Banger Sutras: Sermon Mode
Being right is not the same as being helpful.
A founder I work with recently showed up 10 minutes late to a call with me he clearly didn’t wanna have. He probably had 10 on-read messages from team-mates bugging him about a very important job: tweeting. Nearly 100% of the businesses’ leads were coming from twitter.
I stopped myself from delivering another boring sermon on why he really ought to tweet if he wanted more sales.
As an arrogant prick myself, many times in my life I’ve thought “wow, I know better than this person, I’ll tell them why the thing they’re doing doesn’t make sense.” Sadly, this doesn’t actually work that often. Also, it feels bad for everyone involved.
I try to catch myself these days before going into Sermon Mode, where I’m so sure I’m right that I stop noticing that there is a real person in front of me.
In that beat, he leveled with me: “I just fucking hate doing twitter marketing dude”.
This is a good guy. I’ve watched him give support and grace to his employees when it was very much against his own interests.
In this moment, everyone is pushing him to do something he hates. Another sermon on the virtues of a well-crafted tweet would be silly. So we dropped the pressure and talked.
What he really loved was doing things for his community. Shilling the product was fine, but not the thing that made his heart soar. He loves running events. So we shifted to an events-focused marketing strategy. It seems to be working, but more importantly, he is actually happier, so it gets done with more ease.
This is a risky move. But pushing an agenda onto someone who doesn’t want it is risky too.
I’ve learned a shitload more about life and business from Buddhist texts than from the MBA classes I took at Berkeley, and there’s a sutta that nails exactly the move here.
Sigalovada Sutta (DN 31) - The Buddha meets a young dude doing a prayer ritual. The big dog is not a fan of bullshit rituals. He made this very clear. If anyone has earned the right to go into Sermon Mode, it’s the Buddha. But, he’s clever and sees an opportunity to help someone practically. Cool dude, you’re already doing this prayer thing, why don’t you, like, make it actually useful? He’s cool about it, not condescending.
He reframes each of the six directions as a real relationship. North is your teachers. East is your parents. South is your friends. Each direction becomes a reminder of the concrete duties toward actual people in your life. The ritual stays, but the meaning changes. Sigala walks away with something practically helpful, not a sermon on why his pet ritual is lame.
If you really care about helping someone and being understood, you often have to do this mental jiu-jitsu move on yourself where you drop your own agenda, and follow the momentum to find leverage.
You can sermonize your kid about brushing their teeth, or you can jiu-jitsu them into having a dance party to that one Frozen song you’re completely sick of before bed (which happens to include teeth brushing).
Jiu jitsu isn’t about being stronger than the other guy, it’s about moving in such a way that you get the outcome you want by leveraging what’s already in motion.
Sermon Mode is the opposite.
Think about the last time you felt really right about something. I’ll wait. Got it? Cool.
Be honest, were you in Sermon Mode? Was that the first time you sermoned at that other person? How many times have you explained the same correct thing to the same person who is not going to do it because you keep explaining why you’re right?
I get it, your employee keeps ruining your meticulously organized google drive, your boss is an idiot with a KPI tattooed on his forearm, your roommate won’t stop soaking the god damn dishes and god damnit soaking the dishes doesn’t work anyways!!!
You can only pull the jiu-jitsu move if you accept the other person’s strange alien ways as really actually okay.
No, no, no, I don’t mean quietly enduring while you tap your foot waiting for them to fall to their knees and bask in the pure light of your impeccable reasoning.
This move requires something much more gut wrenching: surrendering the desire to be understood on your own terms.
Btw, the events are off to a good start. Leads are flowing again. My founder friend is happier and I haven’t nagged anyone about twitter in weeks.
Actually helping someone often means surrendering your agenda of how they should be helped.
2500 years ago a random guy was bowing to compass points and the wisest person alive met him there.
What are you doing that’s so important you can’t do the same?