025 Gordon Curtis: Well Connected
11/09/12 • 47 min
Internet radio for savvy professionals –
doing work you love, work that matters.
In today’s uncertain business environment, now more than ever, the best way to succeed is through partnerships—with colleagues, with vendors, with competitors, with anyone who might share a common goal and can help build mutual success.
Such partnerships require strong, meaningful relationships. In other words, these relationships require that you become well connected.
We asked Gordon Curtis, author of Well Connected to join us today to discuss his Right Person/Right Approach to social networking.
We’d love to hear from you in terms of your actionable takeaways from this episode.
Leave a comment or send us an email.
Listen to the full interview by clicking player above.
Here are some exurps from today’s interview...
From the show
As an executive transition coach for maybe more years than I care to share; over 18; I’ve helped hundreds, upwards to a thousand, clients advance their careers and businesses through the traditional teaching workings of inner work of assessment and integration of skills and interest values and experience but my focus has always been to then shift to the outer market facing actualization and work of identifying and approaching decision makers and what I refer to as critical enablers who are instrumental in accelerating client career business objectives to reality.
I’ve facilitated and witnessed thousands of key introductions and always been fascinated with the networking patters of success and true mutual value creation and I’ve also been amazed at the amount of on and offline social networking time and energy people expend with little or nothing to show for it. I always felt the vast majority of people walked away from networking exchanges on or off line leaving so much value off the table.
Over time in this analysis, a very distinct pattern clearly emerged of the seven elements or variables that I felt could easily be replicated for predictable exponential mutual benefit and exchange. I found the most successful networking exchanges all contained these elements and the less productive ones one or all of the elements of the seven were missing.
...a lot of reasons why this book is referred to; Well Connected and the sub title is A Genuinely Unconventional Approach to Building Genuine and Effective Business Relationships; the unconventional part about it is that I found that whoever dies with the most connections doesn’t necessarily win.
What I found is so much of the value that I received in my business came from a very select group of people.
To elaborate a little bit on that value, that sense that so much was left on the table came from countless comments from clients. How’d it go? They’d say well, we hit it off and promised to stay in touch but there was nothing to show for it. So I’m really interested in having measurable results that are true advances in my client’s objectives.
One of the biggest disconnects is someone might be lined up in all of these seven elements but if we’re not articulating exactly what it is that we’re looking for in language that they truly get, we’re often going to walk away with both parties frustrated because there’s not enough value to exchange so that gets right in to chapter one which is Articulating One’s Objectives.
If someone says I’m looking for a job, if you have any ideas let me know. Obviously I don’t know. I can’t help you. If you know of any funders, let me know. That could be a zillion different funders. Or I’m looking for a really good java programmer. That still narrows the field down to a million and on and on for every business objective.
Exactly. And that’s one of the key things that I try to accomplish in Well Connected; take the abstract and turn it in to the truly practical and relevant to each individual in to an application that one could confidently say I can do this.
If you do what I call a diagnosis of their needs and analyzing all of the different drivers to their situation, their busin...
Internet radio for savvy professionals –
doing work you love, work that matters.
In today’s uncertain business environment, now more than ever, the best way to succeed is through partnerships—with colleagues, with vendors, with competitors, with anyone who might share a common goal and can help build mutual success.
Such partnerships require strong, meaningful relationships. In other words, these relationships require that you become well connected.
We asked Gordon Curtis, author of Well Connected to join us today to discuss his Right Person/Right Approach to social networking.
We’d love to hear from you in terms of your actionable takeaways from this episode.
Leave a comment or send us an email.
Listen to the full interview by clicking player above.
Here are some exurps from today’s interview...
From the show
As an executive transition coach for maybe more years than I care to share; over 18; I’ve helped hundreds, upwards to a thousand, clients advance their careers and businesses through the traditional teaching workings of inner work of assessment and integration of skills and interest values and experience but my focus has always been to then shift to the outer market facing actualization and work of identifying and approaching decision makers and what I refer to as critical enablers who are instrumental in accelerating client career business objectives to reality.
I’ve facilitated and witnessed thousands of key introductions and always been fascinated with the networking patters of success and true mutual value creation and I’ve also been amazed at the amount of on and offline social networking time and energy people expend with little or nothing to show for it. I always felt the vast majority of people walked away from networking exchanges on or off line leaving so much value off the table.
Over time in this analysis, a very distinct pattern clearly emerged of the seven elements or variables that I felt could easily be replicated for predictable exponential mutual benefit and exchange. I found the most successful networking exchanges all contained these elements and the less productive ones one or all of the elements of the seven were missing.
...a lot of reasons why this book is referred to; Well Connected and the sub title is A Genuinely Unconventional Approach to Building Genuine and Effective Business Relationships; the unconventional part about it is that I found that whoever dies with the most connections doesn’t necessarily win.
What I found is so much of the value that I received in my business came from a very select group of people.
To elaborate a little bit on that value, that sense that so much was left on the table came from countless comments from clients. How’d it go? They’d say well, we hit it off and promised to stay in touch but there was nothing to show for it. So I’m really interested in having measurable results that are true advances in my client’s objectives.
One of the biggest disconnects is someone might be lined up in all of these seven elements but if we’re not articulating exactly what it is that we’re looking for in language that they truly get, we’re often going to walk away with both parties frustrated because there’s not enough value to exchange so that gets right in to chapter one which is Articulating One’s Objectives.
If someone says I’m looking for a job, if you have any ideas let me know. Obviously I don’t know. I can’t help you. If you know of any funders, let me know. That could be a zillion different funders. Or I’m looking for a really good java programmer. That still narrows the field down to a million and on and on for every business objective.
Exactly. And that’s one of the key things that I try to accomplish in Well Connected; take the abstract and turn it in to the truly practical and relevant to each individual in to an application that one could confidently say I can do this.
If you do what I call a diagnosis of their needs and analyzing all of the different drivers to their situation, their busin...
Previous Episode
024 Kathryn McKinnon: Triple Your Time Today
Internet radio for savvy professionals –
doing work you love, work that matters.
To help us sort through what time means to us and how we can better manage our use of time, we asked Kathryn McKinnon, Time Management Expert, and Author of Triple Your Time Today to join us.
As you’ll hear from her story, her life and relationship with time has evolved over time, and as she took charge of her life and time now focuses on Executive Development & Coaching for Success with Your Life, Career and Your Time!
We’d love to hear from you in terms of your actionable takeaways from this episode.
Leave a comment or send us an email.
Listen to the full interview by clicking player above.
Here are some exurps from today’s interview...
From the show
I think we take it for granted. Time is a state of mind.
The fact of the matter is with time there’s no future and no past. There’s only the present moment. If you live your life present moment to present moment to present moment, you realize you have a choice in how you spend your time. There is such a thing as time management and yes you can. You can really manage your time.
When you start to really live in the moment; it’s hard to do at first; but when you really focus in and live in the moment you realize that you have an abundance of choices about how you spend your time.
I’ve been an executive for 32 years and a coach for the past 20 years. I primarily help women executives, professionals and entrepreneurs and some open minded men learn how to choose more success with their life and their career and their time. I’ve founded businesses. I’m a busy mom. I have two active teenage boys, a husband of 23 years who travels a lot so I’m a single mom when he’s gone. He is really gone for weeks at a time. I’m also a paid professional singer on weekends and I volunteer. I’m the one responsible for keeping everything going. I want you to know, I don’t have a full time assistant. I don’t work 14 hour days. I keep weekends open for my family. I have a home office that I work from. I chose this career and I chose this topic and I chose this way of developing my career so that I could have a family. I think it’s important for people to know that.
How do you make all those choices? I think the answer is over the years I’ve developed a mind set as well as systems that really help me create more time for the things I need and want to accomplish.
I never saw the truck. In an instant this two ton flat bed truck ran through a stop sign and it violently crashed in to me.
After a break at the hospital I went back to work. After months of physical therapy and a year of visits to a chiropractor, I still had that back pain. I also had the stress at work. I didn’t know at the time that there was a connection between stress and physical pain.
At that point I kind of had an epiphany. As I began to really embrace the process of focusing my thoughts, I started to appreciate my time in a new way. I realized that all my attempts to be productive and successful had almost succeeded in helping me lose my life.
It was a real wake up call for me. Since then, which was many years ago, I’ve had a continual awakening to try to stay within my grounded personal energy while consistently moving towards my goals and getting things done. I made a decision to reclaim my personal power. I made a choice. I found my purpose. I embraced how I spend my time in a whole new way. Life opened up for me as a result of that with grace and certainty and it continues each and every day as I continue using these practices and these systems.
You ask why did I write the book. Well, a few years ago I was seeing a lot of success in the transformation my clients were having as a coach and I wanted to help more people. I began to shift my business on line. While looking for ways to build my business, I was told that giving away a free report was a great way to build a contact list. So I reviewed all my client issues and stories and started looking at what they all had in common.
Interestingly, I notice they all had difficulty managing their time in one way or another. Then I realize that managing time was something that I had become really good at; over time.
The first strategy that I think might be the most important in managing your time is develop the right mind set. That’s the foundation for everything that I do and teach. We all have the same amount of time every day but do you know how you spend your time? More importantly, do you know what you think about while you’re spending your time? If you’re no...
Next Episode
026 Tim Vaill: Persuasion
Internet radio for savvy professionals –
doing work you love, work that matters.
Bertrand Russell, the 20th century British philosopher, said, “What is distinctively human at the most fundamental level is the capacity to persuade and be persuaded.”
The ability to influence or persuade is an important competency that affects all areas of our life. Our guest Tim Vaill is here today to share key concepts of persuasion and tips on how we can improve our ability to influence others.
He had an illustrious career in the private sectors of banking and finance before shifting his focus to the public sector. He currently serves as a Special Advisor to Cabinet Secretary for Housing and Economic Development for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
Tim has always been interested in the interplay of language, communications and persuasion. After taking a course at the Harvard Kennedy School with Gary Orren on “Persuasion: The Science and Art of Effective Influence” he has been hooked and assisting in the course ever since.
We’d love to hear from you in terms of your actionable takeaways from this episode.
Leave a comment or send us an email.
Listen to the full interview by clicking player above.
Here are some exurps from today’s interview...
From the show
All of us, I think, try to be persuasive but it wasn’t until I decided to study the science that I discovered there are specific principles of persuasion that can make you even better at that...
I think all of our life we are trying to persuade our parents to stay up late at night or to walk home from school or whatever but we didn’t employ, at least logically, the key principles involved.
Persuasion can be simply defined as symbolic process where communicators try to convince other people to change their attitudes or behaviors...
It is just that simple. The key here is to be sure to think about the framework in which you want that person to move to your view or your thought. Since I became a student of this subject I now think about the principles of persuasion and the principles, therefore, at almost every opportunity.
Let me talk about some of the principles that come to mind but before I do that I need to underscore the fact that we are all in a persuasive situations all the time.
There are many frameworks that people use but the main one that I think about has the following five framework components: ethos, pathos, logos, agora, syzygy.
I mentioned earlier there are several elements to persuasion and these were developed over the years by writers and others who consider themselves experts in this. There are 15 or 20 key elements of persuasion such as know your audience; things like scarcity...
Very important is your ability to listen and listen very carefully. You might think you know your audience when you walk in the door but you have to, in fact, listen very carefully and if you have done your research ahead of time you are ready to listen and create perhaps the most important work ever. Here again you have to make your audience realize you are on their side of the line in terms of dealing with a particular topic and understand where they are coming from.
The other principle that I wanted to talk about syzygy. It is making sure that what you are talking about is relevant to the other person. It may be relevant to you but if it is not to the other person, you can employ all the other principles you want to and you aren’t going to make any headway here.
I think you have to go back to some other principles that you can put into place. We have all been using persuasion throughout our lives even though we don’t think of it as such. What I have learned is there is a real science to it so you have to stop and think. Using metaphors and analogies are very important because you can really relate to the other side by putting salient information in the context that they can understand.
If you go back to the framework and the whole logos business. The logos is the message and if the message isn’t convincing and you aren’t logically moving through an argument that makes sense then you have a problem. You have to stop and think before you walk into the room “what is my story? What is my logos?” What is the logical framework that I am going to use to convince them that I am the right person?
Another quote I will give you is from Elliot Richardson who was originally a Massachusetts native and who served as Secretary of Defense... This is a very well known, persuasive guy but he said that in running the government only 2% of the problem is making the decision. 98% is persuading others to accept the decision.
Dwight Eisenhower back a few years ago didn’t use the word persuasion but it really comes through in one of his q...
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