Culture is more than purpose.

Dan Gregory @DanGregoryCo

In an age where the people who work for us and along side us and the customers, clients and communities that engage with us are seeking greater meaning in their interactions, as well as evaluating our sense of purpose and the meaning we seek beyond monetary gain, culture has become one of the defining factors of success in terms of talent and customer attraction and retention.

However, as much as purpose is one of the defining factors of culture and the two are inevitably linked, they are not synonymous.

Purpose is a part of culture, but culture is better thought of as an identity that is partially informed by purpose as well as other critical factors.

In other words, what sits beneath our Why, What and How (Simon Sinek’s Golden Circle), is our sense of WHO. Which means cultural identity is not just what we aspire to achieve, but also who we are being and becoming in the process

All of us, in fact, have multiple identities. There is the role we play in our families, at work, as a nation or as a community group. These different identities work best when aligned with our personal identities although some will at times have primacy over others.

So, in the context of organisation culture, what are the elements we need to consider in addition to purpose and how do we create “Cultures of the willing?”

There are multiple levels of identity, but for simplicity and utility, let’s examine two fundamentals - that of the unconscious and consicous factors.

1. Identity (Unconscious)

Unconscious identity is influenced by:

• Environment - I love the concept that Fish can’t see water that was so beautifully articulated in the book of the same name by Kai Ewerlöf Hammerich and Richard D. Lewis. This phenomenon is why many of us cannot see unconscious bias or privilege - especially when it works in our favour. This also explains the unconscious nature of environment in the forming of cultural norms. What might seem completely usual in one cultural environment might seem outrageous in another. This experience is echoed in behavioural research that has demonstrated how increases or decreases in skills, like creativity and emotional intelligence, can be influenced by the different environmental conditions participants find themselves in. These environmental factors might be geographic, economic, climatic or one of many other environmental factors.

• Experience - In addition to the environments we inhabit, work in and were raised in, we also need to consider the experiences we have collected along the way. This is the reason why generational distinctions are often useful, as Baby Boomers, Gen X, Y & Z may all occupy a common physical, geographic or organisational environment, though they are perhaps defined more deeply by different collective experiences. These experiences may cause us to feel different emotions, or make different predictions, to borrow a term from neuroscientist Lisa Feldman, and these predictions or guesses inform our cultural context in an unconscious, and occasionally conscious, way. For example, those who have grown up as social media natives have experienced very different formative years and social accountability to their predecessors.

• Personality - If you’ve been working in the corporate world for the past few decades, you’ve no doubt participated in some form of personality profiling - DISC, Myers Briggs, MMPI or something of the like. These systems can be useful for assessing our own personalities and tendencies, but where we at The Impossible Institute disagree and are at odds with them is that they are often presented as a fait accompli. In other words, if you’re a D, you will always be a D! If you tested as an INTJ, well that’s just who you are and you will not change. We prefer to think of personality profiling as an examination of your Default Thinking Frames™. In other words, it’s not who you are, it is simply the filter or filters you rely on most often, particularly under duress. Again, these default filters drive our identity at a largely unconscious level.

2. Identity (Conscious)

Moving up from the unconscious to the cognizant, conscious identity is a function of:

• Abilities - Each of the unconscious determinants of identity play a role in defining our abilities, strengths and weaknesses. These abilities we share are typically thought of in a binary way, that is, strengths are good, weaknesses are bad. As a result, these abilities tend to inform our values and our focus. Hunter/gatherer communities typically value physical abilities as very important whereas developed economies tend to value intellect more highly. These leads us rather naturally to:

• Values - Values, rather than being the output of logical evaluation, are more a function of what we deem to be important. This importance is influenced by the unconscious elements of identity as well as how we are rewarded, what we are praised for, and what we are biased to appreciate in ourselves and others based on our abilities. Even such things as the sanctity of human life, which many of us believe to be an inalienable and an unquestionable moral imperative, has been interpreted very differently by various cultures throughout history and with wildly differering cultural outcomes.

• Meaning - Rather than something that is found or is an absolute, meaning is very much something we create. The proof of this is the fact that a single, clearly understood, incident can be interpreted in many different ways. A setback, for instance, might be seen as failure in one context or as a necessary albeit minor course correction in another.

So, if we’re thinking of culture as an shared identity that we consciously and unconsciously buy into or subscribe to, what other facets of culture should be considered? Let’s take a look at the Five “B’s” of culture:

Bearing

Bearing is very much informed by our purpose, our WHY, our sense of direction. This is often articulated as our mission and vision. It sets up tangible goals and measures of inclusion, cohesion and success. This is where the commercial world typically focuses much of its leadership strategy.

Beliefs

Beliefs, which are often framed as values, might also be thought of as the moral context of a culture. How good and bad are defined and enforced, as well as what might be considered the non-negotiables or underlying code and ideology (or IDology - where identity and beliefs intersect).

Behaviour

Exemplar behaviours describe how these values manifest as well as what our culture defining capabilities are. For example, Nordstrom builds a customer-centric culture by sharing stories that exemplify what outstanding customer service looks like. One of the stories they tell is of a customer service clerk who, while selling a business shirt to a young man on the way to a job interview, offered to iron it for him so he’d look sharp for his prospective employees. This is beliefs and values brought to life as behaviour.

Belonging

Belonging is linked to behaviour and informs how we demonstrate membership of a particular culture. What are the totems, rituals, visual and verbal mnemonics as well as the privileges of membership. Essentially, it’s how we recognise and establish connection with other members of “our tribe.”

Background

All of these factors must also be viewed in light of the environment and context in which our culture is emerging. Culture does not manifest in a vacuum, nor is it immune to outside influences, threats and incursions. As our cultures are defined by the historic environments and experiences that have created them, they are likewise informed by the changes that our environments are experiencing in the current moment.

Ultimately, culture is often a complicated and interconnected identity that adds up to more than just our purpose and vision. So, if we want to bring our WHY into existence, it’s worth considering culture in all of its rich and varied complexity.

How you talk to yourself affects how others hear you too.

Dan Gregory   @DanGregoryCo

You may consider yourself to be someone who, “lives life free of the good opinion of other people,” someone whose actions are entirely independent of what others think of you, that you are the captain of your own ship, the director of your own story line, (please feel free to insert your own “individualist” cliché here).

Now, whether I choose to believe your protestations of social independence, or not (PS. I don’t entirely), what I would like you to consider, is just how affected you might be by your own internal judgements and opinions, as well as how these might be interpreted by those around you when they manifest.

Do your peers, customers and colleagues, for instance, read you as you believe you present yourself, or are they reading something entirely different and perhaps something you’re not consciously aware of.

While many of us fancy ourselves as having a good poker face, our internal dialogue often shows up unconsciously in our expressions, behaviours, posture and demeanour. 

I was once reminded of this by my little sister, Simone, who after watching me being interviewed on television, suggested that I have RBF (Resting Bitch Face). In fact, it turns out that when I’m concentrating on what someone is saying, even when I’m particularly interested, I look quite furious, even livid. Simone reminded me to consciously prep myself to smile amiably and relax my eyebrows when I was listening to a question lest they be frightened to ask me back.

So, if we are capable of unconsciously communicating the opposite of what we’re thinking, it might also be true that we’re not outwardly hiding what’s actually going on inside our heads, even if we think we are.

This can even be true in our non-personal and commercial communications. Things like email, advertising, sales, calls, public relations statement and presentations to shareholders, investors, boards and our teams, are all opportunities for our inside communications to undermine the impression we’re making on the outside. You don’t need a degree in the social sciences to know when the boss arrives at work “in a bit of a mood.” Everyone knows.

This means we need to become more conscious of our unconscious communication.

One of the great mistakes we make in all communication is to believe that any conversation begins in neutral. We all bring our biases, prejudices and past to every conversation we have. Just had a high conflict meeting? It comes with you to your next customer call. Feeling distracted during a board meeting? We can all see it.

So, how might we best make our inside and outside voices congruent?

1. Watch your internal dialogue

I’ll admit that all of us know someone who seems to have no internal voice, or at least no filter between thought and speech (if you can’t think of anyone, it’s you). But even these honest souls can indulge in unhelpful self-talk that undermines the effectiveness of their outer communication.

Before an important meeting or writing an important email or speech, take a temperature check of your emotions and assess whether the tonality of your internal voice is correct for the communications task at hand.

If not, you might need to decompress a little first, to reframe your intent or to write it as another “character.” 

For example, because my business partner Kieran Flanagan and I often write books together, we write each book with its own character, so that no one can tell who wrote or edited which chapters. In other words, we don’t write the way Kieran speaks or with Dan’s tonality, we write in the character unique to the project we’re working on - as you might do with a stage play or movie script.

So, who are you bringing to the meeting? Hugh Grant? Stephen Fry? Or Vinnie Jones? And if you look like Hugh but communicate like Vinnie, you might find others observing, “It’s been emotional!!!”

2. Question whether what you’re focusing on is true? And if true, is it useful?

Often our inside voice is working against us by either running us down, or at other times, having us write cheques we can’t cash. Either way, we need to evaluate what we’re thinking for accuracy, or much more importantly, for relevance and usefulness.

What this requires is a willingness to still your mind and ask better questions of yourself. Questions that are values aligned and congruent with your goals and vision.

3. Don’t believe everything you believe

The great thing about beliefs is that we’ve all got them, but many of them are mutually exclusive. This means many of us, sometimes most of us, are wrong by our own definitions!

Rather than undermining your sense of certainty, this should be taken as permission to hold your convictions a little less tightly, particularly those that might cause you, or others, harm. 

One of my professional idols as a young man was Bill Bernbach, the legendary Madman of New York’s advertising scene in the 1950s and 60s. Bill is reputed to have carried a small note in his top pocket reading, “They might be right.” A great reminder to be humble and open minded.

I’d like to add an amendment to Bill’s note that reads, “You might also be wrong.”

4. Seek useful feedback from those you trust

There’s a meme doing the rounds on social media at the moment. It’s a picture of Morgan Freeman with the quote, “Don’t accept criticism from those you wouldn’t seek advice from.” Whether it’s an original quote from Mr Freeman or a line from a character in a movie doesn’t matter so much - the sentiment is a sound one.

It’s also a reminder to be open to and to actively seek feedback from those we respect. 

As with the anecdote of I shared about my sister; Simone knows she can tell me I have RBF - we’re siblings after all and she has it a little RBF too (Sorry Sim, but you totally do). But I also know that unless we’re fighting at the family Christmas lunch over something I may or may not have said in 1983, she has my best interests at heart and it’s not personal.

In other words, it’s useful to create space for those who have your back to occasionally stab you in the front… obviously in the nicest most useful way. 

In short, make it OK for those you trust to share important truths with you and to help you understand where your inner and outer voice are not in harmony.

What “dumb it down” really means.

Dan Gregory   @DanGregoryCo

I really hate it when people say, “Can you ‘dumb it down?’” And even more so when it is followed up with, “Our people just aren’t that smart!” If you want to piss me off, that is a really predictable trigger. Or at least it was.

Recently, my business partner Kieran Flanagan gave me a useful reframe that has helped me communicate more effectively, to be more easily understood and to deliver greater results for my clients as a professional speaker, trainer and facilitator. 

Essentially, she told me, “Your problem Dan, is that you think everyone must end up as smart as you, on your special subject, in order for you to feel like you’re a success. The truth is, they only need to be smarter than they were when they first met you. That’s a win!”

What Kieran did (and what she does quite regularly, if I’m being completely honest) is shift me from a judgement frame (i.e. our people aren’t that smart) to a translation frame (in other words, can I communicate to be understood not just to transmit information?)

I can’t begin to tell you how transformative and liberating this has been.

It reminded me of when I was at university studying the psychology of relationships and communication. The typical communication model we were presented with in text books at the time was terribly complex and usually involved some form of transmission, reception, filtered through interference, context and feedback. 

However, one of the other members of the class proposed a communications model that looked like it had been designed by a five-year-old (I believe she was in fact a mother to a small child and this may have led to her choice of materials). 

Her communication model consisted of cotton wool balls that had been fashioned into sheep (the people engaged in some form of communication), all randomly arranged in a pen made of used match sticks (the environment) with a goal of herding them all through a gate labelled “meaning”. 

It was breath-takingly simple and still one of the most informative communications models I’ve ever seen.

The truth is, no one really wants me (or you) to speak to them in a patronising way, belittling their intelligence, or worse, insinuating that they have none. However, neither do they want communication that, while accurate, leaves them feeling less intelligent than before we started speaking.

This is a real issue for leaders, experts and consultants. We tend to go “all in” when it comes to sharing WHAT we know and spend less time than we should on the HOW we present it.

Sales-people make this mistake too. Our expertise can often get in the way of our communication and relationship building. We use jargon, assume knowledge and deliver with the cadence of an examiner testing intelligence rather than as a teacher sharing knowledge.

So, my advice is to not get too caught up in the judgment game of “dumbing it down,” but rather to play a little smarter yourself and learn how to bring people along for the ride. 

How to establish (or rebuild) trust.

Dan Gregory   @DanGregoryCo

As markets and communities become more polarised around issues of ethics and values, with both sides shouting “fake news” whenever their team is disparaged and where once revered institutions are being held to account for historical crimes, we are experiencing a decline and even a deficit in trust. This is cause for concern.

Trust and reputational value have always been important considerations in human society and are in fact part of the glue that allowed human groupings to move from family, to tribes, to communities and ultimately cities and nations. Trust was hard earned, easily lost and hence regarded as incredibly precious.

So while technologies like social media have been critical in terms of positively mobilising public accountability of those in power like never before, the trust deficit also threatens to undermine shared social agreements as well as making commercial competition more perilous and indeed treacherous.

So how might we establish, or rebuild, trust?

Acknowledge their intuition

Protesting your innocence or reacting defensively without first addressing the intuition a particular cohort has regarding your trustworthiness is wasted effort. Human beings tend to seek justifiction for their intuitions rather than searching for truth, something psychologists such as Peter Wason refer to as confirmation bias.

This means that arguing your case will fall on deaf ears if all you do is offer information to the contrary. This makes it critical to find points of agreement, where you can affirm aspects of their points of view, before you can shift them.

In other words, play to the emotions before reasoning with the brain.

Listen openly and let them speak first

Some people gravitate to conflict and enjoy nothing more than a stand up argument over issues close to their heart. I am one of them. However, this is not always a winning strategy unless you characterise winning as shouting someone else down. Which again… I often do.

Robert Cialdini in his book Influence, described one of the facets of influence as “Reciprocity”. You do something for me and, if I am a reasonable human being, I tend to feel obliged to do something for you.

By allowing them to speak first, and listening to their views whilst affirming those you can find agreement on, you set in place an unconscious expectation of reciprocity - which makes them more open to hearing your point of view, or at least giving you the space to make your case.

Be inconveniently honest and confound their defensiveness

Trust almost always outweighs truth in human communications, however a divulgence of truth, especially inconvenient truth such as a mea culpa, tend to evoke trust in response.

From “their” point of view, it seems logical to assume that if you’re telling the truth about something that puts you at risk, even if it is only reputationally, why would you lie about less important issues. Radical honesty creates the expectation of universal honesty.

Used strategically, a vulnerable admission can transform the trust expectations within your audience.

Affirm their identity

All human behaviour is shaped by our sense of identity - both our individual identity and that of the groups or tribes we associate with to reaffirm that identity. This makes challenging a core tenet of a person’s identity a strategy that will only lead to them irrationally defending their position despite the robustness of your evidence to the contrary.

To avoid this, consider what values hierarchy are they using to make meaning and evaluate your trustworthiness, and speak through those, using the correct order of their ethics, from most important to least, to guide your narrative argument.

Give them a win

Finally, if you want to win, you have to help them feel like they won too. No one likes to be told their wrong, even when it is clear that we might be. Not only does a win/loss binary argument rob you of any of the benefits of reciprocity, it also frames you as a bully - someone they may give in to in your presence but then undermine behind your back. Hardly conducive to cultivating trust

In the end, trust and reputation are amongst our greatest commercial and social assets, and as much as the scientist in me would like to assert that truth and reason matters above all, the behavioural strategist in me knows that emotional responses, like trust, carry far more weight in human affairs.

Pick a noble fight.

Dan Gregory   @DanGregoryCo

Throughout our lives our parents, teachers, friends, politicians and police have told us to not start a fight, to avoid conflict and to walk away. “It’s just not worth it, man!” But what if the fight in question actually is worth it? And not just to you, but also to your community, the customers and clients you care most about and the people in your tribe?

What I’m going to suggest may seem a little politically incorrect, and even somewhat risky, but I want you to pick a fight.

Now, before you randomly wander out in the street like Brad Pitt and Ed Norton in the movie Fight Club trying to stir up trouble, let me be clear, I want you to pick a specific fight… a noble fight.

This matters precisely because in order to make change in the world, to become a thought leader in your field and build your personal brand as a professional, you will need to bring something new to the table, and that requires a willingness to challenge the existing. In fact, the very nature of life is growth and decay. One dominant species (or idea) cedes its place to a usurper who very likely fought their way to the top of the food chain.

So, what are the characteristics of a noble fight?

Your fight needs to be on someone else’s behalf

If you’re fighting for yourself, for you own gain, against a competitor who’s defeat conveys benefit primarily to yourself, you’re not in a noble fight, you’re a bully.

In other words, you need to be someone else’s champion. 

You might be the plucky underdog in the finance category who takes on the big banks, or the online book retailer who democratises eBook publishing or even the environmentalist tree lopper who decides chipping the trees you cut down is wasteful (and worse, releases stored CO2) and so you turn it into furniture. Whatever your noble fight becomes, it should be to someone else’s benefit.

There needs to be existing dissatisfaction with your opponent

There’s no point starting a fight with an enemy (be it an organisation, a belief or even a behaviour) if no one but you has a problem with it. You’ll look like a lunatic.

No. What you want is a rising sense of “finally, someone’s doing something” amongst those you seek to champion.

Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately for you, there is seemingly no end of misbehaviour, poor service and outright deception present in every industry or category, so you won’t lack for opportunities for a very public altercation.

One thing to consider however, is that the size of your enemy determines the scale of your impact - and the visibility of your thought leadership and personal brand.

Build alliances with those who support your cause

If you’re taking on a sizeable opponent, you’re going to need supporters and allies who can be in your corner.

Battles and wars are seldom won alone, and they can be a bloody and lonely process if you’re waging them alone. So, leverage off your alliances and have them recruit their communities to your cause.

You need to know what you’ll do when you win

You don’t want to be like British Prime Minister David Cameron, who upon calling the ill-fated Brexit vote, immediately abdicated his position leaving the mess for others to clean up.

You need to have a plan for how to transition your identity from challenger to champion. This can be a challenging time as once you become the leading voice in your field, other contenders will begin to circle, measuring your thinking and testing your mettle.

You need to win

This seems like a moot point, but it really isn’t. History is written by the victors and too many of us get so caught up in our rightness and righteousness that we forget that, even though winning isn’t everything, it’s actually pretty critical to everything.

Building your personal brand and thought leadership is really no different to any endeavour you might undertake. Before you begin, you must clearly understand what a win looks like and early on understand whether you are willing to pay the price to earn it.

Turn your weakness into uniqueness.

Dan Gregory   @DanGregoryCo

We’re often told to play to our strengths and to play down our weaknesses or else outsource them to other people. Not only can this be counter-productive to lifting our personal performance (as our weaknesses actually offer the most upside for improvement), it can also cause us to miss the opportunities for thought leadership and building our personal brand that are hiding in our weaknesses.

One of the reasons for this is that our strengths are usually category generic. In a room filled with carpenters, a strength such as being good with a hammer is essentially worthless. When everyone can swing a hammer… so what? 

However, our foibles and failures are more likely to be unique to us as individuals and, used properly, can help us stand out from the crowd and even become an asset.

A chef who’s weakness is that they are rude, impatient and abrupt (think of Seinfeld’s “Soup Nazi”) might traditionally be thought of destined for failure. However, when that weakness becomes amplified, it becomes part of the theatre of visiting that restaurant, cafe or cart and people start to bring their friends for the spectacle.

When John Symond launched Aussie Home Loans, he didn’t look (or sound) like the head of a banking corporation. But it was his folksy, unpolished delivery that made him seem like “one of us” and helped him build a trusted personal brand and a business that took on the big end of town.

A car that was considered “ugly” and small when it launched might just become a global icon, as was the case with Volkswagen. A newspaper ad for the Beetle in 1969 depicted a photo of The Eagle lunar landing vehicle with the headline, “It’s ugly, but it gets you there!”

So why should we own our weaknesses?

The truth is, even though we think we conceal our weaknesses, they usually pretty obvious to all. If you doubt this, ask a group of colleages and judiciously honest friends to help you identify your weaknesses - you’ll be amazed and a little shocked by the consistency of the responses you receive.

Owning your weakness also builds trust. If you’re not only aware of your weaknesses but also disarmingly honest about them, you establish a reputation for being someone who has nothing to hide.

Additionally, owning your weakness rings with authenticity, confidence and comfort in your own skin. A famous maxim posits that, “When you tell the truth, you don’t have to work so hard.”

So how might we turn a weakness into a personal brand and thought leadership?

Firstly, consider how your weakness might actually be an asset.

Impatience might make you proactive, thoughfulness can make you strategic, being young could allow you to be unjaded and open-minded where as advancing years provide wisdom and experience. In other words, no weakness (or strength for that matter) is singulalry bad or good. So look for where your weakness might be useful.

Secondly, explore how amplifying your weakness might make you distinctive. A friend of ours, Jeffrey Hayzlett, is a “business cowboy” who is a mix of New York City and South Dakota. When he walks on stage in foreign cities he kicks off by admitting to what might seem to many to be a weakness, “So a lot of you are looking at me and thinking, ‘Great! Another loud American.’ I am not going to disappoint you!” And, he doesn’t.

Lastly, look for where your weaknesses align with the deepest fears of your customers, clients, staff and communities. The more the unconscious is made conscious, the more fears are brought out into the light, the less frightening they become. Certainly, ignoring them doesn’t make them go away.

Of course, you may not immediately find the opportunity hidded in your weakness, but don’t worry, you absolutely have more than one to experiment with.

Culture IS strategy.

Dan Gregory   @DanGregoryCo

One of my pet peeves is the phrase, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.”

I dislike it partly because I have an aversion to all of the corporate clichés and motivational psychobabble that polute the worlds of business and leadership. However, it bugs me mostly because it artificially separates culture from strategy and vice versa.

Typically, any leader trying to execute a strategy without a consideration for the environment they are working within, or of the current mood of the people they are looking to engage, will enjoy a rather short tenure as leader.

The truth is, a consideration of the context in which you operate, the opportunities and setting you provide access to as a leader, and the example that you set is critical to both the culture that grows (we don’t really create culture so much as provide the conditions in which it emerges) and the strategy you execute through it.

So where do culture and strategy intersect and how might they work together in a synergistic way?

Aligning WHY with WHO.

It’s often asserted that strategy is defined by the What, How and Why a team or organisation should function in the way that they do. A clear direction is set, some rules of engagement and behavioural norms are established and a sense of purpose and meaning is communicated. 

What can often be missed is the “Who” part of the equation. 

This is where culture and strategy very much overlap. So, rather than simply directing through pragmatic or rational instructions, it’s important to establish a sense of empathy for where people currently sit in terms of their emotional state and engagement levels. Additionally, leaders must evoke a vivid picture of who you help them to be through the process of executing your strategy.

Critical in this is aligning your strategic purpose with the identity of the culture you serve. It’s no good asserting a vision of innovation and challenging the status quo if the culture is one of risk aversion and consistency (or if your organisation happens itself to be the status quo). In fact, the exquisite BS detector located between your ears will likely reject any such directives as incongruent and even ridiculous.

This means, leaders who want to drive purposeful organisations must align their WHY with the WHYs of their people. An inspiring mission is clearly advantageous, but it is far more engaging when teams can engage with it at a cultural and an individual level.

Even more importantly, this alignment between culture and strategy fosters a sense of self-driven engagement as well as establishing behaviours that become self-correcting. Rather than vacilating over whether a course of action might be deemed appropriate by a superior, it can be evaluated by asking, “Is this the kind of thing people like us do?”

In the end, both strategy and culture require different tools and thinking, and must be actioned by different members of the team and at different times, however, by artificially separating one from the other, we risk conflict (internally and externally) and the efficacy of both.

Starting with WHY can come across as manipulative.

Dan Gregory @DanGregoryCo

Ok, so we all know that understanding our sense of purpose, our WHY, can add meaning to our work and also help make that work intrinsically motivating. However, starting with WHY in your communication can also come across as a little calculating and manipulative.

Let’s start with why that might be the case.

Part of the problem is that it frames our initial communication in a persuasive mode rather than one of simple request. 

In other words, by the time the request is actually made, it can almost feel like we have ambushed them. After all, given all the evidence and reasoning we’ve hit them with, how could they say no to our inescapeable conclusion and pitch?!

This means, someone might reasonably respond by saying, “Just tell me what your want and stop trying to persuade me.” Persuasion, in and of itself, can often come across as manipulative. You may even be able to think of ocassions where this happens in your personal life as well as in business.

So, how might we avoid this while still anchoring our communication in our purpose and sense of WHY?

Firstly, all influence ultimately begins with empathy. This means, to be influential and persuasive, we need to increase our understanding of their motivations and their WHY.

Until you are able to align your WHY with theirs, your communication will almost always come across as self-serving.

Secondly, demonstrate how your highest value serve theirs. Your communication strategy should borrow more from the world of cafe conversations and less from court room arguments. Too often, in the pursuit of efficiency we sacrifice efficacy and engagement.

Instead of thinking of communication as a linear, to and fro exchange where one of you wins and the other aquiesces, think of it as two or more people moving towards a shared sense of understanding and meaning.

Finally, be clear about the value your WHY provides for others, not simply how it aligns with your beliefs and passions. And, just as critically, understand that though personally motivating, it may not be for everyone.

If we want to appear authentic in our communication whilst not coming across as manipulative or scheming, perhaps, “Why should they care?” is perhaps a better place to start than why you do.

The problem with good versus bad.

Dan Gregory @DanGregoryCo

The truth is, none of us is exclusively good or bad, despite how we would like to characterise ourselves. Psychopaths aside, in our own eyes, we are all on the side of rightness.

This tends to lead us to increasingly polarising points of view where rightness becomes self-righteousness. (And if you’re thinking, “That sounds a lot like you Dan,” you’re really just proving my point!)

At a practical level, however, “good” people do do bad things and “bad” people do good things. Moreover, what constitutes good and bad differs from one individual’s values heirarchy to another and from one epoch to the next.

Trying to divide the world up into good and bad creates numerous problems, not the least of which is that we all regularly exercise compromised judgment and make poor decisions due to our inherent bias that “we’re on the side of the good.”

In other words, by seeing ourselves as exclusively, or even mostly good, we actually increase our chances of doing bad and making poor decisions - simply because we’ve cut ourselves off from insights available from “the other side.”

This also matters because it denies and inhibits our capacity to learn, to grow and to redeem ourselves from past mistakes. How many of our hyper-connected youth will struggle as a result of poorly thought through decisions that may “brand them,” perhaps for a very long time, in one camp or the other?

In a social media world all to ready to cast the first stone, it might be worth first plucking the plank from our own eyes. (How that for mixing biblical metaphors?!?)

Insights versus data.

Dan Gregory @DanGregoryCo

In a world experiencing unprecedented change and, in fact, a rate of change that is accelerating itself, it’s very easy to become distracted by trends.

Trends, whilst interesting and occassionally very exciting, only tell half the story - data isn’t the answer… it’s input!

This makes our capacity to interpret and translate data into insights, or meaning making, a critical skill for leaders, business people and law makers trying to navigate an abstract and ever-evolving future.

This is principally because identical input does not necessarily lead to identical results.

For example, if you jump off a 1 metre high wall a hundred times, versus jumping off a 100 metre high wall once, you get rather different results. 

Both exercises involve you traversing a horizontal distance of 100 metres by jumping off a wall, but only one will win you a Darwin Award and, if captured on video, a chance for the rest of us to experience the power over life and death using our rewind and fast-forward controls!!!

The point is, data is only as meaningful as the meaning we create from it. This means we need to learn to look beneath the trends to identify patterns so that we might discover what’s really going on.

What are you really selling?

Dan Gregory @DanGregoryCo

Like it or not, we are all in the business of sales and selling.

If you’re a leader, you’re selling your vision, your purpose and your ideas. If you’re a business person, you’re selling products or services. Parents are trying to sell things like bedtime and broccoli. And, if you’re in a relationship, or you’re trying to get into a relationship, you are very definitely in the business of selling.

Of course, sales is far from a logical process, when it is done well, it also engages us at an emotional and even psychological level.

Part of the reason so many people are uncomfortable with words like sales and selling is that many of us have had poor experiences with sales people who were either too pushy or else not really interested in meeting our needs or solving our problems. But the truth is, while few of us enjoy being sold to, almost all of us like buying things,

So why the disconnect?

Part of the problem is our definition of sales and selling. These words in isolation tend to conjure up images of sleazy sales people and manipulative pitching methodologies - and there’s more than a little evidence to support this.

Perhaps a better definition is, “to align your value with their values.” This shifts the focus of a sales conversation from the product to the customer. In fact, the sale is always in the prospect, not the product.

Another issue is that we tend not to think of things such as engagement, inspiration and buy in as a function of sales, but in truth, every great leader is in the business of selling their ideas and too many great ideas die on the vine, not for a lack of quality or efficacy, but due to a lack of influence.

If we want to be more influential, persuasive and engaging, it’s helpful to understand that there are 3 Levels of Selling.

1. The Literal

2. The Emotional

3. The Psychological

The Literal Level of the sale is exactly what you would expect. It is the product or service you’re wanting to sell. This might be a physical product - in the case of the FMCG or manufacturing industries, a service - which includes such things as he trades, contractors and professional services, or it might be an idea, some intellectual property or Thought Leadership if you are a scientist, engineer, or leading a cause. This is what most people understand, but unfortunately, it is also where most people stop.

The Emotional Level of the sell is linked to how the sale makes people feel. This is often expressed as the shift from “features” to “benefits”. A faster computer processor (feature) might lead to less frustration in your work or greater productivity and confidence (benefits). This is where sales people tend to spend a lot of their time and it is the first shift from product or service centricity towards customer-centricity. But there is a further step that is critical to understand.

The Psychological Level of the sale may never be articulated out loud (as often it might be embarrassing or suggest a character failing) but it is incredibly important to understand as this is ultimately the real value your provide for your customers. In B2B markets it might be all about risk aversion, whilst in business to consumer sales, it could be all about selfish gain. In either case, it ultimately comes down to the identity of the purchaser and the identity they wish to present to the world. In other words, your sales pitch would start with WHO.

So what does this look like in practice?

A short time ago, my business partner Kieran Flanaganand I were running a program to help small businesses punch above their weight. One of the businesses in the room was an arborist or tree lopping business run by a young, optimistic 24 year old - Nick.

Whilst working with Nick’s Tree Lopping, we asked what he thought he was really in the business of. He replied, “I make people feel good about cutting down trees!” We looked at him for a moment before responding, “Yeah… let’s not put that on the website! What do you mean?”

He explained to us that he was in fact an environmentalist. Most arborists, when they cut down a tree, chip the wood to make mulch. Nick didn’t do that. If the tree’s diameter was any larger than 20cm (roughly 8 inches), he kept the timber and turned it into furniture. Amazing right? This was nowhere on his website but was clearly the greatest point of difference and story he could have used.

Immediately, we advised him to change the name of his business to “Treeincarnation”, which he did, and then we directed the three levels of his sell.

At the literal level, he was obviously selling tree removal. The emotional benefit was a feeling that despite having a tree cut down, you were doing it in the most sustainable way possible. But at the psychological level, we realised that Nick wasn’t actually in the tree removal business - he was in the guilt removal business. Now,  Nick will never say that to a client, but it does inform how he sells, the new services he introduces to his business and the insights he brings to conversations with his customers.

So… what are you really selling?

You're on before you're on.

Dan Gregory @DanGregoryCo

It doesn’t matter whether your speaking to your team, presenting to the board or giving a speech at an AGM or annual conference, you are on before you’re on and being aware of that is critical to the success of your communication.

There is always an elephant in the room that you either need to tame or put down otherwise it will trample over any content you hope to impart. 

Sometimes it’s the way you look, the way you speak, an accent, a stutter, a hiccup in your gait, your professional position relative to those you're speaking to, the remnants they’re carrying from your last piece of communication or even the cultural climate you’re speaking into.

As a professional speaker, when I walk on stage, there are usually two thoughts running through an audiences head, “That guy’s fat,” and “I know that guy from somewhere.” So I take that thought off the table by referencing my weight and the TV show I appeared on for many years, “A couple of months ago I heard a woman at the next table whisperto her companion, ‘He’s the fat one off the Gruen Transfer…’” The audience can then relax, they know why they know me and also that I’m aware of my fondness for pie.

Sometimes the elephant in the room actually has nothing to do with you or what you're presenting. Matt Church, one of the world’s best professional speakers once took to the stage after a very popular member of the audience had had a heart attack and been taken to hospital. At that point, Matt could have decided to press <PLAY> and deliver his content on transmit mode, or as he decided to, he could meet the audience where they were emotionally and move them slowly to where he wanted them to be.

Too often we get caught up in what we're presenting: our content, our pitch, our sales patter of features, benefits, case studies and statistics and forget that the audience’s state is not always where we need them to be.

I once followed Paul de Gelderon stage. He’s a navy diver who had part of an arm and leg taken off by a shark in Sydney Harbour whilst on duty. It’s an inspiring, but bloodily graphic story. The audience was clearly impacted by his story. I had to follow up with some business content and my brief was, “Make them think, but make them laugh.”

I expected the MC, who’s a friend of mine, to reset the audience before introducing me, but what I got was, “Next up, we’ve got Dan Gregory talking about influence…” Before I could get into my presentation, I needed to acknowledge what the room had just experienced and shift their state so they could hear what I had to say and experience a completely different emotion to what they had been sitting in for the previous hour.

So how do we use the fact that we’re on before we’re on?

   1. Acknowledge the elephant in the room

There are many kinds of metaphorical elephants and the reason they’re called elephants is that they’re too big to ignore. So deal with what’s pressing in the minds of your audience before you move to what’s a priority for you. You don’t need to have a solution (if it’s a problem) or a joke (if it’s a personal feature), simply let the audience know that you know where they are.

    2. Turn your foibles or weaknesses into an asset

We like to think that our weaknesses are hidden. So let’s be clear… they’re not. When you’re communicating with someone and you’re nervous, or dismissive or angry, it telegraphs very clearly. The key is to acknowledge our obvious weaknesses in a way that makes them useful to our message. Not only does this take the elephant out of the room, it also connotes a sense of authenticity and confidence.

   3. Understand the state the audience is in

Never present without an understanding of the present context of your audience - even in a one to one conversation. Be in the room early or assess their emotional state through a third party. Even the best communicators in the world will struggle if they misread the mood of the room.

   4. Know what your presentation character is and how it will be experienced by others

My business partner of many years, Kieran Flanagan, has been a leader in a world dominated by MadMen for the past 25 years, despite being a short blonde with a bubbly personality. Kieran knows that she will often be underestimated, in fact, she considers it her super power. She also uses this underestimation as a source of humour. Kieran describes her presentation character as Reese With-a-knife (not Witherspoon) - she’s bright-eyed and optimistic, but sharp and cutting when she needs to be. She uses the audience’s prejudices about her appearance and voice as leverage to build the experience she wants them to have

So, how are the people you are communicating with perceiving you? 

More importantly, how do they perceive you before you’ve even said a word?