Georgetown 2-13

Georgetown Readings

Powerful Conversations by Harkins
-Even most powerful conversations are bound to experience bad times. We all experience emotions, and therefore can easily blame someone else
– Use communication skills to manage these moments
– Characteristics of bad conversations include:
    – Unclear and poorly expressed content
    – Unfocused content marketed with lots of tangents and trying to do too much at once
    – Frequent interuptions
    – Uninterested participating and lack of active listening
    – Unexpressed feelings
    – Harsh tones or indirect language
– Swamp talk and how you get out of it
    – Drop your agenda and be open
    – Understand what is driving the conversation to take a nose dive
    – Have the person tell you why an issues is important
    – Mirror and try to understand the other person’s line of reasoning
Powerful conversations:
– Should be structured
– Should be clear about desired outputs (make them measurable)
– Provide some sort of discipline
Some rules for succeeding
– Expression compassionate feelings with sincerity
– Confronting fear with confidence
– Asking clearly what is needed and Wanted
– Offering and commanding support, direction and focus
– Making it clear how everyone can win
When agenda’s don’t match, it is important to discuss what really is causing resistance. Let the whole story come out. Separate the Want from the Need
Preparing for difficult conversations
– Preparation
– Scripting
– Rehearsing
Leadership requires trust:
– the 4Cs of trust: Caring, Clarity, Consistence and commitment
– Trust begins with commitment
– Trust requires being clear and consistent
– Trust requires consistent acts of caring
– Trust requires living ones own beliefs "Walk the Talk"
Different levels of trust
1) Commitment = professional trust
2) Loyalty = personal trust
3) Belief = Total trust
Trust can break down with the Say and DO quotient breaks down
How to change organizations:
– Listen and spend time with team/employees
– Be caring and direct
– Say and Do
– Do not let strategy overwhelm people
– Be open to diversity

Steps for change (the agenda)
– Establish goals
– Focus the Senior team on defining and fine tuning architecture and process for change
– Focus all managers on the vision and objectives
– Institute a learning system (TPOV)
– Identify Passionate Champions and have them head up specific key projects
    – Highly driven and focused
    – Trusted inside the organization
    – Everyone knows how the committed they are
    – Achievement oriented
    – They are drivers
    – Don’t entertain possibility of not reaching goal

Take away:
– Last year, I realized that my team was not as high peroforming and executionable as I would have liked. So, I focused on my energy on rebuilding the team. One guys who left was known as ad-hoc man. He took on everything that came his way. Answered every request that was made of him. While he always got stuff done, I think it was difficult for him to focus. He was a passionate champaion in the sense that he was skilled and go the job done, but I think his niceness and inability to say no prevented him from being a superstar. But he decided to leave the company on his own and when he did, I saw this as an opportunity to reconfigure the team. A second person on the team was extremely passive. I tried to coach them in how to speak up more in meetings, how to take the initiative more, but they always seems to feel I was making an attack on their personality. Everyone liked this person too, but often I was asked how engaged this person really was. Eventually, they left the company. The last person just couldn’t put in the hours required, so she eventually transferred to a different group. So, in the last few months, I have hired two full-time and two contractors who are extremely process focused and strong in reaching the finish line. My job as a leader now, especially one who does have a tendency to investigate new things, is to be clearn in provideing them direction. I have to deliver on my Say Do ratio, I have to be sensitive to the fact that they want priorities to be  clear and not to change. This last part is a challenge for me because while I think I am able to focus on the ciritcal few, my boss seems to be really scattered. Especially these days. We will see.