Here is a short list of questions that can help you get past the typical blockages to communication. These work well because they were created with the following assumptions and understanding in mind:

• We probably don’t know the fully extent of the other person’s abilities, and it’s likely the environment we’re creating is somehow getting in the way of those abilities being fully expressed.
• Most people are uncomfortable speaking truthfully to others, especially at work, because vulnerability and trust is underdeveloped in most relationships.
• When given permission and an approach which feels mutual in intent, most people will welcome the opportunity to influence their situation and improve results for themselves and others.
• Questions that have a single yes/no answer, or start with “Why” are very challenging to answer. Similarly, questions asking for “the MOST important” or “single reason” are much harder to get right than “some of the most important” or “a reason” kinds of questions.

With these concepts in mind, feel free to use questions from the list below – or develop your own!

1. What kinds of things would make a significant difference around here if we started doing them?
2. What kinds of things are we tolerating now, yet could cause significant problems in the future if they are not addressed?
3. Where do you see are the overlaps and gaps between your work role and mine?
4. If we continued to do things just as we are doing them, at the end of the year what would we be regret not having done?
5. What does coming here add to what you could do all by yourself? What does coming here take away…?
6. What do you see as the more valuable parts of what you do here?
7. What do you see as the least appreciated parts of what you do here?
8. How much has working here helped you grow as a person?
9. How would you say I am personally – for better or worse – impacting your work?

Note: the most commonly asked question “How are you doing?” is very challenging for people to answer, because you are asking them to diagnose their own challenges and disclose potential weaknesses. Leaders frequently add insult to injury by following that question with “So how can I help you?” which puts a further burden on the other person to prescribe their own treatment. Much better to ask them questions about the work environment, the situational challenges, and others – and then ask yourself how you can show up differently as a leader to make a positive difference.

What other questions have you found to be successful in helping understand where you can help others? (Note: not a rhetorical question - this is the reader-involvement part of the blog ;o)

1. Do I understand what things I do make me feel strong at work?
2. Am I applying my strengths to get effective results in everything that I do as a leader?
3. Do I understand what matters most to me as a leader and person?
4. Do I live out my own personal values in the things I do each day?
5. Do I have a clear picture of my desired future - that is, who I want to be when I grow up?
6. Is my vision guiding every action I take each day?

Based on our experience, if you are able to answer 3 or more (truthfully) as "Yes!", we would put you in the "above average" category of leaders. Of course the next step is being in action - as Will Rogers said "Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there." But that's another post.

Special offer

We have a self-scoring assessment with this and other questions about how you are showing up as a leader - and best of all, it's free. Just contact assessments@trebuchetgroup.com with a subject line of "Hey, can I have that free leadership assessment?"

Have fun, and keep your alignment up :o)

Over the years I’ve listened to many highly talented and enthusiastic people who, frankly, had the life sucked out of them every day by the people they worked for. The reason they were still in the job had everything to do with some other overriding factor - the need to provide for the family, their professional reputation, their desire to continue working with the people on their own team, and yes, their desire to protect the people on their own team from the boss.

Now I'm sure you aren't the kind of boss that does these things - this list is for you to be able to help your colleagues and friends when they are trying to figure out why they are discouraged. And if by some chance any of these ring a bell, feel free to contact us for a complementary conversation to see what your options might be.

Number 5 - Do the employee’s job...after they've done it

Imagine consoling a senior electrical engineer - with a Masters degreee from MIT - who is leaning forward in his chair, head in hands. "My team and I have spent 8 months of intensive work developing this product. It's amazing. And yet I'm sitting at my desk, waiting for my Senior VP of Engineering to change components on the layout." He looks up at you. "Why am I even here?"

I am sad to say that I know of several companies where senior people put glaringly obvious errors in their work to allow their bosses the satisfaction of fixing something. "If I don't give them something to change, they'll screw something up that's really important," said one anonymous source.

Number 4 - Ask for input...then discredit it

One executive I worked with got to a point where the team was finally willing to give him some honest feedback.

"When you ask for my input, I'll start sharing, you start listening but then it's as if a switch flips in your head. It's like I don't matter and you've just used me to get some need met. I feel that you don't appreciate what I have to offer," one brave soul offered. The team agreed, and the leader uncomfortably fessed up that once he got a sense of where the conversation was headed, he didn't see value in continuing it but kept going out of a sense of politeness.

With some focused coaching of the leader and team, the leader learned to ask for people's perspective and then when he received sufficient information, request to end the conversation. At that point team members have permission to either agree, or ask for the leader to hear them out on the rest of their opinion. The leader and team member jointly determine whether that moment or sometime later is best to talk.

Needless to say, involvement took a big jump and remains high.

Number 3 - Compliment...then ask for better results

While working in a company in a leadership position, I was approached by several senior people who shared that there was a problem with unclear definitions of responsibility across the organization. Where there was overlap, the clients were confused and resources were often wasted. Where there was underlap, client were disappointed and fingers were pointed between functions blaming each other for dropping the ball.

In my spare time (as this wasn't my main job) I brokered a reasonable solution among the functional managers and went to the boss to brief him on the problem and get his authority to implement the solution. He showered me with compliments - "What a responsible, proactive, organizational thinker!" - and then said he wanted to give me some formal authority to get an even better result. I was flattered, and took to the assignment with vigor. After a few more weeks, I indeed had something better.

"This is great - yet I believe with your talents it can be amazing! Come back in a couple weeks with an even better version!"

After a few iterations like this the energy I had to do the work simply drained out of me. I didn't even realize that I had given up until the boss left a few months later.

During the first week when my new boss summoned me to report on the project. He'd heard about it and at his first staff meeting literally empowered me in front of everyone to implement the solution. When I got back to my desk I realized my old boss had hoodwinked me with smiling compliments. 

Number 2 - Focus on not failing...and induce it through your actions

You get what you focus on.

I once worked (briefly) with a CEO of a mid-sized health care company on the East Coast who was driven by the fear of failure. He thought that by stamping out failure he would ensure success for his company, his team, and himself. He was so driven by this that he jumped on everything that even smelled like it might not work. Getting this unwanted attention didn't feel like help to teammembers - I one said it was "...merciless round-the-clock work, endless updates to the CEO, and him constantly breathing down my neck. I just wanted it to be over."

To avoid getting "rewarded" with this CEO's attention, his staff members did everything humanly possible to resolve issues without involving anyone - not even their other colleagues. Since most problems are system-related, individual efforts usually failed, and the CEO would eventually be notified - but only after things failed. This, of course, reinforced his perception that his involvement was critical and he doubled his efforts to stamp out failure. Until he was replaced by his board.

Number 1 - Assume everything is ok...and don't challenge that assumption

This is number 1 for a reason - every leader I know, including me, has done this.

Recently I did this with my staff. I was operating with some significant - and in my mind very reasonable - assumptions about how people understood my perception of their performance and that everyone was growing in and feeling good about their part they played the organization. Everything was going well - until a senior staff member came in to give notice.

It was a significant wake-up call for me to regularly challenge my own assumptions about how people are doing in the organization. I tend to operate in a no-news-is-good-news manner - and I hope I'm doing a better job of checking in to understand how people specifically see their role, the importance of their involvement to the company, and the amount of their engagement.

While these are plenty, anyone have any additional ways leaders discourage involvement?  

Over the years I've had the opportunity to work with lots of great leaders who "get it." These men and women commit themselves fully to their companies and people who they work with to make the companies great.

Here's one quick example of a leader who learned to look ahead instead of in front of him.

This particular CEO was a fairly young technical whiz who found himself responsible for a 80-person, growing company. We connected after a speech I gave which talked to the way high-tech companies tend to breed micromanagement. After all, the leaders got where they are in the company through technical excellence of some kind (since that's what tends to get promoted) - and that leads to those same leaders leaning on that technical expertise instead of their people in times of crisis.

I was cleaning up my laptop and other presentation materials when this fellow tapped me on the shoulder and confided that he was one of those leaders.

"Doctor, do you think there's any hope?" he said, half-jokingly.

"I don't know right now, but I can tell you after the first office visit" I joked back. 

We worked together for 3 years, during which time he grew both his company and his confidence in being the person who set the company up for long term success. By working with his natural strengths, he was able to get people to step up and be responsible for the results for individual projects and initiatives. 

Yet the biggest breakthrough came when he realized that he couldn't delegate the responsibility to set the direction. After a significant success with a major customer, there was some question about where the company needed to go next. This leader got all the inputs possible - and there still wasn't enough information for a clear solution.

As he and I were working through this challenge he suddenly looked at me and said "I've got to make a decision here, don't I?" And I replied with "That's why you get the big bucks."

It's a tough situation and a leader can feel pretty isolated - yet working through it can pay off significantly for both the organization and the leader who keeps their head up and eyes forward.

Lizard brain.

A personal gremlin.

Whatever you call it, that which holds us back from our best work is alive and well in the world. I would guess that many millions of great ideas are squelched - every day - by our own personal critics.

For what it's worth, I've made a commitment to conquer my lizard brain between now and this fall.

I've been writing a book for the last couple years. In 2010 I committed to getting it done by September. Enter my lizard brain. 

"Are you kidding? There's no way! And, hey, this is more urgent...I mean, important for you to get done now."

And so after a big push I stalled out. 

My writing coach and erstwhile butt-kicker Karla Oceanak shared that when she had people pay her in advance for the Artsy-Fartsy book (real title, not making this up), suddenly there was a commitment she couldn't let slide. She and her illustrator Kenda Spanjer are now readying the fourth book in a (I think) 26 book series.

Last week I tweeted that my book was available for pre-order, and I had purchases within the hour! So I'm devoting more time and energy not to let the buying public down.

Care to add more fuel to the fire? Pre-order a copy (or more) today!

This particular boss is simply amazing at coming up with new ideas and bringing them to the team for implementation. While most of these ideas are great, the team has a hard time implementing change with their current pace and schedule, so my client has been taking it upon himself to ask some questions of the boss to understand and flesh out the idea before getting the rest of the team involved.

You may see what's coming.

When my client begins asking "Hang on a second - why would we do that? I mean, what do you hope to achieve by that change?" the boss doesn't see the question as helpful - he sees it as a threat to his efforts to make the company better. The conversation tends to go a bit downhill after that, with both my client and his boss trying not to be defensive - and doing it anyway.

Here's another counter-intuitive option that I've found works amazingly well.

Just go with it

What I mean is, instead of backing up and saying "Whoa!" to new ideas you don't understand or believe may have some serious holes, walk the person forward to the future. Give them permission to have their idea be successful.

This looks something like "Hmmm. Ok, let's say your idea is fully implemented and successful. What does the organization / team / my job look like?"

Bringing the future to the present allows them to explore their own thinking and you to gain more understanding and ability to influence the exploration. Once you give the person permission that their idea is ok, questions like "So then how do you think Sue's department / our client / my job would benefit from the change as a result?" are much more likely to be seen as collaborative help than a blockage to power through.

It may feel risky to encourage your boss to do more thinking when you're feeling whipsawed by the intensity and seeming randomness of his or her ideas. Yet if you are willing to step into the danger and endorse your boss' idea first before exploring it, your boss is more likely to see you as a thinking partner and not someone who gets in the way of her or his desire to make the company better.

(After all, if you take an idea to your boss, you'd rather have your idea be considered worthy and get your boss' help figuring out how to make it really successful instead of geting a bunch of objections to it, right? Hint: your boss is the same.)

Some time back, I predicted that once the recession started letting up we would see a significant shift as people who were in organizations focused mostly on survival left for more respect and involvement.

Looks to me like it's starting to happen. Likewise, we're seeing a significant increase in the number of engagements where we are partnering with organizations to help their leaders and teams commit and work better together. Most are good companies who now realize they need an even higher level of performance needed to succeed and are willing to invest time, energy, and funds to make it happen for everyone.

What's your perspective?

What? Political turmoil on the other side of the world and marketing? What am I talking about?

Watching the events in Egypt over the past couple of weeks is a fascinating story on many levels:  human rights, the power of grass roots movements, the immediacy of news and information in today’s world, leadership by decree and, perhaps most interesting to me, how communication (or the lack thereof) impacts an organization.

Luckily, people in companies tend not to revolt when faced with leadership that doesn’t care about the difference they are making – they just withdraw their best efforts.

Read the results from just about any employee survey at just about any company. If the company leadership had the guts to ask the employees “Do you have a clear understanding of the company’s vision?” (or something similar) the responses are typically mixed at best. And what do company leaders say when learning of those results? Often, they have a hard time understanding how employees simply don’t know it. It’s so clear, how could they not understand it? That reaction is one of the reasons that “communication” is almost always at the very top of problems cited by employees in these surveys.

It seems so obvious, and yet…

This connection to the people “on the front lines” is especially critical when developing an effective brand marketing program. Seems logical, right? If you want to get to the heart of a company and its DNA, talk to the people. Yet, so many companies don’t.

Three actions you can take to make a real difference

1. If you’re a company leader or executive, form a group of front line managers or staff that you meet with on a regular schedule. Set an agenda that allows them to provide direct feedback on communications within the company, brand marketing activities, and maybe just observations on the brand and company culture.
2. If you work in marketing and have brand development responsibilities, embrace the voice of your company’s talent. It is what will make your work real. And valid. And make sure that your brand marketing includes a strong internal communications plan.
3. [Shameless plug]  Get a better understanding of your company’s DNA. Here at Trebuchet Group, we’ve developed a simple ½ day process to quickly and painlessly help you and your staff understand what makes you unique. The results are actionable, and the return on investment is high. Check it out here and then give us a call.

 If you like what you see, contact me.

I won't go into too much detail describing how they got established and how they have grown from the original high-end version to many hundreds of local versions known as TEDx.

Here's one TEDx presentation on leadership and why people connect with others that I found both affirming and fascinating:

One word of caution: don't go exploring the TED or TEDx material unless you have an hour or so - and you don't mind getting your mind blown here and there.

What are some of your favorite TED(x) presentations?