I'm "Fine"
Most of us are used to getting onto the workplace in the
morning and asking ((and being asked) “how are you?”. How often do we mean this? Admit it, we’re
just doing it for politeness.
Our usual response is “fine”, which Martin and Elizabeth of
Leadership Q&A jokingly translated as meaning
Fairly (or any
other “F”-word you care to use)
Insecure
Neurotic
Emotional
In other words, we may be feeling a number of emotions, one
of which might be the “fine” with which
we answer.
“Fine” is a “neutral” or “nothing” word, a disinterested and
courteous response to what we perceive as a disinterested and courteous
question - part of the “morning ritual” we go through when we get to the
office.
So when we, as leaders, ask people “How are you?” or “How
are you today?” we need first to ask ourselves “Am I asking this because I’m genuinely interested in my co-worker’s
well being or am I doing it because I’m being polite?”
If it’s for politeness, we're wasting our time and (more
importantly) theirs.
I remember one coach who always used to ask me, “So how’s
William today?”, speaking to me as though we were talking about someone
else. When I asked him why he didn't say
“you”, he explained that some people find it easier to answer if the question
is phrased this way. Fair enough, but I
had to explain that I found it disingenuous and patronising, as though he were
talking to a small child and risked being perceived (by me, at any rate) as
insincere.
Martin and Elizabeth suggest 4 ways of getting a meaningful
answer:
1. Be Focused On The Answer:
- Listen
- Show we’re genuinely interested
2. Don’t Let Them Get Away With Just “Fine”:
- ·
Ask an additional question (e.g. “What does
‘fine’ mean?”)
- ·
Probe a bit deeper
- ·
This may be disconcerting at first for both us
and the co-worker, so be careful and try to avoid accusations of giving them
the “Third Degree”.
3. Think About How They Answered The Last Time
We Asked:
- ·
Did they say “Really great”? and not just
“Fine”? If so, why have things changed?
- ·
It shows that:
o
We’re really listening
o
We’re genuinely interested
4. Ban Using The Answer “Fine”
- ·
Make a joke of it - share the meaning of “Fine”
above!
It’ll take a while, but maybe there might be some pleasant
surprises in store.
I have spent more than half my life
delivering change in different world markets from the most developed to
“emerging” economies. With more than 20 years in international financial
services around the world running
different operations and lending businesses, I started my own Consultancy to
provide solutions for improving performance, productivity and risk
management. I work with individuals,
small businesses, charities, quoted companies and academic institutions across
the world. An international speaker, trainer, author and fund-raiser, I can be
contacted by email . My website provides a full picture of my portfolio of services. For strategic questions that you should be
asking yourself, follow me at @wkm610.
Labels: Leadership, Teamwork
Any Decision Is Better Than No Decision
… And a good decision
taken quickly is better than any decision – Business Insider.
Decisions – business AND
personal - are a part of life. We need
to be able to make the best decision based on circumstances at the time,
experience, knowledge and even our own
“gut” feel.
In some cases it’s easy.
Knowledge tells us that it’s not safe to cross the street if there’s a
car approaching. This is an “easy”
Yes/No-type decision. You cross the
street when the car’s too close, you die, bad decision…
As we move through life, decisions become more
complicated. Some cultures teach that
it’s “bad” to make the wrong decision, but how do we learn if we can't make mistakes?
How many businessmen have we heard telling us that we learn as much from
poor decisions as we do from good ones? I
know of one country where ministers prefer to pass all decisions up to the
“final authority” rather than risk their pension. Result?
Things take longer and by the time they’re done, it may be “too late”.
We naturally want to make the “best” decision - our jobs (and indeed our lives) depend on it. Sometimes we can refer to advice/precedent/experience. At others, we can get bogged down in “Analysis
Paralysis” where we keep wanting to gather that little bit of extra information
to improve the decision.
How often, though, will that extra effort significantly improve the quality of the
decision? How many of us have
experienced that time when our manager said “Well, if you had considered…”?
I recently watched the film Sully with Tom Hanks playing Captain Chesley Sullenberger, the
pilot who safely landed US Airways flight 1549 (a plane with 155 souls on board)
on the Hudson river after experiencing catastrophic engine failure after
takeing off from New York’s LaGuardia airport.
Airline pilots are some of the most highly-trained people in the world. Their job involves knowing what to do in an
emergency.
The film shows how “the authorities” were out to show that
Sully made a poor decision in landing on the Hudson.
According to
Wikipedia,
“The National Transportation Safety Board ruled that
Sullenberger made the correct decision in landing on the river instead of
attempting return to LaGuardia, because
the normal procedures for engine loss are designed for cruising altitudes, not
immediately after take-off. Simulations
showed that Flight 1549 could have barely made it back to LaGuardia had that
manoeuvre begun immediately after the bird strike, but this scenario completely
neglects the time needed to understand what had happened and assess the
situation.”
This is played out in the
film, where Sully points out that the pilots in the simulation shown to the
panel had been briefed that they
would suffer catastrophic engine failure and had practiced the landing
manoeuvre 17 times before going in to
the simulator. Sully and First Officer Jeff
Skiles received no such briefing on the day of their fateful flight, and
certainly weren’t able to practice. In
the end, what got them through was training, experience and fastr
decision-making.
Fear of criticism may paralyse us
when called on to decide on a course of action.
The best we can do is use the information available at the time and our
own experience to move forward. As I
mentioned before, “Any decision is better than no decision”.
In his book Why Flip A Coin? The Art and Science of Good
Decision, H.W. Lewis summarises good decision making as:
·
Identifying all reasonable actions.
·
Listing the potential consequences of each
action and the utility of each consequence.
·
Evaluating the probability that each action
will lead to a given consequence.
·
Choosing the action quickly which has the
best expected outcome or positive contribution.
One
wonders whether Sully and Skiles had the time to do this. The film suggests about 34-35 seconds. Often, when people analyse a decision, they
forget that they have the time, all available information (including on the
consequences of the decision) and the ability to analyse multiple scenarios. These “chair borne warriors” are the bane of
many enquiries. The sad fact is, they
weren’t there at the time.
I’m
not advocating a “shoot from the hip” style of management, just that we
sometimes have to take the best decision we can with limited time and
information. The world’s armed forces
frequently have to do this.
Sometimes the best decision is
not to do anything – put it off pending further information. If we can do this without risking loss of
business or worse, this is one of the few cases where the best decision is no decision (for now).
I have spent more than half my life
delivering change in different world markets from the most developed to
“emerging” economies. With more than 20 years in international financial
services around the world running
different operations and lending businesses, I started my own Consultancy to provide
solutions for improving performance, productivity and risk management. I work with individuals, small businesses,
charities, quoted companies and academic institutions across the world. An
international speaker, trainer, author and fund-raiser, I can be contacted by email
. My website provides a full picture of my portfolio of services. For strategic questions that you should be
asking yourself, follow me at @wkm610.Labels: Career, Crisis Management, Leadership, Teamwork
