Liane Davey's Blog, page 17

Be My Guest

If you’re trying to make your meetings more efficient and effective, one place to start is by doing a better job with guests. Bad meetings are already enough of a scourge on the regular attendees without dragging more people into the fray. Based on the behavior I’ve seen over the past few months, it’s time to reset what it takes to be a good host and guest. So I’ll play Miss Manners.

Why Invite Someone to a Meeting?

There are many good reasons to have guests at a meeting. The critical thing is that different roles require different preparation before the meeting and different contributions in the meeting. Here are three guest roles and how to improve the value and quality of their attendance.

Presenter

Perhaps the most common reason to invite someone as a guest into your meeting is that they will present material to you. This type of guest has the potential to be very valuable, but sadly most of the time, presenters waste meeting time, endure abuse, and erode their own reputations in the process. If you’re having a presenter guest in a meeting, do the following:

Prepare

If you’re the presenter, ask the team lead, meeting chair, or the sponsor of your agenda item to spend a few minutes preparing you. Do this with lots of lead time. Ask what the team would like to get out of your presentation. Solicit advice on how best to interact with the team and if there are any issues (or participants) to watch out for.

If you’re the host, be clear with the presenter about what would be useful and be specific about how much time they have, how much of that time you’d like them to spend presenting, and how much interaction should be with the team.

Prime

Prime the conversation by sending out a 5-8 page document that describes the necessary context and specifies the value you would like the participants to add. Include any options, decision points, or questions you’ll ask the team in the meeting.

If you’re the host, send this primer document to the participants two to three days before the meeting and if you haven’t received it from the presenter, cancel the presenter’s time on the agenda (oh yeah, it’s ok to play hardball). If you’re an attendee, read the primer and consider the questions. Maybe I should have written that like this IF YOU’RE AN ATTENDEE, READ THE PRIMER AND GIVE THE QUESTIONS SOME THOUGHT.

Present

Prepare a separate presentation (do NOT present the primer document) that sets up the discussion points where you need input from the team. Don’t fill the slide with information (that’s what the primer was for); instead, use it as a tool to help you facilitate the conversation you need.

Hosts: set up the discussion by sharing the purpose of the agenda item and the structure of how you’ll spend the time you’ve allotted. I’m a big fan of giving 10-15 minutes for the presenter to speak uninterrupted, then 10 minutes where participants can only ask questions of clarification (no monologues, no opining, no enjoying the sweet dulcet tones of their own voices), then 20 minutes for open discussion. (When we do this, presenters report feeling much more valued, and participants celebrate the improvement in the quality of the conversation).

If you do these things to prepare, prime, and present, you’re much more likely to have a high-quality interaction. Or you could just do like everyone else and go in unaware to an unprepared audience and talk for 29 of the 30 minutes while the participants check their emails—your choice.

Delegate

Another possibility for why you might be a guest at a meeting is that you’ve been asked to attend as a delegate for someone else. Being someone’s delegate is an important role and one worth some effort.

Prepare

If you’ve been deputized to contribute on someone’s behalf, you need to get your mission brief before attending. What’s the purpose of the meeting? Who else will be there? What do you need to know? How would they like you to represent them? What should you watch out for? What should you say and not say? How candid can you be?

Contribute

The person you’re standing in for may have explicitly asked that you not contribute but only that you attend to communicate what went on in the meeting. This isn’t a good sign and probably signals either a poor communication pipe or low trust. That’s not your problem to solve. Go, pay attention, and take notes.

Hopefully, you’re free and clear to contribute in the meeting. If so, that’s precisely what you should do. Your boss (or whoever sent you) is giving you a chance to show your stuff—don’t waste it. Sit up straight. Ask great questions. Occasionally, add your informed perspective to the deliberations. Try to keep your contributions in the “middle of the road.” Don’t end up in the ditch by talking too much or trying to show off. Nor should you steer too far the other way and sit silently like a spectator of the whole event. Think about what your boss would be contributing and try to be a good alternate.

If you’re the host or another attendee, don’t be a jerk to the delegate. Don’t ignore them or talk over them as if they aren’t worthy of being there. Don’t take advantage and try to get them to commit to something their boss wouldn’t like. Seriously. Don’t be a jerk.

Communicate

Your delegate job isn’t done when the meeting ends. Make a few notes and communicate back what was said and anything meaningful about the subtext, tone, or conflict in the discussions.

Observer

Another guest role is the observer. Getting an invite to observe a meeting is a bit odd, but that’s all the more reason to know how to handle the role graciously. It’s worth considering whether sitting quietly as a spectator in a meeting is a good use of your time. If not, you can legitimately suggest to your manager that there’s something else you could be doing and ask whether your attendance is required. But let’s assume that you’re attending a meeting as a guest because it’s a discussion you wouldn’t normally have access to and that you’ve been granted a rare audience. (I see this most commonly when facilitating strategy where there are smart, up-and-coming members of the group that would benefit from hearing the executive team machinations. That’s a great performance at which to be sitting in the front row.)

If you decide to observe a meeting, read the primer materials, sit quietly and attentively, and take notes. Then, make the most of the opportunity by following up with your manager about what you heard. That’s your chance to ask questions about the discussion or share any thoughts about the content. Again, make the most of the opportunity.

If you’re the host or a participant, one caution. If the person is there as an observer, it’s not cool to expect them to contribute suddenly. A quick heads up is essential if you change your mind and want them to participate in the meeting. If you ask them to chime in and they fumble unprepared, that should be on you for not setting them up for success. Unfortunately, they’ll wear it.

Basic Manners

What I find fascinating is how often the guests in the room are inattentive and sometimes even rude. It’s like being invited over to a friend’s house for dinner and putting your feet on the table or interrupting their Grandma while she’s speaking. Don’t be that person. Leave your phone in your bag. Ideally, take notes on paper, so no one assumes you’re doing other work. Make eye contact with the person speaking (leave your camera on if it’s a video meeting).

Bad Reasons

I said up front that there are many good reasons to have guests attend a meeting, and I stand by that statement. Of course, there are terrible reasons to have guests as well. Please don’t invite guests for any of the following reasons:

to publicly berate them for poor performance (yup, I’ve seen it),to allow you to say that you had a representative from a given group in attendance when you never let them speak or contribute in any waybecause you’re too lazy to do a decent job of communicating, so you ask them to waste their time so you don’t have to use yoursto deliver a message in person that could have been an emailto show one of your team members the dysfunction of your boss’ team in hopes of getting their empathy (or pity)… “see what I’m dealing with here!”

Did you pick up any ideas for how to be a better host or a better guest? Do you have a practice that works really well? Let me know in the comments.

Further Reading

8 Techniques to Make Your Meetings More Effective (Part I)

8 Techniques to Make Meetings More Effective (Part II)

Video: How to End a Meeting 

 

You Aren’t Strategic Enough

 

You aren’t strategic enough… or are you? (video transcript)

Have you ever had a performance review, or a 360 feedback, or a development conversation where you got the feedback that you just weren’t ‘strategic’?

If you’re like me, you find feedback like that so infuriating.

Read on to discover what ‘strategic’ actually means, and what you can do differently to change how you’re perceived to get those plum opportunities that you’re looking for.

Stop making anti-strategic contributions

The first thing you need to do is stop making contributions that people perceive as anti-strategic – in other words, tactical contributions.

So what does that look like? Tactical people are often people who talk about what ‘is’ rather than what ‘could be’. This can happen when team members put out hypothetical situations and your response is to go from something future oriented and bring it back to the present.

That can make them feel like you’re yanking them back into something very tactical, which won’t help with perceptions of you being strategic. Reducing the amount of references you make to the present situation as it stands will help change this perception.

Avoid being internally focused

People who talk about how the organization runs and focus on operations or processes tend to be perceived as tactical, whereas people who talk about the markets, the customer and how the industry’s changing are perceived as more strategic.

Ideally you want to make fewer contributions to the conversation regarding things happening internally.

This can be done in part by avoiding statements starting with ‘but’. Responses to other people’s ideas with things like “But we tried that in 2002” or “But it won’t work because of this” can really brand you as somebody who kills strategy, or who ruins the mojo of a strategic conversation. So watch out for ‘but’.

Avoid focusing on strengths and weaknesses

Strategy is really about diverging – understanding what the options are and how you could differentiate – whereas being tactical is more about converging.

If you constantly focus on strengths and weaknesses – in other words, when in a conversation about possibility you’re bringing it back to reality – you’re going to be perceived as more tactical.

So, now that we’ve talked about the things that you can do a lot less of, let’s talk about the things you need to do more of. Remember: it’s not enough to just avoid being unstrategic. You actually need to make contributions that will have you be perceived as strategic.

Lengthen your time horizon

Tactical people often talk about the here and now, whereas strategic people talk about next quarter, next year, where things are going.

Asking questions, as opposed to making assertions or statements, will lead to opening up new possibilities rather than simply focusing on the definitive here and now.

Understand how your business makes money

There are so many examples of places where the business makes money in different ways than is necessarily apparent.

Taking Starbucks as an example, there is the obvious B2C transaction of a customer buying a coffee. However, when you load money onto a Starbucks card, all of a sudden they become a bank, earning interest on the money you are loaning them until your next beverage.

The more you understand that, the more you understand what the possibilities are and where disruption might come from.

Understanding macro trends in the economy

There are many things that are cutting across industries that are macro trends important to business, such as verticalization, where companies that used to secure supply from others are now actually building those things themselves so they’re not dependent on anyone else.

One notable mega trend is the switch from companies selling a product to their customers selling subscriptions. This can be seen in the Netflix model, where now you don’t rent one DVD but instead pay a subscription so that you can watch as many movies as you want.

Understanding these sorts of macro trends helps you identify how they can affect your own business role, and can be a very useful way of contributing something of strategic value to your team.

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Strategic people make tough choices. If you show that you listen, that you can envision different possible futures and you’re willing to change your opinion or your approach, you can prove that you make strategic choices based on evidence. You’re not just somebody with a load of opinions that they throw out and really just act in the moment. That will certainly help change your brand from a tactical person to a strategic person.

More on this

How to Communicate Strategy

Your Strategy Should Serve Two Purposes

Strategy execution needs to be more inclusive

Why Promoting Diversity is Hard for Teams

If we’re going to achieve our goals of diversity and inclusion, we need to be prepared to sacrifice trust, harmony, and expedience—at least in the short term.

I don’t think that enough leaders are willing to do that.

Diversity Dilutes Trust

Diversity is hard on trust. As humans, we’re biased toward people who are like us and against people who are different. We’re lax on people who feel familiar and leery of people who feel foreign. We’re quick to open ourselves to those with shared characteristics and quicker to close down to those who’ve traveled a different path.

That’s a problem we need to talk about.

I’ve been writing all month about the importance of trust in teams. There’s plenty of evidence that greater trust supports productivity, collaboration, and retention. The problem is that if we drive single-mindedly toward high trust, we set ourselves back on the journey to diversity, equity, and inclusion.

I’ve seen it; teams that get to a high level of trust not by starting with diversity and working diligently to forge connections, but by starting with diversity and working diligently to cull anyone who doesn’t quickly toe the line. Sometimes managers terminate team members with a thinly veiled excuse that they’re “not a fit.” Other times, they make the environment so icy (or overtly hostile) that the person chooses to leave of their own accord.

I get it. When you’ve experienced what Stephen M. R. Covey calls the “speed of trust,” you want it all the time. You want the efficiency, the economy, the ease of working with a team where everyone gets along. You want the cohesive, conflict-free peace of a team that thinks alike. But, of course, as Walter Lipmann said, “When all think alike, no one is thinking very much.” So, be careful what you wish for.

When your team has racial, cultural, and national diversity, you might have someone who puts uncomfortable tension on your product roadmap, geographic footprint, or customer experience. But if you try to avoid that discomfort by assembling a homogenous team, you starve yourself of ideas and innovations that your customers crave and your business requires. You also shrink the pool from which you can source employees. Avoiding gender-, sexual-, physical-, or neuro- diversity does much the same.

Those aren’t the only forms of diversity you need. Start with those forms of diversity and go further—into the realm of diverse educations, experiences, personalities, and styles. Suppose you do bolster these types of diversity. In that case, you can bet that you’ll slow down and have more frequent conflict because there’s a greater likelihood that someone will see different opportunities or threats, spot otherwise hidden assumptions or gaps in the plan, or simply use a different process than you would. But avoiding that kind of diversity weakens your team, just as avoiding racial-, gender-, and neuro-diversity does.

Where From Here?

If the kind of superficial trust that comes from shared identity is not what we need, what’s the better option?

We need a path toward true, earned trust among a diverse group of people. That’s going to take effort. It will require getting to know one another well enough that we can finally identify shared perspectives among the divergent ones. It will take patience as we build confidence in methods that are different from our own and develop new approaches with the best bits from everyone. It will not come without a few stumbles and setbacks as we learn how to deliver for one another when it counts—and how to even communicate our expectations clearly. And it will take courage, integrity, and humility to admit and apologize when we offend, hurt, or undervalue one another.

Getting to true, deep, profound trust with a diverse team of people takes work. But, what a diverse, trusting team can accomplish makes it worth it.

Further Reading

Trust can’t come at the expense of diversity

The Echo Chamber

5 practices that bolster trust on your team

 

What To Do With an Untrustworthy Teammate

Do you have a teammate that you can’t trust? And when I say “can’t trust,” I’m not talking about the friendly incompetent who’s still getting up to speed on their job or the frantic inefficient who’s always late because they have too many priorities. I’m not talking about lack of competence or patchy reliability; I’m talking about good old-fashioned lack of integrity.

I started thinking about this when writing about what to do when you’re dependent on a colleague who isn’t up to the task. When the issue is credibility or dependability, I was comfortable giving you a way to trust the process when you can’t trust the person. (Check it out here.)

But that approach is worth as much as a comb to a bald man if the issue is that the person you’re counting on has no integrity. And while I don’t think it happens all that often (we tend to get overly dramatic and think people have no integrity when they’re just struggling to keep up), when it does happen, you need some approaches to help you cope.

What Does Low Integrity Look Like?

There are infinite ways for a colleague to demonstrate that they’re slimier than a snail, so I’m going to concentrate on the specific (and miserable) situation where you’re working interdependently on a task with someone who’s not trustworthy. Let’s call this colleague Snidely (after Snidely Whiplash, the archrival of Dudley Do-right of Rocky and Bullwinkle fame).

Here are three dastardly tricks that your Snidely might get up to and what you can do about it.

Pretending They Know What They’re Doing

Ugh. This sucks. If only Snidely had the guts (confidence/humility/grace) to let you know that they are out of their depth, you’d be able to help before you both go down with the ship. Alas, no. Snidely’s going with “fake it ‘til you break it.”

Ideally, you want to get out ahead of this scenario by talking about how Snidely will approach the task before you start. For example, use open-ended questions such as, “How will you tackle the competitive review section?” or “What were you thinking for a template for the proposal?” That approach does a few things:

It draws Snidely’s attention to things they need to address.It shows that you’re invested and not going to miss a slip-up.It gives you a chance to hear what they’re thinking (or not thinking) so you can course correct.

If you get unsatisfactory answers, let your Snidely know that they need to figure it out. “I can’t do my part of the proposal until you develop the framework. I’ll put a time in the calendar for tomorrow to hear what you’ve got.”

If you get something back that isn’t going to cut it, you can ask them to get some help by saying, “This framework doesn’t have anything about our differentiation. Who could you ask to work with you on that section?”

If you have to escalate, ask your manager to help you out. Be sure to frame it as “we need help,” rather than pointing fingers with comments like, “Snidely doesn’t know how to write a differentiators section.” There will be many moments when you would love to push Snidely in front of a train, but doing so will only leave people questioning your integrity instead of the true bad guy’s.

There are many reasons why your Snidely might be hiding their incompetence, and a few of them are even worthy of empathy. But, as much as possible, give them a path to ask for help without explicitly admitting that they need it.

Blaming You

Who doesn’t love being blamed for something that you had zero ability to control?!? Low integrity Snidelys can’t bear to own up to their failings, so if someone has to take the fall, it will be you, not them.

Again, being proactive will put you in a much better position here than trying to justify your actions after the fact. If you’ve been burned by your Snidely before, start on a different foot this time.

One essential part of that is clarifying who is responsible for what in your shared accountabilities. Document everything. Preferably, build the plan together and enumerate each of your responsibilities, any check-in milestones, and the deadline for each item. Do not allow any item to have both of your names beside it. If it’s a shared responsibility, it isn’t specific enough. Split the task apart until you can name who owns what.

Save this document. If any milestones start to slip, return to it with a simple, “You committed to having this in draft form by yesterday. When can I expect it?”

If you need to involve your manager, be extremely careful not to judge or blame your wily teammate. Instead, go asking for help or advice. For example, “Snidely and I agreed to these timelines, and now they have slipped. I have followed up with them and have not received a response. How should I handle it?”

Those techniques are only available if you are onto your blame-bombing co-worker from the start. If their finger-pointing comes out of leftfield, it’s harder to cope.

First, buy yourself some time by saying something like, “Wow, I’m surprised to hear that.”Then show your integrity with something like, “If I bear some responsibility for the slipping of the deadlines, I will certainly take responsibility for it.”Then head for the facts, “Can we take a minute to talk about what went on here?”Keep your comments focused on your behavior, “I turned around the document within 24 hours of getting it from you, as we agreed.”Redirect to your future plans, “Next time, we’ll agree in advance on how to handle situations where we get delayed on milestones.”

Finding yourself center court in a blame game is unpleasant but resist the urge to return Snidely’s serve. Sure, it shows low integrity for them to start accusing you of transgressions when they were the issue, but some people are incapable of taking ownership of their mistakes because it would shatter their fragile self-esteem. So don’t stoop to their level. Instead, own what’s yours, expose the facts, and set yourself up better next time.

Bad-mouthing You

Sometimes you start to get wind of a smear campaign being waged by Snidely. If you’ve earned a good reputation and strong relationships, you might hear it directly from someone who wants you to know what’s being said about you. In other situations, you might notice that people are looking at you differently. Either way, it’s not good news.

If you’ve seen this plotline before and know that Snidely will try to turn people against you, you can get out ahead of it by asking for your teammate’s tips and advice for working with them. This will demonstrate that you’re being proactive and open to making the relationship work. That will make them less susceptible to the slander about you if it comes.

The fear of being maligned by your Snidely should also encourage you to invest in the alignment and documentation strategies I mentioned earlier. You want clear evidence that you knew your responsibilities and delivered on them in every case. If you’ve got the record of what you agreed and what you did, you’ll be able to avoid name-calling and baseless accusations that might leave your colleagues feeling just as dubious about you as Snidely.

Again (harping, sorry), you mustn’t resort to bad-mouthing Snidely in return. You’ll destroy any hope of gaining valuable allies and ultimately leave your teammates with the conclusion that you and Snidely deserve each other.

Shift the Balance

In each of these scenarios, I’m advocating that you make it harder, more uncomfortable, and more obvious when your Snidely is behaving with low integrity and make it easier, more rewarding, and more visible when they take the high road. Of course, it’s not a guarantee that an evil villain will suddenly start acting like an Eagle Scout, but it’s a heck of a lot better than just hoping for the best.

Further Reading

How to Get People To Live Up to Your Expectations

Dealing with trust issues on your team

How quickly do you trust?

 

Conflict Resolution in the Workplace: Interpersonal Conflict

 

Tips for resolving interpersonal conflict in the workplace (video transcript)

Do you ever find yourself in an interpersonal conflict at work? Somebody on your team who just rubs you the wrong way, drives you a bit crazy or maybe they’re totally disrespectful of you? Hi, I’m Dr. Liane Davey, and I’m here to help you with what you can do when you find yourself in an interpersonal conflict at work.

In one of my recent videos, I shared the steps you can take if you’re in a conflict at work that’s about an issue or about the right course of action.

Well, that’s a really different situation than if it’s not so much the issue or what they want to do or what the plans are. It’s more just that they make you crazy. In that case, there are a few things that you can do that will help you, if not get to the situation where you wanna go out for drinks after work together, at least get to the point where you’re civil and you respect each other enough to do your job well.

Tip #1: Use objective language (00:53)

Well, first step is to make sure anytime you’re talking about that person that you’re really careful to be incredibly objective. Usually that means not using any adjectives, which is a way we often express our judgment of people.

Let’s do a real example. If you’re thinking “He was so rude in that meeting”, going back to someone and saying “you are so rude!”, or even thinking about and judging them in your own head as rude is really going to be hard on your relationship. It’s hard to get to the other side of an interpersonal conflict if you’re labeling somebody as rude.

So what you want to do in that case is say, “What’s making me think that he’s rude? What’s the objective real behavior, either something he said or something he did, that’s making me interpret that as rude?” It may be something like “he stuck up his hand as I was talking”. Yep, that counts. That’s totally rude. Maybe it wasn’t that at all. Maybe it was he didn’t even show up for your presentation. “Well, fine, you came to everybody else’s presentations, but not mine”.

When you are able to objectively share somebody else’s behavior, you’re much less likely to really cause this sort of escalation of the conflict. And instead, you’re likely to be able to find out that maybe the person didn’t come to your presentation because he got called into some emergency. When you get back to your inbox, there was a message saying “I’d love to get caught up”. You don’t know, right?

So when we interpret someone’s behavior in a certain way and we share with them our interpretation, we normally get it wrong. So speak really objectively.

Tip #2: Highlight the implications (02:29)

Next piece, you can actually share what you see as the implications of somebody’s behavior.

Let’s take a completely different example. Say you’re just presenting very first presentation of a big, new idea. Your slides, you threw them together because it was really just about getting some input. And you’re two minutes into the presentation when Sally goes, “There’s a typo. “That’s not actually how that’s spelled.”

So what you want to do is again make sure you’re objective, step one applies everywhere. But you can also then talk about the implications. So you could say something like “When you share information about spelling mistakes or you suggest edits when I’m in my first presentation, I get taken off course and I don’t get to focus on the ideas and I’m worried I’m going to miss your input on the ‘why’ and the ‘what’ questions. That’s where I really need your input at this stage”.

So you can talk about “when you behave in a certain way, like calling out a spelling mistake in our very first brainstorming session, the implication is it takes me off track. I lose my focus and I miss the opportunity to hear your thoughts on the bigger issues”. So that’s how you share implications of something.

Tip #3: Share how you’re interpreting the behavior (03:44)

Another thing you can do, and this takes a little bit of vulnerability, but if you actually want to get your relationship in a better place, it can be super useful, which is to share with the person how you are interpreting their behavior. Because often, it’s not that the other person is mean or annoying on purpose. It’s that the story you’re telling yourself paints them as the enemy in the situation.

So for example, maybe you’re doing something in the team meeting, giving your update, and your manager keeps jumping in over and over and over, five times in your 10 minute presentation. Instead of you getting to answer the question, your manager jumps in and answers it.

It’s a great place to share privately later. You could say something like “When you answer the question that was posed of me during my section, I feel like you don’t have confidence in me. And then I’m worried that the team doesn’t have confidence in me either”. And it might be that manager’s reaction’s like, “Oh, that’s totally not what I meant! I did your job for so long. I’m just so used to jumping in.”

Then you might even pose another question, which is great when you’re trying to repair a relationship, saying “How could you signal to the team that you have confidence in me?”

Tip #4: Seek advice from others (04:56)

Finally, if you’re in a situation where you’ve tried all those things, you’ve given the person feedback directly, you’ve talked about what you see and what the implications are and how that’s affecting you, and it’s just really not making a dent in the problem, that’s a situation where you might want to go and get some advice from somebody else.

So you might want to say something like “The boss, Stu, he keeps answering all the questions that are posed of me in our team meetings. I’m worried that when he answers questions people have asked of me that that signals that he doesn’t have confidence in me. You know Stu better than I do. First of all, what do you think? How would you interpret that behavior?”

So when you go asking for advice, particularly if it’s about your manager, make sure you’re not complaining or gossiping, but talk about how you’re experiencing their behavior, what you’re worried about. And maybe the person says, “Oh, everybody knows Stu. They know he just is so excited. I don’t think there’s any issue on the team.” Or they might say, “Yeah, I survived that with Stu. Takes a while before he has the confidence to let you go. Try this.”

Tip #5: Acknowledge your internal narrative (06:02)

The final thing that’s important to say is I often hear people who are embroiled in a really unpleasant interpersonal conflict on their team. They tell me that, “Oh, she just, she makes me crazy. He makes me so upset.” And what I hear is all sorts of blaming other people for how you feel.

Ultimately, nobody can make you feel any way. There is something in that process that is about how you interpreted their behavior. And it’s the story you’re telling yourself that’s what’s getting in the way. So just remembering nobody else can make you feel anything, that’s your own reaction. And the more you’re aware of it and you can label it, probably you can free yourself from that.

Bonus tip: “The Coffee Card Method” (06:49)

Here’s my final bonus tip. This is only for situations where things have really gotten bad. But if it has really gotten bad, I use the line “if you can’t make a dent in the problem, reduce the dent that it makes in you.”

And under that heading, I say if you need to have a few lines that that person uses or things the person does, like I don’t know, shoot you with the air guns or whatever it is, interrupt you in a meeting, have yourself a little coffee card that you can punch every time they do it. And have a buddy. The deal is, if you punch that card five times or 10 times or whatever it is, then you go for a coffee with your buddy to vent.

I find what’s interesting about using that technique if there’s somebody you’re finding is really draining you, all of a sudden that changes the power dynamic. And where this might have driven you crazy before, now you’re like, ha, point on the card. And just something about that completely changes how we think about the situation. Now it’s not annoying anymore. Now it’s like 1/10 of the way to a free macchiato. Don’t use that unless you’re really in a rough situation that you can’t get out of, but it really can be helpful.

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All right, that’s it for me. I’m Dr. Liane Davey, here to help you get the team that you deserve.

 

Bullet Journaling for Busy Professionals

 

How to bullet journal (video transcript)

Bullet journaling was invented by Ryder Carroll, and there are many different versions of it, but I thought I’d share my version.

Layout

A bullet journal has tiny dots in a grid pattern which allows you to make lines any way you want. This allows you to use a template to plan your week.

There’s a spot for each day of the week, although I put Saturday and Sunday together because I try not to have too many tasks or appointments at the weekend. I leave a spot for what I’m going to do next week, so that I have a heads-up of what’s upcoming.

I also have a spot for ideas. That’s really important for me as a writer, because I’m constantly getting ideas on a call with somebody that I need to write down before I lose them. Finally I have a habit tracker section which helps keep my resilience high.

Step 1: Document your appointments

At the start of the week, I go through my calendar and I put in all of the appointments. This would include meetings with clients or colleagues, as well as things like going to the gym.

Step 2: Add next week’s heads up

Then I flip through to my calendar for next week. Anything upcoming that I might need to prepare for beforehand, such as a two-day client meeting, I add in here to give myself a heads up for any preparation I might need.

So that’s what I do at the start of the week.

Step 3: Add tasks on the right day

Then I check through my page for the previous week, and check to see if there are any tasks that I didn’t get done. If there are, then I find a place to fit them in for this week to make sure that they get done.

Step 4: As new things come up, fit them in

The reason I love this so much is that it’s really a great way of managing thought load. What I mean by that is often when I’m trying to write, I’ll remember something that I have forgotten to do. For example, as I’m writing an email will come in that I don’t want to process right away, so I put it on the list to make sure that I don’t lose it.

Step 5: Document ideas

The other thing that happens while I’m doing that is I’m writing one article and I get a bit wordy and I go off on a tangent, and I realize that, “Oh, that’s actually a totally different article.” So that’s not a task per se, but rather something to put in the ideas section.

When I process my journal on Monday mornings, I pick up last week’s random thoughts and actually put them somewhere. So I have a page at the back of the journal for my content planning. So that’s the key reason that a bullet journal keeps you kind of sane.

If I have an intrusive thought about something I haven’t done or need to do that is going to happen between now and Sunday, I usually put it on a Saturday and Sunday. If it’s for next week, I put it straight into next week to remember, because when I update it for next week, I’ll check this list and I can map it forward.

Step 6: Make a future log

The other good thing about bullet journals is that you can also set up an annual section, to get an idea of the upcoming weeks and months and how they will play out.

Step 7: Fill in finished appointments

So as you go through and you complete a task, you can color it in. If for example a meeting is postponed, I just put a little arrow to say that it’s been postponed to another time. And if it’s a task, then I actually cross it out with an X. That’s the bullet journal technique when you finish a task.

Step 8: Cross out completed tasks

My favorite thing about bullet journaling is having finished everything on a day, and being able to cross out all the tasks; I also draw a star below each day that, once my tasks are completed, I can color in to indicate that day’s work is finished.

As such, when I scan the bullet journal, it naturally skips everything completed and shows me what I have left to finish.

Step 9: Use a habit tracker

The habit tracker is a helpful way of managing my anxiety by ensuring I take care of myself and invest in my resilience.

The habit tracker has my five resilience habits which are intermittent fasting, getting hydrated, drinking enough water, doing an hour of exercise at least five times a week, reading fiction each day (I count 10 pages of fiction as good enough for me) and then 10 minutes of meditating.

As I tend to meditate in the morning, I get the satisfaction right afterwards of coloring in the meditation box. I can also color in the fasting box from the previous evening (if I’ve stuck to my plan!).

The other thing I do is meal planning, which in a family is always another source of stress. Before we do the grocery shopping each day or each week, I put in the full week’s worth of menus. That way I know what’s coming.

Step 10: Add check boxes (if you want)

The final thing I do is add a couple of check mark boxes for each day in my bullet journal. You can use these for daily targets you have. For example, I am currently working on an inbox zero strategy to get my inbox down to zero each morning, and I also try to use my standup desk for at least an hour a day. If I’ve accomplished these two daily goals, I can check them off in the boxes.

More on this

Enough about Workload, the Problem is Thoughtload

8 Ways to Feel Less Overwhelmed by Your Workload

How to get things done when you aren’t motivated

Trust the Process

Here’s a conundrum I see frequently. You’re completely dependent on your colleagues to do their work (well and on time), but you’re too busy to keep tabs on their progress. So, depending on your personality, you go one of two ways: 1) you stress, worry, and fret about the likelihood that they’ll let you down and, in the process, cripple your productivity; or 2) you throw up your hands, cede control, trust that everything will be ok and hope like hell that you don’t get an unwelcome surprise at the 11th hour.

Those are crappy options.

Do You Worry and Fret?

Option #1 is terrible because the more you stress and worry, well…the more stressed and worried you are…and that’s bad on its own. But to make matters worse, the more you stress and worry, the less productive you’ll become. I’ve written before about how failing to manage your thoughtload detracts from your ability to manage your workload. So, can we agree that option #1 sucks?

Do You Trust Blindly?

Option #2 ain’t great either. There are many legitimate reasons why you shouldn’t feel confident in passively putting your fate in the hands of a colleague. For example:

They’re new, and you don’t know if they have the skills to be successfulThey’ve been around forever, and they’ve botched jobs like this beforeThey seem distracted by other prioritiesThe way they approach tasks like these is questionableThey don’t know all the key players who have to be on board with the planThey’re great with the big ideas but terrible at thinking through the detailsThey’re great with the details, but the ideas are incremental at best

I could go on and on. There are infinite reasons why you might not trust your colleague to do what you’re counting on them to do. Option #2 is just as much of a no-go!

When You Don’t Trust the Person, Trust the Process

Fortunately, you don’t have to choose between naïve trust and unproductive worry. There is a third way. That third option is to invest time in aligning around how you will approach the task and then trust the process instead of the person.

Unfortunately, most people I meet are so busy that in their haste to get going, they shortchange the process conversations that would make life so much calmer, more efficient, and less stressful. Unless you trust your colleague completely, it’s good to put more stock in a good process. (The amount of time you invest should be proportionate to the project’s length, magnitude, and complexity. It could be as little as five minutes.)

I’ve distilled this conversation into a discussion guide to give you a few new questions that will foster alignment and increase your confidence that the person will deliver. Remember, your colleague is likely in the same position as you, wondering whether you’re trustworthy or not. That means that you both need to answer the questions, listen for any misalignment, and flex your approach to come to a mutually agreed-upon plan.

Define the Objective

If you’re concerned that the person might have different perspectives, motives, or end goals than you, make sure you’re coming to an agreement on the objective of the work before diving in.

What are we trying to accomplish?Who is this for? How might they define success differently than us?Where does it fit with other initiatives or commitments?Describe Good and Bad

If you’re worried about the quality of the person’s work, make sure you’re being specific about the difference between acceptable and unacceptable work.

What would be a home run on this?What is the minimum we have to accomplish?What outcomes would be a concern or judged as a failure?Discuss the Approach

If you suspect that the person might take shortcuts or neglect parts of the process that are important, get into some detail about the steps that are required.

How are you thinking about approaching this?What do we need to do for you to have confidence in the process?How much time should we allow for each of these steps?Determine the Stakeholders

If you’re nervous about how the person will manage the interpersonal aspects of moving the task forward, spend some time talking about the key players.

Who are the key stakeholders for this?Who has sway over the decision? What are they looking for? What influences them?Who has valuable perspectives we need to include?Set Criteria

If the task involves making a decision, clarify the criteria for the decision from the start.

What are the criteria we should use to evaluate our decisions?How should we prioritize the criteria?Which criteria should affect how we implement the decision but not what decision we make?Set Guardrails

If you’re worried that the person will either be too quick to ask for input or too slow, talk about your comfort levels with issues and set the standards for when and how you will alert one another to any concerns.

When should we involve one another or check-in?What scenarios would warrant re-evaluating the plan?When would we need to escalate this to another level?Plan for Issues

No matter whether you trust the person implicitly or not, it’s worth spending a couple of minutes anticipating what could go wrong and creating an “in case of emergency break glass” game plan.

What issues can we anticipate?How would we handle those types of issues?What will we do if something unanticipated comes up?

You certainly don’t have to go through all of these questions every time you’re co-dependent with a teammate. Pick a few that are relevant and use them to open a dialogue where you can express any concerns you have about how things might get off track.

There you have it, a way to increase your confidence that a teammate will deliver without trusting them blindly.

One caveat.

To be fair, this strategy is ideally suited to a situation where you’re dubious about your colleague’s attention, approach, or accountability, NOT a situation where you have a solid reason to doubt their integrity. A low integrity person might agree upfront and then go back on everything they committed. Hmm… I guess I should write about how to handle a low-integrity colleague. Stay tuned.

Further Reading

Building Trust in Remote and Hybrid Teams

What can you do to accelerate trust on a team?

What do I do if my teammate doesn’t trust me?

 

How Can I Be More Trustworthy?

Are you noticing that you’re not getting assigned the interesting projects? Sitting on the outside of the inner circle on your team? Frustrated that no one seems to share important information with you? Maybe your colleagues or your manager have decided that you’re not trustworthy. What can you do?

“Trustworthy” is an annoyingly ambiguous concept, so someone telling you that you need to be more trustworthy can leave you wondering everything from whether they think you did something immoral or unethical all the way to whether they think you’re dodgy because you took the last donut from the box in the kitchen.

In this series, I’m tackling some of the most nebulous and underdefined criticisms that are leveled at people by their teammates in hopes that I can bring some clarity and some tangible ideas for what you can do to bolster your brand. For example, I shared what to do in the first post if someone tells you you’re not “strategic” enough. So check it out and let me know what other ill-defined criticisms have been leveled at you that you’d like me to demystify.

The Definition of Trust

If we’re going to talk about what makes you trustworthy (or not), we better start with the definition of trust. Trust is someone’s willingness to be vulnerable to you in a situation where they can’t control your behavior. So when someone suggests that they don’t trust you, they’re telling you that they feel vulnerable about what you might do and how that behavior will affect them.

It’s helpful to think about trust as two sides of a scale. On the one side are the acts you’ve committed that your coworkers have interpreted as having made them vulnerable. On the other side, you have your behaviors or characteristics that inspire their comfort in being vulnerable around you. How much someone trusts you is a function of both sides. Another way to think about it might be in an accounting sense with debits and credits or assets and liabilities. What assets and liabilities do you have in your trust account with your coworkers?

The Opposite of Trustworthy

Let’s start with the downside; the things you might have done in the past or be doing now could erode others’ trust in you—making them feel vulnerable around you. Now, if you immediately tried to recall times that you threw them under the bus, stabbed them in the back, or let a cat out of the bag, hang on a moment. Not all breaches of trust go straight to the level of low integrity. It’s worth considering some more innocuous possibilities first.

Did You Surprise Them?

Given that trust is about vulnerability, it’s therefore also about predictability. Some forms of “I don’t trust you” are just “I’m not sure what you’ll do.” Someone might feel nervous around you because you did something surprising or startling. Those could include:

Expressing a strong emotional reaction in response to something they said or didAsking a question of them that they didn’t feel prepared to answerReacting to an issue differently from them (and different from what they expected)

You might think these transgressions are too minor to warrant someone calling you untrustworthy. Still, if you surprise someone, you rattle their sense of control and naturally make them less comfortable being vulnerable around you. So consider how you might make your behavior less idiosyncratic and invest more effort in helping people understand where you’re coming from.

Did You Flub a Job?

Another possibility is that you did something that has caused your colleagues to question your capability. Some forms of “I don’t trust you” are equivalent to “I’m not confident you’re capable.”  Someone might feel uncomfortable around you because you didn’t know how to do your job, or you delivered something of poor quality.

Consider these types of scenarios:

Sending a first draft without addressing spelling and grammatical errorsBeing flustered, wordy, or inarticulate in a presentation to a customerMissing a risk in a plan that would have left the business exposed

Again, sending a document with typos might seem silly and insufficient grounds to deem you untrustworthy but remember that different people feel vulnerable in different ways. If they can’t pass on your work without fear that it has defects, they can’t trust you. If gaps in their confidence might be the source of the trust issues, spend more time contracting on shared expectations and add in some checkpoints to bolster your credibility.

Did You Let Them Down?

There’s one last possibility to consider before we get to the “thew them under the bus” level of mistrust. That’s the scenario where you didn’t deliver something they were counting on you for. Some forms of “I don’t trust you” are code for “I can’t depend on you.” The person who thinks you’re not trustworthy might feel that you violated their expectations or left them in the lurch. (Fellow word nerds, check out the fun origin of the expression left in the lurch here).

Examples of that could be interpreted as being unreliable:

Saying you’ll send a draft by Thursday at 5 pm and then sending it Friday at 8 amBooking over a contentious meeting so your teammate has to go without youReprioritizing your workload in a way that affects a colleague’s timelines

In each of these cases, your reasons for not delivering might be entirely justifiable, but that’s not what matters. What matters is whether the person now has a lingering doubt about whether you can be counted on to deliver. If you suspect that your colleague might be worried about relying on you, be very candid about expectations upfront and quick to raise a flag about any issues, so they have time to react.

Did Your Integrity Lapse?

Ok, we’ve exhausted the other possibilities, and now we’ve got to talk about the things you might have done that have left your colleagues questioning your integrity. I’m not going to list out all the genuinely egregious versions, such as acting unethically, sexually harassing them (or anyone), lying, or gossiping about them. You don’t need me to tell you that your trustworthiness will have bottomed out if they suspect you of these forms of impropriety. But what about some less obvious, less severe behaviors that might be undermining your colleagues’ sense that your integrity is worthy of trust?

Consider these possibilities:

Saying one thing to one audience and something different to anotherPretending things are fine when you’re obviously strugglingTaking credit for the work or ideas of others

Questioning your integrity doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re doing anything morally reprehensible. It might just mean that you’re playing politics, exaggerating your stories, or faking it ‘til you make it. And interestingly, it might mean that you’re making it clear that you’re not willing to be vulnerable, which is creating a similarly guarded mindset from your teammates. Fascinating isn’t it?!?

Earn Your Teammates’ Trust

Now that we’ve addressed a few different reasons why your colleagues might be feeling uneasy about your trustworthiness, we can focus on the positive side of the ledger and some steps you can take to get a few credits in your trust account.

Ask for Help

I know it seems counterintuitive to ask for help from someone who might not trust you. And I wouldn’t advise making it a gargantuan favor. But do try asking for help in one of these small ways. Asking for someone to help you gets you in the backdoor of trust (it’s a complicated cognitive dissonance-related phenomenon, but it’s often effective). Try one of these asks:

Ask for help on a narrow, specific part of a project where they have more expertise than youShare a draft of something you’re working on and ask for feedbackSolicit support for a cause or volunteer effort you’re a part ofSpend More Time on Expectation-setting

One of your best options for earning trust is spending more time getting aligned about expectations from the beginning. Behaving differently from what someone expected will tax your trust account. Try these options:

Document what each person is committing to (who’s doing what with whom by when)Plan in advance for what you’ll do if either of you has to reprioritizeDiscuss guidelines for when and how you’ll escalate any issuesBe Vulnerable Yourself

Vulnerability from one person fosters vulnerability from another. If your colleagues are not trusting you, try being more open with them. Try one of these:

Share some of your backstories to help them better understand your idiosyncrasiesAdmit something you’re struggling with or where you feel unsettledApologize for something and share your understanding of the impact your actions hadThe Moral of the Story

In an era of deep fakes and fake news, being someone your colleagues can trust is essential. So for the next month, pay attention to how you’re making your teammates feel confident that they can be vulnerable around you. Do everything you can to make your behavior predictable and when it’s not, take the time to explain why and understand the ramifications on your teammates. Then go the extra mile to earn trust proactively. You’ll find that investments in trustworthiness are some of the most profound relationship builders that will stand you in good stead at work and help you form a friendship that lasts a lifetime.

Further Reading

Building Trust in Remote and Hybrid Teams

10 Tips to Prevent Misalignment from Destroying Trust

What can you do to accelerate trust on a team?

 

Stop Trying to Sound Strategic!

I know, I know, you’ve been told that you aren’t strategic enough, so now you’re trying to reach a self-imposed quota for using big words and making references to The Economist. Please stop. Just stop. It’s not working. You don’t sound more strategic; you just seem more daft.

How Not to Seem Smart

You might think there’s an easy way to fool everyone into thinking you’re a strategic genius, but much like other easy ways to do hard things, they don’t work. Honestly. Here are a few approaches to trying to bamboozle people that are particularly misguided.

Using Big Words to Try to Sound Strategic 

Bigger words aren’t necessarily better. (Even in Scrabble, the three-letter word zax earns you 19 points while seven-letter rentals gives only 7.) I see you adding letters on the end of common words to try to sound smarter! But longer versions often have slightly different meanings and therefore aren’t interchangeable. My least favorite trend is for people to use the word methodology instead of the word method. A methodology isn’t a method. Methodology is the study of methods (like any -ology is the study of something). If you’re not tinkering with the method, trying to better understand the right approach, you’re not using a methodology. Misusing a word isn’t going to make you sound smarter.

For word nerds like me, you might enjoy this (everyone else, detour around this bit ↴).

Another of my hit list of annoying substitutions is utilize instead of use. I consulted Merriam-Webster to confirm my understanding that utilize was a 19th-century addition to the language that was particular to a situation where you have found a new use for something. Yup, true. But the best part was the introduction to the article, where they mentioned another of my love to hate words, incentivize.

“Utilize doesn’t get a lot of love, which is hardly surprising. It’s got two important strikes against it. The first is its ending: words with the -ize suffix tend to annoy people (we’ll pause here for anyone who wants to hate on incentivize for a moment). And second is its length: clocking in at a whole two syllables longer than its plain-Jane synonym use, utilize is often labeled “pretentious.”

Bless you, Merriam-Webster.

[↳ End Detour]

You don’t have to take my word for it that using fancy-pants words reduces connection, artificially creates distance with your audience, and makes others see you as less intelligent. There’s research to back me up. A series of studies showed that complex language is more difficult to understand, which leads to lower ratings of the person communicating. (And props to Daniel Oppenheimer for calling the paper “Consequences of Erudite Vernacular Utilized Irrespective of Necessity.”) The research suggested that anything that makes it harder for your audience to understand your message reduces their perceptions of your intelligence. Interestingly, that even included using a font that’s difficult to decipher.

Let’s hit on two other ways that you make your message harder to understand and thereby make yourself seem less strategic and intelligent rather than more.

Passive Voice

One way that I hear people trying to sound more impressive, mainly when communicating in writing, is by using the passive voice. You’ve probably heard someone going off about this one before, but maybe the grammar reference left you cold. I think it’s worth revisiting it. I find Grammarly’s article clear and helpful. Check it out here. The primary difference is that the active voice has the subject acting on the object, and the passive voice has the subject receiving the object’s action.

Active: Pat broke the rules.

Passive: The rules were broken by Pat.

Passive voice can make a sentence more convoluted and, therefore, harder to understand. From Dr. Oppenheimer’s research, we know that if it’s harder for the reader to comprehend your message, it will negatively affect their perceptions of your value.

If that isn’t enough, passive language is also a common cloak for passive-aggressiveness. That’s because you don’t even need “by Pat” in the passive version. Instead, you can just have “the rules were broken.” That’s where passive voice gets slippery.

Another plus of the active voice is that it conveys accountability better than the passive voice. So not only will people think you sound more strategic, but they’ll also feel more confident that you will make things happen. Bonus!

Messy Bullets

One more… another place where you might be hampering your attempts to sound smart and seem strategic is in your use of bullet points. I like bullet points. There are many instances where it makes sense to get the main idea across succinctly. The idea is to reduce the effort it takes for the reader to extract meaning. What a great goal! The problem is that if your bullets are messy and mismatching, it will make it harder for them to read, not easier. And remember, we’re taking our cues from Oppenheimer; anything that reduces the reader’s fluency hurts their perceptions of you. 

A few months back, I saw a great example of a mismatched bullet list courtesy of the Speaker of the US House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi. Someone made this nice foam-core placard of the core features of the proposed legislation, but no one had bothered to fix the grammar. 

Do you see it?

The first bullet is “good paying jobs,” an adjective combo, then a noun

The second bullet shifts gears to “cut taxes,” A punchy verb-noun pairing

The third is another verb-noun, “lower costs.” 

But just as we’re settling in for some more action-oriented goodness, we get “wealthy and corporations pay fair share”

(Interestingly, “lower” could be a verb or an adjective here, but because of the brain’s desire to find patterns, you read it as a verb when it follows “cut,” which only reinforces my point that we crave cohesive lists!) 

Switching up the parts of speech in a bulleted list makes it harder to read. It increases the cognitive load. It kills the flow. And you don’t want to kill the flow when you’re trying to breathe life into a bill; you want to get people on a roll. The same holds for your persuasive strategy presentations.

Just for fun, let’s see how we could improve Nancy’s list. We could use…

Well-paying jobs (I let “good paying” slide before) Progressive taxesLower costsHigher contributions from the wealthy

Or go all verby if you want to inspire action…

Pay a living wage Cut taxes Lower the cost of living Increase contributions from the wealthy 

A bulleted list is a set. Bullets should work together. The points should match. Otherwise, you’re making it harder for your reader to understand, and more likely that they’ll think you’re asleep at the switch.

Being strategic is about reflecting and being more observant and thoughtful than others. It’s about making connections among disparate issues that others don’t see. It’s about making tough choices to go all-in on some areas while intentionally avoiding others. That’s what will make people think you’re strategic. Saying paradigm, or utilize, or methodology won’t do it.

Reference

Oppenheimer, D. M. (2006). Consequences of Erudite Vernacular Utilized Irrespective of Necessity: Problems with Using Long Words Needlessly. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 20, 139-156.

Further Reading

How to Communicate Strategy

How to Sell Your Strategic Idea

Checklist for effective one-way communication

 

How Team Dynamics Affect Strategic Planning

Developing a great strategy that uses your strengths and capitalizes on a market opportunity to give you a competitive advantage requires a particular team dynamic. That dynamic includes a certain feel in the room (something I’ve heard referred to lately as a mindset and a moodset). It also requires a specific set of behaviors to unleash expansive thinking and then transition to decisiveness over a series of conversations. This team dynamic is essential, and it’s rare.

What’s the Best Team Dynamic for Developing Strategy?

Over the years that I’ve been facilitating strategy, I’ve learned to recognize these hallmarks of an effective team dynamic for creating strategy. And trust me, when these aren’t there, and I’m trying to muscle it as the facilitator, it’s rough going.

#1 Openness to Possibility

Sometimes my diagnosis of a team is that the members just can’t believe anymore. Are you still able to believe in a bright future for your team or organization? If not, you definitely shouldn’t be in a strategy session and probably should be looking for employment elsewhere. You deserve to believe in the company you work for.  

How to Get Your Team More Excited About Possibility

If you’re worried that your team can’t dream anymore, try sharing a great underdog strategy story. There are many great strategy stories that could inspire even the surliest stick-in-the-mud.

#2 Energy and Enthusiasm

Strategy should be a generative process, and if everyone in the room looks like a deflated balloon, you’re not going to have the forward momentum needed to fuel a process that can be long, arduous, and full of dead ends.

How to Boost the Energy and Enthusiasm in the Room

The first place to start is by picking the right room. I remember trying to do a strategy session in a room with a 7-foot ceiling and approximately six inches of free space around the outside of the chairs. The thinking was as constrained as the floor space. Pick a room with light, room to move, fresh air, and a few signs that something impressive is likely to happen inside.

Beyond the room setup, use an engaging opening exercise, a controversial presentation, or a visit from a customer who believes in you to get people fired up. Then use breaks to infuse energy when you notice a lag (but don’t have pre-determined break times that might fall right in the middle of a burst of energy). I’m also a fan of a fun and playful treat at midafternoon. For example, there was ice cream in the session I facilitated in Austin last week!

#3 Withholding Judgment

Judgmental people suck the oxygen out of a strategic planning discussion. As soon as someone starts evaluating the quality ideas (and, by proxy, evaluating the value or intelligence of the person who offered the idea), the psychological safety is gone—poof!

How to Reduce Judgment and Dismissiveness

At the outset, set your ground rules and include a standard about refraining from judging ideas. Then, if someone chooses to criticize or shoot down an idea, say, “We agreed not to evaluate ideas at this stage,” and add on one of the following redirects:

· What WOULD make it a viable idea?

· What would have to be true for it to work?

· Even if it wouldn’t work, what can we learn from the idea?

· What assumptions are we making about the idea?

Ideally, you want to extinguish the judgmental behavior, so you might need to have a private conversation with anyone who persists. But, in the moment, don’t let their dismissiveness kill your team’s mojo. Instead, deflect it with a question that opens things back up.

#4 Disagreement

One of the most painful scenarios in strategic planning is when everyone keeps agreeing with each other. In You First, I described this toxic scenario as a “BobbleHead Team.” It’s harmful because it exposes your organization to considerable risk. A great dynamic for strategic planning has lots of tension. The key thing is that the tension comes in the form of “and” not “but.” This is true, AND this completely different thing is true, too.

How to Get People to Disagree

To boost the amount of productive conflict in your strategy sessions, discuss the importance of diverse thinking in your ground rule conversation. Then use a variety of different prompts to spur disagreement. For example, you can change the time horizon (How would that be different if we were talking ten years instead of two?), the stakeholders (What would European customers say about that opportunity?), the lens (How would thinking about a service versus product lead to a different answer?) You need the start of your strategic planning process to encourage people to disagree, diverge, and dissent.

#5 Managing Egos

Another critical dynamic to manage if you want to get the most from strategic planning is the delicate balance of self-esteem. The participants with too little self-esteem and the associated fragile ego can be disruptive in strange and varied ways. The least disruptive is that they stay silent (and fail to add what is uniquely theirs to contribute), but other, more overt signs of their struggle show up in defensiveness and even tantrums. On the other end of the spectrum, those with an overdose of confidence might be dismissive of others’ contributions and too quick to jump to solutions.

How to Deal with Egos

If you’re in charge of a strategic planning process, you’ll want to diffuse any ego timebombs before the sessions begin. First, invest in doing an exercise to articulate the unique contributions of each member of the team. (Here’s a link to the article I wrote about it for HBR.) This will be indispensable if self-esteem issues arise. You can use it to encourage input from someone hesitant. Try saying, “Julian, you’re the only person in the room who works with our suppliers. What trends are they noticing?” You can also use the outputs of the exercise to temper an over-exuberant contributor. “Thanks for sharing that, Ava. Before you go any further, I’d love to hear from others who are customer-facing.” This exercise ties people’s contributions to their roles and helps you balance contributions diplomatically.

You might need to bolster the unique value exercise with individual conversations about how you’re hoping people will show up. For the person who feels like an imposter at the table, share your take on what they can bring and ask for their commitment to adding that value. For the over-confident person, ask for their help to ask the best questions or elicit contributions from others around the table. Follow these conversations up with check-ins between sessions.

#6 Listening, Validation, and Building

Another sure sign that a team is openly engaging in novel thinking is listening to one another, deliberately validating one another’s contributions, and building on their teammate’s ideas rather than tearing them down.

How to Improve Listening

I’ve dedicated considerable space to exercises and techniques to help improve the quality of your listening and validation among team members. I highly recommend that you share this article on what I call “Level III Listening.” It will be an eye-opener when you realize all that’s going on in your head that distracts you from listening effectively.

And if you have tried to inspire your team to be better listeners with the Level III article and they’re not getting any better, you can find the instructions for my remedial listening drill here.

#7 Convergence

I probably shouldn’t end this article without mentioning that good strategy processes don’t just keep the options open forever; they converge to the point that you choose a course of action and throw your resources behind it. I’m usually so busy trying to hold off convergence that it seems funny even to mention the possibility that your team gets stuck in an endless tangent, but I guess it’s possible.

How to Get Your Team to Converge

This is where you need to shift from open-ended to closed questions. Which of these is more likely to work? Should we do this first, or this? If we can only do one of these in this fiscal year, which would it be? If those questions meet resistance, take one step backward. What would we need to know to make that choice? Which risks do we still need to consider? Don’t stay in this mode too long. At some point, you’ll need to make a call and ask everyone to get on board.

I usually love facilitating strategic planning. I get energized by learning about the trends unfolding in the world, and I relish the puzzle of finding a novel path through the minefield. But sometimes, I’m the only one in the room who’s ready to open things up. In those cases, I’m using all of these approaches to give the team a fair shot at coming up with a great strategy. I hope they’re useful in your next strategic planning process.

Further Reading

Running a great strategic meeting

How to get a juicy conversation

Are you helping or hindering with strategy? A Quiz