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.