During an earlier time in her career when she flew often on U.S. Air, LaVay Lauter, a vice president and director of talent development at Milwaukee-based Baird, persuaded many a gate agent to move her seat up from coach to first class, just by asking nicely. “‘I’d like to be moved to first class, please,’” Lauter said, smiling brightly as she demonstrated her technique to the audience at BizTimes Media’s annual Women in Business Symposium in August. “Then, I embraced the pause.”
Often, the agents were so disarmed by her cheerfully direct request, which she amended only if they hesitated – “‘You’ll have made me blissfully happy, and you’ll feel a whole lot better about yourself’” – that they granted her wish, bumping her up to first class more than 73% of the time. (Lauter, who studied psychology as an undergrad and education and religion as a seminary student, tracked her data in a spreadsheet.)
“Even if you don’t get all of what you want right away,” being bold and asking for “100% of what you want, 100% of the time” is better than only “asking for 65% of what you want, 65% of the time,” she said. “If I can do it, you can do it.”
A funny, wise, provocative woman with abundant Southern charm, Lauter, who grew up in Florida and Kentucky, has a gift not only for helping people spot their weaknesses, but also for offering solutions – simple next steps and thoughtful scripts – that make improvement seem eminently possible. Along with more traditional business-focused classes on leadership and organizational savvy, Lauter and her colleagues on Baird’s talent development team teach a range of internally authored courses aimed at helping associates improve their personal well-being, covering such subjects as the Five Love Languages and how to communicate skillfully with adult children.
Patrick Spencer, vice chairman of Baird’s European equities team, praised her ability to combine deep knowledge about the company with empathy and genuine interest in helping people thrive in every aspect of their lives: “We have a saying that in sales there’s got to be a ‘transference of enthusiasm,’ and LaVay has that in spades. That’s a special gift for people that actually don’t have much emotional intelligence, like myself. She keeps the subject interesting, and she provides tools for change.”
Eager to learn more about Lauter’s strategies for success in business and beyond, I spoke with her recently. Here are four takeaways from our conversation:
Go bold or go home
There are many benefits to learning to ask for 100% of what you want, the first being that it forces you to drill down and determine what you truly want to achieve. But identifying your most important objectives also emboldens you to lobby persuasively for whatever it is you’re gunning for.
“It’s a game changer,” Lauter said. Even if the other person you’re trying to convince says no the first time you ask for what you want, “you feel more empowered, more confident” because you have been clear and honest, creating natural momentum around your idea. “Confidence drives security in the other party. So, the more boldly confident you appear, the more the other person feels secure,” and the more likely they become willing “to meet your need in the future,” she said.
Build a better network
When you want to make a move or try something new, instead of contacting random acquaintances to talk shop, building a network of people who genuinely want you to succeed is usually more fruitful, Lauter said.
To get started, make a list of 50 people “in your personal and professional life who love you, or who are just really nice – those are the people that are willing to help,” she said. Then, brainstorm “a wish list for what each person could do for you. Maybe one person can help you find a house; another, a church; and another can help you land a new job.”
Making her own list years ago during a job search, Lauter put a dash after the name of a distant cousin, John, who – she remembered only then – worked at MCI, “a global company with a huge training department.” So, she called John and “boldly and directly” – and with a laugh, “because it’s always good to put humor in there” – asked him to help her get a job at the telecom company.
“I promised, ‘I will work so hard that I will make you look good. People are going to say, ‘That’s John’s cousin!’” He considered that a good trade and helped Lauter get a job at MCI, where, holding up her end of the bargain, she says she made sure to shine.
Avoid the three Cs
While venting can feel exhilarating, it doesn’t fix problems. A better way to help yourself out of a rut, Lauter said, is to stop kneejerk criticism. “We call them the relationship cancers: critiquing, complaining, condemning.” Maybe your partner is doing something irksome, or you’re frustrated with your boss because you think she owes you a raise. But rather than venting, which keeps you stuck in a blaming mentality, it is “far better to transfer that energy and figure out what is the benefit, the good trade, to the other party for giving you what you want,” said Lauter.
It’s OK to unpack personal problems at work
While Lauter admitted there are some at Baird who would like on-the-job trainings to focus exclusively on business practices, often the biggest challenges she sees people facing at work are “problems in their personal relationships with children, partners or spouses. Our people are human beings, number one,” and sometimes they “come to work with a 50-pound suitcase of heartbreak and suffering, and they park it right next to their office chair. And they are looking at that suitcase all day long. So, to the degree I can offer soft-skills classes that benefit people personally as well as professionally, the suitcase gets left at the elevator, which is where you want it to stay. Or, even better,” she said, “the suitcase transforms into a warm security blanket that they have wrapped around their chair, so they’re feeling good all day long.”
