How To Get People To Listen To You: Over-the-top influence

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Leadership and communication skills mean nothing if no one wants to listen to you. Many knowledgeable, committed people have zero personal influence simply because they are not interesting. We have all been bored by someone to the point where we imagine ourselves on a Caribbean beach sipping a big umbrella drink and listening to metal drum music. That’s right – we will choose the sound of someone beating on harmonically modified oil drums as we sport embarrassing beverages rather than stay tuned in to information that just moments ago we thought would easily hold our attention.

On the other hand, we watch people on reality shows who are seemingly devoid of value, babbling about stuff we can’t even relate to, much less learn anything from that remotely applies to our own lives. (I won’t name names but it starts with a Kar and ends with a Dashian.) What is it that makes something we truly want to know unbearable and makes useless drivel so appealing? Is it a big personality?

I don’t know about you, but I have had to relocate on a mercifully semi-empty airplane because my seatmate had too much personality. It’s easy to say we choose entertainment over education. (If that’s true, why can’t I stop watching Antiques Roadshow?) We can’t get the education we need to forward our lives because we won’t take the time to study, but we will watch Honey Boo Boo and Swamp People until we begin to develop grammar problems! We can’t focus while at work, but we come home to watch someone do their work on TV. Recently, a very honest woman struggling to sell real estate told me she was not willing to work late because she wanted to watch a show every night about real estate gurus easily selling mansions.

Contrary to what we have been told most of our lives, it seems that we are oddly interested in things we can’t relate to very well. For instance, if you can’t sell a fixer-upper in a questionable neighborhood, then watching a show about superstar realtors selling 30,000-square-foot houses supports my theory. When it comes to shows like Hoarders, we watch and feel better knowing that our messy house is not so bad. Interestingly, though, we won’t clean our house in response; instead, we watch as someone cleans the hoarder’s house. Actually, the show makes most people decide to stay in their relationships because you are less likely to gain 100 pounds and sleep on a pile of pizza boxes if you have a roommate.

General Hospital is still on TV while PBS, which airs some of the best documentaries we’ve seen in years, struggles for funding. Great shows end because they run out of ideas after five seasons, whereas General Hospital has had a 50-year run and hasn’t changed a bit. Sure, some characters who’ve died have come back to life, and sometimes the series just switches actors in a key role, as though no one will notice. It’s just not very realistic … and that’s what we like. What family has someone in the hospital every week? If you knew that family, would you want to hang out with them?

In that same vein, science fiction and fantasy are the top movie and TV draws. From Star Warsto Game of Thrones, we can’t get enough of shockingly unrealistic concepts that try to deliver a moral message. What have I learned? Be nice to dragons and always hang out near the escape pods!

In short, we choose escape over importance, spectacle over value, reality TV over reality. Consequently, if you want to get people to listen to you, you need to start with an over-the-top story that makes others feel like they could never achieve such a lofty, unrealistic dream. Or, if it’s over the top in a negative way, it should make them glad that this mesmerizing train wreck did not happen to them. We don’t care for personal tragedy, but we will actually pay to see the misfortunes of others. That’s why your college professor who told weird and probably untrue stories had so much impact on you. It also explains why you slow down to look at accidents even when you are late for work.

Armed with this insight, what can we do to make sure that people absorb what we want them to hear? 

  1. The most ridiculous, outlandish story you have needs to be put to good use. Points are easy; good stories are hard to come by. Take a great true story (embellishments are OK; you can even admit you’re exaggerating as you tell the story) or an untrue story you can use as metaphor and find the points you need. You can adjust the story to fit your points, but keep in mind that it requires focus. Saying “Hard work creates opportunity” is easy; getting a great story to illustrate that point is much tougher. I once heard a former IRS tax attorney talk about some intensely boring subject matter, but he used really crazy stories about agents tackling celebrities in their front yard and people trying to deduct payments made to prostitutes. I still remember his basic points about record keeping and how to make sure you’re maximizing deductions but playing by the rules. I don’t want to be tackled!
  2. Make sure you start with the problem or issue, then the solution, and finally why the solution is valuable. This order is important for impact. Even the worst reality show with the lowest production value is easy to follow. You can present an over-the-top problem that you solve with a straightforward solution and then a dramatic, metaphorical explanation of value. If you can be funny, be as funny as you can. (If you are not funny, don’t be.) Humor that works always gives you an advantage. We can remember a good joke we heard two years ago, but we don’t recall what we had for lunch two days ago.
  3. Be aware of what your audience values and believes in, even if it’s an audience of one. TV and movie companies do lots of research on this and create things that match what they know about the viewing public. If you know people who really dislike a particular sports team (that’s weird, I know, but it happens), then being over the top in a negative way grabs their attention. I spoke at an NFL event, at a pre-Super Bowl meeting attended by fans and staff of only one of the teams. There had been recent news coverage about players saying negative things about the team I was speaking to. It had gotten out of hand. I mentioned that I had a desire to fight the other team’s mascot because he was annoying – and that I was qualified to do so because I had once taken down Barney in an ugly altercation in a Toys R Us parking lot. They cheered and clapped for a full minute. Then I made my point: Sometimes the best action is restraint, followed by introspection. To win, we must keep a cool head and not be distracted by our personal resentments. I admitted to the large crowd that extreme loyalty to a football team was not my issue. I clearly have a problem with people in big furry animal suits. I trace it back to a Disney trip at age 11 when Goofy and I had it out over a funnel cake.

To ensure that we are seen as interesting, we have to be realistic about how people respond and what they respond to consistently. Being sincere, factual, relatable, relevant, and on point can never compete with a personal, colorful, funny, over-the-top, hard-to-believe story or metaphor with a good, solid, easy-to-understand solution or idea that focuses on delivering value to the listener. Here’s the proof: Whether you liked this article or it rubbed you the wrong way, you seemed to have no problem finishing it!

Employee engagement programs and descriptions

Top Tips From Our Research on Top Producers

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Top Tips From Our Research on Top Producers

What the most successful people do differently

Sales

Dealing with ego driven buyers

Ask them to list possible solutions to the problems they are having and then see what you can agree on. The key is to get them talking about their problem. Remember, what comes out of their mouth means more to them, than what comes out of your mouth. It’s almost impossible to listen yourself out of a sale.

Management

Improving performance

Help your employees identify and maximize their strengths first, then discover how those strengths can improve their weaknesses. People are motivated when their talent is acknowledged and are much more likely to identify and put their best effort into improving their weaknesses.

Example:

If an employee builds great relationships with co-workers but has problems with basic skills, guide them towards finding a co-worker who is willing to help them improve their skills.

The best way to help an employee to improve is first to identify and praise them for their strengths, giving them the confidence and motivation to work on improving those difficult areas.

If you just focus on weaknesses your people will always feel weak

Customer Service

Top complaint from call in customers

Make sure that callers don’t have to repeat themselves. Someone who has explained a problem three times to three different people hangs up angry, whether or not the problem is solved. Most studies done in the last two years show that people want to deal with one person. Customer service systems that focus on providing that are always rated the highest.

Communication

Public presentation skills: PowerPoint Problems

The simple key to the effectiveness of a PowerPoint presentation is to make sure that you say exactly what is on the screen. If you read your prepared notes and say something different from what the audience is viewing, learning does not take place. It is important that you say it exactly as it is written. We recommend you decide how you are going to say something and then create the slide to match your speaking style. This can prevent the syndrome known as Death by PowerPoint.

Visual design

Web sites and brochures have a tendency to look busy in order to show they mean business. The problem is that clarity is lost. People may think it’s cool, but they don’t really know what you’re talking about. They won’t call you and say, “hey I don’t get it” they will just do business with someone who is clear!

Getting Great Results: Turning Talent Into Performance

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Getting Great Results: Turning Talent Into Performance

The definition of leadership

Someone following someone because he wants to, not because he has to.

Do you want to be right or effective?

Have you ever been so right that no one would talk to you? If you criticize others’ ideas, they will almost never use yours, no matter how good they are.

Effective leaders drop their judgments

Everybody knows something you don’t. “I disagree, but I am willing to listen.” Thinking you know everything is proof that you don’t.

Listening skills

You motivate people by listening to them; compassion and attention create dedication. When people feel heard and not judged, they will do more than just the minimum.

Managing difficult personality styles

A high percentage of employees with difficult behavior may be getting unintentional negative consequences for doing a good job. Don’t reward an effective employee with someone else’s work.

What great managers know

People don’t change that much. Look for the value they have now. Don’t manage for the miracle; just because you found one diamond in the rough does not mean you are a magic manager. Some people just suck!

Hiring for talent

Look for the naturally recurring patterns that are needed to do the job. Some people are very articulate and experienced and yet have no ability. If they ask you to further explain the question you just asked them in an interview, tell them it’s their interpretation that’s important. You will now find out who they really are.

You turn talent into performance by aligning goals with talents.

 

 

Top Leadership Keynote  – Getting Great Results: Turning Talent Into Performance

 

Listening Like a Leader

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Listening Like a Leader

How to develop trust in under 5 minutes

Our studies of the most effective people in corporate America show that the top 1 percent are effective not because they executed best practices well. They did not make the most phone calls or have the best processes. They simply understood the truth about trust:
  • People do business with people they like.
  • They like people they trust.
  • They trust people who have a detectable level of compassion and competence.

Does it take time to build trust? The truth is that you have known people for five years who still don’t trust you, and you’ve known some for five minutes who do. Our research shows that trust is usually created by showing a detectable level of concern. When people truly believe you are concerned for them, they tend to think you possess good judgment. After all, if you care about them, you must know what you are doing.

So what is the fastest and most effective way to show people that you care and you’re competent? Make sure they feel heard, which is more than just listening. I call it listening like a leader.

You are not a leader unless you have followers; a leader without followers is called a failure. Regardless of your skills, if your staff doesn’t feel heard and doesn’t trust you, they will always do the minimum. They will watch the clock and be ready to leave at 4:45 every afternoon. They will do just enough each day to avoid getting fired, and they will hope the idea you came up with without their input fails. That’s right—you can spend your life delegating to people who want your projects to fail. How smart is that?

OK, you have to listen; I am sure you already know that. The issue is, how well do people really listen? Most studies show that 75 percent of the world’s population does not listen well.

Here is an insight that you won’t find in many books, keynote speeches or training programs. As a whole, we don’t listen very well and it’s not our fault! That’s right, I am sure you are used to hearing and reading that all of our communication problems are of our making. However, most experts agree that from birth to 5 years of age, we learn more than we will for the rest of our lives.

Even if you earn 15 doctorate degrees in your lifetime, you still acquired most of your knowledge in early childhood. In those formative years, if a child does not feel heard by the adults in its life, it does not possess good listening skills. The bottom line is that it’s hard to listen when no one ever listened to you.

Listening is not hereditary.
It’s an acquired skill.

Are we going to blame the parents? No! It’s difficult to listen to young children when we are trying to look out for their welfare. When my stepdaughter was five, she asked me if Dracula drives a taxi cab. I said, “Well…, I guess if it’s a night job. Uh, wait a minute! What kind of question is that?”

She also asked me if she could have a tattoo—not a fake, stick-on tattoo from an ice cream parlor vending machine, but a real one. I said, “No because you’re in kindergarten—and I’m taking the TV out of your room just for asking that question.”

People are more likely to follow your example than to follow your advice. We create better listeners by being better listeners.

Unfortunately, we don’t have much evidence of people returning from communication training programs as better listeners. It doesn’t take a lot of research to figure out that poor listeners get very little from seminars on listening.

So we don’t listen and it prevents us from being effective leaders. If we can’t do much to improve our listening skills, we have to focus on what we can do in the condition we are in.

The key, then, is to focus on making sure people feel heard. And the first step requires recognizing and recovering from distractions.

One day, as I listened to an employee talk about his wants and needs, my mind started to wander. There he was, sharing his core issues, and I’m thinking to myself, “Look at the size of this guy’s head!” It was hard to focus. Once I was trying to listen to a prospect on a sales call when I noticed he had red hair, blonde eyebrows, and a black mustache. I remember thinking, “It’s Mr. Potato Face! Something has to be a stick-on; that’s not all him.”

After we recover from our own distractions, we have to deal with the real issues at hand. The first of these issues is what I refer to as “the pitch in your head.” It can be anything from a preconceived idea that a manager has about an employee, to a practiced presentation that you are dying to spew on your unsuspecting sales victims (prospects, I mean).

Sure, you ask a question just as you were taught to do in your sales or management training program—you know, a question like “Based on what criteria are your decisions made?” As they talk and you diligently pretend to listen, the pitch in your head starts to play; and when the prospect says something that strikes a chord in you, triggering how much you know, your pitch finds the pause it was looking for and off you go.

“I know exactly what you are talking about because I have had many people just like you with this exact same situation. As a matter of fact, it was this time last year and they even looked a lot like you.”

You then project your opinion, experience or spiel onto the person as a solution to his or her problem.

Instead of feeling heard, the person feels quickly judged, and communication does not take place. It was dead before the spew was finished.

The problem with this scenario is that you rob people of their uniqueness. When you tell them you know exactly what the problem is, they tend to want to show you how unique they are. You actually create your own resistance and prevent your skills and even your empathy from making their mark.

When people are talking, you are thinking about you or about what you can do to help them help you. It’s a natural thing for us to do, and it forces us to pitch hard and focus on convincing rather than on gaining agreement.

So what do the most effective people do differently?

They make sure the people they are dealing with feel heard and can retain their uniqueness. If you make people feel important, you will be important to them!

But an even bigger realization comes from all of this.

When you focus on how people feel about what they are saying, you increase the level of true concern you have for others. You actually start to become the person you thought you were pretending to be: A true leader!

Top Leadership Keynote: Getting Great Results: Turning Talent Into Performance

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Garrison Wynn Quote

 

Being the Best vs. Being Consistently Chosen

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Do you have the best service, product, or skills in your area, yet for some reason you still are not getting the results you know you deserve? Hey! I thought if you were the best, you were supposed to eventually win. Let’s address the reality of why your products, services, or leadership styles–or those of your competitors–are selected.

Think of the top-selling hamburgers in the world. Are they the best hamburgers? No! So why are they chosen? Because there is more to success than being the best! Is that special sauce really special? No! It’s actually pretty gross! I’m not trying to criticize the fast food industry; it has combined two of the most desired things on the planet: Fast and Food.

The point is, success is more than being really good at what you do, it’s about being consistently chosen to do it. We like fast food because it meets a specific need. Some people under certain circumstances will trade quality for speed and if you can put a little special sauce on it even better.

Here’s an idea I’d like you to consider: There is no such thing as The Best! If the world agreed on what’s best, everybody would choose the best and nothing else would even be considered. Decision-making doesn’t work that way! People don’t necessarily choose what’s best… they choose what they are the most comfortable with whether it’s the best or not.

People will choose what they feel is the best. That’s right, I used the F word: Feel! People will buy into anything that they feel will serve them best. In business, that means people. People don’t buy or rent from companies or hire and promote a discrete skill set. People buy or rent from people and they hire and promote people. So what is it that everybody really wants?

Interviews off the record with top performing, business owners, managers, and sales people show something very different from just best practices.

Best practices tend to focus on the method, the tactics, and the knowledge. I want to make it very clear that we should be as good as we possibly can at what we do and get all the skills training we can get our hands on. It’s just that skill and knowledge are not enough in today’s world. Being sharp and good at what you do is just the price of admission. If someone is going to rent a chocolate fountain and a cement mixer (hopefully not for the same event) they expect you to be knowledgeable and the equipment to work.

The consistently chosen focus on the mindset, the approach, and the agenda we all have in common. Everybody wants the same three things: Love, Money, and Prestige. They want to be cared about, have some security and get credit for their efforts. So you have to ask yourself three questions:

  1. Love
    How detectable is my care and concern in a business transaction?
  2. Money/value
    Do I have multiple solutions for a single problem?
  3. Prestige
    Will they look good to others by doing business with me?

I wish I could tell you that our research of thousands of top performers showed that the most skilled and knowledgeable were consistently the most successful. It did not indicate that at all.

The research showed that people make choices based on what they feel is best for them. It may not be the lowest price, the latest model, or the ideal career; but for some reason, they are sticking with it no matter what!