What makes a community abundant in this new new normal world? In this uncertain economy where budgets of local governments and non-profit budgets will continue to get slashed, it is especially heartening to read the mutual-reliance message inherent in this book.

How Communities Can Run Leaner and Better

Rather than rely solely on outsiders and related funding and services, the authors suggest we band together with other locals to come up with our own solutions to problems – and ways to leverage the resources we each have in support of “our” community.

While the authors advocate “no more relying on institutions or systems to provide us with the good life”the community-building they intend should lead to wider adoption. Hopefully some of the ideas that evolve, from the grassroots up, will be honed (with ongoing public input) into systems and sometimes even institutions then adopted in other communities.

That’s part of the ebb and flow of community design.

Mutual Reliance Sparks Innovation

Another reviewer at Amazon notes that the authors advocate our striving toward greater compassion for each other rather than greater systems of efficiency. I believe however that, like natural systems and user-friendly design, collective useage inevitably leads to innovation and thus efficiency.  Yet isn’t that co-innovation an apt way for neighbors to care for each other in their community?

Not only do I feel compassion but usually genuine liking for those in my community who suggest a way to make our community better run and/or close-knit.

That’s compassion in action.

As a long admirer of Block’s ideas who believes that the U.S. economy will be bumpy at best for the decade I am heartened by the several specific ways that bottom-up community-building is happening – and that the models for such local efforts are spreading so leaders in different communities can learn from each other’s local experience.

The more specific and immediately useful the  ideas is  the more “spreadable” it becomes. Often community-building methods are, in fact, more efficient ways to be mutually supportive.

Own Less.  Share More. Get Closer.

Some examples are as seemingly mundane as Freecycle – which is elegantly moderated in my Marin County by “Nicole,” co-working spaces, and The Village Movement, started in Beacon Hill, to enable more people to age in place among tight-knit neighbors.  Shareable is doing a vivid job of covering the evolving ways we are working and playing better together and stretching resources.

When people do discover concrete ways they can be mutually-supportive they tend to adopt them, then modify them and to tell others.

Word naturally spreads.

From my work in forging partnerships to generate more value and visibility for individuals and organizations I’ve found that identifying the sweet spot of mutual interest between individuals and/or organizations is a crucial first step to exploring how to accomplish greater things together than one can alone.

Accomplish Greater Things Locally Together Than You Can Alone

When people collaborate around an explicit shared purpose they tend to bring out the better sides in each other so they inevitably get closer.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the co-authors use their influence to advocate the creation of an online community where we could exchange ideas about what is working to create “abundant communities”?

Some books that I’ve found helpful around the notion of helping each other and learn from each other include What’s Mine is Yours,  The Great Reset: How New Ways of Living and Working Drive Post-Crash Prosperity, Turning to One Another: Simple Conversations to Restore Hope to the Future, Consequential Strangers: Turning Everyday Encounters Into Life-Changing Moments.

It is also gratifying to see the neighborhood-strengthening start-ups that are springing up like Patch and the community and town-wide businesses such as Steven Johnson’s outside.in and the smart phone apps like mycityway that will enable locals to share with other locals and visitors their knowledge of local history, architecture, food, sight seeing places, crafts and more.

The invisible gorilla, Get Satisfaction, wellness community, Bikewire, kiva and etsy are just some of the online places we’ve shared for fun, money-making, justice, special interests, tips or support. With more free time and the spread of “public media” ordinary citizens can “pool free time to pursue activities together” suggests Clay Shirky in Cognitive Surplus, his follow-up to Here Comes Everybody.

Yet, where are we heading with this growing capacity to actively share and co-create?

Towards extraordinarily satisfying and dangerous “opportunities” I’ve found.

Shirky covers the upside. Here are some points from his book, followed by the dangerous downside of the trends he cites that are covered in other books. These effects will touch all our lives so it’s vital to be aware of them.

The Benefits of More Free Time and Capacity to Share and to Organize

•  “The wiring of humanity lets us treat free time as a shared global resource, and lets us design new kinds of participation and sharing that take advantage of that resource.  Our cognitive surplus is only potential; it doesn’t mean anything or do anything by itself. To understand what we can make of these new resources, we have to understand, not just the kind of actions it makes possible but the hows and wheres of those actions.”

• “Back when coordinating group action was hard, most amateur groups stayed small and informal.  Now that we have the tools that let groups of people find each other and share their thoughts and actions, we are seeing a strange new hybrid: large, public amateur groups.  Individuals can make their interests public, more easily, and groups can balance amateur motivation and larger coordinated action more easily as well.”

• “The geographic range of collaborative efforts has spread dramatically.  When Linus Torvalds first asked or help creating what would become the Linus operating system, he received only a few replies, but they came from potential participants all over the globe.   Similarly, Julie Clarke, Valerie Sooky, and Meg Markus all lived in different places when they were forming Grobanites for Charity, but that didn’t stop them from creating a charity that’s raised a million dollars.”

• “Today people have new freedom to act in concert and in public. In personal satisfaction, this goal is fairly uncomplicated – even the banal uses of our creative capacity (posting YouTube videos of kittens on treadmills or writing bloviating blog posts) are still more creative and generous than watching TV.

• “Personal value is the kind of value we receive from being active instead of passive, creative instead of consumptive.”

The Dangerous Downside to Most Anyone’s Increased Ability to Share and to Organize

Yes, people like sharing and collaborating, as Shirky suggests yet many are adept at both for illegal goals. There is a tragic and growing dark side in this increasingly connected world as Moses Naim points out in Illicit. From trading in women, guns and drugs, illegal activity has also grown more “creative” and “active” and connected groups of bandits, terrorists, pirates and self-described global businessmen in a more efficient, larger activity.

As Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn have found there are now more enslaved and traded girls and women in than there were blacks at the height of slavery.

As well, we increasingly connect with people who share our beliefs, according to The Big Sort and Going to Extremes. A dangerous consequence of closer connections with like-minded people is not limited to terrorists.

As a group continues to bond it tends to take more extreme stances on the beliefs that brought them together – and to become more intense in those beliefs.

With our innate desire to belong, contribute and be known – and the greater capacity to connect, share and organize described by Clay Shirky, it behooves us to be aware of the downside tendencies of organizing groups as we enjoy the upsides.

Also as low-paid writers for eHow and LIVESTRONG, wine and other “content farm” workers have discovered, we’ll see other downsides to increased connectivity.

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 below your waist. That’s the GrotesquePlane.

3. To convey excitement or that you are offering a big idea, bring your gestures up to chest level. That’s the PassionPlane.

Connect With Your Gestures and Your Voice

Here’s a way to remember what to practice to look comfortable with yourself and to connect with others:

1. Lower

2. Slower

3. Less

These three tips refer to the level of your gestures and their speed and amount of motion. Alternatively, for example, quick, jabbing finger gestures pushes us away as you can see in this video.

Think of your voice in the same way. Lower your voice; do not race through your sentences and say less to invite other into the conversation.

Get in Body Sync With Others to Get Along Better

Whether you are around loved ones, strangers or colleagues, to connect better literally get in body sync with them. That means your heart rate, skin temperature and other vital signs become more alike.  The more alike “we” are the more we like each other. From five researchers I follow here are some ways to get in body sync:

Get in motion together, the more similar the motion, the more likely it will be that you like each other.

• For example, eating across the table from each other, while you wouldn’t want to replicate another’s exact movements you will instinctively become more alike in the speed and amount of movement of your body and your hands as you eat.

• Always take the opportunity to shake hands. You are in exact sync with each other.

• When you walk together you are more likely to match each other’s pace and arm movement and thus strongly mirror each other.  At a client company I suggested that teams walk together across the open quad to the other building where they would meet, and talk about the agenda along the way.

They noticed that they often accomplished more when walking to and from the meeting than while sitting still around the conference table. Sometimes, now team leaders call for Walking Meetings in which they “meet” by walking, grouped together, on the sidewalk around the quad.  I enjoy walkabouts with friends up and down the steps here in Sausalito and along the water front.  Sometimes this is the way I meet with clients.

By the way I disagree with the first phrase in the sub-title of Bowden’s book yet found many helpful parts: Control the Conversation, Command Attention, and Convey the Right Message Without Saying a Word.

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.

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:• “Large corporations, political parties and government bureaucracies will crumble and fragment as central planning agencies did before them.”

• “Monolithic behemoths, whether private or nationalized, are vulnerable as never before to this Lilliputian assault. They are steadily being driven extinct not just by small firms, but ephemeral aggregations of people that form and reform continuously. The big firms that survive will do so by turning themselves into bottom-up evolvers.”

• “People will more and more freely find ways to exchange their specialized production for diversified consumption.”

• “‘The online masses have an incredible willingness to share’ says Kevin Kelly. Instead of money, `peer producers who create the stuff gain credit, status, reputation, enjoyment, satisfaction and experience.’”

• Among the pitfalls we face, predators and parasites can piggyback on the work of others as freeloaders and worse. They can spark terror or spread a false belief: “The integrated nature of the world means that it may soon be possible to capture the entire world on behalf of a foolish idea, where before you could only capture a country, or perhaps if you were lucky an empire.

• “It will be hard to snuff out the flame of innovation because it is such an evolutionary, bottom-up phenomenon in such a networked world. However reactionary and cautious Europe and the Islamic world and perhaps even America become, China will surely now keep the torch of catallaxy alight, and India, and maybe Brazil, not to mention a host of smaller free cities and states….”

I’m surprised that Ridley ignored the role that language played in the evolution of human progress especially as it is vital to specialization and trade.

Another area that Ridley does not explore and that Financial Times columnist Samuel Brittan raises is that the rise of the collective brain that Ridely cites may, in fact, be collective brains – people who band together around their common interests.

While the upside is the sense of belonging that engenders, the downside is, as Ridley has suggested is “generally speaking the more cooperative a species is within groups, the more hostility there is between groups.”  If this future scenario does happen then we may have more and more kinds of tribes and more kinds of intense disagreements amongst them – and worse.

Also, while I, like Ridley, think “open” markets aid innovation I have this caveat. To be truly open there must be a level playing field for competition and a true accounting for all costs to the public in the price of that product – that means no hidden subsidies, protections or costs of clean-up, etc. by government. That base line role of government regulation will always be hotly contested and arduous to craft and to enforce yet it is a vital role of a government of the people – for the people.

Three ways you can thrive in a bottom-up world are to be quotable, forge profitable partnerships and turn strangers into allies.

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?

After the Lakers’ stinging defeat to the Suns what stuck in my mind was the image of Kobe Bryant and Derek Fisher staying behind in the locker room after teammates had left to hash over what happened. The intense conversation was their singular focus. That’s a sure sign of a strong partnership. How do they happen?

1. True partnership won’t happen without mutual respect and respect is rarely gained without earning it from each other:

“It started at a tournament in Long Beach over the summer,” Bryant said. “We were playing together over the summer, working long hours, and as the season went on, we didn’t play much, so we had to go in to work early and play a lot of one-on-one.”

“Fisher, a stumpy 6-foot-1 guard…would not back down to Bryant, who headed one of the gifted preps-to-pros classes of the 1990s. They clawed each other on court, commiserated off it and ultimately coalesced into an enduring tandem, the Lakers’ Lone Ranger and Tonto.”

2. Mutual trust rises sharply after partners experienced sticking together through a tough situation.  That trust is reinforced the more times partners demonstrate it for each other:

“ We’ve gone through different facets of life together,” Bryant said. “He’s always been a standup guy, a friend who is more like a brother.”

“When you’ve lived through fire together, the comfort level is there, before and after games, on the bus, text messages and whatever,” Derek Fisher said of Kobe Bryant.

3. Agree on a single and singular goal that reflects the sweet spot of mutual benefit. (You don’t have to be on a sports team to become higher-performing by agreeing on – not a bunch of “wants” – but one top goal):

“We’re constantly thinking about what this team needs in order to win a championship,” says Derek Fisher.

4. Bring out the better side in your partner:

“Most teammates thought Bryant was arrogant, aloof, out of touch with reality. Fisher believed he was just young and misunderstood.”5. An affectionate nickname is a sign of a cemented partnership:

“In a league currently obsessed with mega free agents contemplating coexistence with another outsize ego, seldom has there been a pro basketball partnership like Bryant and Fisher’s — the highly credentialed and often contentious superstar and his special vocational friend, the man Bryant affectionately calls Fish.”

6. Never let up on growing and on proving your worth to your partners and for yourself:

• Fisher said of Bryant, “As we’ve both aged, I think he respected the things I had to do to stay at a high level.”

• Coach Phil Jackson “thought Bryant’s appreciation of Fisher grew exponentially in 2000-1, when Fisher missed 62 games but returned for the playoffs and made 51 percent of his 3-pointers while averaging 13.4 points.”

• ‘He’s been giving him the ball ever since,’ Jackson said, while noting that Fisher, as the quasi point guard in the triangle offense, had enough currency not to reciprocate when he thought the ball should go elsewhere.”

7. Good partners go out of their way to support each other in their enlightened self-interest. Great partners go out of their way to support each other:

• In their eight years together, Michael Jordan, so appreciated John Paxson as the Bulls’ spot-up jump shooter that “he made a personal appeal to ownership in 1991 when Paxson was in danger of being dropped.”

• “Two years later, Paxson repaid the debt, sealed the trust, when his 3-pointer from the left wing against the Suns nailed down the first of Jordan’s two three-peats. ‘The consummate pro,’ Jordan called him that night.”

8. After an important experience together, debrief first with your partner or team about what happened and how you’ll do better next time, then go out and face the larger world. The military and the FBI call such debriefings hot washs:

“Long after their Lakers teammates departed the locker room, Kobe Bryant and Derek Fisher lingered in the adjacent trainer’s area, visible through a plate glass window and in no apparent hurry to explain a stinging playoff defeat to reporters before they had seethed over it with each other. Their post-game meeting, according to Fisher, was just getting started.”

See also:

Make Wiser Choices, Stronger Friendships

The Art of Being Business Partners and Friends

… and others’ ideas on some angle of Moving From Me to We.