There are opportunities all around us during our workday, but we miss them because we’re not aware that they exist. It turns out there’s a very simple way we can unlock access to those opportunities: changing the way we approach our conversations with other people.

In this episode, we discuss how simply expressing an intention, talking about what you want, or asking for help can have an incredible impact on your professional and personal development.

Transcript:

There are opportunities all around us during our workday, but we miss them because we’re not aware that they exist. It turns out there’s a very simple way we can unlock access to those opportunities just by changing the way we approach this one thing. Let me show you what it is. Here we go. 

One of the professional and social norms we’ve accepted as true is that good opportunities are hard to come by. We have this idea in our mind that things like job opportunities, or opportunities for professional advancement, they only come around every now and then, and not only that, we have to work really hard to find them. 

But it turns out that there are incredible opportunities for us – no matter what we’re looking for – that are hiding in plain sight every day. They’re right in front of us, but we just don’t see them because we’re not looking for them.

And here’s where those opportunities are: they’re in everyday conversations we have with people. 

Every single conversation or interaction we have with a person is an opportunity to share with them intentions that we have, questions we’re looking for answers to, or things that we’re able to provide to others. 

In other words, every conversation is a chance to share with someone a glimpse of something that you need, something that you’re looking for, or something that you’re capable of doing for another person.

Most of the interactions that we have with other people during the day stay at the surface level, we end up repeating the same small talk to each other day after day, and it’s almost as if we’ve reached an agreement with one another that we’re not going to go any further than those surface interactions. 

But if you decide to simply share something that you need or want with the other person then you can unlock opportunities that they have access to.  

I want you to picture a time when you had a conversation with someone, and during that conversation they mentioned something that was incredibly helpful fo you, or vice versa.

Something where the reaction was like: Oh, I know someone who can help with that. Or, Oh, I can introduce you to so and so. Or, Oh, you should look into XYZ

We can all point to a time when this happened. 

If you think about it, other people have access to an incredible amount of knowledge, and experiences, and connections, and resources that we DON’T. 

I’m talking about people that you’ve just met or people that you’ve known for years. And it also turns out that those people not only want to, but they’re more than willing to share that knowledge with us.

But here’s the thing: We will never know that they have that knowledge, or that they have a way to help us, unless we express an intention, or tell people what we’re looking for, or ask for what we want. 

No one will know what you need unless you express what that thing is out loud.

You could be looking for a job, a mentor, a connection, an opportunity, a recommendation, anything – and the person sitting across from you will never know, because you never asked.

They might be able to do something for you that takes  them 5 minutes and it literally could change the course of your life, but that opportunity could pass you by because you stayed silent, and didn’t express that intention. 

So the simple act of just saying it out loud and making it known that you’re looking for something is incredibly powerful. 

I want to give you an example of how powerful this can be, and more importantly how SIMPLE this can be. 

I’m an adjunct professor at a couple of Bay Area law schools – my alma mater UC Davis, University of San Francisco School of Law, and also Golden Gate University. And the class I teach is called a Practice Ready Seminar, and the idea is that we cover all of the things a law student can do in law school so that they can show up ready to practice at their first legal job. 

And in this class one of the things I tell my students is that if you’re looking for a specific kind of job, you need to bring this up in conversation with as many people as you can, because you just don’t know whether someone might be able to help you if you don’t ask. 

So last semester I raised this concept in class, and after class one of my students comes up to me and said, “I’m practicing what you just told us to do, and I want you to know that I don’t have a job right now, but I’m interested in practicing Family Law when I graduate.”

So as soon as she said this to me, the first thing that came to mind was a good friend of mine who is an AWESOME attorney and has a small but thriving family law practice. I told my student that I had no idea whether my friend was hiring, but I said that I’d be happy to introduce her to my friend so that the two of them could connect.

So after class, I sat down and wrote a text to my friend asking if it was ok for me to introduce my student to her, she wrote back and of course said yes because she’s awesome, and then I wrote an email introducing the two of them. The entire process took me 5 minutes.

So here’s what happened. That introduction email led to the two of them meeting in person, and they hit it off. That meeting led to my friend eventually offering her a little bit of part time work here and there, maybe a few hours a week. 

And then THAT eventually led to her being offered a full time position at my friend’s firm, doing work that she absolutely loves AND my good friend has added a team member who does great work and is passionate about helping her clients. 

If my student had never come up to me and opened her mouth and expressed an intention and asked for what she wanted, I never would have been able to help her. 

And the thing I love the most about this story is that it was so stinking easy for me to help her.

We have this idea in our mind that everything has to be hard, but it turns out that little things like this – expressing an intention, talking about what you want, asking for help – they all have the ability to massively impact our lives – but we overlook them because they’re not hard enough, and we think the only way to get ahead is by doing hard things. And that’s just not the case. 

So one of the reasons we don’t do this is because it seems selfish – we feel guilty about talking about ourselves or asking for things we want. We don’t want other people to think that we’re being self-centered. 

But I don’t think this is selfish at all – I actually think it’s a natural way for us to connect with people and to help people. 

And if you’re still not convinced, I would encourage you to think about this from a flipped perspective. Think about the last time you were able to help someone, when a friend or a colleague asked you for something and you were able to connect them with someone, or introduce them to a book or a resource that helps them. 

That actually feels really good. We forget that helping other people makes us feel important and valued and appreciated, and it’s a healthy and natural thing to go out of our way for people. 

So instead of thinking of this idea of asking for what you want out loud as a burden, look at it as an opportunity for someone else to share with you what they know – and remember that the process of sharing something is meaningful and also adds a lot of value for the person who’s giving. 

Remember too that this can and should work in both directions. 

If there’s something you want to receive, you can use this as an opportunity to ask. 

BUT you can also ASK people if there’s anything THEY need, or that THEY’RE looking for. Ask if there’s any way you can help THEM. 

We know how good it feels to be able to help other people, and I can’t tell you how happy it made me to help my student and my friend. 

The night that my student passed the bar exam and got her fulltime job offer she called me. She actually called me literally five minutes after the bar results came out to thank me. And when she told me, it was the best feeling ever – I didn’t even do anything, I just spent five minutes writing an email – but hearing her be so excited about her future was an incredible feeling for me. 

And we can all point to a time when we did something really small that made a huge difference for someone else.

So here’s how you put this into practice: look for opportunities in everyday conversations to move from your default questions and responses to questions and responses that might trigger these opportunities.

So when someone asks you how things are going, instead of saying something like “Same old same old,” or “Things are fine, just keeping busy” or something that stays on a surface level, look for a way to talk about something that you’re interested in, or something that you’re looking for – and also see how you can ask other people questions that might lead to an opportunity for you to help them. 

So see if you can find ways to unlock opportunities for yourself and the people around you. It’s so easy, all you have to do is go to the trouble of asking a question or expressing an intention – it’s well worth it. 

Go have a great workday.