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How do you know if you have common sense?

Over the years I have often expressed and wondered why there is not a school for common sense, and why a course on this topic is not offered in middle or high school? For fun, I have periodically searched on-line to find a class on common sense. Typically this search is often prompted by an act of someone either I know, or based on an interaction recanted from someone else about the “lack of common sense” exhibited by an individual. There are so many examples of people who do not have “common sense”, or who from time to time say or do something which would be classified as not having common sense. However, my real question is, does someone who lacks common sense know they fall into this classification?

Another question I have posed relating to this topic is whether common sense is a gift or a natural ability some people possess (e.g., an ability to draw, dance, are mechanically inclined, have a good sense of direction) or can it be be taught? If for the sake of conversation we agree this subject can be taught, where would you even begin to teach this subject, as it is such a broad reaching topic? Perhaps the subject could be broken down into various categories such as at home, at work, in social settings, with friends, family, pets or while traveling outside of the US borders. The point is, there needs to be a foundation or entry level course, and hypothetically, there also needs to be an instructor who is deemed to have an enormous amount of common sense to teach the course.

Common sense involves finding solutions to scenarios, and the brains ability to think through a series of ways to come up with an ideal solution. However, everyone’s brains are wired  and process information differently, so the potential to have multiple solutions to a problem is entirely possible. Unfortunately not all solutions are equal, and this is often when the solution devised and presented has what I will refer to as “holes”, and may not be ideally suited to solve the challenge. An example of this could be your boss needs to have you provide her with information related to a non time sensitive project, and the information could easily be obtained from you during regular business hours. However, they decide to call you at 11 PM on Friday night to ask you to begin working on providing them with the non-time sensitive information they require. A person with common sense would know they can and should wait until Monday morning to obtain this information from you.

So, if there was a test to determine whether you had common sense, would you want to take it? Or, have there been times you wish you could send someone you know or whom you have encountered to “common sense school”?  I guarantee most people who possess common sense would answer yes to this question.

 

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Interpreting body language is an essential business skill. Have you mastered it yet?

Reading body language can be learned, and for some people, is a natural interpretive instinct. However, over the years I have seen numerous instances of people who do not know how to interpret body language, and who are simultaneously unaware of how their body language is conveying how they directly feel to others. Understanding how to interpret body language, or how your body language is speaking volumes about how you feel, is an essential business skill. Unfortunately educators in the United States do not teach reading and interpreting body language in business school, or in most educational settings. So, how does someone learn how to do this?

The simple answer is to educate yourself on-line, and one place I found which provided a helpful general overview of how to interpret most body language, can be found via this link. Talking to others and learning from their experience is another approach. Paying more attention during future interactions with your family, friends and colleagues will help you to practice and become more skilled at interpreting others body language. For your own body language, and understanding how you come across to others, I recommend asking people you are comfortable with for feedback on instances they have observed your body language in either happy, neutral or contentious situations. Another option is to pay closer attention to your own physical reactions during conversational engagements (e.g., do you cross your arms when you do not like what you are hearing, do you look down at the floor when you feel threatened, do you laugh in a strained manner when you are nervous?).

Here is an example of an actual situation I was recently observing a colleague’s body language, and who was unaware of me doing so. Sitting across from two of my colleagues last week, it became apparent to me one of them was unaware of how to read body language, and did not understand the language his body was conveying to the person we were having the conversation with. Without giving any corporate secrets away, the conversation was between the head of marketing, and the head of sales. During the conversation, the head of marketing was talking to the head of sales and offering to have his team take on work which the sales team would highly benefit from. The sales team had been asking for this work to be done for months. However, during this interaction, the head of sales began to fold his arms over his chest during the conversation. For those unaware of what this body language expression means, it essentially means they were either not listening, did not believe, were uncomfortable with the conversation, or were rejecting what was being said. This was the opposite reaction I expected to see occur, and after the meeting had taken place, I asked the head of sales if he was happy about the offer made by the marketing team? His response was he was happy with what he heard. However, what he did not realize was he body language expressed the opposite of this emotion. Guess what I’ll be working on next week? If you guessed teaching a colleague about body language, you get an A+.

Posted on

Interpreting body language is an essential business skill. Have you mastered it yet?

Reading body language can be learned, and for some people, is a natural interpretive instinct. However, over the years I have seen numerous instances of people who do not know how to interpret body language, and who are simultaneously unaware of how their body language is conveying how they directly feel to others. Understanding how to interpret body language, or how your body language is speaking volumes about how you feel, is an essential business skill. Unfortunately educators in the United States do not teach reading and interpreting body language in business school, or in most educational settings. So, how does someone learn how to do this?

The simple answer is to educate yourself on-line, and one place I found which provided a helpful general overview of how to interpret most body language, can be found via this link. Talking to others and learning from their experience is another approach. Paying more attention during future interactions with your family, friends and colleagues will help you to practice and become more skilled at interpreting others body language. For your own body language, and understanding how you come across to others, I recommend asking people you are comfortable with for feedback on instances they have observed your body language in either happy, neutral or contentious situations. Another option is to pay closer attention to your own physical reactions during conversational engagements (e.g., do you cross your arms when you do not like what you are hearing, do you look down at the floor when you feel threatened, do you laugh in a strained manner when you are nervous?).

Here is an example of an actual situation I was recently observing a colleague’s body language, and who was unaware of me doing so. Sitting across from two of my colleagues last week, it became apparent to me one of them was unaware of how to read body language, and did not understand the language his body was conveying to the person we were having the conversation with. Without giving any corporate secrets away, the conversation was between the head of marketing, and the head of sales. During the conversation, the head of marketing was talking to the head of sales and offering to have his team take on work which the sales team would highly benefit from. The sales team had been asking for this work to be done for months. However, during this interaction, the head of sales began to fold his arms over his chest during the conversation. For those unaware of what this body language expression means, it essentially means they were either not listening, did not believe, were uncomfortable with the conversation, or were rejecting what was being said. This was the opposite reaction I expected to see occur, and after the meeting had taken place, I asked the head of sales if he was happy about the offer made by the marketing team? His response was he was happy with what he heard. However, what he did not realize was he body language expressed the opposite of this emotion. Guess what I’ll be working on next week? If you guessed teaching a colleague about body language, you get an A+.

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Starting with my Why?

Thanks to Simon Sinek, author of Start With Why, Jo-Anne Reynolds, CEO at SpikeBee and renowned entrepreneur and fellow dyslexic, Richard Branson for motivating me to write my first article, or at least my first one in quite some time. Since it is early in 2017, and one of the most popular times to craft a New Year resolution, I am starting off by explaining My Why, in terms of why I am writing this article. The simple answer is I have wanted to do this for many years. The more complicated reason has to do with the fact I have been holding myself back from doing so, admittedly because I was afraid to do so. After years of soul searching and talking to numerous other women from around the globe, I believe my fear is due to a phenomenon many women are plagued with called the “Imposter Syndrome”.

The “Imposter Syndrome” was coined and researched in the 1970’s by Oberlin College psychology professor Pauline Rose Clance; and if you read more about this phenomenon as I have, it explains why it has taken me over thirty years to write this article. However, my article and future ones are not going to focus on the “Imposter Syndrome” concept, but is instead going to provide you with insight relating to what I have been thinking about all these years, as both a woman, wife, mother of three, professional high technology executive, mentor, coach and now entrepreneur.

Recently I have been thinking about what I will call “retooling” or “recrafting” myself professionally, namely because I have reached a point in my career where I was not feeling authentic in terms of leveraging what I am really good at. It turns out, my greatest strength, according to Strengths Finder 2.0 by Tom Rath is being positive. Unfortunately, the majority of my professional career has not allowed me to fully exercise this strength until recently when I was given the opportunity to do so.

The opportunity to capitalize on my greatest strength presented itself at an unlikely place, a male dominated software company in the Northeast. The challenge in front of me was to turn around a sales team who had not met their sales goal in 11 months. The secondary goal was to act as a bridge between this team and the marketing team. Fast forward in time six weeks later, and I can tell you in under six weeks, I was able to turn this team around, bridge the sales and marketing teams, and have the sales team hit and exceed their sales goal number for the first time all year.

How did I do this? Was it a miracle or a repeatable model? The answer is multi-dimensional, but boils down to while I was helping myself to focus on what was my greatest strength – “Positivity”, I was in turn able to have a team of a dozen people “believe” they could achieve what was an illusive goal for them all year. This achievement has inspired me to want to do this for other teams, and individuals. More importantly, it has provided me with the direction I was soul searching for, and now am monomanically directed to being able to make a great living from doing this type of work, even though it does not seem like work to me…which is the best part. Do you know what your top five strengths are, and are you leveraging them yet? If you do, ask yourself why you are not utilizing them yet?