How to Try New Behaviors Without the Pressure to Succeed
I was talking with my walking buddy, Stacey Shipman, about experimenting. When I start with new coaching clients, I invite them to think of coaching as one big experiment and their workplace as their own personal leadership lab. What I love about this approach is the inherent lack of commitment involved. Yes, you read that correctly. I said lack of commitment. This might sound counterintuitive. When you experiment, however, there’s no obligation to perform this new thing to infinity and beyond (have I mentioned how much I love the movie, Toy Story?). Like taking a car for a test drive before you buy it, an experiment lets you try a concept before committing fully to it. So many of us struggle to fully commit to something new from the get-go. I think this stems from two issues. Most of us don’t want to jump feet first into failure. With an experiment, there’s no mandate for a lifelong commitment. It allows for flexibility, possibility, and choice. Making it much easier to step out of one’s comfort zone and put aside the “what ifs.” By definition, “experiment” is “a test, trial, or tentative procedure; an act or operation for the purpose of discovering something unknown or of testing a principle, supposition, etc.”* Take the New England Patriots, for example. This year they “experimented” with having Matt Patricia, a guy whose successful track record was as a defensive team coach, and put him in charge of coaching the offensive team. They didn’t make the playoffs. The experiment did not produce the intended results and I suspect Bill Belichick will not be running that experiment again next season (if he still has a job.) As Stacey says in her blog post, run the experiment. You can always go back to the old thing if it doesn’t work out. Your call to action is to experiment with a new mindset or behavior, evaluate your results, and tweak the experiment as necessary. Need some ideas? Try this. If you try something out and it doesn’t pan out, scrap it and try something else. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. Until you find what does work. *Dictionary.com
Why Honest Conversations Are Better Than Silent Assumptions
Have you ever found yourself feeling stuck between a rock and a hard place? It happens for me when I “assume” there is a finite set of solutions to a problem – especially when I don’t like the solutions I’ve come up with! Here’s a perfect example. I provided a client with a proposal for a project. After I proudly hit “send” on my email, I realized I hadn’t accounted for a piece of the work that was potentially time-consuming on my end. Argh! As I was expressing my frustration over my rookie mistake with a colleague, she said, “Everything is a potential conversation.” The light dawns over Marblehead! You see, I “assumed” that I had to honor the proposal I sent. In doing so, I made a decision on behalf of the client without actually checking with the client, and I put myself in a box at the same time. It’s with more than a little embarrassment that I share this with you. I have conversations with leaders every day in which I ask “Have you had the conversation?” I feel like I “should” know better. Because isn’t it obvious to just have the conversation? Yep. Except in the moment, it wasn’t. It’s much easier to have objectivity about someone else’s challenges than it is your own. Here’s where I led myself astray: Here’s what helped me turn it around: With this new frame of mind, I shared my omission with the client and asked if they were amenable to revisiting pricing if my estimate turned out to be way off base. Her response? “Absolutely. Always willing to have the conversation.” Note to self… engage in the dialogue. What assumptions are you making? This week’s call to action is to have a conversation.
2 Overlooked Ways to Improve Your Leadership Skills
There is no shortage of ways to develop your skills as a leader. With a few clicks on your computer, you could grab a book (or 10), and enroll in any number of online learning, leadership, mentoring, or coaching programs. These aren’t bad strategies if you have the time, the resources, and the focus to follow through on them. But there are also plenty of ways to build your leadership fluency and efficacy in real-time simply by being curious and putting yourself in someone else’s shoes. Obvious and overlooked strategy #1: There is one question I repeatedly find myself asking clients. “Have you asked?” Coaching conversations cover a wide range of diverse topics, environments, and politics, and the question always applies. Why? Because inevitably, clients are trying to work through a question or a problem that requires involving the people impacted by the solution. Yet they are trying to figure out the solution in a vacuum. If you’re struggling to work through a challenge, look to engage others in the process. Then ask them what they need. Obvious and overlooked strategy #2: “We are not all in the same boat. We are all in the same storm. Some are on super-yachts. Some have just the one oar.” The above quote was penned by writer Damian Barr at the beginning of the pandemic. It’s made its way around the world and is a powerful example of true empathy as it aptly describes the disparity between the haves and the have-nots. Empathy means that you can emotionally identify with someone else. You can understand what they are feeling in a particular situation. This substantially changes how you interact with others and your outcomes as a result. If you want to up your game, build your empathy game. In her blog post “This is your brain on empathy”, neuroscientist Dr. Sarah McKay lays out six steps for training your brain to be more empathetic. (And you know she’s awesome because her name is Sarah!) 🙃
3 Unfussy Ways to Be More Authentic
I met with my marketing consultant recently (who is such a gem of a human being I call him “My Guy Nick”) and asked how one of his product launches was going. What I got was a professional yet unvarnished answer about what was working well and what could be different. It was so refreshing! Had he given me a pat answer that everything was fabulous, I wouldn’t have held it against him. I am his client, after all, and conventional wisdom would say, “Don’t air your dirty laundry.” Instead, his authenticity paved the way for a mutually beneficial conversation. Too often, people are looking to save face and not show any kinks in the armor. I would know. I did this for a long time. And I got better results when I started to share more of my humanness. This can be harder in organizations where it may not be culturally appropriate or psychologically safe to do so – where saying “I don’t know.” can feel like the kiss of death. But I’m perpetually optimistic that balance exists and allows people to be more transparent and true to themselves without committing career suicide in the process. Here are three ways to lean into your authenticity: What opportunities do you have to show up more authentically?
How to Conduct a Mid-Year Check In
In the past I’ve taken myself on a retreat and reflected on the year. It was an insightful exercise! Waiting until the end of the year to do it, however, doesn’t give me the opportunity to make adjustments in the second half of the year. Now I conduct a mid-year review. It’s not too late to make shifts now if something feels off course for the remainder of the year. Here are 10 questions I use to keep me on track: Feel free to use these to guide your own mid-year review!
3 Fail-Safe Ways to Amplify Your Voice
I once facilitated a group session in which I asked participants to graphically depict the concept we had just discussed. They had carte blanche to draw, sketch, doodle, mind map, use metaphor, words, word clouds, etc. When the group came back to debrief the exercise, one person said, “I cheated. I searched online for images.” I’d call that “resourceful” rather than “cheating.” I hadn’t provided any ground rules that said looking online was off-limits! Language plays an important role in shaping not only how others interpret what we’re saying and also impacts how others perceive us. Both of these affect our influence. If you want to amplify your voice and increase your influence, your words matter. Here are a few factors to consider: All of these habits diminish the value of your knowledge and expertise. They detract from your executive voice and ability to make a stronger impact. (Full disclosure, I have been working to eradicate the filler “like” for longer than I care to admit.) Try these strategies to amplify your voice: Notice Your language Use your cell phone to record yourself speaking in a meeting for a minute or two. Listen to the audio and identify one thing you did well and one thing you’d like to do change. Then practice doing both. Use Strong Verbs If you’ve ever had someone review your resume, you’ve probably heard this. The same rule applies to the spoken word. “I am spearheading…” is stronger than “I’m coordinating…” Exchange weak verbs for stronger ones. (Doing this on the fly requires being present in the moment so your brain can catch up to your mouth.) (Take a Deep Breath and) Say What You Mean If your confidence is low or you’re nervous, it can be common to add qualifying statements, share too much detail, or over-explain. This makes it harder for your audience to follow your train of thought and you appear unsure of yourself. Here’s the good news. Once you see something, it’s hard to “unsee” it. You’ll start to notice your language more and take steps to course correct. By doing this repeatedly, you’ll build new neural pathways in your brain and obliterate the habits that hold you back! If you’re looking for more tips on building your executive presence, you can download my executive presence quiz here! Or click here to jump on my calendar.