Change Masters Incorporated - The Blog
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One of my clients just realized, “If I want people to quit punching me, I have to quit being the punching bag!” In coaching, he heard his voice sounded like a victim, not a victor. He had uptalk, a soft volume level, and far too much inflection for the statements he was making.
He flattened the inflection, increased the volume dramatically and lowered the pitch which he coupled with cutting his content in half … he displayed instant gravitas.
Executive presence tip by Carol Keers
A Harris Poll of 1,000 USA workers revealed employees see communication issues dragging executive performance down. Leaders are so busy that they focus on tasks rather than having the emotional intelligence to better engage the people they are supposed to be leading.
I do not talk with leaders who are bored because they have too much extra time on their hands. They are looking for a “time-expansion-machine” that will expand an hour to 90 minutes. If someone has found that time-expander, they have not told me. So we are stuck with 60-minute hours and 24-hours days. What is missing?
Doug Lennick is a very successful executive, mentor, and author who shares great wisdom. He said, “The reason we do not get what we want in our life is because we let important things get in our way.” I thought I was supposed to focus on the important things! Doug’s message is, “We need to focus on our KEY things in life rather than the important ones.” Key things are things that we must do and only we can do them. We can delegate or drop most important things that are not key.
If you look at the survey list of issues by employees, and match it to the key activities, it is not hard to imagine that the leaders of those employees are not focused on key activities. They are letting the “important” things consume their life and ignoring the key things.
The last chapter of our book “Seeing Yourself as Others Do – Authentic Executive Presence at Any Stage of Your Career” is on Inspiration, Motivation and Praise. Most clients recognize they can be significantly better at this, and want to be better. By focusing on KEY activities and the importance of relationships, everyone can improve the score they would receive if their employees were part of another Harris Poll.
Many of my clients have grabbed onto the KEY activities concept and dramatically improved their ability to manage themselves and lead others without the need for a time-expander.
Talented people want to improve. Even small opportunities for adjustment are valuable. Receiving negative feedback is one of the most important paths to improvement.
Many managers avoid the negative feedback. “It’s a small thing.” is one excuse for not sharing the feedback. Many managers save negative feedback for the performance review, which is often a tragedy. Much time is lost and the negative feedback is more painful.
The most tragic lack of feedback is when someone is 45-years-old and has a career limiting behavior of which he is not aware. Managers have known the issue since he was 35-year-old. The individual gets stuck for 10 years. When he learns at 45, makes corrections, his career is already 10 years off track. “If only I had known this ten years ago!” is a common refrain we hear in coaching.
Feedback involves both the manager and the subordinate being committed to feedback. Being “too nice” or being conflict avoidant by either party requires some extra effort to be successful.
Honest, compassionate, clear, timely and constructive feedback is the objective. The more the subordinate believes the manager has his/her best interest in mind, the better the environment is for communication. Many managers, also, want to feel respected when they give feedback. If they risk a strong negative reaction, it will often cut off feedback.
The main benefactor of negative feedback is the recipient. If you want to encourage someone to give you honest feedback, you must be open to it and accept it gracefully.
Deborah Grayson Riegel teaches management communication at Wharton School of Business. Here is a summary built on her suggestions:
Physical and emotional pain are natural and help us grow. Difficult feedback can be painful. It is the pain that helps us move to improve. We call it “tough love” when raising children. Caring and honest feedback that creates pain is a gift. It needs to be viewed that way by both the giver and receiver of the feedback.
Hurt is not constructive. It is often inflicted by bullies. It does not encourage growth. It injures people with no redeeming value. This is not the feedback we are discussing.
One other source of feedback is your mirror. If you take time to reflect on what has gone well for you and explored your part in what happened it can be very productive. I find journaling to be very helpful. Many others do as well.
If you get feedback from a loved one, be sure to at least consider what might be true. It is often easy to brush away “nagging” comments. We do extensive surveys for our clients of the people they work with regularly. When clients show the data to their spouse, the response is, “That’s what I have told you for years.”
Sounds like a learning opportunity is close at hand.