Communication

Question 1

Contagious: What are the six principles (key STEPPS) that cause things to be talked about, shared, and imitated?

Answer 1

1. Social Currency 2. Triggers 3. Emotion 4. Public 5. Practical Value 6. Stories

Question 2

Made to Stick: What framework can you use make your ideas memorable?

Answer 2

SUCCES(s) Framework - Simple - Unexpected - Concrete - Credible - Emotional - Stories

Question 3

Influence: What are the six sources (R-CLASS) of influence?

Answer 3

1. Reciprocation 2. Commitment and Consistency 3. Liking 4. Authority 5. Scarcity 6. Social Proof

Question 4

Say It With Presentations: What four things need to be done for every presentation?

Answer 4

1. Define the situation 2. Craft the storyline 3. Build a storyboard 4. Check the Audience Bill of Rights

Question 5

Say It With Presentations: What are the key questions you need to answer to define the situation?

Answer 5

1. Why are you giving this presentation? 2. Who will you need to convince? 3. How much time will you have? 4. What is the appropriate medium?

Question 6

Say It With Presentations: What’s the storyline?

Answer 6

1. Introduction (PIP) - Purpose - Why are you giving this presentation? Why are we here? What will success look like at the end of the presentation? - Importance - What makes it so important that we accomplish that purpose today? - Preview - How the presentation structured so we can concentrate on the content and not questioning where we are in the presentation. 2. Structure - Objective - Recommendation - Preview of conclusions - Conclusion A & evidence - Conclusion B & evidence - Conclusion C & evidence 3. Ending - Summary - Spell out the recommendation one more time - Present your action program - Ask for agreement and commitment - Next steps

Question 7

Crucial Conversations: What defines a crucial conversation?

Answer 7

Stakes are high Opinions vary Emotions run strong

Question 8

Crucial Conversations: What are the seven steps to mastering crucial conversations?

Answer 8

1. Start With Heart - Stay focused on what you really want 2. Learn to Look - Notice when safety is at risk 3. Make It Safe - Make it safe to talk about almost anything 4. Master My Stories - Stay in dialog when you’re angry, scared, or hurt 5. STATE My Path - Speak persuasively, not abrasively 6. Explore Other’s Paths - Listen when other blow up or clam up 7. Move to Action - Turn crucial conversations into action and results

Question 9

Crucial Conversations: What are the two levers form the basis for recognizing, building and maintaining dialog?

Answer 9

Learn to Look - Improve dialog skills by continually asking whether you are in or out of dialog (falling into silence or violence) Make It Safe - Establish mutual purpose and maintain mutual respect

Question 10

Crucial Conversations: What do you look for to assess if safety is at risk?

Answer 10

Are people falling into (a) silence or (b) violence

Question 11

Crucial Conversations: How do you make it safe?

Answer 11

1. Apologize when appropriate. 2. Contrast to fix misunderstanding. 3. CRIB to get to mutual purpose - Commit to seek Mutual Purpose - Recognize the purpose behind the strategy - Invent a Mutual Purpose - Brainstorm new strategies

Question 12

Crucial Conversations: How do you master your stories?

Answer 12

1. Retrace my Path to Action - See/Hear - Story - Feel - Act 2. Separate fact from story 3. Watch for the Three Clever Stories (Victim, Villain, Helpless) Tell the rest of the story

Question 13

Crucial Conversations: How do you STATE your path?

Answer 13

STATE (3 “what skills and 2 “how” skills) - Share your facts - Tell your story - Ask for others’ paths - Talk tentatively - Encourage testing

Question 14

Crucial Conversations: How do you explore others’ paths?

Answer 14

AMPP (Ask, Mirror, Paraphrase, Prime) ABC (Agree, Build, Compare)

Question 15

Crucial Conversations: How do you STATE your path?

Answer 15

How will we we make decisions? Who will do what by when? How will we follow-up?

Question 16

How to Win Friends and Influence People: What are the three fundamental techniques for handling people?

Answer 16

1. Don’t criticize, condemn, or complain.
2. Give honest and sincere appreciation.
3. Arouse in the other person an eager want.

Question 17

How to Win Friends and Influence People: What are the six ways to make people like you?

Answer 17

1. Become genuinely interested in other people.
2. Smile.
3. Remember that person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.
4. Be a good listener; encourage others to talk about themselves.
5. Talk in terms of the other person’s interests.
6. Make the other person feel important - and do it sincerely.

Question 18

How to Win Friends and Influence People: What are the twelve ways to win people over to your way of thinking?

Answer 18

1. The only way to get the best of an argument is to avoid it.
2. Show respect for the other person’s opinions. Never say “You’re Wrong.”
3. If you’re wrong, admit it quickly and emphatically.
4. Begin in a friendly way.
5. Start with questions to which the other person will answer yes.
6. Let the other person do a great deal of the talking.
7. Let the other person feel the idea is his or hers.
8. Try honestly to see things from the other person’s point of view.
9. Be sympathetic with the other person’s ideas and desires.
10. Appeal to the nobler motives.
11. Dramatize your ideas.
12. Throw down a challenge.

Question 19

How to Win Friends and Influence People: What are the nine ways to change people without giving offense of arousing resentment?

Answer 19

1. Begin with praise and honest appreciation.
2. Call attention to people’s mistakes indirectly.
3. Talk about your own mistakes before criticizing the other person.
4. Ask questions instead of giving direct orders.
5. Let the other person save face.
6. Praise every improvement.
7. Give the other person a fine reputation to live up to.
8. Use encouragement. Make the fault seem easy to correct.
9. Make the other person happy about doing what you suggest.

Question 20

To Sell Is Human: What are the ABC’s of sales?

Answer 20

1. Attunement - Bringing oneself into harmony with individuals, groups, and contexts
2. Buoyancy - Grittness of spirit and sunniness of outlook
3. Clarity - Ability to clarify what you’re actually offering

Question 21

To Sell Is Human: How to you become attuned to the buyer?

Answer 21

1. Assume that the buyer is the one with the power
2. Focus on understanding the buyer’s thoughts rather than their feelings
3. Mimic the buyer’s gestures

Question 22

To Sell Is Human: What are the three keys to bouyancy?

Answer 22

1. Ask yourself questions beforehand (“Can I succeed?”) rather than pumping yourself up (“I am the best”); they encourage your brain to come up with answers, reasons, and intrinsic motivation
2. Be mostly positive: it can make the buyer more positive and open to different possibilities (although a little negativity keeps you grounded)
3. Be optimistic: believe that rejections are temporary, contained, and due to external factors

Question 23

To Sell Is Human: What are the five potential frames?

Answer 23

1. Less frame — Framing people’s options in a way that restricts their choices can help them see those choices more clearly instead of overwhelming them
2. Experience frame — Emphasize the experiences they will gain (not just the material objects)
3. Label frame — Pick labels and names carefully as these anchor expectations
4. Blemish frame — List a small negative attribute after the positive ones; when individuals encounter weak negative info after already having received positive info, this weak negative info increases the salience of the positive info
5. Potential frame — When selling yourself, focus on your potential rather than your past accomplishments

Question 24

To Sell Is Human: What is Pantalon Technique’s for clarifying another’s motivations?

Answer 24

Ask two questions:

1. On a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 meaning “not the last bit ready” and 10 meaning “totally ready,” how ready are you to study?
2. Why didn’t you pick a lower number?

Question 25

To Sell Is Human: What are the six pitches?

Answer 25

1. One-word pitch — Mastercard: priceless
2. Question pitch — Regan: Are you better off now than you were four years ago?
3. Rhyming pitch — Haribo: Kids and grown-ups love it so, the happy world of Haribo
4. Subject line pitch — Promise useful content OR elicit curiosity and be specific e.g. 3 proven ways to get your email opened
5. Twitter (140-character) pitch — Ask questions or provide relevant content
6. Pixar pitch — Once upon a time __. Every day, __. One day __. Because of that, __. Because of that, __. Until finally __.

Question 26

To Sell Is Human: What are the three essential rules of improv?

Answer 26

1. Hear “offers” — Listen well and hear the buyer’s answers as “offers,” not objections (attunement)
2. Say “Yes and…” — Agree and add a suggestion; this spirals upwards towards possibility, so when you stop you have a set of options (buoyancy)
3. Make the buyer look good – Shatter the zero-sum frame of mind and replace it with a culture of genorisity (clarity)

Question 27

To Sell Is Human: How do you adopt an attitude of service (Robert Greenleaf’s “servant-leader”)?

Answer 27

1. Make messages personal and purposeful
2. Believe in the value of the product and how it will impact the life of the buyer: If the person you are selling to agrees to buy, will his or her life improve? When your interaction is over, will the world be a better place than when you began?
3. Incorporate altruistic messages into their selling

Question 28

Pyramid Principle: What are the three rules of a pyramid structure?

Answer 28

1. Ideas at any level in the pyramid must be summaries of the ideas grouped below them
2. Ideas in each grouping must always be the same kind of idea
3. Ideas in each grouping must always be logically ordered

Question 29

Pyramid Principle: What are the two approaches to building a pyramid structure?

Answer 29

1. The top-down approach
2. The bottom-up approach

Question 30

Pyramid Principle: How do you build a pyramid top-down?

Answer 30

1. Fill in the the top box — Draw a box, decide the Question, and write down the answer.
2. Match the Answer to the Introduction — Identify the Situation, develop the Complication, and recheck the Question and Answer still follow.
3. Find the Key Line — Determine what New Question is raised by the Answer and answer it deductively or inductively
4. Structure the Support Point — Repeat the question/answer process at this level

Question 31

Pyramid Principle: How do you build a pyramid bottom-up?

Answer 31

1. List all the points you think you want to make
2. Work out the relationships between them
3. Draw conclusions

Question 32

Pyramid Principle: How does deductive reasoning work?

Answer 32

1. Make a statement about a situation that exists in the world (any company that meets one of these 3 criteria is worth buying)
2. Make another statement about a related situation that exists at the same time (Acme Co. meets all three criteria)
3. State the implication of these two situations existing at the same time (therefore, Acme Co. is worth buying)

In deductive arguments, the second point always comments on the subject or predicate of the first.
Use it as low in the pyramid as possible (e.g. at the paragraph level); inductive agreements are easier to absorb at high levels

Question 33

Pyramid Principle: How does inductive reasoning work?

Answer 33

1. The mind notices several things (ideas, events, facts) that are similar in some way, brings them together in a group, and comment on the significance of their similarity
2. The key technique is to find the one word the describes the kind of ideas in your grouping
3. Check your reasoning from the bottom up

In inductive arguments, the second point can be classified by the same plural noun as the first.

Question 34

Pyramid Principle: What are the four areas you can critique?

Answer 34

1. The general order of the ideas in a grouping
2. Their source in your problem solving process
3. Your summary statement about them
4. The prose in which you express them

Question 35

Pyramid Principle: How can your order groupings?

Answer 35

• Time order — Process (What would I do first? Second?)
  
  • Incomplete Thinking — Are all steps included, and are they in the right order?
  • Confused Logic — Does the logic make sense?
  • False Grouping — Have any ideas been brought together that don’t belong in the grouping?
• Structural Order — Structure (divides a whole into its parts)
  
  • Creating a Structure — Must be MECE (mutual exclusive and collectively exhaustive)
  • Describing a Structure
  • Imposing a Structure — Use to sort out faulty logic in a grouping. Why this order? Where did these ideas come from?
• Ranking Order (Order of Importance) — Class (grouping of like things)
  
  • Creating a Proper Class Groupings — Place in order of the degree each possess the characteristic by which you have classified it, presenting the strongest one first
  • Identifying Improper Class Groupings

Question 36

Pyramid Princple: What are the five questions to answer in problem solving?

Answer 36

1. What is the problem?
2. Where does it lie?
3. Why does it exist?
4. What could we do about it? — Possible options
5. What should we do about it? — Recommendation

Question 37

Pyramid Principle: What are the five typical logic trees?

Answer 37

Five Typical Logic Trees — The value of logic trees lies in the fact that they can often reveal where the problem is, why it exists, and what do do about it all in one picture. The trees all begin at an end result and branch in to causes:

1. Financial Structure
2. Task Structure
3. Activity Structure
4. Choice Structure
5. Sequential Structure

Once you have displayed the logical relationships between groups of activities to show their cause-effect nature, you can use the concept to question the logic of what you have written.

Question 38

Pyramid Principle: What are the two types of summary statements?

Answer 38

Your summary statement will be either (1) an action statement telling people to do something, or (b) a situation statement, telling people about something. Always ask yourself of any group, “why have I brought together these particular ideas and no others?”

1. Stating the Effect of Actions (Causes)
   
   • Does the same step appear in more than one place?
   • Can I visualize someone taking the action?
   • Will the sub-steps bring about the step above them?
   • Have I kept the subject the same?
2. Drawing An Inference from Conclusions (Class)
   
   • Finding structural similarities in the sentences in which the points appear
   • Visualize the relationships implied between the parts that are similar (sometimes groupings of situation ideas are really action ideas in disguise)

Question 39

Pyramid Principle: How to compose readable words?

Answer 39

To compose clear sentences, begin by “seeing” what you are talking about. Once you have that image, you simply copy it into words:

• Create an image with the structure of the relationships being discussed (geometric shapes arranged in a schematized fashion, plus an arrow to indicate direction and interaction). What nouns do we have to hang onto here that are relatively concrete? How might be pictured in relationship with one another?
• Copy the image into words