Humor’s effectiveness will always ride the emotional tides of your audience members. How well a joke goes over may depend on whose company your prospects are in, whether they are winding down for the day or still up against deadlines or other workplace pressures, whether they are awake and alert or feeling drowsy, whether they have a headache, etc. Always be in tune with how your audience is feeling and always assess the atmosphere you’re in to determine whether it is conducive to humor.

There are a lot of factors that contribute to whether or not humor will be effective in persuading someone. Often, it will simply be the mood or situation that makes it obvious whether humor is appropriate or not. For example, if someone has just learned of a death in her family, you probably shouldn’t start cracking jokes. Another example would be if you were speaking in a religious setting where there was an expectation that a certain degree of reverence always be maintained. You probably wouldn’t go wild with the humor in this kind of setting. The appropriateness of humor for a particular setting or mood is usually not too difficult to discern. You just have to be observant. What may be funny to one person one day will not be funny the next, even if it’s the exact same joke told in the exact same way.

There are many other less apparent factors that influence humor. Have you ever considered factors such as what time of day it is, the number of people in your audience or even the layout and lighting of the room? All of these things can influence how your humor will come across. As far as time of day, mornings are typically more stressful, since it is then when most people are confronted with all the demands that await them. Under certain circumstances, this stressfulness may be precisely the type of mood you’re looking for. Other times, you may want an audience that’s a little more relaxed. When people are on a lunch break or winding down for the day and readying themselves to leave work, you may find that they are more receptive to a good joke.

When considering the size of your audience, the general rule of thumb is “the bigger, the better.” That is, the bigger your audience, the more laughter you will typically get. Why is this? It’s because laughter is contagious. The more people involved, the more we laugh. For example, when a movie theater is packed, the laughter tends to be greater and last longer than when there are only four people in the audience. This is one of the reasons why TV producers use canned laughter in their programming. Often the scenario being acted out really isn’t even that funny, but studies show that the use of laugh tracks actually gets us to laugh more. Whether the material even registered as being funny or not, we are more inclined to laugh along if we hear others laughing.

Knowledge of this tendency can give you a real advantage when considering the layout of the room you’ll be speaking in. Notice the seating arrangement. How many people are expected to show up compared to how many chairs are set up? Always make sure there are less chairs set up than there are people expected. If audience members sit closer together, it will be easier to get the energy going and evoke more laughter than it would be if they were spread out all over the room. A seemingly sparse audience will surely dampen humor’s designed effect. A more compact seating arrangement will not only help people laugh more freely and more often, but it will also give off the illusion of greater attendance. Another consideration is the lighting of your speaking area. The audience’s ability to see your facial expressions and body language is of prime importance.

Fear is part of being on your growing edge.

I’m not certain where this statement comes from. I’d like to take credit for it, but I think someone much wiser than I am said this.

Most people consider fear an emotion to be avoided at all costs. Here, it is considered an indication of change and growth. Could that really be? Let’s break this statement down and see if it is true.

FEAR

Every human, and at least higher forms of all organisms, have felt fear. It is an innate feeling and one that has allowed individuals to survive by moving them away from danger.

Fear may not feel good, but it can be positive in that it can keep us away from harm. There are physiological and psychological parts to fear and I’m sure we have all had them. Sometimes they don’t feel attached to anything happening in our lives and at other times they are very specific to the situation.

When fear strikes, blood flows to the extremities, the legs and arms, preparing us to flee the dangerous situation. There is a momentary freeze, that cold feeling that flows through the body, while the brain processes the information in front of it, determining what action, flight or fight, is more appropriate. Hormones contribute to the reaction.

Thoughts play a huge part in the development of fear and our reactions to it. We play the worst case scenario in our heads and then our hearts begin to pump fast, our faces flush, perspiration begins, mouth dries, eyes widen, looking for the threat that may not be visible.

Being on your Growing Edge

What if you’ve been at the same job, same route to work, same schedule for the past five or ten years and you’re becoming bored? You think there’s more to life but you are not sure how to find it.

Suppose you’re going along your life’s road and this year you are given a promotion to a job which calls for skills you haven’t master, you also get marry, move to a new city, and get elected president of a service organization you’ve been a member of for some years.

Now suppose you become aware that you need to hone skills that are unfamiliar to you . You seek out a way to learn those skills. You could read books, observe people you know who have those skills, seek out a mentor or a life or executive coach, use trial and error. But in some way you target what you don’t know and develop a way to learn it all. Hard work ahead, but easier on the fear factor.

These are three examples of being on the growing edge. In the first example, growth hasn’t happened for some time. You’ve been comfortably living in the familiar, but after a time, this comfort level leads to dissatisfaction and a need to experience change.

This is good. It makes you want to grow. It might lead to developing new work skills or even a new career. Or seeking avocations that make “free” time more exciting. No matter what, your choice is to stay bored, and safe, or take a chance, sometimes many chances, experience some fear, and grow.

In example two, you can almost feel the frenzy of the life overextended, overwhelmed with change. It’s being on the growing edge in every area of one’s life. Not too many people will find this enjoyable or even livable. Something would have to give. Fear of change could easily take hold and become the most prominent emotion. Blood pressure rising? I would think so, and temper, too.

Stepping too far out on the growing edge can pose great risk of failure and can be just as bad in one’s life as avoiding fear by staying within one’s comfort zone.

Example three, how to keep some comfort while moving out, taking risks, experiencing some invigorating fear. Fear of the unknown is keep low and fear of failure is minimized. Recognition that some fear will exist helps keep emotions in check.

Fear is part of the growing edge

So, yes, fear is part of the growing edge. Just knowing that it is and that those who choose to grow experience fear helps keep it low enough to cope with it.

But there are other ways to step into the growing edge, facing the fear but not focusing on it.

1) Often we have assumptions about what it will be like to move into the growing zone that are not based on fact and, indeed, are untrue and frightening. Discover what part is causing you to avoid moving and find out if it is real or just part of your imagination.

2) Re-label emotions. Fear and excitement are so similar that we often confuse the two and moving into the growing edge will have both emotions firing like crazy. Re-label some of the fear excitement and see if that rings true for you. Think how it is to be on a roller coaster. Fear and excitement, right? And you still got on.

3) Focus. You can choose to focus on the fear in starting a new, unfamiliar process, or you can focus on the process itself. The second will get you much closer to your goals.

4) Limit stepping into the growing edge to just one or two areas at a time. Growth takes time, energy, and perseverance. Expecting to make many changes at the same time will increase the need for these as well as the fear that is a part of change.

5) Don’t diminish your accomplishments. I have worked with many people who, once they have accomplished the change, talk as if they have nothing to be proud of. They do, and so do you. It takes courage to face fear of the unknown and of things that can make you cringe, even if they hold you back. So be proud and aware of your accomplishments.

Where has the growing edge taken you? What fears have you had to face? Share them with us over the next months by writing to info@commuter-assist.com.

We look forward to hearing from you.

Be well,
Dr. M.

In our age of ever-expanding communication possibilities, researchers have been drawn to answer the question of which communication mode is most likely to lend itself to successful negotiation. Although the answer is undetermined, Face-to-face communication has been proven to have a greater possibility of alleviating miscommunication. When you’re in person, you are more apt to pick up all the nuances of the exchange. That way, you will be better able to gauge what the other party is thinking and to determine the direction in which the negotiating is headed.

For the same reasons, it is also easier to create and maintain rapport. If there is already a fair amount of tension in the air, however, negotiating by phone can take the edge off, can provide breathing room and can minimize the effectiveness of any pressure tactics that may have been employed. E-mail’s main advantage is that both parties have control over saying exactly what they want to say and how they want to say it. Since there is no ebb and flow to live conversation, the involved parties can keep the floor as long as they want. On the flip side, e-mailing can tend to make the negotiating parties less restrained and more impulsive in their communication. This rashness isn’t always a bad thing, but it definitely can be if tensions exist. One study found that abrupt and unmannerly exchanges occurred 102 times when negotiating via e-mail as opposed to only 12 times when negotiating face-to-face.

Understanding Personality Directions

A personality direction is the way in which we lean most of the time in terms of the way we act and react to most stimuli. We hate to be boxed in and categorized, but the reality is, most of the time we are predictable. Sure, people aren’t going to be 100 percent predictable all the time, but the more discerning you become, the more you will see how predictable individuals really are.

When you analyze personality directions, ask yourself the following questions:

I. Is your audience mostly logical or emotional?

A. Logical people:
1. Think with their heads
2. Go with what makes sense
3. Are persuaded by facts, figures and statistics
4. Rely on past history
5. Use their five senses

B. Emotional people:
1. Think with their hearts
2. Go with what feels right
3. Are persuaded by emotions
4. Rely on intuition
5. Use their “sixth sense”

II. Is your audience introverted or extroverted?

A. Extroverted people:
1. Love to communicate
2. Are talkative
3. Involve others
4. Tend to be public people
5. Want face-to-face contact

B. Introverted people:
1. Keep their feelings inside
2. Listen more than they talk
3. Like to work solo
4. Tend to be private
5. Use memos and e-mails over face-to-face communication

III. Is your audience motivated more by inspiration or desperation?

A. Desperation-motivated people:
1. Try to get away from the problem
2. Are stuck in the past, are afraid of repeating mistakes
3. Avoid pain
4. Want to get away from something

B. Inspiration-motivated people:
1. Work towards a solution
2. See a better future
3. Are motivated by pleasure
4. Want to move forward, have vision

IV. Are your audience members or prospects assertive or amiable?

A. Assertive people:
1. Consider results more important than relationships
2. Make decisions quickly
3. Want to be in control
4. Are task-oriented
5. Don’t waste time
6. Are independent

B. Amiable people:
1. Consider relationships more important than results
2. Are friendly and loyal
3. Like to build relationships
4. Are great listeners
5. Avoid contention
6. Are nonassertive and agreeable

The more you understand personality directions, the better you will be able to customize your negotiation tactics. Each individual’s personality direction will dictate how you customize your message.