One of the things I love to do are trainings for young members within JCI. They start to know the organization and aspire to learn as much as possible about it. The sparkles in their eyes when they have seen where and how to engage as well as what they might gain from it belongs to the great joys I have as a trainer.

The challenge for the trainers thus is to create the sparkles! To achieve this independently from the tons of information to give, making them a bit too many for some, it is important to find a way to make the training a lasting experience. For this training, Diana, one of our trainers had the wonderful idea to bring Matti along.

 
Who?

Matti is a huge yellow rubber duck. Yes, I'm serious a rubber duck!

Why?

Well, Matti is a visual symbol for activities and partnership within this organization. Explaining where Matti came from, why he is attending all kinds of events and why it is fun to have him assist in the activities gave real insight to the participants. Matti served as materialized experience.

Another important role Matti had was to make the participants smile. Some of the participants smiled because the trainers were playing with Matti, others were simply smiling at the duck itself and the others were smiling that everyone was having fun. All had in common the feeling of something nice happening during the training.

Last but not least the ability to connect ourselves to our memories as a kid, simply by seeing a big rubber duck, reminded us of the energy we had as kids when we used to learn and have fun. Connecting to this feeling enabled the participants to use exactly this energy to enjoy the training and take as possible out of it for themselves. Connecting to this feeling also helped us as trainers to smile and remain energetic during all the training.

What?

This training was as so often a valuable learning experience. Seeing the effect of participants connecting to visual tools as well as to fun elements was a good reminder to provide the correct mix for the different perceptions people can have: thinking, acting as well as feeling. Providing all three will enable the trainer to connect with all the participants and will give every participant something they can personally connect to and take home after of the training.

Photo credit: Jan, JCI Frankfurt

image credit Eugenio

He usually has a challenge to win somewhere, will take swift actions and make fast decisions. These are great qualities, especially if you are able to follow. Yet if you can't, you'll notice that he expected you to follow and won't support you too much to keep up with him. Along the way I learned that it isn't that important for him, being out of business one day never meant that the next day we wouldn't be again working at making the things happen.

Action

Francis has a great capacity to adapt himself to the situation he meets, problems are momentary inconveniences and he'll find a way to persuade the right person or whoever is needed to make the necessary changes. This makes him a real winner and an exciting person to work with.

We both have been working a lot together. He followed me in realizing several projects, as they provided enough room for action and excitement. Knowing that there were some opportunities for him to be in the limelight he always made sure that the big picture looked right, leaving me the part to make sure that everything is ready.

Direct

A reason for our successful collaboration was that we didn't fuss around; if a decision was to be taken we went straight to the point and didn't lose time with lengthy discussion. That's the most effective way I found to communicate with him, he even is ok to receive blunt instructions and follow them. Especially in situations where there was no time for discussion, it was great to have someone in the team who is capable to take orders.

Stress

Oh yes, Francis and I have our differences regarding leadership. When under stress, and expecting that every team member should be able to handle almost anything, he would make achieving the goal his first priority even with little consideration of the relationship. To shake everybody up, Francis could be providing single team members with an information that others didn't like their work or had changed the plan. As usual in such circomstances a lot of excitement was created with everybody reacting, yet only leading to discussions as well as to the difficulty to keep a healthy relationship in the team instead of leaping towards the goal.

Contacts

Someone like Francis finds it great to meet people as well as to be all over. Whenever I attend a promising event he will be there, usually in a discussion with a group of people who will mostly be listening to him. As he likes to make contact he goes towards the people, mingles in different groups and enchants everyone with his charming style. Expect that the nicest compliments you'll hear not only on such an occasion will be from someone like Francis.

To be so charming, helps to make him special in everybody's mind, which is important to him. To show that he is someone special he also will show-off. You might not always notice this at first sight as he might do it with little details, when dressing he will pay attention to have some stylish and expensive accessories. The next time you are at a party just have a look at the wristwatches and check who is wearing the expensive ones.

How To

You might have met personalities similar to Francis who perceive the world through action, have you been watching action movies lately?

But how can get along with them? Try the following suggestions, I found them to be helpful when working with personalities like Francis.

• Make short working meetings and avoid long discussion. You can also invite them only for the parts of the meeting relevant to them.
• Go right to the matter and share the bottom line of the task with them. Don't be afraid to be too direct, it won't offend them.
• Avoid giving them too many “second chances” and be clear about it. It is ok to confront them when needed as they are quite thick skinned when it comes to accept a “no”.
• Add a challenge or a healthy competition to the task you give them, they'll like the excitement.
• Quick rewards are also a great idea, thus never wait until the project is accomplished to give them for example a motivational talk. By paying attention to them you respond to their desire to stand out of the crowd
• Define rules but avoid to make them too strict as for example a requirement to be present during specific office hours (8 to 5)

This post continues my series about different personality types and follows Emotional Competence.

How do you feel today? Is this a question you would like to hear more regularly? Or do you think that "how are you?" sounds more appropriate?

Looking back I think that my mother would have by far preferred the first question as it relates more to emotions than the usual "how are you".

Some of us connect with others mainly through feelings and thus have a different approach to life than others, to illustrate such a personality I chose to write about my mother as she belonged to those connecting with others mainly through feelings. She was very compassionate, warm and sensitive.

I can imagine that she would have been a great blogger as communication belonged to her basic needs, she wrote tons of letters, a diary in times where she felt alone and grabbed the phone regularly to stay connected with us.

Had she started a blog it would have been centered on beautiful things, tasty cooking, and the regular activities of her favorite clubs. To describe it in more generic terms her blog would have certainly contained a lot sensory stimulation.

A Need: Sensory Stimulus

Beautiful things had a major importance for my mother and the range of things in which she saw beauty was huge: it could be a fabric especially if touching it was agreeable, a special perfume, a nicely crafted tool, a smooth stone just as well as a breathtaking view or architecture. With this in mind, she would decorate our home using even unimpressive things in order to create a nice atmosphere and make sure that coming home felt nice.

In her case the need to taste led to a passion for cooking accompanied by a great pleasure to smell spices from all over the world. Others might have selected a different occupation for example to care about their garden or maybe listen to music.

Sharing these sensations with others and being in a group belongs to the needs of personalities like my mother, thus she regularly invited friends to enjoy delicious meals. She also joined several clubs, where she would occasionally take the leadership to ensure that all the members would have enough occasions to meet and enjoy beauty.

There was only one restriction to her wish to connect: it was important for her to look as good as possible, she thus would never go out of the house if she wasn't well dressed or didn't have her make-up and a note of perfume on her.

Less Appreciated: Bare Facts

Communication for her was intended at understanding who the person she was talking to was and how they felt and much less related to the exchange of information. In times this made it necessary to adapt to her style of communication. I remember that there were multiple occasions when I asked my mother for driving directions and was incapable to understand her description. I couldn't follow her description packed with details describing the view I would have while finding my way.

When asking for information, do you appreciate to have the bare facts or do you like to know the story behind?

A Need: Caring

She loved to nurture others and regularly had people approaching her to share multiple details about their life and personal stories. They did so because of her unconditional acceptance of them and giving such recognition was natural to her as it corresponded to the recognition she looked for herself.

How to Support Them

As far as we know, about a third of the population will have feelings as main perception.

Now think about your environment, do you know someone with similar traits as my mother? Did you recognize such a person perceiving their environment through their feelings? Knowing this person, can you see how the following suggestions help to get along best with this person and how they allow boosting his or her performance?

• Make sure that a place is available allowing for casual meetings for example around the coffee machine. They will use it these opportunities to connect, be compassionate and supportive with their fellow workers.

• Give them room to put up some family pictures and use other elements to make their office a cozy working area. When in need of energy they will be able to use these details as sensory stimulator allowing them to feel well.

• Make sure that their office, even if it allows for some moments of retreat, is close to their colleague's offices as they need the ability to connect.

• When making a compliment, avoid compliments about their achievements instead give them an unconditional recognition of their person (for example "I'm glad that you are here" or "you are important to the company and me"). Recognizing them as a person will motivate them to achieve as much as possible.

• Don't critique their mistakes too much, as they often don't separate mistakes they make from their own person.

This post continues my series about different personality types, which started with How to Recognize Competence

 
 
In our relationships discussions can end up in a totally different way than we expected and we feel like fools afterwards. The idea was to receive or give help and it doesn't happen, here is why.

Remember that day when your friends had a fight out of nothing? The scene might have looked like this:

 
 
Tit: Lately I have really grown out of shape.
Tat: Why don't you do some sport with me tomorrow morning?
Tit: I'm always so tired in the morning.
Tat: If we'd go outside you'd have some fresh air to help you wake up.
Tit: It's too cold and they announced rain for tomorrow.
Tat: You should try instead of constantly look for excuses.

I remember having seen such situations and in some cases I admit to even have been playing my part in such a plot. Usually I would then find myself wondering what had happened to end up with a totally different situation I had wanted. It is only by asking myself some questions, that I can avoid such situations.

Let us have a closer look at the dialogue. Tit started it with a statement in which you can perceive some distress or a sense of inadequacy. It can be a real quest to find help, yet it can also create for Tat the wish to reach out and help. This is a most accepted reaction; just remember the fairytale you have heard as a kid: a mixture of help, love, rescue and everlasting happiness in which a prince will appear and rescue the princess. And for sure, Tat starts out to rescue by suggesting solutions.

Why does it end up like this?

It might very well be that Tit was looking for help and that would have been perfectly OK, yet there was no clear request for help. The suggestions offered by Tat might have been a perfectly genuine offer to help, on the other hand it can be possible that Tat likes to fix situations or rescue others. Do you remember the energy and power you felt whenever you succeeded to help? To feel such power again thus can be a reason to help independently from the fact that help has been asked for or not.

The result of such discussion depends on the expectations of the participants. In our case Tit might have hoped that Tat solves the situation and Tat could have expected that Tit accepts Tit accepts to be rescued and follows the indications. As this didn't happen, Tat became disappointed and started to judge Tit.

Stephen Karpman visualized such situations or discussion via the drama triangle.

In this image, the three corners of the triangle correspond to the three roles we have seen above. This isn't static, thus roles might be switched: Tit started out as victim, Tat jumped in as rescuer and ended up as persecutor.

Change the Outcome!

Your goal has to be to avoid taking up one of the roles in the triangle or to find ways to step out again.

The following questions and actions will help you to succeed.

1. Think

Whenever you see yourself take up one of the roles, stop to think why you might be doing it. Are you looking for a specific benefit?

• Are you asking for help? Or do you feel helpless and hope for a confirmation that you won't make it? Would you call yourself a victim of your situation?
• Is your offer to help genuine? Or would it feel nice to be needed making you whish to save the other?
• Are you offering useful criticism? Or are you trying to protect yourself from feeling insecure by attacking?

2. Clarify the Expectations

When hearing or feeling a request for help, verify that there has been a clear request for help. Why not ask if you can help, where or how?

If you feel the urge to rescue, ask yourself if it is your business to help and if it is a problem where you can help. If the answer no, it is OK to state that you will not become involved, you might not even need to explain it.

When offering your help, make sure that it is a genuine offer to help and accept that the other person might not follow your suggestions. As much as you might hope that help would be accepted, it is their choice not yours.

If you receive suggestions you didn't ask for, think about your needs and how you expressed them. Restate what you have been looking for or explain what you are feeling.

When feeling insecure or at the mercy of forces beyond your control look for someone who can give you the attention or responsiveness you are looking for. Find yourself a mentor for example.

Ask yourself how you will feel afterwards. Is it what you are looking for? Will you feel better then?

3. Remind yourself that you are a unique person. You have the choice, you can do it.

image credit niko si

Remember the last time you were astonished to see how capable a new colleague or friend was and that you asked yourself how you could have missed that?

I remember having had this feeling quite a few times, but I learned to observe, anticipate and see the potential I missed before. In the following you'll find out how.

We all know how different we all are independently from sex, age, culture or religion. Think of your friends. You'll probably have some who never pass by unnoticed and some which are happy if they receive time to be for themselves.

Amongst my friends I have both. I love the diversity this creates.

Today I'll put the spotlight on one friend who is very calm, full of imagination and very reflective. I have never seen him push forward for himself only with the intention to be noticed. This isn't his style. Be aware, this has nothing to do with his goals, achievements and implication; he simply uses other tools to achieve. Remember his assets: being calm he won't overreact, his imagination lets him see far beyond and through reflection he'll be able to determine the best solution.

He doesn't need a lot of things; this shows for example in the environment he likes. You will not find a lot of decoration in his apartment or office apart maybe from piles of books he will have read.

Have you met someone like him?

Ok, here are some other details:

He will participate in big events and will mingle with people, where you'll mainly find him discussing with a single person and not much later, you'll see that he is alone and a bit outside of the group studying the landscape or some objects. His mind will do the exact same thing, with his vast knowledge he will be able to add interesting information to any type of discussion and in the next moment his mind will go on to the next subject to reflect upon. If I need some original and bright imagination it's him I'm going to ask.

If he owns something it is because there is a practical reason for it. Where I like to have a car and want it to be nice and comfortable, for him it is a vehicle. Keep it a secret between us: this is a capacity which always impresses me.

Now you'll probably have someone in mind you know who is similar to my friend. Knowing this person, can you see how the following suggestions help to get along best with this person and how they allow boosting his or her performance?

• When giving him a chore, make sure that it is one where he doesn't need to interact constantly with other people.
• If his office has a door accept that he'll close it. For him it is natural to be a loner once in a while, he needs this solitude to re-energize.
• When asking questions, give him the time to reflect. Don't expect an immediate answer.
• It usually is ok to ask them to do routine tasks as well as those needing a lot of patience. For example they'll love to work hours and hours to make a clock or to put a puzzle together.
• When providing him with instructions be clear, precise and direct. No need to provide a thousand excuses why it's him you are asking.
• If during a meeting he hasn't expressed himself, ask him if he has something to add. Sometimes it is important to interrupt his reflection and offer him an opportunity to express it, especially if he doesn't do it by himself.
• After he has accomplished a project make sure that he takes some time off. He will also use it to reflect on his next project and to find ideas how to handle it.

For someone like my friend the above suggestions will help him to develop great ideas and achieve exceptional results.

Did you recognize the needs of your friends?

It's great, you are reading this post. I highly appreciate it. You are a special person and for sure: you are OK!

Everyone is OK …. Does this starts to be tough to agree upon? I kind of hear some of you starting to disagree. This is a natural reaction, so let us make a step back and think about it.

Nature has given us tools and methods to help us survive, some of these are older than mankind. When meeting another being we have a few moments to decide how we are going to react to its presence. Is there trust, fear, respect, aggression? This quick evaluation of the situation will also be an evaluation of the other. We tend to classify in those we like or not, those we trust or not or in those we find intelligent or not. At least I have a tendency to do that.

How does this relate with the statement that people are OK?

Independently from any evaluation we might be applying to a person we can have a fundamental acceptance of the other. In that case the person as such is valuable, has importance and dignity; it will be independent from age, religion, culture or sex.

This applies to the person as such, not to his or her behavior.

For me, this was the clue. The evaluation I was making when meeting someone related to the behavior I could see and feel, whereas I had no idea about the person as such.

If you want to connect with your pears, expand your network or want to grow the number of customers, accepting other people as being OK will be a major asset as it helps you to keep an open mind and find the elements where you can connect.

Whenever you approach someone as a valuable person and acknowledge his or her importance and dignity you will find that the relation is strong and encouraging because this person becomes someone special for you.

Think and feel how this makes yourself special!

You too are an important, worthwhile, valuable person in your own right.

In the past years I attended a lot of trainings as I love to learn and broaden my horizon. Quite a lot of these trainings took place during JCI conferences I have regularly been attending. There the trainers would have about my age or younger. But as time passed by I attended trainings given by trainers I had met as participants in other trainings. 

Why them and not me? 

It thus seemed natural that I should also start and give trainings, but I felt quite uncomfortable about it. I was wondering if my knowledge would be sufficient or how I would be able to make it as much fun for those participating in my trainings as I had when I was attending trainings. I was frightened to fail. I wasn't sure I could meet my expectations as well as those I thought participants would have. 

Why did I start then? 

The answer is easy to find: if you don't try you fail even more. I had seen how my peers had evolved and learned and knew that there was something to be learned as a trainer, I thus decided to start giving trainings and take it as an experiment. 

At that time I mainly had training opportunities related to these tasks and challenges I had accepted within JCI making training easy on me as I was sharing experience I had gathered. 

It still took me quite some time to achieve the first level of certification as a JCI trainer. 

Promote yourself! 

The main reason why it took so long is that I don't like to promote myself and find it a very difficult exercise. But here again, I learned that not promoting myself as a trainer means to be doomed to fail. No one is searching for me as trainer and no one is going to find me if I don't offer any information. On the other hand a JCI local organization preparing a training might be happy to invite me if they attended one of my trainings or heard that I can provide a good training. 

I had to do something about it and as I had learned the starting point to promote myself is to have a presentation of myself as a trainer. 

Find your motto 

Starting my presentation meant staring at a blank page asking myself a lot of questions as to how I can present myself. One sentence finally appeared, made sense and became the title of my presentation: "train to enable". It reflects my aim– not only – as a trainer to provide tools, methods, information which can be used by the participants of a training as well as others to learn, grow, change and experience. 

Working on the presentation, it became in itself a tool allowing for change. My next challenge now is to distribute the presentation regularly, but having it available makes this possible. 

Try it 

Have you encountered challenges and opportunities difficult to take up? If you take the challenge one step at a time, chances are high that you'll find afterwards that you learned, grew, changed and gained in experience.

Based on his works several other classifications have been developed and are nowadays used for a diversity of personality tests. I did try some of these tests establishing my “personal profile” finding them to be entertaining and a learning experience. To me one of the most interesting aspects of establishing profiles is that it tells me something about other individuals making it much easier to understand someone else's behaviour and reactions.

As an example for personality type classification I'm using here a Venn diagram displaying different types of nerds. This diagram has been whizzing around the web in the last years. Being an IT person myself, it makes me smile.

Discovered via SwissMiss

Through this diagram you'll have a good guideline to distinguish between dorks, dweebs, geeks and nerds. Don't worry if you didn't know these personality types.

The classification of the four types is done by the following criteria.

• Intelligence is an umbrella term describing a property of the mind including related abilities, such as the capacities for abstract thought, understanding, communication, reasoning, learning from experience, planning, and problem solving. Or in short: how smart a person is.
• social skill is any skill facilitating interaction and communication with others. In this diagram a more restrictive criteria “social ineptitude” pertains to limited social and communication skills. It is often perceived as being bad even if it must not necessarily be so.
• Obsession is the domination of one's thoughts or feelings by a persistent idea, image, desire, etc. In our context it can be specified as an extreme passion for intellectual activities.

Now that the classification criteria are all set, it will be up to you to find the measurement to be applied to each of these criteria. To be in the diagram verify if you possess at least two of the given traits. Using you measurement determine the type you think to correspond best for you.

Now read the description for our personality types to find out if they correspond to your evaluation

• A dweeb combines social ineptitude with intelligence and is somehow mysterious. You don't see him study or mingle often but he gets high grades. Others will often find him to be boring.
• A dork will combine social ineptitude with obsessions; he is the kid at the corner, buried in his books and out of touch with contemporary trends. He lacks the intelligence of a nerd or geek.
• A geek is someone combining obsession with intelligence and is perceived to be overly obsessed with one or more things. He is always on the pursuit of knowledge and has the brains for it. He learns quickly and gets the things done.
• A nerd avidly pursues intellectual activities, technical or scientific endeavours, esoteric knowledge, or other obscure interests, rather than engaging in more social or conventional activities. He is a smart, talented person and may be awkward, shy and unattractive. His obsession to learn more leaves him no time to socialize or for physical activity.

Successful personality test?

The ability to define a combination of criteria and their measurement applicable to everyone is one of the success factors for every personality test. The essential factor for its usability is the capacity to set up a set of questions allowing assimilating questions with criteria and measurement. The success factor when commercializing such a test is the ability to describe the personality types in such a way that the participants find the results an appropriate description of him or her.

Magic 8 Ball

How do you make your decisions? Are you the kind of person who takes out a blank sheet and lists the advantages on one side and the disadvantages on the other? If so, you are in great company, Plato and Benjamin Franklin belonged to those promoting and using this method. It is quite easy to use it and count the advantages as well as disadvantages, the bigger number wins.

I tried that method but failed miserably, it just doesn't work for me.

Another way to make a decision is to ask someone else by delegating your decision to an “expert” or some form of divination. In both cases it is mainly trying to have someone else make the decision for you. Such an upwards delegation will not always work as it will happen that people (rightly) will refuse to take the decisions for you. The added difficulty with divination is to find afterwards someone you really can blame if the decision wasn't appropriate. Just as with flipism you will eventually end up and call it bad luck and blame yourself.

There again, whenever I tried any of these methods it wasn't a real success as it seemed like giving up on finding the right solution.

If the above don't work, how to make decisions then?

In this case you'll want to do as I like to do and analyse the situation and the choices available before making up your mind.

Let's get started with this decision you are pondering

1. The starting point in the decision making is the objectives you have; take some time to write them down. The importance of this first step is that it will help you see if the decision you have been thinking about is related to your objectives. You will be able to ask yourself if the decision is relevant or if you can simply dismiss it and continue working on your objectives.
2. Now review you objectives and classify them. Which one is most important to you? Which one is least important?
3. The third step consists in developing the alternatives you might have. Which decisions would be possible? Which are the choices available to you?
4. Now that you have your objectives and your alternatives you can evaluate them against each other. How do the alternatives relate to your objectives? Do they allow you to achieve the objectives? Which one supports all your objectives?
   This step helps you to see which of the alternatives can simply be dismissed as they don't support your objectives and which ones will help you to reach your objectives.
5. Now that you know which alternative fits best your objectives, do step back and think about the possible consequences of this alternative. Are these consequences important? Can they threaten your success to achieve your objectives? This last step helps you to validate your selection of the best alternative and thus enables you to make your decision.

Whenever you have decided start acting, take the decisive actions as well as the actions needed to prevent adverse conversions from becoming a problem. If you miss the later point you'll most probably come back into the problem analysis as well as into the decision making process.

This looks pretty simple and it is especially if you avoid the existing pitfalls. Most commonly these are the biases creeping into our decision making processes. It is for example easy to be too optimistic and base your decision on that, you might even search for evidence that it ok to be so optimistic and thus dismiss negative views. You might also be influenced by the group and some kind of peer pressure and will eventually find yourself in such a situation if it is your habit to adapt yourself to others a lot. Another bias can be inertia, meaning our inclination to rely on familiar assumptions combined with a reluctance to revise those assumptions and thus change.

This 5 step method does work fairly well for me, still it will not always provide me with the right decision. I thus often use the last resort, which is to simply trust my gut feeling and go ahead with that decision.

In some cases it might happen that all things mix up. Lately I had to take a decision which seemed to be quite easy as it was simply a yes or no decision. Along the way things pilled up, leading to a gut feeling decision, which seemed ok. But, looking into the matter and exchanging with a friend I suddenly had reasons why either choice wouldn’t be totally right. I started the decision taking process all over again and tried all the possibilities, even establishing a list – which again didn't work at all. I thought about delegating the decision by assuming that if the deadline had passed the choice was made, this sure didn't feel right either. In the end I checked with a few friends, used their advices to help me review my objectives and define the alternatives and then had my best choice. Verifying the consequences showed that there is no perfect choice. The choice thus simply needed to be the better one.

In the end going ahead and deciding isn't only rational but makes good use of the following advice I received along the way: “Acting for the best, prepared for the worst, welcoming what is happening.”

Kiss me, I'm a prince

Just a few days ago my brother married and decided to travel to Italy for a long week-end with his wonderful wife. They kept the marriage as an event for the family as it was the legal one. We all gathered in the office of the marriage officer where the wedding was held and went on with a nice long breakfast in a beautiful location. After this good start into the day, my husband and I brought the two of them to the airport from where their honeymoon would start. Everything went easily; they quickly checked in, started off to the security check and looked forward to be just the two of them – it was the first time she left her daughters alone for a few days. Who wouldn't expect them to look forward to nice quiet days?

Upon arrival at the airport in Milan they immediately continued to the car rental service and were looking forward to the little car they had booked in order to continue their journey. After presenting all the papers the car rental officer started preparing the hand-over and asked for their credit card.

This was the moment were the big question mark appeared, neither one of them had a credit card at hand! They started negotiating, they called to have valid credit card data but nothing helped. They wouldn't be handed over a car as long as they didn't have any credit card in their own hand which could be used in the credit card machine in the car rental office expected to hand over the car.

Sure, in the contract details for the car this information had been presented but as they didn't order the car themselves and relied on the person selling them the complete travel. As until then they never had needed to rely on the presence of a credit card they didn't think about it when booking their honeymoon. The travel agent himself, being used to the regular requests for credit cards when checking in in hotels or booking services took the presence of a credit card on a travel for granted and never realized that this might not be true for everyone.

Sure my brother and his wife learned a great deal about communication and traveling, found a solution to arrive at their final destination, and certainly had a memorable experience, nevertheless they'll probably have a grudge towards the travel agency for under-performing. They had expected the travel agent to verify and inform them of all the details needed for a perfect travel.

Small details sometimes become huge mountains if there is a misunderstanding or if an assumption made in the communication proves to be wrong.

Instead of assuming that something has been understood don’t hesitate to verify if it this is really the case. Never forget to make sure that all details which can develop to “single points of failure” are clear to everyone.

In short: If you don't ask the question needed to achieve the expected result you will be seen as a stupid person, the question itself will never be interpreted as being stupid.