Michelle Tillis Lederman - The Connectors Advantage

so hello i'm marshall goldsmith so happy to see you today on linkedin live i am an executive educator and executive coach and an author and i am here today with michelle tillis litterman michelle has just got a great new book out called the connectors advantage she is a world's expert on this topic ranked by forbes is one of the top 25 people in the world and it's a big world on the topic of networking she's an author she's a coach she's a consultant she travels about giving people advice and she's talking about a topic that we can all relate to even more important she's a member of our wonderful hundred coaches community so honored to have her be a member of our happy community michelle briefly introduce yourself we'll get started

well i'm so honored to be in this community and thanks so much for having me on your show um well you told some of the work stuff but what people don't always know about me is that i'm a recovering cpa i spent the first decade of my career in finance um and actually that's kind of what drew me to this career because of the frustration that i saw in the way people communicated and led and obviously connected or didn't connect um but what's really more interesting about me is that i am a travel enthusiast i'm an adrenaline junkie i am uh an animal lover and mother of two and um that's kind of more interesting than sometimes the work but i love my work yeah life is good and we've got wonderful people joining us already from around the world hi sue hi sue it's very nice to see you and again really nice people joining us you know i love the topic of your work which is connection yeah uh for those who are people who are new to you what is a connector and why should you bother to be one

and that's probably the most important thing we can tell people a connector is simply somebody who puts relationships first in everything that they do in all their interactions personal professional the relationship is the priority in those interactions and connectors have a certain way of behaving and interacting that enables that deeper connection but more importantly why should we care it's because whatever it is that you are working on or towards you're going to get there faster easier and better through your relationships and that's really what the connectors advantage is faster easier better results and i got stats to back this up i love stats you know you can take the girl out of accounting but not accounting out of the girl when it comes to getting a job 90 of jobs at the executive level and 85 of jobs at any level come from who you know if it's promotion you're 70 more likely to get a promotion um if you have an active mental relationship again the relationships driving it people trust referrals 92 of people trust referrals you're four times more likely to buy when referred by a friend i mean the statistics are amazing but the ones that shocked me and marshall that news ones people don't always know about

it it's about health and happiness those connections um are really more important than on your health and mortality than as if um obesity right so you are more likely to die from social isolation and from obesity and it has an equal impact on mortality than if you smoke 15 cigarettes a day that's amazing that is just and you know i'm i can't say you know i'm totally shocked by that because i'm a great believer in everything you do and you know over covet i spent time with 60 of these incredible leaders and they get a chance to be with each other and you know people are lonely today people are existentially lonely and there's no saying it's lonely at the top today it's lonely er at the top and we don't live where we were brought up we don't have this sense of community like we used to and i think people loved it being able to talk to each other to talk about their lives without feeling being judged and you're a member of our little community the 100 coaches community what's that like in terms of connection well you know another thing that you're saying about community because we have to create our own communities and i love that you created this community and i only joined your community at the end of 2019 so i was very new to it and just kind of starting to meet some people in the community when coveted hit and everything got locked down and so you know people say that it's been this time of distancing um but i always say physical distancing we don't have to be emotionally distant and i think it's actually really enhanced the possibility of creating community and connection um and you did this fabulous thing where you had us on the phone every day sometimes really early we got to see all these faces and go into breakout rooms and start to meet people and start to recognize names um and then we started to taper off but we still continue to do it and i feel more a part of the community now um through that so i think it is about creating our own communities and being more intentional about it and we have to be a little more intentional about it because of this new hybrid remote distance world that we're in i completely agree with you i mean i think that oddly enough in the world of coaching for example these 60 people that mark thompson and i spent every weekend with over the entire covert experience they're from all around the world we couldn't have done that live and in person so it really kind of forced us to be kind of creative and come up with new and different ways to be in your terminology to be connectors and help people connect with each other and i think a lot of people i said if you're a ceo of a company you don't have anybody to talk to you can't really talk to your board about everything and you can't talk to you know the people you manage about everything and sometimes your family doesn't understand it so to be able to be with other very distinguished people who don't have an agenda they're not trying to prove something you're it's just very important to have these kind of connections i mean one guy in our group i'm living here in nashville now is greg jones and craig gray's a great guy he's a new president of belmont college or belmont university and i said you know greg we can be good friends one you're a president of the university you got to go out there and selling all the time raising money that's part of your job and either people are you're selling them something they're selling you something so it's just nice to have some people you can talk to where you know you're not selling they're not buying you're just trying to help each other so it's been a very positive idea now this next question i love you know is being a connector is that something you're born with or is that something that is made or born i get asked this question all the time about leadership what do you think about being a connector i get this question all the time and the truth is when i started the research i actually thought there were some innate qualities that connectors had that enabled them to do this and i had ideas about self-esteem and conscientiousness and extroversion and emotional intelligence and locus of control of all of these ideas and i did a study and the research showed me that there was very moderate variations between connectors and non-connectors in most of those attributes and the one differentiation was um the personal satisfaction derived from connecting people 60 greater in connectors than non-connectors which kind of reinforced it but what it told me and it completely changed the direction of the book it told me that anybody can be a connector anybody can learn these attributes and behaviors and infuse them into their interactions and get the connectors advantage well you know it's really interesting because i'm always asked this question are leaders born or made and you know i have a very i think profound answer you like numbers in math and i'm pretty willing to stick with this one so far and i think the same may be true for connectors one hundred percent of the leaders that i've coached have indeed been born yes how about you were they born yes i love that and i just thought i just felt great yeah

yeah um and loudon and high-end just popped up a coffin that said no agenda connections and that's what you're describing marshall and i love that um you know and the truth is though i think the agenda can just be connection right and there's certain relationships that we all need and want in our lives you know the mentors and the followers but the confidants and the sounding voice that's what i heard you talking about when you got those 60 liters together right and there's so many opportunities that this new world has opened up for us because you know getting everybody's schedules to align especially at the level that you are working with is so challenging we can't get them all to fly in on the same day but we can get them all to zoom in on the same day um and we can just create those things that would happen naturally in person no we can have them maybe not as natural but we can create those moments in this hybrid world and you know i what we did is mark thompson i did this we did six sessions each weekend we spent hundreds of hours on this six sessions each weekend so they had some choices too and we also rotated the groups so you didn't know who was going to be in your group every weekend so you know really interesting neat people all different walks of life and you know uh i think it's just been great now one thing you talk about is the spectrum of connection okay what is the spectrum and talk about the various gradations and well just talk about that you got it so

probably nobody who's listening today is a non-connector doesn't even believe in the value relationships right and there's very few people i think that are truly non-connectors but what we have is um it's fluid it's a spectrum so there's two things that help us elevate up the spectrum of connection and the first is whether or not we are responding or initiating so an emerging connector believes in it but just doesn't know how to do it yet we can start responding to incoming requests for introductions for assistance they become a responsive connector so from emerging to responsive to acting and once we are both initiating and responding we are in that acting phase right we are putting people together we're looking for ways to add value we're thinking about these mindsets of a connector and infusing them into our interactions and this is a great place for people to strive if you want to keep climbing up the spectrum the other levers the breadth and depth of your connections so when we think about um how deep we go in an area that's a niche connector right my sister she knows everybody in new jersey real estate law she is in a niche everybody knows her and she knows everybody but if we broaden and we think about broadening up and down the ladder across industry hopefully demography where you know that's saying marshall where it's like i got a guy right oh i know somebody right that's somebody who is a super connector they just have such a depth and breath across so many areas that there are very few degrees of separation away from that person you may need to meet now are you originally from new jersey or did you just move there i'm a jersey girl i i flatten the hair for you it's usually much bigger when you said i got a guy the jersey came out with that one yeah i gotta go i am a jersey girl now i've got a question you talk about seven mindsets and what are the seven mindsets and tell me a little more about that by the way hello stacy hello oh hi steven it's so good to see you here i look you know

and i'm going to answer your question in a second but stacy's point is so true i found that i connected more with my college friends during copied because we would zoom and we would do online trivia we would do happy hours and it actually brought people together if you allowed it so yes thank you for that comment stacey okay so the seven mindsets of a connector open and accepting connectors trust they have a clear vision they come from a place of abundance they are social and curious they are conscientious and the one that you are highlighted in is they have a generous spirit and yes i interviewed marshall for the book and that's actually how we got connected and then i wouldn't let that connection go because i was so inspired by you thank you so much you know to me back to the generous spirit one let me give you one thing that inspired me on that is when i was a kid i was brought up very poor valley station kentucky and we had something called the march of dimes bread drive to raise money for this charity and the way it worked is you're supposed to you knock on the door and say the nice bakery is donated bread and if you donate money we're going to give you his bread that's what you're supposed to do now our high school came in first place in the entire county although we were the poorest high school what happened i told my team don't do that you got to throw away the bread anyway if they don't use it you know what you do with old bread right you knock on the door you say look the nice bakery has made a loaf of bread and we're going to give you the bread if you want to donate money that's fine if you don't that's okay too just keep the bread what i said is if they're too poor and they need the bread give them the bread you're not hurting anything and i love this story and don't try to bribe people with a loaf of bread to me that's demeaning to people don't trying to bribe people so kind of that was kind of a motto of mine give people the bread

so you are really talking about that mindset of a generous spirit and give because you can because you want to and without expectation of anything in return right and when you give without that expectation sometimes that reciprocity happens and sometimes it doesn't but what happens is when we see good we do good right when good is given to us we might give good to someone else and it's non-linear and that's the one thing i want to highlight when i talk about these mindsets it is not do one then do the next and do the next it's mindsets that enable each other it's really hard to have done our spirit right and to give that bread if you don't come from a place of abundance and believe that there will be enough right and it's very difficult to um you know trust if you know you don't have that conscientiousness or that abundance mindset so these mindsets really do enable each other but i do i love that story actually highlighted in the book and to me that's really important because in the hundred coaches by the way which i think is a great example hopefully of everything you talk about in the book in our hundred coaches one of the rules is there's pay it forward so the idea is you give to others but there's no expectation and they have to give something back to you and the other thing i like is feed forward where in our group of 60 each person comes with a problem a challenge and i asked the group for ideas and people give you ideas there's no expectation of payment or anything and you don't critique the ideas you just say thank you say thank you for the ideas you treat the idea like a gift and the only expectation is you help somebody else

you took the words right out of my mouth i always talk about that as a gift right information feedback feed forward advice guidance even a simple thank you all of those things are gifts and for those people out there that are listening who feel like they don't have anything to offer you have so much to offer because appreciation recognition your willingness to give to someone else those are all gifts and i'll never forget when i was working on my first book um i i had somebody in my life her name is amy she might even be out there today and she really gave me a lot of advice as i was starting out and she was so far ahead of me i really didn't feel like there was any way i could add value back to her so instead i was doing the same thing she did for me for other entrepreneurs so she gave me the confidence to start my own business 17 18 years ago and in that time anytime somebody else was like hey i'm thinking about starting a business would you know let me pick your brain a little bit i would sit with them and i'm sharing this story to talk and i said i told amy that i've spoken to over 100 entrepreneurs because of her so i was paying if it forward and backward um by giving her the credit and the audience is like i'm one of those people michelle and i was like oh hi and then somebody else was like i'm one of those people too michelle and then half the audience raised their hand i'm on stage i start to cry because i'm so moved by seeing all these people who who showed up i didn't even know they were there and i said i guess i need to increase

this number to 500 people and probably at this point in time i've sat with over a thousand um startup entrepreneurs because of the gift that somebody gave to me and so that's i think that idea of paying it forward and that generous spirit you know i mean we we're going through a very unique time with covid the pandemic and we also have a lot of i guess the word is divisiveness you know my club your club you're not me i'm not you and give people some suggestions as how they might expand the diversity in their lives

lives so the last section of my book is all about expanding and diversifying and the first thing is that we have to understand the value of that diversification right we understand you know okay so back to my finance days we understand diversification when it comes to our portfolios right we want to invest in different areas to hedge our bets so to speak that same diversification in our relationships also adds so much value organizations with diverse teams make decisions faster are considered more creative and innovative they make better decisions not just faster decisions so we really want to have that diverse thinking because that will avoid issues like group think but on the personal side it also it gives you access to different thoughts to different perspectives it broadens our view so one i want you to see the value in it and then the challenges breaking out and building those connections and you know in my book i've interviewed you know not just you but another 30 experts in these different fields and one of those experts gave me one of my favorite ideas and it's having a host mindset and i think that when you are in any environment whether you're the host or not if you have a host mindset your goal is to make people feel comfortable and welcome and bring them in and help them engage and if you are that person that helps bring somebody in you're starting to build the foundation of relationship with them so one of the things he always says is i look for the person who seems the most out of place um and i go and invite them over i personally have a rule if i'm at a live event i want to make sure i'm sitting next to somebody new at least on one of my two sides right so that there's always somebody new that you're meeting and bringing in those new relationships um and when you are in those conversations call out the similarities we are so used to being aware of and so um cognizant of the differences because sometimes those differences are obvious and the similarities are not so i want you to be a little bit of a detective and look for those similarities look for those places of common interest and common values and common experiences and common people and common places because we don't connect on what we do for a living we just connect on what we like to do

yeah i like that i i've got a new book coming out in may it's called the earned life by the way order it often and as many as you can it's coming out in may and in the book i talk about my friend roosevelt thomas roosevelt no longer with us one of the world's experts in diversity and he taught me a couple of points relatives what you're saying he said one we all have different referent groups now referent group is a group of people that we want to be like we respect we look up to for me my referent group was pretty clear was peter drucker warren bennis richard beckhard francis hussman people who were great thinkers in our field and you mentioned generous were very kind and generous to me and didn't charge me money so my goal is just be like them and they were always heroes to me and i wanted to be like them so i shea rocelle who you might know is in our group i love her she did this program design the life you loved asked me who were my heroes well they were and back to pay it forward if i'm generous because they were generous to me so everything i do is kind of dedicated to them because they went out of their way to help me they didn't get paid any money for it i'm a buddhist last time i checked buddha didn't send me bill's first if stuff which i use constantly so you know i think it's very good so roosevelt said we need to recognize different people have different reference groups referent groups and it doesn't mean it's good or bad some people that might be the nation their community some people might be their family themselves and if you understand a person's referent group you may not have the same referent group they do but you much less likely to hate them because you just think well they're different than i am roosevelt also talked about the difference between what he called requirements and preferences and sometimes people are different but if you're in a business or organizational setting who cares and he gave the example of phil jackson a great basketball coach and one of his players was dennis rodman well a lot of people didn't care for dennis rodman because he had different color hair was always doing weird stuff but roosevelt's point was phil jackson's point was who cares he's leading the league in rebounds he's and i've already got plenty of scores this guy's a great defender he's leading the league and rebounds i don't care what color his hair is hair or be pink or yellow or aqua he may or may not have a preference for that color hair but it doesn't matter you don't have to have everybody be just like you so again roosevelt taught me a lot of couple points are really good in that area of diversity now we've got a nice comment here my major growth as a coach came from client leaders who are the most different from me and age every different from age gender continent field etc i feel the same way i like diversity when i have dinners i like to have dinners i'm like you though i don't like to have everybody be the same let me tell you another reason i agree with you if people are too much the same they start competing my company's bigger than your company blah blah but if you have a ceo the head of a non-profit the athlete the broadway star whatever they're not competing with each other they're just different so i think you gain a lot and also you gain fresh perspectives from people who are very different any thoughts

i have so many thoughts that are going in my mind right now and i loved orly's comments about being challenged as a coach i actually love it when clients choose somebody who's very different from them because it pushes them and i would actually challenge everybody out there to think about who do i have in my life that's giving me contrary views who's giving me who's pushing my thinking who's not just you know in that same corner as me that same mindset that same perspective that same background where we just have all of this agreement who is challenging the way in which i think to broaden the way i think so i love that and i think that goes back to the relationships that we want and need that we were talking about the mentors and the followers those heroes another word for them is a mentor and to really think about how do we diversify those that we look up to and then we're emulating so that we're bringing different things in to who we are now there was something else that you said that really jumped at me which was um the competition piece right if there were two alike we're in competition and the mindset of abundance really is the area in which we try to pull away from that thinking when we come from a place of abundance it is not that pollyanna thinking it's not everything's wonderful it's the idea that although things might not be the way i want to be the possibility is there and for me i always think back to i started in finance in the early 90s and there was no female partners at the firm there was one female senior manager and nobody wanted to work for her because her philosophy was one of scarcity there's no women at the top there's only going to be one that's going to get there it's going to be me and i'm going to step on everybody to get there abundant mindset would be hey there might not be any there yet but hey we it's not there's not just room for one i think three of us or five of us let's work on this together and we can all you know move that needle and so one of the things of a mindset of abundance because this is probably one of the hardest mindsets for people to adopt is to stop comparing yourself to other people there's always somebody better there's always something worse right

right but instead what are my goals what am i working on uh you know for example i launched my linkedin newsletter this past week and i just had a goal of getting to you know a thousand subscribers in the first week it doesn't compare to the newsletter that you put out there and that's okay right it was my goal and i feel abundant because i accomplished that goal good so yes we don't need to compare ourselves and the other piece of that is having a practice of gratitude and that practice can look a lot of different ways but i like a really simple practice of gratitude um and for me it's something i heard with my kids because i have teenage boys now and they tend to be very negative and all those parents of teenagers out there know what i'm going through right now uh everything is bad right like how was the day awful all the bad stuff comes so i started asking the question what was the best part of your day or what was the good in today even though today might not have been good tell me one of today and so that little reminder that small moment of gratitude that habit is something anybody can do at any time i love that now before you feel too bad about those teenage boys i believe it or not once was a teenage boy and i am distinguished to say i was the first in my class at age 14 to be arrested you know i i wasn't exactly the poster boy of teenagers myself so yes i was arrested for a drunk and disorderly conduct at age 14 years old my parents the southern baptist surgical teachers were less than thrilled with my performance so anyway you imagine teenage boys you're making me feel better because they have not gotten arrested there teenage boys neither has been arrested ahead of me that way you must be doing something right i guess before we depart this is my opportunity my mission is to make a positive difference in as many people's lives as i can in the limited time i have left to do it and i'm not naive i'm 73 this show doesn't last forever okay now you're the coach you're the connecting coach give me some ideas what do i need to do keep connecting right don't think about and i don't think you need this advice because i know you do it i see you doing don't apologize give me the advice i'll say the advice is that we want to not what network for now or network for need we want to think about those relationships and those connections just because build them because you enjoy building them if you like the conversation be in the conversation without any direction of where it's going and nurture you know keep in touch stay in somebody's mind don't get in their face and when you need those relationships they will be there because you've been there for them hey all right now this is your opportunity you have a chance to get coaching from the one the only the spectacular dr marshall will smith all right what's your goal and give me a question how can i help you my goal is to help make a more connected world and this is one of the ways that i'm doing that so for those people who um want to think about how do i am more connected to my family to my team to my organization creating connected cultures canadian connected leaders um follow me um subscribe to my newsletter and um you know marshall keep spreading the word about connection and the community that you are always doing um because you model the behavior and i see it in what you did with the leaders but i also see mg100 all of those same techniques that we can borrow that you all listening out there those leaders that are listening out there borrow and bring them to your teams and create connection one thing i would strongly suggest you keep doing is build your brand and build a global brand build a global oh deepak ceti is there a great friend of mine how are you doing how you doing great just you know we're just a good friend from years gone by build a global brand because you know most of people in my linkedin are not from the united states so i think it's really good to build a global brand because you can help people then all around the world and to the degree you really focus on you know making some connections that will help you build that positive global brand because i think your message is not constrained to the united states or any geography it's a global message so that's my final advice for you and finally any last word before we wrap up well thank you for that advice and um thank you for having me on your show it's always a pleasure to be connecting with you thank you and thank you for joining me you're wonderful and i my mission is to help people have a little better life and i think if they listen to you they take advantage of it they'll have a little better life so thank you for helping me help hopefully somebody else thank you so much thank you marshall bye everybody keep connecting bye-bye you