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    The Samurai Listener
    The Samurai Listener
    The Samurai Listener
    Ebook136 pages2 hours

    The Samurai Listener

    By Cash Nickerson

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    About this ebook

    Justice, courage, loyalty, self-control: these are more than words limited to the study of ancient wars and the martial arts. They are essential to the workplace wars we face daily. So, what if you could use the way of the Samurai in your daily life—especially at work? The martial arts skills of the Samurai revolve around politeness, self-control, and honesty. By using these traits as business strategies, you will develop an especially powerful tool for dealing with the subtle attacks we often face from colleagues, clients, and others competing for control, eager to succeed at our expense. By learning how to recognize these attacks, you’ll be ready to handle unexpected challenges. And by mastering these techniques, you will become a more confident and effective leader.

    The Samurai Listener provides specific physical and mental exercises to improve all of your interpersonal interactions, particularly in professional settings. Cash Nickerson draws upon more than thirty years of experience in human resources, the workforce, and his training in the martial arts to offer expert instruction to help anyone eager to be more successful.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPost Hill Press
    Release dateMar 6, 2018
    ISBN9781682615263
    The Samurai Listener
    Author

    Cash Nickerson

    Cash Nickerson is President and CFO of PDS Tech, Inc., a position he has held for 10 years. With over $440 million in annual sales, PDS is the fourth largest engineering and IT staffing firm in the United States. He has held a variety of legal and executive positions in his 25 year plus career including serving as an attorney and marketing executive for Union Pacific Railroad, an associate and then partner at Jenner & Block, one of Chicago’s five largest law firms and chairman and CEO of an internet company he took public through a reverse merger. Mr. Nickerson holds a JD and MBA from Washington University in St. Louis where he was an editor of the law review and a recipient of the US Steel Scholarship. Mr. Nickerson is Chairman of the Dallas Regional Cabinet for Washington University in St. Louis. He is a member of the National Council of the Washington University in St. Louis School of Law and International Council of the Whitney R. Harris World Law Institute. Mr. Nickerson serves on the Equifax Workforce Solutions Client Advisory Board. Mr. Nickerson is licensed to practice law in California, Nevada, Illinois, Nebraska and Texas and is a member of the American, Los Angeles and Dallas Bar Associations. He received the Global Philanthropy Award from Washington University for his support of the Crimes Against Humanity Initiative. He is an avid martial artist, ranked as a third degree black belt in Kenpo Karate, and he is a Russian Martial Arts instructor. Mr. Nickerson is the author of the recently released, critically acclaimed book on employment, “StagNation, Understanding the New Normal in Employment.”

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      Book preview

      The Samurai Listener - Cash Nickerson

      A POST HILL PRESS BOOK

      ISBN: 978-1-68261-525-6

      ISBN (eBook): 978-1-68261-526-3

      The Samurai Listener

      © 2018 by Cash Nickerson

      All Rights Reserved

      Cover art by Tricia Principe, principedesign.com

      No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author and publisher.

      Image6706.JPG

      Post Hill Press

      New York • Nashville

      posthillpress.com

      Published in the United States of America

      DEDICATION

      This book is dedicated to those who are continuously dissatisfied with their performance and seek to improve their skills, gifts, and talents.

      It is dedicated to those who approach each day determined to make it a better day than the last.

      It is dedicated to those who lead others and spend their time trying to improve those around them.

      Imagine a world where we each help the other, and in constructive ways we work to improve our ability to work together to advance humanity.

      I am humbly engaged in the effort to help dramatically improve how we work with one another on a day-to-day basis with a view towards making work more fun, productive, and successful.

      Cash

      ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

      I want to acknowledge all of my martial arts instructors and training partners, especially Vladmir Vasiliev, all of the Machado family, Martin Wheeler, and Rick Fowler. I also want to acknowledge my academic professors at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, and my law school and graduate business school professors at Washington University in St. Louis.

      Special thanks to Debra Englander who helped me by editing drafts of the book and to Billie Brownell and the other editors and staff at Post Hill Press. We all need those who make us do one more try, one more effort, and one more draft.

      TABLE OF CONTENTS

      Introduction

      Chapter 1: Redefining Listening

      Chapter 2: Are You Present? Woody Allen Was Wrong

      Chapter 3: Awareness and Attention? Mr. Miyagi Was Wrong

      Chapter 4: Are You Receptive? Or Are Your Shields Up?

      Chapter 5: Engagement and Give and Take

      Chapter 6: Understanding? Perspective Listening and Confirming Understanding

      Chapter 7: Persistence—Can You Stay in the Game?

      Chapter 8: Resolution—Pre- and Post-Listening Rituals

      Chapter 9: Emotions—Who Is in Control? Are You?

      Chapter 10: Senses—The Role of Other Senses and Sensing

      Chapter 11: Ego—Avoiding the Me That Gets in the Way

      Chapter 12: Nerves—The Impact of Tension

      Chapter 13: Tempo—Getting in Touch with Rhythm

      Chapter 14: Silence—The Most Powerful Communication Device

      Chapter 15: Listening and Leading

      Chapter 16: Listening and Selling

      Chapter 17: Listening and Negotiating

      Chapter 18: Listening and Remembering

      Chapter 19: Your Twelve-Week Listening Improvement Plan (LIP)

      Chapter 20: Conclusion—Do You Feel Me Now?

      About the Author

      INTRODUCTION

      LEARNING THE HIDDEN ARTS

      Those of us who have been in the workplace for a long time know that soft skills matter. I use the term soft skills (compared to hard skills) to mean the interpersonal and social skills of a person working in an organization, not their skills in their trade or craft. We all have witnessed the rise of certain people in organizations who we know are not necessarily the most technically competent. To be sure, they are technically proficient, but they are not the best coders, lawyers, accountants, operators, or engineers in the companies they eventually lead. They could be, but they usually aren’t.

      Generally, we have come to accept this fact without questioning or examining it. We take it as a given in the human behavior in organizations ecosystem that

      people skills or soft skills is a defining factor in suc-cess. That begs the question: If there is something besides your technical skills that is a key factor in how far you rise in an organization, what is it? Why do some people have it while others don’t? We don’t consider it unfair; mostly, we acknowledge that accomplishing undertakings and leading others to do so takes a different set of skills than the technical skills we learn in colleges and universities and on our on-the-job skills training. But where do you acquire these other skills? Are they innate? Where do you turn for instruction in the art of getting things done and leading others to do so?

      That’s a great question, but unfortunately there are not a lot of easy answers. We tend to treat soft skills as hidden arts, somewhat like martial arts. We often view soft skills as something with which you are born or otherwise mysteriously acquire. We consider them talents.

      Have you noticed that some people can walk into a room and immediately take over the room? Everyone in the room becomes attentive and wants to hear what that person has to say. Those same people seem to be able to say, "Let’s go this way, and everyone follows them. Those same people speak and those around them say, I could listen to them all day long."

      It’s natural to want to be one of those people who attracts others and whom people admire. And here is the good news: Not everyone is born with this talent. You can study and learn these traits. I learned the hard way, largely because of my first job review decades ago that I didn’t like or understand.

      My first job review in the professional workplace was in 1985, when I was a young corporate lawyer at the Union Pacific Railroad. It was a mediocre review, which I am convinced had nothing whatsoever to do with my legal skills. How were my legal technical skills? They were first rate; I ranked highly in my class and I was an Articles Editor of the Law Review. I clerked for one of the top professors at my school. I interned for one of the top law firms in the country and the largest in the region where I went to law school. I was hired by the Union Pacific Railroad, one of the oldest, most prestigious and conservative companies in the United States, after a national search for one of two new lawyers. (Abraham Lincoln signed the Pacific Railroad Act of 1862 on July 1, 1862, which created the Union Pacific Railroad.)

      But according to my first-year review, among my other flaws, I had soft skills issues. At the time of that review, nobody referred to them as soft skills. But the criticisms in the written review and in a conversation about the review were clearly about what I now understand were soft skill issues: I was aloof and too task oriented. I was not a people person. I had excelled at every project, but I hadn’t paid attention to the environment in which I worked at the time. Out of habit I suppose, I treated the workplace like it was school. Law school back then was very much like the way it was characterized in the movie The Paper Chase. It was competitive. While there were study groups, it still was a me against everyone else type of environment.

      The review bewildered me. My first boss, Bill Higgins, who was responsible for the review, was a former WWII Army infantryman who had fought at The Battle of the Bulge; he liked my work and me. But as I sought to glean clues from my environment, I could tell his assistant didn’t like me. She looked at me with disdain whenever I entered or left his office. It took me months to figure out that she was my primary critic and she was influential.

      And that is one reason, I discovered, for the mediocre review. She had helped create the reputation I had acquired for being too intense and not very human. Since this assistant was popular, she successfully held me back as she shared her view of me with others in the environment and apparently, everything I did constantly confirmed her opinion. It wouldn’t be fair to blame her alone, because she was just more observant. She was right. I didn’t care about other people in the workplace enough; I cared too much about my own work and getting it exactly right. I aimed for perfection. I had carried over the intense competitive skills I had developed in school that had worked for me and brought them into the workplace.

      This negative review had nothing to do with my work. I later learned that Jim Dolan, my manager’s boss, the VP of Law, had to encourage my boss to include more positive comments in my review because of the work I actually did. Nevertheless, at the young age of 26, what held me back were skills I had not learned in college, law school, or business school. My behaviors in the office and the perception of those behaviors by my boss’ assistant and everyone else in the office who had an opinion had derailed me—possibly even threatened my career.

      I suspected there were underlying and mysterious factors at play in my review because it made no rational sense to me. How could I do great work and get a mediocre review? It wasn’t as if I were a bad person. I hadn’t done anything to hurt anyone else. There were clearly unwritten rules at work, but I didn’t know what they were or where to find them. There were hidden arts. I knew nothing of the hidden arts. So I turned my perceived intensity into a desire to understand and master these hidden arts.

      This book is intended to share what I have learned about the hidden arts over the past thirty-five years in every imaginable type of professional setting from start-up enterprises, to big corporations, to midsized companies, as well as law firms of all sizes. Perhaps, most important, my primary industry expertise has been in the area of employment. I have been involved with human resources, talent acquisition, recruiting, and merging and acquiring companies that perform such tasks for a very long time.

      Simultaneously, in my personal life, I have been a student of many types of martial arts. I have studied and taught martial arts as a hobby and business. I studied Shotokan Karate in my youth and then American Kenpo Karate, achieving

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