“I really want feedback on my performance. I especially like to hear where I can improve,” a new direct report told me eagerly. Steve looked sincere. He acted sincere. So I thought he was sincere. I then proceeded to tell him that he needed to be more careful about the type of information he was sharing with people as it was causing people to think that features were changing in the product. His opinion was affecting the progress of the…
I was managing a five-person startup. We had put our mission, company values, goals, and strategy in place about 6 months ago. We had spent several days together in a small, windowless conference room nailing down these things. No distractions. Just focused on making sure the mission, values, goals, and strategy were all well defined. Since there were just five of us, I figured that communicating those things again wasn’t necessary. Then about 6 months later, we were talking about…
There is nothing more frustrating than going to a weekly staff meeting that is content free. Or worse, ends up as a weekly status meeting. Please! If it is a project status meeting, call it that. If it is a staff meeting, please, please, please, make it about something other than project status updates. Maybe for some managers, staff meetings are equivalent to project status meetings. It’s their chance to get an update on the current project. So call it…
This story begins when I was having lunch with someone who reported to me several years ago. We were reminiscing about those days and I shared that my mother was ill during those years and died during that time. My friend sat back in his chair obviously surprised and said, “I had no clue. You never said a word to any of us. You never shared anything about yourself with us. It would have been nice if you had, especially…
Clearly communicating is challenging. It’s challenging with everyone in the same room. Adding people who grew up in different geographical areas – each bringing a different cultural worldview, different ways of communicating that they take for granted, and you have a much higher potential for confusion and misunderstandings. Then add in geographically remote team members who may only be included via audio and not video and consequently seem even more distant. Opportunities for miscommunication double and triple. How can such…