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Episode: 473 |
Celine Teoh:
Decoding What Clients Want:
Episode
473

HOW TO THRIVE AS AN
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Celine Teoh

Decoding What Clients Want

Show Notes

Celine Teoh is an executive coach who helps senior leaders convert potential into performance by making the soft skills practical. She is a certified Tiny Habits Coach with Stanford’s Behavior Design Lab, and a facilitator for Stanford Business School’s popular Interpersonal Dynamics course. She is also an ex-McKinsey consultant, business operator, marketing strategist, and investment banker with years of strategy consulting experience with Fortune 500 executives in Asia and the USA. She holds an MBA from Stanford and a BSc from the London School of Economics. She is currently a marketing and strategy executive, and in this episode, she talks about techniques that can improve understanding and communication. Access the accompanying file to this podcast. 

Agnès Le is an executive coach with a focus on emotional intelligence with 20 years of experience in talent development, a multicultural background, and an MBA from Stanford. She’s a leadership coach in the Executive Education and MSx programs at Stanford business school, and a group facilitator for the school’s most popular elective, Interpersonal Dynamics, also known as Touchy Feely. She is also an instructor at Stanford Continuing Studies where she teaches the class “Building a Career of Meaning and Impact.”

Key points include:

  • 10:54: The challenges of practicing empathy
  • 15:22: Three hacks based on our research and experience
  • 25:53: Unpacking status
  • 44:38: Understanding the market

One weekly email with bonus materials and summaries of each new episode:

 

Decoding what clients want

 

Will Bachman 00:02

Hello, everyone, welcome to decoding what clients really are thinking and what clients really want. I’m so grateful for Celine to and RDS Lee, for doing this session today, they can introduce themselves, they got an amazing background, Celine and on us over to you.

 

Celine Teoh 00:22

Alright, well, thank you so much. And yes, and I are so happy to lead this with you. We’re super excited. We’ve actually already sent our introductions, I think by email. And we’ve got tons planned for today. So we’re gonna skip the intro if that’s okay. And then go straight into the presentation. And yes, what do you think? Good? That sounds great. Yeah. All right. With that, what I’m going to do is I’m going to share screen.

 

00:52

Do you want to lead us into or get a bread race?

 

Celine Teoh 00:56

Yeah, I’ll do that. And then I will lead us in that. In that. Reading. Thanks. Well, you already took us through the welcome. Why don’t we spend some time arriving. And brief most of us are busy, we’re transitioning from another activity, or we’re about to go into a super busy day, it’s been crazy the start of the year. Let’s do a quick hack. take three deep breaths. Feel free to close your eyes. I’m going to start just let go of anything that’s outside this room. And set it all aside, turn off your devices. And welcome everybody. Before we begin, let me turn this to slideshow. Before we begin a few things to note. One, let’s experiment. I’m encouraging all of you to participate. The more we participate, the more we learn questions, plunk them in the chat. We’ll answer them in the chat. One of us will. If we can’t, we’ll answer them live. If that doesn’t work, and time is too short, we’ll answer them in emails after so anything that pops into your head, stick it in the chat. Next context matters. This entire presentation is based on our on SNR context, which is US based. It’s very egalitarian assumes that everybody’s kind of equal. And it’s very specific. So we’re like honing in on details. The context might be different, where you’re from, where you’re sitting where your client is. So keep that in mind. Feel free to adjust what we’re saying based on what your experiences of your client and yourself. Lastly, the presentation will be shared after so you don’t have to take notes. All right. So we’re curious, what brings you here today, enter into the chat. Why do you want to know how clients what clients really want? Like? How’s that going to help you with your practice? And yes, will you take a look at what people are saying?

 

03:09

I’ll do that. And maybe name some of them. Yeah. Don’t be shy.

 

Celine Teoh 03:18

What’s it worth?

 

03:20

Okay. Yeah, Julie talks about better be able to deliver on expectations. Benjamin always like to learn more and improve skills. I love that learning mindset.

 

Celine Teoh 03:33

So important for independent consultants.

 

03:36

Yeah, Giovanni talks about curiosity and active listening. Wow, some of my favorite skills. And we can always learn more cereal cereal, yeah, something you just don’t want to tell you and say, Tell me about?

 

Celine Teoh 03:54

You want more tactics, more strategies? Love it. Yeah, so let me do the big unveil right here. It’s actually it’s all about taking into account the emotional side of the equation. So as consultants, we tend to think about the problem in a rational way. We tend to approach it starting from here. But clients and us make decisions based on emotions and underlying needs. We’re never Oh, it’s this is about 20%. This is 80% No matter what people say. So as an example, I once as a fresh associate, went to the head of gap, men’s apparel division, and had done this amazing analysis about why we should not launch a particular product. And I walked him through it. analysis was watertight, I was like, This is great. It’s going to convince him and he looked at me and he said the quiet part out loud. And he said, Celine, it’s great analysis, but I don’t like the numbers. Can I just ignore it? And I was flummoxed product got launched, I hadn’t taken into account the fact that he really, really wanted to do this for all his hidden reasons. So how many of you have been in that situation? Does that resonate? Oh, yes. So, today, what we’re gonna be talking about is how do you handle the emotional side of the equation? Let me actually, flip this. Slides is a weird way of showing videos. Let me show you a video that might resonate. When I hearing it, you’re not hearing it. Alright, something is wrong with this.

 

05:50

You might have to unshare first. Yeah,

 

Celine Teoh 05:53

I’m going to unshare again and reshare. With the funny I shared it with the sound, but it’s still technical difficulties.

 

06:04

Let’s start again.

 

06:07

It’s just, there’s all this pressure, you know. And sometimes it feels like it’s right up on me. And I can just feel it, like literally feel it in my head. And it’s relentless. And I don’t know if it’s gonna stop. I mean, that’s the thing that scares me the most is that I don’t know if it’s ever going to stop. Yeah. You do have a nail in your head.

 

06:38

It is not about the nail. Are you sure? Because I mean, I’ll bet if we got that out of there. Stop trying to fix it. No, I’m

 

06:45

not trying to fix it. I’m just pointing out that maybe the nail is cause you always do this. You always try to fix things when what I really need is for you to just listen.

 

06:54

See, I don’t think that is what you need. I think what you need is to get the nail I’m not even listening now. Okay, fine. I will listen fine.

 

07:01

It’s just sometimes it’s like, there’s this achy. I don’t know what it is. And I’m not sleeping very well at all. And all my sweaters are snagged. I mean, all of them. That sounds really hard. Is Thank you. Oh, come on, if you would just don’t try to say things my way.

 

Celine Teoh 07:37

Okay. Who resonated with that? Happens a lot. Like, as consultants, we want to fix things. And because we’re the experts, the answer is always looking at us right in the face, right in the head. And the problem is the clients not there yet. And so what we need to do is listen, and connect. And then maybe then they’ll let us take the nail out of their hip. But doesn’t happen before that. So the key to the emotional side, what do we have to do? I think somebody said it, was it zero, listening, and empathy, listening and empathy. And you’ve heard it many, many times before. But you’ve heard it many times before, and many of you are probably thinking, Oh, great, touchy feely stuff. But the challenge is, if my slides would advance. Yes, empathy is very soft is a little warble. What we’re talking about here is what Chris Voss calls tactical empathy. And we love this definition. It’s listening to understand another person’s perspectives and feelings and make them feel understood with the clear purpose of building trust and influencing them. So it’s not just empathy for empathy sake, that’s great for like personal relationships, but this one is for building trust and influencing them. So it’s super practical empathy. Well, today, what we’ll do in order to get there is we’ll take you through some empathy misses, some hacks that are easy to implement, and then you’ll get to practice enroll place.

 

09:13

I sit into you want to talk just mentioned really quickly, who’s Chris Voss some people may not know.

 

Celine Teoh 09:19

Yeah, Chris Voss. He’s a former FBI lead negotiator. He’s the author of a book called don’t split the difference. And he’s the head of a group called The Black Swan group. They focus on negotiations. And they focus very much on like, taking all of all of the little tips and tricks that he learned in hostage negotiation and applying them now to all sorts of life situations. So he’s extremely practical, extremely hard nosed and drives results. That’s why we like him. It’s it’s touchy feely, but touchy feely with a purpose. Thanks on Yes. All right. So listening With a Purpose, sorry, water bottle dropped with a purpose. And also there’s data backing it up. So there’s lots of research that explains why listening is important. We’re just going to share one piece with you. The time required to reach resolution is cut in conflict resolution is cut in half, when each negotiator agrees, before responding to just repeat what the previous speaker said nothing else. Times cut in half. Can you imagine what that would do for our negotiations? So we were looking on si for hacks like that, what would move the needle on your ability to actually understand the customer? And give them what they need? And yes, I’m going to turn it over to you to talk about just how challenging sometimes doing empathy can be. Yeah, so

 

10:54

um, you know, empathy seems to get simple, but sometimes, you know, it’s not always easy to imagine. And we tend to default to different ways of doing it. And so, you know, we listed some of the 10, empathy misses that are common. Bernie Madoff, Bernie Brown mentioned Sam’s nonviolent communication and also mentioned them. So it’s different sources. But here are some of them said, can you go to the next slide. And I think consultants in general, tend to focus on the first four, so fix it, interrogate, tell a story, and defend it doesn’t mean that we don’t necessarily do the other ones. But those are probably the ones that we tend to do in business settings. And then we’ll just do a fun game to guess you know, if you can, I’ll give you some examples and see if you can guess which type of miss it is. Yeah. That’d be a waste. So let me pull out my cheat sheet. Okay, I’m gonna name one and then put in the chart, if you think it’s fix it, interrogate tell a story or defend it. Yeah. Okay. Have you tried increasing the density of products on store shelves to boost sales per square foot? I think you should do this. Fix it. Yeah.

 

Celine Teoh 12:24

Everybody saw it, fix it.

 

12:27

That’s the default one. Right. Everyone think all of us kind of know what that one is? Okay. I know your situation. He reminds me of a project my firm wants did around SKU right rationalization. What do you think that is? Fellow story? Yeah, yeah. And, you know, a school such as, of course, we bring our different experiences. And it’s not a bad idea to kind of mention some of the things in our track record and things that we’ve done before. But I think it’s important to make sure the timing right, we empathize enough about our client? And do we understand enough? Do we have enough information about what their situation is before we can divert the limelight on on us and our track record? Okay, let me share another one. I understand. But last quarter, when we develop this strategy, it was based on all the information we had available at the time, you know.

 

13:37

Defend Yeah. So again, I think that sometimes we’re so varied on a certain strategy that we have that when there are things that come up and people are resistant, we double down on it. And so you know, be able to be able to listen to them and acknowledge some of the resistance before we’re able to address some of the things that are coming up might be helpful. And then one more. Which year did this revenue shortfall cure was the driver reduction in initial signup, so drop up in retention?

 

Celine Teoh 14:23

Interrogate

 

14:24

Yeah, yeah. So again, I say this consultants we used to like, here’s the problem and we go in with a lot of questioning and kind of like try to dig in dig into again. And so we fixate a little bit on again the rational data and situation without taking into account a little bit more about like, especially if some emotions are showing up some resistance of concerns and worries, being able to again empathize and listen and dig deeper around those things before we go in and get into again the situation. Great while you guys did want before, so, I know those are, tend to be misses. And so now we’ll talk a little bit more about the hugs, you know, and things that we that might be helpful to do when clients come up with some of the, the emotional side of the problem.

 

15:22

So we come up with three hacks based on our research and experience. And they are one hack number one mirroring, mirror number two, label number three request. And we’ll go through each one separately. But mirror is about repeating one or two, three words, from the last thing the client says. It’s actually one of the heart that Chris Voss talks about. People have different versions of it, but we will really like the simplicity of the one that Chris mentions. Hype number two is labeling. So it identify the client’s feelings and needs, especially when there’s some heightened emotions. You really want to be able to name some of the things that are happening. And the third is request, what is the action that the client wants? Right? That’s her four to need. What does he need in this moment. And again, don’t be fooled by the simplicity, the elegant and easy to remember, but sometimes they’re not always easy to implement. So let’s go into Hack number one cylinder you want. Okay? Mirror. And so as I mentioned, it’s repeating the last word said by the client will occur. Yes. abortive linen inflection. So what does that look like? So let’s say I’m saying we’re plating a bigger China presents, and you’re like, ah, bigger China presents. It’s a way to say tell me more. Right? Which is our three beautiful words, tell me more the base repeating the words that the client says you actually activating what we call a neuroscience mirror neurons. And he helps to build a rapport and say, Well, yeah, I understand you. I’m following you. So it’s why is that helpful? What is to help data gathering? So he encourages the the speaker to say more. He builds rapport by what I mentioned, activating the mirror neurons, and then in heightened emotional situations. He helps them I try to calm them down. So Selena and I talk a lot that we have, she has teenagers and preteens and I have three teenagers. And you should if people have teenagers, you should try that. He actually really works. Okay, I wonder whether we should try a little bit to see what you might look like. And it’d be a little bit playful. So Celine is going to share a little bit about her puppy. She has a new puppy, and then I want to see if there’s a volunteer in the audience who wants to see, you know, try to mirror by repeating some of the last three words. Is there a volunteer? Raise your hand. See? Okay, Benjamin. Yay. Thank you. All right. So Cillian go for it. Talk about your puppy.

 

Celine Teoh 18:21

Okay. Um, hi, Benjamin. So I saw I recently got a puppy. And he he’s, he’s cute, but he’s kind of a handful.

 

Celine Teoh 18:35

Let me let me pass. Benjamin, will you say that again? With an upward inflection like a handful? A handful? Yeah, oh, my goodness. He He’s a poodle. And for some reason he’s figured out. You know, when you get a poodle, everybody says, Oh, they’re really smart dogs, but they just don’t tell you exactly how smart. So he’s learned how to open all the baby gates in the house.

 

19:02

He’s opened all the baby gates.

 

Celine Teoh 19:05

Open all the baby gates. Open all the baby gates. Oh, my God. Yes. He, I’ll be in a meeting like this one. And I wouldn’t be surprised if he can’t. He drops in. And he’s got he loves, like, all kinds of stuff. socks, underwear. All kinds of stuff. All kinds of stuff.

 

Celine Teoh 19:26

Yeah. And you can also play with, I noticed that you’re using phrases from the middle that’s a little bit advanced. Try using stuff from the very end. So my underwear, okay. Maybe you didn’t want to say that?

 

19:42

Well, I wanted to, I want to take into account everything. And if I just said, underwear, I felt like I I didn’t take into account everything else. You said,

 

Celine Teoh 19:51

Ah, that’s interesting. So you’re trying to take in the totality of what someone says. The nice thing is Think about a conversation like a flywheel. Right? Let’s say you’re rowing, if any of you are rowers, and you use a concept to or any herbs, or conversations like a wheel, what you’re doing is you take the end of it, and you just tap it, you tap it a little bit, and it keeps it going.

 

20:14

So yeah, imagine that Benjamin is advanced. So yes,

 

Celine Teoh 20:19

Ah, that’s right. It’s an advanced move to use the middle, because it means that you’re able to pick up what the most important thing is. So you’ve gone to one or two, Benjamin, one a one is take the last three was and just repeat that, as you get better at it, then you can start thinking, Okay, well, the client said, usually they’ll say a whole bunch of stuff, especially if you’re doing it right. They’ll say a whole bunch of stuff. And then if you’re good, you can pick out which bits are the most important to get them to keep that flywheel going. If not, and you’re just starting out. Last few words. Last few words. Yes, last few words, but that, but that’s good. And he did steal my son’s underwear and was prancing around and wouldn’t let it go. Well, that was a little bit of a scene like a comedy like us chasing him. And yes, do you think this is?

 

21:07

Yeah, thank you, Benjamin for being so playful. Yeah, that’s very helpful. And did you notice a difference when he went? He was affirmative. And Mani he also kind of upward interrogation. Benjamin, I don’t know if you saw if you felt the difference.

 

21:23

I didn’t feel the difference. From an audience perspective. For me, it feels a little more natural. Unless I’m really I really have questions. If I’m just trying to push the flywheel. I don’t inflect my voice as much. But I don’t know how it felt from an audience perspective what the difference was?

 

Celine Teoh 21:43

Oh, yeah, I’d love to hear from the audience. And then I’ll tell you how it felt from a speaker perspective

 

21:49

from the audience who wants to share? Yeah, Michael?

 

21:54

Yeah, just so from my standpoint, it was better when you had inflection, when you made a statement, it didn’t feel as much like the person needed to follow up and continue on. So I felt the flywheel moving more with the inflection.

 

Celine Teoh 22:06

Thank you, Benjamin. I’ll give feedback also that I, I also felt when your tone went down, that I could stop. And so some, but it depends on the context. In some cultures, I know you have less of a serious upward inflection at the end of a sentence, but maybe use whatever techniques that you use it within, within your culture, or that’s natural to you in order to encourage curiosity to express curiosity.

 

22:35

Thank you. That’s very helpful.

 

22:39

Thank you so much for playing with us.

 

Celine Teoh 22:41

Thank you, Benjamin. Thanks, everyone.

 

22:44

Sitting Do you want to go to hack number two?

 

Celine Teoh 22:46

Yes, I will. Alright, so hack. Number two, hack. Number two is labeling. How do you do this? You say it sounds like, and then you guess at the underlying me. So an example is, it sounds like it’s important to you that this part of the project is finished in a month, where the underlying need is efficiency? Or it sounds like you want to make sure that your department owns the relationship with the consumer, with the underlying needs are autonomy or power or status. So it sounds like is, well, I’ll come back to this. Why do we do this? Why label because needs and feelings are universal. It’s easier to understand someone if you understand their needs, all the words are dressing, really what you want is the needs. So if you label you’re revealing your understanding, and at the same time, because it’s an awkward inflection, you’re asking for corrections from the client. You’re not saying I understand you completely because some people will you know their hackles go up when you say that you’re like, No, I think I’m hearing that I understand this question mark. They’re like, Yes, fantastic. You keep going? No. Okay, tell me more. Right. Common client needs that our workplace friendly. Things I see a lot our effectiveness, efficiency. Autonomy is a big one, especially if they’re senior. Status, safety. Surprisingly, safety and trust are really huge for clients. And sometimes they want the consultant to fill those needs.

 

24:23

Ceiling. Just want to ask in the Yeah, these are the ones that people are seeing when when you’re dealing with clients. What are some of the kind of triggers are things that are nice that you are seeing that are important for them?

 

24:38

This is Astrid, I saw. I think it’s similar to the labeling that you’re using seeing it sounds like but I did actually early in my marriage, something called Imago therapy where you actually mirror your partner. And so one of the things that we we that I learned is and I use it My plan is what I think I heard from you is, did I get that right? Um, and, and that, to me definitely triggers like the trust. But also the fact that I’m not going to be this consultant that’s just going to show up. And, you know, like, it’s my way or the highway, like it’s going to be very collaborative.

 

25:23

Great. Esther, thank you so much for sharing. Yeah, it’s a version of of what we’re saying is sounds like it’s a shortcut. But there’s many versions, and yours is absolutely a great tool, great way of saying what I heard you say is and then kind of confirm that. Yeah. Love it. Thanks for sharing.

 

Celine Teoh 25:43

Yes, and Yes. Should I keep going? Yeah. All right. So when we are,

 

25:48

DC is asking you a little bit about status. Do you want to talk a little bit about status?

 

Celine Teoh 25:53

Yeah, some people. So status is things like your position, somebody just came into a new role. And they’re at a pretty senior level. And they’re worried that if their performance goes down, or if they you know, they go into a group meeting with all the other VPS, or as VPS. And they mess up for whatever reason that their status in the organization is going to drop. So that’s one thing that we see. And it’s actually an interesting need, because it’s not very, okay to say it out loud, I’m worried about my status, I’m worried about my pay, I’m worried about my promotion. But all of those don’t, all of those, even though they’re very apparent at lower levels are still really apparent at higher levels are still very present at higher levels, they’re just a little bit more hidden. So if you as a consultant can see that in your clients, because they’re all still people addressing those needs, without sometimes without calling them out, and we’ll get into this in this slide. It can be very, very good at building trust with the client and getting them to divulge more to you. Does that answer your question? I can’t see, unfortunately. Yeah. Thanks. Thank you. All right. So labeling, we want to spend a bit of time on labeling, because labeling is one of those pieces where we feel the literature just drops people, you know, there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of guidance around, like, here’s exactly how you mirror and then after that there’s a label. And when they say label, they’ll say, go ahead and label feelings. And and then I’m like, How the hell do I label feelings? I don’t know how to label feelings, or I don’t, I can’t do all this touchy feely stuff at work, what am I supposed to do, I can do it with my son, I can do it with my husband, but I don’t know how to do it with a VP of engineering over there. So we actually pull together this page is like money, this page pulls together a whole bunch of research around how do you actually do empathy at work? Right, so first tip, use business friendly labels. So you say concerned instead of scared. Number two, you remove the words, feelings and needs. So instead of saying, I like classic, you know, are you feeling frustrated? You say Are you frustrated? Right, or you turn the label word into a phrase? Interesting. You need you you need fairness, you want fairness, you say? You want to make sure that all the stakeholders get to weigh in. And then you add softeners. Like, so perhaps? Question mark. So it sounds like perhaps you’re concerned about and it leaves space for them to correct you. And it feels less like you’re you’re kind of flexing, I’m labeling you’re feeling right there. So this is helpful when you’re worried about, you know, doing klasik. If any of you have done, say the training that Astrid you did, or that you’ve done nonviolent communication on any of the other frameworks, a lot of that stuff is just very hard to bring into the workplace. And all the examples are about talking with somebody, you know, on a personal relationship basis. This is how you bring it into the workplace. Let me advance, here are the questions we get. What if I get it wrong? What do I labels? What if I label a deed? And they’re like, no? Sorry? Well, that’s okay. They’ll correct you. Right? Especially if you asked it with a curious upward inflection and your guests will sometimes make them think a question for the advanced people among us, like what happened to labeling feelings? Because we notice we said label needs like autonomy or respect. Why do you label feelings like aggravated or angry? Feelings are often less acceptable than needs in work settings. That’s a generalization. But in certain situations, like if you’re with nonprofit client, it might be more acceptable to talk about feelings. But if you’re talking with a financial institution, probably best Hold off, right? Next question that we get is do I have to do this? And the answer is just enough, you go slow, right? When we’re in a work in a business setting purpose, Trump’s connection, we’re not there to just build a relationship, we’re building the relationship in order to do something. So just create the minimum amount of connection, you need to enable the purpose. And if it seems like they’re enjoying it, you can go further. Now, the only exception to this is repair. If you need to repair a relationship, let’s say that the clients insane, the angry, you’re going to lose this deal, or you messed up, something needs to be fixed. In that case, keep labeling label again, label again, until they’ve got it all out. Yeah, we’ve created a cheat sheet for consultants with more details and more tips and feelings. I need words for you to use. We’ll have those as a resource after this is done to

 

31:03

put it in the chat as well. Thanks. And yes, yeah. And then I just want to mention I son gave, made a great comment, she had talked about David rocks, model scarf. That’s something we were like wondering whether to include or not. So he’s a little bit advanced, but we’ll put it as a charter as a resource, as well. But David Walker talks about five elements that that to keep in mind that those are amongst other things that kind of tend to trigger social threats. And so status is one of them, since we talked about it, but there’s other things, fairness, certainty, and other things like that. So we’ll put that as a chart. So as you enter clients to keep in mind, again, those are needs and things, those might trigger social threat. So you have to think about, you know, from a client perspective, how do they feel around those elements?

 

Celine Teoh 31:56

Yeah. And yes, who mentioned scarf? On Yes, who was the who’s?

 

32:04

That was me. That was me, Alison. Hi. Yeah.

 

Celine Teoh 32:07

Oh, so that’s pretty advanced. But yeah, David Rock scarf is a fun time

 

32:12

a great, I’m a brain science geek. And I actually incorporate some of that into some workshops that I do with leaders, just because it’s such an impactful model that makes a lot of sense for people, once they understand what it is. And I added in the chat that you can obviously also use them as motivation, you know, because if you can play to the need, and they have a status need, then you can really get in good graces if you play to that need. So just wanted to clarify that.

 

Celine Teoh 32:39

Yes. Thank you for the clarification. Yes. Once you know the needs, you can actually, I hate to say do a lot with them. But you’re exactly right. Once you understand what’s motivating the person, right, it’s motivating person to move towards something or to move away from something, then you can actually make sure you address that is I think how I would phrase it, make sure you address that when you’re being a consultant. Now, that was a lot. Okay, let me pause. It was a lot. I’m sorry. But this is what people are leaving out. This is why we call it the secrets. Nobody talks about how to actually do this in a business setting. But when it comes down to it, the only thing you need to say is it sounds like it sounds like and then you think in your head, what’s the need? And then you say you say a phrase that actually kind of like talks about the need without using the actual need word itself. Yeah.

 

33:31

And as you mentioned, I mean, we’re simplifying things, right. So that we were trying to be sticky in some ways, but there’s many versions of like, he sounds like, I imagine you feeling this? I mean, imagine you saying that. You know, we’ve heard us, we’re saying what I’m hearing you say is this, right? So we’re just trying to get what’s one, if you had to stick to one, what would be one that you know, you could practice, but there’s many versions of this sentence. Things on? Yes. Okay,

 

Celine Teoh 34:03

let’s move on to hack number three requests. So this is where we get into the tactical empathy piece of it, right? We’ve understood the client, but that’s not enough. We have to actually do something with it. So the next thing you do is you say, and you’d like, say a specific action? Question mark. Remember, all of these have a question mark at the end of them. So an example and this is a label and a request together. Right? So it sounds like it’s important that activist employees get their voices heard. And you’d like help creating a comprehensive employee listening strategy that might incorporate a shadow board. Right, you notice how that’s highly specific, right? You need this? Is this what you need me to do? This is what you want me to do. So you’ll be very clear. And again, we do this because we have to move from understanding to action. You’re meeting their needs. Future On this positive framing, say what to do? Not what not to do. Be very clear and specific, send weekly safety stock reports not report on inventory regularly. And if the client says no, you need to go back and do more needs gathering, because there’s another need that’s preventing them from saying yes. So an easy way of doing that is to ask What else is important here for you? Or you can go back and do the needs analysis again. Yeah, so this whole thing is a cycle. One tip, will I know you love this one, it’s the 70% rule. Client talks. 70%. So wrapping all of it up, right? Client top 70% of the time, when the consultant talks 70% of the time should be questions and reflections. If you do that, you’re on the right track. Okay, so to summarize the three hacks again, mirror the last three words, label the needs and the feelings it sounds like. And then figure out what the client is actually requesting? And you’d like, question mark.

 

36:12

Questions? If there’s anything before we go into actually practicing and experimenting?

 

Celine Teoh 36:22

I’ll stop sharing for a second.

 

36:25

Second, see people’s faces. Exactly. Okay, great. We put in the chat, that cheat sheet where we have kind of a summary of what we mentioned, and some variations of things. We also listed kind of some of the, you’re in there, there’s a link to a list of needs list of feelings. So again, we’re giving you resources that might be helpful. Yeah. Okay. Sounds good. Why don’t we go Silene sounds like there’s no question, why don’t we go into then the workplace.

 

Celine Teoh 37:00

Let’s do that. And so with the roleplay, let me share screen again, so I can show you the setup. Or, for some reason, it’s not showing up. Okay, so we’re going to go into our roleplay. And this is going to be done in this bigger group. So what we’re going to do is, I’ll play the client, one of you will play the consultant. And I will ask for volunteers roleplay for a minute, and then some and then you hand the baton off to someone else who’s a volunteer, and they’ll keep going with the with the roleplay. No worries, and yes, we’ll help you get stuck. So feel free to step up. So the situation is you’re about to have a short meeting with the head of an underperforming business unit to get data about sales. You’ve already signed the contract with a CEO of the company. You’re now you’re coming in, this is your first discovery meeting, right? Your goal is to get me to agree to share raw transaction level records from the past three years. This is a b2c play, tag with demographic and behavioral data. So you need a big flat file. Success for you as a consultant in this meeting looks like getting the data in a usable format within a week to hit your deadlines. Voluntarily. It’s a failure if you have to go ask somebody else to sit on me to get this information. Right. Because if it because you want me to, you want me to cooperate without external coercion?

 

38:42

Sounds good.

 

Celine Teoh 38:44

Okay, let’s carry on Yes, go ahead,

 

38:49

sailing Can you not share so that we can see who’s

 

Celine Teoh 38:53

Yeah, I’ll stop sharing so that we can see faces. With that in mind. Again, the goal is to get me to agree to share data in a usable form in a week. Who would like to, and in this, try to use mirroring and labeling just mirroring and labeling first? See how that works in practice it? Who would like to volunteer? Michael, I see Michaels hand up. Also, Michael. Alright, so the situation is I’m sitting at my office. And we’ve got a meeting set up, you walk inisoline Hi, Michael.

 

Celine Teoh 39:35

It’s good to see you too. So what’s this about? Oh, great to meet you. We were hired to help you with your strategy and there’s some information we need to get an order for us to do it.

 

Celine Teoh 39:57

Ah, so I’m actually not sure Sure, were you supposed to help me with my strategy? I actually wasn’t sure about that helped me help you with your strategy.

 

Celine Teoh 40:09

Yeah, I mean, um, I got a notice I got an email from from Karen’s saying that you were going to come in. And I kind of have some context, but I’m not, but I’m not entirely sure. So I mean, it’s great if you’re helping me with a strategy for for our business.

 

40:30

Can you tell me more about what what you what you do need?

 

Celine Teoh 40:35

Well, so, so, right now, what we need is we’re actually working on multiple initiatives in order to boost sales over the next few months. We’ve got, we’re, you know, we’ve got a long and storied business over here, our unit sells outerwear. And it’s been a it’s been a challenging few years, because of all of this. Global warming, I guess. So we’ve had to come up with a few initiatives to to boost sales,

 

41:11

trying to come up with initiative to boost sales.

 

Celine Teoh 41:14

Yeah, yeah, it’s, we’ve got three in the pipeline. We’re not exactly sure if they’re if they’re the right thing, though, because one thing we’re wondering is, you know, if the market is shrinking, and our hero products are all outerwear, whether this is something we should be doubling down on, or whether we should be diversifying.

 

41:37

So you’re trying to think about whether you should diversify. Can you say more about that?

 

Celine Teoh 41:41

Yeah, but whether we should diversify into other categories. It’s not just about us so we can pass the baton. Hey, Miko, you got us such a great start.

 

Celine Teoh 41:51

It was a good start.

 

41:52

It was a good start. Who else would like to, to follow up on Michaels?

 

41:59

Edie volunteers?

 

42:01

I know, Ray. Awesome. Hey. Hi.

 

Celine Teoh 42:05

Hi, Ray. Nice. I missed you last night. But we get to talk now. Yes. Wonderful. Yeah, Roy and I are on a board together. Oh, sorry, Ray. Ray wrong wrongly, I thought of doing that board. Sure. Why not?

 

Celine Teoh 42:29

All right, right. We’re gonna keep going. So I was talking. The last thing was I was talking about initiatives, and I’m not sure about diversifying our categories.

 

42:37

Yes. So you can’t How about those categories?

 

Celine Teoh 42:40

Yeah, yeah, I’m not sure you know, we’ve currently got outerwear, but it seems like a we don’t want to go way out into left field and start selling bikinis, you know, plus, that’s not the legacy of our business. But we’re actually having difficulty deciding what we have permission to play in.

 

42:59

So you’re really not sure what the plan?

 

Celine Teoh 43:03

Yeah, it’s like outerwear. And then is it footwear? Do we have the expertise? Do we have the permission to play? Do we have the market access? Do we have the infrastructure to do it? So there’s a lot of questions that we’re trying to work through in deciding what these adjacent categories are that we need to enter?

 

43:26

What kind of adjacent categories?

 

Celine Teoh 43:30

Well, some of them could be things like, you know, small ones would be accessories, beanies, gloves, things that help. But if we’re trying to segue away from the cold weather stuff, maybe it’s important for us to do something summer. So hiking gear. Yeah, hiking. Yeah. I mean, what do you think?

 

43:53

I think all of those categories or be a possibility is going to require understanding more about the market.

 

Celine Teoh 44:02

Yeah, yeah. I think actually understanding the market. That’s a good point. I mean, we’ve been going straight into brainstorm, but I do think the next stage is understanding the market. Do you have you ever like has your firm done a bunch of understanding the market?

 

44:22

Yes, we have done quite a bit actually, in your particular category. We’re known for that.

 

Celine Teoh 44:28

Oh, interesting. Yeah. Let’s pause here. Ray, thank you. This is

 

44:36

Hey,

 

Celine Teoh 44:38

thank you for stepping up. How did that actually I’m curious. How did that feel?

 

44:46

A little bit discomforting, knowing that there’s a whole group doing this and I don’t really know anybody here but quite quite engaging as well though.

 

Celine Teoh 44:56

Yeah, no, I appreciate the bravery and stepping up. It’s it’s kinda vulnerable to stand out here and do it. But this was very much appreciated. The group appreciates. You’re stepping up.

 

45:07

Okay. Thanks for the opportunity.

 

Celine Teoh 45:09

Yeah. And so, Christoph said something. I guess it’s okay if we transition to discussing this a little bit. So what did what do people see happening? I see Christoph. In the chat seeing when the client asks for your opinion, you seem to have won half the battle of building trust. Yes, that’s right. What else? What else? Did you guys notice? Michael, I’d love to find out. How what’d you think about how that went? In the beginning?

 

45:43

It was I was not prepared for having I thought kind of I was I in my mind, I was coming in, you already knew what I was there for? No, I kind of got thrown a little bit by you just asking kind of okay, now, you know, start talking. But other than that, it’s all good. I like the one once we kind of got past that initial thing of kind of, Okay, I gotta remember what you what I’m supposed to get here. Then, I thought it went well. And I felt, you know, it was good to just have you talk more?

 

Celine Teoh 46:08

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think the initial setup was a little bit unclear. So I apologize for that. But it was good after you came in. And once you started asking me questions about what I was doing that about what I wanted, I could feel myself softening more towards you. And we didn’t get to the we didn’t get to ask in this. We didn’t. And that wasn’t part of the setup, because we were focusing on mirroring and labeling. But if this had continued, I would have been happy to get there, like a little bit more. And I would have been happy to get there. I see Ramon, and then after that, we’ll come on. Yeah. So high. So I didn’t see the complete framework being being applied. Maybe at the beginning and a little bit, but then with Ray it was it was also get the beginning. And then it kind of went back to you know, at least I saw myself very reflected on Ray, without any any of this framework. So kind of my I just, yeah, so I, and you notice something that actually didn’t happen and tends to happen in real life. I’m also I’m glad you pointed it out. The framework is useful when you are starting out, and it’s a good fallback. And if you see things happening, that mean that you understand the customer a little bit more of the client a little bit more, and you can start playing with it the way I think Benjamin you’re doing, you can start going into middle portions or broader portions of what the client is saying. We’ll and then after that Mona

 

47:48

is selling Can I add? Yes, the question. I think my my where you’re, what I’m hearing you say is that part of the reason maybe that we shifted is that Silin ended up asking a lot of questions. So you’re in a situation solely, like she’s talking, the client is talking in the survey, she brings it back to the you know, what do you think, have you done this? Right? And so then you have choices, you could answer it. If you feel like you’re, you know, you’re fully understand that incipit sympathizing or you might say, you know, and that you know, your that you guys, other consultants, but you might say, Yeah, I’m happy to answer but I, you know, sounds like you I still have some ambivalence, or is, you know, I would love to understand better your situation. So you get you pushing back the ball back to towards the client, if you feel like you still need some data gathering, you still feel like, you know, you haven’t built enough rapport, right? So that’s an option to do that. But the reason is that you may have seen, not the framework, being able to be applied in a race site is like cincinnati.com, pushing back the ball towards Ray, when she asked some of the

 

Celine Teoh 48:54

questions, and this is part of that 70% conversation, right? It’s like 70% of the time the client should be talking. So if, if the client starts pushing it back to you and saying, Yeah, so what kind of projects? Have you done? The instead of saying an option, right, instead of saying, well, here are the projects that we’ve done? You can say, you know, we’ve done a ton in order to pull out the right ones for you. I’d love to find out more. Drop it back to them. Keep going, right? Well.

 

Will Bachman 49:23

Yeah, so this just the opening can be can be awkward when you first sit down with a client at a firm that you’re already serving. And I think the natural inclination of a lot of us is to start off by saying, This is why I’m here. Let me tell you about this project. Let me tell you what we’re trying to accomplish. And you end up being the first one to speak and just sets up an awkward dynamic, whereas it’s, it’s actually very powerful to flip that and using as a template. Say to start with I’m happy to fill you in on you know why I asked for this meeting. But I don’t want to just sell you a lot that you already know, what have you already heard about this effort? So that does a couple things. Number one, it, it sort of works to that 7030 split, right, you’re getting them to talk first, number one. So just help set up the dynamic of you’re here to listen and not to talk at them. Also, you get insight into how it’s being communicated internally, right. So maybe they’re super prepped on it. And that’s useful information. Or maybe they got a very slanted view, oh, you’re just here to like, fire us or like, you know, eliminate jobs, right? Maybe that’s not what you’re there for at all. So you understand. And you also get their take on it right? And you get their emotions of it, instead of them just listening at you for the first three or four minutes. So just, you know, like, what have you heard about this effort? Or, you know, what have you heard about why I’m why asked for this meeting, one way to start, those kinds of sessions

 

Celine Teoh 50:59

will that’s a great hack. So it’s, it’s true, if you ever walk into a room, and the first words out of your mouth are, I’m here, because I need this. Either you’re in a position of very high power, and the other person already knows they have to do what you ask them to do. Or you’re going to get in trouble. So find out first what they need, build a relationship, find out what they need. And then so what happened in this meeting was initially, you know, as the client has, like, Oh, crap consultants come in, they want something from me, I don’t even know what’s going on. I’m not sure I want to give it to them. And I was ready. Part of my brief here was, I was going to actually push back and be like, either not give the data or give the data late, or give the data in a form that you couldn’t use, because I was going to dig in. But I wasn’t going to dig in in a way where the CEO could say, oh, you’re not cooperating. I’ll be just be like, It’s too hard. But over time as the questions like repair as possible, right, so you started asking questions, both of you about, what is it that you like, what are you doing what’s going on with you? And you notice you didn’t talk at all about the project that you were doing? You talked about my projects? Then I was like, Okay, I’m interested, I’m interested enough to actually even ask for your help, possibly with my project. So you might have started selling another another gig. And yes, yeah. Mona. Mona. Sorry, Mona? Is it okay to go to Mona first, or? That’s what I meant. Thank you, Mona.

 

52:35

Sure, it’s probably a little bit of, I think, what Bill with what will said, but it’s, you know, what often times I see happening is, you know, is a different bubble over people’s heads, you know, someone says, you know, this is what we’re trying to solve, and everybody interprets it differently, especially in the beginning. So it sounds a little bit like that’s where saline might have gone. And so it’s, you know, maybe it’s an obvious comment, but it’s just, it’s always useful to just sort of dig into that and have that perspective. Well, the bubble over your head, was this the bubble over their head was this and then you can either try to bring that together or highlight sort of, or identify a more nuanced understanding of the problem? Mm hmm.

 

Celine Teoh 53:19

Yeah. It’s a, what do you call it the bubble over their heads is the underlying needs and wants? And at some point, if you surface enough of them, there’s always something you can there’s usually something you can do. Because the Venn overlap is usually a lot larger than we initially anticipate. Do we have time on Yes, to address one more question?

 

53:44

One more question, we should move on to the roleplay number two,

 

Celine Teoh 53:48

okay. Very quickly, Giovanni asks, What if you’re in front of someone who just would not talk it can happen to finally do you want to see more? Has it happened to you in? Yeah, well, sometimes

 

54:02

you have someone who’s like, you know, just like, a block of ice, you know, and you try to talk to him and like, chat or whatever, and they just wouldn’t answer, you know, like, zero willingness to kind of talk and, or anything, you know, so, you know, say, Okay, well, you know, you try to invite Him into something, maybe small talk to kind of try and unfreeze the situation, but there are like, some people are like, like definitely frozen. Maybe they just had a fight with their wife or whatever. But it’s like, you know, it’s like the door seems to really be really closed. And it’s it can be very difficult. It’s very, it’s quite rare because people like to talk generally, but it happened to me a few times. So,

 

54:43

I guess, in the audience, do you want to ask any audiences?

 

Celine Teoh 54:46

Yeah. Anybody have any tips for Giovanni in this situation? Somebody a block of ice hasn’t doesn’t respond at all.

 

54:54

Ray, you mentioned something do you want to share?

 

Celine Teoh 54:58

Wendy’s raised her hand

 

55:00

One day, sorry, I was on mute. I often when I run into situations like that I, I typically try to make it more of a human type of an engagement. And talk about something about myself or, or maybe current event that just happened that that may not be too politically charged, so that we can find maybe a common ground to break the ice, and then eventually, ease into why I’m there in for the meeting.

 

Celine Teoh 55:34

rate. So what we’re talking about is moving the conversation to a lower stakes situation, and also trying to find points of personal connection. So it’s not maybe it’s not something to talk about, that’s quite so dangerous for the other person. And then Wendy, and then Astrid.

 

55:49

Yeah, I’m a quite high energy person. And so what I’ve learned is that when someone is not ready to speak, I need to slow down and lower my tone and get more at their pace. Because I’m normally like this, and I talk with my hands, right. And so the mirroring is not only using words, it’s mirroring to the whole system, I’ve studied a lot of neural neurolinguistics. And so one of the other hacks that I’ve learned since the since we’re all on Zoom, is that the screen image also communicates to the brain. So if I’m speaking with usefully, our faces are about the same size. And, and yes, if I’m talking to you, I would move forward so that your brain would see my head. So these kind of tricks, and I’ve started using it with teams, where when we start a meeting, I invite everybody to adjust their cameras, so that the faces look similar. And those are ways to create more safety. And, because normal otherwise, if I’m with someone that’s not going to talk, my normal way of being will be I’ll be 70. And they’ll be 30. Right? So I have to consciously dial it back.

 

Celine Teoh 57:22

When the you raise great points. Mirroring is our entire presence, not just the voice. And that’s a that’s a tool to level things. So you’re, you’re advanced to fantastic. So

 

57:36

getting there. Thank you. And I also just want to acknowledge how impressed I am with how you bring it down to bury actionable techniques, I really appreciate that.

 

Celine Teoh 57:48

Thank Wendy, that makes me feel so good. We worked super hard on this, because we find there are very few techniques that are just that are actionable. Yeah. So I appreciate it. I’m taking that feedback. Thank you, Astrid. One last comment. And then we have to move on. But thank you

 

58:05

definitely want to echo what Wendy said about how you read all, you know, to a level for us to understand. What I do with all my projects is that I asked the project sponsor to give me some color about everyone that I’m going to be interacting with. And I will have generally known oh, this person is hard to get through, or this person is opposed to the project or whatever. And then generally, in the past, in person, I would have always asked, you know, what is like an areas of personal interest of that person? And maybe it’s an object in their office that I can start by reflecting on that, or if it’s a picture of their family. Wow, what a beautiful family. And it sort of melts the ice a little bit. And I love what Wendy said about zoom, because I’m still trying to figure out how to do that in zoom. But that has been my techniques in the past.

 

Celine Teoh 59:01

Fantastic. Thank you, Astrid, for that comment. And then I want to go to something that Ali is saying in the chat. I know we have to move on. Yes, but just one final thing. The only You said that’s happened to me when dealing with middle managers who feel threatened by being there. We’ve talked about icebreakers we’ve talked about common ground. Another thing I’ll talk about is going back to needs right? There is a need of this middle manager that is not being met. middle manager hasn’t said it, but they have a need for safety. That’s not happening because you’re there and that’s the reason why they’re not talking to you is my guess. So if you can find a way to promise them that safety, or to assure them of that safety, maybe you can’t promise it, but you can signal that your intent is not to jeopardize them. Maybe they’ll open up so Giovanni, I hope that answers your question. And and yes, shall we move on?

 

59:49

Yeah, just as a wrap up, and I love all the comments that you and tip so you’re sharing and, you know, it’s in a way to create a psychological, psychological safety, you know, in the room And all those are applicable. Yeah. Should we go to?

 

Celine Teoh 1:00:05

Yes, I’m going to share a screen again. And we’ll go to our second roleplay. Alright, so we’ve debriefed it, let me enter, slide show. Okay, the second roleplay is a little bit different. This one, you’re going to be going into breakout rooms. So if you can’t stay until the end of this, or until the end of the roleplay, go ahead and leave first because we’re going to be putting people into pairs. So you’re going to go into breakout rooms in pairs. If we have odd numbers, Megan, I’m not sure we will have a room with three people, the roles in those rooms will be client consultant. And if you’re in a trio observer, will have time to only do the roleplay once, so we won’t switch roles, but you’ll learn a lot in any role. As a client, it’s rare that we get to sit in the client seat. So it’s very interesting to see what feelings come up in you. And the observer gets to provide valuable feedback. So what’s going to happen is you’re going to go into your rooms, we’re going to drop in the chat, the roles, the client role, the consultant role, and the observer role, read only your role. Otherwise, it’s no fun. Three minutes to read seven minutes to roleplay, that gets you to 10 minutes, and then five minutes debrief all of this in your rooms. So 10 minutes to read and roleplay. Five minutes to debrief in your room. Some tips make the situation realistic. If you as a client, if you feel like you’re going to flip, go ahead and give in to what they want. And because this is a real situation, different rooms will have clients flipping at different levels of empathy. So the consultant is going to have to go figure that out. And in this, it might be an industry you don’t normally serve. Just assume you have the skill set to serve the client. Yeah. So Megan, do we have the breakout rooms ready? And thank you, Megan, for helping us out with this.

 

1:02:10

We do have them ready. You might experience some shuffling around. If people are, you know, leave still leaving. And do not be surprised if you see me popping in and out of your breakout room just can’t you know, see how things are going. So if

 

1:02:26

sorry, silly. Do we need to share the instructions before we put people in breakout rooms? So they can see it?

 

Celine Teoh 1:02:32

Yes, I’ll stick the instructions in the chat.

 

Will Bachman 1:02:39

Right now. Observer instructions

 

Celine Teoh 1:02:42

should have done this before. So server read that client.

 

1:02:59

So only click on your role after you’re in the breakout room and you decide which one you are so that you don’t see the other side? Yeah.

 

Celine Teoh 1:03:09

And decide quickly so that you can spend more time.

 

1:03:13

Okay, we missing you. Okay, great. So you have the observer, client and consultant.

 

Celine Teoh 1:03:22

Okay. All right. And I’ll be floating around the rooms to check in. Make sure everything’s going okay.

 

1:03:31

All right. Wonderful. I love it. Just getting people into rooms now. It’s there all right, away we go, folks.

 

Celine Teoh 1:03:52

Good luck. See you back soon.

 

1:03:59

I’m going to broadcast a message to everybody with those links again, just in case they can’t get in the chat. I think they’ve recently changed that. So

 

Will Bachman 1:04:11

yeah, you’re welcome, man. You make it your dean. You’re still in making your dean lindo by himself in room three. So no,

 

Celine Teoh 1:04:20

Wendy just joined.

 

Will Bachman 1:04:22

Okay, so maybe

 

1:04:25

I’ll move him

 

Celine Teoh 1:04:29

on Yes. Are you taking care of timing on this? So yeah, reminders. Thank you so much.

 

1:04:34

That’s interesting. Okay, room two. Okay. He’s now in room

 

Celine Teoh 1:04:37

two them. Oh, no, I they requested access one second.

 

1:04:41

Why? Yeah. Okay. All just they just did you just give access Cillian I just gave access and just say Alright, let’s try it one more time

 

Will Bachman 1:05:22

what drums are you playing? Megan?

 

1:05:25

I don’t know why it is so loud to you. Well, my so my keyboard is incredibly wild too well, I don’t know why I want to try to get my arm. I do have a mouse for this. So I’ll try to dig that out. I haven’t used it in many years. But I think it’ll still work

 

Will Bachman 1:05:39

while you’re playing the bongos over there.

 

1:05:42

I wish I had room for a drum set, but I do not. So I just live it out with my keyboard. Okay, great. So they have what they need. Let’s just make sure everybody’s doing well. I’m going to take a quick little Oh, seven has no one. Okay, good. All right, just give me one second. And then I’m going to start kind of going in and out and seeing how things are going.

 

Celine Teoh 1:06:11

Oh, I forgot to say thank you before she left. Well, how are you? How are you in Howard? How’s this going? So far? Any feedback pointers?

 

Will Bachman 1:06:21

Thanks. Great. You know, great discussion. I think people were engaged on it. You know, I think we had a pretty good number of people staying on, which is always a good metric that people aren’t dropping off. And I found it very actionable advice. A nice job. Both you. Thank you. Well, yeah.

 

Celine Teoh 1:06:39

Glad to hear it. Yeah. Yeah, this is great. John is here. Jonathan? Will you? Will you in a room before?

 

1:06:55

John, you’re on mute.

 

1:06:56

I had a meeting. I had a meeting before. So I was just joining because we had an hour and a half. And so I was trying to join the last 30 minutes. When I missed the first door,

 

1:07:09

you want to assign you want to put him into one room and just tell him there is an observer sitting?

 

Will Bachman 1:07:14

Yeah, you want to do that, Celine. Alright, John, and we’ll be sending out John will be sending out the recording. So you can catch the first section and the presentation. And from now you can join one of the rooms and kind of observe the discussion. Yeah.

 

Celine Teoh 1:07:28

I’ll put you into room one. And so you’ll just be watching Andrea and Astrid, playing client consultant situation, and then you can provide feedback.

 

1:07:43

Okay, thank you very much.

 

Will Bachman 1:07:47

How is your podcast going? By the way?

 

Celine Teoh 1:07:51

To be honest, we’ve been working on all of the stuff like this. Yeah. And less on the podcast. It’s takes more time than I thought, well, I don’t know how you do it. You pump out so many.

 

1:08:03

I know we admire your consistency. It’s something that we have. We’re putting it on the back burner right now.

 

Will Bachman 1:08:13

Well, that’s very kind. So I we just launched a page on the Umbrex website that includes links to all of the podcasts by Umbrex. Members. Let me just check to see if we have yours. Do you have do you have some episodes out?

 

Celine Teoh 1:08:27

Yeah, some episodes out? I’m not sure if we’re on that page. So let me

 

Will Bachman 1:08:33

I’m checking right now. And I see here. We got Felicia in line. No, we don’t have it. We need to add you. Okay. So what’s your Yeah, send me send me a link to that. I’ll send you a link. And we’ll get it added. And yeah, are you but you guys aren’t doing an interview show. Right? You’re doing like content show where it’s the two of you saying stuff.

 

Celine Teoh 1:08:54

We’re actually doing interview shows or you’re doing an interview show? Yeah, no, we’re interviewing coaches, consultants, anybody with hacks? But our bent is precisely this just making all of the soft touchy feely stuff EQ really actionable.

 

Will Bachman 1:09:08

Yeah. So and is the barrier for you? Oh, so you’re doing hacks?

 

Celine Teoh 1:09:16

I love it. Nice. Yeah. I was gonna answer well looks like until you did the eyebrow raise. I was like, yeah, he’s so interested. Yeah, we’re doing hacks. And the barrier has been, quite frankly, just bandwidth.

 

Will Bachman 1:09:36

Is the bandwidth, more a matter of your time to do the episodes or to do all the processing and editing and posting and so forth.

 

Celine Teoh 1:09:45

It’s probably the latter, because the interviews themselves don’t take a huge amount of time. So outsourcing would be great.

 

Will Bachman 1:11:19

okay, good. Yeah, I’d love to remove barriers. And then then you can focus on the actual value added part of doing the episodes. And then that’s easy, right? Just one hour a week on your calendar. So

 

Celine Teoh 1:11:33

that’s fantastic. I love what you did, too, which was the query the problems, the honing in on the specific problem and then offering the solve? I love it.

 

Will Bachman 1:11:43

So what are you hoping to achieve with it? Is it more about building an audience or more just about building the connection with that guest?

 

Celine Teoh 1:11:54

It’s it’s primarily building an audience building a connection with the guests, we have networks. It’s letting people see our approach, I think is the key thing. Because coaching consulting, it’s really hard to a coaching, especially in workshops, people just don’t have a clue what’s happening within that on blurb. Yeah.

 

Will Bachman 1:12:19

Fantastic. I’d love to see, you know, check out some of your episodes.

 

Celine Teoh 1:12:23

Yeah, I’ll send you the link. Thank you so much for that recommendation. Not on Yes. Are we keeping track of the tournament

 

1:12:30

and keeping track? I gave them now another two minutes? I don’t know. Megan, if you obviously was the only one keeping track of time I just want to take

 

1:12:41

I’ve been keeping track of if everyone has what they need. Okay. And so far, we’re

 

1:12:45

gonna give them I’m going to broadcast that they have. Do I have podcasts ability? I do. Okay, that they have two minutes and then just a roleplay. And then they are they’ll go

 

Celine Teoh 1:13:00

to the room just to see what’s going on for make sure it’s

 

1:13:03

okay. They seem pretty far well on their way from what I’ve seen. So it’s yeah, there. It seems to be going well.

 

1:13:14

Go over very engaged. i Right.

 

Will Bachman 1:13:20

I’d like I’d love to have you a guest on my show. Yes,

 

1:13:23

I know. Thank you so much for your kind invitation. I still have that invitation. So I would love to come up. Yeah. All right. I have your link. So I’ll try to schedule something in the in the next month or so. Wherever. Great. Yes.

 

Will Bachman 1:13:37

I’ve got time in February right now. So right now I’m pretty much booked through January. So yeah,

 

1:13:41

Mayberry is definitely is better for me for sure. So include a note Alright, so I heard that you also I don’t know how it’s like going but you in touch with Gosh. Jumping on silly put you in touch with the chairman of

 

Will Bachman 1:14:05

aggravation. aggravation. Got vision. Yeah. Yes. And, yeah. And it looks like we’ll do something small for them. Yeah. Yeah. So that was great. I’m just gonna actually stop recording here. Because I think we don’t want to have people like watching the whole breakout session. We’ll give them the up front. It’s gonna stop recording.

 

1:14:40

I did some of the

 

Will Bachman 1:14:43

not very easily. I’m just gonna stop

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