Never thought you would hear someone say “Business and Poker are much the same” right?
Business and Poker are two completely separate approaches. Or are they?
Have you ever played Black Jack, Gin Rummy or poker? One of my favorite games is Texas Holdem, a poker game where you are dealt two cards face down and finally five community cards face up. You use your two-card Situs Rolet Dan Terpercaya along with the five community cards to compete against other players at the table for the best five-card hand during the hand. Sounds simple isn’t it. It really is. It’s not difficult to play at all. But, depending on who your competitors are, it can be very difficult to win.
Anyone who plays poker a lot knows that the best hand doesn’t always win the pot. This is very true. Poker is more than a simple game of cards among other things. Each hand is a situational strategy of your skill, timing, maneuverability and pitting cleverness against your competitors. Sound familiar? Exactly, it’s a business game! And like any business, it’s not always the best product or service that wins. It’s the best product or service that is managed at a time that wins!
Some of the best players in the world can win the hands that have the worst odds of winning. They usually do it by what we call “bluffing”, or leading you to believe they have a better hand than you. The ability not to let their excitement, worries or problems show on their faces is a talent in poker. This is what we call Poker Face. The presence of a blank expression on their face when they place their bet provides you with no idea if they have a good hand or a bad hand.
No, that’s not lying. The difference is, in poker, they never really know what they’ve been up to, and of course you’ve matched their bets. Then, if they bluffed you and you have the best hand, you win!
Communicating in the business world is not much different. There are times when you have to communicate something that may be very relevant to you or something you have a problem with your team. In this day and age, you will need to keep your Poker Face on and let them see that you are calm and composed, even though that power is not going to happen. Luckily this time it didn’t happen too often, but when they did, being able to put on a calm appearance was very important. You have to take all your emotions out of communication. Those who do this very well usually end up in a Public Relations role within a company and do most, if not all, of their company communications. This has become the age of political correctness,
The ability to communicate with your team and keep emotions out is something that is truly appreciated, not only from your team, but from those above you. Employees have a tendency to react to emotions and not messages. When that happens, the focus then turns to sending and the message content disappears all together. At that time, your communication has now become the problem of someone else to help resolve. It’s not where you want to be. You should spend your time helping clear obstacles for your team, not creating them.
The poker face is something that CEO and corporate communications experts have consistently mastered. As you continue to move up in the company, you will see more and more examples of the ability to take emotion out of messages. Your ability to master facial communication poker in your current role only makes you more valuable to your current team and to future companies.