Jim Bennett - HOT Leadership

I believe that a zest morning routine is one of the most important habits for an exceptionally great life. The way we begin our day very much sets up how our day unfolds. Of course we may choose to start with MVP [Meditation, Visualization, Prayer] is also powerful. Doing a sweaty workout while hydrating and listening to a fascinating audiobook or pulsating music adds magic to our morning. I’ve al...

It is sometimes easy to reach agreement smoothly, painlessly, and quickly. Other times it takes a lot of tugging and pulling to finally arrive at “Yes.” There are four main reasons why peo-ple do not ask for that “Yes”: Fear of rejection; Lack of appropriate vocabulary; Insufficient practice; Lack of belief. Learn to ask for the “Yes.”  Let's explore 'Factors plus incentives' and dealing with obje...

Methods and words that are used to persuade and influence people are important to identify.  These things are as important as modes of speech and body language. Clients will choose you because they trust you, like you, have confidence in you, and think that you can get the job done. Most important, they believe you have their best interests at heart....    Helpful Link: Standford Report on ' The p...

When starting a conversation with another person, you are attempting to break the other person’s preoccupation with whatever they are  doing. Make the person want to listen to you. Excite them, put them at ease, or have them feel important. Each of these reasons is supported with various techniques to have the most effective start to a conversation....... Useful Help: 250 conversation starters htt...

Body language is considered the most important and largest percentage of the three major fac- tors of communication. It far surpasses how you say what you say and what you actually do say in words. A staggering 93% of communication relies on aspects other than the words you use. Body language really is the unspoken truth - it is as crucial as active listening.... Helpful Links Understanding Body L...

Questions are very powerful because they are always answered, even if those answers are not verbalised (spoken aloud).You will be able to create a number of different situations and reactions by the types of questions you use e.g.: Use information questions to both give and to receive information.  Consider a focusing question to focus people on a potential outcome Fill an embarrassing silence wit...

Subconscious Encoding Consider that as humans we have two minds: the conscious and the subconscious. The conscious mind is the judge of the information that comes through the senses, dealing with one item at a time. The subconscious mind stores memories and does not judge information at all. It simply stores it. When a person is asked a question they respond, whether the re- sponse is verbalised o...

ZeCommunications is about enabling the zest in people and organisations through the power of values based communications. It involves “practice practice, practice” and a sense of fun ‘sprinkled’ with resilience… Everyone is in the persuasion business. Sometimes that persuasion is directed to other people. Sometimes it is inwardly directed to your self talk. Persuasion can occur in a simple convers...

These are strange and gorgeous times. Tons of challenges. Dazzling possibilities. And I viscerally want you to leverage these times to fly. To express your talent. To do your dreams. To make the world better. To help you Lead Without a Title, I’ve distilled 10 of the most valuable and practical insights on Leadership that I’ve shared globally to my corporate clients These ideas have helped them do...

The holy grail of habit change is not a single 1 percent improvement, but a thousand of them. It’s a bunch of zest habits stacking up, each one a fundamental unit of the overall system. In the beginning, small improvements can often seem meaningless because they get washed away by the weight of the system. Just as one coin won’t make you rich, one positive change like meditating for one minute or...

In our discussion of the 4th STEP of Behaviour Change we have covered the importance of making good habits immediately satisfying. The inversion of the 4th STEP is Make it immediately unsatisfying.  Just as we are more likely to repeat an experience when the ending is satisfying, we are also more likely to avoid an experience when the ending is painful. Pain is an effective teacher. If a failure i...

No matter how consistent you are with your habits, it is inevitable that life will interrupt you at some point. Perfection is not possible. Before long, an emergency will pop up - you get sick or you have to travel for work or your family needs a little more of your time. Whenever this happens to me, I try to remind myself of a simple rule: never miss twice. L et's discuss in more depth... HOT Lea...

Making progress is satisfying, and visual measures provide clear evidence of your progress. As a result, they reinforce your behavior and add a little bit of immediate satisfaction to any activity. Visual measurement comes in many forms: food journals, workout logs, loyalty punch cards, the progress bar on a software download, even the page numbers in a book. But perhaps the best way to measure yo...

Step 4 of changing habits is that it needs to be enjoyable f or it to last. Simple bits of reinforcement like soap that smells great or toothpaste that has a refreshing minty flavour can offer the immediate pleasure we need to enjoy a habit. Change is so much easier when it gives us  joy. It is more likely we will repeat the behaviour when our expereince is satifying. Our human brain has evolved t...

Making  Good Habits Inevitable and Bad Habits Impossible Sometimes success is less about making good habits easy and more about making bad habits harder. This is an inversion of the 2nd STEP of Behaviour Change  "Make it Attractive". If you find yourself struggling to follow through on your plans make you bad habits more difficult by creating what pschologists call a commitment device . Commitment...

Even when you know you should start small, it’s easy to start too big. When you dream about making a change, excitement inevitably takes over and you end up trying to do too much too soon. The most effective way that's known to counteract this tendency is to use the Two-Minute Rule, which states, “When you start a new habit, it should take less than two minutes to do.” You’ll find that nearly any...

Conventional wisdom holds that motivation is the key to habit change. Maybe if you really wanted it, you’d actually do it. But the truth is, our real motivation is to be lazy and to do what is convenient. Despite what the latest productivity best seller will tell you, this is a smart strategy, not a dumb one. Energy is precious, and the brain is wired to conserve it whenever possible. It is human...

Making our Lives Easier It is easy to get bogged down trying to find the optimal plan for change: the fastest way to lose weight, the best programme to build muscle, the perfect idea for a side job. We are so focused on figuring out the best approach that we never get around to taking action. As Voltaire once wrote, “ The best is the enemy of the good." This is the difference between being in moti...

This week we examine the cause of our bad habits and how to avoid them. The 'higklightd' are as follows.... The cause of our habits is the prediction that precedes them. (the 'activator') This prediction leads to a feeling. Habits are attractive when we associate them with positive feelings and unattractive when we associate them with negative ones. When we create a motivation ritual by doing some...

Whenever we are unsure how to act, we look to the group (the many) to guide our behaviour. We are constantly scanning our environment and wondering, “What is everyone else doing?” We check reviews on Amazon or Yelp or TripAdvisor because we want to imitate the “best” buying, eating, and travel habits.... Likewise, humans everywhere pursue power, prestige, and status. Historically, a person with gr...

This week we look at culure and the role of family and friends in shaping our habits. Humans are herd animals. We want to fit in, to bond with others, and to earn the respect and approval of our peers. Such inclinations are essential to our survival. For most of our evolutionary history, our ancestors lived in tribes. Becoming separated from the tribe, or worse, being cast out—was a death sentence...

In our 2nd STEP of ZeChange let's learn how to make a habit attractive and irresistible. It may not be possible to transform every habit into a supernormal stimulus, we can however make any habit more enticing. To do this, we must start by understanding what a craving is and how it works. Today we begin by examining a biological signature that all habits share—the dopamine spike. Research has shwn...

As we move forward in our journey of culture and behavioural change in creating good habits lets look deeper into the secret's of self-control and review our 1st Step Principles as follows: The inversion of the 1st STEP of Behaviour Change is make it invisible. Once a habit is formed, it is unlikely to be forgotten. People with high self-control tend to spend less time in tempting situations. It’s...

We continue our journey of looking at Step 1 in Making it obvious where we discover the motivation can be overrated at times and our environment matters more ar certain times as follows: Small changes in context can lead to large changes in behaviour over time. Every habit is initiated by a cue. We are more likely to notice cues that stand out. Make the cues of good habits obvious in your environm...

The 1st STEP of Habit Behaviour Change is make it obvious. The two most common cues are time and location: Creating an implementation intention is a strategy you can use to pair a new habit with a specific time and location. The implementation intention formula is: I will [BEHAVIOUR] at [TIME] in [LOCATION]. Habit stacking is a strategy that you can use to pair a new habit with a current habit. Th...