Opportunities hiding in plain sight

This week’s looking at assumptions through two stories. Two stories with a common thread. Two stories of opportunity offered and potentially lost.

THE NEW KID ON THE BLOCK

Alan had been the new sales manager at SirmiaLabtech, a company making glass vials for the pharmaceutical industry.?He’d worked as a sales associate for a while but this was his first step up into being a sales manager and first time leading people.??His new boss Dave had made it clear he held high expectations that Alan would knit a powerful sales force together.?Alan had?made a few speeches and briefings to his new team, presentations that didn’t come naturally to him as he’s much more comfortable in one on one scenarios but necessary nevertheless.??Somehow when it came to matters of business the right words automatically flowed, but outside matters of business it just felt different.

However Alan had made it clear it was important to knit the team together. One day, feeling the need to do things less formally and to get to know his staff he took a walk down the corridor into the break area where some of his sales assistants were getting coffee.?After noticing the conversation level stop as soon as he approached he tried his best to start a conversation but it all felt a little awkward.?Saying his goodbyes he picked up his coffee turned his back and then felt his cheeks glow with embarrassment at hearing giggles and laughter from the coffee area.?

They’re all laughing at me, he thought.?I don’t have their respect, they think I’m a bit of an awkward idiot.?Maybe a made the wrong choice jumping ship and should have stayed where I was. I’m better as a sales person, I’m not good enough to be this leader, I am the imposter and they all know it.

From the outside it’s easy for us to see the disconnect between what’s happening here and Alan’s choice of interpretation.??For all we know, those in the coffee pot could have been discussing last night’s TV, they could be themselves still trying to figure out how they want to be seen by the new boss.?The point is no-one really knows.

Yet for Alan, the interpretation of the scenario comes easily and for all of us this is what we do.?Faced with imperfect facts, we allow our brains and the imagination within, to fill in the blanks for us and interpret the situation.?Often we use scripts and routines from the past to fill in those blanks.?For Alan, a sense he’s not great at presenting or working with crowds of people and stepping into a brand new managerial role was enough to prompt him to interpret the situation as being not able to command respect of others and doubting the promotion he’d taken.

We use interpretation at a business level as well as personal level.?The customer chose to go with our competitor so our pricing must be wrong or I must be really bad at selling.??False interpretations pull us into taking actions that are either unhelpful or counterproductive.

If we’re prone to catastrophising then we may embellish these interpretations we sincerely believe to be fact to an extreme degree that in Alan’s case could well lead to either performance deterioration or his resignation either of which would be a loss to him and his new organisation.

The thing is most of the time we don’t even know we’re doing it.

WHAT ARE YOU ASSUMING?

The simplest way to check if this is your interpretation or not is to ask for other insights.?Had Alan asked his boss and some of his direct reports how they felt his first month had gone, he might have reached entirely different conclusions.??If his sales team had just lost a major customer, he could assume it was to do with the performance of the sales team, but it could equally have been many other factors.

What is telling us this is likely to be true versus my own interpretation

What are the other ways I could interpret this situation, how else could it be seen

How out of the ordinary is this event

When we rely largely on one single information source to form a conclusion then we are vulnerable to using an assumption.

ASSUMPTIONS MAKE AN *** OUT OF YOU AND ME

So goes the phrase but we do it anyway.??Assumptions are scripts rehearsed in our brain that fill in the blanks between imperfect facts.?The problem is, to our brains they then become the facts and we act upon them accordingly.

I have been for three jobs and didn’t get either of them, I am clearly bad at interviewing, I will never get another job, I am clearly not good enough

No one cares about this job more than I do.?People let you down.?The only way this report is going to get finished is if I stay up all night and do it myself.

These things are not necessarily true but we can easily convince ourselves they are fact and selective memory in our brains will then happily pick out all the evidence of past and current behaviours to convince us there is no other reasonable conclusion.

AS A LEADER YOUR TEAM MAKE ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT YOU

If you’re a leader of people then you’ll know that they see your every move. I mean every move. Little nuances of voice, raised eyebrows, how you treat others all form the kaleidoscope of information through which the team create assumptions around you. And if you so choose, you’ll never know what they are.

Dave’s project team had been struggling for a while to find a solution to a problem with a major client order. They had tried numerous different solutions and none of them seemed to really work. The team knew as the deadline for the finished order came ever closer that someone would have to speak with the client.

In fact they all knew that in all likelihood someone should have spoken with the client a few weeks earlier but everyone pressed on in the vain hope a solution would be found because no-one wanted to face Boss Dave. By cross referencing historic encounters with multiple team members, a folk-lore had been subconsciously concocted between the entire project team which in turn transformed itself into a rule that was as firm as if Boss Dave had said it, printed it in six foot high letters and printed it all over the company car park.

Boss Dave hates unfinished ideas, Miriam once went in there and had her head chewed off because she hadn’t thought things through.??It’s not worth raising this with Dave until we’re absolutely sure we have a cast iron answer.

The consequence for Boss Dave? Well of course ultimately his hand was forced when the client asked to see the last few stages of their prototype on the production line and Boss Dave suddenly realised he had nothing to show. There was a lot of noise, a lot of ears chewed off at what Boss Dave felt was a distinct lack of honesty and integrity on behalf of his team.?They misled me, they allowed us to fail, this must not be allowed to happen again.?He has a point. Yet the origins of the problem of course came through Dave himself.

AS A LEADER IT’S YOUR JOB TO CHECK ASSUMPTIONS – YOURS AND EVERYONE ELSE’S

Assumptions are related to limiting beliefs but ultimately assumptions prevent creativity and generation of new solutions.?

Leaders who want to develop greater creativity within their teams can make quick gains in team energy by just freeing people of their assumptions

When we say this, what are we assuming?

What assumptions are we making here?

If we made a different assumption what solutions might that present?

This has happened once, what is convincing us that it will happen again?

And as a leader in your individual interactions with team members you can unleash additional energy and talent by challenging the assumptions you make of individuals as well.?Remember the team’s assumptions of boss-man Dave???We don’t know the whole circumstances and events when Dave chose to berate Barry for his unfinished idea but we do know that folklore within the team has generated the assumption that Dave will only engage with fully-thought through ideas which ultimately means that when the team discovers a problem, until they can find a solution they have assumed that Dave doesn’t want to know.??A dangerous strategy that in many a company has led to a disaster unfolding and a hapless leader wondering why did no-one tell me that this was going off the rails???Because you had allowed your team to develop an assumption that they should never bring you problems, only solutions.

We work with imperfect data especially if we’re ever to discover or create something that’s new.?So inevitably we are going to encounter assumptions and we will be forced to make interpretations.?This cannot be entirely avoided.??

Misplaced and unhelpful assumptions can mean opportunities can hide in plain sight, right in front of you, and you'll never even spot them. Checking our assumptions creates instead a capacity to see possibilities and solutions. More productivity for less energy, sounds like a good deal to me.

Hope you’ve enjoyed this article.?

As a leader you’ll have a to do list that’s as long as your arm and then some.?There will never be enough hours in the day.?Great teams aren’t formed by exhausted leaders.??Great ideas forge themselves around people with the energy to harness creativity, collaboration and be the catalyst for unleashing the talents of those around them.??That's why I created resources to help you grow and my Energy Leader Programme to grow even faster. Pop over to www.theenergyleader.com and take a look.

The amazing photography in this article has come from Ketut Subiyanto?from?Pexels,

?RODNAE Productions?from?Pexels

Binti Malu?from?Pexels ?Yan Krukov?from?Pexels