Another day at the park

Pictures of Jack and Niko when they were a bit younger

Hitting the dog park

Do the right thing!

Many years ago, I used to run the technical operations team for a company of about 250 people. After software was deployed to our systems, our inventory system could suffer issues and I, like the rest of my team, wore pagers to bring things back online if that happened.

One night our systems went offline in the middle of the night. I received the second page (which meant that no one picked up the first one) and I spent most of the evening trying to repair the situation before inventory was necessary on the East Coast. It was 3AM and I decided that missing the 8AM meeting was not a big deal.

The next morning, I learned a very important lesson from my mentor. While it was important to get the servers up and running at 3AM, it should have been my priority to be at the meeting at 8AM to represent what happened the night before.

We are often asked to use our judgment and do the right thing. What often is missing from that request are perspectives of regarding role and scope of influence.

• Individual contributors look for ways to ensure that they can meet the customers/end-users expectations.
• Leads look to do the right thing for their local team.
• Manager (or a manager of leads) do their best to represent their overarching team.

Questions in this space relate to work-life balance, team load balancing, and reduction in context switching.
The other inflection point is regarding scope of influence. This is where the conversation becomes more difficult to articulate. The questions and answers become less concrete.

• Is doing this workload or piece of work better for your organization, for your product, or for your company?
  
  This meme gets used, but gets talked about at the company level when a local scope is best utilized. "It is the right thing for company" is said but words are often left off. This actual statement often means "it is the right thing for the company to spend your resources on my project even though I didnt plan or ask for it."
  
  By changing the context from "company" to "division" or "group," the discussion effectively changes. This does not mean you should not consider the impacts to the company in your discussions, but it should be a transparent discussion where the below points are also discussed.
• Are you or your group the best to handle this responsibility? This requires reflection and dismissal of self-deception techniques. Make sure you pass "the Mom sniff test" and only you know if you do.
• Are all facets being considered when you are being asked to do the right thing? Budget, scope, resources, time, shared prioritization, etc.
• Is doing this effort today the right decision beyond today? Will you look back on this decision in 3/6/12 months and still be ok with this decision based on the information you have today?

These questions are often not asked nor offered as they change the leverage that the statement "do the right thing" has in forcing a specific behavior; compliance.
This is also where you can also negotiate for better results through compliance today for "doing the right thing" tomorrow with the above questions answered. You can ask the question "while this effort is important today, is this effort a business priority for your team?" and then hold all parties accountable for their respective answers.

The Power of Micromessaging

In the book "Micromessaging," there is a reference to a study by Robert Rosenthal about the testing of rats. In that study, there was one group of rats and it was shown to two different groups. In one test, the group was told that these rats were exceptional. The second group was told that these rats were not especially bright. In both, they were expected to give their observations about the rats.

Strangely enough, the group that was told about how smart the rats were gave observations that supported that assertion; conversely, the group that was told the rats were not especially bright shared that perception. When you begin looking at the behavioral characteristics through a pre-filtered lens, it has a deeper impact that we realize.

Another example the author focuses on is the introduction of two individuals. "Steve" is introduced with what their responsibilities are, the tone of the voice is somewhat flat, and the individual is standing behind the introducer. "Bob," however, is introduced with "and this is Bob,"  the tone is much more animated, and Bob is patted on the back as they are standing diagonal to the introducer.

• While each person is introduced with nothing wrong said, which person do you want to meet? 
  
• Which person is the one that is going places? 
  
• How did you tell?
  

The author laser focuses in on the how did you tell and points out the responsibility of the speaker in delivering a balanced message. Without intending, we deliver these messages every day.

Think back on the last time someone you didn't want to chat with to stopped by your office or your home. Did you check your email, look at the clock, not meet eye contact, or respond without any real affect to your voice? Each of those are micromessages that scream to the recipient that I would rather be doing something else.

This book is a great read to be self-critical in how we message things and, more importantly, how we communicate things we may not have intended. This applies to any relationship and articulates the adage that you get exactly what you put into any relationship.

Things to consider when communicating:

• Tone and inflection of your voice - are you animated or does it sound like drudgery even to you
• Attention and focus on the speaker - are you making eye contact
• Vocabulary - do you hold words that could be considered praise in reserve
• Body language - are you slouched or are you looking at your monitor or are you leaning forward and listening intently

While this list is not comprehensive, the key message the author tries to convey is that we control the richness of our relationships through the engagement we provide. If you provide positive messaging, you will likely receive a positive outcome. If you provide negative messaging, you will likely receive a negative outcome.

If you as the speaker have this much control, how much are you willing to work to ensure your relationships develop with intention?

Getting to public speaking

Like every week, the boy needed to do a book report. This was not that big a deal as the boy enjoyed reading. However, giving the book report was always uncomfortable. He would be expected to stand in front of the room and give his report to his class.

When he arrived at class, there was a video camera and television set up in the room. Child after child went without any major incident and the teacher called on the boy as he was the last one to go.

The boy went to the front of the room and started to recite his book report and then stopped suddenly. He could not remember the report and the teacher asked, "didn't you do your book report?" He replied meekly with "Yes." The teacher then said "You need to finish your book report and it needs to be 2 minutes like I assigned."

He tried to start again and for the life of him could not remember what he had read. After what seemed like an eternity, he started to cry as the camera rolled on. After what seemed like an eternity and a half, the teacher graciously turned off the camera and excused the boy back to his desk.

The next words from the teacher were "Now we are going to watch each book report and judge how they did as a class." When the tape continued to his section, the boy could only hope that the teacher would put a stop to it. As the boy on the television began to give the book report and froze, the boy had that same sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach again.

Time passed and the video eventually ended, but the feeling did not. For the remainder of the school year, this continued and he never did get past his fears.

In order to be an effective presenter and public speaker, you should follow the following process to reduce any possible anxiety you may experience.

1. Own the material
2. Know your audience
3. Plan, plan, plan
4. Practice, practice, practice

The confidence you bring will help your audience believe your content. The best way to describe this is why should your audience believe what you are presenting if you do not believe it yourself. Prepare by coming up with questions and answers that would come up from a person that does not have the same background as you or questioning each of your assumptions. This can be done in your practice sessions before your actual presentations.

Who you are presenting to is critical to ensuring you are using the right language profile. This coupled with the size of your audience and the benefit/value that this presentation will provide are major success indicators. Choosing the right language profile will allow you connect and build rapport with your audience.

A little splash of planning will go a long way. Print outs, presentation deck, laser pointer, cue cards, and other aids are all great as long as they are ready before hand. Get these items together an hour or two before your engagement. Make sure you do not compete with lunch and that there is adequate seating for your audience.

Last, but not least, practice often and much. This will allow you to be comfortable in speaking without reading the content off the screen. Additionally, you will be able to get feedback on your content and the manner in which you present which will only improve over time.

As with everything you do, be realistic in what you can handle and practice in increasing your scope over time. If you try to do your first presentation to a room of 1000s, the result will likely not be to your liking.

What other tricks have you learned to make you a better public speaker?

Foundations of trust

A while ago, I went to buy a car because my commute had become somewhat unbearable and I was looking for a little luxury out of the situation. I went to the car lot and a salesman struck up conversation up with me. We chatted about what I was looking for and the different types of vehicles that were available.

When we went for the test drive, I was pretty much ready to buy the car right there. When we got out of the car, I said, "I am interested in getting this car. What do I need to do next to make that happen?"

The response that I got stopped me in my tracks. With a lilt to his head and a tone that spoke he was trying to sell me something, he said, "Trust me. I got your back."

All the rapport he had spent building was gone in one 5 second exchange. He had gone from someone that was interested in what I was looking for to someone that appeared to have dollar signs in his eyes.

The fundamentals of trust are so delicate and require constant vigilance as for one wrong move can damage it irreparably. It boils down to behaviors and the underlying micromessaging that we convey on a day-to-day basis. It is the baseline required for good relationships no matter the context; significant other, child, employee, friend, manager, or parent.

Trust is what makes it possible for individuals to have a short conversation and respond with, "I understand. How do I help?" It is also what causes individuals to dig deeper when they hear a new idea because "it just doesn't sit right with them."

When you consider that all individuals in a relationship start on day 1 from a neutral standpoint, trust is like the freshly potted plant from the floral shop that is just to be planted.

Given that knowledge, what can you do to grow your plant effectively?

• Be the example of integrity
• Set and meet expectations
• Be humble and kind

Each of these has individual behaviors you can exhibit on a day-to-day basis. When stray from this in your relationships, you will find that you will have created negative influence/trust for yourself.

Be the example of integrity can be exemplified in many ways; choosing to do the right thing versus wanting to be right, taking responsibility for doing something wrong or making an error, being honest, giving credit, or being sincere. While these are some examples, there are many more micro-actions you can take to help be the role model of integrity.

Set and meet expectations is grounded in clear communications with all individuals. Whether it is through project schedules and committing to timelines for the big project or through planning a date night your significant other, the core still applies. Define the outcome and make sure you each have shared understanding and beliefs. Missed expectations are often not about what was delivered, but what was left unsaid.

Be kind and be humble are about the concept of "the Mom sniff test," but especially about being generous with ourselves. Share your time, your experiences, your lessons, and your beliefs and you will find people willing to share the same with you as well. This creation of shared understanding enables clarity of thought and language profile.

Like any plant, trust requires care and feeding and without it, trust will atrophy. When you invest the time and effort, you will see the relationship flourish and continue to grow over time.

What do you do to build trust within your relationships?

The fundamentals of "the Mom sniff test"

When I look at the way I was brought up by my parents, there were a few rules that have shaped the manner in which I develop and maintain relationships. Not to take away from my father's contribution in anyway (Sorry Pop! :)), I have coined the phrase "the Mom sniff test."

While simple in concept, these are often the overlooked.

• Name - "A person’s name is, to that person, the sweetest and most important sound in any language." - Dale Carnegie. Do everything you can to remember and address people by name. The engagement you will receive in return will increase substantially.
• Please - "Don't reserve your best behavior for special occassions. You can't have two sets of manners, two social codes - one for those you admire and want to impress, another for those whom you consider unimportant. You must be the same to all people." - Lillian Eichler Watson. When you treat all people with respect and kindness, again, the engagement you receive in return will be richer.
• Thank you - "As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them." - John F. Kennedy. I will take on the role of being captain obvious and state that recognizing the efforts other put in is critical.
• You are welcome - "The smallest act of kindness is worth more than the grandest intention." - Oscar Wilde. Same as above, it is important to recognize and acknowledge others.
• Is there anything that I can help you with? - "Generosity is not giving me that which I need more than you do, but it is giving me that which you need more than I do." - Kahlil Gibran. The dedication of time and effort to others needs will grant you the opportunity to build trust.

When I stick close to these, I find my relationships are richer and more fulfilling. When coupled with the work ecosystem, it yields great dividends in magnifying the creation of trust and deep networks.

Thanks Mom and Pop!

The art of the compliment

Compliments to some people are the acknowledgement and affirmation that is necessary to continue to do great work. Conversely, to some people, the compliment is a segue into an uncomfortable silence. When giving a compliment or reinforcing feedback, ensure that you are sincere. If you do not believe what you are saying, it will be clear to the recipient through the microinequities you will be radiating.

When giving a compliment, you want to be as specific as possible to ensure the recipient has an opportunity to understand why they are being appreciated. A good formula you can use is something like the following: "When you covered the meeting for me this afternoon, it made it possible for me to go to the budget meeting and advocate for our group’s needs. Thank you very much for your flexibility and supporting me this afternoon." In a more generic way, it could look like this "When you [exhibited behavior], the impact was [what was the impact felt]. [Please continue doing the same thing or could you change your behavior]."

Feedback is neither positive nor negative. Feedback is a description of impacts caused by specific behaviors. If you want a great listen on feedback, please check out Manager Tools as they invest heavily in this topic.

If you are receiving a compliment; be patient, listen intently, and acknowledge it fully. Be gracious and thank the individual for giving you the compliment. This can be simply done with a few simple words that show that you value their opinion; "Thank you for taking the time to tell me that. I appreciate it."

By returning the compliment with respect and sincerity, you will continue to foster the trust that is already built with the sender.

Telegraphing

Telegraphing is defined as "to divulge or indicate unwittingly (one's intention, next offensive move, etc.), as to an opponent or to an audience."

To effectively use telegraphing, one has to make a minimal investment in the following elements:

• Observation
• Language profile
• Inquiry and triggering

Observation is recognizing an individual or groups involvement represented by group dynamics and interactions in a topic or a subject of presentation. The key attributes to watch physical or tonal differentiation correlated with topics at hand. For example, if you were to talk to me about the importance of configuration management within a software organization, you would definitely be a part of a very animated conversation.

Language profile like the previous post is about understanding the language of the person you will be communicating with. If you are speaking to a physician about their business and your topic was insurance billing, you would need to know the background about medical coding for insurance forms, ICD coding, CPT coding, and the overhead related to managing insurance payments in a private practice. If you are unaware of the right terminology, you may not be projecting the appropriate responses. This learning will require some investment of time to learn the language, a prequisite for a rapport.

With inqury and triggering, you are trying to steer a conversation in a specific direction. You will need to ensure that you are not perceived as dominating (even though that may be what you are wanting to do). For if you do, you risk creating negative influence with all those in the audience. By structuring your statements as non-confrontational inquiries, you can effectively manage the interactions through precision questioning with neutral tones.

With a tactful use of language profile and topics, one can shape and direct a conversation in a direction you would like it to go. The precision questioning coupled with using the language profile and knowing what topics create animated behavior will allow you to trigger similar behaviors on-demand. This can be done in general conversation, through email, or in meetings.

While all of these are ways to influence directly and indirectly, I find it important to emphasize "the Mom sniff test" and recognizing the different between doing right versus being right. If you stray too far from either of these principles, you will find that you are steering this interaction into the toilet.

Speak quietly and carry a big stick

This saying was quoted from Theodore Roosevelt and its wiseness still holds true to today.

One of the questions that I was asked today was "how is it that you can ask questions that cut to the bone and people are not taken a back."

This is comprised of a couple of critical elements:

• Speak from a position of authority on your domain expertise
• Doing right versus being right
• Know your audience and tailoring your language
• Delivery of the message based on fundamentals of communication
• "The Mom sniff test"

The fundamental rule is that you are presenting information that is founded in fact. Without this baseline, any application of the below principles will yield negative influence.

The doing right versus being right discussion is an age old one that speaks to motivation for your message. If even for a second it is perceived that you are trying to be right in your discussion, you lose the moral high ground and will have to make up serious ground in attempting to influence the audience.

Each audience requires a different tact or language profile. For a technical audience, it will be expected that a primarily technical vocabulary be used. For a management audience, it will be expected that clear expectations are set through resources, budget, and timelines. For business owners, it will be business impacts.

If you use the incorrect language profile, you will find that the audience will not hear your message and your influence will decrease in that setting.

Shifting gears into the fundamentals of communication, Albert Mehrabian researched the three key elements of communication; the words, the tone and inflection of your voice, and body language you display. Of these items, the body language plays the largest impact on your message followed by the tone and inflection of your voice, with lastly the words that are said.

If you communicate in a calm and cool tone with body language that mirrors or emulates your audience, the tone, inflection, and body language will be what is remembered. This is best articulated in recalling the outcome of meeting. It is likely you will remember how someone conveyed a message, whether or not they were a dynamic speaker, and whether or not they were engaged with the meeting. However, if I asked you to recount exactly what was said, I imagine that you will not be able to do so.

Last, but not least, is "The Mom sniff test." This is check on myself to see if what I am about to say would make my Mom proud or would she say, "Did you really say that? I raised you better than that!"

When you bring these elements together concurrently when you deliver a message, the recipient is left with following verbal and non-verbal queues.

• Your speaking from a position from authority on the content you are presenting.
• Your message is trying to convey how to do the right thing.
• It speaks the language they are expecting to hear.
• Your body language, tone, and inflection are calm and reserved.
• The words chosen are deliberately polite and above board.

There are only two options available; 1. break one of the above rules and produce negative influence for themselves or 2. question the content on the basis of content only.

This will lead into the next topic of telegraphing and shaping conversations (verbal, written) to intended effect to handle the second option.

How do I choose what to work on first?

My mentee had been working all weekend long on getting a couple of critical deliverables done and, unfortunately, she did not finish them in the timeframe that she had wanted to.

We went through an exercise where I asked her to list out all the items that she had been working on during the weekend. I will be using generic project names for simplicity sake.

• Catching up on mail
• Project X with 200 person impact
• Project Y with 50 person impact
• Project Z with 20 person impact

I then asked her for the due dates for each of these.

• Catching up on mail - on-going/never ending
• Project X with 200 person impact - Monday of end of day
• Project Y with 50 person impact - Monday end of day
• Project Z with 20 person impact - Monday beginning of day

I then asked her to prioritize these efforts.

• Project Z with 20 person impact - Monday beginning of day
• Project X with 200 person impact - Monday of end of day
• Project Y with 50 person impact - Monday end of day
• Catching up on mail - on-going/never ending

The final question was in what order did you actually work on them. This was where she realized her error and said, "I can't even prioritize correctly." I corrected her and ensured she understood that she was more than capable of prioritizing, but she just needed to listen to the clear priorities she was more than capable at setting. The below chart describes that prioritization she provided:

	Due Soon	Due Later
Important	1	2
Less important	3	4

We, as humans, can only focus on one item at a time and we mistake the ability to work on multiple items concurrently as multi-tasking. However, this is context switching and there is a cost to this effort.

One point that needs to be driven home is that differentiation of priorities is critical to effectiveness. If the message you are giving yourself is that all projects are priority 1, you are telling yourself that none of them are priority 1.

While this post has not talked about a few items (effort required, setting proper expectations), the above chart will ensure effectiveness as opposed to efficiency. Efficiency is the getting things done quickly. Effectiveness is getting the right things done.

Knowing the right question to ask

One of my mentees stopped by my office and said, "I seem to be having a week where everything I do is wrong. Why can't I ask the questions like you do?"

This started a discussion about knowing what questions to ask (experience) came from many tries of learning what not to do (bad judgment).

The other element of this equation is time. Just because someone has told you the right questions to ask does not guarantee that the right question will come to mind. There is still a requirement of practice that is required to ensure the mind pulls that specific question out of a myriad of others available.

Bad Judgment (or poor decisions) leads to experience.

Experience coupled with practice leads to good judgment (or good decisions).

An additional context we also touched upon was identification of the learning style/leadership style necessary for her at that moment (highly supportive/highly directive). This was readily recognizable based on her question, her body language, her tone and inflection in her voice.

We then delved into priorities issue she came in to talk about.

Learning progression

• Intern - I don't know how to do this.
• Beginner - I think I know how to do this.
• Intermediate - I can do this
• Advanced - I think we should choose to do this.
• Subject matter expert - We will do this.

As an individual progress through learning, they become more adept at making choices. This same process is followed for something as simple as a writing a letter to constructing a building.

The only thing that changes about the learning process is the size of the scope that you are targeting.