I was honored to be a guest on business coach Study McKee’s podcast, “Focus Forward.” We talked about business successes and challenges, and what it means to be a good communicator.
Sturdy has a focus on building strong processes that support you and your business, and I was excited to learn about his work.
Check out the interview!
“What do you need from me in order for us to have this conversation?”
My first “big job” was as the Education Director of the National Shakespeare Company, in New York. Our mission was to bring Shakespeare plays and classroom workshops to students at K-12 schools all over the city, and I was absolutely on fire for this project.
In order to make it happen, I raised money for the program, booked the shows, hired the actors, edited the plays to 55 minutes each, directed the plays, designed the classroom workshops, and figured out the logistics necessary to get the cast and all the costumes and props to schools all over New York City. I was the sole staff member working on the program.
Most of the important lessons I have needed in my subsequent career came from the four years I spent building and running this program. I learned how to be adaptable, to see the big picture, to be in charge, to make decisions, and to let go of sunk costs in order to move forward.
Of all these lessons, one that really stands out is being able to adapt to the circumstances. Many days we showed up at a school to perform and something key had changed, or hadn’t been communicated ahead of time at all.
Instead of the auditorium, we were going to be in the cafeteria, or in a small classroom.
Once, all the students in the audience spoke only Chinese.
Another time, the teacher who hired us let me know as we were setting up that the students would be walking out of the auditorium when the bell rang regardless of what was happening on stage, so I stood in the wings cutting lines as we went in order to make it just under the wire.
More often than I care to remember, an actor quit and needed to be replaced with less than 48 hours notice.
These situations helped me get very good at keeping my eye on the outcome, not the details. Auditorium isn’t available? That’s fine, help me move these desks. Everyone speaks Chinese? Okay, we’ll slow down and lean into the vocal inflections and gestures to convey the meaning. The actor playing Banquo quit to take a temp job? Okay, I’ll be Banquo for the next few shows until I can find a replacement.
My mission for the program was to bring these plays to the students, to create an experience for them they would not get any other way. Everything else—location, actors, props left behind–was something we could work out. I have found myself leaning on that ability in the years since, as obstacles inevitably crop up in whatever project I’m working on.
What is the most important thing? How do we make that thing happen? The rest is just details
Job interviews often cover the subject of communication skills. Like most nontechnical areas, communication skills are pretty unquantifiable, so there’s not a single agreed-upon way to report on our own capability.
Because of this, we tend to assess our “communication skills” in terms of how we think we talk. In our own estimation, can we speak our message out loud? We get a lot of practice at saying words out loud, so typically we say that we are “good communicators.”
But this assessment leaves out the real crux of the question. Communication isn’t “can you say words out loud in an order that makes sense.” That’s transmitting. Communication is when you speak, and someone else hears you, understands, and acts.
So as we are thinking about our competence as communicators, maybe we should check in with the people around us, the ones on the receiving end of our transmitting. We can ask how they feel after meetings with us. Are they clear about what we wanted, needed, are going to do next? When we need to advocate for ourselves, how does that land? What does it mean when we’re not communicating well?
Even though each of us speaks 100% of the words we’re ever going to say, those words’ intended audiences are better judges of their effectiveness. Let’s start by asking how we’re doing.
The coach of the college basketball team I root for (Go Heels!) announced his retirement last week. I’m sad about it, but that’s not what this post is about.
Roy Williams is a Hall of Fame coach. He has 903 wins, three National Championships, and literally dozens of other accolades he earned at both UNC-Chapel Hill and at Kansas.
Much more important to him are the hundreds of young people he got to coach and know and love over the course of his career. He has made a lot of money, and given a lot of it away. He has been able to give back to the university that he credits with setting him on the path to success.
He could have kept coaching, kept developing young people and serving his university through the game he loves and the only profession he has ever had. Looking from the outside, there was no clear reason to retire right now. There’s no defined retirement age for a coach; he’s not being pushed out. There’s no clear reason for the “when.”
But from his perspective, there was a clear “why.” He is, in his words, “not the right person for the job any more.” Someone else needs to coach the team. This selflessness is generosity. It is a sacrifice on behalf of everything he loves to step aside for the next person.
I wish he weren’t leaving, but I honor his decision. More than that, I’ll remember his example.
Lately, as I’ve been on video call after video call, I’ve wished I could turn the camera around and show the people I’m speaking with what’s outside my window.
Spring is really underway here in western North Carolina. The forsythia is fully in bloom, a massive yellow burst in a corner of the fence. Above it, the white blossoms of a cherry tree wave from a neighbor’s yard, and daffodils and tulips are starting to peek out underneath.
In my Zoom square, every day is the same. Same bookcase, same books, same photos, same knickknacks. But outside, the world keeps moving.
Thank goodness.
This post was originally published in the fall of 2018. A recent conversation with a colleague made me think of it, and it still seems relevant!
Most of the people I coach have a horror of failure. They are leaders who look for the next achievement, personally and professionally. They have a lot of accomplishments to celebrate, and they’re not too keen on failing.
If you asked them, “What are some uses of failure? Why do we need to fail sometimes?,” I’m sure they could give you good answers. Their answers might look like this: “Oh, I tell my teams it’s important to make mistakes because you learn from them. I set them up to do things on their own where they might fail in a controlled atmosphere, where I can help them.”
But if you say, “What about you? What’s something you need to fail at in order to grow?,” you can watch their bodies tense up and their brains spin, coming up with all the reasons why that’s not such a good idea. Failure can be really scary. It can feel like we won’t recover from it.
When you lift weights, sometimes you “go to failure.” That means you go until you can’t go anymore. You add weight until you have surpassed the maximum your body can move, and then you drop it. You “fail the lift.” Everyone in the gym knows that this is the assignment—you go until you fail. The failure is the point. It’s literally how you get stronger.
How can we find places to practice failing, getting it wrong, making mistakes? We know it’s good for us, but like so many things, we avoid it because it’s scary.
Where can you go to failure? What might be on the other side?
I was on a video call this week with about fifteen people, and as I looked across their work-from-home rectangles, my heart sank.
In almost every box, people slumped, multitasked, stared fixedly at a monitor located away from their camera, and looked down their noses at their laptops. In one, a lonely office chair sat unoccupied in front of a branded virtual background.
There were three or four people, however, who really stood out in contrast. Cameras at eye level and with good lighting, they seemed engaged and interested.
People can always come up with reasons not to be on camera or not pay full attention to what’s going on. But if you’re the person who has taken the (minimal) time to get your setup looking good, you’re going to outshine those who haven’t. The effort pays off.
Last year I started watching the prime time drama “9-1-1” (and then its spin-off, “9-1-1 Lone Star”), and I am totally hooked.
I won’t pretend that either show is exceptional art. The writing is predictable and the plots outlandish. But a lot of the acting is great, and I’ll tell you this: week after week, the shows deliver exactly what they promise.
We turn to certain kinds of entertainment not to be surprised, but because we know what to expect. “Law & Order” has endured for decades not because we have no idea what’s going to happen, but because it’s the TV version of comfort food.
The formula is the appeal.
Our brains are busy, and we engage with complex ideas every day. There are times we choose complexity, and times we would rather not.
When we are responsible for communicating complex ideas, choosing a formula to put them in can make them more legible and memorable. The formula means the listener can do less work processing what you’re offering, and engage more with the main takeaway. In addition, using a familiar formula can make your twist stand out even more. Think of a pop song that changes up the hook, or a horror movie that subverts your expectation.
The formula for your work may not be a prime time soap opera, but it probably does have elements in common with something your audience is already familiar with. What of those elements can you repurpose for yourself?
Podcasts are, of course, global. They can be recorded and heard anywhere! But my latest foray into podcast guest-dom still feels local to me, since my connection with the hosts, Josh Batenhorst and Tom Chalmers, is through my life here in Asheville.
Josh and Tom Devour the World is a podcast that explores our relationship to what we’re consuming (literally or figuratively), and how it affects what we create. I loved spending time talking with them about theatre, coaching, and what we’ve been creating (and devouring!) in the past year.
I have been getting a lot of questions lately about what to do when you are teaching a class virtually, or leading a meeting on Zoom, and you simply can’t read the room. You look out and see faces staring back at you, and it’s impossible to tell if you’re getting through at all.
Often we tend to have a “show must go on!” mentality about this, pressing on with our prepared material regardless of the blank faces.
I want to suggest that, instead, you ask. Come clean about what the experience is like for you! “I want to take a moment here and check in. As I’m looking at your faces, it’s really hard to tell how this material is landing.”
Then, depending on the context, you can ask people to unmute and respond, you can launch an anonymous poll that allows people to rate how much they’re understanding, you can ask them to put in the chat one or two points of reflection or questions…
You don’t have to wonder. Ask.