Deal World Rule #5 - Know Thyself

Central to the wisdom of the great sages is this principle -- "Know Thyself." This simply stated, yet difficult thing to achieve is the primary challenge faced by negotiators -- because the hardest person you negotiate against is always yourself.

If you Know Thyself, you will separate yourself from your ego (a horrible negotiator) and from the emotion of the situation. You will create natural flow, which yields clarity of purpose and the strength to confront any fear. There are many paths to self-awareness:

Desire it - This will cause you to see and tune into opportunities of selfawareness.

Seek it - Create a simple journal (handwritten preferred), and take a few
minutes each day to reflect upon the following questions:

• What is your passion? Passion points to purpose.
• What do you value? This is the filter of all major decisions.
• Who do you admire and why? What are their values?
• What would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail? Leaning into your fear is the most powerful exercise for personal growth.
• How would your eulogy sound? You are going to die, embrace that thought so you get off your butt and step into your greatness – NOW!

These questions can be found in a great book - BE by A.C. Ping

Self-Analyze - As you become more aware of the questions to ask, you can start to really focus on how you behave in certain situations and what truly provides happiness. You can usewww.strengthsfinder.com, www.marcusbuckingham.com or Myers-Briggs Personality Inventory as aids.

Feedback - Ask your trusted friends for feedback about your areas of brilliance, strengths and weakness.

Coaching - Get a coach to help you establish a structured approach to tackle all of these questions with effective feedback and continuous self-assessment.

As you grow, learn, and evolve, remember the most important attribute of great negotiators (and happy people) is that they know themselves. Do you know yourself?

Creative Genius

I've been reading a great book lately: Orbiting the Giant Hairball, by Gordon MacKenzie. I would say that after 11 years, the book is getting a little dated, but some ideas are just a little too sticky to go out of vogue.

One of the first stories in the book is about the author's visits to elementary schools where he displays his steel sculptures and talks art with the kids. Predictably, as the groups of kids get older, the less enthusiastic they become about discussing their own creative genius. To illustrate the point, I was taking a walk this past Sunday around a nearby lake. A young girl and her mother were walking just ahead and discussing the various ideas for sandcastles and sand-sculptures they could make when they got to the beach. The mother's ideas were primarily based on castles, moats, mermaids, etc. The young girl had a different idea: A half unicorn, half duck sculpture. She reasoned that she really liked ducks and really liked unicorns - so why not put the two together (Duckicorn or Uniduck?)!? Awesome.

Obviously, not every off-the-wall idea will work and certainly there is some comfort in having grown ups act in predictable patterns. But this draws out the distinction between being "normal" and being ORIGINAL, which is what we're really driving for when we want to unlock our creative genius.

One of the more powerful ideas here was about validation:

My guess is that there was a time - perhaps when you were very young - when you had at least a fleeting notion of your own genius and were just waiting for some authority figure to come along and validate it for you.
...
But there is still hope. You are an adult now. As an adult, you can chose to become your own authority figure.

I get a huge kick out of that idea. Authorize and validate your own genius!

Deal World Rule #4 - Use Maps to See the Deal Landscape

Ernest Shackleton, Robert Scott, and Roald Amundsen were among the great explorers of the modern world. Armed with their passion, knowledge, and tools, these intrepid souls boldly ventured into the unknown, in search of great rewards, yet keenly aware that tragedy might befall them instead. Deals are like expeditions. Dealmakers are the explorers. We embark on a journey into new territory, relying on our passion, knowledge, and tools in the hope of reaching our business goals, yet recognizing that the risk of a bad deal is ever present. One critical tool that explorers use is a map.

Dealmakers should use them too. A deal map allows you to see where you are within the whole landscape in relation to the desired destination. Maps clarify and simplify complex terrain. Where are you now? Where is the destination? What risks & obstacles lie in the way? How can they best be navigated? Are you on the best course? You should start with a deal map based on what you know at the outset, and add detail as you uncover it during the expedition. This will help you in the deal, and it will foster greater knowledge transfer and retention beyond the deal.

A picture is worth a million words. Just as it’s better to show than to tell, a deal map is superior to the old memo. Memos may have their place in certain situations, but deal maps should also be added to your toolbox.

This Deal World Rule #4 is about seeing the whole landscape. When you can see what you are doing, in context, you have deeper understanding that makes you more effective at achieving better results.

How do you map your deals? Do you do it in a visual way that allows you to see the whole? Do you fill in the deal landscape with more detail as you move forward? If so, congratulations. If not, start today.

(click picture for the full view)

Mission Statements

I've been preparing a little presentation about the firm for use in an upcoming meeting and it has kept me thinking about mission statements, strategic vision and things like that. I could easily point back to my last post - I don't like business jargon that seems to be saying a lot without really saying anything. So with that in mind, have you thought about a meaningful mission statement to guide your personal and professional lives?

One of the best ideas I can think of for crafting a mission statement is to figure out what you are good at: What are your strengths? It is easy to identify weaknesses and attack them systematically over the course of weeks or months, but it makes more sense to me to FOCUS on your strengths. These are the skills, passions and desires that drive you. So what are they? Need a little help? A great book by Tom Rath, entitled StrengthsFinder 2.0 is a great place to start.

Now, take those strengths and use them to come up with a MISSION. No, I didn't forget the last half of the phrase, a MISSION. James C. Collins, in his article In Pursuit of the Big Hairy Audacious Goal states that

A true mission is a clear and compelling goal that focuses people's efforts. It is tangible, specific, crisp, clear and engaging. It reaches out and grabs people in the gut.

I love that imagery and the ideas behind that quote. Any good MISSION has a clear finish - you'll know when you achieved it! Resist the urge to fill out your mission statement with platitudes and vague statements. If your mission statement isn't guiding your behavior, you haven't quite got it right. Go back to your strengths and keep paring it down until you've got to the honest core of you MISSION.

Emotional Intelligence - Beyond The Buzzwords

While I'm definitely not one to walk into a meeting and tell people we have to synergize, think outside the box and repurpose our goals to make them actionable, I do think there is something to the oft used and abused term Emotional Intelligence.

So, what is Emotional Intelligence? Sure, there's a long, drawn out scientific explanation as to why and how our emotions developed and clearly raw, unadulterated intelligence can take a person pretty far in this life. Still neither of these, standing alone explains why some extremely intelligent people fail while those with a perceptibly lower level of intelligence seem to get a lot of traction. Emotional Intelligence, according to author Daniel Goleman is an amalgamation of five areas: (1) Self-Awareness: Ongoing attention to your internal states, including your emotions; (2) Managing Emotions: Don't ignore or try to eliminate emotions, analyze and incorporate them; (3) Self-Motivation: The ability to restrain emotions, delay impulses, and to defer gratification are critical life skills and the key to a host of endeavors; (4) Empathy: The more self-aware you become, the more skilled you will become at reading other people's feelings; and (5) Handling Relationships: The ability to accurately express feelings and sense the emotions of others is key to maintianing healthy relationships. IQ and Emotional Intelligence are not opposing competencies, but they do work separately. A person can be intellectually brilliant but emotionally inept, an imbalance that can cause many life problems.

How can you build your emotional intelligence? Authors Travis Bradberry & Jean Greaves offer some suggestions in their book, the Emotional Intelligence Quick Book:

1. Repetition is the key to permanent change. If you practice emotional intelligence skills regularly they will get easier over time.
2. Don't bite off more than you can chew. Spend time improving one particular skill area rather than taking a shotgun approach and losing interest when the task seems overwhelming.
3. Lean into your fear. Most people have a hard time realizing the cold, ugly truths about their own weaknesses. If you come face to face with your shortcomings, you can find ways to deal with them rather than ignoring them altogether.

This is just the tip of the iceberg, but a great starting point for gaining control over your emotions and dealing with the emotions of others in your personal and professional life.

Minneapolis Half-Marathon

I participated in my first-ever half-marathon this weekend and had a blast. Special thanks to Team Ortho for putting on a first rate event that was great for the runners as well as the spectators. I don't think I could have asked for a more perfect way to kick off my long-distance running. The weather was perfect and being there with all these other runners was so inspiring!

So, What's Your Story?

How many times have you heard that question? Plenty probably, but have you taken some time to think about the stories you tell about yourself? According to Jim Loehr in his book, The Power of Story, tells us that most of our stories revolve around 5 central topics: Health, Family, Work, Friendships & Happiness. Take a few minutes to think about the stories you tell about those 5 topics. Do you find a gaping difference between the stories you tell yourself and what is actually happening in your life? If so, you have a big problem!

Authentic storytelling is one of the oldest and most effective ways to communicate ideas and ideals. It's the reason the radio program (podcast program?) This American Life is so popular - people telling authentic stories about their lives is powerful!

So how do you tell authentic stories that will communicate the essence of you, your brand, your business? Here's a few suggestions from the book What's Your Story?, by Ryan Mathews & Watts Wacker:

• Give your story a human face. People respond to stories about people.
• Think of yourself as a color commentator rather than a play-by-play announcer.
• Don't assume your audience is familiar with your story or even cares to hear it.
• Know who your audience members are. They might include employees, customers, the media, investors, your stakeholders or your competition.

So, What's Your Story?