All Posts By

Aaron Shields

Are You Listening?

I remind myself every morning: Nothing I say this day will teach me anything. So if I’m going to learn, I must do it by listening.
Larry King

Do you listen or do you just wait for your turn to talk?

When you listen, you have to be genuinely interested in what the other person is saying and be willing to let them change your mind. For most people, that’s not an easy state of mind nor is it something that naturally comes to them. It’s why it’s often referred to as active listening: it’s not a passive activity; it takes conscious effort to truly listen.

Listening is a valuable activity for both yourself and the person you’re listening to: it can help build your knowledge or let you see something from a different viewpoint; and, it lets the person you’re listening to know you care, listen to themselves, get something off their chest, and let them make way for new thoughts.

Listening is powerful.

Listening isn’t about outward behavior; it’s not about nodding or eye contact—although they will happen naturally—instead, it’s about being genuinely curious. It’s attitudinal, not behavioral.

I’ve sat in on many focus groups and customer interviews that were nowhere near as effective as they could have been because the interviewer was more focused on their questions than listening to the interviewees. As storytelling expert Annette Simmons comments, many people think asking questions equates to listening: “Some people are lousy listeners because they think that asking lots of questions is good listening. Asking lots of questions is a good way to destroy someone’s story-not to mention break the flow of introspection the storytelling might have begun.”1

And, you’ve all heard the stories about bosses that don’t listen; at some point, you’ve probably told them yourself.

Put simply, listening is about shutting up and paying attention.

One of the most effective ways I’ve found of training yourself to listen comes from when I studied Linklater Method—a voice-based acting training—in college: Once in a while when you’re talking with people, briefly pay attention to your breath; if you’re holding it, you’re focused on something else, likely what you’re about to say in response; you’re not in the moment, listening. As Kristen Linklater, the founder of the technique, says, “If you’re holding your breath in any way, you’re absent.”
2

Learn to listen. Few other activities will reward you as much as listening can.

_______________________

April 6, 2018 by

How To Achieve Maximum Influence

“Every generation seeks the Holy Grail of instantaneous influence—in the information age we seek the sound bite that moves the masses—but it doesn’t exist. Human behavior is influenced over time, within a context, and by focusing primarily on how people feel.”
Anette Simmons, The Story Factor

Good companies place a strong focus on how customers perceive them. Great companies know they also have to understand how customers perceive themselves.

Look at any survey or attend any customer interview and you see a slew of questions that make the customer evaluate the company: How satisfied are you? When was the last time you made a purchase? How likely are you to recommend us to a friend or family member?

Sure, many of these surveys use some of the questions to create demographic and “psychographic” categories, But, these categories rarely reflect the way people view themselves and feel in the context of buying from the company. They’re abstract generalizations that can help figure out where to place advertising, but they ignore the emotional context of the real individuals actually buying from you.

If you don’t understand their hearts, you can’t win their hearts. And, if you can’t win their hearts, you can’t influence their buying decisions.

Next time you engage in collecting customer data rather than make the survey or interview all about you, also make it about them. You’ll learn valuable strategic information, and you’re likely to see your customers in a new light: as people rather than numbers. And, people are much easier to sell to than numbers.

March 30, 2018 by

Discovering Your Big Idea

Big ideas, when they stick, can guide an organization to an extraordinary future. It helps you determine when to move and where. It provides a shared vision that creates cohesion within your organization, which can lead to superior execution over time.

To discover or refine your big idea, consider the following questions:

End Picture: What will your business look like when it’s done?

Passion: What does your organization love doing? What are your collective strengths (based on employee passion, past performance, and available resources)?

Leadership: What will your organization be a leader in? What are you committed to being the best in the world at?

Impact: Where can your enterprise have the most significant impact? Who are you committed to best serving?

As with any discovery process, be sure to start with a Beginner’s Mind. Pretend that you don’t know the answers.

Be open-minded.

Be receptive to any idea, even the most outrageous ones.

Stay curious my friends.

March 9, 2018 by

It May Be Time To Do Less

Are you busy? Isn’t that a stupid question to ask? Of course you are. You have a lot to do and it all NEEDS to get done.

That’s the way it seems.

But, truthfully, a lot of what you’re doing is probably getting in the way of what really NEEDS to get done. And, you may be so busy that you haven’t stepped back to distinguish between what truly NEEDS to get done what you believe needs to get done.

We constantly get projects—large and small—and rarely give them the evaluation that our sanity and our business’s future deserve.

Look at everything you’re doing and ask: does it push you closer to your ultimate vision? Also ask: if you didn’t do it could you still get to your ultimate vision. If it fails one of these tests, why are are you doing it? The reason should be better than because you “have to”—although that’s often the reason most of us do the things we do at work.

Eliminating everything that isn’t essential to achieving your ultimate vision gives you the time to focus on everything that is essential to taking a step toward that goal.

And, it’s likely to cut down on the uber-bane of every business person: meetings. Instead of having meetings for updates or just because that’s the “culture” of the business—I’m sure you know that’s a bad culture to have—only schedule meetings that are required to make a step toward the ultimate vision. If a meeting doesn’t have an essential goal that’s clear and achievable at the meeting, then that meeting only hurts the company by taking people’s attention away from what really matters.

If it’s not essential, it’s not moving you forward. And, it’s probably driving you crazy.

February 9, 2018 by

Build Audiences, Not Megaphones

Your new product or service is great. You want to tell people. Why not shout it as loudly as you can to as many many people as you can?

Because, until you have an audience, you have to work exponentially harder to make your message matter. This means more time, more money, and more resources.

An audience gives you their attention, instead of you having to capture it.

Attention is given, not purchased. Yet, that’s just what many businesses do: throw ad dollars at a problem to try and increase awareness and intent to purchase.

Instead of trying to grab attention, make your customers realize that you’re worthy of their attention. This isn’t something that can happen overnight, but it is something you can build towards, rather than just hoping it will eventually happen.

Building an audience starts with consistently helping people solve meaningful problems—small or large—in their lives. And, it is strengthened by building brand communities—a co-authored experience between you and your customers.

Are you solving meaningful problems? Are you helping build brand communities?

February 2, 2018 by

Dare To Dream

You have to live life to the limit, not according to each day but according to its depth. One does not have to do what comes next if one feels a greater affinity with that which happens later, at a remove, even in a remote distance. One may dream while others are saviors if these dreams are more real to oneself than reality and more necessary than bread. In a word: one ought to turn the most extreme possibility inside oneself into the measure for one’s life, for our life is vast and can accommodate as much future as we are able to carry.
Ranier Maria Rilke, Letters on Life

January 1: It’s time to set those goals and resolutions again.

The goals we set for ourselves and our businesses at the beginning of the year usually don’t look any further than the end of the year. These types of goals are good, but they’re not great: they don’t provide us any long-term guidance. They don’t necessarily help us achieve our life’s goals.

This year, when thinking about your goals and resolutions, dare to dream. Dream what you want your life and your business to look like in the future. Ultimately, think about what will make you, your customers, and your employees happy.

Once you know what you want the future to look like, build your yearly goals and resolutions around it.

What do you want the future to look like? What concrete goals can you achieve this year that will push towards your ultimate goals and vision?

January 5, 2018 by

Beware The Deadly Customer

Many businesses suffer from catering to deadly customers.

Deadly customers aren’t customers that hate you. They like you and probably account for a large portion of both your current base and target market. Chances are that, collectively, they purchase a lot from you. Playing to deadly customers may seem lucrative: there’s a lot of them out there and they likely contribute a significant portion of your bottom line. And, they’re easy to make happy.

The problem is: they don’t push your business forward.

The deadly customer is happy with the status quo—they don’t ask for anything new; in fact, they may not want anything new. They may make you think you’re doing better than you actually are. Serving the deadly customer encourages stagnation instead of innovation. By focusing on the deadly customer, you hand an unfair advantage to your competition in the future.

Are you catering to deadly customers?

December 22, 2017 by

True Excellence

The companies that survive longest are the ones that work out what they uniquely can give to the world—not just growth or money but their excellence, their respect for others, or their ability to make people happy. Some call these things a soul.
—Charles Handy, “The Search for Meaning” in Leader to Leader

Continue Reading

September 29, 2017 by