Category: leadership

Meetings

Fabrizio2 Comments

Few rules to get the most out of meetings.

Come prepared. A meeting should have a clear agenda, make sure you know what it is about and you have an important contribution to give. If you don’t, you can sit this out and be updated later. For 1-1 meetings, be sure you have reviewed previous history and have at least a couple of points that move the relationship forward.

Come on time. Should go without saying, yet it still happens most of the times that people are late. Actually, do not come on time. Be a few minutes early. Feel the room, exchange a word with others, make sure you are all set for the starting time.

Let the talking flow. Your turn will come, no need to rush it. Make sure you listen carefully to what is being said and are ready to speak when the time is right. Avoid interrupting, or jumping in. And if something is absolutely, incredibly urgent and needs to be said right now, get the attention of who’s speaking with body language (e.g. raise your hand) rather than by talking a higher tone.

Be polite and behave. Most likely, jokes are not welcomed. Rants aren’t as well. Stay on topic. Speak in a normal tone of voice, avoid bursting out in laugh or random hysteria. If you are leading the meeting, make sure everybody gets a fair chance to voice their opinion, yet avoid going around the room. Again, flow is important.

Keep technology to a minimum. Can’t think of a reason why phones should be allowed. If you or somebody is waiting for an important phone call, postpone the meeting. As per notebooks, if somebody has anything to present ok. Otherwise, notebooks are not necessary. In the best case scenario, they are a distraction waiting to happen (and no, your mind will to refocus on the topic discussed right after you have noticed the notification). In the worst case scenario, they create a lot of personal barriers behind which to take cover and avoid meaningful conversations. You got to take notes, you probably know how to write: take a notepad and a pen with you. And while you take notes, particularly in 1-1s, say it out loud: “I am writing this down as I feel it’s important”.

Keep it short. I am not sure what the right length of a meeting is. I can tell you, it is never more than 60 minutes. Nobody, nowadays, can be focused on one single topic, or on one single speaker, for 60 minutes. If you have multiple things to discuss, schedule multiple shorter meetings, only with the people that needs to be there. If you have to go through a lengthy document, there are probably better ways than to lock yourself in a room together. Well-prepared workshops are a great alternative. Make sure attention is high, and for this reason, keep it short. And then, make it shorter.

The trap of doing

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Urgency is a myth, so before you start taking action, make sure you understand what you are acting upon.

In marketing, for example, it is very easy to fall in the trap of doing. You start a new job, there is a pressure to get more visits to the website, more content, more leads, and so you begin with tactical actions already on your second week on the job (if you have been good enough to last that long). You do not know anything about the customer, very little about the product, even less about your colleagues, what they do, what their challenges are, and why you are in the job in the fist place.

No wonder many are dissatisfied with their marketing efforts. There is a reason if tactics, channels, messages change all the time, while strategic marketing is essentially the same from decades. Start with the basics, make sure you clearly understand who you are serving (internally and externally), and what you can do for them. Where they are found, why they should care, whether there are alternative solutions to their pains and why yours is better.

If your boss does not understand that, you might be in the wrong place. You need to build solid foundation if you want to build anything that stands the test of marketing fads.

How to start trusting others

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Three ways to start the good habit of trusting others, particularly if you are in a leadership role.

  1. Praise others’ strengths. This is not about saying “good job” or “keep up the great work”, but actually about taking time to identify things people do well and break those down with them. Why are they good? Why do they matter (to the organisation, to the purpose)? What is it that makes them special? How can we make sure you can re-do this next time?
  2. Listen without distraction. I wrote about listening yesterday. Making sure you are 100% present during a conversation (that is to say, at least listening to understand) means you are trusting others with your time. No, you don’t need to check your phone every five minutes. No, you do not have to quickly answer an e-mail as somebody is talking to you. And probably no, the phone call you are getting is not important and you do not have to take it.
  3. Delegate responsibilities. Delegating, in general, is difficult. In part, we don’t want to bother others; in part, we do not believe others can do as good a job as we can. Furthermore, when we delegate we usually delegate tasks: “can you work on this report?”; “can you take next week’s presentation?”; “can you update this process?”. I believe we can do a better job by delegating responsibilities, that generally feature more freedom and exposure: “We have been tasked with achieving this type of growth, can you take ownership?”; “I have been in charge of updating the management, how about you do it from now on?”; “So far, managers from the headquarters have done most of the touch bases with remote offices, how do you feel about taking that?”.

What type of listener?

Fabrizio7 Comments

One of the things we most seek is a good listener. Somebody who can just shut up and intensely, passionately, attentively listen to what we have to say.

But are we any good at that?

During a coaching course I took, professor Bob Thomson taught me the five different types of listening.

The first one is not listening. It happens when you are in presence of somebody else speaking, yet you are not really paying any attention to what is being said. A great example is when somebody is in a meeting and continuously checks the phone. They are not really listening, they are just physically present.

The second type is listening, waiting to speak. This is when we pay just enough attention to the what is being said to be able to say something as soon as there’s a pause. It happens quite a lot early in a relationship, as we want to make a good impression, and we can’t wait to follow up with something smart. Most of what is said is missed.

The third type is listening to disagree. It happens very muhc in arguments and heated discussions, it’s essentially taking some of the things the other person is saying to make a point. Words are often misunderstood in this scenario, as the real meaning is not at all important. What matters is finding ways to support and strengthen our own view.

The fourth type is listening to understand. While the first three types are very common, this is incredibly difficult to practice and meet. This is sitting in a conversation saying “I want to see the World from your point of view”. We put ourselves aside for a moment, and try to the best of our possibilities to listen and empathize with the other person.

The fifth one is listening to help the other understand. I know the fourth type seemed magical, and as it is so rare, we might be satisfied with it. Yet, it still demands some kind of negotiation: for me to understand your perspective, I need to take my worldview, your worldview, and somehow make sense of them both. And this often means I “distort” your worldview to try to make it fit mine.

The fifth type of listening, on the other hand, says “It does not matter if I understand you or not, what matters is that you understand yourself”. It is pure service. I am here, I am present, I am listening, and I want to help you understand what you are feeling, living, experiencing.

Listening to help the other understand means “I” am out of the equation. Not momentarily, but completely. What you are saying does not have an impact on my assumption, I am not defending anything or trying to understand anything, as I am strong in my own awareness. I want to make yourself strong as well, hence I listen.

Good listeners are no less rare or important than good communicators. Here, too, an unusual degree of confidence is the key — a capacity not to be thrown off course by, or buckle under the weight of, information that may deeply challenge certain settled assumptions. Good listeners are unfussy about the chaos which others may for a time create in their minds; they’ve been there before and know that everything can eventually be set back in its place.

Alain de Botton

Before you demand a certain type of listening, be aware of what you can offer. Most likely, the two will go hand in hand.

Honest and open stories

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We are surrounded by stories.

We tell stories all the times. About ourselves, our family, our work, the situation we are in, what happened yesterday, the last weekend, the last time we went on vacation, our childhood, our adulthood. Others do as well, and so all we hear all day long, every day of the week, are stories.

Companies tell stories as well. The story of a company is sometimes more complicated, as it is a mixture of its values, products, customers, stakeholders, shareholders, and so on. There are, in general, more interests involved in the story of a company, yet that does not mean it is not a story.

As your exposure increases, and this is valid both for individuals and for companies, you progressively lose the grip on your story. Sometimes you might hear that somebody does not believe it, that they have a different version, that they have seen you do something that is not line with what you are narrating.

Facebook has for long time been the platform bringing people together. Its story was one of communality, of moments and likes, on sharing interests (and stories) with your friends and family. Nowadays, Facebook is the platform that has rigged elections in many countries, where hatred and fraud spread, and people with mean intentions can organise to easily find an audience.

Amazon has for long time been the best shop in the world. Its story was one of outstanding customer service, attention to details, low price and convenience. Nowadays, even though it is not remotely in as bad waters as Facebook (and other social media), we hear more and more about how it basically pays no taxes, how it devours every competitor in every market it chooses to enter, and how its CEO is the richest person in the world while its employees are sometimes overworked and strictly surveilled.

The more a story is told, the more its audience grows, the more the power of the person or the people telling it, the more it is difficult to believe it. It’s just how it is, and the only thing that you can do to attempt to mitigate this risk is being honest and open.

Honest, because the closer the story you are telling is to how things actually are, the easier it is to stay on its track. How do you behave when nobody’s watching? If your interest is in getting people together, why is your main source of revenue advertising?

Open, because in telling the story you need to be sensible of the people you are affecting. Is my story beneficial to my community? Am I willing to lose profit to address something that unexpectedly happened while I was living my story? Am I ready to quit, should the damage be too much?

Telling stories is complicated, and we don’t spend quite as much time as we should trying to define them.