“Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.” — Winston Churchill

The biggest influencing skill is the skill of listening. You cannot hope to be heard until you’ve listened. Your influence will only reach to the extent you’ve payed and attention – and have been seen to pay attention.

As a listener, most of what we think of as listening happens inside our head. Let’s set the table and invite our speaker to sit with us:

Be a Generous Listener

Generous listening is the assumption of favourable intent. It means if somebody says something that can be taken in more than one way, they meant the good way. Or they are, in their own way, trying to help you. Or maybe you misunderstood?

I told a close friend of mine once that she “had to own her own shit.” I meant that she had to take responsibility for her own emotions and actions. She thought I had said “had to eat her own shit.” A subtle but important difference. Hilarity ensued.

Be a Respectful Listener

Is it safe to tell you bad news or give unfavourable feedback? Can you handle the truth? Listening means being vulnerable sometimes. Putting yourself out there. Exposing yourself to things that are hard to hear and maybe even hurtful.

Can you be compassionate and understand that the person telling you the bad news might be feeling vulnerable too? That if they’re telling you something unfavourable that it might actually be happening?

Be a Calm Listener

Your silence is not mean you agree with what is being said. Not interrupting, however, shows respect. Not interrupting is listening.

Sometimes people take a while to get to their point. They need to feel safe before they can get to what they really want. Personally this drives me nuts, but my therapist was really good at it.

President Lyndon Johnson was especially good at this. He could actively listen for hours, and spent much time on the telephone, waiting patiently to pounce when the speaker got to what they really wanted. [On listening to Johnson's private phone calls]

Your Actions

Can you think of a conversation you’ve had in the past that might have gone differently with using any one of these techniques? What upcoming conversation can you apply these techniques too?

Are you getting sucked back into the daily drama, details, and problem solving that you (supposedly) hired others to take care of? Are you unable to pull your head out of the minutia of running a business to think about where that business needs to go next? Are you reacting to daily and hourly crises instead of being “proactive”?

Sprinter and Rabbits

If you’re a successful entrepreneur, you probably have a strong bias towards action. You’re a doer, a decider, the action gal. It’s a big part of why you’re successful. Like a fast running sprinter, or the hard to catch rabbit, you move fast..

A sprinter runs so fast and so hard they leave everybody else behind in the parking lot. That’s good if you’re ahead of your competition. If you’re leading a business it may be a problem.

If everybody else is still trying to figure out where the finish line is when you’ve already crossed it, then you’re not really being a leader. The idea of leadership is to get everybody across the finish line as quickly as possible. Not just you.

The rabbit is also fast. A rabbit who is trying to evade a coyote will zig-zag and change direction quickly. Also not a bad thing if you’re taking advantage of opportunities and can change direction quickly to stay ahead of your competitors.

This doesn’t mean your staff knows which way you’re going next, or if they’ll be able to keep up. It may seem to them that they’re chasing a crazy rabbit who keeps changing its mind.

If Nobody Else Can Keep Up, Maybe They Aren’t the Problem

Your bias to action comes with a blind spot, sometimes. Making sure the team understands where you’re going next as a company. This helps them make decisions that line up with the company strategy (so you don’t have to), or anticipate where they need to be next. You may be frustrated that people don’t seem to get it, or keep up, or have the same excitement or energy or engagement as you. But they’re frustrated with you too.

They’re frustrated because you’ve left them behind, or they’re tired of chasing your zig-zagging rabbit backside. They can’t see the stuff you, the leader, can see.  And you’ve taken off without sharing what’s happening in your brain. So what are they supposed to do next? You could hire mind-readers, but my wife isn’t available.

You’ve lost your staff. As an entrepreneur or leader you can’t do it all yourself, and you’ve learned (hopefully) how to delegate and supervise. This frees you up to do what you do best: Create and discover new opportunities, get out in front of emerging markets, anticipate changes, hire the right people.

You may keep getting sucked back into the daily drama, details, and problem solving that you hired others to take care of because you keep running away without telling them where the finish line is.

You Need Them, They Need You

You do have to recognize that people can’t read your mind. People don’t know what you know, and they certainly don’t know what you’re thinking. Changes in speed and direction need energy, especially for the non-rabbits.

Those  detail guys and gals sometimes drive you nuts, but they keep you out of trouble. Worker bees get the mundane but important things done every day. The ones that are effective and efficient and complete because they take their time and think things through. And drive you crazy because they can never decide anything without you.

Maybe you can’t slow down to their speed, and maybe they can’t accelerate to yours. But you can meet them halfway.

What You Can Do

* Think a little more

Sit on your new ideas before throwing them out, and expecting people to understand what they’re supposed to do next. Not every idea you have is a good one, so don’t overwhelm the detail guys and gals with stuff that’s not going to happen because you change your mind tomorrow

* Over-communicate.

Keep your message simple and repeat it constantly. If you can’t explain what your company does and who its customers are in a way an eighth grader can understand, then it’s not simple enough.

* Listen more than you talk

Close the loop and listen as intently to your internal staff as you do your customers. You listen to your customers, right? This will tell you if your message is getting through, and having the desired effect. Adjust as necessary.

Sometimes things happen you can’t plan for. Like riding your bike up the back of a bear. My trainer says she didn’t see the bear until she was on top of it. Literally, with her mountain bike.

She came around the corner, peddling furiously, looking over her shoulder and trying to stay ahead of the Scout troop following her. Scouting in Calgary has many advantages. Access to the mountains and wildlife are some of them.

The bear was sitting in the middle of the single track, facing uphill. The way she told us the story at the training workshop, she didn’t understand what had happened until the bear turned to look over its shoulder at her. It’s one of those “no sh*t, there I was” stories that’s funny only later when you’re telling it around the campfire.

She backed down slowly, keeping herself between the mother bear and cubs and the Scouts. By hand signals and whispering they got back to the last branch in the trail and took a different route.

That’s the kind of leadership I prefer. Calm, competent, cool. There are many things that could have gone wrong with this scenario, and any drama on the leader’s part wouldn’t have helped.

What do I mean by drama? In an already emotionally laden and potentially dangerous scenario adding more emotion is drama. If she’d screamed, or panicked, or froze, or attacked, things could have gone very horribly wrong.

Worst places to work? One sign is when your day depends on the boss’s mood. “Better keep your head down. Ian is in a foul mood because the budget is due.” Managers and executives need to control and manage their emotions instead of letting their emotions manage them.

Be enthusiastic, be positive, have fun. All good. But if you’re angry, or yelling, or throwing things, or even quietly calling people names now you’re either out of control or you’re a bully. Now you’re a “boss-hole”. Not inspirational nor effective in the long run.

It’s a simple thing outstanding managers do well – keep calm, be consistent.

I was in Rogers on Tuesday (they’re a local  cell phone service provider), on the 29th anniversary of my engagement to my bride, trying to get her a phone upgrade.  I thought it would be a simple process, and a nice gesture on our “asking” day.

Silly me. Three hours later we walked out with a new phone, bitter and disappointed at the service we received from Rogers. The only reason I didn’t switch was because the clerk couldn’t get through to her own customer service to cancel my contract, and I didn’t want to spent my entire anniversary waiting for this to get sorted out. But that’s not really what I want to talk about today.

While waiting I noticed the Roger’s one-page strategic plan lying on the counter. It seems I’ve inherited my grandmother’s faculty for reading upside-down. At least somewhat.

That skill had something to do with why she spent a few years living in Argentina after the war. There’s also something about her burning her then-dead German husband’s papers on the roof of the apartment in Switzerland under cover of doing laundry before fleeing. That’s also another story.

I asked the clerk if I could take a look at her company’s values, and she said no. She hid it furtively. As if she’d been caught doing something wrong.

This puzzles me. If a company is going to go through all the time and effort of discovering a set of expected behaviours for the company, then why can’t its customers see it? Are they embarrassed? Are they afraid that customers will laugh? In Roger’s case, given my treatment by them that night, that might realistic.

I began wondering how many other companies have values that they’re not willing to share with their customers, suppliers, and partners. Are they afraid to be held accountable to them? If you set out values and expected behaviour for everybody in your company, and you know that that’s not who your company really is, then I might understand your reticence.

I challenge you to publish your values. I dare you to make a public commitment. Commitment that is necessary for accountability and results. If you’re not willing to make that commitment, maybe you need to go back to your executive retreat and have another think.

If it turns out you don’t have any values, besides just making money, which I doubt, then don’t make something up. You’re not fooling anybody. Share who you are as a company, and be willing to be held to it. Otherwise the public will make up its own stories about why you behave the way you behave, or treat them the way you do.

Then make sure there’s a way for your clients, staff, suppliers to tell you when you are – and aren’t – living up to them. Listen. They’re already talking about you anyway. If you’re not hearing them it’s because you’re not listening.

If you’re not willing to fire employees behaviour that  consistently violate your core values, or you’re not willing to fix internal systems that consistently violate your customers humanity (such as making a phone upgrade a byzantine, three-hour gauntlet of bizarre rules and contractual obligations that require approval from an unreachable customer service representative in some overwhelmed call centre), then don’t waste your time.

There is a direct line between integrity and execution. If you don’t understand the this linkage between vision and engagement, values and execution, purpose and urgency, then stop wasting your time. Don’t waste it on “values” and “strategy” if you’re not going to follow through, or are doing it only because all the other “good” corporations are doing it.

That’s how I got started smoking – because the “cool” kids were doing it. It took me more than 29 years to quit and permanently damaged my health. But that’s another story.

My Own Personal Values

For the record, here are my own personal values:

1. I will keep my word
2. I will not lie, steal, cheat, hate, nor tolerate those who do.
3. I will leave this world better than I found it.
4. I will deal with reality, and face my fears. The only easy day was yesterday.
5. Family first and last

The problem is never the problem. The response to the problem is almost always the real problem. (Perception is all there is.) ~ Tom Peters

Some business owners react badly to social media. One of my clients was railing against on-line criticism, now that he was on Facebook. He took it seriously, superior service being a big part of his strategy, and something he personally believed in. It’s how he was and how he built his business.

He couldn’t make somebody take it back, he couldn’t fix it. For the action-oriented entrepreneur guy that he was frustrated.

Then he went for lunch with another very smart woman, who told him: “Garry, people have always been saying that kind of thing about your business. The only difference now is that you’re hearing it.”

When he related this too me he was calm. The realization was, he told me, that the internet wasn’t just about getting his message out. It was also about hearing what his customers had to say and using that to make his business better. Even when what his customers had to say was something he didn’t really want to hear.

Especially when what his customers had to say was something he didn’t want to hear.

My recommendation? If you want to have an effective on-line presence, it’s less about pushing your message and more about listening to your customers. As Covey said: “Seek first to understand, then to be understood.” Here is an example of good “seeking” that I wrote about earlier this year, when I wrote about my encounter with an on-line bookstore. They listened hard and used it as an opportunity to turn my customer experience around.

What is your company doing to listen to your customers? What you’ve heard and what you feel doesn’t count. What does the research and the facts tell you? What are your customer actually saying?

I was talking to my motorcycle mechanic about my latest acquisition, when a quote from Drucker came to mind:

If we did not do this already, would we go into it now?” If the answer is no, the reaction must be “What do we do now?” Very often, the right answer is abandonment.

I spent two years rebuilding my last motorcycle’s carburetors. I’d never done it before. I figured it would be a fun project to do with my buddy. It turned into an epic trial spanning multiple spare parts, nested layers of mechanical failure, and mishaps such as screws dropped into the engine. I could have taken that time, got a weekend job driving a cab, and bought myself a new bike.

The upside was that I did get to spend time with my buddy, mostly in an unheated Canadian garage. So when he found a $100 bike last fall, and it ran well, I jumped at it. Cosmetically it looked bad, but I’d rather be riding than busting my knuckles turning wrenches.

Third ride out, however, it started backfiring, stalling, and losing power. I took it down to my local mechanic who, after a quick inspection, identified about $2000 worth of work. Only two out of four cylinders were firing, the chain rusted out, there was an oil leak, and the carburetors were also leaking. This last one got my attention, as memories of busting knuckles in a cold garage came flooding back.

So I sold it to him for $200 in trade. He’s going to break it down for parts. For the money I would have spent fixing that one up I’d still have a bike that was only worth $100. I’m better off saving my pennies and spending that money buying a new, better looking, mechanically sound bike that I can actually enjoy riding. Sometime before another two years elapses.

As leaders we have to ask ourselves the tough questions:

• What parts of your business are sucking up more time and energy than their worth, draining the life and joy from the rest of the company?
• Which employees have you kept because you have an emotional investment in them unsupported by performance or results?
• What opportunities are slipping away from you because you’ve been focused for too long on fixing something that’s not working and that isn’t your core business?

I’m a fairly detailed, action-oriented kind of guy. In fact, if you look at my DISC profile, I’m about as far away from the “people” side of the chart as you can get. But it’s not an excuse for me to be a jerk.

What it is an opportunity for me to understand how other people see me, and how might sometimes need to change my behaviour to be more effective in working with other people. Notice how I said “change my behaviour”.

Sometimes people seem to think that learning about communication styles and behavioural profiles is  to learn how to manipulate people. The question they’re trying to answer is “How do I make other people do what I want?” The answer is “You don’t.”

What you can do is understand how and when changing your own behaviour makes you a more effective leader, team member, or follower. Where your own blind spots might be. To understand that it’s not always personal, or about you, or about them being a jerk, a liar, a bully, or a milk toast. Their perception of the world is different.

Stated more accurately, your perspective of the world is different from theirs. “They”, people who see the world differently, are in the majority. It’s not up to them to change.

I’m never going to be a Brian Mulroney or a Bill Clinton, with my own personal charismatic-reality-distortion-field. But I can learn to sit up straight, smile, speak clearly, and look people in the eye when I talk to them. In fact, I like to think I’ve done a pretty good job at that, and it’s made me better and more effective in my job.

What are your blind spots? How can you meet the rest of the world half way?

The universe is conspiring against me. Well, not really against. It’s conspiring on my behalf to take me to the next adjacent possibility. It’s tapped me on the forehead and made clear that I need to step up my game, especially about how I speak about women. Please let me explain.

Last week I was listening to a ManagerTools podcast on ethics, where two former West Pointers and now successful consultants were talking about the code of ethics they adopted at the academy:

“I will not lie, steal, cheat, nor tolerate those who do”.

With events in popular culture, the news, and politics, I decided to adopt a new personal honour code:

“I will not lie, steal, cheat, hate, nor tolerate those who do.”

Then I realized this week, while working with a woman CEO of a construction company, twice I used the term “girl” to describe an adult woman. Doh! Seems I have some work to do. I don’t think I do this maliciously, or trying to control others. At least that isn’t my intent, but I realize now it will sure come across that way.

I don’t want to be just another guy talking about women in the workplace. So how do I link my purported values to my behaviour? How does what I believe translate to how I am in the world. How are my words and action perceived by and impact others?

This is the work I do with business owners every day – how do we translate how we want to impact the world into everyday actions that take the company in the right direction? What is really going on? It often comes down to doing the basics well and consistently. In my case, dropping the use of “girl” to refer to adult women. Small changes often make the biggest difference. Especially when they allow us to make bigger changes.

Then I ran across an articles about  Katherine Switzer, the first woman to run the Boston Marathon. That’s her in the picture above running the first time 45 year ago this April. One of her cadre is body-checking a race official attempting to throw her out of “his” race. Katherine ran the race herself. Nobody carried her. That’s what she wanted, I imagine: the opportunity to run, to test herself, to do her best. Just like most of us.

It’s not enough to just give somebody an opportunity, job, or place, then stand by and watch them fail. In order to be leaders, in order for management to be a force for positive change in the world, sometimes we have to get up off our asses and run interference. Call bullies on their bullying. Deliberately solicit every opinion. Not tolerate poor behaviour. Let others lead. Which is what leaders are supposed to be doing when we’re “building teams”.

So I’m going to watch my language better, do some more volunteer one-on-one mentoring, and try to figure out how deep this blind-spot of mine goes. My little circle to start with. It will be interesting to see where this goes. Researching and writing this article has only made me realize how far I might have to go.

Who’s with me? What are you going to do to “lead”? What’s your blind spot?

When trust is gone, nothing else works. It’s true for friendships, marriages, politicians, and companies.

I ran into this with recently with a client. Two feuding departments who look to the CEO to resolve differences, but can’t get the decisions they need. Instead of one company working together, there are two departments working in parallel and duplicating effort. But it’s even worse than that.

The Effect

The atmosphere between the two department heads, and between some of their staff, is now poisoned with mistrust. They’re at the stage where they’re actively sabotaging each other.

Instead of having a creative and concrete conflict about substantive issues, solving problems, and moving the company forward they’re covering up weaknesses and mistakes, jumping to conclusions about each others’  intentions and attitudes, and not talking to each other. Grudges fester and meetings are dreadful and unproductive.

So What?

We can’t reach into the past and change things. There are some things we  can do.

First, it’s up to you as a leader to model vulnerability for your team. Admit mistakes, listen to feedback, ask for help. You can’t do it all yourself, that’s why you hired smart people to work with you. Use them to make yourself better, just like you want them to lean on each other.

Support vulnerability. Do not tolerate destructive or critical behaviour. One of my construction clients even has it written in their company ground-rules posted in every meeting room: Swearing is allowed and even encouraged. Personal attacks and blame are not. They laugh a lot, even when things seem to be at their worst. Then they buckle down and get things done.

Lastly, encourage healthy, passionate debate. Get everybody’s opinion. Don’t allow one or two verbal bullies to dominate the conversation. If we all agree all the time, then some of us are redundant. Get all opinions on the table, discuss the worst case scenario, get clear on what you’re trying to do, figure out specifics of who’s going to do what by when.

Then go execute.

I got a huge compliment from one of the company partners this week. He said “You’ve done a great job learning to connect with people the last year.” Now, this might sound like a left-handed complement, but for me it’s something that I’ve consciously focused on the last little while. I’ll never be a Bill Clinton, but it’s something that was important to get better at.

Changing behaviour like that is hard and requires continuous focus. I came from a software and project management background, and in my earlier life I was little better than most at persuading people to work together. Which is to say that I was a little better than a company full of engineers, programmers, and project managers. When I started working at RESULTS.com I realized that not only was I going to have to raise my game to the next level, but that there are levels above me that I wasn’t even aware of.

In my current role as a business execution specialist connecting with people and building trust and a relationship is the biggest part of the job. They are trusting me with their companies, their livelihoods, and livelihoods of everybody in their company. If you’re a CEO you’re even more so in the hot seat. The buck stops with you.

Which is why I was surprised when I got briefed in on a new client recently. Part of what I was told is that they don’t want any of that fuzzy-wuzzy psychology mumbo-jumbo. Just come in and fix what’s wrong. This gave me the first sign of what my approach was going to have to be. Except I would have to be patient. Spend time face-to-face with the players. Build trust. Establish a relationship. You know, all that fuzzy-wuzzy psychology mumbo-jumbo stuff. Because at the c-suite level it’s all about the people. And trust. And relationships.

If you’re a lumberjack you’d better know how to use a chain-saw. If you’re a manager, leader, or CEO, you better know what makes your people tick and how to get them working together. Either that or you can pay somebody like me a lot of money to “fix what’s wrong”.