engage the “people” you just called “your resources”?
“Do you believe all this crap you say about people…”
My door swung open 45 seconds after I hit send. One of my directs slammed it shut behind her. “Do you believe all this crap you say about people and team work or is it just lip service?!” Her office was on the far side of the building, a 2 minute walk on a normal day. She ran…
You’re decisive… and you are reading this on a Monday with 40 unread things in front of you… When you are in a hurry, what is the first thing you squeeze out of a message… the reason, or the person?
…and what a Compressor actually does…
Compression is not a metaphor I am borrowing for the week. It is a physical thing that is done to music. A Compressor takes the loudest part of a signal and holds it down so everything quieter can still be heard in the same space. Every record you have ever loved went through one, because acetate, vinyl and tape all had a ceiling, and the music had to be squeezed to fit under it.
What I sent was a week of context squeezed into 4 lines, because I was late. And what survives a squeeze is never the careful part. It is the loudest part. In my case the loudest part was one word.
“Yes, I believe in it. What is wrong? They are my resources, and we need to make a change now or we will all be in trouble.” And back it came, at volume. “They are NOT your resources. They are OUR resources. We lead and manage them. Tell us what you need, and WE will Execute it.” There it was. No context, and no clarity on the why. I had been told that before, never that starkly.
… to your best talent…
Chad Channing played his first show with Nirvana in late May 1988 and he is the drummer on Bleach… one of their biggest hits. He was there for the 2 years nobody was watching, and was frustrated about… not being included in the songwriting. He was in the room the whole time and the part of him that would have been most useful was never asked for. Two years later he was gone, and the band that made the record everybody knows made it with somebody else. Nobody in that story was a villain. A band is busy, a record is late, and the question that would have cost 10 seconds does not get asked.
Are you engaging the person, or moving the row?
There is a version of my email that is defensible. The contract was real. The risk was real. The move was probably right. What was wrong was that I had Compressed 5 people into a line item and mailed the line item, and I did it in the 90 seconds before a holiday. My directs were not objecting to the decision. They were objecting to being told, in 4 lines, that they were “inventory.”
And they fixed it for me… “Ok, tell us WHAT you want – not HOW, and we will sort it out while you are gone.” Which they did, far better than my ham handed approach. I answered a pile of questions I had assumed were already clear, including the one I had never mentioned at all, which was that we needed an answer while I was away. Having actually delegated correctly, I then had a great vacation.
Come as You Are is an invitation with no conditions attached to it. That is the whole of what it takes to engage somebody. Not a speech. Not a values poster. An invitation that survives your own worst Compression is the only kind worth printing, and you find out which kind you have on the day you are in a hurry.
…who will you ask first, this Monday?
Your “Simple… Not Easy” move: Pick the person whose work you lean on hardest this week, ask them what they heard you say, and write their answer down in their words, not yours.
I spend my best hours helping leaders engage the person before they move the row. Schedule time with me here. If you want to get better at Delegation, these resources on A to Z Delegation might be helpful.
I hit send in a hurry and got told the truth at high volume by somebody who ran across a building to say it. That is what an invitation sounds like when it is real… Come as You Are
