How to get the best from these best of people

What do You Need from Them? I have a firm belief that everyone wants to do their best; and there is only one way that people can give you precisely what you want: they have to know precisely what you want. This may sound obvious, but you have no more idea about what goes on in my brain than I have of what goes on in yours. Suppose I have a great dream in my mind, and I am employing you to fulfil part of that dream: unless you can see the pictures in my mind's eye, you won't be able to come up with the goods. For example, if I asked you to find me somewhere to live, and simply assumed that you knew I had six children, seventeen dogs and a goat, it would hardly be your fault if I found myself in a two-bedroomed fifth-floor flat. And Tell 'em the Truth! The whole unvarnished truth. Because, if they know the whole truth, they will be able to contribute so much more For example, because I was short of cash, I wanted to buy Pulse Communications' expertise - rather than their time; so I stuffed all the envelopes with press releases and stuck on the stamps and labels myself - leaving them the extra time to get on with what they were good at: ie chatting up the press. We all think differently: I like thinking in big chunks, and too much fine detail can drive me mad. A copy editor needs to be a small-chunk thinker: someone who loves searching through haystacks for needles. Peter Gilbert, my copy editor (who enjoys thinking in the tiniest chunks), also likes meeting the people he works with face to face, so he and his wife Margaret came to lunch. As we ate, I regaled him with the horror stories of the copy editor of LAZY LEARNING: substituting five syllable words for single syllable words where possible; cutting out the section on John Harvey-Jones - because she had never heard of him; cutting the most important section of the book, and retyping the contents list in the hope that I would not notice (and I nearly didn't! - it was only because she used a different type face that I realised what she had done); changing everything she could - simply for the sake of change, and so on. (When I got her final version, it bore no resemblance to the book I had written, and I refused to allow it to go to press. I was so incensed by the whole incident that I wrote an article in 'The Author', which started: 'it is a truth, universally acknowledged, that your copy editor knows more about your specialised subject than you do'.) Another very good reason for publishing yourself! You know what you're talking about, and they don't. By the end of lunch, Peter was pretty clear about what I didn't want. I then told him what I did want. My outcome was a book which sounded like conversation, rather than deathless prose; hence a sentence ending with a preposition was something he would have to put up with; and that I had even been known to deliberately split an infinitive. What I wanted him to do was to find the typos and anything that didn't make sense; make sure I had put the inverted commas in the right places, and to check that - when I said something like 'as you discovered in Chapter 1' - that Chapter 1 was where it was. This he duly did, and only gave me a hard time - quite properly - about things like was I quoting Seneca the Elder, or Seneca the Younger? Or whether this question mark should be in italics. If you tell people precisely what you need from them, then they will oblige - in spades. After all, why wouldn't they? What do They Need from You? This is a leadership question; so now is the time to stop and have a think about all the people you have pulled rabbits out of hats for. What was it about them that inspired you to such great heights? Write yourself a list, and be subjective - in other words, what effect did these people have on you? And what was it that they did that had this effect on you? When you have done this, ask your friends the same questions. You will, of course, get varied answers, because we are all different; but you will discover the overall strategy of leadership. Anyone can set off into a supposedly golden sunset; but, if there is nobody following, there is no leader - there is just someone heading for a golden sunset. In my experience, anyone who is part of a team needs to feel valued and valuable. And the next question that arises is how do you know that you are valued? What is it about people's behaviour that gives you the evidence that you are valued? :: Is it what they say? :: Is it how they say it? :: Is it the way that they look at you? :: Is it the way that they listen to you? :: Is it the time they give you? :: Is it the space they give you? :: Is it the hugs they give you? :: Or is it something completely different? This information is probably coming in at an unconscious level, so give yourself the time and space to think about it. When you have discovered what your evidence is - and it may be something completely weird - then ask your friends, and they will probably come up with something entirely different. The only thing to notice here is how different we all are. Supposing that my evidence that you value me is that you buy me the odd box of chocolates: if you do not know that this is my evidence, how will you ever know how to demonstrate that you value me? Our evidence procedures have nothing to do with logic, or reality - they just are; and they may be totally weird. (I once worked with a client who could not believe any compliment that anybody paid her - and that was that!) 'How do you know?' is the perennial NLP question. The information has to come from somewhere - from one or more of the five senses: it will something you see, something you hear, something you feel, something you taste, or something you smell - or any combination of the above. Try giving your appreciation through different senses, and see what happens; and remember that the only way we can really find out what goes on in other people's heads is to ask. TIP from Don Juan, the Mexican Sorcerer who caught and held the attention of the American anthropologist Carlos Castaneda so effectively that Castaneda (who had only gone to Mexico to study the use of peyote) became his apprentice, and stayed with him for five years. Look deep into the right eye of the other person, and keep that connection. TIP from me: just pretend: this person really matters to me. Try them both, and see what happens! The Other Side of the Leadership Question This is, of course, you. And, if your mind is throwing up protesting statements like: I'm not a leader; I've never been a leader, and so on - just think back to the times when you have been a leader. It doesn't have to be an earth-shaking project: it could be the great family holiday you decided upon; or the farewell party for a favourite friend which you organised; it could be anything where you had an idea, and carried it through, with the help of others. Then stop and think how you did it. What was going on inside you as you inspired the help of other people to turn this dream into reality. What did you believe about your idea? Why were you doing it? What was it going to give you? What was it going to give everybody else? Think about it at all the different logical levels and take separate pieces of paper for each level so that you can write everything down as it comes to you - however silly it may seem: remember we are all pretty weird - that's the fun of it! Where and when have you been a successful leader? Maybe when you organised a fund-raising project; maybe surrounded by your family; maybe away from your home territory; maybe in the mornings - if that's when your brain works best. You will be interested by what you discover. What did you do that was so successful? Did you involve other people at every level? Did you just tell them what to do? Did you delegate, or do it all yourself? What exactly did you do? Only you will know. What were you seeing in your mind's eye? What were you hearing in your mind's ear? What were you feeling? What were you tasting/smelling? (For example, how much saliva did you have in your mouth?) How did you do all these successful things? For example, if you delegated, how did you decide what to delegate? How did you get other people to do it? How did you react to what they had done? How did you support what they were doing? And so on, with all the other 'how' questions you can think of. Why were you successful? (This is a beliefs-level question.) What did you believe about the project? What did you believe about the people who were working with you? What did you believe that success would bring to you, to your team and to the world? And ask yourself any other 'why' questions you can think of. Who were you as this successful leader? It might be easier to use a metaphor here; for example, you might think of yourself as the tip of an arrow; or the hub of a wheel; or the catalyst; or the artist; or the gardener. Whatever you choose - and you have the universe at your disposal - let it fit comfortably with who you are. Who Else was your leadership going to benefit? This is the mission question. It's all about what you are doing on the planet, and what difference your project is going to make, and how that difference fits in with who you are. Then you can think about all the other times you have been a successful leader, and go through your bits of paper with the 'wh..?' questions on them again - adding anything new that comes to you. Obviously, some things will be completely different - because the situations were different; but a lot of them will be the same. And it is the answers that are the same which will give you the structure of your own successful leadership strategy. Some More about Telling the Truth If everyone knows everything, then there are no surprises. For example, if I enlist your help with a project, you need to know that my brain works best in the morning. And you need to know this for two reasons: 1. Having been up since 5.00 am, I may cheerfully ring you up at 9.00 am - bubbling with all sorts of ideas. If you work late into the night, and start slowly in the morning, this may not be a very good plan. 2. If you ring me at 7.30 p.m. - bubbling with all sorts of ideas - my brain has switched off entirely, I will be concentrating on cooking, and not in the least interested in any of your wonderful ideas. If we have different body clocks, we need to negotiate a time for our discussions when both of us are making maximum sense. We have always been a pretty peripatetic family and, when our sons were at pre-school age, their best friends were Alice and Suzannagh. Our ways parted, and years later, when we were in Berlin, Alice decided she wanted a job there, looking after children. As luck would have it, our next door neighbours, Issy and Gordon, needed some help. Issy wrote out this amazing list of things she thought Alice needed to know about them: 'if I don't tell her about how neurotic I am about the kitchen floor, she'll think I'm quite mad!' - Issy washes her kitchen floor three or four times a day. Alice decided she could live with this, and went to look after Brigid and Morag, which was the greatest fun for us all. And more years later, when we all arrived in Ireland for Alice's wedding, there were Brigid and Morag as her bridesmaids. Issy's determination that there would be no suprises was the beginning of an excellent working relationship, and a long-term friendship. Getting the Best for Everyone To carry the truth thing further, suppose that I have invited you to work on a prestigious project with me, in the expectation that you will return the favour by inviting me to work on your prestigious project - you need to know this. Otherwise it may never cross your mind; and I may be left feeling bitter, unappreciated, hard done by, and so on - simply because I never told you what I wanted at the beginning. It's back to the old mind-reading thing: 'If you really loved me, you would know that I wanted to go skiing this year, rather than to the sun!' - Or any other of those 'if you really loved me ..............' things that people trot out. We expect other people to be able to read our minds - and they can't. So, if we want them to know what we want, we need to tell them. As with all good teams, if everyone knows what everyone else wants to get out of it for themselves, they can all help each other along the way - and everyone can have the best.