Paul Goldsmith shares the 3 questions he uses daily to get clarity around goals, clear up team confusion at work, and become a better communicator in life:
- What Is My End Goal?
- How can I Make This More Clear?
- How Can I make This More Simple?
"Complexity is the enemy of execution." - Tony Robbins
"Certainty is the enemy of growth." Mark Manson
"If You Confuse, You Lose" - Donald Miller
Business would be a lot easier without all the people and their issues of course there would be no business without the people and their issues. This is the next simple step. I'm Paul Goldsmith. I say this all the time to my team at the fundraising consulting company when a client or customer has complications and things just aren't working right and that this is why. We have a business we're here to solve problems not argue with people and today I want to share with you three questions I use multiple times a day to minimize issues get moving on important projects and clean up messes at work. I'm not perfect but these questions definitely help me be better and these questions are simple they're designed to just challenge your thinking in the moment. To simplify your actions and push a little bit out of your comfort zone so stick around you don't want to miss this the first question anytime you get stuck or maybe even challenged by someone on your team pause and ask yourself what is my end goal. Is it to win this argument to be right have my ego stroked or is it to learn something new foster better communication and camaraderie with my teammates. You get to decide if the goal is to win great do that if that is the most important thing to you with this other person or with the team but know that that's going to limit your options down the road and maybe that's okay but just be clear about what you're. Goal is and I've had to rethink and learn this one many times too many times to count because I'm a quick start I like to move fast and I think I'm right as my wife will point out I think I'm always right but my counter to that is of course I do because. If I didn't think I was right I change my mind however I've learned to not put it in such a binary way right and wrong most things there's a lot of gray area. And as Mark Manson points out certainty is the enemy of growth let that sit with you for a minute certainty is the enemy of growth what don't I know what can I learn from this other person. And what I've learned that most things aren't right or wrong there are many ways to accomplish the same thing and you have to get others perspective if you really want to get them to go along with you for the long haul. And in this moment where you're being challenged and you want to get through it and foster better collaboration think about in terms of learning and how can you build trust with your team so that they'll want to go further with you and they'll continue to contribute. Ideas because we've got a I to do all the things that don't require a lot of critical thinking. The goal of having people on your team is to think for themselves not just to execute whatever you think up and getting a better win for the team means slowing down and clarifying on the regular what is your end goal what is this team member or the team as a whole. Actually think not what they tell me they think when I put him on the spot as a manager or owner of a business let this sink in if you're not careful you'll start to believe your team always agrees with you now this is easier to spot another people but it's true of you to. Your team doesn't always agree with you they just like getting paid and they don't want to rock the boat particularly if you have a fragile ego they're going to do everything to tell you that you're right even when they disagree but of course they'll share it with others. And I'll give you an example in our new restaurant we have over 30 hourly employees mostly teenagers and so our manager has to juggle a lot of things when it comes to scheduling. So we started hearing through the grapevine that a few of the teenagers were unhappy with their schedule and they were scheduled to work on some of the days they had previously requested off. When my wife or I asked them if they had said anything to the manager who's doing the scheduling each of them said no. And a couple people even turned in their notice they quit without saying anything to the manager that the schedule didn't work for them they would rather find another job then to have this confrontation and it shouldn't be a confrontation it should be a conversation but you have to realize the power imbalance here and so I don't blame the employees at all that's on management ultimately me as the owner. We are having to revamp the whole scheduling process to make it more collaborative and clarifying with the team ahead of time each week before the schedule comes out that this is a workable schedule now I can sense there are some people listening that that might be a visceral reaction because. Back in the day it was like man I'm the boss and you do what I say you show up when I tell you and you do it with a smile that is not the world we live in plus it's not a real great way to treat people in my opinion. And ultimately you want people to want to be there especially in an hourly job situation like the restaurant we know that. These teenagers that can go get a job virtual anywhere there's lots of jobs to be had so we want them to work here and we need their buy in and we need to feel respected and honored when they request certain time off. Again the question is what's the end goal and are in goal is to have people that show up and think like owners and want to be at work. And are excited because they know that they're valued and respected and they pass that on to our customers who then want to return for business and I'll give you one other example we have a gym and at the gym the team has a million ideas about how we can celebrate our members and retain them and then. Outreach to get new ones I have a few ideas myself but the team doesn't have time for any more ideas what in my opinion they need is to rally around one or two great ideas for the time that we're in for the current season. And execute because complexity is the enemy of execution and if you have a million ideas you're not going to make progress or much progress at all on any of them. Rather than if you have one or two and you're all focused on executing those ideas and so that leads me to question number two when you're having some confusion at work. And that question is how can I make this more clear. As the saying goes and ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure and so if you're seeing these same types of issues popping up time over time back up and ask yourself when you go to make a statement issue a new policy or directive. How can I make this more clear we're all bombarded with tens of thousands of messages every day it's just the world we live in. And so people are stupid they're just distracted and so your words may be clear to you but are they clear to your audience. And so I really like to check myself every time I'm asking somebody to do something how can I make this more clear one way that I do that is. I say it to the person I'm communicating to and then I ask them is that clear what did you hear me say and then I put it in writing after we have a conversation follow up with a recap of the conversation via email or in slack. This doesn't eliminate all miscommunication but it certainly helps in expressing what I actually mean by my words because there's so much unsaid there's so many assumptions on all sides when you're trying to provide clarity. You have to go out of your way to say it forward backward repeat it and then put it in writing it drives me crazy or used to because I'm like I thought I was clear well that's on me I wasn't clear. Because maybe something somebody else said yesterday or something I said a week ago and I'm contradicting myself or there are some chains made by every individual you make them just as well as everybody else. That you bring to the table from your last job from your family situation everybody has their own assumptions they bring to the table so when you're trying to make something clear. One of the ways to do that is to clarify back what you're in goal is what are you trying to accomplish what does it look like what is it that has to be true when you get there. And you can flip it on its head what don't you want to see happen the more clarity you can provide the less message you have to clean up later you ever notice when someone goes to champion an idea and maybe others in the meeting don't quite get it or they don't just don't want to do it. They gradually steer the conversation away and I don't think it's necessarily conscious in the moment. Maybe they make a joke or just throw out a completely different topic that is seemingly urgent and maybe it is but then the original idea just kind of gets lost in the shuffle. That's got a stop and one way I do this is when have a meeting I take notes and if it's on zoom I use an a I bought to capture the notes and they're brilliant so it's fantastic but in person. I write them myself and each item has an owner and a deadline or it's not even an idea I want to consider it's like we're throwing this out and I'm clear with the team. If we're deciding to move forward on an idea it has to have an owner and a deadline or it doesn't exist owner deadline and I put that deadline on a calendar because so many things that happen every single day in addition to be bothered with information. But then things change other situations arise that we have to deal with and then we can look at the calendar and decide that maybe we want to do it a different way in the future but we have to put a placeholder on that idea before we move on. How can I make this more clear is something that I repeat to myself before I send an email before I send a slack or have a conversation. It's not perfect but it certainly helps and finally it's in the name of the podcast so I have to add it as one of my three questions that I asked to clean up any confusion at work or really at home anywhere you go is how can I make this more simple. We often over complicate things because we don't understand them well enough as I said complexity is the enemy of execution when you make something complex you're much less likely to stick with it in fact you're almost guaranteeing that you're going to fail. And so when you said a goal make it as simple as possible and particularly when it comes to sales I'm learning friction leads to people giving up quitting at our gym everyone has a million reasons why. They can't commit to the gym right now everybody agree they want to get healthier they want to get more fit but few people actually want to do it today to make the commitment and so every bit of friction everything we put in somebody's way to make that decision to join our gym gives them an out and if they walk in our gym or they send an email to our gym or they call the phone. They're clearly interested there's something that is in them that has them curious about what it would look like to join our gym and so it is on us to clarify. And make it as simple as possible for them to say yes I would love to join that community yes I want to commit to better health and fitness but to do that we have got to make the process as simple as possible and one brand new. Tool that we're using is we downloaded an app on the gym phone it's a cell phone there are certain times when there's no one at the desk and the phone rings and no one answers and that isn't simple because now someone has to leave a voicemail and a lot of people don't and it's sort of a lost lead if you will our team as a habit of calling people back but the moment that they call is the best possible way to engage with them to make it simple. For them to come in and get a tour but if we don't answer the phone that's not simple we've added complexity to the process and so we downloaded an app on the gym phone that immediately text the person back if we miss a call it sends him a text and that says something like sorry we missed your call. If you have an immediate question send us a text back or here's a link to the website you can check out our schedule and book a free tour and we're still refining that process but we wanted them to immediately be recognized and send a text that then our team can follow up with so it's not perfect but it definitely makes the process a little more simpler than missing a call and then the the team member when they call back has to sort of guess what the person was calling about. And oftentimes they'll get a voicemail so that the text at least begins the conversation at the moment they decide they want to have a conversation and that's really it all business you have to do it on the terms of your customers because if they're not ready to buy a car it doesn't matter how. Amazing the car is or slick your sales people are if the person doesn't show up to the showroom and is an issue by a car it's hard to sell them a car. So somebody shows up in your business or they email or they call or some other way reach out and have an expression of interest ask yourself how can I make this more simple for people to buy your product and that means breaking things down seeing it from the customer's point of view the more steps you have the more people you lose when it comes to a website how many clicks can you remove. This is why Amazon is the biggest company in the world because they have one click ordering I clicked on that button and had something within two hours yesterday that is still magic that's amazing so how can you be more like Amazon have one click ordering and there was no shipping cost they took out all the friction. I'm always looking for a way to make things the buying process in particular more simple because I've heard Donald Miller say this if you confuse you lose don't confuse your potential customers or your existing customers make it super easy for them to buy and then buy again make it recurring getting better anything. Requires fresh thinking it requires a little bit of discomfort of slowing yourself down getting out of your own way and being clear about what it is you're trying to accomplish ultimately part of growing up is deciding what you want. Big picture over what you want right now to satisfy your discomfort and I think that's why it's really a struggle to untether from. Our cell phones at certain times because we'll get anxious and I definitely am guilty of this myself to satisfy that itch that anxiety of not knowing what to do next or having too many things to do so. Just pick up the phone and relieve that uncomfortableness with scrolling and so if you can set that aside if you're feeling discomfort and actually clarify what's my goal for today and write down the three things that have to happen today and miss all the other. Hundreds of things that you're going to do I created the next simple step podcast because I see in my own life that. I have all of these ideas and I don't seem to make progress on him because I haven't made them simple enough I haven't clarified what I ultimately want and I've not been clear about what's most important you can't have a hundred priorities and so I hope this has been helpful for you today. If these questions are valuable to you and you've been able to use one or all three let me know I'd love to hear from you can reach out on Instagram or ex on Paul J. Goldsmith or at next simple step dot com thank you for listening and I'll talk to you next time on the next simple step podcast. (upbeat music) [BLANK_AUDIO]
