When Feedback is a Setback

We’ve all heard the adage: feedback is a gift. And in most cases, it is. But the gift itself is sometimes overlooked. Most of us think feedback is a gift because it tells us how we’re doing and how we can improve. We think of feedback as a performance measure because it’s often packaged within a performance review. But the greatest gift of feedback is the insight it provides into someone else’s perspective.

And the further along you are in your career journey, the more that perspective matters.

Early in a career, feedback tends to tie to one manager’s thinking. Performance is about skills as you learn and settle into an individual contributor role. But as careers progress, feedback shifts from skills to impact and from deliverables to influence.

Unfortunately, it’s also when feedback becomes less frequent. It’s harder to give feedback about impressions and impact. It’s more nuanced and subjective. People managers can’t look at a list of eight skills and tell you that you “check the box on six and need to improve on two.” Impressions are more relational. Do people enjoy working with you? Are you able to resolve conflict in meetings? Do you respect ideas of others, or do you do all the talking?

Feedback becomes less frequent just as the impact of those impressions matter most. And that’s when feedback can be a setback.

Once you hit a mid-management level, a single people leader doesn’t control career advancement. People leaders work in groups to discuss expectations, career advancement and succession. And impressions lead the conversation. How have a group of leaders experienced you? Have you had visibility across a management team – or only with one leader? Do they see flexibility in your skills? Could they move you from one area to another to accelerate impact?

Those impressions have been taking shape over time and if you and your manager haven’t talked about them, you may be behind or misaligned. Often, it can be an unexpected roadblock to what you’d like to do next.

So, what can you do about it?

• First, ask for feedback on impressions
• And second, follow three steps to manage feedback effectively

People leaders don’t give great feedback on impressions because it’s a harder conversation to lead. When people managers share impressions or input from others, they don’t always have clear ideas on how to get beyond it. To position an impression, they talk more broadly and less specifically, which can make it hard to change an impression.

That’s why some managers avoid this feedback and let the impression linger. That’s harder because it can build over time and become more challenging for you to address if it’s taken hold. You need this feedback, and if it isn’t a part of how your manager shares feedback today, you should broaden the conversation and ask for it.

If this has happened to you, you’re not alone. More than 75% of seasoned managers don’t have a full view of their brand and impact within an organization. It’s why most of our coaching engagements include a verbal assessment to better understand impressions, strengths and blind spots. If it isn’t something that you’ve done recently, it’s a helpful view into your brand within an organization.

And that leads to the second point. There are three things you can do to signal you’re open and appreciative of receiving subjective feedback.

First, own it. Our instinct when someone shares an impression is to react to it. And the first step to encourage an open conversation is to avoid that.

Your manager might say: “John, I wasn’t in the meeting, but I’ve heard that you were defensive as others tried to give input to our rollout plan for the integration.”

All of us want to jump in quickly and say:

“No, I wasn’t defensive. I just felt like they didn’t understand the timeline and so I went back through it.”

A quick reaction signals that you’re not really listening. You’re solving it…which your manager reads as dismissive of the feedback. Instead, listen fully. Allow your manager to get the full thought out before you respond. He or she is literally trying to share how people experienced you in a meeting. You need to fully hear it.

Pause, listen and ask for more.

Because chances are when someone tells your manager, you are resistant, they tell your manager more. If you cut off the conversation too quickly, you’ll shut down the most important part of the feedback.

Instead, own the comment and try to understand the perspective.

EX: If someone felt I was defensive, how did that impact the ideas that they were trying to share with me?

Second, clarify it.

From a manager’s perspective, this conversation is less about solving for impressions and more about raising awareness.

Once the manager has framed the impressions, you may have questions to better understand the group’s reaction or impact. Avoid getting too tactical about yourself yet. Seek deeper understanding to learn if your manager has heard this feedback before. Is it broader than one meeting? Has your manager experienced it before? Does your manager have another example?

Keep yourself in discovery mode. It’s an open conversation with your manager, not an interrogation. And the more insight that they share, the more you can process what may be leading to the impressions.

And third, resolve it.

Impressions don’t get solved overnight. Working on how others perceive you and interact with you can be a hard shift to make.

The manager’s goal was to start with awareness, not resolution. And you need some time to think about what you’ve heard. You may even validate it with input from others.

Impressions may take months to reset. Most people need a plan to become more intentional about showing up differently. In this meeting, gain a commitment from your manager of when you’d like to come back and share your thoughts on how to resolve it.

External coaching can be a great resource. Working through feedback, impressions and overall impact in an organization is one of the most effective ways to use a coach. If feedback has set you back or hasn’t even been offered, we’d love to help you gain awareness of your brand and your opportunities to continue to advance.

Also Read: Are You Being Cautious with Feedback?

Join Sally for a Group Coaching Session on June 17 at 10:30am ET!

 

Can Chat GPT Write My Speech?

It’s an obvious question as ChatGPT continues to show up in things we google and ways we’re learning to work differently.

But the best response didn’t come from me. It came from a client who said:

Sure, ChatGPT can write your speech – as long as your expectation is a crappy, first draft!

I agree!

Your expectations should be higher than something that would work for anyone in any setting. As I’ve played around with ChatGPT, I’ve learned that there’s an art to how you ask, how you reframe and drill down to information that’s useful. But it is an incredible resource tool that has great potential to get you to that first draft. And that’s the part many people say is the biggest drain of time.

If you’ve worked with our storyline framework, then you know the difference in setting external insights and internal perspective. ChatGPT could be a great resource to help you find those insights to broaden, challenge or expand a locked-in belief. But be wary of easy facts that may not hold up. Be sure you re-research everything you get from ChatGPT to be sure it happened as it’s quote, and the metrics are valid.

As a coach, I’m always a little skeptical when the question is ‘can ChatGPT write my speech?’ vs ‘can ChatGPT find interesting facts?’. It makes me wonder if the goal was a shortcut versus a memorable speech. I’m all for leveraging these tools – as long as your goal remains impact versus efficiency. And before you rely on AI as a viable partner, here’s a quick reminder of what your expectations of yourself should be as a communicator.

Before you align to an easy way out, think about what good looks like and how you should evaluate yourself in terms of expectations and results.

Before every significant communication, ask yourself three questions:

Is it you? – Communication should align to a communicator’s brand. Would people in your audience say –“I can see why he did it.” Or “That’s so in line with who she is.” There are several ways to make content your own from storytelling to word choice to delivery choice and many more. Authenticity is the top attribute listeners describe with presence.

ChatGPT can’t give you that.

Is it memorable? – Attracting and holding the attention of any group is more challenging than it’s ever been. Listeners are distracted, impatient and many days, flat out uninterested. Your content has to break through that. And in many cases, it takes the ability to react to people in the room more than preplanned content you set a week ago.

It’s hard work to find the thread that will pull people into your ideas. You need to know them, you need to align to them and then you need to find a way to pull their interest into your ideas.
You want the content and context you share to be memorable so that the group you meet on Monday shares it with the group they meet with on Thursday. Whether you’re the CEO or the operations manager, the goal of communication is to help information travel.

ChatGPT can’t define that.

Is it actionable? – While I often say there’s no pass/fail in communication, there is impact. And all the effort you’ve put behind a message and a speech is best measured by whether or not listeners took away an actionable insight. Internally, did they rethink the way they’re approaching a project or a work team? Externally, did they have an “aha” about your solution or a broader view based on your insights? Did you ask them for follow-up or action steps? Did you create urgency to act or build trust to work together?

ChatGPT can’t do that…But you can.

You can gauge every speaking opportunity against those three questions. It raises the bar on expectations – and challenges you to take responsibility for making something happen as a result of your communication.

So, can ChatGPT write your speech? Not as well as you can.

Crappy, first drafts seem better suited for wedding toasts than business communication. Assign ChatGPT and AI a supporting role and maybe those swirling data points will inspire you beyond the crappy, first draft. Great communication deserves a little sweat equity and the best of you.

 

Are You Going to Memorize That?

For many of us, memorizing content dates back to grade school. In third grade, it was usually poetry or an element of a famous speech in history.

Ask a third-grade teacher, and they’ll tell you why they assign it. Memorization builds confidence, it develops young brains and it helps young students think more about the meaning beneath the words.

But those values don’t hold up with business content and in business settings. In fact, memorizing is a huge liability for a speaker for the same reasons it may be a good idea for a third grader.

As a communicator, you’re not trying to think beneath the words, you’re trying to influence through them. You’re not trying to put stress on your brain to remember a word, you’re trying to leverage a thought to draw a response from an audience. And while it may feel confident as a step of preparation, it quickly becomes obvious that someone is uncomfortable with memorized content because it’s written all over their face.

If your preparation strategy is memorization, it’s time to break that habit.

What should you do instead?

Ironically, what we see on a communicator’s face is pretty consistent between a third grader and an adult. Do you remember watching young classmates stand up and recite poetry? It was clear they were searching for words, it was clear that they were trying to rush through it, and it was clear they weren’t aware of anyone else in the room.

That’s still very recognizable on any communicator’s face.

Technically, to repeat thoughts from memory requires someone to be in their head. Through the years, we can get better at stringing words together and visualizing that string of words to recite them in order. But it’s a technique that keeps your focus in your head and blocks any awareness of or connection to the listeners. That’s why it’s also the most common cause of losing your place.

Instead, start with the most basic point of communication: the listener.

The point of communication is not to push out information; it’s to pull in listeners. Think about it. That’s what you do in 1:1 conversations every day. When you talk to a colleague, your goal isn’t just to tell them something. Your goal is to get their reaction to it. In fact, when we don’t get a reaction, we tend to stop talking about a topic and move on to something else.

Years ago, I was coaching a client to get out of his head. In his case, it was easy to see what he was doing because his face was void of expression, his voice was monotone, and he looked away to get his thoughts. When I talked to him about pushing out information versus pulling in people, he was surprised by my expectation.

In fact, he told me that he’d never thought about what people did with his information. Instead, he thought of it as showing up and dumping all of his information on a conference table in front of people and assumed that they took what they needed. He hadn’t considered that the way he said it impacted how they heard it.

But it does.

Audiences only retain about 10-30% of what they hear. The difference in those percentages seems to be how hard the communicator works to influence an idea.

So, how do you prepare effectively?

These five steps will help a communicator develop an effective approach:

First, set the flow of a storyline. If you’ve worked with SW&A on content, then you know that we organize ideas with the listener in mind. This creates alignment and an easy way to engage listeners in any conversation or presentation. It also helps a communicator adopt an order to content that is easy to follow consistently.

Second, expand ideas into details. For important presentations, invest the time to build a talk track and put intention to how details are explained. This helps you add color commentary and interest with stories and examples. The level below the big ideas is where the communicator captures their own emotion and unique way of sharing points.

Third, visualize the ideas. Your visuals should follow your content, not the other way around. Visuals are a powerful part of content development if they’re used in the right place. But you can’t build the flow of content through visuals because visuals are tied to details. When you leverage visuals once the details have taken shape, you’ll use them much more effectively.

Fourth, practice from an outline. The talk track got your own words on a page, but it’s not what you use to practice. You practice with an outline. The talk track helped details take shape. The outline pulls you back to focus on leading a listener through ideas and not getting bogged down in word choice. In fact as you practice with an outline, you’ll notice that you use different words to get across the same stories and examples. And it’s much easier to settle in with what comes to mind versus keeping your mind focused to retrieve the word.

Fifth, practice out loud. That’s what builds confidence. When you hear the words, you own the words. When you feel the delivery of an idea or the ownership of a story, your style attaches to content and increases your ability to influence.

These five steps are a better way to develop content and approach an audience a little smarter than a third grader. We’ll show you how!

 

Influencing Clients Through Compelling Communication

As the second month of the year wraps up, so have the sales kick-off meetings.  Across all B:B sales teams, internal meetings have set the strategy and the revenue goals to supercharge the year ahead. New solutions and big expectations for what the sales team can accomplish. And at each of these meetings, salespeople get new product features and new demonstrations, but not always added support and coaching on how to advance client conversations. And that’s the most essential part of expanding relationships.

It’s the paradigm in relationships that every salesperson experiences.

You’ve got a group of relationships that you’ve developed over time. It started by bringing the right solution to a problem. It continued as you delivered outcomes, and at some point, it took hold as you built trust. Today, you have a base of clients who value your product(s) and trust your inputs. So much so that as time passes, complacency settles in.

Not because you aren’t earnest. More because you didn’t know how to get beyond your current reputation.

Unintentionally, as you delivered outcomes, your customers aligned those outcomes to your company’s brand. And so, you’re known by one solution, not a whole family of solutions.

Or in today’s environment, you have new solutions that weren’t even a part of your portfolio when you started the relationship. And the paradigm becomes the more you solve for one kind of problem, the deeper the impression sets as the company with that solution.

• If you sold a retailer a new e-payment solution…it may be hard to expand that relationship to offer security solutions.
• If you positioned an HR tool for tracking employee data…it may be challenging to reposition that same tool with marketing for tracking consumer analytics.
• Or if you sold a technology that simplifies finance functions…it’s hard to repackage it as an operational tool that simplifies supply chain functions.

But those are the common asks of most B2B sales teams today.

So, How Do You Solve It?

As companies expand their offerings, apply technologies to more complex problems and race to see who can embed the best AI solutions everywhere and in everything, capabilities and offerings are changing overnight. Yesterday’s go-to-market story has evolved so much that even the sales team isn’t quite sure how to tell it. And if they’re going to get to new buyers and drive increased revenue, they’re going to have to broaden the conversation.

We’ve seen many of the sales toolkits roll out this year, and that’s the tool sales teams need that’s missing.

“The methodology to broaden, expand or change a conversation”

Salespeople are armed with your company’s latest offerings and capabilities. But they aren’t given a lot of support in how to evolve conversations to get all those new solutions in front of the right people.

In the past, it happened organically over time. The more time they spent in an account, the more people they met. And they could leverage the relationship by being knowledgeable and responsive.

But time seems to be the only thing companies aren’t counting on these days. There’s an urgency to pull related capabilities together and introduce a broader family of solutions that reaches into multiple areas of a company. And that requires sales team to shift conversations faster as they compete with new players and different objectives.

That’s why we’re helping sales groups rethink how they leverage our storyline process.

Since it’s built from a listener’s perspective, the idea of setting perspective with insights is a strong starting point. It’s helped hundreds of sales teams learn how to frame expertise against a customer’s needs rather than their own capabilities. And we’re showing teams how to leverage the same concept to broaden and shift conversations. In many cases, we’re building templates for specific situations which helps a group accelerate faster.

If you’ve introduced our foundational storyline to your team, here’s how you can leverage it further:

• We coach teams to use outside insights to pivot inside beliefs. By doing this, we can help a group lift the altitude of perspective and broaden a conversation to get to other areas of a company.
• We coach teams to minimize a roadblock by setting broader alignment to an ideal state and positioning a roadblock as one element that they can resolve to get to that state.
• And we coach teams to create a bias toward action by bringing options and risks to customers rather than single recommendations.

The pace at which companies are eager to move starts with sales teams who are confident and capable of broadening conversations. It isn’t easy.  It’s a different conversation, and an essential one, to expand relationships quickly. If you’ve armed your group with new product capabilities and bigger revenue expectations, but you forgot about the communication essentials, it’s not too late.

Let’s talk about how to reset relationships and get your team in the right conversations.

We’re here when you need us!

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

Do I Need a Coach?

Last year, I spent a lot of time on airplanes which can lead to a lot of introductory conversations. And when you introduce yourself as a communication coach, most seatmates have questions. The most common one is:

Do you think I need a coach?

A complex question which always gets a broad response from me: “It depends.” And from there, I learn a lot about someone’s career path and aspirations to date.

If I were sitting next to you, I’d say:

If this is the year that you want to get beyond roadblocks that have held back your career advancement and visibility…coaching is a great option.

Or if this is the year that you’ve been handed a great opportunity and it’s getting bigger and moving faster than you expected…coaching is a great option.

Communications coaching can help you push through almost any obstacle or excel at almost any opportunity.

But coaching doesn’t make sense if you’ve earmarked this as the year you want to coast or stand still. The value of coaching gets diluted when you don’t have any expectations or outcomes aligned to it.

If our practice is any indication, executive coaching is up by almost 30% in comparison to other leadership development programs. And the reason is the urgency to get results and the desire for hands-on support across leadership levels.

Our practice is built on two formats: group workshops and individual coaching. So, we’re not partial to one over the other. But where workshops rely on hypothetical situations and commonalities across a group of people to coach new skills, 1:1 coaching shifts from hypotheticals to real situations and from potential outcomes to desired results.

And I think that’s why we’ve seen such growth in executive coaching. The pace of work and expectations from work have increased significantly. And people who are in positions that carry the weight of those expectations want individual support at their fingertips.

But back to the introductory conversation. If we continue to talk about coaching, I’m likely to say:

The question isn’t really whether you need a coach because most people find value in coaching.

The most important question is how to choose a coach.

And that’s a conversation we have every day.

Chemistry Comes First: A one-on-one coaching engagement is a lot about chemistry between you and the coach. And most people set an introductory call to test this. But a lot of people don’t know how to interview a coach or consider what chemistry really means.

An initial reaction to someone is pretty easy. But more important than finding a coach you like is finding a coach who adds value.

Having been interviewed hundreds of times, many people approach the interview by diving into all their challenges or sharing all the feedback they’ve received and asking for a “diagnosis.” And it’s helpful to give a coach some perspective and focus for an engagement. But the coach doesn’t know you yet, so they won’t have all the answers.

Instead, consider one specific situation to share with the coach and see how they coach you around it. This will highlight how the coach gains insights, approaches situations and leads a discussion with you.

Learn about Approach & Process: If you bring an example as noted above, you’ll see the approach illustrated. And it easily leads to discussion of what to expect and how to manage the engagement. And that leads to process.

There are many coaches who have “fallen” into coaching as a next step to their own career experience. Expertise and experience are not the same thing, especially in the world of communication. If you want to mimic the way someone else has done something, you may prefer to have a mentor in your field or organization.

But if you want to strengthen and deepen your own skill set, then you want someone who has expertise in skill development.

Balance Process & Priorities: There’s a balance between following a process and prioritizing someone’s situations. And the best coaches do it well. But a less experienced coach may lean too much one way or the other. The “process” coach builds a plan and follows it to the letter. Each session is mapped out against goals. But there is little flexibility to shift from it. And that means your discussions will stay hypothetical or in parallel to your work, not immersed in it. And that loses a lot of value the coach can have working through situations that are in front of you.

A coach without process will let you run the show which means they react to what you bring them. This may keep your priorities front and center, but it also puts all the impetus of preparation on you. And that often adds more work versus more coaching.

In communication coaching, our formula for coaching is a balance of skills and situations. So, we drive a process that flexes to your needs and priorities. That ensures you leave us with an expanded toolkit and confidence in the application of those skills because we adopted and adapted them to your situations throughout the engagement.

As my seat mate, you don’t really want the details of our process yet. So, I don’t map it out. Instead, I wrap-up our discussion with one final point.

At some point in your career, you will leverage a coach. It may be for a peak in your career to support added responsibility. It may be for a valley in your career to work through roadblocks. Or it may be for all the steps between the peaks and valleys.

You have to decide when the timing is right for you. Communication coaching is different than coaching for tennis or golf. It isn’t about when you have the time for it. It’s about when you have the greatest need. And when you do, it’s time.

We’re here when you need us!

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

Speaking Up May Be Harder Than You Think

It’s true that feedback is a gift. But sometimes, managers go beyond sharing insights and they offer the employee the “perfect” solution for how to resolve it. With communication feedback…that can get a little tricky.

That’s certainly been my experience as I’ve coached people who got feedback to “speak up”.

It’s one of those phrases that seems so simple. In reality, it means different things coming from different managers.

• Some use it to tell someone that they’re soft-spoken and need to speak up so they can be heard… They’re guiding projection.
• Others use it to suggest that someone isn’t adding to meetings or discussions, and they need to “speak up more”…They’re guiding brand and impressions.
• Still others use it more generally to suggest to someone that they need to speak up in a setting or with a specific group…They’re guiding executive presence.

As we’ve explored this further with clients across the globe, we continue to learn the meaning of the phrase across different backgrounds and diverse cultures. More formal cultures guide respect by not speaking up unless you’re asked to. There may be a “sir” or a “Ms. Jones” added as part of it. For this employee, “speaking up” may be harder than you think.

Many people have shared their beliefs that they don’t have the right to speak up unless someone calls on them or asks for their input. Sometimes gender plays into it and skews their confidence in speaking up.

Still, others shared their upbringing and beliefs about being assertive. They were encouraged to be assertive, so they weren’t ignored or tuned out. They enter a lot of business settings ready to defend their perspective and may be seen as pushy or aggressive. Their goal has always been to “speak up.”

And the best way to approach feedback with any of these perspectives is to start by understanding the WHY instead of jumping in with WHAT they should do differently.

The manager’s perspective is right. People do need to be seen and heard in settings to establish their brand, their experience and their way of thinking. No one sees you as a strategic thinker unless they hear you as a strategic communicator.

But everyone may not get there in the same way.

Here are a few suggestions for uncovering the WHY behind “speaking up.”

You have an employee who is soft-spoken.
Start this conversation by asking “Has anyone ever told you that you’re soft-spoken?” Technically, they need to understand how to get their voice forward and project more effort behind their words. But they may have known that since they were six years old, and they may have tried multiple ways to do this. Most people have the ability to do it; they hold their voice back for various reasons. It could be because a parent spoke softly, and they learned to follow that speech pattern. It could also be the opposite. A parent spoke very loudly, and they spoke softly to avoid mirroring an overbearing speech pattern.

Some women view soft-spoken as demure, and they may be in a culture that fosters that. Some men view soft-spoken as respectful, and they may be illustrating a more formal upbringing.

By allowing someone to tell you more about the WHY behind soft-spoken, you’ll know whether there are some perceptions to work through as well as skills to support voice strength.

You have an employee who doesn’t speak much in meetings.
Start this conversation by asking: “Do you want to add to conversations?” And then allow the employee to tell you WHY they don’t speak up. It could be that they don’t want to speak up because others speak too much, and it makes meetings run long. They may hear the feedback as a suggestion to show up more like a peer who talks too much. Managers often give guidance by saying “You should speak up like Jeff does in meetings.” Jeff may monopolize conversations more than you realize, and an employee who is more introverted than Jeff will never follow that advice.

As you explore the WHY, you may also learn that an employee doesn’t think as fast as others in the room. They may say that they have thoughts to add…. after the meeting wraps up. They just need more time to think it all the way through.

Every manager should know the make-up of a group and the different kinds of thinkers in the room. Someone who is more process-oriented needs time to think it through before they’ll jump in with an idea or answer that may be wrong. If you knew this, you could help this employee by providing agendas ahead of time. A process thinker will be great if given the time to prepare.

You might also have an employee who isn’t speaking up from a place of respect or a more formal upbringing. And they may literally not know when to do so. You can learn more about this by asking “If you have something to add, what keeps you from jumping in?” If you knew this, you could create openings in conversations and invite a more hesitant employee into the conversation. So, they’ll worry less about when it’s appropriate and speak up more when you invite them into the conversation.

You have an employee who talks too much.
Start this conversation by saying: “You had a lot of enthusiasm today. I felt like you said the same thing multiple times. Why?”

If someone was guided to be assertive, they may continue to “speak up” again and again until they feel acknowledged or as if they won the discussion. They may be seeking some kind of validation or credit that isn’t likely in most meetings.

So how do you guide the “over-talkers” to a better balance?

Their blind spot isn’t really how much they’re speaking. It’s the lack of focus on everyone else. There may be insights in the WHY behind someone who feels the need to be heard the most. For this employee, the real opportunity or learning is the perspective of everyone else. Get insight on how they feel heard by asking “How did the group react to your idea? What was the reaction you were expecting?”

You can guide this person through awareness of team dynamics and the concept of a great team player who not only speaks to share their perspective but also speaks to move a topic toward an outcome that includes everyone’s input.

 

“Speaking Up” can mean something different to each of us. If you have an employee who needs to show up differently, start with a better understanding of WHY they don’t speak up. Be less quick to solve it from your perspective and more patient with understanding the WHY from the employee’s perspective.

Feedback is a gift, and spending the time to understand the WHY behind a behavior gets everyone to a better outcome. If you’d like to improve the way you give feedback, we can help.

We’re here when you need us!

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

Doubling Down on Your Off-Site

It seems every people leader is now responsible for hosting an off-site meeting. And for very good reasons! It’s an opportunity to bring a team together, ignite collaboration, clarify direction and invest in personal development.

We’ve seen twice as many off-sites completed and planned for in the last year than the last three years combined. Off-sites have become the new team meeting, and most of these “away” meetings are getting rave reviews from employees.

We’ve been a part of many off-sites over the last year, resetting team dynamics, facilitating the discussion of team priorities or developing skills needed to reach top priorities. And we’ve seen what works and what doesn’t with employees.

If you’re planning your off-site in the next few months, these pointers may help you consider the new dynamics before you’re confronted with them. Because, while “off-sites” are back, they need to be planned and led a little differently than before.

 

Here are seven dynamics to consider:

Invest in the setting. Most managers have a team event to kick-off the year or touch base on a quarterly basis. And we called it an “off-site” even when we held it down the hall in a conference room. You can’t do that anymore. Those are team meetings, not “off-sites”, and employees think of them differently. Add to it the continued push to get people back into offices. If you’re planning a day with your team in the office, consider that a team meeting. If you want the group to view it as an “off-site,” make the commitment to host it somewhere else.

It doesn’t have to be an airplane ride, but no one will be disappointed if it is. It should be a few nights away, and it should be mandatory. You can’t connect as a team if you’re missing colleagues. There may still be an occasional absence due to illness, but for those who are able to attend, invest the effort and the money to take the team to an interesting setting. It increases their desire to be there, and that’s worth a lot.

Teams aren’t as close as you think. Sure, they talk over virtual platforms all day. Or they see each other in the office once a week. But the full group is seldom all together, and it’s one of the biggest mistakes we see leaders make at off-sites. They assume people are comfortable together. And they jump right into a heavy agenda. I continue to be surprised by the number of people who haven’t met or haven’t seen each other in quite a while. It takes intention to reset people, and they need a little time to settle in and connect with each other before they connect with the work.

People can’t sit still. We assume people sit all day when they work virtually. But they move around more than you realize. And when you ask them to sit through an eight-hour agenda, it’s not something that they’re used to doing. If you can reserve a meeting room with natural light, do it! But most conference space is in the interior of a hotel or resort, so the choices can be limited. Add plenty of breaks and even a group-led stretch throughout the day. Be specific about expectations on devices and breaks. It’s disappointing to bring people together for collaboration and in short order they’re all on laptops and phones. But it happens – and it’s much more frequent these days. As the leader of the meeting, you need to set the tone and the expectations. Otherwise, people allow their own priorities to override the group setting.

Every voice counts, even the soft ones. Group dynamics have gotten harder with less interaction. And it takes more intention to be sure that everyone is participating, and the louder voices don’t overshadow the softer ones. Depending on the size of the group and the objectives of the leader, it’s often best to bring in a facilitator to run the discussion. A good facilitator will balance the energy and input to keep everyone involved, and they can provide good insights to a leader on what they observed once the off-site wraps up. It’s hard for the leader or another team member to run the agenda and participate in the discussion simultaneously. It confuses the group and often shuts down the employees’ perspective.

Are we having fun? You need to because that’s what most employees come for. Make sure there’s a cooking class, scavenger hunt, incredible race or something that’s meant to be just fun. You’ll get lasting benefits out of organizing a few fun events. Some groups like competitions; others prefer less strenuous activities. Ironically, this was one of the hardest roles of a leader during the pandemic…finding ways to entertain their teams and creating virtual games or events to bring them together. Hire someone to do this for you. Most conference centers or resorts offer corporate games and will manage the entire experience.

Let’s focus on me. Professional development is the number one ask of employees. While they like a flexible work environment, they know they’ve fallen behind on development opportunities. And the off-site is a great time to add some training to the mix. Even if it adds an extra day, it’s more cost-effective to deliver it while the team is already together versus scheduling it as a separate event. And it’s often the highest-rated portion of the meeting because it feels as if it’s focused on the employees’ benefit rather than the benefit to the company.

And… did you bring stuff?  Everybody loves bling and logo wear! It’s a great way to keep teams connected to the company brand. Send it home with them in a pullover, a cooler, an insulated cup, a cookie, and hundreds of other items. The off-site gets off to a great start when they check into their rooms and find corporate gifts. It’s one more retention strategy, and it adds to the fun factor when employees go home with a gift from their manager.

 

Do you already have some of these practices in place? If so, increase your efforts this year and you’ll have a happier group and better takeaways from the off-site! Or if you’re just getting started and would like a little help meeting the new expectations, we can put great ideas into actions with you.

This is the year to double down on your off-site….and we’d love to be a part of helping you get great results.

We’re here when you need us!

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

Our Top Three Challenges – 2022 Case Studies

When we’re called on to address a new situation or think outside the box and develop a new approach, we’re always up for the challenge! And when we bring curiosity and creativity together, we get great outcomes.

As we looked back at the broader application of our work this year, there were three programs that stood out with innovative thinking, accelerated learning, and great results.

Here’s a quick look and a profile of some of the development projects that seemed to resonate most this year.

 

CASE STUDY #1: Getting to the Heart of the Matter  

Situation: More than a handful of times, we were asked to work on a refresh/reset/redesign of company values. In some instances, it was a request to bring values to life and help leaders get creative with storytelling to illustrate the values. And in other instances, it was a total overhaul or fresh start for the values themselves.

Solution: In each case, we started the project with leadership interviews to understand the current state of the values and the perspective across the senior leaders. And regardless of how we got to the table, each company was surprised at the insights we uncovered. They weren’t very favorable. Values took a hit during the pandemic, and few leaders know how to revitalize them. Or worse, they don’t agree on what revitalizing means.

We went to work to shape up a set of principles that the group could discuss and shape into their own. Then, we put processes in place to get input from employees and captured what resonated and what didn’t. Finally, the process led us to a communication strategy that brought new energy and creativity to how leaders illustrate values and involve employees in living them.

Impact: Whether it was a new or renewed group of values, we saw interest and alignment take shape within each organization. And the unexpected outcome was that the project seemed to energize leadership teams and solve for some of the concerns around bringing clarity and connection back into the culture.  And for a few groups, it was a great way to get teams back into their office a little more, too.

Interested in this topic? Talk to us about Values Reset

 

CASE STUDY #2: Ready or Not…

Situation: As all companies struggled to fill leadership gaps created during the great resignation, an immediate ask was to help managers show up as leaders …. quickly. And it got us thinking about the tools we give new leaders through coaching as they onboard to bigger roles. We gathered the insights to be sure we understood the gaps, and we built a program to simplify the tools to an “emergency kit” that built confidence quickly. The goal was to equip a new leader with insights that allowed them to settle in and consider new ways of building trust and alignment with a more complex team.

Solution: With multiple programs under our belt, we discovered commonalities that ran deeper than we originally thought with the new generation of leaders. All said the learning didn’t come fast enough, and they were relieved to have a “starting point” for evaluating a team, inspiring a group and thinking through decision-making.

Impact: Our work with these groups lifted confidence in a single day by introducing proven tools. But each workshop also linked new leaders to each other. We kept small groups engaged in coaching circles to share ideas and problems with a coach and a few peers. And while our work wrapped up, all of the coaching circles we activated are still intact and proving to be a great way for new leaders to grow together.

Interested in this topic? Talk to us about Manager to Leader

 

CASE STUDY #3: Do we have a match?

Situation:  There’s been a lot of focus on the job market, from a shortage of candidates to a plethora of opportunities. But no one has said a lot about the impact all that activity and movement has had on the hiring managers themselves. And once we discovered it, we knew we could help. Interviewing is a task most managers take on a few times a year. They rarely describe themselves as great at it, but they can find the candidates they’re looking for through some trial-and-error interviews. When you speed up the rate of turnover and the number of candidates, that approach doesn’t work. Today, managers interview frequently and need a consistent way of getting to the experiences and foundational skills sooner.

Solution: So, we built a workshop that helps managers think about what they want to know, and we developed the tools that help them observe and compare one candidate with another. We introduced an interview format that covers the foundational behaviors and drills down to previous experiences. It helps a team align on a common approach and work through how to evaluate candidates more effectively.

Impact: And what was the result? Well, better interviews for starters! The instinctive and “seat of the pants” approach with candidates became more structured and measurable as a tool. And even the tougher concepts, like gauging culture fit, can take shape as teams talk them out.

Interested in this topic? Talk to us about Compelling Interviews

 

So, with four weeks to go, we’re energized by bringing curiosity and creativity together to solve the development priorities we heard about this year. And we’re already intrigued by what’s ahead as early planning suggests that 2023 holds new challenges with skill gaps and communication challenges. We can’t wait to partner with you to explore it.

 

Here’s to the year ahead….and as always, we’re here when you need us.

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

Early Career – Development Priorities

It’s that time of year for budget reviews and planning as a new year begins to take shape. And as companies consider priorities and corporate strategies, it’s a good time to also align individual’s growth and priorities.

Early Career Development Priorities is part 3 of our 3-part series focusing on trends, priorities, and insights to help align personal growth with business priorities for the year ahead.
Read Part 1 – Peak Career Development Priorities here.
Read Part 2 – Mid-Career Development Priorities here.

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Today’s young professionals are setting a new way of working and shifting the thinking from work as a place we go, to work as a thing we do. This group of employees entered the workforce with savvy technical skills and solid educational backgrounds that seem destined for success. And the current labor shortage has given them more opportunities to choose from.

As the newest players in the workforce, they’re negotiating flexibility as well as compensation. They’re outspoken about where they want to work and how they want to work. And that’s exciting when you’re young and feel like you can set your own lifestyle and balance work alongside other interests. But there is another view of that flexibility that most early career employees don’t see.

They’ve traded off visibility for flexibility. And that may be a short-sighted advantage with long-term consequences. We’re seeing some early signs of that. Many companies saw phenomenal growth coming out of the pandemic, but it was not sustainable growth. And they’re resetting to a more modified growth track. That meant some workforce reduction that will continue as we head into 2023.

Reduction is never easy across teams, but it’s easier when we don’t really feel connected to an employee. If you joined a company and have worked virtually for the duration of employment, there’s not the same loyalty to you as others on the team. You haven’t had the visibility to leaders and therefore you don’t have the same support team when the tough decisions have to be made.

And if you allow flexibility to be the only motivation of your early career decisions, you may find that you’re stepping from one company to another without really moving up from one role to the next. The first decade is an important time to set a career path and make smart choices in order to leverage opportunities for more than a flexible schedule.

As we’ve worked with early career professionals and managers, we’ve focused on three priorities to strengthen their visibility and impact.

 

Career Runway

Jobs feel a little like window shopping right now. It’s fun to see so many choices, and the window dressing makes every opportunity look exciting. But buyer beware! Shop for more than the package wrapped up for you. Look at the company, the culture and the advancement opportunities. Are you considering the long-term as well as the short-term as you evaluate a role? Did you meet the co-workers and the hiring manager? Is this a good fit or just a good paycheck?

In addition to finding a role that meets the way you want to work, consider the role that will help you get to the next one. Resumes are shaped in the first decade of work. Hiring managers like to see that someone took an interest in you and helped you gain skills and additional responsibility. When the career path doesn’t show that, it’s a red flag.

We can help. Many data points prove out that early career employees will change jobs much more frequently than others which means framing up your experience more often. Our book, Disrupted! How to Reset Your Brand & Your Career focuses on how to position yourself and your experience. It also links to your personal brand and impressions. We developed a course to support it and can help you prepare for an interview or an internal, introductory meeting to help others get to know you and your interests. It makes all the difference in finding the next opportunity and positioning yourself for it.

 

Brand Awareness

Your personal brand is how people think about you and talk about you when you’re not around. It’s a reflection of someone’s impressions of you that take shape over time.

The savvy professional takes note of impressions and makes choices about how to come across as confident and credible. Impressions of confidence are why certain people get heard when they speak up. Confidence isn’t just a skill for leaders; it’s a differentiator that strengthens any employee’s personal brand and impact in an organization.

But it’s rarely an instinctive skill. It’s more about awareness of how people see you and hear you and focus on what it takes to really connect with a group. And it’s harder if you aren’t in an office often to be seen and heard. Early career professionals need to think about impact and add intention to visibility moments and their opportunity to be visible and involved in key initiatives.

We can help. Our workshop, Strengthening Personal Brand & Impressions, is offered internally for working teams or quarterly as an open-enrollment workshop. The program raises awareness of brand impressions and guides the discovery of professional presence and a confident communication style.

 

Manager Exposure

Everybody needs a champion. And in today’s shifting work environment, most people are going to need more than one. A champion is someone who knows your work and is willing to speak up on your behalf. It may be your manager, but it could also be your manager’s peers or others that you’ve worked with on projects. Champions start the process of a network within a company, and they are critical to bigger opportunities and advancement.

We used to build relationships as we met people in the corporate gym or cafeteria. It was easier to evolve relationships over time because we saw people often and had informal interaction and a chance to get to know each other. That’s a consequence of hybrid and virtual work models. It isn’t happening by happenstance. It takes an intentional plan to meet with someone and plan for those interactions, and early career professionals are going to have to work harder to get these connections.

Companies are trying to help with development programs and opportunities to connect with managers. Take advantage of all of these opportunities. When your company hosts a lunch, be there. When they set up a volunteer opportunity, be there. It’s going to take intention to start a network, and managers notice who’s taking an interest in it and who’s not.

We can help. Both programs described above include an element of building champions. We can also help you think through your own plan in 1:1 coaching and map out a conversation to gain insights and input from a potential champion in your organization.

 

Flexibility is a wonderful addition to career paths, and it’s an advantage that seems to have taken hold. But don’t make it the only factor in your early career decisions. Leverage the current role you have to build your brand and find the managers who will champion your skills. While it may take a little more in-office time, it will be the difference in your career advancement in the long run.

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

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

Mid-Career – Development Priorities

It’s that time of year for budget reviews and planning as a new year begins to take shape. And as companies consider priorities and corporate strategies, it’s a good time to also align individual’s growth and priorities.

Mid-Career Development Priorities is part 2 of our 3-part series focusing on trends, priorities, and insights to help align personal growth with business priorities for the year ahead.
Read Part 1 – Peak Career Development Priorities here.
Read Part 3 – Early Career Development Priorities here.

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For some time, I’ve referred to managers in their mid-career years as the Mighty Middle. And I can’t think of a time when the phrase has been better suited to middle managers than today. I’m just not sure if the significance is more about the Mighty or about being in the Middle…because both are true!

Middle managers have always been a mighty muscle and influencer in companies. In the last two years, we’ve strained that muscle by expanding their roles and asking them to manage everything from mental health to physical health and well-being. They were given very little training to do it, but they did it. And many developed a whole new skill set in the process.

Then, we began to reset work structures. And as hybrid models emerged, managers were stuck in the middle. They’ve been squeezed between top leaders who want some semblance of an office setting to return, and most employees who want to keep their blended style of working and managing life on a flexible schedule. The friction intensified with the great resignation, and most of these managers picked up the slack, shifted the work and altered the way their teams would function.

They are the unsung heroes of the last three years. But the looming question is whether the last few years were energizing or exhausting to them? Are they motivated to continue growing as people leaders or are they likely to step away to avoid additional pressure? Companies have leadership gaps, and there is great opportunity for advancement. But it doesn’t feel great to step up to something you don’t feel qualified to do.

When you ask middle managers how they think about it, they talk about skill sets and development. While they like increased responsibility, they want to feel as if they have the support and experience to step up to new challenges. And the last few years haven’t provided a lot of time for that to happen. Companies have the desire to do it, but many are still focused on reset steps and culture that we identified in last week’s newsletter.

Middle managers need to take ownership for their own development and ensure that they feel qualified for the opportunities that are sure to come their way.

There are three priorities where we encourage middle managers to invest their time. Here’s a look at each priority with thoughts on how we’re supporting them.

 

The first priority is Skills.

Every day, companies look at a manager and decide whether the manager has the skills they need in a role. They can decide to develop a manager to expand the skill set or they can bring in a candidate from the outside who already has the skills. It depends on the momentum and pace at which a company needs to move. The shortage of candidates worked in favor of the internal managers, but it is shifting a bit.

We talked about learning and development priorities in our fourth book, Disrupted: How to Reset Your Brand and Your Career. Those priorities haven’t changed. The L&D team focuses on training needed to deliver top goals within a company. If you’re tied to the top goals, you may be a top priority for development. But if you’re working on a goal that’s lower on the list, you may not be the focus of the year.

You can take ownership by asking for development. Pay attention to shifts in company direction. Pay attention to who is managing some of the projects and the skill sets they have. You can gain experience without being in a role, and you can develop skills without waiting for the company to tell you that you need them.

We can help. If your skill gap is less about technical skills and more about influence and team dynamics, we can help. Last year, we introduced a workshop called Manager to Leader to focus on the skill sets needed to manage a bigger team and a broader responsibility. It sets the right foundation to help a new leader feel confident quickly and creates coaching circles that give the manager some bandwidth for input as they settle into a new role.

And our foundational programs can build confidence around increased visibility by providing skills to Lead Executive Conversations and Master Executive Presence within an organization.

 

The second priority is Relationships.

One of the benefits of leadership development programs within a company is the relationships built with peers. Over the last few years, companies have tried to continue the programs virtually, and the relationship aspect suffered. It’s harder to get to know people when you don’t have the downtime and social interaction together. And many companies are resetting to an in-person format to bring the relationship opportunities back.

But it isn’t just the relationships with peers that middle managers need to focus on. It’s relationships across the company that will make the difference in new opportunities. And that’s harder than it’s ever been. Because while people are returning, it isn’t an everyday, consistent schedule that brings easy interaction.

Leaders, a key group for most middle managers to interact with, aren’t as willing to connect as they have been in the past. And that’s because they’ve developed their own habits. They’re not around as much, so it’s harder to find 15 minutes to stop by. Every interaction takes a set appointment, and that’s a bigger commitment that’s harder to manage.

Today, it takes a lot of intention to build a network. In fact, it takes a plan to think about champions within a company and find creative ways to build relationships if the hallway conversations are limited.

We can help. We can help middle managers build plans for networking and gaining visibility across a company. In fact, we often do this with small groups of managers to ensure the leaders feel the investment works. There’s impact in numbers and bringing small groups of colleagues together helps a leader see value in the touchpoint as well.

 

And that leads to the third priority…Coaching.

We’ve seen tremendous growth in our coaching business and a lot of that has to do with a company’s attitude towards coaching. Coaching has become a great retention tool, and it’s the fastest way to help a manager gain confidence and support while taking on expanded responsibilities. Visibility leads to liability, and middle managers want to feel that they have the right tools and support to be successful in an expanded role.

Coaching can also offer feedback on a brand and help a middle manager understand how they’re seen within a company today. As a new leader, a manager can leverage a new opportunity to strengthen a brand or reset misconceptions.

We can help. In fact, in the last few years, we’ve doubled our resources to meet the added demand. If you’re a middle manager expanding responsibilities quickly, ask for coaching. It builds confidence and provides confidentiality with an objective partner who can talk through decision-making and offer a support system to build new tools and skills. And with SW&A, it’s access to the tools we know you’ll need.

 

The opportunities for middle managers have never been greater. But so are the risks. Experiences haven’t prepared most managers for those opportunities, and those who are succeeding got a little help along the way. It’s an exciting time to be a future leader. Take advantage of the opportunity and ask for the support you’ll need to be successful.

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

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