Q&A: To Do Your Best Work, Avoid the ‘Gray Zone’
by Mimi Kmet /“Don't go to your grave with your best work inside of you. Choose to die empty.” That’s the advice of Todd Henry, from his book Die Empty: Unleash Your Best Work Every Day (Penguin, 2013).
A 2014 Small Business Book Awards winner, Die Empty aims to help businesspeople find their truths and do something big. The book incorporates sound advice, basic principles, anecdotes and exercises.
Die Empty is the latest of several books on creativity and productivity authored by Henry, an international speaker and founder of Accidental Creative, a company that offers business workshops.
Travel Market Report asked Henry how travel agents can apply the ideas in Die Empty so they too can do something big in their careers.
How can a travel agent turn his or her passion into what you call ‘productive passion’?
Henry: ‘Passion’ comes from a root word that means ‘to suffer.’ So the questions a travel agent can ask are: ‘What outcomes am I willing to suffer on behalf of? What things do I care so much about that I’m willing to go a little bit farther to ensure that I find success in that area?’
That can be: ‘I want to make sure that the people I’m serving have a specific outcome.’ It can be an extraordinary commitment to customer service. It can be an extraordinary commitment to being the absolute best at knowing things no one else knows.
Knowing one’s customer is a key tenet in selling travel. But you write about the importance of knowing yourself. Why is this important?
Henry: It’s essential, because a lot of people live under the specter of trying to be something that they’ll never be effective being. The same thing goes for travel agents.
It’s knowing your strengths and weaknesses and understanding the place where you can add proportionate value to the people you serve, versus the things that, culturally, are lifted up or celebrated that maybe aren’t in your sweet spot.
And sometimes, you have to say no to really good things so you can embrace the really great things you have to offer.
You also emphasize the importance of staying connected.
Henry: It’s incredibly important to have a network of people you stay in touch with, who are around you, with whom you talk about your work.
It’s all that much more important to have that kind of a network when you are working on your own at home, to help sharpen and inspire you, to help you see the world through new eyes.
It doesn’t have to be a network of other travel agents. It can be a network of peers who work in different industries. The goal is to get together to talk about your work, sharpen one another, and share notes and resources.
I would recommend getting together with a handful of people on a consistent basis and asking three questions: (1) What are you working on right now, and what kinds of challenges are you facing? (2) What can we help you with? and (3) What’s inspiring you right now?
Explain what you call the ‘lag’ as it applies to cultivating a client relationship. How can a travel agent overcome that lag?
Henry: There’s always going to be a period of engagement where you’re putting disproportionate effort into whatever it is you’re trying to do in comparison to the results you’re seeing.
There’s always going to be lag before getting results. A lot of people give up when they get into that period of the lag.
It’s important to know when to quit. But you want to quit because you learn something that makes it obvious that this is no longer a winning strategy. You need to develop a new strategy. You’re not quitting on your objective; you’re quitting on a strategy.
You talk about the ‘gray zone.’ What is it, and how can travel agents stay out of it?
Henry: The gray zone is similar to the lag. It’s where you’re getting results, but you’re not stretching in a way that’s going to provide results over the long term.
We also call this the comfort zone. It’s where you’re going through the motions; you’re doing all the things that once were really challenging, but now they’ve become easy. You’re going over and over again back to the same tactics, because they’re comfortable.
Over time, they become diminishingly effective. So you have to learn new methods of reaching people, communicating, growing yourself and growing your skills.