Call me Ishmael …

If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is …

Those are the opening lines of some of the most beloved and best‐selling books of all time. That they employ a kind of direct address to the reader, from the outset, is at least part of what allows these books to cast a spell on readers from generation to generation.

It's a simple move, really, born of intense conviction. The authors say, “I see you; you see me; come along on my adventure.”

Just remember, though: an adventure requires commitment from both the leader and the follower. If you are the producer or leader, then you have to make the right invitation. You have to leave room for the consumer or follower to step forward, to make his or her own personal relevance. If you do not, then you are no better than the teacher who lectures and leaves no time for the class to synthesize; you are no better than the teacher who gives a test but never offers feedback. (Perhaps you have had a teacher like that. Think about that classroom and your level of engagement. Think about what you learned.)

On the flip side, if you are the consumer, offered the invitation, you have to move forward in order to complete the adventure. You have to be willing to be changed, or else you are just another disengaged student who failed to meet a teacher halfway.

When delight works, it works fully, on the parts of us that are not always obvious or projected outward.

Earlier, we met Robert Steed. We like his definition of success – so much so that we're going to repeat it:

Whether something “works” is based on whether the minds of participants in a program are opened to new ways of thinking, whether they can experience their reality in a new way, whether they can incorporate both head and heart, both mind and feelings, in resolving issues. (Steed, 2005)

In short, to do certain things, to participate in certain events, trainings, and so on, you must change your life. You have to grow in some way to get there. You have to acquire a new skill, a new way of seeing the world. It's not the feature. It's not the gimmick. It's not the hack or the trick. It's what you are while you're doing it, what you are after you're doing it. It's what you want to continue to be or what you want to go back to. Then, it's how you go forward.

We've argued in this book that your work – whether sales, training, leadership, or service – can feel like the work that happens in the best classrooms. We've tried to articulate what those exchanges can look and feel like.

Do you think enough of your customers or clients to play to the very best versions of them? To work to know where they are, so as to project where they might go, and to help them move quickly? To not simply play to their baser instincts, but to help them aspire to their highest potential? (Again, we're coming from the point of view of teachers, so perhaps it's easier for us to believe that such asks are possible.)

What's more, are you asking whether your product or service or training is calling people to the right kind of change, the right kind of transformation, so that they can do the things that they were meant to do?

Think back to that statue, the archaic torso of Apollo. The statue is a perfect product, one immortalized by an immortal poet, only because part of it is missing. In that, it's an invitation onto the y‐axis, away from the status quo, onto the private plane. If the viewer is willing to study the rest of the statue carefully enough, give enough of himself or herself – by way of time, concentration, imagination – then he or she can complete it, can see it, can own it forever…inside, where it counts. The viewer must change in order to complete it. That's why the statue is so valuable. Like any good teacher, its value is assessed by the ways in which those that came into contact with it have been amplified, changed, improved, given greater possibility for life, transformed.

Do you trust your audience, your clients, your team, your customers enough…do you know them enough…and is lifting their understanding a deep concern of your product, your service, your engagement with them? Are you trying not just to charge them but to change them?

Now, having reached this point in our book, we certainly hope so.