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In Order to Truly Encourage Someone, You Also Have to Pay Attention and Listen

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CJ Mahaney, from his book Humility: True Greatness:

Paul teaches us that encouragement is the effect of appropriate words — “as fits the occasion” (Eph 4:29) — appropriate to the person I’m seeking to serve.

To effectively encourage or edify a person I must know something about that individual, which comes through studying the person, asking questions, and carefully listening.

That’s what we’ll do if we’re trying to truly serve others with our words and not simply impress them. From what we learn about others, we’re able to answer this question: What do they need now? Is it counsel? Exhortation? Warning? Comfort? Forgiveness? All of the above?

And here’s a helpful expansion on what that looks like:

In 1 Thessalonians 5:14, Paul urges us, “Admonish the idle, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient with them all.”

So we have to walk carefully here. Are they weak? Because it would be unwise for us to admonish the weak, and just as unwise to help those who are idle.

So what is their present circumstance? Are they experiencing a test of adversity or a test of prosperity? What season of life are they in? No matter what their situation, there’s something we can say to bring them encouragement.

How to Increase the Emotional Intelligence of Your Email Messages

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A good article on the emotional intelligence of email at the 99% by Scott McDowell. Here’s the first part:

Earlier this year I attended a presentation with Daniel Goleman, author of Social Intelligence and godfather of the field of Emotional Intelligence. According to Goleman, there’s a negativity bias to email – at the neural level.

In other words, if an email’s content is neutral, we assume the tone is negative.  In face-to-face conversation, the subject matter and its emotional content is enhanced by tone of voice, facial expressions, and nonverbal cues.  Not so with digital communication.

Technology creates a vacuum that we humans fill with negative emotions by default, and digital emotions can escalate quickly (see: flame wars). The barrage of email can certainly fan the flames. In an effort to be productive and succinct, our communication may be perceived as clipped, sarcastic, or rude. Imagine the repercussions for creative collaboration.

He goes on to give six tips for making sure your email messages communicate the right tone.

10 Things Google Has Found to be True

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A good summary of Google’s philosophy from it’s website, which encapsulates some helpful principles in general for understanding the changes that have been brought about by the internet (and which many companies still haven’t caught up with):

  1. Focus on the user and all else will follow.
  2. It’s best to do one thing really, really well.
  3. Fast is better than slow.
  4. Democracy on the web works.
  5. You don’t need to be at your desk to need an answer.
  6. You can make money without doing evil.
  7. There’s always more information out there.
  8. The need for information crosses all borders.
  9. You can be serious without a suit.
  10. Great just isn’t good enough.

How Information Overload Affects Decision Making

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A recent article from Newsweek. Here’s the summary:

The Twitterization of our culture has revolutionized our lives, but with an unintended consequence—our overloaded brains freeze when we have to make decisions.

And this is very interesting:

The booming science of decision making has shown that more information can lead to objectively poorer choices, and to choices that people come to regret. It has shown that an unconscious system guides many of our decisions, and that it can be sidelined by too much information. And it has shown that decisions requiring creativity benefit from letting the problem incubate below the level of awareness—something that becomes ever-more difficult when information never stops arriving.