Tag: Leadership

Show, don’t tell – Tell, don’t ask

On By AlfonsIn Getting things doneLeave a comment

How do you make things real for your audience? How do you move complex work forward swiftly?

Easy: you go from wishful thinking to concrete and tangible. You “Show, don’t tell”, and you “Tell, don’t ask”.

The first quote is an old saying, and I’m sure you’ve heard it many times. I made up the second one, but I like it just as much.  😊  Here is what both of those approaches mean to me:

Show don’t tell

If you want to have an impact and drive action, it often matters more how you say something than what you say. As you try to convince your audience and convey your thoughts, you must make them clear and real for your listeners.

Make it specific – “Specifics eat generics for breakfast” (I made this one up as well). Be specific! Provide examples, explain the specific impact, concrete next steps, dates, and owner. Instead of “we are trying to complete the project through summer”, say “Sam will complete the exploration phase by July 15th, after which Tom is responsible for implementation completion by September 21st”. Instead of “let’s regroup and follow-up on this”, say “we will meet next Wednesday and make a final decision on this – let the group know of any additional information you need to make that decision”.

Specifics eat generics for breakfast.

Make it real – Show a visual if you can. We can talk about how we should do things all day long, and everyone will make up their own pictures in their heads, circling around the discussion and misunderstanding each other. Show an image, flow chart, demo, UX mock-up, and your discussion and decision-making will leap forward. Give your attendees something to hold onto and react to – it will dramatically change the discussion’s dynamic. The same applies to agendas and meeting notes. Show them to your audience as you are in the meeting. Share your screen as you type the notes, provide your audience an artifact to look at, and anchor the discussions through that artifact. Extra points if you share those notes in real-time with the group.

Provide artifacts to anchor discussions.

Speak confidently – Last but not least, speak confidently. Say it like you mean it. If you’re not confident in your opinion and plans, take some extra time to think them through, but then step up and make an impression. Avoid softening words like “wish”, “hope”, “want”, “could”, “should” and instead use clear and confident language. “We will” convinces and wins your audience. Saying “I hope we can get this done by the end of Fall” is a recipe for failure; putting a stake in the ground and stating “we will do whatever it takes to go live on October 1st” gets your team focused.

Say it like you mean it!

Tell don’t ask

If you want to make progress, you need to put stakes in the ground. If you wait for others to make decisions for you, you will spend a lot of your time waiting…

Open-ended questions – I hear open-ended questions in the decision phase of many project discussions. “What do you think?” is a great question for brainstorming – and only for that! I am by no means downplaying the value of open-ended questions. They have their place in discovery, brainstorming, reflection, coaching, mentoring, and even in critical and contentious discussions. They are terrific to foster learning, information sharing, and broadening understanding and perspective. Unfortunately, they are terrible for coming to decisions.

Closed questions – Closed questions and “tell, don’t ask” come into play when it’s time to establish a common base and move on (“Any objections?”, “Is there anyone who doesn’t agree?”). They are also your tool to drive decisions. For example, don’t ask “What do you think?” when it’s decision time, instead tell and verify: “Alright, the plan is to roll this out by August 8th – are there any blocking issues with that?” Btw, don’t ask for “concerns” – voicing concerns is a tactic that is often (unconsciously) used by risk-averse team members to push away responsibility for unknown risks. It will not help you to advance a decision – ask for “blocking issues” instead.

Be deliberate about when you want to widen the discussion funnel (ask and listen – open questions) and when you need to narrow it (tell and confirm – closed questions).

Turn silence into an advantage – Have you ever said “Please come back to me and let me know if you agree or have concerns”, only to never hear back from anyone and not knowing if you had support or opposition for the plan? I certainly have. I learned to switch to “default approval statements” (not an actual terminology, I made that up as well) instead. Give a clear timeline by which you need to hear any objections and define what silence (i.e., lack of feedback) automatically triggers at that date. A good way of establishing a decision is to say “Unless I hear any blocking objections by the end of day tomorrow, we will move forward with the plan as proposed”.

Don’t trap yourself in an undetermined waiting loop – make default approval statements with a clear deadline.



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Thriving in High-Pressure Environments
Lessons from Amazon, a global pandemic, and other crazy times
By Alfons and Ulrike Staerk
ISBN 9798718017663

Find it on Amazon: Paperback, Kindle

If you like what you’re reading, please consider leaving a review on Amazon. If you don’t like it, please tell us what we can do better the next time. As self-published authors we don’t have the marketing power of big publishing houses. We rely on word of mouth endorsements through reader reviews.

Listening is your most powerful collaboration and leadership tool

On By AlfonsIn Getting things doneLeave a comment

That means really listening!

Did you ever watch yourself and checked what percentage of the discussion you were the one talking and how much of it you were listening? Most of us will be surprised by what we find.

To add some more self-reflection, check your thoughts during the periods when you are listening. Are you really following, digesting, and trying to understand what you’re hearing, or are you spending more time formulating your own wise answer?

Are you communicating to learn or to show off? Are you listening to understand or to make a point?

Listening is understanding, and listening is leading. Unless you give a presentation to a large audience, meetings where you talk most of the time are a waste of everyone’s time and energy. They don’t drive engagement with the audience – be it one person or a team of 20.

You lead by listening, not by talking.

So how can you change your interactions towards a more collaborative and engaging setting? Here are a few ideas.

I. Make short statements

Force yourself to make short statements and watch for the reactions. Don’t try to fill quiet space – it’s ok to have a few seconds without someone talking.

Remember that it’s not about you! Leave room for others and leave room to truly understand their thoughts and contributions (if that’s not important, you didn’t need a meeting in the first place). If no one speaks up, call them out individually and on specific topics or questions.

Here’s something critical I learned about (crisis) communication back in my days in Corporate PR:

The more you talk, the more people will think you don’t have a strong point (or you try to deceive). If you have a strong point, a short statement will do just fine.

Plus, if you keep going on and on in your speech, circling the same topic, you will have a really good chance of losing your audience to some more exciting topics in their heads or on their screens.

II. Pause and ask questions

Force yourself to stop talking. Take pauses and breaks. Ask questions – lots of questions.

Make a (short) point and then get feedback. Critical feedback is even better. Tap into the knowledge and experience of the crowd – if you don’t seek and need that input, you shouldn’t have a meeting to begin with.

III. Take the input

Acknowledge the input you receive. Really take it, think about it, and acknowledge what you have heard. Don’t just brush over it and go on with what your thoughts, plans, and opinions were in the first place.

It’s incredibly frustrating for me when I am in a meeting, the group is asked for inputs, thoughtful ideas come up, and then the meeting lead moves on with an unspoken “actually, I already have a plan and don’t really care about what you guys said”.

On the flip side – if you don’t want to take input on a particular topic, be upfront about it. Don’t pretend to ask for it.

Trust that the wisdom of the crowd is more brilliant than yours. Leverage it to your advantage. Learn from the folks in your meeting!

IV. Take notes

Taking notes is a great tool to focus yourself on listening and really following what is being said.

How do you distill down the key ideas that were shared in your own words? This active processing of the shared content will force you to listen and be tuned in. It will prevent your mind from wandering to the next topic, developing your own smarty-pants response, or multi-tasking in your email.

V. Play back what you heard

Lastly, we need to be aware that all we hear is being heard and processed through our own (unconscious) filters.

What you hear might be very different from what I tried to communicate. The only way to ensure that you really heard and understood correctly is to play the statement back in your own words.

“Thank you for sharing this. Can I quickly play back what I heard to make sure I understood correctly?” or “Let me just quickly play this back to make sure I got it right?” do wonders towards active and collaborative communication.

Talk less, listen more!

Listening is leading. Active listening is finding collaborative solutions. Talk less, listen more! There are better ways to demonstrate smarts than by dominating airtime.



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Thriving in High-Pressure Environments
Lessons from Amazon, a global pandemic, and other crazy times
By Alfons and Ulrike Staerk
ISBN 9798718017663

Find it on Amazon: Paperback, Kindle

If you like what you’re reading, please consider leaving a review on Amazon. If you don’t like it, please tell us what we can do better the next time. As self-published authors we don’t have the marketing power of big publishing houses. We rely on word of mouth endorsements through reader reviews.

Do you have a Worry list?

On By AlfonsIn Getting things doneLeave a comment

Hint: you should!  😊

We all have a lot on our minds – juggling different responsibilities, complex project dependencies, competing priorities. The risk of keeping so many things in our heads is that we will miss a bunch. We had a great idea, go to bed, and poof, it’s gone.

The solution to this is to get those ideas, questions, challenges out of your head and into what a former manager of mine called his “Worry list”. If you learned formal project management, you would call it an Issue tracker, but I like “Worry list” better.

The idea of a Worry list is to 1) get things out of your head to free up mental space, 2) collect all issues and questions in one place, so you don’t miss any, 3) have a way to systematically “burn down” the number of issues until you are ready to launch, and 4) see a glide path that lets you predict if you are on-track or off-track.

Add to your Worry list – This process is ongoing until the end of the project (and usually into the sustain phase afterward). If you discover a new issue, challenge, or question for a project, you add it to the list. No curation, no prioritization, no nothing – just capture the thought before it eludes you. Have one place and one tool where you do it and just drop things in right when they come to your mind. I like Microsoft To Dos, others use OneNote or paper, and if you want to go fancy, you can build an Excel issue tracker. The most important piece is that you keep your tool simple enough so that you will use it consistently. If you add too many bells and whistles, the maintenance effort will be too high, and you won’t follow through.

Burndown – This is the fun part. Instead of wondering what you need to take care of next, you look at your list and pick the most important or most urgent question or action. You solve it. You move on to the next. You can prioritize your list ahead of time or pick what is appropriate for the moment. This is “burning down” the list of issues (or bugs if you are in SW development).

Glide path – Looking at the glide path lets you determine if you are on-track or off-track. If a plane is within the prescribed glide path during landing, it will smoothly touch the runway. If it’s off the glide path, bad things could happen, and the pilot needs to take immediate action. The same is true for your worry list: if you solve 5 issues per day, have one week to go until launch, and 40 remaining items on your worry list, you know that you need to take action and change course. A glide path can be mathematical science (linear or polynomial regression) or just a rough temperature check (oops, still ten issues left for the week) – it’s up to your preference. In either case, it’s critical to know if you will be ready in time or not.

Punting – The hidden secret for shipping any product or project is to determine what not to tackle when you are running out of time. Some things must be done before launch, but others can wait until after. Solving issues is not the only way to burn down your Worry list – you can also decide to punt some issues for later. SW companies do that all the time and for good reasons – see this famous (and misleading) article on Windows 2000 https://www.zdnet.com/article/bugfest-win2000-has-63000-defects/. When launch day comes close and you run out of daylight, decide what really needs to get done and what is nice to have and can wait for another day.

Get your worry list started now! You will see that you will worry much less once you have it (you effectively delegate your worries out of your brain and into the list).

Did you like this post? Want to read more? Check out our newest book!

Thriving in High-Pressure Environments
Lessons from Amazon, a global pandemic, and other crazy times
By Alfons and Ulrike Staerk
ISBN 9798718017663

Find it on Amazon: Paperback, Kindle

If you like what you’re reading, please consider leaving a review on Amazon. If you don’t like it, please tell us what we can do better the next time. As self-published authors we don’t have the marketing power of big publishing houses. We rely on word of mouth endorsements through reader reviews.

Get something on paper first – only then start talking

On By AlfonsIn Getting things doneLeave a comment

There are three types of meetings and interactions with people (I’m sure the official literature has more, but for me, it comes down to these three critical archetypes):

  1. Brainstorming – You have no idea what to do, and you need as many ideas as possible from everyone.
  2. Making decisions – You have a plan or are pretty close to a plan and just need to get over the final step of making a decision.
  3. Informing – This is presenting out. All options have been evaluated, and now it’s only about reporting out on those.

…and then there’s the fourth variety: the unstructured “let’s just talk it over” meeting where you go wild across all types, everyone talks, and no one listens, and with all likelihood, the group will spend most of the time in a deep rat hole on a minor topic, completely missing the bigger picture (while 90% of the attendees tune out).

Let’s not have that last type of interaction; it’s not fun.

We all know how to run “Informing” meetings: you collect all the facts you can remember, organize them into a logical story flow, and build a nice PPT to walk folks through the evolution of thoughts that got you where you are. Bonus points if you make it look good (design matters) and throw a fun joke or two in there to lighten up the mood.

Most of us also know how to do “Brainstorming” meetings: you need a lot of Post-Its, a big white wall, a framing question, and off you go. Make sure to collect inputs and avoid getting locked in any one of the ideas – you want to go quick to gather a wide perspective instead of dwelling in deep details. Also, make sure that you proactively include quieter participants. Easy peasy and always fun as no one needs to make any commitments at this stage.

But how about “Making decisions”, when we do need to get people to make commitments?

This is harder as most people would much rather talk about inconsequential ‘What-ifs’ than making a decision that will lead them to commit and being accountable for outcomes. In the “making decisions” phase, meetings have a high propensity to be derailed by semi-related questions that come out of the blue or by digging into very deep discussions on very small subjects until all available time is spent.

A good – if not the best – way to keep decision meetings focused, structured, and moving forward, is to bring written content to the meeting. The written word has gravity, and seeing a document keeps everyone on topic. Of course, you need to share this document in the meeting so that everyone sees it on the screen as you guide through discussions, and everyone can also see how decisions get added to the document as the discussion progresses. That visibility and documentation allow you to keep people moving forward and to dwarf any attempts of going back to things that were already decided. It takes time and energy to prepare a strong written document, but the effort will pay off many times in decision-making meetings.

If you want to convince, you need to start writing!

A word of caution: this approach and this type of meeting are focused on narrowing down an information funnel and coming to decisions. Employ them at the right time(s) of a project. It’s not an effective way to gather as many ideas, questions, and concerns as possible – for that, you need to have a brainstorming meeting, and you need to hold yourself back from the temptation of providing initial ideas.

A blank page creates ideas. A written (draft) plan focuses discussions.

Widen the funnel with brainstorming meetings, shrink it with decision-making meetings. Never mix up the two!! You cannot do both in the same meeting.

Did you like this post? Want to read more? Check out our newest book!

Thriving in High-Pressure Environments
Lessons from Amazon, a global pandemic, and other crazy times
By Alfons and Ulrike Staerk
ISBN 9798718017663

Find it on Amazon: Paperback, Kindle

If you like what you’re reading, please consider leaving a review on Amazon. If you don’t like it, please tell us what we can do better the next time. As self-published authors we don’t have the marketing power of big publishing houses. We rely on word of mouth endorsements through reader reviews.

Leadership styles and developing agility in how you lead

On By AlfonsIn Getting things doneLeave a comment

Last week, we discussed how important it is to develop communication agility and to pick the right communication modality for the situation and intended outcome.

It’s equally, if not more important, to develop a similarly broad range of leadership techniques and styles. Specifically, your leadership style should look very different, depending on its direction in the hierarchy.

The sad story is that most people got it backward: they ask their management what to do and prescribe their reports what they want them to do. – This is WRONG!!

As a leader, you need to ask the people closest to a topic for options and solutions. You need to take their inputs to weigh decisions, not the other way around. Likewise, as a team member, you should not ask your manager what to do for a situation where you have more information than they do.

Of course, some decisions are better made top-down, specifically if they require a broad view and understanding that goes beyond the project owner (i.e., dependencies to related projects or higher-level organizational priorities. However, those are rather the exception than the rule.

As a general rule, if you communicate upwards, you should communicate initiative and solutions. If you communicate down the chain, you should communicate curiosity and desire to learn.

Managing your manager (communicating upwards)

You have the most complete, accurate, and detailed knowledge of your area. You will have more ideas on what to change and how to improve the status quo than anyone else. Bring that forward, don’t hold it back!

If you ask your manager what you should do, you will get direction all right, but it might not be based on the most robust foundation of facts. Instead, it is your job as owner and leader to provide direction and proposals!

You know your stuff – go lead and tell your management what needs to get done!

Engaging your team (communicating downwards)

If you are a manager and leader (people management or project) it is easy to think that you know all the answers. That’s what got you into the position in the first place, right? Wrong!!

You might have been the smartest IC (individual contributor) on the block, but that was before you got one or several levels removed from the actual work. You’re not the one who has the most facts anymore. Your decisions are at risk to be more gut-based than what your team would recommend – listen to them!!

Hold yourself back and trust your team. Encourage them to bring their ideas forward and listen to them intently. The less you speak, and the more you listen, the better off everyone will be.

If you apply the same style all the time – regardless of which one it is – you will fail to lead efficiently 50% of the time. You need to adapt your style, and critically, you need to do it the counterintuitive way:

Tell your boss. Ask your team.

Did you like this post? Want to read more? Check out our newest book!

Thriving in High-Pressure Environments
Lessons from Amazon, a global pandemic, and other crazy times
By Alfons and Ulrike Staerk
ISBN 9798718017663

Find it on Amazon: Paperback, Kindle

If you like what you’re reading, please consider leaving a review on Amazon. If you don’t like it, please tell us what we can do better the next time. As self-published authors we don’t have the marketing power of big publishing houses. We rely on word of mouth endorsements through reader reviews.

Communication agility

On By AlfonsIn Getting things doneLeave a comment

Being an effective communicator is critical for being successful in today’s world. Gone are the days where we lived alone on our farms – everything is interconnected today and requires collaboration and with that, effective communication.

The key to such effective communication is to know how to communicate when. We talked about making the content of your communications relevant before – now let’s talk about the tools of communication.

It’s imperative to have a diverse portfolio of such tools at your hands and to know how and when to use them. Don’t be a one-trick pony! Instead, you need to pick and choose the best method of communication deliberately based on the circumstances and on what you want to achieve.

Not all communication mechanisms are equal. Each one of them works marvelously in certain situations, and fails miserably in others. For example chat and texting is effective in ‘interrupting’ someone for urgent information that needs to be acted upon right now. Do it to me for too many times in non-urgent situations and you will be muted for good. Similarly, email is great to asynchronous communications that require thought and time. However, don’t expect me to respond to an email within the hour.

Don’t be a one-trick pony. Have a rich toolbox and know which tool to use when.

You can ask yourself three questions to determine the best communication method for a given situation:

What does the topic require?

Is my request urgent or is there some time to get an answer? Do I need synchronous (right now) or asynchronous (when the other person has time) communication? Must I interrupt the other person, or can I let them answer at their leisure? Does the topic need explanation?

If your topic is not urgent, grant the other person the control over when they want to answer. Let them plan their time and set proper expectation by sending your request or information over email.

If on the other hand you need to solve an urgent matter and time is off the essence, use a more real-time and synchronous communication channel like chat, text, or a phone call. What channel that should be depends on your organization’s culture. However use them sparsely and only if needed. Synchronous real-time communication interrupts the other person, disrupts whatever they were focused on at the time. Use it sparsely or you will piss them off over time.

Lastly, if your topic requires more explanation, it is likely better to talk in person. Schedule a meeting to discuss the topic in detail. If it is urgent, send a chat first and ask for a good time to schedule a meeting in short time.

What best serves the relationship?

Know the communication preference of your partner. If they are more introverted they will prefer written communication, if they are more extroverted they will appreciate the opportunity to meet and talk. Try to accommodate that preference if you can – sometimes that might require you to give up your preference.

Quick information and updates can be well served over email, which also saves time for all involved parties.

Building relationship and a foundation for partnering can only be done in person.

Know your tools and use them wisely!

  • Email – Great for asynchronous information sharing that saves time for everyone.
  • Chat/phone call – Interruptive but ensures quick attention and turnaround. It disrupts the other persons so use it wisely!
  • Meeting/video conference – Great for more complex discussions and building relationship. Plan ahead and respect times that are already blocked for the other person.

Did you like this post? Want to read more? Check out our newest book!

Thriving in High-Pressure Environments
Lessons from Amazon, a global pandemic, and other crazy times
By Alfons and Ulrike Staerk
ISBN 9798718017663

Find it on Amazon: Paperback, Kindle

If you like what you’re reading, please consider leaving a review on Amazon. If you don’t like it, please tell us what we can do better the next time. As self-published authors we don’t have the marketing power of big publishing houses. We rely on word of mouth endorsements through reader reviews.

Developing mechanisms and turning them into culture

On By AlfonsIn Getting things doneLeave a comment

Have you ever been in a situation where you discovered a problem, found the root cause after some investigation, determined corrective actions, and fixed the issue – only to see the same or a similar problem creep up again a few weeks later?

What happened? You fixed the problem, but you didn’t make the learning and fix a part of your operations moving forward. It’s all too easy to get distracted by the next issue at hand and thus not turning the fix or change into sustained improvement.

Create a mechanism

The way to make a change sustained is to create a mechanism.

Mechanisms can be many things: an updated process description, a recurring reminder on your calendar, a check-in meeting cadence with set agenda topics, or a scheduled report that you review on a regular basis.

The important common quality of all of those is that they remind you to think about the previous problem, its fix, and future prevention on a regular basis. Each of those mechanisms ingrains the learning into your operational processes and memory. They make it stick.

For example, if you want to make sure that system changes that impact multiple teams are reliably communicated to everyone, you cannot just send out an email to all groups and tell them to please do so in the future. That email will stick in their memory for about a week – if you are lucky. Instead, if you have a recurring meeting with that stakeholder group, you should make it a standing agenda item for those meetings to check for any planned changes that need to be communicated. That way, you transformed the one-off issue, fix, and learning into a repeatable process. You change the operations – and eventually the thinking – of the team.

If you want something to stick, you must develop a mechanism for it.

From mechanisms to culture

While a mechanism will help you achieve the desired outcome, it is not where you want to end up.

Mechanisms ensure that things get done the right way. However, they are also crutches for doing the right thing. Mechanisms require you to handhold and micromanage a specific behavior because it is not yet the natural behavior of the group.

You really want to achieve that the behavior becomes natural for the group and doesn’t need constant reminder through the mechanism. You want to achieve culture change.

Culture doesn’t change because you tell it to – culture changes through repetition, role modeling, and shared expectations. However, mechanisms can help you change the culture as they provide repetition (muscle memory) and remind everyone that a certain behavior is important (expectation setting). Over time mechanisms can evolve into culture.

A word of caution: think carefully about what your organizational priorities are and what you want to focus on. If everything becomes a mechanism, nothing matters at all. I’ve been in organizations where we had so many mechanisms that everyone lost track. In the end, none of them mattered, and their utility evaporated.

If you never make it to culture change, if you don’t change thinking, if you don’t role model the right behavior, you will spend a lot of time and energy to make sure the right things happen (aka micro-management).

Culture is the end goal. Mechanisms only compensate for culture.

Did you like this post? Want to read more? Check out our newest book!

Thriving in High-Pressure Environments
Lessons from Amazon, a global pandemic, and other crazy times
By Alfons and Ulrike Staerk
ISBN 9798718017663

Find it on Amazon: Paperback, Kindle

If you like what you’re reading, please consider leaving a review on Amazon. If you don’t like it, please tell us what we can do better the next time. As self-published authors we don’t have the marketing power of big publishing houses. We rely on word of mouth endorsements through reader reviews.

Achieve your desired outcome!

On By AlfonsIn Getting things doneLeave a comment

How much time do you spend in meetings? For me, it’s currently 57% of my working time (yes, I do track how I spend my time as I make it a point to be intentional about where I put my time and energy). Even if it’s not quite as much for you, I’m sure you spend a LOT of time in meetings. As that’s the case, we better make that time count, right!?

How many times have you been in a meeting where folks talked for an hour, but at the end of the allocated time, you were just at the same point where you started from. It was unclear who was doing what next, and after a few days, the memory of whatever was discussed in the meeting faded away as well.

In our roles as meeting organizers or meeting attendees, we are all empowered and responsible for changing that – to make meetings effective, actionable, and worth the time we spend in them. Instead of wasting your time in a meeting that doesn’t drive change and action, you would better spend that time with your kids, puppy, or taking an office nap. Seriously!

Hold yourself and others accountable for more effective meetings, regardless of whether you are the organizer or ‘just’ an attendee. It’s your’s and everyone else’s time – make it count!

You need to make two fundamental changes to get more effective meetings: 1) move from agenda-driven to action-driven and 2) track decisions and progress and don’t let people slip back.

Here is what we all need to do to get there – if you are the meeting organizer, you need to build this into the meeting; if you are an attendee, you need to hold the meeting organizer accountable for these.

  • State the desired outcome at the beginning – Most meetings have agendas (don’t even get me started about large group meetings without an agenda). However, agendas only tell us what we want to talk about, not what we want to achieve. And in many of those meetings, there is a lot of talking but not much achievement. Drop the classical agenda and instead list desired outcomes for your meeting. Don’t call out what topic you want to talk about but instead what the group must have achieved by the end of the meeting. If someone submits an agenda topic to you, ask them: “What do you want to achieve with your agenda topic?” Instead of “Discuss project plan.” add “Agreed on and locked milestone dates for Phase 1 tasks.” to your meeting plan.
  • Allocate time – Allocate time and manage time for each of the desired outcomes. Drive to and force decision and closure on the desired outcome within the allocated time. Be really, really, really resistant against not achieving a desired outcome in the given time. It should pain you personally. Sometimes it happens, but it should be the rare exception, not the norm. If you didn’t achieve the outcome, you wasted everyone’s time. Having allocated time for desired outcomes will help you reign people back in if they go on a tangent or enjoy themselves on rat-holing or side-conversations on a topic that’s not material for the desired outcome.
  • Take action notes – Take action notes during the discussion and share them with meeting attendees in real-time as you take them. Let them watch you type. Action notes are different from verbatim notes – they focus on the critical outcomes of the meeting, not what everyone has said. Focus your action notes on: 1) decisions and decision reasons, 2) action items, 3) follow-ups and open questions, 4) risks and concerns, and 5) critical facts and findings. If you want verbatim tracking, record the meeting. If you want to drive progress, make and share action notes. Always remember: “She who takes the notes controls the meeting!” (trust me, it’s true).
  • Close by summarizing action items – Summarize all action items at the end of the meeting. Remember that it’s only an action item if it has an owner and a date. That means one (!) owner and a specific date (not a quarter or month). If an action item doesn’t have a date and owner, it’s not an action item – it’s wishful thinking.
  • Make it real – Send out notes and action items right after the meeting. Like culture eats strategy for breakfast (Peter Drucker), timely raw notes beat well formatted but delayed minutes every single time. Remember that it’s not about beauty; it’s about driving action! As a matter of fact, in most cases, less well-formatted notes are more effective than pretty ones in sophisticated templates (however, don’t make them ugly and hard to read either!). You can thank digital marketing for that – it has trained us to ignore emails that look too pretty as they remind us of marketing newsletters and sales pitches right away. If you want to drive action, have your notes and action items directly in the email instead of an attachment and have bullet points for what needs to be done right on the top. You can still add a nicely formatted template attachment if you want, but know that what will drive action is what you put in the body of the email. Also, don’t underestimate the importance of timeliness – to be honest, I never even skim notes for a meeting that has occurred a few days ago – it’s just not relevant to my current context anymore.
  • Check back in – All throughout life, the difference between success and failed attempts lies in the follow-through. The same is true for action items – if you don’t follow through on them, you teach people that you are not really serious about them, and they can safely ignore whatever task was assigned to them. Make it a point to revisit project deadlines and action item progress at the beginning of every meeting. If you don’t, you might as well not assign them in the first place. If you have a well-functioning and high-performing project team, everyone will feel accountable for their own action items, and you might not need to check-in anymore. However, be aware that it will take a long time for the team to work together to get to that point.

Walk away from meetings that are not action-driven. Yes, really do! Don’t just pretend to be there while doing something else on the side – that would just encourage the bad meeting behaviors.

In closing, I want to be honest – I’m an introvert, so I really don’t enjoy large groups where everyone is just talking for talking’s sake. That makes me a little biased with regards to meeting efficiency. Just saying…

Did you like this post? Want to read more? Check out our newest book!

Thriving in High-Pressure Environments
Lessons from Amazon, a global pandemic, and other crazy times
By Alfons and Ulrike Staerk
ISBN 9798718017663

Find it on Amazon: Paperback, Kindle

If you like what you’re reading, please consider leaving a review on Amazon. If you don’t like it, please tell us what we can do better the next time. As self-published authors we don’t have the marketing power of big publishing houses. We rely on word of mouth endorsements through reader reviews.

Evolve your leadership style

On By AlfonsIn Getting things doneLeave a comment

Today I’m going to dive a little into one of my favorite topics: leading people, teams, and project groups.

As I’ve said many times before, we are all leaders in one capacity or another. Leadership, like so many others, is a skill that needs to be developed. Usually, people go through three stages when trying to get other folks to do something for them:

Stage 1 | Supervising | Task-oriented

This stage is all about telling others what to do, when to do it, and then auditing the outcomes.

It’s where we all start, but quite frankly, it’s not very effective. For once, it requires you to know exactly what needs to be done. As you take on more responsibilities, new areas, or problem spaces, that will not be the case anymore – others will know much more about specific areas than you do. It also requires a LOT of time and handholding from you, meaning it’s fundamentally not scalable. Finally, it only works if you have authority over the other person – why else would they care about what you tell them to do?

New managers with small teams usually show that leadership style.

Stage 2 | Managing | Process-oriented

This stage moves the focus away from telling people what to do and towards establishing goals and processes.

The leader moves away from the tasks and towards defining the way in which things need to be done, as well as the specific outcomes that need to be achieved. This stage is somewhere in-between – hopefully, it’s a transition stage and not where you’ll settle. It’s still directive in nature but moves the focus from tasks to outcomes and processes. It still requires lots of auditing and falls short of genuine trust for the team.

This model provides relief for the manager as teams start to grow from the initial small group. However, it still falls short of unlocking the true potential in your team as it depends a lot on you setting the goals and processes and then monitoring and enforcing them.

Management is halfway down the path to leadership but not quite there. The next step is the hardest as it requires giving up control and ego.

Stage 3 | Leading | People-oriented

This is where the magic happens. It’s all about the enablement of others, not about what you do.

Instead of knowing everything, this stage acknowledges that the wisdom lies in the team and n unlocking that wisdom. Instead of defining the ‘what’ and ‘how’, leadership at this stage is much more about developing shared purpose, team values, and rules for collaboration.

It’s a tough stage, as it requires you not to be the smartest kid on the block and rather take a backseat. However, the impact is enormous as that approach opens up space for others to step up and contribute. The more you trust the team and have them lead the path, the bigger the overall impact will be. You have to check your ego at the door, and not every manager is ready to do that, but once you do, things will really take off. (If you don’t you will be stuck in the manager stage for the rest of your career.)

This might sound a little theoretical and maybe not applicable to your current situation. It’s not. We all apply leadership styles all the time – dealing with coworkers, running projects, leading teams, or just trying to manage our families and convincing our kids to make better decisions. You will achieve the best results if you can shift your interactions from supervising to leading. Sometimes you will need to start at supervising and go through managing to lay the proper foundation, but your goal should always be to get to leadership.

As you tackle new challenges, turn around the typical approach that you have been taught and instead follow this sequence to solve the problem:

People first, then process, tasks come last.

Engage the people you’re working with first. Then define processes together. Lastly, let them drive tasks the way they deem most appropriate.

Here’s a little back of the napkin drawing that I scribbled to visualize the difference for myself:

Managers prescribe, leaders encourage.

Managers are anxious, leaders trust.

Managers need to control, leaders look for positive surprises.

Be a leader in your interactions with others!

Once you’ve tried a leadership approach, you will find the other two pretty limiting and boring.

Did you like this post? Want to read more? Check out our newest book!

Thriving in High-Pressure Environments
Lessons from Amazon, a global pandemic, and other crazy times
By Alfons and Ulrike Staerk
ISBN 9798718017663

Find it on Amazon: Paperback, Kindle

If you like what you’re reading, please consider leaving a review on Amazon. If you don’t like it, please tell us what we can do better the next time. As self-published authors we don’t have the marketing power of big publishing houses. We rely on word of mouth endorsements through reader reviews.

To lead means to ask good questions

On By AlfonsIn Getting things doneLeave a comment

I had several discussions this week about dealing with conflict situations or getting someone on board with a plan. It’s funny how similar leadership issues seem to cluster at certain times. Those discussions all ended up in exploring the importance and power of asking questions. So let’s dive a little into why asking questions is so critical and so powerful for us as leaders – and we all are leaders! We lead projects, we lead (virtual) teams, we lead families, we lead partnerships, and many more…

As a leader, asking good questions that guide deeper understanding is a critical skill. Of course, it needs to be paired with the patience and desire to ‘listen to understand’ (instead of listening to identify an opening where we can jump in with our own monologue). You don’t ask questions to show off – you ask questions to understand.

As a matter of fact, what usually marks the transition from a manager to a leader is the change in how they interact with their direct reports, peers, and bosses:

A manager gives direction; a leader asks questions and guides understanding.
A manager (thinks he) has all the answers; a leader knows what questions need to be asked.
A manager is the superstar; a leader develops everyone around her into superstars.

There are many benefits in asking guiding and insight-seeking questions instead of rambling about your opinions. Here are the three most important ones:

I. You broaden your understanding (Decision making)

Let’s start with the hard truth: You don’t know everything!

You may be as smart as they come – you still just can’t know everything. You won’t know all the details, you will miss the specific context, and you don’t have the specific perspective that others bring in based on their personal experience and background.

As a leader, your job is to make good decisions. So ask questions and LISTEN! Gather as much diverse data as you possibly can. Listen to what you hear, then think about the next good question to ask. Don’t try to shine as a superbrain by asking tough questions – listen, digest, and then ask for what additional information and perspective is needed.

Your goal is to gather diverse data that challenge your opinions and biases. Ask the right questions to gather that data and listen to what you are given back in return. A good answer is a gift that you should cherish!

At some point, it will be you who needs to make the call – try to gather as much unbiased information as you can before you take that step. However, once you do, it’s your call – allow for new information as you go along, but  don’t allow second-guessing of your decision based on the existing information.

II. You encourage thinking (Coaching)

By asking questions, you guide critical thinking. You point out areas that might need further investigation or reflection, or you draw out important additional information and insights that weren’t shared yet.

By doing so, you walk your partner through your thought models. You help them think about their own opinions from a different angle and more holistically. You help improve their thinking and decision making, leading to better plans and strategies.

Best of all, if you only communicate your grand plan, you will not teach your partner anything. They get a black-box solution and won’t understand what led to that solution. If you lead them to the rigth solution with your questions, you share your thought process and let them experience and practice it on a concrete example. Instead of giving an answer, you have taught a thought model. You showed how to fish, instead of just handing over the fish.

III. You are in control of the flow (Negotiating)

While the first two scenarios and reasons for being the one who asks the questions are more focused on finding a solution, this last one is more about being effective when you have a plan and just need to get it done against resistance.

Our typical reaction when we run into resistance is to defend our plan and thinking. The more resistance we encounter, the wordier we get. We get into the defense and dig a deeper and deeper hole for ourselves. As we are trying to explain our position, we are always a step behind – it’s easy for the other person to just question our opinion and keep us on our toes, explaining and defending until we doubt ourselves.

Asking good questions instead allows us to get out of the defensive position and take control of the flow of the discussion.

Instead of saying “…but I really believe that we should do X, as I said, we have looked at all the data…”, start asking, “Well, I would like to understand better why you think this won’t work. Can you walk me through the challenges you see and how you think we could overcome those challenges.”

Asking good questions and genuinely listening to what you hear are some of the most powerful tools to make you more effective and a better leader and collaborator. Practice and sharpen those tools whenever you can!

And here’s a quote from Jack Welch in closing:

“When you are an individual contributor, you try to have all the answers. When you are a leader, your job is to have all the questions.” – Jack Welch

PS to the quote above: I actually don’t think YOU have to have all the questions. Your job is to make sure all the right questions get asked – no matter whether they come from you or from your teammates. You foster those questions. You don’t have to provide all of them.

More great quotes on the importance of leading with questions: https://leadingwithquestions.com/latest-news/my-top-ten-favorite-leading-with-questions-quotes/

Did you like this post? Want to read more? Check out our newest book!

Thriving in High-Pressure Environments
Lessons from Amazon, a global pandemic, and other crazy times
By Alfons and Ulrike Staerk
ISBN 9798718017663

Find it on Amazon: Paperback, Kindle

If you like what you’re reading, please consider leaving a review on Amazon. If you don’t like it, please tell us what we can do better the next time. As self-published authors we don’t have the marketing power of big publishing houses. We rely on word of mouth endorsements through reader reviews.