Liane Davey's Blog, page 10

How to Be a Good Team Player

 

One of the more infuriating pieces of feedback that people receive is, “You’re not a team player.” That’s actually not feedback; that’s judgment. We are judged and evaluated in ways that are so squishy, slippery, and unhelpful. What can you do if you’ve been told you’re not a good team player? Let’s go through a few things you can try, to be perceived differently.

Alignment – Focus on Your Unique Value

The first thing is to make sure you’ve aligned yourself, your actions, your investment of time, and your energy, with the things that matter to your teammates or your manager. One of the reasons you might get called a poor team player is that you’re marching to the beat of your own drum. You’re doing what you think is important, but you’re not contributing to the things your team or organization needs from you. Ask your manager questions like:

What is the most important thing you want me paying attention to?What’s the value you’re counting on my role to add?What are the three top ways I can add value for this team?

Then, look at your calendar and say, “To what extent is my time and my energy aligned to the things my team most needs from me?” Make sure you’re focusing on utilizing your unique value. I find people look at work and they think, “Well, I can add value to that. I know that. I can be helpful there.” They end up getting into the weeds, spending time on things that don’t require their unique value, and aren’t what their team is counting on them to be doing. Really, really, really important: If you’ve been told you’re not a good team player, make sure that your energy, your attention, and your time are focused on adding the value that the team is counting on you to add.

Balance – Give Others Room to Contribute

The second thing causing that judgment of “You’re not a good team player,” is you don’t balance your contribution relative to other folks on the team. A lot of people really lose points on this one. They dominate, they say too much, they don’t let other people get a word in edgewise. It’s like they’re in a tennis match, returning every serve. One person says something and they respond, a second person says something, but they’re the one who responds, and every serve is going back to them. Pay attention in your next couple of meetings and ask yourself, “Am I balancing my participation? Am I taking up the same amount of airtime as everyone else?”

Here’s some advice for natural extroverts, who have a lot of energy, tend to take up too much time, and have a hard time sitting on your hands, saying nothing: change your contribution to a question instead of a statement. When you jump in to speak, instead of saying, “I don’t think our enterprise customers would like this,” phrase it as a question that draws somebody else in: “Oh, I’m really wondering how that would land with our enterprise customers?” Contributing with a statement can be a bit of a downer, putting a lid on the conversation, whereas a question draws somebody else in. Now it’s looking like you actually care what your colleagues have to contribute, which = more of a team player. Balance your participation.

What you’re aiming for is to get to the point where you’re taking up the same amount of airtime as everybody else. If you can’t get there, or if you’re working on it but it’s gonna be a journey, then start by shifting at least 50% of your statements to questions. That will help a lot.

Connection – Don’t Be a Lone Wolf

The third thing that might not be evident to your manager is the connection between you and your colleagues. You stand apart from everyone else. If there’s a tight team dynamic that doesn’t include you, you really stand out as not being a team player. Find places to connect with your colleagues. Ideally, some of those places are going to be during downtime, which is a time to connect with them as humans. But that’s not the first step.

The first step is to connect with them by asking questions, engaging them in conversation. Say, “I’m wondering how you’re thinking about this?” Build a strong connection by being a great listener for your colleagues, and the person in the meeting who reframes and rephrases what they’ve said. “Oh, I really love Josh’s point. Josh, if I’m hearing you right, you just said X, Y, and Z?” This shows: I’m not just a one person band here, but I’m listening, I’m interested, I’m curious, and I’m trying to connect. Start with those work related connections.

If you’ve already been labeled as not a team player, going straight to, “Hey, you wanna have lunch?” may feel a little weird and off-putting for your teammates. As you form a stronger connection around work, opportunities will open up to grab a coffee, and have those kinds of conversations. You’ll find situations where there’s common ground, which is very helpful for us as humans, but actively seek out places where the person has had a different experience than you. Find that interesting. Look for some insight. All of those things that say, “I value and wanna be a part of a team, I empathize and listen to their experience, as opposed to trying to make sure they understand my experience.” Connection matters a lot.

Disagree – You Owe it to Your Team

This is a bit of an advanced one. You want to demonstrate that it’s okay to disagree, to diverge, to have diverse thoughts. You can be a good team player at a lower level: you get along and treat everyone nice. But that’s not being a particularly valuable team player. A really valuable team player actually contributes diversity of thought, brings new perspectives, new experiences, advocates for stakeholders no one else is talking about. If you’re going to be a really strong contributor to the team, try to take it to that level.

You might want to say, “As I’m listening, I’m realizing none of us has talked about what it’s going to feel like when we roll it out to our international employees. So I’m just wondering, you know, how do we think?” You’re bringing in another perspective, but you’re also using a question, which is a good balance of techniques. You can also draw in dissenting information or other ways of thinking. You can say, “Well, that’s how I’m thinking about it, but I’m super curious about what assumptions I’m making, what I haven’t thought about. I would love to hear what you’re thinking about that.” When you invite people to disagree with you, they start to realize you’re someone who knows how to make a team valuable.

Contrary to popular opinion, a great team player is good at conflict. I absolutely believe the most valuable team players are the ones who understand a) they don’t have the answers themselves and b) nor does any single individual on the team. A great team player understands the goal is to bring a very diverse variety of perspectives to the table, to listen effectively, to be curious, and to go through a dynamic process of figuring out the optimal answer. It’s taking the concept of being a team player to the next level.

Being a Good Team Player is as Easy as ABC (and D)

There are a variety of things you can do if you’ve gotten the demoralizing, unhelpful feedback that you’re not a good team player. First, make sure you’re aligning your time, your attention, and your energy to the things that are going to make a difference for your team. Next, balance your participation, and move toward taking the same amount of space as everybody else. Next, actually connect with people. Be the one who does the best job at listening. Make lots of eye contact. If eye contact is uncomfortable for you, say, “I was listening and think that’s interesting.” Or, “Here’s what I heard you say.” Finally, disagree. Show you know how to use the team to have productive conflict.

Align, balance, connect, and disagree. That’s the A, B, C, D of being a better team player. I hope the next time you get feedback, you hear something completely different. They’ll be telling you, “Wow, what a great team player you are!”

More On This

How Do I Know I Have a Healthy Team?

What to do with the star who is a poor team player

Tips to improve the connection when you communicate

Video: Team Effectiveness Starts With You Being an Effective Team Member

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How to Have Healthy Conflict in the Workplace

 

Are you feeling a lot of conflict within your team, the kind that isn’t necessarily healthy? I want to provide a framework for understanding three different types of team conflict. One of them is great and should be encouraged, but the other two can be really problematic.

Tension in Team Dynamics

The first type, which we want more of, is what I call “tension.” Tension is when we have conflict in our team because we’re looking at a problem through different lenses. We have different expertise, we’re coming from different departments, different teams with different priorities and goals or performance metrics. We have consider different stakeholders and their concerns.

This diversity of perspectives naturally puts tension on the conversation, on the deliberation. It can feel uncomfortable, for example, realizing that your obsessive focus on suppliers is just one aspect of a broader issue that includes customer needs. But this kind of tension is healthy and necessary for a well-rounded decision-making process.

The Problems of Pressure and Friction

There are two other things I’ve been seeing a lot of in teams, recently—things that are not healthy and that we will want to avoid: pressure and friction.

Pressure

Pressure is a situation where there’s conflict, but it’s one-way, with no forum in which to go back and forth or come to a workable solution. Pressure comes from unilateral demands, like a CEO insisting on a certain course of action with no room for anyone to say, “that’s not actually workable or achievable.” It comes from one department in an organization having all the clout and all the influence—and deciding on how something will be without any input from the rest of the team, and then creating unrealistic expectations and impossible timelines.

In a way, pressure is half of the tension equation. It would be a positive if only that one perspective could be melded with the other perspectives to understand what’s an optimal outcome. But pressure doesn’t work like that. It’s a one-way street.

Friction

When it come to friction, on the other hand, everyone is involved in the conversation, but it is misdirected. Yes, there is a forum for the conflict, but instead of that conflict being focused on those different perspectives, different stakeholders, different priorities, different ways of looking at the problem, friction is where it gets focused on the individual. It gets competitive. It gets to the point where no one’s looking for the optimal solution—everyone’s just looking to win their case. You’ll see a lot of interrupting, not listening, and entrenching in initial positions rather than seeking an approach that benefits the whole. And that friction is what really wears us down.

Tension Is Healthy

We need conflict in our teams, but we’re looking for it to feel like tension, stretching our thinking and optimizing our limited resources. Tension may be uncomfortable, but it’s necessary and healthy compared to pressure, which lacks a healthy forum for conflict resolution, or friction, where the forum exists but is not used to get the best answer.

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I want you to think about scenarios where you might be feeling that tension, but also where you experience pressure or friction with no helpful, constructive, useful forum to resolve it. Understanding these dynamics is the first step in resolving conflict within your team—and that’s what we’re going to be talking about next time.

More On This

The Importance of Conflict Resolution at Work

The Steps to Resolve a Conflict at Work

New Research on Healthy Conflict

Video: Lack of Conflict Is Not a Good Thing

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10 Helpful Things To Do When You’re Overwhelmed

In this series, I’ve been sharing strategies to manage your heavy workload so that you can work efficiently and effectively and manage your stress levels without getting completely overwhelmed.

In the previous post, I discussed why the grin-and-bear-it approach is terrible for you, your team, your organization, and your loved ones. Now, I’m back with some more constructive alternatives to sucking it up.

What to Do When Your Workload is Too High

Without further ado…

1. Triage Your Work

To triage is to prioritize action based on an assessment of the urgency of the need, the nature of the effort required, and the likelihood of success. When dealing with an insurmountable workload, triage is your first step. Resist the temptation to jump into the first task or to respond to the top email in your inbox until you take a few moments to jot down the things you need to do and sort them.

How you sort them is up to you. You might choose what goes first based on the due date, the number of people waiting on your outputs, the urgency of the situation, and the type of work you do best at a particular time of day. Many different criteria can be effective. The secret is to avoid diving into the task that’s most obvious, straightforward, or for the person squawking loudest.

2. Ask for Help Prioritizing

Either before (or preferably after) you’ve triaged, ask your manager for assistance or validation of what you’ve put first, second, and third. Make this request even more helpful by sharing your estimates of how long it will take to complete each task and how much time you have available.

For example, you could say. “I plan to do the ACME report first, which should take about three hours. Then, I have a two-hour steering committee meeting. Afterward, I will make the changes to the draft proposal; an hour should be enough so you have those by the end of the day. That means I have to push the follow-up calls to tomorrow. Does that work for you?” This not only ensures you’re spending time on the right things but also gives your manager a sense of how much you’ve got going on.

3. Schedule Future Work

One of the most productive things you can do when you’re overwhelmed is to move things off your to-do list and put them somewhere for safekeeping. The stress associated with juggling and trying to remember many tasks reduces your ability to be productive in the moment. By documenting your non-priority activities, you get them out of your working memory so that you can focus on the task at hand.

I’m a big fan of bullet journaling to keep track of future work so that it doesn’t interfere with or intrude on my current focus. I share my instructions and a downloadable template for bullet journaling here.

4. Protect Prime Time

Know your rhythms and be ruthless in protecting your most productive time of day. Or, more specifically, protect the different productive periods by tailoring them to the right kind of work. If you are most creative in the morning, don’t let administrative tasks clog that time. If you’re naturally chatty mid-afternoon, use that time for catch-up calls or check-ins.

You might have three or four hours each day when you can focus and work in flow. That time is precious. Do your best not to let low-priority work seep into that time.

5. Capitalize on Unproductive Time

If you’re feeling overwhelmed, you might have more moments than usual when your brain feels foggy, frantic, or frazzled. By scheduling suitable activities at this time and using strategies to chunk the work and make it feel more like a game, you won’t have to write off the lulls in your day. Contenders for your typically low-energy periods include responding to five emails, following up on two outputs you’re waiting on, or doing administrative tasks like entering information into a CRM. When all else seems too taxing, I’ll do invoicing and get the sense of satisfaction that a bill is out the door.

6. Create a Cocoon

When you’re overwhelmed and facing a torrent of tasks, it can feel like standing on the gaming floor at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas; the lights and sounds bombard you. If you’re overwhelmed, retreat to a quiet space where you can limit distractions. If you’re in an office, see if there’s a small space where you can shut the door. Close all applications except the one you need to do your work. If that application has multiple tabs open, close the non-essential ones. Turn off all notifications: email, texts, Slack, etc. (I particularly like the specific focus categories in iOS that send a message informing those trying to reach me that I’m in focus mode.) There’s even research that shows that moving your phone out of sight will make focus much easier.

7. Set a Timer

Using a timer to create bursts or sprints of work can help you stay on task and accomplish things. Building momentum is essential when overwhelmed, so don’t be sheepish about starting with a 15-minute block. I do that when I’m overwhelmed, but I still have to get writing done. I tell myself that I only need to write for 15 minutes. That doesn’t feel too daunting, so it helps me stop procrastinating. I can’t remember a single time that I’ve stopped 15 minutes in. By then, the ideas are starting to flow, and it’s relatively easy to keep going. (This is the one I use because I like to go analog, so I don’t need my phone close at hand.)

Don’t make your blocks too long, though. You need to move around, rest your eyes, clear your thoughts. I’ve got a Spotify playlist of songs for my dance breaks between my focus sessions. It’s full of tunes guaranteed to lift my mood and get me moving.

8. Tell your Colleagues

Many people feel sheepish or even ashamed of being overwhelmed and try to keep it a secret. That’s a poor strategy. Let a couple of people know when you’ve got too much on your plate. This serves a few purposes. First, it might be that the person can take some of the load off by doing components of the work, enlisting others’ support, or shifting the due dates on your tasks. Second, you give them a heads up if there are risks to delivering something they need so they have time to form a Plan B. Third, you give them a chance to support you. For example, I’ve had colleagues offer to grab me food so I can take 20 minutes to join them to eat without having to take the extra 20 to walk to the food court.

9. Switch Modes

Part of feeling overwhelmed is feeling like the clock is ticking, but you’re making no progress. If the ideas are not flowing in one form, try switching to a different mode. If you’re trying to write, grab a microphone and try riffing into your phone so it transcribes the audio. This is particularly helpful if you’re better when on the move. Alternatively, grab a blank sheet of paper and see if drawing or creating a mind map unlocks something useful. The idea is not to struggle unnecessarily while you’re feeling overwhelmed. If you’ve sat for 15 minutes trying to write a response to an email, switch gears rather than getting to the point of feeling helpless.

10. Take a Power Nap

Sometimes, that feeling of being overwhelmed is your body telling you it needs rest. There’s nothing wrong with listening to your body. Brief naps can be incredibly refreshing. There are many mid-day nap regimens, but the one I use is to sit on my couch and watch a couple of YouTube videos while I drink a massive mug of caffeinated tea. When the tea is gone, I put on a podcast, set my alarm for 25 minutes, and doze off. I usually wake up a few minutes before the alarm and then listen to the podcast for five groggy minutes while I wake up. Then, I am good as new and back at it. (In fact, I did exactly that between drafting and editing this post.)

Having too much to do, feeling overwhelmed, and stressing about how you will get it all done is not pleasant. Don’t suck it up and try to survive by doing the same thing, only harder, for longer, or sloppier. Choose a better set of tasks and work through them more efficiently and effectively.

Additional Resources

8 Ways to Feel Less Overwhelmed by Your Workload

A Personalized Approach to Feeling Less Overwhelmed

How To Tell Your Boss You’re Overwhelmed

 

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Communicating a Strategic Plan to Your Team

 

So, you don’t have a strategy, but you’ve decided that it’s time for your team, your department, your function, or even your organization to have one. This is the last step in our strategic planning series—and this is a really important step, because it’s about how we cascade the strategy to everyone in the organization.

Identify Your Purpose

One thing you’ll want to do is put your entire strategy on a piece of paper, what I call a Strategy Map. At the top, state your organization’s purpose. Right beneath that, list the three or four strategic goals that determine whether you’ve future-proofed your organization. Then, in the next level, highlight the most important opportunities and threats you’re seeing in the environment.

Once you have that down, you can—using big, bright, beautiful print in catchy language—articulate your strategy. Think about your imperatives. How does your organization need to think differently? With your imperatives in place, you can finally map out strategic projects underneath. But don’t make the mistake of communicating those projects as your strategy. They’re the tactics that you’re using to implement your strategy, not the strategy itself.

The reason this matters in that, in many organizations, people who aren’t working directly on one of the strategic projects often don’t feel any sense of ownership of the strategy. And that’s just a huge loss of brainpower and horsepower for implementing your strategy.

Communicate with Everyone

Instead, when you roll out your strategy, keep in mind that those imperatives also have the second purpose of ensuring that everyone in your organization, regardless of their role, understands what they should be focusing on in their daily activities.

Many years ago, I was working with a smaller technology company that was competing against a much larger competitor. I think they had only about 8% market share and nowhere near the research and development funding that the big guys did, so they couldn’t compete everywhere. Nevertheless, they found a way to compete by realizing that their technology was really advanced in some ways and they had a shot to win in the sexiest, coolest, bleeding-edge parts of the industry, which at the time was computer gaming and digital animation. They figured out that in order to make an impact in the most innovative and dynamic segments of the industry, they needed to be seen as cutting edge and cool. This realization led to the imperative that they needed to be perceived as “cool” to earn the right to have conversations with Pixar or Nintendo.

This cool imperative led to some really interesting strategic projects, with big bets on features in their products that were designed to be really cool—but the key thing was, it wasn’t just about those big bet decisions. It was also about how everyone, every day, makes different decisions to be cooler. Recruiters began looking for talent that fit the gaming mold and understood the preferences and expectations of gamers. Marketing events and branding strategies became aligned with this cool, cutting-edge image.

Communicating this imperative to everyone in the organization meant that every department, from HR to marketing, and not just engineering, understood the strategic importance of positioning themselves in a different space, of coming across with a different feel. It was incredibly powerful when every individual in the company could align their decisions and actions with the goal of making the organization cooler and more competitive in the niche they had identified as their opportunity to stand out even against the Goliath that they were fighting.

So, when you communicate your strategy, emphasize your purpose, the importance of everyone understanding and contributing to the very small set of the strategic goals. Talk about what’s changing in the environment around you and how those changes create opportunities—but also threats—for you, and how your current strengths and weaknesses match up against those opportunities and threats.

Make Your Strategic Imperatives Come to Life

Spend time making your strategic imperatives come to life. Use stories, videos, and engaging language so every person in every department understands they can think differently and align their actions with those imperatives. That’s the power of a great strategy.

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I hope you’ve enjoyed this series. I hope it has helped you create a strategic planning conversation in your organization. You don’t need to hire a consulting firm. You don’t need an MBA and you don’t need to wear a suit to have a great strategic conversation. You just need to be asking yourself the right questions—not just about whether you’re healthy as an organization today, but about whether you’re doing what you need to make sure you’re healthy in the future.

More On This

How Does Strategic Planning Benefit Companies

Common Mistakes in Strategic Planning

How Team Dynamics Affect Strategic Planning

Video: You Aren’t Strategic Enough

The post Communicating a Strategic Plan to Your Team appeared first on Liane Davey.

Stop Sucking It Up

I’m surrounded by people who look permanently overwhelmed. It shows in their eyes, which are abnormally wide, with pupils dilated. The threat response is visible. It screams, “I’m not handling this!!!”

But other than sharing the ubiquitous complaint about being busy, they aren’t admitting where they’re at, asking for help, or doing anything other than working even more hours trying to get their insurmountable workload done. In short, they’re sucking it up.

I implore you to stop sucking it up.

What Counts as Sucking It UpTaking on a new assignment without asking for reprioritization of your existing workloadRoutinely working beyond regular working hours without telling anyoneCovering for inadequacies in systems, resources, or colleagues by doing extra workEnduring ongoing stress, anxiety, and fear of failure without communicating itWhy Are You Sucking It Up?

I know it’s scary to say something. You’re telling yourself:

If I complain, they’ll just pass it to my already overworked teammates.What if they fire me and replace me with someone who won’t say anything?Maybe I’m just too slow. I should be able to get all this done.No one can do this but me; I’m the only one who knows how; I HAVE to do it.I don’t want to give up this juicy opportunity.Consequences of Taking on Too Much

We’ve gone past the point where sucking it up, plodding ahead, and soldiering on is something to celebrate. We’re in for some nasty consequences. Here’s why I want you to stop sucking it up.

Bad for Your Health

Trying to do it all without breaks or rest is killing you. Night after night of too little sleep or fitful rest is eroding your health. Chaining yourself to your desk and forgoing proper food, exercise, or fresh air is toxic. Marinating in a cocktail of cortisol and adrenaline is changing your physiology. Seriously. Stop sucking it up—please, for the good of your health.

Hurting Your Family

Maybe you’re willing to trade quantity or quality of life to be a work machine; I guess that’s your choice. But if you aren’t ready to change something for the benefit of your own health, at least do it for the people who care about you. You’re coming home spent. It’s an empty shell of you at the dinner table. You’re skipping the second bedtime because you have to get back to your email. You’re not there for your partner because you’re still neck-deep in work. Stop sucking it up—please, for the good of your family.

Risking Your Reputation

I bet you’ve convinced yourself that saying something about your overwhelming workload would be a career-limiting move. Sure, saying, “I can’t handle this; I’m throwing in the towel,” would be an issue. But consider how taking on too much without letting anyone know is putting your reputation and career at risk. As you allow more and more on your plate, you’re probably doing lower-quality work. You’re dropping balls and inviting speculation and questions about your reliability. Stop sucking it up—please, for the good of your reputation.

Letting Down Your Teammates

Can’t bring yourself to say something about your overwhelming workload because all of the above reasons seem too selfish? Okay, I get it. But what if I told you you’re not being a great team player by carrying all the monkeys on your back? You’re actually putting your team at risk. What if one of the balls you drop is glass? What if the task you do your best on isn’t good enough and reflects poorly on a colleague? What if you burn yourself and leave a gaping hole in your team? Teams depend on transparency to foster trust. Trying to do it all while you’re slowly going under will erode that trust. Sucking it up isn’t good for your team.

Allowing the Charade to Continue

Perhaps the thing that makes me most angry about people sucking it up is that it allows leaders to continue in ignorance to abdicate their responsibility to set people up for success. When you don’t raise the alarm, the organization resets its baseline productivity based on your 50- or 60-hour week. Managers come to expect and depend on your crisis-level output without realizing how much risk there is if a real crisis happens because there’s no slack in the system. Sucking it up just allows your leaders to perpetuate the problem.

If you’re telling yourself that sucking it up and struggling through a barely manageable workload is your only option, I think you’re getting it wrong. The price is too high. In my next post, I’ll give you ten constructive things you can do instead of just sucking it up.

Additional Resources

8 Ways to Feel Less Overwhelmed by Your Workload

Enough about Workload, the Problem is Thoughtload

A Personalized Approach to Feeling Less Overwhelmed

The post Stop Sucking It Up appeared first on Liane Davey.

Best Practices for Hybrid Meetings

 

Are you finding yourself in a lot of hybrid meetings lately, where some people are physically present and others are remote, joining using technologies like Zoom or Microsoft Teams? I find them to be the worst of both worlds.

I like a good in-person meeting. When we have time to be physically together, it’s really helpful for connecting. I was also okay with fully virtual meetings. I got used to being in my little Brady Butch square and found a way to make it effective. But I’m still struggling to warm up to hybrid meetings because I find that our experiences are very different depending on whether we’re in the same room or remote.

I’d like to share some techniques I’ve been trying as a team facilitator to make these types of meetings more effective.

Join on Your Own Technology

The first thing I encourage everyone to do is to have everyone in the room join the meeting on their own technology. Even if you have some awesome tech in the meeting room with a camera that can see and follow and zoom in on the speaker. Even when you have that, it usually zooms in on the speaker so that it’s kind of just the side of their face and it’s tiny and you can’t make things out. You can use the room tech for audio, but then you should connect with your tablet, or phone—it doesn’t really, matter as long as you can have the experience and other people can have the experience of you having your own square in the meeting. It makes a really big difference.

The other thing this does is it allows everyone to use the chat feature. I found that chat can really help make meetings more efficient. Things that people couldn’t withhold in a face-to-face meeting can now go into the chat. Someone can just say something like, “We should follow up on X, Y, and Z later.” People see it, but you’re not interrupting the meeting.

Having people who are physically in the room join the meeting on their own technology ensures that everyone has the experience of being a virtual contributor to the conversation, even if they’re physically there.

Turn Your Camera Off

The second technique I’m experimenting with a lot more is in situations where we have the camera off. I know it’s controversial—a lot of managers say, “Turn the camera on!” like it’s a job requirement, but there are a lot of situations where you don’t want to have your camera on.

Yes, it’s better for creating connection when you’re having a contentious discussion and when you’re just in the middle of some kind of interaction or exchange. But there are so many situations and meetings where we’re trying to create a work product, working on a document, looking at a presentation, or trying to take notes on the key pieces of a plan. In any of those situations, it’s really beneficial to turn the cameras off.

It turns out that our human brains just can’t resist trying to figure out what someone’s facial expressions are telling us. We’re using a lot of processing information to deal with that when we should be trying to focus our attention on some kind of work output. We’re much better when the cameras are off.

When you go into a meeting where you’re working on a product, try to turn off the cameras. Then, when you pull out to have a conversation, that’s your cue to switch them back on. It’s really about getting to the point where you’re toggling camera on, camera off, depending on what you’re working on.

Have Fewer Meetings

And here’s my third tip—one of the best tips for hybrid meetings: don’t have a meeting! There are so many situations where we use hybrid meetings to inform, report, or monitor all kinds of things, or even to approve those kinds of activities, and they really don’t need a meeting. We know from Microsoft’s research that over the course of the pandemic, the number of hours people spent in meetings has increased by 250%. The average person now spends 22 hours a week in meetings! That’s not productive and it’s not healthy. We really want to reduce the number of hours spent in meetings. One of the ways to do that is to get rid of a bunch of the hybrid meetings that you have on your calendar and get that task done in a different way.

It’s really great to have meetings when your team has an anchor day where you’re all physically together in the office. What are the novel, complex, controversial topics that you can cover? What are the cross-team, cross-functional groups that you need to bring together? Where can you anticipate, envision, and design? All of those things are going to be done much better in-person than in a hybrid meeting. So, move those things to when you’re together.

Other things, where you’re just checking off a list or making sure you’ve got all the steps in the plan, don’t need a meeting at all. Maybe what you want to do is have somebody do a screen recording or a quick video and say, “Here’s what I’ve got, I’m sending this out so you can listen to it whenever it’s convenient for you. Let me know if I’ve missed any steps.” See? You don’t need a meeting at all—and that video might even be as little as seven minutes long. If it had been a meeting, it would have filled up 30 minutes, maybe an hour.

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So, those are my tips to make your hybrid meetings better. Have everyone join with technology, spend a lot more time with the camera off, and move hybrid meetings into other formats as often as possible. These are the things that are working for the teams that I’m facilitating. I hope they’ll work for your team too.

More On This

How to Improve Hybrid Meetings

How to Strengthen Connection on Remote and Hybrid Teams

The Pros and Cons of Hybrid Teams

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Practical Advice About How to Prioritize Your Workload

In my most recent post, I argued that the only viable number of priorities is one. That’s because you can only do one thing at a time. Having a list of seven things you’re worrying about at once is a recipe for low productivity and likely burnout.

I’m not so naïve as to think that your boss will neatly prioritize down to your single most important area of focus. Nor is that kind of discipline likely to come from the leadership in your organization (they’re the ones who sponsored the list of seven—or seventeen—priorities in the first place).

So, how do you manage if you’re the only one you can depend on to get to one priority at a time? Let’s set it up with a few categories, and then I’ll take you through how to create a prioritized plan for your week.

A Hierarchy of Priorities

If you make it as basic as possible, you can think of priorities in three categories: corporate priorities, departmental priorities, and role priorities. This is an oversimplification, I know, but let’s play it out just for fun.

To those priorities, let’s add “corporate stuff” as a fourth category. In the corporate stuff bucket, I’m going to include reports you’re supposed to send to finance, mandatory training that HR needs you to complete, and the information you’re supposed to enter into systems like your CRM, CMS, LMS, ERP, or the FML (ok, kidding, there’s no system called an FML, it’s just what you say after entering all your information into the others).

If you think about your priorities using that four-category framework, what would be on your list? What are the most critical corporate priorities? What’s on your departmental list? What do you need to focus on in your role? What other corporate contributions do you need to make? Jot them down.

Roles in Prioritization

There is another wrinkle in deciding howtime is to invest   your role in each corporate or departmental priority initiative. I don’t have slick names for them, but let’s try core, adjacent, and peripheral. How you incorporate the priority into your weekly plan depends on your role.

Core

If you are core to a corporate or departmental priority, it will take the #1 spot in your week. The majority of your days should be spent moving that project forward. Only if you accomplish the necessary tasks for the day do you have room to do tasks for other projects or to knock off some corporate stuff. If you’re a core team member and haven’t finished the minimum tasks to keep the assignment on track, you need to enlist support from your manager to delete, delay, distribute, or diminish everything else.

Adjacent

Another possibility is that you’re adjacent to the #1 priority core team. For example, if priority #1 is a product launch and you’re doing some financial modeling, your weekly priority might be one of your role priorities. Still, if the core team needs something from you, that task moves to the top of the list until completed. Similar to core team members, if committing fully to the #1 priorities means you need to divert your time and attention away from your role priority, you can ask for help to figure out how to delay or distribute that work.

Peripheral

If you are peripheral to a priority, it means that you don’t expect to have any tasks associated with the priority. In this case, focus your time on your role priorities and leave a little slack so that if someone needs something from you to keep the ball rolling on a corporate or a departmental priority, you’ll have a spot to do it.

Ok, go back to your list. For the corporate and departmental priorities you listed, circle the ones where you’re core or adjacent. Pick the one that’s priority number one. If there is more than one corporate or departmental priority for which you’re core or adjacent, set your #2, #3, and so on. Now slot your role priorities into the numbered list.

Prioritizing Your Time

Ok, now start chunking out your week.

Open your calendar and stare down the meetings that are already on there. Any that you can delete? Send a delegate? Attend for an abbreviated time? See how much time you can liberate before you start adding anything else.Protect some time daily to handle emails, do corporate stuff, get lunch, and pee.Block chunks of focus and flow time each day. Try to make these a minimum of 45 minutes. Get as many as you can during the work week because you and I both know it happens Monday-Friday 8-5; they’ll probably do that if they get shoved into your evenings or weekends. Fill those F&F blocks by working through your prioritized list in order.Identify any concerns about work that is on the list that you won’t have time to get to. Note what’s required and your approach to deleting, delaying, distributing, or diminishing your efforts.If you regularly check in with your manager, share your plan and ask their thoughts. Did you prioritize the right things? Is there anything you missed? How might they support you in reprioritizing, delaying, or distributing anything on your list that you already know will not fit in?

Your calendar should now be your guide. It will tell you your most important priority at any given moment.

If you’re in a meeting, be all-in, take from it what you need, and add any action items to your prioritized list.If you’re in a scheduled email and collaboration block, don’t respond to every email or request; scan for the most important, urgent, and unique to you. Pick off the one that’s got the most points on that scorning scheme and focus strictly on providing a good answer to that.If you’re in one of your Focus and Flow blocks, know your priority and work it for the entire block.

Doing one thing at a time, with your complete attention and energy, will help you get the most possible work done. When you finish (or the block ends), get up, move around, and then settle back in to focus on the next thing. You’ll see that what you can accomplish only doing one thing at a time is incredible.

Additional Resources

1 Yes and 3 Less – A Different Way to Look at Prioritization

How To Tell Your Boss You’re Overwhelmed

Focus your time on your real value

 

 

How Many is Too Many Priorities?

I get asked this all the time, “How many priorities are too many?”

What would you answer?

I bet it depends on how you define a priority.

What is a Priority?

Based on my informal polling, I’m guessing your definition of a priority is something like “a super important thing that all the bigwigs are getting bonused on, so it damn well BETTER GET DONE!” (Am I close?)

If that’s how you define a priority, I’m gonna say that the maximum advisable number depends on the size, scale, and available resources at your organization, but maybe something like five to eight. I’ve seen seventeen.

But the exact number doesn’t matter because it’s a terrible definition of priority.

To be fair, it’s the definition of priorities you’ve been bombarded with for your entire career. It’s the standard form of business-speak. And it’s likely been the basis of every strategy rollout, town hall, and goal-setting session you’ve attended.

This definition equates priority with importance. Essentially, they are the company’s “very important things.”

The only problem is that’s not what priority was supposed to mean. The word priority comes from the Latin prior, which means former, previous, or first. Priorities are things that come first, literally first in time.

If you define priority as the thing that comes first, you can have exactly one. One priority. Therefore, the answer is that two firsts are too many. Ipso facto three, five, and seventeen priorities are also too many.

“A priority is what goes first. It is not just something important.”

Objections to Prioritization

When I share the definition of a priority as “the thing that comes first” and argue that there can only be ONE first, I inevitably see a hand go up in the audience. The hand is usually attached to a face warped into a truly cantankerous pose.

Cantankerous audience member: “Um, Liane, we are a very large and serious and impressive organization; there’s no way we can only have one priority.”

Liane: “Um, yes, you can.”

I’m not suggesting that your very large and serious company accomplish one thing and take the rest of the year off. Of course, you can have a second priority and a third priority. In this case, I’d even be cool with your seventeenth priority. The point is that you focus ruthlessly and relentlessly on one thing, use it to align and create focus across diverse departments, get it done quickly, and then move on to the second priority.

The Power of a Single Company Priority

Over my career, I have seen slow, lumbering organizations that can suddenly deliver a massive, complex project in a flash when it becomes the singular focus.

One of those was a bank. They had a regulatory change to implement and very little time to complete it. The penalties for not doing so were too severe even to consider. Thus, everyone set to work with one non-negotiable first priority.

The basic idea was that if you had any action items related to the project on your docket, you did those before anything else you might have going on that day. Once you had no outstanding items on the regulatory project, you moved on to the second priority on your list. With the single, overriding priority, the weight of the massive organization shifted, momentum built, and they got it done on time.

Why a Single Priority Matters

Some people in your organization will need to work on the priority all day, every day, even for months or years. Interestingly, they are not the problem when it comes to moving rapidly. They know what comes first.

The problem is all the ancillary folks who have small contributions to make. They are the ones who are conflicted because the priority likely isn’t stated in their objectives. Finishing it won’t bring fame or glory to their department. In fact, taking time to do tasks on the priority project will likely delay their own priorities and perhaps even jeopardize the achievement of their goals. It’s THOSE people who will determine whether your priority is accomplished on time or not.

If a clear message comes from the top that this project is the first priority, then every person in the organization knows that anything required of them to accomplish the task needs to take precedence—it needs to be done first.

For example, you might argue that you can have a big commercial product launch as an equal priority with the roll-out of a new ERP system because different people are required. Sure, that’s true of the full-timers. But it’s your auxiliary teams that become the issue. If both projects are beating on the door of finance, which work gets done first? If marketing is supposed to be building the campaign for the imminent roll-out of your snazzy new X73 product and is simultaneously asked to provide subject matter experts to determine the quote-to-cash process in the ERP design, where do they go?

Can You Afford to Do One Thing at a Time?

You might be nervous about doing one thing at a time. You might fret that the competition will soar past you because surely they’re doing so much more.

I’d argue that thinking is backward. Can you afford to leave it up to your employees what project or task matters most? Can you afford to dilute people’s attention and energy as they attempt to multitask on corporate priorities and things on their performance objectives? Can you afford the delays and bottlenecks when departments have competing priorities?

Can you afford NOT to do one thing at a time?

In the next post, I’ll share a process for sorting out competing priorities and getting to a focused task list.

Additional Resources

Prioritize Means Deprioritize

8 Ways to Feel Less Overwhelmed by Your Workload

1 Yes and 3 Less – A Different Way to Look at Prioritization

 

Getting Emotional in a Difficult Conversation

Recap: This is the fourth and final post in a series about difficult conversations. We started by discussing what makes a conversation difficult and then got into the preparation that sets you up for success. The second post zeroed in on the exchange itself and the techniques you can use to keep things constructive—the third shared tips on creating closure and moving forward after a difficult conversation.

When I asked on LinkedIn for your perspective on what makes a conversation difficult, most of the answers included some reference to the likelihood that the discussion would get emotional. Anything threatening our ability to remain in emotional control at work feels precarious.

Here’s what worries me: If you choose not to act because you’re worried that someone might get upset, you’re dangerously limited in your ability to address critical issues. So, rather than letting the risk of emotional upset or outbursts stop you, let’s talk about how to manage them if they happen.

What to Do if the Person Gets Emotional

Imagine that you broach an uncomfortable topic with a colleague, and tears start to well up in their eyes. Or they begin to raise their voice and turn red in the face. What do you do?

Keep Going

My take is that you shouldn’t abandon the discussion. Maybe it’s an unpopular opinion, but here’s my view on what’s problematic about bailing when someone gets emotional:

You leave them hanging in the awkward situation of having let emotions detract from their ability to do their job. That’s not a good feeling.You have to choose between leaving the situation unresolved or coming back to it again later when it might be even more uncomfortable.You signal that emotions are unwelcome and are an immediate kill switch in conversations. From my experience, if you get a reputation as someone who doesn’t cope well with emotions, you will be branded as an unsafe person for your colleagues or direct reports to navigate in the future.

Unless the person is gasping for air or screaming to the point that they’re hoarse, try to keep going.

Make a Safe Space

Don’t pretend everything is calm and normal; just don’t catastrophize. Emotions are human. But it’s fair to say that they aren’t the norm in professional spaces, and we still have many folks who have antiquated hang-ups about outward displays of emotion, so your first task is to demonstrate that you’re not in that camp.

I use one simple line. “This is important. What do I need to understand?”

I use it if someone is crying. I use it if someone is yelling. I use it if someone is pulling their hair out. This is important. What do I need to understand?

There are other ways to create a safe space as well:

If you are standing, gesture to somewhere you can sitIf you have another meeting coming up, ask for a moment to postpone itIf you’re in a public space, suggest that you find somewhere with more privacyIf you’ve got a tissue handy, offer itIf you need to readjust the physical distance between you, go for itIf you can switch to a parallel position and drop eye contact, that can help

Perhaps the best thing you can do is to say that you value the conversation and want to stay with it. You’re trying to limit their discomfort and stop them from thinking they’ve made a career-limiting move.

Ask Questions to Uncover the Root Issue

When someone gets emotional, they often need help figuring out what they’re feeling and where it is coming from. They may be just as surprised as you that your initial comments triggered something in them.

You aren’t a therapist, but you can think of yourself as a facilitator to help the two of you reach a point of shared understanding and a plan for moving forward. The benefit of asking questions is that it gives the conversation (and the other person) momentum rather than getting stuck in the emotions.

Here are a few options:

How are you thinking about this?

Where do you see the risk?

What is this about for you?

What would it take to feel confident?

Share What You’re Learning

Now, take a moment to share what you’re taking from their comments. Treat these like hypotheses or observations rather than facts. “It sounds like you feel we’re under-resourcing the team and burning them out.”Or “You’re feeling like I’m not advocating for you.”

If the information you’re learning is relevant to solving the problem you wanted to discuss, great! Start asking for potential remedies or float a few trial balloons and see if they could be the next steps. Those are the situations where surfacing the emotion helps you get to the crux of the matter and on a path to a mutually beneficial solution.

Recalibrate the Conversation

As the person shares their perceptions, you might realize you’re not getting closer to solving the issue. Instead, you’re going in the wrong direction. Sometimes, as the emotional tenor increases, you might be tempted to let the person pull you off course. You might abandon your original goals and let the conversation flow where the other person wants. That’s often a mistake.

Instead, take the chance to bring the conversation back to the original issue. How you do that depends on what the person did. If they…

Went on a Tangent: If they’ve gone off on a tangent, you might say, “I’m glad you’ve shared more about the pressures you’re under. I appreciate you being so candid with me. With that as context, can we return to this report’s deadlines? What would it take to deliver this on time?”

Overstated Your Concerns: If they took your relatively modest concerns and are speaking as if you have lost all confidence in them or they are somehow not worthy, you might say, “As I listen to you, I feel like you’re seeing this as a criticism of you rather than my concern about this one presentation. How could you incorporate my feedback into your next draft?”

Started to Blame: If they deflect constructive feedback by talking about every other person who didn’t do their part, you could say, “I’m sure there are many pieces to this puzzle. I’m happy to talk more about that later. For the moment, I think we need to stick with your role.”

I’m a huge advocate for a healthy relationship with emotions at work. And yes, the first part of that is to realize that feelings are normal, and sometimes they overflow the bounds of our normally staid professional demeanor. But the second half is just as important; being emotional is not a free pass for getting out of your work responsibilities. So, acknowledge and work with the emotions, but don’t let them hijack the conversation.

Once you’ve addressed the emotions, made space to understand the underlying issues, and returned to the underlying problem, you’re back on the regular track. Bring the conversation to a close and use all the follow-up steps I provided here.

What to Do if You Get Emotional

Did you notice how I spent this whole time assuming that it was the OTHER person who got emotional? Yeah, I was just sucking up to you. Let’s be real; there’s a good chance it was YOU who had the tears welling up or you who lost your nut and started yelling. What if it’s you who gets emotional?

Basically, the same rules apply. If you’re lucky, the other person will shift into facilitator mode and help you get back on an even keel. But that’s not entirely likely, especially if you were the one who raised the difficult topic in the first place. They might be pleased to let you squirm.

In that case, you just apply the steps to yourself.

Keep going. If you want, acknowledge that you’re feeling emotional by saying something like, “This is hard for me, but I want to continue.” Or “I’m emotional about this, but I’d really appreciate the chance to keep going.”

Make a safe space. Ask for what you need to make an uncomfortable conversation bearable. “I’m just going to run and grab a tissue, and I’ll be right back.” Or “Could we shift to the meeting room so I can close the door?” Or “I’m fired up. Would it be possible to walk and talk for a bit?”

Ask questions to uncover the root issue. I know it sounds weird, but just ask yourself the questions to move the discussion along. “I’m wondering why this is affecting me so deeply.” Or “I’m not sure what I’m asking for. What would I want to be different?”

Share what you’re learning. Answer your own questions. “I think this is affecting me so deeply because I’m feeling really protective of my team.” Or “I think I’m asking you to get involved in the meetings with the other departments.”

Recalibrate the conversation. If you notice that you’ve taken the discussion off track, steer it back. “I just derailed what I came here to talk to you about. Let’s get back to that.” Or “I’m probably making a mountain out of a molehill; let me focus on this one point.”

Suppose you’re putting off a difficult conversation because you’re worried it might get emotional. In that case, I’d argue that you’re already suffering with the emotions and better off getting through to the other side of them. Make space for the idea that it’s possible to be emotional and also professional, emotional and accountable, emotional and capable.

Additional Ressources

Crying at Work

Become a Pro at Dealing With Emotions in the Workplace

How to Broach an Uncomfortable Topic

 

How to Choose Strategic Projects

 

We’re talking strategy. If you don’t already have a really good strategy, this series will equip you with the questions to guide your own strategic planning process. No MBA required. You don’t even have to wear a suit. This is the final stage of strategic planning: identifying the projects that will help you move forward.

What Are the Tactics after Setting Your Strategy?

In our previous discussion, we focused on the most important step: setting your strategy by defining your strategic imperatives—those guiding principles and insights you have about how your business needs to be different from what it is today. Now, let’s talk about what comes next: the tactics.

We often see organizations that have their four strategic imperatives and then, for each strategy, they ask, “What are the five tactics we’re going to employ for this strategy?” The problem, of course, is that if you take a strategy with maybe four strategic imperatives and you have five projects for each of them, all of a sudden you’re juggling 20 different strategic projects. That really dilutes your organization’s energy and resources across far too many fronts.

Coming up with Strategic Projects

I have a different approach when coming up with strategic projects. What I do is take each of the strategic imperatives and ask, “What are some of the things we could do that would really move us forward on this imperative?”

For example, last time we talked about how being “global enough” was a really valuable strategic imperative for a company that needed to expand beyond the United States, but not spread itself so thin across so many countries that it couldn’t afford to keep up.

You might say, “Okay, what could we do to really try to move the needle on being ‘global enough’?” For that company, there was one answer that was immediately apparent: “We absolutely need to establish a base in the United Kingdom. The most obvious place where our customers are going—where we need to be able to grow with them—is the UK.”

That means a number of things: A UK strategy is going to require a different data center. It’s going to require building a sales force there. It’s going to require reprogramming your software with a lot of U’s and S’s in words where you wouldn’t normally have them. There’s a whole cluster of things that make this big strategic project around the beachhead in the UK. That’s all one big project.

Projects That Advance Strategic Imperatives

But your approach shouldn’t stop at examining each imperative to come up with your proposed projects. The real value is in looking at all of them and seeing if there are single projects or programs that can really advance you on multiple imperatives at the same time. That’s where you’re getting into the good stuff. Imagine a single activity that is so useful because it pushes you on multiple things. A “big bet” project that advances not one, but two, three of your strategies.

Many years ago, I worked with a state lottery and gaming organization. They had imperatives around needing to be more entertaining because they were losing to places like Atlantic City and Las Vegas. But as a state-run organization, the last thing they wanted was to keep getting more and more money from the same people and end up with them gambling away their rent.

They were looking at how they could diversify. There were a number of things they wanted to do, and one really valuable approach was to move into internet gaming. On the internet, they could reach a whole new customer base, they could make it fun and entertaining, and there were so many different platforms they could use. At the same time, because it required login credentials, people could opt-in to be locked out, or set limits on how much they could gamble on any given day. Being on a digital platform gave them a lot of control that would have been much harder to have in a brick-and-mortar casino or when you’re just buying a lottery ticket.

Focus on Big Bets to Move Ahead

Getting into internet gaming was the sort of big bet project that we’re looking for. An idea that is so valuable because implementing it will help us move ahead on many of our strategic imperatives.

When you’re creating your strategic projects, don’t just scattershot a whole bunch of things. You can’t just say, “These are our 27 priorities!”—because first, your organization can’t afford to do that, and second, you’ll burn everyone out trying to do it. Instead, focus on a small number of key initiatives. Think about the six, eight, at most ten big bets that your organization can make to move you ahead on multiple imperatives. That’s why they’re useful. That’s why they matter.

These Projects Are Not Your Strategy

The most important thing to remember, however, is that these projects are NOT your strategy. Don’t talk about them as if they’re your strategy. They should be called what they are: “These are our projects.” “These are our big bets.” “These are our tactics.” Whatever you prefer. But never lose sight of the fact that the strategic imperatives are the strategy. They’re the guiding principles that everyone in your organization should follow.

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In our next and final installment in this series, we’ll explore how to effectively cascade your strategy throughout your organization. The idea is to make sure you don’t lose people by getting stuck at the project level, but instead, keep everyone aligned with the strategic imperatives at the heart of your plan.

More On This

Tips for Setting Strategic Goals

Common Mistakes in Strategic Planning

How Does Strategic Planning Benefit Companies?

Video: 1 Yes and 3 Less – A Different Way to Look at Prioritization

The post How to Choose Strategic Projects appeared first on Liane Davey.