When we feel another person in our life – prospect, client, vendor, team member, spouse, child, etc.- is offside we have a tendency to avoid addressing their behavior in the moment, which often erupts later, or we hammer them with a message to correct the behavior we believe is offside.
Remember this rule – it’s never about us, it’s about them. Each person we communicate with has their own fears, dreams and worldview, which is bumping up against ours and causing friction.
To create long term, mutually profitable relationships, lock in this mindset – I connect before I correct.
What this means in practice is that we put a brake on our gut reaction to correct and take a moment to understand what is prompting the other person, let’s say a team member who isn’t entering data correctly into our CRM, to behave in a way that is offside.
First, connect – there are lots of ways to get to this mountain top. Some examples that our clients find effective are, “feels like there’s something going on…,” “I’ve noticed recently that you’re not on your usual pace….,” or “my sense is you’re not a big fan of <insert recent change/news/announcement>….” Whichever we choose the key part is to give a 3-5 beat pause to allow our team member to respond. If they don’t that’s okay. We then transition to….
Second, be vulnerable – one of a leader’s greatest sources of strength is in being vulnerable with their team members. By being vulnerable we’re bringing our emotions into the conversation To get to this mountain top we might say, “and I’m struggling…,” “I’m not really sure what this means…” or “I’m frustrated….” Then we wrap up with….
Third, ask for help – we wrap up our connect-before-correct process by asking for our team member’s help, which is another source of vulnerability and a engages them in finding a solution to the issue at hand. We might hit this mountain top with, “would you help me figure out a solution to this together?”, “so I thought we could work through this together, are you okay with that?” or “and I thought it would be better to talk this out with you instead of making up stories about why this is happening, fair?”
Yes, there are instances when a team member is willfully offside with their behavior. We can still follow the above process, which would make step 1 sound something like, “feels like there’s something going on and it’s affecting your regular performance….” That phrasing puts the pressure on the “something going on” instead of sounding to our team member like, “hey, you’re not performing like you used to. Shape up or ship out!”
Some leaders we work with expressed reservations at following this process because they were afraid of what their team member might say. We suggested they adopt this mindset – I can handle any response. Certainly there are extremes to what our team member might say, but their response will likely be in the middle, which we can address using some of the same techniques shared above.
In text this process may feel stilted, clinical or weird. The power of this process kicks in with our tonality (gentle, nurturing, genuinely curious) and our body language (open, warm, inviting). To get a feel for how this process would sound coming from you practice alone or with a trusted adviser so when you need to use it, it sounds like you instead of an idea you head about once, which will enhance you chances of a successful connection and correction.
Until next time… go lead.
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