NetWorking

Each night I dream about packing, traveling, moving. I, who am a dreadful relitigator in the day, relitigate all night, trying to decide which plane to get on, which things to pack in the car, which house to move to. I agonise, run late, miss my chance—or take my chance and regret it, waking weeping. When, during the day, I teach about listening techniques, I tell people that if someone says something once, it is just a thing they’re thinking at the moment. If someone says something twice, you should probably pay attention. If someone says something three times, you had better stop what you’re doing and be sure you’ve heard the message—and the speaker knows you’ve heard the message. My subconscious is screaming the same message every night, and I keep trying to say I’ve heard it, but still, there it is, the next night. Maybe I need some kind of workshop on subconscious listening skills…

The thing that I’m noticing is that as I do live in New Zealand (at least during the day), I should probably be getting the work I need to sustain myself in New Zealand, too. This means that I have to do business development work, something that I’ve been afraid of for a long time. One of my Kenning partners said that on the skill/will matrix (skill= how well you do a thing and will= how much you want to do it well), I had both low skill and low will for developing business, and that is probably historically true. I’m trying to beef up my “will” though—trying to understand that I’m not going to make it here without some serious effort at networking, and so I pick up the phone and call to schedule coffee after coffee with colleagues of colleagues and try to make things happen.

It turns out though, that even when my will to do the work is raised, my skill at doing the work is still low. I am a wiz at the informational interview, in great measure because I find other people so interesting. But then there’s that point in the conversation where I have to connect the dots, to make it not just a conversation about what they do and what I do, but a conversation about what WE could do together. This is the part I do seriously badly.

For a rather brief time long long ago, Michael sold expensive and trendy yuppy-art from the kind of art store that sells the same lithographs in expensive shopping malls all over the US. They taught him to “assume the sale,” to ask not “Are you thinking of buying this?” but rather, “Which wall are you wanting to hang this on?” He knew that if he could just get someone to take the painting home for a “trial,” the odds were good the painting would stay in the house, and the cash would come back to the store (and the well-needed commission would go in his pocket). He hated this and wasn’t very good at it (thus the rather brief time of his employment at this shop), and we have teased about it for years, laughing knowingly at each sales person who walks up behind us as we ponder a decision and smoothly asks, “Would you like one or two of those?”

But now it’s me over expensive coffee at some café or government office. Which of your programmes would I be a fit for? Which of my skills would be most helpful to you in your business? Will you be ordering one or two of these workshops? On which wall are you wanting to hang me? I can almost not make the words come out of my mouth. I think I’d be better at selling lithographs.

And so I try to make the connections day by day, and I dream about starting again, night by night. This week I will meet with chief executives and HR directors. I will talk about coaching their managers and developing their leaders. I’ll drink excellent coffee and well-brewed tea. And sometimes I’ll catch sight of my reflection on the train window or a café mirror, and I’ll wonder who this grown up woman is, with ever-longer hair and ever-more wrinkles, and what she is doing looking out over sheep-dotted hills or rain-streaked New Zealand streets. Will I be having one country or two? On a wall in which country am I wanting to hang my hat?

(pictures today are randomly of our new front porch and Naomi digging in the garden one beautiful Sunday. You can't imagine how lovely the weather is here today--I challenge any of you in summer to match this bright sun and lovely temperature!)