Jeff Cassman, Author at Jeff Cassman

2 Easy Ways To Make Memories That Lasts A Lifetime

Why some memories last a lifetime and others are quickly forgotten.

Memories that last a lifetime need to be linked to lots of other memories, plus they need to be a bit weird.

These are the two key components of memories that have the potential to last a lifetime.

Professor Per Sederberg, an expert on memory, thinks the idea of peculiarity is vital to understanding memory:

“You have to build a memory on the scaffolding of what you already know, but then you have to violate the expectations somewhat.

It has to be a little bit weird.”

This ‘scaffolding’ means connections to other memories.

For example, memories of our childhoods are linked to lots of other memories about our families and the places we lived.

And which are the stories we remember best — the ones that stand out?

Of course, it is the ones where something unusual happened: when Grandad told you he was in a band years ago and astonished you by playing the guitar.

It is when you were cycling home and happened to pass your mother in the street wearing a dragon costume and holding a cricket bat.

How memories are stored and retrieved

In one of Professor Sederberg’s studies people wore smartphones around their necks for a month.

These automatically took photos at random intervals.

Later, they relived these memories in the brain scanner so researchers could see where and how the memories were stored and retrieved.

Think of all your memories as being like a vast network, Professor Sederberg said:

“If we want to be able to retrieve a memory later, you want to build a rich web.

It should connect to other memories in multiple ways, so there are many ways for our mind to get back to it.

You want to have a lot of different ways to get to any individual memory.”

Memorable experiences often happen in familiar contexts, but have some peculiar, unpredictable aspect, said Professor Sederberg:

“Those peculiar experiences are the things that stand out, that make a more lasting memory.”

This is why some memories last a lifetime and others are quickly forgotten.

Professor Sederberg was speaking at the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity in France on June 19. The study referenced was published in the journal PNAS (Nielson et al., 2015).

Author: Jeremy Dean

Psychologist, Jeremy Dean, PhD is the founder and author of PsyBlog. He holds a doctorate in psychology from University College London and two other advanced degrees in psychology. He has been writing about scientific research on PsyBlog since 2004. He is also the author of the book “Making Habits, Breaking Habits” (Da Capo, 2013) and several ebooks. View all posts by Jeremy Dean

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10 Practices for the Leader as Coach

Leaders who tell people what to do can’t coach. The use of authority creates conformity.

The leader as coach ignites vitality.

10 practices for the leader as coach:

#1. Learn and grow.

Know-it-alls make lousy coaches. Self-development is the first development.

#2. Notice.

Command and control leaders are blinded by their agenda.

The leader as coach notices:

Shifts in energy. What causes energy to go up? What drains?
Positive and negative emotions.
Recurring issues. Patterns signal character. Solving the same problem over and over means people are stuck.

The leader as coach means others are the center of attention.

#3. Ask more than tell.

Curiosity drives coaching. Knowing gets in the way. Even if you think you know, ask questions like you don’t.

#4. Provide space for response.

Silence is the space where change begins. Don’t interrupt a person who is thinking.

#5. Don’t compete.

Don’t out-do, one-up, or make yourself the center of attention. Good coaches are salt and pepper, not the meal.

#6. Have your own coach.

If you want to coach have a coach. It’s hypocritical to think others could you use coaches but not you.

#7. Challenge bull crap.

Challenge one-sided perceptions, inconsistencies, and helplessness.

#8. Move conversations from aspiration to action.

Success distills into simple behaviors that produce desired results. Talking about results is easy. Describing behaviors leads to action.

#9. Turn toward the future.

Coaching is forward-facing. You aren’t a psychologist or an analyst. You begin where people are and build the future.

#10. Feel optimistic.

Coaches believe growth is probable. You can’t coach someone you don’t believe in.

Bonus: Hold people accountable for the goals they set for themselves.

Which of the above practices do you find most useful for the leader as coach?

What would you add to the list?

Still curious:

Solution Saturday: How to Coach to Build Confidence

8 in 10 Struggle Holding People Accountable

Successful Leaders Are Great Coaches (hbr.org)

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How Changing Voice Pitch Affects Your Social Status And Attractiveness (M)

From the boardrooms to the bedroom, your voice pitch makes a surprising difference.

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Author: Jeremy Dean

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Chew the Gristle: Taking Responsibility Like a Leader

Churchill said, “The price of greatness is responsibility.”

Taking responsibility is the warmth of sunrise. Without it life loses its melody. Avoiding responsibility is tumbling into the grave.

You lose it when you don’t own it. When you don’t own your marriage, it dies. When you don’t take responsibility for your team, it flounders. Taking responsibility is vitality.

Taking responsibility:

Failure you don’t own returns like a nagging pimple. Own it or repeat it.

Take charge of your responsibilities before someone else does. Own it or lose it. Face the disappointment you cause others. Don’t explain why you’re mediocre. You insult yourself when you trample the people who trust you.

Taking responsibility means chewing the gristle when it’s easier to spit it out.

Responsibility for failure:

It’s self-centered to take failure personally. “See how I’m struggling.” You lower yourself when you beat yourself down. Lift yourself and inspire others.

Say three things when you fail.

I’m learning to…. (Remember you are always learning. You have never learned anything.)
I’m learning not to….
Next time I’ll….

Excuses:

Someone said an excuse is the skin of a reason wrapped in a lie. No excuses. No blaming.

An excuse validates failure and drags incompetence into the present. Everyone who tries fails. Our trouble is we don’t fail enough. Lack of failure empties life of vitality.

An excuse is another way of saying don’t change anything. Don’t expect much from me.

Fear of failure:

Those who don’t fear failure – at least a little – end up failing. A little fear brings you to life.

Fear of failure is concern for reputation. You don’t want to feel embarrassed. More important you don’t want to disappoint yourself.

What idea in today’s post can you carry with you through the day?

What would you add to today’s post?

Still curious:

How to Navigate the Gap Between Responsibility and Ability

An Elegant Accountability Practice for Today

Developing Personal Accountability – Taking Responsibility to Get Ahead

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Will a Call Simulator Help Your Agent Training? Not Really

Call simulators can be nice tools when you want to provide supplemental training and practice for your agents, but they can’t replace the hands-on experience they’d get from dealing with real customers. In other words, call simulators work, but they’re not very practical for training purposes—especially in the long term.

Instead, the best call center training stems from having your agents handle live calls, evaluating those calls, and offering them constructive feedback in areas they can or need to improve.

If you’re tunnel-visioned about using a call simulator, one of the best times to do so is during the recruiting process for new hires. This way, you can test a candidate’s performance in a mock situation that won’t have any effect on your actual customers.

However, the way a candidate behaves and reacts in a simulation is not always indicative of how they’ll perform on a real call, so it’s important to use call simulators sparingly, if at all.

Call Simulator: A Detailed Look

The typical call center simulation software can integrate with your existing solution and offer screening, hiring, and assessment modules to test the aptitude, personality, and technical skills of aspiring candidates.

Usually, a call simulator can be built right into your call center architecture, but depending on the solution you may have to access the mock assessments remotely. In this second case, the simulator software lives outside of your center and can be thought of as a separate training course.

The most modern call simulators have AI-generated voices, scripts, or both—with or without the help of a certified trainer—that can adapt to multiple departments and verticals such as marketing, software development, sales, accounting, and customer support.

In practice, a mock call presents the candidate or agent with a scripted sequence that they must treat like a real…

Why The Sales Team Hates Your Leads (And How To Fix It)

You ask the head of marketing how the team is doing and get a giant thumbs up.

“Our MQLs are up!”

“Website conversion rates are at an all-time high!”

“Email click rates have never been this good!”

But when you ask the head of sales the same question, you get the response that echoes across sales desks worldwide — the leads from marketing suck.

If you’re in this boat, you’re not alone. The issue of “leads from marketing suck” is a common situation in most organizations. In a HubSpot survey, only 9.1% of salespeople said leads they received from marketing were of very high quality.

Why do sales teams hate marketing-generated leads? And how can marketers help their sales peers fall in love with their leads?

Let’s dive into the answers to these questions. Then, I’ll give you my secret lead gen kung-fu to ensure your sales team loves their marketing leads.

Marketers Must Take Ownership

“I’ve hit the lead goal. If sales can’t close them, it’s their problem.”

How many times have you heard one of your marketers say something like this? When your teams are heavily siloed, it’s not hard to see how they get to this mindset — after all, if your marketing metrics look strong, they’ve done their part, right?

Not necessarily.

The job of a marketer is not to drive traffic or even leads. The job of the marketer is to create messaging and offers that lead to revenue. Marketing is not a 100-meter sprint — it’s a relay race. The marketing team runs the first leg and hands the baton to sales to sprint to the finish.

via GIPHY

To make leads valuable beyond the vanity metric of watching your MQLs tick up, you need to segment and nurture them. Screen the leads to see if they meet the parameters of your ideal customer profile. If yes, nurture them to find out how close their intent is to a sale. Only then should you pass the leads to sales.

Lead Quality Control is a Bitter Pill that Works

Tighter quality control might reduce your overall MQLs. Still,it will ensure only the relevant leads go to sales, which is a win for your team and your organization.

This shift will require a mindset shift for your marketing team: instead of living and dying by the sheer number of MQLs, you need to create a collaborative culture between sales and marketing. Reinforce that “strong” marketing metrics that result in poor leads going to sales aren’t really strong at all.

When you foster this culture of collaboration and accountability, it will be easier for the marketing team to receive feedback from sales about lead quality without getting defensive.

Remember, the sales team is only holding marketing accountable so the entire organization can achieve the right results. It’s not sales vs marketing — it’s sales and marketing working…

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A Major Personality Trait That Indicates High IQ

People with this personality type have higher crystallised intelligence.

Being open to experience is a sign of high intelligence, research reveals.

People who are open to experience are more interested in things that are complex, new and unconventional.

They are sensitive to their feelings, intellectually curious and seekers of variety.

Curiosity and an appreciation of beauty are particularly strong signs of crystallised intelligence, the study found.

Crystallised intelligence roughly equates to general knowledge: knowing many things about the world.

It is natural that people who are curious and interested in new things tend to pick up more general information.

The conclusions come from a study of around 500 people who were given tests of intelligence and personality.

Openness to experience is one of the five major aspects of personality.

Openness also has a number of facets of its own, the study authors explain:

“The Openness to Experience construct involves the tendency to fantasize (Fantasy), aesthetic sensitivity (Aesthetics), awareness of one’s emotions (Feelings), preference for novelty (Actions), intellectual curiosity (Ideas), and preference for non-traditional values (Values).”

The results revealed that more intelligent people were particularly appreciative of beauty: they had a strong aesthetic sense.

They were also likely to be intellectually curious and to have an interest in ideas for their own sake.

These two facets of openness were most strongly linked to higher crystallised intelligence.

The study was published in the Journal of Research in Personality (Ashton et al., 2000).

Author: Jeremy Dean

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5 Things Leaders Say – Leadership Freak

5 Things Leaders Say

The first step to becoming a leader is in the heart. You learn to love people. A person who loves people turns their focus outward.

The second step to leadership is practicing things leaders say from the heart.

Words without heart are meaningless irritants. Leaders say things that reflect a heart that has turned outward.

5 things leaders say:

#1. How can we simplify?

The easiest way to do something is also the most complicated. Simplicity is harder than complexity.

One way to simplify is by stopping unnecessary things. You simplify when you put an end to drama. You shorten the path when you eliminate unnecessary steps.

A straight path is easier to walk but harder to create.

#2. How can we be better?

It’s good to talk about doing better. It’s remarkable to talk about being better. Excellent performance is important, but the way we show up for each other determines if we’re exceptional.

#3. How does it feel to work here?

‘Me’ talk makes the world small and fearful. There’s too much “I’m” stressed, I need…, I’m taking care of myself.” The purpose of self-care is reigniting your ability to care for others.

Concern for others includes caring about emotions.

#4. What are we learning?

Average leaders tell. Remarkable leaders ask.

A leader who always knows is filled with decay.

#5. What’s next?

Celebration is energy to continue, not relax. Victorious athletes say, “We’re going to enjoy this victory tonight. Tomorrow we prepare for what’s next.”

Life apart from ‘what’s next’ is over.

What are some things leaders say?

What do you want to practice saying today?

Still curious:

Why Self-Care isn’t a 4-Letter Word

28 Words Every Leader Needs to Thrive

15 Things Great Leaders Say To Create Engaged Teams

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This Fun Activity Does More For Your Brain Than Simple Exercise (M)

The activity has a surprising cognitive edge over other types of workout.

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Author: Jeremy Dean

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The Surprising Effect Of Coffee On Blood Pressure

Lower blood pressure linked to one of the most popular drinks in the world.

Coffee is one of the most common drinks around the world yet due to its natural stimulant effect, caffeine has been controversial.

Caffeine can cause a short spike in blood pressure by affecting adenosine production, a compound that relaxes blood vessels.

However, antioxidants in coffee reduce this effect, helping the blood vessels to widen and improve blood flow.

Phenolic compounds in coffee have antioxidant activity that can provide anti-inflammatory benefits and improve insulin sensitivity.

Contrary to what many believe, a study has found that drinking coffee helps maintain low blood pressure.

Participants who consumed two or three cups of coffee every day had notably lower blood pressure than those who did not drink coffee.

The research team observed that moderate coffee consumption was associated with lower peripheral and central (aortic) systolic blood pressure (SBP).

Elevated central aortic pressure is a strong indicator of cardiovascular disease.

Professor Arrigo Cicero, the study’s first author, said:

“The results obtained show that those who regularly drink coffee have significantly lower blood pressure, both on peripheral and central levels, than those who do not drink it.

This is the first study to observe this association in the Italian population, and the data confirm the positive effect of coffee consumption on cardiovascular risk.”

Despite the side effects linked to its powerful stimulant effect, several studies show that people who drink coffee regularly, but in moderation, are less likely to develop diabetes, cardiovascular disease, liver disease, and certain neurodegenerative conditions.

Professor Cicero said:

“Caffeine is only one of the several coffee components and certainly not the only one with an active role.

Positive effects on human health have indeed been recorded even among those who consume decaffeinated coffee.

We know that caffeine can increase blood pressure, but other bioactive components in coffee seem to counterbalance this effect with a positive end result on blood pressure levels.”

To find out the impact of coffee on blood pressure, the study compared central and peripheral BP values in 1,503 Italian adults.

Participants’ coffee drinking habits (the amount and how often) and blood pressure levels were recorded.

Professor Cicero said:

“The results are very clear: peripheral blood pressure was significantly lower in individuals consuming one to three cups of coffee a day than in non-coffee drinkers.

And for the first time, we were also able to confirm these effects with regard to the central aortic pressure, the one close to the heart, where we observe an almost identical phenomenon with entirely similar values for habitual coffee drinkers compared to non-coffee drinkers.”

Their data shows that coffee drinkers had lower values in central aortic pressure, peripheral circulation, SBP, and pulse pressure suggesting the beneficial health effects in lowering cardiovascular disease risk.

The study was published in the journal Nutrients (Cicero et al., 2023).

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