The snow will melt sometime. Want to to kick off your Spring in a way that spurs growth, enables you to  savor time with others and create fresh meaning in your life? Try this ….

Create a Mutually-Reinforcing Group Ritual

For over a decade in Lake Oswego, Oregon, eight women, including my college friend Jane, get of bed to meet at the same corner at 6 am for their rigorous one hour walk. Husbands, children, bosses all know that it is going to happen and to not get in the way.  Sometimes they don’t even talk.

Over the years they’ve walk/talked about an embezzling business partner, son’s first girlfriend, unexpected job promotion and a sick, aging pet Labrador that must be put to sleep that day. Increasingly, over the years they’ve come to see this daily ritual as a stabilizing continuity in their lives. It took several years yet the rhythm of walking, looking around as they talk and the reliability of knowing they will meet each morning has enabled them to ease into increasing candor and caring for each other, and so can you with others.

When they ask for advice they know it will come from women who know them well and who will speak frankly. Contrary to the saying, “familiarity breeds contempt,” instead over time, in a safe group ritual, familiarity breeds acceptance and even reliance on each other.

Let us forget things and consider only relations. ~ Georges Braque

Getting in Action Together Eventually Brings Us Closer

My former husband is in two poker groups that have been meeting in each other’s homes for over 25 years. The players are mostly lawyers.  From upstairs I’d overhear snippets of conversation. In the early years, between poker hands, they’d mostly talk about their legal cases. Later one man got cancer, then another, one divorced, another became a judge. Over time there’s more conversation between hands. Some now fish together. Others share vacations and settled arguments between each other. They’ve been at each other’s birthday parties and attended funerals of three of their fellow players.

Reality is nothing but a collective hunch.  ~ Lily Tomlin

It’s Never Too Late to Start Your Small Tribe

Group members can nudge each other in supportive ways. Some of the benefits I’ve enjoyed over the years in the two small groups to which I belong include:

• Seeing how wrong I was about first impressions, after getting to know someone better, especially what really matter to them and why they got upset or happy.

•  Discovering, first-hand how the same experience in the group can be seen and felt so differently by each person and recognizing that this happens all the time.

•  Realizing that I learn more about myself from what I react against than from what I am attracted to.

• Recognizing that everyone has hot buttons that hold them back, no matter how confident and calm they appear; and it’s possible to create mutual support in mitigating their power over us.

• Learning how often we discount how much we can accomplish with our best talents; and concrete insights from those who know us well can be a guide to better using them.

• Gaining the rare opportunity to get candid, caring, confidential advice at crucial points in my life.

“Lots of people want to ride with you in the limo, but what you want is someone who will take the bus with you when the limo breaks down.” ~ Oprah Winfrey

What Helps a Group Feel Closer?

1. Share One Thing in Common

That shared interest provides a safe place to start getting to know each other better. Jane’s walking group lived nearby, are all women and mothers. The poker groups were lawyers and, with one grand exception, all men. For the richest adventure and learning, then seek diverse individuals with backgrounds different than yours.

2. Make it a Priority to Meet Regularly

Group glue begins as we prove to each other that getting together is important and nothing proves that more than turning up.

3. Do Some Things the Same Way Every Time You Meet

Familiarity fosters trust. Jane’s walking group always walks the same route. The poker group host always provides the snacks and drinks.

4. Get in Motion Together

From the beat of our hearts to our gestures and rate of speaking, we literally get more in sync with each other when we are in motion together. That’s why people often agree on things more easily while walking down the hall to the meeting than while sitting in it.  Consequently walking is more powerfully connecting than eating or playing a card game together yet any kind of shared motion builds closeness.

5. Affirm Your Appreciation of the Group

Set aside a time for each person to share what’s been most helpful about the group. Consider sharing this appreciation as an ongoing, private group diary in a google doc or an ongoing email to which each person adds something at regular intervals. Research show that the more actions taken on behalf of a belief the more deeply a person feels about it, speaks about it and will defend it.

“Those who regularly come into contact with people having diverse interests and viewpoints are more likely to come up withinnovative ideas.” ~ Steven Johnson

Launch Your Year Off on an Up Note by Starting a Small Group

1. It is often easier on others in a group if best friends are not part of it. Instead consider including people who, while they share the group’s common interest, are only slightly acquainted. That way the group can begin as Consequential Strangers.

2. Seven members is the best small group size for individuals to get close, according to some research.

3. As you explore the idea of starting a group, consider inviting individuals to get together for some activity such as a meal, walk or attending an event.

4. If they seem to enjoy each other you might then ask them later, one at a time, if they’d like to get together again as a group. If they would (and this is the brave part) ask if they’d like to meet regularly for awhile and collectively get to know each other better.

5. If they do, in fact, share your interest then ask them to discuss how often and what regular time works best and how long they’d like to experiment with the get-togethers.

6. Be clear that, although you started the group, you do not seek to lead it. Instead you hope everyone can participate in co-creating the group. That might include agreeing on:

•  The common interest that gets you started.

•  Some simple ground rules such as confidentiality regarding what’s discussed in the group.

•  A mutual support goal and/or specific ways each member would like to be supported. If you do it will probably change within six months as the group evolves.

•  How you might include motion in the way you meet, such as walking and/or eating around a table together.

“Let’s just keep asking ourselves this question: ‘Is what I’m about to do strengthening the web of connections, or is it weakening it?’” ~ Margaret Wheatley

Hint: Your group does not have to have to be productive. It may simply be. It can take its own course, evolving with the samemembers, meeting in much the same way at regular times. In so doing, you may become close-knit and a vital and meaningful part of each other’s lives. That will be something to celebrate this time next year.

Also consider creating mutual support with these variations:

1. Mutual Mentoring

Partner with another person or form a small group where each person has something to teach the other(s). Agree on the way to mentor each other. For example, in a two-person mutual mentoring arrangement I have, we spend one session focused on my learning and the next session on his learning.

In my mutual mentoring group, we round robin the five-person discussion in a two-part format in each meeting: First each person briefly gives one tip related to their expertise, then one member gives a ten minute briefing on their expertise as it relates to the group’s interest in it, followed by an hour of Q and A.

2. Accountability Buddies

For your top goal for 2011, pick one person who shares that desire – or a different yet specific goal and get specific about:

•  The small steps along the way to accomplish each person’s goal.

•  How you will stay accountable to each other for taking those steps, such as daily by phone.

• What temptations or obligations might get in the way and what you will do to overcome them.

• How you will celebrate together when you each accomplish your goal.

3.  Mutually-Managed Project Team

This follows the same approach as the small group except that it is formed to accomplish one specific task that reflects a sweet spot of strong shared interest by all members. Consequently, each member brings a specific talent to the group that is needed to accomplish the task, all members agree on who is to take the lead on what parts of the project and on a few rules of engagement regarding how they will work together.

Such mutually-managed project teams will grow in popularity for work and for personal and social interests so you may become sought-after as you gain experience in participating in them.

“Because I helped to wind the clock, I come to hear it strike.” ~William Butler Yeats

Here’s to a nourishing new year in spite of and because of the increasing complexity, uncertainty and connectedness of our world.  I look forward to continuing to learn with and from so many of you as I have this past years. Also consider joining in on our Twitter conversation: @KareAnderson See links to this post here http://www.movingfrommetowe.com/2011/01/01/one-way-to-nudge-ourselves-into-a-nourishing-new-year-together/

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’sresearch 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.

See links here http://www.movingfrommetowe.com/2010/06/21/five-ways-to-bring-others-closer/

In a world that increasingly favors thinkers (vs. laborers) huge changes are happening, including these four, observes Arnold King:

1. The nature of marriage has changed: “Men & women look for complementarity in consumption rather than in production.”

2.  “Achievement-oriented men looking for interesting mates rather than for good maids.”

3.  There’s “greater inequality across households” - and that affects children’s well-being and opportunities.

4.  The chasm is widening: Increasingly the world economy favors thinkers over laborers.

If villagers living in the midst of poverty and war can be nudged to work better together with just three simple rules (honed via a parental competition study) and a reward (money, in this case) then maybe your group (team, board, committee, etc.) could too:

1. The village leaders (or your project leader) are elected by secret ballot.

2. The village (or your group) holds communal meetings – meaning open to all participants and no secret side confabs.

3. The results of all meetings are covered completely and accurately and that coverage is made available, quickly, to all participants. Here are two other posts you may find helpful:

How We Help Each Other Do the Right Thing…Sometimes

Disagree? How to Keep Talking Instead of Arguing

See links at http://www.movingfrommetowe.com/2010/01/19/how-groups-can-make-better-choices/

Like to literally see a story unfold? Want to make your complex product or idea simple to understand? Yearn to make your next meeting more memorable – and enable more people to experience it? Here are three vivid approaches offered by the masters of their visual genres.

1. Animating Your Story to Make it Come Alive

To see an animated version of a TV show, launched out of a radio program, This American Life, (still with me?) see Chris Ware’s coverage of the segment “Every Marriage is a Courtroom” and another segment here. What if you videoed a happy client using your product or service, then hired a cartoonist to created a Ware-styleversion to reinforce your message?Also consider a manga-style comic book version such as Dan Pink did with Johnny Bunko, along with a video trailer, of course. Lesson? Multiply the fun and/or helpful ways they see your message.

2. Drawing the Speaker’s Message to Compound Its Impact

Watch a graphically illustrated version (BigViz Book) of the last TED conference’s 50 or so speakers, brought to you by group cartographer, David Sibbet and Kevin Richards.

3. Illustrate the Steps So We Recognize How and Why to Take Them

How about getting some pictorial help on “how to” do something new? View the “plain English”, explanatory videos at Sasha and Lee LeFever’s Commoncraft.

Follow-up Ideas: Consider hiring one of these talents or others to:

• Illustrate the messages presented by your speakers at your conference or meeting. Give the results to attendees as an ebooklet or vlog  – a free meeting momento. Then offer it online to anyone else for a modest fee (new profit center?) – or for free to attract members and media coverage. Find a sponsor to underwrite the costs.

• Create the visual story of a new product, service, program or innovation. Feature employees or customers in the creation and distributionof this story. Feature it on your blog and web site. Tell your key media about it.

• At a brainstorming or other meeting, keep everyone focused on the goal, not whip- sawed by the verbally dominant. Share a Sibbet-style visual group record of the meeting with team members and other stakeholders.

Like participating in a lively Pecha Kucha, these other visual methods can make collaborating and learning together more productive and fun.

Haven't some of your most meaningful memories been of times when you accomplished something greater with others? Didn't it bring you closer in the flow of camaraderie - even when someone in your group didn't act right - like you?'

What we learn from those times is vital in an information-flooded, connected world - and that's a good thing.

The most common and satisfying ways we learn and invent are not from sitting in a classroom seat being taught or trained. The world is too complex and fluid now to keep up with everything all by yourself.

That doesn't mean that we aren't sought-after for our mastery of a topic or skill. It simply means we stay relevant when we engage in projects with diverse others, learning and experimenting as we go. Like children we still learn best by observing, imitating, re-mixing, making fresh mistakes and, most of all, by playing and using our imagination - with others.

That's why the new book by Douglas Thomas and John Seely Brown, The New Culture of Learning, two long time lovers of social learning-by-doing is so relevant today for students of all ages, in school, at work and involved with the causes and projects that most matter to us.

While their book is aimed at transforming learning in schools every concept I read can be equally applied to any part of our lives - lived well with others.

If you'd like to see the next chapters of your life as the kind of adventure story you co-create with others and want a bigger voice in the role you play - literally - read and share this book with those you think will make engrossing, imaginative playmates.

Some of my favorite quotes from this book:

* The new culture of learning gives us the freedom to make the general personal and then share our personal experience in a way that, in turn, adds to the general flow of knowledge.

* In the new culture of learning, people learn through their interaction and participation with one another in fluid relationships that are the result of shared interests and opportunity.

* Play is the tension between the rules of the game and the freedom to act within those rules. When play happens while learning it creates a context in which information, ideas and passions grow.

* The important thing about the Harry Potter phenomenon is not so much what the kids were learning, but how they were learning. Thought there was no teacher in this setting, readers engaged in deep, sustained learning from one another through their discussions and interactions.

* In a world of near constant flux, play becomes a strategy for embracing change rather than a way of growing out of it.

* The challenge is to find ways to marry structure and freedom to create altogether new things.

* Study groups dramatically increase the success of college students in the classroom.

* The connection between the personal and the collective is a key ingredient in lifelong learning.

* When information is stable, the explicit dimension becomes very important. The speed of light, for example, is probably not going to change....The twenty-first centry, however, belongs to the tacit. In the digital world we learn by doing, watching, and experiencing... not by taking a class or reading a manual.

* Students learn best when they are able to follow their passion and opeate within the constraints of a bounded environment. Without the boundary set by the assignment there would be no medium for growth.

* Indwelling is a familiarity with ideas, practices and processes that are so ingrained that they become second nature. When engaging the learner, we must think about her sense of indwelling, because that is her greatest source of inspiration, but it is also the largest reservoir she has of tacit knowledge.

* Dispositions indicate how a student will make connections on a tacit level... how she is likely to learn.

* Learning from others is neither new nor revolutionary; it has just been ignored by most of our educational institutions...

... and, I would add, by most of our organizations.

From the people under 30 who grew up studying and playing in groups I have enjoyed playing and co-creating on everything from business start-ups to models of more effectively serving causes.

I hope that a version of this book is put up online for shareable input from us all - commenting, adapting, re-mixing the ideas, thus turning it into an ecosystem where we can hone our ideas on the new culture of, not "just" learning but also inventing and co-creating better ways to work and play together.

See the book here

http://www.amazon.com/New-Culture-Learning-Cultivating-Imagination/product-re...

You may also enjoy another book, co-authored by John Seely Brown, Pull.The Power of Pull: How Small Moves, Smartly Made, Can Set Big Things in Motion

It’s sunny outside yet you’re stuck studying. You must know this stuff for tomorrow. It gets worse. Your smart aleck friend walks by saying “You know you’ll only remember ten percent of what you’re reading right now.” She’s citing an oft-repeated study that shows that, six weeks later, you’ll only remember four percent of what you are passively learning by reading.

Yet that familiar study has been debunked. Or rather there never was a study that showed people remember:

10% of what they read

20% of what they hear

30% of what they see

50% of what they see and hear

70% of what they write and say

90% of what they say as they do something with the information

“People do NOT remember 10% of what they read, 20% of what they see, 30% of what they hear, etc.,” learning expert, Will Thalheimer emphatically explains.

So the percentages aren’t proven yet the levels for accelerating learning are. You do learn faster and remember more when you move from passive to active, meaningful, repeated engagement in what you are learning.

Your Useable insight

You’ll learn more and remember it longer when you:

• Actively and repeatedly practice what you are learning, as you are learning it, and when you continuously relate it to something concrete that matters to you.

• Teach others what we are learning.

So, skip the percentages and speed your learning by adopting themethods described in Dale's Cone of Experience. After learning this it may be helpful to sleep on it.

See links here http://sayitbetter.typepad.com/say_it_better/2009/09/how-to-learn-faster-and-remember-more.html

Research shows that Americans are most likely to trust and support someone who exhibits strong listening and inclusion skills. These traits matter even more than charisma. Those sought-after people - the major nodes on the invisible organizational chart that reflects the real centers of influence - are different than the leaders of just a decade ago.

"Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind
than in the one where they sprung up."
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

In this Age of Engagement, the trait they are most likely to share is the capacity to speak to the sweet spot of mutual interest.

In most conversations they begin, not by talking about themselves but byaddressing the other person’s specific need or opportunity.

Then they move on to describe how there’s a shared interest or way of accomplishing something together that cannot be done alone.

While many experts on leadership such as Warren Bennis and Steve Covey offer valuable ideas on what leadership should look like, two research studies, one by the U.S. Air Force and another from M.I.T. show that people are more likely to seek out and support people who exhibited at least three of seven behavioral traits of what I’ve dubbed the “Synthesizer-Style Leader". Remarkably, these traits mattered more than ethnicity, sex, ethnicity, apparent wealth, physical size, education or even appearance.

“A true leader is not one you look up to because they are the best.
A true leader is one that draws the best out in you.”
~ Anne Warfield

These leaders succeed because they bring out the most productive side of their colleagues. While this new style of most valuable player (MVP) does make her presence felt in her organization, she is much less likely than old-style leaders to take center stage, voice an opinion early in a situation or take charge of projects. Instead she sets a single goal and a goal for each team and each person, leaving it to them to propose the smartest path forward Thus these leaders do not need total quality management programs because they set a goal for and reward self-organized teams.

“All value resides in individuals.
Value is distributed in individual space.
Relationship economics is the framework for wealth creation.
Deep support is the new metaproduct.”
~ Shoshanna Zuboff

The Synthesizer-Style Leaders' behavioral traits are described here as rules to work by. Often, I find them difficult to follow yet not as arduous as ignoring them:

1. "Go slow to go fast"
At the beginning of every task or interaction, do everything lower, slower less - in moving and speaking - so that you get "in sync" and can then establish a common direction and involvement so that when you pick up speed later on, everybody is eager to be on board.

2. Create the Common Vision
Vividly characterize the direct benefit to the listener up front, for providing support, even if it is a part of his job anyway. Then characterize how the expected support directly relates to one of the top goals of your organization, the upside and down side of doing the work.

3. Play Straight
Announce the rules upfront - penalities and rewards for participation in a team activity or project or job - and don't change them mid-stream without a compelling reason.

4. Play it Back
Seek and reward candid feedback on an ongoing basis, and respond specifically and soon to what you’ve been told, including the rational about the action you will or will not take, based upon that feedback.

5. Synthesize the Best
Listen, ask, ask more, then synthesize others' ideas as a way of proposing new action.

6. Give Third Party Endorsements
Offer specific, genuine praise for others' contributions from anywhere in the company; praise them to those who are important to them and in ways that reflect their highest self-image and values.

7. Walk Your Talk
Demonstrate a congruency in all that you do; make and keep agreements; reflect a clear set of core personal values that people can trust you'll keep, regardless of whether they share those values.

“In everybody’s life, at some time, our inner fire goes out.
It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being.
We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner fire.”
~ Albert Schweitzer

See more ideas like this at http://sayitbetter.typepad.com