Speaking and Communicating Podcast

 If you were led that way, that's where self-curiosity has to come in. You're like, "Are those really my values, or that's just a bad habit that I learned somewhere else?" And if I'm on my leadership journey, I have to be curious every day about what beliefs I'm bringing in, what's showing up for me, and I always make it simple.

Is this getting you the outcomes you want? Welcome back to the Speaking and Communicating podcast. I'm your host, Roberta Ndlela. If you are looking to improve your communication skills, both professionally and personally, this is the podcast you should be tuning into. Communication and soft skills are crucial for your career growth and leadership development.

And by the end of this episode, please log on to Apple and Spotify and leave us a rating and a review. Now let's get communicating with our guest today, joining us from Alberta, Canada, Tyler Chisholm. I hope I said that right. You did. So- You nailed it. You nailed it, Roberta Thank you. Good training I had there.

He's the CEO, author, speaker, fellow podcast host, and is here to talk to us about how crucial, actually, that it's not optional to be curious, not only as a leader, but also as an entrepreneur. And before I go any further, please help me welcome him to the show. Hi, Tyler. Hello, Roberta. How are you? Thank you for having me on.

I'm doing fantastic. Thank you for being here. I'm looking forward to our conversation. But before we get started, did you ever think to yourself growing up that, "I'll be helping leaders, making them realize how literally life-saving curiosity is if they hope to thrive"? One answer, no. I never, that was not the journey, that was not the path.

Uh, growing up always as a curious person, but never being deliberate about it, never unpacking it, never really building a strategy around it. But looking back on my life, it kinda makes sense in reverse. But at the time, uh, it was not deliberate, it was just a journey that I was on, and it's something that evolved for me, not only in my leadership journey, but I've really discovered it being a podcast host.

Because a podcast host who's not cur- curious probably shouldn't be a podcast host. That is absolutely true. In fact, I say being a podcast host, this has been my mini MBA 'cause I've learned so much. Oh, yes. And the reason I've learned so much is because of the questions I ask. And the openness- And I've learned to ask as well, that my guests have trained me to ask.

Yes, the truly being open to what shows up, and I love that you said that. About 50 episodes in I went, "Wait a second, this is a mini MBA." And I said the same thing. I love that you brought that up. And the ability... And every time you, you do one, the next one gets better because you're like, "I could go deeper here.

I could ask a little bit here." And if the objective is always to elevate the guest and to provide an outcome and experience for the audience, and for you to just go on the journey, it almost shuts down some of the other narratives of, "I have to look smart, I have to have all the answers," 'cause that's ridiculous.

Why would you ever think that when your guest is the expert in their world and, and you're only the podcast host in that journey? It really gave me permission to be c- almost, like, unfetter my curiosity. And the more I did it, the better I got at it, but also the more fun I had and the more I walked away with.

It became too much to deny. Yes. But not only that as well, even if you're an expert in your field, 'cause we say the same thing about leaders, we're like, you're not expected to know everything, and therefore you don't have to put that pressure on yourself And when it comes to even public speaking as well, you're a speaker.

You're not expected to be perfect and all no mistake making, suited up type of- I don't know, maybe that's your style. I I could be assuming here. I think it was earlier in my career. I think I put a lot of pressure on myself. I think I bought into the narrative of the all-knowing leader. I bought into the belief that therefore if I was the leader, I must be able to answer every question.

I have to be confident, I have to speak that way, I have to be certain about every decision. And over time I realized, one, that that wasn't really working. Well, I got, I got some 360 degree feedback from my team back in the early days of right when I was starting the podcast, and it was, "Tyler, you're asking questions you already know the answer to.

You're filling up the room. You're not creating space for the rest of us to participate. We kinda sit back and just listen because we already know you th- you know which way we wanna go, and you wanna go anyways. When you ask us questions, they're slightly performative, but you're also have an objective."

And I got this feedback in a 360 review, but I'd been doing it in podcasting and I went, "Wait a second. Podcast Tyler doesn't do any of those things, but leadership Tyler is clearly doing them." I wonder, and this is my belief, that we have multiple personalities, and I mean that in a positive way. We have our work personality and our family personality and our friend personality.

My podcast version of myself was much more curious, much more open, left space for the other person, never made myself the hero, always made the other person the hero, then the audience, and then maybe me way down the line. And I said, "Wait a second. What if I started bringing that deliberately into my leadership journey?"

And one, it almost immediately gave me positive feedback, 'cause I had a few team members I'd been working with for many years, and they're like, "Hey, kinda liking this new thing you're doing here." All of them knew I was doing podcasting, so they're like, "I listened to your show, and now I'm seeing you in meetings, and I'm seeing more overlap, and we really like it."

So I was able to get some really positive feedback from my team. Luckily, I had a safe environment. But the 360 kinda gave me a punch, it kinda gave me a kick, and made me realize I was lucky enough at the time that I had something I could reference and going, "Huh, this version over here doesn't act that way, and I get a different outcome.

And if leader Tyler's acting this way and my team is telling me this is not creating a positive environment for growth, for them feeling like they're participating, for them feeling safe in meetings, ooh, I gotta listen." And that was kind of the turning point for me where I started to deliberately make curiosity top of mind.

I'm curious about that. Did you intentionally create that meeting or wherever you got the feedback from, or was it just something random? Yeah, we actually did, uh, we did leadership 360s with the entire team. Okay. And so we brought in an external advisor. We were a small team at the time. We were, like, 45 people.

So we brought in a consultant to look at our values, look at our leadership team from a performance perspective. We had some friction between certain team members, but everyone was a high performer on their own pillar, but when you put the pillars together, there was a lot of friction, and it wasn't good friction.

It wasn't healthy friction. And so I absolutely included myself in that journey. So it was a formal 360 review process that was done by an external consultant who came in, and everybody filled out surveys and gave feedback on their team members, and there were six of us on the leadership team at the time.

So that was the event that, for me, if I look back, of when was the actual turning point and when I decided to start getting deliberate about being more curious and what that meant as a leader, it was that moment of that feedback, which was kind of uncomfortable, Roberta, at the time. It wasn't kind of uncomfortable, it was very uncomfortable.

But I couldn't debate it. You know, sometimes you get feedback and you kind of, you bristle. I didn't like it, but I couldn't argue. They were right. They were very right. Okay, one, uncomfortable for you as the leader knowing that that's their perspective But also, do you feel it was uncomfortable for them to fill out the survey and be honest?

I would imagine. I think clearly we had enough safety that people felt... It was also anonymous. There was a veil in between the two. There was a curtain between. I feel very blessed that the team did feel comfortable enough, but this opens up a whole other conversation around feedback and psychological safety.

And as a leader, are you creating an environment where people feel safe communicating up? You know, and I've heard a concept recently about up power and down power. Down power almost feels easy. You're in a leadership role, you immediately have positional power, but what are you doing to make sure the people around you who can maybe see your blind spots and see your risk of certainty and point it out to you, do they feel safe enough to do that?

And in that case, we had to create an anonymous survey environment for that to happen. I would say my team today is much more quick to speak up, but at the same time, we're all humans, and sometimes there's fears and there's holdbacks that, as a leader, sometimes keep you insulated from the feedback you need to hear.

'Cause that's where the trust factor comes in. Yes. You don't want somebody to think, "If I tell my leader, Tyler, that this is what I really think, I might lose my job. I might not get promoted. He might not give me the bonus." Yeah. And in a lot of organizations, I would say that that's still true Like, I think you're right to question that.

But as a leader, I think it's our responsibility. I believe that it creates a better environment when we have that level of transparency, but that's a belief that I have, and now I've worked to do things that create it. I work with a lot of leaders that struggle. They say they want that type of radical candor, but when they get it, it makes them very uncomfortable, and sometimes they, they react in a way that doesn't create more feedback.

And one thing we've always wondered is whenever we talk about these principles, leadership principles like empathy, trust, do they actually translate into monetary gains, or it's just some la-la land, let's all be human and create a great environment, but hey, at the end of the day, the job's gotta be done?

I think you've touched on something very, very powerful. One, I believe those things help, and when I was writing the book, I found endless amounts of data around an organization that is curious shows a higher rate of return on dollars invested because they have better ideation. They have a team that's more open.

They are more quick to look at something that's happening in the market and get curious about it versus ignore it or resent it or be frustrated by it. I don't have them on the top of my head right now, but there was quite a few studies that I found from Harvard Business Review, and but it wasn't just North America.

There was a lot of global research that had been done around, one, how do we measure curiosity, idea output. It's a very broad term that everyone understands, but it's hard to define 'cause it can mean different things in different settings. So I do believe that my book was written, or I embraced it from the perspective of curiosity in a corporate environment that has performance as a primary objective.

This isn't curiosity of like, "Oh, I wanna learn about pottery. I wanna learn about art. I wanna learn about a world around me." I think that is a fantastic trait to have as a human, but in the context that I wrote about curiosity, it was in the environment of, like, performance. At the end of the day, someone still needs to make a decision and jobs need to be done, and the more curious we are on the way we get there, uh, s- research shows that better outcomes would come from it.

Also created a more collaborative environment, but it didn't take away for the leader to still make hard decisions. Cool. And I think that's the difference of curiosity day to day on a, on a weekend when you're out with your friends, and there's curiosity on a Tuesday when you're in the boardroom.

Someone still has to make a decision Absolutely. Yes. Talk to us more about your book. When you wrote it, what was the objective, and what do you hope that any leader who reads it comes out with something tangible from it? Oh, what a fabulous question. So as any- I'm a marketer by trade. I've been in r- in marketing for probably, oh, a lo- quite a while now as, as time passes, probably 18 years.

I targeted it to, to, my persona was, uh, Alex and Ariel the trailblazer. They were 35 to 45. They were new into the world of leadership. They'd had examples before that they really liked. They had examples of leadership that they didn't love. They were looking for their own way. And I said, "You know what? I wanna make a proposition that curiosity is that way."

So I was very transparent in writing the book that, like, if you read this book, it's not telling you to be a certain way, but it's opening your mind that there's other options. I'll give you an example. I got some feedback from some younger readers. They said, "Wow, I never saw myself in a leadership role because the leadership roles I'd seen are things I couldn't relate to.

They were top-down. They were command and control structures. They didn't resonate with me. But when I read your book, I said, 'Wait a second. I can define my own version of leadership,' and it starts to beco- by being curious of what I value myself. What do I think is important, and how do I think that translates to the people around me?"

So the book was very much written for that group. Does that mean that that's the only group that should read it? Absolutely not. I've got feedback from people all up and down the scale of leadership experience, time, and d- I don't wanna say age 'cause age doesn't matter. You could be 55 or 60 and read this and go, "Wow, you know what?

I'm looking at the world around me, and maybe the way I have been leading isn't working for me anymore." So if you have the mindset of being really curious about yourself, how are you showing up? What beliefs are you bringing to the boardroom that are helping you, and what beliefs are you bringing that are holding you back?

And if you're willing to start there, I think curiosity can be a filter for anyone. But if you're early in your leadership journey, my, my goal was to give new leaders or new managers or people expanding into the role of influencing teams a different way to look at leadership that maybe wasn't as formulaic as some of the books I've read in the past.

Yes, and I'm glad you mentioned self-leadership twice because they say that's where it all starts 100%. 100%. Mm. If you don't have self-curiosity, I think the whole book could have just been about self-curiosity, but it would've been a little bit one-dimensional. Yeah. So I believe it's self-curiosity followed by relational, followed by strategic.

We all value strategic curiosity in organizations, but if we don't have awareness of self, if we don't have connection with the people around us, when the tension's on, I don't think we need to get there. We don't get there because all the other noise gets too loud. "Oh my God, what, like am I gonna sound stupid?"

And, "What if people think my ideas are bad?" And oh, like, "Oh, geez, the, uh, the way they talked to me was so confrontational." Why? Because I didn't, I never built rapport with them. I don't know them. So all of a sudden I'm in a meeting and I'm expected to collaborate with people where I don't have trust, I don't have psychological safety, 'cause that all gets to get created in advance.

But when you have it, and big problems show up, 'cause they do in business every day, every minute almost these days, you can then go, "Wow, I trust the people around me. I tr- I know who I am from a values perspective. I know how I show up. Let's really take apart this issue from all different sides of the elephant," as, as they joke.

We out, can't each stand at our side of the problem and stare at it. We have to look at it completely. But if you don't have the self-curiosity and the relational curiosity in place before, it makes that strategic level of curiosity a lot more difficult, and I think companies need that more than ever.

Pace of change, volume of technology we're all wrestling with in the world of, of business or life. Oh, VUCA. You know the concept of VUCA? I do. I do. Mm-hmm. Yes. There's so much to deal with. The thing is, if you don't have self-leadership first and actually evaluate things the way you just described, that's when you also have cases of leaders who pass the buck instead of taking responsibility for something that happened, instead of being accountable.

I don't think anything will erode trust faster with the people around you, because you know who else knows you passed the buck? Everybody you work with. It's not, everybody knows. Every- Like, it's not a secret. You're not hiding it. That vulnerability and that ownership of like, "Wow, okay, I made an error here.

Let's talk about the error. Let's talk about if we would've done it different. Let's include everybody in the journey." Back to the same point about the leader has to make the decision, how included did you and I feel before our leader made that decision? Because if we didn't feel included at all and they got it wrong, we are lining up to tell everybody that they got it wrong.

But if we were included and it's like, well, you know what? We made that decision together. We had to make a choice, and we didn't get it right. We learn from it. I'm also been really exploring the idea of experimentation. Don't call it failure, call it an experiment. Because what is an experiment? Experiment isn't a fail or succeed, it's an experiment.

Because I think our culture has worked very hard to embrace the concept of failure, but yet I still don't like failing, Roberta. I have to be honest with you. I don't like it. I don't. I don't like it at all. I don't care how much we've tried to destigmatize it, I do not like it one bit. I think, and I've had a few friends lately in the leadership space that have said, "Tyler, start playing around with the word experiment with your team."

Oh, if we fail, it's okay. Nobody really thinks it's okay. No. Are we gonna go out of business? Like, is this a category one or category two decision? If we make this decision and it goes wrong, we might lose the company. Okay? That's a very serious decision. But a lot of times they're category two decisions where it's like, well, we can back it up.

We can try another direction. To me, that's the perfect definition of an experiment, that it isn't a make or break. People aren't gonna die, people aren't gonna lose their job, the company isn't gonna go out of business. That's a level one decision and it has to be taken very, very seriously. But we often treat smaller decisions like level one where it's like, no, it's just an experiment.

But the more you and I are transparent about that, I think the safer it is for us to learn from it, not start pointing fingers after and passing the buck. Right. As someone who's married, I'm wondering when it comes to that idea of you wanna feel included, 'cause my mom used to say even though she didn't tell my dad initially that she wanted to do something She'll, after she decides, "Okay, yes, I am gonna buy that thing for the house, and your dad's gonna think it's expensive," I'll just say to him, "But honey, we spoke about this.

You're just forgetful, you know." "Obviously, yeah, we spoke about it." 'Cause my dad was growing old, I was like, "Yeah, I'm very forgetful now, hey? Yeah, we talked about it. You did say that, yeah, we do need this vase for the corner of the living room" or whatever. I obviously, I will always make you feel included in all decisions.

Roberta, I think that's called gaslighting. Is it not? I think it's, I think it's actually there's a term for that actually. Um, and depending, you're right, if you're working in a, in an environment where things are moving 100 mile an hour, I think you can get away with that a few times. A few times. It is.

But I think it, it really, it really exemplifies how we interact with humans, and when you feel like you were part of something, if you feel like you weren't. Mm-hmm. 'Cause it's amazing. You might think it's a great idea, but simply because you weren't included, you might push back. Uh, they didn't ask me, so I'm gonna be against it.

That's why I think that inclusive level of relational curiosity where it's not only, "Why did you do that?" I'm curious, what were your thoughts when you did that? Right. What got you there? What were you thinking? Not like, not, "What were you thinking?" But I'm curious, what was your thought process at the time?

Because right now we have new information, but two weeks ago we didn't have that information. So based on the information we had at the time, we made the best decision available to us. But five minutes later, new t- new information can show up. But if we were all included, we can share in that journey and it gets away from the blame game, which I think is very unhealthy.

But I don't mean that that supersedes ownership. If I screw up, I will be quick to own it. When I was younger, I was maybe less quick. Because if you grow up in a, a shame and punishment environment, and a lot of corporate organizations still operate that way, if someone gets it wrong... I had a story yesterday of a friend of mine, very senior in her organization, showed up late to a meeting because she was in traffic.

She had texted the meeting owner, who was a senior player- Showed up, she said about nine minutes late. She was very precise. Mm-hmm. She goes, "I had sent him a text five minutes before the meeting, but he didn't get it." And she goes, "Rather than go, 'Oh, hey, was something up?' he choose to berate me in front of the team."

And she's like, "I never respected that leader again." And she goes, "I didn't say anything." And she goes, "Many times I've replayed in my mind, should I have said, 'Hey, I'm curious. Next time I'm gonna be late because of extenuating...'" And she was driving to another city, so it was three hours away, so it was already a big ask- Mm-hmm

to be there. This is not an excuse for not being on time, but that leader wasn't curious at all and chose it as a moment for shame and punishment, and she never respected that leader the same way again. So as a leader, you have to think really long and hard about what might be a habit for you to punish someone and get them in trouble.

But the impact of that, especially in today's world, you can't walk back from that. That, you can't unexplode that bomb. It's already blown up all over your... And everyone else watched you do that. Trust- Yeah ... even if it was at a six, it's now at a two. Because it's not just her, but the people watching- 100% ... in, in front of them, they're thinking, "If I do something, that's exactly how he's gonna treat me."

Don't put your neck out around here, bro- In front of everybody ... because it gets chopped off. It gets chopped off. Yes. He would think, "Oh, I'm-" That's not a safe environment. No one's gonna be curious. That must've been a terrible meeting after that. It must've been horrible. Wow. What does social media call it?

I- Humiliation ritual. Is that what- Yeah, humiliation. Oh, is that what it is? 'Cause it, it's, it's bullying at its best, right? Oh my goodness. And bullying from a position of power. Ugh, it's so messy. And but if you grew up in an environment, if you were led that way, that's where self-curiosity has to come in.

You're like, "Are those really my values, or that's just a bad habit that I learned somewhere else?" Mm-hmm. And if I'm on my leadership journey, I have to be curious every day about what beliefs I'm bringing in, what's showing up for me. And I always make it simple. Is this getting you the outcomes you want?

I guarantee with that individual, if the outcome was to punish her, you might've got it for five minutes, but then, um- The long-term, it hurts ... any type of extra effort just got pulled away. Yep This is why they say a lot of people now don't leave because of more money where they're going, they leave because of bad leadership.

100%. Especially in ... That's what they said that it's- Not feeling connected, not feeling cared about, not feeling ... There's so many not nots in there. I- you can't even pick what it is. Mm-hmm. But if you don't have that connection with your team, and I joke, you build those connections for when things do get tense, because things will get tense, and if you've spent no time creating connection.

Like, if those two individuals, I would guess, my friend Tina and this boss who I don't know, had a good relationship before with trust, that wouldn't have happened. No. 'Cause you don't do that to someone you have a good relationship with. You're more like, "Hey, is everything okay?" "Yeah, I got stuck in traffic."

And maybe after you say to them, "Hey, listen. I know you got stuck, I know you'll be on time." Even if you wanted to berate her, how about in private? You know? I ... Totally. But even then, by then, the berating probably should have sto- I don't think you should berate anybody, period. But it doesn't mean you shouldn't have- Exactly

a real conversation. Mm. "Hey, next time I really need you to be on time. I know this was extenuating circumstances. We're good." That's all you had to do, and that person probably would've went, "You're right." But when you get attacked, you don't go, "You're right," you go, "Oh, really? You wanna attack me? You wanna play this game now?"

Maybe that's just me, Roberta, I don't know. And also, that's when you forget that you're dealing with adults. That's what she said. She goes, "I w-..." She actually said in the story, "I w- I was a grown ass adult." She actually said that when she was telling me the story, so you nailed it. So you are the CEO of Clear Motive Marketing Group.

I am. And the main thing that you do is you help your clients connect with their audiences. How do you do that? Getting really, really curious, fanatically curious about what is actually going on with that customer. I heard something years ago that I love from a startup founder. "Don't fall in love with the problem.

Fall in love with your customer's version of the problem." And that I love, because I've met with so many companies, large and small. They're like, "We know exactly what our customer needs." I'm like, "Has anyone asked the customer?" Well, we did a study like six months or a year ago. I'm like, "Okay, but things have changed.

Let's get really, really connected." The name of our company is Clear Motive, because I believe every company has a motive and every customer has a motive. You and I might have a motive to solve our problem that we need to buy new toilet paper. That's a very day-to-day. But also it might be I need a new car, I need a new house, I need a new outfit, I need to go on a vacation.

I have something I want to accomplish, something ... It might just be very transactional and maybe logistics. I need peanut butter. I need groceries. Or no, I actually wanna elevate myself and I want to reward myself. And if you can identify with that, not only the practical need, but the emotional need as a marketer, because every company that sells peanut butter wants to sell you peanut butter.

The company that wants to sell you a trip, they really wanna sell you a trip. We do marketing for a large, uh, global motorcycle, uh, manufacturer. I was at a large trade show where everyone goes in the spring to look at their dream motorcycle, and I met this gentleman who was probably in his 60s, and he had just picked up a brochure for a very specific type of motorcycle that often is bought by that age group of men.

He said ... I was chatting with him. I said, "Oh, I see you're interested in this motorcycle." I was just there gathering information about the customers. He goes, "I've been collecting these brochures for the last 10 years. They're sitting beside the chair where I watch TV, and I am finally gonna buy that motorcycle."

It's like a $30,000, very expensive motorcycle. And he goes, "I'm finally gonna buy that motorcycle." You know who was excited about that purchase- Right ... more than him? The company that was selling it to him. That was the perfect persona. It was like you could illustrate the guy that w- you built that motorcycle for, and he just showed up in your booth, and he'd been collecting your marketing material for 10 years.

A lot of it was material that we'd created. So I looked at that and said, well, there everybody had a motive, and because of the messaging that we created as an organization, we were able to join those two groups. Mm. And when we do that, that's when magic happens. But you only do that if you're curious about the customer in a way that you can develop a product or service that aligns with that.

Our job is then create the messaging and all the tools and all the channels that exist today that allows those two groups to meet in the middle, 'cause that's when magic happens, and that's when marketing is at its best, in my opinion. So you basically need to make your potential customer say, "Hey, this person sees me, understands me."

Literally the messaging, it's like they know me personally And you're doing that all subconsciously, because very few customers actually say that out loud, but they feel it. Mm-hmm. And they sense it, and they get it. We all like to think that we're very l- rational and very logical, but let's be honest, emotions tend to be the bully or to, tend to be the, um, the fire in e- the gasoline in every environment.

Mm-hmm. And if you can connect with a customer emotionally, and that could be selling B2B industrial manufacturing equipment, you're still solving that problem of that person to do the thing that they need to do that lets them meet their quarterly objectives or drive their performance outputs. Like, I don't think it's reserved only for a business-to-consumer marketing.

I think it exists right across the board, because humans are always in the buying chain somewhere, being emotional beings that we are. But when creating a survey questionnaire, trying to find out what the customer needs so you can understand their problem to that level They answer logically or emotionally?

Oh, I think that's a really interesting balance. I don't think you can rely on one source of data. Okay. I think you can do focus groups digitally right now. It's so easy to engage with customers. But often, if you're a startup, you don't often have any existing customer data. But I think most companies have a wealth of information, sometimes is untapped.

And not in every company. Lots of companies are very good at this. 'Cause you're looking at that kind of infinity loop. You have all the customers... They have the people that are soon to be your customers on the left side, but then you have all the people that are your customers on the right side. When you align that, what was the customer experience?

What was feedback on the buyer's journey? If we're gonna introduce a new product, what about this product is similar to products we've released before, and who was the customer who actually valued that the most? Sometimes companies go to market to sell something to a certain customer, and another group buys it because they're like, "Oh, we had no idea that group was gonna see themselves in our product.

What can we learn from that?" So it can be customer surveys and engagement, it can be conversations, it can be talking to your salespeople, the ones that are often the closest to the consumer. It can talk to your customer success teams. Again, who's actually interacting with the customer once they became a customer, and what are we learning from that?

So I do believe it's about how you're collecting, and this is where it really comes down to the discipline of your data. Are you collecting data from multiple sources that often don't talk to each other into a way that you can create a complete picture of not only your soon-to-be customer, but your existing customers and what you can learn from that?

It's simple, but also very complex in the world of overwhelming amounts of data points. How are you as a company technically bringing that data together so that when we work with you as an organization, we can then turn our creative people loose on really, really good information? So we do both. We help companies really align on the data side so that when our team looks at it strategically and creatively, they have the right inputs.

If you don't put the right information in, you don't get the right answer out. So getting that data into one place that's very usable, that can often be the biggest challenge for a lot of organizations to then come up with that creative insight or that wow moment that shows up in a campaign or in a messaging strategy or online that makes that customer go, "Wait.

Subconsciously, this makes sense to me. I'm gonna go a little deeper." 'Cause, you know, we're all one click away from wanting to learn more, but we're also one click away from just leaving and skimming over to something else 'cause we're getting inundated- Yeah, true ... every day with endless amounts of content.

It's actually, it's quite overwhelming. It is, yeah. If I'm a salesperson and I'm listening to you right now, 'cause you know how salespeople get trained, you know, there's a script, and they tell you how to handle- There can be. Yes, there is. Mm-hmm ... object- objections. If Tyler says this 'cause he's trying not to buy, this is how you close him.

So how do they, in that process, in that reciting the training they've been given- How do they then have the curiosity to extract whatever information they can from a potential customer? This is where every sales trainer is going to resent me for saying this, but we're talking about they forget to listen.

'Cause if I'm just waiting to trigger my next thing because I memorized my script, I'm looking down because I'm thinking about memorizing my script. No matter what the customer says, you say this. I heard this. What was it? Um, if you walk into a retail store and someone says, "Can I help you?" What's the first answer you always say?

No, I'm good. No, thank you. Yeah, I'm fine. Roberta, have you been into our store before? No. Fabulous. Let me show you what we have on special. Roberta- I said I'm fine ... no, let's change it. Rober- Roberta, have you been into the store before? Yes. Say yes. Amazing. Well, then you know about our incredible sales. It's so funny because even changing the question allows me to maintain my script, but if I don't listen right to the next thing after that, of like, actually, no, 'cause what you'll often say are typical, and I'm being very general here, Roberta.

I've never- Mm-hmm ... Roberta and I have never gone shopping together. Just- ... I want everyone to know that. Just- But we might after this. We might after this ... disclaimer. I wanna be clear. I wanna be, 'cause it sounds very like this is very contrived. Right. Um, well, actually no, I'm looking for X. Oh, amazing. Well then let me show you that.

But the first question requires this response. The second question lets them say whatever they're supposed to say next. But my argument is that's fine 'cause it opens the dialogue and kinda gets your toe in. Mm-hmm. But if you don't really listen to what that person will probably correct you with next, then you're missing the opportunity, because then the script either falls apart or the customer gets annoyed.

And we're talking about very transactional, we- we're in the mall hanging out, which I don't do very often. I don't know if you do, Roberta, but we're creating a very transactional thing. In, in B2B, B2C, especially B2B- Mm ... are you being prescriptive? Are you being transactional as a salesperson? Are you really understanding?

I think that as you go up the ladder of sop- sophistication, the best salespeople I know listen incredibly well. Doesn't mean they're not prepared, doesn't mean they have a script, doesn't mean they understand the value propositions, but they're listening so they can frame it up in a way that can be relatable to the customer.

And that's where curiosity- Mm-hmm ... to me, is a make or break. It is the curiosity part, because not that w- your training should fall off the wagon, but there's a way to adjust it and go along with the customer's pace of questioning, whatever clues they give you. Not just verbally, body language. Like you said- 100%

if I say I'm fine, please don't follow me and keep asking if I need help. For goodness sake. Don't stalk me. Don't stalk me. The store stalker, yes. If I just wanna window shop, I'm f- I really am. I promise you. So, yeah. And, and, and which I very much agree. What's the joke? The best laid plans never, never survive encountering the, it's a military term, never survive encountering the enemy.

That sounds very aggressive. Mm. I don't like that term. Best laid plans never survive the real world. It is. That's more true. Yes. So but that's where I think if you're fluid and you're more curious, and you've got some of that information that you can then move and adjust. Sometimes when, you know, I'm using too many metaphors here, but once the play- Mm-hmm

starts moving, you've got to adjust. The ball might go over here, it might go over there, and I think curiosity makes you a little bit more nimble, and I think that that's where it can be fun actually. And in this day and age with VUCA, as we mentioned, you have to be nimble, you have to be flexible. There's no way that you can still be business as usual like it used to be back in the '90s- No

when we started working. Oh my goodness. You have no idea when you start talking ... So in my world, it's very consultative selling. I have no i- idea what their experience was with a past agency. I have no idea if they're comfortable with AI, if they think AI is the devil, if they think it's the best thing ever, if they're struggling to get their team to adopt it, if they had a marketing campaign, if they spent a whole bunch of money and another attempt and it didn't work.

There's so many stories that I have to in- learn about with that customer to actually serve them, that if I don't ask a lot of questions and be really open to what I hear, you can get excited about the wrong path, not even understanding what the customer values Which is the whole handling objections module of sales training.

No, seriously, I'm about to pay for this- It's a module. You're absolutely right. Mm. It's such an interesting journey and, you know, even the, even the theme of your show about communication and being an effective communicator. So much of it is, like, it's in what you hear, not what you say. Two ears, one mouth.

Use in proportion, Tyler. Roberta, you sound like my mom now. Tyler, what did she used to say? Um, before you shoot off your mouth, make sure your brains are loaded. I've, I've been told that in my younger years. I love your mom. That is so good. I'm gonna steal that. I haven't heard it for a few years, but it clearly, I'm...

I, I heard it in the back of my mind when you said that. Right. Any last words of wisdom? Anything that you feel I could have asked you that would be very valuable to our listeners today? Oh, fabulous. What a great question. I think the biggest thing about curiosity, it's not yes or no, it's a practice. I aspire every day to be mir- more curious than I was yesterday.

And when you put yourself out there as the curious guy, it's a lot of responsibility, but I think that we need to give ourselves permission as leaders to practice and to create environments where we can test it. And don't start at a 10 out of 10. Start at a two out of 10. Don't pick the most intense conversation with one of your peers that you're really uncomfortable about and go, "Okay, today's the day I'm gonna test it."

That might feel really uncomfortable. Try twos out of tens and threes out of tens. This is a meeting where the stakes are low, it's a level two decision that we're not betting the company on it. Sit back and say, "Hey, guys, I'm actually not even sure where we're gonna go with this. What do you think? I wanna hear the craziest ideas.

Like, you know, don't give me the five best ideas, give me the most ideas, and let's think about this thing as if it was the opposite, as if the door wasn't black anymore, it was pink." Let's really play with that, and you'll be amazed to see with a little bit of practice, it builds a discipline very quickly with your team, and it can take things that often were sometimes boring decisions and make them a little bit more enjoyable.

It does sound like an enjoyable practice indeed. And then your podcast, where can our listeners find you? Yes. Check it out. Please go to www.tylerchisholm.com. I'm just about to launch a new show, Roberta. I'm very excited. So I've done 537 episodes of one show and I paused it, and now I've done a new miniseries, seven episodes, all with senior leaders from all different, from startup founders, from LGBTQ backgrounds, to longtime publicly traded company leaders working at that level, to someone starting a new sports franchise across Canada, and we have a seven-part series, and the theme is the risk of certainty, all based around the realm of curious as hell.

So we're gonna be going live with that in about a month. So if you go to tylerchisholm.com, you'll find old episodes, you'll find lots of articles, but you're gonna be able to find that new podcast series that's gonna be coming out shortly that I'm really excited to share, 'cause we kinda go right at it, and with leaders that have all experienced it differently, who all share very honest stories and journeys about their own wins and losses on the road of leadership.

That really does sound like a mini MBA, doesn't it? It does. That would be... If someone listens to it and walks away with that feeling, then I'll know I nailed it. Exactly. And you are Tyler Chisholm. If you're watching on YouTube, we can see exactly how your name is spelt, but anyone listening, please spell for them Chisholm.

Absolutely. T-Y-L-E-R, Tyler, C-H-I-S-H-O-L-M. And absolutely, you can find me on YouTube. And if anyone wants to just have a quick chat, find me on LinkedIn. It's one of the social media platforms I still kinda love, because I feel like I'm still talking to real people and no one's quite as crazy- Mm-hmm ... as they are on some other platforms.

Uh, sorry, that was a personal bias I just shared. But if you wanna have a good chat, be free to hook, to connect with me on LinkedIn. I'm happy to connect. Absolutely. Tylerchisholm.com, CEO of Clear Motive Marketing Group, author, speaker, and a fellow podcast host who has also launched another podcast with leaders from around the world.

Thank you so much. I had so much fun during our conversation. Thank you. And I'm sure anyone listening will be able to enjoy this episode as well. Thank you. My pleasure. Don't forget to subscribe, leave a rating and a review on Apple and Spotify, and stay tuned for more episodes to come.