Posts Tagged ‘conversation’
How To Talk With Your Boss (Dummy’s Guide to Conversation #11)
3 Realizations that Change Everything
It would seem this person controls my future, given that she signs off on my paycheck every two weeks. And she is the barrier between me and climbing the ladder. And all that baggage swirls around my head every time I talk with her. But there are a few fundamental realizations that can help power useful conversation.
Realizations help you prepare
- Talk is and always will be human to human. No matter what power levels come into play, the bottom line is that conversation is about two humans uttering words. And humans have equal value. So reject power-plays and the assumed rights and privileges of authority to talk over or down to you. How to do that? Persist in your questions and answers—all the while being respectful. If Marty Buber were in the next cubicle, I’m not sure what he would say about power distance, but he would maintain (maybe in his affected tone) that I-Thou relationships are to be honored from employee to boss, even if the boss thinks of you as a tool. Marty might argue that you not throw your bosses’ low opinion back at her. Instead, respect that she is a human of equal value, and try not to put too much weight on her biweekly signing of your pay stub.
- She does not control your destiny. She is only your boss at this job. And this job is not everything, even in a down and down-turning economy, you have choices. As anyone who has been laid off or changed jobs knows, change may have immediate negative effects but unseen positives gradually resolve—positives you would never have guessed at.
- Be the person you are meant to be. This is more than saying “I’m OK. You’re OK.” And this is also more than saying “Be yourself,” though I generally agree with both (with caveats). This is about garnering a vision for the person you want to be at work and having the balls and hope to respond that way right now, even though you haven’t achieved it.
Look: jobs come and go. But let each job and the people you interact with help shape you into the person who can do the work only you can do.
Postscript: I was blessed to have three terrific bosses during my tenure at Medtronic: David Laursen, Julie Foster and Noreen Thompson. Each of them encouraged the three points above and were/are simply delightful people who saw potential at every step. So—no sour grapes here.
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Image Credit: Albert Macone via 2headedsnake
The Gift of a Fresh Topic
Say Something New to an Old Friend
step away
Anybody can get fixated on a topic. Usually it is the annoyance that sticks in your craw or the coworker/friend/acquaintance who doesn’t act like you think they should. It bugs you, so you talk about it. I know the hot buttons for a bunch of people: things I can say to cause them to automatically press “Play” on their internal dialogue player. And here come the same words out of their mouths every time. People know my hot buttons, too: when I hear “trickle-down economics” the same set of words come to mind and mouth every time, with visceral results.
But consider what happens when a third party comes along: someone without the relationship history, someone unfamiliar with your precious grievance. Someone with an entirely different, passionate focus. This person can step into and through the usual troubled-water topics and help lead you out the other side. And it can be energizing to step away from the little slights we’ve nursed and twisted and inhabited.
I’ve witnessed grandchildren doing this with grandparents: asking an innocent question that led to an articulate explanation rather than the expected tirade. Such is the power of relationship and dialogue. And for those of us all too happy to walk on eggshells, maybe it’s time we say out loud what we’re thinking.
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Image Credit: via Wo and Wé
The Moving Horizon of Engagement: The New Yorker’s Nathan Heller on TED
How to Boil Down Levinas?
help find a way
A recent issue of The New Yorker includes an excellent article on TED talks. On his way to explaining why the talks are so popular, Nathan Heller stumbles onto the differences between our rituals of learning in college and how college is set up to support those rituals, and compares that with the kind of learning people need outside of college—the kind that keeps expanding rather than narrowing. Along the way he mentions in an offhand way how Levinas does not lend himself to a quick recap. One must do much preliminary work to begin to understand Levinas. Philosophy, especially phenomenology and theology are useful backgrounds to begin to understand Levinas. But only as a beginning.
The author of Conversation is an Engine is well familiar with this. As he tries to explain Levinas from time to time, blank stares and hasty retreats to other subjects are typical reactions. The French philosopher and apologist for The Other is famously obscure. And fascinating. But obscure.
Heller’s offhand remark reminds me that the bigger challenges ahead of us as communicators have to do with how we let people in on the details that engage us. Over at Big Picture Leadership there was a discussion recently about what it means to witness. That discussion reminded me of an ongoing conversation a few of us have had about what makes something remarkable, as in, making me remark out loud to another person because it was that important to me. In both cases there has to be an intensely personal connection for it to bubble up through our conscious mind and cross our lips.
If we are intent on rhetoric that draws others in (and I believe it is a most excellent thing to be a passionate booster for what we love and understand), than we are constantly providing low-hanging fruit for newcomers to grab and taste so they too will become enamored by the taste and want more. This is the horizon of engagement. That horizon is growing shorter and getting closer with every Google Search.
More sophisticated discussions will always have their place among practitioners and experts. But we’re quickly moving to the point where we each need to have a ready answer about our work, or firm, and what we believe.
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Image Credit: Martin Morazzo via thisisnthappiness
Pray Like You Talk. Talk Like You Pray.
How to be.
Back when I was newish to this notion of pursuing reunion with the Creator, I began to wonder about prayer. Was it just a kind of thick wishing; full of detail and electric longing, uttered into the silence? The practices of prayer remain mysterious to this day, but way back then my buddy said something I’ve never forgotten:
“Look. Just pray like you talk. Simple stuff. Forget the impressive words. Just talk.”
That proved useful. It still makes sense to me today.
Prayer is an articulated event. A speech-act that causes things to happen out in the world—though not exactly the way you might hope. This is what people who pray believe (people like me): that by talking to the One who controls everything, laying out the case, and leaving it there, stuff starts to happen. Of course, dictation and demands are fruitless. So are bargains. Prayer doesn’t work that way—it’s not exactly a reciprocal relationship.
But what if my friend’s advice worked the other way too: what if that easy conversation full of detail and electric longing was a part of our daily, hum-drum human conversations? So rather than utter desire into silence we uttered it into relationship? That does not sound like wishing into the silence. People would be listening—the very people right around you. They would hear. And sympathize. Or challenge. You’d get known. Your peaks and valleys would be known. There would be no hiding. If our talk were like our prayer, there would be a measure of freedom, and a whole lot of assumptions about the level of interest in our conversation partner.
No. Now I see that would never work.
But. Wait—that characteristic of being known is a peak human experience. What if we were designed for that very thing?
That would be something.
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Image Credit: Kris Graves via Lenscratch
“Funny You Say That”
How to recognize an awake moment and what to do about it
I heard this again the other day. Clearly this points to a glitch in The Matrix.
I was talking with a friend from a company we both worked at a lifetime ago. I mentioned a client I had been working with and he said, “It’s funny you say that.” He had just had a conversation with someone at the company and the firm had been on his mind.
“Not so strange,” you counter. “You both worked at the same company, it’s likely you had similar work trajectories.” Agreed. That is likely.
But it happens often: you mention something you read or see or hear. Or someone you know or talked with. And the person you are talking with makes a connection with something they recently heard or thought, or with someone they recently talked with. There is a leap of awareness and understanding. And out of that emerges a way forward.
Maybe it is just like what Trinity said about déjà vu: it’s an indicator something is changing. That sounds reasonable to me. In this blog I’ve been tracking how our conversations affect us in the most unwitting and unexpected ways. I wonder if “it’s funny you say that” is something of an open door through which we actually indicate we are consider/reconsidering/rethinking something. Or that we’re open to any of the above. And there is the possibility something much larger is happening behind the language we so easily pick from the moving racks of words in our heads.
Something to think about.
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How to Sap Energy & Steal Creativity: “Just Execute”
Don’t think. Just do.
A talented strategic friend chatted with the vp of marketing at a medtech startup. What was the company looking for in their posted marketing hire? They just wanted someone to execute. Just execute? My friend was floored. You want to hire someone and not use their entire brain? You want to disengage the emotion that arises from thinking through a problem? You have such knowledge of the market, you’ve considered every angle, you know all there is about your target audience, you are so confident you don’t need anyone else thinking this through? Or—was the pressure so great to show results that they could not waste time on strategy. Either way, the entire conversation pointed out this was a company to avoid.
“Just execute” is corporate bully language for “Do it because I said so.” Nearly every human benefits from knowing the “what” and “why” behind an order. And even God entertained modifications to His plan while Moses verbally worked through the mission as they chatted around the burning bush.
Don’t misunderstand: there is absolutely a place for “just execute.” Stuff gotta get done. Yes. But long term, stuff gets done much more effectively when we enlist whole people to work with us. And that means bringing people along with us as we process our mission. Just say “No” to the smoky backroom where highly paid C-suiters work out the details and then send a courier with decrees out to the rank and file.
This authoritarian tendency looks even worse in a volunteer organization like a church. Because money is not a factor there—it’s all about feeding motivation. Avoiding rich conversations about “why” short circuits the process and makes whole people flee.
Whatever your position, do yourself and your organization a favor by helping people see the big picture. Helping them form and reform and personalize the big picture. Whether you are a manager, a volunteer coordinator, a pastor or lead worker on an assembly line. This is what leaders do.
And know this: Those who won’t share or budge on the big picture will not attract or retain talent. But they will find themselves starting from scratch again and again.
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Image Credit: C-front
Boss No Like Social Media
Mashable reports that employers are not all hep on giving more social media freedom to employees.
tweet that
It seems the spread of negative information is their persistent nightmare fear. There are all sorts of main courses and sides to this tasty debate, but one thing a boss might consider is taking a longer-term look at the issue. Yes, we all know how easy it is to waste hours on Facebook. And many of us are starting to assume Facebook will give way to something else, George Tannenbaum thinks it will happen by 2017. I expect a rising Facebook backlash. But whether a backlash happens broadly, something will rise in its place. That’s because once people realize they have a voice, there is no going back.
But a longer look at giving many people a voice recognizes at least two facts:
- The era of sovereign control over you employee’s voices is over. Despite what Vladimir Putin thinks and does, what you allow or forbid workers to say at the workplace matters less and less when you don’t control the technology residing in a pocket. And conversations about your work are already in progress, whether you know it or not.
- Reasons and a few simple parameters beat “No” every time. All anyone wants is an explanation. It’s a grown-up thing to explain the reasons behind a choice that affects others. An explanation moves a team in the right direction. Even an explanation like my friend offered a two-year old visitor at his party. The toddler wanted to pick up a little poodle who had no intention of being picked up by the toddler: “You know what, Jenny? This is a Wiggly Dog. And no one can pick up a Wiggly Dog.”
Even if you have to make up a new category of canine, it’s worth an explanation. Of course, an explanation invites questions. Simply put: bosses need to get used to hearing voices. May as well start planning for it.
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Image Credit: via Retronaut
Dummy’s Guide to Conversation #9: Say it Out Loud To Get It
A pastor friend once wondered why the congregation didn’t know this certain fact he had mentioned in a sermon. My friend was under the notion that people listen closely to every word of a sermon. I am convinced people do listen—just not to every word.
I know this because I have taught college students and mistakenly thought that the wide-open eyes and direct eye contact meant they were listening. It took me until my first test to realize how mistaken I was. Direct eye contact is as much an act as appearing to type notes while facebooking friends. Students and all of us easily adopt the outward behaviors that allow us to escape miles away to play on the beach while the person in front persists in boring monologue.
But a conversation is a different environment than a lecture or sermon. Don’t let your conversation partner bore you with abstractions. Challenge them. Question. Ask. This is the very nature of conversation and it fits with how we understand anything: we need to try an idea on for size to sort out whether it fits us or the situation.
Trying an idea on for size looks like talking.
We must turn something over verbally to begin to understand it. It’s just how the will is connected to the brain—through the voicebox. Not exclusively, sometimes we get it without saying it or asking. And sometimes writing a note helps in understanding (that’s often how it works for me). But make peace that people need to respond in one way or another to truly begin to understand something.
This is part of the reason lectures can be so ineffective.
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Image Credit: BLU (street artist from Bologna Italy) via 2headedsnake
How to Pitch a Medical Device Company #1: Know MedTech Context
help us feel human again
I spent the early years of my working life being formed by the medical device industry. I was energized by the mission of seeing people restored and hearing joyful patient stories. I enjoyed the banter with physicians and learning about the junction of technology and living systems. And I was charmed by the folks I worked with: some of the smartest people around, with a bent toward helping others. Not everybody, mind you, but enough lively, mission-fed people that the workday was full of surprise.
Things change. Corporations mature—for better and worse. Lately it seems the balance sheet and the quarterly earnings call too easily drown out mission. Smart people who enjoy a challenge still work there, and it is an industry with more and more specific boundaries. So if your agency is pitching medical device work, please be aware of these three influences that shape the perspective of the people you will be talking to:
- Legal pinioning
- Regulatory straight jacket
- Branding dead ends
These perspective-shapers sounds like a bummer, but smart agencies with a knack for operating in tight quarters can help make a difference. The first two perspective-shapers are fairly obvious. Naturally, the best medical device companies hold the patients who receive their therapies in the highest regard. And you would not want to work with a company that didn’t. But in our litigious age, there’s lots of money to be made from suing manufactures for all sorts of things. Naturally, medical device companies ramp up their risk-averting processes. Lawyers review nearly every outward facing piece of communication and regulatory reviewers—the picky cousins of lawyers—delight in ferreting out each word of potential deviation from the FDA-approved copy. And the work of lawyers and regulators is invaluable.
Branding dead ends are not so obvious and few will admit to them out loud. These take a bit more explanation, so I’ll reserve it for another post.
But in your initial approach to conversations with med tech employees, know that most of their conversations are like walking a tightrope: marketing is always a balance between what you’d like to say and what you can say given the published studies. Agencies with more consumer experience can find this deadening. But resisting the pinioning and the straight-jacket—in your own way—is one of the ways your team can add value. It’s just got to be believable. And it becomes more believable when you ask for and expect the list of approved claims before starting work on your pitch. Since every claim must have a valid reference, basing your creative on the right foundation can make the difference between making the final cut and being dismissed as not up to snuff.
Image Credit: Engadget
Speak up! Wait. Why are you talking?
If you hail from the corner office, you’re used to being heard.
If you are king of the OR, assistants jump at your command. If you hang out behind a pulpit or professorial podium—you know some at least pretend to tune in. But not everyone has a built-in audience. Not everyone is heard.
Those accustomed to being heard can have a hard time believing some cannot be heard. Why don’t just they just speak up if they have something to say? (Do they even have something to say?) In the same way Wall Street favors insiders over run-of-the-mill investors, every organization favors and rewards certain voices over others. These are the go-to voices in catastrophe or when a pep talk is needed. But these people sometimes assume everyone has a voice—because people listen to their voice—so, true for everyone.
Right?
But how many C-Suiters really want to hear? And how many behind the pulpit or podium really want to dialogue? Because—after all—casting vision is all about one-way messaging. Dialogue takes too long, is messy, confuses people with extraneous stuff and swerves off (my) topic.
What would leadership look like if listening were involved? Certainly there are times when monologue and one-way messaging are appropriate. But not all the time. What if the real strength of leadership was hidden in the will and unvoiced thoughts of the department/team/congregation/classroom? What if all sorts of unity was bubbling deep under the surface waiting to spring out much bigger and much better than anything the C-Suite player could ever imagine? It would be messy at first. But maybe something lasting would happen.
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Image Credit: thaeger
conversation is an engine 
