“I love your stuff Lynne,” they said.

What is our stuff? 

It’s our perspective. It’s what we think and how we package that up to share it with others. 

It’s how we express ideas and how we explain things, our views and values and experiences. 

It’s also our MO - modus operandi or our way, our method of doing things. 

So ... what’s yours? 
Have you thought about it? 
Are you already working on it? 
And do you share it?

The need for us to declare who we are and what we believe is on the rise: there is the growth of personal branding, sole business operators, your name dot com, individuals as brands and the opportunities available to share our stuff via social media profiles. 

Even if you don’t run your own show, having a profile and sharing your stuff helps build a body of your ideas, thinking and work that can help you carve out your career.

Do you know what your stuff is? And have you worked on it recently?

The thing about experience is: it’s different for everyone.

The thing about experience is: it’s different for everyone. Even the same event is experienced differently by people. How do you make the most of experience in an organisation or team?  I’ve shared some advice and suggestions like:

🗺 Use experience maps

🕘 Schedule an experience share meeting

📌 Put experience on the agenda of regular meetings

❣️ Protect people while they’re presenting their experience maps.

And it’s helpful to remember the power of ideas. Any two ideas can be connected, creating an incredible third idea. Their experience plus your experience, plus the situation you’re all in now, it can be combined to solve what you're working on.

Bringing the experience of your team together, to be used together, tapped together and understood together is better than information sitting in a spreadsheet cell or filed away in an enterprise people system. Make experience something of the ’now’, talked about and acknowledged in the now, not just of the past - when it happened - and you’ll bring your team into a strong position able to cope with the future.

>>What experience do you have that you just know will set you up for the future?

Put experience on the agenda

I’ve been writing about the untapped expertise that lives in your team and business. It’s vital you uncover it because there’s much to be gained.

Be sure to allow some time for it, like at your next meeting. Just put some time on the agenda. You could hold an entire meeting to go through everyone’s expertise, but there are other ways too.

A couple of people could present at each meeting, sharing their ‘experience maps’ as I explained a couple of days ago.

Set the time aside, and then provide some protection of the people while they’re sharing their experience. Why protection? I know some organisations where this meeting would be the most wonderfully respectful experience. I also know other teams and organisations where some people will be rude, impatient, checking their device, agitated that things are moving too 'slowly'. So you may need to chill a little. Allow time, knowing that what you’ll uncover will build connections and trust and help you know more about the people you lead. Let people share their experience - then watch what happens in the team.

>> How might sharing your experience in a team you're part of help enhance and change culture? 

Hidden experience is a huge cause of productivity loss

This week I’m writing about experience people have that you might be ignoring. A barrier to hearing people’s experience is often the leader’s resistance to it.

- Why wouldn’t you want to know about expertise that exists in your team?

- Why wouldn't you want to know this information?

- Why wouldn’t you want to hear it?

‘Why don’t people listen?’ author, Hugh Mackay says we don’t want to listen due to the fear that what we hear will change us.

Australian Olympic athlete Cathy Freeman says 'when I'm in a bad mood, I don't listen.'

Oscar Trimboli, author of ‘Deep Listening' says by not listening ’the same issues keep occurring therefore people are blamed.’ Excuses like: No time Too much to do Too hard Too many people to get through ...are excuses with simple answers.

It takes effort and empathy to pay attention to people, especially when they're sharing their story, and it’s not about you. New ways of working require us to change what we do so we can make progress through these tricky times. To listen and learn from others is a key part of this. And for many people this indeed is a 'new way of working'. 

Map your expertise

Yesterday I lamented the waste of not knowing what people have experienced when they join the team. So here’s what to do: Map the expertise.

Not a spreadsheet or a folder of resumes/CVs that no one will ever read. Make a map of your expertise and make it visible and available. I call them ‘experience maps’.

1. Schedule an 'experience share' meeting now.

2. Give people time to prepare their map.

3. Everyone talks through what they’ve done and shows their experience map.

4. The map lives on and can be updated over time.

A learning-focused organisation sees the efficiency, and practicality of involving people to capture, hear and see the experience in the business. And then they leverage it. It’s wasteful, ignorant and unproductive not to.

What about you? What skills or experience do you have that people wouldn’t know?