Power 3 Questions
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Up until now in this module, we've been focused more on pre-paving with inner world practices. Now we're going to turn our attention to pre-paving with a more outer world strategic tip.
And just to let you know, this tip is an extract from the Successful Feedback program.
Imagine a Challenging Conversation
I want you to imagine you've got a challenging conversation coming up.
- Maybe you've got someone who keeps turning up late to work. Or
- Maybe this person's a leader who's pretty rude or abusive towards his or her team members. Or
- Maybe they're leading with a command and control style when your company's trying to transition to a culture that's more high performing or a more engaging style
Whatever the challenge you have with someone in your team, you need to talk to that person about their performance.
Don't Wing It!
Well, my first tip is don't wing it.
Obviously, the conversation will flow better if you prepare for it, rather than just barging in and winging it. Remember we spoke a short while ago about Choosing Your Attitude for the day, and then we spoke about Segment Intending.
Well, this process I'm about to outline is a formal way of:
- Segment Intending this conversation.
- Along with Pre-paving the vibe and attitude you are going to step into the conversation with
- And finally, you'll end up with a real depth of clarity about the real outcome you want
Because more often than not, if you just try to wing it, you'll barge into that conversation with a vibe of condemnation, and "I'm here to fix you and get you doing what I want!"
Yeah, good luck with that.
Get Curious
When in fact, to get the best possible result you need to go in with a vibe of, " I'm curious. I'm here to ensure we both get our needs met."
To set that up, there are three questions that I call the Power Three that when they become second nature, enable you to keep conversations healthy and positive, even when emotions take over.
Power Three Questions
- What do I want for the task at hand?
- How do I want to impact this relationship?
- How do I want to show up or grow in this situation?
As an aside, I've been using these three questions for years, but I was thinking about it recently and I realized that they do overlay the 4Bs of High Performance Leadership Framework.
So let's take a quick look at how that plays out.
What Do I Want For The Task At Hand?
When we ask the question, What do I want for the task at hand? Generally we're thinking on two planes.
Firstly, what behaviors do I want changed?
And secondly, what outcomes do I want to achieve?
For example, I want this leader to stop abusing his team members. Which probably means you'll be seeking some sort of change of behavior so that you can get an improvement in the bottom line, which is improved individual and team performance, which ultimately leads to improved profit and productivity.
But Your Shouldn't Stop There!
And for most people, that's where they stop in their planning. They think about what's the problem, how do I get it fixed so I can move on to the next thing on my task list.
And generally when we go in with that attitude and that limited an outcome, someone's going to walk out of that room pretty disgruntled.
Doing that, you are going to push them into the Hostage quadrant.
However, if you are a Rockstar leader, you'll want to affect long-term change in behavior and attitude, and get and keep people on side.
Doing that you'll push them into the hostage quadrant
You'll want to ensure that you don't push them down into that Hostage quadrant.
Instead, you want to inspire them to remain eager and motivated and wanting to provide discretionary effort. In other words, up in the Contributor and Rockstar quadrants, which is where our second question comes into play.
What do I want for this relationship?
So now you're starting to focus on building, Believing, and Belonging.
You want the person you're talking with to know that even as you work through thorny issues, you want the best for them and you've got their back, and you are looking toward how you can both achieve your goals.
You'll start to think about when this conversation's over, "What do I want that person to say to the next person they talk to about the conversation he or she just had with me?"
What do I want that person to say to the next person they talk to about the conversation he or she just had with me?
So now you're starting to go broader than just the tasks that you want to get done. For example, stop this leader from abusing others.
Now you're starting to hone in on "How do I ensure I get and keep this person on side? While I'm getting them to address their performance."
And finally that third question,
How do I want to show up or grow?
Which is your personal Bottom line. We all have behaviors and attitudes and mindsets that derail us or stop us from constantly to delivering superior performance.
So with this question, you're starting to work towards ensuring you are minimizing the limiting behaviors that get in the way of achieving the success you desire, and stepping into being a rockstar leader.
For example, maybe:
- your limiting behavior is that you run a mile when there's a conflict, or
- you come on all aggressive and offend others with your fiery nature, or
- maybe you are the take charge, take control type, who actually puts others offside by your impatience, or
- you're a people pleaser and you try to rescue and be liked by others, which stops you from getting what you need
There are so many ways we derail ourselves and our relationships with others, but by answering the three power questions, either prior to a challenging conversation or when a challenging conversation hits you unexpectedly, it enables you to remain totally focused on what's really important to you, rather than getting caught up in games of winning and protecting turf, saving face, and defending and protecting yourself.
So let's take a look at how this might play out. And this is a real situation, but it was so a profound, it so changed the direction of my life that I want to share with you.
CASE STUDY
I'm taking two weeks family leave!
Back in the 90s when I was working at Colgate, we had a pretty liberal family leave policy, for that time, where team members could get unlimited paid family leave at the discretion of the team leader and in consultation with the team member.
And I recall a team member who came in at the start of a shift saying to myself and the factory manager that he was ...
taking two weeks paid family leave starting tomorrow because his wife had to fly out the next day to the UK for her father's funeral. And their family values were such that they wouldn't place their children in childcare EVER! So, therefore, he wouldn't be able to be at work for the next two weeks.
And this was pretty much delivered as an ultimatum.
Not so much as a consultation.
And while our family leave policy was generous, this was really stretching the boundaries of fairness.
As well, being a production environment, we were like, 'Holy Moley! How do we cover somebody being off for two weeks, keep the line running during peak production period, and we've already got people off on leave, including his team leader and others on training.'
It was a bit of a quandary.
So now a little bit of background for you. This was a team member who was a pretty good performer.
We, we held him in pretty high regard.
But because our team members were highly trained technicians, in most of the positions we just couldn't hire in casuals to cover their role.
In fact, in this scenario, because we already had people on leave and in training all the slots where we could put untrained, casuals had actually been filled.
So I've got a little quiz for you to do around how you would solve this dilemma. So head over to the Take Action Tab
You have to think about the scenario and write down how you would answer those three questions.
Task
Task, list the outcomes in terms of task that you would want to achieve during or after that conversation with this team member.
Definition of a task is a behavior change or a result/outcome.
Relationship
For relationship, I want you to list the outcome in terms of relationship that you would want to achieve during, and then after having conversation with this team member.
A definition of relationship is how you and the other person will feel about each other after the conversation's finished.
Growth
And then in terms of growth, list the outcome in terms of personal growth or impact that you would want to achieve during and after having a conversation with this member.
The definition of personal growth is what limiting or derailing behaviors of yours that you want to avoid? And I want you to state it in the positive that is how you want to show up, not in the negative.
So you've got the little quiz to do, and then we're going to take a look at how we handled the scenario.
The scenario is detailed below the quiz.
AFTER YOU HAVE COMPLETED THE QUIZ
THEN CLICK ON THE CASE STUDY BUTTON AT THE BOTTOM OF THE PAGE
TO SEE HOW WE RESOLVED THE PROBLEM
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CASE STUDY
I'm taking two weeks family leave!
Back in the nineties when I was working at Colgate, we had a pretty liberal family leave policy, for that time, where team members could get unlimited paid family leave at the discretion of the team leader and in consultation with the team member.
And I recall a team member who came in at the start of a shift saying to myself and the factory manager that he was ...
taking two weeks paid family leave starting tomorrow because his wife had to fly out the next day to the UK for her father's funeral.
And their family values were such that they wouldn't place their children in childcare EVER!
So, therefore, he wouldn't be able to be at work for the next two weeks.
And this was pretty much delivered as an ultimatum.
Not so much as a consultation.
And while our family leave policy was generous, this was really stretching the boundaries of fairness.
As well, being a production environment, we were like, 'Holy shit! How do we cover somebody being off for two weeks, keep the line running during peak production period, and we've already got people off on leave, including their team leader and others on training.'
It was a bit of a quandary.
So now a little bit of background for you. This was a team member who was a pretty good performer.
We, we held him in pretty high regard.
But because our team members were highly trained technicians, in most of the positions we just couldn't hire in casuals to cover their role.
In fact, in this scenario, because we already had people on leave and in training all the slots where we could put untrained, casuals had actually been filled.
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