Constrained Growth 2.0
Some 14 months ago, a few days into the US lockdown, on March 30, 2020, in a piece titled “Constrained Growth” I tried to imagine how the lockdown might change us:
Today’s constraints on our physical movements can provide the opportunity to enlarge our mental and emotional capabilities to such an extent that it may lead to a great re-invention.
Emotionally the crucible of change we are in can make us feel differently about our lives, our connections, and our work.
Mentally the stress in the foundry of uncertainty will twist our thinking in one or more ways as we seek to make sense of what has happened and plans for when the constraints lift.
In many ways it will make us appreciate what we took for granted.
In others as we forgo certain behaviors and have the time to ponder and ruminate on our previous days, we may question why we did certain things.
We will question many aspects of our lives and we will make resolutions.
Every one of us will adapt, evolve, and meld different versions of ourselves and interact with a world of people and institutions that are different.
We may have gone into this crisis as MS-DOS and focused on the narrow corridors of ourselves but if we spend the next few weeks correctly, we could come out as Windows 10 with expanded horizons…
Over a year later.
The pandemic is still with us, and it is causing great devastation in India. Many areas of Japan are back in an emergency lockdown with the Olympics only a few weeks away. However, in the US with significant portions of the population vaccinated and an easing of the need to wear a mask, life will likely return to familiar routines.
As the constraints ease and the limits are removed will we return to the way we were?
Every individual will be emerging from the past year in different ways. Over half a million people in the United States who were lost to Covid will not be here to register these days. The tens of millions who were connected to them will always see a gap, a shadow and an empty chair which was previously occupied. Others among us may have lost jobs or needed to move back home or move away to a different place. Relationships have been strengthened and sundered. Rituals were postponed, delayed, or virtually held. All these have made their mark and left their invisible tattoos.
Limits can lead to growth.
Many have found growth amidst the constraints and limits.
In the ordinary.
In less.
In enough.
In endings.
Ordinary.
There is a newly found appreciation for the ritual of the ordinary day.
We might have pined for the extra-ordinary, the special and the memorable eighteen months ago.
But as we sat socially distanced, masked, and locked down the little habits, movements and freedoms of every day loomed large.
Sometimes one does not know what one has until one loses it.
Happiness is not often in the one day in the future or getting promoted to the right level at work or when the right “number” is reached.
It is in the ordinary of good health, relationships, and freedom.
The extra-ordinariness of “everyday ordinary” is what is special to many.
Less.
All we may need is less.
For many people the tragedy of Covid-19 has been a lack of food, shelter, jobs, money, and health care. For many others especially people with white collar jobs that can be done remotely we are realizing that except for space we could do with less.
How many of the things you have, or the past harried routines or frenetic travel are you missing?
All the frenzy of movement and much more remind us of William Wordsworth’s lines.…the world is too much with us; late and soon. Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers...
Many people are using this time to re-consider their lives and many are discovering that all they need is less.
And if one needs less, it opens a world of options since we may be able to pursue the dream our previous lifestyle may have priced us out of.
Enough.
Jack Brennan the CEO of Vanguard has a new book out called “Straight Talking on Investing” in which he quotes the journalist Jason Zweig from a January 2000 Money magazine column:
“I once interviewed dozens of residents in Boca Raton, one of Florida's richest retirement communities. Amid the elegant stucco homes, the manicured lawns, the swaying palm trees, the sun and the sea breezes, I asked these folks - mostly in their 70's - if they'd beaten the market over the course of their investing lifetimes. Some said yes, some said no. Then one man said, "Who cares? All I know is, my investments earned enough for me to end up in Boca."
The moral of this story is three-fold.
a) What are our goals in life?
b) There is a need for finish lines. Comparison is the thief of joy. Continuous benchmarking is a recipe for always coming up short. Living in the minds of other people might leave us empty. Are we happy with what we have when we have them or only when we can show others that we have them?
c) Enough. The most satisfied people recognize the power of enough. Living in a fervor of continuous measurement means you live by the scoreboard, and we stop focusing on the ball.
Life is the ball and not the scorecard.
Endings
Franz Kafka wrote “The meaning of life is that it stops.”
In the future the ritual of the ordinary day will be special, just as we have come to realize after months of a new way of living that the simple pleasures of free movement, meeting friends, sitting in a crowded bar, and watching a sports game were so special.
Life does not have to be lived forward and understood backward if we decide to pay attention.
We can use the lessons of 2020 to be aware of the fading moments of now.
Look around you. Watch the special quality of light or listen to the hiss of the air duct. Treasure the conversations and even the repetition and lack of differentiation of day after day.
Because one day it will not be so…
So, as we get back to the way it was maybe the year of constrained living with anxiety, fear and uncertainty has grown all of us in ways that show that limits can free us and concentrate the mind and heart on what matters.
All Photographs by Rishad Tobaccowala
Slaying Our Inner Dinosaur
Many, if not all of us suffer from IDD.
Inner Dinosaur Disease.
The cause of this disease is change.
It is all around us. We all talk about it. We are buffeted by it. We participate in conferences about it. We hand down edicts and issue press releases about change initiatives.
But individually we abhor it. Change sucks. Particularly for decision makers.
Change exposes us to vulnerability and loss: of control, of clout, of turf and of face. It demeans the very currency of expertise, seniority, networks, and image we spend decades building. How dare some pompous young pup, some fresh idea, some innovative technology, some fearless startup, or bossy consumer challenge us?
The two-phase inner dinosaur shuffle.
We let our inner dinosaur roar and roam unleashed against these threatening changes to our ecosystem by indulging in a two-step shuffle.
First, we justify our refusal to change via the Deflection Dance!
Blame our myopic bosses who are approaching retirement or the organization that has too much money riding on status quo.
Attribute inaction to the profit pressures and business realities we carry on our shoulders.
Suggest the Client or Customer gave only lip service to change readiness.
Rebuke the employees. They are not trained or motivated for this stuff.
Exhume specimens from the when-things-went-wrong. Remember when?
Wait for others to find the landmines.
The second step is Change Botox—little injections of temporary surface embellishments to distract from real change. Common manifestations:
Announce the retention of a Consulting firm who, over the next X months, will benchmark and develop a plan of action.
Launch a Vision or Change 202X task force to “get out in front” of change.
Hire a talent agency, next generation modern marketing firm, or niche agency, then issue a press release.
Re-launch a quiet, unsupported brand or initiative with a small budget dedicated to a new way so there is something to point to.
Five weapons slay our inner dinosaurs (and dragons!)
Here are s ways of slaying inner dinosaur disease (IDD): a) own change, b) empower the iconoclasts, c) cross the line, d) leverage organizational inertia, e) act to change or change your act
1. Own change. If you change, others will follow. If they do not, change your partners, or your options.
It cannot be achieved via delegation, outsourcing or by committee.
Change would be easy if there were no people or organizations to get in the way. This draws a laugh, among leaders and often a pensive “so true.”
Less comfortable for the leaders who run organizations is that we are often the people who get in the way. Appointing a change agent, hiring some boutique agency with a hip name, securing a powered consultant to affect change, or just embracing cool and different behavior might be part of an answer. But it is our organization, and it is us who must eventually be the doer of new things.
2. Empower the iconoclasts. There are many talented revolutionaries within your corporate environment, but they are often dismissed as “too junior” to add value. Seek out your best thinkers at any level or age. Listen to them, give them a platform and the support they need to achieve their goals. Encourage them to attack your ideas, your company. Too many of us get delusional surrounded by sycophants who either fear them or lust for the dollars we control.
While organizations can clearly promote a culture that is conducive to innovation, it is ultimately the individual that matters—the passionate, risk-taking, caution-to-the-wind individual. Not some group think, an organizational grope or some socialistic, homogenized, outward bound team.
3. Cross the line. We all cower within self-drawn boundaries. Too often we self-edit ourselves, fearful of crossing a line. Or we wait for permission.
Remember you do not know where the line is until you cross it.
Let ethics guide you and start changing things. Now. You will be surprised to find that people will not stop you but most likely will follow you.
Cross the line. Often you will notice the line was in your imagination. You might learn that those who once prevented you from crossing this were not aware of a line at all.
4. Leverage organizational inertia: It is possible to get “The Company” to do what we want if we simply start doing it.
If getting approval requires lots of forms, presentations, and justification, it means your organization may suffer from so much inertia it might not actually know how to say no. This is a real opportunity for the daring. Instead of asking for approval to start something, why not take the initiative and see if the company stops you? No harm done, right? Key is that idea or initiative is ethical and legal.
Most important, in today’s fast moving and ever increasingly digital world, the lines we draw around our categories are disappearing. So are the barriers and lines that once controlled competition in our industries. Did any phone company executive a few years ago predict competition from Skype? Or Whats App? New competitors appear all the time, as do new threats, but so do new potential partners and opportunities.
Crossing the line is a lonely job. It is you who must eventually be the doer of new things.
If you are successful, why not be willing to take a risk? Are you not amazed at how many admired, world class organizations are overly cautious? If they cannot grasp the opportunity to fail at some greater thing, are they not already in the process of ossification?
5. Act to change or change your act.
You might be a highly talented individual cowering within some imagined or real constraint. If your company is repressing you and you are good, risk taking can only beget one of two outcomes. You will succeed or you will be asked to leave. If you are asked to leave and you are good, many companies will be ready to hire you, or you could go into business for yourself. But staying put and becoming some bureaucratic czar will eventually lead to you resenting yourself and reducing your market value.
Do yourself a favor. Cross the line. Most times no one will stop you.
Challenge yourself to fail once you have succeeded.
Seize bigger opportunities!
All non-dinosaur photography by Erin Babnik
Repair
“Everything that has a shape breaks”- Japanese Proverb
But…
“The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places”- Ernest Hemingway
And…
“Repair is the creative destruction of brokenness”—Elizabeth Spelman
Five paths to repair.
Images and words extracted from five books that offer different perspectives that anyone can draw on since none of them have to be purchased and can be integrated into every day of almost every life.
1. Poetry 2. Water 3. Wabi-Sabi 4. Kintsugi 5. Gardens.
1. Poetry
Poems restores us to what is deepest in ourselves.
Poetry finds the perfect words in the perfect order.
CK Williams in his Pulitzer Prize winning collection “Repair” writes how
‘Self-doubt is almost our definition” as we move forward with the “hesitant music” of our lives
“If I can create myself, I’ll be able to amend myself.”
“Re-establishing myself in myself like this always comes to pass”.
He celebrates “Invisible mending”.
The minds procedures of forgiveness and repair.
The greatest poetry is written at the borders of what can be said. As this stanza on persevering and resurrecting and restoring oneself through the ups and downs of life while never losing your internal melody …
“Be soft in your practice. Think of the method as a fine silvery stream, not a raging waterfall. Follow the stream. Have faith in its course. It will go its own way, meandering here, trickling there. It will find the groves, the cracks, the crevices. Just follow it. Never let it out of your sight. It will take you”. Sheng-Yang
2. Water.
Moving water is often symbolic of power and life. It can reputedly heal the sick and the lame, restore youth, confer fertility, dissolve sin, and so on.
It is an alchemy of thermal simulation that leaves one clean and pure and reconciles mind and body.
Flowing water whether it be rainfall, a stream, a river, or the tides of a lake or ocean has a certain timelessness to its biological rhythms.
From the Calm app to the music at a spa, our internal compass draws us to water as a place of rest, rejuvenation, and repair.
Even if it’s just the shower…
3. Wabi-Sabi
Wabi-sabi is a beauty of things imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete. It is a beauty of things modest and humble. It is a beauty of things that is unconventional.
It is a philosophy of repair and therefore real life for it does not have perfection or ideal as a goal
Wabi refers to a way of life, a spiritual path, the inward, the subjective, a philosophical construct. It is about “space”.
Sabi refers to material objects, art, and literature, the outward the objective an aesthetic ideal, it is about “time”.
4. Kintsugi
Kintsugi is a Japanese repair technique that takes ceramic destruction and makes a broken object into a new entity. It leaves clear bold visible lines with the appearance of solid gold. A kintsugi repair speaks of individuality and uniqueness, fortitude and resilience, and the beauty to be found in survival. Kintsugi leads us to a respectful acceptance of hardship and aging.
Kintsugi has in it the Wabi-Sabi philosophy and its belief of beauty, knowledge and humanity arising from the scars and the repairs is sung by Leonard Cohen…
Ring the bells that can still ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in…
And the philosopher Rumi…
“The wound is the place where the light enters you”
5. Gardens
In the Charlevoix region of Quebec there lies a private garden which covers more than 20 acres and is called Les Quatre Vents ( The Four Winds). It is considered amongst the finest private gardens in the world (it is opened a few times a year to the public).
The garden was created by one person, Francis Cabot, as his life work that blends creativity and passion and it is simply the most breathtaking places one can imagine.
Francis Cabot believed that gardens are like art and have the power to change you. And unlike other art, which may affect you differently over time, because you have changed over time, a garden is itself always changing. Francis designed his garden to lift the soul of people who walked through it. To help them grow and repair and heal.
He wanted us to come out different after the experience.
Here is a peek at Les Quatre Vents…
One prescription for the pressures and challenges we face is to take a walk in a garden.
Regardless, it is key to remind ourselves of Francis Cabot’s belief that every individual is creative and we have a garden within ourselves that we need to tend to so that we can heal, self-repair and always bloom…
The Future
We are all interested in the future since we will be spending the rest of our lives there.
And the future by definition is unknowable since it is yet to unfold.
However, are three very high probabilities about the future that we should heed so that we can better align and adapt to what is likely to occur.
The three high probabilities.
The future will not fit the containers of the past: From organizational structure to how markets are organized, the existing ways of doing business have been optimized on what has come before. The challenge for most of us is to realize that the future refuses to be contained in the containers of the past whether it be media, money, markets or mindsets.
The future will come from the slime and not the heavens: Future prognosticating is often aligned with crystal ball gazing, scenario planning and blue-sky thinking. We look ahead and above. We watch market leaders and todays visionaries and time after time we are surprised that the future did not come from where we were looking but from those we looked down upon or were outside the “velvet rope” or who never appeared on our radar.
The future while challenging for some is likely to be much better for most: Someone said that they were not afraid of the future, but they were scared out of their minds by the headlines. When it bleeds it leads? What enrages powers the algorithms that are built on what engages. While there are real challenges and some segments of society and certain regions fail and slip back, history indicates that for humanity as a whole the future can be looked at with optimism.
The future does not fit in the containers of the past
Let us consider just three arenas surround us every day: a) Media. b) Markets and Money. c) Mindsets.
Media
There was a time that most of the media we consumed fit in containers called compact discs or DVDs or newspapers or magazines.
The have now been all unbundled down to individual scenes, songs and articles all digitized, streamed and available for re-mix and re-posting.
Media fit in containers of time whether it was a television networks programming grid, the deadlines that the newspapers and magazines went to presses and movies were marched along their windowing schedule from theater to pay tv to video to cable to tv.
Now windows have shortened and collapsed, and everything is increasingly in real time. And movies and television show long lost to time or another region are resurrected on Criterion or can be viewed with a VPN and an app. Schedules are malleable.
Media used to fit form. There was print and there was audio and there was video. But in a digitized world the containers between forms were eroded away by the hydrochloric acid of code and everything became multi-media and then immersible and swappable and interactive. This is the difference between the first pictures on Instagram and todays Instagram stories.
And even the containers of search, mobile, social and e-commerce are leaking into each other and mongrelizing as we speak. What is WeChat or a shoppable format with internal search and embed e-commerce?
Markets and Money
Soon the Miami Heat arena will be renamed for a company called FTX which allows for 24-hour trading globally of many instruments and creates new markets and instruments.
Crypto currencies and block chain which most people disdained, are re-configuring the future of transaction, store of value and exchange.
Wall Street Bets and Stock Twits are for many a modern Bloomberg terminal, and the revolution is on Robinhood.
Insurance is priced by the mile. Ownership of everything is fractionalized and tokenized. Coinbase is more valuable than Goldman Sachs and debit is the new credit as the next generation of Stripes, Squares, Affirms and Afterpays embed and engulf all.
None of these fit within the containers of the past and are so new that regulation lags and definitions fail to do them justice.
Mindsets
Most of us and most managers are Baby Boomers and older and our mindsets may be the containers of the past
Millennials who are a generation or two removed from the average age of most leaders in non tech companies have grown up in a completely different environment that their management may have and one that is more aligned with where the future is going.
They grew up multi-ethnic with the US under the age of 18 turning Caucasian minority next year.
They grew up digital. Go meet them on a Discord, Twitch and Tik Tok and try to figure out what is going on.
They expect to do worse than their parents and having seen 9/11, The great recession and Covid and the rise of Uber, Task Rabbits and much more recognize that the future of work is being a gig worker thus skill building, speed, social standing are increasingly important. They operate as companies of one in real time.
They are forcing companies to become more purpose and meaning driven.
YOLO! You only live once is a real movement as are FIRE. Financially Independent Retire Early.
But it not just the mindsets of millennials that need revisiting but also how we see older people. Someone who is healthy at 50 is expected to enjoy another 30 years of good health. With people over 50 controlling over 70 percent of wealth and living 30 years and as Covid has shown capable of new behaviors we would be short sighted to give short shrift to older folks or to our own abilities to re-invent.
The past year has accelerated, accentuated and amplified all these trends. There is no going back to December 2019. If you take the entire world and shake it with a health, financial and social crisis for over a year and we do not restart or return to a new normal. Instead, we start again and prepare for the new strange.
Once a champagne cork is out of the bottle it swells and does not fit back. A mind and behavior expanded does not go back to its original shape.
The future comes from the slime and not the heavens.
IBM did not see Microsoft. Microsoft did not see Google. Nokia and Sony did not see Apple. GM, Ford and Toyota missed Tesla and Uber. And Gillette and Schick were late to recognize the power of Dollar Shave Club and Harry’s.
Coastal urban elites ensconced in bubbles of chattering chit chat and voguish self-glorification missed the measure or the temperature of the country in between. Many board rooms today continue to bathe in yesterday’s data lakes filled with dead fish and actually believe they will control and manage how people will come back to work.
The future of video did not emerge from the networks or studios, but a DVD distributor called Netflix and the dominant force in music was not based in London or LA but in Stockholm where a little company called Spotify was birthed.
In each case the threat came from a) outside the industry definition or established competitor, b) utilized a go to market strategy that in the near term made little economic sense or introduced a completely new form of distribution or pricing c) aligned with technology and demographic trends that were becoming versus technology and trends that had been.
The new entrant was therefore unknown, too little and small and or crazy.
From the dredges, the low-rent district, the outside places.
Life came from the slime according to evolution.
So will the future.
Smart management of companies today pay a lot of attention to adjacent industries and not just theirs. They understand that as we enter the third connected age of technology which will combine AI, Voice, 5G and Quantum Cloud Computing every aspect of their go to market strategy must be re-considered. They monitor and invest in start-ups and fund internal disrupters who re-imagine.
The future will be better for most of humanity.
From Covid-19 to climate change, from inequality to increased polarization, from race relations to lunatic leaders the future looks troubled, dystopian and trauma filled.
And it might be.
Since the future is not ours to see.
But if the past is any guide, the technology and new learning being discovered and the mindset of the young generation around the world are any sign the future for most people is something to look forward to.
While there is much to be achieved let us remember that in the past 20 years 2 billion people came out of poverty, half the world’s population went online and were connected, that to have cancer was not necessarily a death sentence and being a woman or minority or gay in 2021 while still not where it needed to be was far better than two or three decades ago.
Today with quantum computing, gene and biotechnology, knowledge (not just rumor and memes) spreading fast because of the internet and new approaches to medicine and education delivery being scaled and birthed the future is much brighter than the headlines make it out to be.
Just imagine a vaccine for Covid being delivered in less than one year using technologies that were in the lab less than five years ago.
Two books, Enlightenment Now by Steven Pinker and Human Kind: A Hopeful History by Rutger Bregman make for great antidotes to the fusillade of dystopian headlines exploding across your television screen and social streams.
Five steps to future align yourself and your firm.
First it is key to understand how we and the people we serve or sell to have changed as we all come out of over a year of living differently into a world where modern technology has accelerated, amplified and augmented the way we live. What will our customers and employee and other people around us start, stop and continue to do as we proceed into years of the Third Connected Age.
Second is commit to continuous learning in a world where the half-life of knowledge and behavior is increasingly shortening. Deliberate practice and continuous improvement are key.
William Gibson wrote the future is already here but not evenly distributed. Look around the world or different markets and you will see the future and due to the acceleration of the rate of change we will constantly have to upgrade our mental operating system. Upgraded software eats the world. Static software (our minds and skills if we let them atrophy) gets written over.
Third is to imagine the exact opposite of what we believe to be true to both stretch our minds and ensure that in a world of polarized media and tight social circles we do not become mislead to feel our flatulence smells like Chanel 5.
Fourth is to remember that the future comes from the slime and from the outside. Which is from beneath us or besides us and not usually from the roped in areas we may be inhabiting. Look to the slime and not the heavens. Wonder whether you are walling yourself in rather than walling people out.
Finally, and most importantly be optimistic. Pragmatically enthusiastic not pollyannish. People follow people who have hope in their eyes and see a higher mountain to climb. Be real and align with science since fact are stubborn things and truth has a habit of breaking in. Inspire! People choose with their hearts and use numbers to justify what they do.
Meetings Re-Imagined
Illustration by Carolina Contreras
We spend our time in meetings.
Meetings at work. Meeting friends. Meetings where you present and meetings where you are presented to. Meetings with all sorts of people. Meetings used to be in offices, conference rooms and over meals and over coffee. Today they have been replaced by and in the future will also be supplemented by meetings over screens.
In fact, if you are in business at almost any level you likely the spend the majority of your time in meetings. Thus, how you spend your time in meetings is how you spend a great deal of your career.
In business there are many who find meetings a waste of time and try to make them as short, small and few as possible. Many try to avoid meeting people and have gate keepers and delay tactics ready to brandish. Some leaders use meetings as ways to ensure discipline and instill fear.
Illustration by Carolina Contreras
How meetings have changed.
For the past year the ability to exercise power through meeting power structures such as leveraging gate keepers, seating arrangements and arriving late or slipping away early are for less impactful in a zoom world. Everyone is a single square and showing up late means entering an empty virtual space or more likely the meeting is proceeding without you.
The number of meetings has increased rather than decreased because in a collaborative, fast moving, networked society even with all the social networks and collaborative tools in the world, it is hard to be a manager or a leader without meetings even if it these days it is remote via a screen and you can be dressed in your pajamas.
Another way that meetings have changed in the socially distanced arena is that we often find the meetings more tiring these days. The reason is not because we have trouble staring at other people but because in the office, we rarely looked at each other when we were in a meeting! We did not attend meetings but “stare-a-thons” where we looked not at each other but at three screens. A big screen where some presentation was being projected. Our laptop or iPad where we were attending to emails or reading the news and the mobile screen balanced on our knees below the table where we engaged in social and text messaging. Yes, we were in a room with other people, but we were really staring away from them at some combination of screens.
Instead of circumventing what cannot usually be avoided why not think about how to get the most from the meetings you will be spending your time in?
Illustration by Carolina Contreras
A different way to approach meetings.
There are a lot of books and articles on meeting management and how to get the most out of gatherings. Most of them are utter and complete BS because they all focus on how you can get the most out of a meeting, while the focus should be how can you give the most in a meeting.
If you go to a meeting with an “extraction” mindset versus a “giving” mindset you are likely face a number of problems including a) missing meetings where you may have been able to share your knowledge and therefore build goodwill and your brand, b) become so focused on what you are looking for that you do not discover what you need and c) becoming over confident that you know more than anybody else and so you have the ability to forecast before attending a meeting can where you benefit and where you do not.
So, you end up with less and less knowledge, find yourself shocked and surprised at things that come from left field and also suffer a diminished reputation.
To maximize your learning, your reputation and upgrade your meeting experience focus on generosity, empathy and energy as the keys to meetings.
a) Generosity.
How can you leave the person or the people whom you are meeting with or presenting to with a gift? A gift of knowledge or insight or a way to see things that they did not have before. Something that makes them believe that it was a good use of their time to be in the meeting.
Besides knowledge some other ways to be generous include appreciation of their skills and their contributions. Everyone wants to be acknowledged and recognized for their good work.
Another way to be generous is to provide guidance. People are hungry for advice, directions and stories to navigate whatever challenge or situation they face. Providing perspectives, stories and experiences resonate and scale in empowering and growing people.
Knowledge. Appreciation. Guidance.
b) Empathy.
How can you truly understand the other persons perspective and point of view because in doing so you will grow even if you disagree with their perspective or view. If you are presenting, how can you make sure that your talk is relevant to the audience and the issues they have in mind and not some boiler plate boiled anew. Is it not ironic when speakers talk of relevance and customization and customer or content is king but do not customize or make relevant their content to their audience? Basically, they are saying that their time is more valuable than the audience!
Three ways to ensure empathy is to seek to understand by asking, listening and re-stating the problem and situation. By reframing the problem using analogies and other categories and finally by sharing relevant personal experiences.
Understanding signals you are listening. Re-framing telegraphs that the problem or challenge being faced has been shared by others. Personal experiences ensure a human connection and re-enforces that you have been in this person’s shoes or seen others who have been.
c) Energy.
How can you leave the folks in the meeting more energized and feeling better about themselves? So much of success is attitude, belief and hope. So many meetings leave folks dispirited, brow beaten, scared and worried. One does not have to be all bouncing beans unrealistic but let’s be pragmatically enthusiastic if you want progress.
There are three keys to ending a meeting with energy. First is clarity. People should be clear what next steps are for each of them. Second is belief which is a belief that they can tackle these next steps and finally a plan which is how they go about doing the next steps. At the end of every meeting are things clear, do people believe they have the tools and skills to do what is next and do they have a plan?
Illustration by Carolina Contreras
The giving mindset to meetings is omni-channel and omni-situation effective!
By focusing on giving versus getting you are almost guaranteeing a great meeting because at minimum the other folks leave the room better off, and feeling positive about you. And in feeling that way they become an ally, a supporter and an advocate for you, so you get something out of it.
But actually, what happens is much more. In the course of the meeting once they understand that you are giving without asking, they give in return. Knowledge.Insights. Help. Lots of other stuff. Often in the meeting or as a follow up.
Finally, because you have treated their time as precious, they treat your time as precious.
Don’t think of how to put barriers to meeting people. Don’t think about what you can get. Don’t think through yourself as a filter.
And this approach to meeting works in both the real world and the virtual world. It works across every culture and country. It is effective in both personal and business situations.
Think about the other person or people.
Give yourself and your time first.
And you will find meetings are valuable, fun, educational and energizing.