We Don’t Really Hear Each Other

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We are not always able to accurately hear what others mean to convey. Sometimes we hear only a fraction of what’s been said and our brains misunderstand or bias the rest – and we might not realize it until it’s too late, causing us to believe we’re right and others are wrong, or moving to action using the wrong assumptions. We’re left with restricted communication and creativity, failed relationships, and lost profit. And none of it is our fault.

We try to attend carefully to what’s being said. Yet our pesky brains do some pretty sophisticated stuff, all without our conscious consent: they

  • delete or misconstrue or filter out what sounds wrong or goes against our beliefs or is unfamiliar, then
  • matches what’s left with a historic memory of a ‘similar-enough’ conversation and
  • throws out what doesn’t match that memory.

Whatever is left is what we believe has been said.

In conversations with familiar folks, there is less of a gap; with folks we don’t know, in dialogues that are outside of our habitual knowledge base, or when we enter conversations with a rigid goal, we accurately understand far less of what was actually meant. A problem occurs when we are convinced – certain – that what we heard is accurate, and don’t know when, if, or how, to take measures to fix a problem we don’t believe we have. As a result we unwittingly compromise relationships, business, partnerships, creativity, and success.

With little control over what our brains tell us we’ve heard, we’re left with the fallout:

  • Misunderstandings that remain unresolved because we believe – we’re certain – we’re right;
  • Bad feelings and take-aways caused by misheard communication;
  • Biased assumptions that cause inadequate responses and failed initiatives;
  • Misheard facts that lead to inaccuracies in business, technology, relationships;
  • Restricted creativity, laps in leadership, therapy, coaching, and medical advice.

We misunderstand doctors, make assumptions with our teenagers and vendors, bias communications with family members and colleagues, set up filters before conversations with historic relationships. Our lives are influenced by how accurately we hear what others mean to convey.

But a new book is out that will resolve these problems. What? Did you really say what I think I heard? not only describes how, exactly, our brains create the instinctive actions that limit our ability to hear others without bias or misunderstanding, but also shows how to intervene our automatic behaviors and hear others as they intend to be heard.

Different from books on Active Listening which merely enables listeners to hear words, What? focuses on understanding intended meaning. Using exercises and assessments, funny stories and authentic appeal, New York Times best selling author and StrategyDriven Principal Contributor, Sharon Drew Morgen has written a game changer, a book that thoroughly breaks down every aspect of how we interpret what others mean to tell us, how the understanding gap between Sender and Receiver is created, and the skills to avoid any misinterpretation or bias at all. It’s a book that will be the foremost communication book for decades and the book is being offered for free (no opt in).

Go to www.didihearyou.com where you can get the book, and peruse the learning tools that accompany the book for those wishing to recognize any obstacles with their listening habits (Assessments) or learn how to overcome any bias and misinterpretation issues (Study Guide) that occur during conversations.

About the Author

Sharon Drew Morgen is founder of Morgen Facilitations, Inc. (www.newsalesparadigm.com). She is the visionary behind Buying Facilitation®, the decision facilitation model that enables people to change with integrity. A pioneer who has spoken about, written about, and taught the skills to help buyers buy, she is the author of the acclaimed New York Times Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity and Dirty Little Secrets: Why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what you can do about it.

To contact Sharon Drew at [email protected] or go to www.didihearyou.com to choose your favorite digital site to download your free book.

Important Characteristics Every Business Owner Should Have

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At the core of every great businessperson, is a set of solid characteristics. There are certain traits that every entrepreneur in the world has. If you are lucky enough to have these traits, you will succeed in the world of business. Some people think that anyone can start a business and make a decent profit. That is not true. It takes a special person to undertake the epic task of starting a company. If you don’t have what it takes, you will fail in your business career. Here are some important characteristics every business owner should have.

Important Characteristics Every Business Owner Should Have
Photo courtesy of Mish Sukharev

Motivation

As you likely know, starting a business takes a lot of hard work and dedication. If you don’t have the motivation, you will struggle to survive as a business person. You will be working many hours with little reward for the first year or two of your business. You need some motivation to drive you forwards, or you will find that you give up before you make a success of your company. If you are a lazy person who gives up easily, you will never make it. Nobody can make you work. You need to want to work.

Creativity

It’s fine having motivation, but if you have nothing to work towards, what is the point? At the heart of every new business is a fantastic idea. You need to think of something original, which will make your company unique. Otherwise, you will not stand out from the crowd. Creative people always have new ideas and can expand on the ideas of others. That means that you can see ways to improve products and services. Few people are creative by nature. Many try to come up with new ideas, but few are innovative without trying.

Charisma

When you start a business, you need people to buy into it. That means that you have to find ways to convince people of how great your company is. If you are not a charismatic person, you will find it hard to sell your company to others. When you meet business contacts or clients, you need to charm them. When people fake charm, it can seem a little sleazy. Nobody wants to work with someone who is creepy and fake. Naturally charismatic people can sell anything to anything to anyone. If, when you talk to people, you can engage with them on a meaningful level right away, you are charismatic.

Decisiveness

Do you struggle to make decisions? If you do, maybe you are not the right person to start a business. When you are running a company, you need to make a lot of key decisions. If you hesitate or take too long to make a decision, you could lose money and waste opportunities. For example, let’s say there is Manchester office space available for a limited time. You might be unsure of whether you want to open a branch of your business in Manchester. A decisive person will make a decision fast and stick to it. An indecisive person will hesitate and miss an excellent opportunity.

Compassion

If you are not compassionate, it means that you don’t understand the needs of others. Your company provides products or services to people. Whether your business is B2B or B2C, you will still be serving someone. If you fail to understand what people need from you, your business will fail too. Studies show that people with a high level of compassion suit managerial roles best. Sometimes, it is difficult to understand what people need or want. If you are perceptive, you will pick up what people are thinking and develop your business to suit them.

Practicality

Trying to do a million things in a short space of time might not be a practical decision. When people don’t approach things in a practical manner, they find it hard to cope with all the jobs they have to do. A great entrepreneur is someone who can manage their time and their workload. If you dive into projects too fast or make irrational decisions, you will find it hard to make the most of your business. In fact, you might let the work overwhelm you. If that happens, you could stress yourself out and break down.

Intelligence

Intelligence doesn’t always mean that you are academic or that you have loads of qualifications. In fact, intelligence has little to do with degrees. What makes a person intelligent is how they approach certain situations. You will need to be emotionally intelligent in that you need to understand how others feel. You will also need to be intelligent in the way that you talk to people and sell to them. Running a company is a lot like a balancing act. You need to handle loads of projects at once. If you lack intelligence, you will find that you can’t handle the workload.

Resilience

When you first start a business, you will fail at something. Failure is part of life. It doesn’t matter if you don’t succeed the first time you try to do something. What matters is that you try again. When you take a hit, you need to get back up again and start over. If you let failure hold you back, you will never make a success of your life. It takes true resilience to try again when you fail at something. Failure knocks people’s confidence. That is normal. You need to get over it and move on, though if you want to be a great business owner.

Independence

When you run a business, you can’t afford to rely on anyone except yourself. You are the master of your destiny. In other careers, you always have people above you to look after you and check that you are doing things right. When you work for yourself, you are the only person who you can trust. If you need constant reassurance from others, you will not make a great entrepreneur. You need to find ways to work on an independent level so that you can go it alone.

Corrective Action Program Best Practice 1 – One Program

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StrategyDriven Corrective Action Program Article | Corrective Action Program Best Practice 1 - One ProgramImprovement opportunities abound; ranging from everyday failures and performance enhancements to strategic acquisitions and marketplace openings. While these opportunities may represent some value to the organization, each requires different resources in varying quantities and offers a unique and unequal return on investment. Consequently, it is important to evaluate the urgency and need of these items collectively when determining which improvements to pursue. Employing a single repository within which all of the organization’s opportunities are collected facilitates these ongoing evaluations.

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About the Author

Nathan Ives, StrategyDriven Principal is a StrategyDriven Principal and Host of the StrategyDriven Podcast. For over twenty years, he has served as trusted advisor to executives and managers at dozens of Fortune 500 and smaller companies in the areas of management effectiveness, organizational development, and process improvement. To read Nathan’s complete biography, click here.

Easiest way to make a sale? Start at the top!

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If you’ve never been to the Guggenheim Museum in New York City you’re missing an exceptional experience and an incredible lesson in sales.

When you enter this Frank Lloyd Wright designed building, you’ll be immediately amazed by the rotunda exposing the entire museum. Art is everywhere and a giant ramp wraps around six floors of art treasures.

The question is where do you start?
The answer is simple: start at the top.
Same in sales.

I first wrote about this process 21 years ago in 1993. There was no Internet. Your cell phone was in a bag or hard-wired into your car. No email. Life was simple, but getting to the CEO was hard.

I wrote about starting at the top, and gave recommendations about how to contact the CEO’s ‘secretary’ to get the appointment.

I asked the obvious (sales) questions: Why would you walk uphill when you can walk downhill? Why would you start at the bottom when you can start at the top?

Those same questions still apply today.

Isn’t it easier to make a sale when you start with the CEO? And today there are a dozen or more different ways to get to that same CEO than there were 21 years ago.

PICTURE THIS: You walk into a crowded museum (or a crowded sales environment) and you saunter over to an uncrowded elevator. You enter an empty elevator car and push the top floor button. Boom! Easier than you thought – same in sales – AND the CEO’s office is the LEAST crowded office in the building.

THINK ABOUT THIS: If you start on the first floor, at the lowest and easiest point of entry, whoever is in charge has to call upstairs to their daddy on the 2nd floor to find out if they can do business with you.

And depending on the size and deal, the guy on the second floor may have to call his daddy on the third floor. And of course the guy on the third floor may have to call his dad on the fourth floor, and so on up the ladder.

And of course the salesperson has to climb UP the ladder instead of walking down or climbing down the ladder. Complaining all the way.

Or worse, sometimes that salesperson will send me an email saying, “The guy at the bottom won’t let me talk to his boss” and wants to know how to get around him. The easy answer is: never start with him to begin with.

REALITY: Which is more powerful: Having to claw your way up the ladder and beg for permission or beg for the sale? Or having the CEO come down and tell that guy on the first, second, or third floor who he’s going to be doing business with?

That’s the difference between bottom-up and top-down.

GREAT NEWS: Enter social media, the Internet, blogging, YouTube, and a host of other search avenues. And enter your online reputation. All of these elements will determine whether you can earn a meeting at the top, or not.

REAL WORLD SCENARIO: “Hi, My name is Jeffrey Gitomer. I’d like to schedule a brief appointment with the CEO. Would you mind Googling me while I’m on the phone to determine my worthiness, look at my accomplishments, and perhaps check on my reputation. Now the administrative assistant Googles you to see if you deserve the meeting.

In the old days YOU had to convince the admin to get a meeting. Today, the Internet does the convincing for you. Gotta love it – unless you have no social media presence, no Internet presence, no Google presence, no blog, and no reputation to speak of. Salespeople, including you, can no longer BS their way into a C-level meeting. You either earn it, or you burn it.

Next week I’m going to talk about the five things that CEOs are interested in. HERE’S A HINT: They have nothing to do with your product, but they have everything to do with the CEO, or his appointee, buying your product.

But today’s lesson is not, “see you at the top.” The lesson is: “start at the top.”

Reprinted with permission from Jeffrey H. Gitomer and Buy Gitomer.

About the Author

Jeffrey GitomerJeffrey Gitomer is the author of The Sales Bible, Customer Satisfaction is Worthless Customer Loyalty is Priceless, The Little Red Book of Selling, The Little Red Book of Sales Answers, The Little Black Book of Connections, The Little Gold Book of YES! Attitude, The Little Green Book of Getting Your Way, The Little Platinum Book of Cha-Ching, The Little Teal Book of Trust, The Little Book of Leadership, and Social BOOM! His website, www.gitomer.com, will lead you to more information about training and seminars, or email him personally at [email protected].

The Big Picture of Business – Diversity is Important for Business

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This year is the 50th anniversary of the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. I was on the committee that wrote that legislation.

Diversity is most important for business, the economy and quality of life. I have conducted many diversity audits of companies. I have seen corporate America embrace diversity in many practices, including the workforce and suppliers.

Several years ago, we realized that specialized positioning and communications are necessary for social harmony and a global economy. We are a diverse population, and the same ways of communicating do not have desired effects anymore.

Diversity is about so much more than human resources issues. It means making the most of the organization that we can. It means being anything that we want to be. Diversity is not about quotas and should never be perceived as imposed punishment. By taking stock and planning creatively, then we can and will embody diversity.

The premise of multicultural diversity is ambitious and necessary to achieve. It is a mindset that must permeate organizations from top-down as well as bottom-up. If not pursued in a sophisticated, sensitive way, good intentions will be wasted.

The following pointers are offered to companies who communicate with niche publics:

  • Seek and train multi-cultural professionals.
  • Contribute to education in minority schools… assuring that the pipeline of promising talent can rise to challenges of the workforce.
  • Design public relations programs that embrace multicultural constituencies, rather than secondarily appeal to them after the fact.
  • Interface with community based groups, sharing in activities and civic service… to learn how communications will be received.
  • Realize that minority groups are highly diverse. Not every Asian knows each other, nor speaks the same language. There are as many subtle differences in every ethnic group as the next. Thus, multicultural communicating is highly customized.
  • Realize that multi-cultural communications applies to all. Black professionals do not just participate in African American community events. Cultivate communicators toward cross-culturization.
  • As media does a good job of showcasing multicultural events, note it positively. If thanked enough, media will continue to shine the light on multicultural diversity.
  • Sophistication in the gauging of public opinion will result in a higher caliber of communicating. The demands of an ever-changing world require that continuous improvement be made. Attention paid to writing and graphics quality will enhance the value of multicultural communications.

The old theory was that society is a Melting Pot. That philosophy evolved to the Salad Bowl concept. In either, one element still sinks to the bottom. We must now see it as a Mosaic or Patchwork Quilt. Each element blends and supports others. Diversity is a continuing process where we keep the elements mixed.

People believe that they are now thinking differently and creatively about diversity issues. In truth, they are really rearranging their existing prejudices. To be diverse and united, societies must be sealed with common purposes.

We can be diversified and unified at the same time. We can remain culturally diversified. We still can and should work together as a society. We all hold cultural values. One set is not better than another.

Look at the issues and how they affect the total person. Actions are always required. Good intentions and political correctness are not enough.

It is short sighted to ignore changes in society. It is good business to recognize opportunities for practice development. In the Chinese culture, every crisis is first recognized as a danger signal and always as an opportunity for overcoming obstacles.

Every professional must embrace a set of ethics:

  • Things for which each professional holds himself/herself accountable.
  • Holds benchmarks for Continuous Quality Improvement.
  • Realistically attainable goals.
  • Contains mechanisms to teach and mentor others.
  • Continually re-examines and adds to the list.

There are many good reasons why diversity relates to your livelihood:

  • Embracing diversity is politically correct.
  • Society will make increasing demands that you address these issues.
  • It makes good business sense.
  • It opens your services to additional market niches.
  • It embodies the spirit of open communications, the basis of winning companies.
  • This process creates more job opportunities for multicultural professionals.
  • And it is the right thing to do.

Quotes About Diversity

“What is food to one is to another bitter poison.”
Lucretius

“Variety’s the very spice of life, that gives it all its flavor.”
William Cowper, The Task

“Letting a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought contend is the policy.”
Mao Tse-tung (1956)

“No pleasure lasts long unless there is variety to it.”
Pubililius Syrus

“It were not best that we should all think alike. It is difference of opinion that makes horse races.”
Mark Twain

“Everyone is a prisoner of his own experiences. No one can eliminate prejudices. Just recognize them.”
Edward R. Murrow (1955)

“Diversity is the one true thing we all have in common. Celebrate it every day.”
Proverb

“When power leads man towards arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the area of man’s concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of his existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses.”
President John F. Kennedy (1917-1963), honoring poet Robert Frost at Amherst College

About the Author

Hank MoorePower Stars to Light the Business Flame, by Hank Moore, encompasses a full-scope business perspective, invaluable for the corporate and small business markets. It is a compendium book, containing quotes and extrapolations into business culture, arranged in 76 business categories.

Hank’s latest book functions as a ‘PDR of business,’ a view of Big Picture strategies, methodologies and recommendations. This is a creative way of re-treading old knowledge to enable executives to master change rather than feel as they’re victims of it.

Power Stars to Light the Business Flame is now out in all three e-book formats: iTunes, Kindle, and Nook.