When I showed up, nine months into difficult negotiations, the binder of legal documents waiting for me to review was twelve inches thick. Every day, I was getting calls from legal and business experts, some of the greatest Ivy League minds in the field, telling me how I could structure the agreement in some innovative way they had devised. I heard about reverse equity deals, this kind of trigger, that kind of incentive—all sorts of highly complex compensation mechanisms to get Junior paid on our terms. Meanwhile, we still had no deal. The situation was only getting worse. My phone rang all day long with reporters looking for personal gossip about the Earnhardt family. This new job was like being thrown into a hornet’s nest. And to top things off, before I even met him, I read in the paper that Junior didn’t understand what Teresa was thinking when she hired some music company executive to run the company.

Of course, I had been hired to do much more than resolve this one dispute. As president of global operations, it was my job to help us win at the track, build relationships with our sponsors, burnish our public image, and transform DEI into a full-fledged entertainment company to set us apart from our competitors. In the longer term, my goal was to help NASCAR expand beyond its traditional white, Southern fan base, building the bridges that would make it a truly national sport open to everyone. But when I arrived, all those goals were eclipsed by the negative publicity of the contract negotiation. It was the number one story in the sport. Journalists spent more time writing about the fire that burned down Junior’s mother’s house when he was six years old, and speculating on what it meant to him as a little boy to lose his childhood home and go live with his father and stepmother, than on the races themselves. They were exaggerating the present hostilities and creating an ugly image of a family feud. This was the last thing we needed as we worked to show America how racing had grown.

So how did I prepare for my first meeting with Junior and his sister Kelley (who was his manager and one of the most powerful executives in the sport)? I put all the legal proposals aside. I stopped thinking about my next move in the contract negotiations and focused on learning what made Junior tick. Most of all, I listened. I listened to my new boss, Teresa, and to everyone else in management who could give me perspective on the situation. I read everything I could find about his career, watched all his DVDs, and learned all the background I could about the Earnhardt family in NASCAR. What was I looking for exactly? I didn’t know yet. Whatever would get me to his core, to what motivated him and made him feel good about his life. To succeed in this negotiation, I had to know what made him tick.

I was excited to meet the charismatic, powerful young racing star I had learned about, but at our first meeting he didn’t exactly turn on the charm. His body language was stiff and suspicious, and his answers to my questions were clipped. He barely met my eyes. And so there we were in Junior’s office. I suppose he and Kelley were expecting me to make a proposal, or at least to feel him out about some possible terms of his contract. I didn’t do that. Instead, I said, “Look, let’s put all the papers away. Before we can even start to talk business, we need to know each other. Let me tell you a little about me.”

Junior and Kelley seemed surprised, but I went on and shared a story about my family—the one I shared with you in the preface of this book—about my father taking my sister and me away from our mother, about the difficulties after he died and my struggle to put the past aside and focus on building a successful future. I was trying to show Junior that I could appreciate him not just as a business opportunity but as a person I could relate to. If I could show him that I “got” him, then I could show him that I understood what he needed—and that I would work with him to get it.

I believe that 95 percent of meaningful communication is nonverbal and indirect, and that most of what mattered in that meeting was what I didn’t say or do. To start, I didn’t act like one of the hard-driving lawyers they had been fighting for the past nine months. I didn’t lean on them to agree to a deal. Instead of pushing my needs, I offered them something: my interest and attention. I said, “I’m here to listen. Tell me everything I need to know.”

Slowly Junior started to open up about his life. As he talked, I came to realize that for him, this negotiation had very little to do with money. The deeper challenges here were not legal complications or how to structure a deal. The issue was the relationship between Dale and his stepmother. A young man was stepping out on his own, away from the shadow of his parents, and he wanted respect and control of his own life. He had been the son of the famous driver, the stepson of the owner, the one everyone knew as “Junior,” but now he wanted to feel acknowledged and treated well as his own man. That was what success meant to him.

Now I understood that those nine months of wrangling before I came on board and all those legal fees had been a waste. All the lawyers and the experts with their technical proposals had overlooked his deep motivation. But as we talked, Junior’s tense body language started to relax. For the first time, he looked me in the eye. He said, “You’re not what I expected.” We were beginning to develop a relationship of trust.

I’ve seen it again and again. So many books on success and so many courses in business school promise to get you an edge so you can “beat” the other side, but in my experience, that’s often the wrong goal. I’ve seen so many professionals—not to mention some family members—forget that the people across the table are still human beings. If those human beings don’t have a relationship with you, or if they don’t believe the relationship will bring them success, they won’t do business with you. To win—and keep on winning—with them, you need to learn what success means, deep down, to them.

There was no quick fix for that contract negotiation or for that challenging family situation, but what we could change right away was the tone. We showed each other and the press that we were perfectly capable of continuing negotiations while also getting along and doing our jobs. Junior went back to concentrating on races and the media went back to reporting on them. Teresa and I focused on the work of making the company stronger and more successful. And although in time Junior felt he needed a break from the family and signed a contract with another team, we remained supportive of each other’s efforts in the sport, continuing to build a relationship that I believe will bring the best outcome in the long term for everyone connected to the Earnhardt family.

But there is a second way of listening, which I think of as listening to understand. When we do that, we put aside our present problem for a little while and try to understand the larger situation of the person who’s talking. That means listening not just for what they say, but what they mean—listening for what they need and care about, which often lies underneath their words. When you listen to understand me, I sense that I have your attention and your interest, and naturally I’ll start to relax and get a little more comfortable. It’s reassuring to have a respectful audience, to feel that my words aren’t just a grab bag for you to dig around in and find something you can use. When you’re listening to understand me, then I am freer to talk to you not just about what I planned to say, but about what matters most to me, what makes me tick.

It’s an approach with a proven track record and a very long history. If you go all the way back to the life of Jesus, you’ll notice that although he was a spiritual man, in Bible stories he’s not usually found in the temple. You usually find him outside, meeting people in the regular paths of their life. His goal is to preach, but that’s not what he does first. It’s not even what he does second. He goes to where the people are and he listens to understand them. Once he’s understood what they need, he responds to it. If they’re hungry, he feeds them. If they’re sick, he makes them well. Only after he both understands what they need and responds to their need does he start to preach.

In those Biblical stories, Jesus doesn’t take this approach as a way to seem thoughtful or nice. He does it because listening to understand is the most effective way to reach the goal of spreading his message. I would say something similar is true in any kind of relationship, including business relationships, though the messages may be very different. So no matter what’s on the table, I start by trying to step outside myself and listen for what the other person needs, their expressions of their deep motivation. Often it’s not what I might expect, and it’s rarely what they say up front. Usually people have some kind of surface style they wear for the situation—charming, confrontational, passive-aggressive, or whatever it may be—that mostly hides what moves them. Their words may not clarify things much either; I can count on one hand the times I’ve met a person who actually expressed precisely what he meant and what he needed from me. So when you get past the surface postures and the opening remarks, there’s often a surprise waiting. Those surprises have made listening to understand the most eye-opening experiences of my life.

What I’m describing applies in every industry and every type of relationship, both business and personal. When I was newly married, I had some fixed ideas about what my wife, Jennifer, wanted from me and how I could make her happy. And she had some fixed ideas of her own. For a while, we just followed our fixed ideas and didn’t listen to understand what the other wanted. The result was that two loving, committed newlyweds managed to kick up a whole lot of frustration and unhappiness.

For example, Jennifer thought that husbands wanted their dinners cooked when they came home from work, and though she had a demanding career of her own, she would put in the time to cook for us at night. I would come home and find her in the kitchen, but I wouldn’t jump up and down with happiness and rave about her big dinner plans the way she expected. She felt offended and unappreciated, but I couldn’t hear what she wanted, because I had my own ideas about what showed appreciation: Didn’t I put money in the bank, bring home flowers or a new necklace now and then, and do other things she liked?

At first, when we tried to talk it out, we only listened for what would help each of us make our case: What do you mean you feel ignored? I spent two hours making your dinner! Or: How could you feel unappreciated? Didn’t you see that necklace I brought home? It took us some time to start listening to understand. Finally I began to hear what mattered, deep down, to her. I told her, “I love a home-cooked meal, but we work so much that I would rather have two hours with you at night than to have you busy preparing the meal, then talk for a few minutes and go to sleep. I would rather go out to dinner or order in and have more quality time together.” Along the way, she helped me to understand that while she appreciated flowers and other presents, what was even more important to her was that I sit with her on the back porch and talk with her, acknowledging her efforts, so she could see that I recognized the hard work she put into even small things she did for me.

Gradually we both learned to stop listening for what would help defend and justify what we had been doing and to start listening to understand what the other one needed. We came to see that it was unfair to make a decision about how to treat the other person if we didn’t get good information first. You can call getting that information “being a good listener” or “ministering to souls in need” or “conducting effective market research.” I don’t really mind what you call it, because it all comes down to the same thing: listening to understand.

Of course, some people ask me, Max, is all this really necessary in business? If I have a simple business arrangement, do I still have to bother learning what makes them tick? My answer is that I don’t think any business arrangement is simple. Maybe it seems that way sometimes to a customer who places a quick order, but that’s only because the seller has done the work for the customer to make it seem easy. So if you’re the one with goods or services to offer, or if you have a good professional connection with someone and you want to keep it that way, then you have a relationship to cultivate. And that means learning what makes the other person tick, whether he or she is your customer, your client, your boss, or your employee.

Professionals are professionals because they can perform over and over, in good conditions and bad, when they’re feeling inspired and when they wish they could crawl back into bed. Even if communication comes naturally to you some of the time, it’s worth getting clear just what it is you’re doing right when you’re at your best. Because the day will come when the stakes are higher or the conditions rougher, and you won’t be able to cruise on instinct. You’re going to need to be able to guide yourself—step-by-step like a great coach—through the challenge. So here are a few rules for listening to help others share what makes them tick when you first make contact. (Later I’ll talk about going deeper, when you already have a relationship established.)