Category Archives: Coaching

The Best Christmas Ever: A Coach’s Story

The Worsening Situation

Sometimes circumstances can make the truly gifted feel incredibly small, even invisible. This is particularly true when a person is out of work, searching for a job that seems further and further away with each passing month. That, by itself, can be a crippling anxiety-generator, but the anxiety mounts when this talented individual is a single parent who looks at the uncertain future with fear and dread.

A coaching client, who I will call Karen, was a single mom who had been out of work for about eight or nine months when I finally met her in August, of this year. We conducted a rehearsal, and then in September we met again to do more work. I went over all of the techniques I wanted her to use to gain control of her emotional state and project a charisma that is magnetic and leads to job offers. She told me she was using several of them, but she was still failing in job interviews.

Our time together was over, but we kept in contact. One day she told me she was excited about an upcoming interview in late November, but I was not excited about her prospects. She sounded weak and uncertain, utterly lacking in confidence. She later told me that she was in a bad place at this stage of her job search. So I scheduled time to visit her on November 24th, the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, to try and prepare her for at least two opportunities.

Charisma Must Be Balanced

Karen naturally radiated warmth-charisma, but not the charisma that says with a sonorous tone, “I am strong and confident and capable of overcoming every challenge.” So, my goal was to balance her warmth-charisma with authority-charisma. When these two are balanced they act  like a powerful pheromone that is irresistible to hiring authorities. We then went over a strategy to help make this so.

Her next interview came and it must have gone well because she made it to the next round.

Ah, the second round. She had reached it several times, but her competitors kept passing her by as they raced for the finish line. Making matters worse, this stage involved the CEO of the company. He was a tough interview, kind of like a poker player wearing sunglasses. He gave nothing away.

The End of Uncertainty

The interview ended and Karen had an uneasy feeling. She was uncertain about how she did. Her feeling of uncertainty ended today when she got her offer. The CEO told her new boss, the VP of Sales, that Karen impressed him. As the VP told Karen, “He almost never says anything like that.” But her offer was not a good offer; it was a great offer. It was twice what another company recently offered her, and it exceeded what she was making a year ago. And here is what makes it stronger: The hiring company knew she had now been out of work for a year, and they knew what she was making. They could easily have offered her a lot less.

Karen was stunned by the generosity of the offer, but as I told her over the phone, “Karen, you’ve developed charisma. You made them want you, yearn for you to be a part of their team, and we can see the appearance of charisma in the result you generated. The hiring company paid you more than they logically and rationally needed to. And that is because, as Blaise Pascal once wrote, “The heart has reasons that reason can’t understand.”

The Best Christmas Ever

Christmas is coming in 11 days, but I am celebrating it today. And it is the best Christmas ever. For I got a chance to help a kind and decent person, who was gifted but did not always feel that way, to climb from her deep, dark sinkhole and arrive at a place where she and her son will be able to chart a new course.

Merry Christmas Karen, and thank you for making my Christmas the best ever.

Charisma in One Week: A Free Seminar

THE MEANING OF CHARISMA

Look up the definition of charisma and you will find that it is a divine gift, something that separates the extraordinary person from the ordinary Joe and Jill.

Does that sound right? Not to me. Charisma has to do with mastering a subconscious form of speech called non-verbal behavior, and I’ve taught people how to do this in one week.

THE POWER OF NON-VERBAL BEHAVIORS

Tom Payne
Tom Payne

What are non-verbal behaviors? They are facial expressions, body language, tone of voice and other elements of speech like pacing and pausing, etc. But what purpose do they serve?

They are subconscious expressions of our emotional state. When I am happy I do not have to consciously think: “I need to look happy. Smile, Tom, smile!” No, I automatically look happy, and so do you when this is your emotional state.

This causes an important effect: Those around us feel this happiness. That is what makes non-verbal behaviors so powerful. They make people feel what we feel. This is because of the mirror-neuron system. We are wired to respond in this way. And when a charismatic person is radiating confidence and positivity, then we are drawn to such a person.

FIRST EXAMPLE OF CHARISMA IN ONE WEEK

I was working with a client who had a non-verbal intensity that came from repeated failures at job interviews. He was subconsciously expressing his desperation to get a job, but I was able to teach him how to master his non-verbal voice. Then, a week later, he was one of many interviewing for a few, coveted opportunities at a well-respected, internationally-known company. The interviewing process would end on Friday and my client interviewed on Wednesday. His newly-found charisma produced the following result that both delighted and puzzled him. He received an offer that Thursday night. This was before they had finished interviewing the rest of the candidates. 

He said to me, “This doesn’t make any sense. What if Friday’s candidates are better than me? Now they won’t be able to extend an offer to one of them. Why not make an offer to me Friday evening, or the following Monday? I’m out of work. I would have waited. Happily.” He was shocked by the influence he had now gained. He caused a powerful, emotional response in the hiring authority, not a rational one. His charismatic pull created a craving for him. For him! The same person who had failed repeatedly at job interviews in the weeks prior. No wonder he was surprised. He was beginning to experience the profound insight of Blaise Pascal, “The heart has reasons that reason does not understand.”

SECOND EXAMPLE OF CHARISMA IN ONE WEEK

Another client, Tess, had failed in fifty-nine straight interviews. That is not a typo. Fifty-nine! Can you imagine how emotionally devastated she was? Then imagine the non-verbal behaviors these feelings produced. Not good, I can tell you. I worked with her for a little over a week and on her 60th job interview she got an offer for $20,000 more at the salary line than her previous job, the one she held 19 months ago.

Her charisma created a craving. But it could not overcome the bi-polar behavior that afflicts many corporations–they’re up and hiring one week, down and firing the next. A few months later this hiring company reorganized and she was one of the many let go.

Did she spiral back into the darkness? No. Within a matter of weeks she interviewed again and received another great job offer.

This charismatic communication style can be taught to jobseekers, salespeople, clinical researchers, and executives, and I have seen the outcomes that support this claim. So, how can you learn to control this non-verbal form of speech?

REGISTRATION INFORMATION FOR A FREE SEMINAR, OPEN TO THE PUBLIC

CTC ChicagoI am currently giving free seminars, open to the public, on mastering non-verbal communication. The next seminars will take place, in 2015, on October 6th, November 3rd, and December 1st at the Career Transitions Center of Chicago, 703 W. Monroe St., Chicago, IL, from 10:30-noon. If you are in the Chicago area, and are interested in attending, then you will need to register. To do this please visit www.ctcchicago.org by clicking on this link that takes you to the Full Calendar of Events. http://www.ctcchicago.org/show1.asp 

Then, scroll down to the date (my seminars are usually posted 2-4 weeks in advance), and click on the “Details” link associated with the seminar entitled, The Interviewing Edge: Mastering Non-Verbal Communication. Click “Reserve Here” and then follow the registration information. It is free, and open to the public, but you must register.

I hope to see you there. But if you cannot attend, and are interested in learning the techniques that produce this charismatic presence, then read the blurb below that introduces a resource that contains this system.

A guide to developing this charismatic presence
A guide to developing this charismatic presence

Tom Payne is an international management consultant who developed a sales system based on the emotional causes of the buying decision, his coaching of others, and recent advances in psychology and neuroscience. His system for developing a charismatic presence is found in his new, award winning book, “The Path to Job Search Success: A Neuroscientific Approach to Interviewing, Negotiating and Networking.” To read the first chapter, click on the following link: http://www.tompayne.com/books.html 

 

Hired or Rejected Within Seconds

Could it be that interviewers make a hiring decision in less than a minute and are unaware that they’ve made this decision? I believe this happens in almost every case. To understand how this might be you need a brief and simple introduction to the two mental systems that everyone possesses.

We have a subconscious mental system called, by some researchers, the cognitive unconscious, and a system we are very familiar with, the conscious, rational mind. Unlike the rational mind the cognitive unconscious is effortless, automatic and very fast. It also influences the conscious decisions we make. The following study shows how this subconscious decision making takes place.

RED CARD OR BLUE CARD

An experimental subject (called “the subject”) was faced with a red and a blue deck of cards. The blue deck gave the subject bigger wins, but even bigger losses. The red deck gave him smaller wins, but even smaller losses. Ultimately the blue deck produced a loser and the red deck produced a winner, but this was not immediately apparent.

By about card number 50 the subjects began to express doubts about the blue deck, but what was precisely wrong with it they could not say. They had a feeling, but not a rational, conscious conclusion. By card number 80 they knew what the problem with the blue deck was.

What about the cognitive unconscious? Is there a way to measure when it concluded the same thing? The cognitive unconscious communicates to us through the body. It has no voice. So to determine when it began to “speak” to the subjects they were hooked up to devices measuring heart rate and sweating. By card 10 their heart rate accelerated and their sweat glands activated. Without the subject realizing it, they began to make fewer blue card choices after card 10. The cognitive unconscious was already influencing conscious decisions. The cognitive unconscious detected the pattern much faster, because pattern detection is one of the many talents it possesses.

So a subconscious conclusion was drawn at card 10 that was communicated to consciousness by card 50–the uneasy feeling. We see similar things occurring to interviewers. They often have  difficulty articulating why a candidate is not right for the job. It is a feeling they have in their bones. They are like the subjects at card 50. Some pattern has been detected and it is influencing conscious thought. What could those patterns be?

ASSESSING TRAITS BASED ON NON-VERBAL BEHAVIOR

We have an amazing ability to assess people on just a few seconds of non-verbal data. People who viewed three two-second video clips, minus the sound (a mere six seconds of non-verbal data) assessed a teacher on traits such as confidence, optimism, enthusiasm, and likability. Their assessments were highly correlated with those of students who sat through the entire semester watching and listening to the same teacher.

Non-verbal behavior is the language of the cognitive unconscious. It is what enables us to immediately recognize an angry, sad, or happy face. We don’t have to rationally process this. And so, during an interview a subconscious assessment is automatically and effortlessly made on non-verbal behavior. It is a highly accurate assessment and it steers the conscious mind toward a decision. It is also an assessment that occurs quickly, resists change and assimilates all incoming information to fit the existing image. This assessment is called a mindset, but when people meet for the first time this mindset is called a first impression. And just like the blue and red decks, we are unaware of this assessment made by our subconscious system until “the 50th card,” or, depending on the individual, 5-15 minutes have passed. At that point we have an uneasy feeling about this candidate and a great feeling about that one.

THE DOMINANT VOICE OF CONSCIOUSNESS

One reason why non-verbals are so powerful is because so much of it is visual. The cognitive unconscious processes 11 million bits of data per second, and 10 millions of these bits are visual. The rational mind? It is slow. About 40 bits per second. Yet what do we tend to focus on in job search? Those rational 40 bits, ignoring the 10,999,960 bits that shape decisions in seconds.

Non-verbal behaviors express feelings like anxiety, nervousness or confidence. These feelings are felt and generate feelings that influence subconscious assessments that then influence conscious decisions.

THE PATH TO JOB SEARCH SUCCESS:

The following link will take you to my eBook, The Path to Job Search Success: A Neuroscientific Approach to Interviewing, Negotiating and Networking. It details the system that will enable you to gain control of your non-verbal voice.

http://amzn.to/1dETvOC

An Antidote to Negative Self-Talk

anxiety2A private client of mine, who I will call Tess, was like a soldier suffering from PTSD. She had been out of work for nineteen months and had failed in fifty-nine, straight job interviews at twenty-nine companies. She was very smart (MBA from the University of Chicago), accomplished, likable, and engaging, but she no longer believed in herself. A tape kept playing in her head that said, “Loser! What happened to you? Your career looked so promising. Why did you screw it up?”

Nineteen months of negative self-talk can make you a stranger to yourself. She no longer knew who she was, and she desperately needed to reconnect with her real self before she disappeared. So, we had a conversation:

Me: Are you smart?

Tess: Yes. I believe so.

Me: What makes you think that?

She looked at me a little surprised. My tone was challenging. I was saying, “Prove it.” She then said:

Tess: Well, I went to a distinguished undergrad program and did very well. I also did well in a post grad program at one the top universities in the country.

Me: Oh, so you have objective evidence that you are smart. This is a fact, not a fantasy, am I right?

Tess: Yes.

Me: Are you likable?

And so the conversation went. It became something of a game, and she would smile with each question. I finally ended it by saying, “When I tell you that you have every reason to be confident because you are smart, likable, and engaging, I am not saying things that aren’t true just to try and make you feel better. I’m sharing objectively verifiable facts. So will you please start believing me and believe in yourself.”

After our conversation she would wake up each morning and say, “I’m smart and I have objective evidence to prove it. I am likable and engaging for the following reasons….”

dreamstime_xl_19169606Her negative self-talk was now replaced by positive self-talk based on reality. A week later she interviewed with a company and was hired. Their salary offer was $20,000 more than her previous salary. This indicates she was able to transform their “need to fill a slot” into “an intense desire to have her fill this slot.”

The hiring authority can feel what we feel. Human nature was designed to have this capability through the mirror neuron system. When the hiring authority feels our anxiety, fear and a lack of confidence this can outweigh the objective reality that each one of us may actually be a great hire. So we need to regain our confidence and when we do, and the 60th opportunity comes around, this same person who failed the previous 59 times can hit the ball out of the park.

When I spoke to Tess after she received her job offer, I could feel what she felt: the pure joy that accompanies the end of a nineteen-month, brutal slog through a wilderness.

THE PATH TO JOB SEARCH SUCCESS:

The following link will take you to my eBook, The Path to Job Search Success: A Neuroscientific Approach to Interviewing, Negotiating and Networking. It details the system used to help Tess and others.

http://amzn.to/1dETvOC

The Male and Female Brain

In order for us to align business practices with human nature–the way we process information, make decisions, etc.–we must first understand how humans are wired to operate. One area that people tend to shy away from are the differences between men and women. This is a touchy subject for any number of reasons, but we risk misaligning our business practices in ways that hurt men, or women, or both, when we fail to take into account that gender differences do exist.

Louann Brizendine, MD, in her books, The Female Brain, and The Male Brain, illustrates the neuroanatomical differences between men and women. In other words, there are male brains and female brains. The change occurs at the eight-week mark while male babies are in the womb. Notice, I did not include women in this statement because, as it turns out, the default position of the brain is female. Men and women begin life with “a female brain.” Yes, the cells of men have a Y-chromosome, so their brains are fundamentally different, but the structures of the brain are pretty much the same.  This changes at the eight-week mark when “the tiny male testicles begin to produce enough testosterone to marinate the brain and fundamentally alter its structure.”  Louann Brizendine, MD, The Male Brain (New York: Harmony Books,  2010), p. 2.

Among the structural changes: the Medial Preoptic Area (MPOA) of the male hypothalamus grows 2.5 times larger than the female’s MPOA. This area regulates sexual pursuit. That explains a lot, doesn’t it? Another area that is larger in males than in females, and also part of the hypothalamus, is the Dorsal Premamillary Nucleus that “contains the circuitry for a male’s instinctive one-upmanship, territorial defense, fear and aggression.” (Brizendine, p. xv).

This work correlates well with Susan Tannen’s work in sociolinguistics where she illustrates how men tend to have hierarchical relationships and their speech, or lack of it, reflects this. They always want to be “one-up,” in her wording, and not “one-down.” Women, on the other hand, operate in a more horizontal fashion, seeking to preserve the group harmony and consensus at the expense of staying at the top of a hierarchical ladder.

These finding correlate well with the Myers-Briggs world of Type. Around 3/4 of women tested are “Feeling” types that are more concerned with maintaining group harmony and dislike confrontation, unlike the other side of this dichotomy, the “Thinking” type.

All of this impacts communication, among other things. As Tannen famously noted, men don’t like to ask for directions because it places them in a “one-down” position. The person who may, or may not, possess the information being sought is now one-up.

Without an understanding of human nature we can make the most basic skills–e.g., communication–less functional than it should be. And this is just one small area, with a huge impact across all areas, where an understanding of how we tick can improve our performance.

Sales is an area that I am most familiar with and the way many salespeople, if not most, work against human nature instead of with it is astounding. I’ve consulted with European and American sales forces; some have had PhDs as salespeople, but education and intellect did not change the fact that their approach worked against human nature instead of with it. My volunteer work coaching the unemployed reveals the same issue. People, for example, interview in a way that is contrary to success. But once they align their interviewing, or selling, or communicating, with human nature, the results are much better and the chances of a successful outcome are greatly enhanced.

Consulting Assignment in Europe and Leveraging Your Strengths

I will be traveling to Germany soon to work with a group of sales professionals from Germany, France, Italy, and Belgium. It will be my second time with this group and the focus will be the adoption of successful behaviors. One of these behaviors that works in sales, leadership, job interviews and life, is creating and telling powerful stories.

Strengths-ImageI’ve already received several of this class’s stories and they will become part of a series of workshops, but one was particularly powerful. It was written in English (for my sake), and English is not this person’s native tongue. What amazed me was the way I did not have to make many changes to this story to improve it.

I’ve given dozens of story-telling courses, and some have involved people with advanced degrees from Stanford and other fine schools, but one variable remains constant: I must rewrite their story to make it better. But not this European’s story.

How could this be? Another part of this consulting course provided the answer. The course will include, among other things, a few workshops on discovering your strengths and then leveraging them in your work. According to StrengthsFinders, this person possesses the strength of communication which, their literature states, is an innate gift for turning events into vivid, powerful stories (among other things). The question becomes, “Did this person know about this strength and leverage it prior to this training?”

The first time I met this group was in Rome, and I do not remember this individual mentioning the use of stories in his or her work. More than likely, it is a great strength that has been under-utilized. Hopefully, following this assignment, they will all learn about their strengths and begin to employ them with intentionality. And if they do, they will be more engaged and successful in their work.

Coaching Notes: The Fastest Way to Get Your Audience to Check Out

I was attending a workshop on how to facilitate a presentation, meeting, seminar, etc. It started out well. The instructor gave us helpful information. Then the wheels fell off her wagon and I began to think, “I want to be anywhere but here.” How did such an abrupt transition occur?

facilitatorFirst, she stopped providing useful information. What I was hoping for was, “In facilitation you can run into the following difficult situations [she lists them], and in the next hour I will discuss ways to handle each situation, as well as invite feedback from you about how you may have handled it.” The strength of this approach is it guarantees useful information will be shared. But she didn’t want to walk down this path. Instead, she wanted to levitate in a different direction.

I should have headed to the door the moment she started ringing her meditation bell. But I didn’t. Curiosity kept me glued to my seat. I thought, “Maybe she’ll start chanting, “Hare Krishna,” or belt out a sonorous, “Ommm,” but she took this first-ever experience for me no further. Nor did she take the learning of the class any further.

bellsWhat she did was make the bell seem like incidental contact when compared to the full-contact approach that followed. Her second grievous sin was to lie. She said what was going to happen next was not role play, but psychodrama, Gestalt, whatever, but I’ve been in hundreds of role-plays and this looked, sounded and smelled like a role-play.

Role plays are okay so long as you provide a safe environment. This one was anything but. She asked a person to facilitate a conference call and the moment he began to speak about how he would be coaching each person individually she stopped him and asked the group, “Has anyone else started to check out of this conference call since it will not involve everyone?” After he tried to defend his approach she dismissed him to return to his seat and replaced him with someone else.

I wanted to say, “You’ve certainly caused me to check out.” Somehow an unkind, insincere and fruitless approach to teaching others has a way of causing that effect.

Coaching Notes: The Ineffective Coach

I’ve recently attended a training program that involves receiving content, working on the content, and being coached to improve the result. This experience of mine was not based on stories and being coached on how to create effective ones, but I will use the development and improvement of stories as an example. The content was good, the exercise was good, but the coaching skills of the instructor were deplorable. Here are a few areas where he seemed to lose his way:

  1. The goal of coaching is to assist the person being coached in the acquisition of skills and behaviors leading to success. In other words, the focus is on the student and helping them.
  2. This process requires a process that first recognizes what the student did well. “I really liked this part and that part.” Criticism, which is part of coaching, is best received when the student understands that the coach isn’t only seeing what is wrong or needs improvement.
  3. The delivery of the critique, or what you feel needs to be changed, is best heard by the student when it is couched in non-threatening language and a non-threatening approach, “Is there anything about your story that you feel could be improved?”
  4. If they think it is fine, but it obviously isn’t, you could continue, “Let’s word it the following way and see if you like it better.”

Coaching is an art most easily mastered by a person who is secure and comfortable in their own skin. But the coach who is out to prove how he is right, or how he is smarter than everyone else, is one who will never master the art of coaching until he masters a little self-control.

Coaching Notes: Keep Fishing or Cut Bait?

Problem solving is unlocking the secrets of the maze we are in.
Coaching is problem solving. Your problem solving approach can determine success or failure.

He was over sixty, very hard of hearing, spherical in shape… and LOSING MAJOR CUSTOMERS AND BEING BANNED FROM HOSPITALS. He was the first person I’d met who had been banned from hospitals, and the last person I would have picked to achieve this distinction. For he was kind, friendly, likable…what the heck was happening?

His numbers were never great before I came on board and now they were getting worse. At a company that seemed only to fire convicted felons, I was surprisingly given a green light to fire Joe. He was losing too many large, long-term, influential customers. But I didn’t want to. He was nearing the end of his career and I did not want it to be with me pulling the rug out from under him. So, I had one option. Coach him, make him better.

I have a simple coaching philosophy: Subtract the most egregious behavior, if there is one, and add the most important, missing behavior.

To locate what is missing and what’s needed you must keep quiet, let people do what they normally do, and watch like a hawk. The egregious behavior appeared quickly. A nurse asked a reasonable question and Joe responded, “Do you really think that would be a good idea?” I kept quiet to see where this was going. I thought his belittling response must have been an anomaly since it was so unlike him.

The next day he was asked a question by another nurse and he said, “Now that really doesn’t make a lot of sense, does it?” Now I had a pattern forming and the nurse’s visceral response confirmed I had found the bad behavior that needed to be removed.

After he was made aware of what he was doing, and its impact, he stopped doing it. I never heard of another problem about him.

As for the behavior that needed to be added I chose the most powerful sales technique I know: differentiation. [If you are interested in the subject of differentiation, please click on the following link  http://bit.ly/19jQ9Gy.] I taught him how to do it and–to this day it amazes me–he was an instant master of the technique. The very next day he delivered a differentiation presentation and closed a large piece of business. You could have knocked me over with a feather. Two years later I was delighted to present Joe with the Region Manager of the Year award. As I stated to all present at the awards ceremony, there was no one I was more proud of in the entire company than Joe.

Coaching can be tough for the coach and the person being coached, but there are few career satisfactions greater than turning a person around when everyone, including the coach, believed the company should probably cut bait.

Coaching Notes: The Genius

There was a person who needed coaching but he had two things standing in his way. First, he was extremely talented. Second, his ego believed no one was capable of improving him. He was the center of the sales universe and everyone else were satellites circling him in a worshipful orbit.

He actually believed every good idea was his. A company-wide joke went like this: Your idea must be really good, because Joe is telling everyone it was his. Another joke: “What did Neil Armstrong see when he set foot on the moon? Joe’s footsteps, because he had gotten there first.”

Question: How do you coach a genius? Someone who is infinitely smarter than you?

Answer: You can’t coach them directly because, unless you are a certified demigod (think Hercules, or Perseus), your opinion doesn’t really matter. So you must elicit the opinion of someone whose opinion does matter. In Joe’s case, since he was a salesperson, this respected person was his customer.

Why are you even trying to coach someone as good as me?
Why are you even trying to coach someone as good as me?

What was Joe’s problem? One of them was his presentation style. He presented PowerPoint slides that were crammed with text and black and white photos. As I told him, “Your content, the substance of your presentation, is great, but your style is detracting from it. You need fewer words, more color, movement, embedded videos, things that help make your lively presentation more lively.”

My critique changed nothing. It only hurt our relationship. He thought I was incredibly presumptuous to be critiquing him. In short, he hated me for being arrogant enough to challenge an acknowledged superstar.

What was I to do to make this good salesperson better? I did the following. We had an important hospital system coming to our corporate office. I arranged for me to have the first 30 minutes of the presentation, and Joe could have the last hour. I used a presentation rich in graphics, footnoted references to clinical papers, sound, movement, and ideas that strategically addressed problems common to most hospitals. The audience was transfixed. I held them in the palm of my hand. I then turned it over to Joe. Within five minutes they were taking restroom breaks while he was still presenting. After the presentation the key customers came to me and asked, in front of Joe, for copies of my presentation. When I asked why the CIO said, “You’ve made my case for me. You have clear illustrations of benefits, footnoted studies…I can use this internally to sell members within our hospital system on your product.” WOW!

Joe was not a genius–he only thought he was–but he was smart enough to see how the customer had voted on our two presentation styles. Within a week he had adopted the behaviors I had wanted to impart, without me asking him to do so.