Liane Davey's Blog, page 20

Prioritize Means Deprioritize

How often does your leadership team talk about priorities? What importance do you place on the act of prioritizing work? When you say “prioritize,” what does it mean?

Just to go all word-nerd on you for a sec, the term priority (and prioritize) comes from the 14th-century word meaning “being earlier.” It literally means this comes first.

Now think about how the term is used in modern-day parlance. When was the last time you saw a list of priorities that was longer than one item? Be honest, was it today? Could you send me screenshots of 5 different places where you’re using the word priority to describe a list of 3, 5, or 15 things?

Now think about it. How is your team supposed to figure out what to do “earlier” than everything else?

So why are leadership teams so prone to having a laundry list of priorities?

Why You Add More to the Plate

There are many reasons why your team might keep adding to the list:

You want everyone to know all the things that are important (sensible)You have to worry about all those things so shouldn’t they have to too (less sensible)You don’t want to have the hard discussions about what’s more and less importantYou think that doing more will make things betterYou assess your team’s capacity based on your own, very high, capacityYou don’t want to take the time to create a different priority list for different stakeholdersWhat’s Wrong with Doing Good Things?

Is there such a thing as too much of a good thing? Yes, yes there is. If you’ve ever overfilled your plate at a buffet and had to eat salad covered in gravy and cheesecake in salad dressing, you’ll know it’s true. Having too many priorities isn’t just an issue at the buffet, it’s a problem for your team too. Here are a few issues:

You dilute everyone’s focus and create a generalized sense of anxiety and overwhelmYou miss a chance to create cross-team alignment about what mattersYou leave the true prioritization up to the layers below who have less expertise or context to make good choicesYou set up conflicts between departments who interpret the priorities within the priorities differentlyDeprioritize, Don’t Just Prioritize

If you’re not supposed to add one exciting initiative after the next, what are you supposed to do? I encourage leadership teams to deprioritize, not prioritize. Here’s what I mean:

Each time an important new initiative comes up, revisit the current agreed set of prioritiesDiscuss the scope and resources required for the proposed new activity and identify overlaps with existing commitmentsDetermine if the new activity rises to the level of bumping something off the listIdentify one or more activities that you will deprioritizeChoose whether you will delete something off the list, delay the start of a priority, distribute the task to a person who is available, diminish the task by reducing its scope to make room for higher priority activityBenefits

Leaders who get good at deprioritizing will find themselves not only more productive but also more popular. Deprioritizing has the following benefits:

Forces the difficult conversations to happen at the table, which reduces the misalignment and dysfunction that otherwise just happens in the shadowsCreates a better line of sight to resourcing, allowing you to address resource constraints and build capacity where requiredReduces mental clutter, which allows your team to increase their workload by reducing their thoughtload (more on that here)Creates a progression of activities that build on each other, which means you’ll get better traction at first and great momentum later

You’re kidding yourself if you think having a list of 5 priorities is helping anyone. If every single person on your team can’t answer, “what do I need to do first,” then you’ve abdicated your responsibility as a leader.

I’ve talked previously about the importance of leadership teams commissioning work, rather than trying to solve the problem in the room. It turns out, it’s just as important that teams learn to decommission work too. What are you going to delete, delay, distribute, or diminish for your team this week?

 

Further Reading

Why You’re So Busy and How to Ruthlessly Prioritize

10 Tips to Prevent Misalignment from Destroying Trust

5 busy person mistakes to avoid

 

 

 

 

Too Many False Alarms

Since the advent of nuclear weapons, there have been several incidents where false alarms might have caused a cascade to global thermonuclear annihilation. One such episode was triggered by a flock of Canada geese, one by meteor showers, one by a malfunctioning chip, and one by a rocket researching the aurora borealis. Thankfully, in each case, the folks with their fingers on the button decided to see if there was something worth ending the world over. Keeping your powder dry (or your atoms separate) until you can confirm the nature of the issue is rather important.

So why are leadership teams so prone to launching all-out attacks based on one data point?

Imagine you’re sitting in a leadership team meeting. At some point, someone raises an issue that popped up in their department this morning. Maybe the servers were down for two hours or 40% of the staff in one warehouse called in sick, or you lost a competitive bid on a contract.

What happens when someone shares a data point that suggests you have a problem?

Often, I see teams go straight to the launch codes without double-checking that there’s an actual threat.

Why You Pull the Alarm

There are many reasons why your team might want to chase after a single data point:

It sounds alarming and the instinct to protect the organization kicks inThe problem is more concrete and tangible than the long-range issue you were supposed to be talking aboutIt’s satisfying to grab something in the moment and make it betterNo one trusts the person in charge to solve the problem on their ownWhat’s Wrong with Getting a Jump on the Issues?

As with the other suboptimal ways leadership teams use their meeting time (see my recent posts on using meetings to make decisions or design processes), chasing after problems based on a single data point is both inefficient and ineffective. Here are a few of my concerns:

What you think is a nuclear attack might just be a flock of geese. Overreacting can be costlyJumping on a problem means disempowering the person who is in charge of monitoring and course-correctingZeroing in on a single issue during scarce leadership team time means detracting from the time you could be spending on issues that are more appropriate for your levelStick to Patterns, not Points

If you’re not supposed to chase after discrete problems, what are you supposed to do? I encourage leadership teams to focus on patterns, not points. Here’s what I mean:

Ensure there’s a plan to address the issue:

Briefly discuss the nature of the problem, then identify who is responsible for investigating it furtherCall out any inter-dependencies or stakeholders who should be consulted to fully understand or remedy the problemAsk the responsible person to research the relevant data and come back to the leadership team with any concerning trends

Then get back to adding your unique value by:

Revisit your risk protocols, leading indicators, and scenario plans to ensure the current problem has been accounted forSchedule time to have a fulsome conversation about a broader issue that encapsulates the problemEngage an external party to educate you about external market trends or leading practices that relate to the problem you hadBenefits

There are several benefits of keeping your leadership team focused on patterns rather than points.

Better prioritization of the team’s time on the most important issues, which means you don’t miss something important while dealing with something urgentMore systemic views of issues, which means the solutions are more likely to work and endureTransparency of your risk tolerance and thresholds for escalation, which means your team feels more empowered to address issues autonomouslyClusters of issues are considered together rather than piecemeal, which leads to more holistic approaches that are better coordinated across different functions

It is such a colossal waste of time to send your leadership team spinning over one possibly erroneous, errant, or ephemeral data point. Before you invest time in an issue, make sure there’s a there there.

How can you help your team pause the action and focus on patterns rather than points?

 

Further Reading

How far in the weeds are you?

Curtailing your need for detail

Questions to Redirect a Low-Value Meeting

 

Design by Committee

Do you know the old adage, “a camel is a horse designed by a committee?”

That line nails it for me.

Imagine you’re sitting in a leadership team meeting. At some point, someone mentions the need for a new way of doing things. It might be a new performance management program, a strategic planning process, a bake sale for charity, or one of a gazillion other activities that need to be developed. What happens when someone mentions one of those processes?

Design by Committee

Only you know the truth, but I’m willing to bet that your team rolls up their sleeves, jumps up to the whiteboard, and starts to map out the design.

Zack is right into the weeds, “If we’re revamping performance management, we need a template that fits on one page.”

Jayme follows him in, “Our new system needs to include a lot more about our values and competencies. There’s too much emphasis on the ‘what’ and not enough on the ‘how.’”

She’s interrupted by Lacey who adds another complexity, “If we had an app it would make it more likely that people would submit real-time feedback.”

You try to jump in to tell them that you have a team full of people with master’s degrees who can design the system, you just wanted to get some direction on what the system needs to accomplish.

Watching a leadership team trying to design a program or process is excruciatingly painful and wholly ineffective. Why do they insist on trying?

Why You Delve into Designing

Flashing the opportunity to redesign a process in front of a bunch of leaders is like dumping a bag of Lego blocks in front of kids. They can’t help but start to build things—something, anything! The temptation is too strong. Who wants to just talk about what to build when all those beautiful blocks are there for the taking?!?

What’s Going On?

There are myriad reasons why leaders jump into designing things. Which of these is true on your team?

You have a strong bias to action and designing something in a meeting seems like the fastest path to getting it doneYou are smart and creative and love the energy of brainstorming and generating ideasYou have years of experience of what doesn’t work and a vested interest in not replicating those mistakesYou don’t have confidence in the designers who should be doing the work

What’s Wrong with Designing?

If you’re asking, what’s wrong with designing processes, they’re the backbone of an organization, I get it. It feels like abdicating responsibility to leave these important design decisions to people with less context and experience. It’s not. It’s a terrible idea for leadership teams to delve into design because:

You likely aren’t up on the latest advances in the given field and won’t have the research on what works and what doesn’tIt’s been too long since you walked a mile in the moccasins of the people who will need to use the process. You can no longer relate to their experience or empathize with what would be a relief and what would be infuriatingDesigning is a long and involved process and getting into the weeds on one topic will rob you of the time to talk about strategic issues that you ought to be focused on

Leadership teams trying to design processes is a recipe for disaster. How could you add more value?

Don’t Design, Envision

If you’re not supposed to design core processes and programs, what are you supposed to do? I like to refer to the alternative as “envisioning.” Here’s what I mean:

Discuss the goals or business outcomes that you want the process to accomplish. If it’s performance management, your goals might be better alignment of priorities across teams or a stronger sense of personal accountabilityAnticipate how the business will evolve over the next 3-5 years and paint a picture of the organization the system will need to support. If you’ll be international in 5 years, that’s important to knowArticulate what you want the process to feel like (not to look like)Agree on the risk appetite for the process and whether it needs to be industrial strength or just cheap and cheerfulIdentify other core programs or processes the design team will need to integrateReinforce your organizational values, culture, or guiding principles that you want the process to embodySuggest other models or inspirations that the designers should investigateBenefits

There are so many benefits of spending time envisioning what’s possible without plunging into the depths of designing or building the process.

More emphasis on the purpose of the process, which means it’s more likely to support your business successA cross-functional view baked-in, which means your core processes will integrate more effectively with one anotherLoftier goals for the process, which means the process is useful and relevant for longer and can grow with your business rather than being antiquated in two yearsGreater alignment upfront, which means fewer iterations and faster implementationRoom for the experts to add their value, which means you can attract and retain better caliber peopleDon’t Skip Envisioning

One more caution. Some teams are good at staying out of the weeds of design but it’s because they abdicate their responsibility for core processes altogether. Don’t miss your opportunity to add value before the design commences. If you do, you’re likely to balk at the draft designs, leaving those poor designers having to regroup, reinvent, and rework. Not only will you lose precious time but you’ll frustrate everyone in the process.

 

There are countless benefits of shifting from designing to envisioning, including been seen as leaders rather than Six Sigma white belts.

How can you help your team make this shift?

 

Further Reading

Envision What’s Possible

How to Be More Strategic

Are you failing as a leader?

 

Stop Solving Problems

Imagine you’re sitting in a typical leadership team meeting (and by a leadership team, I mean you’re a people leader and so is everyone else around the table). It probably doesn’t take long before someone raises an issue. Not something that was on the agenda, probably a comment during the roundtable portion of the meeting. Something like, “our overtime numbers are getting worse and worse.” You’re not clear why they raised it. Maybe they just want to give everyone a heads up that the results aren’t going to be on plan for this quarter. Or perhaps they don’t know what to do and are looking for input. Regardless of the rationale, the issue is now front and center. If it were your team, what would happen?

Solving Problems

I’ll tell you what I see. Often, when one team member raises an issue, it’s like someone has fired a starting pistol—and they’re off!” Team members bolt off the starting line with potential solutions.

Bob chimes in with, “Overtime, eh? What if you put a limit on the number of overtime hours each manager could use in a month?”

Gurjit interjects, “Staff levels are our top predictor of customer satisfaction, we should cut somewhere else, so we don’t have to sacrifice people on the floor.”

Rosie nods enthusiastically while Gurjit is talking and adds, “I think we’ve been pouring way too much on our ad spend when service is way more important.”

Theo, who raised the issue, his head is spinning as he tries to take it all in. A couple of times he tries to correct people who have made incorrect assumptions, but now he can’t get a word in edgewise. The team has taken over the issue.

Why do you pounce on problems?

Dangling an unresolved problem in front of a bunch of leaders is like tossing a pack of wolves a hunk of raw meat. They can’t help but pounce. There’s no holding them back.

What’s going on?

There are good reasons why leaders want to attack the problem. It might be a leader’s desire to help their colleague, their concern for the customer or the bottom line, or their broad sense of shared accountability. Accountability is good, right? Jumping in with potential solutions is a lot better than sitting back in the chair, arms behind your head declaring, “not my circus, not my monkey.” (Check out the origins of this awesome Polish expression.)

There are also a few more troubling reasons why leaders might jump in to solve a problem. The most common pattern I see is that leaders don’t really like being leaders—they miss being doers. They long for the sense of satisfaction of grabbing a problem and wrestling it to the ground. They want something current, concrete, and cut-and-dry that they can start and finish and hold up for their gold star. Their sense of purpose hasn’t yet shifted from producing work to orchestrating it.

It’s also possible that the leaders who are jumping in to solve a colleague’s issue are doing so because they have no confidence that the person can solve it themselves. Low trust in a team leads to group problem solving (or more likely to the paralysis of trying to reach a consensus decision rather than leaving accountability where it belongs).

I’ll mention one other reason that leadership teams go deep in the weeds on problems and that’s because they have no clear view of what higher value activity they could be spending their time on. We’ve got this two-hour meeting every week, we have to fill it with something, it might as well be this. 

Take a moment to think about your team’s propensity to start solving issues. If you’re honest with yourself, where does it come from?

What’s wrong with solving?

If you’re asking, what’s wrong with solving problems, isn’t that what leaders are here for, I get it. Much of what you read about leadership frames leaders as problem solvers. I’m in a different camp. I think it’s misguided (or at least sub-optimized) for a leadership team to try to solve issues because:

You likely don’t have the information to arrive at an informed solution and instead will spend considerable time listening to people opine, pontificate, and ramble about what they think, which is probably just what they feel or believe.It’s probably been a while since you were close enough to the front lines to know what would work and what wouldn’t. You’re going to lose the confidence of your teams if you propose a naïve, dated, or otherwise cockamamie solutionThe team likely has a few people with enough knowledge of the issue to weigh in while everyone else is relegated to wasting their time spectating

Leadership teams trying to solve problems in the room is second only to wordsmithing as a bottomless time suck.

How could you add more value?

Don’t Solve, Commission

What’s the alternative to plunging into the depths of a problem? Instead of solving, try commissioning a solution. Here’s what that entails:

Discuss the nature of the problem, soliciting multiple perspectives from around the table, and agree on a shared definitionIdentify any information you would need to understand the problem and assign someone to collect and distill that information and report back to the teamSelect the appropriate person to lead a resolution team and identify the stakeholders that would need to be part of the deliberationsDefine what a good solution would look like, including what should be in-scope and what shouldn’tDebate what’s required and allocate resources based on whether the solution needs to be industrial strength or merely fit for purposeDetermine where the issue fits among existing priorities and choose what work will need to be deleted, delayed, distributed, or diminished to make space for this new activity

It’s amazing to watch the difference in a leadership team that knows how to pull out of a solving nose-dive and instead redirect their energies to commissioning a solution. TRULY. AMAZING. Some of the benefits include:

clearer problem definition, which speeds the process of resolutionalignment among the leaders, which reduces the disparities and friction at successive levels of the organizationshared expectations for the solution, which means less time and money wasted chasing the wrong approachesa unified message from each team member, which contributes to the perception that the leadership team is high-functioningagreement on deprioritized items, which leads to relief that prioritizing new work will not result in an overwhelming workloadless time in the weeds of one specific area, which means more time to deliberate on issues that need the entire teamassignment of work to the people who are best-suited to it, which means less disempowerment and more engagement

I could go on. There are innumerable benefits of making the transition from solving to commissioning, not the least of which is finally getting your groove as a leadership team rather than an over-priced help desk.

How can you help your team make this shift?

Further Reading

Your Value is in Identifying the Problem, Not Solving It

Focus your time on your real value

Are you spending enough time leading?

 

How to Work with Someone You Don’t Trust

Have you ever had to work with someone you don’t trust? And I don’t just mean work on the same team or see them at the coffee machine. I mean have you ever had to depend on someone you don’t trust to get your work done? Have you been on the hook for something that you can’t deliver without their support? Have you ever had to endure that sinking feeling that your fate is in the hands of someone who doesn’t take that responsibility seriously? If you have, you know that it really, really sucks.

Before we talk about what you can do, we should probably differentiate between a few different versions of lack of trust. Let’s do them in ascending order of villainy.

Reasons You Don’t Trust the PersonI Don’t Know You

The most basic form of trust gap is one that stems from a lack of connection with the person you’re dependent on. If a colleague has just been hired and, in week one, you’re assigned to work with them on a major project, you might be nervous about how it’s going to go. Totally understandable. You’re counting on someone that has no track record—at least not one you’re aware of.

If you are in this situation, you can try a few things to set your mind at ease:

Schedule time for the two of you to talk through the boss’ expectations and make sure that you’re interpreting your roles and responsibilities the same way. If not, seek clarification before you start.Share some of your experiences on similar assignments and ask about theirs to calibrate on approaches.Ask a couple of open-ended questions to get a sense of their comfort level, such as “What do you think is the most important part to get right?” or “What do you think will be the trickiest part of this?”Agree on a few milestones where you can touch base and assess progress before any deadlines. Be transparent about the purpose of these check-ins, “Because we haven’t worked together before, let’s share our progress so we can tweak the approach as we go along.”

Start your relationship with a new colleague by acknowledging that it will take some time to get accustomed to one another. Be casual about it and make it clear (without saying it) that you realize that how the project goes is more of a risk for them than it is for you. Alignment and empathy should rule the day when you work with a colleague you don’t know.

I Don’t Have Confidence in You

The stakes get higher when you have to rely on a colleague that has a spotty track record. If you can think of a few examples where the person’s work wasn’t up to snuff or they failed to meet deadlines, it’s natural that your anxiety levels might be rising.

If you’re in this situation, you can try any of the following to increase the likelihood they’ll deliver:

If possible, take some time with both your manager and your colleague to hear the boss’ expectations and to get clear on who owns which parts of the taskDocument the expectations in an email or shared file as something you can all refer to as you goShare how you’re approaching the task and ask for any input and then ask your colleague to reciprocate by sharing their approach. If you’re concerned about the approach, ask for your manager to weigh in (Ask for feedback on both your approach and your colleague’s so it doesn’t feel lopsided or vindictive.)Check-in on the agreed milestones and be transparent about the issues that arise if the person doesn’t get the timing or the quality right. “It’s important that I have your draft by Thursday at noon because my edits are due Friday morning.”If things aren’t going well, ask your manager for some coaching on how to handle the situation. “We agreed that Sam would have the draft to me by noon and I haven’t received it yet. I sent a reminder this morning and I followed up at 2. What would you advise me to do?”

If you’re working with someone who is known to drop the ball, make sure other people see what’s going on. Visibility and accountability should rule the day when you need to work with a colleague in whom you don’t have confidence.

I Fear What You Will Do

The most threatening situation is when you are forced to rely on a colleague that has harmed you in the past. It might be that you have evidence that they’ve trash-talked you to members of the team. Maybe they’ve tried to sabotage your work. It could even be that they give you the creeps and you don’t feel physically safe around them (If you’ve been sexually harassed by a colleague, go directly to your manager or to HR.)

Although you might default to being silent, acting small, or being innocuous to protect yourself, that will only leave more room for the person to take advantage of you. If you’re dependent on someone whom you have legitimate reasons to be concerned about, you can try one or more of these to mitigate any threats:

State your goals for the work and acknowledge that the pairing might be difficult. “It’s important to me that both of our ideas show up in the final product. Based on our work on the ACME project, I’m concerned that my ideas will get short shrift.”Talk through the situation with a mentor, coach, or trusted teammate to help you assess the situation objectively and to let you know if you’re blowing things out of proportion or to get support if the person’s conduct is unacceptable.Meet in public spaces to reduce the likelihood that the person will behave. inappropriately. If you’re working remotely, invite a third person to be a part of your calls.In severe cases, share your experiences with your manager and ask if you (or they) can be reassigned.

If you’re working with someone who has taken advantage of you, make sure you aren’t letting them walk all over you. Enlist the help of other team members to shine a light on the person’s behavior. Attention and support should rule the day when you are stuck working with a colleague you fear.

It’s dreadful to have to work with someone you don’t trust. Don’t give in, clam up, or shut down. Own the situation and do what you can to get a good outcome. With an ounce of courage and a dash of luck, you might just trust them more when you’re done.

Further Reading

10 Tips to Prevent Misalignment from Destroying Trust

Dealing with trust issues on your team

Another Thing You Can Do to Repair Trust That is Damaged

 

A Different Take on Psychological Safety

Do you feel safe speaking up in your team? Can you voice an unpopular opinion without fear of your colleague’s rebuttal? Will you disagree with your boss knowing that they will value, or at least tolerate your divergent thinking? If you can say “yes” to those questions, then you know what it feels like to have psychological safety.

But if you couldn’t confidently agree with those questions, then you are among the throngs of people who feel psychologically unsafe at work. Your brain is telling you to be on guard, to protect yourself. It’s good to have a brain that keeps you safe. And still, your brain isn’t infallible. It can be a little over-the-top sometimes. So, before you buy what your brain is passing off as fear, interrogate those feelings. Is the fear real? Is it justified? Is it serving you?

Psychological Safety

Here’s my take on what really is a question of psychological safety and what isn’t.

Fear of Harmful Outcomes

It’s possible that you have direct evidence that people who disagree or rock the boat will be punished. If you have examples to show that speaking up might cause you to be yelled at, removed from a project, rated poorly, denied opportunities, or terminated, it makes sense for you to be afraid and therefore to be silent. This is a time when your brain is warning you and you should listen. You have legitimate cause to feel unsafe. The answer in this situation is to seek help from HR and to seek support from peers or leaders with whom you feel comfortable.

While these situations are very serious, I don’t believe they’re all that common.

Fear of Aversive Outcomes

In most situations, if you add a contrary point of view or disagree with the prevailing wisdom on the team, you’re unlikely to be rated poorly or fired. What might happen is that you might be met with counterarguments, you might have the veracity and validity of your information challenged or face a barrage of questions. If you feel unsafe because your ideas might be tested, you might be asked to do additional work, you might have to give up a long-held belief, I encourage you to reframe that as feeling uncomfortable, rather than unsafe. The answer in this situation is to work on your skills to be able to work with constructive criticism and productive conflict so that over time it becomes less frightening to you.

Not Safe from Yourself

There’s one final possibility I’d like to mention. I work with some individuals who feel psychologically unsafe when I can see no objective explanation for their feelings. I watch their managers listen actively and respond in ways that demonstrate they value the diversity of thought. I see their colleagues being responsive and taking the information on board. I don’t see anything that could be classified as uncomfortable being thrown at them. Yet, the fear persists. If you feel unsafe because you believe your team will stop liking you if you don’t go along with them, you won’t make your point perfectly eloquently, or you’re worried about looking less smart than your colleagues, you have a confidence problem, an imposter syndrome problem, not a safety problem. The answer in this situation is not to blame your boss or your colleagues or pin your fear on others. The answer is to seek out reflection, coaching, and perhaps therapy.

Psychological safety is becoming a very popular topic, with good reason. When you don’t feel psychologically safe, you’re unlikely to contribute fully, you won’t throw out creative ideas that spark innovation, you might hesitate to point out issues or concerns that mitigate risk, you won’t sleep well at night. While psychological safety is critical to all of these important obligations, I’m not convinced that it’s the sole responsibility of the organization or the manager to create it. Reflect on how much of your own psychological safety (or lack thereof) you own. How could parsing the parts of your fear that are more generalized anxiety about feeling uncomfortable or unsure help you be happier, healthier, and more productive?

Further Reading

Ask For What You Need

Managing Fear and Emotions

Reducing Conflict Fatigue

 

To Foster Trust, Ask for Help

Do you find yourself working on a team where you just don’t fit in? Or do you like your colleagues well enough but still not trust them for anything more than providing convivial coffee conversation in the cafe? Or is it worse than that? Maybe you have evidence that your teammates mistrust you and are excluding you from the comings and goings of the team. If you’re struggling with any of these low-trust scenarios, your instincts might be leading you in the wrong direction. While you might feel like pulling back or otherwise protecting yourself, the best hope you have of fostering trust and getting the team you deserve is to ask for help.

Ask for Help… About What?

What do I mean when I say, “ask for help?” I mean do something that strengthens the connection between you and your colleagues, particularly something that makes you a little vulnerable and gives them a chance to be a bit of a hero. Ok, hero is overstating it…maybe just a bit of a good Samaritan. Here are a few examples of how you might ask for help:

Share your thoughts on how you’re approaching a project and ask for their suggestions on how to improve the planAsk about a stakeholder that they know better than you and solicit some advice on how best to meet the stakeholder’s needsAdmit that you weren’t totally clear on what was agreed to in the meeting and ask them how they interpreted the instructions

These are intentionally innocuous and business-focused requests because they open you up to a manageable amount of risk but not to anything too personal. Be creative and opportunistic with scenarios that arise in your team. There are many ways to ask for help that will provide an opportunity for a colleague to help you without exposing you to an inordinate amount of judgment.

Of Whom?

Now, I’m not suggesting that you choose the scariest, the most aloof, or the most blunt person on the team to try this approach on first. Ideally, I’d pick the person who isn’t in the inner circle of team power but someone who is obviously welcome to visit that circle. You’re looking for a person who knows how things work on the team but who isn’t so invested in protecting the current dynamics that they won’t help you navigate them. Somebody like the girl in the cardigan in your grade 9 class who was always nice to the new kids.

Where?

Hmm… good question! If you want to maximize the likelihood that the person will be helpful (and candid), you might want to make your first forays into asking for help in a private spot. Now, if you’re working remotely, that’s easy. Shoot the person an email or a private message and ask if you could get their advice on something. If you’re nervous about it, just make it a phone call, not a video call (new research shows that audio-only is better for empathy, anyway). If you’re in the office, grab a quiet moment in a breakout room, or better yet, go for a walk so that you reduce the pressure of eye contact.

If your early attempts yield signs of connection, you can slowly increase the richness of your communication choices (video calls, face-to-face chats) and the exposure (e.g., asking for help in a meeting when others are present). You’re trying to earn trust with one person and then to allow the credibility of their trust to transfer to others.

When?

Now! Don’t wait. The longer you let frost develop between you and your teammates, the harder it will be to thaw.

Why?

Why am I suggesting these approaches? Well, for several reasons. First, because trust matters a whole heck of a lot. It affects your productivity, your engagement, and your stress levels. You deserve to work with people you trust and who trust you. Next, because our gut instincts on how to deal with people we don’t trust tend to be terrible. I get it if you fear rejection (oh honey, do I get it) so I understand why your first (and second and third) reaction might be to just put your head down and do your work independently, but that’s not going to get you anywhere but eating alone in the cafeteria. Finally, I’m advocating for asking for help because it’s the right risk/reward ratio. It will give you enough fodder to create and strengthen a connection without making you look desperate or daft.

Amping it Up

If the strategy works and after a couple of months you start to develop rapport with the person, you might shift slowly to more sensitive topics:

Open up about your struggles connecting with another colleague and ask for help in how to strengthen your connectionInvite the person to give you feedback about how you show up and what you could work on to contribute more (or more effectively) to the teamShare a behavior you’re trying to change and ask them to watch for examples of where you are moving in the right direction

Trusting relationships are important and wonderful and you deserve them. Sitting waiting for someone to trust you is not the best route to earn them. Find small ways to ask for help and build from there.

Further Reading

Working Cross-functionally? Build Trust Before You Need It

One Thing You Can Do to Repair Trust that is Damaged

Another Thing You Can Do to Repair Trust That is Damaged

 

How to get things done when you aren’t motivated

What do you do when you have work to do, but no mojo, motivation, or momentum to get started? Seriously, I’d love to know because I am not “feelin’ it” at the moment. I even toyed with a few justifications and rationalizations why I didn’t need to write a post this week. It’s not coming easily. My muse has gone fishin’.

To be fair, my malaise isn’t terrible, but what I’ve realized is that I am great in two modes.

Full Speed Ahead

When I’m in this mode, I’m thinking of ideas before getting out of bed in the morning. I’m noticing at 1:30 that I worked right through lunch. I’m having an insight while working with a client and immediately parlaying that into a new tool or article. The challenge when I’m in this state is that there aren’t enough hours in a day. My fingers can’t type fast enough to keep up with my brain. This turbo-charged state is amazing…but the fuel isn’t endless. That’s why I have the second state.

Closed for Business

I am pretty darn good at switching off. And I mean the kind of time off that’s less like sleep mode and more like a full factory reset. Prior to Covid, we were closing down 3COze for five weeks each summer to clear the cache, update the software, and fully recharge. This dormancy is fantastic and my investment in turning off each summer made me like my work, my family, and myself more.

The Doldrums

Covid threw a wrench into my normal summer sabbatical plans again this year. For a variety of reasons, I ended up splitting my long hiatus into a couple of two-week vacations plus an extra day off here and there. I’m taking roughly the same amount of time off, but it’s not nearly as effective. Some of the problems are self-inflicted. When I’m on vacation somewhere local, with decent wifi, it’s been too easy to say ‘yes’ to client meetings. In my first two weeks, I only did 3 meetings, but that was enough to never feel far from shore. (In the two weeks I have left, I’m going to say ‘no’).

While the shorter breaks have meant that I’m only half checked out while on vacation, they’ve also meant that I’m only half checked in while I’m supposed to be working. I still love my clients, so my sessions and my keynotes have provided the necessary shot of adrenaline to make me feel genuinely engaged and enthusiastic. That’s not the problem. The problem is that anything non-immediate, anything that is just ‘the right thing to do,’ or whiffs of proactivity, is leaving me stone cold.

How to Get Things Done When You Aren’t Motivated

My own predicament provided a great laboratory to test out what works and doesn’t work for trying to get things accomplished in the absence of motivation. I thought I’d share what I’m doing (and not doing) to get through the doldrums.

I guard the two hours where I have maximum energy fiercely. Normally my high-energy time is 6:30-10:30 am, but I’m keying in on 8:00-10:00 right now. I’m using those hours for the most important, arduous, unappealing things I should get done. Then 10-12 is for the things I must get done. See the difference? I’m putting negotiable ahead of non-negotiable. I realized that using the high(er) energy times for must-do tasks was a waste because the fear of not getting them done would drag me through them even if it was a lower energy time of day. I was pretty pleased with myself for figuring this one out.I break my work into chunks and have low standards for what I accomplish. I realized that my sleepy brain can do some of the work for me if I just spend a little bit of time considering an issue and then let it soak for a while. When my energy levels are high, I often start and finish things in one go (hence missing lunch sometimes). Now, I just take it as a given that a task is going to require a few passes and I find that each time I start back at it, I have a new insight gleaned while slacking off.I commit to working on my should-do tasks for only 15 minutes. I set the timer on my phone and get started. I can count on one hand the number of times that I’ve stopped at 15 minutes. It’s a great hack because when I give myself permission to stop at 15 minutes, I am more likely to start. Once I start, I’m more likely to continue. (It’s somewhat sad how gullible I am to my own tricks.)I recommit to my bullet journal and have a single to-do list with everything on it. I notice that in lower energy times, I abandon my bullet journal. Getting everything back on paper and right in front of my nose helps me keep tabs on what I want to accomplish. And in those moments when I can’t muster enough energy to even spend 15 minutes on something, I can at least write in on the list so I know it’s not going anywhere.What I’m not doingGetting frustrated with myself for being a slacker. I accomplish a lot in a year and it’s ok that being full speed ahead most of the time requires that I rest and restore sometimesMaking up for my reduced capacity by working more days a week. Au contraire. I normally write my posts on the weekends, but I’m writing this on Friday morning (8-10) so that I can be fully off-the-grid this weekend.Starting new things. Nope, they can wait. I’ve been writing this blog for nine years, so I know how to do it. Anything that needs the best of my creativity will be high on the list come September.Working 8-hour days. Well…actually, I facilitated an 8-hour session on Tuesday, so that counts, right?!? Otherwise, it’s been more like five or six hours. That’ll do.

There is one more giant ugh of a task waiting for me before my final time-off of the summer. I want to finish the copy for our new 3COze website. It’s going to take every one of these strategies to get it done. Wish me luck.

When do you feel like you’re in the doldrums? What works to keep you accomplishing some of your should do’s and not just your must do’s? Let me know.

Further Reading

Busy is a self-inflicted wound

Flip Your Priorities

Why your company needs you to take a break

 

How to Improve Hybrid Meetings

Have you suffered through a hybrid video meeting where you’re remote while a few of your teammates are together in person?

Here’s my question. Did you at any point:

A) tune out and get some other work done because two people in the room were so far from the mic that they were completely inaudible?B) concoct a grand conspiracy theory about what the people in the room were talking about each time they muted the microphone?C) stab your pen into your hand to distract you from the rising fury of this inefficient and ineffective approach to conducting a meeting?

Hey, if you did any one of those things, I get it. These half in-person, half-on-video meetings are brutal.  Here are a few alternatives that you can try:

Improving Hybrid Meetings

In general, I’m not a fan of hybrid meetings, and even before Covid, my advice was to either have everyone in person or everyone online. If you can’t make that happen and you can only nudge your team toward a less crappy hybrid meeting approach, try one of these.

Instead of sharing videos of people’s faces, try sharing a screen that allows everyone in the meeting to be looking at the same work product, but not at each other. You could share a word file so everyone can see a note-taker documenting the conversation, a spreadsheet that allows you to talk through a budget, or a Gantt chart to move around tasks in an ongoing project. Sharing a document and audio can be much more efficient than adding video.Give the remote folks a break now and then by having breakout discussions that are divided between those in the room and those on video. It will be easier to focus with a smaller group who are all on the same tech. Those in the room can enjoy not having to look at tiny faces in boxes while those on the video can stop squinting to see who the small person is in the shadows. (Don’t overuse this approach because you’ll amplify us versus them disparities if you always group the in-office versus remote team members.)Have each person in the room looking into a laptop camera so that each participant appears as a single frame whether they’re in the meeting room or remote. Just remember that you’ll want a speakerphone in the room and for each participant to turn off the audio on their laptop. (This really works, I was in a meeting done this way last week and it was seamless and the best hybrid meeting experience that I’ve had.)Humans—We’re Weird That Way

Regardless of which side of the hybrid meeting you’re on, remember to cut your teammates a little slack

If you’re in the meeting room:Don’t put the speakerphone on mute and talk to one another. It’s just human nature for those on the video to assume they’re missing out on something they want to hear (whether that be juicy details, nasty gossip, or funny jokes).Don’t have side conversations in the room. Your speakerphone is going to make a complete mess of the different signals and the people on the line aren’t going to be able to make out anything.Don’t unwrap your ridiculously over-packaged six-piece lunch right beside the speaker. For those who have the volume cranked up to be able to hear Larry at the far end of the room, the noise is excruciating.)If you’re remote:Don’t turn off your video halfway through the call. It’s too distracting for those in the room who are wondering if you’re there or not there. If you need to go to the washroom or answer the door, get up and leave your screen empty so that people know you’re missing out.Don’t be texting other people in the meeting. That’s equivalent to someone in the room whispering to someone. If it’s something related to the topic, use the chat so that everyone can see it. If it’s only relevant to one person, make a note and follow up with them after the meeting.Try to have your camera in your eye line. I’ve seen multi-monitor setups where the camera is on a different computer than the one the person is looking at. It’s really hard to read your body language if I can only see your ear. Similarly, if your display is too high relative to your camera, everyone will spend the meeting inspecting the lining of your nose—and the health of your mucus membranes is really not the team’s business.

If hybrid teams are here to stay, then improving your approach to meetings is going to be important. What say you? Any tips to add? What’s working, and what’s definitely NOT working, for you?

Further Reading

Team Building Exercises for Remote Teams

Reset Your Remote Management Approach

Wasted time in meetings

 

Support Effective Decision-Making When You’re Not in Charge

Are you someone who enables and supports effective decision-making or someone who stymies it? What do you think?

If you were quick to put yourself in the first category, are you sure? I often see people who think they’re being good team players but who are actually detracting from the quality of decision-making on the team. Here’s what I would love to see from you if you’re a party to a decision but not the decision-owner.

How to Support Good Decision-makingContribute Expertise

I’d love to see you… coming prepared to contribute. If you are part of a decision-making process, you’re included for a reason: maybe unique expertise, experiences, relationships, perspectives, or access to different facts. If you’re going to maximize the value the decision-maker can extract from your unique perspective, showing up unprepared isn’t going to cut it. Ensure in advance that you understand the context, the options, and the implications of the decision. Back up your opinion with facts and evidence. Speak with stakeholders that you’re expected to represent. Make sure you’re ready to contribute, particularly in areas where you have a unique vantage point.

I often see: People showing up unprepared, which shifts the balance of the meeting to catching them up and reduces the likelihood that they’ll contribute anything substantive to the discussion.

Diversify Perspectives

I’d love to see you… adding some tension to the discussion. You need to channel all that preparation into the decision-making process. Think of it as your obligation to get your unique contributions entered into the record. If you agree with what’s being said, indicate your agreement but keep it short. Focus your airtime on where your perspectives differ from where the conversation is headed. If there are others in the room who haven’t spoken up, draw them into the conversation with great open-ended questions. Think of it as your role to help get the fullest picture of the issue possible.

I often see: People going with the flow figuring that their perspective isn’t valued or isn’t worthy, or that disagreement isn’t worth it.

Adapt to Options

I’d love to see you… moving from your initial position. The measure of your contribution to a decision-making process is not that the final decision is the one you advocated for (I feel like I need to say that again. The measure of your contribution is not that the decision is the one you advocated for!) The measure of your contribution is that you were a part of identifying an optimal decision given all the information. Once you’ve represented your perspective, it’s time to listen and learn. Based on the added context from others, can you add any new options or implications? Can you propose any additional options?

I often see: People digging in and advocating for their original position regardless of what anyone else says.

Identify Risks

I’d love to see you… taking a balanced perspective. It’s easy for a decision-making process to gain momentum and for you to get swept right along with it. At some point, you need to turn your eagle eye to spotting assumptions, risks, and scenarios that might impact the decision. In some cases, you’ll be able to spot things others can’t because of your expertise or experience. In other cases, it will be your ignorance and naivety that will help you spot things that don’t add up. Either way, ask the questions to draw people’s attention to risks.

I often see: People rushing to judgment when there’s a plan that looks viable; paying no heed to the potential downside and charging toward the cliff.

Commit to the Decision

I’d love to see you… expressing your commitment to the decision. When the call is made, it’s your responsibility to support it. If you have strong concerns about the decision, voice them so that your opposition is out in the open. Then get busy doing everything in your power to make the decision successful. And don’t just nod and agree, actually say what you are agreeing to. Share your understanding of what you’re committing to.

I often see: People keeping their opposition under wraps and waiting passive-aggressively to be able to say, “I told you so,” when it fails.

Implement Vigorously

I’d love to see you… throwing your weight behind the decision. Get to it! Whatever it was that you committed to, get on with it. Deliver what you promised. Support those who are implementing the plan. Communicate your support of the decision with your words and your body language.

I often see: People standing idly by letting their faces tell the world that they are not on board, and they are judging those who are.

Evaluate Effectively

I’d love to see you… evaluating the decision objectively. There is one more spot where you can contribute as a party to a decision and that’s when the decision is being evaluated. Regardless of whether you advocated for or against the initial decision, you owe the team an objective view on what’s working and what needs to be course-corrected.

I often see: People polarized based on their original positions on the decision with the advocates being mindlessly positive and the detractors refusing to see anything positive.

It’s tempting to put all of the responsibility for decision-making onto the person who owns the decision. That’s an unreasonable expectation. If you’re contributing to a decision-making process, there are many things you need to do in advance, during deliberations, and after the decision to make the process and the outcomes successful. If you do these things routinely, you’re safe to think of yourself as a great team player.

Further Reading

Dysfunctional Behavior in Disguise

Optimists, Skeptics, and Cynics

5 Ways to make your team more decisive