Some of the students asked if they could see a video of them speaking so that they would know what to improve. I said, “Wrong focus. If I were to make a video, I would have the video be of your audience, not you. Then we will sit and watch the audience. But we will not watch you. It’s not about how you’re coming across; it’s about whether they feel a true connection to you.”
When your direct reports want something, ask questions that take them deeper. What drives that desire? If somebody says, “I want to be famous,” you might ask, “Why do you want to be famous?” And they might say in an unguarded moment, “Well, because famous people make a difference and people pay attention to them.” And you ask, “Well, why don’t you just make people pay attention to you by making a difference? Because right now you can make a difference. You don’t have to wait to become famous. You have a desire that’s been put in the future. But you could have it now.”
You can lead people away from their weakest position—Gee, I wish I could have what I want…but I’ll probably never get there—and lead them into giving away what they want! If they want appreciation, they can give more away. Soon, whenever they even think of something they want, they can say to themselves, I’m just going to give it away! After they practice doing that for a while, they begin to realize, If I have it to give away, I must already have it!
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Follow effective action with quiet reflection. From the quiet reflection will come even more effective action.
—Peter Drucker
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Steps to hands-off success in your life
Three action steps to take after reading this chapter:
1. Write down the four material things you want most in life right now. Boat, house, entertainment system, car, whatever. Leave plenty of space below what you wrote down.
2. Now write down why you want it: for example, “It would give me….” or, “It would mean that….” Discover the ways of being those “things” would create for you.
3. Finally, imagine how you can be that way right now. Today. At work and at home. Once you practice this act of deepening your desires and seeing what lies beneath each one, you can meet with each employee on your team and talk about their big picture career desires. You’ll help them get to their own way of being that they’re not yet giving themselves permission to understand. As a gifted hands-off mentor you will be able to show them that their best nature was being held hostage by an uncertain future. That they were saving their best for some yet-to-be realized experience. By showing them this, you will free them to be who they always wanted to be, now.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
LIVING IN THREE WORLDS
The greatest natural resource in the world is not in the Earth’s waters or minerals, nor in the forests or grasslands. It is the spirit that resides in every unstoppable person.
—Cynthia Kersey
I recently coached a business owner named Milo who had a large team of salespeople in the real estate field. He kept talking about how hard it was to get real producers on his sales team and keep them there.
He talked about the volatile market, the attitude of young people today, and the poor hiring system in his HR department. These were outer manifestations of his own scarcity thinking—his erroneous belief that he never has enough of anything.
“What do you want?”
“An all-star team of producers, instead of this high-turnover joke of a team I’ve got.”
“Then create it,” I said.
“What do you mean by that?”
“Build it. Stop wishing for it. That will push it away. Start building it.”
Milo took a long time, but he finally began to see that he could build his team from within. He let all his company members participate in recruiting. He changed his compensation system so people had higher incentives to stay a long time. Then everything began changing from within.
Milo soon realized the insanity of trying to fix what had already happened. Why try to undo history? You can’t do that. It was time to let it go and dive back inside. To connect with his inner spirit, the only true leverage point for change.
Success comes from three worlds
Allowing success requires that we create an understanding within ourselves of the existence of three worlds. Worlds that we live in every moment of every day, simultaneously. These worlds are spirit, mind, and body (or the physical world). And you can’t actually see most of what happens in those three worlds.
Duane explained his theory of three worlds one warm Sunday morning in his home while my tape recorder was running. He produced a diagram he had made (see the end of this chapter) to illustrate his point, and said, “If you’ve ever seen a scientific analysis of the spectrum of visible light, all the way from infrared down to real slow waves, there’s only a little tiny sector in the middle that’s visible. And it represents a very small percentage of what’s actually coming at us. Our whole lives are like that spectrum.”
“How do you mean?”