FAQs
Marcus Answers Frequently Asked Questions
I’m always going to make sure that there’s a message delivered around the importance of people in the organization, the respect and the necessity for process in the organization, and having people understand how people, process and product tie together.
I try to understand the business that’s asked me to come and ensure that I have a good understanding of what message they want to deliver to their team. There are always a few twists and turns, but we always stay consistent with making sure that the company or the group that’s brought me in accomplishes their own goals. That’s my job.
It’s interactive. I want the audience to participate. Ultimately everybody in the room is going to learn not only from me, but from other people’s experiences. We will figure out how to improve the business overall, because ideas come out in that room that people may be unwilling to provide outside of a closed forum.
There are microphones all over the room and I encourage people to share their experiences—whether they’re good or bad— and expose their vulnerability. I’m a moderator for the business and to help the group move forward as a team together.
My job is to peel back that onion to get you to think about yourself differently—to get you to think about other people differently, the company differently, the industry differently. But most importantly, to learn how to communicate what you’re thinking, what you’re feeling, what your goals are and how that business can help you grow.
The best way to get somebody to understand how to change their behavior is to acknowledge the mistakes that you’ve made. With me, what you see is what you get. If I’ve made mistakes or had failures in my life, I’m going to talk about it. It creates a level of relatability with the audience that allows them to be open and comfortable talking about their own issues.
Sometimes people ask me silly questions about my personal life or ask about things that I’m embarrassed about. I’ll answer them. But they also ask me about things that have worked for me and more importantly, things that have not worked for me. Transparency is the key to engaging with an audience. If they feel like they can trust you, then they’re going to process the information.
I won’t deliver a message that I don’t believe in. If I don’t believe that it adds value to the participants’ life, or that it’s going to improve the business overall, I won’t do it. I don’t do this as a career. I do it because I love sharing my knowledge and experience.
You want to give people permission to share what’s on their minds and to let them know that there will be no consequences for their sharing. It does require the executive or the corporate leader or the business owner to go in with an open mind. In almost every single case, I’ve gotten a letter back from the organizer or the business owner or the executive saying, “I was uncomfortable for a few moments. But in the end, the way that my people thought about me or our company, or the message that you delivered about our initiatives, was far more effective than I was able to deliver.”