Tag: relationships

Your story

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Make sure who you are defines the job you do, and not the other way around.

You might be stuck in a job you do not like, and yet this does not alter the person and the professional you aim to be. If you are treated fairly, you can still do a good work, deliver value in details, lend an helping hand, translate experiences into learnings.

And when it is time to move on, continue on a path of self-definition and self-affirmation.

Never lose track of who you are and what you are here for. That’s what makes your story coherent and worth telling.

Listening and asking

Fabrizio4 Comments

Two strong recommendations if you are into podcasts and leadership.

The Look and Sound of Leadership, by Tom Henschel.

Coaching for Leaders, by Dave Stachowiak.

They ship respectively monthly and weekly, and they are full of interesting insights and suggestions on how to be a modern leader.

If you want to start from somewhere, this one is a beautiful conversation about how poor we are at listening and what we can achieve by improving such basic skill.

In average, a person would speak about 150 words a minute. Yet in their mind, they can think up to 900 words a minute. If we stop at hearing the first thing a person says, there’s a huge chance we do not really hear what they wanted to actually express.

Oscar Trimboli

We have all had that feeling of not being able to sufficiently elaborate on our thoughts. We can get better at capturing our ideas, and still the role of the listener, particularly when in a position of power, is enabling our ability to clarify what we want to express and make us say it out loud.

And as a complement on the topic, this other one episode goes into some details about what we can do to facilitate and stimulate conversations. The key is being able to formulate good, open questions that give the other space to reflect and open up.

I hope you enjoy.

Patience

Fabrizio1 Comment

Despite common belief, patience is not a passive quality.

Patience means being committed. Devotion and dedication are necessary to stay in a situation long enough, to make the uncomfortable feel comfortable, to push away the instict of moving on to something else that might look more appealing in the moment. A patient person might look like somebody who has given up, and yet deep down they are decisively in.

Patience also means being aware. Knowing what is going on, proactively seeking for signals, interpreting the situation and learning from it. It is more than merely waiting, as it involves a conscious cognitive work aimed at collecting information about one’s sorroundings in order to effectively understand.

If you look at patience through this lens, then it should be easy to understand how crucial it can be in business and, more generally, in life.

Beyond up and more

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Is up the only way? Is more the only mean to advance?

Certainly, that is the popular view. When you are with a company, you figure what your next step would be in terms of career advancement and salary increase. Companies tend to reward with promotions and bigger paychecks their best performers or people with long tenure. They apply a one-size-fits-all measure that gets along well with the broadest culture, and yet might end up disappointing everyone involved.

Unfortunately, many organizations still offer only one way “up”. Become a manager, even if your strengths aren’t in management. Some people who aren’t really cut out to be managers may do an OK job, but they may never feel quite right managing.

It’s the Manager, by Jim Clifton and Jim Harter

There are terrific opportunities to improve this view of the work environment (and of society at large). Just imagine.

You have done a terrific job lately, I am proud of you as you have achieved this and that, and it’s important to the organisation because of that and this. As I know you had to work some extra hours to achieve that, I suggest you take two weeks off and take your family somewhere for a relaxing holiday. We are happy to pay you normal salary while you’re away, and cover the cost of the flight.

The way you have contributed to taking this team to the next level is really outstanding. In particular, I noticed you have done this with that project, and that with this person. You have mentioned during one of our conversation you’d wanted to complete your Master’s Degree you had to abandon to support your family. We’d be happy to cover the cost of your enrollment at University X for the completion of your studies.

You have been essential in closing this customer. Without you, we would have missed the opportunity to discuss the importance of Y, that eventually turned out to be crucial in convicing them. Thanks for the additional research you put into the case. I know that your true passion is in people’s development, though. I have discussed with the head of HR, and they are happy to take you in their team and mentor you on this new path. What do you think?

This does require extra effort, the effort put into knowing team members‘ strengths, wants, needs, ambitions, passions. You should really start today.

Tools

Fabrizio1 Comment

When a company implements a new tool, that is no guarantee the tool is going to fix the issue it was hired to address.

Actually, in most cases, it is quite the opposite.

A tool is merely a helper, enabling you to do something. It has very little to do with the definition of what “something” is, and even less with the act of doing itself.

I have experienced companies changing tools over and over again in the attempt to address, for example, a lack of internal communication. This is quite a typical situation in fast-growing organisations. The new tool is usually a fancy and shiny object for the first five minutes, and then people suddenly realise that: 1. they do not know what to communicate; 2. they do not know who to communicate to. And so, the new tool is mainly left unused, or is misused, and the problem persists.

Tools should always be implemented in a solid cultural and practical framework.

Culture is what tell you what to do. In the internal communication example, it tells what to communicate, how to communicate, who to communicate to, how often, for what purposes, and so on. So if a company is undercommunicating, a new tool is not going to solve it, because most likely it is not in their DNA to communicate. Or at least, they still haven’t defined an idea of internal communication that is worth following.

Practice is the act of doing itself. This is usually not very formal, though it can be (for example, a company can have a schedule for internal newsletters, updates, memos, etc.). And still, people working in an organisation know that there are certain things that need to be done, as it is part of their culture. Needless to say, managers and leaders have a dominant role in translating what to do in doing. If a company wants to be better at communicating, and (for very legitimate reasons) its managers and leaders think of communication as a least important task on the list of to-dos, a new tool is not going to send out messages in their place.

We have the tendency to give too much importance to the tool we choose and its features, when actually most of what is needed is already available. Of course, setting the stage for what needs to be done and for doing it means making decisions, and that translates into having a serious look into what is front and center to the organisation. The scarcity of resources is not something that can be addressed with technology, I am afraid.