Listen now!

In this episode:

Working with with people who aren’t located in your office can be a pain!

Tom helps you make this process go more smoothly by prompting better communication and building relationships.

• Work with remote teammates more effectively
• Learn what FORM is and how it can help you in your out-of-office projects.
• Use these concepts with your in-house team as well!

Resource Download:

Download the Making a Personal Connection one pager for specific ways to apply F.O.R.M.!

Here’s a short video on how to apply F.O.R.M.

Transcript

Sponsored by Geek to Great

Man: [00:00:00] Becoming a Geek Leader, Season 1, Episode 5.

Tom: [00:00:05] This episode of Becoming a Geek Leader is sponsored by the Geek to Great 101 course. We all want to grow our skills and improve the work we do, but who has time for that? In this online, blended learning program, you and your team will gain practical skills in topics like time management, dealing with difficult people, improving communication, and so much more. Train your whole team for less than $500. Each lesson is 30 minutes or less, so it fits right into your current team meeting schedule. Find more information and get immediate access to your first free lesson at brighthillgroup.com/helpinggeeks, that’s brighthillgroup.com/helpinggeeks, so that you can get access to the Geek to Great 101 course.

[00:01:03] Welcome to the Becoming a Geek Leader podcast. My name is Tom Cooper. As a geek, I’m on a mission to figure out better ways to lead others at work and at home. Through the Becoming a Geek Leader podcast, I’m sharing what I’m learning so I can help make you more effective at leading people, too. Ready?

Introduction

[00:01:25] This week’s episode is all about how to get the most out of working with a team that’s remote. Now, I find this happens a lot with many of my clients, that they put together teams, whether they’re internal teams or external teams from multiple organizations working on a project, and they struggle because the teams are not co-located. So in today’s episode, we’re going to be talking about things that you can do that will make a difference with your team members who are not local to you. I am looking forward to hearing from you about what you have applied from today’s podcast.

Coach’s Mailbox

Tom: [00:02:36] Today’s email comes from David. David says, “I’m responsible for making sure the work gets done. My team is spread out. I’ve got people a few states away, I’ve got some across the Pacific, and even some across the Atlantic. What can I do to get the most from my team?”

[00:02:55] Well David, thanks for asking the question. I find that this is a key challenge, particularly today. So many times we find ourselves working with vendors or working with partners, or servicing clients who are not local to us. And sometimes the team is an internal team, just like yours, where resources are spread out all over the globe. I worked in similar teams when I was working as a geek professionally, and we had employees, or contractors, or vendors, and all of them had different priorities and different agendas.

[00:03:34] Now, we struggled through many of common challenges that you’re probably facing now. Things like miscommunication, not enough communication, no connection between the people who are doing the work. We saw all kinds of cultural differences. Language issues, problems with translation and nuance between languages when people’s native language was not the same. Time zones, and yours in particular, must be challenging where you’ve got people on one side of the Atlantic who are several hours ahead of you and on the other side of the Pacific they are several hours behind you. And I know there’s this idea that, “Oh, we’ll work 24 hours a day. We’ll get the requirements on this side and we’ll hand it off and everything will keep going.” But the challenge is that it’s very difficult.

[00:04:24] And the final one that we ran into a lot was norms about quality, verbosity, depth of communication, and feedback. Those are the kind of challenges I ran into, and I suspect that those are similar to the kinds of challenges that you run into. The first thing I want to say about this is that working with remote team members is essentially the same as working with local team members, but here’s the key difference. The key difference is that when you work with somebody who’s in the same building you’re in, you’re likely to bump into them in the hallway, or on the way to lunch, or in the coffee…taking a coffee break by the coffee machine or the snack machine, or you’re going to run into them on the way to the same meeting, or right after a meeting you’ll probably chat with them a little bit. That’s the difference, that with a remote team member, you don’t have that informal communication opportunity.

[00:05:28] Typically, if you had something that was going on that was a little bit of an annoyance, or it was a challenge that you were facing, typically what you could do is just what I would call poke your head into their office. Stop by, just have an informal communication. But with these folks who are remote, it is much more difficult to do that because it just seems like a barrier that you have to overcome to make that connection. And I will tell you that it’s more than it seems like it’s a barrier, it’s an actual barrier to communication. So working with remote teams is the same as working with local teams, but you have to be intentional about making a connection with them.

[00:06:16] All those informal, subtle, brief communications, and that includes things like facial expression and body language, all of those things that comprise the totality of your communication when you’re face to face, they’re just not naturally there when you have a remote team. What that means is, you have a responsibility to go the extra mile. You have to take the initiative to make that connection. You’ve got to look for opportunities. More than even look for them, I’ll say, more than look for them, you have to make those opportunities.

[00:07:01] Now, I’ve heard that all business problems are people problems. And by extension, I think it’s true that all technical problems are actually people problems, too. Let me say that again, all technical problems are actually people problems, too. That’s not to say the technical problem is…there’s no such thing as a purely technical problem, but what I will say is that 90% of the problem is not the technical solution, 90% of the problem is defining what the problem is, making sure the customer is comfortable that you understand what the problem is, and dealing with the emotional stuff that goes along with that. So the technical solution is never completely sufficient.

[00:07:48] So, assuming that all technical problems are actually people problems, here’s the thing. If you want to get the most from your team members, you’ve got to know what matters to them. Now, as I’ve said, it’s easier if you work in the same office, because you’ll have those clues. The things that are…the indicators you’ll see, things like how they decorate their office. Do they put certificates on their wall or do they have pictures of their pet on their desk? Maybe their desktop image on their computer or their phone, and you have that opportunity to grab lunch with them, or get a cup of coffee, or bump into them in the hall, just as I said. And in those small, casual interactions, you have an opportunity to learn a ton about how they work.

[00:08:36] It’s funny, I recently shared this idea at a speaking engagement, and I want to share with you an example of how I learned something about a colleague and how that might help our future collaboration. The lady who introduced me, Beth, before we started up this presentation, she was showing me this adorable picture of her puppy that she has on the home screen of her phone, right? Now, I didn’t know she owned a dog before that. I’ve known Beth a little while professionally but I didn’t know about her dog. It’d be a good idea when I talk to Beth again to ask her how the puppy’s doing, right? Because that matters to her. It mattered enough that she took a picture, she put it on the phone, and she said, “Look at how cute my puppy is! My puppy’s so cute!” So that’s the kind of thing, if you can find out what it is for them, that’s a big deal.

[00:09:18] So apparently Beth loves her puppy. And I have to say, I love dogs and I can appreciate her love for her puppy. And because I have a dog too, we have a way that we can connect at some commonality that we can use to connect on common ground. But if you’re not in the same office and you’re not going to be able to have lunch with them, and frankly it’d be a little bit creepy for you to show up at their house to see how their home office is decorated, what can you do? How can you make a personal connection with somebody who’s not anywhere near you? You’re going to have to be a little bit creative because you’re going to have to make an opportunity to have a couple of minutes of personal conversation with them. So maybe it’s between status update meetings, you schedule a meeting with them about an issue that came up in the meeting, but you make it a point at the beginning of the conversation to ask them things like, “What did you do over the weekend?” It’s a simple opening and you can begin to connect with them on the things that matter to them.

[00:10:31] Now, you might think, “Look, I am really not good with small talk. I don’t enjoy it very much and I don’t think of things to talk about.” Well, let me help you with that. On the website, you’ll find with this podcast episode, one of the resources is a one-pager I call Making a Personal Connection, and I’ve got a whole long list of things you can ask people about, and they’re organized into categories. So, for example, you can ask them about their family, you can ask them about their occupation, you can ask them about recreation, and then you can ask them about message or mission. And on the Making a Personal Connection download sheet, there are probably two dozen topics or questions that you could ask people about. And because you’ve got that organized into family, occupation, recreation, and message or mission, you can think of it the acronym FORM. “F” is for family, “O” is for occupation, “R” is for recreation, “M” is for message or mission.

[00:11:38] And so I’m going to encourage you to get the Making a Personal Connection download sheet and take a look at that. Once you have that in your hands, let’s say you start to talk to somebody and they don’t want to talk about one topic. No problem, jump to one of the other topics and find one that they care enough about that they’re willing to talk about. This is critically important, if you can begin to understand what the motivators are, what the drivers are, what interests that other person, it’s going to make a huge difference in the way that you interact with them, and their willingness to help you get things done. But the tricky part with remote teams is you have to take the initiative. It won’t happen magically, and so you want to look for those opportunities to connect with somebody.

[00:12:26] Now, once you know something about those people, you have an opportunity. For example, I recently talked with a client and he told me that he was very passionate about rugby in South Africa. Now, I don’t know anything about that sport, but I do know about Google Alerts. So what I can do is set up a Google Alert on that topic and any time some information about that topic comes across the news wire, I can scan it, and if it looks positive and interesting, I can shoot it over to him and say, “Hey, I just happened to come across this, I thought you might be interested in it.” When we begin to show interest in the things that other people are interested in, even if we’re not specifically skilled in it…you know, I wouldn’t pretend that I know anything about rugby. I would say, “Gosh, I don’t really know anything about this but I saw this news story and I thought you might like to see it.” It’s as simple as that.

[00:13:27] I encourage you to be intentional about finding out what they care about and then creating ways to set up and sustain that connection. Find the thing that matters to them, and then begin to foster communication around that topic. If you want to be successful in working with your remote team, it’s about understanding who the people are that make up the team, and once you know who the people are, what things matter to those people. Fostering a personal connection, improving the kind of relationship that you have with them is the key, the single most important key, toward delivering better results.

[00:14:16] David, I hope that helps, and that’s today’s Coach’s Mailbox

Thought Leader Segment

Tom: [00:14:44] So when it comes to working with remote teams, in today’s Thought Leader segment, I want to share an idea from my mentor, John Maxwell. John wrote a book called “The 17 Indisputable Laws of Teamwork”. As you’re working with a team, I highly recommend you pick up a copy of the book. It’s very, very well done, and provides a framework for your thinking about how to improve your teamwork.

[00:15:12] Now, these laws that John identifies in his book are completely relevant to teams that work in the same building, and they’re also relevant to teams that are remote, perhaps even more relevant. The challenge is that most of the time we don’t have clarity about exactly what is needed. I was working with a client just the other day who said that he was frustrated about a remote team, that the remote team’s delivery was weak, that they weren’t doing very much, and he said, “I don’t even know what they’re really working on!” Now, I challenged him to go and look more closely at the work that they were doing and the problems they were solving and their understanding of what the expectations were. And in our next session he said, “You know, Tom, I was pretty upset with them, but now that I’ve looked at what they’re doing I realize that I just wasn’t seeing all the things they were doing. Now that I’ve looked more closely, I have more appreciation for the value that they’re delivering and I was wrong about what I thought.” Until he looked at it more closely, he didn’t know.

[00:16:19] So, John talks about 17 laws, and one of them is the law of the scoreboard, the law of the scoreboard, the team needs to know where it stands. Now, as I said, this is important for teams that are co-located, I would suggest it’s even more important for remote teams. When people aren’t clear on what you want, you’re not going to get what you want, period. If they don’t understand what you want, you’re not going to get what you want, and it’s especially true when they’re in another location, another time zone, they’re from another culture. When it comes to the scoreboard, John says the scoreboard is essential to understanding.

[00:17:01] Now, I don’t know a lot about a lot of sports, but one I do enjoy is football. Now, if I’m watching a football game and one of my sons comes in the room, the first question he’s going to ask me is, “What’s the score, Dad?” The scoreboard tells us who is winning the game, how much time is left in the game, who has the ball right now, and even down to what’s the next smallest milestone. What down is it, what’s the difference to the next first down, they’ve crammed a ton of information into the scoreboard and it helps you understand where you are. So thinking about your team, when it comes to your team, what scoreboard are you using? You need to be able to have that scoreboard in front of you, so that you can evaluate how you’re doing.

[00:17:58] If it’s early in the game and your team’s not doing very well, there’s time to make adjustments, there’s time to make decisions. But the approach that you take in the last two minutes of the game may not be the same approach that you take in the first half of the game. And so understanding where you are and all of the factors that lead to success, we know at the end of the game the only thing that matters is what was on the scoreboard, but during the game, during the game there’s so many factors that influence what you do and how things are going to work.

[00:18:30] If you want to make course corrections, seeing the score, knowing where you are, watching your progress, the rate of change, the rate of improvement, all those things factor in to your success. You can’t win without knowing what the score needs to be, and how do you begin to define that scoreboard? Well, it might be, we’re going to deliver System X, by Y date, but even within that you probably need to go a lot deeper. Just like you have the score, and then you have the down and distance in football, you have to know what’s the next thing the customer’s looking at. What’s the next milestone that matters, what’s the next deliverable that matters, and can we all agree on what that looks like? Making sure that we’re all on the same page about what success looks like is really what the scoreboard is all about. Your team members need a scoreboard to know whether they’re getting it done or not.

[00:19:33] If you ask your team members to fill out a one-question survey and the question is, “How am I measuring your success?” I bet you’d be astonished by the variety of answers that you get back from people, even if you think you’ve been crystal clear. One advantage to a centrally-published scoreboard is that everybody can see where they are and they can agree.

[00:20:00] I think I may have shared this before, but I was working on a project recently where we were doing some volunteer work and we were assembling things as part of the volunteer work. And there were multiple stations that were doing the same job, and what we found was the team that was upstream from us making the stuff that we had to do the next part on, wasn’t getting very much done. And I sat back and tried to not get involved in changing things around, but I watched other teams who were doing the same job being much more productive. And eventually I got frustrated and I went up and I asked them, “Hey, how’s it going?” And they said, “It’s going great! We’re making a lot of progress. We’re moving really fast. We’re working as a well-oiled machine. This is fantastic.” And I said to them, “Wait a minute, wait. Do you realize that other teams are producing more than you’re producing?” They said, “No way! There is no way that other teams could do more than we’re doing.” They didn’t have a scoreboard, and without a scoreboard, their internal feedback mechanism told them everything was going well when it really wasn’t. And I’d be willing to bet that you probably have some of that going on within your organization as well, so how is your team being measured?

[00:21:19] Now, one thing that you may get frustrated by when I share this is, you might say, “Look Tom, I’m not the boss. I’m not able to make them do anything. They don’t have to listen to me at all.” Well, first of all, let me assure you that even if you were the boss, you couldn’t make them do anything anyway, so what you need to do is get clarity about the scoreboard. How is your customer keeping score? What measurements are relevant for your team members to know? Are they producing enough widgets fast enough? Are they solving the right business problems that your customer cares about? What are the things that matter to the customer? Not the things that matter to you internally. The people that are paying your paycheck, what do they care about? The people that are buying those services, what matters to them? And those are the items that need to go on the scoreboard, particularly when you’re working with a remote team.

[00:22:30] I shared with you a minute ago about my client who was frustrated with his remote team’s production. Until he got on the same page with them about what the expectations were, he just didn’t know exactly what they were working on and he didn’t know how productive they were, whether they were actually delivering value, the kind of value that he needed. Let me just encourage you to think about what can you do to document what matters. What matters to the customer, what matters to your management, and find a way to put that into one place, a one-page report, some indicator of how things are going. Once you have the scoreboard identified and you get people to agree what the score is and what the score should be at the end, now you can get everybody making the right kinds of decisions.

[00:23:30] Let me give you just a few more things to think about from this law of the scoreboard. First, what is the scoreboard for your team? How are you measuring progress? Is it modules of code delivered? Is it business problems solved? Is it revenue? Is it the level of excellence or innovation? How do you keep score? That’s a critical question to answer, and it’s a good one to talk to the whole team about. What are we measuring today? Heck, what should we be measuring? Once you’ve decided from a team perspective what those measurements looks like, now you can start to measure yourself individually and you can challenge your teammates to measure themselves individually. What should you be keeping track of to make sure you’re doing your best? How can you be on your A game to deliver for your team?

[00:24:30] Now remember, leadership is influence, it’s not title, it’s not role, it’s not position. It’s your ability to influence other people. You can be a team leader even if you’re the person on the bottom rung of the ladder that you’re on. And let me just read to you some ideas that John shares about becoming a better team leader. John says, “If you lead the team, you have primary responsibility for checking the scoreboard and communicating the team’s situation to its members. That doesn’t necessarily mean you have to do it all by yourself, but you do need to make sure that team members continually evaluate, adjust, and make decisions as quickly as possible. That is the key to winning. Do you have a system to make sure that happens, or do you generally rely on your intuition? Using intuition is fine, as long as you have some fail-safe backups to make sure you don’t let the team down. Evaluate how consistently and effectively you consult your scoreboard. If you’re not doing it as well as you should, then create a system that helps you to do it or empowers others on your team to share that responsibility.” I think that’s a great suggestion from John Maxwell about how to improve teamwork by leveraging the law of the scoreboard, and that’s today’s Thought Leader Segment.

Episode Hack

Tom: [00:26:27] In today’s episode, we’ve been talking about how can you get better results when you’re working with a remote team. In the Coach’s Mailbox segment, we talked about how you have to be intentional about making a personal connection with people to make a difference at work. In the Thought Leader segment, we talked about the law of the scoreboard and how having an agreed standard for performance is critically important to getting the team to deliver the things that are most important.

[00:26:59] For today’s Episode Hack, I want to ask you, who is the most difficult person on your team? Who frustrates you? Who is it that just makes you crazy? What personal connection have you made with them? What is it you know about them, their family, their occupation, their recreation, their message or mission? What do you know about what makes them tick and what they want? For today’s Hack, I want you to decide what you can do to improve that connection. Think about what you can do to make the time to reach out to that one person and learn more about what matters to them so that you can be more personally connected with them, more relating to the things of their world. Remember, I mentioned that on the brighthillgroup.com website, in this episode there is a link to the Making a Personal Connection one-pager, and that would be a good place to start when you want to look at how can you improve the connection you make with somebody else. And that is today’s Episode Hack.

Closeout

[00:28:15] Thanks for listening to this episode of Becoming a Geek Leader. You can play a part in helping the podcast to grow. If you enjoyed it, please do me a favor. The way to get the podcast to grow is for you to go to iTunes and give it a rating. If enough of you give me a good rating on iTunes, this podcast will show up in their “New and Noteworthy” section. Being in “New and Noteworthy” is a great way to attract more listeners, and having more listeners helps me have the support to keep the podcast going.

[00:28:39] There are three simple steps to giving me a rating. One, go to the iTunes store in the Podcast section. Two, search for “Becoming a Geek Leader,” and three, give the podcast a great rating. And while you’re there, why not write a quick review as well? Thanks! This is Tom Cooper, thanks for listening. Be sure to join me next time for another episode of “Becoming a Geek Leader.” Join me in my mission of discovering better ways to lead others at work and at home.

Listen now!

In this episode:

We all know difficult people. In this episode, Tom helps you learn how to work with the ones in your life!

• Help your employees and coworkers recognize and focus on the right goals
• Beware of “the Bozo Bit”.
• Learn to make difficult people understand you!

Resource Download:

Appreciation Starter Script – This guide helps you get people on your side by giving you ways to compliment them. The script contains positive things you can say to others when you can’t think of any!

Transcript:

Sponsored by Geek to Great

We all want to grow our skills and improve the work we do. But who has time for that? In this online blended learning program, you and your team will gain practical skills in topics like time management, dealing with difficult people, improving communication and so much more. Train your whole team for less than $500. Each lesson is 30 minutes or less, so it fits right in to your current team meeting schedule. Find more information and get immediate access to your first free lesson at brighthillgroup.com/helpinggeeks. That’s brighthillgroup.com/helpinggeeks, so that you can get access to the Geek to Great 101 course.

[00:00:57] Welcome to the becoming a Geek Leader Podcast. My name is Tom Cooper. As a Geek, I’m on a mission to figure out better ways to lead others at work and at home. Through the Becoming a Geek Leader podcast, I’m sharing what I’m learning so I can help make you more effective at leading people, too. Ready?

Introduction

[00:01:20] Today, I want to talk about something I know is relevant. It’s a problem that I face all the time and I’m sure it’s something you’ve had to deal with. It’s dealing with difficult people. Now, I worked in tech for a long time and I understand that technology is not simple. In fact, when technology works, it’s fantastic. And when it doesn’t work, you’re hating life. And as hard as technology is, in my experience, people are harder. As challenging as it is to do the technical work that we do, dealing with people sometimes can be the most frustrating thing that we have to do. So in today’s episode, I want to talk about a couple of things that you can do to make a big difference in the way that you interact with others and will help you significantly in the way that you deal with those difficult people.

Coach’s Mailbox.

Tom: [00:02:50] Today’s email comes from Jeff, one of my clients. Jeff writes, “Tom, I’m supposed to be leading some team members to get work done. But instead of focusing on the work, they seem to bicker over stupid little stuff. It makes me crazy. I mean, aren’t these people grown adults? How am I supposed to get work done when they spend their time arguing over nothing?” Well, Jeff, I’m really glad you asked that question because it’s an important one and it’s one that many of us struggle with. In fact, I would suggest to you when you ask the question, “Aren’t these people grown adults?” The answer is, “Actually, no.” No, they’re not grown adults. They’re actually grown children.

[00:03:45] Now, a lot of times, parents think that their children will watch what they do and just start doing what they do. Now many times, that’s true, but many times children don’t know what to do. And when it comes to parenting, we want to give our kids specific and direct instruction about every little thing. Now, how does that translate in to the work place? Well, the fact is that most of the time, people have never been given specific and clear instruction about what it is they need to do to be successful. Common sense is not common practice. Common sense is not common practice. And one of the things that I am passionate about is when it comes to leading people, you have to teach them every little thing.

[00:04:40] Now when I say, “Every little thing,” I mean things like “Here’s how we shake hands: we make eye contact, we give a firm grasp, we pump three times. That’s our handshake. And you might say, “Isn’t that ridiculous? Don’t people know how to do it?” The fact is unless we give them specific and direct instruction, clear instruction about what we want, we are not going to get what we’re after. Now, the other thing we run in to that’s a difficulty is we tend to think about what we think is important and they think about what they think is important. So one of the things we have to do as leaders is make sure that everybody’s on the same page about what’s important.

[00:05:28] Now, I know you’re probably thinking, “Isn’t it obvious what’s important? I mean, how crazy must it be for people not to know what’s important?” But I will tell you that people often are confused about what’s important and it’s our job to make it crystal clear. We need to be specific and direct. So let me give you an example here. So, let’s say for the sake of argument that you’re responsible for managing a reporting tool kit, that your job is to work on creating enhancements to that reporting tool kit, and your team members are the ones who either define the business processes and document those, or they’re the ones who actually write the code that implements the changes in reporting. This happens all the time, that whatever part of the work I do, I think is the most important, and I think that’s what matters the most. So if I’m the business analyst, I think that the business analysis work is critically important. If I’m the developer, I think the development of the code is the most important stuff.

[00:06:38] Here’s the problem: they’re both wrong. They’re both wrong. It’s critically important that you do the business analysis. No one would argue with that. It’s fundamentally important that the coding be done properly. Nobody would argue that. However, you need to lay out the vision for the work. So, if you’re responsible for the reporting tool kit, why does the business need the reporting tool kit? What is the business reason behind the existence of the reporting tool kit? Well, reporting tool kits are to help business leaders make good business decisions. Our job is not to document business processes or improve business processes, or write great code. Our job is to solve business problems and work as a team to deliver great value to the business.

[00:07:33] When I focus on optimizing why the coding is so important, or I focus on optimizing why the business analysis is so important, all of a sudden I miss the big picture. And I just want to encourage you that people don’t see the big picture. They don’t understand it unless you make it clear to them. What seems like common sense to you is not common sense to them. Common sense is not common practice. You’ve got to teach them every little thing. So you need to sit down and lay out the vision with them. Our job is to make enhancements to the reporting tool kit so that our senior leaders can make great business decisions. Anything that doesn’t contribute to that goal, it’s not what we do. It’s not where we need to invest our time.

[00:08:21] When you lay it out that way, now there’s a rule of thumb, or a guideline that people can use to help determine whether the work that they’re doing is on target or off target. And it’s a great way for you to ask the question when you find yourself in a conflict with people fighting over stuff that doesn’t really matter, “How does this contribute to our goal of helping our business leaders make better, well-informed decisions based on actual data?” When you reset it for them, now they’ll stop fighting so much about that petty little stuff and be more engaged on the bigger picture issues.

[00:09:00] So, Jeff, getting back to your question, “Aren’t these people grown adults?” The fact is they’re not. They don’t know what they should be thinking about. They don’t know what they should be focusing on, and they don’t know what they should be fighting for. When you lay out for them the vision and you help them redefine what they should optimize for, to optimize around what matters to the business, you’ll be able to overcome many, many of those little issues. And that’s today’s Coach’s Mailbox.

Mentoring Segment.

Tom: [00:09:54] In the Mentoring Segment, I want to talk about a different kind of difficult person. This person is the difficult person who just doesn’t get it. They really don’t get it. I was talking with a developer the other day. He said, “Tom, you don’t understand. My manager doesn’t get it. I mean, we spend our time writing code. We’re developers. And we write in a language that my boss doesn’t understand. He doesn’t know the difference between Java and JavaScript, and we spend our time working on one of those languages and not the other. How am I supposed to deal with somebody like that? He really doesn’t get it.”

[00:10:49] Now, before you just think that that person is a hopeless idiot…I mean, statistically speaking, there is a chance that the person you work for is a hopeless idiot. But before you land on that conclusion, let’s talk about something else. I mean, they are your boss, right? If they really were a hopeless idiot, they probably wouldn’t be your boss, right? So they’re doing something that’s working for them. And I just want to ask you to start to think about, when you think that person’s a hopeless idiot, maybe they’re being measured on something different than you think they’re being measured on. Maybe what you’re looking at is not the thing that matters the most to them. For example, if your boss is your boss and doesn’t get it, maybe you need to ask the question, “What does their boss want from them? What’s their boss looking for? How would their boss decide if they were being successful?” That might give you some clues about what it is that your boss is doing that’s working.

[00:12:00] Now, there is another topic that I want to touch on here, and it’s a danger. It’s actually something that we do mentally that can be a big problem for us, and the concept that I want to share with you is the idea of the Bozo bit. And we know that bits are either 1 or 0. They’re either on or they’re off. And if a bit is on, then it’s 100% on. And if it’s off, then it’s 100% off. Sometimes, what we do is we decide that somebody is a Bozo. Here’s what that looks like. You’re in a meeting and they say something that is completely off topic. They refer to the language that you write in as the wrong language. They misunderstand something that you think is foundational to the technical work that you do and you think, “How could they possibly be in this position and think or believe or act like that? That person is a Bozo!”

[00:13:06] When you have set the Bozo bit in the on position, now, all of a sudden, it doesn’t matter what they say. If they say anything, as far as you’re concerned, you have a filter and your filter says, “A stupid person said this.” And when you believe that a stupid person said this, all of a sudden, you don’t hear them anymore. It doesn’t matter. They might come up with something that is insightful, something that is useful, something that is helpful. But you won’t be able to hear it because your filter is going to say, “A stupid person said this.”

[00:13:50] Now, as I said, in some cases it’s true that whoever is talking has no idea what they’re talking about. But let me challenge that because, statistically speaking, it’s a very small percentage of people who are hopeless idiots. It is more likely that they are doing something that works for them, they’re optimizing for something different than what you’re optimizing for. They’re being recognized and rewarded for different things than you’re being recognized or rewarded for and it’s your job to figure out are they a hopeless idiot and you were correct to set the Bozo bit. Or, maybe, just maybe, you’ve made a mistake. Maybe you shouldn’t have set the Bozo bit for this particular person. So if you’re analyzing whether you’ve incorrectly set the Bozo bit to the on position, here’s some things to think about.

[00:14:51] What is it that has led them to success so far in their career? What is it that they are being measured on that’s rewarding them? People do what works. What is working for this person? Why is it that they are successful in the role that they are in? You need to start thinking about that, because when you start to think about that, it’s possible, very possible, that what you think matters actually is not as important to your organization as you formerly thought. And when you start to look at what’s working for this person, now you’ll be able to change what you’re doing to do what’s working for the organization. Now, I’m not suggesting that you stop doing great work, or that you just suck up to people. That’s now what I’m saying at all. What I’m saying is sometimes the organization values things that are other than what we want.

[00:15:57] I had a colleague one time who was passionate about doing an excellent job of doing desktop engineering, making sure that the operating system on all the computers worked as perfectly as could be made to work in the imperfect world in which we live. He spent hours and hours and hours working on that. The problem was that the organization wanted the desktop engineering done, but their standard for quality was far, far lower than my colleague’s. He was so frustrated. He was angry about the fact that the organization was just stupid for not understanding how important it was to get the desktop operating system configured properly. And he was mad at his boss, who was an idiot, for not understanding why it was so important.

[00:16:47] Now, the thing is we were not in a technology industry. We were in the hospitality industry and our organization fundamentally did not value precise, elegant engineering of the desktop. The organization was very happy to tolerate imperfection and problems on the desktop because it wasn’t worth it to the organization to fix that. They accepted the fact that it was suboptimal because the cost for engineering it to the level that my colleague wanted to do it was too high. So the organization deoptimized around desktop engineering. It wasn’t as good at desktop engineering as we could have been. Did optimize, prioritize their optimization around cost to deliver these systems. That was a reality we lived in. And my colleague spent a lot of time being angry. And he thought the bosses were pretty stupid. So you want to ask, “What is working for them? What are they being measured on?”

[00:17:50] The next thing I want to encourage you to do is recognize that they may be good at something that you’re not good at. Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Every man I meet is my superior in some way. In that, I learn from him. Every man I meet is my superior in some way. In that, I learn from him.” So even if this person seems to be less than competent, even if they seem to be less than enjoyable to be around, I want you to think about in what way are they good at something? What is something you can praise in them? Now, I know from my work with people that sometimes you find a co-worker and you think, “Tom, really, seriously, man. There is no way. There is nothing, absolutely nothing that I could say that’d be positive about that.”

[00:18:53] Well, John Rockefeller, John D. Rockefeller was the richest man in the world for a long time. He had tremendous success. He had a business partner who was overseeing a venture and that venture lost some money. In fact, it lost a lot of money. This business partner of John Rockefeller’s managed to lose a million dollars of John Rockefeller’s money. And that was when a million dollars was really worth something. I found an online calculator and did an inflation adjustment on that money. It was about $70 million of money that was lost. Seventy million dollars. Now, you can imagine, if you had a business partner who lost $70 million, that let’s just say it would be challenging to find anything positive to say about somebody who made that kind of mistake.

[00:19:47] Now, I don’t know how long John D. Rockefeller spent thinking about what he was going to say, but I’m going to share with you what he did say. When he spoke with his business partner, he said, “Well, at least you saved 60% of our investment. That’s splendid. We don’t always do as well as that upstairs. At least you saved 60% of our investment. We don’t always do as well as that upstairs.” Look at what he did. He found something, ever so small, that he could praise about the fact that the guy hadn’t lost even more money. And then in a self-deprecating way, he said, “Look, we screw up some times, too.”

[00:20:28] That is powerful. Now, it’s powerful for a couple of reasons. One reason it’s powerful is that it lays out for people that their mistake is fixable. It also is something that you could say that they did well. And when you do that, when you find that thing that they do well, “Every man I meet is my superior in some way. In that, I learn from him,” when you do that, it changes the way they think about you, because you’re all of a sudden valuing the things that they value, recognizing their contribution, appreciating the things they do and the things that they believe matter, and it’s going to change their way that they interact with you. It’s going to change the way that they think about you, the way they communicate with you. It’s very powerful. Not only that, but when you start to find those things that really you can appreciate about the other person, it changes the way that you think about them.

[00:21:32] You see, when you’ve got the Bozo bit in the on position, it doesn’t matter what they say. It doesn’t matter what they do because they are a Bozo. And when you are able to begin to flip that bit off, and then really intentionally think about what it is that they’re saying, and see whether it is valuable or not valuable, it changes you, and it changes them. It’s very powerful. Now, one of the resources I’m going to be sharing as a part of this episode is what I call the Appreciation Starter Script. Sometimes, we just don’t have the words to say to recognize people. So for example, some things you might be able to look for are things like, “You are really good at being customer-focused. Sometimes we get caught in the details and we don’t see that.” Another is, “You do a great job of defining what the business problem is.” A third one might be, “You’re really good at understanding how the political winds blow around here.”

[00:22:45] I heard a quote from Ghandi. He said, “A man who says he is not interested in politics is like a drowning man who says he has no interest in water.” Politics happen all around us, and we would be wise to understand those politics. Another one might be, “You’re really good at getting us all on the same page, making sure that we’ve communicated clearly where we’re going and what needs to happen.” Now, in the Appreciation Starter Script that I’m going to include on the Resources page with the podcast, that’s just a few of the ones that are in the list. There are a whole bunch of them and they’re just different things you can look for and some ways that you might say it. Now, don’t necessarily copy word-for-word what I would say, but think through how you would say it. Take what I’m putting out there and…you can use it word-for-word, but it’s more authentic if you put it in your words. I’m just giving you some examples of things to look for and things you can say.

[00:23:48] So I just want to wrap up by saying it’s possible they’re a hopeless idiot. But something’s working for them and you should look for things you can appreciate about the things that they’re doing, because that will help you in your relationship with them, and it’s going to help you work with them more effectively. And that’s today’s Mentoring Segment.

Episode Hack.

Tom: [00:24:34] On today’s episode, I talked about how people are not grown adults. You’ve got to teach them every little thing. Common sense is not common practice. And also, people do what works, period. People just do what works. So whatever they are doing that’s working for them, they’re going to continue to do. So for today’s hack, I want you to think about what’s working. What are they measured on? What are they optimizing for? If you can figure out what they’re optimizing for, then you can frame up your requests, frame up your interactions around things in a way that matches what matters to them, in a way that matches what they’re being measured on. When you can talk about the things that they care about, you’re going to have their attention. And that’s today’s Episode Hack.

[00:25:29] Now, as I’m wrapping up today, I want to say, “Thank you.” I want to thank you for bringing me with you, because I know that when you’re listening to a podcast, you might be driving in your car or going for a run, walking the dog or any other of a thousand activities that you want to be involved in. And I just want to say, “Thank you.” I appreciate you for giving me some of your time. Now, go figure out how to deal with some of those difficult people, would you?

Closeout

[00:25:58] Thanks for listening to this episode of Becoming a Geek Leader. You could play a part in helping the podcast to grow. If you enjoyed it, please do me a favor. The way to get the podcast to grow is for you to go to iTunes and give it a rating. If enough of you give me a good rating in iTunes, this podcast will show up in their New and Noteworthy section. Being in New and Noteworthy is a great way to attract more listeners and having more listeners helps me have the support to keep the podcast going. There are three simple steps to giving me a rating. One, go to the iTunes store in the podcast section. Two, search for Becoming a Geek Leader. And three, give the podcast a great rating. And while you’re there, why not write a quick review as well? Thanks.

[00:26:43] This is Tom Cooper. Thanks for listening. Be sure to join me next time for another episode of Becoming a Geek Leader. Join me in my mission of discovering better ways to lead others at work and at home.

In this special Christmas bonus podcast episode, I take you along with my boys as we work on building an old school game console from some parts we ordered online.  We had a great time, and I think that you’ll enjoy hearing about our adventure.