When it comes to staying motivated in pursuit of your goals, it’s not a question of whether others influence you, but how, and how much. When working with others, you need a way of checking whether you are being productively or unproductively other-focused.
As humorously illustrated in the popular movie I Love You, Man, when working toward goals there are two ways to be other-focused: the “Bro-Date” method and the “Billboard” method.
Billboards are better, but we often pressure ourselves unknowingly into time-wasting Bro-Dates.
1. The Bro-Date Method
At the beginning of the movie, Peter (played by Paul Rudd) proposes to his girlfriend Zooey (played by Rashida Jones), and she enthusiastically says yes.
When they are together alone, things are great. But when Zooey’s girlfriends express discomfort that Peter lacks many male friends, things change. Zooey gets nervous, and Peter goes on a wild goose chase to recruit more male friends.
There’s nothing wrong with having more guy friends, but the distorted urgency created by their shared concern about the misgivings of Zooey’s girlfriends leads Peter into a series of uncomfortable, time-wasting “Bro-Dates.”
In a farcical variation on the foibles of online dating, Peter meets a potential guy-friend whose internet picture presented him as being several decades younger. From another man who misunderstands Peter’s non-romantic intentions, Peter receives two vigorous, unwelcome kisses, and later a series of embarrassing public insults.
There is nothing wrong about Peter and Zooey listening to her girlfriends, who offer well-intended information, based on their own experiences and perceptions. The mistake that Peter and Zooey both make is subtly substituting the girlfriends’ perspective for their own, and letting it become a primary source of motivation driving their actions. The girlfriends identify a problem, but it is their problem, not Peter and Zooey’s problem.
Peter and Zooey cut-and-paste the girlfriends’ opinions into their own mindset, rather than discerning the difference between considering information and internalizing someone else’s concerns.
That’s the wrong way to be other-directed: Substituting the perspectives of others for your own. Often it’s harder to resist than we think. When there are many of “them” who seem to share the same point of view, and they express it with good intentions, force and confidence, we can lose our bearings.
It gets worse. Because their persuasive efforts can be so powerful, we end up striving to solve someone else’s problem, which is a product of their experiences and biases instead of ours.
If we look closely, however, there are usually clues for us to see. In the movie, for example, Zooey’s girlfriends have plenty of problems in their own relationships. It turns out their opinions come more from idiosyncratic emotional baggage associated with their own romantic failings, than from objectively sound advice based on successful experience.
That’s the trap: With the Bro-Date method of being other-focused, we can’t solve the problem because it’s not ours in the first place. It exists instead in the emotional domain of someone else. We run in circles, unwittingly goaded by someone else’s biases, but for a while under the delusion that we must be making progress because of the effort we are expending. By the time we escape the cycle, if we do at all, it’s often too late. By focusing on the wrong priorities for too long, we lose valuable time and energy, and like Peter and Zooey, we risk damaging relationships.
2. The Remedy to the Bro-Date Method: Two Key Questions
If you are stuck in the Bro-Date cycle of wasting time and energy on efforts that don’t help you make progress, the remedy lies in two key questions: (1) What Matters Most?; and (2) Who Matters Most?
These questions are designed to help you focus on your own genuine priorities, because the Bro-Date Method sidetracks us on other people’s priorities. Either of them can break the Bro-Date cycle.
What Matters Most? is the purpose question. It asks you to consider for the issue at hand, what is your true, number one source of motivation.
Who Matters Most? is the person question. It asks you to consider for the issue at hand, who is your primary stakeholder, the person whose reaction matters most to you.
The mistake that both Peter and Zooey made was to focus on the wrong purpose (the girlfriends’ opinion of Peter) and the wrong persons (the girlfriends). Had Peter or Zooey asked themselves the two key questions, they would have seen their error immediately. In fact, they would have answered the questions the same way. What matters most? Their relationship. Who matters most? Their fiancée. Had they asked themselves the purpose question and the person question, instead of unwittingly pursuing actions to satisfy Zooey’s girlfriends, they could refocus their attention on their own relationship and upcoming marriage.
These two key questions help you check whether the right purpose and persons are pulling you helpfully toward your desired goal, or whether the wrong purpose and persons are pushing you off track toward irrelevant and unproductive ends.
3. The Billboard Method
In the movie, before Peter understands why the Bro-Date strategy isn’t working, by chance he meets Sydney (played by Jason Segel), with whom a genuine friendship connection is possible.
While still in Bro-Date mode without realizing the problems it creates, Peter almost undermines his promising connection with Sydney.
Through self-imposed pressure to sound cool instead of being comfortable with himself, Peter leaves Sydney a painfully awkward, rambling voicemail which concludes: “Okay, you call me whenever you get a mo…a moment…get a moment…okay, I’ll talk to you…when we talk..again. Bye now.” Peter hangs up the phone and swears at himself.
Still missing the point, Peter makes an abortive attempt to give Sydney a nickname, “Jo-ban.” When Sydney asks, Peter admits the name has no meaning whatsoever. It is rather a mangled combination of syllables spontaneously discharged from his urge to appear a man’s man.
Trying to be what his fiancee’s girlfriends want doesn’t work for Peter, but fortunately Sydney—the real hero of the film instead of the male or female lead—sees through Peter’s contrivance and salvages the friendship.
In fact, he does even more. He revives Peter’s business and builds him up in the eyes of Zooey and her friends too. How? He uses a better strategy for being other-focused. He invents the Billboard Method.
Instead of imposing his own priorities as Zooey’s girlfriends did, Sydney takes the time to understand Peter’s priorities. He learned of Peter’s struggles as a real estate agent, and his urgent need to sell more properties. Sydney then crafted a strategy to help. Knowing that Peter lacked skill to promote himself effectively, Sydney placed humorous, attention-getting promotional images around Los Angeles featuring Peter in multiple guises on billboards, busses and buildings. For example, one billboard pictured Peter in a tuxedo as the James Bond of real estate with a “Licensed to Sell” tagline.
4. Application: Choose Billboards Over Bro-Dates
Are you wasting your time without realizing it, being subtly influenced into misbegotten “Bro-Dates” for stakeholders whose perceptions should matter less to you?
Or instead, are you wisely investing in thoughtful win-win actions by putting up “billboards” for stakeholders who do matter to you?
Action Tools:
First: Break the Bro-Date cycle by asking the purpose question and the person question: What Matters Most? and Who Matters Most? Let others clarify your motivation, not create it.
Second: Put up “billboards” for your trusted business colleagues. Find out what they are trying to do, accomplish or achieve, and generate creative ways to make them look better to others. Go out of your way to help them look good. Give a referral, make an inspiring introduction, write a reference letter, or give them a testimonial they can use with clients or on social networking services where their peers, managers or clients will see. Whatever “billboards” will help them most, be the one who puts them up.
