StandOut (10 page)
• Don’t ever gain the reputation for being the chief “defender of the idea
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The defender of the idea is the person from whom one always gets the same answer, the person whose creative back is up against the wall, the person who has closed his or her mind to new information. You do not want to be this person. You want to be seen as the person who, despite your strongly held views and insights, is always open to new data, new evidence, new patterns of understanding.
• Having said this, remember
“open,” in this instance, means “inquisitive
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It does not mean “immediately accepting of.” The balance you have to strike is between staunchly opinionated at one extreme and, at the other, wishy-washy theorizing. We tend to avoid the former, and we’re suspicious of the latter. The perfect middle ground is to be seen as inquisitive.
How to Win As a Leader
Creator
: Your strength is your ability to think things through. As our leader, we see your mind working and it gives us confidence. We know you will make a new sense of things.
• You have incredible ideas. Share your vision with us. What are you creating next? What’s so exciting about it? Why should we go along?
• You excel at keeping it simple. No need for complex graphs or excessive business terminology. When you set a goal, make it clear to all of us why it’s important and what part we play in achieving it. Then, keep that goal in front of us and link everything back to it. Show us how it all ties together.
• Demonstrate your passion for the client’s experience. Show us how simple and easy it can be to make a client feel special. We will share these stories with our colleagues. It makes us proud to align with a leader who cuts through the complexity and reveals how simple it can be to do the right thing.
• Trust us. At times your need to understand everything that’s going on or to control the process slows us down. We don’t mind reporting on progress, but it can distract us from getting the job done. You recruited really good people; let us prove it to you.
• We feel secure with your deliberate nature. We know you’ve asked a million “why”s before presenting a solution or idea to us. We would love to be privy to your process or, better yet, at times included. We feel more connected to work that we had a say in creating.
• Teach and model that when it’s true, the best answer is “I don’t know, but I’ll find out.” We appreciate your humility, that you don’t have unreasonable expectations of yourself or any of us. This vulnerability makes it easier for us to connect to you. Also, when you defer to your experts, it creates opportunities for other team members to shine.
• Sometimes you can insulate yourself. We know this is because your mind needs solitude to be productive. Just make sure that you do come up for air often enough for us to connect to you. The sense you create is exciting to us. We need to see you.
How to Win As a Manager
Creator
: Your strength is the time you give me. To listen. To consider. To understand before reaching your conclusions.
• When issues arise, take the time to consider all perspectives and investigate what’s been done to address the problem to date. I’ll appreciate that when something goes wrong, you don’t jump right into fixing but acknowledge and salvage my efforts.
• Seek out spontaneous opportunities to explain to us how our actions and efforts are making a difference for our clients. Keep tying what we do back to the “why” of our work. We, your employees, will not go down the street to another company for dollars if we know that what we do here really matters.
• Be crystal clear and consistent with your expectations. Check that we understand by asking us to repeat back what we’ve heard. With this clarity in place, when we’re off track we can self-correct before a curative conversation ever needs to occur. No performance correction should ever come as a surprise.
• You create momentum. It’s incredible to be along for the ride once one of your ideas takes off. Keep communicating what you’re seeing and I’ll keep supporting our progress.
• I want to learn from you. Your process of dismantling and solving problems, of seeing patterns in the most complex data, fascinates me. Let me peek behind the curtain: share your process.
• Give credit where credit is due. Even though the initial idea was often yours, it’s really important that I hear you acknowledge my contribution and the contributions of my teammates.
How to Win in Sales
Creator
: Your strength is your sophistication. You will win sales through your deliberate timing. You know how to listen and fully understand before jumping in with your point of view.
• I, your potential client, love your poise and style. Because you are thoughtful and open-minded, I feel free to discuss my situation with you quite openly. Start these discussions with me and always allow me to say my piece. I will reach my own conclusions. You will be my guide.
• You crave time out to think. Honor this need and set time in your schedule to muse about the day. From these musings will come ideas and alternatives that neither your competitors nor I will have considered.
• At some point, I will need you to make a strong recommendation. Your need to consider all contingencies and possibilities may at times hold you back from pursuing a path with conviction. Push through the what-ifs and the what-abouts. You’ve thought it through, now go all out to turn your vision into reality.
• Choose opportunities for business development that require more than superficial understanding. You will thrive most where my situation and the sale within it are complex. Here you can drill down, carefully pick apart my situation, and pinpoint precisely why I am struggling and how you can best help me.
• While I appreciate your helping me with solutions for current needs, what’s so valuable is the way you push me to also consider future needs. Keep informing me how the steps I’m taking with you today are setting me up to be ready for what’s coming down the pike.
How to Win in Client Service
Creator
: Your strength is that you take the time to discover the root cause of my need. You don’t just provide me with the pat answer.
• You are skilled at asking relevant questions. Hone this, as it shows me that you’re truly curious and interested in unpacking my problem. I won’t get the sense that you’re following some set of rules. Instead you’ll make me feel that my situation is exceptional.
• You bring a thoughtfulness to your service. I don’t mean you’re caring—though you may be. I mean that I can see your mental wheels turning. When you’re ready, let me in on your thinking. Tell me what conclusion you’ve arrived at.
• I appreciate your calmness. No matter how upset I might be, you manage to keep your cool. On the other hand, a sense of urgency at times would be welcome. Although I’m sure you’re working on it, check in with me with status updates to reassure me that you’re still “on my case.”
• Trust your instincts. Just because the solution you’ve considered isn’t in “the book” doesn’t mean it isn’t right. As your customer I will always appreciate signs that you are pushing the boundaries in order to solve my problem.
• Ask “what’s working?” as often as you ask “what’s broken?” If you get too caught up in fixing problems, I miss out on your ability to see growth opportunities. Keep me out of the minutiae and focused on the big possibilities.
The Definition
You begin by asking,
“What is the right thing to do?”
You are sensitive to how everything in the world is interdependent, how movement in one part of the world causes everything else to move as well. Alive to this interconnectedness, you feel compelled to keep everything aligned. This need for alignment might be organizational—you sense when your world is disorganized and you get a kick out of restoring everything back to its rightful place. Or it might be ethical—you are acutely aware of who is responsible for what, and you are quick to take action if someone doesn’t live up to her responsibilities. You have no problem calling her out if she hasn’t followed through, and you are just as willing to call yourself out when you drop the ball.
You see the commitments we make to one another as threads that connect us and allow us to share in each other’s success. It pains you when you see these threads break, and so you are their passionate protector. At your best, you are our conscience, helping us realize how much we owe one another and how much we rely on one another. You hold us together.
You, at Your Most Powerful
• You are a levelheaded person. The world is best for you when it is in balance.
• Yours is a moral world made up of mutual obligations. You are driven to keep the balance in this moral world. You are unnerved when your world tips too far in any one direction.
• What tips your world out of balance?
When people don’t tell the truth. You hate lying, or even half-truths. Politics and finessing are anathema to you. You feel strengthened by the truth and you tell the truth. Sometimes quite bluntly.
