871: Improve Your Business Conversations with Michael Reddington

Robert Plank 0:01 Hey everyone, welcome back to the marketer of the day podcast. We're here with Michael Reddington. Michael Reddington is a certified forensic interviewer. That's a CFI. He's the president of inquisitive Inc. and they integrate key components of effective, non confrontational interview techniques with current business research for executives. So we're going to hear today all about discipline, listening, improving our conversations, and so much more. Michael, glad to be talking to

Speaker 2 0:29 you. Thanks for having me here. I really appreciate it. And unless I

Robert Plank 0:33 appreciate you being here, and you know, this whole idea of listening, it probably took until like my late 20s, to kind of like dial down the cockiness to arrogance and realize that instead of like working so hard, and info dumping and and just like trying to be the one that says so many things, just listening, and hearing people out and hearing if they're ready for this or hearing them telling you about this problem, it made life so much easier. So So listening, I'm here to listen about you to tell us about listening. So what do you have?

Speaker 2 1:03 I appreciate standing up like that. And in getting to that in your early 20s might, or late 20s might put you somewhere between a decade and six decades ahead of many other people. It's, especially if we think about it in a business context, when we're under stress, we go to what we know. And many business meetings can be to some degree stressful even for people who are super confident in themselves in what they want to achieve. They're still pressured to close the deal, they're still pressured to land the job, they're still pressured to impress our boss, there's no pressure not to set us up for consequences to get yelled at, or taken off a job or to hear no, or whatever that might be. So when those stress levels mount out, we go to what we know, which is our stuff. Which leads exactly to what you were just talking about. We talk more we dominate the conversation, we overshare. And unfortunately, if we're not listening, we're not learning. And as I'm sure you've experienced as part of that transformation, the more we listened, the more we learn, the less we have to say the fewer questions we have to ask, in order to get more powerful information that leads to the outcomes and the relationships we aspire to create.

Robert Plank 2:18 I love it. And so what's coming to mind, as you're explaining all of that is, like you mentioned about being under stress. And there has been so many times when when I reminded myself, Okay, I'm giving this presentation, or I'm explaining this or trying to make the sale these these situations you mentioned, when I think about it in reverse, I think instead of here's what I need to do, or here's how I needed to impress someone, if I say, Well, what are they thinking? Where are they stuck? Where are they needs, then it kind of it seems like it sort of takes the pressure off me. And I can just kind of feel when to what it is I have to say and it just it kind of hurts my brain to think in this way. But whenever I get to stress I'm like, okay to go to is where are they at? What are they thinking? And what would they be asking me?

Speaker 2 3:06 I love it. I love it. And at the risk of speaking in hyperbole, that's a pretty critical paradigm shift. It's really easy for us to go into any conversation and say, Okay, what do I need to say? What do I need to deliver? What do I need to do? To your point, now we're entirely inward focusing. And we could be missing on any number of signals from our audience. And really, when it comes to listening, we can't decide if we're good listeners, only our audiences, only our counterparts can decide if we're good listeners or not. And when it comes to not only generating that impression of being an Intune, listener, but also again, creating the relationships and outcomes we strive to achieve. It's not about what we want to say. It's about what they need to experience. So going into any conversation and focusing on what does my client, what does my prospect what what does my boss, what does my employee what does my spouse need to experience in this conversation in order to choose to share the information, make the decision change the behavior that I'm looking for? And for me, even as part of that critical consideration process, one of the first questions I'll ask myself as part of that strategic preparation, is why shouldn't they commit to what I want them to? Not? Why should they? Because if I asked myself, Why should they there's a reasonable likelihood I'm transposing my expectations and perceptions onto them. But if I asked myself, well, if I was Robert, why wouldn't I want to do this? Why shouldn't he agree or commit to what I want him to? Now that literally forces me to have a real painful conversation with myself about where you are likely at what your goals or concerns might be? And now I can use the answers to that question, to begin to create a communication process centered around listening. To create the communication experience, you need to end up with a result I'm prioritizing.

Robert Plank 5:02 And I love that because you hear so much about like creating like your your perfect presentation or about customizing what you want to say to some audience. But it's easy to drive yourself crazy and saying like, Where do I even begin? And what you're mentioning there reminds me of, I was in one of the situations where I was like, I could literally talk about anything in this in this topic. And there's so many possible ways to start, I'm completely stuck. And I remember asking someone one time, and he said, Well, what are their weather? What are their objections? Like you said, what are the reasons why I shouldn't take this action. And what was forming in my mind was like, these three squares, like these three blocks, were just like floating around, and I like lining them up. And then thought of like a path that kind of warmed through each of these three kind of roadblocks obstacles, and I thought, hey, that's kind of that kind of removes some of the confusion. And it kind of is a solution to some of these cliches that you and I have been jumping into, like, solve their problem, and you know, what they're going through. But if we say, Okay, well, why why shouldn't Michael? Or why shouldn't Robert do this? Then your mind can maybe sorts? What are the top, you know, objections or roadblocks and then like, your content kind of almost creates its own path in that way. So that's kind of what that's kind of the visual that went through my head, as you were explaining this, why shouldn't be

Speaker 2 6:20 idea. That's fantastic. And then doing it that way you allow yourself to address their objections before they get the chance to verbalize them. And in a way that increases the perception of your credibility, because you've clearly been down this road before. So we're not putting ourselves in that situation to have to play that tug of war.

Robert Plank 6:38 And I love that. And I was talking just the other day about, I had a friend who was he was like feeling like insecure about being on a podcast. And I told them things like, well, by if if someone points out like a flaw in what it is that you're doing, or if there's like some one of these hidden objections, instead of avoiding it, why not lay deeper into it, and many times what you're describing here, there's this elephant in the room where there's this thing that needs to be addressed. And it's always fun to like, take that and like double down on it and say, Well, you thought there was this reason not to do it. And but it's even like three times worse than you thought. And let's just take care of it right now, instead of avoiding the issue. So there's like, what's coming to mind is like some of these fun ways that we can play around with this. And so in these last few minutes of what we're talking about here, it's always fun to hear about stories, right? Because I think you've given us some some cool solutions and some cool kind of abstract ways of thinking. But the concrete stories always helped to kind of drive that point home. So what sort of stories do you have here, Michael, about maybe like the do's and don'ts or like the the has that you've had, as far as this whole, strategic, ethical, persuasive listening kind of concept?

Speaker 2 7:54 That's a great question. And there's lots of different ways to potentially take that. I think I'll do I'll do an investigation related story. Just with the interrogation background, people might gravitate to that I'll keep it short, and then try to double down on a business story behind it as well. But for me, one of the biggest lessons I learned specifically from interrogation that carries over to all of my business conversations is allowing people the opportunity to save face and protect their self image. If we get into a situation where we force somebody to take in defend a position or they feel attacked or judged or embarrassed, you know, good luck getting whatever information we wanted from them after that, whether it is a business deal, whether it is the truth about where a project stands, or whether it is a confession in the interrogation room. And one that jumps in mind from the interrogation room was when I was interrogating a man who was expected to suspected a reasonable amount of theft. And early on in the interview, he told me that his brother manage the receiving dock. I was brought in from the outside but that should be need to know information that a suspected thieves brother works here as well, by the way at ground zero for where most large scale theft happens in the private sector if it's not happening through the computer system. So after he confessed to his theft, my new goal became getting him to snitch on his brother. So now I literally have to line up snitching on your brother with his self image. So in listening to him talk he, a lot of what he stole, he said was to help support his family. He had multiple kids. He had several different wives previously sort of juggling all of that. But he at least worked hard to come off as somebody who loves and cares about his family, and I'm sure to what degree he did. So because I was able to pick up on that love and dedication that he had to his family. I could tell him a story truthfully, about my brother and I growing up together, being best friends being told by our father, no matter what happened, we always had to take care of each other. And by no means did I indicate that John and I had committed any crimes together or done anything like that. But I could intimate that there were situations that maybe John and I followed each other into a room that we probably shouldn't have gone into. But it didn't matter. Because John was going I had to be there and vice versa. It literally when I concluded the story, I just dragged my thumb across my lip and said, you know, it wasn't always the best idea. But I had to be there with John. And when I did that, he nodded his head. Yes. So now I've got his self image aligned with, we have to do what we have to do to take care of our family. After that, I simply asked him, What is the most expensive item you and your brother ever took off the receiving dock together? At which point he sighed and said the air compressor and continued to snitch on his brother for several minutes after that. So really combining the strategic observation piece picking up on how important he says his family is to him and what he will do to take care of his family. And then sharing a story that allows him to protect his self image helps align the two opportunities and get to the truth. Did I leave enough time for a business example as well?

Robert Plank 11:04 You did. You gave me even the example that scared me a little bit, but then it makes you say, Okay, now how does it relate to like this business side of things? Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 11:12 In a fun example that I had specifically talking about observation this time, is right before COVID. So perfect timing. I live here in Charlotte. And there's another professional here in Charlotte who have an immense amount of respect for and she and I were preparing for a meeting, where basically, we wanted to co facilitate an event. But we needed a third partner to host and market it for us because we're busy. So there was a mutual relationship we had we figured it would work. We scheduled the meeting, on the way in, the woman who I'm going into this meeting with literally stops you on the street says okay, what's the plan? What are we going to tell them? The goal of this meeting is what's the outcome we want? How are we going to steer them towards that? And I smiled, and I looked at her and I said, Well, we're not we're gonna let the conversation come to us. And we're gonna scare it as we need to go. And you could see that that wasn't a process she was comfortable with probably not one that she had used before. And so I was literally able to say, well hang on a second, we know the main players we're talking with, we can literally anticipate how this conversation is going to go. So let's do it. We're going to walk in, they're going to say, Hey, how are you? They're going to tell us how excited they are to see us working together, they're going to tell a few stories. They're going to ask us why we're here. And then all we have to do is give a summary of the program we want to do and illustrate our understanding of their goals and schedule with their members and turn the microphone over to them. She said that what what we're going to observe their reactions and take it workouts. So we literally execute that. And they had their CFO and two of their vice presidents in the room with us. The CFO starts talking, everything went exactly as we anticipated. And I can tell that he's about to tell us as much as he loves the idea, the answer is going to be no, no, I don't know why yet. But I can pretty much tell that that's where this is going. So as he begins to deliver the message, I stopped watching him and I start watching his two VPS. Because he's already made up his mind, he's taken a position I'm not going to fight him off of it. But if I can watch how his two VPS react to what he says they might open up a window for me. And as he was saying they didn't have the bandwidth. They were really busy. One of his two VPS literally looks up into the left and bites her lip kind of scrunches her eyebrows up a little bit. And I'm like, huh, she doesn't necessarily agree. She might have another idea. So I stay quiet. We have this whole conversation about partnerships and relationships, and maybe someday down the road and great to see it. And before we leave, I literally looked at her and said, I'm sorry, if I dominated the conversation. I certainly didn't mean to. But I was curious as to what input you may have as well. She literally looked down the table at her CFO and said, You know, I actually have another idea that might work. She had another idea that we hadn't thought about based on something she was planning that allowed us to put together what was an awesome plan that COVID destroyed. So I guess there's the punch line that may or may not derail the story completely. But in that situation, being able to have a heightened level of contextual awareness and understand what everyone in the room was likely thinking and feeling in real time while being patient and letting the conversation come to us, allowed us to identify a previously I'm going to use the same word twice in a sentence and identified alternative, that would have worked fantastic.

Robert Plank 14:26 But in the moment you made it work with what you had, even if long term it didn't work out. And that's cool that you were in this situation where there was not a clear solution. But sometimes you think outside of the box and you say okay, well, this person has already made up their mind, but instead I'll focus my energy towards this person instead of trying to just beat down this wall that that won't get beat down. So that's so that this is all very interesting for us to think about. And so now how does it relate to the making money side of things and how does it relate to you? on what your company and creative is doing.

Speaker 2 15:02 I appreciate you asking both when it relates to making money, and I'm going to spend that towards your listeners, it's been said time and time again that we need to connect with people in order for them to truly perceive the value of what we offer. If they are going to invest in us, whatever our products or services may be spinning full circle all the way back to the beginning of our conversation. If we spend the majority of the conversation and try to convince them of our value, we're probably missing the boat. Whereas if we can be patient and let the conversation come to us and really identify not just where their pain is, that trope is too old and too vague. But really begin to understand what what is the emotional roller coaster they're writing right now, listening to their word choice, what's the unsaid story, watching their behavior? What emotions might they be feeling, where might some new avenues be? Now if we can begin to listen to intelligence as opposed to information, instead of trying to hammer whatever peg we're given into the round hole we brought into this conversation, now we can continue to create new and unexpected opportunities, potentially to make more money, because we can reframe the situation and illustrate our value in a different way. So how that relates to what we do at equative is we facilitate customized educational programs for CEOs, executives, sales teams, and HR teams, to help them activate the truth and reduce these missed opportunities and increase these commitments to action in their conversations.

Robert Plank 16:34 And I love how you said their intelligence, not information where because in my mind, information is limited. Let me list all these things. And maybe they can pick out one or two things. But instead, when you hear about intelligence, it's like the the CIA picks up on some little thing that was said, and then they use that information to then change what kind of action that they take. And, and this, I mean, I've come across this, this concept so many times in doing a product launch and trying to make something work and just wasn't working. And then I would ask for feedback from the customers. And I would just see the same patterns or the same phrases or keywords. And I wouldn't say Oh, instead of just trying to think of something super clever that someone will think, Oh, I can't believe you thought of that. Instead, look at what they're saying. And then in some ways, like mirror back to them or try to piece together or make sense the mess of like you said not just where the pain is, but what current roller coaster are they going on, they want to get off the roller coaster. And they know that there's there's some potential here and what they're doing, but they're just not quite getting there. And they need your help to do it. And so what you're doing here with inquisitive with making the making, aiming, like the learning fun and making the learning effective. Sounds amazing. So how can we find out more about this? What's the website? Where do we go?

Speaker 2 17:49 I appreciate it. There's several websites to learn more about the programs that we facilitate, in Quake live.com i n qu as IV to learn more about my background specifically, it's Michael reddington.com. And to learn more about the book, the discipline listening method, they can go to discipline listening.com To preview the book and read a little bit there before they maybe decide to purchase it.

Robert Plank 18:13 Fantastic. Make it very simple discipline, meth art discipline listening.com. Is that right? That's it. That's the one and then Michael reddington.com, and then in creative.com. So go to all three, have all three tabs open, bookmark them all, and figure out which one works for you right now. Go there right now, while still fresh on your mind. Don't wait for the podcast to be over, open up in case of.com Michael reddington.com and discipline listening.com. And we will see you there. And before we push the Close button on this whole conversation here, Michael, any final parting words of advice?

Speaker 2 18:47 I would say this value the opportunity to learn something new, over the risk associated with feeling vulnerable in any conversation. We're hardwired to listen and observe for information that makes us feel better about what we already think and believe. And if we don't override that, by forcing ourselves to maintain a learning mentality, we're probably going to find ourselves continuing to circle back to where we've already been.