We’ve all been touched by Dan Pink’s work in some way. His insights into the changing world of work have either been mentioned in a talk we’ve listened to, a book we’ve read, or been implemented in places where we work. Dan’s interview has been a long time coming and it was great to meet him in person. As in the video, Dan is super sharp and concise. The video is packed with many interesting insights from his books and otherwise. Enjoy!
My favorite sections here –
“In job interviews, the interviewer is basically trying to decide if this person is going to make their life easier or harder. If you can be the kind of person that others think will make their life easier, that’s advantageous. I think that can actually trump a lack of experience.”
“Not only did I spend time with some of those great salespeople, but I asked them that very question. There is a view out there that some people are naturals, that a certain person can sell anything. It’s really amazing to me. I asked this particular question to them: “Are some people just born salespeople?”
Almost uniformly, their view was no, especially now. The reason for that was that whether they’re business buyers or consumer buyers, what matters more on the seller part is expertise. That’s something I heard over and over again, particularly in B to B. You have to have expertise. What they were saying is that you’re not born an expert in computer systems. You’re not born an expert in luxury sedans. You acquire that. You build that and you actually have to have some interest in it in order to do it.
The very best salespeople out there say, “No, I don’t think that there are some people who are naturals. I think it’s something that people learn how to do.”
The other thing that fits into that is some of the research that I read about from Adam Grant at Penn about introversion and extroversion. We have this stereotype that the naturals are super extroverted people. What Grant’s and others’ research have found is that that’s not it. People who do the best are in the middle, the ambiverts. Most of us are ambiverts. Most of us are naturals because it’s what human beings do.”
“Typically the way that I do things for a book is that I’ll write a proposal. I end up writing pretty long proposals partly because it’s a test for me about whether there’s a there there and whether I’m interested enough to do it. I also think strategically about whether there’s a market for this book, too. For example, let’s say I was keenly interested in collecting stamps from Estonia and I wanted to write a book about Estonian stamps. That might be really interesting to me but there’s no market for that, so it becomes a hobby rather than something I really do. There is a strategic layer on it as well.”
“When I’m writing I’ll start in the morning and commit to a certain amount of words and I won’t do anything else until I hit that amount of words.”
Full transcript, as always, is on RealLeaders.tv
A Learning a Day 