What to do about the excruciating sound of silence

We often want people to contribute, give and be engaged - in conversations, in meetings/workshops or planning days, in the work at hand, in the project, in the business and the industry. 

It can be tough; how do you get people to contribute, to add their views and to give their input? Don’t they know we want it; after all, we asked them!

In this day of co-creation and collaboration we want to and need to ensure our customers and clients get the types of solutions they need...  but sheesh it can be hard work sometimes getting people to give, contribute, ‘cough-up’ and show they are engaged. 

We experience it when we  need to extract information from customers, clients or users, or get the requirements for a project or the details for a consulting job… but we just don’t seem to get what we’re after. 

Sometimes we have asked a question… or four… and then we're met with ….

silence.

Crickets.

Stillness.

Are they thinking?

Are they going to respond? Do they have anything to say? 

Somebody. Say something. Bueller, Bueller Bueller?  Anyone, Anyone?

If we’re leading the session or meeting we might be tempted to jump in and answer or move on or even ask another question. Or we can just feel like disappearing and going for a coffee, just to get outta there!

We can wonder: Why aren’t they ‘engaged’! ? Why aren’t they contributing great ideas? Was it something I said? 

Worse is when we know there are great ideas to be gathered; we may have heard whispers OUTSIDE the session; why aren’t they bringing them INSIDE, to the meeting or session?   

So here’s the word…  it’s not about engagement, it’s about elicitation. 

Simply saying 'people aren’t engaged on the topic' or ‘they’re not engaging in the discussion' is too much about them.

Elicitation is the new engagement.  

Elicit means to draw forth. It means to make or create or invite, to stir up and stimulate.  
It can mean stronger things than this, but to elicit something is to evoke. To sparkand stir. 

We need to elicit. Not wait for them to engage. Elicit. 

Instead of blaming them for not being engaged or measuring their engagement scores, how about we measure how well we elicit information?

• So how are you stirring things up?
• What are we evoking, inviting and sparking? 
• What questions are you asking?
• How are you doing that?
• Do you have a good mix of open and closed questions?
• Do you think this is a closed question?
• What is an example of an open question? (See what I did there?)
• And are you working those questions out ahead of time… or just winging it? (PS, hint, work them out ahead of time or you’re sure to be unconsciously asking closed questions. It happens a lot. A lot. And closed questions can push people away and bring on the crickets.) 

Our workplaces need bright, enlightening discussions, epic progress, competitive products and bold decisions.  

Contemporary leaders know how to elicit, spark and stir.  

Fire it up people!

Can. Not. Deal. How to Handle the Cognitive Clutter

Cognitive clutter: it’s not about messy desks and over flowing 'to do' lists. 

It’s the cognitive load your mind is under when you’re trying to take in, digest, synthesise and make sense of what you’re hearing, seeing and working with. Too much! Can. Not. Deal. 

 

No wonder we dash off to a technology mental paradise, where we can imagine we’re sipping cocktails poolside or hiking across mountain ranges if the information is all too much. 

This is a big reason why it's challenging to engage with people or to fully get their attention - and keep it - in workplace conversations, workshops, meetings and interactions. It's cognitive clutter's fault!

So here's a cognitive broom! It's a template for clarity. 

 
It's a cognitive broom! A template for cognitive clarity. 

We've often got too much to think about, remember or process. It's as if you don't have the bandwidth to take anything else on; like someone is using your mind to download a box set on Netflix!

Then when we’re presented with even more information, it just doesn’t get through. Or wait, yes, some info does get through; some familiar pieces make it through thanks to our well-wired confirmation biases. 

 

When you feel hammered with content and Can. Not. Deal. … here are three things to do to sort, make sense and synthesise so you can tidy up the cognitive clutter. 

 

I'll often use the visual model above, with teams who have a lot on their plate or struggle to find their way through a topic, piece of work or discussion, to make sense: 

 

1. Get context quick!

Context gives your eyes, mind and brainpower something to filter to. Rather than trying to take in everything, context will help your mind call out and grab various pieces of highly relevant information. The information will latch on and magically file itself.

>> I like to write a phrase, topic or point in the template space, the blue speech bubble at the top. What's this thing all about? 

 

2. Get something down - anything! 
Of all the stuff you’re thinking and talking about, get some of it down on paper. Something. Anything. We are way too verbal in the workplace, expecting people to remember what's spoken. No wonder people scribble madly on spiral notebooks trying to capture the essence.

>> In the template, capture a couple of chunks o’content. You’ll be able to handle some more real soon. 

 

3. Close the loop on what is done or good or decided. 

In an effort to do, we often don’t stop adding to the list so we keep raising new topics. Get something done and ticked off. Stop starting, start finishing. Once it's done it gets shifted to another part of our memory. There's an 'Aaaaahhhhh' feeling, like when you sit in a chair at the end of a long day. Feel it.... aaaaah! 

>> Write a few dot points in the circle to show what's good and done. 

 

4. Some more randoms...
Capture a few more random thoughts. This keeps freeing up and tidying up the clutter. You don’t need to know where they go right now, simply get more stuff down. Maybe it connects to what else you’ve got there, or it may well be different. 

 

You’ll feel and see the bandwidth freeing up; people in your group or team will see some connections, they'll be making sense and connecting the dots. More clarity will magically come.  

 

They’ll see what you mean. They'll know what it is ...because they've seen it.

And best of all, you’ll be helping others tidy up their cognitive clutter too. Now that is some nice and tidy work. Good job!

Hellllooooo procrastinators : how to make things happen, stat!

The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.’ - Walt Disney

There’s a message here from the Director of Your Life; don’t wait for the script to arrive.

Get on with it. Everyday life is the biggest improvisation of all. No script. No rehearsal. Get straight out on to the stage of life and start performing!

Ray Bradbury, the science fiction, horror and fantasy writer, said, ‘First you jump off the cliff and you build your wings on the way down’. And although some believe the quote attributable to Kurt Vonnegut, another equally interesting and creative author, the message is the same: leap and the net will appear, you will adapt, you’ll work it out and you’ll be moving!

Spur of the moment is often good enough

For many planners, strategists and forward thinking folks, planning is a part of their everyday life. They plan their morning; they plan their lunch; they plan their afternoon; and they plan family holidays, expeditions and adventures. But to deal with the volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous life which is how the world is now operating, to plan can sometimes be too slow.

I love the idea of starting before you're ready and making things up as we go along.

I joke with friends and family that there are some cities and towns in the world that if I had the opportunity to visit them again, you could take me to the airport right now. With nothing more than a credit card in my hand and my passport in my back pocket, I would work it all out as I went.

That idea can freak some people out. But I'd really would be willing to do that. Wanna travel with me?

The performance of starting

Starting before you're ready is a response based on a theory around improvisation. Step into any community or public theatre on any night of the week in almost any city around the world and you will be able to discover the talents and prowess of improvisers. They step onto stages, performing for paying public and they are able to create and deliver an incredible performance almost every time.

At the end of an improvised show, many theatergoers ask, ‘can we come back tomorrow night and see this performance again?’ Some audiences don’t realise that the show they just saw was fully improvised. Perhaps, a suggestion was given from someone in the audience to start a scene for the performance. Perhaps, one of the performers has added their own ideas. In fact, this is what improvisation is. It’s cutting loose your censor and setting free the inhibitions in your mind to deliver creativity.

When I first learned the skills of improvisation with Impro Melbourne and was encouraged to step onto stage as a performer, I always felt that I needed to rehearse a bit more or prepare in my mind what I was going to do. Just as improvisers step onto a stage without a script so must we in workplaces today.

 Having a go

The idea that we can start before we are ready, gives us permission to just have a go, to not have a plan, to not have a script, to not have a structure and to not have any clue where this might go! This of course can be terrifying for those who like to plan, for those who like certainty, for those who like unambiguous situation and for those who like steady and calm environments. 

 Start before you're ready says don't worry about planning fully. If you are 80% ready to go, then go. If you are 40% ready to go, then go with something. If you are 20% ready to go, then go with that.

Start before you're ready. 

If you continue to plan out every single step of your idea, of your business opportunity, of your entrepreneurial thoughts or of your team's actions, your capacity to respond to volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity are minimized. To be able to start at anytime - particularly before you're ready - gives you the opportunity to respond, to adapt, to be agile and to be flexible.

Procrastinators.... helloooooo?

Over the longer term starting before you're ready helps reduce your inhibitions, your structures, your limitations and your beliefs about what can be possible, what you can create and what you can do. And for the procrastinators among us (yes, me too), starting before you're ready is a very cool way to get some momentum, to get something 'out there' and get over your need for it to be finished, perfect or better before you put it out there.

Have a crack. That's Aussie slang for 'have a go'. It's an Australian saying I'm often saying to myself, and groups and clients to encourage starting.

Try it out. Start before you're ready and then document what happens. You could be on to something truly life changing for you and those you impact with your thinking, creativity and work.

How inspiring are you as a leader?

Straight up then: how inspiring are you as a leader?

Do you even know?

Television’s Dr Phil McGraw often asks guests getting some pop-psych on his Oprah offshoot program ‘Dr Phil’, 'How much fun are you to live with?'

It's a brilliant question that will put you in the shoes of your partner. But the same can apply to workplaces, organizations, teams, leaders and groups.

So how much fun are you to work for? Work with? Collaborate with? Communicate with? Do you even know? Do you need to have a chat to someone?

Think of it like a bellows that fuels a fire with air. At the historic re-enactment tourism village in regional Victoria, Australia, about 90 minutes from Melbourne, there’s a place called Sovereign Hill.

Here you can buy boiled sweets, watch people wear clothes of the pioneer days or get your name printed on a bushranger ‘WANTED’ poster. On a school-day visit in years gone by, I remember seeing the impact of the bellows at the town blacksmith. The Smithy would be operating the bellows using a foot-pump to stoke, feed and ‘air’ the fire and then he’d be tapping, belting and chinking out horseshoes and other historic items of metal blacksmithing in between whooshes of air.

When you look at bellows, you see they have two actions:

• first they draw air IN ...
• before they can blow it OUT.

Do you give or take?

Are you the sucking-air-in kind of person… squeezing the life out of; the one who brightens a room just by leaving it? Do you leave people deflated and flat, beaten and feeling hopeless? Do you even know? Oh how depressing! No no!

Rather… be the one who gives with (good) air and energy and possibility and hope. Make the environment, space, team, project and business feel fired up with air and energy because of you. Whooosh – blow fresh air and energy into the environment. Be inspiring! 

Be filled with possibility

When you’re leading change in a team or organisation, you have to fill the air and the environment with possibility and hope and ‘yes we can do this.’ This is not ‘yee-ha’ but rather a great feeling of capability, high likelihood and a sense of ‘we’re gonna do this because….’ and ‘we can do this because…’

If I followed you around for a week (not in a creepy way), what would I see? How inspiring are you as a leader? 

Engage BS* detector: "We want to consult with you on this..."

As you respond to the volatile world of change out there, and work hard to engage and consult with people around you or with clients, customers and stakeholders, please please please, think first about how involved you want people to be.

How involved do you want people to be in the change, transformation or piece of work you’re leading?

You may want them fully empowered. Or perhaps this is about some consultation. Or something else. At each step or stage or leading change, keep asking yourself questions like: 

• Is this a briefing or transfer of information? (inform)
• Is it a consultative thing - I want to ask some questions and find out what they think? (consult)
• Do I need to involve them in the design or development of a process, product or service? (involve)
• Is it about collaboration: ‘let's work on this thing together’. (collaborate) 
• Do I want them to pick up the ball and run with it, to empower them so that they act and decide? (empower)

Whichever of these you'd like to make happen – and you may want to achieve several on one piece of work - you need to be clear, otherwise it can get awkward, disengaging and cause some further hiccups. 

When people say 'we want to consult with you on this...', I make sure my BS detector is switched on. Because they may have already made up their minds!

So here's a continuum or scale that can guide you. Get your goggles on: how low do you wanna go?

A Depth Gauge: How low do you want to go?

 Informing people about change is very much on the surface. You tell them, they listen. You move on.

But you can go further. When you consult with people, you’re getting under the surface, you’re asking them what they think, you want their views and those views may well impact the shape and size of things to come.

To go deeper is to involve people. How do they see things? What would they do? What do they think needs to happen? Get their ideas, their thoughts, their ways of thinking and seeing and bring them into the change.

Oh, yes you can go further. To collaborate with people, you go deeper. ‘Co’ means to work together. Now you’re talking, listening, meeting, co-creating, co-designing and co-delivering this thing together. Regularly. Often. Most of the time.

And even further you can go where people are empowered to design, create, deliver or implement a change or initiative. Give them power, decision making, financial, resource, timing: it’s theirs for the making.

I regularly use these five levels and ‘depths’ of involvement and participation (adapted from the International Association for Public Participation, or IAP2) to guide me in:

• how to prepare for engaging with a team,
• how to set up and design an environment a team is going to meet or work in,
• what processes they'll work through when I’m facilitating a meeting or workshop, and
• how to handle the stuff that happens during that team’s meetings, work, conversations and projects.

What you do as a leader makes a b-i-g difference in how well a group or team goes towards achieving an outcome. And how you set the scene is super important.

If they aren't engaging...

It's not ‘their fault' or 'up to them'. It's on you. If you've called a meeting, are facilitating a workshop, leading a piece of work or responsible for getting the outcome, it really helps to get clear about what you’re going to do when and how you'll engage them to make something good happen. 

Those crusty old days of workshops, meetings or conversations to 'discuss, decree and demolish' are gone. That's disengaging and ineffective. It’s super low engagement.

Start with this ‘depth gauge’ of participation and swim down to the levels that suit the outcome you're after and the people you’re leading. If it’s just about informing – stay on the surface. If it’s about collaboration, you’re going to have to go deeper, do more, design more and set things up so that people do indeed collaborate.

Just as a trained scuba diver plans their dive, maps out the use of their oxygen supplies and prepares their equipment, leaders too need to plan the depth of involvement and engagement with their teams, colleagues and stakeholders during times of change.

Take a big breath... and off you go. 

*BS: Bullsh*t (or Bullshit for the non edited version)