I couldn't resist following up on my earlier post on how to appear intelligent in a meeting. At the end of the post I mentioned that this process and strategy was born from children. I have eventually found the proof. This video clip of Louis CK breaks down how children break us down through the repetitive asking of the question "Why?"
The video clip is 10 minutes long. The specific piece I mentioned here starts 7mins 30 seconds in.
Disclaimer. This is explicit and not for sensitive ears.
Over the years I have learned from many consultants that you don't actually need to know anything to help someone. In fact the one's that pretend to know the most (experts) end up being annoying and their opinions grating. Great facilitators have the knack of letting the person/people in question wrestle with the problem and solve it themselves. I am not suggesting that there is no co-creation in solving a problem with someone but rather that it is much better to ask questions and nudge things along instead of directing.
Joel Spolsky has a decent in this month's Inc. Magazine called 'How hard could it be?' that resurfaces the Five Whys problem solving technique developed by Toyota after World War II to improve its manufacturing process.
The basics of this process is to ask "Why?" five times to get to the root of any failure/issue in order to solve the core problem instead of the symptoms. For instance, imagine the problem you are facing is that you have a dissatisfied client. Why? because the job is only 3/4 complete in their mind. Why? because their expectations were different that what I understood. Why? because I assumed I understood what they meant? Why? because I didn't want to spend too long going through requirements. Why? because I wanted to get working and save time.
You get the idea. Try using this in meetings and you may get slapped by the odd person for seeming belligerent however for others you will be impressively brilliant as long as you pace with the people you are working with.
I think we will eventually learn that this process was actually derived from children and not Toyota.
I am back in the office today after spending a good chunk of last week in NYC at the Worldblu Live gathering. We were all filmed in HD at the conference and I believe each of our sessions will be up on the website soon. The line-up of speakers were some of the heaviest hitters I have ever shared a stage with. It was amazing to listen to some of the best presentations and people who are not pitching for money but instead sharing about the brilliant things they are involved with in the world. Traci (CEO) really has a knack of bringing together some of the greatest minds into one room at the same time.
It wasn't all work last week. One of my good friends, Jason Weinstock who I am shaming into twittering more got me in to see Trey Anastasio at the Roseland Ballroom which was outstanding. I am looking forward to some of the gigs when Phish reform soon.
This week includes a couple of days in Ontario to catch up with the Brainpark team in Guelph and then back to San Francisco on Thursday for the OneXOne gala with Matt Damon (where the music line-up looks great).
Here are the next couple of events I am speaking at before thanksgiving hits in:
The Silicon Valley Indian Professional Association are putting on their annual event called SIPACON at the HP Auditorium in Palo Alto. This year the event focus is on Social Media and the Enterprise and is taking place on November 8th.
The Beyond Technology Conference is at the Pan Pacific Hotel in Vancouver is on November 20th. I am really looking forward to sharing this experience with Alistair Croll and David Crow (it could be dangerous).
Hopefully I will get to see some of you there...
Blogging has been taking on leaps and bounds and as many of us know is beginnning to reshape grassroots marketing and communication. A whole new era is being birthed with adding broadcasts. This will open the world up beyond the new critic and journalist to the voice and video presenters. BlogTV seems interesting and another if found while in the UK last week was BlogTalkRadio. It will be interesting to see how they compare with what is happening with Waxxi and other podcast groups.
A friend of mine just sent over a funny link which I thought would be a good excuse to say Merry Christmas to all my friends and readers out there.
If I don't get to see you in person have a great Christmas and try to behave yourelves...
We receive feedback from other people every day we interact with others. The feedback may be a raised eyebrow, an interesting twitch, or simply something verbal.
On several occasions someone has said to me "can I give you some feedback?". I used to immediately respond with "yes please" like a dummy instead of asking a more precise question like: "in regard to what specifically" or "it depends how encouraged I will feel after..."
I have realized that I need to be the one who looks after my own development and growth. I can seek feedback or I can shut it out. There are some people that I know I can open myself up to completely and there are others who just have a beef with anything in life that they are not in control of. Taking the time to deduce or test out what sort of person I am dealing with can help me to remain on an upward growth spiral instead of wasting my time ruminating on someone elses issue.
I suppose the art of this is remaining open yet wise. It is good to go for a walk around the zoo but it is not always wise to pet the alligator or stick my hand in the lion's cage. Riding and elephant would be fun though but not allowed in most establishments...
There is some truth in the statement that it takes two to know one so I still err to the side of openness in the fear of remaining stuck. I have learned from the hard statements in life however the issue is that I remember them in the style of an obvious scar (damaging self-analytical crap). I intend to now choose the physicians that I am willing to do some surgery on my life that have the reputation of leaving no marks.
So in short, we are all in charge or our own feedback and it is worth learning new ways to maintain that position and believe it to be true while holding that two eyes are better than none...
My english is usually good but I am going back and forth here on the blackberry without spell check wondering if there is a "h" in Sandwich...I will take the risk of getting it wrong this time.
This week I was doing a training session on giving and receiving feedback and one of the aha moments for the folks I was with was that the old encouragement sandwich is a fluffy disastrous strategy in communication.
Like many others I have attended the seminar that the "love sandwich" is something good to aim for when approaching difficult conversations. By this I mean the encouraging word followed by the critique finished by another nicety.
The problem with this strategy is that most of us know it is a scam and an approach from people who are afraid of speaking the truth in love.
It is a much better strategy to pause and consider the feedback you want to give someone and consider the desired outcome of the communication. If you hope that the person can learn a more effective manner of behaving then be prepared to demonstrate the benefits while sharing the content.
This is a way to get beyond any form of negative feedback. Feedback is more effective when positive, but only some take the patience to learn how to do it.
If you discover in the process that you are not committed to the person's development whom you are giving feedback I would suggest spending more time developing yourself as the agitation may be of more learning to you personally.
Final considerations: If you find yourself using flowery language in your communication, loop back around and ask yourself what aspect of courage do you need to say what you really mean in a manner that will hit the mark and affect positive change.
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