The Virtual Manager

While 2020 wasn’t the year any of us expected, 2021 shows great potential to deliver on many anticipated resets. And we’re ready! Ready to move beyond the pandemic, ready to reset company goals, and ready to feel energized for the year ahead.

Companies are talking to employees, industry experts and business partners to get a sense of what those resets will be. One that is generating a lot of discussion is the work from home setting. Early survey results show more than 90% of employees like this new setting for work…and they want to reset on where they work and how they work. While some companies may continue to work fully virtually, most will reset a new normal that isn’t fully back to where we were in 2019 and won’t fully continue as we are today.

But what will continue is a new role: the virtual manager.

When teams began working from home, we coached managers as boundaries around their role became very blurred and unstructured. Overnight, they were managing around and through personal dynamics.  And they had to learn how to track work dynamics, personal dynamics and emotional distress over a virtual platform.

We wrote about the big shifts (It’s Getting Personal , March 2020). And we quickly saw that most managers were hesitant with them, some managers were tentative about them, and by the end of the year, all managers adjusted to them.

Managers were coached quickly to lead with empathy and understanding in 2020. Now, the expectations of a manager have reset again in 2021, and managers are still learning to manage virtual Productivity, virtual Connectivity and virtual Collaborability.

Here’s why:

Productivity

While managers still have empathy for dynamics surrounding a work from home setting, there has been a reset on expectations. Many employees worked very consistently through the pandemic; others were more sporadic. The result is managers who are trying to figure out how to allow for flexibility while adding more structure and pressure to deadlines and deliverables.

It means they have to be focused on how they set expectations and clear in how they communicate those expectations. And they will have to balance the pressure that one person’s flexibility puts on another person’s deadline. They will manage some people who come in the office and others who remain at home. They will feel more pressure on their own schedule as they try to adjust to everyone else’s.

We’re helping managers with meeting agendas, difficult conversations and a more structured plan for updates. Everyone is still learning.

Connectivity

Managers worked hard throughout 2020 to connect with virtual employees. It almost doubled the amount of time it takes on their calendars. Most say they never really tracked the hallway chats or drive-by conversations in the office. But they’ve learned to track touchpoints now so that they can balance how often they check in and who they’re checking in with.

The frequency of meetings and checkpoints added some efficiency, but it also diluted some connectivity.  It’s hard to force connection at 10am on Tuesday if your employee is distracted or a little less open at that time. Most managers have tried virtual social time. Some ideas work, and some don’t. There are multiple learnings and adjustments around what employees enjoy and what feels forced.

And for managers, some of this felt critical as companies wanted to stay in touch through uncertainty.  But productivity and expectations are no longer uncertain. 2021 has been reset. So, what will be enough and what will be too much connection? It will be a blended approach in 2021. And most managers hope that some of the in-person and easier 1:1 connection will return.

We’re helping managers manage their time and their priorities. We’re helping them facilitate an open and candid conversation virtually. But everyone is still learning.

Collaborability

This may be the weakest link for the virtual manager. In addition to keeping individuals connected and productive, a good manager takes responsibility for getting the whole team to high productivity. And every manager says it’s harder to do. They can run efficient meetings and report outs, but they miss the group’s ability to really collaborate together. They need the spontaneous thoughts that come when team members talk often and huddle informally around the more complex opportunities.

There are lots of tools, but teams haven’t settled in easily with many of them. In many cases, the challenge is time. To make virtual work productive, managers and employees became very focused on efficiency. And while you can set aside 30 minutes to get a team up to speed, you can’t force out of the box thinking into a short meeting. When you try to replicate a longer whiteboard session, you hit Zoom fatigue with participants.

We’re helping managers’ rethink the format that they can’t replicate. We’re leveraging ways to create small discussions in large groups and prework before brain work.

And…everyone is still learning.

It’s a dynamic and evolving skill, and our coaching is evolving right with it. We see commonalities in challenges and different approaches to good practices. And once companies commit to their virtual work strategy, we’ll know how expanded a future manager’s skills need to be. For now, we’ve created a format that combines real-time coaching with small group discussion. Our Virtual Manager coaching circles run for six weeks and support real-time issues with tangible tools and solutions. It allows a manager to learn fast from shared group experiences. It drives discussion, camaraderie….and a little fun!

If you’d like a little support during the 2021 resets, reserve your spot in your Virtual Manager cohort here.

And as always, we’re here when you need us!

Wrap it Up!

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

Happy Holidays & Happy New Year!

SW&A Team

Meetings Going Nowhere

Has it really been eight months since we shifted to a different way of working?  Somehow…it has!   In fact, it’s been long enough that email tags have shifted from “working from home” to “back at work,” “in and out of the office” and “still at home.”

We’ve talked to people through the different iterations of virtual work, and some interesting trends have emerged around how people work and communicate with each other.

In March, the early response we heard was: “This really works!” “This is great.” “We got this.” “We’re much more effective than we thought we would be.”

At the time, we assumed virtual work was going well because people knew the work they needed to do.  Big initiatives were already in place for 2020.  Most people were in a phase of execution, and once home, they focused on the things they had to do.

Fast forward six months, and the insights have shifted significantly.  Now we hear:

• “This is really hard to do.”
• “It’s impossible to get the input you need.”
• “I feel like I’m missing direction.”
• “I’m so sick of working alone.”

People hear about others going back to work and seem envious. They say they want to go back to the office.  I think they really want to go back to working with each other. Because one consistent theme we’re heard all along is: virtual communication is harder.

People say:

• “There’s just no response when you lead a meeting.”
• “I can’t get people to participate.”
• “It takes twice as long to get a decision.”
• “I’m always misunderstood.”

And it’s why we’ve dubbed this a trend: meetings going nowhere.

Virtual meetings aren’t as effective as they need to be.  In fact, they seem a little chaotic when you ask people what’s going wrong.

• “There are too many people talking.”
• “Agendas aren’t clear.”
• “No one seems sure what the point of the meeting is.”
• “There are too many people in the meeting.”
• “No one seems to be in charge.”

A virtual meeting is different than an in-person meeting.  It can be run effectively, but it takes a lot more work to get it organized.  And even though it’s been eight months, few people have built a skill set for leading virtual meetings well. They’re relying on skills they’ve used for years, and from a listener’s perspective, they don’t translate well.

Here’s the root cause: while the “work from home” setting made everything about communication feel more impromptu and casual, it’s actually the opposite. An effective virtual meeting requires more structure to keep a group focused and on task. The discussion itself may be informal, but it takes work to get a group involved.

Here are a few of the differences that we’re helping managers and leaders consider.

BRAINSTORMING SESSIONS:

This is the hardest format to transfer to a virtual setting.  Hard to believe, because most people love these meetings! They start with a few concepts and quickly build to some great ideas.  It’s the strength of an in-person discussion, and it works because people are 100% focused on being in the room, and they build off of energy and enthusiasm of others. People are very visible, and they work hard to contribute. In fact, they feel a little pressure to show up well.

Virtually, it’s much harder to build on ideas and attach to someone else’s energy. Instead, we tend to stay wedded to our own thought and we just reinforce it when we have an opportunity to speak. And reflection time is dead time in a virtual meeting. If you tell a group to take 10 minutes to write down their thoughts, they’re more likely to take ten minutes and get a snack.

A virtual discussion has to have guardrails and direction to be productive. A virtual group does better with choices of concepts and focused work on supporting a recommendation for a choice versus trying to come up with the broader concepts.

We learned this ourselves as we transitioned to virtual workshops. We gave groups one of  our standard exercises and quickly saw they did very little with it. When we modified the scope of the exercise to making a choice between options, they were able to collaborate better. They needed defined roles and specific instructions of what to do. Their input was very good, but they got there differently.

The same may be true of your discussion sessions.

PREWORK AND ASSIGNMENTS: 

Do more of this for virtual meetings. Everyone seems exhausted and overworked, but people miss connection. And it will simplify your discussion if you have people work together prior to the meeting instead of in the meeting.

Plan ahead and assign partners to discuss prework together. It’s a benefit from both perspectives. This makes the large meeting discussion easier on the leader because you have reduced the input by half. And, it ensures everyone feels heard because they shared perspective with a partner prior to the larger meeting.

TEMPLATES & AGENDAS: 

It’s the routine meetings that people dislike the most. The feedback is lack of structure, lack of direction and just no real takeaways. If you’re leading standing meetings, you owe it to a group to improve the takeaways.

Meetings have become more transactional in a virtual setting, but people still want to feel as if their attendance mattered.  It takes more formality and structure to help it run well.

Our rule of thumb is cover less. Simplicity over complexity. These virtual meetings are a hybrid of conference calls and in-person meetings. There’s still a lot of clunkiness in how we experience each other online. So, keep it simple.

Agree on a flow of an agenda and stick to it in every meeting. A consistent structure makes it easier to follow a meeting and easier to hear what’s being said. Agree on how to participate. It’s like learning a new game. Give everybody the rules, and they’ll get a little better each time you hold a meeting.

CAMERAS ON:

Companies may have sent the wrong message about the video early on. It was with the best of intentions because they knew that people were dealing with a lot in their homes. But the camera is a signal of focus. It says, “I’m here and focused on this conversation.”

No camera or darkness around someone’s name, says the person isn’t fully there.

And it changes the very essence of communication: Connection. No matter what your role is in a meeting, turn the video on and be fully there as a communicator.

We aren’t as chaotic as we were eight months ago. We’re working differently and we’ve learned a lot from our experiences. If your company is headed into another six months or more of virtual meetings, then learning to lead a meeting that’s going somewhere will be an important skill in 2021.

If you’d like a little help resetting your annual planning session or your team’s routine  meetings, we can help you transition to an effective virtual model.

Call us when you need us.

Bringing Impact through Compelling Communication

Original post: Sally Williamson & Associates is the proud recipient of Top Leadership Development Training/Coaching Provider 2020

A leader or a manager may be highly qualified and skilled in his chosen field, but his abilities become irrelevant without competent communication skills. At Sally Williamson & Associates (SW&A), Sally Williamson and her team help rising leaders at all levels strengthen communication influence and impact across their organization. The company undertakes training programs and executive presence coaching, to teach the fundamentals and finer nuances of effective communication, and create better leaders.

In an interview with CIO Application, Sally Williamson, President and founder of SW&A shares her insights on effective communication, and how  their training programs  and coaching can improve communication strategies. As a leading resource for improving the impact of spoken communications, Williamson has been coaching leaders for more than thirty years. Her team specializes in executive coaching and developing custom programs for groups across company verticals. By working with professionals to better understand their listener’s expectations, SW&A can coach  a communicator to influence people with a compelling storyline and personal style that drives engagement.

What spurred the conception of SW&A?

I founded SW&A when I realized the gap between training and coaching in the marketplace. We are one of the few firms in the training industry that combines both concepts to not only introduce skills but to help a person adapt skills to their communication situations. Communication is a durable skill that all organizations look for, and it is an essential skill of leadership.

In the early stages of a person’s career, if someone can express their ideas with confidence, they move up the career ladder quickly. For mid-level managers, clarity of communication is essential to manage people and processes. And for senior leaders, the expectations of communication increase significantly as employees and customers expect a compelling leader who can build trust, understanding and conviction behind ideas.

What are some of the recent trends that you have witnessed in the leadership development space?

The trend we see is urgency. Companies need leaders ready to lead, and new managers ready to manage right now. The skills haven’t changed; it’s the timing that has intensified in terms of having someone ready to step into a role. And, it’s why we have two delivery models: executive coaching and group workshops. Through workshops, we teach the foundational skills for future leaders and through coaching, we strengthen consistency and impact for someone who is already leading.

Tell us more about the services you offer and how do you deliver the same?

We deliver our services through group workshops, and one-on-one coaching programs.

When you work on communication skills, it comes down to content development, what someone plans to say, and personal delivery skills, how someone comes across when they say it.

We teach foundational skills for creating content and building personal confidence, and then we support that foundation with a number of situational tools to help someone apply the fundamentals in many different ways.

What sets us apart in the marketplace is a deep bench of expertise. Our coaches share the intent of communication rather than just the techniques.  And that means that we bring  knowledge from our research and our insights on what it takes to drive impact with listeners. While we often focus on communication in a classroom format, no one on our team started their career as an instructor. Instead, we were in roles that required clarity and influence and we have leveraged that experience into our coaching relationships.

Historically, our workshops run one-two days, and our coaching engagements are tailored to the needs of the coachee.  In 2020, many of our programs shifted  to a virtual format, and we now have the capability to deliver all of our services as a series of sessions with small group breakouts and coaching circles.

How do you measure the outcomes of your programs?

We start with the rating of the workshop by participants. We capture a self-assessment of skills at the start of the program and the completion of the program. We also have an online practice tool that allows us to track frequency of practice and the tools being leveraged by an individual. In our custom programs, we provide managers with tools for ongoing coaching and support. And if we’ve worked with a group on messaging as well as personal delivery, we can also design a customer survey to measure effectiveness of content and style.

Could you narrate an instance that highlights the benefits brought to one of your clients, through your coaching program?

One of our clients was a specialized group of technologists. They were the most senior technical team within the organization and a quiet resource to a top leader. With an abrupt shift in leadership, the senior sponsor was gone and the group had no visibility and no executive support. The technical leader feared that her team would be dissolved.

She sought help to build the storyline that elevated their role and their results within the organization. She knew they had to resell their value to the leadership team and build greater awareness across the organization. We worked with the team to build a story that highlighted their expertise and raised awareness of their impact. We built a strategy with their communications team to raise their visibility among colleagues and we helped each technologist gain confidence in sharing that story in multiple settings.

Within about six months, the group had established visibility within the company and had begun to establish value with the leadership team. Within a year, the group had doubled in size and was managing three times the amount of work for the full leadership team.

What is SW&A’s future roadmap and how do you stay ahead of the competition?

We always align ourselves with our client’s priorities and pain points. We learn a lot through relationships and discussions about expectations. One client may lead us to their priorities, and over a period of time, we begin to see a trend developing across a number of clients.

We’re able to share commonalities and bring conversations together as we position our response to a trend.

A great example was the pandemic. No one really understood the nuances of virtual communication and the balance of similarities and differences. We quickly pulled our learnings together and created a Virtual Communicator course to help our clients navigate the new normal.

We’re also underway with our fourth book on career disruption. The trends that we see are more frequent shifts in careers and roles.  So, whether you create your own disruption or are impacted by a company’s disruption, we believe professional development and skills of influence are ingredients that people need to take ownership for themselves. The book sets up the research to validate the trend and provides our insight and coaching on how to reset your personal brand and your professional career.

The Spirited Leader – Passion vs Intensity

The last six months have been different, and the next six months may continue the trend. And our response to that is beginning to show up in language and communication.

We’ve said a lot about blurred lines between workspace and personal space, worktime and down time. But we’re also hearing some blurred lines between appropriate and inappropriate language and experiences.

Most of us are stressed with uncertainty and have felt a little frayed along the way. It’s a very confusing picture when some companies and individuals are overworked, and some are out of work. Some managers are pushing to make quotas and others are pushing to deliver products and services faster than they ever have before. And both extremes seem to bring out bad behavior.

Here’s what we hear:

“He just snapped on our sales call. He yelled at me and called me an idiot who would be lucky to still have a job on Monday.”

“She glared at me and told me I was the dumbest product manager she’d ever had to work with. She just didn’t think she could put up with me through the conversion.”

 “He called me out in front of all my peers.  He said his ten-year-old could have done a better job than me. And I was so upset that I burst into tears on the call. Then, I was mortified.”

And while the tense times may bring out the worst in some, the spirited leader wasn’t born out of the pandemic. And the language above isn’t passion; it’s intensity. It’s lashing out with the intent to make someone feel badly. And it’s wrong.

If you’ve been on the receiving end of intensity, you know how it makes you feel. We’ve all had our feelings hurt by a personal friend who’s a little too honest or a little too direct. But, when your boss takes a shot, it’s different. It’s someone in a position of power and influence who makes you feel belittled.

We meet a lot of leaders who are intense. And we sometimes meet leaders who need a little help recovering from outbursts similar to those above. In most cases, I don’t think they mean to belittle anyone.

Their roles are stressful. If an employee feels pressure, you can assume the pressure only intensifies when you talk to their manager or the manager’s boss. That’s not an excuse, but it is an explanation for what happens.

The spirited leader is someone who blends thoughts with emotions and expresses them in a tangled outburst. For a moment, emotion gets the better of them and they say things they shouldn’t say.

Through coaching, we can help someone recognize that emotion and thought have been smashed together. As a leader, you have to be intentional about what you say. And sometimes, you have to be careful about revealing how you feel. It doesn’t mean that you won’t have emotional reactions to people or situations. You are a spirited leader, and that spirit or passion may have gotten you where you are today.

But you can’t release that on someone else. You have to stay intentional about what you mean to say, and you have to own how you make someone else feel based on what you say. By separating your emotion from your thought, you can talk through what you’re thinking without always sharing what you’re feeling. You can also share what you’re feeling and then put it aside before you share the thought of what you want an employee to do.

Here are coaching thoughts for the leaders who shared the emotions above:

“He just snapped on our sales call. He yelled at me and called me an idiot who would be  lucky to still have a job on Monday.”

“John, I’m very frustrated right now, and I don’t want that frustration to be the only thing you hear.  So, let me put that aside and tell you this. (Breathe!) You aren’t delivering on our agreed upon expectations.  You had three things to accomplish this week, and they have not been accomplished. So, you need to figure out how to get out of a rut in order to stay in your role.”

“She glared at me and told me I was the dumbest product manager she’d ever had to work with. She just didn’t think she could put up with me through the conversion.”

(Breathe and exhale as you relax your face. Don’t send emotion forward through nonverbals.)

“I am feeling very defeated by our mistakes on this conversion. And I’m not sure how to improve things. Do you have better insight on why we’re struggling to work well together?”

“He called me out in front of all my peers.  He said his ten-year-old could have done a better job than me.  And I was so upset that I burst into tears on the call. Then, I was mortified.”

It doesn’t take a spirited leader to get this one wrong. Good leaders give positive feedback in front of a peer group and give constructive feedback only one on one.

We have blended workspace and personal space and work time with down time. But intensity has to stay out of the work conversations. In personal relationships, unleased emotion may hurt someone’s feelings. In a work relationship, it could cost you your job.

If you’re a spirited leader, try the concept above. Recognize what’s happening and manage through it by talking about emotions and thoughts separately. And if you work for a spirited leader, see if you can get this newsletter in front of them.

Maybe they’ll call us when they need us.

Helping Tech to Talk Exec

You’ve seen this challenge. It’s in every meeting where strategy connects to implementation. It’s where vision meets tactics. And it’s one of the biggest communication challenges in most companies.

Here’s how it happens:

The leadership team wants to expand a product into a new vertical. They’ve seen the numbers to support market size and they know there’s a window of opportunity. They’ve also been told there’s a “little tweaking” that will need to be done in the product’s application to make it viable in the new vertical. So, the next meeting calls for the engineers to come in and explain what’s involved in “tweaking” or converting the product.

The leadership team is looking for a 15-minute explanation to quantify what needs to be done and how long it will take. Instead, they get the step-by-step details of how it will be done.

In an effort to get out of the details and move toward answers, the leaders jump in with questions and assumptions. It was meant to speed up the discussion, but instead it signals to an engineer that the leaders didn’t understand the information. So, the engineer provides more explanation.

The leaders want the bottom-line. The engineers communicate in process and details. And whether the disconnect goes on for several minutes or more than an hour, it’s frustrating to both the executive listeners and the technical communicator.

As a coach I’ve been asked many times: “Why is communicating to the executive level so hard for engineers and technical teams? After all, they are arguably the smartest people in the company!”

Both points are true. Engineers are some of the smartest people in a company, and communicating with executives is a common challenge. It always has been. But companies are noticing it more because technical input has become more critical as a point of influence and essential to making smart decisions.

So, why is “executive talk” hard?

I’ve coached on both of sides of the table for decades and solved for the challenge when I wrote Leading Executive Conversations. But I wrote the book for all audiences who want to solve for the executives’ perspective…and the tech group is a little unique.

Through the years, I’ve learned that it really comes down to how people think, because how they think impacts how they speak. And engineers think in details, steps and precision. And thank goodness they do! Would you want to drive an automobile that was built from a sketch instead of a blueprint? Can you imagine working on a computer that can do 20 things but can’t connect those things to each other?

Whether process-thinking is innate or developed over time, engineers add the greatest value by bringing precision and detail to vague concepts. It’s no wonder that they communicate in details. To tell a leader that they can build a new capability in eight weeks isn’t how they think. And in fact, they wouldn’t be comfortable with that answer unless someone took them through details of what was planned over those eight weeks. It’s how they think, it’s how they work, and that’s why it’s how they communicate. I describe it as communicating from the bottom up.

Yet most leaders think in the opposite manner. They let go of thinking through details of HOW some time ago. They need the What, and the Why. They start with the big concept and challenge whether the WHY has enough value to pursue. They listen to implementation just enough to buy-in. Most leaders think and communicate from the top-down.

And the disconnect comes when the leader feels impatient working through the HOW to get to WHY and the engineer feels the value isn’t justified unless you communicate detailed steps to prove out the HOW.

But it’s a disconnect that’s solvable because you’re dealing with some of the smartest people in the room! And once we figured out why the challenge exists, we developed a process for solving it. And we’ve found that technical teams can be some of the best students of communication.

To help Tech to talk Exec, we developed a process that is based on key insights and a formulaic outline. We’re prescriptive in defining the executive perspective and building specific examples that illustrate how the outline works against common technical topics.

It’s our storyline formula with two key components: a Message and a Framework. This gives an engineer a blueprint to follow that lifts the altitude of their conversation. The details don’t disappear entirely. But the flow of communication is organized with a top-down approach that starts with what executives value and then leads to the technical steps that can be reduced or expanded based on an executive’s interest.

It’s solving for one of the biggest communication challenges in companies today. And it’s helping technical teams become key influencers at a time when their expertise is essential to smart business decisions.

Do you need help coaching tech to talk exec?  We’d love to share our insights and some great success stories about strengthening the voice and the impact of technical teams.

We’re here when you need us!

How to Talk About Yourself

We all do it. We’re asked to step into the limelight from time to time. Most times we’re asked to give presentations on topics we know a lot about. Sometimes we’re asked to give speeches on topics we’ve led or direction we’ve set. But eventually, the journey for all communicators leads to the hardest topic of all: ourselves.

Nobody wants to give this speech. Everybody shies away from this topic. I think it’s because this is the topic we fear will disappoint a group or not live up to assumptions or expectations. And if you don’t consider your career path an incredible journey, you assume it isn’t worth telling. If your experiences can’t fill a best-selling novel, you assume we don’t want to hear them.

But that isn’t so. Everyone has a story or two within them. Talking about yourself helps people get to know you and trust you. Your stories make you real. They also make you vulnerable.

And that’s another reason people don’t like to talk about themselves. Career journeys aren’t limited to successes. In fact, most journeys have more challenges than successes. They’re crooked paths with dead ends, roadblocks and even a few falls. But that’s what we love about them. The career journey helps us relate to someone and potentially see a glimpse of what we have in common.

So, why is it hard? Because many people worry that sharing more about where you’re from, what you’ve tried and where you’ve failed may not justify the success you have now. It may not add up to the spot you’re in today. It doesn’t matter. It’s your journey, and you are where you are for good reason. What does matter is that you understand how to tell your story in a way that’s interesting to others.

And that’s where most people struggle. They don’t know how to tell their stories.

Case in point:

A few years ago, I was giving a keynote at a conference and was scheduled to follow a well-known business founder. I was intrigued to meet him and actually wondered how I would get a group to shift to my topic after his story. I shouldn’t have worried. Unfortunately, he bombed telling his own story.

Here’s why.

He told his career journey in terms of the big things he had accomplished. And he had accomplished a lot. But instead of talking about the challenges that led to accomplishments, he focused on his heroics. For thirty minutes, he went through step after step of building a very successful business. And not once, did he relate anything he said to the people sitting in the ballroom.  It felt like a canned speech, and it sounded like a homage to a hero.

The reason to share your story is to make it relatable to a listener. The people sitting in his audience didn’t relate to him as a successful founder or entrepreneur. And I kept thinking that within his glory, there must have been some failures or a few stumbles that they could relate to.

This is the core element of storytelling. The connection with the listener isn’t through great outcomes or success. It’s always with the challenge or the unexpected curve.

And that’s part of why it’s hard to tell your own story. You’re focused much more on the successes. That’s what you want the group to know.  It’s “How I Did This” or “How I Built This.” But the points of connection are always the struggles. It’s the little steps that make you human and vulnerable.

It’s hard to map it out because you lived it and you don’t always see it.  It’s less a chronology of everything you did; only your Mother cares about that. It’s more the cumulative learnings that shape who you’ve become and the stories you use to bring those learnings to life.

We’ve helped many managers and leaders tell their stories through a three-step process.

Here’s how we do it:

First, we map the journey.

We want to know what you’ve done and where you’ve been. We start from the early days and track every step leading to your current role. Sometimes we do this on a map; sometimes we do this on a timeline. We build the full picture so we can see the highlights and low-lights in perspective.

Second, we interview you to get more details about your journey.

We dig deeper to understand the experiences that seemed to matter the most. It’s never the same. But there are often patterns that help us color in the experiences that have shaped you. We call those your key learnings, and we sometimes identify them as the traits of your leadership.

And finally, we take those experiences and we bring them to life with specific stories.

Every journey has stories, but not all stories are worth sharing. Many communicators make the mistake of trying to tell too many. We focus on helping you get to three or four stories that will intrigue a listener. And we help you tell those stories really well.

When it’s complete, it’s no longer the dreaded career speech. It’s your story told in a manner that adds interest and meaning for listeners. It has highs and lows that engage a group and make you seem more “normal” than they might have assumed. And that’s pretty inspiring to any group.

So, when you’re asked to talk about yourself, let us help you do it. We’ll find those stories within you that can paint a picture of who you are and where you’ve been. And, I think you’ll find it more fun than you might have imagined.

We’re here when you need us!

The Mastery of Presence

The development of an effective communicator is a journey. And I’ve always felt that my team can impact that journey in two ways. In our workshops, we introduce awareness and core competencies to start someone’s journey, and in our 1:1 coaching relationships, we accelerate the journey by working side by side to influence results.

But neither format nor a combination of the two is a promise of mastery. And I’ve thought about that a lot in the last few years.

I’ve had an opportunity to work with a lot of people over thirty years, and I’ve tracked their progress over time. Every investment of time leads to progress and every lapse in effort leads to bad habits. And so behind the scenes, I’ve been thinking about mastery and comparing my knowledge of different journeys to different outcomes.

I don’t think it can be solely blamed on a lack of effort if someone never truly masters the art. And I don’t think it can be assumed that only a few people can. I’ve seen the road to mastery for many clients, and I’ve thought about my own experiences at trying to master different things in life.

To be honest, there are far more skills that I’ve quit on than ones I’ve mastered. And you may feel the same way. It’s why I believe any kind of “road to mastery” has to have passion behind it. You have to deeply want something to be great at it before you’ll invest the time and the length of the journey to master a skill. That easily takes learning guitar and marathon running off my list!  Way too much of a commitment and not enough passion to master it. But it still leaves hiking 16ers and beating my kids at pickleball as potentials!

If you connect passion to a true interest in mastery of communication, then you’ll see some people  drop off the journey based on a lack of a commitment toward something they just don’t value enough.  And if that’s you, we should have a different conversation because I believe that someone who can influence and impact groups is destined to be a leader in one setting or another. And I also believe if you aren’t willing to be a great communicator, then you shouldn’t lead people because people want to follow someone who can define a direction with passion and purpose.

But even those who have been earnest about communication skills, don’t always master them. And I think some people stall on the journey because they don’t have all the ingredients in place for mastery.  As we’ve thought about it on our team, we’ve agreed that mastery comes from combining six things:

FEEDBACK:

Impressions and guidance aren’t the same thing. Everyone can give feedback by telling you how they’ve experienced you. But few people really understand what drives impressions and how to help someone consider new choices that move beyond them. And that’s why a lot of communicators get guidance that isn’t very helpful. More than 70% of the guidance clients share was a clear impression and misguided direction.

To master communication, you need insights from an expert, and someone who knows how to interpret impressions into actionable goals.

WELL-DEFINED GOALS:

One of the hardest things to do as a coach is to meet someone where they are versus where you think they should be. Thinking through where a person’s journey is today helps shape goals that they can reach. And accomplishing some goals encourages someone to keep working toward mastery.

It’s no different than training for anything else. You don’t start at the top of the 16er. You work your way up through the length and difficulty of hikes.

We work hard to set goals that can be reached in a workshop day or across a coaching engagement. To master communication, you have to keep resetting goals that align to your journey and push you toward the next milestone.

NEW HABITS:

That’s the first real roadblock for new skills. Are we really willing to change habits and think about being uncomfortable as a part of the journey? Mastery is way outside your comfort zone, and it’s the reason a good coach can keep setting new goals and forward motion for a communicator.  Expectations change with any new role, and skills have to expand and grow as well. It’s why communication should be integrated into any transition plan.

To master communication, you have to keep resetting communication skills. Every time you step into a new role, you should align goals for influence and impact and think through how you can continue to grow.

Those three elements make a big difference in how well someone begins the communication journey.  It’s the right formula to start with awareness, intention and effort. And I’ve evolved our coaching steps over the years to integrate these three concepts into everything we do.

And we deliver on it really well…as long as we’re in charge! And that’s what I’ve been thinking about around mastery. The difference in someone who becomes a master of communication is something that’s happening when we aren’t around:

PRACTICE:

It’s really what leads to mastery. And it’s practice with intention, not just repetition. It takes a plan, manageable pieces and a little motivation. And those are the remaining three ingredients.

PRACTICE PLAN:

We’ve created practice plans in coaching engagements for years. We outline where to practice and align someone’s goals to upcoming events. But we’ve come to realize we can’t practice for someone. And the difference in someone who knows how to practice versus someone who picks up a few techniques is miles apart.

People who master communication buy into practice. They’re less about “I use a few things” and all about “Here’s how I think about it.” When it’s internalized, it sticks.

SMALL PARTS:

Practice helps a communicator break big goals into small parts. Whether it happened in our workshops or someone else’s, when someone tells me they took away a technique, I explore it further. Techniques feel like acting to me. It’s something you think you’re supposed to do in a certain setting. Communication doesn’t have one setting or one technique. Communication is all about intention in every situation.

To master communication, you have to know what you’re trying to do in order to do it well. Break down techniques into intents. When you truly understand it, you begin to accomplish it. And, that’s great momentum toward mastery.

MOTIVATION:

I called out passion at the start of the newsletter, and I think it’s critical to keep you going. I can’t force you to be as passionate about communication as I am. But I can help you practice in small parts, and maybe that’s all the motivation you need! That’s why we built SWAU – a practice platform that provides the intent behind every communication tool and a little encouragement in every step. It brings clear goals together with an intentional plan to work on style step by step.

Our exploration around mastery has expanded our thinking about Presence and has led to a few additions to our offerings.

We recommend you begin your journey with our personal brand workshop. It takes a deeper look at impressions and assumptions. And it sets a great stage for thinking through why impressions occur so that you start your journey with a clear set of intentional choices, rather than universal techniques.

And when you’re ready…we’ve added Presence 2.0, which we call Mastering Executive Presence. And whether we worked with you two years ago or ten, this is the next level course that shifts focus from your style to the audience impact. We look at style through the lens of a listener and take the basic concepts and fit them within a higher profile setting and a high-stakes impact.

And mostly, we’ve built the practice platform to keep the journey going.

That’s what we’ve done about mastering communication. What will you do?

 We’re here when you need us!

BEYOND LIMBO – How to Reset 2020 for Your Team

Limbo… it’s an uncertain period of time waiting on a resolution. And while our experiences over the last 90 days have been different, overwhelming, emotional, defining, and exhausting, I think we would all agree, it’s also been a state of limbo.

We’ve made the best of it. We shifted to new formats, and we navigated a new normal. But we’ve been thinking about it as a transition period and something we would leave behind soon. And for most people, that’s begun to happen. Many people have gotten a haircut or a manicure. They’ve been to a restaurant or a store. They’ve increased their circle to include friends and extended family. Our life seems to be resetting. It’s modified. It’s still full of uncertainty and caution, but it’s coming back.

The one area that may still seem in limbo is work.  Some people are back in offices. My team has returned, and it brings back a sense of normalcy and ease of collaborating. But for a lot of corporate employees, the formula just doesn’t work. The guidelines for social distancing don’t fit the corporate footprint.

Companies are trying different formulas. Employees come in on different days; departments set different schedules.  Other companies have said they will stay home until there is a vaccine. Regardless, work isn’t resetting easily, and as other parts of our lives fall into place, employees may still feel like they’re waiting for a resolution for their work setting.

Leaders need to reset their teams to move beyond limbo. And communication is the best way to do that.

The reset message needs to feel different than what they’ve been hearing for 90 days. Most groups have been in “survival mode.”  Companies have laid off employees or reduced employee hours. None of those messages have been easy, and most of them focus on what’s happening today. Leaders are exhausted and managing through a week by week view of things. Teams are behind in forecasting the rest of 2020, and leaders are late in getting a clear view of what’s ahead. But it’s time.

It’s time to talk about what is certain and what is not, and it’s time to instill a more forward-looking view into an organization. Employees need a reset and a look ahead in order to move beyond limbo and feel a sense of security and confidence.  Some leaders do this at the midpoint of any year; all leaders have to communicate this at the midpoint of this year.

Here are some thoughts on how to reset your message:

Think Outside-In.

Leaders have been very internally focused with their communication. And for good reason! They are making a lot of decisions about the current state of companies. But now it’s time to use the midyear communication to shift that focus.  Talk about customers and clients.

Your customers instill confidence in a way that nothing else can. Even if their news isn’t good news, it answers uncertainty. When things begin to make sense and pieces fit together, everyone can move forward.

Connect the Year.

Connect your message back to the start of the year. Companies started 2020 with goals and expectations.  And in fact, most companies started the year quite well. A lot has changed.  But not everything has changed. When you connect what you’re doing now with what you set out to do, employees hear consistencies and begin to see that some things are on track.  That builds hope and confidence. They’ve lived the differences, so they need less about how hard it’s been and more about where it’s going.

Adjust Goals, not Expectations.

Redefine success and adjust the 2020 goals to something employees can reach the second half of the year. We lived with a “shelter in place” concept that was imposed on us. It felt safe, but it felt out of our control. Everyone would like some control back.

It’s important for company goals, but it’s also important for the mental health of your team to feel there are expectations and adjusted goals that they can achieve. Give employees a reason to get up and turn on their laptop every day.

Make it Personal.

Many leaders have done this effectively throughout the whole process. Others just simply haven’t had the time. Personal touch will be the piece that helps employees feel the most connected. When you reset the year, commit some of your time to this as well.

Plan online lunches or afternoon breaks. Meet with team members in very small groups….no more than five virtually.  Turn off the videos and make a few calls just audio. Invite a group to walk with you in their own neighborhood as you sort through a topic or simply connect with each other.

It’s harder virtually, and it takes more effort. But it’s worth the effort. The big decisions that impact the second half of the year are now in focus. The best use of a leader’s time now is to inspire employees around that focus with a sense of hope, accomplishment and even joy.

Reset Yourself. 

Nothing about the last few months has been easy. As a leader, you must be exhausted. No one can get beyond limbo if they don’t feel they have a fresh start. So, take the time to replenish your own energy. A week away sounds good to me!

Then, invest the time to create the right message to move your team beyond limbo.

It may be harder than it’s been before. And it may be more challenging to bring clarity or conviction to your thoughts. But that’s leadership. The ability to see ahead of a team and instill the energy and inspiration that employees need to get beyond limbo.

It’s an important message, and you need to do it well. And if you’d like a little help thinking it through, I hope you’ll call us.

Because we’re always here when you need us.

THE VIRTUAL COMMUNICATOR: It’s Not as Easy as it Seems

Our “new normal” as virtual communicators has progressed in the last few months. As we’ve talked to clients, the first conversations were about how “easy it was” to make systems and processes work virtually. Corporate teams did a great job of setting up transitions and processes to move a workforce to a virtual setting. The first focus was the technology of communication…but it wasn’t as easy as it seemed.

Then, the conversation shifted to communicators and we were asked: “What should leaders be doing to create a virtual culture?” This was our article, “Leading through Video” that focused on how to stay visible with employees. Overnight, a leader’s toolkit expanded. Many had to adapt quickly to engage an invisible audience in virtual town halls and conferences…and it wasn’t as easy as it seemed.

And now, conversations are shifting from leaders to everybody else, and we’re hearing: “We need help with this. We don’t understand the ground rules of virtual communication. My team can’t run meetings, my team can’t lead customer conversations, my managers can’t influence their teams. We need help with platforms, we need help with focus, we need help with engagement.” None of it was  as easy as it seemed

How can that be?

Remote working and virtual working may not be synonymous. Remote working is a term we’ve used for a while to refer to someone who doesn’t come into the office. They may work remotely every day or just some days. It implies a different way of working and sometimes a different schedule. Remote workers set their own timeline, their own space and their own approach to their role. It works well for people who can work independent of almost everyone else.

When we made everyone virtual, we realized that every employee couldn’t work independent every day. We needed to communicate and interact with each other. And most people can feel work happening if they can “see” work. So overnight, virtual working required video. It’s a good way to get interaction and to talk to someone.

But it also required employees to sit at a computer and interact with a laptop screen for 8+ hours every day. It’s like playing a video game for hours on end. It wears you out. And it didn’t really follow the same practices of a remote worker who’s working, but within their guidelines and time frames. And very few were sitting for 8+ hours.

And now we’ve figured it out. It isn’t the same setting, and it isn’t as easy as it seems. In fact, it’s different from both perspectives.

For a listener, it’s more removed and more independent. You can get most of the experience through video, but it’s not always clear and focused. That’s because communicators are distracted by new steps and not always “ready” to manage a meeting. Listeners also have a harder time interacting with other listeners. It’s not like sitting in a room and observing others. Technology controls your view, and you get a snapshot of those talking a lot, not those who are quiet. And if a listener doesn’t like the pace or the interaction, they have the power and independence over video to turn off their camera, turn off their audio and just “leave” for a few moments.

That changes the power of the communicator. We’re not used to people connecting and disconnecting so easily. It makes things very disjointed. While the listener is a little more distant, the video makes the communicator more intimate. It’s a close-up shot of you. Yes, you can change that if you know how, but some communicators aren’t really sure where the camera is. So, the snapshot may have them looking down, looking left or all around, and it makes it harder to focus on them and harder to hear what they say. And many communicators say they’re managing too much in this new format, and it feels like a juggling exercise to run a virtual meeting.

It is different, and it’s a new set of skills. And it’s why in response to the questions and discussion mentioned above, we’ve pulled our best practices together to create “The  Virtual Communicator” program for leaders, sales teams, internal teams, project teams, and anyone who is trying to improve their impact in a virtual setting.

Our premise is that it takes three things: Preparation, Participation and Presence.

Here are a few highlights from the program.

PREPARATION

We’ve always said that a prepared communicator sends an agenda in advance, so participants know what you expect them to do in an upcoming conversation. It’s a best practice for all meetings, and it’s a necessity for the virtual communicator. It’s hard for the virtual communicator to generate participation in the moment. When listeners aren’t prepared to participate, the virtual meeting falls flat. This makes the communicator lose confidence, and the listener lose interest. And that’s when listeners disconnect.  They can turn on/off technology at will.

Sometimes, technology is the challenge for communicators and listeners. Platforms are being over-worked, and they aren’t running beautifully. But most of it is operator error. The leader is dropping calls, dropping people, talking without sound, talking with too much sound, etc. The first two minutes of any virtual meeting should be ground rules for technology and participation. No one is doing it, and everyone needs it.

PARTICIPATION

Once the ground rules are set, the communicator has to signal participation. We introduce techniques for getting involvement early and keeping it throughout a meeting.

It takes facilitation skills, and few communicators have had much experience with facilitation.

Technology works against you on this one. Technology pulls the talkers front and center. If you’re speaking, you show up more on the screen. The communicator needs to know who isn’t talking to make sure they have everyone engaged. And the quiet listeners are hard to “see.” We’ve developed a simple workaround that helps a communicator track a full group and still keep their focus on the conversation.

PRESENCE

Your presence is as important on video as it is in a conference room. In fact, it’s a more intimate snapshot. We don’t see the communicator from head to toe. We see a close-up shot from the shoulders up which makes connection and expression the most critical style component.

That’s a challenge because many communicators don’t seem to know where the camera is. In order to make a listener feel seen, you have to be talking directly to them. Communicators seems to be looking down and all around. In the close-up shot, the lack of connection is front and center.

You can adjust the listeners’ view…. you can improve it, but you have to think about it. Some teams are having a lot of fun with backdrops. They are fun, but distorting, for important meetings. It seems as if someone is behind a curtain pulling on your body parts. Ears get cut off, arms seem to be broken, etc. It will be a “to do” for marketing teams to improve the green screen backdrops. For now, find a real setting in your house that works for important meetings to avoid the distraction.

It’s a new medium, and it requires a new set of skills. They aren’t totally different, but they aren’t as easy as they may seem. If you’re beginning to focus on the skills of your communicators, we’d like to help your team manage and improve their virtual setting.

Learn more and sign up for The Virtual Communicator today.

We’re here when you need us.