When Does Empowering Our Teams To Deliver Become Enabling Bad Behaviour?

My conversations this month have - as always - focused on communication in leadership; and specifically, the challenge of getting the balance right between challenge and support when it comes to driving performance from our team. We live in a world where talent is hard to find, harder to recruit and even harder still to retain. This commercial reality in a world trying to live with Covid-19 adds an additional layer of complexity to engaging our team to deliver, and my time this past month has been spent with a fashion brand that is a global powerhouse in the industry, who is wrestling with such a challenge.

Specifically, the focus of my discussions with senior leaders who need to take the performance of their team to the next level has been consistent: how to ensure that we empower our teams to deliver, rather than enable bad behaviour? What’s the bad behaviour specifically I hear you wonder? ‘I don’t know’, ‘I haven’t got time’, ‘I don’t know where to get that’, ‘I tried that and it didn’t work’ type responses to dealing with issues, requests, challenges. Have you come across it at all, I wonder?

The difficulty for leaders everywhere is that in the race to be supportive, empathic, helpful and motivating, we can fall prey to the sin of allowing our team to ‘do a YP’. My first ever boss described a ‘YP’ as ‘your problem’. So, when our teams do have an issue, challenge or difficulty, they want to share it with you in order for you to ‘fix’ it. That’s ‘doing a YP’. Now their problem is your problem. And they look forward to hearing from you when you’ve resolved it.

But, isn’t that our job? Aren’t we there to do precisely that? Make their lives easier? Sort problems, resolve issues, galvanize and motivate our team to step up, rather than have them wasting time on issues which you can easily sort?

Beware. Yes, we need to be flexible, dependent on the ability and willingness of our teams to complete the task (we’ve all come across situational leadership), however, engaging our teams is all about enabling them to become more confident and confident to resolve such issues themselves.

Our communication - if it is to be effective - means getting the balance right between ‘tell’ and ‘ask’. Being able to ask brilliant, crisp questions that explore what they’ve learned, scrutinize what they’ve done, explore their ideas are to address the challenge, identify who can help them, brainstorm options, ground them in metrics of success and agree a date by which we’ll catch up on what they’ve done to gauge progress.

Whoever is asking the questions is controlling the conversation. Pure coaching is the secret sauce of leadership communication…woven into the discussion seamlessly, effortlessly. All of us are much more invested in making our ideas work, rather than trying someone else’s, and that’s how we ensure that we empower our teams, rather than enable bad behaviour.

What’s The Problem We’re Trying To Solve?

I’ve been working with three global brands this month, talking about the concept of selling ideas, leading change and delivering a different result.

There are so many skills and strategies which sit behind taking an idea, convincing a business to invest in it, and then driving lasting adoption over time… there’s a lot of ground to cover and a lot of communication skills to master.

The focus of our discussions has been right at the beginning of leading this change, and the first place things tend to fall over is right at the start. Why? Because whilst the good news is that whilst we have an idea to address an issue, the bad news is that it can drive down the scrutiny with which we identify what exactly our idea will help address. We’re so excited and enthusiastic about what we propose, that we quickly, readily, repeatedly revert to talking about how marvellous our idea is; because that’s what will persuade, right?

Wrong. Unfortunately.

In my experience, no matter how brilliant our idea may be, the chances are that someone, somewhere in our business has - or is currently - trying to address the issue. The challenge, or should I say the necessity, is to demonstrate absolute rigour.

What’s the problem we’re trying to solve? The simplicity of this question betrays the power of it. Are we talking symptoms or root cause? What’s changed? What’s the value to our customers? To our business? What’s the return on investment as a result? Why is this a problem? Why now? Who is it a problem for? What’s the scope of this problem? Does it exist everywhere or only in some places? Who’s tried to fix it before? What have we learned as a result?

These are questions which we need to ask repeatedly to stakeholders in the business in order to shape our thinking around the problem which our idea will solve, and we definitely need to adapt, improvise and amend our thinking around the problem which our idea will solve.

Problems are never what they appear… and never what they become in relation to garnering support from others to invest in idea.

Selling ideas starts with defining the problem you want to solve… so in terms of rigour and scrutiny, remember to ask ‘what’s the problem we’re trying to solve?’ Repeatedly.

Do You Talk Too Much?

When was the last time someone started talking… and as you listened, you wished they would just stop? I’ve been working with both clients and colleagues this month and I am reminded about the need to be clear, precise and concise. Very recently, I have partnered with a colleague in my industry who simply talks far too much in their answers. They talk about topics which don’t relate to the question, they repeat everything, quickly and they just keep on talking… it’s actually painful and frustrating to experience. Too. Much. Information. TMI. Poor listening. Lack of curiosity. Really poor skills.

The research from the world of behaviour economics supports a different approach, and we absolutely have to dial up our skills in this area - especially in a remote working environment that is here to stay. Harvard Business Review published fascinating research in 2016 that I use regularly with my clients to encourage talking less. The first twenty seconds of speaking typically means we have the ear of our audience. As pack animals, we actually like talking and during this period, we can get comfortable and start to relax into our point. Isn’t that great? Well, beware. If we keep talking for a further twenty seconds, there is a very real danger that our audience will think that we’re talking too much. Beyond forty seconds? Then steady on; it’s highly likely that we’ve lost the room.

Being better means:

1. Gathering your thoughts before starting to speak.
2. Organizing your message into three parts.
3. Pacing your delivery so that the audience can understand what is being said.
4. Knowing when to stop.

I’ll take my cue, right there.

Getting Your Audience’s Attention

How long does it take before you stop listening to others at work?

Data published in the past two years suggests that our ability to get (and then keep) the audience’s attention when we’re trying to influence them has never been harder. Two years of working remotely has made our ability to ‘switch off’ listening commonplace – and it is brutal. Seconds have become mere moments… sentences have become a few words, before we stop engaging with the person speaking because we simply don’t relate to any relevance in what they’re saying.

My conversations with clients this month focused on answering the ‘why should I care?’ question fast and right up front. If we don’t get this right; then everything we say afterwards doesn’t matter…..because our audience is no longer listening.

Common mistakes include demonstrating the validity of our work by explaining the rigour of our process or providing an overly lengthy description of the background to our project or our idea, demonstrate our credibility by a too long introduction, or get overly excited by our propositions (because they’re fabulous).

We’re social animals and we’re pack animals, and we like to talk. So, we think this helps. Without making context clear and relevant, then it just does not work.

There’s a reason why Simon Sinek’s ‘Start with Why’ – How Great Leaders Inspire Action TED talk is one of the most watched of all time. He says, “people don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it”. If our audience doesn’t immediately understand the answer to the ‘why should I care?’ question, then we will lose them. Everything after that doesn’t matter.

So how can you get their attention right at the start? Rhetorical questions, relevant statistics, compelling facts, metaphor, analogy, voice of the customer, soundbites all work. But they must relate to what your audience cares about and, what you’re trying to achieve through the conversation.

What do you need to dial up in order to get your audience’s attention today?

It's Time To Talk To Our Team

As the two year anniversary approaches of this global pandemic - which remains far from over - my time so far this year has been absorbed with loss….not only loss associated with the generation defining experience of Covid-19, but also loss of good people: from our teams, our company, our industry. ‘The Great Resignation’ appears to be well under way and organisations everywhere seem to be focused on finding, hiring, developing and keeping their best people. Added to that is the challenge of wanting to encourage people back into the office (dependent on where we are in the world), and there is a wide variety of views regarding employees’ level of excitement at this prospect.

The beginning of year represents new beginnings, reflections, hopes, dreams and aspirations… and now – as we charge through March – it feels as it always does – that being that the year is starting to speed up very quickly.

So, what does this means for leaders everywhere who are responsible for engaging their teams to deliver, in spite of everything that has happened?

Well, if we haven’t already; it’s time to talk. Really talk with our people about what they want, need, aspire to and dream about achieving as we move through 2022. In this fast paced, distraction filled world in which we all operate, as leaders we may think that we do this well, often and usefully… the challenge here is genuinely a reflective one: do we?

We live and work in a highly distracted environment. We kid ourselves that we can ‘multi-task’ (no such thing by the way; we simply task switch). As leaders, we’re in the business of relationships… so how to do this well?

Questions on which to base a meaningful, useful, connected discussion include:

How are you? (And mean it).
What are you enjoying at the moment?
What aren’t you enjoying?
How do you feel about the prospect of returning to the office?
What would make that prospect work for you?
What’s next for you in terms of your career?
How can I help?
What do you need from me?

We join companies but leave managers; the point is to start talking. Really talking. Now.

Who’s Had Too Much Appreciation Lately?

Seriously? Absolutely no-one I know. Ever. As we move through the month of February, I’m drawn back to this essential communication skill, based on a recent personal experience with a global, corporate client of mine. As part of a team which supports different leadership groups; I was invited to choose a gift (one from a choice of two), for which I was delighted. “Thank you very much”, I thought. And then, it started to go wrong, and all the positive sentiment behind the initiative was replaced by irritation, frustration, shame and a complete and total lack of empathy.

I had to sign up to/download a link to something (blah, blah, blah).
“Have you had the link yet I was asked?” ‘No’, came the reply.
“You will have had it, double check” was the response. ‘I did and I haven’t’ came my reply.
“Well then you probably didn’t sign up properly.” ‘I did, I checked’, came the response.
“Redo it”. I did.
(At this point I’m fantasizing about what they can do with their gift).
“Have you downloaded the link yet?”. Yes.
“Has it worked?” No (again).
“Well, can you contact XYZ, do ABC, then call DEF and at some point before the end of time you’ll get your gift. Because we appreciate you!!!”

Are you serious? I thought. Have you completely lost your mind? It absolutely, certainly didn’t feel like it. So what’s my point?

Appreciation is a serious business. A glorious business. A massively enjoyable business. A leadership business.

And yet we rarely make enough time for it.

It’s never about the gift. It’s about the thought. The time. The effort. Not the monetary value. Some of us will think: “yes that’s great Sarah, but I’d like a 20% pay rise anyway.” Of course, who wouldn’t? My point relates to when it’s not about a pay rise. In fact, if the only reason our team will stay is if they get a pay rise, then I argue that we’ve left it too late, too long to help them feel engaged and highly valued as a member of our team through regular appreciation. Remember when we do this well, people stay in spite of the fact that they might get more money elsewhere.

When it comes to the art and the magic of appreciation, I believe we don't want ‘things’; we want ‘thought’. We want care, kindness, generosity of spirit rather than generosity of wallet.

It’s time to show the love (appropriately!) for our team. We all work in a relationship business, whatever our sector, role or area of expertise. We all need others to help us succeed and we all need to feel that spectacularly good feeling that comes from being truly, authentically appreciated.

So, who is overdue appreciation from you today? And what can you do about it now?

PS Still no gift. That’s totally fine. The moment and the thought are lost. And it was the thought; and only the thought that counted. Nothing else.