Two techniques for intentional interactions: anticipate BOO (Barriers, Obstacles, Objections) before conversations to avoid being caught off-guard, and design the emotional flow of your interaction like a crescendo, moving people from reflection to action to high-energy motivation. A two-day virtual retreat case study shows how this works in practice.
Chapters
Okay, third step: anticipate BOO so you don't get scared. What the heck is BOO? So on the intentional interaction plan, we look at barriers, obstacles, and objections. So it's always great before these intentional interaction plans, you've got these objectives, you got these questions, what are some of the barriers, obstacles, and objections you might get? Especially in conflict-oriented conversations, you know, what are some of the barriers that you might see? Who's gonna block this from happening? What objections are people gonna have when you bring up price? So what's the BOO? Barriers, obstacles, objections that people have. And so think about what in your intentional interaction will prevent you from achieving your goal? What's gonna prevent you from achieving your goal? A barrier, obstacle. So brainstorm those boos. Boo! It's like a boo hiss, I guess. And as you're writing those down, to talk about my one-on-one with my masterminds, what are some of the boos? Somebody might come back and say, "I'm not getting what I want out of the mastermind." Wow, if I don't think about that ahead of time, I'd be like, "Ah, wow." But if you come back, if you've practiced that, you go like, "Oh, what would add more value for you? How could I do better?" So thinking about some of those barriers might be good at a time. And here's the biggest boo that I could get out of talking to my masterminds. It's like, "Hey, what challenges you got? How can I help you?" And it's like, "I'm good. I'm good." That's a huge barrier when I'm trying to interact with, you know, somebody in my mastermind community. "I'm all good. I don't need any help." I'm left with nothing. So even good things can be barriers, obstacles, or objections. In some sense because it's like it's not helping us move or advance or deepen anything in the conversation. Okay, so that is dealing with the boo up front allows you to not get scared. Okay, so let's move on. The fourth piece here is to plan the emotional flow through the interaction. Plan the emotional flow through the interaction. Now, How I usually do this is when I think about today's topic, I usually just brainstorm topics. I just brainstorm content for today. So I just throw stuff in a bin. I might use a whiteboard or something like that and I just throw things in a bin. And then I say those are the topics, but then I start thinking, how do I want to flow that information so that there's an emotional flow through there? I create the agenda. But what's the emotional flow? So to give you an example of that, I'm running a spirituality series on Wednesday night. We've been running since September. And this summer we're going to have a virtual retreat, a 2-day virtual retreat. And so one of the things that we were talking about just this past week with the planning team is, you know, what do we want to do with this? They're like, "What book are we going to use and who's going to be a speaker?" and all that. Back up a second. How do we want this retreat to flow emotionally for people? You know, Friday night, show up and have some self-reflection, some quiet reflection time, looking at some things I could do better at. It's kind of a low, but you get people doing some of that self-reflection. And then you move into that Saturday and you start saying like, well, here's some things that we can do. And you start doing some action planning. And then towards the end of the second day, you start going like, well, here we are, you know, here's an action plan that you can do. And then by the end, we're going like, We're going to do this together and change the world. And all of a sudden the crescendo goes up and people are like, "Let's go out and change the world!" So that was an emotional flow through a retreat that we're going to plan. So what's that emotional flow through this intentional interaction that you're going to have? Do you want it to build up? Do you want to deal with the— you know, sometimes when I do conflict mediation, you know, I put the conflict on the table up front. And just say, "Look, people aren't getting along on this thing. Let's deal with that up front." And we have a negotiation specialist, an expert for decades in our community here, and I'm sure she has lots of suggestions about how to navigate really hot negotiations. And so how do you plan the crescendo, the emotional crescendo through those? So important to think about those, not just what's the agenda, not just what do the PowerPoint slides look like, what book are we going to look at, but what's the emotional flow that you want to create through that. So take some time right now and just brainstorm for this intentional interaction that you've got, you're planning, what is your emotional flow?
