#009 - Mark Dando's Changing Gears

Five things I learnt from Mark Dando's book Changing Gears

For a long time, I've been interested in the impact our behaviours have on the messages that we are communicating.

Noticing other people change their styles has always been fascinating to me. People like Jim Carrey and Robin Williams mastered this.

In Changing Gears, Mark Dando talks about some key reasons to flex our behaviours when we are communicating.

?- to build connection

?- to create impact

?- to keep people alert and interested (including ourselves!)

With my desire to provide training and to help others train too, these skills are absolutely essential.

Here are five things that I learnt from Mark Dando's book Changing Gears:

1. Novelty can be as much about how you present as what you present

Yu Kai Chou tells us that people pay attention until they can put you in a category. Novelty can stop them from doing that.

We often think about novel slides, novel props, novel stories, novel facts, novel questions - all of these are important and useful.

But one way that we can introduce and maintain novelty is through how we talk and present.

When our combinations of behaviours don't fit into a category people pay attention - novelty keeps them interested.?

The idea from last week's newsletter to "balance novelty and credibility to ensure your vision gets support" applies as much to the content of the vision as it does to they way that you deliver it.

When we want to create change, there is often a feeling of a need for a big bang, for attention, for significance, for a increase of pace.

In reality, we can effect change by taking a more quiet, measured, thoughtful approach - as this may be the jolt from autopilot that people need.

Chris Voss reminds us to Slow. It. Down.

If you are trying speeding up, raising volume and energy and it is not working, listen to that - slow it down, quieten down instead.

A hushed voice can quieten a whole auditorium.

2. We wait until the stakes are high before introducing intention into our behaviours

When we are going to a meeting that is really important, when we are making a presentation that we think a lot hangs on, when we are meeting someone that has influence over something meaningful to us, we make much more effort in our preparation.

We spend time understanding our audience.

We think about our goals.

We practice a variety of behaviours to find the ones that will help us achieve our goals.

These are great things to do.

This reminds me of the need to steep yourself in your why before taking on big challenges. Clarity about your overall purpose helps you stay authentic, otherwise you can be swayed by the pressure of the situation to act in a way that doesn't align.

But it shouldn't just be the big occasions that we are intentional in. In fact, the more we practice intentionally changing gears in the every day activities the easier it is on the big stage.

3. When behaviours are useful we fall into the trap of overusing them

When we behave in a certain way in one circumstance and it works, it can be very tempting to use that same behaviour or set of behaviours in other circumstances with the assumption that it will achieve the same results.

We use the same behaviours over and over again we often don't see that we need to change. We get so used to them that we use them when it is not appropriate or helpful - or certainly not the most helpful, as we are no longer acting with intention.

Seth Godin says

You need to stop defending your old wins. You need to be incompetent through change to become competent in a new way

This is especially true as we come upon the 'same' circumstances again. We might think everything is the same, but things have changed, so it would make sense that we might consider the benefits of changing our behaviours too.

It is really important that we remember that the behaviours we use when you research and prepare won't be the same behaviours we use to present!

We want to be seen as good at what we do and sometimes that can mean that we don't move from the expert approach we take day to day to the connecting approach that we need to take in our presentation and communication.

4. We might not notice we are in a rut until it is too late

Have you ever looked in the mirror one day and thought "How did my hair get so long?" or maybe "When did I lose all my hair?" Or possibly you've looked at a child and thought "How did they grow to that size without me noticing?!""

Our behaviours can be the same. We might not notice the impact they are having on a case by case basis, but over time they can add up to a significant impact.

When we are stuck in a rut, this can have a big negative effect.

We may behave in a way that is not helpful to our long term goals. The individual behaviour may not cause a big impact, but over time the behaviour compounds and has a significant negative impact.

We know that the longer an error is left unchecked the bigger the impact it has.

The good thing is that small actions can help break the cycle of bad behaviour.

5. All new behaviour feels unnatural to start with

When we are learning something - a new approach, a new move, a new routine, a new process - it can feel clunky to start with.

We can often use this as an excuse not to continue.

But we need to remind ourselves that new behaviours never feel automatic or smooth, because behaviours only feel like that when we have moved them into the habit part of our brain - the basal ganglia.

We should persevere with the clunky behaviours, as that tells us that a.) we are learning and b.) we haven't got it yet.

This reminds me of the fact that we should not judge tools or musical instruments on our first use of them! Of course they will be clunky the first time, as we have not built up any skill in our use of them.

When we are trying something for the first time we are often doing it based on the instructions of someone else, or what we have observed.

We are not doing it in our own way. We are having to step through it slowly and with thought.

It is not until we practice and try out a behaviour that we can be flexible enough and apply it in a way that is authentic.

Someone who understands the rules well will be able to break them best!

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How do you make sure that your behaviours are intentional?

What do you do to stop yourself from getting into ruts?

Where would you benefit from changing gears a bit more often?