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Guiding a Team to Take Your Customer’s Perspective with Tim Bay

Episode 107

Tim Bay is the Head of Digital Marketing at Fellowes Brands where he is responsible for building comprehensive strategies and programs to drive greater brand awareness, increased engagement, and profitable growth via digital channels. Before joining Fellowes, Tim had accumulated 20+ years of B2C and B2B digital marketing leadership experiences in roles such as Vice President of Digital Marketing at Wilton Brands and Co-Founder of Shay Digital, an internet marketing consultancy where he developed and executed online strategies for a wide breadth of organizations. In this episode, Tim discusses what he does in his current role, the common challenges he sees between digital marketing agencies and their clients, the balance between automation and utilizing actual people, the role empathy plays in how you market to your consumers, how to integrate empathy in all aspects of your business, and more!

Mentioned in this episode:

Play here (the red triangle below), on iTunes, Stitcher or TuneIn Radio (Amazon Alexa) or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Tim Bay Voice of Influence Podcast Andrea Joy Wenburg

Transcript

Hey, hey!  It’s Andrea and welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast.  Today, I have with Tim Bay.  Tim is currently Head of Digital Marketing at Fellowes Brands, which he’ll explain in a minute, where he is responsible for building comprehensive strategies and programs to drive greater brand awareness, increased engagement and profitable growth via digital channels. Before joining Fellowes, he had accumulated 20+ years of B2C and B2B digital marketing leadership experiences in roles such as vice president of Digital Marketing at Wilton Brands and co-founder of Shay Digital, an internet marketing consultancy where he developed and executed online strategies for a wide breadth of organizations, Gatorade, Ty, etc.

Andrea:  So, Tim, we’re thrilled to have you here today on the Voice of Influence podcast.

Tim Bay:  I’m excited to be here.  Thank you.

Andrea:  Well, Tim is also speaking at a conference that I’m also speaking at the end of September, the Digital Experience Summit in Chicago.  So, Tim, let’s start with what do you do as head of digital marketing at Fellowes Brands?

Tim Bay:  So, I would say at the highest level, it’s looking at how we can leverage digi-channels.  That could be website.  It could be social.  It could be email to achieve our business objectives.  You know, these objectives are how do we enhance brand awareness, how do we drive product awareness, and ultimately how do we convert to sales?  So, that’s sort of from the business side. You know, thinking about it from a consumer first perspective is what can we do to help people along their journey?  And we sell products, everything from shredders to storage boxes, to sit stand desks, to chairs, or to laminators.  How can we help people find what they want to find?  How can we make it easiest for them to get what they need, to get when they want to get it, and how they want to get it?

Andrea:  Great!  So, when it comes to digital marketing, you know, you being the head of it, how did you get to that point, like what was sort of the journey that you’ve taken because you mentioned in your bio that you also had a consultancy for awhile?  So, we were talking beforehand that it was really interesting that you have been on both sides of agency and client in terms of, you know, this relationship between agency and clients.  So, I guess I’m just wondering what has been that path for you?

Tim Bay:  So, I actually started out when I was an undergraduate as finance major and accounting minor, and I thought I was going to be a stock analyst or stock researcher at some point.  I went back to get my masters and I took my first marketing class for my masters and just fell in love with marketing.  And then what led me to digital was I think a little bit of the right brain and left brain and the ability to get the immediate feedback and analyze, you know, what’s working, what’s not working given that sort of real time feedback in terms of what we can do to be more effective. And then from a digital marketing perspective, you know, as you mentioned over the course of my career, I have been on both the client side and the agency side.  And largely that depends on where I saw some great opportunities and the ability to learn.  And so I like having been on both sides because I think it made me better on the agency side to be able to empathize with the plight of the client and to understand what it’s like to work in an organization.  And sometimes there are challenges that you face. And then on the client side, understanding sort of how agencies work and how I can be a better partner from my client perspective, but also understand a little bit of the nuances of agency and helping me in terms of the clients I get the most out of that relationship.  I can always feel like, you know, the best relationship, the best partnership is one where it’s mutually beneficial.  So, I do feel like being on both sides sort of gives a perspective that allows you to get not only more out of it from your side, but also help be a better partner.

Andrea:  Do you think that there are any common mistakes that you’ve noticed, maybe you’ve helped mitigate them so that they don’t happen that when it comes to that relationship between client and agency, when they’re trying to figure out plans and execute plans and all that sort of thing, have you noticed any particular mistakes that kind of pop up quite frequently?

Tim Bay:  Yeah.  I think the biggest challenge from the client side is believing that you can just offload strategy to an agency and the fact it’s the best relationships and I feel like this from the agency side as well.  The best relationships are our partnership and you have to give the right amount of time, you have to be fully vested, you have to be transparent.  The more information, the more time that you can spend with your agency, the better ultimately they will be able to be. And I think the other thing too is, and this goes from both sides, is really being honest about what you need in a relationship and what you need in a partnership and what success looks like.  Because I think too often you get a few months in and you just realize that things are operating as effectively as you’d like and that comes back sometimes to expectations in terms of how much time, from the agency perspective, they have to spend to manage the account, some of the challenges they might be facing in terms of gaining information or deadlines or things like that. And so I think, you know, going in understanding what is needed from both sides and being committed to doing that and having those conversations up front really helps.

Andrea:  So, making sure that the relationship is structured in a way that is going to allow for the time and the energy that needs to be spent in order to establish your goals and get everything in place before you even begin so that you can keep referring back to it?

Tim Bay:  Exactly, exactly.  And I think part of it too is, you know, you mentioned strategy.  Another challenge is if I as the brand can’t communicate a strategy, I can’t expect my agency to actually execute against that strategy effectively.  And I think sometimes recognizing that there needs to be some work done first from a strategy perspective before you can engage in agency and in a very effective way.  And again, that goes back to just really understanding what you need to do from your perspective to partner successfully with an agency.

Andrea:  OK, so at the conference we’re talking about managing and optimizing digital customer experience to drive greater loyalty and profit, and one of the things that I feel like is super important in the managing and optimizing of the experience is the digital piece of, you know, automation and that sort of thing, but then also the people side of things.  So, for you, when you’re working at Fellowes or when you’ve worked with other clients in the past, how much energy and effort goes into each side of that equation, the people side versus the automated side?

Tim Bay:  I still think the greatest asset that any organization can have is its people.  As much as I get excited as a marketer about things like Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence, you know, there’s nothing that replaces a great team of people.  And that’s not just from a customer service perspective but it’s also from sort of thinking proactively about how to create that best customer journey.  You have to think about the customer first.  You have to be proactive in terms of understanding what is it they want and meet their needs before you can sort of, you know, get them to give you what you want in a way. And so, I think the technology has to work hand in hand with people.  I don’t think you can certainly, not anytime soon, I imagine a situation where you feel like whatever technology solution you have is going to be as effective in a lot of areas as just our ability to communicate, interact, engage, and strategically think through issues. Now, there are things that obviously technology can do better than us as humans, right?  Things like, you know, quick computing and things like, I think personalization.  But at the end of the day, you know, I think people want to feel from a customer service perspective, people want to feel like there’s somebody there on the other end that is helping them out and listen to them and understand the nuances of human language. And I think on the forefront it’s being able to, you know, people want to feel like that experience that we’re providing to them via a website, for example, was created with an understanding of what their challenges are.  And that is something that, right now, the best way to do that is with really creative and smart people.

Andrea:  Hmm.  So, when it comes to giving them a good experience from the outset and would you say, it generally starts out with the website and that sort of thing, right?

Tim Bay:  Right.

Andrea:  So, you’re going to make sure that the websites optimal for people and then they’re going to encounter people.  And so, how do you decide as a company?  What is the line that kind of crosses into the actual human experience?  So what needs to be automated and what needs to be human to human?

Tim Bay:  Well, I think that is always a bit of a challenge, because you want to provide the best experience possible, right?  Almost like a customized, you know, white glove treatment, but then you have the realities of just staffing and maybe 24 hours and things like that.  So, for us, yeah, I think, we’ve always tried to think about is how do we find that right balance.  And also recognizing that in today’s world, there are some times that people, you know, they’d rather chat versus call a phone, and sometimes, they want to sort of do self service. And so, I think for us, it’s looking at the situation.  It’s looking at what the product or service is and saying based on that, what are the types of help that people are going to need.  If it’s, you know, something very basic, they may want to know dimensions or they may want to know a specific product feature.  If it’s something that’s maybe more complex or even more expensive, they may want to be able to talk to somebody and be able to ask that person questions. So, in some cases a really good FAQ, a really good _____ on the page, a chatbot, or even a chat that connects to a human might be we think good enough to provide that direct level of service.  But sometimes it’s more than that and that’s part of where I think we have to look at the situation and think about it from the perspective of the consumer, you know, what is that thought process, what is that decision tree looked like for her?  And at what point might she get stuck and do we feel like no matter what tactic is we’re doing enough to help her get unstuck from a situation that she’s at?

Andrea:  So, I love how much you’re talking about getting her perspective and coming from her perspective.  What are some of the best ways to actually figure out what her perspective is?  How do you actually take her perspective?  Do you ask, do you imagine, or do you use a committee to talk about it?   What is the process that you guys go through?

Tim Bay:  I think to start off with, there’s got to be a mindset.  It’s a mindset, and one of my favorite words in marketing beyond that is empathy.  And you have to put yourself in a situation of who that consumer is, so one is understanding who is the consumer.  And then, you know, we’ve done a lot throughout my career in lots of places, we’re doing this at Fellowes about building a persona, because the danger is you always look at your customer as yourself.  I think, especially in organizations, you know, let’s take for example an engineer talking about the product is very different than a consumer buying the product, right? And so, we very much look at who is our consumer and let’s put ourselves in her situation, understand what’s driving her motivations, what is she looking and what concerns does she have.  And part of that is just if you build that persona out and you put yourself in that perspective, you can go very far in terms of understanding that person, but then we supplement that with things like focus groups. It could be any type of research that you can do, maybe it’s first party, maybe it’s third party to sort of build out that understanding.  And then of course you have an idea, you build something out, you feel like you’ve done everything you can but you need to test that out.  And then you continue to listen after you roll something out to see, are they experiencing what we expect them to be? So, I think it, ultimately, has to be a commitment too.  You’re always thinking about that consumer and always thinking about who that person is.  It’s not necessarily you, in most cases it’s not thinking about everything through that lens of her.  And I think if you do that, it’s always keeping you on the right path in terms of whatever you need to do to make sure that you’re providing the best experience for her.

Andrea:  Do you find that the people that do this with you, that work together with you to build this empathy and build the persona, does this translate into better relationships in general with them because they’re able to do that?  Because this is not something that people do well in general.

Tim Bay:  You know, one of the things that I think that’s really important and whether if you’re talking about ecommerce, digital marketing, management, personal relationships, empathy and trust.  So, from a team perspective, one of the things that has always been challenging in terms of building a team is building that level of trust, especially as you’re bringing new people together or asking people to do things that they haven’t done before. And so, one of the byproducts of what you just said is that even from a team perspective, you’re sort of learning to put yourself in somebody else’s position.  And that works whether or not you’re talking about website visitor or you’re having a conversation with a teammate about creative or a wire frame, a copy or content.  And so, I do think that overtime it does help not just in terms of what you’re trying to do with that particular customer journey but overall.

Andrea:  Yeah, I would think so.  It’s interesting to me this connection between what we’re trying to accomplish in business and selling and having actual relationships, because we’re sort of taking the idea of having a relationship and taking it to a completely different level when it comes to business.  And I think businesses are getting more and more aware and becoming more and more aware and more attuned to the idea of, “No, this really needs to be a relationship with the customer not just, you know, a transaction.”

Tim Bay:  Absolutely.  You know, I love and I’m passionate about and most of my times thinking about the digital world, from a digital marketing perspective.  But when we talk about a customer journey, I always think about that website like a store, if somebody were to walk into a store, what would you want that experience?  How would you greet that?  What would be the first thing that you say to them?  How would you help them navigate the store?  If they wanted to talk to you then how would enable that?  If they wanted to browse and if they’re a tech person and want to do a little bit of researching, exploring on their own, how would you make that really efficient for them? And I think the other point that you talked about is, again, even though it’s a digital relationship, it’s still relationship.  And I think any business, whether you’re selling shredders or you’re selling consulting services, you really do want that to be a long-term relationship.  And just from a practical perspective, much easier, much more efficient to engage with your current community of folks that already know you and believe in you and like you than going out and finding new people. So, thinking about anything that we can think about from a digital perspective as a relationship and something that we’re trying to, and this is important for our brand at Fellowes because of what our brand stands for, we want that to translate into the digital world.  And so even though it’s a digital relationship or a part of it maybe, we always still think about it as you’re still connecting.  It’s just the medium that you’re doing it is different than if you were in person.

Andrea:  Yeah.  I love the analogy of the website being like a store and how you’d welcome them and all that sort of thing.  I think that’s really good.  So, when you said that Fellowes has, how did you put that, what you’re trying to be about or what you’re trying to communicate as a brand, what is the communication that you’re trying to communicate as a brand?

Timothy Bay:  Well, I think part of our DNA, and so Fellowes has been around for 101 years.  It is a family owned and run business.  John Fellowes who is our current CEO is a fourth generation.  And, you know, one of the things that John has mentioned and he has said this in a couple of different settings is he was told by his dad who’s third generation that they are there to serve the business, not the business or the family and part of our DNA is helping people.  We’re very much about workplace wellness, how can we make people feel better?  How can we make them work better?  It’s really part of sort of our tagline.  And so that can’t just be, you know, tagline or slogan but that you have to live it. So, going back to that sort of relationship part, we have to think about “Are we providing value to the consumer?”  “Are we giving her the right information?”  I mean, obviously from a product perspective, we’re thinking about that in terms of “Are we making it easier for her to do better?”  “Are we ultimately make her feel better as part of that experience?” And if that’s part of your DNA, you think about that in every single thing that you do, whether it’s part of your feature set or product, it’s building a website, it’s an email communication, or it’s something on social.  And so again, going back to, you know, as a company, when you have this notion of what your values are and what’s your purpose is, it needs to permeate every single thing that you do, including digital marketing.

Andrea:  Oh yeah, that’s really, really seems to be important.  And I’m curious as to how that plays out.  So, when you’re talking about your DNA, the values, the purpose and all that, when you’re needing to build out these different things whether it be product, the service, the website or whatever, like practically speaking, do you look at your DNA first and say, “OK, how can we make sure it does that?”  Or is it just something that’s sort of in the back of your mind all the time?  Practically speaking, how does that workout for how to integrate that?

Tim Bay:  So I think, it’s a bit of both.  It is always present at the back of our mind, but we can’t forget to explicitly remind yourself of that.  I just walked through with the team recently, a playbook that I call on, you know, how we’re thinking about email marketing.  And playbook is basically, here’s the things that we think we need to be doing to do the best that we can in a particular channel or particular tactic. That playbook starts with a reminder of the things that we need to be thinking about from that sort of DNA perspective, thinking about the customer first, thinking about how we’re communicating that in everything that we do, whether it’s a LinkedIn post or an email campaign or a banner. And of course there’s always some sort of spectrum in terms of how much you can do that.  You can do a lot more with a blog post than you can with a web banner.  But I think, again, you want to always be there to remind yourself consistently that you got to be thinking about _____ that’s always in the back of your mind.

Andrea:  Hmm, so you integrate that into the playbook itself too.

Tim Bay:  Absolutely.  You know, one of the things I’ve learned throughout my career is that it’s really difficult to over communicate something.  You know, 99 percent of the time, it’s the under communication that takes a lot of time and a lot of enforcement and reinforcement of something before it becomes part of our sort of daily nature and habit.  And in a way, you want to always have a top of mind.  It takes a lot to do that and it’s really difficult to over communicate.

Andrea:  Yeah, yeah.  That’s so good.  Tim, I can’t believe it’s already about time to wrap up.  But when, you know, people are looking to be a voice of influence and when it comes to either on a team, whether that be on an agency or an a client side, whether it be because we’re thinking about our client or our particular customer or our relationships, do you have something that you would like to leave with the listener in terms of a tip or a strategy or one last thought?

Tim Bay:  I think that all of us have something to offer and have a unique perspective.  And, you know, I think as managers, as leaders, we want to empower folks, we should also feel just a natural empowerment to give our point of view, you know, to recognize that everybody has a different perspectives.  And when we talk about diversity of opinion, you know, it’s so important.  And so, I think when you talk about voice of influence is, you know, I think we have to on one hand, you know, _____ sometimes and trust a little bit that our opinion matters. And then, I think, again, as leaders we have to enforce and reinforce that we want to have folks voice.  We want to have that level of trust and comfort there because, you know, two smart people are always going to come up with a better solution than one person.  And we have to create that environment that facilitates folks having comfort and talking about bringing their perspective and bringing different ideas.  And that’s something that has to be nurtured.  You just can’t say it’s going to happen.  It’s something that you have to continually tend to like you would, a flower garden.  If you don’t, it runs over with weeds and eventually the flowers die.  I can’t overemphasize how important that to me in terms of building good teams and making sure that people feel comfortable with those works of different ideas and opinions.

Andrea:  So good, so good.  Thank you, Tim.  How can people find Fellowes or find you?

Tim Bay:  They can find Fellowes at fellowes.com and then, you know, you can see our social channels from there and they can find me on LinkedIn and Twitter.  So, I’m happy to talk to anybody at any point in time.  I always love talking to folks who are interested in talking about anything from customer journeys to culture, to digital marketing.  I love talking to people.

Andrea:  Awesome!  Thank you so much for doing that and for sharing your voice of influence with our listeners, and we’ll be sure to link all of the things that you mentioned here in the show notes.

Tim Bay:  Great!  Thank you very much.  I really enjoyed it, Andrea!

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Become the Person You Want To Be with David Neagle

Episode 106

David Neagle is the founder of the multimillion-dollar global coaching company, Life Is Now, Inc. David helps thousands of entrepreneurs, experts, and self-employed professionals gain confidence and find the right mindset to increase their revenue, turning their endeavors into seven and eight-figure ventures.  He is also the author of Millions Within and the host of the Successful Mind podcast. In this episode, David talks about the near-death experience that inspired the name of his company, why having a successful mind should matter to someone who wants to have a voice of influence, how a person can change things when they feel stuck, the power of deciding you’re no longer going to tolerate what your mind tells you about things you don’t want to change or do, why people find it difficult to have conversations about money, why it’s important to pursue making more money on their own, his unconventional perspective of sales, the two main things people need to be clear on in order to make big changes, and more!

Mentioned in this episode:

Play here (the red triangle below), on iTunes, Stitcher or TuneIn Radio (Amazon Alexa) or wherever you listen to podcasts.

David Neagle Voice of Influence Podcast Andrea Joy Wenburg

Transcript

Hey, hey!  It’s Andrea and welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast.  Today, we have David Neagle on the line with us, and I’m really looking forward to this.  He is the founder of the multimillion-dollar global coaching company, Life Is Now, Inc.  Life is now, not later apparently.  Maybe you can tell us a little about that in a second, David. He helps thousands of entrepreneurs, experts and self-employed professionals gain the confidence, find the right mindset to increase their revenue, turning their endeavors into seven- and eight- figure ventures.  He is the author of Millions Within and the host of the Successful Mind podcast.

Andrea:  David, welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast.

David Neagle:  Thank you Andrea.  Thank you for having me.  It’s my pleasure to be here.

Andrea:  And so just real quick, what does it mean Life Is Now?  What’s the meaning of this?

David Neagle:  Life Is Now came out of an experience that I had in 1989, I had a near-death experience.  I had a pretty bad accident.  I was water skiing and I got separated from the boat and I was sucked through a dam and I was one of only two people to survive going through it.  And during that time of my life, I was not in a good place.  I was having real trouble in my life, but I wasn’t doing anything to fix it and I didn’t know how to fix it.  

The experience kind of woke me up to the idea that we don’t know how long we’re going to be here.  If we’re going to do something or change something, we really need to do it now. So, fast forward to 1999, when I started to put my business together, I was thinking about what do I want to call this?  And, you know, I was thinking everything really is about making decisions now, whether we’re creating something for the future, we’re changing something right now, it’s about what we do right now.  So, that was where the name came from.

Andrea:  Hmm, and I have listened to your story before about going through the dam and just that whole thing.  We’re going to make sure that we link to your story from your podcast here on the show notes so that the listener can go find it there because it’s quite a story.

David Neagle:  Yeah and that it is.

Andrea:  Do you find that people who have gone through near-death experiences or really intense crises that they tend to be more ready for big changes in their lives?

David Neagle:  Not only that, but what’s even kind of sad about it is that very often it takes something like that to precipitate a major change in a person’s life.  I went out in my career trying to help people make that change before they hit that kind of a wall or a problem or a catastrophe in their life. But, yeah, I mean very often when you go through something like that, you start to question things.  

It’s really fascinating, I think, Andrea, when you go through any kind of a crisis in your life, it shakes up what you know about your world.  You know, you start thinking to yourself, “Is any of this true?”  “Is it real?”  “What’s important?”  “What can I count on?”  “What do I trust it?”  It rattles the foundation of the illusion of safety that most people live in and it causes people to really think about what is true and real and important in their life from a very different place because it rattles their sets of security.

Andrea:  Yeah.

David Neagle:  And most people walk around in this illusion that we’re safe, everything’s going to be okay, just keep moving forward, not really taking things literally, too seriously.  And then something happens to shift that and it could be a death.  It could be an illness, it could be a partner has an affair on you that sometimes those things like that are the worst because you’ve trusted certain situations or people to be a specific way. And then you find out that they’re not that or you find out that the business or the job you have is it what you thought it was. 

And you start to really question what can I trust in my life?  What is actually real?  It really shakes the core foundation of a person when they go through that.  So, in that questioning, if they’re questioning intelligently and they’re actually really looking for answers, they usually come up with some pretty significant shifts over time for their life.

Andrea:  Hmm.  I’ve also found that people that have gone through that sort of pain.  People who have really experienced pain seemed to be more willing to think about the things that they want to change and actually do something about it.  And it does seem like just super significant when it comes to wanting to make a difference, to get out of the status quo and move out of a comfort zone.

David Neagle:  Yeah, I agree.  I absolutely agree with you.

Andrea:  So, what does having a successful mind, your Successful Mind podcast, I guess I’m really fascinated by the titles that I have to work with what you do.  Why does having a successful mind matter to someone who wants to have a voice of influence?

David Neagle:  Well, I think the reason is this, we’re not taught how to think when we’re growing up, most people weren’t, anyway.  And the inability to do so, I mean, we just take mental activity is the idea of thought and I guess clinically it’s thought but really being able to think productively for one’s life is something very, very different.  And being able to observe the world in situations that we’re in, evaluate it well and then make solid concrete decisions, plans, and goals for how we’re going to navigate that is extremely important in a person’s life.

But we don’t learn it as children. So, very often we find people making decisions, choices, plans, and setting goals and they’re not aware of the consequences.  They’re coming from a place where they’ve never really evaluated the cause and effect of different things in their life.  And avoidance is also a decision and that’s a big one because there’s a lot of things like pain that you just mentioned in a person’s life that they will avoid because they don’t want to have to experience what that’s actually like to go through any kind of a significant change.  I mean, I think the idea is that if we can learn to think better, we can then make better choices and have better outcomes and live richer and more fulfilling lives.

Andrea:  And I know that you see a connection between the way that people think and what they feel and then how they act.  How do those three things sort of interplay?  Which one should somebody work on first, you know, do they take an action first?  Should they work on their mindset first if they’re wanting to get out of a spot where they feel stuck?

David Neagle:  Well, if a person is stuck, the first thing to understand is they’re resisting changing something.  There’s something in their life they’re resisting because the universe is actually pretty clear for each person.  But if we’re stuck, we’re resisting something.  And if we’re in confusion, something that we’re evaluating in our thought processes is not true.  Otherwise, we wouldn’t be in confusion. So, the idea would be that a person gets clear on what they want or what they don’t want.  It could be one of the other, because very often a person’s in their life and you’ll ask them, “What do you want?”  They’d be like, “I don’t know.”  “Well, what don’t you want currently in your life?”  

Well, that they can pretty much tell you.  The things that are making them miserable or sad or they’re just not happy with. So, what I was saying was that the thoughts that we think correlate with emotional patterns in our life and that’s generally based on past experience.  So, what’s really interesting about this is that the first seven years of our life, we don’t have the ability to critically think.  We’re basically coming all from our subconscious mind.  

Our conscious mind is not developed yet and that’s the part that gives us the ability to think critically. The subconscious mind doesn’t have the ability to reject anything that’s going around it.  It just totally accepts everything in it.  And then it creates patterns to navigate through life, to hopefully to keep us safe.  In the process of this, we have an emotional correlation with how we see other people experiencing life.  What is their emotional state around what they’re experiencing and then we go into kind of a mimicking pattern around our parental figures and people of authority.  So, that’s really how most people set up their emotional base through life.

Now, once we get past the age of seven, what’s even more fascinating is that everything that we’re experiencing in life, our subconscious mind it’s already been preprogrammed with how to respond, tells our conscious mind what to do with what we’re experiencing on some level.  And because we haven’t had all that many experiences yet by the age of seven, most of it is an emotional response first to what we’re experiencing.  And then we tried to make some kind of intellectual sense over it. So, if we’re going to make a change, one of the things that we need to do is to make, create an intellectual truth around what it is that we want to create and then determine how do we create the supporting emotion that goes with that.  

So that now we start to really link up a really good thought or idea and a really good positive emotion to go with it that correlates with it well.  And then we take the action that we need to take to create the change in our life.  When we get the feedback of that, we can either make corrections because it’s not quite right or it’s a good reaction.  It’s positive.  So we accept that reaction and then we begin to reprogram our subconscious mind for the success that we’re looking for.

Andrea:  Could we take that to a practical level of, OK, so somebody wants to make a change in their health.  I know that’s something that you’ve been talking about a lot more recently.  If somebody is wanting to make that big shift, they know they want to make a change here, but they’re struggling because they may be start and then they end up failing or they start and they fail and that sort of thing.  They get into that sort of rhythm of feeling like they can’t take it all the way to the finish line.  How do you put what you just said about beliefs, emotion, and action, how do you put all that into play in that kind of a scenario?

David Neagle:  So, here’s the reason why people do this, why they’ll say “I’m gonna do this in my life.”  And then either they start doing it and fail or they procrastinate, they don’t do it, or they forget to do it.  Nothing ever actually changes.  The idea is that we have to go through a transformation of who we are.  If we just take part of our behavior and say we’re just going to change that one part without changing all the parts that support the thing that we don’t want to be doing or don’t want to be experiencing, we’re pretty much doomed to going back to the old behavior. So, it requires a transformation on all levels in order for us to be able to do that.  

So like if a person, if they want to get in better health, they have to look at how do they view health, like what is their belief around health.  They have to look at how do they view the things that make them healthy and the things that don’t make them healthy.  And then what are the emotions that go with those things? So, very often when a person is not healthy, it’s because they’re doing things to numb out or escape from the world in some way.  Some people do exercise in a way that dumps them out for the world, but a lot of people don’t.  

And they’ll do things like they’ll watch TV, they will eat things that are not good for them, they will drink too much, they become a couch potato, or they’re doing things to escape in some way. So, it’s not just about changing the behavior but changing kind of the substructure under it of what’s causing that behavior.  Like why are we actually doing that when we do know better?  So, the ideas that we really take a look at who we are overall and create a person that wants to embody wellbeing.  

And so, it’s looking at all of the things that support health and all of the things that don’t support it.  Removing the things that don’t support it and completely embodying it from a place of “I’m no longer going to associate with what doesn’t.  I’m going to be this new person.” And then you have to be doing an act like that person every day.

Andrea:  That is so significant.  I just want to pause there for a second because becoming that person is such a huge piece of what I’ve heard you talk about that I think is so important.  Can you just reiterate what it means to, you know, think that way?

David Neagle:  Well, what it means is that you’re no longer going to tolerate the conversation in your mind about doing something that you don’t want to do.  So, when we set a new goal or we decide that we’re going to be something different in our life, having a new experience, or live a different way, then most people start to make that change but they’re battling that voice in their head that says, “You can’t do this.”  “Go eat the pizza.”  “Go eat the ice cream.”  “Don’t work out today,” or whatever.  So, they’re always having this argument between the old self and the new self that they want to be. When we transform, we have to go to a place where that we will no longer tolerate the conversation at all. 

So it’s much different level.  It’s where we sit down and consciously say, “OK, here’s all the things that I want to do to make the change.  But what I need to eliminate is this idea that I have this conversation in my head.”  And we have the ability to stop that conversation, we just don’t engage.  It would be like engaging somebody in your life who’s constantly all they want to do is argue. Well, after awhile you find out that’s all they want to do.  They don’t want to be productive.  So, you stop engaging that person and if the person doesn’t stop, you remove that person from your life. 

So, it’s the same thing with the voice in your head.  You stop engaging that argument and you don’t leave things around that will allow you to, in a moment of weakness or being tired, go back to the way that you did things before. So, if you’re going to be healthy, like you don’t keep ice cream in the house so that when you’re tired at 2:00 a.m. and you can’t sleep, you don’t reach for the ice cream.  You put something positive that’s going to support the direction that you want to go as a resource to help you get there.

Andrea:  Hmm, so good, so good!  OK, let’s move this conversation toward money.  This is not a comfortable subject for me historically.  I’m much more comfortable with it now than I used to be.  But what are some of the reasons why people are uncomfortable talking about money, thinking about finding success around their financial success.

David Neagle:  One of the reasons is because we have a lot of shame around it.  We have a love-hate relationship with money in our society, and very often money is a representative of how we value ourselves, or let’s take this back a little bit.  It’s a representative how our parents valued themselves.  So, the amount of money that they made or didn’t make really kind of set up their social status in the world.  

And you will find that if you have a money problem that there was some kind of judgment that your parents had either around people that had much more money than them or people that didn’t have as much money, in many cases both. So, we have to go in and really tackle what is in our internal money story and how is that connected to the love, the security, the appreciation, and the acceptance that we got from our parents.  Because very often people will hit this point in their lives where they struggle with actually making more money than their mom or their dad and I’m not talking about a little bit more.  I’m talking about significantly more.  And they lose that relationship because they actually saw their parents have the idea that making too much money was not good and they don’t want to be labeled that. So, what’s true is that if you start to make a lot more money than you’re currently making now, people are going to notice that. 

They’re going to see you and some people are going to judge you for it.  And we instinctively know this, so we move away from it, plus all the things that we have to do to make money cause us to combat the value system that we have, especially if we were raised middle class and not entrepreneurial.

Andrea:  So,  I’m tracking with you and I totally see this.  What do you think is the importance of, I mean, why would somebody choose to pursue making more money?  I could tell you my story, but I’m curious about the stories that you’ve heard over the years.  Why is it important?

David Neagle:  Yeah.  I think the number one important reason from a value proposition is this.  It teaches a person how to become financially independent.  So, if I learn how to earn money and I can do it regardless of whatever situation comes down in my life, I’m free.

Andrea:  Yes!

David Neagle:  If I’m totally reliant upon other people for money, I’m not free.  And then I have to make decisions based on the idea of acceptance or performance, which are not good because they keep me in a creative prison, so to speak, and I don’t get to live my life the way that I want.  We all know that more money will give us better vacations and jobs and colleges for our kids and all that kind of, cars, you know, all the material stuff, which is fine in and of itself.  If that’s what you want, there’s nothing wrong with those things.

But fundamentally, it’s to set ourselves free so that we don’t become slaves to not understanding how to bring money into our lives.  And that’s what I teach people. And it’s not just an interesting idea.  I don’t just teach it from the intellect.  We actually help people create multi-seven figure businesses and lifestyles and they can replicate it on their own over and over and over again throughout their entire lifetime.

Andrea:  I really do think that is just so significant.  You know, I even look at our kids, we have a 10 and 12 year old kids.  And one of the things that I’ve realized that they’ve begun to do is they’ve begun to think in terms of, “OK, I need money in order to pursue this thing.”  “OK, how am I going to do that?”  “What business do I want to create?”  “What do I want to sell, or what do I want to do that’s gonna…”  And I’m seeing them live in more freedom in that regard than I ever did when I was a kid for sure, because just what you said, they know how to bring money into their lives.  And I’m like, “Wow, that’s so significant for the rest of their lives.”

David Neagle:  It absolutely is.  I mean, either we develop the mindset and the skill set to be able to create whatever amount of money that we need whenever we need it, or we live a life in trade and a life where we come up with a perfect reason why we can’t be better or do better or contribute better in the world.

Andrea:  Yeah.  You know, when you talk about sales and transactions and all that sort of thing, I don’t want to get it wrong, but it seems like what you’re saying is that if I am dependent upon this next sale in order to be okay, then this is going to feel like a transaction, I’m going to be pushy and that sort of thing.  But if I know how to bring money into my life in that sense then I can offer what I have as a sale if somebody’s interested without it being as pushy and it’s an opportunity instead.  I mean, is that an okay way to describe what you are talking about when you talk about sales?

David Neagle:  Absolutely.  I mean, most people think that sales is something that you do to someone and for an unethical person or a person that’s under a lot of pressure from an employer to meet a monthly quota or something that would be accurate.  But really and truly sales is something you do for someone else.  Meaning that if you have someone, like when you make a sale, what we’re really doing is solving a problem for another person.  So, it’s important to be influential, not manipulative. And if we’re influential and we meet the other person’s needs and we get them to clarity about their decision, they’re either going to say yes or no.  And that’s all sales should be, is that we get them to be clear about their yes and their no.  If we do that properly and we understand how to do that, we will never have an issue with sales in our given businesses or employment.

Andrea:  Great!  So, if somebody is being influential in the sales process, from what I understand you just said, that’s means you’re bringing clarity to their situation so they can see the options in front of them basically.

David Neagle:  Correct.

Andrea:  Yeah.  That makes so much sense.

David Neagle:  And that they can make a decision, so that they can make a decision based on what’s best for them.

Andrea:  So the influence is in bringing clarity not in pushing them towards a particular answer.

David Neagle:  Absolutely not.  That’s extremely unethical because that’s all about you…

Andrea:  You said because that’s all about you and…

David Neagle:  It’s all about you and your agenda and it has nothing to do with them.  And sales should not be about you and your agenda, even though you have one, it is about developing your skill set in a way that allows you to communicate with another human being where they have trust and they want to buy from you and you’re looking for the right people to buy your product or your service and you’re helping them become clear about what the benefits are and if it’s something that they want or will help them.

If you look at every salesperson that does something unethical, what’s you say, pushy, right?  And let’s not even go unethical, let’s just say they’re pushy.  It’s all fear-based.  It’s based on, they don’t have enough.  It’s based on, they won’t sell enough or it’s based on, they don’t want to talk to as many people as they need to talk to or do the marketing that’s required or do the travel that’s required.  It’s all based on what they don’t want to do. If a person’s really coming from embracing that position and skill set in their life for what it is, and salespeople are the highest paid people in the world, they will do whatever is necessary from an ethical perspective to make sure that they’re hitting their numbers, which may mean that they have to see more people.  They have to talk to more people.  They have to do more instead of pushing people that aren’t sure whether they want your product or service into a decision that they’re not ready for.

Andrea:  So when it comes to making changes, and kind of circle back around, so whether that these changes be changes in your life around health or changes in your life around money, money mindset, money success, sales that sort of thing; what are the first steps for somebody who is really wanting to make a quantum leap, like you talked about, what are the very first things that they should be thinking about or doing or feeling in order to really start moving in that direction in making a really big change?

David Neagle:  There are two very important things.  One is that they’re very clear on what they want.  And the second one is what they’re prepared to sacrifice to get it.

Andrea:  Hmm.

David Neagle:  You have to bring in that part because if you don’t sit down and really consider what the sacrifices, you won’t accept it.  And then when you hit the first stumbling block or something that you have to change, it’s going to be the perfect excuse for you not to do it.  I think another thing is that one of the things that we do with our coaching clients is we help them unravel their stopping strategy or their failure strategy because it is a strategy for every person. Like how do you stop in life?  What causes you to stop?  

And what’s important to know about that is that when a person does that, when a person stops, they set a goal, they’re going to go after the goal and then somewhere along that journey, they quit.  They’ve actually come into agreement with some situation or circumstance in their life that is in that moment more important than the goal. So, we’re either setting weak or impotent goals that are not strong enough to help pull us through the difficult stages of moving through a goal or we’re letting other things sabotage that because they’d become more important because we haven’t dealt with some internal issue, we’re never going to move forward in our life.

Andrea:  Hmm, so good.  Alright, David so what are the different offerings that you have through Life Is Now, Inc.?

David Neagle:  Well, I mean, there’s a lot of different things.  Generally, we work with a business owners and high-end employees to better their life in various different ways, whether that is through coaching or through strategic, business building or a specific skill set.  But what people can do is they can go to our website davidneagle.com.  There’s a free download there called You Were Born to be a Success, they should read that.  They should really take a look at it and see how it resonates with them and where they want to go in their life.

Andrea:  Thank you so much for being here and we will make sure to link all of that in the show notes.  So, David, one last thing, what would be the parting words that you’d like to leave with people who really do want to have a voice of influence?

David Neagle:  Make a decision to embrace the opportunity that’s in front of you currently.  That’s the whole Life Is Now concept, like the universe doesn’t hold anything back and there’s something in front of every person right now that would give them the opportunity to do that and have that change in their life, but they have to make a decision to do it.

Andrea:  Alright.  Thank you for calling us to action for calling us to have a successful mind and to actually move forward in our lives.  David, appreciate you sharing your voice of influence with our listeners.

David Neagle:  Thank you so much, Andrea!  It was great being here!

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Creating Moments of Delight for Customers with Fred Skoler

Episode 105

Fred Skoler is an award-winning digital innovator, product manager and user experience executive who thrives at the intersection of business results and fun, and I really think this conversation is going to be fun. Since founding MGM Interactive in 1994, Fred has produced hit video games, designed simulations for the US Department of Defense, consulted on user-facing UX for digital advertising, wellness, health insurance, and delivered social games for social good.

In this episode, Fred discusses what he did at Sears in terms of gamification, why you need to have empathy for your customers, how he transitioned from a career in performing arts to what he does now, the main tool he uses to help his potential clients see the need for his services, the importance of setting varied goals, doing smaller tests, and getting feedback along the way, how to determine when to set feedback aside, how gamification helps companies meet their customers where they’re at, and so much more!

Mentioned in this episode:

Play here (the red triangle below), on iTunes, Stitcher or TuneIn Radio (Amazon Alexa) or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Fred Skoler Voice of Influence Podcast Andrea Joy Wenburg

Transcript

Hey, hey!  It’s Andrea, and welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast.  Today, we have Fred Skoler with us.  He is an award-winning digital innovator, product manager and user experience executive who thrives at the intersection of business results and fun, and I really think this conversation is going to be fun.  Since founding MGM Interactive in 1994, Fred has produced hit video games designed simulations for the US Department of Defense, consulted on user-facing UX for digital advertising, wellness, health insurance, and delivered social games for social good.

Andrea:  I’m so excited to have you here on the Voice of Influence podcast, Fred.

Fred Skoler:  Hey, hey, I’m Fred.  Hey, I know, I’m very excited to be here too.  Thank you for inviting me.

Andrea:  Fred, let’s start with what did you do with Sears, because I think that might give us an idea of what exactly you do with gamification?

Fred Skoler:  OK, sounds great.  I think a lot of people wondered when I was at Sears, what I did for Sears.  I think there’s a lot of head-scratching like, “OK, well what is that guy doing?”  And then ultimately the results spoke for themselves because there were a lot of leaders who didn’t really follow it.  

The great news is I worked in collaboration with the chairman to execute the vision for the gamification of kind of the loyalty program called Shop Your Way. And that involved leveraging all of the resources of this, at the time, very large company with multiple marketing groups, 13 business units, a lot of excitement, a lot of engagement around e-commerce, but a deep need to better understand our customers.  So, I was brought on to start to work out some of the gamification of the experience. So, if you are earning points for activities, if you are playing games with your friends, if you’re interacting with product and you are sharing your joy, your love, and your happiness around whatever it is that you bought, all of those things kind of played into the role.  And it was my job to kind of take that soup and focus it in ways where we would see the results that the business was looking for. And my initial projects were under a group called Integrated Retail Labs and I worked with them to develop something called Sweeps, which was the gamification of the Shop Your Way e-commerce website.  I created 50 behavioral kind of little modules that you could combine in groups and have people do these things so that they could be entered into sweepstakes. And sweepstakes, as we may know is a federally regulated thing.  It’s not just something you can just run out there and do.  So, there are all kinds of elements to that that have to be tuned and assured that they are compliant with what’s going on in the environment that you’re serving.  So, I put that together and the tools to drive the engagement. And in the first year, you know, we had 10,000 different sweepstakes that came out.  This came, you know, prior.  It was costing them like 30,000 sweepstakes and they could do five or six of them a year, 10,000.  That was what we got out there.  We had 33 million users.  We did our job and that was really exciting.

Andrea:  Wow, that’s amazing!  So is that kind of what you’re doing now with DigiSnax?

Fred Skoler:  You know what, in DigiSnax, I’m the chief product officer.  So, I work with clients to help them find more value from their customer interactions by leveraging different types of digital experiences.  And digital in this context can be apps, web, smart devices, sensors, and things like that and combining that with physical space to feed data models to produce the business results.  And the area where I excel is in finding ways to assure that we don’t lose the empathy for our customers in their journey and that we respect them as much as we gain from having them interact with us.

Andrea:  OK, so what does that mean to have empathy for the customer in their experience when you’re talking about a digital experience?  How do you have empathy?  How do you put yourself in their place or what do you mean by that?

Fred Skoler:  That’s a great question.  You know, a long time ago, I worked with a company called Whatif Productions and the reason for that company was to let someone walk a mile in someone else’s shoes.  And that was a totally digital experience.  Today, now, you know, 20 years later, we actually have the tools with augmented reality, virtual reality to give someone an experience that isn’t only screen in front of their eyes, but something that’s entirely immersive. But even in that experience where I’m walking and I’m holding on to my phone, there are lots of things that we need to think about.  If my primary user is someone who is a woman who has a baby, then I’ve got to consider she’s holding that phone with one hand she need, because she might have the baby in her other arm or a caregiver.  Let’s say I’m a father, I’m going to focus on a female user because of some of the size differentiation, of some of the newer phones and where you might need to put buttons depending on the actions that you want her to accomplish. So, the empathy there is understanding that she is hurried  or she is dealing with a million things at once.  She doesn’t want a lot of noise and she also wants to be respected.  She doesn’t want to feel like you’re using her to get something.  She wants to feel like it is a symbiotic relationship.  So the way that you do design the user interaction, the way that you create that digital experience needs to take these things into account. And my background is in the arts.  I come from performing, writing, and directing and that stuff really matters to me and I think it really matters to our customers.  And that’s why we see a lot of, well, you know, we get good results when we put good things out there in front of our customers and we truly listen.

Andrea:  Hmm.  So, how does your background with the arts, writing, directing, performing have a connection with what you’re doing now?  I love it.  I come from some of a performing background as well.  So, I’m really curious to hear about some of that experience or how did you get into this?  How did you get here from there?

Fred Skoler:   Oh, that’s a good one.  You know, it’s interesting because I started off talking about context.  I think context is really everything.  I was living in LA and I was working sometimes as an actor, but mostly I was working in, actually, digital engagement.  I was a founder of MGM Interactive and that came to me because of the work I’ve done with a group called Synapse Technologies where I was their director of operations, but then became a kind of a producer of little digital experiences. And in talking with their strategy and development lead at MGM, there’s a real opportunity to take the licenses, the movies, and turn them into things that people could relate to in an interactive environment.  And that was the primary focus there.  So, we started making video games based on movie licenses, things like Golden Eye for the Nintendo 64 and other things. And for me, the moment of truth was I was there.  We had a little talk earlier, I had some kids and I was actually in the delivery room when a script came to me for an audition the next day for a major movie with a director I really admired.  And it was a moment of reckoning, you know, it was your big break and it was.  It was the breakthrough for me where I realized I had to prepare and focus on my family. And it also made kind of that, “How do you bridge the gap between digital and human?”  You know, that connection with me, my daughter, my wife and my family and OK, now I’m going to double down on how do we do that.  And I started to work with a company where our objective was to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes.  You know, what might it feel like to, gosh, I have a diabetes and I have colorblindness associated with that or losing some feeling on your legs or whatever it might be, giving someone that opportunity to have that experience so that they could create for themselves a different context rather than judging, understanding. And so from that perspective, I think the arts are critical.  I think the idea of having empathy for the user is critical to being able to drive true experience and something where people just aren’t doing it.  They’re doing something because they actually want to because they see value in it and then they see more value in your brand and your services.

Andrea:  Do you find that it is difficult for companies to really take that perspective to really empathize to be able to really imagine the other person, that sort of thing?  I know that we have to be seeking out big business results.  But at the same time, it sounds like you’re saying we have to meet the customer where they are and communicate with them in a way that is going to be helpful for them and possible for them to really interact seamlessly.  But yet, is it difficult for companies to really bridge that gap in their own way of thinking?

Fred Skoler:  I think that you point out something really powerful.  I would say yes, but no, because right now that’s kind of murky.  The reality is that there may not be the talent that understands this side of human behavior and action and interaction.  There’s a lot of data, but there needs to be context for that data.  And because companies are starting to realize and truly understand that they need to know their customers, they’re starting to see the value in this.  And I think this is where a really exceptional product manager comes in, and it’s part of what makes a great product manager is being able to be the advocate of all these sides. So, being able to share in terms that leadership understands that value and benefit of doing these things is kind of the bigger role, I think of people like me.  I can say, “Look, I got a 47 percent increase in sales from people who are playing these silly games.”  “Why is that?”  “Well, because I had them in the palm of my hand.  I knew exactly what they wanted.”  I figured out ways to innovate on basic concepts like sweepstakes in such a way so that we could tune the experience to tell us exactly what someone wanted.  Not just, “Hey, here’s something really shiny and cool, do you want it?”  “What do you want?”  “And if you win that’s what you’re gonna get.”  And then take that information and use it in context to then help someone through their journey.

Andrea:  So, when you’re having these conversations with the executives or the companies who are wanting this, but they’re having a hard time actually getting there or maybe they’re not sure what they want or they’re not sure how, you know, why it’s important, that sort of thing, what kinds of things do you call upon to help them to understand?  So, statistics, you just shared statistics, I mean, in terms of your voice of influence with a company and helping people them to understand it, what kind of things do you employ to do that?

Fred Skoler:  One of the big tools that I use is agile, and the agile framework and a lot of different approaches to driving kind of creative discovery, business discovery, and of course production and product management, all can be driven through some of these similar tools.  These tools provide a framework by which you can truly focus teams on what’s most important. Because the reality is, you know, if you don’t know what you want and why you want it and what the outcome specific you’re looking for, it’s going to be quite difficult to hone in on what it is that I’m delivering.  But those tools help focus these clients so that they know what they’re looking for. And then we have something that’s measurable.  So, we have those statistics.  We can drive those measurements.  We can assure that they’re being tallied from the beginning and we can also do this in an iterative way.  We don’t come in and say, “Boom, we got to blow this.”  You know, we can do all kinds of little tests.

Andrea:  So, iterative changes, not taking on the whole big thing all at once and trying to say that this is the answer, but to have these little tests and say, OK, this one works, this didn’t and that sort of thing, right?  Is that what you mean by that?

Fred Skoler:  That is, you know, with a lot of experience in road mapping development, you can have goals that are years out.  You can have aspirational goals and you can have near term, what are the pieces that you need.  One of the ways I like to look at it is, you know, if you’re going to get in a car, you need a few things.  Meaning, I need a steer.  I need the wheels and I need to be able to sit in this thing, probably I need a motor unless where I’m going is, you know, gravity is going to pull me down that kind of thing. But if it’s four things that I need then I work on those four things first and make sure that those are the things that are going to lead to the outcome that I’m looking for.  So, you do a lot of prototyping.  You use different types of tools to assure that everyone understands what it is that we’re doing and then you’re able to test it and iterate. I think that whole idea of getting stuff done, sometimes we change stuff to the expletive.  You know, that GSD, being able to know what it is that you want and move forward on it rather than trying to do the perfect everything.  Get some feedback, get it out there, do it in certain iterative ways and have a genuine discussion with your community at the same time so that you’re not only working from your feedback on what you’re saying, you’re starting to get feedback from real people who really use your product.

Andrea:  Hmm.  How do you know when the feedback that you’re getting is going to be helpful for the spectrum of folks or if it’s feedback that needs to be kind of put to the side?  Or do you ever say, “OK, this particular piece of feedback doesn’t seem to be helpful for where we’re headed.”  How do you know when to pay attention to it and when to set it aside?

Fred Skoler: That’s another great one.  I think a lot of this comes from experience, but it’s driven by kind of a ruthless prioritization.  You know, always looking toward what is it that we really need and going back to, you know, why and some of those specifics.  And what we do in product development is we create these user stories.  Tell the specifics of what it is we’re trying to do and what the outcome that is expected and what it might be. And so what we do is we leverage that piece of data and we go back to it again and again, “Hey, are we hitting that or is this something new?”  And it’s a management challenge as well.  But that’s part of why I guess that product manager role is such an important one and that the product manager has the skill set to be able to drive the product forward and make sure that it’s communicated correctly among all of the stakeholders.

Andrea:  Hmm.  And it sounds like keeping the focus where you want the focus to be, because it’s so easy to get distracted by other things.  But if you keep coming back to what you originally set out as what you want and what you’re trying to accomplish, you know, all that clarity that you gained at the beginning.  I’m thinking about the entire Voice of Influence audience here who may not necessarily into like gamification but they might be thinking about some of this stuff. And I’m thinking that, you know, it’s easy to get distracted.  It’s easy to get distracted by the things, but if you keep coming back to where you started and keep coming back to what you’ve set out to do and accomplish at the beginning, I mean, you have to almost be ruthless with that.

Fred Skoler:  You do, you do.  And that’s providing the context for what we’re doing.  We have to know.  And if we don’t know then we haven’t done enough homework, and to jump in without done that homework is inefficient.  It wastes, you know, everybody’s time and money, and that’s like the gem.  So, coming back to leadership, you say, “Look, do you really want me to waste your time and money on that or do you want to do what you set out to do?” And if they want it in the weeds and you know, micromanaging then they can but they need to know and you need to have the answers as to “Look, this is gonna add number of days to your project.”  And in so doing, we are going to be removing these resources that would, otherwise, be working on what you really want and it’s going to be much further down the line or we’re going to add more people to the team and it’s going to cost so much more. But those are kind of logical responses to what sometimes are kind of emotional needs, you know, “Oh, we saw this and we really want that.”  “Why do you want that?”  “Because we saw it and it looks really cool.”  “Well, will it drive your initial need?”  “We don’t even have a car yet.  We don’t have four wheels.  We don’t have a steering wheel.”  OK, what we’ll do is we’ll put that on our list of wishes and then we’ll assess it as far as the value it provides to meet our goals, as far as how many resources we need to achieve that goal. And then we’ll look at that in that context and determine whether or not it’s something we want to put effort into, because it may be that the way to achieve that is by doing 10 little things, and each of those things has a cost, but there may be something else that brings more value that only has one or two steps that we can achieve very quickly with the resources we have on board right now.  That seems to be from my perspective where we would want to focus.  What do you think leadership?

Andrea:  That is so helpful and applicable to anybody?  I want to get back now before we close this conversation; I want to go back to gamification.  What are some reasons why people or companies should use gamification?  I know that you care about connecting with a customer?  You care about that empathy and actually meeting them where they’re at that sort of thing.  How do games do that?

Fred Skoler:  Well, I think a lot of it is our understanding of what games are.  Marketing is games.  It is at its core.  It’s finding the triggers that drive your customer forward.  Now, if that trigger is an overt activity that has an outcome that is understood then maybe we go, “OK, that’s a little game.”  But there are other ways of using these tactics without it being a game. Meaning, as you are going through certain types of content, if I highlight elements in that content, let’s say in a website, so that your eye goes to it and those are the most important features of my product that I want you to know about.  I’m leading you.  I am using the context of your experience to drive you forward. Now, if I do things there that you start to learn that when you do that, like if you were to click on one of those things, you always get a coupon or you always get a piece of additional insight that I’m teaching you that by clicking on the stuff that I put in front of you, there’s value in it.  And by doing that often enough, you’ll start clicking on this stuff that I put in front of you because you know you’re getting value from it, and that’s gamification. This is my perspective because there are gamification platforms that have, you know, ribbons and badges and all sorts of things.  There are a limited number of customers who are going to be driven by those pieces.  There is value in that and the reality is there’s a very high percentage of us who are considered gamers because of the amount of time that we might touch a game in our day, so many more than we probably thought. My mom was a hardcore gamer.  All she did was, you know, she played spider solitaire, but when she had some downtime, that’s what she would do.  She was probably playing an hour a day.  And some of those factors are part of what we call a hardcore gamer.  She’s not the, you know, 70, 80-year-old woman.  It might not be what we think of immediately when we think hardcore gamer.  But the reason she did that wasn’t because she’s like “Oh, I gotta play a game.”  She’s just like, “Oh, I could do better.” In that game there were some very clever tactics, including the sound which would drive activity and the need almost this compulsion to want to come back.  Now, those same principles can be used in pretty much any customer journey, whether it’d be delightful colors, whether it be a loading screen, whether it be the way that something sounds or feels.  These moments of delight if used to reward at the right time is what I would call gamification. The specific use of games to drive data, which could then be leveraged to kind of increased sales, that sort of thing that’s clear and strong and good stuff.  That’s the big part of what I implemented at Sear’s Holdings, but these more subtle elements that we may call, you know, marketing that’s a use of gamification as well.

Andrea:  I love the definition that you used or even the phrase that you used, moments of delight.  Offering those is what helps people to know to take the next step, to want to take the next step, which does seem very empathetic.  At the same time I wonder, could you also help us to know when do we take that too far?  When does it become manipulation?  How do you navigate that desire to offer something beautiful, delightful, or gratifying?  And how can that go too far?  Have you seen it go too far?

Fred Skoler:  Well, I think it has to do with your customer and your brand identity.  So, it would be wrapped up in kind of that and even using technologies like machine learning to drive certain types of information.  Some of it, if it’s overused may seem creepy.  Some of it may seem fun.  That is more about that empathy.  That is more about bringing people to the team who has this unique insight because it’s not necessarily something that’s teachable. So, one of the teams that I’ve been on in a large company, they ran a survey and they were basically talking about the archetypes on a team, and one of the things that was missing through their executive team consistently was empathy.  And without that, you can’t be driving, in my opinion, a customer focused experience.  You can talk the talk, but unless you feel what it’s like, you don’t know.  And you know, you can research your butt off, but at the same time, you do need to truly kind of consume yourself with that experience. In my background, that’s what I used to do.  You know, that’s part of what it is in comedy and doing improvisational comedy, coming up with characters quickly that sort of thing, that’s the activity.  And leveraging that rich experience and bringing it to something that could be seen as just, you know, ones and zeros is what for me is really joyful and why I really liked doing what I do.

Andrea:  Love it.  I love that so much.  I’m glad that you’re out there doing it.  I’m glad that somebody with empathy is able to go out there and help companies do this well and bring with you integrity and a desire to truly help the customer.  So thank you.  Thank you for doing that.  Thank you for your voice of influence. Fred, so you are going to be speaking at the Digital Experience Summit for the Strategy Institute in Chicago in September.  We’ll link to that in the show notes.  I’m also speaking there.  What are you going to be talking about?

Fred Skoler:  Oh, I’ll be talking about gamification kind of integrating the seamless digital and physical experiences for your customers, why that experience has been kind of a game changer for companies like Sears, where the rich data and that rich intent truly knowing what someone wants has become, you know, super meaningful.  And part of, you know, what it really takes to do something to create that loyalty program, something that’s really going to work today. I start going and wanted to talk about it.  It’s exciting stuff for me and so I’m talking about those sorts of things.

Andrea:   It’ll be great.  So, if you are in Chicago, if you’re headed to Chicago, if you’re interested in that conference, it’s going to be a really, really good one.  You can come to our show notes and check it out at voiceofinfluence.net. Fred, how can people get in touch with you if they’re interested in working with you or what do you do with other companies?

Fred Skoler:  Well, I’ve been working in a word of mouth capacity in my consulting and I’m very happy to engage with the listeners in any way that might be helpful.  I’m always happy to lend a hand where I can.  You know, you can find me on LinkedIn.  Right now, I think I’m using my full name Frederick Skoler, but you can call me Fred with an f, not a ph.  And there’s supposed to be a laugh there.

Andrea:  I was holding it back.  I’m not going to lie.  I don’t know if I’m supposed to laugh or not but that was funny.

Fred Skoler:  You know, it’s a very quiet room and you can hear the crickets, right?  So if you’re interested in bringing a little more fun and joy to your products and if you are looking for someone who can help you do that from a very pragmatic standpoint and someone who understands the kind of the business side in building teams, I’m your guy.  You can reach me at fskoler, so F as in Fred, fskoler@digisnax.com byte-size pieces, got it?  Byte size, this is a digital goodness.

Andrea:  Nice.

Fred Skoler:  You know, I can help you do that.

Andrea:  That’s fantastic!  OK, again, we will have links to all of what Fred just mentioned in the show notes just to make it easy to connect with him if you’d like to.  Thank you so much for sharing your voice of influence with our listeners today, Fred.

Fred Skoler:  Oh thank you, Andrea, and thank you, listeners, for letting me take a little bit of your time today.

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How to Not Be Weird When Selling with Liz Dederer

Episode 104

Liz Dederer is disrupting sales for good. As founder and CEO of Selling With Service and the creator of Sales School for Entrepreneurs, Liz and her team have helped clients increase close rates from zero percent to 80 percent in 30 days, and ended the year 50 percent over their plan and have turned around an underperforming sales team from under $300,000 to over $1.2 million in six months. In other words, this woman gets things done! Liz has been featured on the International Women and Money Summit and is currently on her second speaking tour on the Currency of Conversation, empowering women sales teams and business owners to close clients quickly.

In this episode, Liz explains what she means when she says, “How you do money is how you do everything,” the four currencies that impact our money conversations, the quick and easy way she can tell if her potential clients are a “hard or soft currency” person and how that changes her interaction with them, the difference between having a sales energy and a service energy, the true difference between an amateur and an expert and how to know when it’s time to own your expertise, and more!

Mentioned in this episode:

Play here (the red triangle below), on iTunes, Stitcher or TuneIn Radio (Amazon Alexa) or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Liz Dederer Voice of Influence Podcast Andrea Joy Wenburg

Transcript

Hey, hey!  It’s Andrea and welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast.  I’m really thrilled to have Liz Dederer here today because she is distracting sales for good.  As founder and CEO of Selling With Service and the creator of the Sales School for Entrepreneurs, Liz and her team have helped clients increase close rates from zero percent to 80 percent in 30 days, and end of the year 50 percent over their plan and have turned around an underperforming sales team from under $300,000 to over $1.2 million in six months.  In other words, this woman gets things done. Liz has been featured on the International Women and Money Summit and is currently on her second speaking tour on the Currency of Conversation, empowering women sales teams and business owners to close clients quickly.

Andrea:  Liz, it is great to have you here today with me on the Voice of Influence podcast.

Liz Dederer:  Thank you.  I’m so excited that we get to have this fun conversation together.

Andrea:  I am too.  Every conversation with you is fun.

Liz Dederer:  Yay!

Andrea:  It totally is.  Yes, I’m thrilled to share you with our listeners.  So, Liz, why don’t you kind of give us a little bit more context for what you do with Selling With Service?

Liz Dederer:  The way I explained it to my 7-year-old daughter is that I help mommies make a lot of money.

Andrea:  There you go.

Liz Dederer:  That’s the simplest, mommies and daddies or nonparents, or grownups, right?  So, Selling With Service is really just about helping people be normal in sales conversations and giving them the tools, the talk, and the tech to be able to use their voice in a more empowered way as the expert that they are in sales conversations by shifting their sales mindset and looking at sales for what it actually is, which is really healthy service-based conversation and process.

Andrea:  Now that sounds really appealing.

Liz Dederer:  Yeah.

Andrea:  Yeah, yeah, it sounds really appealing.  OK. We’re going to make sales normal, sound normally.  I mean, in general, how do you do that?

Liz Dederer:  Magic!  It’s shifting your sales mindset.  We look at things in Sales School for Entrepreneurs and in Selling With Service in general, we look at first, what is your relationship with money because how you do money is how you do everything. And to be honest, the reason and the point and the sales process or conversation when people start getting weird is around the money stuff, because we’ve never been taught to speak confidently or competently around about money.  In fact, we’re like totally conditioned on the opposite, “Don’t talk about money.”  “It’s rude to ask people how much they make.”  “They can afford it.  You can’t afford it.” 

All of those things come up. So, we come right out of the gate and we use a proprietary assessment, the eight languages of money so that you understand what your money language is and we talk about the currency of conversation.  So, we just come at it right out of the gate talking about money and the softer side of money.  And then we look at what is sales, so let’s unpack it?  What do you think it is versus what is it really?

You know, there’s a reason I named the company Selling With Service because it’s all about being in service and of service to other people.  And then the results of a healthy relationship or understanding of your relationship with money, understanding and being able to identify it in others as well and having the tools, talk, and tech to be able to navigate a conversation.  The healthy outcome of that is that you’re working with more people because you’re not weird in conversations.

Andrea:  Oh man, I love it!  Yeah, I mean, I had a really hard time with this and have made it over a pretty darn big hump in my own life and my own business on this.  And so I am really excited about what you’re doing because I know that it changes everything.  So, you said this, you said “How you do money is how you do everything.”  What do you mean by that?

Liz Dederer:  So, we look at your relationship with money, and money is one of the four currencies.  And the four currencies, I use the acronym TEMP like temperature; it’s Time, Energy, Money, and People and how you operate with money shows up in the other categories of currency.  If you’re really, really possibly stingy with money, we’ll just use these two kinds of _____ as an example.  If you’re really, really stingy with money that’s likely going to show up in other areas of your life and your business and how you’re approaching conversations and the extent of information you’re willing to give away because you have a hold, a lack mentality on time, energy, money and people;  a fear scarcity based.

Andrea:  OK, so stingy with money could translate into stingy in your conversations and how much you’re willing to offer of yourself or be vulnerable and all those sorts of things.

Liz Dederer:  Exactly.  Yeah, so it can look like, and it’s not an absolute, right?  But it can look like and it does look like and this is what we teach people how to listen and look for.  It can start to show up in the sales process where they say, “Well, I already gave them a free sample.”  “I already explained it to them.”  “I already, you know, did this.”  “They already have what they need.”

But sometimes people just need a little bit more information, and someone who is more on the fear scarcity side is not going to be as willing to maybe get on another phone call, you know, build the relationship a little bit more, give a little bit more energy and put a little bit more into the people bank and the relationship bank because they’re operating through the lens of fear and scarcity, which is not wrong.  It’s not wrong.

In my presentations, I have this diagram.  I’ve got it off the internet where it’s two people looking at the number six and one is saying six and one is saying nine.  And neither is wrong, but it’s your perspective and it’s just about understanding others, you know.  So, the other side of that is if someone is overly generous and overly nurturing and overly giving, me, all soft currency, I’m kind of boundary-less and limitless. And you know, I lose track of time with clients and if someone needs another conversation before they decide if sales was right for them, myself and my team, we’re all ready to jump in.  And yeah, we have to keep track of the time because you know, we have other things going on but I’m not going to say “Nope, gotta go, your time’s up.”  Like if someone needs more coaching, if they need more help or support, we’re very, very flexible and willing and giving because that’s how we are with all of our currencies.

So, two extremes, one is not right, one is not wrong, it just it’s important to notice because when you’re in a “sales” conversation, and I’m using air quotes with sales because any conversation where you know there’s a desired outcome or you want to move an initiative forward.  Getting your kids to pick up their room is a sales conversation, right?  Let’s just be honest.

Andrea:  Totally.

Liz Dederer:  You need to understand what’s most important in those conversations is understanding and speaking the language of the other person.  So, when we recognize what our money language is, what our relationship with currency is then we’re going to know how that’s going to show up in conversations and where we might self-sabotage or etc.  And we’ll also just be aware of it to hear it showing up in the conversation to say, “Oh, is this my language I’m speaking or is this theirs?”

Andrea:  Hmm.  How do you know?

Liz Dederer:  So with the acronym TEMP, I try to make it really simple for people to listen.  I used to teach, you know, and explain the eight languages of money so people could hear that.  And I’m like, “Well, it’s too much.  It’s too much, put a _____.”  We cannot remember our own names at times.  So, I try to make it really simple, just listen for the hard and the soft currency.  Hard currency is time and money and soft currency is energy and people. So, if someone’s using filling words a lot like “This is gonna be so exciting, I can’t wait.”  “This is gonna be great, really looking forward to playing.”  Those are total soft currency person. 

Energy people, if something fun is going on, if there’s people involved; they’ll want to be there, right?  And if someone says, “Well, what time and what are we going to get out of it?”  “What exactly is going on?”  And more precision based language, time, money then they’re going to be a harder currency person and you’ll just want to speak in more detail with them.  But if you start speaking in significant detail with a soft currency person, you’ve likely lost them.  If you’re in the fun zone with a hard currency person, they’re likely not respecting you for being an expert and authority because you sound wishy-washy.

Andrea:  Oh that’s so true.

Liz Dederer:  Right?

Andrea:  I see it in my own family.  Some of us are one way, and some of us are another, yeah.  So, do you have maybe like a couple things that you look for immediately to kind of gauge if somebody is really more of a hard currency or a soft currency kind of person?

Liz Dederer:  Yeah, I mean, in our “sales conversations,” we call them service conversations once you go through the training.  But if I say service conversations you’re going to be like, “What, is their washing machine broken?  What’s going on?”  So, in a sales calls, in a service conversations, you know, I’m talking to business owners, I’m talking to entrepreneurs, I’m talking to coaches, consultants and salespeople; so one of the questions we ask obviously is, you know, what are your numbers?  What was your revenue over the past 12 months or what were your sales over the past 12 months?  And I’ll hear right away if they’re hard or soft currency the way that they answer it.

Andrea:  Sure.

Liz Dederer:  So, if they, you know, come to the table and they have no clue about their numbers or they give me some really roundabout kind of, you know, dodgy answer, definitely it’s a soft currency person.

Andrea:  Hmm.

Liz Dederer:  Hard currency person, like I literally had this answer in a call and they said, “I’m not exactly sure what my numbers are.”  So, I think soft currency right away.  And then they continued, they said, “I haven’t updated my reports and we haven’t run the numbers for the business this week, but as of last week my numbers were dah, dah, dah, dah,” and x y z sense.  And I’m like, “Holy crow, they weren’t confident in their numbers because they hadn’t been updated for that week, so they didn’t want to give me the numbers.”  And I was like, “Wow, you’re really a hard currency.”  “What’s going on?”  That’s great.  That’s good to know.

Andrea:  Sure, sure.  OK, I love that.  I always love it when people have ways that they read people to know where they’re at because, like you said, any conversation where you’re attempting to get somebody to cooperate or to purchase something, it’s still a sales conversation.  It’s some sort of its influence of some kind.  And so, meeting people where they’re at is so vitally important, but yet it’s really hard to do.  I love your hard versus soft currency model that you’re using, and it seems simple enough that people could really grasp onto that and really make something of that, you know, just listening to this conversation.

Liz Dederer:  Yeah.  I did it in a real estate investors’ conference I was keynoting and I had two gentlemen volunteer to do a role play.  And the way that we worked the role play was just these guys hadn’t met.  So, I said, “Just network in front of these thousands of people, please, #nopressure.”

Andrea:  Wow!

Liz Dederer:  So that’s it.  They were just networking and it was great.  I mean it, it was definitely a divinely guided conversation because it’s like you always take a risk when you do something like that, but it worked out really, really well.  

So, one guy was an investor and the other guy was a lawyer and the lawyer was saying, “Oh, you know, I’ve got this client.  He was looking to sell his house.  He’s an artist.  He’s lived in it for 30 years, but I think it was death or divorce or something, he has to get rid of it, but he’s done all these really intricate, cool things to the house but we do need to get it on the market, you know, sooner rather than later.” And then the investors said, “Do you know the value of the house and when is he looking to list it?”  And you could instantly see the lawyer just completely deflated.  

And the audience, it was interesting too, the women in the audience gasped because they were like, “No, you just killed it.  You didn’t speak his language.”  And the men in the audience like, “Doo, doo, doo, doo.”  No idea of what’s going on.  That was interesting.  But this isn’t a man-woman thing and it was just a very interesting thing to notice. But what the women noticed was that the investor did not speak the lawyer’s language.  One was very hard currency, one was very soft currency and all that needed to be done.  

You don’t have to change who you are.  You don’t have to completely change your language, you just have to validate and give them just a little sticky note that says “I hear you and this is how he could have done it.”

So, the lawyer was saying, you know, the artist and all this cool stuff, etc., etc.  All that the investor needed to say was, “Wow, your client sounds really, really fascinating.  Do you know the value of the house or when he wants to put it on the market?”  That’s it, one bridge line.

Andrea:  Brilliant.  I love it.  Alright, Liz, let’s talk service.  How in the world is selling actually service?

Liz Dederer:  Ha ha, great question.  So, the answer, I mean, what are you doing when you’re selling, selling, selling, right?  If you’re just like, “I’m in it for the kill, I’m in it for the money,” then you’re in sales, right?  You’re in it for yourself.  Sales energy is about yourself, “I need to sell this.”  Service energy is about the other person.  And to take it even more _____, sales energy is fear based and service energy is love and abundance based. We’re operating in the line of sales, you’re thinking about yourself, you’re thinking about fear, and you’re thinking about your numbers and there’s an element of fear and scarcity going on, “I need to make my goal.”  “I don’t have enough in the bank,” or whatever it is.  “I need to move more widgets.”  I need to, you know, etc.

When you’re thinking through the lens of service, you’re not thinking about yourself.  I tell my students all the time, lovingly, “Your business ain’t got nothing to do with you.  It’s all about the other person.”  

The purpose of a business is to create a customer. So, service is all about being available and helping the other person.  It doesn’t mean that you can’t exchange hard currency.  It doesn’t mean that money doesn’t get brought into the equation.  It doesn’t mean that we’re all paupers on the street.  It means that you’re thinking in terms of what is in the highest and best interest for all parties involved.

Andrea:  Right?

Liz Dederer:  That’s service.  And you can’t give and give and give and at some point you’re going to have to say, “We need to set an official play date so I can really take this to the next level to help you.”

Andrea:  Hmm.  How do you know what that boundary line is?  Maybe, it’s partly like you were talking about the assessment that you do and how people kind of fall someplace on this spectrum between sort of really soft and really hard currency.   How does one determine when it’s time, like how much to give before they go ahead and ask for the sale?

Liz Dederer:  So, in a service-based business where you’re selling a service, it comes down to really knowing and owning your zone of absolute brilliance, your zone of expertise, and how you do your work, right?  You have to be really, really clear on your deliverable.  And the reason I say that is because there are things that you can do to get a client ready to become a really good client.  And that’s the service part of it.  

We adopt the mindset; we teach in Sales School for Entrepreneurs, we adopt the mindset early and often that they’re already a client. And the goal is you want to make sure that they’re really great client by the time they actually become a client, so whatever you’ve got to do to help them get to that point.  And then there is a point where you say, “This is what we do in Sales School.”  “This is what we do in a strategic planning day when we map out your five points to profit.”  So, you have a strong grasp on who you’re serving and what that looks like and how you’re priced, etc.  That happens in this container.

So, if you’re ready for that, it sounds like you’re ready for that, we can definitely talk about that but that is the next step in me being able to be of service to you is you got to come play in Sales School or you need to set up, you know, a strategic planning day.  

I struggle with the word boundaries because I’m like all soft currency, like water on concrete who just go everywhere.  So, I love the word, one of my mentors, over the years, gave me this word to use instead, which is container.

Andrea:  I really like that.

Liz Dederer:   Yeah, and Sales School is my container where I get to just fire hose and just love on and drip on the students and give them everything.  So, it’s a really healthy, happy container space for me to play in and I know what goes on in there and I know what I can give to people on the outside.  And I also know with anybody there is going to be a point where I can’t give them any more.  They have to come.  You know, I can only splash you with water so much outside the pool, at some point you’re going to have to just jump in.

Andrea:  Hmm, another good analogy.  OK, so there are people out there like you, like me who sort of come from this mindset of service, and this is maybe, you know, prior to getting through all.  I guess, I’m thinking about on the front end before they have really figured out what their container is and all that.  They want to help.  They see lots of opportunities to offer people advice, their expertise and all that sort of thing.  And yet, they maybe start to feel resentment because they’re thinking to themselves, I could have charged for that.

What do you do to help somebody see that, you know, to help somebody get over their resentment toward the people that they actually really do want to serve?  I remember there being such a contradiction that just really robbed with me and I wasn’t sure how to handle that.  What would you tell me back, I don’t know, a couple of years ago before I started to kind of figure that out?

Liz Dederer:  Well, that’s how my company was born is because I was doing exactly that.  I was giving it all away.  I actually have a video on my website, sellingwithservice.com, on the entrepreneurs’ page where I talk about how I was the busiest brokest entrepreneur because I was having great conversations and I was giving it all away and people were like, “Oh my God, you’re amazing!”  And I’m like, “Gee, thanks!”  And then they’d leave and I’m like, “But uh, uh, but uh, I got to eat.”

 

Andrea:  Yeah.

Liz Dederer:   So, that’s how all of my systems and processes were born organically is because I had to protect myself from myself from giving it all away, because what you’re actually doing is a disservice to the other person.  You’re giving them a Band-Aid solution for a bleed and you haven’t fully identified why they’re bleeding.

Andrea:  Yes, so good.

Liz Dederer:  Yeah, and you know, I had to create ways to protect myself from myself because I knew, you know, it felt really good to do the energy exchange and to get the validation and they’re like, “You’re really smart.”  And I’m like, “Oh my God, thank you.”  Because I needed that in my life at the time, so that was my dominant currency is that I needed to be fed validation and energy and it’s not wrong.  

It really built me in a lot of ways and I know a lot of other people go through this too, like “Who am I?”  “What am I doing?”  “Am I really good at this thing,” and all of that. So, the validation, there is nothing wrong and you build your validation bank and at some point you need to start building the money bank.  And that’s where it’s just kind of having a lens to say, “Well, let me pull back for a minute.”  

I’ll suggest people to consider that the expert asks questions, the amateur answers.  So, when you’re having these conversations, you’re going to get to points over time having the same conversations with different people where you’re going to say, I need to ask more questions to understand what’s going on rather than just jump to the gun with a solution.

Andrea:  Why do you suppose that’s the case?  Why do you suppose the amateur jumps to answering questions?  It’s so true, like I totally see it.  Why is that?

Liz Dederer:  Validation?  We want to be proven that we’re right.  We don’t know that we are yet, so we’re looking to build that evidence base, “Am I really good at this?  Can I really do this?  Can I really solve this problem?  Is my salad any good?”  Whatever it is.

Andrea:  Yeah.  That makes a lot of sense.

Liz Dederer:  It’s feeding the soft currency side of things, building the relationships, having the conversations with people, getting the energy exchange, getting information in exchange for validation in return.  You know, it’s working for validation, not cash.  And then there does come a point where I’m like, “I’ve had this conversation before, I know how this is going to end and I also know I can help them.”

Andrea:  Yeah.  I think like you were talking about the Band-Aid on and that doesn’t really stop the bleeding.  I think that’s something that I had to see that for myself in order to get over that hump because when I realized that, when I was helping people for free or for very, very little money and giving a lot of way, I realized that they weren’t taking it as seriously.  They weren’t valuing it and truly doing something with it as much as people started to do once I started actually, you know, charging money.

Liz Dederer:  Well, I’ll offer the lens that they were valuing it as much as you were.

Andrea:  Yeah, absolutely.

Liz Dederer:  That’s in the amateur energy and it’s not bad.  We all have to start somewhere.  No one in social media with a thousand followers, you start with nobody.  Nobody starts in business with all these customers, you start with nobody.  Amateur is not a negative.  It just alliterative to answers, which is why I use that word because the amateur answers, the experts ask questions, you know.

Andrea:  Yeah.

Liz Dederer:  We don’t necessarily understand and appreciate the importance of the energy exchange of validation because it’s non quantifiable.  It’s not visible and there’s not like an actual calculation for it, so we don’t see it.  And we are in business for money, right?  We all have to eat.  It’s the resource, the tool, the evidence that we require in our modern day society.  

But with the energy exchange, it’s still valuable.  It’s so necessary so that when that time comes and you’re like, dress rehearsal is over, you’re totally standing as a confident and authoritative expert versus an empty suit.

Andrea:  Yes.  I really, really appreciate that distinction and I wonder if that, you know, sense of resentment when it starts to come up, if that might be an indication that it’s time to flip.

Liz Dederer:  Yes, yes.  That’s a great way to look at it.  That’s definitely the moment where you can start to step into why am I not owning my expertise or my favorite question is what if?  What if I did that conversation differently?  What if I showed up more in my expert zone versus amateur zone?  What if I started referring to myself as an expert?

Andrea:  So good.

Liz Dederer:  Who’s going to challenge you on that, like who’s going to challenge you on the fact that you’re an expert?

Andrea:  It’s such a hard thing to get over though.  I mean, it really is, and I think you’re absolutely right that the amateur really does need to have that validation, but you’re right.  There comes a point when it’s just, “Maybe, I really need to do this.  Maybe this really is my thing.”

Liz Dederer:  Uh-hmm.  I can stand in absolute confidence and go to toe-to-toe with anyone that I am hands down the best at sales.  I am an expert at sales for everyone, absolutely not.  I am the best at sales for the people I invested sales for.  That’s how you stand and own your expert energy.  You’re not _____ best across the world who ever lived ever.  That’s ego, right?  Expertise says I’m the best at what I specifically do for those that I specifically do it for.  I am an expert in that.

Andrea:  OK, so when you’re doing the Sales School for Entrepreneurs, are you helping people who are amateurs or people who are experts or people who are trying to get over that hump?  How did the people know whether or not they belong in that program?

Liz Dederer:  I’m helping everyone across the board.  I’ve got experts in there who just aren’t necessarily using their voice.  They aren’t necessarily speaking their value yet.  They’re still in sales energy, fear energy because they haven’t been taught or given permission that it’s OK to serve. 

Teaching amateurs for sure, who just had a great conversation with a woman yesterday who’s going to join our conversation creation challenge, which is a free Facebook group to help drum up more appointments on your calendar. And she’s at a really stage of infancy in her business, which is so exciting and she’s just so dripping and ready to learn that I was like, “Please come into this container, we’ll get your calendar booked, we’ll bump up your revenue and then when you’re ready you come play in Sales School.”  

And I was like, “I don’t wanna lose you because you’re an amateur and it comes across and you’ve got so much potential.”

Andrea:  Hmm, cool.

Liz Dederer:  Well, what we don’t work with are people who are just in it for sales, just in it for the money, just in it for kill, don’t have integrity, are not good at what they do, that doesn’t work.  The best people that we work with are those that really, really want to do good work in the world.  They want to help other people.  We can help them.  They’re great at what they do.  They want to be even better at what they do.  And they’re spending so much time getting better at what they do that they’re not spending any time doing it with clients or having conversations about it.  They’re just geeking out in their zone.  Those are the people I want to help because they’re really mad passionate about what they do.  That to me is sexy as hell.

Andrea:  Alright, so the Sales School for Entrepreneurs is it like a program with a certain end date or what is the basic structure of it?

Liz Dederer:  So, we do six weeks kind of cohorts.  We’ve got six week cohorts that run where it’s live training.  And we’re in the pilot mode.  It’ll launch officially in mid 2020.  So, right now, it’s the six week cohorts and then we have teaching Tuesdays and follow-up Fridays. 

To just kind of put this out there, overtime, it will be, you know, your sales don’t go away.  So, I don’t believe your training should either, so we will build in an extended membership component to it and it will likely look like some sort of lifetime membership. I’m still working out the details, but I’m just so crazy passionate about this and the students who are in are getting great results.  But it’s, “We’re gonna get in, we’re going to retrain your brain on how you think about sales, how you have the conversation.”  “You’re gonna get the scripts, the mindset, the words.”  “It’s all in this container and then I’m gonna support you on our follow-up Fridays,” which are kind of the students have been calling them, you know, office hours, just kind of open coaching calls where playing your sales questions to the call.  And I just coach you right on the spot.  

And I’ve literally had a student bring an in process sales situation to the table.  We repositioned her thinking around it and this was on a Friday, and by Tuesday she had doubled her rate with this client who was already in process and she closed it and it was done from Friday to Tuesday.

Andrea:  Awesome!  So, listener, if you’re wanting to get results like that, if you are thinking to yourself, Liz, sounds amazing, I would really like to work with her then follow the next step.  Liz, what’s the next step?

Liz Dederer:  The next step is go to a saleschoolforentrepreneurs.com and we have a waitlist in between sessions and that will trigger our team to reach out to you and have an actual conversation with a real person to see what’s going on, where are you in business, how can we meet you where you are, and support you the best.  It might look like the conversation creation challenge.  It might be some of our other free resources that we keep behind the scenes to get you going.  It might look like jumping in early to the next, you know, cohort, but that’s kicking off.

But we’re just so mad passionate about helping people make more money because I know what it’s like to be the really busy broke entrepreneur and it’s painful, especially when you’re really good at something.  And I just don’t want people to feel like that.

Andrea:  Hmm.  And Liz, if you had one thing that you could leave the audience with, the listener with, what sort of tip or a piece of advice would you have for somebody who really does want to have a voice of influence?

Liz Dederer:  I would say to them, again the expert asks questions and the amateur answers and a voice of influence does not have to look like complete sentences.  You can be crazy impactful by getting someone to think differently and that’s through the process of asking more questions and you can completely demonstrate your authority, expertise, genius influence by shifting the way someone’s thinking through really expert, intelligent questions.

Andrea:  Hmm, so good.  Alright, thank you so much, Liz, for joining us on the Voice of Influence podcast and sharing your voice of influence.  And listener if you have interest and any of this at all, please come to the voiceofinfluence.net.  We’re going to have the show notes available for you there with links to what Liz said and talked about, or go directly to her Sales School for Entrepreneurs, is that right?

Liz Dederer:  Yep, saleschoolforenterpreneur.com

Andrea:  Either one is just fine.  So, I know that this conversation is going to make a real difference in some people’s lives.  And so thank you so much, Liz.

Liz Dederer:  I’m so excited.  Thank you for having me!

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How to Manage Your Reputation in Times of Crisis with Bill Coletti

Episode 103

Bill Coletti is the CEO & Founder of Kith, a reputation management, crisis communications and professional development expert, keynote speaker, Wall Street Journal Risk & Compliance panelist, and best-selling author of Critical Moments: The New Mindset of Reputation Management.

Bill has more than 25 years of global experience managing high-stakes crises, issues management, and media relations challenges for both Fortune 500 companies and winning global political campaigns.

In this episode, we discuss what reputation management is and what it looks like when he helps companies achieve it, the four A’s of reputation management, some of the main mistakes companies make when they attempt to manage their reputation or they enter a reputation crisis, the role transparency plays in managing a reputation crisis, the three common reactions to a reputation crisis, how to help employees at every level the actions needed to obtain an organization’s desire reputation, and more!

Mentioned in this episode:

Play here (the red triangle below), on iTunes, Stitcher or TuneIn Radio (Amazon Alexa) or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Bill Coletti Voice of Influence Podcast Andrea Joy Wenburg

Transcript

Hey, hey!  It’s Andrea and welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast.  Today we have with us Bill Coletti who is a reputation management, crisis communications and professional development expert, keynote speaker, Wall Street Journal, Risk & Compliance panelist, and best-selling author of Critical Moments: The New Mindset of Reputation Management.

 

This is going to be interesting, folks.  He has more than 25 years of global experience managing high-stakes crises, issues management, and media relations challenges for both fortune 500 companies and winning global political campaigns, which is interesting.  Bill is the CEO and founder of Kith.

 

Andrea:  Bill, welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast.

 

Bill Coletti:  Andrea, it is my pleasure to be here and I’m looking forward to a great conversation.

 

Andrea:  Yeah.  OK, so what is Reputation Management and what does it look like when you’re actually helping companies or individuals achieve it?

 

Bill Coletti:  So, the beginning part of what we do at Kith is primarily crisis communications and crisis response.  A company finds themselves misaligned with public expectations.  And so think of United Airlines relative to the gentleman that they dragged off the plane or a credit card company or a bank that’s had a data breach, or a healthcare provider that is in the midst of litigation or some sort of lawsuit that’s there.

 

So, it’s a company that has somehow found themselves in the public eye and they’re misaligned with what the people expected them to do.  The pivot to that is reputation management is that how do you control and how do you manage this very, very intangible asset of a corporate reputation.  And we’ve introduced this concept of the 4As to allow corporations actually the ability to manage that.

 

So, we come in the door typically through crisis when companies find themselves misaligned and then we continue the relationship in this construct of, well, a “we don’t want to have to ever go through that again and how do we build a reservoir of goodwill,” or “We want to avoid that overall and never would sort of want to experience that again, but never for the first time.”  And “How do we use reputation management as a means to sort of grow the benefit of the doubt if something would to happen to us?”

Andrea:  Hmm.  So, you just mentioned your 4As, would you like to kind of go into that a little bit?

 

Bill Coletti:  Yeah.  So, there’s this concept that a lot of people may be familiar with in marketing called the 4Ps of marketing, it’s Price, Product, Place, Promotion.  It’s a pretty, you know, 1960s generation of thinking.  And so, I was sitting with a client in New York, we had just finished a crisis engagement.  They were through it and we’re now in the process of recovery after this crisis.  They had been subject to, you know, pretty withering media coverage for about 10 days and then we sort of found a solution and move forward.

 

And I was sitting with the CEO and the CEO said, “OK, I’ve heard you talk about reputation management before.  What do you mean?  What are you talking about?”   And so I tried to explain the concepts behind how we can try to get ahead of these issues that may impact our company moving forward.

 

And I was explaining it before I had developed the 4As and he said, “Oh, you mean like the 4Ps of marketing, price, product, place promotion,” because prior to that there was no such thing.  What it created was a structure for companies actually to assign resources as well as headcount to solve a marketing problem.  So you had someone responsible for price, for product, for placement and promotion.

 

And so the 4As that came out of that conversation, when I realized that most people think about the 4Ps, was to articulate this concept of what are the 4As.  And what I came up with is the structure of it begins with awareness.  Companies have to be aware of who they are, aware of their marketplace and to have a sense of sort of self-awareness much like we would to talk about in a human development context.

 

So, the first level is Awareness.  Can we pull it off?  How do we think about ourselves?  The second step is this notion of Assessment, which is asking others, both, asking your employees internally, asking stakeholders externally, asking your customers, asking regulators, and asking others that influenced your corporation.  So the first step is very much personal self-awareness, looking inside your company.  The second step is asking and having ongoing assessment of how we do and where do we stand in the context of reputation.

 

Then the third A is Authority.  And with authority is, is that once you’re self-aware and understand what your corporation has the capacity to do, you then understand what the public and your stakeholders expect of you.  You can then get authority and give yourself permission, the company permission to actually begin the process of developing reputation management initiatives.

 

And that authority certainly comes from senior leadership buy-in; it comes from asset allocation budget in order to execute it and then probably headcount in order to do that.  And so you need the authority from the organization to do it because too often CEOs and leaders that I work with sort of think about this as, “Oh yeah, yeah, that’s nice.  Let’s just write a bigger check to the United Way or let’s just write a bigger check to some organization.”

 

And so this notion of authority is you got to get buy-in from your leadership, but you also have to then make sure that you have more than buy-in, but actually budget and resources and whatnot.  And then in the model there is a hard blue line on top of those three things.  So from awareness, assessment, to authority and that hard blue line is to stop you from going to the final, the fourth A, which is Action.

 

Because too often consultants, PR firms, and myself 10 years ago would immediately run to action and say, “Well, you need to do this that’s the other thing.”  “You need to have a big sustainability program, you need to be able to talk about all the great things you’re doing for your employees.”  But if you’ve not gone through that journey and you jumped to action, and that’s why I put that a blue line separating the third step in the fourth step, is that the action is foolish.  It’s foolhardy.

 

And so, Andrea, I’m sure in the work that you do with your clients is that you’ve got folks and individuals that want to just immediately jump to action and don’t want to do the assessment.  They don’t want to be self-aware and they don’t want to give themselves permission to actually change.  And so, I think that that notion of don’t immediately jump to action, but let’s go through a little bit of a journey in order to turn the corner sort of resonate.  So, it works in a human context, but it also works in a corporate context.

 

Andrea:  Hmm, definitely.  There’s always a need for truly looking for the actual problem that’s there and finding the real solution before moving forward.  So, you said that one of the things that leaders tend to do is write a big check right away instead of really taking care of this in a sustainable kind of way.  What would be one of the biggest mistakes that you see leaders making sort of immediately when a crisis comes up?

 

Bill Coletti:  Yeah.  So two separate things, there’s in the crisis when the crisis comes up is one way a leader shows up.  And then the second way the leader shows up is actually how do they sort of develop reputation management.  And so the writing a big check is in the context of reputation management.  One of the biggest mistakes that I see companies make in a reputation management context is that this is easy, that you can get away with a tactic or a set of tactics and that could be write a big check or have an employee townhome meeting or, you know, do something that is good for the LBGTQ community or something like that.  It’s not one off, because people form opinions based on constant interaction with corporations over a long time.

 

So, the greatest challenge that I see companies take is that they’re looking for the silver bullet, the one thing that can kind of bring about that change from a reputation standpoint.  In a crisis, I think what I see, and it’s almost the polar opposite, where people tried to be too thoughtful for too long in a crisis while Rome is burning and stakeholders, the media and others are frustrated, you have to fill the vacuum with information as fast as you can.  So, there’s actually a polar opposite sort of in crisis.  You have a set of behaviors and then reputation management.  You have a set of behaviors and they’re almost at opposite ends of the perspective.

 

Andrea:  I know that one of the things that you talked about as seven levers that companies need to manage or to grow their reputations and that first one is transparency.  When it comes to that moment of crisis, some things, you know, are not going as planned.  There’s that misalignment with what people expect.  Maybe a lot of people inside or outside of the company do not understand what’s really going on, how much transparency is necessary on the front end at the very beginning to fill that vacuum?

 

Bill Coletti:  Yeah.  You know, transparency is directly related to authenticity and these are all sort of jargony buzzwords that we all sort of toss around that’s there.  And so if transparency in a crisis, it’s critical.  And transparency relates to authenticity.  So, for a preventable risk, something that has happened to accompany that there simply should be a zero tolerance support.

 

So, a meat company, a producer of ground beef or any meat and there are metal shavings in the ground beef, there should be zero tolerance for that.  That is absolutely preventable with the right amount of resources and the right amount of technology that can be avoided.  When that happens, the transparency comes in.  You simply have to apologize, fix it, and get back to normal as fast as you can.  And that’s where transparency comes in, is that “We’re sorry we made a mistake.”  “Here’s what happened.”  “Here’s what we’re doing to fix it and here’s how we’re going to get back to normal to try to earn your trust.”  And so that is very transparent.

 

That was not the typical response probably 10 to 20 years ago.  That was not the typical response.  Typical response was, “Let’s hope nobody finds out and sort of bury our head a little bit and we’ll just sort of fix the problem in a small scale way.”  “We’ll recall the product and move forward.”  I think the risk of getting kind of caught, if you will, is greater than the risk of transparency.  I think in a reputation context to people that are transparent; they gravitate to companies that are transparent, that are good to do business with, that are honest and open partners.

 

And so that’s the context of transparency.  It’s not oddly cathartic where every thought and feeling you have is broadcast on social media.  That’s not what I mean.  That’s kind of weird.  We all have kind of friends like that on Facebook.  That’s not what I’m talking about, but I’m talking about that companies do business in a way that is open and fair dealing and people are comforted by that.  While they might not be interested in it, they’re at least comforted by it.

 

Andrea:  I’m thinking of some situations that I’ve seen before where maybe a leader, I’m just taking this little step further, where there might be a leadership change at the top and people are wondering what’s going on or why, how much of that information, and it could be in a crisis situation, but how much of that information should people know, you know, employees or the public depending on how involved the public is with a particular leader.  Sometimes leaders have a very charismatic presence, so people are drawn to them and want to stick by them and that sort of thing.  How does a company deal with that sort of, I don’t know that attention, I guess, between how much do we share and how much do we not?

 

Bill Coletti:  Sure, and this is hypothetical, is it a sudden transition or is it a planned transition?

 

Andrea:  Probably sudden, yeah.

 

Bill Coletti:  Yeah, sudden.  So, I think we’re acutely seeing that in the context of MeToo.  I think we’ve seen a number of men particularly in leadership roles that are now no longer in leadership roles.  So it has been very, very sudden and these have been, you know, popular people, popular certainly within their small subset of their company.  But some people we’ve seen, you know, have been popular in a pop culture context.  The old adage and the old line that we’ve all seen a hundred times is that, you know, “Mr. X has decided to spend more time with his family.”  And that’s almost become kind of code for, “There’s something going on.  We don’t want to tell you about.”

 

And so I think that there are legal tensions.  We can’t call somebody out that said, “You know, Mr. X is no longer here because of these following transgressions.”  There’s disparaging clauses and there are all kinds of negotiated contracts that are there.  I think companies don’t really care or individuals, they’re curious about why this happened.  But I think what they really need to hear is from the new leader that said “What happened, happened,” but here transparently is how we are going to get better moving forward.”

 

So, sort of the People Magazine view of “Oh my gosh, what happened, give me the inside scoop?”  We’re all interested in that.  We’re all curious about it.  But I think scratching that itch is not very necessary.  I think the transparency comes in about the path forward and acknowledging that we’re in a situation of change, acknowledging it’s a change that we didn’t want to be in but it is a place that we’re going to get through and that’s where the transparency comes in.  It’s less about the voyeuristic, you know, who shot John or what happened in the events.  That open up to a litigation and legal risk, which is really unnecessary, and it’s frankly unfair to someone who’s going through a pretty bad, difficult situation to begin with.

 

Andrea:  OK, so you’ve been in the room with a number of people who are in the middle of crisis and a team dynamics.  You see these team dynamics sort of at play.  What is it like for you to walk into a room and try to assess where everybody’s at or how to meet people where they’re at, what are those team dynamics like?  What do you see when you move into a crisis situation with the leadership team?

 

Bill Coletti:  Yeah, it’s a great question, terrific question.  So, typical engagement starts with someone from the company where their head of communications to CEO, board member of general council calls and has an initial conversation and they say, “Here’s where we are and my ears are wide open from that moment forward.”  And that usually one person, maybe two people on the call and they’re all sort of sharing their perspectives.  From then, I’m really sort of taking mental notes of how is this information getting flowed to me.  What’s missing?  What are people hiding?  What do they not want to tell?

 

And it’s usually in that first call, we’ve not really been engaged but we’re pretty close to being engaged because a lot of our business comes from referrals, where people find themselves in crisis.  They do an initial call to make sure that I’m legit and then it moves to the next meeting, which is more than likely means, I jump on a plane in that afternoon and the next morning, we all gathered together and meet as a team.

 

There is a handful of different leadership responsibilities when I walk in.  So, there’s typically somebody from legal, typically somebody from operations, someone who actually does the work of whatever the enterprise does, someone from communications and then an executive leader.  And all four of those career choices, if you decide to be a lawyer or if you decide to do business or in business operations and, actually sort of do the work versus communications versus executive.

 

So, I have a gross general perception of those types of four archetypes just based on the career choices that I’ve made is that, you know, the communicators typically are looking for the silver lining and are looking for sort of the positive constructs that are there.  I think the general council are looking at the worst case scenario, you know, “What could go wrong?”  I think the people in operations are like, “What are you worried about, this is really normal.”  “Something broke.  We’re going to fix it and, we’re going to get back to business.”  The big wild card is the CEO, the leadership team that’s there and it really depends on their leadership archetype.  You know, who are they, where do they come from?

 

I believe in the adage that the crucible of crisis doesn’t develop your leadership, it reveals it.  And so I think when we see ourselves in situations, I really, really, really quickly try to size up the CEO.  I’ve recently used, I know you’re a fan of sort of the Sally Hogshead stuff and there’s a Gallup’s StrengthFinders, while we certainly don’t have time to do any sort of, you know, an assessment in a real time situation like that is that I do try to use some sort of paradigm archetype to quickly sort people because it just sort of helps me interact with them.

Because what I did earlier in my career was I would just sort of walk in and say “I’m in charge, here’s what we’re doing, step 1, step 2, step 3.”  And that will work in a fire.  You know, if you’re in a fire, you don’t really care about the personality of the firefighter, you just want to be told what to do and how to get out safely and you want them to fight the fire.  But if it’s smoldering or not actively burning, if you will, that’s when it’s really beneficial.  And that’s where I found great benefit of sort of understanding the dynamics of the individuals in the room.

 

But there are times where you just got to go in and say, “Here’s what we’re going to do and we’ll deal with the casualties kind of afterwards.”  It’s there.  I don’t know if that directly answered your question, but as it develops, I try to look at some sort of personality traits or some sort of paradigm to help sort people because that’s really, really valuable to let me empathize.  But also, let me sort of, you know, lead with passion and cajole people into doing things that they might not necessarily want to do.

 

Andrea:  Hmm.  And I really think that when you have a voice of influence, you are trying to meet people where they are, not just trying to bring them to where you are.  And so that’s sounds to me like sort of the epitome of that, like trying to figure out where are they and how can I meet them there.  That seems very, very important.

 

Bill Coletti:  It is, but it’s time-bound.  And I would ask you as you’re imagining situations like that and the people that you serve and you’re trying to help them, it’s usually in a committee meeting as they are planning the next event and it’s a little bit slower paced as opposed to something like this.  So, I’ve got to cheat the process.  I’ve got to short circuit things in order to do that.  I’m glad to hear you say yes.  That it is different than if I’m meeting with my team to perform our quarterly task or an annual, you know, major goal that we have versus, you know, “We’ve got to get back to a reporter by 4 o’clock and I don’t even have any idea what happened.”  Those are two different paradigms.

 

Andrea:  Hmm, definitely.  Have you always been good in a crisis?  How did you know that this was, you know, your thing?

 

Bill Coletti:  Yeah.  I don’t know about always.  I always try to improve and get better at it.  I think I have had a leadership trait and I’ve always used that and from elementary and middle school and manifested itself in student government and things like that.  I sail and I enjoy sailing and they say that sailing is, you know, hours of boredom with moments of stark terror.  And I tried to stay calm in those situations, so I don’t know about always.  I think the stakes are a little bit different when you’re in sixth grade versus now.  But I don’t recall having big shifts or swings of panic or concern and my dad is amazing 95 years old and still alive.

 

You know, I’ve watched him and he has a little bit of a higher drama panic meter than I do.  So, it has been really nice to watch that and try to do the opposite of it.  Not in a disparaging way, but just try to craft myself and to craft the way I show up in a little bit of a different way than the way I’ve seen it.  So, I manifest with him in our sailing that we did as a family.

 

Andrea:  Sure.  I think there’s a little bit of that some people just kind of tend to shut down in a crisis, others really kind of dial up.  It’s almost like the spidey senses turn on and so I was just kind of curious, I assume that that’s kind of how it goes for you.

 

Bill Coletti:  Well, I would add in so typical is that third is just panic.  One is that spidey sense is awesome.  I want people in the room that are intuitive see things and have centers of influence where they can learn really well.  So, there’s the shutdown, which is, “Oh my God, this is the worst thing ever.”  And we never hear from them again, the spidey sense folks in the middle love that analogy.  But there are also folks that just chicken a little and are freaking out in every little thing and those two extremes have very little use.  And there are subcategories underneath that.  But I think you hit on something with those two and then we add the third.  But I think those are the three general ways I see people show up.

 

Andrea:  Yeah, yeah.  What foundational things do you think that companies should do or provide to really ensure that whatever the reputation is that they’re trying to establish, that it actually reaches the frontline employee in service or sales.  The people that are actually, you know, face to face with customers, how do you hope that reach all the way down?

 

Bill Coletti:  Yeah, so a clear and simple articulation of mission and values.  What do we stand for as a company?  And that is most personified by the voice of the CEO.  And so, I think getting CEO voice right and then once you get it and you think you got it right repeat it over and over and over again so that that line employee simply gets it.  But more importantly, the manager of that line employee really, really gets it.  And that people are empowered for reputation management standpoint to make smart decisions not simply follow the rules that are there.

 

And so, there’s a famous marine corps general named, Krulak, and Krulak articulated the concept of the strategic corporal.  And basically what that is, is that his theory was that the frontline of the marines at the actual front have more impact on American foreign policy than any policy or strategy decision that’s made.  That frontline person shows up like a jerk that is going to have more impact on what we do.

 

So, Krulak’s law, pushing that down into the organization and the concept of the strategic corporal is, it’s one thing for the counter clerk at McDonald’s, which is the equivalent of, you know, the fighting marine on the grunt, if you will, on the very front line.  What you need is, yes, frontline is important, but what you really need is that strategic corporal or that store manager for them to really get it.  That’s what really, really critical.

 

And I don’t want to disparage the frontline because I think we’ve all been there and in that early first jobs that we’ve had, but I think the way that that gets pushed down is mission and values articulated by the leadership, by the CEO specifically, but then for that strategic corporal, that person at the second round, if you will, having them have it dialed in is sort of the best way to push it down to the organization.  It’s not a memo, a webinar, or a podcast or anything like that.  It is the embodiment of that in the individuals that are the strategic corporal at the frontline.

 

Andrea:  Great!  Thank you so much, Bill.  How can the listener find you?  Where should they go to find your book, Critical Moments?

 

Bill Coletti:  Awesome!  Well, kith.ceo is the website of our firm.  I’m really active on LinkedIn.  I try to publish some content weekly about crisis and reputation management on LinkedIn.  So, those are two really good places and then I’m just kind of old fashioned email, bcoletti@kith.ceo.  So, our website is the great portal to find us.  LinkedIn is a great resource and I read emails still.

 

Andrea:  Great!  And we will certainly put all of that in the show notes.  Any last words that you would want to share with leaders who are wanting to have a voice of influence in time of crisis?

 

Bill Coletti:  I think to kind of really do what you suggest, learn who you are as an individual and play your strengths.   Not everyone has to be good in a crisis because we need players in the B team, the second round.  And I don’t mean that B is less than A, but I think the important thing is that when you show up in a crisis, understand what your strengths are and understand how you react.  I think the simplest, best advice I give folks that find themselves in corporations to do this is read the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times and just say, “If that had happened to us, how would we react?”

 

So, if companies or if individuals do that and maybe a brown bag lunch type of thing and say, “Hey guys, if this had happened to us, here’s an article.”  “If this had happened to us, what would we do?”  Simple best actionable advice that’s there after that, get to know yourself and know how you’re going to show up because that notion of the crucible of crisis doesn’t develop your leadership, it reveals it.  And so you want to like what you see when it gets revealed.

 

Andrea:  Great!  Thank you so much for sharing your voice of influence with our listeners.

 

Bill Coletti:  Thank you very much!

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How to Unite Your Team With An Anthem

Episode 102

It should be a goal of every corporate leader to get their employees to buy into the company’s mission and brand. Yet, the further you get down the line, the more difficult it becomes to do that. You end up with people who don’t feel like they have a purpose within the organization and then they’re there just for the paycheck.

In this episode, I explain how you can help your employees feel like they have a purpose and a voice within your organization by creating and utilizing a team anthem specifically for your customer service team. I also explain what a team anthem is, the three reasons we utilize team anthems with our clients, how to create your team anthem, and more!

Mentioned in this episode:

Play here (the red triangle below), on iTunes, Stitcher or TuneIn Radio (Amazon Alexa) or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Voice of Influence Andrea Joy Wenburg

Transcript

Hey, hey!  It’s Andrea and welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast.  One of the things that we often talk to people about is brand awareness and the opportunity that people on, sometimes, the frontlines or throughout the company have to be able to truly represent and embody their brand.

That is something that leaders usually want.  They want everybody in the company to be on board and buy into the mission, the vision, and the values of the company.  And yet, it’s very easy, the further you get down the line in terms of seniority to end up with people who feel less than excited about the brand, less than committed to the company and the company’s success where it might just feel like a job.  It just feels like a job to them that they want to maintain to get paycheck, which is a legitimate reason to have a job.

But there’s something significantly missing when there are people in your company who work at your job just to have a job, something significantly missing for them and for you.

One of the most important things for us to remember when you are a leader is that the people around you want to know that they have a purpose.  They want to know that their voice matters.  If their voice doesn’t matter within the company or with your customers then it’s just a job.  However, if they find purpose and meaning and believe that their voice really does matter then they’re going to have a different level of investment into the success of the mission and vision and values of the company.

One of the things that we do is work with individuals on their own voice of influence, so helping people to really believe that their voice does matter to find their authentic voice so that they can make a difference.  So that their advice can be _____, so that their expertise can be accepted and utilized, and so that their leadership can be followed.

When people are searching for their voice of influence, one of the tools that we utilize is the Fascinate Assessment in order to be able to help people kind of understand how the world sees them, how they are perceived by others.  It is a fairly simple assessment, which is what I love about it because I love the really in depth stuff but at scale.  In depth is very difficult to apply and utilize fully.

The Fascinate Assessment has just enough meat on the bones that it can really make a significant impact.  But it’s also simple enough that people can take it real quick and then have some results right away and come up with what they call a personal brand anthem, something that would help them to remember what their purpose is.  And so this is an assessment that we use and I love the terminology, the anthem.

So, we have applied this idea of having an anthem to the importance of having one as a team.  A personal anthem would be based on your personal purpose.  The things that you’re particularly good at or what you bring to the table that is significant and that others need to know about how other people really see you when you’re at your best, but what about the team as a whole?

A lot of times companies have, you know, values and mission statements and things are super important to the DNA of the company and you want to maintain that throughout every bit of the company.  But what about teams?  You know, sometimes a team needs to have their own sense of identity.  Why does our team in particular matter?

And it’s interesting, but customer service can tend to feel like it sort of everybody wants to be important.  Everybody wants the customer experience to be good, but at the same time it has historically been sort of these are the people that are taking care of the hard stuff and they’re dealing with the hard conversations.  They’re just cleaning up the messes and that sort of thing.

The problem with that is that if you are hiring people to participate in customer service and you want them to do a good job, then you’re trying to hire people that care.  You’re trying to hire people that would be good with people and that sort of thing.  Those are all very important things.

But if they don’t have a personal connection to the purpose, to the vision, to the mission of the company, if they don’t see how they fit in as a team, as a customer service team that matters to the bottom line, that matters to the leadership of the company, if they don’t feel like they really matter, then whether they mean to or not, whether you mean to or not, they’re going to end up feeling as though they don’t really matter.

I’ve spoken with a number of managers or customer service teams or call centers who feel as though the bigger company and the leadership of the company doesn’t respect the fact that their frontline customer service people need to understand what’s going on in the company.

So when there is a strategic initiative that starts or when marketing is going to take a turn or a new product is going to come into play, many times the customer service team is the last one to know about these changes, which is unfortunate because they’re often the one place that customers actually have contact with the company itself.

One of the very first or most important voices of your company is your customer service team.  And if they don’t sense that from you, if they’re not getting that sense or they’re not truly connected to the bigger purpose, mission, vision of the company then it becomes more difficult for them to really truly embody it and represent your company well.

So, today we’re going to talk a little bit about creating a team anthem for your customer service team.  Why we do this?  Why is this a piece of what we help companies to do and how can you do it for yourself?  So we’re going to start here with an anthem.

So an anthem, let’s think about this in terms of a national anthem.  So the United States National Anthem, the Star-Spangled Banner is played on a regular basis at ball games and sporting events and political gatherings and all kinds of places that is played on a regular basis.  Why is that and what is it about an anthem that is so important?

Well, we got three things here.  So first of all, an anthem is really, really important for providing perspective.  When an anthem is played before a competition, there is a sense of we are all together under this anthem, under this one nation and we are a part of this bigger story.

There is perspective to be gained when we take a step back and say, “Wait a second, this is what we’re all about.  This is where we came from.  This is where we’re headed, this is what we stand for,” that sort of thing.  So, having perspective and understanding that in the moment of the fight, in the moment of that point of a competition where things get really intense prior to that you’ve said that moment is important.  But overall we’re on the same team.  And when we can say that, then those little moments though they might be intense and people might fight really hard to come out the winner.  That’s great.

But bringing that sense of perspective allows people to remember that they’re really a part of something bigger than themselves.  And this is not just about me and winning this competition, but who we are as a people and where we come from is really important.  And that we don’t have to compete on that in particular.  The anthem reminds athletes who and what they’re actually representing.  This is about something bigger than ourselves.

So, when we offer people an anthem, when they have an anthem to rally around, then that helps them to gain a perspective about what we’re all about, where we come from and the fact that this is about a bigger story, this is about more than me, “I am not the only piece of this puzzle that matters, but I am a piece of the puzzle that does matter.”

And that brings us to point number two.  A good anthem calls out our identity.  Who do we say that we are as a people, as a company, as a nation, who do we say that we are?  In the United States National Anthem, the Star-Spangled Banner, at the very end you hear a very clear “This is who we are.  We are the land of the free, so we are free and we are a home of the brave.”

So, this is where you can really find a place when you are brave.  You are brave and you are free and that piece of identity at the end of the national anthem, every time it is sung, every time a whole huge crowd or every time that we hear “The land of the free and the home of the brave” and that is belted out at the end and we all rally around that sound, those words.  It’s an amazing opportunity for people to f to be reminded of their identity and who we are.  This is important.  I am important.  I can be brave and I am free.

Then finally number three an anthem provides, I don’t know if you’d call it motivation or really a sense of purpose.  So perspective and identity and purpose, they all sort of come together.  They come together to help people to feel like they know, “OK this is what we’re all about.  This is where we come from, this is what we’re all about and this is what I’m here to provide.  This is how I show up.  I show up as brave, I show up as free, I show up with respect that sort of thing.

So when a company adapts this idea of having an anthem, a good anthem is going to provide those three things; it’s perspective, a sense of identity, and a very clear purpose.  This is where we come from.  This is who we say we are and this is what we say we’re all about an anthem, for even a team like a customer service team is going to bring all those three things to bear.  It is going to make sure that those three things are hit on so that the team can rally around this anthem and have that sense of identity and perspective and purpose.

But what happens when there’s an anthem and there is a sense of discrepancy between what the anthem says and what people are seeing in their company or in their country.  When they see an anthem, when they’re hearing an anthem and they hear these words like respectful invitation or, you know, freedom and bravery and these values or these words that really call out something really beautiful and important and purposeful.  And then they look at the company or they look at the country and they say, “But that’s not what I’m seeing here.  I’m seeing a discrepancy between who we say that we are and what we’re actually doing.”

You’ve probably been quite aware of some of the controversial ways that the anthem in particular of the United States National Anthem has been used to discuss this and bring up conversation about the discrepancy that athletes are seeing between the anthem itself and what they’re seeing in the way that it plays out for equality.  And the way that some of these people have chosen to address this or to bring this discrepancy to light is to kneel during the anthem instead of stand, which is an interesting way to do it.

There are lots of different perspectives on this and having had grandparents or relatives that have served in the military almost giving their lives or giving their lives for the country, I can understand the depth of intense feelings that people have around this issue.  And yet I think it’s important that we always look at, especially for if you’re going to have a voice of influence, you going to be able to take perspective.  You got to be able to look at the way that other people are seeing the world as well.

So, why would somebody kneel during the national anthem?  Is it possible that they actually do respect the national anthem and they respect the many ways that people have contributed or sacrificed for the freedoms in the country so much that they see that there’s a need to do it even better.  They see discrepancies between that freedom that we proclaim in the national anthem that people have fought for and what they’re actually seeing in real life.  And this is a way that they are choosing to bring this to light.

So the point for a company is that there are going to be times that even if you do create an anthem or if you have a set of values that you say, you know, on a big scale mission, vision, values for the company.  And those get down to the people who are on those front lines that you get down to the customer service folks and they look around and they say, “Yeah, but I’m not seeing that here and I’m not seeing that here.”

How would you like them to handle the discrepancies that they see?  Do they have an opportunity to share their voice, to help make the communication or the anthem that of the company actually get everybody aligned underneath of it so that it’s not saying something that’s not true about your company because if values aren’t aspirational, I don’t know what they are.

Obviously, they’re not going to be perfect in a sense an anthem should be calling out what’s already present, the strengths that are already there in your company or in your customer service team or in you as an individual.  But if people are seeing discrepancies, they should see discrepancies.  What should they do with those discrepancies?  What do you want them to do about it?  Do they have the opportunity to really voice their concerns and make a difference?  Does their voice matter?

So, as you’re thinking about an anthem and giving people an anthem, it’s not something that you actually create for other people.  Instead, it works so much better if a team gets together to create their own anthem because then they do have a voice.  When you do have that company mission, vision, values and then try to get it to filter out through the whole company; different sites, different divisions, different teams, it’s good to have all that but it’s even better when a team can come underneath of that and in alignment with what you’ve already created be able to get even more specific about who they are as a team and who they are as an individual.

When they do that, you’re going to find that the people, the individuals have a clear sense of what they bring to the table, their own sense of perspective, identity and purpose and that they see how that connects with their teams sense of perspective, identity and purpose and then they see how their team fits into the strategic mission, vision, and values of the company then things feel more aligned.

People don’t see as many discrepancies or when they do, they have a better sense of what to do with those discrepancies when they come up.  So as for the technical pieces of an anthem besides this general sense of perspective, identity and purpose, how do you do that?  What process can you go through to take your people through this opportunity to find an anthem for your team?

There are different ways that you can do this.  There are different people that have different systems that give you one word or give you a set of values or give you whatever.  There are lots of different ways that you could do this.  And the basic concept is that you want them to be very, very clear on the perspective, identity and purpose.

The way that we do it with companies when we do a voice of influence program for like a customer service team or a sales team is we go in and we identify the strengths of the team itself.  People take the fascinate assessment and we give people the opportunity to create their own anthem and then from there, their own anthem in the Fascinate Assessment is like an adjective and a noun.  It’s what you do best and how you do it.

So for example, empowering expression is one of the pieces of my personal anthem.  So when I walk into a room, I’m thinking to myself, “This is what I bring to the table.   I bring empowering expression.  This is the perspective that I have. This is where I come from.  I know in my own mind and heart just the background of why that’s important to me and what I’ve done to be able to get to the point where I can actually help people with that.  I know that’s my identity.  This is who I am, this is what I provide.  But it’s also my purpose.”

I can help people by helping them be able to express themselves.  And when I have that as my main mission, when that becomes the goal then most other things tend to fall into place because I’m very, very focused on what I can bring to the table.  I’m very, very focused on my anthem.

When it comes to with voice of influence, and our anthem is Voice of Influence, what we have chosen to do is to take that same model, the adjective and the noun and create four or five different adjectives, noun phrases that would describe different pieces of who we say that we are and what we’re all about.  And by doing that then we use a one sentence to describe that to make it very clear and then we use a question to ask, “Are we really doing that?  How does this actually play out? Is this a thing that we can actually do?  Are we doing it well?”

And so that is the basic format of the team anthem that we help teams create.  You can do that on your own or if you need help with that, we could certainly help.  But that is so important for people to be able to come together to create this together.  And once you have an anthem, you can utilize the anthem to create a system of checks and balances to create a system of accountability if you’d like to incorporate it into your personal reviews, personal reviews for the person.

If culture and tribe and getting everybody together to be aligned with that mission, vision, and values of your company is important to you then spending time on an anthem, spending time on giving people a voice, helping people to find their own voice and to be able to connect it to the voice of your company is so worth it.  Because in the end you’re going to get more buy-in and you’re going to get more engagement.

When people really feel like they understand the perspective of what this company is about, where they came from, what your company says that they are, who they are and who they are as a team within the company and then their purpose.  When they know that your purpose and their purpose are connected, they’re going to be motivated to be able to do more and really truly embody the brand of your company.

If you’d like any more information about creating an anthem, you can find more information on our show notes at voiceofinfluence.net/99 and folks that means that next time it will be Episode 100 for the Voice of Influence podcast and we are celebrating here on our team.  We’re very excited about Episode 100.  So in that episode, I’m going to be back again to share with you what we have distilled over the past two years, two plus years of interviews and working with clients, working with individuals on their voice of influence.  What are the six main elements of a Voice of Influence?  Why are they so important?

Clarity around these things changes the game.  When you are wanting to a difference, you need to know the six elements for yourself and for helping your team know these six elements for themselves.  If you’re looking for emerging leaders to come up and come up the ranks in your company, this episode is for you.  You’re going to want to hear it.  We’re excited to share it with you next time and until then, until Episode 100.  Go and find an anthem for your team and go make your voice matter more.

Posted on

Six Elements of a Voice of Influence®

Episode 100

We’re celebrating today because it’s episode 100 of the Voice of Influence® podcast! Our team is thrilled with where we’ve been and we’re excited for where we’re going with the show in the years to come!

In today’s show I share the ways the podcast has shifted and what has remained the same since the beginning. Then I discuss one of our biggest ah-ha’s from interviewing guests, the six elements of a Voice of Influence, so you can utilize the framework for yourself.

To get you started, here are a few examples of episodes where we address each of the six elements:

Your Purpose (or Passion)

Your Style

Your Message

Your Offering

Your Strategy

Your Community

Play here (the red triangle below), on iTunes, Stitcher or TuneIn Radio (Amazon Alexa) or wherever you listen to podcasts.


Transcript

Hey, hey!  It’s Andrea and you are listening to Episode 100 of the Voice of Influence podcast.

Your voice matters, but you can make it matter more through our in-depth conversations with leaders and experts.  You’ll learn what it takes to move your audience with your message at home, work, and in the world.  It’s compelling communication strategy brought to you by your host, Author, Speaker, and Strategist, Andrea Joy Wenburg.  Welcome to Voice of Influence!

Welcome, welcome!  I am so glad that you’re here with us today.  It’s a kind of a day of celebration.  We’ve made it to Episode 100, and it’s been just over two years and about two or three months since we started the Voice of Influence podcast and we’ve made it to Episode 100, so fun.  So, thank you so much for being here, for listening, and for engaging.  We appreciate it.  We value you and your voice, and we really believe that your voice matters.

Over the course of the last couple of years, we have shifted, tried to figure out what exactly we’re doing with the podcast.  I’m typically not somebody who makes up her mind and just goes for it and sticks with the same exact thing the whole entire time.  Rather, we really believe in making iterations as we go.

And so as we started the podcast, we were really focused on the personal brand and personal brand strategy, which is still really important to the work that we do with people and the people that we’re hoping will listen to the podcast.  So, we’re talking about people who are really wanting to understand who they are and how they portray themselves to the world, how you are able to provide a presence that it will leave an impact, and that has remained the same.

What has shifted over the course of the last couple of years, especially in the last year and a half or so is that we’ve also added in this idea of service and leading teams and having a bigger impact on business in general.  But, really, it all comes back down to who you are as a person, what you believe about your voice, what you have been called to do, or feel a sense of purpose to do, finding meaning in your life and going after it.

And I tell you what, when it really comes down to it, it’s about putting yourself on the line for others, going that extra mile, being willing to sacrifice something of yourself in order to achieve something that is bigger, in order to put yourself in a position where you can have influence in a bigger way.  And when we’re talking about influence, we’re talking about influence that is ethical, influence that is not manipulative, but that helps other people to find their path that helps other people to make good decisions.

Sometimes that really looks like bringing clarity and helping people to see the big picture.  Sometimes that means giving advice, sometimes it could be providing an experience.  There are all kinds of ways that we can have influence and make a difference with who you are with your expertise, with what you have to provide.

But when it comes down to it, like I said before, it costs something.  It costs the person, you.  It costs you something to offer it because there are things at stake.  There are often things at stake.  There are things like relationships at stake.  There are things like your ego at stake.  I mean the idea of failing in front of other people, gosh, you know when you’re voice of influence when you’re putting yourself out there and you’re going for it and offering who you are to others.  Very often you’ll fail.  You will be rejected by others and it’s just part of life.  It’s part of what it means to lead and to be a leader, to be a voice of influence.

And so, I just want to say thank you first of all, for being a voice of influence.  Thank you for being willing to put yourself on the line for your cause for other people, to love other people really well.  I know that that comes at a cost to you personally and I just want to thank you for your courage and for taking risks.  And I hope that somehow along the way we have been able to provide for you a companion, perhaps a little bit of guidance on this journey of finding and owning and using your voice of influence.

Well, today we’re going to talk a little bit more in depth about what we consider to be a voice of influence here at our company.  We have a number of models, of frameworks, things like this.  This is one thing that I have found over the course of the last few years that I’m actually really good at.  And that is to help bring order to chaos, so, where there are lots of ideas or we’re trying to figure out how to solve a problem.  I love to help companies; individuals bring order to that process.

So, for example we the model of engagement, the A2 Model of Engagement and sometimes I call it A2, I don’t know.  I haven’t nailed that one down yet, but an A2 model of engagement, which is about how do you find context and understand where people are at in terms of engagement. And we do that in the context of agency and agreement, and I would love to explain that to you sometime if you want it, but it’s pretty darn hard to do that over a podcast episode.

So, send me an email if you’re interested in learning more about the A2 Model of Engagement and how I talk about that in keynotes and in breakout sessions or training sessions.  I’d love to visit with you about that.  You can send me an email at andrea@voiceofinfluence.net, and I’d be happy to schedule that with you.

But today, we’re going to talk about the Voice of Influence elements.  These are six things that over the course of the past few years as we’ve been putting together our thought leadership around voice of influence, these are the elements that we believe are absolutely necessary to dive into, understand, and get a grasp of for yourself when you’re wanting to be a voice of influence.

And as we are moving forward on the podcast, we want you to know that the way that we are structuring the podcast and the conversations that we’re having, the things, the insights that we share, the stories that we share are going to have to do with these six categories, these Six Elements of your Voice of Influence. And that’s how they fit together.  This is how it all fits together.  And it all also, as I mentioned previously, fits together under this idea of influence and service.

So, whether that’d be customer service or serving as a leader, we are serving other people and offering our voice of influence.  And so, in that process then these things all relate to all of those kinds of interactions.

Your Purpose

So let’s talk about these six elements.  We’re going to dive in.  The first one is your PURPOSE.  Your purpose could also be called your passion, but this is really about why you care.  It is so fundamental and important to have a sense of purpose, to give you meaning, to give you a reason to, you know, go that extra mile to get over that hump, to walk through the fire that you’re going to walk through in order to really offer what you have to offer well.  Having that sense of purpose and knowing why you care is incredibly important.

We’ve talked about this in a number of episodes.  I am going to a link in our show notes.  We will link to different episodes that have tackled some of these elements so that you can easily go back and see where we’ve already covered some of these things.  For now, just know that purpose is about why you care.  You need to know your purpose and have a purpose.  Whether it’d be something that you feel like is your own purpose and calling and that sort of thing, or if it’s something that you can align yourself to.

A lot of times when we’re working in a company, for a company, their purpose, the company’s purpose may not be exactly what our purpose is or what your passion, where your passion lies and that sort of thing.  But as long as it aligns with your purpose, as long as it fits together with what you care about, then you can still harness the power that comes with having a purpose and be able to utilize that.  So, the first category then is having a purpose.

Now, the Purpose at Voice of Influence is to help connect people’s gifts and expertise with the need in the world.  So, people and companies helping them connect what they have to offer with the need that is in the world.  That is something that drives us so that is incredibly important when it comes to what we do and why we care.  We see the need in the world.  We see your gifts, your talents, your expertise, and we’re saying, “Let’s figure out how to connect that.”  “I do not like dizzy thing go unconnected.”  So, we love to help make those connections with folks, so your purpose.

Your Style

And then your STYLE is the second element.  This is about how you show up.  What is the way that you do this?  How do you show up?  It’s kind of your personality.  Sometimes it has to do with your gifting, but certainly, the way that you show up in your personality.  The thing that we find that is so important about style is that folks often feel like they shouldn’t be the way that they are, or they don’t want to fully own who they are inside and then it doesn’t show up on the outside.  And it just really depends on the person, OK?

So, there’s a spectrum of different ways that we handle this, but let’s say on one side of the spectrum, there are people who want to be chameleons and sort of fit in with everybody else because we’re afraid of standing out.  We’re afraid of looking like we want to have attention, that sort of thing.  But maybe we do want attention or maybe we don’t want attention, but we need to receive attention in order to get a message out.

So, style and how we show up then for that person could mean owning who they are and showing up in a bigger way.  For somebody else, on maybe the other side of the spectrum, it could be that they are so out there and they beat everybody to the punch.  They are bigger than life and almost to the point where they’re covering up.  On the outside, they’re so big and flamboyant or extreme on the outside that they’re covering up something very, very intimately fragile on the inside.  And that fragileness on the inside then doesn’t have a chance to come out because it’s being covered up by a show.

Now, there are all kinds of people in between or perhaps on even further in different directions; who knows.  But how you show up authentically as yourself and knowing who you are being that person with others and then also at the same time being able to communicate and meet people where they are.  This is an interesting delicate kind of a balance.

It really comes down to being authentic.  It comes down to knowing who you are, being that person with others and caring about them enough that you don’t have to be you.  You know that you can make adjustments in order to meet somebody where they are.  So, the person who is naturally maybe loud, let’s say, like I’m naturally more of a sharer, there are times when I have to be quiet in order to meet somebody where they are, because they’re not going to share as much if I just start sharing.

So, there is this interesting balance that we have to kind of consider when it comes to being authentic, owning our voice, but at the same time doing it for the sake of others means being authentic to ourselves while at the same time meeting them where they’re at.  And that can be difficult but it is achievable.  You can do that.

And what I found with my own personal style is that I do tend to be dramatic.  I tend to be deep and intense.  I talk about all these things in my book UNFROZEN: Stop Holding Back and Release the Real You. I really went through a lot of struggle in my own life to figure out what was real about all of that and what wasn’t real or wasn’t me.

What I found is that when I’m feeling tension inside, when I’m feeling fear inside, when I’m feeling shame internally and that is unresolved inside of me, then I’m going to end up showing up as something that I’m not.  I’m going to show up in a way that is more self-protective.  That is more about me taking care of me and my ego than it is about loving others and serving them.

When it comes to our style, Voice of Influence, one of the ways that we know that we’re in-step with who we are in our style and how we’re showing up is if we’re not feeling that tension, if we are feeling free to be able to offer and love well.  So that’s something that you can consider for yourself, your style, if you’re feeling that tension.

If you’re feeling resentment and anger and sometimes righteous anger is legitimate and you should consider that as something that maybe is more of a passion or a purpose.  But when it’s indignation, when it’s, “Uh, I cannot believe they would do that,” that sort of thing.  Look, these are things that indicate that you are not totally resolved inside to be able to show up in a way that is true to who you really are and what you really want, which is to serve others well, to love them well, and to fulfill your purpose.

Your Message

And so this is Purpose, why you care; Style, how you show up.  And then MESSAGE, these are the words that you say.  Words that you say and how you show up are both part of your message truly.  But when it comes down to it, you actually need real words to be able to say, “You need to know what exactly you’re trying to communicate.”  “You need to know what your core message is.”  It’s one of the first things that we started doing at the Voice of Influence was to help people find their core message and get clear on the fact that you have to have a tiny message at the top, something that is specific and helpful to somebody else in order to be able to bring a bigger message behind it.

And so I call that the arrowhead alignment of a message, and we have talked about that some on the podcast.  So, I will make sure to link to an episode in the show notes on that one.  It’s about being really clear on what you’re going to say about your message, you know, what is it that you’re actually going to say?  One of the hardest things I think for people who tend to be more creative or passionate is that they might have a lot of different ideas, a lot of different things that they care about.  And it’s hard to narrow it down.  It’s hard to get more clear.  But if you’re wanting to come across as clear, you’re going to have to get clear for yourself.

And so, finding those words that you say are super important and the core message of Voice of Influence is when you align your voice or what you do and what you say with who you are, you will have more connected relationships and a bigger impact in the world.  That is the core of what we’re saying.  We are very clear on the fact that we want to help people get to that point where they can align what they do and what they say with who they are because that is where they’re going to find their voice of influence.

We also have other messages and you should have other messages that you’re really wanting to convey that you, you know, feel like are really important to you.  And we’re going to talk about having an anthem or a real clear set of values in Episode 102, so I’ll be working out for that one.  We’re going to be talking about what it means to have additional messages that are core to who you are and what you’re bringing as a team or what you’re bringing as an individual.  So we’ve talked about your Purpose, which is why you care; your Style, which is how you show up; your Message, which are the words that you say.  So we’re halfway done.

Your Offering

We’ve gotten down your OFFERING, what you can do to help.  All of these things, words are just words.  If you do not have something to offer, if you are not actually doing something for others, if you’re not putting out something that others can actually, you know, use or listen to or if you’re not serving them in some way, if there is no offering, then it makes it really hard to communicate a message.

A message in and of itself is nothing until you actually put it into some sort of creative contribution that you’re making to the world.  And so the question then becomes, what is your offering?  What can you do to actually help?  With Voice of Influence, our offerings have to do with training and coaching and strategy and these sorts of things.  And so we have a number of different offerings including the Voice of Influence Academy that allows us to draw from different teachings and different trainings that we have in order to create custom programs for our clients.

The Voice of Influence Academy is one of our offerings, but so is coaching and so as group coaching and the Fascinate Assessment and a number of different things that are aligned with our message and our style and our purpose.  And we want to encourage you to find an offering that aligns with who you are. And with offering, it may mean that you have to say no to other things in order to be able to do the thing that you really should be doing, that you really feel called to do.

While many of us have many opportunities to say yes to this committee and that nonprofit and this one and that and, “Oh my goodness, there are so many opportunities to serve in the world.”  And if you haven’t found those, if you haven’t found opportunities to serve or places that you can offer your gifts, even aside from your work, then I would encourage you to open up your mind to the possibility that there are a lot of opportunities out there and that you have to just go out and start to explore those and see them for yourself.

But because you have a specific voice of influence, you’re not just doing everything.  Instead, you’re going to need to narrow it in a little bit and make some decisions on what is going to be most in line with who you are with your purpose, your style, and your message.  OK, so now let’s figure out what you want to offer.

Your Strategy

Then the fifth element is STRATEGY.  This is about how you share your offering.  Now, in some situations it just means getting a job.  It just means getting the right job.  But really it doesn’t just mean, “OK, now I’m on this committee,” or “Now, I have this job and now I’m just going to play this role, this is my strategy.”  But instead when you consider your purpose, your style, your message and your offering, what is the best way forward?  What are some things that you want to do that will help you to share your offering better?

So, one of our strategies at Voice of Influence is to have a podcast.  So we’re going to have a podcast, we are going to get our message out there.  It’s going to give us an opportunity to connect with guests, to connect with listeners, to potentially help them to see a lot of these things for themselves.  And maybe there are a few people in the mix who are going to eventually want to work with us as a company as well.  So this is part of our strategy.

Other pieces of our strategy have to do with going out and speaking.  I’m doing a lot of speaking and going to conferences and getting in front of audiences who could potentially use what we have to offer, not just anywhere but places and getting in front of the audiences that actually need what we have to offer.  This is not about feeding my ego and getting me in front of big audiences just to get me in front of big audiences.  This is even tackling or going for smaller audiences of people who actually do need what we have to offer.  Then we are kind of more quickly getting to the path that we’re trying to get down, you know, moving down our path.

So for you, what choices do you want to make about your strategy that don’t have to do with your ego, but do have to do with what is the best path forward?  What’s going to turn the needle the most?  My husband is the one that’s kind of always talked about this with me, “That doesn’t turn the needle for us, Andrea.  So, it’s not worth doing it.”

And as I started our business and we’ve kept going, I started to realize what exactly he’s talking about because there are times when I have great ideas, I have lots of ideas, but what is going to actually turn the needle on our purpose and getting us closer to the goals that we have, the vision that we have, what is actually going to turn the needle?  And that’s what you need to be thinking about when you’re thinking about your strategy.

Your Community

OK, and then your COMMUNITY.  This is the last piece.  This is about who you serve, not about who you’re leading, not about you being in charge of people.  This is about who you’re serving and you’re going to serve people in different ways.  There are different people in your life who need different things from you and who you want to serve in different ways.  Maybe this friend of yours, for example, maybe they are a great friend you love having fun with them, but you’re not going to talk to them about deep things inside of your heart because they’re not the kind of person that really likes to talk about that stuff.  And they’ve shown you that that’s not something they can handle, so OK, no problem.  I will reserve that sharing these really deeper things for another situation or just, you know, share minimally.

So, with your community, you’re not just saying, who am I targeting?  That is part of it.  You know, who is this?  Who is the person who needs what I have to offer?  This is an important question to ask, not just who needs it, because a lot of times you could say, the whole world needs what I have to offer, which of course I feel that way about Voice of Influence, everybody needs to know how to have a voice of influence, right?  But that’s not the only criteria.  Here, we’re also talking about who is it that not only needs what you have to offer but is open to it and wanting it, and looking for it.  Maybe they have a pain point inside that is driving them to look for an answer and you have that answer.

You need to know who those people are and what those pain points are.  How can you help them to see that you actually do have what they need?  And as I mentioned at the beginning, one of our great purposes at Voice of Influence is really about connecting people’s gifts and expertise with the need in the world.  Well, that is a lot of this community piece.  Who is it that we are here to serve and what is it that they need from us?  Why are they looking for what we have to offer?

For us, for Voice of Influence, we know that there are customer service teams, for example, who want to have influence or who might be feeling like they don’t have influence, that they are just there to answer questions.  They’re just there to clean up the mess.  But really, we’re missing out on such an opportunity to serve and to draw in our customers and build customer loyalty if we’re not helping our customer service teams to really have a voice of influence.

Because if they know what their purpose is, they show up with their style and their message and the offering of the company and they know the strategy and they understand the customer who they’re serving, then they can come to their job with a sense of purpose and they’re going to go the extra mile.  They’re going to do what they can to help.  And all of that is going to lead to building customer loyalty.  That human element that you really can’t control, it’s something you can only release.

And so, this is something that we know that customer service teams that are really looking forward to build customer loyalty, those are the ones that we can really serve.  We can serve them, and so those are the audiences we’re trying to get in front of and that sort of thing.  But at the same time, we also know that there are leaders and executives who want to lead well, who want to do a better job of getting buy-in from their teams.  These are also things that we do at Voice of Influence, and so those are also people that we recognize we serve.

So, my question for you is who do you serve?  Who is it that needs what you have to offer?  This is your community and then the people that aren’t open to what you have to offer, they need something else from you and that’s OK.  You don’t have to be all things to all people and you don’t have to try to knock down every door to make sure that everybody gets what you have to offer.  That’s OK, you don’t need that.  Instead, what you need is you need to go through the open doors.  You need to look for the open doors.

Sometimes you got to knock, but very rarely should you ever knock down a door just to get somebody to take what you have to offer.  These are the elements, the six elements of having a voice of influence.  These are the things that we build into, the things that we address, the things that we help other people to cultivate either individually or in their teams.  And what we want to provide for you here on the podcast, we want to give you the resources to be able to think through these elements for yourself.

When you get pretty clear on these things, then you’re going to show up in a way that has more purposeful that does have a clear message with, you know, more confidence for who you’re here to help and serve or work with or collaborate with or what you’re here to truly accomplish. And so that is what we have created for you moving forward.  We want to offer you podcast episodes that are going to address these elements.  And really most of the ones that we’ve already done in the past do address these elements in some way.

And so the question for you is what are you doing right now?  How is this helping you to grow as a voice of influence in your purpose, your style, your message, your offering, your strategy, or your community?  I just want to thank you for listening.  I want you to thank you for being here.  It is an honor, a deep honor that you would listen to what we have to say here, and I counted a privilege.  I counted a huge responsibility to be serving you in this way and I hope that it’s been helpful.

If you have listened to over let’s say five podcast episodes, would you consider going to your podcast player wherever you listen to podcasts and leave us a review, particularly on Apple podcast.  That would be so helpful for us as Voice of Influence, the podcast and for helping other people to find the podcast.  I’ve not asked for reviews very often and I know I probably should do that more, but I thought, “Well, you know what, it’s episode 100, let’s go ahead and ask you to leave a review.”

So if you have listened to over five episodes, would you go and find your podcast player and leave us a review.  We’d so appreciate it and we will read them.  We will take a look and see what you have to say and you can always email us also at andrea@voiceofinfluence.net. I would love to hear from you, especially if something that we’ve shared with you here on the podcast has made a difference, we’d love to hear about it.

It’s so fun to hear from you and to hear the things that you’re doing in your community, in your place of business, in your families because of what you’ve listened to here and what you’ve heard and, and how you’re applying it.  And so that’s what it’s all about.  It’s about making a difference.  And so we wish that for you.  Go and leave that review on the podcast player that you listened to.  Take these six elements and make your voice matter more.

I know that that comes at a cost to you personally, and I just want to thank you for your courage and for taking risks.

 

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Reframe Your Company’s Future with Aviv Shahar

Episode 99

Aviv Shahar enables Fortune 500 companies to create purpose-inspired visions that bring out the best in their people and catalyze growth. As the President of Aviv Consulting and the author of Create New Futures, Aviv guides executive teams at companies around the world to dramatically accelerate the achievement of their business results. In this episode, Aviv discusses what it means to create a new future as leaders of teams and in our personal lives, how “collective stupidity” inspired Aviv’s work, the importance of creating a learning culture, why it’s difficult for leaders to listen to others and even themselves, the two layers of having an authentic voice, the four quadrants of conflict, how he helps his clients improve their introspection skills, the five levels of integrity, and so much more! Mentioned in this episode:

Play here (the red triangle below), on iTunes, Stitcher or TuneIn Radio (Amazon Alexa) or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Aviv Shahar Voice of Influence Andrea Joy Wenburg
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How to Choose to Lead With Joy with Danny Williamson

Episode 97

Danny Williamson is a communicator, humorist, Navy veteran, and poet who’s absolutely passionate about joy. He has more than sixteen years of leadership and ministry experience serving in the U.S. Navy, as a co-founder of a non-profit mission organization, as a church planning missionary in Argentina, and as an associate pastor in California.

Danny has a bachelor’s degree in Religion and a master’s degree in Executive Leadership. He is also the author of the recently released book called Where’s the Joy?: An Invitation to Look Up, Reach Out, and Experience Life’s Greatest Treasure.

In this episode, Danny discusses the three main professional activities he’s currently involved in, how he manages his time to allow room for all the things he does, how he became interested in the topic of joy, the importance of understanding that we have a choice to be joyful and to bring joy to those around us, the four main choices we make that impact our joy and the joy of others, how we can choose to be more grateful, the value of bringing joy into our leadership style, how a nun taught him one of the greatest lessons of leadership, the power of listening, and more!

Mentioned in this episode:

Play here (the red triangle below), on iTunes, Stitcher or TuneIn Radio (Amazon Alexa) or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Transcript

Hey, hey!  It’s Andrea and welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast! Today, you’re going to enjoy a lot.  I’ve got Danny Williamson who is a Communicator, Humorist, Navy Veteran and Poet, who is absolutely passionate about joy.  He has more than 16 years of leadership and ministry experience serving in the U.S. Navy, a Co-Founder of a non-profit mission organization, a church-planting missionary in Argentina and an associate pastor in California.  His educational background includes a bachelor’s degree in religion and a master’s degree in executive leadership.  And he is the author of the recently released book called Where’s theJoy?

Andrea:  And it is great to have you with us here today on the Voice of Influence podcast, Danny!

Danny Williamson:  Oh, thanks for having me, Andrea.  It’s a real honor and joy to be here.

Andrea:  It’s awesome! OK, I really want to dive into your book, but before we do that, let’s kind of give the listener a little context.  So you play a few different roles in your life.  Can you share with us the main, I guess, career things that you’re doing right now?

Danny Williamson:  Absolutely. The number one thing I love to do is motivational speaking, which ties in with authoring this book as well.  And the passion behind that is to awaken joy in everyday life, both in my life and those I’m communicating with that a sense of joy is being awakened in their life through that.  The other thing I’m involved in is called the Collective Global.  It’s a cultural consulting firm, where we help teams and companies, organizations, non-profits, large corporations, small startups; you name it.

I really help them with a simple path that we have that enhances their performance and improves team satisfaction as well as customer satisfaction and even the long term result as an increase of profit.  So, it’s exciting to do that and then come alongside teams and champion them in their efforts and help them communicate better and work with greater levels of creativity.

The third thing I do is I’m an executive director for a non-profit faith-based organization called Speaking Louder that was founded by the Christian music artist, Jeremy Camp.  And really the mission for that is to declare the hope of Jesus throughout the world with music, testimony, and service.  So those are the three main jams that I’m part of.

Andrea:  And how in the world do you have time in your life for all of these things?

Danny Williamson:  Yeah, that’s a good question.   Sometimes, it feels a little scattered.  But really, it comes down to planning out my week and just having in line what needs to be done, when it needs to be done, and strengthening those relationships that I have as well as trying to be a good dad and a good husband.  So, it all kind of ties together, but it works out.  There’s always a way.

Andrea:  Yeah.  You know, that really gets me thinking about how people do this sort of thing, like how you schedule your life or schedule these various different aspects of…do you have a system?  That is such a weird question, but do you just kind of regularly look at what you have going on and then put it into place?  How do you make sure that you tackle all the right things at the right time?

Danny Williamson:  Yeah, that’s a great question.  Ultimately, it comes down to the start of my day.  I really try not to look at what I have for the day.  You know, the first hour of my day, I really don’t even look at my phone other than my alarm clock.  And I really try to set that early part of my day as almost a quiet time, whether it’s sitting on my front porch with a cup of coffee or even sitting in my kitchen at a bar stool there and just kind of setting my heart right for the day.

I’ve been doing that for, I would say, 20 plus years every morning.  And it sets the pace for the day then 0my thoughts are organized.  I’m not trying to clutter in and jam in as soon as I wake up everything I have to do.  And then once I have that early quiet time in the day then when I am ready to look at those tasks, it’s much more organized in thought.  I’m not going at it frantically like, “OK, this is what needs to be done.”

When it does come time to looking at those things I need to accomplish throughout the day, I’m a big checkbox guy.  I love having that little square next to, you know, things I need to do and just go through one at a time and kind of prioritize them and then go from there and check them off as I go.

My wife discovered this about me early on in our relationship that I’m a checkbox guy, so she realized if she wants me to get things done around the house, she needs to put a check or like a box next to it and then I’ll get it done because it drives me crazy when it’s just open space and I need to check it off.

Andrea:  Sure.  Well, you know, overwhelm is such a killer of joy.  So just the fact that you have a system, you have this way of doing things that frees you so that you can, can enjoy life is a pretty big deal.

Danny Williamson:  Absolutely, yeah.  Coffee helps too.

Andrea:  OK, so tell us a little bit about why you got interested in this topic of joy in the first place.  Why did you decide that this would be the book?  What was the thing that you yeah, yeah.

Danny Williamson: Yeah.  I began to realize that joy is something we all want.  I’ve yet to meet a person in this world, and I’ve traveled over 35 different countries.  I’ve yet to meet a person in this world who doesn’t want joy.  And I’ve had seasons in my life where I’ve been in valleys or I’m just wondering, “Hey, where is this joy in my own life?”  And I realized I’m not the only one who wants it.  So everybody in this world wants it.

I want it, and so I created this desire in me like, you know, I want to start awakening joy in everyday life because if we have joy on the inside happening in our inner man and who we are as a person, as a human being, then that’s going to affect the joy we have in our home setting.  And then if we enjoying our home, that’s going to result in joy at work, whatever we’re doing for our career.  So it starts in the inside then it transfers into our home and then it transfers into our work and our leadership environments.

And so this word to Joy, I think a lot of people too identify joy.  They hear it and they just think it’s rainbows and hula hoops and Cheerio’s and Easter bunnies and all those things, which yet it is but it’s so much more.  And I’ve found it to be the secret sauce of leadership.  It’s what keeps people going with their purpose and motivates even our passions this idea of joy because joy really is a strength.  It lightens the load, if you will.  And we’re able to get things done in a more efficient manner, I think when there’s a skip in our step and even a smile on her face.

So, there’s just a lot of power in joy.  And thus I was like, “Let’s dive into this.”  And me writing this book wasn’t this bucket list idea I was like, “Hey, you know what, there’s really something to this, this message of joy.”  And I began to see it everywhere.  I mean, even McDonalds is using the word joy in there tagline now.  So joy is just this desire that everybody’s really…they have a desire for it and a lot of times we don’t even realize it.  And so I want to wake in joy in everyday life.

Andrea:  You know, one of the things that we’re just talking about, it really flips motivation on its head.  So it seems to me like what typically happens is that we are driven by work, which then impacts how we feel at home.  And you’re saying, start from the inside and go to work so that your joy impacts or your attitude, whatever it might be, but hopefully it’s a joyful one, impacts your work instead of letting your work drive how you feel at home.  I love that!

Danny Williamson:  Exactly, exactly.  Yeah, you nailed it.  And also I realized that joy isn’t necessarily something we can go out and choose like, “Hey, I0 wanna be happy today.”  I call it as a beautiful byproduct of life’s most important choices.  So if we’re making choices, which I can talk about in a second, but if we’re making specific choices, like love for example, you know, if I’m making a choice to love, then the byproduct of that is this joyful life.

So there are a lot of other things, vulnerability and community and things that I talk even throughout the book.  But, it’s these choices that we make in life that contribute to our joy, which ultimately will contribute to helping our careers that will help how we operate at work. It won’t make a burdensome work environment.

Andrea:  OK, so before we go on into the choices, let’s just talk about why it’s so important that we believe that we have a choice?

Danny Williamson:  Yeah, yeah, because life is really about choices.  When you say that it comes down to, we have these choices in life that are presented before us and how is this choice going to affect this person.  How is this choice going to affect my employees if I’m in a leadership position?  And so how are we going to narrow down?  What are these vital choices that I need to make?  How is this going to impact?

I’m a big fan too when it comes to choices.  I don’t know if you’ve read Man’s Search for Meaningby Viktor Frankl, but I’m a big fan of that logo therapy types of thought where you’re looking at your life backwards in a sense of like, OK, if I’m 80 and if I’m looking at my life as if I was 80, would I be making the same choices I’m thinking about making right now?  So it really helps and contribute.

Andrea:  Yeah, I think that one of the most important things that you seem to be bringing to the table here in this discussion with joy is that people do have a choice to be joyful.

Danny Williamson:  Yeah.

Andrea:  And instead of feeling like this sort of the whole thing, and we were talking about just a minute ago with how work can make us feel a certain way then we carry out throughout our life instead of being the person that then has the agency and the ability to make a difference because we’ve made these choices.  And so what are some of these choices that we actually have that we may not even realize that we have?

Danny Williamson:  Yeah, I like to call them “dambusters” if you will, these choices.  And four main dambusters that I really try to narrow in on, the first would be vulnerability – choosing to be vulnerable.  And vulnerability, it’s more than transparency.  Transparency is letting the word out of who you are and being an open book.  But vulnerability goes even deeper to that where you actually beginning to let people inside.  You’re beginning to let people inside who you are.

For example, Donald Miller wrote a great book called Scary Close.  And in that he said, “How tragic would it be to come to the end of your life and you realize that those who loved you the most never really knew you.  They never knew the poems you had up your sleeve.  They never knew the dreams you had.”  And so this choice of vulnerability, it just has a way of breaking open this river of joy in our life.

It was Brene Brown who said, “Joy really is founded and the birthplace of joy is found in vulnerability.”  And so if we’re willing to be vulnerable, it opens up this wide world of joy.  So vulnerability is huge.  And this one’s a little bit tougher, but it goes more to the heart and this is the idea of forgiveness.  And a lot of times we can be so wrapped up with those who hurt us and made bad choices against us, and we’re not willing to let them go.  And so if we’re willing to forgive, it has this wonderful effect on our life in regards to joy.  And all forgiveness is just a release of those who have hurt us, releasing them.  It doesn’t mean what they’ve done to us is by any means right.  It’s very wrong what’s happened, but we just release them.

And then the third thing is community.  The reason I’m big on community is if you think about it in regards to laughter, it’s really hard to belly-ache laugh when you’re all alone.  We really need people, you know, and so if there’s going to be a sense of laughter and sense of joy in our life, we need to make this choice of community, like let’s not isolate ourselves.  And if we’re in a working environment, let’s not try to do everything ourself.  Let’s really connect with our employees.  Let’s have this relationship where we’re communicating well with one another and then let’s open up this wonderful door of joy.

And then the last thing is just gratitude, having an attitude of gratitude, if you will.  So that’s just a choice to be thankful; a thankful hearts, a joyful heart.  So let’s be thankful for what job we actually have.  You know, let’s be thankful for the position we have, whether we’re flipping burgers or up in a C-suite.  You know, let’s look at life for what it is and make that choice of gratitude.  It has a marvelous way of opening up a door of joy.

Andrea:  I’m curious what you would say to this question about how does somebody choose to be grateful?

Danny Williamson:  Uh, yeah.  It’s actually the subtitle of my book, you know, an invitation to look up and sometimes I just think we need to put our phones down and this is very practical way to be grateful.  Put our phones down because comparison is literally a thief of joy.  And when we have our phones and we’re stuck on our social media, and I like technology just as much as the next guy, I appreciate my iPhone all that kind of thing.  But at the same time, a simple way to just begin to operate this idea of gratitude is just to look up, “Wait a second, the sky’s blue today.”  “Oh my goodness!”

And you know a way to practice gratitude is showing how thankful you are for other people.  And I like to challenge people and like, “Hey, tell somebody, a stranger if you will, or tell an employee how awesome they are.”  You know, it’s amazing to see what happens to their face and their countenance just literally lights up when you say, “Hey, has anyone told you you’re awesome yesterday?” And they’re like, “No, well thank you! And you know, “You are!”  And I think our employees need to hear that.  Our coworkers need to hear that.  Our family members need to hear that.

You know, for example, “Andrea, you’re awesome!  You are.  You really are. You’re crushing it,” you know.  So people need to hear that and so that’s this whole idea of gratitude.  You just become to be thankful for those around you and it makes some marvelous impact on where you are.

Andrea:  It sounds like you’re saying something along the lines of do the thing that those people who are grateful do.  So it’s like you start with doing it so that maybe it’ll change the heart.

Danny Williamson:  Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, it’s absolutely true.  Now, if we’re to lead into like leadership, if you will, how these ideas of joy come into leadership.  Because you can look at joy as just a feeler and that kind of thing but something can happen when we can bring in joy into our leadership, how we lead.  If we’re able to lead with a joyful countenance, it’s much easier to follow than someone who’s there with a sledgehammer, will you agree?

Andrea:   So, so true!

Danny Williamson:  Yeah.  And so I think of a joyful bosses I’ve had.  I’m like, “Man, I want to keep working for you.  This is inspirational.”  And so that’s why we want to bring in, you know, in regards to consulting and those things like, “Hey, let’s bring this atmosphere of joy and helping even redefine this idea of joy.”  People think it just means like putt-putt golf in the lunchroom.  It’s like, “No, let’s go beyond that where it’s like there’s actually an attitude of joy.”

And this comes out through having things like the joy of grit, like there’s a joy and satisfaction of sticking to something.  You know, I think of navy boot camp and when I was in the navy and boot camp was rough.  I mean, I remember my drill instructor had tattoos up all the way up his neck wrapping around his ear.  And I’m like, “Man, this guy’s gnarly,” you know.  But I pressed on and made it through that boot camp and then went on to my next training and made it through that.  And then I was able to look back at the six years I spent in the navy, I was like, “You know what, that just taught me a lot of grit.”  And some of it was painful and some of it was so difficult, but there was such a joy in completing that work.

And so that’s what I call the joy of grit that we can really begin to apply for our leadership.  And then there’s the joy of gentleness, which I think we can forget about in leadership that there’s such power in just gentle leadership.  But the only way we can have a gentle approach in leadership is if we’re operating from a place of rest.  And that rest is so vital because you know, we can actually get so much more done if we operate from a place of rest than if we’re just striving and striving and striving and striving.

So if we can tap into this idea of rest, sometimes it’s literal rest, like are we taking our lunch break to just check on her phones and do all these things.  And as we’re taking a bite of salad we’re looking at our phone at the same time or we’re actually pausing in our day, you know.  Say, we have a 10 minute window, let’s step outside for a second, take a quick walk around the block of wherever our offices at or wherever it may be, and just get outside of that space we’re in and just to create some space in our head, that white space, if you will.

So that rest contributes to this joyful gentle leadership because if we’re tired, we’re going to be grumpy.  And so, we really need that sense of rest.  And then the last part I would say in attitude is when it comes to joy in leadership is the joy giving.  And I would say, one of the greatest lessons of leadership I ever learned came from a nun. I had the opportunity to sit next to a nun in an airplane for about two and a half hours and it was an amazing interaction.  She was humorous and she’s just really delightful to be around.

And what was interesting, I asked for her name and said her name was Beatrice.  That name actually means the joy giver.  So I was like, “Oh my goodness, I have to know more about this.” “So tell me what it means that joy for you.”  And really what it all came down to what I learned from her is the joy of giving.  I mean, she gave up everything and she lived a very, very just simple life and she lived in Ireland serving this small village, you know, community and it really narrowed it all down to the joy of giving.  She just found such treasure in giving.

So, if we, as leaders can just begin to give of ourselves, give of our hearts, give of our wisdom, give of our insight where we’re not afraid to give, there’s such joy in that. It really is better to give than to receive.

Andrea:  Well, I think especially when you really believed that there is plenty to give.

Danny Williamson:  Yeah, absolutely!  Like that nun didn’t have a penny to her name. She really didn’t, but she had so much to give.  And so, you know, giving is far than just writing a check, you know, let’s give of our time.  Let’s give of the treasures, the things we’re gifted with we know we’re good at, let’s give those things.  Let’s share those things.  We don’t just have to hoard it to ourselves so that we can climb the ladder.  Let’s give of those things to bring people on the ladder with us, if you will.

Andrea:  When you’re working with leaders in the Collective Global and you are helping them to incorporate joy into their team performance, do you have any practical sort of suggestions that somebody could maybe apply to their own team?

Danny Williamson:  Yeah.  One thing I ask and I keep it real simple and I would say is listening.  Just this simple art of listening is so vital to our leadership.  And that’s something we try to do whether it’s consulting, even in motivational speaking, there’s an atmosphere of listening that I need to do as a communicator, or in Speaking Louder in my non-profit, I need to be listening to what the culture needs if we’re going to do an effective mercy project.

So, it all comes down to this idea of listening.  It literally can save a team if a leader is just willing to stop for a second and telling all these people, do this, do this, do this.  He needs to stop or she needs to just stop and listen.

And one of our clients is really fascinating.  They have a CEO switch recently and the guy who is coming as a new CEO.  He’s created this thing he’s calling listening rooms where he’s actually creating an environment for teams to come in and he’s just sitting there quietly as the CEO listening, whatever they want to say, whether it’s event session, whether it’s a praise session, whatever it is.  He’s just opening up the door for people to talk. And in that, he is creating such an atmosphere of trust.  He’s showing him open to what you have to say.  He creates a sense of value.  You see when were listened to, we feel valued.  And so I just think there’s one word if we could just listen, it does so much. It might even save a life.

You know, a personal story real quick with me, I think of how my mom, when I was in my young teenage years, I really battled with some major depression and different things and even got to the point of contemplating suicide and those things.  I’ll never get what saved my life really was my listening mom.  She just sat next to me and just listened to my heartache, to my fears, to my girl problems, you name it.  She just listened.  And so listening can be so powerful in the home.  It can be so powerful at work.  The most effective leaders throughout the world are those who learned and tapped into the art of listening.

Andrea:  Very good.  Danny, you know, just the fact that you had been in that place at one time and now have come to the point of writing this book about joy and then letting this be your message is really powerful.  And I’m sure listeners, it’s a really important thing to understand that you have a choice, that you have the ability to make a change in how you’re feeling.  I guess I would suggest going out and getting this book and listening to what Danny has to say or reading what Danny has to say more about this and allowing your heart to be moved and to make these practical changes that you’re talking about, Danny, to do these things that could lead to the heart change.  That is really powerful!

Danny Williamson:  Uh-huh, thanks!

Andrea:  How can people get a hold of your book?

Danny Williamson:  Sure, sure.  It’s on Amazon.  It’s any place that you can order a book, you can find it.  A simple way to get in touch with me or to get a hold of the book or anything, it’s just go to my website, dannywilliamson.com and you can find the book there.  You can find your requests for speaking engagements there.  You can find out about are the Collective Global.  There’s a link there you can find out about Speaking Louder.  There’s a link there, so everything can kind of be narrowed down to dannywilliamson.com.

Andrea:  Awesome! And we will make sure that we have all of that information in the show notes so that people can quickly access that if they have any questions.  So, Danny, thank you so much for sharing your message with the Voice of Influence podcast listeners, and we wish you well on your book.

Danny Williamson:  Thank you so much, Andrea.  I really appreciate it.

 

END

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How To Find the Opportunity In Any Obstacle

Episode 96

I’m not one of those people who believe everything happens for a reason. However, I do believe we can choose how we respond to obstacles in life and that every obstacle opens the door to an opportunity. In this episode, I go deeper into this topic by telling a story about how my dog made the best of a bad situation because she didn’t know any other way to respond. I also talk about how this lesson can help you find the opportunity in any obstacle.

Mentioned in this episode:

Play here (the red triangle below), on iTunes, Stitcher or TuneIn Radio (Amazon Alexa) or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Obstacle Voice of Influence Podast Andrea Joy Wenburg

Transcript

Hey, hey!  It’s Andrea and welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast! Alright, so I’ve got a story for you and this one is about our dog, our dog named Belle.

My husband has always really been into dogs.  I knew this coming in to the marriage that if I was to love my husband, I would have to love his dogs.  At the time he had one and it was actually part of the thing that maybe I fall in love with him because, I mean, he has this dog trained so well, George is his name. Anyway, I’d talked about that in my book but, I have to love dogs because I love my husband.

Well, about five years ago or four years ago something like that, my husband was like kind of looking through, he’s always kind of paying attention who’s selling dogs, what dogs need a home, you know, this sort of thing and he points some out to me every once in a while.  And I suppose he was trying to like warn me up the idea of having two dogs and not just one, and I was never that big of a fan of the idea.

But then he found this one dog and this dog needed a home.  A groomer had kind of rescued this dog and it was about 6 months old and he looked at it and he’s like “This dog is a good dog.  I can tell this is a good dog.  I need to go check this dog out.”  And I’m like “OK, fine.”  So he goes to check this dog out at the groomers.  He brings the dog home to kind of you know see what she’s like with our kids.

Dog comes home and she’s super sweet.  She’s humongous because she’s like a great Pyrenees poodle, we decided, and I don’t know if you know anything about dogs but that means she’s really big.  At the time, she wasn’t that big, but now, she’s probably 90 pounds.  So, anyway, Belle is what we ended up deciding to call her because she had a name and it was not a name we could use because another dog in the family had that name.  So we named her Belle.

Well, a few months later, I’m not exactly sure when it was, but a few months later, Belle was able to get out of our backyard and so she would run away and just have a grand dog time in our neighborhood.  Just running through everybody else’s backyard and across the street and then always going to freaked us out because we thought, “Oh my goodness this dog is going to get hit by car,” we just knew it.

Well, this kept happening. My husband kept finding all the holes that he needed to pin down in our backyard and we had everything kind of figured out, we thought.  And then she got through again.  She pushed away underneath of our fence of our backyard and she took off.  We didn’t know where she was but it was pretty late at night, I don’t know, maybe 10 o’clock or so and the kids were already in bed. We don’t know what’s going on.  We don’t know where she’s at.  It’s really hard to find a dark mostly kind of grayish black haired dog.  How do you find a dog like this who is so fast in the night like that?

So we opened up our front door hoping that she would just come back in because she had done that before. So I’m like scrubbing our floor or something and working and all of a sudden we hear breaks and a thud and a dog screech, and our hearts just about popped out of our chest.  We ran outside and the dog was not there.  The dog had moved.  So, Aaron talked to the driver of the car and had found out that she had hit the side of his car.  She’d actually run into the car itself.  The car didn’t run into her, she ran into the car and then she took off.

Well, she took off behind our house where there’s like this river behind our house and so we didn’t know what’s going to happen to this dog because she could get eaten by a fox or something like this because we’ve seen with a fox behind our house before and oh my goodness all of the things! We were just feeling horrible about it and the next morning, we told the kids and they felt really bad and they were outside yelling trying to get Belle to come back home and I felt so bad for them.

Well, the kids went back to school and went back behind our house and thought “I’m gonna have to find this dong.  She’s probably out there lying on the ground some place.  She could be dead, who knows.”  But when I got to the back of our fence, she was kind of barking, crying at me.  And it turns out that her leg was broken.  So, I had to lift this dog, who at that time, I don’t know she was 50 pounds or something like that.  I lift this dog up.  I carried her all the way, take her to the vet.  I just couldn’t believe that she was so alive, neither could Aaron, of course. The kids, of course, thought that she would be but I just couldn’t believe it.

Well, this dog, we love her so much.  I should say, everybody else loves her so much.  I try.  I do try sometimes.  But anyway, dogs can be a pain when you’re the one has to kind of, I don’t know.  Anyway, so the dog gets a cast on her leg because her leg was so broken and of course she a puppy still.  She was at the time, maybe 6 months to a year old, I can’t remember exactly.  So she’s wanting to bite at her cast all the time.

Well, you know, what happens when dogs aren’t suppose to bite things, they get a cone around their necks, the cone of shame.  Have you seen this?  You know, what I’m talking about.  It’s that plastic cone that goes around the dog’s neck and it goes out beyond their face so that they can’t actually bite anything so that she couldn’t get to her leg and bite her cast off.  Well, we thought it was pretty funny at this point where she had the cone of shame. She didn’t act like was ashamed at all.

This dog is so funny. I mean, there are so many lessons to learn from this silly dog.  But she wasn’t afraid at all.  She just was like “whatever, I got this cone on.  It’s not a big deal.  I’m just still trotting around even though I have a broken leg and I’m still the happy go lucky dog that I am and what not.”

Well, one day, I looked in the backyard and Belle had bird feathers all over the inside of her cone of shame.  That dog took her cone and trapped a bird underneath her cone down that thing and just ripped it to shreds and ate it up because she had this cone on her head. Oh my goodness and there was just such a mess.  I have a picture of her.  I’ll find it and put it in the show notes.  It was so funny.  I mean, it was terrifying for me, but it was so funny because this dog had figured out how to take an obstacle and turn it into opportunity.

She didn’t look at her cone and be like “Oh my goodness,” like all the dogs would do.  We would look at something like that or something that is supposed to be full of shame.  This supposed to make you feel horrible.  We would feel that way.  We would feel like wanted to hide.  We wouldn’t show anybody that.  We don’t want to have to deal with it.  We felt bad about it.  You know, maybe we would go hide in the corner, stay in our homes, whatever.  Not this dog.  She doesn’t know what shame is.

And so what did she do, she just “OK, well, this is what I got.  This is what I got to work with.  Let’s make something happen.”  And she sure did.  She made something happen.  She trapped the bird and ate that thing up.

Well, I love this illustration and obviously, I took a whole 9 and half minutes to tell you this story because I really do believe that we can find opportunities in our obstacles. It maybe trite to say that in some ways, but when you’ve actually gone through stuff, when you’ve gone through really hard things then you start to look around and you realize, “You know what, I made it through that.”  And how did I make it through that?  I found a way.  I found opportunity even in the obstacles and then it’s not so trite anymore.

You start to realize that “You know what; this is actually really, deeply true.”  There are things that I’ve experienced in my own life, family situations where an illness in the family has caused me to really take a hard look at myself.  It has really had me thinking, and multiple illnesses and things that have happened, you know, when you start to realize how short life is, when you start to realize how old you are and that life isn’t just this infinite expansion of opportunity that there are serious obstacles in the way then you could do a few different things.

You could go hide and you could find a way to push it all away.  How do we usually do this?  We do this with food.  We do this with alcohol or drugs.  We do this busyness.  We push away the things that don’t feel good, those obstacles we don’t have to think about. We just push them away because we don’t want to deal with it.  But you know what happens when we do that.  You’ve probably seen that before in yourself.  You’ve probably seen that before in other people.

When we push away the hard stuff, it has its way of working its way really deeply inside of our souls to a point where you start to really kind of have gaping wound on the inside, things that we haven’t really dealt with that really start to eat away at us.  It’s not healthy.  It’s not good.  It’s painful to actually look and stare obstacles in the face.  It can be painful to say, “Oh my goodness, I have this cone of shame on.  I’m dealing with this horrible broken leg.  How am I gonna go chase squirrels now?”

But that’s not the only way to look at.  There’s also other ways to look at.  You can look at it and say “OK, so what do I have to work with now?  How do I make it work with what I have now?”  And not only that, this is one of the other things that has really hit me, sometimes obstacles like place on us limitations that now we have to deal with those limitations.  And I’ve done this before where a limitation is placed on me and so I think “Oh my goodness, I can’t do it then.  I guess these walls have been put up.  These limitations had been put up.  Apparently, I’m not gonna able to accomplish what I need to accomplish. I’m just gonna give up.”

Instead, what we can do is we can say “OK, this limitation could be a gift.”  How could it be a gift?  It could be a gift because it’s helping me make decisions.  “OK, I can’t go that direction so I’m gonna have to go this other way.  So this other way has to work for me.  It must be the direction that I’m supposed to take.”  Instead of looking at this “Oh my goodness, there’s this obstacle on the way. There’s this branch in the middle of the road, this big huge tree in the middle of the road.  I’m not gonna be able to take that road now.  I always wanted to take this road.  This is the path that I wanted to take but I guess I’m not gonna be able to.”

So you can just turn around and go back home. Or you could say, “Alright, so this isn’t the path, let’s look around whatever options are left?  Well, it looks like I could go this way or we can go that way.  Well, at least now I know that this is not the way so that gives me fewer decisions to make, fewer choices.  I can make a decision on my own.  I don’t have to be drawn just by what I was wanting to do in the first place, instead I get to make a decision now based on the circumstances that I have in front of me.”

How do we turn obstacles into opportunities?  A lot of people take tragedy in their lives and they actually find meaning and purpose in helping other people avoid that tragedy sort of like the Mothers Against Drunk Driving.  I think I remember a story a long time ago how some mother lost her son or daughter to a drunk driver and she started MADD.  She started Mothers Against Drunk Driving and turned it in to her purpose to help other people avoid it.

Now, when I say opportunity, I don’t mean that it something that you would necessarily want for your life. When you start out your life and you’re looking forward, you’re not saying to yourself “I really would like to experience tragedy here so that I could find purpose in helping other people avoid that tragedy.”  Of course, you’re not saying that.  Nobody is saying that.  I’m not even saying that you should think that.  However, when you do confront tragedy, when you do confront the hard stuff of life which so often just hits us and we can’t even control then we have to take a step back and say “But what can I control?  What can I do now?”

Yes, there’s been a stake in the place in the ground.  There has been a fork in the middle of the road, a tree that fell down in my path, a cone around my neck.  There’s a serious obstacle right in front of me.  Am I going to crumble and just fall to the ground?  Am I going to back off and just say forget it?  Am I going to avoid the pain and the tragedy?  Am I going to avoid having to deal with it or am I going to look at this straight in the eye and say “OK, now what am I going to do with this?”

For a while you may need to mourn.  For a while you’re going to need to grieve a lost opportunity.  For a while you might be sad. It might be three seconds, it might be three years of grief depending on the kind of obstacle or tragedy that has hit you.  But all the while, you can have this internal belief that there can be meaning that could come from it.  There can be something important that can come from this struggle.

You see, this is really about having a growth mindset.  It’s about saying, “You know what, I acknowledge that I’m not gonna able to just have what I want all the time.  I acknowledge that life is hard and I can’t avoid the pain that this life is going to bring me.” But the question that ends up coming is what am I going to do with what I have?  What internal resources, what external resources, or what belief do I have that I can drop them that will help me to move forward, that will help me to find a new purpose, a new path.

There are a lot of things that I’m doing now that I never in my life would have thought I would have been doing.  But I came up against obstacles.  I came up again needs in my family, in my life, in my own personal sense of self, things that were difficult then I had to take a really hard look often after years of pushing things away or trying to be distracted or being in depression or things like this.  I finally came to sense of purpose and meaning that I could still find having gone through the battle, having gone though the struggle, having encountered the obstacle and those things kind of marked my path.

They sort of gave me direction toward the next step that I needed to take, to the point where now I’m doing something in Voice of Influence that even though I always wanted to do something like what I’m doing now, I never would have thought that I would have started a business.  I never would have thought that I would be offering strategic advice, offering the opportunity for teams to really gel and align to a company’s vision.  I never would have thought about, “Oh my goodness, this is what I wanna do when I grow up.”  I had no idea that that sort of thing even existed for quite a while.

But those obstacles that kept coming into my road, kept directing me to the next step, to the next place along my path.  And I think in the end, we all have to just admit that this is a hard, hard thing, walking through life.  It’s not easy to figure out how to handle everything.  It’s not easy to know how to prioritize or what decisions to make for your family or what decisions to make for your company, how to help a team member through a really hard time.

But in the end, I think we have to just go back to asking “What is the opportunity present?  What is the opportunity?  You’re not saying to yourself, “Well, everything happens for a reason.”  I’ve said this so many times, guys.  I’m not saying that that everything happens for a reason.  I don’t think that that’s how we should look at it.  Instead, this hashappened so, now, what I’m going to do with it. Now, what am I going to do?  I don’t think we have to look at it as destiny. I don’t think we have to look at it that God is trying hurt me or allowing really bad things to happen to me that sort of thing and that it’s all for a reason, somehow it’s for a reason. I don’t think that we have to look at it like that.

But I do think that when we do come up against hard things, when we do encounter tragedy, when we do encounter obstacles, when we sort of have this cone of shame around our neck that is supposed to be something that’s really shameful, maybe instead of walking around in shame or hiding in shame, we can shrug our shoulders and say “OK, so what are we gonna do with this today?  How do we I still make this work?”

That’s what my silly dog Belle taught me.  How do I still make this work even though I’m a silly old dog that ran into a car?  (I do not understand how it happens) But how do I make this work?  What am I going to do with this now?

Friend, please take the obstacles that are in your path and ask, what is the opportunity here and go make your voice matter more.