This week in the world’s #1 newsletter on leadership communication:

• How to Speak Like a Spy​
• On the Show: The Trillion-Dollar Cost of Leaders Who Talk Too Much​
• Book Recommendation: Mastering Executive Transitions ​

How to Speak Like a Spy

Hi Reader,

Andrew Bustamante asked an Australian entrepreneur one simple question: what's your annual revenue?

Up to that point, the conversation had been green lights all the way. Bruce had happily talked about how he got started running care facilities and how much his employees loved it.

Now the Aussie got quiet. "I don't really pay too much attention to the numbers," he said. "It's the people that matter."

Bustamante spent seven years as a clandestine officer in the CIA, and he knew exactly what he was looking at: a closed door.

In his new book Outsmart Everyone, he describes a conversation as a house. Some topics sit behind open doors, some behind closed doors, some behind locked ones. The skill is knowing which is which – and how to open them.

Open doors: easy and least interesting

The weather, work, the kids. They're great for rapport, but you never learn what matters there if you stay on these topics.

Locked doors: back off for now

The topic gets shut down right away. "Behind every locked door is a pain point that someone desperately wants to keep secret," writes Bustamante. Push and you alienate them.

Closed doors: walk through

The signs are hesitation and vague, nonspecific answers. They're not refusing to talk. They're just not telling you everything yet.

Most people get awkward at this point and retreat to an open door. I know I do. It feels awkward and pushy to stay on a subject, and I would normally retreat to shallow talk.

But for a spy (or us trying to understand what’s going on in the business, or how to close a deal), those are the crucial ones. So here's what Bustamante did, and you can copy it step-by-step:

1/ Read the door

Bruce had become less forthcoming, so it wasn't open. But he hadn't refused to talk about it either, so it wasn't locked. Hesitation followed by a vague statement is a classic closed door.

2/ Ask for the specific

Instead of accepting "it's the people that matter," he pressed for a dollar figure.

3/ Sit with the discomfort

Bruce hesitated again. It wasn’t comfortable for him because he didn’t want to seem like he was complaining.

This is the moment most people bail out. They think, “This is going to get emotional, I don’t want to get into this,” and start babbling about the food.

Bustamante does the opposite. He lets it be awkward for a few seconds, stays on the topic and keeps going.

You want to resist the urge to fill the silence. It’s the comfort paradox at work: what feels uncomfortable for you is often what gives the other person room to answer.

If the door needs a nudge, you can make the problem feel normal: “Reaching a revenue plateau sounds familiar. A lot of my clients have faced a similar challenge.”

Bustamante stayed with his question, and the number came: about $500,000 a year.

4/ Now go one level deeper

Once someone lets you into a room, Bustamante notes, they're unlikely to kick you out right away. So he asked about what Bruce wanted, not about the numbers: "Are you happy with 500K? Do you want more?"

And then the real answer came out: "Well, it gives me everything I need personally. But I'm in the business of helping people who need care. And you know, I can only help so many people at that size."

Bruce depended on a single client, a government program that referred people to him. He'd never had to win new business, and he worried what would happen if the program stopped. Bustamante's team ended up coaching him through exactly that, and the business grew.

None of it would have happened if Bustamante had backed off at the first sign of discomfort.

"That's why closed doors are the most interesting. Closed doors show you where the other person's pain points lie."

The same goes for you as a leader. In one-on-ones, client meetings and difficult conversations, the answer you need usually sits behind the door people hesitate to open.

When you sense a closed door, explore it, don’t ignore it.

One caveat: speaking like a spy isn't about prying secrets out of people. Bruce opened up because, as Bustamante puts it, they discovered how much they could help each other. Open closed doors to help, not to extract information.

Which closed door do you need to walk through this month? Hit reply and let me know. I read every answer.

ON THE SHOW

The Trillion-Dollar Cost of Leaders Who Talk Too Much

▶️ Episode 348 on YouTube, Spotify or Apple.

Only 1 in 12 leaders has this quality. Yet it’s the most important one.

Only one in twelve employees says their leader is very good at listening.

That leads to a lack of trust, lack of engagement, and lack of performance.

And it’s more expensive than you think. It’s possibly the biggest undetected cost in business today.

To solve this issue, I invited Julian Treasure to join me on Speak Like a CEO.

Julian’s TED Talk on “How to speak so that people want to listen” is one of the most watched of all time with 130+ million views.

Julian shares the four Cs of conscious listening:

1/ Consciousness: Recognise that listening is an active skill requiring effort.

2/ Commitment: Put distractions aside and give the person your attention.

3/ Compassion: Seek to understand rather than judge, even when you disagree.

4/ Curiosity: Listen to learn. Let people surprise you instead of assuming you know what they’ll say.

Applying these as a leader allows you to build a listening culture from the top, and to become the one leader in twelve whose high-performing team says: they really listen.

You can listen and watch my conversation with Julian here:

​​​

BOOK RECOMMENDATION

Mastering Executive Transitions

A stunning 40% of executive transitions fail during the first 18 months. That’s because expectations are higher than ever while leadership has become more complex and demanding.

And we all know that onboarding tends to suck at all levels in most organizations.

My friend Navid Nazemian, who was my guest on the podcast last week, is the person CEOs call when they are picked for a new role.

His book, Mastering Executive Transitions, explores the intersection between executive leaders and their career transitions, the research of transitions versus the reality of it, and the increased complexity and demands from executives coupled with shorter tenure and executive overwhelm.

This book demonstrates how the biggest transition mistakes can be avoided – like making big announcements too early – and provides a useful framework to transition into a new role successfully.

Now I hope you can transition into an inspiring weekend.

Oliver

Eo Ipso Communications GmbH

c/o Mindspace

Uhlandstraße 32, 10719 Berlin

​Unsubscribe · Preferences​