When planning anything significant: from a meeting, an article, a product improvement or a whole new product …
… here are three (groups of) questions that can help you “start with why” and tap into people’s deeper drives; without a Sinek-style, singular, all encompassing mission.
The three questions are:
Whose life will be better when we do this?
What kind of …? and Is there anything else about …?
And when …, what will we be able to see or hear?
Let’s dig into each of them in turn:
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Question 1: Whose life will be better when we do this?
When starting anything, start by asking this set of closely related questions:
Whose life will be better? How?
or Who cares about this? Why?
or Who will be affected? How?
and then Do they actually want this?
if not: What do they want?
It might not be a single (type of) person, but a whole list of stakeholders. That’s fine. Focus on the critical few.
If you don’t find a convincing answer you might want to consider doing something else instead.
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Question 2: What kind of X? and Is there anything else about X?
One huge problem with planning in groups is that we frequently imagine completely different things while using the exact same, seemingly obvious, words.
There’s no such thing as obvious!
When someone tells you that they need X I encourage you to peel back just one layer by repeating what they said and asking:
What kindof X?
and when you explore one aspect you can go back to the beginning and ask:
Is there anything else about X?
I promise you you will frequently be surprised by how differnt your initial guess about what they meant was from what they actually had in mind.
Question 3: And when X, what will we be able to see or hear?
This is the most advanced purpose-clarification strategy of the three we’re discussing today.
It becomes critical when there’s a lot riding on the exact details of what we’re trying to achieve or when we’re spending a lot of time talking about abstract concepts and are having a hard time converging on specifics.
Take your list of stakeholders and the the things they care about from section one.
About each need ask:
What will they be able to see and hear when we’re done?
or more strongly
What will they be able to see and hear when we’re successful?
If you can count on one thing, it’s that whenever there’s limited information people will make up the Worst Possible Story to fill in the gaps.
“My boss hates me!”
“That guy is a #$@%.”
“How can they be so stupid?”
This dynamic can be especially harmful in newly remote teams, who have not yet developed patterns of communication that work for them or in distant working relationships across organizational silos.
So what can we do about it?
Be as open and transparent as you can, especially around hot button issues.
Create as many opportunities for people to get to know each other better, so that there’s a lot of shared context and accumulated goodwill when trouble arises.
And most of all: adopt the API (Assume Positive Intent) habit for yourself and with your team.
Who? What? When?
When you get angry about something someone said, wrote or did. Instead of jumping to conclusions, take a deep breath and consider the alternatives by asking:
How might this make sense?
In what circumstances might this be a reasonable thing to say, write or do?
Is there any part of this I can agree with?
It might not solve all your problems, but believe me: it can be transformational in many difficult situations.
The more useful stuff you have in a well-organized, densely interconnected team information system, the richer your interactions can become.
A great TIM can be like a beautiful garden where things can stack up, grow and interweave in ways that would be impossible without the right environment.
The only problem is that it’s wrapped in dirty rags.
When faced with a worthy challenge it would make sense to unwrap the sword and cast away the rags. Once you do, the road to victory is all but assured.
Consider now that the rags contain an old stick.
In that case you should not waste time unwrapping it. It would be wiser to start running before the wolves get you.
So it is with everything else.
A common problem (especially in engineering circles) is to be overly problem-oriented. To immediately look for what’s not working and try to fix it.
But some things are more worth the improvement effort than others.
use a consistent information architecture across tools.
For example: given you use JIRA Stories as the main unit of work and you have a team wiki, when you add information supporting the development of a story to the wiki, then this information should clearly reference the story: directly in the title or in some other clear and unambiguous way.
Or: given you distinguish several types of information (say delivery plans, playbooks and reference information) when you create and share a Google Doc to brainstorm ideas then you should clearly indicate what the ideas are about: are they proposals for future delivery plans? are they potential improvements to our playbooks (i.e. operating standards and methods)? or are they optional ideas that may be useful in some part of our work but do not constitute a solid commitment?
All this might sound simple but there’s a deeper thought behind it.
In order to go beyond simulating the office with your remote team I encourage you to look at your work not just as individual effort tied together by communication between people, but as a set of interactions with a distinct Team Information Environment made up of all the tools, services and technologies that you use.
Having a consistent information architecture across tools is one way to improve that environment …
… but the rabbit hole goes much much deeper than that.
The first ever One Minute Tip for Remote Leaders is about making references concrete.
When you’re talking about something (document, ticket, website, app) — share your screen and show it.
If you have nothing to show — create the appropriate item immediately — capture what you talk about in concise bullet points, and then make it complete as soon as possible.
If you can’t show it and you can’t create it then be extra careful, because with ephemeral topics like that it’s extremely hard to have everyone understand it in the same way. Ephemeral is the enemy.
What say you?
If you do this: what was the most challenging aspect of implementing this habit?
Have you ever experienced that another co-worker didn’t want to listen to your feedback, even though it would clearly improve their performance? Did an important project fail because an employee didn’t tell you about unresolved issues with a client? Perhaps it is a lack of psychological safety that hampers open communication with your team.
Research at Google showed that there are five key dynamics that set successful teams apart from others and psychological safety is number one on that list. We’re all reluctant to engage in behaviors that could negatively influence how others perceive our competence, awareness, and social standing. Although this kind of self-protection is a natural strategy in the workplace, it can be detrimental to effective teamwork. When team members feel psychologically safe, they are more willing to:
Ask questions
Experiment with new ideas
Make mistakes
Give an opinion
Take a risk while learning
What is psychological safety?
Amy Edmondson, professor at Harvard Business School, first identified the concept of psychological safety in work teams in 1999. She defines it as a shared belief that the team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking. Team members feel psychological safety, when they believe they can be honest, sincere and feel accepted. They don’t need to pretend to be someone they are not, to avoid damage to their image, status or career.
How does psychological safety influence the quality of teamwork?
When we don’t feel safe, we hesitate to admit mistakes or share doubts and the quality of our work is threatened. Let’s take a look at Pixar, which is a company that knows how to use feedback and criticism in a psychologically safe way. Co-founder, Ed Catmull, says, that at the beginning all Pixar animations are extremely bad. They get better and better over time due to the continuous stream of constructive feedback. The end result is a movie widely appreciated by critics and audiences.
Which factors most strongly influence psychological safety?
Findings described in a 2009 research paper titled Learning Behaviours in the Workplace: The Role of High-quality Interpersonal Relationships and Psychological Safety confirm that psychological safety is associated with high-quality relationships which are characterized by:
high emotional carrying capacity,
tensility,
connectivity,
positive regard,
mutuality.
What exactly are those capacities and how can we use this knowledge in practice?
Emotional carrying capacity
When a relationship has high emotional carrying capacity, people can display a range of emotions and expect to be understood. This increases psychological safety, because people are less afraid to express negative emotions and therefore are more likely to speak up about emerging problems without fear of harmful reactions.
How can we increase emotional carrying capacity while talking to our co-workers?
DO accept the emotions the other person is feeling. For example you can say: “I understand, that you are dealing with some difficult emotions right now…” or “It seems that this situation has made you sad”.
DON’T deny the other person’s emotions. For example, if someone says: “I am angry.” Don’t reply: “You don’t have a reason to feel angry in this situation!”. We all perceive and interpret reality in a subjective way, so people can feel a whole different range of emotions.
DO create a safe space for people to share their emotions. It is easier to deal with them, once you talk about them in an honest and safe way.
DO find safe opportunities to share your own emotions.
Tensility
Tensility allows the relationship to bend and withstand stress and conflict and bounce back after setbacks. Due to this capacity of high-quality relationships, psychological safety is reinforced and people tend to talk more freely and openly.
How can we enhancetensility while talking to our co-workers?
DON’T jump to conclusions if you hear something that makes you feel anxious or angry DO ask questions to clarify what the other person really meant.
DO paraphrase what the other person said to let them know you’re really listening and to make sure you understood them correctly.
DO accept healthy disagreements — it’s useful to consider various ways of looking at the problem without seeing it as a threat.
Connectivity
Connectivity of a relationship captures the degree of openness to new ways of thinking and doing things. If there’s good connectivity in the relationship, people feel more comfortable to open themselves up to new approaches. Connectivity facilitates non-defensive reactions and encourages members to be open to and speak up about new challenges.
How can we enhance connectivity?
DON’T be too rigid and judgemental, if you attack divergent ideas, people might be afraid to share their opinions with you.
DON’T assume, that you are always correct and others are wrong or people won’t be willing to share their thoughts with you.
DO find something to agree on.
DO get curious and ask questions to find something useful for you and make the other person feel like you value their ideas (as long as you actually do).
Positive regard
Positive regard is a feeling of being known and respected by people around you. If you believe that others see you as competent, you don’t feel judged or monitored and you can share your viewpoints, without fear of harming your image. If people know that they are appreciated and valued, they feel a sense of social dignity, reinforcing their self-esteem and competence
How can we build positive regard?
DO find opportunities to honsetly appreciate your co-workers. How often do you appreciate your co-workers or employees right now? How often do they appreciate something you did
When thinking about something surprising someone did, DO ask yourself: What can I learn from that person?
Mutuality
Mutuality is a way of participating in a shared activity in which each person is involved as fully as possible.
How can we enhance mutuality?
DO refer to a common goal. For example when you are giving feedback.
Is there a balance in your relationship? Is there someone who is asking for more favors? DON’T let the other person feel used and DO protect yourself if you are the one feeling used.
Psychological safety – not as pleasant as it sounds
When we are thinking about the word ‘safety’, we might imagine sitting under a warm blanket with a mug of hot tea and a favorite book. We might imagine a situation when we are not threatened by anything and we don’t have to face any challenges.
The concept of psychological safety is not as pleasant. The aim is not to quietly work with your colleagues or a stress-free workplace. The aim is to be able to show your emotions (also the difficult ones), doubt if the existing solutions are optimal or fight for a common goal.
Psychological safety in your team
On a scale of 1-10 how would you rate the level of psychological safety on your team?
What would it mean for you and your team to increase that level?
Which one thing you can try this week to take a small step towards greater psychological safety and thus better communication, more engagement and better results?
(This is a short note about something I found useful in my role as a manager and coach at 9LivesData.)
Project Aristotle was a research project conducted by Google. The goal of the project was to find what attributes of a team contributed the most to it’s effectiveness.
The project found that the key factors of team effectiveness are:
“Google’s intense data collection and number crunching have led it to the conclusions that [in] the best teams, members listen to one another and show sensitivity to feelings and needs“
(This is a short note about something I found useful in my role as a manager and coach at 9LivesData.)
Notes:
teams are much better than individuals at solving complex tasks
individual or maximal intelligence of group members matters less than collective intelligence and there is no correlation between individual and collective intelligence
social perceptiveness and evenness of communication drives collective intelligence
empathy earns money: more empathy ~> better collective intelligence ~> better business outcomes
I have mixed feelings about feedback. In my own life I have grown tremendously by accepting direct feedback from people I trust and respect. On the other hand I hate it when someone uses a demeaning label on me and expects me to be grateful for the opportunity to improve.
I have also pissed many people off with my subjective judgements, but sometimes I did manage to positively influence people in a honest and comapassionate way.
Here are some notes that I want to remember when I’m faced with giving or getting feedback in the future. Let me know if this approach works for you as well.
Ask for feedback
I’ve just left my job after almost a year as a Product Owner working with several teams of software engineers. To put it mildly I was dissatisfied with the specific ways that my organization went about the topic of peer review so I decided to take matters into my own hands and ask for direct, anonymous feedback from everyone I’ve worked with. I created a Google Form with one numerical and two open-ended questions with a note asking for the feedback to be constructive and that specific examples would be most helpful.
The questions were:
Would you like to work with Michał in the future? (1-10)
What did you like the most about working with Michał?
What did you dislike the most about working with Michał?
The results
I got 10 responses (roughly the number of people I worked with) and got a 75% average result on the want-to-work-with question. Direct feedback (even anonymous) may be more positive then reality but, even slightly discounted, this result makes me happy. Despite all the mistakes I’ve made I seem to have had a net positive impact on my teammates.
That’s mostly a vanity metric though, so the open-ended questions ware there to provide more actionable ideas. The respondents told me what I should apply even more of (enthusiasm, knowledge, adaptability) and what I should improve (be less forceful with “the right way” to do things).
A story of reconciliation
One specific response surprised me the most: I got feedback from the person I had the most “trouble” with. The one I would expect would give me a score near zero (described in the form as “would rather be chopped to bits”). Instead he gave me a 7 and not only that: he gave me the most comprehensive answers to the other two questions with very useful comments regarding how he perceived my attempts to make our teams more Agile.
That was valuable in itself but beyond that it put our relationship in a completely new light. We will not be able to benefit directly since I’ve just left the company, but it did remove one of the most painful thorns that would otherwise have troubled me for a long time. Thank you!
Make it direct and anonymous
Overall I believe the most important thing was to make sure that the feedback was direct and anonymous (unless someone chose to identify himself). Without that I think the results would be skewed too much to be useful.
Give honest feedback with kindness and compassion
When I’m ever in a situation where I’m the one giving feedback here are some things I’d like to remember to ask:
Does the recipient want the feedback or is it about me wanting to express my judgement (or worse: hurt that person)?
If someone gave me the feedback I’m about to give, would I find it helpful or hurtful?
Does the feedback include concrete examples or is it a bunch of generalizations?
I strongly believe asking those questions will make my feedback more readily accepted and my relationships with those I give my feedback to will be strengthened instead of strained.
Deliberate practice
Feedback is one of the necessary conditions for significant growth and a lot more can be written about it so expect future posts to continue the topic, including:
As a team member: How can you use feedback to grow as individuals and as a team?
As a manager: how can you help the people in your organization by encouraging a culture of asking for and giving honest and non-aggressive feedback?
