4: Leaders: how being lazy can make you more effective

Sales leaders, be honest, does the idea of being more effective and do less work sound appealing? Of course it does. Well, Michael Bunga Steinier, in his book The Coaching Habit, has the question that does both. Welcome to the Bite-Size Sales Podcast, where we believe that sales is the most important team in a B2B company, that complacency is the enemy, and taking bite-sized steps each day to get better at your craft is the best way to improve results. I am your host, Andrew Monahan, and I'm using my 26 years of experience in B2B sales to bring you small, actionable ideas every day to help you get better. Sales leaders, we've all had this situation where someone brings us a problem and we end up working on it either together or even for the person that brought it up in the first place. I know I've had situations where I've gone into full problem-solving mode only for the rep to actually rain me back by saying something like, Look, I just wanted your opinion or I wanted to vent, or even I just wanted you to know that I was working on this in case it came up. I think one of the dangers of being a servant leader is that you can cross the line and become a slave for your reps. Being a servant leader is such a popular thing these days, but I think there may be some dangers if we take it too far. And you know, you do stuff for them, you become a hero knocking down obstacles, and you feel so valuable afterwards, but also for you it can be exhausting and stressful. If it happens again and again, it can snowball, and the effects it has on you will only get worse. Michael Bunga Stanier talks about a better way in his book, The Coaching Habit, by using the simple question, how can I help? So from the book. First, you're forcing your colleague to make a direct and clear request. That may be useful to him. He may not be entirely sure why he started this conversation with you. Sure, he knows he wants something, but until you ask the question, he didn't know that he wasn't exactly clear on what he wanted. Unless he was, in which case the question is useful for you, because now you can decide whether you want to honor the request. Second, and possibly even more valuably, it stops you from thinking that you know how best to help and leaping into action. That's the classic rescuer behavior. Too much of your day is spent doing things you think people want you to do. Sometimes you're completely off base, but that's not the worst of it because that gets sorted out relatively quickly. More dangerous is when you're only slightly wrong. That's when you find yourself kind of doing what they want, but not enough so it's really useful. And not so wrong that someone tells you to stop. The more direct version of how can I help is what do you want from me. It strips the conversation down to understanding the essential exchange. What do you want? What do I want? And now what should we do about that? But be careful. You can likely guess that how what do you want from me lands will depend in no small part on the tone of voice in which it's asked. If you're in persecutive mode, it might come across as aggressive, in victim mode as whiny, and in rescuer mode as smothering. A way to soften this question, as with all questions, is to use the phrase out of curiosity. What that does is shift the question from perhaps coming across as an inquisition to being a more noble inquiry. Other phrases that can have a similar softening effect on the question being asked are just so I know, or to help me understand better, or even to make sure that I'm clear. So this is really powerful. Listening to what the author was saying there, this simple question can really open up an understanding that wasn't there before. It will stop you from doing unnecessary actions, it will stop you from making assumptions about what's needed from you. It makes for a less stressful environment, and also for your rep helps them be empowered and more confident in what they're doing. So if this resonates with you, my ask is when you are listening to one of your reps talking about an issue, instead of jumping into full problem-solving mode with them, simply ask them out of curiosity, what help do you want from me? If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with anyone you think would get value. Co-workers, teammates, your boss, your head of sales, even that guy you worked with two companies ago who could probably do some help. In fact, just overshare it. This is one of the few times it's cool to do that. Your podcast app will have a share button. Please click it and share it wide and far. If you want to get the book mentioned in this episode for free, simply go to bitesizesales.com forward slash free book. If you sign up on that page for unstoppable.do, we'll send you your book on us. Unstoppable gives you habit-forming action notes on great sales books such as Spin Selling, Never Split the Difference, New Sales Simplify, The Challenger Sale, and many more. In there you get the best ideas from these books, all organized in a straightforward and easy to implement way and designed for you to take action and transform your results. All at the equivalent of three cups of coffee per month. Start now and get your free book by going to bite sizesales.com forward slash free book.