Lean Back, Do The Job You’re Capable of Doing

Sometimes Doing A Job Right Means Leaning Back.

When the chief operating officer of Facebook, Sheryl Sandberg wrote Lean In, she wrote it to encourage women and to argue for a more equal approach. Whether she achieves her objective remains to be seen, but she certainly got a stream of thinking going. Most of the commentary has been positive, praising her for reinvigorating feminism. Some of it has been less favourable, her insights are useful, necessary even in a culture that often assumes that everything is equal between men and women, but hardly original. For me, her book prompted a series of questions that revolve around a central question. Why do people do the jobs they do?

 

Why Do We Stay Or Go?

What makes people stay in positions they find unsatisfying while others will find new challenges?  What makes people climb the corporate ladder while others strike out on their own and start independent businesses? Daniel H. Pink, author of the book, A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future, might say that those who leave have met their basic needs and now seek that upper tier of the needs pyramid. They are trying to self-actualize.

Economist might argue that we are not so much reaching for spiritual satisfaction, as we are the more basic needs of food and shelter.  In economies where jobs are scarce people are often forced to start their own businesses out of necessity rather than desire. I’m not sure what the right answer is, but that’s probably because it’s some combination of all of those things. Still, it makes me wonder why some bright capable people are increasingly finding their way to independence while other people who would be better off on their own remain inside organizations.

 

Middle Management Mindset

It would appear that there is an interesting phenomenon that happens at the middle management level. Some leaders discover that they have found their niche and stay in place. Most realize that they are out of their depth, and struggle to avoid sliding backwards or look forward towards still more responsibility. As colleagues and I once noted on seeing the upward trajectory of a particularly incompetent co-worker, the rise in success is often directly inverse to the level of incompetence. In effect, dismal workers will continue to prosper because most leaders would rather promote than fire. Some people just keep moving up as leader after leader palm their hopeless employee off on an unsuspecting department. I’ve seen this in government, high tech and countless other sectors.

The employee quite naturally assumes that they are great at what they do, so they keep doing it. Their confidence grows and thrives and they take on ever increasing challenges. That brings me back around to Lean In. Sandberg notes that studies show that a woman will chase a job if they feel they have an overwhelming number of the skills required to do the job.  While men will chase a position even if they have about half the skills, perhaps even less.  The implication is that women should give themselves an ego boost and go after the big jobs. Frankly, I find that idea disturbing.  Just because someone feels confident that they are ready for more responsibility doesn’t mean they are actually capable of delivering on it.

 

How About Something Completely Different?

I’m all for women having more confidence and tackling the big jobs, but I like their approach better.  That hesitation in the face of opportunity means that when they do leap, they are ready for the role. I wish more men behaved like women. Just for a change, why not have people go after jobs they actually had the skills to perform? I’m not saying that everyone should have one hundred percent of the skills needed before applying, that would be very tedious. I just think  it would be more productive to have employees who knew what they were doing. Leaders who knew what they were talking about. One of the reasons we have so many incapable leaders is because we keep hiring people with an emphasis on their self-confidence and not their core skills. In fact, we place so much emphasis on bravado, attitude or attractiveness that there should be no surprise that we are continuously chasing what it takes to make a great leader. It should be no surprise either that we lose good people to their own or other businesses.

What do you think? Lean in or lean back?

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Do The Job You’re Capable of Doing

What makes people stay in positions they find unsatisfying while others will find new challenges?  What makes people climb the corporate ladder while others strike out on their own and start independent businesses? Daniel H. Pink, author of the book, A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future, might say that those who leave have met their basic needs and now seek that upper tier of the needs pyramid. They are trying to self-actualize.

An economist might argue that we are not so much reaching for spiritual satisfaction, as we are the more basic needs of food and shelter.  In economies where jobs are scarce people are often forced to start their own businesses out of necessity rather than desire. The truth probably lies somewhere between. Still, it makes me wonder why some bright capable people are increasingly finding their way to independence while other people who would be better off on their own remain inside organizations.

Middle Management Mindset

It would appear that there is an interesting phenomenon that happens at the middle management level. Some leaders discover that they have found their niche and stay in place. Others realize that they are out of their depth, and struggle to avoid sliding backwards. Then there are those who are not up to the job but still look for more responsibility.  Surprisingly, they have often rewarded for their efforts. This happens because most managers would rather promote than fire.

The employee quite naturally assumes that they are great at what they do, so they keep doing it. Their confidence grows and thrives and they take on ever increasing challenges. In Lean In, Sheryl Sandberg notes that studies show that a woman will chase a job if they feel they have an overwhelming number of the skills required to do the job.  While men will chase a position even if they have about half the skills, perhaps even less.  The implication is that women should give themselves an ego boost and go after the big jobs. Frankly, I find that idea disturbing.  While I do think women tend to under estimate their abilities, I don’t believe that misplaced self-confidence is the road to success, at least not for the employees left reporting to incompetent bosses or the organizations that stumble under the weight of poor leadership.

How About Something Completely Different?

I’m all for women having more confidence and tackling the big jobs, but I like their approach to work.  That hesitation in the face of opportunity means that when they do leap, they are ready for the role. I wish more men behaved like women. Just for a change, why not have people go after jobs they actually had the skills to perform? I’m not saying that everyone should have one hundred percent of the skills needed before applying, that would be a waste of talent. It would be more productive however to have employees and leaders who knew what they were doing. We have incapable leaders because we often hire with too much emphasis on self-confidence and not enough core skills.

What do you think? Lean in or lean back?

 

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Presenting Ideas, Avoiding The Information Avalanche

It was Friday afternoon and as I sat in the hotel conference room I wondered how long it would be before the speaker finished. I was restless, well restless and sleepy. I was convinced that if I didn’t move soon I’d drift off.  What if I snored? The topic under discussion was the future of health technology. Prior to the start of the lecture, I had been eagerly awaiting the presentation.  Now I eagerly awaited its end. The speaker was a senior executive in a large technology firm and his presentation was billed as providing invaluable insight into what the future held for the health sector.  However, as the speaker continued with his presentation I couldn’t help but focus on the present. I looked again at the slide that was currently being discussed and looked away. It hadn’t changed in a while.  Not surprising really, the densely packed projection was filled with words in 14-point font, they might have been smaller, they certainly felt smaller. He was sharing in one slide what might have been better shared in six or eight.

I looked around the room trying to find something to amuse or distract me and found myself looking into the eyes of other audience members.  They too were looking for entertainment since knowledge was not to be found at the front of the room. In fairness to the speaker, a mid afternoon presentation on a Friday is never the best scenario, but the room was full. Although this was not a plenary session that would have drawn the majority of the conference participants, it had still managed to get the attention of at least 250 conference goers.  At a health conference, his topic was hot stuff. The problem wasn’t what he had to share, it was how he was sharing it. His tone was fine, he seemed to genuinely care about his topic.  He was clearly very knowledgeable but we were being avalanched with information and no one feels safe in an avalanche.

Even if you have information the audience wants and a venue in which to deliver it, you still need to make sure that the information can be understood and digested. Knowledge transfer is never as easy as sending a package of information from one person to the other. The information has to be deciphered, distilled, decorated and delivered with conviction.  If that sounds an awful lot like product marketing then that’s because that is precisely what you are doing, you’re selling ideas.

Decipher: Avoid using jargon that only you and a select few in your industry can understand. It may make you sound like an authority, but it also makes you frustrating to listen to because you are hard to understand. Make sure that you are doing all that you can to make it easy for listeners to follow.

Distill:  While you want to appear knowledgeable, you don’t  have to share everything you know. Simplify your message. The objective isn’t to do a mind dump, but to create knowledge in the recipient, think sound bites.  By not being discerning with information the presenter risks not only not getting their message across but alienating the audience.

Best practice is to have one concept per slide no more than four bullets. The bigger the font, the better for easy reading.  The letters should be no smaller than 18-20 points depending on the font and even that’s on the small side. The header of the slide should be larger than the font in the body and should give the audience an indication of the points you need to make.

Decorate: Add life to ideas by adding images or colourful text.  They help to emphasize your point and transform your presentation into a multilevel message. Avoid clip art, it rarely meets the challenge and can make your information seem inconsequential.

Deliver: Repeat important messages.  Know your audience. Your enthusiasm can make up for a number of weaknesses, but you have to be understood. The audience needs to be clear about why what you are saying might be of interest to them.

Mix things up. Every once in awhile and try a different presentation style. If you’d like to try something a little different from PowerPoint, consider using Prezi,  Adobe’s Spark, Visme or one of the many other awesome presentation tools out there. Or use them to incorporate some fun into your PowerPoint. The ones mentioned here are free and relatively easy to use. 

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How to Present Data

COMMSTORM - How to Present Data

Ever wonder how great presenters get to be great? While what they are presenting is important, how they present it and what considerations they give to the environment they are presenting in is equally important.

In a recent post I marvelled at how data could actually get in the way of strategic thinking.  It isn’t a question of how accurate the data is, though that of course that matters, but even the best data can be overwhelmed by the state of mind of your audience, your own mindset and how you choose to share data.

It is difficult to be persuasive when your body is closed or unfriendly.  I explore those challenges in my post, Body Language – Managing You So You Can Deliver Your Message. Even when we physically present a positive demeanour our tone can change how information is received. A grating tone can have a disruptive effect and a soothing tone can create interest.

A few years ago on a Saturday afternoon I was lazing around the house with the TV on when I found myself following along with avid attention to a documentary. I was more than twenty minutes into the program when I had to ask myself, “Since when did you have any interest in cartography?”

Patrick Stewart
Cover of Patrick Stewart

I like a good map as much as anyone, but the history of map making would never have made my top ten TV list, not even my top fifty, yet there I was mesmerized. It was at that point that I realized that the narrator was Patrick Stewart. Being a fan of Star Trek I had always enjoyed his voice and that enjoyment was all that was required to get me to enjoy the making of maps.

Tone is so influential to how information is received that even if you deliver the identical words, if you change where you place emphases, you can change the meaning. One of my favourite exercises to illustrate how the identical words can have multiple meanings is the following sentence.

“I didn’t say she stole my money.”

If you place the emphasis on different words in the sentence you can get at least 7 different meanings.

I didn’t say she stole my money – someone else said it.

I didn’t say she stole my money – I didn’t say it.

I didn’t say she stole my money – I only implied it.

I didn’t say she stole my money – I said someone did, not necessarily her.

I didn’t say she stole my money – I considered it borrowed, even though she didn’t ask.

I didn’t say she stole my money – only that she stole money.

I didn’t say she stole my money – she stole things that cost me money to replace.

If a sentence this supposedly straight forward can change meaning depending on which word we emphasize, is it any wonder that even the most influential data can be misinterpreted based on emphasis?

To further complicate things we have the audience’s emotions to take into consideration. Were they anticipating the information?  Are they vested in the outcome?  Do they even understand why you are sharing the information? Just because the connection between your data and their interests are obvious to you, doesn’t mean they are obvious to your audience.

The mood of your audience can also have a tremendous impact. If they are tired because it’s mid afternoon on a busy day, you may want to have them do some stretches before beginning. If they are angry it can have a whole host of consequences.  Angry people take shortcuts in their thinking and are more likely to blame people rather than a situation for outcomes. Anger will influence how information is perceived and what actions follow as a consequence. In one study conducted at the University of Illinois (Jennifer S. Lerner) and UC Berkeley (Julie H. Goldberg of and Philip E. Tetlock) noted that people who watched an anger-inducing video were more punitive toward defendants in a series of unrelated fictional tort cases involving negligence and injury than were people who had seen a neutral video. The exceptions to the rule were in those cases where they were told that not only would they be held accountable for their decisions but they would be asked to explain their decisions to an expert.

This gives us a good glimpse into best practices when sharing data, which is having the audience have a sense of responsibility about the outcome or a vested interest in the outcome. Letting them know exactly why you feel the information is relevant to them and telling them that you will ask a few questions at the end to get their opinions on the findings is a good way to ensure that they will do more than daydream while you present. If you can associate a sense of accountability with how they manage the decisions as an outcome, you will also produce more thoughtful contemplation of the data.

Finally we come to the data itself.  Whether you use PowerPoint, Prezi, video or Skype can influence your audience’s reception of your materials. Some people actually feel nauseous when they watch the movement of a Prezi presentation while others want to curl up and go to sleep at the first signs of a PowerPoint. Whichever vehicle you choose, make sure that that you are not overloading your presentation with data. Next week I will explore common pitfalls in showcasing data including when Prezi can outshine PowerPoint.

What about you? Have you ever had a presentation, pitch or a meeting take a strange turn because of how data was viewed? Have you ever found yourself captivated by the delivery style of a presenter?

First image courtesy of Pakorn/ FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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