291 – 3 Questions That Will Create A Better Outcome

John Over the last two decades, I’ve been on an insatiable quest to learn everything I can about leadership. What makes the best leaders so good? After running companies small and large over the last 20 years, today I speak on stages all across the world to audiences who are interested in that same question. My name is John Laurito. I’m your host, and I invite you to join me on this journey as we explore this very topic and what makes the best leader so good. Welcome to tomorrow’s leader. All right. 

John Welcome to the show. Yes, that’s my new intro. Hey, you’re welcome to the show because I again a few episodes to go let you know that I realize that I’m kind of saying the same thing in my intro that’s prerecorded in my podcast. So I’ll save you the redundancy of the dual. The double intro. The Department of Redundancy. Department of my organization. Notify me of that. First of all, I’ve got a lot of feedback from you on the episode I did with Nick, my son. We co-hosted together, which was awesome. I had so much fun. Honestly, it was such a blast doing that with him and I appreciate all your feedback. If you haven’t got a chance to listen to it, it’s worth a listen. It’s like four or five, six episodes ago. Definitely. I’ll give it a listen. 

John And it’s fun to do an episode with somebody else in the room doing it with me. It’s kind of cool, you know? I do these solo. Even when I do my guest episodes, I do it virtually. So to have somebody in the studio and have multiple camera angles, if you haven’t checked it out on YouTube, check it out. It’s pretty cool. I do have somebody else in the studio with me today. That is Bodi, my dog. He was sometimes you can hear barking in the background. I figured if I bring him in here, he may not bark. He may bark. And you’re going to hear him really loudly, but he’s here to join me. I don’t think he’s going to co-host. I may pose a few questions to him. Maybe. I don’t know. Maybe we’ll get a dog’s perspective on leadership. 

John Bodi, what is your what? Let’s talk let’s just talk about your daily routine because I know you are a champion of the daily routine. You’ve got it wired down tightly. So what is your daily routine? I mean, just kind of walk us through the beginning of your day. Oh, well, you knew you would typically you would do is I will wake up after a deep slumber and you know what I would first spend approximately the first seven or 8 minutes doing is scouring the floor, looking for pieces of food might have dropped in the middle of the night and wouldn’t have done that. I would then either decide to poop outside or inside, depending on my preference that day, or even if I’m not in a good mood, I may poop in your closet. So, you know, that’s pretty much my day. 

John And then at that point, I then return to my slumber for a nap. I usually was sleeping in for six, seven, and 8 hours. Maybe because they’ve expended that amount of energy it’s needed. I would then at some point in the afternoon get it to begin. I will occasionally bark, I will eat. It will also scour the floor for food and then I will go outside and pretend to chase an animal that I might be afraid of last year, some sort of a flying insect outside, in which case I will not even embark outside at all. I will stay in the comfort of the home here, after which I will return to a nap and take my midday nap for approximately 6 to 7, maybe 8 hours again. 

John And I will wake up in time for a quick bite before I head to bed for the evening. And that’s pretty much my daily routine. So you heard it from Jody, the dog? Yes. That is one heck of a routine. Sleep is very, very important. Take it from Bodie. So. All right, Riddell time. So let’s see here. The last riddle that I have not answered yet is the riddle. I’ll repeat the riddle. And I will tell you the winner of the riddle. Guess. And that riddle was a woman who was born in 1971, yet she is celebrating her 38th birthday this year. And yes, this is present-day 2022. How is that possible? I got lots of guesses on this one, many of them wrong. I know this stumped a lot of you. Are you ready for the answer? Here it is. Spoiler alert. Here it comes. So turn this off. Reports it if you still want to think about it, here is the answer. 

John Drumroll. The answer is 1971 in the hospital room she was born in? Yes, the hospital room. I did get lots of great guesses. Everything from Leap Year to that was an address of a house of the close guess. But the winning guess was made by Jackie Flynn, the Jackie Flynn of North Carolina. Congratulations, Jackie. Now you have fame, worldwide fame because your name is now mentioned on this podcast. Listeners all over the world, Jackie Flynn, you will be getting a signed copy of my book. Congratulations on that second place. Came literally moments after I got Jackie’s winning. 

John Yes. And this was worth honorable mention. That is Tammy Haynes. Tammy, so close. I mean, I’m talking about minutes after Jackie’s. Yes. So in any event, great stuff that was hung out there for a while. Not I think I think it’s been out there released for a couple of weeks or a week and a half. So that is the answer. Okay. Do you want another one here? It is simple. One quick, one easy, one thought-provoking. And again, I’ll make the same deal. You text me, email me, call me, whatever. With the right answer, I will announce her name and I will send you a signed copy of my book, Tomorrow’s Leader. So the question is what goes up but never goes down? What goes up and what never goes down? 

John So I think that’s going to be one you’re getting. Yes, pretty fast. But I got some really, really hard ones. Really hard ones I get to hold back and not make them too hard. But we’ll see how fast that I get answers on that and who gets it first. So little test. Okay. All right. Now on to today’s topic. Here we go. All right. I want you to think about something for a minute. I want you to envision and go with me on this, envision that you are going to a party and you don’t know many of the people at this party, if at all. It was a big party. It’s a big social gathering. And you somehow know you’ve been led to believe you are somehow sure that you are not welcome at this party. Not only are you not really expected, but you’re also not welcome. When you walk into this party, you know the reaction you’re going to get from people. They’re going to be like, What is he doing here or she doing here? 

John They’re not going to be pleased to have you at this party and nevertheless, you are on your way to it and go into this really uncomfortable situation. First of all, how does that feel? And I hope you haven’t been in that situation before, but you know what? The fact of the matter is, a lot of us are in that situation. We convince ourselves that we’re going into a situation like that when in reality we’re not we’re totally not. You know, and it’s interesting because this absolutely becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy if we go into an organization, a company, a networking event, a party, a social gathering, some kind of interaction with somebody feeling like this is not going to go well, we’re it could be a good interaction. It is impossible for that not to become a self-fulfilling prophecy because you know what happens, your whole mentality, your personality, your nonverbal cues, your body language, everything changes. 

John You have no idea. You don’t even realize it. But I promise you it does. If you went into a party like that and you truly had yourself convinced that that’s what people were thinking, and I honestly think about this. If you were convinced that that’s what everybody was thinking, oh, gee, why did he come? What is he doing here? He wasn’t in. Guided your demeanor and nonverbal cues would be absolutely crystal clear and would convey all kinds of confusing, weird things to people. Some people would read it as a lack of confidence. Some people would read it as unapproachable ness. Some people would read it as a lack of friendliness or lack of friendliness. Some people would just read it as awkward. Some people would just know people would not gravitate to you. They would not. If they interacted with you, they’d quickly want to get away from you and you would have no ability. 

John You wouldn’t even realize that is happening. It’s all because you got some dumb thought in your mind that you were convinced was the case. Now flip that situation and flip that script. And now think about walking into a party where you can’t wait to get there. You’re like, Drive fast to get there, walk walking fast to get there because you know you’re going to have a great time and you know people are going to be really excited to see you there. Maybe this is a reunion. Maybe it’s a group of people you haven’t seen in a long time. Maybe it’s people your best friends you just enjoy. There’s so much comfort there, you know, you’re just so excited. You’ve been looking forward to this. You know, you’re going to be just a welcome addition and people are going to be thrilled that you were there. How does that feel going into that? Okay, now compare how you are physically, emotionally, and personality-wise. 

John Everything in that setting, you are yourself, right? You’re your best self. You’re your best version of yourself going into that environment because you are convinced you’re going to have a great time and you do. It’s so easy to have a great time. You know it and you know, people are excited to have you there and your body language reflects that. People you walk in, you’ve got presence. People can’t help but look at you. They can’t help but be attracted to you. They want to talk to you. When they talk to you, they want to keep talking to you. They introduce you to other people. You leave there with more friends than you came in and they want you back at the next party. I mean, that’s what happens. And it’s amazing to me how much your mindset and what you’re thinking about before an event impacts the reality of what the outcome of that event is. 

John And I’ve thought about this a lot because I think about it in business and in working with leaders and all different levels and all different industries, everything that there’s so much that goes on between your two years that affects the outcome of interactions, of phone calls, of meetings, of your day, of your week that you don’t even realize is happening. And there’s actually a pretty easy fix to this. I must share this with you. This is something that I do all the time. And I just think about this, you know, for for a period of time when I remember there were I used to have a Monday leadership meeting with my leadership team, and I’d have new leaders coming in and things like this. 

John And there was a period of time when I was just not in a good place. I was really wanting to get on to doing my own business. I was not happy where I was. I wasn’t fully engaged. I just I wasn’t I wasn’t my best self by any means. My mind was somewhere else and already into what I’m doing right now. And part of this was the mentality I went into these leadership meetings with was a very negative mental I don’t even realize it at the point, but it was a very negative mentality. It was this almost defeated mindset where I was just I just wanted to get it done with. I just wanted to get it over with. I just wanted to go through it fast. I was there was some tension sometimes in those meetings. I just didn’t look forward to it. I didn’t control it the way I needed to. I didn’t lead it the right way. 

John I just wasn’t happy with who I was in that meeting. And I wasn’t happy with the outcome of those meetings. And nobody else was. Wasn’t just me. Nobody else was. If I’m being really honest, nobody else was. And all I needed to do was something that I learned to do after this. And and what I learned is that it’s a simple two-minute exercise before you go into a meeting, an interaction, an appointment, a phone call, whatever the case may be, a conversation. And I ask myself three questions and these are super easy. Again, you can do this exercise in 2 minutes. You probably get it down to 30 seconds when you get really good at it. And I’ll tell you why these questions are good. One first question is, what would it look like if I crushed it? What would it look like if I went into this meeting and absolutely nailed it and crushed it, what does it actually look like? Okay. That’s question number one. 

John The second question is if I crushed it. And I’m visualizing what it would look like. How would people react? What would they do as a result of that? What would their body language be? What would their facial expressions be? What would their actions be true? If everything was going exactly the way I wanted it to and I was my best self, I had my A-plus game. I was doing it. Let’s say this is a keynote, a presentation, a speech. And I was funny. I was engaging. Words were flowing out of my mouth. I had the silver tongue, the gift of gab. How would the facial expressions look on the people? They’d be glued to me, their eyes. They couldn’t take their eyes off me. They’d be captivated. 

John A smile on their face, waiting, hanging on every word. Right. And and the last question is, what would they say if I crushed it? So what would be the chatter that I hear? What would be the interactions in the medium? What would be the things? People would come up to me and say after I kicked butt and crushed that keynote or that presentation? What would they say? They’d come up and they’d be like, Dude, you crushed it. That was awesome. That was the best presentation I have ever seen. Hey, I got to tell you, we go through these meetings all the time. That was the best leadership meeting we’ve ever had. I don’t know what it was, but we just got so much done. Everybody was there. We were in sync. We had good chemistry. 

John We had a good conflict, everything, good ideas. I know what it was but do it again. You know, people would say stuff like that. Hey, we got to run these meetings like this all the time again. I know what it was, but we got to do it. Those three things are critical. What would it look like if I crusted? What would it what would people’s reaction be? How would they respond and what would they do? And then what would they say? Who would say what? And I just go through this little mental exercise that takes 2 minutes. And what it does is it forces me to visualize a positive outcome. I don’t have time to think about the negative. If I’m asking myself those three questions, think about it. If I went into this party and I crushed it, what would it look like? 

John Well, it looked like I’d be telling jokes a bit, be funny, I’d be engaging, I’d have kind of my good conversation going, but good conversation skills. I’d enjoy it. I’d be in the moment. I’d have a crowd of people around me. I would be relaxed, I’d be comfortable. I wouldn’t be self-conscious. Right. What would people how would the people respond? They’d be looking at me. They’d want to be near me. They’d be talking to me. When they’re talking to people in a group, their eyes would be on me. They’d be trying to engage with me. They’d introduce me to people. What would they be saying? While they’d be asking me questions, they’d be laughing with me. They’d be, you know, tell me about the next party that they want me to come and whatever it is. This works for every single interaction, everything. 

John And it’s so easy and so fast. So I just want you to take this as a takeaway today. Those three questions, a two-minute exercise. And it forces a positive visualization, which forces almost forces a positive outcome. I guarantee your outcome will be better than it would have been had you not done this. I guarantee that. I guarantee you that. And I will almost guarantee that it will be a successful outcome if you do this enough and you get really great at it. Okay. What I found is when I do that and again, the beauty of it, those three questions, I can’t allow any negative thoughts to come in there because those aren’t negative questions or positive questions. 

John And if I find myself starting to ask or think about something negative, break the train of thought, and just get back to the three questions. What would it look like if I absolutely crusted? What would people how would people respond to react or what would they do? Okay, I’ve got to visualize what they’d be doing. And how would they what would they say? What would they come up to me and say, what would I hear? I cannot tell you how many times I’ve said this before. I cannot tell you how many times that the person that I visualized saying whatever they said actually came up to me and said the thing that I said, it happened at least two times. I can visualize it right now in the presentations I did. One was was Larry Post coming up to me saying what I visualized them saying. Which was and this was the real world. 

John But I’ll just say because I think this podcast is rated as a clean podcast, but it was like you were f ing awesome, John, you were f-ing off awesome. You’re f-ing awesome. That was that. That’s what I visualized some saying. The other was Michael Caine coming up to me after I did a presentation at LAMP saying, Don’t you crush it, give me a big hug. It was amazing. It was amazing. Those two things I had thought about beforehand, really, really cool stuff. So take it from me, these easy, easy things. You can do those three questions that will change the outcome. Use this. Let me know how it’s working for you. Okay. I’m available to you. 

John You know that? Text me, call me, email me, whatever. You’ve got all my info. It’s in the show notes. You got it. They’re probably programming on your phone. So with that said, I hope this was helpful. Again, congrats to Jackie Flynn on guessing the, uh, the, the riddle. Uh, you heard the one from today. I will announce it next time. I’m sure I’m going to get a lot of guesses. The first one again, get your name out there and you get a copy of the book signed copy of the book. 

John So for now, thanks for joining as always. Like, share, subscribe, all that kind of good stuff. Go down below, give a five-star review and we’ll see you next time. Thanks. Thanks for joining us on today’s episode of Tomorrow’s Leader. For suggestions or inquiries about having me at your next event or personal coaching. Reach me at John@johnlaurito.com. Thanks, lead on!