Susan Scott's Blog, page 35

Fierce Tip of the Week: Improve Two Relationships through Conversation

The conversation is the relationship. It is such a simple five word sentence. Yet, the depth and applicability of this concept is powerful.

The quality of your conversations dictate the quality of your relationships. Think of all the relationships in your life. With those, imagine that you must put the quality of your conversations on a scale of 1 being most satisfying to 10 being least satisfying. Where would those conversations land?

Given all the relationships you may have on that scale, ask yourself: 

As a leader, what kind of conversations are you having? Are they developmental and supportive? Or skeptical and controlling?
As a team member, what kind of conversations are you having? Are they collaborative and robust? Or superficial and frustrated?
As a friend, what kind of conversations are you having? Are they thoughtful and compassionate? Or assumptive and insincere
As an individual, what kind of conversations are you having with yourself? Are they encouraging and optimistic? Or critical and sabotaging?

This week’s tip is to scan and focus on two relationships in your life where you are having the least satisfying conversations. Is it with your partner? With your boss? With a team member? With your son?

If you want to make the relationships more fulfilling, you must start by improving the content and quality of your conversations.

Take them out to coffee. Schedule a lunch. Go somewhere that you can focus.

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Friday Resource: 5 Conversation Tools for Nurturing Your Relationship with A Mentor

This week’s Friday Resource was originally published by Forbes and offers tips for nurturing your relationship with a career mentor.

A mentor can offer guidance, wisdom and insights they’ve gained over the years. As with any relationship, your relationship with your mentor needs to be nurtured in order to grow and maintain it. Deep connections require building trust over time, and there are steps we can take to facilitate the strengthening of the mentor-mentee connection.

Per Kelli Richards, Forbes, communication is essential. She advises, “Communicate frequently. As a mentee, it’s your responsibility to reach out to your mentor when you need her. You should express your appreciation both verbally and with your actions. Take suggestions to heart, act on them, and send regular notes to communicate your progress and how you’re applying advice. Make it clear that you’re following through so your mentor knows she’s investing her time wisely.”

Read her other four tips and the entire article here.

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How to Clean Up a Messy Conversation

Life is messy. Or as Susan Scott puts it, “Life is curly.” Having successful conversations is a learned skill, but even for those with a lot of training, conversations don’t always go the way we planned. And when they don’t, they can potentially impact our relationships in ways that are less than peachy.

After a conversation, we may leave behind what we at Fierce call an emotional wake. The emotional wake can be either positive or negative and is experienced by either one or all parties involved. It tends to show up as an afterglow, aftermath, or aftertaste. In the case of an aftermath or aftertaste following a conversation, frustrated thoughts, confusion, or waves of guilt may arise. These feelings are an indicator that a rupture or miscommunication may have occurred that we need to address.

So why is it important to clean things up after a messy exchange? For starters, an unsavory emotional wake falls under the umbrella of what’s considered “poor communication,” which can be costly for organizations and relationships if not repaired. Due to miscommunication, businesses with 10,000 employees are each losing $6.2 million annually on average, according to a study from IDC. Second, repairing conversations strengthens relationships and builds emotional capital with others, leading to higher levels of trust, contentment, and happiness.

So you believe you’ve “botched” a conversation. Perhaps you lost your temper, became defensive, were dismissive, laid blame, or simply said something you didn’t mean. Now what?

To start off on the right foot when we find ourselves wanting to backpedal, we need to accept that the moment has passed. We can’t go back, but we can take a positive step forward. Here’s how:

1. Acknowledge (and communicate) your perceptions.

How did you feel after the conversation? How do you perceive it went? Communicate your perception to the person with whom you conversed. Deliver an apology if you feel it’s appropriate for the circumstance.

2. Ask for feedback.

Ask how the conversation occurred for them. This will give you (and them) the opportunity to determine how you each perceived the situation, whether it was perceived the same way, and how you can improve your approach next time. This is a good opportunity to explore and be curious about the other person’s perspective.

3. Re-set your intention.

It’s easy to fall into the trap of skipping this step and assuming the other person understood our intent, but our intent is often far clearer to us than it is to the other person. Express to the other person what you intended and how the original communication wasn’t an accurate representation of that intention.

4. Be kind to yourself.

Aspire for things to go well with any conversation you find yourself in, but don’t expect perfection. And, don’t be afraid to laugh at yourself. When we fall, we have the choice to either fret about falling or have a sense of humor about our own human foibles (to which none of us are immune).

Were you on the other end of the conversation? Follow these same steps in reverse and approach the person who you think left an aftermath or aftertaste in their wake: communicate your perceptions, offer feedback, ask for clarity about their intention, clarify your own intention, and approach the situation with kindness.

Every conversation comes with risk, but it’s important to ask yourself: what’s at stake if we don’t have it? If we pass up on opportunities to have difficult conversations, we also pass up on opportunities to improve our lives, our organizations, and our relationships.

Muster up some fierce courage, set a positive intention, and move forward. Let life be curly.

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Fierce Tip of the Week: Pay Attention to Your Influence

What effect do you want to have on others when you leave a room or call?

This week, you have the opportunity to infinitely inspire others…or do the opposite.

At Fierce, one of the concepts is to take responsibility for your emotional wake. An emotional wake is what is remembered after you have left a conversation.

It can be an afterglow, aftertaste, or aftermath.

Which one do you choose?

This week’s tip is to pay attention to your emotional wake, so that you are able to tune in and take responsibility for it. 

All in all, what effects do you want to have on others this week?

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The Compelling Case for Giving Employees More Freedom

This week’s Friday Resource was originally published by Inc. and builds a case along with tips for giving employees more freedom.  

Growing research shows that employee autonomy leads to higher levels of workplace satisfaction and improves workplace performance by allowing creativity to flourish. It also grants a sense of ownership and accountability while spurring productivity.

Bellhops, a startup company employing students from around the country to coordinate and assist with residential moving jobs, allows its contracts to have total autonomy over their schedule, who they work with, and how much money they make.

Per Bellhops and Shelley Prevost, Co-Founder and CEO of Torch, here are some tips for creating more autonomy in your workplace.

1. Relinquish the 9-5. “People are all different. Some do their best work in the early morning. Some prefer to grind it out on the weekends or in the wee small hours of the morning. Having a choice in deciding when you will do your best work is extremely empowering. Many managers still insist on the 9-5 for one reason only—control. They lack the trust to relinquish control over employees’ schedules. If you mandate desk time between 9 and 5 in order to see your employees working, may I suggest that you 1) haven’t hired the right people, or 2) might have some controlling tendencies.”

2. Instill values through training. “Don’t just expect your company vision—as great as it might be—to be sufficient in motivating employees. What are your values and why should it matter to them? Employees want to feel aligned with your company and you do that by making your operating values very apparent. Don’t make them guess at your expectations. Be very clear about what you value–and then make sure you’re living it!”

Read the full article and the rest of the tips here.

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Want to Improve Workplace Performance? Don’t Overlook This Essential Element

Improving performance requires leaders to consider employee engagement, satisfaction, and culture and ask how these areas can be strengthened.

One how element of performance that deserves an in-depth look is autonomy.

What comes to mind when you think of autonomy? You might imagine engaging in solo work with your headphones on, focused, independent, and free of distractions.

While there might be some truth to this idea of autonomy, there’s a lot more to it. For starters, it’s less about how often we interact with others and more about ownership, accountability, trust relative to our work, and having a sense of control over how we use our time. In a larger context, autonomy creates a sense of empowerment for the person who is autonomous.

Let’s look at some data that supports just how much autonomy matters…

Researchers from the University of Birmingham have reported that if you have flexible working hours or the ability to work at your own pace (ahem, autonomy), you’re likely to have higher job satisfaction and higher overall well-being than other professionals who don’t. In other words, we need it to achieve satisfaction in our careers. Published in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, researchers found that “gaining autonomy quenches the desire for power,” and people would rather work in a non-managerial autonomous position that grants self-empowerment than take a promotion offering power over others.

So how does autonomy improve performance? By increasing our sense of satisfaction. It also motivates us and gives us a sense of control over our working lives. Some individuals choose to leave their organizations and start solo businesses to achieve autonomy, but luckily, leaving our organizations isn’t required in order to create it.

Here are a few ways you can increase a sense of autonomy within your team and organization.

1. Make collaborative meetings productive.

Collaboration is important for engagement and results, but meetings for the sake of meetings can disrupt workflow and aren’t the best use of time. For pre-scheduled meetings, make sure to set an intention and provide attendees with an agenda beforehand. Ask yourself where you are wanting your team’s input. In what ways can collaborating benefit the project or issue at hand? If needed, use today’s robust technology to make accommodations for remote workers.

2. Make time for uninterrupted work.

Autonomy is broadly defined, but one aspect includes the ability to work independently and focus on the tasks or projects without interruption. Respect your own time and the time of others–set up boundaries with others and be realistic with projects, deadlines, and timelines. If meetings and chat time are outweighing independent work time, much will be talked about but little will get done. It’s often the “heads down” time that produces the rewarding fruits of our labor by allowing us to put all of our attention on the product or results we want to produce.

3. Provide trust and flexibility.

Simply put, life happens. Between the needs of family, our own needs, doctor’s appointments, and personal preferences, strict scheduling doesn’t work for everyone. Pose questions to yourself and your team—how do you want your workday to look? What environment allows you to work most effectively? If expectations and objectives are clear, flexibility is beneficial for both individuals and organizations. Trust that objectives will be met, and if they aren’t, commit to following up with the conversations that need to happen in order to address the issue. For more on strengthening trust, read our previous blog post here.

4. Have conversations about the amount of autonomy that’s currently present.

Whether you’re a leader or individual contributor, have a conversation with the people you work with most closely. Do you feel a sense of ownership and independence when it comes to your work? Do you feel empowered in your schedule, the pace at which you work, and feel there’s a sense of mutual trust between colleagues? If the answer is no to any of these questions, a conversation can open up the possibility for more autonomy that then leads to stronger workplace relationships and improved performance.

If your current work environment isn’t supportive of autonomy, don’t let it slide. I repeat: have the conversation. 

How have you benefited from autonomy, both personally and professionally? Share with us.

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Fierce Tip of the Week: Provide Autonomy

With engagement levels of employees at an all time low, many organizations are looking at what they can do in order to engage the hearts and the minds of their teams.

While there is no one single right answer, our Fierce Whitepaper, What Employees Really Think About Best Practices: Survey Uncovers 3 Things Employees Crave, shows that the top highest rated practices are Transparency, Autonomy, and Responsiveness. Nearly 50% of those responded identify the most beneficial practices as those that encourage accountability, development, and individual empowerment within the organization.

Autonomy does just that. As defined in the Fierce whitepaper, autonomy provides people with the freedom to make appropriate decisions which ensures employees remain focused and engaged.

This week, ask yourself: Do I provide my team the necessary level of autonomy to be active and engaged in their work? Are they clear on where they can act and when they need to check in?

Don’t make assumptions. If you’re unclear, have the conversation and ask.

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Friday Resource: 5 Critical Steps to Fearless Confrontation

This week’s Friday Resource comes Forbes and details the necessary steps women can take for a fearless (and effective) confrontation.

Having a confrontation conversation is rarely easy for anyone and can be particularly challenging for women. Others’ expectations and perceptions of gender can add another layer of difficulty when the need arises to face a person or situation head-on.

One essential element of a successful confrontation is acknowledging what we’re afraid of and why—perhaps we’re afraid things will go poorly the way they did in the past when we attempted a confrontation, or perhaps we’re afraid of the intensity of our own emotions.

Per Kathy Caprino, Forbes contributor, here are some critical steps we can take to overcome reluctance related to confrontation.

1. Mentally prepare. “Carefully evaluate what you’re thinking and feeling, and identify the real issue that you need to address. Tease out all the tangential factors, emotions and issues that aren’t relevant or essential to the discussion. Then assess how best to approach this specific person (each person has a unique set of preferences, values, mindsets and worldview) and prepare what you’ll say in detail.”

2. Set the stage. “Remember, confrontation doesn’t have to mean a ‘fight.’ First, seek a safe environment for the confrontation. Don’t just blurt out in a public meeting, for instance, ‘We have to talk about this NOW!’ Privately, ask permission to discuss the situation, and schedule a time that’s mutually convenient. Here’s an example: ‘Nancy, I would like to have the opportunity to discuss with you an issue that’s been on my mind about how we communicate with each other. Would you be open to that? When might be a good time to talk?’”

Read more and the other three steps here.

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How to be Fierce in 3 Challenging Work Conversations

We all need to have them at some point. Those pesky, dreaded conversations. You know, the ones that can be awkward or uncomfortable or come with a crazy mix of emotions.

When these unwelcome, challenging situations enter your life, your first instinct may be to run away, either physically or mentally. Once you think about the impracticality of escaping, you may minimize the issue – oh it isn’t that bad. Or I’ll just see if it happens again. Or I just will deal with this on my own.

While this is a reality for many of us, I contend that those conversations you want to run from are the very ones you need to have. Why?

Well firstly, you spend the majority of your time with the people at work, so from a practical perspective, you can only avoid these conversations so much. Secondly, HR Magazine reported that in a survey of 4,000 employees, 46 percent said they routinely received confusing or unclear directions, with 36 percent of these employees reporting it happening up to three times each day. So, the directions or cues that you are receiving are likely murky at times and need clarification. Lastly, being effective in difficult conversations takes skill and practice. You will improve if you focus on them.

Let’s start by breaking down three workplace conversations that can be particularly difficult.

Conversation #1: Your close colleague is late on delivering her part of your important project.

Peer relationships can be so rewarding when they develop into friendships and special connections at work. On the flip side, they can be troublesome when a person takes advantage of your connection or assumes that she can have more slack from you because you are friends. Sometimes you can create an exception. Other times, you just can’t.

I once worked with a close colleague who was always micromanaging projects and people, including me. Items were always delivered on time, which I loved, but the approach was off. Many people delivered out of complete fear of being reprimanded – in return, our relationship was continually damaged. A work environment where fear is driving behavior is not a healthy environment. I share this example because it is crucial to share your intention with your colleague. Your intention is to complete the project on time, without stress. Things don’t always go as planned, and yet, you need to articulate how your colleague’s actions affect you and the bigger picture.

At Fierce, we call your impact your emotional wake. After any interaction, you are either leaving behind an afterglow, an aftermath, or an aftertaste. Which one do you want to leave behind? Be mindful of your emotional wake and how you describe the issue. Talk about your feelings, not the other person’s character or other components that can derail your intention. Once you share what you need to, ask questions and be curious to understand how you can best avoid this situation in the future.

Being delayed on a project can be stressful for everyone, and having a conversation is a critical part in preventing making stories up in your head or destroying a friendship that may go far beyond the workplace.

Conversation #2: Your colleague gives you critical feedback you don’t agree with.

This one is tough. There are people in your personal and professional life that you may not want critical feedback from. Or sometimes your inclination to something they share may be – is the pot calling the kettle black? Didn’t you do the same thing last week?

Well, that isn’t productive.

Be open to the possibility that there is a nugget of truth or insight that you can use to your professional advantage. We define fierce feedback as a conversation in which you have the opportunity to see what you may not see. Look past your initial reaction and think bigger picture. Ask questions.

You don’t always have to agree with the feedback that you receive. And you set the tone of your relationship by what you are willing and not willing to hear. If you are caught very off guard by the comment, share that with your colleague and express how you are reconciling that.

There are times when people are not well-intentioned. However, it is important to remember that someone sharing critical feedback with you is extremely difficult for both parties. Reminding yourself of these two realities can help ground you. And ultimately, you are the one who gets to decide what you do with any feedback you receive.

Conversation #3: Your direct report has a consistently negative attitude.

As a leader, you want everyone on your team to be happy, positive, and productive. And then the wide-eyed, bushy-tailed employee turns into Oscar the Grouch. Let’s assume that if you noticed this employee in a funk, you gave him feedback on the negative attitude and its impact on the team and your workplace. And then nothing changed.

This is a beyond frustrating situation that leaves many leaders making up stories about the person that may not be true. This is not good for the leader or the employee. When you have reached a point where an attitude needs to change, you need to explore the attitude with this person.

To be fierce, when something needs to change, use our confrontation tools. For this conversation, you need to clearly and directly open the conversation by laying out the issue and how their attitude is affecting you and others on the team. It is critical that you describe what’s at stake for the person if nothing changes. For instance, if you continue to have a negative attitude, it will affect the projects and opportunities that are given to you, and eventually, your job could be at stake.

Once you tee up your side, open the conversation to further explore the other person’s side. What is happening that you may not be aware of? What does the world look like in their eyes? Ask questions to gain more insight. Set an action plan together and move forward accordingly.

A Fierce Conversation is one in which we come out from behind ourselves, into the conversation, and make it real. Everyone craves real. So be real. When your instinct may be to shrink and leave the situation, stand tall and be yourself.

Being effective with challenging conversations is like any other skill. The more you practice, the better you will be.

What conversations have your name on them? Go out. Now. Make them fierce.

Want to take it further? Read our previous blog here for tips on taking the scare out of your conversations.

What other challenging conversations happen at work? I will share some ways to make them fiercer.

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Fierce Tip of the Week: Ask What Else

In our coaching model, we instruct you to ask “what else?” at least 3 times in different parts of the conversation. Each time you ask, you are going deeper into the question. You are exploring – unlocking new territory.

The need to ask “what else?” is everywhere.

For example, think about when someone asks you: How’s it going?

How do you usually respond?

When I ask people this, the initial answer is usually very surface. Examples: Work is busy but good. Family is good. Vacation was good.

This conversation is always different when I ask “what else?” after they give me the first, ceremonial answer. Only after the “what else” does something juicier come out. It is almost like “what else” translates to “no, really, I want to know.”

This week’s tip is to concentrate on where you can ask, “what else?” What relationships in your life deserve the extra attention?

It is only two words after all…

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