Sorting your thinking vs selling your thinking

“Ok Rob, I feel like you have it all there”, he said while pointing to his head, “but we need to see it here, can we do that?”, while pointing to the page.

Point taken. Let’s get to it.

One week later. “So one thing that I’d like us to reflect together on, Rob, is that people have told me you can sometimes come across as condescending”.

Pause. Shit. Breathe. Lean forward and ask for more detail.

These two conversations happened earlier this year, and were probably a pretty foundational piece of feedback on how I see myself and my work.

The events above are connected because they are good examples of what happens when your thinking lives in your head, vs breathes in the world.

What happened was I got stressed and tried to solve it all on a page which I could take others through, instead of explaining the logic of where I was at.

And this is how you end up coming across as someone who cannot believe that others cannot read what’s already so automatic in your own mind.

Which in turn means your body language comes across as more frustrated, more befuddled, which in turn makes others feel small and frustrated too.

It’s the difference between sorting your thinking, and selling your thinking. People buy what they can see in front of them, so we need to start there.

And the audience matters too: some folks like to be told the answer, others want to be taken on a journey where they can understand the steps you took.

It hurts to be called “condescending”, but the greater lesson here is when something hurts, it’s a sign that it’s worth paying attention to it a bit more.