Kindle Notes & Highlights
Read between
December 27, 2021 - January 8, 2022
Creating a welcoming environment for suggestions and solutions keeps the energy flowing and the ideas coming
Shift your perspective on effective leadership communication with this counterintuitive experiment.
Inside the Management 8-Ball are not answers but powerful questions. How much would it reduce your stress level if you could lead people by randomly selecting questions from a list of fifteen powerful questions?
Here’s the canned list of the Magic Management 8-Ball Challenge questions: So, what’s the core issue here? What’s the problem behind the problem? What should we start doing or stop doing? What assumptions are you making that are limiting the solutions you are considering? What support do you need to be successful? In what ways am I, the organization, or other factors outside of your control holding you back? Often, the most powerful insights are in words left unsaid. What do you think has been left unsaid? What important questions have we not yet asked that may change our thinking? If you
...more
Eliminate Yes-or-No Questions
Any question that elicits a one-word yes or no is a closed question.
Unquestions open up the conversation. They can guide someone to the areas that you find most interesting or areas where you really need to know more about the topic.
Tell me more is one technique for asking an unquestion: Tell me more about [repeat part of what the person said]. [Repeat what the person said.] Interesting. Tell me more about that.
Why questions usually lead to defensiveness.
focus on the future with people.
What did you learn from this that will help in the future? Knowing what you know now, what would you do differently in the future? How would you change your approach in the future?
Here’s root cause analysis version 2.0:
Michael isn’t hitting his sales quota. Q: Tell me more about what you think is behind that. A: Because Michael doesn’t know how to sell. Q: Hmm, Michael doesn’t know how to sell. Tell me more about that. Rather than asking why, just repeat their words and add, “Tell me more” or “I wonder what’s behind that” afterward.
To upgrade your listening, upgrade your questions.
Rather than listening, our brain is usually fast-forwarding to what we’re going to say in response to what is being said rather than actually listening to what is said.
Apologizing when you interrupt brings more awareness to how frequently you do it. When we stop to apologize, it breaks the flow of the response and brings our awareness to the fact that we’re, well, interrupting. Over time, you’ll naturally do it less frequently.
“It’s very difficult for me to follow and contribute because you are immersed in this language that’s foreign to me. May I have your permission to interrupt if I don’t understand something?”
What if the reason people don’t have anything interesting to say has everything to do with your words and little to do with theirs?
If you ask questions that don’t engage people, you’ll get boring answers. Have some fun with it. Get more creative. Imagine a question that the other person isn’t going to anticipate.
one person speaks, and the other person attempts to repeat their words exactly. Try this. You’ll discover two things. First, it’s extremely difficult to repeat what someone said word-for-word if they speak for more than twenty seconds. Our memory can’t store that much information.
The second thing you’ll discover—which is especially important in emotionally charged conversations—is that you hear things that the other person did not say.
When he said these things, what I heard was, “You’re doing a bad job.” But my father never said those words. I heard what he didn’t say. When he was saying, “You’re running the company into the ground!” what he was really saying is, “I’m scared that a recession is coming and that our profit margins are too low to withstand a weak economy. I want you to increase profit margins.”
if you find yourself not listening, just acknowledge it and apologize. Explain why you weren’t listening and ask them to repeat themselves: I’m sorry. I wasn’t listening. I was still thinking about the email I was writing before you walked in. Something you said sparked an idea, and I was thinking about it instead of listening to you.
Position yourself to face people when you speak with them. Do video calls instead of phone calls.
When you know someone can see your eyes, it will help you resist distractions and help them to see that you are listening.
A partner is someone about whom you would strongly agree with the following statement: it is very important to me that this person is engaged and committed one year from now. Write down the names of the people on your “team” to who you really want to be engaged and committed to one year from now.
I recall thinking, “Why is it that most parents would say they love their children, but not all children feel loved?”
What if we could look at the specific behaviors that make up a good relationship, then ask a partner how they think we are doing with those behaviors?
The only question that matters is this: do you have a good relationship in the eyes of your partners?
The First Nine Statements of the Leader’s Creed I demonstrate kindness and respect toward you in ways that you can see and hear. I listen when you speak. I am aware when I hurt you, and I apologize when I do. I show interest in your career and development as a person. I demonstrate how to respectfully request changes in the behavior of others, including my requests of you. With my words and actions, I build you up rather than tear you down. I effectively communicate my emotions and needs and create a safe place for you to communicate yours. I express anger appropriately. I surround us with
...more
recommend you download the latest version of the worksheet at www.TheLeadersCreed.com.
How you treat the mother (or father) of your children will become the unconscious baseline of what your children will expect—and accept—in their romantic relationships. Married or divorced, the parameters of your relationship will become the default setting for your kids.
The Tenth Statement of the Leader’s Creed
The Leader’s Creed: With my words and actions, I demonstrate kindness and respect toward coworkers, customers, and business partners, even when they are not around. The Couple’s Creed: With my words and actions, I demonstrate love, kindness, and respect toward our family members, even when they are not around. The Father’s Creed: With my words and actions, I demonstrate love, kindness, and respect toward your mother, even when she is not around.* The Mother’s Creed: With my words and actions, I demonstrate love, kindness, and respect toward your father, even when he is not around.*
And ultimately, whether someone has the ability to listen is irrelevant if they don’t listen to you, right?
Great leaders don’t stop people from leaving; they stop people from wanting to look.
in most teams and organizations, the top 20 percent of the people deliver 80 percent of the results. This is where your efforts to retain talent need to be placed.
“It’s really important to me that you enjoy your work here. On the days that you find yourself most frustrated, what has happened? What do we need to start doing, or stop doing, that would reduce or eliminate your frustration?”
the shift is to commit, in that moment, to having a conversation with the person who has the power to change the circumstances (or behaviors) that result in your decision to leave.
When [insert the event that caused you to decide to leave], my initial gut reaction was that this was the last straw, and I decided to leave. Rather than keeping you in the dark as I planned my exit, I committed to having the courage to speak to you about it to see if there is a way forward.
The people who take control of their happiness are the ones who regularly ask themselves: Instead of investing time to find a new job (or relationship), how can I invest in this one to make it better?
An “emotional Einstein” is someone who intellectually understands emotional intelligence but is unknowingly speaking thoughts instead of emotions.
Many of us are uncomfortable expressing emotion, especially at work.
A simple upgrade is to replace the word how with what. If you ask, “What are you feeling?”
“What emotion are you experiencing right now?” or simply “What are you feeling right now?”
“What emotion were you experiencing at that moment?”
