Posted in Discipline, Skill, Toolkit on January 13th, 2012
Let’s pick up on this theme of listening and being comfortable with silence. If you can exert mastery over your tendency to fill silence, all kinds of good things accrue. First, you make room for dialogue, not monologue. For conversation, not just empty give and take.
Then, you give yourself an opportunity to really understand what someone is saying. This understanding comes through the questions you ask, and there are three types of questions:
1. Closed-ended
2. Open-ended
3. Impact
Closed-ended questions are those that yield a one word answer. “How are things?” “Good.” Very informative!
Open-ended questions go a bit farther and yield a longer answer; “What have you been working on?” “Not falling asleep.” Okay, that’s a start.
Impact questions go all the way. These are questions that ask someone to actually think; “Given what you just said, how will you change the way you approach that next time?” “Hmmm…let me think.” Now we’re talking.
You have asked tons of impact questions. You know you have, because you get the “Good question…let me think” response. This is almost always good. It means you have honored your partner in conversation enough to think about and ask an impact question. And you have offered that person the chance to really think something through.
There’s nothing wrong with closed and open-ended questions, but they function more like transactions than relationships. What they are best-suited for is breaking up the flow of your impact questions, since if you ask TOO many impact questions, you can easily exhaust and annoy your conversation partner.
Next time you are walking into a meeting or a social situation, take a pause and make an impact.
Posted in Skill, Toolkit on January 4th, 2012
Early this morning, I was going through some of my Mom’s and Dad’s old files and I found my Kindergarten report card. The last item was “Listens well.” The categories were “Always, Often and Seldom.” You can guess which one I got!
That got me thinking about the skill of listening. I was a rambunctious kid, and I’m a rambunctious adult, but I do think I’ve learned a bit about listening (maybe I’ve moved up the scale to “Often”).
How are we supposed to “listen” to someone? I think one of the secrets lies in the pause. If you can be comfortable with silence, it allows you to formulate meaningful questions as you engage in conversation.
I teach the skill of asking “impact” questions, but I think the equally important skill is what happens in the silence after a response. We all need to take a breath, relax and give the response room to sink in. Speaking of relaxing, isn’t it nap time?
Posted in Frameworks on December 27th, 2011
Whether you like “resolutions” or not, this is the time of year we all think about them, and that’s not a bad thing. If you scroll down on this blog, you’ll see that the past few posts have been about “reflection,” because it is in the process of reflection that the lessons of life get embedded.
But now that we are all in the mode of thinking; “What do I need to accomplish or do better in 2012?” I think we need to shift our mindset a bit from “what” to “how.”
One of the things I see over and over in my MBA courses is that when I assign an entrepreneurial project, I get a long list of “what” the student teams are going to do. And I always give them the same feedback: give me less “what” and more “how.” Stop drawing and re-drawing the map and just travel to the first destination and adjust from there.
It is in the how that things actually get done. Anyone can make a list. But in thinking through how you will actually do that first thing, you begin to tilt towards action.
The problem here is that thinking it through only takes you so far. It is action that gets the job done, and as I’ve said many times here on this site, the ability to take the right actions is a combination of knowledge, skill and discipline:
1. Do I have the requisite knowledge to pull this off?
2. What skills do I need to do it well?
3. What level of discipline will I need to ensure success?
I believe that if you can answer these three questions, you are well on your way to putting down the map and getting on the road.
Posted in Observations & Intersections, Toolkit on December 12th, 2011
One of the great (unexpected) benefits of teaching MBA students is that I get to see them developing their knowledge, skill and discipline at a key moment in their lives. Most of my students are in their early 30′s, and they are striving hard to build a set of competencies that will take them to the next level.
But one skill that we don’t talk much about in our schools is reflection. We are so worried about pouring more and more content into heads – and our students are so worried about obtaining that content – that we simply don’t have time to let much of what we teach and learn sink in, sort, and sift.
My favorite adult learning principle is “Learning is a continuous cycle of action and reflection.” I think that nails it. Having taught at the MBA and Exec-MBA level for some time now, I can (mostly) tell when a person is reflective. They have a calm confidence about them that provides a strong foundation for them to pile more content on.
The very nature of “self-awareness” is that you can see how your actions and behaviours are reflected on others. It is only then that you can make those subtle adjustments that increase your positive impact…your “presence.” This does NOT come from absorbing more content…it comes from being aware of how the content you already have affects your actions.
Many people wait to “reflect” until something has gone wrong…the loss of a job, getting passed over for a promotion, or the break in a relationship. Taking time to reflect when things are going well ensures that we can see things clearly and non-defensively and that we are drawing the right lessons.
Each of us must find our own way to reflect. I know I’ve added a “to-do,” but if you are measuring ROI…this is the one.
Posted in Observations & Intersections on October 31st, 2011
Running along Northwestern’s University’s campus, I got thinking about what a perfect October it’s been here in Chicago. If you live in this area, you begin to brace yourself around this time of year for the coming cold. But we’ve been given a great gift this late Fall, as our October has been nearly perfect. A poet I am not, but here are a few reflections as an offering to a perfect month:
Running along the winding path near Lake Michigan’s beach and feeling like I am inside a painting.
The abandoned lifeguard chairs huddled closely together high on the beach, preparing for the biting wind and already looking forward to next season.
Leaves turning yellow and red, and blowing across the paths and sidewalks as you make your way.
Standing on the sidelines of a baseball or soccer game, your face and heart still feeling the heat of the Summer, but your fingers that know the Winter is coming.
The old friends you run into at the football games, snapping you right back to your old school and those yearbook memories.
Sitting at a table outside the local pub with close friends drinking beer on a Saturday afternoon.
Getting out the well-worn flannel shirt that will be close by for the months ahead.
The low sun putting everything in a light that somehow is both hazy and crystal clear at the same time.
Seasons change, and we are better for it.
Posted in Entrepreneurship, Frameworks, Teaching, Toolkit on October 25th, 2011
Flying to Detroit the other day for a talk, I was sitting across from a Mom her little 2 year old boy. Every thirty seconds or so, the boy would say; “Mommy, why are they closing the door?”
And his Mom would say; “So we can take off.”
“Why?”
“Well, so we can get there.”
“Why?”
“So we can go see Grandma.”
“Why”
“Because we love Grandma and we miss her.”
The boy was in that “why” stage that all of us go through, and I got to laughing so hard that I almost dumped my coffee on my laptop case. The next morning, I was teaching one of my courses and discussing with my students what my expectations were regarding their analyses of the companies we were studying. It struck me that I was essentially asking them to do what came naturally to this 2-year old…to all 2-year olds.
I was asking the students to go beyond “surface” analysis. Don’t just repeat my questions and give a couple of answers. That’s not analysis. Analysis is when you ask ‘why’ something is happening the way it is. It’s when you pull apart the pieces, look at connections and recognize patterns in how they are put together, and ask whether that is optimal given the challenge faced.
You do what 2-year olds do. You ask “why” until you get to the core. And the core often reveals the truth of why things are the way they are.
So decide what’s worth looking at and then pull the pieces apart. Dig down beneath the surface. Find the edges of the puzzle. Identify patterns and ask why. A surprising picture might just emerge from the fog.
Posted in Entrepreneurship, Observations & Intersections on October 6th, 2011
I went for a long, sad walk last night in Washington DC and reflected on Steve Jobs. Much will be said about him over the next months. I hope that when people read about his legacy, they quickly move past the shiny objects and see the real gifts that he gave us.
Jobs’ life and work was a magnet, not a bulldozer. Early on, he drew us toward him with the beauty of his art that proved that business can actually be visceral and not just surface. Then, he reminded us of the key lesson that all entrepreneurs know: don’t live someone else’s life. The philosophers have all told us this, but it’s hard to listen to someone who didn’t experience life like we experience life.
But Jobs is of us. He showed us by the way he lived his life that we shouldn’t be afraid. Like my favorite adult learning principle, life is a continuous cycle of action and reflection. Jobs’ ousting from his own company caused him to get stronger (to our great benefit), not to shrink away and just spend time securing his legend. The great wisdom in his cycle of action and reflection is that Jobs understood that life is actually a process of getting rid of things, not adding things. It’s discovering the beautiful sculpture in the stone by chipping away at it and not being afraid to simplify. While everyone was running to add, pile on, accumulate, Jobs was simplifying and taking away and helping us understand that life is best experienced through simple things.
I’m writing this on my MacBook Pro with my iPhone right in front of me, keeping me connected to my family. Mr. Jobs, thank you for giving me the opportunity to interact with your art and for your inspiration. Thanks for helping me Think Different.
Posted in Frameworks, Observations & Intersections, Required reading/listening/viewing on September 15th, 2011
From Jonathan Haidt at University of Virginia (author or The Happiness Hypothesis) to Sian Beilock at University of Chicago (author of Choke) to David Brooks of the New York Times (author of The Social Animal), there are lots of great people writing about the brain and what science is teaching us about ourselves.
Haidt has a fantastic metaphor for structuring his arguments about why we take the actions we take…that of a rider on an elephant. Our consciousness is the “rider” but our unconscious is the “elephant,” and you already know who’s going to win the battle of wills.
The reason I love this metaphor is that it suggests that just “changing our minds” is not enough to change our actual behavior. I spend a lot of time helping people try to get better at something…selling, leadership, coaching, entrepreneurship…and I am so impressed with people who make a conscious decision to increase their performance. That’s a huge first step away from the status quo. BUT, thinkers like Haidt and Beilock and Brooks are pointing out that this is not enough. There’s this giant beast of an unconscious mind that is going a certain direction and no amount of steering is going to move it to a new path.
So what do we do? Is this bad news? Are we just set in stone? Of course not. As Haidt suggests, we need to slowly re-train the elephant, and I believe this is best done by putting ourselves in new situations. I once heard someone say; “You are what you’ve been reading for the past five years.” I love that, and I think it’s dead-on correct. If that’s true, then we need to try new things and put ourselves in new situations with new people such that our unconscious picks up different signals and can form new patterns.
This is a decision that the “rider” can make. Just enter a new situation or a new context or a new place. It may be hard work once you get there (business school, a toastmaster’s club, a design class, etc), but the elephant is up for hard work. Is the rider?
