Crucial Conversations

Some people write blogs that look beautiful.  They sat down and clearly typed for hours.  They thought; they formatted. I cannot do that. I don't have that time, so this blog is a testament to the timeless ones! This is written while driving from one meeting to the next in my car, dictated into my phone.

My job has a title that has nothing to do with what I really do, like so many people--plumber, technician, teacher. You’re an instructor. You're a police officer. Like me, you have a title.  Mine: 21st-century curriculum coordinator. But what I do has nothing to do with my title.  I have conversations all day every day. My job is about conversations.  I've also recently felt that I was doing poorly in my job, not because I'm a poor instructor or I don't know my technology. I'm very good with those things. It's the conversations that were letting me down.

Recently I came across a book titled Crucial Conversations. Hopefully you know about it.  It states that we live and die (seriously die), we succeed and fail based on our conversations.  Life is a series of conversations, all of those conversations crucial moments of success or failure. In fact, a fascinating statistic is you can evaluate whether or not a program will be effective with 90% accuracy based on the quality of the conversations.

Doubtful?  Here’s a question: are there moments where a conversation left you feeling worse, less effective, with a dark cloud of regret hanging over your head? For instance, when I got in a fight with my neighbor about how loud my children are. Or when I lashed out at a colleague about a comment he made. Or like when my wife was talking to me and I ignored her and she said, ‘why don't you ever pay attention’  The good and bad news is we all have those 'failed' conversations, the guilt, the frustration.  Those conversations failed, but those failed conversations are opportunities, opportunities to have a richer relationship with someone. And all of those conversations could've been successful with the right tools.

While I'm not going to go into all of the tools (please read the book), I’d like to share one: perspective. Today is a good example to feature.  I'm going to say today was okay because today as I was walking down the hallway to have a go at an insensitive colleague, I thought, ‘why was this colleague upset with me?’ How did that meeting look from her perspective, and how was I doing something that was making her life more uncomfortable? The conversation I did have, which was very different from the one I could have had was based in empathy.  Today I managed to listen to a good book and survive a crucial conversation.  Today.

Indispensible Tools

I was walking out of a bank recently, noticed a height measurement chart on the door jamb and thought to myself, ‘Oh, how cute.  My daughters would love that.’  Then, like a truck or a really poorly done movie realization moment, it hit me that the chart was for bank tellers to judge the height of bank robbers! 

That chart on the wall was a vital tool for tellers to not only feel like they had a plan in the face of a horrible situation, it was also an indispensible tool without which they could not live.  My topic for the next blog thumped me in the noggin right there!

If I only had one tool to use as an administrator, what would that be?  I sifted through all the things I have found this year and kept coming back to a tool Dr. Shannon Flumerfelt from Oakland University shared with me: the CX tool.  Now, my example is a really simplified version.  This tool is a way for an organization to assess what is wrong with it and why.  Here is my simplified version:

Here is how to use the tool at a personal level:

Written explanation:

I think it is important to be healthy, but my actions don’t align with that.  I am overeating, especially at night. How do I know?  My scale tells me so, at least that I am heavier than I want to be.  (However, the scale isn’t a great measure of healthy since I am riding my bike a lot and have a low resting heart rate.)  When I investigate why it is that my actions don’t align with my beliefs, it seems relatively clear that I work a lot and struggle to find the time.  So, those 4 areas all combine to create the organizational system and whether or not it is in balance.

The thing is, most organizations that used this tool, and people, would find not only that they are out of balance between their ideas and actions but also that a simple tweak of their structures or measures would pull them into balance.

First Follower

If you’re in the Oakland County, MI area, you might have had the opportunity to work with Oakland Schools and their facilitation crew.  Lauren Childs in particular got me thinking the other day, and really bent my mind with a concept I hadn’t come across.  When we hear leaders and leadership, we nearly always think of someone willing to go out in front and/or someone really adept at motivating people to do something.  She introduced the concept of a first follower, however, as the most vital ‘leader’ an organization could have.  I’ve embedded a great TEDex video, 3 minutes long, which lays it out perfectly.

Here’s the essence.  If everyone is out leading, which does happen often, then no one is following.  If no one is following, then there is no organized movement.  The first follower is that person who decides the lone leader has a good idea and should be followed.  And that first follower is the one who convinces another core group of people to also follower the leader.  It takes tremendous courage, humility, and leadership to say, ‘Hey folks, this person has a great idea and we need to support her.’  I saw someone do it once in an organization I was in, and it was a really powerful, galvanizing moment for us.  Thanks to Lauren I have a name for it: First Follower.

Journeys

Some time ago I took a long bike ride, long enough to be lost and frustrated and find myself sitting on a bench staring at the ocean. It was a pretty view, but I couldn’t appreciate it.  A man sat down next to me, also on a bike ride, and started talking spontaneously.  That happens to you on bike ride. People find you more approachable.

He said, ‘You know the good thing about long bike rides and journeys is what you learn and what you learn about yourself. The problem with them is you begin to think they're the only way to have a journey. When you're done with this ride, you're going to think the learning is done, the journey’s done, the adventure’s done, and the mistake we make is to not realize every day is a journey. Every day has new things to see, to discover, to experience and learn. Every day has a view like this (he gestured at the water), but we miss it when we return from the journey.  We go home. We fall back into the regular life, and we don't keep ourselves open to the journey. That's the trick because you spend most your life in the everyday journey and not much of it on the big, broad exciting one. That's the trick--to be in the journey every day.’

Then he got up, and he got on his bike and rode away.

Introduction

In the last year I have come across so many new learning opportunities that I feel like I might explode.  This space seemed like a great place to share ideas, situations, and solutions, especially those from the experts and wonderful leaders I have been blessed to learn from.  With any luck, there’ll be something new to learn every day!