Right Attitudes

Ideas for Impact

Asking Questions

Listen to Understand, Not to Respond

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Listen to Understand, Not to Respond Many people overestimate their listening skills, yet true listening is uncommon. However, anyone can become an excellent listener by embracing a key principle: listen intently.

In any meaningful conversation, give your complete focus not only to the spoken words but also to the speaker’s underlying emotions and messages. This requires attention without judgment or the internal urge to formulate responses or ask clarifying questions prematurely. When the speaker pauses, resist the urge to interject, allowing them space to continue. Respond instead with a nod or a thoughtful question that encourages further sharing.

In your next important conversation—whether with your boss or partner—practice this focused attention. You might be surprised by the positive impact it creates.

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Fixing Isn’t Always the Quick Fix: Keep Your Solutions to Yourself

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Stop Solving, Start Asking: Guiding Teams Through Questions, Not Answers When team members come to you with problems, resist the urge to jump straight into “fix-it” mode. It’s a common reflex, but it can actually backfire.

Quick fixes give the impression that they should rely on you rather than work through the issues themselves. This not only stifles their growth but also means you’ll be fielding more of these help requests.

Instead, take a step back and ask guiding questions. Encourage them to think through their own solutions. You might say, “That’s a great question. What ideas do you have?” Listen closely. A little nudge is often all it takes for them to land on the solution you’d suggest anyway, but this way, they’re more invested.

If their ideas miss the mark, ask, “What else could you try?” Use your experience to broaden their thinking and gently guide them toward a solution.

Idea for Impact: Guide team members to think through their own solutions by asking questions, rather than offering quick fixes, to foster growth and independence.

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Why Giving Advice Backfires: Their Issues, Not Yours

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When Asked for Advice, it's Not Your Problem to Solve Giving advice is like navigating a tightrope between lending a hand and honoring their independence.

Sometimes, folks seek guidance when they’re feeling adrift and crave direction. Other times, they just want to chat or unload their thoughts. Catching their drift early is key to staying within bounds.

Listening carefully is essential. The more you understand their perspective, the better you can offer advice without seeming pushy.

Idea for Impact: Unless another person explicitly seeks your assistance, their problems aren’t yours to fix.

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Signs Your Helpful Hand Might Stray to Sass

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Recognizing Signs of Sassy Help: Stay Mindful of Your Approach Understanding when your well-meaning guidance might unintentionally come off as condescending is crucial, but it’s definitely not easy.

Condescension tends to rear its head when you unknowingly imply that you know what’s best for someone else, disregarding their own feelings and perspectives. This slip-up can happen without you even realizing it, especially when you’re looking at things from an outsider’s viewpoint, which might seem more clear-headed or knowledgeable.

Here are some red flags that you might be veering into unintentionally condescending territory:

  1. Tuning out: If the person you’re advising seems uninterested or disconnected, it could be a hint that your approach might be a touch condescending.
  2. Defensive reactions: When emotions run high and they start getting defensive, it’s a sign that your words might have rubbed them the wrong way, leaving them feeling judged or dismissed. They might even start pushing back on your points.

When boundaries regarding acceptability or comfort are unclearly communicated, it’s hard to gauge where limits lie, which can lead to misunderstandings, discomfort, or even harm. To avoid stepping over boundaries:

  • Get a feel for what they’re seeking from the conversation. Are they in need of some understanding? Simply letting off steam? Or are they hoping for concrete solutions?
  • Keep an eye out for subtle cues. Take a moment to consider how your words might be received—will they come across as helpful or a bit too critical?
  • Always approach advice-giving with caution. Before jumping into counsel mode, check if they’re open to hearing your thoughts. And if they’re not feeling it, respect their decision.

By staying attuned to the other person’s emotions and viewpoints, you can ensure a more compassionate and respectful dialogue.

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Even the Best Need a Coach

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As the saying goes, it’s what you learn after you know it all.

Top athletes rely on coaches to push their performance to new heights. Even Tiger Woods had a swing coach at the top of his game.

Many corporate executives seek out several advisors who help frame ideas for them and play a point of critical thinking. Former General Electric CEO Jack Welch worked with Ram Charan, the eminence grise of business advisors, for many years.

“It’s not how good you are now; it’s how good you’re going to be that really matters”

In a TED2017 speech, the American surgeon Atul Gawande—author of such well-received books as The Checklist Manifesto (2011)—emphasized how coaching helps individuals and teams execute better on the fundamentals:

Having a good coach to provide a more accurate picture of our reality, to instill positive habits of thinking, and to break our actions down and then help us build them back up again.

There are numerous problems in “making it on your own.” You don’t recognize the issues that are standing in your way—or, if you do, you don’t necessarily know how to fix them. And the result is that somewhere along the way, you stop improving.

That’s what great coaches do—they are your external eyes and ears, providing a more accurate picture of your reality. They’re good at recognizing the fundamentals. They’re breaking your actions down and then helping you build them back up again.

Sometimes you can be too close to things to see the truth.

Blind spots are less obvious when things are going well. It is very easy for you to become inward-looking, particularly when you’ve been very successful. However, these blind spots can become destructive when performance moves in the other direction.

A third-party, fresh-eye assessment is an obvious reality check. Coaching is a whole line of way that can bring value to what you do and excel at it.

If you’re successful and want to get better, you’ll need to look at your situation as an outsider might. Coaching can help you get perspective and see things in a more detached manner.

It’s Lonely at the Top

Executives need a valuable ally and a resource for professional growth. They hire coaches to help explore their strengths and vulnerabilities.

Coaches are also valuable allies in decision-making. Many executives find it helpful to talk important decisions over with a trusted coach—just the process of talking can help sort out and clarify thoughts and feelings. Not to mention how another person’s views may illumine aspects of a problem that you may have missed.

Besides, many a coach’s specific arena is one of interpersonal relationships, office politics, and corporate culture. To be effective in our work, you must be effective in building relationships with your bosses, subordinates, peers, and other organizational stakeholders such as customers and suppliers. Management and leadership are all about influence.

Idea for Impact: Coaching is how people get better at what they do

You too should consider a coach to look at things with a fresh eye, improve your performance, and help with interpersonal relationships in the workplace.

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Don’t Underestimate Others’ Willingness to Help

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The biggest barrier to generosity may not be getting people to give but people’s reluctance to ask for what they need.

Mostly, people enjoy helping (but not so much that they can get burned out by their own goodness.) They want to give and be recognized for their giving.

People can’t give when they don’t know what others need

According to the University of Michigan’s Wayne Baker, a solution to the awkwardness of asking for help is the notion of reciprocity rings (or reciprocity bulletin boards.) Boeing, Citigroup, Estee Lauder, General Motors, Google, IBM, Novartis, UPS, and others have implemented informal networking groups to facilitate asking—and giving.

In All You Have to Do Is Ask (2020,) Baker explains that these onetime or recurring networking meetings have individuals explain one by one the specific issues they’re facing. The rest of the group taps their knowledge, resources, wisdom, or networks to help the requestor. In a sense, a reciprocity ring is an expanded version of the “daily stand-up,” “daily huddle,” or “scrum meeting” that many teams use to talk over what they’re each working on and where they need help.

Wharton School’s Adam Grant popularized the concept of reciprocity rings in his book Give and Take (2014.) He argues that reciprocity rings normalize asking and giving. They build trust and relationships by creating new and fast connections where they may not exist otherwise.

A charitable mood sets in—reciprocity rings engender altruism.

Helping others without the expectation to have that help reciprocated is the foundation of altruism. A reciprocity ring cultivates an environment of giving. According to All You Have to Do Is Ask, a reciprocity ring helps people overcome their hesitations and fears about asking for help because everyone’s making a request. Baker cites research that the takers in the groups tend to give three times more than they get. Over time, people tend to make more significant requests.

Idea for Impact: Assemble an informal network and facilitate opportunities to ask for and help one another. It’s an easy and effective way to build connections and strengthen the spirit of the community.

Take a cue from Bay Area career coach Marty Nemko, who organizes his own informal reciprocity ring. Nemko’s “board of advisors” meets for an hour every month, and each person talks about a thorny personal—or professional—problem they’re facing and requests input from others.

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We Need to Unlearn Not Being Creative

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Creativity is a fundamental tenet of being. Every idea, no matter how trivial, is a spontaneous association between established earlier ideas.

Creativity is how we think and reason. It’s how we understand and explore. Everything else—education, upbringing, social conditioning, cultural mores—confines our creativity.

The principal villain is that little voice inside our heads that holds us back because a creative activity is disruptive. Originality begets instability. Creativity takes time, effort, and courage. Being imaginative is more unpredictable than the comfort of the repetitive pattern of everyday existence.

Watch children at play. They can invent new worlds, compose new narratives, and fantasize in double-quick with an endless stream of creativity. Children don’t hold back—to them, all things are possible because they haven’t learned that some things are impossible.

In other words, children are less hindered by prior patterns of thought. They don’t judge the quality of their creations. Nor must they “save face” if others think their ideas to be stupid. They simply move on to something else.

Alas, this high level of creativity isn’t necessarily sustained throughout childhood and into adulthood. By high school, most children have their creativity gently squeezed out by those (adults, undeniably) who think more conventionally.

Idea for Impact: We adults don’t need to learn to be creative. We need to unlearn not being creative. As Albert Einstein once said, “To stimulate creativity, one must develop the childlike inclination for play.”

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The #1 Thing Top Salespeople Do

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It is astonishing how many salespeople aim for nothing and hit it every time.

Average salespeople often don’t have a written “game plan” for every sales call. They may have only a vague idea of how to go about their sales call. They usually wing it and hope for the best. They fail to plan and thus plan to fail.

Planning a sales call is vital because it gives you a framework to understand your customer’s buying motivations. You can have “value summaries” at hand to evoke her interest.

  • Establish the call objectives. What do you want to accomplish? Review your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system, meeting notes, or whatever method you use to manage interactions with customers. Reexamine what was discussed the last time you met with the customer. What are her pain points? What might she need that she’s not asking for?
  • Develop a list of questions you’re going to ask. These questions should guide the “needs analysis” phase of the sales process—they shape her buying criteria. Being ready with prepared questions help minimize the amount of close-ended questions you’ll ask your customer.
  • Review what you can “value add” to your customers to incentivize getting more business from them. A “value add” could be anything from extending warranties, training staff, selling pre-assembled products, customizing products, providing financing, etc.
  • Think through what resistance you may anticipate. List possible objections that could stall a sale: bad timing, budgetary constraints, new leadership, market uncertainty, etc. Develop a go-to response for each challenge. Ask yourself, “How can I help the customer get past this resistance?”

Planning a sales call helps you get in the shoes of the person you’re trying to sell to and sell it from their perspective.

Idea for Impact: Always have a plan for a sales call. No matter how rushed you are, how well you know a customer, or how routine the call might be, plan the call. Never wing it. Great brands aren’t measured by units sold but relationships built.

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What’s the Best Way to Reconnect with a Mentor?

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Send a thank-you note immediately after a meeting with a mentor. Include anything that could add to—but not draw out—the conversation you’ve had with her.

A further opportunity to say thank you—and request to reconnect—surfaces after you’ve accomplished something anchored in your prior conversations with the mentor. Write her a sincere thank you note, describe what they did for you, and report the impact. Then, request to get back in touch and say, “I’d love to meet up with you the next time I’m in Chicago.”

The only reward mentors often look ahead to is the satisfaction that they’ve made a difference. So your mentor will find it meaningful to hear from you, even if weeks or months later. As a result, she’ll be more inclined to meet again.

Considerate mentors are generally approachable to people who ask the right questions, listen well, put into practice what they’ve learned, and demonstrate that they care sincerely for advice and counsel.

Idea for Impact: Getting your hands on a good mentor is tough enough, but maintaining—and nurturing—that relationship meaningfully can be just as challenging.

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Nobody Wants Your Unsolicited Advice

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Unsolicited advice may be motivated by a genuine interest in helping. Still, it could have roots in a narcissistic desire to prove yourself useful or establish your dominance or elevated understanding of things.

If you’re inclined to fly your own kite, your heart may not in the right place.

Getting your unsolicited advice can leave other people feeling resentful. They may refuse to give in. They may perceive your “just being helpful” as a transgression and an affront to their freedoms to do as they wish. Nobody wants to be told that they’re on the wrong path or that their decisions are misguided.

Idea for Impact: Giving Unsolicited Advice is Invasive. Reactance theory causes people to resist the social influence of others. People believe that they possess certain freedoms to engage in—and unsolicited advice can threaten this sense of free behaviors.

Now, to turn the tables, if someone offers you unsolicited advice, assume the advice-giver’s good intentions, express thanks to the advice-giver, then accept or reject the advice solely on its merits. Too, consider your relationship with that person. If they’re a stranger whom you may never see again, offer a polite response, and move on. If they’re a co-worker or a family member, have a conversation on setting boundaries.

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