Do They Talk Too Much & Do Too Little?

Wow, a fortnight over with and here we are again. In this issue I really want to build on what we were talking about last time out.

This was the image to describe the 2 most important measure that I believe we should be understanding more about:

• The number of thoughts we all have
• The time from thought, to conversation to action

This past few weeks I have directly been asked for feedback from 2 separate leaders based on the interactions I have had with their teams, one part of that feedback has been the same,

"conversation bias over an action bias"

Which, when we think about the two measures above, I need to develop my narrative a little further on them, with more of a 'how' could we do this.

1) Increasing Thoughts

Every single one of us has thoughts in our head, with one study suggesting:

"The average person will typically have more than?6,000?thoughts in a single day"

This is a lot of thoughts and they are based largely upon what is happening around us, or our own ability to be in our own heads. I don't know if you are like me, but a large number of my thoughts don't really result in much, so there is an opportunity to get more productive thoughts in everyone's head.

I talk a lot about thoughts and the way to do this is to ask better questions, or even to ask more and better questions. Often this is interpreted as what I am expecting the leader to do BUT, the environment can also be a great source of thought provoking prompts for people. How does someone know what is the expectation of what they are doing? Does it look right? how do they know?

How can you use the environment to prompt more thoughts in line with the vision and direction of the team or business AND, how can you as a leader ask better and more questions. I would suggest start with HOW or WHAT questions as opposed to WHY....

2) Reduce the time from THOUGHT to ACTION

Now this is the one for me where I see most teams with opportunities to do better.

In order for people to share their thoughts, they have to feel comfortable and confident in doing so, this may require different mechanisms and arenas. Everyone is different, and to start with some people may not be able to talk openly, what can you as a leader do to ensure everyone's needs are catered for?

People often talk about Psychological safety, and to create this there has to be a certain amount of TRUST. This T word is an interesting one as it is individual and situational and only by understanding your people, building connection and developing those relationships can you ever get people to be fully open with you and each other.

In order for the conversation to be fruitful you have to have an aligned goal or destination that you want to achieve, and ensure everyone has a share of voice.

The effectivness of the conversation though can be determined by the level of activity that follows. I was in a meeting the other week when the leader stopped the meeting, gave everyone a 5 minute break and said when they came back they would develop and agree the 'solution'.

The number of meetings I see where the main agreed action is to have another meeting is not necessarily reducing the time from thought to action.

So, what can you do to:

• A get people to be more open and share what they are thinking
• Have fruitful, purpose driven conversations
• Deliver actions or develop them as close to the time the conversation took place

With both of these measures, it is all about your ability to develop relationships with people, and I truly believe to be an effective leader that needs to be high on your agenda along with, clarity of direction, setting clear expectations and role modelling the desired behaviours.

Do you agree?

As always the Business Problems Solved Podcast continues to speak to amazing people, and this last weeks issue was no exception. Step forward Mr Josh Gain, founded of the 10x Community. One of 10x leaderships philosophies is “Management is a title given to you by a company. Leadership is when somebody decides that they are going to create change and impact their team, their business, their industry and beyond. Leadership has nothing to do with job titles, it's all to do with people and their actions.”

KEY TAKEAWAYS

10x Management is a community driven learning platform where managers come together and share knowledge and insights to ultimately improve in their positions.

10x has developed a whole training platform that helps people train in the 12 key areas of management.

We need new ideas that are implemented or perhaps even fail, to learn. We need to analyse the results and 10x allows you to share these insights with the community.

Have clarity on your destination. Set clear goals with timelines and measurable results.

BEST MOMENTS

‘The real problem was, managers need better training. They need to become better leaders. Companies are aware of it and managers are aware of it but no one really does much about it’ – Josh

‘We prompt everybody to reflect into the community. Based on the experience that you’ve had and the insights that you’ve taken in we prompt them to say something or ask a question into the community that can help have a discussion and prompt more ideas from other people to really develop that thought and that learning.’ – Josh

And to really bore you about these 2 metrics, It may come as no surprise that I have also recorded a podcast episode about them

Have an amazing fortnight and I promise in the next issue I will try not to be as preachy :)

Lee