The Leading Edge by Mark Goulston

10:09 pm | 0 recommendations | 1 comment

The Leading Edge: Check Your Dissonance at the Door

Dissonance = What are you going to do for me?/What are you going to do to me?

When what you're going to do to people speaks much louder than what you are going to do for them, not only will you not get through to them, they will pull themselves even further away.

To counter that it is wise to be aware of your misperceptions of how you think you are coming off when you are really coming off differently. If you think you're coming off as wise, but they see you as being sly (think Hillary circa 2008) or if you think you are coming off as passionate, when they think you're coming off as over the top (think Howard Dean circa 2004) people are more likely to buy out.

In addition, when you think you're perceiving someone accurately when they feel you aren't getting where they're coming from, they are likely to be even more resistant to having you take them where you want them to go.

To summarize, when you really get where people are coming from, they are more likely to let you take them where you want them to go. When however you assume you know where they're coming from, but you haven't a clue, they're less likely to let you do anything with them.

For a list of common misperceptions about how you're coming off and about how others are coming off, check out: Emotional Ignorance: What you don't know can hurt you..

For more info go to: www.markgoulston.com.

04:49 pm | 0 recommendations | Be the first to comment

The Seven Steps to Instilling Confidence

As a leader, your company looks to you for clarity. The clearer you are about the following seven steps and in being able to articulate it to your company (including shareholders), the more confidence they will have in you.

1. What do you love making (product) or doing (service) that has enough value that other people would be willing and want to pay for (your DREAM)?

2. What desire or problem is your product (what you make) or service (what you do) the best answer or solution to (your VISION and MISSION)?

3. What people or what company has a desire or problem that most urgently needs your product or service, i.e. who are the ones that "Gotta' have you!" (your MARKETING)?

4. How do you get those people or that company to be aware of their urgent need for your product or service (your ADVERTISING)?

5. How do you convince those people to buy that service or product that they “gotta have?” (your SALES)

6. How do you get your product or service to those people or that company (your PRODUCTION and DELIVERY)?

7. How do you continue to increase the satisfaction and enthusiasm for your product or service, so they'll tell others (your CUSTOMER SERVICE and CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT of products and services)?

Sign up to receive my free Usable Insight of the Week at: http://markgoulston.com/list

11:39 am | 0 recommendations | Be the first to comment

WORK/LIFE: 'Tis the Season to Be Thankful

Don't settle for giving a "thank you" at Thanksgiving
when you can give a POWER THANK YOU

If you want to make the people who are special to you, feel special, try a Power Thank You. It has 3 parts:

Part 1: Thank them for something specific that they did for you (it can also be something they refrained from doing that would have hurt you).

Part 2: Acknowledge to them the effort it took for them to do it (by saying something like: "I know you didn't have to do ----" or "I know you went out of your way to do ----").

Part 3: Tell them the difference it personally made to you.

I still get choked up when I think of the power thank you a CEO client gave me a couple years ago.

He told me: "1. I think you might have saved my life; 2. I can be very tough and hard headed but you took me on. You told me very firmly and in no uncertain terms about the incredible pain my 15 year old, underachieving son was in by having a high IQ and not being able to use it because he couldn't focus. I just kept treating him like he was lazy; 3. And what did it mean to me? I remember when I asked him (as you suggested), how bad it got for him (that he couldn't concentrate), and he broke and started crying and let me in instead of blowing me off like he usually did. And then I'll never forget when I asked him, why he hadn't told me it was so bad and he looked right back at and through me and said (correctly), 'Dad, you didn't want to know!'

I told my son I was sorry for not knowing and for not caring enough to find out. He looked back at me at said, 'I'm sorry for all the self-destructive things I did, when I didn't give a damn because you didn't either.' That's when I knew I had to go from hurting my boy to helping (the guy was choked up as he said this) him."*

* This CEO started keeping his son company every night as the boy struggled through his homework, because as his dad said to him: "I can't allow you to be alone feeling so awful." This change in attitude turned everything around at home. That CEO then realized how he was doing the same thing at his company to his board and management team and turned those situations around as well.