Only when you understand will you be understood

During the early years of my career, when I was 27, I did sales training at one of my employers in front of a video camera. I had to play a salesman and make a call, which an experienced colleague answered, playing the role of the customer. I tried everything to sell him something: I listed the product benefits, told him why he absolutely needed the product, but he dismissed all my attempts. I got increasingly pushy and became so wrapped up in the conversation that when my “customer” told me to stop pressuring him and leave his office, I was really angry. But the worst was yet to come: when we watched the video together, I was utterly ashamed. I had to confront the reality of the worst sales call in human history, and knew that I’d failed miserably.

Find out about others’ ideas before acting

After learning this hard lesson, I realized that if you want to sell something to someone, you first have to put yourself in their shoes and understand their wants and needs. Not only as a salesperson but in many other professional and private situations too, you have to create win-win situations from which everyone can emerge as victors. But this is something I can only achieve if I listen carefully and analyze how my customer ticks, and what drives them. “Only when you yourself understand will you be understood” was the advice from the sales training – and this has been my motto ever since.

In the more than 30 years since that video training, I have always remembered this advice and tried to be a good listener. I have come to appreciate just how important it is to listen to my fellow humans, to be on equal footing with them and find ways to reconcile their needs and my needs. In my experience, far too many people try to push forward their own ideas and advance their own interests without getting to know those of others. This approach makes things so much more difficult. I also pass this insight on to my management staff. And I constantly remind them that they should find out about the needs and ideas of their counterpart before they act. Over the years I have found that this message comes across very quickly when I talk about my distressing experience in sales training over 30 years ago.

Even Henry Ford was convinced that “if there is any one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other person’s point of view and see things from that person’s angle as well as from your own.” Among his many other wise thoughts, he also said: “Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t – you’re right.” This motto has also helped shape who I am today. 

Don’t give up too early

I discovered how true this is when I was at Nalco, an international services company specializing in water and wastewater treatment. This was where I became a CEO for the first time in 2008. The company had not grown for ten years, but when I joined, the entire management team – myself included – believed in its growth potential. We spent four months feverishly developing a growth strategy, visiting customers and working tirelessly to bring our growth strategy to life.

And then, just as we started to roll it out in 2008, the financial crisis hit. What to do now? We had believed so strongly in ourselves and in our growth strategy, but suddenly everything imploded. We found ourselves in precisely the situation Henry Ford was describing when he said, “Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t...”. We were just about to scrap our plans and strategies when a jolt went through us, and we said to each other: “Not so fast, we believe in our strategy! We’re not going to give up just because we don’t have the money at the moment. We have to and will find a way through the trough of the financial crisis, a way to reduce costs, improve cash flow and invest in growth at the same time.”

I’ll never forget this moment; it was so energizing. We cut our product range by fifty percent, did the most incredible things to avert a decline, and actually managed to turn the tide: with a growth rate of ten percent, Warren Buffett himself ultimately became our most important investor. Other factors played a role in this success and enabled us to achieve what even we thought were overly optimistic goals, namely determination and the desire to succeed.

Team spirit can move mountains

There is one thing above all else that I learned from this time: with the right team – and by that I mean both the Executive Committee and all the other employees – you can successfully overcome even the trickiest situations. If we foster team spirit, share the same values and strive toward common goals, we can move mountains. It is this – and nothing less – that I want to achieve together with my team, because there are countless global issues we can and would like to help solve through our work at Syngenta.

I am very preoccupied with topics such as advancing climate change, the growing global population and the challenge this brings of producing not only a higher quantity but also a higher quality of food in a way that protects the environment and people’s health. Syngenta can be part of the solution and make a vital contribution in many areas, for example by increasing the shelf life and nutritional content of fruit and vegetables, making sure that fewer harmful substances find their way into food and the environment, and supporting biodiversity and reforestation.

(This text was originally published in German and is part of the book “Der beste Rat” by Frank Arnold)