Kairospl

Principles of Persuasion Workshop, brought to you by Kairos Performance Learning is coming to Kuala Lumpur again!
Sign up for our upcoming workshop in Kuala Lumpur at the Hotel Istana from September 28-29, 2011

 Dr Khoo Cheok Kau is the only Cialdini Method Certified Trainer (CMCT) in Malaysia and among the only 26 CMCT’s in the world, personally trained and certified by Dr Robert B. Cialdini, Regent Professor at Arizona State University & the world’s most cited expert in the Principles of Persuasion

Download brochure here.

May 12, 2012

Some you may be familiar with the Contrast Phenomena when trying to persuade others. You will learn more about this and the 6 weapons of persuasion for the upcoming Principle of Persuasion Workshop to be held in Penang, Malaysia at the Eastin Hotel Penang from June 21-22, 2012.

In this article by Steve Martin, a great and innovative person whom I know personally, he has written this interesting article for Influence Report below:

In previous Inside Influence Reports we have discussed contrast effects. The idea that the way an offer or proposal is perceived will be influenced not just by the offer itself but also by what is experienced or presented immediately before that offer or proposal. Accordingly, when looking to persuade others, a detective of the influence process will know that what comes first is of great importance.

But what comes last is important too. Understanding the powerful sway that ‘send-offs’ can have on how experiences are evaluated can have implications not only for future business interactions, but also how much your clients enjoy their next interaction with you.

Imagine for a few moments that you have just visited your physician’s office for a routine, yet rather uncomfortable medical procedure and immediately afterwards you are asked how painful it was and how much you are looking forward to the next examination.

By way of contrast now, imagine this much happier scenario. You have just returned from your vacation and you are asked how pleasurable it was and how much you are looking forward to your next one.

If you are like most people who have been asked these questions, then your responses will most likely be influenced by two things. The peak moment of intensity you felt during the experience (pain in the case of the medical check-up or pleasure in the case of the vacation) and the final moment of pain or pleasure (Paying your bill as you leave the medical office or attending the final night gala at the end of your vacation). This is what is known as the peak-end effect.

Rather surprisingly, your feelings at any other time of the experience would matter a lot less than you would at first imagine. Furthermore, your overall evaluation of the experience will most likely also suffer from duration neglect. Put simply you will tend to pay less attention to how long the actual experience lasted or perhaps even disregard the time it lasted entirely.

Peak-end effects go some way to explain why pop stars are more likely to play their most popular songs at the end of the concert rather than at the beginning or during the middle. And remember that incredibly boring meeting you were in last week, the one that you thought would never end? On reflection, it doesn’t seem so long now after all does it? That’s duration neglect in action.

These peak-end and duration neglect effects mean that the memories of our experiences are etched into our minds with extremity and recency but not necessarily duration. As a result, our memory can be an imperfect guide when we decide how we feel about our experiences. However, regardless of how imperfect a guide our memory will be, it will clearly still have a significant influence over us; both in terms of how when we decide and in terms of when we persuade.

Let’s take an example of each.

Imagine that the time has come to book your next vacation – one that you will want fabulous memories of when you look back on it. Given that much of your future evaluation will be based on the powerful yet hidden influence of the peak-end effect, you might be better off planning one amazing experience during your time away and, rather than using those free miles to get a nicer seat on the way to your vacation destination, you should probably travel home in style instead.

As far as your business interactions go, if you wish to persuade customers and clients to remember their experiences with you more favorably and to come back for more (and what business wouldn’t want this?) then you should be sure to focus an appropriate amount of attention on the final stages of your business interactions. Keep in mind that we are not minimizing the need for “what comes first” but simply also stating that there is a benefit to making sure customers and clients experience a high point of their interactions with you by ensuring a great send off!

So when it comes to influencing others, it is important to pay attention both to what comes first and what comes last and to notice the subtle differences in the roles of each.

When looking to influence a decision, a detective of the persuasion process will know that what comes first will be of most importance. However when looking to positively influence someone’s evaluation post- decision, then arranging for a good send off will be key.

Questions:

What examples of good (or poor) send-offs have you experienced and how have they influenced your future interactions with that company or organization?

What other potential ways of employing these contrast and peak-end effects come to mind?

If you are interested in the upcoming Principles of Persuasion Workshop in June 21-22, 2012, please contact me at: ckkhoo@kairospl.com for more details.

April 21, 2012

To engage yourself in a difficult conversation, whether it is something that is risky or involves strong emotions is a gigantic task. One can take either option: to avoid it altogether and pretend nothing happens or to deal with it courageously. I will prefer to take the second option of dealing with it. To do that needs preparation. David Lee here shares about setting the stage for a difficult conversation.

If you need to master how to coach others in a difficult conversation, kindly ask for the training on “Coach To Lead”, which is a coaching program for leaders. I can be contacted at: ckkhoo@kairospl.com

Here is the article by David Lee:

What you do before you talk with someone about a difficult issue will largely determine what happens during the conversation. How you spend your “thought time” prior to talking with that person has a huge impact on the other “make or break” moment of truth—how the conversation begins. If you spend your time thinking about the other person’s evil intentions—real or imagined—and getting outraged, if you spend your time ruminating about unpleasant things he or she has done or unpleasant conversations you’ve had with him or her, you’re likely to enter the conversation in a negative emotional state and with an antagonistic attitude. Doing so obviously reduces the odds that you will begin the conversation in a skillful, productive manner.

Questions to Ask Yourself as You Think about the Other Person and the Upcoming Conversation

1. Are you mind reading? Mind reading is when we take our guesses about a person’s motivation, agenda, or intention as the truth— and then take action based on our assumptions. Since we can’t know what’s going on in another’s mind, our guesses are just that and nothing more—guesses, not facts. When we assume our guesses are facts, we can set ourselves up for unnecessary conflict by going into the conversation with a combative, antagonistic mind-set that might be based on a totally incorrect perception.

2. Are you fortune telling? Fortune telling is a cousin of mind reading. Instead of taking our analysis of a person as fact, fortune telling is taking our predictions of what will happen as fact (e.g. “I know exactly what she’s going to say,” “I know what will happen if I bring that up.”) Just as with mind reading, fortune telling can set us up for unnecessary conflict by leading us to enter the conversation in a confrontational mood.

3. Are you indulging in self-righteous outrage? Often mind reading and fortune telling lead to self-righteous indignation (“She’s doing that just to be passive-aggressive! I am so tired of her game-playing! I don’t have time for this!”) Self-righteous outrage puts us into an angry, resentful emotional state, hardly an optimal frame of mind to engage someone in a productive conversation.

4. What’s your goal? Asking ourselves about our goal, what we hope the conversation will accomplish, helps us identify and eliminate unproductive, antagonism-generating agendas. If our goal is to tell someone off, show him why he’s wrong, or other win/lose agendas, we set the stage for an antagonistic interaction. To help you identify possible unproductive intentions, ask yourself if your goal is to tell him off and set him straight, or to understand his perspective and help him understand yours.

5. Are you willing to hear an alternative perspective and maybe find out your perspective is off base? Although it may feel good to see ourselves as right or blameless, if it makes us unwilling to get potentially useful input and feedback, it’s an expensive indulgence. A clue to how sincere we are about engaging in a constructive conversation is whether we are willing to get a third party’s perspective—even if it ends up being very different from ours.

Actions to Take

1. Focus on trying to understand the other person’s perspective.  “Seek first to understand” is the antidote to mind reading, fortune telling, and indulging in self-righteous outrage. By devoting part of your preparation time on seeking first to understand, you’re more likely to generate a balanced, reasonable perspective. Seeking to understand is different from mind reading. When we seek to understand, we recognize that our present assessment is still an option, not a fact.

2. If you’re really upset, vent to someone you trust—or several if necessary—until the emotional charge has been reduced to a controllable level. Doing this allows you to calm down enough to get into a more moderate emotional state and thus allows you to see the situation from a more rational, untainted perspective. Having “blown off some steam,” you are more capable of entering the conversation in a neutral or even positive emotional state. Keep in mind that the goal of venting is not to disparage the other person and make him look bad. It’s to discharge negative emotions––not build more. If we vent in a mean-spirited way, putting down the other person, and consciously trying to make him look bad, we only create more negative emotions in ourselves, which hurts us physiologically and hurts our chances of a having a constructive conversation.

3. Ask someone you trust and respect for his or her perspective. When we’re upset, our emotions can distort our perceptions. We can remedy this by getting someone else’s perspective. Because that individual is not emotionally involved, he or she is able to see the situation in a more measured, rational way. If you do ask for someone’s perspective, make sure you really want it. We can measure how sincere we are about wanting to perceive the situation accurately—rather than indulge ourselves in self-righteous indignation—by our willingness to hear a neutral party’s perspective, even if it’s different from ours.

4. Ask for feedback on how you propose to bring up the conversation. Ask one or more people whom you respect and trust how they would respond if you brought up the issue to them in the way you’re thinking of doing. Give them some background about yourself and the other person and ask them how they think the other person might respond to your opening.

5. If appropriate and possible, establish some goodwill with the other person by doing something kind, generous, or thoughtful. When there’s goodwill between two people, they’re more likely to give each other the benefit of the doubt. They’re more likely to enter a difficult discussion with a willingness to hear the other person’s point of view, and they’re more likely to want to work things out collaboratively. Establishing goodwill can be as simple as paying the person a sincere compliment, doing him a favor or offering to help him out rather than waiting for him to ask you.

6. If appropriate and possible, see if you can engage the person in one or more positive interactions before addressing difficult issues.  Besides making deposits in your “goodwill bank account with the other person,” think about other ways of engaging him in positive interactions. Again, such interactions don’t have to be big or dramatic. In fact, the simpler and more understated, the more likely he will be receive the gesture as genuine. It can be a short conversation about his favorite team or asking him about his kids. By taking the time to have positive interactions with him, you increase the odds he’ll enter the important conversation in a more positive emotional and attitudinal state.

Returning to the point about your actions being perceived as genuine, make sure they truly are genuine. If you do a favor or make small talk purely as a strategy for “warming the person up” so you can have a productive conversation, he’s’ likely to pick up on your insincerity. If you don’t yet sincerely want to understand and respect their point of view or you harbor strong negative feelings toward them, your first task is to do the work that will get you into a more charitable frame of mind.

If we don’t do that work first, engaging the other person in a positive interaction will be nothing more than a calculated manipulation. When we no longer see the person as an enemy or out to get us, when we sincerely do want to bridge the gap, our efforts to create positive interactions will be sincere and genuine, and the other person will pick up on that.

7. If you catch yourself mind reading, fortune telling, or indulging in self-righteous indignation, stop. Remind yourself that mind reading and fortune telling are irrational thought processes Even if your guesses are dead on, even if you have a right to be outraged, you’re the one who pays the price, as mentioned previously.

8. Make the Law of Reciprocity your ally. People tend to reciprocate. If we’re generous, the other person is more likely to be generous toward us. If the person you need to talk with believes you’re trying to show him he’s wrong, he’ll reciprocate by trying to show you that you’re wrong. If you genuinely want to understand his point of view, he’s more likely to want to understand yours. Keep this principle in mind by reminding yourself that “what you put out is what you get back.”

January 28, 2012

I have known of leaders in organizations who are fearful of opening themselves up to being vulnerable. The heads of divisions would send their second liners for assessments like sales and marketing instead of themselves. Leaders are reluctant to seek help from others as they do want to be perceived weak by others, especially their subordinates or colleagues. This article based on the movie, “The King’s Speech”, by Dr. Dennis Reina and Dr. Michelle Reina identified the four common arguments against asking for help by leaders.

The 2010 movie The King’s Speech won multiple awards as well as the hearts of moviegoers everywhere. On a basic level, the film presents a compelling personal story of the England’s Duke of York’s triumph over a debilitating stammer. However, it is also an inspirational example of what it takes to rise above obstacles and step up to leadership in the service of a cause greater than oneself.

The Duke, (called Bertie by his family) was second in line to the British throne. He suddenly found himself in his country’s top leadership role when his father, King George V, passed away and his brother, the Duke of Windsor, abdicated the throne to marry the American divorcée Wallis Simpson. As king, the Duke would have to face his most dreaded fear: public speaking.

The newly crowned King George VI worked tirelessly to overcome his stammer and lead and reassure a nation on the brink of World War II. How did George VI literally find his voice to speak to his people? By reluctantly asking for and accepting the help of someone lower in social status than he—a “commoner” voice coach named Lionel Logue. Although he worked hard to overcome his stammer, he could not do it alone; he needed expert advice and support—the very support that as a monarch, he felt he should not need.

If you’re like most leaders you, too, struggle with asking for and accepting the help you might need to perform to your highest potential. You may think that you should be able to go it alone—that asking for help will be seen as a sign of weakness. Yet, in failing to receive support, odds are, you are depriving yourself—and your organization—of your true greatness.

Believe this: accepting support isn’t a sign of weakness. It’s a sign of courage and strength. Only strong, self-aware leaders can size up a situation and see, realistically, what they can or cannot face alone. What’s more, only then can they embrace, as King George VI ultimately did, their own “human-ness.”

Like Bertie, you may have some instinctive reactions to the idea of approaching others for support. In our own work with leaders, we find that there are at least three common barriers to their asking for and getting the input they need.

Based on our own work with leaders, we have identified the following four common arguments against asking for help (each one confronted by the King George VI himself) along with suggestions on how to deal with each:

1.  “I’m the leader here – I can’t let on that I need help.”

Your people want and need you to lead. So, if asking for, and accepting, help will enable you to be a better leader, it’d be a smart move on your part to do it. What’s more, by example, you’d be letting others in the organization know it’s okay to ask for help—to acknowledge their “human-ness” and accept assistance. As a result, relationships would deepen, trust and respect would grow, and people would be better able to give their very best to the business.

2.  “I don’t want to open myself up to being vulnerable.”

If playing it close to the vest is your default, then first seek to understand your immediate world. Ask questions to learn who the people around you really are, where they’re coming from, and what their true intentions might be. The more you know, the less vulnerable you’ll feel. Ultimately, you’ll open yourself up to the trusting, supportive relationships you need to succeed.

3.  “I don’t know who I can trust.”

Feeling uncertain about whom you can really trust and depend on is normal, even legitimate. So, at first, select just one or two people and start slowly with small, safe steps. Set clear expectations. Lay out the ground rules. And make specific agreements to help you stay on track. Give people a chance to earn your trust and, odds are, you’ll reap valuable rewards.

4. “I want to be a strong leader, but that has nothing to do with my personal life.”
You’re a whole person, and your success comes from the sum of all your experiences. Additionally, as a leader, your ability to build and rebuild trust with others has a lot to do with how you’ve dealt with situations of broken trust in your own life. If you don’t want to “go there” with people within your organization, look for someone on the outside—your own Lionel Logue.

January 26, 2012

We have heard about hiring potential employees based on attitudes rather than skills or knowledge alone. Getting the right hire is vital to the hiring manager and also the organization. According to Matthew Beecher in this article, in hiring there is a need for a shift from filling a void to mitigating corporate inadequacy. The test of the right hire is whether the new employee is an asset or a liability.

Kairos Performance Learning conducts the Competency-Based Behavioural Interviewing Workshop for multinational companies to help them recruit assets for the their organizations. Kindly contact: www.blog.kairospl.com

In recruiting, hiring managers often fill positions based on corporate-specified education levels and years of experience. This two-step checklist can give hiring managers a false sense of completion. When managers settle into the checklist mentality, they often fail to identify how the candidates can further enhance the entire workplace.

In an asset frame of mind, a hiring manager begins to take on a consultant role, looking at inefficiencies and weaknesses in the department and determining characteristics and strengths that may improve those problems. With this shift, hiring moves from filling a void to mitigating corporate inadequacy.

Once hired, employees quickly become assets or liabilities in how they affect the environment.

Average employees often meet job requirements but choose not to exceed them. Even though they have strengths to bring to the organization, they do not use those strengths. These employees are focused on completing the job, not helping the company succeed.

The best employees are assets. These employees typically exceed their pay grades in value and contributions. These employees use their strengths to improve inefficiencies and cut expenses. They often strengthen their corporate cultures by fostering teamwork and corporate respect.

In summary, average hires: 

• Maintain the organization.
• Use work time for performing nonemergency personal tasks.
• Give minimum effort to complete the job at hand.

Asset hires:

• Improve the organization.
• Use nearly all work time, including downtime, to advance the company (for example, through special projects) or to advance the company’s culture (such as by engaging in co-worker edification).
• Give best effort to complete the job at hand.

A resume should contain an individual’s historical display of strengths. However, the hiring manager must ask how a candidate consistently uses his or her strengths to advance the organization. Asset employees can clearly provide examples of how they improved a prior organization. In turn, the hiring manager can identify if the strength displayed aligns with a departmental void.

Sample interview questions for determining consistent use of strengths are: 

• At your previous job, how important was your role in helping the company make a profit?
• How have your personal strengths directly improved your prior places of employment?
• What are two problems at a prior organization that you addressed, without the prompting of a manager? Describe your action steps in those situations.

Focus on Verification

Since nearly all departments have potential efficiencies that can be gained, a hiring manager must make use of additional tools to prove that a candidate will become an asset employee: 

• Recommendation letters. Four letters of recommendation should be required to verify how candidates use their strengths. Two letters of recommendation should be professionally based; two letters of recommendation should be character-based.
• Pre-interview questionnaire. Examples of prior employment achievement are often difficult for the candidate to provide in an interview setting. A pre-interview questionnaire should be required with an application to provide solid proof and examples of past achievement. A professional reference could be used for verification.
• Transcripts. If a formal education is a requirement of the job, a transcript should be required. Transcripts can provide vital information on an applicant’s choices and historical performance.

Hire Only Assets

Asset employees are vital. Changing from a checklist hiring approach to an asset hiring mentality can prove invaluable in increasing corporate profitability. Every new hire directly impacts a company’s culture. Each hiring decision provides an opportunity to hire an asset who can revitalize departments and companies.

January 24, 2012

One of the essentials for persuasion is the ability to build relationships with others. This is done through creating win-win outcomes. In thinking win-win, an effective persuader is able to seek the needs, aspirations and values of others instead of looking at his/her own. Monika Jensen shares her thoughts on creating win-win outcomes in this article.

In the past, organizations had clearly drawn lines of authority. Senior management had access to information, resolved problems, and made decisions. Others in the organization acted on these decisions, working mostly with people in their own departments.

In today’s intensively competitive business environment, this type of top-down structure is too unwieldy and inefficient to produce results. Instead, people at all levels of an organization participate in solving problems and making decisions.

In other words, the ideas that drive an organization come from everyone, not just from upper management. As a result, people in various areas and at different levels of an organization need to collaborate to turn their individual ideas into reality.

For your own ideas to succeed, you need support from a network of people. Persuading and influencing, is the key to winning that support, which presents new openings and challenges-in today’s workplace.

To win support for an idea, you need to convince people to change their thinking and often their work habits as well. Since most people tend to resist change, winning support for an idea, even a compelling idea, may be challenging. It takes determination and skill. You may find it hard to convince someone that your idea is based on firm information and that it will work; persuade people that your idea will benefit the organization and them personally so they will want to be involved; link your idea to benefits that interest people you are influencing; and understand the difference between influencing and manipulating; avoid isolating people by coming on too aggressively; remain receptive to constructive criticism; respond positively and persuasively to negative commentary and build relationships you will need in the future.

The goal of creating win-win outcomes is not simply to get your idea implemented, but to find ways your ideas can work for everyone involved. In today’s workplace it is an open market for new ideas. This article will ensure that your best ideas get the attention they deserve. In this part we will discuss why we need to create a win-win outcome. The next edition will discuss the how’s of creating a win-win outcome.

Plan the best approach.

Good ideas will not sell themselves. It is up to you to show how your ideas match people’s needs. Plan to take time to determine exactly what you want to accomplish, whose support you will need, and how you will show that your idea deserves support. When you are trying to win support for an idea, remember that any type of support needs a firm foundation. Before you can influence someone successfully, you need to lay this foundation by assessing the situation carefully and finding a way to meet the needs of everyone involved.

Establish mutual involvement in the situation.

When you are influencing someone, begin your conversation by explaining how the situation affects both of you and how you both have a stake in finding a solution. Once the other person feels involved in the situation, he or she will be motivated to listen and participate-which is essential for reaching a win-win outcome. Most people will not give you their full attention unless they see a need to do so. By demonstrating that both you and the other person have a stake in the situation, you will establish a reason for them to be receptive.

Explain your recommendation and its benefits.

When the person understands that you both have a stake in the situation, they are much more likely to listen to your proposal. Be straightforward. A good proposal includes specific benefits-how the recommendation will help the other person, the organization, and you. People buy into ideas for their own reasons. Some will be interested in how your idea will benefit the organization; others will want to know how it will benefit them personally. And since most people will wonder what your agenda is, they will want to know how your idea will benefit you. A good presentation of your idea will include benefits in all three areas.

Ask for reactions and address concerns.

Since a part of influencing is to show how your recommendation meets another person’s needs, you should take active steps to get honest responses. Probe for both positive and negative reactions. Hidden concerns may surface later to hurt your proposal. By probing for honest reactions, you can build and improve your recommendation until you reach a win-win outcome.

Without input from the person you are influencing, you can aim for a win-win outcome, but you’ll never know if you are on target. If you do not deal with someone’s concerns, you may never get full buy-in. That is why it is important to make sure the person understands your proposal, to listen carefully to their comments, and to address their concerns.

Ask for the specific support you need and explain what you will do in return.
When you ask for a specific commitment of time, money, and other resources, you will learn whether you have really won the support you sought. To ensure a win-win outcome, offer something in return for the support. You might offer to take on some of the work or to do something that will make your idea more valuable to the other person.

Many people find it difficult to ask for what they need since the answer might be “no”. Instead of being direct, they hint and wait for the other person to volunteer support. As a result, they rarely get what they need. The best way to gain people’s commitment is to be straightforward and specific about what you need them to do.

Agree on an action plan.

Without a clear plan, good intentions are not always attained. Seal your agreement by reviewing the agreed-upon actions and setting a realistic plan for how to proceed.

Once the other person promises support, you have almost reached your goal. But you still need the actual support. To help ensure that you get it, work with the person to develop a specific action plan.

November 28, 2011

Of the communication experts I have come across, Dorothy Leeds stands out.  I am impressed with the numerous books written by on communication. Here is an article on listening which I find useful during coaching.:

Ho Hum. Listening. Not the most scintillating subject. Not a subject on which most reps want to spend a lot of time. However, if you spend just long enough to read this article, I guarantee you’ll find some quick and easy ways to rev up your quality listening, establish better relationships with your doctors, and get them to write more scripts.

I was recently in a doctor’s office and overheard a conversation between a rep and a doctor. The doctor said, “I really respect Dr. Smith. He’s extremely knowledgeable about endocrinology.” The rep replied, “Doctor, who are the experts you really respect?” Under most circumstances, this is very good question to ask – but not when the doctor had just given out that information. Obviously, the rep hadn’t been listening carefully to what the doctor was saying. The doctor, who had been engaged in conversation just a minute before, suddenly said, “That’s all the time I have,” walked into his office, and shut the door. The rep was left standing, not even aware of what he had done to turn the doctor off so rapidly.

According to a recent U.S. Department of Labor study, out of the total time we spend communicating, 22 percent is spent in reading and listening, 23 percent is spent speaking, and 55 percent is spent in listening. So even though more than half our communication time is spent in listening, only a small percentage of us are very good listeners.

There are two major aspects of listening: Listening to others and getting others to listen to us. We will cover both in this article.

How Good a Listener Are You?

Take the following short assessment. Be ruthlessly honest and objective. Don’t answer the way you feel you should be, or like to see yourself, but as you really are.

1. Do you pretend to listen when you are not?
2. Do people tell you that you are not listening?
3. Do you ever finish other people’s sentences for them?
4. Do you have a fear of silence?
5. Do you have your mind made up before listening to the other side?
6. Are you good at tuning in and out of a conversation without missing much?
7. Do you frequently ask for clarification when you don’t fully understand?

If you answered “no” to questions 1-6 and “yes” to question 7, you are a good listener. Unfortunately, most people don’t fit into that category.

WHY BE A GOOD LISTENER?

There are several essential reasons why it is important for pharmaceutical sales reps to listen attentively:

• Build strong relationships with your doctors and others in the office who will impact your success. One of the great advantages of quality listening is that it makes us more empathetic – which means that we can identify with the thoughts, feelings, and attitudes of others.
• You will know what to say and what to ask. Suppose you are in a Doctors office and the Doctor has shared that he relies on his long-time nurse to talk to the patients. If you are listening, you would want to learn more about which issues he entrusts to his nurse. You might want to ask, ”Doctor, could you describe the types of issues you ask your nurse to discuss with your patients?” That question will give you lots of good information and show that you are paying attention. The hardest thing for reps to do is to stop thinking about what they are going to say, start concentrating on what their doctors are saying.
• You will show caring and concern. Think about how you feel when someone is not paying attention to what you’re saying. Now think about a time when someone really listened to you. How did that make you feel? How did it influence your relationship with that person? Doctors are no different than anyone else. Listening makes doctors feel you care (and, as an added bonus, it makes them feel that are intelligent as well).
• You will learn important thoughts and feelings and persuade more effectively. Quality listening can alert you to problems or opportunities you never knew existed.
• You will set yourself apart from the other reps by being a quality listener. Good listeners often stand out from the crowd because they have asked smarter questions, and gained a better understanding of the other person’s needs and concerns.
• You will gain more time and access with the doctor. Think about it, if you were a doctor with limited time, which reps would you select to talk with? So many doctors tell me that the reps who come into their offices are so busy talking and pitching their drugs they do not have time to stop and listen. Since I’m not a rep, I try to put myself in your shoes to replicate your situation. I try to extend my time with each of my doctors. For example, my gynecologist used to spend three-six minutes with me. At my last visit, because I engaged her with interesting questions and listened and built on her answers, she stayed 18 ½ minutes. Her nurse had to come and get her.

Which of these is motivation enough to change your listening habits? We never listen in a vacuum. The most successful reps do not talk a lot. They ask thought-provoking, win-win questions where both parties benefit. It’s a flow chart. If you want your doctors to listen to you, you must learn what is of interest to them before you talk. You must find out what interests them (other than money and golf) and relate all your information to them. For example, if your doctor states his main concern is not knowing the real differences between competing drugs, he will probably not listen to anything you say until he feels you have explained these concerns. We listen to others in terms of our self interest and they listen to us for the same reason. So the big question is, “How do you learn what others are interested in, so when we speak they will listen to us?” By slowing down and asking smart questions.

Why Don’t We Listen Better?

More than 10,000 salespeople have taken my listening assessment quiz (a longer version than the one in this article) in my Smart Questions + Smart Listening Sales Workshops. Less than one percent claim to be excellent listeners, a few claim to be good listeners, many more think they are fair listeners and the largest group admit to being poor listeners. Although every rep and sales manager admits that listening is essential – and we all know that to be true – why are we not all better listeners?

Here are just a few of the many reasons why we are such poor listeners:

• There are few rewards for listening well. There are rewards for speaking well and selling well, but not many obvious rewards for listening well. A crowd will never give you a standing ovation for being a good listener. The rewards you do get may be subtle, but they are invaluable – like gaining information and making the other person feel important.

• There are few role models for good listeners. Since more than 86.7 percent of people claim to be poor or fair listeners, we have little opportunity to observe really good listeners. Even sales managers, who are mentors in most other areas, are not necessarily role models for listening. Most sales managers were salespeople and salespeople are usually hired because they are talkers not because they are smart questioners and quality listeners.

• Listening is hard work: It takes focus and concentration to listen to what someone else is saying. If a doctor tends to ramble in his answers, for instance, you may stop listening and miss something important (which explains the rep in the first paragraph).

• We have short attention spans: If you’ve watched television or gone to see an action film recently, you know that scenes often last no more than a few seconds before they cut away to the next car chase, explosion, or complex story line. We don’t get a lot of practice in listening to anything for more than a minute or two.

• We feel the need to express ourselves. Reps often try to convince or persuade a doctor to prescribe their drugs. And we feel that the way to do that is to talk, talk, talk. Actually, the best way to do that is to ask questions so that you can practice what I call “targeted talking.”

WHAT IS TARGETED TALKING

As a rep, you have a very short time with your doctors; every statement and every question is important. Therefore, you only want to talk when you know what you say will fall on interested ears. If your doctor states she has only a short time, ask, “What questions or concerns can I address in this short time that would be helpful to you?” Listening to the doctor and responding to her answers is the best avenue you have to gain and keep her attention.

TAKE THE CURE FOR BETTER LISTENING

Most reps, like most patients, have no patience and want an instant cure. So let me end with the tried and proven process to become a better listener:

• Go into every sales call with two or three things you need to learn to be able to get your message across more effectively. Having a plan and purpose are vitally important for that will affect your communication and your results
• Have planned questions to get that information
• Go into every sales call with a promise to yourself not to be thinking of what you are going to say but to focus entirely on what the doctor is saying to you.
• Listen with all four organs (ears, eyes, head, and heart). For example, if your doctor hesitates when you ask him if he has tried the dosing you recommended, the hesitation will alert you to the fact that probably he has not done it.

Smart Listening takes patience, discipline, and hard work. But the rewards are enormous. One of the nicest compliments I ever received came from a client who, in thanking me after a workshop to his sales force, shared that by listening I was able to tailor the program to the real needs and concerns of his sales team and really help them increase sales.

Just imagine how helpful it would be to hear from your doctors, ” All those other reps talk way too much, but you really listen.” Beat the competition, become a Smart Listener, and reap the rewards.

November 28, 2011

Are you aware that you can be powerful in your  persuasiveness of introductions. Steve Martin whom I know personally when I met him in Malaysia, is the co-author (along with Dr. Noah Goldstein and Dr. Robert Cialdini) of the New York Times bestseller Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to be Persuasive (Free Press). Here is an article which you will find most helpful when giving introductions:

Shortly after boarding a flight the other day, the captain came on the PA to welcome passengers on board and remind us to pay attention to the safety demonstration that the flight attendants would be taking us through. We’ve all heard these words a thousand times before. Like many others I probably wasn’t paying that much attention to the words he used to persuade passengers to not only pay attention to the flight attendants, but to also keep their safety belts fastened at all times.

But towards the end of his remarks, he added six words that I have never heard before and I immediately became convinced that many more passengers than usual would be persuaded to pay attention and keep their seat belts fastened even if the seat belt sign was turned off.

The words he added were “like we do in the cockpit.”

These extra six words are not only a neat demonstration of how a pilot can influence his or her passengers but they also provide an example of how anyone in business – by understanding how people are influenced – can win more customers and clients.

For more than 65 years, social scientists have been studying the influence and persuasion process to determine what are the factors that cause people to say ‘Yes’ to the requests of others. My colleague Dr. Robert Cialdini, an Emeritus Professor of Psychology at Arizona State University, has shown that there are only six universal principles of persuasion.

 One of these principles is Authority. Simply put, the persuasiveness of a message, proposal or recommendation can be enhanced if it is seen to come from a legitimate expert. In business settings, for example, people will often be more persuaded by proposals or offers that come from someone who, in their eyes, has both expertise and trustworthiness, compared to similar proposals that don’t. So it’s generally a good idea to present your business credentials, your staffs’ training, and your business expertise to customers. But doing so can also present a problem.

How do you introduce your expertise and knowledge without being seen as a show-off?

Informing potential new customers that because of your greater knowledge and expertise, they should listen to and be persuaded by your proposal, will often result in them being turned-off rather than turned-on to you.

The answer, of course, is to have our expertise introduced by someone else. But what if such a person is unavailable? Or maybe you don’t want to keep harassing current customers for introductions? Research from Stanford Business School suggests that a business can use its own co-workers equally effectively and, provided that they do so honestly and ethically, a notable increase in referrals and profit can be realised.

Take by way of an example a small study we conducted in a real estate office. Typically customers who telephoned in with enquiries about rentals or sales would speak first with a receptionist who asked them the nature of their enquiry and would then route the call through to the most appropriate colleague.

We made one small addition to this interaction. Now, before putting the caller through to their colleague, the receptionist not only tells callers the name of the colleague she is putting them through to, but also mentions her colleagues’ credentials and expertise.

Customers interested in rental are told “Rental? I’ll connect you with Sandra who has over 15 years experience renting properties in this area.” Similarly, customers who want more information about selling their property are put through to Peter. “He is our head of sales and has 20 years of experience selling properties.”

The impact of this expert introduction had an almost immediate effect. The agency registered a 20.1 percent rise in the number of face to face meetings and a 16 percent increase in the number of customers who appointed the agency to market their property.

There are several attractive features of this simple intervention. Firstly, everything the receptionist tells her customers is true, but for Sandra or Peter to tell the customers would be seen as boastful and self promoting. Second, and consistent with the Stanford Business School research, it doesn’t seem to matter that the introduction comes from a colleague who will benefit from such an introduction, and thirdly, the intervention was both simple and costless to implement.

Proof perhaps that when it comes to influencing and persuading new customers, ensuring that we are introduced as experts could make for some big differences in our success.

November 26, 2011

Professor Alber Mehrabian is well known for his study on communication. In his study, he found that:

• 7 % of message pertaining to feelings and attitudes is in the words that are spoken.
• 38% of message pertaining to feelings and attitudes is paralinguistic (the way that the words are said).
• 55% of message pertaining to feelings and attitudes is in facial expression.

It is the 55% component that concern the importance of body language in leadership communication. Carol Kinsey Goman’s article on this aspect of communication which is often ignored is atimely reminder for all leaders:

The chief executive officer of an oil company showed up at a refinery in a designer suit and tie to discuss the firm’s affairs with rank-and-file operators, electricians, and members of the warehouse staff, who were dressed in their uniform of blue, fire-retardant overalls.

After being introduced and walking carefully to the front of the room, the CEO removed his wristwatch (let’s call it a Rolex) and quite visibly placed it on the lectern. The unspoken message: “I’m a very important man, I don’t like coming into dirty places like this, and I have exactly 20 minutes to spend with you.”

That message was, you understand, quite different from the words he actually used to greet his audience: “I’m happy to be with you today.”

Which do you think those refinery workers believed…the CEO’s spoken words or what his body language said?

 We continue to learn more and more about how body language affects the messages we try to send. Although we may not normally associate the fields of psychology, neurobiology, criminology, and sociology with advances in communication research, evidence from these areas of study has endowed the world of nonverbal communication with scientific credence. And one of the findings from evolutionary psychology is that our brains are “hard-wired” to respond to nonverbal signals—even though most of us aren’t consciously aware of the process.

Here’s what one researcher discovered: A classic study by Dr. Albert Mehrabian at UCLA found that the total impact of a message is based only 7% on the words used. Much more important are facial expressions (responsible for 55% of the total impact of the message), tone of voice (38%) and other forms of body language.

Obviously, you can’t watch a person speaking in a foreign language and understand 93% of what is being communicated. Mehrabian was only studying the communication of feelings—particularly, the feelings of liking and disliking. Still, you can bet that when the verbal and nonverbal channels of communication are out of sync, most people (those refinery workers, for example) will tend to rely more on the nonverbal message than the verbal content.

All leaders express enthusiasm, warmth, and confidence—as well as arrogance, indifference, and displeasure–through their facial expressions, gestures, touch, and use of space. If an executive wants to be perceived as credible and forthright, he or she has got to think “outside the speech and recognize the importance of nonverbal communication.

When a leader stands in front of a thousand employees and talks about how much he welcomes their input, the message gets derailed if that executive hides behind a lectern, leans back away from his audience, puts his hands behind his back or shoves them into his pockets, or folds his arms across his chest. All of those send closed nonverbal signals, when the intended message is really about openness.

It is especially crucial for leaders to communicate congruently—that is, to align the spoken word with body language that supports (instead of sabotages) an intended message. When nonverbal messages conflict with verbal messages, the audience becomes confused. Mixed signals have a negative effect on performance and make it almost impossible to build relationships of trust.

Then there is the matter of timing. If a leader’s gestures are produced before or as the words come out, she appears open and candid. However, if she speaks first and then gestures (as I have seen many executives do) it’s perceived as a contrived movement. And at that point, the validity of whatever is said comes under suspicion.

Nonverbal communication also plays a critical role in making sure the workforce truly receives and understands key messages. If a leader wants to talk about new initiatives, major change, strategic opportunities, or if he or she has to deliver bad news, my advice is to do so in person. Every research report on employee communications presents one consistent conclusion: Face-to-face communications is the employee’s medium of choice. This is because in face-to-face encounters, our brains process a continual cascade of nonverbal cues that we use as the basis for building trust and professional intimacy, both of which are critical to high-level collaboration, persuasion and communication.

If a face-to-face meeting isn’t possible, employees will accept the next best thing. I know of one Fortune 25 company that regularly used teleconferences to provide an ongoing opportunity for small groups of employees to get up close and personal with the CEO. Time after time, employees would ask about policies or pending organizational changes that had already been communicated in various company publications and through dozens of e-mail announcements.

After the meetings, the beleaguered CEO would ask his communication manager, “How many times have we told them about that? Why don’t they know that?”

“Oh, they know it,” the communications manager would reply. “They just want to hear it from you.

More importantly, they want to be able to look at you when you say it.”

There is no doubt that you can gain a professional advantage by learning how to use nonverbal communication more effectively. Here are a few simple tips:

• Get out from behind the lectern so the audience can see your entire body
• Fully face the audience, standing tall
• Make eye contact with your audience
• Keep your movements relaxed and natural
• Use open arm gestures, showing the palms of your hands (silent signals of credibility and candor)

A good coach can help you determine which gestures and facial expressions are most congruent with the messages you want to convey. But remember that body language is more than a set of techniques. It is also a reflection of a person’s internal state. In fact, the more someone tries to control their emotions, the more likely those emotions will leak out nonverbally.

Here’s a recent example: The corporate communicator who brought me into her company to coach an executive warned me that he was a “pretty crummy speaker.” And, after watching him at a leadership conference, I had to agree. It wasn’t his word—they were carefully chosen and well rehearsed. But through his mechanical gestures, this man’s body was screaming: “I’m uncomfortable and unconvinced about everything I’m saying!”

The question: Could I help?

The answer: Not much.

Oh sure, I could find ways to make his movements less wooden and his timing more fluid. But if a person doesn’t care about (or believe in) what he is saying, his gestures will automatically become lethargic and restricted. What the executive needed most was genuine enthusiasm and passion about the company’s new strategic direction. Sadly, what employee audiences saw when this business leader spoke was exactly how he really felt!

Of course, learning to align body language with verbal messages is only one side of the coin. The other side—and here is where leaders can really set themselves apart—is the ability to accurately read the nonverbal signals that employees and team members display.

Peter Drucker, the renowned author, professor, and management consultant, understood this clearly. “The most important thing in communication,” he once said, “is hearing what isn’t said.”

November 25, 2011

One of the most important task of a manager is the ability to communicate with people around him or her. Here is a good article by Mark Sanborn:

As a leader, do you ever feel your important messages fall on deaf ears?

Are your carefully constructed and communicated strategies always getting implemented?

Are you often frustrated by the difference between the results you ask of others and what you actually get?

Leaders agonize when developing vision, mission and strategy. They carefully choose words and phrases. They painstakingly craft spoken and written communication to explain these important concepts. They communicate these messages in countless conversations and presentations.

Yet if you asked the typical employee what their leader’s message is-what is truly important and how it should shape their decisions, actions and interactions-they’d be hard pressed to provide more than a vague summary.

Why?

The answer: The Dilution Dilemma. By the time the message is passed down or through the organization, the clarity, effectiveness and impact are dramatically diluted.

What can you do to minimize or eliminate this costly dilution?

The antidote can be summarized by these four words: constant, clear, catchy and compelling.

Constant. The best messaging loses effectiveness when it changes. The more often messaging changes, the less believable future messaging becomes.

Repetition is the mother of both retention and understanding. When followers hear the same messages repeatedly they realize there must be a reason, and the reason is importance. Often the first time a message is heard it is ignored or discounted. Why? Employees assume they’ll hear it again if it really is significant. They are used to fleeting ideas and concepts and have learned to tune out those that aren’t emphasized.

Constant communication of the same messages can be a crazy maker for leaders but it is necessary nonetheless. You need to stick to you messaging until you are sick and tired of repeating it. Only at the point of near nausea can you safely assume the message has been heard, understood and believed to be important.

The messages you send as a leader will be repeated with less frequency as they move through the organization. That’s why you need to front-load the system with constant repetition. A few mentions by leaders at the top get diluted to a miniscule amount of information at the bottom of the org chart.

Clear. Ambiguity is the enemy of success. When people aren’t clear on what you mean, they fill in the blanks, and usually incorrectly.

There is a scene in the movie Philadelphia where the character played by Tom Hanks is doing an initial consultation with a lawyer played by Denzel Washington. Although I saw it over twenty years ago, I still recall how the lawyer communicated with the potential client about his situation. He said, “Explain it to me like I’m a second grader.” Despite his intellect and skill, he knew only a complete and thorough explanation would provide the information he needed.

And that is clarity. You must cut through the superfluous to find the substantive and communicate it in such a way that there can be no misunderstanding.

Leaders build their messages on irreducible minimums. They know that if they can’t succinctly explain what they mean, they won’t be understood by others. Recall the childhood game of telephone where a statement is passed by whispering to another which they in turn whisper to another. Within a few of these “transmissions” the content of the original message has completely morphed. This is yet another effect of the dilution dilemma.

Don’t tell people you’re explaining it like they’re second graders, but be just as clear and thorough as if you were.

The end result you need as a leader is not mere acceptance and understanding but action. Be clear on what people must do as a result of what you’re telling them. You can’t insinuate what needs to be done; clarity requires a call to action.

Catchy. Your audience is bombarded with messages in every conceivable medium. Being catchy is about breaking through the clutter and being memorable.

What about your message will stick in the mind of the reader or hearer? Here’s the test: will they be able to accurately convey what you’ve communicated? Your job as a leader is to make their job of understanding and repeating easy. More importantly, catchy messages make us want to repeat them. We all love the catchy and the clever and quickly tire of the mundane.

Stories, metaphors, analogies, mottos and even clichés are among the tools you can use. Spend as much time in the packaging of what you’re trying to convey as you do developing the content of the message.

Remember, facts validate, but stories illustrate. The best statistical analysis in the world will be diluted to the point of nothingness if it isn’t packaged in a catchy, memorable story or illustration. 

Compelling. The ultimate guard against dilution is to make your important messages compelling. People can be clear and able to act on the information but they won’t without reasons that make sense to them. That is the essence of creating compelling message: getting people to care enough to do something. Compelling ideas are powerful; they have the ability to induce action.

And that requires emotion. Take it from two experts in the field, Dan and Chip Heath, authors of Made to Stick: “A credible idea makes people believe. An emotional idea makes people care.”

Leaders tend to have credible ideas but often stop short of compelling ideas. A leader knows why action should be taken, but that familiarity can prevent them from thinking through the reasons others need to follow through.

To avoid dilution, answer the question lingering in the listener’s mind: why should I care? That is a more effective question than “Why is this important?”

Ideas must be robust to be strong and withstand the almost inevitable affects of the dilution dilemma. As a leader, the strength of your ideas and messages comes from constant and clear communication that is designed to be catchy and compelling.

September 03, 2011

A young executive had made some bad decisions that cost the company several million dollars. He was summoned to Tom Watson Jr’s office, fully expecting to be dismissed. As he entered the office, the young executive said, “I suppose after that set of mistakes you will want to fire me.” Watson was said to have replied,

“Not at all, young man, we have just spent a couple of million dollars educating you.”

(Source: Edgar Schein in his book Organisational Culture and Leadership)