Ignite CSP

I can’t. I can!

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My gym is right next to an art therapy studio that has classes for adults with learning disabilities. I am often there at the same time that the students are arriving, and yesterday, that was the case.

 

Our workout involved three runs up the hill beside the gym. On the first run, when I was about 100 meters up the street, I passed a woman and her companion going the other direction, towards the studio. They were walking together, slowly.

 

On the second run, a few minutes later, I passed them again. They were about 50 feet closer to the studio, and losing speed. The woman who was the student seemed reluctant to continue towards class.

 

On the third trek up the hill, I passed the companion. She was looking up towards the other woman, who was now totally still, about where she had been where I passed her last. Her gaze was fixed on the door of the studio. I heard her say, “I can’t. I can’t.”

 

Have I mentioned that I hate running? I’d rather do almost any form of exercise than run. As I passed the woman, she said exactly what I was thinking, what had been going through my head since I saw that there was running in the workout.  She said, “I can’t. I can’t.”

 

But do you know what she did next? She said, “I can!” Her voice was so clear that it carried to me, huffing and puffing my way up the hill again. She tapped into a voice of encouragement, of positivity, that got her, and me, moving again.

 

What is your voice saying to you? Are you listening?

Keep it simple.

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It can be tempting to throw a really big word or a complex sentence into your presentation. As with everything else, ask yourself: “What is this for? What’s my intention here?”

 

If the answer is not: “This is the best way to serve my audience,” cut it. Keep it simple.

Deplane!

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Leaving a small plane, passengers crowd into the narrow jetway, waiting for the bags that were checked at the gate to be returned to them. They press themselves against the walls, making a corridor for the people who don’t need to wait for their luggage.

 

An airport employee, calling down the jetway, says, “Stand to one side, please, until everyone is off the plane.” The passengers look at each other—everyone is standing to one side, no one is crowding the middle of the corridor. She bustles down the path, gesturing, “Thank you to those of you who followed instructions. Everyone on this side, please move over.” With muttering and rolled eyes, those on the left side, where she has waved her hand, move over to join the group on the right, the people who “followed instructions.”

 

It was clear what she wanted, but only after she explained. She wanted all the waiting passengers to line up on a single side of the jetway—but that’s not what she said. As far as they could tell, they were complying with the instructions to “stand to one side.”

 

What seems completely clear in our own minds isn’t necessarily clear to those who are listening. What can we learn from our own assumptions, so we can connect and communicate more clearly?

Get your spotter.

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My family and I have recently binge-watched a Netflix show called Hyperdrive. Hyperdrive  features a slate of drivers and their souped-up cars racing a course of increasingly crazy obstacles. The drivers go through narrowing walls at top speed, race up inclined six-story tall bridges, and drift their cars sideways into targets. They do all this at night, on a course where they can’t see what’s beyond their headlights.

To make this possible, each driver has a spotter. The spotter and driver are connected via headset, and the spotter can see the whole course as well as what her driver is doing, on monitors. The spotter is the driver’s perspective—as he speeds away from one obstacle to the next, the spotter can give him the lay of the land. The spotter is also the driver’s crew—if something breaks during a lap, they work together to fix it before the car races again. The spotter helps keep the driver (literally) on track and sticking to the strategy they planned before the starting light turned green.

The spotter can also help the driver change strategy if they need to pivot. For example, in one episode the driver Faruk Kaguy breaks an axle on the first obstacle in the semifinal race. He has to manage to get through the rest of the precision course with very limited ability to steer the car. As Faruk is stuck in his damaged car, seeing his dreams fade, the spotter is looking at the whole picture. He realizes that because an earlier contestant was eliminated, all Faruk has to do is finish, and he still has a chance to race again. The driver and spotter change their entire strategy in a blink—now, instead of getting around the course as fast as possible, the goal is simply to make it over the finish line. To stay in the race. Faruk does this, pumping his arms with an enormous smile, then embraces his spotter.

Spotters. Someone helping you gain perspective on the whole picture.

Get your spotter.

The dog in the road.

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Imagine that you are walking from one place to another. You must make this journey every day—maybe from home to work. One day, on the road between point A and point B, there’s a huge dog, snapping and snarling at you. The next day, the dog is there again. Each time you try to make this journey, the dog is there, cutting you off, keeping you from your destination.

 

What would you do?

 

My guess is that, pretty quickly, you would figure out a way to get to point B. You would find another route, you would distract the dog with a treat, you would threaten the dog, you would make friends with the dog, you would call in reinforcements to help you get past the dog. You would take some kind of action.

 

We face a different kind of dog in the road when we continue to communicate with people in our lives in the same old way, despite the fact that we can’t get to the outcome we are hoping for. If I lecture my kids when I’m frustrated, even though I know that lecturing them brings me farther from my goal of connection and understanding, I’m facing the dog in the road. Unlike our literal dog, though, we keep trying the old methods, louder, slower, angrier, but all a version of the same tactic.

 

What happens when we can choose a different strategy? What happens when we look past the dog to the destination, clear and shining on the other side, and focus on all the ways we can get there, rather than on the dog?

 

Maybe instead, when I see a “lecturing” situation looming, I can take stock. I can see that dog in the road. I can think “I want my child to feel supported and heard,” or “I want to offer my help in coming to a solution,” rather than “I want my child to know what they did wrong.” Now the dog is lying down, maybe rolling in the grass to the side of the road. It’s not an impediment.

I can’t hear you when I’m looking at my phone

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It was a busy morning in our house, and I needed to leave early. I asked my kids to do several things before they left for school.

 

The first thing I asked my daughter to do involved looking up information on her phone. While she was doing that, I said, “Please make sure to get the recycling out to the street, and close the garage door.”

 

I headed out to my car. As I started the engine, I was looking straight into the open garage, with the recycling sitting inside it. In my rearview mirror, my daughter was getting into her own car.  What was going on here?

 

I got out of my car and jogged over to her window. “Hey, I needed you to get the recycling to the street.” She looked at me, totally bewildered. “You did?”

 

As she ran into the garage to deal with it, I thought back. I was in a hurry to get out of the house, so I lobbed a list of requests in her direction, not bothering to make sure she received them. And this is key:  the first thing she was doing involved a task on the phone. Her brain was occupied with the visual task of searching and swiping, so she literally couldn’t hear me .

 

New plan: I’m not going to talk to anyone while they’re finishing up a task on their phone, and by the same token, I’ll ask someone who wants to speak with me to wait just a second until I can give them my full attention.

Short-term satisfaction vs. long-term outcomes

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Let’s say I run a thriving dog-walking business. I employ five dog walkers to take various clients on walks on different days, and different times. One walker, someone I have worked with for a while, does a good job but is really flaky about his schedule. He changes things around at the last minute, takes long vacations, and, after I’ve moved the other employees around to cover his shifts, wants all his favorite clients back when his schedule settles down. Not only that, but when he texts “Hey, I’m back in town,” he gets annoyed when I can’t plug him back into his favorite slots.

 

Well, all that makes things tough for me as a business owner.

 

I have to have a conversation with him about why he’s not going to be getting his preferred slots. I have a few options—let’s look at them in terms of the intention I may have going into the conversation.

 

I want to avoid a conflict with him.

 

I want him to know that he won’t be on the schedule any more, and to feel valued for his contribution.

 

I want him to see that he’s wrong and I’m right.

 

Only one of these intentions is about him, and about the situation at hand. (I think you know which one.) Number 1 and number 3 are about me and my feelings; they’re short-term intentions that will serve a short-term goal. In the case of #1, I get to avoid the conflict, but my scheduling hassles are going to continue. With #3, I’m indulging a very human but not very productive urge to get the upper hand. This almost always backfires—I might get to say some things I’ve only muttered under my breath, but there’s no long term gain.

 

I want him to know that he won’t be on the schedule any more, and to feel valued for his contribution.

 

This choice is the one that will lead to the outcome I want—not juggling the schedule, and also giving me an opportunity to express my gratitude for the work that he’s done to date. I could even leave the door open for him to fill in for other walkers or to come back when his life settles down.

 

In the moment when you get to choose, what is going to serve you best in the long run?

Doing the opposite

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What is your default mode?

 

Are you the listener or the speaker?
A loner or a group project cheerleader?
The leader or the follower?
Do you like to weigh all the options several times before you decide, or go with your gut?
Do you express your feelings or hold them to yourself?
Are you the person who likes to be in charge of all the decisions, or the person who would rather hold back and observe?

 

These are all valid, important ways of being.

 

It’s good to know what behavior you default to. When we know “oh, typically I would speak up at this point in a meeting,” or “I’m noticing I could say something but I’m not,” it gives us a window into what could be different. We can create an experiment—what happens if I’m quiet when I would usually speak? What happens when I step forward to lead, or when I volunteer, or when I hold back?

 

If you decide to run this kind of experiment, notice how you feel when you’re behaving in the way that is outside your norm. Are you jittery? Anxious? Do you feel stifled? Do you feel vulnerable?  What evidence can you collect and learn from?

Meeting amnesia

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Oh, meeting amnesia.

 

This isn’t the kind of amnesia that makes you forget to go to a meeting—

 

No, this is what happens the second the meeting is over, and everyone scurries back to their real work. They forget, instantly, about what happened in the meeting and what follow-up actions they are supposed to take. This all exits the brain completely, only to be remembered about ten minutes before (or five minutes into) the next meeting.

 

What can we do to combat meeting amnesia?
Create meetings with purpose: what are we to make happen? Be explicit about this.

 

Align the external parts of the meeting to support this purpose. Choose the who, when, where, and especially how of the meeting carefully.

 

I know so-and-so is usually invited to meetings like this one, but does he actually need to be here?

 

I know 4pm is the most convenient time, but that’s right when most people are experiencing the lowest productivity and creativity in their day.

 

It would be efficient to do it via WebX or conference call, but this topic is so important that I want to be able to be in the same room and read everyone’s signals, to make sure not to miss anything.

 

And finally, if you want action to result from the meeting, don’t wait until the meeting has already run late to quickly discuss action items. Build in the next steps as you go, set up check-ins and follow-ups, and help the people in the meeting orient themselves towards those actions.

“70% helpful, 30% being a jerk.”

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A friend turned to me recently after a conversation with someone else had ended awkwardly.  She said, “I know that didn’t land well. I was 70% trying to be helpful, and 30% being a jerk.”

 

That 30% is pretty powerful, and my guess is that it’s going to override the 70%.