Peter Winick explains when thought leaders should lead with curiosity versus confidence. Ask questions and dig deep early to understand the client's real problems. Once you know what they need, shift to confidence and use your expertise to guide them toward solutions.
Hi there, it's Peter Winick. I'm the founder and CEO at Thought Leadership Leverage, and here's the idea that I'd like to share with you today, and that's this: as a thought leader, as an expert, do you know when in your interactions with potential clients and prospects and such you should be confident and when you should be curious? Well, overall statement is it's good to always be curious and it's good to always be confident, but I'm talking about when to sort of amp up one over the other. So here's where to become more curious than not, and that's early on in the engagements with the clients. What's going on? What's causing them to reach out to you? What are some of the underlying issues in the business that they might not be articulating directly? Ask a lot of questions, lean in, read what you can, study them, really, really engage and be curious so that you could learn what's going on there. Now, when to show that you're confident— when you show that you're confident is when you're presenting your solutions. Hey, I heard what you said, we had a couple of calls and such, and here's how I think I can help you based on my expertise, based on what I've done with other clients in similar situations to you in the past. And you have to put those, those options out in a fairly confident way because they're looking for someone to guide them, to to the other side of that. They're looking for someone that they can trust, someone that can help them solve the problems that you've helped them identify. So there's a time to be curious, there's a time to be confident. Love to hear your thoughts.
