Captivate - The Science of Succeeding with People by Vanessa Van Edwards

Captivate: The Science of Succeeding with People  by Vanessa Van Edwards shares the findings from her human behavior research lab to help people successfully connect to each other. The book begins with a quiz to assess your PQ - or interpersonal intelligence.  According to the author individuals with high PQ scores earn $29,000 more per year than individuals with average PQ. The study tests your ability to accurately assess the meaning of facial expressions and body posture, general understanding of personalities, and the most effective ways to engage other people.

The book sorts interactions into the first five minutes, the first five hours and the first five days describing the four to five skills needed to be successful. She weaves 14 personality hacks throughout the book to improve the odds of success. For hack #1, the social game plan, she diagrams out a typical social gathering and notes the areas likely to be most promising.  These locations can be modified according to personality type. She illustrates how Harry Truman used this technique to win the democratic nomination for vice president.

I found immediate application for the tips in this book. While conducting ergonomic evaluations, it is important for me to focus on the concerns of the employees. After determining their concerns, I'll offer suggestions for improvement and then assess their response to my suggestions. If their statements and facial impressions are incongruent, I need to pick up on that and increase my curiosity about what they need to be successful without injuring themselves. For fun, I attempt to read their microexpressions while they pick out chairs in the showroom. Facial expressions come long before the verbal declarations.

Her Science of People blog provides additional insight to be successful for different personality types, work, and social situations.

Ten Essential People Skills You Need to Succeed - 10 minutes

You are Contagious -18 minutes

Ten interview questions to reveal behavioral quirks - 10 minutes

The Power of Moments by Chip and Dan Heath

The Power of Moments: Why Certain Experiences Have Extraordinary Impact by Chip and Dan Heath examines the disproportionate effect of small events on our perception of life experiences.  This Power of Moments website summarizes the principles of  the book. 

Four principles of Powerful Moments

• Elevation
• Insight
• Pride
• Connection

Elevation: Moments of pleasure (fireworks, scenic views, eating favorite food). Companies need to focus on elevated the customer experience instead of just filling potholes and repairing the problem areas. This also works in personal relationships and helps create shared moments.

Insight: Instead of spoon feeding the truth to your audience. They can be set up to discover it themselves. They have an opportunity to own it.

Pride: Recognized steps on the path to achieving a larger goal. Train people to handle the difficult experiences prior to going out into the real world. This is similar to martial arts, practicing for a basketball game, or rehearsing a play. People doing civil disobedience were to handle abuse and behave appropriately. Cops receive training to handle the abuse and respond with restraint when dealing with protesters.  

Connection: Teams, partners, and parents with kids they can unite when they all struggle towards a similar goal.  

Build Peaks Don't Fix Potholes - 4 min. 

The Power of Moments - Approx. 11 min.

Managing stress through control of response - 11 min. 

The Art of Empathy by Karla McLaren

Karla McLaren's guide to the Art of Empathy provides a better understanding of the role of empathy in our relationships to others. Using empathy during ergonomic evaluations has helped me do a better job of making sure an employees workplace is functional reducing the risk of injury.

She counsels against valancing emotions by labeling a specific emotion as bad and something to be avoided. She describes each emotional states as soft, medium and hard.  The soft states of various emotions are very helpful. We can access the soft state of shame to help us avoid behaviors that we may later regret.  The soft state of anger allows us to set boundaries. The soft state of fear allows us to be very aware of what is going on around us.  It keeps us alert and safe. The soft state of anxiety encourages us to fill out to do lists and get things done to avoid future pain.

The unrelenting quest to make everyone happy is from her perspective misguided. It is important for people to be able to chose and when circumstances allow us to express emotion. At a funeral it is appropriate to express grief. Forcing someone to be happy in a time of grief is not helpful.

Her discussion of the suicidal emotion was new to me. She suggests that people misinterpret this emotion as the need to end their life. This emotion actually signals that some aspect of a person's life has to end or die. The search to find this can provide relief if the specific problem is identified and removed.  I do not know if this exercise in reframing would be helpful to people. It may be worth studying as the efficacy of current methods need improvement.

The six aspects of empathy - 10 minutes

Emotions simplified - 10 minutes

Rejuvenate yourself - 17 minutes

The Undoing Project by Michael Lewis

The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds by Michael Lewis at first focuses on one man's attempt to apply the Moneyball process to drafting for the Houston Rockets Basketball Team. It is marginally successful but imprecise. While trying to take human biases out of the process used to evaluate player the manager discovers that this process has already been studied by a pair of Israeli psychologists, Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. The book Thinking Fast and Thinking Slow was a summary of their research.

Kahneman's early family life was spent on the run and in hiding during the second world war in occupied France. After the war ended and his father died they moved to Israel. He worked with the Israeli military to help select proper roles for soldiers. Prior to this selection process during the early stages of the state, the Israeli military was not competent.  Atrocities were committed on both sides of the conflict of the war and Tversky was in the thick of the fighting. He was struck by the rapid transition from killing machine to a person who could be compassionate towards defeated enemy soldiers.

The gregarious Tversky and the brilliant but insecure Kahneman formed an unlikely intellectual partnership attempting to determine errors in the thinking process of human beings.  His bold style contrasted with Kahneman's as he was an enthusiastic paratrooper. They worked together developing questions (paraphrasing Tversky)not to develop artificial intelligence but study natural ignorance.  This marriage of two intellects resulted in the psychologist, Kahneman recieving the 2002 Nobel Prize in Economics for prospect theory.

The Undoing Project - 9 minutes

Malcolm Gladwell interviews Michael Lewis - 87 minutes

Michael Lewis looks at decision making process - 9 minutes

Many Ways to Say I Love You: Wisdom For Parents and Children from Mister Rogers by Fred Rogers

The book, Many Ways to Say I Love You: Wisdom for Parents and Children from Mister Rogers is the third in a series of books published after Mr. Rogers death in 2003. The notes for this book were compiled by staffers at Family Communications Inc. from speeches and articles written by Fred Rogers.  As with the previous books Fred's wife, Joanne Rogers writes the forward.

The book is divided into four sections:

• What We Bring from Our Past
• Growing as Parents
• Many Ways of Loving Each Other
• Growing as Children

At the core of the book is a realization that parents and children recognize that neither one is perfect. The quest for perfection leads to frustration. Sometimes we get angry with each other using words. Its important for children to observe how adults handle these situations by not resorting to physical violence and working to repair the relationship after disagreements.

He encourages us to let the transition from each phase of childhood through adolescence happen naturally. Children need rituals and some quiet time to process these changes. In some cases people can get stuck in a developmental stage and never fully grow up. There needs to be space to take the risk to be part of the new experience. It reminded me of Hope Jahren's explanation of the internal processes of a seed taking the risk to germinate, breaking the seed coat, and attempting the dangerous task of growing into a mature plant.

Its important for children to feel safe sharing their feelings. Sometimes these feeling may be mixed and this can be confusing. Being comfortable with ambivalent feelings is helpful.

Children need someone who will be there when life is difficult and during times when they try to develop. "We need to help children understand that for us, as for them, life is made up of striving much more than attaining." Children can also be very good at giving comfort when adults are honest about their own difficulties. Being needed and being helpful to others is important to children.

The book offers solid advice to parents trying to do their best to raise their children. Its given me some useful insights on ways to be a better parent.

There are Many Ways to Say I Love You - 2 min. 

Fred Rogers 1997 -  approx. 2 min. 

It's You I like - Fred Rogers - 3 min.

Life's Journeys According to Mr. Rogers by Fred Rogers

Fred Rogers compilation of wisdom in Life's Journeys According to Mister Rogers: Things to Remember Along the Way, is an excellent sequel to his earlier book, The World According to Fred Rogers. In the forward to this 2005 book, Fred's wife, Joanne Rogers begins with a note Fred sent her  on the back of a sunset photo taken while he was away on a trip. These words continue to offer comfort to Joanne and to readers of this book after Mr. Rogers death in 2003.

When the day turns to night

and your way beyond my sight

I think of you. 

The book is divided into three sections - Who You are Right Now, Loving and Being Loved, and Guided Drift.

Who You are Right Now: Fred wants us to understand our uniqueness in the world. When we play music no one else does it the same. He relays his childhood feelings when he was teased for being fat. The advice to act like it doesn't bother you doesn't work. We can begin understand that we control how we respond with the help of others who treat us with kindness. 

Loving and Being Love: It begins and ends with being kind to yourself and your neighbors. Mr. Rogers celebrates those who teach and share with others what they love. This reminded me of my entomology teacher at U of M Morris who had a boundless enthusiasm for insects. Her favorite phrase was "Good! Great! Go for it!"  I try to infuse the same love for discovery when teaching students about mycology. I am grateful when they respond with curiosity and take enjoyment in learning. 

Guided Drift needs a bit more explanation. There are times in our lives when we are in transition between jobs, friendships, and recovering from a loss. Its important to use this time for exploration as a side street can become a major path. However during this exploration it is also important not to be sidetracked by the trivial but to use our rudder to gently guide the journey.

He asks many questions: Will we be open to giving and receiving help during tough times? Will we recognize our own disabilities and use them to relate to others? Will we allow our playful nature to guide and give meaning to our work? How do we combine persistence that is needed to succeed with the wisdom to know when to take a break for nourishment and renewal?  How do we use our disappointment to discover new opportunities?

Nicolas Ma and Joanne Rogers on the New Mr. Rogers Movie - 12 min. 

Last Chance to See by Douglas Adams and Mark Carwardine

The book, Last Chance to See, by Douglas Adams and Mark Carwardine describes the quest by these two intrepid explorers and NPR sound technicians to identify rare birds, animals and aquatic creatures near the edge of extinction. As safety is of great concern in Australia they make contact with the world expert in poisonous snakes Dr. Struan Sutherland. His sage advice with a brief diversion into the wonders of hydroponics is to not get bitten. This section reads as it was lifted out of a Monty Python sketch.

They encounter a white rhino which is rather more gray than white, several komodo dragons, a gorilla, a rare parakeet, and some not so rare fruit bats. Along the way they bump into several transportation snafus, time wasting bureaucrats, mid-western tourists, and well meaning Chinese citizens with an unexpected flair for eco-friendly marketing.

The trip had many of the absurd plot twists of the Adams earlier book, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.  The message about conservation and the very difficult task of keeping these creatures alive is made clear without being overly preachy. Many of the problems stem from island creatures being isolated and being ill prepared for the strong competition between species on larger land masses when these animals (cats, rats, etc.) are accidentally introduced into these island ecosystems.

This book was a real treat to read over Father's Day weekend. Thanks to Barb H. from work for  loaning it to me. We discovered that both of us had the unfortunate experience of just missing out on the opportunity to hear Douglas Adams speak before he died in 2001 at the age of 49.

Last Chance to see Zaire part 1- 10 min.

 

Aye-Aye - Douglas Adams - 1985 -  4 min.