Eliminating the word “but” is like throwing a party for your brain.

Word Count: 465
Reading Time: About 90 seconds

As I sit down to write this, we’ve just come through another election season in the United States.  The level of vitriol was unprecedented, our inability to remember all we have in common eroded by years of hateful, divisive language.

The time for communication superheroes was never more urgent.  If that seems like a tall order, I’ve got good news:  You don’t have to attain enlightenment or become a better, more peaceful person to make a difference.

You have to eliminate the word “but” from your vocabulary.

This one, tiny step has the power to transform your thinking.  Once you accomplish that, you’ll be on your way to shifting our national dialog.

When it comes to the brain, practice makes permanent.

Here’s how it works: We’ve spent years practicing the language of division, polarization, and war.  According to Daniel Coyle in “The Talent Code,”  repeating an action, causes the brain to wrap that neural pathway in myelin, the brain’s insulator, which turns that pathway into an ultra-fast neural superhighway.

Lay down enough myelin and you’ve got a habit.   Keep laying down myelin and you’ve got a fixation.  Lay down more and it gets harder to see the links between seemingly polarized points of view.  That’s how you know your mental rut has deepened into a foxhole.

Refusing to use the word “but” can reverse this trend by forcing us to hold two seemingly irreconcilable concepts in our mind.  This invites the brain to make new connections, which it loves – this is how the brain parties!

If you’re ready to start myelinating a more innovative neural pathway in your brain, eliminate the word “but” today.  Your brain will stutter, then gasp, and finally creak its way to new thoughts.  Before long, your brain will be party-central, where all the new, innovative thoughts want to hang out.

Here’s what to do instead of saying but:

1. Replace it with the word “and.”  This is the fastest path to the party.  In any sentence, the word “but” negates what came before it.  Compare “I want to come over tonight, but I’ve got to make cookies,” with “I want to come over tonight and I’ve got to bake cookies.”  The “but” version uses the cookies to negate the possibility of coming over.  The “and” version leaves all p0ssibilites on the table and keeps the brain engaged. Its next contribution might be “Hey, how about I mix up the batter and bring it over?”

 

2. Replace “but” with a period.  Instead of “I like to eat donuts for breakfast, but they’re really bad for you,” say “I like to eat donuts for breakfast.  They’re really bad for you,” and see what happens next.

 
If you’re ready to start your own “but”-less trend, let me know in the comments below.

If you want to be a communication superhero, s-h-h-h-h!

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Word Count: 520

Reading Time:  Under 2 minutes

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“Speech is silver, Silence is golden.” (Swiss proverb)

If you’ve been to even one communication seminar, you have enough tools to last you a lifetime.

Paraphrasing, open-ended questions, and probing questions on the listening side; saying what’s so without blame or judgment, using “I” statements, and stating feelings on the speaking side.  The more of these excellent skills you take in, the more difficult it can be to work them into your repertoire.

Wouldn’t it be great If doing just one thing could dramatically improve every conversation you’re in?

 
One of them can:  Silence.

Silence is how you give someone the gift of your attention.

 
And your attention is what everyone is vying for.  At the gym this morning, I claimed the exercise bike right in front of a TV playing CNN. I was astonished at the amount of visual stimulation competing for my attention.  There were closed captions, constantly changing headlines at the bottom of the screen,  a shifting video background behind the two anchors, the excruciatingly lovely color coordination of set, clothing, headlines and background, and the director’s shifting  camera angles.  It was an extravaganza of data points, so many I didn’t know which to pay attention to.

So, I ignored them all.

All that stimulation was designed to capture my attention, but I it didn’t work.  Nothing stood out.  Nothing cut through the clutter.  Worst of all, I can’t tell you what I thought about it.  And that’s what makes silence so powerful:  It connects us with ourselves, with what we really think.  It connects your client with themselves.  You with your self.  It’s rare anymore to build this kind of reflective time in.

As a consequence, we get more and more data, with less and less meaning.  I recommend bucking that trend.

 
When you’re moving really fast, trying to impress with your brilliance, your commitment, your credibility, stop.  Stop and let stillness reign: For a moment, be silent.  Give someone the gift of your attention and see where that leads.

Here’s what I think silence can do for you:

• Cut through the clutter
• Give you and your client time to listen to what they just said
• Give you and your client time to listen to what you just said
• Give you both time to think
• Open the door for the other listening skills you learned in those workshops.
• Calm an anxious situation.

Start small:

• Slightly increase the pause between listening to another and responding to them.  Then increase it some more.
• Speak more slowly than the person you’re talking to.  This increases the silence between words, sentences, paragraphs, thoughts.
• Take notes and verify you got it right with your partner
• Look thoughtful and interested

Start even smaller:

• Schedule the week you’ll commit to more silence, then for get about it until the appointed time.
• Put a blank card in your portfolio or notebook to remind you of silence.
• When you are ready, commit to 3 moments of conscious silence in a conversation you are already comfortable with. ( If you like what happens, you can expand your time.)

 
Let me know how it goes.  As always, comments are open on the blog.

Until next week,

Liz

If you think being authentic is saying whatever comes into your head, you might be giving people too much information.

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Do any of these sound like you?

• “You say to be authentic, but then I get in trouble for saying too much. “
• “I can’t lie to my clients.  If we can’t do something, I have to say so.”
• “Trust me.  No one wants me to be authentic. “

 
How can being yourself be so tricky?

An Authenticity Rule of Thumb
I like this three-fold test when I’m deciding whether or not to speak up.

• Is it true?
• Is it kind?
• Is it useful to the person hearing it?

 
If it’s true and kind, I’ve taken the blame and judgment out of what I’m about to say. Being kind while speaking the truth shows great compassion.  It’s also difficult, because sometimes we just want to let it rip.  But being authentic is not an excuse to dump on someone.  Keeping it useful is how we avoid that pitfall.

Is what I’m about to say likely to be of any use to the person to whom I am saying it?  Authentic speech, even when it is hard to hear, comes from a singular intention: To be of use to the person receiving it.  The examples below fall on the continuum from inauthentic speech to way too much information.

It may help to remember perfection isn’t the goal here, being real is.  That means there is room for our mistakes, for apologies, for learning and for laughter, however sheepish.  The best way to know how you’re doing is to watch the effect your words have on others and adjust accordingly.

Authenticity is a big topic.  The comments are open for your ideas, clarifications or questions.

“I’m not sure about what happened in that meeting. I asked if they were OK with what we agreed to and they each said yes. But I’m not convinced.”

Does this ever happen to you? I have this conversation with a coaching once a week, on average.

My response never varies: “Say to them what you just said to me. Say, ‘I know you say you agree with this, but I’m not convinced.'”

Often, I hear this: “I wanted to tell them that this can’t work. I wanted to say that the what they asked me to do is not only impossible, it will get them a result exactly opposite the one they want.”

“What stopped you?”
“I could never say that.

And then, you do say that, but not to the person who needs to hear it and not at the time it could do some good.

A participant once came up with a ground rule I love:  This is the cab ride home.  This meeting, this conversation, this moment.