Most arguments, misunderstandings, confusion, and aggressive behavior are triggered by negative words, phrases, and attitudes. In situations of confrontation and controversy, at least one side of the argument needs the negativity of the other to continue operating effectively and pushing the argument forward. Eliminate that negative energy, and progress can actually be made, or a more peaceful resolution can be sought.

It's crucial to understand just how powerful this concept [focusing on outcomes] is. Fundamentally, it recognizes that everyone owns yesterday, last week, last month, and last year, from their own point of reference. That ownership is permanent. Even given a limitless amount of discussion, the past will remain as it was, owned by those who were there.

But no one owns the future—the next 15 minutes, the next day, the next week, the next month, the next year. Therefore, when we choose to be outcome-focused, we are choosing to enter, live, and build a future together.

When you’re not caught up in being right, then you have the ability to listen when an issue comes up - and I mean really listen.

Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers.

Many managers rely on deliberate cognition—that is, the ability of the human mind to process and analyze information—and an appeal to reason. By contrast, insurgents realize that audiences rely on automatic cognition, or shortcuts, to make sense of the world. Hence, they use symbols to communicate their point of view.

If strategy is indeed an invention – just one story about the future among many – then it is always contestable. Leaders must therefore persuade others of the compelling wisdom and superiority of the story they have chosen. They must, in fact, make the story seductive; in selling their strategy, they must, to put it bluntly, treat employees like ‘lovers’ instead of ‘prostitutes.’

It’s not easy to entice people into sharing an image of the future. After all, strategies in most industries today call on people to commit to something new and different, to step away from the security of what has worked in the past. This is never an easy sell, even for the most seasoned leaders. Like venturing into a new relationship, persuading others to share your vision works best when you issue an invitation instead of a command.

Don’t write merely to be understood. Write so that you cannot possibly be misunderstood.

Continually ask yourself: 'Why the hell should anyone want to read what I am writing?' If you can't give at least three good reasons, stop writing and start thinking. Otherwise, you will be wasting everyone's time - principally your own.

If we...create pictures [by] breaking down any problem and its corresponding picture into distinct "who," "what," "how much," "where," and "when" elements, we can convey the "how" and "why" to anyone in a way they will understand.

Ultimately, it is the quality of the company's dialogue that will determine how it receives the incoming flow of rapidly changing information. Whether the information confuses and overwhelms, or informs and inspires will have a direct impact on the decision-making process, and by extension, on the performance of the company.

Bad news isn't bad wine. It doesn't improve with age.

Dialogue...is the single-most important factor underlying the productivity and growth of the knowledge worker...dialogue shapes...the corporate culture...faster and more permanently than any reward system, structural change, or vision statement.

Candor can be measured by the question, "How close are our public conversations to our private ones? How well do the water cooler conversations line up with the conversations we have in public meetings?"

An old rule of thumb suggests asking yourself before you speak: Is it true; is it kind; is it useful? If it is not all three, you have not found a skillful way to communicate.

Very few organisations can match the highly sophisticated five senses of humans. Many companies do not listen to their environment; they simply wait to speak. This means that 80 per cent of information flows outwards from the organization and only 20 per cent flows inwards. For humans, these figures are reversed.

Companies should have a team of "information-gathering personnel" who are constantly feeding information into the highest levels of the organization.

Communication...always makes demands. It always demands that the recipient become somebody, do something, believe something. It always appeals to motivation.

While the mind looks for proof, the heart looks for engagement. While the mind looks for information, the heart looks for passion. While the mind looks for answers, the heart looks for experience. The mind makes a decision, and it's the heart that makes a commitment.

When the first person said, "A picture is worth a thousand words," he or she permanently warped our understanding of pictures. The point of a good picture isn't to eliminate words, it's to replace as many as possible so that the words we do use are the important ones. (Rather than spending time verbally describing coordinates, positions, percentages, qualities and quantities, if we simply show them, we have more time to talk about what they mean.)

People need something familiar to relate to in order to gain a sense of comfort with the new, the strange. Creative ideas take the facts, feelings and everyday fictions we all share and find new ways to connect them. By making the new and strange seem familiar, you not only establish an opening for your audience to interpret your idea, you create a backdrop against which the edge of your idea will shine.

In describing something new, something beyond most people’s vision, you need to create a mental map for them to follow you and your idea to its successful conclusion. The art of making a mental map is to hook your audience with what they know and then explain what they don’t know. Start with a construct that everyone is familiar with and add to it.

So how do you create a construct for something that people have never come across before? Make up a new word. It cuts through the clutter and gives everyone a new word that they can agree on. If we called [something familiar] we would probably find that a lot of people have their own notions of what [that word] means.

In all great storylines, the author creates a problem, and then solves a problem.

Giving feedback is a tricky business, and nearly 40% of feedback programs actually demotivate people. There is a skill to be learned here, and there are two things we can do to give feedback that's motivating, accurate, and tactful. The first thing is to give feedback that is concrete, as opposed to feedback that's about the person's character. You want to talk at the behavioral level. Feedback should not feel like a character attack, but rather a helpful suggestion. The other thing is to not only point out the bad, but point out the good, at a behavioral level.

So when you give people feedback, give them feedback that's both positive and negative. If all the feedback is just negative, negative, negative, they might develop some psychic calluses against that feedback.

The last thing I would mention, though, is that feedback becomes more risky and the consequences are higher if you receive it only rarely. Instead, to the extent that feedback is a small event that happens frequently, every piece of feedback carries less of a threat. You don't want managers and employees to be giving everybody feedback every five minutes, but giving feedback often and in small doses removes or reduces the threat level associated with it. You might want to spend more time with employees, giving them explicit goals for the week, the month, and the year.

PowerPoint has a dark side. It squeezes ideas into a preconceived format, organizing and condensing not only your material but-inevitably, it seems-your way of thinking about and looking at that material. A complicated, nuanced issue invariably is reduced to headings and bullets. And if that doesn't stultify your thinking about the subject, it may have that effect on your audience-which is at the mercy of your presentation.

The Curse of Knowledge says that once we know something, it becomes hard for us to imagine what it was like not to know it. And that, in turn, makes us communicate to others like speakers of a foreign language. We forget to translate.

You need a story to displace a story. Metaphors and stories are far more potent (alas) than ideas; they are also easier to remember and more fun to read. Ideas come and go, stories stay.