Just Like You

Sometimes, the roles we inhabit can box us in or weigh us down. If I’m with my children and slip into “dad” mode and they into “child” mode, our interactions too easily head down well-traveled paths. If I meet you for the first time across a checkout counter, my “customer is always right” meets your […]

We All Want Control

“Control” and “connection” are paired but opposed ideas. A sales conversation that feels like a battle for control versus one that feels like a connection will yield very different outcomes. This motivation for control is deeply rooted in a desire for predictability, certainty, autonomy, independence, influence, and power. Most of us fear chaos, many fear […]

We Are What We Do, And We Do What We Think

As smart as we think we are, as stunning as our cognitive abilities are, we are easily fooled and tricked by our socialization and keening for acceptance, affiliation, and status. We think our thoughts are our own, but many have been borrowed, stolen, or planted by someone else. We think we are our own persons, […]

A Jargon A Day Keeps Real People Away

I blogged the other day about once being an ENTJ. A friend told me yesterday that the new term for being widowed is “Newly Singled.” When I started selling, we didn’t have “sales motions.” Now, I guess we do. My skin doctor recently told me I had a “Squamous-cell carcinoma.”  Skin cancer. An asset manager […]

I Used to be an ENTJ

I used to be an ENTJ. Now, I’m an INFP. Or maybe an ISFP. These, of course, refer to MBTI Personality Types. Actually, I don’t think I was ever really an E. I just played one. It’s not that I don’t T anymore. It’s just that I do more F. Or at least I’m more […]

If The App Doesn’t Record it, Did it Really Happen?

I have a device that tracks my sleep. I look at the app every morning, happy when it tells me I slept well, bothered when it says otherwise. Last night the gizmo stopped tracking in the middle of the night. I slept in. Checking the app, it told me I had slept very poorly. I […]

Better Conversations in Three Steps

Unless you’re a hermit, monk, or writing a book, your life is likely filled with conversations. Looking back, it’s not hard to put the ones you had yesterday (or last week) into three buckets: Great Not Great Don’t Recall We all have different ideas about what those buckets mean. It’s also true that you and […]

No Agenda. Just Be There.

The thing about selling is every conversation has an agenda. You’re there for a reason; you’re there to persuade. Conversations between parents and children, teachers and students, coaches and athletes, bosses and employees also have agendas. Charles Duhigg, the author of Supercommunicators describes these as practical conversations (What’s this really about?) Mischief ensues when we […]

Be Worthy of Trust

Trust. It’s the mechanism and byproduct of social engagement. Trust and its cousin, reciprocity, were the necessary ingredients that helped our ancestors form tribes 2.5 million years ago. Trust is also hard to define with precision, at least if you’re not an academic. It’s like the famous Oliver Wendell Holmes comment about obscenity. “I know […]

Making Friends, Fast

In 1997, five people at Stony Brook University published a paper suggesting people could become good friends in under an hour. The term “good” obviously covers a lot of ground, but bear with me. The initial study paired two complete strangers. The intuition was that questions inviting personal disclosure would lead to more disclosure and […]