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An executive I know, who excels at accomplishment, recently told me: “I want to charge right into action but I’m forcing myself to just listen.” Since this guy is still developing his ability to develop others, his way of “just listening” is to try to suppress the urge to tell others what to do. Do you ever feel like you have to force yourself “just to listen”?
Suppression never works. It doesn’t free people to bring out their strengths. Development is a much better bet. What strength of yours, if you developed it to another level, would replace what you are trying to suppress? What capability, if developed, would displace a blind urge to act?
First, be intentional about what you listen for. Intention, plus attention and interest, shapes your listening. Think of the radio antenna in your car: although it receives everything broadcast in your area, you can choose which station you want to listen to. Therefore, rather than just listening, you can listen for an opportunity to appreciate your small accomplishments or good starts and those of others.
You can also listen for others’ strengths and their possible next steps, providing guidance and encouragement in that direction. For instance, if you have a natural gift in writing or editing, you might find it easy to create an engaging document without errors, while others consider the task a challenge and will miss their own mistakes. You can help others develop themselves in an area through conversations that help them see how to capitalize on their unique strengths. This would readily surround you with people capable of accomplishing more of the right things with ease.
It takes intention to listen for how people have developed. If you watch carefully and openly, you can notice when they are seeing things differently or when they are faking it. However, many people miss such opportunities. Some of them are so stuck with their image of “already knowing” who someone “is,” they wouldn’t notice if this person transformed from a caterpillar into a butterfly in front of their face. It astounds me how often I see this.
Start with your own strengths: pick one to develop. This could be anything from listening to collaboration. Stick with it for a month, then fine-tune how you can focus your intentional listening. That way, you will lead more people to fulfilling, sustainable accomplishment, the kind that creates the authentic engagement that so many organizations are struggling to find these days. Rather than suppressing yourself by “just listening”, you will boost your own power and make things easier for everyone.
Photo: iStock
Here’s the short version of the story. Find people who are very good at what they do but don’t worry that they won’t know what they actually do, how they do it or why they do it. Go ahead and ask them to describe it anyway. They will do their best to provide a plausible description and explanation. Then use this description and explanation — which may in fact be the opposite of what they actually do — as the basis for training others and in some cases paying others. Smart! Why didn’t I think of that!
It’s no wonder that despite all the latest and greatest ideas of the month, fads and apparent short cuts to success that things don’t improve or improve sustainably. It really does pay to get at what’s fundamental: fundamental strengths; the first principles of communication and what really fuels accomplishment.
Here’s the longer version:
In September 2007 , I wrote about some of the problems when organizations try to describe leadership competencies — one the favorite corporate flavors of the month that unfortunately still isn’t past its “best before” date.
I must apologize for misleading you. It is way, way worse than I thought at the time. Now I’m definitely a little late getting to this but I just finished reading Blink by Malcolm Gladwell . His insights into the unconscious mind seriously undermine a fundamental basis on which competencies rest: consulting experts to determine what they do and how they do it.
Gladwell cites an example of Vic Braden, one of the world’s top tennis coaches. Braden, he says, hasn’t found a single pro tennis player in the world who is consistent in “knowing and explaining exactly what he does.” All the pros say that they use their wrist to roll their racquet over the ball. Amazingly, when you slow down the high speed action and examine it in minute detail — that is not what they do. A digitized analysis of Andre Agassi’s swing, for example, shows that he doesn’t move his wrist until long after the ball has been hit.
Now this is significant for a couple of reasons. First, when we’re talking with a pro about his or her tennis swing it is something physical — something that can be observed, recorded, slowed down and analyzed. And the analysis shows they don’t actually know what they are doing. They know the effect they create but they do not actually know what they are doing that creates that effect.
Now take something like leadership. Leadership does not happen on the outside, it happens on the inside. From the outside, leadership looks like any other human interaction. There is some talking, there is some listening and there is some silence. Sometimes the talking and listening is in big groups, sometimes small groups, sometime one on one. What’s the big deal? Talking and listening.
But what’s going on inside the leader: what is the leader thinking about; how are they thinking about it; why are they thinking about these things and not others? How do they determine who to talk with, who to talk with first, next, next? One at a time, in small groups or as a large group? How often — once certainly won’t be enough. How do they determine who to encourage and who to disrupt? When to take a hard line or when to take some more time? And all these considerations — plus many more — are just a thin slice in time and most of the choices occur on an unconscious level.
While the evidence of leadership shows up in what gets accomplished there is scant evidence available about how the leader orients to the world inside her and the world outside her. What is really going on — the myriad choices and decisions is completely invisible to the high speed cameras that could actually tell us whether she is rolling her wrist before or after the shot.
Not only is there no evidence available to the external observer; we do not even have reliable access to our own thinking. Gladwell describes an experiment by the psychologist Norman Maier in which the subjects needed to solve a problem by swinging a rope back and forth. There were three other solutions but swinging the ropes wasn’t obvious. None of the subjects discovered this solution on their own. At some point the experimenter would walk past one of the ropes in a way that created a very subtle movement in the rope. After that, most people suddenly came up with the solution of swinging one of the ropes. The most interesting part is that when they were asked how they came up with the solution only one person could say that they were helped by the subtle hint provided by the experimenter when he walked past the rope. Everyone else came up with some explanation — and some of them very elaborate explanations — that were not true!
So now we have an interesting situation. The experts we would want to rely on as our best examples to emulate are unreliable for describing what they do or how they do it. However, either because of the way our human brains work or the culture we live in; or perhaps some combination of both, we seem to be compelled to offer explanations. It’s just that those explanations cannot be relied on as true!
Giving advice is more harmful than helpful. It kills people.
But before we go further let’s distinguish the type of advice we’re talking about here. There is a world of difference between advice on how to deal with non-living objects (a hammer, software, processes, etc.) and how to deal with people. Here we’re talking about giving advice on how to deal with other people. This ranges from advice to a friend on how to deal with someone in their life or a colleague on how to deal with their boss, to advice on leadership, communication or collaborating with others.
YOUR STRENGTHS ARE NOT OTHERS’ STRENGTHS
Two primary problems arise in advice giving. First, we can’t help but give advice from our strengths. If you think about it, for a minute, it would be hard to give advice on any other basis. Common sense would have you want to give others the best advice you can. You would recommend to others what you have found works best — for you. Unfortunately, in a sense, what works best for you is in your area of strength. It’s actually not unfortunate for you — it’s just unfortunate for others if they take your advice and try to resolve or accomplish something with someone else out of your strength. They are highly unlikely to be successful trying to operate out of your strength. Others, like you, will be most effective operating from their strength — not from trying to emulate someone else’s strength.
Your greatest strengths are unique to you, and others don’t have easy access to your strengths. In fact, most of the time even you are blind in your area of greatest strength. In the area of your greatest strength you have never seen the world differently; there are some things you have always been impatient with, or patient with. Some things you find easy and don’t understand why others don’t find those things as easy as you or some things you seem to struggle with no matter how hard you try.
One way of gaining some insight into your greatest strengths is to become aware of what annoys or bothers you; what seems obvious to you that others don’t seem to notice of appear to struggle with; the common sense you see that is frustratingly uncommon. When any of these occur you are in an area of your strength. And, at the level where others are blind to what appears as obvious to you, you have access to a strength — a way of relating — that others do not have your access to.
PEOPLE ARE NOT THINGS
The second difficulty arises when we do not see that there is a tremendous difference between giving advice about how to deal with physical things or performance and advice on how to communicate, lead, manage, collaborate, or resolve issues with other people.
The Excel expert can give us good advice on using Excel pivot tables and the golf coach can give Tiger Woods good advice on improving his swing. With good Excel advice we can manipulate the data into a pivot table, but another level of judgment is required to determine which data and how to interpret the results. Similarly, Tiger can improve the mechanics of his swing but tremendous judgment is required to determine which club to swing and where to aim in the particular conditions of the day.
Advice about relating with others can be thought of either as recommendations about principles or advice about how to do something or what to say and when to say it.
There is less risk in giving advice at the level of principles like the following: Start where you are — with yourself, others and the situation — not where you think you or they should be. Be willing to earn sufficient trust in each new situation and relationship. Do not mistake your view for the truth. At the level of principles, people have the opportunity — indeed a demand — to bring their own strengths to it.
The trouble starts when you start telling others what to do or how to do something at the level of specific actions:
- “The next time he says that, I’d say, “What were you thinking!?’”
- “You need to tell them that their performance needs to improve.”
- “The next time that happens, call a meeting of the whole team.”
The two main problems with this type of advice is that it ignores or assumes a tremendous amount and following through relies on the skill and strength of the person giving the advice.
For example, it does not take into account the history, strength and nature of the relationship between the people involved, the current circumstances for you, for them, and the larger context of the organization, team or family.
Additionally, it does not take into account your strengths and way of being and their strengths and way of being. For example, if you were the one giving the advice, “You need to tell them that their performance needs to improve”, it is very likely that you would be entirely capable of engaging with “them” regardless of their answer. Alternatively, while you are giving that advice now, you would be discerning enough in the time leading up to telling them their performance needs to improve to pick the right time to do it, or to hear that something else is called for.
Your advice is offered from your strength and predicated on your ability to discern appropriate action and handle the situation you are giving advice about.
When others try to emulate your strengths, or try to do what you recommend without your discernment and judgment in the area, that’s when your advice kills their development and their confidence in their own strengths and their ability to actually implement what you’re suggesting.
ADVICE FOR YOU
So now here’s my advice for you.
Discover your unique strengths and develop others in your strength. Engaging with others to contribute your strengths to them will develop you in the area of your strength.
Develop your ability to “hear” others unique strengths and help them develop ways to put their strengths to work to accomplish what they intend to accomplish.
It’s far more effective and far less painful for everyone than trying to get them to do it your way!
Best Practices have considerable undeserved cachet. There is an embarrassment of unexamined assumptions embedded in the myths surrounding best practices.
There is no clear, common understanding of what is meant by “best practices”. Does it refer to the practices of the “best” companies; or to practices of some of the best known companies, or the best known publicly traded companies? Or is it the most common practices of a selected set of some of the best known, you get the point.
And who says those practices are the “best”? Or even that they are the specific practices that have led to that companies (presumed) success?
America’s Test Kitchen is an organization that tests kitchen equipment and recipes. The point here is that they test them — they have a panel of people who test them. They don’t publish the “best” recipes without having their panel test them at home and then rate them for the results they produce. Often, the “best” kitchen equipment does not come from the best manufacturer (biggest market cap) or the best known brand. And, it’s seldom the most expensive.
The best practice for scrambling eggs is determined by people scrambling eggs in different ways and tasting the results. The best chocolate cake practice is determined in a taste-test bake-off.
Nobody bets millions on the best way to scramble eggs and those practices are tested! Organizations bet tens and hundreds of millions on best practices all the time without any testing! With scant evidence of the effectiveness of the practices — without a bake-off that determines that some particular practice is best for them.
And of course, there’s the rub. How would you know if some practice — some way of doing things — is best for your organization? Let’s bring just a dash of thoughtfulness to this issue before running off half-baked to the next conference or workshop purporting to tell you about the best practices in some particular area.
AN EFFECTIVE DISTRACTION
Best Practices are an effective distraction from the real source of power in creating competitive advantage. That’s why smart organizations are so willing to share them! They distract others from noticing what really makes the difference. Distraction — the best magicians have mastered the art. They tell you what to keep your eye on to keep you from noticing what they are really doing.
Think about what it would take for a practice to be “best” for you and your organization. First, it would have to integrate with other practices. Even the most simplistic thinkers would be hard pressed to suggest that there is any one practice in an organization that has no relation to other practices: that the part of the organization employing that practice has no effect on the rest of the organization and the rest of the organization has no effect on that part. Impossible! Separate and disconnected is the primary source of organizational difficulty; not a solution.
The organization that develops a particular practice does it in some particular circumstances, at some particular time, to address an issue that those people, at that time, saw needed to be addressed and who determined an effective way for them to address it given their unique strengths, background and relationships with each other.
Well of course that practice ought to work for you and your organization! You’re just like them! Or more insidiously as the thinking goes, if we act like them in this particular area we can become as successful as them.
Rubbish! Your thinking; your orientation is a more fundamental source of power for improving organizational performance than your practices ever will be. What is required for your organization to be successful at this point in time, facing these challenges with these people? Did you make this up or discern it from listening deeply for something fundamental that is missing and available?
Develop practices that fit what is called for now and evolve them as your organization develops and as circumstances change.
COOKING UP BEST PRACTICES FOR YOUR ORGANIZATION
(An untested recipe but that shouldn’t matter)
Gently mix several “good eggs” until integrated. Do not separate. Be careful; we just want them folded together, not beaten.
Place over high heat and stir gently with a significant accomplishment required by a specific deadline.
Add the spice of fresh thinking; whip up inspiration, listen for practical solutions bubbling up.
Reduce over the inescapable heat of reality.
Serve developmentally.
