Week 3 …

#IBMCSCUSA2 – This photo cracks me up … meet one of my fellow CTC team members – Valentin from Romania.  More about that later … first, sharing more on things I have learned as I continue to work through the preparation tasks, one that I revisited and explored in more detail, was on the topic of Emotional Intelligence (EI), and it was interesting how it set me down a path or 2 …

So in the spirit of one thing I learned from our CEO is that when starting something share a story, that’s how most remember what you are saying.  So here are my stories:

After reading this paragraph in some of the activities I had to work on …

Be mindful of your body language. Just the simple act of pulling your shoulders back gives others the impression that you are a confident person. Smiling will not only make you feel better, but will make others feel more comfortable around you. Don’t forget to look at the person you are speaking to and speak slowly.

… it reminded me of the skills that I have picked up over the past year on this very topic.  Did you know that up to 93% of what we say is through our body language … yes pretty high, but true.  So what is Valentin saying in the photo above? Provide your thoughts in the comments below.

Body Language is thought provoking, and something that everyone should think about.  When I switch into the Body Language Detective it is amazing what I “hear” when someone is talking!  My question to you is how come we focus so much on our words, and no thought to our body signals when we are delivering the messages?  Understanding body language can be a powerful tool to have.   Here is a one minute video that shows how to use different body language movements in a job interview … how would you go?

So in my last blog I spoke of meeting of fellow team members, this week i had the privilege of meeting 5 more of them.  Here is what I learned:

• Valentin … travels a lot, and was in Germany when we spoke.  He was quite a happy person, loves to have a laugh, he is pretty flexible and loves snowboarding.  In fact, he told of a story how snowboarding was a great way to break down the barriers of a team that he worked with, where they had traveled to Austria for a weekend together and just did snowboarding.  The following week they were able to work together so much better after the teaming exercise which was an eye opener for Valentin after all the other teaming exercises that were done in the office, the snowboarding was the thing that broke down the barriers.
• Lung .. lives in Malaysia.  What I learned of Lung is he is the quiet one.  His social presence I enquired about, and with a smile, his response was “I am not a social kind of guy” … I laughed, and said that CSC will certainly help change that with a little bit of encouragement from his fellow team members I am sure (namely me 🙂 ).  Lung likes to go and explore archaeological sites, and would definitely give shopping a miss!
• Abhay (a fellow Aussie), born in India, and has lived in Australia for the past 12 years.  He works in Canberra and commutes between Adelaide and Canberra each week.  He has been to Dubai and been in a Ferrari and got up to 180 km with a driver, his dream is to drive a high performance car like a Lamborghini and drive the Autobahn.  That was when I was able to share with Abhay that I had driven on the autobahn last year getting up to speeds of 220km which was a phenomenal experience and a must if you like driving quick, with focus!
• Benedicte is from Denmark and was an interesting person to listen too.  She spoke about her travels to different locations around the world that were not of the most common of places you would think of.  She has a background as a Journalist and Economist. Sometimes she is able to bring them together. Benedicte was a Journalist on national television channel .. news journalist and anchor woman presenting sporting activities such as the Olympics games in Atlantis in 1996 being the biggest highlight of her career.  Benedicte shared that if she had a day to do anything she wanted, that would be to spend a few hours on her new paddle board learning how to use it.
• Madlen, based in Switzerland, but was in Germany when we spoke.  Having grown up in Germany, spent time in Ireland and is now based in Switzerland.  One thing that stood out for me is that if Madlen could do something for one day, was to go to a country where things are not so easy, where food is hard to come by, water not easy to get, things are just that, things that we take for granted.  She felt that by living somewhere like this for a period of time, that she would learn to appreciate things more so, life in general, instead of taking things for granted.  Being a different person in a different country would expand and change outlook in life!

So to finish up, I have one last question to you which highlights another topic I covered on EI … how present were you reading this blog?  Did you get distracted?  Or did you get through it all and not multi-task?  I know that I am one of those people that does a lot in a day, multi-task in fact, whether it is effective working, that is another story.  So another skill I plan to work on is practicing doing nothing for 10 minutes, to give my mind a break; to practice mindfulness and being present.  I will leave you with an interesting TEDtalk on this very topic that you might enjoy!