Be Five Percent Better

You might not be the world’s best communicator or conversationalist, but there’s probably no need to be. Even a few key improvements can produce surprisingly helpful results.

Improve doesn’t mean fix. It means making things a little better.

Most of us sometimes wish we could better understand what others need understood, more easily make ourselves fully understood, better manage our mindsets and attitudes in order to confidently discuss and resolve differences, navigate conversational complexity and generate real interpersonal collaboration.

But people who are prepared to examine, assess and continually improve those aspects of their own behaviours are rare, because the process involves an unusual level of self-reflection and self-discipline.

So I sometimes ask, What if you set out to improve your practices by five percent?

“Improve” doesn’t mean “fix.” It means making things a little better. Improvement is incremental. Once you make things 5 percent better, it’s easier to make them 10 percent better. Then it’s easier to make things 20 percent better, and so on. [Steven Stosny]

Those willing to do this soon make rewarding progress as they discover there’s no need for perfection. A more realistic aim is gradual mastery through everyday habit-forming. Each new habit acquired makes another one easier to develop.

Mastery

Mastery is not a function of genius or talent, it’s developed through focus, guidance, practise and action-reflection learning.

Masters of any discipline (those with comprehensive skill) hold clear ideals and high standards they strive to follow consistently. They sometimes fall short in their application but discover their lapses and recover the conventions of mastery sooner than novices do.

They understand that because their confidence and best or most sophisticated interpersonal practices are necessary under challenging circumstances – for example, when differences peak and emotions run high – they must be developed under easier circumstances, every day.

Incremental mastery

Although you might need skilled help to identify your most necessary refinements, many productive small-step developments will become obvious once you compare your current habits (practices and mindsets) with useful ideals, real-life illustrations and practical guidelines for achieving them. [1]

The revelation of competency gaps may be uncomfortable (as is the case in the early stages of most transformational learning) and the effort needed for lasting change can be daunting.  But those insights can provide incentive and direction for continuous small-step enhancements if you are sufficiently committed to making progress.

Safe-to-fail experiments

You could then set three achievable targets and begin introducing safe-to-fail experiments – small-scale changes designed to produce desirable progress while limiting undesirable outcomes – to consider and learn from their effects. Once you’ve bedded-in some enhancements, you might set another three targets, and so on.

[1] My new book is designed to facilitate these processes.  You’ll find it as many others have, a productive guide to self-assessing interpersonal dialogue behaviours and attitudes, and a workbook for making and maintaining incremental progress.

There are reviewer comments about the book here, and others at Amazon.com or Amazon.com.au. Better priced purchases (NZ only) can be made direct from me.

See also: 

Do You Respond or React to Criticism?; Our Own Part in Conversational Problems; Don’t Take it Personally; Collaboration, Cooperation & Competition; Skill Least Taught and Mastered; Drawing the Line at Criticism.