Can you hear you?

Image: Marek Piwnicki on Unsplash

One of the privileges of my work as a strategy coach is not just listening to my clients but helping my clients to hear themselves. 

The words we use - as colleagues, as bosses, as partners, as daughters and sons, as friends, as parents -  can have enormous power and listening with what one client called "exquisite attentiveness" allows me to bring my clients' words back to them so that they can hear themselves properly - often for the first time. 

Repeated words, phrases, the images and metaphors which my clients use often without noticing are all helpful data which I can feed back to them to help them see, hear and understand themselves in new ways. And, with this new awareness comes increased choice, agency and progress. 

I can think of one senior client struggling to make progress in his role and contemplating moving to another role but feeling very unclear about what to do and whether a job move would really improve things. As he talked about his current manager and his potential new manager, I noticed that, in both cases, he was using very parent-child style language. I offered his words and phrases back to him* not as an opinion or judgement but as an observation. 

And, as I shared his own words with him, he had an epiphany. He looked like he'd been hit by a thunderbolt, was quiet for about thirty seconds and then told me what he had heard clearly for the first time. 

He realised that, even though he genuinely wanted to move to the next level and to be seen and treated as the equal of the partners at that level (as well he should - he was highly experienced at his job), he continued to think of himself as their protege rather than their partner and that was reflected in his language and the way he showed up. 

We then talked briefly about why he thought this was and how he might change the words he used going forward.

Image: Alexandra on Unsplash

That moment of hearing himself clearly changed so much for my client. Within weeks, his relationship with his line manager improved measurably; within months, he had a new, far more senior role in a great business. 

And most of all, he was moving and positioning himself with a new confidence, not operating as though he needed patronage but as the highly competent partner he was. He came into his own and he has continued to knock it out of the park since as a business builder and a recognised expert in his field.

I can also think of one organisational client, a global leader in their sector but also stuck in a bit of a no man's land when it came to future success. 

After a couple of weeks of listening across the organisation informally as well as in workshops and one-to-one conversations, I told the leadership team that, time and time again, I had heard a real energy around increasing the engagement of their key stakeholders. It was clearly a core priority and yet this commitment to engagement as a big driver of future success was not officially recognised or reflected anywhere. 

As soon as the leadership team heard themselves and the wider organisation clearly, they got it and that resulted in rewording their strategy and developing metrics around engagement.

As a result, they have improved their core product results by 50%, and last year went into the top 10 amongst their peers for the first time in years. Their commercial revenues have also risen by 54%. This, along with a deeper sense of mission in the organisation was all sparked by hearing themselves more clearly and acting on what they had heard.

How might you be able hear yourself better and use key words in ways which enhance your clarity and effectiveness at work? 

A few ideas for you:

You might perhaps ask trusted colleagues, "What do I talk about most when it comes to work?" and more precisely, "How do I tend to talk about it?"

You might also seek to listen to yourself more carefully over the next week at work - in meetings, in conversations with colleagues and customers/ clients. 

Image: Glenn Carrie on Unsplash

You might ask those with whom you speak to most regularly outside of work, "When I talk about work at the moment, what do I talk about? What sorts of words do I use?" 

Not everyone is the world's most careful listener but you may be surprised by what people tell you if you ask with curiosity and listen without defensiveness.

Once you've heard yourself a bit more clearly, maybe think about the two or three key words you use more than you perhaps realised, and then ask "How do these words both reflect and shape my current reality?" And finally you might ask, "How can I use different words to help me get different and better results going forward?"

This is also a great exercise to do as a team, asking each other which words tend to get bandied around a lot in your team chat. What do they tell you as a team? What different words could you use?

Make the words you use work for you and find greater clarity and increased progress at work. As always, do get in touch and tell me how that goes. 

Next up, a great tool to help you get clearer in especially complex situations at work as well as two exciting announcements for those who like "To Be Clear..."

Three sides to every story

A few weeks ago, a client running a complex 1500-person business that all UK readers would have had some interaction with, came to me stuck on how to present a (literally) billion pound idea for investment to a board. He told me how he typically feels in those situations (not great) and wanted help approaching them differently.

So I introduced him to the Third Story - a very useful tool from Sheila Heen, Douglas Stone and Bruce Patton's excellent Difficult Conversations. It's not the first time this treasure trove of a book from the Harvard Negotiation Project has been mentioned on "To Be Clear..." and it's unlikely to be the last.

Formulating the Third Story can help you get clearer on what's really going on when you feel nervous, stressed or overwhelmed by a complex or unclear situation at work.  

In the case of my client, he was seeing this billion-pound meeting in "us and them" terms, as a supplicant trying to persuade reluctant, powerful people to approve his vision.   

I asked him to zoom out and give me the Third Story perspective and he saw that, to a neutral observer, the meeting wouldn't look "us vs. them" at all. 

Instead it would be clear to an observer that everyone in that room was doing their best to deliver on the business's objectives and deploy that billion pound investment in the most effective way possible. While he and the board were playing different roles in the process, the end objective was the same. 

As a result of this change of perspective, my client headed into his next high stakes meeting in a completely different frame of mind - not as a supplicant but as a key participant in a process in which everyone was after the best possible outcome. 

Getting the billion pounds of investment is a good result but, more than that, my client's change of perspective will hopefully serve him and his business for years to come. 

The Third Story is not only an effective way of getting unstuck yourself but can also be a great way of starting and framing a challenging conversation so that the other person is less likely to get defensive. 

A few tips for framing the Third Story. First, zoom out and imagine yourself to be someone entirely uninvolved in the situation. What do you observe? How would you describe it? 

Then, formulate a one sentence judgement-free description of the situation which:

• all the participants would broadly agree with (in my client's case, "Everyone in this room is committed to deploying this large investment in the most effective way....")
• frames the issue as a difference between two or more stories and identifies the gap rather than judging one story or other to be right
• signals curiosity and learning ("I've noticed that..." or "I'd be interested to understand...")

For more tips on using the Third Story to get clearer yourself and to bring more clarity into complex situations, get hold of the book or feel to contact me.  

Any tool like the Third Story which takes you out of your own limited perspective to look at a situation from a different angle can be a real catalyst for deeper clarity and meaningful progress. 

That's the basis of the questions I developed for the Ideas layer of ONION® and why I'm thrilled to announce two exciting things that have been released today and in which  you can participate.

One is (drumroll please) a podcast interview with me on the topic of Coaching & AI from the ever excellent and dynamic team at Clarity on Fire. I mentioned how fantastic Kristen is in the last issue of "To Be Clear..." and now you get to hear her for yourself. 

You can find the podcast here or on Apple, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you normally download and listen to podcasts.

The second exciting thing newly available today is (fanfare) the opportunity for you to get exclusive access to the early release Alpha of Digital ONION®! 

Readers of "To Be Clear..." not only have the opportunity for exclusive access to this early release but also get a further 21% discount on the early release price (just use the code TBC21 at checkout). It's a way of saying thank you for all the support so many of you have given me as I've continued to develop ONION® in its different forms. Find out more and claim your discount. 

There are a limited amount of discount codes available so, if you do take advantage of the offer, do get in touch with me and Nim, my brilliant co-founder, and let us know what you think. 

If you find Digital ONION® helpful in getting you to deeper clarity and more confident decision making on something that matters to you, spread the word so that others can benefit too.

So, there you have it - two ideas to increase your clarity and progress at work - hear yourself so that you can put the right words to work for you and start telling the Third Story when things aren't clear. 

In addition, a chance to think about accessing deeper clarity via emerging tech on the podcast interview with me and an exclusive chance to access the newly launched Digital ONION® Alpha at an exclusive price.

As always, do get in touch to tell me how you are thinking about and using these ideas, insights and offers in practice. It's always really good to hear from you.

I'll be in touch before long to share more ideas and insights for greater clarity at work. Wishing you a clearer week ahead in the meantime.