Influence Archives - How to be Awesome at Your Job

Pete Mockaitis
Chris, welcome back to the How to be Awesome at Your Job podcast.

Chris Croft
Yeah, thanks for having me back. I, obviously, got away with it the last time. So, that’s great to know, Pete.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yes. Well, I’m excited to dig in again. And to kick it off, I want to hear about you are a saxophone lover. I’ve played the saxophone back in the day. What’s the story?

Chris Croft
Yeah, somebody said to me once, “The definition of a gentleman is someone who knows how to play the saxophone but doesn’t.” And I think that’s probably pretty good. I do, I like listening to it, to people like John Coltrane and Bruce Springsteen’s fantastic sax player who died recently, Clarence Clemons. So, I love listening to it but I do play it as well in rock and jazz bands. But I don’t claim to be very good.

But I find it very therapeutic. It makes me happy to play very loudly, just to blast away. I tell people I’m the Jimi Hendrix of the sax but, of course, I’m no way near as good as him. But playing any instrument, I think, is a source of happiness. It’s creative and you get to show off. So, yeah, what’s not to like?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, happiness that’s exactly what we’re talking about. Well done. Happiness at work, you know a thing or two about it. Can you maybe, first, give us the lay of the land? To what extent are professionals, in general, happy at work? Can you illustrate the state of affairs there?

Chris Croft
Yeah, most people are not very happy at work. When they’re asked the biggest source of unhappiness, it’s usually their boss or their job. And happiness at work is not really treated very seriously by most organizations. They think it’s a bit of luxury. They understand motivation which is sort of linked a bit to happiness. And, in fact, when Maslow was creating his hierarchy of needs, he was actually studying happiness, not motivation.

So, he found that happiness required things like security and social links and being valued and all those sorts of things. And that was sort of twisted into motivation, just how to get people to work harder. But there is a link between happiness and how people work. And I saw some research that said that unhappy people tend to be about 50% engaged with their jobs, whereas happy people are 80% engaged. So, they spend more time working and they work harder if they’re happy.

But it’s hard to untangle cause and effect because it could be if you loved your job, then you’re happier, and then you work harder. But it could be if you work harder, that makes you happier, and it’s hard to un-pick the whole thing. But, certainly, if there are things you can do to make your employees happier, you’ll get more out of them and you’ll make more profit. So, why don’t organizations think more about happiness at work?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so happiness at work, I think we’d like some more of it just in and of itself and for the performance and productivity boost that it generates. Are there any sort of misconceptions associated with people think this makes them happy or unhappy at work but, really, that’s not the case?

Chris Croft
Well, the big one is money.

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

Chris Croft
The huge one is money, and there’s been a lot of research done into happiness related to money. And, certainly, below a certain point, money is related to happiness. If you’re so short of money that you’re worrying about where your next meal is going to come from or whatever, then clearly happiness is reduced by not enough money.

But when you get to a certain point, it really starts to level out and eventually you get to a point where more money doesn’t make you any happier. And it’s interesting because we put so much effort into earning more money. We do jobs that we don’t like because they’re better paid and we sort of sacrifice lots of time, personal life, even relationships and marriages and things get sacrificed in order to make more money. And all the research says more money isn’t going to make you happy.

And I know everyone’s listening to this thinking, “Yeah. Well, it would make me happy.” But, actually, if you look back over the jobs you’ve done in the past, if you’ve had a steadily increasing income as your career has gone on, then it’s hard to know whether it’s made you happier. But if you’ve had a career like mine where the money has gone up and down, you’ve done all kinds of different things, looking back, so times I’ve been happiest when I was earning very little money. And some of the jobs where I’ve earned quite a lot were really stressful and I wasn’t that happy.

And my theory about why this is true is I do think money makes you a little bit happier. If you earned twice as much, and you spent twice as much on your car and the wine you drink and things, I think you would be 10% happier. But the problem is that you pay a 20% price to earn that money, to earn more money. Why will somebody pay you more money? And there’s got to be something wrong with the job that they’re paying you to do. They have to pay you more in order to get you to do it, and it’s usually stress, or working longer hours, or a lot of travel.

And so, yes, the money makes you slightly happier, but the price you pay to earn that money outweighs the gain that you get.

But there’s good news because it means we don’t have to search after money at work. We can think about doing a job that we’re going to enjoy. You could start thinking about work that’s going to be satisfying and make a difference, and all of those things. And that’s good news, I think, in the end.

Pete Mockaitis
I’m curious, you mentioned that after a point, the incremental happiness for extra money levels off. I’ve seen some studies on that. Do you have a sense for what that point is, like, dollar terms?

Chris Croft
Yeah, I saw one and it said $60,000. And I remember being a bit disappointed because it hoped it would level off at like 20 or 30 because then I could say to pretty much everybody, “Don’t look for more money,” but, of course, a lot of people don’t earn 60,000 and, of course, it’s personal, so for some people it may level off at $40,000 or $50,000, and a lot of people are at that kind of point there.

And even at 30,000 or 40,000, it’s levelling off fast. So, if you can earn a whole load more, it won’t make much difference to your happiness. It’s completely leveled above 60, that’s the numbers I saw. But I think it varies depending on the country and your personality, and there’s a lot of factors going on in there.

Pete Mockaitis
And maybe your zip code and size of family and such.

Chris Croft
Yeah, but certainly it’s not millions. It’s not your second million doesn’t make you happier, although I’m sure that’s true. It levels off a lot sooner than that so don’t chase after the money. That’s not going to make you happy. But lots of things can, and that’s what I’ve got some tips for you in this podcast. I’ve got some practical things people really can do to get more happiness at work.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, lay it on us. What do you think are sort of really the big levers, the things that make all the difference?

Chris Croft
Yeah, so I’ve got a list of ten here and I’m planning we can zoom through them. They’re not really in any particular order and I think different ones will work for different people. My first one is a really quick one which is projects. And all the people who know me will laugh when I say projects because I am quite obsessed with Gantt charts and project management and things.

But it’s not project management that makes you happy but it’s having a project. It’s a feeling of moving towards a worthwhile objective.

And any project that you’re working towards gives you a nice feeling of progress and that your life isn’t being wasted. And we probably all had the feeling of driving home at the end of a day and thinking, “Where has that day gone? I’ve achieved nothing today.” But if you’re working on a project, you have that feeling of moving forward and you have that feeling of a worthwhile objective.

So, the first thing you can do at work is make sure you’re involved in a project, not just processes which is the same every day but a project, something that’s going to take a few months or a year where you’re working on something big. And I think it probably has an extra spinoff because you’re in a team, you’re working with people on a team, and that’s always good as well. That’s sort of a secondary benefit.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, it sounds like when you say projects, some will say, “Hey, I’ve got too many projects and it isn’t doing it for me.” It sounds like it’s something you can own and observe your efforts are creating improvement, advancement, like a house you can see or, maybe, I don’t know if sales numbers…

Chris Croft
It could be a website. It could be an exhibition that’s going to happen. Yeah, it could be a piece of software. It could be an app that you’re working on but something where you’re going to get closure in the end and you’re going to think, “I did that,” or, “I was involved in that, and there it is.” That’s the thing.

And, yeah, you don’t want to have too many projects. Stress is bad. But a lot of people are really stressed out by the processes. For example, I used to run factories for a living before I escaped. That’s quite a tough job to do. We were just churning out stuff and we were trying to churn out 1% more stuff every month. And it was just stressful and you just felt like you were running to stand still.

But every now and then there’d be a project and we would get a new machine installed or extend the factory or start making a new product. And that was great because we could get our teeth into something new. And then after possibly a few months, there it would be working, done. And it was the projects that I used to enjoy. And the projects were a little bit stressful because there was often a deadline but it felt good when you finished them.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s a great distinction with the manufacturing world because it’s sort of like, in a way, at the end of each day, like, “Hey, there’s a warehouse full of stuff that I contributed to,” but it’s sort of like, “But that was happening before I got here and will happen after I got here and I see it every day, so it’s not distinctive in terms of that’s mine.”

Chris Croft
That’s right. Yeah, I really think ownership is important. And that’s actually part of my second one I’ve got here actually, but to have ownership of something, even ownership of part of a process would be fine, even if you were just sweeping the streets, let’s say. If it was your street and you always swept the same street and you could take pride in it, then that would increase your happiness.

So, I think ownership of anything is good but, you’re right, ownership of projects is the best thing to have because you don’t have that futile feeling of doing it over and over again, Groundhog Day.

But my second tip, with ownership as part of it, is to work hard. And I know this sounds like an old thing and people may think I’ve been put up to saying this by some sinister boss behind the scene somewhere. But, actually, if you work hard, you’ll be happier. And I know people whose job it is all day just to skive and do the minimum. They’ve set themselves the challenge of doing the minimum amount of work. And I can still remember I’ve got my daughter a work placement at a garden center when she was about 18, and at lunchtime she said, everyone at the garden center, when they had their half-hour for lunch, they went into the mirror room and they just sat there and either fell asleep, which is sort of stared at the wall and just did nothing for half an hour. And she said, “I was totally bored so I went out and volunteered where I could help on the till, and was there anything, some plants that needed repotting or something.”

And they all thought she was mad to volunteer to work. But she said, “What’s the point of just sitting there? It’s not going to make you happy in the end because you’re just not achieving anything. And deep down, part of you knows you’re wasting your life.” So, I actually think having decided to do a particular job for a particular wage, having decided to do that job, you might as well work as hard as you can and absolutely do the best you can.

And people have said to me, “Oh, it’s different for you, Chris, because you’re self-employed. You’re working for yourself.” But everybody is self-employed in a way, and you’ve decided to turn up to work today and sell your time for money, and you might as well do a job that you can be proud of. And I think that that, then, means you’ve got to find a job that you believe in because it’s much easier to work hard at something you do believe is making a difference.

Pete Mockaitis
And before we dig into that one, in terms of hard work, it sounds like part of it is that it’s, I don’t know, you do honest work in terms of like you’re really doing some stuff as opposed to just showing out or trying to dodge or staring at a wall. So, it sounds like it’s a matter of focus or kind of really plugging into it as opposed to sheer number of hours. Like, it’s hard work.

Chris Croft
Yeah. It’s not the hours at all, no. In fact, don’t work long hours because that’ll make you less happy. And, in fact, there’s been research that shows that every half hour that you commute takes 10% off your happiness. So, half an hour each way that is.

And if you take an hour to get to work, an hour to get home, that’s two half an hours, that’s 20% off your happiness your whole life. So, working longer hours is a really bad idea. But when you’re at work, you should absolutely do the best you can, best quality, but also put maximum effort in. And the time will go quicker, you’ll feel happier, the customers will be happier, and they’ll give you a better response back to you.

And a sort of little subset of that is to try to evolve the job, evolve it towards what you like. So, if there’s 10% of your job you really love and 10% that you just don’t like at all, say to your boss when you get your appraisal, or if you don’t have appraisals, just say anyway to your boss, “I’d like to do more of this. I’d like to spend more time directly with customers,” or, “I’d like to spend more time coding,” or whatever. And they’ll go, “Yeah. Well, that’s great. I was looking for somebody who wanted to do that.” And you can move your job towards the stuff you like and away from the stuff you don’t like.

And even if you only move a 10%, after three or four years, you’d kind of really transformed what your job is like, and you can actively influence what your job consists of. And most managers are delighted when their employees say, “I’d like to do more of this and less of this.” Sometimes there’s unpleasant work that has to be done by somebody, and they say, “Well, look, sorry, you’ve got to do that.” But quite often, there’s some other crazy person who wants to do the bit you don’t like. So, you say, “I don’t want to do the filing.” There’s somebody else who’d probably love to do filings, so win-win.

So, it’s to think about what your ideal job would be like and influence your boss, to just slowly edge it towards that, and then it’ll be easier to work with your heart and soul into whatever it is you’re doing.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. So, just as simple as asking. Just like that.

Chris Croft
I think so. If your boss isn’t interested in your happiness, then you can start to think about whether you want to do something else and vote with your feet, but it’s definitely worth a try. And I think most bosses are pretty amenable to being asked about that kind of thing. We’re not asking for everything to be totally different. We just want to do a bit more of that instead of a bit of this, and just evolve it towards in that direction.

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

Chris Croft
So, that’s my second of my, gosh, ten sounds like a lot, doesn’t it? Although some of these are shorter. Shall I go on to number three?

Pete Mockaitis
Sure.

Chris Croft
Creativity. So, we get happiness from creativity. And we were talking about the saxophone earlier, and one of the great things about music is it’s a challenge to be creative. And actually, funny enough, in the band I’m in, sometimes they give me a fixed line they want me to play, “Can you play this rift all the way through the chorus?” And I’m thinking, “Well, yes, I can play that but it’s boring. And even if it’s a really good rift and it’s better than anything I could think of, I still want to play my own. I like my own better and I want to vary it.”

And so, there’s something in us that makes us want to be creative. And I would say even if you’re not very good at something, do it anyway. Even if you’re not very good at playing an instrument, play it. Or if you write poetry, even if it’s not very good poetry, or art, just do some paintings.

But once you get into management, then creativity becomes really important. I think it’s probably the most important thing a manager can do actually is to be creative. Because if you’ve got a process you follow as a manager, then what’s the point of you because anybody could follow that process? You could just get anybody, any old person in, and they could just, you know, “If this problem happens, do that. If a customer is unhappy, give them a refund, or whatever.” So, the purpose of management is to think about how to improve things, and that’s creative.

So, you need to find a job that’s creative and find creative parts within your job, and do as much of that as you can because creativity is a big source of happiness. And we talked about projects earlier, and I think projects have a creative element always, don’t they, because they’re always to do with doing something new. So, creativity, that’s the next thing to think about.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly, yeah. And I hear you that it’s not purely about sort of art and music. Creativity, I guess, the core of it is you are inventing or putting something into existence out of you.

Chris Croft
Yeah. And where does creativity come from? I mean, there’s a question.
And, by the way, never say, “Oh, I’m not creative. I can’t do it,” because everybody is. Everybody can be. So, you must never just give up and think, “I’m not a creative person. I’m just not,” because you can do it. And with practice and with nurturing and a good boss, because you don’t want a boss who just tramples on your ideas, “Oh, that will never work.”

Look at kids. Kids are always really creative, aren’t they? So, we’re all born with creativity, and you can see it in kids. Kids are always inventing stuff, aren’t they, and imagining, “This stick is actually an airplane,” and all that. So, we’ve all got creativity within us and you can rekindle it, and it’ll make you happier if you can use it.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. What’s next?

Chris Croft
What’s next is learning. And I like asking people, “How long could you do a job for if you weren’t learning anything new? If it was quite easy and it was quite well-paid and you were good at it, how long could you do that for?” And answers vary from a couple of weeks to a year or whatever. I worked, part of my apprenticeship when I was an engineer, I had to make washers on a lathe.

And you would make 10,000 in a day. And I had to work there for six weeks which is part of my apprenticeship, and it just drove me absolutely mad. I couldn’t stand it. Within a week, I had become quite good at making washers, and I’d made, I don’t know, 50,000 by then. And after two weeks, I was just climbing the walls. It was so boring. And I tried stacking them in pyramids and trying to calculate how many were in the pyramid, and how many seconds till I can have a cup of tea at 10:00 o’clock, just to keep your brain going.

And I think we all have a built-in need to keep learning because that’s going to be a survival quality, isn’t it? Suppose you were making podcasts, for example, but if you get bored with making podcasts, if that day ever came, then you’ve got to do something else. And it won’t be as obvious as the washers but there will be a point where you just think, “I’m just not feeling it anymore, you know. It’s just yet another guest, and I just go, ‘Oh, how interesting’ after each thing he says.” I know you’re not there, Pete, but you know what I mean.

And, funny enough, I’d been doing training courses for years and I wondered at what point would I get bored with training, teaching people project management or something. And I notice I never got bored because the groups are different every time, and, also, I learn stuff every time from the audience. And so, you have to keep learning. And if you get to a point where you’re not learning, then you’ve got to go off a level or go sideways, volunteer to do something different. Just find something else where you’re going to keep on learning.

And I think it’s easy to avoid the effort of learning, and, “Oh, I can’t be bothered to learn something new.” And I have found if you move somebody to a new job, they’d go, “Oh, I don’t want to do that. I’d have to learn new stuff.” But once they start learning it, they love it. And, of course, learning allows you to be creative as well because it just gives you more ideas you can use so there’s a link there, isn’t there, I’m sure between learning new skills and being creative.

So, learning is something that anyone can do. You can volunteer to go on training courses. Your company is bound to have training going on so just volunteer to go on the next course and learn something that you just don’t even think you’d need, like project management or assertiveness or anything, Excel, and just volunteer and go and learn something. And I’ll bet you, you’d feel good when you’re doing it. So, learning is number four on my list of easy ways to increase your happiness.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, I’m convinced. And number five?

Chris Croft
Number five is to come out of your comfort zone. And this follows on a bit from learning. But to come out of your comfort zone and push yourself, volunteer for some things that are a bit scary. Maybe they want someone to give a talk at a conference, or maybe they want somebody to open a new office in Cincinnati or something. Just put your hand up and say, “I’ll do that.” And afterwards, you’re thinking, “Oh, why have I volunteered for that?” but just push yourself out of your comfort zone a little bit.

Now, ideally, you’d have a boss who would do that, who would encourage you to gradually move on up and not give you huge scary things but just things that are a little bit beyond what you normally do. So, you just keep expanding your comfort zone. And the reason this increases our happiness, of course, is because we get achievement, because we get a bit of an adrenaline rush at the time, “Oh, I’ve got to give a talk to a conference.” And afterwards, it’s like, “Yeah, I did it. I feel good,” and you’ve increased your skills, you’ve learned some things as well.

So, volunteer. It’s a bit counterintuitive because we don’t think it’s going to make us happy but actually it does. And there’s that great sort of quote which says, “We only regret the things that we didn’t do.” So, if you do come out of your comfort zone, you won’t regret it. It’ll lead to something or other, and even if it ends up being a bit different to how you thought and it turns out to being tougher, you’ll look back and think, “I’m glad I did that.”

So, I don’t think you should do things that are really stupid at work but things that are just a little bit beyond what you would normally do. And, obviously, you can do that conference talk. Of course, you can.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. I’m with you. And so, I guess I wonder, do you have any pro tips with regard to what is a risk worth taking versus it’s too risky?

Chris Croft
I don’t know. I don’t think there’s a rule for that because I think everyone is going to be different. I think you want it to be kind of 10% more difficult than what you normally do and not twice as difficult. I guess you can look at the, “How big will the downside be?” When you do risk analysis, you look at the probability of it going wrong and how bad it will be, don’t you? And you can weigh up the upside and how likely that is, and the downside and how likely that is.

But I think I would mainly focus on, “Will you die if it goes wrong?” So, if you’re thinking of giving a talk at a conference, what’s the worst that’s going to happen is your talk is going to be really boring and some people are going to go to sleep because they’re not going to throw things at you, or you’re not going to get fired. So, that absolutely is the risk worth taking.

And so, I think assess how likely it is to go really badly and how bad would it be. And, quite often, when you start thinking about what’s the worst that could happen, it’s actually not that bad. We mostly have fear of looking bad in front of other people, and that’s just not a problem, really. So, I think that’s what I would do. I think that’s probably how I would assess risk.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And what’s next?

Chris Croft
Well, number six, we’re onto the second half now. I’m really interested by this one because this one says that when you’re thinking about what makes you happy, your brain doesn’t know what’s good for you. This is based on some research by somebody called Sonja Lyubomirsky who I’m a big fan of. I think her research is fascinating. I think she’s great.

And they found that our brain doesn’t know what will make us happy. And we’ve already said that we think money will make us happy, and it doesn’t. And how can your brain be wrong? And the reason is because we’re really still stone age people, our brains are stone age.

So, for example, we have certain rules programmed in. Like, for example, eat the maximum amount of food while it’s there because we think that will make us happy because, in the stone age, if there was a dead dinosaur, you had to eat it as quickly as you could or whatever.

And then we have other simpler rules, like laziness is more efficient. And, yet, in real life, laziness doesn’t make you happy. You just underachieve and feel bad. And, yet, we think that if we do nothing all weekend and just read the paper and drink some alcohol at lunchtime and fall asleep in the afternoon in front of the TV, that that will somehow make us happy. But, actually, you look back and you think, “That wasn’t a great weekend really.”

And then our brain tends to focus on problems because if you’re trying to survive in the jungle, you’re always thinking, “Is that a tiger over there? Why is that there? I haven’t seen that before.” So, we tend to be quite negative, and that makes us unhappy in the modern world where in the modern world there aren’t that many things to be frightened of, and, yet, we still focus on the negative things. We watch the news, we want all the bad news that’s happening around the country, and we focus on the bad news. And that is a survival thing that is now out of date.

And the final thing that our brain does that’s bad is that it drifts away from the present. So, it frets about the future, it worries about the future, what’s coming up even though it can’t do anything about it. And it goes back to the past and it sort of thinks, “Oh, if only that hadn’t happened and I wish that wasn’t like that.” And sometimes it thinks the past was great, “If only I could go back to the past.” But, of course, you can’t change the past. So, our brain is obsessed with the past and the future even though that isn’t where happiness lies, because happiness is only in the present. And you can only be happy when you’re living in the present.

And that’s why we’re happiest when we do things that absorb us completely in the present. So, if you’re doing something, it’s called being in the flow. If you’re doing something where you’re really concentrating on doing it, and it might be, say, paddling a canoe or something, and you’re really concentrating on the canoe and the balance and the water, and you do it. And you just forget everything else.

And so, our brain is not our friend. And so, number six, really, is to say don’t trust your brain. Don’t think, “Well, I’m sure I must know best for myself,” but to actively take actions that go against what your inner nature is telling you. And don’t be lazy, don’t think that money will make you happy, don’t think that eating loads of food will make you happy. Don’t take the easiest path.

One of my favorite books is The Road Less Traveled. And the road that’s less traveled is the high road, the hard road. And he says in there that laziness is the biggest problem. He says that’s the root of everything, actually, is laziness. And why would we be lazy? And the answer is, in the stone age when we were short of energy, short of food and warmth, we had to be really economical. But, now, if we’re not careful, we can just lounge around all day, and we mustn’t. So, don’t trust your brain is number six.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. And I think that hard work piece, that’s sort of why that helps is because you’re not able to be thinking about other things at the same time when you’re working hard and, thusly, you are engaged in the thing.

Chris Croft
You’re in the flow.

Pete Mockaitis
So, I dig that. Well, just to accelerate a smidge, could you give us seven, eight, nine, and ten in a sentence or two each, and then maybe we’ll dig into one of them?

Chris Croft
Okay. Well, number seven, it is a biggie but we can dig into it, is you can be happier by getting rid of your negative emotions because your negative emotions, and whether it’s sort of frustration and anger, or sorrow, regret, guilt, worry, you’re actually choosing all of those negative emotions. Your brain is choosing those for you, and you’re choosing it because you think you’ll get a payoff. You think that worry will make you perform better but, actually, it’s a substitute for planning. And you think that getting frustrated will make things go quicker but, actually, you just do things worse and you end up taking longer.

And so, negative emotions are always unhelpful, and you’re choosing them, and you can, therefore, not choose them. And you may think, “Well, I can’t choose my emotions. They just well up from within,” and they do well up, but you can choose whether to give them house room or not. You can choose whether to fan the flames, and think, “Yeah, God, that guy did it, is annoying at that meeting.” Or, you can think, “I’m not going to get annoyed with him. He means well. It doesn’t matter. There’s no point.” So, number seven is you choose your emotions, and you can choose not to have negative emotions.

Number eight is to not be focused completely on achievement but don’t forget enjoyment at work. A lot of people think that enjoyment is for outside work and then achievement is for work, and that’s the split. But, actually, you should enjoy your work as well.

And so, it’s worth thinking about, “What would enjoyable work look like?” Have goals for that. If you think that you would enjoy going out to visit customers, have that as a goal at work, “I want to find a way to get into doing that somehow.” And it might be the 10% evolving of your job but it might be to just go to a whole different department, and say, “I’d like to work here.” I mean, I don’t know. So, think about what you would enjoy at work, and have some goals for enjoyment at work. And linked to that is self-talk, to say to yourself, “I love my work.”

So, as you drive to work, don’t be thinking or even saying out loud, “Oh, not work again. I hate my work. Oh, I bet it’s going to be awful today. It’s the sales meeting, that’s always awful.” But, instead, say, “I love my work. It’s great.” And the first few times you’ll say that you’ll think you’ve gone mad and don’t let anybody else hear you because they’ll think you’ve gone mad. But it becomes true surprisingly quickly because your brain is really quite malleable. And if you say, “I love my work. I really do, I love it.” And, by the way, you have to say it like you mean it. You mustn’t just go, “I love my work.” That won’t work. You have to say, “I really do love my work,” and it will become true.

Number nine is to help other people. And this, again, this is a quick one to explain. But take every chance you get to help other people at work and outside work, of course. Because not only does that make them happier, but it makes you happier as well. For some reason, we are wired to help other people. And you’ll know this if you’ve traveled abroad, if your car is broken down, anywhere people will help. People help, they love helping.

So, if you help other people, you get kind of a triple win because you feel good and they feel good. And then later, they’re more likely to help you as well. So, helping other people is one of those things which a lot of people don’t do but you absolutely should take every chance.

My last one, number ten, is you can choose to set the temperature in every encounter you have with people. You can consciously be nice or not nice. And why would you not be nice with everyone that you deal with? Just be the nicest person.

A very quick story about this. I was doing a customer care call a while ago and there’s a guy, he was actually the carpenter, he’s to fix people’s desks and doors and things. And he said, “Well, I’m only nice if they give me tea. When I’m working on a job in someone’s office and they give me a cup of tea, I’ll be nice, but otherwise, they can get stuffed.” And I said to him, “How often do you get tea?” And he said, “Oh, about one time in ten.”

So, I said, “Okay, so nine times out of ten you’re not nice.” And he said, “Well, no, but they don’t deserve it.” And I said, “But what if you set the temperature and went in really nice every time? You’d be more likely to get tea. You’d probably get tea half the time. You’d probably get five times as much tea, which clearly is your objective in life.”

And he said, “Well, yeah, but if I was nice ten times, and I got tea five times, that means I would’ve wasted half of the times. I’d have wasted being nice half of the time.” And I was like, “Yeah, but it doesn’t cost you anything to be nice, and you’re going to get five times…” He’s going, “Yeah, no, no, I’m not going to do it, not unless I know they’re going to be nice; I’m not going to do it.”

And I’m just thinking, “What can you do with a guy like that?” So, put it out there and be the first one to put it out there. And there’s a little circle called do-get-feel. So, what you do affects what you get, and what you get affects how you feel, and then how you feel affects what you do. So, if you’re a bit lazy and you sort of do the minimum, then what you’ll get is sort of hassle from your boss and hassle from your customers. And then you’ll feel unhappy about your work. And then what you’ll do is even less work.

And you can break that circle by thinking, “No, even if my boss is maybe not treating me that well, I’m going to do the best job I can,” because then you’ll get better results and you’ll feel better about it, and you’ll be in the good circle, and you might even win over your boss. But, in a way, who cares what your boss says? Do it for yourself and do it for your customers to an extent too. But mainly do it for yourself because you’ll enjoy the work more.

If you’re nice to people, you’ll win in the end. So, that’s number ten, set the temperature in every interaction that you have.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I appreciate this rundown, and I guess I’m thinking, you mentioned get rid of negative emotions. Is there anything else that you think we should stop doing? Like, there’s a number of things here that we should make an effort to do and to pursue. What are some things we should just cut out?

Chris Croft
The first thing that springs to mind, actually, for me is comparison and competition which are related because comparing yourself with other people is a road to nowhere. There’s always somebody who’s going to be more successful or richer or a higher achiever than you are. And if you compare yourself with people like that, it’s just going to make you unhappy. And if you try to compete with colleagues it’s the complete opposite of helping them.

So, I really like the idea of the abundance mentality. If you help somebody else, they’ll help you and you’ll both gain. And, funny enough, I visited a friend of mine a while ago, and he’s got this great big house and it’s on the edge of London. It’s beautiful. And I said to him, “So, you’ve done really well in life, haven’t you? You’ve achieved.” And he said, “No, I don’t feel like I’ve proved myself at all.” And I said, “But you’ve got a house that’s worth five strokes six million pounds.” And he said, “Yeah, but my brother has got a house that’s worth 20 million.” His brother is the chief executive at Accenture.

And I said, “Yeah, but why compare yourself with him? Of all the people you could pick, why don’t you compare yourself with me because my house is only worth about half a million?” And he said, “You?” He looked at me and he went, “You? Why would I compare myself with you?” And I said, “To make yourself feel better.” But it was really interesting that he felt it was productive to compare himself with somebody on the level above. And, yeah, that might pull him up, but will it? Or will it just make him feel bad about himself?

So, I think comparing and competing are really unhealthy. And just do it for yourself. If you’re a salesperson, you don’t have to be the number one salesperson. Just feel good about every deal that you get and feel good about the fact you helped a customer and feel good that you’re getting better at selling, and you’ve learned some new techniques. But don’t start thinking, “Oh, that person sold more than me. And, oh, that person earned more bonus than me.” Just feel good about the amount of bonus that you’ve got.

So, I think that’s definitely something to stop doing, is comparing and competing.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Thank you. Well, now, let’s hear some of your favorite things. Can you tell us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Chris Croft
Yeah, I’ve got two happiness-related quotes I really like. The first one is from Albert Schweitzer, and he said, “Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success.” And so, if you love what you’re doing, you will be successful.

The other quote I like is totally different. And it just says that, “Allowing yourself to feel hate is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.”

Pete Mockaitis
And how about a favorite book?

Chris Croft
Well, if I was a real egotist, I would say my Big Book of Happiness isn’t a bad place to start.

But there is a book that’s better than mine, and it is The How of Happiness by Sonja Lyubomirsky. I really think she’s nailed it.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And is there a particular nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with folks; they quote it back to you a lot?

Chris Croft
I think it’s probably that you choose your negative emotions. People are always fascinated by that.

Pete Mockaitis
And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Chris Croft
ChrisCroft.com. Just go to my website. I’m always putting stuff on my blog. And from my blog, you can get my tip of the month, which is a free email I send out every month. I’m on YouTube as well and things, but ChrisCroft.com would be the starting place.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Not to be confused with Chris Cross.

Chris Croft
Yes, that bass player. I do get address, caught up letters addressed to Mr. Cross, but it doesn’t make me angry because anger is a negative emotion and you don’t think about it.

Pete Mockaitis
You’re not cross about it. Ha ha ha.

Chris Croft
Yeah, it’s not worth it, is it?

Pete Mockaitis
And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Chris Croft
I think the easiest call to action is probably start a project. Yeah, what are you going to do? What projects have you got on the go? But if you’ve already got a project, then my sort of fallback call to action would be learning. What have you learned recently? How are you going to improve? Because all you’ve got is what’s between your ears really. What’s in your head is that’s your main tool nowadays, isn’t it, for earning a living, and you’ve got to keep improving your ticket.
They’re easy things you can do and they will lead to other things. So, make a start with a bit of learning and some sort of reasonably ambitious project that give you a sense of achievement.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, Chris, this has been a treat. I wish you lots of luck and happiness in your adventures.

Chris Croft
Yeah. Well, thank you for having me again. And I really hope it makes a difference to people listening.

Pete Mockaitis
Brian, welcome back to the How to be Awesome at Your Job podcast.

Brian Ahearn
Thank you for having me back on. Third time is a charm, I think.

Pete Mockaitis
It is. Well, you’re in rare company there. That doesn’t happen very often. Maybe like three-ish times. Well, the listeners can’t see this but I’m charmed by your background. You have a screen which has the How to be Awesome at Your Job logo, cover art, and it says, “Hello, Pete.” And then you have a tasteful backdrop. I guess you got an Amazon, which looks pretty realistic. What’s the story here?

Brian Ahearn
So, in the COVID lockdown world that we’re in, I knew that I was going to need to do something to differentiate myself, and I saw a friend who’s a bigtime National Speaker Association speaker and he had put a studio in his house, and he was kind enough to spend about an hour with me one day to walk me through everything that he did, and we converted our daughter’s old bedroom.

And so, I’ve got a beautiful backdrop and a 55-inch TV and I can give standup presentations where I’m walking up to the camera and moving. It’s not just a face-on Zoom, and clients have loved it, and potential clients are blown away when they see their logo and their name up on the screen on a Zoom call.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah, and it’s different I don’t know why but it is. It’s different than sharing your screen with an image of that with you like in a corner. It just is and I don’t know why or how it matters but it does.

Brian Ahearn
Well, I think clients are going to see me from like the waist up moving back and forth and turning towards, and getting a sense of, “Hey, this is a little bit what life was like prior to the pandemic. I’m seeing this person really interact with us.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, it does. It’s more three-dimensional literally because it’s behind you in the third dimension. So, Brian, not that I had any doubts but this just reinforces that this was the right choice to have you on a third time.

So, you’ve got a fresh book. It’s funny, I was a little slow, as you may recall, to reply to your email because your book is called Persuasive Selling for Relationship Driven Insurance Agents. And I’m like, “Well, you know what, most of my listeners are not insurance agents.” But, nonetheless, I think you’ve really identified some universal skills and principles that benefit all professionals, and so we’re going to zoom into a couple of those.

You’ve got some good acronyms, kind of STARS and the DEAL model, we’re going to talk about. But, first, maybe you could just tee it up broadly, what can and should non-sales professionals learn from insurance agents?

Brian Ahearn
Well, everybody is selling all the time, and so when people say, “Well, this book is for insurance agents.” Well, it’s really for all salespeople because we look at the entire sales cycle and how the psychology of persuasion applies throughout each of the steps. But even somebody who might say, “I’m not in a formal sales role,” they’re still selling themselves, their ideas, and things, especially if they’re working in a large corporation. So, understanding the deal model of how to interact with people is critically important for those folks. So, I feel like anybody who knows that moving forward with getting a yes, selling themselves, their ideas and things, they’re all going to benefit from the book.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so you’ve got some great perspective on listening and a helpful acronym STARS, which is funny because I think of STAR for interviews: situation, tasks, action, result. But you’ve got a different STAR associated with listening and I think it makes a ton of sense. So, can you lay it out for us, when it comes to listening well, why should we do it and how should we do it?

Brian Ahearn
Well, when I worked in the corporate world and I was involved in sales training, a critical component of being a good salesperson is the ability to listen. And, unfortunately, a lot of people haven’t experienced this, but good salespeople only talk 25% to 30% of the time. They ask good questions and then they stop and they listen, and they ask more questions. But you have to be a good listener and you have to be confident in those skills. And while we are taught to read and write and speak, almost nobody goes through a class on how to be a more effective listener.

So, as I was interacting with our field sales team back in the day, I came up with this acronym to make it very easy for people to understand what it takes to be listening stars. And it’s simply this: stop everything you’re doing, that’s the first letter, the S; pay attention to tone of voice, T, because it conveys emotion; A is ask clarifying questions; R is restate your understanding of what you’ve heard; and then S is scribble, take notes.

And I think if everybody could do those five things and just work on doing those things better all the time, you would be blown away by how much more effective you could be as a listener. You’d become listening stars.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. So, I love this in that it makes a lot of sense. Those seem to be five critical ingredients and often overlooked ingredients. Help us out with some of them in terms of it sounds easy to do but most often people are not doing it. Maybe tell us, how can we do each of these better? Like, how can we stop excellently? What should we really look for in the tone, etc.?

Brian Ahearn
Okay. So, when it comes to stop, you cannot give your attention to more than one thing at a time. You could try to fool yourself, and you could say, “Well, I can finish this email while I’m listening,” but you’re never really giving your attention and, therefore, you’re missing things. And we saw this when we were running little workshops and experiments, and we saw that people who gave their full attention to listening, they weren’t distracted by a second task or taking too many notes. They were catching 75% more of the facts that were being shared as compared to other people.

So, if you think about that, if you are a salesperson, or any position you’re in, if you discipline yourself to stop so that you can fully pay attention, and you’re catching 75% more than your competitor, you have a huge advantage. So, I think anybody who is listening to this podcast will catch themselves doing other things, and that’s okay, that’s a slap on the hand like, “Oh, I shouldn’t have done that.” That’s your first step in awareness. And if you keep that up, eventually you’ll find yourself stopping all those other things for longer and longer periods which is going to certainly help you be more effective in terms of what you’re receiving through your ears.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Brian, I love it when you drop a clear number like that. Boy, I’m thinking about there are just so many opportunities. Like, 75% more facts, I mean, that’s huge because someone might grab 10 facts, and then a listening star, could grab 18 facts, and those incremental 8 facts can make all the difference in terms of I’m thinking of it like in negotiation, like, “Huh, that thing I captured could surface a win-win opportunity that we could totally overlook had we not captured that upfront.”

Or, you can say, “Hmm, that little piece could really help me deepen my relationship with this person down the road.” It’s like, “Oh, hey, I remembered you liked flyfishing,” or whatever they like, and then you’ve got a cool opportunity to engage in subsequent conversations, build connection, camaraderie, etc. wow, 75% more facts from a conversation is just like 75% more opportunity, possibility, impact.

Brian Ahearn
And I would say, too, it’s not just the positive facts that you catch. Sometimes it’s the negative facts that might make you say, “Hmm, this isn’t a deal I want to go through with.” When I worked with an insurance company, a lot of the role of an underwriter is to get as many facts to make a determination, “Do we want to write this account or do we not? And if we do write it, at what price?” Catching those things, even the negative things, impacts the decision-making on behalf of the company, so it was critically important on the positive and the negative what are you going to catch or miss.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, decision-making in terms of making those decisions optimally and the facts are just the top of the funnel, so that’s huge. So, for stopping, you notice that you’re doing something else and then bring it back. And this kind of sounds like any number of mindful practices and exercises, like with your breath or whatnot. How else can we get better at stopping?

Brian Ahearn
Make an intentional effort to do it. Just to tell somebody, like, “Hey, hold me accountable here.” If you’re sitting in a meeting and you tell somebody, “I’m really trying to work on my listening skills and I don’t want to be distracted. If you see me kind of going off or something like that, just give me a nudge.” But that accountability is probably enough at that point just to get you to do something different versus if you never said anything to somebody else. So, it really starts with a commitment.

And what I want to say about this, Pete, every step in the STARS model, it’s a skill but it’s not a skill that people don’t possess and cannot get better at, and I’ll give you an example. I’m 5’9” and I weigh 210 pounds, I was always into weightlifting and things, but I was never able to dunk a basketball. And if somebody came to me tomorrow and said, “Hey, Brian, this contract that you’re looking at, it depends on your ability to dunk a basketball.” I’m like, “I’m out. Never been able to do it. It’s not a skill I ever possessed, and it’s not one I ever will, given my physical characteristics.”

But the skill of listening starts with a choice, and when you make that choice, the more often you make that choice, it becomes habit. And that’s where you, all of a sudden, you’re finding yourself stopping more and more, paying attention to tone more and more, asking those questions, etc.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s good. And if I may, I’m thinking about what distracts me from listening. It’s often my body in terms of like, “I’m hungry,” “I’m thirsty,” “I need to pee,” “I’ve been sitting for too long.” How do you recommend we address those in particular or is it all the same in terms of redirecting it right back to the person talking?

Brian Ahearn
Well, I think the consciousness of it, like when you start thinking like, “Oh, I want to go to the bathroom,” or, “Oh, I’m getting so hungry,” it’s still like shake your head and say, “Well, wait a minute. There’s going to be time for me to get some food. I need to just bear down here a little bit more.” And give yourself some grace, too, because sheer willpower is like a muscle. It gets tired too. And as we are mentally tired, as we are physically tired, as we are hungry, all of those things will impact our ability to give focus and attention.

So, if you have an opportunity to do something different, like, say, “Hey, Pete, I’m loving this conversation but can I take a short break? I just need to get a little carbohydrate in me. I just need to get like a piece of candy or something.” And that person is probably going to say, “Sure, that’s fine.” They may be feeling the same way, and so that might be license for them to go do that thing too.

And I think that when you’re the person who’s engaging somebody to help them be more effective listeners, I always make sure, like when I’m doing training sessions, every hour, we have at least a 10-minute break. And I know that carves out time but if people can use the restroom, can get a refreshment, can stretch their legs, can clear their mind, that next 50 minutes that I have them, they are so much more focused than if I try to just plow through two hours.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s absolutely true. I’ve seen it many times on both sides of the presentation table there. Okay, so that’s stopping. So, tone, you say that there is a lot in it and we should pay attention to it. Expand on that, please.

Brian Ahearn
Well, I think everybody knows two people can say the same thing. Two people could make an apology, and one person can seem sincere and the other one doesn’t, and it’s not so…

Pete Mockaitis
“I’m sorry.”

Brian Ahearn
Exactly. We hear it all the time when people are caught, media figures are caught, and, all of a sudden, they’re issuing that standardized apology. But I always thought about the example that my wife called me one time, and I was at work, and I could hear the wind blowing, and I said, “Are you playing golf?” And she said, “Yes.” And that three-letter word, yes, just the way she said it, I said, “You’re not playing very well, are you?” And she goes, “No,” and then she started kind of unburdening herself.

But that’s a clear indication. Three letters, one simple word, and just by the tone, I could tell that she wasn’t playing well. You’ve been married now for a little while, I’m sure that you can hear some words like, “Fine.” When you say, “How are you doing?” “Fine.” You realize, “They’re not really doing fine. There’s more behind that. I can tell,” and that’s usually based on tone of voice.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. Okay. And so, are there any tone things that people tend to overlook or a great sort of telltale indicators? Because I think that sometimes in my own tone or others, I notice…how do I say it? It’s like they’re energized and excited, and then they’re back into sort of like perfunctory, like, “Uh-oh, duty, responsibility, process, compliance.” I don’t know what words I would use for those tones but sometimes you could see they’re jazzed about this and not so jazzed about that. And so, I can pick up on that and I find that pretty handy. What are some other key dimensions of tone to look out for?

Brian Ahearn
Well, where somebody emphasizes. You can have a sentence, “I didn’t steal that toy.” If you say that to a little kid or somebody, depending on where they put the emphasis, “I didn’t steal that toy,” or, “I DIDN’T steal that toy,” “I didn’t steal THAT toy. I stole another toy.” Right? So, paying attention to where that emphasis is and that tone is coming out, starts to become an indicator too. Because if somebody says, “I didn’t steal THAT toy,” then you might think, “Oh, the way you said that, you might’ve stolen some other toy,” or something like that.

But a lot of times people aren’t aware of it and they’re a leak, so to speak, and we do this with our body, too, and how we verbalize things and how we move. But there are leaks that will really let you know more about what somebody understands. And some of this goes back to the work of Dr. Albert Morabia and in his work on communication.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s like the words and the tone and the gestures. It’s the proportion of…

Brian Ahearn
Yeah. And what they say, I think, is 55% body language, 38% tone, yeah, and 7% words. And speakers get up and all the time they tout that and they say, and I was guilty of this at one point, they’ll say, “People are going to remember your tie more than what you said.” That is not what his work was looking at. His work was looking at when the message and the messenger seem to be incongruent, people will focus a lot more on how somebody looks, their body language, and their tone of voice. Because, going back to that apology, two people can say the very same words. And if somebody says it in a way that doesn’t seem sincere, you start focusing on the body language and the tone. That’s what he was talking about in his research. Not a blanket, “People aren’t really listening to your words.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yes. Thank you for setting the record straight there. And that sounds a lot more true, certainly, in terms of if they said, “Ah, ah, ah, I didn’t steal anything.” It’s like, “Well, your words say that you didn’t but there’s something. You’re very nervous for some reason, and that’s what I want to be keying in on.” Okay, so tone. And then how about some asking clarifying questions? What are some of your favorite clarifying questions?

Brian Ahearn
Well, let me say this about questions. First is I’m never an advocate of interrupting somebody when they’re speaking, but when you don’t understand and you recognize in the moment, “I don’t really understand something,” it shows that you’re engaged in the conversation. So, if you’re telling me a lot of stuff, and I say, “Hey, Pete, can you hang on a second? When you said this, did you mean that? I’m not really sure.” It gives you an opportunity to make sure that I do understand and clarify, but it also shows that I’m engaged in that conversation because if I just button up and don’t say a word, you might start even wondering, like, “Is he even paying attention? I mean, he hasn’t said a word. He hasn’t given me any gesture. I don’t know if he’s engaged in this conversation.”

And it’s even more difficult over the phone because you can’t see the person. So, I think utilizing clarifying questions is a great way to stay engaged in the conversation so your mind doesn’t wander. It lets the other person know that you are in that, and it just helps you clarify what it is that you’re hearing.

And to your question, too, a simple one is when you say what are some of the questions. It’s, “Help me understand,” or, “I’m not really sure. Could you explain it?” But it’s a question. So, you have to say, “Well, I don’t understand something,” “I’m not clear on what you said,” “I don’t think I hear what you’re saying,” “Can you explain?” “Can you expound?” “Can you do something to help me out here?”

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, that’s grand. And I do like a 90-minute training on clarifying questions alone for like collaborators in terms of what you really need to understand before you embark upon a piece of work such that you don’t end up giving them something that they don’t want, in terms of like the deliverable, the timing, the process, the resources, the audience, and the motive.

Brian Ahearn
Well, I will say this, we talk about STARS in the book in the section on qualifying. So, in the sales process, when you finally have the opportunity to meet with a client, you want to assess, “Do we want to do business together?” Not all business is good business, “Can I do business? Do I have the capacity to fulfill your needs? And do I want to?” And you’re making the same assessment of me as the salesperson, “Do I want to do business with this guy? Can he meet my needs?” Questions are what help us determine that, and that’s why we talk about the STARS model in the qualifying part of the sales process.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. So, we’ve asked some clarifying questions. And then restating, how should we do that?

Brian Ahearn
So, whatever it is that you understand somebody to say. Pete, I know your listeners can’t see this but if I ask you, for example, about your business. You’re proud of your business and you know all this, and I’m putting my arms out really wide. You have this vast wealth of knowledge. If I’m working, for example, with insurance agents, they don’t need to know all of that. There are certain key things that they want to understand and so they’re going to hone in on those.

And as they do, those are the things that they’re going to probably come back and say, “So, Pete, your business sounds awesome. And if I understand you right…” and then I kind of come through and I lay out a few critical things about what it is that you need in your insurance protection. “If I hear you right, Pete…” and then I clarify that. And you may come back and go, “That’s exactly it, Brian. Thank you.” Or, you might come back and go, “No, you’re missing it. It’s the claim that I had. That’s why I’m upset.” And so, we can circle back and make sure that we’re both on the same page.

But no matter how well I do with listening, I will never know everything going on in your mind and so I don’t want to make that assumption that I do, so I, therefore, am going to try to restate to the best of my ability, “Here’s how it boils down for me.”

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Excellent. And then note-taking, I mean?

Brian Ahearn
Well, I use S for scribbling because N would’ve been STARN and that would’ve blown the whole model, right? So, I always encourage people to take some notes, but this is not writing the great American novel. It’s not trying to get down every word that people say. And while we can use certain tools like laptops to get a lot of information, that actually can hurt your listening because they say a lot of times students are trying to take down everything the professor is saying and they’re missing context and other things.

I encourage people to just bullet point things that they’re going to need to circle back on. So, I might’ve heard you say you had a car accident. I don’t need to stop you right in the middle of your story to say, “Tell me the details,” because you might. But if you don’t, I‘ve got that little bullet point and I can say, “Hey, Pete, you mentioned you had a car accident. Can you tell me a little bit more?” And I start asking, “When was it?” “What happened,” and all those things but it’s because I have that bullet point to remind me.

It also maybe just a few quick bullet points so there are things that I can fill out after our conversation is over. So, maybe I catch the name of your pet, I catch the name of your wife, or other things that I think will be important for me to remember down the road. And so, I bullet point those and it triggers my mind, and then I start going back, “Oh, yeah,” and I remember the type of dog that you said you had, and how long. Certain other things are triggered by that bullet point. So, that’s what I mean by scribble.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Excellent. So, there we got the listening, STARS, cool. And we’ve got another perspective, you called it the DEAL model, and you’re thinking specifically about four personality types. Well, first, lay this on us in terms of what are the types? Where do they come from? And how do we identify them?

Brian Ahearn
Okay. People are probably pretty familiar with DiSC, the DiSC model. And when I was working with the insurance company, and this was probably ten years ago, a training organization came in and used something that was similar to that. I don’t remember exactly what it was but it was similar to that, as a way to try to identify yourself, and it was a little more self-reflective than others.

And a guy I worked with came up and said, “Man, it’d be really cool if we could tie the principles of influence that you teach to the different personality styles. Are there some that are more effective than others?” So, I did a survey with my blog readers, and I took some very generic descriptions and said, “Read these and choose what you think you are,” and then that kind of funneled them in. And then I was asking them all the same questions, but I could look at the results then, and say, “Wow, people in one category seem to be different than people in these other categories.”

So, through the course of that, I came up with driver, expressive, amiable, and logical. And I like that because it’s spells DEAL and we deal with people, and the people I worked with, the salespeople, want to close deals, so it becomes very easy for them to remember. And it’s focused on, not self, not that it’s unimportant. It’s very important to understand ourselves, but it’s other-focused. I wanted to try to determine, Pete, are you a driver, that person who’s more focused on getting things done than relationships, and you like to be in control? Or, are you the expressive, the person who’s really relationship-driven but also really likes being in control?

And then that amiable, which is the relationship-oriented person who is more about self-focus and self-control. And the logical person is a task-driven individual but they’re not focused on controlling others or situations. They’re more focused on themselves, their own thinking, their own self-control. So, that’s a very basic model but it’s good because salespeople don’t always…I mean, I’m not going to go up and say, “What’s your Myers-Briggs, Pete?” And I wouldn’t be able to figure that out.

But this is a pretty simple model to assess people, and once you feel like you’ve got a handle on the type of personality, then we talk about the principles that are most effective in terms of being able to ethically influence them.

Pete Mockaitis 
Okay. So, it sounds like it’s, if I were to stick them in into a two-by-two, the dimensions we’re looking at are their level of task focus and their desire to control others?

Brian Ahearn
And situations, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And so, with the driver, being high-high; the expressive being, I don’t know, low-high, they care about the relationship.

Brian Ahearn
Well, I just say that, yeah, there’s a demarcation and the bottom of it is the person is very relationship-driven.

Pete Mockaitis
Got you.

Brian Ahearn
And I would say good examples of that that I used in the book, Steve Jobs would’ve been a driver, right? That guy doesn’t care about being your friend. It is just about the work and get the stuff done. Oprah Winfrey, I think, is a great example of an expressive. She wants to know your story. She wants to get to know you and help you, but yet she is completely in control of her media kingdom just like Steve Jobs was in control. So, in the respect, they’re very alike but they’re very different in terms of their interactions with people on an individual level.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, okay. And so, how about examples for amiable and logical then?

Brian Ahearn
Amiable is always a little bit tougher in terms of coming up with examples because they’re not necessarily limelight people, and a lot of the occupations that they tend to move into aren’t ones that are necessarily in the limelight because they’re very relationship-focused and a little bit more self-control, self-focused than other in terms of control. They tend to be things more like counselors and teachers and nurses and social workers, and those aren’t always positions that are in the limelight. Now, that’s not to say that because you’re an amiable you can’t lead a company. You absolutely can. But what we tend to see is people move more into those positions that are not as much in the limelight.

Brian Ahearn
Mother Teresa would be an awesome example.

Pete Mockaitis
Alrighty. And logical?

Brian Ahearn
Logical person, again, very, very task-focused but not about controlling others or situations, more on the self-focused. And a great example here would be a Bill Gates or an Albert Einstein. And I would hope that you’d agree and your listeners would agree, if you have five minutes to try to sell an idea to each of these people, I hope you would go about doing it very differently with Steve Jobs versus Oprah Winfrey versus Mother Teresa or an Albert Einstein because they’re going to respond to different things and for different reasons.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. In terms of like Bill Gates doesn’t care much about your story most likely. If you’re talking about he’s trying to save the world in some dimension, I don’t know, climate change or vaccines or something, and then you say, “You know, Bill, let me tell you how I got interested in malaria,” I have a feeling Bill doesn’t want to hear, and maybe he does. I don’t know. But I would imagine he’d be more intrigued by, “Here’s the innovative cool thing that we’ve got going on here and why it’s different than what’s ever been used before, and why it’s way more cost-effective at saving lives than the previously existing technology available,” versus, Oprah would probably not be as into that. She wants to hear the story about how you got into malaria.

Brian Ahearn
Well, here’s a really good example, I think, for the logical versus the driver. According to the research, the survey that I did with blog readers, both of those personalities responded to the principle of consistency. And that principle says that we feel an internal psychological pressure and an external social pressure to be consistent in what we say and what we do.

I would think that somebody like Albert Einstein or Bill Gates, when they say something, they believe they’re right because they trust their intellect, they’ve thought it through, they’ve been methodical, and they’ve come up with a decision, and that’s why they believe what they believe. And if you can tie your request into that, then it makes very logical sense for them to say, “Absolutely.”

You go to the driver who is also driven by that principle of consistency but it’s a lot more ego-based. When Donald Trump was on “The Apprentice,” when he said something, he believed it. Even as president, when he said something, he barred the door on the facts just because he uttered it, he believed it. And I think to a great degree, a lot of people who are in that driver situation, they trust their gut, and so when they say something, they believe they’re right but it’s not for the same reason as the logical. But, nonetheless, if I can tap into what they’ve said, what they’ve done, or what they believe, it becomes easier for them to say yes. So, same principle, but very different reason on why it’s so compelling for each of those personalities.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s interesting. I’m reminded of I heard there’s like a legendary story, and I believe it’s true, the person doing the interview wasn’t lying, about Bill Gates, Microsoft, the XBOX, like they’re having a meeting about this thing. And, at first, Bill says, “What you’re proposing is an insult to everything I’ve done in my career in terms of like how it’s going to work and how it didn’t utilize the DOS/Windows, whatever stuff that he built up.”

And so, the meeting wasn’t going well for a long time until someone said, “Well, what about Sony?” He’s like, “Yeah, what about Sony?” And then it sort of totally changed his thinking associated with dominance and market share and influence and being in the living room, and how Microsoft and Sony were both kind of growing on these dimensions, and Sony has got this PlayStation, and they’re like, “Yes, we’ll give you everything you’ve asked for. Go for it and do the XBOX.” And so, that’s interesting in terms of like the set of facts that he’s focused on, logical, sure enough, was the persuasive thing that got it done when those were brought front and center for him.

Brian Ahearn
And I would say, too, that contrast phenomenon, right? He’s being compared to Sony, somebody that he looks at as a peer, a competitor, somebody he doesn’t want to be beaten by. If they had made the wrong comparison, maybe there was a little upstart company that was doing something, and he might’ve looked at it and said, “Who cares?”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, or like Nintendo. Like, “Yeah, okay, Nintendo has got Mario. I don’t care.” But Sony, “Oh, that’s a different story.”

Brian Ahearn
Yup.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool. Well so then, maybe if you could give us an example of some things that you might hear out of someone’s mouth that would make you go, “Hmm, driver,” “Oh, yeah, expressive.” Just a couple of telltale words, phrases, sentences that kind of cue you in to thinking, “It sounds like this is where you’re landing here.”

Brian Ahearn
Well, I think a lot of times, and I don’t like always making generalities, generalizations, because they’re always exceptions, and I absolutely recognize this. But I think a telltale, a lot of times, for drivers is they don’t stop talking.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Brian Ahearn
You really have a hard time getting a word in, edgewise, because they want to be in control of the situation, they have an opinion on everything, and, therefore, they’re continually going. And so, that can be a clue right there that, “I’m dealing with somebody who’s not giving me any space to step in and share what I need to share.”

If you’re going to try to influence somebody like that, you have to be okay with that. You have to recognize, you have to pick and choose the battles, and then step in where you get that opportunity or ask a question that might make them go, “Hmm, what do you mean? Tell me more.” Now, you’ve kind of got the platform back. But I think that’s the big telltale for a lot of drivers is it becomes kind of hard to get a word in edgewise.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And expressive?

Brian Ahearn
I think expressive is a lot of times people, and these are entertainers and politicians, people who know the importance of having a relationship, they’re probably a lot more of the storyteller, somebody who’s got a, “I met somebody and here’s a story and here’s another story.” So, they may do a lot of talking too. They’re expressive, they’re very outward, but they also allow you that space to ask about you, and you feel a little more connected to them, and some of it may just be because of the stories, but you’re like, “Hey, that’s funny. I like that person.” You don’t feel like you’re necessarily being talked to or talked at as much as maybe you will from that driver, who’s kind of tell you what it’s got to be like.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And amiable?

Brian Ahearn
Amiable is a lot of times are going to be the ones where you have to pull a little bit out of them. I’ve always pictured an amiable, if you’re going to go to the movies and you’ve got six people, and you say, “Hey, what do you guys want to see?” Amiable is probably like, “No, anything is cool with me,” because they’re very laid back, very relational. They’re just happy that they’re hanging out with everybody, and they’re cool doing whatever.

The driver would be the person who might say, “Well, if you guys are going to see that, I’m going to head home. I don’t want to see that movie,” and they’d be okay heading off by themselves. So, I think with the amiable, you’re going to see people who are very relational, very laid back, not looking to be the life of the party. You may have to do a little bit more to draw them out. You’re probably are going to get into much deeper conversations with somebody like that.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And logical?

Brian Ahearn
Logical person is going to be somebody, obviously, who’s very analytical and they’re thinking they’re going to be very fact-oriented. They’re going to be the people who don’t just share an opinion. They will do some research so that they can speak intelligently on something. Before they open their mouth, they want to really understand what they believe and why they believe it so that they can feel comfortable in terms of sharing it.

And that one, I would say from experience, people will say that I am an expressive just because of what I do, but I am absolutely a logical person. I’m a deep thinker about things, and I always tell my daughter, when she asked me a question, I’m like, “I don’t have an opinion on that because I haven’t really looked into it and I’m not going to just say something.”

Pete Mockaitis
I feel the same way, and particularly, in business-y situations. I remember, talking about insurance, I was buying some insurance once and it had some absurd clause, I was like, “Wait. And this kind of make it sound like you don’t pay any claims ever. So, what’s the deal here?” “Oh, no, one has ever asked that question before.” It’s like, “Well, so can you share with me some evidence that you sometimes pay out claims because this kind of reads like you never have to?”

And so, when I’m in sort of a business conversation, that’s kind of what I want, it’s like, “I want a profoundly compelling evidence that proves that you got the stuff. Like, you’re going to deliver what I’m seeking to be delivered.” And so, I think that often makes people feel very uncomfortable because usually they don’t have the evidence that I want. And so, they need to kind of like try to be compassionate, it’s like, “Well, okay, if you don’t have that set of facts, can you give me some alternative sets of facts that maybe I can plug into my spreadsheet and deal with how I need to deal with to prove it out?” But, still, it’s logical, like got to have it.

Brian Ahearn
Well, this can be a shortcoming when you’re the one trying to persuade. Let’s say you’re really good at building relationships. That’s an awesome skill to have but if you get into that situation with a logical like you, if you make a friend, okay, that’s cool. But if you don’t, that’s cool, too. You just want to buy the insurance.

So, if a person only is able to lean on what their strength is, that strength ends up being a negative, a weakness with certain people. And this is why I try to emphasize in looking at this model. It’s not about you, it’s not about what you’re good at, it’s not about your strengths; it’s about the other person. Learn what the psychology is and then understand what the psychology is that applies to them, and get good at that.

So, in a sense, be a little bit of a chameleon in terms of how you interact with people, not being a false person, but just recognizing that just because you like having these great relationships, you’re going to have some clients, and they could be great clients, but they’re just not into the relationship part. That’s okay.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Well, maybe since insurances is your specialty, maybe I’ll just put you on the spot. Let’s say you’re trying to sell auto insurance to these four different types of people. Can I hear a sentence or two of a custom verbiage that might be very appropriate when you’re making that pitch to a driver versus an expressive versus an amiable versus a logical?

Brian Ahearn
Okay. Well, if you’re talking to a driver, then scarcity is something that comes into play a lot. The mistake that people would make is talking about all the things that somebody might gain or save, but what you really want to talk about is what they might lose.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Brian Ahearn
So, going in and having that conversation and framing something instead of gain, like they don’t care so much about saving as what they may be losing, and framing it that way, “You’re overpaying,” instead of, “Well, I can save you a bunch of money.” That would be a particular approach.

When you move down and you’re talking to somebody who’s an expressive, understanding that they’re going to be more relationship-oriented, you’re going to want to tap a little bit more into like, “You’re going to want to make that connection.” They’re going to want to look at you and say, “That’s a person that I really like and I want to do business with people that I like.”

Another effective principle in terms of interacting with folks like that is consensus. What are other people who are like them doing? And by bringing that in, that becomes a strong decision factor. Whereas, again, the driver, they don’t care what everybody else is doing. They think of themselves as completely different and unique. So, that’s a little bit about how you’d be different with this person who’s the expressive.

When you move over to the amiable, also very big on relationship, so you’re going to want to certainly make sure that you tap into liking because they’re probably not going to want to do business with somebody that they don’t like. So, connecting on what you have in common, talking about those things, being complimentary where genuine compliments are due. But they also surprisingly respond really well to the principle of authority.

And so, by really showing that you know what you’re talking about, that’s not challenging to them; that’s comforting to them. And so, by deferring to something like, I might say, “You know, Pete, I’ve been in this business now for more than 30 years. And something that I found is really important.” That little tidbit about, “I’ve been in business for 30 years,” isn’t coming across like a bragger to them. It’s giving them a sense of comfort that, “Wow, okay, I like this guy and he knows what he’s talking about.” And so, that becomes a little bit more of the tact that I take with that person.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And then the logical?

Brian Ahearn
So, the logical, obviously they’re going to be fact-driven so you’re going to need to be able to show authority not only that you have some personal authority that you’re good at what you’re doing but bring in data, bring in information from respected individuals or organizations that would support your claim. If you don’t do that, then you come across to the logical person as just somebody who thinks they know everything. Much better to bring in that support of the information, “Where did you hear that quote?” “What did this particular report say?” That’s what’s going to give somebody, who’s a logical individual, a sense of comfort.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Cool. Well, Brian, tell me, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we hear about some of your favorite things?

Brian Ahearn
As I said at the beginning, I wrote this book for a specific market. I wrote it for insurance agents, and that was because trying to write a sales book can get super generic. When you keep talking about products or services, and people start reading it, “That doesn’t apply to me. Well, that’s…” So, just on the counsel of somebody I really respect, I thought, “You know what, I’m going to tighten this up. I’m going to make it specific to insurance. It’s what I know.”

But then I realized, as I got into it, that every step in the sales cycle, if somebody is in sales, they’re going to benefit from understanding the psychology that applies. And that even people who aren’t selling are going to benefit from learning how to be a listening star, how to deal with different personalities so that they can sell themselves and their ideas. So, I would just encourage anybody, if you see yourself in any capacity as selling, check the book out.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Thank you. And, now, a favorite quote?

Brian Ahearn
Well, I think the one I find myself referring to more than ever now is something that my high school football coach said, and I attributed it to him for a long time, until somebody said, “No, that was the Roman philosopher Seneca.” But it is, “Luck is where preparation meets opportunity.” And ever since I was a sophomore in high school and heard coach say that, and recognized that if I worked really hard, good things would happen.

And even when the good thing that I want doesn’t come about, it’s amazing, Pete, how all that preparation comes in in a different way, and, all of a sudden, I’m like, “Hey, that preparation is helping me now over here.” So, it never goes untapped.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite book?

Brian Ahearn
One of my favorites, was Viktor Frankl’s book Man’s Search for Meaning. And just reading about what he and all those other people in those concentration camps endured was unimaginable. But the takeaway for me was towards the end of the book when he said, something to the effect that, “Every freedom can be taken away from a man except for the last freedom; where to place your thoughts, what you’re going to think about.”

Nobody. And he said, basically, it didn’t matter how much the guards beat them, threaten them, or do anything, they could never ever make them think what they didn’t want to. And that is incredibly powerful.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite tool, something that helps you be awesome at your job?

Brian Ahearn
It’s called Voice Dream, and it’s an app that I downloaded on the advice of a friend on my iPhone. And when I write something, I have it up usually in Google Docs, and I just pull it into that app, and then I can listen to it. And it’s amazing what you catch. You write it and you think it’s good, and then you hear it, and you’re like, “Eh, it’s not exactly how I wanted it to come across.” So, it has helped my writing immensely. I’m working on two more books so I use it all the time.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Brian Ahearn
First will be LinkedIn. I connect with everybody and I guarantee your listeners, if you reach out to connect and you don’t put a reason, I will come back and say, “How did you find me? I’d like to understand why people are reaching out.” And if you do put in a reason, I will still respond because, as my most recent blogpost said, “Social media is supposed to be social.” And the way that we do that is by having conversations with people. And so, I will absolutely respond to you on LinkedIn.

The other place, Pete, would be my website which is InfluencePeople.biz. Just a tremendous amount of resources out there if they want to learn more about this topic.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Brian Ahearn
I think it would be to start dedicating time to understand the influence process. Influence, in some respects, is like listening. Very few people learn how to do it well and yet we use it every single day, I say from womb to tomb. As soon as a baby is born, he or she cries. They’ve got a need they’re trying to get met.

Some of us learn how to do it well and it helps immensely with our professional success and personal happiness. So, I hope people who are listening will say, “You know what, maybe I need to dig into this a little bit more. I could use the ability to have more people saying yes. That would be helpful in my life.”

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Brian, this has been a treat. Thank you and I wish you lots of luck in all your influencing.

Brian Ahearn
Thank you. I appreciate it, Pete.