You don’t get to the top by being lazy. It takes a lot of hard, careful work. You need to be thorough and avoid mistakes. At the same time, you need to keep your eye on the big picture so you know when to push back and change course. You also have to be alert to your environment and know who can be relied upon and who needs help or watching. By the time you’ve earned a long series of promotions, you’ve made ultra competence your habit. That’s great! Congratulations! Now it’s time to stop that. It’s time to be lazier!
There is a formula for providing effective feedback. It is really pretty simple and many people know about it. Recently, however, I discovered a common and fatal flaw in the way most people apply that formula. The Feedback Formula The formula involves pointing out a specific, observable behavior and ensuring the other person understands the impact of that behavior. “When you {did/said a particular factual, observable thing}, {it made me/us/the company feel/think/suffer a negative impact}.” Once you’ve made your point, it is time to listen and understand the other person’s perspective on what happened and why. With this new, mutual understanding, you can work together to figure out how to prevent a recurrence. To make this work, you have to:
A client of mine was told confidentially by a third party that he was picky. That’s it. That’s all he was given. The messenger didn’t want to reveal the source and so my client was left with nothing to go on. Few people consider being picky a virtue. Especially my client, who was new to the job. When he told me about this, he had fashioned no fewer than three detailed theories about what he might have done and with whom that could have possibly led to this disparaging label. What a waste!
I know the earth is round and the sun rises and sets with our rotation. I picture the difference between my high sun and a sinking sun farther east every time my daughter calls from London on her way home from work and I’ve barely finished lunch. I picture the pre-dawn glow in Oregon every time I refrain from calling my sister before noon on the weekend. Time zones are an intriguing, but familiar, concept. But that did not prevent me from being blown away last week.
I don’t know anyone who wishes they got more email. Everyone gets too much. If you are tired of getting buried, follow these 6 steps.
I followed a conversation on social media recently where women were talking about the common habit, especially among women, of ending sentences in an uptick as if they were asking a question. There have been numerous articles about how this uptick makes women seem tentative, weak, and unsure of themselves. I agree with this interpretation? You don’t sound competent and trustworthy if you sound like you need reassurance every step of the way? You simply can’t speak with authority if every statement you make sounds like a question? This group, however, was defending the habit. They suggested the uptick was a sign of their collaborative nature. They even suggested that men would do well to follow suit.
A ‘lack of clarity’ sounds like something is just a little off. Like a lack of spice, where the perfect pinch would elevate an otherwise exquisite dish to greatness. Or a ‘lack of light.’ Not darkness. No, just not quite enough light to see really well. Just a little lacking. Everyone knows that light and darkness fall on a continuum. And we all have many shared words for describing positions along that continuum. Black of night, candlelight, twilight, bright and sunny, in the spotlight, and blinded by the light, to name a few. Each conjures an image distinct from the others and with a meaning shared by most people.
Massachusetts recently tried to make changes in state health care programs for retired civil servants. They had to back down when the retirees protested. The Governor, Charlie Baker, blamed a lack of communication. The Boston Public Schools recently tried to change school start times. They too had to back down following excessive protests. Once again, a lack of communication was cited as the culprit. This is stupid. This is the kind of thinking that leads to endless meetings where everyone is invited. Truth be told, no matter how many meetings you have, no matter how many people are allowed to have their say, and no matter how many explanations you distribute, you will have protests if you mess with people’s lives and expect communication to be the preventive medicine.
I had my first virtual reality experience at MIT recently. The program was called The Enemy and the point was to introduce us to three pairs of enemies, get up close and personal, and hear them talk about their beliefs and experiences. The three conflicts were in Israel/Palestine, the Congo, and El Salvador. As I expected, all six wanted peace and better lives for their children. And all six grew up in circumstances, mostly desperate, that defined the enemy and, seemingly, limited their options. Across the board, their actions were violent, heartfelt, and contextually defensible, if misguided. I walked out as I walked in, wishing for a better world and wondering how you get people to step out of their circumstances long enough to find common ground and peaceful alternatives that lift all people. My wishes extend to all three of these conflicts, as well as to today’s USA and beyond. Imagine a world governed by civil, rational, collaborative problem-solving! We could have left feeling pensive, I believe, but that didn’t happen. Instead, the MIT crew ushering us through this experience tainted the experience by breaking one of my cardinal rules: