Why your connections are your secret weapon
We agree – 2020 was all about silver linings. Finding them, hanging on to them. Because this ride isn’t over yet.
So you know you from the first post in our blog series that before you look try to support others, you need to put on your own oxygen mask first. That’s key.
So, what’s next? Making sure you surround yourself with a village to sustain that well-being will allow for maximum productivity and effectiveness. In other words – forge connections.
Vital Friends author Tom Rath digs into Gallup research that shows the absence of a best friend at work results in only 1 in 12 employees being engaged in their jobs. One. In. Twelve. While some might find humor in the idea of a “best friend at work,” it has real business impact. Gallup’s research links employee engagement to profit, sales, safety, and productivity. It turns out that this skeptically viewed “best friend” question has one of the strongest links to those hard and important measures that the board and investors care so much about.
Everyone needs connection – hardly a groundbreaking concept. Some need it more, some need it less, but research clearly tells us that everyone needs it in some form to be successful and to be happy. It is even more challenging to do this in a still-virtual environment, where it takes more deliberate action. Here are four ways we look at how leaders should be thinking about how their connections can help them excel:
- Maintain your sanity
- Get stuff done
- Expand your influence
- Find fulfillment
Connect to maintain your sanity—and others’ too
“Even though people spend more of their waking hours at work than anywhere else, people underestimate how work influences their overall wellbeing and daily experience.” - Tom Rath
The typical American works about 1,800 hours per year, and that number has likely increased during pandemic times, with blurred work-life boundaries. Worse yet, we’re more anxious and overwhelmed. A pulse check by the American Psychological Association found that nearly 8 in 10 adults say the coronavirus pandemic is a significant source of stress in their lives, and nearly 1 in 5 adults say their mental health is worse than it was at this time last year. Perhaps not shocking – but are we as leaders helping to create and encourage the outlets to manage that stress?
Create a dedicated connection forum or platform
Of course, there is much you can do on your own to restore and maintain your sanity. We covered some of that in our first post. The task here is to involve others in maintaining or even growing your – and their – sanity and provide a platform to help your team do the same. In the midst of the pandemic, our founder and CEO Suzanne Bates instituted a “buddy system” at the company. The idea being that on any given day, someone might need a captive ear, a shoulder, or just a colleague to process with. It wasn’t about catching up on work things – it was more about checking in on each other’s well-being. While team members approached it in different ways – some met weekly, others just when they needed support – having a safe space and a means of asking “how are you, really?” has in many cases transcended just emotional connections, and has led to innovative ideas, brainstorming, and in some cases – new ways of working together. In fact, this blog series is a byproduct of a great buddy partnership.
Connect to get stuff done
As a leader, you need other people to accomplish your goals. You need to rally the troops, ensure alignment, and motivate them to execute. At Bates, we call this intentionality: being able to clarify direction for the team and keep actions aligned and on track. In other words, driving execution through others.
All of that is challenged in this virtual environment. In person, you may more easily get a sense of how projects are going, if there are roadblocks, or if the team is feeling overwhelmed. But when you’re not in the room or having those regular conversations, you may not pick up on the things that slow progress. To adjust, you must develop a more systematic approach to connecting about initiatives and goals.
For example, we are working with the top supply chain leader for a global industrial organization. This leader has been charged with spearheading a re-engineering initiative. This would be a difficult task even pre-COVID. Gone are the impromptu hallway conversations or water cooler chat she might have to ease into these sensitive discussions with her team. She has found that to drive this initiative forward, she must spend more time with people and consciously create interactions that otherwise would have occurred naturally. And it can’t be all about business, given that she is in a position of needing to ask people to give up budget, people, or both – often tough, personal, and emotional decisions.
Create a roadmap to make the right connections
We recommend you create what we call an Initiative and Influencers Matrix. Jot down a list of the top three things you need to get done – whether big initiatives or small projects – down the left-hand side of the grid. Along the top, capture the key stakeholders you need to get that work done. In each box, break down the stakeholder names into two buckets: stakeholders you’re regularly in touch with, and stakeholders who might have fallen off your radar. Identify and map the connections you might need to create or reignite to be your most effective and productive self and create the buy in you need to move further, faster.
Connect to expand your influence
The third aspect of connection deals with your work future – who do you need to stay connected and visible to so that you don’t derail your own business success? We all know the adage, it’s not what you know but who you know. Well, we think it is a both/and equation.
Consider this client we worked with. Dan ran a multibillion-dollar business at a Fortune 50 company. For better or worse, he was often quite literally the smartest person in the room – at least according to his senior leadership team colleagues. He tended to write off people who didn’t share the same level of perceived intellect and drive for success. More than once, this discounting of key stakeholders nearly cost him his career. In fact, in at least one case, his inability to take a peer-to-peer approach held him back from taking on a bigger role. Dan learned the hard way that professional growth is a team sport. We know from our research that humility (having an openness to others), inclusiveness (bringing others into the conversation), and interactivity (consistent and frequent interpersonal exchanges) are fundamental to leadership effectiveness and can be the difference between flatlining and expanding your sphere of influence – even if you’re one of the most senior people in the room.
Create a personal board of directors
Establish a formal or informal network of colleagues, friends, mentors, advisors to connect with regularly as a sounding board, and advisory group. Think about who could help you broaden your perspectives, get exposure to other parts of the business, provide advice and guidance. Think beyond the usual suspects. Who are the individuals who you are not close to who might influence your opportunity for impact – for better or worse? Who might your dissident stakeholders be? And bring them close. Who are some leaders or colleagues outside the company who could bring an unbiased perspective and fresh ideas? For very senior leaders with few peers within the organization, this approach can be game changing.
Connect to find fulfillment
Sometimes connection isn’t about the day-to-day work at all. Of course, you need connections to get work done. But connections in the workplace don’t have to solely focus on what helps you contribute to the bottom line, hit deadlines, move business forward. They may be about finding personal fulfillment and meaning at work – which often drive creativity and innovation. Gallup would tell us that engaged and motivated employees are more productive. And we don’t disagree with that.
We have a female executive in the technology space who loves her job. She really finds the work interesting, and intellectually challenging. And while she has decent relationships with her senior leadership team colleagues, she doesn’t have a lot in common with them. As working mother with young children – in a predominantly male field – she was missing relatable, empathetic connections that would help her maintain energy and balance when life and work was feeling out of whack.
Tap your leadership skills and role to inspire others and yourself
We talked about where she could take on a leadership role in one of the organization’s support communities. Most companies have some form of Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) or Team Member Networks. ERGs are not just for mid-level or high potential employees – they are critical for senior leaders who can actively participate as executive advisors or sponsors. Visible representation for high-level executives gives credence to the importance of connection and balance. It helps set the tone for more junior team members in the organization while also allowing those senior leaders to benefit from new interactions and community of an expanded group of employees.
This client found a renewed sense of purpose by taking on a sponsor role with the Women’s ERG. She was able to encourage and support networking, leadership programs, and volunteer opportunities for women across all business units and levels of the company – and found herself lifted and inspired by the camaraderie.
Often as leaders we focus on the “what” that needs to get done – driving the business forward, hitting our strategic priorities, delivering for clients and shareholders. But we focus less on the “how” that will get us there. The critical relationships and connections that not only pave the way for efficient work but help lessen the singular responsibility for any one leader by sharing some of that mental and emotional burden with key partners. The hardest part is being intentional and carving out the time to focus on building those connections so you, in turn, can be an even more effective leader for your people.
So consider our advice – find ways to establish relationships at work that will help you stay sane during the tumultuous times, while also helping you push that rock up the hill with a bit more ease. Try out one or more of these ideas we shared and encourage your teams to do the same.
Balance is about finding your zen so you can focus on what needs to be done. Connection is about maintaining that zen so you can get work done. And our next blog post about effectiveness? It’s about channeling that zen – cutting out the noise and clutter – so you can deliver with excellence and productivity.
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Last night I started reading a book by Irvin Yalom, a psychiatrist who has written several novels that I’ve loved. But right now I’m reading something different—a book of short lessons he’s learned from many years of working with patients.
Early in his career, Yalom was inspired by something he read. The gist of it was that all people have a natural tendency to want to grow and become fulfilled—just an acorn will grow up to become an oak—as long as there are no obstacles in the way. So the job of the psychotherapist was to eliminate the obstacles to growth.
This was a eureka moment for Yalom. At the time, he was treating a young widow. Suffering through grief for a long while, she wanted help because she had a “failed heart”—an inability ever to love again.
Yalom had felt overwhelmed. How could he possibly change someone’s inability to love? But now he looked at it differently. He could dedicate himself to identifying and eliminating the obstacles that kept her from loving.
So they worked on that—her feelings of disloyalty to her late husband, her sense that she was somehow responsible for his death, and the fear of loss that falling in love again would mean. Eventually they eliminated all of the obstacles. Then her natural ability to love—and grow—returned. She remarried.
Reading this story made me think of the responsibility of leaders toward the people they need to develop—and for the growth and learning that leaders themselves require to be the best that they can be.
Many leadership development challenges seem overwhelming—even impossible. The leaders that we coach usually have a list of areas where they want to get better, but how? How do you “build better relationships with your peers and direct reports”? How are you supposed to “get out of the weeds and demonstrate enterprise-wide thinking” or “build executive presence”? All of these goals are as abstract as they are huge.
So the best approach is to not focus on the huge and fuzzy goal. What we try to do is to break these goals down into concrete actions through working on real-time business problems. To put it simply, though, we do just as Yalom does: We identify the obstacles and work toward knocking them off, one at a time.
Leadership development is not usually a quick fix. You’re not going to develop executive presence through a half-day workshop or a one-time meeting. If you’re interested in meaningful, lasting growth—whether for yourself or for those who work for you—it’s a commitment.
But don’t ever forget that we’re all capable of growth throughout life and our careers. The trick is to find the right coach or mentor who will guide you through that obstacle course.
In my work as an executive coach, I meet at least once a month with each of my coaching clients.
I often talk to them on the phone and exchange emails with them as we work on their real-time business challenges. So, what happens in those conversations? Recurring themes start to come up. I find that many leaders have a “talk track” of words and phrases that they use all the time—without always being aware of the impact. For better or worse, this talk track ends up becoming part of their executive presence and their brand as a leader.
One of my clients had a talk track for many years that led to a reputation for negativity. In one meeting alone, I noticed that he had described about ten different work experiences as “nightmares.” Strong word! So we talked about this talk track. And the next time I heard him lapse into that way of talking, I decided to delve into it. “What I just heard from you was an example of that ‘talk track’ we’ve talked about,” I said. “So let’s talk about this. You say it was a ‘nightmare.’ Okay—why do you call it a nightmare?”
The upshot was that he had made a sales presentation but didn’t get the deal. I said, “Let’s use accurate language to describe the situation.” Was it a nightmare? No. Maybe it was a disappointment. Maybe he could have said, “Unfortunately, we didn’t get the deal” or “They decided to go with another vendor” and state why, objectively. My goal was to get him to stop “catastrophizing” when something didn’t work out.
This leader didn’t want to be defined by that negative “talk track” anymore. So I told him that the only way to do that is to turn up the volume on a very different talk track—one that captures the brand and presence that you want to project.
I’ve had clients who always talked about how difficult or challenging or complex things seemed to them. You’ve probably had a boss or colleague with any number of talk-track themes:
- “I’m so exhausted/overwhelmed/unhappy/unappreciated….”
- “Everyone here is useless/stupid/incompetent….”
- “It’s such a difficult environment/project/client/travel schedule…”
- “That will never work/We won’t get that deal/It’s a dumb idea/What were they thinking?”
Often people aren’t even aware of how much they harp on a conversational theme and how negatively this lack of executive presence is affecting their professional brand. So what can you do to make sure your talk track is working for you and not against you as a leader? Take these four steps:
1. Identify your talk-track themes.
What are the words and phrases that you find yourself constantly using in conversations at work? Write down the things you seem to say almost every day—or think about what themes come up all the time for you in conversation at work or elsewhere.
2. Consider the impact of your talk track.
As a leader, your words carry more weight than others. You’re setting the tone for your team or division or organization. Whether that tone is absurdly optimistic, cynical, critical, upbeat, energized, or overly emotional, it’s going to be the model for others. Make sure that your talk track is consistent with the values and behaviors you want to drive.
3. Challenge the reality of your talk track.
How accurate is your talk track? Do you have a natural tendency to see the part of the glass that’s empty? How do you respond to setbacks? Do you gloss over the pain? Do you make a mountain out of a molehill? It’s crucial for leaders to be balanced, objective, and real about what’s happening. Your language choices need to reflect that.
4. Consider what you could say differently.
It’s easy to lapse into your talk track. When you catch yourself saying the same old things, try to catch yourself as if an alarm was going off. Can you find another way to say it—something that’s consistent with the brand and presence you want to project.
Don’t get me wrong. Leaders do need to be “real” about challenges and setbacks, and a somber tone may be appropriate and even helpful at times. The goal is to become more aware of your talk track and what it’s doing for you and others. As a leader, people take their cues from you. Before you know it, your talk track can dominate or drive the culture.
Changing your talk track is a challenge. Our ways of talking and viewing the world are pretty ingrained through several decades of life experiences. But change is also very possible. Pump up the volume on a more positive talk track for the holidays, and your presence will be viewed as a gift.
A while back, I heard an anecdote on the radio about cellist Yo-Yo Ma, and it really struck me. Surprisingly, Ma said that once of his biggest inspirations was chef, author, and television personality Julia Child.
Huh?! Well, it turns out that thinking about Julia Child helped him get in the right mindset before a performance. He would think about watching her on television, making a roast chicken that looked beautiful—only to have it fall off the plate and onto the floor. Did she flip out? No, she never stopped smiling. She just acknowledged what happened and went on with the show.
Reflecting on this, Ma realized that the best mindset he could have as a performer was to ensure that his audience was having a good experience—rather than worrying about being perfect. Speaking to the St. Louis Post Dispatch last October, he said, “The idea of performing is hosting. It’s like you’re giving a party. You invite people to come to a place and enjoy something special; basically, they’re subject to whatever you dish out. You want them to have a great time, they want to have a great time, and what are you doing to facilitate that?”
In a Malcolm Gladwell article that I read years ago, Yo-Yo Ma also admitted that he used to strive for perfection in performance. When he was 17, he practiced a Brahms sonata for a year with technical perfection in mind. So what happened when he did that? “In the middle of the performance I thought, I’m bored. It would have been nothing for me to get up from the stage and walk away. That’s when I decided I would always opt for expression over perfection.
”There is a valuable lesson here for executive presentations. In my experience, many leaders worry too much about precision when they present. Aiming for total accuracy, it’s easy to end up with text-heavy PowerPoint slides—and far too many of them. And once you have a ton of bullets on a slide, you usually feel compelled to read them all. At best, slides still tend to distract the audience’s energy away from you—and the presentation is really all about you, not your visuals.
Think about it: What would you rather be able to say at the end of your presentation?
- I covered every point perfectly and spoke without a single stumble.
- I connected deeply with the audience, and I could sense that they were completely engaged with my presentation.
It’s a no-brainer, isn’t it? If you’re able to really connect with your audience’s questions, concerns, and needs, they won’t even notice if the imperfections that jump out to you as the expert.
Of course, there’s a catch here. Connection trumps precision… but the more you master your topic through preparation and practice, the more you’re freed up to focus on connecting with the audience. When you don’t have to work to remember your key points and transitions, you can concentrate more on your eye contact, gestures, and reading the room.
So give some thought to drawing some inspiration from Julia Child, just as Yo-Yo Ma does as a concert performer. When you’re giving a speech, you’re the host, and your job is to set the tone and make sure that everyone has a good experience.
That’s a recipe for a successful presentation.
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La maggior parte delle riunioni di vendita non fallisce.
Semplicemente non porta a una decisione.
Ed è lì che si perde valore.
I clienti di oggi sono più informati, più selettivi e hanno meno tempo.
Non hanno bisogno di altre presentazioni di prodotto.
Hanno bisogno di conversazioni che li aiutino a stabilire le priorità, decidere e andare avanti.
Eppure, il 58% delle riunioni di vendita non riesce a creare valore reale.
Non perché i venditori manchino di capacità, ma perché le conversazioni non sono progettate per far avanzare le decisioni.
“I clienti non agiscono su ogni esigenza che riconoscono.
Agiscono quando qualcosa diventa una priorità.”
In questo breve executive brief scoprirai:
- Perché la maggior parte delle conversazioni informa… ma non porta all’azione
- Cosa spinge davvero i clienti a stabilire priorità e muoversi
- Come creare urgenza senza compromettere la fiducia
- Il passaggio dal presentare soluzioni al facilitare decisioni
- Cosa distingue le conversazioni che si bloccano da quelle che accelerano il progresso
Se i tuoi team stanno affrontando trattative bloccate, decisioni ritardate o un pipeline lento, questo brief ti aiuterà a capire il perché e cosa fare in modo diverso.
Scarica l’executive brief e scopri come progettare conversazioni che portano davvero a decisioni.
A maioria das reuniões de vendas não fracassa.
Elas simplesmente não levam a uma decisão.
E é aí que o valor se perde.
Os clientes de hoje estão mais informados, mais seletivos e com menos tempo.
Eles não precisam de mais apresentações de produto.
Precisam de conversas que os ajudem a priorizar, decidir e avançar.
Ainda assim, 58% das reuniões de vendas não conseguem gerar valor real.
Não porque os vendedores não tenham capacidade, mas porque as conversas não são desenhadas para impulsionar decisões.
“Os clientes não agem sobre todas as necessidades que reconhecem.
Eles agem quando algo se torna prioridade.”
Neste breve material executivo, você vai descobrir:
- Por que a maioria das conversas informa… mas não gera ação
- O que realmente faz os clientes priorizarem e avançarem
- Como criar urgência sem prejudicar a confiança
- A mudança de apresentar soluções para viabilizar decisões
- O que diferencia conversas que estagnam daquelas que aceleram o progresso
Se suas equipes estão enfrentando negócios estagnados, decisões atrasadas ou um pipeline lento, este material vai ajudar você a entender o porquê — e o que fazer de diferente.
Baixe o material executivo e aprenda como desenhar conversas que realmente impulsionam decisões.
La mayoría de las reuniones de ventas no fracasan.
Simplemente no llevan a una decisión.
Y ahí es donde se pierde el valor.
Los clientes de hoy están más informados, son más selectivos y tienen menos tiempo.
No necesitan más presentaciones de producto.
Necesitan conversaciones que les ayuden a priorizar, decidir y avanzar.
Y, sin embargo, el 58% de las reuniones de ventas no logra generar un valor real.
No porque los vendedores carezcan de capacidad, sino porque las conversaciones no están diseñadas para impulsar decisiones.
“Los clientes no actúan sobre cada necesidad que reconocen.
Actúan cuando algo se convierte en una prioridad.”
En este breve informe ejecutivo descubrirás:
Por qué la mayoría de las conversaciones informan… pero no generan acción
- Qué es lo que realmente hace que los clientes prioricen y avancen
- Cómo crear urgencia sin dañar la confianza
- El cambio de presentar soluciones a facilitar decisiones
- Qué diferencia a las conversaciones que se estancan de las que aceleran el avance
Si tus equipos están experimentando acuerdos estancados, decisiones retrasadas o un pipeline lento, este informe te ayudará a entender por qué y qué hacer diferente.
Descarga el informe ejecutivo y aprende a diseñar conversaciones que realmente impulsen decisiones.