One of my favorite movies is “Rudy”. It’s based on a true story about someone who against all odds, goes to Notre Dame, and gets to be a member of the football team. Because he is small and short, he doesn’t get to play but he shows up to every practice with heart and soul.
I won’t ruin the end for you if you haven’t seen it. But one of my favorite moments is when it’s the second to last game of the season, and he still hasn’t played. Watch what his team does.
That’s leadership.
I always thought communication skills were a no brainer. Obvious. What’s the big deal?
Then I had the benefit of working with someone who I call “Yoda” who taught me that communications has best practices. So a couple of things he taught me:
1. Communication in companies has changed. It used to be more like a newspaper: you’d report on what happened. Now, communication is more akin to a political campaign headquarters. The information coming in is constant, and you’re continually refining what you communicate out in response to what your voters are telling you.
2. When you develop your key strategic messages, they need to be simple, meaningful, and take into account what you want people to know, think, do and feel. They shouldn’t change significantly year over year. What you choose to emphasize may change.
3. Framing the message is critical….meaning context is key. A memo sent out “we’re closing down stores” feels different than a CEO getting in front of everyone and saying: “As you all know, our company has had some financial challenges. While we have reduced our expenses where we can, the senior team has decided that we will need to close stores in the Midwest region this year. We haven’t yet decided which ones. We will communicate to those impacted people as soon as possible, and we appreciate your support while this is going on.”
Be honest about what you know will happen, what may happen, what won’t happen. That way you’re always telling the truth, but you’re not waiting until you know all the facts before communicating. Remember, in the absence of information, people will make up their own version of the truth to fill in the gap. Make sure you involve human resources and legal if the situation needs it. I find HR to be a great group to run ideas by.
4. What you say means nothing if your behavior doesn’t support it. You can’t say you care about people if your behavior suggests the contrary. People look for the symbols that indicate the message is real. So if you say people are important, and then you spend more time in all hands meetings, improving benefits, refurbishing the cafeteria, you will be much more credible.
5. Optics matter. You may not necessarily be doing anything wrong, but the optics don’t work. Remember the three big automakers who asked Congress for billions of dollars? Later it was found out that they flew in on private jets.
When things go wrong, it can be scary. Downright terrifying. But there are ways to turnaround those projects. A couple of things that have helped me.
1. Figure out what the problem is and tackle it directly. What is the issue that got you here? Make the hard decision, and get agreement. Most projects are a function of effort plus deadlines. Usually, when projects go wrong, it’s because you run out of time. The only way to deal with time is 1) get an extension, or 2) cancel or defer some of the deliverables. Figure out which path you’re going to take, and get agreement with the parties who will be impacted.
2. Encourage honesty with your team and make sure you have the right team in the room with you. Everyone gets to contribute, but you’re the leader. It starts and stops with you. Don’t expect a decision from your team: expect them to provide you all the information you need to make an informed decision and to tell you if you’re wrong.
3. Now is the time to micromanage. When things are not going as expected or when the margin for error is nil, I institute morning and afternoon checkouts. A lot of things can change in a day. Everyone’s expected to be either in the room or on the call…most times, they show up. Sometimes you can’t afford to wait till the next day to get a status.
4. Communicate: if your project’s in red RAG status, say so. Keep it in red even when you think it’s amber/turning green. Yes, you’ll continue to get unwanted attention. But I never like to flipflop statuses: nothing’s worse than going to amber only to go back to red. It raises the question “Do you know what you’re doing?”
5. Be factual and simple in your updates: sometimes it’s email, sometimes it’s a presentation, sometimes both. Overcommunicate. I often use monthly calendar slides for team updates: I’ll show the time we have left, and I’ll have what we need to do scoped out on the calendar. I’ll put in all the major deliverable dates, buffer time (for anything that might go wrong), and most importantly, the end date. It gives a very clear depiction of what we have to do and the time we have to do it: the two variables I need the team to focus on.
Crisis management isn’t fun. But you learn the most about how to get things done by running to the fires and knowing what to do when you get there.
Full confession: in my career, I’ve not had great success with formal mentoring programs. Maybe it’s just me.
Once, I had breakfast with a “mentor” who was assigned to me. We had nothing in common. We’d try to get a conversation going, only to have it run out of gas. I kept trying, but it was really hard. It was the longest breakfast I ever had, and all I had was oatmeal.
A mentor is someone who knows you, who’s interested in your career, who feels a connection to you. Someone you can trust, share your concerns, go to when faced with dilemmas. It’s hard to successfully assign a match for both the mentor and the mentee.
But I have had many people mentor me. How is that possible?
One way to do this is to reach out for a conversation. Like “having a cup of coffee” with various people. So, if someone has a really interesting role, or has done some interesting things, drop them an email “Would love to have a cup of coffee/meet for lunch/meet for breakfast/just meet to talk about your career and how you got to be “fill in blank”. Would it be all right for me to set up something at your convenience?”
It’s much less stressful than the formal “will you adopt me, pay for my wedding, forever be there” mentor set ups.
Everyone says yes. It may take some time, but you won’t hear no.
This lets you get to know the person, and gradually develop a potential mentoring relationship. At the very least, you’ll spend an hour with someone who will share their experiences with you. At the most, it might evolve to a true mentoring relationship: someone in the organization who feels responsibility for you and is there to help you. BTW, it’s great when they’re senior. But it’s also just as rewarding when it’s a colleague.
If you don’t have a mentor, and always had mentor-envy, try it and see.
Want to know the best way to handle a mistake, error, or problem?
Tell people immediately and take accountability.
That’s it. No matter what the problem is, big or small, this is what I observe works. Time is of the essence: the longer you wait, the worse the problem usually gets. You run out of options…or worse, it looks like you were hiding the problem.
When mistakes happen, we tend to want to blame someone. Blame is often a waste of time. Focus instead on the process and what the source/cause of the problem, because the goal is to fix and remediate so that you manage the risk. The clock is ticking.
Mistakes People Make About Mistakes
1. You try to get perfect information before informing anyone. You need to know enough to explain the situation, but don’t chase unnecessary details at the expense of time. The hospital doesn’t need to run 100 tests on you to know that they have to stop the bleeding.
2. You blame others
3. You use voicemail or email to notify folks.
4. You don’t fix the problem fast.
5. There is no post mortem (otherwise known as:What could we have done differently?)
Finally: move on. Things will go wrong. The key is your ability to react quickly and ensure we don’t make the same mistake again…creating a stronger organization than what existed yesterday. Then you’ve done your job.
Throughout my career, I have changed roles: within the company or changing companies. Recently I was asked “what did you learn to help you change roles successfully?” and I realized there were some things I do that seem to help.
1. Schedule “meet and greets”. When I start a new role, i get a sense of who my key stakeholders are: who do I need support from? Who are the naysayers? Who are the opinion makers? Once I have my list, I set up half hour meetings with each of them to introduce myself, learn more about them, and get a sense of who they are and what their perspective is. I take notes, ask questions, and listen.
What this does is 1) begin a relationship with the person, 2) provides you with more intel on the situation, 3) indicates to the person that you’re willing to listen. When it’s time for me to ask them for something, they’re more likely to respond.
2. Initially, focus on being liked. The first question on everyone’s mind about you is “will I like you?” Meaning: will they trust you, find you reasonable, good to work with? Do you listen? Are you self aware? Will you fit in? Too often, new people anxiously try to prove their value immediately by criticizing and trying to change things. We just met! Focus on being liked first. Then you can make your suggestions.
Note: if you talk about your old company all the time, stop it. The new girlfriend/boyfriend never wants to hear about the old one…bad or good.
3. Then add value. Once you’ve established your “likeability”, now you can start making suggestions and gathering feedback. You’re there to get a job done….so now is the time to start executing with your team and putting points on the board.
4. Circle back. Once you’ve been in your role for a number of months, put together a short presentation that allows you to update those folks you met with before, but may not deal with day to day. I like to start with “What I heard”, which tends to be common themes as a result of my meet and greets. Then a page on what we’re doing: what, who, when. A few exhibits if needed. A next steps page: always ending with “is there anything else I’m missing?”
Changing jobs is always a little scary. This time, you want them to assume positive intent about you.
For those of you who watch Grey’s Anatomy, you know who I mean.
Christina Yang is a character played by Sandra Oh: a cardiothoracic surgeon at the hospital. Meredith Grey is her best friend: another top surgeon. They have rituals: “dancing it out”, being “each other’s person”, and not going to that “dark and twisty place”. Two women passionate about professional excellence and their friendship.
Doctor Yang is competitive, ambitious, intelligent, and at the same time, brutally honest, insensitive, aggressive and tactless. While I’m not recommending that all her manager behaviors be emulated (how she handles the new residents…and how they love it), she is inspiring because she is who she is and is unapologetic about it. How refreshing is that?
This past May, Dr Yang left Grey’s Anatomy. Thank you Sandra Oh for giving us a female Asian television character as authentic and brave as Dr Yang.
I get asked a lot about “work life balance” and how I do it. It’s not easy.
Personally, I don’t believe it exists if you define it as balancing work and life equally all the time. Just from a pure math point of view, if you work 5 days a week, there is no way that there can be balance from a time allotment perspective. Balance implies you have equal weight on both sides. So we feel guilty because we can’t achieve the balance, and we beat ourselves up even though it’s impossible. And we feel bad because we’re told we can have it all. But what does that mean?
What I do believe is in work life balancing. Continue reading
How many times have you heard this? So, there are right ways and wrong ways.
You can’t say no because you have too much to do. You can’t say no because you have no resources. You can’t say no when it’s the business or your client. You can’t say no when it’s your boss. You can’t say no because you think it’s not important. You can’t say no because your boss told you to say no. Continue reading
Myth: “my work stands for itself…so I don’t need to do anything. They’ll recognize that I am promotion material.”
Getting the balance between being humble but still advocating for yourself is hard. It’s hard not to take it personally when you’re not promoted, and you expected it. It’s even harder if you see peers getting promoted. So how do you navigate this space? Continue reading