Posted in Discipline, Skill, Toolkit on January 13th, 2012
Let’s pick up on this theme of listening and being comfortable with silence. If you can exert mastery over your tendency to fill silence, all kinds of good things accrue. First, you make room for dialogue, not monologue. For conversation, not just empty give and take.
Then, you give yourself an opportunity to really understand what someone is saying. This understanding comes through the questions you ask, and there are three types of questions:
1. Closed-ended
2. Open-ended
3. Impact
Closed-ended questions are those that yield a one word answer. “How are things?” “Good.” Very informative!
Open-ended questions go a bit farther and yield a longer answer; “What have you been working on?” “Not falling asleep.” Okay, that’s a start.
Impact questions go all the way. These are questions that ask someone to actually think; “Given what you just said, how will you change the way you approach that next time?” “Hmmm…let me think.” Now we’re talking.
You have asked tons of impact questions. You know you have, because you get the “Good question…let me think” response. This is almost always good. It means you have honored your partner in conversation enough to think about and ask an impact question. And you have offered that person the chance to really think something through.
There’s nothing wrong with closed and open-ended questions, but they function more like transactions than relationships. What they are best-suited for is breaking up the flow of your impact questions, since if you ask TOO many impact questions, you can easily exhaust and annoy your conversation partner.
Next time you are walking into a meeting or a social situation, take a pause and make an impact.
Posted in Discipline, Frameworks, Observations & Intersections, Required reading/listening/viewing on August 24th, 2011
I’m reading a great book by Jonathan Haidt from the University of Virginia called “The Happiness Hypothesis.” He talks about how clinical psychologists often refer to their patients who are in therapy as needing either “loosening or tightening.” A patient who compulsively worries about small problems and can’t relax needs “loosening,” while another patient who is lackadaisical and unable to focus may need “tightening.”
This strikes me as a useful metaphor for selling. In my work with sales teams and CEO’s, it is often the case that revenues are suffering because no one is adhering to the sales process or managing prospects and clients through that process reliably. What these teams and individuals need is to be tightened. They need some rigor and some discipline to follow the process…even the parts (like lead gen) that they don’t enjoy.
Similarly, some teams are so tightly wound that they become mechanical. They often come across as stiff and married to their product features or presentations in a way that turns prospects off. They need to loosen up a bit and have some fun (while staying true to their process).
As in life, it’s all a balance. If you tighten everything too much, you break it. But if you loosen it too much, things start flying out of control. So look at your day or week, and be vigilant as to what direction you need to turn the wrench.
Posted in Discipline, Observations & Intersections, Power of Story on August 9th, 2011
It’s hard to look at the news right now. The front page is a mess with natural disasters and more self-inflicted, man-made crises than we can count. And in this environment many people find themselves looking for jobs. I’ve spent a lot of time in 2011 coaching clients and students (more listening, really) in what they should be doing to find a new job.
This conversation seems to always move quickly away from the tactics of what and how to why. One of the ways I try to frame this up is to suggest that people look at a career choice (or change) as the next “chapter” in the book of their lives. The reason I suggest this is that it tends to lengthen the focus of the discussion to capture what people want to do versus what they have to do.
I think most of the time, we are caught up in writing the next “line” of our book, and thus our focus is so narrow that we can only see the page right in front of us and not where the story should be going. It is powerful to stop for two seconds and look into the distance and see where we might want to go. This allows us to envision our story as we want it to be. It’s only then that we should ask ourselves; “Now that I know the next chapter, how do I write the next line to get me there?”
Posted in Discipline, Story on July 26th, 2011
Why the hell are we so resistant to sharing “failure?” I get it that when you’re 20, you need to puff out your chest and impress a potential mate. Got it. But after that, most of our best learnings come from failures. Every unbelievably successful entrepreneur I’ve ever seen has had failures. Yes, sometimes they are small failures and not spectacular explosions, but they are there. Anyone who tells you different is bullshitting you.
In my talks about the power of story with all kinds of business cultures, I always ask; if you only had one type of story to tell, what would it be? Most people say “success” stories. And that’s fine…success stories are great and there are valuable lessons embedded within. But here’s a quick thought experiment for you: what if I walked into the room and told you the “5 greatest hit success stories” of Craig? What would you think about me after about 20 seconds? Jerk. Arrogant ass. And you’d be right. I realize that the converse might also be true. If I walked in and told you the “5 tragic failure stories” of Craig, you would probably think “this guy is a moron!” You might, but you would listen ALL THE WAY THROUGH. And this is not true of success stories, and therein lies the power.
Failure stories are not “look what a moron I am” stories. They are “I made a decision with the information I had at the time, and it didn’t go my way. I learned x, y, and z and now I approach things differently” stories. That’s it. They connect because they carry humility, something that is in scarce supply in a “look at me” world. When you fail, you’ve got a very powerful story. Capture it. Distill it. Tell it.
Posted in Discipline, Teaching on July 16th, 2011
I’m writing today. But in order to get an on-ramp to writing, I jumped over to a few blogs I like, including Seth Godin’s blog and loved what I saw. Today, Seth says; “Writers write. If you want to be a writer, write.” That simple advice is exactly right (write?).
Five years ago, I happened to give a guest lecture at my alma mater Kellogg. The professor had two of us guest-speaking that night, and the other guy was the author and consultant Sam Hill. After class, the three of us went out for a beer in Evanston where I shared with the professor and Sam that I had this set of ideas about the power of story and I wanted to write a book about it.
I was pouring my ideas out, and at some point Sam looked me straight in the eye and said; “Craig, I don’t know you, but can I give you some advice? Shut up and write.”
He caught me off guard, but in those four words I found the push I had been needing. The next morning at 5am, I was at my local Starbucks writing. I was writing junk, but several months of effort later, a book started to emerge from the fog.
Sometimes we all need a push towards discipline. Sam shut me up. But what he really did is just channel my energy in a different, more productive direction. Isn’t that a gift? Thanks Sam.
