In this photograph of Fatma, you get a sense of her presence. She is one of the few people I know who has a balance of both magnetizing in and radiating out. Her voice is lyrical, musical, calming, and exquisitely beautiful. It is light and rich at the same time. Her voice pulls one in, like smelling a flower. And, as you can see in this picture, her eyes radiate out. She bathes us in her presence.

Rather than thinking of people as introverted or extroverted, I think of people as either radiating out or magnetizing in. Both are powerful ways of being in the world. And all of us can play with both energies.

Personal presence is personal. Unique. And should be. It’s what makes people forever fascinating. Nobody should try to be less themselves. And though it’s wonderful to play with many behaviors in order to stretch ourselves or break habits, it’s also important to embrace our essential presence.

Read on for more on radiating out and magnetizing in…

Generation Z has taught me the beautiful acceptance of making a mistake and taking responsibility in the simple phrase, “My bad!”

“My bad!” is often thrown off in a casual and light way. It means, “I made a mistake. I take responsibility.”

Growing up I internalized the message that making mistakes was shameful. Working in the theater demanded that I let go of this message and embrace messing up, without being derailed. I learned that striving for perfection only serves to block creativity.

AND, I still feel a twinge of shame and fear when I make a mistake. I can get defensive and rigid instead of being fluid. How I wish I had the good-natured acceptance I see in teens to acknowledge …read on for more on integrating mistakes…

I follow the work of New Yorker cartoonist, Liza Donnelly, and have been watching her drawings of tiny, quotidian moments in the lives of New Yorkers. This drawing arrested me with both its simplicity and its detail: the tilt of the dog’s head, paying attention to Liza as she draws, the man, eating a sandwich. She writes:

“To me, life is about the small things, the individuals. New York City is made up of so many wonderful individuals, in fact it’s what makes the city.”

The other day when I was trying to meditate, instead of letting my thoughts float by, I was caught by a deep longing to have work like Liza’s, work that demands that I simply stay still and pay attention—to be absorbed by others, by the poignant beauty that makes us human. Then I thought, but of course it does! Everyone is allowed to, invited to, pay attention to the world around us. My work is all about connecting with others. How can we possibly connect with others if we don’t take them in?

Read on for more on paying attention…we are all invited to witness our world with wonder.

Have you ever felt strangely insulted when someone voices their concern for you? Even if something is wrong. And especially when things are great!

“Are you OK? You look/seem (exhausted, like you’ve gained weight, worried, pale, etc.).”

As a mother of two teens, I find myself falling into this concern/insult trap far too frequently.

Questions like, “Have you got your (class schedule, phone, homework, lunch, mask, etc.)?” are really about my own anxiety and only serve to make my kids feel insulted, like I don’t trust them to either take care of things themselves or to recover when they don’t take care of things.

In their book, When Women Stop Hating Their Bodies, Carol Munter and Jane Hirschmann use the phrase “speaking in code” to refer to the well-meaning friends and relatives whose statements about us say more about their own anxiety than our reality.

In order to break the code, we can:

1) look beneath the words to find the intention

2) read on…

This is Lauren between takes. It’s been a long day, the stakes are high, she’s been preparing for many weeks. She’s breathing, engaged, and ready. She is what we refer to in Nia (a movement technique) as Raw: Relaxed, Alert, Waiting.

What can we do to create that Raw?

This week we create and “layer in” a tiny ritual to practice before any heightened, challenging, difficult, high-risk, high-expectation, anxiety-provoking, deeply meaningful, presentation or interaction. The goal is to integrate the ritual in the way James Clear outlines in his book, Atomic Habits, so that it is automatic. In my life, I use the same ritual before any client interaction. I set up the space, check my tech, and without thinking, I stretch (body warm-up), make strange noises (vocal warm-up), and center myself with a few deep breaths.

For your own ritual, include a little bit of each of these:

1) Stretching….

Read on…

Anyone here fallen asleep during a production of Hamlet? I may have…Certainly the text is pretty extraordinary. So why might someone be bored or not able to connect to this most human drama? Most likely be cause the story is only told verbally and not inhabited physically. There is no coherence between the words, the expression, the body, and the intention. And haven’t we all experienced the strange pit in our stomachs when someone’s words do not match their expression? Maybe they tell us that everything is “just fine,” while tears pour down their cheeks. Or that they are not angry, though their jaws are clenched tight. Or that they’re listening while scanning social media. When our physical communication is incongruent with our words, the other, the audience, the group, feels that tension. They hear one message and receive another.

Most of the time we communicate without words at all—just gestures, expressions, sighs…read on for ways to find congruence…

Take a look at this image of a flower by the photographer Emily Scher.

Now I ask you: Is this flower pretty? Yes or no. It’s hard to answer, isn’t it? The question simply doesn’t allow for an answer that feels right. The flower is so much more than pretty. The spirit of this image, to me, is ineffable and cannot be constrained in a binary response. To you, it might be different.

When there is no true or real or correct answer to a question, we can answer, “mu.”

I first heard the term, “mu” on On Being with Krista Tippett. She was interviewing Padraig O’Tuama…

Read more on embracing mu…

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I talk too much. I know it. Not all the time, thank goodness. And I also know my triggers: anxiety, being full of myself, having too much fun, and simply forgetting to include others. Dr. Jim Coan, a UVa psychology professor who studies the psychophysiology of attachment, associates over-talking with dominating. Yikes.

This week, we take note when we find ourselves talking too much, forgetting to listen.

And then we take these steps…read on.

To have truly generative and creative meetings, we need to put our analytic minds aside and open ourselves up to what scientist and improvisational actor,  Uri Alon calls, “the cloud.” Easier said than done! But there are a few tricks we can take from the world of theater to set the stage for creativity, even in the board room.

1) Set up the meeting by reminding everyone …read on.

Have you ever found yourself saying, “Sorry! Sorry!” out of habit or anxiety? Certainly, I have. This is not so much a true apology for harm done, but a strange way of both diminishing ourselves and calling attention to ourselves. And it does not serve us or the situation. In fact, it undermines both.

This week, take note if you find yourself apologizing for simply being, doing your job, speaking up, making a trivial mistake. Resist the urge to apologize. Apologizing in these instances disrupts and undermines. Instead, graciously move forward. If you are unsure of the difference between a real and needed apology and an habitual or anxious, “sorry,” ask yourself, “Would Joan of Arc apologize for this?”

Read on for how actors recover when they forget a line…

Why do we communicate?

Sometimes, admittedly, we speak just to have a sense of self, as Harriet Lerner reminds us in her wonderful book, The Dance of Anger (more on that in another post). Sometimes we speak out-loud to figure something out—think of Hamlet’s “to be or not to be” soliloquy. But most of the time, we communicate to ignite a give-and-take, to be in relationship with the other, the audience, friend, partner, team.

This week, include your audience, ask yourself…read on…

Last week we talked about the simplest, sanest, most appropriate way to respond to any compliment. As my father said:

“You look the person in the eye and say, ‘Thank you.’ That’s all. No excuses, no eye-rolling, no putting yourself down. You just say ‘thank you.’ Full stop.”

The same goes for receiving gifts. A simple thank you, and then a thank you card, is just perfect. As my father also, wisely said: “Gifts are for the giver.” So give them the pleasure of your gratitude.

Certainly, there are many reasons that others may offer a gift: a thank you, a show of appreciation, an expression of love.

And sometimes, there is an expectation of reciprocation, something owed in return. Of course, in that case it is not really a gift, which is freely given. Simply saying, “thank you” creates a boundary, a finality. A receiver owes nothing, but thanks.

What if, you ask, you don’t like/already have the gift? You say, …read on…

I have a vivid memory:

We’re sitting outside eating dinner in that golden hour when the sun makes the world look like it’s been splashed with honey. My father gives me a compliment. I don’t even recall what it was. I just know that I batted it away, as I’d been taught somehow, somewhere, maybe TV? How did Mrs. Brady take a compliment? Mary Tyler Moore?

I already knew the script:

THEM:“Katie, you look so/sound so/are so_______. Your ______ is so _________.”

ME:“No, I’m not. It isn’t. It was just lucky. Did you notice that crack/mistake/mess?”

That night, my father gave me a different script:

Read on…

Questions that Connect Us

Jun 30

Written By Kate Bennis

In the Fall of 2016 I visited our dear family friends, Joan Goldsmith and her husband, Ken Cloke. I was trying to make sense of a world where all the things I valued (empathy, connection, representation, equity, equality, justice) seemed to be rejected by so many of my country-people. The cognitive dissonance left me bereft and lacking the capacity to see the complexity of the moment: everything and everyone seemed to be “good” or “bad,” “right” or “wrong.”

Ken caught me up short in a conversation that reframed everything. He said, “The trouble is that we are asking the wrong questions. The questions we’re asking only have polarizing answers.” I was flooded with examples: “Who did you vote for?” “Do you believe in God?” “Do you support abortion rights?” “Do you support gun reform?” “Where do you get your news?”

These questions have only one-word answers. There is no room for a complex human being to reside in those answers.

Ken guided me to ask a very different question, a question that invites infinite answers, a question that has framed our humanity, given us meaning, culture, and connection.

This week, think about the questions we ask. Are they likely to polarize us? Or connect us? This week, we play with questions that invite connection.

Read on for Ken’s question, a question that cracks us open…

In every part of my professional life, from actor to writer, from therapist and communication coach, I have had to practice the skill of putting myself firmly into a stranger’s shoes without judgement. I must see the world through their particular truths, stories, and experiences. When I find myself judging my character or client—if I just don’t like them, if I simply can’t put my own filters aside—then I can’t do the job. In fact, these are the characters and clients who have the most to teach me. It is a challenge of humility. And it is transformative.

This week, play with empathy by putting yourself without judgement into someone else’s shoes. Read on…

We, all of us, have that choice to fall in love with the mundane, with others, with nature, with the world. And when we do that, we bring a sense of warmth and radiance into every room.

This week, make the choice to fall in love and watch how others bloom in your presence. What kind of love? How do we find it? What does it do? Read on…

Have you ever given a talk, told a story, or had the same conversation one too many times? Although I will always push people to do Extreme Preparation, there are certainly situations when the content is so old it might become stale. In these moments, we can easily disconnect from our audience or partner or team and just, “phone it in” as we say in the theater. Meaning, we turn on the inner tape recorder and get back into bed mentally.

What are the skills we practice to keep communication alive? We trick ourselves into being present by changing things up, adding an element of abandon and play, welcoming disaster, moving to a new place physically, using a new intention, and, as always, reveling in the unknown that every person and audience brings.

This week, keep communication fresh by inviting in the unknown!

Here are my favorite examples of keeping it fresh! Read on…

While training to be a facilitator at the Ariel Group, I noticed Belle and Kathy, the founders, would draw a line down the center the page to create two columns as they took notes on our work.

On the right they would take notes on “what’s working,” and on the left, “things to work on.”

This simple structure helped them, as trainers and coaches, do two things:

1) Consciously look for things that are working. Like spying a snake in the grass, our tendency is to scan for problems and things to fix. Consciously reminding ourselves to scan for what’s wonderful, what’s working, what is rare and precious in our fellow humans, in their writing, in their presentations, in their personal presence, in their communication, creativity, and leadership, does many things…read on for all five tips for giving feedback.

Many years ago I was lucky enough to act in a production with the marvelous British comedienne, Frances Cuka. I adored her. She was a consummate pro and had been acting professionally since she was a young child on the radio, as a teen originating the role of Jo in A Taste of Honey, and then many years in the theater and on BBC television.

The day the rave reviews of her performance came out, I knocked on her dressing room door where she sat drawing on her eyebrows, resplendent in her costume of green silk, red wig, and satin heels.

“Frances! Have you seen the reviews?”

She smiled slightly. “No, darling. No need, thank you.”

I gushed, “But they loved you!”

Frances turned towards me with kind patience:

“Oh, darling. If you believe the good reviews, then you have to believe the bad reviews, too.”

This one line sings out as the truest thing I ever heard. And in some small way, it set me free from the need for external validation and gave me the tools to view criticism with the same balanced scrutiny.

But it begs the question, if we don’t take in the good reviews (feedback, comments, compliments), and we don’t take in the bad reviews (feedback, comments, criticism), then how do we know how we’re doing? How can we be self-aware and know what to work on? How do we grow?

This week we re-think receiving feedback,: who to ask, when to take it, when to solicit it, and when to let it go. Read on…

“To be truly effective, you must speak with such intensified and exalted naturalness that your auditors will never dream that you have been trained.”

--Dale Carnegie

Many people believe that authenticity involves complete transparency, blunt honesty, and talking about our wayward bodily functions in public. This nightmarish stream-of-consciousness behavior is not only destructive for the speaker, but the listeners may never recover. No, that is not authenticity. Authentic communication includes awareness of the other person and awareness of our own impact.

And though I agree with much of what Adam Grant writes, I disagree with his definition that: “Authenticity means erasing the gap between what you firmly believe inside and what you reveal to the outside world” (New York Times June 4th 2016). I also disagree with the idea that “being yourself” is the same thing as being authentic. I would call that inappropriate sharing, not reading the room, and putting our own personal needs over the needs of others.  Great communicators know the difference.

Then what IS authenticity?…Read on.