Daniel C Schaffer

Keynote Speaker | Mentalist | Best Selling Author

[Daniel C Schaffer @DanielSConnects]

@VideosProh Colin is a good boy 🪱

[Daniel C Schaffer @DanielSConnects]

@seanhannity Is this really the priority with a $40T debt? He’s responsible for 25% of our national debt, it may be time to cut up his credit cards.

[Daniel C Schaffer @DanielSConnects]

A few months later, they voted me in as Executive Director.

I did not earn that by caring more than everyone. I earned it the first time I stopped assuming I did.

https://t.co/XzqkHc5qud

[Daniel C Schaffer @DanielSConnects]

I'm going to tell on myself.

I was VP of a nonprofit I loved. Board went quiet in a meeting. My first reaction was not wonder.

It was, "people just don't care."

[Daniel C Schaffer @DanielSConnects]

I caught it a couple of days later. Reached out to each board member. Asked what they wanted for the organization, instead of telling them what they weren't doing.

The curiosity re-engaged the board.

[Daniel C Schaffer @DanielSConnects]

@awkwardgoogle This is something I would do if I had more money

[Daniel C Schaffer @DanielSConnects]

Leadership move, resist the urge to close your team's open questions just because you're senior enough to close them. Your certainty ends their exploration.

https://t.co/XzqkHc5qud

[Daniel C Schaffer @DanielSConnects]

The Solver on your team says "maybe it's a special metal."

They're not threatened. They're having fun.

A puzzle is a game and they want to play with it.

[Daniel C Schaffer @DanielSConnects]

Solvers are your hypothesis engine.

The warning, they need the loop closed. Which means a Solver in a hurry will shut a rich open question before it's done doing its work.

[Daniel C Schaffer @DanielSConnects]

Full essay: https://t.co/XzqkHc5qud

[Daniel C Schaffer @DanielSConnects]

I signed a quarter at a cocktail hour. Someone watched it bend an inch from their face.

Their first reaction, in the half-second before composure caught up, told me how they'd handle a bad number in Monday's board meeting.

[Daniel C Schaffer @DanielSConnects]

I include the story of the time I was the Debunker on a board I loved.

I read the room wrong, I almost destroyed a relationship I cared about, and I caught it a couple of days later.

That pause is the entire difference.

[Daniel C Schaffer @DanielSConnects]

Your certainty isn't your strength. Your willingness to test it is. The whole piece. https://t.co/98yq5Xpq1T

[Daniel C Schaffer @DanielSConnects]

You don't fix bad decisions by being more skeptical. Skepticism is just defensiveness with better posture.

[Daniel C Schaffer @DanielSConnects]

One move for your next meeting: make confidence the trigger for evidence, not the substitute for it. Test the claim wrapped in the most certainty first.

[Daniel C Schaffer @DanielSConnects]

Full piece on deception literacy as a board-level skill. https://t.co/98yq5Xpq1T

[Daniel C Schaffer @DanielSConnects]

A rocket scientist gets taken by a card scam. She knows rocket science, not card scams.

[Daniel C Schaffer @DanielSConnects]

There's a name for knowing where the doors are: deception literacy. It belongs on the executive competency list, right next to finance. Almost nowhere is it taught.