A former elevator mechanic's mentor taught reverse-engineering: start from the most recent action and work backward through causes. That troubleshooting method later became the speaker's strategy for interrogations and now shapes how they train leadership and sales teams on conversation and influence.
Chapters
When I went back to school and I was juggling those part-time jobs that I yada yada'd over, one of them was an elevator mechanic. It was an assistant elevator mechanic. The guy I worked for ended up being one of my biggest life mentors ever. And there's funny accidental stories about how this all came together, but there were multiple times where we thought the elevator was done. We hit the button and nothing moves. And talk about like a— oh, I don't want to swear on your podcast, but an oh crap moment, right? Like, I thought we were done. Now what do I do? But the problem solving was reverse engineering. You start with the last thing you did, and then you kind of move backwards towards the first, and you go through the most likely issues and opportunities. So that whole thought process of reverse engineering problem solving, I guess, was first formalized for me in that environment, but then came through in interrogations. So I love that outlook of what am I missing. In fact, I— this still comes up occasionally, but when I used to teach investigations and when I used to teach interrogations— now I spend most of my time working with leadership teams and sales and HR teams, teaching them how to employ these strategic observation and persuasive communication techniques in their conversations.
