Monthly Archives: October 2020

Absolute Candor

27 Tuesday Oct 2020

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I’ve been rewatching the new Picard series – which will come as no surprise to anyone who knows me. I am a Star Trek: The Next Generation fan, and I love Captain Jean-Luc Picard.

In this new series, I am particularly taken by a group of Romulan warrior nuns called the Qowat Milat. Don’t worry! You don’t have to understand anything in the last sentence to get value from the rest of the blog. (But how awesome is a group of Romulan warrior nuns who only bind their sword to lost causes?!)

What I really like about the Qowat Milat is that they live “The Way of Absolute Candor.” They believe in “total communication of emotion without filter between thought and word.” Wow! Can you imagine what life would be like if we all practiced absolute candor?

We wouldn’t have to guess any more about whether or not someone was angry with us. If they were upset, they’d just say, “I’m upset about this.” We’d know immediately if it was something that we said or the fact that we are out of orange juice.

If we were hurt by someone’s comment, we’d just tell them. I recently had someone that I pay money to for consulting say to me, “I don’t know why you’d ask that question.” I did not tell this person that they had pissed me off, were not fostering psychological safety, and needed a refresher course in delivering customer service that delights.

I swallowed my anger and went on with the discussion. In truth, I didn’t do either of us any favors in the long run. We continue to work together, and I do not like this person. I did not give them a chance to see how their behavior was perceived. I never opened the door to the opportunity of repairing the relationship because the other person had no idea that there was a problem.

How one practices absolute candor would be key. In Picard, two members of a small crew hook up one night. There is some awkward tension between them the next morning. The character who practices absolute candor said, “The obvious tension between you makes me uneasy.” It was said in a calm and nonjudgmental way. Brilliant!

In systems coaching, we call that “naming the emotional field.” As a coach, we name the emotions that we sense are present during a discussion or workshop.

I had a difficult time with this technique in the beginning because I had never paid attention to the emotional field before – or my own feelings. I just kind of kept going a step at a time, relying on logic alone.

Naming the emotional field is a powerful tool. During a discussion, it gets everyone to pause and check in with how they are feeling about what is going on.

The feeling part of a discussion is just as critical as the fact part. When we all start to ask why we feel a certain way, we generally open the vault on a bunch of new and relevant facts.

When first hearing about the Qowat Milat, one of the characters says, “Anyone else think the Way of Absolute Candor sounds potentially annoying?” I agree.

If we all ran around commenting on every feeling, the world could become an annoying place. I’m not sure I want to hear everyone’s emotions about the food they eat, the clothes someone is wearing, or my love of Star Trek: The Next Generation characters.

However, the world would be a less tentative and tension-filled place if we calmy shared how we feel in situations that are important and with people who matter.

For a little bit of fun leadership development, join 53 Leadership Challenges at KathyStoddardTorrey.com.

Want to go further with your professional development? Check out the courses offered at PositiveEffectLeadership.com.

If you are interested in taking your career to the next level quickly, contact me for a sample coaching session at KSTorrey@tapferconsulting.com.

 

Find the Bright Spots

19 Monday Oct 2020

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“Finding the Bright Spots” is one of my favorite concepts, and it comes from the book Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard by Dan and Chip Heath. In one chapter, the authors tell the story of a young man charged with reducing the number of malnourished children in Vietnam.

The young man had little money and no power to deal with things like poor sanitation and poverty. Instead, he looked for the Bright Spots; he looked for children who weren’t malnourished.

He found some! Those children’s mothers served the children’s daily allotment of rice in smaller portions. When a person is malnourished, they digest smaller amounts of food better than larger servings. They also added a bit of protein by seining for brine shrimp in the rice paddies. Finally, they included the leaves of sweet potatoes in their children’s diet.

These were easy things that most parents could do. He then had the moms teach each other these techniques. At the end of six months, 65% of the children were better nourished.

We don’t need to start from scratch very often to solve a problem. Most of the time, someone has already solved it for us.

Is one team having a problem keeping up with reporting requirements? Find the team that isn’t struggling, and see how they do it. Are you having trouble motivating your employees? Locate someone who has an enthusiastic team, and find out why.

Bright Spots are proven methods. We know that they work and that they can be done.

If you think about it, hunting for a recipe online is looking for a Bright Spot! Someone else has already figured out how to cook spaghetti squash, and you benefit from his or her experience. Parenting, communication, conflict, and motivating others have all been figured out by someone else.

Heck! There are YouTube videos that will show you how to put on tights and trim your beard, although not at the same time.

There is usually a variety of solutions to choose from. We can pick and choose which appeals to us the most and give it a shot. Even if the Bright Spot isn’t exactly what we need, it gives us a good place to start.

For a little bit of fun leadership development, join 53 Leadership Challenges at KathyStoddardTorrey.com.

Want to go further with your professional development? Check out the courses offered at PositiveEffectLeadership.com.

If you are interested in taking your career to the next level quickly, contact me for a sample coaching session at KSTorrey@tapferconsulting.com.

 

Do One Thing

13 Tuesday Oct 2020

Posted by in Leadership, Words of Wisdom

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When I was a young mom with young children, I struggled to keep our home neat and clean. The sinks in the bathrooms would get mold of some color or scale around the base of the faucets. I hated to drop anything around the toilet. Yuk! The kitchen was usually cleaner but very cluttered. And there were toys everywhere.

When I did clean, it was with fervor. When I cleaned the bathroom it was an event – and exhausting. I used an arsenal of chemicals, brushes, sponges, and even toothpicks. When I was done the entire thing sparkled.

I finally got things under control by following the advice of FlyLady and using a system to get the kids’ help in The Messies Manual: The Procrastinator’s Guide to Good Housekeeping. However, there is one practice I use now that I don’t think I got from either of them.

I honestly don’t remember when I started doing this one thing or where I got the idea. If you recognize it as someone’s signature concept, please let me know so I can give credit where credit is due.

The one thing is to do one thing. If I see one thing that needs to be done, I just take a minute and do that one thing. For example, if I notice that a windowsill is dusty, I grab a damp paper towel and wipe it off.

In the past, I’d have seen the dusty windowsill, been bothered by it, but ignored it until I found the time to clean the window, the blinds, and the windowsill. Everything was a project in my mind that had to be done to perfection. If I didn’t have time to do it all perfectly, it went on the rather long list of projects.

The idea is to Do One Thing that needs to be done. If you see it, take care of it. If you see three, do the one that bugs you the most, and come back to the others later. The key is that the worst things are getting taken care of immediately and quickly. It’s easy! It’s amazing what you can get done in less than five minutes.

Now if I see one dusty baseboard, I wipe off that one. I don’t run through the house cleaning them all. If a blind looks dirty, I do a few slats at a time when I take work breaks. Nothing is ever perfect all at the same time, but everything is pretty good most of the time.

Of course, if we Do One Thing all the time and ignore the strategic actions that move us toward big goals, we’ve missed the point. It’s about doing small things that need to be done in small amounts of time between the bigger actions with deadlines that support big successes.

So what are the leadership lessons here? For you knew there must be one if I’m writing about it in my blog.

Actually, there are a couple of ideas to take away from the concept of Do One Thing. First, perfection is an enemy. You can read about that here.

Second, leaders often step over small things that need to be done because they are pushed for time or think it’s not that important. I’m not talking about things like ordering paper for the copier. That is not generally a leader’s job. However, noticing that paper is low and sending the person in charge of paper a note is a hugely important small task.

(As I wrote out that example, I realized that it’s a pre-COVID-19 concept. Many of us are not in offices, and paper isn’t the essential item that it used to be, but you get the idea.)

The one thing that leaders could do in a moment or two – and get a huge benefit from – is connecting with the people that they work with. Many leaders feel that “chit chat” is a waste of time. It absolutely is not.

We need relationships to reach our most productive autonomic nervous state, the ventral vagal state. You can read about it here. That means that if we want everyone on our team to be creative, positive, and broad-minded, we want to ensure that they have some positive human interaction.

We also need to ensure that we, as leaders, have the relationships and connections that help us stay open-minded and good at problem-solving.

Small conversations also help to build the trust necessary for psychological safety, which is the essential ingredient for exceptional teams and performance. You can read about psychological safety here.

The biggest bang for a leader’s time buck is actively listening to someone for a few minutes – asking how things are going and paying attention to the answer.

Of course, it never hurts to take a minute and organize our workspaces or do a bit of stretching. The main thing to remember about Do One Thing is that it moves us forward, toward goals both big and small – even if it is a tiny baby step forward.

For a little bit of fun leadership development, join 53 Leadership Challenges at KathyStoddardTorrey.com.

Want to go further with your professional development? Check out the courses offered at PositiveEffectLeadership.com.

If you are interested in taking your career to the next level quickly, contact me for a sample coaching session at KSTorrey@tapferconsulting.com.

 

Behavior Is a Form of Communication

06 Tuesday Oct 2020

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In leadership seminars, I talk about the three types of communication – verbal, nonverbal, and symbolic. You can read about these three types here. I am ready to add another category.

My daughter-in-law and I are both working from home and hear snippets of each other’s Zoom meetings as we both care for my grandson. She works with special needs kids and talks to their parents regularly. One day she explained to a parent of a nonverbal child that behavior is communication.

Of course, it makes total sense. If any child is unhappy, they have a myriad of ways to let us know. My grandson is about seven months old. Although he doesn’t talk yet, we get clear indicators of how he feels about things.

He can’t tell us exactly what is bothering him, but we know something is! And we are pretty good at figuring out what that is.

I started thinking about how the concept applies to adults and leadership. Adults also communicate with their behavior. Nonverbal signals like eye-rolling and heavy sighs tell us how someone feels. However, I’m talking about actions – things that we do.

I’ve never been one to trust the words that someone says right off the bat. I learned as a young woman talking to hormone-ravaged males that some of them could talk a really good game in an effort to reach their end goals. I recognized them for what they were – words. They were saying things that they didn’t really mean.

It’s hard to know if someone means what they say. The only way I’ve figured out is to watch their actions. And not just what they do in the short term. I like to pay attention to what someone does for a significant period of time.

In my youth, I had a six-month watching period. If a suitor publicly announced his undying devotion and stuck with it for six months, he was due serious consideration. Not many passed the test.

Consciously or not, we put leaders through the same sort of scrutiny. We watch to see if they walk the talk. If they say something is important, do their actions back that up?

Unfortunately, many leaders and cultures say one thing is important, but they reward a different behavior. For example, many organizations talk about teamwork and the importance of being truthful with customers about expectations. In truth, they reward money-making efforts – even if they damage team morale or include undoable promises to customers.

As leaders, we must be aware that our behavior is communicating information to others. If I am chronically late to meetings, I am telling you that my time is more valuable than yours. If I say that employees are our most important resource but don’t listen to them when they try to share an idea, I am negating the verbal message.

When a nonverbal and verbal message do not match, we go with the nonverbal message. For example, if I sigh heavily and look bored while saying, “This is so much fun,” you are going to ignore the words and know that I’m not really enjoying myself.

It’s similar with behaviors, although it might not happen as quickly. We immediately know when a verbal and nonverbal message don’t match. Figuring out that someone is not behaving in alignment with their words can take longer because we normally give people the benefit of the doubt for a bit.

However, there comes a point when we have to ask ourselves if the words are just a smokescreen for behavior that sends an entirely different message. If a leader says that values are important, but they cut corners or lie, we must question how serious they truly are about the values thing.

As leaders, in order to build the trust necessary for psychological safety (which is a necessary ingredient for exceptional team performance) we must ensure that what we do consistently lines up with what we say.

For a little bit of fun leadership development, join 53 Leadership Challenges at KathyStoddardTorrey.com.

Want to go further with your professional development? Check out the courses offered at PositiveEffectLeadership.com.

If you are interested in taking your career to the next level quickly, contact me for a sample coaching session at KSTorrey@tapferconsulting.com.