Integrate!

In some ways, I have the ultimate credential. A doctorate is the end of the line, the highest credential in academics. Mine took eleven consecutive years of post-secondary study. The graduate study was seven years, twelve months a year. Now I am working in a field (NLP, but also coaching) where people think a credential is something to be earned in one year (at best) of part-time study. In the public sector, a rigorous (if not always adequate) process ensures that students only get a credential if they complete work to a specified standard. There are exams, and in good courses there are also assignments and projects and peer-review. There is an effort to ensure that some common standards are represented by the credentials earned. And lots of people fail. They don't make it through the process. There are lots of reasons to question the ethics and the wisdom of failure rates, but they do show that people are being judged not by what they pay or what they attend, but by what they ca...

Do you know that good bye began as "God be with you."  It's a good way to part company, much like "Fare well." When it's time to make an exit, what do you say? The modern way (there are endless Facebook variations) is "it's not about you. It's all about me. This change is good for me and I'm off to pursue my bliss." The focus is on the reasons for leaving. Whatever else is said, whether the rest is in anger or apology, the core message is "I am leaving now because that's what works for me." And the response to that tends to be "Don't let the door hit you on the way out" (with greater or lesser degrees of courtesy). This is inevitable, since the reasons for leaving are always insufficiency or brokenness or mistakes. When we look at the reasons, we cannot help but feel bad. And there's worse to come. Human beings are pack animals: we feel abandoned when someone walks away from our pack because we are ...

You've been waiting for this day for weeks - actively preparing so that you'll be at your best when you need to perform. You've researched and rehearsed and you are ready. Until the bug hits, the one that has been going around the office or the school. You're all set and you're sick. Now what? There are times when there is no choice. You're too sick to carry on and so you miss it. Other arrangements get made. What I want to think about now are the majority of days, the days when you have a wicked head cold and you have to face a 2 hour commute before presenting to a room filled with important people you want to influence. You have choices. You could cancel and begin the long, hard process of preparation again.  You could muddle through miserable and hope for sympathy points from your audience. Or you could excel despite the bug. You could be so committed to your outcome that you show up fully and let go of most of the rotten feelings until after you'...

I've been developing two courses at the same time. One is our new course on Hypnotic Language and the other is the Business Communications courses I teach at Sheridan College. Theoretically, teachers fall into the class (joke!) of people who can tell other people what to do. Teaching is a great way to find the limits of that theory. Here are three ways I make it more likely that my students will do what I tell them to do: When I really need compliance, I use a tone of voice that lets them know it's time to do what I say. This is a voice that rings out with my determination to get an outcome. It's not really about them: it's about presenting an outcome so clearly and compellingly that they are likely to do what I've asked before they notice that they have started or stopped. When I don't really need compliance, I suggest or offer or encourage or give permission. I frame - which means I tell stories or give explanations that put people into a mood (or state,...

There's a lot of misleading information about how to use language to make the kind of suggestions that get carried out without resistance. The first step, the one on which everything else depends, is to understand that anything you say is only a suggestion. The Oxford online dictionary defines a suggestion as an idea or plan put forward for consideration. If you keep reading, it adds what seem to be paradoxical dimensions to this word. In psychology (and hypnosis), a suggestion is not supposed to trigger conscious consideration. This is true whenever suggestion involves talking about one thing to call up another. We can resolve this paradox if we add an element of playfulness to a suggestion. Playfulness is never mistaken for either commands or appeals for help. When we are playful, we suggest (meaning imply, meaning make a connection) that we are doing something together, something that will engage us both. Whatever is being suggested is part of an interaction designed so tha...

The new year is still a baby, and we don't want to load it with too many expectations. Most of you will not be working because it is an official holiday: one of the few shared by people of all faiths and backgrounds. This is the pause before the downbeat, the moment before 2015 really gets going. I think it's a good day to look forward and backward and think about what makes life worth living. It sounds like a big, important question (and it is) but it is also a question we answer every day with the choices we make and the things that we do. Your answer is not what you would say if asked: your answer is what you choose to be important from one day to the next. Once I had a business partner who always said his ultimate goal was to not have to work. He had no concept of work being something that shaped you as you shaped it into something of value, something of influence, something that was inherently worth doing. This caused a certain amount of difficulty, since I believe tha...

Are you too tired? I think we should be asking this question a lot more often than we do. We tend to say "this is too important for me to rest." What we should be saying is "this is too important to tackle when I am this tired." The science of fatigue and sleep deprivation is pretty straight forward. In essence, being overtired is like being drunk: you feel clever but you're really not clever. You can't learn when you're overtired, which means you can't adapt to change. You really shouldn't be making decisions or negotiating them or doing anything that demands your best thinking. You will never have your best thinking when you are sleep deprived. I am at the beach this week because I have been too tired. I stretch. I accomplish great things. People think I'm the Energizer bunny.  And I am, when I remember that even batteries need regular recharging. I am here because I have too much to do over the next few months to do it in a fog. I ...