Field notes
Field Notes
Our daily Field Notes email is just the kind of jumpstart you need. A fast read. Maybe less than a minute. Because sometimes it just takes one insight to change the trajectory of the day.
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How team meetings begin sets the tone for the engagement, positivity, and energy shared by the group.
How team meetings end shapes what the team will remember and solidifies team member commitment to next steps and actions. Yet, most leaders don’t think very strategically about these important time-bound bookends. As such, they miss a crucial element in designing a great meeting.
Not everyone likes or appreciates those they work with. It is inevitable that, on occasion, a leader will find a team member distasteful or stylistically not their cup of tea. Over time, unless the leader finds their way to more connection or affinity with a disapproved team member, they will often unintentionally “leak” their dislike through their everyday behaviors. It's exceedingly hard for most people to hide their true feelings over a long period of time. This is especially true for leaders who must engage a disfavored team member on an everyday basis. No matter how they might try not to, leaders who loathe a team member will display their distaste in a myriad of ways. Once the disliked party and others on the team notice this objection, it becomes a problem for everyone.
Asking others how you might help them can be a highly indirect and effective way of giving feedback.
Consider a colleague who is chronically late and deserves the feedback that their performance is suffering as a result. A leader could give this feedback in a more direct fashion by saying something like: “You really need to work on your punctuality. Your contribution to the team is diminished by your tardiness.” Or they might take a more indirect route: “Is everything okay? You seem to be having difficulty arriving on time, and it’s affecting your performance.” Leaders have at their disposal many other direct and indirect approaches to expressing this feedback. One avenue often used by admired leaders is to couch this feedback indirectly by offering help.
Some listeners take over the conversation by interrupting, changing the topic, or focusing on themselves without any intention to understand what the other party has to say. Metaphorically speaking, they steal the ball away from those speaking. And run with it. People quickly get fed up with them.
You might recognize this ploy from someone you know. You say: “I can’t wait to tell you about my new car.” Before you get the last word out, they grab the conversation and run with it: “I got a new car last year. It still smells new even though it has 25,000 miles on it.”
