Give good empathy

"We apologise for any inconvenience caused."

It's such a bland, banal, cover-all statement. I'm just not feelin' it though. I'm not feeling that you've REALLY understood the lengths to which your stuff, has stuffed up my stuff.

Building deeper connections, trust and understanding with customers, clients, colleagues and users means you've got to give, first.

In a workshop I was facilitating with customers and users recently, I made a point of giving. Deeply.

While I'm listening - like all good leaders, managers, trainers, facilitators, coaches do - I really need to show I'm listening. I've got to 'give' good listening, to get good trust.

So in workshops, conversations, sessions, I give empathy. Big time.

Then when there's been 'an inconvenience' or 'any inconvenience', I'll take the time in a client, customer or user workshop to hear it.

"But it's not on topic," whispers a designer on the project. "And it will build trust," I say later, "you'll get more engagement, trust and truth, later."

It's called empathy. I think we need to show it more by naming what it is that might have 'inconvenienced' people in the past.

Often people want to tell you their 'story' about a situation or experience. I've seen too many people cut off in the prime of their story because it's not on topic, or we don't have time, or they're waffling on or I don't have an answer for it or I can't fix it or <insert another low empathy excuse.>

I'm sorry if this has totally stuffed up your calendar for the day. I'm sorry if this means you were expecting to do this, not that. I'm sorry if this has meant you've spent time doing this and feel like you've wasted that time. 

Wow that must have really been annoying. Gee that must have been frustrating and irritating. Ooooh that sounds like it was a difficult thing for you to have to do. 

Understand. Name the inconvenience. Go out on an empathy limb. Make them know you feel it. And don't be so quick to jump on to the next topic or story. Give.

More than Post-it Notes & Sharpies

Let us give thanks... let us give respect, thanks and acknowledgement to two awesome and life changing tools :

• The Post-it Note (Well, anything Post-it really, brilliant)
• The Sharpie (In fact any marker. They're super too).

Used together, they are life changing, team changing and world changing tools.

So now that we've given thanks to them, we must realise that they alone (or together) do not a 'workshop' make.

When you're getting the team, clients, users, customers, stakeholders - anyone! - together and you ask them to write their thoughts or some comments on a post-it note, it isn't a workshop.

It's ONE tool, one task, one process in that workshop.

What do you then do with those Post-its? Put them not a wall, whiteboard or flip chart and start categorising or sorting? That's another process or task.

I've got to say, I'm seeing patterns before my eyes! The write-it-and-post-it technique can be limiting, repetitive and very 'same-same'.

I'm not dissing the approach per se; it works, it's just... overworked.

Hands up if you've been in a workshop/meeting/conversation/session/thing where you wrote stuff on a Post-it and put it on a board/whiteboard/flipchart/wall/thing?

We can fall into tired patterns of what a workshop is, or what we can get a team or individuals to do in a workshop. When you want to engage with users, customers, stakeholders, sponsors, clients, you must think and plan what processes you'll use.

Don't wing it. If you're the facilitator or leader of the meeting or workshop, then it's up to you to plan, think, prepare and map out what processes you'll use - or at least have at hand - to help the team and group move, shift, achieve decide and do.

Break the Post-it pattern.

Continue to evolve, adapt and build up your toolkit of 'go-to' processes, tools and activities that you can use with a team.

Be ready to go where the team needs to go, do what needs to be done to respond to what's happening. (Oh, and it's not about playing 'icebreaker' games either! They're so 1980s.)

Participation, contribution, collaboration and engagement in workshops needs to be built, ramped up, encouraged and rewarded. That's how you go deep, that's how you get great stuff done.

So what are you planning? What are you doing and saying? How are you responding?

This is more powerful than 'Write your idea on a Post-it' x four times in the one workshop.

Evolving Leadership

Meeting with a client yesterday and we were talking about how leadership continues to change and evolve. 

She is the Organisational Development manager; she's keen to see how else she can help develop the capability of the whole business. 

So the 'leadership is evolving' conversation went like this:

• Leadership used to be directive : 'you... do this'.
• It's evolved to being consultative : 'would you like to do this?'
• And continues to evolve to more facilitative : 'whats your view on what needs to be done? How will we go about doing it?'

Of course the questions will differ depending on the team, situation and needs of the business, but the shift and change is clear. 

From strong, directive statements, to questions about the work to be done, to a more facilitative, eliciting style of leadership. 

I think we can fear the facilitation style of leadership, thinking that it's going to take too long. "Who's got time to ask all those questions!?" Even the consultative style of leadership can be perceived as being a lengthy approach to achieving an outcome. "It's just quicker for me to tell them what to do."

Yeah? How much do you like being told what to do?

Our TELL bank accounts have a small balance in them. I think you need to save your directive approaches and telling for when they're really needed.

We need to use consultative approaches more, and realise they won't take longer... in the long run. If you're getting impatient or it feels like you're not getting anywhere, you'll likely save time later by getting buy-in, connection and engagement now, and to leverage that all along the process of leading the team. 

Plus, facilitative styles of leadership put more responsibility on the individuals and the team. The leader has less of the answers, which means less telling, less direction. This helps boost collaboration, trust, engagement, interest, freedom. 

Yes you'll still need to 'lead', to manage performance and to handle the tricky stuff when it comes up.

Notice how leadership continues to evolve; and so must we, if we are to engage and inspire new generations, diverse cultures, and thriving individuals who all want to make a mark on the world.

Ideas that spread...win

 

In the fight for attention in a world full of noise, how do you make your message interesting, engaging, actionable and viral?

Seth Godin asked 'how do you make something 'new'?" when he delivered a presentation on his tour in Australia last year. I visually captured his presentation ... and then my visual idea of his idea was shared. 

We have chances, opportunities and choices to connect with people and get our message across. How well are we really doing?

Think of the word 'remarkable' : what is it that makes what you're sharing, selling, saying remark-able, or worth making a remark about. 

Seth Godin encourages us to be impresarios: producers, creators, curators.
What's creative about your message, your thinking and the change you're leading?

PowerPoint slide decks are dull and boring; bullet points are bullish*t!

What's the cost of people not seeing (or sharing) your message? Or the cost of you not seeing another way to create and deliver it?

Seth says attention is precious.

Make the most of it when you get the opportunity to share your idea. 

Change Leader : What's your front page and headline?

A paragraph in the change pack I spied at an organisation this morning read like this:

We need a more contemporary reimagining of our integrated administrative capability.

What? What does that mean!!? You're leading change and you're communicating like that?

You can read more thrilling gobbledygook here by using the automated generator! But really, do leaders still distribute uninspiring, time wasting and mind-numbing change messages like this?

Unfortunately they do.

But we must do better. We must be clear, inspiring, real, relevant, brief, to the point. And then get on with it and listen, engage, and keep inspiring throughout the change.

So how to communicate before, during and after change?

You can take a leaf from Simon Sinek's angle on Start With Why, or the earlier version of it from Bernice McCarthy and the 4MAT Frame, loved by trainers around the world.

Or you could go PR-style and craft out your key messages. In some of my earlier roles on communication campaigns and strategies we'd create a 'story house'.

We'd build our key messages from the ground up:

• what is a foundation message, must be delivered message (like the concrete foundation or slab)?
• what is a structural, framework kind of message (like the wooden frame)?
• what is a higher vision, overarching message (like a roof)?

Another approach is to think sharp and engaging; to think in front page and headline style. 

What will the front page of your 'edition' on change read like? What story will you be leading with?

Where is the investigative piece? The history piece... the bit about why this is happening, the inspiring information about others who have taken this path, the reason why the business needs to do this... and what it means for the team. 

What are the headlines about this change? Where can I find the further details, the background, the unpacked data and spreadsheets and research on it? Where can I find the 'long read'? Where is the photojournalism on it - show me what it will look like? Where's the shipping news: what will be happening when - what's arriving when and where? What will be starting, what's stopping and when is that happening?

Delete that workplace waffle that reads: We're going forward with our plans to implement systemised third-generation paradigm shifts.

Urgh!

Go clear, bold, strong, interesting, engaging. 

Create your front page and your headlines; build your readership for this change.