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Becoming a Geek Leader

Team Culture and the One Email Reply Rule - Sea:2Ep:9

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In this episode:

What would it be like if your team had an amazing sense of teamwork?  In this episode I talk about how (even if you’re not “the boss” you can help establish the ground rules to help your team really function well as a team.

Have you ever had an “email war” with someone?  A back-and-forth that led to frustration, anger and generally going off the rails?  I talk about a simple rule that will help you stay on track.

Resources:

4 Levels of Thinking as a Geek Leader – This easy-to-read graphic clearly illustrates the 4 Levels of Thinking, individually breaking down each level.

.

Transcript

[00:00:00]

Man: Becoming a Geek Leader, Season 2, Episode 9.

[00:01:32]

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

[00:01:54]

In today’s episode, I want to share a couple of ideas that are gonna help you improve teamwork and reduce miscommunication. In the Coach’s Mailbox segment, I’m gonna answer Bill’s email about how to handle it when somebody’s copying the universe on an email chain, leading to Bill getting in trouble with his boss. And in the mentoring segment, I’m gonna talk about how you can create a team culture that brings people together and gets your brilliant experts on your team to work as a team rather than just as individual contributors. Let’s jump right in.

[00:02:24]

Mentoring segment.

[00:02:42]

Tom: Let’s talk about culture. In an ideal world, your senior leaders have determined ahead of time what the culture of the organization is gonna be, and they have carefully shepherded that culture throughout the entire life of the organization up to the time that you join. Realistically, that rarely happens. And even though culture-setting is something that theoretically ought to happen at the most senior levels of the organization, this is a skill that you can start to use when you’re at level two of the four levels of thinking as a geek leader.

[00:03:15]

Man: Level two, team member. Level two is where you work well with others and together you all succeed.

[00:03:24]

Tom: Have you ever worked on a team or in a group that really didn’t seem to like each other very much? Have you ever worked for a company that has a terrible culture where people seem to look for ways to throw each other under the bus or undermine each other or make other people look bad? Maybe it’s a company where people seem to take particular pleasure in the failures of other departments. If that’s true for you even where you are now, I might ask you, “Well, why do you want to work for a company like that?” But let’s say for the sake of argument that these types of problems are isolated or this company really is your best option. So what do you do then?

[00:04:03]

When it comes to culture, culture is really the expression of the values we hold. And values are all about answering the question “How are we going to treat each other along the way?” In most organizations, there is a difference between the values that are on the wall or on the website and the values that you actually practice. And I’m talking about the values that you actually use as you and your teammates work together. In a perfect world, the values that your organization actually puts into practice would match your personal values. That would be the best-case scenario. Now, in practice, that doesn’t actually work out that way, but the best thing to do is to make sure that there’s as much alignment as possible between the things that you value and the things that the organization values.

[00:04:58]

And, moreover, in that perfect theoretical environment, you would have good examples of values in practice, and you would have support for making decisions that would enforce those values. Your team members would share the same values. You could recruit people who were high performers who also shared those values. And with those values as a guide, you would work together as a cohesive team to get things done.

[00:05:24]

Now, that’s the ideal situation, and I’ll just say here that it’s probable that you work for an organization that doesn’t quite have that. Maybe you work in an organization that doesn’t treat people very well, where there’s a value system that says it’s okay sometimes to throw people under the bus. So what do you do in that situation? Well, my mom always used to say, “The speed of the leader is the speed of the group.” If you want to establish a positive team culture, you are going to have to set an example. You’re gonna have to live out a specific set of values and challenge people to live up to those values too.

[00:06:02]

In my career, as I worked with highly technical experts, there were multiple times that I found teams or so-called teams where people really acted as individual super star performers but not as a cohesive team. In a recent episode, I mentioned the idea that geeks are an interesting bunch to lead because they’re able to be influenced by logic, but they’re driven by ego. Now, ego can be very, very valuable because it encourages us to pursue excellence and to create things that are beautifully elegant in their efficiency. But, unfortunately, there’s also a dark side to the ego.

[00:06:43]

One time I was working with a couple of engineers who were responsible for building a certain tool. And they had worked together, and they had done a great job because even though they never said it out loud, they actually shared one core value. That value was they aspired to perfection. Now, this aspiration, never articulated or specifically expressed, that drove them for their egos to work extremely hard to eliminate all errors from the final product.

[00:07:14]

Interestingly, this organization’s values did not require perfection from the tool. However, these geeks felt that perfection was so important that they insisted on pushing themselves and pushing each other to deliver an increasingly perfect product. As geeks, we think perfection’s good, right? But the challenge we run into is sometimes the cost of delivering perfection is far higher than the value received by having the product be perfect. If we’re talking about NASA or pacemakers or some other form of lifesaving device, I suppose perfection is something that really is worthwhile. However, I would submit to you that the majority of the projects we work on, the systems that we’re building, it’s really a lot more like making chocolate milk.

[00:08:02]

Now, I have to say I’m confident there’s some ideal ratio of cold milk to chocolate syrup which allows you to make the perfect glass of chocolate milk. Too little syrup, and you just get a slightly gray-brown glass of milk. And too much syrup, and you’re basically just drinking sugar, so there’s probably an ideal ratio, whatever that is, between the milk and the syrup. But when I’m making a bunch of chocolate milk to give to my kids, I’m really not particular about hitting a precise ratio. There’s a pretty wide tolerance between the minimum amount and an overwhelming amount of chocolate going into the chocolate milk, and I’m confident my kids would lean toward the overwhelming amount of chocolate, but along as there’s enough chocolate in the milk, they’re gonna be happy.

[00:08:46]

Getting back to that product my engineers were building, their tolerance for error was more like NASA, and the organization was more interested in getting some cold chocolate milk served and getting that milk served quickly. In fact, the amount of work that the company was demanding from that team was growing, and it was growing so fast that the engineers who were working on that product just couldn’t keep up. So in hindsight, I think one of the challenges they really ran into was their standards were just too high, and that made their pace of work too slow. And it probably would have been worthwhile to fight the battle of challenging them to lower their standards to improve productivity, but I didn’t really get into it that far at that time.

[00:09:25]

I tried a number of different things with them to improve their throughput, and eventually we settled on adding another team member to the engineering team. Now, unfortunately, the new guy didn’t hold the same standard of perfection that the other two guys had. In fact, because those first two team members personally held that value of perfection so highly, they never even needed to say it out loud. It was an unspoken, expected requirement. Well, you can predict what happened next.

[00:09:54]

The new guy joins the team. He gets the list of requirements, and he starts building. And when he believes his contributions are good enough, he submits them. And the original two team members take a look at what he’s produced, and they are disgusted by the low quality that’s been produced. They don’t say anything to the offender. No, no, that’d be way too easy. Instead, they mock him, and they belittle him, and they disrespect him, and they say he’s stupid. They’re far superior to this new person, and their response to his unacceptable work is ridicule and anger.

[00:10:24]

Now put yourself in the new guy’s shoes. You’ve been assigned to do some work, and you deliver what you think is good work product. And your new team members, who are already in trouble and needed your help, are not satisfied with the work you’re doing, but instead they criticize you, and they’re angry with you, and they don’t appreciate you. So the whole team now is confused, bitter, and angry, not exactly what I was looking for.

[00:10:48]

As I tried to get to the bottom of the problem and I talked to the original two team members, they scoffed. They said, “This guy’s a moron. His work is crap. There’s no way we could use anything an idiot like that produced.” Now, was this new guy an idiot? Actually, no. Fundamentally, his values were much more in line with the values of the organization. He focused on delivering on productivity even when it meant delivering something that wasn’t perfect. He got it. He understood that the organization really wanted chocolate milk served, not perfect chocolate milk but milk that could be served quickly.

[00:11:21]

So how does this relate to culture? Well, I definitely had my work cut out for me, and in this example, we were not working as a unified team, but we were a group of primadonnas. So I started to answer the question, “How are we gonna treat each other along the way?” Now, clearly, it’s not okay to have contempt for somebody who’s supposed to be a team member. Here’s the principle. You have to say it out loud. I had to say it out loud. I had to say, “We don’t throw each other under the bus. We don’t say bad things about each other in public. If we have a problem with a specific person, the first place to go, to that person. And if that doesn’t work, then we can get some help from a leader. But either way, we don’t talk trash about each other. That’s not what we do. That’s not who we are. We don’t do it.”

[00:12:09]

Now, I call this the little brother principle. This is the example of where big brothers sometimes harass or bug or pick on their little brothers at home, but at school or on the playground or anywhere else, if somebody messes with my little brother, there’s gonna be trouble. At work, this translates to, during our team meetings, we’re kind of in the house, and we can argue and discuss and campaign for, passionately advocate for our ideas. And there might be table pounding, and there might be raised voices, and people getting frustrated and angry, and inside those closed doors that’s fine. That’s in the family. That’s our internal discussions, and we can be open and specific and direct, and we can even challenge each other in a respectful way.

[00:12:52]

But once we open those doors, we are all one team. That means we don’t say bad things about team members in front of other people. That means when somebody makes a mistake, we share responsibility for the mistake. Rather than saying, “I can’t believe Joe did that. That was really dumb. Joe should never have done that,” wouldn’t say that if Joe’s on the team. We say things like, “That’s the decision we made. Now we get it. We see that’s not the best decision. We’re gonna do a better job next time. And in the interim, this is what we’re gonna do to try and fix it.” By not throwing Joe under the bus, what this does is it builds a sense of team, and it helps develop trust because we all want to feel like our team members are gonna have our back.

[00:13:37]

Now, it’s easy to talk about, but it’s not simple to do because we have to remember to do it. Let’s go back to my engineers who were building that product. They had to start to say out loud what their standards were. And once they said it out loud, boy, did we have work to do because, first, we had to align their standards with the company’s standards. We had to help them see that they were making chocolate milk and they weren’t making a medical device. Now, this was a big challenge because, remember I said ego matters? Well, they were saying things like, “Well, I’m not putting my name on that. I’m not gonna sign off on anything that’s that terrible.” So we had to reframe it and get them to buy in to the idea that they were making chocolate milk, that they were making something that had to be good enough, but we couldn’t afford perfect. So once we aligned their standards, then we had to ask ourselves, “How good is good enough?” And we had to be specific. We had to say out loud what we would tolerate and what we wouldn’t, how wide is the tolerance for error.

[00:14:38]

Now here’s what’s really interesting. Once we said it out loud, the new guy had no difficulty meeting that standard. He was able to meet the standard from the beginning, but his internal standard just didn’t happen to match the internal standard of the other guys who were on the team. And I want to point out that it’s not even that either of the standards was right or wrong. Neither one of them was bad, but we had to agree as a team what our standards would be, and that is part of developing team culture.

[00:15:10]

On an upcoming episode, I’m gonna talk about how to define the types of skills and competencies that are needed for a well-rounded, highly performing technical team, and I’ll talk also about what I did to help identify those skills and competencies and challenge my team members to stretch in those directions. But for today, I’m gonna summarize it by saying this. First, you have to define your operating values, and if you’re not the boss, you can still agree with your team members about what the operating values are. In the example I gave, mine involved working as a team, supporting each other, not saying bad things about each other in public. We use the say it out loud principle to agree about our quality standards and expectations. And we use the little brother principle to make sure that we weren’t gonna let anybody beat up on our little brother outside in public even if we might have picked on him behind closed doors and at home.

[00:16:01]

Just starting with these key principles, we developed a culture that was much more unified than other teams in the organization, and that improved our trust and improved our overall productivity. So as you think about your role on the team and the team that you’re working on, what’s something that you need to say out loud? Culture matters, and that’s today’s mentoring segment.

[00:16:27]

Coach’s Mailbox

[00:16:57]

Tom: Email challenges. We all have them, and the letter that I’m gonna be answering today is a set of skills that you can use when you’re at level one of the four levels of thinking as a geek leader.

[00:17:11]

Man: Level one, individual. At level one, you may even be a superstar technical resource. Level one focuses you on improving your technical skills.

[00:17:25]

Today we have an email from Bill. Bill writes, “Tom, my boss gets upset with me when I CC him on emails. He says he gets too many emails already, but the problem is that other people copy their boss and my boss, and then I get in trouble. My boss is telling me I need to solve more of these things without him, but I’m stuck. What am I supposed to do when the other guy is copying his boss and then I end up getting in trouble? I can’t win. Help.”

[00:17:51]

Dave, I understand. I have been in many email battles back in my day. I remember working for a large company, and things would definitely escalate. I tried to remember, and I went back and looked at my email archive. Found one message that had 192 people on the CC line, 192. Seriously, you cannot make this stuff up. And I remember how it works. It starts with a miscommunication. You meant A. They hear B. They expect B. They get upset when B doesn’t happen. They send a terse email calling you out for failing to deliver B. You reply to explain it. They copy their boss, and the next thing you know, their boss is talking to your boss about why you can’t deliver on what you promised, for heaven’s sake. You can tell I’ve been in a few of these, and they generally don’t lead to good memories.

[00:18:44]

And you know if you’ve ever been involved in one of these that it takes a huge amount of time to read what the other person wrote and craft a response, a reply, to the points that they raised and then bring up the specific details that support your point and prove that they’re totally and completely wrong. So, Bill, I want to talk about how you can avoid this situation in the future, and there are two things that you can do, and they won’t take much time at all, and, in fact, they’re gonna save you a huge amount of time and emotional energy. These two tips are gonna let you be able to improve your team communication, deliver better results, and get things done faster. And not only that, but they’ll keep your boss off the CC line, and they’re gonna keep you from getting chewed out too.

[00:19:25]

So here we go. Let’s start with emails. Early in my career, one of my best bosses ever, Mike Wakefield, he instituted the one reply rule for email. And what’s the one reply rule? Mike said, “You’re allowed to hit reply one time. Only once. If, after that reply, the matter’s not settled, you have to talk to the other person. You can’t text them. You can’t hit them up on Slack, IM them. You can’t use any other electronic communication.” Now, you might be permitted to call them on the phone, but it’s preferable for you to get off your butt and walk over to where they are and speak with them directly about the miscommunication. I can tell you that our team fought this idea. We were really unhappy about the idea of having to waste our time by going to see people who it’d just be easier for us to write an email. But here’s what we found.

[00:20:20]

It turned out that when we stopped hitting reply and when we stopped adding additional people on the CC line, our communication actually got better. The idea that that one reply only meant that we’d have to interact with them directly forced us to think about what we wanted to say and what we had to do to resolve the conflict. One benefit of speaking with the other person on the phone or seeing them in person is we could hear their tone of voice, and we’d understand the urgency behind some of the things they were saying, and we could help identify the priorities they had so we could address the specific concerns and the exact needs that they had. That type of communication was critical.

[00:21:06]

Email is just text. Emojis don’t count. And you don’t get any sense of emphasis or tone of voice or priority in that email, and I know from my personal experience that if I’m in a bad mood, I’m gonna automatically add grumpiness to the message as I read it. And that might not at all be what the original author intended, but I brought it in. And since there was no other mechanism to help me think about exactly what tone of voice might be there except my own grumpy attitude, then all of a sudden I’m reading it as if they’re intending it to be grumpy, and that’s not good. Also, sometimes if we’re not clear about the motive that the other person has, then we’re gonna apply negative motives to them, and that’s gonna cause us to react in a defensive way.

[00:21:55]

By going and having a personal conversation with that other person helps me to get more information about their reasoning, their motives, and their goals. The problem is that we’re more comfortable sitting in our office and investing that time to write a response. It’s less risky, right? It doesn’t take the time. It might be a waste of time to go to their office and find they’re not there. But here’s the thing. After a couple of these reply wars that go on, each side tends to get so wound up with the other one, they don’t even read what the other person says. And I’m reminded of a Bugs Bunny cartoon where Daffy Duck shows up with a knife, and then all of a sudden there’s Yosemite Sam with a pistol. And then before you know it, you got Elmer Fudd with his shotgun, and Bugs Bunny shows up with a cannon.

[00:22:42]

In these email reply wars, we set out bigger and bigger weapons as we escalate to prove how right we are. And the thing is what could’ve been resolved in a minute or two of conversation ends up taking hours of time for six or eight or a dozen people or more. So let me encourage you to try it. Try the one reply rule. After a single reply, if somebody hits reply a second time or if you want to hit reply a second time, before you do that, pick up the phone or, more valuably, go see the other person. Most of the time what you’re gonna find is you get to resolution a lot faster.

[00:23:24]

Now, this next tip is related. After you’re both on the same page, how are you gonna remember what you talked about? I recently attended a conference where a speaker shared with me the idea that… It’s an idea he called the same-day summary. The same-day summary is where you summarize in an email what you talked to somebody about that day. Now, I have always been a big fan of keeping meeting minutes in a big meeting. The person who writes the minutes controls history. If you’ve got the opportunity to write down what happened in the meeting and you share that with others, whatever you wrote becomes the official record of what happened. And the same-day summary is just a smaller, simpler version of those meeting minutes. It’s a meeting minutes for the one-on-one meeting you had with that other person.

[00:24:11]

So let’s say that you’re having a conflict with somebody about getting work done by a specific time, and it’s clear from the email exchange that you have a difference of opinion with the other person about what’s required and exactly when it’s due. If you follow the one email reply rule, you go see the other person. You negotiate a little bit, and you agree on exactly what is gonna be done and exactly when it will be done.

[00:24:35]

So let me make this a little bit more specific. Let’s say you get an email from Julie about moving a server from one lab to another. And Julie says, “You’re not doing your job properly because this task was already supposed to be completed, and now you’re holding up other people.” And Julie needs you to get that done and right now. And you reply, and you say, “My understanding was that Chet and Steve were responsible for coordinating the move, and they told me that it was scheduled to happen next week. Yeah, I’m the contact for that server, but I didn’t commit to getting it done. Check with Chet and Steve, but I’m guessing it will be done next week.” Now, that’s the one reply.

[00:25:09]

Julie sends another reply, and on that one she copies her boss, and your boss, and she says, “Look, Bill, you’re the contact. The project plan called for this to be done last week. You need to do whatever it takes to get this done, and we can’t wait for next week.” Now right then, right then when you want to hit reply and tell her what an idiot she is because you already told her that it’s not your job, I want you to stop, and I want you to go see Julie because we’ve already surpassed that one-reply rule.

[00:25:37]

Now, in this example, let’s say Julie works in another state, so you give her a call. And during that call, you clear up the miscommunication. You negotiate a little bit. By the end of the conversation you’re on the same page that while it’s not technically your job and you didn’t commit to get the work done, you’ll reach out to Chet, because Chet works in your office, to see what he can do about getting things done faster.

[00:25:59]

Now at this point, most of us would feel pretty good because we took care of that problem. We felt like we got to understanding, and there was no more work required, right? But let me suggest that you take just a minute or two to right a quick email. Write the same-day summary. And in that email, you copy the entire CC list, and you summarize the conversation. In this example, you might say something like this. “Julie, thanks for taking the time to chat about that server move today. As we discussed, I recognize the project has slowed down because the task is not complete, and we talked about how the right person to talk to about that box is actually either Chet or Steve. Since Chet’s office is down the hall from me, I will go see him, find out if he can expedite the move, and I’ll ask him to follow up with you. I will email you with what I find out from Chet. Bill.”

[00:26:51]

Now I’m telling you this email will take you two minutes to write, but I promise that it will save you a ton of hassle later. Taking the time to write a same-day summary documents that the conversation took place, what was discussed, and what the planned next steps are. In this example, I just gave you five sentences. Just five sentences, and these sentences show the leaders the issue is closed or at least in its progress. They’ll also show the leaders that you took initiative to head off an escalating problem. And it also provides backup later when Julie remembers something different from whatever it is that you remember. So, Bill, I hope this helps. The one, two punch of the one email reply rule and the same-day summary should keep you out of hot water with your boss, and that’s today’s Coach’s mailbox.

[00:27:42]

Episode Hack

[00:28:05]

Tom: In today’s episode, we talked about creating a team culture, how to move beyond frustrated team members and create a sense of one team. We also talked about how you need to say it out loud and apply the little brother principle when you back each other up if a different team wants to pick on one of your team members. In today’s episode hack, I want to challenge you to use the one email reply rule. Look at an email chain that’s in your inbox right now, and take a moment to visit with or call the person on the other side of the issue. If you take just a few minutes to get to the bottom of the misunderstanding and then use the same-day summary, you’ll be glad you did. And that’s today’s episode hack.

Closeout

[00:28:47]

Is the podcast helping you? Make sure you don’t miss out on the latest info. Head over right now to brighthillgroup.com/join to be sure that you stay in the loop. When you do, you’ll get my PDF “Become a Geek Leader in Two Easy Steps,” and you’ll be notified as soon as new podcast episodes are available. Plus, you’ll get updates and ideas that I don’t share on the podcast. Head over to brighthillgroup.com/join right now.

[00:29:21]

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!

Becoming a Geek Leader

11 Steps to Resolving That Conflict at Work- Sea:2Ep:8

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In this episode:

We all hate conflict.  Learn how to disarm the conflict and get back to being on the same page.

Hear about a new way to take advantage of a helpful tool in your toolkit – a tool that that will multiply your effectiveness.

I also talk about the behind the scenes of the podcast and share some tools that I use to document some of the processes required to make the podcast run well.

Resources:

4 Levels of Thinking as a Geek Leader – This easy-to-read graphic clearly illustrates the 4 Levels of Thinking, individually breaking down each level.

.

How to Resolve Conflicts at Work (& How to Delegate Effectively) – Sea1Ep:9

Conflict Resolution Worksheet – Got a conflict to work out? This worksheet helps you figure out how to use the CORE and XYZ methods for your specific situation.

DISC assessment video

Clarify software

Articles – How to: Resolve Conflicts at Work by Emma Johnson, Engineering Management May be the Most Unnatural Act of All by Michael Driscoll

Link to Shotgun sound effect

Transcript

[00:00:01]

Becoming a Geek Leader, Season 2, Episode 8.

Sponsored by Geek to Great

Tom: I spoke with Dr. Peter Bamberger, from Tel Aviv University’s Business School, about engineers becoming leaders and he said…

[00:00:13]

Dr. Bamberger: If you take an engineer, and you want to turn them into a leader in an organization, you tend to presume that you promote them and they’ll sort of learn overtime how to become a leader.

[00:00:24]

Tom: Right.

[00:00:25]

Dr. Bamberger: Some of them will. The vast majority won’t.

[00:00:27]

Tom: Some of them will, but the vast majority won’t. So here you are. You’re a talented engineer. Maybe you’re running a team of technical folks. But the fact is, they won’t magically get better at things like communicating clearly or delegating effectively, or dealing with conflict in a healthy way. They need to learn those skills. That’s why I created Geek to Great 101. It’s a simple way for you to help your team members with an easy plan to improve these skills and more. For less than $500, your team can start to make progress. Find more information and get immediate access to your first free lesson at brighthillgroup.com/helpinggeeks. That’s brighthillgroup.com/helpinggeeks.

[00:01:20]

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

[00:01:43]

This episode is a powerful one on conflict. Conflict, we all have it. Most of us hate it, and even when we find ourselves in a lot of conflict most of us would rather avoid it. Today, I’m going to cover some great ideas about how to lead your way through conflict. And I’ll also be covering a very simple way for you to increase your effectiveness using a tool that you’ve already got in your toolbox. Let’s get started.

[00:02:12]

Mentoring Segment.

[00:02:30]

Tom: I’m talking about conflict again today. Why? Because we all have conflict. We hate it, but it happens. I like to say, where you have people, you have problems. One study found that U.S. workers spend 2.8 hours per week dealing with conflict. That’s almost an hour a day of conflict. Now, what does that do to morale or to overall team performance? Well, whatever it is, I can tell you it’s not good. Learning to manage conflict with others is a skill you can really leverage when you get to Level 2 of the four levels of thinking as a geek leader.

[00:03:08]

Announcer: Level 2: Team Member. Level 2 is where you work well with others, and together you all succeed.

[00:03:11]

Tom: In my life, I have made a lot of mistakes when it comes to conflict. I remember years ago I was working for Price Waterhouse. At that time, I shared an office with a technically brilliant, but pretty abrasive engineer. He really liked to push people’s buttons. Just for fun, he hooked up speakers to his desktop, that was back before most computers had soundcards, and he set up his new mail sound to be the sound of a shotgun cocking. Imagine having this sound behind your back intermittently all day long. [shotgun cocking]

[00:03:53]

This guy was smart, and he was hard-working. He did a ton of great work. But he used that great work as a weapon to compel management to tolerate his antisocial behavior. Now, one day, I remember I was having a particularly bad day, and I had had enough of his pushiness, and I snapped. I turned around and I said something nasty. Now, conveniently, I guess I don’t remember the details of exactly what I said, but I’m sure it was not nice. He responded in kind and before you knew it, we were both standing up and yelling at each other.

[00:04:26]

As we were proceeding in this dangerous game, he got closer and closer to me, and at one point he was a couple inches away from my face and he was yelling at me. I remember thinking, “Is he going to hit me?” and then thinking, “Well, if he hits me, am I going to hit him back?” I immediately decided that I was not going to blows over this, but we were at a pride standstill and it was tense. Thankfully, that conflict eventually deescalated without punches being thrown. But how much work do you think we got done that afternoon?

[00:05:06]

I saw a quote the other day in an article on TechCrunch that said, “Engineers are a unique bunch, persuadable by logic, yet driven by ego.” I can remember a ton of times where ego got in the way of the results. Today, I want to share some ideas that came from an article in SUCCESS magazine called “How to Resolve Conflicts at Work.” In the article, Emma Johnson outlines 11 tips for refereeing office disputes, and I’ll include a link to both articles in the show notes for today. Johnson says disputes can’t be avoided, so we have to deal with them when they occur. She also says we can’t expect team members to just get over it.

[00:05:48]

I have to inject some commentary here. This is right on the money. I believe you have to teach people every little thing. Recently, I had a client ask me, “Why is this so hard? Aren’t these people grown adults?” Actually, no. My mentor, John Maxwell, says, “People claim with age comes wisdom. They are wrong. Sometimes age comes alone.” As influencers, sometimes we need to step in and to help mediate the conflict, to help take the edge off and equip people with the skills they need to fix the problem, rather than just back away and stay mad at each other.

[00:06:30]

Tip number four, make each person acknowledge the other person. That other person has strengths, and that other person is worthy of being heard out. Number five, focus on expectations. Man, that is the truth. The gap between what we expect and what we experience is a huge contributor to the conflict we have. Let me just say that again. The gap between what we expect and what we experience is a huge contributor to the conflict we have. Number six Johnson suggests is, challenge the people having the conflict to come up with a solution. Let them find some common ground and come up with a plan, even if their plan is not as good as your plan. Because if it’s your plan, they’re not going to be as bought in. It’s good to have them do it.

[00:07:21]

Number seven, help them say it out loud. What’s the plan, and what are the next steps? Who is going to do what, and by when? Number eight, do not separate the people having the conflict. I can’t help but think of a time we were on a road trip. Boy, you can’t get separated when you’re inside the car. Right? Two of my boys were bickering endlessly. Oh, it was so frustrating. So I decided that when we got to the hotel we were going to get to the bottom of this. When we got there, I made them stand in the bathtub, balancing on one foot, until they found a way to work it out. You can’t get away with that at your office. But find ways to get the people who are having the conflict to be together to try and work it out.

[00:08:12]

Number nine, Johnson says, “Unite them in solving a crisis bigger than the argument.” Find a common enemy, find a dragon they can work together to slay. Number 10, Johnson says, “Consider personality assessments like a disk assessment to help them find ways to communicate more effectively based on the other person’s style.” Now, that’s something I can help your team with and I’ve got a link that I’ll put into a video about disk assessments in the show notes as well. Number 11, teach them how to do it. I always ask my complaining kid, “Have you spoken to your sibling about this?” They know the rule is they have to talk to each other before they escalate to me, and you can challenge your team members to do the exact same thing. “If you’re upset with somebody on the team, go talk to them before you come talk to me.”

[00:09:07]

Now, check out Johnson’s article. She’s got more information in the article, and some examples of these principles in action. Again, there’s a link in the show notes to the article. I highly recommend it. Conflict is sometimes no fun. But it’s also the key to innovation and disruption of the old ways of doing things. Teaching your team members to work it out can have a big impact on performance. I’m also including in the show notes a downloadable worksheet that’s going to help you work out conflicts, and that is today’s Mentoring Segment.

[00:09:41]

Thought Leader Segment.

[00:10:01]

Today’s Thought Leader Segment describes a skill you can start to use when you’re at Level 1 of the four levels of thinking as a geek leader.

[00:10:10]

Announcer: Level 1: Individual. At Level 1, you may even be a superstar technical resource. Level 1 focuses you on improving your technical skills.

[00:10:12]

Tom: The U.S. Government decided to set up a research facility to understand more about how software is created. Through funding from the U.S. Government, the Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon University was created. Now, they came up with the Capability Maturity Model for software development. If you haven’t ever heard of it or you’ve never looked at it, it’s fascinating. It describes the process of what does it take to be really good at writing software.

[00:10:56]

In addition, because software projects have so many people problems, they’ve created the People Capability Maturity Model, and that identifies the key components that lead to excellent people and processes around people in organizations. Like the CMMI for software, the PCMMI for people outlines the things that you need to know to lead to outstanding performance. Now, there are a ton of great ideas in the PCMMI, and today I want to talk about one specific idea, and that is repeatability.

[00:11:36]

As geeks, we are used to using our expert judgement to create repeatable processes using technology. That’s what we do. That’s what code is. Right? That’s what machines are. Machines are systems that automate the work. Our job, as highly technical experts, is to come up with tools to make it easier for other people. These systems we build make it so that you don’t have to have that expert judgement at every single step along the way. You can repeat a set of steps without having to make that expert judgement decision every single time about what should be done next.

[00:12:12]

A major idea inside the PCMMI is that we need to have repeatable processes that we can use over and over again to make it so we don’t have to make decisions over and over, and over again. You might be thinking, “Well, that’s kind of intellectually interesting, Tom. But I’m not sure how it relates to me.” One of the things that I try to do in this podcast is make sure that the information I give you is actionable. So what can you do to make your work more scalable? How can you make your work impact more people, more processes, more projects, without having to work crazy hours? There’s a simple tool that I bet you’re already using, at least a little bit, that will improve your influence and your effectiveness. What’s the tool? It’s a checklist.

[00:13:02]

Really? A checklist? I mean, come on, Tom. You’re kidding, right? Back in 2007, Dr. Atul Gawande published the story of another doctor, this one from Johns Hopkins by the name of Peter Provonost. Provonost realized that to safely install a central line, medical personnel needed to complete a series of five steps perfectly. Now, a central line is used for patients that get a lot of drugs put in their system, and it’s a fairly common procedure. But apparently, it’s also relatively dangerous. On observation, in more than a third of patients, doctors consistently skipped at least one of five steps. See, our memory is just not quite good enough to remember to do everything all the time.

[00:13:46]

In combination with some cultural change, the results were incredible. To quote from The New Yorker article by Dr. Gawande, “The results were so dramatic that they weren’t sure whether to believe them. The 10-day line infection rate went from 11% to 0%.” So they followed patients for 15 more months. Only two line infections occurred during the entire period. They calculated that in this one hospital the checklist had prevented 43 infections and 8 deaths, and it saved $2 million in costs. Think about that for just a minute. Implementation of a five-step checklist saved lives, eight lives, and millions in costs. Now, in fairness, without the extreme commitment to cultural change that went along with creation of the checklist, because creating the checklist isn’t enough…But without that commitment to cultural change, other hospitals have not seen the same scale of results.

[00:14:50]

But the principle is that we as people forget things. Sometimes, something as simple as a checklist becomes a really powerful and effective tool. Let me ask you this. What are some things you’re doing today that could be improved by using a checklist? Back in 1994, I was working as a wide area network guy. My employer had a group of software engineering centers across the U.S. and in international locations too, and one of my jobs was to upgrade the routers at each location. Now, I didn’t have the luxury of complete documentation. The system had been set up originally before I had started with the company, and frankly I wasn’t an expert in all the different hardware models that we had in each location.

[00:15:36]

My ego, however, couldn’t stand the impact of failure. There were a million details that had to be just right in order to make the upgrade process a success. I had to fly in to each location, swap out hardware as needed, upgrade the operating system on the router, and then make sure the network links all came back online before the developers needed to access those systems that were onsite. I remember as I was getting ready for those trips, I was always a little bit nervous. I over-packed. I took extras of just about everything that I could think of, just to make sure that I wouldn’t run into difficulty. Now, I wasn’t sure about the exact cables that I’d need, so I had a big variety of them that I took with me. I took backup copies of the software and extra disks, and everything I needed. I was consistently surprised when things went wrong.

[00:16:24]

Every time, I had to scramble to overcome yet another unexpected problem. That was stressful. I think I got through maybe four of those upgrades, when I went to my boss and I said, “Hey, boss, I think maybe I should make a list of things to remember.” Really? I was going to rely on my intellect and my technical skills. I did manage to pull things off that frankly should have failed it. I was lucky, except for that one time in Chicago when the phone company had installed a link between our location and their office, but hadn’t extended the network back to Bethesda.

[00:16:58]

I was able to get everything done pretty much in one trip. But have you ever tried to get the phone company to make a fast change to anything. That one required a second trip. But how would it have been different if I had created a checklist that included, “Confirm the technical requirements of the LAN link with the phone company two weeks before the upgrade date?” It wouldn’t have been that tough, and it certainly could’ve saved me a trip to Chicago. Checklists can be a huge help.

[00:17:27]

Going back to that New Yorker article, Gawande relates the story of the B-17 Flying Fortress. This was an incredible aircraft. It was faster, it had longer range, and it had five times the payload capacity that the Army Air Corps even requested. This plane had tremendous promise. It was going to be an amazing tool for warfare. That’s how it got the name the Flying Fortress. During the flight competition, they really believed that the Flying Fortress was going to so outperform the competition that it was not even up for grabs, that the Flying Fortress was so much better than the alternatives.

[00:18:07]

But here’s what happened. For the demonstration flight, the plane took off smoothly, it climbed to 300 feet, and then stalled before a spectacular crash that killed two of the five crew members. This pilot was an unquestionable expert in aircraft and flight. He was the head of test flights for the Army Air Corps. But he had forgotten a single step in the operation of this crazy complex machine. If he’d remembered to unlock the elevator and rudder controls, he’d have been fine. But he forgot, because he’s a person and people forget things. Now, this incident was almost the end of the aircraft, which had been believed to be one of the future aircraft to help us fight wars that were coming up.

[00:18:50]

But what happened instead was the introduction, for the very first time in our aircraft operation, the creation of a checklist to help remember the myriad details. Once that checklist was implemented and adopted, that cultural change that I talked about, the Flying Fortress flew 1.8 million miles without any incidents. Let’s take a moment right now, and just spend just a moment or two thinking about your work. I know how it is. You are probably swamped. You’re pressed for time. You’re overwhelmed, too much to do. How is creating a checklist going to help you?

[00:19:30]

Many years ago, I worked in Fortune 500 IT, and we had a major project to roll out that required new servers to be built. These servers were finicky. We needed our installation process to work perfectly. If you didn’t install and configure every single component in exactly the right order, the process just would not work. Now, when we started the process, we looked at expert judgement, time and again, “Okay. What steps should we do next? Exactly how are we going to go about that? How do we configure this? What are the settings for that?” We did eventually create a repeatable process through trial and error, and I can remember installing that iTMS software, oh, dozens of times to be able to get it down.

[00:20:17]

What we learned is that even when we as experts knew what to do, we still managed to blow it sometimes, and that led to unpredictable results. Now, we had become really knowledgeable and even we had trouble getting things done perfectly. It was too complex for us to do it right. So that meant there was no way we could ever delegate it. Right? Actually, after we realized how frequently we missed a step, or we missed several steps, we decided to create a server build guide that included every single step, every step, from specifying power and networking requirements before the box was actually put into place, to the operating system and installation options, to configuration files, specific software tools, and manual settings, every single step, one at a time, and in order.

[00:21:05]

Now, using that build guide, our success rate for server build went up so high that we were able to hand off installations to the operations team, rather than depend on expert engineers to make the right choices all the way along the way. Handing that off to the operations team allowed us to tackle other even more complex tasks. Let’s get back to your task list. What tasks are on your list? What things could you document? What task, no matter how complex, would you be able to hand off to somebody else who’s not quite the expert that you are? What would it take for you to document the process, so you don’t have to be involved in every single step?

[00:21:44]

Now, you might say, “Well, Tom, I can’t do that, because it’s just far too complex.” Okay. Let me assume that that’s true. I’m not sure it’s true, but let me assume it’s true. Could you document 80% of it and hand off 80% of it, and only get called in for that portion that required your expert judgement? What would that do to free you up? Using a checklist solved my iTM server build problem, and a checklist definitely would’ve helped me with my network upgrades. It helped the Army Air Corps master the Flying Fortress, and it saved lives and millions at Johns Hopkins. Repeatability and consistent performance, isn’t that part of the elegance we seek as engineers? Finding a way to package our expert judgement and pass it along to others is one way that you can improve your effectiveness. Checklists do that, and that is today’s Thought Leader Segment.

[00:22:36]

Family Segment.

[00:22:51]

Tom: As I record this episode, we’re in the dog days of summer. My teenage son, Joel, as you know, is the producer for this podcast. That means he’s responsible for all the post-production edits and mixing the episodes, as well as making sure that all the technical bits of getting the recordings posted online actually happen on time so that you get your episode when you’re expecting it. Now, as you might think, our routines have been pretty disrupted by our summer activities. Over the last couple months, Joel has been handling some school work, and he’s been involved in two different week-long camps as well.

[00:23:24]

When I created the podcast, one of the first things I had to do was figure out all the technical bits, all the processes I wanted to follow, and how I was going to go about doing each podcast episode. When I wanted to bring Joel in to be the producer, I wanted to create a process and document that process. So I’ve used some cool software called Clarify. It makes it simple to take screenshots and mark them up. You can add detailed notes about exactly what to do and in what order. It turns out that there are about a zillion little things you need to do to make the podcast run really smoothly.

[00:24:00]

While Joel has been gone, I’ve had to step back into the technical editing process in posting some of these episodes. Now, I’ve told you before that I am not a detailed guy. I generally operate at a pretty high level. I can do details, but they just make me tired. But because Joel was busy doing other things, I jumped right in with both feet and I edited the first episode I had edited in a while. It was after I posted it that I discovered I’d forgotten one of the steps in the edits to the introduction. If you go back a couple of podcast episodes ago and the very beginning of the episode doesn’t sound exactly like the rest of the episodes, yep. That’s me.

[00:24:34]

In the next episode, after I posted it, I realized I’d forgotten to add ID3 tags to the MP3 file. Oops. I guess that will screw up my SEO. Now, let me ask you. Do you think I actually used my checklist? Nope. You’d think I’d know better. I mean, I created a checklist and I remembered almost everything. But that reminds me of a story my Uncle David told me. My Uncle David is a flight instructor, and he had a friend who was a pilot, who refused to use a landing checklist. I guess he didn’t get the memo about the Flying Fortress. Right?

[00:25:09]

Now, my uncle’s friend had flown for years and years, and years successfully, and he landed well over and over, and over again, until that one day where he landed his plane with no landing gear. After that, he switched to using a checklist. My Uncle David says there are old pilots and there are bold pilots, but there are no old, bold pilots, and that is today’s Family Segment.

[00:25:36]

Episode Hack.

[00:25:57]

Tom: In today’s episode, we talked about conflict. Why? Leading geeks is a unique challenge. We’re persuadable by logic, but frequently driven by ego and pride. Where you have people, you have problems, and improving your conflict resolution skills is a great way to improve team performance. For the Episode Hack today, I want to challenge you to think about something you do frequently, something you’ve been reluctant to ask anybody else to do because you’re too important to the process. For that activity, I want you to take some time and document the steps into a checklist. Once that checklist exists, you can use it to make sure that it actually works, that you remember to put down your landing gear.

[00:26:35]

After you’ve done that a few times, think about who you could delegate that task to, and use the checklist as a foundation for training them to do it well. That’s today’s Episode Hack. Oh, and I’ve mentioned before that licensing intellectual property matters to me, making sure that the people who create content are recognized and rewarded for the work that they do. I am very grateful for Creative Commons and other public domain-type licenses that make it possible for me to take advantage of sharing great ideas and great content with you. Special thanks today to Rob Sun God for the shotgun sound effect, and for offering it under the attribution-only license, making it free for me to share with you. Thanks for listening.

Closeout

[00:27:20]

If you like the podcast, can I ask you to give me a hand? It turns out it’s a big deal to have a rating in iTunes. Now, I’ve heard other podcasters asking for ratings and reviews, and I wondered why they kept going after it again and again, and again. Do you want to know? Because almost no one actually does it. It only takes a minute and it’s a huge help. So why is that? Great ratings help iTunes decide that this podcast is worth promoting, and when you put a rating or a review, it helps it appear as a top podcast in the iTunes search. Would you please take a moment to do it right now? There are three simple steps. One, go to the iTunes store podcasts. Two, search for “Becoming a Geek Leader”. Three, give the podcast a great rating. Thanks.

[00:28:16]

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!

Becoming a Geek Leader

Performance reviews & crazy product owners - Sea:2Ep:7

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In this episode:

It’s mid year, and about time to think about performance reviews – yours AND people who report to you. In this episode I cover some key ideas about how to reset the goals for the rest of the year, and how to set yourself (and your team members) up for success.

Resources:

4 Levels of Thinking as a Geek Leader – This easy-to-read graphic clearly illustrates the 4 Levels of Thinking, individually breaking down each level.

.

Dealing with a disrespectful team member – Sea:2Ep:4 – Learn about the XYZ formula and apply it to your work environment.

33 Minutes To Setting Amazing Goals – workbook to help you set priorities and establish big picture goals for the year.

 SMART Goals Worksheet – A worksheet to help you define what your goals are and how you can achieve them.

The Rainmaker Platform –  I love the platform because it handles the technical aspects, and lets me focus on creating great content for you!

Transcript

Announcer: Becoming a Geek Leader. Season Two, Episode Seven.

Sponsored by Geek to Great

[00:01:32]

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

In today’s episode, I want to talk about performance reviews, how you can make sure that you get a great one this year. I’m also gonna go behind the scenes and talk about some of the technology I use to keep the podcast going and to keep you in the loop. And finally I’m gonna share an email from a listener who’s working on an Agile project with a product owner who doesn’t quite understand what Agile means and I’m gonna offer some tips on how to deal with him. Let’s get started.

[00:02:20]

Mentoring segment.

Tom: Can you believe it is the middle of summer already? It’s time to talk about performance reviews. I was just talking with a client the other day and she said, “Well, I haven’t heard anything from HR about mid-year reviews, so I really don’t have anything to do about that.” Wow. Really?

[00:02:52]

Now I’ve been on the receiving end of a bunch of reviews over the course of my career and some of ’em were good and some were downright awful. And I know that they can be a big problem when it comes to employee engagement. There are two ways that a well-meaning boss can really deflate us as employees on our review. First is a review that only points out bad things we’ve done that doesn’t pay any attention to any of the good things we did. And the second is a review that praises us for things that we thought were minor but overlooks the big stuff. Now both of these are definitely problems and even those two don’t account for reviews where we get blamed for things we didn’t do or we get evaluated for stuff that was never on our goal list, for heaven’s sakes.

[00:03:38]

We all know that we are overwhelmed. We have too much stuff to do and not enough time to do it and I can remember when I was a manager. I remember it was getting close to review time and even though I took reviews pretty seriously and I wanted to do a good job with that, I remember thinking myself, “Boy, this is a pain. What’s the least amount of work I can do to be able to check the box and get HR off my back, but also not make my team members mad?”

[00:04:03]

Now that’s somebody who really was passionate about getting reviews and getting ’em done well. And your boss is busy. He’s got too much stuff to do and you wanna make sure that you’re working on the right stuff so you get good work done and so you can have a great review when it comes to the end of the year. And your boss is in the same boat you’re in,. You’re busy and overwhelmed. So how can we make it easier for our boss and help improve our own performance at the same time? If you’re a team member, this is a skill you can start to use at level one of the four levels of thinking as a geek leader.

[00:04:38]

Announcer: Level One, Individual.

[00:04:40]

At level one, you may even be a superstar technical resource. Level one focuses you on improving your technical skills.

[00:04:51]

Tom: I was raised in a family of political junkies. We loved to listen to debates and speeches and I remember watching C-SPAN and I liked to hear the leaders in their own words without spin doctors telling me what to think. And my family spent time discussing and arguing our positions and I think most of us probably enjoyed it. And back before podcasts were popular, one of the ways I kept my mind engaged while working on home repairs or when I was running errands on a Saturday was I liked to listen to C-SPAN Radio. On Saturdays, they’d play Supreme Court oral arguments and they also played presidential tapes, recordings made by the president of whatever was going on at that time. It was on one of these Saturday afternoon listening sessions that I learned an important lesson about how to get a busy boss to make progress on something that you care about. The recording was from March 8th, 1965, and President Johnson was talking to his press secretary, George Reedy, about presidential appointments.

[00:05:51]

Now what I noticed was the president was reading out loud a letter which finished with the words, “We have drafted a letter asking Donner to accept, which will be prepared for your signature.” I think I’ve got an audio clip here.

[00:06:05]

President Johnson: Donner’s term as a member of the Board of Communication will expire. He’s one of your original appointees [inaudible 00:06:10] which coincides with the expiration of his term May 11th. We have drafted a letter asking Donner to accept, which will be prepared for your signature.

[00:06:19]

Tom: I cannot think of a job that’s more busy than the President of United States. His team had helped him by making a recommendation for him. They saved him the time and the work of personally reviewing the list of people who could possibly be appointed. And not only that, but they had drafted a letter and prepared it for his signature. Now he’s the President. Of course he had the power to change the plan, but if he wanted to move forward with the recommendation of his team, all he had to do was sign the letter. It made it simple for him.

[00:06:51]

So let’s get back to our question. How can you make it easier for your boss and improve your performance at the same time? You can do what President Johnson’s team did. You can make it easier for your boss.

[00:07:05]

One challenge we have with performance reviews is that in most organizations, nobody and I mean nobody is thinking about performance reviews at all. Unless we’re getting close to a deadline or maybe we’ve blown completely past the deadline. And we could have another separate conversation from this podcast about the value of annual reviews and whether they work or don’t work and how some companies are experimenting with eliminating them, but that’s a topic for another day. I think eventually companies are gonna come back to using performance reviews because I think they perform an important function but again that’s a separate topic for a different day.

[00:07:43]

In general, any time you can make your boss’s life easier, that’s gonna be a big win for you and for your boss. If you’re able to deliver great work product that your boss can forward to his boss, that’s something that is always gonna make your boss smile. If you’re gonna be able to deliver great work product that your boss can forward to his boss, that is something that will always make your boss smile. I said it twice because it’s important. Anything you can do to make your boss’s life easier is definitely gonna play well for you. Philosophically I believe every single team member ought to be looking for ways to become better at their job and then after they’ve demonstrated their proficiency in that area, they should look for things that their boss is doing and start learning how to do ’em for your boss.

[00:08:32]

Now I wanna just put this right out there for you. I think once you’ve demonstrated that you are competent in the work that you’re assigned to do, you should stretch and try and look at things that your boss is doing and find ways to take those things off of your boss’s plate.

[00:08:49]

So how does that relate to your performance review? It’s simple. Do you think your boss wants to spend a ton of time coming up with goals, measurements, and assessments of how well you did? Probably not. And realistically there are other people on the team besides you and that’s just one more thing on the pile of things that your boss has to do. And I promise that is not on the top of the list of fun things for him to do or for her to do. So what can you do? You can write your own goals and measurements. Now I’m not saying that you sandbag or you say, “I am the best person ever.” I’m not saying that at all. But how do we go wrong? Well, what usually happens is that at the beginning of the year, we have some…at least a vague idea of the things that we need to do. But for most of us, over the course of the year, some of those things are going to change. And by the time we get to annual review time, we worked on this goal for a while and we worked on that goal for a while, then we had a new goal we worked on for a while…it’s no wonder we’re confused. What I want to encourage you to think about is, how can you break it down into smaller pieces? If you can show progress toward goals, you’ll have a lot more clarity about whether you’re working on the stuff your boss wants you to work on, as long as you continue to think in short time-frames.

[00:10:13]

So for example, let’s say that at the beginning of the year, your boss told you there were three big goals. Goal one: launch a new version of product XYZ before December. Goal number two: reduce developer time spent on operational support by 20%. And goal number three: stop wasting developer time on sales demos. Equip the sales team with documents and demo tools so we don’t have to spend developer time with sales.

[00:10:36]

So now let’s say that it’s summer. It’s halfway through the year. You’ve been working on these three big goals since the beginning of the year. But if your boss asked you right now how much had you gotten done, I mean, you could talk about the tasks but you might be struggling to give, I don’t know, a percent complete or to give him a sense of how much you’d actually gotten done. So how do you move forward from here?

[00:11:00]

Well, the first thing I would encourage you to do is check with your boss to make sure that those goals are still the highest priorities that are relevant. In some cases, what your organization had hoped to do this year, it just didn’t work out and priorities got shifted. And sometimes there’s an urgent thing that came up and sometimes, too, nobody told you about the shift in priorities. Having a conversation with the boss is a great way to get started to think about making sure you’re working on the right priorities.

[00:11:31]

Next, look at just one of the goals on the list. And I want you to think about, if you were making progress, how would you know? How would you know you’re making progress? Now what is one way over the next month or two you could demonstrate progress toward that goal? When you think about demonstrating progress, is it easy to prove? Is there an easier way to show progress? The thing is, the harder it is for you to collect the information and report your progress, the harder it’s gonna be for you to get your review done well. And I want you to think in terms of what is the smallest unit of work that you can easily count and show progress toward the goal? We’re talking about baby steps. How can you demonstrate progress? Now it’s important to think about demonstrating progress in a way that others perceive as actual progress. So let’s talk about that first goal that was on the list: launch a new version of the product.

[00:12:27]

If you think about the milestones, that software development life cycle, where are you? Have you locked down the features that are gonna be in the product? Have you identified your schedule for the scope of the things you’re working on? Have you mapped out how many sprints you’ve got between now and launch and how you’re gonna get the features into those sprints if you’re doing an Agile development methodology? Are you on track? Maybe your baby step is gonna be, let’s decide on the final features in the new release. Maybe you’ve already moved beyond that and you’re halfway through the features that you’d plan to code. And you might wanna say, “Well, here’s what we’re gonna do. We’re gonna set a short-term goal of getting another 15% of the features done in the next month and a half.”

[00:13:11]

Now when you think about defining those goals, sometimes it’s helpful to have a model to look at and I’ve got an e-book that I’ll put a link to in the show notes. It’s called “33 Minutes to Amazing Goals” and in the show notes, I’ll also include a copy of my SMART Goal Setting Worksheet, which I think’ll be helpful for you as you start to think through those goals and those measurements. Now it’s pretty simple after that. After you’ve identified one baby step, you’re gonna wanna move on to two more and you’re gonna identify deadlines for each of those as well. The more work you do to identify what needs to happen and how you’re gonna measure that and making it easy to do those measurements, that’s gonna make it that much easier for you and your boss to be on the same page about what exactly you need to work on, getting those priorities set. And not only that, but as you begin to collect those metrics and check off those baby steps as being done, it makes it even easier for your boss to give you credit for the work you’re accomplishing.

[00:14:12]

What we’re talking about here is how to make it easy for others to get things done. The more prep work you do, the easier you make it for your boss. The easier you make it for your boss, the better it’s gonna be for you and your performance review is just one example of where you can perform like an advisor to the President of United States, by making it easier for your boss and that today’s Mentoring segment.

[00:14:35]

Behind the Scenes segment.

Tom: You know, it’s funny, I was preparing to record this episode and one of the segments in today’s episode is a Behind the Scenes segment and I’ve got some content I definitely wanna share with you but I also have to laugh a little bit and say this is my second attempt at recording this episode. I realized as I was recording, I noticed that things were recording, but when I went back to check one of my recordings, it had been picking up my voice through the wrong microphone. And since I know that audio quality is important, this is my second attempt at recording this episode. Hopefully now it’s actually recording using the correct microphone. It’s hard to believe as I’m recording this that it’s late July. And this summer, I’ve been thinking a lot about things that are behind the scenes in the business. Today I want to talk about my website and how I communicate with you.

[00:15:39]

I started the business about five years ago and when I first got started, I knew I needed a website and I wanted to get something up and running pretty quickly and so I used a tool called Google Sites and that site was…well, let’s just say it was ready to be replaced probably the day that I launched it. Not very long after that, I hired somebody to help me do design and layout for a custom WordPress site. And I found a hosting provider that was a pretty good hosting provider. They had a lot of geeky options that made me feel comfortable that I could do backups and I could test things and I’d keep the site up and running and I felt pretty good about that. But keeping the website alive meant that every time there was a new release of WordPress, I had to spend time fiddling around and testing to make sure the plugins and custom themes were working properly. And it didn’t take me very long to recognize that I’d become a part-time website administrator and that the time I was spending on administering my website was time I really could have been spending working on helping clients and helping you and thinking deeply about what does it mean to move from being a geek to being a leader? And I decided something had to change.

[00:16:49]

I was pleased to discover a tool called the Rainmaker Platform. It’s an all-in-one service and it’s really kind of neat because it allows me to have a mobile responsive website, which my old site didn’t have, and give me a platform for publishing my podcasts and blog posts and gives me a place to share documents and manage my social media postings and it gives me an up-to-date security-managed website with a complete learning management system so I can offer online classes and it takes care of payment and a thousand other things for me so I can focus on the stuff that I love to do, which is about leadership and influence and helping you become a geek leader.

[00:17:26]

Even though I’ve got a background in computer science and actually I’ve been working with one of my boys recently to figure out how to do some Google script to do some manipulation of some code and teach him a little bit about coding, coding is not what I want to be investing my time in right now and moving to Rainmaker let me move away from some of that more technical stuff so I could focus on the things I wanted to work on. In case you’re curious about it, I’ll include a link to the Rainmaker in the show notes for this episode as well.

[00:17:54]

Now this last week or two, I’ve been experimenting with a new feature that they’ve offered, email marketing. I’m still doing some testing, but I think there’s a pretty good chance that I’m gonna be migrating away from AWeber’s email service. I’m not entirely unhappy with AWeber…I’ve been using them for several years now…but keeping track of people in multiple systems, it’s just not ideal and by having it all under the one platform I think is gonna be helpful.

[00:18:17]

Now it’s not as simple as it might seem. Yeah, I can export my mail list and content and import it over to the Rainmaker side, but I also have some automated email sequences that get sent out using AWeber today, so I’m probably gonna need to recreate those in the new system and then while I’m at it, I’m probably gonna want to refresh them because some of those sequences have been around for a long time and they may not be relevant.

[00:18:44]

One of my goals is to think through the user experience. How can I do a better job of meeting your needs and giving you useful and helpful information? As I’m learning, I’m investing time in thinking about the latest tools and the best approaches for communicating and then I work to make my downloadable resources as valuable as I can for you. And what that means is I’m learning things and I look back on what I’ve done in the past and I realize I could’ve done it better. And many times, that means that I’m editing or recreating resources to make ’em better for you.

[00:19:19]

I also take seriously intellectual property and over the last several years, I’ve had a bunch of opportunity to learn about licensing for video clips and music and photos. And I’ve learned that there are a number of places to find good quality images that I can use as long as I provide attribution to the author at no charge. And there are also a number of sites that offer images and music and movies that are in the Creative Commons zero license. Now that license doesn’t require attribution at all. And then there are licensing sites where you can pay for access to images and music and movies. And the images that you see in my products, they come from a variety of sources and I’m careful to make sure that I’ve got a license that covers the way I use the image. Because sometimes the license requires, if it’s a special license for, if it’s in an electronic presentation or maybe if it’s in printed materials or if it’s online. It turns out licensing intellectual property can be pretty complex. That’s one more thing I didn’t realize I’d be learning as I went down this journey. And that today’s Behind the Scenes segment.

[00:20:26]

Coach’s Mailbox.

Tom: Today’s email from a listener comes from Fred. Fred writes, “Tom, I’m part of an Agile development team at a big company. We do software development for an internal client. This internal client is the product owner and they’re making me crazy. This is my first Agile development project and I’m really confused. I thought Agile meant we were all on the same team and we were gonna work together to understand how to solve problems and set priorities and then get the code written and tested and released. But that’s not what we’re doing. Our client keeps stopping us and then having us start on features that are completely different. Most of the time, we have two-week sprints but then sometimes the client decides to stop us in the middle of a sprint and have us start working on something entirely different. As I’ve read about Agile, I’ve read about making time in the sprint to groom the backlog and plan for the next sprint. But I feel like every two weeks, we’re starting from zero all over again. Is Agile supposed to be this hard?”

[00:21:52]

Well, Fred, the first thing I’ll tell you is that whatever you’re doing, that’s not Agile. It’s not even Waterfall. What you’re doing is kind of messy. To make progress here, you’re gonna have to work with your product owner and this is a skill set that you’re gonna be wanting to work at when you’re at level two of the four levels of thinking as a geek leader.

[00:22:11]

Announcer: Level Two, Team Member.

[00:22:14]

Level Two is where you work well with others and together you all succeed.

[00:22:21]

Tom: In order for things to be different, you’re gonna have to work on getting somebody who doesn’t report to you, your client, to change. Now you know how hard it is to get you to change, so you can only imagine that getting somebody else to change is gonna be even that much more difficult. You don’t have the power to make them change, so they have to want to change. As I think about this, I’m reminded of that scene in the movie “The Hunt For Red October” where the main character is trying to figure out how he’s gonna be able to get Russian sailors off of a Russian submarine without starting a war. And he figures out that he is gonna have to get them off the boat, but how is he gonna make them get off the boat? He’s wrestling with this question:

[00:23:07]

Alec Baldwin: “How do you get a crew to want to get off a submarine?”

[00:23:11]

Tom: How are you gonna get your product owner to stop changing direction every two weeks? Just like Jack Ryan, you have to ask, “How do I get the product owner to want to be more consistent?” Now in Jack Ryan’s case, as I’m sure you recall, the sailors were convinced they were gonna die from radiation poisoning if they stayed on the boat, so they really wanted to get off and I’m not suggesting you threaten anybody’s life. But how can you get them to want to change? They’ve got to want to change.

[00:23:40]

I like to tell people, “If you don’t have a plan about where you’re going, then whatever direction you’re headed right now, that’ll be just fine.” Right now it sounds like you’re changing your destination on your road trip every couple of weeks and that’s not good. With that kind of planning, it sounds like your development project’s a little bit like the Israelites from the Old Testament in the Bible. You’re wandering in the desert and if you don’t watch out, this software project may take you 40 years to finish. But seriously I think that you and your internal client have got to get on the same page. Again, what they’re doing is definitely not Agile, even if they’re using those terms and even the titles like product owner. How do you get the product owner to want to be more consistent? As I’m going through this next section, if you listen carefully, you’re gonna hear me using the XYZ formula. In situation X, when you did Y, it had Z impact. And I talk about this approach in detail in Season Two, Episode Four, Dealing With a Disrespectful Team Member, and I’ll have a link to that episode in today’s show notes.

[00:24:40]

If I were in your shoes, I think I’d want to approach the product owner and say something like this: “Hey, my goal is to develop as many new features and bug fixes as fast as possible. Would that be okay with you?” Now I can’t imagine that they’re gonna say no to that question. Who doesn’t want as many features as fast as possible? You can go on and say, “If it meant we needed to adjust our process a little bit to give you those faster features, is that something you might be open to talking about?” And again, I don’t think you’re likely to get a negative response here. They might be a little guarded or a little bit hesitant, but you’re in the zone now to be able to offer some feedback. And the way that I start that conversation is by asking the question: “May I offer you some feedback?” Now almost never will they say no or almost 100% of the time, they’re gonna say yes to this request. So once they say yes, you use the XYZ.

[00:25:32]

“Last week, when we stopped that sprint right in the middle, the team was pretty frustrated. We thought we were all on the same page about the sprint goals, but then all of a sudden, we had different goals we needed to work on and we had to start all over. We felt like we lost a week of development completely and that put us behind and slowed us down in getting you those new features you asked us to deliver.

[00:25:53]

“Can we talk about ways we might be able to avoid that for future development? What would be great is if we could all agree about the features we need to work on and then we can start to plan not only for this sprint but really we’d like to start thinking about upcoming sprints, too. Sometimes it’s helpful to have some time outside the sprint to get input from other teams or to do some research about how something works. And if we can agree ahead of time generally which things we’re gonna work on for this sprint and the next one, we might be able to speed things up for you.”

[00:26:23]

You’re probably gonna get a positive response to this, but I’m not foolish enough to believe that magically all the issues you’re describing are gonna go away. In fact, I would suggest, based on what you’ve told me, that it’s probably wise to have an Agile coach come in and work with the whole team. Not just send people to Agile training, but actually have somebody come in and work with your team because if this is a new methodology for you personally and it sounds like real Agile would be a pretty big culture shock for your product owner, it would probably be a good idea to have somebody who can come in and help you get the processes set up and get the tools in place to really move things forward. But you’re gonna need to connect as a team and get focused on those same goals. And I would invest whatever time it takes to get alignment because without that alignment, your client is gonna burn the team out and he’s not gonna get what he wants and then everybody’s gonna be frustrated. Working toward a common goal can help make sure that your time is spent well. And that’s today’s Coach’s Mailbox.

[00:27:21]

Episode Hack.

Tom: In today’s episode, we talked about some behind the scenes tech, how I host the podcast on my website using the Rainmaker platform. We also talked about how to get your product owner to wanna work with you instead of changing direction all the time. And finally we talked about how to help your boss and help yourself get better performance reviews. In the Episode Hack today, I want you to think about a goal you’re working on this year. What is one baby step you can take to move you in the direction of getting things done? Now make sure that that is a step that others are going to see as progress. If you want some help thinking that through, check out my e-book on the podcast webpage right in the show notes there. You can find the e-book, this is Season Two, Episode Seven and right there in the show notes page, you can get free copies of the e-book and my Goal Setting Worksheet as well. So what is that baby step? And that today’s Episode Hack.

[00:28:37]

Closeout

Hey, can I ask you something? Did you hear something helpful on today’s episode? Why not share with a friend? On my iPhone, it’s as simple as hitting the three little dots on the bottom right of the screen, selecting Share Episode, enter your friend’s e-mail, and hit Send. Why do this? Two reasons. One: your friend or coworker will thank you, you’ll be seen as a source of helpful and valuable information, and they will appreciate you for it. And number two: I need you to help me get the word out about this podcast. I’m working hard to bring great ideas and great content to you and it’s a big help to me if more people hear those ideas. Go ahead. Share it now. I’ll wait. Thanks.

[00:29:27]

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.

Becoming a Geek Leader

When is Done "Done?" When to Share Bad News & Office Politics Sea:2:Ep6

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In this episode:

• When is the software done?
• When should you share bad news?
• What about office politics?

Resource Downloads:

Miscommunication Cheat Sheet - free download

When is “done” done?

• Free  one page download: When is Done Done
• Jeff Sutherland article and video on when done is “done”

Episode 10 – the Four Levels of Thinking as a Geek Leader

• 4 Levels of Thinking as a Geek Leader - Free Download

Episode 8 – Leadership lunch and better networking –

• Questions for your Leadership Lunch - Free Download

Episode Transcript

Becoming a Geek Leader, Season Two, Episode Six.

[00:00:05] Tom: I spoke with Dr. Peter Bamberger from Tel Aviv University’s Business School about engineers becoming leaders. And he said…

[00:00:14] Dr. Bamberger: If you take an engineer and you want to turn him into a leader in our organization, you can’t just assume that you promote them and they’ll learn over time how to become a leader.

[00:00:25] Tom: Right.

[00:00:26] Dr. Bamberger: Some of them will. The vast majority won’t.

[00:00:28] Tom: Some of them will, but the vast majority won’t. So here you are. You’re a talented engineer. Maybe you’re running a team of technical folks. But the fact is, they won’t magically get better at things like communicating clearly or delegating effectively or dealing with conflict in a healthy way. They need to learn those skills.

[00:00:51] That’s why I created Geek to Great 101. It’s a simple way for you to help your team members with an easy plan to improve these skills and more. For less than $500, your team can start to make progress. Find more information and get immediate access to your first free lesson at brighthillgroup.com/helpinggeeks. That’s brighthillgroup.com/helpinggeeks.

[00:01:21] 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

[00:01:43] In today’s episode, I’m going to talk about three aspects of your career and your work. And all three of them are tied to the way that you work with other people. In the Tech segment, I want to talk about the question when is done, done? In the Mentoring segment, I’m going to share a story with you about a client who almost lost his job because nobody was willing to give him bad news. And finally in the Thought Leader segment, I’m going to talk about how you ought to handle office politics.

[00:02:13] I’ve got a lot to cover in today’s episode so I want to get started. All the topics in today’s episode are skills you’re going to want to start thinking about when you’re at level two of the four levels of thinking as a Geek Leader.

[00:02:26] Now it’s been awhile since I’ve talked about all four of them and if you want more information and a description of all four levels of thinking as a Geek Leader, I want you to check out Season One, Episode Ten. And there will be a link to that episode in the show notes as well. Today, we’re going to focus on level two of the four levels of thinking as a Geek Leader.

[00:02:47] Man: Level two, team member. Level two is where you work well with others, and together you all succeed.

[00:02:56] Man: Tech segment. In the Tech segment, Tom talks about tools, processes, and theory related to agile, projects, systems, and more.

[00:03:10] Tom: In the Tech segment, I want to talk about software development, and I’m going to answer an email from Gina. Gina writes, “Tom, I keep getting in trouble with my boss because he says our code is late, but that’s not true. What really happens is we deliver on time but our customers aren’t happy with our code. Their requirements are awful and we do the best we can. We give them exactly what they ask for and then they demand we rewrite it. We’re doing what the customer wants but then we’re getting dinged for not delivering what they want. What are we going to do about this? Can you help?”

[00:03:46] Gina, I feel your pain. I’ve been there. Have you ever seen that t-shirt that says, “I am a software developer. I deliver complex applications based on precision guesswork from unclear requirements.” Man, now that’s funny because it’s got at least a kernel of truth to it. Right?

[00:04:05] The problem comes about because to our customers, the work we do is essentially magic. And they don’t really understand how to translate their business needs to into technical specifications that we can understand. And that’s really the root of it. Often the problem is not well defined.

[00:04:24] When I was overseeing developers, I can’t tell you how many times I heard them tell me, “It’s done,” only to find out that their definition of done didn’t match my definition of done. And I think that’s really the answer to your question. What you’re asking is how am I going to know when we’re done?

[00:04:42] And I really appreciate Jeff Sutherland’s thinking on this. If you don’t know who Jeff Sutherland is, you can check out his website jeffsutherland.com. He’s one of the inventors of the Scrum methodology, and he has a lot of great things to say that are really powerful when it comes to the art of software development.

[00:04:58] Now in one of the postings on his blog a while back, he said that it’s one of the thorniest problems to deal with as a team. And he says done is done when the code is feature complete, code complete, has no known defects, and is approved by the product owner.

[00:05:18] Now what that means is if it’s feature complete all the intended functionality of the final version, it’s in the software. If it’s code complete there’s no entirely new source code that’s going to be added to that release. No known defects I think really means no showstopper defects because all code has got some kind of bugs. And approved by the product owner means it meets all the defined business goals.

[00:05:45] When I was overseeing teams who were responsible for deploying software in production environments, I also added a fifth item. I added production ready to Jeff’s list. And what I mean by this is that the operational documentation is complete, the configuration files have been delivered to production, system settings are in place in production, and the app runs without developers ID and it’s finally been accepted by the people who are going to have to operate the code.

[00:06:10] Now this information is available in today’s show notes and I want you to feel free to go over to the website and download the document that’s called When Is Done, Done. And that’s going to help you identify or articulate these items for your organization. Now I’m not suggesting that your answers to when is done, done ought to be exactly the same as mine or Jeff’s but I think you need to have that conversation if you want to be clear about when you’re really finished with the requirements from the customer.

[00:06:41] Now the question of when is done, done, it’s a tough one. It really is. Because a developer, for example, might think it’s done when he figures out how he’s going to write the code, or maybe when the code compiles without errors. The QA might think it’s done when it passes all the tests, the unit tests, and the regression tests. The product owner might think it’s done when the code runs and the documentation is complete. But the customer doesn’t think it’s done until it solves their business problem. And unless we’re all on the same page about what does done mean, you’re not going to get there.

[00:07:19] Have you ever heard the expression, “If you don’t know where you’re going, then any direction is just fine”? I think that’s what happens to us at work. We don’t have clarity about exactly where we’re going.

[00:07:29] So to wrap up this segment, Gina when is done, done? It starts by asking the question, “For this work, how are we going to know we’re done?” And it boils down to having a conversation about what do we want to complete in order for this to be finished, and how will we know? What measurement will we use to make sure it’s done? Until you have a measurement of success, how is anybody going to be able to say you’re done?

[00:07:55] The next time you’re planning a feature or you’re getting a project assigned to you, don’t accept the assignment unless you and the other folks agree on your measurement of success. And don’t accept the cop-out of, “I’ll know it when I see it,” or, “It’s obvious.” It’s not. If you accept that, you’re headed for frustration and pain. So, Gina, I hope that answers your question. And that’s today’s Tech segment.

When should you share bad news?

[00:08:19] Man: Mentoring segment. In the Mentoring segment, Tom tackles tough issues based on his years of experience.

[00:08:26] Tom: In the Mentoring segment, I want to talk about sharing bad news. We all hear bad news, we all know bad news, and we all at times are called on to share bad news. This segment is about when to share it. Now unlike wine, bad news does not improve with age. You need to share bad news as quickly as you reasonably can do it. And today I want to share a story about Eric and Paul.

[00:08:57] Now Eric is a senior technical lead in a large company. He’s been there a few years, and he’s been responsible for running a program working with an internal customer. They’re doing customizations and product enhancements to support the needs of an internal customer. Now the company leadership brought me in to work with Eric.

[00:09:17] Now Paul is Eric’s boss. Paul had some reports from folks inside the company that Eric was not delivering as much work as the customer wanted. And Paul also had some complaints from that customer about arguments the customer had with Eric. Now let’s talk for a minute about Paul. Paul is a smart, highly technical expert himself. And he’s a boss overseeing a number of folks like Eric, and each of those guys has programs they’re responsible for.

[00:09:47] Now when Paul heard these complaints about Eric, he did mention those issues to Eric but not really severely. Almost a casual or in a passing way. In such a way that Eric really didn’t think it was that big a deal. Not only that, but Paul didn’t mention to his boss that Eric’s primary customer was really unhappy.

[00:10:10] Now our story today is about a boss and a team member, but the principle is the same whether you’re talking to a peer or you’re talking to somebody who reports to you. And that’s why this is a skill you’ll start using at level two of the four levels of thinking as a Geek Leader. You can use it with a team member even if they don’t report to you.

[00:10:26] So let’s get back to Paul and Eric. Imagine that you’re Eric. You’ve been doing good work. You’ve got a lot on your plate. Your internal customer is completely unreasonable and extremely demanding. In fact, he asks for the world and gets angry when you don’t deliver it. And for some reason, he gets away with acting like a jerk while he’s doing it.

[00:10:48] Now in this scenario, Eric’s customer is actually pretty politically savvy. He knows his stuff technically, and he knows what measurements his bosses are interested in. He is aggressive about working his relationships and working the system and he’s figured out whose toes he can step on without getting in trouble. And he’s been able to behave badly because the organization is so focused on financial results that they are willing to overlook the metaphorical trail of dead bodies left in the wake of the customer.

[00:11:17] Eric, on the other hand, he’s a pretty typical technical expert. He focuses on knowing his stuff. He knows the platform, the platform capabilities and he works with his team members to deliver as much work as he possibly can for this crazy customer. But the problem is that while Eric is focused on these things, his customer is looking at the metrics his bosses care about. And he’s working the system and Eric isn’t doing that.

[00:11:43] Now as time goes on, Eric gets more and more frustrated because he feels like he’s overworked and he’s underappreciated. And one day when he’s just at his limit, he has it out with the customer. Voice were raised on both sides. Not nice things are said by both people. But this customer now is so angry with Eric that he complains bitterly to the senior leadership three levels over Eric’s head. So here we are. Eric’s boss’s boss’s boss thinks that the lack of results are entirely Eric’s fault.

[00:12:18] Now here’s where Paul comes in. Paul has not worked with Eric to help him really correct the problem. And Paul never told his boss there was big trouble brewing between Eric and the customer. When the news comes to Paul’s boss that Eric has to go, Paul’s boss is completely caught off guard. The next thing you know, Eric is put on a performance improvement plan, or a PIP, with human resources. Here’s the deal. If he doesn’t turn around his performance in the next few months, he’s going to lose his job.

[00:12:48] Now this is the point where they brought me in to work with Eric. During my initial conversation with Eric and Paul, it seemed very clear to me that Eric had no idea his job was on the line. Now I took Paul aside after the call and I asked him about it, and he told me he never told Eric he was likely to lose his job if things didn’t turn around. Are you kidding me? Wow.

[00:13:09] Now we could go into the ways that Eric had already turned a deaf ear to negative feedback and the ways that he managed to tweak his customer and frustrate his customer both intentionally and unintentionally. But that’s outside the scope of today’s story. Today’s story is about giving bad news as quickly as possible.

[00:13:30] What I want to highlight here is the lack of clear guidance that Paul gave to Eric. It would’ve been a lot better if six months before Paul had taken Eric aside and said, “Hey look, you got to watch out for this customer and you better make some investments in relationships with him. And watch out, because this person is really politically savvy. You better be careful.”

[00:13:51] Now I just read an article in Harvard Business Review talking about the question of negative feedback. Nobody wants to have to give bad news. Nobody wants to be the bearer of bad tidings because it seems really, really awkward and uncomfortable. But here’s the thing. The fact is your team members don’t enjoy hearing that they didn’t do a good job. That’s true. Nobody enjoys hearing that. But they really want to hear it.

[00:14:16] There was a survey that was done and the respondents said some really interesting things. One of the things they said, 92% of them said negative feedback if delivered appropriately is effective at improving performance. 92% said, “If you give me negative feedback appropriately, it’s going to help me to do a better job.”

[00:14:37] And 57% were asked if you had to choose between getting positive feedback and getting negative feedback, which would you choose? 57% said they would rather receive corrective feedback over positive feedback. That means that most of the people you work with, even though it’s uncomfortable, A, recognize that it’s important to hear, and B, actually prefer to get negative feedback over positive feedback because then they can do something that improves their performance.

[00:15:07] So this whole conversation starts with the question, “May I offer you some feedback?” Now if you want more information about that, I want you to download my miscommunication cheat sheet. It’s got simple scripts of what to say and how to say it. Now you can find that in the show notes for today’s episode.

[00:15:26] Much of the problem we had here would’ve been resolved if Paul had been willing to have a tough conversation much earlier. Now here’s where this got off track. As I talked with Paul his story in his head was, “Look, I got a lot going on right now, and I just don’t have time to think about that. And it’s probably going to be okay. I probably don’t have to worry about it.”

[00:15:48] Now the fact is that that story is just not true. Thinking it’ll be okay if I do nothing, that’s a false story. Problems do not go away by themselves, particular people problems. Remember that people know negative feedback is helpful. And even though it’s unpleasant to hear, they benefit from it so much that they’re willing to endure the discomfort to get to better results. Unlike wine, bad news does not improve with age. May I offer you some feedback? And that’s today’s Mentoring segment.

What should I do about office politics?

[00:16:22] Man: Thought Leader segment. In the Thought Leader segment, Tom brings in ideas from today’s best thought leaders.

[00:16:36] Tom: In today’s Thought Leader segment, I want to share some ideas about office politics that I found in some of my recent reading. Now earlier in today’s episode, we talked about how Eric almost lost his job because of poor guidance from his boss. Now, of course, there was a lot more to it than that. Eric had ignored office politics and he thought that his great work alone would save him.

[00:16:57] Now that’s an assumption I know that technical experts make all the time. My great work, my brilliance is what matters the most, but it’s not. Time and again, I hear Geeks say things like I’m too busy to waste time with all that people stuff. I got a lot of stuff to do and not enough time to do it. The last thing I need to do is spend time talking to people about sports at the water cooler. Now I’ve heard that kind of idea more times than I’ve ever counted.

[00:17:23] But here’s the thing. Mahatma Gandhi said, “Anyone who says he is not interested in politics is like a drowning man who says he’s not interested in water.” Anyone who says he’s not interested in politics is like a drowning man who says he is not interested in water. Here’s the thing. You are already enmeshed in politics, and it’s going to help you in huge ways to understand that you’re in the water. If it’s handled poorly, you’re going to drown like Eric almost did. And handled well, you’re going to be able to swim, maybe even as well as Michael Phelps. Now this is another level two thing on the four levels of thinking as a Geek Leader. You need to start working on this skill long before you find yourself in a formal leadership role. This kind of thing pays off and big time.

[00:18:11] Now let me ask you, have you ever been in a position where the leaders seemed well dumb? Have you ever been frustrated because your customer just doesn’t get it? I remember a guy on my team said, very sincerely, “Our customers, Tom, are idiots.” Wow. But you know you’ve been in a place where you’ve thought, “I’m smarter than this leader” or “How did that person get promoted? They really don’t understand.”

[00:18:39] I remember a time when I was at Marriott. One of the vice presidents asked me, “Why do we spend money on your department? You make it so that software gets installed on desktop computers, but what’s the big deal? I download stuff from the Internet all the time. Nobody makes that work for me.” This was my boss’s boss. And yet nobody had told him, for example, that when we were using a consistent package to install Visio, that the number of helpdesk calls related to Visio plummeted and that follow-up visits dropped as well. He didn’t get it.

[00:19:09] But he was the boss and I got to tell you at that time, that was baffling to me. I didn’t have the insight about the fact that he had delivered significant business results earlier in his career that allowed him to be put in a position where he was in a role of leadership because the company said, “Hey, this person gets things done, and we want to have him getting things done.

[00:19:32] So why is it that less technically competent people get promoted and the people not as technically savvy as you are are put in leadership positions? It’s because politics matters. Many years ago, John D. Rockefeller, one of the richest men in the world said, “The ability to deal with people is a commodity, just like sugar or wheat. And it is a commodity for which I will pay more than any other commodity.” Now let that sink in just for a second. The ability to deal with people is a commodity just like sugar or wheat and it is a commodity for which I will pay more than any other commodity. According to the richest man in the world, the most valuable commodity on the planet was the ability to deal with people.

[00:20:25] Now in his day, he was dealing with big technical problems like how to transport oil, how to refine it into lamp oil, kerosene or gasoline. He had a lot of geeks that worked for him, probably as many, if not more than any of the other robber barons, and he said the most valuable skill was dealing with people.

[00:20:46] So let me put this out here for you. Maybe it’s time to look more carefully at that skill set. It’s not that your technical skills aren’t valuable. They are very valuable. In fact, I just read an article where somebody said that software development skills are the most precious resource on the planet. I’m not sure that I totally buy into that, but they are valuable. But what if you added political savvy to your toolkit? How might that help you?

[00:21:14] I came across an article in Harvard Business Review about New York Police Chief Bill Bratton. He was talking about implementing change in an organization and I’d like to read just a little bit from the article entitled Tipping Point Leadership. Here’s what it said. “Organizational politics is an inescapable reality in public and corporate life, a lesson Bratton learned the hard way.

[00:21:40] “In 1980, at age 34 one of the youngest lieutenants in Boston’s police department, he had proudly put up a plaque in his office that said: ‘Youth and skill will win out every time over age and treachery.'” Oh man. I’ll continue the quote. “Within just a few months, having been shunted into a dead-end position due to a mixture of office politics and his own brashness, Bratton took the sign down.

[00:22:07] He never again forgot the importance of understanding the plotting, intrigue, and politics involved in pushing through change. Even if an organization has reached the tipping point, powerful vested interests will resist the impending reforms. The more likely change becomes, the more fiercely and vocally these negative influencers, both internal and external, will fight to protect their positions, and their resistance can seriously damage, even derail, the reform process.” Bratton learned there were powerful forces at work, forces that his youth and skill could not overcome.

[00:22:46] I want to encourage you to be like Bill Bratton. Recognize that there are powerful forces at work and you can either find ways to work with them or around them. But let me assure you that if you ignore them, you will find yourself, like Bratton, in a dead-end position. Office politics make or break projects and companies and if you pretend they’re not there, you are going to end up drowning.

[00:23:12] Now here’s the thing. I understand. We all want to believe that great work wins. We want to believe that the best ideas rise to the top. But the fact is that’s not how it works. It isn’t how the world works today and it never has worked that way.

[00:23:29] In another article I read the story of Jill. Jill was a technical leader whose career got sidetracked. And as she began to explore how and why it happened, she said, and I quote, “I didn’t want to play office politics or be perceived as a brown noser, self-promoter, or somebody who rose because she was buddies with so-and-so. I was always told that the cream would naturally rise to the top.” But that’s not how it works. The cream doesn’t always rise to the top. The way it works now, and they way it’s always worked, is for you to get your work noticed and in the hands of as many people as possible.

[00:24:04] Now just as a quick analogy, I want to ask you to think for a moment about pop music and movies. Now do you think that the things that are the most popular are the absolute best creative products? Of course not. Some of the biggest sellers are hugely talented but an awful lot of them are in the right place at the right time with the right connections to be heard. And this is true for you, too. You need to know who the influencer’s are, what problems they have and how those people can help, or hurt your efforts.

[00:24:36] If you choose to opt out of politics what you’re saying is, “There’s a whole world out there that has immense influence over my success and I don’t want to be part of it.” But politics is not big and scary and you don’t have to be the guy with no technical skills who stands at the front of the room. You don’t have to sell out to be able to engage politically.

[00:24:57] Let me share just a couple of places where you could improve your political savvy. First, look at the team members, your peers. What could you do to help them achieve their goals? Second, look at your boss. What are three major goals that your boss is working on and how can you help. Now if you don’t know, ask. Go to your boss and say, “Hey, I want to make sure that I’m doing everything I can to be helpful to you in every way that I can. So what are three big things that you’re working on?”

[00:25:29] And third, build your network. Now I covered details about this in Season One, Episode Eight and I’ve got a resource in the show notes that’s called Questions for your Leadership Lunch. And those questions can help you make and maintain the connections you need to make at work. And they’re going to help you with those political forces as well.

[00:25:51] Remember, Mahatma Gandhi said, “Anyone who says he is not interested in politics is like a drowning man who says he is not interested in water.” Knowing who the influencers are and how to swim in the ocean of politics makes the difference between drowning and success. Now as I said before, you don’t have to sell out to be more savvy about politics. And that’s today’s Thought Leader Segment.

[00:26:16] Man: Episode hack. In the episode hack segment, Tom shares one action-oriented takeaway from this episode, something you can apply right away.

[00:26:27] Tom: In today’s episode, we talked about when is done, done, and how getting specific about how everybody agrees that it’s done is a game changer. In the Mentoring segment, we talked about Paul and Eric and how Paul’s reluctance to give Eric bad news almost cost Eric his job. And finally in the Thought Leader segment, we covered ideas of how the best solution doesn’t always win and why your ability to learn more about office politics is going to make a huge difference in your overall success.

[00:26:57] Today’s episode hack is focusing on speaking up when you’ve got bad news. In the show notes, I’ve got a document called the Miscommunication Cheat Sheet and that gives you some specific tools that you can use to help give feedback to a team member. And remember, the conversation starts with, “Hey, may I offer you some feedback?” And that’s today’s episode hack.

[00:27:21] Is the podcast helping you? Make sure you don’t miss out on the latest info. Head over right now to brighthillgroup.com/join to be sure that you stay in the loop. When you do, you’ll get my PDF, Become a Geek Leader in Two Easy Steps and you’ll be notified as soon as new podcast episodes are available. Plus you’ll get updates and ideas that I don’t share on the podcast. Head over to brighthillgroup.com/join right now.

[00:27:55] 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.

Today’s episode focuses on:

• Priorities – what can you do when your boss WON’T set them?
• Stupid customers – How to handle it when they demand something that just won’t work? AND
• Who has the power to say no?  And what can you do to help influence them NOT to say no?

Don’t miss out – listen now!

Becoming a Geek Leader

Stupid Customers and Setting Priorities Sea:2Ep:5

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Becoming a Geek Leader, Season 2, Episode 5

[00:00:07]
Tom: Have you ever had one of those really annoying customers who always seems to be looking to start an argument? Have you ever had a team member who just couldn’t let go and delegate work, but was always complaining about being buried? I’ve been there, and I know how frustrating that can feel. I also know these things don’t generally get better on their own. People need help learning exactly how to communicate, delegate, manage conflict with others, and plan more effectively.

[00:00:39]
Now, you know it would be great if you had a simple plan to address those needs, but you’re crazy busy too, right? That’s why I created the Geek to Great 101 program. It’s a simple system designed for you to take a portion of your already scheduled team meetings to play a video for your team, ask a few questions from the Leader’s Guide, and your team members will be able to fill in their own personalized action plan. It’s a great way to put a simple professional development program in place. Your team members will be able to share their plan with you, and you can help them actually do it. Train your whole team for less than $500. Find out more information and get immediate access to your first free lesson at brighthillgroup.com/helpinggeeks. That’s https://brighthillgroup.com/helpinggeeks.

[00:01:05]

Introduction

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?

[00:01:56]
I know I normally talk quickly, but today’s episode is really gonna be rapid fire. First, in the Thought Leader segment, I’ll be talking about how to prioritize when your boss won’t set any priorities because everything is a number one. In the Mailbox segment, we’re talking about customers who have terrible ideas. I mean what do you do? And finally we have a Family segment, and that’s all about figuring out who do you need to influence, and who has the power to say “no.” Let’s get started.

[00:02:25]

Thought Leader Segment

Man: Thought Leader segment. In the Thought Leader segment, Tom brings in ideas from today’s best thought leaders.

[00:02:36]
Tom: In the Thought Leader segment today, I wanna tell you about my grandfather, George Kelly. He was a research chemist, and he had patents for all kinds of cool stuff. For a while, he worked for the Library of Congress, and one of his inventions was a way to chemically remove acid from book paper so that it would not yellow and fall apart. Not only that, but he could do it to a room full of books all at the same time without damaging the book. Now, that was cool.

[00:03:02]
And one of the challenges pop had was that his boss refused to set priorities. So today’s thought leader is my grandfather, who taught me about priorities. Now, his boss would come to him with a list of 10 things, and he would expect pop to do them all at once. And I will tell you that anybody who knew my grandfather knew he was a right-brained, logical, step by step, methodical thinker who simply was unable to multitask. Now, you might imagine that this may have led to some conflict with his boss, and you’re exactly right. This skill we’re talking about today is one you’ll use throughout your career, and it starts at level one of the four levels of thinking as a geek leader.

[00:03:43]
Man: Level one, individual. At level one, you may even be a superstar technical resource. Level one focuses you on improving your technical skills.

[00:03:56]
Tom: So let’s say you’re in a situation like pop, your boss simply won’t set priorities. He says, “They’re all important,” and “Get them all done.” Now, it’s ridiculous, but it does happen to far too many of us. So what do you do? Well, if your boss won’t set priorities, then you set the priorities. And what you need is a reason for your prioritization. Now, the crazy thing is that any reason at all will do, but I wanna challenge you to find great reasons to set your priorities.

[00:04:27]
Now, the best way to do this is to align your work with your company’s goals, and you asking yourself, “How does my work tie to the strategic priorities of the company?” And what is it that your company really needs to get done? How does your to-do list link with the company’s strategy? Do you know what the company’s priorities are? Now, if you’re in a big company, check out your annual report. Look for ways your company is in the news. What are your senior leaders saying in public?

[00:04:53]
Now, if you’re at a small company, think about the big rock challenges your customers are facing. How does your work link to solving your customers’ problems? Now, maybe you’re doing internal work that customers don’t see. For example, I worked in identity management, which was granting and revoking access to internal systems. Now, how was that important? Automating this improved security, it sped up gaining access to those critical systems, and it lowered our operational cost. That tied into a major goal of decreasing the operational overhead of corporate IT, which was really important to the business.

[00:05:32]
Now, as you find the corporate goal, order your work in terms of the biggest payback to the lowest, based on the organizational goals. Now, some of you are gonna say, “Tom, I can’t even do that. Our leadership is so screwed up, they can’t even decide what’s important.” Now, if that’s the case, use your expert judgment to decide what needs to be done and when. Look at the list of projects, identify the resources required and the benefit to your boss, or at least the benefit to your team members, and based on your expert judgment, pick a list of priorities for your projects and publish it.

[00:06:10]
When the boss asks why you’re working on number two and not number eight, say, “Boss, I get it. I want that done too, and here’s why I’m working on this one first.” For example, you might say, “This project is gonna take us three weeks, and it’s going to speed up our team’s efficiency for the rest of the year. Number eight will take more resources and more time, but you see once this one is done, we’ll have more available time for every project, including number eight.” You see where I’m going?

[00:06:37]
So if he wants to reorganize the list, that’s okay, ask him for his reasoning for making the switch. See, lots of times bosses know things that we don’t know, and that might affect the appropriate priority. Now, if the boss doesn’t have a good reason for changing priorities, it’s okay to negotiate with him about that. And we’ll talk more about influencing your boss in a future episode, but for now, know that having a reason for your choices is a powerful influencer, and that when your boss is talking about why things should be in a specific order, it gives you more information to help set priorities when he won’t. And that’s today’s Thought Leader segment. Thanks, pop.

[00:07:16]

Coach’s Mailbox

Man: Coach’s Mailbox. In the Coach’s Mailbox segment, Tom answers a direct question from a listener. Want Tom to answer your question? Just send an email to coach@brighthillgroup.com. That’s coach@brighthillgroup.com.

[00:07:38]
Tom: In this segment, I’m gonna be talking about how do we convince our leaders or our customers that they have terrible ideas? I’ve got an email from Dave here, and Dave writes, “I’m stuck. We’re planning a major upgrade to our financial system. Now, this is a highly customized, commercial product, and the upgrade planning alone is gonna take months. And we’re gonna have to rebuild each customization and prove that all the new code works. We’re on a very tight timeline to get this done. The testing of the customizations will take months to complete, and we have a limited upgrade window because we’re in a regulated industry. Now, here’s my problem. I just learned that my internal customer has decided that we don’t need a dedicated test environment, and they wanna continue to develop customizations in the old version of the software until the day of the cutover to the new system. Not only that, but they can’t or won’t give us more time, more people, or more money. Help!” Dave, the first thing I have to ask you is this, is your resume up to date? No, I’m just kidding.

[00:08:43]
I remember being in similar situations, and I can appreciate that the situation as you describe it is awful. Now, probably close to 100 years ago, there was another guy who was faced with a similar problem. Now, of course, it wasn’t with a financial system upgrade, but he was in a dispute with a hotel about contract terms. Dale Carnegie tells a story of how he had planned 20 lecture meetings at a hotel’s grand ballroom. He had worked with the hotel for previous contracts, and he’d scheduled these meetings, he confirmed that the room was gonna be available, but he didn’t have the completed contract in hand.

[00:09:21]
Now, knowing that the room was available, he went ahead and printed tickets and the promotional materials, and he’d already been selling them when he got a letter from the hotel that said the hotel was gonna charge him three times what they previously had charged him. Now, he was stuck. All that stuff had already gone out, and it wasn’t like you could just send a new Twitter update to tell people things had changed.

[00:09:43]
So Carnegie thought about it for a while, and he decided to schedule a meeting with the manager, knowing he was in a very weak position. I mean after all, the hotel only cared about what they cared about, not what Carnegie cared about. But I love the way he handled it. He said to the manager, and I’m quoting from his book, “How to Win Friends and Influence People” here. “I was a bit shocked when I got your letter, but I don’t blame you at all. I should probably have written a similar letter myself if I was in your position. Your duty as manager of the hotel is to make all the profit possible, if you don’t do that, you ought to be fired. Now, let’s take a piece of paper and write down all the advantages and disadvantages that will accrue to you if you insist on this increase in rent.”

[00:10:32]
He then took a piece of hotel letterhead and he created the columns, advantages and disadvantages. Under advantages, he wrote the words “ballroom free”, and he said, “You will have the advantage of having the ballroom free to rent to dances and conventions. That is a big advantage, because events like that can pay far more than you can get for a series of lectures.” Under disadvantages, he went on to describe the fact that the income would certainly decrease from Carnegie, and all those business people who might have had a great experience in the hotel would not come to the hotel. And that advertising and promotion potentially leading to future business coming from the work that Carnegie was doing, well that would be lost as well.

[00:11:16]
Now, he wrapped up with this, “I wish you’d consider these advantages and disadvantages before you make your final decision.” Now, interestingly, he received a letter from the hotel manager the next day, informing him that the rent increase was only 50%, not the originally noted 300%. And he did that without ever mentioning what Carnegie wanted. He spoke only in terms of what was important to the hotel manager.

[00:11:47]
So Dave, getting back to you and your internal customer. I think you know their plan is a terrible one, and that moving forward with it is gonna lead to frustration and pain, and long work hours with a low likelihood of success. But they’re not focused on that. So let me ask you, what do they care about? So let me just give you a couple of ideas.

[00:12:12]
For example, what would it mean to their team’s work, now this is the customer’s team, not yours, if they have to spend time debugging a live system which wasn’t able to be tested before it go live? What are the consequences of having the customizations not convert properly or not convert on time? In your you know regulated industry. is there a regulatory compliance problem if the financial system is delayed? What are the consequences of being out of compliance if something goes wrong? Finally, is there a revenue problem if they can’t have access to the financial system? You know I worked in enterprise B2C business, and if our retail sales website went down, we lost millions of dollars, even if we had a short outage. So I think you’re getting where I’m going with this. Just like that hotel manager, you have to find out what matters to them, and help them understand the advantages and disadvantages of their plan.

[00:13:11]
Now, one final note when it comes to persuasion. Think about what Carnegie said as he left that meeting. He said, “I wish you’d consider these advantages and disadvantages before you make your final decision.” I’ve gotta tell you, this is actually brilliant, just one small sentence. None of us wants to be inconsistent with our previous decisions, even if our previous decision was a bad one. What Carnegie did here was he gave the manager an excuse. He opened the door for the manager to change his mind without having to say he changed his mind.

[00:13:54]
After all, if the 300% rent increase was his final decision, well then he’d have to violate his internal consistency to make a change. But if the rent increase was merely an idea floated before he made his final decision, well then he could easily change his plan and not feel like he was compromising his previous decision. I’m telling you, this idea is a great one and it is very useful. So Dave, I hope that helps. And that’s today’s Coach’s Mailbox segment.

[00:14:29]

Family Segment

Announcer: Family segment.

[00:14:30]
Man: In the Family segment, Tom shares leadership lessons from his family life.

[00:14:39]
Tom: In today’s Family segment, I wanna talk about the question, who has the power? Now, I have a story that’s ripped from the headlines, inspired, as they say, by actual events. Let’s say that you’re an IT leader in a Fortune 500 company. Hypothetically speaking, let’s say this is a large hotel company with the initials Marriott International. In our story, you’re the server engineering guy. You’ve been looking at vendors, needs and capabilities, and you believe the company should switch the hardware from a different manufacturer, rather than the current company standard. You’ve done your research, and from a cost and performance perspective this new vendor blows the existing vendor out of the water. It’s a slam dunk, right? So you make a list of who needs to approve the change, and you need to talk to your boss, maybe his boss, and the purchasing department. It should be pretty easy, right?

[00:15:32]
Now, I’m gonna pause at this point in our story and jump back to Noah, my youngest. Now, as I have said, Noah is a master of influence. As the youngest child of seven, he falls at the bottom of the totem pole, and he’s gotta be creative in order to get what he wants. Now, I think he’s got a career ahead of him in sales or in some kind of opportunity that’s gonna involve influencing other people, because he has mastered the skills of influencing others.

[00:16:04]
Now, he’s figured out that I am not the fun parent. It’s not that I’m anti-fun, but push comes to shove, he knows that generally mom is more likely to say “yes” to something fun. So he also is plainly aware that mom and I have a policy, we back each other up. If you get an answer you don’t like from one of us, you had better not go to the other one for a different answer. See, the kids know that mom and I talk to each other too, and we are gonna find out if you’ve played that game with us. So Noah knows that I have the authority to say “yes,” and more importantly he knows that if I say “no,” that is it. The answer is “no,” there’s no appealing to mom. In fact, he’s so fully aware of this, that even when he was younger he figured out if there’s something he wants that his best bet is not to ask me first, but to ask mom. In fact, he’s done it so often it’s become a running joke in the house, and what you’re about to hear happens with frequency.

[00:17:07]
Yes, Noah? How can I help you?

[00:17:09]
Noah: I would like to ask mom a question.

[00:17:13]
Tom: Noah knows that I have the power to say “no,” and he’s very careful to use that idea to his advantage. Now, this is kind of a nuanced thing. You see, if he asks me and I say “no,” then he knows that the answer is gonna be “no.” But he also knows that if he asks mom and she says “yes,” that mom has influence over me. So if mom says “yes,” dad is gonna say “yes.” Pretty smart, huh?

[00:17:42]
So let’s get back to you, the server engineering guy at the hypothetical hotel company. You look at the technical capability, and it is clear that vendor B is better than vendor A. You look at pricing, vendor B is lower price with at least equivalent quality, capacity to supply and to support the equipment. In fact, you’re already doing business with vendor B, it’s just a matter of making B the preferred provider. This is clearly the right decision, the plan should move ahead. Right?

[00:18:12]
So you go to the person who has authority to approve your plan, the IT VP overseeing your area. And you present your case, and he shuts you down and hard. What? Why would he do this? He explains he understands your point of view and that your case has merit, but it’s simply out of his hands. He’s supportive in concept, but he does not have the power to make that change. Now, you’re baffled, you didn’t see this coming at all, you’re really upset. If this guy doesn’t have the authority, then who in the world does?

[00:18:46]
It turns out it’s the sales department. The sales department? How can that possibly be? They don’t know anything about technology. Who do they think they are to make this kind of rule? I mean, that’s just stupid, right? Well, it turns out no matter how compelling your capability or cost savings are this idea is dead. Why? Because the preferred vendor, vendor A, has a huge sales force and consulting arm, and as it happens, vendor A agreed to make your hotel chain their number one preference for their employees in exchange for your company making them the preferred hardware vendor. And the sales that the hotel company gets from all those room nights far exceeds any cost savings you might have. So the business call is to use the lesser vendor’s hardware. And besides, nobody ever got fired for buying from vendor A, if you know what I mean.

[00:19:44]
So in our story, the server guy had no idea there was a stakeholder with power and influence who could scuttle his plans. He knew who had the power to say “yes,” but it didn’t even occur to him that there was somebody who had the power to say “no.” And he didn’t even consider them in his examination of stakeholders, so they had the complete power to stop him. Like going back to Noah, he knows who can say “yes” and who can say “no,” and who has the influence. And he also knows if dad says “yes” that mom is gonna go along with dad’s plan.

[00:20:20]
So here’s the practical application. When it comes to your projects and your goals, who has the power to say “yes?” And just thinking about what matters to them, and how do you make it easy for them to say “yes?” You know my kids will come to me and they’ll ask me, “Hey, dad, can I do X?” And one of the first questions I’m gonna ask him is, “Well, why would I say no?” Because it helps me to understand what are the negative consequences, right? So how can you make it easy for the person to say “yes?” And then, I want you to think about, who has the power to say “no?” What matters to them? Is there any way you can influence what matters to them? And that is today’s Family segment.

[00:21:07]

Episode Hack

Man: Episode Hack. In the Episode Hack segment, Tom shares one action-oriented takeaway from this episode. Something you can apply right away.

[00:21:23]
Tom: In today’s episode, we talked about setting priorities when your boss won’t. How you can use your expert judgment to put your list together, and then use that as a starting point when you negotiate with your boss about priorities. We also talked about influencing others. Who’s got the power to say “no,” who can say “yes,” and what do you do if they have a plan that’s actually a terrible plan? Today’s hack is all about Dale Carnegie’s ideas with that hotel manager.

[00:21:49]
Now, I want you to take two minutes, literally. Literally, just two minutes to pause now and I want you to think about the following questions. Number one, who is an influencer who’s standing in your way? Number two, what does that influencer care about? Think about, what are the advantages that matter to them and what are the disadvantages? Three, how can you present these advantages and disadvantages to those influencers in a way that helps them wanna think about doing things your way? And finally, how can you use Dale Carnegie’s technique before you make your final decision to help them reconsider previous decisions that they think are already finalized? And that’s today’s Episode Hack.

[00:22:34]
If you like the podcast, can I ask you to give me a hand? It turns out it’s a big deal to have a rating in iTunes. Now, I’ve heard other podcasters asking for ratings and reviews, and I wondered why they kept going after it again and again, and again. Do you want to know? Because almost no one actually does it. It only takes a minute, and it’s a huge help. So why is that? Great ratings help iTunes decide that this podcast is worth promoting, and when you put a rating or a review, it helps it appear as a top podcast in the iTunes search. Could you please take a moment to do it right now? There are three simple steps. One, go to the iTunes Store, podcasts, two, search for “Becoming a Geek Leader,” and three, give the podcast a great rating. Thanks.

[00:23:31]
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!

Becoming a Geek Leader

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In this episode:

• Ever have to deal with a disrespectful team member?  Wonder how to confront them without it turning into a huge fight?  Learn what to say, how to say it, and download my worksheet to help organize your thoughts.
• Special guest: Teddy Burris gives some amazing advice about how to build your professional network without passing out bunches of business cards.  You’ll learn some great ideas about how to live a lifestyle of networking.

Resources:

Conflict Resolution Worksheet – Got a conflict to work out? This worksheet helps you figure out how to use the CORE and XYZ methods for your specific situation.

4 Levels of Thinking as a Geek Leader – This easy-to-read graphic clearly illustrates the 4 Levels of Thinking, individually breaking down each level.

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Transcript:

Man: Season Two, Episode Four.

Geek to Great 101

[00:00:04]
Tom: I spoke with Dr. Peter Bamberger from Tel Aviv University’s Business School about engineers becoming leaders. And he said…

[00:00:11]
Dr. Bamberger: In the case of an engineer, and you want to turn it into a leader in our organization, you can’t just assume that you’ll promote them and they’ll sort of learn over time how to become a leader.

[00:00:23]
Tom: Right.

[00:00:23]
Dr. Bamberger: Some of them will. The vast majority won’t.

[00:00:26]
Tom: Some of them will, but the vast majority won’t. So, here you are. You’re a talented engineer. Maybe you’re running a team of technical folks. But the fact is, they won’t magically get better at things like communicating clearly, or delegating effectively, or dealing with conflict in a healthy way. They need to learn those skills.

[00:00:49]
That’s why I created Geek to Great 101. It’s a simple way for you to help your team members with an easy plan to improve these skills, and more. For less than $500, your team can start to make progress. Find more information and get immediate access to your first free lesson at brighthillgroup.com/helpinggeeks. That’s brighthillgroup.com/helpinggeeks.

Introduction

[00:01:19]
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?

[00:01:41]
I’m excited about today’s episode. Today we’re gonna cover how to deal with a disrespectful team member. What do you do when you have to work with a jerk? I’ve also got a special guest in the thought leader segment. Teddy Burriss is gonna be joining us, and he’s gonna talk about how to build a network of folks that will really help your career, without having to go to so-called networking events and pass out business cards. It’s gonna be great. So let’s jump right in.

Thought Leader Segment

[00:02:10]
Man: Thought leader segment. In the thought leader segment, Tom brings in ideas from today’s best thought leaders.

[00:02:29]
Tom: I can’t wait to jump into today’s thought leaders segment. Teddy Burriss is a LinkedIn consultant, coach, and trainer. Teddy is a master of networking, and he can help you figure out what to do to grow your relationships with people who can help you, without having to grip and grin your way through those pointless networking events. Building your network is a skill you’ll use your whole career, and when you start, you’ll be at level two of the four levels of thinking.

[00:02:57]
Man: Level two: Team member. Level two is where you work well with others, and together you all succeed.

[00:03:07]
Tom: We’re gonna jump into this interview in progress, and I’m just starting to ask Teddy a question about how a friend of mine can move forward. We’re jumping right into the conversation. Teddy, here’s the thing. I was just having a conversation with a friend a couple of nights ago, and he said to me, “Tom, I just found out that my job is in jeopardy.”

[00:03:29]
And he said, “It’s not because of my performance, it’s because of what’s happening with the organization. And now I’m in a position where I need to start thinking about what am I gonna do next. And I really haven’t spent any time or attention connecting with people and building my network.” So, you know, for my buddy, that’s not a good place to be. And I guess one of the questions I have for you is, how is it that you approach the world in a way that doesn’t put you in that position?

[00:03:58]
Teddy: Well, you’re assuming I was never in that position.

[00:04:03]
Tom: Yeah. You were in that situation?

[00:04:05]
Teddy: We all were. We all were. I didn’t figure out how to do…how to live the lifestyle I lived called Networking for Mutual Benefit, Tom, until I was well past 45 years old.

[00:04:20]
Tom: Really?

[00:04:21]
Teddy: Oh, big time. It wasn’t until I got into a sales role that I discovered that, “Oh my golly, I need a network.” I lived the same lifestyle that many other people did, that I did not understand that the most important asset I have in my life…let me restate this preface. The most important asset I have in my life is my network. I discovered the value of building what I refer to as a Mutually Beneficial Network.

[00:04:59]
Tom: What did you do?

[00:05:00]
Teddy: I guess it’s been about 11 or 12 years ago, I decided that I wanted to go sell IT solutions. I went to sell IT solutions for a small computer company, software staffing company in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. And I asked the guy who hired me, “Tell me one thing that you know if I do it right, and I do enough of it, I’ll be successful as a sales guy.” As a senior business developer, by the way. That’s my title. “I want you to grip and grin your way through every chamber, and collect as many business cards as you can. Put them in our CRM system, and call them until they buy.”

[00:05:43]
Tom: Wow! That sounds annoying.

[00:05:45]
Teddy: Yeah. I put a little bit of a tutu and a little bit of lipstick on this pig. But I was like, “Oh my God, there’s no way in the world I want to cold call. That’s not what this guy is signing up to do.” You know, I had a relationship. I had a reputation. You know, the people in my community know me. They know me as someone that they can trust and respect.

[00:06:09]
And to start doing that was significantly contradictory to my lifestyle. And so, remember, I had already quit my other job. My wife and I had talked about it. We were all on the same page. So when he told me that, you know what I told him? I looked him straight in the eye, and do you know what I told him, Tom?

[00:06:28]
Tom: No. What did you tell him?

[00:06:30]
Teddy: I said, “Yes, sir.”

[00:06:31]
Tom: Wow.

[00:06:32]
Teddy: I had to. I had quit the other job.

[00:06:35]
Tom: You liked that check coming in frequently, right?

[00:06:37]
Teddy: I needed to hear that ka-ching, ka-ching. So what I did, was I went on a journey, and I went and interviewed a bunch of people. I interviewed a lot of smart people in business, people who I contend are successful in business, and successful in their lives. And I discovered, through hundreds of conversations that I had documented who I talked to and met. And Tom, I discovered that in order to be successful in life, you have to do two things. Number one, you have to build relationships. And then…

[00:07:14]
Tom: Well, hang on a sec. You said this is the number one thing. And what I get stuck on is, the technical experts that I know believe, sincerely believe that they got to where they are today because of their technical acumen alone. And you’re saying that’s not true.

[00:07:34]
Teddy: I am a walking, talking successful businessman who has proven beyond any doubt that I have, that that is not the case. And I have story after story about how I’ve done things along the way. I’m a certified social media strategist. I got that title. I got that gig before I got certified. The company who hired me went and got me certified.

[00:07:58]
They didn’t hire me, they contracted me. I’ve done seminar after seminar on topics that I’ve learned before I went to do them. Mastered them before I went to do them. But they hired me because they trusted and respected me. Listen to those words, Tom. They hired me because they trusted and respected me.

[00:08:15]
Tom: Trust and respect.

[00:08:17]
Teddy: Yeah. It’s all about relationship.

[00:08:20]
Tom: Okay.

[00:08:21]
Teddy: You know, I said, “Great. If it’s all about building relationships in life, becoming trusted and respected…” And by the way, light. Trust and respect and the light. How do you do that? And these 100-plus people I interviewed, again, trusted, respected, successful entrepreneurs, community leaders, small business owners. They all came back to…their answer to how do you build a trusting, respecting relationship, their answer was, “You lead with give.”

[00:08:52]
Tom: Lead with give. Tell me about that. What does that look like?

[00:08:55]
Teddy: Well, too many people over-analyze what that is. It doesn’t have to be painful. It doesn’t need to cost dollars. It doesn’t need to take a lot of time. But it’s, you know, Dale Carnegie principle. And I can remember what Dale Carnegie says: “Make the conversation all about the other person.” And so, for me, lead with give means I don’t start with, “Hey, Tom, let’s talk. I need this.” I start with, “Hey, Tom, what’s going on? How are you doing? How’s business? What’s happening? How can I help you?” And in the process of having that kind of a dialogue, your relationship starts growing with that person, and gets to the point where they trust and respect you more.

[00:09:45]
Tom: Well, and I think you may have seen the post that I put up yesterday. I went to a meeting where I talked with a guy at a networking session, and he talked about himself for 20 minutes. And didn’t even get my name.

[00:09:59]
Teddy: Oh, I’m sorry. What’s your name again, dude?

[00:10:02]
Tom: Exactly.

[00:10:03]
Teddy: Yeah. Again, I’m a walking, talking, successful businessman who proves day in and day out that leading with give works, every single day. Now, you’ve got to be tactical, you’ve got to be purposeful when you’re networking.

[00:10:19]
Tom: Okay.

[00:10:19]
Teddy: But you make the conversation all about the other person. You make it mutually beneficial. And in that process, you get permission to ask. And when you get permission to ask, there are two things that I live by and eat it. There are two things that this [inaudible 00:10:40] tells me I’ve got to do. One is, when I have permission to ask Tom, my most important thing I can ask you is, who’s the next person I should meet?

[00:10:52]
Tom: Okay.

[00:10:53]
Teddy: That’s the most important thing I could ask you for help with. Now, again, purposefully, you know, tactically. When I believe that Tom may need some help with what I do, then I’m gonna ask Tom for an opportunity to have that conversation. Now listen to those words. I’m gonna ask you for the opportunity to talk with you about what I do. And rather than spend that 20 minutes and meet with, “Hey, Tom. Hey, I’m Teddy Burriss. I’m an IT guy. This is what I do. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,” I’m going to get permission to talk with you about it first.

[00:11:35]
Tom: Okay. So, can we can put some skin on this? So dial back to my buddy who’s sitting across from me, and he says, “Tom, I’m in a situation where I really have not built my network. And now I’m finding out that maybe my job is in jeopardy. What do I do?” So, if you were gonna talk to my friend…let’s call him John. If you were gonna talk to John, what would you tell him?

[00:11:59]
Teddy: I’m a career coach. And as a career coach, I get faced with this issue all the time. Regularly, weekly if not daily. And so, here’s what I tell people. First of all, I’m a career coach. I say, “Stop looking for a job. Stop asking for a job. Stop applying for jobs.” Click, click, click, apply, apply, apply, hope, hope, hope, beg, beg, beg, apply, apply, apply, desperation, desperation, depression, depression because you’re just applying for jobs.

[00:12:27]
You should only apply for the job that is the right job for you, and the way you discover that is by networking. Having open conversations, meeting somebody new every freaking day. And by the way, if you’re unemployed and your job is to find that next great job, then you should be meeting two or three people every single day.

[00:12:51]
There’s eight hours of working time in the day. A couple meetings a day. You could meet two or three people. Develop a little bit of a relationship, get them to understand who you are, trust and like you a little bit so that they can ask you, “Tom or John,” I’ll go back to John, “How can I help you?” So when you’re developing a little bit of a relationship by having a networking conversation and making it all about the other person, they’re gonna say to John, “Dude, how can I help you?”

[00:13:21]
Tom: Okay. So, let me just dig in on that a little tiny bit. So, early in my business I met with a lot of people through the chamber events, the same kind of things your boss told you to do. And I met an awful lot of people who were not a strategic fit for the things that I was doing.

[00:13:37]
And so, I ended up not making…I built relationships with people, but they weren’t things that turned into great opportunities for me. And you touched on this earlier. You said, “Be strategic about who you connect with.” I’d like to have you talk for just a second. You know, if you’re telling John not just go meet anybody you can meet on the street at a bus stop, but how would he decide who it is he should meet?

[00:14:00]
Teddy: Well, first of all, everybody on the street. When I’m walking down the street, I am not looking at the pavement. I’m looking up. And when I’m passing people, I’m saying hello to them, because you never know who you’re gonna run into. You never know. And here’s the other thing too, Tom. You never know who they know. Now, I’m not gonna stop on the middle of the street and see some person who is totally irrelevant to me, perceptually, you know, from visually, and strike up a fancy dan conversation and get to the point where I’m gonna ask them, “Hey, Mr. Person who I haven’t no clue who you are or what you’re all about in life, who should I meet next?”

[00:14:40]
That’s not smart. But I’m gonna, at the very least, say hi to every person I see, and every cashier I talk to, and every person that’s standing in line. You know, John is all about networking and finding the opportunity to meet people who we can create a relationship with and they can introduce him to somebody. And John’s got to build a list.

[00:15:01]
Tom: Okay. And who should be on the list? How does he even know where to start?

[00:15:05]
Teddy: Well, let’s assume that John wants to be a project manager working in Raleigh, North Carolina.

[00:15:10]
Tom: Great.

[00:15:12]
Teddy: That John should be able to build a list of organizations, and people associated with project management in Raleigh.

[00:15:21]
Tom: Okay.

[00:15:22]
Teddy: And if John doesn’t know those people, he needs to start with his network, his existing network, and find out who they know in that industry. Who do they know who work in Raleigh? Who do they know they can introduce him to so he can have a conversation about organizations, his target organizations? Who are involved and have people who do project management work in Raleigh. That’s the tactical.

[00:15:52]
Tom: Great. And so then he can start to reach out to them and have those conversations about the other person?

[00:15:59]
Teddy: Yeah. I’ll give you a great example. I have a spreadsheet in front of me. I have a very basic, rudimentary, front end prospecting list. It’s just a spreadsheet. Once I move them down the stream a little bit, I put them in my CRM tool. But I’ve got a list of organizations that I want to work with. And I’m a public speaker, so I’m always open for public speaking opportunities. And I’m not gonna tell you the name of the organization, but it’s an association that has probably about 200 chapters.

[00:16:30]
Tom: Yup.

[00:16:31]
Teddy: And I am targeting these 200 chapters for them to hire me as a public speaker.

[00:16:35]
Tom: Sure.

[00:16:36]
Teddy: Now, I could just jump right on Natalie, or Laura, or Holly, or Sheryl, or Megan, or Marshal, or Deborah, the names of all these presidents, and say, “Hey, I want you to hire me.” But a better way for me to do that is find out who I know that knows Sheryl.

[00:16:53]
Tom: Sure.

[00:16:53]
Teddy: Who do I know that knows Megan, or Sandy, or Judy or Paul, etc., etc? And then reach out to those people and go, “Hey, you know, I’d really like to talk to Sheryl, Megan, etc., etc.” Here’s the magic, Tom, “Would you introduce me to these people?”

[00:17:08]
Tom: That’s huge, that’s huge. Going from cold to warm is a powerful way to get connected.

[00:17:14]
Teddy: You know, and I think, Tom, the word warm is not powerful enough, because I have 20 emails from the last two days that I’ve sent out. And these 20 emails…here, I’ll get the one right here in front of me, boom. Here’s one that I just got from this morning. This dude said, “Man, I will be glad to introduce you to the sales manager of my organization. I think he will have a great time with you.” His last email to me said, “I wish you all the best at this.”

[00:17:44]
Tom: Nice!

[00:17:45]
Teddy: You see where I’m going? This is networking for mutual benefit. I’ve got a relationship with this dude. A really good friend of mine, by the way. And you know, Tom, you and I have sat three times, maybe at most four times and talked. I consider you a friend.

[00:18:02]
Tom: Thank you.

[00:18:03]
Teddy: I mean, just because of our engagement and the conversations we’ve had, it has not been purely business. I think you and I have laughed a little bit in our conversations.

[00:18:12]
Tom: Absolutely, absolutely.

[00:18:14]
Teddy: That’s the differentiator between business and friend.

[00:18:18]
Tom: So, that’s interesting. I think you’ve given a lot of things to think about here. I’m looking at the clock, and it’s amazing how fast time shoots forward. I know that you’ve barely even scratched the surface. I’ve heard you present a couple of times, and I know you’ve got a lot of really good information we didn’t even get a chance to get into.

[00:18:35]
If folks want to catch up with you, where’s the best place to find Teddy Burriss? Aside from walking down the street looking ahead and making eye contact? Where’s the best place for folks to reach you?

[00:18:44]
Teddy: Well, the best place on the internet to find me is linkedin.com. I’m a big LinkedIn consultant. I love it. And it’s really easy, Tom. Just search for T-L-B-U-R-R-I-S-S, TL Burriss, R-R-I-S-S.

[00:19:03]
Tom: Perfect. All right, great. Well, thank you very much. I appreciate having you on the show today.

[00:19:07]
Teddy: Great chat with you. I really appreciate your time.

[00:19:11]
Tom: Man, we got a ton of actionable ideas in this interview with Teddy. Teddy has laid out a game plan for you to follow to grow that high value network. And John, you know who you are, take this and run with it, man. And that’s today’s thought leader segment.

Coach’s Mailbox

[00:19:29]
Man: Coach’s mailbox. In the coach’s mailbox segment, Tom answers a direct question from a listener. Want Tom to answer your question? Just send an email to coach@brighthillgroup.com. That’s coach@brighthillgroup.com.

[00:19:59]
Tom: One of the most popular blog posts I’ve ever written was on the topic of how and when to confront a disrespectful team member. It was a summary of a Michael Hyatt podcast on that topic. And this idea comes up over, and over, and over again. Now, that one was about how do you deal with it when it’s somebody who’s on your team? Somebody who reports to you?

[00:20:23] And today I’m gonna talk about something a little bit different. Today what I wanna talk about is, what do you do when you have to deal with somebody who is a peer, somebody who does not report directly to you, but somebody that you need to work with who’s making you crazy? In the coach’s mailbox segment, today I’ve got an email from Adam. Adam writes, “Tom, I’m working with a jerk, and I don’t know what to do about it. He makes me nuts. He hates all my ideas, and he does everything he can to keep from helping me. He works on another team, and so he and I are peers. What can I do?”

[00:21:01] Adam, I remember many, many years ago I had a rough relationship with a co-worker like that. Now, I don’t remember all the details, but I do remember that he didn’t like me, and I wasn’t fond of him. Back in those days, I was responsible for pushing software updates over the network to computers all over the company. Now, at one point, one of my updates put software on his user’s machines that wasn’t supposed to be there.

[00:21:25]
He threw a fit. He yelled at me in public. He mocked me. He said I was an idiot for making a mistake, and demanded that I come and personally remove the software from every single machine that was affected. Now, I have to say, I was embarrassed about making the mistake. Not only that, but I was more upset by the way that he treated me.

[00:21:45]
Now, that was a long time ago, and I was pretty immature. And I got really, really angry with him. I was at the end of my rope, and I remember going to my boss and complaining to my boss about the jerk. Now, my boss knew this guy and he wisely counseled me to just let it go. He said, “Tom, that guy’s opinion doesn’t matter. Just go remove the software, and be done with it.”

[00:22:08]
Now, he was right. Sometimes, it’s just not worth the effort to work through the problem. And I have to say, I remember a bunch of people I worked with back then. Today I can’t even remember that guy’s name. I do remember how he made me feel. And I’ll note that my boss was right. That guy’s opinion had no impact on my career.

[00:22:28]
That guy didn’t move into a management role in the company. And eventually, I did move into one of those roles. So, sometimes the right thing to do is appeasement. You have to ask yourself, “Am I willing to fight this battle?” In my example, I was willing, but the fight would have been a foolish one. And I’m glad I had good counsel. And I wish I could say that I handled it well. I didn’t.

[00:22:50]
I couldn’t stand the idea this guy was gonna rub my face in my air. So I weaseled out and I begged a coworker to do me a favor and go and uninstall the software for me. Thanks, Stu. I wasn’t mature enough to deal with the person. But what if appeasement is a terrible idea? Many times we need to take action, but we don’t. We don’t because we’re uncertain about what to do, and whether our actions will actually make a difference. So we procrastinate. But bad situations and bad relationships are not like wine. They do not get better with time. Sometimes, probably more frequently than we’d like, we need to take action. So, what can you do? This is a skill you’ll grow when you’re working at level two of the four levels of thinking.

[00:23:44]
Man: Level two: team member. Level two is where you work well with others, and together you all succeed.

[00:23:54]
Tom: I was just in a meeting yesterday, where a very smart and selfish guy made perfectly clear his contempt for the approach that the meeting organizer recommended, and the approach, by the way, that most people in the room were leaning toward. Now let’s call this guy Eddie. Eddie had a different approach and was harshly critical of everyone else’s idea in favor of his clearly far better idea.

[00:24:16]
Eddie communicated that the more popular idea was ineffective and wasteful. And he did it in a critical way that was condescending. Nice! Here’s what you can do if you find yourself in that situation. Now, I’ve got a fill in the blank worksheet you can download from the website to help organize your thoughts. Take a look at the website for more information. This is Season Two, Episode Four on brighthillgroup.com. Feel free to check that out.

[00:24:44]
So, what do you do in that situation? Well, I call this the X, Y, Z formula. In situation X, when you did Y, it had Z impact. X, Y, Z. In situation X, when you did Y, it had Z impact. So, as we walk through this formula, what you wanna do is, you want to ask X, “What’s the exact situation?” It’s important not to say things like, “You tend to,” or, “People sometimes think.” No, you have to be very specific. What you have to say is something like, “In yesterday’s meeting, when we were talking about X…” and that makes it very clear that you’re talking about the specific situation.

[00:25:24]
Next, let’s talk about Y. When you did Y. Identify the exact specific behavior that’s the problem. Now, you can’t say, “Eddie’s a jerk,” or “He’s rude,” or “He’s disrespectful.” All of these are conclusions. They’re not behaviors. If you tell him he was being a jerk, he would say, “No, I wasn’t,” and you’re done, right? But here’s what happened in the situation. Eddie communicated clearly that he didn’t think your idea was worthy and that your approach was stupid and a waste of time.

[00:25:56]
Now, what did he do specifically? He was unkind and he was inconsiderate, but you have to dig in even farther. He said, “Why would anyone pick a stupid approach like that one? It doesn’t work and it wastes everybody’s time. Everyone hates that old school approach.” Now, what does that imply? It implies that the person who suggested it was stupid, and that we who agreed with the suggestion are in fact stupid too.

[00:26:20]
So now we’ve talked about X and Y. Let’s talk about Z. It had Z Impact. What was the impact of the specific behavior on you, on others, or on your work? In this example, Eddie’s comments communicated disrespect for the leader’s recommendation and for the rest of the team as well. The impact? The leader was offended and Eddie’s input shut down creative brainstorming. Nobody wants their new ideas shot down immediately.

[00:26:47]
Now, once you’ve identified X, Y, and Z, in situation X, when you did Y, it had Z impact, what do you want Eddie to do in the future? Certainly not what he did last time. But what specifically do you want him to do? And I’d suggest, in this case, you ask him to think about the impact of the words he chooses. So, what does this look like in the real world? And I just want to run through a scenario as if you’re going to have a conversation with Eddie. If I was gonna tackle this, I’d go see Eddie. I’d set up a time to grab a cup of coffee, or have lunch, or any other time that I could be one-on-one with him.

[00:27:22]
This conversation needs to happen between the two of you only, not in public. So I set up a time to get together with Eddie. And when I sat down with him and exchanged pleasantries, and I mean I connect with him on things he cares about, and find opportunities, any opportunity for common ground. And I’d look for ways to establish a rapport in that conversation. It could just take a few minutes. And after a few minutes of conversation, I would say, “Eddie, I’ve been thinking about that meeting we had a couple of days ago. Something happened during the meeting that bothered me. Can I talk to you about it?”

[00:27:56]
Now, at this point Eddie is likely gonna be uncomfortable with the question. But I will tell you from my experience, it is rare that the other person will say, “No, I don’t want to talk about it.” Ninety percent or more of the time, Eddie’s gonna say, “I guess,” or, “Okay.” So, at that point, the door’s open. You’ve got an opportunity to say something. And here’s what I would say: “You remember the other day in the project meeting, when we were talking about the approach to take when we’re trying to communicate with people?” “Yes.”

[00:28:24]
“And the meeting leader recommended we do A, and you didn’t like that, right?” “Right. That approach is old school. It’s stupid. I don’t understand why you thought it was a good idea at all.” “Yeah, Eddie, I remember that you felt that way. In fact, I wrote down what you said. I’m looking at my notes. You said, ‘Why would anyone pick a stupid approach like that one? It doesn’t work and it wastes everyone’s time. Everyone hates that old school approach.'”

[00:28:48]
Now, at this point Eddie’s not quite sure what to do, but you have just entirely validated his point of view. And here’s what he’s probably gonna say, “Right! That’s exactly right!” Now, here’s where you have an opportunity to engage. You might say something like, “Okay, so here’s the thing. When you use the word stupid, and in that tone of voice, I noticed that was the last time anybody in the meeting offered any other ideas. You offered your approach, but did you notice nobody else spoke up?” “What? Of course not. I told them the right way to do it, so there was no need to keep on talking about it.”

[00:29:25]
You can tell I’ve worked with Eddie before, right? So then you might go on and say, “Eddie, it was the word stupid and the tone of voice that sent a clear message to me, and to others, that no one else had better propose an alternate idea. I felt like you were saying I was stupid. And I didn’t like it.”

[00:29:44]
“Well, Tom, that idea was stupid.” “All right, Eddie, but was it your intent to say that everyone in the room was a stupid person?” “Well, no. Why would you think that? I just said the idea was stupid, because it was.” “Well, Eddie, when you said ‘Why would anyone pick a stupid approach like that one?’ it felt like you were saying the idea was obviously stupid, and that I was stupid for liking it.”

[00:30:09]
“Here’s the thing, Eddie. None of us has a lock on brilliant ideas. Not even you. When we’re working as a team, we need you to be a little bit less critical, and frankly, a little bit less direct. If you think an idea is stupid, it’s okay. But your words and your tone have a big impact on other people. Now, I want you to know, I think you’re smart and you have great insights, but the way you express those insights, it shut down me and other people. Next time, could you try to say something like, ‘I disagree. I want to get the message out, and I think this approach won’t work’? What if we tried instead of saying, ‘That idea is stupid’?”

[00:30:48]
Now, I’ve worked with enough Eddie’s to be able to tell you at this point Eddie’s possibly…this could go one of two ways. He might say, “Okay, I’ll think about that,” or “Okay, I’ll try that.” He might not. It might go really negatively. In fact, what he might say is something like this: “I think you’re being too sensitive. Using politically correct language is just a waste of time.” “Eddie, I get it. It’s more work for you, but your words stop the team’s progress, and they offended me. And I bet some other people were upset too, even if they didn’t say anything. Would you at least consider this for next time?”

[00:31:25]
Now, if the conversation has gone this poorly, Eddie might say something like, “Sure. Whatever.” At that point, you can say, “Thanks for listening to my point of view.” Now, Adam, this is an extreme example. This is, I mean, really extreme. This is gonna be the most difficult you’re probably gonna run into with somebody. Most of the time your conversation’s gonna go a ton better than this. But even if the conversation goes this badly, Eddie will think more about his word choice before the next time he speaks up, even if he never admits to you that it made a difference.

[00:32:01]
You’ve laid down a boundary, and that matters. So, as you’re thinking about dealing with this difficult person, Adam, I want you to check out my conflict resolution worksheet download. And that’s a simple way to kind of walk through how to help you organize your thoughts and prepare you for that conversation. And I hope this helps. I also talked about this idea in Season One, Episode Nine: How to Resolve Conflicts at Work. And that’s today’s coach’s mailbox segment.

Episode Hack

[00:32:30]
Man: Episode hack. In the episode hack segment, Tom shares one action-oriented takeaway from this episode. Something you can apply right away.

[00:32:53]
Tom: In today’s episode we talked about creating a high value network that will be your best resource to help you with your family and friends, your community, and your professional work. We also talked about how you might confront a disrespectful team member using the X, Y, Z formula. In situation X, when you did Y, it had Z impact. For today’s episode hack, I want you to take the time to think about somebody you work with, somebody that makes you nuts, somebody who is difficult. I want you to pick a specific situation where they frustrated you, and then make a plan about how you could confront them using the X, Y, Z formula.

[00:33:34]
Now, even if you never speak with them about it directly, just going through this process will be good practice. Now don’t forget there’s a download on the website that can help you organize your ideas. It will help you walk through what you’re gonna say and how you might think about that. When you go to brighthillgroup.com and you take a look at the website, you can search for season two, episode four. And that’s today’s episode hack.

[00:34:00]
Hey, can I ask you something? Did you hear something helpful on today’s episode? Why not share it with a friend? On my iPhone, it’s as simple as hitting the three little dots on the bottom right of the screen, selecting “share episode,” enter your friend’s email, and hit “send.” Why do this? Two reasons. One, your friend or coworker will thank you. You’ll be seen as a source of helpful and valuable information, and they will appreciate you for it.

[00:34:27]
And number two, I need you to help me get the word out about this podcast. I’m working hard to bring great ideas and great content to you, and it’s a big help to me if more people hear those ideas. Go ahead, share it now. I’ll wait. 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.