The importance of listening

~ ACTIONABLE EXPERT ADVICE ~
First Published in Cynopsis Classified Advantage


One of the most important skills you should use in your job search is listening carefully, both literally and metaphorically. You have to listen to your friends when they tell you about opportunities. You have to listen to your bosses and clients to learn about your strengths and weaknesses. You have to listen to your heart to know what you really want to pursue.

You especially have to listen to the wording of the job ad. What does it actually say they are looking for? You have to listen closely to the recruiter and to your interviewer.

You will already have invested large chunks of time developing your own unique positioning to separate you from the pack. You have probably crafted yourself a script for your elevator meetings, a template for your cover letter, a set of anecdotes for your interview. And all this as it should be. If you have thought it all through and internalized it and what it means, it will do its magic for you. But if you are determined to stick to your script willy-nilly this investment might all be for nought.

Listen carefully to what is said and also between the lines to what is unsaid. And that means listening not only in the moment of the interview, but it means listening to the research you will have done in advance. Listen to what the company says on the website. Listen to the story the recruiter tells you about the job. Listen to the LinkedIn profile of your interviewer. Take it all in and frame your responses and approaches accordingly.

If you are safely in a job but aspire to a promotion or a new assignment, listen to your boss, to your co-workers, to the press so that you can create the opportunity and be there as the obvious person to fill it. This comes not just from wanting it  and telling your boss "I want the bigger title," but from asking the right questions of the right people and listening to what is needed, so you can tell them you will provide just that.

People like to be listened to. They like to be heard. They do not like to be ignored. So tell them you heard them by responding directly and positively to something they said. Don' t stick to a script  be ready to improvise. If they feel you have not listened to them, or worse yet responded with a " No, " they will shut down and they will not listen to you. Listening keeps you relevant and smart. Their awareness of your listening to them keeps them engaged with you. I can' t stress this enough.

Could you be stifling innovation instead of encouraging it?

Change is a pre-requisite for survival - whether as an individual or as part of an  organization.  

How are you going to get the people in your team to think and act innovatively so that you can change and improve the services or products you offer to keep up with demand and with the competition. 

The challenge is nicely laid out by Prof John Bessant in his eminently readable book "High Involvement Innovation" (see below).

When you start to look at whether your organization supports innovation or whether it actually inhibits it, a good way is to ask people to tell you their favorite "killer phrases".  This will quickly show the ways that ideas are getting killed - and how this can work to prevent the kind of effective innovations that we perhaps thought we were encouraging.

They often take for form of "Great idea...BUT..."  BUT: now that's how to stop an idea in its tracks. If people get used being told "no" in these ways they will soon stop even trying to propose new ideas.

Here are some "killer phrases" running inside people's heads:

I've got a good idea - BUT
   No-one will listen to me
   It's not my job to offer ideas
   Someone else must already have thought of it
   I'll look stupid if I say anything

At the group or organization level they might look like this:

That's a great idea - BUT
   We've already tried it
   We've never tried it
   We don't have time / money/people/other resources
   X wouldn't like it
   X would like it (!)
   It's not the way we do things around here
   We did that last year and look what happened.

So start by asking yourself or your teams what are their killer phrases. Then you will begin to see what has to be done to alter the climate so that the ideas, some of which will mean the difference between success and failure, can come to the surface and be taken seriously, tested and implemented. 

If your culture has evolved to stifle innovation - then innovation you will not get.

Carve out the time. Just do it.

We all have major issues of our careers - business planning or portfolio development or what have you - that has to get done but we put it off because the day-to-day stuff just won't let us do it.

I am working with a wonderful and dynamic client who needs to spend time writing. Trying to set part of every day aside for it did not work. There were too many other stimuli and phone calls and emails and so on to be dealt with. The time never materialized.

So we have decided that she will carve out - set aside - an entire day every week. And not a weekend day either. A weekday when no calls will be taken and no emails returned. For her the writing is part of moving her career forward. This is not a hobby to be done at night or weekends - it is important. And clients and colleagues will have to understand - and they will. Just this week I had a communication from a senior TV executive who said that she would not be available on one day as she would be traveling. That was easy for me to understand and work around - no problem. Happens all the time. Similarly she might be on a shoot or at a client - also out of reach.

So we have instituted a one day a week for writing - she will be unavailable and the world will not have a problem with that.

I recommend this technique. It could be a day a week or every two weeks - whatever you need. But make it real. Carve it out. Put it on the calendar and stick to it.

Crisis, Misdemeanors and Special-NESS

Things that made me go hmm this week.

I heard from a self-proclaimed e-business guru that “if you haven’t p-ssed somebody off today you aren’t doing your job”! I heard from a just-graduated art student that if an artist wants to get attention it is all about “committing misdemeanors.” “Misdemeanors” she kept on saying. And I heard last night at the SHOOT New Directors Showcase that “crisis and creativity go hand in hand.”

So in the quest for what's new and next - and for the attention we crave - it sounds as if we should be making more noise, stirring more pots, causing more trouble and intelligently exploiting the air of crisis that is all around us in the media industry.

But we had better do it with a point. Be true to our own unique personality and skills – be bad “on brand” in fact, if we think that bad is what we need to be. There is no doubt that each of us has to distinguish ourselves from the pack. No-one wants “just another one of those”. Everyone is looking for something (or someone) special.

So we each have to be just as special as we can be and show it to the world - what David Byrne has called our "special-NESS." And we should probably rattle some cages along the way.

Exec Producer recommends Workshop

Click the image to read the original - here is what the letter says:

March 12, 2009


Dear Michael,

Many thanks once again for the recent team building seminar you and April Jaffe led at our offices here at Schofield Films. Even after all these weeks, many of the mental exercises from that evening still resonate. I am consciously referring back to things I learned. For example, the way in which we began to frame a conversation in a more positive way has had a lasting effect on me. And I have tried to purge the word “but” from daily conversation and emails. I further find myself actually thinking about where I want a conversation to go and the words I want to use on the journey. In spite of myself, I actually felt stimulated by the evening’s activities. I recommend it for anyone with a brain or anyone who hopes to acquire one.


Regards,



Robert Berman
Executive Producer
Schofield Films

Get in touch and we can tailor a workshop for your team or company. Click here to learn more.

Recession Depression? Try Hypnosis!

Rachmaninov was in such a funk after his first symphony was savaged by the critics (he was 24 yrs old - and no, that is not him in our picture) that he couldn’t compose for two years.

Then, according to Linda Mack of Andrews University, friends connected him with a psychologist called Dr Nikolai Dahl who tried to restore his self-confidence through hypnosis.

In a dark room, the doctor would repeat over and over such phrases as “You will begin your concerto…you will work with great facility…the concerto will be of excellent quality.”

The treatment was a success and the resulting 2nd Piano Concerto was a resounding triumph, and is still one of his most popular pieces. It is dedicated to the good Dr Dahl.

Your own ideas are always better

Creative people don't respond well to enterprise level systems and color-coded filing. We don't do too well with org charts and direct reporting grids. And we surely are awful at doing time sheets! Hopeless. And the real creative doesn't really care what her title is - does she? The person in the room with the best idea has the most status at that moment - whatever their title, whatever their age.

To learn what choices exist for my creative-business clients, I have been looking at coaching and self-help sites. I reacted really badly to a lot of the false enthusiasm I saw - and to acronyms - especially acronyms. What is it with acronyms?

Here's one of mine:
SWOTWA Stop Wasting Our Time With Acronyms.

And another.
FAME: Fatuous Acronyms Make Enemies

Got any others?

The one proven way to help a creative person is to help them figure out their own answers for themselves. We all know that someone else's idea is never a hit - until it becomes your own idea - then it is the smartest thing since whatever. I know that's how it works for me and that's how it works for pretty much every creative person I have worked with.

It's not manipulation - you help them to find a better answer - or a better way of doing things. (and I am sorry to say if they find an acronym helpful - well it will have to come from them - and they are welcome to it. Though LSMFT worked pretty well on the poor misguided smokers of the world. Look it up!)

So give creative people respect and help them to solve it themselves. Create a good environment, excite them, nurture and guide them and together we'll conquer the world.

"Wow - those marketers really understand me!"

Our Research Director, Laurie Pollock, brings us this insight into how we really see ourselves. It sure works for astrologers - marketers please note.

In 1948, psychologist Bertram R. Forer gave a personality test to his students, and then gave them an analysis supposedly based on the test's results. He invited each of them to rate the accuracy of the analysis on a scale of 0 (very poor) to 5 (excellent) as it applied to themselves: the average was 4.26.

He then revealed that each student had been given the same analysis:

"You have a need for other people to like and admire you, and yet you tend to be critical of yourself. While you have some personality weaknesses you are generally able to compensate for them. You have considerable unused capacity that you have not turned to your advantage. Disciplined and self-controlled on the outside, you tend to be worrisome and insecure on the inside. At times you have serious doubts as to whether you have made the right decision or done the right thing. You prefer a certain amount of change and variety and become dissatisfied when hemmed in by restrictions and limitations. You also pride yourself as an independent thinker; and do not accept others' statements without satisfactory proof. But you have found it unwise to be too frank in revealing yourself to others. At times you are extroverted, affable, and sociable, while at other times you are introverted, wary, and reserved. Some of your aspirations tend to be rather unrealistic.”

Forer had assembled this text from horoscopes.

Later studies have found that subjects give higher accuracy ratings if the following are true:

* the subject believes that the analysis applies only to them
* the subject believes in the authority of the evaluator
* the analysis lists mainly positive traits


Source: Wikipedia

Behavioral Marketing

A man recently offered his personal profile for sale on ebay for a minimum of $100. There were no bidders. Yet yesterday AOL bought Tacoda – one of the two big behavioral targeting networks – the price I am told worked out at $2.25 per user profile in their database. I went yesterday to the first conference dedicated to Behavioral Marketing.

There is a nice definition in the Blue Lithium literature – Behavioral Marketing "involves identifying user interest by observing their behavior online – what sites and what pages they visit, what links they click on, how they respond to certain ads and so forth."

On one portal, most of the visitors to the car buying section come to them from the religion pages. So if you advertised your car on the above mentioned religion pages you would likely reach a potential buyer earlier in the purchase funnel.

Clearly behavioral is a hot and growing category. One speaker told us that though the click-through rate is 33% lower for a behavioral than a contextual ad placement (contextual is where you put an ad for windshield wipers on the weather page when its raining), the ultimate conversion rate is 40% higher. This would be measured in the auto category by the user locating a dealer or requesting a quote.

Advertisers who use behavioral targeting are twice as happy with their banner campaigns as those who don’t, we are told. Yet advertisers 10% of their online budget seems to be as high as they are going for behavioral. What we see is that it works better for patient advertisers – they need to go a little way out of the normal direct marketing, immediate conversion, mindset.

But there is a long way to go before BT can achieve real scale. Its knowledge depends largely on those cookies that are stored by your browser. So every time you clear the cookies they have to start again. And multiple users of a browser of course create a jumbled profile. And anyway a profile becomes out of date very quickly. A buyer may be searching for a car for a couple of weeks - but after that she has probably bought one and a car ad aimed at her when she visit ivillage will be wasted.

There are attempts to link the data collected online with behavior offline and to use similar sets of metrics – but it isn’t coming easy. There is a long way to go, even for the high-end advertisers, in integrating their online efforts at any level with their traditional campaigns. Only 50% of advertisers on the last Superbowl had bought the relevant online keywords so that they would be easily found in searches by viewers who wanted to follow up.

More in a later post on what I saw as the biggest missing piece from this forum.