The Meta Message

One of Many Lessons I Learned from My Mom

My mom was one of the most talented people I’ve ever met.

She graduated high school and sixteen; college at 20, met and married my dad and started a journey of different careers.

She started as a school teacher in Berkley, CA public schools in the sixties while my dad got his Masters degree. 

She did the same in Nashville, TN while my dad was getting his PhD.

It was there that my brother was born and my mom started to raise our family.

They moved to Rhode Island, where I was born and my mom spent the next 18 years focused on us.

She went back to school as I was finishing up high school and got her Masters degree and began the next phase of her career as a Clinical Social Worker. She was gifted at this and it is still quite common for me to meet people who she has helped in small and large ways.

She was really a pioneer on mindfulness and mediation. She was making me custom relaxation tapes 30+ years before Headspace came along.

She was also a gifted therapist who helped people find and use specific tools to help solve problems in their lives.

Now that I am a dad and a CEO, I find myself quoting my mom and using some of these tools on a regular basis.

One that I’d like to share is “The Meta Message.”

I remember when my mom first talked to us over dinner one night about The Meta Message.

Quite simply, The Meta Message is what we really are feeling and want to say, but we don’t out of fear, unease or inability.

As a kid, lashing out at my brother over a perceived slight was likely hiding The Meta Message of “you’re hurting my feelings” or throwing a tantrum on a night before going back to school after a vacation might be hiding The Meta Message of “I’m scared to go back to school.”

In relationships, criticizing someone else about their choices might be hiding The Meta Message of “I am afraid you’re going to leave me.”

Deep stuff, for sure; but also incredibly freeing once you get good at it.

At home, we got into the practice of asking each other “What is The Meta Message here?” and that became a very useful tool to get to the real point.

No shocker, but this works really well at work too.

One of the traps I have fallen into in the past is being passive-aggressive when I’m communicating unhappiness with an employee. Rather than say “I don’t think you’re focused on the right things,” I might have micro-managed and asked really hard and, frankly, counter-productive questions.

I have seen this on teams over the years too. In an effort to try and make everyone feel good, people don’t share what they really feel. Things get muted and over-simplified and results suffer.

So we’ve been doing a few things at Bitly related to this.

One, no surprise, is that our leadership team frequently uses The Meta Message when communicating with each other. When we fall into reciting long to-do lists or a litany of issues, opportunities or backlogs, we’ll often ask each other “what’s The Meta Message here?” And we get right to the point. It’s an incredible tool to get to what really matters.

We also try to do this with all of our employees. We run a process called Bitly Excellence, where each team member meets with their manager once a month, outside of regular status meetings, and comes prepared with answers to a few basic questions, including “How happy are you coming to work each day?” and “Are there relationships at work that you wish were better?”

Because, really, The Meta Message I want to share with our employees is that “you are valuable and we want you engaged, productive and happy.” 

Bitly Excellence helps us get to those real feelings. 

So, I guess that The Meta Message here is that I think about and miss my mom every day and I’m super thankful for the many gifts she gave me, including The Meta Message. 

I hope it can help you too.

I’d love to hear if it does.