Welcome to Minute with Mallon!

Something I Taught:

There’s a saying I’ve always loved:

“People rarely resist their own ideas.”

I was working with a client recently on a problem he was facing. As we talked through it, I had several ideas in mind that I thought would help him.

But instead of giving him the answers, I kept asking questions.

“What do you think is really going on here?”

“What options do you see?”

“What would you do if you had to decide today?”

Little by little, he started to think it through.

Then it happened—he landed on a solution. Actually, a couple of them.

I could see it immediately. His face lit up. He was excited. And more importantly, he was fully bought in. He couldn’t wait to go implement what he had come up with.

That’s the power of helping people think instead of telling them what to do. Great leaders do this all the time!

Three Takeaways:

1. Ask more, tell less.

When you jump in too quickly with answers, you rob people of ownership. Great leaders develop thinkers, not followers.

2. Ownership drives action.

People are far more likely to act on ideas they create than ideas they’re given.

3. Your job isn’t to have all the answers—it’s to help others find them.

Whether it’s your team, your kids, or a friend, your influence grows when you guide instead of control.

So let's take action:

This week, try something simple:

The next time someone comes to you with a problem… don’t solve it. Ask a few thoughtful questions instead. Let them think. Let them wrestle with it. Let them come up with their own answer.

You might be surprised—not only by the solution they come up with… but by how much more motivated they are to follow through.

Because when people own the idea—they own the outcome.

Something to Ponder:

I am convinced that people will not grow unless there are hard times in their lives.

Anonymous

Something I Learned:

A book called Art and Fear shows how indispensably failure is tied to learning.

A ceramics teacher divided his class into two groups. One group would be graded solely on quantity of work—fifty pounds of pottery would be an “A,” forty would be a “B,” and so on. The other group would be graded on quality. Students in that group had to produce only one pot—but it had better be good.

Amazingly, all the highest quality pots were turned out by the quantity group. It seems that while the quantity group kept churning out pots, they were continually learning from their disasters and growing as artists.

The quality group sat around theorizing about perfection and worrying about it—but they never actually got any better. Apparently—at least when it comes to pottery—trying and failing, learning from failure, and trying again works a lot better than waiting for perfection. No pot, no matter how misshapen, is really a failure. Each is just another step on the road to an “A.” It is a road littered with imperfect pots. But there is no other road.

Perfection slows you down. Repetition makes you better.

Most people think quality comes from thinking more, planning more, or waiting until they “get it right.”

But the truth is—quality comes from volume.

The people who get better aren’t the ones who overanalyze…

They’re the ones who take more swings.

They try.
They fail.
They adjust.
They try again.

And over time, what looked like “mistakes” were actually reps.

Something to think about…

Something I Saw:

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Hope you have an incredible week!

Robert

Robert@RobertMallon.com

Minute With Mallon: Ask More. Tell Less!