The power of transformative information for a mentee

The feeling you get when delivering an AHA moment to someone is memorable and shareable.

There is nothing in this world that excited and energizes me more than conveying practical information to someone who gets it, who deploys it, and who shows it in their success in making it work.

When you give someone practical knowledge which they didn’t see before, or maybe you show them a different perspective of the outcome, their expression is telling. Their mouth drops, pupils dilate and begin to look at you like you are the messiah.

That’s how I feel when I am around my mentors and even people who I don’t know, who deliver great content and shed new light and opportunity onto new theory’s and observations.

It’s those moments, will call them transformative moments, it’s not just about information being passed, but it is information that will be applied by the recipient.

I want to give you a little bit of a background to build the context on which my thesis is based on.

I volunteer for a program with an organization who lends money to young start-ups and entrepreneurs. There I have a role as a mentor to an individual who was granted a loan for his retail start-up business.

We come from two different backgrounds, not just in our ethnicity and experience but also in our business practices. I come from the service based industry and he is at the retail end.

On a side note, I have been thinking a lot about the retail business and I am thinking about penetrating it through the custom design furniture industry, more on that later.

Having no prior experience on the retail end I understand business and so does my mentee. Our relationship is formal and structured. But our conversations are seamless and fluid.

When I give him practical wisdom that I apply in my business and that he never thought off applying in his, his response is 

come finish over here 

https://karasingroup.com/2017/02/13/create-transformative-moment/

Hire as if you were never going to fire.

Remember that employee that got away with everything; Paid holidays, extended vacations, sick leave, excuses, asking for more money, more sick leave, blaming others for their own mistakes, even more sick leaves.

Who hired him/her?

Oh, it was your executive assistant, or your HR department, recruiters? Let me guess, it’s their fault?

Okay, and who hired the person that hired your employee? If you want to go through that again we can, but I think you understand that behind all the hiring’s, you were the person who was secretly in charge of it all.

You might not admit it, that’s fine. This post isn’t about you.

I want you to understand that no matter how good your hiring intuition is, or how good a person seems to be when they start their job, there is no perfect candidate out there.

This is because life goes on.

Things change, people get married, have kids, move away, have relatives move in, or they die. Either way what seems too good to be true is.

So why am I telling you this? It’s not so you recognize that everyone at some point will be mediocre. It’s so you appreciate the things that they do well, and not dwell on the things they don’t.

I tell you this so you understand that organizations are built on people. They aren’t just a digit for when the economy collapses for them to get slashed in the figurative sense. Or literally, however, you want to take that.

Oh, wait, but your employee is extraordinary he/she is the best there is out there and has never let you down.

They will, time will come.

The point I am getting at 

Over here come finish this post https://karasingroup.com/2017/02/11/hire-never-going-fire/

When you feel right about something and you don’t know why.

You digest a great deal of information and take on unprecedented amounts of knowledge, this becomes a catalyst for new ideas, theory’s and feelings.

You begin to see things clearer. Things begin to feel right and wrong without understanding exactly how.

Only to think it is logical.

You don’t remember reading about it but you just know when something is off.

The last two years have been immense for me. I know that I digest and cover a great deal of personal and business development. (This has certainly made an impact in my well being, my business, and those who are in my circle)

Sometimes I think it’s too much.

I don’t burn out, but the amount of information that I didn’t know before is insurmountable. My head feels like it’s going to explode.

Yet, I want more.

It feels as though I am possessed by some knowledge thirsty daemon.

My routine is surrounded by inputs and outputs. Constantly reading digesting and reiterating what I learn.

Watching and reading from people who are winning. Who has it figured out, or so it seems to be that way.

Why do I digest information like a bloodthirsty hyena?

Come finish over here no strings attached 

https://karasingroup.com/2017/02/10/when-you-feel-right-about-something-and-you-dont-know-why/

Why you should stay fit so that others can benefit.

“Don’t you think you compare yourself to others?”

Written extensively about not comparing yourself to other people, and to focus on yourself. I preach this to all those around me. I do it because I believe it’s the right thing to do.

What does comparing yourself to others do for you?

It can be one of two things; self-loathing or motivating.

It can either bring about a negative perception of the self or it can inspire you to behave the same way the person that you compare yourself to.

I have written about competition and how that can also motivate you to do better than other people, but I also have said that competition should be within the self, doing better than you have previously done rather than how others are doing.

The other day my partner asked me;

“Don’t you think you’re influenced by your best friend? You always say not to compare yourself to other people, but it seems like your doing it now.”

Both, I agree and disagree with her statement.

I acknowledge the fact that I .....

If you want to find out more come finish the post over here, by clicking on this link  https://karasingroup.com/2017/02/08/stay-fit-others-can-benefit/

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Originally published at karasingroup.com on February 8, 2017.

Why you should not try to convince anyone that your ideas rock

I am terrible at convincing people because I try too hard to convince them.

I was having a debate with my partner about birthday gifts. Her friend’s birthday is tonight and she is stressing about buying a gift last minute for her friend.

My belief is that birthday gifts, or any holiday related gifts, must not be forced. Meaning that society shouldn’t tell you when the time is due to get gifts for someone rather you should be prompted to get a gift when you feel like getting the gift for that person.

It also makes it much more memorable to get someone a gift when it is least expected.

Let’s take my best friend as an example. His birthday was approaching and he has been with his girlfriend for about 2 years. His girlfriend was planning to buy him something special on his birthday and so she had contacted me for some advice.

I think I restrained from giving her my usual spiel about birthday gifts, so I told her which one of the options he would like that she had chosen.

When the day came, my partner surprised me with some news. As least expected my best friend, whose birthday it was, ended up getting his girlfriend a gift. Talk about spontaneous. This is memorable. So memorable that two years later I still remember it vividly.

No one knew that my best friend was going to surprise his girlfriend with a gift on his own birthday. That’s what made it special. That is thoughtful.

What is not thoughtful is getting someone a gift along with 30 other people on the same day. Guess what, it’s like hitting a piñata to get the prize inside only to find 100 of the same candy’s fall out.

Your gift along with the other meaningless gifts get tossed at the back of the pile with a reciprocation of some fake smiles and gestures of gratitude.

Talk about cliché, getting gifts that actually become meaningless and thoughtless.

How can a gift be thoughtful if there is an external reason to get the gift? I am sure it comes from a place of wanting to do the right thing, but sometimes the right thing isn’t what it made out to be.

I was called cheap, and that I shouldn’t be pushing my beliefs onto others.

I am okay with the insults, what I am not okay with is the realization that the harder I try to convince someone of my beliefs the less convincing I do.

I don’t think my beliefs are right, I believe their right for me.

So how can I carry on?

This boils down to the art of negotiation, even though I am not negotiating anything material, I am still negotiating something of substance; values.

For this, I will turn to Herb Cohen a negotiation expert. He deals specifically with negotiation strategies for government crisis and commercial dealings.

He explains in his tactful book You Can Negotiate Anything that there are three logical factors to consider when negotiating with someone:

1. Help the other person understand by using analogies that they understand.
2. Your Evidence must be overwhelming that it can’t be disputed.
3. In believing you, you must meet their existing needs and desires.

It is also wise not to tell the other person what to think or how to think, but rather give them a theory and let them construct their own thoughts and solutions if they choose too.

People are guarded because being wrong doesn’t feel good, and in this case, no one is wrong. It’s not wrong to get someone a gift when the occasion arises.

I learned that its best not to make the person feel like their wrong because that’s when the wall goes up.

And we know what the German’s said when the berlin wall came down. “Walls don’t work.”

Okay maybe that’s out of context, but talking about unexpectedness and walls I felt it was appropriate timing to put that in there.

Some experts will agree that whoever is stonewalling it will be difficult to persuade them. There are tactics around that, but I want to stick to my main thesis.

In conclusion, get gift’s when you feel it’s right to get them, surprise works well when it is a good surprise.

Negotiation is an art and should not be taken lightly, even when your negotiating ideas and beliefs.

If you want to be calculating care less not more. The more you show you care the more you have to lose.

And lastly, I learned from Herb that change and new ideas need to be introduced in bite sized pieces consistently. It is when ideas become familiar that they soon become acceptable.

Thank you for reading this post, my purpose was not to convince you of anything but to give you practical advice in your next negotiation debut.

To be continued….

Image copyright by Think Progress