joshbjon.es

Take a breath. Ask “how can I help?” when your stuck not knowing how to give good feedback.

This is a pomodoro timer that my wife gave me a few years back. It’s great for a lot of productivity hacks. One being, what to do when you need to give feedback but are frustrated and don’t know what to say. hit the 3 minute side and breath.

I just had an employee who wasn’t performing to, what I felt, was their best. I started typing out something towards feedback with them. I couldn’t find the words that would give them the appropriate feedback while also helping them see I was on their side after several retypes. Hit the pomodoro timer and stop. I really only needed 30 seconds. Rephrased the thing with an ending statement like this: “I need you to be able to _________. Is there anything I can do to help you ______________?”

Stop. Take a breath. If you can end the statement with the phrase above, you’re probably in the right ballpark.

The litmus test for knowing what to say and not to say when giving feedback is not “Is it honest?” but rather “Is it helpful?”

I can operate quickly, but that also can make me impatient. I have a trick for mitigating being impatient in meetings.

Several years ago I realized about halfway through a meeting (e.g. 30 minutes into an hour long meeting), I would begin to speed up and try to rush the conversation. You can imagine that the output of this wasn’t always great. Rushing a conversation does not lead to great decision making.

After some negative impacts of this once or twice, I began to notice this at times. It came around times that I felt extra stress of workload assigned to me. Noticing is great, but what to do about it? This is how I found my secret trick.

At one point, I realized I was starting to feel pressure to rush a conversation in the middle of a meeting. I had enough awareness to look at the clock on my screen and that’s when I realized that there’s about 30 minutes left in the meeting. What was the point of rushing? We had the time. So I slowed down and the conversation proceeded to a good end result.

So that’s my trick for feeling rushed in meetings. There’s more to it than that, I’ve also had to figure out what to do when you are actually running up on time. More on that later. But in terms of rushing a conversation because you feel pressure while others aren’t, that’s not needed. To do this there are two things you need:

1) Enough awareness to know how you’re feeling in the moment.
2) A system to mitigate that is quick and helps reset.

Doesn’t have to be the same method as mine, but you do need one if you’re leading people. What do you do to mitigate your own unhelpful proclivities?

A few businesses ago I had an interaction with someone who was new to an organization. They had joined to replace another person that exited (who I also happened to know). One of the things that came up in the conversation was a specific vendor. In this instance I happened to also know the vendor and the details around how both sides negotiated and setup their agreement. I’m not attached to either directly as an employee, but know both as a third party and like both organizations.

The previous person wasn’t happy with the agreement they signed. There are many reasons for this, but my primary assessment is buyer’s clarity and remorse. Almost immediately after signing there were questions about the vendor not doing what they agreed to, even though the expectations were clearly being met based on the outlined agreement. Without going into details here, there is also an argument to be made that the issue was wrong fit. More was expected than what was being paid for and there were significant budgetary constraints on the client end compared to the service they desired.

The thing that was interesting about this conversation was that the new person happened to be questioning this vendor’s utility without having ever had a meeting with the other organization. It makes sense. When the previous person left they gave the incoming staff a list of their frustrations about the other organization. So now the new person can’t walk into a meeting with a new relationship and a truly objective view. I gave the new person some counsel about places where I saw misalignment and some things to look at on the agreement and how to possibly reposition for greater alignment to organization needs and value creation.

What I know in these situations is that the best thing for everyone is to find places for alignment and value creation. The previous person seemed to close to it to be able to do that and might have even caused the incoming staff to live with the same issue while they exited. There’s a thing about putting people in a box like that in your mind. It’s in your mind and you’re the only person who can release them. If you never do that work, then eventually you’ll work to help other people see them in the same box. This greatly reduces the opportunity for greater service to others and greater value creation for all. Tending the mental garden so bitter roots don’t spring up is the only way you can get to a place of true service to others.

How are you doing with the other orgs you work with? Need to take a step back today and reset or are you crushing this? I want advice on both sides.

How do you communicate with your vendors?

A few years ago I had a new account manager from a vendor call me. Initially he called because he didn’t have my email address. SMH. How do you not have my email address in your system? I didn’t want to give him the time of day. Especially after that. At one point I told him “If you guys didn’t have the best product on the market for this, I would have kicked you to the curb a long time ago.”

What happened next? I asked him to do a few things, and he did them. Then he called back a few weeks later for a check-in. I didn’t want to give him the time of day again. Still he got through, we talked, he responded well and actioned some things, and a month later he reengaged. He grew on me. This AM ended up getting a promotion that was well deserved. I was sad that we were losing him as our primary contact for this vendor. By the time he left it the relationship was better though and that was due to his efforts way more than mine.

He was actually a solid guy who really wanted to help customers. When we first interacted I wasn’t upset at him, I was just unengaged with the vendor, but I directed that at him. I didn’t treat a people like a people. Not good.

I’m trying something new now. The golden rule. If I wouldn’t talk to a personal relationship this way, why would I talk to a team member in this way? If I wouldn’t talk to a team member in this way, why would I talk to a vendor in this way? My experience would tell me that most people are really just trying to do good work and we don’t have to make their jobs harder to get what we need.

How do you feel when you’re clients are more engaged with you? Even in the tough conversations, if a client is engaged it makes a big deal on how easy it is to dig in on the response to the client’s request. Strong relationships make for easier work and value creation. At the end of the day, even for organizations external to us, are just made of people. Engagement with those people will get you further than standing off and being ambiguous to your posture about them. You are trading money for work, don’t reduce it to that though. It’s about value creation not, money transaction.

Words are important, so I started this post referring to external orgs as vendors, but I generally have shifted to referring to them as partners. It’s helped me adjust my thinking of vendors as partners. They’re a part of our team. I also look at them that way. Where do you visualize them on the org chart? That partner is the most expensive employee you have, you should have a monthly checkin at least and probably a quarterly “employee review”.

Quick pointers on how to live this out:
-Weight your perspective to co-creating value.
-Partner meeting cadence
-Golden Rule: Treat others the way you want to be treated.”
-Add a layer to your org chart with partner orgs to see how it works
-Kind and nice are different. Mostly be nice, always be kind.