Very little sucks the life out of us more than having others fail to deliver on our expectations. Examples include: Expecting, then not receiving, feedback from the boss on a report we put our heart and soul into; being left out of a meeting we thought we’d be invited to; having someone fail to return a phone call or email; not getting paid on time; having someone “mess up” work that we had gone over with them before, etc., etc.
Unmet expectations are such a real and common part of life. Our ability to respond effectively– as our own Fierce Partner in these situations – which is key to our productivity, well being, and our relationships with others - is the focus of this blog posting.
Promises, promises
We base our expectations on what we believe others will do, and when and how they will do it. The when element may only exist in the labyrinth of our mind, but it does exist. The “how” part refers to the manner or style in which we think something will be done. If I order a meal in a restaurant, I don’t just expect the plate of food I requested, I expect it to be fresh, tasty, delivered in a reasonable time frame, and in an appropriately professional manner by the wait staff.
We operate, even if it’s unwitting on our part, as if a promise was made to us, then broken. Here it gets sticky! Often, a promise was never made. Or, there was an implicit (tacit, or unspoken) rather than explicit promise. Nowhere on the wall or on the menu or in the Customer Bill of Rights statement they hand out when you enter the restaurant does it say, “Your food shall always be delivered promptly and professionally and with a smile by your wait staff.” Yet, we expect that. And it sets us up for … you guessed it! An unmet expectation.
Other times, our expectations are based on an explicit promise such as, “I’ll get the latest sales numbers to you by noon on Wednesday.” Promises matter: we make our plans accordingly. If I don’t get paid in a timely way, it messes up my promises to make my mortgage payment, pay my credit card bill, etc.
When our expectations aren’t met, we’re likely to be disappointed and quite possibly, angry. It can get personal in a hurry. We feel violated, victimized. Righteous indignation may follow. “This is wrong. And I’m annoyed. How dare they?!”
Being angry doesn’t occur for us like an option. It just happens naturally. However, if we’re interested in resolving the situation, and especially if we’re interested in the future of our relationship with someone, we need to apply some wisdom. We need a Fierce Partner strategy aimed at turning people who could end up as adversaries into partners.
Out to Get You?
First, some perspective. Mostly, people do not deliberately go about trying to mess up our day (or life or career). Your colleague, when he gets up in the morning, doesn’t say, “Today’s the day I’m going to ignore all the promises I made at our last meeting (especially the ones I made to Robert. That’ll really bother the guy. Hah!”).
So, suppose we start with the notion that most people have good intentions. However, they may:
- Underestimate the time needed to do the job;
- Underestimate or misunderstand the resources needed; and
- Have no system in place for registering and following through on their commitments.
In addition, people may:
- Be unclear what exactly was expected of them in the first place;
- Find it difficult to speak up before they commit to doing something; and
- They may even be oblivious to our expectations in the first place!
As a Fierce Partner, we consider that our relationships do matter – and I’m a believer in the axiom that “relationships are the foundation for our accomplishments” - the best course of action is to talk and get to the heart of the matter together. While damage may already have been done, we still have a chance to learn our way forward from the breakdown so we can put adjustments in place for a better future.
Have the Conversation
The first step is to invite the person (or people) who did not meet your expectation into a conversation with you. The spirit of the invitation is key. No one will want to join you in a make-wrong session. Once you’re together, acknowledge that something you expected would be done or said, wasn’t, that it’s had a damaging impact (be specific about what this was), and that you are interested in talking about that.
Announce that your goal is to come away with a clear understanding of what happened so you can find a mutually acceptable way to resolve it. Let others know that this has the potential of shifting how you’ll go about working together in the future. This approach implies that you, too, in ways small or large, have helped contribute to the misunderstandings. The willingness to acknowledge your responsibility is key.
When the right people, i.e. the stakeholders, are involved together in this conversation, you’re able to start establishing a clear, accurate picture of what happened. It’s akin to creating a mosaic. Everyone adds a piece with their version of the events. Finding out the facts that underpin each of these versions helps ground you and all concerned. A fact can include someone sharing, “when I didn’t hear back from you, I assumed this work was no longer a priority.” Staying with the facts helps help you start to distinguish things that led to the unfulfilled expectations in a way that repeating and arguing for your positions or points of view seldom do.
It’s also a good idea, when leading people through this process, to actively look for insights into the thinking and beliefs that governed people’s actions - yours and theirs. E.g. You might share that “the whole time, I just knew this was headed for the rocks.” That belief may lead you into territory with significant implications. So, a willingness to lead by example and be open and curious is very important here.
Once the picture is clear you’re better positioned to sort out next steps. Some genuine apologies may be in order at this point. They may apologize to you for not informing you that they would not meet their promise. You may need to apologize for assuming they had enough time to fulfill it. Apologizing is powerful. It can help wipe the slate clean.
The learning and discovery you’re doing serve as a springboard for a more powerful way of partnering. Oftentimes, people will make commitments. E.g. “I’ll make sure I go through my slides with you before the next presentation to make sure we’re in synch.” Or, “I will double-check with Jean to make sure he is available to provide admin. support so we don’t run into that problem again.”
Commitments not only bind us, they are a expression of our intent to work together. We are committing to deliberately create our future rather than drift into it. It’s often valuable to include in our commitment a process for checking in along the way. This has us spot and head off potential breakdowns when there’s still time to do something about them.
An enormous benefit of this Fierce Partner approach is that we’re acting to restore trust in and respect in one another. Trust and respect are frequent casualties of having unfulfilled expectations, and doubly so, when we don’t address them. Anytime people come away from a breakdown stronger and better equipped to work together, faith in each other and the future, grows.
Developing our capacity to have a Fierce Partner conversation will transform the quality of our relationships and our results.
If you would like a copy of the form I’ve created to help guide clients through this Fierce Partner conversation, let me know!
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Completing the Year Powerfully
Each December, lots of people do an end-of-year completion exercise. It’s a chance to take stock of what they accomplished over the past year. There’s a lot of power in doing this. When we take a step back from the day-to-day, we can see all the places where we’ve moved the needle. We get to say, “I did all that” and feel the satisfaction that comes from this.
Yet, it occurs to me that the typical way of doing this exercise does not do justice to what we’ve really done. Asking the question, “What have I accomplished” masks something much more accurate and even, profound. It ignores the others with whom we are linked. While our actions stemmed from a stand we took, what escapes our notice is how that stand does not arise out of thin air nor occur in isolation. Stands arise out of our interconnectedness and, when made public, out of the quality of listening our relationships give us. Often, others join with us in our stand because we are standing for the possibility of something that has resonance for them, too. Such as our stand to shift our diet to eat in a healthy way.
That’s why, to take full stock of the past year, I invite people to look beyond the fiction called, “what I accomplished,” and look at the question, “what did we accomplish?” This gives us a clearer, truer and more expansive picture.
That “we” picture has to factor in how everything we did involved in some way the give and take of working together: e.g. our agreeing on a goal, setting a plan, finding the resources, meeting, working through differences of opinion, and making mid-stream adjustments.
Part of what makes the accomplishments meaningful is to consider what this took from you in your interactions with others that you may not have known you had. E.g. the ability to enroll people via a presentation you gave. Offer the benefit of your advice or grant someone the generosity of your listening. How you completed a difficult negotiation. Or how you made and fulfilled an “impossible” promise to someone. Perhaps it was the way you hashed out some fundamental differences, or allowed yourself to be a beginner and ask for support. But again, you had to work together with others to coordinate your actions to get things done.
To round out the picture of your year even further, look at the outcomes that may not have been your most prized priorities but which were still important to others. Own how you supported others to make their accomplishments real. These are your accomplishments as well.
Then look and see where you are today as a consequence of what you’ve accomplished. Are you standing in a new, more satisfying place within your network, your organization, perhaps your industry?
The “we” way of looking can open enormous space: once you’ve looked back, you can also look forward and begin imagining ‘what new possibilities, such as new goals and projects, might be possible in the coming year because of who I - and we - have become?’
I welcome you to be in touch about how to use this completion process or to let me know how it went for you!
Yet, it occurs to me that the typical way of doing this exercise does not do justice to what we’ve really done. Asking the question, “What have I accomplished” masks something much more accurate and even, profound. It ignores the others with whom we are linked. While our actions stemmed from a stand we took, what escapes our notice is how that stand does not arise out of thin air nor occur in isolation. Stands arise out of our interconnectedness and, when made public, out of the quality of listening our relationships give us. Often, others join with us in our stand because we are standing for the possibility of something that has resonance for them, too. Such as our stand to shift our diet to eat in a healthy way.
That’s why, to take full stock of the past year, I invite people to look beyond the fiction called, “what I accomplished,” and look at the question, “what did we accomplish?” This gives us a clearer, truer and more expansive picture.
That “we” picture has to factor in how everything we did involved in some way the give and take of working together: e.g. our agreeing on a goal, setting a plan, finding the resources, meeting, working through differences of opinion, and making mid-stream adjustments.
Part of what makes the accomplishments meaningful is to consider what this took from you in your interactions with others that you may not have known you had. E.g. the ability to enroll people via a presentation you gave. Offer the benefit of your advice or grant someone the generosity of your listening. How you completed a difficult negotiation. Or how you made and fulfilled an “impossible” promise to someone. Perhaps it was the way you hashed out some fundamental differences, or allowed yourself to be a beginner and ask for support. But again, you had to work together with others to coordinate your actions to get things done.
To round out the picture of your year even further, look at the outcomes that may not have been your most prized priorities but which were still important to others. Own how you supported others to make their accomplishments real. These are your accomplishments as well.
Then look and see where you are today as a consequence of what you’ve accomplished. Are you standing in a new, more satisfying place within your network, your organization, perhaps your industry?
The “we” way of looking can open enormous space: once you’ve looked back, you can also look forward and begin imagining ‘what new possibilities, such as new goals and projects, might be possible in the coming year because of who I - and we - have become?’
I welcome you to be in touch about how to use this completion process or to let me know how it went for you!
Friday, December 4, 2009
The Glow May Start With You
This time of year, perhaps more than any other, our attention turns to light, warmth, and beauty. When it gets so dark, instinctively, we seek light. Lights can be very beautiful. I especially love the glow of the silver and blue lights you see strung on some of the trees.
Our sense of rhythm changes this time of year. We speed up to get our work done before the mad rush of the holidays and year end. Part of us also wants to shift gears and slow down. The holiday season is a time of wonderment. To experience that, we need to pause and let that in. It’s also a time of year when we reach out to people. We are grateful for many of our co-workers. We may feel like fellow-survivors. The past year or so has not been easy. Yet, we’re still here. Acknowledging that would be a welcome gesture.
Having researched, written about, and worked with workplace survivors, I wonder, given the economy, how is this season being celebrated where you, or those close to you, work? Is there any kind of communal celebration? Did there used to be? Or, have your office traditions been sliced from the budget this year?
Suppose the sense of holiday and celebration is missing from your office environment. If so, I invite you to generate that spirit yourself. Better yet, enroll your work group or department and create something worthy of who you are and what you share. It would be a terrible loss to give in to the scrooges. You, your co-workers and your office, I’m betting, could really use the light, warmth, and beauty you provide.
(c) 2009 Jeremy Nash, Fierce Partners
Our sense of rhythm changes this time of year. We speed up to get our work done before the mad rush of the holidays and year end. Part of us also wants to shift gears and slow down. The holiday season is a time of wonderment. To experience that, we need to pause and let that in. It’s also a time of year when we reach out to people. We are grateful for many of our co-workers. We may feel like fellow-survivors. The past year or so has not been easy. Yet, we’re still here. Acknowledging that would be a welcome gesture.
Having researched, written about, and worked with workplace survivors, I wonder, given the economy, how is this season being celebrated where you, or those close to you, work? Is there any kind of communal celebration? Did there used to be? Or, have your office traditions been sliced from the budget this year?
Suppose the sense of holiday and celebration is missing from your office environment. If so, I invite you to generate that spirit yourself. Better yet, enroll your work group or department and create something worthy of who you are and what you share. It would be a terrible loss to give in to the scrooges. You, your co-workers and your office, I’m betting, could really use the light, warmth, and beauty you provide.
(c) 2009 Jeremy Nash, Fierce Partners
Thursday, October 8, 2009
On the Delight and Value of Being Impressed
I enjoy being impressed. Lately, I have been impressed by the laugh out loud humor of NBC's "The Office." Another delight has been David Whyte's brilliant cd series, "Clear Mind, Wild Heart" (www.davidwhyte.com). David's way with poetry helps open us to new ways to participate in life, and I am moved, inspired and mightily impressed. I've been impressed by an executive I've been working with, Paul Anderson. Paul leads with a finely tuned sense of wisdom, knowing how much and how little pressure to apply to his organization, as he steers it through a sea change in its relationship to construction safety. I could go on and on with examples.
Being impressed makes a huge difference to the way we experience life. Life would be dull without our being impressed. We would miss so much. It's the experience of being impressed that opens us to pleasure, admiration, respect, excitement, wonder, and so much more. We can be impressed by something mundane, e.g. the way a waiter comes around at just the right moment to re-fold our napkin. Or, by something awe-inspiring. (I'm remembering a visit I made as a 9-year old to Grand Teton National Park. The beauty of that place is utterly humbling and unforgettable.)
Being impressed also makes a huge difference to the way we work together. To be impressed takes being impression-able. This is when we're open, willing, and appreciative of others vs. closed, defensive, and cheap. When we're impressionable, we're curious about what others are saying, e.g. in the meeting. We're interested - and actively listen for - the merit of what's said, regardless of how big or small that idea may be, or out of whose mouth it's coming from.
When we're impressionable, people around us notice this and feel validated because of the way we're paying attention. People appreciate this kind of generosity. Being impressionable becomes a catalyst for the creation of ideas and allows us to create a dynamic where we're building off each other's ideas. It increases the kind of stakeholder energy we need to get most anything worthwhile done.
Something else I've noticed about being impressionable. It's how impression guides expression. The more open we are, the smarter the words are that come out of our mouth. Not only have we listened in an interested, creative way, our speaking grows more interesting and creative. Rather than being fixated on our own ideas, we become a force for the integration or blending of different ideas we're all putting out there. We do not have to know whose great idea it was that came out of the meeting because it was all of ours.
I'm curious to hear what you are noticing about your impressionability and how that's adding to the quality of your relationships, to what you're getting done and the way you're getting it done, especially in your work with others.
Being impressed makes a huge difference to the way we experience life. Life would be dull without our being impressed. We would miss so much. It's the experience of being impressed that opens us to pleasure, admiration, respect, excitement, wonder, and so much more. We can be impressed by something mundane, e.g. the way a waiter comes around at just the right moment to re-fold our napkin. Or, by something awe-inspiring. (I'm remembering a visit I made as a 9-year old to Grand Teton National Park. The beauty of that place is utterly humbling and unforgettable.)
Being impressed also makes a huge difference to the way we work together. To be impressed takes being impression-able. This is when we're open, willing, and appreciative of others vs. closed, defensive, and cheap. When we're impressionable, we're curious about what others are saying, e.g. in the meeting. We're interested - and actively listen for - the merit of what's said, regardless of how big or small that idea may be, or out of whose mouth it's coming from.
When we're impressionable, people around us notice this and feel validated because of the way we're paying attention. People appreciate this kind of generosity. Being impressionable becomes a catalyst for the creation of ideas and allows us to create a dynamic where we're building off each other's ideas. It increases the kind of stakeholder energy we need to get most anything worthwhile done.
Something else I've noticed about being impressionable. It's how impression guides expression. The more open we are, the smarter the words are that come out of our mouth. Not only have we listened in an interested, creative way, our speaking grows more interesting and creative. Rather than being fixated on our own ideas, we become a force for the integration or blending of different ideas we're all putting out there. We do not have to know whose great idea it was that came out of the meeting because it was all of ours.
I'm curious to hear what you are noticing about your impressionability and how that's adding to the quality of your relationships, to what you're getting done and the way you're getting it done, especially in your work with others.
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Announcing "Fierce Partners"
The moment has arrived. I sit, I think, I write. Composing my first official blog post could feel like a solitary act acted out in my basement office. But I'm not alone in this. People too numerous to mention - teachers, friends, work colleagues, coaches, clients, people across the world like Felix the Honolulu tour bus driver, etc etc have all played some part in this creation. This post, and this blog in general, is all about the fierce partnership that characterizes much of the best of what we are up to; that goes hand in hand with who we are, working together.
Working together has fascinated me from my very first job in high school working in my father's private label paper plate factory. They say it takes a village to raise a child. It also takes one to make a paper plate! We had Carl, the plant superintendent; Lidia and a good dozen other Spanish-speaking machine operators; Heinz the mechanic; Ramon the warehouse foreman; Luis and Juan the fork-shift drivers; Mickey, among others, in the warehouse; and various and sundry other characterss, all participating to make those plates for the ShopRites, Pathmarks, and Star Markets, of the world. This was sweaty, gritty, mind-numbing work. The fruits of our labors came together to produce something tangible. Working there, you learned what it took to thread 2000 lb. spools of kraft paper through lines of paper presses so they could stamp out stacks of white and pastel-colored plates which got packaged, boxed up and shipped out in trailers or rail cars for placement on a supermarket shelf near you.
I am not glorifying what we did back there in the day, especially when you consider the vast number of trees that were cut down or the mega-tons of toxins the paper mills spewed into the air and rivers to make the paper we used, and how those plates were part of a throw-away lifestyle that clogged our landfills.
Thankfully, we know better now and are much more mindful of our impact on the environment. Thankfully, too, it's highly unlikely that we go to work in an environment which values us for our hands and little else. On the other hand, we may wish that we, too, in concert with others, produced something tangible, that we could see and touch at the end of our day, and feel pride in.
What we do and how we do what we do consumes much of our lives. To what end do you devote this huge chunk of your self? What's the experience like for you working with others? How is that turning out, as in, how satisfying is it? What, that's crucial to what you care about, depends on how well you and others work together? It's to these questions, among others, that I dedicate this blog.
Help me get this rolling. I welcome you to share what you have to say to the above questions, or anything else that got stirred up here so far.
Thank you for being here and welcome aboard!
Working together has fascinated me from my very first job in high school working in my father's private label paper plate factory. They say it takes a village to raise a child. It also takes one to make a paper plate! We had Carl, the plant superintendent; Lidia and a good dozen other Spanish-speaking machine operators; Heinz the mechanic; Ramon the warehouse foreman; Luis and Juan the fork-shift drivers; Mickey, among others, in the warehouse; and various and sundry other characterss, all participating to make those plates for the ShopRites, Pathmarks, and Star Markets, of the world. This was sweaty, gritty, mind-numbing work. The fruits of our labors came together to produce something tangible. Working there, you learned what it took to thread 2000 lb. spools of kraft paper through lines of paper presses so they could stamp out stacks of white and pastel-colored plates which got packaged, boxed up and shipped out in trailers or rail cars for placement on a supermarket shelf near you.
I am not glorifying what we did back there in the day, especially when you consider the vast number of trees that were cut down or the mega-tons of toxins the paper mills spewed into the air and rivers to make the paper we used, and how those plates were part of a throw-away lifestyle that clogged our landfills.
Thankfully, we know better now and are much more mindful of our impact on the environment. Thankfully, too, it's highly unlikely that we go to work in an environment which values us for our hands and little else. On the other hand, we may wish that we, too, in concert with others, produced something tangible, that we could see and touch at the end of our day, and feel pride in.
What we do and how we do what we do consumes much of our lives. To what end do you devote this huge chunk of your self? What's the experience like for you working with others? How is that turning out, as in, how satisfying is it? What, that's crucial to what you care about, depends on how well you and others work together? It's to these questions, among others, that I dedicate this blog.
Help me get this rolling. I welcome you to share what you have to say to the above questions, or anything else that got stirred up here so far.
Thank you for being here and welcome aboard!
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