My conversations this month have – as always – focused on communication in leadership; and specifically, the challenge of getting the balance right between challenge and support when it comes to driving performance from our team.   We live in a world where talent is hard to find, harder to recruit and even harder still to retain.  This commercial reality in a world trying to live with Covid-19 adds an additional layer of complexity to engaging our team to deliver, and my time this past month has been spent with a fashion brand that is a global powerhouse in the industry, who is wrestling with such a challenge.

Specifically, the focus of my discussions with senior leaders who need to take the performance of their team to the next level has been consistent: how to ensure that we empower our teams to deliver, rather than enable bad behaviour?  What’s the bad behaviour specifically I hear you wonder? ‘I don’t know’, ‘I haven’t got time’, ‘I don’t know where to get that’, ‘I tried that and it didn’t work’ type responses to dealing with issues, requests, challenges.  Have you come across it at all, I wonder?

The difficulty for leaders everywhere is that in the race to be supportive, empathic, helpful and motivating, we can fall prey to the sin of allowing our team to ‘do a YP’.  My first ever boss described a ‘YP’ as ‘your problem’.  So, when our teams do have an issue, challenge or difficulty, they want to share it with you in order for you to ‘fix’ it.  That’s ‘doing a YP’.  Now their problem is your problem.  And they look forward to hearing from you when you’ve resolved it.

But, isn’t that our job?  Aren’t we there to do precisely that?  Make their lives easier?  Sort problems, resolve issues, galvanize and motivate our team to step up, rather than have them wasting time on issues which you can easily sort?

Beware.  Yes, we need to be flexible, dependent on the ability and willingness of our teams to complete the task (we’ve all come across situational leadership), however, engaging our teams is all about enabling them to become more confident and confident to resolve such issues themselves.

Our communication – if it is to be effective – means getting the balance right between ‘tell’ and ‘ask’.  Being able to ask brilliant, crisp questions that explore what they’ve learned, scrutinize what they’ve done, explore their ideas are to address the challenge, identify who can help them, brainstorm options, ground them in metrics of success and agree a date by which we’ll catch up on what they’ve done to gauge progress.

Whoever is asking the questions is controlling the conversation.  Pure coaching is the secret sauce of leadership communication…woven into the discussion seamlessly, effortlessly.  All of us are much more invested in making our ideas work, rather than trying someone else’s, and that’s how we ensure that we empower our teams, rather than enable bad behaviour.

Until next time….

I’ve been working with three global brands this month, talking about the concept of selling ideas, leading change and delivering a different result. 

There are so many skills and strategies which sit behind taking an idea, convincing a business to invest in it, and then driving lasting adoption over time… there’s a lot of ground to cover and a lot of communication skills to master.

The focus of our discussions has been right at the beginning of leading this change, and the first place things tend to fall over is right at the start.  Why?  Because whilst the good news is that whilst we have an idea to address an issue, the bad news is that it can drive down the scrutiny with which we identify what exactly our idea will help address.  We’re so excited and enthusiastic about what we propose, that we quickly, readily, repeatedly revert to talking about how marvellous our idea is; because that’s what will persuade, right?

Wrong.  Unfortunately.

In my experience, no matter how brilliant our idea may be, the chances are that someone, somewhere in our business has – or is currently – trying to address the issue.  The challenge, or should I say the necessity, is to demonstrate absolute rigour.

What’s the problem we’re trying to solve?  The simplicity of this question betrays the power of it. Are we talking symptoms or root cause?  What’s changed?  What’s the value to our customers?  To our business? What’s the return on investment as a result?  Why is this a problem?  Why now?  Who is it a problem for?  What’s the scope of this problem?  Does it exist everywhere or only in some places?  Who’s tried to fix it before?  What have we learned as a result?

These are questions which we need to ask repeatedly to stakeholders in the business in order to shape our thinking around the problem which our idea will solve, and we definitely need to adapt, improvise and amend our thinking around the problem which our idea will solve. 

Problems are never what they appear… and never what they become in relation to garnering support from others to invest in idea.  

Selling ideas starts with defining the problem you want to solve… so in terms of rigour and scrutiny, remember to ask ‘what’s the problem we’re trying to solve?’  Repeatedly.

Until next time….

When was the last time someone started talking… and as you listened, you wished they would just stop?  I’ve been working with both clients and colleagues this month and I am reminded about the need to be clear, precise and concise.  Very recently, I have partnered with a colleague in my industry who simply talks far too much in their answers.  They talk about topics which don’t relate to the question, they repeat everything, quickly and they just keep on talking… it’s actually painful and frustrating to experience. Too.  Much.  Information.  TMI.  Poor listening.  Lack of curiosity.  Really poor skills. 

The research from the world of behaviour economics supports a different approach, and we absolutely have to dial up our skills in this area – especially in a remote working environment that is here to stay.  Harvard Business Review published fascinating research in 2016 that I use regularly with my clients to encourage talking less.  The first twenty seconds of speaking typically means we have the ear of our audience.  As pack animals, we actually like talking and during this period, we can get comfortable and start to relax into our point.  Isn’t that great?  Well, beware.  If we keep talking for a further twenty seconds, there is a very real danger that our audience will think that we’re talking too much.  Beyond forty seconds?  Then steady on; it’s highly likely that we’ve lost the room.

Being better means:

1) Gathering your thoughts before starting to speak.
2) Organizing your message into three parts.
3) Pacing your delivery so that the audience can understand what is being said.
4) Knowing when to stop.

I’ll take my cue, right there.

Until next time….

How long does it take before you stop listening to others at work?

Data published in the past two years suggests that our ability to get (and then keep) the audience’s attention when we’re trying to influence them has never been harder. Two years of working remotely has made our ability to ‘switch off’ listening commonplace – and it is brutal. Seconds have become mere moments… sentences have become a few words, before we stop engaging with the person speaking because we simply don’t relate to any relevance in what they’re saying.

My conversations with clients this month focused on answering the ‘why should I care?’ question fast and right up front. If we don’t get this right; then everything we say afterwards doesn’t matter…..because our audience is no longer listening.

Common mistakes include demonstrating the validity of our work by explaining the rigour of our process or providing an overly lengthy description of the background to our project or our idea, demonstrate our credibility by a too long introduction, or get overly excited by our propositions (because they’re fabulous).

We’re social animals and we’re pack animals, and we like to talk. So, we think this helps. Without making context clear and relevant, then it just does not work.

There’s a reason why Simon Sinek’s ‘Start with Why’ – How Great Leaders Inspire Action TED talk is one of the most watched of all time. He says, “people don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it”. If our audience doesn’t immediately understand the answer to the ‘why should I care?’ question, then we will lose them. Everything after that doesn’t matter.

So how can you get their attention right at the start? Rhetorical questions, relevant statistics, compelling facts, metaphor, analogy, voice of the customer, soundbites all work. But they must relate to what your audience cares about and, what you’re trying to achieve through the conversation.

What do you need to dial up in order to get your audience’s attention today?

Until next time….

As the two year anniversary approaches of this global pandemic – which remains far from over – my time so far this year has been absorbed with loss….not only loss associated with the generation defining experience of Covid-19, but also loss of good people: from our teams, our company, our industry.  ‘The Great Resignation’ appears to be well under way and organisations everywhere seem to be focused on finding, hiring, developing and keeping their best people.  Added to that is the challenge of wanting to encourage people back into the office (dependent on where we are in the world), and there is a wide variety of views regarding employees’ level of excitement at this prospect.

The beginning of year represents new beginnings, reflections, hopes, dreams and aspirations… and now – as we charge through March – it feels as it always does – that being that the year is starting to speed up very quickly.

So, what does this means for leaders everywhere who are responsible for engaging their teams to deliver, in spite of everything that has happened?

Well, if we haven’t already; it’s time to talk.  Really talk with our people about what they want, need, aspire to and dream about achieving as we move through 2022.  In this fast paced, distraction filled world in which we all operate, as leaders we may think that we do this well, often and usefully… the challenge here is genuinely a reflective one: do we?

We live and work in a highly distracted environment.  We kid ourselves that we can ‘multi-task’ (no such thing by the way; we simply task switch).  As leaders, we’re in the business of relationships… so how to do this well?

Questions on which to base a meaningful, useful, connected discussion include:

How are you?  (And mean it).
What are you enjoying at the moment?
What aren’t you enjoying?
How do you feel about the prospect of returning to the office?
What would make that prospect work for you?
What’s next for you in terms of your career?
How can I help?
What do you need from me?

We join companies but leave managers; the point is to start talking.  Really talking.  Now.

Until next time….

We all talk too much.  And the science proves it.

I was tempted to have those two sentences be the total content for my newsletter this month.  However, I will elaborate (just a little).

My conversations with clients recently have focused on brevity.  When we need to make a point, answer a question, handle a challenge, offer a perspective, explain something….how can we say less?  Be crisper?  Get to the point faster?  And know when to stop talking?  As social animals we are hard wired to communicate.  This is how we navigate and negotiate our way around our world, and it works. 

However, the challenge and the contradiction in this hybrid world is that our capacity to pay attention to all this chatter is almost zero.  Okay, not quite zero, but not far from it.  When others are speaking, we can decide very quickly to just stop.  Stop listening.  Stop caring.  Stop interacting.So how to be more effective?  Think of it like a traffic light system.  This glorious analogy came from Harvard Business research, and I attribute it to them.  We have a green light for the first 20 seconds.  Our audience likes us if what we’re saying is relevant and serving others in the conversation.  We have an amber light for the next 20 seconds.  The risk is dramatically increasing that our audience will lose interest.  Take heed!  We have a red light at 40 seconds.  No matter how exciting, engaging, thrilling, relevant, dynamic, and fabulous we think what we’re saying is….just stop.  Otherwise, we’re in severe danger of boring, frustrating, disengaging and dissuading our audience completely.  Our impact is zero; our ‘wins’ at the start of our message have turned into losses.  We said too much.

Until next time….

August is a month which signals that beginnings and ends of seasons are around the corner.  Wherever you are in the world, change is on its way – not just in the turning of summer into autumn and winter into spring, but also – COVID allowing – in terms of the very real prospect of returning to our offices and those of our clients more often that we have done over the past eighteen months.

The ‘hybrid leader’ – namely one who runs teams with individuals who are both in the office and working from home – is what we all will become. 

Putting to one side legal, social and cultural considerations around this whole topic for a mere moment, I have been talking with leaders about what this means for our ability to engage and communicate with our teams, the business and our customers.

What’s changing?  Some of us may think simply ‘nothing’.  We operated a hybrid business model pre-Covid.  True.  Except now we have Covid.  Forever.  And with this global health pandemic has come profound change to the way we think about, connect with, deliver at and get joy from work.  A pulse survey of eleven global brands with whom I’ve worked this month has revealed that all of them are extremely worried about their top talent becoming flight risks, about re-igniting customer relationships that have gone quiet, and re-hiring and re-engaging existing employees. This is the strong and consistent thread of challenge coming from every single one of them.

So what does this mean for us as leaders and influencers?  As always, leadership is all about communication and influence.  The concept of the hybrid leader has been much on my mind in 2021, and so over the coming months, I will be exploring how our ability to persuade and influence others needs to step up given the necessity as a leader of demonstrating empathy, exquisite listening, curiosity, humility, agility, courage to make mistakes and flexibility.  As never before.

I have yet to meet a leader who doesn’t think they have these skills already.  However our challenge is how we will need to take these up yet another level to meaningful convey them; be it remotely or face-to-face.

Look out for more information here and across my social media every month and let’s start the conversation.

In the meantime, I have a question for you: are you ready to become a hybrid leader? 

Until next time….

Recent research would suggest that turning our cameras off in remote meetings leads to us being less tired and more productive.  These results came after a four week experiment found that individuals felt more free to ‘focus less on the face of others and more on the content of the meeting’.

I have been talking with my clients about this exact topic a lot this month, and reference to this research has been used as an ‘aha, now I can turn my camera off!’ Sounds great, right?

WRONG!

It’s the wrong solution for this particular problem.  Turning our cameras off makes us less influential and less impactful.  Rapport lowers, mis-trust increases and – let’s face it – we all know those with ‘cameras off’ could easily mean that they are doing something else for some/part/all of the time that they’re not visible to us.

Being able to see the impact of our communication on others is an incredibly powerful tool to modifying, adapting and enhancing our influence.

Yes, I agree that we want to be less tired and more productive.  Turning our cameras off is not the way to do it.  

We jump on calls to build relationships, discuss options, solve problems, lead change, galvanise our people, make decisions, agree actions, secure commitments and genuinely make our workloads easier.  Being an influential leader means being a visible leader.  Always remember that trust increases, rapport increases, dialogue increases when we are on camera.

So, instead of turning off our cameras off can I suggest:

1) Shorten all 1 hour meetings to 45 minutes and 30 minute meetings to 25 (with a hard stop).

2) Review your calendars regularly to remove meetings which are unnecessary, low value, repetitive and too long.

3) Use other media to communicate.  Some issues don’t need a meeting at all.

4) Sharpen your influencing skills.  In the absence of being crisp, concise and compelling, take one guess as to what the easiest response is from our audience – who are not convinced by us.  Yep, you’ve guessed it… the answer is… ANOTHER MEETING.  If we are more persuasive, more compelling, more able to reach people, engage people and change people… we don’t need turn our cameras on at all because we don’t need another remote meeting.

Until next time….

Delivering results through others means getting the balance right between challenge and support.  My time this month has been focused on how to practically get this right – which is hard enough to do anyway, without the sixteen months and counting of a global health crisis which has challenged us all as never before.  As leaders who drive results through others:

• How do we conduct those more difficult discussions about below par performance?
• How do we constructively challenge those who’ve had a lot on their plate and where we’ve been both supportive and sympathetic, but now they really need to step it up?
• How do we encourage, enthuse and engage our teams to lean in, dig deep and deliver more when we fear that they are a flight risk and ready to leave our business?
• How do we help our team see the value of returning to the office environment positively, rather than as a veiled threat to future career prospects if they insist on staying at home?

The list of scenarios is endless, and the challenge around getting it right is great, so where precisely we start?  Endless behavioural science research confirms that distance builds distrust, and that the remote environment can have a damaging impact on the quality of our professional relationships across teams and time zones.  These conversations would be hard enough if we were face to face, but now we need to do this remotely.  How on earth do we get this right?

I have found myself returning to the power of Kim Scott’s work, who wrote a superb book called ‘Radical Candour: How To Be A Kick Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity’.  If you’ve not read it; then buy a copy and do so now.  It’s on audio, so grab it that way if this is your preference.  It is simply exquisite.  Scott talks about a simple concept with profound impact: how to care personally whilst challenging directly.  As leaders she is straightforward and practical in how to get started and offers a simple and effective framework to critique where we might tend to operate at the moment.  The area within the four box quadrant that has taken my time and attention this month is the spectacularly labelled ‘ruinous empathy’.  This month, I have been working with sales leaders at a global brand who need to challenge their teams to change their behaviour, learn more quickly and adapt faster to deliver better performance.  Tenure, expertise, skill set is no protection against this requirement and whilst caring personally is in abundance; challenging directly is not.  This is ‘ruinous empathy’ because we don’t want to damage the relationship or cause offence and yet leaders everywhere must fight against it.  Why?  Because ultimately, it’s not fair or helpful to the other person to fail to tell them things which they would be better off knowing.

Are you guilty of ‘ruinous empathy’?  Who in your professional world is overdue ‘radical candour’ for which they, the team, their customers and the business would all benefit if you took your communication skills up to the next level?  If our relationships are as strong with our team as we like to think they are then now is the time to step up.  Care personally, and challenge directly.

Until next time….