Don’t Blame PowerPoint!

Next to a laptop, PowerPoint (PPT) could be considered one of the top three tools used in business. More than 30 million presentations are built in the software every day tying up 15 million people hours at a cost of $252 million…..every single day! And yet, few of us are Masters of it. In fact, we have a love/hate relationship with the software which has led to the term, “death by PPT.”

AT SW&A, we hear a lot of the angst around preparing presentations blamed on the software.

From the listeners:

• “There were too many details and too much information.”
• “I got lost in the details and didn’t understand what the listener was asking me to do.”
• “It’s a horrible eye chart.”

From the communicators:

• “We go through more than 15 iterations of decks before we have a final presentation.”
• “I got so many edits to my slides that I’ve lost the point I was trying to make.”
• “I’m not artistic or creative; I hate building slides.”

And our response is always: Don’t blame PPT.

It’s the process…or lack of a process…that frustrates you. Not the software.

Here’s a little self-diagnosis.

Assume that you’re asked to deliver a presentation two weeks from today.  Whether you start planning it today or wait until next week to develop it, how many of you will start the process by opening up a PPT document on your laptop?

If this sounds like you, stay with me. Then, you begin outlining points by putting a text box on each slide or if you’ve covered the topic previously, you’ll open up another PPT and begin to migrate slides to your new deck. Either way, you’re building the foundation of your content, one slide at a time.

It’s a very linear approach to structure, and it’s the wrong approach.

Because now you have a collection of details instead of a storyline, and you will present the deck slide by slide versus concept linked to concept.

Is this your approach?  Most people say yes.

When PPT is used as the planning tool, it becomes cumbersome to work with and takes on a very different role. PPT’S role is to help you illustrate details or connect two points, not to thread all the points together.  That’s the role of an outline or storyline structure as we refer to it. The usage numbers above may explain this.  Because organizing content has become such a constant in our day, we may be telling ourselves that we can skip a step and organize our thoughts at the same time as we illustrate them. And, that’s a misuse of PPT.

The storyline structure is the first step, always. Whether you use our model or you have your own tool, as the communicator, you should always start with an end to end view of what you’re asking the listener to do. It’s rarely the details that fail in presentations; it’s always the connection between them.

A storyline view helps a communicator understand the bigger ideas and repeatable points that will lead the listener to an outcome or takeaway.  This changes how you build out a PPT.

When PPT becomes the second step, it works beautifully for the communicator and the listener. A broader storyline helps the listener see beyond what you’re illustrating and understand why you’re illustrating it. The communicator’s focus gets simpler and key concepts get repeated as the communicator focuses on pulling ideas forward rather than making every point.

PPT is also a horrible communicator and a really good illustrator.

Let’s diagnose that one.

Assume that the presentation you’re building is for another leader to deliver or it has such high visibility that several people want to give input before you deliver it. So, you work on the PPT for a few days and then you forward it for feedback.

Does this sound like you?  Then, what you may not realize is that even though you shared it for feedback, you were pretty locked into those slides. And your editors now begin to interpret what the slides mean.  They can see the illustration; they just don’t know the storyline. So, they create their own mental storyline to support your details. Then, they edit to their own thinking.

This leads to adding content on your slides, reordering your slides and even adding new slides to support their thinking. You get the edits back and don’t feel grateful for the input.  You’re frustrated. Because they’ve changed the meaning of your slides and thrown off the flow of your storyline. At least the storyline you have in your head.  Because it was never shared as a structure for the conversation.

Have you had this experience? Most people say yes.

 

The storyline drives communication; PPT creates illustration. If an editor can read a storyline to see the end to end plan for communication, they are much less likely to edit slides.  Instead, they’ll identify areas of the storyline that aren’t easy to understand or where they want you to add detail.

In fact, when a team is involved in preparing a presentation, we urge communicators to get buy-in to the storyline first before PPT is even introduced. This helps a group align to the full direction of communication and the big ideas before the supporting PPT takes shape. And it keeps a team moving through the organization process together. Then when you move to PPT, the second step, the feedback is limited to the look and feel of illustrations.

As a communicator, you want listeners spending less time on how to follow your thoughts and more time on understanding how the big ideas connect and lead to outcomes.

And if we’re pleased with the transformation we see when individuals add our first step  into content planning, we’re ecstatic when we see teams adopt it. Because if an individual can improve a single meeting, the full team can change their influence in an organization.

We know because we’ve made it happen.

We’ve taken many teams beyond the storyline structure to a team template that gives the communicators a template to follow and the listeners a consistent expectation. So, listeners spend less time trying to follow the structure and more time hearing the ideas.

When teams adopt a standard structure, it quickly takes hold in an organization. They become known for their ability to deliver clear ideas and recommendations which often raises their visibility in a company.

If you’re getting bogged down in details and edits, don’t blame PPT. Put the first step back into your process. And if you’d like some help learning to do that, join us for an upcoming storylines workshop. Even better, bring your team together and strengthen the group’s impact across your organization.

Call us when you need us.

With SW&A, Your Troubles Will be Out of Sight

You’re ready for some Christmas cheer
And the magical sound of eight tiny reindeer;
But before you can get to calm and bright
You have one last presentation to wrap tonight.

Those chestnuts are roasting, but you feel the fire
As your boss’s voice echoes like the Tabernacle choir;
You waited too late to do this and can only blame yourself
Your resources are now helpless – like that elf on a shelf.

It doesn’t have to be this way
Dashing through slides the night before
If you’ll only remember that a storyline
Takes a message, a framework and little more.

So while you feel like crying this time
There’s no need to pout and I’m telling you why
SW&A can help solve this
With a twitch of a nose and the blink of an eye.

And while we don’t climb down any chimneys
We’ll work our magic even when you’re awake;
Because while presentations can be bad or good
Make yours great… for goodness sake!

So, add us to your development plan
And check that list twice
Because when SW&A guides your content
Your troubles will be out of sight!

Happy Holidays from the SW&A Team! 

Retirements, Weddings and Funerals

Whether you’re a frequent communicator or an occasional one, chances are you’ve had the experience and pressure of speaking at some of life’s most important moments. Whether it’s a colleague’s retirement, a friend’s wedding or a loved one’s funeral, these important life moments raise the bar on wanting to get the message right and covering all the highlights.

I’ve helped with these moments hundreds of times by writing a toast, editing a eulogy, or bringing humor to a retirement speech. And in each instance, the communicator shares the concern and pressure of getting it right and saying it all. They feel responsible for communicating the importance of the individual as well as their relationship with them.

It’s a classic example of the difference between a communicator who is worried about everything they need to say and loses focus on what a group of listeners really want to hear. I had to follow my own advice a week ago when my son got married, and it brought the “rules of engagement” for these short speeches top of mind. 

Like any speech, success is defined by what listeners want to hear.

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The “rules of engagement” are:

Make a Point.

While most speakers feel the pressure to give a summary of events or cover a timeline, it’s better to make a single point than talk through a laundry list of points. Listeners want to hear one or two points about an individual, not every point. In fact, the most important goal is to connect the audience or group to the individual being honored, and it works much better to focus on a few ideas and bring them to life with stories.  

Stories set time, place and situation. So even listeners who weren’t a part of the story can connect to the situation and relate to the individual because of it.

Use Humor. 

All life moments include emotion. Whether it’s grief or joy, speakers often get overwhelmed by emotion during their remarks. It’s fine to share emotion and acknowledge it as part of your remarks. But in most of these situations, the listeners really want to be entertained. They want to laugh and connect to the humanity of the individual. Sharing sentiment is good; but a speech based entirely on emotion rarely works because it leaves the listeners focused on the communicator rather than the honoree.

Avoid Inuendoes.

While there may be a few stories or events that are unique to you and the honoree, if you aren’t comfortable being clear about the event, don’t talk about it. There’s nothing worse than a speech that has vague references or hints about something that a group doesn’t understand. If you have a story that’s inappropriate for the group but important to you, talk about the topic rather than the event and focus on how the honoree handled it or what you learned about them as a result of going through it. 

End with Impact.

Endings are as important as openings in these speeches. Work to connect how the speech begins with how it ends. Listeners like to hear the connection between how you started and how you ended. It adds impact, surprise and validates that you led them to a point.

Prepare & Practice.

Finding time to prepare remarks for an unexpected life moment or a long-planned one is difficult. This is where the pressure is real because listeners expect thoughts to be planned in a way that helps them celebrate an event, mourn a loss or bring closure to a career. 

And when a communicator rambles through thoughts, it frustrates listeners and they seem to miss the point of why they are together. In time-pressed situations, give yourself permission to tell one story and practice delivering it well. It’s less about making profound remarks and all about connecting the listeners to the honoree.

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“So, how well did the communication coach follow her own rules?“

And since I confessed that the “rules of engagement” were real for me a week ago, you may be  wondering:  So, how well did the communication coach follow her own rules? Pretty well, but it wasn’t easy.

Like most communicators, I had a lifeline to cover and wanted to be sure that I expressed my love and pride in my son a hundred times over. I felt the pressure to say it all as no one, but his Mother, could. Well actually, I guess his Father could cover the same lifeline, so we decided to deliver our toast together. That complicated things!

His father was happy for me to write it, but he wanted editing rights. Fair compromise. As we worked on our point, several stories and experiences hit the edit floor. And, I made us stay true to a point. We focused on two attributes of his personality that everyone in the room had experienced, and we built most of his friends into the examples we gave so that the listeners felt a part of our story.

We added humor in our delivery with back and forth banter and a story that illustrated our two different perspectives as parents. We connected the opening to the close and wrapped up with a final message to his bride.

Did it work? I think so. A lot of laughter, a few tears and a special hug were our proof points. But mostly for me, a good reminder that these short speeches are less about saying the right thing and all about connecting people to each other to celebrate important life moments.

And whether your speech is a life moment, a career moment or just a routine one, it’s our goal to help you connect with listeners. 

Call us when you need us!

Creating High-Performing Teams

As leaders step into new roles and realign strategies, they almost always adjust their teams. It makes sense. Leaders need people that they can trust, and they want people that they have experience with. In short order, they bring trusted colleagues into their group. It gives them peace of mind and an established working pattern, but it doesn’t immediately yield a high-performing team.

In fact, it can create competing priorities on a leadership team. As strategies get realigned, it shifts focus, responsibility and some initiatives. And unintentionally, peers can get on opposite sides of an issue from one another. The real risk of conflict is competition among the leaders’ employees who can feel as if they’re working on opposing teams. This creates friction within a culture and angst among employees. In order for employees to align behind strategies, the leadership team has to appear to be aligned with each other. And that doesn’t happen without effort.

To drive fast results, leaders create great 1:1 relationships with members of their team but they don’t always take the time or have the time to help the new colleagues build relationships with each other. In fact, the 1:1 approach can eliminate any need for peers to collaborate with each other.  When this happens, leaders have strong relationships but lack the bench strength that they’d like to have, the team trust that they need to have or the support system that the team needs.

Over time, it may sort itself out among the peers or by the leader.  But time is the one thing that organizations don’t seem to have these days. And, that’s why we’re often asked to help a leader accelerate the process.

Essentially, you’re trying to establish openness and candid feedback in order to work toward trust.

A high-performing team has three core qualities.

• They value diverse thinking.

  They’ve learned to see their peers beyond functional responsibility.  Instead, they value the way peers think and they learn to seek out the added perspective in their own decision making.

• They share ownership.

  A true team mentality comes from working together and solving together. They understand that they will have to compromise or improvise on most initiatives. They respect that multiple perspectives are usually better than a single one. And once their voice is heard, they align to the decision of the team.  

• They trust each other.

  Trust is an earned relationship and a goal the team reaches over time. By accelerating openness of thought and feedback, trust becomes a more intentional goal rather than evolving over time with trials and missteps along the way.

So how do you get a peer group there quickly? By focusing on the first two qualities in a way that lays the foundation for trust to develop. 

We follow a three-step process with teams to improve how they interact with each other and to strengthen their impact across a company.

First, we get to openness by putting each leader’s brand and peer impressions on the table for discussion. With our help, each individual understands how they’re perceived within a group today and what the group expects from them. We help each individual understand their strengths/challenges, and the areas where they will need to improve to win trust with their peers. We talk through the aspiration of a high-performing team and what each member needs to feel a part of it. This work is done without the leader and begins the process of empowering a team.

Second, we work to help each individual introduce new skills into the team. This may take shape in a workshop or across projects with a partner.  To value diverse thinking, the group has to begin to experience it. The openness of feedback and willingness to grow together sets the right environment for peers to speak up and get outside of their function area more often.

And finally, the leader has to adjust to a team mentality versus the 1:1 relationship that they may have started. While 1:1 expedites activity and gives the leader quick insights, it can also blindside buy-in across a group.  Leaders need help learning to defer decisions to group settings and shut down some of the side conversations that lead to misalignment. When a team senses that a leader has trust in them, they begin to respect the perspectives and ideas of one another. This drives more honesty in the room and ultimately works toward building trust for decision making within the team.

A high-performing team leads to a high-performing organization.

But with today’s pace of change across leaders and teams, most groups need a little help. If you’re leading a new team, a great starting point is peer feedback and honest impressions. And if the timing is right, we’d be happy to talk through how we might develop a plan for your team.

Call us when you need us!

CHANGE: An Advantage or Disruption to Early Career Employees?

We’ve all heard the catch phrases:  “Change is the New Normal” or “The Only Thing Constant Is Change.” And, certainly in the workplace, they’ve proven to be true.  But we hear much less about the impact of that change on employees. Especially those who are newer to the workforce and trying to establish a foundation for a career path.

Companies are focused on the mid-tier group, the new leaders. The pace of change is creating more opportunity than it ever has for those who are close to leadership. Opportunities are coming faster, the landscape is bigger and it’s why leadership development teams have focused on this group. And we’ve partnered with companies to expand the skills of these new leaders.

But most recently, we’ve paid attention to the impact of change on a different group….the early career employees.

The first decade of a career builds the foundational skills that define a career path. Leaders who started careers 20+ years ago didn’t navigate their careers at the same pace. They had more time, more direction and more support.  Now that they’ve become the group competing for the opportunities, they have less time and less focus to mentor the newest generation in the workforce.

But the bigger challenge is that the model for establishing a career foundation has changed significantly. Most early career employees don’t have the right guidelines. This employee group is trying to navigate a path that hasn’t been traveled by anyone else. 

So, we’ve taken an interest in helping early career employees navigate their career. And we’ve focused on our three “V’s” that best support career advancement in today’s shifting environments:  Visibility, Value and Velocity.

VISIBILITY

The number of managers most employees have in the first decade of their career has continued to climb. On average, most have had seven different managers at the end of ten years, which means having a new boss every 18 months.

Some of that change is their own doing by moving to different companies, but the pattern of a single manager promoting you within a company and creating the next opportunity for you is no longer the model.  Very early on, employees need to learn how to build relationships and create visibility for themselves.  To gain visibility, you have to build your unique network within a company early so that your success is lined up to multiple people and not a single (often revolving) track.

VALUE 

Access to leaders is easier today than ever before. Leaders want to hear all ideas, but you have to know how to position ideas with them. You need to know how to add value to the conversation.  For years, we’ve helped seasoned managers get a seat at the table by building conversations with measurable outcomes. And today, we’re helping a younger employee understand the leader’s perspective.

VELOCITY

There are confusing messages about how to work in corporate America. To attract employees, employers have offered many incentives:  unlimited vacation, flexible schedules and every sort of amenity from onsite childcare to ping-pong.  But for a generation that hasn’t fully developed a work ethic, it can be a little misleading.  It could suggest “do things when you want” and “get things to me when you can.” 

That’s incongruent with the pace of work. The typical front-line job requires upwards of 50 hours a week and can reach much longer during heavy “sprint” periods.  And with an early career employee expected to work nine to ten hours a day amongst unlimited choices, a few poor choices are likely to be made.

Gaining visibility and adding value to a conversation only matters if you’re willing to work hard to deliver on a result.  You have to put in the hours to achieve the results. That part of the career journey hasn’t changed.  

An early career employee always asks:  How long does it take to add value?  And the answer is much longer than they think.

This is the generation that is more prepared and capable than other generations have been. But they are restless.  They are constantly thinking about the next step and they are easily distracted by moving their skills to a different place that offers a different perk, a unique project or a better culture setting.  That impatience can lead to careers that move more sideways than forward. 

Velocity is a balance of speed and direction. And moving just to move doesn’t fit the formula. Moves should advance a career. Many early career employees get frustrated and move because they’re bored or restless, and in the end, that impatience and quick change ultimately leads them to continued frustration.

We’re working on a simple formula to help an early employee understand when their skills are considered advanceable and when their experience shows enough repetition that someone would put them in a bigger role or expanded responsibility. We hope it instills a little patience and a reason to stay in a role a little longer.  

Change doesn’t have to be disruptive.  And, in fact, with a little coaching it can be an asset.

Companies know they’re either headed toward change, they’re in the middle of change or they’re coming out of change, and someone who has been through it has great value to them. The key is to build a career story that reflects that experience rather than one that shows a limited skill set.

We’re excited by this new dimension to our conversations in companies and we are digging deeper for insights and experiences that can teach others how to navigate change. If change has disrupted your career path, we’d like to capture your insights.  If you’d like to share your story, please take a few minutes and complete our survey.

And if you see the challenges of change in your employee group, we’d love to host a program for you. We’ve rolled out the concepts above in short seminars and custom workshops. And, we expect that could be a sign of a more general program in the year ahead.

Call us when you need us.

GETTING IT RIGHT vs DOING IT WELL

Someone asked me recently about how many workshops I’ve taught throughout my career. I probably should keep up with that number a little better than I do. With simple math, I think it’s somewhere between 3,000 and 3,200. It’s a lot of programs, but I don’t think I’ve ever taught two days exactly the same way. The foundational components are always there, and the exercises are always similar. But the way I engage with a group shifts based on my read of the room and the experiences each group brings to us.

Now, this isn’t how I started as a communicator. There was a time when I was focused on getting it right. In fact, feedback that I got early in my career changed the way I thought about communication skills. I gave a presentation, and the feedback I got afterwards was very positive.

“Wow, you’re really confident on your feet.”

“You really seemed to know your facts.”

“You got everything right.”

And, I took that as a very good sign. Until my mentor, who overheard a lot of this feedback, asked me how I thought I did. I replied that I thought I got it right and that I did feel confident in front of the group. He looked at me and said, “Well, that’s a lot about how YOU did. You’ll know you’re a good communicator when people begin to share feedback about how THEY felt.”

At the time, it felt like he’d thrown cold water on me, but it’s feedback that I’ve never forgotten. And as my journey took me into communication coaching, I developed my own beliefs between the difference in “getting it right” and “doing it well.”

Most presenters are focused on getting it right. They work hard on the details, knowing the facts and making sure they cover them well. There’s an expectation of accuracy that puts pressure on structure and organization. That requires memorization or a lot of support materials. I’ve seen it all. Note cards, a single page with small print, several pages with large print, notes on a slide, notes on a phone, notes on a hand … you get the idea. Success is in the details and defined by getting it right.

You’ve seen it, too. You just didn’t realize you were seeing it. Memorizing a series of points or remembering a lot of details keeps you in your head. So, the presenter seems uninterested. Their face becomes void of expression because their focus is in their head, not in the room.

Facts are important, but no one ever remembers them all. So, getting it right is a tough expectation on a presenter that drives little impact with an audience.

That audience impact is what I call “doing it well.”

Spoken communication starts with connection and engagement. Details are a part of the storyline, but they can’t become more important than drawing people into an idea.

Doing it well requires someone else to be involved, and that’s exactly what a listener wants. Listeners believe communication should be about them, adjusted to them and interesting enough to engage them.

But most presenters stop short of mastering communication. They develop an approach to organizing ideas and maybe a system for memorizing them, and they settle into “getting it right.” But those who continue to evolve their skills will shift their focus from how they’re doing to how listeners are reacting. And, that’s when presenters begin to “do it well.”

It isn’t easy, but learning to communicate to influence is one of the most critical skills an aspiring leader can develop.

I believe you can see the difference every time you sit in a company all-hands meeting or a customer conference. When you watch a series of presenters, you can tell those who are involved with the group versus those who are involved with their thoughts.

You’ll also notice it when you see a room of people introduce themselves. We’ve all been a part of a setting where people are asked to introduce themselves and speak on a topic or theme that’s assigned. Some people seem to struggle with what to say; others seem perfectly at ease when they get up. The difference is those who are trying to get it right are worried about what to say and they get caught up in saying the right thing. Even in this setting, you’ll experience communicators in their heads trying to remember their points. The more relaxed communicator is thinking about how to engage with the group. When they stand up, they’ll say something that establishes a connection. It may tie back to someone else, it’s often humorous or even sometimes a little self-deprecating. But their main thought is always to connect with the group.

Impactful communication is both art and science.

The science of communication is in the structure of content. I describe this as the difference between a linear approach to presenting point after point versus a more simplified approach that combines big concepts and objectives. A good presenter simplifies the way they organize ideas so that it’s easy to move through them. It also changes the way they talk through ideas.

The art of communication is knowing how to engage people and invite them into a conversation. Everyone knows how to do this because it’s a part of everyday communication. We talk with people, and work for their response. The misunderstanding about engagement is that we view it as a different skill when we’re presenting instead of a universal one. Connection remains a 1:1 skill that has to be leveraged, not changed, with a larger group. And when presenters learn to do this, they evolve from getting it right to doing it well.

We’ve evolved too in how we support the journey of the communicator. While our content methodology remains the same, we’ve expanded our approach to coaching presence. We know that it starts with personal confidence in yourself before it can move toward engagement of everyone else. And, it’s why we teach presence across two workshops today.

If you’re ready to evolve from getting it right to doing it well, we’d love to help accelerate the journey.

Call us when you need us.

STUCK IN THE MIDDLE: The Tug on Product

A few years ago, we were asked to work with a product marketing team to strengthen stories and case studies that they were using to illustrate the impact of their products.

As we began our homework to learn the value their products delivered to customers, we quickly discovered we were learning more about the features of their products than their value to end users. And after a few more conversations, we saw the gap we were really solving for. Sales teams weren’t using the product materials provided; the leader hoped that we would help product marketing position stories to make the products more compelling. And, we did.

But along the way, we got curious about why the marketing materials were so feature focused. And that’s when we realized that the marketing group was really a product group. And, they were getting their insights from the product developers. They were positioning features because that’s how engineers talked about value, and they were missing the customer value and outcomes.

It’s a pattern that we’ve seen repeated in many companies since then.

Product teams often find themselves in the role of the middleman. They’re a step away from customers as they work with sales teams and a step away from deliverables as they work with engineers. Somehow, they’ve become the “go to” group to answer for everything.

And, that’s challenging. Sales gets frustrated because product causes delays. Engineers get frustrated because product causes changes.

Product managers spend most of their time with engineers who are building to a road map. But they experience most of the friction with the sales team. And while friction isn’t easy to navigate, the product group needs the sales group. They are the voice of the customer and provide the best insights and perspective on customer outcomes.

But what makes sales teams great at customer insights can also make them tough as the internal customer. They sign product up for a lot of things that aren’t doable. Sales doesn’t always understand the implications of what they’ve agreed to with a customer, so they commit time without a deep understanding of trade-offs. Or, they pull the product team onto customer calls so that product can personally commit to the request and the timeline.

And, many product managers do commit. Because, after all, their salespeople are good at selling. They can get you to buy into the need and the customer promise with ease. Next thing you know, the product manager has a “to do” list that’s longer than a child’s holiday wish list and about as likely to be delivered on.

And, that’s when product gets caught in the middle.

Because the next conversation is with the engineering and technology teams. And, they want to talk about that growing list of requests. Engineers call out the amount of time required, the misalignment with the overall roadmap and the conflict with bigger initiatives and priorities. Sometimes, the engineering teams refuse to take more on. And, now the product manager will have to go back to sales and communicate the delay. The tug of war begins.

And, that’s how product gets stuck in the middle.

It’s not an easy role to navigate, but it is a manageable one. And as we’ve continued to work with product teams, there are a few rules of engagement that we’ve coached them to consider…

Recognize the Gap

Sales and technology will never think alike. They are opposite ends of the spectrum. And, they don’t have to think alike if they have product in the middle. But they do have to value the perspectives of each other, and that’s the communication role that product can play. Get both perspectives into every conversation. When you’re talking to sales, make sure the conversation moves to HOW we’ll do things. When you’re talking to technology, make sure the conversation begins with the WHAT and WHY for the customer.

Clarify the Outcomes

Sales is a good friend to your customers. But they don’t always challenge the request. We see many technology groups backing off customization in order to deliver speed. Challenge the sales team to understand the outcome and the impact to a customer. Sometimes what they’ve been asked to do won’t deliver as much as a customer may think.

Identify the Trade-offs

The customer is king, but they don’t always rule the whole court. See above the details and call the tough questions. Technology is right about trade-offs. On the roadmap of development and delivery, when one thing moves ahead something else falls behind. Sales doesn’t always participate in this part of the conversation. Keep them in the loop and give them a better understanding of what is falling behind.

Solve Together

Product should have the megaphone in the tug of war. You have to win together and that comes from solving together. Think through the options and then give both groups the sound bites that help explain a delay to a customer or a change order to an engineering team.

Communicate Often

Product managers have become communication managers. And, it’s going to take repetition to keep everyone on the same page. The discrepancy between sales and technology is what needs to be done and the best way to get there. Once they agree, solidify the agreement with consistent communication and help them share it with stories and examples.

When product teams strengthen their role in the middle, companies see tremendous benefit from clarity of thoughts and alignment of priorities. If we can help your product team manage the role in the middle, we’d love to share some of our learnings with you.

Call us when you need us.

My Meeting Didn’t Go Well. Now What?

“My meeting didn’t go well.” Now What?

That may sound like one thought. But, it’s actually two different perspectives. It’s our clients who say, “My meeting didn’t go well.” And it’s me who asks: “So, now what?” What did you do to follow up?

The reply is often: “Nothing.”

Because when a communicator has invested a lot of time and effort to lead a conversation or present a new idea and it doesn’t go well, the emotion they feel is…well, at least it’s over. It’s behind me. And, I don’t have to do that again for 90 days. Whew!

It’s an understandable feeling, but a short-sighted one.

As roles expand, managers, directors and new VPs, are handed more responsibility. And with responsibility comes visibility. That’s a great thing because exposure leads to connection with senior leaders and future opportunities. But it also gets harder because topics are more complex, and recommendations are not so black and white.

In our research on executive conversations, we consistently hear that experienced communicators say conversations with leaders only reach their intended result 60% of the time. That means 40% of the time, the communicator doesn’t get a desired takeaway or result.

Whether your batting average is a little higher or a little lower, the reality is no one hits the mark every time. So, you need to know what to do when things get off course.

And, the answer begins by understanding what happens on the other side of the conversation.

The leader notices that you weren’t on top of your game or didn’t walk out with an approved next step. They may be surprised that you missed the mark if they’ve experienced a more successful conversation with you. Or, they may not know you and this may be their first impression. Whether it’s a first impression or a different one, they take note. And, they hold onto that impression.

In fact, anyone would. Your peers or employees would notice a conversation that didn’t yield takeaways. What’s different with a senior leader is that their experiences of you are not as frequent. So, their impressions last longer. Impressions last until they meet with you again or get the next report out. So, the power of an impression becomes more significant because they don’t see you the next day like a peer or an employee would. Instead, they hold onto those impressions, and over time impressions can become distorted.

We know this because we capture feedback from leaders who often say: “When I think about Joe as a communicator, I remember a meeting last year.” Or, “Sue seems like a sincere person, but she just can’t anticipate my questions well.” And, the follow-up phrase is often: “I just can’t get what I need from Sue. She’s not ready to lead this kind of discussion.” or, “Joe needs to lift the altitude of his conversations. He doesn’t know how to focus on what I need.”

And, those are impressions and comments that you need to diffuse. So, what do you do when meetings don’t go well? Three things can help a communicator move beyond a bad experience.

Acknowledge it. As much as you’d like to walk out and forget it ever happened, you need to acknowledge that it didn’t go well. Leaders worry most about whether someone is aware of mistakes. Notice in the quotes: “She’s not ready …” and “He doesn’t know …”. It’s the lack of awareness that sets up concern more than the miss itself.

Within 48 hours, send an email and acknowledge that you missed a point or fell short of having needed information. While the impression may not fade entirely, it’s now blended with an impression of awareness that gets high marks.

Answer it. Most misses are caused by questions that can’t be answered in the meeting or perspectives that were too far apart to find common ground. The solve is usually new information or a repositioning of information. Work quickly to get new information in front of the leader before they lose track of the topic. When you circle back with information, don’t dwell on the solution that you started with and avoid being defensive about the information you initially presented. Provide context to reset the topic and focus on moving the conversation forward.

If you can combine the answer with the acknowledgment, all the better. But if not, send an email to acknowledge and commit to a deadline of when the leader will have the correct information.

Check on it. The two steps above represent a lot of effort to reset a poor impression, and they work. But it’s always a good idea to circle back and confirm that the poor impression didn’t stick. This is your brand, not just a presentation. Use your manager to check on impressions. Ask if the leader has moved beyond the impression. In most cases, you’ll get good insight in return.

If you don’t have an easy way to assess impressions, watch for indicators of impressions. Are you taken out of senior-level meetings or presentations? Do you not get as much visibility as you once did? Is someone else reporting out on your initiative? Those are negative indicators. Or, did the conversation reset and move forward? Are you given added responsibilities and visibility? Those are possible indicators.

The reality is that an increase in visibility means an addition in complexity. These conversations aren’t easy, but they shouldn’t be risky. Nobody’s perfect, and nobody is expected to be. But, if your success rate is only 60%, you may need to improve your batting average.

And that’s where we can help. Hitting the right altitude and providing information that leaders value is a methodology we teach in our Leading Executive Conversations program. From how to recover a miss to improving the odds of success, we can help you improve consistency and outcomes.

Call us when you need us.

 

Frosty the VP

Frosty the VP
Was a manager with style
With a story here and a story there
He engaged listeners all the while

Frosty the VP
Had a takeaway for every call
He made data sing
And presentations ring
To departments big and small

There must have been some magic
In those stories that he told
For when he got up in a room
Even the CFO was sold

Frosty the VP
Made slides as alive as they could be
And his employees said
He was better than TED
As his brand spread across the company

His magic was
The tools he got
From SW&A;
For we helped him organize his thoughts
In a compelling kind of way

And into every meeting
With his points aligned just right
He’d brought laughs and cheer into every chair
And put the whole room in his sight

Frosty the VP
Is so many of you today
And as the year says goodbye
And reindeer start to fly
We’ll be wishing you Happy Holidays from SW&A!

The Gift of Feedback

You’ve probably heard “feedback is a gift” a time or two across your career. But it doesn’t feel like much of a gift whether you have to deliver the feedback or receive it. There’s joy in giving, especially this time of year, but we find little joy in year-end reviews or development discussions.

In fact, these meetings often feel more like a chore because feedback isn’t always well-received, and it often creates tension between a manager and an employee until you can move beyond it. When we ask managers to share their most challenging communication situations, feedback always makes the top three. Managers don’t like giving it, they aren’t good at it and they don’t always know how to move an employee beyond it.

And yet, when you ask employees about pivotal moments in their careers, they reflect on feedback or directions that set them on a different course or got them over a hurdle. They may not have liked “the gift” when it was received, but they valued the impact it had on helping them move forward.

Feedback is a gift that should be packaged in a way that both the giver and the receiver are open to engaging in it. And while feedback should be given frequently throughout the year, it seems very relevant and timely in December as the current year wraps up, the new year sets up and employees have an opportunity to reflect and reset for the year ahead.

Here are insights to consider from both sides of the discussion.

IF YOU’RE GIVING FEEDBACK…

Your mindset may begin with getting through it. You may have multiple feedback discussions you need to complete and summarize as a part of company policy for year end. But, feedback shouldn’t be a check-the-box task. While it doesn’t impact your career, it can have a profound impact on someone else’s. Be thoughtful about how you give it and approach it as something you’re willing to help someone work on and work through.

Keep these things top of mind.

The Coach and The Player: The best environment for feedback comes when an employee sees that you’ve shifted from their manager to their coach. Call that out at the start of the conversation so that they believe you’re trying to help rather than trying to correct. Managers approach feedback as telling someone what they did wrong and how to fix it. But a coach approaches feedback more as an opportunity for insight, impact and teaching. In fact, feedback is yours to deliver, but it is the employee’s to solve.

Raise questions, not answers: We grow through feedback because we process and solve for the issues within the feedback. Allow an employee to process feedback, good or constructive. This is an important conversation for them, allow them to see it as such. Don’t offer solutions, let the employee talk through what they can do differently. Sometimes, it may require letting them process it and come back a few days later with their thoughts. Position the impression and then wait…for ownership and reaction.

Share real-time observations: Feedback will draw a non-verbal response, even if the employee says very little. Share what you observe. It can often help illustrate the feedback or draw an employee into the discussion.

EX: “John, I imagine that wasn’t what you wanted to hear. And, your lack of response makes me feel as if you don’t want the insight or don’t understand the observation. Actually, it’s similar to how you come across in meetings.”

Manage resistance: If you’ve decided feedback is important enough to share, don’t allow an employee to be dismissive of it. Feedback should be the beginning of discussion, not the end of it. Put the responsibility on the employee to come back with ideas and next steps. Allow an employee to set a timeframe and a context for working through an issue. How they handle the follow-up steps speaks volumes about their willingness to learn and grow.

IF YOU’RE RECEIVING FEEDBACK…

Your mindset may be “grin and bear it,” especially if you’re ready for holiday celebrations and downtime before the year ahead. But, don’t dismiss it. Feedback is a gift and an opportunity to learn as much as you can about perception around your brand and discussion in year-end talent reviews. If you ask the right questions, you may get revealing answers.

Keep these things top of mind.

Be open, be still, and listen… to understand perspective. It doesn’t matter if you agree. Impressions are always helpful because they identify how your brand is being perceived. You may feel as if some feedback comes from a manager who just doesn’t see things the way you do. But even when feedback is isolated to a specific event or meeting, it’s an impression and the more you know about impressions, the more successful you will be in managing them.

Lean in to this conversation, don’t shut it down. Managers don’t like giving feedback and few are good at it. If they sense you’re uneasy, they clam up quick. Don’t challenge the input, seek to understand it and expand it. Ask for more insights. Ask how others reacted to it or whether your manager knows if it’s still a concern. When a manager can’t clearly explain an impression, it may be a sign that it’s a broader impression among their peer group.

EX: Manager says: “You need to show up better in staff meetings. You seem uninvolved and uninterested.” You say: How do I create that impression? And the response you get is: “I often see you on your phone and it seems like you’re not engaged in the discussion.”

This example illustrates a manager who observed a behavior and is very clear about the impression they formed as a result of it. It’s easy to fix. Leave your phone out of staff meetings.

EX: Manager says: “You need to show up better in staff meetings. You seem uninvolved and uninterested.” You say: How do I create that impression and what can I do to improve it? And the response you get is: “Well, you should participate more. Speak up and add your perspective.” You might say: “Can you think of a situation where you felt my perspective was missing or could have changed a conversation?”

This example illustrates a manager who has an impression that may have been shaped by others or from a broader impression of you. It’s harder to resolve because the manager doesn’t have clarity on what they expect to be different. You need to know more about overall impressions of your brand beyond the staff meeting and you should ask for them.

Circle back with action steps. Don’t leave the feedback unresolved with a manager. Even though they don’t like giving it, they remember it. And, they will remember how you responded and what you did about it. No one is perfect; we’re all growing and learning along the way. But we remember how people respond to feedback and our willingness to share more is based on the employee’s receptiveness.

Feedback is a gift, and managers and employees should treat it as one. While feedback may create angst on both sides of the discussion, it’s a critical step to help anyone move forward in their career.

So, embrace it as the year wraps up…and say “thanks” to the person who took the time to make it worthwhile.

Call us when you need us!