As most of the interactions with colleagues, peers, and managers happen nowadays in written form – chat, email, articles -, this study provides a good guidance on how to avoid that a conversation will turn awry.
Being direct, starting with “you”, and focusing on facts are sure ways to make an exchange heated. On the other hand, being polite, using opinions, and expressing gratitude will keep an argument on track.
Kindness pays off.
Even when writing.
The impulse to control, dictate, micro-manage is strong.
We just have to think carefully at what happens when we do it.
Example: a colleague is planning to send out an important email. You submit to the impulse and ask to review it first. The colleague obliges and shares a draft with you. You once again submit to the impulse and, since you do not really have time for this, give them some broad feedback about tone of voice and points to make. They edit the draft and send it back. For the third time, you submit to the impulse and go deep with comments, edits, and formatting. They end up sending your version.
The results.
That is a lot of negativity spread around just because you once sent out an email that – in that particular context – turned out to get a pretty positive response.
Change is weird.
When all is calm, we are alright, we feel safe and secure, even a tiny bit of it makes us freak out. We want to maintain control, we want routine, we want more of what is already working. And we want to pretend it will work forever.
When we are in the middle of a storm, instead. When we have problems, we feel discomfort, when we are not even sure that what we are doing is what we want, then we tend to seek it as a panacea. We go after new things, forgetting what we have achieved, and pretend the exact same problems, discomfort, uncertainty will not happen again. No matter where we end up.
There is value in preparing when things are quiet. Incrementally changing our habits, spending time seeking within, adding a small new piece every day. So when the storm hits, we are ready to welcome it, stay with it, learn from it.
Take control of change. It will serve you well.
There are companies where it is normal to talk about mistakes and failures, and there are companies where all you hear is success, success, success.
Of course, the latter still make mistakes. It’s just that their culture makes it very difficult to go out there and say: “here, I have done this, and I was wrong”. So, mistakes are repeated over time. People feel stuck, learning is at a minimum, frustration rises.
Fortunately, there is something very concrete that leaders can do. They can share their own failures as learning opportunity for their own group.
It always starts from the top.
When companies grow and get to a certain size – say, 3-400 employees – the tendency is to add layers of management and middle-management to set the stage for the future growth.
That’s when something typically happens that ends up actually hindering the growth they are seeking.
It is the time when the company stops solving interesting problems and starts serving individual agendas.
It is the time of more and more meetings to find alignment, the time of blaming it on others, the time of politics and gossiping. It is a time dominated by opinions and personal anecdotes. Facts lose importance. Indeed, they barely get measured because everyone is busy pleasing those up the ranks while trying to come out first among peers.
It is where motivation dies and talent retention becomes a serious problem.
So when you hire or promote managers for your growing company, ask them not about their previous experience and their track record. Ask them instead how they plan to manage their team, how they will be handling conflict and contrasting ideas, how they will be making decisions and manage the change that comes from those decisions.
These hires will determine your possibility to get to the next phase. Be intentional about them.
You've got this 