3 Exercises For More Productive Meetings

Conversational Blind Spots

Three decades ago I began my first experiment in Conversational Intelligence®. I was hired by Union Carbide to work with 17 high-powered sales executives in danger of losing a bid for a key contract. My job was to figure out how they could raise their game and beat the other seven competitors.

For two weeks I had them role-play potential conversations with “customers” and charted what they said. The patterns were clear: The executives used “telling statements” 85% of the time, leaving only 15% for questions. And almost all the questions they asked were actually statements in disguise. They were talking and talking, trying to bring their counterparts around to their point of view—all the time thinking that they were still conducting good, productive conversations.

Having observed thousands of executives in similar, real-world situations—from prospecting to performance reviews, business development to innovation—I can tell you this is a common problem. People often think they’re talking to each other when they’re really talking past each other. They carry on monologues, not dialogues.

There is a biological explanation for this: when we express ourselves, our bodies release a higher level of reward hormones, and we feel great. The more we talk, the better we feel. Our bodies start to crave that high, and we become blind to the conversational dynamics. While we’re being rewarded, the people we’re talking to might feel cut off, invisible, unimportant, minimized and rejected, which releases the same neurochemicals as physical pain.

Feeling rejection sends them into a “fight, flight” response, releasing cortisol, which floods the system and shuts down the prefrontal cortex, or executive brain, letting the amygdala, or limbic brain, take over. To compound conversational challenges, the brain disconnects about every 12 to 18 seconds to evaluate and process; hence, we’re often paying as much attention to our own thoughts as we are to other people’s words.

These are natural impulses. But we have to learn to master them because clear two-way, compassionate, non-judgmental communication is necessary in leadership—it is how deals get done, projects get run, and profits get earned.

Recognize your blind spots. Stop assuming that others see what you see, feel what you feel, and think what you think (that is rarely the case). Your blind spots cause you to fail to recognize that emotions, such as fear and distrust, change how you and others interpret and talk about reality. You think you understand and remember what others say, when you really only remember what you think about what they say. Don’t underestimate your propensity to have conversational blind spots!

Start paying attention to and minimizing the time you “own” the conversational space. Start sharing that space by asking open-ended discovery questions, to which you don’t know the answers, so you stay curious. For example, you might ask, what influenced your thinking? Then listen non-judgmentally to the answers and ask follow-up questions.

Through coaching, the Union Carbide sales team began to notice when they were making assumptions, interpreting incorrectly, and jumping to conclusions. They started asking discovery questions and paying close attention to their customers’ answers, which expanded their frame of reference and gave them new insights into needs and opportunities. In so doing, the executives presented themselves as conversationally intelligent partners, not sales people—and they won the contract!

Hooked on Being Right

When you are in a tense meeting trying to defend your position on a big project and start to feel yourself losing ground, your voice gets louder. You talk over one of your colleagues and correct his point of view. He pushes back, so you try to convince everyone you’re right. It feels like an out-of-body experience—and in many ways it is. In terms of its neurochemistry, your brain has been hijacked.

In situations of high stress, fear or distrust, the hormone and neurotransmitter cortisol floods the brain. Executive functions that help us with advanced thought processes like strategy, trust building, and compassion shut down. And the amygdala, our instinctive brain, takes over. The body makes a chemical choice about how best to protect itself—in this case from the shame and loss of power associated with being wrong—and as a result is we are unable to regulate its our emotions or handle the gaps between expectations and reality. So we default to one of four responses: fight (keep arguing the point), flight (revert to, and hide behind, group consensus), freeze (disengage from the argument by shutting up) or appease (make nice with your adversary by simply agreeing with him).

These harmful responses prevent the honest and productive sharing of information and opinion. I find that the fight response is by far the most damaging to relationships. It is also, unfortunately, the most common. That’s partly due to another neurochemical process. When you argue and win, your brain floods with different hormones: adrenaline and dopamine, which makes you feel good, dominant, even invincible. It’s a feeling that we want to replicate. So the next time we’re in a tense situation, we fight again—and thus become addicted to being right.

Many successful leaders suffer from this addiction. They are skilled at fighting for their point of view (which is often right), and yet they are unaware of the dampening impact their behavior has on the people around them. If one person is getting high off his or her dominance, others are being drummed into submission, experiencing the fight, flight, freeze or appease response, which diminishes collaborative impulses.

Luckily, there’s another hormone that can feel just as good as adrenaline: oxytocin. It’s activated by human connection, and it opens up the networks in our executive brain, or prefrontal cortex, increasing our ability to trust and open ourselves to sharing. Your goal as a leader should be to spur the production of oxytocin in yourself and others, while avoiding (in communication) those spikes of cortisol and adrenaline.

Three Exercises to Try Today

            Here are three exercises to do at work to cure your addiction to being right:

1. Set rules of engagement. If you’re heading into a meeting that could get testy, start by outlining rules of engagement. Have everyone suggest ways to make it a productive, inclusive conversation and write the ideas down for everyone to see. For example, you might agree to give people extra time to explain their ideas and to listen without judgment. These practices will counteract the tendency to fall into harmful conversational patterns. Afterwards, consider see how you and the group did and seek to do even better next time.

2. Listen with compassion. In one-on-one conversations, make a conscious effort to speak less and listen more. The more you learn about other peoples’ perspectives, the more likely you are to feel compassion for them. And when you do that for others, they’ll want to do it for you, creating a virtuous circle.

3. Plan who speaks. In situations when you know one person is likely to dominate a group, create an opportunity for everyone to speak. Ask all parties to identify who in the room has important information, perspectives, or ideas to share. List them and the areas they should speak about on a flip chart and use that as your agenda, opening the floor to different speakers, asking open-ended questions and taking notes.

Connecting and bonding with others trumps conflict. I’ve found that even the best fighters—the proverbial smartest guys in the room—can break their addiction to being right by getting hooked on oxytocin-inducing behavior instead.

This article originally appeared on psychologytoday.com and was written by Judith E. Glaser.

The Power of Floating

Imagine being a 24-year-old man, naked and floating in a pod, inducing complete sensory deprivation and being immersed in what I can only describe as adult sized womb. Sound terrifying? Well, today I did just that, but alas, it was not scary in the slightest and instead it ending up being both relaxing and transformative.

To my surprise, I learnt that floatation therapy has been around for around 60 years. It is yet however, to become mainstream. I for one, knew nothing about it.

A few weeks back, I was browsing the web looking for something interesting and new that a friend and I could try out. This is when I came across ‘Float Works’ in Vauxhall, London. Intrigued, I booked us one ‘float’.

I arrived at 9 am and was overcome by a sense of tranquillity. The receptionist positively oozed zen, making my friend and I feel at ease; this was particularly reassuring when trying something so new and unusual.

He showed each of us to our private room where a large white pod filled with salt water greeted me. He explained its features and left us to shower and hop in. Normally I would be nervous, but the staff were so friendly and positive that any residual nerves evaporated.

I took off my clothes and lay down in the water. I felt the tension in my body melt away. Turning the pod’s lights off, I was lost in complete darkness, left to focus on my own thoughts for a full hour.

After the fifteen minutes of quiet music (to ‘ease you in’) I lost any sense of time. I began to fade in and out of active thought, managing in the main to clear my mind. The water, being perfect room temperature, meant that I wasn’t able to tell which parts of me were in the water and which were out. I focused on my breath and could hear only my heartbeat; I had completely succumbed to the pod.

The hour was up in what felt like minutes. Before entering, I was convinced that this whole process might drag on, but instead I was shocked at how quickly the time flew!

After the float, I felt happier, lighter and rejuvenated. I made my way up to the ‘relaxation room’ and poured myself a complementary herbal tea, and pondered the immense and positive impact of the float. I am a massage addict, but let me tell you, this float session was more wellness inducing than any massage I have ever received. It was special absolutely worth the £50 price tag.

I’m giving this 5/5 on the happiness scale.

This article originally appeared on huffingtonpost and was written by Nader Dehdasht

How to Help Soothe an Upset Stomach and Improve Digestion

Stomach ache got you down? Rubbing your tummy can be extremely comforting, not just for your mind but also to give your digestive system a nudge in the right direction.

We use the term ‘stomach ache’ to refer to all kinds of abdominal pain. However, often what we perceive as a stomach ache is really intestinal pain. A simple self-catered massage can help to relieve digestive aches and pains, and help your stomach feel (and look!) better fast.

How to Give Yourself a Stomach Ache Massage:

1. Lie on your back on a yoga mat or comfortable surface. This massage is most effective a few hours after eating or first thing in the morning on an empty stomach. Breathe in and out slowly for a few minutes to relax.

2. Identify your cecum. The cecum is where the small intestines empties digested food into the large intestines and where the peristaltic muscle action begins to push digested food through your colon. This is generally located halfway between the part of your right hip bone that juts out and your belly button. Place your right thumb on your belly button and your pinkie on your hip bone, lower your middle finger so it touches your skin and this is approximately where your cecum should be.

3. Once you have identified the cecum, begin to push down on it with two hands (one atop the other), massaging slowly and carefully in a circular motion. This helps to enhance digestive action.

4. Next, expand these circular massage movements in a clockwise motion, which mimics the passage of food, across your entire abdomen — upwards to just under your rib cage, across and along the rib cage to the left side of your abdomen and downwards to below the left side of your belly button.

5. Now, using sweeping motions with your hands, repeat the same clockwise direction. Repeat 2-3 times, alternating between circular massage movements and sweeping movements.

6. During the stomach ache massage, you may notice a particularly tender part of your abdomen or an area of particularly strong stomach pain. Once you’ve pinpointed the exact location, focus your attention there, continuing with clockwise massage movements.

7. Bend both of your index fingers and use your knuckles as a mock acupuncture needle, so to speak. Apply pressure to opposite ends of the area just under your rib cage — one on the furthest left point of your abdomen and the other on the furthest right point of your abdomen. These areas are called flexures and are where your colon bends. Often food and gas will get caught in pockets of your flextures. Applying pressure helps to release them.

8. Keeping your back flat on the ground and your arms by your side, twist your body below the waist, with your right leg leading the way. Stretch it to your left side. Repeat with the left leg. Pull it up and stretch it to the right side of your body.

9. Gently roll off your back and stand up. Jog in place for a few seconds and twist your body with the abdomen as the focus. This helps to inspire get gas and other problem areas moving along.

This article originally appeared on ecosalon.com and was written by Aylin Erman

Relief from Gastrointestinal Disorders with Massage Therapy

Gastrointestinal disorders include more than 40 acute and chronic conditions of the gastrointestinal tract, ranging from common ailments such as indigestion and flatulence (gas) to serious, life-threatening diseases, such as colorectal cancer.

Even if it is not related to a serious health condition or disease, gastrointestinal dysfunction is typically quite painful and has the capacity to interfere with daily activities and overall quality of life. Patients looking for an alternative or complement to pharmaceutical solutions may seek out the expertise of a massage therapist to effectively manage chronic digestive disorders.

Accredited massage therapy colleges teach a range of modalities that may help limit the aggravation of existing gastrointestinal conditions, alleviate painful symptoms, and relieve discomfort after diagnostic screening.

Relaxation Massage to Reduce Gastrointestinal Flare-ups

People who suffer from chronic conditions like Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS), Colitis and Crohn’s are often challenged to achieve genuine and sustained relaxation. In addition to withstanding painful symptoms, continual worry about gastrointestinal dysfunction can result in significant anxiety and stress. Unfortunately, stress is known to trigger a range of digestive issues, and can contribute to flare-ups of more serious conditions. Administered regularly as a complementary treatment, gentle modalities like Swedish massage and Lymphatic Drainage can help limit the frequency of flare-ups, reduce painful symptoms, and lower stress levels - encouraging patients with gastrointestinal disorders to reach deeper levels of restorative relaxation. Massage college graduates use their knowledge of assessment best practises to coordinate with patients’ medical team, selecting the massage modality most appropriate for each individual case of digestive dysfunction.

Abdominal Massage to Alleviate Gastrointestinal Dysfunction

Whether symptomatic of a serious disease like Crohn’s or the result of daily stressors, millions of Canadians suffer from constipation on a regular basis. In order to minimize reliance on laxatives, some people turn to a massage therapist to improve digestive performance with gentle abdominal massage.

Besides stimulating blood flow, massaging the affected area helps encourage the spontaneous movement of the digestive tract (a process called peristalsis), which helps alleviate cramping, bloating, gas, and constipation.

Massage to Support Recovery from Colonoscopy

One of the most serious gastrointestinal diseases, colorectal cancer, is 90 percent preventable if detected early. According to Colon Cancer Canada, over 24,000 new cases were diagnosed in Canada in 2014 - and more than 9,000 patients lost their lives that same year. Screening is one of the most valuable defences against this disease, but many patients avoid colonoscopy because of potentially painful side effects following the examination.

Gentle abdominal massage has been found effective in minimizing some of these bothersome and painful side-effects, specifically bloating, flatulence, and cramping. Students who have completed massage therapy training and are ready to launch their career can share this technique with patients who seem anxious about an upcoming examination - potentially helping saves lives by encouraging early detection.

Whether the goal is prevention or the alleviation of disruptive symptoms, massage therapy is an ideal complementary approach for encouraging optimal gastrointestinal performance.

This article original appeared on ovcmt.com