Mohamed Ibrahim's Blog, page 2

Your Guide to Delivering a Charismatic Speech

You've spent half of the night rehearsing in front of your close friends, and spent the other half trying to draw mental images on how the audience will receive your first speech, and how their eyes will sparkle for the powerful response you are going to stir in their hearts and their minds. Now you are trying to catch your breath while climbing the few steps to the podium where you are going to deliver this five-minute speech, and just before you start, you looked at the few-hundred audience, glanced your papers, and reckoned an article you've read few weeks or months earlier that helped you to prepare and deliver this “charismatic speech”. It’s the article you are reading now!
Preparing and delivering an impressive speech that inspires the audience and sticks in their memories for long, is vital in many personal and professional life events, such as a graduation party, a marriage ceremony, a sports team gathering before a final match, an introduction of a new product to a sales group, a presentation of a major change to a department or team, or an introduction of a new leader, and so on.
You probably have attended several seminars, read a dozen of articles, or viewed lots of webcasts on delivering an effective presentation. You probably also have practiced and perfected it, as part of your job requirements. But what you must know is that delivering a charismatic speech differs greatly from delivering an effective presentation, in both the purpose and the means of each. In this article, I will be sharing with you the main guidelines that help you figure out what it takes to write and deliver a charismatic speech that leaves your audience dazzled. But just before that, let’s try to understand first, what we mean by the word “Charisma”, and how -if ever possible- to become more charismatic:
1. At first, what is “Charisma” anyway?One useful way is to define “Charisma” as the ability to trigger a strong positive emotional response in others. As Max Weber, the German sociologist explained, charismatic authority rests at least on one of three factors: devotion to an exceptional sanctity, heroism, or exemplary character of the person. If you are neither a religious leader nor a hero, then all you can have access to, is only the third source of charisma, which is your character and your personal appeal. There are six areas here which you can take care of: 1) getting and paying attention while communicating, 2) expressing the meaning of your ideas effectively, 3) instilling trust by following through on promises and taking clear positions on issues, 4) caring for people’s welfare, their feelings, and your own self-regard, 5) taking calculated risks in pursuing things you believe in, and 6) tapping into the feelings of others, and making their work/contribution more meaningful for them.
Having defined charisma, and what constitutes it, we now turn to see the main elements of the charismatic speech, and attempt to crack what leaders like Gamal Abdel Nasser, Anwar Sadat, Martin Luther King, John Kennedy, and Barack Obama, were doing in order to be able to truly inspire their people whenever they addressed them with a speech.
2. The style of your speech1. Use simple language that the audience will understand. Use active verbs. Use colorful and vivid words. Use innovative symbols and slogans. Make sure that you get to your point quickly.      
2. Avoid using clichés.
3. Logically organize your speech, with clear transitions between ideas.
4. Drive analogies and tell brief stories and metaphors, to convey your meaning in a concrete way, simplify the complex, flame the imagination of the audience, and create the desired emotional reactions in them.
5. Employ “framing” techniques effectively to emphasize values and beliefs and to bring out the importance of the core ideas of the topic. Framing means selecting a framework for the message. For example, the two statements “our company goal is to build communication devices,” and “our company goal is to connect human beings to one another” deliver the same basic message with very different frames.  The book “Mind-Lines, Lines For Changing Minds” by L. Michael Hall and Bobby G. Bodenhamer is a practical resource that can help you master the art of framing.
6. Repeat the key message through various words, phrases, or sentence structures to emphasize its importance. Watch how Martin Luther King awesomely did this in his historic speech: “I Have a Dream”.
7. Use Alliteration, which is the repetition of initial consonants sounds (e.g., mighty mountains of Montana) which provide a pleasing rhythm to the speech and has a lovable musical effect in the ears of the audience.
3. The content of your speech1. Establish the need for change. Particularly, at turning moments in the lives of people and organizations, the audience will be usually anticipating to hear something that clearly sets the scene for a change in goals, directions, way of doing things, etc. After all, challenging the status quo for the good of one’s self and the group is a virtue of effective and charismatic people.
2. Describe a vision of the desired future situation that highly appeals to people's hopes for something better. A carefully articulated vision acts as a “true north” that guides people’s actions and behaviors.
3. Present a promising, innovative strategy (route) for attaining the vision in general terms, without too much detail. Keep in mind that it’s the route or way for fulfilling the vision that distinguishes truly visionary people from mere day dreamers.
4. Talk about the challenges that come across the way of achieving the vision, and the need for dedication, courage, persistence, creativity, and possibly self-sacrifice. Maintain a realistic outlook so that audience will regard you as being credible.
5. Express optimism that the vision will be attained, despite the obstacles. At the end, there is no motive for people to positively respond to your speech or to support you, unless they believe you can do what you say you are going to do.
4. The audience and the environment of your speech1. Find out as much as you can about your audience before you write your speech
2. Learn everything you can about the room, the other speakers, the time of day you will speak and the availability of logistical resources to boost your speech.
3. If you will be reading your speech from a paper, write it in a font big enough for you to comfortably and quickly read it from a distance.
5. The speaker - yourself1. Realize that the ability to speak in public is not innate. It is a skill that you can learn.
2. See speeches of great speakers to learn how they deliver them. You may refer to http://www.americanrhetoric.com for hundreds of video, audio, and text speeches of influential leaders.
3. Practice your speech, read it silently and then out loud. Tape-record it and play it back at least once a day, visualize yourself delivering it as you listen. Encourage yourself.
4. At the time of the speech, if you are nervous, breathe deeply to relax your body, mind and vocal cords.
5. Never forget that the nonverbal messages you transmit need to be consistent with and supporting to your spoken words.  For example, your voice tone, inflection, and pauses, and other non-verbal cues (e.g., posture, gestures, arm and hand movements, and facial expressions) can be used to amplify the intended meaning.
6. Remember that as you practice speech writing and delivery, your other communication skills will also improve.

Your Guide To Delivering A Charismatic Speech

You've spent half of the night rehearsing in front of your close friends, and spent the other half trying to draw mental images on how the audience will receive your first speech, and how their eyes will sparkle for the powerful response you are going to stir in their hearts and their minds. Now you are trying to catch your breath while climbing the few steps to the podium where you are going to deliver this five-minute speech, and just before you start, you looked at the few-hundred audience, glanced your papers, and reckoned an article you've read few weeks or months earlier that helped you to prepare and deliver this “charismatic speech”. It’s the article you are reading now!
Preparing and delivering an impressive speech that inspires the audience and sticks in their memories for long, is vital in many personal and professional life events, such as a graduation party, a marriage ceremony, a sports team gathering before a final match, an introduction of a new product to a sales group, a presentation of a major change to a department or team, or an introduction of a new leader, and so on.
You probably have attended several seminars, read a dozen of articles, or viewed lots of webcasts on delivering an effective presentation. You probably also have practiced and perfected it, as part of your job requirements. But what you must know is that delivering a charismatic speech differs greatly from delivering an effective presentation, in both the purpose and the means of each. In this article, I will be sharing with you the main guidelines that help you figure out what it takes to write and deliver a charismatic speech that leaves your audience dazzled. But just before that, let’s try to understand first, what we mean by the word “Charisma”, and how -if ever possible- to become more charismatic:
1. At first, what is “Charisma” anyway?One useful way is to define “Charisma” as the ability to trigger a strong positive emotional response in others. As Max Weber, the German sociologist explained, charismatic authority rests at least on one of three factors: devotion to an exceptional sanctity, heroism, or exemplary character of the person. If you are neither a religious leader nor a hero, then all you can have access to, is only the third source of charisma, which is your character and your personal appeal. There are six areas here which you can take care of: 1) getting and paying attention while communicating, 2) expressing the meaning of your ideas effectively, 3) instilling trust by following through on promises and taking clear positions on issues, 4) caring for people’s welfare, their feelings, and your own self-regard, 5) taking calculated risks in pursuing things you believe in, and 6) tapping into the feelings of others, and making their work/contribution more meaningful for them.
Having defined charisma, and what constitutes it, we now turn to see the main elements of the charismatic speech, and attempt to crack what leaders like Gamal Abdel Nasser, Anwar Sadat, Martin Luther King, John Kennedy, and Barack Obama, were doing in order to be able to truly inspire their people whenever they addressed them with a speech.
2. The style of your speech1. Use simple language that the audience will understand. Use active verbs. Use colorful and vivid words. Use innovative symbols and slogans. Make sure that you get to your point quickly.      
2. Avoid using clichés.
3. Logically organize your speech, with clear transitions between ideas.
4. Drive analogies and tell brief stories and metaphors, to convey your meaning in a concrete way, simplify the complex, flame the imagination of the audience, and create the desired emotional reactions in them.
5. Employ “framing” techniques effectively to emphasize values and beliefs and to bring out the importance of the core ideas of the topic. Framing means selecting a framework for the message. For example, the two statements “our company goal is to build communication devices,” and “our company goal is to connect human beings to one another” deliver the same basic message with very different frames.  The book “Mind-Lines, Lines For Changing Minds” by L. Michael Hall and Bobby G. Bodenhamer is a practical resource that can help you master the art of framing.
6. Repeat the key message through various words, phrases, or sentence structures to emphasize its importance. Watch how Martin Luther King awesomely did this in his historic speech: “I Have a Dream”.
7. Use Alliteration, which is the repetition of initial consonants sounds (e.g., mighty mountains of Montana) which provide a pleasing rhythm to the speech and has a lovable musical effect in the ears of the audience.
3. The content of your speech1. Establish the need for change. Particularly, at turning moments in the lives of people and organizations, the audience will be usually anticipating to hear something that clearly sets the scene for a change in goals, directions, way of doing things, etc. After all, challenging the status quo for the good of one’s self and the group is a virtue of effective and charismatic people.
2. Describe a vision of the desired future situation that highly appeals to people's hopes for something better. A carefully articulated vision acts as a “true north” that guides people’s actions and behaviors.
3. Present a promising, innovative strategy (route) for attaining the vision in general terms, without too much detail. Keep in mind that it’s the route or way for fulfilling the vision that distinguishes truly visionary people from mere day dreamers.
4. Talk about the challenges that come across the way of achieving the vision, and the need for dedication, courage, persistence, creativity, and possibly self-sacrifice. Maintain a realistic outlook so that audience will regard you as being credible.
5. Express optimism that the vision will be attained, despite the obstacles. At the end, there is no motive for people to positively respond to your speech or to support you, unless they believe you can do what you say you are going to do.
4. The audience and the environment of your speech1. Find out as much as you can about your audience before you write your speech
2. Learn everything you can about the room, the other speakers, the time of day you will speak and the availability of logistical resources to boost your speech.
3. If you will be reading your speech from a paper, write it in a font big enough for you to comfortably and quickly read it from a distance.
5. The speaker - yourself1. Realize that the ability to speak in public is not innate. It is a skill that you can learn.
2. See speeches of great speakers to learn how they deliver them. You may refer to http://www.americanrhetoric.com for hundreds of video, audio, and text speeches of influential leaders.
3. Practice your speech, read it silently and then out loud. Tape-record it and play it back at least once a day, visualize yourself delivering it as you listen. Encourage yourself.
4. At the time of the speech, if you are nervous, breathe deeply to relax your body, mind and vocal cords.
5. Never forget that the nonverbal messages you transmit need to be consistent with and supporting to your spoken words.  For example, your voice tone, inflection, and pauses, and other non-verbal cues (e.g., posture, gestures, arm and hand movements, and facial expressions) can be used to amplify the intended meaning.
6. Remember that as you practice speech writing and delivery, your other communication skills will also improve.

What Great Leaders Do Differently

One day Peter Drucker -the guru of modern management- received a phone call from a potential consulting client, and she was asking: “We’d like you to run a leadership seminar for us on how to acquire charisma”. To her surprise, Drucker responded that there was more to leadership than the popular focus on personal “dash” or charisma. He added: “leadership is work”.
What Drucker told his client was affirmed few years later by Jim Collins in his book “Good to Great” where he rigorously researched eleven companies that were able to sustain their superior financial performance for at least fifteen years, and he found out that leaders of these companies didn’t seek fame or huge compensation. Instead, they had one thing in common that distinguished them from the leaders of other “just good” companies: They embodied a paradoxical mix of personal humility and professional will, or what Collins calls: “level-5 leadership”.
So, it seems that being really a great leader hinges more on your thoughts, beliefs, and actions, and less on your inspirational appeal, ability to manage impressions, or rhetoric. This is also consistent with the latest developments in the field of leadership research, namely authentic leadership and positive leadership. But the question now is: What is it exactly, that great leaders do differently?
They focus on their strengths:Great leaders truly know their own strengths (i.e. things they do very well and enjoy doing them). They focus on these strengths, improve them, and get the most out of them. They don’t waste time or energy trying to fix their weaknesses. Mediocre leaders, on the contrary, often try to be good in all areas of leadership, ending up without excelling in any single area. In their book “Strengths Based Leadership”, Tom Rath and Barry Conchie challenge the conventional wisdom which states that: “You can be anything you want to be, if you just try hard enough”, and argue that it is flawed. They assert, instead, that you cannot be anything you want to be –but you can be a lot more of who you already are.
Gallup Inc. interviewed thousands of leaders in business and government sectors over decades, and found that great leaders do not share any particular strength. However, what they all have in common is that they truly know their strengths and they lead by them. It’s ironic, however, how a lot of managers are blind about their real capabilities, or even worse, believe they are good at the very same things claimed by their followers to be their weak points. So, the starting point for you here is to develop a solid self-awareness that helps you realize your own strengths and weaknesses. “StrengthsFinder” is an instrument developed by Dr. Donald O. Clifton, the father of strengths psychology, to help leaders assess their leadership abilities. It has 34 individual leadership themes, which can be categorized under four main domains of leadership strength: Executing, Influencing, Relationship Building, and Strategic Thinking. You can access this instrument via the link: www.strengthsfinder.com
They assemble strong teams that complement their own skills:Knowing that they cannot excel in all aspects of leadership, great leaders surround themselves with strong teams that complement their own skills. This creates the skill diversity that can be even more important than demographic diversity when tackling complex business issues. Mediocre leaders usually commit the classical mistake of staffing people who only mirror their own traits and echo their thinking styles, and hence miss on the opportunity to tap into a richer pool of talents. They only create an unneeded skill redundancy.
Great leaders also use their strength-based approach for developing their followers. They realize that each individual is different, with a unique blend of skills, passions, and motivations. They assign each team member a role that matches their strengths, while at the same time managing around the member’s weaknesses. For example, if someone is not good with numbers, it’s unlikely that they will become a great bookkeeper no matter what amount of training they receive. As advised by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman in their must-read book: “First, Break All The Rules”, there are three ways to manage around worker’s weaknesses: 1) put in place a support process or technology to compensate the lack of talent, 2) find them a compatible partner, or 3) assign them an alternative role.
They spend more time with their best people:This sounds counter intuitive, as it might be widely accepted that best people are already performing so well that they don’t need much devotion from the leader, and that a leaders has to spend more time with the strugglers in the team to develop them and make them more productive. Gallup’s researchers Buckingham and Coffman Revealed that this is not what the best leaders do. Best leaders try to spend more time with their stars to let them know they are their best people and to pamper them to maintain their top performance. Besides, leaders can learn what works well only from their top performers, while spending the time with poor performers will merely allow them to know what doesn’t work.
Another practice of great leaders is assigning their best people to the greatest opportunities, not the greatest problems. They understand that assigning best people to solve issues - hoping to turn around the bad situation- may pay off, but they also know that solving issues will just lead to an average performance, and that it’s the pursuit of great opportunities that will yield great results.
They face the reality of the situation:Remember that great leaders are humble, so they do not get blind by success, and they do not just ignore facts because these facts are uncomfortable to them. They also possess a strong professional determination, so they always want to face the reality of their situations since they realize that this is the only way to make quality decisions. They acknowledge that they neither have all information nor possess all answers. So, they listen carefully and respectfully to their people, rationally challenge the assumptions that lie under the surface of the conversation, pose questions that trigger the most insightful debates, attend to discussions with no preset decisions or judgments, and tolerate or even stimulate opposing views.
When evaluating decisions they or their organizations have made, great leaders adopt an objective and honest perspective, create a climate of accountability, and seek to identify learning opportunities, rather than trying to shift the blame or look for a scapegoat. This has a dual positive impact on their followers and their organizations: Followers will perceive them as trustworthy, credible leaders and will become more motivated to follow them. Organizations will actually learn from events, accumulate useful experiences, and eventually will break free from mediocrity.
They spur optimism and hope:After almost a century of his risky voyage, the story of Sir Ernest Shackelton, the legendary Antarctic explorer, continues to inspire other leaders on the role of optimism in effective leadership and in crisis management. Interestingly enough, the mission that earned Shackelton his reputation as a great leader was a failed mission. Polar ice crushed his ship, the “Endurance”, but he managed to return all his men safely despite the lack of supplies and the loss of contact with the outside world. In a gallant act, he and a few men of his crew sailed a small lifeboat for 800 miles from Antarctica to a whaling station on South Georgia Island to bring back help. Even in these terrible circumstances, Shackleton never whined or showed fear or frustration, and his men credited his optimism and resourcefulness for saving their lives.
The CEO of Disney, Robert Iger, confirms this notion when he says:  “What I’ve learned over time is that optimism is a very, very important part of leadership. However, you need a dose of realism with it. People don’t like to follow pessimists”. Gallup Inc. has recently offered the empirical support to Iger’s belief when it surveyed 10,000 employees from 2005 to 2008 and found that around 70% of those who feel optimistic about their future prospects at their companies become fully engaged in their work.
They handle negativity quickly:Having one unhappy or unmotivated team member, who chronically complaints, and is self-centered, uncooperative and unproductive, can have just the same effect like a bad apple, by drawing energy out of other team members. And, if left unhandled, their negativity can spread and damage team spirit and cohesion. While many leaders may prefer to avoid dealing with people with negativity or ignore them on the hope that they will change by themselves, great leaders confront negativity with no procrastination. They try either to win those people over, or at least defuse their negative energy and contain their effect.

Is Persistence Always a Good Idea?

In May 1996, thirty four enthusiastic climbers were ascending the Mount Everest. Many of them were adventurers with no previous 8,000m experience, and so they hired two expert mountaineers to lead the expedition. The huge number of climbers caused route bottlenecks and delays. Climbers, however, got so locked in their lifelong dream of submitting Everest that they continued to make their way up ignoring the snow storm that was looming, the supplemental oxygen tanks that were running out, and the darkness that was falling. The result was that eight of them died and two suffered severe frostbite in what was considered one of the deadliest disasters in Everest’s history.   
We’ve always learned about the virtue of persistence in so many success stories of politicians, military commanders, business people  scientists, artists, athletes and the like who fought failure, rejection, or other adversarial conditions, and relentlessly kept trying till they paved their rough road to success. Persistence is known to be a quality of highly effective people who have self-efficacy and believe in their ability to accomplish their goals, but tragic incidents like Everest’s pose an important question: is it always a good idea to stubbornly pursue a goal even when signals all through the way are telling you otherwise?
In his book “Destructive Goal Pursuit”, Christopher Kayes attempts to answer this question, by warning about the dangers that stem from the combination of: 1) too narrow goals that limit the adaptability of teams or organizations, 2) shifting environments that could make the original goals not viable or unrealistic, 3) grandiosity of leaders that make them oblivious to the reality of their situation, and 4) over dependence of the team members on their leader to the extent that they might suspend their own judgment. With such lethal combination, persistence to achieve goals turns into “gambling” with resources, reputations, and perhaps lives. In the remainder of this article, I’ll try to draw the fine line that assists you to see where persistence stops and gambling begins:
Recognize and avoid “escalation of commitment”:Irrational escalation of commitment is a known decision making error that occurs when the decision maker chooses to commit more resources (money, effort, time, etc) to an initiative or a project despite the objective evidence that continuing this initiative is unwise. A classic example of this error was when the British and French governments chose to continue funding the joint development of the supersonic jet “Concorde”, even after it became no longer feasible economically. Industry experts estimated that in 2003, when the last aircraft in the fleet was retired, British Airways was losing $1,200 on every passenger who took the Concorde. The question that pops up now is: Why decision makers, no matter how experienced, continue in the wrong direction even if it is becoming more obvious that it is wrong?
There are many reasons why escalation of commitment happens. The most important of which is the attempt of the decision maker to protect his image for if he admits that his original decision was flawed, people may start to question his judgment, consistency, or competence. So, he tries to put more resources into the failing initiative hoping to make it work. Another reason is that when decision makers receive positive feedback about the performance of their initiatives, they tend to stay risk-averse in order to maintain their gains, but when things change and they start receiving negative feedback, they tend to take high risks as an attempt to prevent loses, thus they escalate their commitment. 
It also is worthwhile noting that voters penalize public officials if they switch their previously supported views. This is what happened to the democratic candidate John Kerry in the 2004 U.S. presidential election when he changed his stance on several issues including the Iraq War, and this is another reason why decision or policy makers tend to stick to their views even after they become aware of their pitfalls.
Recognizing this type of decision biases and its reasons can surely help you avoid it. Moreover, here are few measures that can serve as an antidote. They are based on researches conducted by Wharton University of Pennsylvania, and recommendations of Mathew Hayward in his thoughtful book “Ego Check”:
- Remember that flexible leaders know their limits. Put advance limits for your commitment to a particular course of action and stick to these limits. For instance, you might consider going up to 20% over budget for a stumbling project to turn it around, but then you will abandon it when the spending reaches that limit.
- Don’t be authoritarian. Consult others and have someone on the team to play the role of the devil’s advocate, who looks for disconfirming or discomforting information that can help develop a more balanced and realistic view of the situation.
- Anticipate the consequences of your decisions on the organization or the team. Ask yourself: “Would I choose to put more resources into that project if it wasn't me who initiated it?” An honest answer to that question can help you make sure if it’s the welfare of the greatest number of people, not your ego or hubris, that motivates you to continue pursuing a given course of action.
- Set flexible goals for your team whenever possible, and empower team members to use their own judgment. This will allow them to quickly adapt to changing circumstances without wasting too much time and effort continuing in a direction that has become no longer valid.
- Structure your reward system so that decision makers in your team are not punished for inconsistency, especially when they are facing novel situations. This will discourage their potential to commitment escalation.
- Move the decision making authority on whether to commit further resources to ongoing initiatives to different decision makers than those who made the original “Go” decision. This will also help mitigate any personal bias.


Beware of the “sunk cost” trap:Haven’t you ever told yourself “I’ve invested too much money or spent too much time on this project to quit”? Guess what? This is a flawed argument from a rational economic perspective, yet people still make it all the time! This is called the “sunk cost” fallacy and is another way decision makers make bad decisions by continuing to mobilize more resources into a direction that evidently turned out to be less feasible. By definition, sunk cost means a cost that was incurred in the past and became irrecoverable, and hence must be irrelevant to justifying future investment decisions.
It’s interesting to see how the concept of sunk cost extends to different areas of our lives: We watch a dull movie because we already paid for the tickets, we wear unfitting clothes because we already bought them, and we maintain unfulfilling relationships because we’ve spent long time in them, and so on.
To better understand the sunk cost fallacy in business context, take this example: $10 million have been spent in building a manufacturing facility, and it’s half way to completion (i.e. another $10 million is needed to finish construction). But due to accelerated development of manufacturing technologies, an equally viable, but much cheaper alternative technology has emerged, that you can choose to abandon construction of the current facility (which can’t be resold), and build a whole new one for a total of $7 million.
The rational decision here is the one that yields the greatest payoff, which is to abandon the existing facility and build the new one, even if means a total loss of the originally spent $10 million that will be considered a “sunk cost” in that case. However, many decision makers will be mistakenly influenced by this sunk cost that they will choose to continue the construction of the current facility. The reason behind such poor decision is our natural inclination to avoid the feeling of loss, or what’s called “loss aversion”. Research has proven that people feel greater harm by a certain loss than the joy they feel by obtaining an equivalent gain (e.g. the pain of losing $1,000 exceeds the pleasure of gaining $1,000). Some studies suggest that the psychological effect of losses is even twice as powerful as that of gains. This explains the desperate gamblers’ behavior of throwing good money after bad in an attempt to recover their losses, but they usually end up just losing more.
You can manage to break out of the sunk cost trap when making decisions about future resource commitments if you follow these advice:
- Check if your decision making process is suffering any sunk cost bias by asking yourself: “Would I choose to put more resources into that project if no costs were previously incurred, or if its past investments were done for free?”
- Reframe the situation for which the decision is made, by using the frame of gains instead of the frame of losses. This will help you overcome your loss aversion tendency and see the unbiased reality of the situation. Applying this to the above example of the manufacturing facility means to consider the savings of $3 million in future investments rather than getting locked into the $10 million initial investment that was paid in all cases.
- Introduce many intermediate check points to regularly assess the viability of your ongoing projects, so it will be less difficult to kill unsuccessful projects early on (before sunk costs grow very large and loss aversion intensifies).
- Generate more alternatives for moving forward than just the two options: stay on course or kill the project. This will help reveal any hidden assumptions and improve the quality of the decisions made.