‘Twas the Night Before the Keynote

‘Twas the Night before the Keynote, and all through backstage
Every comms person was stirring, from Michael to Paige;
The teleprompter was locked after much pleading and shouting,
All edits were stopped, even though speakers were pouting.

Yet one keynote speaker was snug in their bed,
As their vision for the storyline played out in their head;
Warm in their PJs, their dog listening proud,
As they practiced the opening right out loud.

For out of the mangled and deep-weeded clatter,
They’d carved out their message to tell what really did matter.
As the townhall opened the very next day,
The scurrying continued each and every single way.

Except for the speaker, well-rested and spry,
Who touched up one last note and was ready to fly.
“If we do this,” they began with a smile and a wink,
“We’ll increase our sales more than you could possibly think!”

Their vision was clear and their stories were too,
They knew how to connect with me and with you.
And as their Keynote wrapped up with a big round of applause,
They left the stage after an appreciative pause.

The Keynote was grand and the year launched with style,
Because they put in our number and then they hit dial.
As your New Year begins in just a few weeks,
Let us know if your Keynote is still looking bleak.

For where there’s a story or message in doubt,
That’s when the SW&A magic turns out.
Whether you need us tomorrow or on a cold winter night,
We wish you a Happy New Year and hope your holidays are bright!

From all of us to all of you… we wish you a joyful and restful Holiday.

Happy Holidays & Happy New Year!

SW&A Team

Who Owns Your Conference Throughline?

Every year, we support conferences, sometimes helping with a few keynotes and sometimes supporting the entire three-day production. Regardless of our role, our first step is to ask for the messaging document. But we rarely get it when we ask for it.

Instead, we get the run of show from the production company with a well-mapped timeline. Or we get a framing document from the internal team that explains the conference theme and experience. And occasionally, we just get a list of speakers with their topics and what we need to improve.

What we’re asking for is a view of how messages align, overlap and lead to key takeaways for the listeners. That’s what we call the throughline.

And more than half of the time, no one really owns it.

If that’s hard to believe, consider the key players who are pulling conference details together:

• The production company is focused on the event…and they deliver on the look and feel in a ballroom.
• The marketing team is about the experience…and they deliver on the look and feel outside the ballroom.

And it continues across technology support, events teams etc. People deliver on what they’ve been asked to do. But the throughline isn’t embedded in the process.

In fact, if you walked into a rehearsal the day before the conference begins, you’d see that a lot of what the audience will experience works well without speakers at all! The energy in the room comes from music. The visual concepts within the room create an experience and illicit emotion without words. In many cases, the quality of the production is well ahead of the quality of the messaging.

And the obvious question is: Is that OK?

It depends on your expectations for the conference.

If the outcome you’ve agreed on is that clients and employees feel entertained and connected to each other, then your goal may be accomplished with energy and entertainment. You may not need to worry about aligning messaging at all. Speakers can bring individual thoughts and worry less about being part of a total picture. But if the outcome you want includes follow-up actions, peaked interest in a new product, buy-in to a new approach, or sales calls to accelerate deals, you’ll never get there if messaging is not aligned and repeated consistently in the midst of all the entertainment and energy.

And that’s what a throughline is designed to do.

By helping internal teams align to six key steps, we ensure that conferences are developed around best practices that set the bar higher than a fun experience and deliver on outcomes and momentum that continues well after the event itself has wrapped up.

Here are our best practices.

STEP ONE: Set the Content Team & Process
The sweat equity required to align messages to a theme should happen as a first step. Messaging should lead the production element, the entertainment element, and everything else that happens in the room. But often, a production company is engaged before the theme is ever considered. And when you do that, you lose the flexibility to imagine the experience that best supports the outcomes you’re trying to deliver. This is when the throughline is developed.

STEP TWO: Align the Communicators to Messaging
Your communicators need to be aligned to a full picture of what you are trying to accomplish rather than treated as a separate component. Do you get their buy-in right up front as the throughline takes shape? Or do you get their attention in the last mile when you’re trying to nail down key points you want them to cover?

They are integral pieces of the through line, and that’s where challenge comes in. When conferences are treated as productions and events, the good thinking and talent resource goes toward planning the event. But if the theme isn’t talked out with the key communicators, you don’t have buy-in to the concept. And you’ll hit misalignment when they come in later in the process. Before anything else moves ahead, agreement to the throughline helps everyone support the event based on messaging. The throughline creates a clean and clear blueprint that should drive all the other components.

STEP THREE: Build Content & Context
While the creative teams join the conversation in step one, they leverage the message document to bring an experience to life. Once the messaging and throughline is set, it’s much easier to allow creative teams to do what they do best – without input or friction from the content owners. We create a separation between the two elements for production which gives the creative side full ownership for context and keeps the content creators very much in the lane of messaging.

When the content side tries to leverage a creative document to drive their process, roles get blurred and inevitably the creative side gets too much input into their process.

STEP FOUR: Blend Content & Context
Midway through the development, the content and context sides come back together. This gives both distinctly different elements a chance to see the full picture framed up and to gauge and adjust how well each component delivers the desired outcomes. If done at a midpoint, it also gives the creative team time to enhance the experience with elements leading up to and following up after the event. This step evaluates and edits at the midpoint to support repeatability and extend the memorability of what’s said. It also identifies the transitions and simple add-ons that can help ensure takeaways.

STEP FIVE: Add Supporting Roles
For most big events, companies rely on an MC to make all the transitions.

It’s a hard role. MC’s may be hired talent or someone inside the company who’s got a good stage presence. When step four happens at the right time, the role of an MC is defined clearly and linked to the throughline and flow of messaging. When it doesn’t happen, the MC becomes more of a comedian or stand-alone element that keeps the audience engaged and gives out details of what happens next throughout the day.

When this is seen as an intentional step after the blend of content and context, the MC role is leveraged more effectively. And it can be a more focused guide through the content rather than just an entertainer transitioning from one speaker to another.

STEP SIX: Measure Outcomes
Before you wrap it up, ask for feedback. And if you’re driving toward outcomes, you need feedback on two components: content and context. Measure context first. This can be done on the final day as people head to the airport. They’re thinking about the event itself and what they experienced. It’s good measurement against what you wanted the experience to deliver.

But more important is measuring the content impact. And that’s the outcome you wanted to reach. One month after the conference, what do your attendees say? Have they booked a follow-up meeting or moved exploration of a product further? Measuring content and context separately helps you gauge whether you’re investing too heavily in one or the other. And if you’re really delivering against all expectations for the conference.

 

The steps above make a big difference in moving from high entertainment to high impact. And we can help you do it. Whether you leverage us for two steps or all six, we can help your conference gain repeatability and memorability that will deliver outcomes throughout the year.

We’re here when you need us!

Want a free 15-minute consultation with us to see how we can help you or your leaders? Book a call now!

2025 Priority: The Leadership Team

It’s time to plan for the year ahead, leadership and L&D teams are outlining their plans against business priorities and focus. Since we work across a broad spectrum of clients, we can be an indicator of trends that are beginning to emerge and how other companies are prioritizing them. And we’re often asked: “what do you see as the priority?”

The group that’s emerging as a priority for development focus in many companies is the leadership team itself. And it’s not surprising when you consider the pace of work and expected acceleration in results, the change in work with transformative capabilities like AI and the ever-evolving way of working across the workforce. Add to that, almost half of the leaders sitting in the top seats are new to those seats based on acquisitions, early retirements and C-Suite movement.

Individually, top leaders have always been a priority in terms of upleveling communication skills, approaching new settings and new audiences, and driving impact with messaging and storytelling. But this focus isn’t on the individuals as much as the team.

Over the last year, we’ve been asked to help the senior team:

• Carry a message across a company
• Collaborate more effectively for faster decisioning
• Balance likeability and accountability with employee base
• Strengthen their visibility and authenticity in video communication

Essentially, it’s working better as a team to manage communication going up to their Board and key stakeholders to gain support, across to their peers and business partners to balance different perspectives, and down to employees to keep engagement high with their employees.

As we worked across different teams, here’s what we learned beneath each of those requests.

Leadership Brands:

Leaders have to stay visible within companies and industries to have impact. They have to position a point of view and reinforce it almost as a campaign to be sure it takes hold within their organizations. It’s gotten harder to do that as new ways of working settle in. And they’ve had to rethink how they communicate in terms of format to be sure their communication has reach and impact.

We’ve helped leaders think about where authenticity shows up best, how messaging is best reinforced, and the intention communication takes to add flexibility to how everyone else consumes it. One area we’ve focused on a lot is the use of video. And while a lot of this coaching happens individually, we’ve worked with entire teams recently to consider their reach collectively and to streamline formats for consistency across the company.

The Enterprise Voice:

This is one of the hardest areas to align a leadership team. Most have had distinct voices as leaders, and as senior leaders, they recognize the need to align as one voice. It makes sense conceptually, but it’s hard to get a group of leaders to follow it. It takes a process and an understanding of how to balance their voice and the company’s voice on key topics. And they can get lost in understanding it takes all of them to carry a message forward.

In most cases, we aren’t producing the messaging for clients. We’re coaching this team to work with the messaging they’re given by internal teams to find ways to align to the enterprise voice while still staying authentic to their individual ones. Leaders often feel they lose their own voice to the company voice, and we coach teams how to effectively balance the two and distinguish between them.

Peer Decisioning & Alignment

One sound bite we heard throughout the last year was “we have division leaders, not enterprise leaders.” And what they mean is that their leaders are very skilled at leading their functional areas. But they often get stuck gaining alignment across their peer group because they don’t take the time to balance perspectives.

Our coaching has focused on finding common ground and aligning to another leader’s value. Peers aren’t always quick to say yes, and they say it’s because they don’t see value for their own organization or the full enterprise. It’s one of the most critical communication skills needed on top teams because it’s the only way they can move quickly.

The Employee Base

Bench strength got thin following the pandemic as seasoned leaders took early retirement and allowed some to catapult quickly to top roles. In many cases, they haven’t learned how to manage  communication with large groups of employees. It isn’t a new skill need, but it’s become a more  apparent one. Companies are just busy and they’re moving fast. The catalyst of that movement is top down, but communicating what’s happening and why it’s happening isn’t always met with the same priority and focus.

Leaders miss an important opportunity and sometimes even set themselves up for risks when they aren’t well prepared. We help teams build the rigor of preparation and the skills of storytelling to make sure they gain repeatability and impact with one of their most important audiences.

The leadership team isn’t the only priority we’ve experienced.

Middle managers are still a focus as companies see increased visibility as a benefit and a liability. Expectations haven’t changed around how managers communicate with leaders, both in terms of the ability to structure a storyline and to lead a conversation with confidence. We continue to tailor the format and focus of our Leading Executive Conversation programs, and it remains one of the most popular ways to combine content development with executive presence.

We have lots of new topics on our mind and enjoy learning ourselves as companies plan for the year ahead. And we hope there’s a conversation ahead with you about leadership and communication as a part of your planning.

We’re here when you need us!

Want a free 15-minute consultation with us to see how we can help you or your leaders? Book a call now!

The Evolution of People Leaders: What They See & What They Miss

Our interest in people leaders and managers continues.

So much so that it was our introductory topic for a recent Chief Learning Officer conference in Boston. As we opened the discussion, we wanted to know if the top learning leaders had the same observations inside their companies as we’ve had as coaches all year.

We asked them to choose the statement below that best represented their companies:

1. Managing people has never been a more challenging role in our company.
2. Managing people is one of the strongest skills we have in our company.
3. Managing people has become a continuous learning curve that we can’t stay ahead of in our company.

Only one attendee felt the second statement fit their company. Everyone else felt statement one or three applied. So, we went a little further.

We asked them to choose the statement below that best represented their people leaders:

1. Our people leaders are set in their ways and frustrated by a broader set of expectations from us and our employees.
2. Our people leaders are inexperienced and haven’t developed the skills needed to manage how employees want to work and what they need to feel valued.
3. Our people leaders are exhausted by trying to stay aligned to demands in our business and expectations of our employees.

The start of our discussion confirmed what we’ve observed for the last few years. People leaders are under pressure and don’t have the right tools or skills to manage all the expectations coming their way.

And while we expected the responses to the opening questions, the discussion surprised us.

Even for those it’s a top pain point, supporting people leaders is not a top priority. Many of these leaders talked about it as an employee problem more than a manager’s challenge. And it validated our biggest observation which is that people leaders are begging for support, and no one has an easy answer. In fact, the pressure on people managers is getting worse.

Gallup measured the changes that people managers said they navigated last year:

• 64% said they were given additional job responsibilities, not promotions.
• 51% said they were restructuring teams.
• 42% said they were managing “budget cuts,” which often has a resource implication.

And the HR teams, for the first time ever, have the highest turnover of any functional area within a company.

Why is this such a gap?

Because companies reset a work model, and a rigor, without a manual. Senior leaders are pushing harder for results, and they don’t have a view of how that gets translated or implemented three levels below.

Remote work has done a lot of good things from reducing costs to expanding talent pools. But it takes more effort in coordination, teamwork and culture. Managers bear much of the responsibility of overcoming those challenges. We didn’t see it in a strong labor market because people just left if they didn’t like their manager. But job hopping has slowed down, and disgruntled employees are staying. Soon, we’ll all feel the frustration inside companies.

Why is it so hard to manage?

Because we introduced so much flexibility during the pandemic that managers don’t have guardrails to put any sort of team expectation back in place. Companies thought flexibility was temporary; employees thought it was permanent. And there continues to be friction to find balance.

Employees say their needs are unmet. They aren’t getting opportunities for development, and managers aren’t delivering on their expectations. And many employees have big expectations. Some are not realistic, but they still create challenging conversations. And companies have a limited view of how their managers handle them.

And why aren’t people managers catching on?

That’s the hardest part. Most people managers would say they are sitting in the middle of a perfect storm…increased demand from the company and higher expectations from employees. They’re trying! They’ve asked us for help handling conversations about:

• Limitless vacation and employees who’ve taken advantage of it.
• Requests for a sabbatical in the second year of employment.
• Employees who don’t like traffic, don’t like mornings, need fitness breaks, quiet rooms, and space away from a difficult colleague.
• Employees who go around managers if they don’t get the approval they want.
• Employees won’t don’t fly, who don’t turn on virtual cameras, who don’t answer cell phones, who don’t always seem to be working.

It’s harder than it’s ever been. Not because employees don’t have needs and expectations. But because the rules have shifted, and the interpretation of those new rules sits squarely with the people managers.

As our conversations continued at the conference, we heard more about gaps within companies and different situations managers were dealing with.

It’s handling conversations, demands and feedback. It’s knowing when to be firm and when to be lenient. And it’s being confident enough to pause and think before you respond.

It put us into coaching overdrive sharing ideas to:

• Reset teams to working as a team, not just as individuals
• Coach a manager to feel confident and stay settled in a challenging conversation
• Communicate a difference in a promotion and a development opportunity
• See, listen, and understand before you solve
• Set the difference in a general expectation and a specific request
• Adopt a conversation model to uncover the WHY underneath a skill or behavior gap
• Define parameters so exceptions don’t evolve into patterns

And while the spontaneous conversations were lively, we can do more than sketch an idea on a napkin! We’ve embraced this challenge, and we’ve developed workshops to help people managers evolve, expand and reinvent their skills. We meet them right in the middle of their experiences and responsibilities, and we coach a new way of communicating options and decisions. And I hope we’ve built confidence to help managers move through the perfect storm.

If your people managers could use a little support, we’d like to learn more about their challenges. And as we continue to talk to companies about building a better manager toolkit, we’re considering different formats which may include an open enrollment program that brings managers from different companies together. Let us know your interest by joining us on a call to explore the topic further.

We’re here when you need us!

Want a free 15-minute consultation with us to see how we can help you or your leaders? Book a call now!

When the Company Story Becomes a Financial One

When a company is up for sale, three key players take center stage: the current investor, the banker and the top executives.

And while the PE firms and the bankers know their roles well, the company leadership team is walking into a setting that’s less familiar to them. As the key spokespeople for the company, they should be the company’s best communicators. And in most settings, they are.

They bring credibility to a big prospect presentation. They add inspiration to an employee all-hands meeting. And they establish buy-in with their current investor and Board on strategies and new opportunities.

But pitching the company as a financial story is something they haven’t done often. And it’s different enough that they lose some confidence and conviction around how to do it well.

Here’s why:

It’s not the way they tell the story. – The storyline is created by the bankers. And it’s much less about solving needs for clients or inspiring a culture behind a vision. It’s focused with a critical eye on the value of the company and the potential that value has to expand in the future. It’s much less about where you’ve been and much more about proving where you could go. It’s a sum of details that have to add up. And it’s a way of positioning the company and assessing it that the founders or current leaders haven’t considered.

It’s heavy on data and details. – Most leaders don’t use slides in a lot of what they do. They’re the inspiring element of the company, so they speak from the heart, they speak from an outline or they speak off the cuff. They do not speak from heavy data slides. So, when the bankers hand over a deck for a management presentation, it’s overwhelming to them. Many leaders say they don’t see “their story” within it.

The story’s there, but it’s a different way of presenting it. It’s full of insights. It’s full of data points. It maximizes landscape with 9 or 10 points on every page. And that’s different than how a business leader has been coached to inspire and engage an audience.

And it’s more of a team effort than they’re accustomed to. – That’s a nuance that matters in communication. Leaders present together, but they stay in their own lanes and talk to their areas of responsibility. They might call it a team presentation, but it’s more five focus areas coming together. In a management presentation, they need to align to the same core messages and the same sound bites. They need to be well-aligned on handling questions so that there is a consistent response and belief across the team.

And it’s the ability to solve those three differences that brought us into the investment coaching space more than a decade ago. The role of the key players remains the same: positioning the company for a successful exit from one investor to another. Our role is an added addition: helping the communicators, as individuals and a team, find their confidence in a tougher setting with a different lens on content.

We do it with a three-step process that focuses on: the talk track, the communicators and the team.

The talk track doesn’t mean the deck or the positioning. That’s the bankers’ role. Our work focuses on helping each leader find their voice in a storyline that is less familiar to them. While the slides are dense to leaders, it’s common place in a sell position. These decks are used to position companies as pre-reads and as documentation to set the story without the leaders. So, the slides won’t change. But we can help leaders consider how their voice comes through and how to work with headlines and foot lines to avoid getting bogged down in the details and losing their train of thought or their audience as a result of it.

The seasoned communicators need some support in thinking through how they want to position themselves along with the story. Most of this work is on personal style and leveraging great communication skills to be clear, concise and compelling. It’s a high-pressure setting. So, each leader wants feedback and a few coaching adjustments to be sure they bring their “A” game to the setting.

And finally, the team. Learning to manage key messages and sound bites in a messaging document is a new skill for most leadership teams. It’s pulling everything into a few big concepts that help them consider how to make points repeatable. And it’s a rehearsal that helps them see the flow of the talk track, their ability to tether back to key points and appear as an aligned team in a high-stake setting.

We’re the added addition that allows the bankers and current investors to stay focused on attracting buyers while we stay focused on helping the leadership team find their voice in presenting a financial storyline. So, whether your role is exiting a company in your portfolio or building the financial storyline to pitch it to other investors, we can ensure that the communicators you’re counting on bring their best to the opportunity.

Call us when you need us.

 

Want a free 15-minute consultation with us to see how we can help you or your leaders? Book a call now!

The Language of Business

Do you speak the language of business?

If you’re in a corporate function, there’s an easy way to tell.

• As a finance manager, are you the last person included in discussions of an upcoming initiative?
• As a lawyer, do people get careful with details when you’re in a meeting?
• As a communications director, did you miss the strategy discussion and only felt looped in the week of the all-hands meeting?
• Or are you the marketing lead who is pulled in to launch a new product after decisions have already been made about the target audience?

Limited exposure happens every day inside of companies, and it’s often because the functional areas don’t speak the language of business. They have deep expertise in their areas, but they don’t easily translate that to business outcomes that are common across operational areas. And unintentionally, that can create an impression of being narrowly focused or missing the bigger picture that a leader needs to resolve because they are influencing without authority at work.

The finance guy speaks budgets and numbers and forecasting and risks. The lawyer speaks regulations, compliance and contracts. And marketing speaks lead generation, website statistics and clicks and open rates.

In fact, for a subject matter expert, technical knowledge can be so entrenched as a language that others in an organization don’t think they can speak anything else. And that limits influence and visibility in an organization because peers and leaders won’t pull them into conversations until their functional expertise is needed. That means someone else is determining when the functional leader can add value. And it’s almost always narrower than it could be and later than it should be. And that’s a disservice to the SME and the company.

I first saw the gap in the language of business through executive coaching. At the start of most engagements, I learn about teams and resources that add value to a leader. And as they talk about different resources, you can hear the difference in how they describe people who support them and people who partner with them. It’s a gap that many SMEs don’t understand, and most leaders don’t work around.

And it’s why we developed a program called Influencing Without Authority to shift the language of function areas to the broader language of business outcomes. And we coach to three specific things that can broaden perspectives and align to business language.

1. The Difference in Perspectives.

This is the most common blind spot in all the coaching we do. People communicate from their own perspective rather than aligning their thoughts to a listener’s perspective. If you’re a subject matter expert, you can assume that no one in the room understands what you understand. So, speaking in your language will always create distance with listeners.

We help all communicators consider a listener’s perspective and align it before they bring their own perspective into a conversation. And as we introduce a model for outlining conversations, it helps many communicators think beyond governing through their lens and get to a more common ground and suggested alternatives for leaders.

2. The Journey to Value.

In fact, more than just understanding a listener’s perspective, we coach SMEs to attach to what those listeners value. The expertise of many SMEs can be a narrow lane. Too often, they listen with only that lens and focus more on what a leader shouldn’t do versus aligning to the priorities and outcomes the leader has to deliver.

We call it the journey to value, and we help groups go a step further in perspective to understand the goals and priorities beyond the current conversation. When a communicator can see that, they quickly understand how to fit their discussion into a broader picture. It changes their input and shifts them to partnering with a leader on options.

When leaders hear a communicator who is trying to solve a challenge or create an opportunity, they hear insights beyond the area of expertise.  And they notice the skill of communicating with the broader business in mind. And the communicator shifts from a subject matter expert to a valued utility player. That’s someone who has knowledge that can be leveraged in many different ways.

3. Activities and Outcomes.

Our third area of focus gets specific in helping any expert build messaging that aligns to business outcomes. And it challenges every SME to think beyond their activities to broader business outcomes. That’s the final step to align to the language of business. And it may be the hardest because it positions the functional efforts more as a means to an end or a part of a broader outcome.

Here are specific examples:

I’m a finance manager talking to a business unit leader about her budget. She’s requested three additional head count that don’t fit within budget guidelines. My role is to communicate that she can’t add those costs. In this instance, she’s focused on a means rather than an outcome. And if I understand what she’s trying to accomplish, I can help her consider ways that she could get to an outcome without additional headcount. If you delay your project launch by four months, you’ll have a better view of first quarter results and could adjust your spend to better align to the project needs.

I’m a lawyer talking to the senior leadership team about compliance training.  The legal team has been very focused on getting people through the training, and we’re pleased that we plan to have half of the organization trained by the end of the year. But that’s the legal team’s activity and not the value to the business.  So, the message to the leadership team should be: By training half of our employees on compliance risks, we’ve updated awareness of new risks and built confidence in their ability to prevent those risks in the year ahead. 

I’m the marketing director, targeting a specific demographic for a new product. My efforts produced a 15% increase in leads from the targeted group. When I meet with the sales leader to report on that progress, I’m likely to mention the 15% increase in leads as the outcome.  But to the sales leader, it’s one step towards a broader outcome which is to generate product sales from the leads. To attach to the sales leader’s value, I’ll say that: By increasing leads by 15%, we should be able to generate an additional 10% in product sales to this demographic.

Speaking the language of business is a valued skill and a critical skill to help someone in a specialized area continue to gain visibility and advancement in an organization. If you run a functional area and think your team could improve communication, we’d love to share more about Influencing Without Authority and how we’ve helped teams expand their influence across an organization.

Call us when you need us.

 

Want a free 15-minute consultation with us to see how we can help you or your leaders? Book a call now!

How Do You Learn to Manage People?

We’ve taken an interest in people managers since the beginning of the pandemic. Because as we supported different experiences across companies, we quickly saw the pressure point was people managers. And we wrote and coached about how to handle worry, loss, loneliness…. and inconsistencies in work. That order was the priority during the pandemic as managers were told to “look after people” first.

Then, we saw the “return to work” phase, as managers had to pivot to manage the work versus managing the people. Some stepped in and took it on themselves so they could look after people and look after work when the two were in conflict with each other.

And now with company plans firmly in place, people managers are expected to be firmer in managing people. In the last two years, people managers have come full circle with giving feedback, reviews and sometimes performance ratings that communicate less flexibility and more expectation. And through it all, new pain points for people managers have emerged.
Anecdotally, we set out to learn a few things from both perspectives: the managers themselves and the people being managed. And we came away with interesting insights.

When people managers were asked to rate themselves in terms of effectiveness, (scale of 1-5; 1=poor and 5=outstanding), the average was a 3.5. Some were threes and some were fours, but everyone we talked to considered themselves average or a little above.

But when we asked for the same rating of effectiveness from people who are managed, the swing was much greater. Some employees rated their manager a five, and some rated their manager a one. And the wide discrepancy led to another realization. The people managers who were rated the highest had been managing people for more than 10 years. And those who were rated very low started managing people during the last five years.

Our hypothesis became: your skill set at managing people has a lot to do with when you became a people manager.

People managers with a lot of experience under their belt now say the pandemic chaos was an anomaly. As their companies reset, they reset their management skills to conversation guidelines, feedback processes and team expectations that they learned to do a while ago. They have a toolkit that needs some refinement, but they find the fundamentals of managing people to be the same.

People managers who took on teams in the last five years see their role as inconsistent, and their experience has only been the frenetic shifts described above. Many say they aren’t confident being a people manager, and they don’t feel that they have much of a toolkit to guide them. They’ve been handed a new playbook every year and the guidance swings from “anything goes” to “enforce expectations” with smaller pivots in between.

If you ask the more experienced managers how they developed management skills, they all say their skills evolved over time and they learned by watching others and asking others for guidance.

That wasn’t a model that was sustainable during remote work and high-stress situations. So, it’s little wonder that newer managers feel they didn’t get the same guidance or support. And it’s why we’ve taken an interest in helping these younger managers feel more confident in the tools and their skills in managing people.

Work situations are different today, and both experienced and inexperienced managers told us that they find feedback conversations to be challenging.

Today, they’re managing a false sense of confidence from young employees, a stronger demand for personal preference and exceptions, and a concern that every conversation will be a negotiation. They brace for resistance and feel good when they can avoid conflict.

The seasoned managers have a better perspective on assessing behaviors and showing empathy without trading off work.

So while all managers feel they’re being tested by some of their employees, the more experienced managers have “seen things before” and feel more confident in their ability to work things out and get to resolution.

And interestingly, employees see the difference. When we asked those who rated a manager low what skills the manager needed, they say managers need to set clear goals and hold people accountable. They want constructive feedback, and they want to advance in their careers. But they admit they’re impatient about it and often feel the younger manager is in the way of their advancement rather than supporting their path.

The pain points were easy to identify with young managers and their teams. But as we’ve prioritized this development need, we’ve also talked to HR leaders to be sure we’re aligned on what the gap actually is.

And it has multiple components.

Guidelines for Hybrid Work – All managers need a reset on dealing with the blurred lines created by a new way of work. Every company has a return to work strategy, but in most cases, the strategy is different enough that managing people in a hybrid setting is still a development need.

Manager Network – Young managers can’t evolve over time as their predecessors did. In fact, many of their role models are no longer in the workforce to mentor them. The early retirement and remote work of seasoned managers has created a gap in companies. And managers need a structured network and sounding board to support each other.

Manager Toolkit & Tools – While they may have some tools, they want training that brings all the tools together. They don’t have time to find different pieces. They want the best practices for feedback and crucial conversations and guidance on applying them to their situations.

Brand & Confidence – Open dialogs have led to direct feedback from their teams. Sometimes charged with emotion, and sometimes just deflating. But demanding employees can erode a manager’s confidence, and they want to understand how their brand is perceived and how to hold their own in a tough conversation.

We’ve taken an interest in people managers because we know how critical they are in companies, and we hear the pain as we talk to them in workshops and coaching sessions. While it’s no one’s fault that the gap developed, it will be everyone’s problem if young managers don’t gain confidence in their ability to manage.

And that’s why we’ve developed a program that focuses on the components above. We’re talking to companies about how to leverage it and how to tailor it to the needs of their managers. And if you’re experiencing similar challenges, we’d welcome a chance to talk to you as well.

 

Want a free 15-minute consultation with us to see how we can help you or your leaders? Book a call now!

LIGHTS! CAMERA!…and LOW ENERGY?

Why is it that the best communicators fall flat when put in a studio to produce a video?

The seasoned communicators who’ve tried it will tell you it’s because it’s too scripted. They prefer a more informal and conversational approach. Or they say, it’s too constricted.  They believe their energy comes from movement, and they want to move around like they would on a stage.

And while both the tighter content and the limited movement are concepts that take adjustment, the biggest difference that communicators struggle with is the lack of an audience.

It’s ironic because when you ask communicators in other settings what makes them nervous or throws off their focus, the common issue is the audience. “The group was bigger than I expected, I didn’t know a senior leader would be there, or they weren’t as interested in my topic as I was told.” If you find the audience to be a challenge as a communicator, you’ll find the lack of one makes video production even harder.

Ask anyone who’s produced a lot of videos and they’ll tell you: the hardest part of video is understanding how to lead a one-sided conversation as if it were a two-sided one. And essentially, that’s what changes the most.

For years, we’ve guided our executive coaching clients to get comfortable with video as a medium. But we couldn’t have predicted how quickly it would take hold as different ways of work evolved, and leaders weren’t in front of employees as frequently. Today, more than 50% of internal communications is done via video. And by video, I don’t mean live communication that’s hosted on a virtual platform. I’m referring to taped communication that is produced for sound bites, promotion and engagement on topics.

And it’s not just leaders who are using it. Video has become an easy way to get information out in a short format. Companies are adding studios to their offices, and they’re creating pre-taped messages to support most internal initiatives. The only piece missing are communicators who are effective with the format.

That’s because it’s different enough that skills don’t easily adapt to it. Communicators need some help translating and adapting what they know about energy and engagement to the new format.

In fact, whether you’re the coach or the coachee working on a video format, it’s important to make sure the skill set of the communicator starts with an understanding of intent more than technique.

Too often, people who coach communicators give tips and techniques that mask poor habits rather than working through them.

And when a communicator tries to translate those techniques to a different setting, it seldom works because the old habit is still there.

Across all settings, our focus always begins by talking to a communicator about their toolkit. Every communicator has the same one: their body, their voice and the listener. The tools don’t change across settings; a communicator’s understanding of how to leverage them does.

So how do you coach a communicator to be impactful through video?

First, you talk about scripts. Some communicators have learned to use teleprompters for keynotes and large stage events. In this setting, they can use headlines and short-form bullets as an outline. But when producing video, the content has to be much tighter. Videos have 2-3 minutes to be compelling and succinct. It’s sound bites, it’s phrases – and it’s always scripted. The conversational tone most communicators want to convey comes through in style, not content. Coaching someone to read a script in a conversational way is step one.

Second, you focus on the body. Video requires a more settled presence. Movement is distracting. Some people like to stand to get involved in what they’re saying, but most people do their best seated on a stool. Either way, the goal is to get someone forward toward the camera. Coaching focuses on helping a communicator feel settled and involved at the same time.

The third coaching area is the voice. Video requires someone to be able to land a point and create energy through effort behind the voice. Foundational skills translate easily to video in terms of articulation and projection. The harder coaching concepts are landing a point and putting emotion behind words and phrases.

And that leads to the missing element: the audience. Communicators leverage energy and engagement back and forth with listeners in other settings and when it isn’t there, their own energy drops quickly. Unfortunately, it’s easy to spot. Someone who doesn’t know how to connect through video will look as if they’re staring. The eyes become hard, and it’s easy to see them reading the script.  That’s less about reading and more about keeping expression active in communication.

If you’ve worked with SW&A on presence and style, you know the answer. Connection is less about looking at someone and more about drawing response from someone. Again, it’s the intent of connecting with someone and less the technique of eye contact.

When we coach someone how to engage with a listener, we illustrate the two-way interaction of connection. And if you understand the essence of connection, you can translate it to video. It is the concept of leading a one-sided conversation as if it were a two-sided one. You have to work for emotion, you have to work for response – even though you won’t get it. What you will get is expression through the communicator’s eyes and face. And that’s what makes video feel as if a communicator is talking directly to a listener.

Video is a powerful medium when it’s done well. And it’s a frustrating one when seasoned communicators don’t know how to execute it.

We can help!

SW&A coaches communicators to connect through video in 1:1 coaching and group workshops. And we can ensure that when the lights and cameras come on, there will be great energy on your side of the lens.

As always, we’re here when you need us!

Want a free 15-minute consultation with us to see how we can help you or your leaders? Book a call now!

The Art of Answering Questions

When we work with individuals or teams to prepare for important presentations, our debrief always includes interest in the questions asked throughout the presentation. And the response is varied. Some presenters say they received no questions, others share a few and some presenters can’t remember.

Sometimes, they brush it off and want to talk more about how they did than how the listeners reacted. And yet, questions are arguably the most important part of most communication.  The questions asked by listeners reveal how the information was received and how it’s likely to be used once the meeting wraps up.

When we coach big moments, we talk to presenters about how to impose questions on a group as a way to gauge what they heard and whether they’re aligned before the presentation ends. Questions are the clearest indicator a communicator gets on how well they transferred knowledge.

But answering questions is not a skill that most communicators learn or practice.

And that’s because questions aren’t considered to be critical or challenging early in your career.

In fact, as you begin to present to colleagues, questions may be easy to manage. You know the audience well, and when they ask questions, it’s easy to understand why they’re asking.  They want to know how a topic impacts their work or their role.  And chances are, the questions ask for more detail around something in the presentation.  So, you can go an inch deeper or restate a concept to offer more context.

There may also be a manager in the room who manages the scope of questions for you.  So, when someone asks for more detail or challenges a detail, you may get air cover to shut down a line of questioning or keep the topic in scope.

Early on, communicators rarely say they didn’t understand the reason a question was asked.

And yet, as opportunities expand and audiences become more diverse, that’s the most common complaint we hear from communicators. “I have no idea why they asked me that question.”

In the toolkit of communication skills, the inability to answer questions effectively will become a vulnerability for a communicator. And in fact, it will also become a determining factor of whether they continue to gain visibility to different groups.

As leaders interact with communicators, they always gauge how well someone shows up. Style and presence matters, clarity of messaging matters. But the ability to transfer knowledge through how questions are answered may matter the most. If confidence and clarity got you in a high-stakes meeting, it’s the ability to manage questions well that gets you back to the next one.

In fact, the ability to answer questions well is one of the most universal skills of communication because every manager and leader has to answer questions. Questions transcend across every setting from conference keynotes to media interviews, from investor days to board rooms, and from customer meetings to employee round tables. If you learn to manage questions well, you will leverage it in every step of your career.

It isn’t easy.

Questions are dynamic. They come from listeners, so you prepare for them the same way you prepare your storyline. You can anticipate about 60% of what will be asked if you consider the listeners’ perspective. But questions require real-time, in the moment content that means thinking on your feet and being as clear and focused as you were throughout the presentation.

As your career advances, questions become harder because audiences and listeners get more diverse. You don’t have the understanding that you did when you spoke to colleagues. You don’t always know why someone asks a question or how they’re trying to apply your response. It takes a new skill set and an intentional process to think on your feet and manage questions effectively.

We coach a three-step model for answering questions.

STEP ONE:  Adjust the Question.

On any given topic, presenters have a defined sweet spot. It’s the scope of what they know and the depth of what they can answer. And yet, they rush in to answer things that they may not understand. They stumble when they try to answer anything and everything.

With broader audiences and more senior leaders, questions aren’t as simple or as clear. Leaders ask questions to connect recommendations or challenges to their areas of a business. And often, the communicator won’t know their area or can’t easily transfer their knowledge to it. So, they have to listen to the question and adjust the questions to what they can answer. Confidence in answering questions begins with the ability to adjust the question to your sweet spot.

STEP TWO:  Answer in a Sentence.

Because the presenter often feels that the Q&A section is more informal, they shift from being “on point” to a more casual communication style. They think out loud and often ramble through an answer to get to a point. That makes it hard to follow a response, and it annoys the more seasoned listener. Learning to pause and organize a focused response is a discipline that comes with answering questions well. A one sentence answer signals a definitive response, whether it means a definitive answer or not.

STEP THREE: Illustrate a Response.

Once a listener reacts to a clear response, you can expand on an answer and offer more context or illustration of how your response applies to a function within the company. The more complex questions tend to evolve into a back and forth with a listener, and communicators need to be comfortable with managing questions that don’t have easy answers. They lead to more questions.

 

Questions with tougher audiences and more seasoned listeners are still a sign of transferring knowledge. But the application of concepts isn’t as clear, and questions often open up more discussion. Communicators become facilitators who can guide a diverse group to common takeaways.

If you’ve reached a point in your career where communication has shifted from informing groups to trying to influence decisions, then answering questions is now a critical skill. And because it’s a common gap and frequent request, we’ve pulled it out of our content programs and developed a workshop focused solely on the art of answering questions and thinking on your feet.

Check out Handling the Q&A as an upcoming Open Program or get a tailored one-day program for your team!

As always, we’re here when you need us!

Want a free 15-minute consultation with us to see how we can help you or your leaders? Book a call now!

Your Time vs Their Time – The Mystique of Promotions

It’s January 23… and you’ve wrapped up one year and launched headfirst into another one. And buried within the holidays and celebrations is an end-of-the-year touchpoint. In that touchpoint discussion, managers will give feedback, a compensation review and sometimes a promotion.

It’s the “sometimes” that has created tension inside organizations. And while we work with many people to prepare for the end-of-year conversations, we also start coaching with people when they didn’t get what they want.

Promotions, or the lack of them, create tension in organizations, hard feelings between managers and employees – and a lot of misunderstanding with everyone. In fact, the tension around it has increased in recent years.

People managers feel like they get asked about promotions 3x more often than they used to. Most feedback sessions lead to “what’s in it for me,” and many employees want to meet frequently to be sure that their “promotion” and advancement is on track. Managers say that the language has shifted from “What’s my next opportunity?” to “You need to promote me” and “You owe me a promotion.” That’s a pretty demanding employee!

Employees are worried about falling behind. They’re worried about an increased cost of living. They want to hold onto the more flexible lifestyle and work style, and they’re impatient about getting to the next opportunity. They’re trying to shift the timing from when they want it to when the company is ready to do it.

That suggests that some employees don’t really understand how the timing of promotions works.

And the answer is: it depends.

There are some concepts that are universal for all companies.

• Promotions never happen because an employee asked for it. Promotions happen on a company’s time and when an opening or increased responsibility call for it.
• Promotions are rarely the sole decision of one leader.
• Promotions are best impacted by what you do vs. what you ask for.
• Promotions are more relational than transactional.

The concepts may seem clear. They may also seem rigid as if there’s little you can do to influence them in your favor. It may feel like there’s an invisible playbook inside a company, and some people seem to have one and you don’t. It’s more likely that some employees seek guidance and coaching and developed their own playbook for career advancement.

Here’s how we’d guide you to do the same.

Appreciate Feedback. Act on It.
Even though you aren’t in charge of when promotions happen, pay attention when these touchpoints occur. Even if you weren’t promoted, your career was discussed. Managers are most likely to share their thoughts –and the sound bites of others – as they go through a review.

Don’t challenge your manager’s perspective. Seek to understand it. If you come across as defensive or resistant, you won’t get much more. When you have constructive feedback, act on it. Not by trying to prove a leader wrong, but more by trying to shift an impression.

It doesn’t matter if impressions are accurate. It’s someone else’s perspective. And they have a right to it. You need to change it, not debate it.

In a coaching session, we ask you: what feedback you’ve gotten recently and what you’ve done with the feedback. Everyone answers the first question. Most people say “nothing” on the second one.

Managers vs Coaches.
Everybody has a manager, not everybody has a coach within that manager. And that’s OK. You shouldn’t put your career opportunities in the hands of one person anyway. Most promotions are decided by committee. But you should be savvy about where you stand with the manager you have.

In a coaching session, we ask you: where you stand in a manager’s pecking order. Are you the right-hand person for your manager? If not, are you second? And if not, chances are your manager may not be your best advocate. You have plenty of support in your current role. You just might not have the coach who’s going to help you move beyond it.

If there were an invisible playbook, page two would tell you to build an internal network. Build champions and coaches inside an organization, and they will support your future steps.

Results Speak Loudest.
There is an “I’m owed” mentality that is showing up in touchpoints. And it doesn’t fare well in a corporate setting. Promotions start with company needs, not individual ones. They will align, and promotions are likely. But you do more to promote yourself by your work vs. your words.

In a coaching setting, we talk to you about how you position your work and your brand. And this is often where some employees outshine others. They know how to package themselves more effectively. And instead of talking about what they should get, they talk more about what they’ve done.

Stop By, Say Hi!
We are still adjusting to new ways of working. The advantages of flexibility outweigh the trade-offs for most employees, but promotions are about visibility and relationships. And if they don’t know you…they don’t promote you. That’s not your manager’s responsibility, it’s yours. No matter how you’re working, you need to put added effort into relational time with your leader and others.

While we’ve heard a lot about how much employees need flexibility in their schedules, we’ve also heard what leaders say about adjusted work environments.

“If I’ve seen you in three Zoom meetings with 10 other people, I don’t know you.”

We know that promotions start with relationships. To promote you, I don’t just need to know your work. I need to know you to endorse you within the company.

 

Promotions are key points across a career, and as a result, they get a lot of attention. But worry less about timing and more about effort. Because there’s a lot you can do to greatly improve your chances.

If your year-end touchpoint didn’t go as you had planned, let’s talk about how you can proactively improve your opportunity.

As always, we’re here when you need us!

Want a free 15-minute consultation with us to see how we can help you or your leaders? Book a call now!