John Boyd's Illustrated Guide to Selling You Part 2

John Boyd’s Illustrated Guide to Selling You - Part 2 - The principles of Optimism & Flow

In John’s presentation he talked about how one confronts adversity.  Those who do so with optimism are most successful in life, in job interviews and in their working lives.  Optimism oftentimes trumps good skills.  Why?  Because the hiring manager wants someone who can engage the work group and team to newer and greater heights.   Someone with a “can do,” optimistic attitude trumps someone with a “did do” past if it was not relevant or without engaging others.  Optimism helps in one’s consistent creativity.  Make your problem solving skills an example of creative engagement.

The customer service representative, who constantly confronts a negative caller and says to him/herself that this person must be having a bad day without internalizing the hostility, is most successful.  John indicates that we will often lose that important/dream job and shouldn’t beat ourselves up, blaming ourselves for our responses, blaming our age, maturity or lack thereof, or blaming other things we have no control over.  Do a quick review after any important encounter of what went right and what to avoid the next time.  Make each interview or meeting a learning episode.  John quotes, Peter McIntyre: “Confidence comes not from always being right but from not fearing to be wrong.”  He indicates we should give our ego a “time out” as you move to take risks to reach your goals.  When hiring managers sense that your ego is in check, you will be able to build more trust.  So rid yourself of these paralyzing ego risks:  rejection, embarrassment, and failure.  Remember what talents you have going on:  “You are a child of God.”  You have the potential of doing great things and acquiring wonderful gifts.  You will never be given a challenge greater than you can overcome.  Paul’s “thorn in the flesh” only made him stronger and more resolved to succeed.

In order to improve our optimism scores for life and adversity, we should recognize those triggering events that bring us down.  We should apply cognitive therapy by acting as if you are … (successful, resourceful, engaging, positive in light of adversity).  We should also learn how to talk back to our negative dialogues that continue to flow through our brain.  Maybe we should be our best creative “spin doctors” when it comes to creating positive images of where we need to be.  Exercising to just lose weight is difficult unless you can see yourself thinner, more attractive in your body/clothes, or able to be more confident in a presentation or special event.  Have a positive mental image of success on a job, of success in a consulting gig or just success in your church or community service. 

How are you creating your dream job or life?  What will you look like and how will you add value in the process  when you realize your dream?  How are you maximizing your strengths while correcting your deficits (e.g. getting additional training or education, providing volunteer service, taking toast master classes, etc.)

If you know that you’ll only have success 10% of the time in your calls, don’t beat yourself up 90% of the time.  John speaks about killing ANTS (Automatic Negative Thoughts).  To be a great pest eradicator, one must be able to recognize the varmints.  My wife’s talk about gophers was a great example of ANTS.  We lived in California and had gophers in our yard.  She at first felt these were cute little critters that she could encourage their departure by flooding, by traps, by stink bombs.  Talking to an old gardener in the neighborhood, he indicated she had to confront them not as pesky pets but as poisonous varmints to be killed, eradicated, and exterminated.   Sometimes we face sins, adversity or challenges of our own making, as cute pests.  Kill ANTS (gophers) wherever you encounter them.  Replace these negative thoughts with positive thoughts, positive action and move on.

On the other hand, John indicates that once we decide that we’re successful only after working  70 hours a week, give yourself a vacation from stressors, base your pricing/value proposition on the contribution to their bottom line, and think in terms of hourly rate contribution by shifting less productive/value contributory tasks to others. 

How are you recognizing when you are in the negative zone or in the positive zone – in the“flow.”  Read Daniel Pink’s book, Drive - see my LinkedIn profile of books I’ve read/recommended.  Drive talks about purpose, about flow, about what drives people and organizations to succeed.  It’s an engaging book about people engagement when centered on purpose.