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mea culpa.
He alienated the people closest to him—not out of malice or arrogance but out of passive neglect.
apologize, advertise, and follow-up.
As Boston Celtics coach Red Auerbach used to say about coaching his players, “It’s not what you say, it’s what they hear.”
Once you’re prepared to apologize, here’s the instruction manual: You say, “I’m sorry.” You add, “I’ll try to do better in the future.” Not absolutely necessary, but prudent in my view because when you let go of the past, it’s nice to hint at a brighter future. And then . . . you say nothing. Don’t explain it. Don’t complicate it. Don’t qualify it. You only risk saying something that will dilute it.
When it comes to apologizing, the only sound advice is get in and get out as quickly as possible.
AFTER YOU APOLOGIZE, you must advertise. It’s not enough to tell everyone that you want to get better; you have to declare exactly in what area you plan to change. In other words, now that you’ve said you’re sorry, what are you going to do about it?
“It’s a lot harder to change people’s perception of your behavior than it is to change your behavior. In fact, I calculate that you have to get 100% better in order to get 10% credit for it from your coworkers.”
Your odds improve even more if you ask everyone for ideas to help you get better. Now your coworkers become invested in you; they pay attention to you to see if you’re paying attention to their suggestions.
Eventually the message sinks in and people start to accept the possibility of a new improved you. It’s a little like the tree falling in the forest. If no one hears the thud, does it make a sound? The apology and the announcement that you’re trying to change are your way of pointing everyone in the direction of the tree.
there’s no point in creating a great new product if you can’t get the message out to the buying public. You have to tell the world, “Hey, I’m over here,” and give them a reason to care.
every successful project goes through seven phases: The first is assessing the situation; the second is isolating the problem; the third is formulating. But there are three more phases before you get to the seventh, implementation. Unfortunately, a lot of people don’t pay close attention to phases four, five, and six—the vital period when you approach your coworkers to secure the all-important political buy-in to your plans. In each phase you must target a different constituency. In phase 4, you woo up—to get your superiors to approve. In phase 5, you woo laterally—to get your peers to agree.
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staying on message—i.e., knowing what you want to say and then repeating it with extreme discipline and near-shamelessness, until it sinks in.
You have to drill it into people repeatedly, until they’ve internalized the concept. It’s the reason politicians in a hard election campaign run the same ads over and over again. Repeating their message—relentlessly—works; it sinks the message deeper into our brains.
Here’s how to start acting like your own press secretary.
you don’t elect yourself to the position of “new improved you.” Your colleagues do. They’re your constituency. Without their votes, you can never establish that you’ve changed.
three things that all good listeners do: They think before they speak; they listen with respect; and they’re always gauging their response by asking themselves, “Is it worth it?”
It’s not enough to keep our ears open; we have to demonstrate that we are totally engaged.
It didn’t matter if you were a head of state or a bell clerk, when you were talking with Bill Clinton he acted as if you were the only person in the room. Every fiber of his being, from his eyes to his body language, communicated that he was locked into what you were saying. He conveyed how important you were, not how important he was.
When someone tells us something, we have a menu of options to fashion our response. Some of our responses are smart, some are stupid. Some are on point, some miss the point. Some will encourage the other person, some will discourage her. Some will make her feel appreciated, some will not. Asking “Is it worth it?” forces you to consider what the other person will feel after hearing your response. It forces you to play at least two moves ahead.
“Before speaking, I take a breath and ask myself one question, ‘Is it worth it?’ I learned that 50 percent of what I was going to say was correct—maybe—but saying it wasn’t worth it.”
In effect, you are taking the age-old question of self-interest, “What’s in it for me?” one step further to ask, “What’s in it for him?”
That’s a profound consequential leap of thought. Suddenly, you’re seeing the bigger picture.
Clinton made a point of knowing something positive about you and, without making a big show of it, saying something to let you know he knew it. In effect, he was bragging about you to you. That’s a very meaningful gesture.
“make the other person feel singularly special”
close their eyes and count slowly to fifty with one simple goal: They cannot let another thought intrude into their mind. They must concentrate on maintaining the count. What could be simpler than that? Try it. Incredibly, more than half my clients can’t do it.
It exposes how easily distracted we can be when we’re not talking. But it also helps us develop our concentration muscles—our ability to maintain focus. Do this exercise regularly and you’ll soon be counting to 50 without interrupting yourself. This newfound power of concentration will make you a better listener.
Try to employ the tiny tactics we’ve outlined here. • Listen. • Don’t interrupt. • Don’t finish the other person’s sentences. • Don’t say “I knew that.” • Don’t even agree with the other person (even if he praises you, just say, “Thank you”). • Don’t use the words “no,” “but,” and “however.” • Don’t be distracted. Don’t let your eyes or attention wander elsewhere while the other person is talking. • Maintain your end of the dialogue by asking intelligent questions that (a) show you’re paying attention, (b) move the conversation forward, and (c) require the other person to talk (while you
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The more you subsume your desire to shine, the more you will shine in the other person’s eyes.
The best thing about saying “Thank you” is that it creates closure in any potentially explosive discussion. What can you say after someone thanks you? You can’t argue with them. You can’t try to prove them wrong. You can’t trump them or get angry or ignore them. The only response is to utter two of the most gracious, inviting, and sweet words in the language: “You’re welcome.” It’s music to anyone’s ears.
Here’s an exercise to get you started
think about your career. Who are the people most responsible for your success? Write down the first 25 names that come to mind. Ask yourself, “Have I ever told them how grateful I am for their help?” If you’re like the rest of us, you probably have fallen short in this area.
Writing a thank you note forces you to confront the humbling fact that you have not achieved your success alone. You had help along the way. More important, it forces you to identify your strengths and weaknesses. After all, when you thank people for helping you, you’re admitting that you needed help in the first place—which is one way to pinpoint your deficiencies. If you didn’t need to improve in a specific area, you wouldn’t have needed another person’s help.
I teach my clients to go back to all their coworkers every month or so and ask them for comments and suggestions. For example, that first client who had a problem sharing and including his peers went to each colleague and said the following: “Last month I told you that I would try to get better at being more inclusive. You gave me some ideas and I would like to know if you think I have effectively put them into practice.” That question forces his colleagues to stop what they’re doing and, once again, think about his efforts to change, mentally gauge his progress, and keep him focused on
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Follow-up is the most protracted part of the process of changing for the better. It goes on for 12 to 18 months. Fittingly, it’s the difference-maker in the process. Follow-up is how you measure your progress. Follow-up is how we remind people that we’re making an effort to change, and that they are helping us. Follow-up is how our efforts eventually get imprinted on our colleagues’ minds. Follow-up is how we erase our coworkers’ skepticism that we can change. Follow-up is how we acknowledge to ourselves and others that getting better is an ongoing process, not a temporary religious
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I had dozens of letters from people who believed they had changed (although I realized that didn’t mean anyone else believed they had changed).
86,000 participants.* As I studied the data, three conclusions emerged.
The first lesson: Not everyone responds to executive development, at least not in the way the organization desires or intends.
second lesson: There is an enormous disconnect between understanding and doing.
one huge false assumption: If people understand, then they will do. That’s not true.
follow-up among their executives. Follow-up was defined as interaction between would-be “leaders” and their colleagues to see if they were, in fact, improving their leadership effectiveness.
when leaders did little or no follow-up with their subordinates, there was little or no perceived change in the leaders’ effectiveness.
when leaders consistently followed up, the perception of their effectiveness jumped dramatically.
People don’t get better without follow-up. That was lesson three.
The Hawthorne Effect posits that productivity tends to increase when workers believe that their bosses are showing a greater interest and involvement in their work. In its most elemental form, it’s the reason employees are more alert at their job when they know the boss is watching. In its more subtle forms, it’s the reason entire factory floors work harder with greater morale when they see that their bosses care about their welfare.
Becoming a better leader (or a better person) is a process, not an event.
Nobody ever changed for the better by going to a training session. They got better by doing what they learned in the program. And that “doing,” by definition, involves follow-up. Follow-up turns changing for the better into an ongoing process—not only for you but for everyone around you who is in the follow-up mix. When you involve other people in your continuing progress, you are virtually guaranteeing your continuing success.
Every night wherever I am in the world, it’s Jim’s job as my coach to call me and ask me questions. They focus largely on my physical well-being and fitness. They’re the same questions each night—and knowing that Jim will call and that I will have to answer the questions honestly is my method of following up on my goal of becoming a healthier individual. The first question is always, “How happy are you?” Because for me it’s most important to be happy. Otherwise, everything else is irrelevant. After that, the questions are: 1. How much walking did you do? 2. How many push-ups? 3. How many
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As a connoisseur of follow-up’s value, I’m not surprised. The key, however, is that it involves another person besides me. It’s one thing to keep a log each night of the same questions and fill in the answers. That, to me, is not quite follow-up. It’s more like entering data in a diary—and considerably less likely to breed ongoing success. (How many of us have started a diary but soon abandoned it?) But injecting Jim into the mix—a friendly sympathetic human being whom, on the one hand, I do not want to disappoint (that’s human nature) and who, on the other hand, provides constant
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your coach can only ask the prescribed questions; he or she cannot judge your answers. (Warning: If your coach is a spouse or parent, suspending judgment might be asking a lot of them.)
