Evaluation and relationships - working together by sharing the right message

I'm seeing a trend in my choices of which sessions to attend at ICE this year. Apparently it's all about evaluation for me. I think I've seen everything the Kirkpatricks have had to say so far, I spent this morning learning more about the do's and don'ts of Level 1's, and now I'm sitting in the front row waiting to hear part 2 of Jim and Patti Kirkpatrick's presentation on the new world of their 4 Levels - ROE - Return on Expectations. I'm finding the further I move into my organization managing expectations, or helping others identify or realize their own expectations of me and my work, is more and more critical.

Along those lines, I attended a session yesterday with Rob VeVerka where we focused on building relationships with senior leaders and how important it is to craft messages, and expectations, to match their business needs rather than expecting them to know or care how we think and operate. That's an important message for me because in my former life everyone I spoke to came from the same place - all education all the time. We all shared the same language, we all came up through the same ranks and had similar experiences we could all share. It made relating to even senior leaders so much easier. But now, as I try to plug my education and learning background into a business environment I find it so much more difficult to communicate, to get them to care about what I care about.

So I attend these sessions learning how to craft my message, and gather the right kinds of data by asking the right kinds of questions so I can share the right kids of information with the right kinds of leaders. It all makes sense now that I see the connections. I don't think I'd have been able to make that connection, as quickly at least, without attending this conference. I love it when I can point to THAT thing that makes the expenditure of time and money seem so worthwhile.

Playing Make-Believe - a follow-up

It was more difficult than I'd like to admit. One of the most difficult days of my professional career if we're being honest. But, as my colleague wisely pointed out - building new skills isn't typically easy to do. So I swallowed whatever was holding me back and I did it. I turned my back on my fear/inability/distrust of playing make-believe, locked myself in a training room, and delivered a presentation to a room full of empty chairs about 27 times until I got it pretty close to perfect.

And it was damn hard to do.

What I learned was that this style of presentation - a very scripted or prescribed style - is not what I would choose or look forward to. My natural style is one that includes a lot of interaction (which I believe will be the topic of my next post), playing off the audience, talking with them rather than to them. Sharing what I know and learning what they know is what makes any presentation fun for me. And I believe that's the key - fun. I want to be having fun when I'm standing in front of a group of people. I can't help but feel that if I'm not having fun then how or why could they be having fun and if they're not having fun then why the hell would they want to spend their time with me?

Deep breath.

So I continue to learn. It's not always about fun. Sometimes, as was the case as I presented the results of a survey to some very senior folks, it's just about the information. I know the data, they need to know the data, my 30 minutes in front of them is dedicated to taking what's in my brain and putting it in theirs. Not much fun but critical to the organization. Did I try to inject levity and personality into the conversation? Of course, not to do that would be asking too much. But I'm learning that balance and in my new, non-academic, environment the balance is much different than I've ever been used to.

Delegation - art or science?

Last week I had the opportunity to sit in on a colleague's pilot for a delegation skills course he designed. The course was interesting to me in that I am often not in the position to delegate, in the traditional sense, as my role is more of an individual contributor rather than a formal leader. Due to my lack of experience in this subject I was excited to be a part of the half-day event where I hoped to learn about a new topic but also to learn more about how the other half lives. I've felt, in my last three positions in fact, that I've operated in somewhat of a vacuum, without a team to work with or others to support me. I have worked under some people who have, at times, tasked me with work but I've been in the unique situation of creating my own work from my own developed understanding of the needs of my environment. I haven't been in that formal leadership role where I would assume the need for delegating would be automatic.

Without any background, in either delegating or having been delegated to, I was at a disadvantage when right out of the box I was put on a team tasked with creating a list of the positive outcomes that might arise should a leader delegate. My partner and I came up with a fairly comprehensive list:

• Increased productivity of the delegator by freeing up their time to accomplish other tasks
• Putting more or different minds/eyes on the problem in order to tap into their experience or expertise
• To grow staff members by giving them new or more challenging work assignments
• Reduce stress of the delegator
• To increase the trust of the team - a positive outcome would increase the ability to delegate to that person again in the future

I was feeling good about our work until I realized that the other three teams were basically creating lists detailing why someone shouldn't delegate. And their lists were far more extensive. I felt woefully inadequate, especially considering my lack of experience with this topic. What we eventually came to realize, through thoughtful instruction by my colleague, was that we should and could take advantage of delegating responsibilities if we were careful to mitigate the possible disadvantages and negative consequences of a poorly done delegation.

Through a four-step process of planning, delegating, monitoring, and reviewing we learned that planning was, as with most other aspects of life, the critical piece to any successful delegation. This was interesting to me especially as the planning piece is not one that comes as naturally to me as it might to others. I've learned quite a bit about myself in my time in my current organization (through tools such as DISC, the Listening Profile, and others) and what I've found is that my primary instinct is to drive forward through a situation, listening and react to solve a problem, rather than slowly investigating, planning and monitoring the situation to ensure a successful outcome.

While it's easy to imagine opportunities that would allow me to take advantage of these action and collaboration-oriented traits, planning for delegating and following through on the monitoring part of the process are not natural fits for me. If for nothing else, I learned that should I find myself in a situation where I could delegate a task I should first literally take a moment to thoughtfully plan the steps we would take and also to be specific in creating expectations around potential deliverable and deadlines. In the few instances where I have delegated a task, mostly with vendors or others outside of the organization, I realize I've mentally put the ball in their court and moved on, expecting they would meet my sometimes silent expectations and return the ball to me for my next step. When that expectation wasn't met it often went unnoticed for weeks or months. With this (not so new) realization I've come to see that I need to be far more blatant about my expectations, even when I'm delegating upwards - which is very uncomfortable for me. But it is only by being so concrete and forthright in the planning stage will I be "guaranteed" of success.

So, I've learned that the science of delegation can be learned, even by people like me who often move at a blistering pace, so that each opportunity will result in a successful conclusion. And with practice that science can soon turn into an art that doesn't requite forethought as it flows naturally through the tasks I delegate.