Today I stumbled over ......
"Influence didn’t have to look like volume or certainty. It could look like curiosity, with an edge of empathy and wisdom.”
Curiosity is self-perpetuating.
This one struck more than a chord with me. I think about 20% of the leads I worked with over the years had this kind of behavior. I know I am extremely lucky, because at some point I made this a requirement for every job I would take and know how hard it is to come by that.
Trust issues
When I first joined Medium, our CEO would occasionally Slack me about decisions I’d made. “I’m curious why…” he’d begin, before mentioning a story I’d curated or post I’d drafted. Honestly, this freaked me out at first.
I had the same problem when I started at Computer Online Medium (most likely about 20 years ago). The whole scene was pre-iPhone/Web 2.0, and the website was really getting traction. Let's say a lot of big news companies dreamed of the amount of visitors and traffic that we could actually monetize. My role at the time was to lead a team and help come up with a way to fix the problems on the part of the platform we were working on. It's kind of a stretch to trust me with this—especially if I would have listened to the boss from my former company who told me to my face I overestimated my abilities taking this job. This is a sentence I would hear at the "Computer Online Medium" from anyone leading me at this company.
Still, I had serious problems adapting to this for a longer time. My teammates would not "listen," conflicts in the team, and a not-so-healthy amount of conflict with the team. At some point I started having strange experiences: The CTO told me to 'check yourself before you whack yourself' (my words), aka told me to start with me when it is about to resolve conflict. Super hard, super effective. And he was asking questions like the ones above. All the time. It stressed me out in the beginning.
It all clicked after 2 years: I was early at work and doing my daily read of online news. Suddenly a CEO appears, doing his morning walk and greeting everyone he saw, personally wishing them a good day. If he was not there, if I remember correctly, the CFO would show up instead.
One day he "caught me pants down", reading something that was specifically not work: Spiegel Online. I alt-tabbed myself out of this situation and was surely not relaxed. The following conversation, so seldom, short, and simple it was, would kind of change my defensive stance to this open culture a lot. In the end he left my workplace, and I was sure that no one would judge me by the amount of Spiegel Online pages I would read over the week, and he was very happy someone was caring so much and showed up early for work.
The "Los Wochos" Crisis
Then the financial crisis happened, and from one day to another we lost a lot, if not nearly all, revenue from the kind of ads that were out there in 2008. We were royally f***** and had to swiftly start implementing some changes to get to numbers that would allow us to continue working without layoffs. So the C-levels had to convince a group of about 80 people at the time to completely change all plans for their departments and do what we jokingly called "Los Wochos"—implement" those changes at a speed we were not used to.
We had contacts at different other companies operating in the same markets. While some were intimidated by presentations showing images of tombstones, others resorted to infighting and name-calling for their IT departments (Elektroquallen is one that stuck), and others tried to motivate teams by talking down to them ("lousy pennies"). They all had the same problems and were most likely doing the same kind of swift change as our team.
We had none of this type of communication. Yes, this presentation was still devastating. The numbers were bad for everyone, and we were in the center of the storm. We had made significant investments, and not all of them had panned out as expected. So definitely, there was a lot of potential for conflict. But one thing worked, and that saved us: we were able to pivot. You could call an all-hands meeting and get everyone informed very fast—I think the time to get everyone aligned was under a week. Work started right away. Looking back at it, this feels a little bit like magic. Today I know how many variables are in play when you need to steer a new direction in an organization, the situation is terrible, and the first people start to show 'fight or flight' reactions. I surely was one of them.
I can't remember all the details, but the following messages stuck.
We (the C-levels) don't know it better than anyone else in the market.
What we were trying to achieve was hard, and there was no guarantee it would work. But we will seriously try and an explanation of why they expected it to work.
Honestly, this was an experiment, and there was no guarantee it would work. Again, the same pattern of 'I don't know' and asking serious questions, and it was using a 'Do it so' approach, very different to how we worked before—we got a plan handed and had to execute it. Was everyone fond of the plan? No, I was even one of them. Did everyone assume it will work out? Several people had brought up criticism and warnings. It turned out to be a large round of 'disagree and commit' without even mentioning the concept.
Neither the CEO, CTO, nor CFO had left us with many trust issues. Much to the contrary: We pulled it off in the following weeks as planned. Maybe not exactly, maybe not as fast as we would liked to, but it was happening. Afterwards: The company was still alive - no one got laid off.
It took me a while (about 15 years) to realize the C-levels were cashing in on their trust. 80 people got a bone to chew on and did so right away. This is something that you can not expect from more traditional management methods. As for how much time was invested in this? I can only guess: Let's say the C-levels invested 100 hours per year (30 minutes per day) in their morning greetings, using them for conversations that matter. The 'Head Honcho' spending 12.5 days a year on "shaking hands". But that day, they got their return on investment: people took the challenge and found a solution. The team returned the trust that was forwarded to them for a period of years. This was an important factor in putting disagreements behind us, finding solutions, and collaborating on a goal without a price.
Looking at it from now, this management team made sure we trusted them, because the other way around it was clear as day: they already trusted us.
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