The End is Nigh, and we’re not just talking about Glenn Beck’s ratings. Some economists are saying that the US has passed the point of no return with its economy, which means economic collapse is as inevitable as Charlie Sheen’s future apologies. There’s lots you’ll need to do before hunkering down in your zombie-proof bunker to prepare for the end. Get a jump on this now before society breaks down and look on the bright side: at least you won’t have to go to work anymore.

Buy Guns

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You can’t fight zombies or your neighbors for those last Twinkies at the 7-11 without good weapons. Remember that handguns maybe easy to carry, but if you really want to put down a looter or that rotten neighbor of yours, a handgun should only be used for the trip upstairs to get your rifle or shotgun. And speaking of shotguns, bullets will be quite the commodity when the end comes, so make sure you also have a shotgun shell press. But remember, don’t start shooting people until after the apocalypse. If you get a bed holster, make sure your sheets don’t tangle or you could blow off your own foot.

Hoard Water

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Oh, sure water comes right out of your sink…now. But is it really paranoid to think that government might shut off the flow and try to control our brains with rap music? Whether the economic end comes due to natural disaster, the next World War or Goldman Sachs betting that it will happen, the human body can survive weeks without food, but only days without water. Do like Viggo in The Road, when you see the flash, turn on the faucet.

Hoard Food

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Until you figure out how to grow your own food or enslave the rest of the survivors, you’ll need a well-stocked pantry. Commodities, especially food, will skyrocket during the coming World Wide Depression, so extra food will also be handy to barter with. Remember that girl in high school who turned you down for the prom? You’ll be amazed what she’ll do for a can of peaches in the coming economic collapse.

Buy Land You Can Farm On

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Having a well-protected chunk of real estate that you can grow food on is going to be very important. Make sure it has a fence to keep out the riff-raff, C.H.U.D.S. and wasteland mutants you’ll probably have to fight. The good news is, after the government collapses, you won’t have to pay property taxes on it.

Convert Your Car to Vegetable Oil

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You think gas is high now? Wait until the seas dry up and the US strategic reserves are diverted to keep the limos running that shuttle Barack Obama and the Congress around. By converting your car to run on vegetable oil, not only will your car’s exhaust smell like French Fries, you’ll be guaranteed fuel. In America, we fatties never run out of greasy things to cook our food in!

Buy Gold

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Gold has been steadily rising as the dollar has continued to plummet. In the dark days ahead, a shiny gold bar could make you the only financially solvent warlord on your block. Gold always holds its value, unless it’s molded in the shape of tacky jewelry worn by the cast of the Jersey Shore. Sadly, anything that touches Snooki must be thrown away.

Learn to Hunt

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After the first few months of the collapse, store shelves are likely to be empty or choked with the shambling corpses of the living dead. Meat is going to be at a premium and you’re going to have to learn to shoot. The deer aren’t just going to stand there while you drizzle barbecue sauce on them. And remember, if your neighbor says you look “juicy”, be careful. He may be sizing you up for a casserole.

Keep a Low Profile

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Bragging to your neighbors about your secret stash of gold, guns, ammo and Survival Seeds sends one clear message to your neighbor: Kill you and he’s set for the apocalypse. You’ll last a lot longer in the coming Hellscape if the locals think you’re just as screwed as them. Conserve your food, don’t put on any weight and don’t attend any town militia meetings reeking of chocolate and cheese. Orange Doritos hands are a dead giveaway too.

Make and Keep Lots of Friends

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You are going to need allies when the world goes back to bartering. If you’re known as the “town jerk”, change your attitude now before the meteor hits. Your neighbors will have skills that you can all use. The local stoner knows how to grow plants, even inside with hydroponics. Your friend the cop probably has plenty of extra ammo. And your overweight friend that ran the pizza shop? He’ll make an excellent zombie decoy while you run away.

Start Your Own Religion

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If you want Godlike power, make yourself one! There’s no easier way to motivate your minions than to promise them something after they’re dead. Who needs money? When you got this kind of power, you can decide what money is! And, when people use faith over logic, you can pretty much tell them to do anything.

These ten business board games will hone your strategic skills, sharpen your negotiating abilities and, in some cases, even make you a better pillager. Play hard, and watch your efforts pay off during work hours.

10. Ca$h n’ Gun$

The only game on our list in which you actually have to stay alive, Ca$h n’ Gun$ starts off with a bang as each player gets an orange foam gun to “shoot” the others. The game basically boils down to players shooting each other over money at every turn. Every time you get shot, you’re wounded; three wounds kills you. If you duck like a coward, you don’t get wounded, but you forsake the round. At the end, whoever is alive and has the most money wins.

9. Million Dollar Challenge

This game, divided into two levels, is a fun way to learn basic to intermediate trading skills. As you try to win by making a cool mil trading stocks, commodities, indexes and more, you also learn concepts and vocabulary you can use in real life, including which indicators you need to follow, when to exit a market, and more. It’s like a friendlier, less risky version of the real market, as well as an excellent educational tool.

8. Ticket to Ride

Connect US cities with lucrative rail routes while stopping your competitors from finishing theirs. Cards let you either build a route, gain a train car, or tell you where you can create new routes. The game lets you build secret routes that your competitors don’t see until the very end. Long routes and secret routes gain you points, while unfinished ones are losers. This strategy game is great for families.

7. Cashflow 101

This board game, in which you invest and save your way out of the rat race and into the ownership class, is as much motivational tool as entertainment. You begin with a balance sheet and a predesignated job, income and debt. Roll the die, land on spaces that let you pull cards for investment opportunities or make you pay up for incidentals, and work up your wealth so that you can get out of the “rat race”–essentially a never-ending circle on one side of the board game–and onto a new track, where you start making the big bucks. Cashflow is a great teaching and inspiration tool for anyone wanting to get out of the real-life rat race.

6. Hotels

Use your money to buy land and build 3D hotels, and win this game by making your competitors go bankrupt. As you move around the board, certain squares let you purchase land if adjacent property is empty. Other squares let you build hotels on that land. With additional money, you can buy entrances and add facilities to your hotel. When players land on your hotel, they have to pay you to stay there–or else put their own properties up for auction in order to afford it. The last person standing wins the game.

5. Agricola

Be a little farmer who makes it big in this agri-centered game. Move around the board with your wife (that is, your farmer’s spouse) to make your house bigger, have kids, maintaim the farm, harvest, etc. Action cards tell you what you can do, while occupation and minor improvement cards give you expansion options. You decide when to use your options. May the best farmer-strategist win.

4. Puerto Rico

About 50 years after Colombus, Puerto Rico experienced its first economic boom. Be in the thick of it as a settler cultivating and selling five different kinds of crops. During every round, you choose a different player role, each with distinct benefits and drawbacks. Deciding when to store, sell, and ship your wares to Europe; employing colonizers, and constructing buildings in San Juan are all strategic choices that could make or break you in Puerto Rico. The game can end in three different ways, adding additional excitement towards the end.

3. Monopoly

Monopoly is the classic board game for capitalists (or those who just want to see how it works–it was initially derived from a socialist game in 1913). Snap up as many squares of land, utilities and railroads as you can, then suck other players dry by building houses and hotels on them. Windfalls and setbacks include two kinds of taxes, the Community Chest, Chance cards, Free Parking and, of course, jail. The game is so popular that producer Hasbro hosts national and worldwide Monopoly tournaments. Winners take home the entire Monopoly bank of $20,580.

2. Steam: Rails to Riches

Being an imaginary railroad tycoon makes for a darned good business game. You don’t only construct railroads in Steam, you make the towns around you better and figure out the most profitable goods to carry in your trains. The game even takes terrain into account. S/he who builds the most efficient railroad wins. Sophistication and an artful game board make this a fulfilling train game for adults.

1. Settlers of Catan

You’re a settler on the island of Catan in this popular and captivating game. Your job is to grow your colony by buying resource-filled land, then gain victory points by building settlements, cities, roads and armies with your materials. You can also trade resource cards with other players to maximize your points. Resource robbers, which let you temporarily stop other players from using their resources, are among the several other variables that will engross you in this game.

Purchases of existing houses, which are tabulated when a contract closes, increased 12 percent to a 5.28 million annual rate…The median price dropped 1 percent from a year earlier, and the share of sales represented by foreclosures climbed.

Buyers are returning to the housing market after a government tax credit expired in the middle of 2010, indicating the drop in prices and cheap lending rates are making homes more affordable. At the same time, unemployment in excess of 9 percent and record foreclosures are among concerns that have prompted Federal Reserve policy makers to follow through with a second round of quantitative easing….For all of last year, purchases decreased to 4.91 million, the fewest since 1997.

Clearly, it’s no new housing bubble, but people with cash in their pockets are out finding good deals. If only people would find jobs again, too, real estate might be back in business.

Also from Bloomberg BusinessWeek:

The average rate on a 30-year fixed mortgage was 4.74 percent this week, according to figures from Freddie Mac. The rate reached 4.17 percent in early November, the lowest since records began in 1972.

The jump in rates “provided some urgency” to buyers, Lawrence Yun, the Realtors’ group’s chief economist said in a press conference. The initial increase in borrowing costs “generally induces people to make the decision earlier,” said Yun, although a sustained increase may eventually hurt demand.

Inducing a sense of consumer urgency is part of the Fed’s plan. This small spike in housing purchases lends credence to the idea that slowly increasing interest rates indeed makes consumers buy more, out of fear they’ll miss the best deals. It remains to be seen whether this plan works in other sectors, too.

Sometimes you have to be hard on yourself in order to save money. Anna Newell Jones should know. At the beginning of 2010, Jones, fed up with her prodigious spending habits and mountain of debt, decided to go on a “Spending Fast,” which she documented on her blog, And Then She Saved.

That meant no spending on anything except necessities, including her mortgage, car payments, and utilities, for an entire year. She denied herself new clothes, hair cuts, eating out, movies, and more (see her full list of self-negation here). The only luxury Anna allowed herself all year was hair dye–she is a professional photographer and needs to look good for clients.

What did Anna get for her 365-day foray into financial asceticism? More than $13,000 in savings. No more credit card debt. Much less student loan debt. And, perhaps best of all, a better way of managing money.

Despite her pain and suffering–or perhaps because of it–Jones serves as a personal-finance inspiration for 2011. I caught up with her to talk more about her project, her accomplishments, and what she plans on doing next.

BP: Can you list your five biggest accomplishments for your year of saving in 2010, starting with the biggest?

Wow! There have been so many accomplishments this year.

#1 is definitely that I met my main goal of eliminating all of my consumer debt. I never thought that would actually happen and it was the driving force behind deciding to go forward with the Spending Fast in the first place.

2. Paying off my parents. They took out a college loan for me years ago and I had been trying to get it paid off forever and I could never seem to make a dent in it until this year when I did the Spending Fast. Actually getting them paid off is such a huge weight off me emotionally and mentally that I’m just beyond overjoyed to have that debt wiped out.

3. Learning to say “No” to myself and that learning that just because I have money doesn’t mean I should buy whatever I want.

4. Learning the concept of “Enough”. Before the Spending Fast I was never satisfied with what I had or did because I was always trying to have and get MORE, MORE, MORE… my wants were completely insatiable. I would compare myself to others and could never be satisfied since there was always something new that I needed to make me and my life perfect. Because of the Spending Fast I’ve found that I can get by with a lot less and be okay with it.

5. Lastly, starting and actually completing the Spending Fast for an entire year is pretty huge accomplishment. I’m kind of shocked and amazed that I actually did this for an entire year! Did I really just not spend money, except on necessities, for a whole year?! It’s crazy to think that I really pulled this off.

BP: What was the hardest part? What about the easiest part?

The hardest part of the Spending Fast was the beginning. I had to force myself to get used to a completely new and foreign way of thinking about money and spending and saving and debt re-payment.

There were some rough moments there for a while, and I knew I would’ve given up on the whole idea if I wasn’t being held accountable by the blog I had started to document my year with the Spending Fast.

Knowing that I had to write about any failures made me work even harder at doing well because I didn’t want to write that I had messed up. It was also surprisingly hard at certain points to decline on some things because of the Spending Fast and then have people offer to pay my way or pay for my dinner so I could participate. Those situations were a little awkward. I had to explain that I chose to do this and I was going to deal with the good, the bad, all of it.

On the other hand, the easiest part has been that after I got the hang of the Spending Fast and got used to telling myself “No,” the Spending Fast has actually been okay. More okay than I ever anticipated it would be. At this point, at the end of the Spending Fast, I’m feeling far more comfortable with not spending money and I’m way more comfortable with finding creative ways to do things that need to get done rather than automatically going for the quick fix of buying something new.

BP: What are the main things you learned? Will you take any of them with you into the future, or do you think you’ll eventually just revert to your old habits?

I’ve learned so many things. I found that I had to want to be out of debt more than I wanted whatever item I had my eye on. As I mentioned earlier, learning to say “No” to myself has been very powerful and I learned that I can be okay with having less. I’ve also learned that having everything I want is not all that amazing and that I’d rather be doing other things than maintaining, managing and caring about things that I own. I’ve got better things to do with my time! I have learned throughout this year that I am very industrious and that once I set my mind to do something I will do it. I learned that I can make zombie portraits and people will actually pay me for them (www.etsy.com/shop/annanewell). That is very awesome.

I’ve also learned that getting that first credit card paid off was an amazing feeling. Getting that first card knocked out encouraged me to keep going. There is no doubt in my mind that I will take what I’ve learned this year with me into the future.

There’s no way I could go through an experience like this and not have it affect me. Though, I have to admit I have been panicking that once the Spending Fast ends I will become possessed with some wild spending craze and go buck wild again. I hope that doesn’t happen and doubt that it will.

Throughout this whole past year, I have been creating new habits regarding money and spending and my financial life. Now my finances are in the best spot they’ve ever been in before. I won’t let myself get into trouble with money like I did in the past. I can’t go down that road again. I won’t let the year long Spending Fast be for nothing.

BP: What’s your plan for 2011 in terms of saving money?

In 2011 I plan on doing a modified version of the Spending Fast. It will be a Spending Diet and it will be quite a bit less extreme. I still have a college loan hanging over my head and I plan on wiping that out as soon as possible. Getting funds into a savings account and investing are some of my other goals for this upcoming year. I will continue to write on my blog And Then She Saved, since I’ve found that accountability so beneficial.

BP: Can you share any advice for people who want to get out of debt?

I would recommend starting by cutting out one thing a week. Maybe it’s making a gift rather than buying one or wearing something to an event that you already own. Change one thing per week and just keep adding healthy spending/saving habits in there. It is a process.

Money and spending and saving have so much symbolism for so many people and it taps into the priorities and values that we each hold for ourselves. Changing those ideas about money is not something that happens overnight.

I also highly recommend going on a Spending Fast for a couple of months or for even just a month, if not for a whole year. In a lot of ways my life has been re-calibrated because of the Spending Fast.

My style has changed, my financial life is in order, I feel empowered, I appreciate the hours of my life a lot more and I am no longer willing to sell the hours of my life for things. The Spending Fast has literally changed my life.

Anna Newell Jones is a freelance photographer based in Denver, Colorado who shoots a lot of conceptual gallery work. She’s married to a fellow photographer and they travel all over the United States shooting weddings. She started a year-long Spending Fast in January 2010 along with an accompanying blog to document her progress and setbacks throughout the year. Because of the Spending Fast, she has managed to save $17,911.89 in one year and get completely out of consumer debt.

Know your fellow man and you’ll know business. Know your own mind and you’ll know your fellow man.

Catching up on how science sees our minds can benefit you socially, personally, and in the workplace. Here are 50 neuroscience links that will amp up your business circuitry.

Skills
You can use neuroscience and neuropsychology to sharpen your own skill set, both in the workplace and in life. See how you can benefit from the tips below.

Seven ways to avoid becoming the boss from hell.

Networking hint: We prefer to socialize with people who sound like us.

Why many people learn well in one-on-one settings.

The pitfalls and benefits of goal setting.

Caffeine makes us easier to persuade.

Defense mechanisms lead to crucial outcomes in peoples’ lives.

How touch influences social perceptions.

Are fast talkers more persuasive?

7 quick tips to avoid a meltdown.

To detect when someone is lying, you need to also be able to see when they’re telling the truth.

The psychology of time-pressured sales.

Dying to work overtime? The results may be literal.

Getting along with a younger boss.

Mastering Your Mind
Knowing how your mind works takes you one step closer to mastering it.

Brain clutter—what’s left undone lingers on.

A wandering mind is an unhappy mind.

Why balanced arguments are more persuasive.

Human thought can voluntarily control neurons in the brain. Thoughts, in other words, are powerful little critters.

Thoughts of religion prompt acts of punishment.

When does a healthy ego cross the line?

What the Internet is doing to our brains.

What happens when you hit a mental traffic jam.

Ten words that build trust.

What working memory is and how to improve it.

What you need to do to maintain your brain.

Walking slows cognitive decline.

Here’s a double resource on how to improve your attention and learn about the effects of culture on your brain.

Our minds are metaphor machines.

Companies, Products, and Advertising
Companies are using neuroscientific findings more and more to influence marketing, advertising, and product design efforts. Here are some ways it’s happening.

Why you want to value your young employees: Younger brains are easier to rewire.

Making ads that whisper to the brain.

How Wii and Kinect hack into your emotions.

Advertising’s hidden second message.

Does using beauty as an advertising tool always work?

Social media is more hype than silver bullet.

Why the office is not an ideal place to work.

Brains and Economics
Neuroeconomics is a new and promising field. Here are some important recent findings.

Why our brains go for market bubbles.

Neuroeconomics and incentives: Does paying students to perform work?

The scent of anxious people actually encourages risk-taking.

Poor people are better at reading emotions than rich people.

Research on the link between charismatic CEOs and stock price—featuring Steve Jobs.

More Cool Research and Facts
Learn even more about brains below.

Sleep makes your memory stronger, and helps with creativity.

Dogs have bigger brains than cats because they’re more sociable, research suggests.

Men and women respond differently to stress.

How culture evolved by adapting itself to our brains.

Another look at the 10% brain myth.

Brain imaging shows that different cultures have different brains.

Mind Hacks is a consistently excellent blog on psychology and neuroscience.

Why we do dangerous things and how to stop.

Psychopaths and social contracts.

The British government is nudging good behavior through, among other things, good citizen punch cards.

Personality and motivation.

Online travel agent Expedia is no longer listing American Airlines flights on its websites, thanks to American’s effort to cut travel agent costs. From the Wall St. Journal:

The removal of American flights from Expedia’s listings comes as a conflict between the airline and travel sites ratchets higher. On Dec. 21, American pulled its listings from Expedia competitor Orbitz Worldwide Inc. (OWW). The airline hopes to drive more traffic to its own website, which it says offers “our lowest airfares” and doesn’t charge an online booking fee.

American, the third-largest U.S. airline, is at the forefront of an industry effort to reduce the cost of ticket sales that has brought it into confrontation with parts of the travel agent sector, as well as the online sellers.

Cutting costs related to travel agents is a much more consumer-friendly way for an airline to protect profits than some of the airlines’ other efforts, like charging $50 to check bags or cutting flight supply to a bare minimum in order to maximize fares. It’s almost a relief to see that they’re looking to other venues to trim down operating costs. As for Expedia, it may just be running on an agency model whose time is almost up.

In order to be heard, you need to interrupt.

If someone misunderstands you and does a project wrong, it’s your fault for not communicating right.

This is American Business Listening 101. We rush through ideas because time is money. We interrupt one another in meetings because we want to prove our mettle. As a result, we waste hours of time and execute projects ineffectively.

If we could actually listen, we’d streamline communications within our teams, produce more accurate projects for leaders, even sell more to clients. So why don’t we do it?

Because we don’t know how. That’s what Marian Thier, who runs the consulting, coaching and training organization Expanding Thought, wants us to know. An expert in teaching businesspeople new ways of thinking, Thier recently realized that we have a serious listening deficit. Her new mission is to educate people about what listening is, why it’s important, and how we can become better at it.

I caught up with Thier to learn more about the art and science of listening. Here’s what she had to say.

BP: Can you talk a little bit how lack of listening skills could derail a leader?

Here’s the most important thing a leader does: A leader makes decisions. If you don’t listen fully, you don’t’ get all the information you need to make a good decision. That’s one way leaders are derailed.

Another responsibility of a leader is to be able to model behaviors. People coming up in the organization learn from the way you as a leader behave, so you best be an effective model.
When you don’t listen fully, others are also apt to lose their attention. So they leave a lot of information on the table that’s readily available to them. Because they are not appropriately listening to the situation at hand, they miss stuff and often make partially informed decisions.

Poor listening skills also prevent people from questioning, so they are not very critical in their thinking. They take things at face value. They trust the person who’s talking rather than being able to analyze and diagnose the value of the information that’s being put on the table.

There’s just too much that’s lost because they a) don’t know how they listen, and b) don’t know if how they’re listening fits the situation.

BP: It sounds like learning to listen could save time and be a competitive advantage, because you would be so streamlined and efficient.

Totally. But if so much is riding on it, how come people aren’t trying to develop those skills?
When I started to beta test this research, I learned that we form habits around the way we listen. Those habits become ingrained. We become very reliant on them without questioning whether that habit serves us well in a particular situation.

So how does that habit form? Brains begin to develop neural pathways very early in our lives. When information comes into the ear, the brain co-opts that information and takes it into an established neural pathway. Basically, our brains are pretty lazy. Our individual brains become wired for a certain kind of listening.

Another part of habit formation is physical. Say we’re on a tennis court. When I play tennis, I have established all sorts of physical habits. For example, when the ball is coming my way, my body and brain all say, “Okay, I know that this is a forehand shot, so get ready for it.” My opponent can read my posture to know where to place the ball. The same thing occurs when we’re listening. The body puts out signals that say, “This is the way I look when I listen.”

The next habit-former is psychology. When I get on the court and start thinking, “Oh no, something is going to hinder my back hand.” or “Oh gosh, this is a strong player,” I develop an emotional and psychological basis around all these messages. Same thing when you’re listening. You look at somebody as they’re talking and you might think, “That person reminds me of this really snappy boss I had, so I have to be very defensive when I listen, because if I don’t assert myself, I’m not going to get listened to.” Now you have another habit around something that has no merit, but it’s locked up into you habitual way.

And then the last consideration is our behavior. What are the things we actually do? There are people who do very specific things in their behavior. They interrupt, for example.

BP: Then you try to help somebody understand what interrupting really is?

Interrupting is really a part of the interaction. The interrupter has something to say and wants to share it. Good listeners hold off until the speaker has concluded, but interrupters don’t hold their tongue and break in, cutting off the train-of-thought and decreasing the amount of shared information.

BP: In every corporation I’ve worked in, especially the bigger ones, interruption and displays of assertiveness are ingrained in corporate culture. It’s like you have to be the top dog to be heard.

More true in the Western nations than in the East.

BP: So with that kind of culture, how can you even afford to listen if you’re so busy asserting your alpha status by interrupting everybody?

Probably the better question is, how can you afford not to listen? One of the things we’re doing in my company is educating people about preferred listening habits to help them grasp the breadth of the topic. Most people agree that listening is critical, but they really know very little about it.

To increase knowledge of the field and one’s self, I developed an assessment instrument that helps people understand which of four listening habits is their preferred habit.

To understand your habits is to raise awareness about how you listen. Part of the knowledge is being able to hold a mirror up to somebody and say, “This is the way you look when you listen. This is the way you attend when you listen. Is that the most effective way for you?” That’s question number one.

Question number two is to ask whether there are ways to be more effective as a listener. One way is to watch someone and say, “I watched you in this interaction and you interrupted the speaker eight times in ten minutes. What happened as a result of that?” That behavior is unconscious for most people.

BP: Could you talk a little bit more about the purpose interrupting serves, and what it means when people interrupt?

We can think faster than a person can speak. Thus, if someone is talking, instead of following them as they speak, we speed up our brains to move further ahead. We make assumptions about what that person is going to say and stop listening to what they are saying. The person who is supposed to be listening is actually not listening but is preparing to speak—to interrupt.

In a positive sense, interruption shows you’re engaged and you want to be additive. You want to inquire. You want to be a part of the conversation, but you’re not using your best skill—full-listening or turn-taking.

I teach people a tactic to use when they are in a situation and they want to interrupt. First, I ask, why is it you want to interrupt? What is behind it? If it is because you have a question, then just write down the question, then refocus on what’s going on. If you want to add your point of view, then write your comment down and keep listening. Chances are the speaker will cover the point you wanted to make or answer the question you posed, usually later in the interaction. Writing your mental disrupters ensures your thoughts are captured and enables you to remain focused.

Listening is the most respectful thing you can do. If you want to respect the person you’re listening to, tell yourself that maybe in 5 minutes that person will get to the point you want to make. Is there value in making that point? Or is it your ego that wants others to think you’re smarter than everyone else by raising an issue or inserting a comment?

Image: Simon Blackley/Flickr

BP: That was how I interpreted the chronic interruption that was going on in the workplace—ego stuff.

Yeah. In our workplaces we have:

a) very impatient people
b) high value for demonstrating our intelligence
c) a very male-oriented sort of way of interacting. It’s a game that gets played. Who can have the most control? Who can one-up others? Believe me, that’s a high-contact sport that results in many injuries of the hidden kind.

I observe a game I call “Who’s the smartest in the room?” I watch everyone in a discussion and award a “prize” at the end. After the interaction, I explain the dynamics I was observing. Then, privately, participants write the name of the person they think played the game most “successfully.” I tabulate the anonymous results and before I reveal the name I ask what the “players” learned from the game. I usually end by asking each individual what s/he did to be a contender for the title.

It’s rarely necessary to say the name of the person who “won,” because the offender almost always self-identifies.

A lot of this work is just helping people to be conscious about what they are doing. A huge amount is realized when someone can say, “I listen in this way.”. And then to be able to analyze the compatibility of the way they listen to the organizational dynamics. At that point someone can say, “I lose too much by not listening appropriately and I best devote time to skill development. That’s a simple formula. It’s not simple to effect, although easier than people thought.

BP: What about global implications?

If you look at Asia, for example, why is it that Americans who work in China have such a hard time there? Americans are fast-paced. They say “tell me in two minutes what it is, okay I got it,” and they’re ready to run off. While Asians complain about the lack of deliberation when dealing with Westerners.

In the West, there is the expectation that the speaker must make himself totally clear. The responsibility of the listener is to execute what the speaker is saying. If you don’t make yourself clear and someone else doesn’t execute properly, it’s your fault as the speaker, not the listener.

In Asia, it’s flipped the other way. The responsibility for listening is on the listener. I have to get from here everything I need in order to execute. So if something goes awry it’s my fault because I didn’t listen well. Think about how different the perceptions are and how those perceptions impact listening.

BP: That’s interesting. That’s how feel as a freelancer. I need to get everything right first in order to do the assignment properly. Otherwise, it’s my fault if anything goes wrong.

Good analogy. It’s the same way in corporations. You come back with this wrong product, all these people wasted their time working on a problem that actually wasn’t the right problem. They say, “You didn’t tell us the right thing.” Actually the issue went awry from the get-go because the parties involved didn’t have a clarifying interaction that was complete enough for both sides to tackle the assignment.

To remedy that problem, all involved need to be able to demonstrate that they’re clear. There’s a tool I teach people called a listening loop that helps people do that. It takes time to do.

People go, “Oh man, it takes too long.” Yeah, but how long does it take to fix the problems when you’re three months down the road and you’re doing the wrong thing? It’s much more expensive then than investing time at the start of a process.

BP: It sounds like becoming aware of the way that you listen involves a high level of coaching. Is there anything that people reading this interview could do by themselves that could help them become better listeners?

Absolutely. The first thing is to watch yourself when you’re listening. Say to yourself, “How engaged am I? At what point do I check out? What causes me to stop listening? What can I do to bring myself back so I can remain focused?” Observe yourself.

The other thing is to observe others. Try to see if you can pick up the signals they give you. They give you signals all the time about what they care about and what to listen for. Clues are in the kinds of questions that people ask.

For example, if you’re talking to someone who asks a lot of detailed questions, and you are a big picture thinker, you’ll probably shut off when that person gives you a lot of details. But your job is not to shut off. So if you observe that person asking detailed questions, you mirror by asking detailed questions, too. That way, you’re synchronizing with one another, rather than you each reverting to non-effective habits.

Observe yourself, observe others, and try to listen in the way that is compatible with another.

BP: I can see how you could train yourself to be a more effective person in general by adopting those skills.

Yeah. Many of the hundreds of people who have taken my assessment instrument Hear! Hear? tell me, “I never before thought about how I listen.” So just by being a self-observer you’re a leg up on developing capacity.

This is important work, but not daunting work. Here’s why. A habit is just that. It’s a habit. And it’s changeable. If you take any of the four elements that develop a habit and put energy towards changing it, it will change. Each of our listening habits is a strength. They are not deficits.

Sometimes what we need is to have more in our repertoire–to be additive. We’re not talking about stopping using a listening habit that serves you well, we’re talking about gaining access to others to broaden your capacity to listen well in any situation.

Official bio: Expanding Thought was founded in 1984 to help people think beyond the obvious. The firm does this through coaching, training and consulting initiatives. Marian and her staff work with individuals and organizations to think strategically and originally, and enable high-potential employees to fulfill their promise. Here is Marian’s blog on listening.

To bring success to your business in 2011, you better be motivated and prepared. But with enough elbow grease, you can get a step ahead of your competition. Perseverance and a clear plan of action are crucial for your success in the new year. Here’s how to know what you want for your business in 2011, and how to get it.

Identify what success means to you.

Success means different things to different people. Depending on the current state of your business, you may have different aims and objectives. For 2011, set smaller goals for your business that lead to an overall main objective.

For example, the first goal could be to cut down your supplier costs. That could then tie into your overall objective to improve operating profit by 10%.

Setting goals that lead to bigger objectives for your business gives you two fundamental things. One is a clear idea of where you are heading. The second is a vision of where you want to be.

Be SMART when setting your business objectives

When it’s time to set your business objectives for 2011, being SMART is incredibly important. SMART is an acronym for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic/Relevant and Time Bound:

• Specific – Your business objectives should always be specific. By identifying what success means to your business, you know exactly what you want to achieve
• Measurable – If your business objective is not measurable, how will you know when or if it has been achieved?
• Achievable – Your business objectives should always be based on the current state of your company. They should be achievable based on the resources available to you.
• Realistic and Relevant – The objectives you set should be relevant to where you want your business to go, but they should also be realistic.
• Time Bound – If you don’t have a time limit on your business objectives, then they could run on and on without any real progress. Setting a time limit helps to keep you focused.

Have a plan

After you have identified what success in 2011 means to you, and you have written down your business objectives, it’s time to ensure that you have a plan.

Having a clear plan of action keeps you motivated and focused on the tasks at hand. Write down each of your business objectives. Then identify how you are going to achieve of them. Voila–that’s your plan! Try and stick to your plan of action as much as possible, and watch as your desired results unfold.

Some examples of business success objectives

• I want to demonstrate my business growth by putting together various reports in January 2011
• I want to cut supplier costs by 10% over the next 2 months
• I want to improve business revenue by 20% over the next 12 months

Be positive! The method above will bring success to your business in 2011.

This guest post is by moneysupermarket.com

This is a guest post by Fee Fighters’ Stella Fayman.

The holiday season is the best time of the year for opportunistic retailers. Unfortunately, it is also the most wonderful time of the year for people specializing in fraud. Luckily, there are some easy ways to protect your business, whether brick and mortar, from credit card fraud:

Nip the fraudsters in the bud- Take preventative measures such as having customers sign receipt and checking signatures on the back of each and every card. Ecommerce merchants should always use an Address Verification Service (AVS) and have customers enter the 3 digit security code on the back of each card (called the CVV). More helpful tips can be found in this comprehensive article.

Be patient- As the holidays near, tensions run high as popular items are high in demand and low in supply. Maintaining a level of excellence in customer service will make sure customers don’t get belligerent and make your life more difficult (think chargebacks).

Be prepared- Make sure to know the policies and procedures around chargebacks—when a customer disputes a charge on his/her credit card. Reach out to your merchant account provider before one occurs, and then use that information to develop a stand policy in your business about who handles and how to handle chargebacks.

FeeFighters.com is the comparison shopping site for credit card processors. FeeFighters lets business owners compare top quality processors on an apples-to-apples basis, similar to using Priceline for travel. If you have any questions, feel free to email Stella at stella (AT) feefighters (DOT) com.

In a recent article that appeared on CNBC “Is It Safe to Buy a Foreclosure?” the following advice was offered:

It’s safe to buy a previously foreclosed-upon house if title insurance is available on it, experts say….As long as the new lender and new owner have title insurance, the former owner can’t seize the home back. The new owner will keep the house, and the displaced former owner might be compensated with money.

This story was a real wake up call for me on just how far the housing market has fallen, even from other past post-bubble lows.

Back in 2007–2008, buying a foreclosure was something savvy buyers would look into in order to get a decent house at a heavily discounted price. Buyers at that time essentially had two options – buy a house from a previous owner or buy a bank-owned property.

Flash forward to 2010 and you’ll be hard pressed to find any home buyers who are looking at non-bank owned properties. The main reason for this that foreclosed properties have almost completely saturated the market.

Consider the following figure from RealtyTrac: In the US, one out of every 389 US households with a mortgage is in foreclosure. In the most troubled states such as California and Florida (which also contain a high percentage of our nation’s housing stock), the rate shoots up to one in every 79 homes.

With this in mind the article from CNBC should have been titled “How to Stay Safe When you buy a Foreclosure”, because if you buy a home, chances are it will be a foreclosure.

The crux of the CNBC article touched on the scary trend of new owners being sued by former owners who were given the boot by their bank without proper due diligence and legal procedures being followed. The huge “robo-signing” scandal may only be the tip of the iceberg. We’ll see the rest after Congress gets finished grilling mortgage industry and banking executives on what went wrong with their internal procedures.

Title insurance, as the excerpt above states, is probably the best solution to this problem. I have another solution: Don’t buy a house.

The real estate market is still a basket case. If you prefer not to get dragged down in complicated legal proceedings, you should simply look into renting.

I know, many people still claim that renting is throwing your money down the drain, but no matter how dysfunctional the housing market becomes – just when you think we can’t hit a new low, there it comes and takes everyone by surprise.

If you’re intent on purchasing a new house, you owe it to yourself to at least wait until the congressional hearings on the mortgage industry have reached some sort of conclusion. There are a lot of lawyers in the US and they are all salivating about being able to bring lawsuits surrounding the hundreds of thousands of foreclosures filed in the US since the beginning of the financial crisis. I’ll be sitting this one out on the sidelines from my rented apartment. Won’t you join me?

About the Author: Aaron Huber is a staff writer for Global Finance School. Global Finance School is a leader in producing interactive e-learning courses on finance, accounting, and economics.