What Will You Celebrate This Festive Season?

As we continue to unlock and lock down yet again around the world, the topic of celebration may - for some - hold little appeal at the moment.

And yet despite all of the loss, fear, grief, monotony, anger, frustration and disappointment of the past 12, 18, 21 months, celebration has been the topic of discussion for my clients in recent weeks.

As the end of the calendar year approaches, so does an opportunity to reflect on what we’ve achieved, in spite of it all.

For our professional lives, for our clients, for our teams and for ourselves, we should celebrate that we’ve made it through 2021. We’re still here. Still standing - or at least still staggering - to fight another day. Out of the woods? No, not yet. Wish we were? Yes, like you wouldn’t believe.

Joy has been in short supply; normality continues to be suspended and the future remains uncertain.

Do we organize a team meet in person or not? Can we face another virtual drinks on Zoom? And does anyone feel remotely festive anyway?

Celebration amidst confusion, chaos and crisis can seem jarring.

And yet……

Leadership is about connection, fellowship and even love.

Leaders who ‘reach’ their teams, inspire loyalty beyond reason and who bring out the very best in others are those who make the time to notice and celebrate individual strengths. To pay attention to that which makes others tick. To marvel at individual brilliance and who make it their business to make sure others know it.

My view is simply this: your teams don’t need a naff ‘Secret Santa’ gift, or a trite ‘copy and paste’ email which was pretty much the same one they received last year and the year before that. What they need is something far more meaningful and far longer lasting, wrapped up in a completely unexpected, utterly delightful and from the heart commentary that celebrates them for the good they’ve done for you, the team, your clients and the business this year.

That’s always worth knowing and it’s definitely worth celebrating.

In the meantime, here’s to a better 2022 for us all……

Talk Less

We all talk too much. And the science proves it.

I was tempted to have those two sentences be the total content for my newsletter this month. However, I will elaborate (just a little).

My conversations with clients recently have focused on brevity. When we need to make a point, answer a question, handle a challenge, offer a perspective, explain something….how can we say less? Be crisper? Get to the point faster? And know when to stop talking? As social animals we are hard wired to communicate. This is how we navigate and negotiate our way around our world, and it works.

However, the challenge and the contradiction in this hybrid world is that our capacity to pay attention to all this chatter is almost zero. Okay, not quite zero, but not far from it. When others are speaking, we can decide very quickly to just stop. Stop listening. Stop caring. Stop interacting.

So how to be more effective? Think of it like a traffic light system. This glorious analogy came from Harvard Business research, and I attribute it to them. We have a green light for the first 20 seconds. Our audience likes us if what we’re saying is relevant and serving others in the conversation. We have an amber light for the next 20 seconds. The risk is dramatically increasing that our audience will lose interest. Take heed! We have a red light at 40 seconds. No matter how exciting, engaging, thrilling, relevant, dynamic, and fabulous we think what we’re saying is….just stop. Otherwise, we’re in severe danger of boring, frustrating, disengaging and dissuading our audience completely. Our impact is zero; our ‘wins’ at the start of our message have turned into losses. We said too much.

Fed Up With Turning Your Camera On?

Recent research would suggest that turning our cameras off in remote meetings leads to us being less tired and more productive. These results came after a four week experiment found that individuals felt more free to ‘focus less on the face of others and more on the content of the meeting’.

I have been talking with my clients about this exact topic a lot this month, and reference to this research has been used as an ‘aha, now I can turn my camera off!’ Sounds great, right?

WRONG.

It’s the wrong solution for this particular problem. Turning our cameras off makes us less influential and less impactful. Rapport lowers, mis-trust increases and – let’s face it – we all know those with ‘cameras off’ could easily mean that they are doing something else for some/part/all of the time that they’re not visible to us.

Being able to see the impact of our communication on others is an incredibly powerful tool to modifying, adapting and enhancing our influence.

Yes, I agree that we want to be less tired and more productive. Turning our cameras off is not the way to do it.

We jump on calls to build relationships, discuss options, solve problems, lead change, galvanise our people, make decisions, agree actions, secure commitments and genuinely make our workloads easier. Being an influential leader means being a visible leader. Always remember that trust increases, rapport increases, dialogue increases when we are on camera.

So, instead of turning off our cameras off can I suggest:

1. Shorten all 1 hour meetings to 45 minutes and 30 minute meetings to 25 (with a hard stop).
2. Review your calendars regularly to remove meetings which are unnecessary, low value, repetitive and too long.
3. Use other media to communicate. Some issues don’t need a meeting at all.
4. Sharpen your influencing skills. In the absence of being crisp, concise and compelling, take one guess as to what the easiest response is from our audience - who are not convinced by us. Yep, you’ve guessed it… the answer is… ANOTHER MEETING. If we are more persuasive, more compelling, more able to reach people, engage people and change people... we don’t need turn our cameras on at all because we don’t need another remote meeting.

We’re Heading Back To The Office (A Bit) – Now What?

As the world continues to battle with Covid-19 and move through various stages of locking down and unlocking, this month I have found myself talking with my clients about what to do now that some of their team (and themselves) have started to return to the office.

What’s the right thing to say or do as a leader? Is it ‘as you were’? Or is it all completely different?

Whatever our own personal experience, all of us are living through generation defining change, and in this different, changed world into which we all emerge, gradually - and blinking, the reality is that as we start to return to the office, it will feel either very weird or very familiar.

Our challenge as leaders to lead change, engage others with change, drive change, create a culture in which change feels good… so, as we get used to the reality that Covid-19 is with us forever, and our working patterns will be different (for some - forever), the absolute priority for us do now is step up the quality and quantity of our communication.

Why?

Because the default human response to change is consistent around the world - namely, what will I lose?

Given that reality, being a better communicator as a hybrid leader now means:

1. Avoid the mantle of the keyboard warrior. Of course I realise that if you’re running a global business with a 5,000 employee strong organisation then that’s not as easy as it sounds. However it’s no less important to communicate more often, through more channels, with more clarity. Written communication (in long or short form), will never be as effective as the spoken word. Make time for it; defend time for it; and review the impact of your conversations afterwards. That’s the inescapable and outstanding reality of our communication. We can measure its impact in the response we get. If our teams are confused then it means we weren’t clear. If our people are disinterested that we’ve not been persuasive enough. If our organisation doesn’t care, then we’ve not involved them in the right way to engage them.
2. Don’t assume you have to have all the answers. Leading change effectively is never about having all the answers, it’s always about having the right questions. No business, no government, no country, no executive team, no company had a playbook for Covid-19. Why on earth would we assume that there’s a playbook for hybrid working? We’re all working this out as we go. We all need to stay curious, be experimental, get comfortable with failure (and we will sometimes). This is all new. So, what do you need to ask now? What do you need to know from your teams now that which enable you to help them be more effective as they navigate new working patterns?
3. Listening is underrated and poorly executed. And it’s got worse through remote working. What’s really being said here? I am visible? Present? Suspending my agenda and deeply listening to the words being said and those not being said? Or am I half- hearted, jumping ahead, trying to ‘send that quick message’ whilst professing to care? The greatest delusion is that we think others won’t notice. They do; always. The greatest gift we can give others is our time and undivided attention. How much of your time and your attention are you really offering to your teams at present?
4. Reflect, rehearse and refine key messages. I’m not talking about rehearsing everything you want to say before you say it. However, what I am talking about is the absolute, pinpoint accuracy with which you craft the messages which reach people. For those of you who have worked with me in the past, you know I’m a fan of the number three. What top three messages need to land with your teams immediately? Remember, these are the messages that resonate, change minds, win hearts and drive the right behaviours. What are the top takeaways that you want your team and the wider organisation to hear, understand, believe… and repeat? Rehearse them to ensure brevity, precision and impact.
5. Encourage conversations and connections between teams and individuals. Who needs to be connected with whom? Where is there an opportunity for learning? Mentoring? Best practice sharing? We’ve all been away from the office, at home, with overbooked calendars, kids being home schooled, no delineation between ‘work time’ and ‘home time’, plus longer days, more stress, a lot of uncertainty, illness, sadness, grief, loss. The initial excitement of Zoom virtual drinks or wearing silly hats has long since gone. Who do we want to get talking to whom? Great conversations change people. When we change people we change performance.

What all hybrid leaders need to do now is get even better at having, facilitating and driving better conversations with and between their people.

Are You Ready To Become A Hybrid Leader?

August is a month which signals that beginnings and ends of seasons are around the corner. Wherever you are in the world, change is on its way – not just in the turning of summer into autumn and winter into spring, but also – COVID allowing - in terms of the very real prospect of returning to our offices and those of our clients more often that we have done over the past eighteen months.

The ‘hybrid leader’ – namely one who runs teams with individuals who are both in the office and working from home – is what we all will become.

Putting to one side legal, social and cultural considerations around this whole topic for a mere moment, I have been talking with leaders about what this means for our ability to engage and communicate with our teams, the business and our customers.

What’s changing? Some of us may think simply ‘nothing’. We operated a hybrid business model pre-Covid. True. Except now we have Covid. Forever. And with this global health pandemic has come profound change to the way we think about, connect with, deliver at and get joy from work. A pulse survey of eleven global brands with whom I’ve worked this month has revealed that all of them are extremely worried about their top talent becoming flight risks, about re-igniting customer relationships that have gone quiet, and re-hiring and re-engaging existing employees. This is the strong and consistent thread of challenge coming from every single one of them.

So what does this mean for us as leaders and influencers? As always, leadership is all about communication and influence. The concept of the hybrid leader has been much on my mind in 2021, and so over the coming months, I will be exploring how our ability to persuade and influence others needs to step up given the necessity as a leader of demonstrating empathy, exquisite listening, curiosity, humility, agility, courage to make mistakes and flexibility. As never before.

I have yet to meet a leader who doesn’t think they have these skills already. However our challenge is how we will need to take these up yet another level to meaningful convey them; be it remotely or face-to-face.

Look out for more information here and across my social media every month and let’s start the conversation.

In the meantime, I have a question for you: are you ready to become a hybrid leader?

Are You In Danger Of Conveying ‘Ruinous Empathy’?

Delivering results through others means getting the balance right between challenge and support. My time this month has been focused on how to practically get this right - which is hard enough to do anyway, without the sixteen months and counting of a global health crisis which has challenged us all as never before. As leaders who drive results through others:

• How do we conduct those more difficult discussions about below par performance?
• How do we constructively challenge those who’ve had a lot on their plate and where we’ve been both supportive and sympathetic, but now they really need to step it up?
• How do we encourage, enthuse and engage our teams to lean in, dig deep and deliver more when we fear that they are a flight risk and ready to leave our business?
• How do we help our team see the value of returning to the office environment positively, rather than as a veiled threat to future career prospects if they insist on staying at home?

The list of scenarios is endless, and the challenge around getting it right is great, so where precisely we start? Endless behavioural science research confirms that distance builds distrust, and that the remote environment can have a damaging impact on the quality of our professional relationships across teams and time zones. These conversations would be hard enough if we were face to face, but now we need to do this remotely. How on earth do we get this right?

I have found myself returning to the power of Kim Scott’s work, who wrote a superb book called ‘Radical Candour: How To Be A Kick Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity’. If you’ve not read it; then buy a copy and do so now. It’s on audio, so grab it that way if this is your preference. It is simply exquisite. Scott talks about a simple concept with profound impact: how to care personally whilst challenging directly. As leaders she is straightforward and practical in how to get started and offers a simple and effective framework to critique where we might tend to operate at the moment. The area within the four box quadrant that has taken my time and attention this month is the spectacularly labelled ‘ruinous empathy’. This month, I have been working with sales leaders at a global brand who need to challenge their teams to change their behaviour, learn more quickly and adapt faster to deliver better performance. Tenure, expertise, skill set is no protection against this requirement and whilst caring personally is in abundance; challenging directly is not. This is ‘ruinous empathy’ because we don’t want to damage the relationship or cause offence and yet leaders everywhere must fight against it. Why? Because ultimately, it’s not fair or helpful to the other person to fail to tell them things which they would be better off knowing.

Are you guilty of ‘ruinous empathy’? Who in your professional world is overdue ‘radical candour’ for which they, the team, their customers and the business would all benefit if you took your communication skills up to the next level? If our relationships are as strong with our team as we like to think they are then now is the time to step up. Care personally, and challenge directly.

Why Turning On Your Camera (Still) Matters

Sixteen months into a global health crisis which is far from over means for all of us that we’re still spending a lot of our working day on remote video calls.

Whilst the clamour to travel to visit clients or get back to the office may be overwhelming for some - and non-existent for others - for now at least, we’re still largely working from home.

I’ve been working with several global law firms this month and I have noticed the resurgence of the ‘I’m not camera ready’ expression….with the preference to remain off camera for a meeting.

It has prompted my curiosity and also my constructive challenge.

What’s going on here? What does this expression mean? And why do we think that it is an acceptable working practice to join remote meetings with lots of black squares and/or out of date photographs are at play?

To be clear, there’s a big difference between needing to go off camera because a child we’re home schooling is having a meltdown, or we need to answer the door to the delivery man. That’s a totally valid reason, and it is not what I’m talking about.

As leaders and influencers, our job is to show up. Being visible by turning our cameras on still matters for a wide variety of reasons:

1. It sets the tone. Being on camera shows the world that ‘this is how we do things around here’. Linguists will tell us that 80% of our communication is non-verbal and being able to see and read facial expressions, posture and hand gestures all help create connection and improve the quality of the interaction. The ‘illusion’ of communication actually occurring was first observed by George Bernard Shaw. Working remotely has made the task significantly harder and so everything that we can do to counteract this challenge is helpful.
2. It shows responsibility. By conveying to your team that you’re ready to work. I’m not talking about being fully suited and booted, or spending a lot of time grooming (however much that is), but putting on a clean shirt/top, brushing our teeth and putting a comb through our hair isn’t a lot to ask is it?
3. It builds connection. As human beings we crave it; and after so long being separated from each other in so many different ways, being visible creates a powerful opportunity to do just that – connect. How we spend our time and how we spend our money tells the world what we care about, and by turning our camera on and our attention to the audience, we’re saying we care… about each other. If we show others we can about them; we encourage the same reciprocity.
4. It makes us memorable. Expressions such as ‘out of sight is out of mind’ and ‘in one ear and out the other’ reflect what a significant amount of scientific research has already shown, namely that our auditory modality is not as good as our visual modality for remembering the message. Who wants to be forgettable? We jump on calls to talk to each other and influence each other and not to crank through a million emails and messages.
5. It builds trust. Distance builds distrust. Harvard Business Review found that we’re 2.5 times more likely to perceive incompetence, poor decision making and mistrust our remote colleagues, versus those whom we see regularly at the office. The myriad of rituals that bind us in person are missing remotely, and so we have to work so much harder to that precious commodity which is the cornerstone of any successful relationship.
6. We’re all in a relationship business, first and foremost. And we lose sight of that at our peril.