- The Better Listener
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- What to say when they need advice
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Yesterday, I sat with Dr. Avi Kluger, one of the foremost listening experts in the world, and I’ll writing about his soft and deeply studied brilliance.
I was searching for the answer to the question:
How do I get people to want to practice this skill?
(A good time, reader, for you to voice your response by replying about how you came to find this newsletter)
As I mentioned in yesterday’s email, he first said that he’d show me, and he listened to me.
Although I felt the meaning of his answer, I had yet to feel sated.
So I pressed on with questions searching for a simple answer
If you want a relationship, dating coaches sell dating advice.
If you want more money, business coaches sell negotiation advice.
Both talk about listening but for a specific goal, how do I sell it in a way that people want as much as a relationship or more money?
He sat back and laughed, “I don’t know, but I’m going to keep teaching it!”
Then, he said posed the real question to me:
Why are you trying to sell it?
Ah ha!
His listening poked my balloon.
When I started this journey, I wasn’t trying to sell anything.
I had a job, and I did this on the side, and I gave it away for free.
I was happy about that.
Once I decided to make this a job, the question changed from how do I teach this better to how do i sell this?
In practice, the answer might look the same, but the question changes my perspective and how I want to go about answering that question.
Dr. Kluger showed me this through listening to me despite me interviewing him.
He’d given me advice and pried open a new perspective without telling me anything in the form of advice.
The three rough questions he asked to get there:
If we were to look back on this moment in three years and everything had gone amazing, and you were to write a book about this, what would it be called?
If you were a cartoon character, what would your obstacle and situation look like?
And if you could solve that obstacle, would there be anything stopping you from getting to success?
Each time I answered the third. He asked again, until all the obstacles were turned into metaphors. And we laughed.
More to come.
With love,
Orly
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