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How to Talk to an Underperformer

2/25/2020

Few of us like confrontation, and having to confront an underperforming employee about their performance can be a daunting prospect. Writing in the Harvard Business Review global CEO coach Sabina Nawaz offers some guidelines to de-pressurize this difficult situation:

Ask before telling. Start by asking your employee how they think they’re doing on their goals. In the best case, they’ll be on the same page as you, and you can move on to next steps. If they are in partial agreement, this still saves you some heavy lifting. If they think they're doing fine, you might say, “I have a different perspective... I’d like to provide more information and then explore with you what I might be missing and where you might need to do things differently.”
Clarify non-negotiables. Provide a list of clear expectations and clarify which are “musts” rather than optional.
Connect to the employee’s goals. Your employee will be more motivated to improve if performance is tied to one of their goals.
Provide specific examples and behaviors that are unsatisfactory. Telling someone, “You’re not responsive,” is vague and doesn’t outline a path for change. But saying: “You haven’t replied to the team’s Slack messages” clarifies what behavior is expected without labeling them. (Tweet it!)

Have you ever had to confront an underperforming employee? Did your talk lead to productive change? To join the conversation, click "comments" above.

If you would like to learn more about creating a habit around masterful communication, check out our online learning programs.

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How to Listen More…and Better

2/18/2020

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When journalist Kate Murphy was writing her book, You’re Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters, few people she asked could define what it meant to be a good listener—but they did know how a bad listener behaved: interrupting, checking their phones, responding in a self-involved way. “The sad truth,” she says, "is that people have more experience being cut off, ignored and misunderstood than heard to their satisfaction”.

How to reclaim the lost art of listening? After years studying the neuroscience, psychology and sociology of listening, as well as consulting numerous professional listeners (including a C.I.A. agent, focus group moderator, radio producer, priest, and bartender), Murphy “discovered that listening goes beyond simply hearing what people say. It also involves paying attention to how they say it and what they do while they are saying it, in what context, and how what they say resonates within you.”

Some pointers:

Good listeners ask good questions. Curious questions don’t begin with “Wouldn’t you agree…?” or “Don’t you think…?” and they don’t end with “right?” Try to explore the other person’s point of view, not alter it.
Because our brains think faster than people talk, beware of the tendency to take mental side trips when you should be listening. (Tweet it!)
Don’t assume you already know what the other person is going to say.
A lot of listening has to do with how you respond. Good listeners facilitate the clear expression of another person’s thoughts and, in the process, refine their own.

Good listening has many rewards. Your relationships will be stronger, you will gain more knowledge, and you will certainly have more interesting conversations.

Do you consider yourself a good listener? How do you keep your attention focused on your conversation partner? To join the conversation, click "comments" above.

If you would like to learn more about creating a habit around masterful communication, check out our online learning programs.

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Creating a Sense of Belonging at Work

2/11/2020

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Human beings have a fundamental need to belong; yet 40 percent of us say we feel isolated at work. To better understand this basic need to belong, the career and life coaching platform BetterUp conducted research to investigate the role of belonging at work and “the outsized consequences of its absence”.

Here’s what the research showed:

Belonging strengthens the bottom line: High belonging was linked to a whopping 56% increase in job performance, a 50% drop in turnover risk, and a 75% reduction in sick days. (Tweet it!)
Exclusion leads to team (and self-) sabotage: Feeling excluded leads us to expend less effort.
The harmful effects of exclusion can be reversed: Strategies like sharing experiences, coaching others in similar situations, and finding a fair-acting ally can mitigate feelings of exclusion.

Organizations are not powerless in the face of exclusion, but leadership must ensure that recruiting for diversity is not an end in itself. To ensure that no one feels left out, regular feedback should be solicited and attended to.

Have you ever felt excluded at work? What have you done to make others feel they belong? To join the conversation, click "comments" above.

If you would like to learn more about creating a habit around masterful communication, check out our online learning programs.

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Honing Your Elevator Pitch

2/4/2020

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Every movie started with a logline, a one or two line synopsis to grab the attention of studio executives. For Jaws, it was: A police chief, with a phobia for open water, battles a gigantic shark with an appetite for swimmers and boat captains, in spite of a greedy town council who demands that the beach stay open.

Every business proposal should similarly be able to be summed up in a “grabber” elevator pitch – so-called because it could be delivered in a brief ride between floors, or in any situation where someone first asks, “What does your product or company do?” Take the pitch for Google’s original startup: Google organizes the world’s information and makes it universally accessible.

Harvard Graduate School of Design Instructor Carmine Gallo, author of Five Stars: The Communication Secrets to get from Good to Great, offers guidelines for crafting a clear, concise pitch that captivates:

Keep it short: Make it easy to say and remember, and light on details. As an exercise, see if you can get it under 140 characters (Google’s was 77).
Identify one thing that caters to the needs of your audience: Steve Jobs dubbed the iPod “1,000 songs in your pocket.” Who could resist? (Tweet it!)
Get your whole team on the same page: Every individual who speaks on behalf of your company or product should deliver the same logline.

What is your process for coming up with an elevator pitch? Does your entire team use the same message? To join the conversation, click "comments" above.

If you would like to learn more about creating a habit around masterful communication, check out our online learning programs.

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How to Talk to an Underperformer

How to Listen More…and Better

Creating a Sense of Belonging at Work

Honing Your Elevator Pitch

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