Communications as a performance zone
The participants of Saint TeamLead Conf called the report of Alexander Ziza one of the best, probably because much depends on the communication skills of the team leader, and they are usually not well developed.
The story will consist of four meaningful blocks:
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Below you will find the video and text version of this speech, but just to watch or read it is not enough. We must try to immediately start applying the approaches in practice, and Alexander will convince you of this. In fact, this is part of the program for the development of managerial competencies for pumping skills of the team leader with a detailed guide to action and preparation for homework.
About the speaker: Alexander Ziza (Aletheia Business) is a developer of a program for the development of managerial thinking, a consultant in the psychology of transformational change. He has the education of a physicist, financial director and psychologist, and a diverse IT background, including the development of hardware, the implementation of large IT projects, and the formation of teams.
Communications
First, consider a few questions.
How would you like your employee to work?
Answers from the audience: independently, effectively, calmly, result-oriented, predictably, responsibly, motivated, consciously, without mistakes, with pleasure.
What is your job as a manager? What are you physically most often doing as a manager?
Answers from the audience: answer questions, set tasks, accept work, communicate, coordinate, explain what to do, create conditions, report to superiors, delegate, motivate?
Please note - all these items describing the work of the head relate to communication.
But the fact is that we should treat our employees with communication exactly the way we want our employees to work. How our developer is kodit - when he is result oriented, responsible, constantly working, involved, is in focus - this is his area of ​​execution. Communication becomes a performance area for us!
This is one of the most difficult to understand moments in the human mind when he becomes a leader. He ceases to be an expert and developer, he ceases to do some things with his hands. Its main area of ​​execution is a different kind of communication.
Let's not go into the wilds, what is communication. In general, the business community believes that communication is a matter of conversation . Everything else is chatter, halivars, etc. We communicate when we are talking about a case, for example, we give tasks on a scheduling, we evaluate them, etc.
Lyrical digression
I often buy Chinese goods on a well-known site. Once I was recommended to buy this thing here.
Imagine - the company wants to sell me something for only 248 rubles, the rating is 5 stars. The right thing - you need to take! But what is it?
What does communication have to do with it? The communication has 2 sides:
By the way, in the picture there is a special tool for pulling out metal clips.
The next point I want to talk about is the peculiarities of national communication. We all met with them repeatedly and know that they exist. To understand the features of national communication, we need to understand what we have in general around the world.
We have America, and we know that, in general, the American community considers such a notion as benefit to be of high value. We ourselves also believe that this is a good thing. In principle, probably it is.
What is interesting about America? As soon as I come to an American, I communicate with him, and he understands that it is beneficial - he does not reason, does not think, but takes and does: “If it can bring money, I will do it. If it helps reduce time costs, I go and do it. I do not think much. I myself observed this pragmatic approach many times while working with an American company and with Americans. There is an extremely high performing discipline compared to other countries. If someone said that this should be done, because it is profitable, because you can save nerves, time and money, then I take and do.
In a country that calls itself the Middle Kingdom, a completely different logic. For Chinese people, the wisdom of ancestors and the heritage of history are of very high value. In China, the so-called stratagem thinking . Sometimes in China you can see that chaos is happening on the streets, chaos in motion, chaos in business - but at the same time, everything works somehow, and it comes to the leading positions.
In Russia, we really appreciate wit . But what causes sharpness? In addition, as a rule, we do not believe in what we are taught. I think that most of the readers now think: “What is he saying? It is necessary to check everything. This is reflected in the fact that we are optimizing everything . This is one of the main problems that we really have to face as managers. We tell something to our beloved employee, he, without listening to him, understands everything in his own way, and runs to optimize.
One of our national peculiarities in terms of communication is that we try to apply our old experience to the current situation and with the help of old constructs to optimize what we were told. The well-known wisdom of Einstein, which says that it is impossible to solve new problems with the help of old tools, is not authoritative for us.
This communication scheme was born from the Russian methodological school. The basic idea is that management consists of the flow of communications from the leader, from the overall goals and values ​​of the company. With the help of communication is carried out managerial impact - decomposition of tasks on the level of performance.
But the fact is that what I put into communication and what a person understands is what is called two big differences. Understanding comes completely fragmented, torn, and something to do with it.
We can talk about what can be done.
Above, the main types of communications that the timlids have in real work - one has a little more, another has a little less.
High performance communications
This semantic block needs to be read, as they say, by the American type - try to believe that this is so. In any case, try to try on this model . This is a schematic diagram - in real life everything is more complicated. But on this basis, you can build your effective management. If you do the opposite and say that it does not work, then the story of high-performance communications will not work.
One contact - one topic
The principle of “one contact - one topic” is well known in marketing and sales, and in development it is not yet very much. We try to talk about everything at once, the meetings last for hours, and at the output it is not clear what we got: time wasted, everyone remained in his opinion, or everyone agreed, but everyone went to do something different and do things differently.
Let it be a small meeting, but in its focus there should be one small topic or question - either you set the task, or talked about the discipline, or you taught someone something, or something else, but this is something ONE.
Psychologically, there should be a cut-off: here we talked about this, and now we are talking about that. In this case, you, as a manager, should clearly mark the change of topic, record the results of the discussion of the first question and go on to the next one.
Fixed position
The second principle of effective communication comes from the so-called positional communication . When I speak with a person on some topic, I don’t touch on other topics at all. I get into a tough stance.
Let me explain by example. There are employees who do not do something and at the same time consider what they are doing. This is the main headache - you come to him: “And I did, I nakodil it - the customer likes it, the code is good!” And you can’t even tell him that he didn’t do what he needed.
As a rule, such an employee refers to external circumstances: “the server part is not ready,” “more important tasks appeared,” “the product manager said that there is an urgent need to do something else.” And you do not understand what to do - this seems to be necessary, but the employee didn’t complete the task.
When you talk about execution — why not done — everything that concerns the priorities of other tasks cannot be discussed. The point is that you do not have the right in a conversation about performing discipline to return to the statement of the problem and in general somehow question the fact that the task was correctly set.
Thus, when discussing executive discipline, goals and objectives have already been discussed, they are clear and do not change, obligations are taken. This part has already been, we know it, fix it and do not touch it. If a person says that he had other tasks in priority, we say: “I see, we will deal with this in 15 minutes. What did you do so that the ETA task was done? ”
It is necessary to very hard return the person to the position of execution and stand on the fact that the task was set and should be done. It is difficult to admit, but I myself sometimes made mistakes when I tried to discuss motives and goals when it came to executive discipline.
The next point concerns learning, knowledge transfer. We are faced with a similar situation when we teach children. When you teach a child, it is useless to talk about meaning. You will always hear in response: “Why do I need to learn this Russian?” Or “Why do I need to study mathematics if I don’t need it in my life?” All these conversations are also found in real work.
In our digital life, there are often situations when an employee wants to introduce a new technology stack, either apply new knowledge, or learn something just in case. But when it comes to introducing new knowledge and learning some new technologies, maybe very useful and trending ones, you are packing everything tightly into a framework of goals . Everything is perceived in terms of combining with the goals set.
Whenever you try to learn new technologies, you always look at the scope of your goals. There may be options, indeed, it may be important to learn a particular language, but at the same time this framework still needs to be monitored.
The next point is to fix the position when discussing goals and objectives . This position is well studied and described in the literature, it is also called the coach position of Milton Erickson. In general, the meaning is as follows: when setting goals at the meeting, when you discuss goals, individual development plans, OCD, if you have them, it is very important for you to get such a thing as motivation. It is born during the development of goals.
In order for motivation to be born, it is impossible to discuss executive discipline. In the moment of motivation, in no case should the manager say: “Only, you know, I will look after you, because you didn’t manage to do it last time ... Come on, do it well!”
We are so arranged. This is an important point, and mistakes are often made here.
When you discuss tasks and goals, all “and if” reservations are not accepted! To plan a mistake, plan “and if it happens”, plan “and if I get distracted”, plan “and if something happens suddenly not so” is strictly prohibited! No plans B are discussed. Plan B is discussed in a separate meeting.
It is forbidden to plan an error, because as soon as you start discussing it, it will happen exactly.
Exactly the same story happens when hiring, discussing new projects, brainstorming. When you are doing something new, there are a few things that need to be fixed, and enter a fixed position.
First you need to know what competencies you already have . For example, you hire a person, and you have an idea about the purpose of a vacancy: "I need a fifth slave in the development team." The purpose of the vacancy should be expressed in some figures - how the result of the work of the development team, to which the fifth person will be added, will change.
In order to start any conversation with any employee, you need to know your competencies, and know what you are looking for in him .
Do not plan to teach a person something new, in any case, some complex skills. Do not plan that you will take a good person and prove it - he, I think, will become a good productologist . There will be no such thing. The fact is that any part of the training depends heavily on the willpower of the person himself, and you cannot control it.
Therefore, you should definitely know what you have, what you want, and demand it, for example, during an interview.
If the market does not have the necessary skill at all, if you need people with a skill that needs to be trained exactly, do it very simply (not really), as Yandex does, for example: first create a school for learning complex skills, and for money. People will come to the school of training, and then graduates who have proven that they possess this skill can be built into the team.
Craftsmanship
Before that, we had a conversation about a certain frame - the framework in which the team leader works with each communication. The next block is about personal conversation skills.
Consider the integral picture. Here the names of the levels of skill in the circles are very conditional, they can be called differently.
We called the first skill level the Supervisor, the Mentor, the Coach and the Moderator follow in ascending order.
I want to draw your attention that this is an integral history. You can not go to a higher level of skill, not pumped in the bottom . It is impossible to skip a step. As much as I would not like to immediately reach the moderator level, I will not be able to. By the way, the versions about the higher level naming were different, for example, the level of the Magician or the Shaman.
It works very badly here, let's say, our desire to optimize everything: “Let me immediately do this!” You shouldn’t do this, you must first learn how to do basic things.
Supervisor
This skill is very closely related to how we want our employees to work. In other words, entry into communication and conversation with an employee is the moment in time when your employees study executive discipline. At this moment you are an example .
If you are sitting on the phone or doing other tasks (answering calls, drawing pictures), and your focus is not on the employee, during your planning, communicating with the employee, your employee will learn exactly the same behavior from you. Namely, the fact that during his particular work you can be distracted - to call someone or do another thing, do two things at the same time.
This means that every time you need to enter into communication with an employee in total focus : remove everything (phone, computer, etc.), leave everything behind and do only what you are doing at the moment - communication and nothing to others! You are now setting the task for this person, or researching his individual development plan, or discussing OCD or his motivation — no other distractions! You, as a manager, have no right to do anything else during communication, because you teach your employees your behavior.
It’s like with children - they don’t learn from their parents what mom or dad do at work. A child learns from his father when he talks to him. Here is exactly the same. What kind of example you set, so people will work.
Without this basic skill, moving on is generally useless.
Before proceeding to the next level, a small piece of theory about the occurrence of conflicts.
Conflictology and communication
I want to quote from a relatively new book:
This is a human psychology, not our research, a Russian peculiarity, and so on. That is, if someone came to us and said: “We must do this!”, Our brain begins to resist by default and, by default, believes that the one who introduced this proposal will receive more.
For example, now you may have such thoughts: “Mm ... He does not finish speaking something. There is something here that will put me at a disadvantage. ” This is psychology.
What to do with it is not clear. It is because of this psychological moment conflicts arise. Roughly speaking, who came with the proposal, he immediately finds himself at a disadvantageous position, because the opposite side begins to think that something is wrong here and begins to fight with him.
In communication, this is expressed in this reasoning in the head of the employee: “The manager came to tell me what I should do — he probably hides something. Is this a manipulation? ”There is resistance.
In real life, this is clearly seen in a very simple thing - in bargaining on the market. At the bazaar, especially the east, the seller always calls the maximum price, forcing you to be the first to get around this potential conflict. That is, it gives the default price, which is unreal, so that you say your own, more real. The thesis of Ross and Nisbett is embodied in a kind of play in the giveaway between the seller and the buyer, in our life - between the team leader and the employee.
I know an example from a sales training for developers, where they were taught to work with customers. For example, the situation was considered: the product specialist asks the developer how much he will do the task. The developer knows that he can do this task in 5 days. But the coach explains: “You cannot say that you will do it in 5 days. It’s better to say that it will take 10 days - you see, you will be 7-8 ”.
Can you imagine what our developers can learn from this approach?
What do we do in this situation? Of course, bargaining may be, but it is not the most effective way. In real life, in a “manager-employee” relationship, the manager must move to the so-called coach position. He does not say what needs to be done, but every time he works through questions. The ability to communicate through questions, different issues help to resolve this potentially conflicting situation.
Mentor
This is expressed in the style of behavior that we call mentoring . You just do not say anything, you do not give ready-made solutions, do not use the words: "I would do it like this." That is, you do not give any substantive answer until you are asked the exact question. You need in communication with the developer to learn to bring the conversation to such an extent that the substantive question was asked.
When we say how to do the work, we have an image of how the work should be done. If you ask the employee first, and how he would do this work, you see where he is going right and where he may be wrong. Only then a substantive question arises, and you can adjust the direction of work.
In fact, the same thing happens when teaching a child. If he asks you something: “How should I do this?”, First ask, “How would you do it? What would you start with? What are your first steps? ”Such simple questions are the only effective knowledge transfer process for today: from what you need, from how you would act, to stuffing an employee into action and his constructive questions.
Technically, during a conversation, I kind of forbid myself to say how I would solve the problem. First, get an understanding of how your employee would do this. Then you can adjust.
Coach
The next skill “Coach” is more difficult because it requires leveling both the first and the second level. In addition, you need to learn not to recognize ready-made answers. Our modern digital world has very high speeds, the constant emergence of problems that no one has ever solved before. If these new problems could be solved with the help of the knowledge that already exists, everyone would have solved them long ago.
This is a big difficulty - during communication, which lasts 15-20 minutes (half an hour is already quite a serious communication), to be able to stop any patterns , any recognitions: “he is” or “the situation is like this one”. It must be removed from the brain, forbid yourself to think about any categories.
The following will help. I postpone the process of analysis and recognition for a time immediately after the meeting. That is, I plan that my meeting will be half an hour, and I leave 10 minutes to myself for reflection, when I try on the situation for those already known. But in the process of communication, where novelty is born:
At the time of communication, my brain should be as open as possible to new concepts , ideas, and understandings, because there are an infinite number of them in the world — millions of times more than I know. That's for sure! Only then can I move to the next level - the moderator level.
Moderator
The name of this level is taken from specific practice. At this level, you begin to hear subtle signals that give insight into the essence of things.
I will give a simple example. Surely you participated in brainstorms. The real results of the team at the Brainstrom, as a rule, are born from these subtle signals.
In teamwork, it looks like this. Sits 3-5 people. One says: “I have such a problem” and begins to stifle everyone with his story about his problem. The other is trying to carry out the governing process so that everyone speaks out. It is often a quiet person (by the way, usually in the IT community it is a simple developer) who sits and thinks, does not yakat, does not pry, and then says one word, and if the rest succeed in catching him, then this may be the essence of understanding of things.
For the effective work of the team, the discovery of novelty and problem solving, it is very important to hear these words to someone from the team and discuss them. By the time it happens like this: there is a brainstorm, somewhere in 10-15 minutes someone said something quietly, no one heard him. After another 5-10 minutes, several people, hooking on this idea, begin to unwind it. And in the end, everyone starts to discuss a solution that was launched from that very “weak signal”, if, of course, it was heard.
The main skills of a “Moderator” level manager are intuition, subtle understanding, ability to hear the “sign” and bring it to the discussion.
So, we have 4 integral levels:
It is very hard to remove recognition, you will have to work on it. In communications, this is the biggest problem, because recognition leads to action in the old way, and not to those that would be necessary in this situation.
Mastery Development Plan
Any skill is developed at least 3 weeks. You can take this sign and pump your skill, focusing on it.
In the first column, you write down something of your own, just to make it clear what is at stake, for example, some kind of meeting.
In the second column, you enter any of the principles of high-performance communication from my current narration. Any of your meetings fits into one of 5 types of communications and concerns something from one of this list:
Try to identify the communication. As soon as you do this, you have the possibility of effective positional communication.
You fill in the boxes and give yourself subjective assessments. It is very important to give yourself estimates - what you want, you will not show them to anyone. For example, you estimate that you have worked “one touch - one topic” at 5 or 10. To develop skills and abilities, you need to measure progress, otherwise there will be no result .
Gradually, every 3 weeks, introduce a new skill. The first 3 weeks you just totally attentively listen. Just get used to it. You will have many discoveries, believe me. At first it will be very difficult, because it only seems that to be in focus is simple. Maybe not in all communications, but try to increase this skill.
After each module of three weeks, you must write a reflection (1-2 pages of the test) FOR YOURSELF:
Every 3 weeks after you really tried something, you need to write an essay-reflection - on the computer, by hand - as you like, but it should be text.
Every 3 weeks after you really tried something, you need to write an essay-reflection. Write on a computer or by hand, as you wish, the main thing - it must be text.
As a result, you will have approximately this sign. Directly by the numbers of the meeting, evaluation and reflection on 1-2 pages. Thus, you increase your skills in communication, you have the opportunity to quickly make the way from the team leader and grow further in your career to a higher level.
This is my final appeal, one might say, pain. First you need to do, and then optimize, and not vice versa.
The story will consist of four meaningful blocks:
- About communication. Let us touch on what communication is, what is the main problem with communication, why people talk and write about it so much. All the learned philosophers of the world, starting with Aristotle, are trying to solve this problem, but there is still no final decision “to take and make”.
- High-performance communications: 4 types of positional communication. This part is devoted to technical issues related to the construction of high-performance communication. Roughly speaking, what should be done in a particular situation in order for communication to be effective.
- Skill: 4 levels of competence. Here we talk about the personal skill of the manager who exercises his managerial influence through communication.
- Plan for three weeks: diary, homework. The last semantic block contains a three-week plan for upgrading communication skills.
')
Below you will find the video and text version of this speech, but just to watch or read it is not enough. We must try to immediately start applying the approaches in practice, and Alexander will convince you of this. In fact, this is part of the program for the development of managerial competencies for pumping skills of the team leader with a detailed guide to action and preparation for homework.
About the speaker: Alexander Ziza (Aletheia Business) is a developer of a program for the development of managerial thinking, a consultant in the psychology of transformational change. He has the education of a physicist, financial director and psychologist, and a diverse IT background, including the development of hardware, the implementation of large IT projects, and the formation of teams.
In short, with effective communication, I will spend a minimum of time and nervous energy, and the rest of the participants in this communication will do what is needed.
Communications
First, consider a few questions.
How would you like your employee to work?
Answers from the audience: independently, effectively, calmly, result-oriented, predictably, responsibly, motivated, consciously, without mistakes, with pleasure.
What is your job as a manager? What are you physically most often doing as a manager?
Answers from the audience: answer questions, set tasks, accept work, communicate, coordinate, explain what to do, create conditions, report to superiors, delegate, motivate?
Please note - all these items describing the work of the head relate to communication.
But the fact is that we should treat our employees with communication exactly the way we want our employees to work. How our developer is kodit - when he is result oriented, responsible, constantly working, involved, is in focus - this is his area of ​​execution. Communication becomes a performance area for us!
This is one of the most difficult to understand moments in the human mind when he becomes a leader. He ceases to be an expert and developer, he ceases to do some things with his hands. Its main area of ​​execution is a different kind of communication.
Let's not go into the wilds, what is communication. In general, the business community believes that communication is a matter of conversation . Everything else is chatter, halivars, etc. We communicate when we are talking about a case, for example, we give tasks on a scheduling, we evaluate them, etc.
Lyrical digression
I often buy Chinese goods on a well-known site. Once I was recommended to buy this thing here.
Imagine - the company wants to sell me something for only 248 rubles, the rating is 5 stars. The right thing - you need to take! But what is it?
What does communication have to do with it? The communication has 2 sides:
- I want to say something;
- man does not understand what it is about.
By the way, in the picture there is a special tool for pulling out metal clips.
The next point I want to talk about is the peculiarities of national communication. We all met with them repeatedly and know that they exist. To understand the features of national communication, we need to understand what we have in general around the world.
We have America, and we know that, in general, the American community considers such a notion as benefit to be of high value. We ourselves also believe that this is a good thing. In principle, probably it is.
What is interesting about America? As soon as I come to an American, I communicate with him, and he understands that it is beneficial - he does not reason, does not think, but takes and does: “If it can bring money, I will do it. If it helps reduce time costs, I go and do it. I do not think much. I myself observed this pragmatic approach many times while working with an American company and with Americans. There is an extremely high performing discipline compared to other countries. If someone said that this should be done, because it is profitable, because you can save nerves, time and money, then I take and do.
In a country that calls itself the Middle Kingdom, a completely different logic. For Chinese people, the wisdom of ancestors and the heritage of history are of very high value. In China, the so-called stratagem thinking . Sometimes in China you can see that chaos is happening on the streets, chaos in motion, chaos in business - but at the same time, everything works somehow, and it comes to the leading positions.
In Russia, we really appreciate wit . But what causes sharpness? In addition, as a rule, we do not believe in what we are taught. I think that most of the readers now think: “What is he saying? It is necessary to check everything. This is reflected in the fact that we are optimizing everything . This is one of the main problems that we really have to face as managers. We tell something to our beloved employee, he, without listening to him, understands everything in his own way, and runs to optimize.
One of our national peculiarities in terms of communication is that we try to apply our old experience to the current situation and with the help of old constructs to optimize what we were told. The well-known wisdom of Einstein, which says that it is impossible to solve new problems with the help of old tools, is not authoritative for us.
This communication scheme was born from the Russian methodological school. The basic idea is that management consists of the flow of communications from the leader, from the overall goals and values ​​of the company. With the help of communication is carried out managerial impact - decomposition of tasks on the level of performance.
But the fact is that what I put into communication and what a person understands is what is called two big differences. Understanding comes completely fragmented, torn, and something to do with it.
We can talk about what can be done.
Above, the main types of communications that the timlids have in real work - one has a little more, another has a little less.
High performance communications
This semantic block needs to be read, as they say, by the American type - try to believe that this is so. In any case, try to try on this model . This is a schematic diagram - in real life everything is more complicated. But on this basis, you can build your effective management. If you do the opposite and say that it does not work, then the story of high-performance communications will not work.
One contact - one topic
The principle of “one contact - one topic” is well known in marketing and sales, and in development it is not yet very much. We try to talk about everything at once, the meetings last for hours, and at the output it is not clear what we got: time wasted, everyone remained in his opinion, or everyone agreed, but everyone went to do something different and do things differently.
Let it be a small meeting, but in its focus there should be one small topic or question - either you set the task, or talked about the discipline, or you taught someone something, or something else, but this is something ONE.
If you need to fit two topics in one meeting, take a very short break between them - drink coffee, rearrange the chairs, move to another place.
Psychologically, there should be a cut-off: here we talked about this, and now we are talking about that. In this case, you, as a manager, should clearly mark the change of topic, record the results of the discussion of the first question and go on to the next one.
Fixed position
The second principle of effective communication comes from the so-called positional communication . When I speak with a person on some topic, I don’t touch on other topics at all. I get into a tough stance.
Let me explain by example. There are employees who do not do something and at the same time consider what they are doing. This is the main headache - you come to him: “And I did, I nakodil it - the customer likes it, the code is good!” And you can’t even tell him that he didn’t do what he needed.
As a rule, such an employee refers to external circumstances: “the server part is not ready,” “more important tasks appeared,” “the product manager said that there is an urgent need to do something else.” And you do not understand what to do - this seems to be necessary, but the employee didn’t complete the task.
When you talk about execution — why not done — everything that concerns the priorities of other tasks cannot be discussed. The point is that you do not have the right in a conversation about performing discipline to return to the statement of the problem and in general somehow question the fact that the task was correctly set.
Thus, when discussing executive discipline, goals and objectives have already been discussed, they are clear and do not change, obligations are taken. This part has already been, we know it, fix it and do not touch it. If a person says that he had other tasks in priority, we say: “I see, we will deal with this in 15 minutes. What did you do so that the ETA task was done? ”
It is necessary to very hard return the person to the position of execution and stand on the fact that the task was set and should be done. It is difficult to admit, but I myself sometimes made mistakes when I tried to discuss motives and goals when it came to executive discipline.
The next point concerns learning, knowledge transfer. We are faced with a similar situation when we teach children. When you teach a child, it is useless to talk about meaning. You will always hear in response: “Why do I need to learn this Russian?” Or “Why do I need to study mathematics if I don’t need it in my life?” All these conversations are also found in real work.
In our digital life, there are often situations when an employee wants to introduce a new technology stack, either apply new knowledge, or learn something just in case. But when it comes to introducing new knowledge and learning some new technologies, maybe very useful and trending ones, you are packing everything tightly into a framework of goals . Everything is perceived in terms of combining with the goals set.
Whenever you try to learn new technologies, you always look at the scope of your goals. There may be options, indeed, it may be important to learn a particular language, but at the same time this framework still needs to be monitored.
The next point is to fix the position when discussing goals and objectives . This position is well studied and described in the literature, it is also called the coach position of Milton Erickson. In general, the meaning is as follows: when setting goals at the meeting, when you discuss goals, individual development plans, OCD, if you have them, it is very important for you to get such a thing as motivation. It is born during the development of goals.
In order for motivation to be born, it is impossible to discuss executive discipline. In the moment of motivation, in no case should the manager say: “Only, you know, I will look after you, because you didn’t manage to do it last time ... Come on, do it well!”
Any words that relate to the future of potentially not very good performing behavior of an employee, kill motivation and task.
We are so arranged. This is an important point, and mistakes are often made here.
When you discuss tasks and goals, all “and if” reservations are not accepted! To plan a mistake, plan “and if it happens”, plan “and if I get distracted”, plan “and if something happens suddenly not so” is strictly prohibited! No plans B are discussed. Plan B is discussed in a separate meeting.
It is forbidden to plan an error, because as soon as you start discussing it, it will happen exactly.
Exactly the same story happens when hiring, discussing new projects, brainstorming. When you are doing something new, there are a few things that need to be fixed, and enter a fixed position.
First you need to know what competencies you already have . For example, you hire a person, and you have an idea about the purpose of a vacancy: "I need a fifth slave in the development team." The purpose of the vacancy should be expressed in some figures - how the result of the work of the development team, to which the fifth person will be added, will change.
In order to start any conversation with any employee, you need to know your competencies, and know what you are looking for in him .
Do not plan to teach a person something new, in any case, some complex skills. Do not plan that you will take a good person and prove it - he, I think, will become a good productologist . There will be no such thing. The fact is that any part of the training depends heavily on the willpower of the person himself, and you cannot control it.
Therefore, you should definitely know what you have, what you want, and demand it, for example, during an interview.
If the market does not have the necessary skill at all, if you need people with a skill that needs to be trained exactly, do it very simply (not really), as Yandex does, for example: first create a school for learning complex skills, and for money. People will come to the school of training, and then graduates who have proven that they possess this skill can be built into the team.
Craftsmanship
Before that, we had a conversation about a certain frame - the framework in which the team leader works with each communication. The next block is about personal conversation skills.
Consider the integral picture. Here the names of the levels of skill in the circles are very conditional, they can be called differently.
We called the first skill level the Supervisor, the Mentor, the Coach and the Moderator follow in ascending order.
I want to draw your attention that this is an integral history. You can not go to a higher level of skill, not pumped in the bottom . It is impossible to skip a step. As much as I would not like to immediately reach the moderator level, I will not be able to. By the way, the versions about the higher level naming were different, for example, the level of the Magician or the Shaman.
It works very badly here, let's say, our desire to optimize everything: “Let me immediately do this!” You shouldn’t do this, you must first learn how to do basic things.
Supervisor
This skill is very closely related to how we want our employees to work. In other words, entry into communication and conversation with an employee is the moment in time when your employees study executive discipline. At this moment you are an example .
If you are sitting on the phone or doing other tasks (answering calls, drawing pictures), and your focus is not on the employee, during your planning, communicating with the employee, your employee will learn exactly the same behavior from you. Namely, the fact that during his particular work you can be distracted - to call someone or do another thing, do two things at the same time.
This means that every time you need to enter into communication with an employee in total focus : remove everything (phone, computer, etc.), leave everything behind and do only what you are doing at the moment - communication and nothing to others! You are now setting the task for this person, or researching his individual development plan, or discussing OCD or his motivation — no other distractions! You, as a manager, have no right to do anything else during communication, because you teach your employees your behavior.
It’s like with children - they don’t learn from their parents what mom or dad do at work. A child learns from his father when he talks to him. Here is exactly the same. What kind of example you set, so people will work.
Without this basic skill, moving on is generally useless.
Before proceeding to the next level, a small piece of theory about the occurrence of conflicts.
Conflictology and communication
I want to quote from a relatively new book:
"Any proposal that will appear to the group that promotes it that meets the common interests or expectations, will seem to be disadvantageous and serving the interests of the opposing party in the eyes of the group that receives the proposal."
L. Ross, R. Nisbett “Man and situation”
This is a human psychology, not our research, a Russian peculiarity, and so on. That is, if someone came to us and said: “We must do this!”, Our brain begins to resist by default and, by default, believes that the one who introduced this proposal will receive more.
For example, now you may have such thoughts: “Mm ... He does not finish speaking something. There is something here that will put me at a disadvantage. ” This is psychology.
What to do with it is not clear. It is because of this psychological moment conflicts arise. Roughly speaking, who came with the proposal, he immediately finds himself at a disadvantageous position, because the opposite side begins to think that something is wrong here and begins to fight with him.
In communication, this is expressed in this reasoning in the head of the employee: “The manager came to tell me what I should do — he probably hides something. Is this a manipulation? ”There is resistance.
In real life, this is clearly seen in a very simple thing - in bargaining on the market. At the bazaar, especially the east, the seller always calls the maximum price, forcing you to be the first to get around this potential conflict. That is, it gives the default price, which is unreal, so that you say your own, more real. The thesis of Ross and Nisbett is embodied in a kind of play in the giveaway between the seller and the buyer, in our life - between the team leader and the employee.
I know an example from a sales training for developers, where they were taught to work with customers. For example, the situation was considered: the product specialist asks the developer how much he will do the task. The developer knows that he can do this task in 5 days. But the coach explains: “You cannot say that you will do it in 5 days. It’s better to say that it will take 10 days - you see, you will be 7-8 ”.
Can you imagine what our developers can learn from this approach?
What do we do in this situation? Of course, bargaining may be, but it is not the most effective way. In real life, in a “manager-employee” relationship, the manager must move to the so-called coach position. He does not say what needs to be done, but every time he works through questions. The ability to communicate through questions, different issues help to resolve this potentially conflicting situation.
Mentor
This is expressed in the style of behavior that we call mentoring . You just do not say anything, you do not give ready-made solutions, do not use the words: "I would do it like this." That is, you do not give any substantive answer until you are asked the exact question. You need in communication with the developer to learn to bring the conversation to such an extent that the substantive question was asked.
When we say how to do the work, we have an image of how the work should be done. If you ask the employee first, and how he would do this work, you see where he is going right and where he may be wrong. Only then a substantive question arises, and you can adjust the direction of work.
In fact, the same thing happens when teaching a child. If he asks you something: “How should I do this?”, First ask, “How would you do it? What would you start with? What are your first steps? ”Such simple questions are the only effective knowledge transfer process for today: from what you need, from how you would act, to stuffing an employee into action and his constructive questions.
Technically, during a conversation, I kind of forbid myself to say how I would solve the problem. First, get an understanding of how your employee would do this. Then you can adjust.
Coach
The next skill “Coach” is more difficult because it requires leveling both the first and the second level. In addition, you need to learn not to recognize ready-made answers. Our modern digital world has very high speeds, the constant emergence of problems that no one has ever solved before. If these new problems could be solved with the help of the knowledge that already exists, everyone would have solved them long ago.
This is a big difficulty - during communication, which lasts 15-20 minutes (half an hour is already quite a serious communication), to be able to stop any patterns , any recognitions: “he is” or “the situation is like this one”. It must be removed from the brain, forbid yourself to think about any categories.
The following will help. I postpone the process of analysis and recognition for a time immediately after the meeting. That is, I plan that my meeting will be half an hour, and I leave 10 minutes to myself for reflection, when I try on the situation for those already known. But in the process of communication, where novelty is born:
- I should be as open as possible and aim at the result;
- should not say anything superfluous and tell the person about recognizable situations;
- generally should remove any patterns from the brain.
At the time of communication, my brain should be as open as possible to new concepts , ideas, and understandings, because there are an infinite number of them in the world — millions of times more than I know. That's for sure! Only then can I move to the next level - the moderator level.
Moderator
The name of this level is taken from specific practice. At this level, you begin to hear subtle signals that give insight into the essence of things.
I will give a simple example. Surely you participated in brainstorms. The real results of the team at the Brainstrom, as a rule, are born from these subtle signals.
In teamwork, it looks like this. Sits 3-5 people. One says: “I have such a problem” and begins to stifle everyone with his story about his problem. The other is trying to carry out the governing process so that everyone speaks out. It is often a quiet person (by the way, usually in the IT community it is a simple developer) who sits and thinks, does not yakat, does not pry, and then says one word, and if the rest succeed in catching him, then this may be the essence of understanding of things.
For the effective work of the team, the discovery of novelty and problem solving, it is very important to hear these words to someone from the team and discuss them. By the time it happens like this: there is a brainstorm, somewhere in 10-15 minutes someone said something quietly, no one heard him. After another 5-10 minutes, several people, hooking on this idea, begin to unwind it. And in the end, everyone starts to discuss a solution that was launched from that very “weak signal”, if, of course, it was heard.
The main skills of a “Moderator” level manager are intuition, subtle understanding, ability to hear the “sign” and bring it to the discussion.
So, we have 4 integral levels:
- Remove all that interferes. Total focus.
- Remove tips. Answer only the question asked.
- Remove recognition. Postpone conclusions to after the meeting.
- Hear weak signals, bring them to the discussion.
It is very hard to remove recognition, you will have to work on it. In communications, this is the biggest problem, because recognition leads to action in the old way, and not to those that would be necessary in this situation.
Mastery Development Plan
Any skill is developed at least 3 weeks. You can take this sign and pump your skill, focusing on it.
In the first column, you write down something of your own, just to make it clear what is at stake, for example, some kind of meeting.
In the second column, you enter any of the principles of high-performance communication from my current narration. Any of your meetings fits into one of 5 types of communications and concerns something from one of this list:
- novelty;
- formulation of the problem;
- training;
- executive discipline and performance;
- reflection, when we stop and scroll through what happened.
Try to identify the communication. As soon as you do this, you have the possibility of effective positional communication.
You fill in the boxes and give yourself subjective assessments. It is very important to give yourself estimates - what you want, you will not show them to anyone. For example, you estimate that you have worked “one touch - one topic” at 5 or 10. To develop skills and abilities, you need to measure progress, otherwise there will be no result .
Gradually, every 3 weeks, introduce a new skill. The first 3 weeks you just totally attentively listen. Just get used to it. You will have many discoveries, believe me. At first it will be very difficult, because it only seems that to be in focus is simple. Maybe not in all communications, but try to increase this skill.
After each module of three weeks, you must write a reflection (1-2 pages of the test) FOR YOURSELF:
- what happened;
- what was useful;
- I will apply regularly.
Every 3 weeks after you really tried something, you need to write an essay-reflection - on the computer, by hand - as you like, but it should be text.
Every 3 weeks after you really tried something, you need to write an essay-reflection. Write on a computer or by hand, as you wish, the main thing - it must be text.
As a result, you will have approximately this sign. Directly by the numbers of the meeting, evaluation and reflection on 1-2 pages. Thus, you increase your skills in communication, you have the opportunity to quickly make the way from the team leader and grow further in your career to a higher level.
And do not optimize!
This is my final appeal, one might say, pain. First you need to do, and then optimize, and not vice versa.
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Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/420065/
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