Harvey Schachter's article in the Globe and Mail gives three great tips to improve your listening skills.
As coaches, we cannot emphasize enough how important it is to listen, at different levels, to what is said and what is not said. This listening is the key to asking powerful questions- which is the best way to develop people, and to develop business.
Take a minute to give this a read, and think about how you can show others you're listening.
From profitguide.com, Greig Clark shares his discovery: there are five fundamentals of running a successful business, and they live where the rubber meets the road. None of them are earth-shattering, but they can be tricky to apply.
What do you get when you spend 40 years in and around entrepreneurship? In my case, 10 black, three-ring binders are an important part of the answer.
Let me explain. I lived my first 20 years of self-employment as an entrepreneur, building College Pro Painters. I spent the next 15 as a venture capitalist, with a few of those years at the helm of Arxx Building Products, one of the investments in our VC fund. Since stepping down as CEO of Arxx five years ago, I’ve worked as (or, at least, evolved into) a “trusted advisor” to entrepreneurial businesses. And for each of the companies I’ve worked with, I’ve compiled a synopsis of each business in a black, three-ring binder.
I recently leafed through those binders in search of the best business lessons of my past 40 years. My discovery: there are five fundamentals of running a successful business, and they live where the rubber meets the road. None of them are earth-shattering, but they can be tricky to apply.
1. Focus, focus, focus
It’s easy to say, yet so hard to do. I recently read a book on the Facebook story, and this principle leaps out above all else. Facebook placed relentless focus on building a user base, campus by campus, and continually making the program friendlier. As wild as I feel for saying this, Mark Zuckerberg was right not to put short-term focus on raising revenue.
To put the importance of focus into greater relief, consider Paul Martin: a superb finance minister but a weak prime minister. In the former role, Martin focused like a laser beam on reducing the deficit and building surpluses. As prime minister, he dared not disappoint any people, so he ended up disappointing most people.
A CEO I’ve known for a long time told me that his biggest job is to be Dr. No. Only by turning things down does he let people know what really is important.
My brother Paul, a longtime entrepreneur who is now a consultant in Vancouver, tells me that the biggest problem he sees in business is that people start many things but finish few. “I’ll get to that next week,” they say. Next week never comes. His advice? “Complete something.”
2. Time management
It’s the kissing cousin of #1. We have two finite resources in any business: time and money. We budget the heck out of money. Time is even scarcer, but we treat it more shabbily.
How a CEO spends his or her time is the biggest signal to staff of what is really important to the company. A good technique for aligning your actions with your priorities is colour-coding your time planner with those priorities in mind. One of the CEOs I work with, Jeremy Behar of Cirrus Consulting Group in Toronto, knows good people are the key to the growth of his business. So, he shades hours in his day planner green to denote the time he will spend recruiting people or developing his existing employees. That way the task stands out visually to him.
Another trick is to be proactive, applying Steven Covey’s “put the big rocks in first” principle. Go through your calendar months ahead and mark some “green space” in every week to block off time to tackle your most important priority.
3. Horses for courses
Or, as Jim Collins wrote in Good to Great: “Get the right people in the right seats on the bus.” But how can you tell when you have the “right people?” It’s never easy. My first boss, Scott MacDiarmid at General Foods, used to tell me the thing he liked about me was that when he asked me for “A,” he got A or A-plus, and on time; he never got a B or C with an explanation. In business, table stakes is understanding what is asked for and delivering it. Greatness is taking it one step beyond that, being proactive and what I call a “life force” in the business. Someone who is an “energy multiplier,” not a drain. It is so great for entrepreneurs when they feel that they are “not alone” in trying to grow the business or push the envelope.
On the other hand, when the person is not right, you will know. But, like most entrepreneurs, you might be “slow to fire.” Don’t be.
4. Clarify roles
This is all about getting the right seats on the bus. Everyone needs to know what they, and they alone, are responsible for. The “one throat to choke” philosophy is still a good one, although perhaps a bit graphic. At Cirrus, a little box appears under each person’s name on the org chart, containing that person’s top three deliverables and metrics. This allows strategies and plans to be quickly checked against principles #1 and #2: do the tasks reflect the focus of the business, who will perform those tasks and how will anyone know those tasks are being performed?
5. Measure, measure, measure
Make those top three deliverables the key performance indicators for each manager. Put them on a one-page “dashboard” and review it regularly and relentlessly. An example is the weekly RAG (results at a glance) at College Pro, which remains that company’s most read report. When my stepson Jon was a star manager there, he used to check the RAG every day to compare his performance to his targets and that of his peers. When you get the numbers right, the numbers don’t lie—and everyone knows it. Good people will self-manage to make their numbers.
Are these principles simple? Yes. Easy to stick to? Maybe not. Tack this page on your wall, and consult it frequently. If you can’t follow this diet, find a coach or advisor who can help you. It works.
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Seth Godin (known for his knack at getting to the heart of the matter) just sent out a two line post called Your Dent. He asks “Are you making a dent in the universe?” and then hints: “lots of random pokes in many different spots are unlikely to leave much of an impact”. And for a final kick, he adds “hiding out is surely not going to work at all”.
In business development coaching, a few of the partners I coach initially prefer to hide out and magically think enough business will keep coming. It might. Or it might not. A few fall into the random poking category. They can at least say they have activity. They will likely generate some modest results. Finally there are a few partners who strategize, focus and approach business development with discipline and an attitude of generosity and authenticity. They are the ones that make the dent. And because they approach their entire life this way, you can bet their dent is much bigger than the business bottom-line.
For the feedback providers among us, there is ample available advice on how best to proffer messages and to ensure their effective delivery. However, there's far less guidance to help us when we are on the receiving end of these "gifts" (after all, aren't we always hearing how feedback is a gift?).
The purpose of this post is to start a conversation among us, to consider how best to take in the feedback messages we receive — not just at this time of year, but all the time.
Susan Cain is the author of "Quiet: The power of introverts in a world that can't stop talking." A writer who formerly practiced corporate law and worked as a negotiations consultant, Cain spoke at the TED2012 conference in Long Beach, California. TED is a nonprofit organization dedicated to "Ideas worth spreading," which it makes available through talks posted on its website. Follow @susancain on Twitter.
I don't work with a lot of HR people but I do work with a few. It seems to me that all of the HR people I work with share one common trait. They are too busy. HR people are most likely to cancel meetings, most likely to have voice messages that say they are in all day meetings and most likely to have trouble getting back to you for several days. This trend is universal in every organization we work with.
So what? Maybe it means nothing but as a former HR person, I find the trend interesting. Either HR teams are understaffed or working on too many things or both. It feels like a function that needs a refocus. Everyone needs time to reflect, answer calls and emails and have lunch -- particularly those in HR. How can you help others when you have no time to reflect yourself?
Step one is to make sure we aren’t choking the meaning that is already there. This sounds simple yet it takes a concerted effort. Watch how experiments with adults building Lego provides insight into compensation, motivation and meaning in work.
Why? Because the economy has turned around. When business is slow we lay people off and hold off promoting people. Indications are that this has disadvantaged our diverse (women, minorities) groups more. I have seen this as more and more of my clients have asked me about the “diversity issue” in recent weeks. I just read a recent report from PAR (Project for Attorney Retention in DC) that seems to confirm that we have taken a step backward.
“San Francisco, June 3, 2011 – There is not a lot to celebrate when it comes to the gender composition of the new partner classes. According to a survey of the new partner class of 2011 released by the Project for Attorney Retention (PAR), law firms slid two percentage points in promotions of their women attorneys since last year, 32% compared to 34% in 2010.” http://attorneyretention.org/
When the economy improves, we get back on track with our diversity initiatives so this year many organizations have a lot of catching up to do. How do they catch-up? Give an extra “leg up” to your diverse groups by coaching them as individuals and in teams. Figure out what these people need to do to be promoted and give them a coach to help them close that gap. Then take a leap of faith and put them in the more senior job. The coach can help them be successful even if they have a few gaps. There are few better uses of coaching.
A 6 minute video (ish) that describes the marshmallow experiment. It promotes the idea of using a prototype approach to teamwork and design (build it, get feedback, refine, build again…). I think teams can take the same approach to building a meeting format that works for them. Try it, see if it works, refine it, and try again.
This slideshow is excellent. I have never seen such a complete picture of how to deal with a difficult conversation. I particularly like slides 5 and 6 but it is all excellent.
Feel like you’re back in your elementary schoolyard, being pushed and taunted by the school bully? But really, you’re in your office and the person making your work life miserable is a co-worker or boss. That person appears to be advancing his or her position at your expense. Perhaps they engage in behavior that is unnecessarily rude, aggressive and even debilitating to you. Some of these behaviors might be: screaming at you in front of people; repeatedly ignoring or rudely dismissing your ideas; badmouthing you to others; deliberately ignoring you or putting you out of the loop; being consistently judgmental, indiscreet and untimely; or blaming you for issues and problems.
Just like that school-yard bully, an office bully is someone who offloads their anger and fear on a selected victim in an attempt to maintain or gain control and push forward their self-interest. And many people find that the harder they work, or the more they display a strong sense of ethics and try to “do the right thing”, the more they are targeted by the bully.
Unfortunately, it’s not uncommon for a workplace bully to be rewarded for aggressive behavior. Some people might call him/her the person who tells-it-like-it-is, or the person who cuts to the heart of the matter, and this praise makes it harder for you to stand up to the bully or even do something about the situation. But you should do something…here are a few tips:
Park your emotion. This is not about you. It is about the other person. The more you let that person get to you, the more power they will have over you. This is the most difficult and most important tip. Take a deep breath and visualize pushing the emotion you are feeling out of your body.
Don’t react. If you have truly parked your emotion, you should be able to ignore the bad behavior. Like your mother always told you, “If you don’t react, they will get bored and go and bully someone else.”
Avoid confrontation where possible. When you can, work over email or voicemail with this person. If you don’t need them in a meeting, don’t invite them. For heaven’s sake, don’t go to lunch with them!
Bring a buddy. It is tougher to gang up on two people. If the bully still behaves badly, you will have a witness.
Stand up for yourself. You’ll notice that we put this last. We think it is better to diffuse a bully than to fight with one. If you are forced to defend yourself:
Be factual. Keep your message simple. “I completed the project on time and on budget.”
Don’t justify your position. It reduces your power and draws you into the argument.
Be prepared to repeat your message. You may have to repeat it several times in order to be heard.
Be prepared to walk away. Keep your interaction with the bully short and focused.
Don’t bully back. Don’t yell or engage in personal attacks. Stay professional.
There are many helpful web resources on how to deal with bullies. Many of these are aimed at school-aged kids, but the advice shared translates well to the workplace. Check out http://kidshealth.org/kid/feeling/emotion/bullies.html for more info on bullying.
The last IMPACT blog dealt with the downward spiral of those never-ending arguments, but let’s be clear: disagreement in the workplace is not a bad thing. Conflict can be good if it is done in a non-harmful way—with the parties involved disagreeing without being disagreeable. In fact, conflict is often an essential part of good team interaction and good decision-making. A team environment in which team-members sit around simply nodding their heads in synchronization is often an unhealthy one.
According to Team Management Profiles, one of the psycho-metric assessments we like to use with teams we work with, “innovating is a key aspect of teamwork and involves challenging the way things are currently done.” This does not mean that teams should regularly reinvent every process, it just means that effective teams sometimes need to challenge the status-quo. And doing so can often lead to some tough and tense discussions or fights.
Further, when a team is making an important decision, considering disparate viewpoints and allowing space for the team to challenge conventional thinking can help the team arrive at a better final decision.
Whether the conflict is in a one-on-one or team situation, the important part is to fight fair. It may be a cliché, but it’s one worth repeating. Here are a few tips to help ensure constructive, rather than divisive, conflict:
Agree on the ground rules: It is crucial to ensure that team-members have the space to share their idea or viewpoint without being cut-down or personally attacked by others. Here are some suggestions for ground rules a team could agree on:
Park your emotions. Don’t make it personal. When disagreeing, focus on the content of the idea, not attacking the person who introduced it. Once someone at the table feels hurt or disrespected, he/she won’t be listening, they’ll be defending.
Rein in rude non-verbal behavior (loud sighing, eye rolling, etc).
Avoid invalidating other team-member’s opinions. Each person is entitled to their own opinion or perspective. Rather than making an invalidating statement like, “You don’t really think that, do you?” or “You can’t be serious,” try, “Help me better understand your perspective.”
Be factual. Avoid opinions and stick to facts
Be helpful. Rather than just point out problems, suggest possible solutions.
Allow time for team-members to blue sky. Make it known that out-of-left-field-type ideas are welcome. Brainstorming can be a powerful tool!
Make sure everyone has airtime. Use a facilitator trick: keep track of who has contributed and who hasn’t then draw out the person who hasn’t spoken up yet.
So next time you sense a conflict brewing within the team, don’t throw up the white flag. Let the disagreement unfold, adhere to the ground rules and see where it leads.
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