The importance of effective communication in achieving results cannot be overstated, whether in the context of a country’s politics or the dynamics of a business organization. We may pride ourselves with our individuality, but it’s collaboration that really gets things up and going – and it all starts with learning how to effectively communicate with people. Joining Michelle Seiler Tucker to share his thoughts on this is international communication specialist and conflict resolution expert, Bill Stierle. There are so many parallels in running a business and running a nation. Both are populated by different people with different abilities and different communication styles. How do you take those differences and make them come together and make positive things happen? It might still seem a long shot as far as the nation is concerned, but you can certainly make this happen in your business right now!
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Effective Communication: Mending Fences For Business Organizations And The Divided States Of America With Bill Stierle
I’m here with my very good friend Bill Stierle who I love and adore. Bill is a communications expert and international communication specialist and high conflict mediator. We probably need a conflict resolution mediator, communication expert now more than ever before because our nation is divided.
There’s a way back, Michelle. It’s going to take us a little work, but we could get there. We do need that next level of support to get communication to take place.
Let me hit you with the toughest question. How do we solve this world crisis? We are divided more so than I think ever before. How do we get past this division to build our nation and come together?
The question “how” is important because it is going to take a set of steps to get there from here. The first thing is to do a better job of creating an understanding for where the other person is coming from. More importantly is to build a mutual connection between me and this other person and not let it get to be so adversarial. Even at the most difficult issues, we’ve got to be able to stare them down a little bit and go like, “This is hard and painful, but we can discuss our way through this.”
We have millions and billions of people in the world, they can’t agree upon anything. How can we come together as a country? How can we mend the fences basically and repair ourselves and come together as a nation? I’ve never seen the US divided before.
It does look confusing and it does feel overwhelming to have clarity about what the path is and how does harmony and peace show back. The first step in that process is to find the common need that we’re talking about with the person. If we’re talking about let’s say the need for fairness and the need for fairness in regard to taxes. I put two words next to each other, fairness and taxes. Now we can have an open dialogue. Many people experience that because then they say, “It’s not only fair. It’s also not just.” Now, we could see where the escalation is going to take place. We have a sense of how is it legally? It’s legal, but here it comes in integrity or an ethics with a country that’s trying to work in collaboration together because collaboration is going to get us there. Cooperation will get us there. A heightened individualism or identity politics will not get us there.
We’ve got to be able to do a better job of looking at those things and say, “It’s important to have an identity, but it is not as valuable as collaboration and cooperation.” You know this better than most when you’re getting two groups of people, a buyer and a seller in a room together. If you don’t get some qualities of collaboration or cooperation or give and take that takes place in that room, you’re not going to be able to drive the number up or down the way you need to. You’ve got to get them at least thinking, “It’s in both of our best interest to get to the finish line at this.” That’s been one of your superpowers for a lot of years is be able to assess that both numerically as well as from a vision standpoint, you can see what both parties need to get there and what the real value is and cut through the crap.
One of my biggest strengths is negotiations and knowing what each side wants and what each side is willing to give and what each side is not willing to give on. Did you watch the debate? Was there a winner in your mind?
It’s important to have an identity, but it is not as valuable as collaboration and cooperation.
Yes, there were some winning things that took place, but the thing that I would like people to know is that it’s the first time that we’ve ever seen a president that had expertise in marketing and selling. One of the things that I do is I specialize in communication, no wrong or right. There’s no political piece in this at all. It’s what are the words that are coming out of the person’s mouth in order to engender the connection or enroll the vote or to get the sale. There are three specific narratives that are needed, and Trump is an expert in these three narratives.
What are the three?
I can, also the people that I train, point out sentence over sentence how he moves between these three things. Part of it is conscious. Part of it is not conscious because he’s been doing it for so long. The first step is there’s got to be a clear and present reward that meets 3 to 5 needs of the listener, not seven. If the narrative is, “Build the wall,” that’s the need for protection, the need for safety and the need for financial security with jobs. As the listener is hearing it, there’s a reward. Step two, anticipation. Anticipation is I am going to tell you how wonderful it will be when that thing I promised you is going to take place.
In fact, it’s going to be the most wonderful wall, the best wall ever, the longest, the strongest. Nobody can climb this wall. That’s called an anticipatory narrative. These three steps that we’re talking about right now, what they do physiologically in the body is build dopamine up. It’s what’s needed in the sales process, in a marketing narrative and at the beginning of a teacher lesson to a group of students. I need to say, “This is the good reason why to learn, why to dissect the frog. Here’s what you’re going to magically discover when you’re doing this frog,” and then finally the third step.
“Here’s why you need to read EXIT Rich. Here’s what you’re going to learn when you read EXIT Rich. Here’s how it’s going to benefit your life when you sell your business.”
Let me give you another sentence here to sell your book, “Can you imagine what it would be like to read EXIT Rich and be in the financial position where you didn’t need to worry about money from age 60 on?” What I did was I put a time stamp on it from age 60 on. “I’m coming up on 60. I’m not 60 yet, but I sure want to know what’s going on there. I passed 60. I better get that book now because I’m running out of time.” I’ve created a lot of anticipatory energy around your book because the brain and the body are interested in not anticipation boosts dopamine, it’s the anticipatory energy of getting it that makes the difference. Not the reward.
The banana and ice cream doesn’t work unless I say the following sentence. Imagine a bowl of your favorite ice cream in front of you that has two scoops, and there’s a spoon ready for you to eat. Can you imagine what it would be like? With that, I’m not sure if you could afford it, but the special brand of that ice cream is this. I introduced a thing called uncertainty and that’s the third step. The third step of uncertainty is I want to create a sentence of uncertainty so that the person stays on the hook, that they can only get it from me and they cannot get it from the other candidate. It’s uncertain because I can do it, but they can’t do it.
Trump did all three. He delivered on all three steps?
He did multiple times with multiple subjects.
What about Biden? How do you think he did?
Delegate the crap out of your weaknesses.
He did stronger from a thing called setting the vision and also to meet the need for stability, which I think people are craving for right now. We’re getting a little tired of the tweet anticipation, tweet reward, tweet uncertainty, tweet this. The media regrettably follows those things and then retweets them back or says, “This is what the president is saying. Is this what a president is saying?” Trump is selling and marketing all the time with every sentence. He’s only marketing and selling the topics he wants to market and sell.
I’ve been saying that from day one, that there’s a method to his madness and he knows exactly what he’s doing.
He’s been doing it for so long and he’s been doing it in a very similar way. That’s to say, “This is the thing that’s valuable to you the listener. Whether I’m going to deliver it or not, I’m not going to be accountable for that.” In fact, he’s even said those kinds of sentences before. “The pandemic, it’s not on me. It was on those guys. They’re the ones who let it out.” There’s a lot of gap between here and there of accountability, but accountability and the front part of sales is not necessarily there because Michelle, you and I have bought things that did not deliver or that we didn’t even use or that were not up to the value that we paid for them because of these three steps.
Biden did not incorporate those three steps at all in his delivery?
Not as much. A few of them and there were ways that he could have included those. If I was his coach, I could have taught him how to put certain sentences.
In your opinion, the true winner was Trump because he delivered on the three steps.
He delivered on the three steps, which creates the thing that you don’t want when somebody is buying you, but you do want when somebody is refusing someone else and that’s called creating a climate of doubt and skepticism. Those two emotions kill the sale. Those two feeling words are directly related to two need words that are so valuable during the sales process and during the voting process too. There’s a direct relationship between the feeling of doubt and the need for truth. The truth causes doubt real or imagined.
Everybody else that’s commented on it thinks it was a bloodbath and think there were no true winners that came out of it, but you say according to the three steps, Trump delivered better.
He delivered better than Biden did on those three steps. Those three steps are what is needed during the sales process and the marketing process. He’s going to deliver that. What he did is create doubt and skepticism with the thing he kept repeating, which was, “You didn’t do anything for 47 years.” Biden did have a response for that and the response isn’t, “Here’s the list of things that I did.” That’s not how to win that battle.
How do you win that battle?
Here’s what you say back, “I’m guessing you’re feeling doubtful and skeptical, and your truth is I didn’t do anything for 47 years. Is that what your truth is?” Trump has to say yes. Joe Biden has control of the word truth right now. Biden could insert anything he wants, which would sound like this, “The truth is our nation is not stable right now. I can provide stability right now and you can’t.” It’s now back on Biden’s side because Trump is not meeting the need for stability in the marketplace.
Don’t expect people to read your mind.
If they have all the money and resources in the world, do you think they would practice and learn this stuff that you teach?
People don’t have awareness. People treat communication as the way they treat a driver’s license like, “I have a driver’s license. I’m a good driver. I’m a good communicator.” Just because you speak doesn’t mean that you are a good communicator. Just because you have a license does not mean you’re a good driver. It’s like people have an ownership of communication because people will say that they communicate very well and from a general sense, they’re putting words in the environment, but as far as communicating, not so much so.
Most people are not good communicators. Let’s transition. I think the world would be a better place if people could learn how to communicate more effectively.
If I’m going to follow the lead of your book, EXIT Rich, if I’m going to do that, that means I am pursuing financial security of which I know what a number is of what that word rich means to me. I have stability mostly on the passive income piece. I don’t have to do anything for it and there’s a revenue that is covering all the things that I would like to see in my world. The third thing I want to see, and you can imagine this when this takes place, is that I have a clarity that my belief structures are not going to sabotage my richness. People’s belief structure sabotage because they have an association with the word rich that is not a strong association. Rich to me means stable, consistent, has the ability to have some affluence to it. I have some freedom on how I can spend that’s over and above my stability piece. If I have that, my life is rich.
I am rich because the number is irrelevant to the belief mindset of, “I’m doing pretty good. I don’t need much more than this one expensive nice car or these two different houses or whatever. I don’t need much more than that. By the way, what I do with this time is I spend it on family. I work on this problem. I’m contributing to this community, I’m working with my church and I have the stability financially to do that for my entire life, no matter what the catastrophic thing that may show up, including that pesky thing called death that shows up at the end.” I’m feeling pretty good about it because the richness is meeting multiple needs and this is what this money is paying for. I’m enriching my family. I’m stabilizing them. I’m bringing my belief structure solid and that’s what’s a good thing about your book. It’s about, here’s a way to believe and think about your exit strategy and for your readers, you can imagine what they would be like when they have that in their hand.
Exiting rich beats the alternative because unfortunately, many business owners are exiting poor. They’re not only losing their business assets, but they’re losing their family assets too. Rich can mean different things to different people. It could mean, “My bills are paid. I have $2 million in debt and because I sold my business, I am now debt free.” There are many different things it can mean. I do want to transition because you and I met for the very first time at CEO Space and we have shared the stage together at many different conferences. I was in one of your classes and you were talking about colors and how different colors represent different people’s personalities and their values and the way they do things. Can we transition into colors and tell our audience a little bit about that?
If I want to exit rich and I want to build a team, I want to look at seven key members or covering seven key attributes of my business. It depends on the size of the business, but if you get the seven things down and you have expertise in these seven places, things go much easier for you. You could be one of the roles of the seven, or you could be the owner or the employer of those seven people. All of a sudden, I’m positioning to who are these seven people? Who are these seven executives? As Michelle was bringing up, the people that are good with finances and financial analytical thinking, the color cards that Michelle was mentioning, that’s an example of a blue card that thinks rational, analytical, and that’s like a CFO.
Empathy before problem solving.
In business, I want my CFO to do a good job of numbers, the accounting piece, for sure, but also lend their skills to look at projections. “What’s my 30 or 60 or 90-day? What’s in the pipeline of my sales? What am I looking for? How much of the sales is stable over the next year or the next 2 or 5?” There are clients that you and I have worked with for years because they see that that’s a stable piece of hanging around with us in gathering wisdom, knowledge and experience. The blue card is the CFO or financial person.
Do you remember what colors I was? Mine was quite unique if I remember correctly.
You did have some uniqueness to you. The way you move through the world is wonderful. I need somebody to handle let’s say the vision part of it, the marketing part of it and my marketing card is like a yellow card. This is the person that is looking for eyeballs and trying to find who am I going to enlist to get into the function of sales, but they’ve got to market to it and that’s the yellow card. The VP of marketing is the second role. You’ve got these two different roles. I’ve got my finance person looking at my spreadsheets and I’ve got my marketing person looking at my strategic plan.
“Here’s what my marketing rollout is going to be. You’re going to give me $10 and I’m going to give you back a $100 for that $10. Every $10 you give me, I’m giving you back $100. Every $10 you’re giving me, I’m giving you back $1,000.” That’s a better marketing plan. You’re spending money to get eyeballs so that you’re driving money into the third position, which is going to be the red card, which is the VP of sales. The VP of sales is the person that the marketing person hands those leads to because the salesperson needs to be more interpersonal. They need to talk to the person and then get a check. Talk nicely, pick up a check.
Sales is very different than marketing.
It is very different than marketing. You never want those two things to collapse. This one is gathering eyeballs and the other one is talking to those eyeballs. Once you close the deal, you need somebody to deliver the product or service. You need an operations person and that’s the green person. The green person thinks organized, planned, detailed sequence. “I want to build a system to distribute the product or service out to the marketplace, write some procedures about it so that people follow the company policies on implementing or mailing out this widget.”
With the policy written with the customer experience in mind. Many owners forget to develop their processes with the client’s experience in mind.
You are so making my day, because that is a green, red narrative between the salesperson and the operations person that’s delivering this back. Now, I’ve got four people. My CFO, marketing person, salesperson and operations person. I’ve got to think to myself, “I need more people.” That means I need talent. Who do I need to find talent? That’s my VP of human resources. Human resources is internal sales. “I need these people to do and play in their lane to do their job to support these other people.” They’re going to support the operations person.
I got two accountants underneath my CFO. I got seven marketing people underneath my vice president of marketing and my sales team has about twenty people in it. My VP of sales sits on top of that, but my human resources person finds the right person to fit the right slot. I got five. In our modern society, this wouldn’t have been true 40 years ago, but it’s true today. I need a CTO, a Chief Technical Officer, somebody to handle all the computers, technology, internet and any production technological piece. I need that CTO and the website. I need that person to help these other people with their technological challenges. I got six.
What color is number 5 and 6?
Number five was red so I have two people in red quality and then the CTO is going to be blue, similar to the finance person. They specialize not in numbers, but in technology.
I thought they would be under operations under green?
Not as much so. They’ve got to be able to write code and code is very mathematical. They do have green as their second color. Your intuition is correct. They need to write code and code doesn’t have to be organized or have a pile of papers on top of the desk. It has to fit in the filing cabinet. It’d be all over the place. Now, I got six people and with the six people, I need somebody to communicate between all six. That’s my CEO that sits in the middle. A CEO is typically a little bit of each of those four colors. They have a little bit of blue, green, red, yellow and their job is to sit in the middle of the spoke of the wheel and let each person know how to collaborate and cooperate between each other.
This is the magic seven. If I want to exit rich and I want to be able to make this work, if I get these seven people in place, I can sell this thing because this talent knows these different pieces. They know it. They know what their lane is, how to execute their lane and their talent. Because there are enough procedures that are going on and those procedures are in place, if one of them wants to leave for another opportunity, you have the HR person put somebody back in that spot. If the new owner that’s buying the magic seven is coming in, the first thing I recommend to the new owner is this, “Have you secured your talent yet? Have you got them on at least an eighteen-month contract that they’re not moving for eighteen months? The worst thing you want is you buy a company and three people leave.”
That’s number one in the 6Ps. EXIT Rich is all about building a company that operates in all six cylinders, all 6Ps. The first P is People, which is exactly what you’re talking about. How do people determine what color they are?
There are a lot of different models that are out there. The one I use is an instrument called the Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument. It’s a Fortune 50 product that was developed at General Electric and studying with my mentor that developed the tool. It has very strong business vocabulary. Why I like using it so much is that the quality of vocabulary is easy to understand. It doesn’t have as much ambiguity in it. It does a great job of celebrating a person’s strength and also not getting people arguing about what their frustration is or what they’re not good at. I don’t want my CFO to be a people person. They’ve got to be a people person to seven people, but other than seven, not as much so. I don’t need them to have 50 friends. I need for them to be a good numbers person and a good understanding of what their role is in relationship to these other people.
Do you think most people know what they are? Do you think most people already know or not? When I sat in that class with you, there were a lot of people like, “I’m that color? I have no idea. No, I’m this color.” They were arguing about their colors.
They were, because for many people, awareness and consciousness is not finding out what my strength is and work in my strength. What most people have been taught is an alternate narrative. The alternate narrative is work on your weakness. What I teach is delegate the crap out of your weakness. Delegate supervise, delegate direct. Delegate and lead.
Don’t strengthen your weakness, strengthen your strengths. Focus on your strengths. Is this similar to the DiSC?
It has some similarities to DiSC. It was developed before DiSC was and there are some different qualities and some similar. I tend to use this model more because of the clarity of language and I enjoy the team analysis piece because I know their team better than they do within a matter of seconds. I’ve even had that reflected back to me because I did an analysis of a company. The board wanted me to present, “What’s wrong with our company? Tell us about our people. Tell us what’s wrong.” What I did is I came in and for 90 minutes I said, “Here’s where the levers are and here’s what you need to know to pull.” For their part, what they wound up doing is they were able to say, “This makes sense. No wonder why we’re struggling in this area.” The next sentence was from one of the board members, “I’ve been sitting on this board for four years. In 90 minutes, you told me more about the board that I’ve learned over the last four years.” I’m going like, “These tools and instruments can be leveraged.”
People have never been taught how to communicate or how to resolve conflict.
To clarify that, the blue color would be logical, analytical, fact-based, quantitative, measuring things. The green color card is organized, detailed planning and sequencing, putting things in order versus analyzing things in blue. The red color is interpersonal, feeling-based, kinesthetic, body movement. These are all the dancers and musicians, and emotional. The artists are going to be yellow which is creative, conceptual, synthesizing, intuitive.
I have two yellows.
Michelle, what gives you your unique superpower, and I watched this in real time when you present, is you bring the yellow visionary part of it, the entrepreneurial part of it so you can see the entrepreneurial edge, the yellow part, and you bring it over to blue and analyze the numbers. It takes a while because if a person sits down there with you, they’re listening to you talk, they hear the yellow visionary part and they have no idea how skilled you are at looking at the numbers and going there right now. You don’t waste any time. You go, “There’s the number.” People go, “How did she get that?” That’s exactly what that yellow-blue superpower is that you have and then you come to red next, which is your interpersonal skills. It is how you talk to the different people and get them to see the same vision, yellow that you have and agree upon the numbers, the blue that you know that is right for this business or the value or the valuation of this business.
I’m yellow, blue, red. No green?
Green is your fourth. It will melt your brain if you do too much of it. It’s called your kryptonite card because this is what your assistant does for you. This is what schedulers do and procedure people do. That’s the green thing that they do and they do that well. It’s a way green is needed to stabilize a business and also if you do green well, the value of the business goes up.
That’s processes. That’s my third P to succeed.
You got to have the process in place or otherwise, you’re going to get deigned. The new owner can’t run the business if there’s not a process in place. You’ve got to be able to tell an employee what to do and hand them a to-do list. It doesn’t mean you’re taking away their creativity or anything like that. You’re trying to empower them to do their role for the organization.
It needs to be systematic and the processes need to be documented. Yellow is visionary, but yellow is also your artist, your musicians.
You’ve got the artists over there. You’ve got some musicians over there that are very creative and they do that yellow-red thing. You are yellow first. A little bit, but you’re blue. Nobody mistake that she could go blue. She zips right over there and goes like, “I’m not sure if the numbers are working on there. Let me see that spreadsheet.” You’ve done this too. Michelle will sit in a meeting and start looking at the spreadsheet and take her finger and go like, “This number is not quite right.” She zips right there to the spot. That’s a superpower.
Red is sales.
You’ve got to sell it. You’ve got to connect with people. People got to get a sense that you’re going to have their best interest partly in mind and it’s got to be partly like 51%. It doesn’t have to be partly 75%. They’ve got to get a sense that, “This person is seeing that this thing will benefit me.” If they see that it’s benefiting them, then the purchase is a lot easier.
One of the biggest issues I see in businesses is employers will say, “Michelle, I tell employees to do this and they do that.” I even have that happen in my own company. They do the exact opposite of what you tell them to do. You and I have talked about this in the past. Why is it that an employer is communicating one set of directions, instructions, and an employee hears something different and does something different? That’s the business owner’s number one complaint is employees. One of the number one reasons that business owners sell their business is because they’re fed up with employees, but you can’t have a business without employees. We have to solve all these problems. Talk to me about that. The employer says one thing and the employee does something else.
There are three parts of communication. The first one is what we covered, the four-color cards or the four thinking communication styles. The blue thinker is going to speak in a brief, clear, precise way. Whereas the green people are going to speak in a step by step unfolding of the topic. The red speaker is going to speak in consideration of others and balancing the needs of others. Yellows want overview and the conceptual framework. Those are four different communication styles in this first part of the triangle.
I think I speak in blue.
You’re a brief, clear, precise information gal. That’s the first part. Since you’re asking me about how to increase employee performance or employee listening, what most employees don’t have and understand is it’s not about solving the problem, it’s about building an enrollment and participation with the employee, working from the inside out, not waiting for the employee to get the employer to give them a directive. How do we build internal motivation?
The quickest way to build internal motivation is to find out what needs drive this individual. Is it financial security? Is it stability? Is it connection? What drives this person? If we find out what the motive is, we now have access to the person’s emotions. If I found out what that person’s needs are, if it’s safety and security then all I’ve got to do is motivate my narrative and lead them that safety and security is going to be met with me. It’s not going to be met with this other person.
How does that change the fact that they hear instructions differently than what the employer is communicating?
That gets us to the third problem. What happens is that the person has a belief or a bias that gets in the way of listening. I could tell my thirteen-year-old something, and they are only hearing like 1 or 4 words, and it’s not because they’re not listening. It’s because their biases, their belief is sitting in the way, and they’re bias and their belief is, “I want to, as a boy, get back to my computer game. I’m only going to listen to every fourth word that my dad says because it’s funner to play computer games than it is to listen to my dad or do something he asks.”
I have a nine-year-old and I have to tell her the same thing, “Pick up your toys,” twenty times before she picks up her toys.
Let’s use your nine-year-old as a motivator. I’m going to give you some parenting coaching, but being an employer and employee is very much like parenting. This is going to translate directly.
I’ll tell you what I did and you tell me if this is the right thing. I incorporated a chart that lists all the things that she needs to do without being told, “Get dressed, brush your teeth, eat your food, pick up your toys, make your bed.” She does those and she gets a sticker next to each one. She gets a sticker for many days in a row. She gets a reward.
How well is that going?
It’s working pretty well.
She’s following the rules?
For the most part, yes. We do have our down days.
That’s why I asked how’s that working. That’s called the compliance chart and traditional performance evaluation. I can get my performance evaluation by doing these tasks and I’m going to get my gold star in 1 to 10. I rewrote one of these performance evaluations for a Toyota dealership. It’s how do you write the performance evaluation so they’re motivated from the inside and they’re not fully motivated from the outside? The outside thing gets to be the whip cream on top of the pie or the cherry on top of the ice cream. The joy is in doing the task. Right now, she may not have joy doing the task.
She definitely doesn’t.
That means when she realizes that she gets to rebel against the chart, and that’s age 12, 13, 14, 15. When they realize that they’re following your leadership and doing the things you said that you can’t supervise them as much, and the bribe doesn’t work anymore, that’s when the rebellion comes.
What’s the better approach?
This is the longer session that we could do on this one because this one is important to me too. You want your kid to do things internally because it’s their challenge. Not externally because you’re using a bribe. It doesn’t mean that we can’t incentivize people to do things and incentives are to be used as the cherry on top of the cake, especially if it’s a collective incentive. The collective incentive might sound like this, “Here’s the group. Here’s what needs to take place on the sales team in the car dealership. When the entire sales team reaches this number, the entire sales team gets to go to Hawaii or whatever the reward is. You do not set up individual performance pieces inside of business. You set up collective performance pieces so the entire team is working collectively to get there.”
I did this with an international company and they had a different manager from each different country in Europe and throughout the world. They wanted to increase the knowledge and the wisdom of their employees. It was a tech company and they all know that it’s a lot cheaper to train somebody than to hire a new person. We want to train that person. What are you going to train them on? How are we going to evaluate the training? Every manager got this training sheet that was similar to your star thing, but it was based on the group getting there versus the individual getting there.
How do you do that with a nine-year-old though? It’s an individual.
It sounds like this, “Care for your teeth looks like brushing it. Can you say that back to me?” “You mean I don’t have to do that?” “You don’t have to do anything, but we’re working on caring for your teeth.” “My teeth are fine.” “We’re going to work on care. Can you say the word care? Care looks like teeth that are brushed. Can you say that back to me?” Now, you’re trying to get her in touch with her own self-care, not your policing her behavior, because right now it’s out here. This is why all those people are selling their businesses by the way, because they keep trying, “I harp on them. I don’t want to fire them because I don’t want to hire somebody new and I don’t want to retrain somebody new. They’re good enough. I’d rather sell the company.”
“Care for your toys.”
“Here’s how we care for the space and here’s how safety looks like in the space. Safety for the space looks like your toy in the toy box. That’s what safety for the space looks like. Consideration for mom and dad looks like the stuff off the floor in the toolbox. Say that back to me.” “If I care for the space, it looks like the toys are off the floor into the toy box.” “Thank you for hearing me. Would you be willing to do that?” She’ll ruffle a little bit, but go like, “We’re doing it for caring for the space.” She’s got to learn that she’s in relationship to you, not that you’re her slave as if she doesn’t think that right now, because part of her thinks that she’s a slave.
Not just one. “My mommy, daddy and nanny.”
We’ve got to train her into a collaborative cooperative mindset that she’s one person that pulls her part or does her part inside the space.
I’m going to try this and I’ll report back to you. For the employees, that’s the same thing.
I’ve got to build internal investment inside this employee where they see what their part is and then I’ve got to work on an acknowledgment that is specific. That is valuable.
That’s very hard for entrepreneurs because most entrepreneurs are like a bull in a china cabinet and they don’t understand it. They don’t take the time to understand it or the time to do it. That’s probably something best left to the human resource manager.
It depends on the level of interaction that that employee has with their direct report. The HR person can formalize those kinds of systems, which is important because you want to do that for various different employment, hiring, firing, promotion. You want your salaries based on time, but also that there’s this piece in it that they’re working on their internal professional development as they are spending time with you.
What’s the biggest tip that you can give to entrepreneurs that don’t necessarily have a human resource department? Even the ones that do have human resource departments still have the same issue as many of them.
If you don’t have a human resources department, what you want to do is do the called “just in time coaching” and “just in time evaluation.” Just in time coaching piece means, “I noticed you doing this thing this way. I feel excited because I like the quality in which you did that.” That’s a moment of acknowledgment. You’ve got to do the other side too. “I saw what you’re doing. I felt disappointment. It doesn’t meet the need for cleanliness to sweep the pile of dirt to the corner. What cleanliness would look like is putting it in a pan and throwing it away, throwing it to the garbage bin, not just doing that.” We do just in time coaching as an entrepreneur because we can’t necessarily get caught up in heavy HR experiences. At the end of the day, it’s very easy to check in with ourselves or check in with the person. “Here’s one thing Joe did that was good today, that I liked and here’s one thing that Joe did to today that I didn’t like.” You’re keeping track of that.
When an owner gives a task, articulates a task and the employee, hears the opposite, what causes that? The employer says it one way and the employee hears it a different way.
There are three major sentences that people need to capture with abundance. Here are the sentences. Sentence number one, mind reading is overrated. Inside your mind as an entrepreneur, stop thinking that they can read your mind. Mind reading is overrated.
Not mind reading but articulate. If a business owner articulates something and then the employee completely does or thinks the opposite.
Same sentence, mind reading is overrated. “I said something to a person. I think in my mind that they understood this.” That’s the mind-reading part. “I think they understood that. I am thinking that.” Here’s the second sentence to try not to crack up too much, “Message sent is not message received unless they repeat it back to you.”
I do have my team repeat it back to me. You’re all day repeating things back and forth.
Not necessarily because after you asked them to repeat back about a dozen things, they got a sense that you’re going to ask the damn question. They’re sitting on pins and needles, listening to you now a lot more effectively. Let me say it this way, “You’re training them to be a good listener as a leader.” The way I ask is compassionately. Here are the words, “Would you be willing to tell me what you’ve heard me say?” That’s the most effective narrative.
Here’s the third step of this process. Whatever comes out of their mouth next, here’s what you say next, “Thank you. I have more.” That’s the next sentence that comes out of the leader’s mouth. Why are we thanking them? Because even if they get it wrong, they are answering your question. Would you be willing to tell me what you heard me say? “Monkeys eat glue.” “Thank you. I have more.” Why? It’s because they didn’t hear a thing I said so I’m going to give them a second opportunity. I’m not going to say that’s not what I said. I’m going to say thank you. I add more because I want them to be safe and listening.
You don’t want them to be petrified that they’re going to say the wrong thing and then they shut down and they can’t listen.
Then the next time they go, “I better remember what she’s going to say.” They’re waiting for the hammer to come on the other side. With your daughter, by the way, it’s the same thing. “Would you be willing to tell me what you’ve heard me say?” With my now eighteen-year-old son, when he was fifteen, I came into his room one day and he was playing the computer. I said, “I’m doing laundry. Would you be willing to put the clothes that are on the floor into your basket?” He goes, “Yeah, dad. I got it.” Watch my next sentence, “Would you be willing to tell me what you heard me say?”
This is what he said next, “That I have to clean my room.” “Thank you. I have more, I’m doing laundry and I need those clothes in that basket. Can you say that part back?” “That’s all you need, is the clothes in the basket?” He literally did it right then because he was thinking, “I have to clean my whole room, big project.” I’m thinking like, “I could care less about how dirty your room is.” I’m trying to get the laundry done and is message sent, message received? No. Can I get them to hear me? No. Mind reading?
Everybody’s busy and there are many thoughts in everyone’s head. When you think you’re communicating to them, they might not be listening because of maybe what happened at their house that morning, maybe they received a phone call.
I’m glad you added all those things because that’s creating the sensitivity or the empathy that’s needed for the listener. The listener has crap going on between their ears. They are not waiting for you as an owner to give them a direction. They’re thinking about their next step. The thing that they need to get done. They’re thinking about their sick kid at home. They’re thinking about their car payment, whatever the heck they’re thinking about. They’re not thinking about what’s coming out of your mouth. Not even a little bit. They’re not even thinking about that at all. This is one way to get the communication to go better between employees and the employers. You’re training them to listen to you.
We’re definitely going to have you back on the show again, because when someone wins the election, whether that be Trump or Biden. Last time when Trump beat Hillary, you have friends and family members who stopped talking to friends. Maybe they were a Trump supporter and those friends wanted Hillary. It’s ridiculous. You should not lose your friends and family members over the election. We’ll have you back on again to help people mourn.
There are going to be a group of people that are going to need to learn how to mourn something and there’s going to be a group of people that are going to be celebrating something and they’ve also got to, if we’re working on, a primary sentence for us as the United States. It’s a very simple sentence, but we got to get our butts back to it. It’s, “One nation under God, indivisible,” whoever God is for you. See that last part? Stop doing that noise. You cannot have a divisive narrative. There are lots of reasons why it became divisive over the last many years, but we’ve got to undo those things that have made it become divisive. That allows voting to take place across party lines because right now, it can’t be done that way. This is a longer discussion. The main thing that you’re requesting of me is how to heal or restore a national narrative of inclusion and as well as a family narrative of inclusion.
I’ve seen lifelong friendships break up because of the election and they’re still not friends again. I’ve seen families break up because of who won the election. It’s not worth it. What are some of the biggest communication mistakes you see people make whether that’s entrepreneurs or parents or priests? What are the biggest mistakes that you see people making and how to avoid those?
The biggest mistake, but it takes a little work to get there is that we need to adopt a sentence, “Empathy before problem solving.”
It’s like I said, have empathy because you don’t know what happened to that person before they walked in the door.
If somebody didn’t do something, like an employee didn’t do something, the first question isn’t, “Why didn’t you do what I told you?” The first question needs to be, “I feel concerned. I need some understanding about what got in the way of you doing what I asked?” That is empathy before problem solving. “I don’t want the answer. I want to know what’s in the way,” because the company might be putting obstacles in front of this person. You told them to do this thing, but there are five of the things and other people that were in his way to do the thing that you want him to do and he or she picks something different. Empathy before problem solving is one of the key things.
The next thing we can go into this next time for sure because it’s going to be a part of our family or friend or national restoration dialogue because that’s something I’m very interested in. The slight thing that needs to change is we’ve got to redefine empathy to something that works better. Let me share with everybody Bill Stierle‘s definition for empathy and when it occurs so we can start setting a standard here. For me, empathy only occurs when a feeling word and a need word are connected and then agreed upon. I’ve got to get these three parts together. Here’s this feeling word, “I feel frustrated. I have a need for support. Support looks like this. Is that correct?” The person says yes, then we’re in our body. Otherwise, we’re trying to problem solve support, rather than experience what support is most important. This is the problem with the debate. There was no empathy on the stage.
There was sympathy that moved from Biden to Americans. There are a lot of people that have died upon them, but there wasn’t any empathy the way I would describe it, which is Americans are feeling scared and they have a need for safety and safety looks like wearing masks, social distancing, contact tracing. That’s the best we’ve got for this particular task called “stopping the spread of a virus.” I’ll be glad to have a debate with anybody about the effectiveness of certain mass, over certain things, about the size of the virus particle in reference to the size of the water droplet that the virus is writing on and how the mask is for the water droplet. It’s not for the virus. I’ll be glad to have any narrative that people would like to have. The important thing is empathy before problem solving because once we get on to, “We want to see the numbers look like this,” because New York, New Jersey, their numbers are the lowest.
Why? It’s because they bit the bullet early and they said, “We are not going there. Other people from the different visitors, please don’t come here. If you do, we’re going to quarantine you.” I went to Hawaii and I had to spend fourteen days in quarantine before I could start my project. I had to be there for five weeks. I had to be there for five weeks where normally I would have been there for two. The quarantine was to meet the need for safety and protection for the people. I didn’t affect the environment and they want to have certainty on it. They wanted to have trust on it. If I broke the quarantine, it was a $5,000 fine. That’s my external motivation. My internal motivation is to meet the need for care, safety and protection for the other people living on this island. My integrity is high, so I am not going anywhere. I hope that was helpful. That was a lot of fun.
Any last tips for our readers?
I want to celebrate and feel grateful about being on the show with you. It’s been a good thing. I can roll out as many tips as you like, do a seven-week dissertation, but this is great. I enjoyed this process.
What was Bill Stierle like as a little boy? Did you resolve conflicts as a little boy or did you create them?
I did both. I was more the creator of the conflict and I did spend time in the resolution of the conflict. I was in the middle of eight kids. I’m number 4 of 8.
No wonder why you do what you do, to be in the middle of eight kids.
You’ve got to be able to speak some words to get your words in elsewise.
Thank you, Bill, for being on the show. We loved having you. We’ll definitely bring you on after November 3rd, 2020 and maybe you should reach out to the Biden team. Thanks to all of our readers for joining us. Make sure you go to ExitRichPodcast.com so you can get more information of how you can get in touch with Bill Stierle. Bill, you do consulting for large Fortune 500 companies.
As well as the individual coaching and the executive coaching to make a piece show up where conflict is.
It’s been an absolute pleasure having you. I miss seeing your face and hopefully, we’ll be able to share a stage again soon when all of this is over and life stages come back.
I hope so. I’m looking forward to those days. More to come and I’m looking forward to the next time.
Thank you. It’s been a pleasure.
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About Bill Stierle
Bill Stierle has been called a dynamic thought leader in the integration of Emotional Intelligence & Thinking Styles Technology by providing content rich presentations that moves audiences in a impactful way.
With over 27 years of consulting expertise, Bill Stierle’s impact is being felt daily inside of the world’s top business schools, Fortune 500 companies, non-profit organizations and countless government institutions throughout the world.
Bill has a unique and extensive knowledge for developing and implementing successful programs that encourage people nationwide. His clients profit from an increase in professional productivity, organizational performance and individual effectiveness.
Often corporations and organizations leave talent untapped and under utilized. With Bill’s insight and mentorship, teams are provided with decision making strategies, talent management, customer loyalty, and conflict resolution. Bill is one of the world’s most sought-after speakers for his ability to create thought-provoking and game changing training experiences for his audiences.
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vreyrolinomit
April 12, 2021 2:46 amAn impressive share, I just given this onto a colleague who was doing a little analysis on this. And he in fact bought me breakfast because I found it for him.. smile. So let me reword that: Thnx for the treat! But yeah Thnkx for spending the time to discuss this, I feel strongly about it and love reading more on this topic. If possible, as you become expertise, would you mind updating your blog with more details? It is highly helpful for me. Big thumb up for this blog post!