Well, let me ask, is it a good idea to start off the conversation? Or you know it’s going to be maybe what you’re going to say might be difficult to hear. It might be inflammatory or it might be contrary to their thinking. I don’t want to say couching it because I don’t think that’s the right word here, but really prefacing what you’re about to say with, Look, in her example, you’ve hired me for all of my faculties in perspective. What I’m doing here is trying to give you all of that. In this search for this goal of collective finding the truth. So I’ll give you everything that I’ve got so that you can then take that and give me all that you’ve gotten together. We’re going to get, hopefully, something that’s far better than either of us could have come up with. And then you go into, and so here’s what I think. And so now they’re already… Or is it like, wait, you can’t really start a conversation like that because it comes off, I don’t know, stupid or it’s already off-putting?
I have two lines about it. I’m with you. I’m feeling a little divided about it. First of all, the way you just framed it, first of all, it’s about framing the conversation, right? Because the whole thing is before you express the truth of what you think, it’s important to frame the conversation, maybe where you’re coming from, what your intent is. I think that’s important. Most conversations start with no frames. What’s the weather? People just start talking. So it’s like, Why are we here? What are we talking about? Why is it worth talking about? Nobody knows, but let’s just keep talking. And a lot of my clients, they go for meeting after meeting after meeting, and nobody really establishes like, Okay, here’s what we want to talk about. Here’s why it’s worth about. So that’s advice for everybody. If it’s your meeting, please do that. If you don’t, please ask. Because everybody goes along with this and nobody’s like, not nobody, but oftentimes people aren’t fully connected and engaged, because that hasn’t been made clear. So I think there’s definitely a place for that. But please don’t do it every time because people are going to want to kill you and you’re going to want to kill yourself.
I had a friend who learned this methodology. And then Sometimes you hate when people use what you taught them back at you.
He’s like, So, Todd, listen, I’m going to tell you what I think. I’m going to tell you why, that I’m going to ask you what you think. I’m like, No shit. Can we just get to it, please? We could have had the conversation. I could have done my thesis at the time this preamble occurred. My father used to say, he’s going, Can I ask you a question? I go, You just did. How much did he ask the question. Because sometimes that stuff becomes too gimmicky.
It has to exude from your being. When people get used to you being this way, then you don’t have to do it. But I think the more hot it is or the more unusual it is, or when you start to get larger groups of people that you’re to do with this, then I think you really need to pay attention to the framing.
