726 - The Power of Radical Collaboration in Sales Transformation, with Ronen Pessar
Welcome to another episode of Sales Transformation. In this episode, host Colin Mitchell is joined once again by Roman Peser to discuss the importance of self awareness and effective communication in sales. Colin, back to you.
Ronen Pessar:I'm going deep into a training called radical collaboration. It's all about learning how to actually become aware of these elements. About half of it has to do with just self awareness. I know this sounds like a little bit fufooey, but when it comes to when it comes to self awareness, it's like, do you even know how you show up as a boss to meetings with your bosses, to meetings with your teams, to your peers in other departments? Are you aware of how you might be triggering their responses to things negatively?
Ronen Pessar:I had an experience once with a previous coworker where this coworker was cross departmental. I needed this guy to help me with some some rev ops stuff. And randomly once, his boss at the time, the the CMO was like, hey, Ronan. Can I talk to you? I'm like, yeah.
Ronen Pessar:Yeah. What's going on? And just for the sake of an anonymity, I'm gonna make up the name, but she was like, yeah. You know, John, let me know that you've been really aggressive about working with him on fixing, like, reports and getting stuff to work. What's going on?
Ronen Pessar:And I was like, What are you talking about? Now, in my mind, I come from a culture where it's like you just say things like they are and it's okay. Everyone is open about it and so therefore it's safe to say things very bluntly. This guy came from a culture where it was the opposite. That you want to you have to sugarcoat everything and just make sure it's said very delicately.
Ronen Pessar:And he was taking my approach as very aggressive and didn't like it. So I was completely blind to that. That's an example of how, like, just not even being aware of my communication style, which is one of the biggest areas of failure, how I communicate, how this person receives good communication, that's one of the key areas where you can start to already improve. Like, how do I make people feel safe?
Collin Mitchell:And and I think that a lot of people just assume that being that way is totally fine because I can very much be the same way where it's like, hey. I think I'm being open and honest and transparent, and some people take that in a very different way or receive it differently than you may think.
Ronen Pessar:Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. My open and honesty might end up being what, Kim Scott in Radical Candor calls, like, the aggressive a hole. Right?
Ronen Pessar:It's the person who, oh, I'm just being honest. Man, we've all seen that in Silicon Valley. Radical what does she call it? I was gonna say collaboration, but radical candor, but used as a as an excuse to just be a dick to someone. Like, that is clear, which is the next best thing, but it's not kind.
Ronen Pessar:And in Kim's research also at Google, also stemming from this project Aristotle, by the way, Kim discovered that radical candor, which is one of the most successful ways of communicating well, has these two elements of kindness and clear. And, the worst version of communication is the apathetical I don't care person. The next worst is the person who thinks they're being kind but then isn't being clear. It's like the manager who and I've I've fallen into this category too. I wanna be I'm so sensitive to your emotions.
Ronen Pessar:I'm just not even gonna say what I really need to say. And that person walks away not hearing what they needed to hear, and the problem never gets addressed. I had a chat with Tom Mendoza, former president of NetApp, while they exploded, and he talks about this. They won one of the best, the best culture in America, I think, in 2009, right at the peak of his career. And, one of the things he attributes to that is he was like, all of our leaders knew you just had to say what you needed to say, but you're saying it to a human.
Ronen Pessar:You gotta say it in a way where the person can actually hear you, but don't sugarcoat it. Say it. Get it out there. The worst thing you could do to someone is not tell them what they need to hear.
Collin Mitchell:Yeah. I think I think that the interesting thing is how do you even go about starting to understand how you're being perceived by others?
Ronen Pessar:Yeah. That's that's a great question. And that's where it can be really hard. I fall into this all the time too. It's like sometimes our ego gets in the way.
Ronen Pessar:We don't really wanna hear the feedback. But sometimes it's as easy as finding someone we could trust and being like, hey. Can you just can you help me out here? Like, how am I sounding? Like, how am I coming off?
Ronen Pessar:Am I actually, because I think I'm being transparent and kind, but do I just sound like a big dick? Like, as I'm saying something to someone in a mean way? Or am I just not being clear enough? Having allies at work means people that you can trust, people that you can talk to that you can ask them for feedback. I know lots of organizations will have different feedback mechanisms, like HR teams will deploy these 3 sixties and stuff like that.
Ronen Pessar:But ultimately, like, that stuff sometimes gets, you know, looked at it as a joke, almost as a formality, because people aren't even honest in those. But the whole point is it's anonymous and supposed to be honest. But, yeah, when it comes down to it, try to find an ally. Someone who doesn't necessarily feel, wouldn't feel threatened by you in any way and therefore can give you very clear and candid feedback that you can trust and maybe do the same for them. But being able to understand, like, how how do I sound, how am I coming off, having a mirror or someone who could hold that up for you goes a long way.
Collin Mitchell:And I think that asking for that type of feedback is what starts to create that culture of, Hey, this is a safe environment to make mistakes, to ask for feedback, to speak candidly and honestly to one another. You know, if you're a newer company, you know, starting off with the right foot, a little bit easier. If you're a company that's been around for a little while and there's a lot of these old behaviors and practices, like, it's gonna take a long time potentially for people to start to actually trust, like, hey. Is there an angle here? Is it actually safe?
Collin Mitchell:Is it not? Is this a trick? So how do you overcome some of that stuff?
Ronen Pessar:Yeah. So let's talk about some of those older companies because you're right. Actually, the the smaller start ups are small enough that that in theory, everyone should be able to, like, connect really quickly and easily, and that feedback is pretty obvious and clear. I mean, just thinking back to my time at Stylo, there were, like, 10 of us at any given time. We all knew what was going on.
Ronen Pessar:Like, I I mean, we shared Airbnbs when we traveled to an event and, like, got to know everyone really well. But we also got to, like, call stuff out really easily. Like, so if someone was doing something that was like, yo, that's really not cool, you could just say that. But let's talk about larger companies where the culture is actually gonna be departmental and team by team because the companies have 10, 20, 30000 employees. These giant corporations that have been around for a long time.
Ronen Pessar:This is where actually a lot of the work that, I'm now doing with Radical Collaboration comes in. They work with companies like NASA and Toyota and these larger corporations, the Fortune 500s, because they have such long history, such deep rooted cultures that sometimes create conflict, unnecessary conflict. And conflict is one of the worst things that can get in the way of progress. If you're a business, conflict is kinda like cancer. Right?
Ronen Pessar:Like, it's gonna grow and make things worse to the point where it's gonna affect your bottom line at some point. It's gonna affect your ability to be profitable, be innovative, to be able to grow. The opposite of conflict is collaboration. And there is a middle there's a third version also, where in the radical collaboration language, they call it red zone cultures, which is conflict filled, green zone cultures, which are collaborative. But then there's the pink zone.
Ronen Pessar:This is where there's a lot of hiding passive aggressiveness. Mhmm. It's like the, you know, I'm gonna talk about Colin to the coworker behind his back after he leaves a meeting. But at that meeting, things are gonna seem good between me and Colin. I'm gonna be like, you know, Colin's actually super dumb.
Ronen Pessar:He has no idea what he's doing, and the strategy is the worst. After he's left, like, that's equally, if not even more toxic than in your face aggressiveness.
Collin Mitchell:Wow.
Ronen Pessar:And so what tends to be true about this stuff comes back to how the individual interacts with their own emotions. And so what what they teach us in the training is it's all about learning the tools to do 2 or 3 things really well. Identify what's going on for yourself in these moments, in these dynamics, in a meeting, a 1 on 1, you know, maybe email exchange. How to then think collaboratively. So they they teach a form of negotiation, which is actually really cool.
Ronen Pessar:It's this idea of, like, let me first seek to understand what you need, and then I'm gonna lay out everything that I need, and let's go line it all up. Where can we just give each other what we both need? And now that we've peeled back some layers, is there actually going to be any conflict? One example of this, which is, like, the classic example. If I have, like, a single orange, one orange, and 2 people who want it, who do I give it to?
Ronen Pessar:I don't know. I could split it down the middle. Does that work? Here. You take half.
Ronen Pessar:You take half. But if I ask the first person, I'm like, hey. What are you gonna do with the orange? And they go, oh, actually, I'm baking, some orange essence brownies and I just need the peel. And the other person goes, yeah.
Ronen Pessar:I'm making orange juice. I just need the fruit. Solves itself. Problem solves itself. But so by talking and going deeper and trying to actually understand while parking your defenses at the door so that you can listen and hear, sometimes these things will solve themselves.
Collin Mitchell:Mhmm.
Ronen Pessar:And that's the essence of collaboration.
Collin Mitchell:Yeah. Man, this was an awesome topic. I'm glad we went down this this path here today. Lots of nuggets for, you know, seasoned sales leaders, new time, first time sales leaders. Any final thoughts and then where's the best place for people to get into your world.
Ronen Pessar:Can find me on LinkedIn, Ronen Pesar, r o n e n, or my website, Ronen Pesar dot com. But, yeah, the final thought here is change is is possible. Just because things have been happening a certain way doesn't mean that they're gonna continue to happen that way. And so that starts with a little bit of hope and believing that things can be different in the future. And with that belief, you can actually create the kind of environment and culture that leads to high performance consistently.
Collin Mitchell:Awesome. And we'll include your link there in the show notes to make it easy for everybody. If you enjoyed today's episode, please write us a review. Share the show with friends. It helps us to reach more sellers and sales leaders to help transform the way that they sell.
