BONUS: Are you selling bad wood?
If people aren't warming to you, probably.
Is there anything worse than being cold? (Obviously, logically, many many things - but let’s just play my game for a few minutes.)
What’s worse - is bad wood.
We live in a poorly insulated old farmhouse in Tasmania and rely on a wood heater to keep us thawed out.
I like to think I’m quite handy when it comes to lighting a fire. After many bush picnics in my childhood, good fire lighting practices were well and truley instilled in my skill set!
But, this wood - it’s broken.
I’ve just done three rounds trying to get it going. The kindling is so finely cut, you could mistake it for splinters, yet, the fire is far from roaring. It’s meowing at best.
I’m getting more and more frustrated, even though I’m probably less cold now than when I started trying to light it earlier this morning. Why?
Because the very thing that is meant to be the solution to my problem isn’t working.
The solution doesn’t solve.
It’s actually created more problems - I’m not just cold, I’m now frustrated and out of paper and matches.
This got me thinking.
I think many of us hope to create solutions through our work, but I wonder how often our solutions are unable to start the fires we hoped they would.
How many of us are selling bad wood?
For many of the people I work with, they’re selling messages; messages they hope will start a fire-in-the-belly of their clients, their people or of decision makers, helping them to see a new perspective or make critical change.
But too often I see people continue to sell the same messages, even though it’s not starting that fire.
They keep selling the bad wood, and then wonder why the people they’re selling too aren’t warming to their ideas (boom!).
As I’ve learned this morning, it doesn’t matter how many different ways we slice the wood, if the message isn’t landing, we need to find the message that will.
One thing I’m sure of is that yelling the same message only makes us louder, not easier to hear.
I’m sure the right message is there, but often we can be so close to our issues or ideas that we can’t see the (ahem) wood for the trees.
(Can I squeeze in any more wood-based metaphors?)
What if we stopped focussing so heavily on our message, and instead started chipping away at the audience until we uncover their core motivations?
I reckon we’d then be able to craft a message that ignites on contact.
(Yes, I can!)
Wanna work with me?
The full list of ways for us to work together is over on my website but… there is one thing I want to tell you about today.
I’ve just opened another date for my online workshop called Be A Better Guest! Think of it as media training - meets public speaking - meets workplace storytelling - meets air bnb hosting!
One of my most recent participants called it ‘epic’ - I’ll take that.
Most importantly, it’s about doing the doing. We’ll do the work to sort everything you need to have, know and do before, during and after interviews. Yep, it takes everything you’ve been reading here on The Penny Drop and puts it into action.
Check out all the details and get your tickets here.