Increase Buy In + Efficiency with Stickies
I love using strategically placed sticky notes to help me keep useful concepts top of mind. One of my favorite acronyms is “W.A.I.T.” or “Why Am I Talking?”
Whether it’s in conversation with my clients, my wife, or my kids, this mantra reminds me to take a humble moment to check in with myself to see whether the words I’m about to say are actually going to substantively add to the discussion and its outcome or not.
In my desire to be of service, to impress, or simply to make my point, I can also make the mistake of thinking that my advice, insight or opinion is going to be additive when in actuality, it has the real potential to be just the opposite; disempowering, disruptive and disengaging to the process at hand. Why? Beyond being annoying (think mansplaining), despite our best intentions, when we’re always the one with the answers, we inadvertently prevent others from feeling like they are too. As a result, they may give up trying, de facto deferring to us, and relinquishing the opportunity to lead. Worse, they become resigned, thinking about other things rather than the discussion at hand because their opinions don’t seem to matter anyway.
Whether it’s yelling when we’re annoyed, mindlessly eating when we’re stressed or talking too much when we’re nervous, we all have reactions to situations that just seem to happen by themselves without any direction from our conscious minds. After all, our ego self is attached to its position. It’s trained to react in a second to defend it. In the profound book Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl writes about these automatic behaviors and offers that one way to mitigate their negative impact is by increasing the space between the stimulus and the response - by slowing things down long enough to insert the possibility of choice.
But in the heat of the moment, in the executive committee or directors’ meeting, in the “teaching moment” with our kids or the lecture to our partner, how do we summon the patience and restraint to stay quiet?
Another teacher of mine, Mordecai Finley, liked to say ““I might be wrong” or “there might be a better way” are two pathways to wisdom”. A little healthy skepticism, a breaking down of certainty, is a virtue. Cultivating wisdom is a conscious pursuit. It calls for an internal dialogue. When I ask clients who they talk to most on any given day, they’ll tell me it’s their business partner or spouse, their COO or direct report. The truth is that the person they’re talking to most is themselves. Sadly, when I take this conversation deeper and ask about the tone of that daily internal back and forth, it’s typically not that positive. One of my clients half-jokingly said “it can get pretty rude in there”. So how do we create space that slows down the automaticity of our reactions, creates an opportunity for us to choose rather than react on autopilot, invite the best of ourselves to emerge and to bring that out in others? Curiosity.
Here’s another good sticky note acronym “S.T.O.P.” - this one stands for Stop, Take a Breath, Observe, Proceed”. This is a process meant to be done mindfully (i.e. slowly at first). By Stop, I mean stop your automatic reaction. Don’t insert yourself right away. Don’t fly off the handle. Don’t grab your phone. Don’t fire off that email. Just pause. Do nothing. It is more than likely, unless you’re a heart surgeon or a Blue Angel that nothing will happen for that moment. Then…
Take a Breath - the most underused and underappreciated leadership skill there is - I like the “in through the nose, out through the mouth” kind. Why the breath? To get us out of our mind and into the body. To engage the senses. To create an interruption to our thoughts. To redirect neural pathways. To create space.
From this opening, we get to Observe. This is what we might call “reading the room”. While still breathing, take a look around. What do you see when you look at their facial expressions and body language? Are they still with you? Is it time for a break? Is it time to interrupt the person speaking and have him bottom line his rant? Have we stuffed too much into this agenda? Have we beaten the topic into the ground? What’s the very best thing I could do right now to move things forward? What should I say right now? How do I want everybody to feel when I’m done? Informed? Inspired? Calmed? Reassured? Excited? Committed? So what tone do I need to adopt? What words should I use? It’s this moment - the delay between the stimulus and our response that supports us delivering value, win-win-win outcomes, the best and highest act of service to the moment at hand. It’s also great for lowering blood pressure, cortisol production and turnover.
If you or another executive you know is finding it hard to create space between the stimulus and the response and it’s making it hard to do great work, now is a good time to reach out. Let’s see how we can stretch things.