I’ve started an assignment and it’s an interesting one where I’m coaching/advising and explaining best practices based on my experience as a COO. In those situations, it’s sometimes hard to tell whether or not your audience is 1) being polite, 2) secretly bored and planning what they’re going to eat for dinner, or 3) quietly resentful because they have lots of other things they could be doing.

So thinking about the meetings I had this week, I was happy about this one thing. More than once, I heard the phrase “A lightbulb just went off in my head.”

I really haven’t heard that before in my career, so this was something new. It was very gratifying though….knowing that hearing something made them see something they hadn’t seen before….which is really what we’re trying to do half the time. Changing the perspective so you can see the problem in a different light…and hopefully, a solution as well.