Kate McFarlin is a licensed insurance agent with extensive experience in covering topics related to marketing, small business, personal finance and home improvement. She began her career as a Web designer and also specializes in audio/video mixing and design.
10 Simple Ways To Improve Your People Skills And Build Relationships
In my experience, the most important factor in gaining influence and achieving success is developing people skills. Yet, nowhere in the formal education system — from kindergarten through college — are people skills taught, even though nearly all of us use our people skills every day.
I recently spoke to a group of students and joked that the most valuable skill I’d learned in college was how to interact and network with other people though social events that my university had hosted. More than anything I learned from reading textbooks, I gained people skills through organizations and activities.
No matter what technological trends take over, people and how you work with them will always matter most. Still, knowing this, it’s surprising to me how many people lack the skills necessary to bring opportunity to themselves and their companies.
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I recently interviewed Dave Kerpen, CEO of Likeable Local and The New York Times bestselling author of “The Art of People: 11 Simple People Skills That Will Get You Everything You Want,” to learn more about how we as people and as business leaders can build better relationships, connect more deeply with others, and improve our people skills.
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Kerpen shared with me a few of his book’s 53 tips to build people skills — tips that you might not have thought of before. Here’s what he shared:
1. Understand someone better than you do your friends in just three minutes.
The key is to ask great questions that people are excited to answer and then listen attentively. Instead of making small talk, ask deeper questions when you first meet someone, like “What is the most exciting thing you’re working on right now?” or “If you had enough money to retire, what would you be doing today?” This gets people to quickly open up.
2. Wear orange shoes.
At a crowded entrepreneurship conference, an investor sought by everyone walked up to Kerpen because of the bright orange shoes he was wearing and ended up investing more than $500,000 in his company. Sure, the investor didn’t invest because of the shoes themselves, but those shoes attracted him to Kerpen and helped get the relationship started. Kerpen now has 33 pairs of orange shoes and wears one each day. You don’t need to commit to orange shoes, of course, but think about what signature accessory you can wear each day to stand out wherever you go.
3. Always accept the glass of water.
When someone comes over to your house, you offer them a drink, and if they refuse, you may feel like a lesser host. So why do that to someone at their office? Instead, take the water, coffee, or soda they offer you, put the person you’re meeting with at ease, and get comfortable yourself.
4. Make sure who you are online is who you are in real life.
Many people are still guarded about their online lives and social media. But the truth is that the more you can embrace your authentic, even vulnerable, self online, the better. Authenticity breeds trust, and trust breeds business — both offline and online.
5. Don’t sell it — tell the story.
The secret to persuading people is to tell an effective story with an engaging introduction and a compelling narrative. When you captivate your audience with a story, you can inspire a vested interest in the outcome that you want.
6. Go beyond the humblebrag.
Promote others unsolicited, and share their accomplishments across your social media streams. You’ll find that, in exchange, others will be much more receptive when you share what you have to offer.
7. Mirror neurons, and maximize how a good mood goes a long way.
We all have mirror neurons that cause us to take on the attitude of the person talking to us. When you’re in a bad mood, it’s actually contagious — but when you’re full of enthusiasm and optimism, that’s contagious, too. When people feel enthusiastic and optimistic during and after a conversation with you, they associate those positive feelings with you. You made them feel good, and they’ll remember it, which can help you stay top of mind and build better relationships.
8. If you’re there to help, you’re there to win.
No one really likes conflict, but when you work with people, it’s a natural part of the process sometimes. When you enter a conflict, position yourself as someone there to help both parties rather than take sides. You’ll gain everyone’s respect and make it much easier to resolve the conflict to your liking.
9. Be unoriginal. (You can quote Dave Kerpen himself on this.)
You don’t have to use your own words to inspire people. Chances are good that someone’s likely said what you want to say better than you can, anyway. Liberally quote famous leaders, both online and offline.
10. Buy a bonsai.
After meeting someone important to you, leave an impression by sending a handwritten thank-you note and a small gift. What do you get the person who has everything? Try a bonsai — it’s exotic, small, inexpensive, and easy to grow.
As leaders, we should strive to always improve our skills and continuously grade ourselves on how well we practice what we should be. After Kerpen shared this list with me, I graded myself by double-checking how and when I practiced these tips — and I realized I was failing at several of them, even though I agree that they’re important.
For example, I can be really great at sending handwritten notes (though my handwriting resembles a second-grader’s), but I noticed that I’d recently fallen short in this simple practice and hadn’t written a note by hand in a while.
It’s important to read through lists like this to figure out what you agree with and what makes sense for you; reflect on what your people skills are and how you can improve them. To help myself do this, I took the “Art of People” quiz that complements Kerpen’s book to assess my skills. It was really interesting to find out what my particular strengths were and then compare them to these tips to see where I stood. I challenge each of you to do the same.
John Hall is the CEO of Influence & Co., a company that specializes in expertise extraction and knowledge management that is used to fuel marketing efforts.
SEND And Speech And Language Needs: How You Can Use Sensory Art Activities To Develop Your Child’s Communication Skills
Alys Mathers is a Highly Specialist Speech and Language Therapist and works with children who have a wide range of speech, language and communication needs.
Here she talks about the ways in which creative activities can help your child communicate.
As well as developing their creative streak and motor skills, art and craft activities are great for developing children’s communication skills when you join in, and chat to them as you make, draw or colour. They’re also sociable: everyone can join in with getting creative at home – old or young, with or without special educational needs and no matter how artistic they (or you) are.
Creative activities are also a great way you can relax and have fun with your child.
Children with special educational needs (including language and communication needs) will experience particular benefits from arty opportunities.
Their language learning will be helped by:
Children learn description words such as ‘soft’ and ‘sticky’ by experiencing those sensations, and craft activities are ideal for encouraging children to get stuck in with touching and feeling new textures.
Action words, such as ‘stretch’ and ‘sprinkle’, and abstract concepts, such as ‘in’, ‘out’, ‘full’ and ‘empty’ are much easier to learn and remember during activities when your child can have a go themselves.
Creative activities help stretch children’s attention spans, as they stay focused to reach the end goal of a finished picture or model. By sharing the activity with them, you are showing your child how to concentrate for longer and longer. The sense of achievement when they have finished shows them it was worth sticking with!
Arts and crafts let children hear and use the same words and sentences lots of times. This is important for language learning for all children, but particularly those with language and communication needs.
Let your child lead with their creativity
You may also notice that when you’re relaxed and focused on an activity together, it’s easier to let your child lead the activity and conversation. You may hear your child chatting more, and can watch their language skills develop by taking time to make something together. So get rid of any distractions you can, and look forward to sharing that sense of pride in the finished creation with your child.
Children will have even better ideas than us adults for how to play with paints, glue or clay. So if in doubt, let them lead the way, copying and commenting on what they’re doing. That way, you’ll always have fun.
But here are some activity suggestions to get you started…
Finger painting
Even the youngest children can get their hands stuck in with paint. Use words and sounds when you touch the paint like ‘gloop’ and ‘squish’ to encourage them to play with both sounds and paint. Even cleaning up after finger painting is a good time to talk about parts of the body as you wipe the paint off them – hands, fingers, arms, nose… and anywhere else it might get to. To help your child’s understanding, talk about what you’re painting and use simple actions at the same time (for example, you might talk about ‘the sea’, while doing a wavy ‘water’ action with your hands), just like our finger-painting Tiny Happy People families.
Finger painting is a great activity to explore the sense of touch with your child. Music makers
Children learn language through music and songs, with the help of the rhythm, repetition and actions. And you don’t need advanced crafting skills to make the perfect instrument. You can make a simple shaker or rainstick using everyday items from around the house.
When making the instrument, use words such as ‘in’, ‘full’ and ‘pour’ to describe what you are doing. Let your child join in, and give them time to say what they are doing – maybe by finishing your sentence, such as ‘we put the pasta… in!’
Have fun playing the finished instruments fast or slow, loud or quiet. You can help your child learn the meanings of these words by saying phrases like ‘let’s play… fast!’
Texture collages
You’ll find lots of things in the house or park that you can use to make a collage. This gives your child chances to experience different sensations, and learn the words for these. Whatever you use in your collage, describe it using sight, smell, sound and touch.
So if you’ve collected leaves to make into a tree picture, while you are sticking them on together you can talk about what they look like (colour, shape, size, pattern… ), feel like (smooth, bumpy, rough… ), whether you like the smell, and what they sound like when you pick them up (rustly, crackly… ).
Just like these parents exploring texture, you will need to give your little one plenty of chances to hear you using these describing words before they start to use them.
Creating texture collages together is great way to give your child the chance to experience different sensations. Feely bag inspiration
Put a few different things in a bag or empty pillowcase. For young children, this could be everyday objects (a hairbrush, a spoon, some sunglasses… ) or you could use less familiar items for older children, such as different fruit or vegetables. Get your child to close their eyes, and find one object in the bag. Describe it together, using all the senses, then paint, draw, or make a version of it using plasticine. If your child paints or draws the object, you could then make the pictures into flashcards.
Imaginative arty play
Think about how you can get your child’s toys involved in some creative activity. Some children won’t want to touch the paint or craft resources themselves, but toy cars can drive through paint, and toy animals can jump onto playdough and leave footprints. If your child is just learning to use action words like ‘jump’ or ‘walk’, you can repeat these lots. If your child is talking in short sentences then match your language to theirs by using sentences too, such as ‘my car is driving’ or ‘the elephant is marching’.
Your recycling bin can also be a source of craft materials. An empty cardboard box can become a house or a garage for toys, or a rocket or boat for your child. Cardboard tubes can even become binoculars. Once you’ve made the toy together, it’s time to play. Imaginative play is the beginning of storytelling, and the stories you create together will boost their language skills.
Important safety advice
Keep an eye on your child at all times during craft activities and playtime. And remember to keep small and sharp objects out of their reach.
Thanks buzziova
