Smart Conversations
that will Turbo-Charge your life
Shut Up and Listen!
13 days
Dale Carnegie once said “When dealing with people, let us remember we are not dealing with creatures of logic. We are dealing with creatures of emotion, creatures bristling with prejudices and motivated by pride and vanity.” Sounds negative, yes, sometimes the truth doesn’t tickle the ears and sound pretty but truer words were never spoken.
The sooner you are able to get out of your head and leave behind your preferences, desires and ways of doing things the better off you’ll be. Getting into the heads of others and looking at things they way they do is the most important thing you can learn to do. Sales people, at least the good ones, recognize this and usually make an attempt to understand potential customers before trying to sell them something. -And yes, it’s possible to overdo that by getting overly friendly and familiar with your subjects.
I think its important for everyone to engage in this practice. It doesn’t matter with whom you are dealing, a solid understanding of what motivates others and careful assimilation of those factors into your interactions is the most important thing you can do to ensure productive human relations.
I don’t care that you have one blue thingie left and you sell it to me at a deep discount. I hate blue and it reminds me of my ex-wife. If you had taken the time to learn about my preferences you’d know that. How do you learn about my preferences and worldview? Ask a few questions then SHUT UP and let me talk. Most people enjoy talking about themselves, their accomplishments and their worldview. Problem is, you are I share that fondness for talking about ourselves and always find ways to work ourselves back into the spotlight. In the meantime, while you’re mind is busy thinking of what to say next, you miss key elements of what I’m saying.
Your customer doesn’t care that you’ve had a hard day and you’re short staffed and nobody knows how hard you work…bla bla bla. Oh sure, maybe your momma cares, and your therapist -as long as you pay your therapy bill but for the most part, customers what what they want, when they want it, for the reasons they want it and as conveniently as possible.
The most successful people in the world are those who can set aside the human tendency to focus on ourselves to the detriment of missing what other people are saying, thinking and feeling. You and I prefer to do business with companies and individuals who obsess about my needs, desires and worldview. Showing me you understand me starts with actually understanding me then addressing my needs as if you’d rather serve me than breathe. I’m sick of businesses and professionals that think “build it and they will come” is enough. I’m not alone when I stand up and demand “IMPRESS ME”. Trust me, if you’re little local shoe store doesn’t carry the extra wide shoes I need, I’ll sit at home and order from zappos.com. You can whine and moan all day but you’ve left me with no options. The internet and a handful of merchants who obsess over customer service are making survival more difficult for local merchants who worship at the altar of mediocrity.
Mr. Carnegie’s advise can and should be applied broadly. It doesn’t matter if we’re talking about relations with customers, colleagues, family members, friends or lovers; focusing your attention of the ‘other’ person as if the world revolved around them is the easiest way to influence them. Your attempts to genuinely understand the worldview of any human being you encounter will be rewarded with better relationships. It doesn’t matter if you are trying to sell me a pair of shoes or trying to convince me to mow the yard; the secret to influencing another human being begins with setting aside your worldview and adopting mine.
Why New Year’s Resolutions Don’t Work
27 days
by Lee
in Uncategorized
photo credit: drewzuckerman
I recently read a statistic which indicates as many as 75% of New Year’s resolutions are abandoned within a week of New Year’s Day.
Albert Einstein once said “you cannot solve a problem with the same mindset that created it.” The problem with New Year’s resolutions is it takes more than just making a quick list of things you want to change.
You may genuinely want to lose weight. The problem is, the short-term pleasure of eating junk food and sleeping late overpowers your desire to adopt a healthy lifestyle conducive to weight loss. What would happen if your doctor told you, “adopt a healthier lifestyle or you will be dead in 30 days.” Could you do it? Of course you could! The immediate threat of death over one’s head is a powerful motivator. Suddenly the pain of the end of your life is stronger than any short-term pleasure attained by living an unhealthy lifestyle.
Your present mindset and your reactions to life’s circumstances has set the stage for life as you know it. There is a constant dialogue going on in your head. This dialogue is so powerful and automatic most people barely even notice it.
Here’s how it goes: January 2, 2011 and your alarm is set to go off an hour earlier so you can go to the gym to workout or take a brisk jog around your neighborhood. Beep, beep, beep: wakie-wakie: up-and-at-’em Sunshine! At that instant, something happens in your mind that happens so quickly you might be too groggy to even notice it. Your internal dialogue quickly asks “Do I REALLY want to get up this early?” Unfortunately, the answer for the newly resolved exerciser is, “not today, maybe tomorrow.” Before you realize, it’s late December and time to make new resolutions.
The way to fulfill your resolution to get up early and exercise is to change your internal mindset and dialogue. What if the question that sprang to mind was something like “what’s the healthiest thing for me to do right now” or “how much better am I going to look and feel once I lose 20 pounds and have a healthier body?” To fulfill a New Year’s resolution to get up early and exercise requires a different mindset. It requires you interrupt your normal thought process that allows you to make excuses in the first place. Interrupting and replacing your internal dialogue isn’t easy but it can be done by deliberately focusing your attention on the existence of the dialogue in the first place. Once you are aware of your internal dialogue and how quickly and easily this dialogue sabotages your efforts to change, shifting that dialogue to a more productive and empowering line of questioning is much easier.
You mind is pre-wired to ask questions and immediately seek out answers to it’s own questions. The trick is, reprogramming your mind to ask questions that empower change.
How to find Success
39 days
by Lee
in Uncategorized
Success is easy to find. Just drive toward St. Louis but turn left before you get there. Really, it’s that simple. Simple, unless you are not looking for a small town in rural north east Arkansas with a population of just over 200.
We often think of success as something that is tied to big accomplishments, when in fact, an abiding sense of success is rarely tied to big accomplishments. That feeling of achievement is rarely felt just a few weeks or even days later. Achieved goals are, more often than not, followed by the setting of more ambitious goals and the trek toward the new ‘ultimate’ goal. It’s a vicious cycle that in reality, never results in a deep sense of contentment.
Research has shown that a deep sense of accomplishment is more likely to be felt by individuals with a steady stream of small accomplishments than those who express interest in only major accomplishments. Our internal sense of success is rarely tied to a specific event, positive or negative. Our self-concept is based more on our beliefs about who we are and what we are capable of achieving both at home and work. Certainly, specific events can be crucial, but it is our response to those events and not the event itself that is the determining factor.
Some of the most outwardly appearing ‘successful’ people in the world are up to their ear lobes in debt, have few deeply fulfilling personal relationships, and never experience a feeling of contentment. I coached and counseled hundreds of people who, despite tons of professional and personal accomplishment, are never happy and never able to just enjoy and afternoon off without feeling guilty because they aren’t chipping away at that ever-present to-do list.
Success is, plain and simple, an internal feeling of contentment that no accomplishment, job, amount of money or person will ever give you. If you don’t feel successful where you are right now, no amount of accomplishment will be able to give that to you.
You cannot look at a person and discern how successful they are any more than your outward appearance is any indication of how successful you are. Despite what you see in TV commercials, success is truly an inside job.
Sheryl Crowe put it best in her song Soak up the Sun, “Its not having what you want, its wanting what you’ve got.”
Make Yourself Scarce!
60 days
photo credit: Steve Parker
Normally, when someone tells you to make yourself scarce, it isn’t a compliment. They want you to go away.
There is a different way to look at this. Scarcity creates value. We tend to value things we can’t get much of. Indian head pennies, for example, are worth much more than a penny minted last year; in some cases, hundreds of dollars more. Original paintings by Van Gogh fetch among the highest prices in the art world.
In the business world today, there are many things that are scarce, uncommon and even downright rare like customer service that exceeds expectations. Stellar customer service has become so rare that when we encounter it we are almost suspicious.
A young man at a fast food hamburger joint waited on me and some friends a few weeks ago. How many times has someone sold you a hamburger then come to your table a few minutes later to ask, “is everything alright?” That’s the sort of thing you expect anywhere except at a fast food hamburger joint, but this guy’s enthusiasm was truly impressive.
My prediction is, unless somewhere along the way he gets hypnotized and brainwashed into subscribing to the status quo, this young man will find his way to the top of whichever organization is lucky enough to employ him. Maybe not right away, but he will eventually find an employer that values the employee that goes out of his or her way to provide 5 star customer service even when it isn’t expected. Customer service for this young man is an art. Not just art, art that is rare and valuable. I wouldn’t be surprised if this young man ends up owning his own business because he gets so frustrated with the lack of enthusiasm others have for providing stellar customer service.
I’m not exaggerating much when I say, this kid is probably more valuable to that company than most of the senior management staff, yet he is paid a miserable fraction of the salary.
- What about you?
- How valuable to your business or profession are you?
- If you’re not at work for a week, do customers even notice?
- Is what you do art or just marking time and following the crowd?
It’s easy to create stellar customer service that is scarce. Just ‘go the extra mile’ as the old saying goes. Most people are too lazy or brainwashed by a culture that seems to value the status quo over doing anything above and beyond the call of duty.
Look around you. The businesses and professionals that thrive, even in a down economy, are the ones that provide something competitors aren’t providing. Its time to get busy creating scarcity by doing something your competitors aren’t doing — even when you’re tired, even if its Monday morning or Friday afternoon, even if you don’t think it makes a difference.
5 Things to do more of -RIGHT NOW!
69 days
1. Tell someone in your work/professional environment that you really appreciate their contribution to the success of your business or organization.
2. Turn off your phone next time you’re with a close friend. Close friendships are more valuable than almost any potential interruption. If the world comes to an end, you’ll know about it as soon as you turn your phone back on -in fact, you’ll have a more supportive friend to help you cope.
3. Stop, smile, then say “Thank you” next time a store clerk helps you locate something.
4. Realize this, you’re not nearly as smart as you think you are. Sometimes people whom you least expect can teach you something. ASK for help and other opinions/viewpoints.
5. Shut up, listen then think. Resist the temptation to begin formulating your verbal response before the other person is finished speaking. When words have stopped coming out of the other person’s mouth, THEN decide what to say in response.
BONUS:
Breathe! You’re probably already doing that one but taking time out several times per day to quietly observe 5 in and out breath cycles will work wonders to clear your mind. A clear mind equals a more efficient mind.
