If you can remain mindful that most of your thoughts are stories, you create space for considering the assumptions you're making. This is particularly true when it comes to the thoughts you have about other people. Checking your stories is a commitment to understanding what is really going on for someone else.
A useful mental practice is to walk a mile in their shoes. This means imagining what a particular person's world looks and feels like. Where are they living? Who’s at home? What challenges might they be facing? What work demands are on them? What are they having to cope with and manage? What resources are available to them?
In reality the only way you can ever really know about what’s going on with another person is to ask them. Good leadership starts with listening. The questions posed above are some of the same questions you might want to ask a colleague or team member. Asking questions and listening gathers more information and leads to a more accurate understanding. It also builds better relationship currency. Test this with yourself - how do you feel when you have been truly listened to?
From this place a more realistic and productive way forward can be found. This is an important part of the process. Beyond human care and kindness, you build relationship currency in the workplace so you can have robust conversations.
High performing culture is about high support and high challenge. It’s about appropriate empathy, and balancing this with expectation.
You have a job to do. Leaders are paid to drive change and make things happen. I am noticing that balancing the conversation between empathy and expectation has some leaders feeling exposed. It's OK to have expectations and talk about what needs to happen. In fact if you’re not doing that as a leader, you probably aren’t doing your job.
Listening and understanding will better inform how progress is best to happen. It also informs the flexibility and support that need to be in place to help it happen.
Boundaries have shifted in the new economy and workplace, yet boundaries are still required. Boundaries keep people aligned and on track. They are a framework and a guide for progress and productivity.
Where do you recognise that you are making assumptions about what’s going on with a team member or colleague?
How much of that story is helping and how much is hindering?
What conversations are required to close the gap between your perception and their reality?
Where do you recognise that you are avoiding conversations about ways of working and outcomes?
What conversations could you have that would make a positive difference?
Matt helps leaders and teams develop their mindset and resourcefulness so they can relate productively, communicate effectively, and navigate challenge, change and complexity with confidence.
Through coaching and training, he empowers leaders with better choices and more options for progress - building better leadership from the inside out.
Curious what that could look like for you or your organisation? Let’s talk.