. . .  Never invalidate the other person.  I know this sounds like common sense, but — trust me — it is lacking in common application.  In the past week, in several different coaching sessions, I have seen this same thing reoccur:  a manager (not the person that I’m coaching) wants to change the approach that an employee is taking and decides that the most effective way to get buy in to this change effort is to completely invalidate the employee and everything that the employee has ever learned or done.    The thing that I find most incredulous is that this manager is repeatedly surprised by the lack of engagement and change that is occurring.

When we make the other person wrong, we are making it remarkably difficult for that person to come to the table and have a discussion.  We are much more effective when we can affirm the person and explore their approach.  In this case, what works well, when does it work well, and when might a different approach be more effective? 

The whole thing reminds me of something that I read about Martin Luther King, Jr.  He was talking with a critic who thought that Martin should be more combative.  I don’t remember the exact words, but Martin said something to the effect of:  ”If I make them wrong, I will never be invited to the table.  Therefore, I can never change anything.” 

This one little concept has so much applicability:  relationships, communication, coaching, leadership, management, parenting . . .  

I truly wish it were common practice.

Two weeks ago, I was the keynote speaker and facilitator for the Indiana Key Club Convention.  It was an amazing experience.  To be in the room with 250 or so of our young leaders was refreshing and inspiring!  One of my activities was to display 7 different quotes that related to leadership and character.  I then had the students pick whichever quote resonated the most with them and then form a group with the others who picked the same quote.  I included one quote that has a great deal of meaning for me, but I was a bit hesitant to include it; I thought that maybe it just had a lot of meaning for me!  The following is the quote:

“It is better to be hated for who you are than to be loved for something you are not.”  Andre Gide

To my surprise, about one-third of the students picked this quote as the one that resonated the most for them.  It was by far the largest group!  Part of the activity was that they reported out to the larger group why the quote resonated with them.  They shared stories where, already in their young lives, they have felt the pressure to be something that they are not.  They also shared examples where they were led to believe that who they are isn’t “right” or “good enough.”  One young man shared his story of facing that pressure.  He shared that even though others were telling me that he wouldn’t belong unless he changed, he knew in his heart who he was and who he wanted to be and he had to stay true to that.  That takes courage.  It’s something that we have all likely faced. 

This experience once again reminded me that all of us want to be valued.  We want to believe that we have something to contribute and we want our contribution to mean something.  This is absolutely no different for these young student leaders.   I had one young man tell me after the event that, “You have helped me to see that I have a voice and my voice is important.  You helped me see that I matter.”   That, to me, is about the best day of work that I’ve ever done in my life.

When I was at Case Western Reserve University, I had the privilege of studying with David Cooperrider and Ron Fry (the co-founders of Appreciative Inquiry).  I remember sitting in class one day, when David Cooperrider made the above statement (the title).  It sort of brought home why Appreciative Inquiry makes sense.  Why not study the best of what is if we want to be our best, help others be their best and help our organization be its best?

I was watching the local news show, “Good Morning Vail”, when I was reminded of this.  The show runs short little educational safety pieces of the ski patrol.  This particular clip was about skier safety and was titled “Know How to Safely Get on the Ski Lift.”  As the ski patrol guy talked about why it was important to get on the lift in the correct way, they showed a clip of someone who was struggling to get on the lift.  Over the image of this poor hapless skier (who is probably going to end up dangling upside down by his skis!), they imposed the words, “This is the incorrect way to get on the ski lift.”  I’m not a skier but I could have told you that this guy was going about it all wrong.  However, I am NO closer to knowing how to correctly get on the lift!! 

How many times do we try to “help” someone by showing them or telling them what not do?  Admittedly, perhaps there are times when that information is useful, but it doesn’t really tell us what to do or the way that those who do it best would do it. 

Are there areas in your business (or life) where you wish to grow or advance?  For those areas, how could you identify those people who excel at it and study what they do?

I just returned from doing a leadership retreat for 50 high school students in Iowa.  It was an awesome weekend.  Once again I was reminded of how every person wants to feel important.  They want to be affirmed.  They want to know they matter.

The event started on Friday afternoon and it went through Sunday morning.  By Saturday evening, I began to notice how many of the students wanted to talk with me on breaks.  I also noticed that each of them were hungry to tell me what they were doing in school or in their communities.  They all had stories.  The mere — and simple — act of listening to their stories and being interested in what was important to them forged a very strong connection.  The other thing I noticed is how their eyes would light up and their energy would pick up when someone listened.  It was as though by listening and showing interest, I was validating that they were important. 

I’ve noticed this many times before with people of all ages.  We all want our own stories to be important.  We want our lives to mean something.   It is astonishing — and sad — how many times I hear people trying to express what’s important to them and it goes completely unacknowledged.   Usually this is because the person who could be listening believes that they are too busy to take the time to listen.  I argue that they are too busy NOT to take the time to listen.  The person who was trying to express something important walks away from the interaction feeling invalidated.  In other words, they walk away feeling worse about themselves.  Who do you think becomes the target of those bad feelings?  Conversely, if a leader takes the time to listen, they are making large deposits in the relationship bank.  People like people — and are more likely to follow — those who help them feel good about themselves.   It is simple, yet powerful.

In the September issue of Harvard Business Review, Robert Sutton (Professor at Stanford and the author of The Knowing-Doing Gap (and several other books), has an article entitled “The Boss as Human Shield.”  It’s a great article and worth reading.  Here are the high-points from the article as well as my own addition comments:

The general premise is that the manager can do a lot to protect their teams and people from both annoying distractions and annoying people and practices that interfere with performance.  Here are his 7 keys for protecting your team:

1.  Resist your own worst instincts.  Sutton is directly referring to the silly, meaningless meetings which are sometimes (often) scheduled.  He isn’t opposed to meetings in general, but they should add value in some fashion.  He also stresses that if you want to earn respect then you need to start and end your meetings on time. 

2.  Make it safe to fight right.  Here he makes the case that when people respect each other, it is okay — and even a good thing — when they have differing viewpoints.  Instead of squelching these differing voices, draw them out and use them as a way to collaborate and do even better.

3. Protect them from external intrusions and time sinks.  This is especially important for knowledge workers who need to be able to concentrate!  Some companies are instituting policies that will help shield workers from the constant intrusions.  For example, one company has scheduled a four-hour block of time every Tuesday morning where all e-mail and  IM’s are set to offline; likewise their phones are forwarded directly to voicemail.  This has led to enhanced effectiveness.  How can you do something similar?

4. Defy Idiocy from On High.  Should you always defy or ignore policies?  Of course not.  But sometimes there are those policies that get in the way of performance and morale.  He argues that a manager must assess this and the risk of defiance. 

5.  Practice creative incompetence and malicious compliance.  Does every job, every task really need your most perfect and complete efforts?  What about some of the mundane tasks which have to be done, but which don’t add much to performance.  He suggests looking for ways to minimize your efforts on these sorts of tasks.  Is 50% of your best enough? 

6.  Slay — or slow — their enemies.  This refers both to the internal enemies and external enemies (in the form of nasty clients or customers).  He gave a wonderful example from Southwest Airlines.  A customer was berating a gate agent (apparently this wasn’t the first time this customer had been nasty to a SW employee).  A passing Southwest executive noticed this interaction and interrupted the customer.  He informed the customer that he wasn’t allowed to berate an employee.  He then politely escorted this customer over to an American Airlines counter where he purchased a ticket for the customer.  Can you imagine the loyalty and good will that this executive earned? 

7. Take the Heat.  Your team needs to know that you are there for them.  They need to know that it is safe to try new things and learn and grow.   The manager who simply hangs their team out to dry will find themselves alone.  Obviously, he isn’t suggesting that we ignore performance or repeated or even intentional mistakes.

I’d like to hear from you:  what are the traits of some of the best managers and leaders that you’ve worked with?

A couple of weeks ago, I was working with a manager, “Sherri,” to help her adapt a coaching style with her team.  While the manager is successful, she has also encountered some brick walls.  Namely, that telling her team what to do — no matter how many times she tells them — isn’t working.  Her deeper issue is that she has stopped listening to them. 

I observed her as she was trying to have a conversation with her team member, “Paula.”  It went nowhere.  At a point, I asked if I could pose a question.   I said, “Paula, I’ve noticed that you’ve said some version of “What I think doesn’t matter” several times.  I’m curious about what that means to you?”  Now, that probably wasn’t the greatest way to ask the question, but it got her talking.  It would be more accurate to say that it broke the flood gates.  What poured forth was very illuminating.  As Paula talked, I simply acknowledged what she was saying and feeling and I helped her explore it.  I was simply trying to understand.   It probably took less than 10 minutes.

When she ran out of steam, she looked at Sherri and said, “I know that what you are saying is right.  I just want to be heard once in awhile.”  She then paused, laughed a bit sheepishly and said, “Of course, I know this is my responsibility.  What I need is help understanding how to do what you are asking; I don’t need you to keep telling me what you want me to do.  Help me understand how.”  The last time I checked in, things were going well and progress was being made. 

This exchange, however, reminded me — and reinforced — how important it is that we use curiosity in our conversations and that we truly seek to understand the person with whom we are talking.  Steven Covey once wrote, “Seek first to understand, then to be understood.”  That is a wise approach:  it gains us access to be heard in the end. 

When the above session was over and Paula had left the room, Sherri turned to me and said, “I absolutely had no idea that she felt any of those things.  You learned more about her in 10 minutes than I knew after three years of working together.”  I hear some version of that statement all the time.  Each time I hear it, I am somewhat astonished and saddened.  It took ten minutes of my time.  Not ten days.  Not ten weeks.  Ten minutes.  And, in that ten minutes, a door was opened.  As leaders, can we possibly justify not helping to open those doors?

This week on the discussion group for the Robbins School of Business, Tom Wojick posted the following link to an article from NPR: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130247631.  The article discusses how it isn’t always about how smart we are.  I posted the following response; I’ve copied it here as I think it may be helpful. 

Great article! Thanks for sharing. It reminds me of some of the research done by Marcial Losada. He has extensively studied teams and what contributes to either high or low performance. He (and other leading scientists and researchers) have found that high performing teams have a 6:1 ratio of positive focused dialogue to negative focused dialogue. In this instance, positive doesn’t mean merely nice. It means dialogue that is focused on the inherent strengths and opportunities. Negative is defined as having a deficiency focus. What’s very interesting — and relevant to this article — is that they also found that high performing teams have a 2:1 ratio of inquiry (learning focused questions) versus advocacy (closed positions) type conversations. I’ve heard it stated this way: curious versus dogmatic. When I look at the conversations in the article, it appears that they follow this pattern.