How to walk your talk and get more likes!

7 THINGS YOU’RE DOING THAT GET YOU MORE REJECTION THAN AFFECTION

An excerpt from The Collaboration Kickstarter which offers straight talking tips on how to get real heartfelt collaboration – right from the start!

You’ve got it made.

Compliments like “you’ve done/achieved/come far…” aptly praise whatever it is that you define as being a success – at this point of your life – and up to now you’ve systematically ticked off the things that lure and promise eternal rewards and recognition. But. Not everyone is buying and in some areas of your life – be it work or play – you’re getting more rejection than affection.

Family, friends and some colleagues are always going to support you with things you want and like to hear. That’s why they’re still on your party invite list. Unsavoury and un-nice behaviour can be dismissed with a host of adjectives. And, to support you, you live in a world that promotes and perpetuates wonderful and awe-inspiring you. But. You know and I know that you are still turning people off. Relax. You’re human and you really are awesome but you might be doing too much of one of the following: blowing your royal trumpet, taking too much, talking ill of others, too right, righteous and opinionated, making too many excuses, demonstrating favouritism, bias or racism, and last but not least, whinging too much. Which one is it?

Turn Off #1 Big Talk

Cultural core values are a huge big thing when it comes to honesty and harmony. Just like cultures differ in what they value as nice or not, some cultural groups demand a more straight forward tell it like it is way of talking while others, appreciate a more…

beat-about-the-mulberry-bush way of sharing information. Politeness however, is often confused with being nice, and honesty.

Then there are the individualistic competitive cultures that promote a “fake it till you make it” approach to success and winning at life or work – a hotbed for fabrication and distortion with words used to embellish or embroider. We alter. We distort. We create hyperboles.

Did you know that “hype” means “large” and “beyond”. Big. Fashionable. Trendy. And any savvy’d business person like you knows that hypes and trends are of a temporary nature, with some having an abnormally quick expiry date. Short lived. Right?
Let’s not forget “bole”. “Bole” means to throw.
So, let me get this; you’re throwing your meaning beyond the truth?

When you do this you might get the attention you crave to have. You might also get the deal you want. You might even get your team to perform and deliver. But whatever the others are doing is, for the same reason you’re doing it – and fear is no sustainable source for success.

Fake it till you make it!

Enter “The Emperor’s New Clothes” (Hans Christian Anderson). Or the Empress’s new clothes. Whatever. Faking it requires loads of energy and creativity better spent on other things – and if this is your modus operandi you’re in for some hard times. It becomes harder and harder for you to trust others and for them to trust you. You might get the results you want but you also sense that people are taking the stairs or crossing the street. It’s harder to get deals signed and your team just isn’t pulling together like they used to. And. You end up not getting as many party invitations. Faking it, embellishing or embroidering it doesn’t mean making it. Ever.

Sadly it has become the present day norm in some cultures, especially Western ones, to be nice even when you don’t feel like it and to agree with people when you don’t want to because it might cost you your job or not get you the girl. You’ve received enough whacks on the side of your head, enough disappointments, enough threats and enough deadlines for you to create your white lie blueprint and buy yourself more new clothes than you get party invitations for.

My advice? Throw out the blueprint. Create a new one.
Instead of layering your vulnerability with fake – be the child that tells the truth.
Rather than talking about the one that got away – be the one that get’s away – from the bullshit.

Stay brilliant, keep sparkling and look out for more news from Kickbuttville!

speaker | communication craftsperson | cross-cultural connector | author

vienna | cape town | goa | new york