by Jason Treu | Mar 23, 2018
“How can you increase strategic and innovative thinking company-wide?” This question from a former client of mine also goes to increasing problem-solving and how to hold an effective brainstorming session. I wanted to share the answer with you so that you can use it in your organization.
Most people go about attacking this challenge THE WRONG WAY. It gets them very little results. Done right, you can get massive ROI and game-changing results. And it costs very little do.
Question: Do you order the furniture for a house first or do you build the foundation?
If you have a crappy foundation, the whole house will fall down. You have to start at the foundation. Increasing strategic and creative thinking starts not in a conference room, but in the culture of the company and/or the team level.
Here is a blueprint for a plan I’ve done many times. You can use a version of this in your organization.
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by Jason Treu | Mar 23, 2018
“…and Jason Treu for being an awesome coach. Without him, there is no way I would be where I am today.”
Love it when you get an amazing client to share their story (without any prompting). That’s a screenshot from Facebook.
Cheers,
Jason
by Jason Treu | Mar 22, 2018
I was in the market for earbuds back in November and made a mistake. I don’t want you to do the same thing. I got the Bose earbuds over Apple.
They were “supposedly” water resistant. Well, they weren’t. It’s been a huge pain to get a new pair, and now I was told I have to purchase a new pair. That isn’t happening.
Bose was pretty clunky. It was challenging to pair them sometimes with devices, and the app didn’t work great. The sound was good, but that was it. The battery life was horrible. I was always running out of power.
So I said screw it, I’m going to Apple (which I should have done in the first place).
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by Jason Treu | Mar 21, 2018
Here is a question I got from a person from Amazon on my book Social Wealth.He is asking what other things he could do to have more business success (that includes building better business relationships) The key is self-awareness through pattern recognition. Let me explain why.
Your level of self-awareness is either equal to or greater than your social awareness.
That means if you have low self-awareness your ability to lead and manage others will be very poor. Well, studies find that only 10% of people are actually self-aware. I believe that number is actually high.
I’m sharing our (abridged) conversation below.
Here is the key takeaway (if you don’t time to read the conversation):
Rapid behavioral change comes down to pattern recognition – connecting the pattern with the payoff.
Once you see a pattern, you then can figure out the best course of action(s). And your more committed to taking action because you realize you are not “broken.” You are not a bad person. You’ve just done something for so long it’s apart of who you are.
It’s about connecting your past history with your current behavior. Often times what benefitted you in the past no longer serves you now.
For example, if you grew up in a household of six kids and had to talk over others to be heard, it’s no wonder you are a poor listener. Your payoff was talking over others got mommy and daddy to listen to me. You learned that not listening benefitted you. But now not listening is hurting your productivity and leadership of your team so you have to change.
Obviously, listening is a key component of building great relationships. But you’ve got to make that linkage to create the behavioral change.
Here in lies the big challenge: If your self-awareness is low, you will miss-read the external patterns consistently even though you will believe the opposite.
Experience doesn’t change our brain’s wiring near as fast or as much as understanding the patterns that sabotage our success.
Nikolay: Thanks for the link to the team building game. Are there other Social Wealth Tools, Processes or Mindsets I need to know about?
Me: This is a good article. The article is from Harvard Business Review’s Januar 2018 on self- a
nd social-social awareness.
“In 10 separate investigations with nearly 5,000 participants, we examined what self-awareness really is, why we need it, and how we can increase it.
Our research revealed many surprising roadblocks, myths, and truths about what self-awareness is and what it takes to improve it. We’ve found that even though most people believe they are self-aware, self-awareness is a truly rare quality: We estimate that only 10%–15% of the people we studied actually fit the criteria.”
The biggest challenge to building relationships, personally and professionally, is our own blind spots and patterns that sabotage our success. Cultivating your own self-awareness is the single best thing you can do.
Nikolay: Thanks for the great article Jason. So building social skills is not only understanding other people but also understanding yourself on a deeper level. That also means self-awareness is key.
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by Jason Treu | Mar 21, 2018
Here is a brief and reliable assessment / test to measure how empathetic you are: Toronto Empathy Questionaire.
“Empathy is an important component of social cognition that contributes to our ability to understand and respond adaptively to others’ emotions, succeed in emotional communication, and promote prosocial behavior.”
It’s a key leadership and management skill set to master.
Here is a sample set of the questions. Click here to take the test.
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When someone else is feeling excited, I tend to get excited too
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Other people’s misfortunes do not disturb me a great deal
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It upsets me to see someone being treated disrespectfully
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I remain unaffected when someone close to me is happy
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I enjoy making other people feel better
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I have tender, concerned feelings for people less fortunate than me
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When a friend starts to talk about his\her problems, I try to steer the conversation towards something else
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I can tell when others are sad even when they do not say anything
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I find that I am “in tune” with other people’s moods
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I do not feel sympathy for people who cause their own serious illnesses
How did you score?
