The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Paul Bramson, Leadership, Sales & Communication Expert on The Authentic Leadership & Sales

Episode Date: September 1, 2023

Paul Bramson, Leadership, Sales & Communication Expert on The Authentic Leadership & Sales Thepaulbramsoncompanies.com Paul Bramson has been described as a powerhouse on keynote stages and in training arenas. He is distinguished as being one of the most effective speakers, trainers, and executive coaches in the world today. Paul is considered a global authority and thought leader in the areas of sales, leadership, communication, interviewing, and negotiation skills. He has more than 25 years of experience embodying the true gifts of a teacher able to accurately illuminate challenges while empowering all levels of professionals, leaders, and teams with next-generation knowledge and skills. Paul’s natural effectiveness to reach his audiences comes from the sincerity and tremendous passion he has for the messages he delivers and the individuals he works with. Paul grew up in Boston, graduated from Boston University, and currently lives in Atlanta, GA. Here is a summary of the key points from the podcast transcript: Paul Bramson is an expert on sales, leadership, communication, interviewing, and negotiation skills. He has over 25 years of experience training professionals and executives. Effective leaders need strong communication skills, including listening, asking questions, coaching, and interviewing. Leaders should see themselves as coaches and focus on connecting with and understanding their people. Salespeople need to improve their listening and questioning skills to better understand customer needs before pitching solutions. They should ask how the customer wants the conversation to go and tailor their approach. Authentic leadership requires transparency, candid conversations, and vulnerability. Leaders should have one-on-one talks with employees to build trust and understand their perspectives. Self-reflection is critical but often lacking. Leaders need self-awareness to improve and "know better, do better." Looking in the mirror and seeing what others see is important. Buying styles differ. Salespeople should identify each customer's preferences upfront and adapt accordingly. Some want to get right to business while others prefer more discussion first. Servant leadership means working for employees by coaching and motivating them, not kowtowing. The servant leader mindset is to provide what's needed to elevate people. Paul offers training workshops and keynotes on connecting, selling, leadership, communication, interviewing, negotiation, coaching, and listening/questioning skills. His website is paulbramson.com.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times, because you're about to go on a monster education rollercoaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. It's Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com, thechrisvossshow.com. Welcome to the big show, my family and friends. The Chris Voss Show.com. Welcome to the big show, my family and friends. The Chris Voss Show family.

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the TikTok. We're starting to. We might be getting cool with those kids, eh? I don't know. That Gen Z-er might start liking us from what I'm seeing. Go to ChrisVoss1 over on TikTok. Today, we have an amazing gentleman on the show, and he's going to be talking about some of the favorite things that I love to talk about, leadership, et cetera, et cetera, and we'll get into it. We have Paul Bramson on the show. He's described as a powerhouse on keynote stages and in training arenas. He is distinguished as being one of the most effective speakers, trainers, and executive coaches in the world today. He's considered a global authority and thought leader in the area of sales, leadership, communication, interviewing, and negotiation skills. He has more than 25 years of experience embodying the true

gifts of a teacher to accurately illuminate challenges while empowering all levels of professionals, leaders, and teams with next-generation knowledge and skills. Paul's natural effectiveness to reach his audiences comes from the sincerity and tremendous passion he has for the messages he delivers and the individuals he works with. He grew up in Boston, Boston, Massachusetts. It sounds like a Long Island accent to me.

Is that Long Island? A little bit Long Island. See, I'm horrible at this. We had your governor on over there in Massachusetts I think about six months ago. Really nice guy. I gave him my ted kennedy impression he and he courteously laughed and didn't like it all i think anyway he graduated from boston university he currently lives in atlanta georgia and i don't have a i don't have a i don't have a southern accent i don't have a southern accent so i can mimic that welcome to the show paul how are you chris i'm well yourself my friend i am well give us your dot com so people can find you on the interwebs please

all right so they can find me at paul bramson b-r-a-m-s-o-n.com that's paul bramson.com or certainly on linkedin at paul bramson there you go there you go so, Paul, a 30,000 overview, a synopsis of who you are and what you do with the Paul Bramson companies. Sure. So I've had my own company now for 23 years. It's hard to think back that long. And we work with, and I work with, all different global companies of all different sizes talking about skills, sales, leadership, communication, interviewing, communication, as you mentioned. I started off in corporate America before I went on my own in sales and sales training and in leadership. And then I went on my own around 31 years old. It was a natural transition. I absolutely loved speaking to people. I loved having people apply and embrace what they learned. and going on my own was a natural transition. So that's who we are and that's what I do. It's training workshops and

it's keynote. There you go. So what, what's your hero's journey? How did you grow up? What shaped you? What got you into this sort of field and interested in sales leadership? What kind of motivated you at an early age? So I actually do a program about connecting like a pro that talks about how somebody's built. And I'm built a certain way, which actually has led me on this journey. I absolutely love to be a high performer. So I was always striving to be. So I got involved in sports. I was a good athlete growing up out of Framingham, Massachusetts. I was actually president of the class. And that, by the way, is really where I started to learn why I really like speaking in front of groups of people. So I don't know if you call that a hero's journey, but it was certainly a journey nonetheless.

So I was president of the class, then went to Boston University. One of the things I've learned is I was able to leverage. I have an outgoing personality. I'm more extroverted than I am introverted. And from there, it was a natural transition to go into sales. One of the things that I learned from a selling perspective was I was actually really good at communicating. So from there, I took a 50% pay cut and went into sales training. I was really good at that, passionate about it, loved watching people learn, was able to become an international sales speaker, got to travel around the world, training people in my 20s, was a leader in my late 20s, went on my own in my early 30s. So that's the journey that I had, Chris.

There you go. It's always interesting to me how people go through their journeys of life, what shapes them, what motivates them, that steers it. Was it scary to start your company for the first time? Great question. That is a great question. Not that your other question wasn't, but this is a really good one. Is it scary?

I think I remember sitting in a corner office, I was working for a Fortune 100 company. And I remember saying to myself, you know what, what I've built, I'm ready to go on my own. So I trained upwards of 25,000 people in corporate America before I went on my own. And they had all left the company and went to different companies. So that was my network. And I thought to myself, you know what? I remember the day I left. I thought, what am I worried about? There's nothing to be worried about.

I know this is going to be a home run. I just don't know what it looks like. Was it scary? Maybe for a minute. But I've never looked back. There you go. Two things, Chris. One, it's because I was doing what I was passionate about.

And I was doing something that I loved. And number three, that I'm also pretty good at. Wow. There you go. You know, one of the things that we're talking about is a shocking HBR. I believe this is Harvard business review. One of the things that helped me cement my success when I was young at 18, starting my first company revealed that 58% of employees trust a stranger on the street more than they do their own boss. That is an astounding figure. Talk to us about authentic leadership and what's some of the things you help coach people on how to be the best at leadership today? Authentic leadership can have different meanings to different people. To me and to us, authentic leadership is how well does somebody connect with somebody from a leadership to employee level so that the dialogue

they have is authentic, it's productive, and it's healthy, Chris. And that's the disconnect that people have. People go through leadership coaching, leadership training. They talk about skills and tactics. What they don't talk about is how do you actually authentically connect with humans? And that's what I focus on. There you go. And it's interesting to me, a lot of people leave a company over leadership. Correct. They don't get along with their boss. In fact, they think that's the number one reason. That's right. Number one reason. Number one reason.

Why people leave. And so how do we build out authentic leadership? How do we define more meanings? Is it emotional intelligence? Or is it... Oh, here we go. Here we go. That's a favorite topic. Is that a rhetorical question? Is it emotional intelligence? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the... So I'm sorry, I'm interrupting you. Why don't you finish your question? No, go ahead. I just want to lead you into that. And maybe... You can tell I'm jacked up about this servant servant leadership does that play together too with the emotional intelligence let's table serving for a minute let's table that for a second the emotional intelligence aspect so let's be clear most daniel goes

goldman's emotional intelligent that's he's a forefather of emotional intelligence that came out before the 2000s. And when companies started to hear about emotional intelligence, they were like, ah, it's soft skills. You don't really have to worry about that. Leave your feelings at the door. Come in and be ready to work and drive. Well, let's fast forward to 2023. You mentioned something about the Gen Zs. You mentioned something about the younger generations. The emotional intelligence is what resonates with them in terms of self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skills. Those are the five elements of emotional intelligence. As a leader, you need to have strong self-awareness.

You need to actually have a certain degree of strength in all of those to connect better with your employees and to be better with authentic leadership. Yeah, because if you don't, I mean, they're just going to get it. They're just going to go someplace else. I think most people search for a leader. Do you think I'm right on that? That's always been my thing. I think a lot of people are always searching for a leader. For a good leader.

For a good leader. Yeah, that's a good point. I mean, we should probably identify that. But they search for a good point. I mean, we should probably identify that. But they search for a good leader. You know, we see that whether it's politics, whether it's religion, whether it's one thing, it seems like there are a certain small group of people that are leaders, that are tribal sort of leaders, if you will, by their nature. As you mentioned earlier, you know, you kind of, it kind of was kind of your build. It seems to be my build.

I don't know. I don't to be my build i don't i don't know if it i don't think i was born a leader but certainly you start your first company 18 you start shaping you're gonna have characteristics for sure yeah there's probably yeah well i am a first child i'm an i'm an i'm an asshole so maybe that was a there's some sort of hockey villainism going on which there are probably some people that can attest to my dark triads. But if that's an aspect, I think a lot of people do search for leadership. They search for someone to lead. They search for someone to inspire them.

Even if it's, when people listen to the Chris Voss show, we talk about stories here. Stories, we've talked about often, are the great owner's manual to life because you don't get one. You might have got one in the mail. I didn't get one. But the U.S. Postal Service isn't quite the same as it used to be. No, it's not. No. People look at stories, and stories are kind of a leadership thing.

People listen to podcasts. They go on TikTok or wherever to do their things. And so I've always kind of had this kind of theory that people search for leaders or good leaders as you keenly point out. a better lead and direct so they can make better decisions in life. You could argue that's also the leader that they may or may not have. I ask this question a lot in leadership workshops and in keynotes. When was the last time you had a leader that actually changed your life in a positive way? If you have it once in your life, you're lucky. It's a very tough thing to find. People want leaders that, especially today with the millennials the gen z's the younger generations especially they want leaders that help coach and develop now we something you mentioned about with servant leadership you know there are different leadership styles that's the

the challenge that people run the transformational there's laissez-faire there's autocratic so there's all these type of leaders. And a lot of times that has to fit with the right person and the right team that you're leading. But let me just say this, finding that right leader for you is a very difficult thing. They have to connect well with them and the leader has to connect well with the employee. It's all about connection. Definitely. And then you have to become self-aware. That's one of the things you talk about in the 10 keys of becoming an authentic Leader. And I noticed there was something that you put in here, prioritize self-regulation. What does that mean? Is that being self-aware and self-accountable or define self-regulation for me. regulating your emotions appropriately for the certain situation. So when you think about things that would trigger you, the trigger can also be a positive. Let's look at it from a negative

connotation. When you understand things that trigger you, do you act and speak and behave in a certain way that's appropriate for the environment that you're in? The only way that you will regulate appropriately is if you have awareness that it's going to happen. Do you ever enter into a conversation like, I promise I'm not going to lose it. I promise I'm not going to say this or do that. Chris, I'm looking at you right now. I know that never happens to you. It depends on who I'm dating. Let's put it that way. I'm not Dr. Phil, but I could play it if I had to. This is where you get tagged as a good leader or a less effective leader, is if you don't regulate your emotions appropriately, you're probably not going to have employees that want to be around you.

Moody leaders don't regulate well. Volatile leaders don't regulate well. It's unattractive in the environment. There you go. I think, would you equate that to a bit of stoicism or stoicistic aspects? What do you mean by that? Stoicism, you know, founded by Marcus Aurelius and Seneca and other things, it talks about leadership from an aspect of controlling one's emotions, regulating one's emotions.

And so, you know, not freaking out about stuff, processing your emotions through your logic and reasoning thing. It's kind of more of a masculine sort of process of putting things through logic and reason before delivering them. And so talking about that from that aspect, you know, like you said, I've learned that being a leader over the years, you have to be a good judge. And so you've got to be careful. Sometimes I think of myself sitting at a bench.

You've got to be careful at your analysis. You've got to be careful at your delivery and how you understand people, how you understand and evaluate events and be able to meet them in the moment, as you've described, appropriately in a way that doesn't alienate people, devalue them, demoralize them, demotivate them, et cetera, et cetera. A strong leader has self-awareness. They have situational awareness where they pivot appropriately based on the situation. Those are real skills, Chris, that people struggle with, especially when I'm going to hire you to become a leader. Oh, you are a really good individual contributor. You're probably going to be a good leader. And essentially, that's more often that's not the case. People need to be coached and trained on this more now than ever.

There you go. How do you balance that though with emotional intelligence? Because one of the challenges, especially from kind of a stoic leader like myself, is balancing emotional intelligence and emotional delivery of that, where you can understand, you can empathize with people, you can connect with them emotionally, but without freaking the hell out and acting like some sort of spoiled child as a leader. So when you talk about emotional intelligence, there's personal competence, which is self-awareness, self-regulation, and motivation. Then there is the social competence, the empathy and the social skills. Somebody that has strong empathy, by the way, so this is where empathy gets challenging. So speaking candidly

i'm somebody that needs to work on empathy i know how to show appropriate empathy the problem is i may not feel empathetic and as a leader it's not whether you feel empathy or not it's whether you can show empathy and that's and that's by the way that's it's all about appropriateness when it comes to leadership chris can you show it by the way it? By the way, am I going to teach you to have empathy, Chris? Or could I coach you and mentor you on how to show appropriate empathy even though you don't feel it? It's more about the overt versus the internal. And the communication of it and how it passes other people, as you're saying. And some of the coaching you guys, I believe you guys do coaching.

Is that correct? Or do we need an appropriate call? Training, keynote, the whole bit. There you go. So when you guys, you guys teach the communication, how to get that across to people. And I think that's a big thing that many leaders maybe are challenged by is how to communicate effectively and get you know the mission statement they want being being connected their people talk to us about some of the challenges you see leaders do in that area of communication and so when you talk about communication from a leadership

perspective this is one that people hear all the time being a good listener and good at questioning that's the foundation of all communication. So we notice that people, I'm not going to say people are bad at it. People need to elevate their listening and communication skills. Another part of the communication aspect is they need to be better coaches. Coaching is a skill. It's a conversation. It's a collaborative conversation. More often than not, when we work with leaders, they haven't had formalized coaching skills. But I'll throw another one at you, interviewing skills. It's another one, which by the way, of all the programs that we offer, interviewing needs to be more at the forefront, but you would be shocked to know that most companies don't offer formalized interviewing.

So you take a look at listening, questioning skills. You take a look at coaching skills. You take a look at interviewing skills. You take a look at interviewing skills. I'll throw one more at you. You ready? Presentation skills. There you go. All of it. I could talk about hours on this.

You can tell I'm a little bit passionate about this. You are passionate about it. And that's the awesome sauce. So let me clarify something for you when you say interviewing. Do you mean as interviewing as in interviewing for a job for a hire or as a leader the leader asking the interview questions for the person that they're looking to hire there you go there you go interviewing and hiring right spending the money to interview first and up front is so important i mean we we used to do the thing that i think a lot of

companies fall into when they first come out is they'll they'll do one interview and maybe two but usually the second one is just a job offer and sign the contract and and it was a mess sometimes some of the people that we pick up you know you'd find you'd find out you'd met you know jekyll and and they turn out to be dr hyde you know that's the interview problem that's an interview problem. Exactly. And then we switched to four interviews with people, three to four interviews. We put them through multiple things. There's a whole aspect of series that we go through and wow, just made a huge difference in what went on there. Now to fall back to something else you said, because you threw me a lot of different things there and it was great. One of the things you talked about was being able to ask questions and evaluate systems this is

one of the things that you know they talk about in stoicism in being able to try and understand something and i think do you find a lot of leaders one of the challenges they have is they knee jerk to stuff they don't you mentioned they don't ask a lot of questions. Asking questions is really important to not only understanding their people, what's going on with sales, what's going on with the business, et cetera, et cetera. What does it seek to understand and then be understood is what Stephen Covey used to say? Yeah, there you go. This is the – listen, we see it in leadership. We see it in sales. We see it in customer success.

People are not listening and questioning effectively. They're not looking for words and phrases that they don't understand from the other person's perspective. What they're doing is they are, oh, I know what that means. I already know what that means. And they go into talking about things and it doesn't resonate with the other person because they have a different definition. This is really what happens in everyday conversation, Chris. It happens in leadership. It happens in selling. It happens all over the place. So if people would learn to listen, lock on more effectively, to better understand what somebody's talking about, ask better questions, again, to better understand

before they come back with answers. If they better understand, they'll come back with answers that are more likely to resonate with somebody. That's the skill that's missing all over the place, not just in leadership, it's all over the place. There you go. And if you understand and listen to people more, you can gain, number one, better rapport with them. Correct. Build a better relationship with them, gain trust, I believe. them. Correct. Build a better relationship with them. Correct. And trust, I believe. And what else may I be missing? When you listen to people, you give them feedback,

basically telling them, I'm listening to you, I'm doing that right now. They feel like they're heard. They feel like they're heard. And if you're really good at it, they feel like they're understood. You don't have to agree with them. You just have to feel like you're being present in the conversation. If you've had a conversation with somebody, you're like, they're not even following me. Or they're waiting for me to stop talking so I can talk.

There you go. What were you saying, Paul? I was looking at my phone. That's funny. I like it. I've heard that before. No, what we've nailed down here is really vitally important from sales and from leadership, even from running a company, you know, understanding what's coming at you.

It's so easy to assume what the problems are. You know, we were talking about this earlier with some other guests about leadership and, you know, someone was interviewing a CEO and they said, what's the problem with your company? Oh, the marketing department. Right. And it's like, no, it's your, it's your ship. It's your, it's your submarine is the analogy they were using. And it's your, the buck stops here.

And so if your people are failing, if your company's failing and you're the CEO, you're the leader, it could be you, you know, because that's, maybe you haven't trained people. Right. Maybe you haven't effectively communicated. Right. Like we talked about, maybe you haven't exhibited the type of leadership that's, maybe you haven't trained people right. Maybe you haven't effectively communicated right, like we talked about. Maybe you haven't exhibited the type of leadership that's going to motivate people, as you've talked about before. And that can make all the difference.

But also in the running of your company. Like, one of my things that's so simple, and people talk about this, is going into your company and say, why do we do things this way? And, you know, for years, people would say to me, well, I don't know, you invented this little system that processes between here and there, and you did it. And then I would have to sit down and go, why the hell did I do it this way years ago? Is there a better way to do it? Is there always a way to improve? And so being able to ask questions,

what you talked about, can improve the quality of your company because if you're constantly, companies, businesses, people, they always need to be on a constant slide of improvement. improve the quality of your company because if you're constantly companies businesses people they always need to be on a constant slide of improvement and if they don't then they're going to slide downward into nothingness or bankruptcy or becoming relevant uh you know like we've seen with kodak and other companies there's a lot did you say kodak yeah wow i'm going back, Chris. I'm old. It's a great story, too.

It is a good story. Yeah. Let me say this. There are many reasons why companies thrive more than survive. But when you talk about leadership, the crux is communication. It just is. And when that starts to break down is when problems start to happen. There are other skills and behaviors that are involved that are important with leadership.

But for us, what we focus on is that communication aspect. And there are many parts of the communication that you and I talked about. There you go. And sales as well. Sales is one of the topics you mentioned. Being able to listen to, know if people are listening to you anymore. One of the biggest problems I have, especially with online sales and the pitches we get off of LinkedIn, it's like, if I could get a dollar for every pitch I get on LinkedIn

that I have no interest in, or it's- Delete conversation. I'd be a millionaire by now. Like I just, I almost have to pay somebody just to handle that crap. And it's just insane.

And a lot of it is they don't do any qualifications anymore that's one thing i don't see no research and no research yeah that like do they know who they're talking to yeah the the you know like i'll get some pitch they'll be like hey we're steel manufacturers in china do you want to buy some steel you're like at what point did you read my linkedin bio and determine that we're steel wheel tellers? You know, that's just an extreme example. When people actually call me occasionally, I'll pick up the phone.

I'm like, do you know who you're talking to? What exactly do I do for a living? Do you know? Because if you knew I did also sales training, you probably wouldn't be having this call with me. And isn't it interesting that, you know, we're online now, so we can do background checks. We can look at everything. Oh, yeah. And so we can know who people are.

In the old days when we used to go have to knock on doors and show up. Which means, by the way, there's no excuse. There's no excuse for this. Exactly. Hey, we had to get out the yellow pages. I don't know if you're that old. I am that old. Okay.

I'm the type of old where you had to drive out to the manufacturing plant or wherever the business was. You had to knock on the door. You had to bring some roses or chocolates or some, something for the gatekeeper and that gatekeeper, man, she was like, she was a military sort of person that was, you weren't getting through. That was when you can get into a building, Chris. Yeah. You can't get into buildings anymore. That's true. That's true. But to try and, you know, you'd, you'd go into the buyer's office and you'd have to scan around the office and be like, Hey, you got a picture of your wife there.

How's your marriage going? Those days. Yeah. But now you can look it all up. You can Google it. You can say, Hey, you know, Paul Bramson is into this, that, and the other. I can see his LinkedIn. He's over there doing this. He's talking about this. These are the things he's passionate about. You have a better chance of connecting with them now than

you ever have to your point. Definitely. And when, one of the problems that we used to have with our Salesforce is they wouldn't listen to the customer. And when they get through the sales process, the customer gets the end. And then the call would come to me because the customer was angry because what they thought they were buying or what they, what they wanted wasn't what they, what they ended up at the end. For example, we had a mortgage company for 20 years as one of our companies, they would, would you know they want a 15 year mortgage and the loan officer would just be you know wasn't paying attention he would just ram through the process and they'd be a closing with a 30-year mortgage and they'd be pissed

and rightly so yeah so it still happens today yeah it happens today the the these skills are not that easy we're talking about it fundamentally like, wow, this should be easy to do. No. We work with people that sell transactional type deals, hundreds up to the billions that people need work on being more effective at listening and questioning. You say it's a fundamental skill. It is a fundamental skill that people need to work on. Yeah, definitely. We used to teach our salespeople, there's one first question I want you to ask, and we'd monitor for it. We, what are you trying to accomplish?

And shut the F up and listen. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't want to hear you talking. I don't want to hear selling people. Same thing we do in interviewing. I tell my interviewers, I'd be like, shut the fuck up. You'd be surprised what people tell you when you listen. Because they, you know, you would sit there and go, yeah, and you wouldn't be selling, shut the fuck up. You'd be surprised what people tell you when you listen. Because you would sit there and go, yeah.

And you wouldn't be selling them on the thing. You'd be listening to them. And I think people get confused on that selling or interviewing and selling the company in the interview, interviewing for a sales process, you're trying to sell your wares. And if you just shut up and do that listening as we're talking about, you can better understand the client. You can better understand your interviewee. It's a timing thing, Chris. And people's timing is off.

Definitely. I mean, sell them at the end once they've sold you. Only if they tell you something you want to buy. Yeah, there you go. When I'd interview people, I would just shut the hell up. I'd just be as quiet as hell. And I'd ask a lot of questions, of course, through the thing. And, you know, stuff would come out because they would try to be filled the empty space.

And they'd be like, yeah, I did some time in prison. You're like, what? That's not in your resume? Wow. You know, it's interesting what people tell you. Or if you're doing sales and you're qualifying your client, you know, asking them the questions, you can better identify what they want to achieve and help them achieve their goals. But everything you're talking about, everything you're talking about is accurate.

This involves knowledge and skills. People wing it. They have a hard time articulating what would make them successful. They don't have logical, repeatable processes. People need to get good at certain things, whether it's tactical sales, strategic sales, conversations, overcoming objections, listening and questioning, understanding the competition. I could go on and on about this, but there are elements that people need to refine to be selling or leading like a pro. There you go. And as you mentioned, this ties right into leadership too, because if you understand your people, if they feel that

you're vested in them, you understand who they are and everything else. One thing I thought that was really cool you talk about is embracing relationship transparency. Talk to us about how that translates into leadership or really relationships in general, I suppose, from whether it's- Love the question. Love the question. So one of the things we talk about, I like to talk about with leadership is, when's the last time you sat down with your employee and said to them, hey, I want to have a transparent, candid conversation with you. I want to talk about- Usually that get me fired up in a not

so good way. And oh, by the way, I want to hear from you first about that, and then I'm going to share mine. They don't do that. That is being vulnerable, transparent, and candid. Love it if they would do that. They should do that at the beginning of the relationship. They do it sometimes it's too far along to even have that conversation. And what I like about what you did there is you asked them to communicate first. Correct. So you're listening to them and how they do it. One of the most interesting sales pitches I ever got was I got a call from a CEO who wanted me to use a new software, a CRM that he had. And he called me up and he said, hey, Chris, this is what I do.

He goes, I'd like to talk to you about it, but tell me about yourself first. I'd like to get to know you better. And I felt like, hey, this guy cares about what I did. And the way to get to know you better. And, and I felt like really like, Hey, this guy cares about what I did and the way he communicated to made it effective. It wasn't just like, it says here on the card, I should ask you what you do. You know, he really seemed to give a shit and it came across in his empathy. That's authentic. That's authentic to your point. That's right. Yeah. There you go. We just keep rolling through the show with all the topics. And this is such a rich environment that you created with these 10 aspects of leadership.

To become an authentic leader, I should remind people. And we won't get through all 10, sadly, during the show, but people should follow up with you on this. And I think you probably talk about this on LinkedIn too as well, don't you? Absolutely. LinkedIn, posting three to four times a week, both on my personal page and the business page. There you go. So people can follow up with that on the 10 aspects of authentic leadership. So he literally shut up and he listened to me for, I don't know, I went on for 10 or 15 minutes talking about myself because, I don't know, I'm a narcissist. No, no. See, we haven't done a survey for that yet.

You don't come across that way. Well, we've, yeah. Well, okay. It's a callback joke we do on the show, but there's a bit of dark triad shit sometimes with me. And then he told me his pitch. And I was willing to listen to him as a potential customer because he had listened to me. So I was willing to give him the ability to put his pitch out there. And, you know, so many people, they call you up and you, you know,

we've mentioned that you, you have this experience too. They call you up and they just go right for it, man. They don't take you to dinner. They don't take you on the first date. They're just going right for the clothes. And you're just like, who the fuck are you and where you come from? So you have a different buying style, Chris. There's a lot of people that don't have any patience.

They want to get right down to it. Yours is more conventional. This is how you and I grew up. I'll throw you and I in the same age. This is how you and I grew up. A lot of times people want to get right down to business. If you know what people need to be better at, they need to ask that up front. How do you want this to go?

They need to start asking a little bit more unconventional type questions at the beginning so they get a feel for somebody before either they dive into it or not, to your point. There you go. So let's talk about that a little bit. Let's flesh it out. Buying style. As a salesperson, you need to be able to identify what people's buying styles are. And you're right.

I am one of those. Get right to the bottom line. I can tell you if I'm on or off. I mean, I'm 55 years old. I've seen so much crap. You're slightly older. Plus, I'm jaded. I'm jaded and I'm broken.

And I'm at that age where I'm on the lawn. Are you too old to develop? Yeah, pretty much. I think after 15 years, my audience is like, this dog is not going to learn any new tricks. Fair enough. So give us some examples of buying styles, maybe how to identify them as a salesperson.

It's not the buying style. It's the type of underlying needs somebody has will determine how you potentially should handle them from a buying perspective. So if I understand you better, while we get through some of the niceties, maybe I could get a feeling for you on email, a feeling from you as we just introduce each other, I'm going to get a feel for you by your body language, by your tone of voice, and some of the conversation that you and I would have on whether or not I should get right down to business or not. Or I'll even ask you, how would you like this to go? We can certainly do introductions or we can get right down to business.

What would you prefer? You'd be surprised. That can go 50-50. Really? Oh, yeah. Let That can go 50-50. Really? Oh, yeah. People will be like, you know what? Let's ease into this a bit. Let's ease into this. Or somebody says, get right to it. What do you offer? There you go. There you go. I usually use the, how would you like this to turn out when I'm firing people? I'm like, would you like to walk out the front door or would you like to go through

the window? So there you go. Don't do that, people. That's a joke. Don't write me. By the way, Chris, I do have to add, a lot of what you just said has to do with how much the product or the service that somebody's selling, typically the amount that it costs will determine how long a meeting or the number of meetings will go. If it's very transactional, it could be very quick. But if we're talking about making a huge investment for that client, those conversations are going to be much more in-depth. There you go. You know, it's interesting to me how people develop. And a lot of leaders, do you think a lot of leaders do a lot of self-reflection?

Do you think a lot of them understand how to have self-awareness? Talking about leaders, do I think humans do a lot of self-reflection have self-awareness? Do I think humans? Forget about leaders. Do I think humans do a lot of self-reflection? No. You've been watching the news lately. No. In Florida. In Florida, man.

Don't go there. Don't go there. Don't go there. Listen, we all, me included, could do more self-reflection. Listen, you and I, we were joking about, has that ship sailed as your development ended? If you want to continue to develop as a human, you need to self-reflect. And once you know better, you do better. If you're somebody who doesn't do that, if somebody that lacks self-awareness, meaning

when you look in the mirror, if you don't see what everybody else sees, you need work. I would say most leaders don't do that. They're moving too fast. I'm saying that collectively, of course. There you go. And not everyone. Not everyone. They're moving too fast. I'm saying that collectively, of course. There you go. And not everyone. Not everyone. Collectively.

Yeah, there you go. On average. That's the diplomatic answer. That's right. Yeah, we all need to work on being better. That's why we do the show is so that people learn stuff and educate themselves from all the walks of life. But you're right. Being in front of the mirror, I do that Stuart Smalley, Al Franken, SNL bit where I-

Al Franken? Every day. How old is this audience? i'm old i don't know about the audience according to tiktok there's a lot of 13 to 17 year olds watching so i don't know it's it's hopefully we're hip for them but i know i sit in front of the mirror every day and go people like me they really do that's good whatever so as we round out the show let's get into some of the features that you do, the training, some of the offerings you guys do so that we can get people onboarded and aware of some

of the training programs that you offer. So from a keynote, there's a keynote, there's keynote workshops, there's training workshops. Right now, the Connecting Like a Pro. How can we better connect with people, whether it's from leadership with employees, employees to leaders, as well as from a selling perspective, how can we connect better with prospective clients as well as existing clients? This thing is on fire right now, Chris. And it's also, it's not a personality assessment. This is about, it's very, it's fun. It's quick.

It's easy to understand, to apply and embrace. That one's on fire right now. We have selling like a pro, obviously selling skills, tactical, strategic. We have negotiation program. We have interviewing program. We have a coaching program. We have a listening and questioning program. So those are training workshops. And the keynote that's really popular that I'm doing right now is the connecting like a pro, for sure. There you go. Did you say you had a listening and communicating yeah i'm kidding so there you go and so let me ask you this because this is a question that's been coming up this week with

all the leadership discussions we've been having and it was an epiphany that i had this week that leaders need to really think of themselves as coaches you know everyone's there's a lot of coaches nowadays but do you find that a lot of leaders think of themselves as coaches? There's a lot of coaches nowadays, but do you find that a lot of leaders think of themselves as a coach? You kind of alluded to this early in the show and I wanted to call back to it. And then are they good at it? And I think you mentioned something about that. All right. So I can answer the second one very quickly. Most people in management and leadership could be more effective at coaching. I don't want to give it the yes or no. They could be more effective. They could use more honing, refining, and polishing

on it, number one. The first part to your question, again, remind me, was, this is a listening. Was, do coaches need to, do leaders need to think of themselves as coaches? I mean, some people just think they're, like you mentioned before, authoritarian in the show, and they're just barking orders at people. Autocratic. So, no, I'm not correcting you, but I'm adding on to it. I'm not correcting you. I'm adding on to that.

There you go. So here's the thing. First of all, every leader should have the skill set to be an effective coach. I want to throw that out there. Now, how they use it depends on the leadership style they have and the team that they have. If you're a laissez-faire leader, that means you have high performers on your team. You're going to step away and only provide guidance and coaching when it's needed or it's asked for. If you're a transformational leader, you're going to be somebody that's inspirational, motivational, and constantly providing coaching when it's

needed. If you're autocratic, you're probably having a one-way conversation, which is not coaching. It's telling. Every leader should have the skillset to be a capable coach. Not every leader has that. There you go. In fact, we're getting a plug here for your services. Blake gives us a plug in from YouTube. Effective communication is a skill and needs to be developed. The leading and communicating like a pro curriculum from the Bramson companies took my game to a whole new level. How's that for fun? You mean it actually works? I'm sure it does. Thank you, Blake. You would be around for 25 years 25 years 25 years 25 years if it didn't and these are interesting discussions and you bring up a good point too that i that you give me epiphany

on i i love it when we learn things on the show identifying you know being a coach to people and and identifying their personality types so yeah your top guys that are in your sales, your top 5% guys, those guys who are the extreme sales guys, who, you know, it's the 80-20 rule, only, I don't know, these days, it seems to be the 95-5 rule. You know, those are the 5% of the guys who make 95% of your sales.

Or gals. Or gals, there you go. I'm an old, I'm an old, I'm an old beast, but you're right. Thank you for correcting me. So men or women, those top salespeople are just going to be your monster deliverers. And you're right. They don't need much help.

In fact, they want you out of their way as much as they possibly can. Laissez-faire. They want the laissez-faire. Yep. That's right. And then there's other people that need that boost, that need that help, that maybe they're not trained as well. Maybe they don't. Maybe they just don't have the experience.

I mean, we were joking earlier this week about the Glen Gary, Glen Ross. Alec Baldwin's classic in that movie. Classic. And I've had those salesmen that are the high-end salespeople. They're the Al Pacinos. They're out working the bars. There might be an eight ball in their pocket. There's nothing going on.

I'm noting everybody that way, but you know what I mean? There are those guys. You're funny. Did you say you're in Las Vegas? It makes more sense now. Yeah. So, you know, they're the guys who are painting the town. They know how to work the client. They know how to wine and dine and, you know, really get it done. And you just need to stay out of the way and you just need to provide support for them. But you, your point to that, there are other people that need that more coaching they need that more help they maybe need more they need more hands-on hands-on is probably not the word hr is going to let me use but are you a sports fan are you a sports fan yeah yeah what's your sport football

i'm a raiders for a college pro college pro listen these pros they're they're pros that means they're super talented how much coaching do they get a lot yeah and they're pros they're the best in the world the issue is everybody even the five percent by the way even the five percent everybody needs more coaching in order to get to an elevated level. Michael Jordan needs more coaching. I can't remember the coach of the Utah Jazz. I remember when I was 11 years old and I delivered papers. That was my first job. Sloan. Sloan. Was it Sloan? Sloan. I think Sloan was the coach.

Jerry Sloan? Yes. I think it was Jerry Sloan. Jerry Sloan. Okay. I'm 55. The brain's already gone. That's right. We're getting there. We're getting there. I remember we went to a thing at the newspaper thing and they brought Jerry Sloan. Jerry Sloan. Okay. I'm 55. The brains are going. We're getting there. We're getting there. I remember we went to a thing at the newspaper thing and they brought Jerry Sloan into the Utah Jazz. And he was talking about how you would think that Karl Malone, you know, being paid whatever it was at the time, millions and millions of dollars, one of the top people in the game. This is when they were winning championships or trying to win championships. I don't think they fully got there.

They never got there. Never got there. They were getting whatever is up to the point. And Michael Jordan, of course, kept taking it away from him. But he talked about how you would think that you wouldn't need to coach that gentleman because he gets paid. You're like, well, he gets paid a lot of money. He must be good at what he does and he doesn't need any of my help. But he's like, no, I have to be on him. I have to help him, support him, coach him, motivate him, get him to the next level. And I think leaders need to think of themselves as coaches.

The more and more I need to think about, maybe, maybe leaders should all go to coach training and certification. You know, there's nothing more important as a leader, not more important than being an effective coach to your point. There you go. And, and I, I suppose, would you say that falls into servant leadership? Servant leadership is tricky. Servant leadership is I work for you and whatever you need,

I'm going to provide in order to get you to the next level. I think the name itself, although it's a very powerful concept, sometimes people are like, wait a minute, that means I'm going to kowtow to my employees? No, no, no, no. It means you're going to provide them with the information, with the skills, and the knowledge to get them to the next level

because I work for you. A lot of leaders don't have that mindset. That's when the ego starts to kick in. It doesn't come across as servant. It comes across as more egotistical, narcissistic type of leadership. To your narcissism comment. That's a good callback joke. We always bring it up.

So let's do this as we round up the show. What's the best way people can reach out to you, they can onboard with you, they can get to know you better? I know that you have like a, we alluded to it earlier, you guys have a website or a point of access where people can go on and find out more about themselves by taking a survey from you. So that they'd have to reach out to us. But paulbramson.com is the website. We have contact information on the website for that as well. And of course, on my LinkedIn at paulbramson, B-r-a-m-s-o-n there you go and they can get to know you guys better they can find out if you're fit who who are the people that are probably a best fit for you that's

probably anybody that's willing to pay for the services is a very good fit chris and the check's clear i say that in slight jest. Let me just say something. Let me say something. We work with all industries, biotech, medical devices, SAS, fintech, martech, construction, engineering, ergonomic, office furniture,

you name it. We've either keynote, keynote workshop, training workshop. If somebody reaches out, they're looking to develop, they're looking to develop they're looking to elevate that's a good fit there you go there you go well paul it's been wonderful to have you on the show thank you very much for coming on you ask great questions by the way there you go we

try i've done this once or twice before i can tell and i've loved this discussion we've had because i love talking about all this kind of leadership and everything else so hopefully people learn some stuff because i had a couple epiphanies as well and if you didn't go back watch the whole damn show people jesus already throw us your.com one last time so we can get that plug in paulbramson.com p-a-u-l-b-r-a-m-s-o-n.com there you go and thanks for tuning in we certainly appreciate you without you we just There you go. And thanks to my audience for tuning in. We certainly appreciate you. Without you, we just could not do it. And thanks to Mark while coming in there at the last second.

Great episode, gents. Paul is the man, so we love that thing. And then I think someone was asking if there was an online training and would like to look into them. Make sure, I think we got your dot com out there. Yes, we did. If you didn't, it will be on the Chris Voss Show. And you should be seeing this on the LinkedIn newsletter from the Chris Voss Show later this week.

Thanks, Mattis, for tuning in. Go to goodreads.com, 4chesschrissvoss, linkedin.com, 4chesschrissvoss, youtube.com, 4chesschrissvoss, and chrissvoss1 on the big TikTok over there. Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe.

And we'll see you guys next time.