StandOut (7 page)

• Demonstrate that you know my or my company’s particular challenges inside and out. Even if I haven’t engaged you yet, your presenting me unique solutions to problems that my current supplier is trying to help me solve may be just what it takes for me to switch. Show that you know me.

How to Win in Client Service

Advisor
: Your strength is that your advice is specific and clear.

• You don’t skate around an issue I, your client, may be having with your product or service. Instead you confront my problem head-on and, most importantly, give me something concrete to do about it. From my perspective, the more concrete you can be the better.

• You always seem to have anticipated my needs. You have researched my situation, pinpointed practical opportunities, seen the potential obstacles, and more often than not, plotted out my alternative courses of action. All of this “advance work” builds my confidence in you and your team.

• Limit my choices, as in “Do this or do that.” This directness works for you—and for me. It keeps things simple and prevents me from second-guessing myself later.

• Be clear when you believe I’ve made a poor buying decision, and redirect me toward something that will serve my needs better. Make sure you give me at least three solid reasons for this advice.

• Get to know the details of the product or service inside and out. Share these details with me. I may not always understand exactly what you are saying, but the more obvious your expertise is, the more confident I will become.

• Be honest when you don’t know the answer or cannot solve my problem right away. I love your confidence, but mine will quickly disappear if I sense that you’re making things up.

• Speak my language. Learn the terms that I use to describe my world (client rather than customer, associates rather than salespeople) and ensure you always use this terminology when working with me. It shows me that you get that each client is unique and that you cater to that uniqueness.

CONNECTOR

The Definition

You begin by asking,
“Whom can I connect?”
You see the world as a web of relationships, and you are excited by the prospect of connecting people within your web. Not because they will like each other—though they might—but rather because of what they will create together. Your mantra is “One and one makes three” or thirty or three hundred. On your most optimistic days, you see almost no limit to what people with different strengths and perspectives can create together.

You are a naturally inquisitive person, always asking questions about each person’s background, experience, and skills. You know instinctively that each person brings something unique and distinct to the table, something, no matter how small, that might prove to be the vital ingredient.

In your head, or in your contacts, you store a large network of people whom you’ve met, learned about, catalogued, and positioned somewhere within this network—each person with a link to at least one other person, and each with an open port for another link to be added. People are drawn to you because you are so obviously passionate about their particular expertise, and because you have so many practical ideas about how their expertise can be combined with others. You enliven and enlarge others’ vision of who they are and what they can achieve. You are a connector, weaving people together into the fabric of something much larger and more significant than themselves.

You, at Your Most Powerful

• You think in terms of possibilities. “Wouldn’t it be great if we linked up this person with that person?”

• You are a multiplier, always trying to put two things together to make something bigger and better than it is now.

• Your chief impact is through your sense of what could be, your excitement about the combination of people or of people plus technologies, projects, ideas.

• You create culture change, not because you talk “culture” but because you bring people together in order to get something done—you sense that there’s no better way to get people to trust one another than to have them do work together.

• You bring new people on to a team quickly. Because you are able to “ramp up” people so fast, you make teams and organizations stronger, quicker.

• You are a catalyst. You speed up the reaction between two people or two groups or between a particular person and a particular challenge.

• You are a researcher of people. You are intrigued by people’s unique qualities and talents, and so when you meet someone, you delve deep, asking one question after another. The more you understand about this person, the better you’ll be able to position them so that they link up with others— either inside or outside the organization.

• You are also a researcher of facts, technologies, and products. Each new thing you learn is raw material. You can use it to make some new concoction of people, products, ideas.

• You are resourceful. When your back is against the wall, you are sure that you will know someone you can call. Your “toolbox” of people is big and always getting bigger.

• This resourcefulness gives you an aura of confidence—and of optimism. You have a strongly positive outlook about the world and about people in general. You just know that with enough thought you will be able to dredge your memory banks and find someone who can get it done.

• Others are drawn to you. They are drawn to you because they see that you are looking for their best qualities. They are drawn to you because you will connect them with people who can complement them. They are drawn to you because you find ways in which they can be useful.

• You are winning and persuasive. People tend to do what you ask of them because you excel at painting the picture of “what could be.”

How to Describe Yourself (in Interviews, Performance Reviews)

• “I am fascinated by people’s strengths and gifts.”

• “I’m really good at figuring out who should work together and why they would work well together.”

• “I’m a collector. I collect information about people and store it away so that I always know whom to call. For example . . .”

• “I love pulling people together from all parts of the organization for a special project. Here’s how I did it in my last position . . .”

• “The most important thing to me is speed. I want to get myself up to speed on any new subject really quickly, and I want to find the right person to connect to this subject really quickly.”

• “I get a kick out of ‘wouldn’t it be great if . . .’ kind of thinking. I’m always cooking up new projects and plans.”

• “I think I’m effective at persuading people to put aside their differences and join forces to get something done together.”

How to Make an Immediate Impact

• You’re lucky. You’re a fast starter. Your natural instincts cause you to reach out and connect with your new colleagues. Your genuine interest in them will doubtless endear you to them.
So begin by letting these instincts run.

•
Start building your own private “scouting report” on your new network.
For each person, capture what you’ve learned about his or her particular area of expertise or interest or experience, and your initial thoughts about where he or she adds the greatest value to the team.

• Find an opportunity to surprise a colleague with how useful your network is
. Most people don’t continually add people to their mental list of potential resources and so won’t have many people whom they can call on to help them get something done or solve a problem. But you do. So as soon as you can find the right situation, pull out your “Rolodex” and offer just the right person or expert who can help solve a pressing problem.

• Once you feel you’ve had the chance to display your resourcefulness, it will be time to
flex your “possibility-thinking” muscles
. (Don’t try this before you’ve established your credibility or others may reject your ideas as presumptuous.) What’s powerful about you is that the possibilities you see in your head are not theoretical. Instead you think in terms of practical realities, as in “Let’s put this person with that person and then focus them on this particular project.” Your ideas might not necessarily be accepted immediately, but persevere. Keep offering up these “what-if” scenarios. Soon your colleagues will come to rely on you as a source of practical ideas.

• Be sure to
target these “what-if” ideas toward solving existing problems
rather than creating something utterly new. People tend to be immediately grateful to problem solvers. And, in contrast, people are initially suspicious of innovators.

• Always keep your social networking platforms up-to-date with fresh and vivid content
. You’re inclined to do this anyway, but sometimes, as with all of us, the other demands in your life distract you. As the Connector amongst us, we will come to rely on you to maintain the web of our relationships. (If keeping three or four platforms up to date proves too much of a time drain, configure one platform so that it updates all the others.)

How to Take Your Performance to the Next Level

• Stay attentive
. Wherever you go there’s the chance to make a connection. Interesting people are everywhere, not just at work or at professional gatherings, but sitting next to you on the plane, at your child’s birthday party, at the church planning meeting.

• You are inspired by extremely talented people, so try to
find at least two groups of experts in which you can play a leadership or organizing role
. It doesn’t really matter what the group’s expertise is. What’s invigorating for you is hearing the discussions, listening to the different viewpoints of these “masters.” Listen long enough and you will almost certainly come up with a new mission, a new possibility.

• Discipline yourself to connect someone to something every day
. For example, send an e-mail a day beginning “I thought of you when I read this . . .” and then include a line or two about how this particular person might benefit or learn from what you sent them. We rely on you for practical possibility thinking, so be sure to draw a clear connection between what you sent and what the person might be able to do with it.

• To expand your network,
go beyond your usual haunts and gatherings
. Once or twice a year, sign up for an exciting group experience—a cycling trip, a charity walk, a river rafting expedition—and go alone. Given your nature, it’s almost guaranteed that you’ll encounter someone who’ll spark an idea of a new connection you can make.