I have people coming back to me from 20 years ago, and I say, Well, what did you take away from this whole Cander program? They so often come back to this one thing. I’m like, That’s it? This one thing? But that’s what they come back to. It’s like, Okay. But I get it. So it’s a three-step routine. Articulate your point of view, share your data and reasoning and what’s at stake, And then ask the other person, wait for it, what they think about what you just said. Not what they think about what we ought to do about the thing they’re not actually agreeing with yet. So it’s like, I’m going to put my point of view on the table. I’m going to make my reasoning and data vulnerable and my view about what’s at stake, like why you should even care about this. Then I’m going to ask you, what do you think about this? So if I go back to the example of one of the people I’m coaching right now, he could say to this person, sometimes you got to frame it up first before you do the routine. It’s like, hey, there’s something I should have told you for a long time that I think is having the impact on our clients that I know you don’t want to have.
First of all, I got to apologize to you because I should have brought this thing up to you much sooner. The person is going to go, Okay, what is it? Well, one of the things I’ve noticed is quite frequently, you make these out of left field comments on one of these calls with clients. I got some examples I could share with you. Sometimes, 10% of the time or so, they’re actually helpful because you’re quite a creative thinker. But there are other times when it takes the conversation, unless I pull it back, it’s a totally different direction in ways that I think are rubbing our clients the wrong way, making it harder for us to make progress on stuff, and also endangering some of the deals.
Okay. Now, notice, I gave point of view. I didn’t quite give data. I gave reasoning. I didn’t give any examples yet. So the data is absent, and I explained why she should care or he should care in this case. Then the next move would just say, Yeah, but what do you think about that, Ron? So that’s the three-step routine. And it’s not aggressive, and it’s meant to be a dialog versus a verdict.
Yes. Which is important. Which is important, as you’re talking, is in those conversations, what I’m picking up on I’m noticing is, is this a dialog? Is it conversation versus accusation and nailing people down?
That’s great. Conversation, not accusation. That’s great, Ron.
And I think that’s important. It’s what I’m hearing from you. I love the process because oftentimes when you want to have candid conversations, you come across very accusatory. But what you said is, I noticed this versus you’re doing this, which is a total different thing. This is what I’m seeing. Tell me what’s happening. Let them explain the gap for us. So if you’re listening and you’re watching, be very Be careful of having accusations because people will defend it, even if they’re wrong. Some people will defend their bad behavior or what’s wrong because it’s a part of their character. But when you say, Hey, I noticed this, what’s happening? What’s happening in real-time as I’m watching it unfold? So notice things that’s happening. Have a dialog or conversation versus accusation.
