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A Story of Blindness from No Assumptions

Image by: Auntie P

Years back, at a dinner with research scientists, one asked me to describe some of my engagements so he could better understand my work.  When I mentioned a leadership team needing more effective meeting agendas, communication and collaboration, he quipped:

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“Agendas. Wow. That’s something.

Next week you can invent minutes.”

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Many laughed. In spite of the barb, I chuckled too — at what this intelligent scientist didn’t know. Common wisdom isn’t always commonly used.

Common wisdom, e.g. use an agenda, is impacted by uncommon views. These views can be unstated and strong.  Overlook the unstated uncommon views and they will live as hidden assumptions that can strangle the organization’s success.

To counteract this, leaders have added “question assumptions” to best practices, quality programs, and effective meeting techniques.  Yet the more common the wisdom, the less likely we are to even think that someone is viewing it differently.

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To question assumptions about uncommon views of common wisdom, we must first believe that someone would have an uncommon view!

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The research scientist noted above never considered that anyone would question the value of a meeting agenda. He was blinded by his own view. Yet in his daily work, this scientist searches for the unknown and uncommon.


How can we unearth uncommon views and assumptions when our view blinds us to the possibility?


#1 Know Where to Look.
Uncommon views are often found in personality type, previous experience, occupational culture and between generations. On my client’s team, personality type differences were causing the struggle over whether to use an agenda. Some felt empowered by it, others felt constrained.


#2 Know When It Is Likely to Happen.
In settings with many different personality types, experiences, occupational cultures and generations. For example, if technical and non-technical people are interacting, you will find hidden uncommon views. Draw them out and turn silos into success.

In times of great pressure or great change. Although many people get more vocal under pressure, they don’t clarify their assumptions. They express their opinions yet they leave much hidden. Uncover the hidden and move people from pressure to progress.


#3 Spot the Telltale Signs of Hidden Views.
Discussion with no progress. If wheels are spinning, something hidden is holding you back.

Frustration rising for no apparent reason. Find the reason in the hidden assumptions.

Conversations that don’t flow. Ever been in a meeting where you don’t understand how one comment connects to another? Hidden views and assumptions are in full swing. Identify them and watch your meeting results turn from mediocre to meteoric!

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Uncommon views of common wisdom can be helpful to you and your organization — as long as you know they are there.

What would you add to this list of how to discover hidden assumptions? What have you discovered?

Here’s to clearer vision and success!
Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach


©2011 Kate Nasser, CAS, Inc. Somerville, NJ. If you want to re-post or republish this post, please email info@katenasser.com. Thank you for respecting intellectual capital.

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Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach, delivers coaching, workshops, keynotes, and DVDs that turn interaction obstacles into interpersonal success for collaboration, teamwork, customer service, and leading change. See this site for workshop outlines and customer results. Fill the gaps of diversity with business wins!

Leaders, do team members in your corporation or business speak up soon enough?  Long standing teams often answer yes to this. The comfort of knowing each other fuels, what I call, the voices of success in teamwork and business.

This is no little feat.  Social research in America shows that people often speak up less in groups – even in a crisis (When Will People Help in a Crisis).

The common response to this challenge is to get new teams to know each other more quickly and engage the voices of success faster. It’s a start. Yet it still traps success in the time it takes to know everyone.






It also fails in today’s environment of constant change and sudden (ad hoc) teamwork. Can you imagine the business wins possible with the voices of success working in every meeting and encounter — globally? In other words during every instance of sudden teamwork?

Encourage the Voices of Success
Why not spread these messages with signs throughout your business, with your prime vendors/suppliers, and in your new hire orientations? Add these to your performance reviews and see employee engagement soar.

1. “If you think of something possible, say something!” For people to speak up with ideas they have for success or with cautions of dangers to avoid, they must feel it’s OK to do so. Throughout airports and train stations, they now announce “if you see something, say something” — to get people to report possible dangers.
2. “You are getting paid to deliver success. Speak up!” People must feel that they are expected to sound their voices of success. It’s not self-evident in a group setting.
3. “An idea is a terrible thing to waste. Speak up!”
4. “For us to succeed, we must all risk and commit. Speak and listen.”
5. “Respect ideas, even when we disagree.” People fear responses to their voices of success. Reduce the fear by restoring civility and building respect for diversity. Nothing creates silence and lost potential more quickly than rude disrespectful responses to new ideas or key concerns.

If you want true success in your business, encourage your customers to speak their minds too and of course be ready to listen to their voices of success.

Great listening and expressing harvests full potential.

What do you think? What other ways can we tap the creative and innovative ideas of business and corporate teams? Add your voice in the comments section below!

©2011 Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach, Founder & President, CAS, Inc. Somerville, NJ. If you would like to re-post or re-publish the content of this post, please email info@katenasser.com for permission.

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Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach delivers keynotes, workshops, consultations, and DVDs to turn interaction obstacles into interpersonal success in business, teamwork, customer relations, and leading change.

Ever meet someone who is very good with people – all different types of people?  In the workplace you see their professional people skills shine in various situations.    You wonder, “What makes them so successful with diverse people and in widely different situations?”  Look more closely or speak with them and you will find the best professional people skills develop from these four practices.

As you read each point, note one thing you do well and one thing you will do to improve.


Practices: Best Professional People Skills

1. Know Yourself Very Well. Your social style/personality type. Your hot buttons. Your fears. Your pet peeves. Your odd quirks that bother other people. Your natural talents. Your work ethic. Your definition of a happy life. Your definition of success…
   
   
2. Observe and listen to others. This is the critical step for developing outstanding professional people skills.  Observe and listen in order to constantly learn more about other people.  The data you collect is the fuel and the guidance system for successful interactions.  Those with outstanding professional people skills are always learning about others!
   
   
3. Practice Flexibility. Most people interact with others by treating them the way they, themselves, want to be treated.   Unless the world is full of clones, this will not breed great interactions. 
   The best in professional people skills use the data they have collected about others to adapt to others.   To do this you must believe flexibility is a sign of strength not weakness.  Flexibility is a skill that allows you to work with diverse people in a wide range of situations. 
   Most importantly, do not mistake flexibility for indecisiveness.  The best in professional people skills use flexibility for successful connections with others – and achieve tangible results.
   
   


Flexibility & Balance for People Skills Image by:Lady_K

4. Achieve Balance.
   How balanced are you in your professional people skills?
   • Balance your drive for action with empathy for others’ needs.
   • Balance honesty with diplomacy to communicate your message clearly without brutality.
   • See the details that others focus on while compiling the big picture.
   • Balance your knowledge and expertise with input from others.
   • Know when to push ahead with your thoughts and when to pull back to deliver your thoughts at the right moment.
   • Balance your need for bonding with respect for others’ need for independence.
   • Deliver even the toughest news with respect for the humans involved.
   • Lead change with inspiration and grit.

Think of all the applications of the best professional people skills.  Leaders who can inspire both morale and great results.  Soaring sales when you connect with customers and understand and meet their needs.  Successful, cost effective, and timely completion of projects from clear communication & teamwork.  

Professional people skills build trust and collaboration that deliver results!

I have noted 4 practices above.  Is there a 5^th and 6^th?  What would you add?

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Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach delivers workshops, keynotes, consultations, and DVDs that develop your professional people skills. See this site for more information and what others have said about her sessions.

Diversity on teams generally breeds better results and more success. Is this now true of the generational diversity in the workplace? It can be if you as leaders provide team building across the generations. Maximize the value of generational differences and you can realize the potential and success of experience meeting youthful innovation.

There are light, fun ways for team members across generations to get to know each other.   If you want members of multi-generational teams to get to know how they each think, here is a proven approach that produces more substantive results than the purely lighthearted fun events.

I developed this exercise, Success is Ageless, to use with one of my customers and now use it in several variations with many other customers around the globe.

Team Building Across Generations

Benefits of the Success is Ageless team building exercise:

1. Common bonds built from both similarity and difference
2. Fewer fear-based hidden blocks
3. Respect from common struggles of different journeys
4. Success from experience meeting innovation

Setting: Simple office training or conference room that allows people to move around and work together.  The setup must encourage interaction. ( Do not do this exercise around one conference table or in a room with rows of tables/chairs.  These setups do not encourage interaction.)

A/V: Internet access, printing capability, flip charts/easels, videoconferencing (if virtual teams).

Approach: Step One – Have each team member select an image from online resources — one image from her/his early childhood or early teenage years.   They should select an image that made an impression on them, say something about them, or changed their outlook in some way.  If for some reason you will not have internet access, ask the team members to do this step in advance and bring the image to the team building workshop.  If you have team members that are not computer savvy, they can bring a copy of a picture from newspapers, books, magazines etc…

Once this step is done, break into groups of 3 team members each of mixed generations.  For the image from childhood/adolescence, each one tells a story about what was happening to her/him that coincided with that image.   How did it shape who they are today?

Step Two: Hand out a pre-printed image of a current event.  Team members in each group discuss the image. A current event that suggests both struggle and success/achievement tends to work best.

Here are the guided discussion questions for this segment:

1. What feelings do we share about this event?
2. Where do our outlooks differ?
3. What do differences represent to each team member — win/lose, right/wrong, need for collaboration/flexibility, chaos/order, fear/courage, hierarchy/teamwork, etc..

To end this team building exercise, highlight how team diversity can breed great success.  It may take longer for teams to gel and get along.  Nonetheless the different talents, knowledge, outlooks, and innovative ideas are essential readiness tools to handle any challenge that comes to the team. Diversity also helps prevent the terrible plague of groupthink.

Pair up one last time.  Write and read aloud one positive statement about the talent, knowledge, and insight that your partner brings to the team’s projects and success. This final step secures the lessons learned of respecting differences and carries them into daily teamwork.

Respect the Differences.
Learn to Love the Differences.
Find the Fit.

What variations or additions to this team building exercise would you suggest?

©2010 Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach, CAS, Inc. Somerville, NJ. All rights reserved.

If you would like to re-post or re-publish the content of this post, please email info@katenasser.com for permission.

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Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach, delivers team building and customer relations workshops that bridge the gaps and deliver the benefits of diversity. Contact her now to deliver custom team sessions that bring your diverse teams to the heights of success.

Teamwork brings to mind images of people interacting to achieve some goal.  Generally they develop a closeness, a tight bond, if for only a brief period as they exchange ideas, use their collective experience, and take action.  If the team is to stay together as a unit, the tight bond grows tighter. Sounds good right? Yet today’s fast changing business landscape needs agile teams that embrace diversity.

The key question is when does that tight bond become a clique that shuts out new team members, new ideas, and change?  Leaders, do you know the warning signs?

If you want to prevent a clique growing in the shadows of your organization, look for the following signs of team health and the potential for a clique and its destructive limiting force.

1. Do team members openly disagree to reach the common goal? This is a healthy sign of a team whose bond can withstand pressure without cracking. Or do you sense that team members are pressured to conform to be accepted? 




2. Does the team avidly and positively welcome new team members when they first arrive?  If yes, what do they say and do with the new team members? Healthy signs: “Jump in, ask questions, contribute your strengths, we like diversity …”.
   




3. Does the team reach out to all (especially new team members) for lunches, breaks, etc…  The action to include is a healthy sign of a tight bond that can stretch without breaking.
   




4. Do the team members take steps to get the new team members up to speed quickly to make every teamwork moment the most it can be? Or do they expect new team members to prove themselves. If you witness the latter, it is a sign of ill-health.
   

Leaders, what do you do to promote team health and prevent cliques? What steps have you taken to build agile teams that accept diversity?

Would love to hear your insights and questions below!

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Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach, consults to leaders, teams, and organizations for the healthiest teamwork and agile teams that embrace diversity to meet the quickly changing business landscape. Her workshops, blog articles, and DVDs make a unique contribution to teamwork, customer service, and leadership success.

As companies try to standardize customer service, customers continue to want just the opposite.   Customers are most comfortable when the sales team, contact center, customer service center, customer care team, or technical support department truly understands them (i.e. “gets them”)!

Think about it.  When you meet someone with whom you share similar mores, accents, cultural beliefs, and outlook, how do you feel? Happier? More trusting? Drawn to them? Witness BP’s action this week to install an American CEO to deal with the crisis in the Gulf. Already we hear comments from the Gulf: “An American in the Gulf intimately understands the real needs of Gulf residents.” Frequently, I am asked to teach customer service/sales to Canadian companies with a large number of American customers. Who better to teach them how to succeed with Americans than an American?

Comfort and Trust in Similarity

Pundits and critics will debate whether this desire for similarity is good or bad.  Admittedly, when taken to extremes it can lead to groupthink, discrimination, and plagues like racism.  In moderation, it is a positive human desire for bonding and connection. For sales and customer service, showing your customers that you truly understand them produces positive results. Why? It reduces fear, builds trust, and makes interaction much easier. This is a key component. From the customer’s perspective, less to explain means less chance for misunderstanding.


“Get Me” Don’t “Imitate Me”

I am not speaking about the weird attempts of some off-shored call centers to bond with American customers by giving the reps Americanized names.  It was laughable because the strong difference in accents made the names sound very fake.  Rather contact call centers, customer care teams, customer service centers, technical support departments and sales teams with a true understanding of intercultural differences win big.

For example, here in the USA there are vast regional differences across the nation that impact customers’ buying decisions and their expectations in customer service.  Even American based sales and service teams need to learn the regional differences to win over American customers that are from other regions of the USA.


Resources for Intercultural Learning

If you truly want customer loyalty for sales and service, show your customers you “get them”.

1. You can build intercultural awareness by exposing your reps and sales force to social media streams.
2. With rare exceptions, the Internet puts worldwide news events at your disposal for learning cultural perspectives and preferences.
   
3. Provide intercultural training on that specific country or region. Communicaid Group Ltd and other firms deliver country specific cultural learning for your sales and service success.
4. If you are doing business with Americans, learn the regional differences in the USA with the DVD “Customer Service USA – What They Expect Coast to Coast & Everywhere in Between”. (Click for preview.)
   

How else have you learned about cultural differences to show your customers that you “get them”?

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Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach, teaches, consults, speaks, and coaches, on bridging the gap of diversity for success in customer service, teamwork, sales, and leadership. See additional footage about personality differences on this site Http://Katenasser.com

Team success in a diverse workplace requires more than a common goal. Respecting the differences is key. Each team member must be willing to flex their style and adapt to others.  Once again people-skills, also known as soft skills, impact the tangible results in business.  In this case, the people-skill needed for team success is an individual willingness as well as the skill to embrace others’ styles and blend yours for the team’s success.

The underlying support for this is a basic respect for the differences. Engage your teams in a discussion on this topic. You may be surprised at what they say! Here’s a short inspirational video to help you get started:

1. Respect the differences
2. Learn to love the differences
3. Find the fit

Are you a natural collaborator or a natural competitor?  The immediate answer from many people is I can do both.  Sure but that isn’t the question.  Understanding your natural style can be of great help in your work life.  It can have substantially deeper impact on your broader everyday life as it frames how you see and react to various situations.

A few questions to ponder.

Do you a have a strong reaction to either word — collaboration or competition?  When you hear these words, what thoughts jump to your mind?  Which word makes you feel better?

Picture a highway where traffic is moving. You are in the far left lane.  Someone up ahead quite a bit signals they are moving into the left lane.  Do you generally speed up or stay at your speed? 

When someone jumps in and starts talking to you about something you are doing, what is your reaction?  Do you see their involvement as an intrusion and/or an attempt to direct you?  Or do you start out by assuming they are interested or collaborating?

If you were standing in the First Class/Elite line at a gate to board an airplane and someone came up and asked you “Are you in First Class?”, what would you think they were asking?  How would you respond?  I witnessed this.  To me it was clear that the passenger asking wanted to figure out if it was the First Class line.  The passenger that she asked, replied ”Yes, I can follow directions.”   She saw the question as a challenge to her competence rather than a need for help and collaboration.

How would you react to this recent tweet by @1paisley on Twitter?  “If U were arrested 4 being kind, would thr B enough evidence 2 convict U?” ~Author unknown.  My question here is not meant to suggest that competitors are unkind. Yet if you are turned off by this tweet, I propose that you are not a natural collaborator.

What difference does all this make?  Well both in work and in everyday life we encounter diverse people.  Relationships, teamwork, outcomes, and the possibility of success with other people depend on knowing yourself and understanding others.  

If you are a natural collaborator, realize that natural competitors may see your involvement as a competition or a challenge.  If you are a natural competitor, remember that natural collaborators may see you as uncooperative.  One key step for either type to use in bridging the gap — communicate your intention before your message.  Try it — it works!

Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach