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Was It Something I Said? The Trap of High Self-Orientation

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It happened again yesterday. It happens about once a week, though I don’t generally notice it until later.

I had a proposal phone call with a potential client. It went well, but they came back a few days later with a concern. I responded at length in an email. The day ended. Another day passed. By then, it had begun to happen.

I started thinking, “Was it something I said? I’ve probably blown it. I knew I should have done X, I shouldn’t have done Y. On the other hand, maybe I should have…” and so on. You probably know how it goes.

I once kept track of these episodes for a month. There were ten of them in that month. And in 9 out of the 10 cases, the result was: the other person was just busy, that’s all. They weren’t thinking those negative things about me, in fact quite the contrary.

9 out of 10 times I was wrong. And not just about what they were thinking, but about how much time they spent on it.

Self-Orientation in Trust

The denominator in the Trust Equation is self-orientation (the numerator factors are credibility, reliability and intimacy). The higher your self-orientation, the lower your trustworthiness. The logic is simple: if you’re paying attention to the other person (client, customer, friend, spouse, whatever), then you’re probably interested in them, care about them, and have some positive intent toward them.

By contrast, if your attention is devoted inward, you will not be trusted. Why should you be? You’re obsessed with yourself. We trust people who appear to care, and who demonstrate that caring by paying attention. He who pays attention largely to himself is not the stuff of trusted advisors. (Note: you can take your own Trust Quotient quiz at the upper right of this page.)

Get Off Your S

For those of us who need catch-phrases to remember (count me in), here’s one: Get Off Your S. That is, stop being so self-oriented.

Here’s the psychology of it. You’re not as good as you think you are, you’re not as bad as you think you are–you just think more about yourself than others think about you. To live between your ears is to live in enemy territory. You empower what you fear. If you have a foot in yesterday and one in tomorrow, you’re set to pee on today. Blame is captivity. It’s never too late to have a happy childhood.

Here’s the spirituality of it. To give is more blessed than to receive. To get what you want, focus on getting others what they want. Treat others as you’d wish they’d treat you. Pay it forward. Put change in a stranger’s parking meter. Do a good deed a day. Humility doesn’t mean thinking less of yourself, it means thinking of yourself less. Fear is lack of faith.

Here’s the business of it. Never Eat Alone. Listen before making recommendations. To get tweets, give tweets. Inbound marketing not outbound marketing. Customer focus. Customer service. Samples selling.

———

Oh, and my potential client? They were just busy. They’re going to buy, they always were.

It’s not about you. It never is.

 

The Evolution of Capitalism

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Dinosaurs fightingIn 1986, I attended my 10th MBA reunion. I sat in a class taught by Joseph Bower, along with the classes of various years ending in a “6” or a “1.”

Bower talked about global over-capacity in the chemical industry and what could be done about it: “co-opetition” was his solution. The 5-year people looked somewhat bored by it. I found it quite fascinating, as did others in my year.

But the old guys were apoplectic. They spluttered and muttered things like ‘what has this school come to, don’t they know it’s a business school,’ and the like. To them, it was but a short hop to socialism.

It was never that simple. At that time there were already newspaper company joint operating agreements, which amounted to co-opetition in the very newsprint these old gents held in their hands at the Club in the evening. But no matter, ideology dies hard.

Their form of ideology—competition to the death, but in a gentlemanly kind of way—went through a resurgence in the 1980s with the advent of competitive strategy. We heard some about strategic alliances, but as far as I was concerned, co-opetition didn’t get back to the front page.

New Assaults on Old Business Ideologies

But as Michael Jackson once said, that was then: this is now. Now there is some serious re-examination going on about the nature of capitalism.

Umair Haque, who’s based in London, is burning up the Harvard Business Review blog scene by writing about constructive capitalism and about the economics of good and evil. 

At Harvard itself, Bruce R. Scott  writes with great perspective and wisdom about the complex relationship between democracy and capitalism. Sorry, die-hard fans of Adam Smith’s invisible hand; it just ain’t that simple.

And speaking of the Invisible Hand, Adam Smith first used that metaphor in his earlier book, the Theory of Moral Sentiments. He used it to describe the natural working of human sympathies for each other. Over a decade later he resurrected the metaphor to do double duty in Wealth of Nations, where he used it to describe the workings of a competitive market.

At the Boston Consulting Group, Philip Evans and team have done great research into just how it is that Toyota is so much more cost-effective than Detroit at building cars. It’s not pension and health care costs—it’s more effective process innovation, which in turn comes from—omigosh, collaboration. I imagine the old-timers from my reunion popping a blood vessel over that one.

I’m currently reading Winner Take All: How Competitiveness Shapes the Fate of Nations,  by Richard Elkus. Elkus was present at the creation—and destruction—of the US consumer electronics industry, working for Ampex.

Ampex coulda been Sony, or Toshiba. The reason it wasn’t is excruciatingly obvious as Elkus tells the tale of US management doing its best: valuing the transaction over the relationship, focusing on competition not collaboration, channel-loading and fudging costs, and converting all business issues into present value financial calculations.

Up against an Akio Morita, who actually believed in alliances and collaboration, who understood interconnection in technologies, and who worked for the long term, Ampex didn’t stand a chance. Nor Zenith. Nor, I would add, Detroit. The colossal disadvantage of our national economy at this point, he argues, is that we have sold all our technology for licensing fees, outsourced all our manufacturing for low input costs for quarterly earnings, and made ourselves little else but master marketers and consumers.  We exited what BCG called ‘dog’ businesses, and ended up dog food.

The Coming of Collaborative Capitalism

I’ve played around with various terms for it, but I’m liking “collaborative capitalism.” It’s light-years beyond 1986’s co-opetition, because it’s not just capacity-sharing.  It’s true collaboration and trust, working beyond corporate walls and across companies.  Many of us are seeing this trend at the same time.

Way back in 2002—a couple recessions or so ago—I wrote a little article called The Death of Corporations.  It basically said companies who competed against each other were, to use Robert Frost’s metaphor, disappearing not with a bang, but a whimper, as commerce gradually begins to operate across and through companies, rather than in the form of mega-goliath companies clumsily "competing" against each other, spouting their platitudes.

I still think that article’s going to be an overnight sensation, it just needs a little more time…

 

Tiger, Tiger, Burning Trust

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In case you haven’t heard, the world’s best and most famous golfer has got himself into a bit of a mess.

A sex scandal? To be sure. A public relations debacle? You betcha. But what does it tell us about trust?

The Longer You Wait…

It started back on November 27; that’s 23 days before I’m writing this. That’s a long time in scandal-years to go without comment by the protagonist.

It was December 14, two weeks and change into the story, that Accenture dropped Tiger. That too was a long time, but Accenture was by far the earliest and most definitive of his endorsements to drop him. On the day Accenture dropped him, Nike and Pepsi conspicuously announced their continued endorsement. (Tag Heuer, part of LVMH, hedged its bets, later dropping him).

Woods has been visibly silent to date. Now, he is being given public advice by none other than Snoop Dogg.

Tiger didn’t lack public relations advice from the public. The NY Times on November 28 quoted Mike Paul, founder of MGP Associates, a PR firm:

“My advice to Tiger is pretty simple,” Paul said. “Own it, say it yourself, say it yourself with full conviction and responsibility and get it out of the way.

“You have an opportunity to change rumor and innuendo into truth. Moving past fear and doubt — that’s something they did not do well during the first 24 hours.”

Even a Saturday Night Live parody isn’t the height of bad PR. Yesterday’s NYTimes op-ed by Frank Rich now positions Woods as the poster child for a generation of liars and posers. Heavy stuff.

Predictions are risky, of course, but we probably all agree that Tiger’s delay makes it more difficult, not less, for him to stage a comeback in the court of PR.

The PR Perspective: Tiger Just the Latest to Be Taught the Watergate Lesson

Maybe Tiger was listening to his lawyers. In such cases, criminal defense attorneys often warn their clients not to say anything. Hindsight is 20-20, but it seems that Tiger’s legal issues were nothing compared to his PR issues.

You would think that if the world learned nothing from Watergate, it was that the cover-up is always worse than the crime. And yet, consider the list of public figures that continue to figure they can outrun the capacity for the truth to embarrass them. John Edwards, Bill Clinton, John Ensign, Jim McGreevey, Kobe Bryant, Eliot Spitzer, Bernie Kerik, Newt Gingrich, Jimmy Swaggart, Gary Hart, Larry Craig, Mark Foley, David Letterman, Ted Haggard, Mark Sanford. And on, and on.

From a PR perspective, the answer is clear. Get the truth out, fast. It’s what I teach as Name It and Claim It. It is first and foremost an acknowledgement of reality. It may, or may not, then lead to an apology. Job 1 is stop pretending you’re in charge of reality—get the truth out, because if you don’t, it will most definitely out you.

What Scandals Tell Us About Trust

At the heart of trust is one’s relationship to the Truth. The Trust Equation consists of credibility, reliability, intimacy and self-orientation. If someone ranks high on the first three and low on the last, we consider them trustworthy. And if someone lies, it calls all four into question.

He who lies is, by definition, not credible. If he lied in a calculated, ongoing way, we have to question his motives—which suggests very high self-orientation. If he lies in a careful, calculated, painstaking manner, then we question his intimacy—we can’t trust what he says even in confidential, seemingly intimate, moments. And if he carefully lies from selfish motives, we certainly don’t find him reliable.

This is damning stuff. But what troubles us most is the implied sense of arrogance. The implication is that the liar believes we are stupid enough to be played for saps. And the longer the delay in telling the truth, the more the continued arrogance. It suggests the liar still believes he can spin us.

Consider Spitzer—damned for his hypocrisy as a do-gooder, then caught. By contrast, his successor Governor Patterson, on his 2nd day, called a press conference to pre-emptively confess all sorts of drug use and sexcapades by himself and his wife. Yawn, said the press.

But it’s more than just truth-telling. We want the hypocrisy dealt with as well. Letterman owned up immediately, but he also apologized. Interestingly, Patterson confessed quickly, but didn’t apologize. Both are in the American tradition. We’re not as Puritanical as Europeans make us out to be; we are a tolerant nation when it comes to all sorts of activities. But what we don’t want is someone who lies about his motives. It’s OK for Barney Frank to be gay; it’s not OK for Larry Craig to torturously insist he isn’t.

What Tiger Can Do

If Tiger were single, it’d be easier for him. What he can’t do, however, is to continue being hypocritical by pretending to be the marrying kind (unless he undergoes some massive conversion). Nor can he continue to pretend he’s in charge of the Truth by insisting on some right to privacy. He gave that up when he received endorsements.

There is one party that came out of this well, I think, and that is Accenture. Tiger’s rectitude was more important to them than to Nike, given their respective businesses. Accenture took decisive action, which is what values-based companies do.

Their silence about their decision, unlike Tiger’s, I take to be principled: preaching ethics in an ethics scandal just highlights your own form of arrogance. Best to be silent and let others formulate their own opinions.

What’s yours?

Can You Differentiate Yourself from a Competitor in a Sales Presentation?

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It’s tempting. Can you just come out and say you’re the best, without look self-serving? Can you point out a weakness in your competitor without it looking like bragging or mud-slinging? And if the client really needs to know something less-than-perfect about the competitor: can you point it out?

I rarely cite politicians in this blog, but one piece of received political wisdom works in business too: if you’re in the lead, don’t debate the challenger.

Politics offers another lesson too: mud-slinging poisons the well. Negative campaigning works–in the short run. In the not-very long run, it doesn’t work for anybody, including the slinger and the public. No wonder politicians rank so low in trust.

Competitive Disadvantage

Business has focused in recent decades heavily on competition. Try completing this sentence: “The purpose of a company is to…” Way too many people are channeling Ayn Rand these days, by saying “…make money.”

Peter Drucker, esteemed business guru, finished it this way: “…create and serve customers.” Drucker is still respected, but more quoted than acted upon.

In selling, there has always been this tension between a focus on competition and on customers. Is winning a byproduct of customer focus? Or is winning the goal, and customer focus simply a means to the greater end of winning?

Consider romantic relationships: is the best strategy for seeking a partner to disparage his/her other suitors? Or to focus on your intended? I vote for number 2.

True Client Focus

You may be thinking, “Don’t I have an obligation to politely show my client how we’re right and they’re wrong?”

Well, what does the client hear when you disparage a competitor? Of course, they may hear what you intend—that on some important dimension, you are better. But there is collateral damage.

They will also hear “These folks are focused on winning, not on helping me. How do I know I can trust their critique? What are they not telling me? It’s my job, not theirs, to make the judgment. Should I give the competitor a second chance to explain? Why are they sticking me in the middle of a technical dispute?

Be careful also of thinking, “I’m not mud-slinging. I’m being professional, objectively pointing out important risks. I’m helping them.”

Too bad motives aren’t everything. Motives won’t change those unspoken client questions. The more you insist how clean your motives are, the more they’re suspect.

The Long Term is Not So Long Anymore

Reputations spread like wildfire on the web. Worse yet, reputations are no longer based on carefully crafted positioning statements, but on suddenly-public daily corporate life.

Non-marketing actions issues like customer service, lead screening, purchasing processes–and comments about competitors–are suddenly driving brand image.

He who tells a lie gets known as a liar. He who slings mud gets known as a mud-slinger—much faster, and much more broadly, than ever before. What goes around comes around—just a lot faster.

Be careful what you wish for: you may (or may not) win the particular argument, but you will definitely create a lasting impression—and not a good one.

The Good News in Leaving Competitors Alone

The good news is the ‘right’ thing to do is increasingly looking like the smart thing to do. Focusing on your client, that is. When trust in businesses is declining, those who act in a trustworthy manner differentiate themselves. And isn’t that what you wanted?

So how do you differentiate yourself in a sales presentation? Stop asking that question: focus on the client in front of you.

Differentiation is not about what you say about others: it’s about who you reveal yourself to be.
 

Meeting Your Customers’ Value Metrics

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This weekend I read two things. Each influenced me, but the combination kicked me hard.

One was a post by Chris Brogan on website best practices. In it, he critiqued his own website, concluding that he had some work to do.

In my experience, most good professionals have good things to say, though they (we) are not very good at persuading their clients to listen to them. And the toughest client for all of us to convince is—ourselves. We are great at diagnosing issues in others; not so good at seeing the pattern in the mirror. Bravo Chris.

The other piece was by Jeff Thull. I’m honored to be one whom Jeff asked to review the 2nd edition of his classic Mastering the Complex Sale. I was impressed the first time I read it, and reading it on a plane ride Sunday brought on that same rush of ‘oh wow’s yet again.

To grossly over-summarize: Thull has written the book on how to sell (and buy, and manage) in an era where needs identification itself is too complicated for the buyer alone to determine.

Brogan plus Thull: what a combination. And that got me on the subject of value metrics and customer benefits.

What My Customers Ask Me: and What I’ve Been Answering

Most of my customers ask me ‘can you point to results of increased trustworthiness in your client organizations?’ And reading Brogan and Thull today, I had to admit: I’ve done a poor job of answering that question.

First, if I’m honest, I generally don’t raise the subject. If it does come up, I have as often as not steered the discussion elsewhere. “Trust itself doesn’t even have a universal definition, how can it be measured,” I say. “Over-measurement of trust can destroy trust; metrics are overdone; and if the trust is working, you’ll know it through some major metrics like revenue, cost and speed.”

Yeah, I know. All true; but I wouldn’t find it too satisfying either. It sounds defensive. What it isn’t, is collaborative and useful.

Ouch: hey Chris, was it this hard for you to admit your website could be improved?

What I Should be Answering

Great insights, I have found, are usually simple: rarely easy, but usually simple. Jeff Thull’s Big Insight is that most sales these days assume the client knows what’s wrong, and largely how to solve the problem. Hence most sales processes aim at teasing out needs statements from clients.

That is profoundly wrong, and has been for some time. David Maister said years ago that ‘the problem is never what the client said it was in the first meeting.’ The problem definition has to be developed collaboratively. And problem definition is just the barest beginning. Thull’s work is the mental and process roadmap for redesigning supplier-buyer relationships in their entirety.

In my simple small example, what I need to do is to engage my potential clients in discussions about how they measure value; what their metrics are; and whether (or not) my service offering affects those metrics. If there’s no match, it’s my job to explore with them whether the issue is their metrics or my service offering—all done with an attitude of curiosity and a willingness to be agnostic about the outcome.

So, one of the battlegrounds is measurement. I’ll start by getting rid of the ‘battleground’ metaphor and remember this is all about a joint exploration of how to fix the world, one little product and service offering and organization at a time.

Thanks Jeff for the structured big-picture thinking, and Chris for the cold water in the face. Once again, I have met the enemy and it is me.

To present, past and future clients of mine: let’s talk about how you think about the value of trust.

Collaboration: Trust Matters Interview with Brandon Klein

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I first met Brandon Klein when we were swamped processing people at the outset of the Trust Summit in NYC October 23. Some very nice guy came over and, simply, offered to pitch in and help. Which he then proceeded to do, and most ably.

That was Brandon, and it turns out, that was characteristic of him. He doesn’t just collaborate, he does collaboration. In particular, he’s something of an expert in the practical ways of organizing gatherings of human beings in ways that maximize output. That includes social dynamics, ergonomics, technology and psychology.

Since collaboration is one of the four Trust Principles, it’s of interest to us both.

CHG: Let’s start big: how do you define collaboration?

BK: Collaboration is repeating the assumed and then stating the unspoken. It is envisioning what success can be and then understanding how to work together to make it happen. It is sometimes best understood by stating what it’s NOT: It is not about latest social media software (chasing the shiny new thing), it’s not more meetings about meetings or guessing games/”strategizing” about what the boss might be thinking. Collaboration is defining and aligning on a common objective as a group of stakeholders and then openly, selflessly, working towards achieving it in a fun, social, interactive, barrier-less way.

CHG: How did you come to be involved in this sort of thing?

BK: Like most, I was incredibly frustrated by the amount of time that was wasted at work. Though most workplace environments boasted a team approach, I couldn’t accept that collaboration meant spending 95% of my day sitting in a cubicle and/or conference room. In searching for a better way, I was lucky enough to be one of the original people to learn the collaborative process known as a DesignShop™- in my opinion, the best off-line collaborative methodology in existence today.

CHG: Why do you think collaboration is ‘hot’ these days?

BK: The proliferation of web-based tools has definitely made the concept of collaboration more top-of-mind. Everyone can now be “collaborative” with a couple clicks of the mouse (or cell phone). It’s similar to the effect of television on sports. Once upon a time, you either had to play the sport or plan in advance to make the journey to the stadium to cheer for your team and interact with the fans. Now, you simply need to press a button on your TV’s remote. Fan bases have increased dramatically, but so has their average weight!

We’ve managed to make online collaboration hot and successful, but we have quickly forgotten what it means to collaborate in person. We can comment anonymously online, but can’t say why we are so ineffective at work. We can “Reply All” to make it look like we are involved, but can’t cut a meeting short that isn’t going anywhere.

CHG: Your focus is primarily on people getting together, isn’t it? Is technology changing that?

BK: Even with using Cisco’s Telepresence (which is awesome) it is very difficult to say that technology has changed ‘getting together’ yet. Yes, online conversations are fantastic and improving everyday. However, I focus on meetings with 12 to 120 people in the same room. Technology has little effect on face-to-face meetings, and in most cases makes them worse. This is because although we have created new tools and ways of working online, we haven’t developed ways of interacting better in person. It is commonplace and therefore acceptable to sit behind a conference table and read your blackberry, while calling the meeting successful and collaborative. It is crazy!

CHG: Let’s talk about conventional meetings; what’s the biggest mistake people make?

BK: Agendas, PowerPoint and WMD’s (Weapons of Mass Distraction ie phones/crackberry’s) are the 3 most unproductive tools on the planet when it comes to meetings. Additionally things most people don’t even consider such as tables, tardiness and tight-lips, are pretty bad too. Here are the quick reasons:

  • Agendas mean people know when to check out or worry/dread what comes next. Don’t publish agendas to more than 3-4 of the key people responsible for the output of the entire project/strategy etc.
  • PowerPoint puts people to sleep. Unless you are good enough to speak at TED, just don’t use it. Tell a story. Have a discussion about the main points instead. Put the bullet points in large all caps letters on a flip chart. Or better yet, create a visual to represent everything.
  • Technology in the pocket. Humans can’t multi-task. Seen the statistics on text messaging and driving? 23 times more dangerous than being drunk. You don’t want your meeting attendees drunk do you?
  • Tables. If people don’t need to eat lunch or take incredibly copious notes and have stacks of paper in front of them, why put a barrier between every person?
  • Tardiness. This could be replaced with excuses. If you show up late, everyone has to catch you up… wasting everyone’s time.
  • Tight-lips. Water cooler talk is the essence of a company and the harbinger for the success of the project. Bring it out into the open and every meeting and project will succeed.

CHG: How about big-group seminars and shows and conventions; do you see a few big things happening there?

BK: Unfortunately, there hasn’t been enough change. The ‘sit and get’ model is SAFE and so it is almost always what you see. Large-scale collaborative events of any kind are really quite rare. People are afraid to foster interactivity, or to relinquish control. A giant PowerPoint screen is a sense of comfort and power.

CHG: What’s the role of technology? Are twitter feeds good or bad? Is cloud computing affecting things?

BK: I love all of this technology. Twitter Feeds, Google Waves, Live-Blogging, etc, they are all great additions to any group gathering. Their popularity means they are being included by default right now, which can often be more distracting then useful. Their incorporation needs to be strategically designed. Unfortunately, just throwing out features doesn’t produce collaborative, successful output.

CHG: What’s your view of collaboration and how it fosters trust? Or do you see it the other way ‘round?

BK: Perhaps this is the classic case of the chicken and the egg. People must trust in order to collaborate better. And true collaboration will lead to stronger trust. But collaboration only works when people share openly and honestly. In the end, companies, managers, employees need to be willing to change the status quo in order for foster true collaboration… they need to trust each other.

CHG: Many thanks, Brandon, and let’s pursue some of this further another time.

 

For more information on Brandon Klein and the collaboration information he and his colleagues provide, check out his website at CollaborationKing.com

Can Trust Replace Contracts?

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SafeToo often trust is thought of as a nice-to-have but vaguely soft, squishy, liberal sort of relationship thingy. Not often enough do we realize it also holds the key to reducing costs and time, and to fostering innovation and new value creation.  It also mitigates risk.

It’s true: trust is highly profitable. Consider how Warren Buffett acquired McLean Distribution from Walmart. By deciding to trust the management team at Walmart, Buffett reached an agreement in a matter of days and at minimal cost, saving months and many millions in cost.

You may be saying, ‘Fine—but who’s going to double-cross Warren Buffett? It’s different for him.”

I don’t think so. Let me add my own small lesson.

To Sign a Contract? Or to Trust?

In addition to speaking and writing, I run a seminar business. I’ve spent this week training a half dozen worldwide potential trainers, sharing with them all the training manuals, approaches, ideas and concepts that I have developed over the years.

Normal procedure would be for me to have them all sign a non-disclosure agreement to protect my intellectual property, which is, after all, the source of my livelihood. Such agreements can be more or less complex. If violated, they give me the legal right to pursue redress in courts in various countries should one of my licensees/coaches/contractors abscond with my materials or be found to be using them for their own purposes without properly getting my approval or compensating me appropriately.

I could have done that.

Instead, I explained to them that I would prefer to trust them to do the right thing. We went through a 60-second ceremony. All of us raised our hands and, looking at each other, pledged two things: to respect my intellectual property in the commonsense way they felt was right; and if there was any question about what that meant, to talk to me and the rest of our team about it.

No papers. No contracts. Nothing written. Not enforceable in any court of law.

Where’s the Enforceability in Trust?

I feel more protected by this oath than I do by any legal agreement I might have signed. Why? Certainly not because it’s enforceable in a court of law.

Rather, because it’s enforceable in a higher court; the one of their conscience. Conscience is triggered by conscious, collaborative relationships between human beings.

I have no doubt that this group of people, with whom I have worked closely over several days and for months preceding this gathering, will honor the pledge. I trust them. This is partly because of who I know them to be, and also partly because I trust them.

Trust is not something you work on directly; trust is a result. It is the result of two parties interacting: one who trusts, and the other who is trusted. You can practice both trusting and being trustworthy. Probably the fastest way to make people more trustworthy is to trust them first.

Is it risky? Of course.  But I think it is less risky than relying on the rather impersonal and tenuous threads of trademark law. My recourse to legal violations is courts, which are costly, time-consuming, and generally manufacture ill-will in the pursuit of their justice.

By contrast, trusting my business relationships itself increases their trustworthiness, which also lowers my risk–and at near-zero cost. My means of enforcement is pre-installed within them in the form of their consciences.

It’s a win-win. Except maybe for the lawyers.

And frankly I think there’s room for lawyers to gain from this too. But that’s another blog.

What Introductions Can Teach Us About Trust

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parachute jumpersI’m in Washington, D.C. this week, giving a Being Trusted Advisors training session along with the rest of our staff. There is an exercise I like around introductions.

Rather than the usual ‘let’s go around the table and introduce ourselves,’ we ask people to quickly state their company (or title/role if it’s an internal training), followed by two questions:

1. Tell the group how many months you’ve been with (company name), and
2. Tell the group an interesting tidbit or factoid about yourself—something a little bit unusual, quirky, interesting, not an every-day business fact about yourself.

I ask everyone in the room in random order to quickly answer the two questions. The debrief is then: why do you think I asked us to take X minutes doing this?

The usual answers are to establish a group identity, to begin creating trust, to get people focused in on the room. True, true, and true.

Then I’ll stand behind one person and ask the group: “how many months was Joe here with his company?” A few people remember; often they remember different numbers.

I’ll then ask, “What was Joe’s interesting tidbit or factoid?”

The whole group responds immediately: “Arrived late to his own wedding,” or “chickened out parachuting last weekend,” or whatever.

We have a good time with that one, talking about why we remember personal tidbits more than we remember data. But what’s really interesting is: so what?

What should we do with the observation that people remember personal quirks and stories and anecdotes more than they do objective data?

What should a client relationship manager do with that observation? A salesperson? An accountant?

What should you do with that observation? 
 

A Story About the Power of Stories

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The power of stories is well-described in the business literature.  Some of the most famous are stories about story-telling: 1001 Arabian Nights, Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, and its American version, It’s a Wonderful Life.
The why of stories is also well-explained. One author suggests that stories are powerful because they plow common ground, create meaning, build community, and are memorable.
There is, however, another reason why story-telling is so powerful. Let me illustrate by, of course, a story (thanks to Charlie Ortman).
A man was shipwrecked on a desert island. Years went by. A decade. Then another. 

One day a rescue ship arrived. The rescuers found the man healthy and happy. “Is this your house?” they asked, pointing to a comfortable dwelling the man had constructed. “Yes,” he said.

“And this lovely hut over here?” 
“That’s my church,” the man said.
“And what’s this?” the rescuers asked, pointing to a somewhat disheveled, faded hut.
“Ah,” said the man drily, “that’s the church I used to attend.” 

I’ll resist the temptation to say what my interpretation was. Later, I realized it could have been interpreted in another way–at least one other way.

Stories Permit Influence without Rejection

It’s my observation that generally the worst way to get someone to do something is to tell them that they should do it—and then try to justify the advice. There is a human built-in resistance to taking advice, unless accompanied by a serious attempt to first hear out the advisee.

Stories provide a powerful supplement to the critical role of listening in this reciprocal dance.

There is something Teflon- and Rorschach-like about stories. In their telling, the fingerprints of the story teller are removed. The listener hears largely what (s)he wants to hear, without the usual baggage of resistance against the advisor. This is often true even when the teller’s intended meaning is clear. 

Consider the story of the shipwrecked man. 
What meaning do you hear in that story? 
Please add your comment below—so we can all see how our own meanings differ.   
 

Best B2B Sale of the Month: Selling by Doing, Not Selling by Telling

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I spoke recently with Craig Leach, CEO of Graham-Pelton Consuting. Graham-Pelton is a leader in the field of non-profit fund-raising consulting.

CHG: So Craig, tell me this story.

CL: It was a large potential client for us. We had discussions with several key leaders, but as is often the case in non-profits, the board wanted to be involved before significant commitments were made. That meant a presentation to the full board—about 30 people in this case.

I knew we were in the last time-slot of a four-firm dog and pony show afternoon for this group. It had to have been a long day for that many people.

I and my team had prepared well, but as I we headed down the hall to await being summoned at 4:30, just as the door opened and we were ushered in, I got a little inspiration. I channelled you Charlie and your approach to trust-based selling.

“I’m calling an audible,” I whispered to my team. “Follow my lead.”

We walked in to this long, vertical room with 30 stressed, tired faces jammed into the seats. You could hear pencils tapping, and could smell the low-grade tension.

“Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen,” I said. “We’ve got another long presentation for you to sit through today, but I’m wondering—maybe we should do something else. All those in favor of junking the slides and just getting down to business, say Aye!”

Well some of them literally jumped out of their seats, thrusting their hands up and shouting Aye!

We had a great meeting. We talked about what they wanted, what their concerns were, and we listened—actively and attentively. They asked us for some opinions, and we gave them. Everybody felt great having that conversation.

Of course we got the job, and several people told me later that our approach was, while not the only reason we got it, certainly a differentiator and a real plus.

CHG: Congratulations, Craig, that’s a great story. What do you think it means? Is this a case of the last time slot wins?

CL: No, not at all. Partly we read the room right, and got credit for adjusting to it. But more deeply, it was what you had written about: selling by doing, not by
telling. There was nothing canned about what we did. It was a conversation in real time and therefore it became a consulting session rather than a sales pitch. Nothing up our sleeves. We brought game, not gamebooks. We just did what we do, and they could immediately see whatever they wanted to see—not just what we wanted them to see. That’s what really did it, I think.

CHG: I think you’re right. Congratulations again.