Quote from Kavalier on July 8, 2022, 7:44 pm

Quote from Lucio Buffalmano on July 8, 2022, 7:32 pm

Great set of rules, Kavalier!

On this one:

Quote from Kavalier on July 8, 2022, 4:54 pm

• Assertiveness is good. But going meta isn't always the go situation, and perhaps more indirect or subtle ways to address issues when they need to be addressed (and it can be addressed slowly, over time)

Absolutely, most certainly other indirect and subtle ways are a wonderful tool in your toolbox.

On the other hand, I'd also be careful not to swing the opposite end of the spectrum.
And I must say that I respected a lot, even admired, how assertively you went for it, and how resolutely you called it out.
A proper "Kavalier" behavior, shall we say :).

One of the issues with "letting go" is that you may "stew" and build resentment, and that the dynamics "cement" over time.
Then, it's harder to change them, and if you point at past behavior, you'll be met with denials and with the "you never said anything". If you call it out instead you have evidence of a track record.

And the danger of more indirect means is that, if you're not careful, you may end up in a "turkey vicious circle", always covertly aggressing each other.

Of course, since we're aware of these risks, we're less likely to fall for them.
All this to say that direct and assertive calling out is also a wonderful option -and I may even list it as the first option to consider-.

A thousand thanks, Lucio!

Quote from B on July 8, 2022, 9:59 pm

Hi Kavalier,

I wanted to chip in on your great post here to comment on this:

Quote from Kavalier on July 8, 2022, 4:54 pm

• Respect is something that we build overtime; we do not have to demand it right away.

I am a firm believer that respect, in the sense of basic human decency and courtesy, is always due to everybody. We don’t have to be great in our trade or in what we’re discussing to deserve basic respect.

Trust we must earn, but basic respect is always due. And an absence of respect should be a signal for us to reevaluate, and if necessary take distance, in a relation of whatever kind.

Quote from Kavalier on July 9, 2022, 1:16 am

Thank you so much, Bel! It's a heartwarming message!

Now guys, as this thread was really challenging for me, I do need to take a break from the forum. It's a very good time: I've just received my release from prison: RT-PCR negative, so I'll just go out and have some fun :) Perhaps I'll be online from time to time, but I'll be more active in Power University doing my homework from all of this.

@leaderoffun

Really, man I do want to say that it's not fair for me to demand an apology, as I did before. You don't need to do it. I attacked.

It was a knee-jerk reaction that I regret. My (far from antifragile) ego thought it had to make a strong accusation to do exactly what you said:  make a "scratch sound and stop the music" moment, and be heard. We all know that was empty and unfair.

I believe we both understand and respect each other now, and I hope we can start from zero :)

@lucio

If you allow me to mention your name just this one more time in a situation that is not yours, I wanted to say to LOF that I think he is a great man, and everyone that Lucio counts among his friends has my automatic respect and admiration.

Thank you!

 

Quote from Lucio Buffalmano on July 13, 2022, 9:27 pm

Hello @bel

This is to make you aware of it as a fellow user / community member / friend.

I've noticed that a few messages of yours have been deleted after having been posted.
When that happens a few times the feeling it can give others is similar to in-real-life flip-flopping -ie.: saying one thing, then denying, or saying one thing, then changing one's mind if someone else disagrees-.

PU lists it under "tentativeness", if I recall correctly.
Overall, if one cared about reputation, status, or conveying, projecting (and maybe also self-signaling) confidence and clear-headedness, I think it's a good approach to very much limit the "delete" option.

To a lesser extent, the same is true for editing (don't take me as an example for that: I edit a lot. But I still consciously limit myself, plus started using the "edit" after-post tag on purpose to avoid the flip-flopping sub-communication).

Personally, I'd go as far as to say that it's often comparatively better to let what one thinks it's a "poor" message, than to delete it.
Even if it truly were a poor post, one reads it and thinks "hmmm, OK, that wasn't the greatest post maybe".
A deleted one says "that wasn't the greatest post as confirmed by the removal, PLUS deleting was also far from the greatest thing".

Quote from B on July 13, 2022, 10:27 pm

Thank you Lucio, your feedback on this is very kind and helpful.

I’ll work on this, it’s an insecurity of mine I definitely can overcome as I did with other things.

Quote from Transitioned on July 24, 2022, 5:36 am

I wanted to express my thanks to Lucio and the active forum posters (past and present) for the evolution of  Power University.

Let me start out by saying I have always been delighted with TPM as a product and a community.  Nothing this good exists elsewhere that I have found.  Even @Lucio must be amazed how far it has come.

At the start I felt that it was brilliant and had gaps.  And that the forum could be the evolution engine.  Build the community and crowdsource product improvement - how most fields grow, pioneers then people who stand on the shoulders of the giants.  Then I felt that it was amazing comprehensive but hard to apply because it lacked default actions.   Which I've seen form over the last year.  Now with the latest PU update I can't see any weaknesses only gold as far as the eye can see.  The forum helped, I don't think even Lucio could have done this in a vacuum.  But bottom line is it is Lucio's leadership and guidance and constant research in the field has been our bedrock.   Been a pleasure to be a tiny part of - now to the DOING!!

Quote from Lucio Buffalmano on July 24, 2022, 10:17 am

Thank you so much for the beautiful note, Kevin!

It was a pleasure to read and I agree: the beginning it was sparkles of great insights and techniques, but not yet a coherent narrative that put everything together, and not yet was it always bridged with real-life case studies and scenarios.
The community took -and takes, and hopefully, I think, will take- everything to a whole new level -and there's no way I'd have done it by myself-.

By the way, I suppose that many who contributed, contribute, and will contribute prefer remaining anonymous, in which case, needless to say, that's how it will stay.
But if there's anyone who wants a public mention with their real name and/or a link, I'm more than happy to -the link is also possible with a nickname-.

I am thinking to make some sort of collaborators / authors section, and for whoever wants, also make a bigger introduction / description / showcase their contribution and/or their other work.

And possibly even more interesting, for whoever reaches a good level and wants to add specific modules for specific professions/lifestyles, I'm more than happy to find win-win ways to publish it and profit-share (ie.: Project Manager Power University; Lawyer Power University; Entrepreneur Power University; or even smaller add-ons, such as "scripts for project management politics", etc. etc.).
That can be done either on TPM, or another website, and with many different types of agreements: I'm personally more interested in the completeness of the approach, than in specific ways to getting there.

Quote from leaderoffun on July 24, 2022, 11:22 pm

Agree with transitioned. Although I was not here in the first few iterations, the last one was a nice improvement.

And I can see how with the direction and momentum it has right now it will become even better! Momentum is palpable.

And the forum is super nice. Perhaps the ideal size, just before it explodes and goes full-force mainstream. Like a tropical fisherman village before it appears in the cover of flight magazines and they start building tourist resorts a mile high. Perhaps not tropical but Mediterranean? 😜

Quote from Ali Scarlett on July 25, 2022, 9:29 pm

Hi everyone,

Wanted to make a (public) request for feedback on Lucio and I's recent exchanges for TSS.

Lucio did mention that it's up to me if I'd prefer to ask for his feedback privately, but I'd prefer to share it here because:

• I like to acknowledge the thoughts and feedback of the other bright minds here as well
• Perhaps others reading around here might learn from my areas for improvement
• It'd be a good opportunity for growing my antifragile ego to make my mistakes public

So, without further ado, here's lesson one:

#1. Accidental "you are" judge role

The context is that, rather than leave the final page in the book blank, I drafted a request for a review from the reader.

However, even though the writing was my responsibility because Lucio is booked up with a full plate, he was still kind enough to make the time to make edits and revisions to that "review ask" page.

And, when I read it back over, I agreed with all of his changes, feeling like once again, I still have a lot to learn from him.

So, I added that note emotionally from a place of looking up to him.

But, without the "thank you", it may have come across socially as a position of looking down on him:

• "...you're the true persuasion expert...": might communicates, "I have the authority to judge whether or not I consider you an expert or inadequate at persuasion, and I've decided you're worthy of my positive judgment."

With that said, I think that saying, "...you're the true persuasion expert..." maybe saves it a bit because it communicates what I was hoping to get across which is, "out of the two of us, you're better than me :)" (as opposed to if I would've said "you're a persuasion expert" which comes across more power gamey).

Still, a better approach might've been to say:

Ali: Got it, thank you, you're the true persuasion expert, so I'll leave that to you :)

The gratitude turns the "well done" judge role into a "thank you" judge role.

#2. Missed opportunity for more honesty

In this case, I was looking for an update on which of the book covers we had designed was performing the best (we were testing which would get the highest conversions).

But, I didn't mention that I was looking for an update, I only mentioned that the book cover design team was, which felt disingenuous to me (and, potentially sneaky, since it would've cost me nothing to reveal that I was also interested in the latest results).

So, better, might've been if I'd said:

Ali: Hey Lucio, what's the data for the book covers looking like so far? The cover design team is getting curious (and so am I :) )

#3. Missed opportunity for more positive framing

When I said, "...email marketing isn't one of my strengths yet," my aim was, to be honest about my lack of proficiency in that area as well as humble.

I believe it was great for my character as well as the project.

On the project, demonstrating an honest self-awareness of my shortcomings could lead to a better outcome for the email marketing since that honesty could nudge Lucio to avoid over-relying on my feedback when he might know better than I do on certain things. (It's better if someone says they can't do something than if they lie that they can, produce poor results, and then the other party accepts it trusting that the incompetent liar knows what they're talking about.)

Granted, Lucio is the kind of guy to think for himself and challenge any ideas he disagrees with or simply ask for further explanation where it could shed some light (or expose a potentially bad idea). Even so, generally speaking, I'm of the philosophy that honesty is the best policy.

So, with that said, my honesty could've been framed with a more positive sentence structure.

With my current framing, there's an issue of the exchange now looking win-lose.

• "I'll share it [the email] with you for feedback...email marketing isn't one of my strengths yet": Lucio already said that he would share the draft for feedback, so now he may feel that changing his mind is "going back on his word", and must share this document to get feedback that may be useless (which costs him time and effort).

Granted, Lucio might've probably overlooked my comment because of the feedback I've given before in TPM's marketing threads. And, in going this route anyway, incompetent or not, he would still be making sure he didn't miss any potentially valuable thoughts I had to share.

However, if this were a public conversation, I don't think it would look good on Lucio to ask someone for help and then for that person to turn around and say, "Actually, I'm not very good at helping," because for Lucio to still accept that help would be disempowering for him on top of being (potentially) bad for the relationship.

So, a better response might've been something like this:

Ali: OK, sounds good (still learning more about good email marketing practices, but happy to take a look, share my thoughts, and exchange ideas from there)

---

If you guys have any thoughts, happy to read.

And, if you see any other areas for feedback, Lucio, happy to read that as well.