Kent Svenson:
Welcome to the trusted leader show I’m Kent Svenson producer of the trusted leader show. And for this week’s episode, we feature an exclusive clip from the 2022 trusted leader summit, where Phil M Jones, master of influence and persuasion author producer, speaker advisor, and entrepreneur took to the stage to discuss the advantage for every critical conversation. So sit back, relax, and enjoy the show.

Phil M Jones:
So why don’t I share with you the most important lesson I came here to share with you today? And the most important lesson I came to share with you today was oh.

Phil M Jones:
Oh yeah. That’s it. When is the worst time to think about the thing you’re going to say? It’s right in the very moment you’re saying it, right, right. In the very moment, you’re saying how many of you have come away from critical conversations thinking should or would’ve could have, how many times have you come away from a critical conversation and thought done? Why on earth? Did I say that? Yeah, it’s so difficult to do something after the fact, if you took that same energy, put that same energy up front chances are you’d increase your efficiency in the moment. Fair. You’re gonna learn in our time together today that I’m a little pedantic about word choices so much so that I did write this little book about them. So book I’m insanely proud of. I’m proud of it for like a gazillion reasons, but one big one is it’s like a genuine bestseller sold. Now over 1.4 million copies translated into 29 different languages. This little book right here, it outsold 50 shades of gray and Harry Potter did right for one whole day.

Phil M Jones:
You celebrate your wins? I’m taking mine.

Phil M Jones:
So book full of what I call my magic words. What are magic words? There’s sequences of words that talk straight towards the subconscious brain. Subconscious brain is powerful. You’ve learned a lot about it through the last couple of days. Why is it powerful? Because as a yes, output and a no output, there is no, maybe in subconscious. See, people think the no is the enemy of, yes, it’s not in decision is the enemy. Maybe is the enemy. Your job as leaders is to help people make decisions, not get stuck in maybe. So if you can speak to the part of somebody’s brain that is fundamentally more decisive, it will make decisions quicker. Therefore it will take action quicker. Therefore you’ll gain transaction quicker. Make sense. Still confused about this subconscious brain. I’ll give you an example of where it served. You do any of you remember like a familiar car ride where you remember getting in in the morning, and then you remember arriving at the destination and have no idea how you got there. Subconscious brain took the drive. Don’t worry. Anything unusual happened. Conscious brain would kicking grab the wheel in a nanosecond. You’d be in full control, but we are leaning on it all day every day. Think of it quite simply as nothing more than a little voice inside your head. That’s it. And if you are sat there right now, thinking that you haven’t got a little voice inside your head,

Phil M Jones:
Then that’s the little voice telling you. You haven’t got a little voice.

Phil M Jones:
We all have one learning to speak to other peoples is what gives you a fair advantage in almost every critical conversation. I’m gonna give you some examples, but knowing how smart you folks are in the room, I wanted to give you some of the structure and frameworks behind it. The book has 23 sequences of words, but they’re really built on deep rooted psychological principles. I thought that if you are thinking right now that the change that you are looking to make in your organization requires you to enter into some tough conversations, some critical conversations in order to win the trust that you know, you need to change the outcomes you’re looking for. Knowing the structure might give you everything you need. See for every critical conversation that you enter into. There are only three ingredients that you require three very specific ingredients in a precise order. First of those critical ingredients is curiosity. Every great conversation needs to start from a position of curiosity. I know you know a lot about a lot. I know that, but if you show up into a conversation, knowing a lot about a lot, what you’re gonna create is do you now,

Phil M Jones:
Right? Rubs people up the wrong way. Ironically certainty and conversation leads to uncertainty in the other person’s opinion in you. Isn’t that strange. The more certain you show up to a situation, the more uncertainty you create in other people, curiosity by alternative gets you towards certainty. Why? Because it helps you understand their context. You have a lot of content you wanna share with people yet. Your content before context is merely noise. Do the work to understand their context before you insert your content. What do we heighten trust? When you do the work to understand their context. First now you’ve understood their context. We dared towards the third ingredient. Second ingredient even. Wow, I can’t count empathy. It’s like a buzzword right now. Right? Empathy. People throw it around like confetti at a wedding. You still dunno what it means.

Phil M Jones:
Best definition I ever heard for empathy comes from a speaker author, friend of mine by the name of Jon Acuff. Jon Acuff describes empathy as to care about what the people you care about. Care about. That’s easy, right? Care about what the people you care about. Care about. If you wanna test how good you are at this, do me this favor. Check your last sent emails. When you’re back in the office tomorrow, go through your box and see who the hero of the story is on your last sent emails. See who the person is. The primary benefactor. See who you are showing you care about in, in those emails. See, there’s a button that exists inside our head. Every decision maker has the same button it’s called the show. Me that you know me button, the second you trigger the show, me that you know me button, it stops being this.

Phil M Jones:
And it starts being this. It’s not you versus them. It’s you and them versus it. That’s the goal we’re looking for. Empathy gets us towards being relatable, which is what people are looking for in a leader, right? Somebody who can relate to them, empathy gets us there. Show our hands in this room who has somebody you could ask them to do just about anything reasonable. And you’d say, yeah, sure. Who knows at least one person like that. Right? Sure. And you equally have people in your life that could ask you to do the exact same thing. And when they ask you, you’re like me really? Now you got a million questions and a dozen reasons why you can’t, what’s the difference? Trust, trust. So how do you get to trust in critical conversations? You start off curious, you then get to empathy. So you become relatable.

Phil M Jones:
You learn earlier on that. If you do not ask, you do not get, we know that to be true. Why do we not wanna ask for the things we want in life? Because we are fearful of rejection. We learned that we’re fearful of rejection because we didn’t do the work before the work to create the context and see things through their eyes. So the third ingredient is courage and not like jump out of an airplane. Courage, getting a wrestling ring, courage, not that kind of courage, not go to war courage. I’m talking about the courage to just ask, finish this sentence for me. If you do not ask you do not get, you do not receive because your success is in direct correlation to the quantity of quality ask that you make in your life period. And the trouble is, is if we start off courageously asking for the things that we want in our life, we’re rude, we’re obnoxious, all the things we didn’t want to be. But when you do it in this order, you get the action you’re looking for. That’s what happens, cuz it’s built on a foundation of trust.

Phil M Jones:
The secret to influence lies in our deep understanding of this word. One of the most overused words in the word of leadership, motivation, why? Because many people do not understand what it means. The word splits. That’s how it’s formed. Study it. Etymology is two words. First part comes from the Latin word mats. Second part comes from the word that we know is action. Modern day translation to mats is motive. Action stays the same. If somebody had a motive, it would mean they had a, what? They have a motive. They have a I’ll take reason. And if they’re gonna take action, it means they’re gonna move. Or it means they’re gonna do something. All that is meant by the word. Motivation is a reason to move. Now, if you can unlock somebody, else’s reason to move, you can get just about anybody to do just about anything, correct?

Phil M Jones:
Whose reason matters more yours or theirs? This, see, I knew we had smart people. So that is simple to understand. Correct. And very difficult to executing practice. Did you also know there are only three reasons anybody moves to do anything? You knew that dang gotta work. Yikes. Okay. Three reasons. First reason we move to do anything is to run towards something for an incentive because it’s gonna make us more comfortable, correct? We’re run to become more comfortable. If we’re not running to make ourselves more comfortable, we’re running from something, cuz it’s making us uncomfortable. This fear of voting it, I wanna get away from this thing makes sense. And if it’s not incentive to become more comfortable or fear to become less away from uncomfortable, the third thing is cuz we’re all selfish creatures and we do things for our own reasons that make our hearts sing.

Phil M Jones:
We’re doing things that are just for us question for you as leaders, do people move to become more comfortable? Yes or no? Yes. Yeah they do. Right? Some of the people, some of the time do people move when they’re uncomfortable? Yes. They do more of the people more of the time. And do people move to do things for selfish reasons that matter for them, them and only them. Yes they do all of the people all of the time. Interesting. Gonna try and make this as crystal clear as possible for you is knowing that it’s towards the end of a long couple of days. I’m gonna put this chair in the middle of the room and I want you to imagine something for me. This is not a conference chair. This is a chair in your house. This is not any chair in your house. This is your favorite chair in your house. It’s in your couch. It’s your comfy chair. It is your favorite spot on said comfy chair. And I know so cuz it has a perfect but shaped imprint right there that you’ve been working on for some time. Here’s what I now want you to imagine. You’re coming back from this brilliant conference. You’re stepping back into the house. You’re still wearing the clothes that you traveled in. You’ve got your bag alongside you. You look at the couch and you are the most decisive. You’ve been in a long time. You look to the couch and you say, I am gonna sit on you and you give it like everything you’ve got and it looks something like this.

Phil M Jones:
And then you start thinking and you start to think to yourself. You know what? If I went upstairs and got changed, man, I’d be so much more comfortable.

Phil M Jones:
I would. I know it. There is not a doubt in my mind that that is a brilliant idea. What if I what if I lay out that way?

Phil M Jones:
That’ll be a game changer, but you know what? This is fine. Am I right? How many of the people are you looking to influence agree entirely with everything you’re saying to them are in full understanding of the fact that they believe in what you’re saying yet. They’re equally fine as they are. How many too many, what is it that gets you out the couch? Dinner’s ready. Jobs to be done. Kids to be picked up game time. I don’t know what it is. Some form of pattern interrupt changes. It gets people out of their lazy backside helps. ’em Get up to be able to start making things happen. That’s your job. That’s your job is to help be that catalyst to get ’em out the couch. Cuz people do not move to become more comfortable. People move when they’re uncomfortable or there’s a reason that’s big enough makes sense.

Phil M Jones:
So we got some theory helping unlock. Their reason to move is useful. We know that people will move for a few reasons either to run towards something, run away from something to make their heart sing. That stuff is useful. How do we take this further? Well, we need to understand some more about decision making, building on what Jerry said earlier on is did you know that every decision that every human being has ever made has been made at least twice? Did you know that every decision that every human being has ever made has been made at least twice? What do I mean? I mean, we first make decisions in our mind’s eye make sense in our mind’s eye ever said the words to yourself that I cannot see myself doing that. It’s a literal thing. Therefore logic would prevail and say, if I can get somebody to see themselves doing something before I invite them to do it, chance them doing it significantly higher.

Phil M Jones:
What else do we need to understand about psychology is when it comes to decision making, what we have is we have a point of reference when I’m making decisions. I reference my memory. What my memory is, is a catalog of images like a thousand million times of an Instagram account. All of these images up here are memories. When asked to make a decision, I reach in here for memories that are somewhere near similar to what I’m focused on at the moment in time, seeing how these educate the decision I’m looking to make. Makes sense. Here’s the interesting thing though. How did those memories become memories? Let’s ask the question another way. How many of your memories actually happened to you? Oh, it’s not all of them. Correct. See, your memories became memories because of either experience you lived through or an experience that was shared with you typically in the form of a story. Remember this, a story will always sell the facts will only tell that is worth remembering. Why cuz stories, paying pictures. There’s a period in our life that we’re all proven to learn quicker than any other point in time in our life. Scientists can’t agree on the date range, but they all agree. It’s when we’re kids,

Phil M Jones:
When we’re kids, we learn quicker than any other point in time in our life. How did we learn quicker experiences? We live through stories that were shared with us.

Phil M Jones:
There’s a lot to unpack here. Correct? People’s reason to move is the thing that drives ’em. They’ll either move to run towards Sunday, to run away from something to make their heart sing. Decisions are first made in our mind’s eye before we make them anywhere else. And to make decisions, we reference memories. How do things get in our memories, either experience we lived through or experiences that were shared with us, how do we take this all forward and use it? We do it in words. Yeah, but how? Yeah, but how well, how did a child know a story was coming? What were the magic words?

Phil M Jones:
Once upon a time, right? Child hears the words. Once upon a time kid kicks back and says, gimme, gimme, gimme, this is gonna be good. You cannot use the words once upon a time as a leader and expect to get the same outcomes.

Phil M Jones:
You can use the grown up version. What can I now do? I can now paint pictures in the mind of the person I’m looking to influence. What kind of pictures do I paint? I paint pictures of things. They wanna run towards pictures of things. They wanna run away from pictures of things that can make their harnessing that’s it. And the greater the contrast I create between those things, the more likely they are to move. Hey, just imagine the impact of you taking the eight pillars of the trust, edge work and giving the lens of the clarity around those eight pillars, full exposure within your organization. Just imagine you did that or just imagine you can, well, just imagine your competitor got to do it first. Am I right? Hey, just imagine the impact it have on you as a leader. If what you do is take back the information that you’ve learned today, put it into practice in your organization. What could that do for your career? What am I doing? I’m inviting you to see yourself in alternate realities, which is creating the motivation for you to act today. Gerry O’Brion do people make decisions based on logic or emotion?

Phil M Jones:
The answer is correct. Let’s see how this plays out in the real world. Show of hands in this room who’s married or has been married there. You asked a question. Was it because the person you were looking at met your multipoint inspection checklist or did it first feel right at the time and was then backed up with logic? I don’t know a cleaner example, right? It has to make sense here, but only after it feels right here, both need to be true. I showed you a second ago that we could passport people through time in their mind’s eye with the words. Just imagine what if I could passport people through time in their heart’s eye, getting them to feel something they haven’t yet felt to use that feeling, to trigger an outcome in the moment. That’d be cool. Right? It’s called a future conditional feeling and a future conditional feeling is simply the words.

Phil M Jones:
How would you feel if easy. Right? See, how would you feel if you could take these eight pillars back, implement them into your organization and start to see a positive change. How would you feel if that was true? Oh, very good. How would you feel if your competition got there first? Oh, how would you feel if by taking back your page of notes and your beautiful journal, putting them into practice and implemented them, you’ve got the promotion, the recognition you finally deserved. How would you feel if that was true? Ooh, I like that one. What am I trying to teach you? I’m trying to teach you about the power questions. Here’s a five step process that will never change all the time. I have air in my lungs. I believe this will be true. What I believe will be true is that questions create conversations, conversations, lead to relationships, relationships, create opportunities and opportunities lead to action or change. It starts first where with questions to create conversations that lead to relationships, that create opportunities that then create the action. The sales, the change, make sense. See, everybody wants this, but they forget that the work starts right over here. So you want a to-do list? Who do you need to be asking questions of? What are the conversations, you know, you need to be having, and you’re not. Where do you have relationships that hold untapped opportunities? And please get crystal clear on the action or change you’re looking to create

Kent Svenson:
That’s it for this week’s episode. Be sure to check out trustedleadershow.com for all the show notes and links and information from anything mentioned in today’s episode. And we are so excited to have the trusted leader summit coming back next year, November 7-9, 2023 at the JW Marriott Mall of America here in Minnesota. To find out more information and to register, visit trustedleadersummit.com. And if you haven’t already, we would greatly appreciate a review on Apple Podcast, Spotify, Google, or wherever you get your podcast as this is a great way to help support the show and help others to discover it. But in the meantime, that’s it for this week’s episode. Thank you so much for listening. And until next time stay trusted.