🗺 Relating Between the Lines Bootcamp
Have you ever gotten to know somebody so well that you could both finish each other's sentences? Or maybe you have a friend who you could give that look, and both of you would start laughing because of an inside joke?
Now for the opposite, think of the times your feelings were hurt because you either made an incorrect assumption about a person, or they made a judgment about your character based on something small you did.
This is the miracle and madness of mindreading.
In fact, it's something our brains are programmed to do. According to Nicholas Epley, Professor of Behavior Science at University of Chicago:
"Knowing the minds of others is essential for social success because it enables you to anticipate what others are going to say it before they say it [...] At its best, [mindreading] enables understanding between friends, forgiveness among enemies, empathy between strangers, and cooperation between countries and couples and coworkers."
As children, our survival depended on our caregivers successfully intuiting our needs before we had the words. But as adults, it is our responsibility to not just know what we need, but to also communicate it.
Mindreading ALWAYS incurs a risk because it can miss the mark on both ends as listener and speaker.
When it pays off, it fills our lives with awe, delight, and connection.
When it doesn't, it frustrates us, blindsides us, and leaves our hearts broken.
This is why we need a User manual for our relationships:
We get to know ourselves better.
Through our self-awareness, we can make explicit what we need and what makes us tick.
When others read our mind, they'll have greater accuracy.
When we read others' minds, we'll be equipped with more robust models to "get" them with higher accuracy.
In this 5-day bootcamp, we will help you create a User Manual so that the people you care most about know how best to communicate and connect with you.
1️⃣ Mon 8/23: Calibrating - How You Expect & Imagine
2️⃣ Tue 8/24: Understanding - How You Listen & Deepen
3️⃣ Wed 8/25: Acknowledging - How You Cherish & Connect
4️⃣ Thu 8/26: Embodying - How You Share & Feel
5️⃣ Fri 8/27: Negotiating - How You Ask & Refuse
By having the courage to know yourself, you make it possible to spend LESS time working ON the relationship through trial and error and spend MORE time being IN the relationships with people you love.
What more worthwhile task than to give you and your relationships the intention & care they deserve?
Norman is a facilitator for Stanford Graduate School of Business' legendary Touchy-Feely class, which has trained MBA's on interpersonal dynamics for over 50 years. During the pandemic, Norman helped Stanford co-design a virtual version of the Touchy Feely class. After facilitating and creating learning experiences for companies like Facebook, IDEO, Stanford d.school, Norman teamed up with Stephanie and co-founded Relating Between the Lines, an 8-week program that helps you skillfully navigate conversations with the people you care about most. It's a program to make the most of your relationships for the rest of your life.
In Relating Between the Lines, we are fortunate to have been able to serve students from these companies: