It's always half empty.

Last week I went on a little rant against those who tell us that in this Google Age it’s not important to stuff your head with facts. I showed how on having a deep well of knowledge to draw from is so critical for effective thinking.  But what about persuasion? Compared to clear thinking and compelling communication, it would seem that having a lot of facts at your command would seem to be relatively less important. In this article, I’d like to show that depth of knowledge is a huge asset for persuasion as well.

Regular readers know that one of my key themes is that content is king. It’s wonderful to have a gift of gab and to know how to pull all the persuasive strings, but without a lot of facts at your immediate command, you can look like a fine pen that is running out of ink.

Unless you make a living as a writer, most of your persuasion is real time, so you’re not going to have time to look up the information you need to support your point. In a dialogue where two people are trying to influence each other, the one who has the necessary facts at their command when they need them is likeliest to prevail.

Have you ever seen someone deliver a slide presentation and look at the slides most of the time? They use them as a crutch and a memory aid for their “talk track”, and it’s obvious that they don’t have full mastery of the material. Yet, they’re trying to talk you into something based on that material. The content may be airtight, but yet it’s unconvincing; they come across as content mercenaries, fighting for someone else’s ideas.

If you’re a salesperson, it’s especially because knowledge is so readily available that you have to “add value” and that is in the form of proprietary knowledge. You are the one who knows how to diagnose needs (which require a much deeper knowledge and analysis than wants). The customer knows about his or her own business operations and processes, and they can look up and compare product specs easily enough, but you make a living with your special expertise that connects those two pools of knowledge.

Having a facile and fluent command of facts and detail has a strong subliminal effect in its own right. Knowledge is impressive. We admire those who have a deep grasp of their topic, who can pull up concrete and specific facts to support their arguments. On the flip side, we see this every political season, in which an inexperienced candidate is lambasted in the press for not knowing the name of a key foreign leader, for example.

Deep knowledge can also make your communication more compelling by adding specificity and concrete detail. It’s one thing to say that your product makes your customer’s business process more efficient; it’s far better to say, “We speed up the reconcilement process by 35%, which cuts an average of four days out of your accounts receivable.”

Want to impress an audience, especially one comprising senior level executives? Then tell them something new and be prepared to deep dive, both of which require you to know a lot. When you’re presenting to an audience, it’s often the detailed grasp you can demonstrate during the Q&A that will convince the listener. When I interviewed senior executives for my book on sales presentations, several of them told me that they like to “scratch beneath the surface” of the presentation to test the presenter’s depth of knowledge. If it’s a technical presentation, they may not personally have the knowledge to assess everything that’s told to them, so they use this tactic as a gauge of the presenter’s credibility.

There’s a cute story about the physicist Max Planck, who used to travel around Germany delivering physics lectures. One day his chauffeur made an interesting proposal: he said they should trade places at the next lecture, since he had heard the lecture so many times that he was sure he could deliver it word for word. Planck agreed, and the plan proceeded. Everything went perfectly, until the question and answer period, when a distinguished professor asked a difficult question about some esoteric detail in the lecture. The chauffeur, without skipping a beat, said: “Herr Professor, I am surprised that someone as knowledgeable as yourself would ask such a question. To prove how simple it is, I will let my driver answer it.”

Unlike Planck’s driver, you probably won’t have the luxury of someone sitting in the audience to bail you out, so you had better become that expert.

I know!

A commentary by Bret Stephens in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal got me thinking about the importance of “rote knowledge” in today’s world. In his article, he laments the fact that graduates are coming out of college with vast knowledge gaps, because of the trendy idea in education that learning how to think is more important than cramming your head with facts.

Of course, this idea has been around a long time, but it’s even more deeply embedded in the popular imagination since we have ubiquitous access to the world’s information. We have Google if we need to look something up, and Siri can answer practically any question we have. The implication is that since knowledge is free, it is worthless.

The problem with that line of thinking is that it’s a false tradeoff: knowledge and effective thinking are not only not mutually exclusive, but critical thinking is impossible without knowledge. In other words, cramming your head with facts does not make you a worse thinker. In fact, “rote knowledge” can make you a better thinker, in so many ways. Here are just a few:

Better critical thinking: Although critical thinking is partly about evaluating the logic of someone’s argument, it’s also about being able to compare their view of reality to yours, and being able to generate alternative points or explanations. Facts fit into our brains in patterns, and those patterns help us to filter incoming information. Something rings true or false depending on how it interacts with the existing patterns in our minds. Richer patterns make for more reliable critical filters.

If you don’t have a deep well of knowledge at your command, anytime you hear or read something you have to take it at face value until you have a chance to look it up, and that takes time which you will not always have.

Learn faster: In this world of rapid and accelerating change, the capacity to learn is a crucial asset. But the rate of learning is dependent on how much you already know. It’s virtually impossible to learn anything “new” without connecting it to something you already know. It’s a snowball effect: the more you know, the faster you learn, and the faster you earn, and so on.

More innovative: Innovation doesn’t spring from ignorance. Knowledge is the raw material of innovation. It proceeds from adding to existing knowledge or making new connections between disparate ideas. More knowledge exponentially increases the possible connections.

Improve focus and attention: The discipline of studying and learning something in depth, of memorizing and of testing your knowledge strengthens your powers of attention and focus. This is something I’m personally experiencing, as I am embarked on a project to learn as much French as possible before my trip to Paris at the end of June.

Intuition and decision making: Even intuition benefits from knowledge. Indeed, expert intuition may be no more than rapid pattern recognition that goes on underneath our slower logical thinking processes. Chess masters don’t think any more steps ahead than mediocre players, according to those who have studied the source of their expertise. They also don’t run through huge numbers of possible moves like a supercomputer. Their minds don’t have to run through an endless series of bad moves in order to find a few good ones to choose from. Rather, they have deep stored databases of patterns and moves that they recognize; they can “see” where those patterns will lead and the top two or three alternatives come into their minds. They win through superior knowledge, not any superhuman skill at decision making.

Logical thinking: Knowledge even makes pure logic easier. In a well-known demonstration, psychologists like to test our logical thinking by showing four cards, with either a letter or a number showing, and ask you which cards you would have to turn over to prove or disprove the statement: “If a card has a vowel on one side, then it has an even number on the other side.” Most people get the answer wrong, and this is supposed to show our deficiencies in logic. Yet, when the same problem is posed in terms of a familiar real-life scenario, such as deciding whose ID to check to guard against underage drinking, almost everyone gets it right. In other words, existing knowledge makes it easier to follow the logic.

So there you have it, six ways I can think of, off the top of my head, how knowledge adds to good thinking. I’m sure I could have found more, if I wanted to look them up.

It’s probably the same for you, regardless of the store or the category of goods. Once you get into the habit, you tend to stick to it. And, as Charles Duhigg tells us in his fascinating book, The Power of Habit, forward-thinking businesses invest a lot of research into finding ways to change our habits to their benefit. They look for ways to create self-reinforcing habit loops, in which a cue (low on office supplies), triggers a routine (get in car and drive to store), that leads to a reward (customer satisfaction).

Yet, those who live by habits can also die by habits, if they don’t pay attention to the details that can cause their customers to stop acting automatically and take a moment to think for themselves. Another powerful psychological phenomenon is that Bad Is Stronger than Good: and one bad experience (negative reward) can undo a lot of good ones. That’s what happened to me at Office Depot today.

I went to buy ink for my printer, not because I had an immediate need, but because I received a cue in the form of a $15 coupon in the mail towards printer ink. Unthinkingly, I performed my usual routine and drove to the store, expecting my reward (peace of mind of knowing I won’t run out of ink in the middle of a major project). Instead, what I got when I came to the checkout counter was:

“I’m sorry, you can’t use this coupon.”

“Why not?”

“It’s only good for printer ink, not toner.”

“What’s the difference?”

“Ink is liquid, toner is powder.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“No.”

“I’ll buy it somewhere else, then.”

So, I came home and activated my other habit loop, which I had never done before for office products, and logged on to Amazon. I found the brand name cheaper even than if I had been able to use the coupon; but, since I was now in a thinking mode, I decided to break another habit and buy a remanufactured cartridge, saving much, much more. Then, I figured while I was on there to look at other office supplies. It never occurred to me that I can also buy pens and paper there, too!

Companies pay the big bucks to the smart people on the front end to figure out how to entice customers, and then forget to take care of the person who actually talks to the live customer. Customer loyalty is the Holy Grail of business, yet it is one of the most fragile assets you can have, and one that retail companies entrust to poorly paid workers who receive little or no customer service training and have zero power to exercise their own judgment.

So I’m not upset with the clerk. Actually, I’m not upset at all, because I now have a new habit which will save me a lot of money; so thank you, Office Depot, for ticking me off! (And thanks for suggesting a topic for today’s blog post)

There are three key messages in this book:

The overlooked importance of selling in business and life

The book is useful for sales professionals and non-salespeople alike. I wish everyone in business who is not in sales would read this book, because it explains why nothing in business would happen without the special talents, tenacity and hard work of salespeople. Business is fundamentally about two things: a) producing goods and services and b) selling them. Guess which one of those two is almost never taught in the typical MBA program? “All over the world, from the most basic to the most advanced economies, selling is the horse that pulls the cart of business.”

In spite of this, “Many supposedly well-educated people in the business world are clueless about one of its most vital functions, the means by which you actually generate revenue. The absence of knowledge about sales has opened a class division between salespeople and the rest of business.” If you want to contribute to closing this class division, give copies of this book to your leadership team.

And it’s not just business; in life, you are always selling or being sold to. Unless you’re a hermit, most of what you do in life has to be done through others, and selling is the vehicle of interpersonal relationships.

Examining the dilemmas and tradeoffs of selling

Broughton also helps to put into perspective and clear up some misconceptions about the motivation and integrity of those who sell for a living. Of course there are dishonest and pushy salespeople, and there are those who see customers only as instruments of their own commissions. The same could be said for any other profession. Broughton examines the balance and sometime contradiction between trying to sell a product and being paid to sell it.

Selling is neutral; intention makes the difference. When you sincerely believe that what you are selling will improve the life of the buyer in some way, there is nothing wrong with trying hard to sell them on it. In the end, it’s much easier to be really good at something when it aligns with your values and your sense of meaning, and as Broughton tells us, “…the best salespeople see themselves as the means by which customers achieve their purpose.”

Portraying the qualities of great salespeople

If you’ve been in sales for any length of time you won’t learn anything new in this book, but you will be inspired and recharged by the stories of some remarkable individuals who portray the great virtues that all of us could use more of: optimism, resilience, lifelong learning, and work ethic. When you read about the pace kept by Memo, the Mexican immigrant who has created a successful construction business, you realize that you don’t work near as hard as you could. Majid in Tangier reminds you about submerging your ego, keeping quiet and learning. Although I’m not sure what its lesson is, the story of Ted Turner’s pitch to the New York advertising agency is worth the price of the book. It’s not a story I can repeat on a PG-rated blog, so you’ll have to buy the book.

The common thread in most of these stories is that selling is the “great leveler”; when you can sell, when you can apply these virtues in sufficient quantities, you can make what you want out of your life.

Ditch the Pseudo-Science

The book does contain one annoying flaw. The science parts feel as if they have been bolted on to please a marketing manager; whenever it seeks to inject science into the discussion, it’s forced, superficial and inaccurate. For example, he tries to explain one salesperson’s success using a technical explanation involving fluid intelligence and working memory that mostly points out ignorance of what those terms really mean. In another chapter, he throws in a few pages about the evolution of cooperation and altruism, and tries to connect it to the use of Salesforce.com. (May I just don’t have the fluid intelligence to understand the connection.)

Despite that last complaint, I strongly recommend this book. If you’re in sales, you will want to read it; if you’re not, you need to read it.

Who's the decision maker?

I bet you never thought you would learn about one-celled organisms in a blog about persuasion, but bear with me for a few paragraphs because I want to make an important point.

It’s been quite the fashion over the past few years in sales and persuasion circles to focus on our three brains: the reptilian brain, the rat brain, and the human brain. The idea is pretty simple: our human brains have evolved over eons in a different environment than our modern world; since evolution by definition proceeds from what went before, as our newer brain structures and functions evolved, the old structures remain and continue to be quite active. It’s kind of like the separation of powers in the Federal government: all three branches get involved in the process. So, if you want to persuade someone, you have to appeal to the simpler brains as well as to our logical faculties.

That may be true, but why stop at the reptile brain? If we trace our ancestry even further, we all evolved from one-celled organisms—amoebas, if you will, and we were amoebas even longer than we were reptiles. So, should we also tailor our persuasive efforts to the amoeba brain that surely lurks within all of us?

I can see it now: make sure you have a lot of light when you make your presentations, because amoebas move toward the light. You wouldn’t have to explain your solution, because people can get it by osmosis. We could call it “celling”. I realize I’ve reached the point of absurdity, but unfortunately so have many of the “scientific” persuasion experts.

The basic idea is sound, as long as it’s not carried too far. Aristotle, the father of modern persuasion science, made it the core of his Rhetoric, acknowledging that persuasive appeals comprise three strands, ethos, pathos, and logos. More recently, research has categorized and measured myriad ways in which our decisions and behaviors deviate from the purely rational. Science has learned a lot about the brain in the past few decades, and technologies such as functional MRIs let them see real time into our brain activity as we make decisions, respond to stimuli, etc. A lot of that research has confirmed, refined, or changed our understanding of how our minds work.

But new scientific discoveries are inevitably seized upon immediately by modern-day snake oil salesmen to add some legitimacy to their half-baked ideas. The ink was barely dry on the first edition of Darwin’s Origin of Species when the Social Darwinists hijacked his theories to justify their own notions of how society should be organized. In the same spirit, a lot of experts have picked up on the colorful pictures showing various areas of the brain lighting up during controlled laboratory experiments to market their services to companies, promising that they can read consumers’ brains and know what makes them tick, even better than the consumers themselves can. (By the way, if you’ve ever been inside of one of those machines, you know just how “natural” that situation is.)

When a book applies the idea to B2B sales, telling us that, “In spite of our modern ability to analyze and rationalize complex scenarios and situations, the old brain will regularly override all aspects of this analysis and, quite simply, veto the new brain’s conclusions.”[1], then the idea has gone too far.

I have a lot of respect for the work of one of the deans of persuasion science, Robert Cialdini, but even he goes a little too far. His six principles for influence are implied to be so powerful that you can’t sell a good idea without them, and you can definitely sell bad ideas with them. You can trigger fixed-action patterns that cause people to act like a mother turkey does when she hears “cheep-cheep”, and that’s what his book is about.[2] Cialdini at least acknowledges the importance of rationality—in a footnote—saying  of course material self-interest is important, but that it goes without saying.

Yet, that’s the problem: it doesn’t go without saying. When a Harvard Business School professor tells us that “what you say is less important than how you say it”, and “style trumps content”, then it has to be said.

Content has to come first

This article is a plea for a little more, well, rationality in the understanding of what it takes to get ideas approved and products sold. Of course it’s important to be able to appeal to more than just the rational parts of the brains of your persuasive target. I’ve written about ways to do that many times on this blog. But it has to start with a sound, logical and defensible business or personal case—with what Cialdini called material self-interest.

One of the oldest sayings in sales is that you should sell the sizzle, not the steak. But what happens when they buy the appetizing sizzle and then find out the steak is crappy? They won’t come back. That’s why you have to make absolutely you have an excellent steak before you worry about the sizzle. Regardless of how many persuasive cues you employ, or which regions of the brain turn which color in the fmri, if the idea does not work, you soon won’t, either. Bad ideas are bad ideas, no matter how they’re dressed up.

One problem with fixation on techniques to appeal to the old brain is that they distract from the main job of putting together a strong proposal. There are people who spend most of their time learning “the tricks of the trade” in the hope of finding shortcuts, when they should be learning the trade itself. I’ve seen people put more time in the choice of fonts for their slides than they do in critically examining the strength of their ideas.

Whether you’re trying to get a proposal approved internally or selling a solution to a customer, most business decisions are complex enough to require extensive data, deep analysis, and careful decisions. That’s the reality of our modern world, which was built by the human brain. Never forget that it’s still the most important decision maker.

[2] Robert B. Cialdini, Influence: Science and Practice.

It's not magic

We all admire and envy those individuals that have it: the ability to walk into a room and captivate the attention of everyone. Imagine how much easier your life and your work would be if you had that natural quality. Everyone would want to be around you, would hang on every word that comes out of your mouth, and would want to do what you want.

In The Charisma Myth, Olivia Fox Cabane makes a convincing argument that you can have that ability, because charisma is the product of a certain mindset and behaviors that are trainable. In short, if you read this book, and practice and apply its techniques, you too can be the lightbulb instead of one of the moths.

When you come across a book like this, you may be reminded of the old ads in comic books when you were a kid, that promised to turn you from a 98-pound weakling into a musclebound stud who ruled the beach and got all the girls. The reality is that you can make the change—just don’t expect it to happen overnight or without a lot of hard work. You have to work at the exercises even when they get hard.

Here’s an example: One of the components of charisma is presence, which is a great thing to have but hard to define. In one of those aha! moments that seem obvious only in retrospect, presence is defined as the ability to be fully present in the moment, to be so focused on the person you’re talking to that you can make them feel like they’re the most important person in the world at that time. It’s a skill that Bill Clinton is said to have in spades. That’s great advice, and you will definitely see a difference if you work on it—but you can also imagine how hard it is to do. You may easily be distracted, be thinking ahead to what you want to say, have personal filters or biases against the person, etc. Yet, with practice and constant reminders, it is a skill that gets easier with time.

One way to make the skill easier to use is to have the right mental state, and the section of the book that deals with that topic is one of the best. You can’t fake the body language and behaviors that make you charismatic; with a few exceptions, the psychology has to precede the physiology. For example, it’s hard to project confidence when you’re tormented by doubts, and it’s tough to project warmth when you don’t feel much compassion for the person you’re talking to. If you can get into the right mindset of gratitude, goodwill and compassion, most of the behaviors and body language will take care of themselves.

The book itself is excellent: it’s evidence-based, filled with useful information and practical tips, and well-written. If you read it carefully, do some of the exercises and work on applying some of its tips in your work and personal relationships, you should definitely improve the quality of your interactions and increase your influence.

The book does a good job of explaining the components of charisma and then suggesting ways to increase each factor, both in general terms and in specific situations. In general terms, you want to focus on improving your presence, power and warmth. The specific situations are first impressions, speaking and listening, presentations, and difficult situations.

One of the reasons that charisma seems so mysterious is that so many different types of people can display it: it’s hard to find similarities between Marylin Monroe and George Patton, for example. It’s easier to understand when you see that there are four types of charisma, focus (Clinton), kindness (Dalai Lama), visionary (Steve Jobs), and authority (Gates). It’s also helpful because you can tailor your approach for the best fit with your own personality.

One quibble I have with the book is that an overreliance on using well-known people as examples can sometimes confuse cause and effects. For example, there is a quote from an executive raving about fact Bill Gates:  “If it’s the quality that draws people towards you and makes them want to listen to what you have to say, then Bill has that, too.” That may be true, but having nine zeros in your net worth and controlling the fate of so many people just might have something to do with it. Did Steve Jobs sell a lot of products because of his visionary charisma, or did the success of his visionary products make him charismatic?

We’re hardwired to respond differently to high-status individuals. When a person surrounded by Secret Service agents takes the time to really focus on us, we feel special and it leaves a lasting impression. The same behavior by a lower ranking person can seem overly deferential and submissive. That’s why the sections that describe Cabane’s successes with ordinary folks are the ones that resonate the most and are the most credible.

And that’s the main point you should take from this book: everyone can learn to be more charismatic—if they’re willing to work at it. Charisma is not a quality—it’s a set of practices.

Follow these steps and you won't have to dance

I’ve written a lot about planning and preparation, but there is also tremendous value in having the skill and poise to rise to the occasion when someone springs an unexpected question on you or asks you to say a few words on a particular topic. Having survived (so far) 21 years in front of trainees, I’ve developed a few habits that have served me well.

Plan for the unexpected. This sounds like an oxymoron; how can you prepare for an impromptu talk? If you’re going to a meeting, think about who will be there, and based on your knowledge of their history, their positions and their stake in the topic, what might they ask? To be really sure, don’t limit yourself to the scheduled topic. You might be there to discuss a particular project, but someone might have an interest in one of your other projects as well.

Practice situational awareness. Have you ever had the feeling of looking up and seeing all eyes turned on you? It’s easy to tune out or check your email momentarily when someone else is speaking on a topic that doesn’t immediately concern you—and that’s when Murphy’s Law guarantees that someone will direct a question to you. There’s nothing more credibility-crushing than having to ask someone to repeat the question.

Listen to the question. Make sure you answer the correct question: one problem with being too prepared is that when you hear the beginning of a question that sounds just like the one you prepared for, you begin formulating your response before the question is totally out of the questioner’s mouth. What if they swerve in a different direction while you’re formulating your answer? Second, your willingness to listen respectfully to the question is likely to be reciprocated when you are speaking to them.

Use the time when they are asking the question to concentrate fully on the words and on the questioner. Don’t begin formulating your answer until you’ve heard the entire question; you’ll have plenty of time between the end of their question and your response to think of your answer.

After you’ve listened, don’t be afraid to pause. A good friend of mine once told me, “Your perceived IQ goes up ten points if you pause before answering a question.” I’m not sure what the science is behind that assertion, but it generally works. (Unless the question is an easy one; then you just look slow or devious.) In her book, The Charisma Myth, Olivia Cabane tells us that a two-second pause will automatically boost your presence. You can also buy time by repeating the question or asking for clarification, but overuse of this technique gets old fast.

Answer the question. Politicians seem to get away with not answering the actual question that was asked, but you won’t get away with that for long in a business setting or sales call. You may have good reasons to go beyond the actual question that was asked, and that’s perfectly fine, as long as you earn the right to do that by answering the question first.

Or don’t. Sometimes you can’t or should not answer the question. In that case, don’t try to bluff or dance around it. If you don’t know, say, “I don’t know, but I can get those figures and call you back this afternoon.” Or, just leave out the first four words and say: “I can get those figures and call you this afternoon.” If you could answer the question but choose not to, be up front about it, but toss them a bone if possible.  “Unfortunately I can’t comment until we’ve spoken to all the parties involved. But what I can tell you is…”

Practice Need to Know. When you’re an expert, you know and care more about your topic than the questioner, so you tend to tell them more than they need. What does the questioner need to know to make sense of your answer? Give them the bare minimum, and add a signal that there is more if they want to follow up: “In general, that’s the approach I would recommend, although there are some risks.”

Answer the spirit and not the letter of the question. Need to know is a useful policy to keep from being overly long in your answers, but sometimes you can err on the side of being too short.  For one reason, people often ask a closed-ended question when they really want to know more. A silly example is when someone asks, “Do you know what time it is?” Only a real jerk would answer, “yes.” If it is a literal yes or no question, give them the yes or no, and then add the appropriate additional information that will satisfy what they need to know.

What about impromptu presentations? The preceding suggestions apply to answering questions, but sometimes you actually have to give some sort of “presentation” without having had time to prepare. Someone might ask for a status report on your department, for example, and expect a longer answer. For those who are familiar with Toastmasters International meetings, these situations are like Table Topics, in which you’re expected to speak for two minutes on a topic with zero preparation time. The best approach in this case is to pause long enough to take a stand or select one point, state it up front, and then develop it as necessary.

This is the opposite of the usual approach, which is to begin talking about a topic and then develop what you want to say about it and finally reach a conclusion. The problem with the usual approach is that it looks like half-baked thinking, as if you’re making it up as you go along. If you state your conclusion at the beginning, it came up in your mind for a reason, and the reasons will come.

In a way, all this advice can be summed up as, pay attention, know your audience, and keep it short. If you can stick to these three principles, you will never be at a loss for words.

Anyone who has ever tried to swim butterfly knows that it is by far the most grueling stroke; but that was the essence of their genius: no one was crazy enough to try it, so just about any time they got in the water they broke a world record. As one who accompanied them (on a paddleboard) for a 10-mile swim along Fort Lauderdale Beach, I can attest that they were two of the most passionate and determined guys I’ve ever met. But for some reason history has forgotten them.

I’m reminded of these guys when I see yet another article or tweet that tells us the key to life is following your passion. When you read or hear advice like this, it sounds as sure as a law of physics:  all you have to do is figure out what you’re really passionate about, make sure you concentrate on it, and success and happiness will follow.

It sounds nice, but it’s also like telling a football coach that the secret to an undefeated season is to only play the games you want to play.

I don’t dispute that passion is a wonderful “thing” to have, but passion is not enough, and sometimes passion is not necessary. The way they make it sound, following your passion is a guarantee of success. (So is buying a winning lottery ticket; the only secret is that you have to buy the right one.)

An overemphasis on passion rests on shaky economic and psychological premises.

Economically, following your passion is excellent advice as long as two conditions apply:

• There is a market for what you’re passionate about.
• You can realistically aspire to be at or near the top of your field.

The problem is that those conditions tend to conflict. There is a supply and demand relationship between marketability and passion. Sometimes you can be at the top of your field precisely because there is no demand for it. If the activity you’re passionate about has no value in the market, it’s a sure prescription to dying hungry. You may have a smile on your lips, but very little food will pass through them.  The more of a market there is for what you do, the greater the supply of competitors who are equally as passionate about it as you are. The perfect illustration is American Idol. There is no doubting the strength of passion of almost every single one of the contestants, but the vast majority of them should never quit their day jobs. Most college athletes are passionate about their sports, but only a small minority go on to make a living playing their sports professionally.

It’s also about comparative advantage. I’m passionate about physical fitness and working out, so I suppose I could open a gym or become a personal trainer. Do you know how many gyms and personal trainers there are in Fort Lauderdale? Let’s assume I’m a better fitness trainer than average (I don’t claim to be, but this is a thought experiment, so just go with it); let’s also assume that I’m a better sales trainer than average (that one I do claim). I could try to do both, but the simple fact is that sales training pays better than fitness training, so it does not make sense to follow both passions with equal intensity.

The psychological argument is even more important. The passionistas misread human motivation: they tell us that passion is powerful because it drives us to produce our best work. I don’t dispute that passion works that way, but it’s not the only driver for producing your best work.

It’s a little insulting to imply that you need passion to do your best work. Does this mean that if we don’t care passionately about something, we’re going to do bad work? I can think of a lot of reasons that someone might give their absolute best even if they’re not passionate about something: a personal commitment to excellence, a strong work ethic, the moral obligation to give your best to your employer, and so on.

Besides, even when you’re passionate about something, there are parts that come with it that you won’t want to do, or there are days when you just have to grind through difficulties and tedium. As Dan Waldschmidt says, “A lot of life comes down to doing hard things when you least feel like it.” Determination steps in when passion takes a day off.

If you need passion to keep you going, find something to be passionate about in what you’re doing. Sometimes the best path in life is to follow the advice of the Crosby Still Nash song that says: “If you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you’re with.” If you’re in a job that you’re not passionate about, find some aspect of it that you can really grab and make your own—something that you can take pride in.

By the way, in doing a little fact-checking for this post I noticed a 2010 Wall Street Journal article that says long-distance butterfly is becoming popular. Anyone looking for a new challenge?

A clear goal won't help right now

By now, it’s no secret that mastery in any field requires thousands of hours of hard work and deliberate practice. We know that there are no shortcuts, and that we have to work hard all the time. Yet, it’s possible to work harder than anyone and still go nowhere. It’s equally important to identify and focus on the right things to improve. As Anders Ericsson says, “the critical variable for performance improvement is identifying areas of desired goals of achievement (my italics) and engaging in effective training and practice to attain the associated improvement.”[1]

I was inspired to write this post by three stories I’ve read recently:

The first is the most recent. It comes from last week’s Sports Illustrated story on Tiger Woods. “Last Saturday night, less than 24 hours before he won on the PGA tour for the first time in 30 months, Woods was the only golfer on the Bay Hill range.” That sentence says a lot. His opponents no doubt wanted to win just as much as Woods did, but he was the only one out there on a Saturday night. What’s even more instructive is the reason he was out there: his third round had ended badly, and he and his swing coach had identified the problem: too much weight on his left foot. “Woods hit balls until dark, stopping only to change clubs and sip on a Diet Coke. The more balls he hit, the more the fog from the late-round mistakes lifted.”

That’s the essence of deliberate practice: identifying an area that needs improvement and working relentlessly on it until it’s fixed. Then you move on to the next area.[2] While that may sound obvious, most of us quickly yield to the temptation to practice those things we’re already good at; after all, it’s easier and more rewarding.

That means that deliberate practice requires the attitude and the skill of realistic self-awareness. Most of us don’t have the luxury of a personal swing coach for our professional (although with the rise of executive coaching, this is less and less of an issue), but with the right attitude and knowledge we can do a lot of this for ourselves. We can be our own coaches and mentors.

It’s not enough to have a clear goal; you also have to be crystal clear about where you are right now. After all, even a man lost in the woods knows where he wants to go.

You can’t identify weaknesses if you think too much of yourself and if you can’t identify what needs to be fixed. This brings me to the second story, which comes from The Fifth Discipline, by Peter Senge. He tells us that Bill Russell, the basketball great, used to complete a scorecard on himself after every game. After 13 seasons and more than 1200 games, the highest score he ever gave himself was 65. He knew enough about himself and about the game to spot the gaps; and the paradoxical mix of humility and confidence to admit his shortcomings and be resolved to overcome them.

Senge calls it the creative life, in which you are your own ongoing creation, fueled by a continuous creative tension between who you are and what you are capable of becoming.

The third story I read comes from Gary Marcus’ book, Guitar Zero. He tells us that Pat Matheny, the great guitarist who has won 18 Grammys, keeps a diary and every time he plays will record six to eight pages on what worked and what didn’t, so he can improve his next performance. His dedication to his field is impressive enough in itself, but six to eight pages of analysis shows astounding attention to the slightest detail and incredible self-awareness.

Notice one common thread running through all three stories: the most highly skilled are those who are also the best at finding fault with their own skill. In fact, one study has shown that the opposite effect occurs: those who are worst at something tend to be those who most overestimate their ability.

You don’t have to be an athlete or musician to apply the concepts of self-awareness. As I wrote in a previous article, the US Army has seen huge results from the use of After-Action Reviews, and the idea has taken hold in business as well. After a sales call, a presentation, a project—in fact, any task that is important to your job—take some time to reflect on what worked and what did not. I would not recommend six to eight pages, as Matheny does, but even just a short bullet point list can give you enough to work on—I trust it won’t be the same few items every time.

Be responsible for your own feedback and you can be your own best coach. Ignorance may be bliss, but it won’t make you better.

[2] It obviously did not help his Masters’ performance, but that just shows that there is always something else you can work on.

The speaker should have read this article

As we saw in Part 1, stories can be a powerful way to sell products or ideas. In this post, we will look at five suggestions to choose, craft and tell your stories for maximum persuasive effectiveness.

Bring out the conflict

Screenwriter Robert McKee, interviewed in the Harvard Business Review, said, “Essentially, a story expresses how and why life changes.” He goes on to say that all great story tellers “dealt with this fundamental conflict between subjective expectation and cruel reality.”[1]

Stories are such a natural fit with solution selling because they share the same aim. They both begin with a situation and then introduce some gap, or conflict that introduces tension or conflict. They then ratchet up the tension enough so that the listener is more than ready for some resolution. That sequence of situation-conflict-resolution is at the heart of a good story, and if you think of it, is also the essence of sales questioning or conversational techniques that get the customer to sell themselves.

When everything is good and there are no problems, there is no story—and no sale.

Make the customer the hero

The biggest problem with stories as used by salespeople is that they focus on the wrong hero. If you’ve been on the receiving end of a sales presentation that told the seller’s company story, and seemed to go on forever, complete with glossy slides showing the company HQ, its products, stock photos of satisfied customers and so on, you know the feeling. One executive I interviewed for my book on sales presentations told me that, in most of these he has been subjected to, even the salesperson telling the story seemed bored with it.

If a story where you and your company are the heroes is not effective, who should be the hero? On the surface, it would seem that the hero of a good sales story is your product. You tell about another prospect who was in a similar situation, the struggle they faced, and how your solution saved the day.

But the best stories, the ones that engage listeners and fire their imaginations, are those in which the listeners put themselves into the shoes of the protagonist. Some studies have shown that listeners actually simulate the action in their own minds, and many of the same brain regions that respond to actual experience are the same ones that respond to vicarious experience. In essence, your customer should be the hero of your story, with your product in a strong backup role.

Keep them short

One of the most common mistakes is to include way too much detail. The obvious cost of this is that they go on too long and risk losing the attention of the audience. The less obvious but more important reason to cut out detail is that the story you are telling is not really the most important one—it’s the story your listeners are telling themselves as they imagine themselves in the scenario  you are describing. Too many details get in the way and engage their argumentative brains.

But throw in a vivid detail or two

Having said that, some small but vivid details are useful to make the situation more real in the listener’s mind and to stick in their memories. In one of my presentations classes, a speaker told of a woman whose chihuahua, Enrique, had tangled with a skunk. When she mentioned the name, everyone laughed and I’m sorry to say that’s probably one of the details they will always remember from that class!

Make them relevant

Because stories are so memorable, you must absolutely ensure that they are relevant to your message. This should go without saying, but we all like to tell a good story, and we often throw in things just because they’re interesting, or because they show us in a good light. The key to relevance is your own listening, as I was reminded by an excellent comment on part 1 of this story from Mark Goldman, who said that, before getting our clients to listen, we first have to listen to them, so that we can understand their story and then find a story that they can connect to.

I absolutely agree with Mark, and as I explain in this previous blog post, you can use your questions and your listening to get the customer to tell you their own story—with your happy ending.