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Did You Know That Communication Consists of Only 7% Verbal Content?

According to research, the verbal content of human communication is only 7% of what people pay attention to when we talk.  The rest consists of 38% non-verbal cues (meaning the tone of voice, inflection, modulation, speed, volume, etc.), and 55% body language.  And body language consists of posture, hand gestures, shaking of a leg or tapping on a desk, etc. Can you think of someone who consistently folds his or her hands tightly across the chest?  What does that communicate to you? Most likely it does not communicate openness and receptivity.

What this means is that all three components of communication can be communicating something different. And when there is a lack of congruency between these three elements, verbal content, non-verbal cues and body language, the components with the highest percentage of attention paid deliver the message. 

If someone tells you that they like your idea, but their tone of voice says otherwise, which response do you believe, their verbal content or the tone of voice that sends the message that they have reservations about your idea?

Hence, one of the fundamentals of effective communication is that all three components—verbal content, non-verbal cues, and body language—should in alignment.

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Pay Attention to What You Are Paying Attention To When Someone Speaks; It May Not Be What You Expect.

People are often surprised to learn that the least amount of attention is paid to the SUBJECT MATTER when listening to someone speak. That’s right. Research indicates that only 7% of attention is paid to the verbal content. SPEAKING VOICE—such as tone of voice, pace, volume and pitch—grabs another 38% of attention. And the remaining 55% of attention is given over to BODY LANGUAGE.

So, you can imagine how easy it is to distract from your message when speaking voice or body language are either incongruent with the message (i.e., subject matter) or in some way distracting. Conversely, powerful speakers either have been trained to use all three elements of communication synergistically, each one supporting and enhancing the others, or have come by this ability naturally.

Is this a topic on which you would like more information that you can apply in your own personal and career life?

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Communication: It’s the Emotional Undercurrents that Can Put a Ceiling on Creative Problem Solving

Management practices have advanced enormously over the past few decades. Yet, one area that remains hidden from public view is the emotional undercurrent that accompanies communication, which can be negative and destructive to performance. There is a long history of corporate culture to overcome, which has worked to keep negative emotions from seeing the light of day.

While pure expression of anger, sadness, hurt and fear is of little constructive value, leaders need to be aware of how emotions get in the way of creativity and identifying solutions to challenging problems.

One important issue to understand is that the meaning extracted from one person communicating with another does not come in the message content.  Meaning is ascribed by the receiver of communication based on that individual’s life experience, spanning all the way back to childhood.

We each have a bank of memories that has led us to draw conclusions about ourselves and the world we live in, including the corporation.  And these conclusions have crystalized into beliefs (e.g., I am creative and smart, I am not good enough, the world is a safe place, I have no control of these situations, I am defective, I have to try harder than others). The beliefs we hold act as filters for the information we take in, and sometimes an interaction in the present triggers an old experience, and we become angry or frightened, for example, for reasons we may not even be consciously aware of.  Conversely, the memory banks of employees contain a wealth of positive, solution-oriented material that can be tapped for creativity and innovation.

Leaders who understand that each employee has their own mental map of the world through which they interpret communication and events can use this knowledge to improve outcomes in meetings, enable groups to generate more creative solutions and, overall, enable employees to feel comfortable enough to make use of their total self.  Each and every employee has been solving problems throughout life and effective leaders know how to tap into the creativity of all.

So there are tremendous individual differences between the mental maps of employees, which serve to filter all of the data they take in through their five senses (i.e., vision, hearing, touch, taste and smell). That’s one critical level.  But another is the commonalities. When employees gather in problem-solving groups, there is a natural tendency for members to habitually find the flaws in ideas shared by others (e.g., We tried that before and it didn’t work; That won’t work because…, etc.). And when an idea is shot down, the team member who share it definitely has an emotional reaction. That person is likely to feel defensive, angry or frustrated, resulting in a high likelihood that he or she will shut down.  And do you think they are likely to listen to the next idea raised by the person who shut their idea down?  Probably not.

Even very self-confident people come into meetings with a need to be heard, and to have their ideas received with ‘open-ears.’ Without training in areas of listening and constructive response, companies all over the world are shutting down creative, original thinking before germs of great ideas can be built, through teamwork, into great innovations and solutions to problems.

One easy place to start is to build in a communication process that shapes team behavior to give positive feedback to an idea that has been expressed before citing concerns or perceived limitations (e.g., What I like about that idea is…,I like that idea because…). And when constructive criticism is given, it can be followed with a question about how the team could work to resolve the challenge (e.g., Can we work together to find a solution to this obstacle?) Training people to build on the ideas of others—instead of reverting to what is frequently the old habit of picking out the holes or flaws first—is smart business. Over time, employees will engage in more risk taking around sharing their ideas and experience greater work satisfaction. And the company will benefit from greatly enhanced creativity.

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#4 of 4: Four Core Brain Networks that Leaders Should Know About

Unlike the other 3 brain networks discussed (Default, Reward and Affect) by Waytz and Mason in their HBR article, the Control Network operates at a conscious level.  The authors point out that the Control Network is what makes us distinctly human.  Unlike animals that operate at purely instinctive levels, we have the capacity to reflect on ourselves, our actions and the world, and to make conscious choices about actions that counter what is instinctively driven at an unconscious level.  We can decide whether or not to stay at a job, to pursue a goal, and even to break an unwanted habit. 

As a consulting hypnotist, and from the perspective of vast study and practice in the field, the author’s discussion of the Control Network seemed to be least aligned with my experience. They describe the Default Network and the Control Network as “bookends,” because, “they are essentially countervailing forces.” According to the authors, “The more engaged the control network is in distributing resources to achieve goals rooted in the real world, the less engaged the default network is in detaching from the real world and imagining alternatives, and vice versa.” 

My experience has taught me that the Control Network (which is commonly called the Executive Function) is indeed the part of mind that sets goals, plans, prioritizes and makes decisions. But, very importantly, the Default Network (i.e., part of the unconscious mind) is the part of mind that follows through on, and executes those goals and decisions.  The Default part of mind does not make decisions, but it is THE powerhouse of resources that can offer creative solutions and innovations in response to a decision made by the Control Network. People have far more power than they may have ever imagined when the Default (i.e., unconscious) part of mind is aligned with the Control (i.e., conscious) part of mind.   

You may recall that when discussing the Default Network (i.e. part of unconscious mind), I made the point that the conscious mind and the unconscious mind can be guided to work seamlessly together. When the Default Network understands what the Control Network intends to accomplish, it sets about scanning the internal landscape for ideas, opportunities and solutions to meet the goal. And it can do this concurrently with activation of the Control Network.  While the Control Network goes about its daily tasks, the Default network can be instructed to work beneath the level of conscious awareness in finding a creative idea or solution.  And when it has discovered a response to a question or a solution to a challenge, for example, that answer or solution is delivered up to conscious mind, and voila, you have a Eureka! Experience.

I often describe the conscious mind as the captain of the ship.  It is that part of mind that stands on high and calls out instructions through a megaphone to the crew beneath the deck.  The crew beneath the deck is the part of mind that simply follows through on the instructions given by the captain, without judgment or veto power.

Hence, the idea presented by Waytz and Mason of the Control Network being tasked with “policing all the brain’s other networks,” and “suppressing” the Default Network simply doesn’t fit with my experience.  I believe that the powerful alignment of both the Control Network, operating at a conscious level of mind, and the Default Network, operating at an unconscious level of mind, can work in beautiful, harmonious synergy. 

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#3 of 4: Four Core Brain Networks that Leaders Should Know About

The Affect Network, or in the parlance of brain anatomy—the Limbic System—is the emotional system of the body. Events that take place in the world, as well as thoughts in the mind trigger a whole host of internal biochemical chain-reactions within the body that ultimately lead to physical outcomes such as alterations in heart rate, blood pressure and body temperature.  And that biochemical and physical process is what emotion is comprised of. Heart rate, for example, goes down to normal levels when experiences and thoughts are happy, and up when they are anxiety producing.  This is important to understand for a wide variety of reasons.  But for our purposes here, let’s apply it to the experience of ‘gut instinct,’ and leveraging this internal compass for business success.

It’s important to start with a step back, to look at how memory and learning work, because memories and learnings stored in the brain are the elements that trigger emotions.  Over a lifetime, people continuously build up a bank of memories that are categorized by association (i.e., this experience is like that experience and that experience is like this experience). Each time we have an experience in the world, the mind automatically compares that experience to the bank of memories stored and either finds a match—this is like that—or finds that experience to be a novel one.

Waytz and Mason, in their HBR article, use an example of someone having a powerfully bad encounter with a habanero pepper that burnt the mouth and left an indelible lesson:  habanero peppers are bad.  “The point is,” say the authors, “you don’t have to do any rational analysis to decide whether to eat habaneros the next time they’re presented to you.” You now have a fast track to decision-making in which you don’t need any further data to analyze.  I would add to this example that the mind, even at an unconscious level, can generalize to other kinds of peppers, concluding that all peppers are bad. In this scenario, the individual may be unnecessarily limiting their eating experience, because all peppers are not hot, or not as hot as the habanero. In some cases, the associations made by the brain are unnecessarily generalized.

Now, let’s round this back to leveraging the gut instinct by imagining a professional with a big, high risk decision to make, the outcome of which will have significant impact on the business, either positive or negative, depending on the outcome. And the decision maker is a seasoned professional with great depth of experience, who has had a large team analyzing data gathered to facilitate making the big decision. Let’s say the decision is around whether to invest significantly in a new partnership.  All of the due diligence data looks good, pointing to a ‘go’ as opposed to a ‘no go’ decision. Yet, the decision maker is uncharacteristically plagued with sleepless nights over this decision, waking up frequently in the middle of the night with a pit of soreness in her gut.  She knows that all of the data point to a positive outcome, but she just can’t rid herself of a ‘feeling’ of doom and gloom.  What should she do?  Because she is operating within a business culture that relies on data and logic at the expense of ‘gut feelings,’ she procrastinates on bringing her concerns to her boss.

The point of this example is that the negative feeling this professional has about her situation should be deemed important, because she has a wealth of experience that the inner mind has to draw upon to set off alarm signals, even if she is not consciously aware of what is triggering her concerns.  This is not to throw the baby out with the bathwater and discard or dismiss data and rational input.  But the subjective, internal knowing could be at the very crux of what this company needs to pay attention to.

‘Gut feelings’ are by no means always accurate.  Take the example above in which learning and associations have led to the belief that all peppers are bad.  On this very small scale, this can lead to a life of unnecessarily bland eating.  Associations can be distorted, as well, all the way up to the scale of a critical business decision. Having said that, more business are embracing the full scope of inputs, including emotions, to guide their judgments and decisions and reaping excellent returns.

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Cultivating Excellence in Sales Performance

Businesses rely on the strengths of people.  And sales has its own specific demands related to the confidence, motivation, communication, relationship-building, and business acumen.  Salespeople draw upon a broad spectrum of competencies to bring in the business.  And while business, product and service knowledge, along with experience are critical success factors, a tremendous amount of what top-tier sales professionals bring to the job has to do with personality factors such as self-esteem, innate drive, and emotional balance and strength.

As a professional with deep experience in business and psychotherapy (and, very importantly, hypnotherapy), I can tell you that, just like others from across the spectrum of business functions, salespeople have emotional strengths and weaknesses that both enhance their success and block or constrain it.  Wouldn’t you like to ensure that the blocking and constraining issues are removed and strengths are maximized?

Changeformation services enable you to assess the personal development needs of individual sales people, and to rapidly transformation them for performance improvement.  We can do this because we work not only with the conscious mind, which is the mere tip of the iceberg, but with the deep inner mind—the unconscious mind—where all self-defeating habits, beliefs and vulnerabilities are stored, along with all of the character strengths, abilities and successes that we can leverage and build upon.  We offer proven methods to enable salespeople to maximize and build on their strengths, while eliminating their weaknesses.

The human mind is powerful, and we know how to leverage it’s full breadth and depth for the personal and professional satisfaction of the salesperson and the overall success of the business.  And of course there is a vast array of metrics available today to measure sales performance improvement that, in turn, validate the service offerings of Changeformation. Please contact us for more information:  312-399-3464.

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#2 of 4: Four Core Brain Networks that Leaders Should Know About

The second core brain network discussed by Waytz and Mason in their HBR article is the Reward Network. This network should be understood by organizational development professionals, marketers, and anyone who manages and leads people. (Please note that you can find discussion of all 4 Brain Networks discussed by Waytz and Mason in a recent HBR article under the category of “The Brain Terrain” on this blog.)

This Reward Network is activated whenever one experiences pleasure in life. When this brain network receives a ‘rewarding’ stimulus, such as when eating a favorite food, it sends a signal for activation of a part of the midbrain known as the Ventral Tegmental Area (VTA), where dopamine is produced, and we feel pleasure. Dopamine transmits the sensation of pleasure and this experience encourages us to want to repeat the behavior—in this case eating a favorite food—in the future. So, for executives and leaders with responsibility for generating good feelings among employees about a workplace, loyalty and optimal conditions for top performance, this particular network is worthy of attention.  Likewise, marketers and brand managers who seek to create trial, repeat purchasing and loyalty among their customers are greatly benefited by knowing what types of products and experiences engage and activate reward networks of customers.

Prior to the late 20th century, the level of scientific understanding was that the body’s reward system was activated when primary survival needs were met, such as eating, drinking much needed fluids, and having sex (i.e., survival of the species).  According the Waytz and Mason, research has now demonstrated that the reward network in the brain is also sensitive to secondary rewards, including money. And with further research, ‘immaterial rewards’ were added into the mix of what activates the reward center, including status, social approval and anticipation of learning. Curiosity is central to human nature and, for most people, learning is very rewarding.

Delving deeper into the applied realm, a body of Reward Network research has focused on discovering the types of experiences that motivate employees, which Waytz and Mason outline in their HBR article. If a company conducts a survey, they may or may not get honest answers, but direct observation of activation or deactivation of the reward center, through the use of brain scanning technologies, always tells the truth.  Waytk and Mason describe research by Jamil Zaki of Stanford and Jason Mitchell of Harvard, that demonstrates that ‘fairness’ is critically important in motivating people, even those who are part of the “privileged few.” When research subjects were assigned the task of dividing up small amounts of money between themselves and others, findings indicated that the reward centers of their brains were much more activated when they made “generous, equitable choices.”  Hence, one among many suggestions made by Waytz and Mason is that “companies that maintain a reasonable level of internal pay equity would do well to publicize that information among employees. A workplace deemed to be fair is a happy workplace that garners respect and loyalty.

Conversely, unfairness, in all of its expressions, demotivates and deactivates the reward center. This ‘unfairness,’ say Waytk and Mason, includes experiences such as being left out of strategy meetings when one is fully qualified to be there, withholding information from employees, and skyrocketing executive pay. All of this knowledge provides a wealth of information about how to structure cultures that motivate and engage employees, and promote job satisfaction, company loyalty and high performance.

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# 1 of 4: Four Core Brain Networks that Business Leaders Should Know About

I really enjoyed reading the Adam Waytz and Malia Mason article called Your Brain at Work in Harvard Business Review’s special issue titled, The Brain Science Behind Business.  They reviewed four networks in the brain and provided direct linkage to how their processes can be leveraged to both add value to the companies that understand their respective inner-workings, and how they can also create disadvantages, if left to function without guidance. Out of the reportedly 15 brain networks and sub-networks that have been identified by brain researchers, the following four networks have the most consistent backing by neuroscientists, as reported by Waytz and Mason:

  1. The Default Network: Pathway to Unlocking Breakthrough Innovation
  2. The Reward Network: Pathway to Structuring Incentives that Motivate
  3. The Affect Network: Pathway to Leveraging Gut Instinct
  4. The Control Network: Pathway to Creating Achievable Goals

I will address The Default Network in this post, from my vantage point as a consulting hypnotist, and move into the other three networks in subsequent posts.  As a consulting hypnotist, having worked with hundreds of clients, I would refer to the Default Network, along with the Reward and Affect Networks as comprising unconscious parts of mind, and the Control Network to be the core mechanism of conscious mind.

The Default Network is the state of consciousness that the mind defaults to when one is not focused on a task, or outwardly engaged in the external world. The process that takes place in the Default part of mind is sometimes referred to as ‘mind-wandering’ in which spontaneous thoughts arise. Again, through years of practicing hypnosis, I would argue that this mind-wandering state can be directed by conscious mind to wander in the direction of one’s choosing, targeting creative input—from the inner mind—to solve a problem or meet a goal, and I will be bringing out much more on this subject as we move along. The conscious and unconscious parts of mind can work seamlessly together.

When the Default Network is highly engaged, say Waytz and Mason, “people’s brains ‘detach from the external environment, meaning they stop processing external stimuli,” which the HBR authors’ call a state of ‘transcendence.’ From my perspective as a consulting hypnotist, I would call this state of mind ‘trance.’ Anytime a person moves their focus from engagement in the external world to engagement in the internal world, that is trance. Without the scientific backing that the Default Network has today, the state of mind produced by it has had many names throughout history. John Locke (1632-1704) said that the French referred to the state of mind that can now be called ‘Default,’ as a state of reverie.

Waytz and Mason also describe the Default Network as the part of mind that is conducive to Eureka! Moments. I agree with that. As you may have experienced, a Eureka! Moment frequently occurs after you have walked away from a challenge and allowed the inner mind to continue its inner search for a solution. And sooner or later, when the unconscious mind offers up a solution to conscious mind, you say Aha, that’s it!  For this reason, the Default Network has been identified as the place where innovation takes place.

In a chapter called An Exploration/Exploitation Trade-Off Between Mind-Wandering and Goal-Directed Thinking in The Oxford Handbook of Spontaneous Thought, Chandra S. Sripada refers to the workings of the Default Network as a state of ‘Exploration,’ wherein pattern recognition and creativity are the outputs. Conversely, ‘Exploitation’ utilizes that which has been discovered through “Exploration’ to seize new opportunities.  

Psychologists and neuroscientists who study the cycles of human nature (i.e., Circadian and Ultradian rhythms) may refer to the Default Network as the ‘Rest’ component of the Basic Rest-Activity Cycle (BRAC). BRAC is the natural ebb and flow of Ultradian rhythms that people move through in 80 to 100 minute cycles throughout the day. We flow from a state of alert consciousness where task-focus capacities are at their peak, to a state of mind with less focus, wherein daydreams can occur, the mind wanders, and streams of spontaneous, creative thought arise.

Researchers have zeroed in on the Default Network from many perspectives, all pointing to the tremendous resources for creativity and innovation it offers. Hence, it is becoming increasingly clear that creating the right conditions for employees to leverage the benefits of the unfocused, ‘default’ state of mind is a critical advantage for innovation.

So the question is, how can companies create the right environment to tap the creative resources of The Default Network?

As described in their HBR article, Waytz and Mason cite several companies that are already on the path: Google, Intuit, Maddock Douglas, Brighthouse and Twitter. It is the HBR authors’ contention, however that while the leading-edge programs at these companies appear to offer some benefits, their initiatives do not go far enough.  Their reasoning is that because the ‘default tapping’ initiatives of these companies are designed to unearth solutions to problems, this means that employee default networks do not detach from external stimuli, a condition they deem essential. Further, after a brief review of the various approaches used at these companies, Waytz and Mason suggest that better approaches would focus programs on the ‘quality of detachment’ created, not on the ‘quantity of time’ offered for internal focus.

Waytz and Mason elaborate, saying that companies could ‘detach’ employees from email, calendars, phones, job duties and other employees, sending them away on trips.  While they do mention meditation as an effective way to detach, I would go one step further and say that all of the HBR authors’ ‘detachment’ recommendations can be accomplished through the use of hypnosis, by guiding employees to focus inward to access  the creative and innovative resources of their deep inner minds. Employees can be guided inward and taught to use self-hypnosis to travel to any remote, uninterrupted destination of their choosing—in the mind’s eye—and allow the unconscious mind (i.e., default network) to explore solutions, innovations and creative resolution to business challenges.  This has a multitude of advantages, not the least of which is less travel costs!

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How Insights and Intuitions Arise and How to Access Them

The mind is a powerhouse of creative and innovative resources that most people have barely tapped into. While it is true that most people have had an intuitive sense or thought arise out of seemingly nowhere at some point in time that provided guidance in their life, or a flash of insight that solved a problem or enhanced a good product or idea. But science and business have not, until recently, begun to embrace the study and application of methods to access and leverage the creative resources that flow from the deep inner mind. In contrast to mind activities such as compiling and analyzing data, and using logic—actions of the conscious mind which are readily accepted and readily embraced—intuition and insight emanate from the unconscious mind. 

The unconscious part of mind is the source of insights and intuition that spur creativity and innovation; the lifeblood of successful companies and organizations of all types. Yet, until recently, as precision brain-scanning technologies have become available, science has avoided the study of consciousness and all of its outputs. We have been conditioned by a culture of ‘hard science’ to mistrust any inspirations that do not lend themselves to research and the scientific method.   

While there are still considerable unknowns regarding the workings of brain and mind, technologies such as fMRI, EEG, have enabled researchers to identify the parts of the brain that are active in the process of receiving intuitive inputs and eureka moments, and the conditions that promote creative inspirations and insights. They have also been able to identify the brain wave cycles that are active just before (Alpha brain waves) and at the point of emergence of creative insights (Gamma brain waves), which provides further understanding about how to optimize the chances for receiving insights and intuitions from the unconscious mind.

According the a research summary (How Insight Happens: Learning from the Brain) provided by Dr. Mark Jung-Beeman, Dr. Azurii Collier and Dr. John Kounios in the handbook of NeuroLeadership the following are conditions that contribute to the emergence of insights and intuitions:

  1. Access a relaxed state of mind.
  2. Create conditions that encourage people to attend to their own quiet thoughts.
  3. Access a positive mood.
  4. Facilitate a sudden shift of attention from one aspect of a challenge, for example, where one may have been stuck, to another.
  5. Facilitate right brain activity where “weak associations” can be detected, in contrast to the “close associations” characteristic of the left brain.

Jung-Beeman, Collier and Kounios describe the process of “mind wandering,” which is somewhat similar to daydreaming. They say, “it occurs when an individual begins to attend to internal thoughts rather than externally driven tasks or events. It’s what happens when you are driving on the highway and after a while realize that you are thinking deeply about something else and barely attending to the road.”  From my experience as a hypnotist, I believe this mind wandering experience is a state of hypnotic trance, and in the case of daydreaming on the road, I refer to that as highway trance.  And you can rest assured that even when your conscious mind has drifted away and your thoughts are internally focused, that you will snap back to a conscious focus on the road when needed. The reason you can mind wander while driving is because you have learned how to drive.  And by definition, that means you have transferred the awkward and disjointed, conscious process of learning to drive (e.g., pressing down on gas and brake, merging into traffic, using turn signals and rear view mirror, reading road signs, etc.) into a seamless process maintained by the unconscious mind.  

Both labels, mind wandering and trance, are fine, in my opinion.  But for me it is important to recognize that this creative, receptive state of mind can be achieved using hypnosis, either self-administered or guided by a professional hypnotist.

Legend has it, according to Jung-Beeman, Collier and Kounios, that “Thomas Edison would routinely sit in a comfortable chair and rest, allowing his mind to wander as he perhaps headed toward sleep. But he would do this while balancing a spoon over a pie plate so that, should he fall asleep, the spoon would drop and the resulting clang would awaken him. He would then write down his thoughts during that period, in the belief that they were often creative.”  I would add that some of the most powerful time for accessing creative insights is in the state between sleep and a fully alert waking state (i.e., moving up from the Delta Brain Waves of sleep, up through Theta Brain Waves and Alpha Brain Waves…all the way up to fully alert Beta brain waves). You can access the powerful states of Alpha and Theta on the way down to sleep as well, but I find it easier to use this hypnopompic state in the morning when moving up toward a fully alert state instead of down towards sleep.in terms of brain wave cycles per minute.