Partners – romantic and otherwise – tend to fight when one feels neglected or threatened. When Peter Bregman’s wife yelled from two rooms away, “at least pack the shampoo” she was feeling neglected.

Recognizing which underlying feeling is being evoked helps you know how to resolve the conflict. So discovered psychology professor Keith Sanford.

Which one is your hot button? Find out here.

When one feels threatened he sees his partner as critical, blaming, hostile or controlling. When one feels neglected it is because she perceives her partner as failing to contribute sufficiently to the relationship.

Sanford’s research shows it helps to talk about neglect yet discussing a perceived threat may not be helpful.

Sanford’s advice for being happy in love also make sense for any successful partnership or other collaboration: “For the most part, successful couples avoid letting fights get too heated. Specifically, they go easy on the four classic negative fighting tactics:

1. Criticism
2. Stonewalling
3. Contempt
4. Defensiveness

The famed marriage researcher John Gottman calls them the ‘Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse,’ because they can spell doom for a marriage when used too frequently.”

I can’t help but add that Gottman, “found one factor that was the best predictor of all. This was a positive predictor, one that predicted long-term success rather than failure in marriage.

Gottman found that marriages are likely to thrive when the man was willing to be influenced by his wife.” (Gentlemen – want to win points with the women in your life? Comment positively about this finding.)

Sanford’s further advice for couples also seems helpful for non—romantic relationships: “Happy couples resort to negative tactics too, Sanford says, but only sparingly.

When they do bring up hurt, anger, and other negative emotions, they often balance them out with a constructive approach. In the best-case scenarios, couples use conflicts as a time to express concerns and share emotions. Instead of telling his partner ‘you make me sick,’ a man could try saying something like ‘It hurt me when you called me lazy.’

Shifting the conversation away from the partner’s faults and towards one’s own feelings is a tried-and-true way to defuse even the most intense conflicts.”

Q. Want to live faster or slower?  A: Yes.

Want to savor food (or fashion) slowly  but grow your career or business faster? Try a Speed Coaching event. From Hong Kong to Anaheim, this wildly popular format is being adopted to serve diverse crowds quickly.  They range from those who got pink slips to food and beverage folks,  non-profit staffers, journalists, executives, students, government staffers, indie business owners and, well, even coaches. It may be your next business – or way to attract clients.

• Picture the scene. People “are lined up outside an exhibit hall in a Manhattan hotel. The doors open, and they rush to tables set up around the room. They grab a number for each of the experts they wish to consult.

When it is their turn, they get five minutes to blurt out their questions above the din. A small digital clock on each table tracks the fleeting minutes.” Speed Coaching session times can vary from five to 20 or 30 minutes. Depending on your coach, that will seem too brief or too long, of course.  And when time is short coaches can be blunt (I mean direct).

Another format has “you and a group move one at a time through the coaching stations.”

Some Speed coaching events are free, others include keynoters, workshops and meals for up to $350.

• At the Samuel Adams Brewery in Boston, sixty microentrepreurs “jumped on the opportunity to rotate through 20-minute  discipline specific stations with 26 coaches — many of them Sam Adams employees — to get advice in business consulting, marketing, sales, people management, financing, legal advice and more.”

“Some brought their food, others came with logos and package concepts, yet others had a specific business problem they needed help solving,” said marketing expert, Risa Sherman who coached on behalf of her client, Sam Adams.

Thinking of hosting a Speed Coaching event? Involve sponsors and coaches that serve the same niche

This Speed Coaching event, part of the American Dream program, targeted entrepreneurs in the food, beverage and hospitality business.  Thus the lead sponsor, The Boston Beer Company partnered with a non-profit that trains microentrepreurs - ACCION USA.

To spotlight Boston Beer, founder Jim Koch gave a talk as did the president of another sponsor, Carol Coutrier, with the Massachusetts Specialty Foods Association. The danger is if keynoters are boring and sour attendees on the event. In this case, coach Risa Sherman wrote, “for many, the highlight of the event was listening to their talks.”

Sherman dubbed this approach by Sam Adams as “strategic skills based volunteerism.” Another participant, Erika labeled it “engaged philanthropy.”  Whatever you call these partner-based Speed Coaching events, they can leverage value and efficiency for all participants.

That’s a good thing in a bad economy. (The format proved so popular that the partners chose to host another in Providence.)

• And on the west coast over 200 entrepreneurs showed up last month in Anaheim (it was free) for the “Small Business Speed Coaching Test Drive.”  It’s part of a cross-country tour co-sponsored by SCORE (experienced, often retired business folks) and American Express’ Open Forum group dedicating to supporting small business.

Their format includes, not only 30-minute speed coaching sessions, but a keynoter, panel discussions, workshops and a mixer. Topics include strategic business planning, marketing and business finances.

• Women’s Leadership Exchange promotes their popular Speed Coaching events as an opportunity to have private coaching from experts, “many of their coaching services typically run as much as $500 per hour.” (That might be a stretch.)

• Here’s still another format. “A Speed Coaching & Networking Lunch.” Just $27. Aspiring local government leaders in Northern California can connect one-on-one with senior managers from cities, counties and special districts this month.

• To help their women students learn how to brand themselves (and to build the sponsors’ brand visibility) Wharton forged a partnership with their alumnae group and others S.F. Bay area partners -  Financial Women’s Association and Ascend - to jointly offer a Speed Coaching day. Deloitte, Clorox and other supporting organizations recruited volunteer coaches.

As you consider the role you might want to play in Speed  Coaching, consider the benefits to participants in this event. It managed to:

- Raise the positive, public visibility of all sponsoring organizations.

- Enable students and alumni to get to know each other and, in some cases form friendships and mentoring relationships.

-  Strengthened ties with alumni involved, which can payoff in future fund raising other volunteer needs.

- Help the college forge local corporate partnerships “with organizations that share values like development and diversity”  - and, of course, raise Wharton brand visibility and credibility.

- Provide sponsoring companies with a first-hand look at rising stars as potential employees.

• Software firm, Siveco, is such a fan of Speed Coaching it supports its customer/users by providing them in two-hour sessions.  Could your company or membership-based club or association offer it as a service?   If you did, your organization might enjoy …

-  Better, happier customer/member performance.

-  Loyalty to your firm or other organization.

-  Appreciation from participants because you facilitated their collaboration  with each other after meeting at your Speed Coaching event.

• What next?  Virtual Speech Coaching. That seems to dilute the purpose of getting fast but in-person advice.

Some hints if you choose to attend a Speed Coaching event:

• Carefully review the list of experts, if provided in advance, to choose your top two to meet.

• Use old-fashioned 3×5 cards to write your questions out ahead of time, one set per coach.  On the backside of the card or in a notebook take notes on the answers you get.

Diane Cuniff, for example, of cageless doggy daycare The Bone Adventure, wanted advice on whether to buy or lease property for a second location. And Monica Herrera and Ronald Brown are starting a biofuels project so they want to know how to get government contracts.

• Take a digital recorder, say an Olympus and, with their permission, tape sessions.

• Later, thank every coach with whom you met –  preferably by email. It’s the polite thing to do.  Plus your coach and/or the sponsoring groups may use your well-crafted “thank you” as a testimonial – thus boosting your visibility.

What If …

• Your group hosted a Speed Coaching event? Some member-based groups, like National Tour Association are ideal for speedcoaching at their annual meeting – or as a pre-conference afternoon.

After I spoke at NTA I was fascinated watching the long rows of tables at which locale promoters leaned forward over their photo-filled spiral notebooks, alert and ready for the precious ten minutes to show each bus tour operator why he should stop at their sight to see. In my Sausalito, whenever I see tour buses open and tourists spill onto our main street I wonder. What was the pitch that sealed the deal to drop them off here?

• You organized a Speed Coaching event for your profession or industry – as a service and/or to make money? You know, first-hand, the issues and opportunities your peers experience. What experts have the skill, interest and credibility to coach them? How would you make it worth their while to volunteer?

Beyond the obvious joy in sharing knowledge with people who really want it, how does the way you design the event, its promotion and online visibility afterwards help them attract clients or boost their career in their corporation?

What companies and associations also want exposure to that niche?  They could be sponsors, recruit coaches and other volunteers  - or survey attendees where the results would be helpful to them, the respondents and other people like them.

• You offered to recruit volunteers to cover a Speed Coaching event? Other than the private coaching, be sure that other parts of the day are videoed so that the learning and visibility for all participants continues.

Volunteer citizen reporters can use a Flip to video:

1.  Sessions: keynote(s), panel(s) and workshop(s) if you have them

2.  Coaches, and those in #1 in short two to three minute interviews:

“What are two of your best tips for these attendees?”

“What one or two books do you recommend for our attendees and why?

3.  Attendees, also in brief interviews, roving the event, asking:

“What is your favorite bit of advice so far – from whom?”

“What will you do differently after today?”

See more at Elevate your Value and Visibility by Jointly Offering a Speed Coaching Event

For many years my parents took what some Brits call an evening “constitutional.”  They walked, hand in hand, around the neighborhood – just the two of them. Sometimes, they talked. Other evenings they said little, so I am told. Yet they always came home smiling.

Since then I’ve discovered that motion evokes emotion, for good and for bad. Walking helped my parents re-connect at the end of each day.

Act how You Want to Feel and How You Want Other To Feel About You

How you turn, walk and gesture affects your emotions and other around you – and how they feel about you. We are startled, for example, then wary when we see a quick, unexpected movement especially when caught out of the corner of the eye. Conversely we are more deeply drawn to a singer who sweeps her arms above her head as she belts out that exultant line in her song.

Sometimes we even mimic an entertainer’s gestures. Whatever emotion they act out on stage, we feel and sometimes act out. That’s our mirror neurons at work, catching the emotions in the people around us just like we catch a cold.

Motion Intensify Our Emotions

The extra magic is that motions – yours and others – make emotions catch faster and more intensely.  When you smile I instinctively smile back – even if you are on TV and I am sitting on the couch – and we both feel better.

Now there are fresh insights into how gestures attract or repel others. Winning Body Language author, Mark Bowden studied the work of two remarkable men. One was a mime, physiotherapist and acting guru, Jacques Lecoq.

The other was an Iraeli spy, nuclear physicist and Judo expert Moshé Feldenkrais whose insights into how our movements affect our thoughts and emotions was revelatory for me.

Gesture to Get Along

1. To appear honest, factual and sincere hold your hands at the height of your navel. That’s what Bowden dubs the TruthPlane.

2. To avoid appear disinteresting and depressing do not gesture More »

If a hotel can become famous for leading ducks across their lobby at 11:00 then certainly your business can become more well-known for some simple ritual that customers like to photograph and tell others about and reporters love to cover.

In fact it’s surprising that so few businesses and other organizations see the power of memory-making rituals that we keep talking about the few that do. And instead of creating a new ritual a sister hotel simply imitated the duck walk. You can do better.

1. Think quirky

As all actors know, a cute kid or animal almost always steals the show.  For example the annual ritual that raised $120,000 this year in a town of just 2,404 is the weiner dog race.  That’s right. Long, cute dogs. People and their pets came from all over the country for the chance to compete.

2. Create community around your ritual

The race is a great example of what the beneficiary of the race, the Lions Club calls a “core belief – community is what we make it.” It has been an annual tradition around which dog owners (and their families and friends) meet to compare notes and catch-up. Hint: the more fervent the community the more valuable your participation can be for your organization.

3. Offer the unexpected

Instead of “just” offering a loaner car like the one you are getting serviced a British Volvo dealership also offers bikes as loaners. The dealership enjoys two benefits  – deepening the loyalty of its eco-minded customers and attracting worldwide media coverage.

4. Reduce your cost of providing that ritual by partnering

Volvo’s ritual was then topped by Fiat in Spain. By partnering with electric bicycle maker Trek it could make the same offer yet without the cost of buying and maintaining the bikes. Trek benefits by getting a warmed-up introduction to possible customers.

The bonus benefits are that many of the people who saw the cyclists heard also saw the message on the bike and many of the cyclists told their friends about their experience.

5. Give a souvenir sample whenever people have to wait – or even pause

For a client years ago I set up an experiment in which those waiting in a movie theater line were greeted by smiling, good-looking college students and offered a free ice cream bon bon on a silver tray. One each. The students simply walked down the line, saying, “Like a tasty bon bon while you’re waiting? If you like it there are more inside.”

The results of that study were so positive the theater chain intermittently continued the practice. (Intermittent rewards create more happiness, perhaps because of the hedonic treadmill effect yet we crave the certainty of constancy – “the ducks will walk across at 11″). When bon bons are offered movie theatre snacks go up an average of 26 percent.

For the owner of seven upscale restaurants in London we did a similar experiment with wine.  Per customer sales went up as average of 23 percent.

Then we suggested that the restauranteur approach his wine distributers to offer them the opportunity to provide their wine, at cost.  Several agreed so he could rotate the kinds of wine he gave waiting guests.

For this sampling ritual, the wait staff, while offering the tray with the glasses of wine, showed the bottle and said the vinter’s name.   That was so successful that wine makers now vie for the opportunity to give their wine for such samplings. They also began offering samplings to delighted diners during their meal.

That way more customers get free wine and often wind up ordering more wine.

The participating vintners get their wines introduced in a relaxed, convivial atmosphere.

Cost-saving Hint: Make your ritual so popular that you can attract partners that want to participate in it.  That way you can offer your customers that ritual more often yet at a lower cost to you.

Conclusion

Most any consumer-serving place can create a small, simple-to-execute ritual that:

• Gives an unexpected experience to customers, one they can brag about – and others can see them enjoying.

• Increases sales.

• Attracts media coverage.

• Demonstrates the value of partners participating so the cost of offering that ritual go down.

See more ways to profitably partner and then create your own, unique, customer-attracting ritual – with the right partners.

Become an opportunity-maker for the member organization that most matters to you. Imagine that your association or special interest group kept innovating to create more value and meaning for members.

That’s what TED has done and we can too by taking three collaborative steps over time:

1. Offer a single major conference  – as most associations already do, of course. Involve the members in choosing topics, speakers and formats, base on core guidelines, chosen by member vote. Create a format that enables members to participate in reach a single – and singular goal.

2. Encourage the launch of local conferences yet don’t try to control them. Instead create ground rules for local leaders to succeed while maintaining the quality of the “brand.”

3. Co-brand a fresh version of your national conference with another respected organization on vital topic that matters to the members of both organizations. Allow the founders of your local conferences to co-sponsor that new conference by enabling their members to view it together in their area.

The team at the TED conference announced this third step today.  See how you could adapt these steps to the member group that most matters to you.

Step One

The national TED conference has grown increasingly popular throughout the past 22 years, with the biggest community of members becoming those who avidly watch the videos of speakers.

Step Two

Building on the strength of that largely online community, TED launched, just last April, local events dubbed TEDx. Rather, in true collaborative fashion, they announced guidelines for these local events and invited people to co-host, design and run them. In just one year local leaders stepped up and hosted over 600 such events around the globe.

Hint: To encourage local events, the guidelines start with the benefits for the local organizers and provides an easy-to-follow toolkit: “In the spirit of ‘Ideas Worth Spreading,’ TEDx is a program that enables schools, businesses, libraries or just groups of friends to enjoy a TED-like experience through events they themselves organize, design and host. More »

Life is getting better faster. Food is more widely available; we live longer; more people have money and violence, disease and child mortality are down all around the world. Yet there will be turmoil.

“The bottom-up world is to be the great theme of this century,” predicts Matt Ridley in his controversial new book Rational Optimist.

“Doctors are having to get used to well-informed patients who have researched their own illnesses. Journalists are adjusting to readers and viewers who select and assemble their news on demand. Engineers are sharing problems to find solutions…. Politicians are increasingly corks tossed on the waves of public opinion. Dictators are learning that their citizens can organize riots by text message. `Here comes everybody‘ says author Clay Shirky.”

In this bottom-up world individual specialization and free exchange of goods are vital to improving more lives according to Ridley. Human intelligence is becoming collective, not individual – thanks to these two inventions. We can generate more value and options with for each other.

As proof, he recaps the course of economic progress in this way. When humans invented specialization and trade, I could make something and you could make a different object, crafts we each excel at. Each of us trades our best products rather than making them all ourselves.

Then I can focus on making mine better and faster. As others do likewise we trade and sell better products and have more choices, thus spurring further innovation – both in making and trading goods.

Thus consumption could grow more diversified (making life better), while production grew more specialized. William Easterly counters Ridley’s premise: “Specialists often have the most to lose from new technologies that displace the old ones they know so well, and may want to block innovation.” Yet it seems that the power of the marketplace in a networked world to hear about that innovation would eventually push aside such stonewalling specialists’ attempt to block access to the new, new thing.

Our opportunities multiply as human intelligence becomes “collective” and we generate more value with for each other.

Near the end of the book Ridley pulls together many threads of his argument for an optimistic future with these bold forecasts: More »

Even though we know we are more likely to savor life and attract more opportunities to collaborate when we click with others, we often get in our own way – especially when we are distracted or worse.  Here are five concrete ways to connect with others.

1. Face the world as you want to be treated

We’ve all been startled by observing a passerby’s dour expression instantly transformed into a warm smile when someone they knew came into view. The fixed-face habit is increasingly common yet it limits one’s opportunities to make friends or just be treated well.

I envy those who naturally display an open face, yet, with practice, we all can. We don’t have to turn into grinning fools. Research shows, however, that even slightly elevated eyebrows cause the eyes to widen and – presto – one looks more open and less judgmental. Strangers unconsciously project onto such people the qualities they most admire in others, believe those people care – and act more generously towards them.

Unknowingly, as a journalist I came to have an intense facial expression, especially interviewing people I found fascinating (that’s my excuse anyway) until I interviewed an expert on Paul Ekman’s research on reading faces. He gently suggested that it would only take a couple of months of practice to “transform” my face into one with the open expression he was exhibiting in our interview.  It took me much longer – yet his advice comes to mind every time I see a dour or hardened face. That person probably does not understand the missed opportunities for friendship and more – just from this one simple habit.

2. Tour your body for vital signs

When you are literally uptight–rigid in any part of your body - others instinctively resist or even react against you. This phenomenon is akin to bouncing a hard rubber ball on a concrete surface as compared to a soft carpet. The ball bounces higher and faster against the hard surface than the soft one, of course, just as others react more against a body that is even inadvertently held tight against the world.

Whenever you are entering an unfamiliar or potentially volatile situation, loosen up physically. It will help you feel more at ease. Walk, stretch, and release tension from the places where you hold it in your body.

Probably –like many conscientious, hard-working people– you hold your shoulders higher and slightly more forward than is natural, with one of the tendons in your neck tightened up even more than the other. If someone can give you a quick three-minute shoulder and neck massage, you will relax – and look at ease.  Others will respond more warmly to you.

Here’s another quick way to feel and look comfortable. Take your “pointing” fingers and the ones adjacent to them and rub both sides of your face in small circles, beginning at the cheek bone, near the sides of your nose, continuing along that bone towards your ears, down to the jaw line and on toward the center of your chin.

3. We feel closer to happy people, especially when we are happy

Enjoy the bond-building boomerang effect that happens with contagious happiness (when you’re happy, you cause your friends to feel happier, and that makes their friends happier).  As the circles of friends around you feel happier their upbeat behavior will swing around back through those friends towards and around you, reinforcing your capacity to stay contented.

Plus those positive feelings that boomerang back to you in waves from others serve as an emotional cushion in your rocky times. I’m suggesting this as reinforcement for you to smile your way into a better way of feeling. When we feel down we close down and withdraw. This boomerang affect enables you and those you are around to open up to each other.

4. Worried? Don’t keep thinking about it. Act towards what makes you happier.

Women tend to worry more than men so it is especially important for us, when we start to feel anxious or depressed to mentally change the channel of thought to something – any small thing – that lightens our mood.

Consider this.  In any situation you only have three choices: 1. Change how you act, 2. Accept the situation, or 3. Leave.  The sooner you make a decision the less likely you deepen the rut in your memory of fixating on worrying rather than acting to change.

5. Meet new people to see fresh sides in yourself

Want to pull new people into your life?  Like to show an evolving new facet of yourself?  Get out of your orbit. Attend a lecture, sit at a lively café, join a civic, special interest or non-profit committee.   In short, put yourself in a place where you don’t know anyone well.

That’s when, “we are more free to experiment with ourselves, and less likely to have our new behaviors and roles reflected back to us by people who object, ‘But that’s not like you!,’”  says Melinda Blau, co-author of Consequential Strangers: The Power of People Who Don’t Seem to Matter. . . But Really Do. She adds, “Strangers help us stretch beyond the relatively rigid boxes that the people who have known us the longest – our family and close friends – often put us into.”

This may be the surest way to turn the page for the next chapter of your life to be the kind of adventure story you now want. Even within one hour you can learn specific ways to stand out in your work or life.

What’s one of meeting planners’ biggest fears? A frowning audience – or worse. They need speakers who energize their audience.

They love speakers who motivate attendees to practice what they learn and eagerly share their successes with each other all year long – and at the next conference.

In this wobbly economy any organization needs their people to be performing well and sharing with each other.

As a speaker, here’s one way to partner with the meeting planner to get more audience members actively involved in adopting your ideas, telling others and buying more from you.

Evoke the Similarity Effect

Use it when hired to speak – as a reason to bring you back for a return engagement. It benefits meeting planners in several ways. Attendees become higher-performing because they actually put your tips into practice, motivate each other to improve and to rave about the conference.

First, here are the three steps of involvement, evoking the Similarity Effect

1. Attendees are more likely to believe a recommendation when people who are similar to them made it. Being in the same organization and/or audience evokes that feeling.
2. They are even more inclined to believe it when they know the people who made the recommendation.
3. People are most likely to act on a recommendation when the people they know refer to problems or opportunities that are familiar and important to them.

The side benefit is people feel more familiar and closer to each other after exchanging helpful recommendations. When such sharing happens in a group, the group becomes more close-knit and eager to help each other and to collaborate. That’s a bunch of good news for any meeting planner.

When a meeting planner hires me to speak I suggest, for a return engagement, these steps and benefits for making both my sessions more interactive and meaningful. I speak on connective conversation and collaboration but this approach can work for any speaker or topic.

When I speak to the group the first time I invite attendees to write to me about a successful way they use one of my methods, saying I will, with input from the organization, pick three lucky people to share their success with their colleagues the next year.

As well I will give a free eBook to everyone who emails me about how they were successful, using a tip.

Two months before the next year’s conference I meet by phone with the conference committee to choose the three finalists. Then I contact those three individuals, invite them to speak and review with them what they would like to say.

At the beginning of my return engagement session I will open by saying, “It’s so good to be back and to seemany familiar faces. Now you love to hear news-you-can-use from each other while you’re here at the conference, right?

Then please listen closely to three of your peers here in the audience who successfully adopted one of the methods they heard me suggest when I spoke to you last year.”

“After they speak you get to vote for your favorite example by circling that person’s name on the form that you found on your seat. Then pass it to the aisle where volunteers will collect them. Votes will be counted by volunteers while I’m speaking.

“That winner will receive a $400 package of my products plus a gift from our sponsor, an exhibitor here at the conference – (I say the name of the firm.) The runners up will get a $200 package of my products and a gift from our sponsor.”

Everyone here in the audience who, within three days, sends an email to (name of meeting planner) with a tip from this talk – and the way they will put it to use – will get a gift eBook of all the submissions sent to me from last year’s attendees – and oh are they good. Congratulations to these contributors! This eBook gift is underwritten by another generous partner – (name of sponsoring exhibitor).”

The three presenters are prepared, standing back stage, so they can quickly walk over to the floor mike on the stage near me.

With this set up, the three who will speak in front of their peers are motivated to be their articulate best.  When they are done speaking I ask for applause in appreciation of their success and use the last tip as the segue into my keynote.

When I am done presenting, the meeting planner comes up on the stage to thank me and to then announce the winner. All three come up to accept their gifts from me that the meeting planner gives to them. They are invited to get the sponsor’s gift at their tradeshow booth.

Then the meeting planner announces that we have one more gift for the audience. At the upcoming break to visit the tradeshow floor, attendees who drop by the booth of the sponsor of this contest will get a special gift, a booklet with tips from the speaker, Kare and from the sponsor.

Shared Benefits From Evoking the Similarity Effect

By presenting to their peers about their successful experience the three individuals gained bragging rights for themselves in front of their colleagues, reinforced my visibility and credibility with the audience – and motivated more of those colleagues to hire me and/or buy products from my web site.

By providing a layered set of ways for attendees to learn from each other and from me the meeting planner generated more value for her meeting.  The meeting planner can charge the exhibitor for the opportunity to be a named sponsor with a reason to pull attendees to their booth and to be visible for a longer time with their company name on the gifts from them and from the speaker.

How Similarity Can Spark Credible Testimonials

•  The more actions one observes in support of someone or something the more credible and compelling the effect.

• If someone hears something from someone who is similar to them the more quickly and deeply they believe it and act on that belief.  This effect is stronger if they witness the testimonial in the company of their peers.

• The more actions people takes on behalf of a belief the more deeply they believe it and the more prone they are to tell others.

Even if you are not speaking to a group you can gain customer-attracting benefits by evoking the Similarity Effect.

Benefit from evoking the Similarity Effect by providing multiple ways that your happy customers get recognized and rewarded for telling you and others about why they like your products or services. Each time they share their view they become more deeply believing and articulate fans – thus increasing their desire to tell others about you and your organization.

For more ideas about how to make conferences and other meetings more involving and memorable visit these experts:

Association Jam

Principle Innovation

Association2020

Ben Martin

Social Fish

Velvet Chainsaw’s Mid-Course Corrections

National Speakers Association

SpeakerNet

I met my high school boyfriend when I was upset and swung open my locker door so fast I banged him on the head as he was leaning into his locker. Not everyone can take such a first encounter in stride let alone retort with a grin, “If this is how you treat strangers how do handle enemies?” This unflappable humor made us instant friends and helps in his work now as an ER doctor.

I met one of my closest girlfriends at a fundraiser dinner when a big donor at our table made a snide comment to us about a homely woman at the adjacent table. My soon-to-be-friend responded warmly to him, acting as if he meant his insult as a compliment about that lady. In so doing she warmed us up towards her and deflected him from continuing that line of “humor.”

“The best time to make friends is before you need them.” ~Ethel Barrymore

Here are six ways we draw people to us:

1.  When someone is snide or otherwise rude, thoughtless or difficult in front of others, rather than acting affronted, interpret their words or actions as if they meant well.  That way that person has the opportunity to self-correct and save face rather than feel cornered by your correcting him so he escalates his negative behavior.

2.   Use self-deprecating humor that highlights an admirable trait in her – especially one that matters to her, at the expense of your own related trait.  In so doing she flourishes around you.  When others like how they feel when around you they will like you.

Some  effortlessly make friends with all kinds of people. For the rest of us it helps to understand how they draw people to them. Having just a few close friendships is especially vital in this increasingly connected yet more transient world.

Thankfully even apparently small behaviors can make a huge difference in our ability to make friends.

“In my friend, I find a second self.” ~Isabel Norton

3.   College students living in the center of dorms tend to have more friends than those at the end of the halls. Those in center offices have more relationships with colleagues than those who work in the corners of buildings.  Those who sit side-by-side in just one meeting will feel more comfortable with each other later than with others in the meeting yet will not usually know why.

This so-called Proximity Effect is discussed in Rom and Ori Brafman’s new book Click. When you want to get to know someone, find a way to sit or stand next to them in some situation – the more times the better.

“Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another, ‘What! You too?” ~ C.S. Lewis

While it’s obvious that people like people who are like them the extent of this so-called Similarity Effect is considerably deeper than I would have thought. For example, in a study cited in Click, if a woman asked me for a donation, she would have double the chance of getting me to give if she was wearing a nametag with my name on it.

That’s why bonding happens when people first meet and ask those innocuous yet safe questions about where they live, work, went to school or grew up. Once you find a shared interest – the deeper the better – explore it further. I’m drawn, for example, to other avid readers.

“Probably no man ever had a friend that he did not dislike a little.” ~E.W. Howe

To connect with someone, here’s the warning – we are wired to respond sooner, longer and more intensely to the negative rather than the positive things someone else does. It’s our primitive brain wiring to survive – Fight or Flight Syndrome.

Yet when we are physically close to someone when seems much different than us then we are likely to feel, not more positive, but more negative towards that person than if she was further away. That’s why, for example, that students in racially mixed high schools are more likely to be racist.

People like people who are like them and people like people who like them.

Here’s why that’s important, especially when you first meet or re-meet someone. Focus on finding the things about that person that are most like you and that you like:

A. Speak first about those traits you share.

B. Speak next about what you honestly respect or like about that person.

Keep those feelings and thoughts top-of-mind so that you feel, act and speak to that side of the person. That’s relationship glue-building. If you start to get irritated about something don’t focus on the feeling.  Instead turn your mind to one of their positive traits.

There’s a double benefit for you in practicing this. Your capacity to befriend those who are not like you enables you to:

A. Lead a richer, more varied life where you may have diverese adventures and work and social opportunities.

B. You will be able to recognize and express more facets of your temperament and use your talents in more varied ways.

“Friends are relatives you make for yourself.”  ~Eustache Deschamps

5. Those who make friends most easily are what psychologist Mark Snyder has dubbed “high self-monitors.” The Brafmans call them social chameleons. When done consciously, followers of NLP call this mirroring and matching. Without effort or an attempt to manipulate however chameleons instinctively bring out the facet of their personality that is most like the person they are with.

As Rita Carter suggests in Multiplicity, we have many people inside of us. Some people bring out our worst sides and we dislike them for that effect.

“Without wearing any mask we are conscious of, we have a special face for each friend.” ~Oliver Wendell Holmes

These chameleons bring out the best side on more kind of people. Sometimes that makes them adept instigators of projects, or facilitators of teams with diverse personalities.  They may become the glue that sticks the group together. See how much of a self-monitor you are.

The downside is in deepening friendships as high self-monitors may not demonstrate how they feel but rather what they feel is wanted by others. As with any strength there’s a flip side. The good news is that, in understanding both the strength and the disadvantage of such chameleon behavior, we recognize the value of it in the beginning to create the familiarity that builds trust.

“Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive.” ~Anäis Nin

6. I love to design and arrange furniture and glass lighting yet have difficulty with even minor computer problems. One of my dearest friends is a gadget geek who helps me with computer fixes and advises me about if and when to buy the shiny new thing. And I thoroughly enjoyed creating Danish/Italian-style sofas, chairs and a dining table for the home he just bought.

Those who keenly aware of their talents are more likely to see the benefits in befriending individuals with different ones because such relationships enable them to accomplish greater things for each other – or together. This is the Complementarity Effect. Sure we can find most anything online yet we can’t be an expert at everything. Having friends who have different talents and interests makes life easier and more enjoyable.

“If a man does not make new acquaintances as he advances through life, he will soon find himself alone.  A man should keep his friendships in constant repair.”  ~Samuel Johnson

We have to go out of our way to keep such friendships strong because we have different top interests and ways of thinking, talking or doing things.  Yet research shows that we tend to take  for granted that which comes easily to us and to value that which we work at maintaining.

Here’s to cultivating and keeping ever-deepening relationships to savor life together.

“It takes a long time to grow an old friend.”  ~John Leonard

“Cesar Milan says that when a dog sniffs you she’s gathering information. My dog is preparing an extensive dossier on me,” wrote Paula Poundstone.

Humor is a way to get information about each other.

How we evoke and respond to it says so much about how comfortable we are with ourselves and how flexible, open and fun we will be with others.  That’s helpful information if you are thinking of collaborating with someone – or even considering whether to get to know them better. “A well-developed sense of humor is the pole that adds balance to your step as you walk the tightrope of life,” wrote William Arthur Ward.

Every relationship has bumpy moments.  Humor can be quicker than praise to smooth them out. Humorless people make the bumbs bigger. “A person without a sense of humor is like a wagon without springs,” wrote Henry Ward Beecher, “jolted by every pebble in the road.”

Unfortunately I don’t know how to be funny nor have a humor-evoking face like Ricky Gervais – yet I am one of the first to laugh when others are.  Us “first responders” to friction can start what researchers call a laughter cascade to spur the emotional contagion that gets others laughing. Once I broke out laughing in a packed movie theatre only to hear someone yell out, to my mortification, “Kare – glad to hearing you’re enjoying it.”

“Humor does not rescue us from unhappiness,” wrote Mason Cooley (or from arguments I would add), “but enables us to move back from it a little.”

Yet humor is a two-sided sword – it can either cut and divide or unify – bring people closer like “a rubber sword – it allows you to make a point without drawing blood,” wrote Mary Hirsch.

Why inject unifying humor into a situation?

• Because it’s the best way to get us in relaxation mode – and begin to bond.  We become less fearful or tense.

• That’s when we are most likely to like each other, bring out our better sides – and be productive and creative together. “If you can get someone to laugh with you, they will be more willing to identify with you, listen to you. It parts the waters,” said Robert Orben.  As we lighten up we become more playful – which can make us productive if we need to be – and happier.

• Humor aimed at oneself is disarming – as when Chris Pronger answered a reporter’s questions, when Sandra Bullock referred to “us old people” and when President Obama said, “in mock dismay, ‘Don’t be cheering when I say that.’

• Humor diffuses tension. Werner von brown recalled that when astronaut John Glenn was strapped into his seat before take-off, dryly remarked, “Oh my god, I’m sitting on a pile of stuff created by the lowest cost bidder.”

• “When they’re laughing, they’re listening,” said Adrian Gostick, co-author of The Levity Effect.

Humor holds our attention:

- Making us popular as the most popular cat on Twitter has discovered.

- So we learn and remember as teacher-turned- monologist Taylor Mali discovered in performing the hilarious The The Impotence of Proofreading.

• Shared laughter keeps relationships fresh and interesting. “All emotional sharing builds strong and lasting relationship bonds, but sharing laughter and play adds joy, vitality, and resilience.”

•  The one thing “shared by mass murderers, felony drunk drivers, starving children, head banging caged laboratory animals, anxious overworked students, and most reptiles. They don’t play… What do most Nobel Laureates, historically renowned creative artists, successful multi-career entrepreneurs and animals of superior intelligence have in common? They are full of play throughout their lives,” wrote Stuart Brown.

So what actually makes us laugh?  Researchers have found just three clues: incongruity, superiority, and the pattern of three.  We do know that we who laugh last – why not laugh more together?