Always Eat Left Handed: 15 Surprisingly Simple Secrets of Success (5 page)

*Author's Note:
The story of Murdoch and Rosenblatt was excerpted from a brilliant
book on storytelling called Tell to Win
by Hollywood Producer Peter Guber.  

Chapter 9 - Interrupt Often

Lesson - Be An Active Listener

Several years ago, AOL TV decided to run a poll of users asking them to cast votes for their favorite daytime television host.  Over 1.2 million people cast their votes, and Ellen Degeneres narrowly took the top spot, beating out Oprah Winfrey as the top daytime personality. 

In a secondary question, the poll also asked who viewers would rate as the best interviewer.  This time, the winner was a blowout.  Oprah was by far rated the best at conducting interviews—but you hardly need a poll result from thousands of daytime television fans to see how Oprah’s reputation at conducting candid and powerful interviews precedes her.  It makes her a natural choice to interview some of the biggest celebrities in the world.

For example, in May of 2013 NBA player Jason Collins made history by becoming the first professional athlete still playing a sport to openly admit that he was gay.  News media around the world carried the story, and Collins agreed to do his first news interview since his announcement with Oprah. 

Routinely over her career, she has received honors like this one – interviewing everyone from movie stars to music icons to world leaders.  In many ways, she is the world’s most powerful woman.  But what makes her such an engaging interviewer?  Why is Oprah the best?

Why Silent Listening Doesn’t Work

It would be easy to believe it’s because she’s a good listener.  No one could do the types of interviews she does without that ability.  We often hear about the importance of listening.  We have two ears and one mouth for a reason, right?  I’m sure you could come up with your own list of clichés about the importance of listening. 

The problem is, silent listening doesn’t work.  Imagine we’re having a conversation where I’m talking and you’re listening.  The more you listen, the more I talk.  And at the end of our interaction, I might remember that you were a great listener – but not much more than that.  We didn’t really have  an equal conversation.  I didn’t learn anything about you, and I probably didn’t feel that engaged.

The skill that really matters is
active
listening.

Active listening requires you to ask questions
while
listening.  It means you dig deeper, and sometimes even reflect back your own experiences to push the conversation further.  Most importantly, active listening takes doing something you have probably been taught to avoid since you were a child … interrupt.

The Art of Interruption

If you go back and watch any interview Oprah has ever done, you’ll notice an interesting balance that she manages to reach.  In some moments, she will listen intently and ask leading questions.  But then as the conversation starts, she will reflect on something that her guest says.  She might interject with a story of her own.  And she will interrupt often.

But she does it with a rhythm that allows her conversations to continue.  Her interruptions actually help the conversation flow better, and help uncover more interesting insights.  And what most of us don’t realize is that interruptions could do the same for us, if we mastered how to use them.  Though it may seem ironic, when done right interruptions can create
more
interaction.

Interrupting often changes everything.

How To Be An Active Listener

1. Dig for detail.
   The thing that separates smiling and nodding from active listening is your ability to get more detail from someone around any topic they may be sharing with you.  The easiest way to do this is to follow the paths of conversation that lead to greater details.  If someone shares, for example, that they just came back from a vacation … ask them where they went.  How did they like it there?  What was their favourite moment?  The more questions like this you can ask, the greater chance you will have to hear more details that can improve not only your conversations but also your listening ability.
   
2. Use reflecting phrases.
   If you have ever studied counseling methods, one of the big things that they teach is employing the use of key phrases to reflect back on what someone may be telling you.  “What I heard you say was …” is just one example of a phrase like that.  Another may be “the thing I found interesting about that was …”  No matter what kind of phrase you prefer – the idea is to learn a few that you can have in your “conversational toolkit” at just the right moments to help you be a more active listener.
   
3. Ask “story questions.”
   In improvisational acting, you never want to “close” a scene by inadvertently creating a dead end.  That’s when you happen to be partnering with someone else – and the rule is that you accept the premise.  If the act starts and you’re supposed to be the tiger, then that’s what you are.  You go with it, because if you don’t then the scene dies right there.  In conversation, “story questions” are the type of open ended questions that inspire someone to share a story with you instead of responding with a simple yes or no.
   

Chapter 10 - Ignore Job Descriptions

Lesson - Deliver What They Don't Ask For

Almost every job description ever written in the last fifteen years started with the same sad first step: a Google search.  Even people who love to recruit and interview job candidates (yes, there are actually a few people like that!), universally hate writing job descriptions. It is hard to fit everything in.  Sometimes you may not have a perfect idea of what you’re looking for.  But most of all, job descriptions are limiting.

No one ever hired anyone hoping they would ONLY do what is listed in a job description.

A job description isn’t a finish line – it’s a starting line.  Yes, you do need to do your job.  And whether that job actually does involve working for someone else, or even starting your own company … there will probably be some things you don’t enjoy doing or think you are overqualified for.  But you are never overqualified to just get things done.

The truly successful people do something more than deliver on a job description.  They take initiative.  They have ideas.  They try those ideas and stand up for them when they believe in them.  And sometimes they get fired.

Buying Your Own Ideas

In 1999 there was a way to promote fast food restaurants and it was all about convenience.  Lives were busy and sometimes you just needed a meal on the run.  There were lots of places to get one and Subway was just one of them.  Then a franchise owner in Chicago spotted a local college newspaper article about a student who had managed to lose more than 200 pounds by eating Subway sandwiches named Jared Fogle.

He told Subway’s ad agency Hal Riney about Jared – and they pitched an idea to Subway’s marketing director to do a campaign featuring Jared.  The marketing director asked the lawyers – the lawyers said no because it would be making “medical claims” about their sandwiches and the idea was dead.

But the ad agency wasn’t ready to give up.  With the help of some of the local franchisees, they went ahead and recorded an ad with Jared for free – and decided to test the idea with a series of regional ads in Chicago.  At a time before YouTube or Twitter, the ad still went viral.  People talked about it.  Newspapers wrote about it.  Even Oprah’s people called to do a feature with Jared. 

Jared was a sensation and went on to become an internationally recognized Subway spokesperson for the next fifteen years.  Over that time, Subway’s sales have more than tripled to $11.5 billion in 2011, from around $3 billion in 1998 before he started.

Why Delight Beats Satisfaction Every Time

Jared was certainly the right guy at the right time.  If you consider the job of the ad agency, though, it is to deliver ideas and execute on marketing programs based on directions they get from their clients.  Jared was discovered because of an agency that was able and willing to put those rules aside and deliver more than what they were asked to. 

We hear a lot about the value of satisfied customers.  There is a problem with satisfied customers, though, and it’s one that we often forget to think about.  A satisfied customer got what they expected.  Unfortunately we live in an immediately competitive world where that is not enough.  Satisfied customers are neutral.  When it suits them, they may tell someone else about their experience. But they probably won’t.

When you focus on delight instead of satisfaction, all sorts of things change.  Doing the bare minimum no longer seems acceptable.  You must do more to delight – and that was the philosophy that Subway’s advertising agency used as well.  They went beyond their job descriptions and it made a huge difference.

How To Deliver What They Don’t Ask For

1. Understand the real need.
     There are usually two sides to a task that someone asks you to do … the task itself, and then the underlying need behind it.  Closet designers, for example, understand that often they will be called by someone who is suffering from feeling overloaded by the things that they own. The solution, in that person’s mind, is to simply construct new drawers and wardrobes to fix the problem.  Usually, the problem is only partially based on having too many clothes and not enough drawers or wardrobes.  Instead, it may be a problem of finding an organizational system that works … which means the ideal solution has to help someone create a new system of organizing alongside designing and constructing a new closet.
   
2. Make it better.
   Improving on something before delivering it is a key element of going above and beyond what is asked.  I started the book with a story of the power of templates.  They are indeed useful to help get you started on the path to creating a document, but improving means sometimes adding your mark to something that may not seem like it would be easy to change.  Cutting and pasting will only get you to the start – but in order to stand out, you need to focus on improvement.
   
3. Rewrite the job description.
   Often the description of what a job
   should
   be is dramatically different from what it turns out to be.  People are hired based on job descriptions all the time out of necessity, but that doesn’t mean a weak description of your job has to stand in your way.  After focusing on understanding the real need, and making the things you do better … you may be at the point when you need to align the goals and tasks in your job description to what you are doing in reality now that you are in your role. Rewriting that job description may also give you the ability to do more of what you really want to do, and allow you to be even more proactive as a result. 
   

Chapter 11 - Be Forgetful

Lesson - Get Over It

“I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”

This is a popular quote from Michael Jordan and a perfect reminder of just how much we like to celebrate failure.  If Michael Jordan can miss this many shots and still be remembered as a basketball legend, then you can surely screw up a few times and still be successful, right?

James Dyson is another similar example who I wrote about in my first book
Personality Not Included
.  As the inventor of the best selling line of premium vacuum cleaners, he famously failed in designing the proper level of suction for his cyclone powered vacuum more than 5000 times before finally getting it right.  And even then, he had so much trouble selling the design in his native England that he was forced to seek his earliest successes in Japan with more fashion forward buyers. 

What They Don’t Tell You About Failing Often …

Clearly some of the most legendary names in business, athletics, and many more fields credit their ability to fail with their successes.  But they are leaving something out – something that is even more critical than the ability to fail often and learn from those failures: the ability to forget failure.

This quality of having a short memory is something that you often hear coaches tell to their players from the sidelines in just about every sport.  Forget about missing the shot, or throwing an interception, they say.  You need to be able to move on.  It turns out this is a great skill to learn even when you don’t have a game on the line.

The Downside of Grudges

Off the sporting field, any personal interaction can end badly.  You might have a disagreement, or a full blown argument.  Someone may say something to you that hurts your feelings or makes you feel as though they don’t care about you.  People get hurt. 

When that happens, it is easy to hold a grudge.  Forgiving and forgetting sounds like great advice – but in the real world people generally don’t do that very well.  Instead, many times they hold onto grudges.  Sometimes it is justified, but often it may simply have come as the result of a more simple misunderstanding.  Despite apologies and proclamations that all is fine, the negative feelings may still linger. 

The unhappiest people in the world are the ones who can’t let anything go.  They bring up those moments when they felt wronged over and over.  They use them as justification to build a negative attitude towards the world.  And they themselves suffer.

In contrast, happy people actually forgive … and then they forget.  They get over it quickly.  And often they don’t really take that much offense in the first place.  Doesn’t that sound better? 

How To Be Forgetful