Love is the Killer App

by Tim Sanders

New York Times best-selling author, business thought leader, leadership coach at Yahoo! and, frankly, a personality in and of himself, Tim Sanders has some strong opinions about the importance of combining business acumen, interpersonal relationships and top technology. For a taste of Sanders’ idea of success, we’ve reprinted the introduction of his most recent book, Love is the Killer App: How to win business and influence friends. We think it’s a great read for anyone in business. Hope you think so, too.

Chris had worked with me for only a few weeks when I invited him to join a roundtable meeting with several outside consultants. He sat through the two-hour presentation stony-faced and silent until asked by the lead consultant if he had any comments. Then he nodded impatiently.

"This has been totally bush-league," he said. "I can’t believe that we actually pay you to do this."

He went on to point out many serious flaws in the consultants’ research, but he wasn’t watching carefully enough to see the color drain form the consultants’ faces. By the time they’d slunk out of the room, Chris had embarrassed me and everyone else present. He didn’t quite figure this out until the next month’s meeting, to which he pointedly wasn’t invited.

Had Chris been smarter and nicer, he would have made his excellent points and become a hero for it. Poor Chris. He was armed to the teeth, well-educated and wired for decision speed. But he was completely misdirected about how to use his many talents because he was also wired for war – always hostile, always battle-ready. He believed that success in business meant that you crush the weak. You always win. You disdain people who aren’t as smart as you. You protect everything you know – and everyone you know – lest your weapons fall into enemy hands.

I dubbed him Mad Dog, and the name stuck.

Still, there was something beneath Chris’s surface that was truly sweet. In an off-moment, when his defenses were down, he would flash a glimmer of tenderness, a ray of goodness. It was his tough background more than his personality that was making him mean. And he was smart enough to realize that his behavior was his Achilles’ heel. His world stayed small while others around him were growing their networks before his eyes. He was having a bad ride in his career vehicle.

On top of that, he was miserable. Although he liked his actual work, he was unhappy in the workplace. He felt lost. He was doing what he had been told to do – Win at ALL Cost – but it didn’t feel like winning.

I told Chris that his attitude was dangerous and that if he didn’t believe me, he only had to watch how others treated him. He admitted that he’d been repeatedly taken off projects, and he now realized that his peers disliked him. One day he sent me this e-mail: "I have to change. I’m out of step. I’m acting like someone from my father’s generation."

Chris had approached me because he saw that the company listened to me and supported my projects; he knew that people thrived around me, that my network seemed to grow day to day and exponentially quarter to quarter. Chris was ready to listen.

"What do I do?" he asked.

"Be a lovecat," I replied. "And that means: Offer your wisdom freely. Give away your address book to everyone who wants it. And always be human."

I then told him about the advantages of being a lovecat, and the three necessary steps to getting there: sharing your knowledge, sharing your network, sharing your compassion.

We went right to work. First I helped him organize his reading. Chris didn’t have a lot to offer that was portable to people – he could tell you what was wrong but he couldn’t help make it right. His learning habits were screwed up. He’d taken such hard subjects in school that the moment he finished his graduate work, he stopped studying. He read only to get him through sleepless nights in his Spartan Silicon Valley apartment. So I put him on a new curriculum. Reading is a source of potency, I said, so manage it like an asset. Become a walking encyclopedia of answers for anyone who has questions.

Then I showed him how to share his network. Because he was young, Chris didn’t have many contacts. But he had the potential to make new ones; he was dealing with dozens of people on a weekly basis. Soon he was organizing internal meetings for his peers, pollinating them with new ideas he’d picked up from his reading and giving them access to his newly found contacts. Recently I saw him walk out of a 20-person meeting that he had chaired masterfully, just months after wondering how he would ever get airtime at these gatherings. He had built his own little nest.

Mostly we talked about the third step: compassion, or the willingness to demonstrate your humanity at the office. At first Chris resisted because he thought it sounded trite, but the more he thought it over, the more he saw the light. Last month I received an e-mail from him saying, "Guess what? I just made someone’s year." Chris had befriended a woman who worked in a section that was politically at risk. Chris opened up to the woman, whom he admired but had never told, letting her know how great she was at her job, and how valued her contributions were, at the time when she most needed support. "I will help you," he said. "I will tell people how excellent you are. You should feel secure."

Those words turned her around. She was able to calm herself, which improved her work performance. And it gave Chris such a profound sense of satisfaction that he finally began to enjoy the office environment. He felt he belonged. He felt a sense of purpose.

Today I see a more potent Chris, I see a monster of knowledge, a connector of people and the kind man who always existed within him, deep inside. Chris has changed his brand. He’s found a way to use love more than hate. He is no longer Mad Dog. He is a lovecat. And being a lovecat is exactly what all of us must do if we want to succeed in the 21st century. Read on.