There is a fantastic theatrical organization in my community, It’s called the B-Street Theatre. They bring in talent from all over the country to perform in fantastic mostly comedic shows. As a “patron,” every once in a while I get invited to a dinner with some of the performers. We talk about the shows, how they prepare, what it’s like to perform, and so forth.
One evening, I was talking to a cast member about his role in a recent play. The character he play was a deeply thoughtful, reflective person, who came out with the most brilliant ideas and analysis of the situations in the play (It was a who-dun-it mystery performance.)
I said, “You must have a lot of deep knowledge about these types of issues, a lot of deep experience that you bring into the performance. How long did it take you to learn these things and understand them?”
He immediately started laughing, he said, “Dave, I’m totally clueless about all of it. I had no idea what I was saying, what it meant, why it mattered. It was all in the script, my job was to perform it. I didn’t need any deeper understanding!”
As he said that, I recognized much of what we do as leaders and sellers, today, is performative. We follow our scripts and the same talk tracks. We’ve been trained to do these things with confidence, much like actors deliver their lines in a play.
Then AI enables us to amp up our performance to “Tony Award” winning status. We have well structured answers, great messaging, strategic insights. We know how to deliver the lines with authority. We sound impressive, we appear to have deep knowledge or insights. We appear to know what we are talking about until the customer says.
“Tell me more….” or “We have a different view of this issue….” or “What does this really mean…..”
And this is where everything falls apart. In this performative approach, we don’t have the ability to explain things, we don’t have the ability to probe, we are weak in defending our point of view, we can’t engage our customers in a very deep way.
Performative competence isn’t the competence our customers and people need.
Our customers need more than a great performance. They need someone to be curious enough to probe more deeply into what it means to them. To help them think differently. To care about what they are trying to achieve and how we can help them in that journey. To bring a level of knowledge and insight that is new and helps them learn. To create meaning in the interaction and relationship.
Success in selling and leadership is not a great performance. It’s about creating real engagement.
Do you have the mindset, behaviors, and schools move beyond the performance, or are you stuck at trying to look good on stage?
Afterword: This is the AI discussion of this post. I’m stunned, it’s delivered better than my post. Enjoy!
Leave a Reply