Listen to Learn
“Take time to learn. Leadership requires foresight.” - Your Oxygen Mask First, Learn Like Your Life Depends on It
I love working with smart people and strong personalities - it makes for interesting conversations and tremendous insights.
And one of the things we start to believe, over time (especially me) is that we have good listening skills - but we’re usually just listening to find a solution or to make a decision quickly. We don’t listen to learn. We listen for the two to three things we need to move ahead – and miss the four, five or six things we need to understand the situation fully.
It’s a hard balance between taking time to understand versus what you need to know move quickly.
A friend best-described it as listening like a lawyer. And I’ll qualify that by saying listening like a lawyer who is building a strategic case, in the courtroom, when they have an agenda for the jury to reach a certain conclusion.
By the way, this is not a statement about all lawyers, all the time – it’s just an example of how, under some conditions, we listen to validate our belief in the argument we want to make. We listen to prove a foregone conclusion that rather than listen to learn. I know I’ve done it many, many times.
And, I’ll add that I love my business lawyer, who asks excellent questions and listens deeply, before getting into action.
Listen to Learn
When we listen only with one perspective (or agenda), we miss very important things. And it’s not only disrespectful to the person with whom you are communicating, it’s a disservice to you because you’re not available to learn anything new.
The alternative is to actively listen to learn, with a firm question in mind: not ‘how do I get Frank to agree to promote Sally?’ rather ‘does Sally have what it takes to be an A-Player if she were promoted?”
That’s a different question that leads to a very different conversation.
One promotes a foregone conclusion, the other is looking to decide the right course of action.
The Challenge
- Notice when you listen like a lawyer when listening like a learner can be more effective
- Try asking a few more questions to understand more deeply before coming to a conclusion.
Top Talent Takes Top Management
Top talent, or A-Players as we refer to them, are fantastic and easily recognized in an organization. Have you ever said, “Wow! It’s so easy to manage so and so”? Chances are high that you’ve got an A-Player on your team. That said, have you ever stopped to consider what they need and want, what will keep them around, and how to unlock their talent?
We recently hosted a workshop for one of our clients who wanted to revitalize the company’s stagnating performance. We began by looking at how they managed their team and A-Players and realized more could be done to tap into and amplify each person’s unique strengths and abilities.
With A-Players, when it’s done right, the returns you get are exponentially positive – but, when done wrong, the results can be negative. So how do you do make sure you’re tapping into A-Players correctly?
A-Players generally needs three key things:
- Direction (goals)
- Space (autonomy)
- Resources (time, people, money).
Direction
It’s important to set very clear goals with your A-Players – to define what success looks like. A-Players can often be perfectionists, and if you’re not clear about desired outcomes, they may iterate on a deliverable for months because it wasn’t good enough for them. Now, some of you might ask, ‘well, wouldn’t I want perfect?’ But their definition may not be yours, and their time and talent could have been used on another project to achieve twice the results.
Space
A-Players don’t typically like to be micro-managed so once you’ve given clear direction - including when you need regular updates - get out of the way. Trust that they will ask for help if they need it.
Resources
If you trust that your people will come to you when they need something, it’s important that you listen when they do. Whether it’s time, money or people, you can be sure they’ve already tried to solve the problem before asking for help. Provide an environment in which they feel supported, knowing they can come to you with clear requests.
We Are All Different
While it’s easy to lump A-Players into one category of ‘high performers’, a great leader sets specific guidelines to match their individual needs so that they can focus on the right things and perform at a consistently high level. We recently coached a CEO struggling to get the most of his A-Players as the company prepared to tackle high-stakes opportunities in the next Quarter. We did DISC and Enneagram assessments on his team to help him to identify each person’s needs, and leveraged the tools in Teach People to Meet your Standards (Chapter 13, Your Oxygen Mask First). As he started to up the bar and get more specific, output from each A-Player increased between 20% and 50%.
The Challenge
- Do you know who your A-Players are?
- What are you doing to keep them?
- What brings the best out of each person and what shuts them down?
- What’s the best way to communicate with them?
PS – If you want to know more or need help managing A-Players, ask us about our Leadership Education Programs, or call us for some one-on-one insight.
Tim Schokking is a Coach and Strategic Planning Advisor at Lawrence & Co. Growth Advisors.
Challenges are Opportunities for Growth
“I never lose. I either win or learn.” - Nelson Mandela
I have a notable scar on my left knee because of my experience learning how to not to use an Exacto knife. Cutting something resting on your knee is just not a good idea! My scar is evidence to that catalyst of growth to better skills with, and respect for, sharp knives.
Even though we’re conditioned to only want good things to happen, a big part of feeling fully alive is experiencing things both amazing and painful. We don’t want to be stuck in a traffic jam, fight with someone we care about, lose money on an investment, or break an amazing heirloom that’s been handed down, from generation to generation.
Winning and accomplishment, in many ways, just reinforces what we already know how to do. But pain, challenge and struggle offer the greatest path to growth by forcing us to learn, and to find better ways of doing things.
I know I don’t really learn anything serious unless I’m in a situation of great difficulty. I go relentlessly hard, and it usually takes a brick wall to stop me so that I can contemplate that there may be a different way to approach something.
The principle is to fail fast, make lots of mistakes, quickly iterate and do something better.
Over the holidays, I took some time to reflect on the biggest, most painful experiences over the past year and 10 years, and how they were tremendous catalysts for my growth. And I’m grateful for dozens of them in all areas of my Work, Self and Life, and in important personal and business relationships. All of them have made a notable difference in my life and set me on a better trajectory.
The Challenge
- Review Love the Lessons, chapter 15 of Your Oxygen Mask First
- Reflect back. If you find yourself still resisting you haven’t soaked up all the benefits. You still have some reflecting to do.
- Looking forward, how can you learn even better and faster from the doozies you’ll make in 2020?
Circles and Triangles: Confusing ‘Well Rounded’ with ‘Strength’
I was thinking about circle and triangles and how, in our society, many people believe we should all be well-rounded circles. In fact, we talk about how being ‘well-rounded’ as a better thing to be – a well-rounded athlete, for example – but is it?
But the truth is, many people are not well-rounded: they’re more like a triangle, with skills and attributes that are strong and sharp. And, from my perspective, when we try to take a strong triangle, and make it into a circle, we weaken it.
Now, I’m not an engineer, but I do know that in mathematics and engineering, nothing beats the unyielding strength of the triangle. It’s unparalleled in terms of its strength to support a load and to resist external forces. You just have to look at bridges and trusses to see their power at work.
So why would you take a high-performing, salesperson who is amazing with customers and at finding solutions, and get them to focus on inputting data into the company CRM, or on their writing skills – to make their triangle more like a circle?
It may seem logical to try make them more ‘well-rounded’ but, in reality, that person is better off focusing on getting in front of more clients, and have someone else edit their work or input details into the CRM.
You’re much better off with two overlapping triangles: one who is amazing at sales and another who is amazing at administration.
Many executives know and live by this, but many miss this principle and try to force really good triangle people into a weaker, mediocre circle. Not good for them or for the company.
The Challenge
- Find a way to leverage and celebrate your triangle-ness by investing in your strengths:
- Read or review Invest in Your Sweet Spots (Chapter 4 Your Oxygen Mask First)
- Leveraging the strengths of others on your team instead of making yourself into a circle:
- Read or review Make Yourself Useless (Chapter 10, Your Oxygen Mask First).
Fact or Fiction? What’s the Story You Tell Yourself?
“You can focus on things that are barriers or you can focus on scaling the wall or redefining the problem.” - Tim Cook, CEO Apple Inc.
It started the same way: I was given the opportunity to work with a new talented team who were excited by the opportunity to develop their annual plan. The team reflected on how they performed over the last year and relished in new access to capital, and new team members around the table.
Then the conversation drifted to growth for the upcoming year and expense management. Immediately, everyone did what they always do: they drew on their historical knowledge to position comments like:
- “Our industry saw a downturn last year.”
- “Our team doesn’t have the capacity to do more.”
- “Our customers don’t want to hear from us more than we already meet with them.”
- “We only grew 3% last year so we can only grow 3% this year.”
- “We had high turnover last year so we can expect the same this year.”
- “Our revenue grew by 50% last year so we should expect the same this year.”
It was a very controlled, logical, and real conversation based on the mindset of the presenter – same as usual, and creatively stifling.
Fact vs. Fiction
The problem arises when we take the stories we tell ourselves as fact, and then shape what we believe is a logical, rational framework within which all business decisions must fall. The conversation is easier because the team is familiar with the rhetoric but shouldn’t be confused with the brutal facts we really need.
So how do we eliminate the stories we tell ourselves and deal with the real facts?
We use a couple of different approaches:
Start from zero:
Treat the business as if you were starting it fresh, today, with no history to draw on. Take a holistic look at the environment and base your decisions only on what you find.
- If you only had one set of numbers (nothing you could trend), how would you go about establishing your future?
- Where would you invest?
Build an impossible future.
Take your team to a place they can’t picture themselves and then work back to build the plan.
- We are going to grow revenue by 500% next year, or we will add 1000 clients next year.
Assuming these numbers are nowhere near the normal trend, it forces your team to push through the natural barriers they have established and forces them to think creatively.
The team I’m working with decided to embrace the “Build an impossible future” approach and were able to challenge themselves to make that future a reality. They embraced the mindset of “Let’s go make this happen” versus being weighed down by history. I fully expect exceptional growth this upcoming year.
The Challenge
- Identify three business stories you have told yourself that are ground in story versus fact.
- How would they change if they were future-focused with no history to pull on?
- How would that change what you do?
Dean Ritchey is a Coach and Strategic Planning Advisor at Lawrence & Co.
10 Year Plan: Looking Ahead to a New Decade
“Time is finite. You need to know exactly where to invest your hours and energy to get the results you actually want.” - Your Oxygen Mask First, Chapter 17, Plan, Plan & Plan Again
We’re moving into the third decade of the 21st Century and, I may be dating myself, but I can clearly remember 1999 when the Y2K bug threatened to play havoc with computers around the world. Scary that that was 20 years ago!
So, while your planning for this next year is critically important, I encourage you to also think about what you want to achieve in your Work, for your Self and your Life, in next decade. I recently did that with a CEO who is getting close to 50, about how he wants his life to be when he’s approaching 60 in 2030. We both know it’ll be here before we know it.
The Challenge
- Take a couple of hours to contemplate not just 2020, but what you want your 10 year plan to bring. So, we’ve created a special edition of our Master Plan tool, with a new section to help you think about the next decade like it’s your last. Here are links to help you with your planning:
- Special edition Destination 2030 Master Plan (Editable PDF once downloaded | Excel Download). Please note that you first need to download the PDF for it to be editable.
- Quarterly Plan for Q1 2020
- Review Live an Amazing Life, Chapter 1 of Your Oxygen Mask First. Click here for a free download
- Talk to a coach, mentor, trusted colleague or family member to help your best thinking and serious reflection.
Webinar
Join us for our special Destination 2030: Mapping the Next Decade of Your Life webinar on Wednesday January 15, 2020:
- What do you want to achieve at Work, for your Self and for your Life, over the next decade?
- Join us as we guide you through our spectacular, concise Master Plan methodology to quickly get to the heart of what really matters, in every area of your life – and show you how to bring your plan to life.
Can’t make the live event? Register and we’ll send you a link to the webinar recording to watch at your convenience.
Other opportunities:
- A Private, Three-day Retreat to discover and design your unique Master Plan to grow as a person and a leader. Get away from the noise of everyday life for private, one-on-one coaching and an immersive, powerful re-set. Choose a setting that inspires you – anywhere in the world
- Half day, one-on-one session with one of our coaches, face to face or by Zoom video conference, for you and your life or business partner.
If you need help, call us. We can connect you with an experienced coach, locally, and in other locations around the world.