Relentlessly Positive, Personal and Specific

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Before the game I approached the other coach. Usually we share a few friendly words with the visiting coaches, but I wanted him to understand what he was up against.

So after we exchanged handshakes and said hello, I pulled him aside out of earshot of our teams and said, “Look, I just want you to know we’ve lost every single game this season. We’ve been getting crushed actually. I don’t think the boys are frustrated, and we certainly focus on teamwork, hard work and fair play, but honestly we’ve been getting killed. By everyone. I just thought you should know. So maybe if it looks you’re having a runaway win, please keep that in mind.”

He looked at me and said, “We have too! We’ve lost every game!” Perfect. And so with that understanding between us coaches we opened up another U11 boys soccer game on a beautiful Saturday.

And sure enough, the game was fair and competitive. From the opening whistle both teams had their share of small frustrations and grand triumphs. There was more generous passing, more vocal encouragement between the players, and less complaining about positions. In fact, several players were asking – nearly begging – to play defense. It was a glorious moment of camaraderie.

Early in the second half, we found ourselves in the strange, and foreign, position of leading by one goal. Coach Scott and I agreed we were quietly cheering for the other team to score. And wonderfully, they did score to tie it up. In the end, we astonished ourselves and won the game. Afterwards, the moment of both teams slapping hands and congratulating each other felt honest and earnest. I heard very few complaints about either the referee or opposing players.

I’ve participated in a number of coaching clinics, and read quite a bit of material on youth coaching, and developing talent. Curiously, there remains a fairly large minority of parent volunteer coaches nationally who have the perception that learning constructive coaching techniques from experts, and attending coaching certification and counseling is unnecessary and without value.

And yet, these same studies reflect that once coaches adopt “relentlessly positive” approaches to both skill development on the field and social development with their teammates, some pretty remarkable things happen. To begin with, while up to 26% of kids nationally quit sports, only 5% of kids quit the game when they have a coach trained in Coaching Effectiveness Training (CET). Not only that, those children who started the season with lower self-esteem and played for a “relentlessly positive” coach showed a greater increase in self-esteem over the season.

I had an interview last week in New York with child psychologist Joel Haber who affirmed these methods and reminded that positive coaching still needs to be personal and specific, not just positive. Saying “great job!” isn’t nearly as effective as say something specific such as, “I like the way you always stayed in front of the attacker when defending. You stayed in front of him and pushed the ball to the outside. He never had a chance to get by you. That worked great.”

Joel also reminded me of the downside of negative coaching. When a child leaves the field during a game and you point out something they did wrong, it leaves a powerful emotional wake. It not only conveys the message that you were disappointed, it won’t increase their learning and performance later either. When they go back on the field, their head will be filled with what not to do, instead of what to do. It has a paralyzing effect.

Parents: Your Kids Are Watching

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parentsarewatchingAside from a smattering of applause here and there, the parents were completely silent. And myself, as the coach, instead of standing on the sidelines and giving instruction periodically to players, I was sitting on the bench watching quietly, with a clipboard updating positions where the kids were playing on the field. And keeping track of time remaining in the game.

We were participating in a weekend of “Silent Sidelines.” Aside from light applause, parents and coaches are all asked to remain silent throughout the game. The point of the exercise is to give the game back to the kids because it is, after all, a game. Instead of listening to the often confusing shouts of parents and coaches who can succumb to “joysticking” players from the sidelines and providing specific kinds of shouts and directions – “Move left! Farther! Faster! Pass Pass! Get back on defense! Quick!” – the adults stay quiet while the kids work it out themselves.

During these games, the only thing you hear is the kids talking to each other on the field. And over the course of the game their banter got louder and more assertive. They gained confidence in supporting each other, and less distracted by the usual noise from the sidelines. Almost universally, everyone participating last weekend agreed it was a valuable exercise.

I embraced the notion of “giving the game back to the kids” to the extent of even allowing them to pick their own positions during substitutions. The only provision, of course, was that kids could not choose the same player to substitute for. It worked for the most part. I had to intervene a few times when kids all wanted to play the same position.

The exercise reminded me of David Kelley, CEO and founder of IDEO, the premiere design and innovation firm. As you can imagine David has often assembled and led team meetings populated with sharp, creative and opinionated people. I had an interview with Stanford professor and writer Bob Sutton who described David’s behavior at these meetings. When things are going poorly – when there is a lack of focus and agreement and direction – Kelley will spend a significant amount of time at the front of the room guiding discussion and reinforcing ideas from everyone. And when the discussions are going well, he will move to the back of the room, and only punctuate the discussion with occasional provocative questions.

And when meetings are going very well, if you aren’t paying attention, David might slip out the door. Because he understands not only that the best ideas come from the people in the organization but also that his presence can possibly stifle conversation, and get in the way. He calls this “Managing by walking out the door.”

Talk to each other people! Avoiding shipwreck.

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boat_minnowThe dense fog wasn’t bothering me at all. Once we were twenty minutes into our ferry ride on the Laura B to the mainland from Monhegan Island, 14 miles off the coast of Maine, even my wife had started to relax. There wasn’t much to see out the window of our 65 foot ferry boat so I had disappeared into reading Carl Hiasson’s latest hilarious novel. I had just laughed out loud at something in chapter eight when suddenly the engines stopped, and seconds later we hit the rocks, shuddering the entire vessel.

The sound and tremor was unmistakable. We had hit rock ledges, eight miles from shore in the Atlantic Ocean. Most of the dozen passengers looked alarmed, but not yet outright panicked. Out the windows, just at the edges of the fog, we could plainly see we were, in fact, surrounded by rock. How we got here I didn’t know yet, but there appeared no escape.

We went up to the wheelhouse and overheard the captain radio to the mainland and say, “We’re lost on the shoals.”
“How can we help? What do you need?” came the reply over the radio.
Our captain said, “Just take a deep breath with us. We’re trying to get our bearings.”
My wife turned to me, “I think I’m going to throw up.”

I went to the stern of the boat with a young deckhand and asked him what he knew. Apparently, once we had set out from Monhegan, the captain went below to check the engines and left the helm with the first mate, an older salty gentleman who looked born with barnacles in his beard. The boy said although it was his first summer on the ferry line he knew that coming out of the island we should have a heading of 26 degrees yet the mate held a course of 355 degrees, slow and steady through the dense fog. The boy said nothing, and minutes later we hit the ledge. He quietly confessed to me he wished he had said something.

It also turned out that when the boat was drifting in light circles on and off the rocks, the radar system didn’t have a consistent heading to lock on to, and was also spinning in circles. Which explains why the captain wasn’t certain which way to escape the rocks.

I couldn’t believe this was happening. My wife later said, “See, these things actually happen!” But I still didn’t believe it. I bet that beautiful venerable old boat hadn’t hit a rock in forty years.

Once we steered clear of the ledge and set back on course, the captain came on the loudspeaker and explained what happened, accepted responsibility, and assured everyone the vessel was sound, that we were on course, and would arrive shortly. He also sent the crew below deck to look for leaks. That was reassuring.

There’s a few lessons in here:

  • If the captain needs to check the engines, he should relay clear and concise instructions to next in command. Wait for acknowledgement. Then duck below to check the engine room.
  • If the mate held an incorrect heading, how certain could he have been? Hard to say, but ask, ok?
  • And if the boy was reasonably certain we were on a wrong heading, speak up. Even if the seasoned mate insists or corrects him, speak up.

And as for passengers, always check where the life jackets are stored. And read up on surviving a shipwreck.

Do the Right Thing

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the-hard-thing-is-the-right-thingIt never really occured to me. It didn’t occur to my wife. Candy never thought of it either. The morning when Annie and I got in the car, it did cross my mind, but only briefly enough to send a quick text to Candy asking, “Do you think it’s OK if I bring Annie?” It never seemed such a concern that I should call in advance or question it. Although alas, that decision changed the day.

Our team decided a year ago to have a group event and volunteer our time and energy giving back to communities. We picked a GoodWill Center. Candy arranged the time and volunteer effort with the center, and at the last minute I decided to include my five year old daughter in this wonderful exercise of giving. She’s just in kindergarten, and well shucks, what better education than to include her in a day to giving back to those in need?

Annie and I drove the hour from Portland Maine to the GoodWill center and presented ourselves, along with the clothes and toys we had gathered that morning to donate. We were greeted by a floor supervisor who led us to the assigned task of the day. In the warehouse he brought batches of newly donated goods which we were to sort into bins to later be placed on the floor and sold to needing families. Annie thought it was awesome! digging through interesting clothes and sorting them into bins for the WoodWill center to sell.

While we set up shop and prepared to attack the task, the supervisor person re-emerged and declared that we could not stay because Annie was in violation of their safety regulations. It wasn’t a kind dismissal, but delivered more in the tone of “well rules-are-rules” sort of way.

Well, I understand following policy but still asked to talk to the manager who decided this. This was the same decider who was still hiding in her office. Annie and I walked to the closed office of the GoodWill site manager to politely inquire. My intention was just to build rapport and understand her concern. Well, immediately it was clear she was adamant – five year olds cannot be on the “sorting floor”. Ok, I get that but we’re just throwing clothes into big boxes and Annie would love it. She would, in fact, be awesome at it. We were never asked to sign any type of release and obviously I’m there as her parent responsible for her behavior and actions.

Nope, not a chance. Perhaps we could distribute the sorted clothes on the floor in the showroom? Nope, not in the policy. My daughter started to cry, and I knew there was no negotiating. It would only make things more difficult for her. We left, had a nice lunch and I tried to get Annie to forget about the unyeilding people at GoodWill.

Here’s the thing – consistently the best places to work communicate clearly that they trust their people. W.L. Gore, Umpqua Bank, NetApp, and many others have, for example, have adopted travel policies of “do the right thing.” GoodWill has a chance to communicate clearly to their people in the field that they have an opportunity to “do the right thing” as well. Or at the very least be human when delivering sad news.

Listen thoughtfully, carefully, mindfully…then do something

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toon-1066

Success is not the result of spontaneous combustion. You must first set yourself on fire.
—Reggie Leach

This idea was a kick in the pants. Lately I feel like I’ve been inundated with admonitions to listen carefully, deeply, mindfully…Pick your guru and each will say, start with listening.

  • Stephen Covey: “Pass the torch and listen.”
  • Susan Scott: “Waiting to talk is not listening.”
  • Keith Ferrazzi: “When you ask someone’s opinion, your next job is to listen and give a damn.”
  • Marshall Goldsmith: “Let go of ‘yes, but…’ – stop adding too much value and listen.”
  • Warren Bennis: “Ask a probing question and then listen.”
  • David Whyte: “The conversation IS the relationship.”

We had a conversation last week with Jennifer Kahnweiler, an expert on developing introverted people into powerful (and quiet) leaders. She has a segment in her book in which she addresses the downside of always listening. As she points out, when you are engaged in deep listening, by definition, you aren’t sharing information and knowledge, and you aren’t doing anything. When, of course, it’s the doing that translates into shared value and innovation.

Certainly in a state engaged listening, you are developing a heightened sense of situational understanding and honing your emotional fluency. Yet, if you are constantly operating in a listening mode – mindful or not, Jennifer points out a few pitfalls in her new book, Quiet Influence:

Loss of credibility: If you are constantly listening and not contributing, your colleagues and peers might begin to believe you have nothing to offer or contribute to the discussion.

Conflict avoidance: While engaged in mindful listening, you’ll certainly develop a stronger emotional fluency of your collaborators and can begin to sense divergent ideas, or conflicting mindsets on the team. If you don’t speak up to point these out, you’re losing a valuable opportunity to resolve potential conflicts.

Unproductive conversations: Collaboration needs to be reciprocal. When you fail to contribute based on what you’ve learned while listening, the conversation stalls and becomes unproductive.

Unheard ideas: And of course, you’re going to miss 100% of the shots you don’t take. However ridiculous your idea may be, your collaborator – and the world – will never know your ideas if you don’t speak up.

Take a chance. Ask a question, express an opinion, build a prototype. Fail forward.

The Flying Handshake

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face-to-face-600I met a guy named Marcus who was based in Germany and ran an IT services group, which was based in Silicon Valley. Several times a year Marcus would fly to California to spend time with his team, chatting, having meals, talking about work, but also interacting on a human and personal level. He calls these trips “The Flying Handshake.”

We know from research that it’s critically important to meet in person. So much nuance can get lost in translation over the phone, and certainly over email or in social media environments. Meeting face to face is important in early stages of assembling teams to embark on projects, and particularly important when introducing new people to projects whom others have never interacted with before.

In an interview with team expert Mary Waller, Professor of Organizational Studies at York University’s Schulich School of Business, she described an important accelerator to collaboration known as Transactive Memory Systems (TMS in pro lingo). Which basically means an understanding of who knows what information, and who possesses what skills on the team. This understanding of whom to go to for particular types of skill and knowledge to get things done is critically important in accelerating the performance of teams. And when the team is virtual, face to face interaction becomes increasingly important over the life-cycle of projects.

As this study, published in Management Science found:

“Frequent face-to-face communication also led to TMS (Transactive Memory Systems) emergence, but communication via other means had no effect.”

In other words, while digital or phone interaction at a distance is certainly valuable in the exchange of information and collaboration of ideas, such interaction doesn’t improve the quality of team transactions, thus performance.

So next time you have a digital interaction on a project, break the thread of email by picking up the phone. Then break the thread of constant conference calls by actually meeting in person.

The alternative can be pretty amusing:

Can’t hurt to ask

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TaylorSwiftRecently Annie (then 6, now 7) and I were at the store picking out a card to for her to send to a friend. In the card display was a big section dedicated to Taylor Swift. We examined each card – Taylor Swift looking dreamy, sassy, alluring, or even defiant. Taylor can certainly strike a pose. I asked Annie to pick one.

“I can’t decide,” she said. Then, “Wait, what about that one!”

It was the display poster, the marquee advertising the Taylor Swift section of the greeting cards. “Well, that’s not for sale sweetie. It’s just the banner. You know, the poster for the Taylor Swift cards.”

Annie says, “Yeah. Can we get it?”

There was also a little sign saying the Taylor Swift card collection was being replaced in a few days. I shrugged, “Let’s ask.” I took the poster from the wall and Annie carried it to the checkout counter.

“I can’t find a price on this,” the clerk said. “Well yeah, it’s..ah…the display poster. But the sign says you are getting rid of the cards in a couple days. Can we have it?” The clerk frowned. “I need to talk to the manager.”

We waited and the manager arrived and looked at the poster. “I’m sorry but we don’t own those banners. The card company does. We can’t give them away.” I turned and saw Annie’s face squint in confusion. “But why not?” she asked.

For a second no one moved. Then the manager said, “Tell you what. If you give us your phone number, we’ll ask the card company and call you if they say you can have it.” I was pretty skeptical, but Annie’s face lit up and she carefully wrote down the phone number I said out loud.

We drove home and I forgot all about it. But sure enough about ten days later, the drug store manager called and asked if we still wanted the poster. Within the hour, that Taylor Swift poster was hanging in my daughter’s bedroom.

Just because it doesn’t have a price tag doesn’t mean it’s not available. Can’t hurt to ask.

Keys to effective swift-starting teams

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pilotsNext time you’re standing at the gate waiting to get on a flight and the crew shows up, watch how they interact with each other. It will tell you a lot about how effective as a team they are going to be up in the sky shortly.

Mary Waller, a researcher at York University in Toronto, has been studying swift-starting teams – and flight crews in particular. Swift-starting teams of experts are everywhere – TV news crews comprised of journalists, camera, lighting, audio, and transmission engineers who come together to cover a media event. The doctors, nurses, technicians in hospitals who assemble for a ER shift to work together. Or the engineers that may run a nuclear power plant. In many cases these teams are comprised of highly-specialized professionals who assemble as a team for a specific job or task, and sometimes have little or no prior interaction with each other.

Specifically members of swift-forming experts teams are:

  • competent and familiar with their complex work environments
  • working quickly under situations of very evident time pressure
  • have a stable role on the team but ad hoc team membership
  • have complex, interdependent tasks that rely on interactions with team mates during the performance to yield coordinated execution of well-trained skills.

It turns out that how they interact with one another during just the first 15-20 minutes is highly predictive of how they will perform as a team for the duration of the job. The reason is that interaction patterns are established early in these relationships, and those patterns usually persist throughout the job.

Key #1: simple and consistent communication

Waller and her colleagues tracked each piece of dialogue uttered and identified the patterns in which they develop. For example, “Input the coordinates” is a command. “We have good weather today” is an observation. “Maybe we should ask tower control” is a suggestion and “What should our heading be?” is an inquiry…and so on to include disagreement, humor, anger or small-talk, etc. What they discovered is that patterns of interaction often emerge quickly and persist throughout the relationship. And the highest-performing teams established those patterns early, keep them simple, consistent, and reciprocal and balanced with one another. The lowest-performing teams had greater variety of conversational patterns, more unique communication patterns, and members who showed lack of reliance on other team members.

Key #2: short and targeted communication

While big locker room pep-talks or command-center speeches look good on television (think Ed Harris playing flight director Gene Kranz in Apollo 13), they aren’t terribly effective in driving team excellence. The most effective teams kept their communication short, precise and targeted to a specific task or job sequence.

Key #3: balanced communication

In the study, the researchers measured what they called “reciprocity.” That is, to what extent the team members relied on each other and balanced the participation of communication, as well as the reliance on one another for information and expertise. For example, if a team member showed “mono-actor” behavior of asking and answering their own questions, they showed less reliance, and less reciprocity on other team members. As a result, their study showed an overall decreased team performance when team members showed a lack of reliance on others and lack of reciprocity of expertise.

Here’s an interesting twist in the study. The researchers hypothesized that any “mono-acting” behavior (when someone asks and answers their own questions) would be on that part of the pilot currently in control. They thought that the person with command of the airplane would be the one offering the least reciprocity. Nope, it was the PNF (pilot not flying), who lacked control of the plane who exhibited the greatest amount of mono-acting behavior – in other words, was the least team player.

The best swift-forming teams of experts keep their communication simple, targeted and balanced.

The Meeting After the Meeting

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Don’t do this. Don’t hijack an hour of time from people, ask their thoughtful opinion, and then excuse everyone and hold back your cronies and have that “meeting after the meeting.” Sometimes you hear it on the conference call when a team leader says, “Hey Margaret can you call me right after this to follow up?” What is that all about?

We can easily sabotage our efforts to build the valued trust, rapport and engagement we know are important to drive excellence. Here’s a little way in which we can sometimes show to the team that their opinions aren’t really part of the solution: Having the meeting after the meeting.

The meeting after the meeting in which the “real” decision-makers call the shots, says to everyone that they don’t really have a voice. Or at best, they are fighting for their opinion to be heard. Or at worst, it’s a polite move so the shot-callers can attest publicly that opinions were heard, that they took in people’s concerns.

Do this instead. Listen more than talk. Ask credible, relevant and probing questions, and then collaboratively work toward decisions in front of everyone that recognizes and includes the voice of everyone. If you don’t intend to value an opinion, you’re not leading, you’re lobbying.

Your product is not what you sell, it’s the difference you make

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Your product is the impact you make, the change you affect, the experience your product delivers. Your product is the result, the causatum, the punch. Sell cars? No, you don’t sell a car, you sell utility or transport or identity or experience or speed perhaps. In pharma? – you don’t sell drugs, you sell health and well-being. Clothing retail? – your product isn’t jackets and boots, it’s warmth and style and durability and expression of taste.

It starts at the beginning – teachers and educators certainly aren’t selling, they are creating idea agents, young people interested and willing to learn, excited and touched by ideas they put into action. My wife, a high school science teacher, should justifiably be proud when she talks to a former student who was inspired to enter teaching, or go into microbiology, or well… go into any discipline related to science because they were touched in a meaningful way in her class in high school.

And if you are in the the business I’m in – the learning business, you aren’t selling books, courses, classes or video learning, your product is behavioral change. Your product is impact – the difference those ideas make.

Early this year, Tim Sanders gave the keynote address at our annual client conference, Perspectives. Afterwards, a woman approached him to congratulate and thank him for his message, she said “Thank you for a wonderful presentation, but I still don’t understand. What are you selling?” Tim smiled and said, “I’m selling success, your success.”

It doesn’t matter if you are in sales, you are still selling – ideas, solutions, change, experiences, expertise. But understand your product might not be what you think it is. The core asset in your arsenal to make an impact is between your ears – your brain and your willingness and ability to engage and affect change through whatever products or services you happen to be representing. The course, the textbook, the video, is merely a transit mechanism. It’s the vehicle for ideas.

Your difference is the difference you can make, representing something you believe it. But remember the quality of the interaction matters. As Susan Scott says, “The conversation is the relationship.”