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Want To Improve Your Performance?

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Did you know one of my favorite techniques to teach people is “Ask, don’t tell”?  (My clients call it “ADT”.)  Sounds funny, doesn’t it?  It means “ask the person a sincere question; don’t just keep telling them your opinion.”

When you are trying to help someone see your point-of-view, when you’re trying to get someone to see beyond their own opinion, or to agree with you, asking a question, then another question that builds on their answer, is a quick, clever, and very polite way to get their minds to start opening up, and maybe changing.

ADT is also one of my go-to methods when I absolutely must calm down and get my frustration or anxiety under control.  Pausing to ask a question is what does the trick.

If you’d like to strengthen your self-awareness, self-leadership, and resilience, “Ask them; don’t tell them” helps form every one of those skills in you.  Pausing to form a question means you’ve paused, and we know how essential the pause is in bringing your best cognitive brain into the conversation.  Pausing helps you settle yourself into a calm, aware state and to take a micro-second to restate to yourself what you are best intending happen in this conversation.  Pausing is an essential self-leadership technique, and “Ask, don’t tell” (ADT) is what to do when you pause.

Now, three new potent questions have come on the scene.  Imagine a crucial conversation with your boss after a client meeting and you’re asking for feedback….. imagine a crucial conversation with a co-worker when you’re earnestly – finally – trying hard to cultivate teamwork. Imagine yourself asking these questions:

  • “How can I do better next time?”
  • “What am I doing that I don’t even know I’m doing?”
  • “What am I not doing that I don’t see?”

Those potent, beautiful questions work just as well with your husband or your estranged sister…

These questions are courtesy of Sheryl Sandberg, in her 2013 book Lean In, page 83. I recommend all the other pages too.

Have you had a chance to read Sandberg‘s book?  What do you think of her three questions?  Please leave a comment.

Most Important Step To Resolve Conflict

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Do you have conflict at work? Do you wish people understood things more clearly, and more often from your point of view? Then here’s your most important first step.

The Conflict

At home it’s time to do a semi-major housecleaning. Every time Handsome Husband (HH)  and I clean house together I get a little agitated. I make a list of things for HH to do for us: clean the porch furniture, wash windows on the outside, clear up the garage, get the cobwebs, wash the doormats, etc. He does his list willingly and cheerfully, but I wish he’d do it more quickly. Doesn’t he know his list is a lot shorter and less complicated than my list? Can’t he tell I’d like him to go faster, then help me?

Resolving The Conflict – a Simple Example

He cheerfully does his list. I, not so cheerfully, do mine. I act agitated, full of conflict. Why is there conflict? Because I want him to finish his shorter list and help me; that is my objective for him. He has his own objective. He doesn’t know I have one for him.

Objectives We Do Not Share

A wise person once said, “Conflict arises when people are in pursuit of objectives they do not share.” Bingo! We are pursuing two different objectives. He doesn’t even know I have one for him.  No wonder I’m muttering.  I haven’t told him my objective for him let alone asked him to agree with it.  We are in pursuit of objectives we do not share.

“Share” Doesn’t Just Mean “Tell”

Please note, “share” in this axiom doesn’t mean “tell”, as in, “let me share this with you”.  In this axiom, “share” means to “hold the same opinion”, to “hold in common”.  HH and I were in pursuit of objectives we do not share, do not hold in common. Next time, I’ll have to own up to the fact that I have an objective for him (sometimes we hold these objectives subconsciously and have to force them out into the light).  I have to ask him to agree to my objective for him. He might not, so then we’ll use fact-finding, give-and-take, trade-offs, compromise, prioritization, scheduling, “ask, don’t tell” and other methods of coming to agreement.

Conflicts At Work

This is a simple example of different objectives remaining unspoken, unagreed-to.  But aren’t a lot of the conflicts at work just as simple? Conflicts caused by different objectives, remaining unspoken?

The objectives themselves may not be simple, getting agreement may not be simple, but it’s simple to see why you’re in conflict. You want two completely different things, but you haven’t discovered that yet.  The conflict is not personal, it’s not vindictive, the other person’s not stupid or hard-headed.  Rather, you are in pursuit of objectives you do not share.

You Can Resolve the Conflict

A friend of mine says “sometimes we’ll be the only ones in the room who know what’s going on”.  Do you see how that advice can work here?  Really look at the conflicts around you and you’ll see it’s the objectives that are in conflict, not the people.

Discover The Objectives

Have everyone in the conflict speak their objective, namely, their preferred outcome and preferred method.  Everyone will be surprised at how different the objectives are.  Everyone might also be surprised at how easily and well the objectives can be melded together and all satisfied once they’re spoken aloud.  It’s a particular pleasure when one objective influences another, makes it clearer, asks hard questions, or makes the other one easier to achieve.  It’s a pleasure to watch the two people in conflict have a lightbulb moment.

What If They Can’t Be Resolved?

Some objectives can’t be melded together or won’t be satisfied by the final agreement, but perhaps they can be deferred and satisfied later. Or pursued in parallel by another group. Or more fact-finding will show one’s unnecessary or redundant.  One thing is for sure:  the ways to satisfy the objectives can only be found when the objectives are spoken.

Please remember it’s often true that, when two people are in conflict, all it means is that they are in pursuit of objectives they do not share. Now I’m ready to get HH to agree to hurry his list and help me with mine.

I’ve seen this first and most important step to conflict resolution work very effectively at the office and at home.  Do you think it would work at your office?  Please click “comment” above and tell us how you would put it to use. 

What do you think will be the best way to make sure others speak their objectives out loud?

 

Do Your Action Steps Include Throwing Up?

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My tightly-wound coaching client had a problem that she was just now bringing up.  Like many tightly-wound people, she has trouble making decisions at home, including decisions about organizing her house.

Personal Leadership Works At Home Too

She was doing well at reaching the work goals she’d set during our coaching; she firmly grasped the logic behind taking “baby steps” toward goals and was baby-stepping her way to success at work.  Home disorganization was another matter; she’d never tackled it.  She told me she had a walkway through her living room, stacked with papers and stuff on either side of the walkway.  She decided to start with the kitchen…

The 8-Minute Life Saver

She knew my coaching suggestions for taking on big projects in small, sometimes very small, chunks (“baby steps“).  The crucial ingredient I add to that technique is to work on the baby step for only eight minutes.  For eight minutes, you may work on the task, or think about working on the task, or stare at the wall; it doesn’t matter.  After eight minutes, you may walk away from the task.  You can go on working past eight minutes if you wish, but you don’t have to.  You’ll work on it again tomorrow for eight minutes.  If you go on working on it today, you may do so only after asking yourself, out loud, “Shall I work on this a while longer?”  and answering “Yes”.   The easy “8-Minute Technique” really works.

Courage and Grit Can Come In 8 Minutes

She decided to work on just the junk drawer in the kitchen; she’d open it and work on it for eight minutes.  She opened the drawer, looked down at it, and promptly threw up in it.  That day she got to walk away before her eight minutes were up.  (She cleaned up the mess later but wasn’t required to deal with the junk; she’d already done her assignment for the day, rather spectacularly.)

The next day she opened the drawer, looked down, and threw up in the drawer.  She walked away and cleaned it up later.

The next day she opened the drawer.  She emptied it.  She completely organized it.  She put away items that belonged elsewhere, and put the duplicates in the box in her hall closet marked “Donate”.  (A baby step she’d done earlier.)  I congratulated her.  She moved on to organizing everything else, using the same steps.

Grit Means We Endure

The courage and resilience to do the task were already inside my dear client.  They had to be; they didn’t just materialize in two days.  But she had to activate her courage and resilience.  She had to send them a message that it was time to show up.  She did that by enduring.

We can only benefit from our own courage and resilience when we endure.  My client endured; she returned to her frightening task three times, then watched her own courage change her life.

Courage and resilience are both marked by endurance and grit.  Endurance and grit share a part of their definition: “the firm resolve to stand, and go on standing, in the face of aggravations and fears.”

Courage and resilience are inside you too.  And not just about the kitchen junk drawer.

It doesn’t matter if your baby steps include throwing up.  My baby steps used to include a minute of tears from the fears mounded up inside me.

But it didn’t matter. What matters are courage and resilience, endurance and grit.  What matters are that my client and you show a “firm resolve to stand, and go on standing, in the face of aggravations and fears.”

You can do this.  Just ask my client Sharon.

What do you think of the 8-Minute Technique?   What kinds of Baby Steps have you used?  Please comment. We can all use the help!

 

 

 

 

 

 

How To Motivate and Engage Your Team

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This is the story of how I did it wrong.  I was a Program Manager and Business Developer, selling engineering projects right and left, choosing Task Managers and task teams, and having kick-off meetings.  I opened kick-off meetings explaining the project and its importance to the client.  I thought that motivated my team members.

You Can’t Motivate That Way

I also thought they were motivated by the same thing I was, namely, the business of our business:  find and develop clients, develop and sell projects, do high-quality work, provide high-quality solutions, make profits, grow the company and its teams, everyone gets promoted and paid.  Repeat.  I thought they knew that as intimately as I did and that it motivated them, as it did me.  But I don’t know for sure that it motivated them; I never asked them.

It Gets Worse

What I was doing was insufficient for motivating my team.  Journal articles told me I was doing a bad job, but work was coming in so fast, times were so exciting, that I hoped time and the amount of work would make everyone happy and would cure everything.  Or that I would figure it out later, when there was more time.

Lessons Learned About Motivating

I’ll cut right to the chase and tell you what I have learned, what I know now for sure.

#1 – I should have asked them individually what would motivate them to do their best work.  I couldn’t guarantee I would deliver everything they wanted in every project, but my record with them would have been a lot better than it was.

#2 – On any individual project, may I recommend that you tailor the project work so that it delivers one or more of the following benefits to your task team members.  Be sure and express the project work in the terms below.  In broad strokes then, and in order from “probably not that motivating to me as a person, but it’s sort of cool” to “very motivating to me”, explain at the kick-off meeting how their work on the project:

  1. Solves a crucial problem for the client
  2. Provides them job security if that’s what they wish; profitable work secures their job and allows them to be promoted
  3. Solves a problem that hasn’t been solved before
  4. Solves a problem that is so difficult  it will require their very, very best work; it will seriously stretch them
  5. Gives them the chance to lead task-level work now, and lead large programs sooner
  6. Gives them the chance to work one-on-one with you, in a mentor-mentee relationship
  7. Creates new, portable, resume-building knowledge and accomplishments for them
  8. Provides them collaboration they’ll enjoy and learn from
  9. Allows them to be part of something larger than they are, that they can be proud of, and that they could not have produced on their own

Motivate Them By What’s In It For Them

We know now that generational differences dictate some of what motivates our teammates, and my list reflects some generational differences you can choose from.  After your interviews with your individual teammates, you can point out to them what other benefits to them the project offers.  Look at Item 2 and Items 4 – 9; unlike in decades past, we are motivating some employees entirely by what’s in it for them.   There’s nothing wrong with that; the motivation still brings out their best work and leads to successful project outcomes.

On Their Own Terms

I don’t have to tell you how important it is to engage our teammates on their own terms.  I don’t have to tell you that most of them are undaunted by the prospect of finding work at other firms if you fail to engage them.

Engaging them on their own terms, especially when it’s exciting material like Items 4 – 9 in the list above, is exciting for us too.  A lot more exciting than the boring stuff I used to try that didn’t work anyway.

Communicate On Their Own Terms Too

Engage your teammates on their own terms, and have conversations with them on their own terms too.  I have my friend L.L. to thank for tutoring me to not mind it when I only see the tops of my colleagues’ heads when I speak with them.  She reminds me that people now find it correct and efficient, not rude, to interrupt me to answer my question from their phone data before I finish speaking.  She says I should welcome the answers, and I’ve decided to.

You Decide

Have you decided to motivate and communicate with your team only in ways meaningful to them, even if the style is very different from your own?

What’s your best tip about motivating or communicating with your teammates? 

Please comment above and tell the rest of us.  We can sure use the help!

 

 

 

Do You Know This One Basic Goal Of A Leader?

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A leader’s most important goal and most important action, in my opinion, is to maximize her free time, her discretionary time.  That’s right.  To increase the time in her day that has no obligations on it, except what she puts there herself.

What Distinguishes Leaders

Maximizing her discretionary time and choosing what to put into that time – the actions, the thinking, the drilling down into causes and cures, the setting of strategies to effect cure – is what distinguishes a leader from everyone else.  It’s what can distinguish you from everyone else.

The Ability To Do The Hard Work

Here’s another way to express it:  what divides leaders from everyone else is what I call “doing the hard work”.  It’s thinking.  That’s right – thinking.  That’s the “hard work”.  Thinking about making advances and making change.  Thinking of, then writing down plans that are truly workable and implementable, whose results are easy to measure.  Plans that practically make the team get up and ask for a kick-off meeting so they can get to work.  That’s a leader.

Who Will Give You The Time?

No one.  No one’s going to give you the time to formulate plans like those.  You take the time, literally wrest it from the hands of those who want your time.  You carve it out, make more of it, maximize it.  The company and shareholders are paying you to make time to think.  That is what a leader does.

Do you wish your leaders would do more of that?  Do you look forward to doing it more and more as you become a stronger leader?  Please “comment” and share.

How To Stick To A Plan for “For One Day Straight”

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Making and sticking to a new habit has to be one of the hardest things on earth, isn’t it?  I have something that just might help.

I enjoy the site and the app Don’t Break The Chain ; you track your performance on a new habit against your goal and the app keeps track for you, with reminders and encouragement along the way.  When I did miles on the treadmill for several days, the app said, “You’ve done the right thing for 4 days straight.”   I love that.

Then I Missed A Day

I missed a day, but went back to the treadmill the next day.  When I was done, the app said, “You have done the right thing for one day straight.”  I didn’t like that as much; I liked “4 days straight” better.

Still, the phrase “one day straight” made me smile.  You can see why this site works.

“For One Day Straight”

There is a lot to be said for performing better at your new habit “for one day straight”.  One whole day.  Straight.  Here’s to you and to me for doing the right thing “for one day straight.”  Let’s try for that again tomorrow.

I love this app.  How do you make and stick with better habits?

 

Is This Fear, or Is It Only Caution?

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Words and labels have power over us.  Everywhere we read about overcoming fear.  People take quizzes to see if it’s fear of failure or fear of success they suffer from.

What If It’s Not Fear At All?

What if it’s not fear?  What if you’re not anxious, not even nervous, about the big opportunity or the big sale?  What if you are merely cautious?

It’s OK to Have a Doubt

What if you simply have doubts?  Do we even remember – in these days of “fear of failure” – what it feels like to have an honest doubt?  A doubt that we could take time to examine.

What If…?

What if you simply doubt that you’re ready for the major presentation?  Doubt that you have the information you need to go ahead with the meeting?  Put like that, could it be that doubt is alerting you that you have more work to do?  Maybe your doubt is alerting you that you’re short of information and about to get caught with your pants down.

I Like Friends Who Alert Me To Danger

Doubt is a good thing.  By discovering more information and making better plans we “put our doubts to rest”.  That’s a good thing.  Examine your doubt and start to fill in what’s lacking.

Don’t Stay There Too Long

Don’t take forever getting the missing information and making a better plan.  Taking too long is going to kill your forward motion and drain the energy right out of you.  Take just long enough to “put your doubts to rest.”

Here’s The Plan

When you’re tempted to read another article about “fear of …”, spend the time instead examining whether you have doubts about the data, the objective, the plan, the people involved.  Pinpoint whether something is in doubt, and exactly what about it is in doubt.

You’re Not Afraid

Maybe your plan, not your ability, was in doubt.  It’s not your ability that’s in doubt, and you’re not afraid.  Your plan’s just weak.  How shall you make your plan stronger?

I hope this new idea gives you insight.  Please click “comment” and describe where you might use it to beat out the fears you thought you had.

 

 

 

The Single Best Way to Discover Your Client’s Deepest Real Need

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Are you ready to make scary-big sales?  Would you like it to be easier to take scary-big risks?

To make scary-big sales, you have to discover – and prove you can solve – your client’s deepest real need.  To make the discovery, you have to be in fairly frequent, friendly communication with your client.  “Fairly frequent and friendly communication” tells us that relationship selling is a process that requires first that you grow a relationship.

There has to be intimacy

In my opinion, electronic communication alone won’t generate the kind of customer relationship and intimacy that makes the client want to trust you and tell you what he/she really needs this project or product to achieve.  You have to know the deeper need that is beyond the stated requirements in the RFP/RFQ/bid package.

The best way to start and maintain a client relationship that proves you are there to solve real needs:

Be there (physically).

Be sincerely interested.

Be absolutely credible.

Be prepared with two or three good honest questions.

Ask one question, then…

Be quiet.

Believe me.  This works.

Do you think this could work for you?  Are you willing to try?   Please click “Comment” and let me know.

 

 

 

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