You Contain Multitudes

In a nod to the Walt Whitman line, Blair believes successful sales people - as well as agency principals - often need to present themselves as different personalities in different situations. And David believes sales trainers are actually therapists.

Sketchnote by Emily Mills

Transcript

David C. Baker: Blair, today, we're going to talk about multiple personalities.

Blair Enns: Oh, my god, this is one of my favorite topics.

David: This should terrify you. The fact that you have escaped multiple interventions on this topic is always a source of surprise to me.

Blair: I have these two weird topics that I'm really interested in, multiple personalities and secret families, we should talk about secret families.

David: One of my clients had one of those secret families.

Blair: I suppose you start talking about it, it comes out of the woodwork. I keep saying to my wife, social media has killed the secret family.

David: All right, can we get back on topic? This is not a good start.

Blair: That was my other personality, that was Bleen, not Blair just showing his face.

David: I thought of something after you gave me some thoughts to get me started on this. One of the pressures that smaller firms feel is that you have to be more adept at playing different roles at a firm, but no matter how big the firm is, there's still this pressure to step outside of yourself and if your firm is going to thrive, fill a role that wouldn't naturally come to you. Is that the basic topic we're talking about, or do you want to take it in another direction?

Blair: No, that's the basic topic. As you're introducing it, I'm reminded of one of the first things I read from you, probably before we'd even spoken years ago. I don't know if you named your recourse as functional model explicitly. You had identified that in a creative firm, there are 12 roles. I don't know if that model changed since then.

David: No.

Blair: You had this metaphor of, okay, a solopreneur is somebody wearing 12 hats. As you hire, you're handing off these hats. At some point, you're left with just the CEO hat. You think of what we're going to talk about today, this idea of there are times when you see yourself as a certain person, certain personality with certain strengths, and you're really adept at certain situations, but there are times when a different part of you has to show up. I just think back to that, your metaphor. In the beginning, 12 different yous shows up hopefully, in 12 different situations.

David: The first thing you get rid of is bookkeeping or accounting because otherwise, it wouldn't happen. That's an example of how it's such a bad fit for most principals. That's the first thing they give up because it's easy to do, and they hate doing it. They tend to hold on to things that they love to do and may not be great at but they love doing them. When I think about personality theory, this is something I've been studying for about 20 years now.

There are lights that go on in somebody's mind when they finally begin to understand themselves a little bit differently is like, wow, all of a sudden, I understand why I react this way, or why I'm drawn to this person, and I have trouble, I get kind of bristly with this kind of person. Often, it stays there, and they just focus on themselves, they understand themselves better, but it doesn't go to that really healthy stage, which is the second one.

That's understanding that they need to sometimes adapt that natural tendency to what the situation requires, whether that's somebody else who needs you to show up in a different way or a client or something like that. It's that second level of maturity that you're talking about here. It goes beyond just understanding yourself well but understanding how you need to adapt and be something different for the sake of the business or somebody else.

Blair: Yes, I'm really struck by the journey that you've just described. I haven't gotten into the theory of personality theory at all. When I think of embracing these personality assessments, the first thing you do is get this objective outside information. I remember being angry at what I read in one of the first assessments that I'd done. I said, "This isn't me." I was angry for the weekend. Then I give it to my wife, and I said, "What do you think of this description of me?" She read it, went, "Yes, that's you." Then from that moment, it became very useful. I had the sense of my identity, my strengths.

Then I heard you say once, and I've repeated it many times, usually with attribution. Your strengths become your weaknesses when you go to them too often. I think you've described this journey of you start to embrace personality theory or at least the assessments that are underpinned by this universal personality theory. You get the sense of yourself, and it becomes this asset, you see yourself, you see your strengths, you remember to put yourself in positions, hopefully, where you're able to play to your strengths, but I think there's this danger that your identity gets consolidated.

I used to run assessments on all my consulting clients and obscure motivational assessment. I would make the joke that once I have your assessment, you're no longer a human being to me. I just see four numbers. You start saying something, I think, "Oh, that's your affiliation score talking. That's your autonomy score." It wasn't a joke. It was true. It's why I never tested my wife, I wanted to continue to see her as a human being. Then you get past this point. I knew when I started embracing assessments, I knew I was going to overweight the assessments, even though everybody tells you, these are helpful, but a common mistake is you overweight them.

I've in myself, obviously, in my clients, when I get this seemingly objective data about them, and I think, "Well, that's who they are and they can't change." The topic today is really about you're not just what that assessment says, you're different people and you have the capability of showing up differently in different situations.

David: Getting a personality assessment tells you who you are but that's just a training card to show you exactly what needs to change in order for you to be effective in some cases. I've now given 23,000 personality assessments to people in this field. I am still fairly often surprised where I've experienced somebody in a certain way and then I see their personality profile and I think, "Oh, my goodness, that is not how I've experienced them at all." They are so self-aware, they're so good at stepping into other shoes at some times, that it just blows me away. That's the kind of person I want to be.

Now, if you are, say, a deep introvert, then you are clearly acting when you are not spending a lot of energy with a lot of people, you're figuring out how to exist in that setting. It's okay, that kind of acting is okay because we want people to experience us in a way that doesn't just automatically raise barriers, the idea of patience, when you're not an impatient person, we understand all that. What happens in a setting when people aren't aware, and they don't change? They don't act differently. They don't put on that suit. What happens in firms like that?

Blair: Oh, man, I should be the one asking you that question. Let me just turn it back on you. This is something you've thought about deeply and you see all of the time. What are the implications of that? Basically, you're saying when somebody has this strong sense of identity, and they might say to themselves or those close to them, "I can't help it. That's who I am." Is that what you're talking about?

David: Yes, exactly.

Blair: They can't broaden the lines that define that identity or even step out of it from time to time. What are the implications?

David: I would say, we would want to measure maturity in large part along this axis of how good a job you do at reading what the situation requires of you and then still being yourself from an ethical, passionate, values-based core but wrapping that in different things that doesn't violate who you are but makes you more effective and less offensive in the work that you do.

Now, firms have personalities, too, which is a whole other subject. That would be really interesting to talk about at some point. We're talking about specific individuals here. Let's talk about our principal because a lot of our listeners are principals. Principals need to be risk-takers. They also tend to be a little bit impatient, they tend to accept change faster than somebody else would. If they aren't aware of those tendencies, then they're not going to talk through some of the changes that are required. Talking through some of those things and being more patient is putting on an act, it's stepping into a suit and being something a little bit different for a minute.

They can do that but while they're doing that the battery is draining. At some point, the battery will-- It's like regenerative batteries, like with your Tesla when you're accelerating, it's pulling power. When you're stopping, you're saving that power and putting it back in the battery. If you act too much, if you're not yourself enough, then you get angry, and you get tired. When either of those things happen, the real you pops out and people are going to get hurt. It's a matter of managing all of this in your mind. It's like flying an airplane when things are going wrong, but nobody should notice that you're thinking about this stuff.

Blair: Your metaphor of the draining battery, I think is perfect. Let's put it from the employers' point of view, from the owners' point of view. It's unfair, inappropriate for you to ask somebody to be somebody other than their core self all day long. Now, let's flip it around. Everybody on the team has an obligation to be able to step outside themselves from time to time, put on that suit, as you say. The problem is when we ask them to stay in that suit too long, it drains the battery. That's not fair. We should all be allowed to be in positions where we play to our strength. We shouldn't be held prisoner by that identity, that sense of who we are. We need to be able to step out of it.

Some people can do it because as you alluded to earlier, they're self-aware. They understand that they can step out of this sense of identity I want to talk about a mechanism for doing that that a client of ours gave us. Some people understand that and some people can't or won't and are really locked into the sense of, "No, this is who I am." They're actually, I believe afraid of changing, of pushing the boundaries.

David: Yes. We still have this idea that managing people or putting client systems in place is about standardizing everything. Instead, it should be about putting systems in place that automatically recognize the differences and then tailor our management style or how we interact with clients in a specific way. It's easy for me to say that. It's a lot harder to do obviously.

One of the things that I'm intrigued about that you just talked about is is the fact that personality profiles, they're this static picture of who we are. What they don't show us is the range in terms of how far away we can stay, how far we can move, how far away you can stay from this particular picture. Is the difference mainly around maturity and self-awareness? What makes the difference here? Because a lot of very self-aware people that have never taken a personality profile.

Blair: Yes, I don't know the answer to that question. There's understanding the problem with the issues, though some people don't see it. You will see that as self-awareness. Then there's willingness to make the change, and then ability to make the change. I'm thinking of emotional intelligence. The first, they're not steps, they're laid out in quadrants, I think in a two by two, it's, am I aware of my own emotional state? Yes, or no. Am I aware of the emotional state of others? Yes, or no. Do I have the ability to affect my emotional state? Yes, or no. Do I have the ability to affect the emotional state of others?

That last one is basically the highest level of emotional intelligence. I'm aware of my emotional state, I'm aware of how somebody else is feeling, I can moderate mine, and I can moderate somebody else's. I think for you to show up a little bit differently in a moment that requires you to drain some battery and show up differently, I think, it's a function of, A, recognizing who you are and recognizing that this is a situation where you have to be somebody else. Then B, the willingness to show up differently. I'm reminded of a friend of mine Anese Cavanaugh, I've mentioned her and her work before, Intentional Energetic Presence.

David: Whenever you mention that name, I picture you across from a cup of coffee at a cafe and your conversation with her. Even though I've never met her, I have a very clear mental picture of this.

Blair: We were having a conversation the other day, I was giving her some feedback on something and she was giving me some feedback on something. Before we got to my stuff at the beginning of the conversation, when she was going to help me, she stopped and said, "Blair, let me stop you. Who do you want me to be in this conversation?" I thought, "Oh, my God, that is such a great question." After we were done, I shared it with all the team. We've been saying that to each other for weeks ever since that interaction. She's just brilliant at this stuff.

This idea that I can be a friend, I can be an advisor who will give you critical feedback, I can be just an ear who's listening empathetically. "Oh, that must be horrible. How are you feeling?" All of these different ways that you can show up and that's just a great example. I want to bring this back to selling in a minute to account management and to new business development because a lot of what we teach at Win Without Pitching, if you see yourself as a nice compliant person who doesn't ruffle feathers, you're going to have a hard time with some of the things that we ask you to do or suggest would be appropriate behavior, saying no, putting an obstacle in front of the client.

I guess the reason I wanted to talk about this topic is I wanted to communicate that even if you don't see that as you if you see it as contrary to your personality, you have within you the ability to show up differently for a short period of time just like my friend Anese asked, "Who do you need me to be in this conversation?" You would stop and ask yourself, "Who do I need to be in this conversation?"

David: They don't have to be a certain type of person to be successful in sales, but they have to be willing to be a certain type of person temporarily and embrace that. Is that a fair statement?

Blair: Yes, that's fair and I encounter that all the time. I've talked about this before a little bit, I have high power needs, I have a high need for authority and respect, to be seen as the expert, and I have low competitive drive, I have low need to win. The way I think of it is low need to win now because I think eventually, I'm going to have all the chips. A low sales drive is analogous to patience, high sales drive is impatience. I'm a very patient person.

Sometimes I'm too patient. If I'm trying to close the deal, I need to stop and tell myself, "Okay, Blair, you've established your expertise, you don't need to go on, you don't need to be the expert, shut up and take the money." I tell myself that often, "Shut up and take the money. This person's ready to go. Shut up and take the money. Quit talking." That's not in my nature, my nature is to keep talking, keep proving how intelligent I am.

I can fight myself over the short term, but if I had to be in a role where I did that all day long, like a transactional sale, I couldn't do it. It would be unfair of an employer to ask me to move into that role. It would be ridiculous for me to think that I could have a career or a full-time job in a role like that.

David: If I was listening to somebody who was naturally patient and somebody who wasn't naturally patient, but they were both selling using the same methodology, would I be able to see the difference from the outside? Would I see the different personalities even though they were trying to do the same thing?

Blair: Yes, some people are too patient. I really like an impatient person bringing patience to the moment. To me, that's a killer combo because I'm too patient and I know people who are just so patient in a conversation, it drives me crazy. If you're at all empathetic, you tend to mirror somebody else's language and tone and speed in a conversation. There's a couple of people in my life when I'm talking to them, I just find myself slowing down to the point where I bore myself to death. I am a patient person.

David: I'm thinking about my conversations with clients. There are many times when I'm like, "Okay, I know exactly what you're asking and I think I know the answer. Give me a shot. You don't need to keep going. I'm good," but the truth is that it's not just about asking a question, they need to talk about this out loud. They're formulating what they think as they talk, and I need to let them do that. Up until after two hours, I'll stop them.

Blair: I was briefing a new team member the other day about a conversation with a client and that happens at a certain point before training. I don't have these conversations anymore, I pass it all off. I said to her, "Okay, the goal of this conversation is whatever goals they have, whatever worries they have, you need to let them put them on the table." I said, "When I have these conversations, I never remember a thing they said afterwards," because it doesn't change what I'm going to do in the training. The goal is they need to feel heard. I probably just said too much, haven't I?

David: That's the kind of thing that a lot of us think and don't have the courage to say. I like giving you a rope to hang yourself. This is fun.

Blair: Thank you. Can I talk about the impetus for this?

David: You can. Then when you're done, I have a very specific question about sales.

Blair: Okay, the impetus for this is in one of our training programs, we have a client. Her first name is Katie. I told her I was going to write about this. She said, "I'm Midwest nice. That's me. That's my personality, but when I need to do these things that you ask us to do, Blair, I have an alter ego and his name is Chuck Finley." Apparently, this comes from the show Burn Notice where some dude in Burn Notice has an alter ego, Chuck Finley, the baseball player.

She says, "I just become Chuck Finley. Chuck Finley can do this. Chuck Finley can have the direct conversation about money. Chuck Finley can do all of the things that I can't do." Throughout this program, she's referencing, "Yes, I can't do that, but Chuck can do that." The way she says it with just such conviction, I think, "You have mastered this, you have hit on something that is profound."

It unlocks in us the idea that Walt Whitman said, "I contain multitudes. I am many people." She has decided that she can put on this suit, even though it's going to drain her battery, back to your metaphor. She can put on the suit but the suit has a name. There's this person and she is channeling this person. There's part of that person is in her and she is letting that person step to the forefront.

I think that idea of creating the characteristics of the person that you need to show up in this moment and then becoming that person and going so far as to give that person a name so that you can become that person and say, "well, I can't do it, but this person could do it. In that moment, I will be that person. I will be my alter ego." I want to put that out there in this podcast and have others report back on how well it works because I think this is a profound insight. t's a technique that all of us should be using.

David: I want to know what names people chose when they decided who their alter ego is. The observation is that if there wasn't so much stigma around psychoanalysis and counseling, and so on, sales training is really counseling. It's helping people understand who they are, the right way to live, how to step. It's a little bit different than that. As you're the psychotherapist here, stepping back you and Shannon specifically, and you're thinking about, "All right, are there certain personas that people have to put on to be successful? Does everybody need something different? Are there common patterns in the person they need to be that's different than who they are or is it different for everybody?"

Blair: If you look at the profile of the person most likely to be a top performer in all B2B sales. This is exciting research that underpins the book, The Challenger Sale. We've talked about it on previous episodes. What it says is those most likely to succeed, particularly in a complex B2B sale. I think what we sell is complex and it's abstract. You're selling the contents of people's minds. Particularly in a complex B2B sale, those most likely to succeed are those who are comfortable creating tension in the sale. They add value in the sale, in the experience itself.

It's through the creation of some sort of tension, pushing back on some assumptions of what the problem might be, what the solutions might be, the path to procuring those solutions, et cetera. The best performers are the ones who can say something like, "Hold on a second, can we elevate this conversation? You said that you think the problem is X, I want to challenge you on that". That's just an example of some language that's indicative of the tone, the spirit, the personality of a top performer. They're comfortable creating tension in the sale.

Whereas a relationship builder, again, this comes from the research underpinning of the book, The Challenger Sale, the relationship builder is somebody who seeks to ease tension in the sale. You and I did what I thought was a fantastic episode on tension and the fact that not all tension needs to be resolved. This is a great example. I think I probably cited it in that episode of where tension doesn't need to be resolved.

You think, "Who's going to excel in that moment? What type of personality? Will somebody like you and I-- I know because I've objectively measured for both of us our affiliation scores. Mine is low and yours is invisible. Then your affiliation score we need is you need to connect with others. Therefore, they need to be liked by others. If you have a need to be liked by others, if you're a Midwest nice, you see yourself as Midwest nice, you think everybody's going to be happy. Everybody's going to be okay. I'm going to be polite. I'm not going to ask any questions or say anything that's going to cause any tension. That's your natural, won't call it your personality, but that's your go-to approach.

The standard would be if that's you, you need to be able to put on this suit of the more objective colder but not cold, clinical practitioner, who says, "Wait a minute, let me push back on something," who's comfortable pushing back on what the client is thinking and saying. That would be the standard that if that's not you, that's my personality, but if it's not you, that's the alter ego you want to create for yourself. That's the standard.

David: If you aren't sure where that new ego needs to sit or that new suit that you're trying to design, how do you know in looking at how you navigate a sale? Is it simply looking for signs of rising anxiety in yourself, or can you see it in somebody else? How would you know where you might adapt a slightly different style to be more effective as a salesperson?

Blair: I think you're going to know in advance and it's going to be a recurring situation. In a qualifying conversation where you're vetting the lead to see if this is worth applying the resources of the firm against, you would want to be clinical and business-like. Until you gain what I would call a shorthand here, I would say, until you gain the high ground, I don't mean the high ground over the prospect or client necessarily, but a ground higher than vendor. Until you gain that expert practitioner high ground, where your expertise is recognized and valued, and you're getting cues that say that, you want to show up somewhat more clinical and professional.

You go into the first encounter with that suit on. Now, if you encounter somebody on the client side who is also Midwest nice like you, then you can ratchet down the Chuck Finley in this case, in Katie's case, the clinical professional, and you can let more of yourself shine through. You just have to be careful that you don't get into this where you're both Midwest nice and you're both not saying what needs to be said. You still need to be more professional and more clinical than your counterpart, the client in this situation, but you can adjust it based on who you're dealing with.

David: Let me try and summarize how somebody takes a specific message away from this. Figure out where the sales process is helped, or you get a chance to help your clients more because they say, yes. That's obviously we're assuming that fit here, but where the sales process would be helped if you stepped out of your normal way of reacting, identify that name, it, have some fun with it, identify a specific character. Is there something else in there that we need to make sure folks think about? I don't view this as a failing on people's part. I view it as a fun exercise to try to sort of expand your effectiveness.

Blair: What can possibly be failing about who you are? There's no bad personalities. Maybe there are a few out there, but you are who you are. You have these strengths, you bring these strengths to this situation, and hopefully, you're in a role that allows you to play to your strengths all day long, but don't get so locked into that. Recognize that you show up differently. Just back to my friend, Anese's idea. You show up differently with different people, to different people in your life, and under different situations and circumstances. You yourself however you see yourself, you have expressed yourself and handled yourself across these range of different ways in a range of different situations.

If you think about it, you've already proved your ability to do this. It's really a matter of just being conscious about, "Okay, I can do this, and this is the person I need to be in these types of situations. I'm going to think about who this person is. I'm going to name them. I'm going to try on being this person in these situations." There's no failing here. This is nothing but a growth opportunity. I was going to say, there's nothing that can go wrong here but--

David: You are right. I don't think I'm going to agree with you on that one.

Blair: I won't curse it.

David: Just thinking about the impact of the size firm you run or work in. If you're running or working in a small firm, this is all old news to you. You got to be doing all kinds of things that aren't necessarily a good fit for you. If you're running a bigger firm, then if you are hiring all these other people to take care of your weaknesses, then you're going to be more and more like yourself, and that is not necessarily a good thing.

What ameliorates that, what softens it is the fact that if you're running the big firm and you're doing it well, then you are managing lots of people and discovering their strengths and you're stepping into lots of different suits every day too, and you're not becoming some evil version of yourself without thinking about other people.

Blair: Amen.

David: This has been great, Blair. Thank you.

Blair: Thanks, David.