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Envy, Resentment and Trust

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Resentment is like taking poison—and waiting for the other person to die. 

Sounds absurd, but anyone who’s honest will recognize not only the absurdity of that stance, but the fact that we nonetheless indulge in it all too often.

Then there’s resentment’s close cousin envy.  “Envy is the ulcer of the soul,” said Socrates.  The parallel metaphors of ulcers and poison are not accidental.  They are internally corrosive issues masquerading as external.

I want to highlight two other writers whom I find do a wonderful job of exploring the darker regions of the soul. One is Phil McGee; the other is Peter Vajda.  Both have commented on this blog from time to time.

Here are a few choice comments from each on the subject.  Peter’s comments come from  “I Want What You Have.”  Phil’s come from his post "Three Men."   
I recommend reading both in the original. 

Here is a taste, in alternating call-and-response format:

In the throes of envy, we become mired in a sense of lack and deficiency. And, like an ulcer, envy eats away at you, consciously and subconsciously. It seems to be the energy that is running your life – a life of frustration – feeling like you’re being decimated from the inside out.  Peter Vajda

He was the oldest of the group and the ring leader and most of the people in the room seemed to respect and care about him. He was, therefore, the target of my jealousy and dislike. Phil McGee

The honest reality with envy is that it’s never – repeat never – about the other person. Envy can be a blind spot. As Pogo said, “We have met the enemy and he is us.” Few folks realize they are their own worst enemy when it comes to envy.

He had, I came to realize, a sharp wit and great sense of humor and he enjoyed life, a feeling rare in me until I began to question why I disliked so many people instead of wondering what was wrong with me. Somewhere inside I knew I was cheating myself and that I was afraid of getting close enough to feel the rejection that was sure to come.

While focusing outward on what others have, the envious one is also dwelling on “what’s wrong with me.” In this place of self-loathing and self-pity, when we feel “less than”, we tend to focus on what we don’t have. Lack attracts lack. Caught in a downward spiral of envy, you move backwards, sowing seeds of doubt and limiting your potential.

Les…helped me to see that I was wrong about people. They really don’t exist for the sole purpose of making my life miserable. Actually when I seek their friendship and counsel and am open to them it seems they will do anything to help me see the light of love rather than the blind darkness of fear and resentment.

You can decide to not be envious or jealous. It is a choice.

Indeed it is. And choosing to be free of envy and resentment makes you able to trust, as well as trustworthy.

Thanks,Phil and Peter.
 

Transparency and Selling

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President Obama directly links transparency to economic performance.

In his inauguration address, he asserted “…those of us who manage the public’s dollars will be held to account, to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day, because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their government.”

Lately transparency has been in short supply.

Offices for sale. Ponzi schemes. The former mayor of Baltimore has just been indicted on charges that she accepted illegal gifts, including gift cards intended for the poor that she allegedly used instead for a holiday shopping spree.

Whether with respect to government, or to building client relationships, transparency is at the very root of trust.

That may seem obvious. Motherhood and apple pie. But for those of us with a career background in sales, transparency requires deprogramming. We were taught:

• Never share a weakness
• Never admit a competitor strength
• Never share cost information
• Always get as much margin as you can
• Don’t share information that could decrease your ability to close a sale

Oh yeah, and be customer focused.

What goes around comes around. In the long run, the truth inevitably bubbles to the top. You can get credit for saying it—or blame for resisting it.

As Charlie Green said in a HuffingtonPost piece, “If we see someone as being transparent, then nagging questions about motive disappear. We no longer speculate about, ‘What’s in it for him? What’s the hidden meaning? Why’d he say that? Is he lying?’ and so on. We accept the person at face value for what they say, even if—sometimes, particularly if—what they say reflects imperfection. That works in sales and in politics.” 

Yet, we’re trained to go in come back with information that will close the sale. Hunt it, kill it and bring it back to eat.

• What if, instead of dancing around an answer we don’t know, we just admit we don’t know?
• What if, instead of promising something we probably can’t deliver, we admit that and then tell them what we can do?
• What if, instead of offering “teaser” pricing and then covertly getting it on the back end, we share our cost structure?

These examples are counter-intuitive—downright treasonous in some circles.

Without the pretension, void of false promises and out on a limb – we are, admittedly exposed, naked and vulnerable.

But wouldn’t you rather buy from a seller who is willing to show you his cards, even if—perhaps because—you both know it might cost him the sale? That visceral reaction works in reverse when transparency dominates relationships (think Madoff, Blagojevich).

Transparency creates a powerful pull toward you. It also, by the way, lets you sleep easier.

I Have Done Nothing Illegal

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You know the old joke: “Legal ethics is an oxymoron.”

Now, it may or may not be that lawyers are disproportionately ethically challenged. But the real oxymoron is not about lawyers—it’s about the legal-ization of ethics.

An act can be immoral or unethical without being illegal. And the absence of illegality does not make an act moral. This should not be a hard concept to grasp.

Yet, there is no shortage of businessmen and politicians who aggressively assert legal non-guilt as if it could mask the stench of grossly unethical behavior.

Googling “I have done nothing illegal,” and variations on the theme, provides such gems as these:

Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich—“I’m here to tell you right off the bat that I am not guilty of any criminal wrongdoing.”

New York’s former State Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno, responding to a damning indictment, sounds like the ex-boxer he is, saying
“After being hounded for three years, I am being indicted on a prosecutor’s sleight of hand.” Bruno insults an entire profession by calling millions of dollars in sales-commissions-or-is-it-kickbacks “consulting fees.”

Remember Senator Alan Cranston of the Keating Five? Talking to congress, he said, “You know that I broke no law.”

Enron’s Jeff Skilling testifies that he and Lay never broke the law.

Confirming their virtue, his buddy Ken Lay said: “We don’t break the law.”

Former New Jersey Senator Robert Torricelli, explaining the scandal that led to his resignation: “…had not denied taking gifts from Mr. Chang, but said that he took no ‘illegal gifts’…”

Back in 2006, San Jose’s mayor Ron Gonzales kept it simple. Indicted for fraud, bribery and conspiracy, he said “I broke no law.”

Lousiana’s former Governor Edwin Edwards, being charged with $1M in racketeering and extortion said, ”I know I didn’t break any Federal laws.”

Really blurring the ethics/law boundaries, Pennsylvania State Senator Fumo’s 2007 response to a 139-count Federal indictment was, “I know in my heart that I have not done anything illegal.”

Over on Long Island, the late Republican Joseph Margiotta was convicted of federal mail fraud and conspiracy charges in a municipal insurance kickback scheme, and served 14 months. Even then, he explained, “I didn’t break any law.”

When Don Imus was brought back to the air from the racist dead, part of the rationale for it, as provided by the CEO of Citadel Broadcasting was, you guessed it, “he didn’t break the law.” So I guess all that other stuff—no biggie.

I can’t wait to hear from Madoff. His scam deftly sought out legal vacuums. So if and when he says, “I’ve broken no laws,” it’s important we remember he’s still a sociopathic ripoff artist.

When someone says, “I didn’t do anything illegal,” you can bet your bottom dollar they did two things wrong. One was the scam itself.

The other is worse. They have demeaned both the law and ethics.

The law cannot and should not substitute for ethics. For one thing, it puts an unsupportable load on the law—and lets unethical and immoral people off the hook.

Worst of all, it equates moral arguments to whining complaints made to third parties. That’s a recipe for abdicating personal responsibility. You can’t trust people who have no inner moral compass. A thief with a legal loophole is still a thief. A con artist with a good lawyer is no less a con artist.

That is the true meaning of “legal ethics is an oxymoron.”

When someone to whom we entrust our life savings or our political leadership acts badly, and then defends himself by saying,“I broke no law,” they should be shunned and shamed—outed and shouted—exposed to derision and disgust in all forms of public dialogue. Not to mention voted out or fired.

Bruno, Blago and Bernie ought to be ashamed of themselves. If they can’t even manage that, their status in court has no claim on our judgment.

The Path of Redemption Leads to Trust

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Let’s take a break from Madoff, academics, and business processes.  Let’s go way inward and talk about redemption.

In 1997, Robert Duvall’s The Apostle won many nominations and awards.  It features a jagged but dead-on role by Farrah Fawcett, and the best work I’ve ever seen Billy Bob Thornton do.  But mostly, it’s Duvall.

Some reviewers can’t find the redemption in it.  I think it’s about nothing but.

Duvall’s character is a sinner of every sort—a cheating, lying, womanizing and self-congratulatory preacher.  In a fit of rage, he unintentionally kills his soon-to-be-ex-wife’s boyfriend, and sets out on the lam in the deep rural south, calling himself “The Apostle E.F.”

What follow is a series of epiphanies for him.  At every turn of his life, he rediscovers the beauty in life and other people, and in serving them—at the same time realizing with horror how deeply he had sinned.  And at each turn, the consequences of his sin catch up with him. 

He is forced to move on to another place, where again he gains a new insight, again realizes the depths of his sin, and again accepts the consequences of his sin by being forced out of yet another home.

It ends with him working on the chain gang, yet praising the Lord.  Because for every realization of his sin, he knows he grows to a greater appreciation, and becomes more willing to do the right thing.  Every step down represents more learning, humility and dedication to service.

Something like that happens in the last of the Carlos Castaneda Don Juan series, Journey to Ixtlan.  Don Juan and Don Jenaro explain that because they are magical warriors who can see things others can’t, they also cannot be understood by mere mortals. In a palpable sense, they can not go home to Ixtlan anymore.  Yet offered the same choice again—to learn and be alone, or to be common but together, they would choose the lonely life of the magician.

William James, in Varieties of Religious Experience,  wrote about the “once-born” and the “twice-born.”

The once-born has always led a life of quiet faith. The twice-born, by contrast, knows what hell looks like, having been there, and so appreciates the difference. 

I think Duvall, Castaneda and James all spoke the language of redemption.    The religious sense of “redemption” is delivery from evil or sin.  It has a strong sense of “now I know what I never knew before, and I know it to be true in a way I never knew before.”

* Redemption is a complete change of perspective.  Redemption means “I have seen the light,” or, more colloquially, “holy crap, I never realized.”

* Redemption is what the Angel Clarence teaches Jimmy Stewart in Bedford Falls, and Ebenezer Scrooge in London. 

* Redemption is why alcoholics will ignore priests and spouses, but listen to a fellow alcoholic—they’ve been there and seen the light.

* Redemption is the ultimate act of empathy.  It is about radically revising ourselves to see another reality. 

Redemption alone isn’t sufficient to trust someone.  Ex-smokers, for example, can be giant pains-in-the-butt because they’ve exchanged one cause for another.

But it’s a powerful start.  The ability to see (at least) two sides of a coin is the foundation of getting along with others.  And thence to trust.

The ROI of Business Friendships

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Karen Salmansohn publishes a “Be Happy Dammit Tips” Newsletter. She quotes some fascinating statistics about the value of business friendships. For example:

– People with a best friend at work are seven times more likely to be engaged in their work.

– Close friendships at work boost employee satisfaction by nearly 50%.

– People with at least three close friends at work are 46% more likely to be extremely satisfied their job – and 88% more likely to be satisfied with their lives.

– Employees who are good friends with their bosses are more than twice as likely to be happy with their work.

The relevance of friendship is not new to the world of professional services. David Maister writes about friendship in his article titled Young Professionals: Cultivate the Habits of Friendship . He asserts, “The way most clients choose among professionals is essentially identical to the way people choose their friends. At the point of selecting a professional to work with, clients go with providers who can:

(a) make them feel at ease;

(b) make them feel comfortable sharing their fears and concerns;

(c) can be trusted to look after them as well as their transaction and (d) are dependably on their side.”

It seems logical to infer that clients who view you, their business advisor, as a friend are at least doubly more likely to be engaged in the work you do and be satisfied with the results you produce.

Take stock: how many clients can you call “friend”?

The Trouble with Buying Processes

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Big companies have a process for buying things. They define the specs, they shop the vendors, they use specialized purchasing departments to define procedures and processes.

They have similar processes for recruiting human capital (aka human beings). Define the specs, shop the vendors, use special processes.

And ditto for selling. Define targets, channels, measure hit rates, etc.

What these processes all have in common is a focus on the efficiency of the process—and not so much on the effectiveness of the result.

Purchasing managers, HR recruiters and sales managers alike would benefit from Malcolm Gladwell’s recent New Yorker piece title Most Likely to Succeed: How Do We Hire When We Can’t Tell Who’s Right for the Job?

Gladwell’s opening metaphor is about predicting the success of a college football quarterback in the pro game. Despite extraordinary efforts at analytical and statistical rigor—you just never quite seem to know.

His target subject is teaching—how difficult it is to predict the success of a teacher by focusing on any available statistical predictor.

Yet the value of getting it right is huge. Gladwell points to research that says a good teacher dwarfs the effect of any other factor on a child’s education. The US could overcome its middle-of-the-road global relative performance simply by substituting the bottom 6% of teachers for average teachers.

The problem is, you can’t predict success in teachers, anymore than you can in quarterbacks.

The solution, he says, is to stop focusing on accreditation and criteria. Instead, have the equivalent of apprenticeships, open admissions, tryouts open to all. The good ones prove themselves quickly, as do the bad ones. Find out who they are not by controlling input metrics, but by letting people jump into the water and seeing who can swim.

I suggest that the same problem exists in evaluating suppliers, recruits, and sales funnels. These are all deeply complex, human, messy relationship issues. Good customer, employee and supplier relationships make a huge difference.

But the prevailing business wisdom is that we can analyze and measure our way into defining the right relationships. Think of RFPs (requests for proposal) or recruiting specs.

The motivation behind select-by-spec and hire-by-numbers is complex. It’s part blind faith in “science.” It’s part fear-driven cover-your-butt desire to appear blameless. It’s part fear of interaction with other people.

But whatever, it’s hurting us. In the name of efficiency, many business processes have been employed to bring human relationships to a least common denominator level. The result has been low effectiveness.

Let people mix it up. Inefficiencies can be dwarfed by effectiveness. It’s as true in work as it is in the NFL and the classroom.

What’s the Market’s T/E Ratio Lately?

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Yes, I said T/E ratio.

Not P/E, as in the ratio of price to earnings; but T/E as in the ratio of trust to earnings.

The P/E ratio of a company, industry, or market, signals many things. High P/E ratios may signal expectations of high growth, understated earnings, or low returns from alternative asset classes.

But P/E ratios also reflect levels of trust that certain things will continue to work:

• The law of gravity will not be repealed (at least not before Q4).
• The sun will set, as we anthropomorphically put it, in the west.
• Banks will still lend money to each other
• Interest rates will remain positive
• Oopsie…

P/E ratios, in other words, have a lot of co-variance with what we might call the Trust/Earnings, or T/E ratio. But while the numbers may overlap, they are not the same.

It’s one thing to have a certain level of confidence that CitiBank will work its way out of its difficulty. It’s quite another to trust that borrowers will continue to feel the same moral obligation to pay down a mortgage when 11% of borrowers are underwater. Or that they will trust their fellow man with their money in the form of government-insured deposits (interestingly, zero percent interest rates are bullish for institutional trust–it says whole lots of people find government-issue paper at zero to be safer than investing in anything).

This blog writes mostly about personal trust, not social or institutional trust. But they are related, and powerful.

Our economic and commercial world is astonishingly inter-related. If we start losing trust in the complex ways we have evolved to cooperate with strangers–banking, insurance, credit–we are all at risk.

Fortunately, we have personal, human habits, manners and customs that keep us in the habit of behaving nicely with others.

We need to make sure our institutions reflect those habits, not undermine them.

As for P/E ratios, the bad news is we are down considerably from the highs of 2002. The good news is, that was the height of the dot com silliness, and are now at the high end of average for the last 70 years.

Since no one has invented a T/E ratio (and I wouldn’t trust it if someone did), let me make a few assertions unconstrained by facts. Assess them against your own gut instincts.

The P/E ratio is much more volatile than the T/E ratio.

When the P/E ratio was in the 40s a few years ago, that was over-confidence, not over-trust. If anything, we saw the abuse of trust in commerce.

A P/E ratio now at the high end of normal might seem comforting, but I suspect that again Wall Street optimism masks not only the depth of the recession, but some erosion in the T/E as well.

A decline in the T/E is of more concern than a decline in the P/E. The world economy depends a whole lot more on us learning to trust each other—individually and collectively—than it does on interest rates.

For evidence, see the case of Japan over the last decade. Oh, you didn’t notice what happened with Japan? I rest my case.

LL Bean: Urban Myth or Rural Superstition?

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Over at The Consumerist, there’s a snappy bunch of stories about the legend of LL Bean, the Maine-based outfitter who just wants to make you happy. As one reader tells the story, they insisted on taking back monogrammed shirts that his wife had bought in entirely the wrong size.

He tried to insist it was his fault, not LL Bean’s, but Bean wouldn’t take no for an answer. They just had to make sure that his monogrammed shirts would fit him by accepting the old ones for return. (The comments alone are worth reading for a thorough exploration of the pros and cons of having such a liberal policy. Plus they’re fun.)

But let’s talk about the larger issue. LL Bean is not the only firm behaving this way. Every time I teach an exercise on customer satisfaction, someone has a Nordstrom’s tale to tell. There’s a lunch counter in Lincoln Nebraska that uses an honor box to sell sandwiches on the sidewalk for a buck each in the summertime. And so on.

In discussing the dynamics of such policies, I’m bemused to find how many people insist, “it won’t work.” If you point out that it has worked for over a hundred years for LL Bean, they repeat, “it won’t work.” Endless loop.

Sure, it can be abused, and sometimes it is. What’s interesting is, why isn’t it abused more often? In Lincoln, reportedly the homeless people monitor each other to be sure no one takes undue advantage. (I know, I know, it’d never happen in New York. Except I bet it does).

There is an innate sense among people that will keep anthropologists, bio-ethicists, animal intelligence students and other social researchers busy for years to come trying to “explain” it. Meanwhile, it clearly “is.”

And you can make book on it. This is the principle that underlies trust-based selling: if people trust you, they will strongly prefer to give you the business. There’s no better way to get people to trust you than to trust them, by putting yourself at risk.

David Maister always put an explicit guarantee on his work: 100% satisfaction or just pay him what you thought it was worth, including nothing.

Takers? None.

The act of the offer ensures it will rarely be taken up–as long as the offer is genuine.

This is reciprocity in the sense that academic Robert Cialdini writes about as the number one source of influence. If you treat me right, I’ll treat you right. If you listen to me, I’ll listen to you. If you trust me, I’ll trust you.

The wonder is not how often our trust gets abused; it’s how few Bernie Madoffs there are.

I remember hearing of a pizza chain that offered a satisfaction guarantee—if you didn’t like the pizza, you’d get one free. One nasty customer kept saying he wasn’t satisfied, and demanding another new one each time he ordered.

Finally the owner went to the customer and said, “I’m really sorry, but it appears we have failed consistently to meet your high standards. It frustrates me no end, but I have to confess, we just don’t seem to be able to make a good enough pizza. I wish we could, but we have no choice but to reluctantly stop selling you our inferior pizza. Please accept our apologies.”

Buying Decisions: Stepping on the Value Scale

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The phone’s not ringing.

The deal’s not closing.

What went wrong?

If you’re in a selling role for any period of time, you know the feeling of an opportunity slipping away.

We’re inclined to accept the client’s explanation at face value or write our own stories about why we’re losing the deal.

We were too high. The competition had a capability we didn’t. The timing wasn’t right.

Often times, we know in our gut that these are only part of the story. We often accept these as answers because they are concrete, tangible or quantifiable; we can package them and tie them in a bow – they are clean.

The truth is often messy, intangible and more personal; which is why the client is reluctant to share them with you.

So–what really did go wrong?

What if we take a 30,000 foot view of a simple question: what’s the role of the seller?

a. Make a sale?
b. Provide a ROI for the client?
c. Reduce Costs?
d. Improve efficiency?
e. Meet customer needs?

Yes, yes and yes. But the common thread woven through all of these reasonable responses is … to create value.

Neil Rackham, author of Re-thinking the Sales Force and SPIN Selling summarized his years of research: “The only single ‘truth’ that seems to be holding true for all sales forces is that they have to create value for customers if they are to be successful. Just communicating the value inherent in their products isn’t enough.”

But–what is value? How do we measure it, and what is its impact on sales revenue and profitability?

Let’s remember a simple formula: Benefits – Costs =Value

We tend to think of costs synonymous with the price we charge–for example – $1,250 plus tax – while disregarding the costs of the “hassle factor." Likewise, we tend to think of benefits as things that help the customer close a needs gap–improve efficiency, reduce costs, increase customer satisfaction. We discount a critical but less apparent value, i.e. – the way we engage with the client prior to actually making the sale – the process.

The hassle factor on the cost side, and the engagement process on the benefits side can significantly tip the scale in either direction. And your perceived trustworthiness has a lot to do with the balance of the scales.

Read the full article here.

 

A Country Music Star as a Trusted Advisor?

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I saw Vince Gill in concert. First time. I was pretty sure I’d enjoy the music, but I had no idea I’d walk away having learned something from a country music celeb about being a Trusted Advisor.

The concert was magical. Sure, the music was good (if you like country, and I will confess I do). Vince is talented, as is his entourage. But he created something with his band and his audience that turned a good concert into an extraordinary experience of community and connectedness. How? By how he was being: humble, self-deprecating, intimate, vulnerable, and totally transparent.

There were several bands listed on the playbill that night, presumably warm-ups for the Big Guy. At curtain time, a lone man appeared on stage, dressed in blue jeans and a T-shirt, and simply started playing guitar and singing.

I kept looking at the program, trying to figure out who he was. I also wondered why this guy was playing a song I recognized as Vince’s when the star himself would be on stage in an hour or so. Turned out it was Vince. All by his lonesome. No fanfare, no glitz – just showed up and started doing what he does best.

At one point he traded his guitar (for which he is known) for a fiddle. I don’t remember the song as much as I remember what he said as soon as it ended: “Boy, am I glad that’s over!” Everyone laughed, and he shared with us how he is a novice with the fiddle and always nervous about playing it on stage – especially in the company of one of his band-members who is very accomplished with the instrument. He told us that he hates how, due to some recent weight gain, it gives him a triple-chin.

Later, he introduced a song he wrote after his father’s death with a story about his father. He knows how to weave a good story, so that made a difference. But what really drew us in was the authentic and loving way he shared about the trials and tribulations of their relationship. We could all relate. There wasn’t a dry eye in the house at the end of the song.

I will remember this concert for years to come. Why? Because this country music expert created something magical for me and several thousand of my closest friends because of how he was being. And I, and you, and every other expert in the corporate world have available to us the ability to have the same kind of impact.

Forget about your decades of experience and advanced degrees – just for a moment. Put aside your To Do list. What possibilities are you going to create for your clients today out of how you are being?