Sound Bites Don't Like Nuance

That sounds like a sound bite with nuance to me. What do you think?

I was listening to a podcast interview between Katie Hair and Digby Scott. Great conversation BTW and well worth a listen. 

Katie offered up the sound bite that became this week's title. Initially, I totally agreed with what she said, but on further thought I reckon it’s nuanced.

Sound bites can be very blunt instruments, and can certainly be used to polarise camps and opinions. They are often deliberately weaponised, especially in social media. 

Right - Wrong, Black - White, Us - Them

But, the most effective leaders I work with have well thought out sound bites which they repeat often, and to great effect. They use them to focus intention, set direction, define standards, build culture and more. The sound bites themselves don’t have much nuance - they grab your attention. Then if accompanied by nuanced examples, they can guide very nuanced decision making and behaviour. More importantly, they can ensure some consistency in doing so. 

I reckon a sound bite is a bit like a sharp blade. What it does will depend on whose hands hold it. It could brutally slash, but also carve intricate patterns or execute precise surgery.

I wonder, have you seen sound bites used in nuanced ways?

Just Wait

Have you ever had the feeling that you had more than one boss? There’s the person you report too, but another who actually calls the shots. It’s a confusing and unsettling place to be, especially if the 2 people are giving significantly different directions.

The first time I experienced it, a well-intentioned senior leader used to interrupt work that was well advanced and started throwing challenges and questions at the team. He’d usually finish the conversation with a strongly stated preference for how the work should proceed. It was always a significant departure from what had been done to date and involved a lot of rework.

After a while the team would get direction from their immediate boss, but rather than start work, we’d wait until the senior leader made his position clear. The team, and our immediate leader second guessed themselves. The senior guy wondered why no one was showing any initiative, and started directing us in increasing levels of detail. No one was enjoying the dynamic, and it was incredibly ineffective and inefficient. When Hierarchy Hopping like this takes hold, people effectively have 2 bosses. They will always defer to the more senior, because that has the least risk attached.

“Just wait” becomes BAU, everything gets slower and less innovative.

Have you experienced Hierarchy Hopping? Next time we’ll look at the picture from the perspective of that senior leader.

Trying Too Hard

“My work seems irrelevant”

“I feel like a glorified admin”

“No one is listening to me”

“I think I might lose my job”

These are some of the things that middle managers have said to me when  Hierarchy Hopping is happening.

Many of them overcompensate. They work really hard to prove their competence, or exert their authority. Worst case - They overreach and ignore the expertise of their team and the guidance of their leader. Their efforts to be relevant further fuel the Hierarchy Hopping where people above and below them “hop“ over their role for solutions and tasking. They feel even less relevant so try even harder. The people above and below them start to feel that they are a bad fit, even if their skills/experience are a great fit.

I have only ever seen 3 outcomes:

• The team recognises what is happening and gets clear about roles, responsibilities, delegated authorities and expectations. They have robust conversations as their collective understanding of how to work well together evolves.

• The “new” person in the middle leaves, or if they are particularly insistent on hanging in, their team starts to fragment and leave.

• The person in the middle gets performance-managed out.

In all but the first option, the team is left with baggage that makes it even harder for the next person appointed to the middle role.

Have you experienced Hierarchy Hopping, or its impacts?

Piggy in the Middle

Take a well-respected, competent, and confident crisis management specialist. Put them in charge of an operational team. Give them a clear mandate to lead, and 6 months to make a positive impact on team cohesion and results. What would you expect the results to be?

I expected great results and a tight-knit team, but instead I found:

• A new leader who felt irrelevant and undervalued.

• The operational team feeling micromanaged and like they weren't trusted.

• A senior leader who was feeling overwhelmed with details that he thought the new team leader would have been taking care of.

• An increasingly toxic environment where trust was diminishing.

How could it go wrong so quickly - especially when everyone involved was technically good at their job, committed to the team, and the work they did together?

It’s a pattern I’ve seen often enough that I call it Hierarchy Hopping. If there are 3 (or more) layers, and middle layers get bypassed, chaos ensues. A senior leader bypasses their operational lead and directly tasks the team. People on the frontline bypass the operational lead and go to the senior leader to fix problems.

Hierarchy Hopping

Why would it happen? Clearly there is a need for the additional layer, otherwise the role wouldn’t exist. 

For the senior leader there’s often comfort and familiarity in the ‘tools’ of the layer one down from them. Plus, if the layer is new, they’ve previously been responsible for fixing the problems and tasking the team. Handing that to a new person can feel unsettling. The new person can do the job, but the newly leveled up leader feels disconnected from what is happening and so returns to what is familiar. The new person is unintentionally sidelined and the frontline people now have 2 direct bosses.

They’ll hesitate to act until the more senior person's view is clear. You’ll hear them saying, “We are supposed to work on X, but every time we get started, the boss comes down and the direction changes. Let's just hold for a while until they tell us which way to go.” Over time this reinforces itself. The new Ops leader is getting no traction or buy-in, so starts to second guess themselves or throw their hands up and say “what’s the point of my role?”. The frontline shows less and less initiative as they wait for clear direction from 2 bosses.  The senior person experiences even more load/stress than before the new ops manager was around. The person works hard at demonstrating their value, often overstepping all sorts of boundaries in an increasing effort to do the job they were hired for. The senior person feels that if they are not involved at the front line, it will all fall apart. 

Uninterrupted, it starts to get toxic. People play the 2 leaders off against each other, and start assigning blame to others. The team becomes less effective and more fractured. There’s lots of unhelpful talking behind each other's backs and factions forming. 

Over this series, we’ll look at ways people at all levels can avoid it, and/or fix it if Hierarchy Hopping starts.

Challenging Conversations

If you are a leader, difficult conversations are part of the territory. Done well they can significantly enhance relationships, cohesion and results. But they can also do the opposite. Whether it’s feedback, a piece of bad news, conveying a controversial decision, resolving conflict or negotiating, challenging conversations show up over and over.

They are difficult because you care about the outcome (and possibly the people involved) and there’s some emotional connection to it. If you didn’t care about the people or out come and had no emotional stake in it, the conversation would either not be needed or would be easy.

It took me years to learn that challenging conversations are better had as early as possible. There’s usually more options and less consequences the earlier you have them. Delay or avoidance might feel easier in the moment, but it inevitably adds to the original problem.

What conversations are you avoiding? What is the cost of delaying having them?

Skippering a Yacht - 5 Lessons from the Water

Last week, I refrained from drawing leadership parallels from my week long yacht skippers course over the summer, but several of you asked me to share them.

• Solo is challenging. While possible, single-handedly managing a yacht requires exceptional preparation and places the entire burden on one person. Fatigue and workload become critical factors, as does the need to oversee every system onboard. There's immense value in having a skilled crew.

• Clarity is Key. Success hinges on a well-defined plan, along with clear communication of roles and expectations. Ambiguity breeds errors which bend boats and people.

• Preparation Prevents Panic. When things happen on a yacht, they need fast, precise and coordinated action, often on several parts of the boat simultaneously. Preparing people and equipment ahead of time reduces pressure in the moment. Checking that the team is ready to go before a manoeuvre is executed makes it more likely to go smoothly.

• Trust Your Team. During critical moments, the skipper's job is to drive the boat smoothly and accurately. Focus on that. Let the crew do their work. Most of the time you are too far away and too occupied to physically help. Often you can’t even see clearly what they are doing. Second guessing their actions or making suggestions rarely helps at that point. Trust the crew and keep communication short, minimal and clear until the pressure has passed.

• Reflect and Improve. Once the action is complete, there's a period of relative calm to tidy up and discuss how things went. Reviewing the action, reflecting on effectiveness and extracting lessons for next time is a great way to build experience and confidence. Ask for feedback too.

These lessons are universally applicable to leadership, regardless of the context. The beauty of learning in a physical environment like a boat is that everything can be seen, cycles are short and there are clear start and end points. For most of our leadership work it's more opaque and ambiguous. The time frames can be epic. That makes it harder. Throughout my mentoring experience, these five themes consistently emerge as pivotal factors in team dynamics, cohesion, and overall effectiveness. Which of them could you work on with your team? How will you do that?

Learning Outside the Box

Each year I deliberately seek an opportunity to learn with 2 criteria. 

1. It will be new.

2. It will be challenging.

This year I did a yachting skippers ticket. I could write a post about what sailing taught me about business and leadership, but I can already imagine your eyes rolling! Sure there are some parallels, and mostly they would be either naff, obvious, or wonky long shots.

The most useful part of deliberately challenging ourselves outside our comfort zone and usual area of operation are:

• It helps us stay adaptable and fresh

• It provides a platform for looking at transferability - What do we already know/do that serves us well in a different environment? What can we learn from that environment that translates back to our ‘real world’? What assumptions do we usually make that either serve or hinder us?

One of the biggest confirmations for me on the course was to make objectives and communication as clear as possible. Hunt down ambiguity and break things down as much as needed. Oh, and when things go well, say so, it really lifts team focus/morale and sets the bar for what comes next.

Where and how can you test yourself in 2025?

Connection Tales

John leads a small team in a role that is heavy on logistics. Lots of loading and unloading. Lots of making sure the right resources are available at the right time. Lots of planning ahead, and also responding to unplanned, urgent jobs. John told me the team didn’t show much initiative and often sat on the sidelines waiting to be tasked with something. John finds that frustrating and often takes over jobs himself, or criticises the lack of action. He reckoned the situation was getting worse.

We talked in more detail and it turned out that the team also does lots of good and timely work. John started to connect with the good work the team was doing. He started recognising efforts and thanking the team for them. Over a couple of weeks the team has become much more proactive. John has connected with what’s good about his team, and what motivates them. The team is responding.

A senior leader described dealing with a serious complaint. It didn’t go well and escalated in unhelpful ways. As we talked though it he could see a lack of connection between the people involved and with the problem. The person making the complaint felt dismissed and disrespected. Why? Probably because the conversation went too quickly to solving the problem. There were some unavoidable constraints. He explained those in detail. When we do that before we really hear and understand the problem, it feels dismissive and defensive. Connecting with what matters for the person, taking the time to deeply listen and understand, gets us to a place where a solution can be properly discussed.

In both examples the leader is trying to get a good outcome as quickly as possible. That’s understandable and desirable. There’s an enormous amount of time and task pressure for most leaders. Sometimes we need to slow down, connect and then go for the outcome. It feels slower, but connection ultimately gets us there quicker and the outcomes are more sustainable.

Where and how could you do a better job of connection? Who do you know who does that really well?

Thank You, NFP Leaders,

NFP Leaders, especially those in NDIS or aged care have had a tough year. Sending them some encouragement and support as the year closes out. If you know someone in this sector, send them a message of support. They do critically important work in our community.

What’s the key?

Two leaders from the High Impact Mentor program spoke to me about AHA moments this month. 

Both of them saw something in a new way and it changed everything. Both were frustrated and dissatisfied in their work and were finding their focus with staff getting dragged into more and more unnecessary detail. They felt overwhelmed. They felt they were not getting the best from their staff. They wondered if leadership was for them. 

The key for both of them was shifting their mindset from trying to control the people around them, to getting better at influencing the people around them. The work load hasn’t changed, but both are feeling lighter. One of them looked physically less tired and more relaxed than he had just a few weeks earlier. When I asked him what had changed, he said, “ I just changed how I was looking at everything, and now everything has changed”.

Moments like these are why I do the work I do. When leaders raise their capacity, the capacity of everyone around them also rises..

If you or someone on your team could use a change like that, send me an email. I’d love to help.

The People Around Us

She greeted us in the hotel lobby and enthusiastically told us about shopping tours, great places to eat, and sights to see. Two days later, in conversation, we found out that she had a PhD in Nuclear Physics and a number of years working in that field. Why are you working in a hotel after so much time studying and working we asked. Turns out that the career opportunities available locally involved working with higher risk radioactivity. Safer opportunities meant reestablishing in Europe. She wanted to be closer to home and family. Over our time in the hotel, I saw some other guests speaking to her as if she was stupid, and being disrespectful and demanding - a classic case of book and cover!

Over many years of working in and around for purpose organisations, I’m often amazed at the backgrounds of people who come to for purpose work. Some have long careers in the sector, but many come with a diverse range of skills, qualifications and backgrounds.

I’ve always found it fascinating and worthwhile to explore beyond people’s surface story (when they are happy to do so). Often we find interesting connections and motivations for being where they are now. Sometimes we find ways to work with people that go beyond the basic assumptions of the role, and make the most of their experience.

How well do you know and engage with the people in your team/organisation?

P.S. I have no idea if the equations in the image are representative of physics - someone out there will know!

Movement Matters

We’ve all been there. Standing. Waiting. Wondering. It sucks, doesn’t it!

In this bus queue we were wondering why the full bus wasn’t leaving and why four more buses were standing empty.

In traffic and supermarkets we change to the lanes that seem to be moving quickest.

Psychologists call it Progress Theory - If we are not making progress, we feel frustrated. If we are making progress, we feel better.

It matters in organisations too. In their 2011 book “The Progress Principle” Kramer and Amabile said, “Of all the things that can boost emotions, motivation, and perceptions during a workday, the single most important is making progress in meaningful work. And the more frequently people experience that sense of progress, the more likely they are to be creatively productive in the long run.”

Leaders have an important role to play in this sense of progress. If you are stuck on the hamster wheel of an ever growing to-do list, there’s a good chance you are missing a deep well of engagement and motivation for your team (and yourself).

If you lead in a ‘For Purpose” organisation, the progress principle is an even more powerful lever.

How are you using it?

Which direction and how?

Direction over detail is well and good if you know where you are going. Alice (in Wonderland) asked that cat which way she should go. She didn't care where she would end up. The cat reckoned in that case, direction didn't matter. Quite right!

I facilitated a conversation recently where big changes are afoot for an organisation with a long, proud and effective history. The conversation was about creating an ideal future within the inevitable changes.

The leaders and team did a great job of looking forward. They:

• Acknowledged and celebrated past success.

• Identified aspects of their organisation/work that they did not want to lose or compromise in the change.

• Articulated the likely limits to their future, including considering what is happening for their stakeholders.

• Laid out a high level plan for their future, which adds value and insulates from irrelevance.

• Framed their propositions thoughtfully, highlighting value to stakeholders rather than just making a wish list.

There’s a lot of detail to be added, but in less than 2 hours they have the bones of a solid future.

The risk in such a conversation is people getting stuck in the past rather than looking forward. They could have lamented the situation, complained, pushed back against inevitable shifts and fought over irrelevant detail. They did not. It was a great working example of Direction over Detail.

Epiphany

I love a good Aha moment. I had one last week when I was preparing to talk to a group of leaders. I was angry and ruminating on an interaction where the outcome had put me under unexpected pressure. I had to pick up more of a job than I was supposed to because the other person didn’t follow through at their end. It left me scrambling to keep the balls in the air.

So there I am, preparing to talk to leaders about dealing with pressure. Under pressure myself, and not dealing with it particularly well. I was playing the interactions with the other person over and over in my head, doing the things we humans do when we feel slighted. Pointing the finger of blame. Stewing rather than acting. Feeling wronged. Enrolling others in the drama. Burning precious time and emotional energy. Going nowhere.

The epiphany came as I thought about my session with leaders. I was talking about “Grinding the Gorge” where survival groups walk up and down trying to establish exactly where they are, rather than making forward progress. I’d never thought about rumination as an example of Grinding the Gorge but it is. AHA! I used the story in my presentation. My advice in situations like that is to value Direction over Detail. The details feel important, don’t they? We want to be right. We want acknowledgement of the slight and the impact. Usually there's a lot more going on and it’s less intentional than we think it is.

For me Valuing Direction took a mental shift from the detail (he said, she said) to the short term action needed and the bigger picture of what I wanted the relationship with the other person to be. I focussed my time, effort and communication there. Progress is being made. Next time I find myself grinding the gorge called rumination, I reckon I’ll exit much more quickly.

Where could your leadership benefit from a shift to Direction over Detail?

Bush to Boardroom, does it translate?

At a breakfast presentation this week for Quorum I was asked two great questions:

First Question - In survival scenarios, is there a group attribute that makes you smile, because you know the group will succeed?

Groups who take the time to discuss and make explicit their expectations of each other and the situation always outperform. It’s counter intuitive. It feels too slow, and not sufficiently focussed on the outcome. It can be frustrating, because alignment doesn’t happen immediately - things that seemed clearly agreed may need further discussion and exploration. However, the larger the shared narrative and understanding a group has the faster they can act, decide, resolve conflict, distribute tasks. Everything becomes faster and more efficient.

Second Question - Does that observation translate from the Bush to the Boardroom?

Yes! And to every ‘room’ where 2 or more people are attempting to work together for a shared purpose/result. In the boardroom it might mean unpacking what we mean by strategy, or clearly understanding where the division of board guidance and executive function lies. It might mean discussing where our focus should lie. It might mean clearly articulating contrary views and genuinely exploring the nuance of perspective and opinion.

In any situation, the clearer we can be about what is important to us, how we will conduct ourselves as we pursue it, and what success looks like, the faster we can implement.

A lack of alignment usually shows up as either conflict or disengagement. Observe those, lean in, and add clarity.

Direction over Detail

If you’ve navigated by topographic map in complex terrain, at some point you’ve stopped making forward progress while you try to work out exactly where you are. I’ve done it many times, and almost every group on our survival courses did it at least once. There’s two ways it happens:

1. We feel uncertain about where we are and attempt to regain certainty by pinpointing our exact location.

2. We feel certain about where we are (but are wrong), and bend our reading of the map to suit our perception.

Forward progress either slows or stops entirely, and the focus shifts to ever finer detail. I see the same thing happen to teams and leaders (and yep, I’ve done that version too). We burrow into detail to justify current effort, or make ourselves busy trying to perfect things that will never be perfect. Busyness goes up, progress goes down.

In the map scenario, direction is often the answer. On one challenging walk in the Pilbara, we spent ages going slow trying to justify our position and getting more exhausted and frustrated by it. If we had just walked East, we would hit a North/South water course that was unambiguous and unmissable. East was the way we were going and we were planning to follow that water course!

In teams and workplaces the answer is the same. Get clear on direction and favour progress in that direction over nailing the detail. The detail becomes clear as you make progress. It feels much more enjoyable too.

P.S. This is not a reason to avoid or gloss over detail when it is important. Listen to your specialist communications, risk, compliance and audit teams. Just be sure to keep moving.

Top 4 Mistakes when Preparing for Challenging Situations

Challenging situations come in many shapes and sizes. At work or time might be disrupted by something urgent. It could be a complaint, an equipment failure, someone being off sick, or an unexpected critical deadline. It might be relational like giving difficult feedback or correcting an error. It might be in your personal life like a family member getting sick, a contentious parent teacher interview, or a conversation with a difficult ex over the kids.

Bottom line is there are some situations we find more challenging than others. Last week, I highlighted visualisation as a great way to prepare. Here are the top 4 mistakes that people make when doing that:

1. Wishin’ and Hopin’ - even when you are pretty sure it won’t go smoothly, you just launch in and hope it will be OK, then feel surprised when it goes badly. The investment of a bit of time visualising your options in response to likely variables is well spent.

2. One Shot - only visualising one possible version of events. If any other version happens, you’ll be unprepared and surprised again. Pick 4 possible ways the situation could go on a continuum of “smoothly and well” to “terrible”.Visualise a version of each. How will you be feeling? What will you be doing or saying? What words or actions are coming from the other person/s?

3. Horror Movie - replaying past situations that didn’t go well and you wish you had showed up differently. Often we increase the impact of these negative images of ourselves and our capability with highly critical self talk. Act like a director. Say ‘CUT’ when you notice yourself negatively rehearsing and then replay the scene with you acting as you would have liked to have done.

4. Weird Energy - we can easily come in too hyped or too chilled. Each situation will have an ideal energy. Will you be calm, assertive, conciliatory, loud, quiet, listening, speaking? What is the ideal energy for the situation, and your preferred version of how it plays out.

Watch how these play out before your next moment of pressure. Rehearse well, Act well!

Right to disconnect

I keep running into leaders who say “I choose to do a lot of my work after hours and send lots of emails at night or the weekend. I don’t expect my staff to respond, but they do.”

If you do this it will set the expectation for many of your staff to respond, even if you explicitly state that you don’t expect them too. Expectations come from many sources:

• Notifications - if someone has their phone around them all the time, and notifications on, at the very least, they’ll see the message come in. Even if they choose not to respond, it will be on their mind.

• Standards - You are working after hours which sets an expectation that others should too, especially if you hold a senior position.

• Boundaries -  Some people and cultures have difficulty saying no to others. If you breach their boundaries, they’ll respond. 

• Old ways - It used to be said ‘never leave the office before the boss’. It’s changing, but it’s an enduring idea. If you are working any hours, it easily morphs to ‘don’t knock off before the boss’.

• Behaviour - You may not expect a response, but if you get one, do you respond again? This draws staff into an after hours discussion that your behaviour reinforces, even if you say you don’t expect it.

The new legislation is likely to get some leaders in strife for after hours emails like this, regardless of what they say about expectations. There’s a dead easy solution. All email platforms have a timed or delayed send feature. Learn to use it! Write your emails whenever it suits you, then set it to send during working hours. Simple, cleaner, better.

Don’t let legislation lead

Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock, you’ll know that WHS legislation has recently changed in Australia to include psychosocial hazards. Organisations now have a legislated responsibility to ensure that people are safe from undue psychological impacts of work. As of this week, there's been additions to enshrine people’s right to disconnect from work, meaning they cant be compelled to respond to out of hours communication unless it is unreasonable (e.g. when you are on call, or under a specific set of conditions for a limited time)

You could take the approach of finding out what the new rules are and then follow the legislative lead. That will take you down a rabbit hole of minimum standards and a compliance mindset. A better approach is to build the culture you and your team want/need for optimal performance and then create it together. The standard you set will be much greater than the minimum required, and will have the added bonus of boosting engagement and performance. 

Which Why?

A senior leader team I was working with this week spent time sharing their individual “User Manual”. Some great insights about how and where people work best, their preferences for information, building trust, working hours and more were shared. Super valuable. A common theme was that for them to commit time, effort and resources to something, they needed to know why. Makes sense - few if any of us like wasting time on work that doesn’t seem relevant. Whole books have been written on “why”. But which why? Those leaders articulated 5 different types of why:

• Large, audacious ‘change the world’ vision/mission why

• Large organisational purpose why

• Personal mission why

• Tactical ‘how does this relate to the rest of my/our work?’ why

• Unrelated to the organisation whys like family, health, travel, personal growth, freedom, balance, choice.

All the leaders wanted to know why. They all agreed that knowing why was fundamental to alignment of effort. But not all of them wanted to know the same why. A challenge to alignment is we tend to articulate importance through our own why and huddle with others who share that perspective. An effective leader works to understand the different whys in their team and works with people to align effort with the why that most interests them.

There’s a good chance that most of the whys you work with are in the list above. There’s also a good chance I’ve missed some. What would you add?