Basecamp: Giving Thanks
Welcome to the Rangr Basecamp: the weekly newsletter where the Rangr team provides our perspective of creating a startup, tricks and tips we use, and the things that inspire us.
Hello Camprs !
Good Morning!
Welcome back to the Rangr Basecamp after surviving the Thanksgiving weekend worth of food and family conversations! If you haven’t had your fill of turkey yet go watch Joey try his best to down one in a sitting.
The Lesson of the Week 👏
Seek to Understand
As our team comes back from our Thanksgiving weekend, we started to share how we celebrate the time differently. Yuma mentioned how his family opted out of the traditional turkey and stuffing for a delicious hotpot shared among his family. The only thing more synonymous with Thanksgiving other than volumes of sleep-inducing food is the multiple conversations on topics that we may agree or disagree with. I searched for a communication model that would help me understand people better as well as allow me to communicate without fear, and that's how I found the technique known as “Seek to Understand”.
What is “Seek to Understand”
This technique seems to be as old as the first dispute between humans since forever ago. Then came along Stephen Covey, the late author of the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, who distilled the conversation model into two main parts.
Seek first to understand - This starts with the user using techniques such as active listening to intentionally seeking to only understand the situation without adding their own rebuttal and experience. This allows the speaker to begin to trust you as an individual and more open to listening to what you say because you genuinely want to understand their situation.
“ You feel _________ about ___________.”
Then to be understood - Once you have the speaker’s trust and understanding then you can follow that up with your own statement. This allows for the first person to feel acknowledged and comfortable while allowing your own personal thoughts to be conveyed respectfully. This phase could easily be done too early and cause even more misunderstanding in the conversation. An easy trick is to be intentional first with your words and second say your point with fewer words.
“ I feel __________ about _____________.”
Inspirations of the Week 🔥
Article- As my days get busier and busier, I realized it’s harder to squeeze creative moments where I can actively create new ideas. I looked towards Tom Kelly an expert in Creative Confidence who challenged me to increase my creative output in various ways. The goal is to spend 10 minutes a day to write down new ideas in the most convenient way possible. In my case, I always have an open notebook on my desk with a pen ready to go. Read more about the technique at the Build Your Creative Confidence: 15 Seconds of Brilliance.
Video - I personally love breaking down problems to the bare minimum, and apparently Elon Musk and Aristotle share the same sentiment. The first principle is all about getting to a place where there are no assumptions and only truth is left.
This technique allowed me to get a place where I objectively did not have assumptions and a clear focus on what is the main problem. An example is when Elon Musk initially thought about buying a completed rocket and realized the price of a single rocket was very expensive (ballpark 65 million dollars). He then realized the rocket’s raw material such as copper and oil made up only 2 percent of the total cost. In this situation, the first principle was the objective cost of the raw materials that pushed Elon to make the next logical step: building his own rocket company. Check out Elon Musk's first principle video here.
Also, check out the brilliant Star Wars Clone Wars Series.