Some photos from the event (see full-screen):

Here is the presentation:

And in here you find the corresponding video:

You can download the presentation:
- in English: PPT, PPTX, PDF;
- in Romanian: PPT, PPTX, PDF;

What feed-back have I received and will look forward to apply?

• Watch out more for body language, especially avoid crossing arms;
• You should have a pause between ideas, leave people some time to process what you say;
• Avoid finishing with “This is my presentation”; pretty lame.

Ok. This is my blog post.

A. Pictures

First of all, here are some pictures I’ve made at the event:

There are even three YouTube videos at the conference (in English): 1, 2, 3.

B. What did I learn?

Some ideas I jotted down:
a. (a conclusion of another person) When will computers reach human-level intelligence? We’re five years away and always will be;

b. Regarding one of Charles DARWIN‘s trips:
Charles DARWIN noted that Galápagos tortoise that lived on different island had different evolution; One could tell which turtoise came from which island with precision; They evolved differently;

c. According to the Tree of life, all animals come from the same origin;

d. A typical logic for believers:
i. “X” looks designed;
ii. I can’t think of how “X” was designed naturally;
iii. Therefore, “X” was designed supernaturally;
This is known as “God of the gaps”;
Example: People can’t imagine how the pyramids were made; This leads into thinking they have been done by aliens;

e. Quote:

This most beautiful system [The Universe] could only proceed from the dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being.

-Isaac NEWTON;

f. The fate of all mysteries: they get “filled” eventually;

g. Two explanations for life:
i. Supernatural designed (from Top to Bottom);
ii. Natural designed (from Bottom to Up);

h. (funny, I might add) Psychoanalysis is just as effective as doing nothing (this argument also had some scientific proofs);
Talking to a friend or relative is best;

C. Extra readings

If you want to know more about the conference or Michael SHERMER himself, you can see:
(English)
a. Wikipedia entry;
b. Personal homepage;
c. A magazine he founded and runs;
d. Personal thoughts on Twitter;

(Romanian)
a. (Romanian, with English videos) An article on HotNews.ro;
b. (Romanian) An online discussion on HotNews.ro;
c. (Romanian) Conference review;

D. Personal opinion on the conference

Now for my thoughts on this. In a typical society, if my conviction is to be a vegetarian, I could go to a conference on the advantages of eating meat without raising an eyebrow – “Why are you here?”. In the orthodox world, things are more complicated. Do a search on [thou shall not read heretic books] (Romanian) and you’ll get to strong arguments (such as this – Romanian) not to ever read anything that would affect your belief. It’s basically a sin.

Things are that simple – don’t go. But I complicated things, and I went to the conference. To me, sins are:
a. Sins not to be done; Avoid as possible;
b. Sins that are really sins, but I still do them;
c. Sins that are considered by others to be seen, not by me, I do them.
I confess all of them, erase the table.

The conference went into c. Lucky (what a strange word for an Orthodox) for me, in Orthodoxy there are more than the laws, there are interpretations. Sometimes they clearly oppose, and you (or at least me) can:
a. Pick the one that you favor if there are two;
b. If you happen to find out an opinion that you like, stop reading;
c. If you happen to find out an opinion that you don’t like, keep searching until you find an opposite one, then apply a. scenario.
That’s a bit funny to think. In this case, I once read/heard that you can read heretic books if you are more advanced into Orthodoxy/read some things. I can’t apply this logic without getting into the “being proud” problem, but at least I’ve switched sins. Phew, that was though.

Now writing in public about the conference is a bit more complicated. Now I don’t only hear things, I also speak about them. Tricky. Last night, I asked my spiritual father about this, and said I should write it down, but also mention my opinions on the subject (which I didn’t intend to do in the first place).

So, here goes.

A very first observation is this: when there’s a conference on Dalles Conference Room about Orthodoxy, with some monks and priests and orthodox thinkers, I usually can’t see anything. The room (very large, I think there are more than two times more chairs than at the Faculty of Philosophy Titu Maiorescu amphitheater) is crammed with people. There is a balcony. Crammed. There are rooms between the chairs, behind the chairs, between the chairs and speakers’ desk. Crammed. I went two or three times to basically stay outside, could see barely anything, hear almost nothing. That’s how many people go in there. At Michael SHERMER you could get plenty of seats, and while the announcement required prior registration via email, I don’t see that as a too much problem.

Now the question comes – where are all the Orthodox people? There was a public conference from a much known scientist talking about God. The conference was clearly better advertised in the media (at least from my point of view), the speaker was an very good authority on the subject. In this time of year there are not that many public conferences. It was a Wednesday evening, a time similar to the Dalles conferences. So where was everybody? Perhaps they didn’t like the date (9.9.9. is a funny number).

So, now for my views:
a. The science part doesn’t really matter to me; You have proofs the Earth is billion years old? Good for you; You have problems with a, b, c, d, e (whatever) episode in the Bible, you can prove with a big accuracy it didn’t and couldn’t have happened? Great; This has nothing to do with the way in which I believe in God; If tomorrow, one proves to me with high accuracy that a lot of the facts in the Bible aren’t there, it doesn’t matter; It’s all fine; Prove what you want, the Bible to me is an ethical thing, not a miracle of multiplying the five loaves and the two fish to an X number; That’s not about it; It’s not about dinosaurs, Noah’s arch, dividing the Red Sea, or whatever; The dilemma that dinosaurs exists or not has nothing to do with the 10 commandments (oh, and the fact that they were written in stone by God – or not? – is also not a criteria; Prove whatever you wish to, Orthodoxy, to me, it’s not about things, it’s about ethics);

b. What if I cared about the a. things? What then? It’s a quite simple and amusing solution; We start with the assumption that miracles happen even today; Would God do anything to reduce your faith in Him? Probably not; Would the devil do? Well, perhaps; So I can, theoretically, see all the scientific proofs as devil’s work; You found a skeleton? It was planted; That DNA thing? The devil does miracles; And so on; This could be an easy escape hatch; I know, it sounds a bit silly; But as said, it doesn’t matter to me; And we’re on miracle land; Anything could happen;

c. There were some parts at the conference about Orthodoxy in schools; How do I view things? Is religion in school a bad thing? I don’t know; Is religion in school a good thing? I don’t know; Ask me to vote on the subject and I won’t vote; Force me to vote via mandatory voting and I’d vote for science-teaching, rather than religion-teaching (but it’s not the case nowadays – I’m not forced into this); Why my belief?
Things are simple: to me God exists; I’ve “proven” it to me; Let’s say you are near me; What can I say to you about God? I can say to you, if you ask me on the subject, that I believe God exists; And … that’s about it; I can’t tell you to believe in Him, I have no real evidence to convince you; All I know is that to me it exists and, when confronted, I will tell you that; I can’t really transmit why I believe in God to another one; It’s me;
Luckily (yes, that word again!), there is a book on politeness I’ve read while in high school which clearly states that religion, politics and personal health problems are to be considered taboos, and not tackled in public; Phew! I don’t have to talk about religion in public, the best approach is to go around things;
Now to get from here to putting religion in schools; As said, I can’t tell if God exists. Can others? Ok, let them make religion mandatory; Can others tell that God has nothing to do with schooling? Ok, let them take religion out of schools; I prefer not to have an opinion on this – do whatever you please; A system in which religion is mandatory in schools or a system in which religion is forbidden in schools are all fine to me; I will adhere neither to an NGO that wants religion in schools, nor to another one that wants it out of schools; If forced to have an opinion, I would take religion out of schooling system;
On a personal note, it was at this conference that I found out that in the United States there are no national or even federal laws on religion in schools, each school has a parents committee that establish what should the children learn; This is a solution to which Horia-Roman PATAPIEVICI adheres, and if were to chose on the matters, I’d vote for it too; Yes, that’s my vote;

d. To me the conference was spiritually fulfilling; Fun, easy to understand, smart; Did I mention fun? I found out great things.

Oh, and looking backwards, there was really nothing at the conference that affected my belief. It wasn’t a sin at all. Yes.

The speakers in the picture below, are, in this order:
1. Anca PODOLEANU (Choice Consulting Ltd );
2. Oliver OLSON (CEU Business School);
3. Camelia SLIVNEANU (Coca Cola HBC );
4. Florin MIULESCU (FPSE Bucharest);
5. Sabina BICA (Chipita Romania);
6. Ioana MOHOLEA (Perspective Group);
7. Liliana BOLAN (B&B Expert Com);
8. Cristina MIHAI (freelancer);

“

What I liked about the event?
1. I met new people;
2. I got to see again some old colleagues from a previous edition of the summer school;
3. Seeing some past speakers was also nice;
4. The audience was involved, right about everybody got the chance to say a few words.

All in all, a nice event to take part to.

The sessions were moderated (with quite a few interventions) by Bobby VOICU.

Here’s a photo with the bus:

Credits for the picture: Adrian CIUBOTARU.

Presentations:
1. Cristina CHIPURICI and Bobby VOICU – How to be successful with a niche blog in Romania?


- A blogger documents about an event, contacts media partners and does exclusivities – just like a journalist;
- Monden.info was sold for the highest sum for such a transaction in Romania: 40,000 Euros;
- Bobby VOICU intervention: You should become the main source for news if you’re a niche blog; Come with your own news!
- Bobby VOICU intervention: If you only talk about money, ask a lot of money (He currently asks for 1,000 Euros for an ad or blog post on his blog);
- Bobby VOICU intervention: We have tried not to optimize Monden.info for Google, but rather to create a community (at least at the beginning);
- Bobby VOICU intervention: The bloggers in Bucharest also have the handicap of location – they don’t live in New York either.

2. Laurentiu BALABAN: Hosting for your blog: what to take into account when making the decision?

- For the very first year of your blogging experience, in most cases you don’t need more than 500 Megabytes of server space and 10 Gigabytes of yearly traffic;
- Rule: You shouldn’t pay for unlimited space and unlimited traffic;
- There are some Terms of Service (ToS) that rarely are read and contain some tough restrains: you shouldn’t use more than 10% of the RAM of the server, have more than 10 to 15 SQL connections (useful to know for bloggers);
- Some hosting services don’t allow multimedia files;
- Rarely does one realize how important the technical support is until there are some problems;
- The huge majority of the clients will never use more than the offered space (so they will not reach space quota);
- You should do a full weekly back-up and a basic daily back-up;
- The following plugins are great for more than 1,000 daily visitors:
a. WP Super Cache;
b. DB Cache;
c. eAccelerator;
- Basic rule to follow regarding hosting: don’t keep all the eggs in one basket;
- It’s not all that bad do have your web site down for a day, or two; But losing a week’s worth of data is devastating;
- You can safely ask the hosting provider for a testing account;
- One or two problems with hosting provider can be solved, but if you have more than one – that’s a problem;
- Server location is of minor importance, due to Google Webmasters Tools.

3. Tudor GALOS: Communication between bloggers and corporate persons: do’s and don’ts

- You can see Tudor GALOS’s presentation on SlideShare, or you can download it as PPT or PDF.
The functions of a PR department: Media Relations, Crisis Management, Employee Communications, Online Communications, Special Events, Community Relations, Reputation Management, Product/Brand Communication, Marketing, Public Affairs/Goverment Relations, Annual/Quarterly Reports, Product/Brand Advertising Marketing, Issues Advertising, Cause-related Marketing, Financial/Investor Relations, Monitoring Blogs, Writing Blogs, Blog Relations;
- You should measure the Return of Investment for a campaign;
- Blogging can be used as a revenge method;
- Bloggers should not sell themselves cheaply;
- Bloggers should predict the negative opinions and address them;
- Use promotional strategies for a blog;
- The corporate persons should learn and read about the bloggers;
- To bloggers: Make friends within corporations, more than setting a formal connection.

4. Alexandru NEGREA: What plugins should you use on your blog and why?

- People expect to find the Search function in the upper right corner of a blog; Like it or not, you should put it in there too;
- The sidebar should be shorter in length than the content itself;
- Consider this: an average user will mostly read a mouse scroll’s worth of content; So you shouldn’t put a lot of content, that requires lots of content;
- An advertisement should be as narrow as possible; It can be wide in lateral (468×60 is a good size), but it should be narrow on vertical size;
- You can consider placing a blogroll only on the homepage, not on the individual pages;
- Place a picture in the sidebar;
- Consider having an “About” page, with picture also;
- Affiliate marketing should be:
a. Relevant to your blog main theme;
b. Accompanied by relevant blog posts (write about the products / company / fields for which you have affiliate banners);
- Recommendation for:
a. Sidebar: Recent articles and comments, Archive, Categories;
b. Footer: Tag cloud, blogroll, Top commentators, Copyright.

5. Vali PETCU – How to evaluate the price for selling blog advertising?

- Don’t settle with the very first price offered;
- The people who wish to have an ad on your blog have money;
Tudor GALOS intervention: The marketing budget is, most of the time, already set (at the beginning of the year, semester, trimester); Use this and try to get a bigger part of the pie;
- Consider getting more than money – Products, Competitions;
- If the marketer is really interested with you, he will return to you;
- You should start asking for money when you can ask 50 Euros for a 125×125 banner per month;
- Your daily traffic should better be more than 1,000 unique daily visitors.

What impressed me the most at the workshop?
1. I was stunned by Vali PETCU‘s ability to get himself into trouble by saying what he felt like; Sure, take away impolite words and impolite interruptions, and you have little things left, but still – his ability to speak so that it gives you the impression that he wants to create not friends but foes was, to me, amazing; I might start reading his blog just for that;
2. Bobby VOICU has a great way to give feed-back; Lots of things to learn from that;
3. Daniel DAMIAN (Dany) was a very polite person.

A list with the participants at the event:
Bobby Voicu (main organizer), Daniel Damian, Lilisor, Varadinum, Vlad Gidea, Adrian Mihnea, Stefan Hurezan, Paul Ircosan, Alexandra Groza, Razvan Antonescu, Sebastian Mazilu, Ovidiu Purdea, Cristian Buzlea, David, Voicu Potronita, Simona Cuibus, Mihai Muncus-Nagy, Alina Blaga, Dan Ille, George Staicu, Alexei Ciprian, Andrei Monciu, Madalina Blaga, Daniela Stoica (jurnalist), Raluca, Elena, Roxana, Pyuric, Sorin, Gabi, Bluarto, Olivian, Buddha, Adrian Ciubotaru, Tudor Galos, Laurentiu, Zoso.

The event was sponsored by Green Pixel, Mercedes-Benz and Microsoft, who sponsored my very own participation.

First of all, what is George HABER‘s solution? That’s simple: close the presentation as soon as possible, whenever required. George Haber’s solution was presented to me and a rather large audience at a Biz Days Conference in 2007.

What was George HABER’s situation? (almost a problem)
George HABER had a presentation time of 15 minutes (that was its allocated time on that particular day). He talked with passion, made me laugh, inspired me into thinking, and at the end of the 15 minutes he was right in the middle of talking.

Then it happened: the moderator of the event (coming from a Germanic culture) wished to keep a tight schedule. He said to George HABER (approximate quote): “you only have one minute left until the end of the 15 minutes”.

What was George HABER’s solution? (detailed)
George HABER did the most unexpected thing: he quickly ended his idea (letting us know the conclusions of that particular thought), he went to the (I’d say) 5-10 remaining slides quickly, briefly explaining in one sentence what’s the slide about, and he finished all this in 30 seconds (anyhow, much less than the allocated one minute).

Why I like his solution?
The solution is great for your own ability to interrupt your own thinking. I didn’t like the way the moderator signaled it’s time to end the presentation (I would have preferred it went on and on), but in the given situation I think it’s the best way to handle it.

He was quick in his actions, he followed the schedule (even if he and I did not agree with the moderator), he managed to finish the presentation, he left us wonder.

So, the solution is great just for being able to control yourself well enough, and put emphasis on the role of the audience and structure, rather than emphasizing your own role as a presenter.

What should you learn from this? Whenever possible, try to follow the schedule more than your own wish to fully present your ideas.

It’s a tough choice, I know, but I do like it.

Any thoughts on this?

1. Quote: “When the storm comes, some build walls, others build windmills”;
Some the bad times as crisis, some see it as an opportunity;

2. The whole economy might fail if the governments do nothing about this;

3. How can the world economy grow?
a. More population in the production; (by now, via globalization, about the whole world is involved in the process, except, maybe countries in Africa)
b. Be more efficient (have a better organization; in the Western countries the growth in these areas is low; they are already having good productivity levels; there’s not that much that IT can do now);

4. There is a progressive erosion of trust in managers – and that affects productivity; How can one be a leader in times of crisis, when you’re not trusted? (main reason for dying as a firefighter – not trusting the leader);

5. Romania is lucky for not being so successful in the past, but the crisis will affect us too;

6. Immediate effect of crisis: quality of consumer relations suffers;

7. What to do in times of crisis:
a. (most companies do this) Cost-cutting (including by firing personnel);
b. (there should be much more emphasis on this) Fight for revenues.

8. How to get revenues? One solution is not to offer price discounts, but instead offer other types of discounts / bonuses (like three products at the price of two; an extra service); After the crisis, it’s much harder to get the prices up & running, but it’s easy to remove the extra benefit;

9. You should also look for a better business model; Can you do something different or better? Do it! (e.g.: Do cross-selling, sell additional services with your products);

10. There will still be companies after the crisis; Who remains? The best of the industry; Be better than your competitors;

Joke:
“Two men are walking through a forest. Suddenly, they see a tiger in the distance, running towards them. They turn and start running away. But then one of them stops, takes some running shoes from his bag, and starts putting them on.

“What are you doing?” says the other man. “Do you think you will run faster than the tiger with those?”

“I don’t have to run faster than the tiger,” he says. “I just have to run faster than you.””

11. At the end of the day, leadership values is what remains out of a business; Do great leadership;

12. There is not one single recipe for success, but one path to failure is getting the philosophy of victims;

13. Spend time with your people; Get your sleeves up;

14. In a company the best people always have the best opportunities; They are typically the first to leave;

15. People don’t leave their jobs, they leave their bosses;

16. It is not important to be the best at predictions, it is important to react fastest in a time of crisis.

That just about wraps it up.

A great idea, which I need to apply better, is to have a mission statement for any project / web site / company I work with. That’s just great.

All in all, it was a very cerebral presentation, lovely to hear, great ideas.

This is the presentation ready for download: How managers add-destroy value.

What’s this blog post about?
1. What’s the basis for comparison?
2. Who is Nigel RISNER?
3. History of events (how I’ve known him)
4. Why do I consider Nigel RISNER to be great?
5. What I’d focus on more if I were Nigel?
6. Get Nigel to motivate you!

1. What’s the basis for comparison?
In most of my college years (four in total), and while working as a freelancer (one year) I’ve been involved in a quite a large number of activities which involved public speaking (other than formal education). I have even created a mailing list dedicated to such events, where I informed my readers. I’ve been a member of two NGOs, and basically I have been always interested in hearing someone speaking. You might want to note the fact that the “trainers” category of professionals I recommend is the largest one (three persons I recommend are trainers). So I can compare Nigel RISNER with quite a few other speakers.

2. Who is Nigel RISNER?
First of all, Nigel RISNER is not only a motivational speaker, but also an author and television presenter. You can find out more about him on his web site. I especially likea nice article of Nigel’s that can be downloaded in a PDF about “Nigel’s top 10 tips for primary business champions”. Good to know.

Luckily, I can show you three live performances of Nigel in front of an audience. First, there’s a brief Ecademy Presentation. Then, there’s a larger presentation on a Ecademy Power Network Meeting (December 2006). To see it, you have to go to the members’ area, after you first register on his web site. Finally, you can view Nigel in a TV show on UK’s Channel 4 “Richard & Judy Show” (it was broadcasted in February 2004). You can see by watching his performances if what I say bellow is right or not.

3. History of events (how I’ve known him)
In October 18, 2007, at the Howard Johnson Hotel in Bucharest, HR Club (see HR Club web site) organizes a conference on “Aligned at Top: the Strategic Promise of the Human Resources”. I had the role of an observer and to be of little help to the organizers (“little” being the right word here). The day starts, the presentations keep on coming, then there’s a cool workshop, a third break. It was 6 PM, the conference day begun at 9:30 AM, and some of the persons went home. But at 6 PM it was time for Nigel RISNER’s training: “How to Create IMPACT as an HR Partner”, and those persons may have lost an opportunity.

Anyhow, in general I am not impressed by a training itself. I go to a training, I may like the way the trainer reacts (like with Jim BAGNOLA), I may like the way the trainer involves the audience (such as Ana-Maria CORLAN), but to actually like the things the trainer says – that’s rare (also rare are the first two examples). So it’s quite unusual for me to be impressed by the actual words. Nigel used in his training three things: verbal communication (it was great; I will present it below; it’s the only training I want to present from everything I’ve seen so far), motivating games (I like them all, but I won’t present any – it spoils the surprise; they are also not so motivating to me; finally, you can view some of them on the videos on his web site), and finally funny clips (I consider ads, and some funny clips to be some of the greatest things one can see on TV or sites like YouTube; but generally speaking an ad and a funny clip is not that of a great thing; I can’t say I didn’t like the clips Nigel presented, it’s just that a clip by itself is not very entertaining to me).

So Nigel starts in a very energetic way, noted that it’s a bit late and even offered tips on how to make the session shorter (so he motivated the audience in a rather unusual way – something like “Let’s keep this short, shall we?”; thus he accepted that his training may be boring to some; it takes guts to say that) .

One of the first things he said fascinated me: how long can a person pay attention? You can see this blog post of mine to understand why attention is important to me. He said that children can pay attention for 37 minutes, while adults only for 20 minutes (this should contradict the bad remark that some successful businessmen of, say, 30 have the intelligence of a 5-years-old).

He then redefined feed-back. To Nigel feed-back is not actually feed-back, but much rather a feed-forward. An observation on one’s activity should only bring the person in a better place: forward.

I noted that Nigel RISNER talked with pauses between sentences (so you have time to recap the last sentence). He put a lot of questions, to keep the awareness level high (I think).

One of the most influential affirmations on the workshop to me: you go to a conference, there are some good presenters, some bad presenters. How do you give feed-back? Is it OK to just use the feed-back form that some event organizers provide? No, it’s much better, Nigel said, to give feed-back in person. I generally considered that a speaker’s time, even after the persentation ended, is much more important than mine, so I almost never gave personal feed-back. Hey! If Nigel says it’s like this, I should do it (I think Nigel has one of the most expensive cost-per-hour of the persons I’ve met; if he’s a successful trainer, and if he says that one should give personal feed-back, then yes, I really should do it). And for the next months, at each presentation I went I gave positive feed-back (including reasons) whenever possible (I won’t wait at a long line of persons wanting to talk to you just to say you were great and why). I didn’t gave negative feed-back, because it’s hard to change anything since most of the time it can be resumed in a few words: “You are boring me” (I can give some easier-to-change motives, but still these things are not easy to be said and the results are not always for the best).

What did he focus on next? (here comes shock again) Awareness. This is yet another text of mine presenting why awareness is important to me. He noted that while everybody is in the room physically, not everybody is focused on what’s happening.

Again he says something on attention: if you write the texts in the conference (like I was doing), you are likely not to pay attention on the speech itself. This hugely challenged my previous knowledge on this: you retain just a few things while watching television, more things if you read texts, and even more things if you read texts and take notes in the same time. I tried to be aware on the “don’t take notes on conferences, just be involved” affirmation on his seminar and, to my amazement, he was right. Unfortunately, I can’t apply this knowledge to other conferences. My mind easily gets away. I do note just when interested by something, I don’t just note every word I hear.

To make things more enjoyable, he used some funny videos (as funny as a video can be – which is not that funny, to me) .

He made a quick game on awareness (very cool game).

Nigel also presented a way to handle the “I don’t know” answer. He said that if someone tells you so, you can say “If you would know the answer, what it would be?”

Then a new game on why are people afraid of acting.

At one point he says: “I’ve worked in prisons. I know some familiar faces in here.” Also a text similar to this: “After they are 12, people are responsible for their faces” (by Abraham LINCOLN, referring to people smiling). Also: “You’re either in tense, or in past tense”.

Another game was aimed on positive thinking effect on muscles.

From time to time he said “Does this make sense?”

He ended with: “When all is said and done, more is said than done”.

4. Why do I consider Nigel RISNER to be great?
1. When his presentation begun, it took him just a few seconds to get people’s attention; Everything, and I mean everything, on his training had attention-helpers: lots of questions, energetic speaking, provocative affirmations, humor, interaction, audience involvement, call for action, clips; I have yet to participate in a training where my focus was so intense; Everything else being equal, after a workshop you hold on to memories where you were most involved;
2. The subject he picked were of very high interest to me – attention, awareness, human action, positive thinking, even human resources;
3. The training took about 35 minutes. I don’t think I ever changed so many patterns of thinking in such a short time frame;
4. Good humor;
5. (related to 4.) Good logic & intelligence;
6. I left the seminar with the impression that he honestly wanted to help the people around him (due to his actions); It was not all a brand image, he actually applied what he thought was right.

5. What I’d focus on more if I were Nigel?
First of all, I want to present you a small text:
“The shaper is a task-focused leader who abounds in nervous energy, who has a high motivation to achieve and for whom winning is the name of the game. The shaper is committed to achieving ends and will ‘shape’ others into achieving the aims of the team. He or she will challenge, argue or disagree and will display aggression in the pursuit of goal achievement. Two or three shapers in a group, according to Belbin, can lead to conflict, aggravation and in-fighting.” This is from the Belbin Team Inventory page on Wikipedia. I am familiar with the characteristics of the shaper, because it best defines me.

One of Nigel RISNER’s advices (other than people should smile, which he didn’t seem to do) was to be comfortable with a state of discomfort.

I can’t say wether Nigel is a Shaper (according to the Belbin test) or not. I will say that on the single conflict in the workshop (a man didn’t like a personal joke on him), Nigel said: “Do you think I came all the way from UK to argue with you?” (so even in a conflict, he still challenged the situation). I will also say that although it was the best learning experience I’ve had, I’m not sure everybody in the room felt fine with being provoked.

So, if I were Nigel, I’d just be aware on the fact that shaping others leads to discomfort. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, just something to be aware of.

6. Get Nigel to motivate you!
On his contact page on nigelrisner.net web site, you find information like phone, email, contact form, fax and postal address.

You should first check the services page on nigelrisner.net web site, to see what Nigel can do.

What impression did this blog post left on you? Please leave a comment below.