Weekly Nugget: 'Open and Honest' Cuts Both Ways

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In a recent session with one of my clients, I learned the hard way that 'open and honest' cuts both ways.?A bit of context. We use the term "open and honest" in our teaching in EOS? to make sure that the leadership team is always in this mode when working together. They are open, their minds are open, they're open to learning, they're open to new things. They're in the place of curiosity and learning and they're not judging each other, so they're open.

But then they're also in a place of honesty. If something is on the table, we discuss that openly and honestly. We say exactly what we see, we don't try and have politics, we don't try and have other agendas. We don't listen to our egos, we just simply put it on the table, honestly. Because if we're open and honest, we can be curious and not judgmental, and we can take the process forward and grow together. With our parked egos, without politics, we can grow quickly as a leadership team and as a business.?

So at one of these last sessions for this one particular client - and they're a very fast-moving client, they're like sponges, they absorb all the information quickly, they're rolling it out, they're very enthusiastic, they're super smart, and they're taking the business to the next level - in one of these sessions, I brought a piece of bonus material to them. Because they're moving so fast, I could feed them extra information.?This piece of information that I brought them was very complicated.

It came from one of our quarterly sessions. It was a one and a half hour session that I distilled into a single document, and I had about 20 to 30 minutes to teach them the whole thing. I was very enthusiastic, and I taught them the whole thing. When it was done I felt a little off-balance, because it was a lot to teach them in a short time. I thought, Okay it's not quite the way I wanted it to end, but I think it'll be okay, and I moved on and I nearly forgot about it.

At the end of the day we have a session where we look back over the day and we give feedback, and this is where I got real feedback on that particular session.?One of the members said, "Nico, I want to share something with you openly and honestly. You always teach us to simplify things, to not overcomplicate things, to bring things to a place that we can all understand and we can move forward together. But that little piece that you taught us today was so much information and such a short time, with such a detailed document, that I just felt overwhelmed with all the complexity of it. You added complexity, you didn't bring simplicity."?

So that's what she said and there was this awkward moment for a second in the room, and I thought, Oh brother, she's exactly right, this is what happened. I did have this uncomfortable feeling.?Although, my first thought was, this was bonus material, and this was extra, and I did extra work to bring it to them. So this should be seen as a bonus, and I was nearly going in that direction. But then I realized, that's just defending my position, that's just my ego talking. She was 100% correct about complicating things and not simplifying.?

So I took a deep breath, looked her in the eye and said, "You are exactly right, 100% right. I did bring complexity, I did not bring simplicity. I didn't simplify things. So what I'll do is, I'll take that information, because it's really valuable information and I want you to use it, I'll take it back and I'll simplify the document. I'll lift out the learning points in a simplified document that I'll share with you within 24 hours after the session, so that you all can take that forward. Thank you for the feedback, it's really valuable to me, and yeah, let's all be better together going forward."

I learned, what you teach you must practice all the time, and that you have to be open to these types of things coming back to you, because if we can all be in this place place where we park our egos, where we simply look at how we can be better together, we'll take the business to a different place, we'll take the leadership to a different place.?

So there you have it. Give feedback all the time, be open and honest all the time, be kind and be curious and not judgmental. We'll all learn a lot.

Have a great week.

Best Wishes,

Nico