Communicate With Charisma

We are excited and delighted to announce that Tom and Jo's updated version of their fabulous book 'Communicate With Charisma' is now available from all leading, online book sellers. Here's the blurb:
Do you ever wish you had the confidence to stand up anywhere, anytime with anyone and just tell your story? Would you like to increase your personal impact when communicating or presenting? Then Communicate With Charisma is the book you've been waiting for. In this book we offer you secret tips and techniques used by professional communicators from public speakers, actors, comedians and singers to help you dramatically increase your personal impact in life and work. But be warned - If the idea of being able to influence people using the power of non-verbal behaviour disturbs you then don't open this book!



Keeping people Awake, Engaged and Informed should be the goal of everyone presenting or pitching their products, services, values, ideas and beliefs to customers, clients and colleagues at all levels in business today.

And there is no better place to observe the management and focus of human energy and personal presence than the world of entertainment. The very livelihood of the professional performer depends on his or her ability to fully engage, captivate and hold the attention of an audience.

But, charismatic performers are not ‘born’; they have to work at their craft. There is a great deal to learn from the way the great entertainers express high levels of energy through their bodies, voices and language and the use of the environment or ‘space’ in which they communicate.

In Communicate With Charisma you will find the tools and unspoken rules which historically have been used by performers to enhance personal presence. In terms of using space and movement, for instance, there is a healthy respect among actors and directors for left and right positioning when it comes to stage and screen craft.

It is clearly possible to apply such principles to interpersonal communications. For example, you may or may not be aware that by standing on the left-hand side of a right-handed person you are more likely to elicit an increased ‘emotional’ response to your presence than if you stood on their right. This can be so powerful as to literally alter the other person’s mood – for better or worse. In addition, when gesturing as you speak, you are sending specific, subliminal messages which alter meaning, dependent upon the height your arms are held.  In the book you will discover how cells in our brains literally begin to activate when we watch a person gesture, causing us to actually ‘experience’ their movements as well as observing them. 

If you are interested in exploring the subtle, subliminal dynamics of interpersonal communication there is so much valuable information in this book the chapter on voice alone is worth the price!

Here's the Amazon link 

How Do Integral Leaders Define, Create and Support Culture?

Organisational culture has often been described as 'what people say and do when they think no-one is watching'. At 4D we've often found there’s a gap between a company’s stated values and mission statements and the shared values, ideas and beliefs of the people working there. Sometimes this gap is huge!


A recent International survey by Cubiks suggested that today many recruiters are increasingly concerned with finding candidates that fit with their organisation’s values and beliefs. 82% of people responding to Cubiks survey said ‘cultural fit should definitely be part of the recruitment process.’ However only 54% of employees surveyed felt their organization had a clearly defined culture.


This presents a huge challenge for todays leaders - both existing and emerging - when a company’s culture, as expressed in the feelings, thoughts and behaviours of it’s people, is vital to differentiation in an increasingly crowded market place. So who’s responsibility is it to define, create and support a company culture?


We would say, and I think most people would agree, that it absolutely has to start at the leadership level.


As the global economy continues in a state of flux we are seeing increasing levels of economic migration as the good and the great of developed and developing nations begin seeking new opportunities. If they are not available in their own country they will go where the action is. From a leadership perspective embracing cultural diversity will be an absolute must in order to create a sustainable, organisational culture supported by a globally focussed business model.


However, it can become extremely challenging when people holding differing belief systems, worldviews, and levels of complexity of thinking encounter each other in the work place. The main challenge being that people are often only able to understand concepts, models and ideas based on the perspective of their own value systems. And it is widely recognised by any psychologists claiming a level of expertise that we the people will nearly always process information through the lense of our own world view.


This can make communication between people difficult and as a result trying to establish an aligned culture may become a fruitless task. Especially when dealing with non-negotiables in the work place.

This challenge requires a new type of leadership. Integral Leadership.


But what is Integral leadership?


It means being able to take an integrated perspective on leading and managing diverse groups by establishing an integrated culture that recognises the values and beliefs of individuals and how an authentic culture emerges through natural synergy.  A leaders responsibility is to nurture that emergence and guide it towards it's natural evolution. This begins with acknowledging that everyone has something of value to say about the nature of reality and the given life and work conditions within a community. But this is not pluralistic leadership. Neither is it leadership by consensus. The Integral leader listens to everyones opinion and then applies relational systems thinking to identify who should do what with whom, when, where and why based on a systemic perspective that considers the culture as a whole.


What follows are some key capabilities that, for us define Integral leadership, beginning with:


A high level of self awareness - This means having a clear and thorough understanding of the 4 dimensions and two perspectives of human development and expression.


A Flex and Flow mindset -This means being able to creatively adapt and respond to the rapidly changing conditions of life and work today.


A Network mindset- This means developing the capacity for systems thinking, understanding the emotional dynamics of networked relationships and how intrinsic values like trust, integrity, empathy and spirituality constitute human networks.


Communication Skills- How to communicate in a way that inspires and motivates a diverse group of individuals by communicating 4 dimensionally.


A clear and compelling vision - about who should lead whom to do what, how and why? It might not always be you.


Understanding how and why different people are motivated by different values.


Understanding why values, ideas and beliefs take hold and spread in an organisation.

Understanding what personal and professional development really means to each and every person you lead.


Understanding when to lead a diverse group of people through change.


Understanding how to communicate with people in ways that reflect back to them their deepest values.


The ability to model leadership behaviours that empowers and motivates people to take responsibility and achieve their full potential.


The intention and commitment to build an innovative culture that aligns the values and drives of individuals, and teams. An Integral leader is able to encourage, support and develop others towards generating and releasing their energy and creativity in alignment with a leadership vision and the organisation’s purpose, values and drives.


Our approach to leading, creating and supporting organisational culture is inspired by (and based on) the theory of Spiral Dynamics - an evolutionary, developmental model and map that outlines how people living different value systems will look for different modes of leadership.


For example:

Purple Leaders are nearly always part of a direct lineage of succession and are often the ‘elders’ of a group as Purple communities are close knit and fearful of others who are different. Leadership is driven by appealing to tribal loyalities.
     
Red leadership is about the absolute ‘power’ and rule of the individual. Leading from the front the Red leader demands respect and always comes first, even if it’s at the expense of those being led. Leadership is dictatorial and ego-driven.


Blue leadership is driven to serve a higher authority and observe and obey absolute laws and rules. While offering a degree of order, authority, predictability and stability this form of leadership can sometimes be inflexible and pedantic in today’s shifting market place.Blue leadership is compliance driven.

Orange Leadership is entrepreneurial and innovative but can sometimes be Machiavellian. This energy is driven to succeed at all costs. Showing emotion may be considered a waste of time and money. Similar to Red, this mode of leadership is primarily self-seeking. Orange Leadership is achievement driven.

Green leadership seeks interpersonal relationships. Honesty, empathy, authenticity and trust is highly valued. However this mode of leadership on it’s own can lead to challenging levels of  “political correctness”. Green  Leadership is primarily people driven.


A leader energised by the  Yellow value set is able to see the whole spiral of human differences within an organization from a values perspective, and knows how to communicate with people at their respective levels. Cultural barriers such as race, religion, gender, age and lifestyles that can divide and create conflict are managed, transcended and included in a syngergistic approach that serves the whole system. A leader expressing Yellow asks who is best suited to do what and why? Yellow Leadership is flex and flow driven and therefore Integral.

In summary - Integral leaders Define culture as an interconnected system of values, Create networks of shared commitment, reciprocity and trust and Support culture through communication, flexibility and openness.

Dying Is Easy - Comedy Is Hard

I work to live, live to learn and adore a challenge so last weekend I faced my final frontier in communication skills and delivered my first ever ‘stand up' comedy routine in front of a live audience in Brighton.

It all happened after we attended Jill Edwards fabulous comedy workshop at the Komedia Studio Bar.

You might think this isn’t such a big deal for someone whose early career was spent  performing on stage, including many in London’s West End, but you’d be wrong.  

Yes,  these days I do stand in front of big rooms full of delegates delivering training programmes, seminars and workshops. I’ve also presented award ceremonies and hosted corporate entertainment events, but this was different. 

I’ve always had a huge admiration for comedians and their ability to make people laugh. Seamlessly delivering their material as a mix of improvisation and memorised topics looked to me like acts of the supernatural. Watching comedians deal with drunk hecklers is one of my guilty pleasures and I’m always delighted when I see the best of them eviscerate a troublesome punter.  However I always claimed that I never had the guts to try it myself. Well, life is short and as I also claim to be a communication skills expert I thought it was about time to feel the fear and do it anyway.

We arrived back stage at the Komedia early on Saturday morning and after a couple of introductory warm up exercises we very quickly began working on our material. Our comedy coach Jill Edwards was a master facilitator and managed to guide our terrified troupe of twelve towards their comedic fate.  We spent the next two days writing, structuring, preparing and rehearsing a one minute comedy routine that we would be delivering in front of each other (plus some specially invited guests) on the Sunday afternoon.

Having both attended and delivered many training programmes over the past ten years I can be a very challenging delegate. However Jill’s no nonsense facilitation style and mastery of her craft was a delight and I had arguably the best two days training of my life. Thanks to Jill, by Sunday I was ready and raring to go.

So, what was it like?

All I can tell you is that surviving for even just one tiny minute on stage, under a spotlight, with only a microphone as your friend in front of 20 expectant faces delivering what you hope will be funny is a feat of endurance difficult to describe.  And it's true what they say...”Dying is easy, comedy is hard.”

But, if you really want to feel what it’s like to communicate your values, ideas and beliefs clearly, effectively and in a way that makes people laugh out loud I recommend you try it for yourself.  

Laughing is truly one of life's greatest joys. Making other people laugh is one of life's greatest gifts.

There really is no other feeling like it.

TBM

Women Step Up!

This year 4D's resident twins Philippa and Penelope are delighted to have delivered our unique, 2 day programme called ‘Women Step Up’ live in London for RSA. 

This version of the course was tailored to precisely meet the needs of the fabulous, female delegates who attended. However, despite the title the programme is not exclusively for women. 

Yes, it is true that only five percent of the Fortune 500 CEOs are women so ‘Women Step Up’ is very much about the challenges women with ambition meet in the workplace, from both male and female colleagues. And yes we do unpack and explore how to handle some of the daily obstacles women face from sexism and discrimination to a lack of flexibility in terms of parental leave. However these are issues that impact on everyone in the workplace and also on the evolution of business as a whole in the 21st Century. So the course is less about gender issues and much, much more about increasing personal impact, assertiveness and influencing effectively.

These are key capabilities for women in leadership roles as Sheryl Sandberg – COO at Facebook - points out in her book LEAN IN. She tells us: “When a woman excels at her job, both men and women will comment that she is accomplishing a lot but is not as well liked by her peers. She is considered “too aggressive,” “not a team player,” “a bit political”; she “can’t be trusted” or is “difficult.” Those are all things that have been said about me and almost every senior woman I know.”

So, it’s clear that ‘stepping up’ requires good to great levels of communication, networking and negotiation skills. Women Step Up is our learning and development response to the call for not only women but everyone in the work place to identify their passions, take some risks and communicate with clients, colleagues and friends to co-create new opportunities and a new way of ‘being’ human in life and work. For everyone.

Spiral Back In Time

We were recently talking about some of the most memorable times we've spent as a result of being in the learning and development business and one particular memory stood out for us. It was back in 2011 when we attended a training seminar in Spiral Dynamics Integral in Santa Barbara with one of the originators of the model, Dr Don Beck himself. Since then we've continued to integrate many of the key insights from Spiral Dynamics Integral in our work at 4DHB and particularly in our book Spiral Into Love.

The theory of Spiral Dynamics was originally developed by Dr Don Beck and Christopher Cowan based on their take on the research of Dr Clare W Graves. The central idea of Spiral Dynamics is that what we humans feel, think and believe evolves through time and is dictated by our neurophysiological development and responses to our given life conditions. Research into brain function has demonstrated that our environment and our intrapersonal and interpersonal experiences shape our neurology, which in turn determines the drives and values that dictate our behaviour.

Later Don Beck teamed up with the Integral philosopher Ken Wilber and together they began to integrate their ideas to create what became known as Spiral Dynamics Integral. SDI is not a typology but rather a description of value structures that generate a flowing process of psycho-biological energy that fuels human growth and development. These drives form nested systems and express the evolution of each individual's personality. The theory uses the metaphor of a spiral of energy spiralling upwards as it moves the individual towards satisfying various needs that result in physical, emotional and intellectual adaptions to given life conditions that trigger further stages of development.

In this video Philippa and Don enjoy an informal moment at the end of a training day to talk about Spiral Dynamics Integral.

How Are You Authentic?

Few people would deny that our outward behavior is the result of our deepest intentions and yet sometimes the results of our behaviour may not necessarily be what we intended. Particularly if we are not skilled or practiced in using our bodies and voice to communicate what we intend.

Ideally the authentic self would be an integration of all four dimensions of human being. However, in our experience there is usually a gap between each of the dimensions of self.

We recently had an interesting discussion about authenticity with a group of delegates during an in house communication skills course.

We had identified early on that most of the participants attending the two-day programme had received a 360-degree feedback suggesting that they might benefit from tools and techniques to develop their communication skills.

One person in the group felt that, while they were keen to improve their skills being authentic while communicating at work was the most important thing. They then added that they would feel inauthentic if they were to consciously use their body language in a way that might influence someone.

This prompted us to pause and ask the group if they would be interested in us facilitating an exploration into the meaning of the word authenticity. They unanimously agreed and so we kicked off by asking the following question:

“Do you think there is a difference between how you feel, think and behave when you are at home with your family, out with friends and at work with colleagues?”

While everyone in this particular group agreed there was indeed a difference, most felt that they behaved authentically while communicating at work.

This then prompted the question, which of the feelings and behaviours were most authentic to the person; all of them perhaps?

This was a little trickier as it was clear from some of the feedback the delegates in the room had received from a recent 360 that their authentic behavior wasn’t necessarily making the desired impact.

The objective for the rest of the session then shifted towards how we might identify which is our authentic self and how to then consciously use a communication skills technique without losing authenticity. What happened next?

Think, can of worms and a tin opener!

We started by looking at how we might become more conscious of how we use the 4 dimensions (body, heart, mind and intention) to express ourselves. Once we are clear about this we can begin to understand that there are in fact many selves behind what seems like one personality. At least four in most cases.

Let's start with what we might believe is our authentic physical self. It is a fact that we inherit 50% of our genes from our Mothers and the other 50% from our fathers so the self we call our body is entirely inherited. We are basically physical reproductions of our parents. The important thing to understand about this is that the genes we’ve inherited contain memories. You may have heard of muscle memory in sport, well the same applies to the genetic memory inherent in the formation of the human body in vitro. All the memories that inform the process leading to the shape, size and quality of our physical organs is contained in the genes we inherit and are the result of our ancestors’ social and environmental experiences and behaviours. Recent studies in epigenetics have revealed just how important genetic inheritance can be in terms of our health and well-being and that of our children. So, what does it mean to be authentically ourselves physically when we’ve inherited someone else’s body parts?

Now let’s explore how we might become a slightly different person when we become emotional. People will often say that after a particularly emotional episode – this may have involved either feeling extremely happy or ecstatic to feeling sad or angry - they felt like they had been hijacked by another personality. This is essentially because our emotions are a mix of inherited dispositions, learned behaviours and also our own unique responses to the life conditions and experiences we have been born into. Each important stage of life is marked by certain emotional benchmarks, infancy to childhood and puberty to adulthood. Each of these stages will have featured both positive and negative experiences that lay down some fairly stubborn and habitual, emotional responses that can be very hard to break. So, are we always authentically being ourselves emotionally? Which is your true and authentic emotional self?

The intellectual dimension is also subject to the vagaries of our genetic inheritance. Although this is not necessarily fixed for life. Research into brain plasticity has revealed that our thinking style can be altered and with practice and regular brain workouts we can increase our intellectual capacity. However, our genes combined with the quality of our education will influence the development of a personality that is based on our own knowledge of the world. The challenge for this personality is that it will often be a combination of learned traditions and rules plus our own interpretation of the information we have been required to understand and accept. It is probably safe to assume that most people are behaving authentically when communicating their knowledge about the world. After all, it is what they believe to be true.


Which neatly brings us to the fourth dimension of self-expression. The Intentional self. This is the personality that forms around our deepest values and beliefs about life, the universe and everything.

For example, while at work you may professionally execute all the tasks required of your job role but your 'intention' is to get through the day avoiding your boss or certain colleagues and get out of the building as quickly as possible.

In this instance you may be ‘doing’ a job of work that doesn’t utilize all your skills, working for a boss who doesn’t value you or recognize or acknowledge your potential and perhaps your role is not offering you the opportunities you believe you deserve.

In this example your intentional self is the most authentic expression of what and who you are. You may be ‘doing’ your job very well but your 'being'- body language and emotional responses to others you work with - will be expressing your ‘authentic’ intentions. In this case if you communicate anything other than what you genuinely intend you may be perceived as behaving in-authentically – perhaps without even realizing it.

This is the time to reset your intentions and consciously choose a different authentic you that will serve you better. It may be that you can tap into the authentic you that enjoys the physical aspect of the job or begin to explore and expand your authentic emotional self. How might you become authentically more in touch with your emotions in a way that benefits both your colleagues and customers? Perhaps your intellectual self could offer more to your boss than you currently share. What impact might that have?

As we consciously choose which self to express, when, to whom and how, we can begin to integrate all 4 dimensions in a flow of ‘being’ that increases our feeling of authenticity.

So the next time someone says to you “I like to be authentic” you might enquire as to which of the four authentic selves they are being?

Educating For Creativity - Not for Factories

It is unlikely that anyone in the relatively free West doubts that we live in the age of information. A time when the world is fast becoming not just a global village but a global brain. The exponential growth of internet users has meant that never before in the history of the human species have so many of us had access to so much information. Any one with a laptop can get information on everything and anything from the worlds of entertainment, news, philosophy, psychology, religion, sociology, politics, environmentalism -the list goes on and is endless. So a question arises - Are our school systems becoming obsolete? Should we cease 'teaching' and start asking children, students and ourselves to find the answers to new questions? Is it time for a complete revision of the reasons why, how, where and when we educate ourselves?

Just like the human brain the internet is recording the world’s experiences and people are learning more and more about each other and themselves. This means that many of the old ways of living and working will be challenged as people start to seek new ways of being and behaving inspired by what they discover from others. One of the key revelations of the information age is that for every value, belief and idea that you hold there is an equally credible but differing and sometimes opposing value, belief and idea. We can no longer remain cocooned in a small world culture of the tribe.

In human beings the energy and intelligence behind evolution has shifted its focus as we take our first steps into the twenty first century. Unlike the biological evolution of the past which relied on random mutations and chance to adapt and survive we are experiencing an evolution of consciousness. We have now developed the capacity and capabilities to choose and direct our biology at the level of our DNA. Science is uncovering more and more of the mechanisms that govern creation with the result that people are living longer and healthier lives. But in today’s ever changing and unpredictable socio-economic environment we'll need a new worldview and with it a new way of educating ourselves.

In this fantastic TED video Sugata Mitra points to the way ahead.