As you travel with me (while I am sharing 39 years of tremendous excitement in our great profession) you will notice, if you follow closely, that I will talk about something in one post and maybe 3 posts later come back at it again from a different angle.

Here’s the answer to last night’s question, which for you 1st timers was “How do you know why your people are working for you or your company without asking them?” Well, I have given you this answer in a previous post, just framed around a different set of circumstances. In politics I am sure you have heard the shock when something is leaked to a newspaper or someone. Well the truth is the leaks are intentional. They are called trial balloons. They, being the party in charge of making the laws, will deliberately let something leak or float a trial balloon to gauge public outcry or opinion. If it is bad they are in shock that someone could leak something as absurd as that. If the response is great everyone wants to jump on the bandwagon to claim the idea was theirs.

In our business I am constantly floating trial balloons around my staff, while carefully monitoring theirs eyes and response. For example, I once had a group of young people and I put up a cash contest. When I was announcing the contest I noticed that only a couple of them got really excited. To take this a step further, out of the few that got excited only two were talking about the money. The other two were talking about being the best and winning. Right then I knew which ones in that group were motivated by money and which ones were motivated by recognition. But wait, my job is not complete. There were still a couple of people that were indifferent. When I had floated my next trial balloon I mentioned a shopping spree and took the group to a chic clothing store and told them what next weeks goals were and what the prizes would be. The group that was indifferent before changed. Two of them were all over the clothes.

The point I am making is I throw enough trial balloons out there until I know for sure everyone’s motivation. Now it is not always in the form of a contest or promotion. That is the beginner’s way. I can throw out 20 trial balloons in seconds and because I study everyone’s eyes so naturally I can see instantly when their eyes show excitement or indifference. This is a learned skill that takes constant practice of one of the 8 basics of success, “Eye Contact”. Remember, The eyes are the window to the soul, but only after you master it.

You know, I hope this journey is exciting to you because me reliving this information is incredibly exciting to me. If one of you readers becomes great in your profession by mastering this information my mission will be complete.

“The Specialist”