Desktop Background Set - Image 02

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Desktop Background Set - Image 01

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I am going to periodically create these computer desktop backgrounds with inspiring images and tips. The current plan is to create a set of 10 over the next few weeks. Keep checking in for more and I hope you enjoy, download and desktop them...

Simple Messages Drive Complex Behavior

People confirm and reinforce their behavior using simple messages. Reasons:

On the message side:
1. Easy to remember
2. Easy to understand

On the behavior side:
1. Simple to explain to our friends, our co-workers, our family and the mirror.
2. Our brains are wired to work like running water - seeking out the path of least resistance. Thus, it naturally goes for the easiest message to remember and understand.

A few examples (with explanations - although they aren't needed):

• TGIF (Thank God It's Friday) - We use this to define our urgency to escape the drudgery of work and get to the "good life" of the weekend. This is an example of how a simple phrase can reinforce a negative behavior.
  
• Fake it 'til you make it - This is used to remind people that sometimes you have to just start something (like smiling) and then you will feel like doing it. This is a positive behavior example.
  
• I love you - When sourced from the genuine feeling, this phrase is an extension of one of the most powerful forces in human emotions. Again, based on the context, this is the most positive behavior example.

You can leverage this powerful tool to help put a long tail on your content. Here's the strategy: find the simplicity in the complexity of your message, develop a unique phrase or word that embodies the core meaning of this simplicity and then repeat that phrase/word throughout your presentation, in your handouts, on your visuals and during the before and after connection points with your audience.

(Hit tip - http://www.leadershipturn.com/quotable-quotes-say-what/)

Being Prepared to be Original

I have finally started reading The Element by Sir Ken Robinson (of TED fame). It is a book about how to find that magical place where the things you love to do come together with the things you are good at.

It is also largely about how to find and develop our creative muscles. It is a must read for anyone in education or a creative occupation (like speaking).

My favorite line so far is in the section where he is talking about why young people are better equipped to be creative.

"If they aren’t sure what to do in a particular situation, they’ll just have a go at it and see how things turn out. This is not to suggest that being wrong is the same as being creative. Sometimes being wrong is just being wrong. What is true is that if you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original."

As a communicator and someone who thinks Authenticity Rules, being original is at oxygen-level importance. However, it is difficult, challenging, frustrating and time-consuming. And it takes the capacity to be wrong 254 times until you finally realize that you were actually spot-on the 158th time (i.e. – your best idea is not always going to be your final one.)

Getting paid to be creative is one of my favorite parts of being a full-time speaker/author/blogger/business owner. Here are a few of my creative outputs from the past few days:

Music

Design

PowerPoint

Assessing Presentation Threats

Difficult situations can and will arise throughout your presentations.  There are three keys:

1.  Prepare yourself, your room, your content and your audience in advance to avoid these situations.

2.  Have a working understanding of the different levels of situation instigators and know how to handle each.

3.  If you do have to engage a disruptive audience member, be as cordial and pleasant as possible.  Do not allow an unpleasant person make you or your presentation’s experience turn unpleasant.  You can’t always prevent the storm, but you can remain calm during it.

 

Blue Level
Reconnaissance Work
Before your program, build rapport in the room; learn names, be in the audience members’ space, ask questions, learn expectations, etc. If you sense there might be resistance in the room (or if you have been told directly), plan accordingly. If it is one or two people, approach them before the program and discuss options. If it is a large portion of the group, build strategies into your presentation to deal with that reality: use inclusive language, speak to the facts, stand your ground, respect other opinions, don’t pass the buck, be cordial, etc.

 

Yellow Level
The Passive Dissenter
The Passive Dissenter does not mean harm. Their behavior is disruptive, but they are not intentionally trying to hurt your presentation. They are more than likely simply unfocused or distracted and need to be more directly engaged in the program. Catch them at break or when the big group’s attention is on something else and point out how their behavior is disruptive. Ask them how they could adjust their behavior to better fit the needs of the group (let them come up with the solution first.) Give them a purposeful, if even passive, responsibility. Ask them to be a small group discussion leader, help with a small logistical item, think about some new ideas for the current discussion, etc.

 

Orange Level
The Aggressive Dissenter
The Aggressive Dissenter is looking to be disruptive, but not because of you. Their dissention is an outward expression of some inner strife: personal, professional, emotional, social, etc. There is a possibility they can be brought back. When you have a break, approach them one‐on‐one and in private and bring the results of their behavior to their attention. Ask them if they are willing and able to set their personal agenda aside for the betterment of the group. They also need a diversion to get their thinking and emotions back with the group. Let them know you are interested in them, but will not sacrifice the goals of the presentation or the interests and safety of the group.

 

Red Level
The Aggressive Combative
The Aggressive Combative is out to get you; either because of you personally or because you happen to represent the focus of their aggression. They need to be dismissed as soon as possible. If you can, have someone else in an authoritative position do this for you and then move on. If not, then handle it yourself cordially at first, then aggressively if you must. Never physically though. Always leave a safe zone between you and the Aggressive Combative.

 

The BIG IDEA driving all of these strategies is control.  Once you lose control or are perceived as losing control, you lose your audience’s trust.  Once that is gone, everything is gone.

Authenticity Rules #4 – Know Your Tools

Authenticity Rule #4
The Surgeon Rule - Know Your Tools.

 

(Review AR #1 – Know Thyself, AR #2 – Know Your Content, AR #3 – Know Your Audience, AR #6 – Know Your Enemies)

 

You are in the unfortunate position of needing surgery.  Its not the favorite chapter in your life, but you know you have to go through it. 

You are on the table. Everybody is ready to go.  Right before they put you under, the doctor comes in and you hear her say to her staff, “What does this thing do?   How do you turn this one on?  What are those numbers for?” 

The last thing you remember thinking before you slip off to la-la land is, “Goodnight room.  Goodnight moon.  Goodnight life.”  You are scared to death you will not wake up.  You have been given a rookie surgeon.

 

This scenario will, of course, never happen.  Unless our modern health system goes entirely off-course, surgeons not only know how to use the tools of their trade, but they will be complete masters of them.  You wouldn’t even consider going to a doctor that didn’t have hours of experience and absolute confidence using their tools.  So, why would any presenter ask their audience to sit through a presentation where the speaker didn’t know how to use their stuff?

 

Authenticity Rule #4 states:  Your authenticity can show through more powerfully when your presentation tools become natural self extensions.

Here is a quick, non-comprehensive list of this “equipment”:

• Microphone
• Music
• PowerPoint
• Projector/Laptop
• Handouts
• Flipcharts
• Tape/Pins/Velcro (anything you are using to secure visuals to the wall)
• Props
• Room set-up
• Interaction techniques with audience
• Interaction techniques with co-presenter(s)
• Stories

 

What are the downsides of not having total command of your tools?

1. Damages Credibility – Trust between you and your audience is the foundation of everything.  The moment you are vulnerable because of a lack in competency, that foundation begins to crumble.   We don’t care if you are perfect, but we do expect you to care about being close.
2. Distracts – You can only have your focus on one thing at a time.  That one thing should be connecting with the audience.  If you are wasting your “one thing” on how to get your laptop to talk to the projector, someone in the room is getting ignored.  Plus, you want your audience’s attention to be on the message and how it applies to their life, not on the flipchart that keeps falling down because you didn’t think ahead of time to bring push-pins with you.
3. Drains Time – Your audience has chosen to give you two of their most valuable resources – their time and attention.  If you don’t spend time before the presentation getting your tools right, you will have to waste time during the presentation doing it.  This is disrespectful to your audience and is the same as saying to them, “My time is more valuable to me than your time.”  Not good.

How do you get better at using your tools?

1. Learn Great Techniques – Read some books, blogs, tweets, etc. written by ninja level presenters.  Seek these people out personally and ask them how they use ____ successfully.  Here is a great portal for finding great presenters – Speaking Alltop.
2. Practice – After you learn good techniques, practice them.  The best speaking practice is in front of an actual live audience.  In front of the mirror is better than nothing, but not the best practice.  After you finish a presentation, sit down right then and do a Plus (what you did well), Minus (what you didn’t do well), Delta (what you are going to change or find out how to change) list. 
3. Do Recon Work – Call ahead and find out what the room is going to be like.  How is the audience going to be seated?  Are there tables?  What are the walls like?  Can you put things on them?  Do they have a screen, projector, wireless microphone, corded microphone, podium, etc.?  Everything about the room impacts your presentation and should be included in your “tools list.”
4. Start here.

Impossible to Ignore Keynote Strategies

One of my favorite audience responses from my keynote work this year...

"You were impossible to ignore!"

My first thought after she said this was, "So, what you are saying is that you were trying to ignore me, but were unsuccessful?" Seriously though, she went on to say that it was one of the most engaging 25-minutes she has experienced from a convention keynote speaker and she has seen a good number of us.

Now, this post is not about celebrating me, but rather about celebrating and examining the strategies I employ. Here are a few reasons why I think she was unsuccessful at ignoring me:

(This 25-minute keynote was at the end of a 3-hour opening session for a student leadership conference, in a full auditorium of about 1,200 people.)

1. High-Level Interaction
The first half consisted of humor (wit, not jokes), building rapport by telling a quick story about an experience I had that they are currently going through and two quick full-audience interactive activities. There was zero space in the first 12-minutes to be physically, mentally or emotionally disengaged. It was boom-boom-boom.

2. Clear Outline
The second half was the content - the title of the keynote was The Three Giant Jumps to Have a Giant Leadership Journey. Everything about the content pieces revolved around there being three jumps. This repetition built in anticipation to find out what the three were going to be. This anticipation added to the "impossible to ignore" effect.

3. Emotion-Based Stories
Each of the "Three Giant Jumps" were in story form (Reverence, Remarkable and Risk). If I had more time, I would have included another full-audience interactive activity to support the second point. Because the points were supported with fast paced, interesting, colorful and emotion-based stories, the “ignore factor” was diminished by the power of the story – built-in start/middle/end, easy to understand reference points, and unique (two were stories from my life and one was from a friend’s life).

4. Energy
Energy is the most pervasive strategy employed by keynote speakers, workshop presenters and teachers in the Can’t Ignore Club. Our voice, body and attitude all communicate...

"I am excited and interested to be here, even if you aren't. And if you aren't, I'm not going to yell at you or try to push into getting there, we are just going to have so much fun and get so much done on this side of the fence, that you will eventually want to jump it yourself."

This energy strategy results in us being able to pull the audience up to our level of attention, involvement, excitement, joy, etc. It is very difficult to ignore someone who is fully invested in the moment and is armed with effective strategies to motivate that same level of investment from the audience.

The Ultimate Creativity-Sparker and Procrastinator-Killer

You might not be able to have something exactly like Michael Pollan's writing house, but it is worth your time to find something similar to it...








Here are some tips on how to get closer to Michael's recluse paradise:

1. Shut down your mass weapons of distraction.
Phone, email, Facebook, twitter, visitors, TV, web browsing, etc. These elements are designed to attract and control your attention. Unless you have the will power of a Supermonk, shut them off. Give your focus a fighting chance.

2. Find a physical location that has built-in distraction minimizers.
To achieve number one, you might need to do number two. Michael's Writing House works because of the recluse nature of the structure itself. It is physically removed from people, possibly Internet, etc. From the look of it, he pretty much has access to a handful of books, his laptop, a printer and oxygen. When I was in college, this was the fifth floor of the library. Your options are endless if you choose to seek them out: a restaurant, a library, a neighbor/friend's house, your backyard, the hood of your vehicle in the middle of a field, etc.

3. Surround yourself with sights, sounds and smells that inspire YOU.
I don't know, but I would venture to guess that Micheal is inspired by nature, especially since he is a green movement advocate. His Writing House is built of natural material and looks to be in the middle of Sherwood Forrest. These sights, sounds and smells are simply muse fuel. There might even be a certain time of day where he is most prolific. You need to do some self-evaluation and figure out what sights, sounds and smells most inspire you to be creative and/or ultra productive in solo projects. It might be in the middle of a bright, loud, and busy cafe or it could be in your grandma's dark, damp, and quiet basement.

American Dreamin'

There are three reasons why I have some (read: 48 out of 2,735 songs) Hip-Hop/Rap on my iPod...

1. I am a lover of all types of music.

2. Variety is the spice of life and sometimes the stuff is a welcome change to my normal Jack Johnson, George Strait, Michael Buble, AC/DC, Third Day rotation.

3. When it is done without a ton of garbage language or outright ignorant thinking, the artistry, storytelling and ninja-level lyrics are inspiring and highly entertaining.

Like Jay-Z's VH1 Storytellers episode. If you have VH1 or Palladia, watch for it and then watch it. You can also see clips on YouTube. He has a song called American Dreamin' on the episode that is elegantly written. Here is the best piece:

You're now in a game where only time can tell.
Survive the droughts. I wish you well.
Survive the droughts? I wish you well?
How sick am I? I wish you health.
I wish you wheels. I wish you wealth.
I wish you insight so you could see for yourself.

If you read the full lyrics, listen to the full song or even listen to the full album (American Gangster - available in digital download format on Amazon.com, but not iTunes), you will figure out quickly that the story here is about the movie American Gangster. I'm obviously not lifting up and celebrating the story itself - crime, drugs, etc. But the storytelling techniques of the VH1 show are undeniably intense. Its the type of watch that makes a communicator think about how you can tell your story using more visual, creative and intelligent resources.

Starting with the one between your ears and the two attached to your arms.

TED Conference Videos - Invaluable Resource!

If you are a teacher or professional trainer/speaker and don't know about TED, consider yourself informed...

TED is an annual conference in California. TED stands for Technology, Education and Design. Each speaker has only 18 minutes or less to tell about their innovative idea, their life's passion, the part they play in the world of technology, education or design.

BEST PART, their web site (www.TED.com) has hundreds of their speakers' videos in streaming or downloadable format. They are perfect for showing to your students or peers to reinforce your idea and/or enlighten their world. Even if you aren't teaching/speaking on their exact topic, they are all grounded in a ton of great leadership, creativity, education ideas/concepts.

Here are a few of my favorite...


Sir Ken Robinson - Creativity Expert

"Why don't we get the best out of people? Sir Ken Robinson argues that it's because we've been educated to become good workers, rather than creative thinkers. Students with restless minds and bodies -- far from being cultivated for their energy and curiosity -- are ignored or even stigmatized, with terrible consequences. "We are educating people out of their creativity," Robinson says. It's a message with deep resonance. Robinson's TEDTalk has been distributed widely around the Web since its release in June 2006. The most popular words framing blog posts on his talk? "Everyone should watch this."


Nalini Nadkarni - Tree Researcher

"Nalini Nadkarni has spent two decades climbing the trees of Costa Rica, Papua New Guinea, the Amazon and the Pacific Northwest, exploring the world of animals and plants that live in the canopy and never come down; and how this upper layer of the forest interacts with the world on the ground. A pioneering researcher in this area, Nadkarni created the Big Canopy Database to help researchers store and understand the rich trove of data she and others are uncovering."


Juan Enriquez - Futurist
"A broad thinker who studies the intersection of science, business and society, Juan Enriquez has a talent for bridging disciplines to build a coherent look ahead. Enriquez was the founding director of the Harvard Business School Life Sciences Project, and has published widely on topics from the technical (global nucleotide data flow) to the sociological (gene research and national competitiveness), and was a member of Celera Genomics founder Craig Venter's marine-based team to collect genetic data from the world's oceans."


Elizabeth Gilbert - Writer

"Elizabeth Gilbert faced down a ­premidlife crisis by doing what we all secretly dream of – running off for a year. Her travels through Italy, India and Indonesia resulted in the megabestselling and deeply beloved memoir Eat, Pray, Love, about her process of finding herself by leaving home."



Bill Gates - Philanthropist

"Bill Gates is founder and former CEO of Microsoft. A geek icon, tech visionary and business trailblazer, Gates' leadership -- fueled by his long-held dream that millions might realize their potential through great software -- made Microsoft a personal computing powerhouse and a trendsetter in the Internet dawn. Whether you're a suit, chef, quant, artist, media maven, nurse or gamer, you've probably used a Microsoft product today."


Scott McCloud - Cartoonist

"If not for Scott McCloud, graphic novels and webcomics might be enjoying a more modest Renaissance. The flourishing of cartooning in the '90s and '00s, particularly comic-smithing on the web, can be traced back to his major writings on the comics form. The first, Understanding Comics, is translated into 13 languages, and along with Reinventing Comics and Making Comics, its playful and profound investigations are justly revered as something like the Poetics of sequential art."


Tim Brown - Designer

"Tim Brown is the CEO of Ideo, a design firm founded by David E. Kelley in 1991. Brown carries forward Ideo's mission of fusing design, business, and social studies to come up with deeply researched, deeply understood designs and ideas. Ideo is the kind of firm that companies turn to when they want a top-down rethink of a business or product -- from fast food conglomerates to high tech startups, hospitals to universities. Ideo has designed and prototyped everything from a life-saving portable defibrillator to the defining details at the groundbreaking Prada shop in Manhattan (IDEO designed those famous see-through dressing rooms)."


Jonathan Harris - Artist, Storyteller, Internet Anthropologist
"Brooklyn-based artist Jonathan Harris' work celebrates the world's diversity even as it illustrates the universal concerns of its occupants. His computer programs scour the Internet for unfiltered content, which his beautiful interfaces then organize to create coherence from the chaos."


Johnny Lee - Human-computer Interaction Researcher

"To understand Johnny Lee, just take a look at his personal Projects page. Aside from his Wii Remote hacks -- voted the #1 tech demo of all time by Digg -- you can see all the other places his mind has turned: typography, photography, urban renewal ... to say nothing of his interesting sideline in Little Great Ideas, like the hypnotic "___ will ___ you."


Jill Bolte Taylor -Neuroanatomist

"One morning, a blood vessel in Jill Bolte Taylor's brain exploded. As a brain scientist, she realized she had a ringside seat to her own stroke. She watched as her brain functions shut down one by one: motion, speech, memory, self-awareness..."


Raspyni Brothers - Jugglers

"The Raspyni Brothers' inventory of international championships, TV appearances and national tours may seem a lot to juggle, but then, Dan Holzman and Barry Friedman are jugglers by trade. Their waggish humor, irresistible stage presence and "panther-like reflexes" have turned these jesters from openers into the headline act."


Hans Rosling - Global Health Expert, Data Visionary

"Even the most worldly and well-traveled among us will have their perspectives shifted by Hans Rosling. A professor of global health at Sweden’s Karolinska Institute, his current work focuses on dispelling common myths about the so-called developing world, which (he points out) is no longer worlds away from the west. In fact, most of the third world is on the same trajectory toward health and prosperity, and many countries are moving twice as fast as the west did."


Robert Ballard - Oceanographer
"From an early age, Robert Ballard was intrigued by the deep. He's perhaps best-known for his work in underwater archaeology; in addition to Titanic, he has found the wrecks of the Bismarck, the USS Yorktown, the nuclear sub Thresher (on a top-secret mission for the Navy -- for which the Titanic was his cover story) and John F. Kennedy's PT-109."