If you write down the problem clearly, it is half solved.

Kidlin's Law

The more you fear something, the more it will happen

Murphy's Law

The biggest problem at work is that Noone tells you what to do.

Gilbert's Law

If you keep putting information and intelligence first at all time, money keeps coming in.

Wilson's Law

If you don't have to make decision, don't make a decision

Falkland's Law

5 Natural Laws you should know

• We always have a choice and these choices start a behavior that over time becomes a habit.• Your biggest challenge isn’t that you’ve intentionally been making bad choices but it is that you are not aware of them.

Pay attention to what you Choose.

Step 1 - Take responsibility for your choices. If you don't then others will choose for you.Step 2 - Maintain a small diary to track your behavior in areas where you want to be successful.

2 steps to become aware of your choices.

• If you make same choice every day then it will turn into habit. • Habits allow us to use minimal conscious energy for everyday tasks. • Use habits to automate your everyday tasks and focus remaining conscious energy on your goals.

Repeated choices will turn into habits.

• There are 3 type of influences, 1. Input - What you feed your mind. 2. Associations - The people with whom you spend your time. 3. Environment - Your surrounding.

Influences affect our choices and habits.

• The default mode for your brain is survival. Media knows this very well and hence there is always a "Breaking News". • Controlling the input has a direct and measurable impact on your productivity and outcomes.

Input - What you feed your mind.

• The people with whom we spend our time determine what conversations dominate our attention, and to which attitudes and opinions we are regularly exposed. • You can categorize your associations with people.

Associations - The people with whom you spend your time. 

1. Dissociations - Avoid them at all costs2. Limited associations - Decide how much you can “afford” to be influenced, from them.3. Expanded associations - Spend more time with people whose qualities you like.

Evaluate and shift your associations with people into 3 types.

• Physical clutter that makes it hard for you to work efficiently.• Psychic clutter of whatever around you isn’t working or whatever that's broken, but remember one thing while doing th is.

Clear out all the clutters in your life.

• If you tolerate disrespect, you will be disrespected. • Protect your emotional and physical space so you can live with peace, rather than in the chaos and stress the world will throw at you.

You get in life what you tolerate.

Use these actionable steps from to get success in every area of your life.

The New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller, based on the principle that little, everyday decisions will either take you to the life you desire or to disaster by default. No gimmicks. No Hyperbole. No Magic Bullet. The Compound Effect is a distillation of the fundamental principles that have guided the most phenomenal achievements in business, relationships, and beyond. This easy-to-use, step-by-step operating system allows you to multiply your success, chart your progress, and achieve any desire. If you're serious about living an extraordinary life, use the power of The Compound Effect to create the success you want. You will find strategies including: How to win--every time! The No. 1 strategy to achieve any goal and triumph over any competitor, even if they're smarter, more talented or more experienced. Eradicating your bad habits (some you might be unaware of!) that are derailing your progress. The real, lasting keys to motivation--how to get yourself to do things you don't feel like doing. Capturing the elusive, awesome force of momentum. Catch this, and you'll be unstoppable. The acceleration secrets of superachievers. Do they have an unfair advantage? Yes they do, and now you can too!

The Compound Effect

<ul><li>To convince people of your competence, use the “impression management” tools of the “eight pillars of competence.”</li><li>Competence and brilliance aren’t necessarily self-evident; you must showcase your qualities.</li><li>Manage people’s anticipation, so they will expect you to be competent.</li><li>Associate yourself with good news.</li><li>Showcase specific elements of the “competence formula”: performance, ability, motivation, dealing with difficulty and luck.</li></ul>

Prove Your Competence & Win People Over

Master verbal and nonverbal communication.The greater your attraction and popularity, the greater will be your perceived competence. Project tact, authenticity and self-confidence.Use the “power of symbols” to build the most reliable measure of your competence: your habitus – the way you look and act.Judging other people’s competence is hard; recognizing their incompetence is easier.

Communication Matters

It’s not your actual competence that counts. It’s how people perceive your competence that makes the difference. You can apply impression management techniques, tools and tactics to convince others of your competence. Persuading others gives you a tremendous advantage over people who are equally competent but can’t differentiate themselves.

Impression Management

Competence, even brilliance, isn’t self-evident. You must showcase your skills, expertise and competence, so they resonate most strongly with those whom you want to impress.Brilliance does not speak for itself. You can, in fact, be the best in the world and no one will notice.

Showcase Your Skills

To demonstrate your competence, use “expectation management” to direct other people’s anticipation and shape positive perceptions of your competence. When you help people reduce or eliminate anxiety about dealing with a stranger – in this case, you – you benefit. Demonstrate confidence in yourself. Subtly refer to your past successes in areas that matter to those whose support you require.

Manage People’s Anticipation, so They Will Expect You to Be Competent

Use the technique of priming your audience by projecting competence from within. For example, suppose your boss asks you to stand in front of your colleagues and answer several questions. “What are you…good at?” “What was your greatest professional success?” “Why should you, of all people, take on the responsibility for an upcoming project?” “Why should anyone be led by you?” Prime yourself by developing answers in advance to these and other likely questions.

Projecting Competence

In 1980, Senator Ted Kennedy campaigned for the US presidency. During a high-profile TV interview, newsman Roger Mudd asked Kennedy, “Why are you running for president?” Ten incredibly long seconds passed – an eternity of dead air – before Kennedy came up with an answer. This was the precise moment when Kennedy’s presidential campaign inexorably started downhill. Prime yourself to answer probable questions from bosses, clients and job interviewers. Have clear answers ready.

Ted Kennedy Didn't Know Why He Was Running For President

Positive news radiates positively over every other aspect of a person or event, and bad news does so negatively.Always deliver good news face-to-face, not by phone or email. If you make a presentation sharing good news, stretch it out as long as possible. After your presentation, don’t immediately retreat from the podium. Every second you stand there will solidify your association with that good news.

Associate Yourself with Good News

You can’t directly assess the factor by which competence contributes to successful performance and/or achievement. Many aspects play a part in any successful outcome. Elements of the competence formula include performance, ability, motivation, dealing with difficulty and luck.

The Competence Formula

During his 2005 commencement speech at Stanford University, Apple CEO Steve Jobs told the graduating students about the severe hardships he faced before he became a business legend. “I didn’t have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends’ rooms, I returned Coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the seven miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple."

The One Good Meal At The Hare Krishna Temple

More than any other technique, “power talking” will enable you to maximize how others perceive your competence.Success or failure has surprisingly little influence on the perception of competence. One can appear to be competent despite vast failure and seem incompetent in the midst of immense success.

Master Verbal and Nonverbal Communication

Powerless speech indicates a lack of status. On the other hand, power talking suggests elevated social status. To speak powerfully, avoid the “uhs.” Don’t repeat yourself. Make your speech – and speech patterns – crystal clear and direct.Women routinely fall into “powerless speech patterns,” including showing hesitation, trivializing phrases such as “you know” or “pretty good,” and excessive politeness, for example, “Won’t you please close the door?”

Your Speech Patterns

The greater your attraction and popularity, the greater will be your perceived competence. Project tact, authenticity and self-confidence.The more popular you are, the greater will be your perceived competence. The same is true about being more attractive. Popularity and attractiveness are positive indicators. Thanks to the halo effect, these factors enhance all other personal attributes, including perceived competence. The better you can increase your popularity and attractiveness, the more competent you will seem.

The Halo Effect

Ingratiation – People like you more the more you compliment them. This is true even of obvious flattery. Starting your compliments with the right introductory phrasing makes them seem more credible.Opinion Conformity– People like people who agree with their opinions. But if you go overboard, you’ll come across as a toady.Self-presentation – Most people intuitively know how to win the favour of others. Being kind and courteous is a great place to start. Underline the similarities you share with others.

Increase Your Popularity

Personal attractiveness has been a compelling factor for humankind since the Stone Age.  Keep in mind how people perceive beauty. Remember four factors when it comes to physical attractiveness:<ul><li>For women, what counts most is physique – your weight vis-à-vis your proportions.</li><li>For men, what counts most is facial attractiveness.</li><li>When it comes to women’s faces, most people prefer features like full lips, big eyes and a small nose.</li><li>In general, people consider blonde women more attractive than brunettes.</li></ul>

Physical Attractiveness

Many perceptions rely on symbols. Status symbols such as a company car, a title on a business card, a frequent flyer card and a corporate credit card will shape what people think about you and how they act toward you. You can control some of the powerful symbols that help define you to the world.People use habitus to determine someone’s status, and it’s the most reliable measure of a person’s competence. The habitus elements you choose will define you to the world. Your clothing, your lifestyle choices, and so on will affect how others perceive you and your competence.

The Power Of Symbols

BIRGing– a technique that enables you to impress others with minimal effort, though it has nothing to do with competence, perceived or otherwise.  BIRGing means that your status automatically goes up if you can demonstrate a connection – however slight – with someone of greater status. For BIRGing not to backfire and make you appear to be namedropping, offer your connection with tact and subtlety.

BIRGing - Basking in Reflected Glory

Reliably determining competence in others is a valuable skill. This takes on crucial significance when it comes, for example, to selecting a lawyer, a surgeon or a financial professional.Because accurately determining someone’s competence is so difficult, try to judge his or her intelligence instead. Intelligence directly relates to and points to competence.

Judging Other People’s Competence Is Hard; Recognizing Their Incompetence Is Easier

Highly intelligent people generally:<ul><li>Speak clearly and cogently without any hesitation.</li><li>Establish strong eye contact during conversations with people.</li><li>Possess ample self-confidence.</li><li>Stay alert and react quickly.</li></ul>

How To Spot Intelligence

<ul><li>Does the person ask intelligent questions?</li><li>Can the person separate important from unimportant factors?</li><li>When you present a particular issue that needs resolution, does he or she respond with the most logical, appropriate answers?</li><li>Is the person able to consider all the possible options for resolving the issue?</li><li>Can he or she properly weigh the pros and cons for each option?</li></ul>

The Intelligence Checklist

Mentalist Jack Nasher offers tips to help you appear more competent, attractive, intelligent and important.

Competence does not speak for itself! You can't simply display it; you have to draw people's attention to it. World-renowned negotiation and deception detection expert, business professor, and mentalist Jack Nasher offers effective, proven techniques to convince others that we are talented, trustworthy, and yes, even brilliant. Nasher offers the example of Joshua Bell, possibly the world's most famous violinist. In January 2007, at rush hour, he stepped into a Washington, DC, subway station, dressed like any street busker, and began to play a $4,000,000 Stradivarius. It was part of an experiment staged by a journalist of the Washington Post, who expected Bell's skill alone to attract an immense, awed crowd. But Bell was generally ignored, and when he stopped, nobody applauded. He made $34.17. The good news is that you don't have to accept obscurity: you can positively affect others' perception of your talent. Whether you're looking for work, giving an important presentation, seeking clients or customers for your business, or vying for a promotion, Nasher explains how to use techniques such as expectation management, verbal and nonverbal communication, the Halo Effect, competence framing, and the power of nonconformity to gain control of how others perceive you. Competence is the most highly valued professional trait. But it's not enough to be competent, you have to convey your competence. With Nasher's help you can showcase your expertise, receive the recognition you deserve, and achieve lasting success.

Stashed ideas

Convinced!

Negotiations entail trust and teamwork more than pinning an opponent to the ground.Tactical empathy - “intentionally using concepts from neuroscience to influence emotions” - can be used as a core stratagem in navigating any type of friction.Mirroring your counterpart, negotiating across cultures, and building relationships are all essential.

Negotiating Mindset Has To Shift

Negotiation is typically portrayed as a winner-take-all skirmish. Be it <a href="https://qz.com/work/1916146/negotiating-a-salary-raise-how-to-prepare-a-month-in-advance/">haggling for a higher salary</a>, <a href="https://qz.com/707327/before-asking-for-that-promotion-make-sure-youve-done-these-three-things/">asking for a promotion</a>, or closing a deal, the process might summon tactics, for example, from Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. Countless MBA courses and textbooks have taught us that business is a battlefield. A former hostage negotiator with the FBI has a different take on this.Tactical empathy—intentionally using concepts from neuroscience to influence emotions—is a core stratagem in navigating any type of friction.

Tactical Empathy

Tactical empathy requires demonstrating to your counterpart how deeply you’re listening to their words and, in effect, how thoughtfully you’re considering their position. One key tactic, called “mirroring,” entails echoing back one to three words the other person uttered, which Voss says can help build rapport from the outset.Mirroring can also be a survival tactic for awkward networking events. Faced with a roomful of strangers, one can simply echo words and phrases to get them to open up. This simple practice can even turn idle chit-chat into meaningful conversations.

The Art Of Mirroring

In a heated confrontation, mirroring can help you regain balance when you’ve been challenged or buy you time when you’re really flummoxed by what somebody said. Framing the other person’s words in the form of a question also gets them to try different terms, which helps clarify what’s at stake and gives you time to gather your thoughts.For instance, your boss might say: “I need you to pull your weight better around here if we want this operation to survive.” Repeating the word, “survive” will likely lead your supervisor to elaborate on the pressure he or she is faced with.

Mirroring Helps 

And what if both parties are skilled at mirroring each other? Will it produce a stalemate?Mirroring ultimately reveals the most important factors at stake, and the character of each party. At some point, one of us is going to come out of this dynamic and just flat out say, ‘Look, here’s here’s what I’d really like to do.’ Someone is going to step forward and offer something up because you’ve earned each other’s trust.

Two Negotiators

Will this tactic work when parties come from different cultures? What about someone who uses silence as a power manoeuvre? Everybody on earth wants to know that they’re being understood and will open up when they feel they are listened to.The desire to connect and be understood is the basic layer that underpins everything.

Negotiating Across Cultures

Chris Voss, a top hostage negotiator turned leadership coach, believes that negotiations entail trust and teamwork more than pinning an opponent to the ground.

What is tactical empathy and how can it help in negotiations at work?

The only way to lead<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/ludmila-praslova/details/education/1635491374289/single-media-viewer/"> effectively</a> when you can’t force people to do something is to be an example, share information, and lead from a place of caring.If the true goal of leadership is motivating people to achieve goals and effect change, the old model of using positional authority may never have been the most effective.

A New Kind Of Leadership

There are six bases of interpersonal power, or the ability to effect change.<ul><li>Legitimate power: inherent in a position, such as a supervisor’s job title</li><li>Reward power: ability to grant bonuses, raises, promotions, and privileges</li><li>Coercive power: power to punish via termination, demotion, undesirable scheduling, or unpleasant assignments</li><li>Referent power: based on our identification with leaders and the intrinsic desire to follow their example</li><li>Expert power: belief that the leader has a deeper understanding of relevant topics and "knows best"</li><li>Informational Influence/power: adds an element of learning</li></ul>

Effective Leadership Is Not the Same as Formal Authority

<ul><li>Remote and flexible work challenges the traditional workplace authority model.</li><li>Now, positional leaders who used to rely on rewards and punishments have limited options.</li><li>They can attempt to use surveillance where it is likely to harm productivity, such as remote knowledge and creative work.</li><li>Force people into the office, double-down on using reward (perks, bonuses) and punishment (paycuts, firings) power, but risk losing employees and having to deal with a reduced replacement talent pool.</li></ul>

Leadership Without Surveillance

Leaders can lead through referent, expert, and informational power, using purpose-centred inspiration while changing work organization to replace domination with the focus on wellbeing, outcomes, flexibility, and participation.Positional leaders still can and need to use legitimate, reward, and even coercive power when appropriate. However, as work becomes increasingly cognitive or even emotional, the relative importance of the referent, expert, and informational leadership will continue to grow.

Alternate Way Of Leading

Referent power is about leading by example. Aspiring leaders and those retooling to lead in the post-pandemic world can develop their referent power through modelling transparency and authenticity, as well as listening and compassion.Activist leaders must practice what they preach. An effective environmental activist can’t be irresponsibly consuming resources. Similarly, if one expects colleagues to contribute high-quality work, setting an example of competence and commitment is non-negotiable.

Leading By Example

In addition to authenticity, listening to and understanding others underpins human connections. Relationships are much more intrinsically motivating than transactional rewards and punishments. Even before the pandemic, 78% of employees were willing to<a href="https://www.businessolver.com/workplace-empathy-executive-summary"> switch jobs to get more empathy</a>. And 77% were willing to give more hours of work to an empathetic employer. Now, as the stress and burnout are taking a toll on employees, managers face an even taller order to exhibit<a href="https://hbr.org/2022/05/how-to-be-a-compassionate-manager-in-a-heartless-organization"> compassion</a>.

Building Relationships

To build on the referent, expert, and informational power, leadership must center on shared purpose. Both activism leadership and thought leadership unite diverse people from around the world because the <a href="https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/movements-social-change-apartheid-civil-rights-suf/#:~:text=Throughout%20history%2C%20movements%20that%20promote,the%20efforts%20of%20these%20leaders.">cause</a> or the idea intrinsically inspires them. Authentically uniting talent around a sense of purpose is increasingly the task of all leaders. Earning the respect of people and supporting them with care and dignity provide the relational foundation for the intrinsically inspired work.

The Bottom Line

Leadership isn't just about giving orders.

Influence is the new power, and managers have a lot to learn from activists and thought leaders.

5 Natural Laws you should know

The Compound Effect

Convinced!

What is tactical empathy and how can it help in negotiations at work?

We’re in the midst of a fundamental shift in leadership

It's time to

READ

LIKE

A PRO!