La crise, quelle crise ?

Auteur/autrice : marc

  • 5 little things that will make you smile everyday and contribute to your happiness

    https://unsplash.com/quanlightwriter
    https://unsplash.com/quanlightwriter

    Day 618. Happiness is a choice. It’s not always an obvious one when life hits hard, but that’s one you can practice every day. Here are 5 little things that may go unnoticed, but will help big time if you celebrate them daily.

    1. You are alive. That may sound weird, but one day, our own life will end. Until that day, celebrate every single day you wake up alive. It’s another wonderful day ahead of us.
    2. Every action you planned and done. Tick! Done! A shot of dopamine, the happiness hormone! Dance, smile, hug you! It’s a tiny victory that compounds over time and makes you happier and happier.
    3. Say hello to a stranger. And smile. Just smiling at someone and saying hello provide a shot of another hormone, oxytocin, also called the hormone of love. It fights cortisol (and therefore stress).
    4. Your morning coffee/tea/juice. Whatever you drink or eat in the morning, just take one minute to savor each second and thank the universe, god or whoever you believe in.
    5. Say I love you to a friend, your spouse or whoever is helping you or has helped in the past. Love is essential to everybody. I love you are the three most powerful words you can use to show gratitude.

    Happiness is not hard. Even if you are at the bottom, stressed, unhappy with your life, practicing those five simple acts will bring magic back into your life. Things do not happen by magic, they come to those who seek them, and sometimes, what is required is just a first simple step!

  • Écouter, ne serait-ce que par respect pour celui qui parle !

    https://unsplash.com/blazphoto
    https://unsplash.com/blazphoto

    J 617. Ecouter quelqu’un parler. Depuis combien de temps ne l’avez-vous pas fait sans regarder votre téléphone, votre portable ou parler vous-même à votre voisin. Je sais, vous allez me dire que parfois, c’est dur d’écouter quelqu’un de barbant, que parfois vous savez déjà de ce dont il s’agit ou que tout simplement, vous avez quelque chose d’urgent sur le feu. Cependant, si vous avez la moindre once de respect pour la personne qui parle, écoutez-la ou allez-vous en !

    Cela peut sembler violent, mais en tant que présentateur, il n’y a rien que je déteste plus que quelqu’un qui fait quelque chose d’autre quand je parle. Quand je suis de l’autre côté de la salle, je me fais donc un devoir d’écouter ou de partir. Certes, vous allez me dire que partir n’est pas montrer du respect au présentateur. Si ! C’est lui signifier (s’il vous voit partir) que le sujet ne vous intéresse pas et que vous préférez le laisser à son audience. Si vous restez, écoutez. Depuis plusieurs années, je pratique l’écoute active : je prends des notes, je conforte mes connaissances, je note des idées et je prépare des questions.

    Écouter est une question de respect pour celui qui parle, et aussi une question de respect pour le temps que vous passez à écouter celui qui parle. Et puis, on ne va pas revenir sur les qualités de ne faire qu’une tâche à la fois ! Malheureusement, le déficit d’attention est en augmentation. Alors si vous voulez apprendre à écouter, ou réapprendre à écouter, coupez toute forme de technologie (oui, éteignez votre téléphone), focalisez-vous sur celui qui parle, au début quelques minutes, puis augmentez petit à petit. Au bout de quelques jours, vous pourrez écouter quelqu’un parler pendant une heure ou plus sans être distrait. La qualité de votre écoute augmentera la qualité de votre compréhension et celle du temps qui passe. Enfin, admettons qu’écouter ne coûte rien, mais peut rapporter gros.

  • 5 common mistakes to avoid to be an accomplished public speaker

    https://unsplash.com/danielebersole
    https://unsplash.com/danielebersole

    Day 616. I’ve been attending presentations yesterday from 8AM until 7PM, with more than 15 different speakers. All of them (but two, and I will tell you who later) did at least one of the below mistakes. By doing them, they diluted their message, minimized their impact and reduce the retention of the key points they presented. It’s sad because public speaking is not rocket science, anybody can become an accomplished speaker, and if you avoid those 5 deadly mistakes, you will have the impact that less than 5% of public speakers have. Let’s go:

    1. Speak to the screen behind you. I wrote a rant on this a couple of weeks. Screens do not hear you, your audience does. Never, never, never speak to the screen behind you. Either you have a monitor (or a prompter) in front of you that shows you what’s projected (this is your crutch) or you know your script. But please, speak to your audience.
    2. Read what’s on the slides that are projected. Any audience can read. If you read, you do not need to present, just show the slide and shut up. Better, send the slides to the participants, they can read them sitting on a couch or wherever they want. Slides with more than 5 lines of text and 8 words by line are bad slides. You may disagree with the numbers I am giving, I just put them here, I could have used 4, 7, or 6, 10, it’s just to say that less is more, actually it introduces the next mistake.
    3. Give facts, only facts. Slides or not slides, empty slides or full slides, facts are boring. If you need to provide facts, send me a document with the facts and the numbers, I can read it sitting on a couch, drinking coffee. Come on! If you want your audience to remember something, you need emotions, and you can provoke emotions only by telling stories. I always remember my area VP telling us during one of our mid-year reviews: « I can read, so don’t waste my time paraphrasing what’s on the slide (and those are not slides, but full pages written in font size 10 with tons of facts), tell me the story behind the facts » Even at that level of business, the story is more important than the facts.
    4. Speak in the dark. If I come to listen to you, I want to see you. You may have a wonderful setup, but if the scene is not correctly lit, you lose 50% of your impact. People cannot read your body language! A theater scene is not lit so you cannot see your audience (if you never set a foot on a theater scene, imagine the lights are so powerful, you cannot see the audience at all), they are lit so that your audience can see you. The side effect of this lighting is you cannot see the audience. A little bit lit the headlight of a car: you see what’s in front of your light, but if a car comes from the opposite direction and has its headlights turned on, you cannot see behind the lights.
    5. Go without rehearsing. If you read what’s on the slide because you are discovering the slide while projecting them, do not insult your audience by coming on stage. Go back to where you come from and come back when you will be prepared to tell me a story that will make me dream and wanting to act.

    Public speaking is an art! Like all form of arts, it require training, rehearsing and « acting ». Acting means a lot of things, from the words you are using, to how to tell those words and to where to tell them. It’s not rocket science. Respect your audience! You may not have the time (or do not want to invest the time) to become a professional public speaker, but at least do not insult your audience by coming unprepared.

    You want to know who were the 2 speakers who all respected the above points: a lawyer and an HR director. Lawyers are trained speakers and HR director’s job is to respect their people (at least good ones), no surprise they knew how to have a real impact.

  • La gratitude est un art trop souvent oublié

    https://unsplash.com/insolitus
    https://unsplash.com/insolitus

    Jour 615. En fait, je ne suis pas sûr que cela soit un art, mais plutôt une qualité. Remercier pour ce que l’on a, même si c’est peu, devrait faire partie des activités quotidiennes. Quand on voit le drame de nombreuses personnes, il est primordial de relativiser notre propre situation. De plus, râler ou se faire des soucis a un effet biologique simple : l’augmentation de cortisol. Le cortisol est le neurotransmetteur dont l’évolution nous a gratifié pour nous prévenir d’un danger. Et un danger il y a quelques dizaine de milliers d’années c’était une question de vie ou de mort, alors quoi faire face à ce danger ? Se battre ou fuir. Dans les deux cas, très physique, le cortisol est régulé par d’autres neurotransmetteurs comme les endorphines, la dopamine et l’ocytocine.

    Mais de nos jours, il n’est plus de question de vie ou de mort, alors le cortisol s’accumule, le stress augmente et la maladie s’installe. Un des meilleurs moyens de réguler le cortisol est de changer son point de vue, d’être reconnaissant de ce que l’on a, de voir la vie non pas au travers de ce que l’on n’a pas, mais ce que l’on a. il n’existe qu’une seule réalité : le présent. Imaginer le futur ou se plaindre du passé n’a que l’effet de ne pas vivre dans le présent et d’apprécier ce que l’on a.

    Il n’est pas nécessaire de faire la révolution dans sa vie, juste de se mettre à remercier pour les petites choses du quotidien, remercier les gens que l’on rencontre pour ce qu’ils apportent, et remercier pour ce que nous sommes. Je suis un fervent partisan que tout un chacun fait du mieux qu’il peut au moment où il le fait. Ce n’est pas toujours ce que vous considérez comme le mieux, mais c’est le mieux que cette personne peut faire. En partant de ce principe, on a une base pour faire évoluer les relations et les actions, et surtout pour remercier de ce qui est fait. Un remerciement par jour est tout ce qu’il faut pour commencer. Cela pourra sembler inconfortable ou gauche qu début, mais cela deviendra vite une habitude et votre vie a de grandes chances de changer pour de bon.

  • Form, Storm, Norm, Perform, the 4 stages of developing a team

    Day 612. I recently came across the four stages of team development, as defined by Bruce Tuckman in the 60’s. As newly appointed Chief Technology Officer for Microsoft in Africa, I am building a team of highly skilled individuals. Although I have some leadership experience, forming a team is always a daunting task. Hiring particularly. Like in many other jobs, you may want to hire fast, and that’s a mistake, you should be hiring well, but not fast, choosing quality above speed. However, if finding A-player is a must to me, having them work as a team is another challenge.

    As I said, I came across the form-storm-norm-perform concept while listening to Rising Strong, the latest book of Brené Brown. As per Tuckman’s research, these four stages are necessary and inevitable for a team to strive and deliver results. While reading more on the four stages, they are all shaping the way my team leadership will change and the way I’m going to interact, molding the team to perform at the highest possible level. Allow me to describe it in simple terms:

    • Forming. Getting to know everybody by meeting regularly, not only to talk business but also to exchange personal stories. I am not into « team building » exercises that can be fun, but are always artificial and never, to me, beneficial. I prefer « team bonding » where informal leads to personal.
    • Storming. Like in scuba diving, to me storming goes through buddying. We work individually, challenge in pair, exchange in group. We need to disagree, to provide feedback and act on it. At this stage, respect, listening and empathy are crucial, as clear decision making, clear focus and clear guidance.
    • Norming. Each member is clear of his/her role as individual contributor and is required to contribute to the team well-being and performance. Conflicts will arrive, failure too, this is the test of the group. We will accept failure, learn and rise stronger.
    • Performing. The ultimate test is the results delivered. However, while results will start to be delivered, a sense of belonging, of autonomy of decisions and of pride will emerge. There may be superstars in the team, but the team results will be celebrated before individual’s achievement. No victory is a one’s (wo)man’s victory, it’s always the team’s one!

    Although well defined, those stages will melt, and the team may move back and forth depending on the circumstances. I therefore not look at those as four stages well defined, but more as a framework that stood the test of time, that provide guidance. The sextant tells you where you are but never defines the direction! Next rendezvous is mid-year review!