A Crazy Guy Taught Me to Be a Better Listener

Little did I know that I was going to learn how to be a better listener when I decided to watch Harvey with Jimmy Stewart …

Let me back up. I was flipping through the channels the other night when Harvey, a very old movie, caught my attention. Harvey is about a man, Elwood Dowd, who believes he hangs out with a 6’3’’ white rabbit named Harvey. Harvey even wears a bowtie. Classy rabbit.

I immediately related to this movie because I have an imaginary friend named Barney. He’s a 5’4” accountant, and an all-around normal guy. Maybe my friend isn’t as exciting as a rabbit, but he gets the job done in the imaginary friend department.

So Barney and I are watching Harvey, and there’s a scene where Elwood is sitting in the alley behind a bar, talking to his psychiatrist and his nurse. Both of them think he’s crazy, what with his imaginary friend/rabbit and all. But they are having a talk about what Elwood loves most in life.

He says that he loves talking to people.

He loves talking to people. In almost any business, this is what we do—we talk to people.

But how much do we really listen with both ears? A lot of us listen for what we need, but is this the same thing as what our clients, our friends and our family members need?

Back to Harvey.

Harvey loved meeting strangers in bars. Complete strangers would have friendly conversations with Elwood, and pretty soon they would be friends. Elwood’s new friends would tell him their problems—their troubles and worries about the future.

And as Elwood explains this to his nurse and psychiatrist, he says, “And to them, all of their problems and all of their hopes are big…they are BIG.”

BIG. It’s the same thing when we talk to people. Whether they are talking, joking, or complaining to us … everything going on underneath is BIG.

So if you want to know how to be a better listener, think about this: When you are talking to someone else, they are—and should be—the only thing in the world during those conversations.

Your clients don’t care if you have a deadline you are rushing to meet. They don’t care if you had a bad morning and got a ticket on the way in. They care about their big problems. And what will differentiate you from your competitors is if you learn how to be a better listener, and that starts with responding to your clients as if you think their problems are big.

I tried to explain this to my imaginary friend Barney, but he wasn’t listening. Maybe you can be a better listener …

As you interact with clients (or friends and family members for that matter), remember that your job is to make sure you understand that their problems are big. If you want to be a better listener, you truly have to understand that no matter how trivial something seems to you, it’s a big deal to the person telling you.

I have to go now. Barney seems to be getting really jealous of all the attention I’m giving you, so I have to take him out to get some Pinkberry.

Today’s “be a better listener” challenge: 

Treat everything your clients and friends tell you like it is the biggest thing in the world. Throw all of your attention on to them!

Related Posts:
Be Here Now
Procrastination: It's Like Wearing White on Labor Day, but Worse
The Secret to Life...

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

I can’t believe we have the technology that allows me to get swept up in a different world while I’m 30,000 feet in the air.  Movies on airplanes … what a thing!

Of course, most of the time, the movies are so bad that I want to get up and walk out — but I can’t … because like I already told you, I’m 30,000 feet in the air.

Luckily, this was not the case on my recent trip back from Copenhagen. I saw a great movie called "The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel". What a great film. It had a terrific cast of seasoned actors, and it even had a Dame in it. (Dame Judy Dench).

Dev Patel, one of the young actors, said something in the film that struck me as very profound and worthy of thought.

“Everything will be alright in the end. If things are not alright, it is not the end.”  

Wow. Let that blow your mind for a few minutes.

I dug a little deeper and discovered this was a Rudyard Kipling quote. (Dude! Someone tell Rudy that Dev is lifting his material!)

At any rate, there are two ways to look at this profoundly optimistic view of the universe:

    You can actively seek that “alright end”; or

    You may choose to passively participate in the anticipated possible future.

Some people think that if you just wait long enough, things will work out. If you just sit back and wait, hopefully money will come to you. Hopefully happiness will come to you and the secrets of life will simply fall into your lap. Hopefully.

Wandering around aimlessly in life may work for some. In my experience, however, it works that way for very few of us. Anticipating a specific set of goals and knowing why those goals are important is probably the most important first step you can make.

But understand that the course you set toward that goal may not always turn in the direction you expect. Be flexible. That unexpected direction may be fantastically positive. Remember that everything will be alright.

It is those times when we trend toward the negative that separates the winners from everyone else. Consider yourself a winner when an unexpected negative result appears. Assess where you are NOW. You are alive. You are breathing. Come to your senses and ADJUST! You thrive with what life throws at you. You already know the end result. Everything will be A-OK. Move again towards your goal and modify your actions as the situation dictates.

You’re a sailor sailing the seas of your life. Sailors zig and zag to their final destination. Mid-course corrections and interim plans are part of the path of business and life. We are here to LIVE.  

Those who are active planners have a vision. If, during the course of the journey towards that plan, things are not alright, then you are NOT at the end.  

You see, in the end, things will be alright.

Related Posts:
The Secret To Life
What's YOUR Pixie Dust
Be Here Now

TRANSFORMERS AREN’T JUST SPACE ROBOTS

There is a term for customers I would like to share that makes a difference in the way businesses think and how they should deal with people: aspirants. In The Firm of the Future: A Guide for Accountants, Lawyers, and Other Professional Services, by Ronald J. Baker and Paul Dunn, customers are not described as clients, but rather as aspirants. Individuals aspire to something. If a business is doing something other than just compliance work for people, those people are expecting something more than to be treated as basic clients. 

They want to be transformed; they want their situations to be improved (even if they were already doing well, they want better). Maybe they want to be protected, which means they want their situation to be transformed into something safer. Maybe they want to accomplish a business objective that will transform their life in a positive way, or perhaps they are trying to settle some kind of bothersome dispute. Positively or negatively, if you are involved in a dispute, it is transforming. If you assist someone in that process, you are a Transformer. With this in mind, every time you speak to a “client,” think about how you could transform them, either positively or negatively. 

What’s at stake isn’t simply doing the work. What really matters is what the work says to a person. How it is going to transform their life one way or another? Someone could easily make a bad decision based on a product that is not delivered correctly.

If you are an accountant and you simply fill out a customer’s paperwork before flinging it at them, you are depriving them of the transformation they are ultimately seeking from you. Most accountants don’t get this, and while that’s a good thing for those accountants who do, it’s very unfortunate for the customer sitting across from an accountant who just doesn’t care or understand.

I have a buddy who was saddled with an accountant who surprised him by letting him know that, oops, he owed $13,000 more than projected. As my buddy sat there shell-shocked, the accountant looked at him with a straight face and asked, “How are you going to pay this?”

When my buddy could not come up with an immediate answer, the accountant told him to give him a call when he figured it out and advised him to enjoy the rest of his day. That accountant belongs in accountant jail.

It’s essential to understand, whatever your profession, the services you provide make a difference in people’s lives. If an individual knows that you understand this, they will feel protected through the interactions they have with you and can be confident they are exactly where they should be. If you care, no one can compete with you.

The important question here is: When you talk to customers, are you in fact talking to a client, or are you talking to an aspirant? Do you understand what this person is aspiring to be or do? In all of your dealings with aspirants, remember that what you say to them really matters. Take your words as seriously as they do. Think before you speak. Make it a transformative experience for them. Never think about the amount of trouble, hassle or time it will take to accommodate your aspirant. Embrace it. Think about what you can do to make them feel safer, confident, optimistic, and that progress is being made to meet whatever the challenge. This is the kind of stuff they don’t teach in accounting school, or engineering school, or construction school, or any other schools.

A good way to start empathizing with the aspirants around you, is by making yourself your first aspirant. Take a look within, at your own life, and examine the goals you currently have on the table. Once you’ve identified and prioritized those goals, think about the motivation behind them. Maybe one of your current goals is to become a better salsa dancer. A worthy, understandable goal.

Ask yourself: Why is this my goal?

What are you aspiring toward by wanting to achieve this goal? You’re a very hard worker. You work so hard, lately you feel as if your life has become all work and no play. Having a balance in life is vital. You feel that learning to become an amazing salsa dancer will provide a great social outlet to create the balance you’re seeking in life. Rather than crunching numbers, eating ice cream alone and watching To Catch A Predator on MSNBC on Friday nights, you think it would be better for your psyche, to hit the dance floor, get some exercise, make new friends—maybe make new, more than friends—and in general, be happier. It’s clear the goal is to salsa dance because the motivation is to improve your social life, your health, both physical and mental, and to provide variety in your day-to-day life. You deserve all of these things.

And so do your aspirants. Think of your own personal goals when working with aspirants and remember, their goals mean just as much to them as yours do to you. Don’t ever just fill out the paper work!

Related Posts:
What is an Entrepreneur?
Brain Freeze: How Can I Make Better Decisions?
Do Ask- Don't Tell

ARE YOU A SCARCICIST?

Whoa!  That’s the scariest cyst I’ve ever seen!

Oh, wait. I got confused. I’m not talking about scary nodules. I’m talking about people who have elevated topic of SCARCE-ness to a mantra …

A scarcicist.

To be clear, we hear scarcicists all of the time.

“If only we stopped this or that we would have enough of that of this.”

We hear this everyday from candidates on the campaign trail. We hear it from the talking heads and the pundits on the 24-hour news cycles. We hear that naughty corporations are to blame for using up all the stuff like plants, trees, land, air, water, gold, silver, zinc, oranges, apples, superheroes, clouds, etc.

We hear about all the evil countries stealing all the things from people.

We dare not keep using “stuff” and “things” because pretty soon we will be plum out of it!

Several weeks ago, Dan Sullivan, the strategic coach for entrepreneurs, sent me an email recommending that I read Abundance by Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler. The book points out that rather than living in a world of scarcity, we are actually in an age of abundance.

Some say we are straining the world’s resources, daring Mother Earth to burst at the seams, so you know what I say?

We now have a war raging between the scarcicists and what I will call “The Abundance Bunch®.” ( I am trademarking this name so don’t even try it).

Scarcicists tend to believe that things are finite. They believe that if you get something, I won’t get something.  If something is used, nothing will be left to take its place. They also tend to believe that the distribution of resources are allocated unfairly. They want outside rules put in place to assure fair distribution.

The Abundance Bunch® thinks differently. They believe that human innovation and new technologies will create WHAT we need WHEN we need it. If demand exists for something that is limited in supply, something will come around to fill the hole. Ingenuity will always triumph. Lastly, the connectivity of our world through technology will enable the sharing of thoughts and capabilities in such a manner that any challenge is surmountable.

You might be thinking this sounds a little hokey. You must also think that The Abundance Bunch is a horrible name. You are wrong on both counts. First off, great name. You are all just jealous you didn’t think of it first.

Secondly, I just think that all of us have a choice. We can wring our hands, blame everyone else, and wait for others to fix what ails us …

Or we can be a support-mechanism that creates a brighter and bigger future.

When you think about it, The Abundance Bunch® will never be below-the-liners (The Oz Principle - see my blog from March, The Dirty Word). They are looking for ways to impact and influence.

Today, I challenge you to join The Abundance Bunch®. No scarcicists allowed! 

Related Posts:
What Is Trust?
Plans and Life Scripts
Plans and Scripts- Part 2

Are you Growing Older...or Aging?

  

I know it was a few months ago, but I’m still thinking about Angelina Jolie’s bare leg and that crazy Sacha Baron Cohen spilling ashes all over Ryan Seacrest on the red carpet.

But the most interesting part of the Oscars for me was who won Best Supporting Actor:  Christopher Plummer.  

Guess how old he is?  

82.

And he was nominated with 82-year-old Max Von Sydow, another octogenarian (I know, big words!).

In fact, the faces were all getting older. Good ol’ Michael Douglas sure ain’t a spring chicken, is he?

I half expected all these old fogies to reenact a scene from Cocoon. (For those of you who are too young for that reference, it’s a movie where older people find the fountain of youth in their retirement community’s swimming pool in the form of…cocoons.  As I type this, I realize the movie sounds ridiculous, but try watching it without shedding a few tears.)

All those old people got me thinking about my own age.  I realized that when I go out somewhere I’m usually the oldest person there, but I don’t really feel like I’m aging.

What is aging? (Maybe you think that’s a stupid question, but how many times do I have to tell you?  There is no such thing as a stupid question!)

All of us are getting older. Five seconds ago you were younger than you are now. I’m 10 minutes older than when I started writing this blog. And I’m 15 minutes older from when I tried to start cleaning my garage. That lasted all of five minutes, and I decided it was time to blog (I swear, though, that trying to clean my garage aged me three years).

But I digress …

Let me get back to my “stupid” question …

In my mind, there is a huge difference between getting older and aging.  Getting older is the inevitable process of walking through life along the time continuum. Aging, on the other hand, is the process of ceasing to progress.

I think of aging as a trajectory.  You will always get older, but you will only start aging once your trajectory begins to decline.

Now I’ve noticed two types of older people.  There are the people that become a little more infantile about things.  These people are aging.  They start focusing not on lifelong goals, but rather on small things that shouldn’t be important.

And then there are people who are simply getting older—people like Christopher Plummer and Max Von Sydow.  At least from where I’m sitting, these people don’t really appear to be aging. Their physical appearance, of course, shows age … but their minds and their spirits do not.

The difference between aging and getting older is state of mind.  It really is a case of mind over matter.  If you are open to learning new things, you are growing older, but you are also growing.

Let me give you an example by picking on my wife for a minute …

My daughter and I are mystified because my wife hates using credit card machines at the gas station.  In fact, she has boycotted the practice of putting her credit card into a gas pump.  It confuses her, and so she has gone on strike.  Heretofore, she pays inside, where she stands in line and hands her credit card to a fellow or a lady who runs it through a clunky old machine … just like they did in the good old days.

My wife just doesn’t want to progress … when it comes to pumping gas.

(To her credit, she did learn how to use an iPhone in one day, so I think we can call it a wash and agree that she’s not aging.  She’s standing still in time. )

What about you?  Are you open to learning new things?  Setting new goals?  Or are you just focusing on petty little things and letting age sweep over you? 

I know it is my intention to continue to progress — to continue to learn.  Just remember, if you cease to learn, you are aging.  So pledge to get better each day, like a great wine.

Today Challenge: Do everything in your power to learn something new and do something exciting.  There is no reason we shouldn’t all be Christopher Plummers. Who knows?  Maybe this time next year, I’ll be blogging about how old you look on that Oscar stage!

Related Posts:
Five Eyes on the Fence
The New & Improved You
The Dirty Word

The New & Improved YOU!

The New & Improved YOU......featuring ten times more YOU!

Where are you reading this right now? Are you at home? A waiting room at a doctor’s office...or at the same ol’ job you’ve had for the last 17 years.

Same ol’ job, you say?

Well, in that case, I say, ONLY IF YOU WANT IT TO BE!

What if I told you that no matter where you are, who you are, or what you are, you can be ten times better?

Don’t believe me? Well, you should because you can. GUARANTEED!

But before we get to my super-platinum, no-risk, double-your-money-back guarantee (this advice is free), let’s ask ourselves another question …

Why would you want to be ten times better?

Frankly, I think you are pretty darn great, just the way you are, but if you were ten times better …

Your job would be easier.

You would be faster and more productive.

You would increase your capacity to do bigger things.

You might even get a raise, a promotion, or a genie that grants you every wish imaginable. (Disclaimer: The last one probably won’t happen—unless you are prone to imaginary visions.)

The business visionary Dan Sullivan suggests that all of us can move to a “ten times” more world by being:

Alert

Curious

Responsive

Resourceful

Those characteristics sound like fun, don’t they? Way better than:

Lazy

Don’t care

Comatose

Can’t do anything for yourself

When you are working toward a “ten times” future, being ALERT to opportunities to increase your capabilities and improve performance is key to growing your productivity. But it’s pretty hard to be ALERT when you are not CURIOUS. Going deeper to understand things and how they work allow you to understand how things connect. These qualities provide the base upon which you can easily see improvements or new applications of old wisdom and approaches.

Moving quickly in response to your surroundings is the best antidote to being left behind. Too many of us wait for something to change when, in fact, we are responsible for the change. It is up to us to capitalize on the opportunity or defend against the unexpected. RESPONSIVENESS captures the opportunity. The more opportunity captured, the more likely things will get ten times better.

Finally, let’s talk about being RESOURCEFUL. The ability to work with others makes the day go faster and work life easier. Your relationships are like a bank account. (Don’t worry: This bank is fully insured.)  Our relationships are our social capital. We can be resourceful by connecting with others to get better results. We can draw and make deposits into our social capital bank account by working with others—providing them with resources we have and pulling from the resources they have.

So there you have it. All of us can move to a “ ten times” future by being alert, curious, responsive, and resourceful. For those of you that this resonates with, I say GO FOR IT. In fact, if you need me to say it ten times, I will.

GO FOR IT!

GO FOR IT!...

Ah, two is all you get. I just found a lamp, and I’m hoping there is a genie in it. Wish me luck!

Related Posts:
What's YOUR Pixie Dust?
Broken Promises
Deep Thoughts on Thoughtful Disagreement

The Dirty Word

I’m about to say a dirty word—probably the dirtiest word in our society. If you are reading this aloud and children are within earshot, please cover their ears.

Here goes …

Accountability.

Accountability is a dirty word because we live in a victim society. The folks that wrote the book The OZ Principle call the victim-mentality “living below the line.”

The line to which they refer is the line that separates the failures, stagnators, and blamers from the explorers, originators, and the innovators.

Like it or not, success is never bestowed on you. It is earned. (That is, unless you are one of the Kardashians, in which case we know the dark arts are involved.)

Let me use myself as an example. Now, I have been the King of Excuses in what I will call the “before” time. During “before” time, I could easily find reasons why things did not turn out the way I wanted them to turn out.

It’s always easy to find excuses when you exclude yourself from the equation. During “before” time, I was never the chief culprit. That would have been insanity!

I was always saying things like: “If only they did this. They were supposed to take care of that! They are so incompetent.”

Do you have a “they” in your life? Is your “they” as lazy, horrible, and despicable as mine was? If so, you might be living below the line.

One day, I decided I wanted an “above the line” life. The only way I could do this would be to hold myself accountable. I had to fire “they” and take it’s place. (Normally, it is hard to fire people, but “they” were so lazy, horrible, and despicable that it was pretty easy.)

I had to make a commitment. And by the way, you don’t attempt to make a commitment. You are either committed or you aren’t. In living above the line, you are accountable when you hold yourself responsible for results that you commit to. It does not mean you will always actually succeed. Repeat it with me: Success is not guaranteed (unless you are a Kardashian).

But the magic of commitment and accountability is that they get you half the way there.

In fact, the magic formula for success is to learn from your less-than-desirable results. Learning, adjusting, adapting, and modifying commitments in the face of adversity creates success 90 percent of the time.

I’m not sure what the other 10 percent would be called. Maybe we can call it (cover kids’ ears) “sh*t happens” or (keep covering) “Kardashian?”

(I get paid 10 cents in ad revenue every time I use their name!)

How do YOU live about the line? As my friend Kathy Kolbe says, “Commit! But to very little.”

That is the first step. Understand your role, make adjustments, keep moving forward, and congratulate yourself for the distance you have come. Quantify your commitments. Put a number, date, or numerical frequency to those things you want to accomplish. Enlist the help of supporters. Keep away from the detractors. And finally, resist the victim excuses.

Whether you are or are not successful, you only have one person to blame: YOU!

(And the Kardashians).

Related Posts:
Deep Thoughts on Thoughtful Disagreement
The Planning Triad
Are you a Scarcicist?