November 28, 2023 • 49 mins
Are you ready to ascend the leadership ladder? Join me as I have a conversation with Thomas Cox, a tech whiz turned leadership guru, who recounts his transition from a brilliant but challenging leader to one who mastered the art of leadership. With an emphasis on the power of communication, we explore the four-part structure of accountable conversations, offering practical advice that will make you stand out from the crowd and attract more responsibility.
This episode is packed with actionable tips and strategies to enhance your communication skills and lead more effectively. So, listen up and get ready to elevate your leadership game.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Welcome to the Communication 24-7 podcast,
where we communicate about howwe communicate.
I'm your host, Jennifer Furlong.
I have a really special guesttoday.
(00:32):
Thomas Cox and I startedcommunicating some time ago and,
due to my own fault, I had topostpone this conversation, and
I'm so excited to be able tohave him on the show today.
We're going to talk aboutleadership development, focus on
(00:59):
what are those communicationskills that we really need to
concentrate on developing inorder to be successful and to
move up into those leadershipranks, specifically executive
leadership.
I haven't had an opportunityreally to have someone on the
show who can talk to us aboutthis part of our communication
skills.
So, Thomas, thank you so muchfor being on the show.
I'm super excited about thisconversation with you.
(01:21):
Thank you, Jen.
We could cover many hours onthis, but I'll be right back
Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
We can try to be brisk in brief.
So just to get the audiencecaught up with you.
How did you get into this spaceof leadership?
Speaker 2 (01:33):
development Because, you know, reading your bio, you
have a lot of fantasticexperience.
So what caused you to move here?
I was originally a technologist.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
I was one of those people who was technically
brilliant and a total jerk.
And my thinking was, if I wastechnically brilliant enough,
you would all have to put upwith me.
And that worked okay, not great.
It didn't work as well as I wasimagining it was working, I
suspect.
But what happened is Iplateaued technically.
I was doing databasearchitecture, working for Oracle
(02:11):
and IBM and Price WhitehouseCoopers and having a bunch of
big projects, big clients,interesting work, and after
about 15 years I'd gone so deepinto it that I designed kind of
every database structure therewas and it was.
None of it was challenginganymore.
I'm like do I want to coast forthe next 20, 30 years?
And I'm like, no, no, I want tochallenge.
What am I not good at?
(02:32):
But I really want to be good at?
And for me that was people.
It was leadership.
I realized I've got what'scommonly referred to as a good
at Asperger's syndrome.
I don't think that's a they'velet go of that as a formal
diagnosis anymore but it's acluster of attributes of being
(02:55):
not very good at people skillsor picking up on context and
subtext.
And everyone's looking at mefunny.
It's like it's because you'rebeing a jerk Thomas.
It's like, no, no, it can't bethat.
Yeah, it's exactly that dude,and I went through high school
and college and I was like I'mnot good at that.
I went through high school andcollege not making very many
friends and not being veryempathic, but just loving my
(03:18):
technology and loving my facts,and that will never get you into
leadership or, if it does, youwill not be a good leader.
And I found that out in 2005when I was forced to confront
the fact that I was a borderline, toxic leader.
And here.
But I've been reading HarvardBusiness Review and I've been
(03:40):
studying all these books.
And how can I want to be good,how can I be this bad when I
want to be this good?
And I've been reading all thestuff Like what's going on here.
And that's when I had to facethat a vast amount of what
passes for leadership literatureis garbage.
It's either completely wrong orit's too narrow.
(04:03):
There's a cool class that I callTBU, true, but useless, where
you read the words and you'relike, oh okay, I can get that.
And then you're done readingand you're like so what do I do?
And the answer is well, there'snothing in there to tell you
that, and some of it's even fromtop names.
They'll have.
You know, I'm reading passages.
Like you know, leaders driveresults.
(04:23):
I'm like, oh yeah, okay,leaders drive results.
So what is?
How do I do that?
And what I had to do was andthis again, my obsessive
factor-oriented brain reallyserved me well.
Once I set my mind to this,starting in 2005, I had to
figure this out.
I ran across a very few sourcesthat were truly excellent.
(04:46):
I'll give one credit inparticular managertoolscom.
Manager-toolscom If you takenothing else from me today, but
you go to that website and startto listen to the free podcast
or subscribe or buy the book byMark Horseman on the effective
manager, that it took me fromhelpless, hopeless, useless to a
(05:12):
pretty decent manager very,very quickly, and that's been
kind of the backbone ofeverything I've learned.
I've since added a lot to that,and what I want to talk to you
today has to do withaccountability, because everyone
will tell you thataccountability is great and
everyone wants other people tohave more accountability, but
(05:33):
they strangely don't seem tothink that they themselves need
that much more, where they kindof sort of know that they could
be better, but they don't knowwhere to really start.
That was a deep dive for me.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
I'll tell you.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
A guy named Fernando Flores figured this out 1985, he
published something with hiscollaborator from Stanford,
terry Winograd, and it issomething called the basic
workflow, and it turns out thatevery accountable agreement and
(06:06):
accountability comes from makingaccountable agreements and then
fulfilling them is that thatdialogue has a four-part
structure, and it is the samestructure for everybody.
For every accountableconversation, every accountable
agreement you'll ever make inyour life, whether it's please
pass the salt or open us a newdivision in Salt Lake City, it
(06:27):
doesn't matter how big or small.
The structure is identical.
And as I describe it, you'llthink to yourself yeah, okay,
that sounds I get that, butthere's some subtleties that I
will elaborate for you that willdifferentiate you from your
coworkers.
You'll stand out in the eyes ofyour customers and your boss,
and it'll attract to you muchmore responsibility.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
When you master this, yeah, I want to jump in real
quick because I reallyappreciate your focus on the
how-to aspect of it.
I think a lot of listeners thatwill resonate with them and
that's one of the reasons whyWithout that we're just saying
plausible things oh yeah, so welove a great leader.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
Oh yeah, you should be authentic.
Oh yeah yeah, we spend half anhour talking about how great
authenticity is, but at the endof the day, if you don't know
what to do differently, I havenot helped you.
Yes, and I'm committed tohelping people.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
It's so critical.
That's my mission.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
That's my passion.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
Yeah, I have a great appreciation for that and I know
the listeners will have anappreciation for that as well.
I do want to ask one questionthat, with something that you
had just mentioned, you wouldrealize that you were kind of
sort of a toxic boss, and whatexactly was it that pinpointed
(07:55):
to you?
This is holding me back,because there's so many people
out there and you can give themthe feedback, but they ain't
hearing it right.
And you can do all the 360s inthe world, you know and
everybody's giving you similarfeedback, but they're just,
they're not able to take it in.
(08:18):
So what was it?
Speaker 1 (08:20):
They don't know what it means because they don't know
what the new behaviors have tobe.
So it turns out, every followerwants the exact same
fundamental experience, and thatfundamental experience is they
want a boss who has a strongenough relationship with them
that they can tell that thatboss knows them as a unique
(08:41):
human being, really listens tothem, pays attention to them,
doesn't confuse them with otherpeople on the team, knows what
they're good at and cares aboutthem Not too much, but more than
nothing.
They're not going to mistakeyou for a family member, but you
matter to them.
(09:01):
And at the same time, they wanta boss who champions excellence
and won't let them skate, won'tlet them phone it in.
They really was going to pullout of them their best work.
And so, jen, if you and Ididn't know each other very well
and I said to you, jen, this isnot your best work, I need you
to do this again, you'd think,wow, what a manipulative line.
Yeah right, you don't know whatmy best work is, you chump.
(09:27):
But if you and I have spent manyweeks where, every week, I have
a half hour meeting with youthat's scheduled in advance,
where you talk first and Ilisten and I'm taking notes.
That's the one-on-oneManagerToolscom recommends.
It's research that's shown thatthat is the best way to do it.
Every week, 30 minutes and inthat time eight, 12 weeks go by
(09:47):
and you know that I know youwell.
I listen to you, I payattention to you, I give you
feedback on your performance asspot-on, and then I come to you
one day and say, jen, thisreport not your best work.
I need your best work on thisone.
I need you to do it again.
And you're going to go like,yeah, tom really knows me and
you kind of know, you kind ofdid phone it in and rather than
(10:11):
get into denial or name callingor whatever, you're going to go
yeah, he's right, and you'regoing to do it again because I
care enough about you and youcare enough about me that you
want to maintain therelationship.
You'll go the extra mile for meand you know that I'm not going
to say something in amanipulative way.
If I say it's not your bestwork, I'm probably seeing
(10:32):
something real.
And I've demonstrated to youthat I can really spot good work
from not good work.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
Build that trust.
Speaker 1 (10:39):
Yeah, and so strong relationship and strong
requiring those are the twopieces that have to come
together simultaneously tocreate an excellent boss
experience.
And I was mediocre at requiringand I was a zero at relating in
2005.
Speaker 2 (10:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
And I just had to start over and learn those
skills.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
Yeah, do you think you had mentioned empathy
earlier, and how?
You that was something that hadnot developed in you and that
resonated.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
I didn't have none, I didn't have a lot.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
I didn't have a lot to get at.
How did you build the empathypart?
Because for a lot of people itdoes come natural, for a lot of
people, but for many of us whoare more like action oriented,
it's a skill that you really dohave to try to develop.
So what did you do to develop?
Speaker 1 (11:31):
that?
Yeah.
Well, the first thing toremember is, the more action
oriented you are, the more youwant empathy, because it just
speeds things up.
And if you're already anempathic person, great.
But if you're too empathic,you'll hesitate to require
appropriately, thinking that itmight harm the relationship, and
(11:51):
you'll lose sight of the factthat the best boss you've ever
had is someone who did demandyour top work from you.
So if you let your empathy getin the way of demanding
excellence, you're actuallyharming the relationship,
believe it or not.
And if you again, if you're atask oriented person and you're
about oh, I'm about results, I'ma hard nosed results person
it's like great, and empathywill get you there faster,
(12:14):
better.
That's the reason why youshould take the time to
understand how, if you don'tknow how humans work, you can't
work with humans.
Like, if you can't figure outhow to drive the car, you can't
get anywhere with the car.
Humans run on empathy, amongother things.
It gives you the relationshipand the traction to ask for what
you want, and you're likely toget a yes from people.
Speaker 2 (12:34):
Yeah, and find that your empathy grew over time as
you continued to practice theone-on-one and having those
conversations.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
I had to read about empathy development and where it
fits in the brain, and there'ssome specific practices you can
do to accelerate this quitedramatically.
One is get into Toastmastersand become an officer in a
Toastmasters club.
That is the fast track toleadership skill development
(13:05):
because it's all volunteers.
No one's doing it for money.
You can't force people to doanything.
You've got to persuade them andthere's a lot of public
speaking and leading, and soToastmasters gives you a little
bit of speaking every singleweek and it's only through
repetition that we get betterand positive feedback.
The other thing that helps a tonis if you can find it or
(13:31):
there's various sources for thisimprovisational theater, not
comedy.
Comedy is about humor andthat's the humor is distancing.
Improvisational theater isabout getting onto a stage with
one or more other peoplelistening deeply to them in the
moment.
You can't have anythingpreconceived, you're fully
present and then you respondwith something that is
(13:53):
emotionally appropriate to theemotional reality they've given
you in their comments.
You don't respond to the wordsnearly as much as you respond to
the totality of what they'vesaid and the way they've said it
.
And because it's just fun, it'sjust practice, it's not like
the stakes are low and thereforeyou get a lot of reps, a lot of
(14:14):
repetitions in in a low stress,low risk environment with lots
of very fast feedback, andthat's the way to learn
something well, and improvtheater did tons for my empathy
development, my ability tolisten for the emotional truth
and other people's words andtheir tone of voice, so that
would be an approach.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
That's key.
Right there, you're making methink back to when I was
teaching at the college level.
I taught for 18 years at thecollege level and I taught
public speaking and humancommunication skills and at the
time the university I taught forthey made it a requirement for
all computer sciences and ITmajors.
(14:58):
They had to take publicspeaking in order to graduate.
Speaker 1 (15:02):
Good.
Speaker 2 (15:02):
And I agree, I was like, yes, good, we know that
there's value in this and thosekids would come in.
Of course they would come intothe classroom, half of them
seniors, because they would waittill the last minute to take
this class, because they had tohave it to graduate.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
The whole thing that the requirement would be dropped
over the course of four years.
Speaker 2 (15:23):
And by the end of the semester, every single time,
without fail, they would say Ishould have taken this class so
long ago.
I don't know why did I wait totake this class?
What was I scared for?
What was I scared of?
Because they ended up, they sawhow these skills were really
impacting them in other areas.
(15:44):
They ended up having fun withit, doing the impromptu stuff,
things like what you were justtalking about.
It truly is a valuable skill tobe able to develop.
Speaker 1 (15:55):
You can't name me a leadership role that doesn't
involve speaking to a team, tothe group, to your boss, to a
senior committee, to somethingother than yourself or one other
person, If you can't get up andspeak and be on stage.
Oh yeah, by the way, whenyou're a leader, everyone's
looking at you.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
Your whole team's watching you very carefully
because you're kind of the alphadog.
You're setting the emotionaltone for the team.
If you come in with a frown onyour face, everyone starts to
get worried.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
Mm-hmm.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
Maybe you just got a flat tire that morning, but the
next thing you know there'srumors of layoffs or something.
It's like no, I'm just downdudes.
And so you got to be able toself-regulate, not just read
others, but also read yourselfand have good self-control.
Yeah, I think the most usefultool for that is and this is
something that I provide to myclients called positive
(16:51):
intelligence.
There's a book by that name,positive Intelligence.
There's a websitepositiveintelligencecom and that
is really a foundational set ofskills for getting out of fight
or flight, getting out of blame, and being constructive and
(17:11):
being fully present with others.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
Mm-hmm.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
See, it's incomparable.
It's revolutionized my practice.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
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Yeah, and I think that goesback to the accountability
(17:47):
aspect that you had mentionedearlier just being willing to
look at what it is that you'reresponsible for and making sure
that you're holding yourself upto those standards and no
excuses about it.
And if you screw up, you screwup right.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
Make sure it's a learning experience and have the
courage to admit it and make apoint to learn.
Do you still want me to talkabout the four-step process of
creating an accountableagreement and fulfilling it?
Yeah, absolutely, I would loveto share that to me.
So imagine covering a circle infour segments.
You start at, say, 12 o'clock.
(18:24):
Yeah, we're going to start at aspot on a circle.
You're going to go a quarterway around the circle and we're
going to label that initiation.
That is, you are about to asksomebody for a please do this
thing for me.
You want them to enter anagreement with you and you need
to spend a little time gettingclear on what exactly do I want?
How do I want it?
(18:46):
By when do I want it?
Do I have I gathered all thedata I need to give them for
this?
For the first time I taught thiswas to guy named Eric Albertson
, and he discovered that he wasroutinely asking his assistant
for things, doing the initiationand giving him one quarter of
the information needed toactually do it, but guaranteeing
(19:09):
back and forth messages well,what about this?
What about this?
What about this?
And when I gave him thetraining, he's like oh, I'm
wasting a lot of our time byprematurely initiating without
actually having all the stufflined up.
So you heard the phrase wellbegun is half done.
That's what a good initiation isis getting your head on
(19:31):
straight.
If you've ever asked for thisbefore, if this is a routine ask
, there's no excuse for you notto have your ducks in a line and
have your facts laid out.
Make a template, do a Googleform.
Just take the time to respectthe person you're going to ask
by getting yourself straightfirst, so you initiate carefully
(19:51):
and clearly.
And if there was a hiccup lasttime, think about that hiccup.
And how do I front load arequest that we not do that
again?
Like, oh, you gave me a PDF andI wanted a Word document.
What if my initiation, I saythe words I want this as a Word
document place?
Speaker 2 (20:08):
So you don't have to guess or remember.
Speaker 1 (20:09):
That's good info, good, clear initiation.
So then, okay, initiation endswhen I open my mouth or send the
email to actually ask Now weget into negotiation.
Chris Voss's book Never Spotethe Difference is a great book
for the negotiation phasebecause he's all about win-win
negotiation, where you try tosay okay, and what else do I
need to know?
How do we make this an evenbetter agreement together?
(20:32):
And you never, ever, ever wantto say yes prematurely.
That is the death of goodaccountability.
If someone's asking you, hey,thomas, will you, hey Jen, will
you do this thing for me?
Do not say the word yes untilyou have gathered the
information you need to actuallycommit to that yes, if I said
(20:54):
yes, I'll do this podcast to youand I hadn't checked my
calendar and I was out of townthat day or otherwise
unavailable, I'd have to go backwith my tail between my legs
and say, oh, jen, I'm sorry, Isaid yes, but now I look like a
chump, right, you?
Speaker 2 (21:11):
started to build on my yes.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
You started to schedule things.
You're starting to depend on me, and here I am changing stuff.
I could have checked mycalendar up front, couldn't?
I?
Shouldn't?
I Wouldn't you be happier if Ihad?
Of course you would.
So my best advice to the peoplebeing asked if you think you
need to say yes to placatesomebody because it's your boss
(21:36):
and you have to say yes to yourboss, or you're a pleaser and
you just want to make everybodyhappy by saying yes to
everything, do not do that.
Hold yourself back.
And if you need to express yourenthusiasm or your willingness
to say hey.
I'm so looking forward togetting all the information from
you so that I can give you acommitted yes.
(21:56):
Here's my questions.
And you hold back on thecommitment yes.
There's three kinds of yes, asChris Voss says in his book
Never Split the Difference.
There's the confirmation yes,like is it half past the hour
already?
Yes, yes, it is.
Are we going to meet at 7o'clock for dinner?
(22:18):
Yeah, at 7 o'clock.
That's like you're confirmingfacts.
That's all that yes is.
It doesn't actually create anykind of accountability
commitment.
The second kind is thecounterfeit yes.
That's where you say yes butdon't really mean it.
Or you say it but you haven'treally checked and so you can't
really mean it.
And you're doing it because youwant to protect yourself
(22:39):
emotionally.
You do it to manipulate theother person.
You're trying to create anexpectation or blow it up
Expectation or belief, eitherprematurely or contrary to the
facts.
And you should never accept acounterfeit yes.
You should never give acounterfeit yes.
And if you suspect acounterfeit yes, challenge it,
including one from yourself.
(23:02):
So then the third kind of yes iscommitment, where I tell you
when I say yes to you, jen, I amtaking on the burden of you
expecting me to do this the waywe've now agreed and I, my
reputation is on the line.
And if you want to advance inan organization, you make sure
that you give commitment, yesesand follow through.
(23:24):
And that means you take thetime to gather the information
first, as soon as you discoverthere's a problem, like hey, I
gave you a commitment yesterdayand then something happened and
I discovered my wife has usbooked to be out of town that
day and I can't reschedule it,or my dishwasher blew up and I
(23:45):
have to spend the day fixing it,or I got sick and I can't do
the thing.
But as soon as I know.
I'm telling you why Because Iwant you to have lead time,
because I care about you,because I have integrity and I
want you to know that theexpectation may shift and
accountability is really aboutmanaging expectations at least
(24:07):
as much as managing the work.
There's two halves toaccountability there's the
promise made and then there'sthe work done.
They must match.
Every time they start to driftapart, you do the work to
reconnect them.
Speaker 2 (24:21):
Right, right.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
I have a four-hour class I teach on this.
Yeah, I know how to manage allthese pieces, okay.
So finally, you get throughyour negotiation.
You give your committed yes.
You pulled out of the otherperson all the facts, the
context you want to report.
How are you going to use thisreport?
Who's going to read the report?
What format do you want thereport in?
What kind of detail do you need?
(24:43):
How quickly Are you going towant to reuse this?
Would you be happier with aspreadsheet?
Should I also include a graph?
Should the graph be colorblindaccessible?
You might ask Okay, that's alittle deep but you get the idea
.
The more intelligent questionsyou ask before that final yes,
(25:05):
the more your value rises in theother person's eyes.
Because you've got your ducksin a row as the work provider,
you're asking tough questions.
Okay, what difference does thisreally make?
How good is good enough?
How much detail do you need?
I don't want to overwork thisand charge you extra for
something you don't need.
(25:25):
I don't want to under deliver.
Are other people contributinginformation that I should be
coordinating with so that all ofour work can fold together?
I haven't thought of that.
Yeah, I am.
Okay.
Great, give me their names andI'll coordinate with them.
Wouldn't that be nice?
All right, part one wasinitiate.
Part two was negotiate.
(25:46):
Now it's time to perform.
Everyone assumes accountabilityis all about performance.
It's only a quarter about goodperformance, but it's a big
quarter when you're performing.
You have already made theagreement.
If you have to tweak theagreement, you do it proactively
and very explicitly.
You may turn around to becomean asker yourself and ask
(26:08):
subcontractors to help you out.
Hey, I promised Jen this thing.
I need to get some stuff done.
Hey, fred, hey, barney, comehelp me.
What happens if Fred or Barneylet me down?
Do I go to Jen and say Jen,it's not my fault, fred, let me
down.
No, top performers never blameanyone.
They own their inputs.
(26:30):
That's the phrase you want touse.
Look this up.
Owning the inputs means if Iturn around to help Jen and I
ask Fred or Barney for help, Iask them with enough lead time
that if they don't perform I canreplace their work with someone
else's or I can recover.
If I can't recover, I say toJen Jen, I'm sorry, I failed to
(26:54):
properly manage mysubcontractors.
I've let you down.
Here's my repromise.
I can help.
It'll be late and I'm verysorry.
How can I help reduce theimpact on you?
That's me owning it.
How do you feel when I talklike that?
Speaker 2 (27:09):
I was going to say if you could just for one second
really think about and hear whatTom just said right there.
I failed in having mysubcontractors, or I failed to
communicate effectively or beingable to take ownership.
That makes me feel okay, I canstill have trust in that.
Speaker 1 (27:34):
I'm still driving this ship.
Speaker 2 (27:36):
You're still driving it.
You're taking responsibilityfor it.
Speaker 1 (27:41):
Whereas if I try to shed responsibility, say, jen,
it's not my fault, these otherthings happened beyond my
control.
Now you're thinking well,clearly, thomas isn't running
this show.
Can I talk to whoever is incharge, please, because it
clearly isn't Tom.
You don't want to be the onenot in charge.
Speaker 2 (27:57):
Yeah, yeah, that's not a good leadership trait Not
a good look.
Speaker 1 (28:01):
Not a good look Since you don't want to have to say,
hey, I screwed up.
There's your incentive to planit well, be proactive, create
really early deadlines for yoursubloops and your subcontractors
so that you have time tointegrate, you have time to
recover from service failuresand so on.
Okay, you've done yourperformance.
(28:23):
If you have to go back and say,hey, I promised you Oak, we're
out of Oak.
I just found out Oak is goingto be another six weeks.
Do you want to wait the sixweeks, or should I use older or
Ash?
I've got those in stock.
I've double checked.
I've actually reserved some,just in case you say yes.
Okay, now we might talk aboutthe pros and cons of waiting
(28:45):
versus going with a differentwood, but at least you've got a
choice and at least I've toldyou as early as I possibly could
.
Speaker 2 (28:51):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (28:52):
It's a trust holder.
Speaker 2 (28:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:54):
Okay, yay, performance is done.
Are we done yet?
No, we're three quarters of theway.
Now we have to have the finalphase, called acceptance, where
performance isn't done until Iboth do the work and number two,
tell you I have done the work.
Okay, how do I tell you I'vedone the work?
Well, we should have negotiatedthat.
(29:15):
We should have agreed duringnegotiation.
So, jen, when I'm done withthis, how do you want me to
inform you that I'm done and howwould you like this delivered?
Should I drop it on your frontporch?
Should I leave it at theon-call window?
Do you want me to forward it onto Betty?
We should know in advance.
(29:37):
Good negotiation, goodinitiation will have that all
straightened out and you'll knowthat I know what to do.
At the end of performance, I'llsay, jen, performance is done.
Here's my report, thatperformance is done.
I'm notifying you in the wayyou asked, which is a text
message and email, a courieredletter, whatever.
(29:58):
Okay, but we're still not donebecause during initiation
negotiation we agreed that onceI deliver, you will look at it
and you'll tell me if it's okayor not.
The acceptance period you say,yep, this looks fine, as is
thanks.
So much or no, actually myneeds have changed or it's not
(30:21):
what I.
What's the old saying in IET?
It's exactly what I asked for,but it's not what I want.
Who knows what the answer isgoing to be that part of us
building a stronger and strongerand stronger relationship isn't
just me delivering, it's ushaving a high bandwidth, high,
trusting conversation afterdelivery about okay, did this
(30:42):
work for you?
How could I have done evenbetter?
What should we do even betternext time?
How do you initiate better?
How do I perform better nexttime?
We do this particular dance andif you're disappointed during
acceptance I did my best andyou're not happy I'm going to
learn lessons from that.
I'm going to take ownershipfrom my role in it and I'm going
(31:08):
to give you hopefully I'll tellyou literally exactly what I'm
going to do differently nexttime, if you give me another
chance and repeated improvementsis an upward spiral of quality
and an upward spiral of mutualtrust.
I tell you there's people Iwould hire again who completely
(31:28):
screwed the pooch, but theyhandled the failure so
gracefully and so well.
This literally happened.
We had a mold treatment in thehouse we were selling.
We were three days from close.
They go in, put a little bleachsolution on.
Then they're going to air outthe crawl space, the attic space
(31:50):
.
We come in the next day theentire house reeks of bleach.
It's uninhabitable.
And now we're not going toclose on the sale but we already
bought the new place.
Everything's in disarray andit's like Saturday, of course,
right, okay, and there's like nohotline number to call.
(32:12):
There's no emergency red phone,nothing.
And we're furious and live itand I'm like calling Paul Davis,
disaster Recovery Specialist,to come in and remediate this
mess and that's going to be, oh,probably $6,000.
The owners get back in touchand say shows up physically,
(32:33):
meets us on site with everyblower and fan I've ever seen in
my life, and the entire staffand his wife are there and
they're like we're going to makethis right.
And within a day you couldn'tsmell a thing.
It was all better.
And they apologized andexplained that they were going
to change their weekend protocolso that no one would ever have
(32:56):
a phone number to call if therewas a problem.
They handled it so well, sobeautifully.
I gave them a five-star Googlereview and I would use them
again in a heartbeat.
Speaker 2 (33:07):
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recording, allowing you tostream to multiple online
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(33:28):
followers and create a movement.
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show notes.
That's amazing and one themethat I'm seeing as you're
describing these four parts ofthis circle clarity in
communication is so importantduring every single step that
(33:54):
you were taking us through, fromthe clarity in communicating
what your vision is, what it isyou're exactly asking for, to
clarifying with questions tomake sure that you understand it
, and I think, something that alot of people need to hear at
this point, when you're askingthose questions to clarify, it's
(34:17):
giving you an opportunity toreally think about can I
realistically deliver this?
And it is okay to say I cannotrealistically deliver this at
this time.
Speaker 1 (34:28):
You are better off saying no, I can't do it.
Speaker 2 (34:31):
Exactly Bam.
Speaker 1 (34:32):
Yeah, saying yes, and it turns out not to be the case
.
Speaker 2 (34:37):
Yeah, it's so hard.
So many people have a hard timesaying no.
Speaker 1 (34:42):
They're afraid to say no, yes, yes, but I think
that's a really good approach.
Speaker 2 (34:47):
Yeah, it kind of gives them permission in this
way to really think thingsthrough Realistically.
I mean, at this moment in timeI'm not going to be able to pull
this off.
Or I would be able to pull thisoff if I had three weeks
instead of two weeks, and thatwould go into that negotiation
part that you were discussingjust a moment ago.
Speaker 1 (35:10):
So I'm attempting to do a share here.
I'm hoping it's visible.
This is our friend.
The accountability loop, you'llsee, the asker on the left
starts with an initiate as yougo up out of the asker on the
left side.
Initiation ends with thatrequest for performance.
That's the object, the artifact, the email, what have you?
(35:30):
And then the negotiate phaseoccurs from the top down towards
the right ending with a mutualagreement of performance.
What are we each going to do?
I will do the work, jen.
You will promise to respond tomy emails promptly when I ask
for questions or have problemsor need a decision, and we agree
(35:51):
on how I will deliver.
Then there's the perform phase,which only ends when I report
that I'm done.
I can't do the work and go homefor the day.
I have to do the work and tellyou it's done, otherwise you
don't know it's done, you can'tdo your next piece.
And then we've also agreed thatyou're going to go through an
acceptance period and let meknow hey, was this any good?
Did it meet your needs?
How can I do even better nexttime?
Speaker 2 (36:13):
Yeah, and I like this because, regardless of what
side you're on, whether you'rethe asker or you're the doer,
you really are takingresponsibility.
You're taking ownership foryour part.
So if it breaks up, so if itbreaks down at some point, you
really do need to pay attentionto that and ask yourself did I
(36:34):
ask the right questions or did Imake myself clear and really
focus on what I could have donebetter in order?
To make that correction for thenext time.
I love that, that's one thingthat.
I'm, you know, as a communicator, I'm all about take
responsibility for how you areexpressing yourself, whatever it
(36:56):
is, yes, so let me say one lastthing.
Speaker 1 (37:01):
So during perform, it's very common to run into
hiccups, roadblocks, issues ofvarious kinds, and I actually
formulated the accountabilityloop and found Fernando Flores's
original research while I wastrying to help a client, helped
them actually quite dramatically.
They were a digital agency andthey had a problem that they
would start working on somethingand their clients would just go
(37:24):
dark on them, wouldn't reply toemails, wouldn't make decisions
they would have to makedecisions on logos and it would
drag the project out.
It would add all kinds ofadditional costs to things, and
they hadn't actually talkedabout cost overruns in advance,
so they didn't feel they couldcharge for it, and so they ended
up eating a lot of overrids andthey weren't making money Plus.
(37:45):
They were frustrated and I said, look, you're going to do two
things.
First, we're going to come upwith a standard email.
I call it the Warm ABCs Becauseit's an email that's going to
sound cold unless you make aneffort to be warm.
Therefore, make it warm.
Dear Fred, we really loveworking with you.
(38:06):
I've got a very importantquestion for you.
And then A is asked for exactlywhat you actually need.
Is it a decision?
Is it an authorization?
Is it?
What am I asking for here?
Put it up front.
You may have to write the emailuntil you're clear on what it
is you're asking for.
Okay, go back and insert at thetop of the email what am I
(38:28):
asking you for?
It's literally this emailrequests your choice of one of
these three logos.
That's the thing I actuallyneed.
That's the A and ABC.
B is by when.
I need this decision, no later.
If you say tomorrow, saytomorrow, comma, and then
(38:49):
Thursday, the 20th of July.
Because if you say tomorrow andI don't read it until tomorrow,
am I thinking tomorrow fromwhen I read it?
Speaker 2 (39:00):
Is that a?
Speaker 1 (39:01):
vague language.
Now I got to go look up.
When did you send it?
Don't make people think,especially clients.
Don't make people think Ifyou're the one writing the email
, you do the extra work so theydon't have to.
So if I ever say tomorrow, Ialways try to say tomorrow,
parentheses.
Thu for Thursday online dashJUL, or 20 dash J, which works
(39:26):
the 20th of July.
I never use two numbers.
I don't do three slash two ortwo slash three, because that's
either February 3rd or March 2nd, depending on if you're
European Central America.
Speaker 2 (39:36):
That's right yeah.
Speaker 1 (39:38):
It's like no ambiguity.
Ambiguity is evil.
Yeah, it's just no.
So I standardize, actuallytrain.
Anybody works with me.
You always put a two-digitnumber for the day hyphen and a
three-letter abbreviation forthe month.
There's never any ambiguitywith that.
(39:59):
If there's a time component, Ispecify the time zone.
That's a fully qualified date.
So I need this decision fromyou later than noon tomorrow.
Comma, thursday, the 20th ofJuly, and noon would be Pacific
time.
That's the B.
(40:19):
By when?
Okay.
What's the C?
The C is the context and theconsequence.
What if you don't reply?
Very important, okay, becausethey might not.
Or why does this decision allthat important?
They're not going to remember.
When I first broach this, theywere like but it's obvious why
it's important.
I said no, it's obvious to youbecause you're working full-time
(40:41):
on the project.
The clients do a nine otherthings, none of them this, and
they're probably looking at thisemail at the gated LaGuardia
between flights.
Don't make them try to searchout the context to remember why
this is important.
Just put it in there as asentence this decision will
unlock the next phase of theproject and any delay will cause
(41:04):
a delay to the entire project,or whatever is true and there's
a little ass.
After ABCs, the S stands forsilence.
What if they go dark?
If I do not hear from you, Iwill put the project on hold
until I do.
Or if I do not hear from you, Iwill contact your spouse and
(41:27):
ask him or her.
If I do not hear from you, Iwill something.
And when I get taught peoplethat they would say who sounds
threatening, I'm like, look, ifthey are silent, something will
happen.
All you're doing isdemystifying what will happen,
(41:48):
because things will happenwhether you say it or not.
It's kinder to be clearer andtell them if I don't hear from
you, then I'd stop and say whatare you going to do?
If you don't hear from them,I'm just going to put the
project on hold.
Okay, tell them that.
Yes, yes.
Again, I would get pushed backand I finally said okay, you
(42:09):
need to change your onboarding,the initiation negotiation phase
.
You need to say look, before westart working together, you
need to know during perform, weuse a template to communicate
with our clients.
Here's an example.
It's going to look and soundlike this we don't say it to be
mean, we're not trying tothreaten you.
(42:29):
This is how we clearlycommunicate status and needs for
updates with clients.
Are you going to be okay withthis?
Most people say, oh, my God,this is great, you actually
thought this out.
Yeah, we thought this out,we're perfect.
If anybody says you can't talkto me like that, okay.
Well, how would you like me totalk to you when I need a
(42:51):
decision in its critical path?
Speaker 2 (42:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (42:54):
Give me the wording you'd like and I'll put it up
and put a note in your file andthat's how I'll talk to you.
Sahid, yes, yeah, whatever youlike but don't leave this stuff
to chance, right, top performers.
Do not leave performance tochance.
Don't think that you can justdo the work and survive or
thrive.
(43:14):
You have to do the work andmanage expectations around the
work both.
That is the definition ofaccountability is both of those
things together.
Speaker 2 (43:24):
Mm-hmm.
Speaker 1 (43:25):
Yeah, not just one and not just the other.
Speaker 2 (43:28):
Do you know how much this makes my heart sing to have
a guest on my show who, prettymuch, is just confirming
everything that I preach aboutwith the clarity and the
specificity, the directness.
And direct communication doesnot equate to being mean.
(43:50):
Right, it does not mean to, andif you feel mean, to you
reverse.
Speaker 1 (43:55):
Okay, first off soften your tone and second
reverse positions.
Speaker 2 (43:59):
Yes, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (44:01):
Put yourself in the other person's shoes or even
front load it and say, hey, welove our clients and we believe,
as Brunet Brown says, thatclear is kind.
Speaker 2 (44:09):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (44:11):
There is a greater than zero possibility we will
hit a snag.
If and when we hit a snag, wewill communicate to you like
this here's a sample, here's atemplate.
Here's an example of how we dothis.
We'll look like this we willneed you to turn around If you
can't reply.
You need to tell us who is yourbackup person so we can get
fast answers.
If no one answers within 24hours, it says you're in the
(44:33):
contract we can put your projecton hold.
We don't want to do that, butwe can't just pay people to sit
idly because that would bankruptyou.
Yeah, yeah.
And, by the way, here's ourpolicy on overcharges and
overages and whatever.
And if anything was about tooccur that might cause an
upcharge or a penalty, we willtell you in an email like this,
(44:57):
and it'll sound like this andhere's an example.
And again, these are notattempts to make you feel bad.
This is our way of being supertransparent on what to expect.
We're professionals, you're aprofessional, and professionals
talk about money and timelinesand commitments.
Speaker 2 (45:13):
Yeah, and I want to make sure that what I am doing
for you, what I am delivering toyou, is 100% what you're
expecting, 100% what you want.
I want you to be happy.
I want you to be satisfied withthis.
Speaker 1 (45:26):
Bingo.
Speaker 2 (45:27):
Yeah, yeah, it's so critical to be able to
understand that, and in yourright email.
Yeah, it can be very cold, butI tell you what?
What a great opportunity.
The email gives us a greatopportunity to really think
about very carefully how do Icraft this message in a way that
it can be clear and also showsome compassion at the same time
(45:51):
.
So absolutely.
Speaker 1 (45:52):
And if you're not sure how to do it, take the time
up front to draft three or fourversions of templates or
consult some friends, or noticewhen you get an email that you
think, oh, I love this email,this is so nice.
Oh, file it away.
You put it in a swipe file,hang on to that stuff.
Speaker 2 (46:08):
That's right.
Yeah, well, I got to tell youthis has been such a fantastic
episode.
I know that the listeners aregoing to walk away with so much
that they can use coming up withand really more than leadership
.
You know, this is somethingjust every day if you want to be
(46:31):
able to perform effectively inthe workplace, and I can even
see how we could apply a lot ofthis to our personal
relationship.
Speaker 1 (46:41):
Anywhere, you're managing expectations, which is,
oh yeah, most of our lives.
Speaker 2 (46:45):
Oh yeah, Do you manage expectations with your?
Speaker 1 (46:47):
spouse, with your kids, with your parents, with
your neighbors?
Yeah, you do.
Speaker 2 (46:51):
Fantastic Fantastic.
Speaker 1 (46:54):
One last thought I'll leave you with is there's one
thing, because, if you'relooking to be promoted, managing
your people's expectations ofyou and how you follow through
on commitments is a huge way todifferentiate yourself, and
there is one thing that no oneminds it if you steal it, and
that is responsibility.
Run towards problems.
(47:15):
Run towards problems and do itequipped with tools like this to
be highly, highly accountableand highly clear and kind.
Speaker 2 (47:24):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (47:25):
And when you show up as an empathic problem solver
and you communicate withexquisite clarity and show
exquisite attention to detailand you manage your expectations
just as avidly as you managethe rest of the work, you will
be a standout person and peoplewill want to give you more work
and want to give you moreresponsibility.
(47:47):
Heck, I would.
Speaker 2 (47:50):
Yeah, yeah, and all of us want that right.
It just makes it so much betterfor us.
Speaker 1 (47:56):
That's who we want to delegate to is the people who
take ownership and make stuffhappen.
Speaker 2 (48:00):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (48:01):
Don't blindside us.
Speaker 2 (48:02):
Yeah, yeah, that is wonderful.
So how do we get in touch?
Speaker 1 (48:07):
with you.
Please go to bestbossbiz If youhave me on again.
Another time I'll explain thesignificance of best boss.
It's the touchstone and theheart of what I call the only
universal truth of leadership.
Speaker 2 (48:18):
Yes.
I would love to have you on theshow again If you're willing to
come back on the show.
There's just so much we couldtalk about Absolutely.
But yeah, that'll be next time,we'll dive into that.
Yeah, wonderful.
Well, thank you so much forbeing a guest.
This has been so incrediblyinformative and I know that we
(48:40):
have learned a lot here, sothanks again for taking the time
to sharing this with us.
Speaker 1 (48:47):
Very much my pleasure , Jen.
Thank you for having me on.
Speaker 2 (48:49):
All right, everybody.
Y'all take care, have a greatrest of your day evening,
wherever you are in the world,and we'll see you next time.
Thanks for listening.
If you enjoyed this episode andyou'd like to help support the
(49:11):
podcast, please share it withothers, post about it on social
media or leave a rating and areview.
Welcome to the Communication 24-7 podcast,
where we communicate about howwe communicate.
I'm your host, Jennifer Furlong.
I have a really special guesttoday.
(00:32):
Thomas Cox and I startedcommunicating some time ago and,
due to my own fault, I had topostpone this conversation, and
I'm so excited to be able tohave him on the show today.
We're going to talk aboutleadership development, focus on
(00:59):
what are those communicationskills that we really need to
concentrate on developing inorder to be successful and to
move up into those leadershipranks, specifically executive
leadership.
I haven't had an opportunityreally to have someone on the
show who can talk to us aboutthis part of our communication
skills.
So, Thomas, thank you so muchfor being on the show.
I'm super excited about thisconversation with you.
(01:21):
Thank you, Jen.
We could cover many hours onthis, but I'll be right back
Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
We can try to be brisk in brief.
So just to get the audiencecaught up with you.
How did you get into this spaceof leadership?
Speaker 2 (01:33):
development Because, you know, reading your bio, you
have a lot of fantasticexperience.
So what caused you to move here?
I was originally a technologist.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
I was one of those people who was technically
brilliant and a total jerk.
And my thinking was, if I wastechnically brilliant enough,
you would all have to put upwith me.
And that worked okay, not great.
It didn't work as well as I wasimagining it was working, I
suspect.
But what happened is Iplateaued technically.
I was doing databasearchitecture, working for Oracle
(02:11):
and IBM and Price WhitehouseCoopers and having a bunch of
big projects, big clients,interesting work, and after
about 15 years I'd gone so deepinto it that I designed kind of
every database structure therewas and it was.
None of it was challenginganymore.
I'm like do I want to coast forthe next 20, 30 years?
And I'm like, no, no, I want tochallenge.
What am I not good at?
(02:32):
But I really want to be good at?
And for me that was people.
It was leadership.
I realized I've got what'scommonly referred to as a good
at Asperger's syndrome.
I don't think that's a they'velet go of that as a formal
diagnosis anymore but it's acluster of attributes of being
(02:55):
not very good at people skillsor picking up on context and
subtext.
And everyone's looking at mefunny.
It's like it's because you'rebeing a jerk Thomas.
It's like, no, no, it can't bethat.
Yeah, it's exactly that dude,and I went through high school
and college and I was like I'mnot good at that.
I went through high school andcollege not making very many
friends and not being veryempathic, but just loving my
(03:18):
technology and loving my facts,and that will never get you into
leadership or, if it does, youwill not be a good leader.
And I found that out in 2005when I was forced to confront
the fact that I was a borderline, toxic leader.
And here.
But I've been reading HarvardBusiness Review and I've been
(03:40):
studying all these books.
And how can I want to be good,how can I be this bad when I
want to be this good?
And I've been reading all thestuff Like what's going on here.
And that's when I had to facethat a vast amount of what
passes for leadership literatureis garbage.
It's either completely wrong orit's too narrow.
(04:03):
There's a cool class that I callTBU, true, but useless, where
you read the words and you'relike, oh okay, I can get that.
And then you're done readingand you're like so what do I do?
And the answer is well, there'snothing in there to tell you
that, and some of it's even fromtop names.
They'll have.
You know, I'm reading passages.
Like you know, leaders driveresults.
(04:23):
I'm like, oh yeah, okay,leaders drive results.
So what is?
How do I do that?
And what I had to do was andthis again, my obsessive
factor-oriented brain reallyserved me well.
Once I set my mind to this,starting in 2005, I had to
figure this out.
I ran across a very few sourcesthat were truly excellent.
(04:46):
I'll give one credit inparticular managertoolscom.
Manager-toolscom If you takenothing else from me today, but
you go to that website and startto listen to the free podcast
or subscribe or buy the book byMark Horseman on the effective
manager, that it took me fromhelpless, hopeless, useless to a
(05:12):
pretty decent manager very,very quickly, and that's been
kind of the backbone ofeverything I've learned.
I've since added a lot to that,and what I want to talk to you
today has to do withaccountability, because everyone
will tell you thataccountability is great and
everyone wants other people tohave more accountability, but
(05:33):
they strangely don't seem tothink that they themselves need
that much more, where they kindof sort of know that they could
be better, but they don't knowwhere to really start.
That was a deep dive for me.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
I'll tell you.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
A guy named Fernando Flores figured this out 1985, he
published something with hiscollaborator from Stanford,
terry Winograd, and it issomething called the basic
workflow, and it turns out thatevery accountable agreement and
(06:06):
accountability comes from makingaccountable agreements and then
fulfilling them is that thatdialogue has a four-part
structure, and it is the samestructure for everybody.
For every accountableconversation, every accountable
agreement you'll ever make inyour life, whether it's please
pass the salt or open us a newdivision in Salt Lake City, it
(06:27):
doesn't matter how big or small.
The structure is identical.
And as I describe it, you'llthink to yourself yeah, okay,
that sounds I get that, butthere's some subtleties that I
will elaborate for you that willdifferentiate you from your
coworkers.
You'll stand out in the eyes ofyour customers and your boss,
and it'll attract to you muchmore responsibility.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
When you master this, yeah, I want to jump in real
quick because I reallyappreciate your focus on the
how-to aspect of it.
I think a lot of listeners thatwill resonate with them and
that's one of the reasons whyWithout that we're just saying
plausible things oh yeah, so welove a great leader.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
Oh yeah, you should be authentic.
Oh yeah yeah, we spend half anhour talking about how great
authenticity is, but at the endof the day, if you don't know
what to do differently, I havenot helped you.
Yes, and I'm committed tohelping people.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
It's so critical.
That's my mission.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
That's my passion.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
Yeah, I have a great appreciation for that and I know
the listeners will have anappreciation for that as well.
I do want to ask one questionthat, with something that you
had just mentioned, you wouldrealize that you were kind of
sort of a toxic boss, and whatexactly was it that pinpointed
(07:55):
to you?
This is holding me back,because there's so many people
out there and you can give themthe feedback, but they ain't
hearing it right.
And you can do all the 360s inthe world, you know and
everybody's giving you similarfeedback, but they're just,
they're not able to take it in.
(08:18):
So what was it?
Speaker 1 (08:20):
They don't know what it means because they don't know
what the new behaviors have tobe.
So it turns out, every followerwants the exact same
fundamental experience, and thatfundamental experience is they
want a boss who has a strongenough relationship with them
that they can tell that thatboss knows them as a unique
(08:41):
human being, really listens tothem, pays attention to them,
doesn't confuse them with otherpeople on the team, knows what
they're good at and cares aboutthem Not too much, but more than
nothing.
They're not going to mistakeyou for a family member, but you
matter to them.
(09:01):
And at the same time, they wanta boss who champions excellence
and won't let them skate, won'tlet them phone it in.
They really was going to pullout of them their best work.
And so, jen, if you and Ididn't know each other very well
and I said to you, jen, this isnot your best work, I need you
to do this again, you'd think,wow, what a manipulative line.
Yeah right, you don't know whatmy best work is, you chump.
(09:27):
But if you and I have spent manyweeks where, every week, I have
a half hour meeting with youthat's scheduled in advance,
where you talk first and Ilisten and I'm taking notes.
That's the one-on-oneManagerToolscom recommends.
It's research that's shown thatthat is the best way to do it.
Every week, 30 minutes and inthat time eight, 12 weeks go by
(09:47):
and you know that I know youwell.
I listen to you, I payattention to you, I give you
feedback on your performance asspot-on, and then I come to you
one day and say, jen, thisreport not your best work.
I need your best work on thisone.
I need you to do it again.
And you're going to go like,yeah, tom really knows me and
you kind of know, you kind ofdid phone it in and rather than
(10:11):
get into denial or name callingor whatever, you're going to go
yeah, he's right, and you'regoing to do it again because I
care enough about you and youcare enough about me that you
want to maintain therelationship.
You'll go the extra mile for meand you know that I'm not going
to say something in amanipulative way.
If I say it's not your bestwork, I'm probably seeing
(10:32):
something real.
And I've demonstrated to youthat I can really spot good work
from not good work.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
Build that trust.
Speaker 1 (10:39):
Yeah, and so strong relationship and strong
requiring those are the twopieces that have to come
together simultaneously tocreate an excellent boss
experience.
And I was mediocre at requiringand I was a zero at relating in
2005.
Speaker 2 (10:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
And I just had to start over and learn those
skills.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
Yeah, do you think you had mentioned empathy
earlier, and how?
You that was something that hadnot developed in you and that
resonated.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
I didn't have none, I didn't have a lot.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
I didn't have a lot to get at.
How did you build the empathypart?
Because for a lot of people itdoes come natural, for a lot of
people, but for many of us whoare more like action oriented,
it's a skill that you really dohave to try to develop.
So what did you do to develop?
Speaker 1 (11:31):
that?
Yeah.
Well, the first thing toremember is, the more action
oriented you are, the more youwant empathy, because it just
speeds things up.
And if you're already anempathic person, great.
But if you're too empathic,you'll hesitate to require
appropriately, thinking that itmight harm the relationship, and
(11:51):
you'll lose sight of the factthat the best boss you've ever
had is someone who did demandyour top work from you.
So if you let your empathy getin the way of demanding
excellence, you're actuallyharming the relationship,
believe it or not.
And if you again, if you're atask oriented person and you're
about oh, I'm about results, I'ma hard nosed results person
it's like great, and empathywill get you there faster,
(12:14):
better.
That's the reason why youshould take the time to
understand how, if you don'tknow how humans work, you can't
work with humans.
Like, if you can't figure outhow to drive the car, you can't
get anywhere with the car.
Humans run on empathy, amongother things.
It gives you the relationshipand the traction to ask for what
you want, and you're likely toget a yes from people.
Speaker 2 (12:34):
Yeah, and find that your empathy grew over time as
you continued to practice theone-on-one and having those
conversations.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
I had to read about empathy development and where it
fits in the brain, and there'ssome specific practices you can
do to accelerate this quitedramatically.
One is get into Toastmastersand become an officer in a
Toastmasters club.
That is the fast track toleadership skill development
(13:05):
because it's all volunteers.
No one's doing it for money.
You can't force people to doanything.
You've got to persuade them andthere's a lot of public
speaking and leading, and soToastmasters gives you a little
bit of speaking every singleweek and it's only through
repetition that we get betterand positive feedback.
The other thing that helps a tonis if you can find it or
(13:31):
there's various sources for thisimprovisational theater, not
comedy.
Comedy is about humor andthat's the humor is distancing.
Improvisational theater isabout getting onto a stage with
one or more other peoplelistening deeply to them in the
moment.
You can't have anythingpreconceived, you're fully
present and then you respondwith something that is
(13:53):
emotionally appropriate to theemotional reality they've given
you in their comments.
You don't respond to the wordsnearly as much as you respond to
the totality of what they'vesaid and the way they've said it
.
And because it's just fun, it'sjust practice, it's not like
the stakes are low and thereforeyou get a lot of reps, a lot of
(14:14):
repetitions in in a low stress,low risk environment with lots
of very fast feedback, andthat's the way to learn
something well, and improvtheater did tons for my empathy
development, my ability tolisten for the emotional truth
and other people's words andtheir tone of voice, so that
would be an approach.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
That's key.
Right there, you're making methink back to when I was
teaching at the college level.
I taught for 18 years at thecollege level and I taught
public speaking and humancommunication skills and at the
time the university I taught forthey made it a requirement for
all computer sciences and ITmajors.
(14:58):
They had to take publicspeaking in order to graduate.
Speaker 1 (15:02):
Good.
Speaker 2 (15:02):
And I agree, I was like, yes, good, we know that
there's value in this and thosekids would come in.
Of course they would come intothe classroom, half of them
seniors, because they would waittill the last minute to take
this class, because they had tohave it to graduate.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
The whole thing that the requirement would be dropped
over the course of four years.
Speaker 2 (15:23):
And by the end of the semester, every single time,
without fail, they would say Ishould have taken this class so
long ago.
I don't know why did I wait totake this class?
What was I scared for?
What was I scared of?
Because they ended up, they sawhow these skills were really
impacting them in other areas.
(15:44):
They ended up having fun withit, doing the impromptu stuff,
things like what you were justtalking about.
It truly is a valuable skill tobe able to develop.
Speaker 1 (15:55):
You can't name me a leadership role that doesn't
involve speaking to a team, tothe group, to your boss, to a
senior committee, to somethingother than yourself or one other
person, If you can't get up andspeak and be on stage.
Oh yeah, by the way, whenyou're a leader, everyone's
looking at you.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
Your whole team's watching you very carefully
because you're kind of the alphadog.
You're setting the emotionaltone for the team.
If you come in with a frown onyour face, everyone starts to
get worried.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
Mm-hmm.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
Maybe you just got a flat tire that morning, but the
next thing you know there'srumors of layoffs or something.
It's like no, I'm just downdudes.
And so you got to be able toself-regulate, not just read
others, but also read yourselfand have good self-control.
Yeah, I think the most usefultool for that is and this is
something that I provide to myclients called positive
(16:51):
intelligence.
There's a book by that name,positive Intelligence.
There's a websitepositiveintelligencecom and that
is really a foundational set ofskills for getting out of fight
or flight, getting out of blame, and being constructive and
(17:11):
being fully present with others.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
Mm-hmm.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
See, it's incomparable.
It's revolutionized my practice.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
Show your support by becoming a Com 24-7 insider.
Monthly subscriptions begin foras little as $3 a month.
Join today and get a shout outon an upcoming episode and
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Yeah, and I think that goesback to the accountability
(17:47):
aspect that you had mentionedearlier just being willing to
look at what it is that you'reresponsible for and making sure
that you're holding yourself upto those standards and no
excuses about it.
And if you screw up, you screwup right.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
Make sure it's a learning experience and have the
courage to admit it and make apoint to learn.
Do you still want me to talkabout the four-step process of
creating an accountableagreement and fulfilling it?
Yeah, absolutely, I would loveto share that to me.
So imagine covering a circle infour segments.
You start at, say, 12 o'clock.
(18:24):
Yeah, we're going to start at aspot on a circle.
You're going to go a quarterway around the circle and we're
going to label that initiation.
That is, you are about to asksomebody for a please do this
thing for me.
You want them to enter anagreement with you and you need
to spend a little time gettingclear on what exactly do I want?
How do I want it?
(18:46):
By when do I want it?
Do I have I gathered all thedata I need to give them for
this?
For the first time I taught thiswas to guy named Eric Albertson
, and he discovered that he wasroutinely asking his assistant
for things, doing the initiationand giving him one quarter of
the information needed toactually do it, but guaranteeing
(19:09):
back and forth messages well,what about this?
What about this?
What about this?
And when I gave him thetraining, he's like oh, I'm
wasting a lot of our time byprematurely initiating without
actually having all the stufflined up.
So you heard the phrase wellbegun is half done.
That's what a good initiation isis getting your head on
(19:31):
straight.
If you've ever asked for thisbefore, if this is a routine ask
, there's no excuse for you notto have your ducks in a line and
have your facts laid out.
Make a template, do a Googleform.
Just take the time to respectthe person you're going to ask
by getting yourself straightfirst, so you initiate carefully
(19:51):
and clearly.
And if there was a hiccup lasttime, think about that hiccup.
And how do I front load arequest that we not do that
again?
Like, oh, you gave me a PDF andI wanted a Word document.
What if my initiation, I saythe words I want this as a Word
document place?
Speaker 2 (20:08):
So you don't have to guess or remember.
Speaker 1 (20:09):
That's good info, good, clear initiation.
So then, okay, initiation endswhen I open my mouth or send the
email to actually ask Now weget into negotiation.
Chris Voss's book Never Spotethe Difference is a great book
for the negotiation phasebecause he's all about win-win
negotiation, where you try tosay okay, and what else do I
need to know?
How do we make this an evenbetter agreement together?
(20:32):
And you never, ever, ever wantto say yes prematurely.
That is the death of goodaccountability.
If someone's asking you, hey,thomas, will you, hey Jen, will
you do this thing for me?
Do not say the word yes untilyou have gathered the
information you need to actuallycommit to that yes, if I said
(20:54):
yes, I'll do this podcast to youand I hadn't checked my
calendar and I was out of townthat day or otherwise
unavailable, I'd have to go backwith my tail between my legs
and say, oh, jen, I'm sorry, Isaid yes, but now I look like a
chump, right, you?
Speaker 2 (21:11):
started to build on my yes.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
You started to schedule things.
You're starting to depend on me, and here I am changing stuff.
I could have checked mycalendar up front, couldn't?
I?
Shouldn't?
I Wouldn't you be happier if Ihad?
Of course you would.
So my best advice to the peoplebeing asked if you think you
need to say yes to placatesomebody because it's your boss
(21:36):
and you have to say yes to yourboss, or you're a pleaser and
you just want to make everybodyhappy by saying yes to
everything, do not do that.
Hold yourself back.
And if you need to express yourenthusiasm or your willingness
to say hey.
I'm so looking forward togetting all the information from
you so that I can give you acommitted yes.
(21:56):
Here's my questions.
And you hold back on thecommitment yes.
There's three kinds of yes, asChris Voss says in his book
Never Split the Difference.
There's the confirmation yes,like is it half past the hour
already?
Yes, yes, it is.
Are we going to meet at 7o'clock for dinner?
(22:18):
Yeah, at 7 o'clock.
That's like you're confirmingfacts.
That's all that yes is.
It doesn't actually create anykind of accountability
commitment.
The second kind is thecounterfeit yes.
That's where you say yes butdon't really mean it.
Or you say it but you haven'treally checked and so you can't
really mean it.
And you're doing it because youwant to protect yourself
(22:39):
emotionally.
You do it to manipulate theother person.
You're trying to create anexpectation or blow it up
Expectation or belief, eitherprematurely or contrary to the
facts.
And you should never accept acounterfeit yes.
You should never give acounterfeit yes.
And if you suspect acounterfeit yes, challenge it,
including one from yourself.
(23:02):
So then the third kind of yes iscommitment, where I tell you
when I say yes to you, jen, I amtaking on the burden of you
expecting me to do this the waywe've now agreed and I, my
reputation is on the line.
And if you want to advance inan organization, you make sure
that you give commitment, yesesand follow through.
(23:24):
And that means you take thetime to gather the information
first, as soon as you discoverthere's a problem, like hey, I
gave you a commitment yesterdayand then something happened and
I discovered my wife has usbooked to be out of town that
day and I can't reschedule it,or my dishwasher blew up and I
(23:45):
have to spend the day fixing it,or I got sick and I can't do
the thing.
But as soon as I know.
I'm telling you why Because Iwant you to have lead time,
because I care about you,because I have integrity and I
want you to know that theexpectation may shift and
accountability is really aboutmanaging expectations at least
(24:07):
as much as managing the work.
There's two halves toaccountability there's the
promise made and then there'sthe work done.
They must match.
Every time they start to driftapart, you do the work to
reconnect them.
Speaker 2 (24:21):
Right, right.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
I have a four-hour class I teach on this.
Yeah, I know how to manage allthese pieces, okay.
So finally, you get throughyour negotiation.
You give your committed yes.
You pulled out of the otherperson all the facts, the
context you want to report.
How are you going to use thisreport?
Who's going to read the report?
What format do you want thereport in?
What kind of detail do you need?
(24:43):
How quickly Are you going towant to reuse this?
Would you be happier with aspreadsheet?
Should I also include a graph?
Should the graph be colorblindaccessible?
You might ask Okay, that's alittle deep but you get the idea
.
The more intelligent questionsyou ask before that final yes,
(25:05):
the more your value rises in theother person's eyes.
Because you've got your ducksin a row as the work provider,
you're asking tough questions.
Okay, what difference does thisreally make?
How good is good enough?
How much detail do you need?
I don't want to overwork thisand charge you extra for
something you don't need.
(25:25):
I don't want to under deliver.
Are other people contributinginformation that I should be
coordinating with so that all ofour work can fold together?
I haven't thought of that.
Yeah, I am.
Okay.
Great, give me their names andI'll coordinate with them.
Wouldn't that be nice?
All right, part one wasinitiate.
Part two was negotiate.
(25:46):
Now it's time to perform.
Everyone assumes accountabilityis all about performance.
It's only a quarter about goodperformance, but it's a big
quarter when you're performing.
You have already made theagreement.
If you have to tweak theagreement, you do it proactively
and very explicitly.
You may turn around to becomean asker yourself and ask
(26:08):
subcontractors to help you out.
Hey, I promised Jen this thing.
I need to get some stuff done.
Hey, fred, hey, barney, comehelp me.
What happens if Fred or Barneylet me down?
Do I go to Jen and say Jen,it's not my fault, fred, let me
down.
No, top performers never blameanyone.
They own their inputs.
(26:30):
That's the phrase you want touse.
Look this up.
Owning the inputs means if Iturn around to help Jen and I
ask Fred or Barney for help, Iask them with enough lead time
that if they don't perform I canreplace their work with someone
else's or I can recover.
If I can't recover, I say toJen Jen, I'm sorry, I failed to
(26:54):
properly manage mysubcontractors.
I've let you down.
Here's my repromise.
I can help.
It'll be late and I'm verysorry.
How can I help reduce theimpact on you?
That's me owning it.
How do you feel when I talklike that?
Speaker 2 (27:09):
I was going to say if you could just for one second
really think about and hear whatTom just said right there.
I failed in having mysubcontractors, or I failed to
communicate effectively or beingable to take ownership.
That makes me feel okay, I canstill have trust in that.
Speaker 1 (27:34):
I'm still driving this ship.
Speaker 2 (27:36):
You're still driving it.
You're taking responsibilityfor it.
Speaker 1 (27:41):
Whereas if I try to shed responsibility, say, jen,
it's not my fault, these otherthings happened beyond my
control.
Now you're thinking well,clearly, thomas isn't running
this show.
Can I talk to whoever is incharge, please, because it
clearly isn't Tom.
You don't want to be the onenot in charge.
Speaker 2 (27:57):
Yeah, yeah, that's not a good leadership trait Not
a good look.
Speaker 1 (28:01):
Not a good look Since you don't want to have to say,
hey, I screwed up.
There's your incentive to planit well, be proactive, create
really early deadlines for yoursubloops and your subcontractors
so that you have time tointegrate, you have time to
recover from service failuresand so on.
Okay, you've done yourperformance.
(28:23):
If you have to go back and say,hey, I promised you Oak, we're
out of Oak.
I just found out Oak is goingto be another six weeks.
Do you want to wait the sixweeks, or should I use older or
Ash?
I've got those in stock.
I've double checked.
I've actually reserved some,just in case you say yes.
Okay, now we might talk aboutthe pros and cons of waiting
(28:45):
versus going with a differentwood, but at least you've got a
choice and at least I've toldyou as early as I possibly could
.
Speaker 2 (28:51):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (28:52):
It's a trust holder.
Speaker 2 (28:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:54):
Okay, yay, performance is done.
Are we done yet?
No, we're three quarters of theway.
Now we have to have the finalphase, called acceptance, where
performance isn't done until Iboth do the work and number two,
tell you I have done the work.
Okay, how do I tell you I'vedone the work?
Well, we should have negotiatedthat.
(29:15):
We should have agreed duringnegotiation.
So, jen, when I'm done withthis, how do you want me to
inform you that I'm done and howwould you like this delivered?
Should I drop it on your frontporch?
Should I leave it at theon-call window?
Do you want me to forward it onto Betty?
We should know in advance.
(29:37):
Good negotiation, goodinitiation will have that all
straightened out and you'll knowthat I know what to do.
At the end of performance, I'llsay, jen, performance is done.
Here's my report, thatperformance is done.
I'm notifying you in the wayyou asked, which is a text
message and email, a courieredletter, whatever.
(29:58):
Okay, but we're still not donebecause during initiation
negotiation we agreed that onceI deliver, you will look at it
and you'll tell me if it's okayor not.
The acceptance period you say,yep, this looks fine, as is
thanks.
So much or no, actually myneeds have changed or it's not
(30:21):
what I.
What's the old saying in IET?
It's exactly what I asked for,but it's not what I want.
Who knows what the answer isgoing to be that part of us
building a stronger and strongerand stronger relationship isn't
just me delivering, it's ushaving a high bandwidth, high,
trusting conversation afterdelivery about okay, did this
(30:42):
work for you?
How could I have done evenbetter?
What should we do even betternext time?
How do you initiate better?
How do I perform better nexttime?
We do this particular dance andif you're disappointed during
acceptance I did my best andyou're not happy I'm going to
learn lessons from that.
I'm going to take ownershipfrom my role in it and I'm going
(31:08):
to give you hopefully I'll tellyou literally exactly what I'm
going to do differently nexttime, if you give me another
chance and repeated improvementsis an upward spiral of quality
and an upward spiral of mutualtrust.
I tell you there's people Iwould hire again who completely
(31:28):
screwed the pooch, but theyhandled the failure so
gracefully and so well.
This literally happened.
We had a mold treatment in thehouse we were selling.
We were three days from close.
They go in, put a little bleachsolution on.
Then they're going to air outthe crawl space, the attic space
(31:50):
.
We come in the next day theentire house reeks of bleach.
It's uninhabitable.
And now we're not going toclose on the sale but we already
bought the new place.
Everything's in disarray andit's like Saturday, of course,
right, okay, and there's like nohotline number to call.
(32:12):
There's no emergency red phone,nothing.
And we're furious and live itand I'm like calling Paul Davis,
disaster Recovery Specialist,to come in and remediate this
mess and that's going to be, oh,probably $6,000.
The owners get back in touchand say shows up physically,
(32:33):
meets us on site with everyblower and fan I've ever seen in
my life, and the entire staffand his wife are there and
they're like we're going to makethis right.
And within a day you couldn'tsmell a thing.
It was all better.
And they apologized andexplained that they were going
to change their weekend protocolso that no one would ever have
(32:56):
a phone number to call if therewas a problem.
They handled it so well, sobeautifully.
I gave them a five-star Googlereview and I would use them
again in a heartbeat.
Speaker 2 (33:07):
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(33:28):
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show notes.
That's amazing and one themethat I'm seeing as you're
describing these four parts ofthis circle clarity in
communication is so importantduring every single step that
(33:54):
you were taking us through, fromthe clarity in communicating
what your vision is, what it isyou're exactly asking for, to
clarifying with questions tomake sure that you understand it
, and I think, something that alot of people need to hear at
this point, when you're askingthose questions to clarify, it's
(34:17):
giving you an opportunity toreally think about can I
realistically deliver this?
And it is okay to say I cannotrealistically deliver this at
this time.
Speaker 1 (34:28):
You are better off saying no, I can't do it.
Speaker 2 (34:31):
Exactly Bam.
Speaker 1 (34:32):
Yeah, saying yes, and it turns out not to be the case
.
Speaker 2 (34:37):
Yeah, it's so hard.
So many people have a hard timesaying no.
Speaker 1 (34:42):
They're afraid to say no, yes, yes, but I think
that's a really good approach.
Speaker 2 (34:47):
Yeah, it kind of gives them permission in this
way to really think thingsthrough Realistically.
I mean, at this moment in timeI'm not going to be able to pull
this off.
Or I would be able to pull thisoff if I had three weeks
instead of two weeks, and thatwould go into that negotiation
part that you were discussingjust a moment ago.
Speaker 1 (35:10):
So I'm attempting to do a share here.
I'm hoping it's visible.
This is our friend.
The accountability loop, you'llsee, the asker on the left
starts with an initiate as yougo up out of the asker on the
left side.
Initiation ends with thatrequest for performance.
That's the object, the artifact, the email, what have you?
(35:30):
And then the negotiate phaseoccurs from the top down towards
the right ending with a mutualagreement of performance.
What are we each going to do?
I will do the work, jen.
You will promise to respond tomy emails promptly when I ask
for questions or have problemsor need a decision, and we agree
(35:51):
on how I will deliver.
Then there's the perform phase,which only ends when I report
that I'm done.
I can't do the work and go homefor the day.
I have to do the work and tellyou it's done, otherwise you
don't know it's done, you can'tdo your next piece.
And then we've also agreed thatyou're going to go through an
acceptance period and let meknow hey, was this any good?
Did it meet your needs?
How can I do even better nexttime?
Speaker 2 (36:13):
Yeah, and I like this because, regardless of what
side you're on, whether you'rethe asker or you're the doer,
you really are takingresponsibility.
You're taking ownership foryour part.
So if it breaks up, so if itbreaks down at some point, you
really do need to pay attentionto that and ask yourself did I
(36:34):
ask the right questions or did Imake myself clear and really
focus on what I could have donebetter in order?
To make that correction for thenext time.
I love that, that's one thingthat.
I'm, you know, as a communicator, I'm all about take
responsibility for how you areexpressing yourself, whatever it
(36:56):
is, yes, so let me say one lastthing.
Speaker 1 (37:01):
So during perform, it's very common to run into
hiccups, roadblocks, issues ofvarious kinds, and I actually
formulated the accountabilityloop and found Fernando Flores's
original research while I wastrying to help a client, helped
them actually quite dramatically.
They were a digital agency andthey had a problem that they
would start working on somethingand their clients would just go
(37:24):
dark on them, wouldn't reply toemails, wouldn't make decisions
they would have to makedecisions on logos and it would
drag the project out.
It would add all kinds ofadditional costs to things, and
they hadn't actually talkedabout cost overruns in advance,
so they didn't feel they couldcharge for it, and so they ended
up eating a lot of overrids andthey weren't making money Plus.
(37:45):
They were frustrated and I said, look, you're going to do two
things.
First, we're going to come upwith a standard email.
I call it the Warm ABCs Becauseit's an email that's going to
sound cold unless you make aneffort to be warm.
Therefore, make it warm.
Dear Fred, we really loveworking with you.
(38:06):
I've got a very importantquestion for you.
And then A is asked for exactlywhat you actually need.
Is it a decision?
Is it an authorization?
Is it?
What am I asking for here?
Put it up front.
You may have to write the emailuntil you're clear on what it
is you're asking for.
Okay, go back and insert at thetop of the email what am I
(38:28):
asking you for?
It's literally this emailrequests your choice of one of
these three logos.
That's the thing I actuallyneed.
That's the A and ABC.
B is by when.
I need this decision, no later.
If you say tomorrow, saytomorrow, comma, and then
(38:49):
Thursday, the 20th of July.
Because if you say tomorrow andI don't read it until tomorrow,
am I thinking tomorrow fromwhen I read it?
Speaker 2 (39:00):
Is that a?
Speaker 1 (39:01):
vague language.
Now I got to go look up.
When did you send it?
Don't make people think,especially clients.
Don't make people think Ifyou're the one writing the email
, you do the extra work so theydon't have to.
So if I ever say tomorrow, Ialways try to say tomorrow,
parentheses.
Thu for Thursday online dashJUL, or 20 dash J, which works
(39:26):
the 20th of July.
I never use two numbers.
I don't do three slash two ortwo slash three, because that's
either February 3rd or March 2nd, depending on if you're
European Central America.
Speaker 2 (39:36):
That's right yeah.
Speaker 1 (39:38):
It's like no ambiguity.
Ambiguity is evil.
Yeah, it's just no.
So I standardize, actuallytrain.
Anybody works with me.
You always put a two-digitnumber for the day hyphen and a
three-letter abbreviation forthe month.
There's never any ambiguitywith that.
(39:59):
If there's a time component, Ispecify the time zone.
That's a fully qualified date.
So I need this decision fromyou later than noon tomorrow.
Comma, thursday, the 20th ofJuly, and noon would be Pacific
time.
That's the B.
(40:19):
By when?
Okay.
What's the C?
The C is the context and theconsequence.
What if you don't reply?
Very important, okay, becausethey might not.
Or why does this decision allthat important?
They're not going to remember.
When I first broach this, theywere like but it's obvious why
it's important.
I said no, it's obvious to youbecause you're working full-time
(40:41):
on the project.
The clients do a nine otherthings, none of them this, and
they're probably looking at thisemail at the gated LaGuardia
between flights.
Don't make them try to searchout the context to remember why
this is important.
Just put it in there as asentence this decision will
unlock the next phase of theproject and any delay will cause
(41:04):
a delay to the entire project,or whatever is true and there's
a little ass.
After ABCs, the S stands forsilence.
What if they go dark?
If I do not hear from you, Iwill put the project on hold
until I do.
Or if I do not hear from you, Iwill contact your spouse and
(41:27):
ask him or her.
If I do not hear from you, Iwill something.
And when I get taught peoplethat they would say who sounds
threatening, I'm like, look, ifthey are silent, something will
happen.
All you're doing isdemystifying what will happen,
(41:48):
because things will happenwhether you say it or not.
It's kinder to be clearer andtell them if I don't hear from
you, then I'd stop and say whatare you going to do?
If you don't hear from them,I'm just going to put the
project on hold.
Okay, tell them that.
Yes, yes.
Again, I would get pushed backand I finally said okay, you
(42:09):
need to change your onboarding,the initiation negotiation phase
.
You need to say look, before westart working together, you
need to know during perform, weuse a template to communicate
with our clients.
Here's an example.
It's going to look and soundlike this we don't say it to be
mean, we're not trying tothreaten you.
(42:29):
This is how we clearlycommunicate status and needs for
updates with clients.
Are you going to be okay withthis?
Most people say, oh, my God,this is great, you actually
thought this out.
Yeah, we thought this out,we're perfect.
If anybody says you can't talkto me like that, okay.
Well, how would you like me totalk to you when I need a
(42:51):
decision in its critical path?
Speaker 2 (42:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (42:54):
Give me the wording you'd like and I'll put it up
and put a note in your file andthat's how I'll talk to you.
Sahid, yes, yeah, whatever youlike but don't leave this stuff
to chance, right, top performers.
Do not leave performance tochance.
Don't think that you can justdo the work and survive or
thrive.
(43:14):
You have to do the work andmanage expectations around the
work both.
That is the definition ofaccountability is both of those
things together.
Speaker 2 (43:24):
Mm-hmm.
Speaker 1 (43:25):
Yeah, not just one and not just the other.
Speaker 2 (43:28):
Do you know how much this makes my heart sing to have
a guest on my show who, prettymuch, is just confirming
everything that I preach aboutwith the clarity and the
specificity, the directness.
And direct communication doesnot equate to being mean.
(43:50):
Right, it does not mean to, andif you feel mean, to you
reverse.
Speaker 1 (43:55):
Okay, first off soften your tone and second
reverse positions.
Speaker 2 (43:59):
Yes, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (44:01):
Put yourself in the other person's shoes or even
front load it and say, hey, welove our clients and we believe,
as Brunet Brown says, thatclear is kind.
Speaker 2 (44:09):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (44:11):
There is a greater than zero possibility we will
hit a snag.
If and when we hit a snag, wewill communicate to you like
this here's a sample, here's atemplate.
Here's an example of how we dothis.
We'll look like this we willneed you to turn around If you
can't reply.
You need to tell us who is yourbackup person so we can get
fast answers.
If no one answers within 24hours, it says you're in the
(44:33):
contract we can put your projecton hold.
We don't want to do that, butwe can't just pay people to sit
idly because that would bankruptyou.
Yeah, yeah.
And, by the way, here's ourpolicy on overcharges and
overages and whatever.
And if anything was about tooccur that might cause an
upcharge or a penalty, we willtell you in an email like this,
(44:57):
and it'll sound like this andhere's an example.
And again, these are notattempts to make you feel bad.
This is our way of being supertransparent on what to expect.
We're professionals, you're aprofessional, and professionals
talk about money and timelinesand commitments.
Speaker 2 (45:13):
Yeah, and I want to make sure that what I am doing
for you, what I am delivering toyou, is 100% what you're
expecting, 100% what you want.
I want you to be happy.
I want you to be satisfied withthis.
Speaker 1 (45:26):
Bingo.
Speaker 2 (45:27):
Yeah, yeah, it's so critical to be able to
understand that, and in yourright email.
Yeah, it can be very cold, butI tell you what?
What a great opportunity.
The email gives us a greatopportunity to really think
about very carefully how do Icraft this message in a way that
it can be clear and also showsome compassion at the same time
(45:51):
.
So absolutely.
Speaker 1 (45:52):
And if you're not sure how to do it, take the time
up front to draft three or fourversions of templates or
consult some friends, or noticewhen you get an email that you
think, oh, I love this email,this is so nice.
Oh, file it away.
You put it in a swipe file,hang on to that stuff.
Speaker 2 (46:08):
That's right.
Yeah, well, I got to tell youthis has been such a fantastic
episode.
I know that the listeners aregoing to walk away with so much
that they can use coming up withand really more than leadership
.
You know, this is somethingjust every day if you want to be
(46:31):
able to perform effectively inthe workplace, and I can even
see how we could apply a lot ofthis to our personal
relationship.
Speaker 1 (46:41):
Anywhere, you're managing expectations, which is,
oh yeah, most of our lives.
Speaker 2 (46:45):
Oh yeah, Do you manage expectations with your?
Speaker 1 (46:47):
spouse, with your kids, with your parents, with
your neighbors?
Yeah, you do.
Speaker 2 (46:51):
Fantastic Fantastic.
Speaker 1 (46:54):
One last thought I'll leave you with is there's one
thing, because, if you'relooking to be promoted, managing
your people's expectations ofyou and how you follow through
on commitments is a huge way todifferentiate yourself, and
there is one thing that no oneminds it if you steal it, and
that is responsibility.
Run towards problems.
(47:15):
Run towards problems and do itequipped with tools like this to
be highly, highly accountableand highly clear and kind.
Speaker 2 (47:24):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (47:25):
And when you show up as an empathic problem solver
and you communicate withexquisite clarity and show
exquisite attention to detailand you manage your expectations
just as avidly as you managethe rest of the work, you will
be a standout person and peoplewill want to give you more work
and want to give you moreresponsibility.
(47:47):
Heck, I would.
Speaker 2 (47:50):
Yeah, yeah, and all of us want that right.
It just makes it so much betterfor us.
Speaker 1 (47:56):
That's who we want to delegate to is the people who
take ownership and make stuffhappen.
Speaker 2 (48:00):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (48:01):
Don't blindside us.
Speaker 2 (48:02):
Yeah, yeah, that is wonderful.
So how do we get in touch?
Speaker 1 (48:07):
with you.
Please go to bestbossbiz If youhave me on again.
Another time I'll explain thesignificance of best boss.
It's the touchstone and theheart of what I call the only
universal truth of leadership.
Speaker 2 (48:18):
Yes.
I would love to have you on theshow again If you're willing to
come back on the show.
There's just so much we couldtalk about Absolutely.
But yeah, that'll be next time,we'll dive into that.
Yeah, wonderful.
Well, thank you so much forbeing a guest.
This has been so incrediblyinformative and I know that we
(48:40):
have learned a lot here, sothanks again for taking the time
to sharing this with us.
Speaker 1 (48:47):
Very much my pleasure , Jen.
Thank you for having me on.
Speaker 2 (48:49):
All right, everybody.
Y'all take care, have a greatrest of your day evening,
wherever you are in the world,and we'll see you next time.
Thanks for listening.
If you enjoyed this episode andyou'd like to help support the
(49:11):
podcast, please share it withothers, post about it on social
media or leave a rating and areview.
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