McCann - Talk is (not!) cheap : the art of conversation leadership

Text copyright 2014 by Jim McCann

All rights reserved.

No part of this work may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher.

Published by Lake Union Publishing, Seattle

www.apub.com

Amazon, the Amazon logo and Lake Union Publishing are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates.

eISBN: 9781477850213

Cover design by Gabrielle Bordwin

Contents

Acknowledgments

Like many books, this one has a single author but a host of creators and contributors. Id like to take this opportunity to acknowledge the many people who made it possible for me to run a company and write a book at the same time.

First and foremost, thank you to my family for their inspiration and patience: My beloved wife Marylou and our children James, Matthew, his wife Jen, Erin and her husband Joe. Thank you to my siblingsmy sisters Julie McCann Mulligan and Peggy Hordt, my brother Kevin, who always brings a smile to my face, and Chris, my brother and partner in growing 1-800-Flowers.com. A special remembrance for my late parents Jim and Claire McCann and my late grandmother Margaret McCann for their support and guidance.

Thank you to my good friends at Allen & Co., including Walter OHara, a friend, mentor, and extended family member; Herbert and Herb Allen, the true masters of crafting relationships; and Tom Kuhn, friend, banker, and adviser extraordinaire. Also, a special thanks to a brilliant statesman, great friend and confidante, Senator Bill Bradley.

Many at 1-800-Flowers.com contributed to the creation of this book, but Ill call out a few who devoted considerable hours to its success. Thank you to Joseph Pititto, Vice President of Communications and Investor Relations; Yanique Woodall, Vice President of Public Relations; Jerry Gallagher, my friend and our General Counsel who always has my back; and Patty Altadonna, my irreplaceable, indefatigable executive assistant.

I would also like to thank those who came from outside 1-800-Flowers.com to join in the effort to bring this book into being. Thank you to my agent Joy Tutela of David Black Literary Agency for her vision and counsel. Thank you to the many talented and hardworking folks at Amazon, in particular David Moldawer for his editorial guidance, Larry Kirshbaum and Julia Cheiffetz for believing in the project, Carly Hoffmann for her stewardship, and the publicity team for guiding the book on its final mile to readers. Thanks also to Ellen Neuborne for her infectious enthusiasm and tremendous work ethic in helping to draft the manuscript.

Finally, I would like to thank the customers of 1-800-Flowers.com. Your support and passion inspire me every day.

Introduction

Some people make lists. Others take meetings. Still others meditate, searching for ideas and inspiration. Me? I like to talk. Conversations are my way of exploring, imagining, hashing things out, and bouncing my ideas off others while seeking theirs. Throughout my career as an entrepreneur, I have used meaningful conversation as a key management and leadership tool. It works. And I will show you how it can work for you.

Conversation is an opportunity created among two or more human beings to share and explore ideas. Leadership is the ability to recognize potential and propel situations forward. When you pair conversation and leadership, you engage others in a process of opportunity and momentuma key element of starting any relationship, be it business or personal. That moment of connection brings aspirations to the surface and creates social intimacy. When this happens, a conversation can transcend the water cooler or the cocktail party and lead to some of the most significant accomplishments imaginable.

This is the moment at which conversation becomes conversation leadership. I coined the term to describe the process Ive developed to engage with others and not just give orders or advice, but use the ebb and flow of conversation to create forward momentum. It has been the most powerful leadership tool I use. Through the art of conversation leadership, we develop the ability to unearth possibilities, feed off the enthusiasm of others, see ideas from different perspectives, and ultimately accomplish some pretty incredible and memorable things. Along the way, conversation can help us encourage and empower others to do the same. Isnt that what leadership is all about?

Within this book, I will teach you a skill set for an activity most of us take for granted. Conversation leadership is not a talent reserved for the lucky few with special gifts; it is a process that is accessible to anyone. Most of us are halfway therewe just need to recognize what it is that were already doing and to refine our techniques.

Not every great leader is a great conversationalist. There are men and women who draw success from a unique talent or significant intellectual gift that has little or nothing to do with communication. These people have the drive and talent to accomplish the amazing without asking the people around them for much help. We are lucky to have these individuals among us, but they are a rare breed. The rest of us have to make do with good old-fashioned social skills. We need to bounce ideas off others. We need to search doggedly for someone who can help us realize our aspirations, and who sees good reasons to do so. During that search, well talk to dozens of people who seemingly arent that person. The beauty of conversation leadership is that these extraneous conversations will nevertheless introduce us to wonderful opportunities that we may never previously have considered.

Inside and outside the boardroom, I have seen passionate, intelligent conversations drive great ideas forward. Conversation is the unsung supertool of human interaction. In this book, I will pull back the curtain on what I call conversation leadership: the use of conversation to foster success of all kindspersonal and professional, large and small. This process has worked for me, and so I have begun to share it with my staff, my colleagues, and the wider business world.

I have had thousands of conversations in my life, enriching and thought-provoking conversations with the famous (Wayne Huizenga, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and Steve Case, to name a few) and the not so famous (my grandmother Margaret; the folks who do my dry cleaning; and Bob, the new employee in our service center). Yet as diverse as my discussions and the people I have enjoyed them with have been, they all have one thing in common: Ive learned something from each and every one of them.

This book will take you inside the process of conversation leadership. Through my own experiences, I will explain how to use the power of conversation to create opportunities both in business and in life. To begin with, there are certain principles that I feel are very important to every leader. For instance: Converseeven if you think you cant. Conversation leadership requires patience and practice. I was shy, and I had to put great effort into developing my communication skills, but to say it was worth it does not even explain a fraction of the enrichment conversation leadership has brought into my life.

Another principle is: Leave your judgments at the door. Sure, its easy to be impressed by the slick B-school grad with the fancy college tie and the four-thousand-dollar suit, but that pedigree doesnt guarantee that he will have the right solution to every problem. Back when I had my first flower shop in New York City, customers would come in, everyday people with everyday lives, and many of them would share homespun pearls of wisdom about the importance of relationships and how making mistakes is not only human but essential to learning and improving. These conversations provided insights that I continue to live by today, nearly forty years later.