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What You’ll Learn

It’s been two decades since Daniel Goleman’s research

showed that emotional intelligence is twice as important

as other skills in determining outstanding leadership. By

managing your emotions and relating well to others, he

explained, you can achieve higher levels of infl uence as

well as personal well-being.

This kind of emotional intelligence is not just an in-

nate trait: It can be learned. Becoming more fi nely at-

tuned to your own emotions allows you to determine how

to use those feelings more productively to make stronger

decisions, overcome negative thoughts, control yourself

in volatile situations, or understand others when they act

in a way that surprises or angers you. Getting feedback

from trusted colleagues and friends can keep you honest

and aware of your areas of weakness, especially in the so-

cial sphere. And whether you’re writing a diffi cult email,

looking to keep your cool in a bitter negotiation, or man-

aging an upset direct report, an array of frameworks and

tactics can help you approach the situation in a way that

takes the human element into account.

What You'll Learn

This guide will help you navigate these approaches.

You’ll get better at:

• Identifying and managing your own emotions

• Persuading and infl uencing others

• Dealing with diffi cult colleagues

• Responding to stress productively

• Defusing tense conversations

• Using your feelings as data to help you make

smarter decisions

• Avoiding emotional pitfalls in a negotiation

• Reacting to tough situations with resilience

• Helping others on your team develop their emo-

tional intelligence

• Developing a strong emotional culture

Contents

SECTION ONE

What Is Emotional Intelligence?

1. Leading by Feel

3

Defi nitions and refl ections from experts.

2. Do You Lead with Emotional Intelligence?

23

Quiz yourself.

BY ANNIE MCKEE

SECTION TWO

Self-Awareness: Understand Your

Emotions, Know Your Behaviors

3. You Can’t Manage Emotions Without

Knowing What They Really Are

31

Don’t just try to ignore your negative

feelings.

BY ART MARKMAN

4. A Vocabulary for Your Emotions

35

Get precise.

BY SUSAN DAVID

Table of Contents

5. Are You Sure You Show Respect?

43

No other leadership behavior has a bigger

eff ect on employees.

BY CHRISTINE PORATH

SECTION THREE

Manage Your Emotions

6. Make Your Emotions Work for You

53

Use them as data.

BY SUSAN DAVID

7. Defuse a Challenging Interaction

57

Reframe negative thoughts and neutralize

bad behavior.

8. Stay Grounded in Stressful Moments

61

Use your body to take a break from your

mind’s chatter.

BY LEAH WEISS

9. Recovering from an Emotional Outburst

67

You can’t just apologize and move on.

BY SUSAN DAVID

SECTION FOUR

Everyday Emotional Intelligence

10. Writing Resonant Emails

73

Human communication for the digital age.

BY ANDREW BRODSKY

viii

Table of Contents

11. Running Powerful Meetings

79

Use empathy to understand potential

confl icts.

BY ANNIE MCKEE

12. Giving

Diffi

cult Feedback

85

Spark growth rather than frustration.

BY MONIQUE VALCOUR

13. Making Smart Decisions

91

Emotional tagging both helps and hinders

our ability to choose.

BY ANDREW CAMPBELL, JO WHITEHEAD,

AND SYDNEY FINKELSTEIN

14. An Emotional Strategy for Negotiations

97

How to avoid the pitfalls of anxiety and anger.

BY ALISON WOOD BROOKS

15. Working Across Cultures

117

It’s harder to read others across borders.

BY ANDY MOLINSKY

SECTION FIVE

Dealing with Diffi

cult People

16. Make Your Enemies Your Allies

123

Reverse a rivalry by building trust.

BY BRIAN UZZI AND SHANNON DUNLAP

17. How to Deal with a Passive-Aggressive

Colleague 135

Cut to the underlying issues.

BY AMY GALLO

ix

Table of Contents

18. What to Do If You’re a Toxic Handler

145

Don’t be a hero.

BY SANDRA L. ROBINSON AND KIRA SCHABRAM

SECTION SIX

Understand Empathy

19. What Is Empathy?

159

Three types critical for leaders.

BY DANIEL GOLEMAN

20. Beyond Empathy: The Power of Compassion

165

The Dalai Lama, cognitive science, and

the power of caring.

BY DANIEL GOLEMAN (INTERVIEWED BY ANDREA OVANS)

SECTION SEVEN

Build Your Resilience

21. Resilience in the Moment

175

Recovering your self-image.

22. Cultivate Resilience in Tough Times

181

Three traits of people who emerge stronger

from trauma.

BY DIANE COUTU

23. Practice Self-Compassion

185

Treat yourself as you would others.

BY CHRISTOPHER GERMER

24. Don’t Endure; Recharge

195

Resilience isn’t about powering through.

BY SHAWN ACHOR AND MICHELLE GIELAN

x

Table of Contents

25. How Resilient Are You?

203

A self-assessment.

BY MANFRED F. R. KETS DE VRIES

SECTION EIGHT

Developing Emotional Intelligence

on Your Team

26. How to Help Someone Develop Emotional

Intelligence 213

It’s not as easy as a carrot or a stick.

BY ANNIE MCKEE

27. Handling Emotional Outbursts on Your Team

219

Watch for facts, emotions, and values.

BY LIANE DAVEY

28. How to Manage Your Emotional Culture

225

Translate the organization’s mission to the

micromoments of everyday work life.

BY SIGAL BARSADE AND OLIVIA A. O’NEILL

Index 239

xi

SECTION ONE

What Is

Emotional

Intelligence?

CHAPTER 1

Leading by Feel

Like it or not, leaders need to manage the mood of their

organizations. The most gifted leaders accomplish that

by using a mysterious blend of psychological abilities

known as emotional intelligence. They’re self-aware

and empathetic. They can read and regulate their own

emotions while intuitively grasping how others feel and

gauging their organization’s emotional state.

But where does emotional intelligence come from?

And how do leaders learn to use it? The manage-

ment literature (and even common sense) suggests

that both nature and nurture feed emotional intelli-

gence. Part genetic predisposition, part life experience,

and part old- fashioned training, emotional intelligence

emerges in varying degrees from one leader to the next,

Excerpted from Harvard Business Review, January 2004 (product

#R0401B)

3

What Is Emotional Intelligence?

and managers apply it with varying skill. Wisely and

compassionately deployed, emotional intelligence spurs

leaders, their people, and their organizations to superior

performance; naively or maliciously applied, it can para-

lyze leaders or allow them to manipulate followers for

personal gain.

We invited 18 leaders and scholars (including busi-

ness executives, leadership researchers, psychologists, a

neurologist, a cult expert, and a symphony conductor) to

explore the nature and management of emotional intel-

ligence—its sources, uses, and abuses. Their responses

differed dramatically, but there were some common

themes: the importance of consciously and conscien-

tiously honing one’s skills, the double-edged nature of

self- awareness, and the danger of letting any one emo-

tional intelligence skill dominate. Here are some of their

perspectives.

Be Realistic

John D. Mayer is a professor of psychology at the Uni-

versity of New Hampshire. He and Yale psychology pro-

fessor Peter Salovey are credited with fi rst defi ning the

concept of emotional intelligence in the early 1990s.

This is a time of growing realism about emotional

intelligence—especially concerning what it is and what

it isn’t. The books and articles that have helped popu-

larize the concept have defi ned it as a loose collection

of personality traits, such as self-awareness, optimism,

and tolerance. These popular defi nitions have been ac-

companied by exaggerated claims about the importance

4

Leading by Feel

of emotional intelligence. But diverse personality traits,

however admirable, don’t necessarily add up to a single

defi nition of emotional intelligence. In fact, such traits

are diffi cult to collectively evaluate in a way that reveals

their relationship to success in business and in life.

Even when they’re viewed in isolation, the character-

istics commonly associated with emotional intelligence

and success may be more complicated than they seem.

For example, the scientifi c jury is out on how important

self-awareness is to successful leadership. In fact, too

much self-awareness can reduce self-esteem, which is of-

ten a crucial component of great leadership.

From a scientifi c standpoint, emotional intelligence

is the ability to accurately perceive your own and others’

emotions; to understand the signals that emotions send

about relationships; and to manage your own and oth-

ers’ emotions. It doesn’t necessarily include the qualities

(like optimism, initiative, and self-confi dence) that some

popular defi nitions ascribe to it.

Researchers have used performance tests to measure

people’s accuracy at identifying and understanding emo-

tions; for example, asking them to identify the emotions

conveyed by a face or which among several situations

is most likely to bring about happiness. People who get

high scores on these tests are indeed different from oth-

ers. In the business world, they appear better able to deal

with customers’ complaints or to mediate disputes, and

they may excel at making strong and positive personal

connections with subordinates and customers over the

long term. Of course, emotional intelligence isn’t the only

5

What Is Emotional Intelligence?

way to attain success as a leader: A brilliant strategist

who can maximize profi ts may be able to hire and keep

talented employees even if he or she doesn’t have strong

personal connections with them.

Is there value in scales that, based on popular con-

ceptions, measure qualities like optimism and self-

confi dence but label them “emotional intelligence”? Cer-

tainly, these personality traits are important in business,

so measuring and (sometimes) enhancing them can

be useful. But recent research makes it clear that these

characteristics are distinct from emotional intelligence

as it is scientifi cally defi ned. A person high in emotional

intelligence may be realistic rather than optimistic and

insecure rather than confi dent. Conversely, a person may

be highly self-confi dent and optimistic but lack emo-

tional intelligence. The danger lies in assuming that be-

cause a person is optimistic or confi dent, they are also

emotionally intelligent, when, in fact, the presence of

those traits will tell you nothing of the sort.

Never Stop Learning

Daniel Goleman is the cochair of the Consortium for Re-

search on Emotional Intelligence in Organizations based

at Rutgers University’s Graduate School of Applied and

Professional Psychology in Piscataway, New Jersey.

You can be a successful leader without much emo-

tional intelligence if you’re extremely lucky and you’ve

got everything else going for you: booming markets,

bumbling competitors, and clueless higher-ups. If you’re

incredibly smart, you can cover for an absence of emo-

tional intelligence until things get tough for the business.

6

Leading by Feel

But at that point, you won’t have built up the social capi-

tal needed to pull the best out of people under tremen-

dous pressure. The art of sustained leadership is getting

others to produce superior work, and high IQ alone is

insuffi cient to that task.

The good news is that emotional intelligence can be

learned and improved at any age. In fact, data shows

that, on average, people’s emotional intelligence tends

to increase as they age. But the specifi c leadership com-

petencies that are based on emotional intelligence don’t

necessarily come through life experience. For example,

one of the most common complaints I hear about lead-

ers, particularly newly promoted ones, is that they lack

empathy. The problem is that they were promoted be-

cause they were outstanding individual performers—and

being a solo achiever doesn’t teach you the skills neces-

sary to understand other people’s concerns.

Leaders who are motivated to improve their emo-

tional intelligence can do so if they’re given the right

information, guidance, and support. The information

they need is a candid assessment of their strengths and

limitations from people who know them well and whose

opinions they trust. The guidance they need is a specifi c

developmental plan that uses naturally occurring work-

place encounters as the laboratory for learning. The sup-

port they need is someone to talk to as they practice how

to handle different situations, what to do when they’ve

blown it, and how to learn from those setbacks. If lead-

ers cultivate these resources and practice continually,

they can develop specifi c emotional intelligence skills—

skills that will last for years.

7

What Is Emotional Intelligence?

5 COMPONENTS OF EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE

In 1998, in what has become one of HBR’s most endur-

ing articles, “What Makes a Leader?” Daniel Goleman

introduced a framework of fi ve components of emo-

tional intelligence that allow individuals to recognize,

connect with, and learn from their own and other peo-

ple’s mental states, as well as their hallmarks. While

there are many frameworks off ering varying sets of

EI competencies (and other models that conceive of

emotional intelligence not as a set of competencies

but rather as the ability to abstract and problem solve

in the emotional domain), Goleman’s approach, out-

lined in exhibit 1, can be a helpful way to start building

an understanding of emotional intelligence:

EXHIBIT 1

EI

Component Defi nition

Hallmarks

Example

Self-

Knowing

• Self- confi dence A manager knows

awareness

one’s

tight deadlines bring

• Realistic self-

emotions,

out the worst in him.

assessment

strengths,

So he plans his time

weaknesses,

• Self-

to get work done well

drives,

deprecating

in advance.

values, and

sense of

goals—and

humor

their impacts • Thirst for

on others

constructive

criticism

Self-

Controlling

• Trustworthi-

When a team botches

regulation

or redirecting

ness

a presentation, its

disruptive

leader resists the urge

• Integrity

emotions and

to scream. Instead,

impulses

• Comfort with

she considers pos-

ambiguity and sible reasons for the

change

failure, explains the

consequences to her

team, and explores

solutions with them.

8

Leading by Feel

EI

Component Defi nition

Hallmarks

Example

Motivation

Being driven

• A passion for

A portfolio manager

to achieve for

the work itself at an investment

the sake of

and for new

company sees his

achievement

challenges

fund tumble for three

consecutive quarters.

• Unfl agging

Major clients defect.

energy to

Instead of blaming ex-

improve

ternal circumstances,

• Optimism in

she decides to learn

the face of

from the experi-

failure

ence—and engineers

a turnaround.

Empathy

Consider-

• Expertise in

An American consul-

ing others’

attracting

tant and her team

feelings,

and retaining

pitch a project to a

especially

talent

potential client in

when making

Japan. Her team

• Ability to de-

decisions

interprets the client’s

velop others

silence as disapproval

• Sensitivity to

and prepares to leave.

cross-cultural

The consultant reads

diff erences

the client’s body lan-

guage and senses in-

terest. She continues

the meeting, and her

team gets the job.

Social skill

Managing

• Eff ectiveness

A manager wants his

relationships

in leading

company to adopt

to move

change

a better internet

in desired

strategy. He fi nds

• Persuasiveness

directions

kindred spirits and

• Extensive

assembles a de facto

networking

team to create a

prototype website.

• Expertise in

He persuades allies

building and

in other divisions to

leading teams

fund the company’s

participation in a

relevant convention.

His company forms

an internet division —

and puts him in

charge of it.

Adapted from “What Makes a Leader” by Daniel Goleman, originally

published in Harvard Business Review, June 2006.

9

What Is Emotional Intelligence?

Get Motivated

Richard Boyatzis is a professor and the chair of the de-

partment of organizational behavior at Case Western Re-

serve University’s Weatherhead School of Management

in Cleveland.

People can develop their emotional intelligence if they

really want to. But many managers jump to the conclu-

sion that their complement of emotional intelligence

is predetermined. They think, “I could never be good

at this, so why bother?” The central issue isn’t a lack of

ability to change; it’s the lack of motivation to change.

Leadership development is not all that different from

other areas in which people are trying to change their

behaviors. Just look at the treatments for alcoholism,

drug addiction, and weight loss: They all require the de-

sire to change. More subtly, they all require a positive,

rather than a negative, motivation. You have to want to

change. If you think you’ll lose your job because you’re

not adequately tuned in to your employees, you might

become determinedly empathetic or compassionate for

a time. But change driven by fear or avoidance probably

isn’t going to last. Change driven by hopes and aspira-

tions, change that’s pursued because it’s desired, will be

more enduring.

There’s no such thing as having too much emotional

intelligence. But there is a danger in being preoccupied

with, or overusing, one aspect of it. For example, if you

overemphasize the emotional intelligence competencies

of initiative or achievement, you’ll always be changing

things at your company. Nobody would know what you

10

Leading by Feel

were going to do next, which would be quite destabiliz-

ing for the organization. If you overuse empathy, you

might never fi re anybody. If you overuse teamwork, you

might never build diversity or listen to a lone voice. Bal-

ance is essential.

Train the Gifted

Elkhonon Goldberg is a clinical professor of neurology

at New York University School of Medicine and the di-

rector of the Institute of Neuropsychology and Cognitive

Performance in New York.

In the past, neuropsychologists were mostly con-

cerned with cognitive impairment. Today, they are in-

creasingly interested in the biological underpinnings of

cognitive differences in people without impairments—

including differences in people’s emotional intelligence.

Emotional intelligence can be learned, to a degree.

It’s like mathematical or musical ability. Can you become

a musician if you lack natural aptitude? Yes, you can, if

you take lessons and practice enough. But will you ever

be a Mozart? Probably not. In the same way, emotional

intelligence develops through a combination of biologi-

cal endowment and training. And people who don’t have

that endowment probably won’t become deeply emo-

tionally intelligent just through training. Trying to drum

emotional intelligence into someone with no aptitude

for it is an exercise in futility. I believe the best way to

get emotionally intelligent leaders is to select for people

who already show the basic qualities you want. Think

about it: That’s how athletic coaches operate. They don’t

just work with anyone who wants to play a sport; they

11

What Is Emotional Intelligence?

train the naturally gifted. Business managers should do

the same.

How do you identify the naturally gifted? I’d say you

have to look for those with a genuine, instinctive interest

in other people’s experiences and mental worlds. It’s an

absolute prerequisite for developing emotional intelli-

gence. If a manager lacks this interest, maybe your train-

ing resources are better directed elsewhere.

Seek Frank Feedback

Andrea Jung is the chair and CEO of Avon Products,

which is based in New York.

Emotional intelligence is in our DNA here at Avon be-

cause relationships are critical at every stage of our busi-

ness. It starts with the relationships our 4.5 million in-

dependent sales reps have with their customers and goes

right up through senior management to my offi ce. So the

emphasis on emotional intelligence is much greater here

than it was at other companies in which I’ve worked. We

incorporate emotional intelligence education into our

development training for senior managers, and we factor

in emotional intelligence competencies when we evalu-

ate employees’ performance.

Of all a leader’s competencies, emotional and other-

wise, self-awareness is the most important. Without it,

you can’t identify the impact you have on others. Self-

awareness is very important for me as CEO. At my level,

few people are willing to tell me the things that are hard-

est to hear. We have a CEO advisory counsel—ten peo-

ple chosen each year from Avon offi ces throughout the

world—and they tell me the good, the bad, and the ugly

about the company. Anything can be said. It helps keep

12

Leading by Feel

me connected to what people really think and how my

actions affect them. I also rely on my children for honest

appraisals. You can get a huge dose of reality by seeing

yourself through your children’s eyes, noticing the ways

they react to and refl ect what you say and do. My kids

are part of my 360-degree feedback. They’re the most

honest of all.

I grew up in a very traditional Chinese family. My

parents were concerned that the way I’d been raised—

submissive, caring, and averse to confl ict—would hinder

my ability to succeed in the Fortune 500 environment.

They were afraid I couldn’t make the tough decisions.

But I’ve learned how to be empathetic and still make

hard decisions that are right for the company. These are

not incompatible abilities. When Avon has had to close

plants, for example, I’ve tried to act with compassion for

the people involved. And I’ve gotten letters from some of

the associates who were affected, expressing sadness but

also saying thanks for the fair treatment. Leaders’ use of

emotional intelligence when making tough decisions is

important to their success—and to the success of their

organizations.

Engage Your Demons

David Gergen directs the Center for Public Leader-

ship at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School

of Government in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He served

as an adviser to presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and

Clinton.

American history suggests not only that emotional

intelligence is an indispensable ingredient of politi-

cal leadership but also that it can be enhanced through

13

What Is Emotional Intelligence?

sustained effort. George Washington had to work hard

to control his fi ery temper before he became a role model

for the republic, and Abraham Lincoln had to overcome

deep melancholia to display the brave and warm coun-

tenance that made him a magnet for others. Frank-

lin Delano Roosevelt provides an even more graphic

example: In his early adult years, FDR seemed carefree

and condescending. Then, at 39, he was stricken with

polio. By most accounts, he transformed himself over the

next seven years of struggle into a leader of empathy, pa-

tience, and keen self-awareness.

Richard Nixon thought he might transform himself

through his own years in the wilderness, and he did

make progress. But he could never fully control his de-

mons, and they eventually brought him down. Bill Clin-

ton, too, struggled for self-mastery and made progress,

but he could not fully close the cracks in his character,

and he paid a stiff price. Not all people succeed, then, in

achieving self-awareness and self-control. What we have

been told since the time of the Greeks is that every leader

must try to control his own passions before he can hope

to command the passions of others.

Best-selling author Rabbi Harold Kushner argues

persuasively that the elements of selfi shness and ag-

gression that are in most of us—and our struggles to

overcome them—are exactly what make for better lead-

ership. In Living a Life That Matters, Kushner writes of

the personal torments of leaders from Jacob, who wres-

tled all night with an angel, to Martin Luther King Jr.,

who tried to cleanse himself of weakness even as he

cleansed the nation’s soul. “Good people do bad things,”

Kushner concludes, “If they weren’t mightily tempted by

14

Leading by Feel

their yetzer ha’ra [will to do evil], they might not be ca-

pable of the mightily good things they do.”

Find Your Voice

William George is the former chairman and CEO of

Medtronic, a medical technology company in Minne-

apolis.

Authentic leadership begins with self-awareness, or

knowing yourself deeply. Self-awareness is not a trait you

are born with but a capacity you develop throughout your

lifetime. It’s your understanding of your strengths and

weaknesses, your purpose in life, your values and moti-

vations, and how and why you respond to situations in

a particular way. It requires a great deal of intro spection

and the ability to internalize feedback from others.

No one is born a leader; we have to consciously de-

velop into the leader we want to become. It takes many

years of hard work and the ability to learn from extreme

diffi culties and disappointments. But in their scramble

to get ahead, many would-be leaders attempt to skip

this crucial developmental stage. Some of these people

do get to the top of companies through sheer determi-

nation and aggressiveness. However, when they fi nally

reach the leader’s chair, they can be very destructive be-

cause they haven’t focused on the hard work of personal

development.

To mask their inadequacies, these leaders tend to

close themselves off, cultivating an image or persona

rather than opening up to others. They often adopt the

styles of other leaders they have observed.

Leaders who are driven to achieve by shortcom-

ings in their character, for example, or a desire for self-

15

What Is Emotional Intelligence?

aggrandizement, may take inordinate risks on behalf of

the organization. They may even come to believe they

are so important that they place their interests above

those of the organization.

Self-awareness and other emotional intelligence skills

come naturally to some, less so to others—but these

skills can be learned. One of the techniques I have found

most useful in gaining deeper self-awareness is medita-

tion. In 1975, my wife dragged me, kicking and scream-

ing, to a weekend course in Transcendental Meditation.

I have meditated 20 minutes, twice a day, ever since.

Meditation makes me calmer, more focused, and better

able to discern what’s really important. Leaders, by the

very nature of their positions, are under extreme pres-

sure to keep up with the many voices clamoring for their

attention. Indeed, many leaders lose their way. It is only

through a deep self-awareness that you can fi nd your in-

ner voice and listen to it.

Know the Score

Michael Tilson Thomas is the music director of the San

Francisco Symphony.

A conductor’s authority rests on two things: the or-

chestra’s confi dence in the conductor’s insightful knowl-

edge of the whole score; and the orchestra’s faith in the

conductor’s good heart, which seeks to inspire everyone

to make music that is excellent, generous, and sincere.

Old-school conductors liked to hold the lead in their

hands at all times. I do not. Sometimes I lead. Other

times I’ll say, “Violas, I’m giving you the lead. Listen to

one another; and fi nd your way with this phrase.” I’m not

16

Leading by Feel

trying to drill people, military style, to play music exactly

together. I’m trying to encourage them to play as one,

which is a different thing. I’m guiding the performance,

but I’m aware that they’re executing it. It’s their sinews,

their heartstrings. I’m there to help them do it in a way

that is convincing and natural for them but also a part of

the larger design.

My approach is to be in tune with the people with

whom I’m working. If I’m conducting an ensemble for

the fi rst time, I will relate what I want them to do to the

great things they’ve already done. If I’m conducting my

own orchestra, I can see in the musicians’ bodies and

faces how they’re feeling that day, and it becomes very

clear who may need encouragement and who may need

cautioning.

The objectivity and perspective I have as the only per-

son who is just listening is a powerful thing. I try to use

this perspective to help the ensemble reach its goals.

Keep It Honest

Carol Bartz is the chairman, president, and CEO of

Auto desk, a design software and digital content com-

pany in San Rafael, California.

A friend needed to take a six-month assignment in

a different part of the country. She had an ancient, ill,

balding but beloved dog that she could not take with her.

Her choices boiled down to boarding the poor animal, at

enormous expense, or putting it out of its obvious misery.

Friends said, “Board the dog,” though behind my friend’s

back, they ridiculed that option. She asked me what I

thought, and I told her, kindly but clearly, that I thought

17

What Is Emotional Intelligence?

she should have the dog put to sleep rather than spend

her money keeping it in an environment where it would

be miserable and perhaps die anyway. My friend was fu-

rious with me for saying this. She boarded the dog and

went away on her assignment. When she returned, the

dog was at death’s door and had to be put to sleep. Not

long after that, my friend came around to say thanks.

“You were the only person who told me the truth,” she

said. She came to appreciate that I had cared enough to

tell her what I thought was best, even if what I said hurt

at the time.

That event validated a hunch that has stood me in

good stead as I’ve led my company. Empathy and com-

passion have to be balanced with honesty. I have pulled

people into my offi ce and told them to deal with certain

issues for the sake of themselves and their teams. If they

are willing to learn, they will say, “Gee, no one ever told

me.” If they are unwilling, they’re not right for this or-

ganization. And I must let them go for the sake of the

greater good.

Go for the Gemba

Hirotaka Takeuchi is the dean of Hitotsubashi Univer-

sity’s Graduate School of International Corporate Strat-

egy in Tokyo.

Self-awareness, self-control, empathy, humility, and

other such emotional intelligence traits are particularly

important in Asia. They are part of our Confucian em-

phasis on wah, or social harmony. When books on emo-

tional intelligence were fi rst translated into Japanese,

people said, “We already know that. We’re actually trying

to get beyond that.” We’ve been so focused on wah that

18

Leading by Feel

we’ve built up a supersensitive structure of social nice-

ties, where everyone seeks consensus. In the Japanese

hierarchy, everyone knows his or her place, so no one

is ever humiliated. This social supersensitivity—itself a

form of emotional intelligence—can lead people to shy

away from confl ict. But confl ict is often the only way to

get to the gemba—the front line, where the action really

is, where the truth lies.

Thus, effective management often depends not on

coolly and expertly resolving confl ict—or simply avoid-

ing it—but on embracing it at the gemba. Japan’s most

effective leaders do both. The best example is Nissan’s

Carlos Ghosn. He not only had the social skills to lis-

ten to people and win them over to his ideas, but he

also dared to lift the lid on the corporate hierarchy and

encourage people at all levels of the organization to of-

fer suggestions to operational, organizational, and even

interpersonal problems—even if that created confl ict.

People were no longer suppressed, so solutions to the

company’s problems bubbled up.

Balance the Load

Linda Stone is the former vice president of corporate

and industry initiatives at Microsoft in Redmond,

Washington.

Emotional intelligence is powerful—which is precisely

why it can be dangerous. For example, empathy is an ex-

traordinary relationship-building tool, but it must be

used skillfully or it can do serious damage to the person

doing the empathizing. In my case, overdoing empathy

took a physical toll. In May 2000, Steve Ballmer charged

me with rebuilding Microsoft’s industry relationships,

19

What Is Emotional Intelligence?

a position that I sometimes referred to as “chief listen-

ing offi cer.” The job was part ombudsperson, part new

initiatives developer, part pattern recognizer, and part

rapid-response person. In the fi rst few months of the

job—when criticism of the company was at an all-time

high—it became clear that this position was a lightning

rod. I threw myself into listening and repairing wherever

I could.

Within a few months, I was exhausted from the effort.

I gained a signifi cant amount of weight, which, tests fi -

nally revealed, was probably caused by a hormone im-

balance partially brought on by stress and lack of sleep.

In absorbing everyone’s complaints, perhaps to the ex-

treme, I had compromised my health. This was a wake-

up call: I needed to reframe the job.

I focused on connecting the people who needed to

work together to resolve problems rather than taking

on each repair myself. I persuaded key people inside

the company to listen and work directly with important

people outside the company, even in cases where the

internal folks were skeptical at fi rst about the need for

this direct connection. In a sense, I tempered my empa-

thy and ratcheted up relationship building. Ultimately,

with a wiser and more balanced use of empathy, I be-

came more effective and less stressed in my role.

Question Authority

Ronald Heifetz is a cofounder of the Center for Public

Leadership at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy

School of Government in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and

a partner at Cambridge Leadership Associates, a consul-

tancy in Cambridge.

20

Leading by Feel

Emotional intelligence is necessary for leadership but

not suffi cient. Many people have some degree of emo-

tional intelligence and can indeed empathize with and

rouse followers; a few of them can even generate great

charismatic authority. But I would argue that if they are

using emotional intelligence solely to gain formal or in-

formal authority, that’s not leadership at all. They are

using their emotional intelligence to grasp what people

want, only to pander to those desires in order to gain au-

thority and infl uence. Easy answers sell.

Leadership couples emotional intelligence with the

courage to raise the tough questions, challenge people’s

assumptions about strategy and operations—and risk

losing their goodwill. It demands a commitment to serv-

ing others; skill at diagnostic, strategic, and tactical

reasoning; the guts to get beneath the surface of tough

realities; and the heart to take heat and grief.

For example, David Duke did an extraordinary job

of convincing Ku Klux Klan members to get out of their

backyards and into hotel conference rooms. He brought

his considerable emotional intelligence to bear, his ca-

pacity to empathize with his followers, to pluck their

heartstrings in a powerful way that mobilized them. But

he avoided asking his people the tough questions: Does

our program actually solve our problem? How will cre-

ating a social structure of white supremacy give us the

self-esteem we lack? How will it solve the problems of

poverty, alcoholism, and family violence that corrode our

sense of self-worth?

Like Duke, many people with high emotional intel-

ligence and charismatic authority aren’t interested in

asking the deeper questions, because they get so much

21

What Is Emotional Intelligence?

emotional gain from the adoring crowd. For them, that’s

the end in itself. They’re satisfying their own hungers

and vulnerabilities: their need to be liked; their need for

power and control; or their need to be needed, to feel

important, which renders them vulnerable to grandios-

ity. But that’s not primal leadership. It’s primal hunger

for authority.

Maintaining one’s primacy or position is not in and

of itself leadership, however inspiring it may seem to be.

Gaining primal authority is relatively easy.

22

CHAPTER 2

Do You Lead

with Emotional

Intelligence?

by Annie McKee

Great leaders move us—they inspire, motivate, and ener-

gize us. How? They do it through emotional intelligence.

Dan Goleman woke us all up when he published his

groundbreaking book on the topic (in 1995). Since then

we’ve learned a lot about EI competencies, such as self-

awareness and empathy, and about what people can do

to develop them. To gain a deeper understanding of your

own emotional intelligence, respond to the statements in

this questionnaire as honestly as possible, checking one

of the columns from “Always” to “Never.”

Adapted from content posted on hbr.org on June 5, 2015, as “Quiz

Yourself: Do You Lead with Emotional Intelligence?”

23

What Is Emotional Intelligence?

To calculate your score, as you fi nish each section

count the checkmarks in each column and record the

number in the “Total per column” line. Multiply your

total score for each column by the number in the row

below it, and record it in the row below that. Add this

row together to get your total score for how you perceive

yourself along each of the dimensions of EI.

Refl ecting on your strengths and where you can im-

prove is important, but don’t stop there. Other people’s

perspectives matter too. After reviewing your scores, ask

one or two trusted friends to evaluate you using the sa me

statements, to learn what others see in you.

Annie McKee is a senior fellow at the University of Penn-

sylvania and the director of the PennCLO Executive

Doctoral Program. She is the author of Primal Leader-

ship (with Daniel Goleman and Richard Boyatzis), as

well as Resonant Leadership and Becoming a Resonant

Leader. Her new book, How to Be Happy at Work, is

forthcoming from Harvard Business Review Press in

September 2017.

24

x 0

NEVER

x 0

x 1

x 1

RARELY

x 2

x 2

SOMETIMES

x 3

x 3

FREQUENTLY

x 4

x 4

MOST OF

THE TIME

x 5

x 5

ALWAYS

(sum of the row above)

(sum of the row above)

?

OURSELF

OU DESCRIBE Y

I understand the reasons for my feelings.

I understand how stress affects my mood and behavior.

I understand my leadership strengths and weaknesses.

Total per column

Points per answer

Multiply the two rows above

TOTAL SELF-AWARENESS SCORE

I’m optimistic in the face of challenging circumstances.

I focus on opportunities rather than obstacles.

I see people as good and well-intentioned.

I look forward to the future.

I feel hopeful.

Total per column

Points per answer

Multiply the two rows above

TOTAL POSITIVE OUTLOOK SCORE

I can describe my emotions in the moment I experience them.

I can describe my feelings in detail, beyond just “happy,” “sad,” “angry,” and so on.

HOW WOULD Y

EMOTIONAL SELF-AWARENESS 1 2 3 4 5

POSITIVE OUTLOOK 6 7 8 9 10

x 0

x 0

NEVER

x 1

x 1

RARELY

x 2

x 2

SOMETIMES

x 3

x 3

FREQUENTLY

x 4

x 4

MOST OF

THE TIME

x 5

x 5

ALWAYS

.

e.

-changing

y.

(sum of the row above)

xpectedl

?

e une

cumstances chang

e, conflicting demands.

(sum of the row above)

y.

OURSELF

Y SCORE

oals when cir

ABILIT

Y

y when a situation is uncertain or ever

OU DESCRIBE Y

e when situations chang

y adjust g

exibl

ABILIT m fl

I manage stress well.

I’m calm in the face of pressure or emotional turmoil.

I control my impulses.

I use strong emotions, such as anger, fear, and joy, appropriately and for the good of others.

I’m patient.

m adept at managing multipl

Total per column

Points per answer

Multiply the two rows above

TOTAL EMOTIONAL SELF-CONTROL SCORE

I can easil

I can shift my priorities quickl

I adapt easil

Total per column

Points per answer

Multiply the two rows above

TOTAL ADAPT

APT

HOW WOULD Y

EMOTIONAL SELF-CONTROL 11 12 13 14 15

AD 16 I’ 17 I’ 18 19 20

x 0

x 1

x 2

x 3

x 4

x 5

(sum of the row above)

ATHY SCORE

I strive to understand people’s underlying feelings.

My curiosity about others drives me to listen attentively to them.

I try to understand why people behave the way they do.

I readily understand others’ viewpoints even when they are different from my own.

I understand how other people’s experiences affect their feelings, thoughts, and behavior.

Total per column

Points per answer

Multiply the two rows above

TOTAL EMP

EMPATHY 21 22 23 24 25

SECTION TWO

Self-Awareness:

Understand

Your Emotions,

Know Your

Behaviors

CHAPTER 3

You Can’t Manage

Emotions Without

Knowing What

They Really Are

by Art Markman

At this point, everybody knows emotional intelligence

matters in the workplace. Yet there are two aspects of

emotions that make it hard for people to exercise their

emotional intelligence. First, most people are still not

completely clear about what emotions actually are. Sec-

ond, even when we understand emotions conceptually, it

can still be hard to deal with our own emotional states.

To tackle the fi rst problem: While in everyday speech,

emotion and feeling are often used interchangeably,

Adapted from content posted on hbr.org on December 23, 2015 (prod-

uct #H02KOK)

31

Self-Awareness

psychologists distinguish between them. Emotions are

interpretations of feelings.

The feelings you have (what psychologists call affect)

emerge from your motivational system. You generally

feel good when you’re succeeding at your goals and bad

when you’re not. The more deeply your motivational

system is engaged with a situation, the stronger your

feelings.

The motivational system, however, is not that well

connected to the brain regions that help you to tell sto-

ries about the world. In order to make sense of what

you’re feeling, you use information about what’s going on

around you to help you translate those feelings into emo-

tions—emotions help to guide your actions by giving you

explicit feedback on how well you are currently achiev-

ing the goals the motivational system has engaged.

Often, that interpretation is easy. If you are crossing

the street and suddenly have to leap out of the way of an

oncoming car, it is clear that the strong negative feeling

you are having is fear from nearly getting hit by the car.

If a colleague compliments you on a job well done, it is

obvious that the positive feeling you are having is pride.

But things are not always so clear. You might have a

bad interaction with a family member before getting to

work. As the day wears on, you may interpret your nega-

tive feelings as frustration with the project you’re work-

ing on rather than lingering negative affect from the

events of the morning.

Many people try to power through their negative feel-

ings rather than attempting to understand them. But

this is a lost opportunity. Emotions provide valuable in-

32

You Can’t Manage Emotions Without Knowing What They Really Are

formation about the state of your motivational system.

Ignoring them is like driving around lost, not only refus-

ing to ask for directions but refusing to consult the map

or the GPS—or even to look through the windshield. You

will still be moving forward, but who knows where you

will end up? Conversely, paying too much attention to

your feelings is also bad. That’s like staring at your road

atlas without ever turning on the car: You can’t get any-

where that way.

When you have negative feelings, slow down and pay

some attention to what you are feeling and why you are

feeling the way you are.

When you fi nd yourself stressed, anxious, or angry,

take fi ve or 10 minutes for yourself during the day. Sit

alone and breathe deeply. The deep breaths help to take

some of the energy or arousal out of the feelings you are

having. That can help you to think more clearly.

Then start to think about some of the events of your

day. Pay attention to how those thoughts infl uence what

you are feeling. Are there particular events that increase

or decrease the intensity of those feelings?

You may not completely understand the source of

your feelings the fi rst time you do this. Over time, you

will become more adept at paying attention to when and

where you start to feel bad.

Of course, once you have fi gured out what’s bother-

ing you, it’s time to plan a course of action. If you keep

thinking about things that bother you, you run the risk

of solving nothing while getting yourself more upset. In-

stead, use your knowledge about the source of the bad

feeling to fi gure out how to deal with it.

33

Self-Awareness

Finally, if you’re really upset about something, hold

off on actually executing your plan until you have given

yourself a chance to calm down. Responses that seemed

like a good idea in the moment may seem less ideal to a

cooler head.

Being willing to understand your feelings will have

two benefi ts in the long term. First, it will help you to

discover some of the aspects of your life that trigger

negative feelings. That is useful, because you don’t want

to misinterpret your negative feelings and attribute them

to something else. For example, you would like to be

able to recognize when events in your personal life are

spilling over into work and are causing you to feel badly

about the work you do. Second, by understanding the

sources of your own emotions, you will become more

expert in understanding the people around you as well.

We often ignore our own feelings—and then also ignore

those of our colleagues.

Once you can better understand what emotions are

and where your own emotions come from, you’ll have a

much better ability to practice emotional intelligence.

Art Markman, PhD, is the Annabel Irion Worsham Cen-

tennial Professor of Psychology and Marketing at the

University of Texas at Austin and founding director of

the program in the Human Dimensions of Organiza-

tions. He has written over 150 scholarly papers on topics

including reasoning, decision making, and motivation.

He is the author of several books including Smart Think-

ing, Smart Change, and Habits of Leadership.

34

CHAPTER 4

A Vocabulary for

Your Emotions

by Susan David

Dealing effectively with emotions is a key leadership

skill. And naming our emotions—what psychologists

call labeling—is an important fi rst step in dealing with

them effectively. But it’s harder than it sounds: Many of

us struggle to identify what exactly we are feeling, and

oftentimes the most obvious label isn’t actually the most

accurate.

There are a variety of reasons why this is so diffi -

cult: We’ve been trained to believe that strong emo-

tions should be suppressed. We have certain (sometimes

unspoken) societal and organizational rules against

Adapted from content posted on hbr.org on November 10, 2016, as

“3 Ways to Better Understand Your Emotions” (product #H038KF)

35

Self-Awareness

expressing them. Or we’ve never learned a language to

accurately describe our emotions. Consider these two

examples:

Neena is in a meeting with Jared, and the whole time

he has been saying things that make her want to

explode. In addition to interrupting her at every turn,

he’s reminded everyone again about that one project

she worked on that failed. She’s so angry.

Mikhail gets home after a long day and sighs as he

hangs up his coat. His wife asks if anything’s wrong.

“I’m just stressed,” he says, pulling out his laptop to

fi nish a report.

Anger and stress are two of the emotions we see most

in the workplace—or at least, those are the terms we

use for them most frequently. Yet they are often masks

for deeper feelings that we could and should describe

in more nuanced and precise ways, so that we develop

greater levels of emotional agility, a critical capability

that enables us to interact more successfully with our-

selves and the world.

Yes, Neena may be mad, but what if she is also sad—

sad that her project failed, and maybe also anxious that

that failure is going to haunt her and her career? With

Jared interrupting her so frequently, that anxiety feels

increasingly justifi ed. Why didn’t the project work? And

what’s going to become of her job now? All of these emo-

tions feed into her anger, but they are also separate feel-

ings that she should identify and address.

36

A Vocabulary for Your Emotions

And what if what’s behind Mikhail’s stress is the fact

that he’s just not sure he’s in the right career? Long days

used to be fun—why aren’t they any more? He’s surely

stressed, but what’s going on under that?

These questions open up a world of potential inquiry

and answers for Neena and Mikhail. Like them, we need

a more nuanced vocabulary for emotions, not just for

the sake of being more precise, but because incorrectly

diagnosing our emotions makes us respond incorrectly.

If we think we need to attend to anger, we’ll take a dif-

ferent approach than if we’re handling disappointment

or anxiety—or we might not address them at all. It’s

been shown that when people don’t acknowledge and

address their emotions, they display a lowered sense of

well-being and more physical symptoms of stress, like

headaches.1 There is a high cost to avoiding our feelings.2

On the fl ip side, having the right vocabulary allows us to

see the real issue at hand—to take a messy experience,

under stand it more clearly, and build a roadmap to ad-

dress the problem.3

Here are three ways to get a more accurate and pre-

cise sense of your emotions:

Broaden Your Emotional Vocabulary

Words matter. If you’re experiencing a strong emotion,

take a moment to consider what to call it. But don’t stop

there: Once you’ve identifi ed it, try to come up with two

more words that describe how you are feeling. You might

be surprised at the breadth of your emotions—or that

you’ve unearthed a deeper emotion buried beneath the

more obvious one.

37

Self-Awareness

EXHIBIT 2

List of emotion terms

Angry

Sad

Anxious

Hurt

Embarrassed

Happy

Grumpy

Disappointed

Afraid

Jealous

Isolated

Thankful

Frustrated

Mournful

Stressed

Betrayed

Self- conscious Trusting

Annoyed

Regretful

Vulnerable

Isolated

Lonely

Comfortable

Defensive

Depressed

Confused

Shocked

Inferior

Content

Spiteful

Paralyzed

Bewildered

Deprived

Guilty

Excited

Impatient

Pessimistic

Skeptical

Victimized

Ashamed

Relaxed

Disgusted

Tearful

Worried

Aggrieved

Repugnant

Relieved

Off ended

Dismayed

Cautious

Tormented

Pathetic

Elated

Irritated

Disillusioned

Nervous

Abandoned

Confused

Confi dent

Exhibit 2 shows a vocabulary list of emotion terms;

you can fi nd much more by searching Google for any one

of these.

It’s equally important to do this with “positive” emo-

tions as well as “negative” ones. Being able to say that

you are excited about a new job (not just “I’m nervous”)

or trusting of a colleague (not just “He’s nice”), for exam-

ple, will help you set your intentions for the role or the

relationship in a way that is more likely to lead to success

down the road.

Consider the Intensity

of the Emotion

We’re apt to leap to basic descriptors like “angry” or

“stressed” even when our feelings are far less extreme.

I had a client, Ed (not his real name), who was strug-

gling in his marriage; he frequently described his wife

as “angry” and often got angry in return. But as the

vocabulary chart suggests, every emotion comes in a va-

38

A Vocabulary for Your Emotions

riety of fl avors. When we talked about other words for

his wife’s emotions, Ed saw that there were times that

she was perhaps just annoyed or impatient. This insight

completely changed their relationship, because he could

suddenly see that she wasn’t just angry all the time—and

so could actually respond to her specifi c emotion and

concern without getting angry himself. Similarly, it mat-

ters in your own self-assessment whether you are angry

or just grumpy, mournful or just dismayed, elated or just

pleased.

As you label your emotions, also rate them on a scale

of 1–10. How deeply are you feeling the emotion? How

urgent is it, or how strong? Does that make you choose a

different set of words?

Write It Out

James Pennebaker has done 40 years of research into

the links between writing and emotional processing. His

experiments revealed that people who write about emo-

tionally charged episodes experience a marked increase

in their physical and mental well-being. Moreover, in a

study of recently laid-off workers, he found that those who

delved into their feelings of humiliation, anger, anxiety,

and relationship diffi culties were three times more likely

to have been reemployed than those in control groups.

These experiments also revealed that over time those

who wrote about their feelings began to develop insights

into what those feelings meant (or didn’t mean!), us-

ing phrases such as “I have learned . . . ”; “It struck me

that . . . ”; “The reason that . . . ”; “I now realize . . . ”; and “I

understand . . . ” The process of writing allowed them to

39

Self-Awareness

gain a new perspective on their emotions and to under-

stand them and their implications more clearly.

Here’s an exercise you can use to refl ect through writ-

ing. You could do this every day, but it’s particularly

important when you’re going through a tough time or a

big transition, or if you’re feeling emotional turmoil.

• Set a timer for 20 minutes.

• Using either a notebook or computer, write about

your emotional experiences from the past week,

month, or year.

• Don’t worry about making it perfect or readable;

go where your mind takes you.

• At the end, you don’t have to save the document;

the point is that those thoughts are now out of you

and on the page.

You can also use these three approaches—broadening

your vocabulary, noting the intensity of an emotion, and

writing it out—when trying to better understand an-

other person’s emotions. As we saw with the example of

Ed and his wife, we are just as likely to mislabel someone

else’s emotions as our own, with similarly complicating

consequences. By understanding what they are feeling

more precisely, you will be better equipped to respond in

a constructive way.

Once you understand what you are feeling, then you

can better address and learn from those more accurately

described emotions. If Neena addresses the sadness and

regret she feels in the wake of her failed project—as well

40

A Vocabulary for Your Emotions

as the anxiety about what it means for her career—that

is more productive than trying to fi gure out how to deal

with her anger at Jared. And if Mikhail can recognize his

own career anxiety, he can start to craft a plan to build

his future more deliberately—rather than simply miring

himself in more of the same work when he gets home

each night.

Susan David is a founder of the Harvard/McLean Insti-

tute of Coaching and is on faculty at Harvard University.

She is author of Emotional Agility (Avery, 2016), based

on the concept named by HBR as a Management Idea

of the Year. As a speaker and adviser, David has worked

with the senior leadership of hundreds of major organ-

izations, including the United Nations, Ernst & Young,

and the World Economic Forum. For more informa-

tion, go to www.susandavid.com or follow her on Twitter

@SusanDavid_PhD.

NOTES

1. Todd B. Kashdan, “Unpacking Emotion Differentiation:

Transforming Unpleasant Experience by Perceiving Distinctions

in Negativity,” Current Directions in Psychological Science 24, no. 1

(2015).

2. Tori Rodriguez, “Negative Emotions Are Key to Well-Being,”

Scientifi c American Mind, May 1, 2013, https://www. scientifi c

american.com/article/negative-emotions-key-well-being/.

3. Lisa Feldman Barrett et al., “Knowing What You’re Feeling

and Knowing What to Do About It: Mapping the Difference Between

Emotion Differentiation and Emotion Regulation,” Cognition and

Emotion 15, no. 6 (2001): 713–724.

41

CHAPTER 5

Are You Sure You

Show Respect?

by Christine Porath

For the last 20 years, I’ve studied the costs of incivility,

as well as the benefi ts of civility. Across the board, I’ve

found that civility pays. It enhances your infl uence and

performance—and is positively associated with being

perceived as a leader.1

Being respectful doesn’t just benefi t you, though;

it benefi ts everyone around you. In a study of nearly

20,000 employees around the world (conducted with

HBR), I found that when it comes to garnering commit-

ment and engagement from employees, there’s one thing

that leaders need to demonstrate: respect. No other

leadership behavior had a bigger effect on employees

Originally published on hbr.org on May 11, 2015, as “The Leadership

Behavior That’s Most Important to Employees” (product #H022CI)

43

Self-Awareness

across the outcomes we measured. Being treated with

respect was more important to employees than recogni-

tion and appreciation, communicating an inspiring vi-

sion, providing useful feedback—or even opportunities

for learning, growth, and development.

However, even when leaders know that showing re-

spect is critical, many struggle to demonstrate it. If

you’re one of those leaders, consider the following steps:

Ask for focused feedback on your best behaviors

This technique, originated by researcher Laura Roberts

and colleagues, will help you see your most respectful

self.2 Collect feedback via email from about 10 people

(coworkers, friends, family). Ask each for positive ex-

amples of your best behavior. When and how have they

seen you treat people well? After compiling the feedback,

try to organize the data by summarizing and categoriz-

ing it into themes. For example, create a table with col-

umns for commonality, examples (of the behavior), and

your thoughts. You might also use Wordle.net to identify

themes (you’ll also get a colorful picture that can serve

as a reminder of you at your best, most civil self ). Then

look for patterns: When, where, how, with whom are you

at your best? Use your insights to reinforce what you’re

doing well. Be mindful of additional opportunities to be

your best civil self. Leverage your interpersonal strengths.

Discover your shortcomings

Gather candid feedback from your colleagues and friends

not only on what you’re doing that conveys respect, but

44

Are You Sure You Show Respect?

also on how you can improve. Specifi cally, what are your

shortcomings? Identify a couple of trusted colleagues

who have the best intentions for you and your organiza-

tion. These are folks who you believe will provide direct

and honest feedback. Ask for their views about how you

treat other people. What do you do well? What could you

do better? Listen carefully.

Consider the actions of Lieutenant Christopher Man-

ning, a naval intelligence offi cer at the Pentagon, who

has systematized ways to get continuous feedback from

his direct reports. He expanded the scope of anonymous

feedback surveys to include not only how he could im-

prove the organization and himself as a leader, but also

his team members’ personal happiness (e.g., including

how supported people felt by him), and work-life bal-

ance. He also instituted an anonymous comment box

and encouraged an open-door policy. He even provides

incentives for the most insightful critiques, such as the

chance to attend a course or conference of interest, extra

time off, and public recognition. And he meets one-on-

one with his direct reports frequently. The regular feed-

back from these sources has helped him hone his skills.

The bonus: He’s found that those who report to him are

more engaged and respect him more.

If you don’t feel comfortable soliciting the feed-

back of your entire team, you can also ask a trusted di-

rect report to gather feedback within the organization

about whether you (the leader) consistently demon-

strate civility, and what situations may trigger uncivil

behavior.

45

Self-Awareness

Work with a coach

Coaches can uncover potential weaknesses through sur-

veying and interviewing those with whom you work;

they can also shadow you at meetings and events to pick

up on subtleties including nonverbal behavior. A skilled

coach may unearth some of the underlying assumptions,

experiences, and personal qualities that make one prone

to uncivil behavior.

Ask, specifi cally, how you can improve

Once you have clarity on which behaviors you want to

improve, gather information from others about how best

to go about this. This “feedforward” method, originated

by author Marshall Goldsmith, is a terrifi c way to gather

specifi c ideas for improving your behavior. The process

consists of fi ve steps:

1. Describe your goal clearly and simply to anyone

you know.

2. Ask for two suggestions. Encourage creative

ideas.

3. Listen carefully. Write the suggestions down.

4. Respond with “thank you.” Nothing more.

No excuses or defensiveness.

5. Repeat by asking additional people.

Enlist your team in keeping you accountable

Choose one change that could improve your behav-

ior and then experiment, asking your team to help you

46

Are You Sure You Show Respect?

by letting you know when they see improvement. For

example, after a meeting, ask your team if they saw an

improvement in the behavior that you’re working on.

What was the impact?

Here’s an example: A woman I know of—let’s call her

Karen—enlisted her team to help her change a specifi c

behavior. The team had grown increasingly frustrated

by her inability to listen and empower them. While she

was highly intelligent, she was constantly interrupt-

ing people in meetings and taking over initial ideas be-

fore they could even be presented. Karen worked with

a coach to develop a technique to avoid this pattern—in

this case, tapping her toe instead of interrupting some-

one. (Other coaches have developed similar techniques,

such as counting to 10.) She informed her team that she

was working on the behavior, and after a couple of days

of meetings, she checked in with them on her progress.

This helped establish a norm for more open dialogue—

and a shared sense that the team members could count

on each other to support their own development.

Make time for refl ection

Keep a journal to provide insight into when/where/

why you are your best and when you are uncivil. Iden-

tify situations that cause you to lose your temper. A

leader I worked with named Monica noticed that she

was far more curt in the late afternoon. She began her

days before 5:00 a.m. By the time late afternoon hit,

she was tired and was less emotionally attuned. She was

brusque in conversations and less civil in email. Before

she started journaling and refl ecting on her day, Monica

47

Self-Awareness

was unaware of the effect of time of day—and her energy

management—on her demeanor. Now she is much more

mindful of her behavior. For challenging situations such

as confl ict, people who trigger her, and communication

that requires tact, she waits until the following morning

to respond.

Consider tracking your own energy through the day

via an energy audit tool, such as “Energy Audit—Aware-

ness and Action,” which is available from the University

of Michigan.3 Refl ection helps you identify strategies to

maintain composure and be your best, most civil self.

After adopting some of the improvement strategies, do

you see a decrease in incivility, or an increase in civility?

Track yourself and review progress on a regular basis

(e.g., weekly or monthly).

The path toward building greater self-awareness and

treating people more respectfully at work doesn’t have to

be walked alone. While you’re working to improve your

own behavior, encourage your team members to do the

same. Have an open discussion with your team about

what you and your teammates do or say that conveys

respect. How or when are you and your teammates less

than civil to each other? What could you do or say better?

Discuss what the team will gain by being more respectful

of each other. As the entire team develops norms, hold

one another accountable for them. Consider yourselves

coaches that are helping to improve both individual and

team performance.

48

Are You Sure You Show Respect?

The key to mastering civility begins with improving

your self-awareness. Armed with this information, you

can begin tweaking your behavior to enhance your infl u-

ence and effectiveness. Small acts can have big returns.

Your civility will cascade throughout your organization,

with benefi ts to you—and your organization.

Christine Porath

is an associate professor of manage-

ment at Georgetown University, the author of Mastering

Civility: A Manifesto for the Workplace (Grand Central

Publishing, forthcoming), and a coauthor of The Cost of

Bad Behavior (Portfolio, 2009).

NOTES

1. Christine L. Porath et al., “The Effects of Civility on Advice,

Leadership, and Performance,” Journal of Applied Psychology 100

no. 5, (September 2015): 1527–1541.

2. Center for Positive Organizations, “Refl ected Best Self Exercise,”

http://positiveorgs.bus.umich.edu/cpo-tools/refl ected-best-self

-exercise- 2nd -edition/.

3. The energy audit is available at http://positiveorgs.bus.umich

.edu/wp-content/uploads/GrantSpreitzer-EnergyAudit.pdf.

49

SECTION THREE

Manage Your

Emotions

CHAPTER 6

Make Your

Emotions Work

for You

by Susan David

We often hear tips and tricks for helping us to “control”

our emotions, but that’s the wrong idea. Strong emotions

aren’t bad; they don’t need to be pushed down or con-

trolled; they are, in fact, data. Our emotions evolved as

a signaling system, a way to help us communicate with

each other and to better understand ourselves. What we

need to do is learn to develop emotional agility, the ca-

pacity to mine even the most diffi cult emotions for data

that can help us make better decisions.

Adapted from content posted on hbr.org on November 28, 2016, as

“How to Manage Your Emotions Without Fighting Them” (product

#H038NO)

53

Manage Your Emotions

What’s the Function of the Emotion?

To make the most of that data, ask yourself what the

function of your emotion is. What is it telling you? What

is it trying to signal?

Consider the example of Mikhail, who found himself

in a perpetual cycle of stress because of the never-ending

onslaught of tasks at work. As he more precisely defi ned

his emotions, he realized what he was feeling wasn’t just

stress: he felt a more general dissatisfaction with his

work, disappointment in some of his career choices, and

anxiety about what the future held for him. Once Mikhail

recognized and accepted these emotions, he was able to

see what they were signaling to him: He had started to

question whether he was on the right career path.

This revelation meant that instead of tackling a pro-

ductivity problem by becoming more disciplined about

prioritizing his tasks or saying no to extra work, Mikhail

was able to do something much more appropriate and

constructive. He began working with a career coach. By

examining what his emotions were telling him, rather

than pushing them away or focusing on the wrong prob-

lem, he learned something new about himself and was

eventually able to fi nd a new career path where he was

just as busy—but felt much less stressed.

Our emotions can teach us valuable lessons. Let them

shine a light on what you want to change, how you want

to act in the future, or what is valuable to you.

54

Make Your Emotions Work for You

Is Your Reaction Aligned with

Your Values?

Our emotions can also help us understand our deepest

values. They can often signal what is more important

to us: You feel love for your family. You feel ambition at

work and appreciate achievement and self-worth. You

feel fulfi lled when you’ve been able to help a direct re-

port achieve their goals. You feel peace and satisfaction

on a mountain summit. It’s far better to focus on these

deeper values rather than your immediate emotions,

which can spur poor decisions.

Let’s say that you need to give some diffi cult feedback

to one of your direct reports. You’re anxious about the

conversation and you’ve been putting it off (which just

makes you more anxious). In examining your emotions,

you realize that one of the values behind your procrasti-

nation is fairness. She’s a strong employee, and you just

don’t want to be unfair to her. So, you ask yourself: How

does having or not having the conversation either bring

you toward or move you away from your value of fair-

ness? Looking at the situation in this light, you can see

that giving her the feedback and helping her to succeed

is actually more fair to her—and to your whole team—

than caving to your anxieties. You’ve been able to un-

hook yourself from the thrall of your immediate emo-

tions and make a better choice that is true to the values

that under lie them.

This kind of thinking can help you avoid situations

in which you do something that makes you feel good in

55

Manage Your Emotions

the short term but doesn’t align with your values in the

long term. Avoiding a conversation is a typical example,

but there are many others: brashly telling someone off

for getting on your nerves when you value compas-

sion; sticking with a comfortable job that doesn’t align

with your dream of starting a business when you value

growth; criticizing yourself for the smallest things when

you really value self-affi rmation.

Managing emotions isn’t just doing away with them;

it’s putting strategies in place that let you use them ef-

fectively rather than letting them govern your behaviors

and actions. Your emotions are your natural guidance

system—and they are more effective when you don’t try

to fi ght them.

Susan David is a founder of the Harvard/McLean Insti-

tute of Coaching and is on faculty at Harvard University.

She is author of Emotional Agility (Avery, 2016), based

on the concept named by HBR as a Management Idea

of the Year. As a speaker and adviser, David has worked

with the senior leadership of hundreds of major organi-

zations, including the United Nations, Ernst & Young,

and the World Economic Forum. For more informa-

tion, go to www.susandavid.com or follow her on Twitter

@SusanDavid_PhD.

56

CHAPTER 7

Defuse a

Challenging

Interaction

Confl icts stir up many emotions, especially negative

thoughts and feelings. To successfully manage these dis-

agreements in the moment, you need to address your

own emotions as well as those of the other person.

Reframe Negative Thoughts

During diffi cult interactions, you may begin to question

your perceptions about yourself. For example, suppose a

direct report says, “I didn’t attend the meeting because

I didn’t think you valued my ideas.” In response, you

Adapted from “Address Emotions” in the Harvard ManageMentor topic

“Diffi cult Interactions” (Harvard Business Publishing, 2016, electronic)

57

Manage Your Emotions

wonder to yourself, “Maybe I’m not a competent man-

ager after all.”

For many people, the sense that their self-image is be-

ing challenged creates intense emotions. These feelings

can become overwhelming, making it virtually impos-

sible to converse productively about any subject. To ex-

perience—and then let go of—diffi cult feelings:

• Focus on the other person’s intentions and on the

facts. If you discover that your employee had

legitimate reasons for not showing up at a weekly

meeting, your annoyance may fade away.

• Examine your contributions to the problem. If

you realize that you’ve accidentally advised an

employee to focus on an unnecessary task, your

frustration may dissipate.

• Question your assumptions. If you fi nd your belief

that a colleague doesn’t value product quality is

mistaken, you may feel less anger over her ten-

dency to take shortcuts.

Your goal in reframing negative thoughts is to be able

to express your complete range of emotions without

judging or blaming the other person.

Neutralize Unproductive Behaviors

Although you can work to manage your own reactions,

you can’t control those of the other person in the confl ict.

Try the techniques in exhibit 3 for dealing with unpro-

ductive behaviors:

58

Defuse a Challenging Interaction

EXHIBIT 3

Tackling unproductive behaviors

If the other person . . .

Try to . . .

Is aggressive and

• Command respect by remaining calm.

disrespectful

• Interrupt verbal attacks by repeating the

person’s name.

• Communicate your bottom line: “When

you’re ready to speak to me with respect,

I will take all the time you want to discuss

this.”

Doesn’t listen to your side

• Go into the conversation prepared to sup-

port your own perceptions and ideas.

• Redirect the person to your idea or infor-

mation with phrases such as “I was just

wondering . . . ” “Bear with me a minute,”

or “What do you suppose . . . ?”

• Acknowledge that the person possesses

valuable knowledge, too.

Has an explosive outburst

• Take a break and then continue the

conversation.

• Get the person’s attention by waving your

arms and calling their name loudly enough

to be heard.

• Express genuine concern for the person:

“Joe, nobody should have to feel this way!

I want to help.”

Is uncommunicative

• Schedule plenty of time for the person to

respond to your ideas and questions.

• Ask open-ended questions: “What are you

thinking?” “How do you want to proceed?”

“Where should we go from here?”

• Gaze expectantly at the person for a longer-

than-usual period of time after making a

comment or asking a question.

Assumes that the situation

• Give the person time to consider your plan

can’t get better

and get back to you.

• Bring up and address the negative aspects

of an idea before the other person does.

59

CHAPTER 8

Stay Grounded in

Stressful Moments

by Leah Weiss

Mindfulness should be as much a physical practice as

it is a mental one. Given its name, you might think

mindfulness is something you do only with your mind.

In fact, lots of research, including my own, has shown

that paying attention to our bodies is often an easy way

into mindfulness and helps us reduce stress while it’s

happening.

This may seem counterintuitive because when our

mind is overwhelmed, our body is often the last thing

we’re thinking about. If we notice our bodies at all in

moments of stress, most likely it is as they interrupt our

Adapted from content posted on hbr.org on November 18, 2016,

as “A Simple Way to Stay Grounded in Stressful Moments” (product

#H039WF)

61

Manage Your Emotions

normal activities: carpal tunnel syndrome, back pain,

breast pumping, dental appointments, sore feet, sick

days, or simply the routine hunger that forces us to stop

what we’re doing multiple times a day and eat. Yet if we

focus our attention on our bodies, they can be our an-

chor in what’s happening right now, even if the sensa-

tions are unpleasant.

This is how anchoring works: We bring our attention

into our bodies, noticing—rather than avoiding—the

tension, circulation, pain, pleasure, or just neutral physi-

cal experience of, say, our right shoulder or the arch of

our left foot. This practice helps us snap back to reality.

In fact, our bodies are the quickest, surest way back to

the present moment when our minds are lost in rehash-

ing the past or rehearsing the future.

We cause ourselves a lot of unnecessary suffering

when our minds aren’t paying attention. The amygdala,

located in the brain’s medial temporal lobe, is the part

of the brain that detects and processes fear. When our

amygdala is activated by a situation that is interpreted as

a potential threat, even if we are just reading an unpleas-

ant email, it initiates physiological changes such as in-

creased muscle tension and accelerated breathing. This

association becomes so strong that we take the body’s

reaction as evidence of danger, just as Pavlov’s dogs took

the sound of the bell as evidence of dinner. As a result,

a vicious cycle can develop wherein the increased mus-

cle tension and rapid breathing caused by an activated

amygdala further activates the amygdala. Thankfully, we

can use anchoring to break out of it.

62

Stay Grounded in Stressful Moments

One of my students who was working on a startup

business used to panic before meeting with potential

venture capitalists. His mind would spin with fears of

the worst outcomes: his pitch rejected, his business idea

exposed as worthless. Once he learned to tune in to his

body, to use a brief minute to anchor by taking a few

breaths and feeling his feet on the ground, he calmed

down and became poised to have much better conversa-

tions. Here are some simple, effective anchoring prac-

tices you can use:

• Take a single breath. It takes just one intentional

breath to change our perspective. A single breath

gives you a break from the mind’s chatter and a

chance for your body to regulate after amping up

in response to a perceived threat. Most of the time,

when you’re in distress, you’re in the middle of

telling yourself a story and you fully believe it. A

breath can take you out of the story, making you

less gullible. You can follow the breath into your

body, where you gain just enough distance to judge

whether your head is with you (in line with your

current intentions and greater purpose) or against

you, and then consciously choose which way you

want to go.

• Pay attention to emotions. Another reason to

anchor in your body is that it’s where you feel

your emotions, which are important to acknowl-

edge even if they may seem like a liability, es-

pecially at work. I’ve studied the downsides of

63

Manage Your Emotions

emotional suppression and I can assure you—it’s

not benefi cial.1

It’s paradoxical, but nonjudgmentally engaging

with negative emotions negatively correlates with

negative emotions and mood disorder. In other

words, if you acknowledge and recognize unpleas-

ant emotions, they have less power to cause you

distress. In one study, participants wrote every day

for four days about either a traumatic experience

or a neutral event.2 Those who wrote about trauma

made fewer health center visits in the following

six months than those who wrote about a neutral

event. When you pay attention to your body, you

can catch emotional information upstream, before

it hijacks your whole system—once it does, it’s too

late to use it to your advantage.

• Remember that your colleagues have bodies too.

Annoyed with your boss? Think you can’t last

another day with an impossible colleague? If you

let it, your body can connect you to other people—

even diffi cult ones—since the body is a major

part of what we have in common. This sounds

obvious, but the implications are profound. Our

bodies and the pleasure and pain that come with

them—their attendant aches and illnesses, their

needs and indignities, the impossibility of choos-

ing the one we want, the fear of losing it someday,

and the ways we fi ght our bodies or pretend they

don’t exist—are shared experiences. When you

ignore your body (or try to), you miss out on a

64

Stay Grounded in Stressful Moments

fundamental part of what we have in common.

The empathy gained from this awareness helps

you to have productive professional relationships,

rather than suffering from ongoing frustration

and pain.

• Magnify little pleasures. Don’t underestimate the

joy of taking that fi rst sip of afternoon coffee. It’s

human nature to notice pain more than pleasure,

but with reminders and practice you can experi-

ence joy throughout the day in the simple, reli-

able pleasures of having a body. It might be from

sitting when you’ve been standing for too long, or

standing up and stretching when you’ve been sit-

ting; holding a new pen with a particularly cushy,

ergonomic grip; laughing hard when something’s

funny; eating when you’re hungry; the relative

quiet of the offi ce after a morning with screaming

kids; slipping out of uncomfortable shoes under

your desk. Every day, no matter how lousy, affords

countless opportunities like these to feel good.

Recently, I had a meeting at the VA hospital in

Palo Alto and came across two veterans as I was

walking. They were sitting in front of the building,

both in wheelchairs. One man leaned over to his

companion and said, “Well, it’s great that we can

move our hands.” The other responded, “Yes, you

are right. That is great!” Their perspective pro-

vides a powerful reminder that most of us can, if

we choose, fi nd within our daily routine a small joy

worthy of being celebrated.

65

Manage Your Emotions

Stress is an inevitable aspect of our lives at work,

but you don’t need elaborate practices or escape mech-

anisms to engage with it. You simply need to have the

wherewithal to ground yourself in a physical sensation,

to anchor and come back to reality. You need only a brief

moment to tap your feet on the ground and be reminded

that you have a reliable and ever-present instrument to

mitigate your stress. And, it just so happens, you were

born with it.

Leah Weiss is a teacher, writer, and researcher at Stan-

ford Graduate School of Business, the Director of Edu-

cation at HopeLab, and the author of the forthcoming

book Heart at Work.

NOTES

1. Debora Cutuli, “Cognitive Reappraisal and Expressive Sup-

pression Strategies Role in the Emotion Regulation: An Overview

on Their Modulatory Effects and Neural Correlates,” Frontiers in

Systems Neuro science, September 19, 2014; Andrea Hermann et al.,

“Brain Structural Basis of Cognitive Reappraisal and Expressive

Suppression,” Social Cognitive and Effective Neuroscience 9, no. 9

(September 2014): 1435–1442.; and Sally Moore et al., “Are Expres-

sive Suppression and Cognitive Reappraisal Associated with Stress-

Related Symptoms?” Behaviour Research and Therapy 46, no. 9

(September 2008): 993–1000

2. James J. Gross, ed., Handbook of Emotion Regulation, 2nd edi-

tion. New York: The Guilford Press, 2014.

66

CHAPTER 9

Recovering from

an Emotional

Outburst

by Susan David

It happens—we all get emotional at work. You might

scream, or cry, or pound the table and stamp your feet.

This is not ideal offi ce behavior, of course, and there are

ramifi cations to these outbursts, but they don’t have to

be career-killers either. If you take a close look at what

happened, why you acted the way you did, and take steps

to remedy the situation, you can turn an outburst into an

opportunity.

Adapted from content posted on hbr.org on May 8, 2015, as “Recover-

ing from an Emotional Outburst at Work” (product #H022A3)

67

Manage Your Emotions

If you tend to suppress your emotions, you’re likely to

just ignore your tantrum and move on. If you are prone

to ruminating over your mistakes, you’ll overthink your

outburst and beat yourself up about it.

Neither of these strategies is productive; they don’t

help you solve the problem or promote your own well-

being. Instead, treat your outburst for what it is: data.

A key emotional intelligence skill is being able to man-

age your emotion, but you can’t manage what you can’t

recognize and understand. So fi rst, be open to emotions.

What was I feeling here? Emotions are signals, beacons

that show you that you care about something.

To recognize your emotions, you have to be able to

differentiate between feelings—sadness, anger, frustra-

tion (see chapter 4 in this guide). In many work environ-

ments, people suffer from what psychologists call alexi-

thymia—a dispositional diffi culty in accurately labeling

and expressing what they’re feeling. These people tend

to be vague about their emotions. So a manager will say

to herself, for example, “Gee, I yelled because I was really

stressed out.” But that gives her no information about

what was really going on.

Once you’ve recognized the emotion—fear, disap-

pointment, anger—your next step is to understand what,

exactly, caused it: “Why is it that I reacted in this par-

ticular way?” “What was happening in this situation that

I found upsetting?” “What values of mine may have been

transgressed or challenged?” For example, maybe you

lost it and screamed at a colleague when you found out

that your project was cut. If you dig deeper, you may fi nd

that it wasn’t exactly about the project but rather how

68

Recovering from an Emotional Outburst

the decision was made—that you didn’t feel it was made

fairly.

The research on emotions shows that there are gen-

eral triggers that you should be aware of.1 When your

outburst is anger—yelling, stomping your feet—it’s typi-

cally because you’re frustrated or feel thwarted. You’ve

been stopped from doing something that’s important to

you. When you feel sadness or cry, it’s usually because

of a loss. Acting out on anxiety is prompted by a sense

of threat. It’s helpful to think about these universal trig-

gers, and then ask, “What is it specifi cally that was im-

portant to me in this situation?”

Once you’ve recognized how you feel, and why you

feel it, you can focus on what to do to make things bet-

ter—to manage the situation. It goes without saying that

you should apologize if you yelled or lost your cool, but

that’s not enough. Your goal isn’t just to repair the rela-

tionship, but to strengthen it.

After you’ve calmed down and you return to your

team the following day or week, instead of saying, “Gee,

I’m so sorry about what I did; now let’s move on,” address

what really happened for you. You might say something

like, “I got really mad and I’m not proud of my behavior.

I’ve been thinking long and hard about what it was that

I found so upsetting and I’ve realized that my sense of

fairness was challenged because of how the defunding

decisions were made.”

There’s research that shows that when you appropri-

ately disclose your emotions in this way, people are more

likely to treat you with compassion and forgiveness than

if you had just offered an apology.2 From there you start

69

Manage Your Emotions

a shared conversation about what’s important to each of

you and how you can work better together.

No one wants to earn a reputation as a crier or a

screamer at work. Instead of running and hiding or

wallowing in self-pity when you’ve lost it, bring a good

dose of compassion and curiosity to the situation. To be

kind and compassionate toward yourself—especially in

the moments you are least proud of—is not the same as

letting yourself off the hook. In fact, studies show that

people who are self-compassionate are much more likely

to hold themselves to high standards and work to make

things right.3 And treating yourself that way is more

likely to inspire others to do the same.

Susan David is a founder of the Harvard/McLean Insti-

tute of Coaching and is on faculty at Harvard University.

She is author of Emotional Agility (Avery, 2016), based

on the concept named by HBR as a Management Idea

of the Year. As a speaker and adviser, David has worked

with the senior leadership of hundreds of major organi-

zations, including the United Nations, Ernst & Young,

and the World Economic Forum. For more informa-

tion, go to www.susandavid.com or follow her on Twitter

@SusanDavid_PhD.

NOTES

1. R. S. Lazarus, “From Psychological Stress to Emotions: A His-

tory of Changing Outlooks,” Annual Review of Psychology 44 (1993):

1–22.

2. James J. Gross, “Emotion Regulation: Affective, Cognitive, and

Social Consequences,” Psychophysiology 39 (2002): 281–291.

3. Kristin D. Neff, “Self-Compassion, Self-Esteem, and Well- Being,”

Social and Personality Psychology Compass 5, no. 1 (2011): 1–12.

70

SECTION FOUR

Everyday

Emotional

Intelligence

CHAPTER 10

Writing Resonant

Emails

by Andrew Brodsky

Imagine sending a detailed question to your boss and

getting a one-word response: “No.” Is she angry? Of-

fended by your email? Or just very busy? When I con-

duct research with organizations on the topic of com-

munication, one of the most common themes raised by

both employees and managers is the challenge of trying

to communicate emotional or sensitive issues over email.

Email, of course, lacks most normal cues for relaying

emotion, such as tone of voice and facial expressions.

But in many cases, using email is simply unavoidable.

So how can you balance the need to communicate with

Adapted from content posted on hbr.org on April 23, 2013, as “The Do’s

and Don’ts of Work Email” (product #H020WK)

73

Everyday Emotional Intelligence

avoiding the potential pitfalls of using emotion in email?

Here are three concrete, research-based recommen-

dations:

Understand what drives how emails are

interpreted

It is clear that people often misinterpret emotion in

email, but what drives the direction of the misinterpre-

tation? For one, people infuse their emotional expecta-

tions into how they read messages, regardless of the

sender’s actual intent.1 Consider the email, “Good job on

the current draft, but I think we can continue to improve

it.” Coming from a peer, this email will seem very collab-

orative; coming from a supervisor, it may seem critical.

In addition to relative position (emails from people

high in power tend to be perceived as more negative),

there are other contextual factors to consider: the length

of a relationship (emails from people we know well tend

to be perceived as less negative), the emotional history of

the relationship, and the individual’s personality (nega-

tive people tend to perceive messages as more negative).

The fi rst step in avoiding miscommunication is to

try to stand in the recipient’s shoes, and imagine how

they are likely to interpret your message. Doing so can

help you to prevent misunderstandings before they ever

occur.

Mimic behaviors

What is the best way to convey emotions via email?

Emoticons? Word choice? Exclamation points? There is

no single correct answer; the proper cues will vary based

74

Writing Resonant Emails

on the context. For instance, you likely wouldn’t want to

send a smiley face emoticon to a client organization that

is known for having a very formal culture. Alternatively,

you wouldn’t want to send an overly formal email to a

very close colleague.

One strategy that has been found to be very effec-

tive across settings is to engage in behavioral mimicry—

using emoticons, word-choice, and slang/jargon in a

similar manner to the person with whom you are com-

municating. In a set of studies of American, Dutch, and

Thai negotiators, using behavioral mimicry in the early

stages of text-based chat negotiations increased individ-

ual outcomes by 30%. This process of mimicry increases

trust because people tend to feel an affi nity toward those

who act similarly to them.2

State your emotions

While mimicking behaviors can be effective, it is still a

rather subtle strategy that leaves the potential for emo-

tional ambiguity. The simplest solution to avoid any

confusion is to just explicitly state the emotion that you

want to relay in your email.

One excellent example of how this works comes from

a media organization I recently worked with. I asked

employees for an email that they felt was written very

poorly, and one employee provided me with the follow-

ing message from a manager:

The intro of the commercial needs to be redone. I’m sure

that’s the client’s doing and you will handle it :). Warm

Regards, [Manager’s Name].

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Everyday Emotional Intelligence

To me as an outsider (and I’m guessing to the manager

as well), this email seemed well crafted to avoid offend-

ing the employee. However, the employee felt differently

and explained: “She knows perfectly well that I made the

terrible intro, and she was saying, ‘Well, I’m sure the cli-

ent made that segment and that you will tackle it,’ and

then she put a little smiley face at the end. So overall, a

condescendingly nasty tone.”

If the manager had avoided subtlety and stated her

meaning directly, there might have been less room for

interpretation. For example, what if she had written:

I am very happy with your work so far. I think the

intro could be improved, though; would you mind

giving it another shot?

The employee would have had far less ambiguity to fi ll

in with her own emotional expectations.

Yet people rarely state their intended emotions, even

when the stakes are high. Research from NYU has shown

that many people are overconfi dent in their ability to ac-

curately relay emotions when it comes to email.3 It may

seem obvious to the message sender that a coworker who

never takes sick days will realize a comment about them

leaving early is humorous rather than serious. However,

that coworker might be particularly concerned about be-

ing seen as lazy and will feel hurt or offended.

Given the constantly evolving nature of organiza-

tional communication, there is still a lot to learn about

effective email use. However, there are some clear areas

where we can improve. In reality, we all have the same

76

Writing Resonant Emails

fl aw: We tend to be overly focused on ourselves and our

own goals, while failing to amply account for other peo-

ple’s perspectives. Using these methods for bridging your

and your email recipient’s perspectives, by both increas-

ing message clarity and building trust, will help you to

ensure effective communication.

Andrew Brodsky is a PhD candidate in organizational be-

havior at Harvard Business School.

NOTES

1. Kristin Byron, “Carrying Too Heavy a Load? The Communi-

cation and Miscommunication of Emotion by Email,” Academy of

Management Review 33, no. 2 (April 2008): 309–327.

2. William W. Maddux et al., “Chameleons Bake Bigger Pies and

Take Bigger Pieces: Strategy Behavioral Mimicry Facilitates Negotia-

tion Outcomes,” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 44, no. 2

(March 2008): 461–468; and Roderick I. Swaab et al., “Early Words

That Work: When and How Virtual Linguistic Mimicry Facilitates

Negotiation Outcomes,” Journal of Experimental Psychology 47, no. 3

(May 2011): 616–621.

3. Justin Kruger et al., “Egocentrism Over E-mail: Can We Com-

municate as Well as We Think?” Journal of Personality and Social

Psychology 89, no. 6 (December 2005): 925–936.

77

CHAPTER 11

Running Powerful

Meetings

by Annie McKee

Yes, we all hate meetings. Yes, they are usually a waste of

time. And yes, they’re here to stay. So it’s your responsi-

bility as a leader to make them better. This doesn’t mean

just making them shorter, more effi cient, and more or-

ganized. People need to enjoy them and—dare I say it—

have fun.

So how do we fi x meetings so they are more enjoy-

able and produce more positive feelings? Sure, invite the

right people, create better agendas, and be better pre-

pared. Those are baseline fi xes. But if you really want to

improve how people work together at meetings, you’ll

need to rely on—and maybe develop—a couple of key

Adapted from content posted on hbr.org on March 23, 2015, as “Empa-

thy Is Key to a Great Meeting” (product #H01YDY)

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Everyday Emotional Intelligence

emotional intelligence competencies: empathy and emo-

tional self-management.

Why empathy? Empathy is a competency that allows

you to read people. Who is supporting whom? Who is

pissed off, and who is coasting? Where is the resistance?

This isn’t as easy as it seems. Sometimes, the smartest

resisters often look like supporters, but they’re not sup-

portive at all. They’re smart, sneaky idea killers.

Carefully reading people will also help you under-

stand the major and often hidden confl icts in the group.

Hint: These confl icts probably have nothing to do with

the topics discussed or decisions being made at the meet-

ing. They are far more likely to be linked to very human

dynamics like who is allowed to infl uence whom (head-

quarters versus the fi eld, expats versus local nationals)

and power dynamics between genders and among peo-

ple of various races.

Empathy lets you see and manage these power dy-

namics. Many of us would like to think that these sorts of

concerns—and offi ce politics in general—are beneath us,

unimportant, or just for those Machiavellian folks we all

dislike. Realistically, though, power is hugely important

in groups because it is the real currency in most organi-

zations. And it plays out in meetings. Learning to read

how the fl ow of power is moving and shifting can help

you lead the meeting—and everything else.

Keep in mind that employing empathy will help

you understand how people are responding to you. As

a leader you may be the most powerful person at the

meeting. Some people, the dependent types, will defer at

every turn. That feels good, for a minute. Carry on that

80

Running Powerful Meetings

way, and you’re likely to create a dependent group—or

one that is polarized between those who will do anything

you want and those who will not.

This is where emotional self-management comes in,

for a couple of reasons. First, take a look at the depen-

dent folks in your meetings. Again, it can feel really good

to have people admire you and agree with your every

word. In fact, this can be a huge relief in our confl ict-

ridden organizations. But again, if you don’t manage

your response, you will make group dynamics worse. You

will also look like a fool. Others are reading the group,

too, and they will rightly read that you like it when peo-

ple go along with you. They will see that you are falling

prey to your own ego or to those who want to please or

manipulate you.

Second, strong emotions set the tone for the entire

group. We take our cue from one another about how to

feel about what’s going on around us. Are we in danger?

Is there cause for celebration? Should we be fed up and

cynical or hopeful and committed? Here’s why this mat-

ters in meetings: If you, as a leader, effectively project out

your more positive emotions, such as hope and enthusi-

asm, others will “mirror” these feelings and the general

tone of the group will be marked by optimism and a

sense of “we’re in this together, and we can do it.”1 And

there is a strong neurological link between feelings and

cognition. We think more clearly and more creatively

when our feelings are largely positive and when we are

appropriately challenged, as Mihaly

Csikszentmihalyi

wrote in his classic Creativity: Flow and the Psychology

of Discovery and Invention.

81

Everyday Emotional Intelligence

The other side of the coin is obvious. Your negative

emotions are also contagious, and they are almost always

destructive if unchecked and unmanaged. Express an-

ger, contempt, or disrespect, and you will defi nitely push

people into fi ght mode—individually and collectively.

Express disdain, and you’ll alienate people far beyond

the end of the meeting. And it doesn’t matter who you

feel this way about. All it takes is for people to see it, and

they will catch it—and worry that next time your target

will be them.

This is not to say that all positive emotions are good all

the time or that you should never express negative emo-

tions. The point is that the leader’s emotions are highly

infectious. Know this and manage your feelings accord-

ingly to create the kind of environment where people can

work together to make decisions and get things done.

It may go without saying, but you can’t do any of this

with your phone on. As Daniel Goleman shares in his

book Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence, we are not

nearly as good at multitasking as we think we are. Actu-

ally we stink at it. So turn it off and pay attention to the

people you are with today.

In the end, it’s your job to make sure people leave

your meeting feeling pretty good about what’s happened,

their contributions, and you as the leader. Empathy al-

lows you to read what’s going on, and self-management

helps you move the group to a mood that supports get-

ting things done—and happiness.

82

Running Powerful Meetings

Annie McKee is a senior fellow at the University of Penn-

sylvania and the director of the PennCLO Executive

Doctoral Program. She is the author of Primal Leader-

ship (with Daniel Goleman and Richard Boyatzis), as

well as Resonant Leadership and Becoming a Resonant

Leader. Her new book, How to Be Happy at Work, is

forthcoming from Harvard Business Review Press in

September 2017.

NOTE

1. V. Ramachandran, “The Neurons That Shaped Civilization,”

TED talk, November 2009, https://www.ted.com/talks/vs_rama

chandran_the_neurons_that_shaped_civilization?language=en.

83

CHAPTER 12

Giving Diffi

cult

Feedback

by Monique Valcour

Over the years, I’ve asked hundreds of executive students

what skills they believe are essential for leaders. “The

ability to give tough feedback” comes up frequently. But

what exactly is “tough feedback”? The phrase connotes

bad news, like when you have to tell a team member that

they’ve screwed up on something important. “Tough”

also signifi es the way we think we need to be when giving

negative feedback: fi rm, resolute, and unyielding.

But “tough” also points to the discomfort some of us

experience when giving negative feedback, and to the

challenge of doing so in a way that motivates change

Adapted from content posted on hbr.org on August 11, 2015, as “How

to Give Tough Feedback That Helps People Grow” (product #H029QB)

85

Everyday Emotional Intelligence

instead of making the other person feel defensive. Man-

agers fall into a number of common traps when offering

feedback. We might be angry at an employee and use the

conversation to blow off steam rather than to coach. Or

we may delay giving needed feedback because we antici-

pate that the employee will become argumentative and

refuse to accept responsibility. We might try surrounding

negative feedback with positive feedback, like disguising

a bitter-tasting pill in a spoonful of honey. But this ap-

proach is misguided, because we don’t want the negative

feedback to slip by unnoticed in the honey. Instead, it’s

essential to create conditions in which the receiver can

take in feedback, refl ect on it, and learn from it.

To get a feel for what this looks like in practice, I jux-

tapose two feedback conversations that occurred follow-

ing a workplace confl ict. MJ Paulitz, a physical therapist

in the Pacifi c Northwest, was treating a hospital patient

one day when a fellow staff member paged her. Follow-

ing procedure, she excused herself and stepped out of the

treatment room to respond to the page. The colleague

who sent it didn’t answer her phone when MJ called,

nor had she left a message describing the situation that

warranted the page. This happened two more times dur-

ing the same treatment session. The third time she left

her patient to respond to the page, MJ lost her cool and

left an angry voicemail message for her colleague. Upset

upon hearing the message, the staff member reported it

to their supervisor as abusive.

MJ’s fi rst feedback session took place in her supervi-

sor’s offi ce. She recalls, “When I went into his offi ce, he

86

Giving Diffi

cult Feedback

had already decided that I was the person at fault, he

had all the information he needed, and he wasn’t inter-

ested in hearing my side of the story. He did not address

the three times she pulled me out of patient care. He did

not acknowledge that that might have been the fuse that

set me off.” Her supervisor referred MJ to the human re-

sources department for corrective action. She left seeth-

ing with a sense of injustice.

MJ describes the subsequent feedback conversation

with human resources as transformative. “The woman in

HR could see that I had a lot of just-under-the-surface

feelings, and she acknowledged them. The way she did

it was genius: She eased into it. She didn’t make me go

fi rst. Instead, she said, ‘I can only imagine what you’re

feeling right now. Here you are in my offi ce, in correc-

tive action. If it were me, I might be feeling angry, frus-

trated, embarrassed . . . Are any of these true for you?’

That made a huge difference.”

With trust established, MJ was ready to take respon-

sibility for her behavior and commit to changing it. Next

the HR person said, “Now let’s talk about how you re-

acted to those feelings in the moment.” She created a

space that opened up a genuine dialogue.

The subsequent conversation created powerful learn-

ing that has stuck with MJ to this day:

Oftentimes, when we’re feeling a strong emotion, we go

down what the HR person called a “cowpath,” because

it’s well worn, very narrow, and always leads to the

same place. Let’s say you’re angry. What do you do?

87

Everyday Emotional Intelligence

You blow up. It’s okay that you feel those things; it’s

just not okay to blow up. She asked me to think about

what I could do to get on a different path.

The feedback from the HR person helped me learn

to fi nd the space between what I’m feeling and the next

thing that slides out of my mouth. She gave me the

opportunity to grow internally. What made it work

was establishing a safe space, trust, and rapport, and

then getting down to “you need to change”—rather

than starting with “you need to change,” which is what

my supervisor did. I did need to change; that was the

whole point of the corrective action. But she couldn’t

start there, because I would have become defensive,

shut down and not taken responsibility. I still to this

day think that my coworker should have been repri-

manded. But I also own my part in it. I see that I went

down that cowpath, and I know that I won’t do it a

second time.

The difference in the two feedback sessions illustrated

above boils down to coaching, which deepens self-

awareness and catalyzes growth, versus reprimanding,

which sparks self-protection and avoidance of respon-

sibility. To summarize, powerful, high-impact feedback

conversations share the following elements:

1. An intention to help the employee grow, rather

than to show him he was wrong. The feedback

should increase, not drain, the employee’s moti-

vation and resources for change. When preparing

for a feedback conversation as a manager, refl ect

88

Giving Diffi

cult Feedback

on what you hope to achieve and on what impact

you’d like to have on the employee, perhaps by

doing a short meditation just before the meeting.

2. Openness on the part of the feedback giver,

which is essential to creating a high-quality con-

nection that facilitates change. If you start off

feeling uncomfortable and self-protective, your

employee will match that energy, and you’ll each

leave the conversation frustrated with the other

person.

3. Inviting the employee into the problem-solving

process. You can ask questions such as: What

ideas do you have? What are you taking away

from this conversation? What steps will you take,

by when, and how will I know?

Giving developmental feedback that sparks growth is

a critical challenge to master, because it can make the

difference between an employee who contributes pow-

erfully and positively to the organization and one who

feels diminished by the organization and contributes far

less. A single conversation can switch an employee on—

or shut her down. A true developmental leader sees the

raw material for brilliance in every employee and creates

the conditions to let it shine, even when the challenge is

tough.

Monique Valcour is a management academic, coach, and

consultant.

89

CHAPTER 13

Making Smart

Decisions

A summary of the full-length HBR article “Why Good

Leaders Make Bad Decisions” by Andrew Campbell , Jo

Whitehead , and Sydney Finkelstein , highlighting key

ideas and company examples, and a checklist for putting

the idea into action.

IDEA IN BRIEF

• Leaders make decisions largely through uncon-

scious processes that neuroscientists call pattern

recognition and emotional tagging. These pro-

cesses usually make for quick, effective decisions,

but they can be distorted by bias.

Adapted from Harvard Business Review, February 2009 (product

#R0902D)

91

Everyday Emotional Intelligence

• Managers need to fi nd systematic ways to recog-

nize the sources of bias—what the authors call

“red fl ag conditions”—and then design safeguards

that introduce more analysis, greater debate, or

stronger governance. The authors identify three of

these red fl ag conditions as the presence of:

– Inappropriate self-interest, which, according to

research, can bias even well-intentioned profes-

sionals such as doctors and auditors.

– Distorting attachments to people, places, and

things—for example, an executive’s reluctance

to sell a business unit they’ve worked in.

– Misleading memories, which may seem rele-

vant and comparable to the current situation

but lead our thinking down the wrong path by

obscuring important differentiating factors.

• By using the approach described in this article,

companies will avoid many fl awed decisions that

are caused by the way our brains operate.

IDEA IN PRACTICE

Leaders make quick decisions by recognizing patterns

in the situations they encounter, and then responding

to the emotional associations attached to those patterns.

Most of the time, the process works well, but it can result

in serious mistakes when those emotional associations

are biased.

92

Making Smart Decisions

Example: When Wang Laboratories launched its own

personal computer, founder An Wang chose to create

a proprietary operating system even though the IBM

PC was clearly becoming the standard. This blunder

was infl uenced by his belief that IBM had cheated

him early in his career, which made him reluctant to

consider using a system linked to an IBM product.

To guard against distorted decision making and

stre

ngthen the decision process, get the help of an

independent person to identify which decision makers

are likely to be affected by self-interest, emotional at-

tachments, or misleading memories.

Example: The about-to-be-promoted head of the

cosmetics business at one Indian company was con-

sidering whether to appoint her number-two as her

successor. She recognized that her judgment might

be distorted by her attachment to her colleague and

by her vested interest in keeping her workload down

during the transition. The executive asked a head-

hunter to evaluate her colleague and to determine

whether better candidates could be found externally.

If the risk of distorted decision making is high, build

safeguards into the decision process. Expose decision

makers to additional experience and analysis, design in

more debate and opportunities for challenge, add more

oversight, and monitor whether the decision is generat-

ing the expected results.

Example: In helping the CEO make an impor-

tant strategic decision, the chairman of one global

93

Everyday Emotional Intelligence

IDENTIFYING RED FLAGS

Red fl ags are useful only if they can be spotted before

a decision is made. How can you recognize them in

complex situations? We have developed the following

seven-step process:

1.

Lay out the range of options.  It’s never pos-

sible to list them all. But it’s normally helpful to

note the extremes. These provide boundaries for

the decision.

2. List the main decision makers.  Who is going

to be infl uential in making the judgment calls

and the fi nal choice? There may be only one or

two people involved. But there could also be

10 or more.

3. Choose one decision maker to focus on.  It’s

usually best to start with the most infl uential

person. Then identify red fl ag conditions that

might distort that individual’s thinking. Discuss

with the individual if needed.

4. Check for inappropriate self-interest or dis-

torting attachments.  Is any option likely to

be particularly attractive or unattractive to the

decision maker because of personal interests or

attachments to people, places, or things? Do any

of these interests or attachments confl ict with

the objectives of the decision?

94

Making Smart Decisions

5. Check for misleading memories.  What are

the uncertainties in this decision? For each area

of uncertainty, consider whether the decision

maker might draw on potentially misleading

memories. Think about past experiences that

could mislead, especially ones with strong emo-

tional associations. Think also about previous

judgments that could now be unsound, given the

current situation.

6. Repeat the analysis with the next-most-

infl uential person.  In a complex case, it may

be necessary to consider many more people,

and the process may bring to light a long list of

possible red fl ags.

7.

Review the list of red fl ags you have identi-

fi ed for bias.  Determine whether the balance

of red fl ags is likely to bias the decision in favor

of or against some options. If so, put one or

more safeguards in place. Biases can cancel

each other out, so it is necessary to assess the

balance taking account of the likely infl uence of

each person involved in the decision.

95

Everyday Emotional Intelligence

chemical company encouraged the chief executive to

seek advice from investment bankers, set up a project

team to analyze options, and create a steering com-

mittee that included the chairman and the CFO to

review the CEO’s proposal.

Andrew Campbell

is a director of the Ashridge Stra-

tegic Management Centre in England. Jo Whitehead

(jo.whitehead@ashridge.org.uk) is a director of the

Ashridge Strategic Management Centre in London.

Sydney Finkelstein is the Steven Roth Professor of Man-

agement and Director of the Leadership Center at the

Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. His new

book is Superbosses: How Exceptional Leaders Manage

the Flow of Talent (Portfolio/Penguin, 2016). Campbell,

Whitehead, and Finkelstein are the coauthors of Think

Again: Why Good Leaders Make Bad Decisions and How

to Keep It from Happening to You (Harvard Business

Review Press, 2008).

96

CHAPTER 14

An Emotional

Strategy for

Negotiations

by Alison Wood Brooks

It is, without questions, my favorite day of the semes-

ter—the day when I teach my MBA students a negotia-

tion exercise called “Honoring the Contract.”

I assign students to partners, and each reads a dif-

ferent account of a (fi ctitious) troubled relationship be-

tween a supplier (a manufacturer of computer compo-

nents) and a client (a search engine startup). They learn

that the two parties signed a detailed contract eight

months earlier, but now they’re at odds over several of

Reprinted from “Emotion and the Art of Negotiation” in Harvard Busi-

ness Review, December 2015 (product #R1512C)

97

Everyday Emotional Intelligence

the terms (sales volume, pricing, product reliability, and

energy effi ciency specs). Each student assumes the role

of either client or supplier and receives confi dential in-

formation about company fi nances and politics. Then

each pair is tasked with renegotiating—a process that

could lead to an amended deal, termination of the con-

tract, or expensive litigation.

What makes this simulation interesting, however,

lies not in the details of the case but in the top-secret

instructions given to one side of each pairing before the

exercise begins: “Please start the negotiation with a dis-

play of anger. You must display anger for a minimum of

10 minutes at the beginning.” The instructions go on to

give specifi c tips for showing anger: Interrupt the other

party. Call them “unfair” or “unreasonable.” Blame them

personally for the disagreement. Raise your voice.

Before the negotiations begin, I spread the pairs all

over the building so that the students can’t see how oth-

ers are behaving. Then, as the pairs negotiate, I walk

around and observe. Although some students struggle,

many are spectacularly good at feigning anger. They

wag a fi nger in their partner’s face. They pace around.

I’ve never seen the exercise result in a physical confron-

tation—but it has come close. Some of the negotiators

who did not get the secret instructions react by trying to

defuse the other person’s anger. But some react angrily

themselves—and it’s amazing how quickly the emotional

responses escalate. When I bring everyone back into

the classroom after 30 minutes, there are always stu-

dents still yelling at each other or shaking their heads in

disbelief.

98

An Emotional Strategy for Negotiations

During the debriefi ng, we survey the pairs to see how

angry they felt and how they fared in resolving the prob-

lem. Often, the more anger the parties showed, the more

likely it was that the negotiation ended poorly—for ex-

ample, in litigation or an impasse (no deal). Once I’ve

clued the entire class in on the setup, discussion invari-

ably makes its way to this key insight: Bringing anger to

a negotiation is like throwing a bomb into the process,

and it’s apt to have a profound effect on the outcome.

Until 20 years ago, few researchers paid much atten-

tion to the role of emotions in negotiating—how feelings

can infl uence the way people overcome confl ict, reach

agreement, and create value when dealing with another

party. Instead, negotiation scholars focused primarily on

strategy and tactics—particularly the ways in which par-

ties can identify and consider alternatives, use leverage,

and execute the choreography of offers and counterof-

fers. Scientifi c understanding of negotiation also tended

to home in on the transactional nature of working out a

deal: how to get the most money or profi t from the pro-

cess. Even when experts started looking at psychologi-

cal infl uences on negotiations, they focused on diffuse

and nonspecifi c moods—such as whether negotiators

felt generally positive or negative, and how that affected

their behavior.

Over the past decade, however, researchers have be-

gun examining how specifi c emotions—anger, sadness,

disappointment, anxiety, envy, excitement, and regret—

can affect the behavior of negotiators. They’ve studied

the differences between what happens when people sim-

ply feel these emotions and what happens when they

99

Everyday Emotional Intelligence

also express them to the other party through words or

actions. In negotiations that are less transactional and

involve parties in long-term relationships, understand-

ing the role of emotions is even more important than it is

in transactional deal making.

This new branch of research is proving extremely use-

ful. We all have the ability to regulate how we experience

emotions, and specifi c strategies can help us improve

tremendously in that regard. We also have some control

over the extent to which we express our feelings—and

again, there are specifi c ways to cloak (or emphasize) an

expression of emotion when doing so may be advanta-

geous. For instance, research shows that feeling or look-

ing anxious results in suboptimal negotiation outcomes.

So individuals who are prone to anxiety when brokering

a deal can take certain steps both to limit their nervous-

ness and to make it less obvious to their negotiation op-

ponent. The same is true for other emotions.

In the pages that follow, I discuss—and share coping

strategies for—many of the emotions people typically feel

over the course of a negotiation. Anxiety is most likely

to crop up before the process begins or during its early

stages. We’re prone to experience anger or excitement in

the heat of the discussions. And we’re most likely to feel

disappointment, sadness, or regret in the aftermath.

Avoiding Anxiety

Anxiety is a state of distress in reaction to threatening

stimuli—in particular, novel situations that have the po-

tential for undesirable outcomes. In contrast to anger,

which motivates people to escalate confl ict (the “fi ght”

100

An Emotional Strategy for Negotiations

part of the fi ght-or-fl ight response), anxiety trips the

“fl ight” switch and makes people want to exit the scene.

Because patience and persistence are often desirable

when negotiating, the urge to exit quickly is counterpro-

ductive. But the negative effects of feeling anxious while

negotiating may go further. In my recent research, I

wondered if anxious negotiators also develop low aspira-

tions and expectations, which could lead them to make

timid fi rst offers—a behavior that directly predicts poor

negotiating outcomes.

In work with Maurice Schweitzer in 2011, I explored

how anxiety infl uences negotiations. First we surveyed

185 professionals about the emotions they expected

to feel before negotiating with a stranger, negotiating

to buy a car, and negotiating to increase their salary.

When dealing with a stranger or asking for a higher sal-

ary, anxiety was the dominant emotional expectation;

when negotiating for the car, anxiety was second only to

excitement.

To understand how anxiety can affect negotiators, we

then asked a separate group of 136 participants to nego-

tiate a cell phone contract that required agreeing on a

purchase price, a warranty period, and the length of the

contract. We induced anxiety in half the participants by

having them listen to continuous three-minute clips of

the menacing theme music from the fi lm Psycho, while

the other half listened to pleasant music by Handel. (Re-

searchers call this incidental emotional manipulation,

and it’s quite powerful. Listening to the Psycho music is

genuinely uncomfortable: People’s palms get sweaty, and

some listeners become jumpy.)

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Everyday Emotional Intelligence

In this experiment and three others, we found that

anxiety had a signifi cant effect on how people negoti-

ated. People experiencing anxiety made weaker fi rst

offers, responded more quickly to each move the coun-

terpart made, and were more likely to exit negotiations

early (even though their instructions clearly warned that

exiting early would reduce the value they received from

the negotiation). Anxious negotiators made deals that

were 12% less fi nancially attractive than those made by

negotiators in the neutral group. We did discover one ca-

veat, however: People who gave themselves high ratings

in a survey on negotiating aptitude were less affected by

anxiety than others.

Those experiments examined what happens when

people feel anxious. But what happens when they express

that anxiety, making it clear to their counterparts that

they’re nervous (and perhaps vulnerable)? In 2012, with

Francesca Gino and Maurice Schweitzer, I conducted

eight experiments to explore how anxious people be-

haved in situations in which they could seek advice from

others. We found that relative to people who did not feel

anxious, they were less confi dent, more likely to consult

others when making decisions, and less able to discrimi-

nate between good and bad advice. In the most relevant

of these experiments, we found that anxious participants

did not discount advice from someone with a stated con-

fl ict of interest, whereas subjects feeling neutral emo-

tions looked upon that advice skeptically. Although this

research didn’t directly address how the subjects would

negotiate, it suggests that people who express anxiety are

more likely to be taken advantage of in a negotiation, es-

pecially if the other party senses their distress.

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An Emotional Strategy for Negotiations

Excellent negotiators often make their counterparts

feel anxious on purpose. For example, on the TV show

Shark Tank, six wealthy investors (“sharks”) negotiate

with entrepreneurs hoping for funding. The entrepre-

neurs must pitch their ideas in front of a huge televi-

sion audience and face questions from the investors

that are often aggressive and unnerving. As this is go-

ing on, stress-inducing music fi lls the TV studio. This

setup does more than create drama and entertainment

for viewers; it also intentionally puts pressure on the

entrepreneurs. The sharks are professional negotiators

who want to knock the entrepreneurs off balance so that

it will be easier to take ownership of their good ideas at

the lowest price possible. (When multiple sharks want to

invest, they often drop comments that are intended to

make opposing investors anxious too.) If you watch the

show closely, you’ll probably notice a pattern: The entre-

preneurs who seem least rattled by the environmental

stressors tend to negotiate the most carefully and delib-

erately—and often strike the best deals.

The takeaway from both research and practice is clear:

Try your utmost to avoid feeling anxious while negotiat-

ing. How can you manage that? Train, practice, rehearse,

and keep sharpening your negotiating skills. Anxiety is

often a response to novel stimuli, so the more familiar the

stimuli, the more comfortable and the less anxious you

will feel. (That’s why clinicians who treat anxiety disorders

often rely on exposure therapy: People who are nervous

about fl ying on airplanes, for instance, are progressively

exposed to the experience, fi rst getting used to the sights

and sounds, then sitting in airliner seats, and ultimately

taking fl ights.) Indeed, although many people enroll in

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Everyday Emotional Intelligence

negotiation classes to learn strategies and increase skills,

one of the primary benefi ts is the comfort that comes

from repeatedly practicing deal making in simulations

and exercises. Negotiation eventually feels more routine,

so it’s not such an anxiety-inducing experience.

Another useful strategy for reducing anxiety is to

bring in an outside expert to handle the bargaining.

Third-party negotiators will be less anxious because

their skills are better honed, the process is routine for

them, and they have a lower personal stake in the out-

come. Outsourcing your negotiation may sound like a

cop-out, but it’s a frequent practice in many industries.

Home buyers and sellers use real estate brokers partly

for their negotiating experience; athletes, authors, ac-

tors, and even some business executives rely on agents to

hammer out contracts. Although there are costs to this

approach, they are often more than offset by the more

favorable terms that can be achieved. And although anx-

ious negotiators may have the most to gain from involv-

ing a third party (because anxiety can be a particularly

diffi cult emotion to regulate in an uncomfortable set-

ting), this strategy can also be useful when other nega-

tive emotions surface.

Managing Anger

Like anxiety, anger is a negative emotion, but instead of

being self-focused, it’s usually directed toward someone

else. In most circumstances, we try to keep our tempers

in check. When it comes to negotiating, however, many

people believe that anger can be a productive emotion—

one that will help them win a larger share of the pie.

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An Emotional Strategy for Negotiations

This view stems from a tendency to view negotiations

in competitive terms rather than collaborative ones. Re-

searchers call this the fi xed-pie bias: People, particularly

those with limited experience making deals, assume that

a negotiation is a zero-sum game in which their own in-

terests confl ict directly with a counterpart’s. (More expe-

rienced negotiators, in contrast, look for ways to expand

the pie through collaboration, rather than nakedly trying

to snatch a bigger slice.) Anger, the thinking goes, makes

one seem stronger, more powerful, and better able to

succeed in this grab for value.

In fact, there’s a body of research—much of it by Keith

Allred, a former faculty member at Harvard’s Kennedy

School of Government—that documents the conse-

quences of feeling angry while negotiating. This research

shows that anger often harms the process by escalating

confl ict, biasing perceptions, and making impasses more

likely. It also reduces joint gains, decreases cooperation,

intensifi es competitive behavior, and increases the rate

at which offers are rejected. Angry negotiators are less

accurate than neutral negotiators both in recalling their

own interests and in judging other parties’ interests. And

angry negotiators may seek to harm or retaliate against

their counterparts, even though a more cooperative ap-

proach might increase the value that both sides can

claim from the negotiation.

Despite these fi ndings, many people continue to see

advantages to feeling or appearing angry. Some even at-

tempt to turn up the volume on their anger, because they

think it will make them more effective in a negotiation.

In my own research, I have found that given a choice

105

Everyday Emotional Intelligence

between feeling angry and feeling happy while negotiat-

ing, more than half the participants want to be in an an-

gry state and view it as signifi cantly advantageous.

There are cases when feeling angry can lead to bet-

ter outcomes. Research by Gerben van Kleef at the Uni-

versity of Amsterdam demonstrates that in a one-time,

transactional negotiation with few opportunities to col-

laborate to create value, an angry negotiator can wind up

with a better deal. There may even be situations in which

a negotiator decides to feign anger, because the counter-

part, in an attempt to defuse that anger, is likely to give

ground on terms. This might work well if you are hag-

gling with a stranger to buy a car, for example.

But negotiators who play this card must be aware of

the costs. Showing anger in a negotiation damages the

long-term relationship between the parties. It reduces

liking and trust. Research by Rachel Campagna at the

University of New Hampshire shows that false repre-

sentations of anger may generate small tactical ben-

efi ts but also lead to considerable and persistent blow-

back. That is, faking anger can create authentic feelings

of anger, which in turn diminish trust for both parties.

Along the same lines, research by Jeremy Yip and Martin

Schweins berg demonstrates that people who encounter

an angry negotiator are more likely to walk away, prefer-

ring to let the process end in a stalemate.

In many contexts, then, feeling or expressing anger as

a negotiating tactic can backfi re. So in most cases, tamp-

ing down any anger you feel—and limiting the anger you

express—is a smarter strategy. This may be hard to do,

but there are tactics that can help.

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An Emotional Strategy for Negotiations

PREPARING YOUR EMOTIONAL STRATEGY

Preparation is key to success in negotiations. It’s vital to

give advance thought to the objective factors involved

(Who are the parties? What are the issues? What is my

best outside option if we don’t reach a deal?), but it

is perhaps even more important to prepare your emo-

tional strategy. Use the following questions and tips to

plan ahead for each stage of the negotiation.

Ask

yourself: Remember:

The

• How do I feel?

• It’s normal to feel anxious and

buildup

excited.

• Should I express my

emotions?

• Try to avoid expressing anxiety.

• How might the people

• Expressing forward-looking

across the table feel?

excitement may help build

rapport.

• Are they likely to hide or

express their emotions? • In emotionally charged

situations (such as a divorce),

• Should I recruit a third

consider having a third party

party to negotiate on my

(such as a lawyer) negotiate on

behalf?

your behalf.

The

• What things could hap-

• Be careful about expressing

main

pen that would make

anger; it may extract conces-

event

me feel angry?

sions but harm the long-term

relationship.

• What things might I do

that would trigger my

• Avoid angering your counter-

counterparts to feel

parts; they are likely to walk

angry?

away.

• What might they do or

• Preparing answers to tough

ask that would make me

questions is critical for staying

feel anxious?

calm in the moment.

The

• What are the possible

• To reduce disappointment,

fi nale

outcomes of the nego-

outline clear aspirations and

tiation? What do I hope

expectations and adjust them

to achieve? What do I

throughout the negotiation.

expect to achieve?

• When you feel pleased about

• How would those out-

an outcome, it may be wise to

comes make me feel?

keep it to yourself.

• Should I express those

• The best negotiators create

feelings? To whom?

value for everyone, claiming the

lion’s share for themselves but

• How are my counter-

making their counterparts feel

parts likely to feel about

that they, too, won.

the possible outcomes?

Everyday Emotional Intelligence

Building rapport before, during, and after a nego-

tiation can reduce the odds that the other party will be-

come angry. If you seek to frame the negotiation coop-

eratively—to make it clear that you’re seeking a win-win

solution instead of trying to get the lion’s share of a fi xed

pie—you may limit the other party’s perception that an

angry grab for value will work well. If the other party

does become angry, apologize. Seek to soothe. Even if

you feel that his anger is unwarranted, recognize that

you’re almost certainly better positioned tactically if you

can reduce the hostility.

Perhaps the most effective way to deal with anger in

negotiations is to recognize that many negotiations don’t

unfold all at once but take place over multiple meetings.

So if tensions are fl aring, ask for a break, cool off, and

regroup. This isn’t easy when you’re angry, because your

fi ght-or-fl ight response urges you to escalate, not pull

back. Resist that urge and give the anger time to dissi-

pate. In heated negotiations, hitting the pause button

can be the smartest play.

Finally, you might consider reframing anger as sad-

ness. Though reframing one negative emotion as an-

other sounds illogical, shared feelings of sadness can

lead to cooperative concession making, whereas opposi-

tional anger often leads to an impasse.

Handling Disappointment

and Regret

It can be tempting to see negotiations in binary terms—

you either win or lose. Of course, that is generally too

simplistic: Most complex negotiations will end with each

108

An Emotional Strategy for Negotiations

side having achieved some of its goals and not others—

a mix of wins and losses. Still, as a negotiation winds

down, it’s natural to look at the nascent agreement and

feel, on balance, more positive or negative about it.

Disappointment can be a powerful force when it’s

expressed to the other party near the end of the nego-

tiation. There’s a relationship between anger and disap-

pointment—both typically arise when an individual feels

wronged—and it’s useful to understand how one can be

used more constructively than the other. (Think back

to how you reacted as a child if your parents said “I’m

very disappointed in you” instead of “I’m very angry with

you.”) Although expressing anger may create defensive-

ness or increase the odds of a standoff, expressing disap-

pointment can serve a more tactical purpose by encour-

aging the other party to look critically at her own actions

and consider whether she wants to change her position

to reduce the negative feelings she’s caused you.

Research shows that one cause of disappointment in a

negotiation is the speed of the process. When a negotia-

tion unfolds or concludes too quickly, participants tend

to feel dissatisfi ed. They wonder if they could or should

have done more or pushed harder. Negotiation teachers

see this in class exercises: Often the fi rst students to fi n-

ish up are the most disappointed by the outcome. The

obvious way to lessen the likelihood of disappointment is

to proceed slowly and deliberately.

Regret is slightly different from disappointment.

While the latter tends to involve sadness about an out-

come, someone feeling regret is looking a little more up-

stream, at the course of actions that led to this unhappy

109

Everyday Emotional Intelligence

outcome, and thinking about the missteps or mistakes

that created the disappointment.

Studies show that people are most likely to regret ac-

tions they didn’t take—the missed opportunities and er-

rors of omission, rather than errors of commission. That

can be a powerful insight for negotiators, whose primary

actions should be asking questions, listening, propos-

ing solutions, and brainstorming new alternatives if

the parties can’t agree. Ironically, people often don’t ask

questions while negotiating: They may forget to raise

important matters or feel reluctant to probe too deeply,

deeming it invasive or rude. Those fears are often mis-

placed. In fact, people who ask a lot of questions tend to

be better liked, and they learn more things.

In negotiations, information is king and learning

should be a central goal. One way to reduce the potential

for regret is to ask questions without hesitation. Aim to

come away from the negotiation with the sense that ev-

ery avenue was explored.

Skilled negotiators use another technique to mini-

mize the odds of regret: the post-settlement settlement.

This strategy recognizes that tension often dissipates

when there’s a deal on the table that makes everyone

happy, and sometimes the best negotiating happens af-

ter that tension is released. So instead of shaking hands

and ending the deal making, one party might say, “We’re

good. We have terms we can all live with. But now that

we know we’ve reached an agreement, let’s spend a few

more minutes chatting to see if we can fi nd anything

that sweetens it for both sides.” Done ineptly, this might

seem as if one party is trying to renege or renegotiate.

However, when handled deftly, a post-settlement settle-

110

An Emotional Strategy for Negotiations

ment can open a pathway for both sides to become even

more satisfi ed with the outcome and stave off regrets.

Tempering Happiness and

Excitement

There isn’t much research on how happiness and ex-

citement affect negotiations, but intuition and experi-

ence suggest that expressing these emotions can have

signifi cant consequences. The National Football League

prohibits and penalizes “excessive celebrations” after a

touchdown or big play because such conduct can gener-

ate ill will. For the same reason, the “winner” in a deal

should not gloat as the negotiations wrap up. Nonethe-

less, this happens all the time. In workshops, I routinely

see students unabashedly boast and brag (sometimes to

the entire class) about how they really stuck it to their

opponents in a negotiation exercise. Not only do these

students risk looking like jerks, but in a real-world set-

ting, they might suffer more dire consequences: the

other party might invoke a right of rescission, seek to re-

negotiate, or take punitive action the next time the par-

ties need to strike a deal.

Although it’s unpleasant to feel disappointed after a

negotiation, it can be even worse to make your counter-

parts feel that way. And in certain situations, showing

happiness or excitement triggers disappointment in oth-

ers. The best negotiators achieve great deals for them-

selves but leave their opponents believing that they, too,

did fabulously, even if the truth is different. In deals that

involve a signifi cant degree of future collaboration—say,

when two companies agree to merge, or when an actor

signs a contract with a producer to star in an upcoming

111

Everyday Emotional Intelligence

movie—it can be appropriate to show excitement, but

it’s important to focus on the opportunities ahead rather

than the favorable terms one party just gained.

Another danger of excitement is that it may increase

your commitment to strategies or courses of action

that you’d be better off abandoning. In my negotiation

class, we do an exercise in which students must decide

whether or not to send a race car driver into an impor-

tant race with a faulty engine. Despite the risks, most

students opt to go ahead with the race because they are

excited and want to maximize their winnings. The exer-

cise has parallels to a real-life example: the launch of the

Challenger space shuttle. Though the engineers who de-

signed the Challenger’s faulty O-ring had qualms about

it, NASA managers were overly excited and determined

to proceed with the launch. Their decision ultimately

led to the craft’s explosion and the loss of its seven crew

members.

There are two lessons for negotiators here. First, be

considerate: Do not let your excitement make your coun-

terparts feel that they lost. Second, be skeptical: Do not

let your excitement lead to overconfi dence or an escala-

tion of commitment with insuffi cient data.

Negotiating requires some of the same skills that playing

poker does—a strategic focus, the imagination to see al-

ternatives, and a knack for assessing odds, reading peo-

ple, understanding others’ positions, and bluffi ng when

necessary. However, whereas the parties in a negotiation

must strive for agreement, poker players make decisions

112

An Emotional Strategy for Negotiations

unilaterally. Poker also lacks win-win outcomes or pie-

sharing strategies: Any given hand is generally a zero-

sum game, with one player’s gains coming directly from

the other players’ pots.

MANAGING YOUR COUNTERPART’S EMOTIONS

Negotiating is an interpersonal process. There will al-

ways be at least one other party (and often many more)

involved. In the adjoining article, I discuss how to man-

age your own emotions during a negotiation. But what

about the other people at the table? Can you manage

their emotions as well? I suggest two strategies for do-

ing so:

1.

Be observant.  Perceiving how other people

are feeling is a critical component of emotional

intelligence, and it’s particularly key in negotia-

tions (as Adam Galinsky and his colleagues have

found). So tune in to your counterpart’s body

language, tone of voice, and choice of words.

When her verbal and nonverbal cues don’t

match up, ask questions. For example, “You are

telling me you like this outcome, but you seem

uneasy. Is something making you uncomfort-

able?” Or “You say you’re angry, but you seem

somewhat pleased. Are you truly upset about

something? Or are you trying to intimidate me?”

( continued)

113

Everyday Emotional Intelligence

MANAGING YOUR COUNTERPART’S EMOTIONS

( continued)

Asking specifi c questions based on your percep-

tions of the other party’s emotional expressions will

make it easier for you to understand her perspective

(a task people are shockingly bad at, according to re-

search by Nicholas Epley). It will also make it diffi

cult

for a counterpart to lie to you; evidence suggests that

people prefer to tell lies of omission about facts rather

than lies of commission about feelings.

2. Don’t be afraid to exert direct infl uence on

your counterpart’s emotions.  This may sound

manipulative or even unscrupulous, but you can

use this infl uence for good. For example, if your

counterpart seems anxious or angry, injecting

humor or empathetic reassurance can dramati-

cally change the tone of the interaction. By the

same token, if your counterpart seems overcon-

fi dent or pushy, expressing well-placed anger

can inspire a healthy dose of fear.

In recent research with Elizabeth Baily Wolf, I have

found that it’s possible to go even further in manag-

ing others’ emotions: You display an emotion, your

counterpart sees it, and then you shape his interpreta-

tion of it. For example, imagine that you start crying at

work. (Crying is a diffi

cult-to-control and often embar-

rassing behavior.) Saying “I’m in tears because I’m pas-

sionate” rather than “I’m sorry I’m so emotional” can

completely change the way others react and the way

they view your self-control and competence.

An Emotional Strategy for Negotiations

Nonetheless, negotiators can learn a crucial lesson

from the card table: the value of controlling the emo-

tions we feel and especially those we reveal. In other

words, good negotiators need to develop a poker face—

not one that remains expressionless, always hiding true

feelings, but one that displays the right emotions at the

right times.

And although all human beings experience emotions,

the frequency and intensity with which we do so differs

from person to person. To be a better deal maker, con-

duct a thorough assessment of which emotions you are

particularly prone to feel before, during, and after nego-

tiations, and use techniques to minimize (or maximize)

the experience and suppress (or emphasize) the expres-

sion of emotions as needed.

In one of my favorite scenes from the TV show 30

Rock, hard-driving CEO Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin),

who fancies himself an expert negotiator, explains to a

colleague why he struck a poor deal: “I lost because of

emotion, which I always thought was a weakness, but

now I have learned can also be a weapon.” Borrowing

Jack’s insightful metaphor, I urge you to wield your emo-

tions thoughtfully. Think carefully about when to draw

these weapons, when to shoot, and when to keep them

safely tucked away in a hidden holster. Try to avoid feel-

ing anxious, be careful about expressing anger, ask ques-

tions to circumvent disappointment and regret, and

remember that happiness and excitement can have ad-

verse consequences.

Just as you prepare your tactical and strategic moves

before a negotiation, you should invest effort in prepar-

ing your emotional approach. It will be time well spent.

115

Everyday Emotional Intelligence

Alison Wood Brooks is an assistant professor at Harvard

Business School. She teaches negotiation in the MBA

and executive education curricula and is affi liated with

the Behavioral Insights Group.

116

CHAPTER 15

Working Across

Cultures

by Andy Molinsky

One of the greatest assets we have as natives of a culture

is our ability to quickly “read” another person’s emotions.

Over time, we learn how to understand whether our col-

leagues are truly interested in a project or just giving it

lip service by noticing the expression on their faces. We

can tell when someone really likes something we’ve pro-

posed by the way they react. And we can often detect

motivation as well—whether someone is truly willing to

put in the extra time and effort to make something hap-

pen—just by seeing the fi re in their eyes or the passion in

their voice.

Originally published on hbr.org on April 20, 2015, as “Emotional Intel-

ligence Doesn’t Translate Across Borders” (product #H020D6)

117

Everyday Emotional Intelligence

The problem, of course, comes when we cross cultures

and venture into a completely different world of emo-

tional expression. Emotions vary tremendously across

cultures—both in terms of their expression and their

meaning. Without a detailed understanding of these

emotional landscapes, crossing cultures can become a

communication minefi eld.

Take, for example, the expression of enthusiasm. In

the United States, it’s culturally acceptable, even admi-

rable, to show enthusiasm in a business setting, assum-

ing it’s appropriate for the situation. When arguing for

a point in a meeting, for example, it is quite appropri-

ate to express your opinions passionately; it can help to

convince those around you. Or when speaking with a

potential employer at a networking event, it is often en-

couraged to express your interest quite enthusiastically;

the employer may interpret how invested you are in a job

based on your expressed eagerness.

In many other cultures, however, enthusiasm means

something quite different. In Japan, for example, there

are strict boundaries about when and where people are

allowed to display emotion.1 During the regular workday,

Japanese individuals are not typically emotionally ex-

pressive. Even if they feel excited about their work, they

will rarely show it explicitly. This often changes outside

of the workplace setting, though, where Japanese people

can show a great deal of emotion—for example, when

drinking, having dinner with work colleagues, or singing

karaoke. In China, self-control and modesty are the coin

of the realm, not one’s ability to outwardly express emo-

118

Working Across Cultures

tion.2 In fact, expressing too much outward enthusiasm,

especially in front of a boss, could be seen as showing off,

which is not typically condoned in Chinese culture.

Given these differences and the importance of getting

it right when communicating across cultures, what are

thoughtful managers to do?

A fi rst tip is to treat emotions like another language.

If you’re traveling or moving to France, you’re bound to

learn French, or at least some key phrases. Treat emo-

tions in the same way. Try your best to learn the language

of emotions in whatever culture you’re working in. Ob-

serve whether people tend to express emotions readily or

keep them to themselves, and if, as in the Japan example

above, there are differences in when and where people

freely express emotion. Diagnose any gaps between how

you’d express emotions in your culture and how people

you’ll be interacting with express emotion in theirs.

In addition to learning the language of emotions,

make sure you also learn how to respond construc-

tively when you do encounter emotions different from

your own. For example, if you’re expecting a smile from

your boss after suggesting a new idea but instead get a

blank stare, don’t necessarily assume she hates you or

your idea. Instead, gather more information to fully un-

derstand her point of view. You might ask a follow-up

question to get a better sense of her opinion: Ask if your

proposal was clear or if she felt your idea addressed the

concerns she had. Keep in mind that cultural norms dif-

fer in terms of how appropriate it might be to ask ques-

tions like these to your boss, but the general idea is to

119

Everyday Emotional Intelligence

do what you can to collect data to help you decipher

emotional expressions, rather than relying solely on your

initial, knee-jerk reaction or presumption.

Andy Molinsky is a professor of international manage-

ment and organizational behavior at the Brandeis In-

ternational Business School. He is the author of Global

Dexterity (Harvard Business Review Press, 2013) and

the new book Reach: A New Strategy to Help You Step

Outside Your Comfort Zone, Rise to the Challenge, and

Build Confi dence (Penguin Random House, 2017). Fol-

low Andy on Twitter @andymolinsky.

NOTES

1. Fumiyo Araki and Richard L. Wiseman, Emotional Expressions

in the United States and Japan,” International Communication Stud-

ies 6, no. 2 (1996).

2. Ibid.

120

SECTION FIVE

Dealing with

Diffi

cult People

CHAPTER 16

Make Your

Enemies Your

Allies

by Brian Uzzi and Shannon Dunlap

John Clendenin was fresh out of business school in 1984

when he took on his fi rst managerial position, in Xerox’s

parts and supply division. He was an obvious outsider:

young, African American, and a former Marine, whose

pink shirts and brown suits stood out amid the tradi-

tional gray and black attire of his new colleagues. “I was

strikingly different,” he recalls. And yet his new role re-

quired him to lead a team including employees who had

been with Xerox for decades.

Reprinted from Harvard Business Review, May 2012 (product

#R1205K)

123

Dealing with Diffi

cult People

One of his direct reports was Tom Gunning, a 20-year

company veteran who believed Clendenin’s job should

have gone to him, not to a younger, nontechnical new-

comer. Gunning also had a cadre of pals on the team. As

a result, Clendenin’s fi rst days were fi lled with strained

smiles and behind-the-back murmurs. Though he wasn’t

looking for adversaries, “I knew these guys were discon-

tented about me coming in,” Clendenin remembers.

He was right to be wary. Anyone who has faced a ri-

val at work—a colleague threatened by your skills, a su-

perior unwilling to acknowledge your good ideas, or a

subordinate who undermines you—knows such dynam-

ics can prove catastrophic for your career, and for your

group or organization. When those with formal or infor-

mal power are fi ghting you, you may fi nd it impossible

to accomplish—or get credit for—any meaningful work.

And even if you have the upper hand, an antagonistic

relationship inevitably casts a cloud over you and your

team, sapping energy, stymieing progress, and distract-

ing group members from their goals.

Because rivalries can be so destructive, it’s not enough

to simply ignore, sidestep, or attempt to contain them.

Instead, effective leaders turn rivals into collaborators—

strengthening their positions, their networks, and their

careers in the process. Think of these relationships not

as chronic illnesses you have to endure but as wounds

that must be treated in order for you to lead a healthy

work life.

Here we share a method, called the 3Rs (using redirec-

tion, reciprocity, and rationality), for effi ciently and ef-

fectively turning your adversaries into your allies. If you

124

Make Your Enemies Your Allies

execute each step correctly, you will develop new “con-

nective tissue” within your organization, boosting your

ability to broker knowledge and drive fresh thinking. The

method is drawn from our own inductive case studies—

including interviews with business leaders such as John

Clendenin, who agreed to let us tell his story in this arti-

cle—and from empirical research conducted by Brian and

others investigating the physiology of the brain, the soci-

ology of relationships, and the psychology of infl uence.

Emotions and Trust

Many well-intentioned efforts to reverse rivalries fail in

large part because of the complex way trust operates in

these relationships. Research shows that trust is based

on both reason and emotion. If the emotional orientation

toward a person is negative—typically because of a per-

ceived threat—then reason will be twisted to align with

those negative feelings. This is why feuds can stalemate

trust: New facts and arguments, no matter how credible

and logical, may be seen as ploys to dupe the other side.

This effect is not just psychological; it is physiological.

When we experience negative emotions, blood recedes

from the thinking part of the brain, the cerebral cortex,

and rushes to its oldest and most involuntary part, the

“reptilian” stem, crippling the intake of new information.

Most executives who decide they want to reverse a

rivalry will, quite understandably, turn to reason, pre-

senting incentives for trustworthy collaboration. But in

these situations, the “emotional brain” must be managed

before adversaries can understand evidence and be

persuaded.

125

Dealing with Diffi

cult People

When John Clendenin looked at Tom Gunning at Xe-

rox, he immediately saw grounds for a strong partner-

ship beyond a perfunctory subordinate-superior rela-

tionship. Gunning had 20 years’ worth of organizational

and technical knowledge, and contacts around the com-

pany, but he lacked the leadership skills and vision that

Clendenin possessed. Conversely, Clendenin understood

management but needed Gunning’s expertise and con-

nections to successfully navigate his new company. Un-

fortunately, Gunning’s emotions were getting in the way.

Clendenin needed to employ the 3Rs.

Redirection

Step 1 is to redirect your rival’s negative emotions so that

they are channeled away from you. Clendenin decided to

have a one-on-one meeting with Gunning, but not in his

offi ce, because that would only remind Gunning of the

promotion he’d lost. Instead, he found out where Gun-

ning liked to eat and took him there for lunch. “I was let-

ting him know that I understood his worth,” Clendenin

says of this contextual redirection.

He followed this with a plain statement of redirection,

telling Gunning that a third entity beyond the control of

both men was the root cause of their situation. “I didn’t

put you in this position,” Clendenin said. “Xerox put us

both in this position.”

Many executives scoff when they fi rst hear this story,

believing Clendenin’s actions to be too transparent. But

redirection doesn’t have to be hidden. With stage magic,

for example, audience members understand that redi-

rection is happening, but that doesn’t lessen their accep-

126

Make Your Enemies Your Allies

tance or spoil the payoff of the technique. Other personal

interactions work similarly. For instance, we accept fl at-

tery even if we recognize it as such.

Another common redirection tactic is to introduce a

discussion of things you and your rival have in common,

or casually portray a source of tension—a particular ini-

tiative, employee, or event—in a more favorable light. It

sounds obvious. But redirection will shift negative emo-

tions away from you and lay the groundwork for Step 2:

reciprocity.

Reciprocity

The essential principle here is to give before you ask. Un-

doing a negative tie begins with giving up something of

value rather than asking for a “fair trade.” If you give and

then ask for something right away in return, you don’t

establish a relationship; you carry out a transaction.

When done correctly, reciprocity is like priming the

pump. In the old days, pumps required lots of exertion

to produce any water. You had to repeatedly work a le-

ver to eliminate a vacuum in the line before water could

fl ow. But if you poured a small bucket of water into the

line fi rst, the vacuum was quickly eliminated, enabling

the water to fl ow with less effort. Reciprocity with a rival

works in much the same way.

Refl ect carefully on what you should give. Ideally,

choose something that requires little effort from the other

party to reciprocate. Clendenin moved from redirection

to reciprocity at the lunch by promising to support Gun-

ning’s leadership development and future advancement

at Xerox. But, recognizing that mere promises of future

127

Dealing with Diffi

cult People

returns wouldn’t be enough to spark collaboration, he

also offered Gunning something concrete: the chance to

attend executive-level meetings. This was of immediate

value, not a distant, murky benefi t. Gunning could gain

visibility, credibility, and connections.

The arrangement also ensured reciprocity. Gunning’s

presence at the meetings furnished Clendenin with on-

hand technical expertise and organizational knowledge

while giving him “reputation points” with Gunning’s con-

tacts. Thus, Clendenin’s offer created the purest form of

reciprocity; if Gunning attended the meetings, Clendenin

would never have to explicitly request a quid pro quo.

Reciprocity involves considering ways that you can

immediately fulfi ll a rival’s need or reduce a pain point.

Live up to your end of the bargain fi rst, but fi gure out a

way to ensure a return from your rival without the per-

son’s feeling that pressure. Another example comes from

Brian’s colleague Adam Galinsky, who advises leaders in

contentious restructurings and business closings to gen-

erate goodwill among outgoing employees by offering

professional references or placements at other compa-

nies as long as the employees continue to meet or exceed

expectations until their offi ce closes. The employees see

immediate value, and although they don’t consciously

pay back the organization, the fi rm nonetheless ben-

efi ts by maintaining continuity in its workforce until the

scheduled closure.

Similarly, a colleague who helps an adversary com-

plete a project or a subordinate who stays overtime to

fi nish a task for a diffi cult boss not only help themselves

but can reap rewards when other teammates or superi-

128

Make Your Enemies Your Allies

ors benefi t from that effort, too. Here the judicious giv-

ing before asking sets a foundation for reciprocity with

third parties, whose buy-in can positively assist in re-

shaping the adversarial relationship. (See the sidebar

“Rivalries Don’t Exist in a Vacuum.”)

Rationality

Step 3, rationality, establishes the expectations of the

fl edgling relationship you’ve built using the previous

steps so that your efforts don’t come off as dishonest or

as ineffective pandering. What would have happened if

Clendenin had left the lunch without explaining how

he wanted to work with Gunning going forward? Gun-

ning might have begun to second-guess his new boss’s

intentions and resumed his adversarial stance. If a rival

is worried about the other shoe dropping, his emotional

unease can undermine the trust you’ve built.

To employ rationality, Clendenin told Gunning that

he needed him, or someone like him, to reach his goals

at Xerox. This made it clear that he saw Gunning as a

valuable, but not indispensable, partner. Another, softer

approach might have involved Clendenin’s giving Gun-

ning “the right of fi rst refusal” to collaborate with him,

making the offer seem special while judiciously indicat-

ing that there were others who could step in. Just to be

clear, Clendenin was not asking Gunning for a specifi c

favor in exchange for the one he’d granted in Step 2. He

was simply saying that he wanted him to become an ally.

Clendenin also reinforced the connection between

the three steps by making his offer time-limited, which

raised the perception of the value of the deal without

129

Dealing with Diffi

cult People

changing its content. He told Gunning he needed an an-

swer before they left the restaurant. “I needed to nip this

in the bud,” Clendenin recalls. “He knew I didn’t care if

we sat in that restaurant until midnight if we had to.”

When rationality follows redirection and reciprocity,

it should push your adversary into considering the situ-

RIVALRIES DON’T EXIST IN A VACUUM

Even when a leader executes the 3Rs fl awlessly to end

a rivalry, his work isn’t necessarily done. That’s be-

cause the relationship is often about more than just

the two individuals. We all know people who seek to

play to their advantage antagonism between others;

some third parties might even view a blossoming part-

nership with trepidation or envy, triggering new nega-

tive emotions and rivalries.

You can head off this problem, as John Clendenin

did, by framing your work as benefi cial not just to

you and your adversary but to the whole organiza-

tion, which makes the reversal of rivalry in everyone’s

interest. When Clendenin brought Tom Gunning into

those executive-level meetings, he made it clear that

Gunning was going to be a “poster child” for a new

age at Xerox, in which talented, long-term employees

could fi nd new paths to leadership in a time of corpo-

rate transition. Even if the confl ictmongers didn’t care

about Clendenin’s and Gunning’s success, it would be

far more diffi

cult for them to sabotage an eff ort that

was obviously good for the company.

130

Make Your Enemies Your Allies

ation from a reasoned standpoint, fully comprehend-

ing the expectations and benefi ts, and recognizing that

he is looking at a valued opportunity that could be lost.

Most people are highly motivated to avoid a loss, which

complements their desire to gain something. Rational-

ity is like offering medicine after a spoonful of sugar:

It ensures that you’re getting the benefi t of the shifted

negative emotions, and any growing positive ones, which

would otherwise diffuse over time. And it avoids the am-

biguity that clouds expectations and feedback when fl at-

tery and favors come one day, and demands the next.

Of course, Clendenin and Gunning did not walk out

of the restaurant as full-blown collaborators. But both

accepted that they should give each other the benefi t of

the doubt. Over the following weeks, this new mindset

allowed them to work as allies, a process that deepened

trust and resource-sharing in a self-reinforcing cycle.

In this way, a potentially debilitating rivalry was trans-

formed into a healthy working relationship and, in time,

a strong partnership. Several years later, when Clen-

denin moved to another Xerox unit, he nominated Gun-

ning as his replacement—and Gunning excelled in the

position. The foundation for that remarkable shift had

been established during the span of a single lunch.

Adapting the 3Rs

A key advantage of the 3Rs is that the method can work

to reverse all kinds of rivalries, including those with a

peer or a superior. Later in Clendenin’s tenure at Xerox,

he noticed an ineffi ciency in the company’s inventory

systems. At the time, Xerox was made up of semiautono-

mous international units that stockpiled excess inventory

131

Dealing with Diffi

cult People

to avoid shortages. Clendenin proposed that the units in-

stead share their inventories through an intrafi rm net-

work that would improve resource use and lower carry-

ing costs for the company as a whole. Although the idea

was objectively good for Xerox, it threatened the power

of some unit vice presidents, so when Clendenin fl oated

his idea, they shot it down.

WHAT IF THE 3RS FAIL?

The 3Rs are eff ective, but they aren’t a guarantee of de-

fusing resistance. What should you do if the strategy

isn’t working?

Strive for collaboration indirectly. For example,

work well with a third party whom your rival trusts.

A common ally can highlight to him the benefi ts of

working with you.

Remember that timing matters. People in power

need a reason to interact. This was certainly the

case with John Clendenin’s inventory-management

pitch to the Xerox VPs: At fi rst rebuff ed, he was able

to refl oat his idea when the CEO called for a new

strategy.

Recognize when to look elsewhere. Sometimes the

eff ort needed to reverse a rivalry is so great, and

the returns so low, for you and your company that

you’re better off deploying the same resources in

another relationship.

132

Make Your Enemies Your Allies

A short time later, however, following an unexpected

announcement by the CEO that the company needed

better asset management, Clendenin found a way to re-

introduce his proposal to the VPs. Because he knew they

viewed him as an unwelcome challenger—or rival—he

used the 3Rs.

His fi rst move was to redirect their negative emotions

away from him by planning a lunch for them at the re-

gional offi ce and serving them himself. This showed def-

erence. He also presented himself not as an individual

pushing a proposal but as someone who could expedite

organizational change, shifting the reference point of his

rivals’ tension. “With all of those egos and personalities, I

never said, ‘This is my idea,’” Clendenin recalls. “I always

said ‘we.’”

Applying the reciprocity principle of “give before you

ask,” he requested nothing from them at the meeting.

Instead, he facilitated a discussion about the CEO-led

initiative. Inventory management was, unsurprisingly,

a problem cited by many of the VPs, and Clendenin’s

facilitation brought that to light. He then took on the

luster of the person who had illuminated a generic prob-

lem, rather than someone who wanted to lessen the VPs’

autonomy.

That allowed him to present the rationality of his

original idea. All of a sudden, it looked like an oppor-

tunity—rather than a threat—to the formerly antagonis-

tic group. Clendenin indicated that he would be willing

to coordinate a new system more cheaply than anyone

else in the market could offer, while also noting that he

might not have time to do so in the future, which raised

133

Dealing with Diffi

cult People

the perceived value of his offer. The VPs agreed to ex-

ecute the plan in stages and put Clendenin in charge.

The initiative grew in small but steady steps, eventually

saving Xerox millions. Equally important, Clendenin’s

embrace by his rivals positioned him as a broker in the

company and burnished his reputation as an institution

builder.

John Clendenin understood that rivalries help no

one; indeed, success often depends on not just neutral-

izing your foes but turning them into collaborators. By

using the 3Rs to build trust, Clendenin made sure every-

one in his network thrived—including himself, Gunning,

their team, the VPs, and Xerox—forming the basis for

long-term ties and shared success. Years later, Clendenin

started his own international logistics company. His

partner in this new endeavor was his old rival, Tom Gun-

ning, and the lead investors were none other than the

unit VPs from Xerox who had once shot down his ideas.

Brian Uzzi is the Richard L. Thomas Professor of Leader-

ship and Organizational Change at Northwestern’s Kel-

logg School of Management and the codirector of the

Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO).

Shannon Dunlap is a journalist and writer based in New

York City.

134

CHAPTER 17

How to Deal

with a Passive-

Aggressive

Colleague

by Amy Gallo

Your colleague says one thing in a meeting but then does

another. He passes you in the hallway without saying

hello and talks over you in meetings. But when you ask

to speak with him about it, he insists that everything’s

fi ne and the problem is all in your head. Argh! It’s so

frustrating to work with someone who is acting passive-

Adapted from content posted on hbr.org on January 11, 2016 (product

#H02LQP)

135

Dealing with Diffi

cult People

aggressively. Do you address the behavior directly? Or

try to ignore it? How can you get to the core issue when

your colleague pretends that nothing’s going on?

What the Experts Say

It’s not uncommon for colleagues to occasionally make

passive-aggressive remarks to one another over par-

ticularly sensitive issues or when they feel they can’t

be direct. “We’re all guilty of doing it once in a while,”

says Amy Su, coauthor of Own the Room: Discover Your

Signature Voice to Master Your Leadership Presence.

But persistent passive-aggressive behavior is a differ-

ent ball game. “These are people who will often do any-

thing to get what they need, including lie,” says Annie

McKee, founder of the Teleos Leadership Institute and

coauthor of Primal Leadership: Unleashing the Power

of Emotional Intelligence. In these cases, you have to

take special precautions that help you and, hopefully,

your counterpart both get your jobs done. Here are

some tips:

Don’t Get Caught Up

When your coworker pretends nothing is going on or ac-

cuses you of overreacting, it’s hard not to get angry and

defensive. But, McKee says, “This is not one of those

situations to fi ght fi re with fi re.” Do your best to remain

calm. “The person may want you to get mad so they can

then blame you, which is a release of their own anxiety,”

Su explains. “Responding in an emotional way will likely

leave you looking—and feeling—like the fool. This is

your opportunity to be the bigger person.”

136

How to Deal with a Passive-Aggressive Colleague

Consider What’s Motivating

the Behavior

People who routinely act in a passive-aggressive way

aren’t necessarily complete jerks. It could be that they

don’t know how to communicate or are afraid of con-

fl ict. McKee says that passive-aggressive behavior is of-

ten a way for people to “get their emotional point across

without having true, healthy confl ict.” There’s also a self-

centeredness to it. “They make the fl awed assumption

that others should know what they’re feeling and that

their needs and preferences are more important than

others’,” says Su. Understand this, but don’t try to diag-

nose all your colleague’s problems. “You just have to see

it for what it is,” Su adds, “an unproductive expression of

emotions that they can’t share constructively.”

Own Your Part

Chances are that you’re not blameless in the situation.

Ask yourself if something you’re doing is contribut-

ing to the dynamic or causing the person to be passive-

aggressive. “Own your half,” says Su. Also, consider

whether you’ve dished out the same behavior. “It can

happen to even the best of us, whether we’re procrasti-

nating or wanting to avoid something. We might leak

emotions in a way that’s hurtful to others,” says Su.

Focus on the Content,

Not the Delivery

It might be the last thing you want to do, but try to see

the situation from your colleague’s perspective. What is

137

Dealing with Diffi

cult People

the underlying opinion or perspective she’s attempting to

convey with her snarky comment? “Analyze the position

the person is trying to share with you,” says McKee. Does

she think that the way you’re running the project isn’t

working? Or does she disagree about your team goals?

“Not everyone likes or knows how to publicly discuss or

express what they think,” says Su. If you can focus on the

underlying business concern or question rather than the

way she’s expressing herself, you can move on to address-

ing the actual problem.

Acknowledge the Underlying Issue

Once you’re calm and able to engage in a productive

conversation, go back to the person. Say something

like: “You made a good point in that exchange we had

the other day. Here’s what I heard you saying.” This will

help them talk about the substance of their concerns. “By

joining with them, you have a better chance of turning

the energy around,” McKee explains. Do this in a matter-

of-fact way, without discussing how the sentiment was

expressed. “Don’t listen or give any credence to the toxic

part,” advises Su. “Sometimes it’s that they just want

their opinion heard.”

Watch Your Language

Whatever you say, don’t accuse the person of being

passive-aggressive. “That can hurt your cause,” says

McKee. Su agrees: “It’s such a loaded word. It would put

someone who’s already on the defensive into a more an-

gry position. Don’t label or judge them.” Instead, McKee

suggests recounting how some of your previous inter-

138

How to Deal with a Passive-Aggressive Colleague

actions have played out and explaining the impact it’s

having on you and possibly others. If feasible, show that

the behavior is working against something your counter-

part cares about, like achieving the team’s goals.

Find Safety in Numbers

You don’t have to deal with this situation alone. “It’s OK

to reality-check with others and have allies in place to

say you’re not crazy,” says Su. But be sure to frame your

discussions as an attempt to constructively improve

the relationship, so it doesn’t come across as gossiping

or bad-mouthing your colleague. Su suggests you ask

something like: “I was wondering how Susan’s comment

landed with you. How did you interpret that?”

Set Guidelines for Everyone

You might also enlist the help of others in coming up

with a long-term solution. “As a team, you can build

healthy norms,” McKee says. Together, you can agree to

be more up-front about frustrations and model the hon-

est and direct interactions you want to happen. You can

also keep one another accountable. If your problematic

colleague tends to ignore agreements, you might take

notes in meetings about who’s supposed to do what by

when, so there are clear action items. The worst offend-

ers are likely to give in to the positive peer pressure and

public accountability.

Get Help in Extreme Situations

When a colleague persistently tries to undermine you or

prevent you from doing your job, and outside observers

139

Dealing with Diffi

cult People

confi rm your take on the situation, you might have to go

further. “If you share the same manager, you may be able

to ask for help,” says McKee. You might tell your boss:

“A lot of us have noticed a particular behavior, and I

want to talk about how it’s impacting my ability to do my

work.” But she warns, “Step into those waters carefully.

Your manager may be hoodwinked by the person and

may not see the same behaviors, or be confl ict-averse

himself and not want to see it.”

Protect Yourself

“If there’s an interdependence in your work, make sure

you’re meeting your commitments and deadlines,” Su

says. “Copy others on important emails. Don’t let that

person speak for you or represent you in meetings. Af-

ter a meeting, document agreements and next steps.”

McKee also suggests keeping records: “Track specifi c

behaviors so that you have examples if needed. It’s hard

to argue with the facts.” She also recommends you try

to avoid working with the person and “keep contact to a

minimum. If you have to work together, do it in a group

setting” where your colleague is likely to be on better

behavior. You might not be able to break their passive-

aggressive habits, but you can control your reaction to

any incidents.

Principles to Remember

Do:

• Understand why people typically act this way—

their needs probably aren’t being met

140

How to Deal with a Passive-Aggressive Colleague

• Focus on the message your colleague is trying to

convey, even if their delivery is misguided

• Take a step back and ask yourself if you’re contrib-

uting to the issue in some way

Don’t:

• Lose your cool—address the underlying business

issue in a calm, matter-of-fact way

• Accuse the person of acting passive-aggressively—

that will only make them madder

• Assume you can change your colleague’s behavior

Case Study #1: Make Your Coworker

Publicly Accountable

One of Neda Khosla’s coworkers (names and details have

been changed) in the student guidance offi ce of the pub-

lic high school where she worked was making things dif-

fi cult for her. “He would agree to a plan in a meeting but

then sabotage it by not following through,” she explains.

Her colleague, Gareth, defended himself by saying things

like “That’s not how I remember it” or “I didn’t think

we had fi nalized the plan.” She tried to talk about these

“misunderstandings” with him, but he always shrugged

her off: “He’d say he was busy or didn’t have time to talk,”

she recounted.

When Neda told Jim, her and Gareth’s boss, that

a certain project hadn’t gotten done because of this

strange dynamic, Jim said that he had noticed the pat-

tern too. Together, they devised a plan to make Gareth

141

Dealing with Diffi

cult People

more accountable. “He and I agreed that he would pub-

licly ask for a volunteer to take notes on each meeting,

[documenting] who would be responsible for accom-

plishing each task and by when,” Neda recalls. She was

the fi rst volunteer.

And the approach worked. After Neda sent around

the task list, Gareth couldn’t make excuses. He was ac-

countable to everyone who attended the meetings. And

Neda didn’t mind the additional work: “The extra effort

I put in was less than the time I was spending fuming

about my coworker and running around to pick up the

pieces of the things he didn’t complete. It actually helped

everyone in our department be more productive and was

something we should have done a long time ago.”

Case Study #2: Get Help Sooner

Rather Than Later

James Armstrong, a digital marketing consultant for

Roman Blinds Direct, used to manage an eight-person

team at a digital marketing agency. He had gotten the

promotion three months after one of his direct reports,

Violet, joined the agency, and she clearly wasn’t thrilled

to suddenly have him as a new boss. But “she was a top

performer and extremely competent,” James recalls, and

since they’d worked “fairly harmoniously together as col-

leagues,” he was happy to have her in the group.

Unfortunately, Violet became very diffi cult to man-

age. She didn’t communicate with him unless absolutely

necessary; she didn’t actively engage in training sessions

that he offered; and she “poked holes” in his initiatives.

“She took every opportunity to make it clear that she

didn’t value my input,” he explains.

142

How to Deal with a Passive-Aggressive Colleague

Surprised and dismayed by her attitude, he decided to

address it as he would with any other team member: “di-

rectly and clearly.” He started by asking her in their one-

on-one meetings whether something was wrong. She

said there wasn’t, but the behavior persisted, so he tried

taking her out to coffee and asking whether he had un-

knowingly offended her or if she wanted to be managed

in a different way. She acknowledged that there was a

“personality clash,” but she ended the conversation there

and continued to treat him dismissively at the offi ce. He

heard from other staff members that she had even called

him “lazy and useless.”

“The last thing I wanted was to pass the issue further

up the chain and potentially harm Violet’s career,” he

says. After all, she was a valuable team member and he

wanted to protect her. But, he refl ects, “I should have im-

mediately approached my manager.” When he eventually

did, she pointed out that his failure to effectively manage

a key team member amounted to poor performance on

his part.

Within a year, both James and Violet voluntarily left

the agency, but neither was happy with the circum-

stances. He says that if he could do it over again, he

would have talked to his manager sooner, kept better rec-

ords on Violet’s “toxic attitude,” and when there weren’t

drastic improvements, fi red her “without hesitation.”

Amy Gallo is a contributing editor at Harvard Business

Review and the author of the HBR Guide to Dealing with

Confl ict . She writes and speaks about workplace dynam-

ics. Follow her on Twitter @amyegallo.

143

CHAPTER 18

What to Do If

You’re a Toxic

Handler

by Sandra L. Robinson and Kira Schabram

Divani (not her real name) is a senior analyst at a large

telecommunications fi rm. She proudly describes herself

as her department’s “resident cheer-upper.” As she says,

“I have always been the person that people turn to for

support . . . I listen really well and I like to listen, I like

to help.” But the year before I spoke to her, Divani’s or-

ganization was going through a major change initiative:

“I already had so much on my plate, and so many col-

leagues were leaning on me—turning to me to process,

Adapted from “When You’re the Person Your Colleagues Always Vent

To” posted on hbr.org on January 11, 2016 (product #H03A8W)

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Dealing with Diffi

cult People

commiserate, ask for advice. It was hard to get through

my own deadlines and also be there for my coworkers. I

was drowning in stress and nearing burnout.” She told

us about feeling down on Sunday nights, feeling increas-

ingly angry and cynical, and having trouble sleeping be-

cause she couldn’t “shut my mind off.” She took up smok-

ing again after having given it up for four years and let

her exercise routine falter.

Divani is what former Sauder School of Business pro-

fessor Peter Frost and one of us (Sandra) have termed

a toxic handler, someone who voluntarily shoulders the

sadness, frustration, bitterness, and anger that are en-

demic to organizational life just as joy and success are.

Toxic handlers can be found at all levels of the organi-

zation, particularly in roles that span disparate groups.

And they are by no means confi ned to management

roles. Their work is diffi cult and critical even if it often

goes uncelebrated; it keeps organizations positive and

productive even as the individuals within them neces-

sarily clash and tussle. By carrying others’ confi dences,

suggesting solutions to interpersonal issues, working be-

hind the scenes to prevent pain, and reframing diffi cult

messages in constructive ways, toxic handlers absorb the

negativity in day-to-day professional life and allow em-

ployees to focus on constructive work.

This isn’t easy work. And as Sandra’s and Peter Frost’s

research of over 70 toxic handlers (or those who man-

aged them) revealed, individuals in these roles frequently

experience untenably high levels of stress and strain,

which affect their physical health and career paths and

often mean they have a diminished capacity to help oth-

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What to Do If You’re a Toxic Handler

ers in the long run—a side effect that is most troubling

for handlers.

But if handlers can recognize that they’re playing a

role that is both highly valuable and burdensome, they

can see their own emotional competence in a new light

and recognize the signs of serious strain while there’s

still something they can do about it.

How do you know if you’re a toxic handler? Here are

some questions to ask yourself:

• Are you working in an organizational character-

ized by lots of change, dysfunction, or politics?

• Are you working in a role that spans different

groups or different levels?

• Do you spend a lot of time listening to and offering

advice to colleagues at work?

• Do people come to you to unload their worries,

emotions, secrets, or workplace problems?

• Do you have a hard time saying “no” to colleagues,

especially when they need you?

• Do you spend time behind the scenes, managing

politics and infl uencing decisions so others are

protected?

• Do you tend to mediate communication between a

toxic individual and others?

• Are you that person who feels compelled to stand

up for the people at work that need your help?

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Dealing with Diffi

cult People

• Do you think of yourself as a counselor, mediator,

or peacemaker?

If you’ve answered “yes” to four or more of these ques-

tions, then you may be a toxic handler. Before you panic

at that label, recognize that there are both positives and

negatives to fulfi lling this role. On the positive side, be-

ing a toxic handler means you have valuable emotional

strengths: You’re probably a good listener; you’re em-

pathetic; you’re good at suggesting solutions instead of

piling on problems. The people around you value the

support you provide. It’s important, too, to understand

that this role is strategically critical to organizations: You

likely defuse tough situations and reduce dysfunction.

Now for the bad news. Chances are that you’re taking

on more work than is covered in your formal job descrip-

tion (and in fact, as an unsung hero, you may not be get-

ting any kind of formal credit from the organization for

these efforts and how much you bring to them). Listen-

ing, mediating, and working behind the scenes to pro-

tect others takes important time away from your other

responsibilities. More importantly, it also takes tremen-

dous emotional energy to listen, comfort, and counsel.

As you are not a trained therapist, you may also be inad-

vertently taking on others’ pain and slowly paying a price

for it. Sandra’s research shows that toxic handlers tend

to take on others’ emotions but have no way to offl oad

them. Quite likely, as a person who is constantly help-

ing others, you may be unlikely to be seeking support for

yourself. And lastly, this role may be part of your identity,

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What to Do If You’re a Toxic Handler

something that brings you fulfi llment and in which you

take satisfaction—and so it is diffi cult to step away from.

Consider Sheung-Li (not his real name). His man-

ager was a star with a great track record, but he created

a lot of turmoil. He wouldn’t take the time to get to know

anyone on Sheung-Li’s team personally and totally dis-

regarded more junior members. He was also obsessed

with lofty performance goals that seemed to come out of

nowhere. “My main role became protecting my team, re-

assuring them, keeping them focused on our objectives

and away from the tensions this guy continually created,”

Sheung-Li described. “I spent an inordinate amount of

time massaging the message, trying to convince my boss

to reconsider his decisions so as to avoid the obvious fall-

out they would bring, playing mediator when our team

was not delivering. I felt like I was treading water all the

time. And I’m not even sure I was protecting my team

from the pain he was causing. I was losing sleep over

what was happening to my team, I had lost weight, and

I was starting to get sick with one bug after another. I

don’t know if that was the cause but I know this was a

really tough time in my life. It was hard to concentrate

on anything else.”

So if Sheung-Li’s and Divani’s stories sound familiar,

how can you continue to help to your colleagues (and

your organization!) while also protecting yourself? How

can you keep playing your valuable role in a sustain-

able way?

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Dealing with Diffi

cult People

Start by assessing whether the role is indeed taking

a toll. Some toxic handlers are able to naturally take on

more than others; you need to know what’s right for

you at any given time. Look for evidence of strain and

burnout: physical symptoms like insomnia, jaw pain

and TMJ, heart palpitations, more sickness than usual.

Do you have a shorter fuse than you used to, or an in-

ability to concentrate? Sometimes these symptoms can

sneak up on you, so it may help to check in with others

to see if they’ve noticed a change. If you’re not experienc-

ing stress as a result, there’s nothing you need to change

other than being aware and keeping an eye out. Being a

toxic handler only needs to be “fi xed” if it’s actually hurt-

ing you. Here’s how:

Reduce symptoms of stress

Turn to tried-and-true methods for stress relief: medi-

tation, exercise, enough sleep, and healthful eating. Be-

cause toxic handlers have trouble doing things just for

themselves, keep in mind that you’re helping your col-

leagues by taking care of yourself. Set your colleagues as

your intention for your meditation or yoga practice.

Pick your battles

It’s hard to ask yourself where you’ll have the most im-

pact if you’re emotionally drawn to every problem, but

it’s an exercise that will allow you to be more helpful

where you can actually make a difference. Who is likely

to be fi ne without your help? In which situations have

you not even made a dent, despite your best efforts? Step

away from these interactions.

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What to Do If You’re a Toxic Handler

Learn to say “no”

It’s hard to say no to things you want to do, but it’s im-

portant. Here’s how to do it while still being supportive:

• Convey empathy. Make it clear that you feel for

your colleague in their pain—you’re not deny-

ing that they are having a legitimate emotional

response to a situation.

• Tell them you’re currently not in a position to be

most helpful to them right now and, to the extent

you are comfortable, explain the reasons why.

• Consider alternative sources of support. Refer your

colleague to another person in the organization, or

someone having a similar experience (so they can

provide mutual support to one another). Suggest

an article, book, or other resource on the topic

(e.g., something on managing confl ict or handling

offi ce politics). Or, if you know from experience

that the person is good at coming up with creative

solutions themselves, you can simply offer them

encouragement to do so.

Let go of the guilt

If you feel guilty that you’re not stepping in to help some-

one, here are some things to consider:

• Recognize that confl icts are often better solved by

the parties directly involved. If you’re stepping in

repeatedly, you’re not helping people acquire the

skills and tools they need to succeed.

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Dealing with Diffi

cult People

• Question whether you are truly the only one that

can help in a particular situation. Enlist trusted

others in the organization to help you think

through this—you may identify a way to share

the load.

• Remember that there is only so much of you to go

around: Saying yes to one more person necessar-

ily means that you are agreeing to do less for those

people and projects you have already committed to.

Form a community

Find other toxic handlers to turn to for support—these

could be others in similar roles in your organization, or

other team members whom you see dealing with the fall-

out from the same toxic leader. You can also identify a pal

to vent to or create a more formal group that comes to-

gether regularly to share their experiences. This is a par-

ticularly good option if your whole team or organization

is going through turmoil and you know there are others

experiencing the same challenges. Keep these outlets

from turning into repetitive venting sessions by focusing

the conversation on creative problem solving and advice.

Take breaks

These can be as small or as dramatic as you need. Divani

started working with her door closed, which she had

never done before. “I felt terrible about this, as if I was

abandoning my coworkers who needed me. But if I lost

my job, I wasn’t going to be much good to anybody,” she

explained. Consider giving yourself a mental health day

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What to Do If You’re a Toxic Handler

off of work or planning a signifi cant vacation. In more

dramatic situations, you could also consider a temporary

reassignment of your role; because jobs that require you

to mediate between multiple teams or groups tend to

come under particular fi re, you’re more likely to get the

respite you need if you are able to step away from that

role for a time.

These breaks don’t need to be forever, though. “Things

have since calmed down at work,” Divani has reported,

“and I fi nd I have gravitated back to being the person

people lean on for emotional support, but at this point it

is totally doable.”

Make a change

If nothing you are doing has resulted in a shift, your best

option may be to leave. Sheung-Li explained: “After two

years of this [toxic situation], and at the encouragement

of my wife, I saw a therapist. It then became clear to

me this work reality was not going to change, this toxic

manager was not going anywhere, the stress was eating

me alive, and I am the one that needed to change. I did

a bunch of things, but I think the key thing I did was I

ended up making a lateral move in our company to es-

cape this role and to protect my long-term well-being. It

was the best decision I ever made.”

Consider therapy

It may sound dramatic, but Sheung-Li’s decison to talk to

a therapist is a highly useful one. A trained psychologist

can help you identify burnout, manage your symptoms

of stress, help you learn to say “no,” and work through

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Dealing with Diffi

cult People

any guilt. Not only can they help you protect yourself

from the emotional vagaries of being a toxic handler;

they can also assist you in your role. Clinical psycholo-

gists themselves are trained to listen to their clients em-

pathetically without taking on their emotions. They can

help you build the skills you need to help others without

absorbing as much of the emotional burden yourself.

Lastly, here are some things we suggest you avoid. While

they seem like good solutions on the surface, they often

aren’t as helpful as you’d think.

Just venting

While it’s good to unburden yourself of your emotions—

catharsis can reduce aggression—too much venting can

actually increase stress levels. You want to move forward,

rather than dwelling on problems. And this is as true for

those confi ding in you as it is for you! When people come

to you to vent, consider saying something like, “I hear

you! How about we think about what we can change to

make this better?”

Going to your boss or HR

Sadly, the role of toxic handler is often underrecognized

and underappreciated in organizations, despite its tre-

mendous value. This means that while your boss may

want to help, it can be risky for them in many organiza-

tional cultures. Similarly, many fi rms are unlikely to in-

tervene in a toxic situation on behalf of the handler.

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What to Do If You’re a Toxic Handler

Yet toxic handlers are critical to the emotional well-

being of organizations and the people in them. If you’re a

toxic handler, learn to monitor yourself for signs of emo-

tional or physical fatigue—and know how to step away

when you need to—so that you can keep doing what you

do best.

Sandra L. Robinson is a professor of organizational be-

havior at the University of British Columbia’s Sauder

School of Business. Kira Schabram is an assistant profes-

sor of organizational behavior at the University of Wash-

ington’s Foster School of Business.

155

SECTION SIX

Understand

Empathy

CHAPTER 19

What Is Empathy?

by Daniel Goleman

The word “attention” comes from the Latin attendere,

meaning “to reach toward.” This is a perfect defi nition

of focus on others, which is the foundation of empathy

and of an ability to build social relationships—the sec-

ond and third pillars of emotional intelligence (the fi rst

is self-awareness).

Executives who can effectively focus on others are

easy to recognize. They are the ones who fi nd common

ground, whose opinions carry the most weight, and with

whom other people want to work. They emerge as natu-

ral leaders regardless of organizational or social rank.

The Empathy Triad

We talk about empathy most commonly as a single attri-

bute. But a close look at where leaders are focusing when

Excerpted from “The Focused Leader” in Harvard Business Review,

December 2013 (product #R0205B)

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Understand Empathy

they exhibit it reveals three distinct kinds of empathy,

each important for leadership effectiveness:

• Cognitive empathy: the ability to understand an-

other person’s perspective.

• Emotional empathy: the ability to feel what some-

one else feels.

• Empathic concern: the ability to sense what an-

other person needs from you.

Cognitive empathy enables leaders to explain them-

selves in meaningful ways—a skill essential to getting the

best performance from their direct reports. Contrary to

what you might expect, exercising cognitive empathy re-

quires leaders to think about feelings rather than to feel

them directly.

An inquisitive nature feeds cognitive empathy. As one

successful executive with this trait puts it, “I’ve always

just wanted to learn everything, to understand anybody

that I was around—why they thought what they did, why

they did what they did, what worked for them and what

didn’t work.” But cognitive empathy is also an outgrowth

of self-awareness. The executive circuits that allow us to

think about our own thoughts and to monitor the feel-

ings that fl ow from them let us apply the same reasoning

to other people’s minds when we choose to direct our at-

tention that way.

Emotional empathy is important for effective men-

toring, managing clients, and reading group dynamics.

It springs from ancient parts of the brain beneath the

cortex—the amygdala, the hypothalamus, the hippocam-

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What Is Empathy?

pus, and the orbitofrontal cortex—that allow us to feel

fast without thinking deeply. They tune us in by arousing

in our bodies the emotional states of others: I literally

feel your pain. My brain patterns match up with yours

when I listen to you tell a gripping story. As Tania Singer,

the director of the social neuroscience department at the

Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain

Sciences, in Leipzig, Germany, says, “You need to under-

stand your own feelings to understand the feelings of

others.” Accessing your capacity for emotional empathy

depends on combining two kinds of attention: a deliber-

ate focus on your own echoes of someone else’s feelings

and an open awareness of that person’s face, voice, and

other external signs of emotion. (See the sidebar “When

Empathy Needs to Be Learned.”)

Empathic concern, which is closely related to emo-

tional empathy, enables you to sense not just how people

feel but what they need from you. It’s what you want in

your doctor, your spouse—and your boss. Empathic con-

cern has its roots in the circuitry that compels parents’

attention to their children. Watch where people’s eyes

go when someone brings an adorable baby into a room,

and you’ll see this mammalian brain center leaping into

action.

Research suggests that as people rise through the

ranks, their ability to maintain personal connections

suffers.

One neural theory holds that the response is triggered

in the amygdala by the brain’s radar for sensing dan-

ger and in the prefrontal cortex by the release of oxyto-

cin, the chemical for caring. This implies that empathic

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Understand Empathy

WHEN EMPATHY NEEDS TO BE LEARNED

Emotional empathy can be developed. That’s the con-

clusion suggested by research conducted with physi-

cians by Helen Riess, the director of the Empathy and

Relational Science Program at Boston’s Massachusetts

General Hospital. To help the physicians monitor them-

selves, Riess set up a program in which they learned

to focus using deep, diaphragmatic breathing and to

cultivate a certain detachment—to watch an interac-

tion from the ceiling, as it were, rather than being lost

in their own thoughts and feelings. “Suspending your

own involvement to observe what’s going on gives you

a mindful awareness of the interaction without being

completely reactive,” says Riess. “You can see if your

own physiology is charged up or balanced. You can no-

tice what’s transpiring in the situation.” If a doctor re-

alizes that she’s feeling irritated, for instance, that may

be a signal that the patient is bothered too.

Those who are utterly at a loss may be able to prime

emotional empathy essentially by faking it until they

make it, Riess adds. If you act in a caring way—looking

people in the eye and paying attention to their expres-

sions, even when you don’t particularly want to—you

may start to feel more engaged.

concern is a double-edged feeling. We intuitively experi-

ence the distress of another as our own. But in deciding

whether we will meet that person’s needs, we deliber-

ately weigh how much we value his or her well-being.

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What Is Empathy?

Getting this intuition-deliberation mix right has great

implications. Those whose sympathetic feelings become

too strong may themselves suffer. In the helping profes-

sions, this can lead to compassion fatigue; in executives,

it can create distracting feelings of anxiety about people

and circumstances that are beyond anyone’s control. But

those who protect themselves by deadening their feel-

ings may lose touch with empathy. Empathic concern

requires us to manage our personal distress without

numbing ourselves to the pain of others. (See the sidebar

“When Empathy Needs to Be Controlled.”)

Daniel Goleman is a codirector of the Consortium for

Research on Emotional Intelligence in Organizations

at Rutgers University, coauthor of Primal Leadership:

Leading with Emotional Intelligence (Harvard Busi-

ness Review Press, 2013), and author of The Brain and

Emotional Intelligence: New Insights and Leadership:

Selected Writings (More Than Sound, 2011). His latest

book is A Force for Good: The Dalai Lama’s Vision for

Our World (Bantam, 2015).

WHEN EMPATHY NEEDS TO BE CONTROLLED

Getting a grip on our impulse to empathize with other

people’s feelings can help us make better decisions when

someone’s emotional fl ood threatens to overwhelm us.

( continued)

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WHEN EMPATHY NEEDS TO BE CONTROLLED

( continued)

Ordinarily, when we see someone pricked with a

pin, our brains emit a signal indicating that our own

pain centers are echoing that distress. But physicians

learn in medical school to block even such automatic

responses. Their attentional anesthetic seems to be

deployed by the temporal-parietal junction and re-

gions of the prefrontal cortex, a circuit that boosts

concentration by tuning out emotions. That’s what is

happening in your brain when you distance yourself

from others in order to stay calm and help them. The

same neural network kicks in when we see a problem

in an emotionally overheated environment and need

to focus on looking for a solution. If you’re talking with

someone who is upset, this system helps you under-

stand the person’s perspective intellectually by shifting

from the heart-to-heart of emotional empathy to the

head-to-heart of cognitive empathy.

What’s more, some lab research suggests that the

appropriate application of empathic concern is critical

to making moral judgments. Brain scans have revealed

that when volunteers listened to tales of people being

subjected to physical pain, their own brain centers for

experiencing such pain lit up instantly. But if the story

was about psychological suff ering, the higher brain

centers involved in empathic concern and compassion

took longer to activate. Some time is needed to grasp

the psychological and moral dimensions of a situation.

The more distracted we are, the less we can cultivate

the subtler forms of empathy and compassion.

164

CHAPTER 20

Beyond Empathy:

The Power of

Compassion

An interview with Daniel Goleman

by Andrea Ovans

Two decades before Daniel Goleman fi rst wrote about

emotional intelligence in the pages of HBR, he met

the Dalai Lama at Amherst College. The Dalai Lama

mentioned to the young science journalist for the New

York Times that he was interested in meeting with sci-

entists. Thus began a long, rich friendship as Goleman

became involved over the years in arranging a series of

Adapted from content posted on hbr.org on May 4, 2015, as “What the

Dalai Lama Taught Daniel Goleman About Emotional Intelligence”

(product #H021KQ)

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Understand Empathy

what he calls “extended dialogues” between the Buddhist

spiritual leader and researchers in fi elds ranging from

ecology to neuroscience. On the occasion of his friend’s

80th birthday, he was asked to write a book describing

the Dalai Lama’s compassionate approach to addressing

the world’s most intractable problems. A Force for Good:

The Dalai Lama’s Vision for Our World, which draws

both on Goleman’s background in cognitive science and

his long relationship with the Dalai Lama, is both an

exploration of the science and the power of compassion

and a call to action. Curious about the book and about

how the Dalai Lama’s views on compassion informed

Goleman’s thinking on emotional intelligence, I caught

up with Goleman over the phone. What follows are ed-

ited excerpts from our conversation.

HBR: Let’s start with some defi nitions here. What is

compassion, as you are describing it? It sounds a lot like

empathy, one of the major components of emotional

intelligence. Is there a diff erence?

Goleman: Yes, an important difference. Three kinds

of empathy are important to emotional intelligence:

cognitive empathy—the ability to understand an-

other person’s point of view, emotional empathy—the

ability to feel what someone else feels, and empathic

concern— the ability to sense what another person

needs from you [see chapter 19, “What Is Empa-

thy?”]. Cultivating all three kinds of empathy, which

originate in different parts of the brain, is important

for building social relationships.

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Beyond Empathy: The Power of Compassion

But compassion takes empathy a step further.

When you feel compassion, you feel distress when

you witness someone else in distress—and because of

that you want to help that person.

Why draw this distinction?

Compassion makes the difference between under-

standing and caring. It’s the kind of love that a parent

has for a child. Cultivating it more broadly means

extending that to the other people in our lives and to

people we encounter.

I think that in the workplace, that attitude has a

hugely positive effect, whether it’s in how we relate

to our peers, how we are as a leader, or how we relate

to clients and customers. A positive disposition to-

ward another person creates the kind of resonance

that builds trust and loyalty and makes interactions

harmonious. And the opposite of that—when you do

nothing to show that you care—creates distrust and

disharmony and causes huge dysfunction at home

and in business.

When you put it that way, it’s hard to disagree that if

you treat people well things would go better than if you

don’t or that if you cared about them they would care a

lot more about you. So why do you think that doesn’t just

happen naturally? Is it a cultural thing? Or a misplaced

confusion about when competition is appropriate?

I think too often there’s a muddle in people’s think-

ing that if I’m nice to another person or if I have their

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Understand Empathy

interests at heart it means that I don’t have my own

interests at heart. The pathology of that is, “Well, I’ll

just care about me and not the other person.” And

that, of course, is the kind of attitude that leads to lots

of problems in the business realm and in the personal

realm. But compassion also includes yourself. If we

protect ourselves and make sure we’re okay—and also

make sure the other person is okay—that creates a

different framework for working with and cooperat-

ing with other people.

Could you give me an example of how that might work in

the business world?

There’s research that was done on star salespeople

and on client managers that found that the lowest

level of performance was a kind of “I’m going to get

the best deal I can now, and I don’t care how this

affects the other person” attitude, which means that

you might make the sale but that you lose the rela-

tionship. But at the top end, the stars were typifi ed

by the attitude, “I am working for the client as well as

myself. I’m going to be completely straight with them,

and I’m going to act as their advisor. If the deal I have

is not the best deal they can get I’m going to let them

know because that’s going to strengthen the relation-

ship, even though I might lose this specifi c sale.” And

I think that captures the difference between the “me

fi rst” and the “let’s all do well” attitude that I’m get-

ting at.

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Beyond Empathy: The Power of Compassion

How would we cultivate compassion if we just weren’t

feeling it?

Neuroscientists have been studying compassion

recently, and places like Stanford, Yale, UC Berkeley,

and the University of Wisconsin, Madison, among

others, have been testing methodologies for increas-

ing compassion. Right now there’s a kind of a trend

toward incorporating mindfulness into the work-

place, and it turns out there’s data from the Max

Planck Institute showing that enhancing mindfulness

does have an effect in brain function but that the

circuitry that’s affected is not the circuitry for concern

or compassion. In other words, there’s no automatic

boost in compassion from mindfulness alone.

Still, in the traditional methods of meditation

that mindfulness in the workplace is based on, the

two were always linked, so that you would practice

mindfulness in a context in which you’d also cultivate

compassion.

Stanford, for example, has developed a program

that incorporates secularized versions of methods

that have originally come from religious practices. It

involves a meditation in which you cultivate an at-

titude of loving-kindness or of concern, or of compas-

sion, toward people. First you do this for yourself,

then for people you love, then for people you just

know. And fi nally you do it for everyone. And this

has the effect of priming the circuitry responsible for

compassion within the brain so that you are more

inclined to act that way when the opportunity arises.

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Understand Empathy

You’ve remarked that the Dalai Lama is a very distinctive

kind of leader. Is there something we could learn as

leaders ourselves from his unique form of leadership?

Observing him over the years, and then doing this

book for which I interviewed him extensively, and

of course being immersed in leadership literature

myself, three things struck me.

The fi rst is that he’s not beholden to any organiza-

tion at all. He’s not in any business. He’s not a party

leader. He’s a citizen of the world at large. And this

has freed him to tackle the largest problems we face.

I think that to the extent that a leader is beholden to

a particular organization or outcome, that creates a

kind of myopia of what’s possible and what matters.

Focus narrows to the next quarter’s results or the next

election. He’s way beyond that. He thinks in terms

of generations and of what’s best for humanity as a

whole. Because his vision is so expansive, he can take

on the largest challenges, rather than small, narrowly

defi ned ones.

So I think there’s a lesson here for all of us, which

is to ask ourselves if there is something that limits

our vision—that limits our capacity to care. And is

there a way to enlarge it?

The second thing that struck me is that he gath-

ers information from everywhere. He meets with

heads of state, and he meets with beggars. He’s

getting information from people at every level of

society worldwide. This casting a large net lets him

understand situations in a very deep way, and he can

170

Beyond Empathy: The Power of Compassion

analyze them in many different ways and come up

with solutions that aren’t confi ned by anyone. And I

think that’s another lesson everyday leaders can take

from him.

The third thing would be the scope of his compas-

sion, which I think is an ideal that we could strive for.

It’s pretty unlimited. He seems to care about every-

body and the world at large.

Daniel Goleman is the codirector of the Consortium for

Research on Emotional Intelligence in Organizations

at Rutgers University, a coauthor of Primal Leadership:

Leading with Emotional Intelligence (Harvard Busi-

ness Review Press, 2013), and the author of The Brain

and Emotional Intelligence: New Insights (More Than

Sound, 2011). His latest book is A Force for Good: The

Dalai Lama’s Vision for Our World (Bantam, 2015).

Andrea Ovans is a former senior editor at Harvard Busi-

ness Review.

171

SECTION SEVEN

Build Your

Resilience

CHAPTER 21

Resilience in the

Moment

During diffi cult interactions, you may begin to question

your perceptions about yourself. For example, suppose a

direct report says, “I didn’t attend the meeting because I

didn’t think you valued my ideas.” In response, you won-

der to yourself, “Maybe I’m not a competent manager af-

ter all.”

For many people, the sense that their self-image is be-

ing challenged creates intense emotions. These feelings

can become overwhelming, making it virtually impos-

sible to converse productively about any subject. For this

reason, be sure to address feelings about self- image—

in yourself and in the other person—during tough

con versations.

Adapted from “Address Emotions” in the Harvard ManageMentor

topic “Diffi cult Interactions” (Harvard Business Publishing, 2016,

electronic).

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Build Your Resilience

Understand Self-Image

Your self-image comes from many different assumptions

that you’ve made about yourself:

• “I’m an effective manager.”

• “I’m a good person.”

• “I care about my employees.”

• “I’m committed to my organization’s success.”

This set of assumptions may help you meet a need for

self-esteem, competence, and appreciation from others.

Few people like to view themselves in a negative light—

as incompetent, uncaring, or disloyal.

Why Denial Is Common

Many people view self-image from an “either/or” mind-

set: “I’m either loyal or disloyal” or “I’m either caring

or uncaring.” Unfortunately, this perspective makes it

impossible for people to tolerate criticism and negative

feedback from others.

For instance, if a colleague says, “I was really disap-

pointed when you didn’t support my proposal,” you

might conclude, “I can’t possibly be a loyal person if I

don’t support my peer’s ideas.” If deciding that you’re dis-

loyal feels intolerable, you may practice denial and shoot

back with something like, “I did support your proposal.”

Other Reactions to Threats

Other reactions to self-image challenges include:

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Resilience in the Moment

• Burying the feelings, adopting a detached manner,

and resorting to generalizations: “Let’s calm down

and establish precise standard operating proce-

dures here.”

• Striking back at the other person defensively: “Are

you calling me a liar?!”

• Refusing to face the disagreement directly: “Let’s

just forget about it and move on.”

None of these responses enables you to listen to feed-

back and make the changes needed to improve the way

you interact with others.

Handle Threats to Your Self-Image

Several strategies can help you effectively handle chal-

lenges to your self-image:

• Understand your self-image. List all the assump-

tions that infl uence your perception of yourself. By

anticipating that you might experience defensive-

ness over threats to these particular beliefs, you

may be better able to control negative feelings if

they do arise.

• Adopt a “both/and” mindset. Instead of assuming

that you can be, for example, either competent or

incompetent, remind yourself that you and others

are a mixture of positive and negative. You’re likely

competent at some things and not so skilled at

others.

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Build Your Resilience

• Accept imperfection. Acknowledge that everyone

makes mistakes at times. The key is to learn from

them.

HOW TO RESPOND TO CRITICISM

by Peter Bregman

At one point or another, we’ve all been blindsided by

criticism and reacted poorly. I remember once leading

a project that I thought was going great—until my two

colleagues took me aside to tell me I was being con-

trolling and overbearing. I immediately became defen-

sive. I had trouble listening to them, and I became self-

conscious and awkward for the rest of the project.

Surprise criticism about an issue you haven’t per-

ceived yourself often has that eff ect. It emotionally

overpowers you. But you can respond more produc-

tively. As you listen to the feedback and your adrena-

line starts to fl ow, pause, take a deep breath, and then

follow this game plan.

Acknowledge and set aside your feelings. We call

it constructive criticism, and it usually is, but it can

also feel painful, destabilizing, and personal. Notice

and acknowledge to yourself the hurt, anger, embar-

rassment, or insuffi

ciency you might feel. Recognize

the feelings, label them as feelings, and then put them

aside so the noise doesn’t crowd out your hearing.

Also, look beyond the delivery of the criticism.

Feedback is hard to give, and your critic may not be

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Resilience in the Moment

skilled at doing it well, but that doesn’t mean it’s not

valuable and insightful. Avoid confusing the package

with the message.

Next, don’t agree or disagree. Just collect the data.

Ask questions. Solicit examples. Recap what you’re

hearing, all in the spirit of understanding. Let go of the

need to respond. That will reduce your defensiveness

and give you space to really listen.

Criticism, especially surprise criticism, is useful in-

formation about how someone else perceives you. Fol-

lowing these steps will help make sure you can fully

understand it and can learn from it.

Peter Bregman is CEO of Bregman Partners, Inc., a

global management consulting fi rm that advises CEOs

and their leadership teams.

179

CHAPTER 22

Cultivate

Resilience in

Tough Times

A summary of the full-length HBR article “How Resil-

ience Works” by Diane Coutu , highlighting key ideas

and examples

IDEA IN BRIEF

Resilient people possess three defi ning characteristics:

• They coolly accept the harsh realities facing them.

• They

fi nd meaning in terrible times.

Adapted from “How Resilience Works” in Harvard Business Review,

May 2002 (product #R0205B)

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Build Your Resilience

• They have an uncanny ability to improvise, making

do with whatever’s at hand.

Fortunately, you can learn to be resilient. To cultivate re-

silience, apply these practices.

Face Down Reality

Instead of slipping into denial to cope with hardship, take

a sober, down-to-earth view of the reality of your situa-

tion. You’ll prepare yourself to act in ways that enable you

to endure—training yourself to survive before the fact.

Example: Admiral Jim Stockdale survived being

held prisoner and tortured by the Vietcong in part

by accepting he could be held for a long time. (He

was held for eight years.) Those who didn’t make it

out of the camps kept optimistically assuming they’d

be released on shorter timetables—by Christmas, by

Easter, by the Fourth of July. “I think they all died of

broken hearts,” Stockdale said.

Search for Meaning

When hard times strike, resist any impulse to view your-

self as a victim and cry, “Why me?” Rather, devise con-

structs about your suffering to create meaning for your-

self and theirs. You’ll build bridges from your present-day

ordeal to a fuller, better future. Those bridges will make

the present manageable, by removing the sense that the

present is overwhelming.

Example: Austrian psychiatrist and Auschwitz sur-

vivor Victor Frankl realized that to survive the camp,

he had to fi nd some purpose. He did so by imagining

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Cultivate Resilience in Tough Times

himself giving a lecture after the war on the psychol-

ogy of the concentration camp to help outsiders

understand what he had been through. By creating

concrete goals for himself, he rose above the suffer-

ings of the moment.

Continually Improvise

When disaster hits, be inventive. Make the most of what

you have, putting resources to unfamiliar uses and imag-

ining possibilities others don’t see.

Example: Mike founded a business with his friend

Paul, selling educational materials to schools, busi-

nesses, and consulting fi rms. When a recession hit,

they lost many core clients. Paul went through a

bitter divorce, suffered from depression, and couldn’t

work. When Mike offered to buy him out, Paul

slapped him with a lawsuit claiming Mike was try-

ing to steal the business.

Mike kept the company going any way he could—going

into joint ventures to sell English-language training ma-

terials to Russian and Chinese competitors, publishing

newsletters for clients, and even writing video scripts for

competitors. The lawsuit was eventually settled in his

favor, and he had a new and much more solid business

than the one he started out with.

Diane Coutu

is the director of client communications

at Banyan Family Business Advisors, headquartered in

Cambridge, Massachusetts, and is a former senior editor

at Harvard Business Review.

183

CHAPTER 23

Practice

Self-Compassion

by Christopher Germer

If a good friend tells you about an ordeal they’re facing or

a mistake they’ve made, how do you typically respond?

In all likelihood, you’ll offer kindness and comfort, per-

haps speaking in a warm and soothing tone, and maybe

offering a hug to show how much you care. When your

friend recovers and the conversation continues, chances

are that you’ll expand your support by encouraging your

friend to take necessary action or try to discover how to

steer clear of similar diffi culties in the future.

Now refl ect for a moment how you might you treat

yourself when you make a big mistake or experience a

Adapted from content posted on hbr.org on January 5, 2017, as “To Re-

cover from Failure, Try Some Self-Compassion” (product #H03E32)

185

Build Your Resilience

setback. It’s likely that you’d be much tougher on your-

self—that you’d spring to self-criticism (“I’m such an

idiot!”), hide in embarrassment or shame (“Ugggh!”),

or ruminate for a long time about your perceived short-

comings or bad luck (“Why me? Why did this happen to

me?”). When things go wrong in our lives, we tend to be-

come our own worst enemy.

To recover emotionally and get back on your feet,

however, there’s a different approach you can take:

self-compassion.

I’ve been working with mindfulness in my psycho-

therapy practice for over 30 years. It is a powerful re-

source that helps us stay present and focused on the task

at hand. I’ve come to realize, however, that a component

of mindfulness that is essential for emotional resilience

is often overlooked. In particular, when we fail in a big

way, we’re likely to become engulfed in shame and our

sense of self is dismantled. We all know what this feels

like—we’re unable to think straight, temporarily sus-

pended in time and place, dislocated from our bodies,

and uncertain who we really are. Shame has a way of

wiping out the very observer who is needed to be mind-

ful of our situation.

What does it take to rescue yourself and begin to ad-

dress the situation in an effective manner? You need to

treat yourself with the same kindness and support as

you’d provide for a dear friend.

A substantial and growing body of research shows

that this self-compassion is closely associated with emo-

tional resilience, including the ability to soothe our-

selves, recognize our mistakes and learn from them, and

motivate ourselves to succeed. Self-compassion is also

186

Practice Self-Compassion

consistently correlated with a wide range of measures

of emotional well-being such as optimism, life satisfac-

tion, autonomy, and wisdom, and with reduced anxiety,

depression, stress, and feelings of shame.1

To achieve these benefi ts, self-compassion must in-

clude three components, according to my colleague and

pioneering self-compassion researcher, Kristin Neff:

• Mindfulness: Awareness of what’s going on in the

present moment. To be kind to ourselves, fi rst we

need to know that we’re struggling while we’re

struggling. It also helps to name the emotions

we’re feeling in tricky situations and to ground

ourselves in the here and now (sensations, sounds,

sights). These are all skills associated with mind-

fulness that make space for a compassionate

response.

• Common humanity: Knowing we’re not alone.

Most of us tend to hide in shame when things go

really wrong in our lives, or we hide from ourselves

through distraction or with a few stiff drinks. The

antidote is recognizing our common humanity—

understanding that many others would feel the

same way in similar situations, and that we’re not

the only ones who suffer in life.

• Self-kindness: A kind and warm-hearted response

to ourselves. This can take many forms, such as a

gentle hand over the heart, validating how we feel,

talking to ourselves in an encouraging manner, or

by a simple act of kindness such as drinking a cup

of tea or listening to music.

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Build Your Resilience

When we feel threatened, our nervous system

is awash in adrenaline and thus goes into over-

drive. When we’re in this state, showing ourselves

care and kindness is usually the last thing we’re

inclined to do. When we experience positive, warm

connections, however, our system releases oxytocin

instead, a feel-good hormone that downregulates

the effects of adrenaline. Taking a mindful pause

and then bringing kindness to ourselves seems

to activate our innate caregiving system and the

calming effect of oxytocin, allowing the mind to

clear and giving us a chance to take rational steps

to resolve the issue.

Even though self-compassion is not the default op-

tion for most of us when things go wrong, anyone can

learn to do it. Neff has developed an exercise you can

use in everyday life when you need self-compassion the

most—the Self-Compassion Break (see the sidebar “Self-

Compassion Break”)—which is based on the three com-

ponents of self-compassion described above. (This is just

one exercise we offer as part of our empirically supported

Mindful Self-Compassion training program.)

SELF-COMPASSION BREAK

When you notice that you’re under stress or are emo-

tionally upset, see if you can locate where the emo-

tional discomfort resides your body. Where do you feel

it the most? Then say to yourself, slowly:

188

Practice Self-Compassion

1.

“This is a moment of struggle.” That’s mind-

fulness. See if you can fi nd your own words,

such as:

• “This

hurts.”

• “This is tough.”

• “Ouch!”

2. “Struggle is a part of living.”  That’s common

humanity. Other options include:

• “Other people feel this way.”

• “I’m not alone.”

• “We all struggle in our lives.”

Now, put your hands over your heart, or wherever it

feels soothing, sensing the warmth and gentle touch of

your hands, and say to yourself:

3. “May I be kind to myself. May I give myself

what I need.”  Perhaps there are more specifi c

words that you might need to hear right now,

such as:

• “May I accept myself as I am.”

• “May I learn to accept myself as I am.”

• “May I be safe.”

• “May I be strong.”

• “May I forgive myself.”

( continued)

189

Build Your Resilience

SELF-COMPASSION BREAK

( continued)

If you’re having trouble fi nding the right language,

it can help to imagine what you might say to a close

friend struggling with that same diffi

culty. Can you say

something similar to yourself, letting the words roll

gently through your mind?

Consider the following example of the Self-Compassion

Break in action: Your boss gave you a stretch assign-

ment to lead a large and critical project. The project was

a great success, due in large part to your skillful leader-

ship, and you believe you demonstrated that you’re ready

for a promotion. But when you raise the idea with your

boss, she laughs dismissively and changes the subject.

Livid with anger, you retreat from the conversation,

asking yourself why you bothered to work so hard in the

fi rst place, since you would never be recognized for it. Of

course your boss wasn’t going to support you, or even no-

tice—she just wanted someone to do the heavy lifting to

promote her own selfi sh agenda. Or maybe you’re hope-

lessly out of touch and your performance really wasn’t as

good as you thought it was? When we’re in the grip of

strong emotions, our minds run wild.

As a savvy businessperson, you might think that this

would be the perfect moment to advocate for yourself

if it were only possible to make a balanced, compelling

case for your promotion. But without a moment of self-

190

Practice Self-Compassion

compassion, your emotional reactivity is likely to stand

in your way—you’d put your anger on display instead of

showing off your leadership skills, or you’d let self-doubt

eat at your resolve to see the discussion through to an ac-

ceptable conclusion.

How do you activate self-compassion in the heat of

the moment? Begin by acknowledging how you feel;

for example, recognizing that you might still feel angry

(“She’s terrible, and I hate her”), see yourself as the vic-

tim (“She made me go through all of that—for what?!”),

or doubt yourself (“Maybe she’s right—maybe I don’t de-

serve a promotion—I didn’t do that great a job after all”).

Next, acknowledge that others would probably have

similar feelings in this situation: requesting a promotion

after you’ve expanded your skills and taken on more re-

sponsibility is a reasonable thing to do, and your emo-

tional reaction to the rejection of that request is not

out of line. Consider any examples you know of others

in similar situations—perhaps Rob in the fi nance de-

partment told you last year that his promotion was also

denied and you noticed how angry he was and how he

doubted his own worth. You are not alone.

Finally, express kindness to yourself: What would

you say to a friend in your shoes? Perhaps you’d say, “It’s

rough being taken for granted.” “Whatever comes of it,

that project was a huge success—look at the numbers.”

Also think about how you care for yourself already. Do

you go for a run, pet your dog, call a friend? If you do

that when you’re suffering, that’s self-compassion.

Once you’ve shifted your frame of mind from a threat

state to self-compassion, you’re likely fi nd yourself

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Build Your Resilience

calmer and in a place that you can sit down and write a

thoughtful and persuasive proposal about your promo-

tion —one that builds on your project success and exhib-

its your leadership potential under stress.

Lastly, a warning: Many people dismiss self- compassion

because they think it fl ies in the face of their ambition or

hard self-driving attitude—qualities that they feel have

made them successful. But being self-compassionate

doesn’t imply that you shouldn’t be ambitious or push

yourself to succeed. Rather it’s about how you motivate

yourself. Instead of using a whip—motivating yourself

with blame and harsh self-criticism—self-compassion

motivates like a good coach, with encouragement, kind-

ness, and support. It’s a simple reversal of the Golden

Rule—learning to treat ourselves as we naturally treat

others in need—with kindness, warmth, and respect.

Christopher Germer is a clinical psychologist and part-

time lecturer on psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.

He is a co-developer of the Mindful Self-Compassion

(MSC) program, author of The Mindful Path to Self-

Compassion, co-editor of Mindfulness and Psychother-

apy, and Wisdom and Compassion in Psychotherapy,

and a founding faculty member of the Institute for Medi-

tation and Psychotherapy and the Center for Mindfulness

and Compassion, Cambridge Health Alliance/Harvard

Medical School.

NOTE

1. See, for example: L. K. Barnard and J. F. Curry, “Self- Compassion:

Conceptualizations, Correlates, and Interventions,” Review of General

192

Practice Self-Compassion

Psychology 15, no. 4 (2011): 289–303; K. D. Neff, S. S. Rude, and

K. Kirkpatrick, “An Examination of Self-Compassion in Relation to

Positive Psychological Functioning and Personality Traits,” Journal

of Research in Personality 41 (2007): 908–916; F. Raes, “The Effect

of Self-Compassion on the Development of Depression Symptoms in

a Non-clinical Sample,” Mindfulness 2 (2011): 33–36; D. L. Zabelina

and M. D. Robinson, “Don’t Be So Hard on Yourself: Self-Compassion

Facilitates Creative Originality Among Self-Judgmental Individuals,”

Creativity Research Journal 22 (2010): 288–293; E. Schanche et al.,

“The Relationship Between Activating Affects, Inhibitory Affects, and

Self-Compassion in Patients with Cluster C Personality Disorders,”

Psychotherapy 48, no. 3 (2011): 293–303.

193

CHAPTER 24

Don’t Endure;

Recharge

by Shawn Achor and Michelle Gielan

As constant travelers and parents of a two-year-old, we

sometimes fantasize about how much work we could do

if we could just get on a plane, undistracted by phones,

friends, or Finding Nemo. And so in advance of a trip,

we race to get all our groundwork done: packing, go-

ing through TSA, doing a last-minute work call, calling

each other, boarding. But then when we try to have that

amazing in-fl ight work session, we fi nd that we get noth-

ing done. Even worse, after refreshing our email or read-

ing the same studies over and over, we are too exhausted

when we land to soldier on with the emails that have in-

evitably still piled up.

Adapted from content posted on hbr.org on June 24, 2016, as “Resil-

ience Is About How You Recharge, Not How You Endure” (product

#H02Z3O)

195

Build Your Resilience

Why can’t we be tougher—more resilient and deter-

mined in our work—so we can accomplish all of the goals

we set for ourselves? Through our current research, we

have come to realize that the problem comes from a cul-

tural misunderstanding of what it means to be resilient,

and the resulting impact of overworking.

As a society, we often associate “resilience” and “grit”

with a militaristic, “tough” approach to our work. We

imagine a Marine slogging through the mud, a boxer go-

ing one more round, or a football player picking himself

up off the turf for one more play. We believe that the lon-

ger we tough it out, the tougher we are, and therefore the

more successful we will be.

However, this entire conception is scientifi cally inac-

curate. In fact what’s holding back our ability to be re-

silient and successful is the lack of any kind of recovery

period. Resilience is defi ned as the ability to quickly

bounce back from stressful situations—no matter what

problems are thrown at us, we continually get back up,

ready for the next one. But even for the most resilient

person, getting ready doesn’t happen instantly. It is a

process—and an important one. Research has found

that there is a direct correlation between lack of recovery

and increased incidence of health and safety problems.

And lack of recovery—whether it disrupts our sleep with

thoughts of work or keeps us in continuous cognitive

arousal as we obsessively watch our phones—is costing

our companies $62 billion a year (that’s billion, not mil-

lion) in lost productivity.1

Misconceptions about resilience as nonstop activ-

ity and energy are often bred into us from an early age.

196

Don’t Endure; Recharge

For instance, parents might praise the resilience of their

high school student who stays up until 3 a.m. to fi nish

a science fair project. But when that exhausted student

drives to school, his impaired driving poses risks for

himself and others; at school, he doesn’t have the cog-

nitive resources to do well on his English test and has

lower self-control with his friends; and at home, he is

moody with his parents.

The bad habits we learn when we’re young only mag-

nify when we hit the workforce. In a study released last

month, researchers from Norway found that 7.8% of

Norwegians have become workaholics, where workahol-

ism is defi ned as “being overly concerned about work,

driven by an uncontrollable work motivation, and invest-

ing so much time and effort to work that it impairs other

important life areas.”2 And in fact that drive can backfi re

in the very area for which we’re sacrifi cing ourselves: In

her excellent book The Sleep Revolution: Transform-

ing Your Life, One Night at a Time, Arianna Huffi ngton

wrote, “We sacrifi ce sleep in the name of productivity,

but ironically our loss of sleep, despite the extra hours we

spend at work, adds up to 11 days of lost productivity per

year per worker, or about $2,280.”3

The key to resilience is not working really hard all

the time. It is actually found in the time that we stop

working and recover. Ideally, we need to create cycles for

ourselves in which we work hard, then stop and recover,

and then work again.

This conclusion is based on biology. Homeostasis, a

fundamental biological concept, is the ability of the body

to continuously restore and sustain its own well-being.

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Build Your Resilience

When the body is out of alignment and therefore in a

state of stress or exhaustion from overworking, we waste

a vast amount of mental and physical resources trying to

return to balance before we can move forward. As Jim

Loehr and Tony Schwartz have written in The Power of

Full Engagement, the more time you spend in the per-

formance zone, the more time you need in the recovery

zone; otherwise you risk burnout.

And if, instead of taking a break, you muster your re-

sources to continue to “try hard,” you need to burn ever

more energy in order to overcome your currently low

arousal level, which only exacerbates your exhaustion.

It’s a vicious downward spiral.

But the more imbalanced we become due to over-

working, the more value there is in activities that allow

us to return to a state of balance.

So what are those activities that allow us to return to

homeostasis and thereby increase our resilience? Most

people assume that if you stop doing a task like answer-

ing emails or writing a paper, that your brain will natu-

rally recover, so that when you start again later in the day

or the next morning, you’ll have your energy back. But

stopping work doesn’t mean you’re actually recovering:

If after work you lie around on the couch and check your

phone and get riled up by political commentary, or get

stressed thinking about decisions about how to renovate

your home, your brain has not received a break from

high mental arousal states. And surely everyone reading

this has occasionally lain in bed for hours, unable to fall

asleep because their brain is thinking about work, even

if they don’t have a device in hand. If you’re in bed for

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Don’t Endure; Recharge

eight hours, you may have rested, but you can still feel

exhausted the next day. That’s because rest and recovery

are not the same thing.

If you’re trying to build resilience at work, you need

adequate internal and external recovery periods. As re-

searchers F. R. H. Zijlstra, M. Cropley, and L. W. Ryd-

stedt wrote in a 2014 paper: “Internal recovery refers to

the shorter periods of relaxation that take place within

the frames of the workday or the work setting in the

form of short scheduled or unscheduled breaks, by shift-

ing attention or changing to other work tasks when the

mental or physical resources required for the initial task

are temporarily depleted or exhausted. External recovery

refers to actions that take place outside of work—e.g., in

the free time between the workdays, and during week-

ends, holidays or vacations.”4

There are four main researched ways to increase your

resilience. First, start by deliberately opening a space for

recovery to happen. We’ve worked with several compa-

nies that tout the benefi ts of investing in employee well-

being, but fail to create tangible results because they

don’t carve out time for their workers to devote part of

their workday to those rejuvenating activities. Adding

more activities to an already full plate of work increases

the stress load.

Second, it is crucial that you take all of your paid time

off. As we described in a previous HBR article entitled

“The Data-Driven Case for Vacation,” taking your days

off not only gives you recovery periods to recharge, but in

fact signifi cantly raises your productivity and the likeli-

hood of promotion.

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Build Your Resilience

Third, while it might sound counterintuitive, it is pos-

sible to use technology to limit tech use while building

internal recovery periods into your daily routine. The av-

erage person turns on their phone 150 times every day.5

If every distraction took only 1 minute (which would be

seriously optimistic), that would account for 2.5 hours

of every day. In her upcoming book The Future of Hap-

piness, based on her work at Yale Business School, Amy

Blankson suggests downloading the Instant or Moment

apps to see how many times you turn on your phone

each day; using the app reminds you to make a choice

in those moments when you grab your phone—and

choose to stay away. You can also use apps like Offtime

or Unplugged to create tech-free zones by strategically

scheduling automatic airplane modes. In addition, you

can take a cognitive break every 90 minutes to recharge

your batteries. Try to not have lunch at your desk, but in-

stead spend time outside or with your friends— not talk-

ing about work.

Fourth, now that you have carved out time for reju-

venation, it’s time to engage in an activity or two that

make you feel happy and replenished. Take the pressure

off and just do something for the fun of it! Go on a walk

or run, call and old friend, meditate by watching your

breath go in and out for fi ve minutes, try a new recipe, or

do something nice for someone else. Choose to do some-

thing that makes you feel alive, gives you a mental break

from work, and keeps you fully engaged the whole time.

Not only does spending your time this way help you

come back stronger, oftentimes these activities are more

memorable in the long run.

200

Don’t Endure; Recharge

As for us, we’ve started using our plane time as a

work-free zone, and thus as time to dip into the recov-

ery phase. The results have been fantastic. We are usu-

ally tired already by the time we get on a plane, and the

cramped space and spotty internet connection make

work more challenging. Now, instead of swimming up-

stream, we relax, meditate, sleep, watch movies, journal,

or listen to entertaining podcasts. And when we get off

the plane, instead of being depleted, we feel rejuvenated

and ready to return to the performance zone.

Shawn Achor is New York Times best-selling author of

The Happiness Advantage and Before Happiness. His

TED talk is one of the most popular, with over 14 mil-

lion views. He has lectured or researched at over a third

of the Fortune 100 and in 50 countries, as well as for the

NFL, NASA, and the White House. He is leading a se-

ries of courses on “21 Days to Inspire Positive Change”

with the Oprah Winfrey Network. Michelle Gielan, a na-

tional CBS News anchor turned UPenn positive psychol-

ogy researcher, is the best-selling author of Broadcasting

Happiness. She is partnered with Arianna Huffi ngton

to research how a solution-focused mindset fuels suc-

cess, and shares her research at organizations includ-

ing Google, American Express, and Boston Children’s

Hospital. Michelle is the host of the Inspire Happiness

program on PBS.

NOTES

1. J. K. Sluiter, “The Infl uence of Work Characteristics on the Need

for Recovery and Experienced Health: A Study on Coach Drivers,”

201

Build Your Resilience

Ergonomics 42, no. 4 (1999): 573–583; and American Academy of

Sleep Medicine, “Insomnia Costing U.S. Workforce $63.2 Billion a

Year in Lost Productivity,” ScienceDaily, September 2, 2011.

2. C. S. Andreassen et al., “The Relationships Between Workahol-

ism and Symptoms of Psychiatric Disorders: A Large-Scale Cross-

Sectional Study,” PLoS One 11, no. 5 (2016): e0152978.

3. Ronald C. Kessler et al., “Insomnia and the Performance of US

Workers: Results from the America Insomnia Survey,” Sleep 34, no. 9

(2011): 1161–1171.

4. F. R. H. Zijlstra et al., “From Recovery to Regulation: An At-

tempt to Reconceptualize ‘Recovery from Work’” (special issue paper)

(Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2014), 244.

5. J. Stern, “Cellphone Users Check Phones 150x/Day and Other

Internet Fun Facts,” Good Morning America, May 29, 2013.

202

CHAPTER 25

How Resilient

Are You?

by Manfred F. R. Kets de Vries

We all face setbacks from time to time, and the ability

to bounce back stronger than before is something we

envy in others. So how can we develop that ability in

ourselves?

A large body of research shows that resilient people are

generally strong in three areas: challenge, control, and

commitment. They accept that change, not stability, is

the norm; they believe they can infl uence events in their

lives; and they are engaged with the world around them.

This test will help you assess your strengths and

weaknesses in these areas and provide feedback on ways

to improve.

Adapted from material originally published on hbr.org on January 20,

2015

203

Build Your Resilience

Circle your reaction to each statement, then follow

the instructions below to score yourself.

Challenge

1. You’re told that you won’t be getting the promo-

tion you sought, because another candidate is

more qualifi ed.

a. Although you are upset, you say nothing.

b. You acknowledge that you are disappointed

and request a fuller explanation.

c. You ask what you need to do to improve your

chances for advancement in the future.

2. You learn that your company will be opening

an offi ce in Beijing. Succeeding in that market

would be diffi cult, but you know that you have

the right experience to lead the offi ce.

a. You consider the risks and decide not to pur-

sue the opportunity.

b. You discuss the pros and cons with some of

the people in your network.

c. You throw your hat into the ring.

3. A major client tells you that a contract you worked

hard to win has been given to a competitor.

a. You tell your team that you made every effort

to land the client.

b. You put the setback out of your mind, accept-

ing that some factors in the client’s decision

were beyond your control.

204

How Resilient Are You?

c. You refl ect on the experience, realizing that

you now have a much better understanding of

how to deal with this client in the future.

Control

4. You overhear an unfl attering conversation about

yourself.

a. You pretend it doesn’t bother you.

b. You remind yourself that the speakers don’t

know you very well.

c. You approach the speakers calmly and express

your desire to understand why they see you

that way.

5. Your boss comes to you on Friday afternoon with

an emergency: He wants to meet with a client

on Monday morning and needs you to prepare a

feasibility study fi rst. You have a family camping

trip planned for the weekend.

a. You accept the assignment, not mentioning

your weekend plans.

b. You mention the camping trip but agree to

the assignment after your boss emphasizes its

importance.

c. You tell your boss that you have made a com-

mitment to your family and ask if he can

schedule the meeting for Tuesday instead.

6. Work has become increasingly stressful. There

are too many deadlines, too many requests, too

many late nights.

205

Build Your Resilience

a. You tell yourself, “This, too, shall pass.”

b. You try to give some of your work to a

colleague.

c. You request a vacation or a leave of absence to

recharge.

Commitment

7. Your best friend says that he is worried about

your health and suggests that you join his fi tness

club.

a. You say, “No, thanks. I’m fi ne.”

b. You agree that the fi tness club is a good idea and

make a note in your calendar to look into it.

c. You take his concern to heart and arrange to

visit the club together.

8. Your company’s subsidiary in Africa requests

fi nan cial and technical support for a high school

in the region. Although there would be no

imme diate monetary benefi t to the fi rm, this is

a valuable opportunity to build a reputation as

a socially responsible employer.

a. You decline the request on cost grounds.

b. You agree to give the matter serious

consideration.

c. You give your consent and call a friend at the

World Bank for suggestions on how to launch

the initiative.

9. Early in your career you had set a goal to become

general manager at a Fortune 1000 company by

206

How Resilient Are You?

age 50. The clock is ticking: You’re 48, and you’re

a division head.

a. You accept your current role and decide to

make the best of it.

b. You continue striving for advancement but

lower your ambitions a bit.

c. You fi gure out a way to reach your goal.

Score Yourself

For each area, record the number of each answer below

and add up your total score for that area.

Challenge

# of a ___

=

# of b ___ x 2 =

# of c ___ x 3 =

Total =

= Challenge Score

If you had a high challenge score (7–9):

You turn diffi cult events to your advantage and view set-

backs as learning opportunities. You have positive rela-

tionships with others.

If you had a low challenge score (1–6):

You need to work on turning diffi cult events to your ad-

vantage and reframing them in a constructive light. If

you experience setbacks in the process, regard them as

learning opportunities, not failures. Remember the im-

portance of positive relationships with others.

207

Build Your Resilience

Control

# of a ___

=

# of b ___ x 2 =

# of c ___ x 3 =

Total =

= Control Score

If you had a high control score (7–9):

You can distinguish between things you can and can’t

control, and you deal with emotionally diffi cult problems

proactively. You see things in perspective and know how

to set boundaries.

If you had a low control score (1–6):

Work on distinguishing between things you can and

can’t control, perhaps with the help of an executive

coach or a therapist. Try to deal with emotionally dif-

fi cult problems proactively. Use humor to “roll with the

punches.” Set boundaries in both your professional life

and your personal life to avoid burnout. Delegate more

responsibilities to your direct reports.

Commitment

# of a ___

=

# of b ___ x 2 =

# of c ___ x 3 =

Total =

= Commitment Score

208

How Resilient Are You?

If you had a high commitment score (7–9):

You pursue goals that are meaningful to you and main-

tain positive relationships with people who matter to

you. You recognize the importance of health and balance

and have an active life outside of work.

If you had a low commitment score (1–6):

Clarify what is important to you and pursue those activi-

ties. Make an effort to spend time with people who are

meaningful in your life. Develop healthy habits, includ-

ing daily exercise, regular sleep, and relaxation tech-

niques. Don’t ignore problems.

To take this assessment online and compare your re-

sults to those of other HBR readers, visit https://hbr

.org/2015/01/assessment-how-resilient-are-you.

Manfred F. R. Kets de Vries is the Distinguished Profes-

sor of Leadership Development and Organizational

Change at INSEAD in France, Singapore, and Abu

Dhabi. His most recent book is Riding the Leadership

Roller Coaster: An Observer’s Guide (Palgrave Macmil-

lan, 2016).

209

SECTION EIGHT

Developing

Emotional

Intelligence

on Your Team

CHAPTER 26

How to Help

Someone Develop

Emotional

Intelligence

by Annie McKee

It’s easy to point fi ngers at those in the offi ce who lack

basic self-awareness or social skill. Whether clueless col-

leagues or brutish bosses, these people make life chal-

lenging for the rest of us, ruining the dynamic of work

teams and shattering productivity and morale. But in

fact most of us can stand to improve our emotional intel-

ligence. Even those of us who are adept extroverts can

Adapted from content posted on hbr.org on April 24, 2015 (product

#H0216Z)

213

Developing Emotional Intelligence on Your Team

learn how to become more empathetic; those who are

kind givers can learn to be more persuasive.

As a manager, it’s up to you to develop the emo-

tional intelligence of your direct reports—whether they

are socially awkward, downright nasty, or simply look-

ing to become more infl uential. In doing so, you’ll help

them grow in their careers—and make your workplace a

healthier, happier, more productive place to be.

Here’s the problem: Emotional intelligence is dif-

fi cult to develop because it is linked to psychological

development and neurological pathways created over

an entire lifetime (to learn more, see Daniel Goleman’s

book The Brain and Emotional Intelligence: New In-

sights). It takes a lot of effort to change long-standing

habits of human interaction—not to mention founda-

tional competencies like self-awareness and emotional

self-control. People need to be invested in changing

their behavior and developing their emotional intel-

ligence, or it just doesn’t happen. What this means in

practice is that you don’t have even a remote chance of

changing someone’s emotional intelligence unless they

want to change.

Most of us assume that people will change their be-

havior when told to do so by a person with authority

(you, the manager). For complicated change and de-

velopment, however, it is clear that people don’t sus-

tain change when promised incentives like good as-

signments or a better offi ce.1 And when threatened or

punished, they get downright ornery and behave really

badly. Carrot-and-stick performance management pro-

cesses and the behaviorist approach on which they are

214

How to Help Someone Develop Emotional Intelligence

based are deeply fl awed; yet most of us start (and end)

there, even in the most innovative organizations.

What does work is:

First, helping people fi nd a deep and very personal

vision of their own future.

Then, helping them see how their current ways of

operating might need a bit of work if that future is to

be realized.

These are the fi rst two steps in Richard Boyatzis’s in-

tentional change theory—which we’ve been testing with

leaders for years. According to Boyatzis—and backed up

by our work with leaders—here’s how people really can

begin and sustain change on complex abilities linked to

emotional intelligence:

First, fi nd the dream

If you’re coaching an employee, you must fi rst help them

discover what’s important in life. Only then can you

move on to aspects of work that are important to them.

Help your employee craft a clear and compelling vision

of a future that includes powerful and positive relation-

ships with family, friends, and coworkers. Notice that I’m

talking about coaching, not managing, your employee.

There’s a big difference.

Next, fi nd out what’s really going on

What’s the current state of your employee’s emotional in-

telligence? Once people have a powerful dream to draw

strength from, they’re strong enough to take the heat—to

215

Developing Emotional Intelligence on Your Team

fi nd out the truth. If you are now truly coaching, you’re

trusted and your employee will listen to you. Still, that’s

probably not enough. You will want to fi nd a way to

gather input from others, either through a 360-degree

feedback instrument like the ESCI (Emotional and So-

cial Competency Inventory), or a Leadership Self-Study

process (as described in our book, Becoming a Resonant

Leader), which gives you the chance to talk directly to

trusted friends about their emotional intelligence and

other skills.

Finally, craft a gap analysis and a learning plan

Note that I did not say “performance management plan,”

or even “development plan.” A learning plan is different

in that it charts a direct path from the personal vision to

what must be learned over time to get there—to actual

skill development.

Learning goals are big. Take, for example, one execu-

tive I know. Talented though he was, his distinct lack of

caring about the people around him had placed him in

danger of being fi red. He wanted what he wanted—and

watch out if you were in his way. He couldn’t seem to

change until it fi nally dawned on him that his bulldozer

style was playing out at home too, with his children. That

didn’t fi t at all with his dream of a happy, close-knit fam-

ily who would live close to each other throughout their

lives. So, with a dream in hand and the ugly reality re-

aring its head at work and at home, he decided to work

on developing empathy. As a learning goal, empathy is

one of the toughest and most important competencies to

develop. The capacity for emotional and cognitive empa-

216

How to Help Someone Develop Emotional Intelligence

thy is laid down early in life, and then reinforced over

many years. This exec had a good foundation for em-

pathy in childhood, but intense schooling and a stint at

an up-or-out management consulting fi rm had driven it

out of him. He needed to relearn how to read people and

care about them. He was able to succeed—yes, it took a

good while, but he did it.

This sounds like a lot of hard work for your employee,

and it can be. Here’s where a fi nal important piece of

the theory comes into play. They—and you—can’t do it

alone. People need people—kind and supportive peo-

ple—when embarking on a journey of self-development.

Are you there for your employees? Do you help them

fi nd other supporters, in addition to yourself, who will

help when their confi dence wanes or when they experi-

ence inevitable setbacks?

Developing one’s emotional intelligence can make

the difference between success and failure in life and in

work. If you’re the one responsible for people’s contribu-

tions to the team and your organization, you are actually

on the hook to try to help those (many) people who are

emotional-intelligence-challenged, defi cient, and dan-

gerous. It’s your job.

But what if you’re not the boss? You can still make

a difference with colleagues. All of the same rules ap-

ply to how people change. You just need to fi nd a dif-

ferent entry point. In my experience, that entry begins

with you creating a safe space and establishing trust.

Find something to like about these people and let them

217

Developing Emotional Intelligence on Your Team

know it. Give them credit where credit is due, and then

some (most of these folks are pretty insecure). Be kind.

In other words, use your emotional intelligence to help

them get ready to work on theirs.

And fi nally, if none of this works, these “problem peo-

ple” don’t belong on your team—or maybe even in your

organization. If you’re a manager, that’s when it’s time to

help them move on with dignity.

Annie McKee is a senior fellow at the University of Penn-

sylvania and the director of the PennCLO Executive Doc-

toral Program. She is the author of Primal Leadership

(with Daniel Goleman and Richard Boyatzis), as well as

Resonant Leadership and Becoming a Resonant Leader.

Her new book, How to Be Happy at Work, is forthcoming

from Harvard Business Review Press in September 2017.

NOTE

1. “What Motivates Us?” interview between Daniel Pink and Kath-

erine Bell, HBR Ideacast (podcast), February 10, 2010.

218

CHAPTER 27

Handling

Emotional

Outbursts on

Your Team

by Liane Davey

Do you have a crier on your team—you know, the one

with tissue-thin skin who expresses frustration, sadness,

or worry through tears? Maybe you have a screamer, a

table pounder who is aggressively invested in every de-

cision. These kinds of emotional outbursts are not just

uncomfortable; they can hijack your team, stalling pro-

ductivity and limiting innovation.

Adapted from content originally posted on hbr.org on April 24, 2015, as

“Handling Emotional Outbursts on Your Team.”

219

Developing Emotional Intelligence on Your Team

Don’t allow an emotional person to postpone, dilute,

or drag out an issue that the business needs you to re-

solve. Instead, take the outburst for what it is: a commu-

nication. Emotions are clues that the issue you are dis-

cussing is touching on something the person values or

believes strongly in. So look at outbursts as giving you

three sets of information: emotional data; factual or in-

tellectual data; and motives, values, and beliefs.

We get stuck when we only focus on the fi rst two—

emotions and facts. It’s easy to do. When someone starts

yelling, for instance, you might think he’s mad (emo-

tion) because his project has just been defunded (fact).

And many managers stop there, because they fi nd feel-

ings uncomfortable or aren’t sure how to deal with them.

That’s why the fi rst step is to become more self-aware by

questioning your mindset around emotions. There are

several myths that often get in a team leader’s way:

Myth #1: There is no place for emotion in the work-

place. If you have humans in the workplace, you’re

going to have emotions too. Ignoring, stifl ing, or in-

validating them will only drive the toxic issues under-

ground. This outdated notion is one reason people

resort to passive-aggressive behavior: Emotions will

fi nd their outlet; the choice is whether it’s out in the

open or in the shadows.

Myth #2: We don’t have time to talk about people’s

feelings. Do you have time for backroom dealings

and subterfuge? Do you have time to reopen deci-

sions? Do you have time for failed implementations?

Avoiding the emotional issues at the outset will only

220

Handling Emotional Outbursts on Your Team

delay their impact. And when people don’t feel heard,

their feelings amplify until you have something really

destructive to deal with.

Myth #3: Emotions will skew our decision making.

Emotions are already affecting your decision

making. The choice is whether you want to be

explicit about how (and how much) of a role they

play or whether you want to leave them as unspoken

biases.

With your beliefs in check, you’ll be better able to get

beyond the emotion and facts to the values the person

holds that are being compromised or violated. This is

critical because your criers and screamers are further

triggered when they don’t feel understood. The key is to

have a discussion that includes facts, feelings, and val-

ues. People will feel heard and the emotion will usually

dissipate. Then you can focus on making the best busi-

ness decision possible.

Here’s how.

Spot the emotion. If you wait until the emotion is

in full bloom, it will be diffi cult to manage. Instead,

watch for the telltale signs that something is causing

concern. The most important signals will come from

incongruence between what someone is saying and

what their body language is telling you. When you

notice someone is withdrawing eye contact or getting

red in the face, acknowledge what you see: “Steve,

you’ve stopped midsentence a couple of times now.

What’s going on for you?”

221

Developing Emotional Intelligence on Your Team

Listen. Listen carefully to the response, both to what

is said and what you can infer about facts, feelings,

and values. You will pick up emotions in language,

particularly in extreme words or words that are

repeated: “We have a $2 million budget shortfall and

it’s our fourth meeting sitting around having a lovely

intellectual discussion!” Body language will again

provide clues. Angry (leaning in, clenched jaw or

fi sts) looks very different from discouraged (dropping

eye contact, slumping) or dismissive (rolling eyes,

turning away).

Ask questions. When you see or hear the emotional

layer, stay calm, keep your tone level, and ask a ques-

tion to draw the person out and get them talking

about values: “I get the sense you’re frustrated. What’s

behind your frustration?” Listen to their response

and then go one layer further by testing a hypothesis:

“Is it possible that you’re frustrated because we’re

placing too much weight on the people impact of

the decision and you think we need to focus only on

what’s right for the business?”

Resolve it. If your hypothesis is right, you’ll prob-

ably see relief. The person might even express their

pleasure: “Yes, exactly!” You can sum it up: “We’ve

talked about closing the Cleveland offi ce for two years

and you’re frustrated because you believe that the

right decision for the business is obvious.” You’ve now

helped them articulate the values they think should

be guiding the decision. The team will now be clear

on why they are disagreeing. Three people might

jump in, all talking at once: “We are talking about

222

Handling Emotional Outbursts on Your Team

people who have given their lives to this organiza-

tion!” “Here we go again . . .” Use the same process to

reveal the opposing points of view.

Once everyone is working with the same three data

sets—facts, emotions, and values—you will be clear what

you need to solve for—in this case, “How will we weigh

the fi nancial necessity against the impact on people?”

Although taking the time to draw out the values might

seem slow at fi rst, you’ll see that issues actually get re-

solved faster. And ironically, as you validate emotions,

over time people will tend to be less emotional because

it’s often the suppression of emotions or attempts to

cobble together facts to justify those emotions that was

causing irrational behavior.

If you’re leading a high-performing team, you’d better be

ready to deal with uncomfortable, messy, complex emo-

tions. If there’s a situation you have failed to address be-

cause of an emotional team member, spend some time

thinking about how you will approach it and then go

have the conversation. Today. You can’t afford to wait any

longer.

Liane Davey is the cofounder of 3COze Inc. She is the

author of You First: Inspire Your Team to Grow Up, Get

Along, and Get Stuff Done and a coauthor of Leadership

Solutions: The Pathway to Bridge the Leadership Gap.

Follow her on Twitter @LianeDavey.

223

CHAPTER 28

How to Manage

Your Emotional

Culture

by Sigal Barsade and Olivia A. O’Neill

When people talk about “corporate culture,” they’re typi-

cally referring to cognitive culture: the shared intellec-

tual values, norms, artifacts, and assumptions that serve

as a guide for the group to thrive. Cognitive culture sets

the tone for how employees think and behave at work—

for instance, how customer-focused, innovative, team-

oriented, or competitive they are or should be.

Cognitive culture is undeniably important to an or-

ganization’s success. But it’s only part of the story. The

Adapted from “Manage Your Emotional Culture” in Harvard Business

Review, January 2016 (product #R0601C)

225

Developing Emotional Intelligence on Your Team

other critical part is what we call the group’s emotional

culture: the shared affective values, norms, artifacts, and

assumptions that govern which emotions people have

and express at work and which ones they are better off

suppressing. Though the key distinction here is thinking

versus feeling, the two types of culture are also transmit-

ted differently: Cognitive culture is often conveyed ver-

bally, whereas emotional culture tends to be conveyed

through nonverbal cues such as body language and facial

expression.

In our research over the past decade, we have found

that emotional culture infl uences employee satisfaction,

burnout, teamwork, and even hard measures such as fi -

nancial performance and absenteeism. Countless empir-

ical studies show the signifi cant impact of emotions on

how people perform on tasks, how engaged and creative

they are, how committed they are to their organizations,

and how they make decisions. Positive emotions are con-

sistently associated with better performance, quality, and

customer service—this holds true across roles and indus-

tries and at various organizational levels. On the fl ip side

(with certain short-term exceptions), negative emotions

such as group anger, sadness, fear, and the like usually

lead to negative outcomes, including poor performance

and high turnover.

So when managers ignore emotional culture, they’re

glossing over a vital part of what makes people—and

organizations—tick. They may understand its impor-

tance in theory but can still shy away from emotions

at work. Leaders expect to infl uence how people think

and behave on the job, but they may feel ill-equipped

226

How to Manage Your Emotional Culture

to understand and actively manage how employees

feel and express their emotions at work. Or they may

regard doing so as irrelevant, not part of their job, or

unprofessional.

Emotional Cultures in Action

Nearly 30 years ago, the social psychologist Phil Shaver

and his colleagues found that people can reliably dis-

tinguish among 135 emotions. But understanding the

most basic ones—joy, love, anger, fear, sadness—is a

good place to start for any leader trying to manage an

emotional culture. Here are a few examples to illustrate

how these emotions can play out in organizations.

A Culture of Joy

Let’s begin with one that’s often clearly articulated and

actively reinforced by management—above the surface

and easy to spot. Vail Resorts recognizes that cultivat-

ing joy among employees helps customers have fun too,

which matters a lot in the hospitality business. It also

gives the organization an edge in retaining top talent in

an extremely competitive industry. “Have fun” is listed as

a company value and modeled by Vail’s CEO, Rob Katz—

who, for instance, had ice water dumped on his head

during a corporate ALS Ice Bucket Challenge and then

jumped fully clothed into a pool. About 250 executives

and other employees followed his lead.

This playful spirit at the top permeates Vail. Manage-

ment tactics, special outings, celebrations, and rewards

all support the emotional culture. Resort managers

consistently model joy and prescribe it for their teams.

227

Developing Emotional Intelligence on Your Team

During the workday, they give out pins when they notice

employees spontaneously having fun or helping others

enjoy their jobs. Rather than asking people to follow

standardized customer service scripts, they tell everyone

to “go out there and have fun.” Mark Gasta, the compa-

ny’s chief people offi cer, says he regularly sees ski-lift op-

erators dancing, making jokes, doing “whatever it takes

to have fun and entertain the guest” while ensuring a

safe experience on the slopes. On a day-to-day basis, Vail

encourages employees to collaborate because, as Gasta

points out, “leaving people out is not fun.” At an annual

ceremony, a Have Fun award goes to whoever led that

year’s best initiative promoting fun at work. The resort

also fosters off-the-job joy with “fi rst tracks” (fi rst access

to the ski slopes for employees), adventure trips, and fre-

quent social gatherings.

All this is in service to an emotional culture that

makes intuitive sense. (Joy at a ski resort? Of course.)

But now consider an organization where the demand

for joy wasn’t immediately visible. When we surveyed

employees at Cisco Finance about their organization’s

emotional culture, it became clear to management that

fostering joy should be a priority. The survey didn’t ask

employees how they felt at work; it asked them what

emotions they saw their coworkers expressing on a reg-

ular basis. (By having employees report on colleagues’

emotions, researchers could obtain a more objective

bird’s-eye view of the culture.) It turned out that joy was

one of the strongest drivers of employee satisfaction

and commitment at the company—and more of it was

needed to keep up engagement.

228

How to Manage Your Emotional Culture

So management made joy an explicit cultural value,

calling it “Pause for Fun.” This signaled that it was an im-

portant outcome to track—just like productivity, creativ-

ity, and other elements of performance. Many compa-

nies use annual employee engagement surveys to gauge

joy in the abstract, often in the form of job satisfaction

and commitment to the organization. But Cisco Finance

measured it much more specifi cally and is conducting

follow-up surveys to track whether it is actually increas-

ing. In addition, leaders throughout the organization

support this cultural value with their own behavior—for

example, by creating humorous videos that show them

pausing for fun.

A Culture of Companionate Love

Another emotion we’ve examined extensively—one that’s

common in life but rarely mentioned by name in organi-

zations—is companionate love. This is the degree of af-

fection, caring, and compassion that employees feel and

express toward one another.

In a 16-month study of a large long-term-care facil-

ity on the East Coast, we found that workers in units

with strong cultures of companionate love had lower

absenteeism, less burnout, and greater teamwork and

job satisfaction than their colleagues in other units.1

Employees also performed their work better, as dem-

onstrated by more-satisfi ed patients, better patient

moods, and fewer unnecessary trips to the emergency

room. (Employees whose dispositions were positive to

begin with received an extra performance boost from

the culture.) The families of patients in units with

229

Developing Emotional Intelligence on Your Team

stronger cultures of companionate love reported higher

satisfaction with the facility. These results show a pow-

erful connection between emotional culture and busi-

ness performance.

Because this study took place in a health-care setting,

we wondered whether companionate love matters only

in “helping” industries. So we surveyed more than 3,200

employees in 17 organizations spanning seven indus-

tries: biopharmaceutical, engineering, fi nancial services,

higher education, public utilities, real estate, and travel.

In organizations where employees felt and expressed

companionate love toward one another, people reported

greater job satisfaction, commitment, and personal ac-

countability for work performance.

Creating an Emotional Culture

To cultivate a particular emotional culture, you’ll need to

get people to feel the emotions valued by the organiza-

tion or team—or at least to behave as if they do. Here are

three effective methods:

Harness What People Already Feel

Some employees will experience the desired emotions

quite naturally. This can happen in isolated moments

of compassion or gratitude, for example. When such

feelings arise regularly, that’s a sign you’re building the

culture you want. If people have them only periodically

and need help sustaining them, you can try incorporat-

ing some gentle nudges during the workday. You might

schedule some time for meditation, for instance; or pro-

vide mindfulness apps on people’s work devices to re-

230

How to Manage Your Emotional Culture

mind them to simply breathe, relax, or laugh; or create

a kudos board, like the one in an ICU we studied, where

people can post kind words about other employees.

But what can you do about emotions that are toxic to

the culture you’re striving for? How can you discourage

them when they already exist? Expecting people to “put

a lid” on those feelings is both ineffective and destruc-

tive; the emotions will just come out later in counterpro-

ductive ways. It’s important to listen when employees

express their concerns so that they feel they are being

heard. That’s not to say you should encourage vent-

ing, or just let the emotions fl ow without attempting to

solve the root problems. Indeed, research shows that ex-

tended venting can lead to poor outcomes. You’re better

off helping employees think about situations in a more

constructive way. For example, loneliness, which can eat

away at employee attitudes and performance, is best ad-

dressed through cognitive reappraisal—getting people

to reexamine their views of others’ actions. Considering

plausible benign motivations for their colleagues’ behav-

ior will make them less likely to fi xate on negative expla-

nations that could send them into a spiral.

Model the Emotions You Want to Cultivate

A long line of research on emotional contagion shows

that people in groups “catch” feelings from others

through behavioral mimicry and subsequent changes in

brain function.2 If you regularly walk into a room smil-

ing with high energy, you’re much more likely to create a

culture of joy than if you wear a neutral expression. Your

employees will smile back and start to mean it.

231

Developing Emotional Intelligence on Your Team

But negative feelings, too, spread like wildfi re. If you

frequently express frustration, that emotion will infect

your team members—and their team members, and so

on—throughout the organization. Before you know it,

you’ll have created a culture of frustration.

So consciously model the emotions you want to cul-

tivate in your company. Some organizations go a step

further and explicitly ask employees to spread certain

emotions. Ubiquity Retirement + Savings says, “Inspire

happiness with contagious enthusiasm. Own your joy

and lend it out.” Vail Resorts says, “Enjoy your work and

share the contagious spirit.”

Get People to Fake It ’Til They Feel It

If employees don’t experience the desired emotion at a

particular moment, they can still help maintain their

organization’s emotional culture. That’s because people

express emotions both spontaneously and strategically at

work. Social psychology research has long shown that in-

dividuals tend to conform to group norms of emotional

expression, imitating others out of a desire to be liked

and accepted. So employees in a strong emotional cul-

ture who would not otherwise feel and express the val-

ued emotion will begin to demonstrate it—even if their

initial motivation is to be compliant rather than to inter-

nalize the culture.

This benefi ts the organization, not just the individuals

trying to thrive in it. In early anthropological studies of

group rituals, strategic emotional expression was found

to facilitate group cohesion by overpowering individual

feelings and synchronizing interpersonal behavior.

232

How to Manage Your Emotional Culture

So maintaining the appropriate culture sometimes

entails disregarding what you are truly feeling. Through

“surface acting,” employees can display the valued emo-

tion without even wanting to feel it. Surface acting isn’t

a long-term solution, though. Research shows that it can

eventually lead to burnout—particularly in the absence

of any outlet for authentic emotions.3

A better way to cultivate a desired emotion is through

“deep acting.” With this technique, people make a fo-

cused effort to feel a certain way—and then suddenly

they do. Imagine that an employee at an accounting fi rm

has a family emergency and requests a week off work at

the height of tax audit season. Although his boss’s fi rst

thought is No—not now—no! she could engage in deep

acting to change her immediate feelings of justifi able

panic into genuine caring and concern for her subor-

dinate. By trying hard to empathize, saying “Of course,

you should go be with your family!” and using the facial

expressions, body language, and tone of voice she would

use when actually feeling those emotions, she could coax

herself into the real thing. She would also be modeling

a desired behavior for the subordinate and the rest of

the team.

Fortunately, all these ways of creating an emotional

culture—whether they involve really feeling the emotion

or simply acting that way—can reinforce one another

and strengthen the culture’s norms. People don’t have to

put on an act forever. Those who begin by expressing an

emotion out of a desire to conform will start to actually

feel it through emotional contagion. They’ll also receive

positive reinforcement for following the norms, which

233

Developing Emotional Intelligence on Your Team

will make them more likely to demonstrate the emotion

again.

Of course, the culture will be much stronger and more

likely to endure if people truly believe in the values and

assumptions behind it. Someone who is uncomfortable

with an organization’s emotional culture and has to keep

pretending in order to be successful would probably be

better off moving to a different work environment. Com-

panies often have more than one emotional culture, so

another unit or department might be a good fi t. But if

the culture is homogeneous, the employee may want to

leave the company entirely.

Implementation Matters

at All Levels

Just like other aspects of organizational culture, emo-

tional culture should be supported at all levels of the or-

ganization. The role of top management is to drive it.

Leaders are often insuffi ciently aware of how much

infl uence they have in creating an emotional culture.

Traci Fenton is the founder and CEO of WorldBlu, a

consulting fi rm that tackles fear at work. She shares this

example: At one Fortune 500 company, unbeknownst

to the CEO, senior employees regularly use text mes-

sage codes to describe his nonverbal expressions of anger

in meetings. “RED” means he is getting red in the face.

“VEIN” means his veins are popping out. “ACP,” which

stands for “assume the crash position,” means he is about

to start throwing things. This leader is very effective at

creating an emotional culture—but it’s probably not the

one he wants.

234

How to Manage Your Emotional Culture

So don’t underestimate the importance of day-to-

day modeling. Large, symbolic emotional gestures are

powerful, but only if they are in line with daily behavior.

Senior executives can also shape an emotional culture

through organizational practices. Take “compassion-

ate fi ring,” which is common at companies that build a

strong culture of companionate love. Carlos Gutierrez,

the vice president of R&D systems at Lattice Semicon-

ductor, was deeply concerned about the impact of layoffs

on his employees. He recognized that the traditional HR

protocol of asking terminated employees to clean out

their desks immediately and leave the premises would be

especially painful to people who had worked side by side

for 10–20 years. Along with his partners in HR and R&D,

he implemented a protocol whereby employees had an

extended time to say good-bye to their colleagues and to

commemorate their time together at the company. Also,

although two-thirds of the R&D workforce is outside the

United States, Sherif Sweha, the corporate vice president

of R&D, believed it was important for the affected team

members in each region to receive the news from a se-

nior leader face-to-face. So he and members of his staff

fl ew to the company’s sites in Asia to have in-person con-

versations with all the employees to be laid off—and also

those who would remain with the company.

Though top management sets the fi rst example and es-

tablishes the formal rules, middle managers and front-

line supervisors ensure that the emotional values are

consistently practiced by others. Because one of the

235

Developing Emotional Intelligence on Your Team

biggest infl uences on employees is their immediate

boss, the suggestions that apply to senior executives also

apply to those managers: They should ensure that the

emotions they express at work refl ect the chosen culture,

and they should speak explicitly about what is expected

from employees.

It’s also important to link the emotional culture to

oper a tions and processes, including performance man-

agement systems. At Vail Resorts, the culture of joy has

been incorporated into the annual review, which indi-

cates how well each employee integrates fun into the

work environment and rates everyone on supporting be-

haviors, such as being inclusive, welcoming, approach-

able, and positive. Someone who exceeds expectations is

described as not only taking part in the fun but also of-

fering “recommendations to improve the work environ-

ment to integrate fun.”

Decades’ worth of research demonstrates the impor-

tance of organizational culture, yet most of it has focused

on the cognitive component. As we’ve shown, organiza-

tions also have an emotional pulse, and managers must

track it closely to motivate their teams and reach their

goals.

Emotional culture is shaped by how all employees—

from the highest echelons to the front lines—comport

themselves day in and day out. But it’s up to senior lead-

ers to establish which emotions will help the organiza-

tion thrive, model those emotions, and reward others for

doing the same. Companies in which they do this have a

lot to gain.

236

How to Manage Your Emotional Culture

Sigal Barsade is the Joseph Frank Bernstein Professor of

Management at Wharton. Olivia A. O’Neill is an assistant

professor of management at George Mason University

and a senior scholar at the school’s Center for the Ad-

vancement of Well-Being.

NOTES

1. Sigal Barsade and Olivia A. O’Neill, “What’s Love Got to Do

with It? A Longitudinal Study of the Culture of Companionate Love

and Employee and Client Outcomes in a Long-Term Care Setting,”

Administrative Science Quarterly 59, no 4. (2014).

2. Sigal Barsade, “The Ripple Effect: Emotional Contagion and Its

Infl uence on Group Behavior,” Administrative Science Quarterly 47,

no. 4 (2002).

3. Alicia A. Grandey, “When ‘The Show Must Go On’: Surface Act-

ing and Deep Acting as Determinants of Emotional Exhaustion and

Peer-Rated Service Delivery,” Academy of Management Journal 46,

no. 1 (February 2003): 86–96.

237

Index

adaptability, 26

Bartz, Carol, 17–18

adrenaline, 188

behaviors

adversarial relationships,

improving, 46–47

123–134

mimicking, 74–75

affect, 32

neutralizing unproductive,

aggression, 14, 59

58–59

alexithymia, 68

passive-aggressive, 135–143

allies (creating from enemies),

bias

123–134

in decision making, 91–96

amygdala, 62–63, 160–162

fi xed-pie, 105

anchoring, 62–66

body, tuning into the, 61–66

anger

both/and mindset, 177

addressing, 37

Boyatzis, Richard, 10–11, 215

vs. anxiety, 100–101

breathing, 33, 63

disappointment and, 109

burnout, 20, 146, 150, 153, 198

labeling, 38

in negotiations, 98–99,

104–108

Challenger space shuttle, 112

triggers for, 69

change

in workplace, 36

intentional change theory,

anxiety, 69, 100–104, 163

215–217

Asian culture, 18–19, 118–119

motivation for, 10

assumptions, questioning your,

sustaining, 214–215

58

charismatic authority, 21–22

attention, 159

China, emotional displays in,

authority

118–119

charismatic, 21–22

civility, 43–49

questioning, 20–22

Clendenin, John, 123–124,

avoidance, 56

126–133

Index

Clinton, Bill, 14

Dalai Lama, 165–166, 170–171

coaching, 46, 88, 215

decision making, 91–96, 221

cognition, 81

deep acting, 233

cognitive culture, 225–226

deep breathing, 33, 63

cognitive differences, 11

denial, 176, 182

cognitive empathy, 160, 166

developmental feedback, 85–89

colleagues

diffi cult interactions, 57–59,

adversarial, 123–134

175–179

helping develop emotional

diffi cult people, 123–134

intelligence in, 213–218

disappointment, 108–111

learning to say no to, 151

Duke, David, 21

passive-aggressive, 135–143

common humanity, 187, 189,

191

emails, 73–77

communication

emotional agility, 36, 53

across cultures, 117–120

Emotional and Social Com-

via email, 73–77

petency Inventory (ESCI),

companionate love, 229–230,

216

235

emotional attachment, 92,

compassion, 70, 165–171

93, 94

compassion fatigue, 163

emotional contagion, 231–232

self-compassion, 185–192

emotional culture

compassionate fi ring, 235

in action, 227–230

confl icts

of companionate love,

avoidance of, 19

229–230, 235

defusing, 57–59

creating, 230–234

group, 80

defi ned, 226

constructive criticism, 178

implementation of, 234–236

corporate culture, 225

of joy, 227–229

courage, 21

managing your, 225–237

criticism

top management and,

constructive, 178

234–235

responding to, 178–179

emotional empathy, 160–161,

self-criticism, 186

162, 166

culture

emotional intelligence

Asian, 18–19, 118–119

about, 3–4

cognitive, 225–226

components of, 8–9

corporate, 225

defi ned, 4–6

emotional, 225–237

leadership and, 12–14, 21

working across different,

measurement of, 6, 23–27

117–120

overemphasis on, 10–11

240

Index

realism about, 4–6

vs. compassion, 166–167

sources of, 3

controlling, 163–164

tests of, 5

conveying, 151

emotional outbursts

defi ned, 9

handling, 219–223

emotional, 160–161, 162,

recovering from, 67–70

166

emotional resilience, 186–187. See

learning, 7, 162

also resilience

measurement of, 27

emotional self-management,

understanding, 159–164

81–82

use of, 19–20, 80–81

emotional triggers, 69

employees

emotions

giving diffi cult feedback to,

cross-cultural interpretation

85–89

of, 117–120

helping develop emotional

disclosing your, 69–70

intelligence in, 213–218

vs. feelings, 31–32

treating with respect, 43–49

function of, 53–54, 56

enemies, turning into allies,

intensity of, 38–39

123–134

labeling, 35–36, 38–39, 68

energy auditing, 48

managing, 68, 69–70, 112–115

enthusiasm, 118–119

mirroring, 81–82

excitement, 111–113, 115

misinterpretation of, in emails,

exposure therapy, 103

74–77

external recovery, 199

modeling, 231–232, 235

myths about, 220–221

negative, 64, 82, 125, 226,

fear, 62–63

232

feedback

in negotiations, 97–116

360-degree, 13, 216

positive, 81, 226

giving diffi cult, 85–89

reactions to, 55–56

internalizing, 15

suppression of, 35–36, 64, 68

seeking, 12–13, 44–45

trust and, 124–126

“feedforward,” 46

understanding, 31–34, 68–69

feelings

vocabulary for, 35–41

awareness of, 33

writing about, 39–41, 64

vs. emotions, 31–32

emotion terms, 38

ignoring, 32–33

empathic concern, 160, 161, 164,

negative, 32–34

166

fi ght-or-fl ight response, 101,

empathy

108

bodily awareness and, 65

fi ring. See compassionate fi ring

cognitive, 160, 166

fi xed-pie bias, 105

241

Index

gap analysis, 216

Kushner, Harold, 14–15

gemba, 19

genetics, 3

George, William, 15–16

labeling emotions, 35–36, 38–39,

Gergen, David, 13–15

68

Ghosn, Carlos, 19

leaders

Goldberg, Elkhonon, 11–12

authentic, 15–16

Goldsmith, Marshall, 46

decision making by, 91–96

Goleman, Daniel, 6–8, 23, 82,

demons of, 13–15

165–171

emotional intelligence of, 3–7

group confl icts, 80

feedback for, 12–13

group dynamics, 80–82

mirroring emotions of, 81–82

guilt, 151–152

respectfulness by, 43–49

self-awareness by, 12–13, 15–16

leadership

happiness, 111–113, 115

development of, 10

Heifetz, Ronald, 20–22

emotional intelligence and,

hippocampus, 160–161

12–14, 21

homeostasis, 197–198

political, 13–14

honesty, 17–18

self-awareness and, 5

hypothalamus, 160–161

Leadership Self-Study, 216

learning plan, 216–217

Lincoln, Abraham, 14

imperfection, accepting, 178

loneliness, 231

improvisation, 183

love. See companionate love

incidental emotional manipula-

tion, 101

initiative, 5

Manning, Christopher, 45

intentional change theory,

Mayer, John D., 4–6

215–217

meaning, search for, 192–193

intentions, of others, 58

meditation, 16, 169, 230

internal recovery, 199, 200

meetings, 79–83

introspection, 15

memories, misleading, 92, 93, 95

mimicry, behavioral, 74–75

mindfulness, 61–66, 169, 186,

Japan, emotional displays in,

187, 189, 191, 230

118

mirroring, 81–82

Japanese hierarchy, 18–19

motivation

journaling, 47–48

defi ned, 9

joy, 227–229

for passive-aggressive behav-

Jung, Andrea, 12–13

ior, 137

242

Index

motivational system, 32, 33

passive-aggressive colleagues,

multitasking, 82

135–143

personality traits, 5, 6, 18

pleasures, enjoying little, 65

negative emotions

political leadership, 13–14

engaging with, 32–34, 64

positive emotions, 81, 226

impact of, 226

positive outlook, 25

mirroring of, 82

post-settlement settlement,

physiological effects of, 125

110–111

redirection of, 126–127

power dynamics, 80

spreading of, 232

prefrontal cortex, 163, 164

negative feedback, 85–89

negative feelings, 32–34

negative thoughts, reframing,

rapport building, 108

57–58

rationality, 124, 129–131, 133

negotiations, 97–116

recharging, 195–202

anger in, 98–99, 104–108

reciprocity, 124, 127–129, 133

anxiety in, 100–104

recovery periods, 199, 200

counterparts in, 113–114

red fl ag conditions, 91–92, 94–95

disappointment and regret in,

redirection, 124, 126–127, 133

108–111

refl ection, 47–48

happiness and excitement in,

regret, 108–111

111–113, 115

resilience

managing emotions in,

cultivating, 181–183

113–115

defi ned, 196

post-settlement settlement,

emotional, 186–187

110–111

measurement of, 203–209

preparations for, 107

misconceptions about, 196–197

rapport building in, 118

in the moment, 175–179

skills required for, 112–113, 115

recharging and, 195–202

by third parties, 104

respect, 43–49

neuropsychology, 11

rivalries, 123–134

Nixon, Richard, 14

Roosevelt, Franklin Delano, 14

openness, 89

sadness, 69, 108

optimism, 5, 6, 25, 187

self-awareness

orbitofrontal cortex, 161–162

defi ned, 8

organizational culture, 225–237

empathy and, 160

overwork, 195–198

importance of, 5, 12–13

oxytocin, 161–162, 188

improving, 44–49

243

Index

self-awareness

Takeuchi, Hirotaka, 18–19

of leaders, 15–16

teams, handling emotional out-

measurement of, 25

bursts on, 219–223

self-compassion, 185–192

technology, 200

self-confi dence, 5, 6

therapy, 153–154

self-control, 26

third-party negotiators, 104

self-criticism, 186

Thomas, Michael Tilson, 16–17

self-esteem, 5

threats, to self-image, 177–178

self-image, 58, 175–179

3Rs method, 124–134

self-interest, 92, 93, 94

360-degree feedback, 13, 216

selfi shness, 14

toxic handler, 145–155

self-kindness, 187, 189, 191

triggers, 69

self-management, 81–82

trust, 124–126, 167

self-refl ection, 47–48

self-regulation, 8

shame, 186, 187

unproductive behaviors,

Shark Tank, 103

58–59

shortcomings, discovering your,

44–45

sleep, 197

vacation days, 199

smart decisions, 91–96

values, 55–56

social capital, 7

venting, 154, 231

social harmony, 18–19

social skills, 9

Stone, Linda, 19–20

wah, 18–19

stress

Washington, George, 14

overwork and, 197, 198

Wordle.net, 44

staying grounded in dealing

workaholism, 197

with, 61–66

writing

symptoms of, 150

about emotions, 39–41, 64

workplace, 36, 37, 54, 145–155

emails, 73–77

surface acting, 233

244

HBR Guide to

Managing Up

and Across

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Harvard Business Review Guides

Arm yourself with the advice you need to succeed on the

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with how-to essentials from leading experts, the HBR

Guides provide smart answers to your most pressing

work challenges.

The titles include:

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HBR Guide to Project Management

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HBR Guide to

Managing Up

and Across

HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW PRESS

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Find more digital content or join the discussion on www.hbr.org.

The web addresses referenced and linked in this book were live and

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Copyright 2013 Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation

All rights reserved

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced

into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means

(electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise),

without the prior permission of the publisher. Requests for permission

should be directed to permissions@hbsp.harvard.edu, or mailed to Permissions, Harvard Business School Publishing, 60 Harvard Way,

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Guide to managing up and across.

p. cm. — (Harvard business review guides)

Includes

index.

isbn 978-1-4221-8760-9 (alk. paper)

1. Managing your boss. 2. Management—Psychological aspects.

3. Interpersonal relations.

hf5548.83.g85 2012

650.1'3—dc23

2012025301

H6053.indb iv

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What You’ll Learn

Does your boss make you want to scream? Do you have

more than one boss? Do you spend your day herding

cats? Working across departmental silos? Corralling

contractors?

Then you know that managing up and across your

company is critical to doing your job well. It’s all about

understanding your boss’s and colleagues’ priorities,

pressures, and work styles. You need to manage up and

across not just because you may have a problem boss,

incompetent colleagues, or projects that involve stake-

holders fl ung far and wide. You need to manage up and

across, for example, to get your marketing and sales folks

to see that your project will help them meet their goals,

too; to establish authority with higher-ups so they’ll bless

your new product ideas; to secure people’s time for a new

team when they’re already feeling overextended.

Managing up and across will help you get the informa-

tion and resources you need to solve your complex prob-

lems, increase your effectiveness, and make your work

more enjoyable.

H6053.indb v

10/17/12 11:40 AM

What You’ll Learn

You’ll get better at:

• Getting what you need from people who don’t

report to you

• Coping with micromanaging, confl ict-aversive, or

generally incompetent bosses

• Discovering what drives colleagues of all ages

• Partnering with your boss—and her boss

• Selling your ideas up and across your company

• Making the most of your boss’s infl uence

• Establishing a shared vision and commitment

• Juggling multiple bosses’ priorities

• Tailoring your pitch to your audience

• Collaborating with remote colleagues

• Working with a new boss

• Navigating

offi ce politics

vi

H6053.indb vi

10/17/12 11:40 AM

Contents

Section 1: MANAGING UP

Managing Your Boss

3

Build a strong partnership with your boss by

clarifying her priorities and your needs.

BY LINDA A. HILL AND KENT LINEBACK

Winning Over Your New Boss

17

Make yourself indispensable.

BY LEW MCCREARY

Steps for Presenting Problems or

Opportunities to Your Boss

25

Get the support and resources you need to

advance your agenda.

Manage Up with Your Mentor’s Guidance

31

Your mentor can help you build a better

relationship with your boss.

BY JEANNE C. MEISTER

Change the Way You Persuade

35

Tailor your idea to your audience.

BY GARY A. WILLIAMS AND ROBERT B. MILLER

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Contents

Get to Know Your Boss’s Boss

39

Accelerate your career.

BY PRISCILLA CLAMAN

How to Make Your Boss Look Good—Without

Becoming a Sycophant

43

Sell your boss to his boss.

BY MICHAEL SCHRAGE

Stop Being Micromanaged

47

…and start focusing your boss on the big

picture

BY AMY GALLO

Dealing with Your Incompetent Boss

55

Turn your boss’s weaknesses into

opportunities for you to shine.

BY AMY GALLO

Coping with a Confl ict-Averse Boss

61

Make bad news bearable so your boss won’t

run for the hills.

BY ANNE FIELD

How to Give Your Boss Feedback

65

…without putting your career in jeopardy

BY AMY GALLO

Managing Multiple Bosses

71

Meet their competing demands without

getting caught in the middle.

BY AMY GALLO

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Contents

Section 2: MANAGING ACROSS

What Makes a Leader?

81

Polish your people skills by focusing on your

colleagues’ priorities and pressures—not

your own.

BY DANIEL GOLEMAN

The Discipline of Teams

111

How to lead a group of people who don’t

report to you

BY JON R. KATZENBACH AND DOUGLAS K. SMITH

Managing Remote Relationships

115

What it takes to collaborate with people you

don’t see every day

BY KAREN DILLON

A Smarter Way to Network

125

Build a strong support system for your next

crisis or opportunity.

BY ROB CROSS AND ROBERT THOMAS

How to Deal with Offi

ce Politics

143

Focus on mutual advantage.

BY LINDA A. HILL AND KENT LINEBACK

Make Your Enemies Your Allies

149

Three steps to reversing a rivalry at work

BY BRIAN UZZI AND SHANNON DUNLAP

The Necessary Art of Persuasion

161

Win people over by establishing credibility,

discovering common ground, sharing

vivid stories, and developing an emotional

connection.

BY JAY A. CONGER

ix

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Contents

Three Ways Not to Persuade

165

Avoid these common mistakes.

BY JAY A. CONGER

Harnessing the Science of Persuasion

169

Infl uence your colleagues by appealing to

basic needs such as reciprocity and their

desire to be liked.

BY ROBERT B. CIALDINI

How to Get Your Colleagues’ Attention

173

Frame your message so your colleagues

immediately see what you need from them

and why.

BY AMY GALLO

Collaborating Across Generations

177

Work more eff ectively with Boomers, Xers,

and Ys.

BY TAMARA ERICKSON

When the Direct Approach Backfi res,

Try Indirect Infl uence

185

What they don’t teach you in business school

BY MARTHA CRAUMER

Index 189

x

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Section 1

Managing Up

Neglecting to manage up may cost you promotions or

chances to put your great ideas into action. But under-

standing what makes your boss and his cohort tick and

embracing their priorities will open doors for you.

This isn’t kissing up or manipulation. You’re not try-

ing to infl ate egos. You’re helping the people you work for

succeed, which in turn helps you succeed.

This section of the guide is about creating win-win re-

lationships with higher-ups. You’ll learn how to present

problems and opportunities to them, give them feedback,

connect with your boss’s boss without doing an end run,

and deal with a variety of diffi cult managers—from the

micromanager to the confl ict-averse.

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Managing

Your Boss

by Linda A. Hill and Kent Lineback

Managing up is important because your boss plays a piv-

otal role in your success—or your failure. You can lever-

age your boss’s infl uence in the organization on your be-

half in several ways—for example, by obtaining valuable

information, winning needed resources, and securing

important support for your personal development and

career. When you face diffi cult trade-offs and must make

decisions that create both benefi cial and painful conse-

quences for others, your boss’s advice, insight, knowledge

of the organization, and access to higher management can

be invaluable. As your organization shifts and changes

shape in an uncertain market, a good relationship here

Adapted from Being the Boss: The 3 Imperatives for Becoming a Great

Leader (product #12285), by Linda A. Hill and Kent Lineback, Harvard

Business Review Press, 2011

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Managing Up

becomes a necessity for navigating through the turmoil.

The penalties of a poor relationship are many: less infl u-

ence, little information or advice, fewer resources, and

limited personal development and career support. Worst

case, you can fi nd yourself isolated, ignored, pushed

out—your journey stalled, your career derailed.

Why Is It Often an Uneasy

Relationship?

This relationship can be problematic for two reasons.

First, a boss plays confl icting roles: supporter and evalua-

tor, which can create confusion. Second, people often bring

their past experience with authority into the relationship,

which can create unnecessary complications.

This is an area where being a star as an individual

contributor may not have prepared you for management.

As an exceptional performer, you probably had minimal

interaction with your boss. If so, you most likely didn’t

develop the skills of managing up that you need.

Do you see your boss as coach and developer

or as evaluator and judge?

You’re caught in a diffi cult dilemma, one that can feel

personally threatening. The boss is not only a potential

source of great help, in both your job and your career, but

also the one who evaluates your performance. To get help

from her as a developer, particularly with your personal

development, you must reveal your shortcomings. But if

you do, she in her role as evaluator may interpret your

weaknesses as serious faults. Many managers handle this

dilemma by striving to appear capable and in control

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Managing Your Boss

even when they’re not. They see their boss more as threat

than ally and lose the potential benefi ts of her help.

Are you confused by your boss’s dual role? Do you tend

to see your boss as primarily a judge? Does that attitude

seem safer to you? That’s understandable, but it’s not al-

ways the most helpful point of view.

What can you do? Don’t presume your boss is always

one or the other, judge or coach. Instead, think of his

dual roles as extremes between which he moves back and

forth depending on the situation. At fi rst, in small ways

that aren’t risky, test his willingness to provide support.

That way, you can see when, where, and how he’s likely to

focus on development rather than evaluation. Learn his

feelings about what’s important in management—such

as careful planning, decisiveness, building consensus—

and make sure you develop and display those qualities.

Do you see past bosses in your current boss?

How do you feel about your current boss? How do you

respond to authority in general and to those who have

it? If most of your bosses have frustrated you and fallen

short of your expectations, you and they may be victims

of the emotional baggage you carry forward from past

experience. Refl ect on your own history and the feelings

it’s created in you. That history may lead you to perceive

your current boss not as who she is but as an amalgam of

past authority fi gures, with all the positive and negative

feelings that fl ow from that past. Unless you’re aware of

these feelings, you’ll be at their mercy.

On the other hand, you may respond to authority

with overdependence, rather than resistance. Extreme

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Managing Up

WHAT YOUR BOSS EXPECTS OF YOU

You and your boss agree on your annual, individual

performance targets that support larger organizational

goals. But what about her undocumented expecta-

tions? What should you be doing beyond your formal

job description that will make you indispensable to your

boss and your organization as a whole?

• Collaborate. Overcome diff erences be-

tween you and others so you work together

eff ectively—even if you don’t like each other.

• Lead initiatives.  Don’t be reluctant to associate

yourself with unproven ideas, especially those

that cross functional or unit boundaries. Raise

your hand, and you’ll climb the ladder faster

than those who don’t.

• Develop your own people.  Take as active an

interest in your employees’ development as

you do in your own—if not more. Go out of your

way to criticize and praise your people when

they need it. And during performance reviews,

supply people with specifi c, candid, and useful

feedback.

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Managing Your Boss

• Stay current.  Regularly read and watch the

news. What happens in the world aff ects what

happens with your team, your marketplace,

and your competition. Also know what’s going

on with your customers—how they’re chang-

ing, how their competition is changing, and how

technology and world events are aff ecting their

strategies. Your customer relationships are key

assets: Bring them to the table.

• Drive your own growth.  Seek perpetual educa-

tion and development—not necessarily by going

to school but by fi nding exposure to new people

and ideas. Seek feedback from your boss, and

accept demanding assignments.

• Be a player for all seasons.  Demonstrate posi-

tive behaviors even during hard times. You’ll

sustain your ability to motivate and inspire

your own people no matter what’s going on

around you.

Adapted from “What Your Leader Expects of You” (product #R0704C) by Larry Bossidy, Harvard Business Review, April, 2007

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deference and automatic, unquestioning compliance

don’t work well either. Those who react this way never

disagree or push back, even when they’re right or it’s in

their best interest.

Both antagonism to authority and too much deference

will keep you from seeing your boss clearly and realisti-

cally and prevent you from securing the work and per-

sonal benefi ts available from a good relationship.

What Should Your Relationship with

Your Boss Be?

Do you realize that your relationship is actually one of

mutual dependence? Your boss depends on you and

needs your commitment and support to succeed. Just as

you may wrestle with your reliance on your people, he

probably struggles with his dependence on you and his

other direct reports.

Think of the relationship as a partnership in which the

partners depend on each other to succeed and are able

to infl uence each other in ways that improve the perfor-

mance of each. It’s not a relationship of equals, certainly,

but it’s not entirely one-way either. You usually do have

some room to negotiate and create the relationship that

works for both of you.

Take Stock of Your Current

Relationship

Is your current relationship a partnership? Are you and

your boss able to have a normal, constructive discussion

about work? If not, why not?

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Managing Your Boss

Don’t assume you can make signifi cant differences in

how your boss thinks or operates. Most likely, the best

you can do is nudge her in directions that work better for

you. That’s certainly worth doing. But you’re unlikely to

create large changes.

With that in mind, use the following questions to as-

sess and improve your relationship. They focus on ac-

tions you can take.

Are you meeting expectations?

By far, the key factor in a good relationship is your ability

to perform as expected.

Results. Performance targets create the foundation for

your ongoing relationship. Unless you and your group

produce the results expected, you’re unlikely to enjoy

much of a partnership. And it’s not just the results you

attain but how you attain them. If you hit your numbers

but your boss hears complaints all day about how you

railroad other groups, he probably won’t consider you

someone who “meets expectations.”

Information. But results aren’t the only expectation.

Do you keep your boss informed? Reach explicit agree-

ment about how often and in what way you will report

progress. Develop a sense of what your boss wants to

know. Some prefer to know a great deal; others, much

less. In general, no boss likes to be surprised or seem

ignorant of something she should know. If you must

err, do it on the side of overinforming. Many bosses

actually want more information than they say, so dis-

cover the right balance through experience. Find out

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as well how your boss wants information delivered:

written reports via e-mail, in person if that’s possible,

or by video call.

Support and loyalty. Your goal is to make the relation-

ship work for both of you, and that requires some degree

of support and loyalty. Just as you want your boss to care

about you, and your people want you to care about them,

your boss wants your care and concern, too.

Be generous and assume the best intentions, even

when you disagree. Express disagreement as your opinion

offered in support of your boss’s success. Some people bri-

dle at the word loyalty. We don’t mean blind loyalty, but

loyal people earn the right to question and disagree on oc-

casion. Those who speak up only when they disagree will

usually enjoy less infl uence than those who have demon-

strated prior support. So on those occasions when you do

honestly agree with your boss, say so clearly and explicitly.

You cannot succeed in this relationship at the expense

of your boss; you will rise or fall together. Your task is to

make both of you effective. Help your boss build on her

strengths, and overcome or bypass her limitations.

Does your boss trust you?

The foundation of all network relationships is trust, and

the relationship with your boss is no different. Can he

count on you to do the right thing? If you feel microman-

aged, the reason may be that you’ve neglected to establish

real trust. The essence of building trust is to negotiate

what you both mean by “do the right thing.”

Do you both see the current situation the same way?

Make sure you share a common understanding of the

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challenges your group faces and what needs to be done.

If you see the need for fundamental change and your boss

wants to stay the course, you must resolve this difference

right away.

Do you agree about where you and your group are

going? Once again, a plan is critical. Do you have one?

Have you reviewed it with your boss? Does it make clear

what’s to be done and when? Make sure your boss knows

your goals and plans and agrees with them. Ideally, she

had a hand in creating them.

Do you negotiate expectations when you’re given an

assignment? Don’t let your relationship be one in which

you simply accept whatever is passed down without dis-

cussion. If the expectations are unrealistic, you will have

no one to blame but yourself when your team fails. Reach

agreement on the results you’re expected to produce—

what will happen by when. Do this at the beginning, and

update expectations periodically. Warn your boss of po-

tential risks, and play out various scenarios of how you

might handle them.

Do you see and understand your boss as

a person?

It’s easy to forget that beneath your boss’s mantle of au-

thority there’s a person just like you. He has hopes, as-

pirations, frustrations, strengths, weaknesses, and fears.

He’s the product of his background, training, and experi-

ence. He has a personal life—a family and family history,

religious beliefs, social organizations, political views, and

hobbies. Do you know enough that you’re able to see the

world through his eyes?

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Do you understand your boss as a manager?

Your boss has goals, plans, and pressures, as well as

managerial strengths and weaknesses, preferences, and

foibles. Do you know them? What’s your boss on the line

for? What’s her boss telling her to do?

Do you know how your boss prefers to make decisions,

and do you work within that pattern? Does he prefer lots

of analysis and data? Does he need time to reach a con-

clusion? Does he want everyone’s opinion before decid-

ing? If you must depart from these preferences, do you

fi rst negotiate explicitly what you will do?

Do you know and respect the ways your boss prefers

to work? Some bosses want written analyses before a

discussion, while others prefer the discussion or pre-

sentation fi rst, followed by a written summary. Some

want lots of data; others want the highlights. Some

want to be intimately involved in every detail; others

prefer regular reports but nothing more unless there’s

a problem.

When you approach your boss, do you expect guidance

or answers? We know a manager whose boss always re-

sponded to questions with questions of her own. Finally,

this manager realized: “I had to come in with some ideas

about how I would handle the situation, and then she

would talk about them with me. She would spend all the

time in the world with me.”

Do you present a problem and expect your boss to

solve it? Many bosses resist that approach. Instead, try

going in with a problem, an analysis, alternatives, and a

recommendation he can react to.

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Can you identify your boss’s strengths?

This stumps many managers we know. They focus on their

boss’s weaknesses and can talk at length about them—

and often do with their peers. But they seldom look for

strengths. That’s a shame because your boss’s strengths are

what you must leverage, and you cannot leverage what you

don’t recognize or appreciate. Whatever your boss’s weak-

nesses, identify what she does well. There must be some-

thing. Don’t fall back on something like “She knows how

to play the organizational game.” There’s something there.

What is it, and how can you use it to learn and do your

work more effectively?

Are you clear about what you need

and expect?

Negotiate what you need from your boss. Don’t make him

guess. What can he do to help you? Provide resources,

support from other groups, relief from distracting re-

sponsibilities, clearer direction?

In addition, think about the way you prefer to work

and what you need from a superior, such as specifi c

goals, help and ongoing guidance, or a certain degree of

autonomy. Be sure you know where the boundaries are.

Test how negotiable they are. Where your needs and your

boss’s way of managing diverge, talk through the differ-

ences. Where differences involve high stakes, talk sooner

than later. It’s easy to underestimate the risks of confl ict

avoidance and the cost of the passive aggression that of-

ten accompanies it. Your nonverbal communications—

expression, manner, body language, tone—often reveal

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Managing Up

CHECKLIST FOR MANAGING YOUR BOSS

Make sure you understand your boss and his or her

context, including:

□ Goals and objectives

□ Pressures

□ Strengths, weaknesses, blind spots

□ Preferred work style

Assess yourself and your needs, including:

□ Strengths and weaknesses

□ Personal style

□ Predisposition toward dependence on authority

fi gures

Develop and maintain a relationship that:

□ Fits both your needs and styles

□ Is characterized by mutual expectations

□ Keeps your boss informed

□ Is based on dependability and honesty

□ Selectively uses your boss’s time and resources

Adapted from “Managing Your Boss” (product #R0501J) by John J.

Ga barro and John P. Kotter, Harvard Business Review, January 2005

( republished from 1980)

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Managing Your Boss

your true feelings about your boss and can slowly corrode

this critical relationship.

Have you discussed with your boss your own

growth, development, and aspirations?

How can your boss help you grow and develop? She’s not

responsible for your career and personal development,

but it’s in her best interest for you to improve in ways

that will help you (and her) succeed. From your boss you

can get advice and guidance; feedback about your perfor-

mance, strengths, and weaknesses; insight into what oth-

ers think of you; developmental assignments; and access

to training programs and other learning opportunities.

To obtain these, you must fi rst communicate your desire

to learn. Then, you must agree about how and where you

want to grow—what competencies you need to develop,

such as building a network, making a plan, managing per-

formance, or assessing subordinates. Have reasonable ex-

pectations. Take responsibility for your own development.

Besides, your boss probably has no more time and no less

pressure than you, and many bosses, unfortunately, are

uncomfortable in this role. The more specifi c the requests

you make, the better—to attend a training course, for ex-

ample, or advice about a specifi c problem.

Do you and your boss come from

diff erent cultures?

Be aware that cultures differ in their expectations and

treatment of people with authority. In some, the boss is

expected to be participative; in others, directive. In some,

proactive and assertive; in others, humble and modest.

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Managing Up

Compare the characteristics of both your cultures. Where

your assumptions and expectations differ, be prepared to

talk about them explicitly.

Work hard to build a productive relationship with your

boss. Initiate the kinds of discussions we’ve suggested.

It’s diffi cult to succeed without his support, and impos-

sible in the face of his opposition. Always remember that

your reports face these same issues with you. Let your

experience in each relationship—with your boss and with

your people—guide you in the other.

Don’t make the mistake, as many managers do, of ig-

noring such a potentially powerful source of help and

support. Take responsibility for, and play an active role

in, making it a partnership that benefi ts both of you.

Avoid seeing yourself as a passive, powerless subordinate.

Don’t assume it cannot be a positive, mutually helpful re-

lationship until you’ve tested the possibilities on several

occasions. It’s too important—to your ability to exercise

infl uence and thus to your journey—to merely let it be

whatever it will be.

Linda A. Hill is the Wallace Brett Donham Professor of

Business Administration and faculty chair of the Leader-

ship Initiative at Harvard Business School. Now a writer

and executive coach, Kent Lineback spent many years as

a manager and an executive in business and government.

They are the coauthors of Being the Boss: The 3 Impera-

tives for Becoming a Great Leader (Harvard Business Re-

view Press, 2011).

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Winning Over Your

New Boss

by Lew McCreary

Getting a new boss can be fraught with anxiety and risk,

often making it hard to see the opportunities fresh lead-

ership will bring to you and your organization. You’ll have

to come to terms with whatever unpredictable changes

she unleashes. Don’t expect the new regime to resemble

the old one. Leaders are often brought in to shake up the

status quo, so you’ll want to make it clear right away that

you’re a valuable contributor.

If you get a new boss by joining another organiza-

tion, you’ll have no immediate worries about job secu-

rity. But you will need to fi gure out the culture (and its

politics), meet with and impress new colleagues and di-

rect reports, and above all create a successful partnership

with your new boss. You’ll need to understand—quickly

and in detail—exactly what you’ve been brought aboard

to do, what key stakeholders you’ll need to please, what

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Managing Up

resources you can command, and how your performance

in the job will be measured.

In either new-boss scenario, uncertainties abound—

but you have a role to play in taming them. As Tom

Gilmore, a principal at the Center for Applied Research

(CFAR), points out, you’re just as responsible as your new

boss for “the quality of the working alliance.”

What does that responsibility involve? Establishing

yourself as someone the new boss can turn to for candid

opinions, insight, and support—someone she can count

on to perform. Here are some tips for doing that.

Prepare to Meet the New Boss

Because your fi rst meeting with your new boss feels like

a make-or-break encounter—especially if she’s the one

who’s new to the company and presumably looking for

things to change—you may be tempted to lead with your

personal agenda. If you do, you’ll be part of a steady pa-

rade of petitioners, each bearing (as the leader sees it) a

narrow set of demands.

Don’t arrive at that initial meeting with thick stacks of

documents and a PowerPoint presentation. And don’t pre-

pare an eager audition that recapitulates your LinkedIn rec-

ommendations. Instead, ask questions and listen to the an-

swers. Find out who the new boss is, how she likes to work,

what she doesn’t yet know that you can help her learn. An-

swer her questions candidly as well, and don’t be so tightly

clenched that you fail to let the boss see who you are.

Gilmore, drawing on his experience and research at

CFAR, offers the following advice for making crucial

early encounters successful:

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Winning Over Your New Boss

• Ease into the relationship. Think incrementally.

Pick only a few vital issues to cover early on—

ones that will help you lay the groundwork for

an effective alliance with your new boss. For

instance, initially brief her on your unit’s new

open- innovation initiatives. Over time, you can

discuss in more depth the projects that have been

green-lighted so far.

• Observe her style. Does your new boss prefer

short or long conversations? A buffet of options

or one best recommendation? Hard data or soft?

Use these indicators to shape the way you present

yourself and your ideas.

• Consider others’ claims on her attention. It may

be just the two of you sitting in her offi ce, but

you’re not the only one who wants something from

her. Take account of how other key stakeholders

might affect her agenda, and highlight how your

issues fi t into those overall priorities.

• Collaborate. Help her form opinions on issues

of importance to you, her, and the group. Avoid

simply seeking her judgment on your ideas. If,

for example, you believe the group has grown too

risk-averse, begin a broader discussion about risk.

Share anecdotes about how the group has dealt

with it in the past, and ask about her experiences

and ideas.

• Be honest. Most leaders understand the diffi culty

of speaking truth to power, and yet they must

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Managing Up

depend at fi rst on relative strangers for honest ap-

praisals. Look for openings to provide helpful can-

dor on some key aspect of the new boss’s agenda.

Say your boss wants to launch an initiative that

would require buy-in from two unit heads who

don’t work well together. Diplomatically bring that

dynamic to her attention and share stories of how

others have been able to get the two to cooperate.

• Accommodate her preferences. Your new boss

has inherited systems and processes tailored to

her predecessor’s quirks. The more you can learn

about how she would like to be supported, the

faster you can help develop new systems that work

for her. For example, if her style is to delegate,

suggest a regular weekly meeting to review assign-

ments and workloads. Let her know what sorts of

tasks you’re best suited to take on and keep her

apprised of your bandwidth.

Establish a sense of connection, says Gilmore, by “fi nd-

ing links between what you’d like to see happen and things

the new boss wants to accomplish.” There will be time for

your agenda after you’ve built a solid relationship.

Be Yourself and Be Transparent

J. Bruce Harreld, who now teaches at Harvard Business

School, has both been a new boss and reported to one

many times—at IBM, Boston Chicken, Kraft General

Foods, and elsewhere.

Whether you’re getting a new boss at your current

company or joining a different one, Harreld says, “The

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Winning Over Your New Boss

best advice I can give . . . is just to be yourself and be

transparent. The more I think about ‘What should I say

to the boss?’ the more he and I are both in trouble. I’m

there for a reason—for my best opinion. And he’s there

for a reason, which is to guide me and help me learn, and

shape what my work agenda should be. And the more I

posture to him, the less effective I am.” In effect, it lowers

the value of the relationship.

Candor goes hand in glove with confi dentiality. Don’t

share your boss’s comments with others unless he’s asked

you to. And beware of carrying tales of your peers back to

him. “A lot of people view their boss as someone they have

to tell everything to,” says Harreld. “You have to be care-

ful with that. In a complex organization, if you view the

CEO as the kingmaker, you’re putting yourself at risk. If

I wear my power with my boss on my sleeve, and people

know I run back to him often, I’ve just cut out all these

other relationships and made myself totally ineffective.”

When Harreld worked for Lou Gerstner at IBM in

the mid-1990s, they didn’t always agree, but they never

pulled their punches: “That’s part of the process, part

of being on a team. You make your recommendation as

forcefully as you can. And once the decision is made, you

have to snap around and say, ‘OK, here we go.’ And some-

times people can’t [make that pivot]—they get strident.

And sometimes they have to leave the team.”

That’s worth remembering. The agenda for change

may stretch farther than you and others are willing to

go. Many new leaders have transformational marching

orders. Your job in the course of a leadership transition

is to see how compatible the new boss’s plans are with

21

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Managing Up

your own agenda and career goals. If they’re at odds, you

might have some thinking to do. And, of course, that

thinking cuts both ways: If you’re on the edge of disillu-

sionment, a new boss can be a breath of fresh air, helping

to rekindle your enthusiasm and optimism.

Help Your New Boss Get Up to Speed

If she’s new to the organization, your boss has a lot of

catching up to do. You can make it easier by:

• Saving her some time. Be generous with what and

whom you know. Help your boss identify colleagues

whose expertise will help her meet her goals.

• Saving her some trouble. Share shortcuts through

the administrative mazes that drive every newbie

crazy. This may seem like a small thing, but it’s

not. Let her know that Phil in the IT user-services

group is the only person to call when her technol-

ogy goes on the fritz. Or that Maureen in Finance

has developed an idiot-proof Excel template for

expense reports.

• Saving her some work. Being new is a job unto

itself. There may be something on the boss’s plate

that you can take on or at least help with. If you

see an opportunity, step up. Suppose your boss

has been asked to honor her predecessor’s speak-

ing commitment at an industry conference, and

it’s clear she’s not happy about going. Since you

know your way around the presentation material,

volunteer to fi ll in.

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Winning Over Your New Boss

Listen for Clues to the Future

In town-hall get-acquainted sessions, new bosses often

default to being politic and careful. Sometimes, however,

telling comments slip out. File these away as possible

clues to the mysterious future. Some of them will doubt-

less be worth probing later when you have one-on-one

meetings with the boss.

Also bear in mind that you may end up with a new

boss who isn’t right for the business. Pay close attention

to what she says (and how she says it). You may be able to

spot trouble brewing early on. A former colleague and I,

in our fi rst joint meeting with a new boss, were surprised

to hear him say, contentedly, that he really had “nothing

to prove.” Since just about everyone in the company was

energetically focused on proving something, the com-

ment seemed discordant. In less than a year, the new

boss and the company parted ways.

Remember That the Stakes Are High

Reuben Slone has weathered—and learned from— nu-

merous new-boss transitions in his career. He recently

left Offi ceMax, where he was an executive VP leading

the supply-chain organization, for a comparable position

at Walgreens. While at Offi ceMax, he had fi ve bosses in

eight years.

Each time he’s had to adapt to a new boss, Slone has

reread the Harvard Business Review article “Surviving

Your New CEO” (May 2007). He dusted it off again as he

prepared for his new assignment at Walgreens, where his

challenge is to take an increasingly complicated supply

23

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Managing Up

chain—with a growing set of channels, customers, and

offerings—to the next level of sophistication.

Slone values the article’s tips on how to build a strong

relationship with your new leader, whether it’s you or

your boss who’s joining the organization. But he also re-

reads it for a reality check: It includes sobering research

on the jeopardy executives face when a new boss takes

over. In some cases, turnover among top executives is

33%—nearly double the normal rate. So every opportu-

nity to make an impression matters tremendously.

Slone’s advice? “Make sure the boss knows he can

count on you, what he can count on you for, and that

y ou’re there to help make the transition as easy as pos-

sible. Be explicit about that. And get in early—don’t wait

for him to come to you.”

Lew McCreary is an editorial consultant and a contrib-

uting editor to HBR. Working as a consultant means he

gets new bosses regularly. He has learned that the most

valuable attribute is to be fl exible—up to a point.

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Steps for

Presenting

Problems or

Opportunities to

Your Boss

Did your project come in $10,000 over budget? A rival

poach your star performer? Your competitor beat you to

market with a new product? None of us likes to deliver a

diffi cult message, but it can be a valuable tool for build-

ing a trusting relationship with your boss. You know that

you should never bring a problem to your boss without

a proposed solution. But often we forget to frame the

situation in a way that helps us garner the necessary re-

sources or approval to begin moving toward a solution.

Adapted from Managing Up (product #14784) from the Pocket Mentor

series, Harvard Business Review Press, 2008

25

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Managing Up

Here are fi ve steps to take the next time you need to de-

liver bad news—or a promising opportunity.

1.

Describe the problem or opportunity to your

boss. Provide a general overview of the prob-

lem, and show the specifi c impact it has on

your work and the company’s goals. If you’ve

identifi ed an opportunity, show the potential

benefi ts—not just to you or your team, but to

the larger organization.

“Stu, we’ve got a morale problem on our tech

team. Our recent employee survey shows that

40% of our staff in Atlanta doesn’t fi nd their

work rewarding or challenging. If we don’t

address this, we might lose some of our best

talent. We can’t afford that at any time, but

especially now when we’re trying to release the

new system by Q1. I have a few ideas I’d like to

try, with your help and the cooperation of HR.

I think with the right approach we can keep

the team focused on meeting the Q1 goal.”

2. Identify your solution or approach. Explain

how you’ve already tried to solve the problem

and what you’ve learned from those attempts.

Recommend a specifi c approach, along with

alternatives, to provide your manager with

options.

Clearly defi ne each possible option, ad-

dressing the pros and cons, and any potential

risks or barriers. Explain the logic behind your

recommended approach. You want your man-

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Steps for Presenting Problems or Opportunities to Your Boss

ager to be aware that you’ve considered several

possible outcomes.

“It looks like we’d need to add two more

managers to the project to meet the client’s lat-

est round of requests. When I mentioned this

to Sarah during our conference call, she didn’t

respond. I’d like to go to Cincinnati and meet

with her to discuss how we might renegotiate

the contract. I think seeing her face-to-face

will make a big difference. Plus if I do it the

week after next, we’ll have just delivered on the

second phase of the project and she’s likely to

be pleased. We could of course take the hard

line and just say no to their requests and then

see what they come back with. But I’m afraid

we’d be putting our future relationship at risk.

We could also just expand the team and do the

work and see it as a marketing investment. We’d

likely win Sarah’s good graces and, as you know,

she’s well connected with many companies in

our target group. But it may be more fi nancial

risk than we’re willing to take on right now.”

3. Explain the implications. Consider the im-

pact that your proposed solution will have

on yourself and others, including your man-

ager. Be explicit about how your idea will

have far- reaching effects on the goals of the

organization.

“If we put a formal process in place to

track all sales leads, I can do a better job of

27

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Managing Up

connecting the dots between the VPs who

are meeting with potential customers. As

you know, the current approach worked well

when we just had two VPs doing the calls, but

now we have over 20. This will increase their

workload slightly, but it will be clearer to them

how to share lead information. It will also

give senior leadership a better view into the

pipeline. It won’t take a week to pull together

our sales dev reports, which means you can be

more responsive to requests from above.”

4. Discuss the benefi ts. Focus your conversation

on concrete examples of your idea’s benefi ts.

The specifi c features of the solution, or how

it will be implemented, are less important at

this stage. If you have tested your approach

on a small scale with good results, share that

information.

“Delivering the product in a smaller con-

tainer in the Latin American market will ex-

pand our customer base. We’ll be able to serve

truckers with small rigs who go on long hauls

but don’t have room for the 20-gallon contain-

ers. Most of these truckers haven’t bought our

products before, so we have the opportunity to

convert them to our brand. They’ll also be able

to pay cash, since the smaller container will be

at a lower price point. This is a real advantage

in their cash-heavy economy. Carlos helped

me run a quick experiment with a small set

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Steps for Presenting Problems or Opportunities to Your Boss

of truckers in Panama, and the response was

overwhelmingly positive.”

5.

Accept responsibility for the outcome. Demon-

strate your commitment to ensuring success.

Work with your manager to develop a fi nal

action plan for taking advantage of the oppor-

tunity you’ve presented.

“This rests squarely on my shoulders. In the

unlikely event that we don’t convert enough

customers from this campaign, I’ll quickly

move on to Plan B. But to get started I’m going

to reach out to Terry to get the e-mail list of

current customers who have opted-in. Then I’ll

work with Ellen to draft the e-mail pitch. Once

I’ve done that, I’d like to get your help run-

ning it up the fl agpole. Does that sound like a

sensible plan to you?”

29

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H6053.indb 30

10/17/12 11:40 AM

Manage Up with

Your Mentor’s

Guidance

by Jeanne C. Meister

Your mentors can help you build better relationships

with your boss and colleagues. How? Jeanne Meister, an

expert in workplace learning and development, recently

shared her ideas in an IdeaCast interview with Susan

Francis from HBR. Here are some highlights.

What kind of support can mentors off er as you’re trying

to manage up?

Mentors can help you navigate your company’s

political landscape and introduce you to key people

so you can branch out. And they’ll get you thinking

like a senior executive long before you’re anointed

as a member of the upper ranks—which will prepare

you for that metamorphosis. One of my fi rst mentors

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Managing Up

shared this valuable advice with me: Know who the

thought leaders are across the organization, get to

know them personally, and show them how your

ideas can further their business agendas.

Mentors can also help you communicate your

ideas to senior executives, who juggle myriad de-

mands and don’t have time to wade through a sea of

PowerPoint slides. If you want to present a complex

idea to a group like this, take a fi rst pass at boiling

it down to a one-page memo that focuses on busi-

ness outcomes. Then turn to one of your mentors

for input: Have you crafted a message that will get

executives’ attention—one that clearly and succinctly

shows how your idea will affect the bottom line?

What details should you trim? Where do you need to

add data for support?

How can mentors help you work more eff ectively with

your boss?

They can provide insight into the high-level chal-

lenges your boss faces and suggest realistic ways of

supporting his goals. Ask your boss to clarify his top

priorities with you—and write up a one- or two-page

summary of that conversation to share with a trusted

mentor. Then think with your mentor about how you

can contribute. Maybe you can volunteer to assemble

sales data your boss will need for his big presenta-

tion to the executive board, for example, or tap your

network to gather anecdotal feedback on a product

idea he’s considering.

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Manage Up with Your Mentor’s Guidance

Also try asking a mentor for help processing and

incorporating feedback from your boss. Suppose

you’ve been told you need to speak up more in large

staff meetings, but you’re shy. You and a mentor can

practice graceful ways of jumping into the conversa-

tion or brainstorm other things you can do to show

you’re engaged.

Part of managing up is fi guring out which organizational

battles to fi ght and how to fi ght them. What can mentors

do to make this easier?

They can help you develop your personal brand—

which will make it clearer which battles you should

take on. For instance, if you want to be known at your

company for your creative product ideas, a mentor

can broker opportunities for you to present them.

She’ll also help you develop a better sense of when to

go to the mat over them. For example, you and your

mentor may decide it’s worth fi ghting to protect your

vision for a new product’s positioning, but not to

control the timing of its introduction.

Making sure your mentor gets value out of working with

you is obviously good practice for managing up. Any

suggestions on how?

This is almost the same as understanding your boss’s

priorities. When you know what’s important to her,

you can fi nd ways to work toward her objectives.

Simple gestures go a long way—for instance, putting

33

H6053.indb 33

10/17/12 11:40 AM

Managing Up

her top three subjects of interest in your Google alerts

and passing along links you think she’ll like. Look

at her Twitter feed for insights into what she cares

about: What kinds of conversations is she having—

and how can you participate? Ask your mentor about

her personal goals and see how you can help her

achieve them. Suppose she’s writing an article on

pricing strategy for a marketing journal. Offer to read

the manuscript and provide feedback from an execu-

tion perspective. If you fi nd ways to give as well as

receive, your mentor will take note—and become all

the more invested in your development.

Jeanne C. Meister

is a partner at Future Workplace,

which helps organizations redefi ne their corporate learn-

ing and talent management strategies. She is a coauthor,

with Karie Willyerd, of The 2020 Workplace: How Inno-

vative Companies Attract, Develop, and Keep Tomorrow’s

Employees Today (HarperBusiness, 2010) .

34

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Change the Way

You Persuade

A summary of the full-length HBR article by Gary A.

Williams and Robert B. Miller, highlighting key ideas.

THE IDEA IN BRIEF

Your proposal was brilliant; your logic, unassailable; your

argument, impassioned. So why didn’t your boss buy it?

Perhaps you took a one-size-fi ts-all approach to per-

suasion. But different people use different styles when

deciding to accept an idea: Each wants certain kinds of

information, at specifi c steps in the process.

There are fi ve common but distinct decision-making

styles: charismatic, thinker, skeptic, follower, and con-

troller. One decision-making style isn’t better than an-

other. But to tip the outcome your way, understand your

listener’s preferences—then tailor your persuasive efforts

accordingly.

Reprint #R0205D

35

H6053.indb 35

10/17/12 11:40 AM

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H6053.indb 37

10/17/12 11:40 AM

Managing Up

Gary A. Williams is the CEO of Miller-Williams Incorpo-

rated, a San Diego–based customer research fi rm. He can

be reached at gaw@millwill.com. Robert B. Miller is the chairman of Miller-Williams Incorporated. He is the coauthor of several business books, including Strategic Sell-

ing. He can be reached at rbm@millwill.com.

38

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Get to Know Your

Boss’s Boss

by Priscilla Claman

Does your boss’s boss know you well? Is she impressed

with you? Does she know exactly what you do? If you

can’t answer these questions with a “yes,” you’re missing

out on career opportunities.

Here’s a person with a broad perspective on your orga-

nization, someone who can see what’s coming down the

pike—whether it’s a new product or a reorg—more clearly

than you or your boss can. Forming a relationship with

her will help you develop a 30,000-foot view, too. But it’s

more than that. She has a direct say in your growth and

advancement. She approves your performance reviews,

raises, promotions, and major changes in duties. She also

signs off on any professional development you might be

offered, such as stretch assignments or formal training.

Adapted from content posted on hbr.org on November 17, 2011

39

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Managing Up

To succeed in your organization, you need her to know

your skills and have an idea of what your career plans

are. Yes, your own boss is supposed to advocate for you,

but he still has to get the approval of his boss. When you

and others are competing for a promotion, it will go to

someone your boss’s boss thinks highly of.

But how do you get to know her? How do you earn her

attention and respect? Here are some suggestions:

• Interact with her. It sounds basic, but smile and

say “hello” when you see her. Some people duck

and run when a powerful person comes into their

work area. Instead, ask how you can help her. Re-

introduce yourself if you see she doesn’t remember

you. Treat her like the very important customer

she is.

• Reach out to her. Touch base when opportunities

arise. If she gets a promotion or award, send her

a congratulatory e-mail. If you fi nd an article or

book that’s relevant to her interests, send her a link

and ask whether she’s heard about it.

• Tap her for advice. E-mail her to ask for input on

courses you’re thinking of taking, professional or-

ganizations you’re considering joining, and more.

First make sure it’s OK with your boss, though,

and use his name in your message so it’s clear

you’re not bypassing the chain of command. Sup-

pose your boss has asked you to research some new

vendors, and you know his boss has several strong

candidates in her extensive network. Send her your

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H6053.indb 40

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Get to Know Your Boss’s Boss

list of fi nalists to see if she has any experience with

them or knows of other good options. And when

you do this, make your boss look good. Preface

your question with, “John thought you might have

some helpful insights for us . . .” Follow up on her

suggestions and thank her for them when you

write to let her know which vendor you’ve chosen

and why.

• Extend an invitation. Do you have an interesting

guest coming in for a meeting? Are you giving a

presentation? Is your manager leading a train-

ing session? Ask your boss if you should invite

his boss. Whether she comes or not, it’s another

chance to let them both know that you’re thinking

of the big picture.

• Pass along praise. Forward complimentary

e-mails from colleagues or customers to your

boss. He’ll most likely send them on to his boss,

since your success refl ects well on him, too. Cus-

tomer compliments are highly regarded, whether

the customers are internal or external.

• Volunteer for a cross-functional team. Leading or

joining a cross-functional team is a great way to

contribute to the larger organization. So is offer-

ing to take notes at meetings and circulate them

afterward. Most people see this as drudgery, but

it’s an opportunity to raise your visibility. Ask team

members if they’d like you to copy their manag-

ers, and see if your boss would like you to copy his

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Managing Up

boss. If they say yes, your notes—and your name—

will be noticed by the senior team, including your

boss’s boss.

• Fix a problem. If you fi nd a way to make an

improvement that furthers a business objec-

tive or supports a corporate value, act on it—and

share the results with your boss’s boss. Here’s an

example: An administrative assistant at a global

nonprofi t found her organization’s customer-

tracking system inaccurate and hard to use. When

she discovered that many colleagues felt the same

way, she researched other systems. Some friends in

accounting pulled together a cost/benefi t analysis

for her so she could develop a proposal for switch-

ing to a new system, which she presented to her

boss and her boss’s boss. She not only got funding

for the project, she also earned a new leadership

role: overseeing the conversion and managing the

new system.

Try these tips, and your boss’s boss will know—and

care—who you are.

Priscilla Claman

is president of Career Strategies, a

Boston-based fi rm offering career coaching to individu-

als and competency development and career manage-

ment services to organizations.

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How to Make Your

Boss Look Good—

Without Becoming

a Sycophant

by Michael Schrage

I fi nd suck-ups loathsome. But I admire the managing-

up technique I’ve seen ambitious people skillfully deploy.

No fawning or fl attery—they make smart use of technol-

ogy to make their bosses look good.

For example, the boss’s boss at one marketing fi rm

had given a keynote speech at a major industry event.

A twentysomething analyst easily found a couple of

compliment ary tweets referencing the talk. He e-mailed

them to his fortysomething boss, who barely knew what

Twitter was, but who was thrilled to bring them to his

Adapted from content posted on hbr.org on April 15, 2010

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Managing Up

boss’s attention. Win. Win. Win. Everyone was happy. A

simple 90-second investment made his boss look good.

At another fi rm, a project manager found that her

boss’s boss had an offbeat sense of humor and liked in-

jecting levity into boring project reviews. She made it her

mission to fi nd the appropriate New Yorker or Dilbert car-

toon to paste into a PowerPoint slide for presentations.

Of course, she didn’t do this for her own presentations;

she selected amusing and relevant options for her boss’s

talk. He was grateful, and the boss’s boss liked them.

What I like about making your boss look good is that it

is the mirror image of the marketing mantra about know-

ing the customer’s customer. Understanding your boss is

vital. But researching, knowing, and appreciating your

boss’s boss ought to give you valuable insight into what

makes your boss effective—and frustrated. That shapes

how to better position your boss in the mind of his boss.

Your Boss as a Brand

If you saw your boss as a brand, how would you sell that

brand to the ultimate customer—your boss’s boss? An-

swering this question well requires market research.

What can you do that will move your project forward and

make your boss look good to his boss and peers, too? It

can be a worthwhile investment of your time to consider

what tools and technologies may help you.

The economic and technological “barriers of entry”

to fi guring out appropriate approaches to making your

boss look good have collapsed. Most managers are but

a LinkedIn connection or a blog comment away from

insights into their boss’s boss that makes a win-win-win

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How to Make Your Boss Look Good—Without Becoming a Sycophant

outcome a good bet. Should this occur daily? Only if

you’re comfortable being the teacher’s pet. But there’s

nothing wrong with making your boss look good be a

part of your brand.

Perhaps you think it would test the outer limits of your

creativity and authenticity to make your boss look good.

But give it a try. Think of it as a marketing challenge:

What are the two things you could do in the next three

days that would make your boss look better to his boss?

Michael Schrage, a research fellow at MIT Sloan School’s

Center for Digital Business, is the author of Serious Play

(Harvard Business School Press, 1999) and the forth-

coming Getting Beyond Ideas.

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Stop Being

Micromanaged

by Amy Gallo

None of us likes a boss who constantly scrutinizes our

work. Micromanagers are not only annoying, their lack

of faith may make you doubt yourself and stunt your

professional growth. But you don’t have to suffer with

an overly controlling boss. If you reduce your microman-

ager’s stress, you may be able to secure the autonomy

you need.

What the Experts Say

Micromanagement can make you feel inept, but typically

it has nothing to do with your performance. “It’s more

about your boss’s level of internal anxiety and need to

control situations than anything about you,” says Jenny

Chatman, a professor of management at Haas School of

Business at UC Berkeley.

Adapted from content posted on hbr.org on September 22, 2011

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Managing Up

You can’t change the way your boss leads, but you can

change the way you follow using these tactics:

Evaluate Your Boss’s Behavior

Jean-François Manzoni, coauthor of The Set-Up-to-Fail

Syndrome: How Good Managers Cause Great People

to Fail, cautions that all controlling bosses are not the

same. On one end of the spectrum are managers with

very high standards. They may regularly have you re-

work something that doesn’t measure up. They pay a

great deal of attention to detail and exercise some de-

gree of control, but they don’t stifl e you. In fact, you may

learn a lot from them.

At the other end of the spectrum are people Manzoni

describes as “pathological micromanagers who need to

make it clear to themselves and others that they are in

charge.” These are the bosses who give you little to no in-

dependence, insist on being involved in every detail of

your work, and are more concerned about specifi cs, such

as font size, than the big picture. “You know you’re work-

ing with [a pathological micromanager] if he gets in-

volved in a level of detail that is way below his pay grade,”

says Chatman.

Don’t Fight It

Railing against micromanagement isn’t productive.

“If you push back in one way or another—passively or

aggressively—your manager may conclude you can’t be

trusted and get more involved,” says Manzoni. It may be

tempting to complain, but it will probably only make

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your situation worse. “If I sense disdain, I’m going to

be encouraged to show you that on my forehead it says

‘boss’ and on yours, it doesn’t,” says Manzoni. Instead,

try to understand what’s causing your boss’s behav-

ior. Is he under immense pressure? Is this his intuitive

way of managing? Does the company culture encour-

age and reward this kind of behavior? If you recog-

nize the underlying reasons, you can fi gure out how to

respond.

Increase Trust

Micromanagement is usually “based on a general view

that the world’s standards are not up to what they should

be,” says Chatman. You therefore need to make a con-

scious effort to earn your manager’s trust by succeeding

in the dimensions that he cares most about. “You abso-

lutely, positively must deliver and deliver in a way that

doesn’t increase your boss’s stress. In fact, identify things

that reduce [it],” says Manzoni. If you meet your boss’s

standards—deliver work on time, make sure projects

include the elements she wants—she’s likely to see you

as someone she can lean on. The more she trusts you,

the less inclined she’ll be to tell you exactly how to do

something.

Make Up-front Agreements

Another tactic is to talk to your boss—before a project

starts—about how he’ll be involved. “Try to agree on

standards and basic approach,” says Manzoni. What

role will each of you play? What criteria will you use

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Managing Up

to measure the project’s success? Explain what you

think the ideal plan of action is and then ask for his

input. “Be sure you understand up front what the guid-

ing principles are for the work—not just the tactical

elements,” says Chatman. For example, if you’re work-

ing on an internal marketing campaign, be sure to talk

about the message you want to send, not the font you

should use. If the discussion becomes overly focused

on detail, try to bring it back to the principles and ap-

proach you agreed on. Flattery can also work. Remind

your boss that he’s better off not getting involved in the

minutiae because his time and effort are more valuable

to the big picture.

Keep Your Boss in the Loop

Remember that micromanagers are often motivated

by anxiety. “They are nervous about anyone else being

able to do things as well or in the same way they would,”

says Chatman. Address that concern by keeping your

manager informed of your project’s progress. Schedule

regular check-ins to help her feel part of the process. Or

send unprompted e-mails that share important infor-

mation. If she wants detail, get specifi c. Although an-

noying now, it may save you the effort of redoing work

later on.

Give Feedback, but Only

if Appropriate

Telling a micromanager that you don’t appreciate his

controlling behavior may only trigger more of it. But

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some managers may be open to hearing your input. “Try

to catch your boss in a moment of openness,” says Man-

zoni. He suggests using the time in a scheduled perfor-

mance review. Focus your feedback on how his behavior

affects the process. Can you tweak his involvement so

that he gets the information he needs without becoming

a roadblock?

Get Help or Move On

If none of these approaches work for you, ask yourself:

Do I really want to work here? “If it’s pathological, you

should consider transferring to another part of the com-

pany or fi nding another job,” says Manzoni. Before you

throw in the towel, however, look to others inside the

company. Find a trusted coworker or a reliable HR man-

ager who can counsel you. At the very least, you’ll be able

to do some restorative venting, and you may uncover ad-

ditional tactics that could work for you.

Principles to Remember

• Do everything you can to gain the micro manager’s

trust

• Know what worries your boss and try to reduce her

concerns

• Provide regular and detailed updates so your boss

is aware of your progress

• Don’t defy the micromanager—that often triggers

more of the behavior you’re trying to avoid

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Managing Up

Case Study:

Be Attentive to Her Concerns

In 2006, Marcy Berke (names have been changed)

worked for an insurance company with offi ces through-

out the U.S. Her boss’s boss was a woman named Bar-

bara, who was responsible for 10 agencies in her region.

Barbara was passionate about effi ciency. She asked all the

agents in her region to produce a time report, accounting

for the number of minutes each of them spent on various

tasks each day. “She was concerned with keeping her own

production fi gures up and burnishing her image with se-

nior management,” Marcy says.

Marcy recognized what mattered most to Barbara.

“If I were heading up a project, I would make certain

to e-mail Barbara, early and often, with any questions I

might have about what her expectations were, and give

her an outline of what my team was working on and the

anticipated date of completion,” she says. If her team was

having diffi culty meeting the deadline for any reason, she

would let Barbara know as soon as possible, providing

both a reason and a revised end date. Marcy supplied the

information Barbara needed without being asked fi rst so

that Barbara could learn to trust her.

Since Marcy knew that Barbara was so preoccupied

with time, she arrived at least two or three minutes early

for meetings. When Marcy needed to set up a meeting

with Barbara, she would make the request by e-mail,

clearly stating the reason for the meeting, listing the

questions she would be asking, and indicating how long

the meeting would last.

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This approach worked well for Marcy. She was able

to thrive at the company for four years, despite Bar-

bara’s micromanagement, before she left to start her

own fi rm.

Amy Gallo is a contributing editor at Harvard Business

Review. Follow her on Twitter at @amyegallo.

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Dealing with Your

Incompetent Boss

by Amy Gallo

We all complain about our bosses from time to time.

Some of us even consider it part of our job descriptions.

But there’s a difference between watercooler griping

and paralyzing frustration, just as there’s a clear dis-

tinction between a manager with a few fl aws and one

who is truly incompetent. So how can you handle your

bad boss?

What the Experts Say

“Most people have had experience with someone who is

incompetent, or at least unhelpful,” says Annie McKee,

coauthor of Becoming a Resonant Leader: Develop Your

Emotional Intelligence, Renew Your Relationships, Sus-

tain Your Effectiveness. That’s because too many com-

panies promote people for the wrong reasons. Whether

Adapted from content posted on hbr.org on June 6, 2011

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Managing Up

your boss lacks technical or managerial ability, says Mi-

chael Useem, author of Leading Up, bad bosses sap mo-

tivation, kill productivity, and can make you want to run

from the job screaming.

Although leaving is sometimes an option, it’s not the

only one for coping with a bad boss. Consider these tac-

tics fi rst:

Understand Your Boss’s

Incompetence

Before you declare your boss useless, check your bias and

better understand what you’re seeing. “When you’re look-

ing at your boss, the fi rst thing you need to do before you

judge is look at yourself,” says McKee. Many of us have

blind spots when it comes to our bosses. Ask yourself if

you’re jealous of her position in the organization or if you

have a natural tendency to resist authority.

Also “. . . be cautious about your judgment until you

collect all the evidence,” says Useem. Your boss may have

stressors you don’t see or fully understand. “It’s very com-

mon for people to completely miss the pressures their

bosses are under; partly because a good manager will

buffer you from them,” says McKee. By learning more

about your boss and developing empathy for him, you

may reevaluate his competence. Even if you still conclude

that he’s incapable, remember that he’s human. Don’t de-

monize him.

Ask Others for Help

Look to peers or people outside the organization for ad-

vice and a place to vent. This doesn’t mean indiscrimi-

nate moaning about your boss. Instead fi nd confi dants: a

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trusted colleague, a spouse, a mentor, or a coach. Explain

what you’re seeing, how it’s affecting you and your work,

and ask for advice. “This is not to conspire against your

boss but to check your point of view,” says Useem. People

outside the situation can give you a fresh perspective or

offer new coping strategies.

Find a Way to Make It Work

Regardless of your boss’s incompetence, you need to

work together to get your job done. Be creative in col-

laborating with her. Figure out where she excels and then

fi nd ways to pair your strengths with her weaknesses. For

example, if your boss is a competent writer but falls apart

in front of an audience, suggest ways you can help with

her presentation to the executive team. Can you listen to

her trial run? Or present portions of it, as a development

opportunity for you?

When you request something from her—whether it’s

input on a work plan, an introduction to a colleague, or

her permission to reach out to a client—be specifi c about

what you need. And do as much of the work for her as you

can: Provide a draft e-mail or point out the three areas

you’d like her to comment on. If she’s unable to help, sug-

gest an alternative: Perhaps you can ask one of her peers

or superiors for input or the introduction. Your goal is to

help her solve the problem, not set up more situations

where she’ll fail.

Step Up

Rather than give up on an ineffectual boss, focus on what

you can do to make up the difference. If your boss fails to

set priorities for the team, propose some that he can then

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approve or tweak. If meeting follow-up isn’t his strength,

offer to send out the to-dos. Without harboring resent-

ment, do what’s best for your team and the organization.

Recognize that stepping up can be a growth opportunity;

you may be taking on responsibilities someone at your

level doesn’t usually have. And in the process, you gain

the respect and appreciation of other higher-ups.

Develop Yourself

Sometimes incompetence can manifest itself in a lack

of communication. You may have a manager who hasn’t

given you a clear sense of your goals or even a concrete

job description. These are essential to doing your job

well and advancing your career, so take them on yourself.

Write your own job description and articulate goals for

the quarter or year. Send them to your boss and ask to

review them together. In person, you can then confi rm

your priorities and understand her expectations. If she’s

still unresponsive, keep a record of what you’ve proposed

and work to meet the goals you laid out. It may be that

she isn’t sure what you should be working on and needs

you to just take action.

Take Care of Yourself

Working for an incompetent boss can be bad for your

health. “There’s a lot of research on the negative psy-

chological effects,” says McKee. She suggests creating

boundaries that protect you from the emotional damage.

We have a tendency to point to a bad boss and say, “He’s

ruining my life.” But this ignores the fact that you have

agency in the situation. “Once you become a victim, you

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Dealing with Your Incompetent Boss

cease to become a leader,” she says. Focus on what makes

you happy about your job, not miserable. “We can come

to work every day and pay attention to this horrible boss,

or we can choose to pay attention to the people we are

happy to see every day and the work we enjoy. We can

choose which emotions we lean into,” says McKee.

Whenever possible, take on projects that allow you

to spend time in other parts of the organization or with

other leaders. Identify a mentor who can provide you

with the feedback and instruction you aren’t getting

from your boss. Find a way to let off steam, such as tak-

ing short breaks throughout the day. Look for humor in

the situation, and try not to allow one person to ruin your

day, your job, or your career.

Amy Gallo is a contributing editor at Harvard Business

Review. Follow her on Twitter at @amyegallo.

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Coping with a

Confl ict-Averse

Boss

by Anne Field

Does your boss avoid confl ict at any cost? Do you fi nd it

diffi cult to get the resources you need because your boss

won’t advocate for you? Does she push your team to the

brink because she fears saying no to requests from above?

Here’s how to cope—and get the critical feedback and

guidance you need.

Make Confl ict More Comfortable

Having a defensive and confl ict-averse boss doesn’t

mean you can never disagree with him. When an issue

crops up, frame it in terms that will get the best results

for your business. Play devil’s advocate. Ask lots of “what

if?” questions. “What if our printer continues to have

quality- control issues? Might it be a good idea to start

Adapted from reprint #C0504A

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Managing Up

investigating other options now just in case?” Use gentle

lead-ins such as “I might be off base here, but . . .” or “This

might sound like a crazy idea, but . . .” all the while re-

assuring your boss that you’re working toward the same

goal as he is.

Focus on Problem Solving

If you need to talk about a diffi cult issue with your boss,

focus on the problem, not the people. This will help es-

tablish neutral ground.

Offer specifi c suggestions. For example, if your weekly

team meeting has turned into a gripe session for your

colleagues, volunteer to create and distribute agendas. “I

know how busy you are preparing the Williams presen-

tation, so why don’t I poll everyone for agenda items for

this week’s meeting?” You’ll help provide a structure for

your boss to approve and then follow.

Gather Supporting Evidence

If you want your boss to use her authority on your behalf,

give her everything she needs to build her case: assemble

data, write drafts, zero in on how your request fi ts into

larger unit or organizational goals.

For example, a manager in a consumer products

company dragged her feet when her staff urged her to

ask for a bigger budget. So, they gathered the neces-

sary backup, specifying each team member’s duties, and

the resources needed to meet their goals. They high-

lighted how meeting their goals would contribute to the

unit’s overall strategy. With that ammunition in hand,

the boss approached senior management with greater

confi dence.

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Put It in Writing

If your boss dreads face-to-face conversations, especially

performance reviews, send him e-mails and brief docu-

ments outlining your key accomplishments and areas of

development. This will make it easier for him to engage

in a productive conversation with you—rather than com-

ing up with the documentation on his own.

Guidelines can also help your confl ict-averse boss

work with larger groups. If his glossing over disagree-

ments inhibits your team’s ability to air differences, check

your perception with your teammates offl ine. If they also

feel that he’s squelching productive debates in favor of

peaceful chats, raise the issue with your boss in a one-

on-one meeting. Propose that a little debate might help

stoke the team’s creativity and that setting ground rules

for such discussions would ensure that they’re produc-

tive. Volunteer to take notes to help keep the creative

ideas moving along to implementation.

Ease In

If you know that your boss will fi nd a conversation awk-

ward or unpleasant, don’t rush into it. Instead, open

with a neutral, nonthreatening icebreaker. Cite a recent

newspaper article about a common interest. Ask about

her child or pet. Once you sense that she’s comfortable,

ease into the discussion.

Anne Field is a business writer based in Pelham, New

York.

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How to Give Your

Boss Feedback

by Amy Gallo

Have you ever wished you could tell your boss exactly

what you think of her? That her obsessive mobile use

during team meetings is demoralizing? That people roll

their eyes about her compulsive control of the smallest

details of every project?

You see your boss in a variety of settings—

client

and team meetings, presentations, one-on-ones, nego-

tiations—which gives you insight into her strengths and

weaknesses. But even if your observations could be help-

ful, is it your place to share them with her? Could frank

feedback put your job or your relationship at risk?

Providing feedback to your boss, commonly called up-

ward feedback, is a tricky process to master. But if you

offer it correctly, your insight can not only help your boss,

it can also improve your relationship with her.

Adapted from content posted on hbr.org on March 24, 2010

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Managing Up

What the Experts Say

John Baldoni, a leadership consultant and author of

Lead Your Boss: The Subtle Art of Managing Up, says that

leadership is all about perception; if leaders don’t know

how others experience them, their performance suffers.

And the higher up in an organization a leader sits, the

harder it is to get honest feedback. Your input can help

your boss see himself as others see him and help him to

make critical adjustments in his behavior and approach.

Of course, giving your boss feedback requires careful

thought; here are some principles to keep in mind.

The Relationship Comes First

The ability to give and receive upward feedback depends

on the level of trust between you and your boss. If you

know that she’s unreceptive to feedback, is likely to re-

act negatively, or if you have a rocky relationship, don’t

say anything. But “if your boss is open-minded and you

have a good relationship,” Baldoni says, “you owe her the

straight talk.” As with any feedback, your intentions must

be good, and your desire to help your boss should super-

sede any issues you may have with her.

Wait to Be Invited

Even if you have a great relationship, don’t launch into

unsolicited feedback. Some bosses will request feedback

at the end of your formal review, asking, “Is there any-

thing else I can do to support you?” Or, when you fi rst

start working together, he may share his development

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areas and ask you to keep an eye out for certain behav-

iors that he’s working on. “In a perfect world, it is a man-

ager’s responsibility to make it safe to give feedback,” says

Baldoni.

Of course, this is not how things usually happen. If

your boss doesn’t directly request feedback, ask if she

would like it. This might be easiest in the context of a new

project or client. You can ask something such as “Would

it be useful if I occasionally check in with you about how

I think the project is going?” Setting it up in advance can

smooth the process, but you can also give feedback in the

moment. Try asking something along the lines of “Can I

tell you about something I noticed in that meeting?” Em-

phasize that you’re trying to help her so that the client,

project, or company will benefi t.

Share Your Perspective

Focus your feedback on what you’re actually seeing or

hearing, not what you would do as the boss. Baldoni rec-

ommends saying things such as “I noticed that you were

silent when Joe disagreed with your proposal. It can be

intimidating when you don’t respond to criticism.” By

sharing your perspective, you can help your boss see how

others see him. This can be invaluable to a leader who

may be disconnected from people in the lower ranks.

Focusing on your perceptions also means realizing

the limitations of your standpoint—you’re seeing only

a partial picture of your boss’s performance and all the

demands he’s juggling. James Detert, author of the

Harvard Business Review articles “Why Employees Are

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Managing Up

Afraid to Speak” and “Speaking Up to Higher-Ups,” says,

“Subordinates by and large don’t have a full appreciation

of [their bosses’] reality.”

Good feedback rules still apply. Your feedback should

be honest, specifi c, and data-driven. Open with something

positive and then offer constructive comments along with

suggestions for improvement. Avoid accusations.

If Your Boss Bites Back

No matter how thoughtfully you’ve prepared and deliv-

ered your feedback, your boss may get upset or defensive.

Sometimes reframing it in terms of what your boss cares

most about can help, says Detert. “Point out how specifi c

behaviors [may be] inhibiting your boss from achieving

her goals.”

Gauge her reaction to determine how she prefers to

receive feedback and what topics are out of bounds. Per-

haps she doesn’t want to receive pointers on her commu-

nication style or a certain high-pressure initiative. Rather

than clamming up after a negative reaction, take the op-

portunity to ask her about what would be useful going

forward.

When in Doubt, Hold Your Tongue

If you’re not sure your boss wants feedback or if the subject

in question is sensitive, it’s better not to speak up. Don’t

risk your working relationship or your job. Instead, look

for opportunities to comment anonymously, such as a

360-degree feedback process. If you feel your boss’s behav-

ior is putting the company or your unit in jeopardy, follow

the appropriate channels in your company—starting with

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Human Resources or your employee resource manual

or wiki.

Amy Gallo is a contributing editor at Harvard Business

Review. Follow her on Twitter at @amyegallo.

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Managing Multiple

Bosses

by Amy Gallo

The movie Offi ce Space, a comedy about work life in a

typical 1990s software company, details the saga of Peter

Gibbons—a man with eight different bosses. All of them,

seemingly unaware of each other, pass by his desk and

tell him what to do. Although the fi lm is most certainly

a satire, for some, it’s not far from the truth. Many of us

report to more than one boss, so learning to handle mul-

tiple managers is essential.

What the Experts Say

“As you go to a matrixed structure, you can easily have be-

tween one and seven immediate supervisors,” says Robert

Sutton, the author of Good Boss, Bad Boss. Adam Grant,

coauthor of the Harvard Business Review article “The

Hidden Advantages of Quiet Bosses,” concurs. “As com-

Adapted from content posted on hbr.org on August 18, 2011

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Managing Up

panies continue to fl atten, organize work around specifi c

projects, and use temporary teams to complete projects,

many employees fi nd themselves reporting to multiple

bosses,” he says. Although this is more likely to happen

in bigger and more complex companies, it can happen

in small organizations and family-owned businesses, too.

Having many bosses is complicated, and, as Grant says,

“If you’re not careful, you can end up letting all of them

down.”

Here are some guidelines to make your job, and theirs,

easier.

Recognize the Challenges

Although working for more than one person can pre sent

numerous challenges, there are three common ones to

watch for:

1. Overload. With several people assigning you

work, one of the greatest risks is simply hav-

ing too much to do. “If you report to multiple

bosses who supervise your efforts on different

tasks and projects, it’s all too easy for each boss

to treat you as if you have no other responsi-

bilities,” says Grant.

2. Confl icting messages.  “The more bosses you

have, the more confl icting messages you get,”

says Sutton. Sometimes this happens out of

ignorance—your bosses aren’t aware of what

the others are saying—or because people are

pushing their own agendas. “Different bosses

often have different expectations, and what

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impresses one may disappoint another,” says

Grant.

3. Loyalty. “Some bosses want to know that

they’re your fi rst priority. If you have more

than one boss who feels this way, it’s easy to

get caught in the middle,” says Grant. You may

need to negotiate between competing demands

for your loyalty.

So, how do you make it work?

Know Who Your Ultimate Boss Is

Although you may take direction from multiple manag-

ers, most of us have one person who’s ultimately respon-

sible for our careers. Ask a lot of questions about the re-

porting structure. Find out who completes your reviews

and who contributes to them. Who makes decisions

about your compensation, promotions, and so on?

Stay Connected

Reporting to more than one person can be complicated

further if your bosses are in different locations. When

your bosses work remotely (or when you do), you need to

overcommunicate to make up for the lack of face-to-face

time. Rely on technology to help you. Make your calendar

viewable to those outside the offi ce or use a web-based

tool such as Google Calendar. This will allow all your

bosses to know where you are, even when they can’t see

you. You can use the same calendar to indicate what days

you’re working on which projects. To simulate the drop-

by-your-desk conversations, use an instant messaging

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Managing Up

application to have brief check-ins or ask quick ques-

tions. If only one of your bosses is remote, don’t inadver-

tently cater to the boss whom you see more often, and

make sure the distant manager knows you’re meeting his

needs, too.

Be Proactive About Your Workload

Let everyone know what’s on your plate. Although it may

not be in your job description, it will behoove you to ne-

gotiate between your bosses. “I would err on the side of

taking the initiative to coordinate between them. Most

bosses prefer proactive employees,” says Grant. You can

create a shared document that lists all of your ongoing

tasks and projects, or you can communicate these items

in weekly check-in meetings.

Get Your Bosses to Communicate

Most bosses appreciate your bringing them solutions, not

problems, but this is complicated when you have more

than one manager. Whether you need to resolve con-

tradictory directions, reduce your workload, or sort out

inconsistent demands, the best approach is to get your

bosses to talk with each other, rather than trying to rep-

resent one’s agenda to the other. “Start by assuming the

best. Invite them to discuss the confl icts and get them out

on the table,” says Sutton. Bring your bosses together in

the same place—in a face-to-face meeting or on a confer-

ence call—and explain what the confl ict is. Enlist them

in the problem solving and push for transparency. “If you

ask your bosses for advice on how to handle the disagree-

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Managing Multiple Bosses

ment, they’re more likely to take your perspective and see

the challenges from your point of view,” says Grant.

Set Boundaries

“The most important skill for staying sane while report-

ing to multiple bosses is the ability to set boundaries,” says

Grant. He points to research done by Harvard Business

School professor Leslie Perlow. She found that engineers

at a Fortune 500 company were constantly interrupted

by managers and coworkers. She helped them create

norms for quiet time: Three days a week, there would

be no interruptions before noon so they could focus on

work. If your multiple bosses frequently come to you with

questions or to check in about their projects, establish

protected times. As mentioned earlier, you can block

out times in your calendar for work on certain projects.

Before taking on a new project, remind your bosses that

you’ll need to assess how it fi ts into your overall work-

load. Frame this as wanting to be sure you have enough

bandwidth to do a project justice rather than putting the

request off.

Get Sneaky if You Have To

The aforementioned advice works best in a healthy orga-

nization, but yours may not reward transparency and pro-

active approaches. You may fi nd that your bosses are unre-

sponsive or unwilling to meet with you to resolve confl icts,

which requires a different approach. “If you’re in a fear-

based environment, you have to fi gure out how to protect

yourself. The worse the environment, the sneakier you

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Managing Up

have to get,” says Sutton. Figure out which of your bosses

has the most power, and prioritize her assignments. “The

smart employee doesn’t ask. Instead, do your own calcula-

tion of who is more powerful and who would hurt you the

least,” says Sutton.

Don’t Take It Personally

Sutton notes that it’s easy to assume that your bosses are

out to get you, but usually that’s not the case. They’re

probably just pushing their own agendas, and you’re get-

ting caught in the middle. Try not to feel persecuted. In-

stead, identify the confl icts and work to resolve them.

Reap the Benefi ts

Despite the challenges, having more than one boss can

also be an advantage. For example, you’re likely to get

more robust feedback. If your bosses come from different

parts of the organization, you’ll have access to a larger and

more varied network. You probably have more autonomy

because you don’t have one person calling all the shots.

“Like a kid playing parents off each other, ask the person

who you know will give you the answer you want,” says

Sutton. Although this may seem underhanded, it’s an

effective way to align your interests with those of your

bosses and the company.

Case Study:

A Monday Morning To-Do List

Kim Bryant had been in the accounting industry for

15 years when she started with a new fi rm as a staff ac-

countant. The company had three partners, and Kim was

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Managing Multiple Bosses

initially hired to work for one of them. But soon she was

asked to continue her work for that partner and also help

out one of the others. “The most diffi cult thing about

working for two partners was that both had projects that

they felt were urgent and it put me in an uncomfortable

situation,” she says. Kim had to decide which project

to work on fi rst. When she asked one of her bosses for

advice, he would say he wanted his project done fi rst.

Frequently, one partner assigned her something urgent

when she was working on an upcoming deadline for the

other. So Kim created a to-do list every Monday morn-

ing, prioritized by due date, and shared it with the two

partners. “That allowed each partner to be aware of what

I had been assigned to do,” she says.

She also learned to watch their schedules, often with

the help of their secretary. If Kim had been told that a

project was urgent, she could gauge how soon she needed

to do it based on when the partner was back in the offi ce.

She knew if she got it on his desk before he returned, she

would be fi ne.

Amy Gallo is a contributing editor at Harvard Business

Review. Follow her on Twitter at @amyegallo.

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Section 2

Managing

Across

Do you depend on lots of people over whom you have no

authority? Do you struggle to navigate your company’s

political landscape? To get your cross-functional team

functioning? To collaborate across time zones? To moti-

vate colleagues to meet your deadlines when they’re jug-

gling countless other projects?

Managing across—with peers, vendors, or consul-

tants—is complex. You don’t have a say in their reviews

or decide if they get promoted. So you need to use other

tactics, such as setting mutually benefi cial goals, estab-

lishing your credibility, polishing your powers of persua-

sion, and tapping into your network. The articles in this

section will give you these tools.

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What Makes a

Leader?

A summary of the full-length HBR article by Daniel

Goleman, highlighting key ideas.

THE IDEA IN BRIEF

Are you so intent on meeting deadlines or hitting fi nancial

targets that you’re neglecting working relationships? Do

you often interrupt colleagues? Fail to ask them what else

is on their plates?

If you nodded “yes” to any of these questions, you may

have zeroed in on what’s getting in the way of your abil-

ity to work well with people at all levels, across silos, and

with personalities that may be very different from your

own. Managing across requires emotional intelligence:

self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and

social skill. Developing emotional intelligence will help

you better understand your own—and others’— priorities,

pressures, and work styles.

Reprint #R0401H

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.

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Self

Motivation

H6053.indb 82

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ence

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Managing Across

It was Daniel Goleman who fi rst brought the term

“emotional intelligence” to a wide audience with his

1995 book of that name, and it was Goleman who fi rst

applied the concept to business with his 1998 HBR

article, reprinted here. In his research at nearly 200

large, global companies, Goleman found that while the

qualities traditionally associated with leadership—

such as intelligence, toughness, determination, and

vision—are required for success, they are insuffi cient.

Truly effective leaders are also distinguished by a high

degree of emotional intelligence, which includes self-

awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and

social skill.

These qualities may sound “soft” and unbusiness-

like, but Goleman found direct ties between emotional

intelligence and measurable business results. While

emotional intelligence’s relevance to business has

continued to spark debate over the past six years,

Goleman’s article remains the defi nitive reference on

the subject, with a description of each component of

emotional intelligence and a detailed discussion of how

to recognize it in potential leaders, how and why it con-

nects to performance, and how it can be learned.

Every businessperson knows a story about a highly in-

telligent, highly skilled executive who was promoted into

a leadership position only to fail at the job. And they also

k now a story about someone with solid—but not extraor-

dinary—intellectual abilities and technical skills who was

promoted into a similar position and then soared.

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What Makes a Leader?

Such anecdotes support the widespread belief that

identifying individuals with the “right stuff” to be leaders

is more art than science. After all, the personal styles of

superb leaders vary: Some leaders are subdued and ana-

lytical; others shout their manifestos from the mountain-

tops. And just as important, different situations call for

different types of leadership. Most mergers need a sensi-

tive negotiator at the helm, whereas many turnarounds

require a more forceful authority.

I have found, however, that the most effective leaders

are alike in one crucial way: They all have a high degree

of what has come to be known as emotional intelligence.

It’s not that IQ and technical skills are irrelevant. They

do matter, but mainly as “threshold capabilities”; that is,

they are the entry-level requirements for executive posi-

tions. But my research, along with other recent studies,

clearly shows that emotional intelligence is the sine qua

non of leadership. Without it, a person can have the best

training in the world, an incisive, analytical mind, and an

endless supply of smart ideas, but he still won’t make a

great leader.

In the course of the past year, my colleagues and I

have focused on how emotional intelligence operates at

work. We have examined the relationship between emo-

tional intelligence and effective performance, especially

in leaders. And we have observed how emotional intel-

ligence shows itself on the job. How can you tell if some-

one has high emotional intelligence, for example, and

how can you recognize it in yourself? In the following

pages, we’ll explore these questions, taking each of the

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Managing Across

components of emotional intelligence—self-awareness,

self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skill—

in turn.

Evaluating Emotional Intelligence

Most large companies today have employed trained psy-

chologists to develop what are known as “competency

models” to aid them in identifying, training, and promot-

ing likely stars in the leadership fi rmament. The psychol-

ogists have also developed such models for lower-level

positions. And in recent years, I have analyzed compe-

tency models from 188 companies, most of which were

large and global and included the likes of Lucent Tech-

nologies, British Airways, and Credit Suisse.

In carrying out this work, my objective was to deter-

mine which personal capabilities drove outstanding per-

formance within these organizations, and to what degree

they did so. I grouped capabilities into three categories:

purely technical skills like accounting and business plan-

ning; cognitive abilities like analytical reasoning; and

competencies demonstrating emotional intelligence, such

as the ability to work with others and effectiveness in lead-

ing change.

To create some of the competency models, psycholo-

gists asked senior managers at the companies to identify

the capabilities that typifi ed the organization’s most out-

standing leaders. To create other models, the psycholo-

gists used objective criteria, such as a division’s profi t-

ability, to differentiate the star performers at senior levels

within their organizations from the average ones. Those

individuals were then extensively interviewed and tested,

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What Makes a Leader?

and their capabilities were compared. This process re-

sulted in the creation of lists of ingredients for highly ef-

fective leaders. The lists ranged in length from seven to

15 items and included such ingredients as initiative and

strategic vision.

When I analyzed all this data, I found dramatic results.

To be sure, intellect was a driver of outstanding perfor-

mance. Cognitive skills such as big-picture thinking and

long-term vision were particularly important. But when I

calculated the ratio of technical skills, IQ, and emotional

intelligence as ingredients of excellent performance,

emotional intelligence proved to be twice as important as

the others for jobs at all levels.

Moreover, my analysis showed that emotional intelli-

gence played an increasingly important role at the high-

est levels of the company, where differences in techni-

cal skills are of negligible importance. In other words,

the higher the rank of a person considered to be a star

performer, the more emotional intelligence capabili-

ties showed up as the reason for his or her effectiveness.

When I compared star performers with average ones in

senior leadership positions, nearly 90% of the difference

in their profi les was attributable to emotional intelli-

gence factors rather than cognitive abilities.

Other researchers have confi rmed that emotional in-

telligence not only distinguishes outstanding leaders but

can also be linked to strong performance. The fi ndings

of the late David McClelland, the renowned researcher

in human and organizational behavior, are a good ex-

ample. In a 1996 study of a global food and beverage

company, McClelland found that when senior managers

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Managing Across

had a critical mass of emotional intelligence capabili-

ties, their divisions outperformed yearly earnings goals

by 20%. Meanwhile, division leaders without that criti-

cal mass underperformed by almost the same amount.

Mc Clelland’s fi ndings, interestingly, held as true in the

company’s U.S. divisions as in its divisions in Asia and

Europe.

In short, the numbers are beginning to tell us a per-

suasive story about the link between a company’s success

and the emotional intelligence of its leaders. And just as

important, research is also demonstrating that people

can, if they take the right approach, develop their emo-

tional intelligence. (See the sidebar “Can Emotional In-

telligence Be Learned?”)

Self-Awareness

Self-awareness is the fi rst component of emotional

intelligence—which makes sense when one considers

that the Delphic oracle gave the advice to “know thy-

self” thousands of years ago. Self-awareness means hav-

ing a deep understanding of one’s emotions, strengths,

weaknesses, needs, and drives. People with strong self-

awareness are neither overly critical nor unrealistically

hopeful. Rather, they are honest—with themselves and

with others.

People who have a high degree of self-awareness rec-

ognize how their feelings affect them, other people, and

their job performance. Thus, a self-aware person who

knows that tight deadlines bring out the worst in him

plans his time carefully and gets his work done well in

advance. Another person with high self-awareness will

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What Makes a Leader?

The Five Components of Emotional Intelligence at

Work

Defi nition

Hallmarks

Self-Awareness

the ability to recog-

self-confi dence

nize and understand

realistic self-assessment

your moods, emo-

self- deprecating sense of

tions, and drives, as

humor

well as their eff ect

on others

Self-Regulation

the ability to control

trustworthiness and integrity

or redirect disruptive

comfort with ambiguity

impulses and moods

openness to change

the propensity to

suspend judgment—to

think before acting

Motivation

a passion to work for

strong drive to achieve

reasons that go beyond

optimism, even in the face

money or status

of failure

a propensity to pursue

organizational commitment

goals with energy and

persistence

Empathy

the ability to under-

expertise in building and

stand the emotional

retaining talent

makeup of other people

cross-cultural sensitivity

skill in treating people

according to their emo-

service to clients and

tional reactions

customers

Social Skill

profi ciency in manag-

eff ectiveness in leading

ing relationships and

change

building networks

persuasiveness

an ability to fi nd com-

mon ground and build

expertise in building and

rapport

leading teams

be able to work with a demanding client. She will under-

stand the client’s impact on her moods and the deeper

reasons for her frustration. “Their trivial demands take

us away from the real work that needs to be done,” she

might explain. And she will go one step further and turn

her anger into something constructive.

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Managing Across

CAN EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE BE LEARNED?

For ages, people have debated if leaders are born or

made. So too goes the debate about emotional intelli-

gence. Are people born with certain levels of empathy,

for example, or do they acquire empathy as a result of

life’s experiences? The answer is both. Scientifi c inquiry

strongly suggests that there is a genetic component

to emotional intelligence. Psychological and develop-

mental research indicates that nurture plays a role as

well. How much of each perhaps will never be known,

but research and practice clearly demonstrate that

emotional intelligence can be learned.

One thing is certain: Emotional intelligence in-

creases with age. There is an old-fashioned word for

the phenomenon: maturity. Yet even with maturity,

some people still need training to enhance their emo-

tional intelligence. Unfortunately, far too many training

programs that intend to build leadership skills—includ-

ing emotional intelligence—are a waste of time and

money. The problem is simple: They focus on the wrong

part of the brain.

Emotional intelligence is born largely in the neuro-

transmitters of the brain’s limbic system, which gov-

erns feelings, impulses, and drives. Research indicates

that the limbic system learns best through motiva-

tion, extended practice, and feedback. Compare this

with the kind of learning that goes on in the neo-

cortex, which governs analytical and technical ability.

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What Makes a Leader?

The neocortex grasps concepts and logic. It is the part

of the brain that fi gures out how to use a computer or

make a sales call by reading a book. Not surprisingly—

but mistakenly—it is also the part of the brain targeted

by most training programs aimed at enhancing emo-

tional intelligence. When such programs take, in eff ect,

a neocortical approach, my research with the Consor-

tium for Research on Emotional Intelligence in Organi-

zations has shown they can even have a negative im-

pact on people’s job performance.

To enhance emotional intelligence, organizations

must refocus their training to include the limbic sys-

tem. They must help people break old behavioral hab-

its and establish new ones. That not only takes much

more time than conventional training programs, it also

requires an individualized approach.

Imagine an executive who is thought to be low on

empathy by her colleagues. Part of that defi cit shows

itself as an inability to listen; she interrupts people and

doesn’t pay close attention to what they’re saying. To

fi x the problem, the executive needs to be motivated

to change, and then she needs practice and feedback

from others in the company. A colleague or coach

could be tapped to let the executive know when she

has been observed failing to listen. She would then

have to replay the incident and give a better response;

( continued)

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Managing Across

( continued)

that is, demonstrate her ability to absorb what others

are saying. And the executive could be directed to ob-

serve certain executives who listen well and to mimic

their behavior.

With persistence and practice, such a process can

lead to lasting results. I know one Wall Street execu-

tive who sought to improve his empathy—specifi cally

his ability to read people’s reactions and see their

perspectives. Before beginning his quest, the execu-

tive’s subordinates were terrifi ed of working with him.

People even went so far as to hide bad news from him.

Naturally, he was shocked when fi nally confronted with

these facts. He went home and told his family—but

they only confi rmed what he had heard at work. When

their opinions on any given subject did not mesh with

his, they, too, were frightened of him.

Enlisting the help of a coach, the executive went to

work to heighten his empathy through practice and

feedback. His fi rst step was to take a vacation to a

foreign country where he did not speak the language.

While there, he monitored his reactions to the unfamil-

iar and his openness to people who were diff erent from

him. When he returned home, humbled by his week

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What Makes a Leader?

abroad, the executive asked his coach to shadow him

for parts of the day, several times a week, to critique

how he treated people with new or diff erent perspec-

tives. At the same time, he consciously used on-the-

job interactions as opportunities to practice “hear-

ing” ideas that diff ered from his. Finally, the executive

had himself videotaped in meetings and asked those

who worked for and with him to critique his abil-

ity to acknowledge and understand the feelings of

others. It took several months, but the executive’s

emotional intelligence did ultimately rise, and the im-

provement was refl ected in his overall performance on

the job.

It’s important to emphasize that building one’s emo-

tional intelligence cannot—will not—happen without

sincere desire and concerted eff ort. A brief seminar

won’t help; nor can one buy a how-to manual. It is

much harder to learn to empathize—to internalize em-

pathy as a natural response to people—than it is to be-

come adept at regression analysis. But it can be done.

“Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm,”

wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson. If your goal is to become

a real leader, these words can serve as a guidepost in

your eff orts to develop high emotional intelligence.

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Managing Across

Self-awareness extends to a person’s understanding

of his or her values and goals. Someone who is highly

self-aware knows where he is headed and why; so, for ex-

ample, he will be able to be fi rm in turning down a job

offer that is tempting fi nancially but does not fi t with his

principles or long-term goals. A person who lacks self-

awareness is apt to make decisions that bring on inner

turmoil by treading on buried values. “The money looked

good so I signed on,” someone might say two years into

a job, “but the work means so little to me that I’m con-

stantly bored.” The decisions of self-aware people mesh

with their values; consequently, they often fi nd work to

be energizing.

How can one recognize self-awareness? First and fore-

most, it shows itself as candor and an ability to assess

oneself realistically. People with high self-awareness are

able to speak accurately and openly—although not neces-

sarily effusively or confessionally—about their emotions

and the impact they have on their work. For instance, one

manager I know of was skeptical about a new personal-

shopper service that her company, a major department-

store chain, was about to introduce. Without prompting

from her team or her boss, she offered them an explana-

tion: “It’s hard for me to get behind the rollout of this

service,” she admitted, “because I really wanted to run the

project, but I wasn’t selected. Bear with me while I deal

with that.” The manager did indeed examine her feelings;

a week later, she was supporting the project fully.

Such self-knowledge often shows itself in the hiring

process. Ask a candidate to describe a time he got carried

away by his feelings and did something he later regret-

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What Makes a Leader?

ted. Self-aware candidates will be frank in admitting to

failure—and will often tell their tales with a smile. One

of the hallmarks of self-awareness is a self-deprecating

sense of humor.

Self-awareness can also be identifi ed during perfor-

mance reviews. Self-aware people know—and are com-

fortable talking about—their limitations and strengths,

and they often demonstrate a thirst for constructive criti-

cism. By contrast, people with low self-awareness inter-

pret the message that they need to improve as a threat or

a sign of failure.

Self-aware people can also be recognized by their self-

confi dence. They have a fi rm grasp of their capabilities

and are less likely to set themselves up to fail by, for ex-

ample, overstretching on assignments. They know, too,

when to ask for help. And the risks they take on the

job are calculated. They won’t ask for a challenge that

they know they can’t handle alone. They’ll play to their

strengths.

Consider the actions of a midlevel employee who was

invited to sit in on a strategy meeting with her company’s

top executives. Although she was the most junior per-

son in the room, she did not sit there quietly, listening

in awestruck or fearful silence. She knew she had a head

for clear logic and the skill to present ideas persuasively,

and she offered cogent suggestions about the company’s

strategy. At the same time, her self-awareness stopped

her from wandering into territory where she knew she

was weak.

Despite the value of having self-aware people in the

workplace, my research indicates that senior executives

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Managing Across

don’t often give self-awareness the credit it deserves

when they look for potential leaders. Many executives

mistake candor about feelings for “wimpiness” and fail

to give due respect to employees who openly acknowl-

edge their shortcomings. Such people are too readily dis-

missed as “not tough enough” to lead others.

In fact, the opposite is true. In the fi rst place, people

generally admire and respect candor. Furthermore, lead-

ers are constantly required to make judgment calls that

require a candid assessment of capabilities—their own

and those of others. Do we have the management exper-

tise to acquire a competitor? Can we launch a new prod-

uct within six months? People who assess themselves

honestly—that is, self-aware people—are well suited to

do the same for the organizations they run.

Self-Regulation

Biological impulses drive our emotions. We cannot do

away with them—but we can do much to manage them.

Self-regulation, which is like an ongoing inner conversa-

tion, is the component of emotional intelligence that frees

us from being prisoners of our feelings. People engaged

in such a conversation feel bad moods and emotional im-

pulses just as everyone else does, but they fi nd ways to

control them and even to channel them in useful ways.

Imagine an executive who has just watched a team

of his employees present a botched analysis to the com-

pany’s board of directors. In the gloom that follows, the

executive might fi nd himself tempted to pound on the

table in anger or kick over a chair. He could leap up and

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What Makes a Leader?

scream at the group. Or he might maintain a grim si-

lence, glaring at everyone before stalking off.

But if he had a gift for self-regulation, he would

choose a different approach. He would pick his words

carefully, acknowledging the team’s poor performance

without rushing to any hasty judgment. He would then

step back to consider the reasons for the failure. Are they

personal—a lack of effort? Are there any mitigating fac-

tors? What was his role in the debacle? After considering

these questions, he would call the team together, lay out

the incident’s consequences, and offer his feelings about

it. He would then present his analysis of the problem and

a well-considered solution.

Why does self-regulation matter so much for leaders?

First of all, people who are in control of their feelings and

impulses—that is, people who are reasonable—are able

to create an environment of trust and fairness. In such

an environment, politics and infi ghting are sharply re-

duced and productivity is high. Talented people fl ock to

the organization and aren’t tempted to leave. And self-

regulation has a trickle-down effect. No one wants to

be known as a hothead when the boss is known for her

calm approach. Fewer bad moods at the top mean fewer

throughout the organization.

Second, self-regulation is important for competitive

reasons. Everyone knows that business today is rife with

ambiguity and change. Companies merge and break apart

regularly. Technology transforms work at a dizzying pace.

People who have mastered their emotions are able to roll

with the changes. When a new program is announced,

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Managing Across

they don’t panic; instead, they are able to suspend judg-

ment, seek out information, and listen to the executives

as they explain the new program. As the initiative moves

forward, these people are able to move with it.

Sometimes they even lead the way. Consider the case

of a manager at a large manufacturing company. Like her

colleagues, she had used a certain software program for

fi ve years. The program drove how she collected and re-

ported data and how she thought about the company’s

strategy. One day, senior executives announced that a new

program was to be installed that would radically change

how information was gathered and assessed within the

organization. While many people in the company com-

plained bitterly about how disruptive the change would

be, the manager mulled over the reasons for the new pro-

gram and was convinced of its potential to improve per-

formance. She eagerly attended training sessions—some

of her colleagues refused to do so—and was eventually

promoted to run several divisions, in part because she

used the new technology so effectively.

I want to push the importance of self-regulation to

leadership even further and make the case that it en-

hances integrity, which is not only a personal virtue but

also an organizational strength. Many of the bad things

that happen in companies are a function of impulsive

behavior. People rarely plan to exaggerate profi ts, pad

expense accounts, dip into the till, or abuse power for

selfi sh ends. Instead, an opportunity presents itself, and

people with low impulse control just say yes.

By contrast, consider the behavior of the senior execu-

tive at a large food company. The executive was scrupu-

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What Makes a Leader?

lously honest in his negotiations with local distributors.

He would routinely lay out his cost structure in detail,

thereby giving the distributors a realistic understanding

of the company’s pricing. This approach meant the ex-

ecutive couldn’t always drive a hard bargain. Now, on oc-

casion, he felt the urge to increase profi ts by withholding

information about the company’s costs. But he challenged

that impulse—he saw that it made more sense in the long

run to counteract it. His emotional self-regulation paid

off in strong, lasting relationships with distributors that

benefi ted the company more than any short-term fi nan-

cial gains would have.

The signs of emotional self-regulation, therefore, are

easy to see: a propensity for refl ection and thoughtful-

ness; comfort with ambiguity and change; and integrity—

an ability to say no to impulsive urges.

Like self-awareness, self-regulation often does not get

its due. People who can master their emotions are some-

times seen as cold fi sh—their considered responses are

taken as a lack of passion. People with fi ery temperaments

are frequently thought of as “classic” leaders—their out-

bursts are considered hallmarks of charisma and power.

But when such people make it to the top, their impulsive-

ness often works against them. In my research, extreme

displays of negative emotion have never emerged as a

driver of good leadership.

Motivation

If there is one trait that virtually all effective leaders

have, it is motivation. They are driven to achieve beyond

expectations—their own and everyone else’s. The key

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Managing Across

word here is achieve. Plenty of people are motivated by

external factors, such as a big salary or the status that

comes from having an impressive title or being part of a

prestigious company. By contrast, those with leadership

potential are motivated by a deeply embedded desire to

achieve for the sake of achievement.

If you are looking for leaders, how can you identify

people who are motivated by the drive to achieve rather

than by external rewards? The fi rst sign is a passion

for the work itself—such people seek out creative chal-

lenges, love to learn, and take great pride in a job well

done. They also display an unfl agging energy to do things

better. People with such energy often seem restless with

the status quo. They are persistent with their questions

about why things are done one way rather than another;

they are eager to explore new approaches to their work.

A cosmetics company manager, for example, was frus-

trated that he had to wait two weeks to get sales results

from people in the fi eld. He fi nally tracked down an au-

tomated phone system that would beep each of his sales-

people at 5 p.m. every day. An automated message then

prompted them to punch in their numbers—how many

calls and sales they had made that day. The system short-

ened the feedback time on sales results from weeks to

hours.

That story illustrates two other common traits of peo-

ple who are driven to achieve. They are forever raising

the performance bar, and they like to keep score. Take

the performance bar fi rst. During performance reviews,

people with high levels of motivation might ask to be

“stretched” by their superiors. Of course, an employee

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What Makes a Leader?

who combines self-awareness with internal motivation

will recognize her limits—but she won’t settle for objec-

tives that seem too easy to fulfi ll.

And it follows naturally that people who are driven to

do better also want a way of tracking progress—their own,

their team’s, and their company’s. Whereas people with

low achievement motivation are often fuzzy about re-

sults, those with high achievement motivation often keep

score by tracking such hard measures as profi tability or

market share. I know of a money manager who starts and

ends his day on the Internet, gauging the performance

of his stock fund against four industry-set benchmarks.

Interestingly, people with high motivation remain

optimistic even when the score is against them. In such

cases, self-regulation combines with achievement moti-

vation to overcome the frustration and depression that

come after a setback or failure. Take the case of an an-

other portfolio manager at a large investment company.

After several successful years, her fund tumbled for three

consecutive quarters, leading three large institutional cli-

ents to shift their business elsewhere.

Some executives would have blamed the nosedive on

circumstances outside their control; others might have

seen the setback as evidence of personal failure. This

portfolio manager, however, saw an opportunity to prove

she could lead a turnaround. Two years later, when she

was promoted to a very senior level in the company, she

described the experience as “the best thing that ever hap-

pened to me; I learned so much from it.”

Executives trying to recognize high levels of achieve-

ment motivation in their people can look for one last

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piece of evidence: commitment to the organization.

When people love their jobs for the work itself, they often

feel committed to the organizations that make that work

possible. Committed employees are likely to stay with an

organization even when they are pursued by headhunters

waving money.

It’s not diffi cult to understand how and why a motiva-

tion to achieve translates into strong leadership. If you

set the performance bar high for yourself, you will do the

same for the organization when you are in a position to

do so. Likewise, a drive to surpass goals and an interest

in keeping score can be contagious. Leaders with these

traits can often build a team of managers around them

with the same traits. And of course, optimism and orga-

nizational commitment are fundamental to leadership—

just try to imagine running a company without them.

Empathy

Of all the dimensions of emotional intelligence, empathy

is the most easily recognized. We have all felt the empathy

of a sensitive teacher or friend; we have all been struck

by its absence in an unfeeling coach or boss. But when

it comes to business, we rarely hear people praised, let

alone rewarded, for their empathy. The very word seems

unbusinesslike, out of place amid the tough realities of

the marketplace.

But empathy doesn’t mean a kind of “I’m OK, you’re

OK” mushiness. For a leader, that is, it doesn’t mean

adopting other people’s emotions as one’s own and trying

to please everybody. That would be a nightmare—it would

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What Makes a Leader?

make action impossible. Rather, empathy means thought-

fully considering employees’ feelings—along with other

factors—in the process of making intelligent decisions.

For an example of empathy in action, consider what

happened when two giant brokerage companies merged,

creating redundant jobs in all their divisions. One division

manager called his people together and gave a gloomy

speech that emphasized the number of people who would

soon be fi red. The manager of another division gave his

people a different kind of speech. He was up-front about

his own worry and confusion, and he promised to keep

people informed and to treat everyone fairly.

The difference between these two managers was em-

pathy. The fi rst manager was too worried about his own

fate to consider the feelings of his anxiety-stricken col-

leagues. The second knew intuitively what his people

were feeling, and he acknowledged their fears with his

words. Is it any surprise that the fi rst manager saw his

division sink as many demoralized people, especially the

most talented, departed? By contrast, the second man-

ager continued to be a strong leader, his best people

stayed, and his division remained as productive as ever.

Empathy is particularly important today as a compo-

nent of leadership for at least three reasons: the increas-

ing use of teams; the rapid pace of globalization; and the

growing need to retain talent.

Consider the challenge of leading a team. As anyone

who has ever been a part of one can attest, teams are

cauldrons of bubbling emotions. They are often charged

with reaching a consensus—which is hard enough with

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Managing Across

two people and much more diffi cult as the numbers in-

crease. Even in groups with as few as four or fi ve mem-

bers, alliances form and clashing agendas get set. A

team’s leader must be able to sense and understand the

viewpoints of everyone around the table.

That’s exactly what a marketing manager at a large in-

formation technology company was able to do when she

was appointed to lead a troubled team. The group was

in turmoil, overloaded by work and missing deadlines.

Tensions were high among the members. Tinkering with

procedures was not enough to bring the group together

and make it an effective part of the company.

So the manager took several steps. In a series of one-

on-one sessions, she took the time to listen to everyone

in the group—what was frustrating them, how they rated

their colleagues, whether they felt they had been ignored.

And then she directed the team in a way that brought it

together: She encouraged people to speak more openly

about their frustrations, and she helped people raise con-

structive complaints during meetings. In short, her em-

pathy allowed her to understand her team’s emotional

makeup. The result was not just heightened collaboration

among members but also added business, as the team

was called on for help by a wider range of internal clients.

Globalization is another reason for the rising impor-

tance of empathy for business leaders. Cross-cultural

dialogue can easily lead to miscues and misunderstand-

ings. Empathy is an antidote. People who have it are at-

tuned to subtleties in body language; they can hear the

message beneath the words being spoken. Beyond that,

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What Makes a Leader?

they have a deep understanding of both the existence and

the importance of cultural and ethnic differences.

Consider the case of an American consultant whose

team had just pitched a project to a potential Japanese

client. In its dealings with Americans, the team was ac-

customed to being bombarded with questions after such

a proposal, but this time it was greeted with a long silence.

Other members of the team, taking the silence as disap-

proval, were ready to pack and leave. The lead consultant

gestured them to stop. Although he was not particularly

familiar with Japanese culture, he read the client’s face

and posture and sensed not rejection but interest—even

deep consideration. He was right: When the client fi nally

spoke, it was to give the consulting fi rm the job.

Finally, empathy plays a key role in the retention of tal-

ent, particularly in today’s information economy. Leaders

have always needed empathy to develop and keep good

people, but today the stakes are higher. When good peo-

ple leave, they take the company’s knowledge with them.

That’s where coaching and mentoring come in. It has

repeatedly been shown that coaching and mentoring pay

off not just in better performance but also in increased

job satisfaction and decreased turnover. But what makes

coaching and mentoring work best is the nature of the re-

lationship. Outstanding coaches and mentors get inside

the heads of the people they are helping. They sense how

to give effective feedback. They know when to push for

better performance and when to hold back. In the way

they motivate their protégés, they demonstrate empathy

in action.

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In what is probably sounding like a refrain, let me re-

peat that empathy doesn’t get much respect in business.

People wonder how leaders can make hard decisions if

they are “feeling” for all the people who will be affected.

But leaders with empathy do more than sympathize with

people around them: They use their knowledge to im-

prove their companies in subtle but important ways.

Social Skill

The fi rst three components of emotional intelligence are

self-management skills. The last two, empathy and social

skill, concern a person’s ability to manage relationships

with others. As a component of emotional intelligence,

social skill is not as simple as it sounds. It’s not just a

matter of friendliness, although people with high levels

of social skill are rarely mean-spirited. Social skill, rather,

is friendliness with a purpose: moving people in the di-

rection you desire, whether that’s agreement on a new

marketing strategy or enthusiasm about a new product.

Socially skilled people tend to have a wide circle of ac-

quaintances, and they have a knack for fi nding common

ground with people of all kinds—a knack for building

rapport. That doesn’t mean they socialize continually; it

means they work according to the assumption that noth-

ing important gets done alone. Such people have a net-

work in place when the time for action comes.

Social skill is the culmination of the other dimensions

of emotional intelligence. People tend to be very effec-

tive at managing relationships when they can under-

stand and control their own emotions and can empathize

with the feelings of others. Even motivation contributes

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What Makes a Leader?

to social skill. Remember that people who are driven to

achieve tend to be optimistic, even in the face of setbacks

or failure. When people are upbeat, their “glow” is cast

upon conversations and other social encounters. They

are popular, and for good reason.

Because it is the outcome of the other dimensions of

emotional intelligence, social skill is recognizable on the

job in many ways that will by now sound familiar. So-

cially skilled people, for instance, are adept at managing

teams—that’s their empathy at work. Likewise, they are

expert persuaders—a manifestation of self-awareness,

self-regulation, and empathy combined. Given those

skills, good persuaders know when to make an emo-

tional plea, for instance, and when an appeal to reason

will work better. And motivation, when publicly visible,

makes such people excellent collaborators; their passion

for the work spreads to others, and they are driven to fi nd

solutions.

But sometimes social skill shows itself in ways the

other emotional intelligence components do not. For

instance, socially skilled people may at times appear

not to be working while at work. They seem to be idly

schmoozing—chatting in the hallways with colleagues or

joking around with people who are not even connected

to their “real” jobs. Socially skilled people, however,

don’t think it makes sense to arbitrarily limit the scope

of their relationships. They build bonds widely because

they know that in these fl uid times, they may need help

someday from people they are just getting to know today.

For example, consider the case of an executive in the

strategy department of a global computer manufacturer.

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By 1993, he was convinced that the company’s future lay

with the Internet. Over the course of the next year, he

found kindred spirits and used his social skill to stitch

together a virtual community that cut across levels, divi-

sions, and nations. He then used this de facto team to

put up a corporate website, among the fi rst by a major

company. And, on his own initiative, with no budget or

formal status, he signed up the company to participate

in an annual Internet industry convention. Calling on his

allies and persuading various divisions to donate funds,

he recruited more than 50 people from a dozen different

units to represent the company at the convention.

Management took notice: Within a year of the confer-

ence, the executive’s team formed the basis for the com-

pany’s fi rst Internet division, and he was formally put

in charge of it. To get there, the executive had ignored

conventional boundaries, forging and maintaining con-

nections with people in every corner of the organization.

Is social skill considered a key leadership capability

in most companies? The answer is yes, especially when

compared with the other components of emotional in-

telligence. People seem to know intuitively that leaders

need to manage relationships effectively; no leader is

an island. After all, the leader’s task is to get work done

through other people, and social skill makes that pos-

sible. A leader who cannot express her empathy may as

well not have it at all. And a leader’s motivation will be

useless if he cannot communicate his passion to the orga-

nization. Social skill allows leaders to put their emotional

intelligence to work.

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What Makes a Leader?

It would be foolish to assert that good-old-fashioned

IQ and technical ability are not important ingredients in

strong leadership. But the recipe would not be complete

without emotional intelligence. It was once thought that

the components of emotional intelligence were “nice to

have” in business leaders. But now we know that, for the

sake of performance, these are ingredients that leaders

“need to have.”

It is fortunate, then, that emotional intelligence can be

learned. The process is not easy. It takes time and, most

of all, commitment. But the benefi ts that come from hav-

ing a well-developed emotional intelligence, both for the

individual and for the organization, make it worth the

effort.

Daniel Goleman is the author of Emotional Intelligence

(Bantam, 1995) and a coauthor of Primal Leadership:

Realizing the Power of Emotional Intelligence (Harvard

Business School, 2002). He is the cochairman of the

Consortium for Research on Emotional Intelligence in

Organizations, which is based at Rutgers University’s

Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology

in Piscataway, New Jersey. He can be reached at Daniel.

Goleman@verizon.net.

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The Discipline

of Teams

A summary of the full-length HBR article by Jon R. Kat-

zenbach and Douglas K. Smith, highlighting key ideas.

THE IDEA IN BRIEF

Managing across is especially challenging when you’re

leading a group of colleagues. You’re not their boss, but

on this project, you’re their leader. How can you get them

to focus on your team’s work when they also need to tend

their own small fi res—or meet their bosses’ demands?

When you instill in your group the discipline of

teams, your struggles will diminish. You’ll be helping

your team create a shared vision and then realize that vi-

sion with individual and mutual accountability.

Reprint #R0507P

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Managing Across

THE IDEA IN PRACTICE

A team’s essential discipline includes these characteristics:

1. A meaningful common purpose the team helps

shape. Most teams are responding to an initial

corporate mandate. But to be successful, your

team must “own” this purpose by developing

its own spin on it. For example, if one of your

company’s strategic priorities is to increase

customer retention, how might your web team

translate that into its common purpose? By

committing itself to becoming the online des-

tination of choice for B2C customers in your

industry.

2. Specifi c performance goals that fl ow from the

common purpose. Developing compelling

and measurable goals will inspire and chal-

lenge your team, and inject a sense of urgency.

Shared goals also have a leveling effect. They

require everyone to focus on their collective

effort rather than on any differences in their

titles or status.

For example, your web team might set the

following goals on its way to becoming the on-

line destination of choice for its B2C custom-

ers: 1) Increase fi rst-time visitors to the site by

50% over last year; 2) grow repeat site visitors

by 25% over last year; 3) boost e-commerce

sales by 15% over last year.

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The Discipline of Teams

3. A strong commitment to how the work gets done.

Your team must agree on who will do what

jobs, how you will establish and honor sched-

ules, and how you will make and modify deci-

sions. On a genuine team, everyone does equiv-

alent amounts of real work; all members—even

you as leader—contribute in concrete ways to

the team’s collective work.

Developing these rules of conduct at the

outset will help your team achieve its purpose

and goals. The most critical rules pertain to

attendance (for example, “if you can’t make

a meeting, send notes or a representative

who can speak for you”); focus (“no check-

ing e-mail during meetings”); discussion (“no

sacred cows”); confi dentiality (“the only things

to leave this room are what we agree on”);

analytic approach (“base decisions on data,

not assumptions”); end-product orientation

(“everyone gets assignments and does them”);

constructive confrontation (“no fi nger point-

ing”); and, often the most important, contribu-

tions (“everyone does real work”).

4. Mutual accountability. You can’t force trust

and commitment. The process of creating and

agreeing upon purpose and goals helps your

team members forge their accountability to

one another—not just to you, the leader.

For example, as your web team makes prog-

ress toward its three goals, everyone becomes

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Managing Across

increasingly eager to contribute to the team’s

success. Individuals volunteer their own and

others’ areas of expertise: The person with the

best eye for visual detail prepares the Power-

Point presentation for the next unit meeting;

the one who has the strongest relationship

with your IT director spearheads delicate con-

versations about prioritizing the team’s tech-

nology needs.

Jon R. Katzenbach is a founder and senior partner of

Katzenbach Partners, a strategic and organizational con-

sulting fi rm, and a former director of McKinsey & Com-

pany. His most recent book is Why Pride Matters More

Than Money: The Power of the World’s Greatest Motiva-

tional Force (Crown Business, 2003). Douglas K. Smith

is an organizational consultant and a former partner at

Mc Kinsey & Company. His most recent book is On Value

and Values: Thinking Differently About We in an Age of

Me (Financial Times Prentice Hall, 2004).

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Managing Remote

Relationships

by Karen Dillon

After you’ve dialed someone into a meeting, do you fi nd

it diffi cult to meaningfully involve her in the conversa-

tion—and make her feel involved? I’ve been there hun-

dreds of times. I’ve even caught myself rolling my eyes

as the person on the other end of that star-shaped phone

breathed too loudly, spoke at the wrong time, or worst

of all, didn’t stop talking when everyone else was willing

her to do so.

But then I began working on overseas assignments,

and it was my voice in the dreaded “box”—so I started to

see things differently. It’s horrible trying to call in when

people are chitchatting and making noises with their

chairs. And you can never quite read the unspoken tone

of the meeting. You talk too much because you want peo-

ple to know you’re there and at full attention. Or you talk

too little because you can’t fi gure out when it’s appropri-

ate to break in.

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Managing Across

Though many of us work with remote colleagues and

partners—or work remotely ourselves—we struggle to

manage relationships with people we don’t run into at

the coffee station every day. That doesn’t have to be the

case. You can build strong connections. Here’s what’s

worked in my experience.

If You’re Working with Someone

Remote . . .

Talk openly about the challenges

Whether you’re managing a remote employee, working

peer-to-peer, or partnering with someone at another

company, it helps to frankly discuss the challenges as you

both see them. Clarify expectations up front, and the re-

mote worker will become more productive—and happier.

When I managed a West Coast employee from an East

Coast offi ce, for example, she initially thought I expected

her to immediately jump on phone calls and e-mail que-

ries. What I actually wanted was for her to be a vibrant

contributor of ideas and work; to be aware of what her

East Coast colleagues were working on, helping them

when possible; and to have a clear sense of how she fi t

into the organization. Until we directly discussed that,

she slavishly sat at her desk while I imagined she was out

mining her area for ideas and people. We swiftly resolved

this misunderstanding with a single conversation.

Without peers in the next cubicle to informally guide

them, remote employees will make basic mistakes early

on, despite their good intentions, so it’s also crucial to be

candid with them. Perhaps they’ve excessively charged

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Managing Remote Relationships

expenses to a corporate account, for example, or spent

too much time on a low-priority project. Let them know

right away. Of course, it’s best practice to offer timely

feedback to all employees, but it’s especially important

for remote workers. Help them correct course before a

few innocent, early errors become a troublesome pattern

of behavior.

Err on the side of overcommunicating

Set up regular times to catch up on the phone. As an on-

site manager, I decided every two weeks felt about right

for formal check-ins with my remote colleagues, with the

proviso that we could talk whenever an issue arose. I was

always grateful to people who came to those conversations

with an agenda and a list of questions or comments (ide-

ally sent in advance). That meant I didn’t have the burden

of guessing what their needs might be. It was, however,

my responsibility to keep them up to date and give them

information that would help them work effectively with

people on-site (for example, “Joe’s in meetings all day—

best time to catch him is fi rst thing in the morning”).

Otherwise, they wouldn’t know the right questions to ask.

Keep a running list of things to share with your re-

mote colleagues or partners; don’t assume they’re copied

on important announcements about your company or di-

vision. When I began working off-site, I was surprised at

how much I couldn’t pick up simply by keeping up with

e-mail. People were hired. Projects were canceled. Desir-

able assignments were handed out. And I missed it all.

Sometimes even little details are critical to share—

the fact that someone has had a death in the family,

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Managing Across

for example, or is under the gun for a big project dead-

line and won’t likely be responsive this week unless it’s

critical. Communicate decisions large and small. E-mail,

scheduled phone calls—fi gure out what works for your

situation, and make a commitment to follow whatever

protocol you mutually agree is best.

Remember time zones

It’s simple, but easy to forget. Suppose you’re based at

your company’s headquarters in New York and you have

a remote colleague in Paris. You might not dive into your

day until 9 a.m. your time—and that’s 3 p.m. for the guy

in France. So you’ve got about two hours of reliable over-

lap. If multiple people in New York want time from him,

those two hours will be packed. You’re sharing that win-

dow with others, so be thoughtful about what you’re ask-

ing for during that time.

And respect your remote colleagues’ after-hours time.

When I was working in Paris for a company with a

New York headquarters, I regularly fi elded calls at 11 at

night—5 p.m. EST. People forgot to call me until it be-

came urgent at the end of their day to fi nish something.

Set up reminders in your calendar to get in touch with re-

mote colleagues while they’re still on the clock, and don’t

ask them to join late calls if you can easily brief them the

next day. Be clear about which meetings they can skip.

They’ll be much happier to take an occasional urgent call

at 11 p.m. if most of your business is conducted at times

that suit you both.

When you can, take advantage of time differences. As

a manager, I loved assigning work to someone in an ear-

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Managing Remote Relationships

lier time zone because when I came in the next morning,

it would be in my inbox, ready for my attention.

Use technology to collaborate

Technology makes it easy to work with remote colleagues

or partners. All it takes is a laptop to videoconference—

you can bring it into any room and include someone in a

meeting. With Google Docs, you and colleagues located

elsewhere can simultaneously work on a fi le and watch

one another’s color-coded edits or comments appear in

real time. Dropbox allows you to work on documents and

then post them in a secure, cloud-based system others

can easily access through the Internet.

Some companies, like Nokia, rely on instant messag-

ing to keep remote (and local) employees in the loop.

Others, like Royal Dutch Shell, host online events to get

colleagues comfortable collaborating across time zones

and geographical boundaries. (Shell conducted a three-

day “jam” that brought together 8,200 employees from

117 countries to develop new ways to use technology to

work with each other.) There’s no need for someone in a

satellite offi ce to feel remote if you take advantage of the

tools that are readily available to companies of all sizes.

If You’re the Remote Colleague . . .

Make sure you’re up to the challenge—

and take responsibility

To integrate with a team that’s located somewhere else,

you have to be fearless about picking up the phone, ask-

ing to be briefed, and telling people when conference

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calls won’t work in your time zone. You have to keep on

top of a schedule when no one is around to remind you

of important meetings or events. Self-starters required.

Make it clear to people that you’re present, intellectu-

ally and physically, and dedicated to packing a lot into

your day. When you speak up in a conversation, partici-

pate in a brainstorming session, or respond to an e-mail

query, make sure it’s a thoughtful contribution—not just

a token gesture to prove that you’re paying attention.

Think about your colleagues and their projects and chal-

lenges, even when you’re not being asked to do so. One of

the most successful remote employees I’ve ever managed

would periodically come back from an inspiring business

lunch with a great connection for another colleague or

send a link to a thought-provoking article that might aid

a peer. She felt like a part of a team that way, not just

someone covering a different territory.

Even after you’ve established positive relationships

and earned your colleagues’ trust, recognize that the bur-

den is often on you, the remote employee, to make things

work. Show your colleagues what you bring to the table.

Volunteer to help with projects when you have relevant

ideas or expertise. Follow social media buzz on your

company or industry—and then share updates with col-

leagues. If you always think of yourself as part of a team,

not a soloist, you’ll naturally consider how your work can

help others.

Partner with the home offi

ce

Work closely with the home offi ce to establish expecta-

tions. Should you match your colleagues’ hours? Is it OK

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to be out for appointments without telling your man-

ager? What matters more—being available or being en-

trepreneurial? And so on. Actually ask those questions;

don’t just assume you know the answers. Without that

information, you might get paranoid that you’re seen as

a slacker or actually not doing enough—and way, way

overcompensate.

Develop and maintain your network. Justin Mass, a se-

nior learning technologist at Adobe, volunteers for cross-

functional projects that increase his exposure to his HQ

colleagues. He’s worked to become known as a guy who

raises his hand before being asked, and that’s helped him

create strong connections throughout the company.

If possible, have your company occasionally fl y you to

HQ or other key offi ces. Fill your time with meetings—

breakfast, lunch, and dinner—to build relationships. Ask

people about themselves and their work—you can glean

a lot about what’s going on in the organization and where

the opportunities are. (Keep it professional, of course.

This isn’t the time to have a few too many beers or com-

plain about your manager.) You’ll be exhausted after all

these meetings, but you’ll have made the most of your

short amount of time onsite.

If you’re a new hire, you’ll need to build a foundation:

Ask for a visit to the home offi ce to put names to faces, get

a sense of the culture in the building, and get face time by

attending a meeting or two. But not too soon! For your fi rst

few months on the job, you’ll be learning many things, so

time your visit (if you can make just one) for when you’re

in a position of having good questions to ask, not just pas-

sively absorbing information. When you do make your trip,

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introduce yourself to people you’ll need to interact with.

Find out from team members who else you should reach

out to, and ask if they’d be willing to help you connect.

It’s virtually impossible to navigate a company’s spo-

ken and unspoken “rules” without a guide. You can’t sim-

ply assume that the culture is casual because, say, dogs

are allowed in the offi ce on Fridays. That same company

might be rigid about protocol. It takes a little digging to

fi gure out which people in the organization get things

done. Have someone in the know walk you through the

org chart and explain the company’s circles of infl uence

to you. Ask pointed questions: Who is the right contact

for that group? What works best here—e-mail, phone

calls, or IM? Are there informal power brokers I should

make contact with? That kind of thing.

Start Skyping

Adobe’s Mass is the only member of his team who works

entirely from a home offi ce, yet he collaborates with col-

leagues in California and India every day. Videoconfer-

encing has been critical to his success. Every chance to

be seen on video, he says, is a chance to improve your

visibility with your team. You become more than a dis-

embodied voice.

While his company has installed high-end video tech-

nology in his home offi ce, he notes that Skype, which is

free to anyone, also does the job. Of course, being visible

also makes you more accountable. “I think of every video

meeting as an opportunity for my team to see me in ac-

tion,” Mass says. “I have to bring my A game.”

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He actually thinks like a movie director shooting a

scene when he considers how he’s going to be perceived

by his colleagues on the other end of the camera. He

dresses professionally and keeps his desk clean. He’s

even painted his walls the same neutral manila as those

at headquarters so his workspace doesn’t “look like some

strange foreign offi ce.” He makes a point to sit forward in

his chair, engaged, as if he were at the same conference

table. He looks at the camera. Never pushes the mute

button and just listens in. Never multitasks.

Mass’s advice for others wanting to make videoconfer-

encing work? Do a trial video chat with a friend. Study

the thumbnail image of yourself on screen, and ask your

friend for feedback. “See how your colleagues will see

you,” he says. “What’s in the background? How are you

showing yourself? Are you slumping in your chair? Are

you taking notes?”

If your colleagues aren’t ready for Skype, be thought-

ful about the conference call. Ask your manager what’s

expected of you (Am I just getting briefed? Am I part

of the brainstorming team? Do you need me to report

on what I’ve been up to?). Once I was caught off guard

on a conference call by a manager asking us each to “go

around the horn” and give updates. What he really meant

was, “If there’s anything of burning importance, now’s

your chance.” But absent any body language or other vi-

sual cues to put his request in context, I panicked and as-

sumed I needed to show how productive I’d been. When

I fi nished my monologue, a few long minutes later, it was

obvious I’d gotten it wrong, and we swiftly moved on to

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other topics. If you don’t have a chance to clarify expec-

tations in advance, it may be better to listen quietly and

then contribute follow-up thoughts by e-mail or phone.

Ask your manager to occasionally put you on the agenda

to discuss what you’re working on, share your observa-

tions, or report on a project.

Since remote colleagues and partners are likely to be a

permanent feature of any growing company, it’s impor-

tant to manage these relationships well. And it’s worth

the effort. If you’re a hiring manager, who says the right

person for the job you’ve posted lives within driving dis-

tance? And if you’re a remote worker, you can get a lot of

work done, in fewer hours than your HQ colleagues, if

you use your time wisely.

It’s possible to make off-site work relationships both

productive and powerful—I’ve found that some of my re-

mote colleagues over the years have been great allies and

sounding boards. But the key to success, on both sides

of the relationship, is utter transparency and thinking

ahead about what your colleagues most need from you.

Karen Dillon is the former editor of Harvard Business Re-

view and a coauthor, with Clayton Christensen and James

Allworth, of the book How Will You Measure Your Life?

(HarperBusiness, 2012).

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A Smarter Way

to Network

A summary of the full-length HBR article by Rob Cross

and Robert Thomas, highlighting key ideas.

THE IDEA IN BRIEF

To maximize your and your team’s performance, you

need resources, information, and expertise from people

across your organization. They don’t report to you, but

they can make—or break—your project.

So you must infl uence them. How? Build a better net-

work, using these steps:

1.

Analyze: Identify the benefi ts each of your

existing network connections now provides.

Does one person give you valuable informa-

tion? Does another have expertise you need

but lack?

Reprint #R1107P

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2. De-layer: Weed out connections that aren’t

helping you, such as people who burn too

much of your time.

3. Diversify: Fill the fresh openings in your

network with people who can deliver the ad-

ditional benefi ts you and your team need to

accomplish your work.

Construct a strong network, and you’ll have a wider,

richer web of connections to draw on when the next crisis

or opportunity lands on your desk.

THE IDEA IN PRACTICE

When you need help from colleagues up, down, and

across the organization, every network choice you make

matters. Use these steps to make your selections:

1. Analyze

Identify the individuals currently in your network.

Determine:

• Where they’re located. Are they on your team? In

your unit? Outside your organization? Are they

higher-ups? Peers? Frontline workers? You want

a diverse but select web of high-quality relation-

ships with people who hail from several different

spheres and levels in your organization.

• What benefi ts they’re providing. Do they offer

information, expertise, or best practices that can

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help you lead projects more effectively? Are they

formally powerful people who can provide political

“juice”? For instance, can they remind lazy mem-

bers of a task force you’re on how important their

project is to the organization? Are they informally

infl uential people who can win you needed sup-

port among the rank-and-fi le?

2. De-layer

Make tough decisions about relationships to back away

from. Eliminate or minimize contact with people who

sap your energy or offer benefi ts that others in your net-

work already provide. By de-layering, you make room for

people who can help you complete projects.

3. Diversify

Fill the new openings in your network with the right peo-

ple, using this technique:

• Articulate three business goals you plan to achieve

this year.

• List the people who could help you reach these

goals—and how. Is it their expertise? Their control

over resources? Their political support?

• Actively build relationships with these individuals.

Example: Joe, an investment banker, needed

to expand his global client pool. First he identi-

fi ed counterparts in his company’s Asian and

European operations who had relationships

with clients he had targeted. Then he scheduled

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Managing Across

regular calls with his colleagues to synchronize

their selling efforts. In some cases, these calls

helped him identify opportunities he could

pitch proactively, such as potential clients who

were interested in his department’s offerings.

In others, the calls helped him and his peers

appear more coordinated when their bank was

competing against other banks for the same

clients.

One of the happiest, most successful executives we know

is a woman named Deb. She works at a major technology

company and runs a global business unit that has more

than 7,000 employees. When you ask her how she rose to

the top and why she enjoys her job, her answer is simple:

people. She points to her boss, the CEO, a mentor who

“always has her back”; Steve, the head of a complemen-

tary business, with whom she has monthly brainstorm-

ing lunches and occasional gripe sessions; and Tom, a

protégé to whom she has delegated responsibility for

a large portion of her division. Outside the company,

Deb’s circle includes her counterparts in three strategic

partnerships, who inspire her with new ideas; Sheila, a

former colleague, now in a different industry, who gives

her candid feedback; and her husband, Bob, an execu-

tive at a philanthropic organization. She also has close

relationships with her fellow volunteers in a program for

at-risk high school students and the members of her ten-

nis group and book club.

This is Deb’s social network (the real-world kind, not

the virtual kind), and it has helped her career a lot. But

not because the group is large or full of high-powered

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A Smarter Way to Network

contacts. Her network is effective because it both sup-

ports and challenges her. Deb’s relationships help her

gain infl uence, broaden her expertise, learn new skills,

and fi nd purpose and balance. Deb values and nurtures

them. “Make friends so that you have friends when you

need friends” is her motto.

“My current role is really a product of a relationship I

formed over a decade ago that came back to me at the right

time,” she explains. “People may chalk it up to luck, but I

think more often than not luck happens through networks

where people give fi rst and are authentic in all they do.”

Over the past 15 years, we’ve worked with many execu-

tives like Deb, at more than 300 companies. What began

as organizational research—helping management teams

understand and capitalize on the formal and informal

social networks of their employees—has since metamor-

phosed into personal programs, which teach individual

executives to increase their effectiveness by leveraging

their networks.

The old adage “It’s not what you know, it’s who you

know” is true. But it’s more nuanced than that. In spite of

what most self-help books say, network size doesn’t usu-

ally matter. In fact, we’ve found that individuals who sim-

ply know a lot of people are less likely to achieve standout

performance, because they’re spread too thin. Political

animals with lots of connections to corporate and indus-

try leaders don’t win the day, either. Yes, it’s important to

know powerful people, but if they account for too much

of your network, your peers and subordinates often per-

ceive you to be overly self-interested, and you may lose

support as a result.

The data we’ve collected point to a different model

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Managing Across

for networking. The executives who consistently rank in

the top 20% of their companies in both performance

and well-being have diverse but select networks like

Deb’s—made up of high-quality relationships with peo-

ple who come from several different spheres and from

up and down the corporate hierarchy. These high per-

formers, we have found, tap into six critical kinds of

connections, which enhance their careers and lives in a

variety of ways.

Through our work advising individual managers,

we’ve also identifi ed a four-step process that will help any

executive develop this kind of network. But fi rst, let’s take

a look at some common networking mistakes.

Getting It Wrong

Many people take a misguided approach to network-

ing. They go astray by building imbalanced networks,

pursuing the wrong kind of relationships, or leverag-

ing relationships ineffectively. (See the sidebar “Are You

Networking Impaired?”) These people might remain

successful for a time, but often they will hit a plateau or

see their career derailed because their networks couldn’t

prompt or support a critical transition.

Consider Dan, the chief information offi cer of one of

the world’s largest life-sciences organizations. He was

under constant pressure to fi nd new technologies that

would spur innovation and speed the drug commercial-

ization process at his company, and he needed a network

that would help him. Unfortunately, more than 70% of

his trusted advisers were in the unit he had worked in be-

fore becoming CIO. Not only did they reinforce his bias

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A Smarter Way to Network

toward certain solutions and vendors, but they lacked the

outside knowledge he needed. “I had started to mistake

friendship, trust, and accessibility for real expertise in

new domains,” he told us. “This didn’t mean I was going

to dump these people, as they played important roles for

me in other ways. But I needed to be more targeted in

who I let infl uence my thinking.”

Another overarching mistake we often see in execu-

tives’ networks is an imbalance between connections that

promote career advancement and those that promote en-

gagement and satisfaction. Numerous studies have shown

that happier executives are higher-performing ones.

Take Tim, the director of a large practice area at a lead-

ing professional services fi rm. On the surface he was doing

well, but job stress had taken its toll. He was 40 pounds

overweight, with alarmingly high cholesterol and blood

sugar levels, and prone to extreme mood swings. When

things went well at work, he was happy; when they didn’t,

he wasn’t pleasant to be around. In fact, Tim’s wife fi nally

broke down and told him she thought he had become a

career-obsessed jerk and needed to get other interests.

With her encouragement, he joined Habitat for Human-

ity and started rowing with their daughter. As a result,

his social network expanded to include people with dif-

ferent perspectives and values, who helped him focus on

more healthful and fulfi lling pursuits. “As I spent more

time with different groups, what I cared about diversi-

fi ed,” he says. “Physically, I’m in much better shape and

probably staved off a heart attack. But I think I’m a better

leader, too, in that I think about problems more broadly,

and I’m more resilient. Our peer feedback systems are

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ARE YOU NETWORKING IMPAIRED?

In our work, we have identifi ed six common managerial

types who get stuck in three kinds of network traps. Do

any of the descriptions below fi t you?

The wrong structure

THE FORMALIST focuses too heavily on his company’s

offi

cial hierarchy, missing out on the effi

cien-

cies and opportunities that come from informal

connections.

THE OVERLOADED MANAGER has so much contact with

colleagues and external ties that she becomes a

bottleneck to progress and burns herself out.

The wrong relationships

THE DISCONNECTED EXPERT sticks with people who

keep him focused on safe, existing competencies,

also clearly indicating that people are more committed

to the new me.”

Getting It Right

To understand more about what makes an effective net-

work, let’s look again at Deb. She has a small set of core

contacts—14 people she really relies on. Effective core

networks typically range in size from 12 to 18 people. But

what really matters is structure: Core connections must

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A Smarter Way to Network

rather than those who push him to build new

skills.

THE BIASED LEADER relies on advisers much like herself

(same functional background, location, or values),

who reinforce her biases, when she should instead

seek outsiders to prompt more fully informed

decisions.

The wrong behavior

THE SUPERFICIAL NETWORKER engages in surface-level

interaction with as many people as possible, mistak-

enly believing that a bigger network is a better one.

THE CHAMELEON changes his interests, values, and

personality to match those of whatever subgroup

is his audience, and winds up being disconnected

from every group.

bridge smaller, more-diverse kinds of groups and cross

hierarchical, organizational, functional, and geographic

lines. Core relationships should result in more learning,

less bias in decision making, and greater personal growth

and balance. The people in your inner circle should also

model positive behaviors, because if those around you are

enthusiastic, authentic, and generous, you will be, too.

More specifi cally, our data show that high performers

have strong ties to:

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Managing Across

1. people who offer them new information or

expertise, including internal or external clients,

who increase their market awareness; peers

in other functions, divisions, or geographies,

who share best practices; and contacts in other

industries, who inspire innovation;

2. formally powerful people, who provide men-

toring, sense-making, political support, and

resources; and informally powerful people,

who offer infl uence, help coordinating projects,

and support among the rank and fi le; and

3. people who give them developmental feedback,

challenge their decisions, and push them to be

better. At an early career stage, an employee

might get this from a boss or customers; later,

it tends to come from coaches, trusted col-

leagues, or a spouse.

Meanwhile, the most satisfi ed executives have ties to:

1. people who provide personal support, such as

colleagues who help them get back on track

when they’re having a bad day or friends with

whom they can just be themselves;

2. people who add a sense of purpose or worth,

such as bosses and customers who validate

their work, and family members and other

stakeholders who show them work has a

broader meaning; and

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A Smarter Way to Network

3. people who promote their work/life balance,

holding them accountable for activities that

improve their physical health (such as sports),

mental engagement (such as hobbies or educa-

tional classes), or spiritual well-being (music,

religion, art, or volunteer work).

How does one create such a varied network? We rec-

ommend a four-point action plan: analyze, de-layer, di-

versify, and capitalize.

Analyze

Start by looking at the individuals in your network.

Where are they located—are they within your team, your

unit, or your company, or outside your organization?

What benefi ts do your interactions with them provide?

How energizing are those interactions?

The last question is an important one. Energizers

bring out the best in everyone around them, and our

data show that having them in your network is a strong

predictor of success over time. These people aren’t nec-

essarily extroverted or charismatic. They’re people who

always see opportunities, even in challenging situations,

and create room for others to meaningfully contribute.

Good energizers are trustworthy and committed to prin-

ciples larger than their self-interest, and they enjoy other

people. “De-energizers,” by contrast, are quick to point

out obstacles, critique people rather than ideas, are in-

fl exible in their thinking, fail to create opportunities,

miss commitments, and don’t show concern for others.

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FOUR STEPS TO BUILDING A BETTER NETWORK

Analyze

• Identify the people in your network and what you

get out of interacting with them

De-layer

• Make some hard decisions to back away from

redundant and energy-sapping relationships

Diversify

• Build your network out with the right kind of

people: energizers who will help you achieve

your goals

Capitalize

• Make sure you’re using your contacts as eff ec-

tively as you can

Unfortunately, energy-sapping interactions have more

impact than energizing ones—up to seven times as much,

according to one study. And our own research suggests

that roughly 90% of anxiety at work is created by 5% of

one’s network—the people who sap energy.

Next, classify your relationships by the benefi ts they

provide. Generally, benefi ts fall into one of six basic cat-

egories: information, political support and infl uence,

personal development, personal support and energy, a

sense of purpose or worth, and work/life balance. It’s im-

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A Smarter Way to Network

portant to have people who provide each kind of benefi t

in your network. Categorizing your relationships will give

you a clearer idea of whether your network is extending

your abilities or keeping you stuck. You’ll see where you

have holes and redundancies and which people you de-

pend on too much—or not enough.

Let’s use Joe, a rising star in an investment bank, as

a case study. He had 24 close advisers—on the surface,

a more than healthy number. But many of the people he

relied on were from his own department and frequently

relied on one another. If he eliminated those redundan-

cies, his network shrank to fi ve people. After giving it some

thought and observing his peers’ networks, he realized he

was missing links with several important types of people:

colleagues focused on fi nancial offerings outside his own

products, who could help him deliver broader fi nancial so-

lutions to customers; coworkers in different geographies—

particularly London and Asia—who could enhance his

ability to sell to global clients; and board-level relation-

ships at key accounts, who could make client introduc-

tions and infl uence purchasing decisions. His insularity

was limiting his options and hurting his chances of pro-

motion to managing director. He realized he would need

to focus on cultivating a network rather than allowing it to

organically arise from the day-to-day demands of his work.

De-layer

Once you’ve analyzed your network, you need to make

some hard decisions about which relationships to back

away from. First, look at eliminating or minimizing

contact with people who sap you of energy or promote

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Managing Across

unhealthful behaviors. You can do this by reshaping your

role to avoid them, devoting less time to them, working

to change their behavior, or reframing your reactions so

that you don’t dwell on the interactions.

John, an academic, realized that two university ad-

ministrators in his network were causing him a great deal

of anxiety. This had so soured his view of his school that

he was considering leaving. He therefore decided to de-

vote less time to projects and committees that would in-

volve the negative contacts and to avoid dwelling on any

sniping comments they subjected him to. Within a year

he was much more productive and happy. “By shifting

my role and how I reacted to the idiots, I turned a nega-

tive situation around,” John says. “In hindsight it was an

obvious move—rather than leave a place I loved—but

emotions can spiral on you in ways you don’t recognize.”

The next step is to ask yourself which of the six catego-

ries have too many people in them. Early-stage leaders,

for example, tend to focus too much on information and

not enough on personal development and might want to

shed some of the contacts who give them the former to

make more time for those who give them the latter.

Beyond this, consider which individuals—and types of

people as determined by function, hierarchy, or geogra-

phy—have too much of you, and why. Is the cause struc-

tural, in that work procedures require you to be involved?

Or is your own behavior causing the imbalance? What

can you change to rectify the situation? Too often we see

leaders fail because they accept or create too many col-

laborative demands.

Paul, the head of research in a consumer products

company, had a network of almost 70 people just at work.

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But he got many complaints from people who said they

needed greater access to him. His productivity, and his

unit’s, was suffering. When he analyzed his network, he

realized that he was missing “people and initiatives one or

two levels out.” To address this, he decided to delegate—

stepping away from interactions that didn’t require his

presence and cultivating “go to” stand-ins in certain areas

of expertise. He also changed his leadership style from

extraordinarily accessible to helpful but more removed,

which encouraged subordinates to solve their own prob-

lems by connecting with people around him. “As a leader

you can fi nd yourself in this bubble of activity where you

feel like a lot is happening moving from meeting to meet-

ing,” Paul says. “You can actually start to thrive on this in

some ways. I had to move past this for us to be effective

as a unit and so that I could be more forward-thinking.”

Diversify

Now that you’ve created room in your network, you need

to fi ll it with the right people. Simple tools like work

sheets can help you get started. For example, you might

make a list of the six categories of relationships and think

about colleagues who could fi ll the holes you have in

each. Remember to focus on positive, energetic, selfl ess

people, and be sure to ask people inside and outside your

network for recommendations.

You should also think about how you could connect

your network to your professional and personal goals.

Here’s another simple exercise: Write down three specifi c

business results you hope to achieve over the next year

(such as doubling sales or winning an Asia-based client)

and then list the people (by name or general role) who

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could help you with them, thanks to their expertise, con-

trol over resources, or ability to provide political support.

Joe, the investment banker, identifi ed counterparts in the

Asian and European operations of his company who had

relationships with the clients he was focused on and then

scheduled regular calls with them to coordinate efforts.

“In a couple of cases this helped me identify opportunities

I could pitch proactively. In others it just helped us ap-

pear more coordinated when we were competing against

other banks,” he says. One of the big challenges for Paul,

the consumer products executive, was managing a new

facility and line of innovation in China. Because none of

his trusted advisers had ever even been to that country,

he reached out to the head of R&D at a major life-sci-

ences organization that had undertaken a similar effort.

Capitalize

Last, make sure you’re using your contacts as effectively

as you can. Are there people you rely on in one sphere,

such as political support, that you could also use to fi ll a

need in another, such as personal development? Could

you get more out of some relationships if you put more

energy into them? Our research shows, for instance, that

high performers at all levels tend to use their information

contacts to gain other benefi ts, such as new ideas. Recip-

rocal relationships also tend to be more fruitful; the most

successful leaders always look for ways to give more to

their contacts.

Alan, a top executive at a global insurance company,

realized that although he had a good network, he was

still making decisions in relative isolation. He failed to

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A Smarter Way to Network

elicit insights from others and, as a result, wasn’t making

enough progress toward his goals. So he started invit-

ing his more-junior contacts, who were informal opin-

ion leaders in his company, to lunch and asking them

open-ended questions. These conversations led him to

streamline decision making and uncover innovation

deep within the fi rm’s hierarchy. “When I met with one

lady, I was stunned at a great new product idea she had

been pushing for months,” Alan says. “But she hadn’t

been able to get the right people to listen. I was able to

step in and help make things happen. To me the right

way to be tapping into people is in this exploratory way—

whether it is about strategic insights or just how they

think I’m doing on some aspect of my job. That’s how I

get to new ways of thinking and doing things, and I know

it makes me much more effective than people who are

smarter than me.”

A network constructed using this four-point model

will build on itself over time. In due course, it will en-

sure that the best opportunities, ideas, and talent come

your way.

Rob Cross (robcross@virginia.edu) is an associate professor at the University of Virginia’s McIntire School of

Commerce. Robert Thomas is the executive director of

the Accenture Institute for High Performance.

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How to Deal with

Offi

ce Politics

by Linda A. Hill and Kent Lineback

“I don’t care who they are. I won’t buddy up to people

I don’t like and respect just because I want something

from them.”

These are the words of a Fortune 500 senior manager,

but we hear similar comments from managers at all levels,

in all types of companies. Perhaps you feel the same way.

Do you dismiss most of the give-and-take in organiza-

tions as “offi ce politics”—ego-driven, manipulative, dys-

functional game playing? Do you tend to focus on your

own group and deal with others only when you like them

personally or the immediate work requires it? If this de-

scribes your approach, you’re probably making yourself

and your group less effective than you should be.

Every organization has a political environment—that

is, one where human relationships matter—and yours is

no exception. To obtain the resources, infl uence, and at-

Adapted from content posted on hbr.org on November 2, 2011

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tention you and your group need, you must be able to

function in such a setting by actively engaging others,

whether you like them or not.

The good news: You can do that without succumbing

to mean and self-interested tactics. The secret is to build

ongoing relationships for mutual advantage.

Here’s how to navigate your political environment

positively and professionally:

• Focus on the good of the enterprise. A big-picture

view will help you do what’s best for your group.

Recognize your interdependence with other units,

and consider how your goals and theirs align. If

customer service reps say a forthcoming product

will require a lot of extra support, get their input

on ways to make it more user-friendly. They’ll be

happier with fewer calls to answer, and you’ll have

a better product to sell. You’ll become allies, with-

out even a hint of schmoozing. And don’t be afraid

to share customers with other divisions. It shows

that you’re a team player—and your customers will

appreciate the seamless service.

• Keep disagreements professional. Focus on issues,

not personalities. Suppose you work at an insur-

ance company, for example, and people in the

underwriting department resist your plan to offer

a new type of homeowner’s policy. Assume they

have legitimate concerns and try to understand

and accommodate them. Accusing colleagues of

“not knowing the market” or being “stuck in the

last century” certainly won’t win them over or al-

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How to Deal with Offi

ce Politics

low you to fi nd an approach that meets everyone’s

needs. And complaining about them behind their

backs will surely come back to bite you.

• Share information. When it comes to information,

you get what you give, and what you know de-

pends on who you know. Say your IT director has

just fi lled three positions that have been open for

months. Alert your colleagues in product develop-

ment so they can update their list of tech priori-

ties. If you look for ways to make their lives easier,

they’ll probably return the favor when they get an

inside scoop that affects your work.

• Relay good news about your team members.

They’ll likely appreciate the public recognition,

and it’ll help the rest of the organization see the

value they add. Did your group fi nish a critical

project early and under budget? Send an e-mail

to managers you work with closely, and copy the

individuals whose praises you’re singing. Don’t as-

sume that everyone will automatically notice your

group’s success. If you don’t mention it, who will?

• Above all, focus your relationships on what’s best

for “us.” If you want an exception to your com-

pany’s pricing policy and need a colleague’s help,

identify her goals and fi nd a way you can support

her and her group, too. And talk to her about what

you want to achieve; perhaps there’s a way to serve

both your purposes simultaneously. Let “connect

and collaborate” be your mantra.

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We’re not saying that organizations are ideal worlds

where everyone always wants the best for everyone else.

They’re often maelstroms of confl icting goals, divergent

interests, and fi erce struggles for scarce resources. And

organizational bullies do exist. They play games and

pick fi ghts. They defi ne their success by the interper-

sonal battles they win, not the results they accomplish

for the organization. How do you deal with them? Not

by hiding.

Bullies are actually a key reason not to withdraw to

your own corner of the organization. You can coun-

ter their tactics with the help of allies. If someone

spreads half-truths about you or quotes you or your

people out of context, it’s much easier to set the record

straight if you’ve developed infl uence through strong

relationships.

Raise the bar by conducting yourself according to

standards that matter to you. Be honest, courteous, and

dependable—no matter how others act. If you propose

an idea that someone belittles, don’t retaliate by point-

ing out fl aws in his idea. That just creates a poisonous

atmosphere. Instead, try to get at what’s behind the ag-

gressive behavior. Maybe that person feels threatened by

you. Look for ways to lower his defenses—ask for his ad-

vice, invite him to brainstorming sessions, and so on. You

may fi nd that he’s suddenly more collaborative and less

combative.

Linda A. Hill is the Wallace Brett Donham Professor of

Business Administration and faculty chair of the Leader-

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How to Deal with Offi

ce Politics

ship Initiative at Harvard Business School. Now a writer

and executive coach, Kent Lineback spent many years as

a manager and an executive in business and government.

They are the coauthors of Being the Boss: The 3 Impera-

tives for Becoming a Great Leader (Harvard Business Re-

view Press, 2011).

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Make Your

Enemies Your

Allies

by Brian Uzzi and Shannon Dunlap

John Clendenin was fresh out of business school in 1984

when he took on his fi rst managerial position, in Xerox’s

parts and supply division. He was an obvious outsider:

young, African- American, and a former Marine, whose

pink shirts and brown suits stood out amid the tradi-

tional gray and black attire of his new colleagues. “I was

strikingly different,” he recalls. And yet his new role re-

quired him to lead a team including employees who had

been with Xerox for decades.

One of his direct reports was Tom Gunning, a 20-year

company veteran who believed Clendenin’s job should

have gone to him, not to a younger, nontechnical new-

comer. Gunning also had a cadre of pals on the team. As

a result, Clendenin’s fi rst days were fi lled with strained

Reprint #R1205K

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smiles and behind-the-back murmurs. Though he wasn’t

looking for adversaries, “I knew these guys were discon-

tented about me coming in,” Clendenin remembers.

He was right to be wary. Anyone who has faced a ri-

val at work—a colleague threatened by your skills, a su-

perior unwilling to acknowledge your good ideas, or a

subordinate who undermines you—knows such dynam-

ics can prove catastrophic for your career, and for your

group or organization. When those with formal or infor-

mal power are fi ghting you, you may fi nd it impossible

to accomplish—or get credit for—any meaningful work.

And even if you have the upper hand, an antagonistic

relationship inevitably casts a cloud over you and your

team, sapping energy, stymieing progress, and distract-

ing group members from their goals.

Because rivalries can be so destructive, it’s not enough

to simply ignore, sidestep, or attempt to contain them.

Instead, effective leaders turn rivals into collaborators—

strengthening their positions, their networks, and their

careers in the process. Think of these relationships not as

chronic illnesses you have to endure but as wounds that

must be treated in order for you to lead a healthy work life.

Here we share a method, called the 3Rs, for effi ciently

and effectively turning your adversaries into your allies.

If you execute each step correctly, you will develop new

“connective tissue” within your organization, boosting

your ability to broker knowledge and drive fresh think-

ing. The method is drawn from our own inductive case

studies—including interviews with business leaders such

as John Clendenin, who agreed to let us tell his story

in this article—and from empirical research conducted

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Make Your Enemies Your Allies

by Brian and others investigating the physiology of the

brain, the sociology of relationships, and the psychology

of infl uence.

Emotions and Trust

Many well-intentioned efforts to reverse rivalries fail in

large part because of the complex way trust operates in

these relationships. Research shows that trust is based

on both reason and emotion. If the emotional orientation

toward a person is negative—typically because of a per-

ceived threat—then reason will be twisted to align with

those negative feelings. This is why feuds can stalemate

trust: New facts and arguments, no matter how credible

and logical, may be seen as ploys to dupe the other side.

This effect is not just psychological; it is physiological.

When we experience negative emotions, blood recedes

from the thinking part of the brain, the cerebral cortex,

and rushes to its oldest and most involuntary part, the

“reptilian” stem, crippling the intake of new information.

Most executives who decide they want to reverse a rivalry

will, quite understandably, turn to reason, presenting incen-

tives for trustworthy collaboration. But in these situations,

the “emotional brain” must be managed before adversaries

can understand evidence and be persuaded.

When John Clendenin looked at Tom Gunning at Xe-

rox, he immediately saw grounds for a strong partnership

beyond a perfunctory subordinate-superior relationship.

Gunning had 20 years’ worth of organizational and techni-

cal knowledge, and contacts around the company, but he

lacked the leadership skills and vision that Clendenin pos-

sessed. Conversely, Clendenin understood management but

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needed Gunning’s expertise and connections to successfully

navigate his new company. Unfortunately, Gunning’s emo-

tions were getting in the way. Clendenin needed to employ

the 3Rs.

Redirection

Step 1 is to redirect your rival’s negative emotions so that

they are channeled away from you. Clendenin decided to

have a one-on-one meeting with Gunning, but not in his

offi ce, because that would only remind Gunning of the

promotion he’d lost. Instead, he found out where Gun-

ning liked to eat and took him there for lunch. “I was let-

ting him know that I understood his worth,” Clendenin

says of this contextual redirection.

He followed this with a plain statement of redirection,

telling Gunning that a third entity beyond the control of

both men was the root cause of their situation. “I didn’t put

you in this position,” Clendenin said. “Xerox put us both in

this position.”

Many executives scoff when they fi rst hear this story,

believing Clendenin’s actions to be too transparent. But re-

direction doesn’t have to be hidden. With stage magic, for

example, audience members understand that redirection is

happening, but that doesn’t lessen their acceptance or spoil

the payoff of the technique. Other personal interactions

work similarly. For instance, we accept fl attery even if we

recognize it as such.

Another common redirection tactic is to introduce a

discussion of things you and your rival have in common, or

casually portray a source of tension—a particular initiative,

employee, or event—in a more favorable light. It sounds

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Make Your Enemies Your Allies

obvious. But redirection will shift negative emotions away

from you and lay the groundwork for Step 2: reciprocity.

Reciprocity

The essential principle here is to give before you ask. Un-

doing a negative tie begins with giving up something of

value rather than asking for a “fair trade.” If you give and

then ask for something right away in return, you don’t

establish a relationship; you carry out a transaction.

When done correctly, reciprocity is like priming the

pump. In the old days, pumps required lots of exertion to

produce any water. You had to repeatedly work a lever to

eliminate a vacuum in the line before water could fl ow. But

if you poured a small bucket of water into the line fi rst, the

vacuum was quickly eliminated, enabling the water to fl ow

with less effort. Reciprocity with a rival works in much the

same way.

Refl ect carefully on what you should give and, ideally,

choose something that requires little effort from the other

party to reciprocate. Clendenin moved from redirection

to reciprocity at the lunch by promising to support Gun-

ning’s leadership development and future advancement at

Xerox. But, recognizing that mere promises of future re-

turns wouldn’t be enough to spark collaboration, he also

offered Gunning something concrete: the chance to attend

executive-level meetings. This was of immediate value,

not a distant, murky benefi t. Gunning could gain visibility,

credibility, and connections.

The arrangement also ensured reciprocity. Gunning’s

presence at the meetings furnished Clendenin with on-

hand technical expertise and organizational knowledge

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Managing Across

while giving him “reputation points” with Gunning’s con-

tacts. Thus, his offer created the purest form of reciproc-

ity; if Gunning attended the meetings, Clendenin would

never have to explicitly request a quid pro quo.

Reciprocity involves considering ways that you can im-

mediately fulfi ll a rival’s need or reduce a pain point. Live

up to your end of the bargain fi rst, but fi gure out a way to

ensure a return from your rival without the person’s feel-

ing that pressure. Another example comes from Brian’s col-

league Adam Galinsky, who advises leaders in contentious

restructurings and business closings to generate goodwill

among outgoing employees by offering professional refer-

ences or placements at other companies as long as the em-

ployees continue to meet or exceed expectations until their

offi ce closes. The employees see immediate value, and al-

though they don’t consciously pay back the organization,

the fi rm nonetheless benefi ts by maintaining continuity in

its workforce until the scheduled closure.

Similarly, a colleague who helps an adversary complete

a project, or a subordinate who stays overtime to fi nish a

task for a diffi cult boss, not only helps that individual but

can reap rewards when other teammates or superiors ben-

efi t from that effort, too. Here the judicious giving before

asking sets a foundation for reciprocity with third parties,

whose buy-in can positively assist in reshaping the adver-

sarial relationship. (See the sidebar “Rivalries Don’t Exist

in a Vacuum.”)

Rationality

Step 3, rationality, establishes the expectations of the

fl edgling relationship you’ve built using the previous

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RIVALRIES DON’T EXIST IN A VACUUM

Even when a leader executes the 3Rs fl awlessly to end a

rivalry, his work isn’t necessarily done.

That’s because the relationship is often about more

than just the two individuals. We all know people who

seek to play to their advantage antagonism between

others; some third parties might even view a blossom-

ing partnership with trepidation or envy, triggering new

negative emotions and rivalries.

You can head off this problem, as Clendenin did, by

framing your work as benefi cial not just to you and your

adversary but to the whole organization, which makes

the reversal of rivalry in everyone’s interest. When

Clendenin brought Gunning into those executive-level

meetings, he made it clear that Gunning was going to

be a “poster child” for a new age at Xerox, in which

talented, long-term employees could fi nd new paths

to leadership in a time of corporate transition. Even if

the confl ictmongers didn’t care about Clendenin’s and

Gunning’s success, it would be far more diffi

cult for

them to sabotage an eff ort that was obviously good for

the company.

steps so that your efforts don’t come off as dishonest or

as ineffective pandering. What would have happened if

Clendenin had left the lunch without explaining how

he wanted to work with Gunning going forward? Gun-

ning might have begun to second-guess his new boss’s

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intentions and resumed his adversarial stance. If a rival

is worried about the other shoe’s dropping, his emotional

unease can undermine the trust you’ve built.

To employ rationality, Clendenin told Gunning that he

needed him, or someone like him, to reach his goals at Xe-

rox. This made it clear that he saw Gunning as a valuable,

but not indispensable, partner. Another, softer approach

might have involved Clendenin’s giving Gunning “the right

of fi rst refusal” to collaborate with him, making the offer

seem special while judiciously indicating that there were

others who could step in. Just to be clear, Clendenin was not

asking Gunning for a specifi c favor in exchange for the one

he’d granted in Step 2. He was simply saying that he wanted

him to become an ally.

Clendenin also reinforced the connection between the

three steps by making his offer time-limited, which raised

the perception of the value of the deal without changing its

content. He told Gunning he needed an answer before they

left the restaurant. “I needed to nip this in the bud,” Clen-

denin recalls. “He knew I didn’t care if we sat in that restau-

rant until midnight if we had to.”

When rationality follows redirection and reciprocity, it

should push your adversary into considering the situation

from a reasoned standpoint, fully comprehending the ex-

pectations and benefi ts, and recognizing that he is looking

at a valued opportunity that could be lost. Most people are

highly motivated to avoid a loss, which complements their

desire to gain something. Rationality is like offering medi-

cine after a spoonful of sugar: It ensures that you’re getting

the benefi t of the shifted negative emotions, and any grow-

ing positive ones, which would otherwise diffuse over time.

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And it avoids the ambiguity that clouds expectations and

feedback when fl attery and favors come one day, and de-

mands the next.

Of course, Clendenin and Gunning did not walk out of

the restaurant as full-blown collaborators. But both ac-

cepted that they should give each other the benefi t of the

doubt. Over the following weeks, this new mind-set allowed

them to work as allies, a process that deepened trust and

resource-sharing in a self-reinforcing cycle. So a potentially

debilitating rivalry was transformed into a healthy work-

ing relationship and, in time, a strong partnership. Several

years later, when Clendenin moved to another Xerox unit,

he nominated Gunning as his replacement—and Gunning

excelled in the position. The foundation for that remark-

able shift had been established during the span of a single

lunch.

Adapting the 3Rs

A key advantage of the 3Rs is that the method can work

to reverse all kinds of rivalries, including those with a

peer or a superior. Later in Clendenin’s tenure at Xerox,

he noticed an ineffi ciency in the company’s inventory sys-

tems. At the time, Xerox was made up of semiautono-

mous international units that stockpiled excess inventory

to avoid shortages. Clendenin proposed that the units in-

stead share their inventories through an intrafi rm net-

work that would improve resource use and lower carry-

ing costs for the company as a whole. Although the idea

was objectively good for Xerox, it threatened the power

of some unit vice presidents, so when Clendenin fl oated

his idea, they shot it down.

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WHAT IF THE 3RS FAIL?

The 3Rs are eff ective, but they aren’t a guarantee. What

should you do if the strategy isn’t working?

Strive for collaboration indirectly—for example,

by working well with a third party whom your rival

trusts. A common ally can highlight to him the ben-

efi ts of working with you.

Remember that timing matters. People in power

need a reason to interact. This was certainly the

case with John Clendenin’s inventory-management

pitch to the Xerox VPs: At fi rst rebuff ed, he was able

to refl oat his idea when the CEO called for a new

strategy.

Recognize when to look elsewhere. Sometimes the

eff ort needed to reverse a rivalry is so great, and

the returns so low, for you and your company that

you’re better off deploying the same resources in

another relationship.

A short time later, however, following an unexpected an-

nouncement by the CEO that the company needed better

asset management, Clendenin found a way to reintroduce

his proposal to the VPs. Because he knew they viewed him

as an unwelcome challenger—or rival—he used the 3Rs.

His fi rst move was to redirect their negative emotions

away from him by planning a lunch for them at the regional

offi ce and serving them himself. This showed deference. He

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also presented himself not as an individual pushing a pro-

posal but as someone who could expedite organizational

change, shifting the reference point of his rivals’ tension.

“With all of those egos and personalities, I never said, ‘This

is my idea,’” Clendenin recalls. “I always said ‘we.’”

Applying the reciprocity principle of give before you ask,

he requested nothing from them at the meeting. Instead, he

facilitated a discussion about the CEO-led initiative. Inven-

tory management was, unsurprisingly, a problem cited by

many of the VPs, and Clendenin’s facilitation brought that

to light. He then took on the luster of the person who had

illuminated a generic problem, rather than someone who

wanted to lessen the VPs’ autonomy.

That allowed him to present the rationality of his origi-

nal idea. All of a sudden, it looked like an opportunity,

rather than a threat, to the formerly antagonistic group.

Clendenin indicated that he would be willing to coordinate

a new system more cheaply than anyone else in the market

could offer, while also noting that he might not have time

to do so in the future, which raised the perceived value of

his offer. The VPs agreed to execute the plan in stages and

put Clendenin in charge. The initiative grew in small but

steady steps, eventually saving Xerox millions. Equally im-

portant, Clendenin’s embrace by his rivals positioned him

as a broker in the company and burnished his reputation as

an institution builder.

John Clendenin understood that rivalries help no one;

indeed, success often depends on not just neutralizing your

foes but turning them into collaborators. By using the 3Rs

to build trust in his network, Clendenin made sure everyone

in his network thrived—including himself, Gunning, their

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team, the VPs, and Xerox—forming the basis for long-term

ties and shared success. Years later, Clendenin started his

own international logistics company. His partner in this

new endeavor was his old rival, Tom Gunning, and the lead

investors were none other than the unit VPs from Xerox

who had once shot down his ideas.

Brian Uzzi is the Richard L. Thomas Professor of Leader-

ship and Organizational Change at Northwestern’s Kel-

logg School of Management and the codirector of the

Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO).

Shannon Dunlap is a journalist and writer based in New

York City.

The authors’ research was supported by grants from the

National Science Foundation (OCI-0838564—VOSS) and

the U.S. Army Research Laboratory’s Network Science Col-

laborative Technology Alliance (W911NF-09-2-0053).

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The Necessary Art

of Persuasion

A summary of the full-length HBR article by Jay A. Con-

ger, highlighting key ideas.

THE IDEA IN BRIEF

When you’re operating outside clear reporting lines, your

colleagues may not immediately see why they should col-

laborate with you. That’s when your powers of persua-

sion come into play. It’s not manipulation. Effective per-

suasion is a learning and negotiating process for leading

your colleagues to a shared solution to a problem.

Reprint #4258

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THE IDEA IN PRACTICE

The process of persuasion has four steps:

1.

Establish credibility. Your credibility grows

out of two sources: expertise and re lation-

ships. If you have a history of well-informed,

sound judgment, your colleagues will trust

your expertise. If you’ve demonstrated that

you can work in the best interest of oth-

ers, your peers will have confi dence in your

relationships.

If you’re weak on the expertise side, bolster

your position by:

• Learning more through formal and informal

education—for example, conversations with

in-house experts

• Hiring recognized outside experts

• Launching pilot projects

Example: Two developers at Microsoft envi-

sioned a controversial new software product,

but both were technology novices. By working

closely with technical experts and market test-

ing a prototype, they persuaded management

that the new product was ideally suited to the

average computer user. It sold half a million

units.

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The Necessary Art of Persuasion

To fi ll in the relationship gap, try:

• Meeting one-on-one with key people

• Involving like-minded coworkers who have

good support with your audience

2. Frame goals on common ground. Tangibly de-

scribe the benefi ts of your position. The fast-

est way to get a child to the grocery store is

to point out the lollipops by the cash register.

That’s not deception—it’s persuasion. When no

shared advantages are apparent, adjust your

position.

Example: An ad agency executive persuaded

skeptical fast-food franchisees to support

headquarters’ new price discounts. She cited

reliable research showing how the pricing

scheme improved franchisees’ profi ts. They

supported the new plan unanimously.

3. Vividly reinforce your position. Ordinary evi-

dence won’t do. Make numerical data more

compelling with examples, stories, and meta-

phors that have an emotional impact.

Example: The founder of Mary Kay Cosmet-

ics made a speech comparing salespeople’s

weekly meetings to gatherings among Chris-

tians resisting Roman rule. This drove home

the importance of a mutually supportive sales

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Managing Across

force and imbued the work with a sense of

heroic mission.

4. Connect emotionally. Adjust your own emo-

tional tone to match your audience’s ability to

receive your message. Learn how your col-

leagues have interpreted past events in the

organization and sense how they will probably

interpret your proposal. Test key individuals’

possible reactions.

Example: A Chrysler team leader raised the

morale of employees disheartened by foreign

competition when he persuaded senior man-

agement to bring a new car design in-house.

He showed both groups slides of his home-

town, devastated by foreign mining competi-

tion. Dramatic images of his boarded-up high

school and the town’s crumbling ironworks

shone a sobering light on the aftereffects of

outsourcing. His patriotic and emotional ap-

peal resonated with his audiences.

Jay A. Conger is a professor of organizational behavior at

the University of Southern California’s Marshall School

of Business in Los Angeles, where he directs the Leader-

ship Institute. He is the author of Winning ’Em Over: A

New Model for Managing in the Age of Persuasion (Si-

mon & Schuster, 2001) .

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Three Ways Not

to Persuade

by Jay A. Conger

In my work with managers as a researcher and as a con-

sultant, I’ve had the unfortunate opportunity to see ex-

ecutives fail miserably at persuasion. Here are three of

the most common mistakes people make:

1.

They attempt to make their case with an up-front,

hard sell. I call this the John Wayne approach.

Managers strongly state their position at the

outset, and then through a process of per-

sistence, logic, and exuberance, they try to

push the idea to a close. In reality, setting out

a strong position at the start of a persuasion

effort gives potential opponents something

to grab onto—and fi ght against. It’s far better

Excerpted from “The Necessary Art of Persuasion,” by Jay A. Conger,

Harvard Business Review, February 2000 (product #4258)

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Managing Across

to present your position with the fi nesse

and reserve of a lion tamer, who engages his

“partner” by showing him the legs of a chair. In

other words, effective persuaders don’t begin

the process by giving their colleagues a clear

target in which to set their jaws.

2. They resist compromise. Too many managers

see compromise as surrender, but it is essen-

tial to constructive persuasion. Before people

buy into a proposal, they want to see that the

persuader is fl exible enough to respond to their

concerns. Compromises can often lead to bet-

ter, more sustainable shared solutions.

By not compromising, ineffective persuad-

ers unconsciously send the message that they

think persuasion is a one-way street. But per-

suasion is a process of give-and-take. Kathleen

Reardon, a professor of organizational behav-

ior at the University of Southern California,

points out that a persuader rarely changes

another person’s behavior or viewpoint without

altering his or her own in the process. To per-

suade meaningfully, we must not only listen to

others but also incorporate their perspectives

into our own.

3. They assume persuasion is a one-shot eff ort.

Persuasion is a process, not an event. Rarely, if

ever, is it possible to arrive at a shared solution

on the fi rst try. More often than not, persua-

sion involves listening to people, testing a posi-

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Three Ways Not to Persuade

tion, developing a new position that refl ects

input from the group, more testing, incorpo-

rating compromises, and then trying again. If

this sounds like a slow and diffi cult process,

that’s because it is. But the results are worth

the effort.

Jay A. Conger is a professor of organizational behavior at

the University of Southern California’s Marshall School

of Business in Los Angeles, where he directs the Leader-

ship Institute. He is the author of Winning ’Em Over: A

New Model for Managing in the Age of Persuasion (Si-

mon & Schuster, 2001) .

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Harnessing

the Science of

Persuasion

A summary of the full-length HBR article by Robert B.

Cialdini, highlighting key ideas.

THE IDEA IN BRIEF

Do you have it—the power to capture your audience,

sway undecideds, convert opponents? In matrixed orga-

nizations, persuasion trumps formal power. It’s essential

to getting things done through others.

Persuasion works by appealing predictably to deeply

rooted human needs. We can all learn to secure consen-

sus, cut deals, win concessions—by artfully applying six

scientifi c principles of winning friends and infl uencing

people.

Reprint #R0109D

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THE IDEA IN PRACTICE

Persuasion Principles

Principle

Example

Business Application

Liking:

At Tupperware parties,

To infl uence people, win

People like those

guests’ fondness for

friends through:

like them, who

their host infl uences

• Similarity: Create

like them.

purchase decisions

early bonds with new

twice as much as re-

peers,bosses, and direct

gard for the products.

reports by informally

discovering common

interests—you’ll

establish goodwill and

trustworthiness.

• Praise: Charm and

disarm. Make positive

remarks about others—

you’ll generate more

willing compliance.

Reciprocity:

When the Disabled

Give what you want

People repay in

American Veterans

to receive. Lend a staff

kind.

enclosed free personal-

member to a colleague

ized address labels

who needs help; you’ll get

in donation-request

his help later.

envelopes, response

rate doubled.

Social Proof:

More New York City

Use peer power to

People follow the

residents tried return-

infl uence horizontally,

lead of similar

ing a lost wallet after

not vertically; e.g., ask an

others.

learning that other New

esteemed “old timer” to

Yorkers had tried.

support your new initiative

if other veterans resist.

Consistency:

92% of residents of an

Make others’ commit-

People fulfi ll

apartment complex

ments active, public,

written, public,

who signed a petition

and voluntary. If you

and voluntary

supporting a new

supervise an employee who

commitments.

recreation center later

should submit reports on

donated money to the

time, get that understand-

cause.

ing in writing (a memo);

make the commitment

public (note colleagues’

agreement with the

memo); and link the com-

mitment to the employee’s

values (the impact of timely

reports on team spirit).

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Three Ways Not to Persuade

Authority:

A single New York

Don’t assume your ex-

People defer to

Times expert-opinion

pertise is self-evident.

experts who pro-

news story aired on TV

Instead, establish your

vide shortcuts to

generates a 4% shift in

expertise before doing

decisions requir-

U.S. public opinion.

business with new col-

ing specialized

leagues or partners; e.g.,

information.

in conversations before

an important meeting,

describe how you solved a

problem similar to the one

on the agenda.

Scarcity:

Wholesale beef buyers’

Use exclusive informa-

People value

orders jumped 600%

tion to persuade. Infl u-

what’s scarce.

when they alone re-

ence and rivet key players’

ceived information on a

attention by saying, for

possible beef shortage.

example: “…Just got this

information today. It won’t

be distributed until next

week.”

Robert B. Cialdini is the Regents’ Professor of Psychology

at Arizona State University and the author of Infl uence:

Science and Practice (Allyn & Bacon, 2001). Further reg-

ularly updated information about the infl uence process

can be found at http://www.infl uenceatwork.com/.

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How to Get Your

Colleagues’

Attention

by Amy Gallo

Do you have to personally escort colleagues to your proj-

ect meetings to make sure they show up? Does every “ur-

gent” e-mail require phone or face-to-face follow-up to

get a timely response? Do you have to hound your mar-

keting partners to prioritize your products when they’re

launching new campaigns? These key tasks depend on

your ability to frame your message—to make crystal

clear what you need your colleagues to do, when, and,

perhaps most important, why.

When you frame your message effectively, your audi-

ence will immediately understand the issue at hand and

why it deserves their attention.

Here’s how to frame your message to get the results

you want, whether you’re making a presentation, sending

an e-mail, or talking in private with your boss:

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Managing Across

• Start with what you want. Busy colleagues don’t

want to wait while you build to the punch line.

Provide the most important information up front

and ask for what you need.

Example: “John, I need your advice about the

product launch. I’ve gotten some new market-

ing data that may infl uence which message we

lead with. I’ve come up with two alternatives,

and I’d like your help deciding which to go

with.”

• Set the scene. Don’t dive too deep into details,

but provide enough context so your audience can

follow along.

Example: “To refresh your memory, the event

we have planned is a question-and-answer

panel on how to connect with today’s modern

moms. So far we’ve got fi ve participants signed

up to speak, including two CEOs of our top cus-

tomers. Our goal is to reach as many marketers

in the New York area as we can. We’ve sent out

2,500 invites and the initial response has been

positive.”

• Explain the complication. This is the specifi c

reason for the meeting or your e-mail. What

prompted you to deliver the message?

Example: “As of today, the vendor is two weeks

late with the proto types. If there are further

delays, we risk missing the deadline we set with

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How to Get Your Colleagues’ Attention

the marketing team. We are somewhat stuck

because the vendor knows we can’t start over at

this point with someone new. We need to fi gure

out how to motivate the vendor and adjust our

schedule so we can meet marketing’s deadline.”

• Connect to the big picture. Why should your audi-

ence care? Point out what is relevant to them and

how it links to their broader goals.

Example: “While eliminating the call checklist

may seem like a small issue, it has important

implications. It will encourage reps to engage

with customers in a more informal way, which

has been shown to increase customer satisfac-

tion. This is a critical step toward meeting our

unit’s goal of 65% customer retention.”

• Make it memorable. People hear news and

information all day. Give them something to latch

on to such as a metaphor, a key statistic, or a

sound bite.

Example: “Our customers feel this is an urgent

issue and have told us so repeatedly. The longer

we wait to respond, the more it will seem that

the house is on fi re and we’re busy rearranging

the furniture instead of calling 911.”

• Refocus your audience’s attention. It’s easy for

audiences to get distracted by secondary issues,

so you must help them concentrate on the central

objective. This is especially useful when you need

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Managing Across

to keep a large group on track or motivate people

toward a common goal.

Example: “Susan, I see that you’re concerned

about getting the templates to design by our

agreed-upon deadline. We need to make sure

that happens. But let’s agree on the right ap-

proach fi rst—to be sure we’re handing off a good

product—and then we can work backwards to

make sure we meet our deadlines.”

• End with a call to action. Once you’ve set the

context, reiterate what it is you need from your

audience.

Example: “Today I need to get your feedback

on the presentation. I’d like to know specifi cally

how we should tweak our high-level message to

ensure it resonates with the leadership team.”

Amy Gallo is a contributing editor at Harvard Business

Review. Follow her on Twitter at @amyegallo.

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Collaborating

Across

Generations

by Tamara Erickson

If you work with people from every generation, as many

of us do these days, how do you communicate with them?

And how do you get them to support and participate in

your initiatives? By understanding their priorities and

positioning your ideas and requests accordingly. To help

with that challenge, here’s a snapshot of each generation,

along with tips for working effectively across the ages.

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Managing Across

Defi ning

How to work

Group characteristics

with

them

Boomers (born

• Hold a deeply

OVERALL:

between 1946

competitive world

• Emphasize winning:

and 1960)

view; see most

Explain how your idea

scenarios as win-lose

either represents a “win”

• Are hardworking and

or will make the organization

driven

(or individual) more

• Value individual

competitive. For instance,

achievement and

if you’re off ering a Boomer a

recognition

new position in the company,

• Question authority

comment on how you’ve

and hierarchy, yet feel

chosen her over numerous

pressure to follow

other candidates. Or if you’re

established rules and

proposing a new marketing

procedures

investment, discuss how it

• Are idealistic, but

will thwart a competitor’s

have by and large put

program.

“lofty” personal goals

• Seek their counsel: Appeal

on the back burner

to their desire to pass on

for the past 30 years

their knowledge. You might

• Are often parents of

ask a Boomer for advice

Gen Ys and inclined to

on how to get her boss’s

enjoy members of this

attention, for example, or

generation

for help analyzing a problem

• Enjoy mentoring

that keeps cropping up.

others and the idea of

leaving a legacy

IF YOU’RE A GEN XER:

• Spell out your career

goals: Clearly convey

your aspirations to any

Boomers with infl uence

on your career well before

you’re up for a promotion

or new role. Don’t assume

they’ll automatically know

where you’d like to end up

long term or what kind of

development path you’d

prefer. Their well-intentioned

ideas may be quite diff erent

from your own.

• Overcommunicate:

Be transparent in your

approach to projects or

problem solving. You’re

more likely than your

Boomer colleagues to

consider multiple options.

Explain how and when you’ll

make decisions so Boomers

will recognize the time

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Defi ning

How to work

Group characteristics

with

them

you’re spending as due

diligence, not misconstrue

it as indecision or

procrastination.

• Partner with them: Tap

their experience and

networks. For example,

invite a Boomer to join

your skunkworks team.

When you’re ready to

pitch the best ideas to

your executive board, she

can help socialize the top

contenders with her peers,

which may help speed

buy-in. She can also raise

potential concerns early on—

helping you dodge delays at

the implementation phase.

IF YOU’RE A GEN Y:

• Ask them for mentoring:

Pair your enthusiasm for

learning with a Boomer’s

expertise and desire to give

back. For example, share

your most pressing project

management problems with

him and discuss potential

solutions. In return, off er

him tutorials on social

media or time-saving

technologies.

• Make sure your written

communication is

professional: Boomers

are more likely than

others to base judgments

on the way you present

your ideas. Express

your recommendations

concisely, using correct

grammar and spelling.

Describe the fi nancial

benefi ts of your suggestions

when possible.

Gen Xers (born

• Are self-reliant

OVERALL:

between early

• Don’t trust

• Weigh your options: Most

1960s and late

any institution

Xers want to know that

1970s)

(corporations,

you’ve considered

( continued)

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Managing Across

Defi ning

How to work

Group characteristics

with

them

marriage, and so on)

contingencies. Earn their

to take care of them

respect and buy-in by

forever

including a discussion of

• Like to keep their

“what if” when you present

options open

ideas to them. For instance,

• Are irreverent

identify the two or three

• Think outside the box

events or trends that would

and are comfortable

be most likely to disrupt

changing the rules as

your proposed course of

necessary

action—and the response

• Accept the validity of

you would recommend

diverse points of view

taking if each one were to

• Have close

occur.

relationships within a

• Let them choose: Whenever

small group of friends

possible, present a menu

(their “tribe”)

of solutions and engage

• Place high priority on

the Xer (whether she is

being good parents

your boss, colleague, or

subordinate) in the process

of choosing the best one.

You might, for example, ask

her what weight she would

give to various decision

criteria.

IF YOU’RE A BOOMER:

• Employ their innovative

thinking: Ask an Xer to

help solve a problem or

reality-check your solution

to make sure you’re viewing

the challenge from every

possible angle. For example,

invite him to test the validity

of your strategy statement

by posing a broad range

of scenarios you might not

have considered on your

own.

• Harness their ability to

integrate multiple points

of view: Invite an Xer to

lead a complex group

discussion—for instance,

an after-action review.

She’s likely to ensure that

everyone is heard so you’ll

have a fuller picture of what

worked well and what needs

improvement.

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Collaborating Across Generations

Defi ning

How to work

Group characteristics

with

them

IF YOU’RE A GEN Y:

• Explore common ground:

Make the most of your

shared passion for

discovering new ways of

working. For example, ask

an Xer to help you analyze

and improve your cross-

functional team’s processes.

Or work together to fi nd

opportunities to leverage

new technology in the

organization.

• Respect the dues they’ve

paid: Most Xers have

worked their way up a

long career track and may

feel threatened by the

perception that you want to

“leapfrog” past them. When

you express your desire for

more challenging work, be

clear that you’re not looking

to take their seat.

Gen Ys (born

• Expect to live life fully

OVERALL:

between

each day

• Ramp up the challenge:

1980 and the

• Are optimistic and

Give stretch assignments

mid-1990s)

confi dent

to maintain their interest.

• Prefer to work on their

For example, ask a Gen

schedule, not yours

Y to prepare a draft

• Are hungry to learn;

proposal for a client.

expect regular

You’ll free up more of your

coaching

time for other priorities,

• Get things done

and he’ll feel that he’s

using in-the-moment

making career progress.

coordination rather

Or specify an outcome

than long-range

you need to achieve, but

planning

leave the approach to his

• Work collaboratively

discretion. Encourage

• Have limited

him to find ways to do

awareness of corporate

it better. Tell him, for

hierarchy and protocol

instance, that the sales

• Are comfortable

team needs to understand

expressing opinions

and get excited about a

freely and bluntly

new product’s features by

• Enjoy and respect

the planned launch date,

their parents and

but invite him to propose

tend to retain close

the communication and

relationships with them

training plan.

( continued)

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Managing Across

Defi ning

How to work

Group characteristics

with

them

• Put their work into

context: Explain how what

they do aff ects the larger

organization. For example,

invite a Gen Y to your next

marketing meeting so

she can see how the daily

sales dashboard she’s

setting up will help your

group accurately track

the impact of diff erent

campaigns.

• Provide frequent feedback:

Take every opportunity

to teach them. After a

brainstorming session, for

instance, pull your Gen Y

direct report aside to note

how useful it was for him

to help facilitate. Give him

a few specifi c suggestions

on how he could do it

even more eff ectively next

time.

IF YOU’RE A BOOMER:

• Clarify how you’ll

communicate with each

other: Agree on “rules”

everyone feels comfortable

with. For example: How

frequently will you exchange

e-mails or text messages?

Will you share questions

and thoughts as they

come to mind or save

them for a weekly status

meeting? Work together to

accommodate your diff erent

preferences.

• Tap their technological

prowess: Gen Ys are

great sources of tech

support, often without

realizing it. Task a Gen Y

with test-driving new

software, for example, or

looking for shortcuts in

the sales-reporting

process.

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Collaborating Across Generations

Defi ning

How to work

Group characteristics

with

them

IF YOU’RE A GEN XER:

• Invite Boomers to teach

them: If you have a number

of Gen Ys reporting to

you, facilitate mentoring

relationships between

them and Boomers, who

enjoy teaching and tend

to click with Ys (more so

than many Xers). Don’t

assume that all demands

for coaching must be met

by the Ys’ managers—

spread the responsibilities

among other experienced

colleagues.

• Clear up ambiguities: Ys

often ask their managers,

typically Xers, for things

in terms that can be

easily misunderstood. For

example, “I’d like a bigger

job” may simply mean that

a Y wants something more

challenging, not necessarily

that she’s angling for a

promotion. If a Y says, “I’d

like to do multiple jobs this

year,” she’s probably talking

about a variety of tasks, not

formal job assignments.

“Feedback” often means

teaching, not critique or

blanket praise. If you’re not

100% sure what a Y means,

ask her to clarify.

Tamara Erickson wrote a trilogy of books on the genera-

tions: Retire Retirement, Plugged In, and What’s Next,

Gen X? . She was named one of the 50 leading manage-

ment thinkers in 2009 and 2011 by Thinkers50.

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When the Direct

Approach

Backfi res, Try

Indirect Infl uence

by Martha Craumer

How do you get people who don’t work for you to work

for you?

When direct management techniques don’t work—

especially with those over whom you have no authority—

you may have better luck with these, more subtle,

approaches.

1.

Talk less, listen more. When you try to persuade

people, you can spend too much time explaining

your position, and not enough time asking ques-

tions, listening, and understanding other points

of view.

Adapted from reprint #U0608D

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Managing Across

Your colleagues are less likely to resist when

they feel you’ve taken the time to acknowl-

edge their concerns. In The 7 Habits of Highly

Effective People, Stephen Covey says that the

greatest need of human beings—after physi-

cal survival—is to be understood, affi rmed,

and appreciated. He explains that “empathic

listening gets inside another person’s frame

of reference. You look out through it, you see

the world the way they [do], you understand

their paradigm, you understand how they feel.”

It’s human nature to want to work with, not

against, someone who “gets” us. Ask about your

colleagues’ challenges or people they’re strug-

gling with. This information will help you iden-

tify common goals and solutions. And you’ll be

building stronger working relationships.

2. Make ’em like you. It’s hard to say no to some-

one you like. So how can you increase your

likability? Play up similarities. We tend to like

people who share our background, interests,

style of dress, etc.

We also like people who like us. We’re suck-

ers for compliments. If your colleague does

a good job leading a meeting, tell him what

you liked about the way he ran it. Be specifi c.

Ask another colleague about her weekend

and listen—perhaps you’ll discover a shared

passion for hiking or reading. Then when you

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When the Direct Approach Backfi res

need their help, your colleagues will be more

likely to offer their expertise.

3. Make ’em laugh. Ever wonder why so many

speakers open their presentations with a joke?

Humor is disarming. It makes people root for us.

It’s hard to feel bad when you’re laughing—and

hard to dislike a person who makes you laugh.

Humor makes you appear calm, approach-

able, and in control. It helps your audience

feel more relaxed and receptive to change, new

ideas, and your infl uence. Use humor to help

soften a harsh message and make it easier to

speak freely about the challenge at hand.

But use humor with care. Inside jokes and

cultural allusions can be off-putting. And, of

course, humor should never be at the expense

of the person you’re trying to infl uence—nor

should it make light of her issues or concerns.

4. Do a favor—even a small one. Doing something

for someone gives you enormous power and

infl uence over them. In his book Infl uence: The

Psychology of Persuasion, Robert Cialdini dis-

cusses the unwritten rule of reciprocity and how

it obligates us to repay what another person has

given us.

Cialdini cites a research study involving two

groups of subjects and a “plant”—a man named

Joe—who was posing as a fellow subject. Each

member of the fi rst group received a small

187

H6053.indb 187

10/17/12 11:40 AM

Managing Across

“favor” from Joe—a Coke that he picked up for

them while out of the room. The second group

received no favor. Then, Joe told each group

he was selling raffl e tickets. The subjects who

received a Coke from Joe bought twice as many

tickets as the subjects who received nothing.

The reciprocity rule overwhelmed all other

factors—including whether they even liked

Joe. The ticket buyers felt an irresistible need

to repay him.

The more you raise your hand to help oth-

ers, the more likely they’ll do the same for you.

Volunteer to take notes at a colleague’s brain-

storming session. Help set out lunch for a big

client meeting. Offer to listen to your team-

mate’s dry run of a big presentation.

5.

Feed ’em. Pick up an extra coffee for the pro-

grammer who’s been developing a data feed for

your new website. Bring fresh fruit or candy bars

to your project launch meeting. Pick one day ev-

ery two weeks to take a colleague to lunch. Don’t

ask your buddy—invite people whom you don’t

often get to see outside of all-staff meetings, to

help deepen your relationships and extend your

network. It’s simple, but true: we like to be fed.

Martha Craumer is a freelance writer based in Cambridge,

Massachusetts.

188

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Index

accountability, 113–114

incompetent, 55–59

achievement motivation, 99–102

keeping in loop, 50

advice, asking for, 40–41

making look good, 43–45

allies, turning enemies into,

as manager, 12

149–160

managing multiple, 71–77

aspirations, 15

managing your, 3–16

attention, gaining audience’s,

as micromanager, 47–53

173–176

presenting problems or oppor-

authority

tunities to, 25–29

persuasion and, 171

relationship with, 3–6, 8–13,

response to, 5, 8

16, 66

seeing as person, 11, 56

bad news, delivering to boss,

winning over new, 17–24

25–29

boss’s boss

Boomers, 178–179

getting to know your, 39–42

boss(es)

making boss look good to,

accommodating, 20

43–45

as brand, 44–45

understanding your, 44

as coach, 4–5

boundary setting, 75

confl ict-averse, 61–63

brain, 90–91

cultural expectations of, 15–16

branding, 44–45

as evaluator, 4–5

bullies, 146

expectations of your, 6–7

business culture, 122

feedback from your, 33

giving feedback to your, 65–69

candor, 20–21, 96

identifying strengths of, 13

career development, 15, 58

189

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Index

career goals, 21–22, 58

business relevance of, 84–86

change agenda, 21–22

components of, 82–83, 89

coach, boss as, 4–5

empathy, 83, 89, 102–106

coaching, 105

evaluating, 86–88

collaboration, 6, 19, 119, 158,

motivation, 82, 89, 99–102

177–183

self-awareness, 82, 88–89,

commitment, 102

94–96

common goals, 112, 163

self-regulation, 82, 89, 96–99

common understanding, 10–11

social skill, 83, 89, 106–108

communication

emotional stress, 58–59

across generations, 177–183

emotions, 151–152

among multiple bosses, 74–75

empathy, 83, 89, 102–106

cross-cultural, 104–105

enemies, turning into allies,

framing your message, 173–176

149–160

nonverbal, 13, 15

energizers, 135

with remote bosses, 73–74

evaluator, boss as, 4–5

with remote colleagues,

expectations

117–124

confl icting, from multiple

written, 63

bosses, 72–73

competency models, 86–87

cultural, 15–16

compromise, 166

meeting, 9–10

confi dentiality, 21

negotiating, 11

confl ict-averse bosses, 61–63

of your boss, 6–7

confl ict avoidance, 13

expertise, 162

controlling bosses, 47–53

external motivation, 100

core relationships, 132–133

credibility, 162–163

favors, 187–188

cross-cultural communication,

feedback

104–105

from boss, 33, 76

cross-functional teams, 41, 121

giving your boss, 65–69

cultural differences, 15–16,

to micromanager, 50–51

104–105

unsolicited, 66

customer compliments, 41

framing your message, 173–176

decision-making styles, 35–37

generations, 177–183

“de-energizers,” 135–136

Gen Xers, 179–181

disagreements, 10, 144–145

Gen Ys, 181–183

discipline of teams, 111–114

globalization, 104–105

growth and development, 4, 7, 15

emotional connections, 164

emotional intelligence, 81–109

hard sells, 165–166

acquisition of, 90–93

honesty, 19–21

190

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Index

incompetent bosses, 55–59

organizational bullies, 146

indirect infl uence, 185–188

organizational commitment, 102

information, sharing, 9–10, 145

integrity, 98–99

partnership, relationship with

intrinsic motivation, 100

boss as, 8–9, 16

perceptions, sharing your,

job description, 58

67–68

judge, boss as, 4–5

performance targets, 6, 9, 112

personal agenda, 21–22

leaders

personal growth and develop-

qualities of, 81–109

ment, 4, 7, 15

team, 103–104

persuasion

leadership transitions, 17–24

art of, 161–164

likability, 186–187

indirect, 185–188

listening, 185–186

mistakes in, 165–167

loyalty, 10, 73

as process, 166–167

science of, 169–171

managerial types, 132–133

tailoring, to different styles,

managing up, with mentor’s guid-

35–38

ance, 31–34

political environment, of offi ce,

maturity, 90

143–147

mentors, 31–34, 59, 105

problems, presenting to boss,

messages, confl icting, 72–73

25–29

micromanagers, 47–53

problem solving, 12, 42, 62

motivation, 82, 89, 99–102

project guidelines, 49–50

multiple bosses, managing,

71–77

rationality, 154–157, 159

reciprocity, 153–154, 159, 170

networking, 121, 125–141

redirection, 152–153

new boss

relationships

helping get up to speed, 22

with boss, 3–6, 8–13, 16, 66

preparing to meet, 18–20

with boss’s boss, 39–42

winning over your, 17–24

building, 106–108, 121

news

categorizing, 136–137

delivering bad, 25–29

core, 132–133

relaying good, 145

credibility through, 162–163

nonverbal communication, 13, 15

networking and, 125–141

reciprocal, 140, 153–154

offi ce politics, 143–147

remote, 73–74, 115–124

off-site workers, 115–124

reversing antagonistic, 149–160

opportunities, presenting to boss,

trust in, 151–152

25–29

remote employees, 115–124

191

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Index

remote relationships, 73–74,

cross-functional, 41, 121

115–124

discipline of, 111–114

rivalries, reversing, 149–160

leadership of, 103–104

technical skills, 87, 109

self-awareness, 82, 88–89, 94–96

time zones, 118–119

self-confi dence, 95

transparency, 20–22

self-development, 58

trust, 10–11, 49, 151–152

self-regulation, 82, 89, 96–99

senior executives, 24, 32

understanding your boss as a

Skype, 122–124

manager, 12

social skill, 83, 89, 106–108

unsolicited feedback, 66

solutions

up-front agreements, 49–50

to problems, 26–29, 42, 74

upward feedback, 65–69

shared, 161

strengths, of your boss, 13

videoconferences, 119, 122–124

teams

workload, 72, 74, 76–77

accountability of, 113–114

written communication, 63

common purpose for, 112

192

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Notes

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Notes

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H6053.indb 194

Notes

H5971.indb 175

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Notes

H5971.indb 176

H6053.indb 196

Notes

H5971.indb 175

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7/16/12 10:15 AM

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Harvard Business Review Guides

Arm yourself with the advice you need to succeed on the

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Guides provide smart answers to your most pressing

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HBR Guide to Making Every Meeting Matter

HBR Guide to Managing Stress

HBR Guide to Managing Up and Across

HBR Guide to Persuasive Presentations

HBR Guide to Project Management

H5971.indb ii

7/16/12 10:15 AM

HBR Guide to

Finance Basics

for Managers

HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW PRESS

Boston, Massachusetts

H5971.indb iii

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Find more digital content or join the discussion on www.hbr.org.

The web addresses referenced and linked in this book were live and

correct at the time of the book’s publication but may be subject to change.

Copyright 2012 Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation

All rights reserved

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced

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should be directed to permissions@hbsp.harvard.edu, or mailed to Permissions, Harvard Business School Publishing, 60 Harvard Way,

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

HBR guide to fi nance basics for managers.

p. cm. — (Harvard business review guides)

ISBN 978-1-4221-8730-2 (alk. paper)

1. Business

enterprises—Finance. 2. Financial

statements.

I. Harvard business review.

HG4026.H435 2012

658.15—dc23

2012026162

H5971.indb iv

7/16/12 10:15 AM

What You’ll Learn

Where do you begin if your boss asks you to prepare a

breakeven analysis? Can you tell the difference between

an income statement and a balance sheet? Between gross

margin and revenue? Do you understand why a business

that’s profi table can still go belly-up? Has your grasp of

your company’s numbers helped—or hurt—your career?

If questions like these make you sweat, you’ve come

to the right place. This guide will give you the tools and

confi dence you need to master fi nance basics, as all good

managers must. You’ll learn how to:

• Speak the language of fi nance

• Compare your fi rm’s fi nancials with rivals’

• Size up your vulnerability to industry downturns

• Shift your unit’s focus from revenues to profi ts

• Use

fi nancial data to defend budget requests

• Avoid running out of cash—and going out of

business

H5971.indb v

7/16/12 10:15 AM

What You’ll Learn

• Keep costs from killing your bottom line

• Invest smartly through cost/benefi t analysis

• Sell your brilliant idea with ROI

• Avoid

putting

too much faith in the numbers

vi

H5971.indb vi

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Contents

Section 1: FINANCE BASICS

Don’t Be Afraid

Finance Quiz

5

Do you know the basics?

The Key Financial Statements

9

Learn your way around a balance sheet,

an income statement, and a cash fl ow

statement.

The Fundamental Laws of Business

33

Get a grip on any company, regardless

of size or location.

BY DAVID STAUFFER

Section 2: MAKING GOOD DECISIONS—

AND MOVING THOSE NUMBERS

Using Statements to Measure Financial Health

43

Interpret what the numbers mean through

ratio analysis.

H5971.indb vii

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Contents

Grow Your Profi ts by Streamlining Your Business

57

Three ways to simplify for profi tability

BY JAMIE BONOMO AND ANDY PASTERNAK

Working Your Assets to Boost Your Growth

63

Focus your supply chain on customers’

needs—and increase your return on

invested capital.

BY MILES COOK, PRATAP MUKHARJI,

LORENZ KIEFER, AND MARCO PETRUZZI

Profi t ≠ Cash (and You Need Both)

73

Here’s why it’s critical to understand

the diff erence—especially for a growing

company.

BY KAREN BERMAN AND JOE KNIGHT, WITH JOHN CASE

Why Cash Matters

83

It helps you see what’s going on now,

where the business is headed, and

what senior management’s priorities

are likely to be.

BY KAREN BERMAN AND JOE KNIGHT, WITH JOHN CASE

Your Balance Sheet Levers

87

Closely manage days sales outstanding and

inventory—and have more cash at

your disposal.

BY KAREN BERMAN AND JOE KNIGHT, WITH JOHN CASE

What’s Your Working Capital Model?

A Case Study

95

Lessons learned from Dow Jones, a business

that transformed itself without going hat-in-

hand to investors

BY JOHN MULLINS AND RANDY KOMISAR

viii

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Contents

Learn to Speak the Language of ROI

105

Get your ideas and projects funded even

when money is tight.

BY JOHN O’LEARY

Practical Tools for Management Decisions

113

How to analyze costs and benefi ts, estimate

ROI, calculate how quickly you’ll recoup an

investment, and more

Section 3: THE LIMITS OF FINANCIAL DATA

What the Financial Statements Don’t Tell You

127

Keep a sharp eye on nonfi nancial data,

too—and avoid the missteps of Merrill Lynch

and BP.

BY JOHN CASE

The Five Traps of Performance Measurement

139

What they are—and how to steer clear

of them

BY ANDREW LIKIERMAN

Finance Quiz

153

How much have you learned?

Glossary 159

Index 169

ix

H5971.indb ix

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H5971.indb x

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Section 1

Finance Basics:

Don’t Be Afraid

“What’s the ROI on that software your department

wants to buy?”

“The CFO says profi ts are great but money’s tight—

everyone needs to conserve cash.”

“I’ve been studying the fi gures, and it looks as if your

sales reps are sacrifi cing gross margin for revenue.

Have you talked to them about that?”

“Our inventory days are creeping upward. We have to

fi nd a way to reverse that trend.”

“I’m worried about our business. The fi nancials sug-

gest that corporate isn’t investing in our future as

much as it used to.”

Every corporate manager hears questions and comments

like these—sometimes from a boss or a fi nance director,

1

H5971.indb 1

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Finance Basics: Don’t Be Afraid

other times from colleagues in water-cooler conversa-

tions. Whatever the source, they all have one thing in

common: They take for granted that you understand the

fundamentals of fi nance. The people doing the talking

presume that you speak the language, that you can read

the fi nancial statements, and that you can use basic fi -

nancial tools to make decisions.

But what if you’re not sure of the difference between

an income statement and a balance sheet, or between

profi t and a positive cash fl ow? What if you can’t defi ne

inventory days or days sales outstanding, and you don’t

know how to use those numbers to improve fi nancial

performance? If someone asks you to prepare a return on

investment (ROI) analysis, do you get a sinking feeling in

the pit of your stomach because you have no idea where

to begin?

Don’t despair.

For one thing, you’re in good company. Financial train-

ers Karen Berman and Joe Knight reported in “Are Your

People Financially Literate?” (HBR October 2009) that

when their Los Angeles–based Business Literacy Institute

administered a 21-question quiz on fi nancial basics to a

representative sample of American managers, the aver-

age score was only 38%—a failing grade in any classroom.

(After you read this introduction, you’ll have a chance to

quiz yourself with a short sample of similar questions.)

At least those managers did better than the group of For-

tune 500 offi cers and directors described in Andrew Ross

Sorkin’s New York Times article “Back to School, But This

One Is for Top Corporate Offi cials” (September 3, 2002).

2

H5971.indb 2

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Finance Basics: Don’t Be Afraid

On another, equally basic, test of fi nancial concepts, these

executives scored an average of 32%.

But there’s another reason not to feel too bad: You

can easily remedy your situation. Reading this guide is

a great start. The fi rst section introduces you to the key

terms and the three main fi nancial statements. The next

section shows you how to use some of the essential tools

of fi nance. Learn these, and you’ll be able to make better

decisions to improve your unit’s performance. The fi nal

section steps back from the numbers and emphasizes the

importance of keeping your wits about you. Finance is

partly science, to be sure, but it’s also partly an art—and

when you apply its tools, you have to be sure you under-

stand the context for what you’re doing.

Why bother with all this? The reason is simple:

Every business runs on fi nancial data. If you don’t know

the tools of fi nance, you can’t put that information to

work. If you can’t even speak the language, you’ll be left

out of the larger conversation about your company, and

your career may suffer as a result. When you fi nish this

guide, you’ll be well on your way to understanding and

using the tools and the language. You’ll also be well posi-

tioned to take a couple of advanced courses, so to speak,

by turning to sources that dig deeper into the subject.

Do you worry that fi nancial concepts will be too com-

plex or that you won’t be able to do the math? Rest as-

sured, learning the fundamentals of fi nance is not the

same as studying to be a numbers pro. People typically

go to school for at least a couple of years to become fi nan-

cial experts, and then they spend a lot of time picking up

3

H5971.indb 3

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Finance Basics: Don’t Be Afraid

specialized knowledge on the job. This guide won’t give

you all that—it’s just about the basics. And the math in-

volved in using fi nancial tools is relatively simple. Most

of the time it’s no more complicated than the arithmetic

you did in middle school; the stuff that’s a little trickier

can easily be done on a computer or calculator.

Ready to begin? Take the quiz on the following page.

The answers are in the back of the guide, but don’t peek

yet. Instead, take the quiz again (on page 153) after you

have read through all the articles, and then compare your

two scores. You should be pleased with what you have

learned.

4

H5971.indb 4

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Finance Quiz

Do You Know the Basics?

This 10-question quiz isn’t designed to measure your en-

tire fi nancial IQ, but it will give you a sense of the fun-

damentals you should learn to become a more effective

manager. When you fi nish reading the guide, you’ll have

a chance to retake the quiz and compare your scores.

If you don’t know an answer, just mark it “don’t know”

rather than guessing. That will give you a clearer indica-

tion of your progress later.

The questions here were developed with the help of

the Business Literacy Institute, in Los Angeles. A more

comprehensive fi nancial IQ test is available for purchase

at www.business-literacy.com.

1. The income statement measures:

a. Profi tability

b. Assets and liabilities

c. Cash

d. All of the above

5

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Finance Basics: Don’t Be Afraid

2. A sale on credit ends up on the income statement

as revenue and as what on the balance sheet?

a. Accounts receivable

b. Long-term assets

c. Short-term

liability

d. Operating cash fl ow

3. What happens when a company is profi table but

collection lags behind payments to vendors?

a. The company is OK because profi ts always

become cash

b. The company stands a good chance of run-

ning out of money

c. The company needs to shift its focus to EBIT

d. The cash fl ow statement will show a negative

bottom line

4. How is gross profi t margin calculated?

a. COGS/revenue

b. Gross profi t/net profi t

c. Gross

profi t/revenue

d. Sales/gross profi t

5. Which statement summarizes changes to parts of

the balance sheet?

a. Income statement

b. Cash fl ow statement

c. Neither of the above

d. Both of the above

6

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Finance Quiz: Do You Know the Basics?

6. EBIT is an important measure in companies

because:

a. It is free cash fl ow

b. It subtracts interest and taxes from net in-

come to get a truer picture of the business

c. It indicates the profi tability of a company’s

operations

d. It is the key measure of earnings before indi-

rect costs and transfers

7. Operating expenses include all of the following

except:

a. Advertising costs

b. Administrative salaries

c. Expensed research and development costs

d. Delivery of raw materials

8. Owners’ equity in a company increases when the

company:

a. Increases its assets with debt

b. Decreases its debt by paying off loans with

company cash

c. Increases its profi t

d. All of the above

9. A company has more cash today when:

a. Customers pay their bills sooner

b. Accounts receivable increases

c. Profi t increases

d. Retained earnings increases

7

H5971.indb 7

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Finance Basics: Don’t Be Afraid

10. Which of the following is not part of working

capital?

a. Accounts receivable

b. Inventory

c. Property, plant, and equipment

d. All of the above are part of working capital

8

H5971.indb 8

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The Key Financial

Statements

What does your company own, and what does it owe to

others? What are its sources of revenue, and how has it

spent its money? How much profi t has it made? What

is the state of its fi nancial health? You can answer those

questions by turning to the three main fi nancial state-

ments: the balance sheet, the income statement, and

the cash fl ow statement.

These are the essential documents of business. Execu-

tives use them to assess performance and identify areas

for action. Shareholders look at them to keep tabs on how

well their capital is being managed. Outside investors use

them to identify opportunities. Lenders and suppliers

routinely examine them to determine the creditworthi-

ness of the companies with which they deal.

Every manager, no matter where he or she sits in the

organization, should have a solid grasp of the basic state-

Adapted from Harvard Business Essentials: Finance for Managers

(product #5788BC), Harvard Business Review Press, 2002

9

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Finance Basics: Don’t Be Afraid

ments. All three follow the same general format from

company to company, though specifi c line items may

vary, depending on the nature of the business. If you can,

get copies of your own company’s most recent fi nancials

so that you can compare them with the sample fi nancials

discussed here.

The Balance Sheet

Companies prepare balance sheets to summarize their fi -

nancial position at a given point in time, usually at the end

of the month, the quarter, or the fi scal year. The balance

sheet shows what the company owns (its assets), what it

owes (its liabilities), and its book value, or net worth (also

called owners’ equity, or shareholders’ equity).

Assets comprise all the physical resources a company

can put to work in the service of the business. This cat-

egory includes cash and fi nancial instruments (such as

stocks and bonds), inventories of raw materials and fi n-

ished goods, land, buildings, and equipment, plus the

fi rm’s accounts receivable—funds owed by customers

for goods or services purchased.

Liabilities are debts to suppliers and other creditors.

If a fi rm borrows money from a bank, that’s a liability. If it

buys $1 million worth of parts—and hasn’t paid for those

parts as of the date on the balance sheet—that $1 million

is a liability. Funds owed to suppliers are known as ac-

counts payable.

Owners’ equity is what’s left after you subtract total

liabilities from total assets. A company with $3 million

in total assets and $2 million in liabilities has $1 million

in owners’ equity.

10

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The Key Financial Statements

That defi nition gives rise to what is often called the

fundamental accounting equation:

Assets – Liabilities = Owners’ Equity

or

Assets = Liabilities + Owners’ Equity

The balance sheet shows assets on one side of the ledg-

er, liabilities and owners’ equity on the other. It’s called a

balance sheet because the two sides must always balance.

Suppose, for example, a computer company acquires

$1 million worth of motherboards from an electronic

parts supplier, with payment due in 30 days. The pur-

chase increases the company’s inventory assets by $1 mil-

lion and its liabilities—in this case its accounts payable—

by an equal amount. The equation stays in balance.

Likewise, if the same company were to borrow $100,000

from a bank, the cash infusion would increase both its

assets and its liabilities by $100,000.

Now suppose that this company has $4 million in

owners’ equity, and then $500,000 of uninsured assets

burn up in a fi re. Though its liabilities remain the same,

its owners’ equity—what’s left after all claims against as-

sets are satisfi ed—drops to $3.5 million.

Notice how total assets equal total liabilities plus own-

ers’ equity in the balance sheet of Amalgamated Hat

Rack, an imaginary company whose fi nances we will

consider throughout this chapter. The balance sheet (see

page 14) describes not only how much the company has

invested in assets but also what kinds of assets it owns,

what portion comes from creditors (liabilities), and what

portion comes from owners (equity). Analysis of the bal-

11

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Finance Basics: Don’t Be Afraid

ance sheet can give you an idea of how effi ciently a com-

pany is utilizing its assets and managing its liabilities.

Balance sheet data are most helpful when compared

with the same information from one or more previous

years. Amalgamated Hat Rack’s balance sheet shows

assets, liabilities, and owners’ equity for December 31,

2010, and December 31, 2009. Compare the fi gures, and

you’ll see that Amalgamated is moving in a positive di-

rection: It has increased its owners’ equity by $397,500.

Now let’s take a closer look at each section of the bal-

ance sheet.

Assets

Listed fi rst are current assets: cash on hand and mar-

ketable securities, receivables, and inventory. Generally,

current assets can be converted into cash within one year.

Next is a tally of fi xed assets, which are harder to turn

into cash. The biggest category of fi xed assets is usually

property, plant, and equipment; for some companies,

it’s the only category.

Since fi xed assets other than land don’t last forever,

the company must charge a portion of their cost against

revenue over their estimated useful life. This is called

depreciation, and the balance sheet shows the accumu-

lated depreciation for all of the company’s fi xed assets.

Gross property, plant, and equipment minus accumu-

lated depreciation equals the current book value of prop-

erty, plant, and equipment.

M&A can throw an additional asset category into the

mix: If one company has purchased another for a price

above the fair market value of its assets, the difference

12

H5971.indb 12

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The Key Financial Statements

is known as goodwill, and it must be recorded. This is

an accounting fi ction, but goodwill often includes intan-

gibles with real value, such as brand names, intellectual

property, or the acquired company’s reputation.

Liabilities and owners’ equity

Now let’s consider the claims against a company’s assets.

The category current liabilities represents money owed

to creditors and others that typically must be paid within

a year. It includes short-term loans, accrued salaries, ac-

crued income taxes, accounts payable, and the current

year’s repayment obligation on a long-term loan. Long-

term liabilities are usually bonds and mortgages—debts

that the company is contractually obliged to repay over a

period of time longer than a year.

As explained earlier, subtracting total liabilities from

total assets leaves owners’ equity. Owners’ equity in-

cludes retained earnings (net profi ts that accumulate

on a company’s balance sheet after payment of dividends

to shareholders) and contributed capital, or paid-in

capital (capital received in exchange for shares).

The balance sheet shows, in effect, how its assets were

paid for—from borrowed money (liabilities), the capital

of the owners, or both.

Historical Cost

Balance sheet fi gures may not correspond to actual mar-

ket values, except for items such as cash, accounts re-

ceivable, and accounts payable. This is because accoun-

tants must record most items at their historical cost. If,

for example, a company’s balance sheet indicated land

13

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Finance Basics: Don’t Be Afraid

Amalgamated Hat Rack balance sheet as of

December 31, 2010 and 2009

Increase

2010

2009

(Decrease)

Assets

Cash and marketable

$

652,500

486,500

166,000

securities

Accounts receivable

555,000

512,000

43,000

Inventory

835,000

755,000

80,000

Prepaid expenses

123,000

98,000

25,000

Total current

assets

2,165,500

1,851,500

314,000

Gross property, plant,

2,100,000

1,900,000

200,000

and equipment

Less: accumulated

depreciation

333,000

290,500

(42,500)

Net property, plant, and

equipment

1,767,000

1,609,500

157,500

Total assets

$ 3,932,500

3,461,000

471,500

Liabilities and owners’ equity

Accounts payable

$

450,000

430,000

20,000

Accrued expenses

98,000

77,000

21,000

Income tax payable

17,000

9,000

8,000

Short-term debt

435,000

500,000

(65,000)

Total current

1,000,000

1,016,000

(16,000)

liabilities

Long-term debt

750,000

660,000

90,000

Total liabilities

1,750,000

1,676,000

74,000

Contributed capital

900,000

850,000

50,000

Retained earnings

1,282,500

935,000

347,500

Total owners’

equity

2,182,500

1,785,000

397,500

Total liabilities

and owners’

equity

$ 3,932,500

$ 3,461,000

$

471,500

14

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The Key Financial Statements

WHERE ARE THE HUMAN ASSETS?

As people look to fi nancial statements to gain insights

about companies, many notice the traditional balance

sheet’s inability to refl ect the value and profi t potential

of human capital and other intangibles. (Remember

that the intangibles included in goodwill appear only

when one company acquires another, and that the fi g-

ure represents only the acquiree’s intangibles at the

time of purchase.) The absence of intangibles from the

balance sheet is particularly signifi cant for knowledge-

intensive companies, whose skills, intellectual prop-

erty, brand equity, and customer relationships may be

their most productive assets. Indeed, a study several

years ago by Baruch Lev of New York University found

that 40% of the market valuation of the average com-

pany was missing from its balance sheet. For high-tech

fi rms, the fi gure was over 50%. So managers and in-

vestors must look beyond the bricks and mortar, the

equipment, and the cash that constitute balance sheet

assets to determine the real value of a company.

worth $700,000, that fi gure would be what the company

paid for the land way back when. If it was purchased in

downtown San Francisco in 1960, you can bet that it is

now worth immensely more than the value stated on the

balance sheet. So why do accountants use historical in-

stead of market values? The short answer is that it’s the

lesser of two evils. If market values were required, then

15

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Finance Basics: Don’t Be Afraid

every public company would be required to get a profes-

sional appraisal of every one of its properties, warehouse

inventories, and so forth, and would have to do so every

year—a logistical nightmare.

How the Balance Sheet

Relates to You

Though the balance sheet is prepared by accountants, it’s

fi lled with important information for nonfi nancial man-

agers. Later in this guide you’ll learn how to use balance-

sheet ratios in managing your own area. For the moment,

let’s just look at a couple of ways in which balance-sheet

fi gures indicate how effi ciently a company is operating.

Working capital

Subtracting current liabilities from current assets gives

you the company’s net working capital, or the amount

of money tied up in current operations. A quick calcula-

tion from its most recent balance sheet shows that Amal-

gamated had $1,165,500 in net working capital at the

end of 2010.

Financial managers give substantial attention to the

level of working capital, which typically expands and

contracts with the level of sales. Too little working capi-

tal can put a company in a bad position: It may be unable

to pay its bills or take advantage of profi table opportuni-

ties. But too much working capital reduces profi tability

since that capital must be fi nanced in some way, usually

through interest-bearing loans.

Inventory is a component of working capital that

directly affects many nonfi nancial managers. As with

16

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The Key Financial Statements

working capital in general, there’s a tension between

having too much and too little. On the one hand, plenty

of inventory solves business problems. The company can

fi ll customer orders without delay, and the inventory pro-

vides a buffer against potential production stoppages or

interruptions in the fl ow of raw materials or parts. On the

other hand, every piece of inventory must be fi nanced,

and the market value of the inventory itself may decline

while it sits on the shelf.

The early years of the personal computer business

provided a dramatic example of how excess inventory

can wreck the bottom line. Some analysts estimated that

the value of fi nished-goods inventory—computers that

had already been built—melted away at a rate of approxi-

mately 2% per day, because of technical obsolescence

in this fast-moving industry. Inventory meltdown really

hammered Apple during the mid-1990s. Until the com-

pany could dramatically reduce its inventories through

operational redesign, it had to dump its obsolete com-

ponents and fi nished goods onto the market at huge

discounts. By comparison, its rival, Dell, built comput-

ers to order—so it operated with no fi nished-goods in-

ventory and with relatively small stocks of components.

Dell’s success formula was an ultrafast supply chain and

assembly system that enabled the company to build PCs

to customers’ specifi cations. Finished Dell PCs didn’t

end up on stockroom shelves for weeks at a time, but

went directly from the assembly line into waiting de-

livery trucks. The profi t lesson to managers in this kind

of situation is clear: Shape your operations to minimize

inventories.

17

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Finance Basics: Don’t Be Afraid

Financial leverage

The use of borrowed money to acquire an asset is called

fi nancial leverage. People say that a company is highly

leveraged when the percentage of debt on its balance

sheet is high relative to the capital invested by the own-

ers. (Operating leverage, in contrast, refers to the extent

to which a company’s operating costs are fi xed rather

than variable. For example, a company that relies on

heavy investments in machinery and very few workers to

produce its goods has a high operating leverage.)

Financial leverage can increase returns on an invest-

ment, but it also increases risk. For example, suppose

that you paid $400,000 for an asset, using $100,000

of your own money and $300,000 in borrowed funds.

For simplicity, we’ll ignore loan payments, taxes, and

any cash fl ow you might get from the investment. Four

years go by, and your asset has appreciated to $500,000.

Now you decide to sell. After paying off the $300,000

loan, you end up with $200,000 in your pocket—your

original $100,000 plus a $100,000 profi t. That’s a gain

of 100% on your personal capital, even though the as-

set increased in value by only 25%. Financial leverage

made this possible. If you had fi nanced the purchase en-

tirely with your own funds ($400,000), you would have

ended up with only a 25% gain. In the United States

and most other countries, tax policy makes fi nancial le-

verage even more attractive by allowing businesses to

treat the interest paid on loans as a deductible business

expense.

18

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The Key Financial Statements

But leverage can cut both ways. If the value of an as-

set drops, or if it fails to produce the anticipated level of

revenue, then leverage works against the asset’s owner.

Consider what would have happened in our example if

the asset’s value had dropped by $100,000—that is, to

$300,000. The owner would still have to repay the initial

loan of $300,000 and would have nothing left over. The

entire $100,000 investment would have disappeared.

Financial structure of the fi rm

The negative potential of fi nancial leverage is what keeps

CEOs, their fi nancial executives, and board members

from maximizing their companies’ debt fi nancing. In-

stead, they seek a fi nancial structure that creates a re-

alistic balance between debt and equity on the balance

sheet. Although leverage enhances a company’s potential

profi tability as long as things go right, managers know

that every dollar of debt increases risk, both because of

the danger just cited and because high debt entails high

interest costs, which must be paid in good times and bad.

Many companies have failed when business reversals or

recessions reduced their ability to make timely payments

on their loans.

When creditors and investors examine corporate bal-

ance sheets, therefore, they look carefully at the debt-

to-equity ratio. They factor the riskiness of the balance

sheet into the interest they charge on loans and the re-

turn they demand from a company’s bonds. A highly lev-

eraged company, for example, may have to pay two or

three times the interest rate paid by a less leveraged com-

19

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Finance Basics: Don’t Be Afraid

petitor. Investors also demand a higher rate of return for

their stock investments in highly leveraged companies.

They will not accept high risks without expecting com-

mensurately large returns.

The Income Statement

Unlike the balance sheet, which is a snapshot of a com-

pany’s position at one point in time, the income state-

ment shows cumulative business results within a de-

fi ned time frame, such as a quarter or a year. It tells you

whether the company is making a profi t or a loss—that is,

whether it has positive or negative net income (net earn-

ings)—and how much. This is why the income statement

is often referred to as the profi t-and-loss statement, or

P&L. The income statement also tells you the company’s

revenues and expenses during the time period it covers.

Knowing the revenues and the profi t enables you to de-

termine the company’s profi t margin.

As we did with the balance sheet, we can represent the

contents of the income statement with a simple equation:

Revenues – Expenses = Net Income

An income statement starts with the company’s sales,

or revenues. This is primarily the value of the goods or

services delivered to customers, but you may have rev-

enues from other sources as well. Note that revenues in

most cases are not the same as cash. If a company delivers

$1 million worth of goods in December 2010 and sends

out an invoice at the end of the month, for example, that

$1 million in sales counts as revenue for the year 2010

even though the customer hasn’t yet paid the bill.

20

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The Key Financial Statements

Various expenses—the costs of making and storing a

company’s goods, administrative costs, depreciation of

plant and equipment, interest expense, and taxes—are

then deducted from revenues. The bottom line—what’s

left over—is the net income (or net profi t, or net earn-

ings) for the period covered by the statement.

Let’s look at the various line items on the income state-

ment for Amalgamated Hat Rack (see below). The cost

of goods sold, or COGS, represents the direct costs of

manufacturing hat racks. This fi gure covers raw materials,

such as lumber, and everything needed to turn those ma-

terials into fi nished goods, such as labor. Subtracting cost

of goods sold from revenues gives us Amalgamated’s gross

profi t—an important measure of a company’s fi nancial

performance. In 2010, gross profi t was $1,600,000.

Amalgamated Hat Rack income statement

For the period ending December 31, 2010

Retail sales

$2,200,000

Corporate sales

1,000,000

Total sales revenue

3,200,000

Less: Cost of goods sold

1,600,000

Gross profi t

1,600,000

Less: Operating expenses

800,000

Less: Depreciation expenses

42,500

Earnings before

757,500

interest and taxes

Less: Interest expense

110,000

Earnings before

647,500

income taxes

Less: Income taxes

300,000

Net income

$ 347,500

21

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Finance Basics: Don’t Be Afraid

The next major category of cost is operating ex-

penses, which include the salaries of administrative em-

ployees, offi ce rents, sales and marketing costs, and other

costs not directly related to making a product or deliver-

ing a service.

Depreciation appears on the income statement as an

expense, even though it involves no out-of-pocket pay-

ment. As described earlier, it’s a way of allocating the

cost of an asset over the asset’s estimated useful life. A

truck, for example, might be expected to last fi ve years.

The company wouldn’t count the full cost of the truck

as an expense on the income statement in the fi rst year;

it would depreciate that amount over the full fi ve years.

Subtracting operating expenses and depreciation from

gross profi t gives you a company’s operating earnings,

or operating profi t. This is often called earnings before

interest and taxes, or EBIT, as it is on Amalgamated’s

statement.

The last expenses on the income statement are typi-

cally taxes and any interest due on loans. If you get a

positive net profi t fi gure after subtracting all expenses, as

Amalgamated does, your company is profi table.

Multiyear Comparisons

As with the balance sheet, comparing income statements

over a period of years reveals much more than examin-

ing a single income statement. You can spot trends, turn-

arounds, and recurring problems. Many companies’ an-

nual reports show data going back fi ve or more years.

In Amalgamated’s multiperiod income statement (see

page 25), you can see that annual retail sales have grown

22

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The Key Financial Statements

steadily, while corporate sales have declined slightly. Op-

erating expenses have stayed about the same, however,

even as total sales have expanded. That’s a good sign that

management is holding the line on the cost of doing busi-

ness. Interest expense has also declined, perhaps because

the company has paid off one of its loans. The bottom

line, net income, shows healthy growth.

How the Income Statement

Relates to You

Of the three main fi nancial statements, the income state-

ment generally has the greatest bearing on a manager’s

job. That’s because most managers are responsible in

some way for one or more of its elements:

Generating revenue

In one sense, nearly everyone in a company helps gen-

erate revenue—the people who design and produce the

goods or deliver the service, those who deal directly with

customers, and so on—but it’s the primary responsibil-

ity of the sales and marketing departments. If same-store

or same-product revenues rise faster than the competi-

tion’s, you can reasonably assume that the folks in sales

and marketing are doing a good job.

It’s critical that managers in these departments under-

stand the income statement so that they can balance costs

against revenue. If sales reps give too many discounts, for

instance, they may reduce the company’s gross profi t. If

marketers spend too much money in pursuit of new cus-

tomers, they will eat into operating profi t. It’s the man-

ager’s job to track these numbers as well as revenue itself.

23

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Finance Basics: Don’t Be Afraid

Managing budgets

Running a department means working within the con-

fi nes of a budget. If you oversee a unit in information

technology or human resources, for example, you may

have little infl uence on revenue, but you will surely be

expected to watch your costs closely—and all those costs

will affect the income statement. Staff departments’ ex-

penses usually show up in the operating expenses line. If

you invest in any capital equipment—a complex piece of

software, say—you will also add to the depreciation line.

Close study of your company’s income statements over

time reveals opportunities as well as constraints. Suppose

you would like to get permission to hire one or two more

people. If operating expense as a percentage of sales has

been trending downward, you will have a stronger case

than if it has been trending upward.

Managing a P&L

Many managers have P&L responsibility, which means

they are accountable for an entire chunk of the income

statement. This is probably the case if you’re running a

business unit, a store, a plant, or a branch offi ce, or if

you’re overseeing a product line. The income statement

you are accountable for isn’t quite the same as the whole

company’s. For instance, it is unlikely to include interest

expense and other overhead items, except as an “alloca-

tion” at the end of the year. Even so, your job is to manage

revenue generation and costs so that your unit or product

line contributes as much profi t to the company as pos-

24

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The Key Financial Statements

Amalgamated Hat Rack multiperiod income statement

For the period ending December 31,

2010

2009

2008

Retail sales

$2,200,000

2,000,000

1,720,000

Corporate sales

1,000,000

1,000,000

1,100,000

Total sales revenue

3,200,000

3,000,000

2,820,000

Less: Cost of goods sold

1,600,000

1,550,000

1,400,000

Gross profi t

1,600,000

1,450,000

1,420,000

Less: Operating expenses

800,000

810,000

812,000

Less: Depreciation expenses

42,500

44,500

45,500

Earnings before

757,500

595,500

562,500

interest and taxes

Less: Interest expense

110,000

110,000

150,000

Earnings before

647,500

485,500

412,500

income taxes

Less: Income taxes

300,000

194,200

165,000

Net income

$ 347,500

291,300

247,500

sible. For that you need to understand and track revenue,

cost of goods sold, and operating expenses.

The Cash Flow Statement

The cash fl ow statement is the least used—and least un-

derstood—of the three essential statements. It shows in

broad categories how a company acquired and spent its

cash during a given span of time. As you’d expect, expen-

ditures show up on the statement as negative fi gures, and

sources of income fi gures are positive. The bottom line in

each category is simply the net total of infl ows and out-

fl ows, and it can be either positive or negative.

25

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Finance Basics: Don’t Be Afraid

The statement has three major categories: Operating

activities, or operations, refers to cash generated by,

and used in, a company’s ordinary business operations.

It includes everything that doesn’t explicitly fall into the

other two categories. Investing activities covers cash

spent on capital equipment and other investments (out-

going), and cash realized from the sale of such invest-

ments (incoming). Financing activities refers to cash

used to reduce debt, buy back stock, or pay dividends

Amalgamated Hat Rack cash fl ow statement for the

year ending December 31, 2010

Net income

$347,500

Operating activities

Accounts receivable

(43,000)

Inventory (80,000)

Prepaid expenses

(25,000)

Accounts payable

20,000

Accrued expenses

21,000

Income tax payable

8,000

Depreciation expense

42,500

Total changes in operating

assets and liabilities

(56,500)

Cash fl ow from operations

291,000

Investing activities

Sale of property, plant,

and equipment

267,000*

Capital expenditures

(467,000)

Cash fl ow from investing activities (200,000)

Financing activities

Short-term debt decrease

(65,000)

Long-term borrowing

90,000

Capital stock

50,000

Cash dividends to stockholders

—

Cash fl ow from fi nancing activities

75,000

Increase in cash during year

$ 166,000

* Assumes sale price was at book value; the company had yet to start depreciating this asset.

26

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The Key Financial Statements

(outgoing), and cash from loans or from stock sales

(incoming).

Again using the Amalgamated Hat Rack example, we

see that in 2010 the company generated a total positive

cash fl ow (increase in cash) of $166,000. This is the sum

of cash fl ows from operations ($291,000), investing ac-

tivities (minus $200,000), and fi nancing ($75,000).

The cash fl ow statement shows the relationship be-

tween net profi t, from the income statement, and the ac-

tual change in cash that appears in the company’s bank

accounts. In accounting language, it “reconciles” profi t

and cash through a series of adjustments to net profi t.

Some of these adjustments are simple. Depreciation, for

instance, is a noncash expense, so you have to add de-

preciation to net profi t if what you’re interested in is the

change in cash. Other adjustments are harder to grasp,

though the arithmetic isn’t diffi cult. If a company’s ac-

counts receivable are lower at the end of 2010 than they

were at the end of 2009, for example, it took in “extra”

cash from operations, so we would add that to net profi t

as well.

Let’s look at each category on Amalgamated’s cash

fl ow statement for 2010.

• Operating activities. Net income—$347,500—

appears at the top. That’s the fi gure we want to

adjust, and it comes straight from the bottom line

of the income statement. Accounts receivable,

inventory, prepaid expenses, accounts payable,

accrued expenses, and income tax payable are all

calculated from the balance sheets for 2010 and

27

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Finance Basics: Don’t Be Afraid

2009. The fi gure appearing on the cash fl ow state-

ment for each line item represents the difference

between the two balance sheets. Again, these are

all adjustments that will help translate net income

into cash. As mentioned, depreciation is a non-

cash expense, so it’s added in. Then all the pluses

and minuses are calculated to get net cash from

operations.

• Investing activities. Amalgamated sold fi xed as-

sets—property, plant, and equipment—worth

$267,000 in 2010. For simplicity’s sake we’re

assuming that it had not yet begun to depreci-

ate those assets. It also invested $467,000 in new

fi xed assets.

• Financing activities. Amalgamated decreased its

short-term debt by $65,000, increased its long-

term debt by $90,000, and sold $50,000 in stock

to investors. It paid its shareholders no dividends

in 2010; if it had, the amount would have shown

up under fi nancing activities.

• Change in cash. As noted above, the change in

cash is just the total of all three categories. It

corresponds exactly to the difference in the

cash line items on the balance sheets for 2010

and 2009.

The cash fl ow statement is useful because it indicates

whether your company is successfully turning its profi ts

into cash—and that ability is ultimately what will keep the

company solvent, or able to pay bills as they come due.

28

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The Key Financial Statements

How the Cash Flow Statement

Relates to You

If you’re a manager in a large corporation, changes in

your employer’s cash fl ow won’t typically have an impact

on your day-to-day job. Nevertheless, it’s a good idea to

stay up to date with your company’s cash situation, be-

cause it may affect your budget for the upcoming year.

When cash is tight, you will probably want to be con-

servative in your planning. When it’s plentiful, you may

have an opportunity to propose a bigger budget. Note

that a company can be quite profi table and still be short

of cash as a result of making a lot of new investments, for

example, or having trouble collecting receivables.

You may also have some infl uence over the items that

affect the cash fl ow statement. Are you responsible for in-

ventory? Keep in mind that every addition there requires

a cash expenditure. Are you in sales? A sale isn’t really a

sale until it is paid for—so watch your receivables. There’s

more on tools for managing cash later in this guide.

Where to Find the Financials

Every company with shares traded in U.S. public fi nancial

markets must prepare and distribute its fi nancial state-

ments in an annual report to shareholders. Annual re-

ports usually go beyond the basic disclosure requirement

of the Securities and Exchange Commission and include

discussion of the year’s operations and the future outlook.

Most public companies also issue quarterly reports.

If you are looking for even more material on your com-

pany, or on one of your competitors, obtain a copy of its

29

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Finance Basics: Don’t Be Afraid

annual Form 10-K. The 10-K often contains abundant

and revealing information about a company’s strategy,

its view of the market and its customers, its products, its

important risks and business challenges, and so forth.

You can get 10-K reports and annual and quarterly re-

ports directly from a company’s investor relations de-

partment or online at www.sec.gov/edgar/searchedgar/

webusers.htm.

Private, or closely held, companies are not required

by law to share full fi nancial statements with anybody,

though prospective investors and lenders naturally ex-

pect to see all three statements. And many companies

share the fi nancials with their managers. If you work

for a closely held company and have not seen its fi nan-

cials, ask someone in fi nance whether you are allowed to

see them.

30

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The Key Financial Statements

SUMMING UP

The balance sheet, income statement, and cash fl ow

statement off er three perspectives on a company’s fi -

nancial performance. They tell three diff erent but re-

lated stories about how well your company is doing

fi nancially:

• The

balance sheet shows a company’s fi nancial

position at a specifi c point in time. It provides a

snapshot of its assets, liabilities, and equity on a

given day.

• The income statement shows the bottom line.

It indicates how much profi t or loss was gener-

ated over a period of time—usually a month, a

quarter, or a year.

• The

cash fl ow statement tells where the com-

pany’s cash came from and where it went. It

shows the relationship between net profi t and

the change in cash recorded from one balance

sheet to the next.

Together, these fi nancial statements can help you un-

derstand what is going on in your company—or in any

other business.

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The Fundamental

Laws of Business

by David Stauff er

Why was a publisher willing to pay General Electric

chairman Jack Welch an eye-popping $7 million advance

for a book about his career? According to Dallas-based

management consultant Ram Charan, author of What

the CEO Wants You to Know and several other books, the

answer has a lot to do with Welch’s ability to distill com-

plexities—to think and talk about his sprawling global

conglomerate as if it were a simple street-corner shop.

An understanding of a few fi nancial measures coupled

with an enterprise-wide perspective, Charan maintains,

can help you get a grip on any company, regardless of its

size or location. “When you come right down to it,” he

says, “business is very simple. There are universal laws of

Adapted from Harvard Management Update (product #U0104A), April 2001

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Finance Basics: Don’t Be Afraid

business that apply whether you sell fruit from a stand or

are running a Fortune 500 company.”

Understand the Measures of

Moneymaking

Business acumen, writes Charan, is “the ability to un-

derstand the building blocks of how a one-person opera-

tion or a very big business makes money.” Problems arise

when managers don’t have a precise understanding of

what “making money” means. Three measures can give

you a good picture of whether and how a company is mak-

ing money: growth, cash generation, and return on assets.

Growth

Growth in sales is usually—but not always—a positive

sign. A $16 million injection-molding company, writes

Charan, “rewarded its sales representatives based on

how many dollars’ worth of plastic caps they sold, regard-

less of whether the company made a profi t on the caps.

Everyone was excited when the company landed $4 mil-

lion in new sales from two major customers. But in the

following three years, as sales rose, profi t margins sank.”

The lesson here: “Growth for its own sake doesn’t do any

good. Growth has to be profi table and sustainable.”

Cash generation

Cash is “a company’s oxygen supply,” writes Charan; it

“gives you the ability to stay in business.” Even if your

company is growing its revenues profi tably and getting

a respectable return on its assets, a cash shortage—or a

declining cash fl ow—spells trouble. “Cash generation is

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The Fundamental Laws of Business

BIG-PICTURE PERSPECTIVE

Consultant Ram Charan, author of What the CEO Wants

You to Know, urges you to “get a total picture” by an-

swering the following questions:

• What were your company’s sales during the last

year? Are sales growing, declining, or fl at?

• What is the profi t margin? Is it growing, declin-

ing, or fl at?

• How does your margin compare with those of

competitors? With those of other industries?

• Do you know your company’s inventory velocity?

Its asset velocity?

• What is its return on assets?

• Is cash generation increasing or decreasing?

Why?

• Is your company gaining or losing against the

competition?

the difference between all the cash that fl ows into the

business and all the cash that fl ows out of the business

in a given time period,” Charan explains. Since most

companies extend and receive credit, net cash fl ow and

profi t are seldom the same thing. Cash from opera-

tions depends largely on two factors: accounts receiv-

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Finance Basics: Don’t Be Afraid

able (money owed by customers) and accounts payable

(money owed to suppliers).

Charan recommends continually investigating where

the cash is being generated, how it’s being used, and

whether enough is coming in. If there’s not enough, of

course, you’ll want to fi nd out the reasons.

Return on assets (ROA)

A company’s ROA is its net profi t divided by the aver-

age value of its assets during a given period of time. This

measure, usually expressed as a percentage, shows you

how well your company is using its assets—including

cash, receivables, inventory, buildings, vehicles, and ma-

chinery—to make money. ROA gives managers a glimpse

of the often-missing third element of a triad called SEA:

sales, expenses, and assets. “Below the senior manage-

ment level,” explains Chuck Kremer, a fi nancial trainer

and coauthor of Managing by the Numbers, “many de-

cision makers see only their part of the income state-

ment,” which doesn’t deal with assets. Yet all employees,

whether they realize it or not, are involved in managing

some portion of the fi rm’s assets.

Many people equate managing assets with watching

gross profi t (total sales minus all costs directly associated

with creating the company’s products or services). That’s

only half the challenge, says Charan. The other measure

that needs to be monitored simultaneously is velocity—

how fast a particular asset moves “through a business to

a customer.”

In times of intense price competition, for example,

companies often see their gross margins shrink. Increas-

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The Fundamental Laws of Business

ing asset velocity helps protect the ROA of a company

in that situation, because you’re doing more with fewer

assets. This is the strategy that made Dell Computer so

successful in the 1990s. By outsourcing much of its com-

ponents manufacturing, Dell essentially became an as-

sembler, Charan points out: Each computer was confi g-

ured to meet an individual customer’s specifi cations and

delivered in less than a week. Dell cut costs by reducing

inventory and increasing its inventory turns—the num-

ber of times in a year that its inventory turned over—to a

level far higher than most manufacturers’.

“The problem with managers missing the ‘A,’ or assets

part [of SEA], isn’t usually apparent in good times,” Kre-

mer says. “It’s when things are slowing down that ROA

makes all the difference. And it’s the companies like GE

that emphasize the ‘A’ continuously—so that their people

are always managing the receivables, the fi xed assets, and

the inventories—that thrive in good times and bad.”

Think Like an Owner

By understanding growth, cash generation, and ROA,

managers can counteract the common tendency to think

and act within one’s “silo” (department or unit). “None of

us denies that we’re members of a team comprising every

department,” Kremer says. “But how can I best contrib-

ute to the team if I don’t understand how my actions in

marketing impact engineering or production?”

Tracking these fi nancial measures helps expand man-

agers’ thinking in three ways, says Charan: “First, we’re

able to think of the business as a whole. Second, we see

the linkages between our unit and the business as a whole.

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Finance Basics: Don’t Be Afraid

Third, we’re better able to grasp what’s happening in the

outside world—such as an economic slowdown—and re-

late that to the company and even to our own area.”

A big-picture understanding of basic fi nancial mea-

sures has very practical benefi ts, says Thomas Kroeger,

the executive vice president in charge of organization and

people at Offi ce Depot. “The main benefi t is that it helps

us cut through the clutter,” he says, noting that Offi ce De-

pot’s fast growth necessarily created layers and distance

between the CEO and store managers. Kroeger describes

a telling incident that occurred during a meeting of dis-

trict store managers, who had suggested that each store

hire a customer greeter. At the individual store level, this

didn’t represent a huge fi nancial commitment. But when

the managers took a step back, they realized that their

idea would cost $25 million annually to execute. “They

were dumbfounded,” Kroeger recalls. “But they’d experi-

enced a critical shift, from the perspective of store man-

ager to store owner. ”

At Alcoa Packaging Machinery in Englewood, Colo-

rado, a fi nancial-literacy initiative helped foster an

owner’s perspective among all employees. “Workers in

each of about 10 manufacturing cells make the deci-

sions that affect them, ” explains machinists’ union repre-

sentative Garry Harper. Should we work this Saturday?

Should we buy the new tooling we need this month? The

company’s big picture gets factored into the decision

making around such questions. What’s more, all employ-

ees receive monthly updates on key fi nancial measures of

companywide performance at cell briefi ngs and via the

company’s intranet. “Every cell also gets its own monthly

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The Fundamental Laws of Business

P&L statement,” Harper adds. “I can assure you that

every employee knows or has access to how well his or

her cell is contributing to overall company performance.”

Growth, cash generation, and return on assets—these

concepts, along with a focus on customers, form the nu-

cleus from which everything else about a business ema-

nates, says Charan.

David Stauff er heads the corporate writing fi rm Stauffer

Bury, in Red Lodge, Montana.

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Section 2

Making Good

Decisions—and

Moving Those

Numbers

Part of your job as a manager is to help your company

reach its fi nancial goals—in other words, to help move

the key numbers in the right direction. You should now

have a good idea of what those numbers are. The income

statement shows revenue, the various costs and expenses,

subtotals such as gross profi t and operating profi t, and

of course the bottom line—net profi t. The balance sheet

shows assets and liabilities, including accounts receivable

and accounts payable. The cash fl ow statement shows

how well the company is turning its profi ts into cash and

what it’s doing with that cash. All three statements refl ect

the daily actions of managers and employees throughout

the organization. The company will be fi nancially healthy

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Making Good Decisions—and Moving Those Numbers

if and only if those individuals make and execute good

decisions every day.

The articles in this section of the guide will help you

do that. They’ll enable you to see more of what the fi nan-

cials are telling you, where the levers and pressure points

are, and what you can do to make those key numbers

move. You’ll learn how to help boost profi ts, how to use

assets (such as equipment, inventory, and cash) more ef-

fi ciently, how to improve your company’s cash fl ow, and

how to analyze potential investments. You’ll have a better

understanding of the relationship between your respon-

sibilities and your company’s fi nancial results.

If you’re a savvy manager, you always pay careful at-

tention to the operations you oversee and to the people

on your team. But you can’t forget that you and your co-

workers are ultimately responsible for your company’s

fi nancial health—and that you must watch the numbers

as closely as you watch everything else.

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Using Statements

to Measure

Financial Health

By themselves, fi nancial statements tell you quite a bit:

how much profi t the company made, where it spent its

money, how large its debts are. But how do you interpret

all the numbers these statements provide? For example,

is the company’s profi t large or small? Is the level of debt

healthy or not?

Ratio analysis allows you to dig into the information

contained in the three fi nancial statements. A fi nancial

ratio is just two key numbers expressed in relation to

each other. Using ratios, you can compare your compa-

ny’s performance to that of its competitors, to industry

averages, and to its own performance in the past. The

ratios that follow are among the most common, and are

used in many different industries.

Adapted from Pocket Mentor: Understanding Finance (product

#13197), Harvard Business Review Press, 2007

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Making Good Decisions—and Moving Those Numbers

Profi tability Ratios

These measures gauge a company’s profi tability—its

profi ts as a percentage of various other numbers. They’ll

help you determine whether your company’s profi ts are

healthy or anemic, and whether they’re moving in the

right direction.

• Return on assets (ROA). ROA indicates how well

a company is using its assets to generate profi t.

It’s a good measure for comparing companies

of different sizes. To calculate it, just divide net

income by total assets. For example, look back at

the fi nancials of Amalgamated Hat Rack in “The

Key Financial Statements,” in the opening section

of this guide. The income statement shows net in-

come of $347,500 for 2010, and the balance sheet

shows total assets of $3,932,500 for December 31

of that year. Do the arithmetic, and you fi nd that

Amalgamated’s ROA is 8.8%.

• Return on equity (ROE). ROE shows profi t as a

percentage of shareholders’ equity. In effect, it’s

the owners’ return on their investment—and you

can bet that shareholders will be comparing it to

what they could earn with alternative investments.

To calculate ROE, divide net income by owners’

equity. For Amalgamated, it’s $347,500 divided by

$2,182,500, or 15.9%.

• Return on sales (ROS). Also known as net profi t

margin, ROS measures how well a company is

controlling its costs and turning revenue into

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Using Statements to Measure Financial Health

bottom-line profi t. To calculate ROS, divide net

income by revenue. Amalgamated’s ROS for 2010

is 10.9%, or $347,500 divided by $3,200,000.

For 2009, the calculation is $291,300 divided by

$3,000,000, or 9.7%. So Amalgamated’s ROS is

growing—a very good sign.

• Gross profi t margin. Gross profi t margin shows

how effi ciently a company produces its goods or

delivers its services, taking only direct costs into

account. To calculate gross profi t margin, divide

gross profi t by revenue. Amalgamated made

$1,600,000 in gross profi t in 2010; divide that

by $3,200,000, and you get exactly 50%. That’s a

couple of percentage points higher than the previ-

ous year’s gross profi t margin—also a good sign.

• Earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) margin.

Many analysts use this measure, also known as

operating margin, to see how profi table a com-

pany’s overall operations are, without regard to

how they are fi nanced or what taxes the company

may be liable for. To calculate it, just divide EBIT

by revenue. Amalgamated’s EBIT for 2010 was

$757,500. Divide that by revenue, and you get

23.7%. (For an exercise, check to see whether its

EBIT margin improved since 2009.)

Operating Ratios

Operating ratios help you assess a company’s level of ef-

fi ciency—in particular, how well it is putting its assets to

work and managing its cash.

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Making Good Decisions—and Moving Those Numbers

• Asset turnover. This ratio shows how effi ciently

a company uses all of its assets—cash, machin-

ery, and so on—to generate revenue. It answers

the question, How many dollars of revenue do we

bring in for each dollar of assets? To calculate asset

turnover, divide revenue by total assets. In general,

the higher the number, the better—but note that

you can raise the ratio either by generating more

revenue with the same assets or by decreasing the

asset base of your business, perhaps by lowering

average receivables.

• Receivable days. This measure, also known as days

sales outstanding (DSO), tells you how quickly

a company collects funds owed by customers. A

company that takes an average of 45 days to collect

its receivables will need signifi cantly more work-

ing capital than one that takes 25 days. There are

a couple of different ways to calculate DSO. One

common method is to divide ending accounts

receivable—accounts receivable on the last day of

the month or year—by revenue per day during the

period just ended.

• Days payable. This measure, also called days pay-

able outstanding (DPO), tells you how quickly

a company pays its suppliers. The longer it takes,

other things being equal, the more cash a company

has to work with. Of course, you have to balance

the advantages of more cash in your bank account

against your suppliers’ need to be paid—stretch

DPO out too long, and you may fi nd that suppli-

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Using Statements to Measure Financial Health

ers don’t want to do business with you. The most

common way to calculate DPO is to divide ending

accounts payable by cost of goods sold per day.

• Days in inventory (DII). This shows how quickly a

company sells its inventory during a given period

of time. The longer it takes, the longer the compa-

ny’s cash is tied up and the greater the likelihood

that the inventory will not sell at full value. To

calculate DII, or inventory days, divide average

inventory by cost of goods sold per day.

Liquidity Ratios

Liquidity ratios tell you about a company’s ability to meet

short-term fi nancial obligations such as debt payments,

payroll, and accounts payable.

• Current ratio. This ratio measures a company’s

current assets against its current liabilities. To

calculate it, divide total current assets by total cur-

rent liabilities. A ratio that is close to 1 is too low:

It shows that current assets are barely suffi cient to

cover short-term obligations. (A ratio of less than

1 is a sign of immediate trouble.) A ratio signifi -

cantly higher than industry averages may indicate

that the company is too “fat”—in other words, that

it’s holding a lot of cash that it’s not putting to

work or returning to shareholders in the form of

dividends.

• Quick ratio. This ratio isn’t faster to compute than

any other—it simply measures a company’s abil-

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Making Good Decisions—and Moving Those Numbers

ity to meet its current obligations quickly. It thus

ignores inventory, which can be hard to liquidate.

(And if you do have to liquidate inventory quickly,

you typically get less for it than you would other-

wise.) This ratio is sometimes called the acid test,

because if it is less than 1 the company may be

unable to pay its bills. To calculate the quick ratio,

divide current assets minus inventory by current

liabilities.

Leverage Ratios

Leverage ratios tell you to what extent a company is using

debt to pay for its operations and how easily it can cover

the cost of that debt.

• Interest coverage. This ratio assesses the margin

of safety on a company’s debt—in other words,

how its profi t compares to its interest payments

during a given period. To calculate interest cover-

age, divide earnings before interest and taxes by

interest expense. For Amalgamated Hat Rack,

it’s $757,500 divided by $110,000, or 6.9. Bank-

ers and other lenders look at this ratio closely;

nobody likes to lend money to a company if its

profi ts aren’t substantially higher than its interest

obligations.

• Debt to equity. This measure shows the extent to

which a company is using borrowed money to en-

hance the return on owners’ equity. Investors and

lenders scrutinize the ratio to determine whether a

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Using Statements to Measure Financial Health

company is too highly leveraged (usually compared

to industry averages)—or whether, in contrast,

management has been too conservative and isn’t

using enough debt to generate profi ts. To calculate

it, divide total liabilities by owners’ equity. Amal-

gamated’s debt-to-equity ratio? It’s $1,750,000

divided by $2,182,500, or 0.80.

How Ratio Analysis Relates to You

Ratios shine a powerful light on three potential areas of

concern:

• Liquidity. The current and quick ratios can tell you

whether a company will be able to pay its bills. If it

can’t easily do so, it’s likely to cut costs abruptly. It

may even need to restructure its operations.

• Competitive advantages or disadvantages. Com-

paring a company’s ratios to those of competitors

and to industry averages often reveals specifi c

fi nancial strengths and weaknesses. If your fi rm’s

debt-to-equity ratio is higher than average, for

example, the company may be particularly vulner-

able to a downturn in the industry. If its EBIT

margin is higher than competitors’, it may be more

effi cient than others in its operating processes.

• Performance trends. If ROS is shrinking, say—if

costs are growing relative to sales—senior execu-

tives will probably begin looking for cuts. They’ll

ask managers to tighten their budgets, maybe even

to delay hiring where possible. A growing ROA

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Making Good Decisions—and Moving Those Numbers

or ROS, by contrast, may put the senior team in

a more expansive mood. That’s the best time to

consider asking for a more generous budget, a new

position in your department, or a new piece of

capital equipment.

It’s important to understand which ratios you can in-

fl uence and to talk with your team about how to have the

right impact. For instance:

Profi tability ratios

Most line managers are directly responsible for control-

ling costs in their areas. By staying under budget, for ex-

ample, you can help your company’s ROS. There may be

other ways to improve profi tability as well. If you’re in en-

gineering or product development, can you come up with

new product ideas that will generate additional revenue

at healthy margins? If you’re in sales, are you watching

the gross profi t on what you and your team sell as well as

your overall sales volume? If you’re in marketing, can you

fi gure out ways to get more bang from every marketing

dollar? These are the kinds of efforts that make a bottom-

line difference.

Operating ratios

Line managers infl uence operating ratios in a number of

ways. Sales managers, for example, always have to make

certain that their reps aren’t selling to too many custom-

ers that are poor credit risks. They may need to work with

their reps and the credit department to keep receivable

days down to an appropriate level. Plant managers and

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Using Statements to Measure Financial Health

everyone else responsible for inventory must watch in-

ventory days relative to competitors’ and to industry av-

erages. Inventory that’s higher than necessary requires

more working capital, and the fi nance department is

likely to come around asking why DII is so high.

Liquidity and leverage ratios

These ratios are mostly the responsibility of the fi nance

department, so line managers have less infl uence on

them. But all the other moves discussed here—generat-

ing more revenue, watching costs and profi t margins,

collecting on receivables, keeping inventory (and thus

working capital) to a minimum—will ultimately have a

positive impact on your company’s liquidity and leverage

ratios.

Other Financial Assessments

Other ways of evaluating a company’s fi nancial health in-

clude valuation, Economic Value Added (EVA), and pro-

ductivity assessments. Like the ratios described above,

all these measures are most meaningful when compared

with the same ones from earlier time periods or with

those for other companies in a particular industry.

Valuation

Valuation often refers to the process of determining the

total value of a company for the purpose of selling it. This

is an uncertain science. For example, a company con-

sidering an acquisition might estimate the prospective

acquiree’s future cash fl ows and then calculate its value

accordingly. Another would-be acquirer might rely on

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Making Good Decisions—and Moving Those Numbers

TIPS ON ANALYZING FINANCIAL STATEMENTS

• Compare companies to determine the context.

What looks like a big (or small) number may

not be once you understand what’s typical for a

similar-sized business in the same industry. For

instance, the oil company ConocoPhillips earned

close to $5 billion in 2010, which sounds like a

lot of money. But the company’s ROS was only

3.5%, compared with 6.4% for Chevron, which

recorded only moderately higher revenue.

• Watch for trends. How have the statements

changed since last year? From three years ago?

Say you notice a marked increase in the level

of receivables from one year to the next. To see

whether it’s “really” rising, calculate receivable

days. If that’s going up, too, then the company

isn’t doing as good a job at collecting its cash

as it did in the past. That may be a deliberate

different data, such as the value of the acquiree’s physical

assets. Regardless of the method used, a company may

be worth different amounts to different parties. A small

high-tech fi rm, for instance, may be valued well beyond

what its cash fl ow or assets would suggest if the poten-

tial acquirer wants its unique technology or engineering

talent.

Valuation also refers to the process by which Wall

Street investors and analysts scrutinize fi nancial state-

ments and stock performance to arrive at an estimate

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Using Statements to Measure Financial Health

strategy of buying market share, or it may simply

refl ect poor management of receivables.

• Translate the numbers into prose. Use your

company’s statements to write a paragraph

describing how much profi t it is making, how

well it is managing its assets, where the money

comes from, and where it goes. If you worked

for Amalgamated Hat Rack, for instance, you

might begin with, “We’ve done a pretty good job

at increasing revenue over the years, and we’ve

done a very good job of controlling our costs,

particularly in 2010. That has helped boost our

operating profi t and our net profi t as well.” If

you can put what you see on the statements into

everyday language, you’ll be able to use what

the statements are telling you to make smart

decisions.

of a company’s value. They’re interested in determining

whether the market price of a share of stock is a good

deal relative to the underlying value of the piece of the

company that the share represents.

Wall Street uses various means of valuation—that is,

of assessing a company’s fi nancial health in relation to

its stock price:

• Earnings per share (EPS) equals net income divided

by the number of shares outstanding. This is one

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Making Good Decisions—and Moving Those Numbers

of the most commonly watched fi nancial indica-

tors. If it falls, it will most likely take the stock’s

price down with it.

• Price-to-earnings ratio (P/E) is the current price of

a share of stock divided by the previous 12 months’

earnings per share. It is a common measure of how

cheap or expensive a share is relative to the com-

pany’s earnings (and relative to other companies’

shares).

• Growth indicators are also important in Wall

Street’s valuations, because growth allows a

company to provide increasing returns to its

shareholders. The number of years over which you

should measure growth depends on the industry’s

business cycles. For an oil company, a one-year

growth fi gure probably wouldn’t tell you much, be-

cause of the industry’s long cycles. For an internet

company, however, a year is a long time. Typi-

cal measures include sales growth, profi tability

growth, and growth in earnings per share.

Economic Value Added

This concept encourages employees and managers to

think like shareholders and owners by focusing on the

net value a company creates. EVA is the profi t remain-

ing after the company has accounted for the cost of its

capital. If profi t is less than the cost of capital—that is, if

EVA is negative—the company is essentially destroying

value.

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Using Statements to Measure Financial Health

Productivity measures

Sales per employee and net income per employee link

revenue and profi t-generation information to workforce

data. Trend lines in these numbers help you see whether a

company is becoming more or less productive over time.

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Grow Your Profi ts

by Streamlining

Your Business

by Jamie Bonomo and Andy Pasternak

Managers today are under intense pressure to deliver

revenue growth. But as they and their teams respond

to this challenge, they may unwittingly introduce com-

plexity that drags down overall profi tability. People in

design, sales, and marketing, for example, are driven to

introduce new products, acquire new customers, and en-

ter new markets—and they often add offerings, channels,

brands, and customers one at a time without regard to

the cumulative impact on the business.

What is this cumulative impact? As a business be-

comes more complex, it gets diffi cult to trace costs to

their origins. So senior managers struggle to fi gure out

Adapted from Harvard Management Update (product #U0505A), May 2005

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Making Good Decisions—and Moving Those Numbers

which offerings and markets are profi table. They have

a hard time deciding what to sell, at what price, and to

whom. Digging into the costs of individual products,

brands, channels, and customers helps managers at all

levels in a company better understand each link in the

value chain. That knowledge will help leaders as they re-

fi ne strategy and others as they execute it.

Consider the following ways companies can simplify

to increase profi tability:

1. Analyze profi tability by off ering or market

Large, complex companies often lack consistent informa-

tion and systems across their many businesses and geog-

raphies. Moreover, shared costs—those that cannot be

directly attributed to individual offerings or markets—

represent a large portion of their total cost structure. But

you can determine true costs by digging into the details.

Profi tability analysis of this sort will typically reveal large

profi t disparities among lines of business, brands, prod-

ucts, and customers.

At a consumer products company we’ll call Consoli-

dated, Inc., for instance, managers viewed a longtime

large account, MacGuffi n, as one of its two most impor-

tant customers in a particular region. However, the prices

MacGuffi n paid were low, and the complexity of serving

the account was staggering, given the nearly 30 product

stock-keeping units (SKUs) developed specifi cally for

this customer. Consolidated used four manufacturing

facilities to produce the SKUs and operated a “mixing

center” to aggregate orders across plants, primarily for

MacGuffi n. Those costs had not been attributed to Mac-

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Grow Your Profi ts by Streamlining Your Business

Guffi n but rather were spread across all accounts in the

region. When managers analyzed the true cost of serv-

ing MacGuffi n, from the sales front end to the operations

back end, they realized the account lowered the bottom

line by $700,000 even though it generated $5 million in

annual sales. To lower costs and add value, Consolidated

reduced MacGuffi n’s SKU count by 60%, repriced cer-

tain products, and restructured supply terms.

As this example shows, decisions about product selec-

tion and pricing should not be made on the margin—that

is, you shouldn’t assume that the cost of infrastructure

is fi xed and existing excess capacity is essentially free.

While appealing in the short term, this approach may ac-

commodate unprofi table offerings.

2. Make sure your brands and SKUs are

pulling their weight

Most complex companies have many brands or SKUs

that contribute little to the bottom line. A detailed analy-

sis by one U.S. computer maker showed managers that

many of its low-volume products had only modest cus-

tomer reach, low revenues, and low profi ts—yet those

offerings added considerable complexity to the manufac-

turer’s operations. Indeed, the company had been using

up to 20% of its assets to support these marginal brands

and products. By targeting profi table brands and SKUs

and cutting the rest loose, it freed up signifi cant capacity

with negligible loss of revenue and volume.

This was not a purely operations-driven effort, how-

ever. The company also incorporated customers’ perspec-

tives. Through rigorous research that blended survey and

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Making Good Decisions—and Moving Those Numbers

QUESTIONS FOR MANAGERS

• Do you know which of your customers, brands,

and product lines bring in profi ts? Do you know

which ones lose money?

• If a new and highly profi table opportunity came

along and your company did not have enough

capacity to address it, what would it do?

• Do support functions such as R&D, sales, and

marketing set their own agendas, or do they

collaborate closely with other groups across the

enterprise?

• Are performance metrics designed to optimize

overall profi tability?

testing tools from psychology and economics, the com-

puter maker estimated demand for its various brands

and SKUs and learned exactly how and why customers

chose those products. With the data in hand, managers

could evaluate which trade-offs in volume, pricing, and

systemwide costs would help profi tability.

3. Consolidate production

Another way to simplify is to improve the mix of low-cost

and high-cost production capacity. Eliminating or cut-

ting back on a single account to reduce indirect costs is

just the fi rst step. If a company streamlines a suffi ciently

large number of accounts, it can consolidate facilities and

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Grow Your Profi ts by Streamlining Your Business

close the highest-cost production lines or service centers.

The resulting effi ciencies will give managers more lee-

way in negotiating pricing, and will help them end re-

lationships with accounts that still perform poorly. This

approach can dramatically boost profi tability through

operating-margin improvements and focus resources on

accounts with high growth potential.

Transforming a revenue culture into a profi t culture is

no small task. All functions—from sales to marketing to

operations—must join in the effort. But once your fi rm’s

processes and metrics are based on an integrated per-

spective, you’ll be one step closer to a simpler and more

profi table business.

Jamie Bonomo is a managing director, and Andy Paster-

nak is a director, of New York–based Mercer Manage-

ment Consulting.

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Working Your

Assets to Boost

Your Growth

by Miles Cook, Pratap Mukharji, Lorenz Kiefer,

and Marco Petruzzi

Supply chains can account for a staggering 80% of an or-

ganization’s costs. And at product companies, up to 60%

of net assets go toward inventory, plants, warehouses,

and other supply chain assets. Yet companies seldom

look at supply chain improvements as a way to boost re-

turn on invested capital, or ROIC.

Calculating ROIC can be a little complex, but here’s

how it’s usually done:

Earnings + Interest Expense (with an Adjustment

for the Tax Benefi t of Interest Costs)

Total Assets – Cash – Non-interest-bearing

Current Liabilities

Adapted from Harvard Management Update (product #P0503B),

March 2005

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Making Good Decisions—and Moving Those Numbers

Companies most often focus on growing ROIC by

building up the numerator: earnings. But shrinking the

less-obvious denominator by accelerating asset turns—

achieving the same or better results with fewer assets—

can also have a huge impact. In our experience, introduc-

ing effective customer-centric supply chain management

techniques can improve ROIC by an average of nearly

30%. And as a bonus, companies that trim down assets

also signifi cantly outgrow their competitors in revenue.

Embedding Supply Chain Math in

Customer-Focused Decisions

Firms looking to boost ROIC can use supply chain

economics to answer three key questions involving

customers:

1. What do we sell? Can we streamline stock-

keeping units (SKUs) and eliminate complex-

ity, costs, and assets? For instance, perhaps

we can cut some low-volume or unprofi table

products and reduce the number of available

options on others. That will make our plants

more effi cient and allow us to reduce inventory.

2. To whom do we sell? Do we have the right mar-

ketplace focus? In other words, are we aiming

our supply chain capabilities where they can

make money for the company? An analysis of

profi tability by customer, region, and channel

may turn up some areas that are relatively (or

even absolutely) unprofi table.

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Working Your Assets to Boost Your Growth

3. How can we best deliver our off erings? Are our

infrastructure and service policies doing the

job effi ciently? We typically bundle our most

complex products with an extended warranty

and maintenance agreement. But is that the

best deal for our customers—and does it help

our bottom line?

Since their jobs begin and end with the customer, sup-

ply chain leaders are increasingly focusing on customer

segmentation. A better understanding of what users

want creates a better understanding of which products

will satisfy them. Supply chain leaders can then estab-

lish different service levels for different customers and

products. Dow Corning, for instance, had originally tried

to differentiate its silicone-based products by bundling

them with a lot of value-added services, such as technical

support. But as Bain & Company consultants Mark Gott-

fredson and Steve Schaubert point out in their book The

Breakthrough Imperative (Collins, 2008), some of Dow’s

customers didn’t need these services and didn’t want to

pay for them. In response, Dow introduced a standard

product line that could be ordered over the internet,

without any application or engineering services included.

It also began to offer its value-added services on an à la

carte basis, so that customers could buy only what they

needed.

Supply chain leaders typically vary their forecasting

and demand planning for products depending on vol-

umes, production requirements, and lead times. They’re

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Making Good Decisions—and Moving Those Numbers

IMPROVING GROWTH BY

“FIXING THE DENOMINATOR”

A great example of a company that used supply chain

improvements to boost growth is Groupe Danone, the

French food conglomerate. During a turbulent pe-

riod several years ago, it lost its leadership position

in yogurt sales in Brazil. Nestlé had eclipsed Danone

in market share, and Danone—also under attack by

Parmalat—had stopped making money. The company

needed to do something fast.

Conventional wisdom held that Danone couldn’t

match the two giants in operational effi

ciency, given

their vast scale advantages. The two competitors also

had wider distribution networks and more power within

the trade. Danone initially concluded that the only way

out was to compete on quality and innovation, not

the easiest thing to do in a basic food category. Yet a

streamlined supply chain saved the day.

Above all else, Danone’s executives realized, people

wanted fresher yogurt: They didn’t like buying anything

that was approaching its sell-by date. Indeed, when

the company surveyed consumers, about half said they

based their buying decisions on expiration dates.

To fi gure out how to give them exactly what they

wanted, Danone answered the three key customer-

focused questions driving supply chain math and con-

cluded that it could improve how it got products into

customers’ hands. For one thing, volumes weren’t

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Working Your Assets to Boost Your Growth

always tied to demand: To reduce production costs,

manufacturing had been told it could produce only full

vats of yogurt for any SKU, which led to waste. For an-

other, Danone uncovered problems in how its product

moved from the factory to retail outlets. Inventory was

scattered over multiple locations across the country,

yet 80% of its yogurt sales took place within a half-day

travel radius of its central warehouse—meaning that

a large percentage of its product was making an un-

necessary second stop in a regional facility. Such lo-

gistics resulted in less-than-fresh yogurt and stockouts

where demand was high. Moreover, rigid maintenance

and clean-up schedules added downtime that created

more deviation between store-ordered volumes and

the amount of yogurt actually produced.

So Danone’s team redesigned its Brazilian distri-

bution network to serve the majority of its store cus-

tomers, turning three regional warehouses into transit

points without inventory. It created new rules for pro-

duction, allowing manufacturing to make partial vats of

yogurt when needed. The company moved most of the

supply chain responsibility under a centralized logistics

organization that had more oversight over the forecast-

ing process. The result? The average number of days

from factory to store fell by more than half, to four.

( continued)

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Making Good Decisions—and Moving Those Numbers

( continued)

By fi xing the denominator on ROIC, Danone liber-

ated its numerator. There was no change other than in-

creased freshness, but consumers responded dramati-

cally, increasing Danone’s revenue by more than 10%,

as well as boosting the company’s return on sales.

also constantly weeding out ineffi ciencies rooted in silo-

based thinking. In other words, they manage the link

between supply chain decisions and manufacturing op-

erations effectively, so that their companies concentrate

on items that serve their target market with the least

possible complexity. In the mid-1990s, for instance, the

vehicle and engine maker Navistar introduced its Dia-

mond Spec program, through which buyers of certain

trucks could choose among 16 preengineered modules

rather than the thousands of possible confi gurations that

had been available. Soon thereafter, say Gottfredson and

Schaubert, Diamond Spec “accounted for 80 percent of

dealer orders for that class of truck”—and Navistar’s costs

were signifi cantly lower.

How Goodyear’s Customer Focus

Improved Sales

Consider the supply chain situation at Goodyear Tire &

Rubber Company several years ago. As a new chairman

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Working Your Assets to Boost Your Growth

and chief executive took the reins, the company’s North

American Tire (NAT) operations were sliding toward a

signifi cant loss. Poorly targeted attempts to reduce in-

ventories had led to declining service levels and frequent

stockouts. Customers were complaining, and the com-

pany faced a clutter of obsolescent and unprofi table in-

ventory in its warehouses. To raise the stakes even higher,

Goodyear was preparing to launch two products it hoped

would be blockbusters: its Assurance passenger-car tire

and its redesigned commercial steer tire, aimed at curtail-

ing Michelin’s threat in the market for outfi tting trucks.

How could Goodyear turn things around and

strengthen sales? With a new president on board, NAT’s

management reexamined a full set of assumptions

around “What do we sell?” and “To whom?” NAT cre-

ated a team comprising sales, marketing, manufacturing,

and fi nance that was given a broad charter for identify-

ing and beginning to fi x structural problems that ate up

cash and working capital, and for starting to optimize

customer service.

When the team took a clear-eyed look at what NAT

sold and why, it saw, at the core of Goodyear’s culture, a

manufacturing-based mind-set focused chiefl y on driv-

ing down unit costs, insuffi ciently balanced by consider-

ations of downstream supply chain needs and customer

requirements. The team cleaned house, reducing overall

stocks 15% from seasonal highs and eliminating 50% of

the company’s unprofi table SKUs. And it reduced com-

plexity: One streamlining initiative consolidated low-

volume products from more than a dozen warehouses

around the United States to one central place.

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Making Good Decisions—and Moving Those Numbers

NAT also examined its service and delivery practices

for product and customer segments. New guidelines al-

lowed for expediting high-volume products (such as the

company’s Eagle performance tires) in lower quantities

but stipulated batching low-volume, seasonal products

(such as farm tires) and delivering them with longer lead

times. Such practices started to align Goodyear’s product

profi tability with the service requirements of different

customer segments.

Improving supply chain performance demanded new

discipline in sales forecasting. By sharing reliable data for

demand planning in a joint sales and operations planning

process, NAT developed a more realistic set of sales fore-

casts. NAT also fi ne-tuned its manufacturing schedule

to parse monthly quotas to weeks and days required for

given shipments, which reduced the need for safety stocks.

Such moves helped NAT “attack the denominator”—

and as the changes took effect, customers noticed and

appreciated improvements in the company’s fi ll rates.

Goodyear substantially reduced working capital tied

up in inventory and freed up cash for other initiatives.

As forecasting and other processes improved, the com-

pany reduced fl uctuations in inventory, reducing peak-

to-trough variance from 5.3 million units to 1.4 million

just three years later. As it launched its new lines of tires,

Goodyear balanced efforts to meet demand and control

internal costs far better than it had in the past, even

though the popularity of some tires required establishing

dealer quotas based on their “fair share” of the market.

How did the supply chain math add up? After im-

plementing the changes, Goodyear reported profi ts of

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Working Your Assets to Boost Your Growth

$36.5 million on sales of $4.7 billion, versus a net loss of

$119.4 million on sales of $3.9 billion for the same period

in the previous year. Better earnings combined with faster

asset turns also boosted ROIC. The company attributed

the fi nancial improvements and profi table growth to bet-

ter operating results in all business segments, including

North American Tire.

Of course, applying supply chain science has organiza-

tional implications. Chief among these is the challenge of

capturing the right statistics to accurately measure prog-

ress and eliminate hunch work. This also means tracking

the performance metrics of vendors, logistics partners,

and distributors—and sharing appropriate forecasts and

other sensitive data. Few companies do these things well.

Such focus has less to do with new IT systems than it

does with people.

Companies should assign star players—and give them

the proper incentives—to tackle the supply chain chal-

lenge. They should reward these executives not just for

having enough stock on hand but also for increasing as-

set turns, growth, and share price.

Based in Atlanta, Miles Cook and Pratap Mukharji are

Bain & Company partners who lead the fi rm’s Global

Supply Chain practice. Lorenz Kiefer, a partner in Düssel-

dorf, leads Bain’s European Supply Chain practice. Marco

Petruzzi is a partner based in Los Angeles.

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Profi t ≠ Cash (and

You Need Both)

by Karen Berman and Joe Knight,

with John Case

Profi t, shown on the income statement, is not the same

as net cash, shown on the cash fl ow statement. Why

should this be? Some reasons are pretty obvious: Cash

may be coming in from loans or from investors, and that

isn’t going to show up on the income statement at all.

But even operating cash fl ow is not at all the same as

net profi t.

There are three essential reasons:

• Revenue is booked at sale. A sale is recorded

whenever a company delivers a product or service.

Ace Printing Company delivers $1,000 worth of

brochures to a customer; Ace Printing Company re-

Adapted from Financial Intelligence (product #4989BC), by Karen Berman and Joe Knight, with John Case, Harvard Business Review

Press, 2006

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Making Good Decisions—and Moving Those Numbers

cords revenue of $1,000, and theoretically it could

record a profi t based on subtracting its costs and ex-

penses from that revenue. But no cash has changed

hands because Ace’s customer typically has 30 days

or more to pay. Since profi t starts with revenue, it

always refl ects customers’ promises to pay. Cash

fl ow, by contrast, always refl ects cash transactions.

• Expenses are matched to revenue. The purpose of

the income statement is to tote up all the costs and

expenses associated with generating revenue dur-

ing a given time period. However, those expenses

may not be the ones that were actually paid during

that time period. Some may have been paid earlier.

Some will be paid later, when vendors’ bills come

due. So the expenses on the income statement do

not refl ect cash going out. The cash fl ow state-

ment, however, always measures cash in and out

the door during a particular time period.

• Capital expenditures don’t count against profi t. A

capital expenditure doesn’t appear on the income

statement when it occurs; only the depreciation

is charged against revenue. So a company can buy

trucks, machinery, computers, and so on, and the

expense will appear on the income statement only

gradually, over the useful life of each item. Cash, of

course, is another story: All those items are often

paid for long before they have been fully depreci-

ated, and the cash used to pay for them will be

refl ected in the cash fl ow statement.

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Profi t ≠ Cash (and You Need Both)

You may be thinking that in the long run cash fl ow will

pretty much track net profi t. Accounts receivable will be

collected, so sales will turn into cash. Accounts payable

will be paid, so expenses will more or less even out from

one time period to the next. And capital expenditures will

be depreciated, so over time the charges against revenue

from depreciation will more or less equal the cash being

spent on new assets. All this is true to a degree, at least

for a mature, well-managed company. But the difference

between profi t and cash can create all sorts of mischief

in the meantime, especially for a growing company. En-

trepreneurial businesses in particular may face periods

of fl uctuating sales. They may have to cope with the fact

that one big customer pays its bills very slowly—or that

one important vendor requires payment up front. All

these can wreak havoc on an entrepreneur’s cash fl ow,

even if they don’t much affect profi tability.

Profi t Without Cash

We’ll illustrate the difference between profi t and cash

by comparing two simple companies with dramatically

different profi t and cash positions. Sweet Dreams Bak-

ery is a new cookies-and-cakes manufacturer that sup-

plies specialty grocery stores. The founder has lined up

orders based on her unique home-style recipes, and

she’s ready to launch on January 1. We’ll assume she has

$10,000 cash in the bank, and we’ll also assume that in

the fi rst three months her sales are $20,000, $30,000,

and $45,000. Cost of goods sold is 60% of sales, and her

monthly operating expenses are $10,000.

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Making Good Decisions—and Moving Those Numbers

Just by eyeballing those numbers, you can see she’ll

soon be making a profi t. In fact, a simplifi ed income

statement for the fi rst three months looks like this:

January February March

Sales

$20,000

$30,000 $45,000

COGS

12,000

18,000

27,000

Gross profi t

8,000

12,000

18,000

Expenses

10,000

10,000

10,000

Net profi t

($ 2,000) $ 2,000 $ 8,000

The cash fl ow, however, tells a different story. Sweet

Dreams Bakery has an agreement with its vendors to pay

for the ingredients and other supplies it buys in 30 days.

But those specialty grocery stores that the company sells

to? They’re kind of precarious, and they take 60 days to

pay their bills.

So here’s what happens to Sweet Dreams’ cash

situation:

• In

January, Sweet Dreams collects nothing from

its customers. At the end of the month, all it has

is $20,000 in receivables from its sales. Luckily, it

does not have to pay anything out for the ingre-

dients it uses, since its vendors expect to be paid

in 30 days. (We’ll assume that the COGS fi gure

is all for ingredients, because the owner herself

does all the baking.) But the company does have

to pay expenses—rent, utilities, and so on. So all

the initial $10,000 in cash goes out the door to pay

expenses, and Sweet Dreams is left with no cash in

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Profi t ≠ Cash (and You Need Both)

the bank. A simplifi ed representation of the com-

pany’s checkbook would look like this:

Beginning cash

$10,000

Expenses

(10,000)

Ending cash

$ 0

• In

February, Sweet Dreams still hasn’t collected

anything. (Remember, its customers pay in 60

days.) At the end of the month, it has $50,000 in

receivables—January’s $20,000 plus February’s

$30,000—but still no cash. Meanwhile, Sweet

Dreams now has to pay for the ingredients and

supplies for January ($12,000), and it has another

month’s worth of expenses ($10,000). So it’s now

in the hole by $22,000. Here’s the checkbook (as-

suming for the moment that Sweet Dreams can

show a negative balance in its bank account!):

Beginning cash

$ 0

Ingredients and supplies

(12,000)

Expenses (10,000)

Ending cash

($22,000)

Can the owner turn this around? Surely, in March

those rising profi ts will improve the cash picture! Alas, no.

• In

March, Sweet Dreams fi nally collects on its

January sales, so it has $20,000 in cash coming in

the door, leaving it only $2,000 short against its

end-of-February cash position. But now it has to

pay for February’s COGS of $18,000 plus March’s

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Making Good Decisions—and Moving Those Numbers

expenses of $10,000. So at the end of March, it

ends up $30,000 in the hole—a worse position

than at the end of February. Again, the checkbook:

Beginning cash

($22,000)

Collections 20,000

Ingredients and supplies

(18,000)

Expenses (10,000)

Ending cash

($30,000)

What’s going on here? The answer is that Sweet Dreams

is growing. Its sales increase every month, meaning that

it must pay more each month for its ingredients. Eventu-

ally, its operating expenses will increase as well because

the owner will have to hire more people. The other prob-

lem is the disparity between the fact that Sweet Dreams

must pay its vendors in 30 days while waiting 60 days for

receipts from its customers. In effect, it has to front the

cash for 30 days—and as long as sales are increasing, it

will never be able to catch up unless it fi nds additional

sources of cash. As fi ctional and oversimplifi ed as Sweet

Dreams may be, this is precisely how profi table com-

panies go out of business. It is one reason why so many

small entrepreneurial companies fail in their fi rst year.

They simply run out of cash.

Cash Without Profi t

But now let’s look at another sort of profi t/cash disparity.

Fine Cigar Shops is a start-up that sells very expensive

cigars, and it’s located in a part of town frequented by

businesspeople and well-to-do tourists. Its sales for the

fi rst three months are $50,000, $75,000, and $95,000—

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Profi t ≠ Cash (and You Need Both)

again, a healthy growth trend. Its cost of goods is 70% of

sales, and its monthly operating expenses are $30,000

(high rent!). For the sake of comparison, we’ll say that it,

too, begins the period with $10,000 in the bank.

So Fine Cigar’s income statement for these months

looks like this:

January

February

March

Sales $50,000

$75,000

$95,000

COGS

35,000

52,500

66,500

Gross profi t

15,000

22,500

28,500

Expenses

30,000

30,000

30,000

Net profi t

($15,000) ($ 7,500) ($ 1,500)

Fine Cigar hasn’t yet turned the corner on profi tabil-

ity, though it is losing less money each month. Mean-

while, what does its cash picture look like?

As a retailer, of course, Fine Cigar collects the money

on each sale immediately. And we’ll assume that it was

able to negotiate good terms with its vendors, paying

them in 60 days.

• In

January, it begins with $10,000 and adds

$50,000 in cash sales. It doesn’t have to pay for

cost of goods sold yet, so the only cash out the door

is that $30,000 in expenses. End-of-the-month

bank balance: $30,000. Here’s a simplifi ed repre-

sentation of the company’s checkbook:

Beginning cash

$10,000

Cash sales

50,000

Expenses (30,000)

Ending cash

$30,000

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• In

February, Fine Cigar adds $75,000 in cash sales

and still doesn’t pay anything for cost of goods

sold. So the month’s net cash after the $30,000

in expenses is $45,000. Now the bank balance is

$75,000! The checkbook:

Beginning cash

$30,000

Cash sales

75,000

Expenses (30,000)

Ending cash

$75,000

• In

March, Fine Cigar adds $95,000 in cash sales

and pays for January’s supplies ($35,000) and

March’s expenses ($30,000). Net cash in for the

month is $30,000, and the bank balance is now

$105,000. Here’s the checkbook:

Beginning cash

$75,000

Cash sales

95,000

Payment of invoices

(35,000)

Expenses (30,000)

Ending cash

$105,000

Cash-based businesses—retailers, restaurants, and so

on—can thus get an equally skewed picture of their situ-

ation. In this case Fine Cigar’s bank balance is climbing

every month even though the company is unprofi table.

That’s fi ne for a while, and it will continue to be fi ne so

long as the company holds down expenses so that it can

turn the corner on profi tability. But the owner has to be

careful: If he’s lulled into thinking that his business is do-

ing great and that he can increase those expenses, he’s

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Profi t ≠ Cash (and You Need Both)

liable to continue on the unprofi table path. If he fails to

attain profi tability, eventually he will run out of cash.

Fine Cigar, too, has its real-world parallels. Every

cash-based business, from tiny Main Street shops to gi-

ants such as Amazon.com and Dell, has the luxury of tak-

ing the customer’s money before it must pay for its costs

and expenses. It enjoys the fl oat—and if it is growing, that

fl oat will grow ever larger. But ultimately, the company

must be profi table by the standards of the income state-

ment; cash fl ow in the long run is no protection against

unprofi tability. In the cigar-store example, the losses on

the books will eventually lead to negative cash fl ow; just

as profi ts eventually lead to cash, losses eventually use up

cash. It’s the timing of those cash fl ows that we are trying

to understand here.

Understanding the difference between profi t and cash

is a key to increasing your fi nancial intelligence. It opens

a whole new window of opportunity to make smart deci-

sions. For example:

• Finding the right kind of expertise. The two situ-

ations described above require different skills. If

a company is profi table but short on cash, then it

needs fi nancial expertise—someone capable of lin-

ing up additional fi nancing. If a company has cash

but is unprofi table, it needs operational expertise,

someone capable of bringing down costs or gener-

ating additional revenue without adding costs. So

fi nancial statements tell you not only what is going

on in the company but also what kind of expertise

you need to hire.

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Making Good Decisions—and Moving Those Numbers

• Making good decisions about timing. Informed

decisions on when to take an action can increase

a company’s effectiveness. Take Setpoint Systems,

a company that builds factory-automation sys-

tems, as an example. Managers at the company

know that the fi rst quarter of the year, when many

orders come in, is the most profi table for the busi-

ness. But cash is always tight because Setpoint

must pay out cash to buy components and pay

contractors. The next quarter, Setpoint’s cash fl ow

typically improves because receivables from the

prior quarter are collected, but profi ts slow down.

Setpoint managers have learned that it’s better to

buy capital equipment for the business in the sec-

ond quarter rather than the fi rst, even though the

second quarter is traditionally less profi table, just

because there’s more cash available to pay for it.

The ultimate lesson here is that profi t and cash are dif-

ferent—and a healthy business, both in its early years and

as it matures, requires both.

Karen Berman

and Joe Knight are the owners of the

Los Angeles–based Business Literacy Institute. Coau-

thor John Case has written several popular books on

management.

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Why Cash Matters

by Karen Berman and Joe Knight,

with John Case

There are three big reasons for understanding the cash

fl ow statement.

First, it will help you see what is going on now,

where the business is headed, and what senior man-

agement’s priorities are likely to be. You need to know

not just whether the overall cash position is healthy but

specifi cally where the cash is coming from. Is much of

it coming from regular business operations, rather than

from lenders or investors? That’s a good thing—it means

the business itself is generating cash. Is investing cash

fl ow a sizable negative number? If it isn’t, that may mean

the company isn’t investing in its future. And what about

fi nancing cash fl ow? If investment money is coming in,

that may be reason for optimism—or it may mean that

Adapted from Financial Intelligence (product #4986BC), by Karen Berman and Joe Knight, with John Case, Harvard Business Review

Press, 2006

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Making Good Decisions—and Moving Those Numbers

the company is desperately selling stock to stay afl oat.

Looking at the cash fl ow statement generates a lot of

questions, but they are the right ones to be asking. Are we

paying off loans? Why or why not? Are we buying equip-

ment? The answers to those questions will reveal a lot

about senior management’s plans for the company.

Second, you affect cash. Most managers focus on

profi t when they should be focusing on both profi t and

cash. Of course, their impact is usually limited to operat-

ing cash fl ow—but that’s one of the most important mea-

sures there is. For instance:

• Accounts receivable. Factors such as customers’

satisfaction with your service, their relationship to

your salespeople, and the accuracy of your invoices

all help determine how customers feel about your

company, and indirectly infl uence how fast they

are likely to pay their bills. Disgruntled customers

are not known for prompt payments—they like to

wait until any dispute is resolved.

• Inventory. If you’re in engineering, do you request

special products all the time? If you do, you may

be creating an inventory nightmare. If you’re in

operations and you like to have lots in stock, just in

case, you may be creating a situation in which cash

is just sitting on the shelves, when it could be used

for something else.

• Expenses. Do you defer expenses when you can?

Do you consider the timing of cash fl ow when

making purchases? Obviously, we’re not saying it’s

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Why Cash Matters

always wise to defer expenses; it’s just wise to take

into account what the cash impact will be when

you do decide to spend money.

• Giving credit. Do you give credit to potential cus-

tomers too easily? Alternatively, do you withhold

credit when you should give it? Both decisions

affect the company’s cash fl ow and sales, which is

why the credit department always has to strike a

careful balance.

The list goes on. Maybe you’re a plant manager, and

you are always recommending buying more equipment,

just in case the orders come in. Perhaps you’re in IT, and

you feel that the company always needs the latest up-

grades to its computer systems. All these decisions affect

cash fl ow, and senior management usually understands

that very well. If you want to make an effective request,

you need to familiarize yourself with the numbers that

they’re looking at.

Third, managers who understand cash fl ow tend to

be given more responsibilities, and thus tend to ad-

vance more quickly, than those who focus purely on

the income statement. You could go to someone in fi -

nance and say, “I notice our DSO [days sales outstand-

ing] has been heading in the wrong direction over the

last few months—how can I help turn that around?” Al-

ternatively, you might learn the precepts of lean enter-

prise, which focuses on (among other things) keeping

inventories to a minimum. A manager who leads a com-

pany in converting to lean thereby frees up huge quanti-

ties of cash.

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Making Good Decisions—and Moving Those Numbers

Our general point here is that cash fl ow is a key indica-

tor of a company’s fi nancial health, along with profi tabil-

ity and shareholders’ equity. It’s the fi nal link in the triad.

Karen Berman

and Joe Knight are the owners of the

Los Angeles–based Business Literacy Institute. Coau-

thor John Case has written several popular books on

management.

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Your Balance Sheet

Levers

by Karen Berman and Joe Knight,

with John Case

Most companies use their cash to fi nance customers’ pur-

chase of products or services. That’s the “accounts receiv-

able” line on the balance sheet—the amount of money

customers owe at a given point in time, based on the

value of what they have purchased before that date.

The key ratio that measures accounts receivable is

days sales outstanding, or DSO—that is, the average

number of days it takes to collect on these receivables.

The longer a company’s DSO, the more working capital is

required to run the business. Customers have more of its

cash in the form of products or services not yet paid for,

so that cash isn’t available to buy inventory, deliver more

Adapted from Financial Intelligence (product #4977BC), by Karen Berman and Joe Knight, with John Case, Harvard Business Review

Press, 2006

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Making Good Decisions—and Moving Those Numbers

services, and so on. Conversely, the shorter a company’s

DSO, the less working capital is required to run the busi-

ness. It follows that the more people understand DSO

and work to bring it down, the more cash the company

will have at its disposal.

Managing DSO

The fi rst step in managing DSO is to understand what

it is and in which direction it has been heading. If it’s

higher than it ought to be, and particularly if it’s trending

upward (which it nearly always seems to be), managers

need to begin asking questions.

Operations and R&D managers, for example, must

ask themselves whether there are any problems with the

products that might make customers less willing to pay

their bills. Is the company selling what customers want

and expect? Is there a problem with delivery? Quality

problems and late deliveries often provoke late payment,

just because customers are not pleased with the products

they’re receiving and decide that they will take their own

sweet time about payment. Managers in quality assur-

ance, market research, product development, and so on

thus have an effect on receivables, as do managers in pro-

duction and shipping. In a service company, people who

are out delivering the service need to ask themselves the

same questions. If service customers aren’t satisfi ed with

what they’re getting, they too will take their time about

paying.

Customer-facing managers—those in sales and cus-

tomer service—have to ask a similar set of questions. Are

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Your Balance Sheet Levers

our customers fi nancially healthy? What is the standard

in their industry for paying bills? Are they in a region of

the world that pays quickly or slowly? Salespeople typi-

cally have the fi rst contact with a customer, so it is up to

them to fl ag any concerns about the customer’s fi nancial

health. Once the sale is made, customer-service reps need

to pick up the ball and learn what’s going on. What’s hap-

pening at the customer’s shop? Are they working over-

time? Laying people off? Meanwhile, salespeople need to

work with the folks in credit and customer service so that

everybody understands the terms up front and will no-

tice when a customer is late. At one company we worked

with, the delivery people knew the most about customers’

situations because they were at their facilities every day.

They would alert sales and accounting if there seemed to

be issues cropping up in a customer’s business.

Credit managers need to ask whether the terms of-

fered are good for the company and whether they fi t the

credit histories of the customers. They need to make

judgments about whether the company is giving credit

too easily or whether it is too tough in its credit policies.

There’s always a trade-off between increasing sales on the

one hand and issuing credit to poorer credit risks on the

other. Credit managers need to set the precise terms

they’re willing to offer. Is net 30 days satisfactory—or

should we allow net 60? They need to determine strate-

gies such as offering discounts for early pay. For example,

“2/10 net 30” means that customers get a discount of 2%

if they pay their bill in 10 days and no discount if they

wait 30 days. Sometimes a 1% or 2% discount can help

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Making Good Decisions—and Moving Those Numbers

a struggling company collect its receivables and thereby

lower its DSO—but of course it does so by eating into

profi tability.

We know of a small company that has a simple, home-

grown approach to the issue of giving credit to custom-

ers. It has identifi ed the traits it wants in its customers

and has even named its ideal customer Bob. Bob’s quali-

ties include the following:

• He works for a large company.

• His company is known for paying its bills on time.

• He can maintain and understand the product pro-

vided (this company makes complex technology-

intensive products).

• He is looking for an ongoing relationship.

If a new customer meets these criteria, he will get

credit from this small manufacturer. Otherwise he won’t.

As a result of this policy, the company has been able to

keep its DSO quite low and to grow without additional

equity investment.

All these decisions can have a huge impact on accounts

receivable and thus working capital. Reducing DSO even

by one day can save a large company millions of dollars

per day.

Managing Inventory

Many managers (and consultants!) these days are focus-

ing on inventory. They work to reduce it wherever pos-

sible. They use buzzwords such as lean manufacturing,

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Your Balance Sheet Levers

just-in-time inventory management, and economic

order quantity (EOQ). The reason for all this attention

is exactly what we’re talking about here. Managing in-

ventory effi ciently reduces working capital requirements

by freeing up large amounts of cash.

The challenge is to reduce inventory to a minimum

level while still ensuring that every raw material and

every part will be available when needed and every prod-

uct will be ready for sale when a customer wants it. A

manufacturer needs to be constantly ordering raw ma-

terial, making things, and holding them for delivery to

customers. Wholesalers and retailers need to replenish

their stocks regularly to avoid the dreaded stockout—an

item that isn’t available when a customer wants it. Yet

every item in inventory can be regarded as frozen cash,

which is to say cash that the company cannot use for

other purposes. Exactly how much inventory is required

to satisfy customers while minimizing that frozen cash?

Well, that’s the million-dollar question (and the reason

for all those consultants).

Many different kinds of managers affect a company’s

use of inventory—which means that all these manag-

ers can help reduce working capital requirements. For

example:

• Salespeople love to tell customers they can have

exactly what they want. (“Have it your way,” as the

old Burger King jingle put it.) Custom paint job?

No problem. Bells and whistles? No problem. But

every variation requires a little more inventory,

meaning a little more cash. Obviously, customers

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Making Good Decisions—and Moving Those Numbers

must be satisfi ed. But that commonsense require-

ment has to be balanced against the fact that

inventory costs money. The more that salespeople

can sell standard products with limited variations,

the less inventory their company will have to carry.

• Engineers love those same bells and whistles. In

fact, they’re constantly working to improve the

company’s products, replacing version 2.54 with

version 2.55 and so on. Again, this is a laudable

business objective, but one that has to be balanced

against inventory requirements. A proliferation

of product versions puts a burden on inventory

management. When a product line is kept simple

with a few easily interchangeable options, inven-

tory declines and inventory management becomes

a less taxing task.

• Production departments greatly affect inventory.

For instance, what’s the percentage of machine

downtime? Frequent breakdowns require the

company to carry more work-in-process inventory

and more fi nished-goods inventory. And what’s

the average time between changeovers? Decisions

about how much to build of a particular part have

an enormous impact on inventory requirements.

Even the layout of a plant affects inventory: A

well-designed production fl ow in an effi cient plant

minimizes the need for inventory.

Along these lines, it’s worth noting that many U.S.

plants eat up tremendous amounts of working capital.

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Your Balance Sheet Levers

When business is slow, they nevertheless keep on churn-

ing out product in order to maintain factory effi ciency.

Plant managers focus on keeping unit costs down, often

because that goal has been pounded into their heads for

so long that they no longer question it. They have been

trained to do it, told to do it, and paid (with bonuses) for

achieving it.

When business is good, that goal makes perfect sense:

Keeping unit costs down is simply a way of managing all

the costs of production in an effi cient manner. (This is

the old approach of focusing only on the income state-

ment, which is fi ne as far as it goes.) When demand is

slow, however, the plant manager must consider the

company’s cash as well as its unit costs. A plant that con-

tinues to turn out product in these circumstances is just

creating more inventory that will take up space on a shelf.

Coming to work and reading a book might be better than

building product that is not ready to be sold.

Any large company can save millions of dollars in

cash, and thereby reduce working capital requirements,

just by making modest improvements in its inventory

management.

Karen Berman

and Joe Knight are the owners of the

Los Angeles–based Business Literacy Institute. Coau-

thor John Case has written several popular books on

management.

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What’s Your

Working Capital

Model? A Case

Study

by John Mullins and Randy Komisar

Imagine a working capital model where your customers

pay you before your product or service is even produced,

not to mention delivered. A good idea, right? Consider

the subscription-based periodical publishing industry.

From the bare-bones Kiplinger Letter (a subscription-

based personal fi nance newsletter) to the complex work-

ings of the New York Times, companies in the periodicals

industry historically have had negative working capital.

Why is this? Periodicals publishers—whether they

publish newsletters, newspapers, or magazines—tend to

Excerpted from Getting to Plan B: Breaking Through to a Better Busi-

ness Model (product #5371BC), by John Mullins and Randy Komisar, Harvard Business Review Press, 2009

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Making Good Decisions—and Moving Those Numbers

have almost no inventory, just some paper and ink. As

soon as they print the current edition, out it goes. On

the other hand, subscription fees are collected long be-

fore the publication is printed and shipped. That’s good

news if you want to drive working capital down. For the

publisher, the cash the subscriber pays up front is what

accountants call a liability (unearned subscriptions or

deferred revenues, as they are often called on publish-

ers’ fi nancial statements), since the publisher now “owes”

the upcoming issues to the subscriber. The result of all

this: modest current assets (limited mostly to accounts

receivable from advertising not yet paid), large current

liabilities (the issues due for the rest of the year, for ex-

ample), and negative working capital.

Dow Jones & Company (Dow Jones)—known best for

its newspaper, the Wall Street Journal, and its stock mar-

ket index, the Dow Jones Industrial Average—is a case in

point for negative working capital. Its business was based

on this working capital model for more than a century.

Then along came the digital revolution. Was it time for

Plan B?

Let’s start at the beginning. Founded in New York

City in 1882 by Charles Henry Dow, Edward Davis Jones,

and Charles Milford Bergstresser, print media was Dow

Jones’s bread and butter. The company started off pro-

ducing daily, handwritten news bulletins called fl imsies,

delivered by messengers to subscribers in the Wall Street

area of Manhattan. In 1883 the company started publish-

ing the Customers’ Afternoon Letter, which six years later

became the Wall Street Journal. The four-page Journal

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What’s Your Working Capital Model? A Case Study

could be purchased for 2 cents a copy. Advertising was

sold for 20 cents per line. In 1902, Clarence Barron, who

was one of Dow Jones’s fi rst employees, purchased Dow,

Jones & Company for $130,000. He added a weekly fi -

nancial publication, Barron’s, in 1921. Decades later, in

the 1970s, Dow Jones diversifi ed, purchasing a number

of local newspapers, increasing its circulation and reach

and lessening its reliance on the fi nancial markets.

But in the late 1980s, with the advent of digital media

like the now-ubiquitous Bloomberg terminals that have

sprouted on nearly every desk in the fi nancial world,

the Wall Street Journal started losing subscribers. Cir-

culation dropped from a high of 2.11 million in 1983 to

1.95 million by 1989. Profi ts deteriorated. The publish-

ing world was changing, the Internet had arrived, and

electronic publishing became Dow Jones’s Plan B. But

moving from print to digital was no trivial task. That it

believed it could do so was a huge leap of faith.

Let’s take stock of Dow Jones’s working capital model

at the end of its old-economy heyday, in 1992. These were

the noncash elements of its working capital at that time:

• Current assets (other than cash) = 37 days

– Inventory: 4 days

– Accounts receivable: 33 days (subscribers pay

in advance, but advertisers pay in arrears; this

fi gure refl ects the latter)

• Current

liabilities

= 109 days

– Accounts payable: 70 days

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Making Good Decisions—and Moving Those Numbers

– Unearned subscriptions: 39 days (subscriptions

paid for but not yet delivered)

• Net of these elements = –72 days

That’s seventy-two days’ worth of customer cash, or

about 20 percent (72 days out of the 365-day year =

19.7 percent) of 1992’s $1.8 billion in revenue, that

Dow Jones could use for other things. It’s like having

$360 million of free money, just sitting there, ready to

use to buy printing presses, pay wages, or to develop new

businesses! By paying its suppliers (of newsprint among

other things) in an average of seventy days and by col-

lecting people’s subscriptions for its publications and

newswires up front, Dow Jones had the ability to literally

use other people’s money to pay its bills. But the game

was changing. Would the working capital model that was

central to any publisher’s success have to change as well?

Dow Jones Goes Digital

By 1992 the company had already launched DowVision,

a news service customized for Dow Jones’s corporate

customers. DowVision delivered published text from the

Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Financial Times,

Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times, together with

a premier version of the Dow Jones newswires, directly

to corporate desktops. Pleased with its early progress, in

1995 Dow Jones’s leadership went public with its new

strategy. “We’re taking our editorial standards to the

Web, where a glut of information often makes searching

for the right piece of information time-consuming and

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What’s Your Working Capital Model? A Case Study

fruitless.” The company saw two distinct segments for its

electronic services: individuals or small companies and

large enterprises, both of which it wanted to serve. Dow

Jones developed new online services for individuals and

small businesses, allowing them to use credit cards to

purchase subscriptions or to pay for downloads of spe-

cifi c packages of information such as articles. Large en-

terprises on the other hand were expected to sign annual

contracts for electronic access to Dow Jones’s informa-

tion, paid in advance, of course. The company’s leaders

had not forgotten what had gotten it this far, paid sub-

scriptions up front!

Soon there was an online electronic supplement to the

Wall Street Journal ’s Money & Investing section, known

as the “Wall Street Journal Interactive Edition” (known

later as WSJ Online at WSJ.com). This electronic news-

paper subscription service allowed individual users to

browse articles online. Both DowVision and The Pub-

lications Library, a news archive, were made available

for Web users, primarily serving large enterprises as re-

search tools, on a subscription basis.

From 1999 through 2006, Dow Jones quickened its

digital pace, developing a joint venture with Reuters

to create Factiva, a Web-based source of current and

archived global news—subscriptions paid up front, of

course. NewsPlus, a Web-formatted enhancement of

Dow Jones’s newswires, and Dow Jones Financial In-

formation Services, which gave fi nancial professionals

additional Web access to electronic media, information,

and directories, were added. MarketWatch.com, which

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Making Good Decisions—and Moving Those Numbers

provided online business and fi nancial news, was ac-

quired. Dow Jones’s digital Plan B was well under way.

In 2006, Dow Jones went further, getting rid of some

of its paper-based products in favor of online offerings. It

launched Barron’s Online and bought Factiva outright,

terminating the joint venture with Reuters. In December

it sold six of the community newspapers that it had pub-

lished for years. CEO Rich Zannino said, “This sale and

the pending acquisition of Factiva are the latest examples

of our commitment to transform Dow Jones from a com-

pany heavily dependent on print publishing revenue to a

more diversifi ed company capable of meeting the needs

of its customers across all consumer and enterprise me-

dia channels, whether print, online, mobile or otherwise.”

Would Its Subscription-Reliant

Working Capital Model Still Work?

The Dow Jones management team consisted of veterans

who understood the crucial role that the working capi-

tal model played in the publishing industry. When they

adopted Plan B and its new digital revenue model, they

retained a crucial element of Plan A—the company’s

working capital model. Take a look at the 2006 Dow

Jones numbers to see what happened:

• Current assets (other than cash) = 58 days

– Inventory: 3 days

– Accounts receivable: 55 days

• Current

liabilities

= 135 days

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What’s Your Working Capital Model? A Case Study

– Accounts payable: 88 days

– Unearned subscriptions: 47 days

• Net of these elements = –77 days

The Dow Jones’s working capital model had improved

to –77 days in 2006 (compared with –72 days in 1992)!

The bedrock of the model, paid subscriptions up front,

was still in place. The company still charged for tradi-

tional subscriptions for the Wall Street Journal and its

remaining local newspapers, and for Barron’s, Factiva,

and its newswires. Most components of Barron’s Online

and WSJ.com required a subscription, as did some ele-

ments of MarketWatch. The Dow Jones indexes were

both subscription- and license-based. And Dow Jones

Online News could be licensed for a fee. Only a few exper-

iments, such as CareerJournal.com, RealEstateJournal.

com and OpinionJournal.com, came subscription-free.

The business had been transformed without going

hat-in-hand to investors, funded largely by its custom-

ers’ cash, and its precious working capital model had

remained intact. The results for Dow Jones sharehold-

ers? Net income more than tripled on virtually the same

$1.8 billion in revenue, rising from $107 million in 1992

to $386 million in 2006. And, perhaps with a nod to the

company’s successful transition to the digital age, Rupert

Murdoch’s News Corporation purchased Dow Jones for

$5 billion in August 2007. Notably, and probably with

thanks to Dow Jones’s veterans, Murdoch, who indicated

before the acquisition that he would make WSJ Online

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Making Good Decisions—and Moving Those Numbers

free and ad-based, has left its subscription-based, nega-

tive working capital model in place.

Lessons from Dow Jones

Dow Jones & Company shows us that negative working

capital is helpful in coping with dramatic changes, such

as those it faced in the digital revolution. Such a model

provides customer cash with which to develop new prod-

ucts and strategies to iterate toward Plan B. Equally im-

portant was its management team’s ability to identify

new kinds and forms of content—new products, each of

which was a leap of faith until proven—that consumers

and business customers would value and pay for.

By itself, a better working capital model is not enough.

Indeed, this point is evidenced by the cash infusion the

New York Times needed in January 2009 from Carlos

Slim, the Mexican billionaire, in order to remain afl oat.

The Times had not been nearly as inventive as Dow Jones

in developing cash-generative digital offerings to make

its own digital transition. While Dow Jones largely main-

tained its subscription-based model as it went digital, the

New York Times did otherwise in making the New York

Times Online free.

Dow Jones & Company also shows how a powerful

working capital model, common to an entire industry in

this case, can enable changes in other parts of one’s strat-

egy and make seemingly wrenching changes appear as

smooth as silk. Though sailing was not always easy for

Dow Jones—there were a couple of loss-making years

along the way—its transition to the digital age was, for

the most part, successful. Sometimes, though, it takes in-

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What’s Your Working Capital Model? A Case Study

novators to bring new and different working capital mod-

els to an established industry. When they do, watch out!

John Mullins is an associate professor of management

practice at London Business School. Randy Komisar is a

partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufi eld & Byers and a lec-

turer on entrepreneurship at Stanford University.

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Learn to Speak the

Language of ROI

by John O’Leary

Nobody is getting approval to spend money these days

unless he or she can demonstrate an economic return.

And so nonfi nancial professionals are having to master

the mysterious lexicon of return on investment (ROI),

which includes terms such as breakeven, internal rate

of return, and discounted cash fl ow.

These concepts should be second nature for anyone

charged with making or contributing to fi nancial deci-

sions. But in too many companies, it’s only the fi nance

mavens who really understand ROI.

Say you want to spend $200,000 on a new automated

call system. You’re jazzed up about how reducing wait

times from 60 seconds to 30 seconds will boost customer

satisfaction and loyalty. As important as such improve-

Adapted from Harvard Management Update (product #U0210C),

October 2002

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Making Good Decisions—and Moving Those Numbers

ments are, they’re not what the green-eyeshade types

in fi nance care most about. For them, the key benefi t

is adding more money to the bottom line. Since they’re

the ones making the decision on your project, not only

do you have to understand how the new system will in-

crease profi ts, you must also be able to use the language

of fi nancial modeling to make the case for your initiative.

To get your project funded, especially when money is

tight, here’s what you need to learn.

Cash Flow Modeling

An ROI analysis enables you to compare the fi nancial

consequences of two (or more) business alternatives.

Should we spend X dollars to do Project A or Y dollars to

do Project B? Would we be better off buying or leasing?

Would it be better to create this product in-house or to

outsource?

To answer such questions you have to build a business

case—a fi nancial story based on facts, reasonable assump-

tions, and logic. At the heart of this story is a picture of

the expected cash fl ow. A cash fl ow projection provides

estimates of the net fi nancial impact of a decision over a

period of time. To construct such a projection, you must

document not only all of the expected costs and benefi ts

of the decision but also the time period in which they oc-

cur. Most ROI calculations seek to project three to fi ve

years out.

Here it’s important to highlight a crucial difference

between an ROI analysis and an income, or profi t-and-

loss (P&L), statement. The ROI analysis is cash-based,

whereas a P&L uses standard accounting principles to

spread out costs in a reasonable fashion. For example, on

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Learn to Speak the Language of ROI

BUILDING THE FINANCIAL CASE

The following ROI analysis makes projections for the

launch of a fi ctitious new product, the RT-200. As with

many cash fl ow analyses, this spreadsheet compares

the fi nancial consequences of investing in the launch of

the RT-200 against the alternative of not launching the

product (which carries no cost or return).

US$ in

thousands

Year 1

Year 2

Year 3

Year 4

Total

Financial benefi t (revenue or cost savings)

Revenue –

500

1,000

1,500

3,000

(Lost revenue)

(50)

(100)

(100)

(100)

(350)

Cost savings

–

100

120

130

350

Total benefi t

(50)

500

1,020

1,530

3,000

Investments/capital expenditures:

Hardware 600

–

100

–

700

Licenses 200

–

–

–

200

Development 500

–

–

100

600

Subtotal capital 1,300

–

100

100

1,500

Operating expenses:

Headcount 25

25

25

25

100

Fabrication

55

90

155

300

Marketing

420

130

50

600

Subtotal

operating 25

500

245

230

1,000

Total investments 1,325

500

345

330

2,500

Return on investment  Total return = $500

Year 1

Year 2

Year 3

Year 4

Total

Total cash fl ow

(1,375)

–

675

1,200

500

Discounted

cash fl ow

(Present value)

(1,375)

–

557

902

84

Assumes 10%

discount rate

( continued)

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Making Good Decisions—and Moving Those Numbers

( continued)

The bottom-line ROI analysis on the RT-200 project:

• The project will cost $2.5 million in capital and

operating expenses during the next four years

but will generate $3 million in additional revenue

and cost savings, for a four-year ROI of 20%.

• The project will be at breakeven during Year 4.

• The payback period for this investment is be-

tween three and four years.

• The net present value of this investment is

$84,000, assuming a discount rate (or cost of

capital) of 10%.

• The internal rate of return is 12.5%.

a P&L, an expenditure for a piece of equipment with a

useful life of fi ve years might be amortized on a straight-

line basis over that time frame, with one-fi fth of the cost

hitting the P&L each year. On a cash fl ow statement, the

charge hits in the time period that you send the check out

the door.

Often an important element of building a cash fl ow is

translating “soft” benefi ts into hard numbers. If you work

for an airline and want to increase passenger legroom, it

would be easy to calculate the hard costs of removing sev-

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Learn to Speak the Language of ROI

eral rows of seats. But how would you quantify the ben-

efi ts of having happier, more comfortable passengers?

One approach might be through survey data showing

that, say, 10% of your passengers would be willing to pay

a 15% premium for more legroom. And don’t forget to es-

timate the fi nancial impact of the higher customer reten-

tion you might experience because of your roomier seats,

or of the new customers you might win over. You may want

to build a spreadsheet to see how your estimate of the fi -

nancial benefi t changes as you alter your assumptions.

Once you’ve fi nished estimating all the positive and

negative cash fl ows associated with the decision in ques-

tion, summarize the cash fl ow by calculating the net im-

pact for each time period. At that point, you’re ready to

start analyzing the results using the following methods

of comparison:

• Payback period. This is the point at which all

the costs expended have been recovered. Many

companies have a benchmark of fi ve to seven years

as a maximum payback period.

• Breakeven point. This is the moment when costs

are matched by increased revenue or cost savings

for that period. The time between the breakeven

point and the end of the payback period will vary

according to how signifi cantly revenues outpace

costs after the breakeven point has been reached.

• Discounted cash fl ow (DCF). This is a summa-

rized cash fl ow that accounts for the time value of

money, which is an adjustment for the fact that

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Making Good Decisions—and Moving Those Numbers

$100 received today is worth more than $20 a year

for the next fi ve years. The DCF shows the impact

of your project in today’s dollars. The present value

of $100 in the future is calculated with the follow-

ing formula:

Present Value = $100 / (1+ x) n

where n is the number of years into the future that

the benefi t (or cost) will occur, and x is the interest

rate expressed in hundredths.

• Net present value (NPV). The sum of all the pres-

ent values in the discounted cash fl ow, the NPV

gives you a sense of the absolute size of the return

expected from a project. As shown in the example,

the NPV of $84,000 means that the projected

overall fi nancial benefi t of the project is equivalent

to realizing an immediate gain of $84,000 (see

“Building the Financial Case” on page 107). The

NPV should be looked at in light of the size of the

investment that will be made, which in this case

is $2.5 million. Although any NPV above zero

shows that doing the project is preferable to doing

nothing, in practice the benchmark NPV to beat is

not zero but how much the investment could have

earned in an alternative project. (It’s easy to calcu-

late NPV on a business calculator or computer.)

• Internal rate of return (IRR). This is the interest

rate at which the discounted cash fl ow yields a net

present value of zero. This metric is of limited use,

because it doesn’t tell you how long you will enjoy

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Learn to Speak the Language of ROI

the given rate of return, nor does it show you the

dollar amount of the return. Indeed, a pure IRR

analysis can lead you to make poor decisions on

competing investments.

Getting Your Budget Approved

Conducting the ROI analysis is just the fi rst step. Now

take it to the folks in fi nance. Don’t bore them with talk

about boosting customer satisfaction or reducing cycle

times. Use the ROI analysis to spell out how your project

will make the company money.

Let’s return to the automated call system example:

Your focus, when pitching this investment to the fi nance

department, should be on how shorter wait times will

mean fewer customers switching to competitors, which

will translate into more revenue. Moreover, the new call

system will require fewer customer service reps, which

will also translate into lower costs.

This “dollars fi rst” thinking will enable you to engage

your audience in their passion—not yours. By describing

your initiative in language that fi nance hears best, you’re

much more likely to win approval.

Boston-based business writer John O’Leary is the author

of Revolution at the Roots (Free Press, 1995), a book

about best practices in the public sector.

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Practical Tools

for Management

Decisions

Finance and accounting provide a rich trove of practical

tools that will help answer some of the most important

management questions you’ll ever face:

• What are the costs and benefi ts of a particular

investment?

• What is its estimated return?

• How quickly will your company recoup the

investment?

• How many units will it have to sell at specifi c

prices to simply break even?

• Does your company have the right balance of fi xed

and variable costs?

Adapted from Harvard Business Essentials: Finance for Managers

(product #5856BC), Harvard Business Review Press, 2002

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Making Good Decisions—and Moving Those Numbers

• How can you estimate nonquantifi able costs and

benefi ts?

Cost/Benefi t Analysis

Suppose that Amalgamated Hat Rack is considering two

investment options: (1) buying a new piece of machinery

and (2) creating a new product line. The new machine

is a smart-technology, high-temperature plastic extruder

costing $100,000. Amalgamated believes that this ma-

chinery will save time and money over the long term and

is safer than the current machinery. The second option,

launching a line of coat racks, will require a $250,000

investment in plant, equipment, and design. How can

Amalgamated decide whether either option makes eco-

nomic sense? By doing a cost/benefi t analysis. This

means evaluating whether, over a given time frame, the

benefi ts will outweigh the associated costs.

First, though, it’s important to understand the cost of

the status quo. You want to weigh the relative merits of

each investment against the negative consequences, if

any, of not making the investment at all.

Cost/benefi t analysis involves the following steps:

1.

Identify the costs associated with the new busi-

ness opportunity. Consider this year’s up-front

costs plus those you anticipate in subsequent

years.

2.

Identify the benefi ts of additional revenues the

investment will bring. These revenues could come

from more customers or from increased pur-

chases by existing customers. Be sure to factor

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Practical Tools for Management Decisions

in associated new costs; ultimately, that means

you’ll be looking at profi t.

3.

Identify the cost savings to be gained. Some are

straightforward; others are subtle and diffi cult to

quantify. More effi cient processing, for instance,

could save you money because fewer people are

required to do the same work, or because the

process requires fewer steps, or because the time

spent on each step decreases.

4.

Map out the timeline for expected costs and

revenues. When do you expect the costs to be

incurred? In what increments? When do you ex-

pect to receive the benefi ts (additional revenues

or cost savings)? In what increments?

5.

Evaluate the nonquantifi able benefi ts and costs.

There may be several, such as whether the invest-

ment strengthens a fi rm’s position with distribu-

tors and whether it will add unnecessary product

or process complexity to the fi rm’s operations.

Once all that’s done, you’re ready to begin evaluating

the investment opportunities by using one or more of the

analytical tools below: accounting return on investment,

payback period, or breakeven analysis.

Accounting Return on Investment

Return on investment (ROI)—or, to use the more tech-

nical term, accounting return on investment—is not

always the best measure of an investment’s success. But

because many managers still use ROI, it pays to under-

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Making Good Decisions—and Moving Those Numbers

stand how they look at it. Accounting return on invest-

ment can take the form of cost savings, incremental

profi t, or value appreciation. Let’s look at the simplest

possible way of fi guring it, although as we’ll see in a mo-

ment, it isn’t very realistic. You would begin by determin-

ing the net return, simply by subtracting the total cost

of the investment from the total benefi ts received. Then,

to calculate the ROI, you would divide the return by the

total cost of the investment.

Suppose the new $100,000 extruder Amalgamated is

considering would realize an annual $18,000 in savings

for the company over the lifetime of the machine, which

is estimated to be seven years. The total savings would

thus be $126,000 ($18,000 × 7), making for a net return

of $26,000 ($126,000 – $100,000). If you divide the

net return ($26,000) by the total cost of the investment

($100,000), you get an ROI of 26%.

But that isn’t the true return on investment, because

it ignores the time value of money. For example, which

would you rather have (assuming equal risks): an in-

vestment that gave you a 26% return in one year, or one

that gave you the same return at the end of seven years?

No contest there. Any rational investor would want the

money sooner rather than later. Thus, true ROI calcula-

tions must always factor in the time value of money. De-

pending on your assumptions, you might fi nd that the

true ROI on the extruder was 5% or 10% rather than 26%.

Would any of those percentages even be a good re-

turn on the investment? In isolation, such fi gures have

no particular meaning, since ROI calculations are a way

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Practical Tools for Management Decisions

of comparing returns on money a company invests inter-

nally with returns available to it elsewhere at the same

level of risk. The notion of equal risk is very important

here. All investors demand higher returns for higher risk.

It makes no sense to compare the returns the company

believes it could make from an investment in A, the rela-

tively safe expansion of a current product line, with an

investment in B, a wholly new product line for an un-

tested market. The risk levels of the two potential invest-

ments are simply not equivalent. The higher-risk invest-

ment should have a higher potential return.

Payback Period

Companies also want to know the payback period: how

long it will take a particular investment to pay for itself.

We already know that the plastic extruder is expected to

save Amalgamated $18,000 a year. To determine the pay-

back period, divide the total amount of the investment

by the annual savings expected. In this case, $100,000

divided by $18,000 equals 5.56. In other words, the ex-

truder will pay for itself in about fi ve-and-a-half years.

What if we assume that the extruder will wear out

after four years rather than fi ve? The investment now

appears to be not particularly attractive—certainly less

attractive than an investment with a similar ROI and a

payback period of three years. As an analytical tool, the

payback period tells you only one thing: how long it will

take to recoup your investment. Although it is not use-

ful in comparing real alternatives, some executives still

rely on it.

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Making Good Decisions—and Moving Those Numbers

Breakeven Analysis

Breakeven analysis tells you how much (or how much

more) you need to sell in order to pay for the fi xed

investment—in other words, at what point you will break

even on your cash fl ow. With that information in hand,

you can look at market demand and competitors’ mar-

ket shares to determine whether it’s realistic to expect

to sell that much. Breakeven analysis can also help you

think through the impact of changing price and volume

relationships.

Most companies do breakeven analysis on the basis of

revenue and gross profi t margin. Here we will take a sim-

plifi ed approach and do the fi guring on the basis of unit

volume, so you can see the underlying reality. Our break-

even calculation will help you determine the volume level

at which the total after-tax contribution from a product

line or an investment covers its total fi xed costs.

Before you can perform the calculation, you need to

understand the components that go into it:

• Fixed costs. These are costs that stay mostly the

same, no matter how many units of a product or

service are sold—costs such as insurance, man-

agement salaries, and rent or lease payments. For

example, the rent on the production facility will be

the same, whether the company makes 10,000 or

20,000 units, and so will the insurance.

• Variable costs. Variable costs are those that

change with the number of units produced and

sold. Examples include labor and the costs of raw

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Practical Tools for Management Decisions

materials. The more units you make, the more you

consume these items.

• Contribution margin. This is the amount of money

that every sold unit contributes to paying for fi xed

costs. It is defi ned as net unit revenue minus vari-

able (or direct) costs per unit.

With these concepts understood, we can do the calcu-

lation with this straightforward equation:

Breakeven Volume = Fixed Costs /

Unit Contribution Margin

First, fi nd the unit contribution margin by subtracting

the variable costs per unit from the net revenue per unit.

Then divide total fi xed costs, or the amount of the invest-

ment, by the unit contribution margin. The quotient is

the breakeven volume—that is, the number of units that

must be sold for all fi xed costs to be covered.

To see breakeven analysis in practice, let’s look again

at the plastic extruder example. Suppose that each hat

rack produced by the extruder sells for $75, and that the

variable cost per unit is $22:

$75 (Price per Unit) – $22 (Variable Cost per

Unit) = $53 (Unit Contribution Margin)

Therefore:

$100,000 (Total Investment Required) /

$53 (Unit Contribution Margin) = 1,887 Units

In other words, Amalgamated must sell 1,887 hat

racks to recover its $100,000 investment. At this point,

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Making Good Decisions—and Moving Those Numbers

A BREAKEVEN COMPLICATION

Our Hat Rack breakeven analysis represents a simple

case. It assumes that costs are distinctly fi xed or vari-

able and that costs and unit contributions will not

change if output increases or decreases. These as-

sumptions may not hold in the real world. Rent may be

fi xed up to a certain level of production and then in-

crease by 50% as you rent a secondary facility to han-

dle expanded output. Labor costs may in reality be a

hybrid of fi xed and variable. And as you push more and

more of your product into the market, you may fi nd it

necessary to off er price discounts—which reduce con-

tribution per unit. You will need to adjust the breakeven

calculation to accommodate these untidy realities.

the company must decide whether the breakeven volume

is achievable: Is it realistic to expect to sell 1,887 addi-

tional hat racks, and if so, how quickly?

Operating Leverage

Your goal, of course, is not to break even but to make a

profi t. Once you’ve covered all your fi xed costs with the

contributions of many unit sales, every subsequent sale

contributes directly to profi ts. To restate the equation

used earlier in slightly different form:

Unit Net Revenue – Unit Variable Cost =

Unit Contribution to Profi t

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Practical Tools for Management Decisions

You can see at a glance that the lower the unit variable

cost, the greater the contribution to profi ts will be. In the

pharmaceutical business, for example, the unit cost of

producing and packaging a bottle of a new wonder drug

may be a dollar or less. Yet if the company can sell each

bottle for $100, it captures $99 per bottle in profi t once

sales have exceeded the breakeven point! Of course, the

pharmaceutical company may have invested $400 mil-

lion up front in fi xed product development costs just to

get the fi rst bottle out the door. It will have to sell many

bottles just to break even. But if it can, the profi ts will be

extraordinary.

The relationship between fi xed and variable costs is of-

ten described in terms of operating leverage. Companies

with high fi xed costs and low variable costs have high op-

erating leverage. This is true of businesses in the software

industry, for instance, where fi xed product-development

outlays are the bulk of a fi rm’s costs and the variable cost

of the discs on which programs are distributed represent

only pennies. By contrast, companies with low operating

leverage have low fi xed costs relative to the total cost of

producing every unit of output. A law fi rm, for example,

has a minimal investment in equipment and fi xed ex-

penses. Most of its costs are the fees it pays its attorneys,

which vary depending on the hours they bill to clients.

Operating leverage is a great thing once a company

passes its breakeven point, but it can cause substantial

losses if breakeven is never achieved. In other words, it’s

risky. This is why managers give so much thought to fi nd-

ing the right balance between fi xed and variable costs.

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Making Good Decisions—and Moving Those Numbers

Amalgamated Hat Rack, Coat Rack Division, January

budget-to-actual

Budget Jan.

Actual Jan.

Variance

Coat rack

$39,000 $38,725

($275)*

revenues

Cost of

19,500

19,200 300

goods sold

Gross margin

19,500 19,525 25

Marketing

8,500 10,100

(1,600)

expense

Administrative

4,750 4,320 430

expense

Total operating

13,250 14,420

(1,170)

expense

Operating profi t

$6,250 $5,105

($1,145)

(EBIT)

*All parentheses indicate unfavorable variances.

Source: HMM Finance

Estimating Nonquantifi able

Benefi ts and Costs

Because the numbers seldom tell the whole story, you’ll

need to look at qualitative factors too. For instance,

how well does a potential investment fi t the company’s

strategy and mission? Can the fi rm take it on without

losing focus? How likely is it to succeed, given market

conditions?

Even though such factors are not fully quantifi able, try

to quantify them as much as possible. Say you’re assess-

ing the value of improved data—more comprehensive in-

formation that is easier to understand and more widely

available—that a new investment would bring. You could

try to come up with a dollar fi gure that represents the

value of employees’ time saved by the data, or the value of

the increased customer retention that might be gleaned

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Practical Tools for Management Decisions

from your better understanding of purchase patterns.

Such estimates should not necessarily be incorporated

into your ROI or other quantifi ed analyses, but they can

be very persuasive nevertheless.

Weigh the quantifi able and the nonquantifi able fac-

tors together. For example, if an investment opportunity

is only marginally positive according to the numbers, you

may want to give equal weight to qualitative consider-

ations (such as its likelihood to increase customer loy-

alty) in your fi nal decision.

Tracking Performance

Once you’ve decided to undertake an investment op-

portunity, you should monitor its progress. Track your

projections against actual revenues and expenses. It’s a

good idea to do this on a monthly basis, so that you can

spot potential problems early on. With that in mind, let’s

look at projections for a new coat rack division at Amal-

gamated Hat Rack. The table on the previous page shows

the state of affairs early in the fi rst quarter.

The division is doing reasonably well on revenues and

cost of goods sold. Its only really large negative variance

is in the marketing expense line. Because the numbers

are based on just the fi rst month’s fi gures, it is diffi cult

to know if that variance is simply a onetime, or seasonal,

variation, or if Amalgamated will have to spend more on

marketing than anticipated. If your investment is not

tracking according to budget, and if it looks as if the pat-

tern of unexpectedly high costs (or unexpectedly low rev-

enues) will hold, you may need to rethink the initiative—

or even discontinue it.

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Section 3

The Limits of

Financial Data

This part of the HBR Guide to Finance Basics for Manag-

ers is a little different from the rest. In the earlier sections

you learned the fundamentals. In this one you’ll get some

advice about how to evaluate what you know, how to use

it most effectively, and how to supplement it with other

kinds of information.

Why are such cautions necessary? Mainly because

we tend to put too much faith in numbers. The income

statement and balance sheet may seem precise, but they

aren’t. They refl ect all sorts of assumptions, estimates,

and procedural decisions, such as which depreciation

method to use. Moreover, there is much about a busi-

ness that the numbers—even the truly precise ones on

the cash fl ow statement—can’t capture. So when you use

the fi nancial statements, you have to exercise good judg-

ment about what they’re telling you and determine how

they may be misleading you. The articles in this section

will help.

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What the Financial

Statements Don’t

Tell You

by John Case

In 2006, one of the largest fi rms on Wall Street turned

in perhaps its best performance ever. Earnings set

a record for the fourth year in a row; pretax profi t

margin was a whopping 30.1%. “After several years of

restructuring and investing in our business, all of the

components came together to refl ect a company capable

of strong disciplined performance with tremendous

potential for future success,” wrote the chairman in his

letter to shareholders.

The fi rm was Merrill Lynch. The following year it

lost $8.6 billion—“the worst performance in the history

of Merrill Lynch,” as the (new) chairman acknowl-

edged. In 2008 Bank of America agreed to buy Merrill

in a distress sale, and in 2009 the fi rm ceased to exist

as an independent entity.

. . .

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The Limits of Financial Data

In 2010, the chief executive of a major oil company

reported a good deal of satisfaction with his company’s

fi nancial results the previous year. Despite a harsh eco-

nomic climate and a lower price for petroleum, return

on sales had dropped only a fraction of a percentage

point, and the company actually increased its dividend

to shareholders by 2%. “A revitalized [company] kept

up its momentum and delivered strong operating and

fi nancial results while continuing to focus on safe and

reliable operations,” he wrote to his shareholders on

February 26.

The oil company was BP. Less than two months

later, the drilling rig Deepwater Horizon blew up, kill-

ing 11 people and unleashing the biggest offshore oil

spill in history. The ultimate cost to BP—in money, in

reputation, in its ability to operate around the world—

wouldn’t be known for years. BP’s own estimates of

direct costs came to roughly $40 billion.

Grim stories such as these are cautionary tales about

what you can and cannot discern just by scrutinizing a

company’s fi nancials. It’s true that fi nance is the language

of business, and unless you can grasp it, you will be at

a perpetual disadvantage in any kind of business career.

But make no mistake: The fi nancials describe only a frac-

tion of a company’s reality, and sometimes a misleading

fraction at that.

So in this chapter we’ll look not at what the fi nancials

tell you but at what they don’t tell you. The fi gures them-

selves may be wrong or deceptive. They may be silent

about a host of organizational matters that affect a com-

pany’s success. They may capture a business reality that is

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What the Financial Statements Don’t Tell You

true for the moment but that is about to be transformed

by external events. Wise managers always keep one eye

on the fi nancial reports, the ultimate gauge of their per-

formance. But they keep an equally sharp eye on all the

nonfi nancial or external factors that show up late, murk-

ily, or not at all in the fi nancial data. As we’ll see, such

factors fi ll in the rest of the picture.

Financial Sleight of Hand

One limitation of fi nancial statements is that they can be

manipulated. The usual goal, of course, is to make things

look better than they really are.

The manipulation may take the form of outright fraud.

The Italian company Parmalat—a multibillion-dollar

food giant with operations in dozens of countries—de-

faulted on a bond payment in November 2003. Alarmed,

auditors and lenders began scrutinizing the company’s

books, which seemed to show that Parmalat held nearly

$5 billion in an account with Bank of America. In De-

cember, however, Bank of America reported that there

was no such account. Parmalat wound up in bankruptcy,

and some of its executives received prison sentences for

the deception.

More often, the manipulation is subtler: A company

simply alters its accounting practices. Accountants have

a good deal of discretion over many items on the income

statement and the balance sheet, and are free to adopt

different procedures and assumptions as long as they

deem the changes reasonable and apply them consis-

tently. A company can change the way it values inven-

tory, for example, or the amount that it sets aside for bad

debt. Either move will trigger an adjustment—positive

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The Limits of Financial Data

or negative—to the income statement and make the bot-

tom line look better or worse. A company can also alter

its depreciation schedule. If it owns a fl eet of trucks or

airplanes and decides that each one should last 12 years

rather than 10, it will then record less depreciation on

its income statement. Presto: The bottom line suddenly

grows by a corresponding amount. In theory, any new

procedure or assumption that is material to the compa-

ny’s results should appear in the footnotes to the fi nan-

cials. But the accountants get to decide whether the new

way of doing things is material.

The line between fraud and a reasonable change in

procedures isn’t always clear. One telecommunications

company got itself in trouble by taking a group of ex-

penses that everyone else in the industry classifi ed as

operating expenses and inappropriately categorizing

them as capital expenditures. Since only a part of a capi-

tal expenditure—depreciation—shows up on the income

statement, the company’s profi ts improved signifi cantly.

Some people in the company presumably believed that

the change was justifi ed. The Justice Department dis-

agreed, characterizing the move as an “accounting trick”

and issuing an indictment.

The moral here is that it pays to understand the as-

sumptions and procedures used to calculate the fi nan-

cials. The statements themselves don’t always tell the

truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

Only One Piece of the Financial Puzzle

The three statements reveal a good deal, but not every-

thing, about a company’s fi nancial position. For instance,

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What the Financial Statements Don’t Tell You

assets such as land, buildings, and equipment are re-

corded at historical cost on the balance sheet and de-

preciated accordingly—but nowhere does the balance

sheet say what they might be worth on the open mar-

ket today. (The continuing debate over “mark to market”

accounting, in which companies use real or estimated

market prices to value their assets, applies only to fi nan-

cial assets.) Merrill Lynch held plenty of assets, such as

mortgage-backed securities. But when the housing bub-

ble collapsed, those assets turned out to be worth far less

than anybody had imagined.

Probably the most important fi nancial fact the three

major statements don’t tell you is what a company as a

whole is worth. The owners’ equity line on the balance

sheet, which you might think indicates value, really has

nothing to do with what a buyer would have to pay to

acquire the fi rm.

For publicly traded companies, the value of the entire

enterprise is known as its market capitalization, or just

market cap. This is the amount, in theory, that an inves-

tor would have to pay to buy all the shares of stock. To

calculate market cap, you simply multiply the stock price

by the total number of shares. The value changes daily,

just because share prices move up and down. The price

movements depend only partly on the performance re-

fl ected in fi nancial statements. They also depend on what

is happening to the market in general—that is, how in-

terested investors are in buying stocks. General Electric’s

shares hit about 60 during the height of the dot-com

boom in the early 2000s and plunged to about 6 during

the depths of the fi nancial crisis later in the decade. The

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The Limits of Financial Data

company was performing somewhat differently during

the two periods, but the gap in performance was nowhere

near as great as the difference in share price and hence

market cap.

Of course, it is rare for anyone to buy a publicly traded

company at a fi gure close to its market cap on any given

day. If an investor or potential acquirer announces an in-

tention to scoop up all of a company’s shares, the shares

naturally rise in value. That’s why prospective buyers typ-

ically have to pay a premium over the shares’ value on the

day of the announcement.

The value of a private company is harder to determine.

A high-tech fi rm might be worth considerably more than

its book value, or owners’ equity, because a buyer would

be hoping to acquire intangibles, such as engineering

expertise or intellectual property. Neither of these asset

categories shows up on the balance sheet. A small ser-

vice company such as a marketing fi rm or a plumbing

contractor, by contrast, might be worth considerably

less than owners’ equity would suggest. Its tangible as-

sets—computers, telephone equipment, vehicles, inven-

tory—may not yet be fully depreciated, but they may also

have little value on the open market. For this kind of

company, the real value lies in the experience, expertise,

and contacts of the business owner. The buyer’s motiva-

tions matter, too. An acquirer simply buying the business

for its hard assets is likely to pay less than someone who

wants to keep the enterprise as a going concern. A so-

called strategic buyer—an acquirer that needs the private

company to fi ll out its business lines, its technologies, or

its geographic reach—may pay most of all.

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What the Financial Statements Don’t Tell You

Reaching Beyond the Financials

The fi nancial statements are essentially backward-

looking. The income statement and cash fl ow state-

ment tell you how an organization performed along cer-

tain dimensions in a previous time period. The balance

sheet gives you a snapshot of its fi nancial health as of a

given date. But a business also needs to know what is go-

ing on right now and what’s likely to happen tomorrow. If

its managers can do something about those factors in the

present, they’ll greatly improve their chances of seeing

better results next quarter or next year.

Here are three key categories of information that you

won’t learn about from the fi nancials:

1. The organization’s nonfi nancial health.

The explosion of the Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of

Mexico wasn’t BP’s fi rst major accident in recent years.

An explosion at the company’s Texas City refi nery in

2005 killed 15 people and injured 180 more. Later that

year another BP drilling platform in the Gulf nearly sank

because workers hurrying to fi nish it had installed a valve

incorrectly. In 2006 BP’s pipelines from Alaska’s Prud-

hoe Bay fi eld began to leak, eventually spilling 267,000

gallons—the area’s worst spill ever. Somehow the com-

pany seemed unable to fi x its recurrent safety problems.

In 2009, reported Fortune magazine,

. . . the federal Occupational Safety and Health Ad-

ministration (OSHA) proposed a record fi ne against BP

for “failure to abate” previously cited hazards at Texas

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The Limits of Financial Data

City. OSHA also cited BP for hundreds of new “willful”

safety violations. (BP totaled 829 such refi nery viola-

tions from June 2007 to February 2010, according to

the Center for Public Integrity. The rest of the industry

combined had 33.) There had been three more deaths at

Texas City since the 2005 explosion.

If a company has safety issues like these, it’s probably

an unhealthy organization—that is, it’s likely to experi-

ence one problem after another, regardless of what the

fi nancials might say about its fi scal health.

Safety is just one aspect of organizational health (and

one that is far more relevant in mining or manufacturing

than, say, in banking). Another is the level of employee

engagement. Do people enjoy working at your company?

Would they recommend it to a friend? To answer these

questions you need data from employee surveys, for ex-

ample, and from human-resources indicators such as

employee retention rates. You won’t fi nd any of this in-

formation on the fi nancials.

Healthy organizations are also nimble: Their people

can make and execute good decisions without undue

time or trouble. Bain & Company consultants Marcia

Blenko, Paul Rogers, and Michael Mankins, in their

book Decide & Deliver (Harvard Business Review Press,

2010), tell the story of ABB, the big Switzerland-based

power equipment and automation company. ABB was

much heralded in the 1990s for its radically decentral-

ized structure, and for a while its fi nancial performance

lived up to the accolades. But a particular kind of rot was

eating away at ABB from the inside: People were fi ghting

tooth and nail over basic business decisions such as bid-

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What the Financial Statements Don’t Tell You

ding on big power projects. “Overall, the company was

structured into a complex labyrinth, with thousands of

units operating on their own,” the authors write. “Many

of these local entities controlled factories and thus did all

they could to sell the products those factories made, even

if that meant discouraging customers from patronizing

other ABB units.” In effect, the company was hamstrung

by its own structure. “With so many decisions requiring

intense negotiations, internal politics grew bitter.”

There is no direct information about organizational

decisiveness in the fi nancials. Many companies gather

data about it through employee surveys, interviews, and

internal focus groups. As with employee engagement,

the results help executives understand why and how the

company’s future fi nancial performance might suffer.

2. What customers are thinking.

Customer attitudes—their satisfaction with a company

and its products, their gripes and complaints, their intent

to repurchase, and so forth—also don’t appear on the fi -

nancials. Yet those attitudes are critical indicators of a

company’s future success. After all, if a fi rm can’t hold on

to its customers and attract new ones, its prospects are

likely to be dim.

Determining customer attitudes requires several differ-

ent kinds of research. The periodic customer- satisfaction

surveys that most large companies conduct provide a

starting point. (The quality of this data is often suspect,

however. For instance, a company may encourage its

customers to give it high marks when the surveyor calls,

as many auto dealerships do.) It is probably more help-

ful to scrutinize customer behavior. How long do your

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The Limits of Financial Data

customers stay with you? What percentage of them buy

only once and then are never heard from again? What is

your “share of wallet”—that is, how much of their total

spending in your categories do you get? Many companies

also make a point of creating communities of customers

to advise them on policies, new products, and the like.

LEGO encourages and supports local hobbyists’ clubs

and conferences, and often creates new product kits

based on ideas from the avid users who participate in

such get-togethers.

3. What competitors are planning.

Every business is vulnerable to competitors, so the more

you know about your rivals, the better off you are. This

point is hardly original, and most companies spend a

good deal of time and resources trying to anticipate com-

petitors’ next moves. Even so, they often are bested by

rivals. Consider the following pitfalls:

• Ignoring the blind side. In the 1970s and 1980s,

General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler competed

fi ercely with one another—and famously failed to

notice the onslaught of lower-cost, higher-quality

vehicles being imported from Japan. It took years

for Detroit’s Big Three to catch up with Toyota,

Nissan, and Honda in cost and quality. Meanwhile

the U.S. companies lost huge amounts of market

share to the imports.

• Ignoring upstarts. Xerox once dominated the

market for photocopiers. When Canon came along

with a small, inexpensive, slow-operating copier

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What the Financial Statements Don’t Tell You

designed for small businesses and home offi ces,

Xerox didn’t pay much attention. As Harvard

Business School professor Clayton M. Christensen

points out in his work on disruptive innovation,

that made perfect sense—Xerox’s customers

weren’t interested in cheap, underperforming ma-

chines. But Canon got a toehold in the market, and

it was soon able to improve its machines, move

up-market, and challenge Xerox head-on.

• Missing the next big thing. Nokia, once the leader

among cell phone manufacturers, found itself

upstaged and outcompeted by Apple’s iPhone and

other smart phones. Although it had introduced

a smart phone of its own, it missed the appeal of

touch-screen technology. So rapid was the com-

pany’s fall that by 2010 Nokia was in danger of

becoming a second-tier player, particularly in the

United States.

Competitors’ plans don’t show up in any survey. Smart

companies keep a careful eye on those plans by analyz-

ing their competitors’ reports and press releases, talking

to knowledgeable analysts and observers, and attending

industry conferences. A business that pays little attention

to the competition does so at its peril.

It makes sense for every manager to read, understand,

and stay on top of the fi nancials—not just the three key

statements, which are summaries, but day-to-day data

on revenues, operating costs, performance to budget, and

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The Limits of Financial Data

the like. But if you put too much trust in the numbers and

fail to consider factors they don’t capture, you’re likely to

wind up in trouble. To avoid the well-chronicled missteps

of Merrill Lynch, BP, and others, search everywhere for

the information you need, and make sure you get it in a

timely, useful fashion. If you wait to see the last period’s

fi nancials, it will be too late.

John Case is a consulting writer to a variety of clients,

including Bain & Company and the Business Literacy In-

stitute. He is the author or coauthor of more than a dozen

books on business and management.

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The Five Traps

of Performance

Measurement

by Andrew Likierman

In an episode of Frasier, the television sitcom that follows

the fortunes of a Seattle-based psychoanalyst, the epony-

mous hero’s brother gloomily summarizes a task ahead:

“Diffi cult and boring—my favorite combination.” If this

is your reaction to the challenge of improving the mea-

surement of your organization’s performance, you are not

alone. In my experience, most senior executives fi nd it an

onerous if not threatening task. Thus they leave it to peo-

ple who may not be natural judges of performance but

are fl uent in the language of spreadsheets. The inevitable

result is a mass of numbers and comparisons that pro-

vide little insight into a company’s performance and may

Reprinted from Harvard Business Review, October 2009 (product

#R0910L)

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The Limits of Financial Data

even lead to decisions that hurt it. That’s a big problem

in the current recession, because the margin for error is

virtually nonexistent.

So how should executives take ownership of perfor-

mance assessment? They need to fi nd measures, qualita-

tive as well as quantitative, that look past this year’s bud-

get and previous results to determine how the company

will fare against its competitors in the future. They need

to move beyond a few simple, easy-to-game metrics and

embrace an array of more sophisticated ones. And they

need to keep people on their toes and make sure that to-

day’s measures are not about yesterday’s business model.

In the following pages I present what I’ve found to be

the fi ve most common traps in measuring performance

and illustrate how some organizations have managed

to avoid them. My prescriptions aren’t exhaustive, but

they’ll provide a good start. In any event, they can help

you steal a march on rivals who are caught in the same

old traps.

Trap 1: Measuring Against Yourself

The papers for the next regular performance assessment

are on your desk, their thicket of numbers awaiting you.

What are those numbers? Most likely, comparisons of

current results with a plan or a budget. If that’s the case,

you’re at grave risk of falling into the fi rst trap of perfor-

mance measurement: looking only at your own company.

You may be doing better than the plan, but are you beat-

ing the competition? And what if the estimates you’re

seeing were manipulated?

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The Five Traps of Performance Measurement

To measure how well you’re doing, you need informa-

tion about the benchmarks that matter most—the ones

outside the organization. They will help you defi ne com-

petitive priorities and connect executive compensation

to relative rather than absolute performance—mean-

ing you’ll reward senior executives for doing better than

everyone else.

The trouble is that comparisons with your competitors

can’t easily be made in real time—which is precisely why

so many companies fall back on measurements against

the previous year’s plans and budgets. You have to be cre-

ative about how you fi nd the relevant data or some proxy

for them.

One way is to ask your customers. Enterprise, the car-

rental company, uses the Enterprise Service Quality In-

dex, which measures customers’ repeat purchase inten-

tions. Each branch of the company telephones a random

sample of customers and asks whether they will use En-

terprise again. When the index goes up, the company is

gaining market share; when it falls, customers are tak-

ing their business elsewhere. The branches post results

within two weeks, put them next to profi tability num-

bers on monthly fi nancial statements, and factor them

into criteria for promotion (thus aligning sales goals and

incentives).

Of course you have to make sure you don’t annoy your

customers as you gather data. Think about how restau-

rant managers seek feedback about the quality of their

service: Most often they interrupt diners’ conversations

to ask if everything is OK; sometimes they deliver a ques-

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The Limits of Financial Data

tionnaire with the bill. Either approach can be irritating.

Danny Meyer, the founder of New York’s Union Square

Hospitality Group, gets the information unobtrusively,

through simple observation. If people dining together in

one of his restaurants are looking at one another, the ser-

vice is probably working. If they’re all looking around the

room, they may be wowed by the architecture, but it’s far

more likely that the service is slow.

Another way to get data is to go to professionals out-

side your company. When Marc Effron, the vice presi-

dent of talent management for Avon Products, was try-

ing to determine whether his company was doing a good

job of fi nding and developing managers, he came up with

the idea of creating a network of talent management pro-

fessionals. Started in 2007, the New Talent Management

Network has more than 1,200 members, for whom it

conducts original research and provides a library of re-

sources and best practices.

Trap 2: Looking Backward

Along with budget fi gures, your performance assessment

package almost certainly includes comparisons between

this year and last. If so, watch out for the second trap,

which is to focus on the past. Beating last year’s numbers

is not the point; a performance measurement system

needs to tell you whether the decisions you’re making

now are going to help you in the coming months.

Look for measures that lead rather than lag the profi ts

in your business. The U.S. health insurer Humana, recog-

nizing that its most expensive patients are the really sick

ones (a few years back the company found that the sick-

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The Five Traps of Performance Measurement

est 10% accounted for 80% of its costs), offers customers

incentives for early screening. If it can get more custom-

ers into early or even preemptive treatment than other

companies can, it will outperform rivals in the future.

The quality of managerial decision making is another

leading indicator of success. Boards must assess top ex-

ecutives’ wisdom and willingness to listen. Qualitative,

subjective judgments based on independent directors’

own experience with an executive are usually more re-

vealing than a formal analysis of the executive’s track

record (an unreliable predictor of success, especially for

a CEO) or his or her division’s fi nancial performance.

(See “Evaluating the CEO,” by Stephen P. Kaufman, HBR

October 2008.)

It may sound trite, but how the company presents

itself in offi cial communications often signals the man-

agement style of top executives. In August 2006 the

Economist reported that Arijit Chatterjee and Donald

Hambrick, of Pennsylvania State University, had devised

a narcissism index on which to rate 105 company bosses,

based on the prominence of the CEO’s photo in the an-

nual report, his or her prominence in press releases, the

frequency of the fi rst person singular in interviews with

the CEO, and his or her compensation relative to that of

the fi rm’s second-highest-paid executive.

Finally, you need to look not only at what you and oth-

ers are doing but also at what you aren’t doing. The man-

agers of one European investment bank told me that they

measure performance by the outcomes of deals they’ve

turned down as well as by the outcomes of deals they’ve

won. If the ones they’ve rejected turn out to be lemons,

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The Limits of Financial Data

those rejections count as successes. This kind of analysis

seems obvious once stated, but I’ve noticed a persistent

bias in all of us to focus on what we do over what we don’t

do. Good management is about making choices, so a de-

cision not to do something should be analyzed as closely

as a decision to do something.

Trap 3: Putting Your Faith in Numbers

Good or bad, the metrics in your performance assess-

ment package all come as numbers. The problem is that

numbers-driven managers often end up producing

reams of low-quality data. Think about how companies

collect feedback on service from their customers. It’s well

known to statisticians that if you want evaluation forms

to tell the real story, the anonymity of the respondents

must be protected. Yet out of a desire to gather as much

information as possible at points of contact, companies

routinely ask customers to include personal data, and

in many cases the employees who provided the service

watch them fi ll out the forms. How surprised should you

be if your employees hand in consistently favorable forms

that they themselves collected? Bad assessments have a

tendency to mysteriously disappear.

Numbers-driven companies also gravitate toward the

most popular measures. If they’re looking to compare

themselves with other companies, they feel they should

use whatever measures others use. The question of what

measure is the right one gets lost. Take Frederick Reich-

held’s widely used Net Promoter Score, which measures

the likelihood that customers will recommend a product

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The Five Traps of Performance Measurement

or service. The NPS is a useful indicator only if recom-

mendations play the dominant role in a purchase deci-

sion; as its critics point out, customers’ propensity to

switch in response to recommendations varies from in-

dustry to industry, so an NPS is probably more important

to, say, a baby-food manufacturer than to an electricity

supplier.

Similar issues arise about the much touted link be-

tween employee satisfaction and profi tability. The

Employee-Customer-Profi t Chain pioneered by Sears

suggests that more-satisfi ed employees produce more-

satisfi ed customers, who in turn deliver higher profi ts. If

that’s true, the path is clear: Keep your employees con-

tent and watch those profi ts soar. But employees may be

satisfi ed mainly because they like their colleagues (think

lawyers) or because they’re highly paid and deferred to

(think investment bankers). Or they may actually enjoy

what they do, but their customers value price above the

quality of service (think budget airlines).

A particular bugbear of mine is the application of fi -

nancial metrics to nonfi nancial activities. Anxious to jus-

tify themselves rather than be outsourced, many service

functions (such as IT, HR, and legal) try to devise a return

on investment number to help their cause. Indeed, ROI

is often described as the holy grail of measurement—a

revealing metaphor, with its implication of an almost

certainly doomed search.

Suppose an HR manager undertakes to assign an ROI

number to an executive training program. Typically, he

or she would ask program participants to identify a ben-

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The Limits of Financial Data

efi t, assign a dollar value to it, and estimate the probabil-

ity that the benefi t came from the program. So a benefi t

that is worth $70,000 and has a 50% probability of be-

ing linked to the program means a program benefi t of

$35,000. If the program cost $25,000, the net benefi t is

$10,000—a 40% ROI.

Think about this for a minute. How on earth can the

presumed causal link be justifi ed? By a statement like “I

learned a production algorithm at the program and then

applied it”? Assessing any serious executive program

requires a much more sophisticated and qualitative ap-

proach. First you have to specify ahead of time the needs

of the program’s stakeholders—participants, line manag-

ers, and sponsors—and make sure that the syllabus meets

your organizational and talent management objectives.

Once the program has ended, you have to look beyond

immediate evaluations to at least six months after par-

ticipants return to the workplace; their personal feed-

back should be incorporated in the next annual company

performance review. At the soft drinks company Britvic,

HR assesses its executive coaching program by tracking

coachees for a year afterward, comparing their career

trajectories with those of people who didn’t get coached.

Trap 4: Gaming Your Metrics

In 2002 a leaked internal memo from associates at Clif-

ford Chance, one of the world’s largest law fi rms, con-

tended that pressure to deliver billable hours had en-

couraged its lawyers to pad their numbers and created an

incentive to allocate to senior associates work that could

be done by less expensive junior associates.

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The Five Traps of Performance Measurement

Lawyers aren’t the only ones: A number of promi-

nent companies have been caught trying to manipulate

their numbers. Since 2004 Royal Dutch Shell has paid

$470 million to settle lawsuits relating to its overstate-

ment of reserves. Morgan Stanley was reportedly willing

to lose €20 million on a securities trade for the Finnish

government just before closing its books for 2004 in or-

der to improve its position in the league table for global

equity capital market rankings.

You can’t prevent people from gaming numbers, no

matter how outstanding your organization. The moment

you choose to manage by a metric, you invite your man-

agers to manipulate it. Metrics are only proxies for per-

formance. Someone who has learned how to optimize a

metric without actually having to perform will often do

just that. To create an effective performance measure-

ment system, you have to work with that fact rather than

resort to wishful thinking and denial.

It helps to diversify your metrics, because it’s a lot

harder to game several of them at once. Clifford Chance

replaced its single metric of billable hours with seven

criteria on which to base bonuses: respect and mentor-

ing, quality of work, excellence in client service, integ-

rity, contribution to the community, commitment to

diversity, and contribution to the fi rm as an institution.

Metrics should have varying sources (colleagues, bosses,

customers) and time frames. Mehrdad Baghai and coau-

thors described in “Performance Measures: Calibrating

for Growth” ( Journal of Business Strategy, July–August

1999) how the Japanese telecommunications company

SoftBank measured performance along three time ho-

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The Limits of Financial Data

rizons. Horizon 1 covered actions relevant to extend-

ing and defending core businesses, and metrics were

based on current income and cash fl ow statements. Ho-

rizon 2 covered actions taken to build emerging busi-

nesses; metrics came from sales and marketing numbers.

Horizon 3 covered creating opportunities for new busi-

nesses; success was measured through the attainment

of preestablished milestones. Multiple levels like those

make gaming far more complicated and far less likely to

succeed.

You can also vary the boundaries of your measurement,

by defi ning responsibility more narrowly or by broaden-

ing it. To reduce delays in gate-closing time, Southwest

Airlines, which had traditionally applied a metric only

to gate agents, extended it to include the whole ground

team—ticketing staff, gate staff, and loaders—so that

everyone had an incentive to cooperate.

Finally, you should loosen the link between meeting

budgets and performance; far too many bonuses are

awarded on that basis. Managers may either pad their

budgets to make meeting them easier or pare them down

too far to impress their bosses. Both practices can de-

stroy value. Some companies get around the problem by

giving managers leeway. The offi ce supplier Staples, for

example, lets them exceed their budgets if they can dem-

onstrate that doing so will lead to improved service for

customers. When I was a CFO, I offered scope for budget

revisions during the year, usually in months three and

six. Another way of providing budget fl exibility is to set

ranges rather than specifi c numbers as targets.

148

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The Five Traps of Performance Measurement

Trap 5: Sticking to Your Numbers

Too Long

As the saying goes, you manage what you measure. Unfor-

tunately, performance assessment systems seldom evolve

as fast as businesses do. Smaller and growing companies

are especially likely to fall into this trap. In the earliest

stages, performance is all about survival, cash resources,

and growth. Comparisons are to last week, last month,

and last year. But as the business matures, the focus has

to move to profi t and the comparisons to competitors.

It’s easy to spot the need for change after things have

gone wrong, but how can you evaluate your measures be-

fore they fail you? The answer is to be very precise about

what you want to assess, be explicit about what metrics

are assessing it, and make sure that everyone is clear

about both.

In looking for a measure of customer satisfaction,

the British law fi rm Addleshaw Booth (now Addleshaw

Goddard) discovered from a survey that its clients val-

ued responsiveness most, followed by proactiveness and

commercial-mindedness. Most fi rms would interpret

this fi nding to mean they needed to be as quick as pos-

sible. Addleshaw Booth’s managers dug deeper into the

data to understand more exactly what “responsiveness”

meant. What they found was that they needed to dif-

ferentiate between clients. “One size does not fi t all,” an

employee told me. “Being responsive for some clients

means coming back to them in two hours; for others, it’s

10 minutes.”

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The Limits of Financial Data

The point is that if you specify the indicator precisely

and loudly, everyone can more easily see when it’s not fi t

for the purpose. The credit-rating agencies have come un-

der attack because they gave AAA ratings to so many bor-

rowers who turned out to be bad risks. The agencies have

argued in their own defense that lenders misunderstood

what the ratings meant. The AAA rating, they claim, was

awarded on the basis of borrowers’ credit records, and

it described the likelihood of default under normal mar-

ket conditions; it did not factor in what might happen

in the event of a massive shock to the fi nancial system.

Reasonable as this explanation may be, it is no conso-

lation to those who thought they knew what the magic

AAA represented.

Why do organizations that excel in so many other ways

fall into these traps? Because the people managing per-

formance frameworks are generally not experts in per-

formance measurement. Finance managers are profi -

cient at tracking expenses, monitoring risks, and raising

capital, but they seldom have a grasp of how operating

realities connect with performance. They are precisely

the people who strive to reduce judgments to a single

ROI number. The people who understand performance

are line managers—who, of course, are crippled by con-

fl icts of interest.

A really good assessment system must bring fi nance

and line managers into some kind of meaningful dia-

logue that allows the company to benefi t from both the

relative independence of the former and the expertise of

150

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The Five Traps of Performance Measurement

the latter. This sounds straightforward enough, but as

anyone who’s ever worked in a real business knows, actu-

ally doing it is a rather tall order. Then again, who says

the CEO’s job is supposed to be easy?

Andrew Likierman is the dean of London Business School,

a nonexecutive director of Barclays Bank, and the chair-

man of the UK’s National Audit Offi ce.

151

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Finance Quiz

How Much Have You Learned?

Now it’s time to retake the fi nance quiz that appeared in

the fi rst part of this guide. It will give you an indication

of what you’ve learned and what you might need to study

up on. The answers follow.

1. The income statement measures:

a. Profi tability

b. Assets and liabilities

c. Cash

d. All of the above

2. A sale on credit ends up on the income statement

as revenue and as what on the balance sheet?

a. Accounts receivable

b. Long-term assets

c. Short-term

liability

d. Operating cash fl ow

153

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The Limits of Financial Data

3. What happens when a company is profi table but

collection lags behind payments to vendors?

a. The company is OK because profi ts always

become cash

b. The company stands a good chance of run-

ning out of money

c. The company needs to shift its focus to EBIT

d. The cash fl ow statement will show a negative

bottom line

4. How is gross profi t margin calculated?

a. COGS/revenue

b. Gross profi t/net profi t

c. Gross

profi t/revenue

d. Sales/gross profi t

5. Which statement summarizes changes to parts of

the balance sheet?

a. Income statement

b. Cash fl ow statement

c. Neither of the above

d. Both of the above

6. EBIT is an important measure in companies

because:

a. It is free cash fl ow

b. It subtracts interest and taxes from net in-

come to get a truer picture of the business

c. It indicates the profi tability of a company’s

operations

d. It is the key measure of earnings before indi-

rect costs and transfers

154

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Finance Quiz: How Much Have You Learned?

7. Operating expenses include all of the following

except:

a. Advertising costs

b. Administrative salaries

c. Expensed research and development costs

d. Delivery of raw materials

8. Owners’ equity in a company increases when the

company:

a. Increases its assets with debt

b. Decreases its debt by paying off loans with

company cash

c. Increases its profi t

d. All of the above

9. A company has more cash today when:

a. Customers pay their bills sooner

b. Accounts receivable increases

c. Profi t increases

d. Retained earnings increases

10. Which of the following is not part of working

capital?

a. Accounts receivable

b. Inventory

c. Property, plant, and equipment

d. All of the above are part of working capital

Answers to the Finance Quiz

1. a. Profi tability is measured by the income

statement. Assets and liabilities are measured

155

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The Limits of Financial Data

by the balance sheet, cash by the cash fl ow

statement.

2. a. A sale on credit means that the customer

owes you for the amount of the purchase. That

debt is an asset, and it appears under accounts

receivable on the balance sheet.

3. b. If you’re not collecting receivables as fast

as you are paying vendors, you will need more

and more working capital as the company

grows—and if you can’t fi nd it, you will run

out of money. EBIT is just another measure

of profi tability, which doesn’t determine cash

fl ow. And the cash fl ow statement’s bottom line

depends on many factors, not just receivables

and payables.

4. c. Gross profi t is revenue minus COGS (cost of

goods sold). Gross profi t margin shows gross

profi t as a percentage of revenue, so just divide

gross profi t by revenue and convert to a percent.

5. d. On the income statement, net profi t adds to

the retained earnings line on the balance sheet

after dividends are paid. On the cash fl ow

statement, the line items refl ect cash-related

differences between two balance sheets. Both

statements thus summarize changes to the bal-

ance sheet.

6. c. EBIT, or operating profi t, shows a com-

pany’s profi tability without regard to how the

156

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Finance Quiz: How Much Have You Learned?

company is fi nanced (which affects interest

expense) or the taxes it may owe. EBIT is not

free cash fl ow. And it actually adds back in in-

terest and taxes to get that picture of operating

profi tability. EBIT does not stand for earnings

before indirect costs and transfers.

7.

d. Delivery of raw materials is part of COGS

(cost of goods sold), not operating expenses.

Advertising, administrative, and expensed re-

search and development costs are all operating

expenses.

8. c. One element of owners’ equity is retained

earnings, meaning profi ts not distributed to

shareholders as dividends. Increasing prof-

its helps to build owners’ equity through the

retained earnings line. Using cash to pay debt

or increasing debt and adding assets with that

debt does not change equity.

9. a. It isn’t until the customer actually pays its

bill that a company’s cash increases. Accounts

receivable indicates future cash fl ows, not cur-

rent ones. Neither profi t nor retained earnings

affects how soon a company gets its cash.

10. c. Working capital is current assets minus cur-

rent liabilities. Property, plant, and equipment

is not a current asset; rather, it represents

long-term investments in the business.

157

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H5971.indb 158

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Glossary

Accounts Payable. A category of balance-sheet liabilities

representing funds owed by the company to suppliers

and other short-term creditors.

Accounts Receivable. A category of balance-sheet assets

representing funds owed to the company by customers

and others.

Accrual Accounting. An accounting practice that records

transactions as they occur, whether or not cash trades

hands.

Allocations. See indirect costs.

Assets. The balance-sheet items in which a company in-

vests so that it can conduct business. Examples include

cash and fi nancial instruments, inventories of raw mate-

rials and fi nished goods, land, buildings, and equipment.

Adapted from Harvard Business Essentials: Finance for Managers

(product #8768), Harvard Business Review Press, 2002

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Glossary

Assets also include funds owed to the company by cus-

tomers and others—an asset category referred to as ac-

counts receivable.

Balance Sheet. A fi nancial statement that describes the

assets owned by the business and how those assets are

fi nanced—with the funds of creditors (liabilities), the eq-

uity of the owners, or both. Also known as the statement

of fi nancial position.

Book Value of Shareholder Equity. A balance-sheet valu-

ation method that calculates value as total assets less to-

tal liabilities.

Breakeven Analysis. A form of analysis that helps deter-

mine how much (or how much more) a company needs

to sell in order to pay for the fi xed investment—in other

words, at what point the company will break even on its

cash fl ow.

Budget. A document that translates strategic plans into

measurable quantities that express the expected re-

sources required and anticipated returns over a certain

period. It functions as an action plan and presents the es-

timated future fi nancial statements of the organization.

Burden. See indirect costs.

Cash Flow Statement. A fi nancial statement that details

the reasons for changes in cash (and cash equivalents)

during the accounting period. More specifi cally, it re-

fl ects all changes in cash relating to operating activities,

investments, and fi nancing.

160

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Glossary

Common Stock. A security that represents a fractional

ownership interest in the corporation that issued it.

Contribution Margin. In cost accounting, the contribu-

tion by each unit of production to overhead and profi ts,

or net revenue less direct cost per unit.

Cost/Benefi t Analysis. A form of analysis that evaluates

whether, over a given time frame, the benefi ts of a new

investment or business opportunity will outweigh the as-

sociated costs.

Cost of Capital. The opportunity cost that shareholders

and lenders could earn on their capital if they invested in

the next-best opportunity available to them at the same

level of risk, calculated as the weighted average cost of

the organization’s different sources of capital.

Cost of Goods Sold (COGS). On the income statement,

what it costs a company to produce its goods and ser-

vices. This fi gure at a minimum includes raw materials

and direct labor costs.

Current Assets. Assets that are most easily converted to

cash: cash, cash equivalents such as certifi cates of de-

posit and U.S. Treasury bills, receivables, and inventory.

Under generally accepted accounting principles, current

assets are those that can be converted into cash within

one year.

Current Liabilities. Liabilities that must be paid in a year

or less; these typically include short-term loans, salaries,

income taxes, and accounts payable.

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Glossary

Current Ratio. Current assets divided by current liabili-

ties. This ratio is often used as a measure of a company’s

ability to meet currently maturing obligations.

Days Receivables Outstanding. The average time it takes

to collect on sales.

Debt Ratio. The ratio of debt to either assets or equity in

a company’s fi nancial structure.

Depreciation. A noncash charge that effectively reduces

the balance sheet value of an asset over its useful life.

Direct Costs. Cost incurred as a direct consequence of

producing a good or service—as opposed to overhead, or

indirect costs.

Discounted Cash Flow (DCF). A method based on time-

value-of-money concepts that calculates value by fi nding

the present value of a business’s future cash fl ows.

Discount Rate. The annual rate, expressed as a percent-

age, at which a future payment or series of payments is

reduced to its present value.

Dividend. A distribution of after-tax corporate earnings

to shareholders.

Earnings Before Interest and Taxes (EBIT). See operating

earnings.

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Glossary

Earnings Per Share (EPS). A company’s net earnings di-

vided by the total number of shares outstanding.

Economic Value Added (EVA). A measure of real eco-

nomic profi t calculated as net operating income after tax

less the cost of the capital employed to obtain it.

Equity Book Value. The value of total assets less total

liabilities.

Financial Leverage. The degree to which borrowed

money is used in acquiring assets. A corporation is said

to be highly leveraged when its balance-sheet debt is

much greater than its owners’ equity.

Fixed Assets. Assets that are diffi cult to convert to cash—

for example, buildings and equipment. Sometimes called

plant assets.

Future Value (FV). The amount to which a present value,

or series of payments, will increase over a specifi c period

at a specifi c compounding rate.

Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP). In the

United States, a body of conventions, rules, and proce-

dures sanctioned by the Financial Accounting Standards

Board, an independent, self-regulating body. All entities

must follow GAAP in accounting for transactions and

representing their results in fi nancial statements.

163

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Glossary

Goodwill. If a company has purchased another company

for a price in excess of the fair market value of its assets,

that “goodwill” is recorded on the balance sheet as an as-

set. Goodwill may represent intangible things such as

the acquired company’s reputation, its customer list, its

brand names, and its patents.

Gross Profi t Margin. Sales revenue less cost of goods sold,

expressed as a percentage of revenue. The roughest mea-

sure of profi tability. Also referred to as gross margin.

Hurdle Rate. The minimal rate of return that all invest-

ments for a particular enterprise must achieve.

Income Statement. A fi nancial statement that indicates

the cumulative fi nancial results of operations over a spec-

ifi ed period. Also referred to as the profi t-and-loss state-

ment, or P&L.

Indirect Costs. Costs that cannot be attributed to the

production of any particular unit of output. Often re-

ferred to as overhead, allocations, or burden.

Interest Coverage Ratio. Earnings before interest and

taxes divided by interest expense. Creditors use this ratio

to gauge a company’s ability to make future interest pay-

ments in the face of fl uctuating operating results.

Internal Rate of Return (IRR). The discount rate at which

the net present value of an investment equals zero.

164

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Glossary

Inventory. The supplies, raw materials, components,

and so forth, that a company uses in its operations. It

also includes work in process—goods in various stages of

production—as well as fi nished goods waiting to be sold

and/or shipped.

Inventory Turnover. Cost of goods sold divided by aver-

age inventory.

Liability. A claim against a company’s assets.

Liquidity. The extent to which a company’s assets can

readily be turned into cash for meeting incoming obli-

gations.

Net Earnings. See net income.

Net Income. The “bottom line” of the income statement.

Net income is revenues less expenses less taxes. Also re-

ferred to as net earnings or net profi ts.

Net Present Value (NPV). The present value of one or

more future cash fl ows less any initial investment costs.

Net Profi ts. See net income.

Net Working Capital. Current assets less current liabili-

ties; the amount of money a company has tied up in

short-term operating activities.

165

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Glossary

Operating Budget. A projected target for performance in

revenues, expenses, and operating income.

Operating Earnings. On the income statement, gross

margin less operating expenses and depreciation. Often

called earnings before interest and taxes, or EBIT.

Operating Expense. On the income statement, a category

that includes administrative expenses, employee salaries,

rents, sales and marketing costs, and other costs of busi-

ness not directly attributed to the cost of manufacturing

a product.

Operating Leverage. The extent to which a company’s op-

erating costs are fi xed versus variable. For example, a com-

pany that relies heavily on machinery and uses very few

workers to produce its goods has a high operating leverage.

Operating Margin. A fi nancial ratio used by many ana-

lysts to gauge the profi tability of a company’s operating

activities. It is calculated as earnings before interest and

taxes (EBIT) divided by net sales.

Overhead. See indirect costs.

Owners’ Equity. What, if anything, is left over after total

liabilities are deducted from total assets. Owners’ equity

is the sum of capital contributed by owners plus the com-

pany’s total retained earnings over time. Also known as

shareholders’ equity.

166

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Glossary

Payback Period. The length of time it will take a particu-

lar investment to pay for itself.

Plant Assets. See fi xed assets.

Present Value (PV). The monetary value today of a fu-

ture payment discounted at some annual compound in-

terest rate.

Profi t-and-Loss Statement (P&L). See income statement.

Profi t Margin. The percentage of every dollar of sales that

makes it to the bottom line. Profi t margin is net income

after tax divided by net sales. Sometimes called return

on sales, or ROS.

Retained Earnings. Annual net profi ts left after payment

of dividends that accumulate on a company’s balance

sheet.

Return on Assets (ROA). Relates net income to the com-

pany’s total asset base and is calculated as net income di-

vided by total assets.

Return on Equity (ROE). Relates net income to the

amount invested by shareholders (both initially and

through retained earnings). It is a measure of the pro-

ductivity of the shareholders’ stake in the business and is

calculated as net income divided by shareholders’ equity.

Return on Sales (ROS). See profi t margin.

167

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Glossary

Revenue. The amount of money that results from selling

products or services to customers.

Shareholders’ Equity. See owners’ equity.

Solvency. A situation in which a company’s assets out-

weigh its liabilities—that is, owners’ equity is positive.

Statement of Financial Position. See balance sheet.

Variance. The difference between actual and expected

results in the budget. A variance can be favorable, when

the actual results are better than expected, or unfavor-

able, when the actual results are worse than expected.

Working Capital. See net working capital.

168

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Index

AAA ratings, 150

historical cost and, 13, 15–16

ABB, 134–135

liabilities on, 10, 11, 13

accounting practices, 129–130

owner’s equity on, 13

accounting return on invest-

sample, 14

ment, 115–117

use of, 16–20

accounts payable, 10, 36

Bank of America, 129

accounts receivable, 10, 35–36,

Barron’s, 97, 100, 101

84, 87–90

benchmarks, 141

accumulated depreciation, 12

benefi ts, nonquantifi able,

acid test, 47–48

122–123

Addleshaw Booth, 149

Berman, Karen, 2

Alcoa Packaging Machinery,

big-picture perspective, 35,

38–39

37–39

annual reports, 29

Blenko, Marcia, 134

Apple, 17, 138

book value, 10, 12, 132

assets, 10–13

BP, 128, 133–134

current, 12, 96

brands, 59–60

fi xed, 12

breakeven analysis, 105, 109,

human, 15

118–120

value of, 131

budgets, management of, 24

velocity of, 36–37

Business Literacy Institute, 2, 5

asset turnover, 46, 64

auto industry, 137

Canon, 137–138

Avon Products, 142

capital

contributed, 13

Baghai, Mehrdad, 147

human, 15

Bain & Company, 65, 134

paid-in, 13

balance sheets, 9, 10–20, 30,

working, 16–17, 87–88, 92–93,

41, 133

95–103

assets on, 10–13

capital expenditures, 74

H5971.indb 169

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Index

cash

customer credit, 85, 89–90

change in, 28

customer focus, 64–65, 68–71

importance of, 83–86

customer segmentation, 65

net, 73

customer service, 88–89

profi t and, 73–82

cash fl ow, 34–36, 73–86

days in inventory (DII), 47, 51

discounted, 105, 109–110

days payable outstanding

modeling, 106–111

(DPO), 46–47

cash fl ow statements, 9, 25–29,

days sales outstanding (DSO),

30, 41, 133

46, 87–90

components of, 26–28

DCF. See discounted cash fl ow

importance of understanding,

(DCF)

83–86

debt-to-equity ratio, 19–20,

sample, 26

48–49

use of, 29

decision making, 82, 143

cash generation, 34–36

Dell Computer, 17, 37

Charan, Ram, 33–39

depreciation, 12, 22, 27, 130

chief executive offi cers (CEOs),

DII. See days in inventory (DII)

143

discounted cash fl ow (DCF),

Christensen, Clayton M., 138

105, 109–110

Clifford Chance, 146, 147

disruptive innovation, 138

competitive advantage, 49

Dow Corning, 65

competitors, 136–137, 141

Dow Jones & Company, 96–103

consolidation, of production,

Dow Jones Financial Informa-

60–61

tion Services, 99

contributed capital, 13

DowVision, 98–99

contribution margin, 119–120

DPO. See days payable outstand-

cost/benefi t analysis, 114–115

ing (DPO)

cost of goods sold (COGS), 21

costs

earnings

fi xed, 118

net, 21

nonquantifi able, 122–123

operating, 22

shared, 58

retained, 13

variable, 118–119

earnings before interest and

credit, 85

taxes (EBIT), 22, 45

credit managers, 89–90

earnings per share (EPS), 53–54

current assets, 12, 96

economic order quantity

current liabilities, 13, 96

(EOQ), 91

current ratio, 47

economic value added (EVA), 54

customer attitudes, 135–136,

Effron, Marc, 142

141–142, 149

employee engagement, 134

170

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7/16/12 10:15 AM

Index

employee satisfaction, 145

fi nancing activities, 26–28

engineers, 92

fi rms

Enterprise Rent-A-Car, 141

comparison of, 52

EPS. See earnings per share

fi nancial structure of, 19–20

(EPS)

nonfi nancial health of,

equal risk, 117

133–135

EVA. See economic value added

solvent, 28

(EVA)

upstarts, 136–137

expenses, 21

valuation of, 51–54

deferring, 84

fi xed assets, 12

operating, 22, 24

fi xed costs, 118

revenue and, 74

Form 10-K, 31

fraud, 129

Factiva, 99, 100, 101

fundamental accounting equa-

Finance Quiz, 5–7, 153–157

tion, 11

fi nancial health, measures of,

43–55

General Electric (GE), 37,

fi nancial leverage, 18–19

131–132

fi nancial ratios, 43

goodwill, 12–13, 15

earnings per share (EPS),

Goodyear Tire & Rubber Com-

53–54

pany, 68–71

leverage ratios, 48–49, 51

Gottfredson, Mark, 65

limits of, 144–146

gross profi t, 21

liquidity ratios, 47–49, 51

gross profi t margin, 45

operating ratios, 45–47, 50–51

Groupe Danone, 66–68

price-to-earnings (P/E)

growth, 34

ratio, 54

growth indicators, 54

profi tability ratios, 44–45, 50

fi nancial statements, 9–31

Harper, Garry, 38–39

analysis of, 43–55

historical cost, 13, 15–16

balance sheet, 9, 10–20,

Humana, 142–143

30, 41

human capital, 15

cash fl ow statement, 9,

25–29, 30, 41

income

income statement, 9, 20–25,

See also profi t

30, 41

net, 20, 21

limits of, 125, 127–138

income statements, 9, 20–25,

manipulation of, 129–130

30, 41, 133

translating into words, 53

components of, 20–22

where to fi nd, 29, 31

multiyear comparisons,

fi nancial structure, 19–20

22–23, 25

171

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Index

income statements ( continued)

market capitalization (market

vs. ROI analysis, 106, 108

cap), 131–132

sample, 21

market value, 15–16

use of, 23–25

MarketWatch.com, 99–100

intangibles, 12–13, 15, 132

“mark to market” accounting,

interest, 22

131

interest coverage, 48

Merrill Lynch, 127, 131

internal rate of return (IRR),

Meyer, Danny, 142

105, 110–111

moneymaking, measures of,

inventory, 16–17, 84

34–37

inventory days, 47, 51

Morgan Stanley, 147

inventory management, 90–93

multiperiod income statement,

inventory turns, 37

22–23, 25

investing activities, 26, 28

Murdoch, Rupert, 101–102

IRR. See internal rate of return

(IRR)

Navistar, 68

negative working capital,

just-in-time inventory manage-

96–103

ment, 91

net cash, 73

net earnings, 21

Knight, Joe, 2

net income, 20, 21

Kremer, Chuck, 36, 37

net income per employee, 55

Kroeger, Thomas, 38

net present value (NPV), 110

net profi t, 21, 27, 36, 41, 73

laws of business, 33–39

net profi t margin, 44–45

lean manufacturing, 90–91

Net Promoter Score (NPS),

LEGO, 136

144–145

leverage

net value, 54

fi nancial, 18–19

net working capital, 16

operating, 18, 120–121

net worth, 10

leverage ratios, 48–49, 51

NewsPlus, 99

liabilities, 10, 11, 13, 96

New Talent Management Net-

current, 13, 96

work, 142

long-term, 13

New York Times, 102

liquidity ratios, 47–48, 49, 51

Nokia, 138

long-term liabilities, 13

nonfi nancial health, 133–135

nonquantifi able benefi ts/costs,

managerial decision making,

122–123

143

North American Tire (NAT),

Mankins, Michael, 134

69–71

172

H5971.indb 172

7/16/12 10:15 AM

Index

NPV. See net present value

profi tability, 44

(NPV)

analysis of, 58–59

employee satisfaction and,

Offi ce Depot, 38

145

operating activities, 26–28

increasing, 57–61

operating cash fl ow, 73

profi tability ratios, 44–45, 50

operating earnings, 22

profi t and loss (P&L), manage-

operating expenses, 22, 24

ment of, 24–25

operating leverage, 18, 120–121

profi t and loss statement (P&L).

operating margin, 45

See income statements

operating profi t, 22

profi t margin, 20, 35

operating ratios, 45–47, 50–51

gross, 45

operations, 26

net, 44–45

operations managers, 88

property, plant, and equipment,

owner, thinking like an, 37–39

12

owner’s equity, 10, 11, 13, 131,

The Publications Library (Dow

132

Jones), 99

paid-in capital, 13

quarterly reports, 29

Parmalat, 129

quick ratio, 47–48

past-year comparisons, 142–144

payback period, 109, 117

ratio analysis, 43–51

P/E ratio, 54

ratios. See fi nancial ratios

performance measurement,

receivable days, 46

139–151

research and development

performance tracking, 123–124

(R&D) managers, 88

performance trends, 49–50

retained earnings, 13

personal computers (PCs), 17

return on assets (ROA), 36–

plant managers, 93

37, 44

price-to-earnings ratio (P/E), 54

return on equity (ROE), 44

production, consolidation of,

return on invested capital

60–61

(ROIC), 63–64

production departments, 92

return on investment (ROI),

productivity measures, 55

105–111, 115–117, 145–146

product mix, 59–60, 64

return on sales (ROS), 44–

profi t

45, 50

cash and, 73–82

revenues, 20

gross, 21

generation of, 23

net, 21, 27, 36, 41, 73

recording of, 73–74

operating, 22

risk, 117

173

H5971.indb 173

7/16/12 10:15 AM

Index

ROA. See return on assets

solvency, 28

(ROA)

Sorkin, Andrew Ross, 2

ROE. See return on equity

stock-keeping units (SKUs),

(ROE)

58–60, 64

Rogers, Paul, 134

streamlining, 57–61

ROI. See return on investment

supply chain management,

(ROI)

63–71

ROIC. See return on invested

capital (ROIC)

taxes, 22

ROS. See return on sales (ROS)

10-K reports, 31

Royal Dutch Shell, 147

top executives, 143

trends, 52

safety issues, 133–134

sales, 20

upstarts, 137–138

growth, 34

recording of, 73–74

valuation, 51–54, 131–132

sales, expenses, and assets

variable costs, 118–119

(SEA), 36, 37

velocity, 36–37

salespeople, 91–92

sales per employee, 55

Wall Street Journal, 96–99, 101

Schaubert, Steve, 65

Welch, Jack, 33

Sears, 145

working capital, 16–17, 87–88,

Securities and Exchange Com-

92–93, 95–103

mission (SEC), 29

shared costs, 58

Xerox, 137–138

Slim, Carlos, 102

SoftBank, 147–148

Zannino, Rich, 100

174

H5971.indb 174

7/16/12 10:15 AM

Notes

H5971.indb 175

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Notes

H5971.indb 176

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Notes

H5971.indb 177

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Notes

H5971.indb 178

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Notes

H5971.indb 179

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Notes

H5971.indb 180

7/16/12 10:15 AM

Notes

H5971.indb 181

7/16/12 10:15 AM

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What You’ll Learn

As a manager, you’re accountable for ensuring your

employees produce results that align with your organi-

zation’s needs. But traditional approaches to tracking

employee performance—while providing a dedicated

opportunity for employee feedback and evaluation—are

increasingly coming under fi re. Holding a performance

discussion once a year takes a lot of time and can cause

stress for you and your employees—and it doesn’t guar-

antee improvement. Organizations that use traditional

performance management to engage, motivate, and

develop their people are fi nding that those approaches

don’t achieve what they’re after. And annual cycles that

start with goal setting and culminate with a formal re-

view aren’t providing the agility you need from your em-

ployees in today’s fast-paced business environment.

What you need is an ongoing, more fl exible approach

—one that keeps the best of the traditional performance

management process but also incorporates new think-

ing and ideas. By following the advice in this guide, you’ll

discover new ways to fold managing performance into

your day-to-day work, so you’re monitoring employee

What You’ll Learn

progress, providing feedback, and offering opportunities

for growth on a regular basis while still meeting any an-

nual requirements your organization may have.

You’ll learn how to:

• Help your employees set fl exible goals that can

adapt with the organization

• Defi ne clear performance metrics and behavioral

expectations

• Provide ongoing feedback to stop performance

problems in their tracks

• Coach your people toward improvement

• Motivate your employees through recognition and

rewards

• Identify growth opportunities that align with indi-

vidual learning styles and preferences

• Consider development options outside the tradi-

tional promotional track

• Understand where formal appraisals are useful—

and where they fall short

• Go beyond a simple number when using perfor-

mance ratings

• Sidestep burnout on your team

• Manage the performance of employees who work

remotely

Contents

Introduction: Performance Management for

a New Age of Work

1

What changes to the process mean for you

as a manager.

SECTION ONE

Goal Setting

1. The Characteristics of Eff ective Goals

13

Make them clear and specifi c, achievable

but challenging.

2.

Defi ne Employee Goals—and Decide

How They’re Measured

21

Fit the needs of the individual and the

organization.

3. Collaborate with Your Employee to

Create a Plan for Moving Forward

33

Outline steps to accomplish objectives and

adjust as necessary.

Contents

SECTION TWO

Ongoing Performance Management

4. Assessing Performance Isn’t a Onetime Event

45

Note good and bad work, and identify root cause.

5. Make a Habit of Providing Feedback

57

Discuss your observations with your employee.

6. Coach Your Employees to Close

Performance Gaps

71

Ask questions to help them solve problems

and master new skills.

7. How to Keep Your Employees Motivated

83

Recognize good work, and encourage

progress.

SECTION THREE

Developing Employees

8. Understand Your Employee’s Wants

and Needs

99

Know what your direct report aspires to.

9. Expand Your Employee’s Skill Sets

111

Basic tactics to learn new areas of expertise.

10. Craft a Development Plan

125

Defi ne a specifi c path for future growth.

11. How to Develop Someone Who’s Struggling

135

Good performers aren’t the only ones who

need to grow.

viii

Contents

SECTION FOUR

Formal Performance Reviews

12. The Case Against (and for) Annual Appraisals

149

How companies are changing the way they

look at reviews.

13. Assess Performance, but Rethink Ratings

159

Take an individualized approach.

14. How to Conduct the Review Conversation

181

Tips and tricks for a productive discussion.

15. Defi ne New Goals for a New Cycle

195

Adjust objectives for continued growth.

SECTION FIVE

Tough Topics

16. Responding to the Steady Worker

201

What to do with your stalwarts.

17. Preventing Burnout on Your Team

207

Make sure your people aren’t running out

of steam.

18. Managing the Performance of Remote

Employees 217

From giving feedback to conducting annual

appraisals.

Sources 229

Index 237

ix

Introduction

Performance Management

for a New Age of Work

As a manager, you’re responsible for the output and pro-

ductivity of your team. But what steps should you take

to track performance, communicate effectively with your

direct reports, and encourage individual growth?

Performance management is an interconnected set

of tools used to measure and improve the effectiveness

of people in the workplace. High-performing organiza-

tions use performance management to achieve three

goals: to develop individuals’ skills and capabilities, to

reward all employees equitably, and to drive overall or-

ganizational performance. As a manager, you can cus-

tomize your performance management process to help

your team and employees deliver strong results for the

organization while helping them develop their profes-

sional aspirations.

1

Introduction

Specifi c approaches to performance management dif-

fer based on organizations’ strategies, values, and cul-

ture, but they typically include setting employee goals

and tracking progress against these objectives, providing

ongoing feedback and coaching, developing employees’

skills and strengths, and, often, formal evaluations. Many

elements of the process—assessing performance, giving

feedback, and development, for example—are ongoing.

Other activities, like goal setting and formal reviews,

have historically been calendar driven and cyclical.

But traditional performance management approaches

have come under fi re in recent years. Many business

leaders have begun to question the value of standard

processes and whether they are effective in achieving the

results they seek. With the growth of knowledge work,

the traditional annual performance review cycle can

seem like a rusty artifact ill-suited for today’s nimble or-

ganizations. But stepping away from performance man-

agement entirely—leaving employees without a process

for meeting their goals and managers without a method

for developing their employees—risks many errors,

missteps, and missed opportunities for growth. Some

organizations have begun to adjust and revise their per-

formance management processes, but even then, many

managers are left wondering how to ensure the results

and growth of their direct reports as more and more

pieces of the process are debated.

As formal approaches to performance management

evolve, managers must understand which elements of

traditional best practices they should keep in place and

which are fraught, which components of new processes

2

Performance Management for a New Age of Work

are working and which should be avoided. This guide

will introduce the essential elements of performance

management so you can adjust your own process to best

suit the needs of your company and your team, while

also providing you with the information you need to

under stand the conversations surrounding performance

management as it shifts to meet the needs of a changing,

more agile organization.

The Evolution of Performance

Management

The traditional process of managing performance began

as a system for assessing and maximizing the productiv-

ity of industrial workers in manufacturing fi rms. The

cycle generally began with the development of annual

goals for each employee; at the end of the year, people

were formally appraised based on how successfully they

achieved those objectives. Performance assessment was

based on straightforward, production-based metrics, so

evaluating employees against goals was usually clear-

cut: Did they produce the targeted number of units, with

few errors? Appraisals were usually linked to employee

ratings, which were used to calculate changes in com-

pensation for high-performing workers. Those rated as

low performing were often let go.

But processes originally developed to evaluate the

performance of individual contributors in industrial

fi rms and jobs in production don’t necessarily align with

the needs of today’s businesses that prize creativity and

innovation and those that are increasingly staffed by

knowledge workers and teams whose results aren’t so

3

Introduction

easy to measure. While the industrial model aimed to

reduce variation (in manufacturing errors, for example),

many organizations today aspire to innovate by increas-

ing variation. An individual’s appraisal, rating, and

compensation once rested on the completion of annual

goals—but today, those targets often become outdated

before the year is out. In response, some organizations

are embracing fl exibility and shorter-term goals that can

be modifi ed over the course of the year.

Metrics to gauge performance, too, have become more

complex: When an employee is dealing with ideas and

knowledge rather than easily countable units, assess-

ing performance against goals requires some ingenuity.

What’s more, with talent in shorter supply (and skills,

particularly technical ones, becoming obsolete quickly),

companies have used these metrics solely as a tool to

identify individuals to advance or reward—but their ac-

tions didn’t always result in better performance.

Many organizations now recognize that they need

performance management processes that are better

suited for their people and their needs. They want nim-

ble, fl exible instruments that can truly increase and ac-

curately measure performance. Some organizations are

shifting away from cyclical, calendar-based approaches

toward those based on more communication throughout

the year. Netfl ix, for example, eliminated formal evalu-

ations in favor of regular performance discussions and

informal 360-degree reviews, where people identify

what their colleagues should stop, start, or continue do-

ing either by supplying signed feedback or even taking

part in face-to-face team meetings. Others are holding

4

Performance Management for a New Age of Work

more-frequent reviews (often semiannually or quarterly)

and complementing them with increased dialogue be-

tween bosses and employees that involve ongoing check-

ins and opportunities for real-time feedback.

Some infl uential companies and business leaders are

reappraising the established performance management

approach—in some cases overhauling familiar processes

in innovative, even unprecedented, ways. Deloitte, for

example, conducted a public survey and found that 58%

of executives questioned felt that their current method of

managing performance neither drove employee engage-

ment nor promoted high performance.1 By focusing too

much on looking at past results, the process provided no

practical look to the future. With that in mind, Deloitte

created a new approach that removed traditional ele-

ments such as 360-degree feedback, casca ding objec-

tives, and once-a-year reviews and instead focused on

“performance snapshots,” in which an employee’s im-

mediate manager answers four future-focused questions

about an employee—essentially asking what they’d do

with the employee rather than what they think of the

individual.2

Companies are also discovering that a more indi-

vidualized plan may work better for their employees. A

different approach may be needed for, say, salaried pro-

fessional staff eligible for incentive pay than for hourly

employees. Some organizations are also taking steps

to broaden traditional processes to weigh how team-

mates’ contributions, in addition to system or organiza-

tional challenges, can signifi cantly infl uence individual

performance.

5

Introduction

These organizations are signaling that while tradi-

tional approaches may be less effective than they once

were, managers are still responsible for assessing their

teams’ work and output in one form or another. Few can

realistically afford to dismiss the process altogether—nor

should they.

Why Performance Management

(Still) Matters

Despite the arguments against it, routinizing the man-

agement of employee performance can help every orga-

nization and every manager make the most of its most

important resources—its people—so everyone benefi ts.

That’s because:

• Shareholders and investors observe better results

when people are working in unison toward key

goals.

• Supervisors are more successful when their reports

focus on the right tasks and projects—and do

them well.

• Employees appreciate focused goals, opportuni-

ties for career development, and recognition for

outstanding performance.

An effective performance management process—one

that takes into account how organizations are changing

—can still keep employees focused on meaningful goals

and offers managers a clear framework for apprais-

ing the quality of their people’s work. At the very least,

a calendar-based system—whether annual or more fre-

6

Performance Management for a New Age of Work

quent—guarantees that direct reports will have a chance

to discuss their work and get feedback from their man-

agers at predictable intervals during the course of the

year. (Managers can and should offer feedback more

frequently than that, but this is a start.) The perfor-

mance management cycle provides a logical time frame

and process for assessing the quality of employees’ work

and making compensation-related decisions, whether or

not companies stick with formal rating processes. And a

thoughtful performance management approach will of-

fer people opportunities to plan out learning and deve-

lopment efforts to boost their motivation and career sat-

isfaction for the long term.

It’s rare that an organization (or individual, for that

matter) can make real progress without setting and

working toward goals. And few companies can remain

competitive or retain their best people without offering

opportunities to grow. So as performance management

evolves, it’s important for managers to learn how to work

within those changing processes to ensure the growth of

their people and their contribution to their organization.

What’s Ahead

This guide will offer tools and best practices you can tai-

lor to manage your team’s performance while meeting

your organization’s needs and supporting your people in

today’s agile business world. Whether you’re looking to

improve on a traditional process, seeking a more fl exible

option, or creating an approach where none exists, you’ll

learn the basics of performance management, so you can

customize an approach that works for you.

7

Introduction

In section 1, we’ll explore employee goal setting: the

characteristics of effective goals, how individual and

organizational goals align, and how to develop metrics to

measure people’s progress toward their objectives. We’ll

also discuss creating specifi c plans for enabling direct re-

ports to meet those targets to ensure that you’ll be satis-

fi ed with progress. But because established goals may no

longer remain static over the course of a year, we’ll also

explain how to assess whether set goals are still valid—

and how to make changes as necessary.

In section 2, we’ll discuss the process of observing,

documenting, and improving performance throughout

the year. You’ll learn how to identify performance gaps

and assess why they occur, effectively coach and deliver

feedback, recognize good work, and motivate people to

do their best.

In section 3, we’ll address employee career develop-

ment: how to ensure that your people are growing pro-

fessionally. Regardless of how your organization’s formal

performance management process is run, employee de-

velopment efforts are becoming a focus of every manager

who wants to lead an engaged, high-performing team

and drive business. You’ll learn how to discover your

employees’ unique needs and ambitions, identify the tac-

tics available to your direct reports to build their skills,

determine a direction for growth, and create individual-

ized development plans to propel people forward—even

those who are struggling.

In section 4, we’ll delve into the details of formal per-

formance reviews. This section fi rst presents current

arguments for and against formal appraisals—and for

those who do conduct them, offers a detailed process for

8

Performance Management for a New Age of Work

success. We’ll help you navigate the practice of assessing

a direct report’s progress toward previously established

goals and show you how to put your appraisal in writ-

ing, including how to use ratings most effectively. We’ll

cover how to conduct the review session, from detailing

performance to preparing for the review period ahead.

In section 5, we’ll explore topics that managers strug-

gle with in performance management. We’ll begin by

explaining how to support and nurture your B players:

those who are neither ambitious standouts nor strugglers.

We’ll also discuss how to avoid burnout on your team—a

problem that tends to affect the most valuable, hardest-

working employees. Finally, you’ll learn how to man-

age the performance of remote employees you rarely (or

never) see in person.

While the rules of performance management are con-

stantly changing, the need to work effectively with your

employees and to encourage their success remains con-

stant. This book will help you better understand how

the landscape is changing, so you can adjust your own

behavior while managing your people’s performance and

meet the needs of your organization. By following the

advice in this guide, you’ll be able to master each part of

the process and make it an ongoing, fl exible, and effec-

tive part of your daily work.

NOTES

1. Deloitte Consulting LLP and Bersin by Deloitte, “Global Human

Capital Trends 2014: Engaging the 21st-Century Workforce,” Deloitte

University Press, 2014.

2. Marcus Buckingham and Ashley Goodall, “Reinventing Perfor-

mance Management,” Harvard Business Review, April 2015 (product

#R1504B).

9

SECTION ONE

Goal Setting

CHAPTER 1

The Characteristics

of Eff ective Goals

Setting clear goals is the starting point of managing

performance. Goals defi ne the results that your people

should aim to achieve in a given period of time. When

you work with your employees to establish targets, you

help ensure that their time and energy will be spent on

the things that matter most to them—and to your or-

ganization. Doing so enhances motivation, provides ac-

countability, and boosts performance.

Agreeing on specifi c targets is only part of the goal-

setting process, however. You must also defi ne how your

employee’s progress toward these objectives will be eval-

uated and how to measure results and gauge behavioral

expectations. Defi ning this information at the outset will

make assessing performance easier for you later, and

your employees will have a clear understanding of how

to proceed throughout the year.

13

Goal Setting

You will work with your people directly to craft a set

of goals that are suitable for them. Before jumping into a

goal-setting discussion, though, you need to know what

characteristics goals should have and where to draw po-

tential targets from. Finally, you must understand how

challenging to make these objectives.

Attributes of Well-Defi ned Goals

Most managers are familiar with the SMART acronym,

a set of fi ve criteria that goals should meet: They should

be specifi c, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-

bound. These fi ve traits can be used to assess whether

a goal statement has been constructed properly —like

a spell-checker that can fl ag any misspelled words. But

simply passing a SMART test isn’t enough to make an

objective valuable to your company or employees. A goal

can be SMART without being important, challenging, or

congruent with unit or organizational strategy.

Instead, consider different criteria. Effective goals

must be:

• Aligned with organizational strategy and benefi -

cial to the company. They focus your people’s

time, energy, and resources on the work that

matters most.

• Specifi c and measurable. Spelling out the details

of what your employee plans to achieve ensures

that both of you will know when they have reached

their goal.

14

The Characteristics of Eff ective Goals

•

Framed in time, with clear deadlines. Including a

target date for reaching a goal increases the likeli-

hood that your employee will meet it.

• Achievable but challenging. Stretch goals that

require individuals to reach can be energizing.

• Future focused. They should be geared toward im-

proving current performance and spurring future

growth.

• Tailored to the individual. When people are

involved in setting objectives, they feel a valuable

sense of ownership—and they’ll naturally be more

committed to things they own.

• Documented but not forgotten. Most organiza-

tions require that each employee’s targets be

written down, but too often, once they’re fi led away,

they can fall off the radar till the next goal-setting

meeting. Keeping these objectives front of mind

and regularly assessing progress will prevent them

from getting buried in day-to-day work.

These characteristics will help ensure that your direct

reports focus their time and resources on the results that

will most benefi t the organization while still providing

room for individual growth. Some of the attributes in

this list align with SMART criteria, but you’ll also see

additional traits that point to a larger purpose. As you

think about your employees’ goals, strive to meet all of

these criteria.

15

Goal Setting

Sources of Goals

Each of your direct reports should have a set of goals that

is based on their role, skill level, and development aims.

Do this by drawing from a variety of sources directly re-

lated to your employee’s needs, such as:

• Organization, division, or department plans and

strategies. How could the employee contribute

to bigger priorities? Consider your company’s

broader objectives, team aims, or your own targets

as a manager in the process of developing an indi-

vidual’s goals.

• Goals from previous review periods or those that

are linked to critical job responsibilities. Some

objectives will be evergreen, and others will evolve:

A salesperson will always have the goal of increas-

ing sales, but specifi c numerical targets will change

from year to year.

• Comments from previous performance reviews

and feedback discussions. Perhaps there are

performance gaps to close, strong skills to develop

further, or greater responsibilities to take on once

skills have been mastered. Performance manage-

ment is a continuous process, so it can be helpful

to link one period’s goals with those of the next,

especially when they are tied to an employee’s

ongoing growth or improvement.

16

The Characteristics of Eff ective Goals

You can also consider the “cheaper, faster, better”

rubric, described by performance management expert

Dick Grote in his book How to Be Good at Performance

Appraisals. Start by thinking about the areas of an indi-

vidual’s job where they spend most of their time or that

make the biggest impact. How can expenses be reduced

(cheaper) or less time spent (faster) while still improv-

ing quality (better)? How can an employee’s time and

energy best be redirected to contribute to departmental

or organizational success? These questions may be more

apt for those with entry-level or support roles than for

those in leadership positions; seeking ways to perform

cheaper, faster, and better may already be a routine part

of these higher-level jobs and unnecessary to identify as

an additional goal.

You may be tempted to draw goals from a person’s job

description. After all, a well-written job description can

be a clear way to defi ne a position and its essential func-

tions. But job descriptions tend to be more about the

content of the role than about the aims that managers

and their employees agree to pursue.

For example, consider this job description for an ex-

ecutive assistant:

The executive assistant to the director will plan, sched-

ule, and coordinate meetings; record and circulate

meeting minutes; manage and track communications

by providing timely responses and distributing mes-

sages; assist in drafting, editing, copying, and dis-

tributing project reports and other materials; handle

17

Goal Setting

travel arrangements; assist with expense documenta-

tion and reimbursements; manage complicated sched-

ules and day-to-day offi ce systems; and perform other

job-related duties as required.

There are many activities listed here, but not a sin-

gle identifi able goal. The description doesn’t provide

any clarity on the objectives of the director or the orga-

ni

za

tion—or about the professional ambitions of the

employee. Using this write-up alone to establish effec-

tive targets for this role would be ill-advised.

As you think about potential goals for your employee

(and they do the same), dig deeper than a simple job de-

scription. Think about the difference between “handle

customer complaints” and “reduce customer attrition by

10%.” Or “participate in a quality-control training pro-

gram” versus “Cut production waste by 20%.” The fi rst

is an activity, while the second is an end result to work

toward. Aim toward descriptive, measurable targets in

your goal setting.

The Tricky Balance of Challenge

Possibly the toughest factor in goal setting is how to make

desired outcomes achievable but challenging. Stretch

goals are objectives that require extra effort to reach.

They’re an important element of a high- performing cul-

ture and of employee development. People respond posi-

tively to challenge, and when motivated to reach a tough

target, employees can push themselves to achieve more

than they previously thought they could. Ambitious goals

18

The Characteristics of Eff ective Goals

can create energy and momentum, spurring the greatest

effort and highest performance. Conversely, aiming too

low can lead to mediocrity. When people choose goals

that are too easily attained, they don’t see a need to push

themselves, and they may disengage from their work.

Because they require signifi cant effort, there’s no

guarantee these objectives will be achieved. And when

they’re too unrealistic, stretch goals can backfi re. Em-

ployees may discount outcomes that are unreasonably

ambitious. Faced with an impossible task or an overly

aggressive objective, your direct report may end up

frustrated, unmotivated, or demoralized. Worse, when

faced with unrealistic targets, employees may act im-

morally. Michael E. Raynor and Derek Pankratz of

Deloitte Consulting and Deloitte Services, respectively,

have written that when trying to reach unrealistic goals,

“people may feel increasingly tempted to cut corners

or to resort to unethical or illegal behaviors that they

would otherwise be loath even to contemplate.” 1 That’s

not to say that all people faced with tough targets will

cheat or misrepresent their performance. But driving to

meet unachievable goals can pressure your employees

in dangerous ways. You want your people to stretch, not

to break.

Keep in mind, though, that what’s an impossible or-

deal for one person may be an exciting test for another.

Ask an aspiring executive to lead a new team, and they

may light up with excitement; ask a stellar solo contribu-

tor who had no interest in management to do the same,

and you’ll likely be disappointed with the results.

19

Goal Setting

When developing a plan for your direct reports, col-

laborate with your employees to craft goals that are chal-

lenging, strategic, and in line with individual skill sets

and aspirations. The next two chapters will give you the

skills you need to do this.

NOTE

1. Michael E. Raynor and Derek Pankratz, “A Way to Know If Your

Corporate Goals Are Too Aggressive,” HBR.org, July 13, 2015 (product

#H0278K).

20

CHAPTER 2

Defi ne Employee

Goals—and

Decide How

They’re Measured

As a manager, you’ll take the lead on setting objectives

for your team as a whole. Each team member will be

working toward these overarching targets, but each in-

dividual should also have unique, personalized expecta-

tions of their own.

From a purely logical perspective, goal setting should

be a top-down process that begins in company strategy

and cascades down from the top ranks of the organiza-

tion—from the president to the VPs to the directors, all

the way down the line. This system helps ensure that the

goals of any employee in an organization would support

21

Goal Setting

their manager’s team goals as well as the organization’s

broader objectives.

But the traditional “cascading goal” model has its

downsides. When no one is able to set their own goals

until their supervisor’s goals have been established—

which can’t happen until their manager’s goals are set—

employees can feel like mere cogs in a wheel. The cascad-

ing model can directly or indirectly signal to your reports

that they are truly subordinate, leaving them feeling less

motivated than those who have had more ownership and

control in setting their own goals. Imposed objectives

dictated from on high are unlikely to motivate people as

much as goals they had some say in developing. Infl ex-

ible, top-down goals can also fail to account for or take

advantage of the unique interests, skills, and potential

contributions of individuals throughout the organization.

Given this, consider a different approach: Let your di-

rect reports take the lead in setting their goals. Targets

that are defi ned by employees themselves (with manage-

rial guidance and review) engender an important sense

of ownership. A person who isn’t invested in the cre-

ation of their goals may not have the same level of com-

mitment to achieve them—and a person who isn’t held

accountable for results has no reason to take goals seri-

ously. In his HBR.org article, “The Right Way to Hold

People Accountable,” leadership advisor Peter Bregman

explains, “Accountability is not simply taking the blame

when something goes wrong. . . . Accountability is about

delivering on a commitment. It’s responsibility to an

outcome, not just a set of tasks. It’s taking initiative with

thoughtful, strategic follow-through.”

22

Defi ne Employee Goals—and Decide How They’re Measured

Giving your employees the autonomy to defi ne the de-

tails of their goals will help them take responsibility and

accountability for the results they aim to achieve. It also

helps ensure that they understand both the specifi cs and

the greater importance of their objectives.

You can support your people by helping them under-

stand what the organization’s larger goals and strategy

are and what your team needs to achieve. By reviewing

and providing input on each objective your direct report

suggests, you can help create opportunities that also sup-

port each person’s growth and enable their engagement.

Set Up a Performance-Planning

Session

In many organizations, new goals are set after a for-

mal performance review, which serves as the natural

end of a traditional performance management cycle

and the beginning of a new one. Many experts suggest

separating the review meeting from the goal-setting

process for a more-focused discussion. Since appraisal

sessions can cover a wide range of topics from criticism

to compensation —and because many review conversa-

tions are at least somewhat emotionally loaded—sepa-

rating out the goal-setting process allows you and your

employee to give the conversation due consideration

and focused attention. If possible, schedule a separate

performance-planning session to discuss the employee’s

goals and your expectations.

While your employee may be setting goals for the

year in this meeting, it’s possible that those targets will

need to be adjusted before the review period ends. In

23

Goal Setting

fast-changing industries, the goals you set may not be

relevant for an entire year—or even for a quarter. Be-

tween constantly evolving technology and a rapidly

changing economy, many organizations are becoming

more agile; in that context, planning employee goals and

tasks a year in advance may not be realistic or accurate.

Some companies have replaced annual objectives with

short-term ones. At the retailer Gap, for example, em-

ployees have quarterly targets; at GE, shorter-term “pri-

orities” have taken the place of annual goals. Recognize

that a person’s goals may need to be adjusted or adapted

during the year. It doesn’t make sense for anyone to keep

working toward an outdated target, so while you should

aim to establish long-term objectives, recognize that you

may need to meet again to revise or adapt them.

Before you and your employee get together at the

performance-planning meeting, ask them to draft a list

of goals for the two of you to review together. Give them

some pointers about what makes for an effective goal,

and review some promising sources for coming up with

possibilities. Employees at every level should be able to

articulate how their work feeds into the big-picture or-

ganizational strategy in addition to fi tting with their in-

dividual strengths, skills, and ambitions.

Defi ne Goals

When your employee has a list in place, assess their sug-

gested goals. How do they fi t into the larger picture? Can

you see clear links between their expected contributions

and the results they need to achieve as members of your

team? Are the objectives realistic and challenging? Do

24

Defi ne Employee Goals—and Decide How They’re Measured

they cover all the elements of the SMART rubric and

meet the characteristics of well-defi ned goals? When re-

viewing the list, make sure both organizational needs and

the employee’s professional aspirations are accounted for.

Aligning goals with those of the organization

Each unit, team, and individual should have goals that

directly support the organization’s larger strategic ob-

jectives. Such alignment focuses each person’s energy

on the work that matters most to the company. Your

employee may already understand your team and orga-

nization’s strategic efforts, but don’t assume that they

do. Take the time now to discuss those efforts in detail.

Under standing why a goal is important, on both an in-

dividual and an organizational level, will make it more

meaningful to your employee.

With these aims in mind, review the employee’s sug-

gested list. Do each of their proposed goals line up with

these big-picture efforts? Do they fi t within a larger or-

ganizational or team strategy? By defi ning together how

their goals can contribute to a larger organizational

purpose, their sense of ownership and engagement can

grow, and you can begin identifying which of their sug-

gested goals should take priority.

If a target doesn’t match a team or organizational

aim, assess whether it’s the right fi t. You may be able to

revise it to better serve the team or company, or you may

choose to remove it from the list altogether. Also, discuss

whether there are any goals that are missing from their

list that would be important to add from an organiza-

tional perspective.

25

Goal Setting

Aligning personal interests with

professional goals

Understanding your direct reports at a personal level

will help you not only in the goal-setting process but

with every facet of performance management. How can

the unit goals be crafted to inspire the highest level of

enthusiasm and engagement from each person? What

are your employees’ career ambitions? Are their profes-

sional goals compatible with those the unit or organiza-

tion must pursue?

By understanding your employees as individuals and

learning about their personal strengths and interests,

you may be able to help incorporate those elements

into their professional goals. Activities that contribute

to organizational success can also spur individual em-

ployee development—and people can fi nd the intersec-

tion of professional goals and personal interests highly

motivating.

Ask your team members if they would be comfort-

able telling you about their personal interests during

your performance-planning meeting if their drafted list

of goals doesn’t seem to include them. Consider what

adjustments can be made to workplace objectives to

include those interests. A software developer with a

stand-up comedy hobby may not have much opportu-

nity to entertain at work, but if you know they thrive in

the spotlight you can suggest them for any speaking op-

portunities that arise. A goal of delivering departmen-

tal presentations or pitching new clients may well suit

their interests and skills.

26

Defi ne Employee Goals—and Decide How They’re Measured

WHEN PERSONAL AND UNIT GOALS CONFLICT

Every so often you’ll encounter an employee who

doesn’t think that a unit goal is very important—at

least not to them. For example, sales manager Nata-

sha learns that Cory, her team’s newest fi eld sales rep-

resentative, has a professional goal of landing a job in

market research. He’s in his current job only to help

him gain essential skills to put on his résumé. Natasha

needs to have a conversation with Cory in which she

explains that, while he may want to be in a new role

in the future, he has a job to do and goals to achieve

in his current position. She should tell him that by

achieving or exceeding his present goals, he may get

the opportunity to develop skills that are applicable to

market research or gain exposure to the work done by

colleagues in that fi eld.

If Cory devotes himself to meeting his sales goals

and achieves strong results, Natasha will be more

likely to help him get experience in his fi eld of inter-

est. But if he’s just not willing to get on board with his

team’s goals, he may not be a good fi t for the team or

the organization.

Even employees who share identical titles and roles

can adjust certain goals or take on specifi c tasks that

best suit their interests, tap into their strengths, and re-

fl ect their personal traits. Your team of three marketers,

for example, may share similar goals regarding the new

marketing initiative your department is rolling out in the

27

Goal Setting

next few months, but each person can also have individ-

ually tailored goals that suit their unique interests. If one

person likes social media, for example, they might set a

goal of increasing the organization’s followers and grow-

ing brand awareness on a specifi c platform. Their col-

league with an interest in customer research and focus

groups may set out to spearhead new research efforts to

better target your department’s marketing dollars, while

another team member with a passion for data analyt-

ics could aim to analyze your current marketing effort’s

reach. By identifying your employee’s interests, you can

help them defi ne objectives that let them explore and de-

velop skills that are meaningful to them while producing

valuable work results.

Once you’ve taken the time to understand your em-

ployee’s strengths and aspirations, look again at their

suggested list of goals to see if any align with those traits

and objectives. In some cases, you may need to prioritize

an organizational mission over a personal aim, but strive

for balance to keep your employee engaged, motivated,

and growing. (See the sidebar “When Personal and Unit

Goals Confl ict” for suggestions on what to do when your

employees’ aspirations don’t match with unit goals.)

Set a Reasonable Number of Goals

Once you and your report have discussed the list of

goals in detail, narrow down the list to a succinct set of

objectives to pursue. Even stellar employees can only do

so much. A person faced with two goals will probably

make progress toward achieving both. But when faced

with fi ve, an individual may only make progress toward

28

Defi ne Employee Goals—and Decide How They’re Measured

two or three. Any more than fi ve, and your employee

is unlikely to accomplish any, since their attention will

be so divided. Instead of burying someone in a fl urry of

goals, prioritize: Focus on two to four challenging, spe-

cifi c, signifi cant goals.

People can also be overwhelmed by complex and large

goals—which is not to say they can’t aim to meet them.

It can be helpful, though, to break a goal into smaller

pieces, or to set shorter-term aims. Setting monthly or

quarterly goals, rather than annual ones, can narrow the

focus enough to make the target achievable while still

having a big impact.

Establish Ways to Measure Success

Once you and your employee agree on a set of meaning-

ful goals, determine how you plan to assess progress to-

ward each one. List anticipated outcomes and measures

for each item.

Metrics provide objective evidence of goal achieve-

ment or progress toward it. Sales revenues, errors per

thousand units of product, and time to market for new

products are all clear examples of metrics that can be

linked to goals, since they can be easily quantifi ed.

It’s worth noting, however, that not every goal can be

easily measured, and you can fall into traps while estab-

lishing metrics. Keep the following pitfalls in mind as

you defi ne how objectives will be evaluated.

• Missing metrics. Some goals may not be obviously

connected to clear performance metrics. “Increase

unique visitors to the website by 5%” is simple to

29

Goal Setting

measure if you know the starting point, but a goal

of “increase engagement on social platforms” is

trickier to quantify.

• Choosing the wrong metrics. Not all that can be

measured is equally important or worth targeting.

While it’s great to increase the number of cus-

tomer complaints resolved in a given time period,

it may be better to focus on reducing the number

of complaints overall.

• Overemphasizing metrics. Performance is a

combination of two factors: behaviors and results.

If results are the “what” of performance, behav-

iors are the “how.” Noting the behavior and work

behind a specifi c goal is just as important as the

metric itself, even if it’s not easily quantifi able.

Helping a colleague who’s facing a tight deadline

or coaching a new member of the team is unlikely

to fi t into anyone’s formal goals, but such actions

deserve recognition and acknowledgment.

When goals aren’t easily quantifi ed

Some goals are more qualitative and therefore harder to

measure. In such cases, you should still be able to pin-

point tangible, measurable targets within them. If you’re

struggling to fi nd a suitable unit of measure, set a more

specifi c, metric-friendly goal targeting something that

can be measured. Someone whose goal is to improve

their public speaking skills may set a target of making

six public presentations in the upcoming year, with the

understanding that there will be a follow-up meeting

30

Defi ne Employee Goals—and Decide How They’re Measured

to discuss that performance and ways to improve after

each. Or, if your employee is tasked with increasing in-

novation, a suitable target might be to propose three

new ideas to the department in the next six months or

to meet certain deadlines for specifi c stages in a project’s

development.

Determine in advance how you plan to measure prog-

ress for each goal, whether it’s a numerical or time-based

target. Be specifi c: If you were evaluating an individual

who wanted to improve their public speaking, you might

want to agree on how you defi ne “public presentations.”

Are they presentations to the department, to the orga-

nization as a whole, or outside the company? Addition-

ally, defi ne ways to measure engagement and people’s

reactions to determine if the speech was considered a

success.

While goals and metrics are hugely important, they

are not the be-all and end-all of performance manage-

ment. Don’t make the mistake of dismissing what you

can’t quantify. When it comes time to assess an em-

ployee’s performance, you’ll want to look beyond simply

measured aspects.

Establish Expectations,

Not Just Goals

When you discuss objectives with your employees, you

should also talk about what you expect of them in terms

of behavior. Your direct report may understand what

they must achieve, but if they do so in a way that’s detri-

mental to your team or the organization, their contribu-

tions won’t matter.

31

Goal Setting

Talk through your expectations for citizenship behav-

iors—like stepping in to help colleagues in need, serving

as a resource for others, cooperating and demonstrating

fl exibility, and training new hires—as well as basic com-

petencies like behaving professionally in the offi ce and

arriving to work on time. How individuals contribute to

organizational culture may not fi t into a goals framework

but is still essential to achieving strong performance.

Understanding behavioral expectations is important to

creating a collaborative and productive work environ-

ment—and you should make it clear to your employees

that you value their contributions and cooperation on

this front as much as you do their work results.

When you make your expectations clear from the out-

set and your employees understand how they’ll be evalu-

ated, performance improves. Plus, making expectations

explicit helps hold employees accountable.

32

CHAPTER 3

Collaborate with

Your Employee

to Create a

Plan for Moving

Forward

Once you and your employee have developed a clear set

of challenging goals with specifi c metrics, you’ll need to

ensure that there’s a practical plan in place for achieving

them. As social psychologist Heidi Grant says, “Creating

goals that teams and organizations will actually accom-

plish isn’t just a matter of defi ning what needs doing;

you also have to spell out the specifi cs of getting it done,

because you can’t assume that everyone involved will

know how to move from concept to delivery.” 1

33

Goal Setting

Goals can seem impenetrable, even overwhelming,

but they become much more manageable when there’s a

detailed plan to reach them. An ambitious objective that

will take a year to complete will be composed of many

smaller parts and steps. For example, a fi nancial services

professional may set a goal of obtaining licensure for a

certain specialty. It’s unlikely that he’ll be able to meet

that goal simply by showing up for the licensure exam

without any advance preparation. Instead, he’ll need to

break the goal down into doable components, studying

for each part of the exam over a predetermined period

of time.

Your employees should do the same: When people

create a plan to meet a goal, they are more likely to

successfully achieve it. While some such plans may be

straightforward and quick to pull together, others will

be more diffi cult to fi gure out. But the time you invest

at the beginning of the process will pay off when your

employee nimbly works through what could have been

tricky steps. Remember, too, that just as goals may shift

over time, plans to achieve them may need to be adjusted.

Set a Comprehensive Plan

for Success

In most cases you’ll want your employees to develop a

plan for meeting goals that you can then review. The

process of setting a plan can empower your direct report

and create a sense of ownership. But in some cases, es-

pecially for challenging goals or with employees who are

new to project planning, you may need to work together

to complete the following steps.

34

Create a Plan for Moving Forward

Step 1: Determine the tasks needed to

accomplish the goal

Break the goal down into task-based components. If

one task seems overwhelming, separate it into smaller

parts. Some items may be completed simultaneously

(such as making tweaks to a draft marketing campaign

while awaiting additional feedback), while others may

need to be completed sequentially (such as getting ap-

proval for the fi nal campaign before implementing it),

so list them in the appropriate order. Determining each

required task can make complex or long-term projects

seem much more manageable.

Step 2: Plan the timing for each task

Set a start and fi nish date for each individual task, and

describe the desired results or outcomes for each item.

For team projects, you may be familiar with a Gantt

chart or other time-scaled task diagram that illustrates

an estimated schedule. A Gantt chart is an easy-to-read

bar chart that clearly communicates what needs to be

done in a particular time frame (see fi gure 3-1). The

graphic shows you what tasks are upcoming and allows

you to make adjustments in your plans as necessary,

such as if one task takes longer than expected and subse-

quent ones need to be pushed forward.

Individuals can use a similar visual for their tasks

by creating such a chart in an excel fi le or digital calen-

dar. Mark intended milestones along the way, such as

“We should have the fi rst stage of task A completed by

May 15.” With your employee, create an individualized

35

Goal Setting

FIGURE 3-1

Gantt chart example

Product development project

Customer research

Widget design

Test prototype

Customer tests

Modify design

Materials research

Jan

Apr

Jul

Oct

Source: Harvard Business Essentials: Manager’s Toolkit: The 13 Skills Managers Need to

Succeed (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2004), 11.

diagram that includes each of their tasks. Watch out for

overloading or tight time crunches, where if one task

moves, deadlines may be missed. This tool can then be

updated throughout the review period as schedules and

goals shift.

As you develop the chart, think through contingency

plans. If something does move, how should your em-

ployee adapt? Discuss such possibilities with your direct

report, so they can stay on track even when the unex-

pected happens.

Step 3: Gather the resources needed to

fulfi ll each task

Many efforts fail because people underestimate the time

and resources required to accomplish each task. Once

you’ve planned how each task will be executed and as-

36

Create a Plan for Moving Forward

signed its individual time line, consider what the em-

ployee will need to complete it. Do they have the band-

width and equipment to manage these tasks in addition

to their ongoing responsibilities? Does your direct report

have the training and knowledge to be successful?

In some cases you may be able to supply the addi-

tional resources your employee requires—a new piece of

technology, access to a database, or colleagues to assist

them. But in others, you may discover that the person

needs to learn new skills, particularly if they’re facing an

especially challenging goal. When that’s the case, discuss

ways you can help your employee fi ll the gaps. (See chap-

ter 9, “Expand Your Employee’s Skill Sets,” to read more

on how to develop these profi ciencies.)

Step 4: Get it on paper

Once you and an employee have reached agreement on

goals and created a detailed plan to reach them, docu-

ment your conclusions. Your organization may have a

form you can use, or you can create your own using the

template in table 3–1 at the end of this chapter. Either

way, you’ll want to include the following information:

• The date of your performance-planning meeting

• Key points brought up by both parties

• The employee’s goals for the next review period

• A detailed plan of what is required to achieve them

• A description of any resources or training you have

agreed to provide

• A time frame for follow-up meetings

37

Goal Setting

Some organizations require that statements of goals

be submitted to HR, but whether yours does or not, keep

the document on fi le for yourself, and share it with your

employee as well. You’ll fi nd this write-up helpful when

it comes time to revise an employee’s goals, for evaluat-

ing their performance throughout the review period, and

in the instance of a formal appraisal.

Follow Up and Reassess Goals

Performance management is an ongoing process, so

regularly schedule check-in conversations to keep track

of your direct reports’ progress toward both short- and

long-term goals. If you don’t know how well someone

is doing, you won’t know when to make adjustments

in their plan to reach their objectives—or in the goals

themselves. For example, GE encourages frequent con-

versations with employees to revisit two key questions:

“What am I doing that I should keep doing? And what

am I doing that I should change?”2

The timing of these check-ins can vary depending on

how many employees you manage, how you work with

your employees, or the general pace of your industry. In

some instances your organization may have a particu-

lar recommendation. For instance, in their revamping

of performance management practices, Deloitte imple-

mented weekly check-ins. Some other companies sug-

gest their managers check in monthly or quarterly.

You’re the best judge of how frequently you should

meet with each of your direct reports. At the end of your

performance-planning meeting, discuss with your em-

ployee when it makes sense to check in. Some meetings

should be event-based: when an employee completes a

38

Create a Plan for Moving Forward

task, reaches a milestone, or achieves a goal. But others

will be between these points, simply to discuss ongoing

progress. Set a schedule of check-ins in advance, and put

your next meeting date on the calendar before you con-

clude the performance-planning session. These regular

conversations are the most effective and time-effi cient

way to stay up-to-date on your employees’ performance.

When to change your employee’s goals

It’s possible that an employee may need to update their

goals before the next performance appraisal comes

around. Perhaps they’ve achieved a goal and need a new

challenge, they’re taking over responsibilities for a team-

mate who’s shifted to a new role, or the organization’s

objectives have changed. For instance, the goal of devel-

oping an innovative new app may need to adjust if the

organization has decided to prioritize its current mobile

interface instead.

If an employee’s goals need to be revised, meet to re-

view previously set goals and plans. Three questions can

guide you in your discussion as you reassess targets:

• Are they still realistic, given any changes in con-

straints or resources?

• Are they still timely? Is now the best possible mo-

ment to achieve them?

• Are they still relevant? Do they still align with the

company’s strategy?

It may be necessary to change only a single goal by re-

placing it with a new one, but in cases of major change,

the entire plan may need to shift. If, for example, your

39

Goal Setting

team has been diligently working toward a merger, every-

one will need a new set of goals after the merger happens.

If you’re checking in with your direct reports on a

regular basis about their progress, the need to change

course or revise goals will come as no surprise. Addition-

ally, every check-in will be another opportunity to moni-

tor your employees’ performance, offer feedback, or pro-

vide coaching. These elements of ongoing performance

management are the topic of the next section.

NOTES

1. Heidi Grant, “Get Your Team to Do What It Says It’s Going to

Do,” Harvard Business Review, May 2014 (product #R1405E).

2. Peter Cappelli and Anna Tavis, “The Performance Manage-

ment Revolution,” Harvard Business Review, October 2016 (product

#R1610D).

40

Create a Plan for Moving Forward

TABLE 3-1

Goal-setting template

Describe the three primary goals the individual is to accomplish in

the upcoming year with a description of how they will be measured

and any expected outcomes.

Goals

Measures of achievement/expected outcomes

1.

2.

3.

In the following section, describe specifi c tasks that need to be

completed to accomplish each of the three goals above. Include

specifi c time lines, plans for completion, resources needed,

additional actions required for follow-up, and any contingency

plans discussed.

Goal 1:

Tasks required:

Start date:

End date:

Plan to execute tasks:

Resources needed:

Actions required for follow-up:

Contingency plans:

Goal 2:

Tasks required:

Start date:

End date:

Plan to execute tasks:

Resources needed:

Actions required for follow-up:

Contingency plans:

41

Goal Setting

Goal 3:

Tasks required:

Start date:

End date:

Plan to execute tasks:

Resources needed:

Actions required for follow-up:

Contingency plans:

Please include any additional notes about the

employee’s goals or plan here:

This plan is agreed to as indicated by

the signatures below.

Employee

Date

Manager

Date

Source: Adapted from 20-Minute Manager: Performance Reviews (Boston: Harvard Business Review Press, 2015), 83–85.

42

SECTION TWO

Ongoing

Performance

Management

CHAPTER 4

Assessing

Performance Isn’t

a Onetime Event

Performance management is an ongoing process, not a

one-and-done event. Circumstances and priorities can

shift over time, and gaps can form if employees are un-

able to keep up—which why so many companies are

implementing more-fl exible performance cycles. So it’s

particularly important, especially in a fast-changing work

environment, that you observe the quality of your em-

ployees’ performance and respond to it in the moment.

In the previous section you read about defi ning goals and

adjusting them as needed. Now we’ll focus on keeping

track of performance and responding to it regularly.

Unlike a time-bound formal review session (which

we’ll discuss in section 4), assessing performance and

providing feedback is a continual process. You and your

employees will both benefi t if you give feedback often.

45

Ongoing Performance Management

Take advantage of your check-in sessions as opportu-

nities to track your employees’ strengths, weaknesses,

interests, and ambitions while also staying apprised of

their progress. You’ll be able to identify where your em-

ployees may be falling short of their goals and collabo-

rate on ways to correct course.

Periodic progress checks and ongoing observation are

essential in order to help you:

• Stay grounded in goals. Checking in to moni-

tor progress toward goals offers the opportunity

to revise targets based on changing priorities or

circumstances. You might discover that your em-

ployee is on track to meet a goal ahead of sched-

ule—or you might need to remind them about

important items that may not be the current focus

of their attention.

• Recognize and reinforce strong performance. Peo-

ple always welcome positive feedback about their

contributions, successes, and achievements, so be

liberal with your praise. In fact, some experts sug-

gest that to boost performance, you should provide

more positive feedback than negative. (To learn

more about offering recognition, see chapter 7.)

• Become aware of performance gaps, and close

them. A performance gap is the difference be-

tween someone’s current performance and what is

required. As a manager, it’s crucial that you identify

small gaps before they snowball into bigger issues.

If you’re up-to-date on your direct report’s progress,

you’ll be well positioned to catch any problems early and

46

Assessing Performance Isn’t a Onetime Event

work with your employee to correct course—before they

veer so far off target that carefully set goals become unat-

tainable. Ongoing observation is key to staying on top of

any issues and identifying the root cause of problems, as

well as fi nding opportunities for positive feedback and

recognition.

Observe and Gather Data

To best track performance, observe your employees and

how they are progressing toward their goals. Your mis-

sion should be to identify an individual’s strengths and

weaknesses and to understand the impact that their

work and behavior has on the person’s ability to achieve

specifi c objectives, as well as their contribution to the or-

ganization as a whole. You’ll also want to keep ongoing

notes on their performance. (See the sidebar “Document

Your Observations.”)

If there are periodic milestones built into your em-

ployee’s goals, you’ll easily be able to spot performance

gaps as they develop. For example, Nadia is worried

about her employee Eileen’s performance. Eileen’s goal

is to increase sales in her territory by 10% this calendar

year, but the fi rst-quarter results show that Eileen’s sales

are only 2% above last year’s numbers for the same pe-

riod. If this trend continues, Eileen won’t meet her an-

nual goal. Nadia would be wise to check in with Eileen—

earlier rather than later—to see what can be done to

close the gap before it’s too late.

Perhaps someone demonstrates a behavior that is

causing problems. It’s important to assess whether it’s

an anomaly that won’t cause future damage or an on-

going behavior pattern that requires your immediate

47

Ongoing Performance Management

feedback so your employee can change. Consider these

examples:

• During a team meeting, Harriet observed that her

direct report Raul frequently interrupted others,

preventing them from expressing their views. This

tripped up team dynamics and undermined the

teamwork that Harriet’s unit depended on for its

success.

• Miguel noticed that Leila, an off-site member

of his team, often seemed the fi rst to pipe up in

brainstorming sessions with reasons why a col-

league’s suggestion wouldn’t work. After overhear-

ing some heated conversations between on-site

teammates, Miguel became concerned that Leila’s

comments might be inhibiting the group.

While your own personal observations are important,

in today’s environment where tasks are complex or in-

volve a team, you may not have the ability to see the full

picture. It’s helpful to ask for others’ thoughts as well.

Feedback from other sources provides a useful reality

check of your own views—and may provide you with new

information about additional good or bad performance.

So, when appropriate, discuss these situations with

trusted colleagues—in confi dence. Add their observa-

tions to your own.

For example, Harriet viewed Raul’s habit of inter-

rupting others as stifl ing valuable dialogue, but some-

one else may applaud his strenuous articulation of his

views. To better understand whether Raul was indeed

48

Assessing Performance Isn’t a Onetime Event

hurting team interactions, Harriet could go to another

manager, Leo, and request that he observe Raul’s par-

ticipation in an upcoming meeting and report back on

his impressions. (Note that she should not request that

the manager look for interruptions specifi cally, so as not

to infl uence his thinking.) Once she hears back from

Leo, Harriet will be better able to fairly assess whether

Raul’s interruptions are actually a hindrance to his per-

formance. Similarly, Miguel could ask members of his

team whether Leila’s critiques during their brainstorm-

ing sessions are bothering others—and if so, how—to

understand the impact of her actions before jumping to

conclusions.

DOCUMENT YOUR OBSERVATIONS

Keep a fi le (electronically or on paper) on each of your

direct report’s performance, and update it through-

out the year. Use it to keep track of both good and bad

performance, so you have a balanced view of your em-

ployee’s work. Update it after check-ins, or set a calen-

dar reminder to add new information periodically.

This document will likely be only for your own refer-

ence, so you don’t need to write much—just enough so

you can see progress (or lack thereof) over time and

ensure that you’ll remember notable successes or mis-

steps. That said, if someone’s performance is suff ering

to the point where you need to consider termination,

( continued)

49

Ongoing Performance Management

DOCUMENT YOUR OBSERVATIONS

you should be especially careful about document-

ing such actions, as your personal notes could be-

come material in a legal case. Consult with your hu-

man resources department or internal legal team for

guidance.

Here are a few points to consider when keeping

track of performance:

• Record the date and specifi cs of what happened.

For instance: “Raquel’s pitch to a potential new

client exceeded my expectations. When the

client called to confi rm that I’d received the

signed contract, he mentioned that he and his

staff were ‘blown away’ by her polished delivery

and ability to think on her feet when answering

questions.”

• Stick to facts, not judgments. For example:

“Larry has missed four project deadlines in the

last three months” rather than “Larry doesn’t

know how to manage his time.”

• Make notes on the day you’ve given someone

feedback (or soon after), while it’s fresh in your

mind.

• Keep a folder of emails or other correspondence

highlighting your employee’s accomplishments,

whether they are instances you noted yourself or

include praise from others.

50

Assessing Performance Isn’t a Onetime Event

If you aren’t able to check in regularly with your em-

ployees and jot down notes yourself—perhaps they

work remotely or travel often—request periodic prog-

ress reports from each of them every week, month,

or quarter. These reports don’t need to be formal. An

email with a few bullet points will suffi

ce to gather the

necessary information, such as their key accomplish-

ments, questions or concerns, and what the individual

aims to achieve before the next report or check-in ses-

sion. You’ll be able to gather additional information

about each person’s performance based on the quality

and timeliness of the reports.

These informal records will help you when annual

review time rolls around, but they’ll also keep you in

the loop on any developing performance gaps and help

you identify opportunities to off er timely feedback and

coaching throughout the year.

Always ensure you have a complete picture of the situ-

ation, and continue to watch your direct report’s work

and behavior if you have any doubts about your percep-

tions. Avoid premature judgment, and recognize that,

no matter someone’s behavior, any assumptions about

the causes are just that—assumptions. Instead, consider

what might underlie an employee’s disappointing work

results, and make the effort to accurately assess what’s

causing the problem.

51

Ongoing Performance Management

Notice subtle requests for help

While observation is essential to understanding perfor-

mance, it’s also important to perceive the indirect ways

your employees may be asking for help. People don’t al-

ways know what kind of help they need or exactly how

to ask for it. Sales manager Rita, for example, was frus-

trated by the vague monthly reports she was getting

from Philip, a salesperson on her team. In their check-

in meetings he asked few questions, but after receiving

more similarly unsatisfactory reports, Rita realized that

Philip might have dropped hints that he wasn’t sure

what information she was looking for.

Make a practice of actively listening when discuss-

ing projects or progress with your employee, and con-

fi rm that they understand exactly what you’re asking of

them. Some people, reluctant to show they’re not clear

on something, may subtly drop hints rather than ask for

clarifi cation directly. Tune in—what you hear may help

you fi gure out how to improve a person’s work.

Identify Possible Causes of

Poor Performance

If you’ve noticed an employee’s work isn’t up to par, your

next step is to investigate what may be causing the issue.

The underlying cause could be a skill defi ciency, poor

time management or personal work habits, lack of moti-

vation, confl ict with another employee, or unclear direc-

tion on your part. Or it could be something else entirely,

like a misunderstanding of expectations.

Underperformance may have a nonobvious cause and

have nothing to do with lack of skill or motivation. Here

52

Assessing Performance Isn’t a Onetime Event

are a few possible reasons why people may fall short of

expectations:

• Bad processes. W. Edwards Deming, one of the

great management teachers of the past century,

warned business leaders that the source of un-

satisfactory performance was usually bad work

processes. If you want better performance, look

to the work process before you look for faults

in your people. Perhaps your employee who is

frustratingly late in delivering documents is being

hampered by a cumbersome approval process that

relies on getting sign-offs from someone who trav-

els often or doesn’t always turn requests around

quickly.

• Workplace tensions. Workload inequities (even if

temporary) or simply a visceral dislike may pro-

duce confl ict that impairs performance. Perhaps

two teammates have both applied for a higher-

level position; when one is promoted, the other

may grow resentful. Another common—and easily

remedied—cause of workplace tensions is com-

munication style differences between colleagues. If

you can discover what’s behind confl ict or tension,

you may be able to neutralize it.

• Work overload. Even the most-committed em-

ployee will burn out if you demand too much too

fast, so beware of unreasonably ambitious goals

and expectations. Don’t set the bar too high. If

you notice after a series of check-ins that some-

one has yet to make progress toward a goal, ask

53

Ongoing Performance Management

what’s holding them back; doing so may lead you

to reassess the objective. Temporary situations

can also affect the quality of an employee’s or

even a team’s work. If one team member misses

a number of days of work to tend to an ill family

member, for example, their colleagues may feel

supportive but also overburdened from picking up

the slack.

• Personal problems. Sometimes the root cause of

poor performance may have nothing to do with

work at all. A health crisis at home may be dis-

tracting your direct report, or an employee may be

struggling to manage both workplace and family

demands. You might be able to help mitigate these

problems if you learn what they are. For example,

if an employee is stretched thin between caring for

young children as well as aging parents, perhaps

you can offer a fl exible work schedule or an option

to work remotely on occasion to allow the indi-

vidual to aid their family.

If you notice poor performance, remember that there

may be underlying issues that you need to identify before

moving forward with a plan of action. Remedies will dif-

fer depending on the cause.

Are you part of the problem?

As you consider possible reasons behind a performance

gap, assess whether you’ve played a role in the issue. Ask

yourself if you’ve unwittingly thrown up roadblocks by,

say, reducing necessary resources, overloading your em-

54

Assessing Performance Isn’t a Onetime Event

ployee with responsibility, or micromanaging. Consider

these questions:

• Have I been clear in my expectations? It’s possible

that your employee may not know exactly what

you’re looking for. If you suspect a lack of clarity is

the issue, ask your direct report to explain the task

or project in their own words, instead of simply

asking whether or not they understand you.

• Am I holding up my end of the bargain? Perhaps

you and your employee have agreed that they need

to step up their leadership skills and take on more

responsibility—but when they tried to take own-

ership of a recent project, you insisted on daily

updates. While this might not seem like an unrea-

sonable request, to your employee, it could appear

that you distrust them and are micromanaging.

• How often and to what extent have I intervened

in the employee’s area of responsibility? If their

performance doesn’t measure up, maybe it is

because you overruled their decisions or insisted

that they follow your approach to completing the

work. Some people learn best by doing research

and preparing beforehand, but others thrive with a

less cautious approach. Action-oriented individu-

als may need more freedom to experiment in order

to master new skills.

• Have I changed priorities and assigned tasks with-

out employee input? Perhaps you assigned an em-

ployee a new short-term project, underestimating

55

Ongoing Performance Management

how much time it would take away from their

longer-term goals. Or you might have given an as-

signment that was impossible to complete on time.

An unexpected—and unplanned for—shift in time

or resources can throw anyone off their game.

When you have identifi ed the cause of a problem, de-

cide if it’s worth addressing. Is this a true performance

gap or a temporary glitch? If it was a onetime misstep

unlikely to be repeated—an error made the fi rst time a

person used a new tool or attempted a new task, per-

haps—you might let it go. Avoid giving feedback, too,

in situations where your employee can’t change or con-

trol the outcome. If they’re being held up by someone

else’s delayed sign-off, for example, then they may not

be the appropriate target for your feedback. Something

that you deem to be a problem may simply be a matter

of preference. Harriet may fi nd Raul’s habit of interrup-

tion annoying, but if it has no effect on team dynamics or

performance, it may make sense to overlook it.

On the other hand, if you discover a performance

problem that could happen again if not addressed, plan

to discuss the issue sooner rather than later. The next

chapter will guide you through the process of delivering

effective feedback.

56

CHAPTER 5

Make a Habit

of Providing

Feedback

Feedback can be a useful tool for addressing perfor-

mance gaps and recognizing exemplary work. In the

same way that periodic tests and assignments help both

teachers and students gauge progress over the course

of a semester before the fi nal exam, ongoing feedback

keeps both you and your employee on top of how they

are performing as they work toward their goals. Even

companies that have done away with traditional ele-

ments of the performance management process—goal

setting or formal annual reviews—still rely on regular

feedback. In fact, many organizations are asking man-

agers to offer it more frequently, as it’s one of the most

fl exible and effective tools available for getting results

from your people.

57

Ongoing Performance Management

Make giving feedback a regular part of your ongoing

performance management approach as a way to recog-

nize good work and redirect missteps in progress.

The Two Types of Regular Feedback

Ongoing feedback falls into one of two main categories.

Positive feedback or praise— Here’s what you did really

well—can enhance confi dence and increase an employ-

ee’s sense of commitment. Constructive feedback— Here’s

where you need to improve—is informative, providing a

basis for discussion and redirection. Whatever the type,

feedback is most effective when it’s grounded in specifi c

details that an employee can use.

Positive feedback should pinpoint particular actions

of merit: “I liked how you handled the prototype demon-

stration. The way you began with the underlying techni-

cal challenges, went on to describe how those obstacles

were addressed, and fi nished with the actual demon-

stration helped us all understand the technology.” While

vague praise—“Great job with that prototype demonstra-

tion!”—may not do harm, it doesn’t communicate much

useful information.

Constructive feedback should target specifi c oppor-

tunities for improvement: “Your demonstration suffered

from a lack of organization. I wasn’t sure of the problem

the prototype aimed to solve, and the technical chal-

lenges weren’t well-defi ned.” Clear statements help an

employee understand what to work on. On the other

hand, unvarnished criticism—“People in the audience

were bored and confused by your demonstration”—is

neither specifi c nor helpful and offers neither insight nor

room for improvement.

58

Make a Habit of Providing Feedback

Specifi c feedback, both positive and constructive, is

effective at different times with different types of people.

Positive feedback is especially helpful for employees at

early stages of their career or for individuals who are try-

ing to master new things. “When you don’t really know

what you are doing, encouragement helps you stay op-

timistic and feel more at ease with the challenges you

are facing—something novices tend to need,” social psy-

chologist Heidi Grant explains in her HBR.org article

“Sometimes Negative Feedback Is Best.”

More-experienced employees, on the other hand, will

likely fi nd constructive criticism more helpful and infor-

mative, showing them where they should expend their

efforts and how they might improve. “When you are an

expert and you already know more or less what you are

doing, it’s constructive criticism that can help you do

what it takes to get to the top of your game,” says Grant.

Seasoned professionals and high performers tend to be

hungrier for and more appreciative of constructive feed-

back that helps them advance even further.

Frequent feedback is necessary for all your employees

—even your top performers. Don’t assume your top per-

formers know how well they’re doing or how much you

appreciate them. “The higher the performer, the more

frequently you should be providing feedback,” says Jamie

Harris, a senior consultant at Interaction Associates.1

People may fi nd constructive feedback easier to take in

when they feel genuinely appreciated for what they’ve

done well.

While providing input on an employee’s work can

be uncomfortable for many managers, it’s important to

make your feedback frequent and timely. “The primary

59

Ongoing Performance Management

reason people struggle with giving and receiving feed-

back is not a lack of profi ciency but of frequency,” notes

social scientist and author Joseph Grenny in his HBR.org

article “How to Make Feedback Feel Normal.” Check-ins

provide opportunities for you to regularly assess prog-

ress toward goals and discuss your direct report’s perfor-

mance, but don’t hold off on giving feedback right away

just because you have a meeting on the calendar set for

a later date. Even a short debrief can be useful. For ex-

ample, use the two minutes it takes to walk back to your

offi ce after a meeting to offer your employee feedback on

their presentation—what they did well or how they could

improve for next time. With constructive comments es-

pecially, it’s important to give feedback as soon as possi-

ble after you’ve observed a behavior you want to correct

or reinforce.

If you’re like most managers, addressing employees

about problems and pointing out their shortcomings is

the least enjoyable part of your job. No one likes to de-

liver bad news or tell someone that their work or behav-

ior is unacceptable. But if you avoid relaying the mes-

sage, the employee’s unsatisfactory work or behavior will

most likely continue—or worsen.

If you feel a natural reluctance to confront poor per-

formance, remind yourself:

• If your aim is to improve performance, giving

feedback is the most effective and effi cient tool for

redirecting and enhancing your employees’ work.

• Not giving feedback will undermine the team.

Poor performers demoralize others and thwart the

success of the unit as a whole.

60

Make a Habit of Providing Feedback

• You’re doing that person a favor. The poor per-

former may actually think that they are doing sat-

isfactory work. A frank discussion will clear up the

misconception and give the employee an oppor-

tun ity to improve, perhaps saving their job.

• Some

employees

like getting constructive feed-

back. Since it’s essential to improving perfor-

mance—and, by extension, to career develop-

ment—many people fi nd it valuable.

When you see an issue that needs to be addressed,

don’t avoid confrontation. Having an honest discussion

about performance problems isn’t fun for either of you,

but when the conversation is over you’ll know that your

employee is on the right track for improvement.

Conducting the Feedback

Discussion

The feedback you give will most likely cover a wide range

of topics, and you’ll want to tailor your delivery to the

particular situation you’re discussing as well as the per-

son you’re talking to. But there are some general guide-

lines you can follow when providing feedback.

Set the stage for a productive

conversation

Before you sit down with your employee, make a few

notes about what you want to say. Your goal is to elicit

positive change in future performance or workplace be-

havior, not to rake someone over the coals for past fail-

ures, so don’t dwell on the past. If your direct report

61

Ongoing Performance Management

Deepa had a rocky time running her fi rst new-employee

orientation session, for example, cast your comments

in the light of improving her next event. Give some

thought to the most important things you can help her

do better next time, rather than enumerating all the

fl aws you saw.

Next consider the logistics of your conversation. Be

thoughtful about when you offer unexpected feedback.

You don’t want to risk throwing your employee off bal-

ance with constructive feedback if emotions are running

high or they’re due to deliver an important presentation

later that day. Nor do you want to minimize the effect

of giving positive feedback because you’re rushing back

from a meeting that ran late—or cut a productive feed-

back conversation short to get to your next commitment.

Choose a time close enough to the event that it is fresh

in everyone’s minds, while still taking into account other

considerations. You might, for example, wait a day (or

at least a few hours) before talking to Deepa about the

orientation session rather than addressing it immedi-

ately, especially if she seems fl ustered or frustrated. Let

her cool down so that when you do deliver your message,

she’ll be primed to hear it.

Choose a meeting place where you won’t be dis-

tracted or interrupted. You’ll want to conduct the con-

versation in a location where you both can easily hear

each other and where you’re free from social inter-

actions that could inhibit your employee from being

open and honest. That doesn’t necessarily mean you

need to meet in your offi ce, if you think your employee

might fi nd that intimidating. An afternoon discussion

62

Make a Habit of Providing Feedback

over coffee in the quiet company cafeteria could

work well, but meeting in the cafeteria during a busy

lunch hour won’t allow either of you to devote your

due attention to the conversation.

Engage in a two-way dialogue

A feedback conversation gives each party an opportunity

to tell their side and to hear the same from the other. If

your goal in delivering feedback is to elicit change, your

best tool is a two-way discussion, not a monologue. It’s

easy for an employee to shut down when feeling criti-

cized, so to make progress, involve them in the conversa-

tion. Deliver your feedback, and give your employee your

undivided attention. Listen to what they have to say,

but also note physical cues, such as a grimace or crossed

arms. What are they expressing, verbally or otherwise?

(See the sidebar “Be an Active Listener.”)

Open the conversation by soliciting the person’s

thoughts or reactions to assess if you see the problem

in a similar light. Perhaps your greatest concern about

Deepa’s orientation session was her delivery, but she

thinks the technical issues with showing her slide deck

was the main problem. Don’t impose your own judg-

ment at fi rst. Start with an evenhanded question, such as

“Deepa, how do you think the orientation session went?”

Asking the right questions will help you understand

the other person and their view of performance. Open-

ended and closed questions will yield different types of

responses. Open-ended questions invite participation

and idea sharing. Use them to get the other person talk-

ing and for the following purposes:

63

Ongoing Performance Management

• To clarify causes of a problem. “What do you think

the major issues are with this project?”

• To uncover attitudes or needs. “How do you feel

about our progress to date?”

• To explore alternatives and feel out

solutions. “What would happen if . . . ?”

Closed questions, by contrast, lead to yes or no answers.

Ask closed questions for the following purposes:

• To focus the response. “Is the project on schedule?”

• To confi rm what the other person has said. “So

your main issue is scheduling your time?”

Thoughtful questioning can help you uncover the

other person’s views and deeper thoughts on the problem,

which will help you formulate an effective response.

Stick to facts, not opinion

Move on to sharing your point of view, but focus on ob-

served behaviors, not assumptions about character traits,

attitudes, or personality. A specifi c comment that relates

to the job—for example, “I’ve noticed that you haven’t

offered any suggestions at our last few brainstorming

sessions”—opens the door for your employee to explain

why. But an opinion-based statement, more often than

not, can shut down the conversation entirely.

For example, an opinion-based statement like “You

just don’t seem engaged with your work” paints the per-

son into a corner and invites a defensive, opinion-based

64

Make a Habit of Providing Feedback

BE AN ACTIVE LISTENER

If your goal is to understand what is going wrong with

your employee’s performance, you must listen. You

might miss out on important information if you carry

too much of the conversation, suggest solutions before

your employee does, or busy your mind with thoughts

of what you’ll say next. Instead, really focus on what

your employee is saying.

To learn as much as possible from discussions with

your employees, practice active listening, which

encourages communication and puts others at ease.

Try these tactics:

• Give your employee your full attention.  Main-

tain eye contact and a comfortable posture.

Allow time for the other person to gather their

thoughts before chiming in to fi ll the silence.

Don’t interrupt, and avoid distractions like

checking your phone.

• Observe body language.  Do the speaker’s

expression and tone of voice match what’s being

said? If not, you might want to comment on the

disconnect and ask to hear more.

• Refl ect what you see and hear.  To acknowl-

edge the speaker’s emotions—which will encour-

age them to express themselves further—de-

scribe what you’re observing without agreeing

( continued)

65

Ongoing Performance Management

BE AN ACTIVE LISTENER

or disagreeing. “You seem worried about . . .”

Acknowledge if they seem to be struggling; this

will demonstrate your empathy and make your

employee feel recognized. “I can imagine you’re

having a hard time with . . .”

• Paraphrase what you hear.  Check to make sure

you understand what the speaker is saying. “So

if I hear you right, you’re having trouble with . . .”

“If I understand, your idea is . . . Does that sound

right?”

To give feedback eff ectively, you need to receive and

truly hear what your employee has to say. A produc-

tive conversation, especially about a possibly sensitive

performance gap, is a two-way street.

reply: “You’re wrong. I am engaged.” This isn’t produc-

tive for either of you. Statements about assumed mo-

tivations can quickly lead to your employee becoming

guarded, which will make it nearly impossible to per-

suade them to change. To make any progress, you need

your employee to be a receptive, active participant in this

discussion.

Instead, offer a specifi c observation that’s free of per-

sonal judgment. To Deepa, for instance, you might say,

“I noticed that you looked down at the AV equipment a

lot during the orientation session and missed opportu-

66

Make a Habit of Providing Feedback

nities to see when someone had a question.” This is an

observation you viewed that Deepa can then respond to,

rather than feeling like she needs to defend herself.

Be specifi c about the problem

and its impact on others

Your employee may not be fully aware of the conse-

quences of their behavior, so lay it out clearly. For ex-

ample, “Deepa, because you were looking down during

most of your presentation, our new hires were unable

to ask the questions they had and were unsure of some

of the policies you presented. I heard some frustration

from the group afterward, and they may be unclear as to

how to proceed when issues arise in the coming weeks.”

The details demonstrate that this is a real problem, not

a matter of your preference, and that it impacts not only

you but others as well.

Managers sometimes mistakenly think they need

to act tough when giving constructive feedback. But

the aim of feedback should be to motivate change, not

to make your employee feel attacked. When people feel

threatened, they’re unlikely to really hear what you’re

saying, let alone absorb or apply it. Take a thoughtful,

nonaggressive approach to allow the receiver to take in,

refl ect on, and learn from your feedback. “Deepa, let’s

discuss how you might modify the planning process for

the next orientation session. I know this last one didn’t

go well, but I’m confi dent you can improve for next time.”

It can be tempting to couch constructive feedback

in praise, in an attempt to soften the blow. Sweetening

67

Ongoing Performance Management

your message may lessen your own anxiety about deliv-

ering bad news, but it also diminishes your employees’

ability to receive it. This “sandwich” approach actually

undermines your ability to communicate any meaning-

ful feedback, either positive or constructive. Employees

who are struggling may lose track of where they need

to change, registering only the compliment—and high

achievers may dismiss positive feedback as a mere pre-

amble to the “real” message.

Ask how your employee can address

the problem

People generally feel more ownership of solutions they

suggest themselves, but if your direct report has trouble

coming up with a reasonable suggestion for change, offer

one yourself and check for understanding. It’s important

that the employee leave the conversation with a concrete

step for improvement. For example, “In the future, let’s

arrange for you to organize practice sessions in advance

of orientation meetings, so you can rehearse what you

plan to say, get used to the equipment, and hear some

of the questions our new hires are likely to ask.” Then,

check for the receiver’s understanding of your sugges-

tion: “Does this sound feasible to you?” If they seem iffy

or unclear on the plan for improvement, ask them to ex-

plain it in their own words so you can assess if they’ve

truly grasped it. If your direct report can clearly explain

what they should change or do next, you’ve curtailed the

need to deliver the same feedback again—and if the mes-

sage is muddled, you can clarify it on the spot.

68

Make a Habit of Providing Feedback

In some instances, you may discover that a onetime

feedback discussion isn’t enough to close a performance

gap. In those situations, you may need to consider coach-

ing your employee, which is the topic of the next chapter.

NOTE

1. Quoted in Amy Gallo, “Giving a High Performer Productive

Feedback,” HBR.org, December 3, 2009, https://hbr.org/2009/12/

giving-a-high-performer-produc.

69

CHAPTER 6

Coach Your

Employees

to Close

Performance Gaps

Coaching is a powerful way to encourage your employ-

ees’ growth and a practical approach for developing new

skills. It can also be used to close performance gaps. But

coaching—an ongoing learning process in which you

help your direct reports build mastery—usually won’t

bring about a quick fi x. When you need a fast turnaround

or immediate results, feedback is your best bet. When an

employee is driven to improve and wants your help tack-

ling a problem or building mastery, however, coaching is

a rewarding and effective option.

Coaching is a supportive rather than a directive

approach that relies on asking questions. According to

71

Ongoing Performance Management

executive coach Ed Batista, coaching is “asking ques-

tions that help people discover the answers that are right

for them.”1 As a manager, you’re often in the role of ex-

pert, providing answers and guidance. But in coaching,

it’s important to adopt a different mindset. Rather than

suggest what your employees should do or explain how to

do it, you should prompt your employees with questions

to help them solve problems in new ways themselves. As

Candice Frankovelgia of the Center for Creative Leader-

ship says, “If you keep providing all the answers, people

will keep lining up at your door looking for them.”2

Since coaching is an ongoing time commitment, target

your coaching to situations where you will get the high-

est return on your time and effort. The most- productive

opportunities generally arise in these situations:

• A new employee needs direction.

• A direct report is almost ready for new responsi-

bilities and just needs a bit more help.

• A newly minted manager under your wing is

still behaving as though they were an individual

contributor.

• A strong performer is eager to develop a new skill

or explore career development opportunities.

• A

signifi cant performance problem has arisen in

an employee’s work.

As indicated in this list, coaching can be an effective

way to help employees learn new skills so they can reach

the next level in their career. But it can also be a power-

72

Coach Your Employees to Close Performance Gaps

ful tool when it comes to closing performance gaps. As

with feedback, the goal of coaching is not to reprimand

your employees for shortfalls but to catalyze their growth

and improvement. Your objective is not to simply iden-

tify what they did wrong (thereby draining motivation)

but to elicit positive change. Because coaching requires

that your employee be an active participant in their own

development, it can have a deeper impact than outside-

in sources of information.

Coaching may not be a fi t for every employee—and it

won’t succeed unless the person is willing to do it—but

it is broadly applicable and can be used with everyone

from high-potential standouts to underperformers. As a

manager, you set the overall direction for your employ-

ees; with coaching, you can help them fi gure out how

best they can get where they need to be.

Get Your Employee Onboard

When you’ve pinpointed a coaching opportunity, talk it

over with your employee to make sure they agree there

is indeed a problem to fi x or room for growth and that

they are willing to tackle it through coaching. Agreement

is the foundation of successful coaching: For it to work,

the person must take ownership and responsibility of the

process. If you intuit that an individual isn’t invested in

this approach, do some digging before expending more

of your time. Do the two of you see the problem or oppor-

tunity the same way? Do they seem to want to improve?

If there’s a disconnect, discuss how they would prefer

to address the problem. It could be that they are open

to coaching but would prefer to work with an outside

73

Ongoing Performance Management

coach rather than with you, their manager. Or perhaps

they’d rather try taking a class before embarking on an

intense one-on-one learning experience. On the other

hand, if they are open to coaching with you, identify at

the start of the process exactly what they’re hoping to

get out of it.

Defi ne the Purpose of Your

Coaching

Encourage your employee’s participation by fi nding out

what they hope to achieve and how they think coaching

can help address the performance gap. You may want to

begin by asking them to share their thoughts before you

offer your own. By opening with a question, explains ex-

ecutive coach Amy Jen Su, “you’ll begin as you hope to

continue: with your employee talking, you listening, and

both of you then building solutions together.”3

Identify an explicit goal to target with coaching. This

should be a separate goal from the performance goals

your employee identifi ed in section 1 and should gen-

erally be focused on learning. For instance, a coaching

goal may to develop a new skill, learn a new behavior, or

improve in a specifi c area, rather than to deliver specifi c

work results.

Perhaps the two of you determine that your employ-

ee’s performance gap can be closed or minimized by, say,

improving delegating skills, running meetings, or priori-

tizing requests with tight deadlines. Once you nail down

the purpose of your coaching, you may be tempted to fi x

the problem right away by sharing your hard-won wis-

dom, giving advice, or offering your opinion on what’s

74

Coach Your Employees to Close Performance Gaps

going wrong. Resist that temptation. Encourage your

employee to fi nd their own answers. Instead of offering

(unsolicited) solutions, ask questions to get more infor-

mation.

Understand Your Employee’s

Perspective

To help your direct report, you need to learn more about

their point of view on the performance gap and which

skills they need to master in order to close it. Getting

background information is critical in assessing the root

causes of their challenge—and identifying an effective

response.

Skillfully worded, open-ended questions can help

draw out answers. Yes-or-no questions and those that

begin with “why” can make people feel defensive. Start

your questions with what, how, when, or tell me more.

For example, you might ask the following of someone in-

terested in developing their comfort around presenting

to senior management:

• What was different or similar about the situations

in which you were effective compared with those

when you were less effective?

• How would you describe your effectiveness in pre-

senting to this audience in the past?

• When have you been more or less successful in

these types of interactions?

• Tell me more about what you think holds you back

in these situations.

75

Ongoing Performance Management

Listen deeply to your employee’s answers. When

someone senses you’re completely focused and actively

listening to what they say, it can be a deeply validating

experience that helps build rapport and trust (see the

sidebar “Building Mutual Trust”).

BUILDING MUTUAL TRUST

Your people need to trust you. Otherwise, they have

no reason to respect your judgment, do what you ask

(especially if it’s diffi

cult), or put in the extra eff ort that

results in high-quality work. Managers must earn—not

demand—their employees’ commitment. Establishing

trust takes conscious eff ort. You can develop trust with

your direct reports in a few diff erent ways.

First, demonstrate ongoing concern for other peo-

ple’s well-being and success. People trust those who

have their best interests in mind, so show empathy for

your employees. When asking someone to work extra

hours on a weekend to complete a strategic project,

for example, acknowledge that it’s an imposition: “This

is an important initiative for the company, and I know

that this may be an inconvenience. Would this upset

any plans you’ve made with friends or family?” You can

also build trust over time by demonstrating a genuine

interest in an employee’s career. Help them fi nd oppor-

tunities to expand their horizons and develop skills that

align with their professional aspirations.

You can also show your expertise in the matter at

hand. According to Linda Hill and Kent Lineback, authors

76

Coach Your Employees to Close Performance Gaps

of Being the Boss, “You need to know not just what

to do and how to do it but also how to get it done in

the organization and the world where you work .”4 Ulti-

mately, people grow to trust you through your accom-

plishments—the savvy decisions you make, your ability

to garner necessary resources to make things happen,

and your mastery of the concrete details of getting

things done. For example, the person you are coach-

ing with sales techniques will trust you if you yourself

have a reputation as a successful salesperson.

Finally, be true to your word. Whenever you say,

“Here’s the plan: I’ll do X and you’ll do Y,” be sure to

hold up your end of the bargain—every time. This in-

cludes practicing discretion where appropriate. Don’t

disclose information held in confi dence. Discussions

with an employee about a performance problem in a

feedback or coaching session may inadvertently dredge

up personal information that the employee would not

want shared with others. Always respect their privacy.

See the Problem in New Ways

With a stronger understanding of the situation, you can

open a two-way dialogue to help your direct report con-

sider new choices, strategies, or skills they might develop.

This is different than offering a solution— instead, it leads

your employee closer to developing their own answers.

Try these tactics to establish a productive dialogue:

77

Ongoing Performance Management

• Hold up the mirror. Redescribe the situation they

have outlined to you, paraphrased from your

own perspective, and ask for their response. For

example, “Based on what you’ve told me, it seems

that two things might be creating the issue. Do

those ideas resonate?”

• Reframe the situation. Offering another angle

can help your employee see things differently.

Say, “Could I offer another perspective on the

situation?”

• Rehearse. A coaching session is a safe environ-

ment to role-play an upcoming interaction, such as

how they might interact with senior management.

You can also review a presentation that they deliv-

ered well to this audience and discuss what made

it effective. Or you can go over how they should

prepare for these kinds of meetings and fi ne-tune

preparation techniques.

The observations, suggestions, and practice opportu-

nities you offer are the heart of your coaching session. To

be effective, they need to be tailored to your employee’s

particular situation—and they likely should be comple-

mented with ongoing “homework” that will help your di-

rect report prepare for your next meeting.

Agree on Next Steps

Near the end of your coaching session, assess whether

your employee is ready to move forward by asking them

to summarize what they’ve learned. “What are the top

78

Coach Your Employees to Close Performance Gaps

two or three things you’re taking away from this conver-

sation?” Inviting them to articulate their gains, rather

than doing it yourself, increases their engagement in the

process and also helps you gauge what they’ve taken in

and what they might still need to learn.

To maintain momentum between coaching sessions,

set a date for when you’ll meet again, and identify any

tasks to be completed before then. Rather than assign-

ing tasks, build your employee’s accountability by ask-

ing them to formulate and implement their plans, and

establish associated deadlines for each clearly defi ned

action. Perhaps, for example, they’ll outline a forthcom-

ing presentation for the group that the two of you will

rehearse in your next meeting.

It could be that you leave the session with home-

work, too. For instance, you may need to provide your

employee with additional resources, like potential train-

ing programs, or introduce them to a colleague who will

make a great mentor (to read more about setting your

direct report up with an appropriate mentor or sponsor,

see chapter 9).

Keep the Relationship Going

Coaching doesn’t end after the fi rst meeting. Effec-

tive coaching to close performance gaps and encourage

growth includes checking in to track progress and en-

sure understanding. Doing so gives you an opportunity

to prevent backsliding, reinforce learning, and continue

individual improvement.

Your employee may have found it motivating to set

a target date for mastering a new skill, but don’t wait

79

Ongoing Performance Management

until then to assess how things are going. In a fast-paced

workplace, it’s easy to lose track of longer-term plans

and agreements. Hold yourself and your employee ac-

countable by sticking to your planned check-in dates,

and follow through with the resources or introductions

you agreed to provide. Your employee is more likely to

take your coaching efforts seriously if you keep your

commitments.

Then, observe growth and communicate impact. Over

time, are you seeing progress in your employee’s results,

behavior, or relationships? Explicitly communicate to

your direct report the impact of the progress you observe

—it may be hard for them to recognize it themselves.

Helping them acknowledge changes and growth can in-

crease their motivation.

It’s unrealistic to expect an employee to immediately

master skills they’ve been without for years, so expect a

few stumbles in the process. Perfection isn’t necessary

for someone to make real progress. Remind yourself that

you may not see results right away. When you do see im-

provement, celebrate a direct report’s successes, even if

they still have room to grow.

Of course, there’s no one single right way to coach em-

ployees. What works for one person may be ineffective

for another. Try different approaches, and make needed

adjustments. And don’t expect to master the practice of

coaching right away, especially if you’re new to it or to

management. Like any new skill, it requires practice and

stepping out of your comfort zone, which can feel awk-

ward at fi rst.

80

Coach Your Employees to Close Performance Gaps

Not every manager will choose to use coaching as a

performance management tool on a regular basis, but

for the right employees, it can be a rewarding experience.

NOTES

1. Ed Batista, “Introduction: Why Coach?” in HBR Guide to Coach-

ing Employees, Harvard Business Review Press, 2015, xii.

2. Candice Frankovelgia, “Shift Your Thinking to Coach Effec-

tively,” HBR Guide to Coaching Employees, Harvard Business Review

Press, 2015, 4.

3. Amy Jen Su, “Holding a Coaching Session,” in HBR Guide to

Coaching Employees, Harvard Business Review Press, 2015, 41.

4. Linda Hill and Kent Lineback, “To Build Trust, Competence Is

Key,” HBR.org, March 22, 2012, https://hbr.org/2012/03/to-build

-trust-competence-is-k.

81

CHAPTER 7

How to Keep

Your Employees

Motivated

Motivation is at the very heart of performance manage-

ment—something that managers must attend to all the

time. A person can understand the importance of ambi-

tious goals but is unlikely to achieve them without be-

ing motivated to do so. Feedback or coaching efforts, no

matter how extraordinary, will go unheeded by an em-

ployee who’s disinterested. Hours invested on someone’s

annual performance appraisal and discussion will be

largely wasted if the employee doesn’t feel the need to

improve.

By contrast, for those who are motivated, every aspect

of performance management can serve as an opportu-

nity to learn and grow. How can you inspire engagement

and boost motivation on your team?

83

Ongoing Performance Management

Cultivate a Culture of Respect

Motivating your people starts with being a good manager.

A company can offer great pay and benefi ts, employee-

friendly policies, and other perks, but a bad boss can neu-

tralize these features and demotivate people. By the same

token, a terrifi c manager can redeem an employee’s expe-

rience in even dysfunctional organizational cultures.

Employees value being treated with respect—and feel

it’s important that their colleagues are treated well, too.

For the second year running, “respectful treatment of all

employees at all levels” was cited as the leading contribu-

tor to employees’ job satisfaction in the Society for Hu-

man Resource Management’s 2016 Employee Job Satis-

faction and Engagement survey.

Unfortunately, respect isn’t the norm everywhere; to

the contrary, incivility and bad behavior are far too com-

mon in the workplace. Unchecked rudeness, bullying,

and abusive comments create an environment where

people feel threatened and fearful. When such behavior

comes from bosses, in particular, it can easily spread.

Fear demotivates people, spurs excessive caution, and

forces people to prioritize self-protection over workplace

contribution.

In their research on sustainable individual and or-

ganizational performance, business and management

professors Gretchen Spreitzer and Christine Porath

found that motivation and performance plummet in re-

sponse to offensive behavior: “[H]alf of employees who

had experienced uncivil behavior at work intentionally

decreased their efforts. More than a third deliberately

decreased the quality of their work. Two-thirds spent

84

How to Keep Your Employees Motivated

a lot of time avoiding the offender, and about the same

number said their performance had declined.” 1 Rude-

ness in the workplace costs organizations dearly and is

insidiously infectious. “Those who have been the targets

of bad behavior are often, in turn, uncivil themselves,”

Spreitzer and Porath found. Such “uncivil” behaviors in-

clude sabotaging peers, spreading gossip, and neglecting

to copy colleagues on communications.

Although Spreitzer and Porath’s research shows the

negative effects of incivility, additional research by Po-

rath also emphasizes the benefi ts of a respectful culture,

as fi gure 7-1 indicates. Engagement rises as respectful

treatment increases. And there are a few steps you can

FIGURE 7-1

When leaders treat you with respect, you’re

more engaged

Extremely 7

high

6

ement at work?

5

4

evel of engag

3

2

Extremely

low 1

What is your l

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

Never

Every time

How often does your leader treat you with respect?

Note: Based on a study of nearly 20,000 employees around the world.

Source: Analysis of “What Is Your Quality of Life at Work?” survey data by Christine Porath.

Originally published in “Half of Employees Don’t Feel Respected by Their Bosses,” HBR.org,

November 19, 2014 (product #H012O0).

85

Ongoing Performance Management

take as a manager to minimize bad behavior and foster

a culture of respect, thereby boosting motivation and

engagement.

• Model good behavior. Managers establish the

tone—or lack thereof—in their workplace. A

survey conducted by Porath and global leadership

professor Christine Pearson found that a quarter

of managers who admitted to behaving uncivilly

said they did so because their own leaders and

role models were rude.2 As a manager, you have a

unique opportunity to set an example of respect-

ful treatment. Employees who see that higher-ups

tolerate or embrace offensive behavior may follow

suit. By contrast, when they see that a manager

won’t abide such behavior, they’ll be less likely to

engage it in themselves.

• Respect your employee’s dignity. Discourage

public criticism. A basic tenet of supervision is

to praise in public and criticize in private. Being

reprimanded in front of one’s colleagues can have

devastating effects on an employee’s sense of fair-

ness, pride, and motivation. You cannot motivate

people whom you have stripped of their dignity.

Some bosses inadvertently behave in ways that not

only humiliate the individual target of criticism

but also reduce trust among all team members

who witness such incivility. Treat your employees

with respect at all costs, even when you must share

constructive feedback about their performance.

• Hire respectful candidates—and stop bad behavior.

Caiman Consulting, a management consultancy

86

How to Keep Your Employees Motivated

headquartered in Redmond, Washington, boasts a

95% retention rate—which director Greg Long at-

tributes to the fi rm’s culture. In hiring, it conducts

background checks, including “a candidate’s record

of civility.” “People leave a trail,” says Long. “You

can save yourself from a corrosive culture by being

careful and conscientious up front.” Candidates

who don’t fi t the culture, no matter how qualifi ed,

are not hired. 3

Take note of the behavior of those already on your

team. If you see a direct report being disrespectful, ad-

dress it immediately. You may also want to reassure, in

confi dence, the recipient of that person’s rudeness that

you have responded to this issue. This will communi-

cate that you’re invested in the well-being of everyone on

the team.

Once you’ve established a workplace where your em-

ployees are comfortable, you can increase their engage-

ment through rewards, recognition, and challenge.

Truly Rewarding Rewards

“To many people, motivation and rewards go together

like peaches and cream. They are inseparable,” write Jer-

emy Hope and Steve Player in their book Beyond Perfor-

mance Management. Rewards and motivation fall into

two categories: extrinsic and intrinsic.

Extrinsic rewards

When people think about rewards, they often immedi-

ately think of ones that are extrinsic: external, tangible

forms of recognition, such as pay hikes, promotions,

87

Ongoing Performance Management

bonuses, and sales prizes. On the surface, extrinsic re-

wards tend to be easy to execute, such as “If you make

your quota, we’ll pay you $5,000.” In fact, most orga-

nizations’ established reward systems are built around

such extrinsic rewards, and in some instances, they

are effective, particularly in industries like sales, where

bonuses can be linked to reaching certain quantita-

tive goals. But many managers disagree with the no-

tion that fi nancial incentives are necessary to boost

performance. Extrinsic rewards don’t necessarily make

people work harder or better. As Alfi e Kohn writes in

his widely cited HBR article, “Why Incentive Plans

Cannot Work,” “rewards typically undermine the very

processes they are intended to enhance.”

When such motivators do succeed, the positive ef-

fects are often short-lived. Money matters, certainly, and

an organization will have a tough time recruiting and

keeping good employees without a competitive level of

pay and benefi ts. But while money can be a motivator, it

does not build commitment and can also encourage the

wrong behaviors, such as cutting ethical corners to earn

a bonus or to game the reward system. And tensions can

run high when monetary prizes are awarded for the re-

sults of a team. (See the sidebar “A Fair Approach to Fi-

nancial Incentives.”)

The biggest problem with extrinsic rewards, by far,

is that while many people believe monetary compensa-

tion is a major driver of performance, research has found

little evidence to back up that assumption. In fact, bo-

nuses and other fi nancial incentives in some cases can

do more harm than good. “When it comes to producing

88

How to Keep Your Employees Motivated

lasting change in attitudes and behavior,” writes Kohn,

“rewards, like punishment, are strikingly ineffective.

Once the rewards run out, people revert to their old be-

haviors.” Extrinsic motivators don’t change the attitudes

that underlie behavior.

Unless you are a senior executive, you may not have

much control over the fi nancial and extrinsic rewards

you can offer, but you do have the opportunity to pro-

vide intangible options that might mean more to your

employees.

A FAIR APPROACH TO FINANCIAL INCENTIVES

In theory, it’s easy to dole out cash when someone per-

forms well. But in reality, it’s not that simple.

Extrinsic rewards are quantifi able, but motivation is

not. How much money does it take to alter someone’s

behavior? Off er $100 to your sales reps if they hit their

quotas, and they won’t bat an eye. Off er $1 million, and

you’ll have their full attention, but that’s not a realistic

fi gure. No one can say for certain what the right num-

ber is—and the right number for one person may be

the wrong one for someone else.

What’s more, it’s rarely possible to sort out indi-

vidual contributions to a project or determine what

they’re worth. Who should be rewarded when a new

car is launched, for example? Should it be the design-

ers, the engineers, the marketing team, or the execu-

tive who oversaw the whole project? Even if it were

( continued)

89

Ongoing Performance Management

A FAIR APPROACH TO FINANCIAL INCENTIVES

possible to pinpoint the measure of any individual’s

contribution, this form of fi nancial reward can actually

undermine both teamwork and performance.

Most employees’ main concern about pay-related

issues is fairness, so if you do want to use fi nancial

incentives, make them fair and consistent. Concerns

about fairness should not arise when the criteria of re-

wards are standard, based on clear metrics, and obvi-

ous to all—especially when individual contributors are

the ones being rewarded.

But the issue of fairness is harder to resolve when

rewarding members of a team. “Everyone on the team

should participate in the reward payout,” suggest Jer-

emy Hope and Steve Player in Beyond Performance

Management. Since it’s nearly impossible to determine

and quantify the exact contribution of individuals on a

team, don’t try.

Intrinsic rewards

The opposite of extrinsic incentives, intrinsic rewards

produce nonquantifi able personal satisfaction, such as

a sense of accomplishment, personal control over one’s

work, and a feeling that efforts are appreciated. Exam-

ples include intellectual stimulation, skill development,

autonomy, or challenge. When intrinsically motivated,

people do things for their own sense of achievement be-

cause they inherently want to.

90

How to Keep Your Employees Motivated

Intrinsic rewards must be thoughtfully tailored to

individuals. A meaningful reward to one employee may

not move another. A conscientious contributor might be

thrilled to be given the opportunity to attend a confer-

ence in their area of interest, while an ambitious rising

star might prefer being offered face time with the CEO

or an appointment to a high-level project team.

There are a variety of ways that one can encourage

good work through intrinsic rewards. Here are three tac-

tics you can incorporate into your daily work, starting

with recognition.

Acknowledge good work

Recognition is one of the most powerful tools in a man-

ager’s toolbox—and a far more powerful motivator than

money. “Recognition is about feeling special,” explains

author and motivation expert Bob Nelson, and “it is hard

to feel special from a corporate program where everyone

gets the same thing, like a fi ve-year pin.” 4

Each of your employees values recognition from a dif-

ferent audience. One person’s favorite audience might be

their peers, and that individual would appreciate public

praise for their achievement in front of their colleagues.

Someone more concerned with developing expertise

might prize a professional or technical award. A person

who prioritizes customer feedback above all would trea-

sure a letter from a customer—or a photo of the employee

and customer together, framed for their offi ce wall. For an

employee who cares most about your opinion, “the most

powerful recognition would be a one-on-one conversation

where you tell them quietly but vividly why they are such

91

Ongoing Performance Management

a valuable member of the team,” suggests Marcus Buck-

ingham in his HBR article “What Great Managers Do.”

When deciding how to recognize individuals, take

their personalities into account. An extrovert may get a

kick out of a public display, but a more introverted person

might cringe at such a spectacle. Tailor your approach to

what you know of their preferences—and if you aren’t

sure, ask. The motivation employees derive from well-

tailored recognition can be signifi cant. In his article,

Buckingham describes the example of Jim Kawashima, a

Walgreens manager. Jim realized that his customer ser-

vice representative, Manjit, was highly competitive and

measurement focused—and she thrived on public rec-

ognition. So Jim covered his offi ce walls with charts and

fi gures highlighting employee successes in red. Because

Manjit loved to win and see her successes acknowledged,

she was driven to achieve the highest sales numbers on

the team. Her success galvanized the rest of the staff, and

after a few months their location was ranked fi rst out of

4,000 in a companywide selling program.

Like feedback, recognition is best delivered frequently

—at least once every other week. That may seem like a

lot, but if your team gathers for weekly meetings, reserv-

ing a moment every other week to acknowledge an em-

ployee’s contributions will take very little time and have

a big impact.

As you think about ways to recognize good work, don’t

overlook the value of the written word. Consider copy-

ing your employee on an email to your boss highlighting

their performance—or write a sincere thank-you note

for exceptional work. During his tenure as president and

CEO of Campbell Soup, Doug Conant wrote more than

92

How to Keep Your Employees Motivated

30,000 individualized, handwritten thank-you notes to

his 20,000 employees. Such thoughtful rewards and rec-

ognition can be deeply meaningful and highly motivat-

ing to your employees. Plus, they cost nearly nothing.

Provide decision-making discretion

As any entrepreneur can tell you, people are more mo-

tivated when they feel as though they own what they

do. Employees are energized when they’re empowered

to make decisions that affect their own work. “Show-

ing trust, granting autonomy, and recognizing the value

of individual contributions all build employees’ sense

of ownership of their work and pride in performing it,”

says Monique Valcour, executive and career coach.5 Giv-

ing your employees control over their work as their ca-

pabilities allow and supporting their efforts to achieve

meaningful goals can lead to superior performance and

can also serve as rich development opportunities. (We’ll

explore development further in the next section.)

Granting your employees the autonomy to make de-

cisions increases their sense of ownership and control—

and boosts their motivation. For example, Home Depot

grants managers decision-making discretion over their

own stores’ merchandise and layout, rather than insist-

ing that each outlet operate identically. Although the

practice is less effi cient fi nancially, it keeps employees

feeling engaged and rewarded.

Even if your organization doesn’t spearhead efforts

like these to empower employees, you can do the same

on a smaller scale for your direct reports. Allow oppor-

tunities for each individual to operate more indepen-

dently within their own work. If a representative is eager

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Ongoing Performance Management

to improve the customer service experience, allow them

to decide how best to do so, perhaps by surveying cus-

tomers, running a focus group, digging into an estab-

lished customer database, or with another approach you

might not have thought of. When granted the freedom to

choose how to tackle a project, your employee will likely

feel a greater sense of ownership and engagement.

Introduce challenge

People are often capable of handling tasks that are more

complex and more demanding than their managers ex-

pect and than their job descriptions require. Tackling

such challenges can reward, inspire, and motivate them.

In researching her book Rookie Smarts: Why Learn-

ing Beats Knowing in the New Game of Work, manage-

ment consultant Liz Wiseman found that satisfaction

increases as the level of challenge grows.

Consider giving employees higher-stakes assignments

that involve more-complex problems or a bigger set of

stakeholders. This could be a matter of offering a new

work assignment or expanding a current one. For exam-

ple, you could enlarge an employee’s training session in

coding to include participants from the entire organiza-

tion rather than offering it to only those who are in their

specifi c department. Depending on how big or challeng-

ing the project is, you may want to revisit the goals you

and your employee agreed upon to account for the new

challenge.

You can also invite your employees to stretch their

skills and grow their expertise by giving them projects

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How to Keep Your Employees Motivated

they’ve never done before—tasks where they haven’t yet

mastered all the relevant knowledge. This tactic may not

work for every employee, however. “Make sure to choose

people who have core aptitude or adjacent skills, but

then let them learn as they go, Wiseman explains in her

HBR.org article “An Easy Way to Make Your Employees

Happier.” “Their comfort zones will expand, and they’ll

take great pride in mastering new things.” Remember,

though, that the learning process can be rocky—and

before someone feels comfortable with a new skill, they

might feel frustrated or unsure for a while.

Finally, consider redirecting a person’s existing exper-

tise by pivoting to a new problem. Many skills are trans-

ferable from one area to another; with expertise in one

fi eld, some people can quickly pick up the nuances of a

related one. For example, a scientist at a pharmaceutical

company shifted her research from cellular biology—her

area of expertise—to oncology. She was unsure, initially,

about how to do so but after a few months reported feel-

ing invigorated, challenged, and newly creative.

Recognizing your employees’ good work and chal-

lenging them to do more can motivate them to continue

exemplary work and contribute more to the organiza-

tion. As you consider ways to encourage, engage, and

build your direct reports’ skills, think about what they

may aspire to and how they want to grow in the long

term—a key element of performance management called

development that we’ll cover in the next section.

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Ongoing Performance Management

NOTES

1. Gretchen Spreitzer and Christine Porath, “Creating Sustainable

Performance,” Harvard Business Review, January–February 2012

(product #R1201F).

2. Christine Porath and Christine Pearson, “The Price of Incivil-

ity,” Harvard Business Review, January–February 2013 (product

#R1301J).

3. Quoted in Gretchen Spreitzer and Christine Porath, “Creat-

ing Sustainable Performance,” Harvard Business Review, January–

February 2012 (product #R1201F).

4. Quoted in “Employee Recognition and Reward When Times

Are Tough,” Harvard Management Update, September 2003,

https://hbr.org/2008/02/employee-recognition-and-rewar-1.html.

5. Monique Valcour, “The Power of Dignity in the Workplace,”

HBR.org, April 28, 2014 (product #H00S6P).

96

SECTION THREE

Developing

Employees

CHAPTER 8

Understand Your

Employee’s Wants

and Needs

Employee development is a process for managing a per-

son’s professional growth. Learning, building new skills,

and working to one’s full potential is both rewarding for

the individual and helpful to the organization as a whole.

For your direct reports, it means getting the opportunity

to focus on their upward mobility. For you, it offers a

chance to boost employees’ productivity, motivation, and

engagement while also retaining and growing your top

talent.

Development is invaluable for your employees. Fred-

erick Herzberg, in his classic HBR article “One More

Time: How Do You Motivate Employees?” argues that

growth is a powerful intrinsic motivator and can in-

crease job satisfaction. Job seekers at all levels, from

99

Developing Employees

recent grads to executives, are more concerned with

learning and development opportunities than with any

other aspect of a prospective position. And in a study of

Millennials in the workplace, professional services fi rm

PwC found that training and development were the two

most-valued benefi ts for these workers—even more than

money, which ranked third.1

Companies whose employees are inspired and

equipped to fulfi ll their greatest potential yield the best

business results overall. And if high-performing individ-

uals feel that they are regularly being given chances to

grow, they will be more likely to stay with the organiza-

tion, even during tough times. Likewise, having strong

career development opportunities in place helps your

organization prepare for the future; by giving them the

training and skills they need, your employees will be ready

to move into key roles when the opportunities arise.

Employee development, like motivating and coach-

ing employees, should be an ongoing part of your per-

formance management process. Tailor development ef-

forts—which can include training, temporary “stretch”

assignments, mentoring, and coaching, among other

approaches—to the individual, and work with them to

determine which ones are the right fi t for their skills and

aims.

Your Role in Employee Development

While development was once largely considered the do-

main of HR, it’s actually every manager’s responsibility

to attend to their people’s growth on an ongoing basis.

Managers who take employee development seriously are

100

Understand Your Employee’s Wants and Needs

more likely to lead a team with good morale and high

standards, maintain a spirit of continuous improvement,

and achieve better results.

Yet many managers are hesitant to develop their em-

ployees. Some argue that they don’t have the time, espe-

cially if there are no challenging or interesting opportu-

nities currently available for a direct report. Others fi nd

the conversations diffi cult if their employee isn’t ready

for promotion or if the manager doesn’t have a clear plan

of action in mind.

But neglecting development has consequences. Your

employees may feel unsupported, and their morale and

motivation may decline. Even your strongest perform-

ers can begin to feel stuck in their careers, and that in-

creases the risk of them leaving the organization (see

the sidebar “Preventing Career Plateaus”). Worse are the

disillusioned, weaker performers who don’t quit, leaving

you with a destructive morale problem that can infect

the culture.

PREVENTING CAREER PLATEAUS

Just because someone has strong skills and impressive

performance doesn’t mean they’re happy in their job. In

fact, psychologists Timothy Butler and James Waldroop

write in their HBR article “Job Sculpting: The Art of Re-

taining Your Best People,” “managers botch career de-

velopment—and retention—because they mistakenly

assume people are satisfi ed with jobs they excel at.”

( continued)

101

Developing Employees

PREVENTING CAREER PLATEAUS

Don’t allow good people to get stuck in career pla-

teaus. As a manager, you have a responsibility to make

sure that the people you value are progressively ad-

vancing in their career paths.

How can you tell when someone is ready for a new

challenge? They usually make it clear by asking or by

pursuing development opportunities. But you can also

watch for a few signs:

• Everything they manage has been running

smoothly—for a signifi cant period of time.

• When faced with problems, they jump quickly to

solutions.

• They spend time trying to fi x other people’s and

other departments’ problems.

• While they’re still performing well, they’ve be-

come increasingly but inexplicably negative.

To retain your best performers and maintain their

engagement, make an eff ort to off er meaningful devel-

opment opportunities and challenges—and to raise the

topic if they don’t bring it up themselves.

On the other hand, people who are challenged and

engaged describe their development process as exhila-

rating. When people are energized by learning, it’s easy

for them to stay engaged and perform at their peak. Sat-

isfaction levels rise alongside challenge.

102

Understand Your Employee’s Wants and Needs

To be sure, investing in your direct reports’ develop-

ment takes time and thoughtful effort devoted to dis-

cussing and thinking about each of your employees and

their futures. To best help your people develop, you’ll

need curiosity about each individual and patience for the

learning process. But your employee will have to do the

hard work of development—starting with taking owner-

ship and embracing accountability for their own growth.

You can’t just hand your direct report a development

plan and expect them to commit and run with it. Each

employee’s drive to grow needs to come from within.

“Highly structured, one-size-fi ts-all learning programs

don’t work anymore,” explains consultant and author

Keith Ferrazzi. “Individuals must own, self-direct, and

control their learning futures. Yet they can’t do it alone,

nor do you want them to.”2

Start with the Employee

What do your direct reports want to learn? What are

their career ambitions and interests, their passions and

values? These aren’t questions you can answer on your

own. You’re best off making ongoing career development

a regular part of your conversations with your employ-

ees—but start with a comprehensive discussion about

where they’re headed.

Identify employee aspirations

A development-focused conversation can build rapport,

help you connect on a personal level, and show your

commitment to helping your direct report grow while

you gather useful information. Your frequent discussions

about an employee’s performance and progress toward

103

Developing Employees

goals may naturally lead to conversations about their ca-

reer aspirations—but if the topic doesn’t arise naturally,

ask directly. Give your employee a heads-up that you’d

like to talk about their career plans and future develop-

ment so they can refl ect beforehand.

Your goal in the discussion is to understand your em-

ployee’s aspirations as well as their current state of work-

place know-how and daily performance. Explore their

current developmental level and goals (for example,

what they are ready for, how much more work they can

handle, what the next step should be in their journey),

their learning style and preferences, and their motiva-

tions and values. What makes your employee tick? What

is it that they’re after? Recognition? A raise or promo-

tion? Autonomy? Aim to identify what your direct report

wants to achieve most both in the short term and in their

long-term career.

To elicit information, ask open-ended questions rather

than ones that require a simple yes or no response, and

practice active listening (see the sidebar “Be an Active

Listener” in chapter 5). Some sample questions you can

use are:

• What do you want to be known for?

• What matters most to you?

• What do you see yourself doing a year from now

that you’re not currently doing?

• What does success look like for you?

• Where and when do you feel you are at your per-

sonal best?

104

Understand Your Employee’s Wants and Needs

• What’s your favorite part of what you do?

• Where would you like to be in your career in three,

fi ve, or 10 years?

While you may have discussed some of these aspira-

tions and interests in your goal-setting meeting—or even

in your feedback and coaching sessions—ambitions can

shift over time. When it comes to development, revisit-

ing these topics ensures that you and your direct report

will choose a productive path to meaningful growth.

By better understanding your employee’s personal

and learning goals, you’ll both be in a stronger position

to identify developmental opportunities.

Align ambitions with organizational needs

Match an individual’s interests, values, and skills to

growth opportunities based on their level of perfor-

mance and potential. You’ll want to fi nd a development

path that is meaningful to your employee to ensure their

commitment, but work toward an overlap between what

will bring them the most satisfaction and what will be

best for the organization.

Erika Andersen, founding partner of the coaching,

consulting, and training fi rm Proteus and author of Be

Bad First, suggests focusing on three questions to help

choose a direction for your employee:

• What will drive the economic engine? Identify

capabilities that provide value to the organization.

For example, someone in operations could reduce

cycle and delivery times by learning how to better

manage complex custom client projects, reduce

105

Developing Employees

expenses by learning more about sourcing mate-

rials, or boost productivity by setting and com-

municating clearer direction for their own direct

reports. Jot down or make a mental note of all the

options to choose from.

• What is the individual best at? Once you and your

direct report have identifi ed useful capacities that

they might develop, consider whether they can

excel at them by assessing their innate strengths.

Are they good at performing other, similar tasks?

Someone who is organized and sequential in how

they approach work may easily grasp complex

project management—and they could better share

that thinking with their team by mastering some

communication and management skills. But if

they struggle with research, learning to excel at

sourcing materials may be more diffi cult.

• What is the individual passionate about? After

assess ing where an employee’s strengths overlap

with valuable areas for potential development,

think back to your discussion about their aspira-

tions. Identify how interested they are in those

areas. Strengths are not just things that we’re good

at but things that can energize us as well. Perhaps

your employee perks up at the idea of managing

complex projects, but the very prospect of leading

a team sounds draining to them. Development ef-

forts work best when they feel exciting, not bur-

densome, so capitalize on your employees’ interests

by helping them choose a path that energizes them.

106

Understand Your Employee’s Wants and Needs

Rethink the Traditional

Promotion Track

As you think about a direction for your employee, con-

sider their career trajectory. A traditional path of ad-

vancement may not make sense given a direct report’s

interests, skills, and ambitions.

A long-trusted concept in career development has been

the career ladder: a logical series of stages that move a

talented and promotable employee upward through pro-

gressively more challenging and responsible positions.

But clear career ladders are less common in the rapidly

changing, sometimes unpredictable world of contempo-

rary work. Simple and straightforward career paths are

harder to identify as hierarchical structures break down

and organizations fl atten. In some fi elds and companies,

the traditional ladder model has shifted to what Deloitte

vice chairman and managing principal Cathy Benko calls

a “lattice.” In the case of a lattice, people shift roles, re-

sponsibilities, and even business areas over the course of

their careers, sometimes more than once.

“In the industrial era the corporate ladder was the

standard metaphor for talent development and career

paths. Its one-size-fi ts-all, only-way-is-up rules were

clear, and incentives uniformly supported them,” Benko

notes in her coauthored HBR article “AT&T’s Talent

Overhaul.” “The lattice, in contrast, represents career

paths that change continually and adaptively through

multidirectional, zigzag movements.”

In the ladder model, career paths were clearly de-

lineated

—an editorial assistant who is promoted to

107

Developing Employees

assistant editor, to associate editor, and fi nally to editor—

and headed one way: upward. But the multidirectional

lattice model allows for greater fl exibility: an editorial

assistant who discovers an interest in video production

develops those visual and technical skills, and through

apprenticeships and training opportunities shifts from

a text-heavy role in their organization’s book-publishing

division to a multimedia-focused position in its e-learn-

ing branch. With the lattice, employees can move later-

ally or diagonally; they can ascend or descend.

This may require a shift in thinking as you consider

what your employee’s direction may be in the organiza-

tion. Preparing a direct report and shaping their skills to

fi t a traditional role in management may be a mismatch

if they’d prefer another position that taps into their

strengths and interests.

Instead of putting each of your employees on the same

track of automatic advancement (once they’ve learned

the appropriate skills, of course), think about their ca-

reer aspirations. What does your direct report most want

to do or be? Whether they hunger to become a manager,

want to expand an exciting aspect of the current role

they generally enjoy, or yearn to learn a new skill that

overlaps with another department, identify a direction

that meets your employee’s personal needs as well as

those of the organization, even in the long term.

Once you and your direct report have identifi ed their

wants and needs and pinpointed a specifi c direction or

area they should develop, don’t jump right into action.

There are a variety of ways that they can grow their

skills. For example, you might sign them up for training

108

Understand Your Employee’s Wants and Needs

programs, introduce new challenges in their daily work,

or let them try a temporary new assignment. Carefully

consider the options available to you and what may work

best with your employee. We’ll explore potential devel-

opment tactics in the next chapter.

NOTES

1. “Millennials Survey. Millennials at Work: Reshaping the Work-

place,” PwC, http://www.pwc.com/gx/en/issues/talent/future-of-work/

millennials-survey.html.

2. Keith Ferrazzi, “7 Ways to Improve Employee Development

Programs,” HBR.org, July 31, 2015 (product #H028T9).

109

CHAPTER 9

Expand Your

Employee’s

Skill Sets

Once you’ve decided on a direction for a motivated em-

ployee’s development, you’ll need to fi gure out how

they’ll acquire the skills to get them there. There are

many approaches to growing your employee’s capabili-

ties, from short-term training options that help them

stay up-to-date on the latest industry knowledge to en-

couraging them to foster career-shaping, long-term rela-

tionships. The right approach will be determined by the

employee’s situation and preferences. Consider the fol-

lowing tactics as potential options for development.

Skill-Training Programs

In many fi elds, learning and development have a short

shelf life. In industries that are constantly changing

111

Developing Employees

and innovating, skills can become obsolete within mere

months. Staying current in emerging technology, for ex-

ample, requires a perpetual learning effort.

Some companies offer “corporate universities” as a

way for their employees to learn the latest in their in-

dustry and job. These programs let a company tailor the

curriculum to align training with its particular business

strategy, focusing on the specifi c skills needed for orga-

nizational success. As a manager, you’ll know whether

these options are available to your employees (and if

you don’t, you can always ask your HR department). If

you work in a particularly highly regulated fi eld, like ac-

counting, this traditional classroom training approach

can work well.

These formal programs can be time-consuming,

though, and they can take employees temporarily off

the job. In some rapidly advancing fi elds—cloud-based

computing, coding, and data science, for example—the

curriculum changes so fast that traditional training

methods can’t keep up.

In cases like these, consider more-fl exible options.

Encourage your employees to pursue off-site educa-

tion at local schools or universities—or through online

classes, which are usually less expensive than campus-

based training and require no in-person class time. On-

line courses, certifi cations, and degree and “nanodegree”

programs are widely available, regardless of geographic

location, through university-developed MOOCs (mas-

sive open online courses) and e-learning companies

(like Coursera, Lynda.com, and Udemy). You can help

your employees fi nd such programs by looking online

at reputable sources and courses that provide the skills

112

Expand Your Employee’s Skill Sets

your team members need at a pace that works for them.

If price is an issue, talk to your HR department to see if

your organization offers tuition assistance for employees

to invest in their growth.

Task Delegation

You may discover that an employee could learn better

on the job than in the classroom. Task delegation allows

you to test and expand their skills by handing off specifi c

work assignments without adding these new responsi-

bilities to their job permanently.

In this development tactic, you hand off a task (either

yours or someone else’s) to your employee to gauge their

ability in the project and offer more challenge. When you

delegate one of your responsibilities to a direct report,

you transfer not only the work but also the accountabil-

ity for completing it—which builds trust. Delegating is

an excellent way to communicate your confi dence in

your direct report’s ability. In doing so, you’re saying “I’m

confi dent you can get the job done.”

Every time you hand off a project or task, you’re giv-

ing someone an opportunity to test their skills in mas-

tering a new challenge. In some cases, this gives them

experience with managerial work, like learning how to

accept responsibility, to plan work, and to enlist the col-

laboration of others. In any case, it’s especially important

to monitor their progress, offer feedback, and coach as

needed to be sure that they’re learning the new skill.

Stretch Assignments

An alternative to delegation is to provide a discrete,

time-limited stretch assignment. This is a particularly

113

Developing Employees

helpful method to assess whether an employee who

has expressed interest in being promoted is truly ready

for a more challenging role. Rather than handing off a

task from your to-do list, design an assignment similar

to what the person would handle in their potential new

role. The key is for them to perform tasks they don’t nec-

essarily know how to do or that they can’t yet do well.

Suitable temporary assignments for ambitious em-

ployees could include:

• Asking your direct report to develop and launch a

product or head up a new initiative or project.

• Giving an employee the opportunity to fi x a busi-

ness or product that’s in trouble, like improving

the bottom line of a new service or marketing a

struggling product to a new customer segment.

• Assigning a job rotation in a new work environ-

ment. For example, have a marketing manager

work in the sales organization for a while, offer

an employee a short-term foreign assignment, or

encourage your employee to join an organization-

wide committee.

• Creating distinct tours of duty, where an employee

takes over a new role for a specifi c time period

before moving on to another role. (To learn more

about this option, refer to the sidebar “Tours

of Duty.”)

For this type of development opportunity, it’s espe-

cially important to be transparent about what you’re do-

114

Expand Your Employee’s Skill Sets

ing. Ensure that this is a short-term experiment, not a

permanent change in responsibilities, and assign clear

criteria for success and a time line for evaluation.

TOURS OF DUTY

Eff ectively a contract between a manager and an em-

ployee, a tour of duty is an arrangement in which an

employee agrees to take on a new role for only a short

amount of time. This tactic recognizes that lifelong

employment and loyalty are no longer realistic expec-

tations in today’s work world. Few individuals will stay

at any organization for the entirety of their career—but

chances are good that they will stay for a few years,

especially with a targeted set of goals to achieve.

A tour of duty can serve as a personalized reten-

tion plan that gives an employee concrete, compelling

reasons to fi nish their tour and establishes a clear time

frame for discussing their future at the organization. As

a manager, you can construct customized tours that

are mutually benefi cial for the employee and your or-

ganization, with explicit terms, clear expectations, time-

limited commitments, and focused goals.

When Reid Hoff man founded LinkedIn, he set the

expectation for a four-year tour for each of his em-

ployees with discussions to be held after two years.

If an employee produced tangible achievements for

the fi rm during those four years, the company would

( continued)

115

Developing Employees

TOURS OF DUTY

help them advance their career—either inside or be-

yond the company. One successful tour was likely to

lead to another. The two- to four-year period syncs

with typical product development cycles in the soft-

ware business, though other industries also operate on

similar schedules.

The end of the tour need not be the end of an em-

ployee’s tenure with your organization, though. In-

stead, it can be the beginning of another tour off er-

ing another opportunity—for example, reengineering

a business process, developing and launching a new

product, or spearheading an organizational innovation.

As a manager, you may be assigning your employees

to tours where you don’t have oversight. In cases like

these, you’ll want to keep in regular contact with the

individual to assess progress and growth and check in

with their supervisor to get their point of view. This is

especially important if you’d like them to return to your

team in some capacity after their tour of duty.

Job Redesign

Job redesign allows a promising employee the opportu-

nity to try their hand at a new task while changing the

job permanently. Here, you make adjustments to an in-

dividual’s role at the margins, reassigning rote, lower-

level tasks to employees for whom the tasks are more ap-

116

Expand Your Employee’s Skill Sets

propriate (or eliminating the items altogether). You then

replace these tasks with higher-level ones that involve

challenge and learning. For example, if a direct report

whose work is mainly administrative demonstrates an

interest in copywriting, you may be able to shift some of

their administrative duties to the department assistant,

freeing up some time for them to take on introductory

writing projects.

The starting point for redesign is a careful inventory

of all the tasks associated with the job. You and your di-

rect report may be able to compile a list from their for-

mal job description, from their to-do list, or through

information gathered during check-ins and ongoing per-

formance discussions. Look for opportunities to offl oad

low-level items, perhaps to another team member or ad-

ministrative staffer. Keep in mind, though, that just be-

cause someone has always done a task doesn’t mean that

it is worth doing; you may identify out-of-date or unnec-

essary activities that can be eliminated altogether, such

as pulling weekly analytics reports for the team when an

automated monthly report is doing the trick. Then iden-

tify and add a more challenging assignment in its place

as a regular part of the job.

Job redesign may be easiest when working within

a team. Can you fi nd your direct report a partner with

complementary strengths to take on the tasks you want

to hand off? It takes effort to custom fi t a role to bet-

ter suit an individual, but doing so will save you time in

the long run. When people slave away at tasks that don’t

suit them, they (and by extension you) rarely get good

results. People are far more energized, effi cient, and

117

Developing Employees

effective when their responsibilities draw on their innate

strengths and abilities.

If you believe that someone can contribute at a higher

level, don’t simply pile on new responsibilities. An “in-

visible” promotion that doesn’t recognize a person’s con-

tributions with a corresponding raise or change in title

can sap motivation. It can also lead to employee burn-

out. Instead, investigate how you can create a better fi t

between an employee’s work and their best self. Consider

what they do well and fi nd intrinsically satisfying and

how they can do more of it. Great managers tailor roles

so that individuals can succeed in their own way, capital-

izing on their strengths and neutralizing weaknesses.

For example, in his HBR article “What Great Man-

agers Do,” author and consultant Marcus Buckingham

writes about Michelle, a Walgreens manager, who suc-

cessfully tweaked the role of her employee, Jeffrey, to

capitalize on his strengths. Not much of a people per-

son, Jeffrey excelled when given clear, specifi c tasks, like

stocking an aisle with new items and revising displays.

In most Walgreens stores, one person is responsible for

a particular aisle, including arranging the merchandise.

But to capitalize on Jeffrey’s gift for precision, Michelle

made Jeffrey’s entire job stocking and arranging prod-

ucts—in every aisle—while handing off his more social

responsibilities to other coworkers. Jeffrey was able to

spend his time on a task he excelled at and enjoyed while

taking his sub-par people skills out of the spotlight.

What’s more, by shifting around tasks on the team, his

more social colleagues were relieved of work they con-

sidered a chore and could focus more of their time on

118

Expand Your Employee’s Skill Sets

what they did best: serving customers. After the role re-

organization, Michelle saw increases in the store’s sales,

profi ts, and customer satisfaction, and Jeffrey’s confi -

dence grew so much that he became interested in man-

agement roles.

Capitalizing on individual employees’ unique abili-

ties in this way can also help strengthen your team.

Colleagues can recognize and better appreciate one an-

other’s strengths while their coworkers fi ll in to neutral-

ize their weaknesses.

It’s worth noting that it’s not always realistic for some-

one to hand off tasks and responsibilities they don’t love.

If one team member drops an item from their list that

doesn’t bring out their very best, another team member

will have to pick it up. In some instances, particularly as

people are taking on more and more work, there isn’t

always someone who can pick up the discarded task—

in which case you should consider other development

options.

Mentorship and Sponsorship

Beyond course work and challenging tasks, employees

can grow by tapping into the support and expertise of

others around them. Mentors are individuals with ex-

perience, knowledge, skills, and perspective, who work

one-on-one with employees to help them discover ways

to achieve their goals. According to management consul-

tant Tamara Erickson, “A good mentor is part diagnosti-

cian, assessing what’s going on with you now, and part

guide, connecting you with the advice, ideas, people, and

resources you need to grow and move ahead.”1

119

Developing Employees

Mentors teach, advise, motivate, and inspire and can

provide guidance, career help, and even coaching to

boost professional and personal development. They can

help your employees meet challenges by offering encour-

agement and providing valuable feedback about where

to improve. Given their experience and expertise in the

company and their job, they can be valuable role mod-

els who help others understand and navigate organiza-

tional politics as well as help build support networks.

While you may not play an active role in the mentoring

relationship for your employees, you can help them align

with the right type of mentor and assist them in manag-

ing the relationship.

Mentorship is not just for ambitious early career up-

starts; people at all stages of their careers can benefi t

from mentorship. Different types of mentors will be ap-

propriate in different stages of a person’s career.

• Buddy or peer mentors are suitable in the early

stages of an employee’s work life, when what is

most helpful is a peer-based mentor who can

speed up the learning curve. This type of men-

tor can provide assistance and information about

skill development and basic organization-specifi c

practices. Such mentoring relationships can come

about somewhat informally, through social and

professional networks.

• Career mentors serve as career advisors and

advocates for employees after their initial period

at an organization. This mentor helps provide

context and explains how an individual’s contri-

120

Expand Your Employee’s Skill Sets

butions fi t into the bigger picture and purpose of

the organization. Author and CEO Anthony Tjan

explains, “When people feel that they understand

their current role, its impact, and where it can take

them next in a company, it leads to higher levels of

satisfaction and motivation.”2 This type of men-

tor should be a supportive advocate and advisor

within the company and should meet with their

mentee semiannually or quarterly.

• Life mentors offer invaluable support for people in

the mid- and senior stages of their careers. Tjan

explains that people at this point need “someone in

whom they can confi de without feeling that there

is any bias. This is someone who can be a periodic

sounding board when one is faced with a diffi cult

career challenge, or when they are considering

changing jobs.” While life mentors don’t supplant

career or peer mentors, they can impart signifi cant

wisdom and should be consulted annually.

• Sponsors are like mentors, but rather than solely

focusing on support, they also advocate for an

employee. As economist and author Sylvia Ann

Hewlett explains, “Where a mentor might help you

envision your next position, a sponsor will advo-

cate for your promotion and lever open the door.”3

Sponsors can spur a protégé’s career into corporate

heights by connecting employees to senior lead-

ers, promoting their visibility, opening up career

opportunities, helping them network outside

the company, and generally providing advice.

121

Developing Employees

These individuals are usually two levels above

the employee, with a line of sight into potential

future roles.

Employees shouldn’t be limited to one single mentor

or sponsor. Instead, they would be better served by a “de-

velopmental network” with various areas of expertise and

different perspectives. Tapping into multiple supports

decreases the likelihood of wearing out one individual

mentor or sponsor, or fi nding oneself without guidance if

that person leaves the company or is unavailable. A men-

toring relationship can be a long-term, even lifelong, re-

lationship—or it can last just a few hours or weeks.

As a manager, you may be able to introduce your em-

ployee to mentors and sponsors who can turbocharge

their career development. But where do you fi nd them?

Some companies offer formal programs that encourage

mentorship. If your organization has no formal program

in place, ask your employee what they’re looking for in a

mentoring relationship to see if you know anyone who

might be the right fi t. You might consider looking for

mentors or sponsors who:

• Are able to understand and shape the employee’s

long-term professional goals, such as someone

who has a similar background, or someone in a

position the employee might like to have in the

future.

• Are

infl uential within the organization. These

indi viduals know how things work and can help

your direct report navigate the system.

122

Expand Your Employee’s Skill Sets

• Have a broader skill set than your employee, so

they can help them grow and develop in new ways.

• Possess a higher level of functional experience

than your employee does. Sometimes this is a per-

son outside your organization or outside the chain

of command, like someone in a trade organization.

• Are not part of your organization and therefore

may be able to offer broader perspectives and pro-

vide even better support for ambitious employees.

You may also want to discuss with your direct report

some basics they should establish at the beginning of

the relationship. For example, How often should they

meet? What types of things should they discuss? What

are their expectations for confi dentiality? While you can

take some steps to set your employee up for success, it

is in their hands to secure and maintain the mentoring

relationship once it’s established.

All of these development tactics can help individuals

cultivate the skills they need in order to reach their pro-

fessional aspirations, but remember that your employees

are unique and learn in their own ways. If you want your

direct report’s development efforts to be effective, you

need to decide which option best meets their personal

learning style and then craft a plan for paving the way

to success.

NOTES

1. Tamara Erickson, “Introduction: Taking Charge of Your Career,”

in HBR Guide to Getting the Mentoring You Need, Harvard Business

Review Press, 2014, 1.

123

Developing Employees

2. Anthony K. Tjan, “Keeping Great People with Three Kinds of

Mentors,” HBR.org, August 12, 2011 (product #H007LK).

3. Sylvia Ann Hewlett, “The Right Way to Find a Career Sponsor,”

HBR.org, September 11, 2013, https://hbr.org/2013/09/the-right -way

-to-fi nd-a-career-sponsor.

124

CHAPTER 10

Craft a

Development Plan

Skill training, job redesign, mentorship—your employee

could take advantage of all of the development options

available to them, but without a strategic plan, they still

might not achieve their professional goals and aspira-

tions. You must clearly identify a path that you both think

will work best and outline the specifi c actions required to

gain the skills they need to grow. In other words, you and

your employee must defi ne a development plan.

An individualized development plan includes specifi c

growth objectives your employee will strive to meet over

the long term, with a time line and clear steps for achiev-

ing them. Like the performance goals you developed in

section 1, these targets should be challenging but achiev-

able. After all, if the employee isn’t required to stretch or

push themselves, they won’t grow.

125

Developing Employees

Just as goals are best crafted in collaboration with an

employee, so are individualized plans for development.

The action steps that you identify should take into ac-

count your employee’s professional aims (which you

explored in chapter 8) as well as organizational needs.

You’ll also likely want to include some of the develop-

ment tactics covered in the last chapter. In order to do so,

though, you must fi rst understand how your employee

learns best. Then you can craft a plan—and implement it

in a way that ensures they will follow through.

Understand Your Employee’s

Learning Style

Not all development options work for everyone. An ef-

fective mode of learning for one person can fall fl at for

another. Personality type, education, and cultural back-

ground all infl uence the way individuals learn, and with

fi ve generations of people in the workplace, organiza-

tions need to match training and development tools to

employees’ preferences. For example, digital-native Mil-

lennials may gravitate to online learning or other tech-

based approaches, while employees of other generations

may prefer on-the-job learning opportunities such as

mentorship or stretch assignments.

In his HBR article “What Great Managers Do,” au-

thor and consultant Marcus Buckingham identifi es three

learning styles—analyzing, doing, and watching—that

are worth considering when you’re planning which tac-

tics to use for your employees’ development. These styles

are not mutually exclusive, and in fact, some of your di-

126

Craft a Development Plan

rect reports may rely on a combination of two or perhaps

all three.

1.

Analyzing. An analyzer craves information. They

understand a task by taking it apart into com-

ponents, examining each element, and recon-

structing it. An analyzer prefers to fully prepare

before doing, so assigned reading, classroom

experience, and role-play are effective ways for

them to learn new skills.

2.

Doing. A doer learns more during a given activity

than through preparation. Trial and error is an

integral part of their learning process, as they

tend to enhance their skills while grappling with

tasks. For a doer, it’s best to pick a specifi c action

that is simple but real, give them a brief overview

of the results you want, and get out of their way.

As they develop, gradually increase the degree of

diffi culty until they’ve mastered the role.

3.

Watching. A watcher prefers to see a task or

project from start to fi nish so they can under-

stand what the total performance looks like. They

want to see how everything fi ts together in a co-

herent whole. It’s best to avoid classroom learn-

ing and how-to manuals for this type of learner.

Instead, consider shadowing opportunities in

which they can observe someone in the act.

Work with your employee to defi ne how they per-

form best, and ask questions to get to the heart of

127

Developing Employees

their learning style. Once you identify their preferences,

don’t try to change them. Forcing your employee into a

path that doesn’t fi t just causes frustration. Accept the

uniqueness of each individual, and develop a plan that

takes into account how they think and what drives them.

Craft a Plan

Outlining your employee’s development plan requires

time and collaborative discussion with your direct re-

port. You may need to meet a few times before the plan is

fi nalized to ensure agreement.

Ask your employee to draft an initial outline, and

have them explain why they selected certain options.

People are more engaged in plans they have some choice

in creating, and allowing them to start the discussion

will let them incorporate their own learning styles and

preferences. If they need help pulling a plan together,

ask questions like:

• Who can help and support you in learning how to

become profi cient at this task?

• How can I support you in fi guring out how to do

this on your own?

• How will we measure the success of this target?

Make suggestions if necessary, but allow your em-

ployee to choose which learning options they want to

pursue.

Don’t limit your employee to just one avenue for

growth. For example, the 70–20-10 rule, also known as

the “experience, exposure, education” framework, sug-

128

Craft a Development Plan

gests making at least 70% of the action items on-the-job

learning through stretch assignments, 20% from men-

toring, and 10% from formal training or educational

programs. An employee’s plan might involve adding one

or two challenging assignments, complemented with

coaching and formal skill training. The right approach

will be determined by the individual’s situation and what

they think they can handle.

Next, fi gure out what resources are needed. Perhaps

your direct report needs a private work space to partici-

pate in an online course, a subscription for new software

they’re trying to master, or a conference registration fee

paid from a corporate account. Maybe they need you to

introduce them to potential mentors or sponsors. Con-

sider the resources required for your direct report to suc-

cessfully complete their development plan. If you can’t

afford or provide the necessary resources, reassess the

plan and discuss other alternatives.

Throughout your conversations, talk with your direct

report about what, if anything, their development efforts

mean for their pay and position. They may have ques-

tions about what job redesign or a stretch assignment

will mean in the long term. Be clear about whether this

is a new job or a change in responsibilities, a promotion,

or a trial assignment. Development may or may not lead

to an adjustment in salary or status, but your employee

should understand from the start what’s in store.

Whatever options you and your direct report agree

will spur their development—whether it’s a one-day

seminar, an online course, or a task delegated from your

own to-do list—agree on a time line for completion, or

129

Developing Employees

highlight specifi c milestones if the development is an on-

going relationship, as with mentoring. Without set dead-

lines, your employee won’t have a clear idea of the time

commitment their development requires.

Document Your Decisions—

and Follow Up

Get the fi nal plan on paper. If your company has an indi-

vidual development plan form, use that to make a record

of your discussions. If not, create your own, using table

10-1 at the end of this chapter as a template.

As with other parts of performance management,

your conversation with your employee isn’t the end of

the process. Schedule specifi c times to discuss how their

development is going. Choose a date a month or so away,

or fold these conversations into your regular check-ins

and feedback discussions.

Don’t get frustrated if your direct report isn’t growing

as quickly as you’d hoped. Learning is a messy process,

and development doesn’t always follow a straight line.

As a manager, you’ll need to have the patience to allow

people to make mistakes. Your employees need to feel

safe to explore and experiment if they are to take risks in

learning and mastering new skills.

Few individuals will risk stretching to meet an ambi-

tious target if they’re not sure their manager has their

back. Let your employees know you trust them to take

on new challenges—and to recover from missteps. En-

sure that they feel safe taking risks for growth as they do

their jobs. Developing and maintaining a safe working

environment requires ongoing discussion of needs and

130

Craft a Development Plan

opportunities, tasks and obstacles—what is working and

what is not.

Allowing your direct reports to learn and explore pays

off: As individuals achieve small successes, their con-

fi dence grows, so they’re less daunted by bigger chal-

lenges. Step back to allow self-suffi ciency, and let your

employees own their results. Once you’ve delegated a

task or decision, don’t try to take it back. Encourage each

person to learn through their mistakes, and recognize

and reward them when they succeed. If you do fi nd that

someone is struggling to the point of frustration or in a

way that is detrimental to their performance, work with

that person to make adjustments so that they can fi nd

the path that’s right for them.

131

Developing Employees

TABLE 10-1

Individual development plan template

List three primary development goals that the individual aims to accomplish.

Include a description of how those goals will be measured or the expected

outcomes.

Development goals

Measures of achievement/expected outcomes

1.

2.

3.

Development goal 1:

Tactic for development:

Choose skill training, task delegation, stretch assignments, or mentoring and

sponsorships.

Describe the assignment:

Tasks required for the assignment and plans to meet them:

Estimated time frame with milestones:

Development goal 2:

Tactic for development:

Choose skill training, task delegation, stretch assignments, or mentoring and

sponsorships.

Describe the assignment:

Tasks required for the assignment and plans to meet them:

Estimated time frame with milestones:

132

Craft a Development Plan

TABLE 10-1 ( continued)

Development goal 3:

Tactic for development:

Choose skill training, task delegation, stretch assignments, or mentoring and

sponsorships.

Describe the assignment:

Tasks required for the assignment and plans to meet them:

Estimated time frame with milestones:

Resources needed

What additional support or resources are needed to achieve the employee’s goals?

How will it be provided?

Monitoring progress

How often will the employee and manager meet to discuss progress? List any

upcoming dates.

Time frame

Start date of plan:

Anticipated completion date:

This plan is agreed to as indicated by the signatures below.

——————————————————————————— ——————————————

Employee signature

Date

——————————————————————————— ——————————————

Manager signature

Date

Source: Adapted from Pocket Mentor: Developing Employees (Boston: Harvard Business Press, 2009), 75–76.

133

CHAPTER 11

How to Develop

Someone Who’s

Struggling

Every organization has a range of performers, from thriv-

ing stars to those who are struggling. On one end of the

spectrum are the A players, the top 10% of the work-

force whose contributions are exceptional. The steadily

contributing B players do good work and generally form

the solid backbone of units and departments. These two

groups make up the vast majority of your workforce and

consistently deliver strong performance.

On the bottom 10%, though, are your C players. These

individuals produce work that is just barely acceptable.

These aren’t generally strong contributors who simply

struggle with one part of their job but rather employees

who consistently underdeliver and don’t provide the re-

sults your team and organization need.

135

Developing Employees

It’s tempting to ignore this group of employees—or

summarily dismiss them from the company. After all,

shouldn’t managers spend most of their time and en-

ergy working with the people who add the most value?

Failing to develop your C players’ skills outright, though,

comes with its own set of downfalls. These individuals

often:

• Stand in the way of advancement of more-talented

employees

• Hire other C players, which lowers the perfor-

mance bar across the board.

• Tend to be poor role models who encourage a low-

performer mentality among their peers and direct

reports

• Engender a culture of mediocrity that repels highly

talented and ambitious people away from your

team and organization

What’s more, replacing an employee is a time-

consuming task—and even a stellar new hire will need

a period of training and acclimation before adding

much value. So while it’s true that in some cases fi ring

a C player may be the best choice, it’s rarely the place to

start. You owe it to yourself and your organization—as

well as the underperforming employee—to diagnose and

address the underlying causes of poor performance.

Consider the three Cs of dealing with C players—con-

verse, coach, and can—coined by John Baldoni, chair of

leadership development at the global leadership advi-

sory fi rm N2Growth.

136

How to Develop Someone Who’s Struggling

Converse: Identify What’s Causing

the Issue

To solve the problem, you must fi rst fi nd the root cause.

Four issues commonly underlie poor performance:

• Lack of clarity. Does your employee know what

you expect of them?

• Poor eff ort. Is your employee investing enough

time and energy into the work?

• No sense of strategy. Do they approach their work

with an organized plan?

• Underwhelming talent. Do they have the skills,

knowledge, and capabilities to do the job well?

To determine the cause of underperformance, collect

the right information. Establish the details of the unsat-

isfactory work: What is the person doing or not doing?

Gather your facts and observations before discussing the

problem with the underperformer. Much like you would

do in preparation for a feedback conversation, fi nd out

what their peers, supervisors, and direct reports have to

say—but do so in confi dence. Think, too, about the com-

petencies required for the job. Does the employee have

the necessary skills to perform the job effectively?

Ask yourself whether you’re contributing to the

problem. Were you unclear in your expectations? Did

you provide your direct report the resources and free-

dom to complete their job? It’s also worth delving into

your own assumptions about the employee, which may

be unduly negative. Perhaps there are certain types of

137

Developing Employees

tasks they do well, or maybe they contributed satisfac-

torily to particular projects, but you didn’t see these in-

stances because you were only focused on their fl aws.

What skills or qualities allowed them to perform well

in these cases? If you can identify your direct report’s

strengths in these situations, it may be possible to repli-

cate the conditions that made them successful in other

areas of work. Even if good performance is the excep-

tion rather than the rule, the person may be worth keep-

ing around.

Personal issues—for example, health or family prob-

lems, or even a disruptive move to a new house—can

also temporarily throw someone off their game and

keep them from devoting their normal level of atten-

tion to work. If you notice underperformance from

someone with a history of good work, check to see if

personal problems may be the cause. Such employees

are worth saving, so try to fi nd a way to work around

the issue.

Consider the example of Philippe, Allie’s employee

who struggled to turn in complete, timely, and correct

budgets. Allie had brought up the issue a few times be-

fore, but the problems persisted. To get the full picture,

Allie referred to her notes about the problem from pre-

vious feedback conversations and touched base with a

few of her colleagues to see if they’d had similar issues.

But Allie didn’t stop there. She thought hard about

her own role. She felt she had set up the right expecta-

tions for Philippe, but he still struggled to submit the

budgets in a timely manner. Philippe was a team player

and showed strength in other aspects of his role, but

completing these regular budgets was an integral part of

138

How to Develop Someone Who’s Struggling

his job. Allie concluded that Philippe was worth taking

the time to develop and change.

Once you’ve seen the problem from a number of an-

gles, present the employee with the facts of what you ob-

serve, providing frank and honest feedback, and—if the

person demonstrates willingness—creating a plan for

improvement and development.

Coach: Work Toward Improvement

Before sitting down with your direct report, give them

advance notice that you’d like to discuss their perfor-

mance and development. When you meet, describe the

problematic behavior and the impact it’s having on the

rest of the team. Review the specifi c details of the issue—

don’t just describe the problem in general terms. For

example, Allie might say to Philippe, “You’ve been late

submitting your last few budgets, and I’ve found some

troubling errors when I reviewed them. There are some

basic errors that look like a matter of attention to detail,

but it takes a lot of my time to review and make sense of

them. And when you don’t submit them on time, it re-

quires that my assistant fi gure out whose budget is miss-

ing and then track you down to fi nd out the status. This

interferes with the other work she needs to complete.”

Just as you would when delivering feedback, refer to

the context of the problem, if applicable. “This is not the

fi rst time we’ve had to talk about this. According to my

records, we discussed this problem last quarter and last

year. Yet the problem continues.” Be explicit about how

they should improve: “These budgets must be corrected

and submitted by deadline for you to remain a member

of this team and organization.”

139

Developing Employees

While this straightforward approach may be hard for

your direct report to hear, assure them that you want to

help. Consider these sample phrases:

• “I’m seeing issues with your performance, and

I believe that you can do better. So how do we

improve?”

• “What adjustments might we try that would help

you achieve your goals?”

• “What can I do to help you be more effective?”

Showing your support will help your employee side-

step feelings of defensiveness and be more willing to cor-

rect course.

Assess their willingness to change

No matter how hard you try, you can’t force-feed some-

thing that is ultimately the employee’s responsibility. Be-

fore devoting resources to develop low performers, assess

whether they’re committed to their own improvement.

Once you’ve explained the problem at hand, listen ac-

tively to the employee’s response to determine whether

or not they’re open to engaging on the issue. Do they get

defensive, make excuses, or claim that their performance

is in fact adequate? Or do they provide useful informa-

tion about the causes behind the issues you’ve raised?

Perhaps their poor work is due to inadequate resources,

whether it’s staff, budget, time, or managerial support,

or maybe they are struggling to understand expectations

or build the skills necessary for the job. Maybe they’re

being affected by someone else’s poor performance—for

140

How to Develop Someone Who’s Struggling

example, being delayed by one of their direct reports

who isn’t delivering their complete and correct budget

statements on time.

Allie took note of Philippe’s tone and body language

as he spoke. He didn’t seem surprised by her comments,

though he did seem hesitant to give her the full story.

Allie pressed to get more information, and he explained

that he felt uncertain about the budgets, and even if his

team members submitted their information on time, the

budgets were often late because he was worried he was

submitting them incorrectly, based on their previous dis-

cussions. He was unable to spot the problems, but just

knowing they were there made him nervous and led to

his delay in sending them.

Your preparatory work and active listening will help you

distinguish between responses that are true explanations

and those that are defensive excuses for bad performance.

Honest responses indicate that a person is open to change.

When an underperformer demonstrates concern about

the problem and a willingness to make an effort toward

improvement, work with them to develop a specifi c plan.

If your employee does not show an interest in change, you

may need to consider other alternatives to development.

Create a plan for improvement

With a willing employee, state your fi rm expectations

for improvement clearly, and, together, craft a concrete

plan for change. Be explicit: What will each of you do

differently? What measurable actions will mark prog-

ress along the way? In many cases, performance issues

arise from a mismatch between a manager’s expectations

141

Developing Employees

and those of an employee. Write a list of the employee’s

three most-important responsibilities, and ask them to

do the same. Then compare your results. You may fi nd

that, with some alignment of expectations and continu-

ing discussion through your ongoing check-in conversa-

tions, your direct report can soon be on the right track.

While in many aspects of performance management

it’s helpful for an employee to draft an initial plan for

improvement in order to increase their sense of owner-

ship, for an underperformer you should be more direc-

tive. Provide a specifi c request with clear timelines, and

then check for understanding. For example, Allie told

Philippe, “What I’d suggest is that you set a quarterly

reminder a few weeks before your budget is due to ask

your team members to fi nish the components they’re

responsible for, and block out a window to compile the

data and go over any questions with them. Then you’ll be

able to submit complete and clear budgets on time, and

we won’t have to have another of these conversations.”

This discussion provides an opportunity for you to

consider the various development options available to

your employee. Philippe might do well with some online

training or a refresher course—on budgeting, perhaps, or

in Excel. If he has a colleague who consistently delivers

polished, error-free budgets, Allie might connect them

to discuss best practices for preparation. Perhaps the

problem is less about the budget than about Philippe’s

management of his own direct reports, and if so, lead-

ership training or mentorship might be more helpful to

him. Whatever you decide, keep a record of your discus-

sions and what plan you’ve agreed to.

142

How to Develop Someone Who’s Struggling

Follow up

Schedule regular meetings to talk about progress—or

ask the person to check in with you periodically. (If they

don’t follow up on this, they may not truly be willing to

work to improve.)

For example, Allie sent Philippe to a half-day course

on budgeting so he could better identify errors in his

budgets and those of his direct reports. She scheduled a

meeting a few weeks before the next budget was due to

review the information he had at that point and explain

any problems with what he’d put together. They met a

few times over the course of the next weeks before he

was able to submit a fi nal, error-free budget. Allie also

offered Philippe some feedback and guidance about how

he might address one of his employees who consistently

submitted incomplete information.

It was a time-intensive intervention, but the regu-

lar meetings paid off: Philippe’s next budget was com-

plete, correct, and turned in on time. He showed clear

improvement as well as motivation to continue to im-

prove next time. “I think I have a better handle on the

process now,” he said, “but just in case, can we plan to

review a draft of my budget in advance of next quarter’s

deadline?”

In addition to these follow-up meetings, provide

your employee with real-time feedback. Praise positive

change, and pay attention to development and improve-

ment. Make it clear that you notice and appreciate the

results of their hard work.

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Developing Employees

Cut: Know When to Let Go

It can take a while for people to change their behavior

and improve their performance, so don’t expect an over-

night transformation. For coaching and development ef-

forts to work, your employee must also have the capac-

ity to get to the necessary skill level. If your employee is

enthusiastic but not showing even incremental progress

toward targets, fi nd out more about why this is happen-

ing. Let them know that they’re not meeting your expec-

tations, and ask questions to get their perspective. You

could say, for example, “The needle hasn’t moved on

these skills we’ve identifi ed as important. Were the ex-

pectations we set earlier too high or unrealistic? Is there

a different way that you can learn this?” You could con-

sider bringing in a third party, perhaps even another

team member, to coach in your place.

If the employee continues to underperform, you’ll

need to decide if they are the right person for this role,

task, or responsibility. If they demonstrate willingness,

you might redirect them to work that calls on the skills

they do have, whether by shifting their role or changing

particular assignments.

Alternatively, if they are unwilling to improve or are

just meeting the base needs of the position, you’ll need

to take decisive action. Address issues as they arise to

communicate urgency. Shift your focus from eliciting

improvement through coaching and development to ex-

plaining the consequences of unchanging underperfor-

mance. Make your communication clear and straight-

forward. “This is the third time this has happened, and

144

How to Develop Someone Who’s Struggling

since your behavior hasn’t changed, I need to explain the

consequences.” If you still don’t see improvement after

genuine efforts to boost your employee’s performance,

you may have to conclude that the person may not be the

right fi t for the organization.

Firing an employee is a painful process, but it may be

the best choice for the organization and the rest of your

team, which will only grow disheartened by working

with an underperformer. Be sure to document progress

(or lack thereof ) along the way to guard against potential

legal action, and consult with your legal and HR depart-

ments about how to best move forward with a dismissal.

145

SECTION FOUR

Formal

Performance

Reviews

CHAPTER 12

The Case Against

(and for) Annual

Appraisals

Performance appraisal is a formal method for assessing

how well an individual employee is doing with respect to

established goals and expectations. These reviews have

traditionally been conducted annually, though some or-

ganizations do offer them semiannually or quarterly, and

they often include informal follow-ups as needed. Ap-

praisal sessions are both a confi rmation and a formaliza-

tion of the ongoing feedback and development discus-

sions that should be part of every manager-employee

relationship.

Performance appraisals are not widely beloved, par-

ticularly by those being evaluated. In fact, they’re prob-

ably the most stressful work conversation an employee

will have all year. Even star performers may approach

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Formal Performance Reviews

the review process with apprehension. Opening oneself

to formal judgment—particularly judgment that can de-

fi ne one’s pay—is rarely appealing.

But busy managers are not particularly fond of

perfor mance appraisals, either. They can be extremely

time- consuming, requiring individualized preparation,

administration, documentation, and follow-up that’s tai-

lored to each employee. For a manager with many direct

reports, an appraisal for each person is a hefty time com-

mitment. A study by corporate research and advisory

fi rm CEB found that the average manager spends close

to fi ve weeks doing annual appraisals.1 And managers

fi nd the process stressful as well: Few managers enjoy

telling people that they’re not doing their jobs as well

as they should. “What a performance appraisal requires

is for one person to stand in judgment of another,” says

Dick Grote, author of How to Be Good at Performance

Appraisals. “Deep down, it’s uncomfortable.”2

But, done right, formal evaluations can help you re-

inforce solid work and redirect poor performance. At

best, a review is an opportunity to refl ect on perfor-

mance and potential, allowing your direct report to im-

prove in the future rather than be lambasted for past

failures. When you consider that a manager’s fundamen-

tal responsibility is to get results through their people, a

systematic approach to assessing the work of one’s direct

reports seems a natural choice. In addition to provid-

ing insights into employee performance, appraisals help

managers and organizations make informed, consis-

tent decisions about pay, development, and promotions.

Well-documented performance evaluations also protect

150

The Case Against (and for) Annual Appraisals

the organization against lawsuits by employees who have

been terminated, demoted, or denied a merit increase.

Your company may require you to do performance re-

views annually, but that practice has come under ques-

tion in the past few years, especially as it relates to per-

formance ratings. If you have fl exibility in your approach

to formal assessments, you may want to take these criti-

cisms into account.

The Argument Against

Annual Appraisals

The historical focus of annual performance reviews was

on determining which people to reward, keep, and ter-

minate. The roots of traditional appraisals can be traced

in large part back to two sources: the “merit rating” sys-

tem developed in the U.S. military during World War I

and Jack Welch’s forced-ranking model used at GE, in

which the top 10% of people were rewarded and the bot-

tom 10% dismissed.

But as traditional performance management comes

under fi re, many organizations are concluding that

formal performance reviews aren’t delivering on their

promises —that is, to improve employees’ performance.

When rapid innovation is a source of competitive advan-

tage, a system geared toward assessing past performance

doesn’t help propel people forward.

Organizations are also increasingly questioning the

accuracy of the evaluations themselves, particularly

when it comes to ratings, where standardization sim-

ply cannot be achieved. Ratings are by nature subjec-

tive; two managers may mark the same person’s skills

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Formal Performance Reviews

differently, resulting in ratings that reveal more about

the manager than the employee being evaluated. What’s

more, only an employee’s “offi cial” manager is tasked

with appraising their performance—but that employee

may be working on multiple teams or for several man-

agers. It’s unclear if one manager’s point of view can ac-

count for the full range of an employee’s performance.

With an overemphasis on individual contribution, tra-

ditional appraisal systems fall short in accounting for or

recognizing teamwork or collaboration—which are in-

creasingly important.

Some diffi culties with the review process also stem

from the fact that appraisal conversations are used to

discuss more than just performance. It’s tough to have an

open discussion about performance problems while also

delivering news about merit pay. And appraisals, often

intended as a bulwark against worst-case scenarios, are

especially fraught when performance problems are sig-

nifi cant. “Traditional corporate performance reviews are

driven largely by fear of litigation,” writes Patty McCord,

former chief talent offi cer at Netfl ix, in her HBR article

“How Netfl ix Reinvented HR.” “The theory is that if you

want to get rid of someone, you need a paper trail docu-

menting a history of poor achievement.” When these dis-

cussions only exist to ensure you’re covered in case of a

lawsuit, the emphasis on employee improvement is lost.

The annual gap between meetings also stilts the op-

portunity to elicit real change from your workers. A tired

metaphor likens annual reviews to a yearly check-up

with your doctor. The comparison isn’t completely off

base, but anyone who’s ever visited an emergency room

152

The Case Against (and for) Annual Appraisals

knows that one physical every 12 months does not equal

suffi cient health care. What if you have a medical condi-

tion that needs frequent monitoring, like asthma or even

pregnancy? What if you sprain your ankle or get an in-

fection? Waiting for your annual doctor’s appointment

won’t cut it—and when it comes to performance, neither

will an annual review.

Appraisals evaluate employees on how they have or

haven’t met goals set a year in advance. But when an

organization can’t foresee needs that far out, evaluating

people on how they meet shorter-term goals and priori-

ties can make more sense than assessing them in relation

to annual goals. Organizations, particularly professional

services and consulting fi rms, are also under increasing

pressure to increase their learning and development ef-

forts. When it comes to knowledge work, structured

learning opportunities, including feedback and coach-

ing, are what transforms green college graduates into

skilled professionals. Meaningful feedback and coach-

ing from managers is better delivered through frequent

check-ins than in one annual conversation.

What’s more, some employees want their perfor-

mance reviewed more than once a year, particularly

those (like Millennials) who are eager for constant learn-

ing and development, and making your employees wait a

year to hear feedback leads to heightened anxiety when

they sit down for the conversation. Employees shouldn’t

be surprised by a manager’s appraisal—and if they are,

they can become defensive or unwilling to hear the feed-

back. To continue producing good work, employees need

more than a yearly dose of their supervisor’s attention.

153

Formal Performance Reviews

It’s no surprise, then, that Wharton professor Peter

Cappelli proclaims, “Performance appraisals are one of

the most ubiquitous, and also one of the most unpopu-

lar, protocols in the workplace.”3 But if the traditional

approach is fraught, what can managers—and organiza-

tions at large—do?

Alternate Approaches to

Formal Reviews

It once seemed heretical to abandon traditional per-

formance appraisal practices, but a growing number of

companies are ditching performance evaluations while

attempting to create new ways to more effectively man-

age performance. At least 30 of the Fortune 500 com-

panies had revamped their performance appraisal prac-

tices by the end of 2015.4

Deloitte, for example, replaced its cumbersome evalu-

ation and rating process with a streamlined new model:

“something nimbler, real time, and more individualized

—something squarely focused on fueling performance in

the future rather than assessing it in the past,” as Mar-

cus Buckingham and Ashley Goodall describe in their

HBR article, “Reinventing Performance Management.”

The consulting fi rm replaced their complex 360-degree

feedback process with a quarterly “performance snap-

shot.” Deloitte realized that while people may rate others’

skills inconsistently, they are highly consistent when rat-

ing their own feelings and intentions. So, the company

discovered, rather than asking more people about their

opinion of an employee, they’d get a more effective re-

sponse by asking the individual’s immediate team leader

154

The Case Against (and for) Annual Appraisals

four key questions that focus on what they’d do with the

individual, rather than what they think of them. This

forward-thinking questionnaire focused on four areas:

compensation, teamwork, poor performance, and pro-

motion. Complementing the quarterly snapshot are fre-

quent weekly check-ins.

Netfl ix, too, eliminated formal performance reviews,

stating that they were “too ritualistic and too infrequent.”

They encourage regular conversations between manag-

ers and employees, but the company also implemented

informal, simple 360-degree reviews that asked people

to identify things their colleagues should stop, start, or

continue doing. Netfl ix began by using a software pro-

gram to elicit responses but has since shifted to signed

feedback or even face-to-face conversations. According

to McCord, “If you talk simply and honestly about per-

formance on a regular basis, you can get good results—

probably better ones than a company that grades every-

one on a fi ve-point scale.”

Other companies choose to keep their annual apprais-

als but make changes to the actual event. For example,

Facebook analyzed its performance management system

and found that 87% of people wanted to keep perfor-

mance ratings.5 So they kept their annual reviews but re-

vised their rating process to improve fairness and trans-

parency and to increase their focus on development.

GE, originator of much of the traditional appraisal

process, is working to replace its legacy system with a

real-time approach in which managers and their em-

ployees hold frequent, informal “touchpoint” conver-

sations to set or update priorities based on customer

155

Formal Performance Reviews

needs. But these forward-looking, ongoing discussions

are complemented with a year-end summary conversa-

tion and document (not unlike the traditional annual

review), during which both manager and employee re-

fl ect on impact achieved and look ahead. Managers base

compensation, promotion, and development decisions

on these summary fi ndings—just as they did under GE’s

previous system. With the company’s new “performance

development” approach, however, the manager and em-

ployee have a richer set of data concerning the employ-

ee’s contributions and impact over the course of the year,

so the end-of-year discussions are both more future fo-

cused and more meaningful.6

Companies are also rethinking the use of time-

consuming, set systems and processes in favor of allow-

ing managers more leeway in evaluating employees. Let-

ting people rely on logic and common sense can lead to

better results than adhering to infl exible formal policies,

and newer evaluation approaches generally require more

discussion and less documentation, making them less

cumbersome and formal, more agile and fl exible.

These organizations, though, represent just a small

portion of companies that are changing the way they’re

looking at formal appraisals. Traditional annual reviews

are still widely used. According to a study by Human Re-

source Executive, “Despite all the buzz about abolishing

formal performance reviews, the vast majority of organi-

zations continue to employ traditional vehicles for shar-

ing performance-related information .”7 In part, that’s be-

cause employees do need to be evaluated. Performance

inevitably must be measured and rated—and if the ap-

156

The Case Against (and for) Annual Appraisals

praisal process is eliminated, those evaluations will be

invisible to employees. Managers may draw conclusions

about a direct report’s performance, but without the op-

portunity to get input from the employee. And without

rankings or numerical measures, it can be diffi cult to tie

fi nancial rewards to performance in a standardized way.

If organizations dismiss annual appraisals, they need

to replace them with something, whether that means

more-frequent formal reviews—semiannual or quarterly

—or informal periodic check-in conversations.

Performance Reviews

Moving Forward

So what does this mean for you as a manager? Unless

you’re the CEO, it’s unlikely you can overhaul your entire

organization’s approach to appraisal, but you can con-

trol the way you manage the performance of your team.

If your organization requires reviews—whether they are

annual, semiannual, or quarterly—you should, of course,

do them. But you can take additional steps throughout

the review period to ensure that your employees are

meeting goals and growing with the organization.

Make a practice of checking in with each of your direct

reports on a weekly basis—or at least once a month—to

ask two main questions: What are you going to get done

this week (or month)? And what help do you need from

me? These informal conversations don’t require com-

plex forms or burdensome documentation. Check-ins

like these are your best opportunity to deliver immedi-

ate, relevant feedback—and real-time, in-the-moment

course correction.

157

Formal Performance Reviews

When you are faced with conducting periodic formal

reviews, there are proven ways to make them easier for

you and more effective for your employees—a topic that

we’ll explore in the coming chapters.

NOTES

1. “The Real Impact of Eliminating Performance Ratings: Insights

from Employees and Managers,” CEB Global, 2016.

2. Quoted in Rebecca Knight, “Delivering an Effective Perfor-

mance Review,” HBR.org, November 3, 2011, https://hbr.org/2011/11/

delivering-an-effective-perfor.

3. Peter Cappelli, “The Common Myths About Performance

Reviews, Debunked,” HBR.org, July 26, 2016 (product #H030NZ).

4. Lori Goler, Janelle Gale, and Adam Grant, “Let’s Not Kill Per-

formance Evaluations Yet,” Harvard Business Review, November 2016

(product #R1611G).

5. Ibid.

6. Peter Cappelli and Anna Tavis, “The Performance Manage-

ment Revolution,” Harvard Business Review, October 2016 (product

#R1610D).

7. “Seeking Agility in Performance Management,” Human

Resource Executive, http://hr1.silkroad.com/hr-exec-agility

-performance-management.

158

CHAPTER 13

Assess

Performance, but

Rethink Ratings

There is no one right way to conduct a performance ap-

praisal, but you and your direct report will both benefi t

from your preparation. You must evaluate your direct re-

port’s performance in relation to the goals you defi ned

together. You can use the same methods described in sec-

tion 2 to identify gaps between goals and performance.

You’ll also want to assess behaviors that may not be

explicitly linked to any specifi c goal. Teamwork, commu-

nication skills, leadership, initiative, focus, productivity,

and reliability are all competencies that affect how an

employee gets work done. You may also want to consider

whether or not someone has demonstrated citizenship

behaviors, like helping their colleagues or making new

hires feel welcome, which boost cooperation and im-

prove the work environment.

159

Formal Performance Reviews

Gather Information About

Performance

Appraisals are too easily skewed by a manager’s limited

perspective and selective memory. One big mistake or

contribution over the course of the review period may

stick in a manager’s mind and outweigh everything else

their direct report has done during that time. And be-

cause an employee’s most recent performance is fresh

in their manager’s mind, that behavior can weigh more

heavily in the evaluation than it should. But you can help

avoid these problems by drawing on different sources of

information to get a fuller picture.

There are a number of resources to take under con-

sideration when evaluating performance. If you’ve been

keeping records on your ongoing feedback, coaching,

and development conversations, you’ll have plenty of

material to work with. You can also gather 360-degree

feedback from others to complement your own observa-

tions. But to begin, you want to solicit your employee’s

point of view.

Request an employee’s self-assessment

About two weeks before the review session, ask your di-

rect report to complete a self-evaluation. This document

allows you to take the employee’s input into account

when you’re preparing for the conversation, rather than

potentially being surprised by it just before or during the

formal review. Such self-appraisal also has the benefi t of

setting a tone of partnership that may help the person be

more open to subsequent feedback.

160

Assess Performance, but Rethink Ratings

Some organizations provide specifi c self-evaluation

forms or checklists. Questions on this form may include:

• What are your most important accomplishments

since your last review?

• Have you achieved the goals set for this review

period?

• Have you surpassed any of your goals? Which

ones? What helped you exceed them?

• Are you currently struggling with any goals?

Which ones? What is inhibiting your progress

toward those goals (lack of training, inadequate

resources, poor direction from management)?

• Has this review period been better or worse than

previous ones in the position?

• What parts of your job do you fi nd most and least

interesting or enjoyable?

• What do you most like and dislike about working

for this organization?

• What do you consider to be your most important

tasks and aims for the upcoming year?

• What can I as your manager, or the organization as

a whole, do to help you be more successful?

Answering these questions can enhance your em-

ployee’s ability to learn and refl ect during your appraisal

discussion. The very act of thinking them over will help

161

Formal Performance Reviews

the individual recognize the review not as a required

drill but as a true effort toward helping them understand

how they’re contributing to the organization and how

they might build success.

Even if you aren’t required to use a formal self-

appraisal form, it’s still worth soliciting some informa-

tion from your direct report. Ask for an informal list of

your direct report’s most important achievements and

accomplishments—projects, tasks, relevant initiatives—

over the review period to ensure you don’t overlook any

of your employee’s successes. This can be as simple as

an email with bullet points. You can also ask them for

a list of people you could check with about their perfor-

mance (the 360-degree feedback process). This input

can give you a broader perspective on the employee’s

work and any related problems, since as a manager you

may be seeing just a small part of what the person does

or struggles with every day. It will also help refresh your

memory and put a positive slant on an event that so

many participants dread.

Some argue that self-appraisals don’t work. For ex-

ample, performance evaluation expert Dick Grote says

that self-assessments give the employee the wrong im-

pression of what an appraisal is, not to mention a false

sense of collaboration, especially if someone’s perfor-

mance is unacceptable. Having a direct report complete

a self- appraisal cues them to expect that they’ll bring

their evaluation, you’ll bring yours, and together you’ll

come to an agreement on the fi nal appraisal. But a per-

formance evaluation is a record of your opinion of the

quality of their work—not a negotiation.

162

Assess Performance, but Rethink Ratings

In cases where there may be confusion—for exam-

ple, an underperformer’s work is unacceptable and re-

quires immediate change—you may choose not to solicit

a self-assessment. But if you do use self-appraisals in

the review process, make it clear to your direct report

that their contribution is just one piece of the data that

you’ll review when looking at the whole picture and that

its purpose is for you to gain insight into their point

of view.

Review your records

In addition to the employee’s self-assessment, read over

any notes you’ve kept on your direct report over the re-

view period. If you’ve kept robust records, you won’t

need to rack your brain trying to remember what hap-

pened over the course of the year; you’ll have the infor-

mation right in front of you.

If you’re preparing for a review and don’t have de-

tailed records, consider what sources you do have to

jog your memory. Skim through your calendar appoint-

ments to remind yourself of specifi c accomplishments or

problems—the sales pitch delivered fl awlessly, the dead-

line missed, or the time your employee smoothly covered

for a colleague during fl u season. Look through email

correspondence and meeting notes to fi nd similar details

that may have escaped you.

Solicit 360-degree feedback

You may also want to consider complementing your own

observations with 360-degree feedback: feedback from

colleagues and others who work closely with your direct

163

Formal Performance Reviews

report. For instance, an “internal customer”—someone

for whom your employee provides, say, tech or design

services—and a peer who works with the employee on a

cross-functional team might have valuable input on di-

mensions of the person’s work that you don’t see directly.

Gaining observations from the employee’s larger com-

munity can expand your limited perspective.

This type of broad feedback that synthesizes others’

perspectives can reduce the chance of a performance

misdiagnosis. It also recognizes that many modern work-

places are multifaceted, with no one person in particular

seeing all dimensions of the employee’s work. Thus, sev-

eral people in a position to know are asked to rate the

quality of the subject’s performance and their interac-

tions with them. Some organizations present this feed-

back anonymously; others have colleagues participate in

direct conversations about one another’s work.

As a method, 360-degree feedback is not without

drawbacks. First, it is time-consuming. Think for a mo-

ment about the many people whom you might be asked

to rate in your organization. Your boss, four or fi ve of

your peers, the person who handles your department’s

expense reimbursements, and so forth. Now multiply

that number by the one hour typically required to pre-

pare an evaluation. This time adds up.

People can also be uncomfortable giving a negative

report about someone else—even when that person has

glaring shortcomings or you assure them their responses

will remain anonymous. The reviewers know that their

report might result in no raise for (or even dismissal of )

their colleague. But within an organization that’s com-

164

Assess Performance, but Rethink Ratings

mitted to providing useful feedback and in which people

understand the value of the 360-degree approach, so-

liciting others’ points of view can provide much more

complete information on a direct report’s work than you,

as an individual, possibly can. On the other hand, if an

employee works with very few people or if asking for

such feedback would not fi t within your organization’s

culture, 360-degree feedback may not add much to your

own evaluation.

Your organization may have a set process for facilitat-

ing 360-degree feedback, but if it doesn’t, consider these

tips for getting the most-useful information:

• Diversify your pool of respondents. Tap a number

of peers, direct reports, and internal and external

customers to provide input, rather than asking

people from only one category or just one person

from each category. Inviting a larger pool of par-

ticipants means you’ll get a more complete picture,

the respondents will feel more comfortable sharing

their feedback knowing they’re not a lone identifi -

able voice, and your employee will be assured that

you’ve worked to gather a broad, balanced view.

• Clarify that your purpose is constructive, not puni-

tive. Explain to all involved—those giving feedback

and those receiving it—that the purpose of the

360 review isn’t to amass criticism but to evaluate

achievements and defi ne areas for improvement.

• Request specifi c examples rather than just numeric

ratings. If you’re asking about communication

165

Formal Performance Reviews

skills, you’ll learn much more from a response

like “José answers all my questions clearly and

patiently” than you will from a 5 out of 5 rating in

communication.

• Ask probing questions. Dig deeper into people’s

responses by asking thoughtful questions such

as, H ow did this person contribute? What do

you want this person to stop, start, and continue

doing? What are their strengths as a collaborator,

and what are their weaknesses?

Find additional information

Between your employee’s self-assessment, your own rec-

ords, and the feedback of others, you should already be

forming an objective picture of an individual’s perfor-

mance. But consider other resources when assessing

your employee’s work as well, including:

• The employee’s job description. You’re not just

evaluating the quality of your employee’s work

but determining how well they performed their

specifi c job function.

• The person’s goals and development plan as

defi ned in the last review or during the review

period. When assessing performance against

goals, it’s helpful to revisit those goals—taking

into account any that may have changed over the

course of the review period—to see if they’ve been

successfully completed.

166

Assess Performance, but Rethink Ratings

• Any documents from previous review sessions,

prior evaluation forms, employment records, and

other relevant material you may have on fi le.

After gathering your information, the next step is to

pull it together into an overarching evaluation you’ll

later share with your employee.

Assess Performance

To synthesize the information you’ve gathered, sift

through it and begin noting common themes. Look for

patterns and recurring threads, and just as you did when

preparing to give feedback, focus on things that, if ad-

dressed, will make a difference in future performance.

There’s no reason to rehash a onetime mistake, like the

botched presentation six months ago that the employee

underprepared for and that you’ve already discussed

with them. On the other hand, if they’ve consistently

presented poorly, and they’re still not suffi ciently pre-

paring despite multiple feedback discussions, you would

be wise to address it in your formal appraisal.

Give equal consideration to positive results and to

shortcomings when analyzing the overall picture. Has

your direct report met the goals set for the review pe-

riod? (It could be that their goals have changed since you

initially set them a year ago, so take that into account.)

It’s easiest to evaluate quantitative achievements—such

as the numbers of presentations delivered, reports writ-

ten, or apps developed—but to assess qualitative aspects

of their work, focus on behaviors and supplement your

evaluation with examples.

167

Formal Performance Reviews

It can be diffi cult to assess performance against goals.

Sure, if the goal is to assemble 150 widgets or generate

mortgage loans equal to $3.5 million, it’s simple to make

an accurate calculation. But few jobs are that clear-cut.

What if measuring someone’s “output” requires evaluat-

ing how well they managed a team, infl uenced others,

or helped people collaborate? In cases like these, assess-

ment is more subjective. As a manager, you see only part

of the employee’s work activity over the course of the year.

The 360-degree feedback you collected will be especially

helpful in assessing how they’re regarded by others and

in gauging the scope and quality of their infl uence.

As you sift through your data, also consider how the

employee has performed against behavioral expecta-

tions. Communication skills, for example, are critical for

someone in a customer service role, just as coding skills

are vital for a developer. Focus in on those behaviors that

are most important for an employee’s success in their

particular role. (Looking back at the job description or

competency model for the position or level in the organi-

zation can help here.) Your organization may want you to

focus on key behaviors or competencies or on how com-

pany values were demonstrated. Also take into account

more-general attributes like initiative, cooperation and

teamwork, effi ciency, dependability, and improvement

that may not be specifi c to the role or organization.

As you begin to draw conclusions about an employ-

ee’s performance, remember context.

An individual’s

performance depends, to varying degrees, on the situa-

tion in which they work. It’s not always fair or accurate

168

Assess Performance, but Rethink Ratings

to evaluate two colleagues in the same position on the

same criteria, using the same scale or infl exible reference

points. Consider situational factors in a call center, for

example, where performance is assessed based on the

dollar amount of charitable donations pledged. Different

results can be caused by differences in the geographic

regions or the populations of potential donors the em-

ployees are assigned. Such underlying factors may affect

your direct report’s performance. It’s worth considering

questions such as:

• What situational factors made it easier or harder

for this person to achieve their goals?

• What systems, processes, structures, circum-

stances, or events helped or hindered this employ-

ee’s performance?

• How have I contributed to this employee’s success

or performance problems?

Documenting the Performance

Evaluation

In many organizations, you’ll be required to document

your impressions and feedback in a way that can be

shared and saved. Your company may already have a set of

questions to answer or a standard form to use. If not, you

can create your own by adapting the performance evalua-

tion form template in table 13-1 at the end of this chapter.

Record your observations about your employee’s job

performance as objectively as possible, and support

169

Formal Performance Reviews

them with examples. Provide evidence of progress (or

lack thereof ) by connecting accomplishments with es-

tablished goals. For example: “Derek increased sales by

12%, which exceeded his goal of 10%.” “Amelia reduced

her error rate by 18%; her goal was 25%.” Including the

background data informing your conclusions will help

your direct report grasp the assessment criteria and rec-

ognize the evaluation as fair.

Your organization may require you to provide ratings

—a general ranking of the employee’s performance or in-

dividual ratings of specific aspects of their performance.

But a numeric value alone may not give your employee

enough information to make improvements or continue

good work. Instead, supplement your rating with quali-

tative examples, written and verbal observations, and

comments that explain your choices. (See the sidebar

“Navigating Ratings.”)

NAVIGATING RATINGS

Ratings used to be an established part of many orga-

nization’s performance appraisal processes. Despite

movements away from this step, some organizations

still require that managers rate or score their em-

ployees annually on a 5- (or sometimes 3- or 4-) point

scale. And some of these require forced rankings,

in which only 1 or 2 of 10 people can get the highest

rating.

170

Assess Performance, but Rethink Ratings

Some companies still fi nd the process of rating valu-

able. At Facebook, for example, managers deliberate

over those ratings in groups, to keep individual em-

ployees from being unduly punished or rewarded by

managers who are hard or easy “graders.” Ratings are

also used when making decisions about compensation.

But just as performance reviews are changing, so

too is the practice of using performance ratings. Com-

panies are discovering that ratings aren’t as eff ective

as they hoped they’d be. For instance, in his HBR ar-

ticle “Performance Appraisal Reappraised,” Dick Grote

described a workplace where nearly all annual ratings

of 3,200 employees were positive. Not one person

was rated “unsatisfactory”; just one had been deemed

“marginal.” “Clearly, such uniformly glowing apprais-

als are useless in evaluating the relative merits of staff

members,” Grote writes. The result is general “per-

formance infl ation” in which nearly everyone is rated

above average—a statistical impossibility.

Ratings may no longer make sense in a chang-

ing work context. Many people work in teams that

their direct managers may not observe, doing cross-

functional work their managers may not even under-

stand, let alone be able to assess accurately, so an

immediate manager’s rating may not be correct or

meaningful. As more people work in teams and as

( continued)

171

Formal Performance Reviews

NAVIGATING RATINGS

collaboration is increasingly valued, the traditional-

forced rankingapproach also leads to competition, re-

ducing the likelihood of open collaboration and dam-

aging overall team-based performance. In response

to these arguments, more and more organizations are

ditching the use of ratings and forced distribution.

If you are required to rate your direct report, cer-

tainly do as your organization dictates, but keep in

mind a few caveats. A fi ve-point scale is not analogous

to A–F grades in a school context. The majority of em-

ployees will get a 3, the middle rank. Some individuals

may be disappointed with a 3 rating, thinking they’re

merely average. In this context, a 3 means someone

has hit their goal targets with solid, satisfactory perfor-

mance. “In school, a C was mediocre,” Grote explains,

“but a 3 in the working world means they’re meeting

expectations. They’re shooting par.”1

In addition, combine your rating with specifi c com-

ments and feedback that give the employee a clear un-

derstanding of why they got their rating and how their

performance is aligning with their goals. If there isn’t

space on your organization’s evaluation form, add a

page to allow yourself room to explain the logic behind

the rating, and discuss your rating during the meeting

itself as well. Your employee will fi nd your comments,

observations, and qualitative examples valuable com-

plements to a static quantitative score.

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Assess Performance, but Rethink Ratings

The more specifi c information you can provide to

back up your conclusions, the more likely the employee

will be to repeat and even improve on positive behav-

iors—and to correct negative ones. Use the most-telling

examples to make your point in your written evaluation,

and save the rest for your review session in case you need

to support your judgment during the conversation. Ex-

amples should include:

• Details about what you observed. For instance,

Theo, a customer service representative, has

more than doubled the orders he’s filled over the

past year now that he’s learned how to use a new

customer database. Back that assessment up with

detail in your write-up: “Last year Theo filled

15 orders per day. This year his average exceeded

30 per day. He also asks fewer questions now that

he’s effectively using the customer database.”

• Supporting data, perhaps from 360-degree feed-

back. “Siobhan helped Theo learn how to use the

new customer database, and she reports that he’s

using it on a regular basis.”

• The impact on your team and organization. “After

Theo learned how to use the new database, he no

longer had to rely on colleagues to find out perti-

nent information. The whole team began fulfilling

orders more quickly because they were answering

fewer questions from him, which improved cash

flow for the organization.”

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Formal Performance Reviews

Expressing your observations as neutral facts rather

than judgments is particularly important when it con-

cerns subpar results. “Theo received five complaints

from extremely unsatisfied customers” is objective, non-

judgmental, and specific to a particular job requirement.

Contrast that with a negative characterization that

doesn’t describe actual behavior (“Theo doesn’t seem to

care about customers”) or a vague judgment that fails to

point to a specifi c skill he might improve (“Theo doesn’t

know how to talk to difficult customers”).

When giving positive feedback, on the other hand,

combine specific achievements with character-based

praise. For example: “With the new accounts she gener-

ated, which delivered $1.25 million in business, Juliana

exceeded the goal we set for her last July by 27%. Her

creativity and perseverance drove her to look beyond the

traditional client base; she researched new industries

and networked at conferences to find new customers.”

Acknowledging the traits and behaviors that made those

results possible will show your direct report that you see

them as an individual and recognize their unique contri-

butions. Such praise can generate pride and boost moti-

vation in your employee.

Supporting your assessment with specific examples,

data, and details increases the likelihood that the em-

ployee will be able to absorb and learn from your feed-

back, and it also mitigates any possible legal ramifications

in particularly egregious situations. If a person’s work

is beginning to suffer, or if you suspect that you might

need to dismiss someone due to poor performance, it’s

vital that you document the individual’s behavior and

174

Assess Performance, but Rethink Ratings

the steps you’ve taken to correct it. As a rule of thumb,

include in your evaluation only statements that you’d be

comfortable testifying to in court. If you have any ques-

tions about legal ramifications, consult with your human

resource manager or internal legal team.

Finally, write down the three things the employee has

done best over the course of the year and the two areas

that most need improvement. Distill your message down

to one key idea—your overall impression of their per-

formance, which is the single most important takeaway

for your direct report. These few points will determine

the overa rching message that you want to convey in the

review discussion, and having them documented will

prevent you from forgetting any important details when

you’re in the conversation.

NOTE

1. Quoted in Rebecca Knight, “Delivering an Effective Perfor-

mance Review,” HBR.org, November 3, 2011, https://hbr.org/2011/11/

delivering-an-effective-perfor.

175

Formal Performance Reviews

TABLE 13-1

Performance evaluation form template

Employee information

Review period

Employee

Job title

Department

Manager

Scale for competencies

Exemplary

Performance far exceeds the expectations of the position.

Excellent

Performance exceeds the expectations of the position.

Satisfactory

Performance fully meets the expectations of the position.

Fair

Performance does not meet the expectations of the posi-

tion and requires some improvement.

Unsatisfactory

Performance is far below the expectations of the position

and requires signifi cant improvement.

Key accomplishments

176

Assess Performance, but Rethink Ratings

Goals

Was each goal met?

Goal 1

Goal 2

Goal 3

□ Yes □ No

□ Yes □ No

□ Yes □ No

Competencies: Rate the employee on all relevant competencies.

Job requirements: Fulfi lls required responsibilities for position

□ Exemplary □ Excellent □ Satisfactory □ Fair □ Unsatisfactory

Comments:

Problem solving: Demonstrates ability to solve problems and execute

solutions

□ Exemplary □ Excellent □ Satisfactory □ Fair □ Unsatisfactory

Comments:

Initiative: Demonstrates ambition to succeed in the position and strives to

improve processes and products

□ Exemplary □ Excellent □ Satisfactory □ Fair □ Unsatisfactory

Comments:

Effi

ciency: Completes assigned tasks on time without wasting time or

resources

□ Exemplary □ Excellent □ Satisfactory □ Fair □ Unsatisfactory

Comments:

Teamwork: Works well with others and contributes to group projects

□ Exemplary □ Excellent □ Satisfactory □ Fair □ Unsatisfactory

Comments:

Communication: Writes and speaks with clarity; interacts eff ectively with

managers, peers, or customers

□ Exemplary □ Excellent □ Satisfactory □ Fair □ Unsatisfactory

Comments:

Adaptability: Is receptive to new ideas or change within the team or busi-

ness and makes adjustments to work as necessary

□ Exemplary □ Excellent □ Satisfactory □ Fair □ Unsatisfactory

Comments:

( continued)

177

Formal Performance Reviews

TABLE 13-1 ( continued)

Leadership: Demonstrates ability to infl uence or lead others toward achiev-

ing unit, team, or fi rm goals

□ Exemplary □ Excellent □ Satisfactory □ Fair □ Unsatisfactory

Comments:

Integrity: Is honest and fair and models organizational values

□ Exemplary □ Excellent □ Satisfactory □ Fair □ Unsatisfactory

Comments:

Accountability: Accepts responsibility for failure or errors

□ Exemplary □ Excellent □ Satisfactory □ Fair □ Unsatisfactory

Comments:

Judgment: Makes sound choices and informed decisions; able to distinguish

between issues that need immediate attention and those that can w ait

□ Exemplary □ Excellent □ Satisfactory □ Fair □ Unsatisfactory

Comments:

Dependability: Elicits trust from colleagues; delivers consistently on prom-

ises and commitments

□ Exemplary □ Excellent □ Satisfactory □ Fair □ Unsatisfactory

Comments:

Improvement: Demonstrates improved performance over the review period

□ Exemplary □ Excellent □ Satisfactory □ Fair □ Unsatisfactory

Comments:

Areas of strength for the employee

Areas of development for the employee

178

Assess Performance, but Rethink Ratings

Additional comments

Signatures

Manager signature and date:

Signature

Date

To be signed by the employee after receipt of the performance evaluation

form and discussion with the employee’s manager.

Employee signature and date:

Signature

Date

Source: Adapted from HBR Guide to Delivering Eff ective Feedback Ebook + Tools (Boston: Harvard Business Review Press, 2016), product #10084E.

179

CHAPTER 14

How to Conduct

the Review

Conversation

The detailed information you’ve captured in your perfor-

mance evaluation form is a helpful guide for when you

sit down with your individual team members. But simply

stating what is on paper won’t convince your employee

to change or motivate them to continue their good work.

You need to give just as much careful consideration to

the discussion itself.

Much like with your ongoing feedback discussions,

the logistics around your performance appraisal meeting

are just as important as the points you want to commu-

nicate. Without establishing the right time, place, and

tone, your message may be lost, and your direct report

may not understand what to do next.

181

Formal Performance Reviews

Even star performers may feel some anxiety at the

prospect of a formal review conversation, so do what you

can to put your employee at ease. Then, launch into a

two-way discussion about performance.

Consider Logistics

Schedule the performance review session well in ad-

vance to give both of you the opportunity to prepare,

and be thoughtful about choosing a meeting time. Don’t

infringe on personal time by proposing a meeting dur-

ing lunch or after work. Set aside 45 to 60 minutes for

your conversation, and make sure that neither of you has

a pressing commitment immediately afterward in case

the discussion takes longer than expected or your direct

report needs some time to work through any emotions

brought on by what might be a diffi cult conversation.

You may want to ask when they would prefer to meet—a

subtle signal that you value their time.

Choose a location that will make your employee feel

comfortable, somewhere private and free from distrac-

tions and interruptions. You’ll both be most at ease in a

business setting—an empty offi ce, a conference room—

rather than in a cafeteria, coffee shop, or restaurant. Try

to fi nd a neutral spot, but if you do meet in your offi ce,

sit beside the person to establish a sense of partnership

and open communication. Sitting behind your desk, es-

pecially in the context of delivering a judgment, can con-

vey dominance and distance.

Explain the nature of the meeting ahead of time, even

if the two of you have had review sessions in the past.

Outline what you plan to discuss, which may include

182

How to Conduct the Review Conversation

the employee’s input or self-assessment, your completed

evaluation, a rating (should your organization require

it), a summary of their strengths, and areas for improve-

ment. In most cases, you’ll want to give your direct re-

port a copy of your appraisal about an hour or so before

you meet and ask them to note any questions or com-

ments. Allow them some privacy to read the document

over carefully. “When people read someone’s assessment

of them, they are going to have all sorts of churning emo-

tions,” says performance evaluation expert Dick Grote.

“Let them have that on their own time, and give them a

chance to think about it.” 1

Some employees may require special arrangements,

especially if the discussion has the possibility of escalat-

ing to an uncomfortable level. For an individual whose

work is unacceptable, for instance, schedule a time to

meet near the end of the day, and plan to meet in your

offi ce. You may also choose not to provide your employee

with their completed evaluation in advance of the meet-

ing. These small changes will place you in a position of

authority, indicate the need for improvement, and allow

the employee to decompress afterward if they have an

emotional reaction to the feedback.

Set the Correct Tone

To mitigate any anxiety and establish rapport, set a tone

of partnership right from the start. Welcome your em-

ployee, try to put them at ease, and limit distractions.

Close the door, and silence any notifi cations on your

phone or computer. You should have already estab-

lished a relationship of trust through your discussions

183

Formal Performance Reviews

throughout the review period, but if not, taking clear

steps to demonstrate your respect for your direct report

in this conversation can help. Active listening is key to

making your employee feel truly heard. Resist the temp-

tation to check your watch or your phone during the

course of the conversation.

Remind the employee of the meeting’s purpose: to de-

termine how well the individual is doing with respect to

assigned goals and to motivate good performance, pro-

vide constructive feedback, and understand more about

what they need to do to excel in their job. Tell them ex-

plicitly that their input is necessary and valuable and

that you hope the conversation will be an open dialogue

so you can work together on any issues that arise. You

should also mention that you’d like to take notes so that

you can both remember what you’ve discussed.

Once you’ve clarifi ed the meeting’s purpose and ob-

jectives, ask questions to help you understand the em-

ployee’s perspective on their performance and to keep

you from controlling too much of the conversation early

on. If they seem reluctant to speak up, you might probe

with questions like, “How do you feel things are going on

the job? What’s going well, and what problems are you

having?” or “Tell me some of the main points you want

me to note from your self-evaluation.” Focus on their

point of view rather than agreeing or disagreeing.

As you would in any important conversation, practice

active listening. Don’t interrupt. Show that you’re pay-

ing close attention by periodically paraphrasing what

you’ve heard. You might say, “If I understand you cor-

rectly, you feel that you are meeting all goals with respect

184

How to Conduct the Review Conversation

to the weekly sales reports but that you are struggling to

contact all the key customers you’ve been assigned. Do I

have that right?” This gives your direct report the oppor-

tunity to correct any misunderstandings.

It’s not uncommon for an employee to request a pay

increase or inquire about a promotion during appraisal

discussions. These topics should not be the focus of

your conversation, but if you’re asked directly, be pre-

pared to respond. The sidebar “When an Employee Asks

for a Raise or Promotion” explains how to tackle these

requests.

WHEN AN EMPLOYEE ASKS FOR

A RAISE OR PROMOTION

Many people ask for a change in pay or title in the con-

text of performance review meetings. If possible, keep

this discussion of compensation separate by holding

it at a later date. Performance and compensation are

each signifi cant enough on their own to warrant dedi-

cated conversations, and it’s seldom ideal to mix the

two. Thank your direct report for bringing up the topic

and promise to get back to them by a specifi c date. (If

it’s already been decided whether a raise or promotion

will be granted, however, and the individual is set on

discussing it as part of your review meeting, do so at

the beginning of your conversation; otherwise your em-

ployee may be too distracted to take in your feedback.)

( continued)

185

Formal Performance Reviews

WHEN AN EMPLOYEE ASKS FOR

A RAISE OR PROMOTION

If your direct report is asking for an increase in pay

and a decision about salary hasn’t yet been made,

you’ll need time to fairly assess the situation and de-

termine whether a pay increase is appropriate. And

even if you think a pay increase is merited, don’t grant

it immediately. Word will get out that all a person

needs to get a raise is to ask.

When you do meet again to discuss the request,

explain that an individual’s salary is determined by

two factors: the value of the job itself to the organi-

zation and the quality of the individual’s performance.

In some cases, you may discover that someone is well

deserving, but there’s no opportunity for an increase in

compensation. Regardless of the individual in the role,

every job is worth a certain market value. If that posi-

tion’s pay isn’t negotiable because it has reached the

peak compensation your organization allows for that

role, tell your employee so: Rejecting a raise request

in that situation will clearly refl ect only the value of the

job to the organization, not the person’s worth as an

individual.

In other instances, your employee may be more

interested in a change in title than in a raise alone. In

such cases you’ll need to assess their ability to take

on the new job (and if that position is feasible in the

organization). You may decide that your direct report

isn’t quite ready to take the next step. In that event,

186

How to Conduct the Review Conversation

focus on what they can do to get to the next level. Jo-

seph Weintraub, author of The Coaching Manager,

suggests saying something along the lines of, “You’re

not ready today. This next level has a diff erent set of

criteria and skills. But let’s talk about how you’re going

to get there.”2

You’ll have to explain what skills, knowledge, and

experience your employee will need before a promo-

tion is possible and assure them that you’re committed

to helping them succeed. Work with them to identify

the gaps between their current skills and experience

and where they need to be in order to step into the

new role they desire. Strategize ways to fi ll those gaps

using some of the development tactics discussed in

chapter 9, including enriching and challenging stretch

assignments, training, or mentoring.

Discuss Performance

Managers can feel nervous, even reluctant, about of-

fering constructive feedback in the review session. But

everyone, even your best performers, can benefi t from

hearing ideas for improvement—and missing out on

this opportunity to deliver feedback means your time-

consuming evaluation won’t be of much use.

Tailor your discussion to each employee you’re meeting

with, and don’t rely on your written assessment to dictate

187

Formal Performance Reviews

the agenda. Adhering to the order of an infl exible form

can lock you and your direct report into an item-by-item

negotiation instead of a productive discussion. Instead,

use your evaluation as a reference so you remember to

cover all the important points you planned to mention.

The employee’s performance—not the employee them-

selves—should be the subject of the conversation. Focus

your discussion on how agreed-upon performance goals

relate to specifi c outcomes. For example, “We agreed

that you’d bring in 10 new clients this quarter, and you

exceeded that goal” or “We agreed that you’d reduce the

number of production line errors by 10%, but you’ve only

reduced them by 5%.” Emphasize issues that the person

can improve in the future. Be selective; you don’t need to

go over every shortcoming or failing you’ve noticed, only

the most important ones.

As in your written evaluation, don’t make any state-

ments about your direct report’s character, values, or

intentions. Doing so can make your employee defen-

sive and is unlikely to lead to fruitful ideas for change

or improvement. Instead, use neutral language like,

“I’ve noticed you haven’t offered any suggestions at our

service improvement meetings. Why is that?” Take care

not to express any anger, judgment, or contempt, even

with employees whose performance needs signifi cant

improvement.

Avoid any use of the stale “sandwich” technique (as

discussed in chapter 5), in which you share some praise,

then deliver criticism, and end with more positive feed-

back. It can be tempting to sugarcoat constructive com-

ments, but couching your tough feedback in fl uffy

188

How to Conduct the Review Conversation

compliments will only distort what you’re trying to com-

municate, making it less likely that your direct report

will discern your real message and make needed adjust-

ments. With the sandwich approach, you can unwittingly

dishearten your best employees and misguide your poor-

est ones.

For most of your employees—your good, solid per-

formers and your exceptional ones—you should focus

your discussion on their successes. Highlighting what

competent contributors are doing well can further moti-

vate them. For marginal performers, you’ll need to take a

different approach.

Recognizing strong performance

For those employees whose results and behaviors fully

meet or exceed expectations, concentrate on strengths

by recognizing and celebrating what they’ve done well.

Thank your employee for their contributions. They may

not know how much you appreciate their good work.

This will grab their attention and also reduce the defen-

siveness that they might have felt at the prospect of a

performance review.

Detail specifi c examples where their successes and

strengths were most apparent: “You’ve increased our

social media following by 8%, you did a terrifi c job in

organizing the quarterly marketing meetings, and your

contributions at staff meetings are exemplary.” By start-

ing with their most important contributions and most

noteworthy strengths, focusing on achievements and

pinpointing the behaviors that led to success, you’ll en-

courage your direct report’s drive and motivation.

189

Formal Performance Reviews

For star performers, introduce improvements within

the context of their strengths and contributions. Your

conscientious employee will likely acknowledge any

missed targets or unmet goals and may initiate a discus-

sion of opportunities for improvement. If so, they can

take the lead in discussing opportunities for develop-

ment, which will allow them to be more invested in the

conversation and “own” improvement efforts.

If your employee doesn’t volunteer any areas for

change, prompt them with questions such as, How do

you see the situation? What do you think worked, and

what could have gone better? How might you do things

differently in the future? By asking questions rather than

making statements, you can establish a supportive atmo-

sphere without devaluing any of their accomplishments.

By answering your questions, the person can raise issues

and explore alternative approaches.

Discussing areas for improvement (however minor)

may naturally lead you to talk about development op-

portunities. You can also delve into achievements, both

to keep the person on their successful course and to

fi nd out if the employee has learned something that can

benefi t others. Ask, “How did you manage to do that so

well?” Identifying what made the person successful can

open the topic of career aspirations and avenues for fur-

ther development.

Conducting appraisals for

marginal performers

Performance evaluations for employees who require se-

rious improvement should be held last. You might be

190

How to Conduct the Review Conversation

tempted to get a potentially unpleasant conversation out

of the way, but your skill at conducting a review session

will improve with practice. You’ll gain experience with

easier appraisals (with your stars, for example) before

you tackle this tough conversation.

If an employee’s performance—their work results, be-

haviors, or a combination of both—is subpar, the focus of

the review session should be on immediate turnaround

in order for the individual to remain employed. Open

the conversation by reminding the employee of the pur-

pose of the review and acknowledging that this sort of

meeting can feel awkward. Then get right to the point:

“I need to tell you that your performance is not accept-

able. I want to spend our time together talking about the

problems I see and hearing your ideas about what you

can do to correct this situation.”

After this blunt opening, explain clearly what prob-

lems you perceive and make it clear that these issues

must be fi xed. This three-step approach can be useful:

• State your concern precisely: “Your approach to

customer service is of serious concern.”

• Follow with examples: “Some customers have

complained about your sarcastic and condescend-

ing tone. They’ve noted you seem impatient and

have referred to their questions as ‘dumb.’”

• Close by requesting the employee’s reaction to

your perception or with a specifi c request for

change: “I need you to change your customer

service style. If you’re not willing to do that, then

191

Formal Performance Reviews

customer service might not be the right career

for you.”

This direct confrontation of unacceptable perfor-

mance will be painful for the employee to hear. Marginal

performers may be used to the old sandwich technique,

which enabled them to selectively focus on the few posi-

tive comments and brush off any discussion of problems.

They may be surprised by your negative, one-sided ap-

proach, perhaps responding that previous years’ reviews

have always been good and that their work this year

was no different. You might acknowledge that the em-

ployee has been done a disservice by not having the facts

presented clearly in previous reviews, but that doesn’t

change the fact that their performance this year was not

acceptable, and immediate correction must occur if they

are to remain employed.

As a manager, you may fi nd this approach uncom-

fortable; most of us dislike confrontation. But excessive

diplomacy can be just as damaging as undue harshness.

Employees can’t adjust their behavior in a meaningful

way if the criticism they hear is indirect or sugarcoated.

Embrace an opportunity to deliver and discuss mean-

ingful criticism. Every employee deserves an honest

assessment.

Some poor performers, however, may honestly believe

their work has been satisfactory. In this case, frankly cor-

rect the misconception, and give the employee an oppor-

tunity to improve. The individual’s performance may get

substantially better with direction and support. If not,

you may determine that the person is better suited to a

192

How to Conduct the Review Conversation

lower-level position or that they might not be the right

fi t for the organization.

Get It on the Record

Documenting the details of the review session will ben-

efi t both you and your employee in case of disagreement

over what you discussed or planned during the review

(and in the rarer case of legal disputes). So during your

conversation, jot down the main points. Include the fol-

lowing information in your notes:

• The date of the meeting

• Who attended (in some cases, your boss or a

human resource representative may attend)

• Key points and phrases the employee used (not

necessarily verbatim)

• Any points of disagreement

Take notes with pen and paper; a computer screen

can create distraction and distance between the two of

you. Type up your notes right after the meeting, while

your memory is still fresh.

Your organization may require you to distribute cop-

ies of this record to the employee and to HR for the em-

ployee’s fi le. You should keep a copy as well. Some orga-

nizations request that both manager and employee sign

the performance review report, and sometimes the em-

ployee has the right to append their own comments.

It’s helpful to separate the review and development

or performance-planning sessions over time. Review

193

Formal Performance Reviews

conversations and constructive criticism can rouse

strong feelings, and it can be diffi cult to engage an emo-

tional person in creating a plan for future development

or in nailing down a new set of goals. If you are able,

separate the meetings by a week or so, and let your em-

ployee know at the review session that today you’ll dis-

cuss performance, and next week you’ll follow up to talk

about plans for development or goal setting. This gives

them time to process your feedback and mull over ways

they can improve and grow.

That said, if any potential goals or development op-

portunities do arise in your review sessions, you’ll want

to note those as well. Write down any performance goals

for the coming year, an overview of any development

plans you and your direct report talk about, and a sum-

mary of agreed-upon next steps, so you’ll have it for any

future discussions.

NOTES

1. Quoted in Rebecca Knight, “Delivering an Effective Perfor-

mance Review,” HBR.org, November 3, 2011, https://hbr.org/2011/11/

delivering-an-effective-perfor.

2. Quoted in Rebecca Knight, “What to Do When Your Em-

ployee Asks for a Raise Too Soon,” HBR.org, July 15, 2016 (product

#H030GB).

194

CHAPTER 15

Defi ne New Goals

for a New Cycle

Performance management is an ongoing and continu-

ous process, so the appraisal conversation should not

serve as a hard stop. Start the cycle anew by following up

with your employee for a performance-planning session

after the appraisal to discuss the new goals they’ll start

working toward, and embrace the opportunity to evalu-

ate your own approach to performance management by

soliciting feedback from your employee.

Identify New Goals, but Be Flexible

Now that you’ve assessed your employee’s work against

past goals, what new objectives should they be pursu-

ing in the coming months? Many of your direct reports

will have grown or developed over the course of the past

year, mastering new skills and taking on new challenges.

Think about updated goals in the context of previous

195

Formal Performance Reviews

conversations. Your employee’s new targets should re-

fl ect any expanded abilities, development plans, and new

departmental or organizational initiatives or priorities

that have arisen since they last set goals.

Closing any performance gaps and tackling linger-

ing issues should be the focus of your C players, but

your solid and star contributors can have more leeway

in setting their objectives, perhaps aligning them with

developmental interests. As you did when you set goals

in your previous performance-planning meeting, clearly

defi ne how the employee plans to reach their new objec-

tives and set appropriate metrics for gauging success.

The beginning of a new cycle is also a good oppor-

tunity to establish or revise an employee’s development

plan. Determine what coaching, training, or other sup-

port will best equip them to reach their demanding

new objectives and achieve even greater success in the

next year.

While goals and development plans may have changed

for your employee, keep your ongoing performance man-

agement processes in place. Continue your check-ins to

assess progress toward goals, adjust plans, offer feedback

and coaching, recognize good performance, and head off

any burgeoning performance gaps.

Evaluate Your Approach

Effectively reviewing employees’ performance takes prac-

tice, so use the transition time between cycles to evaluate

your own performance as a manager during this process

and consider how you might make improvements. Ask

for feedback from your direct reports: How did the re-

196

Defi ne New Goals for a New Cycle

view process go? Were the feedback sessions effective?

What was useful, and what wasn’t? For instance, per-

haps you didn’t provide enough specifi c examples of per-

formance gaps or give the person enough time to change

based on your feedback before you followed up. Ask for

suggestions for ways to do things differently in the fu-

ture. You’ll build trust when an individual sees you act-

ing on the things they mention.

You can also evaluate yourself to assess your effective-

ness. Consider the following questions, and take notes

on your performance:

• Did you create an open climate for communi-

cation?

• Did you listen carefully to what the employee said?

Did they feel heard?

• Was your feedback clear and specifi c? Was it useful

and future focused?

• Did you spend enough time coaching?

• Were there times when you let bad performance

slip, rather than giving immediate feedback?

• Did you focus suffi ciently on employees’ future

development, or were you more focused on the

present?

• What worked well, and what could be improved

upon next time?

Compare your self-evaluation with any feedback from

your direct reports, and determine what changes you can

197

Formal Performance Reviews

make in the future. Review your notes when preparing

for performance reviews and periodically throughout the

year as you prepare for ongoing development and check-

in conversations.

Managing performance isn’t easy, but with practice

and thoughtful refl ection you can become more com-

fortable with the process—and more effective in helping

your employees succeed. But as with any process, there

are always issues that need special attention. These ob-

stacles are the focus of our fi nal section.

198

SECTION FIVE

Tough Topics

CHAPTER 16

Responding to the

Steady Worker

Capable, solid employees rarely make waves. They get

their jobs done well with little fanfare or oversight. They

neither cause problems that require managerial inter-

vention nor actively pursue the opportunity to take on

more responsibility or expand their roles. In fact, these

B players tend to make the fewest demands on your

time, despite making up 80% of your workforce.

Because these employees may not be eager to advance

in the organization or require immediate improvement,

performance management for these solid B players can

be confounding. Although they don’t actively demand

your attention, they still deserve your efforts to recognize

and develop them. How can you best support your solid

contributors and help them grow? It depends on what’s

driving them.

201

Tough Topics

Who Are Your B Players?

B players tend to be reserved and averse to calling atten-

tion to themselves, even when they need to. “They are

like the proverbial wheel that never squeaks—and, con-

sequently, gets no grease,” write Thomas J. DeLong and

Vineeta Vijayaraghavan in their HBR article “Let’s Hear

It for B Players.” Such reserve is alien to many A play-

ers, the lead singers and guitarists eager to solo, while

B player drummers and bassists keep the band on beat.

These steady contributors can work well on a team with-

out feeling the need to stand out.

There are many reasons why these individuals choose

to fl y under the radar. Some B players are reformed

A players who rejected the pressures of the “A” way of life.

They place a high premium on work-life balance and are

more interested in their day-to-day work than in their

long-term careers. If they enjoy their work, they have

no desire to be promoted from their roles. Others may

have temporarily scaled back their ambitions to spend

time with their young families or wish to devote time to

meaningful pursuits and hobbies outside the workplace

as they approach retirement age. Some solid perform-

ers are simply more risk averse and less entrepreneurial

than their ambitious counterparts. Still others may be

newly improved former C players.

B players tend to be loyal to organizations, shifting

jobs less often and sticking around longer than A play-

ers. Responsible and service oriented, they bring in-

creasing depth and stability to their work over time and

accumulate valuable institutional memory. B players can

202

Responding to the Steady Worker

quietly become go-to people thanks to their extensive

organizational smarts. With strong networks and inter-

personal connections, they know how to get things done.

Considering this expertise, these solid workers tend to

be the backbone of many organizations. B players, like

everyone else, need nurturing and recognition. With-

out encouragement, they can fall into the trap of seeing

themselves as C players—or feel they’re being taken for

granted. Without some level of affi rmation, they may

lose their motivation and enthusiasm for their work.

No category is permanent, however. Your employee

may be a solid worker at the moment, but in a year or

two they could well be a rising star—or a struggling

under performer. It’s important to make an explicit effort

to acknowledge and foster their dedicated talent without

pushing them in a direction they don’t want to go. To re-

tain them, you’ll need to develop them in ways that best

suit their competencies, potential, and desires.

Supporting Your Steady Workers

Managers don’t always consider what they need to do to

retain a good performer who demonstrates no interest in

being promoted to management. Typically, management

will ignore or overlook valuable B players until they get

fed up and leave—or become C players.

While they may not want to stretch like their more

ambitious peers, neither do they want to stagnate. To

develop and motivate your solid contributors, begin the

same way you would with your stars: Learn about their

passions and interests, deepest work values, and stron-

gest skills.

203

Tough Topics

Understand B-player priorities,

and off er growth

Psychological studies suggest we’re tougher on people

who differ from us than on those we identify with. Differ-

ences in ambition are a matter of temperament, a com-

plex blend of motivation, personality, and intellect. Some

managers are highly motivated, ambitious A players who

may need to make a conscious effort not to undervalue

B players who have different priorities. After all, some

people produce solid work and prioritize getting home to

family at the end of the day rather than focus on author-

ity, infl uence, or power.

It’s important to ask all your employees what they

want from their careers, particularly when dealing with

promising contributors you may feel tempted to push

into new, more challenging positions. For some employ-

ees, lateral movements may be more attractive than up-

ward promotion, and still others may not be interested

in a change at all. Confi rming what individuals really

want out of their role in the organization can keep you

from being disappointed if their ambitions don’t match

your plan for them. It’s better to know the details of how

they see their careers than to attempt to mentor an am-

bivalent protégé who, no matter what you do, won’t be

driven to pursue the same aspirations you hold dear.

Some B players have reached the ceiling of their abili-

ties, while others have made a conscious choice to stay in

their current position.

Don’t force an unwilling or uninterested B player to

the A level, but do offer them opportunities to continue

204

Responding to the Steady Worker

to learn, grow, and improve their skills. Stretch assign-

ments, for example, can be invigorating opportunities

to challenge your employees to acquire new skills, but

choose such assignments carefully so you don’t over-

whelm them. Look for ways to make their jobs more

interesting without burdening them with unwanted

new responsibilities. Perhaps they’d appreciate train-

ing to bolster their strengths or the chance to attend

a conference or seminar on a topic that excites them.

Provide them with opportunities to grow within their

comfort zone.

Your employee’s priorities may change over time as

well. If at fi rst they tell you that they’d like to stay in their

current role, check in periodically to fi nd out if they’ve

changed their mind, and if so, adjust their development

plan accordingly.

Recognize and reward them

Strong and capable contributors can feel alienated or

frustrated by a lack of attention, even if they don’t seek

out the spotlight. Track the frequency of your inter-

actions with each of your direct reports. A players are

rarely shy about asking for your time or stopping by to

talk with you, but B players may be less likely to initi-

ate contact. Make a point of regularly meeting with all of

your employees, including the ones who never ask for it.

Acknowledge and praise B players’ good work, and

provide frequent affi rmation. Recognition is especially

important to workers who aren’t gunning for a promo-

tion. They neither expect nor receive the same fi nancial

rewards or promotions as A players, but they still crave

205

Tough Topics

acknowledgment of their very real contributions to the

organization and want to feel appreciated and moti-

vated. Tell them on a regular basis that they are valued,

and tailor your praise to how each individual prefers

to receive it. Some people appreciate public accolades,

while others would prefer a simple handwritten note or

a one-on-one conversation in which you thank them for

their good work.

You can also show how much you trust and value your

steady contributors by listening carefully to any ideas

or suggestions they provide. Respond thoughtfully and

respectfully. Show you recognize their contribution by

giving them credit for any suggestions you act on, and

demonstrate your trust by letting them be autonomous

and make decisions appropriate for their skill level. You

can also tap your capable contributors to mentor junior

employees, demonstrating your trust in their knowledge

and expertise.

All employees, not just stars, should be given oppor-

tunities for coaching, development, and—if they’re inter-

ested—promotion, whether upward or lateral. Don’t let

your solid performers get lost in the crowd.

206

CHAPTER 17

Preventing

Burnout on

Your Team

Every once in a while, you’ll encounter a poor performer

who was once, according to your records, an excellent

employee. This person is now just going through the mo-

tions and getting by—or worse, failing to meet expecta-

tions. What went wrong? You may be looking at a case of

burnout.

Burnout is a debilitating state of work-related stress

and a common danger for your best employees. People

suffering from burnout will often exhibit three symp-

toms: exhaustion, cynicism, and ineffi cacy. Exhaustion

includes physical, cognitive, and emotional fatigue so

profound that it undermines a person’s ability to work ef-

fectively and to feel good about what they’re doing. Cyni-

cism is an erosion of engagement—a way of distancing

207

Tough Topics

oneself psychologically from one’s work. Ineffi cacy is a

sense of incompetence and a lack of achievement and

productivity.

This toxic cocktail manifests differently in each in-

dividual, but common signals include tiredness, lack of

focus, expressions of anger or hopelessness, lower job

performance and satisfaction, dwindling commitment to

the organization, and a heightened desire to “do some-

thing different.” Burnout can turn your A players into Bs

and Bs into Cs. In some cases it’s self-induced, but more

often it’s a result of heavy workloads, deadline pressures,

and a nonstop workplace culture that precludes neces-

sary rest and renewal.

As a manager, it’s your job to ensure that your direct

reports remain engaged and motivated in their work

and performing at their highest capacity, which means

helping them avoid taking on too much and encouraging

them to take time to recharge.

Causes of Burnout

In a fast-paced, intense workplace where people are

pressured to be perpetually on the clock, employees are

more prone to anxiety, stress, and eventually burnout

—especially top performers. Because it’s not an offi -

cial clinical term, hard data on the prevalence of burn-

out is elusive, but some researchers have found rates of

burnout as high as 50% among medical residents and a

whopping 85% among fi nancial professionals.1 In a 2015

Regus Group survey of more than 22,000 businesspeo-

ple across 100 countries, more than half (53%) reported

208

Preventing Burnout on Your Team

being closer to burnout than they were just fi ve years

previously.2

Burnout occurs when an employee feels more stress

than support in their work life. You risk burnout on your

team if your employees are chronically overworked or

under-rested. Common causes of burnout include:

• Work overload and extreme job demands, when

people are given more work than can be reason-

ably accomplished in even a 60-hour workweek

• Streamlined

staffi ng levels, when an individual is

responsible for more work than one person can

sustainably do

• The expectation of constant connectivity, when

people feel pressured to work remotely (by email

or phone) after work hours with little downtime

• The inability to avoid “low value-added” and

monotonous tasks such as paperwork or unnec-

essary meetings

• Having too many projects to work on simultane-

ously, which creates interruptions and distractions

and diminishes people’s ability to focus and priori-

tize among projects

• High demands with low control, or confl icting de-

mands—for example, “ Think big and be creative,

but don’t make any mistakes”

Those most susceptible to burnout are your hardest-

working, most-committed employees. They can become

209

Tough Topics

so involved in their jobs that they neglect other impor-

tant parts of their lives, which can damage family and

personal relationships as well as health. Managers can

unwittingly contribute to employee burnout by relying

too much on these individuals, loading all their critical

projects on the same top performers—and then assign-

ing them more important projects once they’ve suc-

ceeded. Don’t make your employees choose between

work and their mental and physical well-being. Even

people who love their work shouldn’t neglect everything

else in their lives to take on more responsibilities.

Help Your Team Avoid Burnout

You can take steps to prevent burnout in your employ-

ees. Of course, occasional overwork may be unavoidable

due to deadlines or peak work periods, but it shouldn’t

be constant. To keep your employees energized but not

overworked, consider the following tactics.

Regularly monitor workloads, especially for

your top performers

The very act of noticing an employee’s overload can help

them feel supported. Meet with each of your direct re-

ports regularly to check in on how they’re doing and to

see if they are showing any indication that they may be

overworked. (See the sidebar “Spot the Early Signs of

Burnout.”) If someone shows symptoms of burnout, look

at their job description and their list of current tasks.

It could be that they are juggling too many projects at

once. Help them focus on doing one thing at a time by

defi ning clear priorities for deliverables, ensuring that

210

Preventing Burnout on Your Team

milestones don’t overlap, and discerning the urgent from

the important.

If the job’s responsibilities are beyond the powers of

even an exceptional worker, you may need to rethink

their to-do list entirely. See if you can delegate some of

the tasks to another team member (or even have a team-

mate step in temporarily to help), or consider redesign-

ing the position.

Your employee may not want to admit to feeling over-

worked for fear that it will shed a negative light on them.

But as a manager, you still need to see if they’re able to

handle everything on their plate. Get creative. For exam-

ple, a major U.S. accounting fi rm monitored its employ-

ees’ workloads by screening travel schedules. Individuals

observed to be spending excessive time on the road or

volunteering for too many projects were identifi ed and

counseled.

SPOT THE EARLY SIGNS OF BURNOUT

Burnout can be obvious in some people and more sub-

tle in others. It will manifest diff erently in each individ-

ual. Here are some warning signs that your employee

may be overworked:

• They struggle to concentrate or see the big

picture.

• Routine or previously enjoyable tasks—even just

getting to the offi

ce—appear diffi

cult.

( continued)

211

Tough Topics

SPOT THE EARLY SIGNS OF BURNOUT

• They seem disengaged or detached from their

work, colleagues, and customers.

• They have grown increasingly negative, callous,

or hostile.

• Their performance is slipping.

• They’ve expressed self-doubt or worry about

completing tasks.

Your employee may not directly express their con-

cern about their workload, so be a keen observer and

an attentive listener. Acknowledge subtle cries for

help: “I don’t know how I’m going to keep up,” “I’m

swamped,” or “It looks like I’ll have to work over the

weekend again.”

If you spot any of these troubling signs, check in to

gauge your employee’s physical, cognitive, and emo-

tional energy levels. If impending burnout is the prob-

lem rather than a personal issue or a temporary work

upset, take corrective action before their performance

suff ers in the long term or they leave your company

altogether.

Rein in excessive time demands

Many of us work in environments where we’re expected

to be accessible at all hours, even when we’re on vaca-

tion. But constant connectivity costs us. Everyone needs

212

Preventing Burnout on Your Team

rest and recovery time, and no one can sustain working

all day, in the evening, and over the weekend. If people

are available 24/7, they have no time to recharge.

With the exception of the occasional deadline, prod-

uct launch, or emergency, don’t require any employees

to do more work than can be reasonably accomplished

during a standard workweek (“standard” hours will vary

across industries). Assess your team’s current collective

capacity, and ensure assignments and deadlines don’t

exceed it. Set boundaries: For example, demand that no

emails are to be sent after 8 p.m. or on weekends.

Purposefully build in breaks

If you treat every day like a crisis and employees are

chronically overworked, they won’t have the energy,

mental focus, resilience, or time to respond effectively

if and when an actual crisis hits. Encourage your team

to take breaks—from a simple lunch break to fi nally us-

ing their saved vacation time. Different fi elds have dif-

ferent busy times: Some must rush to meet end-of-year

or end-of-quarter deadlines, some calendars orbit the

do-or-die date of April 15, others are busiest when the

school year kicks off. Identify a slow time when your

employees can take a break—whether it’s a short break

during the day, an evening off during a crunch period,

or a vacation. When individuals do take time off, build

in enough teamwork and overlapping responsibilities to

allow them to truly disconnect, without the need for em-

ployees to check their inbox for updates.

For example, professor Leslie Perlow and research as-

sociate Jessica Porter, both of Harvard Business School,

213

Tough Topics

worked with Boston Consulting Group (BCG) to see

if it was possible to meet the high standards of service

while still offering employees scheduled, uninterrupted

time off. Each team assigned, in advance, at least one

evening off per week for each team member to rest and

recharge. They then adjusted the workload on the team

so that others would cover for those individuals and their

work wouldn’t fall behind. The results were positive. Ac-

cording to Perlow and Porter, participants with rotating

evenings off reported “higher job satisfaction, greater

likelihood that they could imagine a long-term career at

the fi rm, and higher satisfaction with work-life balance”

than people on teams who didn’t plan time off.3 You can

create a similar system that will let your team turn off

and recharge on a regular basis, even if there’s no natural

break in your work cycle.

Allow for fl exibility

It’s not the number of hours worked but the quality of

work that really matters. Instead of fretting about the

time someone spends at their desk, help your employ-

ees design schedules that allow them to be more pro-

ductive when they are working. Some folks work best in

90- minute periods followed by a 10-minute break, while

others thrive on the “Pomodoro Technique” of 25- minute

increments of work with 5-minute breaks. Create uninter-

rupted, meeting-free time for people to focus on impor-

tant tasks that works with their rhythm and your needs.

Also consider the balance of priorities your employees

have—not just in the offi ce, but at home, too. People are

at their most productive when they’re able to adjust the

214

Preventing Burnout on Your Team

time and place of their work to avoid confl icts with other

responsibilities. If your top employee is struggling to get

a full day of work in and arrive at home in time to deal

with family demands, consider whether there are ways

to allow them to get home earlier while still getting their

best work from them. Your organization may have a for-

mal program in place for you and your employees to take

advantage of fl extime or telecommuting arrangements,

but if not, informal or ad hoc agreements can be just as

or more effective. Work with your employees to design

fl exible arrangements that suit their job responsibilities,

work styles, and personal demands.

Then, set them up for success. Advocate for the re-

sources your people need to perform—by providing new

technology or software, for example—to ensure your em-

ployees can work virtually without missing crucial com-

munication or meetings.

Provide variety

People periodically need new challenges to stay moti-

vated and committed, so vary your employees’ tasks and

responsibilities from time to time. Doing so will help

your employees avoid burnout by shifting their atten-

tion to a fresh, exciting opportunity rather than feeling

like they are in the same monotonous rut. You might, for

example, give one person in your department responsi-

bility for leading a team-based project for the next six

months; after that time period, rotate the task to some-

one else. Instead of doling out responsibilities randomly,

think about what might be the best options for each in-

dividual, and emphasize any professional-development

215

Tough Topics

benefi ts those opportunities might provide. Add these

temporary responsibilities to the individual’s perfor-

mance objectives so that they’re taken seriously.

While all of these steps can keep your employees from

burning out, remember that they learn from you, their

manager. If a direct reports sees you regularly eating at

your desk, emailing late at night, or working through

the weekend, they’ll follow suit. Set an example, and fol-

low these tips yourself. Not only will you show your em-

ployees it’s OK to recharge, but you’ll also avoid burnout

yourself.

Being an attentive manager and deliberately watching

for signs of burnout can help you keep your employees

healthy and productive. Don’t risk losing your top per-

formers just because you’re asking too much of them.

NOTES

1. “Statistics and Facts about Stress and Burnout,” Statista.com,

https://www.statista.com/topics/2099/stress-and-burnout.

2. Research by Regus Group, http://press.regus.com/hong-kong/

majority-on-brink-of-stress.

3. Leslie A. Perlow and Jessica L. Porter, “Making Time Off

Predictable—and Required,” Harvard Business Review, October 2009

(product #R0910M).

216

CHAPTER 18

Managing the

Performance

of Remote

Employees

Flexible work arrangements, telecommuting, and global

offi ces may mean your employees aren’t all sitting to-

gether in one central offi ce. According to data from the

Global Workplace Analytics, a research-based consult-

ing organization, as of 2014, 3.7 million people worked

remotely.1 As virtual work arrangements become more

common, you will likely need to apply the elements of

performance management to someone you rarely, if ever,

see in person.

Managing remote employees isn’t fundamentally dif-

ferent than managing those who are physically present

in your workplace, but communication challenges can

217

Tough Topics

easily arise when you’re not colocated. Giving diffi cult

feedback or discussing a tough performance review al-

ways requires special handling, but these tasks are fur-

ther complicated when the person you’re talking with

isn’t in the room with you to hear your tone or see subtle

cues in body language. You’ll need to put in extra effort

to minimize the likelihood of off-site isolation, cultivate

a positive team dynamic, address problems, and evaluate

performance.

Whether your team members are in different time

zones or simply working from home, you’ll need to take a

proactive approach to performance management.

Set Goals and Expectations

With remote employees, it’s essential to establish a com-

mon purpose and to frame work in terms of individual

team members’ ambitions and needs. Clarify goals, and

spell out specifi c guidelines for how you’ll work together.

Don’t forget the details. Beyond identifying how projects

will be divvied up, you may need to determine standards

for communication that wouldn’t be an issue with colo-

cated employees, such as how the individual will collabo-

rate with others on the team and how they’ll communi-

cate with you, their manager.

Just as you would with a direct report working in your

offi ce, schedule a performance-planning meeting, a one-

on-one conversation to identify your remote employee’s

specifi c goals. Don’t just trade emails; set up a video chat

or, at a minimum, speak by phone. You’ll have a more

productive discussion, especially about professional aims

218

Managing the Performance of Remote Employees

and ambitions, when both of you can observe body lan-

guage and hear tone and infl ection. Carry the conversa-

tion much like you would with your other employees (as

outlined in chapter 2), but make note of any challenges

they may face because they aren’t working regularly in

your offi ce. Consider if they will require additional re-

sources to help them reach their objectives.

Once goals have been established, ask your employee

to submit suggestions for meaningful performance

metrics, especially for nonquantitative goals. Set clear

targets

—monthly, quarterly, and yearly performance

milestones —to establish accountability. By collaborating

with your employee in this way, they’ll feel more invested

in objectives, and they’ll have a clear understanding

about what they need to do to meet them. Finally, en-

sure that they know how they’ll be evaluated—and as-

sure them that you’re using the same metrics you will use

with the rest of your team, so they know that any future

feedback or assessments will be fair.

Manage Performance and

Communication

A key challenge for remote employees is isolation. Virtual

workers are more prone to loneliness and loss of motiva-

tion, which can result in compromised performance. You

probably won’t get the opportunity to pick up visual cues

or have impromptu conversations with a remote worker,

so you’ll need to make an extra effort to see how they’re

doing, keep an eye out for signs of burnout, and provide

ongoing feedback. Keep the lines of

communication

219

Tough Topics

open to prevent your remote employee from feeling truly

isolated.

Just as with any other direct report, check in regularly

on your remote employee’s progress. You may need to be

more rigorous about scheduling ongoing conversations

with these workers than you would with team members

you run into in the hallway or cafeteria. Even casual con-

versations with remote employees may need to be sched-

uled in advance.

When you touch base with your employee, choose

communication tools carefully. Without physical cues,

anyone can miss the subtleties of in-person interac-

tions—especially during a tough conversation, such as

when you’re delivering constructive feedback. Face-to-

face discussions are ideal, but don’t hold off on having

a crucial conversation or even a casual check-in just

because you’re waiting for an upcoming visit. Consider

alternatives such as the phone, email, video, instant mes-

sage, text, or group chat applications, but note that one

platform won’t work for every situation. Texting, IM,

and team-messaging apps are lighter-touch options that

carry lower emotional stakes. Information that might

elicit an emotional response is better captured by phone

or video, since they can allow you to project empathy,

trust, concern, or fi rmness.

Phrase inquiries wisely when checking in. For exam-

ple, when sending a quick email or IM, “Looking for-

ward to seeing your product demo on Friday! Anything

you need from me?” sounds enthusiastic and supportive.

Compare this with something like “On track for Friday’s

deadline?” which may convey aggression and distrust.

220

Managing the Performance of Remote Employees

Tracking performance from afar

When assessing work, tailor your approach to your re-

mote employees. Take advantage of the opportunity to

gather details about your direct reports’ performance

during team meetings. This may be the best time to as-

sess how your remote employees work with their col-

leagues. Write each person’s name on a pad of paper, and

list their suggestions, questions, and comments. (If you

fi nd it too distracting to do this during the meeting, cap-

ture your observations immediately afterward.) When

someone brings up a problem no one else has thought

of, stubbornly repeats a point, or credits a colleague for

doing good work, jot that down. Follow the same pro-

cess as you observe conversations over discussion boards

and group chats. Note who’s giving helpful feedback,

making smart suggestions, mediating confl ict, or contrib-

uting in some other way. By capturing these details, you’re

creating a performance record you can refer to later.

As with any other employee, address performance

issues with sensitivity. Start by gathering information.

Your direct report’s colleagues may have a different van-

tage point or more information on areas of concern.

Keep in mind, though, that unless they’re located in the

same offi ce as the remote worker, collaborators may not

have a full picture either.

You can ask specifi c questions but also get more con-

text with open-ended questions such as:

• “How’s the project going with Ahkil overall?”

• “How are you fi nding him as a collaborator?”

221

Tough Topics

• “Akhil has been doing a great job, but I’m wonder-

ing if I can do more to support his engagement.

Have you observed anything that might help?”

• “You mentioned that Akhil has seemed checked

out lately. When did that start? What do you think

is going on?”

Handle these sensitive conversations with great care,

and keep them confi dential. The employee may not want

a written record of any complaints or speculations, so

hold these conversations by phone or video if you can’t

have them in person.

If you fi nd that the situation warrants a discussion

with your remote employee, prepare as you would for

any feedback conversation. Consider the bigger picture:

Do you know what else is going on in your employee’s

personal and professional life? Collect facts in advance,

focus on observable behaviors, and don’t speculate.

Probe for root causes, so you feel fully prepared before

having the conversation.

Giving feedback

When you notice something troubling in your remote

employee’s work that could grow into a performance

gap if left unattended, address it with the same strate-

gies you’d use in a traditional offi ce setting. Follow up to

investigate anomalies. You’ll probably notice behavioral

cues if someone is struggling or behind on their work.

They might be uncharacteristically uncommunicative or

have changed the frequency of their communications.

They may seem frustrated, anxious, or even unusually

222

Managing the Performance of Remote Employees

relaxed before a major deadline while all their colleagues

seem crunched. If you sense something is off, don’t delay

in reaching out to them.

When it comes to more-sensitive conversations—

coaching, giving feedback, or discussing performance

problems, for example—don’t dictate the medium; ask

your direct report what they prefer. You may well have

a preference, perhaps for phone or video, but different

tools can be more effective with different people. Video

can provide helpful context and visual cues, but if the in-

ternet connection is poor it’s more likely to be distracting

than helpful. It may be worth investing in better techni-

cal gear, like a high-quality headset, to ensure you catch

every nuance.

It can take special effort to give feedback effectively in

a virtual setting. A written statement—say, “Your recent

work contained some major problems”—seems much

harsher than the same message delivered in conversa-

tion with a compassionate tone. Pay particular attention

to timing. As with the employees you see regularly, you

shouldn’t plan to deliver tough criticism right before the

person has another meeting or while they’re in the last

throes of a time-sensitive project. On the other hand,

when it comes to recognizing strong performance, you

don’t need to be so careful. (Positive feedback, unlike

criticism, can be delivered in writing, but your delivery

will be more nuanced if you’re communicating by phone

or video.)

If you’re using video when offering constructive feed-

back, position your camera at eye level; any lower will

make it seem like you’re looming above them. Maintain

223

Tough Topics

natural eye contact, and keep your body language open

and relaxed. Start your conversation with the usual small

talk, but make an extra effort to be warm. Because it

can be diffi cult for people to pick up emotional cues by

phone or video, be explicit about your positive feelings:

“I really enjoy working with you. We’ve got some work

to do, but I’m confi dent we’ll get there.” Express your

appreciation for their work, or offer some positive feed-

back, if appropriate: what they are doing well or what

they have made easier for you. Since your virtual em-

ployee may not have the opportunity to read your tone or

body language, establishing this mutual trust and reas-

surance will help your message become more palatable.

Keep in mind, though, that you don’t want to couch your

constructive comments in too much positivity, in case

your request for improvement is lost. Just say enough to

confi rm to your employee that you’re on the same team

and on their side.

Limit your critical feedback to discussing a specifi c

behavior. Offer concrete, narrowly focused comments

that are free of speculation. Listen actively to their reply,

and ask if anything seems wrong. If they won’t meet your

eyes in a video chat, for example, they could be feeling

attacked, or it could just be due to camera placement.

End the conversation with an action item. Ideally,

your direct report should offer a plan for fi xing the prob-

lem themselves, at which point you can ask how you

can help execute it. In some cases, though, you’ll need

to suggest a solution yourself. Thank them for the con-

versation before logging off, and follow up with an email

224

Managing the Performance of Remote Employees

summarizing how you agreed to proceed and reiterating

your thanks.

Conduct the Appraisal Discussion

If your company requires a formal performance ap-

praisal, that task can seem much harder when you’re not

seeing or talking to an employee on a regular basis. But if

you’ve kept the lines of communication open throughout

the review period, checked in with your employee, taken

good notes, and provided feedback, you should have

every thing you need to help the process go smoothly.

Evaluate everyone equally

In traditional offi ces, it’s easy to base assessments on

observed face time: Who comes in early, stays late, and

looks busy? But when a department allows employees

to telecommute or is spread across multiple locations,

management often develops a new process for evaluat-

ing remote individuals using specifi c metrics, while in-

offi ce workers are still assessed with the old approach.

Face time unfairly becomes a factor in evaluating some

but not others. While rarely a deliberate choice in the ap-

praisal process, this disconnect in evaluation standards

is especially problematic when an organization requires

forced ranking. Remote employees may be “out of sight,

out of mind” and overlooked for promotions or raises.

When employees work remotely, face time isn’t some-

thing you can realistically assess and shouldn’t be used

as a performance metric. Instead, change your perspec-

tive to focus on the what and how of work. Evaluate the

225

Tough Topics

performance of remote employees in the same way as

their offi ce-based colleagues, and ensure that the same

metrics are applied to everyone.

If you use a rating system, be sure to include context—

concrete details that have contributed to the rating—in

addition to a number. Remote workers are by nature

somewhat isolated and may not have a good sense of

how they and their colleagues are being evaluated. Re-

ceiving a numerical rating with no understanding of how

it was decided does not make for a helpful or productive

appraisal. Include details so the employee understands

where they’re falling short and how they can improve.

Avoid self-assessments

Unlike with your on-site employees, limit the use of

self-assessments with your remote direct reports. Any-

one who works alone much of the time can end up in a

vacuum of their own perception. We all share the ten-

dency to overrate our own abilities and take the credit

for good results while denying our role in bad ones, but

we’re more likely to fall victim to these qualities when

we’re on our own. If your organization doesn’t require

self-assessments, don’t use them. But if you must, em-

phasize to your virtual workers (as you would with the

rest of your employees) that their self-evaluation is just

one component of your performance review.

Conduct the conversation with care

Any employee can go through the motions of the ap-

praisal process, never speaking their minds to avoid

confl ict—and the danger of this is greater with remote

226

Managing the Performance of Remote Employees

employees who may already feel disconnected. For a sen-

sitive conversation like a performance review, ask your

direct report how they’d be most comfortable meeting.

Video conferencing will allow for a more-nuanced con-

versation, but if speaking by phone would make your

employee more at ease, comply with their wishes. The

more often you communicate by video during the course

of the year, the more comfortable both of you will be us-

ing the medium, but if it’s not something you do often,

don’t insist on it for an appraisal. Applying an unfamiliar

technology to an already anxiety-inducing conversation

may only make it more stressful for your employee. Ac-

cepting their preference will set a tone of participation

and collaboration, increasing the likelihood that your

remote direct report will feel comfortable being candid.

Tone of voice, facial expression, gestures, and non-

verbal communication all matter in review conversa-

tions—particularly when you can’t be together in person.

Without contextual clues, misunderstandings can easily

arise. As you did when giving feedback, be crystal clear

when delivering feedback, and linger on positive mes-

sages. In the stress of an appraisal conversation, it’s easy

for anyone (particularly a remote worker) to focus more

on constructive comments than on positive ones, so em-

phasize your positive feedback more than you might in

an in-person meeting. After the discussion, continue the

process again by setting up another meeting to establish

goals and by keeping the lines of communication open.

Successfully managing your employees’ performance

involves a host of tasks and processes. Whether your em-

ployees are across the hall or across the globe, you should

227

Tough Topics

be ready to focus their efforts on the objectives that mat-

ter, work with them to move toward those goals, and

ensure that they’re growing, developing, and improving.

Performance management may be changing rapidly, but

by following the elements and best practices outlined in

this guide, you can make managing performance a part

of your regular routine and ensure that you get the best

out of your people.

NOTE

1. GlobalWorkplaceAnalytics.com, “Latest Telecommuting Statis-

tics,” http://globalworkplaceanalytics.com/telecommuting-statistics.

228

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Introduction

Cappelli, Peter. “The Annual Review Revolution.” HBR.org Webi-

nar, October 13, 2016. https://hbr.org/webinar/2016/09/

the-annual-review-revolution.

Chapter 1

Grant, Heidi. “Nine Things Successful People Do Differently.” HBR

Guide to Getting the Right Work Done. Boston: Harvard Business

Review Press, 2012.

Raynor, Michael E., and Derek Pankratz. “A Way to Know If Your Cor-

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Chapter 2

Bregman, Peter. “The Right Way to Hold People Accountable.”

HBR.org, January 11, 2016 (product #H02LQR).

Kirsner, Scott. “What Big Companies Get Wrong About Innovation

Metrics.” HBR.org, May 6, 2015 (product #H021XV).

Chapter 3

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Chapter 5

Gallo, Amy. “Giving a High Performer Productive Feedback.” HBR.org,

December 3, 2009. https://hbr.org/2009/12/giving-a-high

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Grant, Heidi. “Sometimes Negative Feedback Is Best.” HBR.org, Jan uary

28, 2013. https://hbr.org/2013/01/sometimes-negative-feedback-is.

Grenny, Joseph. “How to Make Feedback Feel Normal.” HBR.org,

August 19, 2016 (product #H032G0).

Chapter 6

Hill, Linda, and Kent Lineback. “To Build Trust, Competence Is Key.”

HBR.org, March 22, 2012. https://hbr.org/2012/03/to-build

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Valcour, Monique. “You Can’t Be a Great Manager If You’re Not a

Good Coach.” HBR.org, July 17, 2014 (product #H00WOP).

Chapter 7

Cable, Dan, and Freek Vermeulen. “Stop Paying Executives for Perfor-

mance.” HBR.org, February 23, 2016 (product #H02OEX).

Harvard Business School Publishing. “Employee Recognition and

Reward When Times Are Tough.” Harvard Management Update.

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Hope, Jeremy, and Steve Player. Beyond Performance Management.

Boston: Harvard Business Review Press, 2012.

Kohn, Alfi e. “Why Incentive Plans Cannot Work.” Harvard Business

Review, September–October 1993 (product #93506).

Novak, David. “Recognizing Employees Is the Simplest Way to

Improve Morale.” HBR.org, May 9, 2016 (product #H02VEN).

Porath, Christine. “Half of Employees Don’t Feel Respected by Their

Bosses.” HBR.org, November 19, 2014 (product #H012O0).

Porath, Christine, and Christine Pearson. “The Price of Incivility.” Har-

vard Business Review, January–February 2013 (product #R1301J).

Spreitzer, Gretchen, and Christine Porath. “Creating Sustainable

Performance.” Harvard Business Review, January–February 2012

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Valcour, Monique. “The Power of Dignity in the Workplace.” HBR.org,

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Chapter 8

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Butler, Timothy, and James Waldroop. “Job Sculpting: The Art of Re-

taining Your Best People.” Harvard Business Review, September–

October 1999 (product #99502).

Donovan, John, and Cathy Benko. “AT&T’s Talent Overhaul.” Harvard

Business Review, October 2016 (product #R1610E).

Gino, Francesca, and Bradley Staats. “Developing Employees

Who Think for Themselves.” HBR.org, June 3, 2015 (product

#H0248M).

Herzberg, Frederick. “One More Time: How Do You Motivate

Employees?” Harvard Business Review, January 2003 (product

#R0301F).

Jen Su, Amy. “The Questions Good Coaches Ask.” HBR.org, Decem-

ber 12, 2014 (product #H01R6J).

Valcour, Monique. “If You’re Not Helping People Develop, You’re

Not Management Material.” HBR.org, January 23, 2014 (product

#H00MXT).

Chapter 9

Gallo, Amy. “Demystifying Mentoring.” HBR.org, February 1, 2011

(product #H006S6).

Harvard Business School Publishing. HBR Guide to Getting the Men-

toring You Need. Boston: Harvard Business Review Press, 2014.

Hewlett, Sylvia Ann. “The Real Benefi t of Finding a Sponsor.”

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Hoffman, Reid, Ben Casnocha, and Chris Yeh. “Tours of Duty: The

New Employer-Employee Compact.” Harvard Business Review,

June 2013 (product #R1306B).

Tjan, Anthony K. “Keeping Great People with Three Kinds of Men-

tors.” HBR.org, August 12, 2011 (product #H007LK).

Chapter 10

Brendel, David. “Asking Open-Ended Questions Helps New Managers

Build Trust.” HBR.org, September 17, 2015 (product #H02CEG).

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Wiseman, Liz, and Greg McKeown. “Bringing Out the Best in Your

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Chapter 11

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HBR.org, September 10, 2008. https://hbr.org/2008/09/

under performers.

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2010. https://hbr.org/2010/10/help-im-an-underperformer.

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Gallo, Amy. “Making Sure Your Employees Succeed.” HBR.org,

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Hill, Linda, and Kent Lineback. “The Most Important Question a

Manager Can Ask.” HBR.org, April 18, 2011. https://hbr.org/

2011/04/the-most-important-question-a.

Maignan Wilkins, Muriel. “Is Your Employee Coachable?” HBR.org,

February 19, 2015 (product #H01VYV).

Chapter 12

Baldassarre, Leonardo, and Brian Finken. “GE’s Real-Time Per-

formance Development.” HBR.org, August 12, 2015 (product

#H029L8).

Buckingham, Marcus. “What If Performance Management Focused on

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what-if-performance-management-focused-on-strengths.

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Grote, Dick. “Every Manager Needs to Practice Two Types of Coach-

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Chapter 13

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-appraisals-make.

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Review, January–February 2000 (product #F00105).

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tive Feedback Ebook + Tools. Boston: Harvard Business Review

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Chapter 16

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for B Players.” Harvard Business Review, June 2003 (product

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Chapter 17

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Behson, Scott. “Just Because You’re Happy Doesn’t Mean You’re Not

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Fernandez, Rich. “Help Your Team Manage Stress, Anxiety, and Burn-

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Perlow, Leslie A., and Jessica L. Porter. “Making Time Off Predict-

able—and Required.” Harvard Business Review, October 2009

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Schwartz, Tony. “Take Back Your Attention.” HBR.org, February 9,

2011. https://hbr.org/2011/02/take-back-your-attention.

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November 2016 (product #R1611H).

Wilson, H. James. “The Surprising Power of Impulse Control.”

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Chapter 18

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March 18, 2015 (product #H01XI4).

Ferrazzi, Keith. “Evaluating the Employees You Can’t See.” HBR.

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235

Index

accountability, 13, 22–23, 79, 103

burnout, 53–54, 118, 207–216

acknowledgment, of good work,

causes of, 208–210

91–93. See also recognition

early signs of, 211–212

active listening, 52, 65–66, 140,

preventing, 210–216

141, 184–185, 224

analyzer (learning style), 127

annual appraisals, 149–158

career development. See em-

alternate approaches to,

ployee development

154–157

career mentors, 120–121

negatives of, 149–154

career paths, 107–109

positives of, 150–151

career plateaus, 101–102

use of, 156–157

cascading goal model, 22

See also performance reviews

challenge, 18–20, 94–95, 102

annual goals, 3, 4, 23–24. See

change, willingness to, 140–141

also goals

“cheaper, faster, better” rubric, 17

A players, 135, 202, 204, 205

check-ins, 38–39, 40, 46, 79–80,

aspirations, of employees,

130, 153, 157, 196, 220

103–105, 106

citizenship behaviors, 32, 159

autonomy, 23, 93–94

closed questions, 64, 75

coaching, 71–81

agreeing on next steps, 78–79

behavior

agreement for, 73–74

expectations, 31–32

to close performance gaps,

problem, 47–49, 68, 77–78,

71–81

137–143

defi ning purpose of, 74–75

body language, 65, 140, 223–224

defi nition of, 71–72

B players, 201–206

employee’s perspective and,

breaks, 213–214

75–76

buddy mentors, 120

goal of, 73

Index

coaching ( continued)

criticism. See constructive

mindset for, 72

feedback

mutual trust and, 76–77

culture

ongoing, 79–81

high-performing, 18–19, 100

opportunities for, 72

organizational, 32, 84

underperforming employees,

of respect, 84–87

139–143

cynicism, 207–208

collaboration

appraising, 152

in goal setting, 33–42

decision-making discretion,

measuring performance of,

93–94

152

Deloitte, 5, 38, 154–155

in setting development plans,

Deming, W. Edwards, 53

126–130, 131

development. See employee

communication

development

active listening, 52, 65–66,

developmental network, 122. See

140, 141, 184–185, 224

also mentorship

with remote employees,

development opportunities. See

219–220

employee development

See also conversations

development plans, 125–133,

compensation. See monetary

166, 196

compensation

development plan template,

connectivity, 212–213

132–133

constructive feedback, 58–61,

dignity, 86

63–68, 187–189, 222–225

direct reports. See employees

contingency plans, in goal

documentation

setting, 36

of development plan,

conversations

130–133

coaching, 73–80, 139–143

of goals, 37–38, 40

conducting performance

of observed performance,

review, 181–194, 226–227

49–51, 221

development, 103–106,

of performance evaluation,

126–130, 131

169–179, 193–194

feedback, 61–68, 222–225

of poor performance, 174–175

“touchpoint,” 155–156

doer (learning style), 127

two-way, 63–64, 77–78

with remote employees, 218–

220, 222–225, 226–227

e-learning, 112

corporate ladder, 107–109

empathy, 65, 76, 220

corporate universities, 112

employee appraisals. See perfor-

C players, 135–145, 196

mance reviews

238

Index

employee development

causes of poor performance in,

aligning with employee aspira-

52–56, 137–139

tions, 103–105

checking in with, 38–39, 40,

aligning with organizational

46, 130, 220

needs, 105–106

coaching, 71–81, 139–143, 153

development plans, 125–133,

collaborating with, 33–42,

141–142

126–130, 131

development plan template,

dialogue with, 63–64, 77–78

132–133

engagement of, 5, 84–87, 102,

evaluating progress, 130, 131,

207–208

143, 144–145

empowerment of, 93–94

expanding skill sets, 111–124

expectations for, 31–32, 55,

job redesign, 116–119

141–142, 168

learning styles and, 126–128

fi ring, 136, 144–145

manager’s role in, 100–103

goals for, 13–20, 21–32,

mentorship and sponsorship,

195–196, 218–219

119–123

identifying strengths of, 106

overview of, 99–100

learning styles of, 126–128

promotions and, 107–109,

motivating, 83–96

186–187

personal interests of, 26–28

resources for, 129

preventing burnout in,

stretch assignments, 113–116

207–216

for struggling performers,

recognition of, 46, 91–93, 95,

135–145

189, 205–206

tactics for, 111–124

remote, 217–228

task delegation, 113

replacing, 136

tours of duty, 115–116

requests for help by, 52

training programs, 111–113

rewards for, 87–95

for underperformers,

self-assessment by, 160–163,

135–145

226

employees

treating with respect, 84–87

aligning ambitions with

understanding wants and

organizational needs, 27,

needs of, 99–100, 103–109

105–106

unique abilities of, 118–119

asking for feedback from,

engagement, of employees, 5,

196–197

84–87, 102, 207–208

asking for raise or promotion,

exhaustion, 207. See also burnout

185–187

expectations

aspirations of, 103–105

behavioral, 31–32, 168

behavioral expectations for,

clarity in, 55, 141–142

31–32, 168

versus goals, 31–32

239

Index

expectations ( continued)

fl exible work arrangements,

mismatch of, 141–142

214–215, 217

performance versus, 168

follow-up meetings, 130, 143

for remote employees,

forced-ranking model, 151, 170,

218–219

171

“experience, exposure, education”

formal performance reviews. See

(framework), 128–129

performance reviews

extrinsic rewards, 87–90

Gantt charts, 35–36

Facebook, 155, 171

General Electric (GE), 151,

facts versus opinions, in feed-

155–156

back, 64–67, 174

goals

fairness

aligning with organization, 25,

fi nancial incentives and,

105–106

89–90

annual, 3, 4, 23–24

in performance evaluations,

assessing, 24–28

155, 168–170, 225–226

assessing performance against,

feedback

167–169

constructive, 58–61, 63–68,

attributes of well-defi ned,

187–189, 222–225

14–15

versus coaching, 71

cascading goal model, 21–22

discussing, 61–68

challenging, 18–20

facts versus opinions, 64–67,

characteristics of effective,

174

14–15

importance of, 57–61, 153

collaborating with employees

from others, 48–49, 221–222

on, 24–28, 33–42

positive, 46, 58, 59

defi ning, 21–32

regular, 5, 7, 57–69, 153, 157

in development plan, 125–126

to remote employees, 222–225

documenting, 37–38, 40–42

“sandwich” approach in, 68,

of employees, 103–105

188–189

evaluation of employees

specifi city in, 67–68

against, 3, 4, 167–169

360-degree, 4, 155, 162,

versus expectations, 31–32

163–166, 168

following up on, 38–39, 40

time and place for, 62–63

identifying new, 195–196

timing of, 59–60, 62

measuring progress toward,

as two-way dialogue, 63–64

29–31, 46

types of, 58–61

metrics for, 29–31

when not to give, 56

personal interests and, 26–28

fi nancial incentives, 87–90

plan for reaching, 33–38

fi ring an employee, 136, 144–145

planning session for, 23–24

240

Index

qualitative, 30–31

lawsuits, 49–50, 150–151, 152, 175

reasonable number of, 28–29

learning styles, 126–128

for remote employees, 218–219

life mentors, 121

revising, 24, 34, 39, 40

location

sources of, 16–18

for feedback discussions,

stretch, 18–20

62–63

template for setting, 41–42

for performance reviews,

time line for achieving, 35–38

182–183

unrealistic, 19

goal-setting template, 41–42

growth opportunities, 99–100,

managers

102. See also employee

building trust as, 76–77

development

modeling of good behavior by,

86, 216

role of, in employee develop-

high-performing culture, 18–19,

ment, 100–103

100

role of, in underperformance,

human resources (HR), 38,

54–56, 137–139

49–50, 100, 112, 175

marginal performers, 190–193

massive open online courses

(MOOCs), 112

improvement plans, 141–142. See

mentors, types of, 120–122

also development plans

mentorship, 119–123

incentives, 87–90

merit pay, 152

incivility, 84–87

merit rating system, 151

industrial model, of performance

metrics, 4, 29–31

management, 3–4

Millennials, 100, 153

innovation, 3–4, 151

monetary compensation, 87–90,

intrinsic rewards, 90–95, 99

185–197

monetary rewards, 87–90

motivation, 83–96

job descriptions, 17–18, 166, 168

culture of respect and, 84–87

job redesign, 116–119

rewards and, 87–95

job satisfaction, 84, 99, 101, 102,

understanding employees’,

121, 208

104–105

mutual trust, 76–77

knowledge work, 2, 3–4, 153

nanodegree programs, 112

negative feedback. See construc-

lattice model of career develop-

tive feedback

ment, 107–108

Netfl ix, 4, 155

241

Index

objectivity, in performance

performance metrics, 4, 29–30

evaluations, 169–175

performance-planning sessions,

online classes, 112

23–24

open-ended questions, 63–64,

performance problems. See poor

104–105, 221–222

performance

opinion-based statements, in

performance reviews

feedback, 64–67

accuracy of, 151–152, 170–171

organizational culture, 32, 84

alternate approaches to, 4–5,

154–157

assessing performance for,

paraphrasing, 65, 78

167–169, 225–226

peer mentors, 120

conducting the discussion,

performance appraisal. See

181–194, 226–228

performance reviews

discussing performance

performance, assessing, 167–169

during, 187–194

documentation of, 49–51

documentation of, 169–179,

as ongoing process, 45–56

193–194

performance evaluation. See

evaluating your approach to,

performance reviews

196–198

performance evaluation form,

form template, 176–179

176–179

gathering information for,

performance gaps, 46–47

160–167

in C players, 196

logistics for, 182–183

coaching to close, 71–81

for marginal performers,

employee’s perspective on,

190–193

75–76

negatives of, 149–150, 151–154

productive dialogues on, 77–78

positives of, 150–151

See also poor performance

preparing, 159–179, 225–226

performance infl ation, 171

ratings and, 170–173, 226

performance management

of remote employees, 225–228

approaches to, 2–3, 5–6

self-assessment and, 160–163,

of B players, 201–206

226

evolution of, 3–6

setting tone for, 183–185

functions of, 1

for strong performers,

importance of, 6–7

189–190

industrial model of, 3–4

360-degree feedback and, 4,

introduction to, 1–9

155, 163–166

motivation and, 83

use of, 156–157

as ongoing process, 45–47

performance snapshots, 5,

of remote employees, 217–228

154–155

performance measurement,

personal interests, aligning with

29–31

goals, 26–28

242

Index

personal problems, 54, 138

remote employees, 217–228

plans

communication with, 219–220

for development, 125–133, 196

documenting performance

for reaching goals, 33–38

of, 221

Pomodoro Technique, 214

giving feedback to, 222–225

poor performance

goals and expectations for,

asking employees to address,

218–219

68

performance appraisals of,

coaching to improve,

225–228

139–143

performance management of,

documentation of, 174–175

217–228

identifying cause of, 52–56,

self-assessments for, 226

137–139

tracking performance of,

progress checks on, 79–80,

221–222

143

virtual communication tech-

reluctance to confront,

nologies and, 221, 223–224,

59–61

227

seeing in new ways, 77–78

respect, culture of, 84–87

positive feedback, 46, 58–59,

rewards, 87–95

92–93, 174, 189–190

extrinsic, 87–90

praise. See recognition

fi nancial, 87–90

problem behavior. See poor

intrinsic, 90–95, 99

performance

risk taking, 130, 131

promotions, 107–109, 185–187,

225

public criticism, 86

“sandwich” approach, 68,

188–189

self-assessment, for employees,

questions

160–163, 226

closed, 64, 75

70-20-10 rule, 128–129

in coaching, 71–72, 75

situational factors, affecting

for employee self-assessment,

performance, 168–169

161

skill-training programs, 111–113

open-ended, 63–64, 75,

SMART acronym (for goals),

104–105, 221–222

14–15

for 360-degree feedback, 166

sponsors, 121–122

yes or no, 64, 75

sponsorship, 121–123

strategic objectives, aligning

goals with, 25

raises, 185–187, 225

stretch assignments, 113–116

recognition, 46, 91–93, 95, 189,

stretch goals, 18–20

205–206

struggling performers, 135–145

243

Index

task delegation, 113, 131

trust, 76–77

tasks

tuition assistance, 113

to achieve goals, 35–37

delegating, 113, 131

introducing challenging,

underperforming employees,

94–95

135–145, 190–193, 196

Gantt charts for, 35–36

resources for, 36–37

variety in, 215–216

variety, in work assignments,

teams

215–216

fi nancial incentives for, 88–90

virtual communication, 219–220,

measuring performance of,

223–224, 227

3–4, 152

virtual work arrangements,

preventing burnout on,

217–228

207–216

telecommuting, 215, 217

temporary assignments, 113–116

watcher (learning style), 127

360-degree feedback, 4, 162,

Welch, Jack, 151

163–166, 168

work-life balance, 202, 209–210

360-degree reviews, 4, 155

workloads, 209, 210–211

time demands, reining in,

work overload, 53–54. See also

212–213

burnout

tone, for performance review,

workplace stress, 207, 208–210.

183–185

See also burnout

tours of duty, 115–116

workplace tensions, 53

training, 111–113

work processes, 53

244

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HBR Guide to

Project

Management

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HBR Guide to Project Management

H6081.indb ii

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HBR Guide to

Project

Management

HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW PRESS

Boston, Massachusetts

H6081.indb iii

11/6/12 11:24 AM

Copyright 2012 Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation

All rights reserved

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced

into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means

(electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise),

without the prior permission of the publisher. Requests for permission

should be directed to permissions@hbsp.harvard.edu, or mailed to

Permissions, Harvard Business School Publishing, 60 Harvard Way,

Boston, Massachusetts 02163.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

HBR’s guide to project management.

p.

cm.

ISBN 978-1-4221-8729-6 (alk. paper)

1. Project management. I. Harvard business review. II. Title:

Guide to project management.

HD69.P75H394

2013

658.4′04—dc23

2012026957

Find more digital content or join the discussion on www.hbr.org.

The web addresses referenced and linked in this book were live and

correct at the time of the book’s publication but may be subject to change.

H6081.indb iv

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What You’ll Learn

You’ve been asked to lead a project. You appreciate the

vote of confi dence, but are you panicking because you

haven’t a clue where to begin? Do you worry that stake-

holders will tug you in a million directions, making it im-

possible to set clear goals, let alone deliver the goods on

time and on budget? How will you know when to stick

to your original plan and when to be fl exible? And how

will you keep all your team members excited about this

project—when they have so many other pressures on

them?

This guide will give you the confi dence and tools you

need to manage projects effectively. You’ll get better at:

• Choosing the right team and keeping it humming

• Avoiding “scope creep”

• Zeroing in on critical tasks and mapping out a

logical sequence

• Making heads or tails of Gantt and PERT charts

• Getting disruptive team members on board

H6081.indb v

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What You’ll Learn

• Keeping stakeholders in the loop

• Gauging your project’s success

• Deciding when to cut bait

• Capturing—and using—lessons learned

vi

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Contents

Overview

1. The Four Phases of Project Management

3

What’s involved in planning, build-up,

implementation, and closeout—and how

these processes overlap

2. The Cast of Characters

31

Who’s who in project management

Phase 1: PLANNING

3. A Written Charter

41

Your marching orders

4. Dealing with a Project’s “Fuzzy Front End”

47

You can’t eliminate uncertainty in the early

stages of a complex project—but you can

manage it.

BY LOREN GARY

5. Performing a Project Pre mortem 53

Learn from your project while it’s still alive

and well.

BY GARY KLEIN

H6081.indb vii

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Contents

6. Will Project Creep Cost You—or Create Value?

57

Set strict limits on scope, but be fl exible

when major opportunities arise.

BY LOREN GARY

Phase 2: BUILD-UP

7. Setting Priorities Before Starting Your Project

65

Three steps for staying on track

BY RON ASHKENAS

8. Boost Productivity with Time-Boxing

73

Tips for getting your team’s calendars—and

yours—under control

BY MELISSA RAFFONI

9. Scheduling the Work

77

Put the horse before the cart.

10. HBR Case Study: A Rush to Failure?

87

When does speed trump quality?

BY TOM CROSS

11. Getting Your Project Off on the Right Foot

101

Set your project up for success with a well-

planned launch.

12. The Discipline of Teams

107

Mutual accountability leads to astonishing

results.

BY JON R. KATZENBACH AND DOUGLAS K. SMITH

viii

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Contents

Phase 3: IMPLEMENTATION

13. Eff ective Project Meetings

113

Run your meetings well, and infuse your

project with energy and direction.

14. The Adaptive Approach to Project Management 117

What to do when your usual decision tools

cease to be useful in the face of uncertainty

15. Why Good Projects Fail Anyway

123

The risks that come with big projects—and

how to manage them

BY NADIM F. MATTA AND RONALD N. ASHKENAS

16. Monitoring and Controlling Your Project

127

Don’t be afraid to revise your plan.

BY RAY SHEEN

17. Managing People Problems on Your Team

135

Make sure people stay on task, pull their

weight, work together, and meet quality

standards.

18. The Tools of Cooperation and Change

139

What to do when people disagree on goals,

how to achieve them, or both

BY CLAYTON M. CHRISTENSEN, MATT MARX,

AND HOWARD H. STEVENSON

19. Don’t Throw Good Money (or Time) After Bad

143

How to avoid chasing after sunk costs

BY JIMMY GUTERMAN

ix

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Contents

Phase 4: CLOSEOUT

20. Handing off Authority and Control

151

Gauge your success before wrapping

things up.

BY RAY SHEEN

21. Capturing Lessons Learned

157

Four steps to an eff ective after-action review

BY RAY SHEEN

Glossary 163

Index 167

x

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Overview

H6081.indb 1

11/6/12 11:24 AM

H6081.indb 2

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Chapter 1

The Four Phases

of Project

Management

Whether you’re in charge of developing a website, design-

ing a car, moving a department to a new facility, updating

an information system, or just about any other project

(large or small), you’ll go through the same four phases:

planning, build-up, implementation, and closeout. Even

though the phases have distinct qualities, they overlap.

For example, you’ll typically begin planning with a ball-

park budget fi gure and an estimated completion date.

Once you’re in the build-up and implementation phases,

you’ll defi ne and begin to execute the details of the proj-

ect plan. That will give you new information, so you’ll re-

vise your budget and end date—in other words, do more

planning—according to your clearer understanding of

the big picture.

Adapted from Pocket Mentor: Managing Projects (product #1878), Harvard Business Review Press, 2006

3

H6081.indb 3

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Overview

Here’s a chart that outlines the activities of each phase,

plus the skills and tools you may need for doing the work:

P R O J E C T P H A S E S

Planning

Build-up

Implementation

Closeout

ACTIVITIES

Determine the

Assemble your

Monitor and control

Evaluate project

real problem

team

process and budget

performance

to solve

Identify

Plan

Report progress

Close the

stakeholders

assignments

project

Defi ne project

Create the

Hold weekly team

Debrief with the

objectives

schedule

meetings

team

Determine

Hold a kickoff

Manage problems

Develop a post-

scope,

meeting

evaluation

resources, and

report

major tasks

Prepare for

Develop a

tradeoff s

budget

KEY SKILLS

Task analysis

Process

Supervising

Follow-through

analysis

Planning

Team building

Leading and

Planning

motivating

Cost-benefi t

Delegating

Communication

Communication

analysis of

options

Negotiating

Confl ict management

Recruiting and

Problem solving

hiring

Communication

TOOLS

Work

Scheduling

Post-evaluation

Breakdown

tools (CPM,

report:

Structure

PERT, Gantt)

analysis and

lessons learned

Planning: How to Map Out a Project

When people think of project planning, their minds tend

to jump immediately to scheduling—but you won’t even

4

H6081.indb 4

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The Four Phases of Project Management

get to that part until the build-up phase. Planning is re-

ally about defi ning fundamentals: what problem needs

solving, who will be involved, and what will be done.

Determine the real problem to solve

Before you begin, take time to pinpoint what issue the

project is actually supposed to fi x. It’s not always obvious.

Say the CIO at your company has asked you, an IT

manager, to develop a new database and data entry sys-

tem. You may be eager to jump right into the project to

tackle problems you have struggled with fi rsthand. But

will that solve the company’s problem? To increase the

project’s chances of success, you must look beyond the

symptoms you have observed—“We can’t get the data

out fast enough” and “I have to sift through four differ-

ent reports just to compile an update on my clients’ recent

activity” —to fi nd the underlying issues the organiza-

tion is trying to address. Before designing the database,

you should ask what type of data is required, what will

be done with it, how soon a fi x is needed, and so on. If

you don’t, you’ll run the risk of wasting time and money

by creating a solution that is too simplistic, too compli-

cated, or too late—or one that doesn’t do what users need

it to do.

Identify the stakeholders

The real problem will become even clearer once you fi g-

ure out who all your stakeholders are—that is, which

functions or people might be affected by the project’s ac-

tivities or outcomes, who will contribute resources (peo-

ple, space, time, tools, and money), and who will use and

5

H6081.indb 5

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Overview

benefi t from the project’s output. They will work with you

to spell out exactly what success on the project means.

Have them sign off on what they expect at the end of the

project and what they are willing to contribute to it. And

if the stakeholders change midstream, be prepared not

only to respond to the new players but also to include all

the others in any decision to redirect the project.

Whether you’re managing a project in a corporation or

working as an independent consultant, it’s critical to have

the support of the people you’re working for. They may

take a blue-sky view and demand an enormous amount

of work within an unrealistic time period or expect you

to perform miracles with inadequate resources or staff-

ing. As the project manager, you’ll need to make sure the

requirements and resources line up fairly evenly, or you

will set yourself up for failure.

Defi ne project objectives

One of your most challenging planning tasks is to meld

stakeholders’ various expectations into a coherent and

manageable set of goals. The project’s success will be

measured by how well you meet those goals. The more

explicitly you state them at the outset, the less disagree-

ment you will face later about whether you have met ex-

pectations. In the planning phase, however, much is still

in fl ux, so you’ll revise your objectives later on, as you

gather information about what you need to achieve.

When defi

ning objectives, think SMART. They

should be:

• Specifi c

• Measurable

6

H6081.indb 6

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The Four Phases of Project Management

• Action-oriented

• Realistic

• Time-limited

Suppose your HR department has been tasked with

identifying potential new providers for your company’s

health benefi ts plan because the current ones aren’t de-

livering the level of service they should given how much

money employees have to pay for them. The project’s

SMART objectives may be to:

1.

Survey < action-oriented> at least six

< measurable> providers that meet the depart-

ment’s minimum threshold criteria for service

quality.

2.

Recommend < action-oriented>, at the June

< time-limited> board of directors’ meeting, the

three < specifi c> that offer the best and broadest

coverage at a cost that is at least 10% < realistic>

less than the company’s current per-employee

contribution.

Keep the following factors in mind as you defi ne your

project’s objectives:

• Quality. Identify quality standards, and determine

how to measure and satisfy them.

• Organization. Calibrate goals depending on the

people and other resources you have available.

• Communication. Determine what information

each stakeholder needs and how to deliver it.

7

H6081.indb 7

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Overview

Determine scope, resources,

and major tasks

Many projects fail either because they bite off more than

they can chew and thus grossly underestimate time and

money or because a signifi cant part of the work has been

overlooked. One tool that can help you avoid these prob-

lems is the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS), which

aids in the process of determining scope and tasks and

developing estimates. (See the sample later in this chap-

ter.) The underlying concept is to subdivide complex ac-

tivities into their most manageable units.

To create a WBS:

• Ask, “What will have to be done in order to ac-

complish X?”

• Continue to ask this question until your answer is

broken down into tasks that cannot be subdivided

further.

• Estimate how long it will take to complete these

tasks and how much they will cost in terms of dol-

lars and person-hours.

A WBS typically consists of three to six levels of subdi-

vided activities. The more complex the project, the more

levels it will have. As a general rule, you shouldn’t have

more than 20—and only an enormous project would re-

quire that many.

Here in the planning phase, don’t worry about the se-

quence of activities. You will take care of scheduling in

8

H6081.indb 8

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The Four Phases of Project Management

the build-up phase. Rather, use the WBS to create the

framework that you’ll fi ll in once you have a better sense

of your staff, budget, and time constraints. Padding esti-

mates is an acceptable way to reduce risk, but do it openly

and communicate your reasons to the stakeholders.

As a result of your thoughtful planning, you’ll be able

to rough out an estimate of how many people—with what

skills—you’ll need for the project. You’ll also have a good

idea of how long the project will take.

Prepare for trade-off s

Time, cost, and quality are the three related variables

that typically dictate what you can achieve.

Quality = Time + Cost

Change any of these variables, and you change your out-

come. Of course, such alterations often occur in the mid-

dle of a project. If your time frame for developing a new

database management system is suddenly cut in half, for

instance, you will need to either employ twice the num-

ber of people or be satisfi ed with a system that isn’t as

robust as originally planned. Don’t let bells and whistles

get in the way of mission-critical activities. The key is to

establish a level of quality that meets your stakeholders’

needs.

Knowing from the start which variable is most im-

portant to each stakeholder will help you make the right

changes along the way. It’s your responsibility to keep

every one informed of any tweaks and tell them what the

consequences will be in terms of time, cost, and quality.

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WORK BREAKDOWN STRUCTURE

Sample Planning Document

Develop a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) to ensure that you

do not overlook a signifi cant part of a complex activity or under-

estimate the time and money needed to complete the work. Use

multiple pages as needed.

DESCRIBE THE OVERALL PROJECT:

The overall project will migrate 3 Web servers and databases to a new

physical data center. The project requires that 5 new servers be provi-

sioned in the new data center: these servers will mirror the production

servers existing in the old data center. The new servers will be built to

the same specifi cations as the old ones; they will run the same applica-

tion and have the same content. Once implemented, the new equipment

will be tested to confi rm functionality. The sites will have a cutover and

“go live” date. Finally, the old equipment will be decommissioned and

reabsorbed into inventory.

MAJOR TASK

Obtain equipment.

Level 1 Sub Tasks

Purchase 3 Web servers and 2 databases.

Ship equipment to new data center.

Level 2 Sub Tasks

Cut P.O. and order servers.

Alert data center that equipment is slated for arrival.

Sub Task Duration

7 days

MAJOR TASK

Provision and implement equipment.

Level 1 Sub Tasks

Physically install hardware.

Load operating systems.

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The Four Phases of Project Management

Load applications.

Mirror content to new servers.

Level 2 Sub Tasks

Rack and cable new equipment in data center and ensure physical and

network connectivity.

Load base-level operating systems for Web and database servers.

Load application level software, including Web server software, data-

base applications, and any required dependencies.

Copy confi gurations from production sites, transfer to new servers, and

load appropriately.

Sub Task Duration

8 days

MAJOR TASK

Test equipment.

Level 1 Sub Tasks

Test machines.

Level 2 Sub Tasks

Ensure network connectivity, as well as Web and database access

functionality and integrity.

Sub Task Duration

2 days

MAJOR TASK

Go live with new equipment.

Level 1 Sub Tasks

Cutover to new production site.

Data and content integrity check.

(continued)

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MAJOR TASK (CONTINUED)

Level 2 Sub Tasks

Switch Web and database access to new sites.

Run a series of predetermined tests to ensure that data is accurate

and that any updates since mirroring have been captured and applied

as necessary.

Sub Task Duration

2 days

MAJOR TASK

Test again.

Level 1 Sub Tasks

Let sites burn in for 24 hours and check integrity once again.

Level 2 Sub Tasks

Run series of tests once more to ensure that updates and logging are

functioning correctly.

Sub Task Duration

1 day

MAJOR TASK

Decommission old equipment.

Level 1 Sub Tasks

Remove equipment from data center.

Reabsorb equipment for future use.

Level 2 Sub Tasks

De-install equipment; erase software and content.

Ship equipment back to inventory.

Sub Task Duration

2 days

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The Four Phases of Project Management

Build-Up:

How to Get the Project Going

In the build-up phase, you bring your team together. Time

estimates become schedules. Cost estimates become bud-

gets. You gather your resources. You get commitments,

and you make them.

Assemble your team

Your fi rst task in this phase is to assess the skills needed

for the project so you can get the right people on board.

This assessment fl ows directly from the Work Break-

down Structure you did during the planning phase, in

which you developed your best estimate of the necessary

tasks and activities. You may need to bring in people—

either temporary workers or employees from other parts

of the organization—who have certain skills. Don’t forget

to budget time and money for training to cover any gaps

you can’t fi ll with people who are already up to speed.

Plan assignments

If you’ve built your own team, you’ve probably already

decided who will do what. Or, if you’ve inherited a team

but worked with the members before, you can still make

the assignments yourself. But if a new, unfamiliar group

is assigned to you, list the people on the team, list the

skills required, and talk to each team member about her

own skill set before you match people to tasks. This ap-

proach starts the process of team communication and co-

hesion. For example, if the project calls for a skill no one

on the team possesses, members may know someone else

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Overview

who has it—or they may express interest in being trained

themselves.

Clearly, you can’t do everything yourself, even if you

want to. After you’ve decided how you will assign tasks

to team members, give each person the information and

resources needed to succeed—and then back off and let

your team members do their jobs. You may, as the proj-

ect proceeds, have to delegate more tasks than originally

anticipated. Be fl exible enough to do so—without forget-

ting that you, as project manager, are the one who’s ac-

countable for results. (See the sidebar “Tips for Delegat-

ing Effectively.)

Create the schedule

It would be nice if you could tally up the to-dos and say,

“With the resources we have, we will need this much

time”—and then get exactly what you’ve asked for. But

the reality is, most projects come with fi xed beginning

and end dates, regardless of available resources.

To create a realistic schedule within those constraints,

work backward from any drop-dead deadlines you know

about—that is, dates that cannot be changed—to see

when your deliverables must be ready. For instance, if an

annual report is due for a shareholder’s meeting and you

know it takes the printer two weeks, then all the fi nal art

and copy for the report must be ready to go to the printer

two weeks before the meeting.

Depending on the complexity of your project, you

may also rely on tools such as the Critical Path Method

and a Performance Evaluation and Review Technique

(PERT) chart to help with the sequencing of tasks and

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The Four Phases of Project Management

a Gantt chart to map out their chronological order and

duration. You’ll learn how to use these tools elsewhere

in this guide. For now, though, keep in mind the “work-

ing backward” rule of thumb and these basic steps for

scheduling:

1. Use the Work Breakdown Structure or a similar

outline to develop a list of activities or tasks, and

TIPS FOR DELEGATING EFFECTIVELY

• Recognize the capabilities of your team

members.

• Trust your team’s ability to get the job

done.

• Focus on results, and let go of your need to get

involved in how tasks are accomplished.

• Consider delegation as a way to develop the

skills of your team.

• Always delegate to the lowest possible level to

make the best use of staff resources.

• Explain assignments clearly and provide re-

sources needed for successful completion.

•

Defl ect reverse delegation. Do not automati-

cally solve problems or make decisions for your

staff members. Focus on generating alternatives

together.

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Overview

plot out their sequence by determining which

ones are critical to achieving the desired fi nal

outcome.

2. Assign each task a deliverable—for instance,

“compose rough draft of survey questions.”

3. Use deliverables to create a schedule with realis-

tic due dates.

4. Identify bottlenecks that could upset the

schedule.

5. Determine ways to remove bottlenecks, or build

in extra time to get around them.

6. Establish control and communication systems for

updating and revising the schedule.

7. Keep all stakeholders involved in and informed

of the project’s progress and any schedule

modifi cations.

Hold a kickoff meeting

As soon as you’ve chosen your players and set the sched-

ule, bring everyone together for a kickoff meeting. Go

over the project’s plan and objectives with the group in

as much detail as possible, and review the proposed time

frame. Be sure to clarify roles and responsibilities.

Encourage people to point out spots where problems

may occur and where improvements could be made. Take

all suggestions seriously—especially in areas where the

team members have more experience than you do—and

adjust your estimates and activities accordingly.

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The Four Phases of Project Management

Develop a budget

The fi rst question to ask when developing a budget is,

“What will it take to actually do the work?” To determine

your costs, break down the project into the following

categories:

• Personnel. Have you included all costs, both on-

going and extra, for employees and contract work-

ers? (This is typically the largest part of a budget.)

• Travel. Is everyone onsite, or will employees be

brought in from other locations?

• Training. Does everyone know how to use all the

necessary equipment and software? Do the mem-

bers of your team possess all the required skills?

Will training involve travel? Will you need to teach

users how to implement your project when it’s

completed?

• Supplies. Will your team need anything in addi-

tion to the usual computers, software, and so on?

• Space. Do people have to be relocated? How

much room will be required in the new space, and

at what cost? Will there be ongoing maintenance

expenses?

• Research. Will you have to buy studies or data to

support this project? How much research will your

team have to perform itself? At what cost?

• Capital expenditures. What expensive equipment

or technical upgrades will be necessary to do the

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Overview

job? Will any capital expenditures pay for them-

selves? If so, how?

• Overhead. What is your projected overhead ex-

pense? Is it in line with your company’s standard

overhead percentage?

After you’ve entered the fi gures from these standard

categories into the budget, ask a trusted adviser what

you forgot. Did you overlook insurance? Licensing fees?

Costs for legal or accounting support?

A budget, no matter how carefully planned, is just

your best guess. Expect actual numbers to deviate from

original estimates, and stay as fl exible as possible within

your limitations of time, quality demands, and total

money available.

Implementation:

How to Execute the Project

It’s time to put the plan into action. The implementation

phase is often the most gratifying, because work actually

gets done, but it can also be the most frustrating. The de-

tails can be tedious and, at times, overwhelming.

Monitor and control process and budget

Whether you have a formal project control system in place

or you do your own regular check-ups, try to maintain

a big-picture perspective so that you don’t become en-

gulfed by details and petty problems. Project- monitoring

software systems can help you measure your progress.

No single approach works for all projects. A system that’s

right for a large project can easily swamp a small one

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The Four Phases of Project Management

with paperwork, whereas a system that works for small

projects won’t have enough muscle for a big one.

Respond quickly to changes in data or information as

they come in, and look for early signs of problems so you

can initiate corrective action. Otherwise, all you are do-

ing is monitoring, not exercising control. Make it clear

to your team that your responses to problems that arise

won’t do any good if you don’t receive timely information.

(In most cases, the weekly updates are fi ne.) But don’t

jump in to fi x things too quickly—allow your team mem-

bers to work out small problems on their own.

Watch the real numbers as they roll in to ensure that

they are matching the budgeted amounts. Be ready to ex-

plain why extra costs are unavoidable. Common ones that

sneak up on projects include increased overtime to keep

things on schedule, consultant fees to resolve unforeseen

problems, and fl uctuations in currency exchange rates.

Report progress

Stakeholders will generally want regular updates and

status reports. Consult with them to see how much in-

formation they’d like and in what format. Don’t hide or

downplay problems as they come up, or you can easily

transform them into crises. If you keep your stakeholders

informed, they may turn out to be good resources when

issues do arise.

Hold weekly team meetings

When you’re immersed in project details, it’s easy to be

diverted from critical activities to side paths that waste

time. You and your team can stay focused by meeting

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TIPS ON CONTROLLING PROJECT SLOWDOWNS

Try these approaches before accepting the inevitability

of a delay in project completion:

• Renegotiate with stakeholders.  Discuss the

possibility of increasing the budget or extending

the deadline.

• Use later steps to recover.  Reexamine budgets

and schedules to see if you can make up the

time elsewhere.

• Narrow the project’s scope.  Can nonessential

elements of the project be dropped to reduce

costs and save time?

• Deploy more resources.  Can you put more

people or machines to work? Weigh the costs

against the importance of the deadline.

once a week and periodically asking yourselves what’s es-

sential to the project’s success.

Set clear agendas for your meetings. Try structur-

ing them around production numbers, revenue goals, or

whatever other metrics you’ve chosen to gauge perfor-

mance. Many of your agenda items will naturally stem

from targets the project has missed, met, or exceeded:

For instance, you may need to discuss as a group whether

to incorporate more travel into the project because you’ve

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The Four Phases of Project Management

• Accept substitution.  Can you go with a less

expensive or more readily available item?

• Seek alternative sources.  Can you get the miss-

ing item elsewhere?

• Accept partial delivery.  Can you keep work go-

ing if you take the items that are ready now and

receive the rest of the delivery later?

• Off er incentives.  Can you provide bonuses or

other enticements to facilitate on-time delivery?

• Demand compliance.  Will insisting that people

do what they said they would get the desired

result? This may require support from upper

management. Use this tactic selectively; be

careful not to damage important relationships in

pursuit of your goal.

noticed a decline in productivity at a satellite offi ce. Or

you might ask the product designers on your team to con-

tinue gathering among themselves on a biweekly basis be-

cause they’ve doubled their creative output since they’ve

begun doing so. Keep the momentum going by following

up each week on any to-dos and connecting them with the

metrics for overall performance. Also, celebrate small suc-

cesses along the way—that will rekindle the team’s enthu-

siasm as you make progress toward your larger objectives.

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Overview

Manage problems

Some problems have such far-reaching consequences

that they can threaten the success of the entire project.

Here are four of the biggest you’ll face:

1.

Time slippage. The most common problem in

project management is falling behind schedule.

Delays may be unavoidable, but you can usually

at least improve the situation. The fi rst step is

to recognize that you’re behind. If you’ve been

monitoring the project’s progress carefully, you’ll

quickly notice when schedules are being re-

adjusted to accommodate delays or unexpected

bottlenecks.

2.

Scope creep. Time slippage can result from

internal pressure to alter the scope of the proj-

ect. When stakeholders ask for changes, it’s your

job to communicate clearly to them how those

changes will affect cost, time, or quality.

On some projects, scope creep is an ongo-

ing battle for the project manager. After specifi c

milestones and budgets have been agreed upon,

people may begin to see more that could be

achieved. Don’t get caught up in trying to solve

problems that lie beyond the established scope

of your project—even ones that your company

urgently needs to address.

3.

Quality issues. Quality assurance plays a major

role in any project’s success. Unfortunately, it

sometimes gives way to deadline pressure. Don’t

rush essential quality checks for the sake of the

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The Four Phases of Project Management

schedule. And when you examine deliverables,

use the most appropriate tools—such as detailed

inspections, checklists, or statistical sampling—to

accept or reject them. Return or rework rejected

deliverables, depending on costs.

4.

People problems. These are often the most dif-

fi cult challenges a project manager must con-

front. They can generally be avoided or handled

early on if you communicate frequently with each

team member. Weekly staff meetings may not be

enough; daily interaction—with individual team

members or with the team as a whole—may be

necessary.

Pay attention to small signs of emerging problems,

such as a team member’s increased tension and irrita-

bility, loss of enthusiasm, or inability to make decisions.

When you see signs like these, get to the heart of the

problem quickly and deal with it. Don’t let it grow from a

small irritant into a disaster.

Closeout:

How to Handle End Matters

Though some projects feel endless, they all, eventually,

come to a close. How do you, as project manager, know

when to make that happen? And how do you go about it?

Evaluate project performance

Before closing out your project, your team needs to meet

its goals (or determine, along with key stakeholders, that

those goals no longer apply). Compare your progress

with the scope everyone agreed on at the beginning. That

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Overview

POST-EVALUATION REPORT

Sample Analysis and Lessons Learned

Project name: Project Phoenix

Date: 5/29/200X

Present at this session: Rafael, Phil, and Carmen

PROJECT PHASE/TASK

Equipment acquisition

What Worked

Obtained the Web servers on time and on budget.

What Didn’t Work

Logistical problems with availability of database servers—caused a

delay. Expedited order that introduced additional expense.

Ways to Improve

Need to order equipment earlier.

PROJECT PHASE/TASK

Provision and implement equipment

What Worked

Two days were recovered through the efforts of Rafael and Carmen dur-

ing provisioning phase.

PROJECT PHASE/TASK

Test equipment

What Worked

Testing phase was successful; during testing, a bug in the database

content was discovered and corrected prior to cutover.

PROJECT PHASE/TASK

Go live with new equipment

What Worked

Smooth cutover with minimal downtime.

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The Four Phases of Project Management

What Didn’t Work

Some users were unaware that there would be a brief outage.

Ways to Improve

Publicize work window to user base more aggressively.

PROJECT PHASE/TASK

Test again

What Worked

Tested fi ne.

PROJECT PHASE/TASK

Decommission old equipment

What Worked

Decommissioned sites and erased content successfully; reabsorbed

stock into inventory.

What Didn’t Work

Some confusion over serial numbers and inventory, but straightened

out in the end.

Ways to Improve

Check serial numbers at an earlier phase to minimize problems at the

end of project.

TARGET ANALYSIS

How well did the project/team do...

In achieving goals and meeting project objectives?

Success: all goals were achieved.

At meeting deadlines and the fi nal completion date?

Success: met our target date.

At monitoring and staying within budget?

Success: slight overrun was unavoidable.

(continued)

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Overview

TARGET ANALYSIS (CONTINUED)

How well did the project/team do...

At communicating with stakeholders?

Partial success: we could have done better at communicating

requirements earlier to individuals involved in the phases of the

project.

RESOURCES ASSESSMENT

Were the allocated resources appropriate, suffi

cient, and effi

ciently

used? (i.e., time, people, money)

Generally, the resource allocations were appropriate. The project went

slightly over budget, but was not inappropriate. The people involved had

the expertise necessary to carry out the highly technical phases of

the project. The time resources were appropriate as the project was

completed on time with no room to spare.

LESSONS LEARNED

What are the key lessons learned that can be applied to future

projects?

At each phase of the project, it is crucial to anticipate the next steps

and to alert groups or individuals of resource requirements as early as

possible in the process. By so doing, we probably could have acquired

the equipment in a more timely manner and would not have had to

scramble so much in the later phases to meet our target dates.

will tell you how well the project has performed—and if

there’s still work to do. When you discuss your fi ndings

with your stakeholders, make sure you reach consensus

with them on how “fi nished” the project is. Keep your

scope front and center so everyone uses the same yard-

stick to measure success.

Close the project

The steps you take to wrap things up will depend on

whether your team assumes ownership of its own deliv-

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The Four Phases of Project Management

erables, hands them off to others in the organization, or

must terminate the project altogether. Later in this guide,

you’ll learn about these three types of closeouts and some

techniques you can use to make them go smoothly. If

all has gone as planned with your project, then it’s time

for celebration. Even if, as is more likely, there are some

rough spots along the way—the project takes longer than

expected, the result is less than hoped for, or the costs

overtake your estimates—it’s still important to recognize

the team’s efforts and accomplishments.

Debrief with the team

No matter what the outcome, make sure you have sched-

uled a post-evaluation—time to debrief and document

the process so that the full benefi ts of lessons learned can

be shared. The post-evaluation is an opportunity for dis-

covery, not for criticism and blame. Team members who

fear they’ll be punished for past problems may try to hide

them rather than help fi nd better ways of handling them

in the future.

Develop a post-evaluation report

The post-evaluation report documents all information

that will be useful not only for the current team and

stakeholders but also for future project managers who

may use it to plan their own projects. (See the sample

report in this chapter.) It should include:

• Insights from the team. Which lessons identi-

fi ed during the debrief should be applied going

forward?

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A NOTE ABOUT PROJECT MANAGEMENT OFFICES

Large companies often have what’s called a Project

Management Offi

ce (PMO), which does some combi-

nation of the following:

• Establishes processes and templates to guide

project managers in planning and execution.

• Provides coaching and assistance to business

leaders, project managers, and team members

trying to apply the processes and templates.

• Directly manages projects to achieve desired ob-

jectives. (PMOs in heavily matrixed organizations

don’t usually take on this responsibility.)

A PMO that’s well run helps each project team develop

an appropriate plan, conduct a reasonable risk esti-

mate, and track progress—and it allows teams room to

deviate from standard procedure when it makes sense

to do so.

• Future status. What will happen to the project

now that it has been completed? Was it part of a

larger project, or was it a self-contained entity that

completed its goals?

• Status of ongoing critical tasks. What is the cur-

rent state of ongoing tasks that contain a high level

of technical risk or are being performed by outside

vendors or subcontractors?

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The Four Phases of Project Management

• Risk assessment. Could or did any risks cause

fi nancial loss, project failure, or other liabilities?

• Limitations of the audit. Do you have any reason

to question the validity of the post-evaluation? Is

any information missing or suspect? Did anyone in

the group seem to resist providing details?

Even after you’ve completed your project, you can

draw on the knowledge you’ve gained, the skills you’ve

learned, and the relationships you’ve formed. You’ve

accumulated valuable assets. The trick is to keep using

them as you begin new projects.

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Chapter 2

The Cast of

Characters

To meet your project objectives, you need the right peo-

ple on board—and they must have a clear understanding

of their roles. Here’s a breakdown of who does what.

Sponsor

The sponsor champions the project at the highest level

in the company and gets rid of organizational obstruc-

tions. She should have the clout to communicate effec-

tively with the CEO and key stakeholders, provide neces-

sary resources, and approve or reject outcomes. It’s also

important that she have “skin in the game”—in other

words, accountability for the project’s performance.

Project Manager

The project manager identifi es the central problem to

solve and determines, with input from the sponsor and

Adapted from Harvard Business Essentials: Managing Projects Large

and Small (product #6198BC), Harvard Business Review Press, 2004

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Overview

stakeholders, how to tackle it: what the project’s objec-

tives and scope will be and which activities will deliver

the desired results. He then plans and schedules tasks,

oversees day-to-day execution, and monitors progress

until he evaluates performance, brings the project to

a close, and captures the lessons learned. The project

manager receives authority from the sponsor. In many

respects, he’s like a traditional manager because he

must:

• Provide a framework for the project’s activities

• Identify needed resources

• Negotiate with higher authorities

• Recruit effective participants

• Set

milestones

• Coordinate

activities

• Keep the vision clear and the work on track

• Make sure everyone on the team contributes and

benefi ts

• Mediate

confl icts

• Make sure project goals are delivered on time and

on budget

Team Leader

Large projects may include a team leader, who reports

directly to the project manager. In small projects, the

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The Cast of Characters

project manager wears both hats. The team leader can-

not act like the boss and still obtain the benefi ts of team-

based work. Instead, he must adopt the following impor-

tant roles:

• Initiator. Rather than tell people what to do, the

leader draws attention to actions that must be

taken for team goals to be met.

• Model. He uses his own behavior to shape oth-

ers’ performance—by starting meetings on time,

for example, and following through on between-

meeting assignments. Leaders often rely heavily on

this tactic, since they typically cannot use promo-

tions, compensation, or threats of dismissal to

infl uence team members.

• Negotiator. He gets what he needs from resource

providers by framing the project as mutually

benefi cial.

• Listener. He gathers from the environment signals

of impending trouble, employee discontent, and

opportunities for gain.

• Coach. He fi nds ways to help team members

maximize their potential and achieve agreed-upon

goals. Coaching opportunities are abundant within

teams because the skills members eventually need

are often ones they don’t already have.

• Working member. In addition to providing di-

rection, the leader must do a share of the work,

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Overview

particularly in areas where he has special compe-

tence. Ideally, he should also take on one or two of

the unpleasant or unexciting jobs that no one else

wants to do.

Team Members

The heart of any project, and the true engine of its work,

is its membership. That’s why bringing together the right

people is extremely important.

Criteria for membership

Although the skills needed to accomplish the work should

govern team selection, keep in mind that you’re unlikely

to get all the know-how you need without providing some

training. Consider the following areas of profi ciency:

• Technical skills in a specifi c discipline, such

as market research, fi nance, or software

programming

• Problem-solving skills enabling individuals to

analyze diffi cult situations or impasses and to craft

solutions

• Interpersonal skills, particularly the ability to col-

laborate effectively with others—a critical aspect of

team-based work

• Organizational skills, including networking, com-

municating well with other parts of the company,

and navigating the political landscape, all of which

help the team get things done and avoid confl icts

with operating units and their personnel

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The Cast of Characters

When forming project teams, people tend to focus too

narrowly on technical skills and overlook interpersonal

and organizational skills, which are just as important.

For instance, a brilliant programmer may thwart team

progress if she is unwilling to collaborate. By contrast,

an organizationally savvy person with average technical

skills may be the team’s most valuable member, thanks to

his ability to gather resources and enlist help from oper-

ating units.

Individuals who are strong on all four skill measures

are few and far between. Make the most of the talent

available, and take steps to neutralize weaknesses in your

group. Look for people not just with valued skills but

with the potential to learn new ones. Once you identify a

candidate for membership, discuss her potential contri-

bution with the sponsor. Consult her supervisor as well,

since team membership absorbs time that would other-

wise go toward regular assignments.

You may have to add new members and possibly bid

thanks and good-bye to others over time, as tasks and

needs change. One note of caution: Team members grad-

ually develop effective patterns for working together,

making decisions, and communicating. Cohesion is un-

dermined when too many people join or exit the team.

Contributions and benefi ts

Free riders—team members who obtain the benefi ts of

membership without doing their share—cannot be toler-

ated. However, not every member has to put in the same

amount of time. For example, a senior manager who

must direct much of his attention to other duties may

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Overview

still add value to the project by securing resources or by

building support within the organization.

Just as each member must contribute to the team’s

work, each should receive clear benefi ts: a learning ex-

perience that will pay career dividends, for instance, or a

fatter paycheck or bonus. Otherwise, individuals will not

participate at a high level—at least not for long. The ben-

efi ts they derive from their regular jobs will absorb their

attention and make your project a secondary priority.

THE PROJECT STEERING COMMITTEE

Some projects have a steering committee, which

consists of the sponsor and all key stakeholders. The

committee’s role is to approve the charter, secure re-

sources, and adjudicate all requests to change key proj-

ect elements, such as deliverables, the schedule, and

the budget.

A steering committee is a good idea when diff er-

ent partnering companies, units, or individuals have a

strong stake in the project. Because it represents these

various interests, it is well positioned to sort out com-

plicated interfi rm or interdepartmental project prob-

lems. Likewise, it can be helpful if you anticipate many

change requests. The downside to having a steering

committee? It involves another level of oversight, and

its meetings take up the time of some of the company’s

most expensive employees. So don’t have a committee

if you don’t need one.

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The Cast of Characters

Alignment

The goals of the project team and those of its individual

members must align with organizational objectives. For

that reason, everyone’s efforts should be coordinated

through the company’s rewards system. This kind of re-

inforcement begins at the top, with the sponsor. Since

she is accountable for the team’s success, some part of

her compensation should be linked to the team’s perfor-

mance. Moving down the line, the project manager and

team members should likewise see their compensation

affected by team outcomes. Such alignment gets every-

one moving in the same direction.

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Phase 1

Planning

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Chapter 3

A Written Charter

Every project should have a charter that spells out the

nature and scope of the work and management’s expecta-

tions for results. A charter is a concise written document

containing some or all of the following:

• Name of the project’s sponsor

• Project’s

benefi ts to the organization

• Brief description of the objectives

• Expected time frame

• Budget and resources available

• Project manager’s authority

• Sponsor’s

signature

Creating a charter forces senior managers to clearly

articulate what the project should do. Consider this

example:

Adapted from Harvard Business Essentials: Managing Projects Large

and Small (product #6211BC), Harvard Business Review Press, 2004

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Planning

Phil was the sponsor of his company’s effort to reengi-

neer its order fulfi llment and customer service opera-

tions. As an outspoken critic of these functions, he was

the right person for the job. He had long been dissatis-

fi ed with the time it took to fi ll orders and with the com-

pany’s mediocre customer service, and he thought the

costs of these operations were too high. So he put Lila in

charge of a project to improve them.

What sorts of cost cutting was Phil anticipating?

What exactly were his complaints about the current

system? What would success look like? Lila attempted

to pin down Phil on those questions, but without suc-

cess. He was too busy to think it all through and too

eager to delegate responsibility for the project’s out-

come. Other company executives were also anxious

to see improvements but, like Phil, had no clear ideas

about the outcomes they wanted. So when Lila quizzed

senior managers about the subject, they cited no specifi c

goals. Lacking guidance, Lila and her team members

developed their own goals and criteria for success.

The team pushed forward, and Lila reported

progress to Phil over the course of the 10-month effort.

Resources were always a problem, particularly since

Lila was never sure how much money she could spend

and how many people she could add to the team at key

stages. Every request for resources had to be negotiated

on a case-by-case basis with Phil.

The team eventually completed its tasks, meet-

ing all of its self-declared goals. It had cut order-

fulfi llment time by one-third and the overall costs

of fulfi llment and customer service by 12%. And 90%

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A Written Charter

of customers could now get all their issues resolved

with a single phone call. The team celebrated with a

splendid dinner, and members went back to their regu-

lar duties.

Senior management, however, was not entirely

pleased with the outcome. “You did a pretty good job,”

Phil told Lila. “The improvements you’ve made are

signifi cant, but we were looking for a more sweep-

ing reorganization and larger cost savings.” Lila was

stunned and more than slightly angry. “If he wanted

these things,” she thought, “why didn’t he say so?”

Situations like this are common but can be avoided

with a charter that clarifi es the project’s objectives, time

frame, and scope.

Objectives

As Lila’s case demonstrates, project managers need

more than a broad-brush description of the objectives

for which they will be responsible. Ambiguous goals can

lead to misunderstandings, disappointment, and expen-

sive rework.

Take, for instance, the following statement: “Develop

a website that’s capable of providing fast, accurate prod-

uct information and fulfi llment to our customers in a

cost-effective way.” What exactly does that mean? What

is “fast”? How should accuracy be defi ned? Is one error

in 1,000 transactions acceptable? One in 10,000? To

what degree must the site be cost-effective? Each of those

questions should be answered in consultation with the

project’s sponsor and key stakeholders.

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Planning

A thoughtful charter specifi es the ends, but the means

should be left to the project manager and team mem-

bers. Telling the team what it should do and how to do

it would undermine the benefi ts of having recruited

a competent group. As J. Richard Hackman writes in

Leading Teams: “When ends are specifi ed but means

are not, team members are able to—indeed, are implic-

itly encouraged to—draw on their full complement of

knowledge, skill, and experience in devising and execut-

ing a way of operating that is well tuned to the team’s

purpose and circumstances.”

Time Frame

In addition to setting specifi c, measurable objectives,

you’ll need to establish a time frame for achieving them.

The project cannot be open-ended. In some cases, the

deadline must be fi rm, and the scope becomes variable.

Suppose a software company promises to deliver a new

release every three months. The project team must make

adjustments to the scope of its new releases—adding or

dropping product features—to meet each deadline.

By contrast, if the project’s scope is fi xed, then a logi-

cal deadline can be established only after the project

manager and team break down the objectives into sets of

tasks and estimate the duration of each task. Neverthe-

less, the charter should contain a reasonable deadline—

one that can be amended as the project team learns more

about what it must do.

Scope

Of course, options are always more plentiful than time

and resources. One useful technique for making the

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A Written Charter

right choices is to have key stakeholders and project par-

ticipants join in a brainstorming exercise to defi ne what

should be within scope and what should not.

Think of the sponsor’s expectations (the ends to be

sought) as part one of the charter and the project plan

(the means) as part two. The project manager typically

creates the plan, but it’s important to get the sponsor’s

approval on it so you don’t run into the same problems

Lila faced with Phil. Ideally, it represents the best ideas

from many or all team members. It’s especially valuable

for large, complex endeavors because it provides details

about tasks, deliverables, risks, and timetables. It serves

as a road map for the team.

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Chapter 4

Dealing with

a Project’s

“Fuzzy Front End”

by Loren Gary

Project management used to be about driving out uncer-

tainty. You nailed down all the deliverables at the outset

and fi ne-tuned your specs so implementation could be as

routine as possible. Sure, there were always a few sur-

prises, but overall you had a pretty good idea of what to

expect. In many of today’s complex projects, however—

whether they involve new-product development, IT in-

stallation, or internal process improvement—uncertainty

simply can’t be eliminated.

If you were retooling a shoe company’s manufacturing

plant, says David Schmaltz, a Washington-based proj-

ect management consultant, “perhaps only 10% of the

Adapted from Harvard Management Update (product #U0306C),

June 2003

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Planning

work would be devoted to building the new production

line, but 50% would have to do with the uncertainty sur-

rounding which shoe style will sell best in the next quar-

ter. . . . Thus, instead of trying to cut its time to market

by building production lines faster, the company focuses

on building production lines that can more easily accom-

modate changing shoe styles.”

Studies of exceptional project managers in fast time-

to-market industries show that the initial phase of a com-

plex project, often referred to as the fuzzy front end, has

a disproportionately large impact on end results. So it’s

important to tread carefully. Resist the urge to dive right

into implementation. “Defi ning the problem fi rst gives

you greater degrees of freedom in solving it,” says Bob

Gill, president of the Product Development and Man-

agement Association, a New Jersey–based

nonprofi t.

“Instead of assuming that your riveting equipment is

operating too slowly, if you step back and say, ‘The real

issue is that my cost of manufacturing the product is too

high,’ you enable other possible alternatives to solving the

problem—for example, redesigning the process so that

the product requires fewer rivets.”

Build Your Community Early

You’ll need input from key stakeholders before you can

reach a robust understanding of the nature and scope

of what needs to be done. Ask people in various groups

likely to be affected by your project to help explore the

opportunities, advises Peter Koen, a professor at the Ste-

vens Institute of Technology, also in New Jersey. “Asking

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Dealing with a Project’s “Fuzzy Front End”

up front the questions about the unmet needs and the

value of what you’re doing can help prevent unsatisfac-

tory results down the road—for example, bringing out

products to a mature and declining market.”

As you invite others into the work of defi ning the

problem, you’ll soon realize that your project’s commu-

nity is much larger than you originally imagined. And it

will shift over time, points out Chuck Kolstad, CEO of

Antara, a high-tech fi rm in California. “Stakeholders who

have only informational input into the early phases of the

project may wield decision-making power later on.” If you

make it clear in those early days that you value their in-

sights and will incorporate them, your stakeholders will

be much more inclined to give you the buy-in you need.

Here’s where your recruitment skills come into play: As

you share your developing vision for the project with a

colleague whose assistance you’ll need, ask her what’s in

it for her. Help her fi nd her project within yours.

Assuming a typical complex project, which lasts less

than a year, “the week or two you spend at the outset just

having conversations with people is far from useless, de-

spite its appearance,” says Schmaltz. When plans slip or

new requirements are added, he continues, the relation-

ships you’ve built during this initial phase will “constitute

a benevolent conspiracy of people committed to fi guring

out how to make the project work.”

Work Backward

Research about cognitive bias has shown that decision

makers are unduly infl uenced by how they initially frame

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Planning

their thoughts about a topic. Once you’ve defi ned the

problem, don’t focus yet on the current process or prod-

uct you want to improve. Instead, says Jim Goughen-

hour, vice president of information technology at Sealy,

“imagine what the ideal end state would look like, then

work back to put in as much of it as you can given the

time, budget, and political realities.”

The traditional approach to one of the projects Gough-

enhour oversees—creating a consistent sales reporting

system—would have been to revisit the purpose of all

the existing reports used by sales and marketing people

throughout the company and explore ways of combining

them. “If we’d done that,” he says, “we’d have spent most

of our money making minor improvements that didn’t

come close to the ideal.”

Be the Voice of Reason

By the end of the project’s initial phase, you’ll produce

a general plan that sets expectations within the project

community and the company at large. That’s certainly no

small task, but it can be an even bigger challenge to man-

age the expectations of your sponsor—the project cham-

pion three or four levels above you who insists that the

work be completed in four weeks.

Remember your “sacred responsibility to disappoint,”

says Schmaltz. You know that unsettling hunch you’ve

got, now that the fuzzy-front-end conversations are

winding down, that the project will take much longer

than expected and will cost a lot more, too? “Only by dis-

appointing the project champion with this news in the

beginning can you delight him in the end,” Schmaltz says.

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Dealing with a Project’s “Fuzzy Front End”

“Otherwise you end up being a slave to his unrealistic ex-

pectations, and instead of guaranteeing success, you’re

almost certain to produce failure.”

Loren Gary

was the editor of Harvard Management

Update.

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Chapter 5

Performing a

Project Pre mortem

by Gary Klein

Projects fail at a spectacular rate. One reason is that

too many people are reluctant to speak up about their

reservations during the all-important planning phase.

By making it safe for dissenters who are knowledge-

able about the undertaking and worried about its weak-

nesses to speak up, you can improve a project’s chances

of success.

Research conducted in 1989 by Deborah J. Mitchell,

of the Wharton School; Jay Russo, of Cornell; and Nancy

Pennington, of the University of Colorado, found that

prospective hindsight—imagining that an event has al-

ready occurred—increases the ability to correctly identify

reasons for future outcomes by 30%. We have used pro-

spective hindsight to devise a method called a premortem,

which helps project teams identify risks at the outset.

Reprint #F0709A. To order, visit hbr.org.

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Planning

A premortem is the hypothetical opposite of a post-

mortem. A postmortem in a medical setting allows

health professionals and the family to learn what caused

a patient’s death. Everyone benefits except, of course,

the patient. A premortem in a business setting comes at

the beginning of a project rather than the end, so that the

project can be improved rather than autopsied. Unlike a

typical critiquing session, in which project team mem-

bers are asked what might go wrong, the premortem op-

erates on the assumption that the “patient” has died, and

so asks what did go wrong. The team members’ task is to

generate plausible reasons for the project’s failure.

A typical premortem begins after the team has been

briefed on the plan. The leader starts the exercise by in-

forming everyone that the project has failed spectacu-

larly. Over the next few minutes those in the room inde-

pendently write down every reason they can think of for

the failure—especially the kinds of things they ordinarily

wouldn’t mention as potential problems, for fear of being

impolitic. For example, in a session held at one Fortune

50–size company, an executive suggested that a billion-

dollar environmental sustainability project had “failed”

because interest waned when the CEO retired. Another

pinned the failure on a dilution of the business case after

a government agency revised its policies.

Next the leader asks each team member, starting with

the project manager, to read one reason from his or her

list; everyone states a different reason until all have been

recorded. After the session is over, the project manager

reviews the list, looking for ways to strengthen the plan.

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Performing a Project Pre mortem

In a session regarding a project to make state-of-

the-art computer algorithms available to military air-

campaign planners, a team member who had been silent

during the previous lengthy kickoff meeting volunteered

that one of the algorithms wouldn’t easily fit on certain

laptop computers being used in the field. Accordingly,

the software would take hours to run when users needed

quick results. Unless the team could find a workaround,

he argued, the project was impractical. It turned out that

the algorithm developers had already created a power-

ful shortcut, which they had been reluctant to mention.

Their shortcut was substituted, and the project went on

to be highly successful.

In a session assessing a research project in a differ-

ent organization, a senior executive suggested that the

project’s “failure” occurred because there had been insuf-

fi cient time to prepare a business case prior to an upcom-

ing corporate review of product initiatives. During the

entire 90-minute kickoff meeting, no one had even men-

tioned any time constraints. The project manager quickly

revised the plan to take the corporate decision cycle into

account.

Although many project teams engage in prelaunch

risk analysis, the premortem’s prospective hindsight ap-

proach offers benefits that other methods don’t. Indeed,

the premortem doesn’t just help teams to identify poten-

tial problems early on. It also reduces the kind of damn-

the-torpedoes attitude often assumed by people who are

overinvested in a project. Moreover, in describing weak-

nesses that no one else has mentioned, team members

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Planning

feel valued for their intelligence and experience, and oth-

ers learn from them. The exercise also sensitizes the team

to pick up early signs of trouble once the project gets un-

der way. In the end, a premortem may be the best way to

circumvent any need for a painful postmortem.

Gary Klein is a senior scientist at MacroCognition, in Yel-

low Springs, Ohio.

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Chapter 6

Will Project

Creep Cost You—

or Create Value?

by Loren Gary

Allow the wrong changes to your project, and you can

veer off course, run over budget, and miss key deadlines.

Reject the right change, and you may fail to capitalize on a

major opportunity. Hence the dilemma: How do you stay

open to improvements without succumbing to “creep,”

in which small tweaks add up to budget- or schedule-

busting modifi cations? By making sure the project’s

boundaries are sharply delineated and the impact of po-

tential alterations or slippage can be quickly calculated.

The Planning Phase

A surprising number of projects get under way without a

thorough attempt to defi ne parameters. Haste is the chief

Adapted from Harvard Management Update (product #U0501C), January 2005

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Planning

culprit here, says Dave Moffatt, who brings 40 years of

industry project-management experience to his role as

senior operations adviser at Harvard Business School

(HBS). As you plan your project, clarify it in the follow-

ing important ways:

Diff erentiate scope from purpose

“A project’s purpose is the general benefi t it will provide

to the organization,” explains Alex Walton, a Florida-

based project consultant. “Its scope comprises the par-

ticular elements (or product attributes) that the project

team can control and has agreed to deliver.”

For example, a project’s purpose may be to create a

new electronic game that will increase a toy company’s

holiday sales by 40%. But the team developing the prod-

uct needs to know what features it must have and what

the budget for producing it will be. The scope statement

provides this kind of information; it spells out, in a few

sentences, how the team intends to achieve success and,

thus, the criteria on which it will be evaluated. Get input

on scope from your key stakeholders to align their expec-

tations with the project’s actual trajectory.

Plan in the aggregate

Defi ning scope isn’t enough to ensure clear boundaries,

however. “Organizations also need to do aggregate proj-

ect planning,” says HBS professor Steven Wheelwright,

“in which they develop a strategy that lays out a pattern

and rhythm for when subsequent projects will occur.”

This is especially important for product development.

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Will Project Creep Cost You—or Create Value?

Lacking a schedule for future projects, a product engi-

neer with a new idea may grow concerned that it will

never be implemented and thus try to slip it into the

product that’s now in development—regardless of the

impact on the cost and schedule.

Analysis of prior projects serves as a valuable adjunct

to aggregate planning. Study the past several internal IT

projects your company has undertaken. What patterns

emerge? Your fi ndings can help you identify and better

prepare for potential trouble spots in IT projects on the

docket for the coming years.

Set the rules

Another way to minimize creep is to require conscious

discussion and approval before signifi cant changes can

occur. For instance:

• Set up a change control board. In highly struc-

tured project environments, such a group is

responsible for “gathering information about the

impact that a proposed change will have on the

schedule, budget, or scope; voting on the proposed

change; and then sending a request-for-change

document on for the project sponsors’ signature,”

says Bob Tarne, a senior consultant who special-

izes in IT and telecommunications projects for PM

Solutions in Pennsylvania.

For an IT project affecting the sales, marketing,

and logistics departments, your change control

board would contain senior managers from those

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Planning

units. Smaller projects—costing less than $1 mil-

lion and lasting less than 12 months—can effec-

tively function without a formal board, says Tarne.

The project manager can simply solicit the advice

of key stakeholders as needed.

• Establish thresholds for additional work.

Michele Reed, an independent project manage-

ment consultant in Washington, says, “Any change

entailing more than 5% of the original cost or

hours budgeted for that particular line item in the

project should trigger a formal request for a scope

change.”

• Limit the number of new features. Set guidelines

for how many new major and minor features can

be included in a project of a certain size. This helps

the project team control the inherent fuzziness of

front-end planning by forcing it to choose only

the ones that are most important to customers

right now.

The Execution Phase

When it’s time to implement the project, break it into

small components with short time frames and focus fi rst

on the tasks with the least uncertainty and variability.

For example, a software development team working

on a product with four new features—the fourth of which

it is not yet sure the market really wants—might choose

to create the other three fi rst because it is confi dent that

the market wants them. The launch date for the fourth

feature would be set to occur later, after the team has

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Will Project Creep Cost You—or Create Value?

gathered enough additional customer input to confi rm

that it is critical.

But don’t wait until all subprojects are complete be-

fore checking on whether the whole project (or product)

is going to be a success, says Wheelwright. He recom-

mends an approach known as periodic system proto-

typing: “At regular intervals during the execution phase,

link up all the subprojects for a system test. This helps

ensure that the subprojects you’ve created are coming to-

gether as planned.”

Should This Add-On Be Approved?

During construction of McArthur Hall, HBS’s residence

for students in executive education programs (some of

which last as long as eight weeks), a scope-change deci-

sion was made to create 10 rooms so guests of attendees

could visit for a few days at a time.

Reducing the number of rooms for students by 10

would have cut into the program’s long-term revenue

potential by reducing the available space for registrants.

Better to build 10 additional rooms to accommodate

guests, the project’s executive sponsor argued, and to

pay for the additional cost over several years out of the

larger income stream that would result from keeping the

number of exec-ed suites as originally planned. Careful

ROI analysis, in other words, helped the project’s over-

seers fi nd the optimal way of dealing with the proposed

add-on.

By following the recommendations outlined here for

your project’s planning and execution phases, you can

eliminate scope changes that don’t merit such analysis. If

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Planning

you defi ne clear boundaries up front, the change requests

that come through are much more likely to be worth seri-

ous consideration.

When considering a scope change, make sure your

stakeholders fully understand the purpose of the change.

For example, have market conditions made it important

to accelerate the schedule so that the product can ship ear-

lier than originally planned? Do new industry standards,

adopted since the planning phase, need to be accommo-

dated? Or is a new technological solution required, be-

cause the one initially chosen hasn’t panned out?

Next, explain how the proposed change affects every-

thing: the scope statement and project plan, the available

resources, the total cost, and the schedule. Finally, en-

courage stakeholders to consider what will happen if the

change is not made. In these deliberations, says HBS’s

Moffatt, the opinions of people who represent the end us-

ers should be given the greatest weight.

As the project manager, if you’re lobbying for a change,

you’ve got to have a plan for funding it. If the future rev-

enue generated by the add-on won’t cover the cost, fi nd

other places in the project where you can save money,

and focus on things you can directly control within the

next 30 to 90 days in the schedule, advises Reed.

Loren Gary

was the editor of Harvard Management

Update.

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Phase 2

Build-Up

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Chapter 7

Setting Priorities

Before Starting

Your Project

by Ron Ashkenas

In a rush to demonstrate initiative and take action, new

project managers often launch activities without fi rst get-

ting a sense of which ones are the most critical and what

the sequence should be. As a result, they unwittingly slow

things down.

Take this example: Plant managers at a global man-

ufacturing company kept getting peppered with un-

necessary, often redundant, data requests from corpo-

rate headquarters. To reduce this burden, the head of

manufacturing asked a senior engineer to lead a project

team to streamline data sharing. Upon receiving the as-

signment, the engineer enthusiastically (1) fi red off an

e-mail requesting that all heads of corporate functions

nominate team members and send lists of the data they

wanted from the plants; and (2) sent a note to a dozen

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Build-Up

plant managers asking for their views about which re-

ports to eliminate. Within hours, the new project man-

ager was overwhelmed and confused: Some of the cor-

porate executives balked at her requests because this was

the fi rst they’d even heard of the project; others said they

needed more details about the problem before they could

respond; and still others sent long lists of required re-

ports. The plant managers, too, came back with an odd

mix of questions and requests. So instead of getting off

to a fast start, the project manager stirred up resistance,

created extra work for herself and others, and ended up

with a pile of information that wasn’t very useful.

It’s not as diffi cult as you might think to avoid a situ-

ation like this. Here are three simple steps you can take

to get your priorities right before you set your project in

motion:

1. Clarify the assignment

Do not start any activities until your stakeholders have

blessed your charter. You can easily spin your wheels

on all sorts of misguided tasks if you’re not clear on the

overall objectives of the project and how success will be

measured (what); the business context for it (why); the

resources available (who); the timing (when); and any

key constraints or interdependencies (how). Though it

would be nice if your boss or project sponsor had sorted

out these issues before giving you the assignment, the

reality is that most projects are not commissioned with

this level of specifi city and clarity—so it will be up to you

to get it. In the example above, if the project manager

had done this before sending e-mails, she would have

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Setting Priorities Before Starting Your Project

discovered that the head of manufacturing had talked

only in general terms to the other corporate functional

leaders about the data-overload problem—and had not

told them he was starting a specifi c project with a defi ned

goal and timetable.

2. Organize your troops

Once you’ve fi gured out what needs to be accomplished

and recruited team members, get people engaged quickly

so they feel ownership of the project. Ask for their reac-

tions to the charter and their experiences regarding the

issues, and treat them as partners rather than tempo-

rary subordinates. Work with them to develop a “modus

operandi” for your team—how often you will meet, how

you will communicate with one another, when you will

review progress with the sponsor, and so on. If you don’t

get organized from the beginning, you’ll waste time later

chasing down people, coordinating calendars, and re-

peating key messages.

The same goes for identifying and reaching out to

stakeholders. Have your team help you create a “map”

of the people who will be affected in some way by the

project. Sketch out how they relate to one another and

to the project—and then do a political analysis of the

key players. Which individuals or groups will be sup-

portive and enthusiastic about your project? Which

ones might be anxious or even resistant? Who will

need to be won over or given special attention? Such

analysis would have revealed to the project manager

in our manufacturing example that some (or all) of

the corporate functional leaders—who would have to

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SAMPLE CHARTER FOR

DATA-STREAMLINING PROJECT

What: Reduce corporate’s requests for data from

plants by 50%—and free up at least four hours per

week for the plant managers and staff .

Why: The plants need to focus on increasing

equipment utilization while managing a greater mix

of products. This means spending more time plan-

ning and leading and less time reporting. Currently,

every corporate function is asking for information

from the plants—often the same information in dif-

ferent forms at diff erent times.

Who: The project manager will recruit team

members from plant operations, corporate fi nance,

quality assurance, and human resources. Others

may be called upon as necessary. All members will

change their way of collecting data to comply with her

requests—would not be supportive of her project and

may in fact be hostile. And with that insight, she might

have approached them differently.

3. Pull your project plan together

You’re now ready to develop a project plan, or at least a

good working draft, given what you know about your ob-

jectives and your stakeholders. Conduct a brainstorming

session with your team to identify all the activities that

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Setting Priorities Before Starting Your Project

be part-time but may have to dedicate 25% of their

time to this eff ort.

When: The project should commence immediately.

Develop an inventory of current reporting require-

ments within 30 days and recommendations for

consolidation and streamlining within 60 days.

Start eliminating redundant reports within 90 days.

Complete implementation within 120 days.

How: The corporate functions must reach consen-

sus about which common data requests can be met

with existing systems and standardized reports.

Data requests that are unique for particular plants

should be exceptions, not the rule, and should

involve minimal customization.

might be required to complete the project—including

data collection, completion of “quick wins,” stakeholder

meetings, and presentations. Encourage your team to

be creative and not to worry at this point about timing.

Write each item on a sticky note, and post the notes on

the wall.

Once all the activities are up there, organize them

into categories and put the groupings in sequence.

Some of the categories will “run” in parallel and rep-

resent separate (but probably related) work streams.

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The notes on the wall, taken together, represent your

project plan.

Now take a hard look at that total picture. Give each

team member 100 “units” to allocate to the various activi-

ties (without discussion); ask them to pay close attention

to which ones must be done successfully to achieve the

project’s objectives. Then compare the allocations and

see which activities are considered critical as opposed to

“nice to do.” This should lead you to the tough discussion

of which ones to drop or delay so the highest priorities

will get the focus and the resources they require. After

you’ve completed this exercise, go back to the overall

project plan and make the necessary adjustments: Re-

move the low-value steps, and load the high-value ones

for success.

Clearly, it’s counterproductive to get things moving

without prioritizing tasks. But controlling the all-too-

natural impulse to jump the gun only at the beginning

of your project is not suffi cient. New opportunities, is-

sues, ideas, and threats will continue to materialize, as

will new steps and work streams—often without anyone

understanding how these items even made their way

onto the table. You’ll need to keep setting and resetting

priorities to make sure you and your people are always

on target. To do this, bring your team together at least

once a month to step back and reassess the project plan.

At each of these meetings, ask your team two questions:

First, “Has anything changed that should make us re-

think our priorities?” And second, “If we were just given

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Setting Priorities Before Starting Your Project

this assignment now, would we approach it differently?”

This will help you keep your priorities clear—and your

project on track.

Ron Ashkenas is a senior partner at Schaffer Consulting

in Stamford, Connecticut, and the author of Simply Ef-

fective: How to Cut Through Complexity in Your Organi-

zation and Get Things Done (Harvard Business Review Press, 2009). He is a regular blogger for hbr.org.

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Chapter 8

Boost Productivity

with Time-Boxing

by Melissa Raff oni

Editor’s note: To keep your project on schedule,

you’ll need team members who are focused and

productive. Here are some tips for getting their

calendars—and your own—under control.

Everybody needs more time—but since no one gets more

than 24 hours a day, the only choice is to use those hours

more effectively. One proven technique, time-boxing, in-

volves just three steps.

First, list everything you and your team members

want to accomplish in a given week, month, or quarter.

Include project goals and the tasks necessary to achieve

them. It may help to group activities by job function,

such as strategy, business development, daily operations,

Adapted from Harvard Management Update (product #U99120), De-

cember 1999

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Build-Up

and people management. With that kind of framework,

you can see whether the team is spending its time in the

right places.

Second, estimate how much time each item will re-

quire. Think carefully about the steps for completing the

tasks. This is the part that “keeps me honest,” says Beran

Peter, CEO of Instruction Set, an educational consulting

company in Massachusetts. “If I realize I’m not going to

hit my estimate, I’m able to assess why and evaluate how

I might make a change to get back on track.”

Third, block off the appropriate amount of time for

each item. If you think writing a business plan will take

32 hours, try setting aside four hours for every Tuesday

and Thursday over the next four weeks. The challenge,

of course, is prioritizing and fi tting the time in where it

makes sense. Don’t forget to allow some leeway. Change

is inevitable, and you may need to add tasks midstream.

Once you get started on time-boxing, you’ll fi nd it has

several benefi ts:

• It forces you to think through project goals and

fi gure out how much time you really need to make

them happen.

• It provides a framework for setting expectations

and boundaries. If a team member’s calendar is

full, she’ll have to say no to extra requests—or

you’ll have to work with her to consciously reassess

priorities.

• It improves your ability to estimate time demands.

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Boost Productivity with Time-Boxing

• It enables you to assess—and pull the plug on—

unproductive initiatives that suck up too much

time.

Your team will feel better about the work it’s doing.

Everyone will be more focused. You’ll all accomplish

more. And—no small matter—people will avoid burnout

from taking on more than they can handle.

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Chapter 9

Scheduling the

Work

Now that you’ve used the Work Breakdown Structure to

identify and defi ne your project’s tasks and estimate how

long each will take, you’re ready to put them in sequence.

That involves three steps:

• Examining relationships between tasks

• Creating a draft schedule

• Optimizing the schedule

Examining Relationships

Between Tasks

Task relationships dictate the order of activities in a proj-

ect. Suppose ABC Auto Company plans to introduce a

new passenger car and has asked a team to design and

test it. The team needs to build and test both external

Adapted from Harvard Business Essentials: Managing Projects Large

and Small (product #6242BC), Harvard Business Review Press, 2004,

and Pocket Mentor: Managing Projects (product #1878), Harvard Business Review Press, 2006

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Build-Up

and internal components before it can test the whole car.

Because of those dependencies, the project’s tasks must

be scheduled in this sequence: (1) design the vehicle,

(2) build and test both external and internal compo-

nents, and (3) test the vehicle built from those compo-

nents. (See fi gure 1.)

Component building and testing, however, can simul-

taneously follow parallel tracks—one for external com-

ponents, another for internal ones. Why? Because those

two sets of build-and-test activities depend on vehicle de-

sign but not on each other. By recognizing opportunities

to perform different activities in parallel, as in this ex-

ample, you can reduce the amount of time your overall

project takes.

Once you’ve evaluated the relationships between tasks,

brainstorm with your team to come up with a rough se-

quence that makes sense in light of the dependencies

you’ve identifi ed.

FIGURE 1

Project network diagram: task relationships

Sample automobile project

3/13–4/11

4/11–4/21

Build External

External Test

3/1–3/12

Components

4/22–4/30

Vehicle

Vehicle

Design

3/13–4/5

4/6–4/19

Test

Build Internal

Internal Test

Components

Source: Harvard ManageMentor® on Project Management (Boston: Harvard Business Publishing, 2002). Used with permission.

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Scheduling the Work

Creating a Draft Schedule

At this point, you’re ready to create a draft schedule,

which involves assigning a deliverable to each task (for

instance, “build prototype for market testing”); setting

realistic due dates; identifying bottlenecks so you can

eliminate them, develop workarounds, or add time to ac-

commodate them; and establishing a protocol for updat-

ing or revising the schedule. In your draft schedule, in-

dicate start and end dates for all activities and recognize

task relationships. Remember, this is just your fi rst stab

at scheduling—you’ll make adjustments later, after the

team has had a chance to review it.

Project managers rely on several tools for scheduling

their teams’ work. Here are a few useful ones to have at

your disposal.

The Critical Path Method

As its name suggests, the Critical Path Method (CPM)

helps you identify which tasks are critical—those that

must be completed on time for the project to meet

its deadlines—so you can allocate resources effi ciently.

Project managers often use CPM to plot the sequence of

activities.

Consider a project involving six tasks with the follow-

ing requirements and time expectations:

Activity

Requirement

Time to Complete

A

5

days

B

3

days

( continued)

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Build-Up

Activity

Requirement

Time to Complete

C

A and B completed

4 days

D

B completed

7 days

E

A completed

7 days

F

C

completed

1

day

You can diagram the critical path as shown in fi gure 2.

This chart tells you that at the earliest, you can com-

plete the project in 12 days. It also shows that activities A

and E are critical to your overall deadline. Given this in-

formation, you may want to readjust your resources and

put more toward these tasks.

Let’s revisit the ABC Auto Company project and the

accompanying network diagram, discussed earlier. The

diagram not only illustrates dependencies between tasks

but also reveals the critical path: (1) vehicle design,

(2) build external components, (3) external test, and

(4) vehicle test. Why does this progression of tasks de-

fi ne the critical path? Because it’s the longest path in the

diagram. The other path—which passes through (1) build

FIGURE 2

Critical Path Method

Days 0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

5 days

7 days

A

E

5 da

Estimated

ys

Estimated

Start:

Finish:

C

0 days

4 da

12 days

y

ys

s

3 da

d

1 ay

3 days

7 days

B

D

F

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Scheduling the Work

internal components and (2) internal test—is shorter by

two days. Team members working on those activities

could spend two extra days on them and still not throw

the vehicle test off schedule. And they wouldn’t shorten

the overall schedule if they completed their work on non-

critical-path activities ahead of time. The reason? Tasks

on the critical path determine total project duration.

Gantt chart

If all you need is a way to show when activities should be-

gin and when they should end, try making a Gantt chart.

You can easily create one with spreadsheet or project-

management software. (See fi gure 3.)

This is a popular scheduling tool because it’s simple

and it allows people to see the project at a glance. But it

does not spell out relationships between tasks, as CPM

does, so you may want to make note of dependencies in-

side the time blocks.

PERT charts

Some project managers use Performance Evaluation

and Review Technique (PERT) as an alternative to

the Gantt method for scheduling. Because it illustrates

the critical path (it’s essentially a network diagram)

and lays out the project milestones, it’s a handy tool for

communicating the big picture to your team members.

(See fi gure 4.) A PERT chart may have many parallel or

interconnecting networks of tasks, so periodic reviews

are essential for complex projects. As you’re tracking

your project’s progress later on, you may need to come

back and revise the chart. For example, if the time be-

tween dependent tasks exceeds your estimates, and those

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/26

/20–55

/19

–5

/135

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issio

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erm p

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ith

5

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. U

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g, 20in

lishbu

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ess P

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arvard

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esting

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e pr

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Repeat t

alv

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Install new server

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ement equipment

Impl

arvard

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ecommission ol

FIGURE 3

G

D

Sour

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Scheduling the Work

FIGURE 4

PERT chart

Copy

Set-up

configuration

Order

Load

Test

Run

equipment

applications

connectivity

tests

Retest

2

2

3

2

3

1

2

4

5

6

7

9

18 Days

5

1

1

8

Start

1

Load

Switch

2

3

OS

web

Alert

1

Numbered boxes represent milestones

data center

Arrows represent task duration, show

sequential and concurrent tasks

Dotted lines indicate downtime while

concurrent task is in process

Source: Harvard ManageMentor® on Project Management (Boston: Harvard Business Publishing, 2002), 25. Used with permission.

tasks are on the critical path, you’ll have to make up for

lost time elsewhere in the schedule to avoid missing the

project’s overall deadline.

Which scheduling tools are best for your purposes?

Whichever ones fi t how you like to work, allow you to

keep all team members informed, and remind people

that they are part of a larger effort.

Optimizing the Schedule

After you’ve created the draft schedule, work with your

team to improve it. Have the group help you look for:

• Errors. Are all time estimates realistic? Pay

particular attention to tasks on the critical path

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Build-Up

because if any of these cannot be completed on

time, the entire schedule will be off. Also, review

the relationships between tasks. Does your sched-

ule refl ect the fact that some tasks can’t start until

others are completed?

• Oversights. Have any tasks been left out? Have

you allowed time for training?

• Overcommitments. In reviewing the schedule, you

may discover that some employees would have to

work 10 to 12 hours per day for months on end to

complete the tasks assigned to them, for instance,

or that a piece of equipment is booked to deliver

above and beyond its capacity. If you fi nd such

problems, redistribute the load.

• Bottlenecks. Any task that causes the work feed-

ing it to pile up must be identifi ed and dealt with.

Think of an auto assembly line that stops peri-

odically because the people who install the seats

cannot keep up with the pace of the line. The usual

way to handle this problem is to speed up the work

process used in that task or add resources to it (for

example, more people or better machinery).

• Imbalances in the workload. Are some team mem-

bers being asked to do more than their share while

others do very little? Rebalancing the load could

reduce the overall schedule.

• Slack time that can be fi lled. You may be able to

shorten the whole schedule by shifting resources

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Scheduling the Work

away from noncritical-path activities. For example,

if you have four people working on a noncritical

task that has four to fi ve days of slack time, shift

some or all of those people to a critical task for

several days.

Even if you’re using project-planning software to keep

track of tasks and times, do this kind of thorough reality

check with your team members. Any software you con-

sider buying should make it easy to develop and change

charts, calculate critical paths, produce schedules and

budgets, factor in weekends and holidays, create differ-

ent scenarios for contingency planning, and check for

overscheduling of individuals and groups.

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Chapter 10

HBR Case Study:

A Rush to Failure?

by Tom Cross

Editor’s note: HBR’s case studies present fi ctional-

ized accounts of actual dilemmas faced by leaders,

and offer solutions from experts.

“There is absolutely no reason why the contractors

shouldn’t be able to give us rapid product develop-

ment and fl awless products—speed and quality both,”

David MacDonagle said as he tried to light a cigarette.

The warm wind, portending rain, kept blowing out his

matches. Finally he gave up and slipped the cigarette

back in his pocket.

MacDonagle, the head of the Canadian Aeronautics

Administration, was nervous. Everyone at CAA head-

quarters was nervous. Very shortly, the project that many

of them had devoted the past four years to would have

its fi rst real-world test, 350 kilometers above the earth.

Reprint #R1104N. Reprint Case only #R1104X. Reprint Commentary

only #R1104Z

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Feeling cooped up in the executive offi ces and oppressed

by the presence of the media, MacDonagle had gone out-

side to breathe some air—actually, some tobacco smoke—

and had invited the sharp young program manager Sa-

mantha Van Sant to join him.

Van Sant, a former Canadian army major, had a lot

of skin in the project too. Since 2006 she’d been man-

aging the two contractors the CAA had commissioned

to build the $1.2 billion set of giant robotic arms known

as Retractable Extended-Arms Compatible Holder, or

REACH, for the International Space Station.

“So how do you deal with nerves?” MacDonagle asked.

“I usually go out for a run,” Van Sant said, looking

down the road that led from CAA headquarters through

the cornfi elds, on which she’d logged many miles.

They turned to look back at the agency’s buildings,

which despite their grandeur looked small in the empty

Quebec landscape. The sight reminded Van Sant of one

of MacDonagle’s catchphrases: “We are a small spacefar-

ing nation. . . .”

Canada was indeed a small player in space compared

with the U.S., Russia, Europe, and Japan. Always at risk

of being marginalized, the CAA had done everything pos-

sible to get the REACH contractors, Hollenbeck Aircraft

and Eskina Software Systems, to complete the fi rst phase

of the project in time to get it to the space station this

year, when the orbiting lab would offi cially be complete.

And, amazingly, they had made the deadline—and come

in on budget. REACH was now attached to the station,

though there was still much more to come, including an

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A Rush to Failure?

even more sophisticated set of “hands” that would fi t on

the ends of the robotic arms for extremely delicate work.

The additions were to continue for two more years.

The contractors had been great about speed; the prob-

lem was quality. Glitches with the software, motors, and

circuits had kept turning up. The fact was, not a single

test in four years had gone fl awlessly. “Yeah, yeah, we can

fi x that,” the contractors’ reps always said, dismissing the

CAA’s concerns. “Hey, this is life in the fast lane,” a rep

told Van Sant after one of REACH’s arms had failed to

retract on command. “Remember, we told you that the

compressed schedule would increase the risk.”

The contract that she managed called for parallel de-

velopment, meaning that the project’s phases—R&D,

prototyping, testing, production, and quality control—

overlapped, with each one beginning while the previous

one was as much as 50% incomplete. That was sacrilege

in some aerospace circles. But owing to the space sta-

tion’s construction deadline and the everpresent threat

of cuts to the CAA’s budget, the agency was aiming to do

a decade’s worth of work in six years. Computer simu-

lations had to take the place of some real-world testing.

Component quality control was less thorough. Because of

all the unknowns in the project, the CAA had agreed to a

cost-plus-fi xed-fee contract, under which the contractors

were paid a specifi ed amount over their costs for labor,

materials, and overhead.

MacDonagle’s insistence on a rapid approach to devel-

opment had been one of the main reasons Van Sant had

been hired as a program manager. During her years in

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Build-Up

the army, she had established a bulletproof reputation for

being aggressive and goal oriented. She and MacDonagle

saw eye-to-eye. She knew speed was critical.

“We’d better go, I guess,” MacDonagle said. “The me-

dia hounds are waiting. I told them I’d do quickie in-

terviews once I got back. I know what they’ll ask me: Is

REACH going to work this time?” As they headed toward

the building, the rain started. He looked at Van Sant.

“So is it?”

Trouble in the Air

Red marker in hand, MacDonagle held forth before a

group of reporters, asking whether they were aware that

50 years ago, the U.S. had blasted half a billion inch-

long copper needles into orbit to refl ect radio waves and

thereby facilitate communications. Those needles were

still fl oating around, and some had torn through one of

the space station’s solar collectors. “The solar arrays are

the big bird’s big red wings,” he said, turning to the white-

board and drawing the collectors.

He drew a gash in one of them. “A hole here means

less electricity,” he said, tapping the board. “Ever since

the solar array got that hole from those fl ying needles, the

space station has been operating on less power. Fixing it

is tricky, because it’s very far from the modules where the

astronauts work and because of the risk of electrocution.

Once an array is in place, you can’t turn it off. It keeps

generating power from sunlight. So if a spacewalker

were to try to go out there and fi x it, he’d be liable to get

100 volts of direct current through his body. That’s where

REACH comes in.”

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A Rush to Failure?

He took a moment to draw the Canadian creation,

then stepped back to admire his sketch. The machine’s

two long arms stretched out toward the solar array in a

nurturing embrace.

“Fixing solar arrays isn’t what REACH was designed

for,” MacDonagle said. “It’s meant to do the mundane

work of replacing battery units on the exterior of the space

station. But since REACH is up there, it’s being pressed

into service for the repair. It will stitch together the solar

array while the astronauts control it from the safety of

their module.” He put the cap back on the marker and

began fi elding questions.

As Van Sant watched, someone tapped her on the arm.

It was Alfred Siroy, the head of a CAA panel that had been

trying to fi nd out why there were so many quality issues

with equipment from the Hollenbeck-Eskina venture.

“How long before they deploy it?” he asked.

“Soon—later—I’m not sure,” she said.

Siroy always made Van Sant defensive. He’d made no

secret of his disapproval of the way the REACH program

was being managed, and of the parallel approach in par-

ticular. She knew that this viewpoint would fi gure in his

forthcoming report. Fortunately, he was an overly me-

ticulous writer, so the draft was taking forever. She asked

him how the writing was going.

“Slow,” he said, shaking his head. “But we do have a

title: ‘The Rush to Failure.’”

This gave her a start. “What failure?” she asked.

“REACH is about to perform a critical repair task.”

He shot her a skeptical look. “Rapid ramp-up was a

laudable goal,” he said. “But you have to give a contractor

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adequate time for QA. And you have to have a contract

that gets the incentives right.”

He continued: “We did an analysis. Your compressed

schedule forces Hollenbeck-Eskina to cut corners, re-

sulting in prototypes that fail. Substituting computer

simulations for rigorous ground testing is a recipe for

disaster. There isn’t an electronic data management sys-

tem that would allow the contractors and the CAA to ac-

cess current test data for analysis. The prototypes aren’t

equipped with the instruments that would provide ad-

equate test data. And the contractors have no incentive

to push back: The cost-plus contract puts all the risk on

the CAA. The agency and the contractors have different

goals and objectives.”

Van Sant couldn’t disagree about the contract; its

weaknesses had become increasingly evident to her. But if

speed was the priority, they were unavoidable. “The con-

tract language is ancient history,” she said dismissively.

“You can rewrite history,” Siroy said. “Any contract can

be altered as long as both sides agree—you know that.”

Suddenly, Van Sant saw, one of the staff members

who’d been monitoring the goings-on at the space station

began ushering MacDonagle away from the reporters,

who, smelling blood, tried to follow. MacDonagle caught

her eye, and Van Sant didn’t like the look she saw on his

face. Something bad had happened.

She slipped inside the communications room, where

journalists weren’t allowed, just before the door was

shut. Over the speakers she could hear the astronauts at

the space station talking about the power switching unit

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A Rush to Failure?

and using the word “failure.” She heard someone say, “We

have to go to Plan B.”

REACH was probably experiencing the same problem

that had come up during its last on-ground test. A sys-

tem failure notifi cation had gone off, but the contractors

had dismissed it as a “reporting error,” meaning it hadn’t

refl ected a true mechanical breakdown. Still, no one

wanted to deploy REACH while red lights were fl ashing.

There was too great a risk that the robotic arms would

fail at a critical moment.

“What’s Plan B?” Van Sant asked MacDonagle.

“I don’t know,” he said quietly, “but whatever it is, it

won’t involve anything that came from us. REACH is

Canada’s only contribution to the space station.”

Support from on High

“We’ve got video!” someone shouted, and there on the

screens were multiple images of a man in a space suit

dangling at the end of a loading crane.

It was well past midnight, but the reporters were still

at CAA headquarters. They gathered around the screens.

MacDonagle and Van Sant had long since given up trying

to avoid them and were mingling with them as the repair

attempt unfolded high above West Africa.

Everyone watched in silence as the crane, jury-rigged

for the purpose, carried a spacewalker toward the space

station’s torn solar array. REACH couldn’t even be seen—

it was docked somewhere else.

“Harris Webb,” MacDonagle said ruefully as he

watched the fi gure in the shiny suit. “It’s so fi tting.” Years

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ago, MacDonagle and Webb had been pilots on the same

shuttle mission, and Webb, though much younger, had

been chosen to lead it. A U.S. physician, mountaineer, au-

thor, pilot, and gourmet cook, as well as an astronaut, he

was the ultimate go-to guy, brilliant and fearless—almost

to the point of being foolhardy.

The reporters were excitedly discussing his stunt. Be-

cause REACH had failed, Webb was going out on the end

of the crane to repair the array by hand. In one gloved

hand he held what looked like an oversized hockey stick

wrapped in insulation, so that he could stop himself from

bumping into the arrays. In the other he carried several

two-meter lengths of plastic cable that would be used to

“stitch” the pliable solar array back together.

“Wow,” a reporter gasped as Webb, reaching awk-

wardly, began threading one of the cables through the

openings in the array.

“Cowboy,” MacDonagle hissed under his breath. He

put his hands on his head and looked at the ceiling.

Van Sant spotted Charlie Truss, one of the reps from

Hollenbeck, sitting in a corner, his tie loose. He looked

miserable. But she didn’t feel pity for him—just annoy-

ance. She went over to him.

“Whatever happens up there tonight,” she said, “things

are going to change down here. Our only way forward

from this fi asco is to show that we’ve taken concrete steps

to improve QA and fi nally get some positive results.”

“I’m all for that,” Truss said. “But anything you do to

increase QA is going to slow things down. Once that hap-

pens, the costs start increasing and you become vulner-

able to budget cuts. If we turn our existing contract into

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A Rush to Failure?

a traditional aerospace contract with all those sequential

steps and inevitable delays, we might as well say good-bye

to the improvements to REACH that are in the pipeline.”

“If speed has to be sacrifi ced for a more reliable

REACH, then so be it,” Van Sant said. “The contract

has major fl aws. You’re accountable for speed but not

performance. We have to share the risk. We need a con-

tract with performance-based incentives and penalties

so that we can balance speed, quality, and results. Our

goal is reliable components and systems that perform—

and that should be your goal, too. We need to work as a

unifi ed team willing to push back on each other to get

results.”

Behind her the reporters gasped. She rushed to a

screen and was relieved to see only that Webb, as he had

fi nished his repair, had accidentally let go of a set of pli-

ers, which was now drifting off into space.

But then Webb did something incredible. He turned

to his Earth audience and began making a statement de-

fending the failed REACH. “Everyone’s going to blame

REACH, but they shouldn’t,” he said. “It’s a great piece of

technology. I want to commend David MacDonagle and

the CAA for overcoming a lot of technical obstacles in a

big hurry and getting REACH up here on time. It’s go-

ing to be a vital part of our operations. One little power-

unit problem doesn’t mean anything. Complex machines

fail—that’s just the way it is. We’ll fi x it, just like we fi xed

the solar array. I understand that the CAA has a great

upgrade coming in the next couple of months—a new set

of robot hands that are so nimble they can peel a hard-

boiled egg. I say, Get it ready and shoot it up here. We’ll

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start using it right away. I’ve got a few eggs that need

peeling.”

Van Sant was stunned, and she could see that Truss

was, too. Then, giving her a small smile, he asked: “What

were you saying about the contract?”

Tom Cross is a senior director in executive education at

the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business,

where he develops executive-learning programs for De-

partment of Defense leaders. Previously he was a senior

executive at such fi rms as KFC and Offi ce Depot.

Should Van Sant push for a renegotiated

contract for REACH?

See commentaries that follow.

Commentary #1

by Gary L. Moe

Whenever you hear about large, complex, costly govern-

ment-sponsored tech initiatives that fail to meet expec-

tations, the blame almost always falls on the “hurry up”

schedule. If only the public agency hadn’t pushed the

contractors so hard, if only the developers had been given

more time to refi ne the design, if only a few more months

or years had been built into the production schedule, the

technology would have worked perfectly. But it’s not true.

Government sponsors can give contractors all the

time and money in the world to complete a detailed re-

quirements analysis and perfect a project design, and the

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A Rush to Failure?

fi nished product still probably won’t work fl awlessly. So-

called big-bang design, in which developers labor might-

ily to get every last detail correct, is incapable of yielding

a fully functioning, error-free product, because human

beings, no matter how brilliant they are, cannot foresee

all the issues that might arise in a complex technology.

What’s needed instead is an iterative development

process, whereby you build a prototype or even a fully

fl edged product and then put it out there, test it, and

learn from its weaknesses, most of which you couldn’t

have seen on the drawing board or in a 3-D simulation.

In the next iteration, you enhance the product. Then

you run another round and another and another until

fi nally you have something that works. The more com-

plex a technology is, the more iterative the development

needs to be.

This is how products are developed in the nongovern-

ment sector. Take the auto industry. Cars are so complex

that a manufacturer will put a model through a number

of builds and a lot of testing before starting full produc-

tion. In software, this process is called agile development.

Developers write code for a week, test it to fi nd out how

to improve it, and then write some more code.

An interactive approach also works best when it comes

to organizational change. No matter how hard you work

on designing a reorganization, you will get it only 60%

right, so you have to keep working at it, and fi nally you’ll

get to 90% right. (It never gets any better than that.)

Iterative development can work both for big long-

term projects and for big one-offs, which is what many

components of the International Space Station are. You

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break the development into pieces and apply the build-

test, build-test method to the parts.

So why do government organizations, especially those

that are defense- or space-related, favor the big-bang

approach? There are a number of reasons, some involv-

ing the way procurement is handled. But the root of the

problem is that iterative development entails experimen-

tation, and experimentation entails failure. Government

agencies don’t like failure because it ruins political ca-

reers. So they try to avoid experimentation. But usually

what they end up with is an even bigger failure—and no

clue about why it happened.

My advice for Samantha Van Sant, then, is to re-

structure the contract to break further development of

REACH into small chunks and require the contractors

to practice iterative improvement, instead of striving for

full initial functionality. Cutting down on the function-

ality delivered in each phase might help too, since 80%

of cost and schedule overruns are usually due to the last

10% to 20% of requested functionality.

Gary L. Moe is a director in McKinsey’s Business Technol-

ogy Offi ce and is based in Silicon Valley.

Commentary #2

by Tom Quinly

In the world of cutting-edge product development, the

struggle between speed and quality is over. Speed has

won—decisively. In today’s highly competitive global

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A Rush to Failure?

markets, getting innovations out quickly can mean the

difference between success and failure. But it’s also a

given that the quality must be high. Quality has become

table stakes.

A lot of research has been published on the holy grail

of lightning-speed development. Concurrent engineering

programs, agile teams, risk mitigation programs, spiral

development, outsourcing, harmonizing tools, and ad-

vanced simulation and modeling tools all can help you

attain it, but your own people, processes, and market de-

mands will determine the right recipe. What works best

for us is forming small, seasoned, highly talented teams;

being clear about time-to-market expectations; making

sure developers have the right set of tools; and keeping our

technical teams engaged, customer focused, and happy.

Bureaucracy, however, is an innovation killer. It’s in-

evitable that as a business grows, things that don’t add

value creep into processes. With each slipup there’s

a tendency to add another process check. In isolation,

each makes perfect sense, but in the aggregate, innova-

tion is choked, and the team can’t move nimbly.

I recall an experience early in my career, when a ma-

jor development project had gone poorly. At an executive

review, I was prepared to explain what had happened,

what we’d learned, and what we’d done to stop the bleed-

ing. Our CEO looked around at the others in attendance

and said that he was disappointed—not in the group that

had failed (mine), but in the other groups, because they

hadn’t failed. They weren’t being as aggressive as he ex-

pected. That story lives on in the lore of the company, and

it says a lot about our culture.

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It’s not that we encourage failure—we use it as a tool.

Complex development programs rarely (if ever) come

out of the gate perfectly; something unanticipated of-

ten happens. A lot can be learned from reviewing fail-

ures and looking at processes, expectations, people, and

tools. Were our requirements too ambitious or ill de-

fi ned? Did we not map the highest-risk areas and have

well-designed mitigation plans? This relentless focus on

learning improves predictability, reduces cycle time, and

helps us get a high-quality offering to market ahead of

the competition.

That’s why I would advise Van Sant to give up the di-

nosaur perspective that speed means having to sacrifi ce

quality. She should engage the entire team in examining

the failures and exploring ways to achieve quality without

upsetting the schedule. If REACH has few qualifi ed alter-

native partners, then disrupting a long-standing contract

with a highly experienced and specialized partner would

be counterproductive. If Hollenbeck-Eskina is the best

option, I would avoid having to reopen the contract and

potentially lose the partner’s deep project knowledge.

However, if Hollenbeck-Eskina was not totally engaged

and forthcoming in helping understand and correct the

failures, it may be time to involve other potential part-

ners or to stand fi rm on a contract renegotiation.

Tom Quinly is president of the motion control segment at

Curtiss-Wright Controls, based in Charlotte, North Caro-

lina, which develops products for aerospace, defense, and

industrial markets.

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Chapter 11

Getting Your

Project Off on

the Right Foot

With your project team formed, your charter delivered,

and the team’s tasks scheduled, you’ve still got a few criti-

cal matters to take care of before work commences. First,

your project needs a launch—a special event that marks

its offi cial beginning. Second, you must set up activities

and provide tools that foster team building. And third, you

must institute behavioral norms that make collaborative

work possible and communicate them to all participants.

Why Launch Meetings Matter

The launch represents the very fi rst project milestone. If

conducted properly, it has substantial symbolic value.

The best way to kick off a project is through an all-

team meeting, one with appropriate levels of gravity and

Adapted from Harvard Business Essentials: Managing Projects Large

and Small (product #6280BC), Harvard Business Review Press, 2004

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fanfare. You’ll have already held many planning sessions

with key individuals—but those informal get-togethers

are no substitute for a face-to-face meeting attended by

all team members, the sponsor, your stakeholders, and,

if appropriate, the organization’s highest-ranking offi cial.

Physical presence at this meeting has great psycho-

logical signifi cance, particularly for geographically dis-

persed teams, whose members may have few future op-

portunities to convene as a group. Being together at the

beginning of their long journey and getting to know one

another on a personal level will build commitment and

bolster participants’ sense that this team and project are

important. If certain people cannot attend the launch

meeting because of their geographic location, they should

participate virtually, through videoconferencing or, at the

very least, speakerphone.

The sponsor’s presence and demeanor at the launch

speak volumes about the importance—or unimpor-

tance—ascribed to the project’s mission. As Jon Kat-

zenbach and Douglas Smith write in “The Discipline of

Teams” (HBR March–April 1993):

When potential teams fi rst gather, everyone monitors

the signals given by others to confi rm, suspend, or dis-

pel assumptions and concerns. They pay particular at-

tention to those in authority: the team leader and any

executives who set up, oversee, or otherwise infl uence

the team. And, as always, what such leaders do is more

important than what they say. If a senior executive

leaves the team kickoff to take a phone call ten minutes

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after the session has begun and he never returns, people

get the message.

Here are your main tasks for the launch:

• Welcome everyone aboard. Acknowledge and

thank all those who will contribute to the project.

Mention each person by name. Many attendees

will be core team members, and others will be

peripheral members who participate for a limited

time or in a limited way. But all are members.

• Ask your sponsor to say a few words. Have him

articulate why the project’s work is important and

how its goals are aligned with larger organizational

objectives. Otherwise, people won’t see conse-

quences for themselves and the company, and they

won’t make their best effort.

• Make introductions. Unless people are already fa-

miliar with one another, they probably won’t know

who has which skills. If the group isn’t too large,

ask participants to introduce themselves, to say

something about their background and expertise,

and to explain what they hope to contribute to and

get from the project.

• Share the charter. Explain the goals, deliverables,

and timetables you’ve documented.

• Seek consensus. Get everyone to agree on what

the charter means.

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• Describe the resources available. Although you’ll

certainly want to stoke the team’s enthusiasm at

the launch, it’s equally important to set realistic

expectations about the amount of support (both

workers and budget) you’ll have.

• Describe incentives. What will members receive,

beyond their normal compensation, if the team

meets or exceeds its goals?

Though participants will develop a sense of belonging

and common goals only with time and through shared

experiences, you’ll have planted the seeds at the launch

meeting. People should now begin to think of themselves

as members of a real team.

Provide Activities and Tools

for Working Together

Giving people collective goals and handing out free

T-shirts with a team logo creates a team in name only.

Project teams gel through joint work, idea sharing, and

give-and-take in decision making and information ex-

change.

A project manager can facilitate that kind of collabo-

ration through regularly scheduled meetings, commu-

nication tools such as project newsletters and websites,

and the physical colocation of team members. Off-site

social events may also be valuable, since they can help

groups cohere. You’ll want to encourage people to forge

the bonds of trust and friendship that make team-based

work stimulating and productive.

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Getting Your Project Off on the Right Foot

Establish Norms of Behavior

It takes time to build an effective project team. Indi-

viduals come to the effort with personal agendas. Some

may view their new teammates as competitors for pro-

motions, recognition, and rewards. Others may harbor

grudges against one or more of those with whom they

have been thrown together. And there’s always a member

or two lacking in social skills.

Such problems can undermine your project if they’re

not contained or neutralized. One of the best ways to

manage them is to set up unambiguous norms of be-

havior that apply equally to all. As Jon Katzenbach and

Douglas Smith point out in The Wisdom of Teams, the

most critical rules pertain to:

• Attendance. The team cannot make decisions and

accomplish its work if members fail to show up for

meetings or joint work sessions. If you, the leader,

are chronically late or absent, people will follow

your example.

• Interruptions. Turn cell phones off during meet-

ings and work sessions. Also, make it clear that

people are not to interrupt others. Everyone has a

right to speak.

• Sacred cows. Agree that no issues will be off-

limits. For example, if a process-reengineering

team knows that a change will upset a particular

executive, its members should not be reluctant to

discuss it.

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• Disagreements. Team players are bound to come

up with competing solutions as they tackle prob-

lems. Encourage them to vent disagreements in

constructive ways.

• Confi dentiality. Some team issues may be sensi-

tive. Members will discuss them freely only if what

is said within the team stays within the team.

• Action orientation. The purpose of teams is not to

meet and discuss. It’s to act and produce results.

Make that clear from the beginning.

What behavioral norms should your group observe?

That depends on the purpose of the group and the per-

sonalities of its members. But the basics include mutual

respect, a commitment to active listening, and an under-

standing of how to voice concerns and handle confl ict.

To guarantee the free fl ow of ideas, some groups may

want to adopt specifi c guidelines that support calculated

risk taking, for instance, or spell out procedures for ac-

knowledging and handling failure. Whatever norms your

group follows, make sure all members have a hand in es-

tablishing them—and that everyone agrees to abide by

them. Members’ participation and acceptance will head

off many future problems.

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Chapter 12

The Discipline

of Teams

A summary of the full-length HBR article by Jon R.

Katzenbach and Douglas K. Smith, highlighting key

ideas.

THE IDEA IN BRIEF

The word team gets bandied about so loosely that many

managers are oblivious to its real meaning—or its true

potential. With a run-of-the-mill working group, perfor-

mance is a function of what the members do as individu-

als. A team’s performance, by contrast, calls for both in-

dividual and mutual accountability.

Though it may not seem like anything special, mu-

tual accountability can lead to astonishing results. It en-

ables a team to achieve performance levels that are far

greater than the individual bests of the team’s members.

Excerpted from Harvard Business Review, July–August 2005 (repub-

lished from 1993), Reprint #R0507P. To buy the full-length article, visit www.hbr.org.

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To achieve these benefi ts, team members must do more

than listen, respond constructively, and provide sup-

port to one another. In addition to sharing these team-

building values, they must share an essential discipline.

THE IDEA IN PRACTICE

A team’s essential discipline comprises fi ve charac-

teristics:

1.

A meaningful common purpose that the team has

helped shape. Most teams are responding to an

initial mandate from outside the team. But to be

successful, the team must “own” this purpose,

develop its own spin on it.

2.

Specifi c performance goals that fl ow from the

common purpose. For example, getting a new

product to market in less than half the normal

time. Compelling goals inspire and challenge a

team, give it a sense of urgency. They also have a

leveling effect, requiring members to focus on the

collective effort necessary rather than any differ-

ences in title or status.

3.

A mix of complementary skills. These include

technical or functional expertise, problem-solv-

ing and decision-making skills, and interpersonal

skills. Successful teams rarely have all the needed

skills at the outset—they develop them as they

learn what the challenge requires.

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The Discipline of Teams

4.

A strong commitment to how the work gets

done. Teams must agree on who will do what

jobs, how schedules will be established and

honored, and how decisions will be made and

modifi ed. On a genuine team, each member does

equivalent amounts of real work; all members,

the leader included, contribute in concrete ways

to the team’s collective work-products.

5.

Mutual accountability. Trust and commitment

cannot be coerced. The process of agreeing upon

appropriate goals serves as the crucible in which

members forge their accountability to each

other—not just to the leader.

Once the essential discipline has been established, a team

is free to concentrate on the critical challenges it faces:

• For a team whose purpose is to make recommen-

dations, that means making a fast and constructive

start and providing a clean handoff to those who

will implement the recommendations.

• For a team that makes or does things, it’s keeping

the specifi c performance goals in sharp focus.

• For a team that runs things, the primary task is

distinguishing the challenges that require a real

team approach from those that don’t.

If a task doesn’t demand joint work-products, a working

group can be the more effective option. Team opportuni-

ties are usually those in which hierarchy or organizational

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boundaries inhibit the skills and perspectives needed

for optimal results. Little wonder, then, that teams

have become the primary units of productivity in high-

performance organizations.

Jon R. Katzenbach is a senior partner at Booz & Company

and a former director of McKinsey & Company. Doug-

las K. Smith is an organizational consultant and a former

partner at McKinsey & Company.

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Phase 3

Implementation

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Chapter 13

Eff ective Project

Meetings

Run your meetings well, and you’ll infuse your project

with energy, momentum, and direction. How do you

make them productive? Follow these simple guidelines.

Setting the Stage for the Meeting

• Make sure a meeting is even necessary. If you can

accomplish your goal effi ciently without calling

one (via e-mail, for example), do so—and avoid

eating up everyone’s time.

• Clarify the meeting’s objective. If it is to make a

decision, explain that and give participants the

time and materials needed to prepare.

• Sound out key participants on important agenda

items ahead of time. What you discover may sug-

gest that alterations are in order.

Adapted from Harvard Business Essentials: Managing Projects Large

and Small (product #6198BC), Harvard Business Review Press, 2004, and Harvard ManageMentor, an online product of Harvard Business

Publishing

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Implementation

• Invite only people who have something to contrib-

ute or who can learn from the discussion.

• Provide an agenda in advance that clearly supports

the objective.

• Insist that people get up to speed on the issues

before they arrive, bring relevant materials with

them, and show up ready to contribute to the

discussion.

Running the Meeting

• Restate the meeting’s purpose. This will sharpen

the group’s focus.

• Let everyone have a say. If one or two individu-

als are dominating the conversation or if certain

attendees are shy about leaping in, say, “Thanks

for those ideas, Phil. What are your thoughts about

this problem, Charlotte?”

• Keep the discussion centered on the key issues.

• End with confi rmation and an action plan that

includes a clear time frame: “OK, we’ve decided to

hire DataWhack to install the new servers. And, as

agreed, I will obtain the purchase order today, Bill

will phone the salesperson later this week and set

up the schedule, and Janet will begin looking for

someone to take the old equipment off our hands.

We’ll regroup at the usual time next week to see

where things stand.”

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Eff ective Project Meetings

Following Up

• Send out a note summarizing the meeting’s out-

comes. People will be encouraged by it because it’s

evidence that the team is one step closer to its goal.

• Remind individuals of their tasks and deadlines.

• Offer support to anyone who may be overwhelmed

with other work or may struggle with a task.

People are often reluctant to ask for assistance,

even when they recognize that they need it.

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Chapter 14

The Adaptive

Approach

to Project

Management

Does your project involve an unfamiliar technology or

material? Is it substantially larger than others you’ve

overseen? Are the tasks different from those your team

has handled in the past?

If you answered yes to one or more of those questions,

the traditional approach to project management may not

work. That’s because it takes for granted that you can

pinpoint what needs to be done, what it will cost, and

how much time you’ll need. In situations with higher

levels of uncertainty—if you face unanticipated risks,

Adapted from “Project Adaptation: Dealing with What You Cannot An-

ticipate,” Harvard Business Essentials: Managing Projects Large and

Small (product #6273BC), Harvard Business Review Press, 2004

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Implementation

A NEW MODEL FOR SPONSORS

The adaptive model of project management creates a

new role for project sponsors, one that Robert Austin

likened to venture capitalism in the 2002 Science ar-

ticle “Project Management and Discovery.” Rather than

give teams a big pile of resources at the beginning, they

support projects in stages, as results roll in. Like VCs,

sponsors advance resources to purchase information

and reduce uncertainty—and each investment gives

them the option of remaining in the game.

Task 1

Experiment

Learn

Experiment

Task 2

Learn

Resources

$$$$

Experiment

Task 3

Learn

Task 4

for instance, or if the range of potential outcomes is very

wide—decision tools such as return on investment, net

present value, and internal rate of return (which assume

predictability of future cash fl ows) cease to be useful. You

may have to consider a more adaptive approach.

In their research on large IT implementation projects,

Lynda Applegate, Robert Austin, and Warren McFarlan

(the authors of Corporate Information Strategy and Man-

agement) found that companies such as Cisco Systems

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The Adaptive Approach to Project Management

have enjoyed success with adaptive project-management

models that:

• Approach tasks iteratively. Teams engage in

small incremental tasks, evaluate the outcomes of

those tasks, and make adjustments as they move

forward.

• Have fast cycles. Short lead times allow an itera-

tive approach.

• Emphasize early value delivery. Small, early deliv-

erables encourage feedback and the incorporation

of learning into subsequent activities.

• Staff the project with people who can adapt. Some

people are faster learners than others and are

more amenable to change.

Cisco refers to its approach as “rapid iterative proto-

typing.” Many tasks serve as probes—that is, as learning

experiences for later steps. This tactic is analogous to the

notion of the “cheap kills” that research and develop-

ment organizations use to sort through many possibili-

ties quickly and at low cost. When the right solution is

not apparent, they try a number of simple experiments

to separate promising and unpromising options. Even

failed experiments provide insights into what will work.

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WHAT-IF PLANNING AND CHUNKING

To enhance their ability to adapt to shifting conditions,

some fi rms rely on the techniques that Cathleen Benko

and F. Warren McFarlan call “what-if planning and

chunking” in their book Connecting the Dots: Align-

ing Projects with Objectives in Unpredictable Times.

Sweden-based software fi rm Ellipsus Systems used

what-if planning to decide which programming stan-

dard—wireless application protocol (WAP) or Java—it

would choose for its software. Since it was unclear which

standard would dominate, cofounder Rikard Kjellberg

designed projects based on both and then took early

prototypes to a trade show to test participants’ pref-

erences. His contingency planning led to a successful

partnership with Java-maker Sun Microsystems.

Minnesota hotel-management company Carlson

Hospitality Worldwide uses chunking to break big, ex-

pensive projects into smaller, more manageable ones,

thereby boosting their chances of receiving approval and

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The Adaptive Approach to Project Management

funding. After the board of directors rejected a $15 mil-

lion request to overhaul the company’s central reser-

vation system, managers broke the project into work

units that each had stand-alone benefi ts and minimal

mutual dependencies. That is, if one chunk was can-

celed, others could still move ahead. The board soon

approved the fi rst chunk. Ultimately, Carlson’s new

reservation system was voted best in the industry; its

voice-reservation chunk alone generated $40 million

in annual revenue by 2003. “Chunking helps us learn

constantly and perpetually reassess our priorities,”

says CIO Scott Heintzeman. “It also reduces risk and

focuses people’s eff orts on each work unit. And be-

cause the work on each chunk extends for no more

than three to six months, people maintain their energy

and enthusiasm.”

Adapted from “Close the Gap Between Projects and Strategy,” Harvard

Management Update (product #U0406A), June 2004

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Chapter 15

Why Good Projects

Fail Anyway

A summary of the full-length HBR article by Nadim F.

Matta and Ronald N. Ashkenas, highlighting key ideas.

THE IDEA IN BRIEF

Big projects fail at an astonishing rate—well over half, by

some estimates. Why are efforts involving many people

working over extended periods of time so problematic?

Traditional project planning carries three serious risks:

• White space: Planners leave gaps in the project

plan by failing to anticipate all the project’s re-

quired activities and work streams.

• Execution: Project team members fail to carry out

designated activities properly.

Excerpted from Harvard Business Review, September 2003, reprint

#R0309H. To buy the full-length article, visit www.hbr.org.

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Implementation

• Integration: Team members execute all tasks

fl awlessly—on time and within budget—but don’t

knit all the project pieces together at the end. The

project doesn’t deliver the intended results.

Manage these risks with rapid-results initiatives: small

projects designed to quickly deliver mini-versions of the

big project’s end results. Through rapid-results initia-

tives, project team members iron out kinks early and on a

small scale. Rapid-results teams serve as models for sub-

sequent teams who can roll out the initiative on a larger

scale with greater confi dence. The teams feel the satisfac-

tion of delivering real value, and their company gets early

payback on its investments.

THE IDEA IN PRACTICE

Rapid-results initiatives have several defi ning char-

acteristics:

• Results oriented: The initiatives produce measur-

able payoffs on a small scale.

Example: The World Bank wanted to im-

prove the productivity of 120,000 small-scale

farmers in Nicaragua by 30% in 16 years. Its

rapid- results initiatives included “increase pig

weight on 30 farms by 30% in 100 days using

enhanced corn seed.”

• Vertical: The initiatives include people from dif-

ferent parts of the organization—or even different

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Why Good Projects Fail Anyway

organizations—who work in tandem within a very

short time frame to implement slices of several

horizontal—or parallel-track—activities. The tradi-

tional emphasis on disintegrated, horizontal, long-

term activities gives way to the integrated, vertical,

and short-term. The teams uncover activities fall-

ing in the white space between horizontal project

streams, and properly integrate all the activities.

Example: Take a companywide CRM project.

Traditionally, one team might analyze cus-

tomers, another select the software, a third

develop training programs. When the project’s

fi nally complete, though, it may turn out that

the salespeople won’t enter the requisite data

because they don’t understand why they need

to. Using rapid-results initiatives, a single team

might be charged with increasing the revenues

of one sales group in one region within four

months. To reach that goal, team members

would have to draw on the work of all the paral-

lel teams. And they would quickly discover the

salespeople’s resistance and other unforeseen

issues.

• Fast: The initiatives strive for results and lessons

in less than 100 days. Designed to deliver quick

wins, they more importantly change the way teams

work. How? The short time frame establishes a

sense of urgency from the start, poses personal

challenges, and leaves no time to waste on inter-

organizational bickering. It also stimulates creativity

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Implementation

and encourages team members to experiment with

new ideas that deliver concrete results.

Balancing Vertical and Horizontal

Activities

Vertical, rapid-results initiatives offer many benefi ts. But

that doesn’t mean you should eliminate all horizontal

activities. Such activities offer cost-effective economies

of scale. The key is to balance vertical and horizontal,

spread insights among teams, and blend all activities into

an overall implementation strategy.

Example: Dissatisfi ed with its 8% revenue

increase in two years, offi ce-products company

Avery Dennison launched 15 rapid-results

teams in three North American divisions. After

only three months, the teams were meeting

their goals—e.g., securing one new order for

an enhanced product with one large customer

within 100 days. Top management extended the

rapid-results process throughout the company,

reinforcing it with an extensive employee com-

munication program. As horizontal activities

continued, dozens more teams started rapid-

results initiatives. Results? $8 million+ in

new sales, and $50 million in sales forecast by

year-end.

Nadim F. Matta is a managing partner, and Ronald N.

Ashkenas is a senior partner, of Schaffer Consulting in

Stamford, Connecticut.

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Chapter 16

Monitoring and

Controlling Your

Project

by Ray Sheen

Unlike processes—where the same people repeatedly

perform the same activities—projects often involve

unique activities (such as using new technologies, build-

ing new buildings, or writing new software) carried out

by individuals who may be working together for the

fi rst time. So as a project leader, you’ll need to actively

monitor progress to fi gure out whether your plan is really

bringing the team closer to its objectives.

When monitoring and controlling a project, you’ll fol-

low fi ve basic steps:

1. Track project activities

It’s important to check in with team members regularly

to make sure they’re completing their tasks and meet-

ing quality standards. You can do this most effectively

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Implementation

through team meetings if everyone works at the same

location. However, given how common distributed teams

are in today’s business environment, it can be diffi cult to

get the entire group together. When that’s the case, I con-

duct separate working sessions with individuals or small

groups needed for particular activities. For example, I

recently participated in a “live meeting” conference call

where engineers from three locations helped prepare a

product-development proposal for a customer. If I had

created a draft, sent it around for comments, and then

tried to integrate all the feedback, it could easily have

taken weeks to complete the document. Instead, I had

the right engineers reviewing it over the phone for about

three hours, until everybody agreed on the wording. Af-

ter a working session like this, I loop the rest of the team

in at a larger group meeting or through e-mail.

I also use “buddy checks” to verify that tasks are done

properly. When someone completes an activity, another

team member looks at the results. This is not an in-depth

technical analysis; it’s a quick check to confi rm that the

person who did the work hasn’t accidentally overlooked

something or misunderstood the requirements. A team

member checking a training plan for a new system, for

example, would make certain that all departments in

need of training have been included. If possible, have

someone who will use the results of the activity do the

buddy check. When I worked with a medical device com-

pany on developing a new product, I had its regulatory

department review the design documentation and test

data to fl ag any missing information that would be re-

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Monitoring and Controlling Your Project

quired later for regulatory submittal. If a team member

with a stake in the activity’s result is not available, you

can do the buddy check yourself—but make it clear that

it’s not a performance appraisal. It’s just one team mem-

ber looking out for another.

2. Collect performance data

A few companies have project management informa-

tion systems that automatically generate reports. If you

have access to one, by all means use it—but also seek out

performance data through short pulse meetings, where

team members share status updates on activities and as-

sess risks, either face-to-face or virtually. I limit these to

10 minutes and discuss only the tasks started or fi nished

since the last meeting. The purpose is to get a quick sense

of where things are, not to roll up sleeves. If the team

identifi es any problems or risks, I resolve them in a sepa-

rate working session with the appropriate individuals.

I normally pulse projects on a weekly basis, which al-

lows me to track progress adequately and identify prob-

lems in time to respond to them. However, when a proj-

ect is in crisis mode, the “pulse rate” quickens. I once

managed a project in which the power system for a new

facility failed three days before the building needed to be

up and running. An important business objective hinged

on that deadline. The team worked around the clock to

identify the cause of the failure, replace the destroyed

component, and bring the facility back on line. All that

would normally have taken two to three months, but we

had three days, so I pulsed the project every three hours.

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3. Analyze performance to determine

whether the plan still holds

Activities seldom go precisely as anticipated. They may

take more or less time; they may overrun or underrun

the budget. A departure from your plan isn’t a problem

unless it’s likely to compromise the team’s objectives. On

one project, I had an engineer report at a pulse meeting

that a new mold would be two weeks late. But since the

mold wasn’t on our critical path and we had nearly six

weeks of slack time in that portion of the schedule, the

team didn’t need to take special action. If the late deliver-

able had put us in danger of missing an important goal,

I would have called a meeting with the appropriate team

members to fi gure out a solution.

This is the time when careful project planning pays

dividends. Knowing the critical path will help you decide

which issues warrant a schedule change. If you’ve identi-

fi ed risks up front that could undermine your objectives,

you can more easily recognize which snags are threats

to the project’s success. Having estimated each activity’s

duration and costs and carefully noted any uncertain-

ties, you’ll be able to distinguish between variances that

aren’t a big deal and those that suggest larger underlying

problems.

When a plan does need revising, you may have to ex-

tend the end date, apply budget reserves, remove deliver-

ables from the project’s scope, or even cancel the project.

On one software development project I oversaw, we had

an excessively “buggy” fi rst release. Before trying to fi x

the software, I quickly checked the requirements docu-

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Monitoring and Controlling Your Project

ment and realized that the developers were using an out-

of-date version. We had to reschedule the software devel-

opment task for that module, causing us to delay project

completion by about a month, but the change clearly

needed to be made.

4. Report progress to your stakeholders

Some project managers and team members perceive

stakeholder reviews—which involve preparing reports

and conducting progress meetings—as wasted effort be-

cause they take time away from other activities. How-

ever, if managed properly, these reviews propel a proj-

ect toward success. There are three types: management

reviews, tollgate reviews, and technical reviews. For all

three, record and circulate action items, and keep meet-

ing minutes in the project fi le for future reference.

The purpose of the management review is to man-

age risk. Stakeholders may examine several projects at a

time to see if the portfolio as a whole will generate the

desired business performance and to identify systemic

weaknesses. They’ll look at individual projects on their

own merits as well. Such reviews are normally held at

regular intervals—monthly, for instance. When conduct-

ing them, keep in mind that your stakeholders care about

reaching business goals, not about following the team’s

day-to-day activities. I recently attended a review where

the project leader spent nearly 30 minutes describing

technical designs the team was considering and test-

ing, which only bored and frustrated the stakeholders.

Instead, he should have spent fi ve minutes telling them

the project was on schedule (it was), that the team had

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Implementation

made progress on its technical analysis (it had), and that

no new risks had been identifi ed.

Creating a project dashboard is a great way to sum-

marize your objectives and show stakeholders whether

the project, as currently planned and managed, will

achieve them. (You can break it down into components

such as schedule, cost, and performance.) This is often

called a stoplight chart, since it usually indicates activity

statuses in red, yellow, and green. Most companies have

a standard format to help senior managers quickly and

effi ciently assess progress and risks on many projects.

When using color coding, make sure everyone under-

stands exactly what each color means. For example, do

you list all incomplete tasks in red? Or are some of them

green, because the plan for completion is approved and

under way?

When you need to report bad news in a management

review, always couch it in terms of risks to project ob-

jectives. Explain how certain task delays will prevent the

team from realizing project goals on time, for instance, or

how a resource shortage will reduce the rigor of an activ-

ity and thus the quality of its deliverable. When you pre-

sent problems, also give options for responding to them

and discuss the risks associated with each solution. The

stakeholders will decide which risks they want the busi-

ness to take.

The tollgate review (also called the stage-gate re-

view, or phase-gate review) is a decision meeting, not

a status check. It’s used when a business plans and ex-

ecutes projects in discrete phases. In it, the project team

summarizes the results of the preceding phase and pre-

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Monitoring and Controlling Your Project

sents a plan for the next phase. The stakeholders assess

the plan, options, and risks, and then decide whether to

approve, redirect, or cancel the project. If they say to pro-

ceed to the next phase, they also provide the team with

the necessary resources, including funding.

At a technical review (sometimes referred to as a peer

review), an independent team of experts—internal or ex-

ternal consultants, say, or representatives from a regu-

latory agency—provides an in-depth analysis of project

results. The purpose is to ensure that team members did

the work accurately, completely, and to the right qual-

ity standard. Stakeholders may give a stamp of approval

at this time: If the team has successfully completed one

phase of the project, it can now proceed to a tollgate re-

view for approval to begin the next phase.

5. Manage changes to the plan

When revising a plan, you may make major changes or

just minor tweaks that will allow the team to meet its

objectives.

If you propose major changes to your stakeholders,

spell out the costs and risks of adopting them and those

of sticking with the original plan. A defense contractor

that I work with was asked by the Air Force to improve

performance of a weapon-system component. After the

Air Force reviewed the proposed options (which included

costs, risks, and schedules) and selected one, the con-

tractor synchronized updates to design documentation,

manufacturing processes, supplier contracts, the proj-

ect schedule, and the budget so the transition would be

as seamless as possible. When making such large-scale

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revisions, record them (along with the rationale) on some

type of change log in the project records. You can use your

normal project-planning processes and techniques to re-

vise your plan. Send the new plan to your team members,

and explain any changes that affect them.

Minor changes may come up as you’re implementing

a contingency plan or working out details of a portion

of the project that was planned only at a high level. The

project team can usually manage these on its own, with-

out seeking stakeholder approval, unless the changes will

directly affect stakeholders or their departments.

As you’re monitoring your project, remember that meet-

ing your objectives trumps everything else. Don’t get

hung up on compliance with the original plan. In my

experience, almost every project plan must be revised

at some point—especially when you’re developing new

products or systems, because what you learn in the early

stages sheds light on how later-stage tasks should take

shape. Don’t be afraid to change course if it will bring you

within reach of your goals.

Ray Sheen teaches and consults on project and process

management. He has more than 25 years of experience

leading projects in defense, product development, manu-

facturing, IT, and other areas, and has run a project man-

agement offi ce in GE’s Electrical Distribution business.

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Chapter 17

Managing People

Problems on

Your Team

Your most important resource is your people. After you’ve

done the hard work of selecting the right team members

and getting them revved up for the project, you need

to make sure they stay on task, pull their weight, work

collaboratively, and reach the quality standards you’ve

established with your stakeholders. If you don’t, you’re

highly unlikely to meet your goals, let alone your dead-

lines and budget targets. Here’s how to recognize and

deal with various people problems you may encounter as

a project manager.

Adapted from Pocket Mentor: Managing Projects (product #1878),

Harvard Business Review Press, 2006

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Team structure problems

Possible

Potential

Recommended

Problem

causes

impact

action

• Your team

• You over-

• The project

• Arrange for a

lacks

looked certain

doesn’t move

team member to

necessary

skill require-

forward as fast

be trained in the

skills.

ments during

as it should, or

skills needed.

planning.

it stalls.

• Hire outside

• You discovered

consultants or

a need for new

contractors who

skills in the

have the skills.

midst of the

project.

Possible

Potential

Recommended

Problem

causes

impact

action

• A team

• This could

• Severity

• Have backup team

member

happen for

depends on

members at the

leaves.

many reasons,

the skills and

ready.

ranging from

knowledge

• Cross-train people

sudden illness

lost:

so they can fi ll in

to departure

• If you can

for one another.

from the

easily redis-

organization.

• Make one person’s

tribute the

departure an op-

work or hire

portunity to bring

someone

an even more

with the

skilled team mem-

same ex-

ber on board.

pertise, the

impact may

be slight.

• If not, the

loss could

create a

crisis.

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Managing People Problems on Your Team

Interpersonal problems

Possible

Potential

Recommended

Problem

causes

impact

action

• Team

• They spend

• Overall

• Emphasize that

members

excessive

productivity

social gather-

are too

amounts of

decreases.

ings need to be

friendly.

time chatting

• Time is

planned for after

or discuss-

wasted, and

work.

ing personal

the project

problems.

• Reorganize team

slows down.

subgroups to

• Hard-working

disrupt cliques.

team members

resent those

who work less

effi

ciently.

Possible

Potential

Recommended

Problem

causes

impact

action

• Confl icts

• People have

• The schedule,

• Focus team

exist

a hard time

quality of

members on the

within

reconciling dif-

work, overall

project’s goals,

the team.

ferent person-

productiv-

not on personal

alities, working

ity, and team

feelings.

styles, or areas

cohesiveness

• Separate the

of expertise.

could all

underlying causes

suff er.

from the surface

disturbances,

so you can solve

problems at the

root.

• Propose solutions,

not blame.

(continued)

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Productivity problems (continued)

Possible

Potential

Recommended

Problem

causes

impact

action

• Time is

• People man-

• Work on

• Clarify which

spent on

age their time

critical tasks is

tasks are most

the wrong

poorly.

delayed.

important.

tasks.

• A team mem-

• The overall

• Assign tasks to

ber prefers

project is

pairs of team

some tasks

delayed.

members to work

over others,

on together so

regardless

they can keep each

of relative

other in check.

importance.

• Provide resources

• You’ve sent

to help members

the wrong

improve time

message about

management

priorities.

skills.

Possible

Potential

Recommended

Problem

causes

impact

action

• The qual-

• A team mem-

• Work must be

• Be clear from the

ity of the

ber misun-

redone, cost-

start about qual-

work is

derstands the

ing money and

ity expectations

poor.

requirements

time.

and standards of

of the job.

• The project

measure.

• Diff erent

fails.

• Develop an action

people mea-

plan for improving

sure the work

the quality of the

by diff erent

team member’s

standards.

work.

• Someone

• Provide training

doesn’t have

and support to

adequate skills

develop skills.

to complete a

task.

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Chapter 18

The Tools of

Cooperation

and Change

A summary of the full-length HBR article by Clayton M.

Christensen, Matt Marx, and Howard H. Stevenson,

highlighting key ideas.

Editor’s note: Sometimes you need to manage change

within projects. Other times the projects themselves

are agents of change in a company, and you have to

overcome organizational resistance. Arm yourself

with the right tools, and you can elicit cooperation

rather than entrenchment.

THE IDEA IN BRIEF

Why do managers struggle so hard to get employees’ co-

operation on change initiatives? Even charismatic leaders

Excerpted from Harvard Business Review, October 2006, reprint

#R0610D. To buy the full-length article, visit www.hbr.org.

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have spotty records—winning commitment to change in

some cases but failing dismally in others.

According to Christensen, Marx, and Stevenson, too

many leaders use the wrong change tools at the wrong

time—wasting energy and risking their credibility. For

example, a vision statement helps get people on board if

they already agree on where their organization should go.

Without that consensus, vision statements won’t change

behavior—aside from provoking a collective rolling of eyes.

How to wield the right change tools, at the right time?

Gauge how strongly your people agree on 1) where they

want to go and 2) how to get there. Then select tools

based on the nature of employees’ agreement. For in-

stance, if people disagree about goals and ways to achieve

them (common during mergers), use power tools—such

as threatening to make key decisions yourself. If employ-

ees have goals that differ from your company’s but agree

on how work should be done (think independent con-

tractors), use management tools—including training and

performance measurement systems.

Choose the correct tools, and you spur the changes

your fi rm needs to stay ahead of rivals.

THE IDEA IN PRACTICE

Selecting the Right Change Tools

Scenario #1: If employees agree on goals but disagree on

how to achieve them, use leadership tools: vision, cha-

risma, salesmanship, and role modeling.

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The Tools of Cooperation and Change

Example: In December 1995, Microsoft’s Bill

Gates published his visionary “Internet Tidal

Wave” memo. The memo persuaded employ-

ees that the World Wide Web would become

integral to computing (which countered most

employees’ beliefs). Employees responded with

products that crippled Internet rival Netscape

and maintained Microsoft’s dominance in the

software industry (which employees and the

company wanted).

Scenario #2: If employees disagree on both goals and

how to get there, use power tools: threats, hiring and

promotion, control systems, and coercion.

Example: To merge JP Morgan with BankOne,

CEO Jamie Dimon slashed hundreds of execu-

tives’ salaries 20% to 50%. He threatened to

select a single IT platform to replace the fi rm’s

myriad systems if the IT staff didn’t pick one

themselves in six weeks. And he told branch

managers they’d lose their jobs if they failed to

meet sales quotas.

Scenario #3: If employees agree on both goals and how to

get there, use culture tools to counter complacence. In

particular, use “disaggregation” (separating the organiza-

tion into entities that each have their own agreed-upon

goals and plans for achieving them) to disrupt high-level

agreement about goals and methods that could other-

wise preserve the status quo.

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Example: Hewlett-Packard recognized that its

new inkjet printer business—with its unique

technology and economics—could thrive only

if it was protected from the cultural expecta-

tions of its traditional laser printing business.

Disaggregating the two businesses eliminated

the need for cooperation between them and

enabled the groups to operate on very different

profi t models.

Scenario #4: If employees disagree on goals but agree on

how work should be done, use management tools: mea-

surement systems, standard operating procedures, and

training.

Example: In many companies, the reasons

unionized manufacturing workers come to work

differ markedly from those of senior managers.

But as long as workers accept management’s

assertion that following certain manufacturing

procedures will help them make products with

desired quality and cost, they will follow those

procedures.

Clayton M. Christensen is the Kim B. Clark Professor of

Business Administration at Harvard Business School in

Boston. Matt Marx was a doctoral student at HBS. How-

ard H. Stevenson is HBS’s Sarofi m-Rock Baker Founda-

tion Professor of Business Administration, Emeritus,

and the chairman of the board at Harvard Business

Publishing.

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Chapter 19

Don’t Throw Good

Money (or Time)

After Bad

by Jimmy Guterman

You approved the development of a high-profi le new

product for your company a year ago—but now things

aren’t going well. Despite previous forecasts that custom-

ers needed your product, the market has changed, and

the response is uncertain at best. But you’re not going to

give up and throw away $10 million, are you?

Actually, spending another dime on a doomed prod-

uct is the wrong decision. Yet chasing after sunk costs

(investments that are no longer recoverable) is a com-

mon error. Just another couple hundred thousand dol-

lars, you say to yourself, and we’ll be able to recoup our

investment.

Adapted from Harvard Management Update (product #U0205D),

May 2002

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Implementation

Don’t fall for that line of reasoning. True managerial

wisdom lies in a kind of forgetfulness—the ability to ig-

nore prior investments, costs, and benefi ts, and to focus

instead on the situation at hand. When faced with insuf-

fi cient information and tight time constraints, managers

regularly use simplifying strategies, known as judgment

heuristics, as decision-making shortcuts. Problem is,

human psychology always enters into the process, lead-

ing to cognitive biases—conclusions based on misper-

ceptions or faulty inferences. The sunk-cost trap is a type

of cognitive bias. Harvard Business School professor

Max H. Bazerman, author of Judgment in Managerial

Decision Making, likens this “nonrational escalation of

commitment” to standing at a bus stop for hour after

hour. At some point, you have to admit that the bus is

not coming.

You can avoid escalating your company’s commitment

to a product, person, or strategy beyond a reasonable

point. These guidelines will help.

Don’t make choices merely

to justify past decisions

Should you retain an underperforming, abusive contrac-

tor simply because you hired him and don’t want to be

accused of fl ip-fl opping? Should you continue to extend

credit to a company that has consistently failed to meet

its obligations, since it promises that just one more loan

will turn everything around? In the abstract, the answer

to both questions is clearly no. But it’s easy to let context

obscure your better judgment.

Avoid this problem by gathering external evidence to

support your choices. When deciding whether to move

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Don’t Throw Good Money (or Time) After Bad

forward on a project, consult as many outside sources

and devil’s advocates as you can, so you’re sure to con-

sider how people other than your supervisor might view

your quandary. Failure to see the big picture often results

in overly cautious decision making, which in turn can

lead to the sunk-cost trap.

Focus on the quality of the decision,

not the quality of the outcome

Many people fall into the sunk-cost trap because they

fear being judged for the unfortunate consequences of

their good-at-the-time decisions. When things go sour,

HBS professor emeritus Howard Raiffa explains, deci-

sion makers become “more worried about acts of com-

mission, like changing course, than acts of omission, like

continuing to take the company down the wrong road.

If I just go along as things are now, the thinking goes,

things might change. If I commit an act of commission

and admit that the current course is wrongheaded, that

may trigger a review. . . . There are huge internal and

external pressures to keep going even if all parties realize

it’s wrong and it’s going to stay wrong.”

If you’re managing a decision maker, you can prevent

unnecessary escalations of commitment by making it

clear that no one will be punished for not owning a crys-

tal ball.

The more you equate time with money,

the more susceptible you are to the

sunk-cost trap

That’s the conclusion Hong Kong University of Sci-

ence and Technology marketing professor Dilip Soman

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Implementation

reached after conducting a series of sunk-cost experi-

ments. As he noted in a 2001 article in the Journal of

Behavioral Decision Making, sunk costs don’t usually

trip us up when our main investment is time. But they do

present a problem when we become more adept at con-

verting that investment into a monetary equivalent.

Use decision rules to prevent

cloudy thinking

In Judgment in Managerial Decision Making, Bazer-

man lays out a common scenario: “You personally de-

cided to hire a new middle-level manager to work for

you. Although you had expected excellent performance,

early reports suggest that she is not performing as you

had hoped. Should you fi re her? Perhaps you really can’t

afford her current level of performance. On the other

hand, you have invested a fair amount in her training.

Furthermore, she may just be in the process of learning

the ropes. So you decide to invest in her a bit longer and

provide additional resources so that she can succeed. But

still she does not perform as expected. Although you have

more reason to ‘cut your losses,’ you now have even more

invested in this employee.”

Precise targets can help you avoid such rounds of ra-

tionalizing. Establish in advance how much time and

money you’re willing to pour into a project or person be-

fore you need to see specifi c results. As the investment

sage Warren Buffett once said, “When you fi nd yourself

in a hole, the best thing you can do is stop digging.” Tar-

gets tell you when to put down the shovel. They enable

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Don’t Throw Good Money (or Time) After Bad

you to discriminate, says Bazerman, “between situations

in which persistence will pay off and situations in which

it will not.”

Jimmy Guterman was a senior editor at hbr.org.

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Phase 4

Closeout

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Chapter 20

Handing Off

Authority and

Control

by Ray Sheen

Now that you’ve executed your project, it’s time to gauge

your success and then fi nalize activities, ranging from

transferring control of new systems or facilities to pre-

senting deliverables to stakeholders. Why not fi nalize

activities fi rst? Because you can’t know when to close up

shop until you’ve determined whether you’ve met your

objectives.

In other words, success means achieving the goals in

your charter and scope statement—not necessarily fi nish-

ing all the tasks on your Gantt chart. Whether your team

is releasing a product, adopting a new system, opening

a facility, or improving a process, you’ll need to validate

that those goals, if still relevant, have been reached. Since

stakeholders care far more about realizing business ben-

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Closeout

efi ts than they do about adhering to the plan’s “critical

path,” the team needs to get out of the weeds and sharpen

its focus on those benefi ts as it completes the project.

Awhile back, I bumped into someone I had worked

with years ago on a product-development initiative, and

he mentioned that it was one of the best projects our or-

ganization had done. After we parted ways, I tried to re-

construct what was so good about it, because it was not

well planned or executed. I realized it was the closeout

phase that saved us. In our plan, we had overlooked some

business systems that had to be changed to accommo-

date the new product; we were late getting staff assigned,

so we soon fell behind schedule; and we had to replan the

project on several occasions as a result of estimating er-

rors and technical problems. Scrambling to recover from

the delays, we went over budget by about 10%. In the

endgame, however, we made up for those earlier prob-

lems by meeting market needs. We made sure that when

the product launched, it worked well, it was easy for

customers to order and for us to build, and our business

systems could support it without diffi culty. All that paid

off—sales exceeded expectations. That’s why stakehold-

ers viewed the project as a success, despite the stumbles

in planning and execution.

Once you’ve achieved your objectives—or determined

that they’re no longer relevant—you’ll take one of three

approaches to winding down your project:

The team hands off the project to itself

In such cases, team members become the primary users

and maintainers of their own deliverables. When I was

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Handing Off Authority and Control

at GE, for example, we had a project team that designed

and oversaw the installation of a new high-voltage power

test facility. Once that was up and running, the head of

the team and several other members went on to man-

age the facility. If your team inherits its own deliverables,

it will need to close any administrative accounts or fi les

(such as supplier contracts and purchase orders) asso-

ciated with development and open new ones for opera-

tional deployment.

The team terminates the project

Here, all activities come to a halt, and the organization

either releases or redeploys the resources. This can hap-

pen when a project has problems, such as a massive over-

run, but sometimes it’s due to forces outside the team’s

control. For instance, I once worked with several project

teams on coordinating fi nancial processes for two com-

panies planning to merge. The teams had been in place

for months and had made great progress when an unex-

pected government ruling barred the merger at the last

minute. The teams disbanded within 24 hours. This type

of closeout is administratively straightforward (the end is

indisputable, after all), but it can be emotionally diffi cult

because people often lose their assignments—or their

jobs—without warning.

The team integrates the project

When using this approach—by far the most common and

the most challenging—your team must ensure that oth-

ers embrace its deliverables and apply them appropri-

ately. In the dozens of new-product initiatives I’ve helped

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Closeout

manage, it has taken as much or more time and work to

hand off the product design to the manufacturing and

quality organizations and to ensure the training of sales,

marketing, and service staff as it has to design, develop,

and validate the products themselves. As you integrate

your project, you may face organizational resistance to

change. If you think that will happen, you can add a tran-

sition phase to the project that includes pilot runs, beta

tests, and any other activities that will make adoption

easier.

Clearly, your closeout method will depend largely

on business conditions—and so will the tools and tech-

niques you’ll apply within it. Here are a few I’ve found

especially helpful in managing expectations as projects

near completion:

The punchlist

This is used mainly in construction projects, but it works

well for any type of project where people may try to slide

in extra requests—for example, additional features—at

the end. The team meets with the stakeholders and re-

views the results of project activities. During that review,

everyone helps identify remaining tasks, which you put

on a “punchlist” of fi nal action items. The team then

tackles each item, and when everything on the punchlist

is fi nished, so is the project. Because stakeholders have

already agreed on your fi nal to-dos, they’ll be much less

likely to ask for “just one more thing” at this stage. The

punchlist is a good fi t when you need to terminate a

project, because the team may have a hard time letting

go, and this focuses the group on closure. While work-

ing with a contract manufacturer of plastic parts several

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Handing Off Authority and Control

years ago, I helped a team use this tool to ensure that all

the tests, inspections, and pilot runs needed to certify a

new mold were done and that the mold was brought on

line in a timely manner.

The “stakeholder handshake”

Projects that have a fuzzy scope statement—as many re-

search initiatives and small, informal projects do—ben-

efi t from this technique because it keeps the work from

going too far beyond the plan’s boundaries. Meet with

your key stakeholders to compare the project’s accom-

plishments with the contract or scope statement, and ask

them to agree on whether the project is indeed fi nished.

Have them set an end point or elect to close the project

now and, if necessary, open a new one. Such meetings

tend to include wide-ranging discussions of options, so

it’s good to come prepared with several proposals. Fol-

lowing the meeting, document the stakeholders’ decision

and circulate it so there’s no confusion. When I conduct

a project-management assessment for an organization, I

often close it in this fashion. Many times, I’ve been asked

to “see what we need to improve.” After I complete my re-

view, I meet with the executive who hired me. Usually we

agree that the assessment is over, discuss the fi ndings, and

then determine if I’m needed to help implement them.

The “scope creep parking lot”

During project execution, eager stakeholders may have

proposed additional ideas, or team members may have

been tempted to add bells and whistles. Ideally, you’ve

captured those items in a list that some project manag-

ers call the “scope creep parking lot,” so they’re not lost—

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Closeout

but they also haven’t derailed the plan by introducing

new activities or changing boundaries. Now that you’re

closing the project, it’s time to review this list so you can

create follow-on proposals for your stakeholders. This

technique can be effective when a team prepares to hand

off a project to itself because stakeholders may be more

likely to accept the deliverables if they know they’ll have

the opportunity to tweak them later. I’ve used the scope

creep parking lot on several software-development proj-

ects. In each case, although minor issues were found dur-

ing user-acceptance testing, the projects could close be-

cause we worked them into the scope for the next release.

Whichever closeout approach and tools you use, don’t

forget to celebrate your team’s achievements. Success

breeds success. Even on projects that weren’t perfectly

planned or executed, team members have worked hard

to meet the business objectives and should be rewarded

if they’ve done so. This will encourage them to do good

work for you in the future—and the positive example will

prompt other teams to achieve their project goals as well.

Hold off on discussing opportunities for improvement.

It’s best to do that in a separate lessons-learned session

that’s focused on improving the way you manage the next

project. For now, take a moment to “bask in the glow” of

your current project.

Ray Sheen teaches and consults on project and process

management. He has more than 25 years of experience

leading projects in defense, product development, manu-

facturing, IT, and other areas, and has run a project man-

agement offi ce in GE’s Electrical Distribution business.

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Chapter 21

Capturing Lessons

Learned

by Ray Sheen

Though every project is different, you can and should al-

ways learn from what you’ve just done. Companies with

a project management offi ce (PMO) conduct a lessons-

learned session—sometimes called a postmortem or an

after-action review—as a formal part of each project’s

closeout. Those without a PMO typically share insights

informally, as team members reminisce. Either way, it’s

important to capture learning while the experience is still

fresh.

For example, I recently led a small project that lasted

only a few months, and the team gathered for a dinner

immediately after we wrapped things up to talk about

what went right and what went wrong. It was a great con-

versation, and the next project we do will be better be-

cause of it. Since the project had a short time frame and

the team was intact for the whole thing, it was relatively

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Closeout

easy to discuss all aspects, from early planning through

completion. When we returned from the dinner, one of

the other team members and I updated the project folder

with notes about our lessons learned.

By contrast, when I managed an engineering depart-

ment at a Fortune 500 company, some of our projects

lasted three years, and the core teams inevitably changed

over time. I remember conducting a lessons-learned ses-

sion with a product development team right after it had

launched a new offering. Unfortunately, only one person

in the room had been on board back when the project

began—and she had moved into a different role by the

time it was winding down. With the benefi t of hindsight,

we could spot errors that the original team had made in

the project plan. But we could not identify the events or

explain the thinking that led to those errors, since most

of us had not been there. From then on, I took a different

approach to long-term projects: I started gathering les-

sons after each phase rather than waiting until the proj-

ect’s end, so the team could clearly recall and accurately

analyze what happened. This had the added bonus of al-

lowing us to incorporate the lessons sooner.

When I conduct lessons-learned sessions, I follow a

four-step process:

1. Evaluate the business case

The fi rst question I ask is, “Has the project delivered on

its promised result?” This isn’t meant to help you judge

how well the team did the work; it’s to gauge whether

the project has met senior management’s expectations

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Capturing Lessons Learned

as clarifi ed in the project selection and approval pro-

cess—and whether those goals were really within reach.

Projects are approved on the basis of forecasted business

benefi ts, such as sales growth, cost reduction, cycle-time

improvement, defect reduction, or increased capac-

ity. Whatever the forecasted benefi t, has it been real-

ized? If not, were the original assumptions and project

justifi cations inaccurate? By carefully examining these

issues and sharing the fi ndings with the project’s spon-

sor, a team can improve its organization’s ability to select

projects and to establish realistic objectives in project

charters. If you have a PMO, it will normally take re-

sponsibility for incorporating such lessons into project-

initiation processes.

2. Evaluate the project plan

Next I ask, “Was the project plan reasonable and ap-

propriate for the project goal and business conditions?”

I consider whether it excluded any necessary activities

or included any unnecessary ones. I also look at the cost

and schedule estimates for each activity. These should re-

fl ect the business and technology conditions at the time

the project began and provide sensible buffers. Then I

review the initial risk assessment to determine which

risks were not anticipated, which ones were improperly

rated, and which response approaches were inadequate.

Finally, I consider the practices established for both team

and stakeholder communication. Did the plan allow

enough opportunities for updates and information ex-

change? Did conversations take place at the right times,

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Closeout

with the right people? Were decisions made in a timely

fashion?

3. Evaluate the project-management

methodology

The third question I ask is, “Were the organization’s

project-

management procedures and systems benefi -

cial?” To answer it, I focus on whether the company even

has procedures, templates, or checklists; how current

and relevant they are (if they do exist); how appropri-

ate the mandated reviews and control points were for the

project; and how useful the project-management infor-

mation system was in communicating the project’s plans

and status to all the players.

Lessons learned are often embodied in companies’

project-management procedures and systems. When I

served as a consultant to a midsize contract manufacturer,

I was surprised to fi nd that it had no centralized project-

management procedures, even though all of its work was

project based. The fi rm simply hired experienced proj-

ect managers and allowed them free rein. This led to a

“rock star” mentality among project managers and no

consistency in approach. Anyone assigned to a new proj-

ect team had to learn new scheduling, budgeting, and

reporting techniques. The duplication of systems and

resulting ineffi ciency in project execution took a high

toll on the organization. Individuals participating on

multiple projects had to support multiple, often confl ict-

ing, meetings and report formats, leading to numerous

“re-dos.” The company established a PMO, and over the

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Capturing Lessons Learned

next three to four months we created the procedures and

systems that allowed for coordinated, simplifi ed project

planning and execution.

4. Evaluate individuals’ performance

Last, I ask, “What feedback do I need to give team mem-

bers on their performance (good or bad), and what should

I tell their supervisors?” I recommend following this

step, even if it’s not offi cially required, for all core team

members. I typically ask the full team to help identify the

“superheroes” among them. This both publicly reinforces

the importance of contributing your best and minimizes

the impression that the project leader is playing favor-

ites. The members with poor performance I address indi-

vidually. Of course, specifi c methods for conducting any

performance appraisals must be in accordance with local

human resource practices.

An effective lessons-learned process encourages contin-

uous improvement. However, in my experience, the re-

ports from these sessions are seldom read by anyone—so

don’t pin all your hopes on the documentation you’ve

tucked away in the project fi le. Instead, turn the lessons

into a list of action items for the PMO or for your team

members to ensure that they are incorporated into the

next project. Apply the insights right away by updat-

ing checklists, tweaking review processes, and making

any other necessary adjustments before the next project

launches.

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Closeout

Ray Sheen teaches and consults on project and process

management. He has more than 25 years of experience

leading projects in defense, product development, manu-

facturing, IT, and other areas, and has run a project man-

agement offi ce in GE’s Electrical Distribution business.

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Glossary

Charter. A concise written description of the project’s in-

tended work. The charter may contain the name of the

sponsor, the project’s benefi ts to the organization, a de-

scription of the objectives, the expected time frame, and

a budget.

Critical Path Method. A planning technique used for

complex projects that consist of several activities. Any

activities that need to be completed before others can

move forward are considered “critical”—in other words,

necessary for the on-time success of the project. The total

duration of the project is defi ned by the critical path.

Gantt chart. A bar chart showing when project tasks

should begin and when they should end.

Launch. A special meeting or event that marks a project’s

offi cial beginning.

Adapted from Harvard Business Essentials: Managing Projects Large

and Small (product #3213), Harvard Business Review Press, 2004.

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Glossary

Management review. A meeting where stakeholders may

examine several projects together, as well as individually,

to see if the portfolio as a whole will generate the desired

business results and to identify weaknesses.

Network diagram. A scheduling chart that indicates all

the relationships between tasks and reveals the critical

path. Generally synonymous with a PERT chart (below).

Performance Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT).

A scheduling method that, when charted, represents

every task as a node that connects with other nodes re-

quired to complete the project. A PERT chart may have

many parallel or interconnecting networks of tasks, so

periodic reviews are encouraged for complex projects.

Unlike the Gantt chart, it indicates all the important task

relationships and project milestones.

Post-evaluation. A meeting where the project team de-

briefs and documents its process for the purpose of learn-

ing and sharing lessons and making improvements. Also

called a lessons-learned session, a postmortem, or an

after-action review.

Project management offi

ce. A corporate offi ce (typically

in a large company) that establishes processes and tem-

plates to guide an organization’s project managers in

planning and execution, provides assistance to individu-

als trying to apply those processes, and sometimes man-

ages individual projects.

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Glossary

Project Steering Committee. A group that approves the

project charter, secures resources, and adjudicates all re-

quests to change key project elements, including deliver-

ables, the schedule, and the budget.

Punchlist. The project team’s fi nal list of action items,

approved by key stakeholders.

Scope creep. The tendency (often as a result of pres-

sure from stakeholders) to permit changes that exceed a

project’s scope and may wreak havoc on the schedule, the

quality of the work, or the budget.

Scope creep parking lot. A list of additional ideas or bells

and whistles proposed during a project. The idea is to

“park” them so they can be revisited later, without danger

of derailing the current project.

Stoplight chart. A project-monitoring tool that uses red,

yellow, and green color coding to indicate the status of

each project activity.

Sunk costs. Project investments that are no longer

recoverable.

Technical review. A meeting where an independent team

of experts provides an in-depth analysis of project results

to ensure that team members did the work accurately,

completely, and to the right quality standard. Sometimes

called a peer review.

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Glossary

Tollgate review. A meeting where the project team sum-

marizes the results of the preceding phase and presents

a plan for the next phase so stakeholders can decide

whether to approve, redirect, or cancel the project. Also

called a stage-gate review, or a phase-gate review.

Variance. The difference (positive or negative) between

actual and expected results in the budget. Managers use

variance to spot sources of trouble and areas of excep-

tional performance.

Work Breakdown Structure (WBS). A planning routine

that breaks down a project’s goal into the many tasks re-

quired to achieve it. The time and money needed to com-

plete those tasks are then estimated.

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Index

accountability, 109

capital expenditures, 17–18

action orientation, 106

change control board, 59–60

adaptive approach, to project

change management, 133–134,

management, 117–121

139–142

after-action review, 157–162

change tools, 139–142

agenda, for team meetings, 20–21

charter, 41–45

aggregate planning, 58–59

defi nition of, 163

assignments, planning, 13–14

elements of, 41

example of, 42–43

behavioral norms, 101, 105–106

explaining, at launch meeting,

bottlenecks, 16, 84

103

brainstorming, 68–69

objectives clearly stated in,

budget

43–44

developing a, 17–18

sample, 68–69

monitoring, 18–19

scope of, 45

build-up phase, 4–5, 13–18, 65–110

time frame in, 44

assignment planning in, 13–14

charts

budget development in, 17–18

Gantt, 15, 81, 82, 163

establishing behavioral norms

PERT, 14, 81, 83, 164

in, 105–106

stoplight, 132

launch meetings in, 16, 101–104

chunking, 120–121

priority setting in, 65–71

closeout phase, 4, 23–29, 151–162

schedule creation in, 14–16,

debrief with team in, 27

77–85

performance evaluation in,

team assembly in, 13

23–26, 151–152

team building in, 104

post-evaluation in, 157–162

team discipline in, 107–110

post-evaluation report in,

time-boxing in, 73–75

27–29

H6081.indb 167

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Index

closeout phase ( continued)

reasons for, 123–126

project closure in, 26–27,

rush to, 87–100

151–156

“fuzzy front end,” 47–51, 60

cognitive bias, 49–50

communication, among stake-

Gantt chart, 15, 81, 82, 163

holders, 7

goal setting, 6–7

confi dentiality, 106

consensus, 103

horizontal initiatives, 126

costs

determining, 17–18

implementation phase, 4, 18–23,

extra, 19

113–147

sunk, 143–146, 165

budget monitoring in, 18–19

critical path, 130

change management in,

Critical Path Method (CPM), 14,

133–134, 139–142

79–81, 163

controlling scope creep in,

60–62

deadlines

failure in, 123

pressure of, 22–23

people problems in, 135–138

setting, 44

problem management in,

working backward from, 14–16

22–23

debriefi ng, 27

progress reporting in, 19,

decision rules, 146–147

131–133

delays, tips for dealing with,

project monitoring in, 18–19,

20–21

127–134

delegation

team meetings in, 19–22,

of assignments, 14

113–115

reverse, 15

incentives

tips for effective, 15

describing, 104

deliverables

for on-time delivery, 21

early, 119

integration failure, 124

handoff of, 152–153

interpersonal problems, 137

integration of, 153–154

interpersonal skills, 34, 35

draft schedule, 79–83

iterative development, 97–98, 119

execution phase. See implementa-

judgment heuristics, 144

tion phase

expectations, setting realistic,

kickoff/launch meetings, 16,

50–51, 104

101–104

failure

launch, 163

rates, 53, 123

lessons-learned session, 157–162

168

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Index

management review, 131–132, 164

determining scope, resources,

meetings

and tasks in, 8–12, 57–60

attendance at, 105

failure in, 123

following up after, 115

“fuzzy front end” and, 47–51

interruptions during, 105

preparing for trade-offs in, 9

kickoff/launch, 16, 101–104,

problem defi nition in, 5, 48, 49

163

project premortem in, 53–56

pulse, 129

setting realistic expectations in,

running, 114

50–51

setting stage for, 113–114

stakeholder identifi cation in,

team, 19–22, 113–115

5–6

mutual accountability, 109

post-evaluation, 27, 157–162, 164

post-evaluation report, 27–29

network diagram, 78, 80–81, 164

postmortem, 157–162

premortem, 53–56

ongoing tasks, 28

priority setting, 65–71

organization, 7

problem defi nition, 5, 48, 49

organizational objectives, align-

problem management, 22–23

ment with, 37

problem-solving skills, 34

organizational skills, 34

product development, 58–59,

overcommitments, 84

87–100

overhead, 18

productivity, 73–75, 138

oversights, 84

progress reporting, 19, 131–133

overtime, 19

project creep, 57–62

project dashboard, 132

peer review, 133, 165

project management

people problems, 23, 135–138

adaptive approach to, 117–121

performance data, 129

build-up phase, 4, 13–18,

performance evaluation, 23–26,

65–110

130–131, 151–152

closeout phase, 4, 23–29,

Performance Evaluation and

151–162

Review Technique (PERT)

implementation phase, 4,

chart, 14, 81, 83, 164

18–23, 113–147

periodic system prototyping, 61

methodology, evaluation of,

personnel costs, 17

160–161

personnel problems, 23, 135–138

people involved in, 31–37

phase-gate review, 132–133, 166

planning phase, 3–12, 41–62

planning phase, 3–12, 41–62

tools, 10–12, 14, 24–26

aggregate planning in, 58–59

project management offi ce

charter and, 41–45

(PMO), 28, 157, 164

defi ning objectives in, 6–7

project manager, 31–32, 45

169

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Index

project monitoring, 18–19,

sacred cows, 105

127–134

schedule

project network diagram, 78,

creating, 14–16, 77–85

80–81, 164

draft, 79–83

project objectives

errors in, 83–84

alignment with, 37

optimizing, 83–85

in charter, 43–44

rushed, 87–100

clarifying, 66–67

scope, 8–9, 20, 45, 58

defi ning, 6–7

scope creep, 22, 57–62, 165

team member alignment with,

“scope creep parking lot,” 155–156,

37

165

project plan, 68–70, 130–131,

scope statement, 58

159–160

slack time, 84–85

project premortem, 53–56

SMART objectives, 6–7

project slowdowns, 20–21

software, project monitoring,

project steering committee, 36,

18–19

165

space costs, 17

project termination, 153

sponsors, 31, 45, 50–51, 102, 118

prospective hindsight, 53–56

stage-gate review, 132–133, 166

pulse meetings, 129

“stakeholder handshake,” 155

punchlist, 154–155, 165

stakeholder reviews, 131

stakeholders

quality

clarifying objectives with,

issues, 22–23

66–67

versus cost and time, 9

identifying, 5–6

versus speed, 87–100

input from, 48–49

standards, 7

renegotiating with, 20

steering committee, 36, 165

rapid development approach,

stoplight chart, 132, 165

87–100

sunk costs, 143–146, 165

rapid iterative prototyping, 119

supply costs, 17

rapid-results initiatives, 124–126

reports, post-evaluation, 27–29

tasks

research costs, 17

approaching iteratively, 119

resources

determining major, 8–12

available, 104

examining relationships be-

deploying additional, 20

tween, 77–78

determining, 8–9

ongoing, 28

reverse delegation, 15

prioritizing, 65–71

risk assessment, 29

scheduling, 77–85

rush to failure, 87–100

tracking, 127–129

170

H6081.indb 170

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Index

team

technical review, 133, 165

assembling your, 13

technical skills, 34, 35

discipline, 107–110

time, versus quality and cost, 9

productivity problems, 138

time-boxing, 73–75

structure problems, 136

time frame, 44

team building, 104

time slippage, 22

team leader, 32–34

tollgate review, 132–133, 166

team meetings, 19–22, 113–115

trade-offs, 9

team members

training, 13

alignment of, with objectives,

training costs, 17

37

travel costs, 17

behavioral norms for, 105–106

confl icts among, 106, 137

uncertainty, 47–48, 117–118

contributions and benefi ts,

35–36

variance, 166

criteria for, 34–35

vertical initiatives, 124–125, 126

debriefi ng, 27

entering and exiting of, 35

what-if planning, 120

evaluating performance of, 161

white space, 123

monitoring and control of,

Work Breakdown Structure

127–134

(WBS), 8–12, 13, 166

organizing, 67–68

“working backward,” 14–15, 49–50

planning assignments for, 13–14

workload imbalances, 84

problems with, 23, 135–138

171

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Notes

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11/6/12 11:24 AM

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Confl ict

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HBR Guide to

Dealing with

Confl ict

Amy Gallo

HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW PRESS

Boston, Massachusetts

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Identifi ers: LCCN 2016044710 | ISBN 9781633692152 (pbk. :

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What You’ll Learn

While some of us enjoy a lively debate with colleagues

and others prefer to suppress our feelings over disagree-

ments, we all struggle with conflict at work. Every day

we navigate an office full of competing interests, clash-

ing personalities, limited time and resources, and frag-

ile egos. Sure, we share the same goals as our colleagues,

but we don’t always agree on how to achieve them. We

work differently. We rub each other the wrong way. We

jockey for position. But disagreements don’t have to be

a source of unhealthy tension. So how can you deal with

conflict in a way that is both professional and produc-

tive—where it improves both your work and your rela-

tionships? This guide lays out a straightforward process

for addressing nebulous situations. You start by under-

standing whether you generally seek or avoid conflict,

identifying the most frequent reasons for disagreement,

and knowing what approaches work for what scenarios.

Then, if you decide to address your situation, you use

that information to plan and conduct a productive con-

versation. Knowing there is a process to follow can make

What You’ll Learn

confl ict more manageable. This guide will give you the

advice you need to:

• Understand the most common sources of confl ict

• Explore your options for addressing a

disagreement

• Recognize whether you—and your counterpart—

typically seek or avoid conflict

• Assess the situation that’s making you feel

uncomfortable

• Prepare for and engage in a diffi cult conversation

• Manage your and your counterpart’s emotions

• Develop a resolution together

• Know when to walk away

• Repair

relationships

vi

Contents

Preface ix

Confl ict at work is inevitable—but it doesn’t

have to be destructive.

BY LINDA HILL

Introduction: A Practical Plan for Dealing with Conflict xvii

Take it step by step.

SECTION ONE

Preparing for Confl ict Before It Happens

1. Types of Confl ict

3

Identify the source.

2. Your Options for Handling Confl ict

15

Diff erent situations call for diff erent

approaches.

3. Recognize Your Natural Tendency

31

Most of us fall into one of two camps.

Contents

SECTION TWO

Managing a Confl ict

4. Assess the Situation

43

Understand the players and the larger

context.

5. Get Ready for the Conversation

61

Don’t rush in.

6. Have a Productive Conversation

75

Listen and be heard.

SECTION THREE

Resolving a Confl ict

7. Get to a Resolution and Make a Plan

101

Collaborate to fi nd a creative solution.

8. Repair the Relationship

111

Rebuild trust and move on.

9. Navigate Common Situations

121

What to do if . . .

Sources 165

Featured Experts

175

Index 185

About the Author

193

viii

Preface

by Linda Hill

Years ago, a colleague and I got into a fi ght. I had been

selected to lead a cross-functional task force to review a

portion of our MBA curricula. This was a diverse group

of people—a few fellow junior faculty, people from other

departments, and professors who had been at the school

for decades, including my senior colleague and friend,

whom I’ll call Elizabeth. I was a brand-new tenured pro-

fessor, and although I was surprised that I’d been picked

to lead the team, I was also honored. And I was glad that

I would be able to rely on Elizabeth for her expertise. Af-

ter all, she had much more experience than I did.

Yet each time the group met, Elizabeth wasn’t partici-

pating. She sat silently and rarely, if ever, had anything

positive to contribute. We’d be talking about a topic that

I knew she had an opinion on, and still she didn’t say

anything.

When she did open her mouth, it was to dispar-

age me. In front of the group, she picked on what I felt

were trivial things, like the fact that I didn’t have all the

ix

Preface

supplemental materials in the same order as they were

listed in the agenda. I could tell that something was

wrong.

So could the rest of the team. People exchanged

glances when Elizabeth openly criticized me for not be-

ing prepared. Some people tried to jump in and move

things along when things got tense between us. But it

was clear that the situation was making the whole team

uncomfortable—me, Elizabeth, and everybody else.

I was confounded. Elizabeth and I had always got-

ten along, and whenever we’d collaborated in the past, it

went well. After a few weeks of enduring her alternating

silent treatment and carping, I decided to talk to her. I

closed her offi ce door behind me, sat down, and asked,

“We aren’t really working well together, are we?”

I wasn’t prepared for what came next. She started

yelling at me. She thought that I was doing a horrible job

of running the group, that we weren’t making progress

on the evaluation, and that I was wasting her and every-

one else’s time. I felt backed into a corner, and as a re-

sult, I raised my voice, too, defending myself against her

accusations.

This was not a smart way to handle the situation. It

quickly became clear that neither of us wanted to be

fi ghting. I didn’t know what to do. I was concerned that

without Elizabeth on board, the group would never be

able to fi nish our work. And more importantly, I worried

that Elizabeth’s and my relationship, a relationship that

I valued, was going to be irreparably damaged. And she

didn’t seem to be doing any better.

x

Preface

I’m not proud of what I did—you should never raise

your voice at people at work. It felt horrible at the time;

I was exasperated, angry, upset, questioning myself and

Elizabeth. But our disagreement over who should be in

charge of the group, how it should be run, and whose

expertise needed to be tapped and in what way was not

necessarily negative in and of itself. These questions

needed to be addressed for the group to do its best work

and for me to be effective as a leader.

During our heated exchange we got those issues out

into the open. But how we handled that initial discus-

sion was problematic—we weren’t going to solve the is-

sues we’d raised if we were both defensive. We needed to

work together.

And that’s just the thing—confl ict at work is going to

happen, no matter what you do. And it should. It can be

good for you, your team, and your organization. But how

you deal with it can make the difference between a nega-

tive interaction and a productive one.

That’s why you’ve turned to this guide. We don’t want

to have screaming matches with colleagues. We don’t

want to feel as if our projects will fail unless we give in

to what someone else wants. We don’t want to lose sleep

over an intense interaction. We want to better under-

stand why confl ict happens, our options for addressing

it, and how to navigate these disagreements so that we

end up with our dignity and relationships intact.

Imagine how things with Elizabeth would’ve gone

if I hadn’t just waltzed into her offi ce and confronted

her. What if I had thought through the discussion in

xi

Preface

advance, considering what Elizabeth and I were actu-

ally disagreeing about, and thinking about our different

personalities? What if I had chosen the right time and

place for us to talk, framed my message carefully, heard

her out, and explained my position? Or what if Elizabeth

had come to me earlier and explained why she wasn’t

participating, made clear that her issues weren’t per-

sonal but had to do with how I was running the group or

what the team was trying to achieve? Instead of sitting

there staring at each other, fuming, we might’ve been en-

gaged in a thoughtful, productive discussion.

Learning to navigate conflicts such as the one I had

with Elizabeth is not really a choice in today’s organiza-

tions. There’s always going to be diversity, interdepen-

dence, and competition over scarce resources. And that’s

not a bad thing. When passionate people with different

perspectives collaborate to address a problem or an op-

portunity, there can be give-and-take and productive

disagreement. That healthy competition helps create

better products, features, and solutions. The research

on innovation is clear: Without “creative abrasion” you

won’t have a robust marketplace of new ideas. The most

effective people are those who can disagree construc-

tively, not destructively, and keep difficult conversations

substantive, not personal.

Thankfully, mercifully really, in the middle of our fi ght,

Elizabeth paused and asked if I wanted to get coffee with

her across campus. Not sure what else to do, I agreed.

xii

Preface

The change of scenery was exactly what we needed.

As we walked across campus, we both calmed down and

Elizabeth opened up about the source of her frustrations.

It turns out that I was driving her crazy. I’m not a linear

thinker and she is. The process I was using was infuri-

ating to her. She wanted to know how each step led to

the next, and I was willing to let things evolve more or-

ganically. Plus she felt as if I wasn’t using her expertise. I

assumed people would speak up if they had ideas—that

those with the most experience, such as Elizabeth, would

chime in when they wanted to, so I didn’t call on any-

one in particular and never met with individual team

members outside the group to get their perspective. By

not calling on her, or openly acknowledging her exper-

tise and asking for her opinion, I had upset her. She felt

that I hadn’t shown her enough respect. It’s not that I

didn’t feel it (in fact, I assumed that she assumed that I

respected her), but I didn’t demonstrate it.

Perhaps what really got me in trouble was that I

hadn’t tried to see the situation from her perspective. I

didn’t think about how she might feel having someone

with far less experience be in charge of something she

cared about so much.

We didn’t see eye to eye on how the committee should

be managed—and she felt mistreated. We both were un-

afraid of confl ict and typically approached it head-on,

which is why we ended up in such a heated exchange in

her offi ce.

Her complaints made me realize that perhaps oth-

ers in the group were having similar reactions. I wasn’t

xiii

Preface

adapting my style for what worked best for the team—

I was doing what was most comfortable to me. Also, I

had assumed that by virtue of holding the leadership po-

sition, I had credibility. I didn’t think I needed to earn

everyone’s trust, but I absolutely did.

Once we understood what exactly we were fighting

about, and we had heard each other out, we were able

to move toward a resolution. I asked for Elizabeth’s ad-

vice. How would she run the group? I was a new leader,

and I wanted to learn from her. We both wanted the

same thing—to produce the best curricula for our stu-

dents—and to get there, I vowed to be more respectful

of the wisdom and experience she brought to the group

and to be more explicit about the process I was using to

run the meetings. I started to ask her opinion before the

team met. If I thought there was something she wouldn’t

agree with, I gave her a heads-up. And I started regularly

asking everyone to suggest options before we started

evaluating them so that we could objectively look at the

pros and cons.

Elizabeth made changes after our discussion, too.

She stopped nitpicking. She backed off and gave me

more space. Because everyone deeply respected her, the

change in her attitude infl uenced the group positively.

People were more at ease and offered ideas freely. Sug-

gestions were no longer “Elizabeth’s idea” or “Linda’s

idea”; they were all viable options we could evaluate

based on their merits.

I was fortunate. I was able to preserve my relationship

with Elizabeth, and the task force’s work was better as a

consequence of our fi ght.

xiv

Preface

Looking back, I wish I had had the advice in this book

before I spoke to Elizabeth. I could’ve saved us both a lot

of grief if I had better understood the common sources

of confl ict, how people approach it differently, and the

various options and strategies for solving it.

That’s what you’ll get in the pages ahead. You’ll learn

how to effectively navigate conflicts with your boss, your

peers, your direct reports, and partners outside your

company. You’ll do the foundational work of better un-

derstanding the different types of conflict, your own

tendency toward approaching it, and your options for

resolving it. Then you’ll learn the process to follow when

a specific conflict arises—from assessing what kind of

conflict it is, to preparing for the conversation, to hear-

ing your counterpart out, and to ultimately reaching a

satisfying resolution and repairing your relationship, if

necessary.

Mastering all of this will not absolve you from having

fi ghts at work. I still have them, for sure. We all do, and

maybe on occasion you will lose your temper, say some-

thing ugly, and behave in a way that you regret. But by

following the advice in this book, those occasions will be

fewer and less painful—for you and your colleagues.

xv

Introduction: A Practical Plan

for Dealing with Confl ict

Let’s face it: There’s no such thing as a confl ict-free of-

fi ce. We fi ght at work. We disagree about how to imple-

ment a new IT system. We battle over which strategy to

pursue. We engage in turf wars about who gets to lead

the website redesign project. And sometimes, we just act

like passive- aggressive jerks toward one another.

And as uncomfortable and draining as confl ict can be,

confl ict in and of itself isn’t really the problem. It’s how

we handle it that matters.

Consider these two fi ctional stories:

Celia and her colleague, Sara, disagreed about how to

word an important provision in a client contract. As

the legal expert, Celia felt Sara’s suggestion was too

vague and perhaps even intentionally deceptive to the

customer—implying better payment terms than their

company was willing to allow. When Celia pointed out

how the language might be misinterpreted, Sara stood

her ground. Celia knew that this was an important

customer for the company, and the CEO was eagerly

xvii

Introduction

awaiting news that the deal was closed, so she let it go.

But she worried for several weeks whether she should’ve

pushed harder. She lost sleep over it, avoided Sara at

the offi ce, and dreaded the date when the customer

would receive its fi rst invoice. And rightly so—when

that time came, the customer was extremely unhappy

and Celia ended up with Sara in the CEO’s offi ce hav-

ing an all-out fi ght over whose fault it was. The two

colleagues didn’t speak for weeks afterward, and it took

months for Celia’s manager to regain trust that she

could handle important contracts.

Now, let’s take a look at what happened with a man-

ager named Antonio.

Antonio had always had a positive relationship with

his boss, Rebecca, but lately he noticed that she was

frequently talking over him. As soon as Antonio started

to say something, Rebecca would interrupt, often

dismissing his view and presenting an opposing one.

Antonio was annoyed. He wanted to pull Rebecca aside

and tell her to quit it. But before doing that, he spent

some time trying to understand what was going on and

seeing things from Rebecca’s perspective. He knew that

she wasn’t afraid of confl ict and that she might not see

her behavior as rudely as he did. He also remembered

a conversation in which Rebecca revealed that she was

under pressure from the company’s senior team to

demonstrate that she had fresh ideas. With these things

in mind, he asked Rebecca out for coffee, explained that

he wanted to maintain their relationship but that he

was hurt by her behavior. At fi rst, Rebecca was defen-

xviii

Introduction

sive, claiming that it was all in Antonio’s head, but

when he gave a few examples, she conceded that she’d

been stressed and was perhaps taking it out on him. He

offered to support her in meetings, even brainstorming

ideas with her beforehand, and she vowed to watch the

interruptions. They continued to work together for fi ve

more years and relied on each other for candid feed-

back and advice.

You might be tempted to think that Celia was in a

tougher situation than Antonio—she was dealing with a

stubborn peer and an important client situation. She had

the CEO breathing down her neck, too. But Celia’s con-

fl ict wasn’t any worse or more intense than Antonio’s. He

was dealing with his boss—the most infl uential person in

his work life—and stood to lose a lot if things went south.

Antonio simply handled the situation better. He took

time to think through what was really happening, to see

the confl ict from Rebecca’s perspective, and to prepare

for his discussion with her.

Celia, of course, is not alone. When we perceive the

risks of engaging in confl ict to be greater than the po-

tential upsides, many of us prefer to stifl e our feelings

and move on rather than speak up. And understandably

so, as there are negative consequences to mishandling

disagreements.

The Downsides of Confl ict

Linda Hill’s story in the preface and Celia’s story here illus-

trate that when handled poorly—or avoided altogether—

confl ict can derail projects, damage client relationships,

or lose company business. Initiatives slow to a standstill,

xix

Introduction

while warring factions sort out their differences or teams

risk not meeting their goals at all. “Energy and creativ-

ity get siphoned off,” explains Annie McKee, an expert in

emotional intelligence, and rather than focusing on ac-

complishing their objectives, team members are absorbed

by their differences. And people in organizations, says

McKee, “often have a very long memory when it comes

to fi ghting at work. It doesn’t matter what the underlying

cause was or who was right or wrong. All people remem-

ber is that it was a mess, and that you were involved.”

Avoiding confl ict (as Celia chose to do) can just

make things worse. In fact, unspoken disagreements can

have consequences that are as signifi cant as a conference

room shouting match. Jeanne Brett, a negotiations pro-

fessor, warns, “Confl ict that’s not expressed can be worse

than confl ict that is.” Sometimes we’re upset with people

and they have no idea we’re struggling with them. This

negativity can bleed into your interactions. Or worse,

your feelings simmer underneath the surface until your

coworker does something that makes you explode, blind-

siding your unsuspecting colleague.

Confl ict also takes an emotional toll. “When you’re

consumed with a fi ght, it’s hard to draw the boundary

and it often spills over into your life,” says McKee. We

shred our nails worrying about what to say to a colleague

with whom we’re fi ghting, or we waste hours agoniz-

ing over whether we could have better articulated our

perspective on a contentious issue. Over time, persis-

tent confl ict causes health problems. A Duke University

Medical Center study showed that an intensely angry

episode can lead to an eightfold increase in risk of heart

attack, and anger has been linked to strokes, irregular

xx

Introduction

heartbeat, sleep problems, excess eating, and insulin re-

sistance, which can help cause diabetes.

The Benefi ts of Confl ict

Luckily, however, when handled well, confl ict can have

positive outcomes: It can help you be more creative,

spark new ideas, and even strengthen bonds with your

coworkers, as it did between Antonio and Rebecca.

You might dream of living in a peaceful utopia, but it

wouldn’t be good for your company, your work, or you.

“Confl ict allows the team to come to terms with diffi -

cult situations, to synthesize diverse perspectives, and to

make sure solutions are well thought out. Confl ict is un-

comfortable, but it is the source of true innovation and

also a critical process in identifying and mitigating risks,”

says Liane Davey, an expert in team dynamics.

Here are some of the specifi c benefi ts:

• Better work outcomes: When you and your co-

workers push one another to continuously ask if

there’s a better approach, that creative friction is

likely to lead to new solutions. And there’s rarely a

fi xed amount of value to be gained in a disagree-

ment. If you and your colleague are arguing about

the best way to roll out a new initiative—he wants

to launch in a single market fi rst and you want

to enter several at one time—you’ll be forced to

explore the pros and cons of each approach and

ideally fi nd the best solutions. It may be that you

decide to run the pilot he wants but on a shorter

time frame so that you get the revenue from reach-

ing the other markets sooner.

xxi

Introduction

• Opportunity to learn and grow: As uncomfort-

able as it may feel when someone challenges your

ideas, it’s an opportunity to learn. You gain experi-

ence from incorporating feedback, try new things,

and evolve as a manager. When a peer chews you

out after an important presentation because you

didn’t give her team credit for their work, the

words may sting, but you’re more likely to think

through everyone’s perspectives before preparing

your next talk.

• Improved relationships: By working through

confl ict together, you’ll feel closer to the people

around you and gain a better understanding of

what matters to them and how they prefer to work.

You’ll also set an important precedent: that it’s

possible to have “good” fi ghts and then move on.

Two regional managers who engage in a lengthy

debate about who should be responsible for main-

taining quality in their region have, at the end of

the day, learned information about each other that

will help them work better together in the future.

And they’ve shown their teams that it’s possible

to move beyond confl ict, to not get entrenched

in a viewpoint but to make progress toward a

resolution.

• Job satisfaction: When you’re not afraid to con-

structively disagree, or even fi ght, about issues

at work, you’re likely to be happier to go to the

offi ce, be satisfi ed with what you accomplish, and

enjoy interactions with your colleagues. Instead of

xxii

Introduction

feeling as if you have to walk on eggshells, you can

focus on getting your work done. A study in China

showed a correlation between the use of certain

approaches to confl ict management—ones in

which employees pursue a win-win situation, care

for others, and focus on common interests—and

an employee’s happiness at work.

For confl ict to have any of these benefi ts, you have to

learn the skills to proactively address problems and en-

gage in healthy discussions. Fortunately, you have ample

opportunity to try. The average person spends nearly

three hours each week dealing with confl ict at work, ac-

cording to a study by CPP Global. Another study by CPP

showed that managers report spending 18% to 26% of

their time dealing with confl icts. Since we spend so much

time engaged in disagreements, it’s worth our effort to

get them right—to temper our reactions and manage the

confl ict so that it’s more productive.

How do you do that? This book will help you break

through the scary, emotional stuff and take a practical,

ordered approach to dealing with conflict.

A Plan for Handling Confl ict

I’ll briefl y outline here a better approach for handling

confl ict so that you get a sense of the whole process be-

fore delving into the individual steps and specifi c scenar-

ios in later chapters.

You start by understanding confl ict better. Before we

engage in an unhealthy way, it helps to know what’s at

the root of the disagreement. First, you need to know the

xxiii

Introduction

various sources of confl ict (see chapter 1, “Types of Con-

fl ict”). There are four main types: relationship (a per-

sonal disagreement), task (disagreement over what the

goal is), process (disagreement over the means or pro-

cess for achieving a goal), and status (disagreement over

your standing in a group). These categories will help you

fi gure out what’s actually happening when you get into a

confl ict—even when your fi ght doesn’t neatly fi t into one

bucket.

The second piece of information you need is to un-

derstand your options (see chapter 2, “Your Options

for Handling Confl ict”). In general, there are four from

which to choose when confronting a confl ict. The fi rst,

which is more common than you might think, is to do

nothing. You don’t say anything to your colleague, you

let the comment go, or you simply walk away and go on

as if the confl ict hasn’t happened. The second option is

to address the confl ict, but indirectly. Instead of talking

through what’s going on with your coworker, you might

involve your boss or a third party, or hint at the confl ict

without ever candidly naming it. This option is more

common in cultures such as East Asia, where saving face

is important. The third option is to address the confl ict

directly. This is where the rest of the book focuses—on

preparing for and having a direct conversation with your

counterpart. The fi nal option—and typically your last re-

sort—is to exit the relationship.

The third and fi nal aspect to having a more productive

confl ict is to know what people’s natural tendencies are

when it comes to confl ict. There are generally two types

of people: those who gravitate toward conflict and those

xxiv

Introduction

who want to take cover under their desks whenever

tensions rise. Avoiders tend to shy away or even hide

from disagreements. Seekers are more eager to engage

in conflict when it arises (or even find ways to create it).

In chapter 3 (“Recognize Your Natural Tendency”), you’ll

get to know which style you gravitate toward (and tips

for sussing out your counterpart’s tendency) so that you

can make a conscious choice about how to address a

disagreement.

Table I-1 gives you an overview of this foundational

work.

Once you’ve completed this groundwork, it’s time to

put your knowledge into practice. When faced with a

specific situation—your colleague raises his voice, you’re

battling with your fi nance counterpart over next year’s

budget, your boss is acting like a jerk—start by quickly

taking stock of what you know about your counterpart

TABLE I-1

Confl ict at a glance

Types of confl ict

Options for

(confl ict is over . . .)

handling

Natural tendencies

1. Relationship (personal

1. Do

1. Confl ict avoider

issues, such as how you’re

nothing.

•  Shies away from

being treated)

disagreements

•  Cares most about

2. Task (the goal,

2. Address

harmony

what you’re trying to

indirectly.

achieve)

3. Process (the process,

3. Address

2. Confl ict seeker

how work gets done)

directly.

•  Eager to engage in

disagreements

4. Status (your standing

4. Exit the

•  Cares most about

in a group or who’s in

relationship.

directness and honesty

charge)

xxv

Introduction

(is she a seeker like you, or are you both avoiders?) and

the type of confl ict you’re having (see chapter 4, “Assess

the Situation”). This will give you a better picture of what

you’re up against.

You’ll also need to sort out what your goal is: Do you

want to move your stalled project forward? Preserve the

relationship? Just move on? That will help you make a

smart choice about which of your four options to exer-

cise. If you choose to do nothing or exit the relationship,

this is where your journey ends. You can skip to chapter 8

(“Repair the Relationship”) and focus on how to rebuild

trust and move on. If you prefer to address the confl ict

indirectly, you’ll choose one of the tactics laid out in chap-

ter 4. If you decide to address the confl ict directly, then

you’ll start to prepare for the conversation (see chap-

ter 5, “Get Ready for the Conversation”). This involves

the following eight steps:

1. Check your mindset.

2. See the situation from your counterpart’s

perspective.

3. Consider the larger organizational context.

4. Plan your message.

5. Prepare for multiple scenarios.

6. Pick the right time.

7. Choose the right place.

8.

Vent.

xxvi

Introduction

Then you’re ready to sit down with your colleague and

talk through what’s happening (see chapter 6, “Have a

Productive Conversation”). You’ll start by framing the

conversation so that you get off on the right foot. You

want to form a bond with your counterpart by focusing

on where you agree. Then you’ll do three things simulta-

neously: Manage your and your counterpart’s emotions,

listen to your colleague’s perspective, and make your

viewpoint heard. These are all toward the goal of trying

to fi nd a solution to the underlying confl ict.

Ideally in that conversation, or in subsequent ones,

you’ll fi nd a resolution that meets both of your needs

(see chapter 7, “Get to a Resolution and Make a Plan”).

And if you aren’t able to reach a conclusion, you’ll at

least agree on how to move forward.

No matter what sort of end your conflict comes to,

you’ll need to figure out how to repair the relationship

and move on (see chapter 8). Conflict can bring up lots

of negative emotions—anger, frustration, annoyance, re-

sentment—and it’s important to clear the air and lay the

groundwork for a strong relationship going forward.

Conflict can feel less scary and more manageable when

you approach it methodically. You’ll need to be flexible

and adapt as the situation takes unexpected turns, but

this book will help you develop the basic skills and strat-

egies you need. There are many examples throughout

(real stories disguised and combined) to show you how

others have tackled similar challenges. Of course, noth-

ing ever goes exactly as planned, so the final chapter

addresses specific scenarios, such as what to do when

xxvii

Introduction

you’re dealing with a bully or how to navigate a disagree-

ment with a vendor (see chapter 9, “Navigate Common

Situations” ). When you learn to manage conflict, it has

fewer downsides and more benefits, and it boosts your

overall productivity. “If you’re going to be a truly effec-

tive manager, you’re going to have to deal with conflict.

Otherwise you’re going to end up fighting with everyone

or simply giving them what they want,” says John Ratey,

a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. By

following the process in this guide, you can reap the ben-

efi ts of confl ict while mitigating its risks. You will also

become more confi dent in proactively addressing dis-

agreements and engaging in diffi cult discussions.

xxviii

SECTION ONE

Preparing for

Confl ict Before

It Happens

CHAPTER 1

Types of Confl ict

In the middle of a dispute, when your brain kicks into

overdrive, you might be stuck wondering, Where did this

conversation go wrong? or Why is my coworker so mad?

It might feel as if your colleague is being unreasonable,

that the situation is intractable, or that your relationship

will never recover.

Uncovering what’s truly going on—what’s at the root

of the disagreement—will help you set aside your emo-

tional reaction and begin to solve the problem.

There are generally four types of confl ict: relation-

ship, task, process, and status (see table 1-1).

The common sources of conflict are neatly delineated

here, but in reality, disagreements rarely fall into just one

of these categories. More often, there are multiple things

going on and a confl ict may start as one type and expand

into another. We’ll follow the story of a cross-functional

team at TechCorp, a fictional tech company, to illustrate

what these categories look like in the real world.

3

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TABLE 1

Types of confl

Type of confl

Relationship

Task

Pr

Status

Types of Confl ict

Relationship

This is what we most often assume is happening when

we get into a confl ict—a clash of personalities.

What it is

A personal disagreement. Sometimes called an interper-

sonal or emotional conflict, it’s when one or both of you

feel disrespected or hurt. It includes:

• Snapping at each other in meetings

• Exchanging snarky emails

• Avoiding eye contact in the hallway

• Interrupting, or talking over, a colleague in a

meeting

• Using a condescending tone to indicate your

disagreement

• Arguing over who’s right and who’s wrong

Quite often a relationship conflict starts as something

else. A disagreement over a project schedule escalates

to bickering that disrupts a team meeting. Or a differ-

ence of opinion on the company’s strategy devolves into

a heated debate about who’s right and who’s wrong. You

may both have valid points, and good intentions, but

some disagreements turn ugly. Annie McKee describes

it this way: “In a perfect world, we follow the textbook

advice, treat conflict logically, behave like adults, and get

on with it. The problem is, we’re not working in a perfect

5

Preparing for Confl ict Before It Happens

world, and none of us is perfect. We each bring our own

baggage to work every day. And some of our issues—

insecurity, the desire for power and control, habitual vic-

timhood—rear their heads again and again.”

Example

A team of functional leaders at TechCorp all agree that

one of their best-performing products needs a new fea-

ture, but the SVP of product development and the SVP

of engineering can’t agree on the ultimate goal. Their

differing views gradually escalated from lively debate

to a public blowout. Now they trade passive-aggressive

barbs over group emails and interrupt each other in

meetings. Some teammates have become so uncomfort-

able witnessing the interactions that they’ve started de-

clining meetings in which they know both will be pres-

ent. Not only do the SVPs disagree, they can’t believe

that the other person doesn’t see it the same way. It’s no

longer about what’s best for TechCorp and the customer.

For both of them, it’s about being right.

The benefi ts of managing it well

There are typically few benefi ts to relationship confl ict,

says Jeanne Brett. When our egos and sense of pride

get involved, it’s painful, and challenging to manage

effectively.

But even uncomfortable interpersonal confl ict can have

positive outcomes. Jonathan Hughes, an expert on corpo-

rate negotiations and relationship management, points

out that these types of disputes give us the opportunity to

learn more about ourselves and our colleagues. We better

6

Types of Confl ict

understand each other’s values, working styles, and per-

sonalities and therefore build better relationships, “which

creates a virtuous cycle,” he says. If you’ve established that

you can successfully navigate conflict, you’re more likely

to give honest feedback and challenge each other when

necessary.

Task

The most common source of disagreement at work is

task confl ict.

What it is

A dispute over the goal of a task or project or what you’re

trying to achieve. This includes disagreements about:

• The agenda for a staff meeting

• How the success of a new initiative should be de-

fi ned or measured

• Whether the customers or the employees should

come first

• How much risk a company should assume when

partnering with other organizations

• Whether to prioritize revenue or customer

satisfaction

“The most common form of task confl ict in organi-

zations is functional,” explains Brett. Marketing, legal,

and fi nance may look at the same problem and see it

completely differently. For example, marketing may lobby

to put the customer fi rst, while legal’s aim is to protect

7

Preparing for Confl ict Before It Happens

the company from risk, and fi nance is trying to cut costs.

Each may argue that their perspective on how to solve

the problem is more important. “In reality, all those view-

points and each functional way of addressing the problem

are relevant and should be integrated into the solution,”

says Brett.

Example

The functional leaders at TechCorp all agree that they

want the new feature, but they can’t agree on the objec-

tive. Marketing sees it as an opportunity to expand the

company’s market share. Finance is focused on improv-

ing the business’s margins. And the engineers on the

team care about developing something cool that inte-

grates the latest technology. If they can’t agree on what

success means for the new feature, they won’t be able to

move the project forward—or even worse, they’ll each

take it in a separate direction, wasting time and the com-

pany’s resources. The engineers spent all weekend de-

veloping a prototype of the new feature, but the fi nance

managers are worried that it will be too expensive to

produce and the marketing lead isn’t sure users will ap-

preciate the added functionality.

The benefi ts of managing it well

When we have productive discussions about our differ-

ent views of project goals or how we should defi ne suc-

cess, we gain valuable insights, says Hughes. “We live in

a world of fi nite resources, and this type of conversation

is helpful in terms of coming to smart decisions about

which trade-offs to make.” Should the new feature have

8

Types of Confl ict

less functionality and be more affordable to make? Or is

it important to delight customers so that they stay with

the company longer? At TechCorp, the new feature is

likely to be more robust and useful to the customer pre-

cisely because each of the functions is pushing its own

agenda. The new feature won’t satisfy everyone, but air-

ing each group’s goals is likely to serve up new ideas and

generate productive conversations about what will make

the feature successful—more so than if the team had just

driven toward one person’s objective.

Process

Another common type of confl ict is not about what

you’re doing but how you’re doing it.

What it is

A disagreement over how to carry out a project or task,

the means or process you use to reach your goal. This in-

cludes differences on:

• The best tactic for reaching a quarterly target

• How to implement a new HR policy

• How decisions should be made in a meeting

• How quickly a project should be completed

• Who should be consulted and included as the proj-

ect is carried out

Process disagreements are easily confused with task

confl icts. You think you’re arguing over the outcome

when really you can’t agree on how to make a decision.

9

Preparing for Confl ict Before It Happens

For example, you might get locked into a battle with a

coworker over the right strategy for a new project when

what you need to settle is not the specifi c tactic but who

gets to make the fi nal call. Or you think the company

should do customer research fi rst and a coworker thinks

it should get a good-enough product out in the market

and see what happens.

Example

At TechCorp, fi nance thinks that the group should come

up with a proposal for the new feature that everyone can

agree on, but marketing is lobbying to take a vote and

let the majority rule. Marketing is also at odds with the

engineers because they think they should conduct cus-

tomer focus groups throughout the course of develop-

ment, starting as soon as possible, while the engineers

think they should wait until they have an internally ap-

proved prototype. None of the three functions agrees on

the timeline for completing the project—in time for an

important trade show or within the fi scal year.

The benefi ts of managing it well

Disagreements over how to get something done can help

bring about process improvements or unearth hidden

benefi ts. A good way to come up with several viable op-

tions, Hughes suggests, is to ask, “What other ways can

we imagine meeting our goals?” and then allow your

team to offer answers. “People tend to frame things in an

unnecessary binary fashion: should we do this or that,

but there’s almost always a third or fourth way as well,”

he says. It’s natural for fi nance to lobby for production

10

Types of Confl ict

schedules that align with fi scal year milestones. But dis-

cussing the timing with the entire group reveals a criti-

cal trade show date, reminds the group of key fi scal-year

dates, and allows everyone to share their own team’s

schedule and resource constraints. As with task confl ict,

process confl ict can improve results by drawing on the

expertise of the whole group.

Status

A less common—but still problematic—source of con-

fl ict is when people disagree over their standing within

a group.

What it is

A disagreement over who’s in charge or who deserves

credit for the work. For example, you think you should

be leading an initiative, while your worker thinks he

should. It can also include:

• Jockeying for leadership, especially in a team with-

out a formal or designated leader

• Competing to run a high-profi le project

• Arguing over or dominating shared resources

• Competing for status symbols, such as the corner

offi ce, the latest technology, or having an adminis-

trative assistant

Example

The SVP of engineering at TechCorp and the SVP of new

product development are going head to head over which

11

Preparing for Confl ict Before It Happens

one of them should lead the group that’s designing the

new feature. In an effort to gain an advantage in this

horse race, when the senior leaders congratulate the

team on the work so far, the SVP of engineering credits

the long hours his group put in, while the SVP of new

product development claims it was her team’s brain-

storming sessions and market research that led to the

concept for the snazzy new feature.

The benefi ts of managing it well

When a status confl ict is resolved, there’s clarity for the

team and anyone working with them. “A clear status hi-

erarchy is effi cient in that everyone knows his or her role

and responsibility,” says Brett. This makes it easier to co-

ordinate work and get things done smoothly. “In stable

social hierarchies, lower-status individuals defer to those

with higher status, and higher-status individuals look

out for the welfare of lower-status ones. At least that is

how it is supposed to work,” she says.

It bears repeating that it’s rare to have a confl ict that

fi ts neatly into just one of these categories. Often, as the

TechCorp example shows, disagreements have elements

of all four, and many that start as another type end up

as relationship confl icts. Separating out each type cuts

through the noise of the confl ict to what’s really at hand.

Instead of a morass of disagreements, you have an or-

ganized list of issues to resolve. “Finding the root causes

helps you get into problem-solving mode,” says Hughes.

“It doesn’t automatically solve everything. It’s not like

12

Types of Confl ict

the heavens open and the angels sing and the confl ict is

over. But it does make it easier to resolve.”

No matter what kind of confl ict you’re having—or if

your confl ict is a mess of all four types—you aren’t stuck.

You have options for moving forward.

13

CHAPTER 2

Your Options for

Handling Confl ict

Some people might tell you that the only way to man-

age work disagreements is to dive right in and straighten

things out. This isn’t true. While dealing with the con-

fl ict directly can be the most effective route, it isn’t the

only one.

In this chapter I explain your four options: Do noth-

ing, address it indirectly, address it directly, and exit the

relationship (see table 4-2 in chapter 4, “Assess the Situ-

ation,” for an overview of these options).

Do Nothing

When you choose to do nothing, you don’t say anything

to your colleague, you let the comment go, or you simply

walk away and carry on as if the confl ict didn’t happen.

Instead of acting on any feelings or impulses you have

about a disagreement, you swallow them and move on.

This isn’t a cop-out—it’s a seemingly easy and low-effort

15

Preparing for Confl ict Before It Happens

option for managing conflict. “Most people tend toward

loyalty,” says Brian Uzzi, a leadership professor. “That’s be-

cause it’s easier to lower your expectations than deal with

the real issues at hand.” To be clear, this isn’t taking your

bat and ball and going home or storming off. This is sim-

ply keeping an issue to yourself rather than raising it.

We do this all the time, often without realizing it. “We

put up with an awful lot on a day-to-day basis. We lump

conflict all the time without consciously making a deci-

sion to do so,” says Jeanne Brett. For many confl icts, it’s

a perfectly good approach. It can be a smart move, espe-

cially if the risks of addressing the issue feel greater than

the potential rewards. “There are certain discussions

you’re just better off not having at all, and knowing when

to let it go is just as critical as knowing when to engage,”

she says. (For more on making that call, see chapter 4,

“Assess the Situation.”)

It may not be worth having the conversation if you

don’t think it’s going to go anywhere. “If your colleague

is stuck in her ways and has never demonstrated a will-

ingness to concede, what do you gain by pushing her yet

again? If the damage is already done—say the project

was defunded last week and you’re just finding out about

it—it’s probably better to forget about it and move on,”

says Brett.

The risk in selecting this option is that your resolve

may not stick. The issue may not go away, so your feel-

ings about it may come out sideways as you blow up at

your colleague about an unrelated matter. Or your col-

league’s behavior may continue or worsen because he is

unaware of the problem.

16

Your Options for Handling Confl ict

Note that this option and the “address it indirectly”

option are different than avoiding confl ict altogether.

Confl ict avoidance is a natural tendency to steer away

from confl ict whenever possible (see chapter 3, “Rec-

ognize Your Natural Tendency”). These are active, con-

scious decisions you make to handle a situation. If you

tend to avoid confl ict, check yourself if you fi nd that you

gravitate toward these two options.

Use when . . .

• You don’t have the energy or time to invest in

preparing for and having a conversation

• You suspect the other person is unwilling to have a

constructive conversation

• You have little or no power, particularly in confl icts

with people above you

• You won’t beat yourself up or stew about it

Keep in mind that this option . . .

• Requires little work on your part, but it can be

frustrating to dismiss your feelings

• Keeps the relationship stable, assuming you can

both truly move on

• Won’t work if you’re unable to put it behind you

and you risk having an outburst later or acting

passive-aggressively toward your counterpart

• May cause your work to suffer if you continue to

feel bad

17

Preparing for Confl ict Before It Happens

• Can reinforce bad behavior—if your counterpart

got away with it once, she might try again

What it looks like in practice

Clara, a project manager, was helping Lisa, a product

manager, develop a launch schedule for testing a new

product line, and she thought that Lisa was being overly

optimistic. She tried to point out that Lisa’s dates weren’t

realistic, but Lisa wouldn’t listen. “I was new, and while

her time frame seemed aggressive to me, I couldn’t be

sure,” Clara says. “Plus she isn’t the warmest person,

and she made it clear she wasn’t really open to my feed-

back.” When the plan went to the wider team, things

blew up. The production manager couldn’t believe that

Clara thought her team would drop everything to meet

her dates. But Lisa had already shared the schedule with

the head of marketing, who had announced the launch

date in the market. When the team discussed the sched-

ule, Lisa never once explained that Clara had a differ-

ence of opinion and, in fact, implied that the dates were

Clara’s work.

“I was livid,” explains Clara, “but I didn’t want to get

into a fi ght in front of our bosses.” She later explained

the situation to her manager but decided not to talk with

Lisa about it. “She didn’t strike me as the kind of per-

son who would be interested in hashing it out, and this

wasn’t the last time we’d have to work together,” she says.

“I didn’t see what good would come of it, other than cre-

ating more tension.” Instead, she put it behind her and

continued to work with Lisa. Though they never directly

18

Your Options for Handling Confl ict

discussed the issue, Clara says that Lisa was more open

to her input on schedules in the future.

Address It Indirectly: Skirt the Issue

If you decide to try to change the situation by addressing

it, there are two ways to do that. The fi rst is to confront

someone indirectly.

Indirect confrontation is when you choose to circle

around an issue rather than naming it and addressing

it together. Maybe you appeal to someone else who can

talk to your counterpart (say, your boss or a coworker

who knows the person better), or you talk about the situ-

ation without ever naming the issue. To those in certain

cultures that tend to address confl ict directly, this may

sound backhanded and completely ineffective. But in

some places, particularly those where saving face is im-

portant, this is the approach of choice. “In many Asian

cultures, group harmony is incredibly important. It’s not

appropriate to say, ‘We have a disagreement,’” says Erin

Meyer, author of The Culture Map: Breaking Through

the Invisible Boundaries of Global Business. “If you have

a confl ict with someone on a Japanese team, for exam-

ple, you would not sit down and talk it through.”

Brett explains that one tactic is to use a story or a

metaphor. For example, if you’re upset about a colleague

who is constantly interrupting you, you might tell a story

about an employee you previously managed who strug-

gled to listen. The moral of the story—that listening is

a valuable but tough-to-learn skill—may prompt your

counterpart to refl ect on her own behavior. “You see this

19

Preparing for Confl ict Before It Happens

all the time in China and other Asian countries. They are

respecting the other party to understand the problem

and do something about it rather than telling them what

to do,” says Brett.

Another way to indirectly address a confl ict is to get a

third party involved. “In some African cultures, when you

have a confl ict, you work through a friend. That person

works it out for you so that you never have a direct con-

frontation,” says Meyer. You might go to your boss and

explain that your interrupting colleague is preventing

you from conducting a successful meeting. In some cul-

tures it may be clear that you expect that she will talk to

your coworker. In others, you may need to ask. Similarly,

if you and another team member don’t agree on how to

spend money in your shared budget, you might ask your

boss to make the decision so that neither of you is seen as

losing. Instead, you’re just carrying out your manager’s

orders. Again, in Western cultures, this might be frowned

upon because you may be seen as giving away your power

or failing to step up to the plate, but in other places, this

is an effective way to handle the disagreement.

This option has several risks. If your indirect approach

is too indirect, your counterpart may completely miss

the message you’re trying to send and may not change,

or he may just think that “someone else” really messed

up. Another risk is that your counterpart hears that you

were reaching out to other people about his behavior and

may resent that you went around him rather than speak-

ing with him about it fi rst. Lastly, if your counterpart is

from a more direct culture, he may not respect what he

perceives to be a passive approach.

20

Your Options for Handling Confl ict

Remember that this option and the “do nothing”

option are different than avoiding conflict altogether.

Steering away from confl ict is not the same as making a

conscious choice to address it indirectly. Watch out if you

tend to avoid confl ict and fi nd yourself exercising this

option regularly.

Use when . . .

• It’s important in your culture to save face and not

embarrass people

• You work in a place (offi ce or country) where

direct confrontation is inappropriate

• You think the other person will be more willing to

take feedback from someone else—either someone

more powerful than you, such as a boss, or some-

one he trusts, such as a close confi dant

Keep in mind that this option . . .

• May not work in Western cultures, where the

expectation is generally to speak directly with

someone when you have a problem

• Can

backfi re if your counterpart fi nds out about

your behind-the-scenes work and is unhappy

about it

• May fail if your counterpart doesn’t understand

your story or metaphor

What it looks like in practice

Carlos worked as an estimator for a large contractor com-

pany, and his new boss, Peter, was a classic micromanager.

21

Preparing for Confl ict Before It Happens

“He was very operations focused and wanted to know

what I was doing all the time,” says Carlos. “I was con-

stantly getting emails from him asking about details

on my projects that he didn’t need to know.” Carlos was

afraid that if he told Peter he was micro managing him,

Peter would get worse, not trusting that Carlos would

do the work the way Peter wanted. “I was good at my

job. I just needed him to back off some,” explains Carlos.

He decided to approach the conversation by talking to

Peter about one of his own direct reports, Vince. “I told

him that since Vince was new, he probably needed some

closer managing, but that I really saw our job as helping

these younger people to learn the job on their own and

empower them as much as possible,” he says. Peter was a

bit hesitant and tried to argue that some people needed

to be micromanaged. The two then got into a discussion

about who needed closer supervision and who didn’t.

Without addressing the issue directly, Carlos was able

to make the case that he didn’t need Peter always look-

ing over his shoulder. And it worked. Peter still managed

Carlos more closely than Carlos preferred, but the con-

versation seemed to encourage Peter to give Carlos a lon-

ger leash.

Address It Directly:

Confront the Issue

You can also try to change the situation by explicitly ad-

dressing it. A direct confrontation is when you talk to the

other person—either in the moment the confl ict arises

or at a later time. Generally this involves explaining your

22

Your Options for Handling Confl ict

side of the confl ict, listening to the other person’s per-

spective, and then, ideally, agreeing on a resolution.

For those in more assertive cultures such as the United

States, this can be an effective option, and it’s the one I

focus on for most of this book. Meyer also points to other

countries, such as France, Russia, and Spain, where it’s

acceptable to have “open, vigorous, strong” disagreeme-

nts. Some organizational cultures are also more prone to

addressing confl ict directly, says Brett. The fi nancial in-

dustry, for example, has a reputation for people openly

disagreeing, sometimes in seemingly harsh ways.

This can be a risky option if it’s not handled well be-

cause it might heighten the conflict rather than defuse

it. That’s why the majority of this book is dedicated to

showing you how to prepare for the conversation, engage

productively, and reach a resolution.

Use when . . .

• You worry that there will be lingering resentment

if you don’t clear the air

• You’ve tried to do nothing or indirectly address it

and the problem persists

• You previously had a positive relationship with the

person and you want to get it back on track

Keep in mind that this option . . .

• Can be good for a relationship—going through dif-

fi cult experiences together can make your connec-

tion stronger and your relationship more resilient

23

Preparing for Confl ict Before It Happens

• Allows you to voice your opinion or feelings, if

that’s important to you

• Helps you develop a better understanding of your-

self and your counterpart

• Can improve your work if you can incorporate

others’ views and opinions

• Could earn you a reputation as aggressive or com-

bative if you do it too often (or not well)

What it looks like in practice

A close work friend of Aparna’s pulled her aside to

tell her that another coworker of theirs, Zia, had been

spreading rumors that Aparna was looking for a new

job. Aparna knew that Zia was competitive with her—

their jobs were closely related—and that in Zia’s ideal

world, she would take over several of Aparna’s projects.

But Aparna was not on the job market. “It was absurd. I

hadn’t had one networking conversation, and I’d barely

updated my résumé in years,” she says. She and Zia had

small disagreements in the past over what direction to

take particular projects, but they’d always been able to

move past them. “I always thought we were healthy com-

petitors. We made each other work harder.”

Worried that Zia’s rumors would put her position at

risk, especially if her boss heard them, she decided to

talk with Zia directly. She asked Zia out for coffee and

explained what she heard and asked for her perspective

on it. At fi rst Zia denied that she had said anything to

anyone, but she eventually conceded that she’d heard

24

Your Options for Handling Confl ict

something about Aparna talking with a competitor and

she may have mentioned it to a few people. Aparna ex-

plained that that was not the case and asked Zia to stop.

She agreed, and while they continued to compete on oc-

casion, Aparna didn’t hear news of Zia talking behind

her back again.

Exit: Get Out of the Situation Entirely

Your final option is to extricate yourself from the situ-

ation by either getting reassigned to another project,

finding a new boss, or leaving the company. This is usu-

ally a last resort. “You can’t always leave a relationship,

especially at work,” Uzzi says. When you’re disagreeing

with a boss or someone on your team, you may just be

stuck with that person, unless you’re willing to find an-

other job. But if the conflict is with someone in another

department or a person outside your company, such as a

vendor, you may be able to reduce your contact.

Exiting doesn’t mean that you end the relationship by

making a dramatic scene. Instead, look for a way to stop

interacting with that person. If it’s a client with whom

you have an ongoing confl ict, you may explain the situ-

ation to your supervisor and propose that one of your

equally qualifi ed colleagues replaces you on the account.

If it’s someone you work with in the fi nance department,

you can begin to build a relationship with someone else

on that team so that you have an alternative contact.

If your boss is the problem, you might apply to jobs in

other departments; you can start by building a broader

network in the organization or connecting with people

on teams you may want to join.

25

Preparing for Confl ict Before It Happens

This sounds easier said than done, and often it is.

Exiting is a risky option because it’s not something you

can typically do overnight or even in a week’s time. More

likely it’s something you’ll build toward slowly, while you

dust off your résumé, expand your network, and have

conversations with people who may be able to support

you in making the move.

Brett says that it’s usually worth trying the other three

options before ending things completely. But there are

situations in which the confl ict is so bad and seemingly

intractable that severing the relationship is the best

option.

Use when . . .

• You’re dealing with someone from another depart-

ment or outside your company where your jobs

aren’t interdependent

• You can easily fi nd another job somewhere else

• You’ve tried other options and nothing has worked

Keep in mind that this option . . .

• May give you a sense of relief because it gives you a

clean break

• Can protect you from further time wasted, stress,

and discomfort

• Is likely to take a lot of work from you (includ-

ing potentially diffi cult conversations) to change

departments, get reassigned, or leave your job

26

Your Options for Handling Confl ict

• May hurt other relationships as you sever ties with

this person

• Can have negative repercussions if you leave a

project and then you’re later blamed for its failure

because you abandoned the team or client

• May

make

you seem as though you’re diffi cult to

work with

What it looks like in practice

When the 50-person department that Monique worked

in was restructured, she wasn’t happy with her new di-

rect supervisor, Samir. “He didn’t know how to man-

age. He was patronizing. He didn’t seem interested in

my contributions. And it wasn’t clear what he wanted

me to be doing,” she explains. To make matters worse,

she didn’t believe in the direction Samir was taking the

department, a unit that she had spent years helping to

build. She repeatedly tried to get clearer directions from

him, but the conversations quickly disintegrated, leaving

Monique frustrated and Samir confused. “It felt near im-

possible to have a constructive conversation with him,”

she says.

After six months of pulling her hair out, Monique

went to the head of HR, with whom she had a positive

relationship. She didn’t want to complain openly for fear

that it would get back to her boss. “That would’ve felt like

tattle telling. Instead, I explained to her that as Samir’s

responsibilities were expanding, he probably had more

than enough to do,” she says. She suggested that maybe

27

Preparing for Confl ict Before It Happens

she could report to a different manager. “She thought

it was an interesting idea,” she says. A couple of weeks

went by, and during one of her one-on-one meetings

with Samir, he proposed the new reporting structure and

asked how she felt about it. Her response, “Whatever’s

best for the team, I’m willing to do.” Monique was very

happy with her new manager and felt she had done the

best she could do under the circumstances. “If things

hadn’t changed, I would’ve left the company,” she says.

When Your Counterpart

Takes the Lead

Sometimes you’re not the one who gets to decide which

option to pursue. Your counterpart may ask to be taken

off your project. Or a colleague may start yelling at you in

the hallway after a meeting. “If it’s the other party who’s

having the problem, you may not be able to completely

avoid having the conversation,” says Brett. If you’re put

on the spot, try to delay the conversation for when you’re

in a better frame of mind so that you can make a smart

choice about the option that will work best. (See chap-

ter 4 for more on walking away from a conflict.)

Here are a few examples of language you could use to

put off a fi ght with someone who’s upset:

• “I understand you want to discuss this, but now

isn’t the best time. Can we schedule something at a

later date so that we can talk it through?”

• “I can see you’re really upset about this. Can we

talk about this when we’re both calmer?”

28

Your Options for Handling Confl ict

• “I’m not ready to have this conversation right now.

I’m going to step outside to clear my head, and

then perhaps we can meet tomorrow to talk

about this.”

If your counterpart makes the fi rst move, then you

must choose how to react. Your options are the same, but

it would be hard for you to do nothing, for example, if

he’s requested that you sit down and talk about an issue.

And you certainly won’t need to exercise your right to

exit if he’s already done so.

Whether you’re choosing an approach or whether your

counterpart initiates a diffi cult conversation, there’s work

for you to do. You’ll have to deal with your anger or hurt

if you elect to do nothing, fi nagle a new position or job if

you decide to exit the relationship, make a careful plan if

you decide to address it indirectly, or prepare for a diffi -

cult conversation if you decide to address it directly. That

work will be easier if you understand the two general ap-

proaches to confl ict and which one you tend to favor.

29

CHAPTER 3

Recognize Your

Natural Tendency

There are generally two types of people: those who avoid

confl ict and those who seek it. Neither style is better or

worse, so instead of beating yourself up for being resis-

tant to conflict or being drawn to it, accept that you have

a default approach, says Amy Jen Su, an executive coach.

Knowing which style is your (and eventually your coun-

terpart’s) natural tendency allows you to make smart

choices about how to address the conflict and, if you de-

cide to confront it, have a constructive conversation.

Of course, it’s rare for a person to avoid conflict or seek

it out all of the time. It’s more likely that you adjust your

style based on the context (are you at home or at work?);

whom you’re having the conflict with (your boss or your

direct report?); and other things going on (is the organi-

zation under extensive scrutiny from investors; are you

feeling particularly stressed-out, or did you just return

31

Preparing for Confl ict Before It Happens

TABLE 3-1

Confl ict styles at a glance

Avoiders

Seekers

• Shy away from disagreements.

•  Are eager to engage in

•  Value harmony and positive

disagreements.

relationships.

•  Care most about directness and

•  Often try to placate people or

honesty.

change the topic.

•  Strongly advocate for their own

•  Don’t want to hurt others’ feelings.

perspective.

•  Don’t want to disrupt team

•  Lose patience when people aren’t

dynamics.

being direct or honest.

•  Don’t mind ruffl

ing feathers.

from a rejuvenating vacation?). You might be willing to

tell your sister that she’s out of line, but you’d probably

tone down a similar comment when you’re directing it

at a colleague. “This may be because we’re more mind-

ful with some audiences than others. With a customer

you’re trying to sell to, you might be more avoidant [of

conflict]. With a peer you’ve worked with for years, you

might be a seeker,” says Jen Su.

Still, knowing which style you gravitate toward will

help you make a conscious choice about how to address

a disagreement. If you’re an avoider, for example, your

instinct may be to do nothing. But knowing that’s your

natural tendency can help you overcome your resistance

to addressing issues. See table 3-1 for an overview of the

characteristics of each. The following sections offer more

detail to help you identify your most common approach.

Confl ict Avoiders

Confl ict avoiders are generally people who value har-

mony in the workplace. When they sense a disagree-

32

Recognize Your Natural Tendency

ment brewing, they will often try to placate the other

person or change the topic. These aren’t passive be-

haviors, but active things they do to prevent confl ict

from becoming an issue. They believe having positive

relationships with their colleagues is extremely impor-

tant and are often seen as easy to get along with. Liane

Davey describes these people this way: “They worry

that disagreeing might hurt someone’s feelings or dis-

rupt harmonious team dynamics. They fret that their

perspective isn’t as valid as someone else’s, so they

hold back.”

This strategy is meant to make things easier, but it

can take a toll. Confl ict avoiders try to be nice and of-

ten avoid contentious topics. But “[these people] end

up spending an inordinate amount of time talking to

themselves or others—complaining, feeling frustrated,

ruminating on something that already happened, or an-

ticipating something that might happen,” says Jen Su.

This avoidance can have physical manifestations as well.

Some of Jen Su’s more confl ict-avoidant clients have ex-

perienced headaches, back pain, and weight gain.

If you’re a confl ict avoider, here are some examples of

how you might think:

“My colleague interrupted me again. We’re supposed

to be leading this effort together, and this is his way

of showing he’s the boss. He just makes me look bad

in front of the team. I’ve been replaying it in my mind

over and over again.”

“Someone has to tell my direct report that her bad

attitude is affecting the rest of the team, but I’m

33

Preparing for Confl ict Before It Happens

dreading it. I’ve been thinking about it all day and

haven’t been able to get anything done.”

“I know what they’re going to say—that we can’t have

more resources due to budget constraints. This gives

me such a knot in my stomach. I’ll probably just give

up on asking for this investment.”

“If I can just keep a smile on my face at the meeting,

people will understand that I don’t want to talk about

the bugs that came up last week.”

Confl ict Seekers

Conversely, confl ict seekers will seize on brewing dis-

putes and amplify them, often strongly advocating for

their perspective. They don’t have patience when they

think people aren’t being direct or honest, and they’re

willing to ruffl e a few feathers. The tendency to dive into

confl ict may feed upon itself because of a neurochemical

process, as Judith E. Glaser, a communications expert,

explains: “When you argue and win, your brain fl oods

with different hormones—adrenaline and dopamine—

which make you feel good, dominant, even invincible.

It’s a feeling any of us would want to replicate. So the

next time we’re in a tense situation, we fi ght again.”

This attraction to confl ict also takes a toll, but often

on others. “Seekers are extremely good at fi ghting for

their point of view (which may or may not be right), yet

they are completely unaware of the dampening effect

their behavior has on the people around them. If one

person is getting high off his dominance, others are be-

ing drummed into submission,” says Glaser.

34

Recognize Your Natural Tendency

Although it may not negatively affect them in the mo-

ment, their effectiveness as leaders and colleagues suf-

fers. Though they “win” the argument, confl ict seekers

may earn the reputation of being diffi cult to work with,

quick to snap, or even mean. People may avoid working

with them or even describe them as bullies.

If you’re a confl ict seeker, here are some examples of

how you might think:

“I can tell that many of them don’t agree that we need

to go with this vendor. But I know this is the right

choice, even if they don’t realize it yet.”

“Why can’t we get into this right now? Everyone

should just lay out what they think the new strategy

should be, and then we’ll choose the best option. Why

are we being so nice?”

“I couldn’t believe my direct report had the nerve

to question the deadline I laid out for the team.

I was sure to shut her down and copied the others

so that they all know in the future not to cross

that line.”

“Sal’s recommendation on this hiring issue is just

plain stupid. I owed it to him to tell him when he

tried to get me on board with the new policy.”

Identify Yourself

After reading the descriptions above, you may immedi-

ately recognize yourself as an avoider or a seeker. If it’s

not clear to you, taking the time to get to know yourself

35

Preparing for Confl ict Before It Happens

better is worthwhile. If a conflict erupts with your boss,

you’re not going to run home to take a personality test or

soul search about your personal relationship to conflict.

You won’t have time for that. Knowing your preferred ap-

proach before you get into a heated debate can help you

be better prepared for a discussion when the time comes.

To better understand what your natural tendency is,

look at the many factors that contribute to your default

approach:

• Past experience: “Our relationship to confl ict

is anchored in a history of habit,” says Jen Su. If

you were shamed or criticized during a conflict

early in your career, you might choose safety and

harmony over speaking up, she says. Or perhaps

your fi rst mentor enjoyed sparring with cowork-

ers, demonstrating that there was nothing to fear.

Maybe you’re from a large family, who thrived on

lively dinner table debates, so you frequently adopt

the role of devil’s advocate to spark heated team

discussions.

• Cultural norms: Brett makes it clear: “You con-

front based on the norm in your culture.” As dis-

cussed in the previous chapter, in East Asian cul-

tures, for example, it’s common to use an indirect

approach. Others are typically more direct, such as

Latin American cultures. This doesn’t mean that

every Chinese manager is a confl ict avoider or that

every Mexican manager is a confl ict seeker; it’s just

another factor.

36

Recognize Your Natural Tendency

• Offi

ce context: Every workplace has its own set of

norms, and some teams have their own separate

set of rules as well. In some offices, it’s frowned

upon to disagree openly; you’re expected to resolve

disagreements in private meetings or through

email. In other offices, it’s common to have a more

open airing of conflict.

• Gender norms: There’s a stereotype that most

women are conflict avoiders and most men are

conflict seekers, which stems from the view that

women are more nurturing and care more about

what others think, say Amy Jen Su and her coau-

thor Muriel Maignan Wilkins in their book, Own

the Room: Discover Your Signature Voice to Master

Your Leadership Presence. But in practice this isn’t

necessarily true. Some women may opt to take

less direct approaches to confl ict because they

know they will be penalized for being assertive. In

fact, researchers at Harvard Business School and

Babson College have shown that when women

negotiate, people (both men and women) are less

likely to want to work with them. So some women

may lean toward being avoiders not because it’s

their natural tendency but because they know the

social costs of being a confl ict seeker are higher

for them.

If you’re still not sure which camp you fall into, here

are several tips for unearthing your preference.

37

Preparing for Confl ict Before It Happens

Develop healthy self-awareness

Ask yourself some of the following questions about your

current and previous relationship with confl ict.

• Were you always more of a fi ghter? Or did you

tend to accommodate others?

• Look back over particular moments of confl ict

early in your life or career—were you rewarded or

punished for your approach?

• When you think about confl ict now, do you

get a pit in your stomach and feel like fl eeing?

• Or does your heart race and you feel the urge to

jump in?

• The last time tensions got high with someone at

work or at home, how did you react?

• When you were growing up, how was confl ict

handled in your family?

• Do you come from a culture where confl ict is

handled more directly or one where it’s frowned

upon?

• What is the norm in your organization? In your

unit? On your team? Do you adopt the typical

approach or play against type?

Look for patterns in your answers. Perhaps you had

always been a seeker until you were criticized as be-

ing “too aggressive” in an early performance review. Or

38

Recognize Your Natural Tendency

maybe you notice that you tend to avoid confl ict unless

the issue is something you really care about, such as your

team. You may be able to understand your tendency just

by answering these questions. But it’s also helpful to get

more input.

Ask for feedback

It’s tough to see ourselves for who we really are, so ask

others to reality check your observations. Get feedback

from trusted colleagues, a caring mentor, or even your

spouse. Inquire specifi cally about confl ict situations: “Do

you see me as someone who backs away from disagree-

ment? Or do I enjoy digging into an argument?” Jen Su

warns that confl ict seekers need to say explicitly that

they want genuine and honest input. “More-aggressive

people tend not to get the tough feedback they need be-

cause their colleagues are often afraid of them and don’t

want to trigger them.” It’s important, therefore, to ask

someone who you know will be candid with you, perhaps

someone who has little to lose in telling you the truth.

Take an assessment

Many of the psychometric tests that people use in the

workplace, such as Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI),

help you better understand how you handle conflict.

However, there’s one tool that’s focused specifi cally on

understanding your confl ict style: the Thomas-Kilmann

Conflict Mode Instrument (TKI). The tool categorizes

you as having one of five conflict-handling styles—

avoiding, accommodating, compromising, collaborating,

39

Preparing for Confl ict Before It Happens

or competing—based on your answers to several ques-

tions. It’s not time intensive (it usually takes about 15

minutes to complete), but there is a fee.

Refl ecting on your approach is only half the battle; you

also need to get a sense of how your counterpart prefers

to approach disagreements before you can have a pro-

ductive confl ict.

40

SECTION TWO

Managing a

Confl ict

CHAPTER 4

Assess the

Situation

When you’re faced with a specific situation, there are five

things to do to assess the scenario at hand before tak-

ing action—understand your counterpart; identify the

type of conflict you’re facing; consider the organizational

context; determine your goal; and, finally, pick one of

the four options you’ll take to deal with this particular

situation.

The fi rst time you analyze a confl ict using these fi ve

steps it will take some time, but eventually the analysis

will get easier. The goal is to be able to quickly do these

steps in your head whenever a disagreement arises.

Understand Your Counterpart

First, consider whom you’re dealing with. Is he a confl ict

seeker or avoider? How does he typically communicate

and how does he prefer to be communicated with? Is

43

Managing a Confl ict

he more of a straight shooter who says things like they

are or does he tend to beat around the bush? If you fre-

quently work with the person you’re in conflict with, you

may already be familiar with his style. If you rarely in-

teract with the person, you’ll have to do some digging.

“More and more we’re working with people whom we

don’t have the luxury of getting that kind of intelligence

on,” says Amy Jen Su. It may be that you’re fighting with

an overseas colleague whom you see in person only at

annual meetings, or your conflict is with a manager in a

different department who sits in another building. “It’s

better to know something about the person rather than

fighting in a vacuum,” Jen Su says. She suggests that you

get whatever information is available. Here’s how.

Look for patterns

Whether or not you know your counterpart well, play

the role of observer. How does she handle a tense dis-

cussion in a meeting? What’s the look on her face when

other people are disagreeing? Does she like people to cut

to the chase and lay out just the facts or does she want

the complete picture with every gory detail? What have

you observed about her communication style? Look for

patterns in how she communicates and clues in her be-

havior. “People who are volatile and confrontational, for

example, tend to be that way in a lot of different situa-

tions,” says Brett. Ideally you’ll observe the person over

time in multiple scenarios. That may not be possible, so

take what you can get. Just keep in mind that the fewer

instances you see, the less likely you’ll be able to deduce

an accurate pattern.

44

Assess the Situation

Get input from others

In addition to examining your counterpart’s behavior,

you might ask a colleague or two for input. Don’t go

around grilling others about him, but ask people to con-

fi rm or deny your observations. Say something like, “I

noticed Jim fl ew off the handle in that meeting. Is that

typical?” or “I saw Katerina avoid engaging with Tomas

when he questioned whether her fi gures were right. Did

you see the same thing?” You can also ask more direct

questions: “Can you tell me how this person typically

navigates confl ict?” Obviously, you have to trust the per-

son you’re asking—you don’t want your colleague to fi nd

out you’re snooping on him.

Use this same approach to fi gure out cultural and of-

fi ce norms. If you’re dealing with a vendor based in a dif-

ferent country, for example, or a colleague who’s located

halfway around the world, ask someone who knows that

person or is familiar with the culture or offi ce environ-

ment how confl ict is typically handled. Erin Meyer sug-

gests saying something along these lines: “Here’s how I

would deal with this in my culture. How would you typi-

cally approach it?” She also recommends that you seek

out “cultural bridges,” people who work in your culture

and in your counterpart’s. These are often ex-pats who’ve

relocated to another offi ce or people based out of head-

quarters who have to work across multiple locations.

Ask directly

It’s not always advisable to come out and ask: “How do

you like to address confl ict?” That can be awkward—few

45

Managing a Confl ict

people will be prepared to answer this question. In-

stead, share your own preferences as a way to start the

conversation: “You might have noticed that I am more

of a confl ict seeker. I don’t shy away from arguments,

and I tend to get worked up quickly.” You could also

share tactful observations about what you’ve noticed

about your counterpart. “Based on how you responded

to Corinne’s questioning in this morning’s meeting, it

seems as if you prefer to steer away from confl ict. Is that

right?”

You’re trying to learn what someone’s style is, not

judge it. Instead of saying “We’ve got a problem here be-

cause it seems as if you don’t know how to discuss con-

fl ict,” you might ask, “What do you do in your culture

when people disagree?” It’s better to ask questions than

make statements, and use phrases that ask for confi rma-

tion, such as “Correct me if I’m wrong . . .” or “Do I have

this right?” Meyer points out that there’s nothing wrong

with showing curiosity. “People always like to be asked

about themselves,” she says.

Once you learn more about the culture, use that

knowledge to help you understand your situation better.

Why did he speak to me like that? What did he mean? “If

you’re dealing with someone from the Netherlands and

he speaks to you in a really direct way,” says Meyer, “you

can interpret that behavior differently than if someone

from China was short with you.” Was the person really

being rude? Was he intentionally being vague and trying

to hide something? Or is there a cultural reason for him

to speak or behave like that?

46

Assess the Situation

If you come up empty-handed

If your digging doesn’t turn up adequate information, all

is not lost. Although it helps, having this information is

not a prerequisite to a productive conversation. Instead,

prepare by playing out a few scenarios. What if she’s a

conflict seeker and gets mad at me? What if he yells?

What if she’s an avoider and gets upset? Or tries to leave

the room?

You may even want to role-play with another co-

worker. If you do, Jen Su suggests you play your counter-

part and your coworker acts as you. That will help you

take your counterpart’s perspective and ask yourself,

How would I want that person to interact with me?

This will also allow you to better understand how your

counter part sees you.

How Your Styles Work Together

Now that you have a sense of your approach to con-

fl ict and have gleaned some insights into your counter-

part’s preferences, how will your styles interact? If

you’re both seekers, can you expect an all-out brawl?

If you’re both avoiders, should you forget the idea of di-

rectly addressing the confl ict? See table 4-1 to get a sense

of what typically happens between each of the types and

how you might manage it.

Identify the Type of Confl ict

Next, think about what’s causing the conflict. Review

the four types of conflict I identifi ed in chapter 1, “Types

47

TABLE 4-1

How confl ict approaches work together

You are an avoider

You are a seeker

Your

What happens:

What happens:

counterpart

•  Both of you lean toward

•  You tend to bulldoze your

is an

doing nothing.

counterpart into agreeing

avoider

•  You may tamp down feel-

with you.

ings that could explode

•  Your counterpart may act

later on.

passive-aggressively to

How to manage:

get his point across.

•  One of you needs to take

How to manage:

the lead.

•  Ask the person to

•  Say directly, “I know we

participate actively in

both don’t like confl ict,

the conversation—not

but instead of doing noth-

hide her opinions.

ing, should we consider

• Don’t be a bully.

other options?”

•  Be patient with the pac-

•  Do your best to draw the

ing of the conversation.

person out in a sensitive,

thoughtful way.

•  If things get tough, don’t

shy away. Fight your

natural instinct.

Your

What happens:

What happens:

counterpart

•  You are tempted to play

•  Neither of you is afraid to

is a seeker

the role of “good guy” and

say what’s on your mind.

go along with what your

•  The discussion turns

counterpart wants.

contentious.

•  You might get trampled

•  You might end up saying

by your counterpart’s

things you don’t believe.

requests.

•  You both feel

How to manage:

disrespected.

•  Explicitly ask for what

How to manage:

you need: “To have a

•  Since you’ll both be

productive conversation,

eager to address the

I need you to be patient

situation, take extra

with me and watch the

time to prepare for the

tone and volume of your

conversation.

voice.”

•  Know that you’re likely

•  Earn the seeker’s respect

to feel impatient and

by being direct and to the

schedule your discussion

point.

in a way that allows you

•  Don’t signal disrespect,

both to take breaks.

which is likely to set the

•  Be ready—things may get

seeker off .

heated. Suggest a coff ee

break or a walk or a

change of scenery to help

even out emotions.

Source: Adapted from an interview with Amy Jen Su, coauthor with Muriel Maignan Wilkins of Own the Room: Discover Your Signature Voice to Master Your Leadership Presence (Boston: Harvard Business Review Press, 2013).

Assess the Situation

of Conflict,” and suss out whether your disagreement is

over issues related to relationship, task, process, or sta-

tus (see table 1-1).

Go over what’s happened so far with your counter-

part—what she’s said and done, who else has been in-

volved, where the disagreement started, and what it’s re-

lated to. With all that information, ask yourself: Are we

disagreeing about the goal of a project, or how to achieve

it? Does my counterpart think she should be leading

the initiative? Have we exchanged barbs? Or all of the

above?

Rarely do confl icts fall into just one of these catego-

ries, so try to identify each type of confl ict that’s occur-

ring. Doing this helps you to:

• Organize your own thoughts. In the midst of

a confl ict, rational thinking often goes out the

window. Considering what type of confl ict you’re

having will help you set aside your emotional reac-

tions and structure your thinking. If you decide to

directly address the situation, parsing the confl ict

into categories will set you up for a successful

conversation (see chapter 5, “Get Ready for the

Conversation”).

• Identify common ground. By labeling your dif-

ferences of opinion, you’ll also see where you and

your counterpart concur. If you disagree on how

exactly to compensate a customer who received

bad service (process), you may note that you agree

on the need to make the customer happy (task).

49

Managing a Confl ict

This shared goal becomes a foundation for reach-

ing a resolution (see chapter 6, “Have a Productive

Conversation” ).

• Structure the conversation. Before you begin your

discussion with your counterpart, create a list of

the types of confl ict you’re experiencing and the

specifi c issues you disagree on. This will help guide

your conversation and keep you focused on the

issue at hand.

Be particularly careful when labeling a disagreement

a “relationship confl ict.” Many disagreements do end

up here, but personalities are not always to blame, says

Ben Dattner, author of The Blame Game: How the Hid-

den Rules of Credit and Blame Determine Our Success or

Failure. “More often than not, the real underlying cause

of workplace strife is the situation itself rather than the

people involved.” What people think they’re fi ghting

about isn’t actually what they are fi ghting about. For ex-

ample, they might perceive the root cause of the strug-

gle to be a personality clash when in fact it’s a process

confl ict.

Dattner explains: “Perhaps the confl ict is due to some-

one on the team simply not doing her job, in which case

talking about personality as being the cause of confl ict is

a dangerous distraction from the real issue . . . Focusing

too much on either hypothetical or irrelevant causes of

confl ict may work in the short term, but it creates the

risk over the long term that the underlying causes will

never be addressed or fi xed.”

50

Assess the Situation

Determine Your Goal

Before you decide which approach to take, determine

what you hope to accomplish. Keeping in mind the per-

sonalities of the people involved, their communication

styles, and the type of conflict you’re having, reflect on

your ultimate goal: Do you want to complete the project

quickly? To deliver the best results you can? Does your

relationship with this person matter more than the out-

come of the work? Figure out what you need to get done.

If you’re under pressure to complete a presentation by a

certain date and your counterpart in sales is complain-

ing about how much data you need from him, you might

consider doing nothing so that you can get the numbers

you need and hit your deadline. Later you could explain

to the sales guy how his griping impacted you and ask

what would work better for him for future requests.

If you’re having more than one type of confl ict, you

might set more than one goal. For example, if you’re

fi ghting with your confl ict-seeking boss about which

metrics to report to the senior leadership team (task

confl ict) and you and your boss have exchanged heated

emails that challenge each other’s understanding of web

analytics (relationship confl ict), your goal may be to

come up with a set of stats that you can both live with

and to make sure that your boss understands that you

respect her and her expertise.

Make sure your goal is reasonable, suggests IMD’s

Jean-François Manzoni, who has conducted extensive

research on confl ict management. Ask yourself: Does

51

Managing a Confl ict

what I want make sense? Is it realistic? If not, set your

sights a little lower. Come up with a small, manageable

goal, such as “agreeing on which of us will own the re-

design project” or “creating a six-week plan for how our

team will collaborate.” If you’re disagreeing over how to

proceed on an important project, your goal might be to

end the conversation by simply agreeing on the next step

rather than cementing a full implementation plan.

It’s not uncommon, particularly with relationship

confl ict, to want to set a goal that’s about changing the

other person. Perhaps you’d like to show your colleague

that her passive-aggressive behavior doesn’t work or

make sure your boss knows what a jerk he’s been for the

past week. But these kinds of agendas are better dropped

before they lead to full-on fi ghts.

“It’s easy to become aggravated by other people’s ac-

tions and forget what you were trying to achieve in the

fi rst place,” says Jeffrey Pfeffer, of Stanford’s Graduate

School of Business. But it’s not likely you’re going to

change the other person, so focus on your goal. If the

conflict were over and you found that you had won, what

would that look like?

Pick Your Option

Now it’s time to decide what to do. Taking into account

your goal, and the other person’s natural tendency and

communication style, which of the four options discussed

in chapter 2 is best for handling the specific situation

you’re in (see table 4-2)?

There is no magic formula that tells you which ap-

proach to take. It’s not like two confl ict seekers having a

52

Assess the Situation

TABLE 4-2

The four options for addressing confl ict

The option

What it is

Use it when . . .

Do nothing

Ignoring and swallow-

•  You don’t have the energy or

ing the confl ict

time.

•  You suspect the other person is

unwilling to have a constructive

conversation.

• You have little or no power.

•  You won’t beat yourself up or

stew about it.

Address

Skirting the issue

•  It’s important in your culture to

indirectly

instead of naming it

save face.

•  You work in a place where direct

confrontation is inappropriate.

•  You think the other person will

be more willing to take feedback

from someone else.

Address

Actively trying to

•  You worry that there will be

directly

change the situation

lingering resentment if you don’t

by talking to the other

clear the air.

person

•  You’ve tried other options and

the problem persists.

•  You want to get your relation-

ship with your counterpart back

on track.

Exit

Getting out of the

•  You’re dealing with someone

situation entirely by

from another department or

being reassigned

outside your company where

to another project,

your jobs aren’t interdependent.

fi nding a new boss, or

•  You can easily fi nd a job some-

leaving the company

where else.

•  You’ve tried other options and

nothing has worked.

relationship confl ict who want to restore a friendly rap-

port should always use the “address directly” approach.

The reality is that the option you choose depends on

all of the above factors as well as other circumstances,

such as your offi ce norms or the amount of time pres-

sure you’re under. Play out each option in your head and

53

Managing a Confl ict

assess the pros and cons for your specifi c situation. If you

do nothing, will you be able to let go of the confl ict? If

you directly confront, will your counterpart be able to

engage constructively? There is no one right answer;

there’s just the one that’s right for you and the circum-

stances you’re in. (See also the sidebar “Know When to

Walk Away.”)

Be mindful of your natural tendency

Because the confl ict may have triggered a fi ght-or-fl ight

response in your brain, your immediate response—“We

need to address this right away” or “I’m going to fi nd a

new job”—may not be the best one. Confl ict avoiders of-

ten gravitate toward the fi rst two options (doing nothing

or addressing the confl ict indirectly), while seekers prefer

the latter two (addressing directly or exiting). Keep this

in mind when you’re choosing your option. Ask yourself

whether you’re doing what’s best for the situation—and

will most likely help you achieve your goal—or if you’re

opting for an approach that’s most comfortable for you.

Cool down before deciding

Brett says that it’s wise to take a breather before

choosing an approach. “Weighing whether to bring up

and try to resolve a confl ict should be a rational decision.

The fi rst question to ask yourself: Am I too emotional

right now?” she says. If so, take a step back from the con-

fl ict. Return to your desk and take a few deep breaths.

Go for a walk outside. Or sleep on it. You want to be sure

whatever route you choose is based on a lucid decision,

not a rash one.

54

Assess the Situation

KNOW WHEN TO WALK AWAY

It’s not an easy decision to walk away from a confl ict—

temporarily or permanently. But it’s important to rec-

ognize when the situation calls for it. “If you’re angry or

upset—or your colleague is—it’s not a good time to en-

gage. It won’t help if either of you is yelling or pound-

ing the table,” says Jeanne Brett. She explains that

there’s a lot of research that shows people are unable

to be rational when their emotions are high (see more

on managing your emotions in chapter 6).

Judith White, a leadership professor at the Tuck

School of Business at Dartmouth, says there are several

signs that you need to walk away—at least temporarily:

• Your counterpart is yelling or is otherwise out of

control.

• You feel as if you’re going to lose control in

any way that might be dangerous to you, your

counter part, or your relationship.

• The fi ght is happening in a public setting where

others can see or hear you.

• It becomes obvious that the discussion can’t be

resolved through the current conversation. You

or your counterpart repeating the same argu-

ment over and over is the telltale sign here.

• Your colleague has never demonstrated a will-

ingness to concede.

( continued)

55

Managing a Confl ict

KNOW WHEN TO WALK AWAY

( continued)

• The damage is already done. For example,

maybe the project you’re fi ghting over ended last

week and the decision can’t be reversed.

Once you’ve made the tough decision to walk away,

how do you actually do it? Here are some tips:

• If the situation feels overly heated or danger-

ous, simply walk away. Leave the room, go to the

bathroom, or take a walk outside the building.

• If you can, explain that you need some time

to think through the confl ict before coming

back to it. “Don’t ever tell someone he or she

needs to calm down, because the person will

lose face or only become more upset,” advises

White. (For more sample language examples,

see chapter 2, “Your Options for Handling

Confl ict.”)

• Take the time you need to cool down (or let

your counterpart cool down). When you feel

ready to make a smart and thoughtful choice

about how to address the confl ict, you can

return to it.

Here’s an example. Jonathan was meeting with his

project manager, Rebecca, about why they were falling

behind in their deadlines. As a confl ict seeker, he was

56

Assess the Situation

asking pointed questions to get at the root of what

was behind the delays. Rebecca was getting more and

more agitated as Jonathan went line by line through

the plan. Soon Rebecca snapped. She stood up and

pointed her fi nger at Jonathan, accusing him of bad-

gering her. “This is your fault, not mine,” she said.

Jonathan quickly apologized for pushing so hard, but

Rebecca wouldn’t hear it. She yelled, “I don’t need

your apologies. I need you to stop %^@# harassing

me.” Jonathan realized he was stuck. Rebecca had

lost control, and he didn’t feel like anything he said

would help. He stood up and said, “I’m sorry that this

conversation has taken this turn. I’m going to go back

to my desk to think through how we might resolve this.

It’d be great if we could regroup tomorrow.” Rebecca

sent him an apology later that night, and when they

had both calmed down the next day, they were able

to have a more rational conversation about how to get

the project back on track.

Sometimes delaying a tense conversation by a day

helps, as it did with Rebecca and Jonathan. But some-

times, a day is not enough. You may be faced with a

situation in which you decide to permanently walk

away—by either doing nothing or exiting the relation-

ship entirely. Whether or not you do this, says White,

depends on two questions: How important is this re-

lationship? How potentially valuable is this deal? As

( continued)

57

Managing a Confl ict

KNOW WHEN TO WALK AWAY

( continued)

Deepak Malhotra and Max H. Bazerman point out in

Negotiation Genius: How to Overcome Obstacles and

Achieve Brilliant Results at the Bargaining Table and

Beyond, you shouldn’t negotiate when the costs of ne-

gotiation exceed the potential gains.

Exiting the relationship is particularly advisable

when the situation is causing you extreme discomfort—

your health is suff ering, for example. If you can’t con-

centrate on anything else or are having panic attacks,

there’s no sense enduring more torture. Also, if your

counterpart is singling you out and trying to prevent

you from doing your job, it’s time to take extreme mea-

sures. Speak to someone else, such as your boss or

an HR representative, to see what support is available

to you.

In a highly emotional confl ict—in which one or both

parties are extremely angry or upset—it can be tempting

to exercise the exit option. But even situations in which

feelings are running high can benefi t from you opting to

address it, or even doing nothing. Judith White says: “It’s

natural for people to feel strong emotion in a confl ict

situation. Once the confl ict is identifi ed and addressed,

and parties are allowed to vent, emotion usually dissi-

pates . . . Recognize the emotion, but don’t let it stop you

from negotiating.”

58

Assess the Situation

Adapt Your Approach

Managing confl ict is a fl uid process. You may start with

one approach and then fi nd you need to switch to an-

other if your selected approach is no longer working or

the confl ict grows or changes. For example, you may

decide to directly address the situation by talking with

your colleague about why you’re disagreeing over the

targets each of your teams should be hitting, but then

fi nd that you’re getting nowhere: Your coworker is un-

responsive or, worse, frustrated that you don’t agree

with her and just gets angrier. Then you may decide to

do nothing and move on. You could also start with the

do-nothing option and realize that the problem is get-

ting worse, so you need to address it directly, by talking

with your colleague, or indirectly, by going to your boss.

As you weigh the options for your specifi c situation,

you don’t have to make a choice and stick to it no mat-

ter what. You can always change tactics as your confl ict

plays out.

Consider this example. Amara and Vivek work closely

in a small design group. Amara has to complete her ini-

tial designs before Vivek can take over the presentations

and do the formatting that is his responsibility. In a team

meeting, Vivek made an offhand comment about Amara

“taking her time” with the latest batch of presentations.

Amara thought about the statement, and even talked

about it with another colleague, and she concluded that

it could be interpreted in several ways, but the implica-

tion was that Amara’s speed was impacting Vivek’s work.

Amara tends to avoid confl ict, so she didn’t like the idea

59

Managing a Confl ict

of bringing it up with Vivek. Plus they had worked well

together for so long. She didn’t see the point.

She thought she could let it go. And for a few weeks,

she did. But soon she realized that it was still bothering

her. Every time she handed something off to Vivek, she

mentally replayed his saying “She’s taking her time,” so

she decided to address the situation directly. She sched-

uled an appointment with Vivek to ask what he had

meant and to fi nd a way to move forward.

The fl uidity of the process can work the other way,

too. Take Marie’s story. She called one of her long-time

vendors to directly address and explain that her com-

pany’s payment terms had changed. In the middle of the

conversation, Claude, the fi nance manager at the vendor,

hung up on her. She emailed him and said that she’d like

to set up a time to talk. But when they got on the phone

again, Claude wouldn’t say anything other than “This

doesn’t work for us.” Marie was offended and frustrated.

Recognizing that the direct approach wasn’t working,

she decided to go to Claude’s boss and appeal to him.

She didn’t want to get Claude in trouble, but they clearly

weren’t able to resolve the confl ict on their own. Soon af-

ter she spoke with Claude’s manager and explained

the situation, Claude called her and offered to negotiate

the terms.

The next two chapters talk about preparing for and con-

ducting a conversation if you’ve decided to address the

confl ict directly. Even if you’ve chosen one of the other

options, your approach may change, so it’s best to be

prepared.

60

CHAPTER 5

Get Ready for the

Conversation

Once you’ve resolved to directly address the confl ict, it’s

tempting to have the conversation immediately. But tak-

ing time to prepare will help you remain calm and in-

crease the chances that you and your counterpart will

come away with a better solution than either of you

could have predicted.

Below are several guidelines to help you prepare for a

productive discussion.

Check Your Mindset

If you’re getting yourself ready for a conversation that

you’ve labeled “difficult,” you’re more likely to feel ner-

vous, stressed, angry, or upset. To minimize those nega-

tive emotions, try to think about it as a non-charged

conversation, suggests Jean-François Manzoni. For ex-

ample, instead of giving negative feedback, you’re having

61

Managing a Confl ict

a constructive conversation about development. Or

you’re not saying “no” to your boss; you’re offering up an

alternative solution.

“A diffi cult conversation tends to go best when you

think about it as just a normal conversation,” says Holly

Weeks, a communications expert. This isn’t sugarcoat-

ing. Be honest with yourself about how hard the conver-

sation might be, but also put as constructive a frame on

it as possible. You might tell yourself: We may have to

talk about diffi cult things, but we’ll work through them

together because Carol and I have always respected each

other.

And focus on what you stand to gain from the con-

versation. “Assume you have something to learn; assume

there is a more creative solution than you’ve thought of,”

says Jeff Weiss, author of the HBR Guide to Negotiating.

By entering the discussion with an open mind, regard-

less of your coworker’s stance, you’re more likely to fi nd

common ground.

Take Your Counterpart’s Perspective

Try to get a sense of what your colleague might be think-

ing. Ideally you already did some thinking about this

when you analyzed the confl ict, but go a little deeper.

She had a rationale for the way she’s behaved so far (even

if you don’t agree with it). What might that reason be?

“Try to imagine your way into their shoes as best you

can. You can learn a lot by doing that simple mental ex-

ercise,” says Jonathan Hughes. Think about what’s going

on for them. Ask yourself: What would I do if I were her,

or if I were in R&D instead of marketing? What if I were

62

Get Ready for the Conversation

someone reporting to me? What if I were my boss? Also

ask yourself: What is she trying to achieve in the con-

fl ict? You’ll need a sense of what her goal is if you want

to resolve it. Identify places where you see eye to eye on

the issues. This common ground will give you a founda-

tion to joint problem-solve.

Ask a colleague what he thinks is going on in your

counterpart’s mind. Make sure it’s someone you trust,

says Hughes. You might say something like, “I’d love

some advice and coaching. I haven’t worked much with

Akiko before, but I know you have. Can you help me un-

derstand how she might be seeing this situation?” Don’t

use the conversation to vent and seek validation. “Paint

the situation for him as neutrally as you can,” says Karen

Dillon, author of the HBR Guide to Offi ce Politics. “Cat-

aloging every fault and misstep will probably get you

sympathy but not constructive feedback, so focus on the

problem.”

It’s unlikely that you’ll be able to gather all the infor-

mation you want about your colleague and her interests

before you sit down together. Weiss says, “Craft a set of

questions to ask in the room to uncover critical infor-

mation and test any hypotheses you made.” This will

help you, once you’re face-to-face, to show that you care

enough about her perspective to think it through be-

forehand and to discover more about how she views the

situation.

In addition to thinking about your counterpart’s take

on the situation, remember the work you did in the pre-

vious chapter to consider his natural tendency for han-

dling conflict and his communication style.

63

Managing a Confl ict

Consider the Larger

Organizational Context

While the confl ict may revolve around you and your

counter part, the reality is that you’re both part of a

broader context—that of your organization or your in-

dustry. Consider how the larger playing fi eld you’re oper-

ating in might be affecting the confl ict.

First, determine the culture of your organization or

team. Do people in your unit generally try to avoid con-

fl ict? Or is it acceptable to have heated debates? Are you

at odds with an external vendor and feeling less invested

in working things out because you have several other

partners who are courting your business? How might

the larger culture be shaping the current confl ict you’re

having? Is it making it worse than it needs to be?

Hughes points out that quite a few years ago Micro-

soft had a reputation for having an aggressive culture.

“During your fi rst few presentations their people would

just tear into you. The culture was one that valued con-

fl ict. ‘We’re going to use rigorous, fi ery debate to separate

good from bad ideas,’” he says. In a company like this,

which places a premium on being direct, you’d need to

be prepared for a lively debate and know not to take

criticism personally. On the other hand, there are com-

panies where consensus is the norm. “In these places,

you’re going to take a slower, more iterative approach to

confl ict,” says Hughes.

Second, refl ect on the current circumstances sur-

rounding your organization. Are there potential layoffs

64

Get Ready for the Conversation

looming? Have budgets been cut? Is your industry on a

downward trend? Your confl ict may be intensifi ed when

tensions are high in the company, or it might take on a

more severe or vicious tone. The answers to these ques-

tions may not change the approach you choose, but you

should consider them as you get ready for the discussion.

Also fi nd out who else in the organization can help you

both reach a resolution. Are there colleagues who need

to be involved in the discussions? Should you consult

your boss or HR?

Plan Your Message

Think about what you’ll say when you get in the room

before you get in the room, incorporating your goal

and your colleague’s perspective, interests, and style.

What do you want your counterpart to take away from

the conversation? “You’ll have a better chance of be-

ing heard if you defi ne your message and decide how

you’ll convey it,” says Dillon. Plan how you’ll approach

the conversation— literally what you will and won’t say.

“View it as a presentation,” suggests Dillon. “What infor-

mation does your counterpart need to hear? Identify the

key points you’d like to make, highlighting mutual ben-

efi ts when possible.” When you frame the conversation as

trying to achieve a shared goal—such as meeting a dead-

line, coming in under budget, or having a positive work

relationship—the conversation will go better.

But don’t script the entire conversation. That’s a waste

of time. “It’s very unlikely that it will go according to

your plan,” says Weeks. Your counterpart doesn’t know

65

Managing a Confl ict

“his lines,” so when he “goes off script, you have no for-

ward motion” and the exchange “becomes weirdly artifi -

cial.” Your strategy for the conversation should be “fl ex-

ible” and contain “a repertoire of possible responses,”

says Weeks. Jot down notes and key points before your

conversation. Even with thoughtful planning, it’s not un-

common for there to be misalignment between what you

mean when you say something (your intention) and what

the other person hears (your impact). “It doesn’t matter

if your intent is honorable if your impact is not,” says

Linda Hill, a leadership professor at Harvard Business

School. Most people are very aware of what they meant

to say but are less tuned in to what the other person

heard or how they interpreted it. So choose your words

wisely, and try to anticipate and address anything that

might be misinterpreted (see chapter 6, “Have a Produc-

tive Conversation,” for more discussion tips).

Prepare for Multiple Scenarios

Since you can’t know how the conversation is going to go,

you may want to play out a few scenarios, suggests Amy

Jen Su. Find a trusted colleague with whom you can do a

few role-plays. What if your counterpart gets upset and

cries? What if she gets angry? Try responding using dif-

ferent approaches and test out phrases you might use for

various possibilities. And ask your role-play partner to

give you feedback.

Pick the Right Time

Knowing exactly when to have the conversation can be

challenging. On the one hand, it might be easiest to get

66

Get Ready for the Conversation

it over with quickly, when all the details are fresh in your

mind. On the other hand, as discussed in the previous

chapter, it’s often a good idea for everyone to cool down

before trying to get into problem-solving mode. Here are

some tips on picking the right time:

• Consider your tendency. Check yourself before

you decide to delay or get into the conversation. If

you’re a seeker, you’re likely to want to get going

and have the conversation. But if your counterpart

is an avoider, he may need more time. And if you’re

an avoider, you may want to put the conversation

off, but watch that you’re not using that tactic as

an “out” so that you don’t have to face the issue

at all.

• Take into account any outside deadlines. Some-

times you don’t have the luxury of several days

or weeks to work out your disagreement. If the

budget you’re fi ghting over is due to the executive

committee by the end of the month and it’s the

28th, you need to have the conversation sooner

rather than later.

• Check the emotions. As discussed in the previ-

ous chapter, it’s better to have the conversation

when you and your counterpart can be level-

headed. Ask yourself: Am I too emotional right

now? If so, you may say the wrong thing, embar-

rass yourself or your colleague, or create awkward

scenes for others. In those instances, take a walk

around the building, or change your surroundings

67

Managing a Confl ict

by working in a small conference room or heading

home to work in peace.

“Occasionally, you need to let it go and come back to it

another time when you can both have the conversation,”

says Hill. It’s OK to walk away and return to the discus-

sion later. But if you decide to put off the conversation,

make a plan for when you will have it so that you don’t

keep delaying it.

When you’re ready, set up a meeting. Look for a time

when you’ll both be in a good frame of mind. “Not fi rst

thing on Monday when you’re both coming in to a full

inbox. Not last thing on Friday when you’re eager for

the weekend to begin,” says Dillon. Be sure to schedule

enough time so that you’ll be able to reach a conclusion,

or at least end in a constructive place where you can

agree to meet again. In fact, you may want to have an

initial meeting to hear each other out and then sched-

ule a follow-up time when you can dig in to how to solve

the disagreement after you’ve both had time to refl ect on

what the other person said.

Choose the Right Place

The venue will have an effect on whether you both feel

able to speak freely, express any emotions, and ulti-

mately reach a resolution, so select a location where

you’ll both be comfortable. “Right after lunch in a neu-

tral conference room? Over coffee at the local greasy

spoon?” suggests Dillon. You might take a walk outside

together for a change of scenery. Avoid choosing a place

that gives you or your counter part an advantage. Inviting

68

Get Ready for the Conversation

someone into your offi ce puts you in a power position,

for example, because it’s your space and you’re the one

sitting behind a desk. And when choosing a conference

room, think about who’s in adjacent rooms. Sometimes

walls are thinner than you think.

Ideally you want the conversation to happen face-

to-face in private. “Don’t try to solve differences using

email, which does not do a good job of conveying tone

or nuance,” says Dillon. If the issue starts on email, send

a gentle request such as “Could we continue this discus-

sion in person?” or just call the person.

If you have a confl ict with one person during a meet-

ing, don’t attempt to work it out in front of the group,

even if others in the room have a stake in the outcome.

It’s better to take the conversation off-line and then re-

port back to the group. For example, if you and a col-

league start to debate the specifi c marketing language

that will accompany the rollout of a new product and

the conversation gets heated, you might say, “Tom and

I seem to have the strongest viewpoints on this. Would

it be OK with you, Tom, if we paused here and contin-

ued the discussion after the meeting? Then we can come

back to the group with our recommendation.” This will

give you and Tom time to cool down, make sure you

don’t embarrass yourselves in front of everyone, and al-

low you to have a more candid and fruitful discussion

later.

Vent

Before you get into the room, fi nd a trusted colleague or

a spouse or friend who can listen to you complain. Say

69

Managing a Confl ict

everything you feel about the situation—the good, the

bad, and the ugly. Don’t hold back. Susan David, a psy-

chologist and coauthor of the Harvard Business Review

article “Emotional Agility,” says that “suppressing your

emotions—deciding not to say something when you’re

upset—can lead to bad results.” She explains that if you

don’t express your emotions, they’re likely to show up

elsewhere.

Psychologists call this emotional leakage. “Have you

ever yelled at your spouse or child after a frustrating day

at work—a frustration that had nothing to do with him

or her? When you bottle up your feelings, you’re likely

to express your emotions in unintended ways instead,

either sarcastically or in a completely different con-

text. Suppressing your emotions is associated with poor

memory, diffi culties in relationships, and physiological

costs (such as cardiovascular health problems),” David

explains. Prevent your emotions from seeping out—in

the conversation or at home—by getting your feelings

out ahead of time. You’ll be more centered and calm

when you’re having the discussion.

Table 5-1 summarizes the guidelines. Use this check-

list to prepare mentally, strategically, and logistically for

your discussion.

When You Have No Time

to Prepare

Sometimes there’s no time to do this advance work.

A decision needs to be made immediately, or your col-

league catches you off guard, or your boss storms into

70

Get Ready for the Conversation

TABLE 5-1

Your pre-conversation checklist

mentally

Do

Don’t

□  CHECK YOUR

•  Focus on what you

•  Label the conversa-

MINDSET

stand to gain from

tion as “diffi

cult.”

Be positive, but also

the discussion and

•  Sugarcoat what’s go-

honest with yourself

assume you have

ing to happen.

about how diffi

cult

something to learn.

•  Assume you can know

the conversation

•  Ask a trusted co-

everything your coun-

may be.

worker for input if

terpart is thinking

□  CONSIDER THE

you’re at a loss about

ahead of time.

OTHER POSITIONS

what your counterpart •  Vent to a friend who

Look at the situation

is thinking.

typically riles you up.

from your counter-

•  Identify places where

part’s perspective:

you see eye to eye.

What does she want? •  Get your feelings out

□  VENT

ahead of time so you’ll

Get your emotions

be more centered and

out beforehand so

calm.

you can be calm dur- •  Come up with a list of

ing the conversation.

questions you want to

ask when you sit down

together.

strategically

Do

Don’t

□  PLAN YOUR MESSAGE •  Plan how you’ll ap-

•  Script the entire

Think about what

proach the conversa-

conversation—just jot

you’ll say ahead of

tion—literally what

down notes and key

time.

you will and won’t say.

points.

□  PREPARE FOR

•  Focus on a shared

•  Assume you know

MULTIPLE

goal.

how the conversation

SCENARIOS

•  Find a trusted col-

is going to go.

Play out various ways

league with whom

the conversation

you can do a few

might go.

role-plays.

•  Test out phrases you

might say.

( continued)

71

Managing a Confl ict

TABLE 5-1( continued)

logistically

Do

Don’t

□  PICK THE RIGHT TIME •  Pick a time when you

•  Have the conversation

Choose a time

and your counterpart

over email

when you and your

won’t be rushed.

•  Try to talk to your col-

counterpart can be

•  Consider an initial

league when emotions

unrushed and calm.

meeting to hear

are high.

□  SELECT THE

each other out, and

•  Have a fight in a group

RIGHT PLACE

then schedule a

setting (such as in a

Look for some-

follow-up time when

team meeting).

where you can

you can focus on

•  Choose a “turf” set-

meet in private.

problem-solving.

ting where you or your

•  Talk in person, or at

counterpart has a

least on the phone.

power advantage.

•  Try a change of

scenery—going to a

coff ee shop or taking

a walk.

your offi ce. Jeanne Brett suggests you try to put off the

conversation if at all feasible. You might say, “I see that

this is a problem, and I’d like to take some time to think

about ways to resolve it. I promise I’ll come by your offi ce

tomorrow to discuss it.” It’s important to not be dismis-

sive and to acknowledge your colleague’s feelings—“I can

see you’re really upset about this”—and then ask whether

you can set a time to talk when you’re both calmer. If

your counterpart insists that you have the discussion

right then, you might have to go ahead. “The best you

can do in these situations is to remain calm and stop

yourself from getting into a negative emotional spiral,”

says Brett. (See chapter 6 for more on how to maintain

your composure and manage your emotions.)

72

Get Ready for the Conversation

You may be wondering, Do I really need to do all of this

for one 10-minute conversation? The answer is yes.

While it takes time (though it will get easier the more

you do it), there is a huge payoff. You’ll go into the con-

versation with the right mindset, feeling confi dent,

knowing what you want to achieve. This foundation is

the key to a productive discussion.

73

CHAPTER 6

Have a Productive

Conversation

You’re now ready to have a constructive discussion. Your

goal is to work with your counterpart to better under-

stand “the underlying causes of the problem and what

you can do to solve it together,” says Jeanne Brett.

First, frame the discussion so that you and your coun-

terpart start off on the right foot. Then there are three

things you’ll do simultaneously as the conversation

fl ows: Manage your emotions, listen well, and be heard.

When you sit down with your counterpart, don’t be

overly wedded to the information you’ve gathered in

advance. Be fl exible. “You don’t want to be so prepared

that you anticipate a particular reaction and you’re not

able to take in what’s actually happening,” says Amy Jen

Su. If you see the behavior you expected, then label it (in

your head) and continue to observe. But allow yourself

to be surprised, too. The same goes for cultural norms.

75

Managing a Confl ict

“Knowing something about your colleague’s culture gives

you hypotheses to test. But just because you have an East

Asian at the table doesn’t mean he will be indirect,” says

Brett.

Frame the Conversation

Your fi rst few sentences can make or break the rest of the

discussion. Set the conversation up for success by estab-

lishing common ground between you and your counter-

part, labeling the type of confl ict you’re having, asking

your counterpart for advice, laying out ground rules, and

focusing on the future. Here’s more on how to do that.

Focus on common ground

“Too often we end up framing a confl ict as who’s right

or who’s wrong,” Linda Hill says. Instead of trying to un-

derstand what’s really happening in a disagreement, we

advocate for our position. Hill admits that it’s normal to

be defensive and even to blame the other person, but im-

plying “You’re wrong” will make matters worse. Instead,

state what you agree on. In chapter 4, when you identi-

fi ed the type of conflict you’re having, you noted where

there was common ground, and in chapter 5, you identi-

fi ed where your goals might overlap. Put those common-

alities out there as a way to connect. “We both want to

make sure our patients get the best care possible” or “We

agree that the new email system should integrate with

our existing IT systems” or “We both want our depart-

ment to get adequate funding.”

If you weren’t able to pinpoint something that you

both agreed on beforehand or you’re not sure you know

76

Have a Productive Conversation

what your counterpart’s goal is, the easiest way to fi nd

out is to ask, says Jonathan Hughes, “although some-

times people need help crystallizing their goals.” Ex-

plain what’s important to you and then ask, “Is there

any overlap with what you care about? Or do you

have another goal?” Asking questions like these sets a

collaborative tone.

Label the type of confl ict

Acknowledge the type of confl ict you’re having—

relationship, task, process, or status—and check with

your counterpart that he sees it the same way. “It seems

as if the crux of our disagreement is about where to

launch the product fi rst. Do you agree?” You may also

want to reassure him that you value your relationship.

This will convey to him that your point of contention is

not a personal one. Say something like, “I really respect

you and how you run your department. This is not about

our relationship, but about how our two teams will work

together on this project.”

If your confl ict covers several different types, as many

do, name each one in turn so that they’re all out on the

table. Hughes suggests you say something along these

lines: It feels like we agree on the same goal here—to

bring in revenue from this new product as soon as pos-

sible. [Establishing common ground on task] Our con-

fl ict seems to be more about how we do it—the timing of

how quickly we roll out this product and whether we roll

it out in target markets fi rst. [Labeling the process con-

fl ict] In addition to that disagreement over the means, it

seems—and I could be wrong about this—you feel some

77

Managing a Confl ict

frustration with me about how I’ve approached this.

[Naming the relationship confl ict] I want to put that

all on the table because success is going to depend on us

working together.

Ask for advice

Research by Katie Liljenquist at Brigham Young Uni-

versity’s Department of Organizational Leadership and

Strategy and Adam Galinsky, the chair of the Manage-

ment Department at the Columbia Business School, has

shown that asking for advice makes you appear more

warm, humble, and cooperative—all of which can go a

long way in resolving a confl ict. “Being asked for advice

is inherently fl attering because it’s an implicit endorse-

ment of our opinions, values, and expertise. Further-

more, it works equally well up and down the hierarchy—

subordinates are delighted and empowered by requests

for their insights, and superiors appreciate the deference

to their authority and experience,” say Liljenquist and

Galinsky. Of course, any goodwill garnered by this tac-

tic will swiftly be undone if you ignore your counterpart’s

suggestions. Incorporate at least some small part of what

she advises into your approach.

There are two other benefi ts to framing a confl ict as

a request for advice, according to Liljenquist and Galin-

sky. First, you nudge your counterpart to see things from

your perspective. “The last time someone came to you

for advice, most likely, you engaged in an instinctive

mental exercise: You tried to put yourself in the other

person’s shoes and imagine the world through his eyes,”

they explain. The second benefi t is that an adversary-

78

Have a Productive Conversation

turned- advisor may well become a champion for your

cause. “When someone offers you advice, it represents an

investment of his time and energy. Your request empow-

ers your advisor to make good on his recommendations

and become an advocate,” they say.

Set up ground rules

The conversation will go more smoothly if you agree on a

code of conduct. At a minimum, suggest no interrupting,

no yelling, and no personal attacks. This is especially im-

portant for confl ict seekers, who may see no problem in

raising their voices. Acknowledge that you both may need

to take a break at some point. Then ask what other rules

are important to your counterpart. If you’re concerned

your colleague won’t abide by the rules, write them down

on a piece of paper to keep in front of you or on a white-

board if you’re in a conference room. If your counterpart

begins to raise his voice, for example, you can nod to-

ward the written rules and offer a gentle reminder. “We

said we weren’t going to yell. Can you lower your voice?”

These rules may also be helpful if you need to change the

tone of the conversation later on (see “Change the tenor

of the conversation” later in the chapter).

Focus on the future

It’s tempting to rehash everything that’s happened up to

this point. But it’s generally not helpful to go over every

detail or to focus too heavily on the past. “You can’t re-

solve a battle over a problem that has already happened,

but you can set a course going forward,” says Judith

White. Focus the discussion on solving the problem and

79

Managing a Confl ict

moving on. You can start by saying “I know a lot has gone

on between us. If it’s OK with you, I’d like to talk about

what we both might do to make sure this project gets

completed on budget and how we can better work to-

gether in the future.” If your counterpart starts to harp on

the past, don’t chastise her for it. Instead, refocus the

conversation by saying something like “I hear you. How

can we make sure that doesn’t happen again?”

Each of these steps will establish the right tone for

your conversation: that you and your counterpart are in

it together and you need to reach a resolution that works

for both of you.

Manage Your Emotions—and Theirs

Confl ict can bring up all sorts of negative emotions for

seekers and avoiders alike. Recognize the emotion, but

don’t let it stop you from having the conversation. To

watch your own reaction while also recognizing your

counterpart’s feelings, understand why confl ict can feel

so bad. Remain calm, acknowledge and label your feel-

ings, and allow for venting. Let’s take a closer look at

how to manage emotions and clear the way for a produc-

tive discussion.

Understand why you’re so uncomfortable

In the middle of a tough conversation, it can be diffi cult

to take a deep breath and think rationally about what to

do next. This is because you’re fi ghting your body’s natu-

ral reaction, says psychiatry professor John Ratey. Your

brain experiences confl ict, particularly relationship con-

fl ict, as a threat: I disagree with you. You haven’t done

80

Have a Productive Conversation

your job. I don’t like what you just said. You’re wrong. I

hate you.

Leadership expert Annie McKee suggests that confl ict

makes us feel bad because it means we’re going to have to

give something up—our point of view, the way we’re used

to doing something, or maybe even power. That threat

triggers your sympathetic nervous system. As a result,

your heart rate and breathing rate spike, your muscles

tighten, the blood in your body moves away from your

organs. “Some people feel their stomach tense as acid

moves into it,” says Ratey.

Depending on the perceived size and intensity of the

threat, you may then move into fi ght-or-fl ight mode.

“When you’re panicking, feeling crushed or over-

whelmed, the body’s response is to be aggressive—punch

or push back—or to run away and hide,” says Ratey. “This

is when you’re in it full-time and the discomfort goes all

over your body. It’s like seeing a bunch of snakes or spi-

ders in front of you.” When your brain perceives danger

like this, it can be diffi cult to make rational decisions,

which is precisely what you need to do in a diffi cult con-

versation. Luckily, it’s possible to interrupt this physical

response and restore calm in your body.

Remain calm

There are several things you can do to keep your cool

during a conversation or to calm yourself down if you’ve

gotten worked up. For confl ict seekers, it’s especially

important to keep your temper in check. For avoiders,

these tactics will help keep you from retreating from the

conversation.

81

Managing a Confl ict

• Take a deep breath. Notice the sensation of air

coming in and out of your lungs. Feel it pass

through your nostrils or down the back of your

throat. This will take your attention off the physi-

cal signs of panic and keep you centered.

• Focus on your body. “Standing up and walking

around may activate the thinking part of your

brain,” says Ratey, and keep you from exploding.

If you and your counterpart are seated at a table,

instead of leaping to your feet, you can say, “I feel

like I need to stretch some. Mind if I walk around

a bit?” If that doesn’t feel comfortable, do small

things like crossing two fi ngers or placing your feet

fi rmly on the ground and noticing what the fl oor

feels like on the bottom of your shoes.

• Look around the room. Become more aware of the

space between you and your counterpart, suggests

Jen Su. Notice the color of the walls or any artwork

hanging there. Watch the hands of the clock move.

“Pay attention to the whole room,” she says. “This

will help you realize that there’s more space in the

room than you’re currently allowing.”

• Say a mantra. Jen Su also recommends repeating

a phrase to yourself to remind you to stay calm.

Some of her clients have found “Go to neutral” to

be a helpful prompt. You can also try “This isn’t

about me,” “This will pass,” or “This is about the

business.”

82

Have a Productive Conversation

• Take a break. You may need to excuse yourself for

a moment—get a cup of coffee or a glass of water,

go to the bathroom, or take a brief stroll around

the offi ce. If you agreed up front that this might

happen, you can say, “I think I need that break

now. OK if we come back in fi ve minutes?” If push-

ing pause wasn’t on your list of ground rules, you

can still make the request: “I’m sorry to interrupt

you, but I’d love to get a cup of coffee before we

continue. Can I get you something while I’m up?”

Acknowledge and label your feelings

When you’re feeling emotional, “the attention you give

your thoughts and feelings crowds your mind; there’s no

room to examine them,” says Susan David. To get dis-

tance from the feeling, label it. “Just as you call a spade

a spade, call a thought a thought and an emotion an

emotion,” says David. He is so wrong about that and it’s

making me mad becomes I’m having the thought that

my coworker is wrong, and I’m feeling anger. Labeling

like this allows you to see your thoughts and feelings for

what they are: “transient sources of data that may or may

not prove helpful.” When you put that space between

these emotions and you, it’s easier to let them go—and

not bury them or let them explode.

Allow for venting

You’re probably not the only one who’s upset. When your

counterpart expresses anger or frustration, don’t stop

him. Let him vent as much as possible and remain calm

83

Managing a Confl ict

while this is happening. Seekers may naturally do this,

while you may have to draw an avoider out. If you took

the time to air your own feelings with someone else (as

discussed at the end of the previous chapter), you’ll un-

derstand the importance of giving your counterpart this

space. That’s not to say it’s easy. Brett explains:

It’s hard not to yell back when you’re being attacked,

but that’s not going to help. To remain calm while your

colleague is venting and perhaps even hurling a few

insults, visualize your coworker’s words going over

your shoulder, not hitting you in the chest. Don’t act

aloof; it’s important to indicate that you’re listening.

But if you don’t feed your counterpart’s negative emo-

tion with your own, it’s likely he or she will wind down.

Without the fuel of your equally strong reaction, he or

she will run out of steam.

Don’t interrupt the venting or interject your own com-

mentary. “Hold back and let your counterpart say his or

her piece. You don’t have to agree with it, but listen,” Hill

says. While you’re doing this, you might be completely

quiet or you might indicate you’re listening by using

phrases such as “I get that” or “I understand.” Avoid say-

ing anything that assigns feeling or blame, such as “Calm

down” or “What you need to understand is . . .” This can

be an explosive trigger for a confl ict seeker. If you can

tolerate the venting, without judging, you’ll soon be able

to guide the conversation to a more productive place.

Refocus the conversation on the substance of the confl ict

84

Have a Productive Conversation

by saying “I’m glad I got to hear how this has affected

you. What do you think we should do next?” This will be-

gin to draw out potential solutions so that you can move

toward a resolution.

Listen Well

“If you listen to what the other person is saying, you’re

more likely to address the right issues and the conver-

sation always ends up being better,” says Jean-François

Manzoni. Hear your counterpart out and ask questions.

Here are tips for doing that.

Hear your coworker out

Even if you think you already understand your co worker’s

point of view—and you’ve put yourself in her shoes ahead

of time—hear what she has to say. This is especially im-

portant if you aren’t sure of what the other person sees as

the root of the confl ict. Acknowledge that you don’t know,

and ask. This shows your counterpart “that you care,”

Manzoni says. “Express your interest in understanding

how the other person feels” and “take time to process the

other person’s words and tone,” he adds. Be considerate

and show compassion by validating what she’s saying

with phrases such as “I get it” or “I hear you.” Accord-

ing to Jeff Weiss, this requires that you “stop fi guring out

your next line” and actively listen. Your coworker’s expla-

nation of his side may uncover an important piece of in-

formation that leads to a resolution. For example, if he

says he’s just trying to keep his boss happy, you can help

him craft a resolution that addresses his boss’s concerns.

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Managing a Confl ict

Ask thoughtful questions

It’s better to ask questions than to make statements;

questions demonstrate your receptiveness to a genuine

dialogue. This is when you bring in the questions you

crafted in the previous chapter to unearth your counter-

part’s viewpoint and test your hypotheses (see the side-

bar “Questions to Draw Out Your Counterpart’s Perspec-

tive”). Once you’ve had a chance to hear her thoughts,

Hill suggests you paraphrase and ask, “I think you

said X. Did I get that right?”

Don’t just take what she says at face value. This is es-

pecially important for a confl ict avoider, who may not tell

you all that she’s thinking. Ask what her viewpoint looks

like in action. For example, says team expert Liane Davey,

“If you are concerned about a proposed course of action,

ask your teammates to think through the impact of im-

plementing their plan. ‘OK, we’re contemplating launch-

ing this product only to our U.S. customers. How is that

going to land with our two big customers in Latin Amer-

ica?’ This is less aggressive than saying ‘Our Latin Ameri-

can customers will be angry.’” She adds: “Anytime you can

demonstrate that you’re open to ideas and curious about

the right approach, it will open up the discussion.”

Hill suggests you also get to the underlying reason for

the initiative, policy, or approach that you’re disagreeing

with. You’ve already labeled the confl ict as relationship,

task, process, and/or status, but return to those catego-

ries in your questions to give your counterpart the op-

portunity to share her view. How do you see the goal

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Have a Productive Conversation

QUESTIONS TO DRAW OUT YOUR

COUNTERPART’S PERSPECTIVE

• What about this situation is most troubling

to you?

• What’s most important to you?

• Can you tell me about the assumptions you’ve

made here?

• Can you help me understand your thinking here?

• What makes you say that?

• Can you tell me more about that?

• What leads you to believe that?

• How does this relate to your other concerns?

• What would it take for us to be able to move

forward? How do we get there?

• What would you like to see happen?

• What does a resolution look like for you?

• What ideas do you have that would meet both

our needs?

• If this was completely in your control, how would

you handle it?

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Managing a Confl ict

differently? Why do you think you’re the best person to

lead the team?

Figure out why your counterpart thinks his idea is a

reasonable proposal. Say something like, “Sam, I want

to understand what we’re trying to accomplish with this

initiative. Can you go back and explain the reasoning be-

hind it?” Get Sam to talk more about what he wants to

achieve and why. It’s not enough to know that he wants

the project to be done in six months. You need to know

why that’s important to him. Is it because he made a

promise to his boss? Is it because the team that’s dedi-

cated to the project needs to be freed up to take on an

important client initiative? These are his underlying in-

terests, and they’ll help you later when you’re trying to

craft a resolution that incorporates his viewpoint (see

chapter 7, “Get to a Resolution and Make a Plan”).

You can return to the notion of asking for advice here.

Perhaps you genuinely don’t understand something, or

you’re shocked by something your counterpart has said.

Davey suggests that you be mildly self-deprecating and

own the misunderstanding. “If something is really sur-

prising to you (you can’t believe anyone would propose

anything so crazy), say so. ‘I think I’m missing something

here. Tell me how this will address our sales gap for Q1.’

This will encourage the person to restate his perspective

and give you time to understand it.”

Respectfully listening to and acknowledging your

counterpart’s viewpoint sets the stage for you to share

your side of the confl ict. If he feels heard, he’s more likely

to hear you out as well.

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Have a Productive Conversation

Be Heard

When it’s time to share your story, allow your counter-

part to understand your perspective in a genuine way.

“Letting down your guard and letting the other person in

may help her understand your point of view,” says Mark

Gerzon, author of Leading Through Confl ict: How Suc-

cessful Leaders Transform Differences into Opportuni-

ties. Help your coworker see where you’re coming from

by speaking from your own perspective, thinking before

you talk, and watching body language (yours and hers)

for clues that the conversation may be going off the rails.

Own your perspective

If you feel mistreated, you may be tempted to launch

into your account of the events: “I want to talk about

how horribly you treated me in that meeting.” But that’s

unlikely to go over well.

Instead, treat your opinion like what it is: your opin-

ion. Start sentences with “I,” not “you.” Say “I’m annoyed

that this project is six months behind schedule,” rather

than “You’ve missed every deadline we’ve set.” This will

help the other person see your perspective and under-

stand that you’re not trying to blame him.

With a relationship confl ict, explain exactly what is

bothering you and follow up by identifying what you

hope will happen. You might say, “I appreciate your

ideas, but I’m fi nding it hard to hear them because

throughout this process, I’ve felt as if you didn’t respect

my ideas. That’s my perception. I’m not saying that it’s

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Managing a Confl ict

your intention. I’d like to clear the air so that we can con-

tinue to work together to make the project a success.”

Dorie Clark, author of Reinventing You: Defi ne Your

Brand, Imagine Your Future, says that you should ad-

mit blame when appropriate. “It’s easy to demonize

your colleague. But you’re almost certainly contributing

to the dynamic in some way, as well,” Clark says. To get

anywhere, you have to understand—and acknowledge—

your role in the situation. Admitting your faults will help

set a tone of accountability for both of you, and your

counter part is more likely to own up to her missteps as

well. If she doesn’t, and instead seizes on your confes-

sion and harps on it—“That’s exactly why we’re in this

mess”—let it go. See it as part of the venting process de-

scribed earlier.

Pay attention to your words

Sometimes, regardless of your good intentions, what you

say can further upset your counterpart and make the

issue worse. Other times you might say the exact thing

that helps the person go from boiling mad to cool as a

cucumber. See the sidebar “Phrases to Make Sure You’ve

Heard.” There are some basic rules you can follow to

keep from pushing your counterpart’s buttons. Of course

you should avoid name-calling and fi nger-pointing. Fo-

cus on your perspective, as discussed above, avoiding

sentences that start with “you” and could be misinter-

preted as accusations. Your language should be “simple,

clear, direct, and neutral,” says Holly Weeks. Don’t apol-

ogize for your feelings, either. The worst thing you can

do “is to ask your counterpart to have sympathy for you,”

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Have a Productive Conversation

PHRASES TO MAKE SURE YOU’RE HEARD

• “Here’s what I’m thinking.”

• “My perspective is based on the following

assumptions . . .”

• “I came to this conclusion because . . .”

• “I’d love to hear your reaction to what I

just said.”

• “Do you see any fl aws in my reasoning?”

• “Do you see the situation diff erently?”

she says. Don’t say things like “I feel so bad about saying

this” or “This is really hard for me to do,” because it takes

the focus away from the problem and toward your own

neediness. While this can be hard, especially for confl ict

avoiders, this language can make your counterpart feel

obligated to focus on making you feel better before mov-

ing on.

Davey provides two additional rules when it comes to

what you say:

• Say “and,” not “but.” “When you need to disagree

with someone, express your contrary opinion as

an ‘and.’ It’s not necessary for someone else to be

wrong for you to be right,” she says. When you’re

surprised to hear something your counterpart

has said, don’t interject with a “But that’s not

right!” Just add your perspective. Davey suggests

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Managing a Confl ict

something like this: “You think we need to leave

room in the budget for a customer event, and I’m

concerned that we need that money for employee

training. What are our options?” This will engage

your colleague in problem solving, which is inher-

ently collaborative instead of combative.

• Use hypotheticals. Being contradicted doesn’t

feel very good, so don’t try to tit-for-tat your

counterpart, countering each of his arguments.

Instead, says Davey, use hypothetical situations

to get him imagining. “Imagining is the opposite

of defending, so it gets the brain out of a rut,” she

says. She offers this example: “I hear your concern

about getting the right salespeople to pull off this

campaign. If we could get the right people . . . what

could the campaign look like?”

Watch your body language—

and your counterpart’s

The words coming out of your mouth should match what

you’re saying with your body. Watch your facial expres-

sion and what you do with your arms, legs, and entire

body. A lot of people unconsciously convey nonverbal

messages. Are you slumping your shoulders? Rolling

your eyes? Fidgeting with your pen?

Increase your awareness of the energy you give off. In

Amy Jen Su and Muriel Maignan Wilkins’s book, Own

the Room, they offer six places where nonverbal mes-

sages are communicated through body language: your

posture; eye contact; the natural gestures you make typi-

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Have a Productive Conversation

cally with your hands; the tone, tempo, and timing of

your voice; your facial expressions; and how you occupy

the space around you (see table 6-1).

Through each of those points, you signal to others

what you’re thinking and feeling. Jen Su and Maignan

Wilkins use the acronym CENTER to help people re-

member these six cue points. Table 6-1 shows different

signals you might be sending depending on whether

you’re in an aggressive, confl ict-seeking mode or a more

passive, confl ict-avoidant mode. Reviewing the table and

considering the questions will help you maintain body

language that’s as open as the language you’re using.

During your conversation, pay attention to each

of these areas and take stock of the overall impression

you’re giving. Do the same for your counterpart. Watch

what she’s conveying through her body language. Again,

her nonverbal cues may be sending a different message

than what she’s articulating. If that’s the case, or if you’re

noticing any body language, ask about it. For example,

you might say, “I hear you saying that you’re fi ne with

this approach, but it looks as if maybe you still have some

concerns. Is that right? Should we talk those through?”

Change the tenor of the conversation

Sometimes, despite your best intentions and all of the

time you put into preparing for the conversation, things

veer off course. You can’t demand that your counterpart

hold the discussion exactly the way you want.

If things get heated, don’t panic. Take a deep breath,

mentally pop out of the conversation as if you’re a fl y

on the wall, and objectively look at what’s happening.

93

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You might even describe to yourself (in your head) what’s

happening: “He keeps returning to the fact that I yelled

at his team yesterday.” “When I try to move the conver-

sation away from what’s gone wrong to what we can do

going forward, he keeps shifting it back.” “Every time I

bring up the sales numbers, he raises his voice.”

Then state what you’re observing in a calm tone. “It

looks as if whenever the sale numbers come up, you

raise your voice.” Suggest a different approach: “If we

put our heads together, we could probably come up with

a way to move past this. Do you have any ideas?”

“Stepping back and explicitly negotiating over the pro-

cess itself can be a powerful game-changing move,” says

Weiss. If it seems as if you’ve entered into a power strug-

gle in which you’re no longer discussing the substance

of your confl ict but battling over who is right, step back

and either return to your questions above or talk about

what’s not working. Say, “We seem to be getting locked

into our positions. Could we return to our goals and see

if we can brainstorm together some new ideas that might

meet both our objectives?” See the sidebar “Phrases That

Productively Move the Conversation Along.” Returning

your counterpart to his original goal may be enough to

get the conversation back on track.

When to Bring in a Third Party

There are times, however, when you’re getting nowhere

with your counterpart and, even when you follow the

principles above, you’re still not able to have a productive

discussion. Some problems are too entrenched, compli-

cated, or emotional to sort out between two people. Or

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Managing a Confl ict

PHRASES THAT PRODUCTIVELY MOVE THE

CONVERSATION ALONG

• “You may be right, but I’d like to understand

more.”

• “I have a completely diff erent perspective, but

clearly you think this is unfair, so how can we

fi x this?”

• “Can you help me make the connection between

this and the other issues we’re talking about?”

• “I’d like to give my reaction to what you’ve said

so far and see what you think.”

• “I’m sensing there are some intense emotions

about this. When you said ‘X,’ I had the impres-

sion you were feeling ‘Y.’ If so, I’d like to under-

stand what upset you. Is there something I’ve

said or done?”

• “This may be more my perception than yours,

but when you said ‘X,’ I felt . . .”

• “Is there anything I can say or do that might con-

vince you to consider other options here?”

your counterpart is too infl exible or unable to hear your

side, insisting that it’s her way or the highway.

The main indicator you may need outside help, says

White, is when it seems as if your counterpart is per-

petuating the confl ict rather than trying to solve it. “She

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Have a Productive Conversation

may be alternatively conciliatory and antagonistic. Every

time you seem to be making progress, she walks back

from the tentative agreement and accuses you of not ne-

gotiating in good faith,” she explains.

This is not a failure. “Someone who is not involved in

the confl ict may be able to provide vital perspective for

both parties,” says Gerzon. Ideally, you’ll both agree that

a third party is necessary before going with this option.

But if you can’t reach agreement on anything else, this

might be diffi cult. In these cases, you may have to ask

someone else to get involved without your counterpart’s

permission.

Who you bring in will depend on the nature of the

confl ict. Choose someone whom you both trust and can

rely on to understand the issues but also brings an out-

side perspective. It might be one or both of your bosses.

“For example,” says Ben Dattner, “if roles are poorly de-

fi ned, a boss might help clarify who is responsible for

what.” If the confl ict is over how people are rewarded,

you might turn to HR or a union representative. Dattner

shares another example: “If incentives reward individual

rather than team performance, HR can be called in to

help better align incentives with organizational goals.”

When you’ve exhausted all your internal options, or

if there is no one to appeal to, you might need a trained

mediator to help.

In the process of having a productive discussion with

your counterpart—expressing your point of view and

listening to hers—a resolution may naturally arise. It

97

Managing a Confl ict

may be that there was a misunderstanding and now it’s

cleared up. Or perhaps after hearing your colleague out,

you realize you do agree with how she’s approaching the

project. Or as you talk through what her goals are, you

stumble upon a solution that would work well for both

of you.

If this doesn’t happen organically, you’ll have to more

consciously work toward a resolution that meets both

your and your counterpart’s goals.

98

SECTION THREE

Resolving a

Confl ict

CHAPTER 7

Get to a

Resolution and

Make a Plan

When addressing the confl ict directly, the fi nal step is to

broker a resolution between you and your counterpart.

Start by understanding what a resolution looks like.

Then with that goal in mind, take steps to narrow down

the options and make the fi nal call.

What a Resolution Looks Like

The details of each specifi c resolution will vary depend-

ing on the type of confl ict you were having. With task

confl ict, the resolution is likely to be an agreement about

what it is you want to accomplish—the stated objective

for the project you’re coleading or an agenda for the next

managers’ meeting. It will be something concrete that

you can write down. The same goes for a process confl ict.

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Resolving a Confl ict

Ideally you’ll be able to document the process you’ll use

going forward—how to reach consensus before approv-

ing new projects or the sequencing for rolling out the

IT initiative. With status confl ict, the resolution may be

reaching an understanding about who will lead a project

or whose team is ultimately responsible for the success

of the product launch.

Resolutions in a relationship confl ict can be the most

diffi cult to broker and recognize, especially because there

are usually bruised feelings that take a while to heal. Of-

ten you might agree to each do something differently in

the future—he will not raise his voice when he disagrees

with you, and you will not run to your boss until you’ve

talked with your counterpart fi rst.

But no matter what type of confl ict you were engaged

in—relationship, task, process, or status—a resolution

needs to meet the same three criteria.

It satisfi es as many interests as possible

During your conversation, you spent a lot of time and

energy explaining your perspective and goals. You also

learned about your counterpart’s underlying interests.

Perhaps she wanted to be sure that her team was well

represented at an important presentation so that they

had an opportunity to show off their work, while you

wanted the presentation to go quickly and smoothly so

that there was plenty of time at the end for questions.

It’s possible—and preferable—that an agreement meets

each of those interests reasonably well. “The essence of

a resolution is that you get to what the underlying inter-

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Get to a Resolution and Make a Plan

ests are and try to satisfy as many of them as possible,”

says Jonathan Hughes.

It’s fair and reasonable

“We all want a resolution that feels fair and reasonable

to everyone involved—and is defensible to others on the

outside looking in,” says Hughes. You should be able to

answer yes to the following questions: “Do I think this is

a reasonable solution?” “Does my counterpart?” “Can I

defend it to my boss or anyone else who cares about the

outcome?” We also want to feel as though we came to the

agreement by ourselves and weren’t pressured into con-

ceding or giving in. So both the fi nal arrangement and

the process you used to reach it need to be fair.

The relationship is intact

If you reach a resolution that meets the business needs

and is fair and reasonable, but you end up hating each

other, then it’s hard to call that a success. You want to be

able to say that you maintained your relationship, or that

you even improved it. “The icing on the cake is if you can

honestly say to each other that you learned something

about each other in the process,” says Hughes, “and thus

that the next disagreement or confl ict will be that much

easier to resolve together.”

How You Reach a Resolution

Arriving at a resolution that meets those three criteria

requires additional conversation, and it’s up to you and

your counterpart to come up with options. Be creative

103

Resolving a Confl ict

and collaborative as you do that. Then evaluate the op-

tions you generated and make the fi nal call together.

Be creative

Keep in mind your goal, and that of your counterpart,

and when all the data is on the table, offer different op-

tions that ideally meet both of your needs. Are there

ways to satisfy both of your interests and build on that to

discover new benefi ts neither one of you envisioned on

your own? Consider a salary increase. You may be fi ght-

ing for a 10% raise, while your boss thinks you deserve

7%. Instead of just duking it out over the exact percent-

age, fi nd a way to include something in the raise that’s

valuable to both of you. Perhaps you can take on a new

project for your region that allows you to travel and get

exposure to more senior leaders. Taking a creative ap-

proach to the confl ict, instead of focusing on and nit-

picking over a number, increases what you can both get

out of it.

Don’t get locked into your answer and his answer.

Proposing several alternatives helps the other person

see a way out, and it also signals humility, that you don’t

believe there’s just one way to resolve this dispute: your

way. Don’t offer what you originally came to the table

with, but use the information you gathered during your

conversation to come up with a better solution. There

are always additional ways of solving a problem. “When

you’re creative about how to meet your interests, you can

begin to imagine a third way that might meet your needs

well and work for both of you,” says Hughes.

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Get to a Resolution and Make a Plan

Be collaborative

Brainstorm possibilities together. If you propose a po-

tential solution, ask for your counterpart’s input. Ask,

“What other ideas might you have?” and let him build

on your ideas or offer others. When you suggest a poten-

tial resolution, don’t just say, “Do you like it?” but invite

criticism. Weiss suggests you ask “What would be wrong

with this solution?” That better helps you understand his

viewpoint and encourages him to also be creative.

Consider what you can off er

If you’ve proposed a solution that potentially puts the

other person in a diffi cult spot or takes something away

from her, ask yourself: Is there something I can give

back? says Holly Weeks. If, for instance, you’re telling

your boss that you can’t take on a particular assignment,

propose a viable alternative, such as someone else who

can fill the role equally well. “Be constructive,” says Jean-

François Manzoni. Or if you’re laying off someone you’ve

worked with for a long time, “you could say, ‘I have writ-

ten what I think is a strong recommendation for you;

would you like to see it?’”

Decide how to evaluate the possibilities

With several options on the table, begin evaluating them.

Agree on the criteria you’ll use to select the best option.

Perhaps you’ll ask a disinterested third party to weigh

in on your resolution and see if it looks fair. Or maybe

you’ll agree on certain requirements that the resolution

105

Resolving a Confl ict

must meet, such as mitigating the risk of a lawsuit or be-

ing cost- effective. “It’s often easier to agree on the crite-

ria than the solution,” says Hughes. These can be hard

to establish in a relationship confl ict, however. In those

situations, fairness is usually the standard against which

to evaluate possibilities.

This may all sound rational and reasonable, and

maybe collaborating on a resolution will be exactly that.

But just as emotions were a key element of the confl ict

up to this point, they’re likely to be present in this part

of the conversation as well. Continue to remain calm, ac-

knowledge and label your feelings, and allow for vent-

ing when necessary. All the tips you learned for having

a productive conversation in the previous chapter will

continue to be useful here.

Make the fi nal call

Often with task, process, and status confl ict, there is a

tangible decision to make. Are we going to fi nish this

project in six months or one year? Can we fund this

project and at the same time put a small amount of

money toward another one that we’ll plan to fully fund

next year? Using the criteria you’ve laid out and the op-

tions you’ve developed, you and your counterpart must

agree on which path to pursue and under which ar-

rangements. Other times there is no decision to make,

especially with relationship confl ict. In those cases,

“sometimes just talking it through will resolve it,” says

Hughes. Once you understand your counterpart’s per-

spective, you may not feel so bad about the way he

spoke to you in that meeting. And once he sees that you

106

Get to a Resolution and Make a Plan

misinterpreted his reaction, he may be more forgiv-

ing of the fact that you left the room before the meet-

ing was over. “No one’s at fault,” says Hughes. “No one’s

the bad guy. And accepting that can take the sting out of

the fi ght.”

Document the agreement

This doesn’t have to be formal, such as a contract. Cap-

ture your discussion in an email and send it with a quick

note that asks, “Did I get this right?” Confi rming what

you’ve agreed to ensures you’re on the same page and

gives you both something to refer to should any simi-

lar issues arise again. You want to do this as soon after

your conversation as possible—defi nitely within a day or

two. Leaving it any longer risks that you’ll misremember

what you both agreed to.

When to Accept That There

Won’t Be a Resolution

There are some situations in which, try as you might,

you won’t reach a resolution. You’ve engaged in a con-

structive discussion and come up with alternatives for

resolving the particular confl ict you’re having, but you

can’t make the fi nal call on which option to go with. It

may be that your counterpart insists on one solution and

you’re unwilling to go with that one. Perhaps you have

your heart set on a particular option, but it doesn’t meet

your counterpart’s interests. Be realistic with yourself

about what’s possible so that you don’t bang your head

against the wall trying to force a solution when there

isn’t one.

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Resolving a Confl ict

If you can’t reach a resolution, there are three things

you can do:

• Take a break. Sometimes, if you step away from

the conversation, let the emotions cool down a

little, and return to it later, you might see a dif-

ferent option neither of you thought of before or

an existing possibility may look more appealing

to one or both of you. This is an especially good

tactic if you feel bullied into accepting an outcome.

“When someone threatens us, we tend to make

irrational decisions, so we need time to fi gure out

whether this is, in fact, something we are willing to

accept, or whether it’s worse than no agreement,”

says Judith White. “This will give you the time to

consider the offer and save you from one of three

mistakes: accepting something you should have

rejected; rejecting something you should have

accepted, or blowing up at the other person and

thereby blowing up any hope of a mutually agree-

able solution.”

• Appeal to someone more senior. You can escalate

the situation to a person in a higher position. You

might say to your boss or your counterpart’s boss,

“We’re in this fi x and we need your help to make

the decision.” You might ask that person to “decide

for the two of you, to intervene and offer another

solution, or to change one of the constraints, such

as giving you more resources or extending a dead-

line,” explains Hughes.

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Get to a Resolution and Make a Plan

• Get your needs met another way. In lieu of settling

your confl ict, what can you do instead? If you and

a supplier disagree on the terms of your contract

renewal, can you fi nd another supplier? Or stay

with this supplier, but escalate the confl ict to his

boss? Or you could hold out for a few months and

see if the deal gets better with time. If you’re in a

dispute about how much of a raise you’ll get, and

it doesn’t look as if HR is going to give you what

you asked for, can you look for a different job or go

freelance?

Learn from Your Experience

Once you’ve reached a successful conclusion, it’s worth-

while to refl ect and consider what went well and what

didn’t, says Manzoni. “Why did you have certain reac-

tions, and what might you have said differently?” Weeks

also recommends observing how others successfully

cope with these situations and emulating their tactics.

The goal is to constantly improve your approach to con-

fl ict by integrating new tactics and strategies. Talk with

your boss, a mentor, or a trusted colleague about what

you’ve learned and ask them to remind you and hold you

accountable so that you don’t repeat the same mistakes.

It’s also a good time to talk with your counterpart

about what you’ll do if you enter into a confl ict again.

What do each of you want to do differently? How can

you make sure that future disagreements don’t turn

ugly? Document these ideas (again an email is fi ne) so

that you can both refer back to them if you need to.

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Resolving a Confl ict

Once the content of the disagreement has been solved,

think about what other reparations you might need to

make. Even if your dispute was purely task related or

process related, be mindful that your relationship may

have suffered. Restoring trust and accepting the situa-

tion are critical parts of moving on.

110

CHAPTER 8

Repair the

Relationship

Whether you’re shaking hands after a productive con-

versation, carrying on business as usual, returning to

your desk knowing someone intervened on your behalf,

trying to accept that there will be no resolution, or plot-

ting how to fi nd an entirely new job, it’s important to put

the confl ict behind you and move on. And even if you’ve

come to an agreeable resolution, sometimes the relation-

ship needs to be mended. There may be some lingering

resentment or you or your counterpart may be anxious

that the situation will happen again.

If you opted to do nothing, you still need to think

about the relationship. You don’t want to harbor nega-

tive feelings toward the person, especially if you were the

one who decided against other options for addressing

the disagreement. “You need to tell yourself: ‘I chose to

let this go. I’m not going to ruminate or retaliate because

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Resolving a Confl ict

it was my decision to let go,’” says Jeanne Brett. Even if

you didn’t make the decision about how to handle the

situation, it’s still in your best interest to move past it.

Putting your relationship back on track requires ad-

dressing your needs, those of your counterpart, and those

of the people who may have been party to the confl ict.

Pause and Refl ect

You might feel amped from the tension even after it’s

been resolved, or plain exhausted from the mental gym-

nastics of trying to remain calm, listen, and balance your

goals with your counterpart’s all at the same time. Or

perhaps you’re worn out from working hard to let the

confl ict go. No matter what you’re feeling, take a mo-

ment to consider what you’ve accomplished: Not only

did you make it through the confl ict in one piece, but you

made smart choices about how to handle it, remained

fl exible, and pushed yourself to stay present. Well done.

Now consider taking a break from work. After a heated

discussion, you may want to take a walk outside, go to

the gym, or meet up with a friend. Or you may just want

to go home and get a good night’s sleep. Chances are

that with a little time and space, any lingering negative

energy will dissipate and you’ll return to work feeling

clearer and more focused.

Look Forward

Although you’ll want to refl ect and learn from what hap-

pened, resist the tendency to analyze every detail of the

confl ict. Who said what? Why did they say it? That isn’t

productive. “Lots of people think that it’s only by under-

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Repair the Relationship

standing the past that we get beyond it. But what you

focus on is what grows,” Susan David says. So contem-

plate what’s worked well previously, what you like about

the person, and what you want from the relationship.

“Take a solution-focused approach, not a diagnostic

one,” she says. (See the sidebar “A Success Story” for one

example of how a common purpose helped two people

move beyond their confl ict.)

Rebuild Rapport

If the relationship has suffered some damage, don’t ex-

pect it to change overnight. “The real shifts in relation-

ships happen less in those watershed moments and more

in your everyday actions,” David explains. Sitting down

and talking is helpful, “but that’s not where the work

really happens. It’s more subtle than that.” Make an ef-

fort to change the tone of your everyday interactions. Say

hello before you sit down at your desk in the morning.

Offer to buy him a coffee. Small gestures of civility go a

long way.

Reconnect Through Questions

One way to rebuild rapport is to ask questions, says Car-

oline Webb, author of How to Have a Good Day: Har-

ness the Power of Behavioral Science to Transform Your

Working Life. “It’s inherently rewarding to people to get

to talk about themselves or share their opinions.” The

trick is to move beyond more typical, factual questions

like “When’s the presentation due?” to what Webb calls

“quality questions” that go beyond exchanging basic in-

formation. Instead of asking “How was your weekend?”

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Resolving a Confl ict

A SUCCESS STORY

Rachel had an ongoing confl ict with her coworker, Pia.

At the consultancy where they worked, it was Rachel’s

job to sell projects to clients, but it was Pia’s role as

the business director to vet the sales proposals and

pricing. Whenever Rachel sent Pia a draft for review,

Pia would increase the prices that Rachel was pitching.

She’d send back a curt email that explained the prices

were too low and told Rachel to fi x them, which Rachel

did. As a result, Rachel lost potential sales.

Because she didn’t know Pia personally (she had

met her only once at a team retreat), Rachel went to

her boss, the regional manager, to explain that Pia

was being unreasonable about the prices and rude to

her. “I had targets I was supposed to meet, and every

time Pia caused me to lose a sale, I was getting angrier

and angrier,” Rachel says. But Rachel’s boss was not

receptive to her appeals. “She told me that she trusted

Pia’s judgment implicitly and that I just had to fi nd

clients who were willing to pay the premium price,”

she says.

The circumstances were starting to aff ect Rachel’s

morale, not to mention her sales performance. She

didn’t enjoy going to work anymore because she wasn’t

making progress toward her goals. She cringed every

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Repair the Relationship

time she got an email from Pia. One day, after learn-

ing that she’d lost yet another potential sale, she

called Pia.

Rather than criticize her, though, Rachel explained

how upset she was and the impact the situation was

having on her: “I wanted to let her know that I really

couldn’t keep working like this, having strained rela-

tionships with my colleagues, bringing in clients and

losing them again and again.”

Pia was receptive to what she had to say. “She heard

me out and said she wasn’t aware of how she was com-

ing across.” It turned out that Pia was also frustrated

by the lack of sales and her performance was also be-

ing aff ected. “This gave us a common purpose to ad-

dress,” Rachel says. So the two of them switched into

problem-solving mode. How could they both do their

jobs and close the deals together? “She taught me how

she did the pricing, and we reached a compromise on

what could be quoted,” Rachel says.

Pia and Rachel ended up closing several big deals

together. “We weren’t best buds, but we didn’t have

any further disagreements either,” she says. Both

women eventually left the company, but they still keep

in touch.

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Resolving a Confl ict

ask what your counterpart did specifi cally and follow up

with something like, “That’s interesting. What led you to

do that?” If you don’t have a personal relationship, ask

questions that signal you value his opinion: “How did

you think that meeting went?” “What are you working

on at the moment?” The goal with these questions is to

create what Susan David calls “a shared psychological

space.” Make it less about you and more about “creating

a connection,” she advises.

Reestablish Reciprocity

You’ll also want to restore trust if it was broken. One

smart way to do that, Brian Uzzi says, is to “offer things

to the other person without asking for anything in re-

turn.” Propose taking on a small project she hasn’t been

able to get to. Or bring her lunch one day. This will acti-

vate the law of reciprocity and restore the give-and-take

of your previous relationship. But don’t verbalize what’s

taking place. “That will get you into the tight accounting

system of who’s doing what for whom,” warns Uzzi. Keep

your word, too. “Being true to the things you’ve offered

will continue to deepen the relationship and make sure it

doesn’t slip back into mistrust,” says Uzzi.

Apologize

“You don’t have to be completely at fault to say you’re

sorry or show some penance,” says Adam Galinsky. It’s

rare that a confl ict is completely one-sided, so chances

are that you contributed to the situation in some way.

Apologize for your part and express genuine regret that

the situation occurred (only if you feel it). Doing this will

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Repair the Relationship

often elicit a similar expression from your counterpart.

But don’t expect that. You don’t want to resent the per-

son if she doesn’t apologize, too.

Focus on Commonalities

During the course of your confl ict, you likely had dis-

agreements that emphasized how different you were

from one another. This can push you apart. Webb says

that “if we see someone as part of our in-group, we’re

more likely to feel empathy for them and not see them

as a threat.” And fortunately, “it takes very, very little to

perceive someone is like you.” Find something you agree

on. Perhaps it’s the common ground you identifi ed be-

fore your discussion or something as simple as a shared

dislike of the new printer. If this is someone you’ve had

a long-standing relationship with, talk about projects

you’ve worked on together that went well. Reminisce

about things you’ve done in the past. Consider paying

the person a compliment or asking about his pet. “Flat-

tery—no matter how ludicrous it is—always works,” says

Webb.

Spend More Time Together

“One of the best ways to repair a relationship is to work

on a project that requires coordination,” says Bob Sut-

ton, a Stanford University management professor. This

seems counterintuitive, since you may be sick of each

other at this point. “Over time, if you work together

closely, you may come to appreciate your colleague more

and perhaps even develop some empathy,” he says. You

may discover there are reasons for your counterpart’s

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Resolving a Confl ict

actions: stress at home, pressure from his boss, or maybe

he’s tried to do what you’re asking for and failed. Spend-

ing more time with him will also grant you the opportu-

nity to have more-positive experiences.

Involve Other People

It’s likely that throughout the confl ict, you turned to

other people for advice and commiseration. Your at-

tempts to repair the relationship won’t be successful if

those people aren’t included. “You need to get any in-

volved third parties on board to fi x it and keep it healthy,”

says Uzzi. Explain to your confi dants that you’re work-

ing on the relationship and that you’d appreciate their

support in making it work. You might say: “I know How-

ard and I have been at odds over the past few weeks,

and you’ve heard an earful from me. I want to let you

know that we’ve sorted through our problems, and I’m

determined to make our relationship work. It’d be great

if you could help by calling me out if I start to complain

again.” This helps not only you but those around you as

well. You’re contributing to an offi ce or team culture that

allows for confl ict to happen. “You’re showing that it’s

safe to disagree,” says Annie McKee. “It’s not enough to

deal with confl ict well; you have to make sure everyone

knows it was dealt with well.”

Consider Providing Feedback

This isn’t always possible, but if you’ve directly addressed

the conflict and you’ve reached a resolution, you might

want to give your colleague some feedback about the

process. You can share observations with the intention of

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Repair the Relationship

improving how you interact in the future. It may be that

how your counterpart behaved with you is something

that regularly gets in her way as a professional. “Don’t

assume the person knows how she is coming across,” says

Sutton. This isn’t a diatribe about everything she did to

annoy you—that will just pull you back into the fray. Fo-

cus on behaviors that she can control. Describe how they

affected you and your work together with the aim of sup-

porting change. Your carefully framed feedback can help

her develop greater self-awareness and increase her ef-

fectiveness. And of course, you also need to be open to

hearing feedback yourself. If you’re seeing some things

that your counterpart might change, she’s liable to have

her own observations to share with you.

However, weigh this option carefully. Daniel Gole-

man, author of Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Mat-

ter More Than IQ, says whether you give feedback “de-

pends on how artful you are as a communicator and how

receptive they are as a person.” If you feel your counter-

part might be open and you can have a civilized conver-

sation, then go ahead. But if this is a person you suspect

will be vindictive or mad, or will turn it into a personal

confl ict, don’t risk it. You’ll be back to where you started.

For most of us, the word confl ict conjures up a diffi cult

struggle: We want people to like us, but we also want to

get our way. It would be ideal if our colleagues always

saw the brilliance in our ideas, gave us the resources

we asked for, completely agreed with us on the best

way to run the business, and still adored us at the end

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Resolving a Confl ict

of the day. But work is not a perfect place. Fortunately,

it doesn’t have to be. And when we fi ght with people at

work, it doesn’t have to be scary or threatening. “Going

through diffi cult experiences can be the makings of the

strongest, most resilient relationships,” says David. We

make it through, and in the process, we learn about each

other, and ourselves, as we make the next confl ict less

likely to occur or at least easier to manage.

120

CHAPTER 9

Navigate

Common

Situations

For every confl ict you encounter, you’ll tweak your ap-

proach depending on the circumstances. But there are

some specifi c situations that commonly occur.

This chapter will walk you through the following

challenges:

• You’re fighting from afar

• Your counterpart is passive-aggressive

• Your colleague goes over your head

• You’re caught in the middle of two warring

colleagues

• You’re mad at your boss

• You’re dealing with a bully

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Resolving a Confl ict

• Your counterpart is suffering from a mental illness

• You manage two people who hate each other

• Your team turns on you

• You’re fighting with someone outside the office

Knowing a bit more about why these situations hap-

pen can help you to better tackle them.

You’re Fighting from Afar

The situation

You’re coleading an important project with your

London-based colleague, and his emails have turned

snarky. You were initially debating when the project

should launch, but now he’s sending you emails with just

a “?” in them if you don’t respond within the hour. Since

you’re based in Hong Kong, that means you’d have to

be up at midnight to receive his “urgent” 5 p.m. emails.

He seems really mad, but who can tell, since you’re just

reading his words on a screen.

Why it happens

“Task-related disputes can more quickly devolve into

relationship confl icts when there’s no face-to-face con-

tact, which helps to accelerate empathy,” says Keith

Ferrazzi, who studies virtual teams. A study by Syra-

cuse’s Kristin Byron showed that using email generally

increases the likelihood of confl ict and miscommunica-

tion. Cultural differences may also be contributing to

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Navigate Common Situations

the problem if you and your colleague are from different

countries.

What to do about it

“The good news is that bad relationship confl icts don’t

occur as often because virtual team members are typi-

cally focused more on their work and less on interper-

sonal issues and offi ce politics. Hence, bad blood is less

likely to develop between coworkers,” explains Ferrazzi.

Still, it can be harder to solve these confl icts when they

do arise because you don’t know how the other person

is reacting. Is he opting to do nothing and set aside his

feelings, or is he actually stewing?

Assess your options

The approaches you might use for navigating confl ict

take on a different fl avor when you work far apart. The

do-nothing option can work well when you don’t have

to see your colleague every day; you may be able to get

over the confl ict more easily by not addressing it. Or you

can indirectly address it by asking someone at your col-

league’s location to talk with her. Also, exiting the rela-

tionship can be easier in these situations because you

can ask to work with someone else on the team, or you

may be able to go around the person and work with her

boss.

Move the conversation to a better medium

As discussed in chapter 5, “Get Ready for the Conver-

sation,” arguing through email can be tough, but some-

times that’s your only form of communication. “People

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Resolving a Confl ict

often behave with far less restraint in a virtual environ-

ment than in the physical world—a phenomenon that

psychologists call the ‘online disinhibition effect,’” says

Ferrazzi. And it’s just too diffi cult to interpret what’s re-

ally going on. If you’re arguing via email, stop. Pick up

the phone and call your colleague, or schedule a time to

do a video call.

Get to know how your counterpart works

Understanding your counterpart—his approach to con-

fl ict, his goal in the conversation, and so forth—is central

to successfully navigating a confl ict. But when you work

in different offi ces, you need to take this task a step fur-

ther. Do you know how the other person works? Are the

tools and processes you use compatible? Pamela Hinds,

who studies dispersed teams, says that when people

share these kinds of details, or at least an understand-

ing of their contextual differences, there is less confl ict.

“The challenge on global teams is that the contexts are

different—that’s unavoidable. But we found that as long

as team members understand what is different, they’re

less likely to blame one another for incompatibilities,”

she says. If possible, visit your colleague’s offi ce, and vice

versa, to get a sense of how he works. If you can’t do that,

spend extra time explaining your systems and processes,

noting similarities and differences.

Increase informal communication

Research by Mark Mortensen of INSEAD and Hinds

also showed that casual, unplanned communication dra-

matically reduces confl ict when you’re not in the same

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Navigate Common Situations

location. Take advantage of opportunities for informal

interactions. Keep your messaging app open to share

personal snippets or jokes throughout the day. Take vir-

tual breaks together, chatting on the phone while you

both sip tea. Or you might leave your computer cameras

on so that you can see each other throughout the day.

“These video links between offi ces create a shared space

and provide more opportunities for these spontaneous—

but often very

productive—workplace conversations,”

says Mortensen.

Diane’s story

Diane started a new job in the US offi ce of an interna-

tional NGO. After several weeks of building a rapport

over email with Brigitte, a German colleague—and be-

lieving that they had started a friendship—Diane got

an email from Brigitte that said, “People here in Europe

are saying that you’re not right for your job.” Diane was

hurt and assumed that her colleague didn’t like her. Why

else would she say something so mean and in such an

abrupt way? But she didn’t want to jump to conclusions,

especially since she’d never met Brigitte in person. Diane

didn’t know anyone in Brigitte’s offi ce to turn to for ad-

vice or insights into Brigitte’s style or personality. She

opted to do nothing, ignore the email, and move on, but

after a few days, it was still bothering her. She set up a

Skype video call with Brigitte.

When the two connected, Diane was surprised to see

Brigitte smiling at her. Diane carefully broached the

subject of the email. “I told her I was taken aback by it

because I thought we had been getting along well,” she

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Resolving a Confl ict

says. Brigitte explained that it was precisely because they

were establishing a relationship that she’d told Diane

about what others were thinking. “She thought she was

helping me, giving me information that would be use-

ful as I tried to prove myself in the new role. She did it

so directly because that was an appropriate way to com-

municate in her culture, but I just misinterpreted her

intentions,” Diane says. The two women started turn-

ing on Skype when they got to the offi ce and would chat

throughout the day. It also gave others in the European

offi ce a way to get to know Diane better as they’d stop by

Brigitte’s desk to wave or say hello to Diane.

Your Counterpart Is

Passive-Aggressive

The situation

Your colleague says one thing in a meeting but then does

another. She passes you in the hallway without saying

hello and talks over you in meetings, but when you ask to

speak with her about it, she insists that everything’s fi ne

and the problem is all in your head.

Why it happens

It’s not uncommon for colleagues to make a passive-

aggressive remark once in a while over a particularly sen-

sitive issue or when they’re not sure how to directly ad-

dress an issue. But persistent passive-aggressive behavior

that manifests itself in a variety of situations is a differ-

ent ball game. These individuals can be self- centered at

best and narcissistic at worst, says Annie McKee. “These

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Navigate Common Situations

are people who will often do anything to get what they

need, including lie.” But it may not be all her fault, ei-

ther. In many organizations, direct, overt disagreement

is not allowed, so “some people have been trained to be

passive-aggressive by their cultures,” she explains.

What to do about it

Passive-aggressive people are not necessarily more en-

gaged in confl ict than most, but they’re doing it in a

way that’s tough to deal with. It’s not as clean as the in-

direct approach described in chapter 2, “Your Options

for Handling Confl ict,” because they’re not being honest

about their intentions. “Fighting with these people is like

shadow boxing,” says McKee. It’s best to do nothing and

work around them or to distance yourself (exit), if pos-

sible. Also, try the following suggestions.

Accept that your counterpart’s behavior

likely has nothing to do with you

It’s not in your head; it’s in hers. Recognize the behavior

for what it is, says McKee, but don’t spend too much time

psychoanalyzing her. Amy Jen Su and Muriel Maignan

Wilkins say, “You need all the energy you can muster as

a leader, so don’t waste an ounce of it trying to fi gure out

why she acts this way with you.”

See through the behavior to the

source of the confl ict

Instead of harping on how much she bothers you, fo-

cus on what’s causing the disagreement. Does she think

that the way you’re running the project isn’t working

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Resolving a Confl ict

( process confl ict), but she hasn’t directly said that? Or

do you disagree about whether your team’s ultimate goal

is to increase revenue or boost brand recognition (task

confl ict)? As discussed in chapter 1, “Types of Confl ict,”

knowing what’s underneath the disagreement can help

to depersonalize it, and when passive-aggressive behav-

ior makes everything feel like a relationship confl ict, un-

derstanding and labeling the real source can help you

move forward.

Focus on a common goal

You’ve thought about what your goal is and what you

suspect hers to be, but her behavior may prevent you

from establishing common ground. Instead, focus on

the objective you share with others, suggests McKee. If

your project is at risk of not getting completed on time,

that’s the problem you need to deal with, not her infu-

riating conduct. Sure, you may be tempted to vent with

others who also work with her, but limit those conversa-

tions. They aren’t professional or productive. After a few

minutes of complaining, redirect the discussion to your

work. You might say: “Enough about her. Let’s talk about

how we can get this project done.”

Enlist help from others

Amy Jen Su and Muriel Maignan Wilkins suggest you

enroll your team in keeping your passive-aggressive col-

league accountable. Have others confi rm expectations

that you agreed on. “For example,” they explain, “if you’re

in a meeting discussing next steps, make sure everyone

articulates what they heard and verbally communicates

what they commit to in specifi c terms (not just head

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Navigate Common Situations

nodding).” Or you can send a follow-up email document-

ing who’s going to do what. “Form an esprit de corps

with your other colleagues,” suggests McKee. And since

your colleague is passive-aggressive with everyone, po-

litely ask others what coping mechanisms or tactics work

for them.

Darrell’s story

Darrell’s new coworker, Raquel, was turning out to be a

nightmare. Their boss had asked Darrell to show Raquel

how to complete several reports that she’d eventually

be responsible for, and when he sat down with her, she

acted like she already knew how to do them. “It was im-

possible since the reports were specifi c to our organiza-

tion, but when I tried to point that out, she told me to

not get so worked up,” he says. “That was the fi rst sign

that something was wrong.”

One day, Darrell overheard her telling their boss that

she was still waiting for him to train her on the reports.

He didn’t want to get defensive in front of his manager,

so instead he went to Raquel and tried to appeal to their

shared goal. “I told her that we both wanted her to be

able to take over the reports,” he says. He again offered to

show her, but she told him that she had it under control.

Since the direct approach wasn’t working, he decided to

go to their boss. “It wasn’t what I wanted. I really hoped

I could work it out with her, but she acted like nothing

was wrong every time I tried to address it,” he says. Dar-

rell explained his side to the boss. “I didn’t ask him to

talk to her because I thought that would make matters

worse, but I wanted him to know that what she was say-

ing wasn’t true.”

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Resolving a Confl ict

Darrell was extremely frustrated, but he didn’t see a

way out of the situation. He had to work with Raquel,

and she wasn’t changing her behavior. So he took the

do-nothing option and didn’t address it further, except

to calmly explain his side of the story whenever Raquel

told their boss a lie about him. “Luckily for me, I wasn’t

the only one whom she treated poorly. Two other peo-

ple in our department noticed the same kind of thing,

so we were able to commiserate,” he says. None of them

fi gured out a way to get Raquel to stop lying, but they all

learned to laugh at the absurdity of her behavior. “I had

a choice to be angry at work every day or to shrug her

off.” Happily for Darrell, Raquel stayed at the company

for only a year.

Your Colleague Goes over Your Head

The situation

Your coworker comes to you with a new initiative and

asks for your help. You agree that his idea is worthwhile

but explain that you just don’t have the time or resources

to tackle it this quarter. After your conversation, he goes

behind your back to share his brilliant idea with your

boss. When your manager comes to you to ask why you’re

not helping your coworker, you’re embarrassed and in-

furiated. Not only has your coworker undermined your

authority, now your boss is questioning your decisions.

Why it happens

There are both practical and psychological reasons why a

colleague might try to sidestep you. Practically speaking,

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Navigate Common Situations

he may want a different answer or outcome than you’ve

given him. Psychologically, it’s possible that he wants to

show that he has more clout or authority than you do.

What to do about it

You may be tempted to stomp over to the person’s desk

and read him the riot act. “You have to be a saint to not

be annoyed or stressed or nervous about something like

this happening,” says Caroline Webb. But, as with any

confl ict, even one where you feel you’ve been slighted,

it’s better to take a more measured approach. Keep in

mind that some people don’t know that going over your

head may be frowned upon. In some cultures, it’s not. So

don’t make assumptions about the person’s intentions.

Instead, try the following approaches.

Question your assumptions

To help you keep your cool, Webb suggests you start by

sorting through what you actually know. You may think

your coworker went over your head but that’s not nec-

essarily true. Ask yourself what the facts of the situa-

tion are and try to strip your explanation of emotional

language. Rather than thinking, “He completely dis-

regarded my authority to get a different answer from

my boss,” tell yourself, “He had a conversation with my

boss about his initiative.” Focus on what you know. And

then ask yourself: What would be different ways to ex-

plain this situation? One might be that your coworker is

just out for himself, but another could be that your boss

asked him what exciting projects he was working on next

quarter. “Work out three or four different scenarios,”

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Resolving a Confl ict

suggests Webb, “that broaden your aperture and help

you question the assumption that they’ve been dastardly

or ill-intended.”

Find out more

As you think about what you know, also consider what

you don’t know. If you just heard about the conversation

through the rumor mill, fi nd out what really happened.

You might go to your boss and ask in a neutral way about

what transpired: “Hey, I heard you and Carlos were talk-

ing about his new idea.” Take care to maintain a casual,

nonaccusatory tone so that your boss doesn’t think you’re

trying to start a feud.

Approach your colleague

If after gathering additional facts, you decide to directly

address the issue, start with your coworker. You’ll likely

need to have a conversation with your boss, too (more on

that later), but that discussion will go better if you can

report on how you handled things with your colleague.

Ask your coworker if you can talk—preferably in a pri-

vate room. Keep an open mind as you enter the conver-

sation, says Adam Galinsky. This is true anytime you di-

rectly address a confl ict, but especially in a situation like

this when you likely feel put upon or upset. Remember

your goal, whether it’s to have a strong working relation-

ship, to restore trust, or to protect your time. Don’t go

into the conversation with the intention of sticking it to

your coworker. That’s just going to set you up for a battle.

Instead, be open to hearing what he has to say about the

situation and why he did what he did.

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State what you know and how you feel

Begin by saying what you know and how it made you

feel. “Make it a straightforward discussion,” says Galin-

sky. Let the person know that you’re disappointed by

what he did but stay away from words like “angry” or

“betrayed.” That may be how you feel, but it’s going to

put your coworker on the defensive, advises Webb. In-

stead say: “I heard you talked to Roger about your ini-

tiative after we discussed it and that made me feel a bit

concerned that we’re not communicating well.”

Problem-solve, together

Once you’ve shared what you know and heard his per-

spective, decide together how to remedy the situation.

“Try asking them for their thoughts fi rst, before build-

ing on their suggestions. Research shows that people feel

far more attachment to any idea that they’ve had a hand

in shaping,” explains Webb. So instead of saying, “Here’s

how we should handle this situation,” ask, “What do you

think would be the best way to address this, given where

we are now?” Once you’ve agreed on how to rectify the

current issue, discuss how you’ll handle similar situa-

tions in the future.

Clarify the lines of communication

Ideally, you’ll both agree that your coworker should

come directly to you next time and then actually follow

through on that. But if he’s not on board with that plan,

prevent this situation from recurring by showing him

that going over your head won’t be effective. Make clear

that you and your boss are in regular contact and if he

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goes to your manager, you’re going to fi nd out. You might

say something along the lines of, “I meet with Roger reg-

ularly to discuss our group’s priorities and he usually lets

me know if he gets requests from other teams.” You don’t

need to say this in a threatening way; think about it as

educating him on the lines of communication.

Repair your relationship with your boss

You may be ticked off that your boss didn’t redirect your

colleague to you and wonder if he has faith in your judg-

ment. And this breach in the chain of command may

have also annoyed your boss or caused him to question

your ability to do your job. So once you’ve settled things

with your colleague, talk with your boss about what hap-

pened, why it happened, and how to avoid similar situa-

tions in the future. Start by considering what you want

to get out of the conversation. Webb suggests you may

“want to come off as wise, thoughtful, and in control.”

Your goal here may be to restore your reputation or to re-

establish ground rules for communication. Then lay out

what you know (for a fact) and how it made you feel: “I

heard that Carlos talked to you about his initiative and

that made me concerned that I might be out of the loop.

Can I ask what happened or how you saw it from your

perspective?” Then it’s your job to listen. Once you’ve

heard his side of things, you might ask, “What can we do

differently when this happens in the future?” You can

gently suggest that next time your colleague goes to him,

he redirect him to you: “If Carlos comes to you again,

would you mind sending him to me so we can address

the issue without having to take up your time?”

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Gina’s story

Gina was responsible for helping new employees get up

to speed on current processes and best practices for ini-

tiating sales with customers. She was training Dante,

who had been hired to work with their biggest customer.

Dante was more senior than Gina. “I could tell that he

wasn’t necessarily pleased to be taking direction from

me and had a general air about him that told me that he

didn’t think I could really teach him anything,” she says.

Dante wasn’t happy with the process and timeline that

Gina explained the company typically used with custom-

ers. He thought it was too strict and wanted to bypass

particular parts of the process, such as getting customer

signoff before sending initial samples, in order to speed

up the sale. So he went to Gina’s manager to get approval

to ship the samples.

Luckily, Gina’s manager reiterated the company’s

standard process and the reasons behind it. “If he had

said yes, it could have completely thrown off our time-

line and been a disaster,” Gina says. Then the manager

had a conversation with Gina about what had happened

with Dante.

Gina decided to talk with Dante directly, but she

wanted to be careful. “I knew that if I approached him

in a certain way, he could easily become defensive and

maybe even combative. I didn’t want to make any snap

judgments about why he did what he did.” While she ap-

preciated his desire to move things along more quickly,

she also knew that she had insight on why things were

done the way they were.

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Resolving a Confl ict

She asked Dante to sit down with her to review the

account once more. “I explained the processes thor-

oughly and stressed how important it was to follow the

guidelines—and included the reasoning behind each

step,” she says. She casually mentioned that their man-

ager had explained what he had tried to do and thanked

him for “trying to think outside of the box and see how

we could potentially get samples to the customer even

faster.” She was careful not to make it a huge deal and to

focus on the process confl ict they were having. “I didn’t

make it personal,” she says. She ended the conversation

on a positive note too, offering to help Dante in any way

she could. Gina says this approach worked: The two had

a great working relationship after that point, and Dante

came to her—not their manager—with questions or

concerns.

You’re Caught in the Middle of

Two Warring Colleagues

The situation

Two of your coworkers just don’t get along. They ex-

change mean looks in meetings, and they both come to

you to complain about each other. You want to be sup-

portive, but you also don’t want to be seen as taking

sides.

Why it happens

We all want to have alliances at work—so when two peo-

ple are having a confl ict, it’s not uncommon for them to

drag other people in. They may want validation of their

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viewpoint or to demonstrate to the other person that

they have more allies. Confl ict avoiders often tend to get

put in the middle because they generally don’t push back

when one coworker gossips about another.

What to do about it

When stuck between two adversaries, “people often fi nd

themselves in over their head,” says Roderick Kramer, of

Stanford Graduate School of Business. “They think they

can intervene, make suggestions, feel good about them-

selves, and move the confl ict forward in a constructive

way. But that’s not always possible.”

Stay out of it

Whether or not you engage will depend on how en-

meshed you already are in the situation. If you feel as if

you’re being used as a pawn in their war, draw the line

and choose to do nothing. This is particularly tough for

confl ict avoiders to do, but try saying something such

as “I’m sorry that you two aren’t getting along, but I’d

really prefer to stay out of it.” If that feels too diffi cult

to do, try to fi nd ways to spend less time with each of

them. After you’ve turned down a coffee break sev-

eral times, they may get the hint. “Remember that you

aren’t a psychologist or a mediator,” says Kramer. If the

situation is outside your comfort zone or you think the

disagreement is juvenile, there’s nothing wrong with

staying out of it. But always give one or both of your co-

workers a next step to take. Say, “I’m not sure I’m the

right person to help you with this, but you might want

to sit down together or with HR.”

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Resolving a Confl ict

On the other hand, if you want to lend a sympathetic

ear and think you can help them work through it, take

the next few steps.

Allow them to vent

It can be hard to listen to people complain about each

other, but sometimes that’s exactly what they need. By

allowing each of them to process the situation with you,

they may fi gure out on their own what the source of their

confl ict is and how they can sort it out between them.

If you’re worried that by hearing one person out, you’ll

upset the other, make an effort to get both sides of the

story. Go to the other person and ask, “What’s your take

on what’s going on between you and Harry?” This will

give you a fuller picture of the confl ict without earning

you a reputation as a meddler. It will also equip you to

help them solve it.

Empathize

While listening to each colleague, show that you under-

stand how hard the situation is. You can say, “I’m sorry

this is happening” or “It’s tough when two people can’t

agree.” Stay neutral and speak from your own experi-

ence. Offer observations such as, “It seemed as if Jane

was stressed out and didn’t mean what she said” or “I

know that Joe is a direct person and can sometimes

come off as harsh.” If you’re being pushed to choose

a perspective, make it clear that you won’t: “You seem

hurt, but I can’t take sides because I have to work with

both of you.”

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Navigate Common Situations

Off er advice—cautiously

Before you give your two cents, ask your coworkers if

they want your help. “We tend to offer unsolicited advice

because we think we know better,” says Anna Ranieri, a

career counselor and executive coach. But people might

not want your opinion, so start by saying something

like, “I’ve observed what’s happening between you two.

Would it be helpful to hear my take?”

Explain the impact of their fi ghting

After you’ve demonstrated your concern, describe how

the confl ict is affecting the team. Say something like,

“You two not getting along is distracting. We’ve got a lot

on our plates right now with the quarter closing soon,

so it’d be better if we were focused on getting the re-

ports done.” Or “I’m concerned that you’re setting a bad

example for the younger people on our team. They look

up to both of you, and when they see you treating each

other this way, they may think it’s OK to do the same to

others.”

Problem-solve together

Just as you would focus on the future if this were your

own confl ict, help them do the same. Instead of offer-

ing concrete suggestions, help them fi nd their own so-

lutions. Ask open-ended questions as discussed in chap-

ter 6, “Have a Productive Conversation.” In this situation,

those questions might sound more like “How do you

hope this will be resolved?” or “What do you want out of

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Resolving a Confl ict

your relationship with Greg?” Kramer says, “You should

be more in problem-solving mode than gossip mode.”

Gary’s story

Gary was planning a partner meeting to make decisions

about compensation. As the senior partner, it was his job

to set the ground rules for the sensitive discussion. Each

partner presented his or her accomplishments and prog-

ress against goals, then the other partners asked ques-

tions, typically polite requests for clarifi cation, before

deciding on that partner’s bonus for the year. If there

was a more serious issue, the partners usually brought it

up before the meeting so that it could be addressed out-

side of this formal setting.

Everyone knew that two partners, Susan and Robert,

had been at odds for some time, and each of them came

to Gary ahead of time to complain about the other. Su-

san felt as if Robert wasn’t pulling his weight at the fi rm

and his compensation should refl ect that. Robert said

that Susan was mistreating her team members, espe-

cially junior analysts whom she often had stay late at the

offi ce for no reason. He wanted her compensation to be

affected as well.

Gary heard them both out. He asked that they sort it

out between them in advance of the meeting. When they

came back a week later even more upset, he suggested

that the three of them sit down together and talk about

what could be done. He explained that if the two of them

couldn’t fi gure out how to stop fi ghting, they would have

to postpone the compensation discussion, which would

affect when the bonuses would get paid out. “But I didn’t

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Navigate Common Situations

want—and I know they didn’t want—to air all of this in

front of the larger group,” Gary says. He then asked if

they wanted to know his opinion. They both said yes. He

suggested they should recuse themselves in the discus-

sion of each other’s compensation. “That way it was basi-

cally a wash for them,” he says.

At fi rst, Susan was game and Robert pushed back. “He

wanted to say his piece in front of the group,” Gary says.

But Gary explained to him that the goal of getting the

discussion done was more important than his beef with

Susan. So when the group met, Susan and Robert sat out

for the discussion of each other’s performance and com-

pensation. “It was obvious to everyone in the room what

was happening and why, but we accepted that because

it let us get through the discussion with everyone saving

face,” he says. Susan and Robert never got along much

better, but because they saw that Gary was unwilling to

take sides, they stopped appealing to him.

You’re Mad at Your Boss

The situation

You did all the work on the unit’s big project, but your

boss took all the credit. The executive team patted him

on the back, and he didn’t say a word about the late

nights you pulled. You’re angry, but you want to broach

this sensitive issue with your boss productively.

Why it happens

“Your relationship with your boss is a signifi cant pre-

dictor of your experience at work,” says Liane Davey. A

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Resolving a Confl ict

positive relationship is likely to lead to interesting as-

signments, meaningful feedback, and recognition for

your contributions, so you want things to go well. But

because of that desire, you may also hold your boss to a

higher, unobtainable standard.

What to do about it

Fighting with your manager, says McKee, “sparks a deep,

primal response: fear.” And for good reason. “Bosses

hold our lives in their hands—the keys to our futures,

not to mention our daily bread.” Given that, you could

do nothing and move on—as discussed in chapter 2, this

is a good option if you don’t think your boss will change

his ways or is unwilling to hear you. But if you’re worried

that your anger will only grow, you may want to take the

following steps.

Cool down

Remember the advice in chapter 6 about walking away?

You don’t want to say anything you don’t mean. First,

give yourself some time—wait a day or two. Your anger

may fade to the point where you’re willing to let the irk-

some behavior go. If not, you may decide to address the

confl ict directly.

Show respect

This may be the last thing you want to do, especially

when you feel slighted, but your boss expects—and

hopefully deserves—your respect. You can still label your

disagreement as a relationship confl ict, but before ex-

plaining what’s made you so mad, “assure your boss that

you respect him and his position,” says Joseph Grenny,

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Navigate Common Situations

author of Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When

Stakes Are High. “When that sense of respect is secure,

you can venture into expressing your views openly and

honestly.” You might say, “I enjoy working for you, and I

know I have a lot to learn from you.”

Focus on the business needs, not yours

When you talk to your boss, you can point out how sur-

prised you were by what he did, but you’ll get further

with the conversation if you frame it in terms of your

goals. What’s best for the business? Where do your goals

align? Your boss may be more willing to change his be-

havior if you explain that not sharing the credit could

create a bottleneck because those above him think he’s

the only one who can get things done.

Explain your intent

As you would do any time you address confl ict directly,

tell your boss what your objective is in giving him this

feedback. Do you want to show off the work of the team?

Are you concerned that you’ll become disengaged if your

work isn’t recognized? Grenny says that you can clarify

your intent by contrasting what you mean with what you

don’t mean. “I’d like to share a concern, but I’m worried

that it will sound as if I doubt your character. I don’t.

And yet I don’t think I’d be fully loyal if I didn’t share my

perspective. May I do so?”

Alina’s story

Alina’s company had an informal policy that it wouldn’t

start work with clients (especially new ones) before there

was a signed contract in place. Rodrigo, one of the fi rm’s

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Resolving a Confl ict

partners, asked Alina to start working with a new client

before he’d gotten the contract fi nalized. “It was a busy

time, and I was stretched incredibly thin, but the proj-

ect started moving forward pretty quickly,” she says. She

worked nights and weekends to keep up only to fi nd out

that the client pulled out before the contract was signed.

Rodrigo sent an email letting Alina and the rest of the

team know. It ended with “Sorry about this!” which irked

Alina. “It seemed fl ippant to me, and it was inadequately

matched to the suckiness of the situation,” she explains.

Rodrigo called her to talk through the logistics of how

to wrap up the work, but she didn’t feel ready to have the

conversation. “I wanted to be prepared, and I was afraid

I would talk about how personally annoyed I was when

really what bothered me was how much of the fi rm’s

money was wasted,” she explains. She asked Rodrigo

if they could talk the following morning instead. She

thought about it that night and decided she wouldn’t be

able to let it go. Rodrigo might not change, but she really

needed to get it off her chest.

She knew that both she and Rodrigo were confl ict

seekers, so she set up a full hour for them to talk. Then

she set the tone for the conversation. “I told him that my

pushing back on him was not because I didn’t respect

him. I did. He was amazing at client service. But I felt

as if it would be a disservice to him if I didn’t point out

why ignoring the policy was so bad.” At fi rst, Rodrigo

was defensive, arguing about whether or not the con-

tract would’ve made a difference. After she let him vent,

he calmed down and vowed to be better about the con-

tracts in the future. He even asked her to keep him ac-

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Navigate Common Situations

countable, refusing to do work for him if there wasn’t a

contract in place.

You’re Dealing with a Bully

The situation

Your colleague consistently undermines you in meetings,

withholds information you need to do your work, and

speaks badly about you. This isn’t just one jab on a bad

day; it’s persistent negative behavior over time. You feel

sick to your stomach whenever you see her name in your

inbox or hear her voice down the hall.

Why it happens

Research from Nathanael Fast, a professor at the Uni-

versity of Southern California’s Marshall School of Busi-

ness, proves a commonly held idea: People act out when

their ego is threatened. “We often see powerful people

behave aggressively toward less powerful people when

their competence is questioned,” he says. It’s not just

people in positions of authority who act this way. Who-

ever it is, chances are, she’s singled you out for this bully-

ing because she’s jealous that others like you or that you

have skills she doesn’t, says Gary Namie, the founder of

the Workplace Bullying Institute. You may also seem like

an easy target, particularly if she sees that you shy away

from confl ict.

What to do about it

Just because you’re a victim doesn’t mean you can’t take

action. Try the following.

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Understand the situation better

Being bullied can be downright painful. Stepping back

and looking at the situation can help give you some in-

sight into the dynamic between the two of you. Are you a

confl ict avoider while she’s a seeker? Are your disagree-

ments mostly relationship confl icts? Or are there ele-

ments of task confl ict as well? Using the advice in this

book can give you some distance from the pain of the

situation and the emotional room to start to address it.

Stand up for yourself

Call out bad behavior when it happens. “I believe very

strongly in making immediate corrections,” says Michele

Woodward, an executive coach. “If someone calls you

honey in a meeting, say right then: ‘I don’t like being

called that. Please use my name,’” she says. If you’re un-

comfortable with a direct, public response, Woodward

advises saying something as soon as you’re able. After

the meeting, you could say, “I didn’t like being called

honey. It demeans me.” Show that there is no reward for

treating you that way. “The message should be: Don’t

mess with me; it won’t be worth your effort,” Namie says.

Enlist help

Talk to colleagues you trust and see what they can do,

even if it’s simply confi rming your perspective. They

might stand up for you in a meeting, defending your

ideas or asking the bully not to call you honey. Or they

might go speak to the bully one-on-one and explain how

disruptive her behavior is to the larger group. This can

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Navigate Common Situations

be especially helpful if your supporters have power over

the bully or the bully trusts them.

Know the limitations

If your colleagues’ interventions don’t help, escalate the

situation to someone more senior or to HR. Your objec-

tive is to get the bullying behavior to stop. But that’s not

always possible. “The only time I’ve seen bullies change is

when they are publicly fi red. The sanctions don’t work,”

says Woodward. Instead, protect yourself. Perhaps take

time off from work. Or move on—when you’re in an abu-

sive situation at work, the most tenable solution may be

to leave, if that’s a possibility. The Workplace Bullying

Institute has done online surveys that show more people

stay in a bullying situation because of pride (40% of re-

spondents) than because of economics (38%). If you’re

worried about letting the bully win, Namie says, you’re

better off worrying about your own well-being.

Cedric’s story

Cedric took a new position at a veterinary clinic with the

intention of buying into the practice, which he did after

several months, becoming the business partner of the

owner, Ruth. A year later, after what seemed like a mi-

nor disagreement, Ruth stopped speaking to Cedric for

six weeks. When he confronted her, she told him she was

contemplating dropping him as a partner. Cedric was

shocked. He had taken out a loan to buy into the firm

and felt financially stuck.

Cedric soon recognized a pattern in Ruth’s behav-

ior. She was a clear conflict seeker. Any time the two

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Resolving a Confl ict

had a conflict, no matter what the original source of

the disagreement (task, process), it immediately turned

personal. “If I disagreed, she would ice me out. If I

confronted her, she iced me out longer,” he says. He

eventually figured out that stroking her ego was more

effective. “You could flatter her, tell her how great she

was, how well she did in a case, and she’d be back on

your side. I learned to do this sort of dance in order to

survive.”

But Ruth’s harsh behavior wore Cedric down. Things

got so bad at one point that she didn’t speak to him for

three months. He enlisted a professional coach, who

helped him see that Ruth was a narcissist and a bully

who was threatened by his skills. This gave him the

confidence to set his limits: He told her he was looking

for someone to buy out his part of the business, and she

offered to do it. “It was the best thing I could’ve done,” he

says. “I wish I had left when she first showed me who she

truly was.”

Your Counterpart Is Suff ering

from a Mental Illness

The situation

You never know what frame of mind you’ll catch your fel-

low team member in. Sometimes when you ask him why

he didn’t respond to an email you sent, he snaps at you

and storms off. Other times, when coworkers challenge

his ideas, he laughs inappropriately. When he doesn’t

show up to meetings or get his share of the team’s work

done, you’re afraid to confront him because you have no

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idea how he’ll react. You wonder whether there’s more

going on here than just a quirky personality—perhaps he

has a mental illness.

Why it happens

In 2014, the National Institute of Mental Health esti-

mated that 18.1% of adults in the United States had a

mental illness, most of whom didn’t have an offi cial di-

agnosis. With percentages that high, you’re likely to have

coworkers with some sort of mental illness—depression,

personality disorders, schizophrenia—“especially since

many of these issues don’t prevent people from working,”

McKee says.

What to do about it

We can’t account for our colleagues’ moods, nor should

we. “There are clues, however, that let us know that there

may be something more going on than a disagreement,”

says McKee. Your interactions or homework to better

understand your counterpart may reveal things such as

sudden changes in mood or communication style, per-

sonality, or personal habits, or social withdrawal—all of

which are indications that your coworker may have an

underlying mental health issue. Addressing the conflict

could be dangerous—to your and your coworker’s well-

being. Instead, do the following.

Look for patterns

Is his behavior often erratic? Do his regular actions seem

outside the norm? Don’t jump to conclusions. “Occasion-

ally people do things that others deem inappropriate,

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Resolving a Confl ict

but if it happens on a consistent basis or every time the

person feels threatened, it’s an indication that there’s a

larger issue,” says McKee.

Don’t diagnose

Although it’s helpful to recognize when something big-

ger might be affecting your colleague, don’t try to come

up with a specifi c diagnosis. Chances are that you aren’t

trained to evaluate emotional or psychological problems.

“And we really don’t know if there’s truly something go-

ing on,” says Judith White. What you can do instead, sug-

gests White, is educate yourself about the symptoms you

may be able to observe in family, friends, and colleagues.

“The National Alliance on Mental Illness [https://www

.nami.org/] is a good resource for friends and family

members who either know or suspect mental illness,” she

says. This information can help you distinguish between

an isolated incident that may be safe to address and a

deeper problem that is better handled by a professional.

Don’t let the problem lie

You might be tempted to steer clear and exercise your

do-nothing option because you’re afraid or unsure about

what to do. Doing nothing may be the right approach to

the confl ict but not necessarily to the person. It’s most

certainly a sensitive situation, but that doesn’t mean you

have to completely ignore it. After all, it may be hard for

this person to do his job if he can’t get along with people.

“Most job descriptions have requirements for ‘interac-

tion’ or ‘collaboration’ of some kind baked in, and if the

person can’t fulfi ll this aspect of the job, then it’s time to

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Navigate Common Situations

step in,” says White. Indirectly addressing the confl ict is

often the right approach here. White recommends ask-

ing your boss or HR for help with the problem, or reach-

ing out to your company’s employee assistance program,

if you have one.

Be compassionate

“Remember that everyone has a story,” says McKee.

Don’t judge what’s going on with your colleague. He

might be suffering from his behavior as much as or more

than you. If you have a close personal relationship and

you suspect there is an underlying health issue, gently

ask about what might be going on outside of work. But

don’t push. If he doesn’t want to talk, don’t force it.

Go by the book

Because of the sensitivity of the situation, this is not a

place to wing it. White says to follow any formal rules

your company has for resolving the confl ict because in-

formal persuasion or negotiation is unlikely to work.

“Look up the legal or regulatory rules, and if they don’t

exist, then fi nd out past precedent in your organization

and write it down,” says White. Then keep records of your

interactions. If the confl ict escalates, you’ll be able to jus-

tify your actions to this person, and to any third parties.

Heather’s story

Heather was concerned about her fellow professor,

Jacques. “He had always been jovial, but his behavior

changed midway through the year,” Heather explained.

“We were coleading an independent study for fi ve

151

Resolving a Confl ict

students, and he basically stopped showing up,” she says.

Every time Heather tried to ask Jacques whether he had

read the students’ papers or was planning to come to the

next meeting, Jacques would snap and insist he was fi ne.

“I felt bad for him, but I was also annoyed because I was

picking up his slack and I was already having a busy se-

mester, and here he is yelling at me,” says Heather. When

she realized that the direct approach wasn’t working,

Heather thought about doing nothing. She knew that

she could cover the class, and she hoped that after the

summer break, Jacques might return feeling better. “But

that didn’t feel right. I didn’t want to get him in trouble,

but there was clearly something wrong. He had become

a different person.”

Heather decided to ask for help. She went to their de-

partment chair and explained the situation, telling him

that some of the students had started to complain. The

chair worked with HR to talk with Jacques and convince

him to take a leave of absence. Heather found out a year

later that Jacques had been suffering from severe de-

pression. “I wasn’t surprised, but it explained a lot. I’m

glad I handled it the way I did. I tried to be as compas-

sionate as I could.”

You Manage Two People

Who Hate Each Other

The situation

As a manager you probably didn’t expect to play referee,

but two of your team members just aren’t getting along.

They won’t look at each other, they openly deride each

152

Navigate Common Situations

other, and they refuse to cooperate. How you can right

such a dysfunctional relationship?

Why it happens

Confl ict, as discussed in chapter 5, is often based on the

fear of losing something—ego, respect, status. Your team

members may be insecure, anxious about their status in

the team, or worried about their jobs. Instead of han-

dling their emotions appropriately, they’re taking them

out on each other.

What to do about it

You have an obligation to help your team members. You

don’t have to hold their hands, but you do need to ex-

amine your role in the problem and offer suggestions for

moving forward.

Hear them out

Give each person a chance to explain his point of view.

First, sit down with each person one-on-one. “Redirect

comments that include assumptions about what the

other person is thinking or feeling,” Davey suggests. For

example, if he says, “She’s trying to destroy my credibil-

ity,” respond by reframing the idea: “We don’t know her

motive; I’m interested in how her behavior is being in-

terpreted by you. How do you feel when she disagrees

with you in front of the team?”

Determine if you’ve contributed to the problem

Make sure you haven’t set these two up for failure, sug-

gests Davey, by either being unclear about roles or

153

Resolving a Confl ict

sparking unhealthy competition. Ask: Do they have a

clear understanding of what’s expected of them? Are

their metrics and rewards designed to promote col-

laboration rather than rivalry? If either answer is no, sit

them down to make expectations clear and rejigger their

goals so that they can work better together.

Manage your reaction

You may be fed up with these two. If you can’t be em-

pathetic, you won’t be able to help because your annoy-

ance is likely to further heighten the confl ict. “Start with

the positive assumption that your direct reports are good

people experiencing something stressful,” says Davey.

This shift in mindset will help in the same way it does

when you’re addressing your own confl ict (as discussed

in chapter 5). It will also make you calmer: a key compo-

nent of managing your emotions—and theirs.

Help them see the other side

Ask questions so that they can understand the other

person’s perspective. “How do you think she felt when

she joined a team of people who are older and more

experienced than she is?” “How might you help her get

her point across so that she doesn’t need to be so asser-

tive?” If there’s someone on the team they both get along

with, ask that person to serve as a bridge and raise each

other’s awareness about what the other is thinking.

Bring them together

After they’ve had a chance to vent and see the situation

from the other’s perspective, bring them together. Davey

154

Navigate Common Situations

suggests you start by saying, “I’ve been speaking with

each of you about my concerns over your strained rela-

tionship, and I was hoping you felt ready to talk directly

to each other.” Interject as little as possible in the conver-

sation, but when you know there is something that’s not

being said, provide a gentle nudge: “Heather, we talked

about your reaction to Tony’s tone of voice. Do you want

to share that with him?”

Work toward a shared agreement

Ask them each to make commitments about what they’ll

change. “Heather, what are you planning to do differ-

ently going forward? And Tony, how about you?” Then

tell them that you’d like to keep them accountable to

those promises. Document what they said they would

do differently and send it to both of them to confi rm

agreement.

Focus them on work

Leadership professor Richard Boyatzis says the best

way to heal war wounds is to start working again. Give

them a relatively easy task to rebuild their confi dence as

a team. As they restore their relationship, help them fol-

low Bob Sutton’s advice from chapter 8, “Repair the Re-

lationship,” about working together. Put them on proj-

ects that require deeper collaboration and give them the

opportunity to work through task or process confl icts.

Prevent additional problems

Encourage your team members to handle issues them-

selves. Research by Grenny shows that top-performing

155

Resolving a Confl ict

teams immediately and respectfully confront one an-

other when problems arise. “Not only does this drive

greater innovation, trust, and productivity, but it also

frees the boss from being the playground monitor,” says

Grenny. Let new team members know up front that you

expect them to hold you and others responsible. Call

out positive examples and be a good model yourself. If

people still come running to you whenever there’s a fi ght,

refuse to get involved. If you’re not solving it for them,

they’ll fi gure out how to do it on their own.

Marshall’s story

Marshall, the owner of an eco-lodge, employed four

managers including Helga, a German expat who ran the

front offi ce and oversaw the staff when Marshall was off-

site, and Carlos, a Belizean who was in charge of client

services. Helga was incredibly organized and meticulous

about her work. Carlos’s expertise was client service. “He

had an ability to make every guest feel as if he or she is

the fi rst one to ever see a snake,” says Marshall.

But Helga and Carlos weren’t getting along. In fact,

Helga asked Marshall to fi re Carlos because she felt he

wasn’t doing his job; he regularly forgot to do tasks and

was sloppy with his paperwork. She was frustrated and

felt as if she was working twice as hard as he was. Car-

los had also previously complained about Helga. He

resented her criticism and felt she was too cold to the

clients.

As Marshall saw it, they were both failing to under-

stand or appreciate each other’s talents. Marshall en-

couraged Helga to step back and look at the situation.

156

Navigate Common Situations

Carlos was failing to do part of his job description, but he

was invaluable to the lodge. Helga conceded that Carlos’s

job description should be changed so that he could live

up to expectations.

He spoke to both employees, explained why each

one was extremely valuable to the team, and asked

them to appreciate what the other brought. He asked

them to focus on the larger purpose and to put their

disputes behind them. With expectations reset, Carlos

and Helga found a way to work together by accepting

that they had completely different styles but both cared

ultimately about the same thing—making the lodge

successful.

Your Team Turns on You

The situation

Your team members disengage or stop coming to meet-

ings. They simply don’t do, or even refuse outright, what

you ask of them. They begin meeting without you. You

start to worry that you have a mutiny on your hands.

Why it happens

Your team may be upset about a decision you made (or

didn’t make) or fed up with you continually interrupting

them, taking credit for their ideas, or not going to bat

for them.

What to do about it

For a leader, this can be a disheartening and terrifying

experience, but it’s not irreparable. By being open to

157

Resolving a Confl ict

what’s happening, listening to your team, and being di-

rect, you can regain the group’s confi dence and your ef-

fectiveness as a leader.

Find out what’s going on

Is one person driving the negativity, or are the feelings

shared across the team? Are people taking issue with

your leadership, or is fi ghting among team members

causing them to rebel against you? Ask direct and open

questions that get at the source of the confl ict. It’s easiest

to do this in one-on-one meetings with team members

you trust most. But if they tell you that others have an

issue with you, ask them to send the others to talk to you

directly.

Name what’s happening

Once you’ve identifi ed the source of the confl ict, ac-

knowledge it with your team. “It seems as if you all are

upset with the way I’ve been gathering and incorporat-

ing your input into the new strategy. Is that right? Am

I missing anything?” Trying to gloss over a problem

can turn it into the elephant in the room. “If you’re pre-

tending that nothing’s wrong and the rest of your team

knows there is, it can be really problematic,” says Debo-

rah Ancona, an MIT professor. And while you may want

to follow the team’s lead in not directly addressing the

situation, when they’re letting the confl ict seep out in

other ways, doing nothing isn’t a smart option.

Own the issue

No matter the cause of the problem, recognize the things

that became destructive under your watch. Publicly ac-

158

Navigate Common Situations

knowledge what you have done to contribute to the

problem, and explain what you’re going to do to address

it. “Great leaders are able to get up and say, ‘Thanks for

the feedback. I realize I haven’t been doing X. These are

the steps I’m taking to correct this, and I’d appreciate

feedback on how it’s going,’” says Ancona.

Get outside help if necessary

When a team is particularly defi ant or upset, you may not

be able to resolve the confl ict alone. Find a mediator—

either an outside coach or an uninvolved person from

another part of the organization—to get the issues out in

the open and negotiate a resolution. Typically you do this

when you’ve exhausted all options, as discussed in chap-

ter 7, “Get to a Resolution and Make a Plan,” but you may

need to go this route sooner because there are so many

people involved and you may not get the whole story as

the boss. Working with a coach can help you understand

why your style or approach is not effective with your team.

Katja’s story

Katja was ready to close her marketing company. The

business was doing OK, but there were some severe per-

sonnel problems: Morale was low, and her employees

were angry and resentful. “The soul of my business was

black,” she recalls.

When she looked honestly at the situation, she saw

that there wasn’t disagreement over task or process or

even status. It was pure relationship conflict. Her boy-

friend at the time convinced her to work with an ex-

ecutive coach before she truly called it quits. The coach

helped her to develop a plan to address the conflict. She

159

Resolving a Confl ict

started by talking with members of her staff to find out

what was going on. But every time she spoke to anyone,

they would claim they didn’t have an issue, but someone

else did. “Eventually, I started to realize that no one was

going to own up to the conflict, so I had to get it out in

the open.”

Katja requested that they start communicating di-

rectly. There couldn’t be any gossip if they were going to

turn things around and improve their relationships. She

also acknowledged her role in creating the destructive

atmosphere. She herself had gossiped on occasion, and

she knew she’d set a bad example. Once her employees

started having the difficult conversations needed to re-

solve their conflicts with her and with one another, they

began to feel more united and committed. Soon they re-

alized there was pent-up client demand they hadn’t been

able to serve because they were so wrapped up in what

was going on inside the business. In the next six years,

the company’s revenue tripled.

You’re Fighting with Someone

Outside the Offi

ce

The situation

Your vendor has missed several deadlines, and you’re

getting nervous the IT project isn’t going to get done on

time. But your contact there isn’t answering your calls or

emails. You’re wondering if it’s time to switch vendors.

Why it happens

When you’re interacting with people in other organi-

zations—a customer, supplier, a partner—you typically

160

Navigate Common Situations

know little about them. Without the shared context of

an offi ce, colleagues, and other commonalities, it’s easy

for you and an external partner to misunderstand each

other or misinterpret intentions.

What to do about it

Whether the person is a vendor who has missed several

deadlines, a customer who complains about a rise in

your product’s price, or a colleague from a partner orga-

nization who is accusing you of not holding up your end

of an agreement, approach the issue in the same way.

Don’t overcompensate

It’s tempting to treat the situation differently than fi ght-

ing with someone inside your organization. You might

think, “This is a key supplier. I should do whatever it

takes to smooth over this disagreement” or “They’re just

a vendor. We can fi nd a new one next week.” You may feel

less invested in the relationship because there are 10 ven-

dors who want your business. But although you may have

lots of alternatives, know what it would mean to pursue

them. Sometimes the cost of switching vendors or suppli-

ers is higher than you think. “With external parties, you

don’t want to fall on your sword, but you also don’t want

to treat them as if they don’t matter,” says Jeff Weiss.

Show respect

With people you don’t see regularly, and perhaps with

whom you communicate mostly via email, it’s impor-

tant to demonstrate that you value the relationship.

This isn’t always implicit. It’s a good way to signal that

you’re invested in working through the issue. Plus, it

161

Resolving a Confl ict

establishes a foundation of trust from which you can

solve the problem: “I know we don’t see each other of-

ten, but I wanted you to know that I value this relation-

ship and appreciate what your company does for ours.”

Jointly diagnose the problem

As with any confl ict, you want to understand what the

root cause is, but because you work in different organi-

zations, you may know less about your counterpart, his

perspective, and his goals. Sit down to jointly diagnose

what led to the confl ict. Is there a communication prob-

lem? Are you perceiving an issue differently? What about

your contribution to the issues? Have you not given the

supplier clear instructions? Have you been too hands-

off? Have you made it diffi cult for him to do his job?

Know your counterpart’s stakeholders

You likely have a contact at your supplier, but this isn’t

the person who makes all of the decisions that affect you.

You’re frustrated that he’s not getting back to you about

pricing or delivery terms, but it may be that he’s trying

to get his boss or fi nance on board with the new terms.

“You are at the interface of the confl ict,” says Jonathan

Hughes. When you do the work to better understand

your counterpart and your goals, don’t just focus on your

point of contact. Also consider anyone who may have a

stake in the decision. And when you propose a resolu-

tion, fi gure out how you can help your contact sell it in-

ternally at his organization so that it fi ts into their goals.

You can ask, “How can I help you get approval for this

arrangement?”

162

Navigate Common Situations

Consider the precedent

Because you may have fewer interactions with this per-

son than you do with coworkers, it’s important to exam-

ine the tone you’re setting as it’s likely to infl uence any

discussions that come next. “Think about the history you

want to have behind you,” advises Weiss. If you mistreat

your counterpart, you’re sending the message that he can

do the same the next time an issue comes up between

your two organizations—whereas if you are thoughtful

and respectful, and take his (and his company’s) per-

spective into consideration, you’re paving the way for

smoother interactions in the future.

Zach’s story

As the project manager at a building company, Zach

works with dozens of subcontractors at a time—

plumbers, painters, carpenters, electricians. “I approach

these relationships with one question in mind: ‘How can

we partner to get this project done for a client?’” he says.

But he acknowledges that it’s diffi cult to settle disputes

because the subcontractors can walk away from the job.

“They don’t have the relationship with the client; I do,”

he says.

A plumber with whom he was working on a big re-

design project was getting upset about the payment

terms. “It’s standard in the industry to pay subcontrac-

tors within 30 days, but we’re not always able to do that,”

Zach says. The plumber had put a lot of time and mate-

rial into the project, and he hadn’t received any payment.

“The trouble was that the client wasn’t paying us, so we

163

Resolving a Confl ict

couldn’t pay out our subs.” The plumber threatened to

walk off the job.

Although Zach knew he could fi nd another subcon-

tractor if necessary, he valued his relationship with this

plumber and said so. He told him, “Look, you’ve always

been a great partner, and as you know, we typically pay

net 30, but we’re stuck in a bind this time. Can you see

it from my perspective? I’d love to pay you, but I just

don’t have the money.” Zach then offered to let him know

as soon as the client check came in. “I promised I’d send

him his check the very same day,” he says. “I don’t think

he was happy with the outcome because he still had to

wait for his money, but he understood the position I

was in.”

Knowing how to manage confl ict at work won’t make it

go away, but it will make dealing with any disagreements

easier and less stressful. Whether you’re experiencing

confl ict with your direct report or your boss—or someone

outside your business—you now have the tools to assess

the situation and choose an approach that works for you.

As these scenarios show, directly addressing the confl ict

is just one alternative. You also need to know when to

walk away or get out of the relationship altogether. But if

you do choose to sit down with your counterpart, you’re

now better equipped to prepare for and engage in a dif-

fi cult conversation, manage your and your counterpart’s

emotions, and develop a resolution together.

164

Sources

Introduction

• Karen

Dillon,

HBR Guide to Offi ce Politics, Har-

vard Business Review Press, 2015.

• Jennifer Lawler, “The Real Cost of Workplace Con-

fl ict,” Entrepreneur.com, June 10, 2010, http://

www.entrepreneur.com/article/207196.

• Kenneth W. Thomas, “Making Confl ict Manage-

ment a Strategic Advantage,” CPP, https://www

.cpp.com/pdfs/confl ict_whitepaper.pdf.

• Jeanne Whalen, “Angry Outbursts Really Do Hurt

Your Health, Doctors Find,” Wall Street Journal,

March 23, 2015, http://www.wsj.com/articles/

angry-outbursts-really-do-hurt-your-health

-doctors-fi nd-1427150596.

Chapter 1

• Annie McKee, “How Power Affects Your Productiv-

ity,” HBR.org, February 9, 2015, https://hbr.org/

2015/02/how-power-affects-your-productivity.

165

Sources

Chapter 2

• Jeanne Brett, “When and How to Let a Confl ict

Go,” HBR.org, June 10, 2014, https://hbr.org/

2014/06/when-and-how-to-let-a-confl ict-go/.

Chapter 3

• Hannah Riley Bowles, “Why Women Don’t

Negotiate Their Job Offers,” HBR.org,

June 19, 2014, https://hbr.org/2014/06/

why-women-dont-negotiate-their-job-offers.

• Liane Davey, “Confl ict Strategies for Nice People,”

HBR.org, December 25, 2013, https://hbr

.org/2013/12/confl ict-strategies-for-nice

-people/.

• Judith E. Glaser, “Your Brain Is Hooked on Being

Right,” HBR.org, February 28, 2013, https://hbr

.org/2013/02/break-your-addiction-to-being/.

• Amy Jen Su, “Get Over Your Fear of Confl ict,”

HBR.org, June 6, 2014, https://hbr.org/2014/06/

get-over-your-fear-of-confl ict.

Chapter 4

• Jeanne Brett, “When and How to Let a Confl ict

Go,” HBR.org, June 10, 2104, https://hbr.org/

2014/06/when-and-how-to-let-a-confl ict-go/.

• Ben Dattner, “Most Work Confl icts Aren’t Due to

Personality,” HBR.org, May 20, 2014, https://hbr

166

Sources

.org/2014/05/most-work-confl icts-arent-due-to

-personality/.

• Karen

Dillon,

HBR Guide to Offi ce Politics, Har-

vard Business Review Press, 2015.

• Jeffrey Pfeffer, “Win at Workplace Confl ict,”

HBR.org, May 29, 2014, https://hbr.org/2014/

05/win-at-workplace-confl ict/.

• Judith White, “Two Kinds of People You Should

Never Negotiate With,” HBR.org, June 18, 2014,

https://hbr.org/2014/06/two-kinds-of-people

-you-should-never-negotiate-with/.

Chapter 5

• Jeanne Brett, “When and How to Let a Confl ict

Go,” HBR.org, June 10, 2014, https://hbr.org/

2014/06/when-and-how-to-let-a-confl ict-go/.

• Susan David, “Manage a Diffi cult Conversation

with Emotional Intelligence,” HBR.org, June 19,

2014, https://hbr.org/2014/manage-a-diffi cult

-conversation-with-emotional-intelligence/.

• Susan David and Christina Congleton, “Emotional

Agility,” Harvard Business Review, November

2013 (product R1311L).

• Amy Gallo, “Choose the Right Words in an Argu-

ment,” HBR.org, June 16, 2014, https://hbr

.org/2014/06/choose-the-right-words-in-an

-argument/.

167

Sources

• Amy Gallo, “How to Work with Someone You

Hate,” HBR.org, January 30, 2012, https://

hbr.org/2012/01/how-to-work-with-someone

-you-h/.

• Amy Gallo, “The Right Way to Fight,” HBR.org,

May 12, 2010, https://hbr.org/2010/05/the

-right-way-to-fi ght/.

• Rebecca Knight, “How to Handle Diffi cult Con-

versations at Work,” HBR.org, January 9, 2015,

https://hbr.org/2015/01/how-to-handle-diffi cult

-conversations-at-work.

Chapter 6

• Dorie Clark, “How to Repair a Damaged Profes-

sional Relationship,” HBR.org, June 5, 2014,

https://hbr.org/2014/06/how-to-repair-a

-damaged-professional-relationship.

• Liane Davey, “Confl ict Strategies for Nice Peo-

ple,” HBR.org, December 25, 2013, https:// hbr

.org/2013/12/confl ict-strategies-for-nice -people/.

• Susan David and Christina Congleton, “Emotional

Agility,” Harvard Business Review, November

2013 (product R1311L).

• Amy Gallo, “Choose the Right Words in an

Argu ment,” HBR.org, June 16, 2014, https://

hbr .org/2014/06/hoose-the-right-words-in-an

-argument/.

168

Sources

• Amy Gallo, “The Right Way to Fight,” HBR.org,

May 12, 2010, https://hbr.org/2010/05/the-right

-way-to-fi ght/.

• Mark Gerzon, “To Resolve a Confl ict, First De-

cide: Is It Hot or Cold?” HBR.org, June 26, 2014,

https://hbr.org/2014/06/to-resolve-a-confl ict

-fi rst-decide-is-it-hot-or-cold/.

• Rebecca Knight, “How to Handle Diffi cult Con-

versations at Work,” HBR.org, January 9, 2015,

https://hbr.org/2015/01/how-to-handle-diffi cult

-conversations-at-work.

• Katie Liljenquist and Adam Galinsky, “Win Over

an Opponent by Asking for Advice,” HBR.org,

June 27, 2014, https://hbr.org/2014/06/win-over

-an-opponent-by-asking-for-advice.

Chapter 7

• Rebecca Knight, “How to Handle Diffi cult Con-

versations at Work,” HBR.org, January 9, 2015,

https://hbr.org/2015/01/how-to-handle-diffi cult

-conversations-at-work.

• Jeff

Weiss,

HBR Guide to Negotiating, Harvard

Business Review Press, 2016.

Chapter 8

• Jeanne Brett, “When and How to Let a Confl ict

Go,” HBR.org, June 10, 2014, https://hbr.org/

2014/06/when-and-how-to-let-a-confl ict-go/.

169

Sources

• Dorie Clark, “How to Repair a Damaged Profes-

sional Relationship,” HBR.org, June 5, 2014,

https://hbr.org/2014/06/how-to-repair-a

-damaged-professional-relationship.

• Amy Gallo, “Fixing a Work Relationship Gone

Sour,” HBR.org, August 20, 2014, https://hbr

.org/2014/08/fi xing-a-work-relationship-gone

-sour/.

• Amy Gallo, “How to Build the Social Ties You

Need at Work,” HBR.org, September 23, 2015,

https://hbr.org/2015/09/how -to -build -the -social

-ties -you-need-at-work.

• Amy Gallo, “How to Deal with a Mean Colleague,”

HBR.org, October 16, 2014, https://hbr.org/

2014/10/how-to-deal-with-a-mean-colleague/.

• Amy Gallo, “How to Manage Someone You

Don’t Like,” HBR.org, August 29, 2013, https://

hbr.org/2013/08/how-to-manage-someone-you

-dont/.

• Amy Gallo, “How to Work with Someone You

Hate,” HBR.org, January 30, 2012, https://hbr

.org/2012/01/how-to-work-with-someone-you-h/.

• Caroline Webb, “How to Tell a Coworker They’re

Annoying You,” HBR.org, March 10, 2016, https://

hbr.org/2016/03/how -to -tell -a -coworker -theyre

-annoying-you.

170

Sources

Chapter 9

• Jeanne Brett, “When and How to Let a Confl ict

Go,” HBR.org, June 10, 2014, https://hbr.org/

2014/06/when-and-how-to-let-a-confl ict-go/.

• Liane Davey, “Confl ict Strategies for Nice People,”

HBR.org, December 25, 2013, https://hbr.org/

2013/12/confl ict-strategies-for-nice-people/.

• Liane Davey, “Managing Two People Who Hate

Each Other,” HBR.org, June 9, 2014, https://hbr

.org/2014/06/managing-two-people-who-hate

-each-other/.

• Liane Davey, “What to Do When Your Boss

Doesn’t Like You,” HBR.org, December 8, 2014,

https://hbr.org/2014/12/what-to-do-when-your

-boss-doesnt-like-you.

• Karen Dillon, “Don’t Hide When Your Boss Is

Mad at You,” HBR.org, June 11, 2014, https://hbr

.org/2014/06/dont-hide-when-your-boss-is-mad

-at-you/.

• Nathanael J. Fast, Ethan R. Burris, and Caroline A.

Bartel, “Research: Insecure Managers Don’t Want

Your Suggestions,” HBR.org, November 24, 2014,

https://hbr.org/2014/11/research-insecure

-managers -dont-want-your-suggestions/.

• Keith Ferrazzi, “How to Manage Confl ict in

Virtual Teams,” HBR.org, November 19, 2012,

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https://hbr.org/2012/11/how-to-manage-confl ict

-in-virt/.

• Amy Gallo, “Choose the Right Words in an Argu-

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.org/2014/06/choose-the-right-words-in-an

-argument/.

• Amy Gallo, “Get Your Team to Stop Fighting and

Start Working,” HBR.org, June 9, 2010, https://

hbr.org/2010/06/get-your-team-to-stop-fi ghting/.

• Amy Gallo, “How to Deal with a Mean Colleague,”

HBR.org, October 16, 2014, https://hbr.org/

2014/10/how-to-deal-with-a-mean-colleague.

• Amy Gallo, “The Right Way to Fight,” HBR.org,

May 12, 2010, https://hbr.org/2010/05/the-right

-way-to-fi ght/.

• Amy Gallo, “When Two of Your Coworkers Are

Fighting,” HBR.org, July 3, 2014, https://hbr

.org/2014/07/when-two-of-your-coworkers-are

-fi ghting/.

• Amy Gallo, “When You Think the Strategy Is

Wrong,” HBR.org, February 4, 2010, https://hbr

.org/2010/02/when-you-think-the-strategy-is

.html.

• Daniel Goleman, “E-Mail Is Easy to Write (and

to Misread),” New York Times, October 7, 2007,

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/07/jobs/07pre

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172

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2014/11/how-to-disagree-with-your-boss.

• Joseph Grenny, “The Best Teams Hold Themselves

Accountable,” HBR.org, May 30, 2014, https://

hbr.org/2014/05/the-best-teams-hold-themselves

-accountable.

• Pamela Hinds, “4 Ways to Decrease Confl ict

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https://hbr.org/2014/06/4-ways-to-decrease

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• Amy Jen Su and Muriel Maignan Wilkins, “How

to Deal with a Passive-Aggressive Peer,” HBR.org,

December 14, 2010, https://hbr.org/2010/12/how

-to-deal-with-a-passive-agg.

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hbr.org/2015/02/how-to-manage-remote-direct

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• Annie McKee, “When Fighting with Your Boss,

Protect Yourself First,” HBR.org, July 22, 2014,

https://hbr.org/2014/07/when-fi ghting-with

-your-boss-protect-yourself-fi rst/.

• Holly Weeks, “Say No Without Burning Bridges,”

HBR.org, June 24, 2014, https://hbr.org/2014/06/

say-no-without-burning-bridges/.

173

Featured Experts

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Richard Boyatzis is a Distinguished University Professor,

and a professor in the departments of Organizational

Behavior and Psychology Cognitive Science at Case

Western Reserve University, where his MOOC “Inspiring

Leadership Through Emotional Intelligence,” has over

400,000 participants from over 200 countries. He is a

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speaker who teaches at Duke University’s Fuqua School

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ton M. Christensen, Taddy Hall, and David S. Duncan)

and How Will You Measure Your Life? (with Clayton M.

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@DillonHBR.

Nathanael Fast is an associate professor of management

at the Marshall School of Business at the University of

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groups and organizations.

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research- based consulting and coaching company, and

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Who’s Got Your Back: The Breakthrough Program to

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ness and the chair of the Management Department at

the Columbia Business School. He is the coauthor (with

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ate, When to Compete, and How to Succeed at Both. His

research focuses on leadership, power, negotiations, de-

cision making, and ethics.

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fl ict: How Successful Leaders Transform Differences

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cations and the chairman of the Creating WE Institute.

She is the author of six books, including Creating WE:

Change I-Thinking to We-Thinking and Build a Healthy,

Thriving Organization and Conversational Intelligence:

How Great Leaders Build Trust and Get Extraordinary

Results.

Daniel Goleman is a codirector of the Consortium for

Research on Emotional Intelligence in Organizations at

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Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ, The

Brain and Emotional Intelligence: New Insights, and

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Writings.

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vator in corporate training and leadership development,

and a coauthor of Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talk-

ing When Stakes Are High and Crucial Accountability:

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engineering at Stanford University. She studies the dy-

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179

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Paravis Partners, a boutique executive coaching and

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Muriel Maignan Wilkins) of Own the Room: Discover

Your Signature Voice to Master Your Leadership Presence.

Roderick Kramer is the William R. Kimball Professor

of Organizational Behavior, Stanford Graduate School

of Business, a coeditor (with Todd Pittinsky) of Restor-

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Katie Liljenquist is on the faculty of Brigham Young Uni-

versity’s Department of Organizational Leadership and

Strategy. She studies decision making and interpersonal

infl uence.

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partner of Paravis Partners, a boutique executive coach-

ing and leadership development fi rm. She is a coauthor

(with Amy Jen Su) of Own the Room: Discover Your Sig-

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sylvania, the director of the PennCLO Executive Doc-

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Unleashing the Power of Emotional Intelligence (with

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lecturer in public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School,

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sations Go Wrong and What You Can Do to Right Them.

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consultancy specializing in corporate negotiations, rela-

tionship management, partnering, and complex change

management. He serves on the faculties of the Tuck

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Military Academy at West Point, where he is also the co-

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research focuses on gender and diversity in groups, mul-

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Michele Woodward is a Master Certifi ed Coach who

coaches executives and trains other coaches.

184

Index

accountability, 90

of situation, 43–60

active listening, 85–88

avoidance of confl ict, xx, 17, 21

addressing confl ict, options for,

avoiders, confl ict, xxv, 32–34, 48

xxiv, xxv, 15–29, 52–58

advice

asking for, 78–79, 88

back pain, 33. See also health

giving, 139

problems related to confl ict

African cultures, confl ict man-

benefi ts of confl ict, xxi–xxiii

agement in, 20. See also

blame

cultural norms and

admitting, 90

confl ict

assigning, 76

anger

body

health problems caused by,

focusing on your, 82

xx–xxi ( see also health prob-

language, 91–93, 94

lems related to confl ict)

boss

toward boss, 141–145

anger toward, 141–145

See also emotions

colleague goes over your head

apologies, 90–92, 116–117

to, 130–136

Asian cultures, indirect confl ict

escalating confl ict to, 108

handling in, 19–20, 36. See

repairing relationship with, 134

also cultural norms and

respect for, 142–143

confl ict

brainstorming, resolution, 105.

assertive cultures, 23. See

See also confl ict resolution

also cultural norms and

breaks

confl ict

from diffi cult conversations,

assessment

83, 108

of counterpart, 43–47

from work, 112

185

Index

breathing, deep, 82. See also

do-nothing option for, xxiv,

calmness

15–19, 53

bullies, dealing with, 145–148

exit option for, xxiv, 25–28, 53,

57–58

indirect option for, xxiv, 19–22,

calmness, 81–83, 95. See also

53

emotions

involving third parties in, 20,

causes of confl ict, roots of, xxiii–

95–97

xxiv, 3, 12–13

lead by counterpart, 28–29

collaboration, and resolutions,

plan for, xxiii–xxviii

105. See also confl ict

situation assessment, 43–60

resolution

win-win approach to, xxiii

colleagues

confl ict resolution, 101–110

bullying by, 145–148

accepting lack of, 107–109

caught in middle of warring,

characteristics of, 101–103

136–141

documenting agreement, 107

going over your head by,

evaluating possibilities,

130–136

105–106

who hate each other, 152–157

fairness and reasonableness

See also counterpart

of, 103

commonalities, focusing on, 117.

reaching, 103–107

See also confl ict resolution

satisfying interests in, 102–103

common ground

confl ict seekers, xxv, 32, 34–35,

focusing on, 76–77 ( see also

48

conversations)

confl ict situations, 121–164

identifying, 49–50 ( see also

anger toward boss, 141–145

assessment of situation)

caught in middle of warring

common situations, navigating.

colleagues, 136–141

See confl ict situations

colleague goes over your head,

communication

130–136

clarifying lines of, 133–134

counterpart with mental ill-

during conversations, 89–95,

ness, 148–152

96

dealing with bullies, 145–148

email, 122–126

fi ghting from afar, 122–126

informal, 124–125

managing people who hate

nonverbal, 92–93, 94

each other, 152–157

confl ict avoiders, xxv, 32–34, 48

passive-aggressive counter-

confl ict management

parts, 126–130

adapting approach to, 59–60

with someone outside of offi ce,

direct option for, xxiv, 22–25,

160–164

53

team turns on you, 157–160

186

Index

confl ict types, xxiv, xxv, 3–13, 47,

input from others on, 45

49–50, 77–78

listening to, 85–88

context and confl ict, organiza-

with mental illness, 148–152

tional, 64–65

passive-aggressive, 126–130

contrary opinions, express-

perspective of, 88

ing, 91–92. See also

providing feedback to, 118–119

communication

repairing relationship with,

conversations

111–120

asking questions during,

stakeholders of, 162

86–88

taking perspective of, 62–63,

being heard during, 89–95

71

changing tenor of, 93, 95

understanding your, 43–47, 124

choosing place for, 68–69, 72

venting by, 83–85

delaying, 28–29, 57, 68, 72

coworkers. See colleagues;

email, 122–126

counterpart

framing, xxvii, 75, 76–80

creativity, to reach resolu-

lack of time to prepare for,

tion, 104. See also confl ict

70, 72

resolution

listening during, 85–88

cultural bridges, 45

managing emotions during,

cultural differences, 122–123

80–85

cultural norms and confl ict,

mindset for, 61–62, 71

19–20, 36, 45, 46, 64,

multiple scenarios for, 66, 71

75–76

planning message for, 65–66,

71

pre-conversation checklist,

deadlines, 67. See also timing, of

71–72

conversations

preparing for, xxvi, 61–73

decision making and resolu-

productive, xxvii, 75–98

tions, 106. See also confl ict

setting ground rules for, 79

resolution

structuring, 50

deep breathing, 82. See also

taking break from, 83

calmness

timing of, 66–68, 72

defensiveness, 76. See also con-

venting before, 69–70, 71

versations, productive

counterpart

diabetes, xxi. See also health

body language of, 92–93, 94

problems related to confl ict

common ground with, 49–50,

diffi cult conversations. See

76–77

conversations

conversations with ( see

direct confrontation, xxiv, 22–25,

conversations)

53. See also options for

empathy for, 117–118

addres sing confl ict

187

Index

disagreements, unspoken, xx . See

face saving, 19, 21. See also op-

also confl ict avoiders

tions for addressing confl ict

discussions. See conversations

feedback

doing nothing, as option for

asking for, on confl ict style,

addressing confl ict, xxiv,

39

15–19, 53. See also options

providing, 118–119

for addressing confl ict

fi ghting-from-afar situation,

downsides of confl ict, xix–xxi

122–126

fi ght-or-fl ight response, 54, 81.

See also emotions

email, 69, 122–126. See also com-

fi nger-pointing, 90. See also con-

munication; location, for

versations, productive

conversations

future, focusing on, 79–80,

emotional leakage, 70. See also

112–113

emotions

emotional reactions, 49, 54, 55,

58

gender norms, 37. See also natu-

emotional toll, of confl ict, xx–xxi.

ral tendencies, for handling

See also health problems

confl ict

related to confl ict

goals

emotions

determining your, 51–52

acknowledging, 83

disputes over, 4, 7–9

checking, before conversa-

returning to original, 95

tions, 67–68

shared, 65, 76–77, 128

during confl ict resolution, 106

ground rules for diffi cult conver-

labeling, 83

sations, 79. See also conver-

management of, 80–85

sations, productive

negative, xxvii

growth opportunities, xxii. See

suppressing, 70

also benefi ts of confl ict

venting, 83–85

empathy, 117–118, 138. See also

relationships, repairing

headaches, 33. See also health

escalating confl ict, to boss,

problems related to

108

confl ict

exiting, as option for addressing

health problems related to

confl ict, 25–28, 53, 57–58.

confl ict, xx–xxi, 33. See also

See also options for address-

emotional toll, of confl ict

ing confl ict

heart attacks, xx. See also health

experiences with confl ict, past,

problems related to

36

confl ict

external partners, confl icts with,

hypotheticals, 92. See also con-

160–164

versations, productive

188

Index

indirect confrontation, xxiv,

multiple scenarios, preparing for,

19–22, 53. See also options

66, 71

for addressing confl ict

Myers-Briggs Type Indicator

informal communica-

(MBTI), 39. See also natural

tion, 124–125. See also

tendencies, for handling

communication

confl ict

innovation, xxi. See also benefi ts

of confl ict

interpersonal confl icts. See rela-

name-calling, 90. See also con-

tionship confl icts

versations, productive

National Alliance on Mental

Illness, 150. See also mental

job satisfaction, xxii–xxiii. See

illness, and confl ict

also benefi ts of confl ict

natural tendencies, for handling

confl ict, xxiv–xxv, 31–40,

47, 48

language

assessing your counterpart’s,

body, 92–93, 94

43–47

verbal, 90–92, 96

being mindful of, 54

Latin American cultures, 36. See

confl ict avoiders, xxv, 32–34,

also cultural norms and

48

confl ict

confl ict seekers, xxv, 34–35, 48

learning opportunity, confl ict

identifying your, 35–40

as, xxii, 109–110. See also

interactions between different

benefi ts of confl ict

styles, 47, 48

listening, active, 85–88

timing of conversations and,

location, for conversations,

67

68–69, 72

negative emotions, xxvii, 80–85.

See also emotions

nonverbal communication,

mantras, 82. See also calmness

92–93, 94. See also

mediators, 97. See also conversa-

communication

tions, productive

men, confl ict styles and, 37

mental illness, and confl ict,

offi ce context, 37, 45, 64–65

148–152

open mind, 62. See also mindset

messages

options for addressing confl ict,

nonverbal, 92–93

xxiv, xxv, 15–29, 52–58

planning, 65–66, 71

organizational context, 64–65

metaphors, 19–20. See also indi-

organizational culture, 23, 64

rect confrontation

outcomes, better work. See ben-

mindset, 61–62, 71

efi ts of confl ict

189

Index

outside partners, confl icts with,

rational thinking, 49, 54, 80–81

160–164

reciprocity, 116. See also relation-

ships, repairing

relationship confl icts, xxiv, xxv,

passive-aggressive counterparts,

4, 5–7, 50, 52, 89–90, 102,

126–130

106–107. See also confl ict

personal disagreements, xxiv, xxv,

types

4, 5–7, 50. See also relation-

relationships

ship confl icts

with boss, 134, 141–145

personality assessment, 39–40.

with colleagues, 130–141,

See also natural tendencies,

145–148

for handling confl ict

exiting, xxiv, 25–28, 57–58

perspective

improvements in, xxii ( see also

owning your, 89–90

benefi ts of confl ict)

of your counterpart, 62–63,

repairing, xxvii, 111–120, 134

71, 88

remote, fi ghting with someone

physical reactions, to confl ict,

from afar, 122–126

54, 81

resolution. See confl ict resolution

power struggles, 95. See also con-

role-playing, 47. See also counter-

versations, productive

part, understanding your

pre-conversation checklist,

root causes of confl ict, xxiii–xxiv,

71–72

3, 12–13

process confl icts, xxiv, xxv, 4,

9–11, 101–102. See also

confl ict types

scenarios, common. See confl ict

psychometric tests, 39–40. See

situations

also natural tendencies, for

seekers, confl ict, xxv, 32, 34–35,

handling confl ict

48

self-awareness, 38–39. See also

natural tendencies, for

questions

handling confl ict

asking thoughtful, 86–88

situation assessment, 43–60

( see also conversations,

goal setting, 51–52

productive)

identifying type of confl ict, 47,

rebuilding relationships

49–50

through, 113, 116 ( see also

picking option for handling

relationships, repairing)

confl ict, 52–58

understanding your counter-

part, 43–47

rapport building, 113. See also

situations, common. See confl ict

relationships, repairing

situations

190

Index

status confl icts, xxiv, xxv, 4, 11–12,

timing, of conversations, 66–68.

102. See also confl ict types

See also conversations,

stories, 19–20. See also indirect

productive

confrontation

trust, restoring, 116. See also

stroke, xx. See also health prob-

relationships, repairing

lems related to confl ict

types of, confl ict, xxiv, xxv, 3–13,

suppliers, confl icts with, 160–164

47, 49–50, 77–78

sympathetic nervous system, 81.

See also emotions

vendors, confl icts with, 160–164

venting, 69–70, 71, 83–85, 138

task confl icts, xxiv, xxv, 4, 7–9,

venue, for conversations, 68–69,

101. See also confl ict types

72

team members

virtual teams, 122–126

who hate each other, 152–157

who turn on you, 157–160

tendency for handling confl ict,

walking away, from confl ict,

natural, xxiv–xxv, 31–40,

55–58. See also options for

47, 48

addressing confl ict

third parties

weight gain, 33. See also

involving in confl ict, 20,

health problems related to

95–97, 128–129, 159

confl ict

rebuilding relationships and,

women, confl ict styles and, 37

118

work, confl ict at, xvii–xix, xx,

Thomas-Kilmann Confl ict Mode

xxiii

Instrument (TKI), 39–40.

work outcomes, better, xxi. See

See also natural tendencies,

also benefi ts of confl ict

for handling confl ict

workplace norms, 37, 45

191

About the Author

Amy Gallo is a contributing editor at Harvard Busi-

ness Review, where she covers a range of topics includ-

ing managing yourself, leading people, and building

your career. As a speaker and workshop facilitator, Amy

has helped dozens of organizations deal with confl ict

more effectively and navigate complicated workplace

dynamics. Previously, she was a management consul-

tant at Katzenbach Partners, a strategy and organiza-

tion consulting firm. She is a graduate of Yale University

and has a master’s in public policy from Brown Univer-

sity. Follow her on Twitter @amyegallo.

193

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Eff ective

Feedback

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HBR Guide to

Delivering

Eff ective

Feedback

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

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Title: HBR guide to delivering effective feedback / Harvard Business

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Description: Boston, Massachusetts : Harvard Business Review Press,

[2016]

Identifi ers: LCCN 2015047167 | ISBN 9781633691643 (hardcover :

alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH: Employee retention. | Feedback (Psychology) |

Employees—Rating of. | Personnel management.

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H6952.indb iv

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What You’ll Learn

Are you worried about losing your star performer to

greener pastures? Or struggling with a problem em-

ployee? Do you dread annual performance appraisals?

As a manager, you know it’s important to give your

employees the feedback they need to develop. But com-

municating it in a way that motivates them to improve

can be a challenge. And the prospect of facing someone

who may get emotional can seem overwhelming.

But whether you are discussing a formal performance

assessment or addressing everyday behavior, you can

transform these stressful encounters into productive

conversations. Brimming with actionable advice on ev-

erything from delivering constructive comments to rec-

ognizing exceptional work, this guide will give you the

tools and confi dence you need to master giving effective

feedback to your direct reports.

You’ll learn how to:

• Incorporate ongoing feedback into your daily

interactions with employees

• Transform annual appraisals into catalysts for

growth

H6952.indb v

2/18/16 9:56 AM

What You’ll Learn

• Plan for a tense conversation with a combative

recipient

• Provide a clear message that emphasizes

improvement

• Identify the reasons behind performance issues—

including your own role

• Motivate individuals by acknowledging

accomplishments

• Coach your star to the next level

• Measure performance when results aren’t easily

quantifi ed

• Establish goals that will help your people develop

• Communicate criticism effectively across global

cultures

• Engage your team during feedback discussions

vi

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Contents

Section 1: ONGOING FEEDBACK

1. Giving Eff ective Feedback

3

The two types of feedback, defi ned.

2. Sometimes Negative Feedback Is Best

7

For some, it can be more motivating

than praise.

BY HEIDI GRANT HALVORSON

3. Giving Feedback That Sticks

11

Prevent a fi ght-or-fl ight response.

BY ED BATISTA

4. A Better Way to Deliver Bad News

27

Take an open approach to your discussion.

BY JEAN-FRANÇOIS MANZONI

5. The Set-Up-to-Fail Syndrome

47

How bosses create their own poor

performers.

BY JEAN-FRANÇOIS MANZONI AND

JEAN-LOUIS BARSOUX

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Contents

6. How to Give Feedback That Helps

People Grow

81

Establish trust, then focus on improvement.

BY MONIQUE VALCOUR

7. Recognize Good Work in a

Meaningful Way

89

Tailor your rewards to the person and

the eff ort.

BY CHRISTINA BIELASZKA-DUVERNAY

Section 2: FORMAL PERFORMANCE

APPRAISALS

8. Delivering an Eff ective Performance

Review 97

Five basic rules for getting it right.

BY REBECCA KNIGHT

9. Managing Performance When It’s Hard

to Measure

107

Focus on the individual, not a rating.

BY JIM WHITEHURST

10. Stop Worrying About Your Employee’s

Weaknesses 117

Emphasize their strengths to help them grow.

BY PETER BREGMAN

11. How to Set and Support Employee

Goals 123

Set your people up to succeed.

BY AMY GALLO

viii

00-H6952-FM-RA.indd viii

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Contents

12. When to Grant a Promotion or Raise

135

First, make sure they can do the job

they want.

BY AMY GALLO

13. Tips for Record Keeping

147

Track performance so reviews run smoothly.

Section 3: TOUGH TOPICS

14. How to Help an Underperformer

153

Identify the problem and see if coaching

can help.

BY AMY GALLO

15. Delivering Criticism to a Defensive Employee

163

Stick to the facts.

BY HOLLY WEEKS

16. How to Give Star Performers Productive

Feedback 171

Discuss performance, new frontiers,

and aspirations.

BY AMY GALLO

17. Prioritizing Feedback—Even When Time

Is Short

181

Three ways to be more effi

cient.

BY DAISY WADEMAN DOWLING

18. Navigating the Choppy Waters of

Cross-Cultural Feedback

185

Make subtle shifts to adapt your approach.

BY ANDY MOLINSKY

ix

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Contents

19. How to Discuss Performance with

Your Team

189

Let them do the talking fi rst.

BY REBECCA KNIGHT

Index

197

x

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Section 1

Ongoing

Feedback

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H6952.indb 2

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Chapter 1

Giving Eff ective

Feedback

If you’re like most managers, the prospect of giving feed-

back to your employees can be nerve-racking. Perhaps

you’re worried about how your staff will react. Or maybe

you’re doubtful that your comments will make a differ-

ence in their work or behavior.

But feedback is a vital tool for ensuring that your em-

ployees are developing in your organization. A feedback

discussion is an opportunity for you to share your ob-

servations with your employees about their job perfor-

mance and elicit productive change. Without it, they will

have no idea of how you see them. Avoid having a tough

conversation with your underperformers early on, and

their performance (and possibly your team’s) plummets.

Adapted from Giving Feedback (product #348X), Performance Ap-

praisal (product #12352), both from the Pocket Mentor series, and the 20-Minute Manager series books Giving Effective Feedback (product #13999) and Performance Reviews (product #15035) 3

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Ongoing Feedback

Assume that your high performers know their value and

will keep up the good work, and they may start “phoning

it in” or leave your company altogether to advance their

careers.

Feedback increases employees’ self-awareness and fos-

ters positive change throughout the organization. There

are two main types: Ongoing feedback occurs on a regu-

lar or ad hoc basis; it can be delivered up (to your boss),

down (to your employees), or across the organizational

chart (to your peers). Formal feedback, typically shared

during annual or semiannual performance reviews, tends

to be between you and your direct report. This guide will

prepare you to discuss both types with your employees.

Ongoing Feedback

Grounded in the goals you and your employees have set

together at the beginning of the year, ongoing feedback

provides opportunities for early intervention if someone

is not hitting the mark. It also allows you to recognize

and reinforce good work. Ongoing feedback includes on-

the-spot conversations (for example, constructive com-

ments about an employee’s presentation delivery at a

board meeting), the weekly check-in meetings you have

with each member of your team to gauge progress on

both little- and big-picture objectives, and career coach-

ing sessions. Such frequent interactions not only help

keep people on track but also make it easier for you to

prepare your formal annual appraisal. By taking note

of your observations and discussing your employees’

progress throughout the year, you’ll already know where

4

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Giving Eff ective Feedback

your direct reports’ strengths and weaknesses lie, and

your employees will already be working on areas for im-

provement and development before the formal feedback

session.

Formal Feedback

Formal feedback enables you to summarize all the evalu-

ations and support you’ve provided throughout the year.

Like ongoing feedback, these yearly assessments afford

you the opportunity to identify what’s going well with an

employee’s performance and to diagnose problems be-

fore they worsen. This discussion shouldn’t contain any

surprises: You’ll have already talked about performance

issues in your ongoing feedback sessions, as well as ex-

pectations that affect pay, merit increases, bonuses, and

promotions. But the formal review also gives you the

chance to plan for the future. It allows you and your di-

rect reports to discuss where they might develop and col-

laborate on new goals for the upcoming year, so they can

move forward in their job and career.

Think of both ongoing and formal feedback as part

of a partnership with your employees, one that pro-

motes trust and candid dialogue. For example, encour-

age them to pinpoint factors that support or impede

their work; they can do this in the face-to-face discus-

sion or in a written self-assessment in advance of the

meeting. Perhaps solidifying relationships with team

members through lunches or after-work drinks is help-

ing them achieve important objectives. Or maybe diffi -

culty controlling e-mail tone is alienating key IT project

5

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Ongoing Feedback

managers. Encourage them to also note achievements (“I

closed two new deals worth $100,000 and established

a weekly check-in with our new distributor”) and iden-

tify resources they need for future development (such as

training on a new sales-reporting system or a mentor to

advise them in a new job function).

Given how widespread the fear of feedback is (on both

sides of the exchange), you may think you can’t possibly

overcome your anxiety and have a meaningful conversa-

tion with your direct report. But you can—and the ar-

ticles in this guide will help.

6

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Chapter 2

Sometimes

Negative

Feedback Is Best

by Heidi Grant Halvorson

If I see one more article about how you should never be

“critical” or “negative” when giving feedback to an em-

ployee or colleague, I think my head will explode. It’s in-

credibly frustrating. This kind of advice is undoubtedly

well meant, and it certainly sounds good. After all, you

probably don’t relish the thought of having to tell some-

one else what they are doing wrong—at minimum, it’s a

little embarrassing for both of you.

But avoiding negative feedback is both wrongheaded

and dangerous. Wrongheaded because, when delivered

the right way, at the right time, criticism is in fact highly

motivating. Dangerous because without awareness of the

Adapted from content posted on hbr.org on January 28, 2013

7

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Ongoing Feedback

mistakes they are making, no one can possibly improve.

Staying “positive” when doling out feedback will only get

you so far.

Hang on, you say. Can’t negative feedback be discour-

aging? Demotivating?

That’s perfectly true.

And don’t people need encouragement to feel confi dent?

Doesn’t that help them stay motivated?

In many cases, yes.

Confusing, isn’t it? Thankfully, brilliant research by

Stacey Finkelstein from Columbia University and Ayelet

Fishbach from the University of Chicago sheds light on

the seemingly paradoxical nature of feedback by making

it clear why, when, and for whom negative feedback is

appropriate.

It’s important to begin by understanding the func-

tion that positive and negative feedback serve. Praise (for

instance, Here’s what you did really well . . .) increases

commitment to the work you do by enhancing both your

experience and your confi dence. A more critical assess-

ment (for example, Here’s where you went wrong . . .),

on the other hand, is informative—it tells you where you

need to spend your effort and offers insight into how you

might improve.

Given these two different functions, positive and neg-

ative feedback should be more effective (and more mo-

tivating) for different people at different times. For in-

stance, when you don’t really know what you are doing,

encouragement helps you to stay optimistic and feel more

at ease with the challenges you are facing— something

novices tend to need. But when you are an expert and you

already more or less know what you are doing, it’s con-

8

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Sometimes Negative Feedback Is Best

structive criticism that can help you do what it takes to

get to the top of your game.

As Finkelstein and Fishbach show, novices and ex-

perts are indeed looking for, and motivated by, different

kinds of information. In one of their studies, American

students taking either beginner or advanced-level French

classes were asked whether they would prefer an instruc-

tor who emphasized what they were doing right (focus-

ing on their strengths) or what they were doing wrong

(focusing on their mistakes and how to correct them).

Beginners overwhelmingly preferred a cheerleading,

strength-focused instructor. Advanced students, on the

other hand, preferred a more critical instructor who

would help them develop their weaker skills.

In a second study, the researchers looked at a very dif-

ferent behavior: engaging in environmentally friendly

actions. Their “experts” were members of environmen-

tal organizations (for instance, Greenpeace), while their

“novices” were nonmembers. Each participant in the study

made a list of the actions they regularly took that helped

the environment—things like recycling, avoiding bottled

water, and taking shorter showers. They were offered

feedback from an environmental consultant on the effec-

tiveness of their actions, and were given a choice: Would

you prefer to know more about the actions you take that

are effective, or about the actions you take that are not?

Experts were much more likely to choose the negative

feedback—about ineffective actions—than novices.

Taken together, these studies show that people who

are experienced in a given domain—people who already

have developed some knowledge and skills—don’t actu-

ally live in fear of negative feedback. If anything, they

9

H6952.indb 9

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Ongoing Feedback

seek it out. Intuitively they realize that negative feedback

offers the key to getting ahead, while positive feedback

merely tells them what they already know.

But what about motivation? What kind of feedback

makes you want to take action? When participants in the

environmental study were randomly given either posi-

tive or negative feedback about their actions, and were

then asked how much of their $25 study compensation

they would like to donate to Greenpeace, the type of feed-

back they received had a dramatic effect on their motiva-

tion to give. When negative feedback was given, experts

gave more on average to Greenpeace ($8.53) than nov-

ices ($1.24). But when positive feedback was given, nov-

ices ($8.31) gave far more than experts ($2.92).

I’m not suggesting that you never tell rookies about

their mistakes, or that you never praise seasoned profes-

sionals for their outstanding work. And of course, nega-

tive feedback should always be accompanied by good ad-

vice and given with tact.

But I am suggesting that piling on praise is a more

effective motivator for the rookie than the pro. And I’m

saying, point blank, that you shouldn’t worry so much

when it comes to identifying mistakes with someone

experienced. Negative feedback won’t crush their confi -

dence—it just might give them the information they need

to take their performance to the next level.

Heidi Grant Halvorson, PhD, is associate director for the

Motivation Science Center at the Columbia University

Business School and author of Nine Things Successful

People Do Differently and No One Understands You and

What to Do about It.

10

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Chapter 3

Giving Feedback

That Sticks

by Ed Batista

“Can I give you some feedback?”

When you ask your employees this question, their

heart rate and blood pressure are almost certain to in-

crease, and they may experience other signs of stress as

well. These are symptoms of a “threat response,” also

known as “fight-or-flight”: a cascade of neurological

and physiological events that impair the ability to pro-

cess complex information and react thoughtfully. When

people are in the grip of a threat response, they’re less

capable of absorbing and applying your observations.

You’ve probably noticed this dynamic in feedback

conversations that didn’t go as well as you’d hoped. Some

Adapted from the HBR Guide to Coaching Employees (product

#13990), Harvard Business Review Press, 2015

11

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Ongoing Feedback

people respond with explanations, defensiveness, or even

hostility, while others minimize eye contact, cross their

arms, hunch over, and generally look as if they’d rather be

doing anything but talking to you. These fight-or-flight

behaviors suggest that your comments probably won’t

have their desired impact.

How do you avoid triggering a threat response—and

deliver feedback your people can digest and use? The

guidelines that follow will help.

Cultivate the Relationship

We lay the foundations for effective feedback by build-

ing relationships with others over time. When people

feel connected to us, even difficult conversations with

them are less likely to trigger a threat response. Social

psychologist John Gottman, a leading expert on building

relationships, has found from his research that success

in difficult conversations depends on what he calls “the

quality of the friendship.” Gottman cites several steps we

can take to develop high-quality relationships:

• Make the other person feel “known.” Making peo-

ple aware that you see them as individuals—and

not merely as employees—is a critical step in the

process, but it need not be overly time-consuming.

Several years ago, a coaching client of mine who

ran a midsize company felt that he was too dis-

tant from his employees but didn’t have the time

to take someone to lunch every day. His efficient

compromise was to view every interaction, no

matter how fleeting, as an opportunity to get to

know that person a little better. He made a habit

12

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Giving Feedback That Sticks

of asking employees one question about their work

or their personal lives each time he encountered

them. “Whenever I can, I connect,” he told me.

Although at times this slowed his progress through

the office, the result was worth it.

• Respond to even small bids for attention. We

seek attention from those around us not only in

obvious ways but also through countless subtle

“bids.” As Gottman writes in The Relationship

Cure, “A bid can be a question, a gesture, a look, a

touch—any single expression that says, ‘I want to

feel connected to you.’ A response to a bid is just

that—a positive or negative answer to somebody’s

request for emotional connection.” But many of

us miss bids from our employees. That’s because

we’re less observant of social cues from people over

whom we wield authority, according to research

by Dacher Keltner of the University of California,

Berkeley, and others. To connect more effectively

with employees, take stock of how much you

notice—or have missed previously—their efforts

to gain your attention. And solicit feedback from

peers, friends, and family members on your listen-

ing skills and how often you interrupt.

• Regularly express appreciation. As Gottman’s

research shows, the ratio of positive to negative

interactions in a successful relationship is 5:1,

even during periods of conflict. This ratio doesn’t

apply to a single conversation, and it doesn’t mean

that we’re obligated to pay someone five compli-

ments before we can offer critical feedback (in fact,

13

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Ongoing Feedback

doing so could confuse your message). But it does

highlight the importance of providing positive

feedback and expressing other forms of apprecia-

tion over time in order to strengthen the relation-

ship. (See the sidebar “The Pitfalls of Positive

Feedback.”)

THE PITFALLS OF POSITIVE FEEDBACK

Praise is supposed to make your employees feel good

and motivate them, but often it does just the oppo-

site. Here are three common problems and ways to

avoid them:

1.

People don’t trust the praise.  Before deliver-

ing unpleasant feedback to your direct reports,

do you say something nice to soften the blow?

Many of us do—and thus unwittingly condition

people to hear our positive feedback as a hollow

preamble to the real message. Rather than feel-

ing genuinely appreciated, they’re waiting for the

other shoe to drop. Though you’ve diminished

your anxiety about bearing bad news, you haven’t

helped your direct reports receive it. You’ve

actually undermined your ability to deliver any

meaningful feedback, positive or negative.

What to do: Instead of giving a spoonful

of sugar before every dose of constructive

criticism, lead off with your investment in the

relationship and your reasons for having the

14

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Giving Feedback That Sticks

conversation. For example: “It’s important that

we can be candid and direct with each other so

we can work together eff ectively. I have some

concerns for us to discuss, and I’m optimistic

that we can resolve them.”

2. People resent it.  Managers also use positive

feedback to overcome resistance to requests.

This age-old tactic can work in the moment but

carries a long-term cost. It creates a sense of

obligation, a “social debt” the recipient feels

compelled to repay by acceding to your wishes.

But if you train people to always expect requests

after your praise, they’ll eventually feel manipu-

lated and resentful—and less inclined to help

you out.

What to do: Motivate people over the long

term by expanding your persuasive tool kit. As

Jay Conger explains in his classic article “The

Necessary Art of Persuasion” (HBR May–June

1998), you can gain lasting infl uence in four ways:

establish credibility through expertise and work

you’ve done in others’ interests, frame goals

around common ground and shared advantage,

support your views with compelling data and

examples, and connect emotionally with people

so they’ll be more receptive to your message.

( continued)

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Ongoing Feedback

THE PITFALLS OF POSITIVE FEEDBACK

( continued)

3. We praise the wrong things.  When aimed at

the wrong targets, praise does more harm than

good. As Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck

notes in a January 2012 HBR IdeaCast interview,

“The whole self-esteem movement taught us er-

roneously that praising intelligence, talent, and

abilities would foster self-confi dence and self-

esteem, and everything great would follow. But

we’ve found it backfi res. People who are praised

for talent now worry about doing the next thing,

about taking on the hard task, and not looking

talented, tarnishing that reputation for bril-

liance. So they’ll stick to their comfort zones and

get really defensive when they hit setbacks.”

What to do: Praise eff ort, not ability.

Dweck suggests focusing on “the strategies,

the dogged ness and persistence, the grit and

resilience” that people exhibit when facing

challenges. And explain exactly what actions

prompted your praise. If you’re vague or generic,

you’ll fail to reinforce the desired behavior.

Set the Stage

Once you’ve laid the groundwork with your employee,

prepare for a feedback discussion by considering logis-

tics. It’s easy to take our surroundings for granted, but

they have a big impact on any interaction. Paying atten-

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Giving Feedback That Sticks

tion to details like these will help make your conversa-

tions more productive:

• Timing. Be deliberate about scheduling a feedback

session, whether it is a shorter, informal conver-

sation or a longer, in-depth discussion. Instead

of simply fitting it into an available slot on your

calendar, choose a time when you and the other

person will both be at your best, such as at the be-

ginning of the day, before you’re preoccupied with

other issues, or at the end of the day, when you can

spend more time in reflection. Think about the ac-

tivities you and your employee will be engaged in

just before and just after you meet. If either of you

are coming from (or heading to) a stressful experi-

ence, you’ll be better off finding another time.

• Duration. We often put events on our calendars

for a standard amount of time without considering

what’s really needed for each interaction. Think

about how much time a given feedback conversa-

tion is likely to take if it goes well—and if it goes

poorly. You don’t want to get into a meaningful

discussion with an employee and suddenly find

that you’re late for your next meeting. Also, con-

sider what you’ll do if the session goes worse (or

better) than expected. How bad (or good) will it

have to be for you to ignore the next event on your

calendar in order to continue the conversation?

• Physical location. Meeting in your office will

reinforce hierarchical roles, which can be useful

when you need to establish some distance between

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Ongoing Feedback

yourself and the other person—but this will also

induce stress and increase the odds of a threat

response. A less formal setting—such as a confer-

ence room, a restaurant, or even outdoors—will

put you on a more even footing and reduce the

likelihood of a threat response. Choose a location

that suits the needs of the conversation, ensures

sufficient privacy, and minimizes interruptions

and distractions.

• Proximity. When meeting with an employee in an

office or a conference room, sitting across from

each other over a desk or table creates physical

distance, emphasizing your respective roles and

reinforcing your authority. But you don’t always

want to do that. When you’re trying to create a

stronger connection with the other person or

convey a greater sense of empathy, it’s preferable

to sit closer and on adjoining sides of the table or

desk. Think about the optimal proximity between

you and the other person at that moment. Perhaps

even being seated is too formal, and you should go

for a walk.

Focus on Facts, Not Assumptions

Next, concentrate on the message you want to convey.

You’re sure to elicit a threat response if you provide feed-

back the other person views as unfair or inaccurate. Your

feedback should address their performance based on the

goals and targets you set at the beginning of the year. But

sometimes this assessment isn’t black and white. How do

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Giving Feedback That Sticks

you avoid a negative reaction, given how subjective per-

ceptions of fairness and accuracy are?

David Bradford of the Stanford Graduate School of

Business suggests “staying on our side of the net”—that

is, focusing our feedback on our feelings about the behav-

ior and avoiding references to the other person’s motives.

We’re in safe territory on our side of the net; others may

not like what we say when we describe how we feel, but

they can’t dispute its accuracy. However, when we make

guesses about their motives, we cross over to their side

of the net, and even minor inaccuracies can provoke a

defensive reaction.

For example, when giving critical feedback to some-

one who’s habitually late, it’s tempting to say something

like, “You don’t value my time, and it’s very disrespect-

ful of you.” But these are guesses about the other person’s

state of mind, not statements of fact. If we’re even slightly

off base, the employee will feel misunderstood and be

less receptive to the feedback. A more effective way to

make the same point is to say, “When you’re late, I feel

devalued and disrespected.” It’s a subtle distinction, but

by focusing on the specific behavior and our internal re-

sponse, we avoid making an inaccurate, disputable guess.

Because motives are often unclear, we constantly cross

the net in an effort to make sense of others’ behavior.

While this is inevitable, it’s good practice to notice when

we’re guessing someone’s motives and get back on our

side of the net before offering feedback. (For more on

framing the feedback discussion, see the next chapter, “A

Better Way to Deliver Bad News.”)

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Ongoing Feedback

Manage Emotions

Although excessive negative feelings inhibit learning

and communication, emotions play a vital role in feed-

back. They convey emphasis and let others know what

we value. Emotional experiences stick with people, last

longer in their memories, and are easier to recall. And

extensive neuroscience research in recent decades makes

clear that emotions are essential to our reasoning pro-

cess: Strong emotions can pull us off course, but in gen-

eral emotions support better decision making.

So while you’ll want to avoid triggering a threat re-

sponse, don’t remove all emotion from your discussion.

That can diminish the impact of your feedback and lead

to a cycle of ineffective conversations. Instead, aim for

a balance: Express just enough emotion to engage the

other person but not so much that you provoke a hos-

tile or defensive reaction, shut down the conversation,

or damage the relationship. (If you do anticipate a com-

bative response, see chapter 15, “Delivering Criticism to a

Defensive Employee.”)

The right amount of emotion depends on the issue

you’re addressing and varies from one relationship to

another—and even from one day to the next. The key

question is how responsive the other person will be to

your emotions. A coaching client of mine who’d recently

launched a company had some critical feedback for his

cofounder, but previous conversations didn’t have the de-

sired effect. For the feedback to stick, my client needed

to become fairly heated and more vocally and physically

expressive. This worked because the two of them had a

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Giving Feedback That Sticks

long-standing friendship. The cofounder didn’t respond

defensively—rather, the intensity got his attention. In

contrast, when this same client had some critical feed-

back for a subordinate, he reined in his emotions, modu-

lated his expressiveness, and delivered the feedback in a

matter-of-fact tone. The goal was to convey the impor-

tance of the issues without overwhelming the subordi-

nate, and in this case, my client’s authority was sufficient

on its own.

Of course, we may not know how another person will

respond to our emotions, and when we’re in the grip

of strong feelings, it’s hard to calibrate how we express

them in conversation. The solution is to practice. By hav-

ing more feedback conversations, we learn not only how

specific individuals respond to us but also how we ex-

press our emotions in helpful and unhelpful ways.

Rehearse and Repeat

With a little practice, these guidelines will help you im-

prove your feedback skills. As with any skill you’re try-

ing to master, experiment in low-risk situations before

jumping into a high-stakes feedback conversation. Here

are a few ways to make feedback a habit and improve

your skills:

• Have feedback conversations more often. Rather

than saving up feedback for an employee on a wide

range of topics during a performance review, offer

smaller pieces of focused feedback on a regular

basis. Even a two-minute debrief with an employee

after a meeting or a presentation can be a useful

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Ongoing Feedback

learning opportunity for both of you. The sidebar,

“When to Give Feedback,” provides some recom-

mendations for when feedback would be benefi -

cial, as well as when it wouldn’t.

• Role-play diffi

cult conversations. With clients in

my coaching practice and with my MBA students

at Stanford, I’ve found that role-playing is a highly

effective way to prepare to deliver challenging

feedback. Conduct this exercise with a friendly

colleague: Start by delivering your feedback while

your colleague role-plays the recipient, which will

allow you to try out different approaches. Then

have your colleague give you the same feedback

while you role-play the recipient. You’ll learn from

your colleague’s approach, and you’ll see the con-

versation from your employee’s point of view. The

preparation will help you refine your delivery and

feel more relaxed in the actual conversation.

• Ask for feedback yourself. By asking employees to

give you feedback on your effectiveness as a leader

and manager, you’ll benefit in three ways: You’ll

get valuable input; you’ll understand what it’s like

to be on the receiving end; and your willingness to

listen will make your own feedback mean more. If

you sense that employees are reluctant to give you

feedback, ask them to help you accomplish some

specific goals, such as being more concise or inter-

rupting less often. By acknowledging your own

areas for improvement, you’ll make it easier for

them to speak up.

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Giving Feedback That Sticks

WHEN TO GIVE FEEDBACK

As you practice giving feedback more often, you’ll learn

when a behavior warrants immediate feedback. Until

then, here are some suggestions as to when it is an op-

portune time to meet with your employee—and when

you should avoid it.

Off ering feedback can be most useful in the follow-

ing instances:

• When good work, successful projects, and re-

sourceful behavior deserve to be recognized

• When the likelihood of improving a person’s

skills is high, because the opportunity to use

those skills again is imminent

• When the person is already expecting feedback,

either because a feedback session was sched-

uled in advance or because she knows that you

observed the behavior

• When a problem cannot be ignored, because the

person’s behavior is negatively aff ecting a col-

league, the team, or the organization

In other cases, feedback can be detrimental to the

situation. Avoid giving feedback in these circumstances:

• When you do not have all the information about

a given incident

( continued)

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Ongoing Feedback

WHEN TO GIVE FEEDBACK

( continued)

• When the only feedback you can off er concerns

factors that the recipient cannot easily change

or control

• When the person who needs the feedback ap-

pears to be highly emotional or especially vul-

nerable immediately after a difficult event

• When you do not have the time or the patience

to deliver the feedback in a calm and thorough

manner

• When the feedback is based on your personal

preference, not a need for more eff ective

behavior

• When you have not yet formulated a possible

solution to help the feedback recipient move

forward

Bear in mind that when you give positive feedback

frequently, your negative feedback, when it is war-

ranted, will seem more credible and less threatening.

Off ering input only when problems arise may cause

people to see you as unappreciative or petty.

Adapted from Giving Eff ective Feedback (20-Minute Manager series)

(product #13999), Harvard Business Review Press, 2014.

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Giving Feedback That Sticks

Ed Batista is an executive coach and an instructor at

the Stanford Graduate School of Business. He writes

regularly on issues related to coaching and professional

development at www.edbatista.com, and he is currently

writing a book on self-coaching for Harvard Business Re-

view Press.

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Chapter 4

A Better Way to

Deliver Bad News

by Jean-François Manzoni

A summary of the full-length HBR article by Jean-

François Manzoni, highlighting key ideas.

IDEA IN BRIEF

That dreaded moment has come: You’re delivering criti-

cal feedback to an employee. Despite your best efforts,

the conversation is a disaster: tempers fl are, the em-

ployee gets defensive, your relationship grows strained.

What happened? Like most managers, you probably

inadvertently sabotaged the meeting—preparing for it in

Reprinted from Harvard Business Review, September 2002 (product

#R0209J)

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Ongoing Feedback

a way that stifl ed honest discussion and prevented you

from delivering feedback effectively.

In other words, you most likely engaged in restric-

tive framing—a narrow, binary, and frozen approach to

feedback: You initiated the conversation without consid-

ering alternative explanations for the problem behavior,

assumed a win-or-lose outcome, and rigidly maintained

your assumptions during the conversation.

Delivering corrective feedback doesn’t have to be so

diffi cult—if you use a more open-minded, fl exible ap-

proach that convinces employees the process is fair.

IDEA IN PRACTICE

Restrictive Framing

When preparing to give feedback, you may picture rel-

evant events, decide which information to discuss, and

defi ne a solution—all before the conversation. This fram-

ing sets the stage for trouble.

Example: Liam, a VP, hears complaints that Jeremy,

a product manager, isn’t delegating enough. Liam’s

framing—“Jeremy’s too controlling”—is narrow (Liam

excludes other possibilities; e.g., Jeremy wants to del-

egate but doesn’t know how) and binary (he assumes

Jeremy must delegate or his subordinates will leave

and he’ll burn out). During the conversation, Liam’s

framing is frozen (he neither hears nor addresses Jer-

emy’s objections). Result? Neither Liam nor Jeremy

learn from the meeting.

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A Better Way to Deliver Bad News

Two Biases

Why do we frame feedback narrowly—despite predict-

ably poor results? Two biases color the feedback process.

And the more stressed we are, the more powerful these

biases become:

• Fundamental attribution error. We often attribute

problems to subordinates’ disposition (“Jeremy’s

too controlling”) rather than their circumstances

(e.g., perhaps Jeremy is delegating, but his sub-

ordinates have some other ax to grind). Too busy

to identify all potential causes and solutions to a

problem, we grab the fi rst acceptable one.

• False consensus eff ect. We assume others see

situations as we do, and fail to revise our framing

during feedback sessions.

Reframing Feedback

To avoid the restrictive-feedback trap, watch for these

biases. Consider alternative explanations for problems

rather than leaping to conclusions.

Example: Liam frames his concerns about Jeremy

openly: “I’ve heard complaints that Jeremy isn’t

delegating—and some of his employees are feeling

suffi ciently frustrated that I’m afraid we’ll start losing

them. I’d like to fi nd out if Jeremy knows about the

complaints, and get his take.”

This framing isn’t narrow (Liam hasn’t leapt to con-

clusions about the problem’s causes) or binary (it avoids

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Ongoing Feedback

a win-or-lose outcome). And since Liam avoids a precon-

ceived outcome, he has nothing on which to freeze. He

initiates the conversation openly: “I don’t know if you’re

aware of this—or if it’s true—but I’ve heard that Frank

and Joan are anxious to take on more responsibility.

What do you think?”

Why Open Framing Works

Open framing shows you have good intentions, the feed-

back development process was fair (you collected all rel-

evant information), and the communication process was

fair (you listen to and respect employees).

When employees feel they’re getting fair feedback,

they accept it more willingly—and work to improve per-

formance.

Giving feedback to your employees, particularly when

their performances fall short of expectations, is one of the

most critical roles you play as a manager. For most people,

it’s also one of the most dreaded. Such conversations can

be very unpleasant—emotions can run high, tempers can

fl are. And so, fearing that an employee will become de-

fensive and that the conversation will only strain the re-

lationship, the boss all too often inadvertently sabotages

the meeting by preparing for it in a way that stifl es hon-

est discussion. This is an unintentional—indeed, uncon-

scious—habit that’s a byproduct of stress and that makes

it diffi cult to deliver corrective feedback effectively.

The good news is that these conversations don’t have

to be so hard. By changing the mind-set with which you

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A Better Way to Deliver Bad News

develop and deliver negative feedback, you can greatly

increase the odds that the process will be a success—that

you will have productive conversations, that you won’t

damage relationships, and that your employees will make

real improvements in performance. In the pages that fol-

low, I’ll describe what goes wrong during these meetings

and why. I’ll look in detail at how real-life conversations

have unfolded and what the managers could have done

differently to reach more satisfying outcomes. As a fi rst

step, let’s look at the way bosses prepare feedback—that

is, the way they frame issues in their own minds in ad-

vance of a discussion.

Framing Feedback

In an ideal world, a subordinate would accept corrective

feedback with an open mind. He or she would ask a few

clarifying questions, promise to work on the issues dis-

cussed, and show signs of improvement over time. But

things don’t always turn out this way.

Let’s consider the following example. Liam, a vice pres-

ident at a consumer products company, had heard some

complaints about a product manager, Jeremy. (Names

and other identifying information for the subjects men-

tioned in this article have been altered.) Jeremy consis-

tently delivered high-quality work on time, but several

of his subordinates had grumbled about his apparent

unwillingness to delegate. They felt their contributions

weren’t valued and that they didn’t have an opportunity

to learn and grow. What’s more, Liam worried that Jer-

emy’s own career prospects would be limited if his focus

on the day-to-day details of his subordinates’ work kept

him from taking on more strategic projects. As his boss,

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Liam felt a responsibility to let Jeremy know about his

concerns. Here’s how the conversation unfolded:

Liam: “I’d like to discuss your work with you. You’re

doing a great job, and we really value your contribu-

tions. But I think you do too much. You have some

great people working for you; why not delegate a

little more?”

Jeremy: “I don’t understand. I delegate when I think

it’s appropriate. But a lot of people in this company

rely on quality work coming out of my department, so

I need to stay involved.”

Liam: “Yes, and we all appreciate your attention

to detail. But your job as a manager is to help your

employees grow into new roles and take on more

responsibility. Meanwhile, you’re so focused on the

details that you don’t have time to think about the

bigger picture, about the direction you’re taking this

product.”

Jeremy: “That’s not true. I’m always thinking about

the future.”

Liam: “I’m just saying, you’d have more time for

strategic thinking if you weren’t so mired in the day-

to-day stuff.”

Jeremy: “Are you saying I’m not a strategic thinker?”

Liam: “You’re so busy dotting every i and crossing

every t that I just don’t know what kind of thinking

you’re capable of!”

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A Better Way to Deliver Bad News

This type of exchange is surprisingly common. Each

side pushes his point of view more and more aggres-

sively, and the conversation escalates until a relatively

minor difference becomes much more dramatic. (For a

visual representation of a deteriorating discussion, see

the sidebar “Scripted Escalation.”) Often, as Liam did in

the preceding conversation, one person or the other un-

intentionally says something overly critical. Of course,

it may not get to that point—one or both parties may

choose to give in rather than fi ght. But either way, es-

calate or fold, the subordinate probably hasn’t accepted

the news the boss set out to deliver. Managers tend to

attribute such nonacceptance to employees’ pride or de-

fen sive ness. Indeed, it’s not unusual for people to feel

defensive about their work or, for that matter, to hold

infl ated views of their performance and capabilities.

But more often than not, the boss is also to blame. Let’s

examine why.

Whenever we face a decision or situation, we frame

it, consciously or not. At its simplest, a frame is the deci-

sion maker’s image of a situation—that is, the way he or

she pictures the circumstances and elements surround-

ing the decision. The frame defi nes the boundaries and

dimensions of the decision or situation—for instance,

which issues will be looked at, which components are in

and which are out, how various bits of information will

be weighed, how the problem might be solved or a suc-

cessful outcome determined, and so on. Managers tend

to frame diffi cult situations and decisions in a way that is

narrow (alternatives aren’t included or even considered)

and binary (there are only two possible outcomes—win

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Ongoing Feedback

or lose). Then, during the feedback discussion, their

framing remains frozen—unchanged, regardless of the

direction the conversation takes.

In anticipation of the conversation with Jeremy, for

example, Liam framed the problem in his mind as “Jer-

emy’s too controlling.” This is a narrow framing because

it excludes many alternative explanations—for instance,

“Jeremy would really like to hand off some responsibility

but doesn’t know how and is embarrassed to acknowl-

edge that.” Or “Jeremy is actually delegating as much as

he can given his subordinates’ current skill levels; they

are frustrated but really cannot handle more than they do.”

Or maybe “Jeremy is delegating quite a lot, but Frank and

Joan have some other ax to grind.” Liam may be making

matters worse without realizing it by sending Jeremy

mixed signals: “Empower your subordinates, but make

no mistakes.” We don’t know for sure; nor does Liam.

Operating from this narrow view, Liam also ap-

proached the discussion with a binary framing that

leaves both parties with very little room to maneuver:

“Jeremy must learn to delegate or we’ll lose Frank and

Joan—and meanwhile, he’ll burn himself out.” Last but

not least, Liam’s framing remained frozen throughout

the exchange despite clear signals that Jeremy was not

buying the feedback. At no point was Liam processing,

let alone addressing, Jeremy’s objections. It’s no surprise

that the meeting ended badly.

The Dangers of Easing In

After they’ve had a few bad experiences delivering nar-

rowly framed feedback, managers tend to fall back on the

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A Better Way to Deliver Bad News

SCRIPTED ESCALATION

Take a look at how quickly a minor point of diff erence

during a feedback discussion can turn into a major

disagreement. Jerry starts the conversation by noting

that he’d done a good job on his project. Beth, his boss,

is not in violent disagreement with his assessment

and acknowledges that “it wasn’t bad.” Jerry could re-

affi

rm his opening bid but instead tries to pull Beth’s

view closer to his own by overstating his initial point.

Beth disagrees with Jerry’s infl ated statement, and

instead of reiterating her fi rst comment, she yields to

the temptation to pull Jerry closer to her point of view.

Both present stronger and stronger positions, trying to

convince the other, and a minor diff erence quickly be-

comes a major point of contention.

Jerry (Subordinate)

Beth (Boss)

“II di

d

i K.

OK

K ”

“It wasn’t bad.

It wasn

t

s t ba

a ”

“What do you mean,

n

“But there were

But the

it wasn’t

? It w

?

bad? It was

wa

problems.

roblem ”

pretty damn good!

g

!”

“Come on,

n

“And the problems

An

it was great!”

g e

were pretty severe.”

e

”

“Come to think of it,

“Listen, I did

it really wasn’t very

amazingly well!”

!

good.”

J4 J3 J2 J1

B1 B2 B3 B4

Initial gap

Gap at the end of the conversation

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Ongoing Feedback

conventional wisdom that it’s better to soften bad news

with some good.

They try to avoid uncomfortable confrontations by

using an indirect approach: They make up their minds

about an issue and then try to help their employees reach

the same conclusions by asking a carefully designed set

of questions.

At fi rst glance, this type of “easing in” seems more

open and fair than the forthright approach that Liam

took, since the manager is involving the subordinate in

a conversation, however scripted. But like the forthright

approach, easing in refl ects a narrow and binary fram-

ing that typically remains frozen throughout the process.

Indeed, there would be no need to ease in if the manager

were approaching the conversation with a truly open

mind. And easing in carries an additional risk: The em-

ployee may not give you the answers you’re looking for.

For example, Alex, an executive at a pharmaceuticals

company, had some diffi cult news to communicate to

one of his subordinates, Erin. She was a middle man-

ager at the company and did an excellent job handling

her department but was not contributing satisfactorily

to a companywide task force chaired by Alex. Erin was

remarkably silent during the meetings, which led Alex to

conclude that she was too busy to participate fully and

had little to offer the group. Alex’s solution? Take her off

the task force so she could focus on her primary respon-

sibilities. But because he suspected Erin would be hurt

or insulted if he suggested she step down, Alex hoped to

prompt her to resign from the committee by asking her a

series of questions that would make her see she was too

busy to continue. Let’s look at what happened.

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A Better Way to Deliver Bad News

Alex: “Do you sometimes feel as though you’re wast-

ing your time in the task force meetings?”

Erin: “No, I learn a lot from the meetings—and from

watching the way you run them.”

Alex: “But do you fi nd that your mind is on your daily

job when you’re at committee meetings?”

Erin: “Not really. I hope I haven’t given you the im-

pression that I’m not fully committed. I think this is

important work, and I’m excited to be a part of it, and

I think I have some good ideas to offer.”

Alex: “What if you could participate more infor-

mally? You could take yourself off the team as a per-

manent member, but you could continue to receive

the agenda and minutes and contribute when your

particular area of expertise is required.”

Erin: “It sounds like you want me off the committee.

Why? I don’t think the committee work has under-

mined my commitment to my real work. I’m making

my numbers. Plus, it’s a learning opportunity.”

Alex: “No, no, I just want to make sure it’s something

you really want to do.”

Erin: “It is.”

As you can see, Erin didn’t play along. Alex was not

ready for a confrontation, so he folded—and lost. He

didn’t get Erin off the committee, nor did he commu-

nicate his view that her committee work was subpar,

so he has no way to help her improve her performance.

What’s more, he introduced a source of stress into their

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Ongoing Feedback

relationship: Erin is likely to have been unsettled by the

interaction, as Alex implied some level of dissatisfaction

with her performance without telling her what it is.

As in our previous example, Alex’s framing of the issue

was narrow: “Erin doesn’t talk at the meetings, probably

because she’s overloaded, so the committee is a waste

of her time.” His framing was also binary; the interac-

tion could be a success only if Erin agreed to get off the

committee without losing her motivation for her regular

work. And this framing remained frozen because Alex

was concentrating on asking the “right” questions and

couldn’t process anything but the “right” answers.

Meanwhile, Erin may actually benefi t from being on

the committee, even if she doesn’t say much. She learns

a lot, and it gives her visibility. And if she can fi nd a way

to contribute more, the committee may well benefi t from

her membership. But by framing the issue the way he

did, Alex excluded other possible solutions, any of which

may have been more productive for all concerned: Maybe

Erin would talk more in the meetings if Alex probed the

reasons for her silence and helped her fi nd a way to con-

tribute what may be very valuable insights. And if over-

work is indeed an issue, perhaps there are duties Erin

might give up to gain more time and energy.

Easing in is a gamble. You might get lucky, but you

have only half the cards. The subordinate may not give

you the answers you’re looking for, as we saw with Erin,

either because she genuinely doesn’t agree or because she

sees that the game is rigged and refuses to play along.

Or the subordinate may decide to stop resisting and pre-

tend to go along but still fail to believe the feedback. And

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A Better Way to Deliver Bad News

there’s another risk, regardless of how the conversation

ends: The employee may forever lose confi dence in his or

her boss. Erin may always wonder what Alex has up his

sleeve, having caught him being disingenuous once.

Indeed, that’s what happened to Mark, a marketing

director at a large consulting fi rm. His boss, Rene, had

called him into a meeting to discuss his role, and Mark

left the meeting having relinquished control of his pet

project, developing and implementing the company’s

fi rst advertising campaign. Rene had asked him a series

of seemingly innocuous questions, such as “Do you fi nd

endless meetings with different agencies to be a waste of

your time?” and “Do you feel like your time would be bet-

ter spent developing new communications materials?”

Mark eventually accepted what was clearly the “right”

conclusion from his boss’s perspective—to surrender the

project—even though he wanted to continue. Worse, he

didn’t know why Rene wanted him off the project, so as

a learning opportunity, it was wasted. His relationship

with his boss is now tainted; Mark can no longer take

Rene’s comments at face value.

Why Is It So Hard?

It’s very clear from a distance what went wrong for Liam

and Alex. Most managers today are well trained and well

meaning; why can’t they see what they’re doing wrong?

The tendency to frame threatening situations in nar-

row terms can be traced to the combination of several

phenomena.

First, research shows that when analyzing others’ be-

havior, most people tend to overestimate the effect of a

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Ongoing Feedback

person’s stable characteristics—the individual’s disposi-

tion and capabilities—and underestimate the impact of

the specifi c conditions under which that person is oper-

ating. So, for instance, a manager will attribute a subor-

dinate’s performance problems to his or her disposition

rather than to circumstances in the workplace, leading

to a rather simplistic interpretation. This phenomenon is

known as the fundamental attribution error.

Second, people are more prone to committing the

fundamental attribution error when they operate under

demanding conditions. We can better distinguish the im-

pact of situational forces when we have time and energy

to spare than when we face multiple demands on our at-

tention. Unfortunately, managers tend to be busy. Facing

huge workloads and tight deadlines, they have limited

time and attention to engage in exhaustive analyses of all

the potential causes of the situations they observe or of

the many possible solutions to a given problem. So they

settle on the fi rst acceptable explanation. “Jeremy’s too

controlling” explained all the symptoms, so Liam did not

go further.

Research can also give us some insight into why bosses

tend to frame things in a binary way. In particular, Har-

vard Business School professor Chris Argyris’s work over

nearly fi ve decades has established that under stressful

circumstances, people behave in predictable ways. They

design their behaviors, often unconsciously, to gain con-

trol of a situation and to win—which means, unfortu-

nately, that the other side usually has to lose. That’s bi-

nary framing.

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A Better Way to Deliver Bad News

And why is it so hard for bosses to revise their restric-

tive framing midstream? For several powerful reasons.

First, bosses don’t set out to frame situations in restric-

tive ways; they do so unconsciously, most of the time, and

it’s hard to question a constraint that we don’t know we’re

imposing on ourselves. Second, humans tend to assume

that other reasonable people will see the situation as they

see it. That’s called the false consensus effect. Our framing

of an issue represents our view of reality, the facts as we

see them. We are reasonable and competent people; why

would others see the situation differently?

Bosses can get past these hurdles by recognizing them

and becoming more conscious and careful when fram-

ing decisions. But then they have to beat another cause of

frozen framing: a busy processor. For instance, Liam be-

comes increasingly stressed as Jeremy continues to push

back against his version of the facts, and both devote so

much energy to trying to control their growing irritation

that they have few resources left to listen, process, and

respond constructively.

Reframing Feedback

Let’s be clear: I’m not suggesting that bosses systemati-

cally misdiagnose the causes of their subordinates’ per-

formance problems. Liam’s and Alex’s early diagnoses

may well have been right. And even if their feedback dis-

cussions had been more productive, their subordinates

may not have been able to suffi ciently improve their per-

formances to meet their bosses’ expectations. But Jeremy

and Erin will almost certainly fail to improve if they don’t

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Ongoing Feedback

understand and accept the feedback. Restrictive framing

not only makes feedback conversations more stressful

than they need to be, it also increases the likelihood that

subordinates won’t believe what their bosses say. Indeed,

subordinates are more likely to accept and act on their

bosses’ feedback if they feel it is developed and commu-

nicated fairly. (See the sidebar “Making Feedback More

Acceptable.”)

So, for instance, imagine how differently Liam and

Jeremy’s conversation might have gone had the man-

ager framed his concerns more broadly: “I’ve heard com-

plaints that Jeremy isn’t delegating—and some of his em-

ployees are feeling suffi ciently frustrated that I’m afraid

we’ll start losing them. I’d like to fi nd out if Jeremy knows

about the complaints and get his take on the situation.”

This frame isn’t narrow. Liam hasn’t reached a con-

clusion about why Jeremy doesn’t delegate or whether,

indeed, Jeremy is refusing to delegate at all. Nor is the

frame binary. Liam hasn’t fi xed on a win-or-lose out-

come. And because Liam hasn’t entered the conversation

with a preconceived outcome in mind, he has nothing on

which to freeze. Now, Liam can open the conversation in

a much more open way. He might say, for instance, “Jer-

emy, I don’t know if you’re aware of this—or if it’s true or

not—but I’ve heard that Frank and Joan are anxious to

take on a bit more responsibility. What do you think?”

This can lead to a discussion of Frank’s and Joan’s ca-

pabilities, as well as Jeremy’s own role and aspirations,

without locking Jeremy and Liam into a test of wills.

As for Alex, instead of approaching the meeting with

the goal of getting Erin off the committee with minimal

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A Better Way to Deliver Bad News

MAKING FEEDBACK MORE ACCEPTABLE

Research shows that people tend to be more willing to

accept feedback when they have the feeling that:

• The person off ering the feedback is reliable and

has good intentions toward them.

• The feedback development process is fair—that

is, the person giving the feedback collects all

relevant information; allows the subordinate

to clarify and explain matters; considers the

subordinate’s opinions; and applies consistent

standards when delivering criticism.

• The feedback communication process is fair—

that is, the person off ering the feedback pays

careful attention to the subordinate’s ideas;

shows respect for the subordinate; and supports

the subordinate despite their disagreements.

This short list makes clear the negative impact of ap-

proaching a feedback discussion with restrictive fram-

ing: Narrow framing tells the employee that the feed-

back wasn’t developed fairly. And a boss constrained

by a binary and frozen frame comes across as biased,

close-minded, and unsupportive—ensuring that the

subordinate will feel as though the feedback hasn’t

been communicated fairly.

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Ongoing Feedback

damage, he could have framed the interaction more

broadly: “I have a great subordinate who doesn’t say

much on the committee. Let’s sit down and talk about

her work, the committee, her career plans, and how

committee membership fi ts in with those plans.” Be-

cause this framing doesn’t fi x on a win-or-lose outcome,

Alex would have felt less need to control the discussion

and hence less compelled to ease in.

While most managers can easily see what they’re doing

wrong when shown how they’ve developed and presented

their feedback, restrictive framing remains a surpris-

ingly persistent problem, even for seasoned managers

who excel at other aspects of leadership. But giving feed-

back doesn’t have to be stressful for you, demoralizing

for your employees, or damaging to your professional

relationships.

Offering more effective critiques requires that you

learn to recognize the biases that color the development

of feedback. It requires that you take the time to consider

alternative explanations for behaviors you’ve witnessed

rather than leaping to hasty conclusions that only serve

to paint you and your subordinates into a corner. And it

requires that you take into account the circumstances an

employee is working under rather than attributing weak

performance to the person’s disposition.

In short, it requires a broad and fl exible approach, one

that will convince your employees that the process is fair

and that you’re ready for an honest conversation.

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A Better Way to Deliver Bad News

Jean-François Manzoni is Professor of Management Prac-

tice and the Shell Chaired Professor in Human Resources

and Organisational Development at INSEAD (Singa-

pore campus). He is a coauthor, along with Jean-Louis

Barsoux, of The Set-Up-to-Fail Syndrome: How Good

Managers Cause Great People to Fail (Harvard Business School Press, 2002).

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H6952.indb 46

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Chapter 5

The Set-Up-to-Fail

Syndrome

by Jean-François Manzoni and

Jean-Louis Barsoux

A summary of the full-length HBR article by Jean-François

Manzoni and Jean-Louis Barsoux, highlighting key ideas.

IDEA IN BRIEF

That darned employee! His performance keeps deterio-

rating— despite your close monitoring. What’s going on?

Brace yourself: You may be at fault, by unknowingly

triggering the set-up-to-fail syndrome. Employees whom

you (perhaps falsely) view as weak performers live down

to your expectations. Here’s how:

Reprinted from Harvard Business Review, March–April 1998 (product

#R98209)

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Ongoing Feedback

1. You start with a positive relationship.

2. Something—a missed deadline, a lost client—

makes you question the employee’s performance.

You begin micromanaging him.

3. Suspecting your reduced confi dence, the em-

ployee starts doubting himself. He stops giving

his best, responds mechanically to your controls,

and avoids decisions.

4. You view his new behavior as additional proof of

mediocrity—and tighten the screws further.

Why not just fi re him? Because you’re likely to repeat

the pattern with others. Better to reverse the dynamic in-

stead. Unwinding the set-up-to-fail spiral actually pays

big dividends: Your company gets the best from your

employees—and from you.

IDEA IN PRACTICE

How Set-Up-to-Fail Starts

A manager categorizes employees as “in” or “out,”

based on:

• Early

perceptions of employees’ motivation, initia-

tive, creativity, strategic perspectives

• Previous bosses’ impressions

• An early mishap

• Boss-subordinate incompatibility

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The Set-Up-to-Fail Syndrome

The manager then notices only evidence supporting

his categorization, while dismissing contradictory evi-

dence. The boss also treats the groups differently:

• “In” groups get autonomy, feedback, and expres-

sions of confi dence.

• Members of “out” groups get controlling, formal

management emphasizing rules.

The Costs of Set-Up-to-Fail

This syndrome hurts everyone:

• Employees stop volunteering ideas and informa-

tion and asking for help, avoid contact with bosses,

or grow defensive.

• The

organization fails to get the most from

employees.

• The

boss loses energy to attend to other activities.

His reputation suffers as other employees deem

him unfair.

• Team spirit wilts as targeted performers are

alienated and strong performers are overburdened.

How to Reverse Set-Up-to-Fail

If the syndrome hasn’t started, prevent it:

• Establish expectations with new employees early.

Loosen the reins as they master their jobs.

• Regularly challenge your own assumptions. Ask:

“What are the facts regarding this employee’s per-

formance?” “Is he really that bad?”

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Ongoing Feedback

• Convey openness, letting employees challenge your

opinions. They’ll feel comfortable discussing their

performance and relationship with you.

If the syndrome has already erupted, discuss the dy-

namic with the employee:

1. Choose a neutral, nonthreatening location; use

affi rming language (“Let’s discuss our relation-

ship and roles”); and acknowledge your part in

the tension.

2. Agree on the employee’s weaknesses and

strengths. Support assessments with facts, not

feelings.

3. Unearth causes of the weaknesses. Do you

disagree on priorities? Does your employee lack

specifi c knowledge or skills? Ask: “How is my

behavior making things worse for you?”

4. Identify ways to boost performance. Training?

New experiences? Decide the quantity and type

of supervision you’ll provide. Affi rm your desire

to improve matters.

5. Agree to communicate more openly: “Next time

I do something that communicates low expecta-

tions, can you let me know immediately?”

When an employee fails—or even just performs poorly—

managers typically do not blame themselves. The em-

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The Set-Up-to-Fail Syndrome

ployee doesn’t understand the work, a manager might

contend. Or the employee isn’t driven to succeed, can’t

set priorities, or won’t take direction. Whatever the rea-

son, the problem is assumed to be the employee’s fault—

and the employee’s responsibility.

But is it? Sometimes, of course, the answer is yes.

Some employees are not up to their assigned tasks and

never will be, for lack of knowledge, skill, or simple de-

sire. But sometimes—and we would venture to say of-

ten—an employee’s poor performance can be blamed

largely on his boss.

Perhaps “blamed” is too strong a word, but it is direc-

tionally correct. In fact, our research strongly suggests

that bosses—albeit accidentally and usually with the best

intentions—are often complicit in an employee’s lack of

success. (See the sidebar “About the Research.”) How? By

creating and reinforcing a dynamic that essentially sets

up perceived underperformers to fail. If the Pygmalion

effect describes the dynamic in which an individual lives

up to great expectations, the set-up-to-fail syndrome

explains the opposite. It describes a dynamic in which

employees perceived to be mediocre or weak performers

live down to the low expectations their managers have

for them. The result is that they often end up leaving the

organization—either of their own volition or not.

The syndrome usually begins surreptitiously. The ini-

tial impetus can be performance related, such as when an

employee loses a client, undershoots a target, or misses a

deadline. Often, however, the trigger is less specifi c. An

employee is transferred into a division with a lukewarm

recommendation from a previous boss. Or perhaps the

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ABOUT THE RESEARCH

This article is based on two studies designed to under-

stand better the causal relationship between lead-

ership style and subordinate performance—in other

words, to explore how bosses and subordinates mu-

tually infl uence each other’s behavior. The fi rst study,

which comprised surveys, interviews, and observa-

tions, involved 50 boss-subordinate pairs in four man-

ufacturing operations in Fortune 100 companies. The

second study, involving an informal survey of about

850 senior managers attending INSEAD executive-

development programs over the last three years, was

done to test and refi ne the fi ndings generated by the

fi rst study. The executives in the second study repre-

sented a wide diversity of nationalities, industries, and

personal backgrounds.

boss and the employee don’t really get along on a personal

basis—several studies have indeed shown that compat-

ibility between boss and subordinate, based on similarity

of attitudes, values, or social characteristics, can have a

signifi cant impact on a boss’s impressions. In any case,

the syndrome is set in motion when the boss begins to

worry that the employee’s performance is not up to par.

The boss then takes what seems like the obvious ac-

tion in light of the subordinate’s perceived shortcom-

ings: he increases the time and attention he focuses on

the employee. He requires the employee to get approval

before making decisions, asks to see more paperwork

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The Set-Up-to-Fail Syndrome

documenting those decisions, or watches the employee at

meetings more closely and critiques his comments more

intensely.

These actions are intended to boost performance and

prevent the subordinate from making errors. Unfortu-

nately, however, subordinates often interpret the height-

ened supervision as a lack of trust and confi dence. In

time, because of low expectations, they come to doubt

their own thinking and ability, and they lose the motiva-

tion to make autonomous decisions or to take any action

at all. The boss, they fi gure, will just question everything

they do—or do it himself anyway.

Ironically, the boss sees the subordinate’s withdrawal

as proof that the subordinate is indeed a poor performer.

The subordinate, after all, isn’t contributing his ideas or

energy to the organization. So what does the boss do? He

increases his pressure and supervision again—watching,

questioning, and double-checking everything the sub-

ordinate does. Eventually, the subordinate gives up on

his dreams of making a meaningful contribution. Boss

and subordinate typically settle into a routine that is not

really satisfactory but, aside from periodic clashes, is oth-

erwise bearable for them. In the worst-case scenario, the

boss’s intense intervention and scrutiny end up paralyz-

ing the employee into inaction and consume so much of

the boss’s time that the employee quits or is fi red.

Perhaps the most daunting aspect of the set-up-to-fail

syndrome is that it is self-fulfi lling and self- reinforcing—

it is the quintessential vicious circle. The process is self-

fulfi lling because the boss’s actions contribute to the

very behavior that is expected from weak performers. It

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Ongoing Feedback

is self-reinforcing because the boss’s low expectations,

in being fulfi lled by his subordinates, trigger more of

the same behavior on his part, which in turn triggers

more of the same behavior on the part of subordinates.

And on and on, unintentionally, the relationship spirals

downward.

A case in point is the story of Steve, a manufacturing

supervisor for a Fortune 100 company. When we fi rst

met Steve, he came across as highly motivated, energetic,

and enterprising. He was on top of his operation, moni-

toring problems and addressing them quickly. His boss

expressed great confi dence in him and gave him an ex-

cellent performance rating. Because of his high perfor-

mance, Steve was chosen to lead a new production line

considered essential to the plant’s future.

In his new job, Steve reported to Jeff, who had just

been promoted to a senior management position at the

plant. In the fi rst few weeks of the relationship, Jeff pe-

riodically asked Steve to write up short analyses of sig-

nifi cant quality-control rejections. Although Jeff didn’t

really explain this to Steve at the time, his request had

two major objectives: to generate information that would

help both of them learn the new production process, and

to help Steve develop the habit of systematically per-

forming root cause analysis of quality-related problems.

Also, being new on the job himself, Jeff wanted to show

his own boss that he was on top of the operation.

Unaware of Jeff ’s motives, Steve balked. Why, he won-

dered, should he submit reports on information he under-

stood and monitored himself? Partly due to lack of time,

partly in response to what he considered interference

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The Set-Up-to-Fail Syndrome

from his boss, Steve invested little energy in the reports.

Their tardiness and below-average quality annoyed Jeff,

who began to suspect that Steve was not a particularly

proactive manager. When he asked for the reports again,

he was more forceful. For Steve, this merely confi rmed

that Jeff did not trust him. He withdrew more and more

from interaction with him, meeting his demands with in-

creased passive resistance. Before long, Jeff became con-

vinced that Steve was not effective enough and couldn’t

handle his job without help. He started to supervise

Steve’s every move—to Steve’s predictable dismay. One

year after excitedly taking on the new production line,

Steve was so dispirited he was thinking of quitting.

How can managers break the set-up-to-fail syndrome?

Before answering that question, let’s take a closer look at

the dynamics that set the syndrome in motion and keep

it going.

Deconstructing the Syndrome

We said earlier that the set-up-to-fail syndrome usually

starts surreptitiously—that is, it is a dynamic that usually

creeps up on the boss and the subordinate until suddenly

both of them realize that the relationship has gone sour.

But underlying the syndrome are several assumptions

about weaker performers that bosses appear to accept

uniformly. Our research shows, in fact, that executives

typically compare weaker performers with stronger per-

formers using the following descriptors:

• Less motivated, less energetic, and less likely to go

beyond the call of duty

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Ongoing Feedback

• More passive when it comes to taking charge of

problems or projects

• Less aggressive about anticipating problems

• Less innovative and less likely to suggest ideas

• More parochial in their vision and strategic

perspective

• More prone to hoard information and assert their

authority, making them poor bosses to their own

subordinates

It is not surprising that on the basis of these as-

sumptions, bosses tend to treat weaker and stronger

performers very differently. Indeed, numerous studies

have shown that up to 90% of all managers treat some

subordinates as though they were members of an in-

group, while they consign others to membership in an

out-group. Members of the in-group are considered the

trusted collaborators and therefore receive more auton-

omy, feedback, and expressions of confi dence from their

bosses. The boss- subordinate relationship for this group

is one of mutual trust and reciprocal infl uence. Members

of the out-group, on the other hand, are regarded more

as hired hands and are managed in a more formal, less

personal way, with more emphasis on rules, policies, and

authority. (For more on how bosses treat weaker and

stronger performers differently, see the chart “In with the

In Crowd, Out with the Out.”)

Why do managers categorize subordinates into either

in-groups or out-groups? For the same reason that we

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The Set-Up-to-Fail Syndrome

In with the in crowd, out with the out

Boss’s behavior toward

Boss’s behavior toward

perceived stronger performers

perceived weaker performers

Discusses project objectives,

Is directive when discussing tasks

with a limited focus on project

and goals. Focuses on what

implementation. Gives subordinate

needs get done as well as how

the freedom to choose his own

it should get done.

approach to solving problems or

reaching goals.

Treats unfavorable variances,

Pays close attention to unfavorable

mistakes, or incorrect judgments

variances, mistakes, or incorrect

as learning opportunities.

judgments.

Makes himself available, as in “Let

Makes himself available to

me know if I can help.” Initiates

subordinate on a need-to-see

casual and personal conversations.

basis. Bases conversations

primarily on work-related topics.

Is open to subordinate’s sugges-

Pays little interest to subordinate’s

tions and discusses them with

comments or suggestions about

interest.

how and why work is done.

Gives subordinate interesting and

Reluctantly gives subordinate

challenging stretch assignments.

anything but routine assignments.

Often allows subordinate to

When handing out assignments,

choose his own assignments.

gives subordinate little choice.

Monitors subordinate heavily.

Solicits opinions from subordinate

Rarely asks subordinate for input

on organizational strategy,

about organizational or work-

execution, policy, and procedures.

related matters.

Often defers to subordinate’s

Usually imposes own views in

opinion in disagreements.

disagreements.

Praises subordinate for work

Emphasizes what the subordinate

well done.

is doing poorly.

tend to typecast our family, friends, and acquaintances:

it makes life easier. Labeling is something we all do, be-

cause it allows us to function more effi ciently. It saves

time by providing rough-and-ready guides for interpret-

ing events and interacting with others. Managers, for in-

stance, use categorical thinking to fi gure out quickly who

should get what tasks. That’s the good news.

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Ongoing Feedback

The downside of categorical thinking is that in orga-

nizations it leads to premature closure. Having made up

his mind about a subordinate’s limited ability and poor

motivation, a manager is likely to notice supporting evi-

dence while selectively dismissing contrary evidence.

(For example, a manager might interpret a terrifi c new

product idea from an out-group subordinate as a lucky

onetime event.) Unfortunately for some subordinates,

several studies show that bosses tend to make decisions

about in-groups and out-groups even as early as fi ve days

into their relationships with employees.

Are bosses aware of this sorting process and of their

different approaches to “in” and “out” employees? Defi -

nitely. In fact, the bosses we have studied, regardless of

nationality, company, or personal background, were usu-

ally quite conscious of behaving in a more controlling

way with perceived weaker performers. Some of them

preferred to label this approach as “supportive and help-

ful.” Many of them also acknowledged that—although

they tried not to—they tended to become impatient with

weaker performers more easily than with stronger per-

formers. By and large, however, managers are aware of

the controlling nature of their behavior toward perceived

weaker performers. For them, this behavior is not an er-

ror in implementation; it is intentional.

What bosses typically do not realize is that their tight

controls end up hurting subordinates’ performance by

undermining their motivation in two ways: fi rst, by de-

priving subordinates of autonomy on the job and, sec-

ond, by making them feel undervalued. Tight controls

are an indication that the boss assumes the subordinate

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The Set-Up-to-Fail Syndrome

can’t perform well without strict guidelines. When the

subordinate senses these low expectations, it can under-

mine his self-confi dence. This is particularly problematic

because numerous studies confi rm that people perform

up or down to the levels their bosses expect from them or,

indeed, to the levels they expect from themselves.1

Of course, executives often tell us, “Oh, but I’m very

careful about this issue of expectations. I exert more

control over my underperformers, but I make sure that

it does not come across as a lack of trust or confi dence

in their ability.” We believe what these executives tell us.

That is, we believe that they do try hard to disguise their

intentions. When we talk to their subordinates, however,

we fi nd that these efforts are for the most part futile. In

fact, our research shows that most employees can—and

do—“read their boss’s mind.” In particular, they know

full well whether they fi t into their boss’s in-group or

out-group. All they have to do is compare how they are

treated with how their more highly regarded colleagues

are treated.

Just as the boss’s assumptions about weaker perform-

ers and the right way to manage them explains his com-

plicity in the set-up-to-fail syndrome, the subordinate’s

assumptions about what the boss is thinking explain his

own complicity. The reason? When people perceive dis-

approval, criticism, or simply a lack of confi dence and

appreciation, they tend to shut down—a behavioral phe-

nomenon that manifests itself in several ways.

Primarily, shutting down means disconnecting intel-

lectually and emotionally. Subordinates simply stop giv-

ing their best. They grow tired of being overruled, and

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they lose the will to fi ght for their ideas. As one subordi-

nate put it, “My boss tells me how to execute every detail.

Rather than arguing with him, I’ve ended up wanting

to say, ‘Come on, just tell me what you want me to do,

and I’ll go do it.’ You become a robot.” Another perceived

weak performer explained, “When my boss tells me to do

something, I just do it mechanically.”

Shutting down also involves disengaging personally—

essentially reducing contact with the boss. Partly, this

disengagement is motivated by the nature of previous ex-

changes that have tended to be negative in tone. As one

subordinate admitted, “I used to initiate much more

contact with my boss until the only thing I received was

negative feedback; then I started shying away.”

Besides the risk of a negative reaction, perceived

weaker performers are concerned with not tainting their

images further. Following the often-heard aphorism

“Better to keep quiet and look like a fool than to open

your mouth and prove it,” they avoid asking for help for

fear of further exposing their limitations. They also tend

to volunteer less information—a simple “heads up” from

a perceived underperformer can cause the boss to over-

react and jump into action when none is required. As one

perceived weak performer recalled, “I just wanted to let

my boss know about a small matter, only slightly out of

the routine, but as soon as I mentioned it, he was all over

my case. I should have kept my mouth closed. I do now.”

Finally, shutting down can mean becoming defensive.

Many perceived underperformers start devoting more

energy to self-justifi cation. Anticipating that they will be

personally blamed for failures, they seek to fi nd excuses

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early. They end up spending a lot of time looking in the

rearview mirror and less time looking at the road ahead.

In some cases—as in the case of Steve, the manufacturing

supervisor described earlier—this defensiveness can lead

to noncompliance or even systematic opposition to the

boss’s views. While this idea of a weak subordinate going

head to head with his boss may seem irrational, it may re-

fl ect what Albert Camus once observed: “When deprived

of choice, the only freedom left is the freedom to say no.”

The Syndrome Is Costly

There are two obvious costs of the set-up-to-fail syn-

drome: the emotional cost paid by the subordinate and

the organizational cost associated with the company’s

failure to get the best out of an employee. Yet there are

other costs to consider, some of them indirect and long

term.

The boss pays for the syndrome in several ways. First,

uneasy relationships with perceived low performers of-

ten sap the boss’s emotional and physical energy. It can

be quite a strain to keep up a facade of courtesy and

pretend everything is fi ne when both parties know it is

not. In addition, the energy devoted to trying to fi x these

relationships or improve the subordinate’s performance

through increased supervision prevents the boss from

attending to other activities—which often frustrates or

even angers the boss.

Furthermore, the syndrome can take its toll on the

boss’s reputation, as other employees in the organiza-

tion observe his behavior toward weaker performers. If

the boss’s treatment of a subordinate is deemed unfair

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or unsupportive, observers will be quick to draw their

lessons. One outstanding performer commented on his

boss’s controlling and hypercritical behavior toward

another subordinate: “It made us all feel like we’re ex-

pendable.” As organizations increasingly espouse the vir-

tues of learning and empowerment, managers must cul-

tivate their reputations as coaches, as well as get results.

The set-up-to-fail syndrome also has serious conse-

quences for any team. A lack of faith in perceived weaker

performers can tempt bosses to overload those whom

they consider superior performers; bosses want to en-

trust critical assignments to those who can be counted

on to deliver reliably and quickly and to those who will

go beyond the call of duty because of their strong sense

of shared fate. As one boss half-jokingly said, “Rule num-

ber one: if you want something done, give it to someone

who’s busy—there’s a reason why that person is busy.”

An increased workload may help perceived superior

performers learn to manage their time better, especially

as they start to delegate to their own subordinates more

effectively. In many cases, however, these performers

simply absorb the greater load and higher stress which,

over time, takes a personal toll and decreases the atten-

tion they can devote to other dimensions of their jobs,

particularly those yielding longer-term benefi ts. In the

worst-case scenario, overburdening strong performers

can lead to burnout.

Team spirit can also suffer from the progressive alien-

ation of one or more perceived low performers. Great

teams share a sense of enthusiasm and commitment to a

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common mission. Even when members of the boss’s out-

group try to keep their pain to themselves, other team

members feel the strain. One manager recalled the dis-

comfort experienced by the whole team as they watched

their boss grill one of their peers every week. As he ex-

plained, “A team is like a functioning organism. If one

member is suffering, the whole team feels that pain.”

In addition, alienated subordinates often do not keep

their suffering to themselves. In the corridors or over

lunch, they seek out sympathetic ears to vent their re-

criminations and complaints, not only wasting their own

time but also pulling their colleagues away from pro-

ductive work. Instead of focusing on the team’s mission,

valuable time and energy is diverted to the discussion of

internal politics and dynamics.

Finally, the set-up-to-fail syndrome has consequences

for the subordinates of the perceived weak performers.

Consider the weakest kid in the school yard who gets

pummeled by a bully. The abused child often goes home

and pummels his smaller, weaker siblings. So it is with

the people who are in the boss’s out-group. When they

have to manage their own employees, they frequently

replicate the behavior that their bosses show to them.

They fail to recognize good results or, more often, super-

vise their employees excessively.

Breaking Out Is Hard to Do

The set-up-to-fail syndrome is not irreversible. Subordi-

nates can break out of it, but we have found that to be

rare. The subordinate must consistently deliver such

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superior results that the boss is forced to change the

employee from out-group to in-group status—a phe-

nomenon made diffi cult by the context in which these

subordinates operate. It is hard for subordinates to im-

press their bosses when they must work on unchalleng-

ing tasks, with no autonomy and limited resources; it is

also hard for them to persist and maintain high stan-

dards when they receive little encouragement from their

bosses.

Furthermore, even if the subordinate achieves better

results, it may take some time for them to register with

the boss because of his selective observation and recall.

Indeed, research shows that bosses tend to attribute the

good things that happen to weaker performers to external

factors rather than to their efforts and ability (while the

opposite is true for perceived high performers: successes

tend to be seen as theirs, and failures tend to be attrib-

uted to external uncontrollable factors). The subordinate

will therefore need to achieve a string of successes in or-

der to have the boss even contemplate revising the initial

categorization. Clearly, it takes a special kind of courage,

self-confi dence, competence, and persistence on the part

of the subordinate to break out of the syndrome.

Instead, what often happens is that members of the

out-group set excessively ambitious goals for themselves

to impress the boss quickly and powerfully—promising

to hit a deadline three weeks early, for instance, or at-

tacking six projects at the same time, or simply attempt-

ing to handle a large problem without help. Sadly, such

superhuman efforts are usually just that. And in setting

goals so high that they are bound to fail, the subordinates

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also come across as having had very poor judgment in the

fi rst place.

The set-up-to-fail syndrome is not restricted to in-

competent bosses. We have seen it happen to people per-

ceived within their organizations to be excellent bosses.

Their mismanagement of some subordinates need not

prevent them from achieving success, particularly when

they and the perceived superior performers achieve high

levels of individual performance. However, those bosses

could be even more successful to the team, the organiza-

tion, and themselves if they could break the syndrome.

Getting It Right

As a general rule, the fi rst step in solving a problem is

recognizing that one exists. This observation is especially

relevant to the set-up-to-fail syndrome because of its

self-fulfi lling and self-reinforcing nature. Interrupting

the syndrome requires that a manager understand the

dynamic and, particularly, that he accept the possibility

that his own behavior may be contributing to a subor-

dinate’s underperformance. The next step toward crack-

ing the syndrome, however, is more diffi cult: it requires a

carefully planned and structured intervention that takes

the form of one (or several) candid conversations meant to

bring to the surface and untangle the unhealthy dynam-

ics that defi ne the boss and the subordinate’s relation-

ship. The goal of such an intervention is to bring about

a sustainable increase in the subordinate’s performance

while progressively reducing the boss’s involvement.

It would be diffi cult—and indeed, detrimental—to

pro vide a detailed script of what this kind of conver-

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sation should sound like. A boss who rigidly plans for

this conversation with a subordinate will not be able

to engage in real dialogue with him, because real dia-

logue requires fl exibility. As a guiding framework, how-

ever, we offer fi ve components that characterize effective

interventions.

Although they are not strictly sequen-

tial steps, all fi ve components should be part of these

interventions.

First, the boss must create the right context

for the discussion

He must, for instance, select a time and place to conduct

the meeting so that it presents as little threat as possible

to the subordinate. A neutral location may be more con-

ducive to open dialogue than an offi ce where previous

and perhaps unpleasant conversations have taken place.

The boss must also use affi rming language when asking

the subordinate to meet with him. The session should not

be billed as “feedback,” because such terms may suggest

baggage from the past. “Feedback” could also be taken

to mean that the conversation will be one-directional, a

monologue delivered by the boss to the subordinate. In-

stead, the intervention should be described as a meeting

to discuss the performance of the subordinate, the role of

the boss, and the relationship between the subordinate

and the boss. The boss might even acknowledge that he

feels tension in the relationship and wants to use the con-

versation as a way to decrease it.

Finally, in setting the context, the boss should tell the

perceived weaker performer that he would genuinely

like the interaction to be an open dialogue. In particular,

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he should acknowledge that he may be partially respon-

sible for the situation and that his own behavior toward

the subordinate is fair game for discussion.

Second, the boss and the subordinate must

use the intervention process to come to an

agreement on the symptoms of the problem

Few employees are ineffective in all aspects of their

performance. And few—if any—employees desire to do

poorly on the job. Therefore, it is critical that the inter-

vention result in a mutual understanding of the specifi c

job responsibilities in which the subordinate is weak. In

the case of Steve and Jeff, for instance, an exhaustive sort-

ing of the evidence might have led to an agreement that

Steve’s underperformance was not universal but instead

largely confi ned to the quality of the reports he submit-

ted (or failed to submit). In another situation, it might

be agreed that a purchasing manager was weak when

it came to fi nding offshore suppliers and to voicing his

ideas in meetings. Or a new investment professional and

his boss might come to agree that his performance was

subpar when it came to timing the sales and purchase of

stocks, but they might also agree that his fi nancial analy-

sis of stocks was quite strong. The idea here is that before

working to improve performance or reduce tension in a

relationship, an agreement must be reached about what

areas of performance contribute to the contentiousness.

We used the word “evidence” earlier in discussing

the case of Steve and Jeff. That is because a boss needs

to back up his performance assessments with facts and

data—that is, if the intervention is to be useful. They

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cannot be based on feelings—as in Jeff telling Steve, “I

just have the feeling you’re not putting enough energy

into the reports.” Instead, Jeff needs to describe what

a good report should look like and the ways in which

Steve’s reports fall short. Likewise, the subordinate must

be allowed—indeed, encouraged—to defend his perfor-

mance, compare it with colleagues’ work, and point out

areas in which he is strong. After all, just because it is the

boss’s opinion does not make it a fact.

Third, the boss and the subordinate should

arrive at a common understanding of what

might be causing the weak performance in

certain areas

Once the areas of weak performance have been identi-

fi ed, it is time to unearth the reasons for those weak-

nesses. Does the subordinate have limited skills in orga-

nizing work, managing his time, or working with others?

Is he lacking knowledge or capabilities? Do the boss and

the subordinate agree on their priorities? Maybe the sub-

ordinate has been paying less attention to a particular

dimension of his work because he does not realize its im-

portance to the boss. Does the subordinate become less

effective under pressure? Does he have lower standards

for performance than the boss does?

It is also critical in the intervention that the boss bring

up the subject of his own behavior toward the subordi-

nate and how this affects the subordinate’s performance.

The boss might even try to describe the dynamics of the

set-up-to-fail syndrome. “Does my behavior toward you

make things worse for you?” he might ask, or, “What am

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I doing that is leading you to feel that I am putting too

much pressure on you?”

This component of the discussion also needs to make

explicit the assumptions that the boss and the subordi-

nate have thus far been making about each other’s inten-

tions. Many misunderstandings start with untested as-

sumptions. For example, Jeff might have said, “When you

did not supply me with the reports I asked for, I came

to the conclusion that you were not very proactive.” That

would have allowed Steve to bring his buried assump-

tions into the open. “No,” he might have answered, “I just

reacted negatively because you asked for the reports in

writing, which I took as a sign of excessive control.”

Fourth, the boss and the subordinate

should arrive at an agreement about their

performance objectives and on their desire

to have the relationship move forward

In medicine, a course of treatment follows the diagnosis

of an illness. Things are a bit more complex when repair-

ing organizational dysfunction, since modifying behavior

and developing complex skills can be more diffi cult than

taking a few pills. Still, the principle that applies to medi-

cine also applies to business: boss and subordinate must

use the intervention to plot a course of treatment regard-

ing the root problems they have jointly identifi ed.

The contract between boss and subordinate should

identify the ways they can improve on their skills, knowl-

edge, experience, or personal relationship. It should also

include an explicit discussion of how much and what

type of future supervision the boss will have. No boss, of

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course, should suddenly abdicate his involvement; it is

legitimate for bosses to monitor subordinates’ work, par-

ticularly when a subordinate has shown limited abilities

in one or more facets of his job. From the subordinate’s

point of view, however, such involvement by the boss is

more likely to be accepted, and possibly even welcomed,

if the goal is to help the subordinate develop and improve

over time. Most subordinates can accept temporary in-

volvement that is meant to decrease as their performance

improves. The problem is intense monitoring that never

seems to go away.

Fifth, the boss and the subordinate should

agree to communicate more openly in

the future

The boss could say, “Next time I do something that com-

municates low expectations, can you let me know imme-

diately?” And the subordinate might say, or be encour-

aged to say, “Next time I do something that aggravates

you or that you do not understand, can you also let me

know right away?” Those simple requests can open the

door to a more honest relationship almost instantly.

No Easy Answer

Our research suggests that interventions of this type do

not take place very often. Face-to-face discussions about

a subordinate’s performance tend to come high on the list

of workplace situations people would rather avoid, be-

cause such conversations have the potential to make both

parties feel threatened or embarrassed. Subordinates are

reluctant to trigger the discussion because they are wor-

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ried about coming across as thin-skinned or whiny. Bosses

tend to avoid initiating these talks because they are con-

cerned about the way the subordinate might react; the

discussion could force the boss to make explicit his lack of

confi dence in the subordinate, in turn putting the subor-

dinate on the defensive and making the situation worse.2

As a result, bosses who observe the dynamics of the

set-up-to-fail syndrome being played out may be tempted

to avoid an explicit discussion. Instead, they will proceed

tacitly by trying to encourage their perceived weak per-

formers. That approach has the short-term benefi t of by-

passing the discomfort of an open discussion, but it has

three major disadvantages.

First, a one-sided approach on the part of the boss is

less likely to lead to lasting improvement because it fo-

cuses on only one symptom of the problem—the boss’s

behavior. It does not address the subordinate’s role in the

underperformance.

Second, even if the boss’s encouragement were success-

ful in improving the employee’s performance, a unilateral

approach would limit what both he and the subordinate

could otherwise learn from a more up-front handling of

the problem. The subordinate, in particular, would not

have the benefi t of observing and learning from how

his boss handled the diffi culties in their relationship—

problems the subordinate may come across someday

with the people he manages.

Finally, bosses trying to modify their behavior in a

unilateral way often end up going overboard; they sud-

denly give the subordinate more autonomy and respon-

sibility than he can handle productively. Predictably,

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the subordinate fails to deliver to the boss’s satisfaction,

which leaves the boss even more frustrated and con-

vinced that the subordinate cannot function without in-

tense supervision.

We are not saying that intervention is always the best

course of action. Sometimes, intervention is not possible

or desirable. There may be, for instance, overwhelming

evidence that the subordinate is not capable of doing his

job. He was a hiring or promotion mistake, which is best

handled by removing him from the position. In other

cases, the relationship between the boss and the subor-

dinate is too far gone—too much damage has occurred to

repair it. And fi nally, sometimes bosses are too busy and

under too much pressure to invest the kind of resources

that intervention involves.

Yet often the biggest obstacle to effective intervention

is the boss’s mind-set. When a boss believes that a subor-

dinate is a weak performer and, on top of everything else,

that person also aggravates him, he is not going to be able

to cover up his feelings with words; his underlying con-

victions will come out in the meeting. That is why prepa-

ration for the intervention is crucial. Before even decid-

ing to have a meeting, the boss must separate emotion

from reality. Was the situation always as bad as it is now?

Is the subordinate really as bad as I think he is? What is

the hard evidence I have for that belief? Could there be

other factors, aside from performance, that have led me

to label this subordinate a weak performer? Aren’t there

a few things that he does well? He must have displayed

above-average qualifi cations when we decided to hire

him. Did these qualifi cations evaporate all of a sudden?

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The boss might even want to mentally play out part

of the conversation beforehand. If I say this to the sub-

ordinate, what might he answer? Yes, sure, he would say

that it was not his fault and that the customer was unrea-

sonable. Those excuses—are they really without merit?

Could he have a point? Could it be that, under other cir-

cumstances, I might have looked more favorably upon

them? And if I still believe I’m right, how can I help the

subordinate see things more clearly?

The boss must also mentally prepare himself to be

open to the subordinate’s views, even if the subordinate

challenges him about any evidence regarding his poor

performance. It will be easier for the boss to be open if,

when preparing for the meeting, he has already chal-

lenged his own preconceptions.

Even when well prepared, bosses typically experience

some degree of discomfort during intervention meet-

ings. That is not all bad. The subordinate will probably

be somewhat uncomfortable as well, and it is reassuring

for him to see that his boss is a human being, too.

Calculating Costs and Benefi ts

As we’ve said, an intervention is not always advisable.

But when it is, it results in a range of outcomes that are

uniformly better than the alternative—that is, continued

underperformance and tension. After all, bosses who

systematically choose either to ignore their subordinates’

underperformance or to opt for the more expedient so-

lution of simply removing perceived weak performers

are condemned to keep repeating the same mistakes.

Finding and training replacements for perceived weak

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performers is a costly and recurrent expense. So is moni-

toring and controlling the deteriorating performance of

a disenchanted subordinate. Getting results in spite of

one’s staff is not a sustainable solution. In other words,

it makes sense to think of the intervention as an invest-

ment, not an expense—with the payback likely to be high.

How high that payback will be and what form it will

take obviously depend on the outcome of the interven-

tion, which will itself depend not only on the quality

of the intervention but also on several key contextual

factors: How long has that relationship been spiraling

downward? Does the subordinate have the intellectual

and emotional resources to make the effort that will be

required? Does the boss have enough time and energy to

do his part?

We have observed outcomes that can be clustered into

three categories. In the best-case scenario, the interven-

tion leads to a mixture of coaching, training, job re design,

and a clearing of the air; as a result, the relationship and

the subordinate’s performance improve, and the costs as-

sociated with the syndrome go away or, at least, decrease

measurably.

In the second-best scenario, the subordinate’s perfor-

mance improves only marginally, but because the sub-

ordinate received an honest and open hearing from the

boss, the relationship between the two becomes more

productive. Boss and subordinate develop a better under-

standing of those job dimensions the subordinate can do

well and those he struggles with. This improved under-

standing leads the boss and the subordinate to explore

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together how they can develop a better fi t between the

job and the subordinate’s strengths and weaknesses. That

improved fi t can be achieved by signifi cantly modifying

the subordinate’s existing job or by transferring the sub-

ordinate to another job within the company. It may even

result in the subordinate’s choosing to leave the company.

While that outcome is not as successful as the fi rst one,

it is still productive; a more honest relationship eases the

strain on both the boss and the subordinate, and in turn

on the subordinate’s subordinates. If the subordinate

moves to a new job within the organization that better

suits him, he will likely become a stronger performer. His

relocation may also open up a spot in his old job for a bet-

ter performer. The key point is that, having been treated

fairly, the subordinate is much more likely to accept the

outcome of the process. Indeed, recent studies show that

the perceived fairness of a process has a major impact on

employees’ reactions to its outcomes. (See “Fair Process:

Managing in the Knowledge Economy,” by W. Chan Kim

and Renée Mauborgne, HBR July–August 1997.)

Such fairness is a benefi t even in the cases where,

despite the boss’s best efforts, neither the subordinate’s

performance nor his relationship with his boss improves

signifi cantly. Sometimes this happens: the subordinate

truly lacks the ability to meet the job requirements, he

has no interest in making the effort to improve, and the

boss and the subordinate have both professional and per-

sonal differences that are irreconcilable. In those cases,

however, the intervention still yields indirect benefi ts

because, even if termination follows, other employees

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within the company are less likely to feel expendable or

betrayed when they see that the subordinate received fair

treatment.

Prevention Is the Best Medicine

The set-up-to-fail syndrome is not an organizational fait

accompli. It can be unwound. The fi rst step is for the

boss to become aware of its existence and acknowledge

the possibility that he might be part of the problem. The

second step requires that the boss initiate a clear, focused

intervention. Such an intervention demands an open ex-

change between the boss and the subordinate based on

the evidence of poor performance, its underlying causes,

and their joint responsibilities—culminating in a joint

decision on how to work toward eliminating the syn-

drome itself.

Reversing the syndrome requires managers to chal-

lenge their own assumptions. It also demands that they

have the courage to look within themselves for causes

and solutions before placing the burden of responsibil-

ity where it does not fully belong. Prevention of the syn-

drome, however, is clearly the best option.

In our current research, we examine prevention di-

rectly. Our results are still preliminary, but it appears

that bosses who manage to consistently avoid the set-up-

to-fail syndrome have several traits in common. They do

not, interestingly, behave the same way with all subordi-

nates. They are more involved with some subordinates

than others—they even monitor some subordinates more

than others. However, they do so without disempowering

and discouraging subordinates.

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How? One answer is that those managers begin by

being actively involved with all their employees, gradu-

ally reducing their involvement based on improved

performance. Early guidance is not threatening to sub-

ordinates, because it is not triggered by performance

shortcomings; it is systematic and meant to help set the

conditions for future success. Frequent contact in the be-

ginning of the relationship gives the boss ample opportu-

nity to communicate with subordinates about priorities,

performance measures, time allocation, and even ex-

pectations of the type and frequency of communication.

That kind of clarity goes a long way toward preventing

the dynamic of the set-up-to-fail syndrome, which is so

often fueled by unstated expectations and a lack of clarity

about priorities.

For example, in the case of Steve and Jeff, Jeff could

have made explicit very early on that he wanted Steve

to set up a system that would analyze the root causes of

quality control rejections systematically. He could have

explained the benefi ts of establishing such a system dur-

ing the initial stages of setting up the new production

line, and he might have expressed his intention to be

actively involved in the system’s design and early opera-

tion. His future involvement might then have decreased

in such a way that could have been jointly agreed on at

that stage.

Another way managers appear to avoid the set-up-to-

fail syndrome is by challenging their own assumptions

and attitudes about employees on an ongoing basis. They

work hard at resisting the temptation to categorize em-

ployees in simplistic ways. They also monitor their own

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reasoning. For example, when feeling frustrated about a

subordinate’s performance, they ask themselves, “What

are the facts?” They examine whether they are expecting

things from the employee that have not been articulated,

and they try to be objective about how often and to what

extent the employee has really failed. In other words,

these bosses delve into their own assumptions and be-

havior before they initiate a full-blown intervention.

Finally, managers avoid the set-up-to-fail syndrome

by creating an environment in which employees feel

comfortable discussing their performance and their rela-

tionships with the boss. Such an environment is a func-

tion of several factors: the boss’s openness, his comfort

level with having his own opinions challenged, even his

sense of humor. The net result is that the boss and the

subordinate feel free to communicate frequently and to

ask one another questions about their respective behav-

iors before problems mushroom or ossify.

The methods used to head off the set-up-to-fail syn-

drome do, admittedly, involve a great deal of emotional

investment from bosses—just as interventions do. We

believe, however, that this higher emotional involvement

is the key to getting subordinates to work to their full po-

tential. As with most things in life, you can only expect

to get a lot back if you put a lot in. As a senior executive

once said to us, “The respect you give is the respect you

get.” We concur. If you want—indeed, need—the people

in your organization to devote their whole hearts and

minds to their work, then you must, too.

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The Set-Up-to-Fail Syndrome

NOTES

1. The infl uence of expectations on performance has been ob-

served in numerous experiments by Dov Eden and his colleagues.

See Dov Eden, “Leadership and Expectations: Pygmalion Effects and

Other Self-fulfi lling Prophecies in Organizations,” Leadership Quar-

terly, Winter 1992, vol. 3, no. 4, pp. 271–305.

2. Chris Argyris has written extensively on how and why people

tend to behave unproductively in situations they see as threatening

or embarrassing. See, for example, Knowledge for Action: A Guide

to Overcoming Barriers to Organizational Change (San Francisco:

Jossey-Bass, 1993).

Jean-François Manzoni is Professor of Management Prac-

tice and the Shell Chaired Professor in Human Resources

and Organisational Development at INSEAD (Singa-

pore campus). He is a coauthor, along with Jean-Louis

Barsoux, of The Set-Up-to-Fail Syndrome: How Good

Managers Cause Great People to Fail (Harvard Business School Press, 2002).

Jean-Louis Barsoux

is a research fellow at INSEAD,

where he specializes in organizational behavior. He is the

coauthor with Susan C. Schneider of Managing Across

Cultures.

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Chapter 6

How to Give

Feedback That

Helps People Grow

by Monique Valcour

Over the years, I’ve asked hundreds of students in my

executive education courses what skills they believe are

essential for leaders. “The ability to give tough feedback”

comes up frequently. But what exactly is “tough feed-

back”? The phrase connotes bad news, like when you

have to tell a team member that they’ve screwed up on

something important. “Tough” also signifi es the way we

think we need to act when giving negative feedback: fi rm,

resolute, and unyielding.

But the word also points to the discomfort some of

us experience when giving negative feedback, and to the

Adapted from content posted on hbr.org on August 11, 2015

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Ongoing Feedback

challenge of doing so in a way that motivates change in-

stead of making the other person feel defensive. Man-

agers fall into a number of common traps. We might be

angry at an employee and use the conversation to blow

off steam rather than to coach. Or we may delay giving

a needed critique because we anticipate that the em-

ployee will become argumentative and refuse to accept

responsibility. We might try surrounding negative feed-

back with praise, like disguising a bitter-tasting pill in a

spoonful of honey. But this approach is misguided, be-

cause we don’t want the constructive message to slip by

unnoticed. Instead, it’s essential to create conditions in

which the receiver can take in feedback, refl ect on it, and

learn from it.

To get a feel for what this looks like in practice, I jux-

tapose two feedback conversations that occurred follow-

ing a workplace confl ict. MJ Paulitz, a physical therapist

in the Pacifi c Northwest, was treating a hospital patient

one day when a fellow staff member paged her. Follow-

ing procedure, she excused herself and stepped out of the

treatment room to respond to the page. The colleague

who sent it didn’t answer her phone when MJ called,

nor had she left a message describing the situation that

warranted the page. This happened two more times dur-

ing the same treatment session. The third time she left

her patient to respond to the page, MJ lost her cool and

left an angry voicemail message. Upset upon hearing the

message, her colleague reported it to their supervisor as

abusive.

MJ’s fi rst feedback session took place in her supervi-

sor’s offi ce. She recalls, “When I went into his offi ce, he

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How to Give Feedback That Helps People Grow

had already decided that I was the person at fault, he had

all the information he needed, and he wasn’t interested

in hearing my side of the story. He did not address the

three times she pulled me out of patient care. He did not

acknowledge that that might have been the fuse that set

me off.” Her supervisor referred MJ to the human re-

sources department for corrective action. She left seeth-

ing with a sense of injustice.

MJ describes the subsequent feedback conversation

with human resources as transformative. “The woman in

HR could see that I had a lot of just-under-the-surface

feelings, and she acknowledged them. She said, ‘I can

only imagine what you’re feeling right now. Here you are

in my offi ce, in corrective action. If it were me, I might

be feeling angry, frustrated, embarrassed . . . Are any of

these true for you?’ That made a huge difference.”

With trust established, MJ was ready to take respon-

sibility for her behavior and commit to changing it. Next,

the HR person said, “Now let’s talk about how you re-

acted to those feelings in the moment.” She created a

space that opened up a genuine dialogue.

The subsequent conversation created powerful learn-

ing that has stuck with MJ to this day. “Oftentimes when

we’re feeling a strong emotion, we go down what the HR

person called a ‘cowpath,’ because it’s well worn, very nar-

row, and always leads to the same place. Let’s say you’re

angry. What do you do? You blow up. It’s okay that you feel

those things; it’s just not okay to blow up. She asked me

to think about what I could do to get on a different path.”

“The feedback from the HR person helped me learn

to fi nd the space between what I’m feeling and the next

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Ongoing Feedback

thing that slides out of my mouth. She gave me the op-

portunity to grow internally. What made it work was es-

tablishing a safe space, trust, and rapport, and then get-

ting down to ‘you need to change’—rather than starting

with ‘you need to change,’ which is what my supervisor

did. I did need to change; that was the whole point of the

corrective action. But she couldn’t start there, because I

would have become defensive, shut down, and not taken

responsibility. I still to this day think that my coworker

should have been reprimanded. But I also own my part in

it. I see that I went down that cowpath, and I know that I

won’t do it a second time.”

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING ON HBR.ORG

In any feedback session, the intention of the giver

determines how the message is delivered—the ap-

proach, manner, tone, and words used. If there is trust

between the giver and the receiver, and consider-

ation and openness, with the giver’s sole focus on the

receiver’s growth, the feedback may still be tough and

but also positive.

—Posted by Cindy

When feedback is “tough,” it means the giver is not yet

ready to deliver it. It is “tough” because it involves behav-

iors and feelings the giver cannot understand and control.

Feedback should never be “tough” because it

needs to be factual and constructive, based on the

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How to Give Feedback That Helps People Grow

process that has led someone to act in a certain way.

Asking open-ended questions is a sure way to make it

more eff ective.

—Posted by Michel

One of my all-time workplace pet peeves is bosses who

hear a complaint, jump to conclusions, and refuse to

even entertain another side of the story.

It’s one thing for a manager to have his or her own

opinions on what’s good performance and what’s not

and to refuse to debate them. And I can understand

a boss taking action, under some circumstances, if

multiple customers or coworkers have complained—

without necessarily endorsing the substance of their

complaints. But it’s fl at-out wrong to conclude that

someone had in fact done something wrong, just on

someone else’s say-so.

—Posted by Jeff rey

The difference in the two sessions MJ described boils

down to coaching, which deepens self-awareness and

catalyzes growth, versus reprimanding, which sparks

self-protection and avoidance of responsibility. To sum-

marize, powerful, high-impact feedback conversations

share the following elements:

• An intention to help the employee grow. The point

of the discussion is not to simply tell them what

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Ongoing Feedback

they did wrong. The feedback should increase, not

drain, the employee’s motivation and resources for

change. When preparing for a feedback conver-

sation, refl ect on what you hope to achieve and

on what impact you’d like to have on them, per-

haps by doing a short meditation just before the

meeting.

• Openness on the part of the feedback giver. If you

start off feeling uncomfortable and self-protective,

your employee will match that energy, and you’ll

each leave the conversation frustrated with the

other person. By remaining open to their point of

view, you’ll create a high-quality connection that

facilitates change.

• A collaborative mind-set. Invite the employee into

the problem-solving process. Ask questions such

as: What ideas do you have? What are you taking

away from this conversation? What steps will you

take, by when, and how will I know?

Giving developmental feedback that sparks growth

is a critical challenge to master, because it can make the

difference between an employee who contributes power-

fully and positively to the organization and one who feels

diminished by the organization and contributes far less.

A single conversation can switch an employee on—or

shut them down. A true leader sees the raw material for

brilliance in every employee and creates the conditions to

let it shine, even when the challenge is tough.

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How to Give Feedback That Helps People Grow

Monique Valcour is an executive coach, keynote speaker,

and faculty affi liate of ThirdPath Institute. Her coaching,

research, and consulting help companies and individuals

craft high-performance, meaningful jobs, careers, work-

places, and lives.

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Chapter 7

Recognize

Good Work in a

Meaningful Way

by Christina Bielaszka-DuVernay

Recognition gets great lip service. Ask three managers

if they consider it important to recognize the value their

teams deliver, and chances are very good that you’ll get

three positive responses.

But probe a little bit, and you’ll discover that the walk

is leagues away from the talk.

Manager 1 makes recognition a priority—when he

has time to think about it. For Manager 2, recognizing

her team means having sandwiches brought in once or

twice a quarter for a conference room lunch. Manager

3 is fairly consistent in doling out praise and rewards—

Adapted from content posted on hbr.org on February 29, 2008

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Ongoing Feedback

too consistent, in fact. The boilerplate language in his

thank-you notes and the inevitable $25 gift certifi cate to

a family-style chain restaurant have become an in-joke

among his team members, generating eye rolls more

than anything else.

For recognition to strengthen your team’s perfor-

mance, say Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton, authors of

The Carrot Principle: How the Best Managers Use Recog-

nition to Engage Their People, Retain Talent, and Accel-

erate Performance, it can’t be haphazard, generalized to

the group, or generic. So what characterizes recognition

that actually works?

Deliver Recognition Frequently

Once or twice a quarter won’t cut it, as Manager 2 has not

yet realized. Research conducted by The Gallup Organi-

zation (Washington, DC) found that employees’ engage-

ment and motivation are strongly affected by how often

they receive recognition for their work.

Three years after the US branch of accounting fi rm

KPMG introduced its recognition program, Encore, the

number of employees who agreed with the statement

“Taking everything into account, this is a great place to

work” rose 20%. In analyzing the program’s effective-

ness unit by unit, Sylvia Brandes, KPMG’s US director

of compensation, discovered that units offering their em-

ployees less frequent recognition suffered notably higher

turnover than units in which recognition was a frequent

occurrence.

So how frequently should you let your team members

know you recognize and appreciate their efforts? At least

once every other week.

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Recognize Good Work in a Meaningful Way

We’re not talking gold watches here, point out Gos-

tick and Elton. “Managers who earn the most trust and

dedication from their people do so with many simple but

powerful actions,” they write in The Carrot Principle.

These can include sending them a sincere thank-you

note, copying them on a memo praising their perfor-

mance, or taking a moment in the weekly staff meeting to

highlight their actions. To keep yourself on track, Gostick

and Elton recommend maintaining a simple recognition

scorecard for every employee that notes the date praise

was given and for what.

Tie the Message to

Organizational Values

If you want recognition to reinforce the sort of thinking

and behavior you’d like to see more of, connect your praise

explicitly to the values of the organization, whether that’s

the team, the unit, or the company as a whole. If you’re

making a connection to company values, keep in mind

that they may be less than clear to the employee.

“So many companies’ mission or values statements go

wrong,” says Gostick. “Either it’s a laundry list or it lauds

such feel-good but generic values as hard work, service,

innovation, and so on. The result is that no one really

knows what values or behaviors really matter.”

And even when the values are clearly defi ned and kept

to a manageable number, employees are notorious for ig-

noring or tuning out the various means by which a com-

pany seeks to communicate them. When’s the last time

you read the entire e-mail update from your CEO? Or

resisted the urge to fi ddle with your mobile device during

a speech about the company’s values?

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Ongoing Feedback

But the moment of personal recognition is one time

that the employee is not tuning out. And if this occasion

is before a group of her peers, chances are that many of

them—particularly if they like and respect her—are also

paying attention. So when you single out an individual

for praise, whether it’s in a one-on-one meeting or before

a group, link that person’s behavior with the organiza-

tion’s values. For example:

• “Thank you, Peter, for going the extra mile to keep

our client happy. As you know, our team is trying

to improve its service-renewal scores and this cli-

ent is one of our biggest accounts, so your actions

really mean a lot.”

• “That was a great idea to invite the special projects

team to our staff meeting. We talk a lot around

here about the value of cross-unit collaboration,

but we don’t always do such a good job of actu-

ally doing it! I really appreciate your efforts in this

area—thanks.”

Match the Award to the Achievement

Remember Manager 3 and his $25 restaurant gift cer-

tifi cates? His recognition efforts met with derision be-

cause he dispensed them without regard to the degree

of the employee’s effort or achievement. Someone who

came in over the weekend to integrate the latest data

into an important report would receive the same reward

as someone whose three-month-long project unearthed

an opportunity to eliminate $50,000 annually in unit

expenses.

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“It’s demotivating to give someone a minor award for

a major accomplishment,” says Gostick. “It’s a slap in the

face.”

But before you think in purely monetary terms about

what would be appropriate for a certain level of achieve-

ment, consider the fi nal quality of effective recognition.

Tailor Rewards to the Individual

What’s meaningful to one employee versus another can

vary signifi cantly. A particularly ambitious employee

might really value face time with the CEO or appoint-

ment to a high-level project team as recognition for her

efforts. A very conscientious employee who always seems

to have trouble leaving the offi ce might get more out of

an explicit directive to take a day off and take his family

to the zoo, courtesy of the company.

Cash awards, say Gostick and Elton, tend not to be as

worthwhile as thank-yous, unless they’re quite substan-

tial ($1,000 or more). Instead of using the money to buy

something special and memorable, most employees just

use it to pay bills and quickly forget about its signifi cance.

Don’t Forget Teams

Manager 2’s mistake was to try to acknowledge individu-

als’ efforts by giving blanket recognition to the group. It’s

a tactic that’s next to useless.

But when your team as a whole achieves goals, recog-

nizing its accomplishments is perfectly appropriate. And

don’t wait until the particular project is near completion.

“In sports, we don’t wait for the team to win before

we applaud; we celebrate each incremental step toward

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Ongoing Feedback

victory,” says Gostick. “Yet in business, there’s this ten-

dency to wait until the project is clearly working well be-

fore we celebrate anything.”

At the start of a project, “set short-term goals and

articulate the reward the team will receive for reach-

ing them,” he advises. Each milestone reached presents

an occasion to celebrate everyone’s contribution to the

group effort, reinforce the project’s importance, and re-

ignite the team’s commitment to working together cre-

atively and collaboratively in pursuit of the end goal.

Whether you’re acknowledging the accomplishments

of a team or an individual, recognition can be a key moti-

vator toward pushing your direct reports to the next level.

Christina Bielaszka-DuVernay was the editor of Harvard

Management Update.

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Section 2

Formal

Performance

Appraisals

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Chapter 8

Delivering

an Eff ective

Performance

Review

by Rebecca Knight

When performance review season arrives, you know the

drill. Drag each of your direct reports into a conference

room for a one-on-one, hand them an offi cial-looking

document, and then start in with the same, tired con-

versation. Say some positive things about what the em-

ployee is good at, then some unpleasant things about

what he’s not good at, and end—wearing your most solic-

itous smile—some more ego strokes. The result: a mixed

message that leaves even your best employees feeling

disappointed.

Adapted from content posted on hbr.org on November 3, 2011

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Formal Performance Appraisals

Your formal review sessions with your employees don’t

need to be so tiresome—or confusing. If you take the

right approach, appraisals are an excellent opportunity

to keep solid performers moving onward and upward

and redirect the poor ones.

What the Experts Say

For many employees, a face-to-face performance review

is the most stressful work conversation they’ll have all

year. For managers, the discussion is just as tense. “What

a performance appraisal requires is for one person to

stand in judgment of another. Deep down, it’s uncom-

fortable,” says Dick Grote, author of How to Be Good at

Performance Appraisals. Evaluating an employee’s job

performance should consist of more than an annual chat,

according to James Baron, the William S. Beinecke Pro-

fessor of Management at Yale School of Management.

Performance management is a process, he says: “Pre-

sumably, you’re giving a tremendous amount of real-

time feedback, and your employees are people you know

well. Hopefully, your relationship can survive candid

feedback.” No matter what kind of appraisal system your

company uses, here are several strategies to help you

make performance review season less nerve-racking and

more productive.

Set expectations early

The performance review doesn’t start with a sit-down in

the spare conference room. You must be clear from the

outset how you’ll evaluate your employees. Grote sug-

gests holding “performance planning” sessions with each

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of your direct reports at the beginning of the year to

discuss that person’s goals and your expectations. (See

chapter 11, “How to Set and Support Employee Goals.”)

“You’ll see immediate improvement in performance be-

cause everyone knows what the boss expects,” he says.

“And it earns you the right to hold people accountable

at the end of the year.” Listen carefully to your em-

ployees’ personal ambitions, as it will inform the way

you assess their work. “Often times, managers are evalu-

ating per formance with out necessarily knowing what

that person’s career aspirations are. We often assume

that every one wants to be CEO. But that’s not always

the case,” says Baron. Under standi ng what your direct

reports want from their careers will help you fi gure out

ways to broaden their professional experiences.

Lay the groundwork

About two weeks before the face-to-face review, ask

your employee to jot down a few things he’s done over

the last year that he’s proud of. This will both help re-

fresh your memory and “put a positive focus on an event

that is so often seen as negative,” says Grote. Next, review

other notes you’ve kept on him throughout the year: a

well-executed project; a deadline missed; the deft han-

dling of a diffi cult client. Finally, ask for feedback from

others in the company who work closely with your em-

ployee. “The larger number of independent evaluations

the better,” says Baron. About an hour before the meet-

ing, give your employee a copy of his appraisal. That

way, he can have his initial emotional response—positive

or negative—in the privacy of his own cubicle. “When

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Formal Performance Appraisals

people read someone’s assessment of them, they are go-

ing to have all sorts of churning emotions,” says Grote.

“Let them have that on their own time, and give them

a chance to think about it.” Then with a calmer, cooler

head, the employee can prepare for a rational and con-

structive business conversation.

Set the tone

Too often, the face-to-face conversation takes the form

of a “feedback sandwich”: compliments, criticism, more

praise. But this approach demoralizes your stars and

falsely encourages your poor performers. Instead, pick a

side. “Most people are good solid workers, so for the vast

majority, you should concentrate exclusively on things

the person has done well,” says Grote, adding that this

method tends to motivate people who are already com-

petent at their jobs. For your marginal workers, however,

do not sugarcoat bad news. Performance reviews are

your chance to confront poor performers and demand

improvement. “People are resilient,” says Grote. “As time

goes on, that person is not going to get a promotion and

not going to get a raise . . . You’re not doing this person

any favors by [avoiding their defi ciencies].” (For more on

dealing with those who are not meeting expectations, see

chapter 14, “How to Help an Underperformer.”)

Constructively coach

After discussing the strengths and achievements of your

solid performers, ask them how they feel about how

things are going. “In most cases, you’re dealing with

mature adults and you’ll elicit their honest concerns,”

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Delivering an Eff ective Performance Review

says Grote. For both solid and poor performers, frame

feedback in terms of a “stop, start, and continue” model,

suggests Baron. What is the employee doing now that

is not working? What actions should they adopt to be

more successful? What are they doing that is highly

effective? Focusing on behaviors, not dispositions, takes

the personal edge out of the conversation. Give specifi c

advice and targeted praise. “Don’t say things like: ‘You

need to be more proactive.’ That doesn’t mean anything.

Say something like: ‘You need to take more initiative in

calling potential sales leads.’” Similarly, “Saying: ‘You’re

an innovator’ is nice but it’s helpful to know exactly what

they’re doing that refl ects that,” says Baron.

Hold your ground

The hot-button issues associated with performance re-

views are money and rank. If your company allows it,

separate any talk of compensation from the performance

review. “But if you must, do not save the salary informa-

tion for the end of the conversation,” says Grote, “other-

wise there’ll be an invisible parrot above the employee’s

head squawking: ‘How much?’ throughout the entire dis-

cussion.” Rank is another place for potential bruised feel-

ings. A majority of companies require managers to rate

their employees—often on a scale of 1 to 5. Your goal is go

over the data and make a judgment call. Remember: the

1–5 system is not analogous to the A–F grading scheme

in school; most employees will get the middle rank,

a 3. This might leave some employees feeling let down,

thinking they’re merely “average.” Don’t cave in. “In the

corporate world, you’re dealing with a highly selective

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Formal Performance Appraisals

group,” says Grote. “The rules of the game have changed.

In school, a C was mediocre, but a 3 in the working world

means they’re meeting expectations. They’re shooting

par.” Conveying that message is a leadership challenge.

“People can accept it rationally but it may be hard to ac-

cept viscerally,” he says. “This is why it’s so important to

hold a performance planning meeting at the outset. If

they hit their targets, they are a 3. It’s a goal.”

Principles to Remember

• Make it clear at the beginning of the year how

you’ll evaluate your employees with individual

performance planning sessions.

• Give your employees a copy of their appraisal

before the meeting so they can have their initial

emotional response in private.

• Deliver a positive message to your good perform-

ers by concentrating mainly on their strengths and

achievements during the conversation.

• Note specifi c behaviors you want your employee to

stop, start, and continue.

Case Study #1: Understand

Expectations and Set the Right Tone

Ben Snyder (not his real name), an expat working in Lon-

don at a global media company, was new at his job. He’d

inherited an employee, Jim, whose primary responsibil-

ity was to travel to Africa, the Middle East, and Russia to

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Delivering an Eff ective Performance Review

develop partnerships that would ultimately drive sales to

Ben’s business. But Jim wasn’t delivering.

“During quarterly performance reviews, Jim and I had

long conversations about his approaches and the great

relationships he was developing. I would tell him how

glad I was that people were talking to him, that he was

forming these relationships. But I also told him that we

needed tangible deals,” says Ben.

This happened for three straight quarters: same con-

versation, no deals. Increasingly, Ben was under pres-

sure: Jim was spending a lot of the company’s money

with nothing to show for it.

“I needed to scare him into action. At the next perfor-

mance review, I gave Jim 90 days to close a deal.”

Nothing changed, and Jim was dismissed. “Even when

we sat down with HR and let him go, he was genuinely

surprised,” recalls Ben.

In retrospect, Ben says he went overboard in validat-

ing Jim’s spadework, and didn’t establish the right tone

during their conversations. “The message wasn’t clear—

Jim only heard what he wanted to hear—the positive

praise about the relationship building. He ignored the

demand to close deals.”

Ben also should have worked harder in the begin-

ning to understand the specifi cs of Jim’s job and set clear

expectations. “It was a business I wasn’t familiar with.

I didn’t know how to push him in the right direction

because I wasn’t exactly sure what he was doing. I had

never really sat down with him and defi ned what success

should look like.”

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Case Study #2: Be Clear and Specifi c

Lucy Orren (name has been changed) worked as a direc-

tor of business development at a biotech start-up in New

Jersey. She managed Peter, who was, according to Lucy,

“a real star. He was smart, very conscientious, and good

at everything he tried.” One of Peter’s biggest responsi-

bilities was giving presentations.

“One of the vice presidents at my company brought it

to my attention that Peter used a certain crutch phrase

too often, and that while he was a good speaker, he was

very deliberate in the way that he spoke, which was some-

times too slow. She thought it connoted a lack of energy. I

thought it was a relatively minor problem, but I decided

to bring it up in the performance appraisal.”

During the face-to-face discussion, however, Lucy

chickened out. “Peter was so good at his job, that I was

reluctant to give him any criticism,” she says. “I tried to

couch the advice when we were discussing his strengths.

He didn’t get it.”

At the very end of the conversation, Lucy high-

lighted areas of improvement. She told Peter to try to

be more upbeat during his presentations. But the advice

was too vague; Peter wasn’t sure what to do with the

recommendation.

“The next few presentations he gave were pretty rocky.

He overcompensated,” recalls Lucy.

After one of his presentations, Lucy realized she needed

to be more specifi c with her coaching. She warned him of

the crutch phrase and told him to try to speak faster.

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Delivering an Eff ective Performance Review

“Peter came through, and improved on every level. He

still uses the crutch phrase every so often, but there is

more momentum to his presentations.”

Rebecca Knight is a freelance journalist in Boston and a

lecturer at Wesleyan University. Her work has been pub-

lished in the New York Times, USA Today, and the Fi-

nancial Times.

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Chapter 9

Managing

Performance

When It’s Hard

to Measure

by Jim Whitehurst

Organizations of all kinds have long struggled to accu-

rately measure the performance of individual members.

The typical approach is to assess an individual’s perfor-

mance against a metric usually tied to whether or not

they performed a task and the amount of output they

generated by doing so. There’s a lot riding on these as-

sessments: everything from compensation increases and

bonus payments to promotions. And as anyone who has

ever given or received a traditional performance review

Adapted from content originally posted on hbr.org on May 11, 2015

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knows, this process can be highly subjective—even in the

most metrics-obsessed organizations.

But what about the kinds of jobs where measuring

someone’s “output” isn’t about counting the number of

widgets they produced, but rather it’s about how they

managed a team or infl uenced others or helped people

collaborate better? While it might be easy to measure

someone’s output on an assembly line, how do we decide

how well a manager manages or a leader leads?

In the case of an organization like Red Hat (where

I am the CEO), which collaborates with many open

source software communities like Linux and OpenStack,

these questions are all the more diffi cult to answer—like

how to measure someone’s contribution to an external

community—and traditional performance reviews just

don’t cut it for us. For example, building enterprise open

source software, like we do at Red Hat, involves collabo-

rating with people outside of the company who volunteer

their efforts. That means you can’t simply issue orders or

direct what work gets done and when. What you can do

is build infl uence and trust with other members of the

community. But doing that can involve making contribu-

tions that offer no direct output or result. It’s not quid pro

quo, and it’s not easy to track and measure.

Conventional performance reviews can also under-

mine a company’s agility and lead to missed opportuni-

ties (see the sidebar “Deloitte’s Performance Snapshot”).

What happens when an individual’s goals no longer make

sense because the competitive landscape has changed,

but their performance rating (and by extension, their

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compensation and advancement opportunities) is rest-

ing on the completion of those goals? That’s not a system

that promotes innovation.

How do you even begin to appraise someone’s perfor-

mance in these scenarios?

At Red Hat, we’ve developed a simpler, more fl exible

approach to performance reviews, one that doesn’t limit

managers to narrow measures of performance.

Agree on Employee Objectives

We’ve found that it’s essential to ensure that associates

and their managers are on the same page when it comes

to the responsibilities and expectations for the role. We

encourage people to track what’s important and to set in-

dividual goals that contribute to our company’s mission

and strategy. We recommend a regular check-in process

to keep managers and associates in sync. However, we’ve

found it best to let managers and associates determine

the frequency of those meetings. Some take place weekly,

others happen on a monthly or quarterly basis.

Get Input from Others

When measuring against these goals, we rely not only on

the manager’s observations, but also on associates’ peers

and communities to informally assess how people per-

form. We pay attention to their reputations and how they

are regarded by others. We look at the scope and quality

of their infl uence. The result is that rather than “manag-

ing up” to their boss to get a good review, Red Hatters are

accountable to the community as a whole.

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Focus on Opportunities,

Not Score-keeping

Our associates are incredibly talented, passionate people.

We don’t want them to fi xate on a number or letter grade,

so we don’t hand them a bottom-line score to sum up last

year’s performance. Instead, we focus on developing their

strengths and growing their capabilities. We advise man-

agers to give continuous, real-time feedback throughout

the year and to use the annual review as an opportunity to

refl ect back on everything their associates have achieved,

what they’ve learned along the way, and what opportuni-

ties they will pursue in the coming months. Unlike many

companies, we don’t expect our managers to fi t people to

a bell curve with a maximum number of low and high per-

formers. Instead, we tell them to pay attention to both per-

formance and potential and to focus on connecting their

people with opportunities for growth and development.

DELOITTE’S PERFORMANCE SNAPSHOT

by Marcus Buckingham and Ashley Goodall

At Deloitte we’re redesigning our performance man-

agement system. Like many other companies, we real-

ize that our current process for evaluating the work of

our people—and then training them, promoting them,

and paying them accordingly—is increasingly out of

step with our objectives.

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In a public survey Deloitte conducted recently, more

than half the executives questioned (58%) believe

that their current performance management approach

drives neither employee engagement nor high perfor-

mance. They, and we, are in need of something nim-

bler, real-time, and more individualized—something

squarely focused on fueling performance in the future

rather than assessing it in the past.

What might surprise you, however, is what we’ll in-

clude in Deloitte’s new system and what we won’t. It

will have no cascading objectives, no once-a-year re-

views, and no 360-degree-feedback tools. We’ve ar-

rived at a very diff erent and much simpler design for

managing people’s performance. Its hallmarks are

speed, agility, one-size-fi ts-one, and constant learning,

and it’s underpinned by a new way of collecting reliable

performance data.

Rather than asking more people for their opinion of a

team member (in a 360-degree or an upward-feedback

survey, for example), we found that we will need to ask

only the immediate team leader—but, critically, to ask

a diff erent kind of question. People may rate other peo-

ple’s skills inconsistently, but they are highly consistent

when rating their own feelings and intentions. To see

performance at the individual level, then, we will ask

team leaders not about the skills of each team member

( continued)

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( continued)

but about their own future actions with respect to that

person.

At the end of every project (or once every quarter

for long-term projects) we will ask team leaders to re-

spond to four future-focused statements about each

team member:

1. Given what I know of this person’s performance,

and if it were my money, I would award this per-

son the highest possible compensation increase

and bonus.

2. Given what I know of this person’s performance,

I would always want him or her on my team.

3. This person is at risk for low performance.

4. This person is ready for promotion today.

In eff ect, we are asking our team leaders what they

would do with each team member rather than what

they think of that individual. When we aggregate these

data points over a year, weighting each according

to the duration of a given project, we produce a rich

stream of information for leaders’ discussions of what

they, in turn, will do—whether it’s a question of suc-

cession planning, development paths, or performance-

pattern analysis.

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In addition to this consistent—and countable—data,

when it comes to compensation, we want to factor

in some uncountable things, such as the diffi

culty of

project assignments in a given year and contributions

to the organization other than formal projects. So the

data will serve as the starting point for compensation,

not the ending point. The fi nal determination will be

reached either by a leader who knows each individual

personally or by a group of leaders looking at an en-

tire segment of our practice and at many data points

in parallel.

We could call this new evaluation a rating, but it

bears no resemblance, in generation or in use, to the

ratings of the past. Because it allows us to quickly cap-

ture performance at a single moment in time, we call it

a performance snapshot.

Adapted from “Reinventing Performance Management” ( Harvard Business Review, April 2015), reprint #R1504B.

Marcus Buckingham provides performance management tools and

training to organizations. He is the author of several best-selling books

and StandOut 2.0: Assess Your Strengths, Find Your Edge, Win at Work

(Harvard Business Review Press, 2015).

Ashley Goodall is the director of leader development at Deloitte Ser-

vices LP, based in New York.

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Emphasize Achievement,

Not Just Advancement

Finally, when it comes to promotions, raises, and bo-

nuses, we don’t force managers to apply a merit matrix

or rigid formula. Instead, we give them the fl exibility

to make decisions that are right for their people. This

means our managers don’t have to enter inaccurate rat-

ings to “game the system,” a problem faced by many other

companies.

The conventional way to reward top performers is to

promote them into managerial roles. This often creates

an army of ineffective and unengaged managers. But

we have come to embrace the concept of a “career of

achievement” in addition to a “career of advancement.”

Some of the most infl uential leaders in our organiza-

tion do not have fancy titles or even people who directly

report to them. They are expert individual contributors

who help shape the direction and priorities of Red Hat

and key open source communities through their contri-

butions and thought leadership.

A great example is Máirín Duffy, one of our user in-

terface designers. Máirín started working at Red Hat

as an intern and later joined us full time in 2005, after

she graduated from college. While Máirín has made ex-

ceptional contributions to our core Red Hat Enterprise

Linux product, she has also earned a stellar reputation

throughout the company (as well as open source com-

munities) for her reasoned and intelligent contributions

to mailing list conversations on everything from the cre-

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Managing Performance When It’s Hard to Measure

ation of Red Hat’s mission statement to contentious in-

ternal debates.

It was in a case involving the latter that led Red Hat’s

executive vice president and chief people offi cer DeLisa

Alexander to approach Máirín to talk about a proposed

project. In other words, a senior leader in the company

went directly to someone working closer to the front lines

to gather feedback on a fairly major corporatewide deci-

sion, simply because DeLisa knew that Máirín could help

make or break the success of the fi nal decision based on

her level of infl uence throughout the company.

A traditional performance review rating could never

capture the kind of infl uence Máirín has built inside

our organization and the communities we participate

in. Even a 360-degree review from her immediate peers

or manager wouldn’t reach far enough to show Máirín’s

impact. But everyone at Red Hat knows who Máirín is

because her contributions shape many areas of the com-

pany. With a performance management process that

emphasizes individual development, infl uence, and in-

novation, Red Hat is able to retain and grow passionate,

talented associates like Máirín.

Jim Whitehurst is the president and CEO of Red Hat,

the world’s leading provider of open source enterprise

IT products and solutions, and the author of the book

The Open Organization (Harvard Business Review Press, 2015).

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Chapter 10

Stop Worrying

About Your

Employee’s

Weaknesses

by Peter Bregman

Your son comes home one day, looks down at his feet, and

gives you his report card. You smile at him as you open it up

and look inside. Then your smile disappears when you see

the F in math. You also see an A (English) and two Bs (his-

tory and science). You look down at him and ask, “What

happened in math, Johnny? Why did you get this F?”

We want our kids to be successful at everything they

do. And if they’re not good at something, we ask why

they failed. We tell them to work harder at it. Understand

what went wrong, focus, and fi x it.

Adapted from content posted on hbr.org on May 19, 2009

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WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING ON HBR.ORG

A great manager recognizes the strengths of their peo-

ple and then puts them in position to win. A perfor-

mance review would serve the company better if it

were less a report card and more of a coaching ses-

sion. The manager should focus on providing the nec-

essary resources to the employee (in your example,

someone who loves spreadsheets) and removing the

obstacles so that the employee can win. Given that the

employee is in the right position, it is often the manager

who is the obstacle to success.

—Posted by Ted

This is a terrifi c approach to managing and motivating

employees. If you take it one step further and share

individual members’ strengths with the whole team,

they begin to see each other for the unique qualities

they bring. They even begin to rely on each other in new

ways. And, focusing on strengths lets an employee’s

gifts shine and productivity climbs and confi dence

grows.

—Posted by Amy

Some respondents have criticized your example about

the salesperson and the spreadsheet. However, I fi nd

that I actually become more profi cient in weak areas

by partnering with an expert who will do the work and

also explain things to me in terms I can understand.

—Posted by Mary

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Stop Worrying About Your Employee’s Weaknesses

I’m a presentation skills coach, [and] I always try to

coach people to focus on their strengths and build on

what they do well. The more comfortable and confi -

dent people get, the more their “weaknesses” will

disappear. People often ask for constructive criticism

and want know what they’re doing wrong. They’re not

doing anything “wrong.” They can be coached to do

something “diff erent” that might compensate for their

(temporary) shortcomings.

—Posted by Steve

But that’s a mistake. The wrong focus. If you dwell on

Johnny’s failure, on his weakness, you’ll be setting him

up for a life of struggle and low self-esteem while reduc-

ing his chances of reaching his full potential.

And you won’t fi x his weakness. You’ll just reinforce it.

The problem with a report card is that it measures all

students against the same criteria, which ignores that

each student is different—with unique talents, distinct

likes and dislikes, and particular aspirations. And when

we see the F on Johnny’s report card, it’s easy for us to

get distracted from our primary job: to help him deeply

enjoy his life and fulfi ll his potential by developing and

deriving pleasure from his unique talents.

Fast-forward 20 years. Johnny is now an adult. As he

sits down for a performance review with his manager, she

spends a few quiet minutes looking over his review and

then raises her eyes to meet his.

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“You’ve worked hard this year, John. Your client orien-

tation is superb. You’ve met your sales goals, and you’re a

solid team player. But you have an area that needs devel-

opment, specifi cally, your detail orientation. The spread-

sheets we get from you are a mess. Let’s talk about how

you can get better in that.”

An A, two Bs, and an F. And his manager handles it the

same way his parent did. By focusing the conversation,

and John’s effort, on his least favorite and weakest area.

We have a report card problem in our companies, and

it’s costing us a tremendous amount of time, money, po-

tential, and happiness. It’s costing us talent.

Traditional management systems encourage medioc-

rity in everything and excellence in nothing. Most per-

formance-review systems set an ideal picture of how we

want everyone to act (standards, competencies, and so

on) and then assess how closely people match that ideal,

nudging them to improve their weaknesses so they “meet

or exceed expectations” in every area.

But how will John add the most value to his organiza-

tion? He’s amazing with people, not spreadsheets. He’ll

work hardest, derive the most pleasure, and contribute

his maximum potential with the greatest result if he

is able to focus as much time as possible in his area of

strength.

Which means taking his focus off developing the

things in which he’s weak. They’re just a distraction.

Here’s what his manager should say: “You’ve worked

hard this year, John. Your client orientation is superb.

You’ve met your sales goals, and you’re a solid team

player. But working on those spreadsheets isn’t a good

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Stop Worrying About Your Employee’s Weaknesses

use of your time, and it’s not your strength. I’m going

to ask David to do those for you from now on. He loves

spreadsheets and is great at them. I want to spend the

rest of our time talking about how you can get even better

at working with your clients. That’s where you shine—

where you add the most value to the company—and you

seem to really enjoy it.”

An organization should be a platform for unique tal-

ent. A performance-review system should be fl exible

enough to refl ect and reward the successful contributions

of diverse employees. Let’s acknowledge that no one can

possibly be great at everything—and place all our effort

on developing their strengths further.

If it’s impossible to take away the part of their job in

which they’re weak, then help them improve just enough

so that it doesn’t get in the way of their strength. If you

can’t take the spreadsheets away from John, help him get

a C and move on. That would be preferable to spending

the time and effort it would take for him to get an A or

even a B.

Peter Bregman is CEO of Bregman Partners, a company

that strengthens leadership in people and in organiza-

tions through programs (including the Bregman Leader-

ship Intensive), coaching, and as a consultant to CEOs

and their leadership teams. Best-selling author of 18

Minutes, his most recent book is Four Seconds.

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Chapter 11

How to Set

and Support

Employee Goals

by Amy Gallo

As you think about how employees should be develop-

ing and what their future looks like, you must also think

about the goals they should be aspiring to. Employees

want to see how their work contributes to larger corpo-

rate objectives, and setting the right targets makes this

connection explicit for them and for you, their manager.

A performance planning meeting shortly after the

review session affords you an opportunity to collabo-

rate with your direct report on goals for the upcoming

year, since where your employees need to improve will

be fresh on your mind. Within this conversation, you can

Adapted from content posted on hbr.org on February 7, 2011

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discuss not only your perception of where your employ-

ees should devote their time, but also what they want in

their own career and how they’re going to reach those

milestones.

What the Experts Say

How involved should you be in helping employees estab-

lish and achieve their goals? Since failure to meet goals

can have consequences for you, your employee, and your

team, as well as the broader organization, you need to

balance your involvement with the employee’s ownership

over the process. Linda Hill, coauthor of Being the Boss:

The 3 Imperatives for Becoming a Great Leader, says,

“A manager’s job is to provide ‘supportive autonomy’

that’s appropriate to the person’s level of capability.” The

key is to be hands-on while giving your people the room

they need to succeed on their own. Here are some prin-

ciples to follow as you navigate how to best craft goals

and support your people in reaching their objectives.

Connect employee goals to larger

company goals

For goals to be meaningful and effective in motivating

employees, they must be tied to larger organizational

ambitions. Employees who don’t understand the roles

they play in their company’s success are more likely to

become disengaged. “Achieving goals is often about mak-

ing trade-offs when things don’t go as planned. [Employ-

ees] need to understand the bigger picture to make those

trade-offs when things go wrong,” says Hill. No matter

what level the employee is at, they should be able to ar-

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How to Set and Support Employee Goals

ticulate exactly how their efforts feed into the broader

company strategy.

Make goals attainable but challenging

Since employees are ultimately responsible for reach-

ing their goals, they need to have a strong voice in setting

them. However, you need to support them through this

process by providing input and direction regarding what

the company is trying to achieve. Ask your employee to

draft goals that directly contribute to the organization’s

mission. Once they’ve suggested an initial list, discuss

whether the targets are both realistic and challenging

enough. “Stretch targets emerge as a process of nego-

tiation between the employee and the manager,” says

Srikant M. Datar, the Arthur Lowes Dickinson Professor

of Accounting at Harvard University. Be careful, though:

Your team members are likely to resent you if you insist

on goals that are too challenging to accomplish. Don’t

aim too low, either. If you are overly cautious, you will

miss opportunities and settle for mediocrity. “When done

well, stretch goals create a lot of energy and momentum

in an organization,” says Datar. But when done badly,

they “do not achieve the goal of motivating employees

and helping them achieve better performance as they

were designed to do.” Even worse, poorly set goals can

undermine employees’ morale and productivity, and the

organization’s performance overall.

Create a plan for success

Once a goal is set, ask your employee to explain how they

plan to meet it. Have them break it down into tasks and

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set interim objectives, especially if it’s a large or long-

term project. Ask your employee: “What are the appro-

priate milestones?” “What are possible risks, and how do

you plan to manage them?” Because targets are rarely

pursued in a vacuum, Hill suggests that you “help your

people understand who they are dependent on to achieve

those goals.” Then problem solve with them on how to

best infl uence those people to get the job done.

Monitor progress

Staying on top of employee progress will help head off

any troubles early on. “We often get problems because we

don’t signal that we are partners in achieving goals,” says

Hill. Don’t wait for review time or the end of a project

to check in. Review long-term and short-term goals on a

weekly basis. Even your high-performing employees need

ongoing feedback and coaching. Ask your employee what

type of monitoring and feedback would be most helpful

to them, especially if the task is particularly challenging

or something they are doing for the fi rst time.

Assist in problem solving

Very few of us reach our goals without some bumps along

the way. Build relationships with employees so that they

feel comfortable coming to you if and when problems

arise. If your employee encounters an unforeseen ob-

stacle, the goal may need reworking. First, however, ask

them to bring a potential solution to you so you can give

them coaching and advice. If their efforts to solve the

problem fail, you will need to get further involved.

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How to Set and Support Employee Goals

Sculpt for personal goals

Some managers neglect to think about what an employee

is personally trying to accomplish in the context of work.

“If I account for the interests of the whole person, not

just the work person, I’m going to get more value from

them,” says Stewart D. Friedman, author of Total Leader-

ship: Be a Better Leader, Have a Richer Life. For example,

if your employee has expressed an interest in teaching

but that is not part of their job responsibilities, you may

be able to fi nd ways to sculpt that job to include opportu-

nities to train peers or less-experienced colleagues. (See

the sidebar “Job Sculpting.”)

JOB SCULPTING

by Timothy Butler and James Waldroop

Job sculpting is the art of matching people to jobs

through a customized career path that allow their

deeply embedded life interests to be expressed—and

increase the chance of retaining talented people. Since

an eff ective performance review dedicates time to dis-

cussing past performance and plans for the future, it

presents an opportune time to job sculpt.

Managers don’t need special training to job sculpt.

They just need to start listening more carefully when

employees describe what they like and dislike about

( continued)

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Formal Performance Appraisals

( continued)

their jobs. Consider the case of a pharmaceutical com-

pany executive who managed 30 salespeople. In a per-

formance review, one of her people offh

andedly men-

tioned that her favorite part of the past year had been

helping their division fi nd new offi

ce space and nego-

tiating for its lease. In the past, the executive would

have paid the comment little heed. After all, what did

it have to do with the woman’s performance in sales?

But listening with the ears of a job sculptor, the execu-

tive probed further, asking, “What made the search for

new offi

ce space fun for you?” and “How was that dif-

ferent from what you do day-to-day?” The conversation

revealed that the saleswoman was actually very dis-

satisfi ed and bored with her current position and was

considering leaving. In fact, the saleswoman yearned

for work that met her deeply embedded life interests,

which had to do with infl uence through language and

ideas and creative production. Her sales job encom-

passed the former, but it was only when she had the

chance to think about the location, design, and layout

of the new offi

ce that her creativity could be fully ex-

pressed. The manager helped the woman move to a

position where her primary responsibility was to design

marketing and advertising materials.

Along with listening carefully and asking probing

questions during the performance review, managers

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How to Set and Support Employee Goals

can ask employees to play an active role in job sculpt-

ing—before the meeting starts. In most corporate set-

tings, the employee’s preparation for a performance

review includes a written assessment of accomplish-

ments, goals for the upcoming review period, skill areas

in need of development, and plans for accomplishing

both goals and growth. During the review, this assess-

ment is then compared to the supervisor’s assessment.

But imagine what would happen if employees were

also expected to write up their personal views of ca-

reer satisfaction. Imagine if they were to prepare a few

paragraphs on what kind of work they love or if they

described their favorite activities on the job. Because

so many people are unaware of their deeply embed-

ded life interests—not to mention unaccustomed to

discussing them with their managers—such exercises

might not come easily at fi rst. Yet they would be an

excellent starting point for a discussion, ultimately al-

lowing employees to speak more clearly about what

they want from work, both in the short and long term.

And that information would make even the best job-

sculpting managers more eff ective.

Once managers and employees have discussed

deeply embedded life interests, it’s time to custom-

ize the next work assignment accordingly. In cases

where the employee requires only a small change in his

( continued)

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( continued)

activities, that might just mean adding a new responsi-

bility. For example, an engineer who has a deeply em-

bedded life interest in counseling and mentoring might

be asked to plan and manage the orientation of new

hires. Or a logistics planner with a deeply embedded

life interest in infl uence through language and ideas

could be given the task of working on recruitment at

college campuses. The goals here would be to give

some immediate gratifi cation through an immedi-

ate and real change in the job and to begin the pro-

cess of moving the individual to a role that more fully

satisfi es him.

Adapted from “Job Sculpting: The Art of Retaining Your Best People”

( Harvard Business Review, September–October 1999), reprint #99502.

Timothy Butler is Director of Career Development Programs at Harvard

Business School and author of Getting Unstuck: How Dead Ends Become

New Paths.

James Waldroop is a founding principal of the consulting fi rm Peregrine

Partners.

The fi rst step is for you to understand what these goals

are. Ask employees if they have any personal goals they

want to share with you. Don’t pressure them; they should

share these aspirations only if they feel comfortable.

Friedman suggests you then ask, “What adjustments

might we try that would help you achieve your goals?”

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How to Set and Support Employee Goals

This allows the employee to take ownership of the solu-

tion. Just as with work goals, you need to be sure per-

sonal goals contribute to your team, unit, or to the com-

pany. “It’s got to be a shared commitment to experiment

and mutual responsibility to check in on how it’s going.

It’s got to be a win for both,” says Friedman.

Hold people accountable—including yourself

There will be times, even with the best support, when

employees fail to meet their targets. Hill advises, “Hold

people accountable. You can’t say ‘Gee, that’s too bad.’

You need to fi gure out what went wrong and why.” Dis-

cuss with your employee what happened and what each

of you think went wrong. If the problem was within their

control, ask them to apply the possible solutions you’ve

discussed, take another stab at reaching the goal, and

check in with you more frequently. If it was something

that was outside their power or the goal was too ambi-

tious, acknowledge the disappointment but don’t dwell

on it. “Do the diagnosis, get the learning, and move on,”

says Hill.

As discussed in chapter 5, “The Set-Up-to-Fail Syn-

drome,” it’s possible that you may have contributed to the

problem. Be willing to refl ect on your role in the failure.

Were you too hands-off, and fail to check in frequently

enough? Did you not review the work in a timely way?

Have an open conversation about what you can do next

time. “If you don’t hold yourself accountable, they’re

going to have trouble with you,” says Hill.

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Principles to Remember

Do:

• Connect individuals’ goals to broader organization

objectives

• Show employees that you are a partner in achiev-

ing their goals

• Learn about and incorporate employees’ personal

interests into their professional goals

Don’t:

• Allow employees to set goals alone

• Take a hands-off approach with high performers

• Ignore failures

Case Study: A Partner in

Goal Attainment

Meghan Lantier is known at Bliss PR for being a natu-

ral people developer. As the vice president of the fi rm’s

fi nancial services practice, Meghan manages several se-

nior account executives, including Shauna Ellerson (not

her real name). Meghan has overseen Shauna’s work

since Shauna started at Bliss four-and-a-half years ago.

Since the beginning, they have set goals through a col-

laborative process: Shauna develops draft goals, Meghan

comes up with goals she believes Shauna needs to focus

on, and then they identify the overlap between them. “I

want to make sure they are manageable but stretched,

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How to Set and Support Employee Goals

too,” says Meghan. The two regularly check in on these

goals. Meghan takes a hands-on approach, providing

Shauna with regular input. They also sit down together

at least four times a year to have a more formal discus-

sion about Shauna’s ambitions.

One of Shauna’s goals is to become more of a thought

leader on one of their largest fi nancial services accounts.

She has mastered the day-to-day work of managing the

client and now needs to focus on the bigger picture.

Shauna has been working on this goal for several months

now by speaking up more in client meetings and provid-

ing more input into the content, not just the process, of

their work. “We don’t need a goal-review session. I give

her constant feedback in the context of the work,” says

Meghan.

Meghan also knows that, ultimately, Shauna is re-

sponsible for her own achievements. “I’m fully invested

in making it work, but I realized the limitations I have

as a manager to make it happen,” she says. It hasn’t been

necessary to talk about the consequences if Shauna fails

to meet the goal—there are natural consequences in

Bliss’s high-performing culture. If you don’t succeed, you

don’t get the better assignments.

Amy Gallo is a contributing editor at Harvard Business

Review and the author of the HBR Guide to Managing

Confl ict at Work.

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Chapter 12

When to Grant a

Promotion or Raise

by Amy Gallo

Managers who want to recognize employees for good

work have many tools at their disposal. One of the more

traditional ways to reward a top performer is to give her

a promotion or raise, or both. Even if you don’t openly

talk about this in your performance review session (as

discussed in chapter 8, “Delivering an Effective Perfor-

mance Review”), it’s often something a manager will

think about—or an employee will ask about—around

formal appraisal time.

But how can you know whether someone is ready for

the next challenge or deserving of that bump in pay? Hu-

man resource policies and company culture often dictate

when and how people move up in a company. However,

Adapted from content posted on hbr.org on January 12, 2011

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managers in most companies have a good deal of input

into the decision and, in some cases, they are the ulti-

mate decision makers. Whether you have this author-

ity or not, you need to make promotions and raises part

of an ongoing discussion with employees about their

performance.

What the Experts Say

According to Herminia Ibarra, the Cora Chaired Profes-

sor of Leadership and Learning and Faculty Director of

the INSEAD Leadership Initiative, “Many times a man-

ager feels responsible for fi nding their people their next

step in the organization.” Managers should make these

decisions about promotions and raises carefully. “I think

who an organization promotes is a very strong index of

their core culture,” says Susan David, codirector of the

Institute of Coaching, founding director of Evidence

Based Psychology. Managers should recognize that who

they reward sends a signal to the rest of the organiza-

tion. Therefore, they need to be sure they are endorsing

behavior that is in line with the organization’s values. For

example, an employee who exceeds his targets but treats

his team members poorly should not be rewarded in an

organization that values teamwork.

Similarly, the way an organization promotes people

has implications for an individual’s success. Organiza-

tions often assume that a promotion should involve giv-

ing star performers responsibility for managing more

people and developing—rather than just executing—

strategy. “Yet these are not areas of genius for all. Many

organizations lose some of their best operational people

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When to Grant a Promotion or Raise

because they create single pathways to organizational

success,” says David. It’s possible to reward people in

other ways. “Organizations [that] create multiple, fl ex-

ible pathways to success will keep their best people, keep

them engaged, and keep them for longer,” she says. Next

time you are trying to decide whether to recognize strong

performance with a promotion or raise, follow these

principles.

Assess current performance using

multiple sources

As a fi rst step, make sure the employee is able to do the

job you are considering promoting her into. Take a look

at her performance. “There will be markers even in the

current job that show how they’ll do in the new role,” says

David. She recommends you use multisource feedback:

Draw not only on your own assessment but also on oth-

ers’. It is especially important to seek input from people

who interact with the employees in ways that you don’t.

Talk to peers, team members, and people she manages. In

some cases, you may fi nd that she’s already doing parts of

the new job. “Some people do their job as it is described

and some enlarge their job; they innovate around the pa-

rameters of the job. That’s the best evidence of all—when

they’re already doing the job,” says Ibarra.

Consider the “competence-challenge

balance”

“We all want to be and feel we are good at things. We also

have the need to feel we are growing and learning,” says

David. A good indicator that you may need to promote

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someone is if he expresses a desire to learn more and take

on a new challenge. Your goal-setting discussion will help

you assess this. People who are particularly good at their

jobs may quickly master them and need to be stretched.

“If in their current jobs employees are reaching points

where they are overqualifi ed, this is a strong risk factor

for disengagement and loss of those employees,” says

David. You need to constantly assess your people and be

sure they are working at the edges of their abilities. If

they are performing well but not learning anything new,

a promotion or an alternative assignment may be best for

both the individual and the organization.

Make sure it’s a good match

Before promoting someone into a new role, consider

whether it’s something she will enjoy doing. Many man-

agers fail to consider that just because someone is good

at a job, doesn’t mean she will take pleasure in it. “One of

the greatest tools a manager can use is an authentic, hon-

est conversation with the individual,” explains David. Ask

your employee whether she is interested in and excited

about the new responsibilities. If not, consider creating

an alternative role that stretches her, fulfi lls her, and fi lls

a need in the organization.

Experiment before making the job permanent

Occasionally, you may need more information to judge

the employee’s expected performance in a new role. As

Ibarra says, “It gets tricky when performance in a cur-

rent role is not a good predictor of performance in a new

role.” In these cases, design an assignment that is similar

to the tasks and challenges of the new job to test the em-

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When to Grant a Promotion or Raise

ployee’s ability. Be transparent with the employee about

this experiment. Make it short-term, and outline clear

success criteria and an evaluation timeline. Be careful,

though—you don’t want to invisibly promote your people

without recognizing their contributions. Providing more

responsibility without a corresponding change in title or

raise can sap motivation.

Determine fair compensation

With some promotions, it may be obvious how much of

a raise you should give based on how much others do-

ing the same job are paid. However, many job changes

are not as clear cut. The employee may be retaining some

of her former responsibilities while taking on new ones.

Create a job description for the new role. Take a look at

all her duties and try to benchmark them against other

jobs in the company or in the broader employment mar-

ket. If you don’t have similar positions in the organiza-

tion, look at increases that went with other promotions

in the organization. If most promotions come with a par-

ticular increase in salary, stick with a similar percentage.

Know when to say no

“There are people who will ask for a promotion even if

they’re not ready,” says Ibarra. Your job is to help cali-

brate those requests. If your employee raises the idea of

a promotion but you worry he’s not ready, have an open

discussion to hear his reasoning and share your con-

cerns. Be clear about what competencies or experiences

he needs to gain to be promoted and create an action

plan for how he can do that. Provide him with the tasks

and assignments he needs to expand his skills.

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Because of a limited budget, you may have to say no

to someone who is deserving. Or there may not be the

right opportunity. To promote, David says, “there needs

to be a strategic need in the organization” that this per-

son can meet. These can be tough conversations. Be hon-

est and transparent. Explain the rationale, and be sure

the employee understands that you value him. Give him

stretch goals that help prepare him for the future when

the company is better positioned to give him a promotion

or raise.

Consider other ways to motivate

Most important, fi nd other ways to keep the employee

engaged. “Leaders are often comforted by their capacity

to give a raise or a promotion because these strategies are

seen as tangible and executable. However, while these

extrinsic motivators are a useful and important part of

keeping employees engaged, they are certainly not the

only ones,” says David. Instead, rely on intrinsic motiva-

tors, such as recognizing contributions, providing oppor-

tunities to gain new skills or experiences, and supporting

autonomy and choice within a job (see chapter 7, “Rec-

ognize Good Work in a Meaningful Way”). For example,

you may have leeway as a manager to make modifi cations

to the employee’s current position so that he is spend-

ing half of his time on his current job and the other half

on new, more challenging responsibilities. Doing this

may be more motivational in the long run and can of-

ten inspire loyalty. “Overreliance on pay and promotion

as motivators leads to an organizational culture that is

very transactional and disengaged,” says David. Employ-

ees who feel valued are likely to wait out the hard times.

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When to Grant a Promotion or Raise

Principles to Remember

Do:

• Make sure your people are working at the edge of

their abilities

• Create an assignment that helps you assess

whether the employee will excel in a new role

• Find other ways beyond raises and promotions to

motivate your people

Don’t:

• Say no to a request for a raise or promotion with-

out a clear explanation

• Rely solely on your assessment of the employee’s

performance without asking others for input

• Assume that a promotion alone will make the

employee happy

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING ON HBR.ORG

Employee turnover is thought to be one of the biggest

upcoming costs and challenges for companies.

If that’s the case, companies need to be proactive in

keeping their top players around. Extrinsic motivators

like money and promotions are great, but they’re not

enough to keep people engaged and motivated. In a

( continued)

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Formal Performance Appraisals

( continued)

Towers Watson white paper “Turbocharging Employee

Engagement: The Power of Recognition from Manag-

ers,” a main fi nding is that “strong manager perfor-

mance in recognizing employee performance increases

engagement by almost 60%.”

Real-time recognition for tasks well done and em-

ployees aligning themselves with company values is a

powerful tool not to be overlooked. Recognition (and re-

wards) are key to maintaining a motivated workforce.

—Posted by Sarah

My current position is in a not-for-profi t community health-

care facility. Funding is primarily through grants and

Medicare or Medicaid. These sources have already been

shrinking and more cuts are coming. There have been no

bonuses for two years, and raises vanished before that. In

addition, more responsibility is a growing burden for staff .

Combine that with the economic hardship of the

employees’ families and the need for other types of

recognition and reward becomes imperative—other-

wise, they will be off to fi nd higher-paying jobs.

Your idea of an employee “. . . spending half of his

time on his current job and the other half on new, more

challenging responsibilities,” then, for us, also has an

additional positive eff ect—more gets done by fewer

staff and it helps to prevent burnout by providing

variation in tasks, duties, and new coworkers.

—Posted by Betty

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When to Grant a Promotion or Raise

Case Study 1: A New Role for the Firm

and the Employee

Elise Giannasi was hired by a strategy consulting fi rm

as the executive assistant to the managing partner. A

year into the job, she was receiving glowing reviews and

Shanti Nayak, the fi rm’s director of people, says it was

clear that she was a star performer. In particular, Shanti

noted that Elise had done a great job of building rela-

tionships with clients. Her relationships had been instru-

mental in setting up key appointments and ensuring that

bills got paid. The managing partner felt she was ready

to move up. But according to Shanti, “there was no typi-

cal role for people to move into unless they were on the

traditional consultant path.”

At the time, the fi rm didn’t have a staff member dedi-

cated solely to business development. People throughout

the fi rm were doing it as an “extracurricular” task. How-

ever, the tough economic climate forced the fi rm to de-

velop a much more formalized process and needed some-

one to be responsible for it. Shanti explains that they had

two debates going on simultaneously: Was this a role they

needed? And, if so, was Elise the right person for the role?

While Elise was doing small pieces of client development

already, she had never fi lled a role like this before. Shanti

knew that Elise had worked hard to develop the right re-

lationships both inside and outside the fi rm, and she had

confi dence Elise could do it. When she talked to others

in the fi rm, they endorsed her assessment. In the end,

Shanti says, “It felt like a risk worth taking.” Shanti ex-

plained that since this was a new position, it was diffi cult

to decide how much to pay Elise once she was promoted.

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They looked at what other promotions carried in terms of

a raise—in particular, the percentage increase that asso-

ciates received when they became senior associates. Elise

was given a similar percentage increase and a new title:

manager of business development.

Case Study 2: An Apprenticeship

Model for On-the-Job Learning

When Sarah Vania joined the International Rescue Com-

mittee as the senior human resource partner, she was

particularly impressed with Nicole Clemons, an HR ad-

ministrator. Nicole was studying for her master’s degree

while working full time. She commuted two hours by

bus to her job, using that time to study. Nicole had al-

ways received very good reviews. Sarah thought, “Here’s

a high-potential person who has earned her right to de-

velopment.” When Sarah sat down with her for their fi rst

review together, Nicole asked, “What’s the path ahead for

me?” She had applied for an open HR partner role, but

because it was two steps up from her current role, the

organization didn’t feel she was ready. Without a logical

next step, however, Nicole would be stuck in her current

role. “As a manager, I owed her a career path, but I didn’t

have the budget to create a new role and hire a new ad-

min,” says Sarah.

Instead, she decided to create an alternative role for

Nicole. Nicole would continue her duties as an HR ad-

ministrator but also take on two of Sarah’s client groups

to manage. This apprentice model would allow Nicole to

learn on the job what it means to be an HR partner, with

Sarah providing her feedback and support. “It helps her

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When to Grant a Promotion or Raise

learn in a manageable, supported way, rather than trial

by fi re,” explains Sarah. Sarah spoke with the leaders of

each client group. She made it clear that although Nicole

was still learning the role, she would make their groups

her fi rst priority and Sarah would be there if any issues

came up. “I asked for their help and explained the bene-

fi t,” says Sarah. Nicole has since taken on more responsi-

bility, and Sarah says she is well on her way to qualifying

for the partner role.

Amy Gallo is a contributing editor at Harvard Business

Review and the author of the HBR Guide to Managing

Confl ict at Work.

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Chapter 13

Tips for Record

Keeping

To prepare for annual reviews, many managers fi nd it

useful to keep a fi le (electronic or hard copy) on every

employee’s performance and update it throughout the

year. Documenting employee performance entails spe-

cial legal considerations, so consult your human resource

manager or internal legal team. If you don’t have either

resource in your organization, consult a lawyer who spe-

cializes in employment law. This is especially advisable

when a person’s performance is beginning to suffer or if

you may need to fi re them.

Here are a few things to consider when preparing em-

ployee records:

• Record the date and specifi cs of what occurred:

“Jane started sending detailed agendas prior to our

weekly meeting with marketing, thereby allowing

everyone time to prepare and send adjustments as

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Formal Performance Appraisals

necessary. This helped the team dive in and cover a

large number of topics in a short period of time.”

• Stick to the facts: Note the behaviors (for example,

Joe’s follow-up e-mail campaigns increased sales

by 10%) rather than judgments (for example, Mary

doesn’t know how to manage her time).

• Whenever possible, make your notes on the same

day that you’ve given someone feedback, while it’s

still fresh in your mind.

• Hang on to e-mails or notes that highlight the ac-

complishments of your employee, whether they’re

instances you’ve noticed yourself or praise from

others.

• For performance issues, document the issue and

the next steps, including timelines, action items,

training, specifi c goals, and expected outcomes.

• Check in (via e-mail or a face-to-face meeting)

with other people who are in a position to evaluate

your employee’s performance, such as direct re-

ports, clients, vendors, and peers. Ask for feedback

on qualities or behaviors, including specifi c ex-

amples that support their observations. Document

their feedback, and add it to your fi le.

• Request regular informal progress reports from

your employee that explain how their work is pro-

gressing, as well as any concerns or problems they

may be having. This will tip you off if there are any

issues brewing in your employee’s performance

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Tips for Record Keeping

and give you the heads-up about what they plan to

do next.

When it comes time to conduct your employee’s annual

review, the bulk of the work will already be done, since

you’ll have kept such good notes. Your task will then be

merely to review and fi nd common themes, rather than

rack your brain for highlights or relying on only the most

recent performance.

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Section 3

Tough Topics

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Chapter 14

How to Help an

Underperformer

by Amy Gallo

As a manager, you can’t accept underperformance. It’s

frustrating, it’s time-consuming, and it can demoralize

the other people on your team. But what do you do about

an employee whose performance isn’t up to snuff? How

do you provide them with the feedback they need and

help turn around the problematic behavior? And how

long do you let it go on before you cut your losses? By

facing the issue head-on and creating a correction plan

with your employee, you can set your underperformer on

the path for improvement.

What the Experts Say

Your company may have a prescribed way of handling

an underperformer, but most of those recommended

Adapted from content posted on hbr.org on June 23, 2014

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Tough Topics

processes aren’t that useful, says Jean-François Manzoni,

INSEAD professor and coauthor of the book The Set-

Up-to-Fail Syndrome: How Good Managers Cause Great

People to Fail. “When you talk to senior executives, they’ll

usually acknowledge that those don’t work,” he says. So

it’s up to you as the manager to fi gure out what to do.

“When people encounter an issue with underperfor-

mance, they really are on their own,” says Joseph Wein-

traub, coauthor of The Coaching Manager: Developing

Top Talent in Business.

Here’s how to stage a productive intervention.

Don’t ignore the problem

Too often, underperformance issues go unaddressed.

“Most performance problems aren’t dealt with directly,”

says Weintraub. “More often, instead of taking action,

the manager will transfer the person somewhere else

or let him stay put without doing anything.” This is the

wrong approach. Never allow underperformance to fes-

ter on your team. It’s rare that these situations resolve

themselves, and they will likely get worse. “You’ll be-

come more and more irritated and that’s going to show

and make the person uncomfortable,” says Manzoni. If

a problem arises, take steps toward solving it as soon as

possible.

Consider what’s causing the problem

Is the person a poor fi t for the job? Do they lack the nec-

essary skills? Or have they just misunderstood expecta-

tions? When it comes to performance, it’s common to

fi nd mismatches between what managers and employ-

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How to Help an Underperformer

ees think is important, Weintraub explains. Consider

the role you might be playing in the problem. “You may

have contributed to the negative situation,” says Man-

zoni. “After all, it’s rare that it’s all the subordinate’s fault

just as it’s rare that it’s all the boss’s.” Don’t focus exclu-

sively on what the underperformer needs to do to remedy

the situation—think about what changes you can make

as well.

Ask others what you might be missing

Before you act, look at the problem objectively. Talk to

the person’s previous boss or someone who’s worked with

them, or conduct a 360 review. When approaching other

people, though, do it carefully and confi dentially. Man-

zoni suggests you say something like: “I’m worried that

my frustration may be clouding my judgment. All I can

see are the mistakes he’s making. I want to make an hon-

est effort to see what I’m missing.” Look for evidence that

proves your assumptions wrong.

Talk to the underperformer

Once you’ve checked in with others, talk to the employee

directly. Explain exactly what you’re observing, point to

ways the team’s work is affected, and make clear that

you want to help. Manzoni suggests the conversation go

something like this: “I’m seeing issues with your perfor-

mance. I believe that you can do better and I know that

I may be contributing to the problem. So how do we get

out of this? How do we improve?” It’s important to en-

gage the person in brainstorming solutions. “Ask them

to come up with ideas,” says Weintraub. Don’t expect

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Tough Topics

an immediate response though. They may need time

to digest your feedback and come back later with some

proposals.

Confi rm that the person is coachable

In most cases, the next step would be to arrange ongoing

feedback or coaching sessions. But you can’t coach some-

one who doesn’t agree that they need help. In the initial

conversation—and throughout the intervention—the

employee must acknowledge the problem. “If someone

says, ‘I am who I am’ or implies that they’re not going to

change, then you’ve got to make a decision whether you

can live with the issue and at what cost,” says Weintraub.

On the other hand, if you see a willingness to change and

a genuine interest in improving, chances are you can

work together to turn things around.

Make a plan

Once you’ve confi rmed that the person is coachable,

create a concrete plan for what both you and the em-

ployee are going to do differently, agreeing on measur-

able actions so you can mark progress. Write down the

specifi c goals to be met and plan the execution of these

tasks by assigning start and end dates. Then identify

what resources the employee needs to accomplish those

goals, whether time, equipment, or assistance or coach-

ing from others. Once you’ve outlined everything on

paper, ask them how they feel about the plan, answer-

ing any questions or clarifying any points as necessary.

You don’t want them to make promises they can’t meet,

and you want to make sure you’re in agreement moving

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How to Help an Underperformer

forward. Then, give them time. “Everyone needs time

to change and maybe learn or acquire new skills,” says

Weintraub.

Regularly monitor progress

Once the conversation is over, the manager’s work isn’t

done. You must follow up to make sure that the correc-

tion plan is being implemented. Ask the person to check

in with you regularly, or set up specifi c dates in the future

to check progress. It may be helpful to ask the employee

if they have someone they’d like you to enlist in the ef-

fort. Weintraub suggests you ask: “Is there anyone you

trust who can provide me with feedback about how well

you’re doing in making these changes?” Doing this sends

a positive message: “It says I want this to work and I want

you to feel comfortable; I’m not going to sneak around

your back.”

Respect confi dentiality

Along the way, it’s important to keep what’s happening

confi dential—while also letting others know you’re work-

ing on the underperformance problem. Manzoni admits

that this is a tricky balancing act. Don’t discuss the spe-

cifi c details with others, he says. But you might tell them

something like: “Bill and I are working together on his

output and lately we’ve had good discussions. I need your

help in being as positive and supportive as you can.”

Praise and reward positive change

If the person makes positive changes, say so. Make clear

that you’ve noticed developments, and reward your

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employee accordingly. “At some point, if the nonper-

former has improved, be sure to take them off the death

spiral. You want a team that can make mistakes and learn

from them,” says Weintraub.

If there isn’t improvement, take action

Of course, if things don’t get better, change the tenor of

the discussion. “At some point you leave coaching and

get into the consequences speech. You might say, ‘Let

me be very clear that this is the third time this has hap-

pened, and since your behavior hasn’t changed, I need

to explain the consequences,’” says Weintraub. Disciplin-

ary actions, particularly letting someone go, shouldn’t be

taken lightly. “When you fi re somebody, it not only affects

that person, but also you, the fi rm, and everybody around

you,” says Manzoni.

While it may be painful to fi re someone, it may be the

best option for your team. “It’s disheartening if you see

the person next to you not performing,” says Weintraub.

Manzoni elaborates: “The person you’re asking to leave is

only one of the stakeholders. The people left behind are

the more important ones . . . When people feel the pro-

cess is fair, they’re willing to accept a negative outcome.”

Principles to Remember

Do:

• Take action as soon as possible—the sooner you

intervene the better

• Consider how you might be contributing to the

performance issues

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How to Help an Underperformer

• Make a concrete, measurable plan for

improvement

Don’t:

• Assume the issue is resolved after one conversation

• Try to coach someone who is unwilling to admit

that there’s an issue

• Talk about specifi c performance issues with others

on the team

Case Study 1: Commit to the

Time Investment

Allie Rogovin managed a fi ve-person team at Teach

For America when she brought in Max (name has been

changed) as a recruiting coordinator. The job had two

main responsibilities: completing administrative duties

that supported the recruiting team and managing special

projects. Allie recognized that the administrative com-

ponent wasn’t that exciting, so she “let him know that

the better and faster he completed these tasks, the more

time he’d have for the fun projects.” But before long, Max

was struggling with the core part of his role. “I realized a

couple months into the job he wasn’t getting his admin-

istrative duties done in time,” she admits.

Allie started by giving Max an action plan template.

She asked him to take 20 minutes at the end of each

day to enter and prioritize all of his tasks. She then re-

viewed his list every evening and gave him input on how

he might shuffl e his priorities for the next day. They also

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WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING ON HBR.ORG

Yes, it’s important to gauge whether the employee is

coachable. It is equally important to determine if the

manager is competent to coach the employee through

the process. Too many managers lack the skill or pa-

tience to help the employee work their way through the

performance issue. The best manager-teacher-coach

will be fl exible in helping the employee utilize skills and

talents diff erent from the manager’s rather than using

the old, stale, “Here, let me show you how it’s done.”

—Posted by Mike

Do you have the right person in the right position?

And if so, have you translated the organization’s vi-

sion to their position? Too many times we put people

in positions, thinking they are the right person, and

then we don’t help them succeed. We don’t translate

the vision of the company into their specifi c area and

set specifi c key performance indicators for that person

or team.

So, when you address this problem, remember to go

back to the basic, foundational reason for that person’s

position, and let them know how it helps achieve the

overall vision.

—Posted by RJ

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How to Help an Underperformer

started meeting three times a week instead of just once

a week.

“He was a very valuable team member, and I knew he

could do a good job. That made me want to invest time

in working with him,” she says. She continued meeting

with Max regularly and reviewing his priorities for three

months: “I didn’t think it was going to be that long but I

wanted to see that he was building new habits.” Max still

occasionally missed deadlines but he was showing defi -

nite signs of improvement.

“We tweaked the plan along the way and he eventually

got into the swing of things,” she says. “I frankly wouldn’t

have done it if I didn’t see huge potential in him.”

Case Study 2: Recognize When

Change Won’t Happen

Bill Wright (not his real name), a business developer at a

residential building company, hired a new project man-

ager last summer. We’ll call him Jack. Right from the

start, Bill saw performance issues. One of Jack’s primary

responsibilities was to develop small projects. That meant

defi ning the scope of the project, talking with homeown-

ers, negotiating with subcontractors, and coordinating

with design professionals. “He was taking too long to get

things done. What should have taken days, was taking

three to four weeks,” Bill says. This was problematic for

many reasons: “I was supposed to be billing his time to

the client but I couldn’t bill for the amount of time he

was putting in. Plus, I had disgruntled homeowners who

were wondering why things were taking so long.”

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Bill met with Jack weekly to review the current work-

load, prioritize tasks, and resolve any issues. “I wanted

to help him move things forward, but eventually I got so

frustrated that I started to take projects over,” Bill says.

At Jack’s 90-day review, Bill had a frank conversation

with his employee about the consequences of not be-

ing able to turn around his performance. “When I asked

what he needed, Jack said that he wanted more than an

hour of my time each week to get more input on his work.

I said I was happy to do that and asked him to go ahead

and schedule a regular meeting time,” Bill says. But Jack

never followed up or put any additional time on Bill’s

calendar.

“It was very clear that it wasn’t working out. There

were never signs of any progress.” That’s when Bill sat

Jack down and made it clear that his job was on the line.

Again, there was no change in behavior, so several weeks

later, he let Jack go. “I look back on it and realize I made

a bad hire. I recently hired his replacement and it’s like

night and day. He already gets the job.”

Amy Gallo is a contributing editor at Harvard Business

Review and the author of the HBR Guide to Managing

Confl ict at Work.

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Chapter 15

Delivering

Criticism to

a Defensive

Employee

by Holly Weeks

How do you handle giving unfavorable feedback to some-

one who will surely take it badly—and I mean really

badly? Think shouting, tears, defensiveness, accusations,

personal attacks, revising history, twisting words—pick

your nightmare.

Consider the case of Melissa, who was the team leader

on a recently concluded project that had been an unsat-

isfactory experience for the whole group. For most of the

team, the project was a disappointment from the start:

Adapted from content posted on hbr.org on August 12, 2015

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team members were assigned, not self-selected; it was

not a high-profi le project; and the deliverables were re-

ally important only for Melissa’s mentor’s research. Me-

lissa’s role was not a powerful one. She was fi rst among

equals and the liaison to management, but had more re-

sponsibility than actual authority. The carrot that man-

agement held out to members of the team was that this

was a stepping-stone project: if the results were satisfac-

tory, they could anticipate higher-profi le projects going

forward.

James, a team member working from a remote loca-

tion, handled the situation by making the project a lower

priority than his other work. He often fi nished his tasks

late or failed to deliver at all, but he knew Melissa would

pick up the slack because it was in her mentor’s inter-

est for someone to do so. He considered this a pragmatic

solution—he had a lot of work to do. His miscalculation,

however, was to assume that the team’s work would be

seen only as a whole. Instead, when the project ended,

Melissa was asked to recommend individuals from the

team for a new, more important project. James would

not be one of them, and Melissa had scheduled a feed-

back session with him to let him know.

Melissa knew the conversation would not go well.

James was known to shout at people, distort their words,

accuse them of victimizing him, and more. Melissa’s own

temperament was unlike his, and the thought of giving

James negative feedback was a nightmare.

How should Melissa handle the situation?

When we fear someone’s reaction, most of us look

for techniques to make the other person act differently.

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But when they get disagreeable feedback, people gener-

ally repeat tactics that they’ve had success with in the

past—that’s why they use them. In the face of negative

feedback, it’s likely that James will be surprised and an-

gry. He’s likely to believe that Melissa misrepresented the

project’s outcome and is scapegoating him, robbing him

of the only benefi t of four months’ work. In James’ view,

how he responds makes sense: Melissa is not reliable, not

his boss, and intends to hurt him. Why would he act dif-

ferently? He wants her to back off.

Melissa foresees that scenario, but her temperament

makes her vulnerable to choosing what business theo-

rist Chris Argyris calls “defensive strategies”—ambigu-

ous, counterproductive behavior chosen to avoid inter-

personal discomfort. Examples of this might be Melissa

deferring to James, apologizing and agreeing that he is

being misused, while stressing that she is just the mes-

senger. Or she might e-mail the message, letting him

simmer in solitude. Or she could ask someone else to tell

him. Any of these would protect Melissa from immedi-

ate discomfort, but they also signal weak competence.

Defensive strategies become “skilled incompetence,”

Argyris says—we get really good at avoiding the diffi -

cult bits, but can’t reach good outcomes and never really

accomplish our goals. That can’t be recommended as a

feedback approach, even if it seems better than butting

heads.

Yet if Melissa does try to toughen up and match James’

confrontational style, even though she knows fi rsthand

that won’t be well received, it’s sure to backfi re. Emotions

will rise, and the conversation will degenerate on both

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sides, destroying the relationship and potentially both of

their reputations.

Melissa needs to try a different approach. One tactic is

to focus on immunizing herself against her own vulner-

ability to James’ diffi cult behavior. This is like a scientist

who, when studying how a pathogen compromises a cell,

focuses on the cell, not the bug.

How would Melissa self-immunize against James’

out bursts? By recognizing that she has to react to the tac-

tic for it to work. Instead of reacting, she can neutralize

how she responds, without giving in or giving up what

she has to say. To get there, she can use a blueprint that

pulls together three attributes of speaking well in tough

moments: clear content, neutral tone, and temperate

phrasing.

Clear content: Let your words do your work for

you. Say what you mean. Imagine that you are

a newscaster and that it’s important that people

understand the information. If your counterpart

distorts what you say, repeat it just as you said it

the fi rst time.

Neutral tone: Tone is the nonverbal part of the mes-

sage you’re delivering. It’s the infl ection in your voice,

your facial expressions, and your conscious and un-

conscious body language. These all carry emotional

weight in a diffi cult conversation. It’s hard to use a

neutral tone when your emotions are running high.

That’s why you need to practice it ahead of time, so

you become accustomed to using it. Think of the

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Delivering Criticism to a Defensive Employee

classic neutrality of NASA communications in tough

situations: “Houston, we have a problem.”

Temperate phrasing: There are lots of different ways

to say what you have to say. Some are considered

and nonconfrontational; some baldly provoke your

counter part with loaded language. If your counter-

part dismisses, resists, or throws back your words,

he’s not likely to hold on to your content—so choose

your words carefully. (See the sidebar “Phrases to

Make Sure You’re Heard.”)

PHRASES TO MAKE SURE YOU’RE HEARD

By Amy Gallo

• “My perspective is based on the following

assumptions . . .”

• “I came to this conclusion because . . .”

• “I’d love to hear your reaction to what I

just said.”

• “Do you see any fl aws in my reasoning?”

• “Do you see the situation diff erently?”

Adapted from the HBR Guide to Managing Confl ict at Work (product

#15006), Harvard Business Review Press, 2015.

Amy Gallo is a contributing editor at Harvard Business Review and the

author of the HBR Guide to Managing Confl ict at Work.

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Clear content, neutral tone, and temperate phrasing

are a package deal. Melissa won’t get good results if she

uses temperate phrasing, but mixes her message with a

lot of contradictory body language. Nor will it work well if

she softens her content because she thinks it is too blunt.

Being blunt is a characteristic of intemperate phrasing,

not of content. So softening the content to fi x a problem

of phrasing won’t get her where she wants to go.

If Melissa says to James, “In February, March, and

April, the team didn’t get the deliverables you committed

to on the dates you agreed to,” her content is clear and

her phrasing is temperate. We have to imagine that her

tone is neutral, but Melissa can do it. If she says, “With

those omissions, I can’t stand behind a recommendation

for you,” she is clear and temperate again. We do under-

stand that the news is not good and James is still likely to

dip into his arsenal of diffi cult tactics. But Melissa is on

solid ground, neither altering her message nor respond-

ing to his tactics. With this blueprint in place, repetition

can be a good friend: if James challenges her or distorts

her message, Melissa can repeat what she has said, rather

than following James down a rabbit hole. When it’s time

to end the meeting, she can say something simple such

as: “Thank you for meeting with me. [Short pause.]

I wish this had worked out differently.”

Will James be happy with this conversation? I think

not. Nobody likes unfavorable feedback. But remember,

when delivering negative feedback to someone who’s

likely to get defensive, it’s not your job to make the other

person feel better. It’s your job to convey the information

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Delivering Criticism to a Defensive Employee

in a clear, neutral, and temperate way—by sticking to the

facts and to the blueprint.

Holly Weeks publishes, teaches, and consults on com-

munications issues. She is Adjunct Lecturer in Public

Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School and the author of

Failure to Communicate: How Conversations Go Wrong

and What You Can Do to Right Them (Harvard Business School Press, 2008).

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Chapter 16

How to Give

Star Performers

Productive

Feedback

by Amy Gallo

As counterintuitive as it may seem, giving feedback to

a top performer can be even tougher than giving it to

an underperformer or a combative employee. Top per-

formers may not have obvious development needs, and

in identifying those needs, you can feel like you’re being

nitpicky or overdemanding. In addition, top performers

may not be used to hearing constructive feedback and

may bristle at the slightest hint that they’re not perfect.

But giving your stars good feedback is essential to

keeping them engaged, focused, and motivated. Luckily,

Adapted from content posted on hbr.org on December 3, 2009

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Tough Topics

feedback discussions do not need to be unpleasant, espe-

cially with top performers. Instead of dreading your next

conversation with them, think of it as an exciting oppor-

tunity to celebrate success and discuss what’s next.

What the Experts Say

Don’t be tempted to bend the rules for top performers.

No matter who the receiver is, follow good feedback

practice. Do your homework: Gather data and details to

support your point of view. Always describe behaviors,

not traits. Don’t dwell on the past; focus on what the em-

ployee can change in the future. Check for understanding

and clarify and agree on the next steps and a fair way to

measure progress.

That said, feedback for your top performers does re-

quire special care. Don’t assume your star is perfect.

INSEAD professor Jean-François Manzoni says, “Every-

one has some room for improvement, in this job or the

next, within our current set of capabilities or a broader

set that will likely come in handy in the future.” You do

your stars a disservice if you fail to help them fi gure out

how they can continue to grow.

When conducting your research, remember that re-

sults don’t always speak for themselves. High performers

often have great results, yet it’s important to understand

how they achieve those results and at what cost. Unfor-

tunately, they often get results by forgoing other things,

such as caring for their people, building alliances with

others, or maintaining a healthy work-life balance. In ad-

dition, top performers’ strengths may often be their weak-

nesses. For instance, an employee who has the ability to

stay out of workplace drama and focus on her work may

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How to Give Star Performers Productive Feedback

be perceived by peers as unapproachable. Think carefully

about the behaviors that have enabled your star to suc-

ceed—they may be the same behaviors holding her back.

To make the most of your feedback sessions, regularly

discuss these three topics: current performance, the next

performance frontier, and future goals and aspirations.

Express gratitude for current performance

Many managers make the mistake of assuming that their

top performers already know how well they are doing.

Always start your feedback session by specifi cally stat-

ing what your star has accomplished. Show gratitude for

their contributions and successes. As Manzoni says, “Ad-

vice is more likely to be welcome if it builds on comments

acknowledging and celebrating this year’s performance

and is clearly positioned at helping the subordinate con-

tinue to develop beyond the current role and capability

set.” Constructive feedback is more easily received if it is

preceded by genuine appreciation for hard work. Given

how valuable your star is to you and your organization,

you can’t express enough how much you value them.

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING ON HBR.ORG

If you’re not getting constructive feedback from your

manager, you don’t need to wait for review time to ask.

Explain to your manager that you want feedback. After

a project milestone or a particularly important meet-

ing, ask your manager if she has any feedback for you.

( continued)

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Tough Topics

( continued)

You can ask questions such as, “Do you think I han-

dled that OK?” or “Do you have any advice about how I

might do better next time?” Be prepared to ask follow-

up questions, especially if you are a star performer.

Chances are you’re doing great and your manager will

need to be prompted to think about how you can im-

prove. Many managers are inexperienced in giving

feedback, and the more you can be clear about what

you are looking for, the more helpful it will be to [your

manager].

—Posted by Amy

I’ve seen star performers leave organizations because

they are starved for constructive feedback from their

managers. They often assume that their manager

doesn’t care about their performance because of the

lack of feedback they receive.

—Posted by Gabrielle

What I fi nd useful is to give feedback that helps shape

the person’s personal goals as well as professional

goals. For example, I have one employee who is pas-

sionate about the Middle East and Arabic studies. So

we found a way at UniversalGiving to let her fi nd and

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How to Give Star Performers Productive Feedback

source NGOs (nongovernmental organizations) in that

area. It fi ts her goals, and it fi ts ours. She moved from

Executive Assistance (which she did very well) to NGO

Marketing.

—Posted by Pamela

Research is clear on the importance of feedback—both

positive and negative—on employee engagement. It’s

those employees who are ignored who just don’t care

to give their all. Gallup proved this in a study showing:

• Managers who focus on employee strengths

have 61% engaged employees and 1% actively

disengaged.

• Managers who focus on employee weaknesses

have 45% engaged employees and 22% actively

disengaged.

• Managers who ignore their employees have

2% engaged employees and 40% actively

disengaged.

It’s critical to note that it is the direct manager’s be-

havior that has the most impact on engagement. Too

many, however, prefer to just close the door and ignore

their teams.

—Posted by Derek

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Discuss obstacles to their development

Your top performer is likely committed to self-improve-

ment—that’s probably one of the ways he became a top

performer. As a manager, it’s your responsibility to help

him determine how to keep improving. Tap into that

commitment and engage your high performer in a dis-

cussion about how he might achieve the next level of per-

formance, whether it is a new sales target or a promotion.

Discussions should include acknowledging what might

be standing in the way and how he can overcome those

obstacles. These don’t need to be negative conversations,

however. Manzoni had a particularly good manager who

adeptly helped him think about what was next and how

he could get there. As Manzoni says, “I never felt criti-

cized. Instead, I walked into his offi ce six feet tall, and I

came out of it nine feet tall.”

Identify future goals and aspirations

Once you and your star have agreed on where she is

headed, ask about her motivation and values. Ask

prompting questions such as “What do you want to be

known for?” or “What matters most to you?” This will

give her a chance to refl ect on her career path and how

this current role and the next performance frontier fi t

in. It will give your high performer what Jamie Harris,

a senior consultant at Interaction Associates, describes

as a “window into greater awareness about what enables

[your star] to succeed in the current situation and what

she wants to achieve next.” It will also allow you to fi g-

ure out how you can align the person’s motivations with

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How to Give Star Performers Productive Feedback

those of the company. Harris says, “Some people perform

well in any context, but people will almost always per-

form well when their own excellence is aligned with that

of the organization.”

As you give feedback to high performers, solicit their

input on how you are doing as a manager. Ask ques-

tions such as “How can I continue to support your high

performance?” or “What can we do as an organization

to keep getting better and supporting your great work?”

This is important because, as Harris says, it “shows

that you’re their ally in achieving what they want to

achieve. This also helps cement their connection to the

organization.”

Frequency is key

In giving feedback to your stars, frequency is crucial.

Harris warns that you shouldn’t be tempted to leave

your high performers alone. He says, “The higher the

performer, the more frequently you should be providing

feedback.” Don’t wait for review time. You and your com-

pany depend on retaining top performers. Therefore, it

is a wise investment of your time and energy to support

and develop them.

Principles to Remember

Do:

• Give both positive and constructive feedback to

high performers regularly

• Identify development areas, even if there are

only a few

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• Focus on the future and ask about motivations

and goals

Don’t:

• Presume your stars have reached the limits of their

performance

• Leave your top performers alone

• Assume your best workers know how appreciated

they are

Case Study: Reframing Feedback in

the Context of Long-Term Goals

Gretchen Anderson has worked with many young, am-

bitious professionals throughout her career. During her

tenure at a strategy consulting fi rm, Gretchen managed

a particularly ambitious consultant named Melissa.

Melissa was an extremely hardworking associate—so

hardworking that Gretchen and others at the fi rm were

concerned she would not be able to sustain her acceler-

ated pace. Her reviews consisted mostly of positive feed-

back about her performance. However, Gretchen felt she

needed to address the pace of Melissa’s work: “I didn’t

want her to be another burnout story.”

Upon hearing the feedback, Melissa became very emo-

tional. She didn’t understand why Gretchen would thank

her for her hard work and then tell her to stop working

so hard. She felt she should be the judge of when she was

working too much. In each of Melissa’s feedback sessions,

this issue became a source of intense emotion for Melissa

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How to Give Star Performers Productive Feedback

and confl ict with Gretchen. Melissa regularly asked for

follow-up sessions to keep discussing the issue and grill-

ing Gretchen about the fairness of the feedback.

After a half-dozen conversations, Gretchen decided she

needed to fi nd a way to reframe the issue so Melissa could

understand what was at stake. Instead of starting the

sessions focused on current performance, Gretchen be-

gan by asking Melissa about her long-term career goals.

Gretchen said, “I knew I couldn’t change her nature, but

I could focus on helping her change her behavior as long

as I could get her in the right frame of mind fi rst.”

Melissa said she wanted to be promoted to manager

as soon as possible. With that goal as the backdrop,

Gretchen was able to explain more clearly to Melissa the

consequences of her work pace: As a manager, Melissa

would need to set an example for her associates. Also, if

she was constantly working at capacity, how would she

handle a last-minute client request? Melissa needed to

fi gure out how to build more spaces into her schedule so

that when she became a manager, she’d be able to serve

her clients well and treat her associates fairly. Melissa’s

drive to work hard was not going to go away, so instead

of battling that, Gretchen gave her a reason she could

relate to for modifying her behavior.

Amy Gallo is a contributing editor at Harvard Business

Review and the author of the HBR Guide to Managing

Confl ict at Work.

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Chapter 17

Prioritizing

Feedback—

Even When

Time Is Short

by Daisy Wademan Dowling

Virtually all of the young executives I work with want to

be good managers and mentors. They just don’t have the

time—or so they believe. “I could either bring in a new

deal or I could take one of my people out for lunch to talk

about their career,” a fi nancial services leader told me re-

cently. “In this industry and in this market, which one do

you think I’m going to pick?”

Good question. It’s not easy to help your employees

develop while you’re trying to take advantage of every

Adapted from the HBR Guide to Coaching Employees (product

#13990), Harvard Business Review Press, 2015

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Tough Topics

business opportunity, but you can make it easier on your-

self, in part by giving feedback effi ciently.

Once you’ve identifi ed that you need to give feedback

to a direct report, make that process more effi cient in

three ways.

Create a Standard Way In

For the majority of managers, providing feedback—par-

ticularly constructive feedback—is stressful and requires

signifi cant forethought. How should you bring up the

bungled analysis, the hurdles to promotion, or even the

meeting that went unusually well? Like chess masters,

we spend most of our time contemplating the fi rst move.

That’s why the key to reducing the time you spend mull-

ing over and preparing for each conversation is to have

a standard way in: a simple, routinized way to open dis-

cussions about performance.

Keep it simple, and announce directly what’s to come.

A straightforward “I’m going to give you some feedback”

or “Are you open to my coaching on this?” gets immediate

attention and sets the right tone. It will make it easier to

prepare for the game if you have your opener ready. Fur-

thermore, your direct reports will become familiar with

your opener, and that will help them be attuned to and

hear the feedback more clearly.

Be Blunt

The number-one mistake executives make in coaching

and delivering feedback to their people is being insuffi -

ciently candid—typically, because they don’t want to be

mean. If you’ve ever used the phrase “Maybe you could . . .”

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Prioritizing Feedback—Even When Time Is Short

in a coaching conversation or asked one of your people

to “think about” a performance issue, there’s a 99% prob-

ability you’re not being blunt enough. But the more can-

did you are, the more likely your direct report is to hear

your message, and thus the more likely you are to have

impact, and quickly. The trick to being candid without

feeling like an ogre? Be honest, be sincere, be personal—

while addressing the issue head-on.

The best feedback I ever received came a few years

into my career, directly after a terrible meeting I had

with senior management in which I had been both un-

prepared and defensive. As we rode down in the elevator

afterward, my boss said quietly, “Next time, I expect you

to do better.” Don’t dance around the issues, and don’t let

the recipient do so either.

Ask for Playback

If your feedback doesn’t stick, you’ll need to deliver it

a second time—and a third, and a fourth—all of which

takes your valuable time and managerial energy. To avoid

the need for encore performances, make sure you’ve

made an impact on the fi rst go-round by asking the per-

son to paraphrase what he heard. If he can clearly explain

to you—in his own words—what he needs to change or

do next, that goes a long way to ensuring he’s gotten the

message. Then you’ll know that the conversation is over

and you can get back to other things. If the message is

muddled, you can correct it immediately. In either case,

you’ve curtailed the need for future follow-up.

By doing these things regularly (perhaps even daily),

you’ll not only save yourself and your direct report time,

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Tough Topics

but your employees will feel that you’re not just their

boss, but a coach. They’ll sharpen their skills and stay

motivated. And for any manager, that’s time well spent.

Daisy Wademan Dowling serves as managing director and

head of talent development for the Blackstone Group, the

global asset management fi rm. She is also the author of

Remember Who You Are (Harvard Business School Press, 2004) and a regular contributor to HBR.

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Chapter 18

Navigating the

Choppy Waters

of Cross-Cultural

Feedback

by Andy Molinsky

Although many of us don’t like to do it, we know that

critiquing others’ work—ideally in a constructive, polite,

empowering manner—is an essential part of our jobs. But

does critical feedback work similarly across cultures? Do

people in Shanghai provide critical feedback in the same

way as people in Stuttgart, Strasbourg, and Stockholm?

Nein, non, and nej.

Instead, they confront situations where they do have

to adjust their feedback style, and sometimes that’s easier

Adapted from content posted on hbr.org on February 15, 2013

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Tough Topics

said than done. Take the case of Jens, a German execu-

tive who was sent by the German corporate headquarters

of his company to improve effi ciency at the company’s

manufacturing plant in Shanghai. All his efforts, how-

ever, seemed to be producing the exact opposite result.

Employee productivity and effectiveness were both go-

ing down, and Jens could not fi gure out what was going

wrong. He was using everything he knew that worked in

Germany—especially in terms of performance feedback.

In fact, he made doubly sure to be just as demanding and

exacting with his Chinese employees as he would have

been with German staff. If his Chinese employees failed

to produce what he was looking for, Jens would be “on it,”

providing immediate critique to get the process moving

back in the right direction. But this approach failed mis-

erably. Rather than improving effi ciency, Jens seemed

to be reducing it, and his own bosses from corporate

started to make calls. The entire situation was becoming

a disaster.

It turns out that what worked in Germany in terms of

tough, critical, to-the-point negative feedback was actu-

ally demotivating to Jens’s new Chinese employees, who

were used to a far gentler feedback style. In Germany, you

typically don’t single out specifi c accomplishments or of-

fer praise unless the accomplishment is truly extraordi-

nary. Employees are expected to do a particular job, and

when they do that job, they do not need to be recognized.

In China—at least at this particular plant—the culture

was quite different. Employees expected more positive

reinforcement rather than pure critique. Positive com-

ments were what motivated them to increase productiv-

ity and put forth that extra, discretionary effort.

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Navigating the Choppy Waters of Cross-Cultural Feedback

It took quite some time and effort on Jens’s part to

recognize this difference and to be willing to adapt his

behavior to accommodate the Chinese approach because

to him, this motivational style felt awkward and unnatu-

ral. He didn’t feel like himself when he was “soft” with

his employees, and he had serious doubts about the ef-

fectiveness of doing so. However, over time and through

quite a bit of trial and error, Jens was able to develop a

new feedback style that worked in the Chinese setting

and also felt acceptable (or acceptable enough) to his

German mind-set. It took time and effort, but in the end

was quite effective.

Clearly, performance feedback can be very different

across cultures, whether you’re in Germany, China, the

UK, or the US. Given that fact and our interest in becom-

ing effective global managers, what can you do to ensure

your style fi ts the new setting?

• Learn the new cultural rules. Many managers I

speak with tell me how they had just assumed

their style was universal, and that lack of aware-

ness was what initially got them into trouble.

How direct and to-the-point are you expected to

be? How important is it to save face or protect

the social standing of others when delivering

feedback in group settings? Learning the cultural

code by reading up on the culture and observing

it in action is the very fi rst step toward developing

cultural fl uency.

• Find a cultural mentor. In Jens’s case, he had a

Chinese-born cultural mentor to help guide him

out of this quagmire. Although this particular

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Tough Topics

consultant didn’t share Jens’s German culture, he

was globally savvy, having worked in high-level po-

sitions in multinational companies for many years.

A mentor who appreciates your position as well as

the expectations of the new culture can help you

craft a new style that fi ts where you are and that

feels authentic to you.

• Customize your behavior. Don’t assume you have

to follow the other culture’s behavior to the letter

to be successful. You often can create a blend or a

hybrid that feels comfortable (enough) for you that

is effective in the new setting. Jens, for example,

was able to adjust his feedback style to be some-

what less frank than his German approach, and

it worked.

As organizations become more global, most of us will

be face to face with colleagues of different cultural back-

grounds, whether it’s abroad or in our own offi ces. Learn-

ing how to navigate diffi cult conversations and to provide

critique across cultures is certainly a challenge. But with

these tips in mind, you can face this challenge head-on,

no matter what part of the world you’re in.

Andy Molinsky is a professor of International Manage-

ment and Organizational Behavior at the Brandeis Inter-

national Business School. He is the author of the book

Global Dexterity: How to Adapt Your Behavior across

Cultures without Losing Yourself in the Process (Harvard Business Review Press, 2013).

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Chapter 19

How to Discuss

Performance with

Your Team

by Rebecca Knight

The majority of this book has been geared toward giving

individuals feedback. But you’re not always dealing with

one person at a time. What if you’re assessing a team’s

work? What type of constructive criticism is appropriate

in a group setting? How much is too much? And how

should your colleagues help?

Just because you’re facing a group of employees, rather

than just one, doesn’t mean you must hold your tongue.

There are a few ways that you can provide feedback to the

entire team so that they all benefi t.

Adapted from content posted on hbr.org on June 16, 2014

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What the Experts Say

Providing feedback isn’t solely the team leader’s respon-

sibility, according to Mary Shapiro, author of the HBR

Guide to Leading Teams. For starters, that would be im-

practical. “You can’t be the only one holding everyone ac-

countable because you can’t possibly observe everything

that’s going on,” she says. Second, if you’re the only one

praising or critiquing, group dynamics suffer. “You want

to give everyone the opportunity to say his piece,” she

says. Your job as manager is to ensure that team mem-

bers are “providing regular constructive feedback,” says

Roger Schwarz, organizational psychologist and author

of Smart Leaders, Smarter Teams. “There needs to be an

expectation within the team that this is a shared leader-

ship responsibility,” he says. Here are some principles to

help you lay the groundwork for ensuring and enhancing

this effective team practice.

Set expectations early

“When a team works well together, it’s because its mem-

bers are operating from the same mind-set and are clear

about their goals and their norms,” says Schwarz. At the

start of a new project, help your direct reports “decide

how they’re going to work together”—and importantly,

how they will “hold each other accountable,” says Shapiro.

She recommends coming up with an “explicit agreement”

about how the team will handle issues like the division

of labor and deadlines. Stipulate, for example, that if a

colleague knows he is going to miss an important dead-

line for his portion of a project, he must e-mail the team

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How to Discuss Performance with Your Team

at least 24 hours in advance. “If someone doesn’t follow

through on the expectations the team created, he’ll get

feedback from the group about what happened because

he fell short.”

Create opportunities for regular check-ins

There’s no hard-and-fast rule about how often your team

should meet to review how things are going, but in gen-

eral, “it’s better to start out with more structure and relax

it over time, than to start out with too little structure and

have to impose it later,” Shapiro says. When you’re in the

early stages of creating a project plan, schedule regular

check-ins as part of the timeline. “If the team is running

smoothly, you can always cancel the meeting.”

Ask general questions

Giving and receiving feedback is a skill—and most people

are not naturally good at it, says Shapiro. “One of your

goals is to develop your team’s capacity to give feedback

and help people get used to articulating how they feel the

team is doing.” Take baby steps. At the second or third

check-in, ask the group general questions such as, “On a

scale of 1 to 5, how well is the team sharing the workload?

What needs to change?” As the leader, you’re the modera-

tor of this conversation. Once team members have spo-

ken, offer your view about “where the team excels and

where it faces challenges,” Schwarz adds.

Work your way up to structured reviews

As your team gets accustomed to working together and

sharing feedback, “you need to do a deeper dive into how

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team members are doing at the individual level,” says

Shapiro. Ask each person to prepare specifi c reviews of

colleagues to be read aloud at the next meeting. “Every

team member should say one thing they appreciate about

the other members and one thing that would be helpful

if they did differently.” The aim is to help “people under-

stand how their behavior is impacting others,” she says.

“If they hear the same kind of feedback from multiple

people, that is powerful.” When it’s your turn, Schwarz

recommends validating your observations with others.

“Ask: ‘Are you seeing things the same way?’ Get other

people’s reactions.”

Keep performance issues out in the open

The management mantra for giving individuals feedback

is: “Praise in public, criticize in private.” But in team set-

tings, this goes out the window, according to Schwarz. “In

the traditional view, it’s inappropriate to raise issues in a

meeting that would make people uncomfortable or put

people on the spot.” But your job as a leader is not always

to make people feel comfortable. When teams have prob-

lems, “it should all be out in the open,” he says. “You alone

can’t help people improve; there needs to be a group

plan.” After you’ve “harnessed the power of the group”

to prompt change, one-on-one conversations with strug-

gling colleagues are then in order, says Shapiro. “Say to

them: ‘What did you hear from the team? How are you

going to do things differently? And how can I help?’”

Foster team relationships

Confl icts between coworkers are inevitable. But, Schwarz

says, “you can’t just say, ‘I’ll handle it,’ because [as the

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How to Discuss Performance with Your Team

manager] you can’t solve a problem to which you’re not

a primary stakeholder. You can coach people on how to

have diffi cult conversations, and you can help facilitate

those conversations, but team members need to address

issues where the interdependencies lie.” Help colleagues

build trust before problems arise by encouraging open

conversation. And, when there is confl ict, make sure they

understand, they need to “give feedback directly to each

other,” says Schwarz. Adds Shapiro: “The only way good

work gets done is through good relationships—the better

the relationship, the better the work.”

Debrief every project

At the end of a project or when your team is disband-

ing, schedule a fi nal check-in to discuss “what worked

and what didn’t, what should we bring forward and

what should we do differently next time,” says Schwarz.

Take careful notes: the information gleaned in this ses-

sion should not only be part of the organization’s fi nal

project review, but also part of each team member’s

annual performance appraisal, says Shapiro. The objec-

tive is to “provide closure on the team and also deter-

mine what each member needs to do to further develop,”

she says.

Principles to Remember

Do:

• Make sure your team understands that feedback is

a shared leadership responsibility

• Schedule routine check-in meetings

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• Keep the tone positive by encouraging team

members to say what they appreciate about

others’ contributions

Don’t:

• Shy away from performance issues

• Deliver your own feedback to the team with-

out asking them how they think they’re doing

fi rst

• Put yourself in the middle of personality

confl icts

Case Study 1: Create Opportunities

for Team and Individual Refl ection

Once every quarter, Laree Daniel—chief administrative

offi cer of Afl ac, the insurance company—assembles an

ad hoc team around a particular customer incident for

an in-depth feedback session. “I take a customer case

study in which we either did very well or very poorly, and

I gather everyone that touched the customer in some

form,” she says.

First, Laree makes sure everyone is up to speed. Team

members are given an information packet that includes a

write-up of the incident, transcripts of phone calls, cop-

ies of customer letters, and copies of the company’s re-

sponses. Next, she poses a series of questions to the team:

What worked well? Where were the gaps? What can we

do better?

The goal, she says, is to get the team to refl ect on the

company’s behavior from both the customer’s perspec-

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How to Discuss Performance with Your Team

tive and shareholder’s. “This isn’t about blame, and I’m

not scolding anyone,” she says. “I am the facilitator and I

make it a neutral environment.”

During these feedback meetings, colleagues often have

epiphanies. “They realize: ‘I didn’t know [my behavior]

would have that impact,’ ” she says. “It becomes a dynamic

learning experience.”

The feedback and information she picks up from those

meetings are used to make process improvements. “Of-

ten the best ideas come from those people who were clos-

est to the work.”

Case Study 2: Focus on Empowering

Your Team

David S. Rose, the angel investor and CEO of Gust—a

platform for the sourcing and management of early-stage

investments—has a simple approach when it comes to

giving group feedback. “The goal is not to depress the

team,” he says. “I try to keep everything upbeat and lay

out our strengths and our challenges.

A few years ago, for instance, he was involved in lead-

ing a 15-person technical team at a software company.

The group’s biggest issue was its disappointing B2B

product suite. “Customers were unhappy and the front-

end salespeople were being yelled at,” he says. “As a team,

we had some good individual contributors but we needed

to get better at working together. I couldn’t just walk in

and give feedback along the lines of: ‘These products are

terrible; you’re all fi red.’ We needed to identify the orga-

nizational problems and come up with a prescription for

a path forward.”

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Tough Topics

He broke the team into subgroups of two or three peo-

ple, and he tasked each with brainstorming how to man-

age a particular inter-team challenge. The subgroups

then provided feedback to everyone else; based on that,

the team developed a strategy to improve workfl ow and

communication. “We came up with a plan and the whole

team felt empowered,” he says. “We knew what the prob-

lems were and we fi gured out how to solve them.”

Within nine months, he says, the products were in far

better shape.

Rebecca Knight is a freelance journalist in Boston and a

lecturer at Wesleyan University. Her work has been pub-

lished in the New York Times, USA Today, and the Fi-

nancial Times.

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Index

accountability, 131

bluntness, 168, 182–183

achievement, versus advance-

body language, 166, 168

ment, 114–115

bosses

alienation, of team members,

accountability of, 65, 68–69,

62–63

131

appreciation, expressing,

assumptions by, about weak

13–14, 90–91, 173. See also

performers, 55–59, 77–78

recognition

categorical thinking by,

apprenticeship model, for on-

56–58

the-job learning, 144–145

compatibility between em-

assessing performance, 99,

ployees and, 51–52

107–109, 111–112, 137,

disengagement from, 60

154–155, 172–173

employee performance and,

assumptions

51, 52, 58–59, 154–155

about boss’s thinking, 59

expectations of, 49, 59

challenging your, 49, 72–73, 76

mind-set of, 72–73, 86

across cultures, 186–188

recognition of employees by,

about weak performers, 55–59,

89–94

72–73

reputation of, 61–62

autonomy, 58–59

set-up-to-fail syndrome and,

awards. See rewards

47–79

burnout, 62

bad news. See negative feedback

biases, 29, 39–40, 41, 44

categorical thinking, 57–58

binary framing, 28–30, 33–34,

check-in meetings, 4, 126, 109,

36, 38, 40–41, 43

157, 191, 193

H6952.indb 197

2/18/16 9:56 AM

Index

coaching, 85, 100–101, 118,

defensive employees, giving

156–157, 159–161

feedback to, 163–169

collaborative mind-set, 86

defensive reactions, 19, 20, 30,

company goals, 124–125

33, 60–61, 163–169

company values, tying recogni-

defensive strategies, 165

tion to, 91–92

direct reports. See employees

compensation, 101, 107, 113,

disengagement, 60

135–145

documentation of employee

competence-challenge balance,

performance, 147–149

137–138

duration, of feedback, 17

compliments. See positive

feedback

confi dentiality, 157, 159

effort, 16

constructive criticism, 14–15,

emotions

100–101, 119

managing, 20–21

for experts, 8–9

negative feedback and,

for high performers, 172–178

165–166

for teams, 189–196

employee records. See docu-

See also negative feedback

mentation of employee

conversations

performance

with defensive employees,

employees

166–168

accountability of, 131

escalation during, 32–33, 35

alienation of, 62–63

feedback ( see feedback)

assessing performance of,

role-playing diffi cult, 22

99, 107–109, 111–112, 137,

with star performers, 173,

154–155, 172–173

176–177

autonomy of, 58–59

with underperformers, 155–156

burnout in, 62

about unhealthy boss-

compatibility between boss

subordinate dynamics,

and, 51–52

65–70

cultivating relationship with,

corrective feedback. See negative

12–13

feedback

defensive, 19, 20, 30, 33,

criticism. See negative feedback

60–61, 163–169

cross-cultural feedback, 185–188

disengagement of, 60

cultural issues, 185–188

emotional connections with,

15, 18

engagement of, 141–142, 175

decision making, about promo-

expectations for, 49, 59, 77,

tions and raises, 113, 114,

98–99, 102–103, 109

135–145

feedback from, 22

198

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Index

fi ring ( see termination)

formal, 4, 5–6 ( see also perfor-

goals of, 98–99, 109, 123–133,

mance appraisals)

176–177, 179

framing, 28–34

“in” group and “out” group, 49,

importance of, 3–4

56–58

limited time and prioritizing,

growth of, 85–86, 176–177

181–184

motivation of, 10, 15, 58–59,

making acceptable, 43

140

negative ( see negative

new roles for, 137–139, 141,

feedback)

143–144

ongoing, 4–5, 21–22, 98

performance appraisals of ( see

positive ( see positive feedback)

performance appraisals)

preparation for, 16–18

poor performance by

reactions to, 9–10, 11–12, 15,

( see under performing

33, 163–169

employees)

reframing, 29–30, 41–44,

promotion of, 114, 135–145

178–179

ranking, 101–102

rehearsing, 21–22

reactions to feedback by,

setting for, 17–18

9–10, 11–12, 15, 33,

standardization of, 182

163–169

for star performers, 171–179

recognition of, 89–94

for teams, 189–196

relationship building with,

360-degree, 111, 155

12–16

timing of, 17, 23–24

shutting down by, 59–61

types, 4–5

strengths of, 118, 120–121,

when to give, 23–24

175

feedback sandwich, 97, 100

underperforming ( see under-

fi ght-or-fl ight response, 11–12,

performing employees)

18, 20

weaknesses of, 117–121, 175

fi ring employees. See termination

employee turnover, 141–142

formal feedback, 4, 5–6. See also

experts, 8–10

performance appraisals

framing

binary, 28–30, 33–34, 36, 38,

facts, focusing on, 18–19

40–41, 43

fairness, 43, 75–76

feedback, 28–34

false consensus effect, 29, 41

frozen, 30, 33–34, 36, 41, 43

feedback

narrow, 28–30, 33–34, 36,

asking for, from employees, 22

38–40, 43

asking for repetition of, 183

open, 29–30

cross-cultural, 185–188

restrictive, 28, 33–34, 36,

factual, 18–19

38–44

199

20-H6952-IX.indd 199

2/19/16 8:16 AM

Index

frozen framing, 30, 33–34, 36,

managers. See bosses

41, 43

manipulation, positive feedback

fundamental attribution error,

as, 15

29, 39–40

motivation, 10, 15, 58–59, 140

motives, assumptions about

others’, 19

goals

accountability and, 131

attainable versus challenging,

narrow framing, 28–30, 33–34,

125

36, 38–40, 43

company, 124–125

negative feedback

employee, 4, 5, 109, 123–133

common mistakes in giving,

of high performers, 176–179

82

long-term, 178–179

cross-cultural issues and,

monitoring progress toward,

185–188

126

defensive reactions to, 19, 20,

overcoming obstacles to, 126

30, 33, 60–61, 163–169

personal, 127, 130–131, 174–175

delivering, 18–19, 27–45,

planning for achieving,

81–87, 100–101, 155–156,

125–126

166–168

setting employee, 124–125,

discomfort over giving, 81–82,

127, 131, 132

164–166

team, 93–94

indirect approach to, 34,

36–39

motivation and, 10

high performers. See star

need for, 7–10

performers

phrasing of, 167

ratio of, to positive, 13–14

tone for, 166–167

“in” groups, 49, 56–58, 62,

neutral tone, for negative feed-

63–64

back, 166–167

intrinsic motivation, 140

novices, 8–9, 10

job sculpting, 127–130

ongoing feedback, 4–5, 21–22, 98

on-the-job learning, 144–145

open framing, 29–30

location. See physical location, for

openness, 50, 78, 86

feedback

organizational values, tying

long-term goals, 176, 178–179

recognition to, 91–92

200

H6952.indb 200

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Index

“out” groups, 49, 56–58, 62–64

performance reviews. See perfor-

output measurement, 108.

mance appraisals

See also performance

personal connections, cultivat-

measurement

ing, 12–13

personal goals, 127, 130–131,

174–175

performance, assessing, 99,

physical location, for feedback,

107–109, 111–112, 137,

17–18

154–155, 172–173

positive feedback

performance appraisals, 4, 5–6

motivation and, 10

accurate measure of perfor-

for novices, 8–9

mance and, 107–115

pitfalls of, 14–16

compensation increases and,

ratio of, to negative, 13–14

101, 107, 135

recognition, 89–94

constructive approach to,

resentment toward, 15–16

100–101

strengthening relationships

delivering effective, 97–105

with, 13–14

employee goals and, 123–133

for underperformers,

expectations for, 98–99,

157–158

102–103

praise, 8, 10

focus on weaknesses during,

problems with, 14–16

117–121

for underperformers,

holding your ground during,

157–158

101–102

See also positive feedback

input from others for, 109

project debriefi ngs, 193

laying groundwork for,

promotions, 114, 135–145

99–100

proximity, 18

promotions and, 114, 135

Pygmalion effect, 51

ratings and, 101–102

record keeping and, 147–149

tone for, 100, 102–103

raises, 101, 107, 135–145

of underperformers, 100

ratings, in performance ap-

performance management,

praisals, 101–102

110–113

recognition, 89–94

performance measurement,

frequent delivery of, 90–91

107–115, 137

matching award to achieve-

performance planning meeting,

ment, 92–93

98–99, 123–124

motivation and, 140

performance problems, 23,

real-time, 142

153–162, 192

of star performers, 173

201

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2/18/16 9:56 AM

Index

recognition ( continued)

self-fulfi lling and self-

tailoring to individual, 93

reinforcing nature of,

of teams, 93–94

53–55, 65

tying to organizational values,

teams and, 62–63

91–92

skilled incompetence, 165

See also positive feedback

star performers

record keeping, 147–149

assessing performance of,

reframing feedback, 29–30,

172–173

41–44, 178–179

goals and aspirations of,

relationships

176–179

cultivating, 12–16

obstacles to development of,

team, 192–193

176

reprimanding, 85

productive feedback for, 4,

resentment, toward positive feed-

171–179

back, 15–16

recognition of, 90–91, 173

restrictive framing, 28, 33–34,

rewarding, 91–93, 114–115,

36, 38–44

135–145

rewards

strengths and weaknesses of,

matching to achievement,

172–173

92–93

treatment of, 56–58

for positive change, 157–158

workload of, 62

promotions, 135–145

stars. See star performers

raises, 135–145

subordinates. See employees

tailoring to individual, 93

role-playing, 22

teams

empowering, 195–196

scripted escalation, 33, 35

expectations for, 190–191

self-esteem, 16, 119

feedback for, 189–196

self-justifi cation, 60–61. See also

fostering relationships in,

defensive reactions

192–193

setting, for feedback, 17–18

project debriefi ngs for, 193

set-up-to-fail syndrome, 47–79

recognition of, 93–94

beginnings of, 48–49, 51–53

regular check-ins for, 191

costs of, 49, 61–63

set-up-to-fail syndrome and,

deconstructing, 55–61

62–63

intervention for, 65–76

structured reviews for, 191–192

overcoming, 63–76

temperate phrasing, 167–168

overview of, 47–48

termination, 147, 158, 162

prevention of, 76–79

threat response, 11–12, 18, 20

reversing, 49–50

360-degree feedback, 111, 155

202

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Index

timing, of feedback, 17, 23–24

coaching, 156–157, 159–161

tone, 166–167

consequences for, 158

top performers. See star

fi ring, 158, 162

performers

giving feedback to, 3, 154,

trust, 53, 83, 84, 91, 193

155–156

helping, 153–162

intervention for, 65–76

underperforming employees

performance reviews of, 100

assumptions about, 55–59,

set-up-to-fail syndrome and,

72–73, 77–78

47–79

causes of weak performance

shutting down by, 59–61

in, 68–69, 154–155

talking to, 155–156

203

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Notes

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Notes

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HBR Guide to

Coaching

Employees

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What You’ll Learn

When you’re swamped with work, it’s hard to make time

to coach your employees—and do it well. But if you don’t

help them build their skills, they’ll keep coming to you for

answers instead of fi nding their own solutions. That kind

of hand-holding kills productivity and creativity, and you

can’t sustain it. In the long run, it eats up a lot more time

and energy than investing in people’s development.

So you really must coach to be an effective man-

ager. Got a star on your team who’s eager to advance?

An under performer who’s dragging the group down? A

steady contributor who feels bored and neglected? With

all of them, you’ll need to agree on goals for growth, mo-

tivate them to achieve those goals, support their efforts,

and measure their progress. This guide gives you the

tools to do that.

You’ll get better at:

• Asking the right questions before you dispense

advice

• Creating realistic but inspiring plans for growth

H6577.indb v

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What You’ll Learn

• Providing the support employees need to achieve

peak performance

• Tapping their learning styles to make greater

progress

• Giving them feedback they’ll actually apply

• Giving them room to grapple with problems and

discover solutions

• Engaging your employees and fostering

independence

• Matching people’s skills with your organization’s

needs

• Customizing your approach

vi

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Contents

Introduction: Why Coach?

xi

Coaching is leading.

BY ED BATISTA

Section 1: PREPARING TO COACH YOUR

EMPLOYEES

1. Shift Your Thinking to Coach Eff ectively

3

You’re learning right along with your

employees.

BY CANDICE FRANKOVELGIA

2. Set the Stage to Stimulate Growth

13

A practical, concrete plan for achieving

peak performance.

BY EDWARD M. HALLOWELL, MD

3. Earn Your Employees’ Trust

29

Build rapport so that they can hear your

feedback.

BY JIM DOUGHERTY

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Contents

Section 2: COACHING YOUR EMPLOYEES

4. Holding a Coaching Session

39

Ask questions, articulate goals, reframe

challenges.

BY AMY JEN SU

5. Following Up After a Coaching Session

51

Monitor and adjust.

BY PAM KRULITZ AND NINA BOWMAN

6. Giving Feedback That Sticks

61

Prevent a fi ght-or-fl i ght r esponse.

BY ED BATISTA

7. Enlist Knowledge Coaches

73

Tap the “deep smarts” of your subject-matter

experts.

BY DOROTHY LEONARD AND WALTER SWAP

8. Coaching Eff ectively in Less Time

77

Adopt effi

cient habits and claim found time.

BY DAISY WADEMAN DOWLING

9. Help People Help Themselves

85

They’ll continue to grow through

self-coaching.

BY ED BATISTA

10. Avoid Common Coaching Mistakes

93

Pitfalls to watch out for—and how to

remedy them.

BY MURIEL MAIGNAN WILKINS

viii

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Contents

Section 3: CUSTOMIZE YOUR COACHING

11. Tailor Your Coaching to People’s

Learning Styles

103

Find approaches to learning that your

employees will be motivated to follow.

BY DAVID A. KOLB AND KAY PETERSON

12. Coaching Your Stars, Steadies, and Strugglers

115

You can’t—and shouldn’t—give them

equal time.

BY JIM GRINNELL

13. Coaching Your Rookie Managers

123

Help them avoid classic beginners’ errors.

BY CAROL A. WALKER

14. Coaching Rising Managers to Emotional

Maturity 135

Don’t promote people before they’re ready.

BY KERRY A. BUNKER, KATHY E. KRAM,

AND SHARON TING

15. Coaching Teams

149

When to intervene—and how.

BY J. RICHARD HACKMAN

Index 165

ix

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Introduction:

Why Coach?

by Ed Batista

After graduating from business school, I was hired by a

founding board of directors to launch a new organiza-

tion, the Nonprofi t Technology Enterprise Network. I

had shared a leadership position before, but this was my

fi rst time as a solo chief executive, and I believed it was

my resp onsibility to come up with the best ideas myself

and champion them aggressively.

This approach led to a number of confl icts with my

directors. A mentor of mine on the board took me aside

and said, “We think you’re a talented young guy, but you

have some rough edges. We’d like you to invest in your-

self and get a coach.” One of my former professors had a

coaching practice, and I asked her to take me on as a cli-

ent. That was one of the best things I’ve ever done.

Although few coaching clients ultimately decide to be-

come coaches, as I did, my positive experience of coach-

ing is typical. The tremendous growth in the fi eld over

xi

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Introduction

the past 20 years has been driven by consistent reports

from clients who feel more effective and fulfi lled as a re-

sult of the coaching they’ve received. And it doesn’t help

only at the individual level. Although researchers can’t

yet precisely measure coaching’s effect on organizational

performance, numerous studies (published in the Jour-

nal of Management, Consulting Psychology Journal, and

other publications) show a positive impact.

Being coached helped me understand that I could

make the biggest difference as a leader not by doing more

than everyone else but by empowering other people to do

more and motivating them to do their best. This meant

letting go of certain responsibilities and recognizing the

limits of my expertise. I didn’t need to have all the an-

swers; I just needed to ask the right questions. In short,

I came to realize that effective leadership looks a lot like

coaching.

But what do we mean by coaching in the fi rst place?

The simplest defi nition is “asking questions that help

people discover the answers that are right for them.”

A more specifi c defi nition that applies to you as a

leader and manager is “a style of management primar-

ily characterized by asking employees questions in or-

der to help them fulfi ll their immediate responsibili-

ties more effectively and advance their development as

professionals over time.” The emphasis on asking ques-

tions is noteworthy when we consider that conven-

tional leadership roles typically position the leader as

the expert, someone who provides answers and whose

domain knowledge is one of the foundations of her au-

thority. In contrast, when a leader acts as a coach, she

xii

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Introduction

needs to adopt a different mind-set and add value in

different ways.

It’s no coincidence that the increased demand for

coaching has accompanied the shift from command-

and-control hierarchies to fl atter, more distributed or-

ganizations. In the 1950s, management thinker Peter

Drucker coined the term knowledge worker to describe

a newly emerging cohort among the white-collar ranks;

today most professionals fall into this category. Because

they require (and desire) little or no direct supervi-

sion and often know more about their tasks than their

managers do, knowledge workers usually respond well

to coaching. Unlike directive, top-down management,

coaching allows them to make the most of their exper-

tise while compelling them to stretch and grow. As their

manager, you set overall direction for them—but you let

them fi gure out how best to get there.

Many senior managers and HR executives have come

to view coaching as an investment in high potentials or as

a perk for stars. Others still see coaching mainly as a cor-

rective measure for underperformers. Daniel Goleman

noted in his classic Harvard Business Review (HBR) arti-

cle “Leadership That Gets Results” (March–April 2000) that despite coaching’s merits, it was used least often

among the management styles he studied. Leaders told

Goleman that they didn’t have time to coach their em-

ployees, and you may feel the same way. But coaching is

broadly applicable, and managers at all levels can benefi t

from working with their direct reports in this way. You

may need to encourage those around you to participate—

and you may need to be persuaded yourself.

xiii

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Introduction

If so, I urge you to give it a try and gauge the return on

your investment. Although external coaches like me will

always play an important role in supporting leaders and

their teams, coaching shouldn’t be our exclusive domain.

It’s an essential management tool, and there are circum-

stances when a “coaching manager” can be more useful

than a professional coach. I often help clients refl ect on

diffi cult experiences in order to make sense of what hap-

pened and extract some learning, but these conversations

occur days or even weeks after the event. A leader who

has coaching skills can help team members begin to re-

fl ect on a diffi cult experience immediately. Highly skilled

leaders can even facilitate these discussions with their

entire team present, allowing everyone to learn simulta-

neously. When leaders view coaching as the sole purview

of external professionals like me, they miss countless op-

portunities to add value.

My experience as a coaching client, as someone who

teaches coaching to MBA students, and as a professional

coach has shown me the value of coaching as a manage-

ment technique, and a large and growing body of re-

search reinforces this conclusion. It takes time and ef-

fort, but the material in this guide will help you integrate

coaching methods and processes into your own manage-

ment style.

There’s no “right” way to coach, so you’ll have to decide

for yourself which approaches described in the chapters

that follow work best for you and your direct reports.

Like any new skill, coaching requires practice, and you’ll

need to step outside your comfort zone as you experi-

xiv

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Introduction

ment. Don’t be too quick to write off a technique just be-

cause it feels awkward at fi rst.

Coaching presents every manager with challenges.

You may have to reconsider your leadership style and the

ways in which you add value. You may feel reluctant to

surrender control or to give people room to make mis-

takes, and you’ll almost certainly be tempted to jump in

with solutions when they’re struggling with a problem.

But those challenges get easier the more you coach, and

the payoff is enormous: You’ll tap your employees’ full

potential while leading more strategically.

Last year a client who’d founded a successful company

concluded that his management style was holding back

the fi rm. He and his senior managers had so many tacti-

cal responsibilities that they weren’t truly leading. They

were putting out fi res, with a limited capacity to take a

longer view and make the systemic changes the business

needed.

So my client decided to restructure his role, delegating

some tasks to his senior managers. He coached them as

they assumed these duties, prompting them with ques-

tions to solve problems in creative new ways rather than

simply telling them what had worked in the past. They,

in turn, took the same approach with their direct reports.

As a result, the company’s management team raised its

sights and focused on more-strategic issues, which had

a positive impact on the business. And my client found

that he was actually more productive while spending less

time in the offi ce. When he sold the company and stepped

down from his leadership role, he left with confi dence

xv

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Introduction

that the management team would adjust seamlessly, and

the business has continued to thrive.

That’s what’s possible when you coach your employ-

ees. That’s why it’s absolutely worth your time. And that’s

why you’ll fi nd this guide an invaluable addition to your

leadership reading.

Ed Batista is an executive coach and an instructor at the

Stanford Graduate School of Business. He writes regu-

larly on issues related to coaching and professional devel-

opment at www.edbatista.com, and he is currently writ-

ing a book on self-coaching for Harvard Business Review

Press.

xvi

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Section 1

Preparing to

Coach Your

Employees

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Chapter 1

Shift Your

Thinking

to Coach

Eff ectively

by Candice Frankovelgia

Do you ever say to yourself (or others), “This person

just doesn’t get it” or “This person will never have what

it takes”? If so, you may have what Stanford psycholo-

gist Carol Dweck calls a fi xed mind-set, which will se-

verely limit your ability to make a difference as a coach.

Low expectations rarely yield growth and often lead to

frustration on both sides. You may occasionally encounter

someone who truly can’t develop, but the real barrier is

most often the belief that the person won’t make progress.

Adapted from the Center for Creative Leadership’s course “Coaching

for Greater Effectiveness.” For further information, visit www.ccl.org.

3

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Preparing to Coach Your Employees

It’s easy to fall into this trap. After you’ve acquired a lot

of experience and knowledge in your fi eld, doing things

yourself may seem simpler and faster than helping your

direct reports improve their critical thinking, technical,

or organizational skills. But that’s a short-term solution

that leads to long-term problems. If you keep providing

all the answers, people will keep lining up at your door

looking for them.

Shifting Your Mind-Set

In the end, it’s actually less time-consuming to embrace

a growth mind-set—one that assumes your people can

learn. If you invest in their coaching and development

early on, you’ll reap benefi ts later: They’ll start solving

more of their own day-to-day problems, freeing you to

focus on strategic issues and developing more leaders.

Shifting to a growth mind-set takes effort. In the

coaching workshops I teach to managers, participants

talk about how hard it can be at fi rst—but once they

make the switch, they start seeing better outcomes.

An R&D director at a manufacturing company had

an employee who struggled to give clear, concise, orga-

nized presentations. When that person asked for input

on a draft slide deck, the manager’s impulse was to mark

it up with suggestions to reorganize the information

and cut down on the length. But then she caught her-

self. She called the employee in for a conversation and

asked clarifying questions: What are the key points you

want to convey? How much does your audience already

know? What points will be diffi cult for people to grasp? If

you were in their place, would this presentation help you

4

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Shift Your Thinking to Coach Eff ectively

reach your goals? What can you do to bring it more in

line with what your stakeholders are hoping to achieve?

With renewed energy and focus, the employee went back

to work and improved the presentation without heavy-

handed intervention from the manager.

A growth mind-set can feel risky because it forces you,

the coach, to develop skills of your own that go beyond

subject-matter expertise. You must ask questions and re-

ally listen without jumping in to provide what you be-

lieve is the “right” answer. And you must be honest about

the performance you expect and where your employee

stands, to make sure you’re on the same page about the

development work that needs to be done. Otherwise,

you’re resigning yourself to the status quo—so why even

bother to coach?

Sharpening Your Coaching Skills

Here are the key skills you’ll need to hone before you can

help others learn and grow:

Reconciling intent and impact

You can gauge an employee’s impact on the organiza-

tion by observing him in action and using performance

metrics such as satisfaction surveys and sales fi gures. But

you won’t know his intent—the driving force behind his

behavior—unless he shares it with you.

When employees underperform, there’s often a gap

between intent and impact, and that can lead to great

misunderstanding and frustration. Coaching them ef-

fectively involves clarifying their intent so that you can

close that gap. How? By asking them what impact they

5

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Preparing to Coach Your Employees

meant to have. For instance, you might say to someone,

“You were quiet at the last sales meeting—can we talk

about why?” You and others may have viewed his silence

as resistance or disengagement, but perhaps he was just

trying to cede the fl oor for a change, knowing that he can

be domineering in group discussions.

Once you’ve asked the question, listen closely to the

answer. (See the sidebar “Active Listening Tactics.”) Dis-

cuss behaviors that confuse or surprise you, especially

those that don’t match the intent he describes.

ACTIVE LISTENING TACTICS

Pay attention.  Build rapport by giving your full atten-

tion. Maintain comfortable eye contact and an open

posture (avoid hunching, crossing your legs, or hun-

kering behind a desk). Be genuinely curious. Allow

time and opportunity for the other person to think and

speak. Avoid distractions such as e-mail.

Notice nonverbal cues. “Hear” the speaker’s nonver-

bal messages and body language. Do the tone of voice

and facial expression match what’s being said? If not,

comment on what you notice and ask your employee to

tell you more about it.

Affi

rm what you hear.  Indicate understanding: “I hear

what you are saying” or “I’m following you. Could you

say more?” This simply means that you are listening

closely—not that you agree.

6

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Shift Your Thinking to Coach Eff ectively

You’re likely to miss out on critical information if you

fi nd yourself:

• Talking more than listening

• Suggesting solutions before the employee has the

chance to do so

• Interrupting

• Thinking about what you want to say next instead

of focusing on what your employee is saying

Refl ect what you see and hear.  Refl ect (like a mir-

ror) the other person’s emotions without agreeing or

disagreeing: “You seem worried about . . .” This en-

courages the speaker to express feelings and deepen

ex ploration.

Paraphrase what you hear.  Periodically restate ba-

sic ideas to check your grasp of key points: “If I under-

stand, your idea is . . . Did I get the essence of it? If not,

please tell me more.”

Summarize key themes.  Briefl y sum up the other per-

son’s point of view to show you’ve listened and to check

your understanding: “It sounds like your main concern

is . . .” or “These seem to be your main points . . . Is

that right?”

7

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Preparing to Coach Your Employees

• Using body language that signals impatience or

distraction—checking your e-mail, accepting

phone calls, leaning back in your chair

• Saying what you would have done differently in

the same situation

As a rule of thumb, ask more than you tell—aim for

a ratio of about 4:1. If you fl ip that ratio, you’re teach-

ing, not coaching. Though teaching plays an important

role in developing others, it’s limited to what you know.

Coaching is an interactive opportunity to discover and

create previously unknown solutions. (See the sidebar

“Teaching Versus Coaching.”)

Always assume positive intent, even when dealing

with diffi cult behavior. People usually mean well—and if

you give them the benefi t of the doubt, they’ll be more

forthcoming about their intent and more receptive to

feedback.

Recognizing your biases

Your own preferences can get in the way of discovering

others’ intent. Maybe you have a gut reaction against

certain personality types or struggle to identify with col-

leagues whose work styles differ from yours. Whatever

your biases, recognizing them allows you to move past

them by inquiring about intent rather than jumping to

conclusions or fi lling in the blanks.

To spot your biases, use frustration as your guide.

Think about what gets on your nerves at work and then

ask a few trusted colleagues for feedback. What do they

think your bugbears are? Compare their thoughts with

yours—look for similarities and patterns.

8

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Shift Your Thinking to Coach Eff ectively

TEACHING VERSUS COACHING

To develop employees’ skills, you must fi rst decide

whe ther to teach or coach. Are you working with an in-

experienced colleague or one who requires immediate

improvement? If so, you’ll want to teach, which means

showing or telling her what to do. Otherwise, you’re prob-

ably better off coaching—asking questions that prompt

her to think and solve problems on her own. That way,

your employee will gain the independence and confi -

dence she needs to grow, whether she’s trying to achieve

greater mastery in her role or take on new responsibilities.

Approach:

Used for:

Example:

Teaching:

Instructing

Having an employee

a directive

shadow you on a task

approach

or project, such as

a joint sales call, so

that she can learn by

observing you

Providing answers

Explaining the

business strategy

to a new hire

Coaching:

Encouraging

Allowing someone

a supportive

independence

to learn on the job,

approach

even if it means

risking mistakes

Serving as a resource

Providing helpful

contacts so that

your employee can

learn from others,

not just you

Adapted from Harvard Business Essentials: Coaching and Mentoring

(Harvard Business School Press, 2004)

9

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Preparing to Coach Your Employees

That exercise helped one manager recognize her ten-

dency to jump right into action rather than spend time

defi ning and aligning processes. She noticed how impa-

tient she became when team members kept pulling con-

versations back to “process” instead of “just getting the

work done.” When she asked them for candid feedback on

this, they explained that her impatience actually slowed

them down (the last thing she wanted to do) because they

often had to loop back to clarify expectations with her.

So her impact—as well as her team’s—didn’t match her

intent. She met her employees halfway by doing a better

job of clarifying expectations up front. She also encour-

aged them to make more adjustments on the fl y so they

wouldn’t get paralyzed by planning and slavish adher-

ence to process. As the general level of impatience and

frustration dropped, the group began to operate more ef-

fi ciently and enjoyed the work more.

Matching people’s skills with

big-picture needs

As a coach to your employees, you’re not just helping

them grow for their own sake—noble as that is. You’re

also boosting their ability to support the company’s mis-

sion and goals. By explicitly connecting their skills with

big-picture needs, you’ll give them a sense of purpose

and belonging, which will motivate them to grow. If you

explain how improving their communication skills will

make the team more effi cient, for example, or increase

sales to clients, they’ll be more likely to take their devel-

opment in that area as seriously as you do.

How can you get better at connecting the dots be-

tween their skills and the organization’s needs? There’s

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Shift Your Thinking to Coach Eff ectively

no magic here—again, you’ll get a wealth of information

simply by asking. Where do they feel their skills are best

used? What excites them about their work? What areas

do they struggle with? What would they like to do more

of? Less of? How do they see all that fi tting into the orga-

nization’s objectives? (For more on channeling employ-

ees’ passions and strengths, see chapter 2, “Set the Stage

to Stimulate Growth.”)

Make it clear that you’re looking out for their interests

as well as the company’s. They’ll be eager to help you fi g-

ure out how they can best serve the organization—and

how the organization (and you) can best serve them.

Developing a growth mind-set means you’re learning

right along with your employees. The more coaching

practice you get, the sharper your skills will become—but

give yourself a running start by favoring inquiry over ad-

vocacy. Ask questions about others’ intent, your own bi-

ases, and individuals’ place in the big picture. And resist

the temptation to coach by explaining how you do things.

With prompting, not lecturing, your employees will dis-

cover solutions of their own and make greater, more last-

ing progress toward their developmental goals.

Candice Frankovelgia

is a coaching portfolio manager

and a senior faculty member at the Center for Creative

Leadership.

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Chapter 2

Set the Stage to

Stimulate Growth

by Edward M. Hallowell, MD

Editor’s note: Before you begin coaching your em-

ployees, set the stage for success. Make sure they’re

doing the right jobs to begin with, they feel connected

to their work and to one another, they’re receptive,

and they’re capable of mastering the skills and tasks

their roles require. Using basic principles from brain

science, you can address each of those issues and help

people achieve peak performance.

The brain is remarkably plastic: It grows and adapts

throughout life.

That means you’re never stuck with who you are or

who your employees are. We used to think only young

Adapted from Shine: Using Brain Science to Get the Best from Your

People (product #9238), by Edward M. Hallowell, MD, Harvard Business Review Press, 2011

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Preparing to Coach Your Employees

brains could change and develop. We now know that

adult brains do, too. We can all get smarter and wiser and

happier. The conventional, dreary wisdom that people

can’t change is scientifi cally incorrect.

We’ve also discovered many of the forces that make

the brain change for better or worse. For example, chal-

lenging a person in an area where she is skilled makes

her brain grow, much like a muscle. But overwhelm-

ing her with more than she can cope with is bad for her

brain. Instilling confi dence in someone leads to improved

performance. But an atmosphere of chronic fear disables

the brain and makes performance worse.

So, what about the guy down the hall who keeps fail-

ing in his role? With proper care, he can learn to perform

at higher levels—he can continue to grow for decades.

And you, as his manager, can help him do so.

Achieving Peak Performance

Drawing on what we know about neuroplasticity, I’ve

outlined a practical plan for achieving peak performance.

By peak performance, I don’t mean taking on every task

and embracing every opportunity. When people try to do

more than they can handle, they fall short. Instead, I’m

talking about consistent excellence, with improvement

over time at a specifi c task or set of tasks.

How can people pull that off? By following these fi ve

steps, with your guidance and support.

Step 1: Select

Before your employees do anything, it’s important to

fi gure out what they should do. Help them achieve peak

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Set the Stage to Stimulate Growth

performance by selecting tasks (1) that they are good at;

(2) that they like to do; and (3) that add value to the proj-

ect or organization. The intersection of those three ele-

ments creates the magical fi eld in which consistent excel-

lence can happen.

This fi rst step infl uences everything that follows, yet it

is often overlooked. Millions of employees underachieve

simply because they stumbled into the wrong job and

never got out of it. It is critical that you know your em-

ployees well enough to help them get into the right slots

in the organization.

Consider Mary Ann, a customer service associate at a

large fi nancial services fi rm. After fi ve years of answering

customer calls, there wasn’t a problem she hadn’t heard

or solved. Even so, she never felt 100% comfortable in her

role. She got fl ustered when customers became irritated,

and she dreaded fi elding the calls. As a result, she took a bit

longer than she should answering calls in the queue, which

meant that she served fewer customers. Customer reviews

were OK but not great. In general, Mary Ann seemed to

lack enthusiasm, to merely go through the motions.

One night, while chatting with her at a company-

sponsored happy hour, her manager discovered that

Mary Ann trained volunteers at a local nonprofi t every

weekend. She loved the work and looked forward to it.

What she enjoyed most was helping the young volunteers

develop their skills.

The next day, the manager reassigned Mary Ann.

Rather than taking calls, she became responsible for

training new customer service associates. Suddenly Mary

Ann started to thrive. She was excited to come to work

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Preparing to Coach Your Employees

and brimming with new ideas for training associates and

improving customer service. Younger associates began to

look up to her. The number of calls answered by the de-

partment increased; customer reviews improved.

With her manager’s assistance, Mary Ann found the

right match for herself in the organization. She took on

the kind of work she enjoyed most, used skills that set her

apart from others, and began adding more value to the

organization—all of which allowed her to deliver peak

performance.

As Mary Ann’s manager did, look for the telltale signs

of a wrong fi t: You can tell that someone is not in the

right role if he never gets excited about his job, for ex-

ample, or if he chronically complains. This doesn’t mean

he’s dull or that the line of work he’s in is intrinsically

dull—just that he’s not assigned to the right tasks.

Investigate your employees’ skills and interests so that

you can deploy people to their (and your) best advantage.

How? By using the most powerful assessment tool ever

invented: the one-on-one conversation.

It astonishes me how few managers do this. Clients of-

ten tell me, “No one has ever asked me what I like to do

or what I do best.” They say they don’t volunteer that in-

formation because they don’t want to make waves. While

I always encourage them to speak up anyway—it is in

everyone’s best interest—it’s simpler if managers take the

initiative.

A structured interview (see the sidebar at the end of

this chapter) can help you unearth your direct reports’

strengths and passions. Ask each employee to take a few

days to think carefully about their replies to each ques-

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Set the Stage to Stimulate Growth

tion and write down their answers. Then have a conver-

sation to review the answers in person.

As you talk face-to-face, you’ll develop understanding

and trust. You’ll also be able to ask follow-up questions

and give employees the wonderful—and in some orga-

nizations, rare—experience of feeling heard. That alone

will boost their motivation and performance.

Step 2: Connect

People who feel connected to others, to their tasks, and to

the organization’s mission perform at the highest levels.

They’re loyal, excited to contribute, and even willing to

make sacrifi ces to preserve that sense of attachment. As

a manager, you can foster it by creating an environment

where it’s safe for people to be themselves and forge ties.

You’ll inspire them to do far more than they thought they

could.

The modern workplace tends to leave people

disconnected—emotionally alone, isolated, exhausted,

anxious, and afraid—with no idea how they got that

way or what to do about it. Often, they’re too mentally

overloaded or too stressed to converse and connect. This

kind of disengagement short-circuits performance more

quickly than anything else.

One of the greatest disconnectors is fear. People may

fear disapproval, a poor result, criticism, looking stu-

pid, going beyond their comfort zone, or making oth-

ers look bad. Whatever the cause, if they’re afraid, they

underachieve.

Here again, brain science shows us why. As fear

mounts, the brain’s deep centers take over. Areas like the

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Preparing to Coach Your Employees

amygdala, the hypothalamus, and the locus coeruleus

light up. Higher cortical thinking—concocting new ideas,

seeing shades of gray—ceases because the brain must

devote its full attention to the perceived threat. If there

were a saber-toothed tiger about to jump out at you, this

would be good. You would not want to be concocting new

ideas and seeing shades of gray. You’d want to be fl ee-

ing or killing the tiger. But a saber-toothed manager—or,

more generally, a culture of fear at work—can elicit the

same response. Excessive fear renders peak performance

neurologically impossible.

So make it a priority to promote positive connections

for employees—and to rein in fear.

As human beings, we are wired to connect. When we

see another person in distress, for example, our “mir-

ror neurons” create an imagined version of that distress

within us. This is the biological basis for empathy, and it

is common to us all.

Why, then, do so many people struggle to connect with

others? We’re all too busy. We do not spend enough time

together, face-to-face. We overrely on electronic connec-

tions and so don’t develop the trust required for candid

exchanges. But you can help your employees overcome

those forces. Try the following techniques:

1.

Noticing and acknowledging your employees.

People feel good when they are acknowledged—

and bad when they’re not. You do not need to

have deep conversations to promote connection.

Just saying hi or even smiling works wonders.

To walk past someone as if that person were not

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Set the Stage to Stimulate Growth

there—which happens all the time—is a surefi re

disconnector.

2. Allowing for idiosyncrasies and peccadilloes.

Encourage your employees to be who they are.

We’re all a little strange. When you are relaxed

about yourself as a manager, you give others

permission to be the same.

3. Encouraging conversation. Agree as a group

not to send e-mails without fi rst considering

whether it’s better to communicate in person or

over the phone. And never use e-mail to work

out emotionally laden issues. Simple changes

like these will reset people’s attentional sys-

tems. Employees will become less ravenous for

distraction and less likely to look to e-mails

or text messages for a “fi x.” They’ll train their

brains to wait while they do more important

work. And they will be more likely to com-

municate with others in person, which fosters

connection.

4. Encouraging breaks. When you can see that

people are starting to feel stressed, urge them

to stop what they’re doing. Even switching to

something else can help. Many “disconnecting”

episodes—fl are-ups, arguments, and the like—

occur as a direct result of stress.

5. Off ering food and drink. Food is a symbolic form

of nurturing. Stock up on fruits, nuts, and bottles

of sparkling water.

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Preparing to Coach Your Employees

6.

Fostering impromptu get-togethers. Planned

parties are fi ne, but they are often command

performances and can feel stilted. Impromptu

gatherings—grabbing lunch, going out for coffee,

catching a ball game after work—all promote

connectedness.

Step 3: Play

Not enough managers recognize the importance of play

in catalyzing peak performance. By play, I mean any

activity that involves imagination. So defi ned, it con-

stitutes the most advanced, productive activity the hu-

man brain can engage in. When workers seem dull or

apathetic, it is usually because they are not engaged in

imaginative, creative problem solving.

By valuing and promoting play, you can transform your

employees’ performance. Here are some ways to encour-

age people to leap from the humdrum to the exceptional:

1.

Ask open-ended questions. The Socratic method

remains one of the best ways to teach. Instead

of giving answers, ask questions that engage the

imagination, invite people to brainstorm and

refl ect, and help them make discoveries. For

example:

– What can we learn from what just happened?

– Where did we go wrong?

– What are we doing right?

– What else could we do?

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– What changes could we make to the

prototype?

– Why are we spending so much time on this

topic?

– What are we avoiding?

2.

Model a questioning attitude. Show people that

it is safe to disagree with the party line and with

the boss—that it is in fact good to bring up oppos-

ing points of view. You need to model this. Your

employees aren’t likely to initiate such behavior

on their own.

3.

Decorate and arrange your workspace with an

eye toward facilitating play. You might choose

lively color schemes, for example, or re arrange

work areas to increase opportunities for inter-

action, as the Atlanta Housing Authority did

when it revamped its cubicle system. It lowered

cubicle walls to improve sight lines between

employees and set up “teaming tables” where

employees could conveniently share ideas and

their work.

4.

Try what organic chemists call “retrograde syn-

thesis.” In chemistry, you work backward from

the molecule you are trying to synthesize. You

can use the same approach to jump-start play

and creativity. Simply envision your goal and

work your way back, step-by-step, until you get

to where you are now.

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Step 4: Grapple and Grow

This step is about mastering challenging tasks that mat-

ter. People who do this feel a sense of well-being and ac-

complishment—and their success makes them want to

work even harder.

But before you ask more of people, consider the

following:

• Are they operating at the intersection of what they

like, what they’re good at, and what adds value to

the organization?

• Do they feel safe at work, comfortable enough to

be candid and open, connected enough to look

forward to coming in?

• Are they imaginatively engaged with their work?

Only when you can say yes to all those questions—

that is, after you’ve helped people select, connect, and

play—will hard work lead to growth. Otherwise it leads

to stress, frustration, mistakes, depression, absentee-

ism, and inferior performance. Just as achieving mas-

tery can instill confi dence and motivation, failing to

make progress can damage self-esteem and de motivate

people.

So be on the lookout for frustration or a lack of prog-

ress. When you see a logjam, break it by redirecting em-

ployees to other tasks or providing coaching to help them

overcome obstacles. And encourage people to ask for

help when they need it. Let them know it is not only OK

but desirable to do so.

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Step 5: Shine

As your employees work hard and advance, they’ll gain

recognition—which affi rms the value of what they’ve ac-

complished. Help them shine by praising and rewarding

them for a job well executed. People who shine are mo-

tivated. They feel connected and extremely loyal to the

team, the group, and the organization. They want to keep

shining, and they want to help others shine, too.

Edward M. Hallowell, MD, a psychiatrist, served as an in-

structor at Harvard Medical School for 20 years. He is

the director of the Hallowell Centers in New York City,

San Francisco, and Sudbury, Massachusetts.

STRUCTURED INTERVIEW:

ARE YOUR EMPLOYEES DOING THE RIGHT TASKS?

Give this questionnaire to your direct reports. Lay out the

ground rules and let everyone know exactly how the infor-

mation will be used, who will have access to it, and where

it will be stored. Only after you’ve dispelled people’s fears

will they open up and give you useful information.

This questionnaire is a tool for putting what you al-

ready know about yourself into words. As you fi ll it out,

you will be generating what amounts to a neuropsycho-

logical assessment—not the kind that a doctor would

conduct, but one that is in many ways more useful.

( continued)

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Preparing to Coach Your Employees

STRUCTURED INTERVIEW:

ARE YOUR EMPLOYEES DOING THE RIGHT TASKS?

( continued)

Once you have answered these questions, you and

your manager will be better able to fi nd the right tasks

for you at work because you will have a clearer idea

of what your skills and preferences are, how you work

best in the organization, and under what conditions

you feel most comfortable and motivated.

1. What are you best at doing? (Can you think of

ways to incorporate more of what you do best

into your job?)

2. What do you most like to do? (This is not al-

ways the same as what you do best. Unless

it is illegal or bad for you, you ought to pre-

serve sizable chunks of time for what you most

like to do.)

3. What do you wish you were better at? (This may

be a skill you can develop through coaching or a

task you should delegate.)

4. What talents do you have that you haven’t devel-

oped? (Don’t say “none.” Everyone has bundles

of them. Pick a few. Just because you name

them doesn’t mean you have to develop them.)

5. What skills are you most proud of? (This may

refl ect obstacles you have overcome.)

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Set the Stage to Stimulate Growth

6. What do others say are your greatest strengths?

(This question is designed to help you identify

skills you may not value because they seem easy

to you.)

7. What have you gotten better at that you used to

be bad at? (This gives you an idea of where put-

ting in additional eff ort can pay off .)

8. What are you just not getting better at, no mat-

ter how hard you try? (This tells you where you

shouldn’t waste more time.)

9. What do you most dislike doing? (Your answer

here suggests what tasks you might want to del-

egate or hire out.)

10. The lack of which skills most gets in your way? (If

you lack a skill required in your current job and

you can’t delegate it, then that is getting in your

way. Your answer to this question might lead

you to take a course, read a book, or work with a

coach.)

11. What sorts of people do you work best and worst

with? (Do you hate to work with highly organized

analytic types, or do you love it? Do creative

types drive you crazy, or do you work well with

them? Make up your own categories.)

( continued)

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Preparing to Coach Your Employees

STRUCTURED INTERVIEW:

ARE YOUR EMPLOYEES DOING THE RIGHT TASKS?

( continued)

12. What sort of organizational culture brings out

the best in you? (It’s amazing how many people

won’t leave a culture they are hideously unsuited

to work in.)

13. What were you doing when you were

happiest in your work life? (Could you fi nd

a way to incorporate that into what you’re

doing now?)

14. What regrets do you have about how you have

run your career? (Could you make any changes

based on those regrets?)

15. What are your most cherished hopes for the

future, workwise? (What stands in the way of

realizing those hopes?)

16. What are you most proud of in your work life?

(Your answer here is another tip-off as to what

you should be doing.)

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Set the Stage to Stimulate Growth

17. What one lesson about managing a career

would you pass along to the next generation?

(This question is another way of getting at your

thoughts on what you have done, what’s worked,

and what hasn’t.)

18. What was the most important work-related

lesson you learned from your parents? (As you

refl ect on this, you will get an idea of how at-

titudes are passed from generation to generation

and shape how your mind works.)

19. What lesson did the best boss you ever had

teach you about yourself? (Other people often

know us better than we do.)

20. How could your time be better used in your cur-

rent job to add value to the organization? (Your

answer here gives your manager valuable input

he or she may never have asked for.)

Adapted from the “Hallowell Self-Report Job-Fit Scale” in Shine

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Chapter 3

Earn Your

Employees’ Trust

by Jim Dougherty

When I took over as CEO of Intralinks, a company that

provides secure Web-based electronic deal rooms, the

company was hemorrhaging so much cash that its sur-

vival was at stake. The service was going down three

times per week; we were in violation of the contract with

our largest client; our chief administrative offi cer had

just been demoted, and so on.

So what did I do on my fi rst day? I spent more than

four hours listening to client support calls at the call

center. I shared headsets with many of the team, mov-

ing from desk to desk to speak to the reps. To say they

were surprised is an understatement: Many CEOs never

visit the call center, and virtually none do it on their fi rst

afternoon on the job.

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Preparing to Coach Your Employees

I made this my priority in part because I wanted to

gain the trust of my team. I knew we had to make radical

changes to behaviors, expectations, and attitudes. There

was no time to be subtle. I needed to show I was differ-

ent, that things were going to be different, and I needed

to establish trust as quickly as possible.

As I’ve led various companies over the years, one of

the most valuable lessons I’ve learned is that establishing

trust is the top priority. Whether you are taking over a

small department, an entire division, a company, or even

a Boy Scout troop, the fi rst thing you must get is the trust

of the members. When asked, most leaders will agree to

this notion, but few do anything to act on it.

Without trust, employees won’t level with you; at

best, you’ll learn either untruths or partial truths about

how they see themselves and their roles within the or-

ganization. They won’t tell you what their own goals

are, or their weaknesses, or how they want to grow—

critical information if you’re going to help them develop

within the organization. Sometimes employees will go

out of their way to hoard and distort the truth, espe-

cially if they fear that you will throw them under the bus

if they make a mistake—or if you make a mistake. And

if you don’t have their trust, it will also make it harder

for them to hear and react constructively to your feed-

back—whether positive or corrective—about the changes

you want them to make. Finally, without trust, it is very

unlikely that you as a leader will learn the truth about

what is really going on in your organization and in the

marketplace.

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Earn Your Employees’ Trust

There are two elements to building trust: the ac-

tual meetings you have with your employees, building

your relationship as you actively coach them; and the

daily behaviors you exhibit as you go about your work

with them.

Building Trust Through Listening

The best way to start building trust is to take the time to

meet with your direct reports and hear what they have to

say. If you are new to your role, you should do this as soon

as you can; it should be one of your top priorities as you

transition. It’s important to start early on so that your

team quickly learns to see you in this light; once you’re

categorized as an untrustworthy manager or leader, it’s

hard to build back that trust.

The key concept here is to consistently fi nd focused

time to spend with your individual team members. Set

up a plan—make a promise—for how much time you’ll

spend and how often for your fi rst six months. It’s criti-

cal to do this slowly but surely rather than having a burst

of meetings at fi rst and then failing to follow through (a

common pitfall). Make sure your plan is realistic so that

you can actually meet it.

As in any relationship in life, it’s important to focus

on the person you are meeting with. The meetings can’t

be rushed. Bring a pad and take notes. Listen intently;

these fi rst meetings aren’t about you telling your employ-

ees what you expect, or giving them feedback; instead, it’s

for them to tell you about themselves, how they want to

grow, and how they see the organization.

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Preparing to Coach Your Employees

These are the questions I ask as we begin our rela -

tionship.

• If you had my job, what would be the fi rst three

things you would do? Why?

• What are your career objectives? What skills do

you want to add, experiences you want to have?

• How can we start you moving down that

path? What can be done soon to help you move

in that direction? (Brainstorm together on these

items.)

• How do you think I could help you succeed?

Once you’ve identifi ed steps that they could take, be

sure to follow through. That’s what makes you trustworthy.

For example, in my fi rst manager role, I created some-

thing we called “value-added assignments.” We’d have

a sales representative who wanted to learn more about

marketing, for example, join a team working on how to

market to a new customer segment. The sales rep would

provide a cross-discipline perspective for the team, and in

turn she would get to see how marketing really worked.

This idea came directly from the questions I had asked

this employee about what she wanted to do and learn,

and it helped her grow not only because of the experi-

ence, but also because she saw that I was listening and

responding to her own thoughts, and that I was truly in-

terested in helping her grow (and not just assigning her

more work).

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Earn Your Employees’ Trust

As you learn more about your direct reports, exchang-

ing information about your personal lives is a way to

build trust as well, but you don’t want to be too invasive.

That line is different for every person, and you’ll need

to feel it out. I usually start by asking where someone

is from: then he’ll share as much as he feels is appro-

priate. You should reciprocate with information about

yourself.

Note that you need to have a legitimate interest in

what is going on in his life. Don’t fake it. For example,

commit to memory how old his children are. I also keep a

Word document for each of my employees to remind me

about the things they’ve told me so that I’ll remember

about little Jimmy’s recital or Laila’s soccer game and can

ask about how they went.

Building Trust Through Behaviors

Listening to your employees and acting on what you

hear are one part of how you’ll gain their trust, but your

day-to-day behaviors also affect how much they be-

lieve you’re authentically interested in their growth and

development.

Here are some tips.

• Give credit where credit’s due. In any situation in

which you’re describing your team’s accomplish-

ments, think and say “we” rather than “I.” If one of

your direct reports contributed to a project, go out

of your way to credit her, especially as the project

is presented to a wider group or to management

levels higher than yours. This is a great way to

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Preparing to Coach Your Employees

show your employees that taking growth assign-

ments will bring them rewards.

• Set an example. Your team members see every-

thing you do. If you expect them to grow in certain

ways, take feedback in certain ways, or shift their

behavior in certain ways, you need to model those

things for them. If you practice what you preach,

they’ll take you at your word on other things.

• Take one for the team. Accepting an occasional

tedious assignment, or taking one off the plate of

one of your team members—especially if it means

that he’s able to attend a concert or game he

thought he’d have to miss—goes a long way toward

showing your reports that you’re on their side. It

also models selfl ess behavior for them: They’ll be

more willing to take on the next assignment you

delegate or help out when a colleague is in the

same predicament.

• Be transparent with tough decisions and feedback.

Just because you want to show you’re on their

side doesn’t mean tough decisions will favor your

team’s whims or wishes or that you won’t some-

times have strong constructive feedback. (And be-

ing known as a pushover doesn’t help you become

trusted.) When you have to convey tough news,

be clear and transparent, and provide as much

explanation as you can. Be open to questions and

feedback.

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Earn Your Employees’ Trust

By the end of my fi rst year on the job we’d signed 150

new long-term contracts (up from zero), revenue was up

by almost 600%, our burn rate was cut by 75%, and we’d

positioned ourselves to raise a $50 million round of fi -

nancing a few months later in the depth of the dot-com

winter.

None of this could have happened without the team’s

amazing growth over the course of that year, and that

couldn’t have happened if team members didn’t trust

me when I pushed them, prodded them, and demanded

the world of them. New leaders must remember that the

key to success lies in the growth of their team. Creat-

ing a trusting, honest dialogue with these key personnel

should be every new leader’s top priority.

Jim Dougherty, a veteran software CEO and entrepreneur,

is a senior lecturer at MIT Sloan School of Management.

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Section 2

Coaching Your

Employees

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Chapter 4

Holding a

Coaching Session

by Amy Jen Su

Coaching sessions are conversations between you and

your employee in which you identify areas for growth,

create development plans, perform exercises, and check

in on progress. A coaching session can kick off a specifi c

development process around a particular skill or behav-

ior as needed; you can then hold further sessions to fol-

low up and monitor progress. A coaching session can also

be a regular, more general conversation about the em-

ployee’s growth.

Coaching sessions are distinct from other types of

conversations you may already be having with your em-

ployees, such as performance reviews or regular check-

ins. Table 4–1 compares and contrasts the focus and time

frames for each of these; you’ll notice that of these three

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Coaching Your Employees

TABLE 4-1

Types of direct report meetings

Meeting type

Time horizon

Focus

Performance review

Annual;

Assess performance of the

retrospective

employee retrospectively

over a given time period

against a set of objectives

related to current job re-

sponsibilities. Formal.

One-on-one

Typically weekly or

Discuss existing business

meeting

biweekly; current

projects, work plans, and

objectives related to current

job responsibilities. Informal.

Coaching sessions

Generally once per

Discuss development and

month; retrospec-

growth. Addresses both

tive, current, and

recent and current perfor-

prospective

mance and future potential.

Can be formal or informal.

types of conversations, the coaching session is the one

that has the broadest time horizon and also looks the

farthest forward to examine, plan, and work toward your

direct report’s future.

Coaching sessions typically range from 30 minutes to

an hour, but they do not have to be long to be success-

ful. In fact, research from the Corporate Executive Board

shows that there is “no connection between time . . . and

effectiveness at development.” 1 Instead of adding more

coaching time to your already full load as a manager,

make the most of each session. You can do so by asking

the right questions and engaging in dialogue to increase

your direct report’s awareness of her own choices, ac-

tions, and behaviors, along with their impact—as well as

gain her buy in for the development plan.

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Holding a Coaching Session

Agree to Outcomes at the Start

As a fi rst step in your coaching session, work together

with your direct report to defi ne what you’re looking to

achieve. Is there a particular skill she has been working

on? A question she has about how to handle a particular

colleague or type of assignment? A long-term goal she

wants to work toward? And what kind of progress can

you expect to make in your time together today?

Encourage your employee to take part in identifying

a clear scope for the session by directly asking her what

she hopes to achieve and what she wants to make sure to

get to. You can offer ideas for further shaping the agenda

based on your previous observations, but in most cases

you’ll want to start your coaching session by asking your

direct report to share her own impressions. This might

catch her off guard; more likely she will expect you to set

the agenda. But by opening your session with a question,

you begin as you’ll hope to continue: with your employee

talking, you listening, and with both of you then building

solutions together.

There are many types of coaching sessions, but here

are three of the most popular:

• Long-term development help. For example, “I

want to increase my comfort around senior man-

agement and get better at presenting to this audi-

ence.” This type of coaching focuses on a goal that

takes time and practice, anywhere from six months

to a year, with follow-up coaching sessions at least

once per month. To keep focused on the develop-

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Coaching Your Employees

ment plan and to take the opportunity to build

successively on the learning from each session,

schedule these follow-ups in advance.

• Debrief on an event or project. For example, “The

meeting with the other team did not go as well as

planned. I would like to review what happened

and determine what I could do differently next

time.” This type focuses on learning from recent

events to identify new ideas, skills, and ways of

handling similar situations in the future. This type

of meeting often occurs in a follow-up coaching

session embedded in long-term development help,

but it may also be purely episodic: a chance to

learn from a onetime mistake or an opportunity

to praise and encourage a productive behavior.

• Short-term problem solving. For example, “Our

colleague in another division has been making

multiple requests with unreasonable deadlines. I

would like your help on how to better respond and

prioritize these.” This is a highly focused coaching

session: Your employee has something specifi c she

needs help with in real time. It requires getting to

the heart of the matter so that she leaves the ses-

sion with actionable tasks she can use to address

the problem immediately. Sometimes a short-term

problem may help uncover a longer-term develop-

ment need, but that is not always the case. These

types of problems may come up in your regular

one-on-one meetings as you delve into a project or

other day-to-day work. Recognize these as oppor-

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Holding a Coaching Session

tunities to put on your coaching hat; many manag-

ers miss them.

Setting the explicit goals of your coaching session in

this way allows you to plan how to proceed: what kinds of

questions to ask and how to frame a solution.

Build a Baseline Understanding

of the Issues

Once you understand what kind of coaching your direct

report is looking for, you will probably feel tempted to

“fi x the problem” immediately—to share your wisdom

about the topic, give her the advice you think she needs,

or carefully explain your point of view about why things

didn’t go well. But don’t do it! This is the place where

coaching most often goes wrong.

Instead, at this stage you need to get more informa-

tion to create a clear baseline understanding of the situa-

tion: Your employee very likely still knows more about it

than you do. To help her develop effectively, you need to

learn more about her point of view of the situation and

any related situations in the past, and her level of devel-

opment with the skill involved. Could she be struggling

because she has an outdated mind-set that is repeatedly

getting in the way? Does she lack a certain skill? Have

her emotions been triggered by something in a way that

is holding her back? Is she not preparing as well as she

could? Collecting background information is critical to

making an assessment of the root causes of your em-

ployee’s challenge and thus identifying an effective devel-

opment path.

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Coaching Your Employees

Tell your employee that you would like to learn more

about the situation and ask her questions that can help you

understand her perspective. For example, for the employee

with the long-term goal of becoming more comfortable

around senior management, ask questions that probe her

past experiences and their effects on her and others, as well

as her current processes. These questions might include:

• How would you describe your current level of com-

fort around our senior team?

• When you have presented to this audience in the

past, how would you describe your impact?

• How do you prepare for these interactions now?

• When have you been effective in these types of

interactions? Ineffective?

• What was different or similar about the meetings

when you were effective versus those when you

weren’t?

For an employee who is many coaching sessions in, a

focused debrief of a particular event or project is more

appropriate. In this case you can home in more closely

on the details.

• How did the presentation you gave to this group

go on Friday?

• How would you describe the impact you had?

• What worked well? What didn’t?

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Holding a Coaching Session

Or, for an employee with a short-term problem, ask

questions that give you a more concrete sense of the issue

and its impact.

• Tell me more about the situation. What are the

requests being made, and what are the deadlines

involved?

• Which of these are tied to our highest department

priorities?

• What trade-offs will we have to make in order to

meet the high-priority requests?

Keep your questions open-ended; starting your ques-

tions with the words what, how, or tell me more tends to

draw out an answer, whereas starting with why or asking

a closed-ended question (in which the answer is a simple

yes or no) can make the employee defensive. In answer-

ing your skillfully worded questions, your employee may

already begin identifying some root causes and solutions

she didn’t see before. This self-awareness will increase

her buy in for any actions or development plan that will

come out of the session.

Hold Up the Mirror, Reframe,

and Practice New Skills

Once you have a stronger understanding of the situa-

tion, it may again be tempting to simply offer a solution

or hand down a piece of advice. Instead, now aim for an

open, robust two-way dialogue in which you help the

employee herself understand possible new choices, new

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Coaching Your Employees

strategies, or new skills she could develop. Here are sev-

eral tactics for creating a productive dialogue:

• Hold up the mirror. What did you hear as your

employee spoke that particularly struck you? Of-

fer her a refl ection that redescribes the situation

she has outlined with your own perspective, and

then ask for her response to that refl ection. For

example, you might say, “Based on what you have

shared, it seems that two things may be creating

your discomfort with senior management. First,

a mind-set around positional authority may be

leading you to be more deferential than necessary.

Second, there may be an opportunity to increase

your skill in preparing for these types of inter -

actions to raise your comfort level. Do those

things resonate?”

• Frame or reframe the situation. Help her see the

situation differently. “Could I offer you a new way

of thinking about the situation? Perhaps we could

explore a broader range of what appropriate re-

spect for senior management could look like. The

frame you currently have focuses your attention

on the differences in your age and experience with

these individuals, which may be making you more

nervous and tentative. Instead, consider what it

would mean to focus on the shared conviction you

feel for what we need to do for the business. As you

hear me say these things, what resonates and what

doesn’t?”

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Holding a Coaching Session

• Practice or role-play. A coaching session is a great

time to practice new skills or a new mind-set with

your employee. In our example, you and your

employee might role-play an upcoming interaction

with senior management. You’ll get to observe her

behavior and offer real-time guidance about the

way certain behaviors can be perceived. In addition

to role-playing, you could review an ideal example

of the type of behavior or skill you are working on.

For example, review a presentation that has worked

well for senior management; you could go over it

together and discuss why this one was effective.

You can also review your direct report’s current

processes together: She could show you how she

prepares for these meetings now, and you can fi ne-

tune her preparation techniques together.

As you offer assessments, introduce possible new

frames, and practice exercises, continue to check in with

your employee to make sure that what you are saying and

doing is resonating for her. If not, take the opportunity

to ask more questions and fi nd out more about the situ-

ation before proceeding. The observations, suggestions,

and practices that you offer are the core of your coaching

session, but to be effective they need to be tailored to her

particular situation.

Ensure an Actionable and

Practical Close

As you near the end of the coaching session, ask your

employee to articulate what she’s learned and what her

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Coaching Your Employees

action items are, saying something like, “As we get to the

last ten minutes here of our session, what are the top two

or three things you are taking away from our conversa-

tion?” Your employee may highlight a-ha’s that particu-

larly struck her, or new ways of seeing things that have

helped her think differently about her situation. Or she

may share the things she is excited to practice or do

differently. Having your direct report summarize her

gains—rather than doing it yourself—helps with her buy

in; it also allows you to sense what she’s heard and what

she might yet have to learn.

Consider the coaching session as a kickoff for the em-

ployee’s actual development: The rubber will hit the road

once she puts what she’s learned to use. While you’re both

still in the room, agree on when to check in again, and

identify any tasks to be completed before then. In this

example, you and your employee might agree to meet

again in a month; in the meantime she will get ready for

another senior-level meeting using the preparation tech-

niques you worked on together in the coaching session.

Continue to demonstrate openness and support as

your time together draws to a close, asking questions

like, “Is there anything else that you hoped we would get

to today? Come by between now and our next session on

this if you have questions or need to discuss something.”

Over time, by asking so many questions of your em-

ployee as part of the coaching session, you will also help

develop her own ability to c oach herself—asking herself

the questions that you’ve often teed up for her—so that

she can continue to grow even without you by her side.

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Holding a Coaching Session

Amy Jen Su is managing partner and cofounder of Para-

vis Partners, an executive coaching and training firm. She

is an executive coach and speaker on issues of leadership

presence, communication excellence, and executive en-

durance—factors critical to a leader’s performance suc-

cess. She is coauthor with Muriel Maignan Wilkins of

Own the Room: Discover Your Signature Voice to Master

Your Leadership Presence (Harvard Business Review Press, 2013).

NOTE

1. Corporate Leadership Council Learning and Development,

Manager-Led Development Effectiveness Survey, available at

https://clc.executiveboard.com/Public/PDF/CLC_LD_Program

_Brochure.pdf.

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Chapter 5

Following Up After

a Coaching Session

by Pam Krulitz and Nina Bowman

It is often said that the real work of coaching happens

after a coaching session. That’s when you and your direct

report actually put your conversation into practice, after

all. But as a manager, how do you make sure to follow

up appropriately? And how do you know whether your

coaching is working?

Align Expectations for Follow-Up

After a coaching meeting, your direct report can quickly

become aware of how diffi cult it is to balance new coach-

ing commitments with the hectic demands of normal

day-to-day work. To keep the process on track, you need

to work with him in advance to set up a thoughtful ap-

proach for maintaining momentum between sessions.

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Coaching Your Employees

While still in the coaching meeting itself, set clear

agreements about how you will move forward. Address

the following.

• Action items. Agree on the specifi c actions that

you and your direct report will take between ses-

sions. For example, if he is working on developing

peer relationships, he may agree to have lunch

with some of those peers before your next meeting.

He may agree to hold a diffi cult conversation with

a direct report whom he’s been avoiding. Coaching

can provide an excellent accountability mecha-

nism to hold your employees to task for the things

they’ve said they want to do to develop—but only

if you clearly defi ne those actions and their dead-

lines up front.

• Feedback. Provide feedback after your initial

coaching session either in the moment or, more

likely, in additional formal coaching sessions.

Agreeing on how you will proceed and being clear

about the frequency of your involvement between

sessions will prevent your direct reports from be-

ing unnecessarily stressed or frustrated by well-

intentioned check-ins. You will also want to decide

whether others in the organization will play a

role in offering feedback throughout the coaching

process. For example, a direct report who is strug-

gling with speaking up in group settings may want

to include a peer who can observe him in meetings

and provide informal feedback.

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Following Up After a Coaching Session

• Resource needs. Ask your employee what tools

or support may be helpful. He may need specifi c

learning resources, such as articles, books, assess-

ments, or training programs. He may also need

you to connect him with others in the organiza-

tion for mentoring, or to have him shadow you in

meetings. Understanding his needs will let you

know which resources you will need to identify

and gather between coaching meetings.

As you discuss these items, ask your employee about

his preferences. Don’t just impose your way of doing

things.

Capture what you’ve agreed upon after each meeting.

Depending on the tools available and the process fol-

lowed in your organization, you may ask your direct re-

port to complete a coaching plan template or document

the goals he’s agreed to in a system that captures develop-

ment plans. Or you may simply have him send a follow-up

e-mail documenting your agreements and expectations.

Table 5–1 shows an example of a coaching action plan.

Check In on Your Direct Report

With your expectations aligned, after each coaching ses-

sion you can continue to support your employee’s devel-

opment in the following ways.

• Follow up on agreements. Because we naturally

tend to focus on what’s in front of us or what’s

due next, the longer-term agreements made in

your coaching conversation can easily fall by the

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54

H6577.indb 54

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55

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Coaching Your Employees

wayside. If you don’t follow up on those agree-

ments, however, your direct report is less likely

to take them seriously. Periodically reviewing

the written plan will hold everyone accountable:

You’ll be more likely to stick to the agreed-upon

check-in dates, provide your employee with the

resources such as the articles and books you iden-

tifi ed, and follow up with engaging others in his

development.

• Observe signs of growth. Continually assess how

your direct report is doing by keeping an eye on

his performance, however informally. Are you

seeing signs of progress in his behavior, his rela-

tionships, his attitude, or his results? Are others

speaking about him differently? For example, if he

is working on being a better listener in meetings,

you may choose to carefully observe him in a few

gatherings and jot down your own thoughts.

• Check in directly. Employees can get stuck be-

tween sessions; a new behavior may not work as

hoped, or they may get frustrated with the ups and

downs of the learning process. A simple check-

in can get them unstuck and moving forward

again. Initiate these as you’ve planned, but also

consider instituting an open-door policy that

encourages your direct reports to come to you if

they have questions. During these check-ins, ask

your employee about how things are changing and

whether he himself is seeing any signs of develop-

ment. Encourage him to jot down things that he’s

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Following Up After a Coaching Session

noticing or learning, and use this material as the

basis for your next formal coaching meeting.

• Communicate impact. As you see your direct

report begin to change and grow, communicate

the impact of his growth to him explicitly: It may

be harder for him to see. What impact is coach-

ing making on him as an individual? Is he being

included in more strategic discussions? What is

the impact on your group or division? Has that

group been able to achieve more of its goals? What

is the impact on the organization? Helping your

employee understand the full effect of the changes

that he is working hard to achieve can increase

his motivation and serve as a reminder that the

coaching you are providing serves both him and

the organization.

• Focus on the relationship. As you work with your

direct report, continue to foster an environment of

openness and willingness to learn. If you sense a

shift in the relationship, a decline in trust, or hesi-

tation toward openness, it may be time to check in

explicitly on what he is thinking and feeling after

your conversations.

In the meantime, stay attuned to the following signs

that the coaching process may be going off track, and in-

tervene early.

• Your direct report comes to coaching meetings

without having completed agreed-upon assign-

ments or practices.

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Coaching Your Employees

• Your direct report blames others for his failures

as he tries new things, or he doesn’t feel

comfortable talking about both successes

and failures.

• Your direct report doesn’t demonstrate ownership

of the coaching process by pushing back on you

when appropriate or suggesting new ideas and

methods of his own.

What if you’ve been vigilant about thoughtful follow-

up, but your direct report is still not progressing on a crit-

ical development need? You may need to enlist the help

of someone outside your chain of command: A trusted

colleague, a member of the HR team, or a professional

external coach may have the objectivity, skills, and rela-

tionship to help your team member progress. Ultimately,

you and your staff member may need to have a conversa-

tion about whether the role is the right fi t for him.

Check In on Yourself

Although much of the follow-up process focuses on your

direct report, the process also requires self-refl ection on

your part. As the manager and coach, you may want to

ask yourself two questions.

1. Am I meeting the needs of this employee?

The coaching process will look and feel different

for each of your direct reports, and what works

for one employee may not work for another.

Approach the process with a trial-and-error

mentality, and show openness in making ad-

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justments along the way. Frequently ask your

direct report what is working and what is not.

Approaches that don’t work for a person at one

point in the process can succeed later, so if a

new practice or exercise is proving diffi cult, you

may need to either change the plan or encourage

patience.

Meeting the needs of your employee during

coaching may also mean having a conversation

with him if you have differing views on how he

is progressing. For example, he may share that

he understood the lessons from the books you

provided and found them useful, but if he doesn’t

appear to be putting the lessons into practice,

it may mean that the approach isn’t working

despite his enthusiasm. It is important for you as

the coach to use your own judgment in addition

to the employee’s feedback to determine whether

his needs are really being met.

2.

Am I holding up my end of the bargain?

Assisting with the development of others can

often expose your own strengths and weaknesses.

For example, Lisa and her manager, Arya, agreed

that Lisa needed to step up more and take more

responsibility. However, when Lisa tried to take

ownership of a particular project, Arya had trou-

ble letting go, insisting on daily reviews of every

detail. But when she took a moment to refl ect on

her role as a coach, Arya realized that develop-

ing Lisa on this particular goal would fi rst mean

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changing her own approach. Coaching often

requires you as a manager to hold up a mirror

to yourself to see whether you’re unknowingly

getting in the way of your direct report’s progress

or whether you’re acting in ways that send mixed

messages about your expectations.

Coaching can be a challenging and yet uplifting pro-

cess for both direct report and manager as you watch

your employee grow and add value to the organization

in new and different ways. By incorporating a follow-

up process that includes aligning expectations up front,

checking in with your direct report and checking in with

yourself, you can see, encourage, and spur that growth,

with results that can be well worth the time and attention

you invest.

Pam Krulitz is a managing partner with Paravis Part-

ners and is on the faculty of the Georgetown University

Leadership Coaching program. She coaches entrepre-

neurs, senior executives, and high potentials to support

their growth as leaders and achievement of their busi-

ness goals. Nina Bowman is a senior partner with Paravis

Partners and provides executive coaching, training, and

leadership development consulting services to senior

executives.

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Chapter 6

Giving Feedback

That Sticks

by Ed Batista

Although coaching is primarily about asking questions

rather than providing answers, your employees will want

your candid feedback on their performance. I’ve been in-

volved in thousands of feedback conversations with cli-

ents and students over the years, and again and again I’ve

heard people say, “Just give it to me straight.”

But that simple request can be diffi cult to fulfi ll. When

you say “Can I give you some feedback?” to your employ-

ees, their heart rate and blood pressure are almost cer-

tain to increase, and they may experience other signs of

stress as well. These are symptoms of a “threat response,”

also known as “fi ght-or-fl ight”: a cascade of neurological

and physiological events that impair the ability to pro-

cess complex information and react thoughtfully. When

people are in the grip of a threat response, they’re less

capable of absorbing and applying feedback.

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You’ve probably observed this dynamic in feedback

conversations with employees that didn’t go as well as

you’d hoped. Some people respond with explanations,

defensiveness, or even hostility, while others minimize

eye contact, cross their arms, hunch over, and generally

look as if they’d rather be doing anything but talking to

you. These fi ght-or-fl ight behaviors suggest that your

feedback probably won’t have the desired impact.

How do you avoid triggering a threat response—and

deliver feedback your people can digest and use? These

guidelines will help.

Cultivate the Relationship

We lay the foundations for effective feedback by build-

ing relationships with others over time. When people

feel connected to us, even diffi cult conversations with

them are less likely to trigger a threat response. Social

psychologist John Gottman, a leading expert on building

relationships, has found from his research that success

in diffi cult conversations depends on what he calls “the

quality of the friendship.” Gottman cites several steps we

can take to develop high-quality relationships:

• Make the other person feel “known.” Making

people aware that you see them as individuals—

and not merely as employees—is a critical step

in the process, but it need not be overly time-

consuming. Several years ago a coaching client of

mine who ran a midsize company felt that he was

too distant from his employees but didn’t have

the time to take someone to lunch every day. His

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effi cient compromise was to view every interaction,

no matter how fl eeting, as an opportunity to get to

know that person a little better. He made a habit

of asking employees one question about their work

or their personal lives each time he encountered

them. “Whenever I can, I connect,” he told me.

Although at times this slowed his progress through

the offi ce, the result was worth it.

• Respond to even small bids for attention. We seek

attention from those around us not only in obvious

ways but also through countless subtle “bids.” As

Gottman writes in The Relationship Cure, “A bid

can be a question, a gesture, a look, a touch—any

single expression that says, ‘I want to feel con-

nected to you.’ A response to a bid is just that—a

positive or negative answer to somebody’s request

for emotional connection.” But many of us miss

bids from our employees. That’s because we’re

less observant of social cues from people over

whom we wield authority, according to research

by Dacher Keltner of the University of California,

Berkeley, and others. To connect more effectively

with employees, take stock of how much you

notice—or miss—their efforts to gain your atten-

tion. And solicit feedback from peers, friends, and

family members on your listening skills and how

often you interrupt.

• Regularly express appreciation. As Gottman’s

research shows, the ratio of positive to negative

interactions in a successful relationship is 5:1, even

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during periods of confl ict. This ratio doesn’t apply

to a single conversation, and it doesn’t mean that

we’re obligated to pay someone fi ve compliments

before we can offer critical feedback. But it does

highlight the importance of providing positive

feedback and expressing other forms of apprecia-

tion over time in order to strengthen the relation-

ship. (See the sidebar “The Pitfalls of Positive

Feedback.”)

Manage Emotions

Although excessive negative feelings inhibit learning

and communication, emotions play a vital role in feed-

back. They convey emphasis and let others know what

we value. Emotional experiences stick with people, last

longer in their memories, and are easier to recall. And

extensive neuroscience research in recent decades makes

clear that emotions are essential to our reasoning pro-

cess: Strong emotions can pull us off course, but in gen-

eral emotions support better decision making.

So while you’ll want to avoid triggering a threat re-

sponse, don’t try to remove all emotion from your coach-

ing. That can diminish the impact of your feedback and

lead to a cycle of ineffective conversations. Instead, aim

for a balance: Express just enough emotion to engage the

other person but not so much that you provoke a hos-

tile or defensive reaction, shut down the conversation, or

damage the relationship.

The right amount of emotion depends on the issue

you’re addressing and varies from one relationship to

another—and even from one day to the next. The key

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THE PITFALLS OF POSITIVE FEEDBACK

Praise is supposed to make your employees feel good

and motivate them, but often it does just the oppo-

site. Here are three common problems and ways to

avoid them:

1.

People don’t trust the praise.  Before delivering

unpleasant feedback to your direct reports, do

you say something nice to soften the blow? Many

of us do—and we unwittingly condition people to

hear our positive feedback as a hollow preamble

to the real message. Rather than feeling genu-

inely appreciated, they’re waiting for the other

shoe to drop. Though we’ve diminished our anxi-

ety about bearing bad news, we haven’t helped

them receive it. We’ve actually undermined our

ability to deliver any meaningful feedback, posi-

tive or negative.

What to do: Instead of giving a spoonful of

sugar before every dose of constructive criti-

cism, lead off with your investment in the rela-

tionship and your reasons for having the conver-

sation. For example: “It’s important that we can

be candid and direct with each other so we can

work together eff ectively. I have some concerns

for us to discuss, and I’m optimistic that we can

resolve them.”

2. People resent it.  Managers also use positive

feedback to overcome resistance to requests.

( continued)

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THE PITFALLS OF POSITIVE FEEDBACK

( continued)

This age-old tactic can work in the moment but

carries a long-term cost. It creates a sense of

obligation, a “social debt” the recipient feels

compelled to repay by acceding to your wishes.

But if you train people to always expect requests

after your praise, they’ll eventually feel manipu-

lated and resentful—and less inclined to help

you out.

What to do: Motivate people over the long

term by expanding your persuasive tool kit. As

Jay Conger explains in his classic article “The

Necessary Art of Persuasion” (HBR May–June 1998), you can gain lasting infl uence in four

ways: establish credibility through expertise

and work you’ve done in others’ interests, frame

goals around common ground and shared

advantage, support your views with compelling

data and examples, and connect emotionally

with people so they’ll be more receptive to your

message.

3. We praise the wrong things. When aimed at the

wrong targets, praise does more harm than good.

As Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck notes in a

January 2012 HBR IdeaCast interview, “The whole self-esteem movement taught us erroneously that

praising intelligence, talent, and abilities would

foster self-confi dence and self-esteem, and

every thing great would follow. But we’ve found it

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Giving Feedback That Sticks

backfi res. People who are praised for talent now

worry about doing the next thing, about taking on

the hard task, and not looking talented, tarnishing

that reputation for brilliance. So they’ll stick to

their comfort zones and get really defensive when

they hit setbacks.”

What to do: Praise eff ort, not ability. Dweck

suggests focusing on “the strategies, the dog-

gedness and persistence, the grit and resilience”

that people exhibit when facing challenges. And

explain exactly what actions prompted your

praise. If you’re vague or generic, you’ll fail to

reinforce the desired behavior.

question is how responsive the other person will be to

your emotions. A coaching client of mine who’d recently

launched a company had some critical feedback for his

cofounder, but previous conversations didn’t have the de-

sired effect. For the feedback to stick, my client needed

to become fairly heated and more vocally and physically

expressive. This worked because the two of them had a

long-standing friendship. The cofounder didn’t respond

defensively—rather, the intensity got his attention. In

contrast, when this same client of mine had some critical

feedback for a subordinate, he reined in his emotions,

modulated his expressiveness, and delivered the feed-

back in a matter-of-fact tone. The goal was to convey

the importance of the issues without overwhelming the

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subordinate, and in this case my client’s authority was

suffi cient on its own.

Of course, we may not know how another person will

respond to our emotions, and when we’re in the grip of

strong feelings, it’s hard to calibrate how we express them

in conversation. The solution is to practice. By having

more feedback conversations, we learn not only how spe-

cifi c individuals respond to us but also how we express

our emotions in helpful and unhelpful ways.

Play Fair

You’re sure to elicit a threat response if you provide feed-

back the other person views as unfair or inaccurate. But

how do you avoid that, given how subjective perceptions

of fairness and accuracy are?

David Bradford of the Stanford Graduate School of

Business suggests “staying on our side of the net”—that

is, focusing our feedback on our feelings about the behav-

ior and avoiding references to the other person’s motives.

We’re in safe territory on our side of the net; others may

not like what we say when we describe how we feel, but

they can’t dispute its accuracy. However, when we make

guesses about their motives, we cross over to their side

of the net, and even minor inaccuracies can provoke a

defensive reaction.

For example, when giving critical feedback to some-

one who’s habitually late, it’s tempting to say something

like, “You don’t value my time, and it’s very disrespect-

ful of you.” But these are guesses about the other per-

son’s state of mind, not statements of fact. If we’re even

slightly off base, the employee will feel misunderstood

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and be less receptive to the feedback. A more effective

way to make the same point is to say, “When you’re late,

I feel devalued and disrespected.” It’s a subtle distinction,

but by focusing on the specifi c behavior and our internal

response—by staying on our side of the net—we avoid

making an inaccurate, disputable guess.

Because motives are often unclear, we constantly cross

the net in an effort to make sense of others’ behavior.

While this is inevitable, it’s good practice to notice when

we’re guessing someone’s motives and get back on our

side of the net before offering feedback.

Set the Stage

It’s easy to take our surroundings for granted, but they

have a big impact on any interaction. Paying attention to

logistical details like these will help make your feedback

conversations more productive:

• Timing. Although I encourage shorter, infor-

mal feedback conversations (see the end of this

chapter), sometimes it’s necessary to have a longer,

in-depth discussion. When that’s the case, be de-

liberate about scheduling. Instead of simply fi tting

it into an available slot on your calendar, choose a

time when you and the other person will both be

at your best, such as at the beginning of the day,

before you’re preoccupied with other issues, or

at the end of the day, when you can spend more

time in refl ection. Think about the activities you

and your employee will be engaged in just before

and just after the conversation. If either of you are

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coming from (or heading to) a stressful experience,

you’ll be better off fi nding another time.

• Duration. We often put events on our calendars

for a standard amount of time without consider-

ing what’s needed for each interaction. Think

about how much time a given feedback conversa-

tion is likely to take if it goes well—and if it goes

poorly. You don’t want to get into a meaning-

ful discussion with an employee and suddenly

fi nd that you’re late for your next meeting. Also,

consider what you’ll do if the conversation goes

worse (or better) than expected. How bad (or

good) will it have to be for you to ignore the next

event on your calendar in order to continue the

conversation?

• Physical location. Meeting in your offi ce will

reinforce hierarchical roles, which can be useful

when you need to establish some distance between

yourself and the other person—but this will also

induce stress and increase the odds of a threat

response. A less formal setting—such as a confer-

ence room, a restaurant, or even outdoors—will

put you on a more even footing and reduce the

likelihood of a threat response. Choose a location

that suits the needs of the conversation, ensures

suffi cient privacy, and minimizes interruptions

and distractions.

• Proximity. When meeting with an employee in an

offi ce or a conference room, sitting across from

each other—with a desk or table in between—

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creates physical distance, emphasizing your

respective roles and reinforcing your authority.

But you don’t always want to do that. When you’re

trying to create a stronger connection with the

other person or convey a greater sense of empathy,

it’s preferable to sit closer and on adjoining sides

of the table or desk. Think about the optimal prox-

imity between you and the other person at that

moment. Perhaps even being seated is too formal,

and you should go for a walk.

With a little practice, these guidelines will help you

improve your feedback skills. As with any skill you’re try-

ing to master, experiment in low-risk situations before

jumping into a high-stakes feedback conversation. Here

are some ways to get started:

• Have feedback conversations more often. We

associate feedback with performance reviews, but

they’re not good opportunities to improve our

feedback skills because they’re so infrequent and

they tend to be stressful. Rather than saving up

feedback for an employee on a wide range of top-

ics, try offering smaller pieces of focused feedback

on a regular basis. Even a two-minute debrief with

an employee after a meeting or a presentation can

be a useful learning opportunity for both of you.

• Role-play diffi

cult conversations. With clients in

my coaching practice and with my MBA students

at Stanford, I’ve found that role-playing is a highly

effective way to prepare to deliver challenging

feedback. Conduct this exercise with a friendly

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Coaching Your Employees

colleague: Start by delivering your feedback while

your colleague role-plays the recipient, which will

allow you to try out different approaches. Then

have your colleague give you the same feedback

while you role-play the recipient. You’ll learn from

your colleague’s approach, and you’ll see the con-

versation from your employee’s point of view. The

preparation will help you refi ne your delivery and

feel more relaxed in the actual conversation.

• Ask for feedback yourself. By asking employees to

give you feedback on your effectiveness as a leader

and manager, you’ll benefi t in three ways: You’ll

get valuable input, you’ll understand what it’s like

to be on the receiving end, and your willingness to

listen will make your own feedback mean more. If

you sense that employees are reluctant to give you

feedback, ask them to help you accomplish some

specifi c goals, such as being more concise or inter-

rupting less often. By acknowledging your own

areas for improvement, you’ll make it easier for

them to speak up.

Ed Batista is an executive coach and an instructor at the

Stanford Graduate School of Business. He writes regularly

on issues related to coaching and professional develop-

ment at www.edbatista.com, and he is currently writing a book on self-coaching for Harvard Business Review Press.

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Chapter 7

Enlist Knowledge

Coaches

A summary of the full-length HBR article “Deep Smarts,”

by Dorothy Leonard and Walter Swap, highlighting

key ideas.

THE IDEA IN BRIEF

It takes years for your company’s best people to acquire

their expertise—but only seconds for them to walk

out the door when opportunity beckons. And when they

go, they take their deep smarts with them. Deeply smart

people make intuitive decisions fast and spot prob-

lems and possibilities others miss. Informed by almost

preternaturally sound judgment and a gut sense for

Adapted from Harvard Business Review, September 2004 (product

#7731)

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Coaching Your Employees

interrelationships, they see the big picture—rather than

getting bogged down in details. Their wisdom is crucial

to your company’s survival.

How to capture the deep smarts residing in your or-

ganization? Turn your experts into knowledge coaches.

Knowledge coaches use learn-by-doing techniques—

guided practice, observation, problem solving, and

experimentation—to help novices absorb long-acquired

business wisdom.

Knowledge coaching not only spurs transfer and re-

tention of vital wisdom, it yields breakthrough product

ideas and more effi cient business processes. Can your

company afford not to invest in it?

THE IDEA IN PRACTICE

Consider these knowledge coaching techniques:

Guided practice

Novices practice skills under the watchful eye of knowl-

edge coaches, who then provide feedback that allows

them to refi ne their new capabilities.

Example: At SAIC, new consultants learn their

trade from seasoned colleagues through a “see one,

lead one, teach one” process. First, they observe an

expert helping a client solve a specifi c problem.

Next, they practice their skills by leading a client

session, receiving feedback from the knowledge

coach. Then, they teach those skills to another

consultant.

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Enlist Knowledge Coaches

Guided observation

This technique takes two forms—shadowing and fi eld

trips. Through shadowing, novices absorb deep smarts by

following experienced, skilled colleagues, and then dis-

cussing their observations with those colleagues. One ju-

nior consultant who sat in on client meetings and then an-

alyzed his observations with an older colleague contended,

“I learned more from those debriefs than in four years at

my prior company and two years of business school.”

During fi eld trips, novices break out of rigid mental

habits and expand their experience through exposure to

novel ways of thinking and behaving.

Example: On fi eld trips to Mexico, Korea, and a

U.S. specialty toy store, teams from retailer Best Buy

observed young people engaged in communal play fo-

cused on a product (such as a doll) or technology (such

as video games). These visits spurred ideas for provid-

ing socially oriented experiences in Best Buy stores.

For instance, the company’s engineers developed

“PCBang,” which enables teens and people in their early

twenties—much younger than Best Buy’s typical cus-

tomer—to play computer games and socialize.

Guided problem solving

Knowledge coaches and protégés work on problems

jointly, so protégés learn how to approach problems.

Example: A senior engineer renowned for his ability

to bring multiple perspectives to the design of com-

plex products had his protégé spend several months

on the assembly line tackling problems with a test

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Coaching Your Employees

technician. The senior engineer joined many of

these sessions, adding perspectives the technician

lacked—such as customer preferences. The pro-

tégé acquired comprehensive know-how about the

product, from design to production to fulfi llment of

customers’ needs.

Guided experimentation

Knowledge coaches help novices set up modest experi-

ments that speed learning.

Example: Start-up company ActivePhoto had

developed a technology for instantly downloading

and cataloging digital photographs. To determine

its most profi table market, the fi rm conducted pilot

studies with three promising customer bases: public

emergency services, insurance-claims processing,

and online auctioning. Through discussions of each

experiment’s results with knowledge coaches, Active-

Photo quickly eliminated the fi rst market.

Dorothy Leonard is the William J. Abernathy Professor

Emerita of Business Administration at Harvard Business

School in Boston. Walter Swap is a professor emeritus

of psychology at Tufts University in Medford, Massa-

chusetts. They are the coauthors of Deep Smarts: How

to Cultivate and Transfer Enduring Business Wisdom

(Harvard Business School Publishing, 2005) and Criti-

cal Knowledge Transfer: Tools for Managing Your Com-

pany’s Deep Smarts (Harvard Business Review Press, December 2014).

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Chapter 8

Coaching

Eff ectively in

Less Time

by Daisy Wademan Dowling

Virtually all of the young executives I work with want to

be good managers and mentors. They just don’t have the

time—or so they believe. “I could either bring in a new

deal, or I could take one of my people out for lunch to

talk about their career,” a fi nancial services leader told me

recently. “In this industry and in this market, which one

do you think I’m going to pick?”

Good question. It’s not easy to help your employees

develop even as you take advantage of every business

opportunity, but you can make coaching easier on your-

self in three ways: planning coaching time well, giving

Adapted from content posted on hbr.org on February 3, 2009

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Coaching Your Employees

feedback effi ciently, and making use of found time to

coach when you can.

Plan Coaching Time Well

Set aside time to think about and pursue issues with your

team. Keep each of these sessions brief, but make them

regular: Put a 30-minute weekly recurring item on your

calendar, for example, and don’t let yourself slip into re-

scheduling or working through it.

Use this window to think about your team’s actions

over the past week. Who needs praise? Motivation? Bet-

ter prioritization skills? Feedback on a lousy presenta-

tion? To be told to wear a tie to the offi ce? You may notice

these things in passing, but if you don’t schedule time to

focus on them, you’ll fi nd yourself worrying about them

all week—on the way to the offi ce, in meetings about

other things—and never actually address them.

Also use this time to check in on your direct reports’

progress and development more broadly. Do you have a

new employee whose needs and interests you want to get

to know better? A mentee who has asked for help devel-

oping a particular skill? A direct report you haven’t re-

ally touched base with recently? Instead of having to fi nd

the time to plan their coaching, you can use the window

you’ve already set aside.

Once you’ve identifi ed the issues that need addressing,

use the remainder of the time to drop a congratulatory

e-mail, to walk over to your direct report and give her

some quick feedback (more on this later), or, if the situ-

ation warrants, to set up time to hold a formal coaching

session.

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Your strategy here is containment: Scheduling win-

dows to think about and address coaching issues lets you

limit them to a manageable amount of time.

Give Feedback Effi

ciently

Once you’ve identifi ed that you need to give feedback to

a direct report, you can make that process more effi cient

in three ways.

• Create a standard way in. For the majority of man-

agers, providing feedback—particularly construc-

tive feedback—is stressful and requires signifi cant

forethought. How should you bring up the bungled

analysis, the hurdles to promotion, or even the

meeting that went unusually well? Like chess mas-

ters, we spend most of our time contemplating the

fi rst move. That’s why the key to reducing the time

you spend mulling over and preparing for each

coaching conversation is to have a standard way

in: a simple, routinized way to open discussions

about performance. Keep it simple, and announce

directly what’s to come. A straightforward “I’m

going to give you some feedback” or “Are you open

to my coaching on this?” gets immediate attention

and sets the right tone. It will make it easier to

prepare for the game if you have your opener ready.

Furthermore, your direct reports will become fa-

miliar with your opener, and that will help them be

attuned to and hear the feedback more clearly.

• Be blunt. The number one mistake executives

make in coaching and delivering feedback to their

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Coaching Your Employees

people is being insuffi ciently candid—typically,

because they don’t want to be mean. If you’ve

ever used the phrase “maybe you could . . .” in a

coaching conversation or asked one of your people

to “think about” a performance issue, there’s a

99% probability you’re not being blunt enough.

But the more candid you are, the more likely your

coachee is to hear your message, and thus the

more likely you are to have impact, and quickly.

The trick to being candid without feeling like an

ogre? Be honest, be sincere, be personal—while

addressing the issue head-on. The best feedback

I ever received came a few years into my career,

directly after a terrible meeting I had with senior

management, in which I had been both unpre-

pared and defensive. As we rode down in the el-

evator afterward, my boss said quietly, “Next time,

I expect you to do better.” Don’t dance around the

issues, and don’t let the person you’re coaching do

so either.

• Ask him to play it back. If your feedback doesn’t

end up sticking, you’ll need to deliver it a second

time—and a third, and a fourth—all of which

takes your valuable time and managerial energy.

To avoid the need for encore performances, check

to make sure you’ve made an impact on the fi rst

go-round by asking the person you’re coaching to

paraphrase what he heard. If your coachee can

clearly explain to you—in his own words—what he

needs to change or do next, that goes a long way to

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ensuring he’s gotten the message. You’ll then know

that the conversation is over and you can get back

to other things. If the message is muddled, you

can correct it immediately. In either case, you’ve

limited the need for future follow-up.

Use Found Time

If you plan and use your coaching time wisely, you’ll fi nd

that you can maintain your coaching relationships and

get your other work done as well. But what if you’re in

a crunch period or for some other reason just can’t fi nd

the minutes to spare for your weekly check-in? If that’s

the case, use what I call the 3.1% coaching method:

Limit your people-development activities to no more

than 15 incremental minutes per day. That’s 75 minutes

a week, or 3.1% of a hypothetical 40-hour workweek.

Here’s how to fi nd those 15 minutes.

• Turn dead time into development time. Walking

back to your offi ce after a meeting? Use those two

minutes to give your direct report feedback on the

presentation and on how he could do better next

time. He didn’t have a speaking role? Ask how

he thought the meeting went and how he might

have made certain points differently—and then

offer feedback on that. Direct, in-the-moment

feedback is your single best tool for developing

people. Look for every two-minute stretch in your

day during which you could be talking to someone

else—most often, that’s travel time—and con-

vert those windows into coaching opportunities.

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Walking down to the corner to get a cup of coffee?

Ask one of your employees to come along—and

talk about goals and priorities. Driving to the

airport? Check in with an employee or two over

the phone.

• Make two calls per day. On your way home from

work, call (or e-mail) two people you met with that

day and offer “feedforward”: “I like what you’ve

done with the Smithers account. Next time, let’s

try to keep marketing costs down. Thanks for your

hard work.” Always make “thank you” a part of the

message. Employees who feel appreciated, and

know that you’re trying to develop their skills, stay

engaged over the long run.

• Show up in her work space. Once per day, get up

and walk over to the desk of one of your direct

reports. Take two minutes to ask her what she’s

working on. Once she’s fi nished answering, re-

spond, “What do you need from me to make that

project/transaction successful?” The goal is for her

to hear you saying, “I know who you are, I’ve got

high expectations—and I’ve got your back.”

With consistent (read: daily) use, these strategies will

pay off. Your employees will feel that you’re not just their

boss, but a coach. They’ll sharpen their skills and stay

motivated.

And for any manager, that’s time well spent.

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Coaching Eff ectively in Less Time

Daisy Wademan Dowling serves as managing director and

head of talent development for the Blackstone Group,

the global asset management fi rm. She is also the author

of Remember Who You Are (Harvard Business Review Press, 2004) and a regular contributor to HBR .

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Chapter 9

Help People Help

Themselves

by Ed Batista

When I take on new clients in my executive coaching

practice, I emphasize how much work they will be do-

ing without me. That’s because they typically spend just

1% of their working hours in coaching sessions; the other

99% of the time, they’re managing interactions, making

choices, and solving problems on their own. Although

our conversations may infl uence my clients as they go

about their day-to-day activities, most of the time they’re

coaching themselves. They’re assessing what’s working

and what’s not, deciding where to change course and

where to hold steady, and repeating this process as they

steer themselves through professional challenges.

The same holds true for your employees if you man-

age knowledge workers who operate with little, if any,

direct supervision. You check in with them regularly to

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Coaching Your Employees

plan, prioritize, and assess progress toward goals, but you

don’t peer over their shoulders all day, telling them how

to complete each task. You don’t have time to provide

such detailed guidance—and even if you did, they would

perceive it as intrusive micromanagement.

This constraint actually presents a tremendous oppor-

tunity: You can be a more effective leader and manager

by helping your employees coach themselves. To be clear,

“self-coaching” is not a solitary process but, rather, a self-

directed one. Your employees will continue to need your

guidance and support, but their “coaching” shouldn’t

just be a series of formal discussions with you. It’s a tool

they can use on their own or in any conversation with

anyone.

Here’s how you can get them started.

Foster a Growth Mind-Set

As discussed earlier in this guide, people have two basic

mind-sets about development: Those with a fi xed mind-

set view qualities such as intelligence and talent as pre-

determined and unchanging, while those with a growth

mind-set believe that these qualities can be enhanced

through dedication and effort. (See chapter 1, “Shift Your

Thinking to Coach Effectively.”) Research by Stanford

psychologist Carol Dweck demonstrates not only the

impact of mind-set on performance but also the relative

ease with which people can shift mind-sets. As she has

observed, “Just by knowing about the two mind-sets, you

can start thinking and reacting in new ways.”

A growth mind-set yields substantial benefi ts in a self-

coaching context: When people view themselves as works

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in progress, they remain open to learning and change.

They’re more persistent in seeking solutions to problems,

more resilient in the face of setbacks, and more receptive

to critical feedback. They also learn more from their mis-

takes, as research by Michigan State psychologist Jason

Moser indicates, in part because they don’t get as upset

by failures, and they spend more time assessing what

went wrong.

Encouraging a growth mind-set doesn’t mean simply

offering praise and avoiding criticism; it means focusing

your feedback—both positive and negative—on employ-

ees’ efforts to accomplish their goals, not on their inherent

abilities. When we praise people for their talents or criti-

cize them for their inadequacies, they adopt a fi xed mind-

set, undermining their attempts to self-coach. But when

we praise them for their determination and criticize fl ag-

ging effort, they’re more likely to adopt a growth mind-

set, which makes self-coaching easier and more fruitful.

You can further support a growth mind-set by view-

ing setbacks as learning opportunities. While you should

SELF-COACHING TIP

High achievers are as likely as underperformers to have

a fi xed mind-set. Promote a growth mind-set by empha-

sizing the value of determination and persistence—not

just strengths and achievements—when reviewing their

performance. Encourage them to do the same in their

self-assessments.

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provide candid feedback when employees fail, emphasize

the value of learning from the experience. Respond to

failures with an attitude of curiosity and a commitment

to understanding root causes, and highlight areas where

greater determination or persistence might have resulted

in success.

Ask Before You Advise

As longtime MIT management professor Edgar Schein

cautions in Helping, dispensing wisdom prematurely

is a trap for anyone seeking to help others, and it’s par-

ticularly dangerous for a manager guiding a direct re-

port. When an employee presents you with a problem,

you probably feel an immediate urge to respond with a

solution. That may seem like a logical and effi cient way

to provide support, but it comes at a price. You limit the

range of possible solutions to your own ideas, diminish

your employees’ ownership of the situation, and increase

their dependence on you. (Again, see chapter 1, “Shift

Your Thinking to Coach Effectively.”)

Resisting that urge is a critical step in helping your

employees coach themselves. By backing off just a bit,

you’ll compel them to fully tap their own knowledge and

expertise—which may be more extensive than yours—

and encourage them to take greater responsibility and

act more independently. So when an employee seeks your

support, start by asking questions, not giving answers.

Follow these guidelines:

• Avoid questions that invite “Yes” or “No” answers.

These questions are direct, but that’s not always an

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advantage. The downside in a self-coaching con-

text is that they stop the conversation just when

you want the other person to refl ect more deeply

on his or her experience.

• Embrace questions that sound naive. Although

sophisticated questions may demonstrate your un-

derstanding of a situation’s complexities, they also

put the emphasis on your own expertise. Simple,

open-ended questions such as “What will success

look like?” and “What challenges will you face?”

are more useful in challenging the other person to

think creatively.

• Use “Why . . .” questions with care. Asking people

why they did something can help them step back

and reassess their approach, but it can also trig-

ger defensive rationalization. That’s less likely to

SELF-COACHING TIP

Emphasize your role as a questioner rather than a

source of solutions, and encourage employees to en-

gage others in the same way. They can turn any conver-

sation into a self-coaching dialogue simply by asking

their peers and colleagues to pose questions before

off ering advice. Note the questions that draw out the

most meaningful answers, and suggest that your em-

ployees ask similar questions of themselves when fac-

ing a challenge or looking back on an experience.

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Coaching Your Employees

happen with “How . . .” and “What . . .” questions

such as “How do you feel about what happened?”

and “What would you do differently?”—which

don’t sound accusatory.

Of course, your employees sometimes need your

advice—but wait for those moments and jump in as nec-

essary, not as a fi rst response to every problem they face.

To reassure those who simply want to be given an answer,

you might say, “I’ll be happy to offer my opinion later,

but, fi rst, what do you think?”

Be Transparent

While your employees may pick up tips on self-coaching

by observing how you coach them, you’ll make it easier

for them to replicate the process—both on their own and

in coaching conversations with others—by talking openly

about the techniques you’re using. This transparency will

also help them understand why you’re behaving differ-

SELF-COACHING TIP

Leave a few minutes at the end of every coaching ses-

sion to discuss the conversation itself. Talk about why

it was helpful—and what might have made it even more

helpful. Spell out which coaching techniques you used

and ask for feedback. Encourage your employees to

use the methods that worked best when they initiate

coaching conversations with others.

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ently if new coaching techniques involve a change in your

management style.

For example, if your employees are accustomed to

coming to you for answers—and you’ve readily supplied

them—a sudden emphasis on asking questions may feel

jarring or frustrating to them unless you provide context

for it. Explain why you’re asking the questions and what

benefi ts you hope to obtain by doing so.

When your employees see what coaching techniques

you’re using, they can share with you what works best for

them (not all techniques work equally well for everyone).

And that understanding will feed their self-coaching ef-

forts. They’ll benefi t more from individual refl ection

when they step back from their coaching with you and

articulate its impact on their actions.

Then, by asking colleagues and friends to adopt the

same techniques they’ve found effective in conversations

with you, they can recruit new, supportive members

of their self-coaching team. You’ll continue to be a key

member of that team, of course, but you won’t need to be

there for every coaching conversation or experience.

Ed Batista is an executive coach and an instructor at

the Stanford Graduate School of Business. He writes

regularly on issues related to coaching and professional

development at www.edbatista.com, and he is currently

writing a book on self-coaching for Harvard Business Re-

view Press.

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Chapter 10

Avoid Common

Coaching Mistakes

by Muriel Maignan Wilkins

Managers learning to coach are often eager to use their

newly honed skills with their staff. But even a few mis-

steps can easily discourage managers from committing

to coaching their employees over the long haul. Here

are four common mistakes made by managers learn-

ing to coach, as well as guidance on how to avoid—and

correct—them.

Common Mistake 1:

Coaching the “Mini-Me”

Coaching is about helping your team member reach her

own potential. Yet, time and time again, managers in-

stead try to coach individuals into the managers’ own im-

age. Don’t fall into the trap of trying to coach your team

member into a replica of yourself, or she will become

rapidly disengaged from the coaching process. Both your

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Coaching Your Employees

attempt to support her and her attempt to deliver will

prove unsustainable in the long term.

One of my clients made this mistake early on. As a

manager learning to coach, he enthusiastically provided

his staff members with advice and individualized guid-

ance for their professional development. But rather than

letting them develop their own paths and learn from

their own successes and mistakes, he typically began his

coaching conversations with “Well, if it were me . . .” His

coaching didn’t stick, and he, as well as his direct reports,

got frustrated with the efforts.

Remedy

Coaching is not about you—and it’s certainly not about

creating another you. Your team member has different

strengths and weaknesses from you, and different inter-

ests and goals. To ensure that your coaching is centered

on the employee and not on you, you have to meet him

where he is in terms of skill, capability, and commitment

to the assignment at hand. Before you craft advice to

share with him, start by understanding his strengths and

weaknesses and identify how they differ from yours. Take

his understanding of the situation into account by asking

questions. Consider how he looks at the situation. Then

you can frame your suggestions and feedback based on

realistic expectations.

Common Mistake 2:

Thinking Coaching Is Special Time

Managers often overly mystify coaching and as a result

make the perennial mistake of waiting for the right time

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to coach. And, unfortunately, that right time often never

comes, because making coaching larger than life makes

it unattainable and impractical even for the best of us.

And so all our best-laid coaching plans never come to

fruition.

Remedy

You do not need to wait for a special time to coach, and

not every coaching conversation needs to be a big devel-

opment discussion with a capital D. The best coaching

is integrated into your and the employee’s day-to-day

work life. Make it a practice to coach in the moment. If

your employee is about to prepare for something, pro-

actively spend a few minutes coaching him on how he

will approach the deliverable. If he has completed an as-

signment, debrief with some coaching questions that will

help him learn from the experience and use the knowl-

edge for the next time around.

Certainly you should still hold scheduled sit-down

discussions with your direct reports to discuss their de-

velopment goals and a plan of action, but don’t wait for

those meetings. If you do, you’ll miss the opportunity to

give feedback in real time, and you’ll also put such weight

on those bigger meetings that they will be emotionally

fraught and less productive.

Common Mistake 3:

Losing Your Patience

Coaching requires patience. It is not about pushing or

pulling your team members directly to the specifi c re-

sults you want them to achieve; it’s more like watching

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Coaching Your Employees

on the sidelines during game time, letting them fi nd their

own way.

For example, over her years as an analyst, Paula had

carefully developed a very distinct way of analyzing her

division’s end-of-month reports. Now the division man-

ager, she has become increasingly frustrated with the way

the new analyst approaches the reports; it seems ineffi -

cient and imprecise. Rather than invest the time to walk

the analyst through her approach, however, Paula simply

takes over and does it herself, fi guring that it will take less

time to do it correctly. Little does Paula recognize that in

the long run she is doing a disservice to the analyst, to

herself, and even to the organization by not teaching her

hard-earned skills to her next-level staff.

For the results- and action-oriented drivers among

us, however, stepping back and letting your direct report

make mistakes—or just different choices from those you

would have made—can feel like a tortuous process. Es-

pecially when you’re short on time, or when a project is

particularly important, it is easy to lose your patience:

You may look fl ustered, let frustration creep into your

voice, or simply snatch the task away and do it yourself.

But giving in to your impatience in this way counteracts

all your previous efforts by making your employee want

to throw up his hands (if you’ve given up on him, why

shouldn’t he?).

Remedy

Resist the urge to succumb to the tiny voice inside telling

you, “Oh, it would just be easier to tell him exactly what

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Avoid Common Coaching Mistakes

to do, or better yet, just do it myself already!” To approach

coaching with composure, follow these guide lines.

• Embrace the idea that coaching is not a quick-fi x

proposition. Coaching is a marathon, not a sprint.

Don’t expect your direct report to move the needle

from 0 to 10 after one opportunity to practice

the skill when he’s been without it for years. You

should expect him to stumble a few times be-

fore he gets it. Just reminding yourself that you

shouldn’t expect to see results right away can put

you in a better frame of mind. It also allows you to

see when to celebrate a direct report’s successes—

even if his work isn’t perfect.

• Set a time line. Even if you know it will take

some time before your direct report has mastered

this new skill, it can help you to cite a specifi c

target date by which point you expect her to be

independent. It can be motivating to her to have

a target date, and helpful to you to estimate

when you can depend on her to perform the task

profi ciently.

• Establish clear milestones. Don’t wait until that

target date to check in with your direct report to

see how she is doing on the task. Instead, do so

over the duration of the project by breaking down

the assignment into smaller chunks. This will

enable you to coach her along the way rather than

in retrospect; it will also satiate your need to see

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Coaching Your Employees

progress and movement on the assignment. Your

direct report will also gain confi dence as she ac-

complishes each milestone or corrects the course

successfully.

• Watch your tone. In the moment, as with all

professional communication, take a deep breath

if you feel yourself getting fl ustered or about to

make a snap decision because something just

seems so easy for you and apparently hard for

your direct report. And if you do slip into

backseat-driver mode, be courageous enough

to apologize.

Common Mistake 4:

Assuming Everyone Is Coachable

Patience is important in coaching, but sometimes man-

agers can be too patient.

John was frustrated and discouraged with one of his

employees. He’d spent an inordinate amount of time

coaching her on meeting deadlines on time, to no avail.

She simply made no efforts to try doing anything differ-

ently. John kept trying new ways to engage her, but he

wasn’t getting anywhere.

No matter how much of an optimist you are, some-

times you need to be realistic: Like John, you may have

an employee who is not coachable—or not coachable at

this time. Many managers fail to recognize this situa-

tion, and subsequently they exert far more energy than

needed, with little results.

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Remedy

A person must want to be coached in order for it to work,

because ultimately the responsibility and ownership of

the effort are hers. Start by giving your team member the

benefi t of the doubt, but as you work with her, quickly

assess her coachability. From what you’ve seen, does she

want to learn? Is she trying (even if she’s not succeeding)?

Does she seem genuinely appreciative of the coaching?

If you’re not sure, talk to her about it. Give some feed-

back on how you’ve seen her approach the coaching

you’ve given; how she responds to such a conversation

can be very telling about how much this is something she

actually wants.

In the rare cases in which you discover that you re-

ally are dealing with someone who is not coachable, don’t

hesitate to try a strategy other than coaching rather than

waste your energy. In certain situations, it may be appro-

priate to take a more directive stance. And in situations

where performance is severely affected despite many at-

tempts at coaching, you should consider whether your

direct report is in the right role.

Learning to be an effective coach as a manager takes lots

of practice. Over time, you will hone your skill and build

your repertoire of tried-and-true strategies that help you

effectively develop your employees. Although these rem-

edies are meant to help you get there more effi ciently,

don’t be concerned if you trip up every now and then on

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Coaching Your Employees

any of these pitfalls or others you might encounter. As

with the staff members you are coaching, some of your

best learning will often come through your mistakes.

Muriel Maignan Wilkins is the cofounder and managing

partner of Paravis Partners, a Washington, D.C.–based

leadership coaching and consulting fi rm. Previously, she

held various advisory and leadership roles in marketing

and strategy at Prudential, Accenture, and U.S. News &

World Report. She is the coauthor with Amy Jen Su of

Own the Room: Discover Your Signature Voice to Mas-

ter Your Leadership Presence (Harvard Business Review Press, 2013).

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Section 3

Customize Your

Coaching

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Chapter 11

Tailor Your

Coaching to

People’s Learning

Styles

by David A. Kolb and Kay Peterson

As you coach your employees to develop their skills or

improve their performance, you can set them up for suc-

cess by understanding how they learn best and adjust-

ing your methods accordingly. They may prefer learning

through intense experience, sustained refl ection, analyti-

cal thinking, goal-directed action, or a combination of

approaches (the basic steps in what we call the Experi-

ential Learning Cycle—see fi gure 11-1). By tapping into

their preferred styles, you will engage them more deeply

and motivate them. As a result, they’ll make greater—

and faster—progress toward their goals.

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Customize Your Coaching

FIGURE 11-1

The Experiential Learning Cycle

The people you coach learn through experience: They think about it, extrapo-

late lessons from it, and experiment with those lessons—which leads to new

experiences and learning.

Experiencing

Initiating

Imagining

Acting

Balancing

Reflecting

Deciding

Analyzing

Thinking

If the benefi ts of customized coaching are so clear, why

don’t more managers do it? Largely because we tend to

favor our own learning preferences when we teach others

(see table 11-1). We assume that what works for us will

work for everyone else, but that’s just not the case.

Take Marie, a vice president of operations for a na-

tional manufacturing company. She had a quick, deci-

sive learning style—and struggled to coach direct reports

whose styles differed from hers. Rather than let them

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TABLE 11-1

Questions to help you coach more holistically

When coaching people whose learning styles don’t match yours, you must

communicate in a way that resonates with them. Try asking yourself the

following questions as prompts for the diff erent styles. They’ll help you

customize your coaching to your employees—whether they favor Refl ecting,

Initiating, or another approach entirely—instead of retreating to your own

comfort zone.

INITIATING

EXPERIENCING

IMAGINING

How can I inspire my

Am I fully present

Am I listening and

employee to learn?

(without distractions)

receptive?

during each coaching

What questions can

Should we explore

session?

I ask to promote

more diverse sources

discovery?

Am I attending to the

of information?

relationship?

What experiments

Am I helping my

will help my employee

Am I connecting

employee explore all

apply the lessons

emotionally?

possibilities?

learned?

Am I making my em-

Have I judged too

Can I provide oppor-

ployee feel supported? soon?

tunities to infl uence

Have I shown

others?

empathy?

Am I bringing enough

energy to our coach-

ing sessions?

REFLECTING

ANALYZING

THINKING

Have I asked thought-

Have I articulated

What is the larger plan

provoking questions?

a thorough, precise

for development or

coaching plan?

improvement?

Am I allowing time

for my employee to

Can I use a model or

Have I been objective

“struggle” and fi nd

theory to explain it?

and logical, setting

answers?

aside my emotions and

Can I provide data or

self-interest?

Can I slow things

specialized knowledge

down?

to support it?

Am I stepping back to

generalize and articu-

Have I considered

Are my thoughts

late lessons learned?

other points of view?

organized?

How can I struc-

Have I observed and

Am I presenting ideas

ture our sessions

deliberated?

logically?

diff erently?

Am I assessing costs

and benefi ts?

( continued)

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Customize Your Coaching

TABLE 11-1 (CONTINUED)

DECIDING

ACTING

BALANCING

What is the goal of the

What can we get done

What are my em-

session?

now?

ployee’s blind spots?

How will I know if we

Are we considering

Which skills does this

have reached it?

both the task and the

situation call for—

people it will aff ect?

and which ones are

What practical results

missing?

can we achieve?

Am I encouraging

my employee to take

Are we considering all

Is it time to choose a

risks?

options when setting

course of action?

development goals

What activities will

Can I provide direct,

and deciding how to

support my employee’s

immediate feedback?

meet them?

learning and help him

or her apply it?

take the lead, she jumped in to help them solve each chal-

lenge as soon as they encountered it. Things got done her

way, but people weren’t really learning—and she became

frustrated with their lack of growth.

But then she recognized how she’d contributed to

the problem: She hadn’t allowed people to take enough

responsibility for their own development, nor had she

considered their approaches to learning. She turned the

situation around by taking the time to identify her em-

ployees’ learning styles and changing her coaching tactics

to suit them.

When coaching Tyler, for example, Marie discovered

through observation and conversations with him that his

preferred style was Experiencing, or learning through

feelings and relationships. (See the following section

“What Are Your Employees’ Learning Styles?” for more

on recognizing preferences.) So she resisted the urge to

set goals and take action right away, as she usually did.

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Tailor Your Coaching to People’s Learning Styles

Instead, she connected with him emotionally fi rst, asking

how he felt about his team’s relationships and revealing

her own feelings about working on a team, which con-

veyed her support and established trust.

One of Tyler’s goals was to overcome his fear of dif-

fi cult conversations and handle them better. Together, he

and Marie identifi ed a way of conquering that fear: orga-

nizing his thoughts before trying to communicate them.

Tyler then practiced by role-playing with Marie. (He felt

comfortable doing so because of the personal connection

they had established.) Because the learning process re-

fl ected his style, he became more invested in it—and his

skills improved each time he practiced.

What Are Your Employees’ Learning

Styles?

Personality type, education, and cultural background all

infl uence learning preferences. And once someone fi nds

success with a certain style, she’ll continue to rely on it,

reinforcing the preference.

Here are the nine learning styles you may recognize

in members of your team and the coaching tactics that

complement them:

1. Initiating: experimenting with new courses of

action. These learners enjoy networking, infl u-

encing others, thinking on their feet, and seeking

opportunities. Encourage them to jump in and

learn from trial and error. Use inspiring, energetic

language to communicate with them ( set the pace,

grab the chance, seize the opportunity).

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2.

Experiencing: fi nding meaning from deep involve-

ment in experiences and relationships. These

learners focus on emotions and intuition. Con-

nect with them on a personal level and encourage

them to work with others. Use language that is

sensitive and accepting ( touched, grounded, pres-

ent, mindful) .

3.

Imagining: contemplating experiences and

considering a range of solutions. These learners

seek and appreciate diverse input from many

people. Listen to their many creative ideas before

prompting them to focus on one. Encourage

them to discover a course of action through a

series of small decisions. Use words that con-

vey open-mindedness, empathy, and trust

( value ideas, brainstorm, reach for the

stars, create an ideal vision, consider other

perspectives).

4. Refl ecting: connecting experiences and ideas

through sustained refl ection. These learners

observe others, take multiple perspectives into

account, and wait to act until they’re confi dent

about the outcome. Allow adequate time for

them to watch, listen, and rehearse quietly on

their own. Communicate with words that convey

a slow and thoughtful approach ( take plenty of

time, be cautious, pause, process the idea, watch a

role model ) .

5.

Analyzing: integrating and systematizing ideas.

These learners like to make plans, attend to de-

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tails, and use theories to test assumptions.

Provide conceptual models so they can process

ideas before applying them. Use concise, logi-

cal language ( seek details, organize the facts,

synthesize the data, do the research, make

a plan) .

6.

Thinking: engaging in disciplined logic or math-

ematics. These learners prefer quantitative

analysis and abstract reasoning, and tend to

focus on one objective at a time. Engage them by

weighing costs and benefi ts. Communicate using

the language of logic and reason ( see the point,

just the facts, sharpen our focus, create a spread-

sheet, examine the data) .

7.

Deciding: choosing a single course of action early

on to achieve practical results. These learn-

ers effi ciently set goals and critically evaluate

whatever solution they’ve chosen. Involve them

in fi guring out which problems to solve and

setting standards, and allow them to measure

their own success. Use language that’s prag-

matic and direct ( take a practical approach,

measure success, critical feedback, strong direc-

tion, best practice) .

8.

Acting: taking assertive, goal-directed steps

toward change. These learners care about

completing tasks and meeting people’s needs,

and they take risks to get things done faster

and better. Encourage trial and error and

on-the-job experiments. Choose words that

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convey dynamism and speed ( take action, quick

turnaround, achieve results, implement

the plan) .

9.

Balancing: weighing the pros and cons of acting

versus refl ecting, and experiencing versus

thinking. These learners can fl exibly assume any

learning style to fi ll gaps in their knowledge. Tap

their abilities to identify blind spots and to adapt.

Communicate with language that refl ects their

fl exibility ( balance the situation, include variety,

adapt, take a holistic perspective) .

Do any of your direct reports, like Tyler, learn best

through feelings and relationships (Experiencing or

Imagining)? Which ones prefer watching role models

from a safe distance and emulating their behavior (Re-

fl ecting)? Which are comfortable with trial and error

(Initiating or Acting)? To fi nd out, try asking employees

whether they generally gravitate toward feeling, watch-

ing, thinking, or acting—and map their answers to the

learning styles defi ned above.

But that’s just a start. (You’ll probably get uneven re-

sponses—many people haven’t even thought about their

learning preferences and may struggle to articulate them.)

So add your own observations to the mix: What appears

to interest and motivate each employee? Knowing that

can shed light on learning preferences. For example, an

employee who always emerges from your group’s annual

strategy off-site with renewed enthusiasm, rallying oth-

ers to support the mission and business model, is likely to

have an Initiating style. By contrast, someone who avoids

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deliberating but digs into every task with energy and

commitment probably has an Acting style of learning.

Language cues can also be telling: Note whether em-

ployees favor expressions of feeling, believing, think-

ing, or doing. Someone who often talks in emotional-

relational terms (“I loved the discussion we had” or “The

fi nancials are making me anxious”) probably focuses on

feelings and learns by Experiencing rather than Thinking

or Deciding.

What If Their Styles Aren’t Doing

the Trick?

Knowing how people like to learn will accelerate their

overall development—but using only their preferred

styles won’t help them tackle every challenge they face.

They’ll often need to try out new styles to meet their goals.

Consider Alex, an accountant who has been pro-

moted to lead his department. His primary learning style

is Analyzing; he also relies on Thinking and Deciding,

though to a lesser extent. This approach has served him

well as an individual contributor. But to thrive in his new

leader ship position, he’ll need to expand his repertoire

of backup styles to include Initiating, Experiencing, and

Imagining.

Now suppose you are his manager. You can help him

experiment with these learning styles and strengthen

his use of them through practice. Ask him to facilitate a

brainstorming session, for instance, to become better at

Imagining as he envisions new possibilities for the group.

Develop his capacity for Initiating by assigning him to a

cross-functional project, where his success will depend

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in part on his ability to infl uence people who don’t report

to him. Work with him to build key relationships so he’ll

spend more time Experiencing—introduce him to col-

leagues whose styles differ from (and complement) his.

During your regular check-ins, talk about these experi-

ments in order to make the learning explicit and deliber-

ate. Ask him what he’s enjoying and what he fi nds chal-

lenging. See what lessons he can tease out on his own; if

he struggles to do that, refer him back to the Learning

Cycle—remind him which styles will help him succeed as

a department head.

As he’s trying out new styles, however, you will still

want to use data, frameworks, theories, and goal setting

to motivate him, given his natural preference for Analyz-

ing, Thinking, and Deciding. To get him to sharpen his

networking skills, for instance, make the interpersonal

challenge more appealing to him by enhancing it with

analysis: Ask him to map out his current network and

identify which people’s functions and expertise will help

him most in his new role.

To do everything we’re suggesting, you’ll need to really

know your employees—talk to them, observe them, ana-

lyze them, ask colleagues about them. Since individuals’

learning preferences are so deeply ingrained, your coach-

ing will be more effi cient and fruitful if you meet people

where they are in the Learning Cycle. Yet it’s equally im-

portant to recognize when their styles aren’t panning out.

By playing to their preferences—while also encouraging

them to become more fl exible—you’ll help them discover

and reach their potential.

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David A. Kolb, a psychologist and educational theorist, is

the founder of Experience Based Learning Systems and

a professor emeritus at Case Western Reserve University.

His renowned Kolb Learning Style Inventory is outlined

briefl y in this chapter. Kay Peterson, a principal at Learn-

ing Partners Group, is an organizational development

consultant and coach specializing in experiential learn-

ing and learning-style fl exibility.

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Chapter 12

Coaching Your

Stars, Steadies,

and Strugglers

by Jim Grinnell

Let’s say you have three direct reports: Cindy always

exceeds her numbers, rarely asks for your help, and of-

ten takes initiative on new projects. Performancewise,

she’s every manager’s dream, although she can be abra-

sive and dismissive of her colleagues. Compare her with

Ed, a pleasant colleague who gets the job done com-

petently. His attitude is “a day’s work for a day’s pay,”

and for him that day ends at 5:00 pm. And then there’s

Sam. He’s very likeable, but he can’t seem to get things

right. It’s heartbreaking—he stays late every day and

Adapted from “The ABCs of Employee Coaching,” posted on May 31,

2012, at businesslearningcoach.com

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takes work home on the weekends just to perform at a

subpar level.

How do you coach Cindy, Ed, and Sam? Should you

give them equal time? Should you emphasize the same

things?

This may sound unfair, but you cannot treat them the

same way. You need to make some choices—place some

bets on where your efforts will pay off.

The Stars

We often assume it’s best to leave A players like Cindy

alone. They’ve mastered their domain, and we don’t want

to muck things up, so we keep our distance as managers.

But that’s a mistake. You should actually devote more

coaching time to your stars than to anyone else because

that’s where you’ll yield the greatest results. Plus, they

need more support than you might think. As execu-

tive coach Steven Berglas points out in “How to Keep

A Players Productive” (HBR September 2006), stars,

“despite their veneer of self-satisfaction, smugness, and

even bluster,” are often insecure individuals in need of

praise and nurturing. Many high performers grew up

in an environment where great was never good enough.

As a result, they often feel they’re masquerading as

suc cessful.

When you coach A players, offset their insecurities

with affi rmation. Try the following suggestions, drawn

from Berglas’s article:

• Praise your stars genuinely and frequently. They’ll

immediately sniff out platitudes and empty ac-

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colades. When you praise them, focus on the

skills and strengths they value in themselves. For

instance, if a direct report says she gets charged up

by landing high-margin sales deals, congratulate

her when she does so. And if she responds well

to public recognition, share the news in a depart-

ment meeting or send out a group e-mail when

she brings in a big account.

• Rein them in. Left to their own devices, A play-

ers will keep raising their own standards and

over time will push themselves to performance

they can’t sustain. So act like a governor on an

engine: Keep their expectations from revving to

the point of breakdown. One way to do this is to

discuss your concerns about their frenetic pace

with them. They’re self-focused, so they’ll probably

be receptive if you direct the conversation to their

well-being.

• Nudge them to play nicely. A players tend to be

hyper-judgmental of their colleagues. Unless you

explicitly hold them accountable for collegial-

ity and teamwork, they may create interpersonal

turmoil, undermining their positive contributions.

Sometimes they’ll demonstrate annoyance when

their teammates don’t perform to their standards,

or they’ll act with contempt when asked to assist

coworkers. When delivering constructive feedback

to A players, comment on the behavior, not on the

person (a lot of “you” statements may get their

defenses up). And be specifi c about the impact of

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their behavior on the team’s performance. That’s

something they’ll care about.

High performers can be hard to take. It’s tempting to

bring them down a peg or two when they start acting up,

but keep that impulse in check. You’ll get much more out

of them—and less grief—if you allow them to savor their

accomplishments.

The Steadies

If A players are your lead singers and guitarists, B players

such as Ed in the example earlier are your drummers and

bass players. They certainly don’t get top billing, but they

hold everything together in the organization. B players

make up the lion’s share of the workforce—75% to 80%,

by some estimates. And they dutifully get the job done

with little fanfare or oversight.

Still, they need your attention. Here are some tips on

coaching them effectively, based on insights from “Let’s

Hear It for B Players” (HBR June 2003), by Thomas J.

DeLong and Vineeta Vijayaraghavan:

• Accept them for who they are. Some managers

assume you should try to move your B players up

to the A level. While this approach is intuitively

appealing, it’s not the best investment of your

time, for a variety of reasons: Many B players have

reached the limits of their abilities. Some have

made a conscious life choice to occupy the meaty

part of the performance curve because they’re

winding down their careers, for example, or seek-

ing work/life balance. While a subset have A-level

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potential, the majority are entrenched at the

B level. But these folks still bring tremendous value.

They’re often straight shooters who provide in-

sights others are afraid to share. They are also less

apt to leave—and thus disrupt—the organization.

• Recognize and reward them. Though they don’t

receive (or expect) the same fi nancial rewards or

promotions as A players, B players crave affi rma-

tion. If a B player puts in extra effort to respond to

a customer complaint, acknowledge it. And deliver

your praise however your employee likes to receive

it. Some people prefer it one-on-one, while others

seek public accolades.

• Give them options. B performers may not want to

grow and develop as much as their A peers—but

they don’t want to stagnate, either. Provide op-

portunities for them to grow within their comfort

zones. Invest in training that will help them shore

up their strengths. Send them to conferences and

seminars on topics they care about. Ask them to

mentor junior employees. Solicit their input on

decisions. B players have a lot to offer—but you

need to make it relatively easy for them.

The Strugglers

Managers often devote most of their coaching to the em-

ployees who struggle the most, like Sam—and that’s a

losing proposition.

When we talk about C players, we’re not referring to

employees who are adjusting to the organization or to

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new roles; we’re talking about individuals who should

be performing at a higher level. Over time, they just

don’t carry their weight. They drag down their teams

and sometimes even corrode their coworkers’ attitudes.

And to the extent that C players are taking up space, they

block the advancement of stronger candidates.

So what do you do with them? In “A New Game Plan

for C Players” (HBR January 2002), Beth Axelrod, Helen Handfi eld-Jones, and Ed Michaels suggest a tough but

respectful approach: Give low performers a chance at re-

demption but set fi rm expectations to overcome procras-

tination and rationalization. Here’s how:

• Create a clear plan for improvement. Employees

won’t improve in a vacuum. They need guid-

ance on what to change and help changing it. Set

concrete goals for them and have a well-defi ned

end point. If C players don’t meet agreed-upon

standards within a specifi ed amount of time, help

them make a graceful, dignifi ed exit. Make sure

you’ve documented their progress, or lack thereof,

so you don’t take them by surprise or leave your-

self open to any HR or legal battles.

• Give candid, real-time feedback. As diffi cult as it

may be to provide critical feedback, you are doing

C players no favors by withholding it. They need

to understand if and how they’re improving and

where they’re falling short. (See chapter 6, “Giving

Feedback That Sticks.”)

• Provide a support network. Don’t invest a ton

of your time coaching C players, but don’t leave

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them to languish, either. You may want to rely

on existing training programs or farm out the

coaching, perhaps pairing the C player with a

competent peer.

That’s how to coach someone like Sam. If he doesn’t

make progress, don’t let him stick around, no matter how

nice he is and how hard he tries. The amount of time

you give him will depend on the nature of his job and his

commitment and capacity to improve. In most instances

you’ll know within a few months whether further invest-

ment will help. You need to move sensitively but swiftly

in dealing with Sam. You owe it to Cindy and Ed—and to

your organization—to focus your coaching efforts where

they’ll pan out.

Jim Grinnell is an associate professor of management at

Merrimack College in North Andover, Massachusetts.

His consulting fi rm, Grinnell Consulting, works with

fi rms on leadership coaching and organizational change

and development.

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Chapter 13

Coaching Your

Rookie Managers

by Carol A. Walker

Most organizations promote employees into managerial

positions based on their technical competence. Very of-

ten, however, those people fail to grasp how their roles

have changed—that their jobs are no longer about per-

sonal achievement but instead about enabling others to

achieve, that sometimes driving the bus means taking

a backseat, and that building a team is often more im-

portant than cutting a deal. Even the best employees can

have trouble adjusting to these new realities. That trou-

ble may be exacerbated by normal insecurities that make

rookie managers hesitant to ask for help, even when they

fi nd themselves in thoroughly unfamiliar territory. As

these new managers internalize their stress, their focus

Adapted from Harvard Business Review, April 2002 (product

#R0204H)

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becomes internal as well. They become insecure and

self-focused and cannot properly support their teams.

Inevitably, trust breaks down, staff members are alien-

ated, and productivity suffers.

Many companies unwittingly support this downward

spiral by assuming that their rookie managers will some-

how learn critical management skills by osmosis. Some

rookies do, to be sure, but in my experience they’re the

exceptions. Most need more help. In the absence of com-

prehensive training and intensive coaching—which most

companies don’t offer—the rookie manager’s boss plays a

key role. Of course, it’s not possible for most senior man-

agers to spend hours and hours every week overseeing a

new manager’s work, but if you know what typical chal-

lenges a rookie manager faces, you’ll be able to antici-

pate some problems before they arise and nip others in

the bud.

Delegating

Effective delegation may be one of the most diffi cult tasks

for rookie managers. Senior managers bestow on them

big responsibilities and tight deadlines, and they put a

lot of pressure on them to produce results. The natural

response of rookies when faced with such challenges is

to “just do it,” thinking that’s what got them promoted

in the fi rst place. But their reluctance to delegate assign-

ments also has its roots in some very real fears. First is

the fear of losing stature: If I assign high-profi le projects

to my staff members, they’ll get the credit. What kind of

visibility will I be left with? Will it be clear to my boss

and my staff what value I’m adding? Second is the fear of

abdicating control: If I allow Frank to do this, how can

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I be sure that he will do it correctly? In the face of this

fear, the rookie manager may delegate tasks but super-

vise Frank so closely that he will never feel accountable.

Finally, the rookie may be hesitant to delegate work be-

cause he’s afraid of overburdening his staff. He may be

uncomfortable assigning work to former peers for fear

that they’ll resent him. But the real resentment usually

comes when staff members feel that lack of opportunity

is blocking their advancement.

Signs that these fears may be playing out include new

managers who work excessively long hours, are hesitant

to take on new responsibilities, have staff members who

seem unengaged, or have a tendency to answer on behalf

of employees instead of encouraging them to communi-

cate with you directly.

The fi rst step toward helping young managers del-

egate effectively is to get them to understand their new

role. Acknowledge that their job fundamentally differs

from an individual contributor’s. Clarify what you and

the organization value in leaders. Developing talented,

promotable staff is critical in any company. Let new

managers know that they will be rewarded for these less

tangible efforts in addition to hitting numerical goals.

Understanding this new role is half the battle for rookie

managers, and one that many companies mistakenly as-

sume is evident from the start.

After clarifying how your rookie manager’s role has

changed, you can move on to tactics.

When a new manager grumbles about mounting

workloads, seize the opportunity to discuss delegation.

Encourage him to take small risks initially, playing to the

obvious strengths of his staff members. Early successes

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will build the manager’s confi dence and willingness to

take progressively larger risks in stretching each team

member’s capabilities. Reinforce to him that delegation

does not mean abdication. Breaking a complex project

into manageable chunks, each with clearly defi ned mile-

stones, makes effective follow-up easier. It’s also impor-

tant to schedule regular meetings before the project even

begins in order to ensure that the manager stays abreast

of progress and that staff members feel accountable.

One young manager I worked with desperately needed

to fi nd time to train and supervise new employees. His

fi rm had been recently acquired, and he had to deal with

high staff turnover and new industrywide rules and reg-

ulations. The most senior person on his staff—a woman

who had worked for the acquiring company—was about

to return from an extended family leave, and he was con-

vinced that he couldn’t ask her for help. After all, she had

a part-time schedule, and she’d asked to be assigned to

the company’s largest client. To complicate matters, he

suspected that she resented his promotion. As we evalu-

ated the situation, the manager was able to see that the

senior staffer’s number one priority was reestablishing

herself as an important part of the team. Once he realized

this, he asked her to take on critical supervisory respon-

sibilities, balanced with a smaller client load, and she

eagerly agreed. Indeed, she returned from leave excited

about partnering with her manager to develop the team.

Getting Support from Above

Most fi rst-time managers see their relationship with their

boss more as one of servitude than of partnership. They

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will wait for you to initiate meetings, ask for reports, and

question results. You may welcome this restraint, but gen-

erally it’s a bad sign. For one thing, it puts undue pressure

on you to keep the fl ow of communication going. Even

more important, it prevents new managers from looking

to you as a critical source of support. If they don’t see you

that way, it’s unlikely that they will see themselves that

way for their own people. The problem isn’t only that your

position intimidates them; it’s also that they fear being

vulnerable. A newly promoted manager doesn’t want you

to see weaknesses, lest you think you made a mistake in

promoting her. When I ask rookie managers about their

relationships with their bosses, they often admit that they

are trying to “stay under the boss’s radar” and are “careful

about what [they] say to the boss.”

Some inexperienced managers will not seek your

help even when they start to founder. Seemingly capable

rookie managers often try to cover up a failing project

or relationship—just until they can get it back under

control.

What’s the boss of a rookie manager to do? You can

begin by clarifying expectations. Explain the connection

between the rookie’s success and your success so that she

understands that open communication is necessary for

you to achieve your goals. Explain that you don’t expect

her to have all the answers. Introduce her to other manag-

ers within the company who may be helpful, and encour-

age her to contact them as needed. Let her know that mis-

takes happen but that the cover-up is always worse than

the crime. Let her know that you like to receive occasional

lunch invitations as much as you like to extend them.

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Lunch and drop-by meetings are important, but they

usually aren’t enough. Consider meeting regularly with

a new manager—perhaps weekly in the early stages of a

new assignment, moving to biweekly or monthly as her

confi dence builds. These meetings will develop rapport,

provide you with insight into how the person is approach-

ing the job, and make the new manager organize her

thoughts on a regular basis. Be clear that the meetings

are her time and that it’s up to her to plan the agenda.

The message you send is that the individual’s work is

important to you and that you’re a committed business

partner. More subtly, you’re modeling how to simultane-

ously empower and guide direct reports.

Projecting Confi dence

Looking confi dent when you don’t feel confi dent—it’s a

challenge we all face, and as senior managers we’re usu-

ally conscious of the need when it arises. Rookie manag-

ers are often so internally focused that they are unaware

of this need or the image they project. They are so fo-

cused on substance that they forget that form counts, too.

The fi rst weeks and months on the job are a critical time

for new leaders to reach out to staff. If they don’t project

confi dence, they are unlikely to inspire and energize their

teams.

I routinely work with new managers who are unaware

that their everyday demeanor is hurting their organiza-

tions. In one rapidly growing technology company, the

service manager, Linda, faced high levels of stress. Ser-

vice outages were all too common, and they were beyond

her control. Customers were exacting, and they too were

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under great pressure. Her rapidly growing staff was gen-

erally inexperienced. Distraught customers and employ-

ees had her tied up in knots almost daily. She consistently

appeared breathless, rushed, and fearful that the other

shoe was about to drop. The challenge was perhaps too

big for a fi rst-time manager, but that’s what happens in

rapidly growing companies. On one level, Linda was do-

ing an excellent job keeping the operation going. The cli-

ent base was growing and retention was certainly high—

largely as a result of her energy and resourcefulness. But

on another level, she was doing a lot of damage.

Linda’s frantic demeanor had two critical repercus-

sions. First, she had unwittingly defi ned the standard for

acceptable conduct in her department, and her inexperi-

enced staff began to display the same behaviors. Before

long, other departments were reluctant to communicate

with Linda or her team, for fear of bothering them or

eliciting an emotional reaction. But for the company to

arrive at real solutions to the service problems, depart-

ments needed to openly exchange information, and that

wasn’t happening. Second, Linda was not portraying

herself to senior managers as promotion material. They

were pleased with her troubleshooting abilities, but they

did not see a confi dent, thoughtful senior manager in

the making. The image Linda was projecting would ul-

timately hold back both her career and her department.

Not all rookie managers display the problems that

Linda did. Some appear excessively arrogant. Others wear

their self-doubt on their sleeves. Whether your managers

appear overwhelmed, arrogant, or insecure, honest feed-

back is your best tool. You can help rookie managers by

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telling them that it’s always safe to let out their feelings—

in your offi ce, behind closed doors. Re inforce just how

long a shadow they cast once they assume leadership

positions. Their staff members watch them closely, and

if they see professionalism and optimism, they are likely

to demonstrate those characteristics as well. Preach the

gospel of conscious comportment—a constant awareness

of the image one is projecting to the world. If you observe

a manager projecting a less-than-positive image, tell that

person right away.

Just-in-time coaching is often the most effective

method for showing rookie managers how to project

confi dence. For instance, the fi rst time you ask a new

manager to carry out an initiative, take a little extra time

to walk her through the process. Impress upon her the

cardinal rule of management: Your staff members don’t

necessarily have to like you, but they do need to trust you.

Ensure that the new manager owns the message she’s

delivering.

Focusing on the Big Picture

Rookie managers have a real knack for allowing imme-

diate tasks to overshadow overarching initiatives. This

is particularly true for those promoted from within, be-

cause they’ve just come from the front lines where they’re

accustomed to constant fi refi ghting. As a recent indi-

vidual contributor armed with plenty of technical know-

how, the rookie manager instinctively runs to the imme-

diate rescue of any client or staff member in need. The

sense of accomplishment rookies get from such rescues is

seductive and far more exhilarating than rooting out the

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cause of all the fi refi ghting. And what could be better for

team spirit than having the boss jump into the trenches

and fi ght the good fi ght?

Of course, a leader shows great team spirit if he joins

the troops in emergencies. But are all those emergencies

true emergencies? Are newer staff members being em-

powered to handle complex challenges? And if the rookie

manager is busy fi ghting fi res, who is thinking strategi-

cally for the department? If you’re the senior manager

and these questions are popping into your head, you may

well have a rookie manager who doesn’t fully understand

his role or is afraid to seize it.

I recently worked with a young manager who had be-

come so accustomed to responding to a steady fl ow of

problems that he was reluctant to block off any time to

work on the strategic initiatives we had identifi ed. When

I probed, he revealed that he felt a critical part of his role

was to wait for crises to arise. “What if I schedule this

time and something urgent comes up and I disappoint

someone?” he asked. When I pointed out that he could

always postpone his strategy sessions if a true emergency

arose, he seemed relieved. But he saw the concept of mak-

ing time to think about the business as self-indulgent—

this, despite the fact that his group was going to be asked

to raise productivity signifi cantly in the following fi scal

year, and he’d done nothing to prepare for that reality.

As a senior manager, you can help your rookies by

explaining to them that strategic thinking is a neces-

sary skill for career advancement: For fi rst-time manag-

ers, 10% of the work might be strategic and 90% tacti-

cal. As executives climb the corporate ladder, however,

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those percentages will fl ip-fl op. To be successful at the

next level, managers must demonstrate that they can

think and act strategically. You can use your regularly

scheduled meetings to help your managers focus on the

big picture. Don’t allow them to simply review the latest

results and move on. Ask probing questions about those

results. For example, “What trends are you seeing in the

marketplace that could affect you in two quarters? Tell

me how your competition is responding to those same

trends.” Don’t let them regale you with the wonderful

training their staffs have been getting without asking,

“What additional skills do we need to build in the staff

to increase productivity by 25% next year?” If you aren’t

satisfi ed with your managers’ responses, let them know

that you expect them to think this way—not to have

all the answers, but to be fully engaged in the strategic

thought process.

Giving Constructive Feedback

It’s human nature to avoid confrontations, and most

people feel awkward when they have to correct others’

behavior or actions. Rookie managers are no exception,

and they often avoid addressing important issues with

their staff.

You can help by creating an environment in which

constructive feedback is perceived not as criticism but as

a source of empowerment. This begins with the feedback

you offer to your managers about their own development.

Often, brainstorming sessions can help rookie manag-

ers see that sticky personal issues can be broken down

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into straightforward business issues. Recommending a

change in action is much easier than recommending a

change in attitude. Never forget the old saw: You can’t

ask people to change their personalities, but you can ask

them to change their behaviors.

Indeed, you should share your own techniques for

dealing with diffi cult conversations. One manager I

worked with became defensive whenever a staff mem-

ber questioned her judgment. She didn’t really need me

to tell her that her behavior was undermining her im-

age and effectiveness. She did need me to offer her some

techniques that would enable her to respond differently

in the heat of the moment. She trained herself to respond

quickly and earnestly with a small repertoire of ques-

tions like, “Can you tell me more about what you mean

by that?” This simple technique bought her the time she

needed to gather her thoughts and engage in an inter-

change that was productive rather than defensive. She

was too close to the situation to come up with the tech-

nique herself.

Delegating, thinking strategically, communicating—you

may think this all sounds like Management 101. And

you’re right. The most basic elements of management are

often what trip up managers early in their careers. And

because they are the basics, the bosses of rookie managers

often take them for granted. They shouldn’t—an extra-

ordinary number of people fail to develop these skills. I’ve

maintained an illusion throughout this article—that only

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rookie managers suffer because they haven’t mastered

these core skills. But the truth is, managers at all levels

make these mistakes. An organization that supports its

new managers by helping them to develop these skills

will have surprising advantages over the competition.

Carol A. Walker

is the president of Prepared to Lead

(www.preparedtolead.com), a management consulting

fi rm devoted to helping organizations maximize the ef-

fectiveness of fi rst-time managers. Before founding the

company, she worked for 15 years as an executive in the

insurance and technology industries.

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Chapter 14

Coaching Rising

Managers to

Emotional Maturity

by Kerry A. Bunker, Kathy E. Kram,

and Sharon Ting

In the past 10 years, we’ve met dozens of managers who

have fallen victim to a harmful mix of their own ambition

and their bosses’ willingness to overlook a lack of people

skills. Indeed, most executives seek out smart, aggressive

people, paying more attention to their accomplishments

than to their emotional maturity. What’s more, they

know that their strongest performers have options—if

they don’t get the job they want at one company, they’re

bound to get it somewhere else. Why risk losing them to

a competitor by delaying a promotion?

Adapted from Harvard Business Review, December 2002 (product

#R0212F)

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The answer is that promoting them can be just as

risky. Putting these unseasoned managers into positions

of authority too quickly robs them of the opportunity

to develop the emotional competencies that come with

time and experience—competencies like the ability to

negotiate with peers, regulate their emotions in times of

crisis, or win support for change. You may be delighted

with such managers’ intelligence and passion—and may

even see younger versions of themselves—but peers and

subordinates are more likely to see them as arrogant and

inconsiderate, or, at the very least, aloof. And therein lies

the problem. At some point in a young manager’s career,

usually at the vice president level, raw talent and deter-

mined ambition become less important than the ability

to infl uence and persuade. And unless senior executives

appreciate this fact and make emotional competence a

top priority, these high-potential managers will continue

to fail, often at signifi cant cost to the company.

Research has shown that the higher a manager rises in

the ranks, the more important soft leadership skills are

to his success.1 Our colleagues at the Center for Creative

Leadership have found that about a third of senior execu-

tives derail or plateau at some point, most often due to an

emotional defi cit such as the inability to build a team or

regulate their own emotions in times of stress. And in our

combined 55 years of coaching and teaching, we’ve seen

fi rsthand how a young manager risks his career when he

fails to develop emotional competencies. But the prob-

lem isn’t youth per se. The problem is a lack of emotional

maturity, which doesn’t come easily or automatically and

isn’t something you learn from a book. It’s one thing to

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Coaching Rising Managers to Emotional Maturity

understand the importance of relationships at an intel-

lectual level and to learn techniques like active listen-

ing; it’s another matter entirely to develop a full range

of interpersonal competencies like patience, openness,

and empathy. Emotional maturity involves a fundamen-

tal shift in self-awareness and behavior, and that change

requires practice, diligence, and time.

This article will look at fi ve strategies for boosting

emotional competencies and redirecting managers who

are paying a price for damaged or nonexistent relation-

ships. The strategies aren’t terribly complicated, but

implementing them and getting people to change their

entrenched behaviors can be very diffi cult. Many of these

managers are accustomed to receiving accolades, and

it often isn’t easy for them to hear—or act on—diffi cult

messages. You may have to satisfy yourself with small

victories and accept occasional slipups. But perhaps the

greatest challenge is having the discipline to resist the

charm of the young and the clueless—to refrain from

promoting them before they are ready and to stay the

course even if they threaten to quit.

Deepen 360-Degree Feedback

With its questionnaires and standardized rating scales,

360-degree feedback as it is traditionally implemented

may not be suffi ciently specifi c or detailed to get the at-

tention of inexperienced managers who excel at bottom-

line measures but struggle with more subtle relationship

challenges. These managers will benefi t from a deeper

and more thorough process that includes time for re-

fl ection and follow-up conversations. That means, for

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example, interviewing a wider range of the manager’s

peers and subordinates and giving her the opportunity to

read verbatim responses to open-ended questions. Such

detailed and extensive feedback can help a person see

herself more as others do, a must for the young manager

lacking the self-awareness to understand where she’s fall-

ing short.

We witnessed this lack of self-awareness in Bill Miller,

a 42-year-old vice president at a software company—

an environment where technical ability is highly prized

(as with all the examples in these pages, we’ve changed

Miller’s name and other identifying features to protect

our clients’ identities). Miller had gone far on pure in-

tellect, but he never fully appreciated his own strengths.

So year after year, in assignment after assignment, he

worked doubly hard at learning the complexities of the

business, neglecting his relationships with his colleagues

as an unintended consequence. His coworkers consid-

ered his smarts and business acumen among the fi nest

in the company, but they found him unapproachable and

detached. As a result, top management questioned his

ability to lead the type of strategic change that would re-

quire motivating staff at all levels. Not until Miller went

through an in-depth 360-degree developmental review

was he able to accept that he no longer needed to prove

his intelligence—that he could relax in that respect and

instead work on strengthening his personal connections.

After months of working hard to cultivate stronger rela-

tionships with his employees, Miller began to notice that

he felt more included in chance social encounters like

hallway conversations.

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Coaching Rising Managers to Emotional Maturity

Art Grainger, a 35-year-old senior manager at a ce-

ment and concrete company, was generally considered

a champion by his direct reports. He was also known

for becoming defensive whenever his peers or superi-

ors questioned or even discussed his unit’s performance.

Through 360-degree reviews, he discovered that while

everyone saw him as committed, results-oriented, and

technically brilliant, they also saw him as overly pro-

tective, claiming he resisted any action or decision that

might affect his department. Only when Grainger heard

that his staff agreed with what his bosses had been telling

him for years did he concede that he needed to change.

Since then, he has come to see members of other depart-

ments as potential allies and has tried to redefi ne his

team to include people from across the company.

It’s worth noting that many of these smart young

managers aren’t used to hearing criticism. Consequently,

they may discount negative feedback, either because the

comments don’t mesh with what they’ve heard in previ-

ous conversations or because their egos are so strong. Or

they may conclude that they can “fi x” the problem right

away—after all, they’ve been able to fi x most problems

they’ve encountered in the past. But developing emo-

tional competencies requires practice and ongoing per-

sonal interactions. The good news is that if you succeed

in convincing them that these issues are career threat-

ening, they may apply the same zeal to their emotional

development that they bring to their other projects. And

that’s why 360-degree feedback is so valuable: When it

comes from multiple sources and is ongoing, it’s diffi cult

to ignore.

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Interrupt the Ascent

When people are continually promoted within their areas

of expertise, they don’t have to stray far from their com-

fort zones, so they seldom need to ask for help, especially

if they’re good problem solvers. Accordingly, they may be-

come overly independent and fail to cultivate relationships

with people who could be useful to them in the future.

What’s more, they may rely on the authority that comes

with rank rather than learning how to infl uence people.

We sometimes counsel our clients to broaden young

managers’ skills by assigning them to cross-functional

roles outside their expected career paths. This is dis-

tinct from traditional job rotation, which has employees

spending time in different functional areas to enhance

and broaden their knowledge of the business. Rather, the

manager is assigned a role in which he doesn’t have much

direct authority. This will help him focus on developing

other skills like negotiation and infl uencing peers.

Such cross-functional assignments—with no clear au-

thority or obvious ties to a career path—can be a tough

sell. It’s not easy to convince young managers that these

assignments are valuable, nor is it easy to help them ex-

tract relevant knowledge.

Act on Your Commitment

One of the reasons employees get stuck in the pattern

we’ve described is that their bosses point out defi cits in

emotional competencies but don’t follow through. They

either neglect to articulate the consequences of continu-

ing the destructive behavior or make empty threats but

proceed with a promotion anyway. The hard-charging

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Coaching Rising Managers to Emotional Maturity

young executive can only conclude that these competen-

cies are optional.

A cautionary tale comes from Mitchell Geller who, at

29, was on the verge of being named partner at a law fi rm.

He had alienated many of his peers and subordinates

over the years through his arrogance, a shortcoming duly

noted on his yearly performance reviews, yet his keen

legal mind had won him promotion after promotion.

With Geller’s review approaching, his boss, Larry Snow,

pointed to heavy attrition among the up-and- coming

lawyers who worked for Geller and warned him that fur-

ther advancement would be contingent on a change in

personal style. Geller didn’t take the feedback to heart—

he was confi dent that he’d get by, as he always had, on

sheer talent. And true to form, Snow didn’t stick to his

guns. The promotion came through even though Geller’s

behavior hadn’t changed. Two weeks later, Geller, by then

a partner responsible for managing client relationships,

led meetings with two key accounts. Afterward, the fi rst

client approached Snow and asked him to sit in on future

meetings. Then the second client withdrew his business

altogether, complaining that Geller had refused to listen

to alternative points of view.

Contrast Geller’s experience with that of 39-year-

old Barry Kessler, a senior vice president at an insur-

ance company. For years, Kessler had been heir appar-

ent to the CEO due to his strong fi nancial skills and vast

knowledge of the business—that is, until John Mason, his

boss and the current CEO, began to question the wisdom

of promoting him.

While Kessler managed his own group exceptionally

well, he avoided collaboration with other units, which

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was particularly important as the company began look-

ing for new growth opportunities, including potential

alliances with other organizations. The problem wasn’t

that Kessler was hostile, it was that he was passively dis-

engaged—a fl aw that hadn’t seemed as important when

he was responsible only for his own group. In coaching

Kessler, we learned that he was extremely averse to con-

fl ict and that he avoided situations where he couldn’t

be the decision maker. His aversions sharply limited his

ability to work with peers.

Mason sent a strong signal, not only to Kessler but

to others in the organization, when he essentially de-

moted Kessler by taking away some of his responsibilities

and temporarily pulling him from the succession plan.

To give Kessler an opportunity to develop the skills he

lacked, Mason asked him to lead a cross-functional team

dedicated to fi nding strategic opportunities for growth.

Success would require Kessler to devote more time to

developing his interpersonal skills. He had no authority

over the other team members, so he had to work through

disputes and help the team arrive at a consensus. Two

years later, Kessler reports that he is more comfortable

with confl ict and feedback, and he’s worked his way back

into the succession plan.

Institutionalize Personal

Development

One of the most effective ways to build managers’ emo-

tional competencies is to weave interpersonal goals into

the fabric of the organization, where everyone is expected

to demonstrate a specifi c set of emotional skills and

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where criteria for promotion include behaviors as well as

technical ability. A built-in process will make it easier to

uncover potential problems early and reduce the chances

that people identifi ed as needing personal development

will feel singled out or unfairly held back. Employees will

know exactly what’s expected of them and what it takes

to advance in their careers.

At one company where the senior management team

committed to developing the emotional competencies

of the company’s leaders, the team fi rst provided ex-

tensive education on coaching to the HR department,

which in turn supervised a program whereby top manag-

ers coached their younger and more inexperienced col-

leagues. The goal was to have both the experienced and

inexperienced benefi t: The junior managers provided

feedback on the senior people’s coaching skills, and the

senior people helped foster emotional competencies in

their less experienced colleagues.

The results were encouraging. Wes Burke, an other-

wise high-performing manager, had recently been strug-

gling to meet his business targets. After spending time

with Burke and conferring with his subordinates and

peers, his coach (internal to the organization) came to

believe that, in his zest to achieve his goals, Burke was

unable to slow down and listen to other people’s ideas.

Burke wasn’t a boor: He had taken courses in commu-

nication and knew how to fake listening behaviors such

as nodding his head and giving verbal acknowledgments,

but he was often distracted and not really paying at-

tention. He never accepted this feedback until one day,

while he was walking purposefully through the large

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operations plant he managed, a fl oor supervisor stopped

him to discuss his ideas for solving an ongoing pro-

duction problem. Burke fl ipped on his active-listening

mode. After uttering a few acknowledgments and saying,

“Thanks, let’s talk more about that,” he moved on, leaving

the supervisor feeling frustrated and at a loss for how to

capture his boss’s interest. As it happened, Burke’s coach

was watching. He pulled the young manager aside and

said, “You didn’t hear a word Karl just said. You weren’t

really listening.” Burke admitted as much to himself and

his coach. He then apologized to Karl, much to the su-

pervisor’s surprise. Keeping this incident in mind helped

Burke remember the importance of his working rela-

tionships. His coach had also helped him realize that he

shouldn’t have assumed his sheer will and drive would

somehow motivate his employees. Burke had been wear-

ing people down, physically and psychologically. A year

later, Burke’s operation was hitting its targets, an ac-

complishment he partially attributes to the one-on-one

coaching he received.

Cultivate Informal Networks

While institutionalized programs to build emotional

competencies are critical, some managers will benefi t

more from an informal network of relationships that fall

outside the company hierarchy. Mentoring, for example,

can help both junior and senior managers further their

emotional development through a new type of relation-

ship. And when the mentoring experience is a positive

one, it often acts as a springboard to a rich variety of re-

lationships with others throughout the organization. In

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Coaching Rising Managers to Emotional Maturity

particular, it gives junior managers a chance to experi-

ence different leadership styles and exposes them to di-

verse viewpoints.

Sonia Greene, a 32-year-old manager at a consulting

fi rm, was hoping to be promoted to principal, but she

hadn’t raised the issue with her boss because she assumed

he didn’t think she was ready, and she didn’t want to cre-

ate tension. She was a talented consultant with strong

client relationships, but her internal relationships were

weak due to a combination of shyness, an independent

nature, and a distaste for confl ict, which inhibited her

from asking for feedback. When her company launched

a mentoring program, Greene signed up, and through a

series of lengthy conversations with Jessica Burnham, a

partner at the fi rm, she developed new insights about her

strengths and weaknesses. The support of an established

player such as Burnham helped Greene become more

confi dent and honest in her development discussions

with her boss, who hadn’t been aware that Greene was

willing to receive and act on feedback. Today, Greene is

armed with a precise understanding of what she needs to

work on and is well on her way to being promoted. What’s

more, her relationship with Burnham has prompted her

to seek out other connections, including a peer group of

up-and-coming managers who meet monthly to share

experiences and offer advice to one another.

Delaying a promotion can be diffi cult given the steadfast

ambitions of the young executive and the hectic pace of

organizational life, which makes personal learning seem

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like an extravagance. It requires a delicate balance of

honesty and support, of patience and goading. It means

going against the norm of promoting people almost ex-

clusively on smarts, talent, and business results. It also

means contending with the disappointment of an es-

teemed subordinate.

But taking the time to build people’s emotional com-

petencies isn’t an extravagance; it’s critical to developing

effective leaders. Give in to the temptation to promote

your fi nest before they’re ready, and you’re left with ex-

ecutives who may thrive on change and demonstrate

excellent coping and survival skills but who lack the

self-awareness, empathy, and social abilities required to

foster and nurture those strengths in others. MBA pro-

grams and management books can’t teach young execu-

tives everything they need to know about people skills.

Indeed, there’s no substitute for experience, refl ection,

feedback, and, above all, practice.

Kerry A. Bunker is president of the leadership learning

fi rm Mangrove Leadership Solutions, LLC and a senior

fellow at both the Center for Creative Leadership and

The Conference Board. Kathy E. Kram is the R.C. Shipley

Professor in Management and Professor of Organiza-

tional Behavior, Boston University. At the time of origi-

nal publication, Sharon Ting was a manager of the Aware-

ness Program for Executive Excellence at the Center for

Creative Leadership in Greensboro, North Carolina.

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Coaching Rising Managers to Emotional Maturity

NOTE

1. In his HBR articles “What Makes a Leader” (November−

December 1998) and “Primal Leadership: The Hidden Driver of

Great Performance” (with Richard Boyatzis and Annie McKee,

December 2001), Daniel Goleman makes the case that emotional

competence is the crucial driver of a leader’s success.

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Chapter 15

Coaching Teams

by J. Richard Hackman

Team coaching is about group processes. It involves direct

interaction with a team that is intended to help mem-

bers use their collective resources well in accomplishing

work. Examples of coaching include leading a launch

meeting before work begins (which can help members

become oriented to and engaged with their task), provid-

ing the team feedback about its problem analysis (which

can increase the quality of its analytic work), or asking

a team refl ective questions about why members made a

particular decision (which can help them make better use

of their knowledge and experience). By contrast, a leader

who personally coordinates the work of a team or who

negotiates outside resources for its use is doing things

that can be quite helpful to the team—but he or she is

Adapted from Leading Teams: Setting the Stage for Great Performances

(product #3332), by J. Richard Hackman, Harvard Business Review

Press, 2002, pp. 165–196.

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not coaching. Coaching is about building teamwork, not

about doing the team’s work.

Coaching can address any aspect of team interaction

that is impeding members’ ability to work well together

or that shows promise of strengthening team function-

ing. In practice, however, a more focused approach brings

better results. Research has identifi ed three aspects of

group interaction that have special leverage in shaping

team effectiveness: the amount of effort members apply

to their collective work, the appropriateness to the task

and situation of the performance strategies they employ

in carrying out the work, and the level of knowledge and

skill they apply to the work.1

Process Losses and Gains

All task-performing teams encounter what psychologist

Ivan Steiner calls “process losses,” and can all potentially

create synergistic process gains. Process losses are inef-

fi ciencies or internal breakdowns that keep a group from

doing as well as it theoretically could, given its resources

and member talents.2 They develop when members in-

teract in ways that depress the team’s effort, the appropri-

ateness of its strategy, or the utilization of member talent,

and they waste or misapply member time, energy, and

expertise. Process gains develop when members interact

in ways that enhance collective effort, generate uniquely

appropriate strategies for working together, or actively

develop members’ knowledge and skills. When this hap-

pens, the team has created new internal resources that

can be used in its work, capabilities that did not exist be-

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Coaching Teams

TABLE 15-1

Characteristic process losses and gains for each of

the three performance processes

Eff ort

Process loss: “Social loafi ng” by team members

Process gain: Development of high shared commitment to the team and

its work

Performance strategy

Process loss: Mindless reliance on habitual routines

Process gain: Invention of innovative, task-appropriate work procedures

Knowledge and skill

Process loss: Inappropriate weighting of member contributions

Process gain: Sharing of knowledge and development of

member skills

fore the team created them. As seen in table 15-1, there

are special kinds of process losses and process gains as-

sociated with each of the three performance processes we

have identifi ed.

What Coaches Do and When

They Do It

A coaching intervention is any action that seeks to mini-

mize process losses or to foster process gains for any of

the three key performance processes. Coaching that ad-

dresses effort is motivational in character; its functions

are to minimize free riding and to build shared com-

mitment to the group and its work. Coaching that ad-

dresses performance strategy is consultative in charac-

ter; its functions are to minimize thoughtless reliance on

habitual routines and to foster the invention of ways of

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proceeding with the work that are especially well aligned

with task and situational requirements and opportuni-

ties. Coaching that addresses knowledge and skill is

educational in character; its functions are to minimize

suboptimal weighting of members’ contributions and to

foster the development of members’ knowledge and skill.

Coaching that succeeds in reducing losses or fostering

gains for one or more of the three performance processes

virtually always contributes to overall team effectiveness.

This kind of coaching can be done by anyone (including

rank-and-fi le team members, external managers, and

outside consultants—not just a person offi cially desig-

nated as “team leader”), and it can be provided at any

time in the course of a team’s work. There are, nonethe-

less, three particular times in a team’s life when members

are likely to be especially receptive to each of the three

types of coaching interventions. And, as we will see, there

are other times in a team’s life cycle when even compe-

tent coaching is unlikely to make much of a difference in

how well members work together.

The fi ndings of organizational psychologist Connie

Gersick are especially useful in explaining why certain

kinds of coaching interventions are uniquely helpful at

different times in the team life cycle. In a fi eld study of

the life histories of a number of task-performing teams,

Gersick found that each of the groups she tracked devel-

oped a distinctive approach toward its task as soon as it

commenced work, and stayed with that approach un-

til almost exactly halfway between its fi rst meeting and

its project deadline.3 At the midpoint of their lives, all

teams underwent a major transition. In a concentrated

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Coaching Teams

burst of changes, they dropped old patterns of behav-

ior, reengaged with outside supervisors, and adopted

new perspectives on their work. Following the midpoint

transition, groups entered a period of focused task execu-

tion, which persisted until very near the project deadline,

at which time a new set of issues having to do with termi-

nation processes arose and captured members’ attention.

Gersick’s fi ndings suggest that when a team is just

starting a new piece of work, members may be especially

open to interventions that address their level of engage-

ment with the team and its work. The midpoint, when

half the allotted time has elapsed (or, perhaps, the work

is half done), is a uniquely appropriate time for interven-

tions that help members refl ect on how well their per-

formance strategies are working, and to change them if

needed. And the end, when a work cycle has been com-

pleted, is the time when a team is ready to entertain in-

terventions aimed at helping members learn from their

experiences. The proper times for motivational, consul-

tative, and educational interventions are summarized in

fi gure 15-1.4

FIGURE 15-1

The temporal appropriateness of coaching interventions

Beginning

Midpoint

End of cycle

Team life cycle

Focal performance

Effort

Performance

Knowledge

strategy

and skill

process

Coaching

Motivational

Consultative

Educational

intervention

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Beginnings

There is much on a team’s plate when members fi rst come

together to perform a piece of work—establishing the

boundary that distinguishes members from nonmem-

bers, starting to formulate member roles and behavioral

norms, and engaging with (and, inevitably, redefi ning)

the group task. Members’ decisions about such matters,

whether made explicitly or implicitly, establish a track

for the group on which members stay for a considerable

time.5 A coaching intervention that helps a team have a

good launch increases the chances that the track will be

one that enhances members’ commitment to the team

and motivation for its work.

The leader’s behavior at the launch meeting of any

type of work team serves to breathe life into the team’s

structural shell, no matter how rudimentary it may be,

and thereby help the team start functioning on its own.

If the launch meeting is successful, the team leader will

have helped the team move from being just a list of

names to being a real, bounded social system. The offi -

cial task that the team was assigned will have been exam-

ined, assessed, and then redefi ned to become the slightly

dif ferent task that members actually work on.6 And the

norms of conduct specifi ed by those who created the

team will have been assessed, tried out (sometimes ex-

plicitly but more often implicitly through members’ be-

haviors), and gradually revised and made the team’s own.

Midpoints

Th e midpoint of a team’s life cycle, when a team is likely

to experience a naturally occurring upheaval in how

154

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Coaching Teams

members are relating to one another and to their work,

turns out to be an especially good time for a coaching

intervention that invites them to refl ect on the team’s

performance strategy. At such times (or at other natural

breakpoints or low-workload periods), coaching inter-

ventions that encourage members to mindfully refl ect on

their work thus far and on the challenges they next will

face can be quite helpful to them in revising and improv-

ing their plans for the next phase of their work.

Research by organizational psychologist Anita Wool-

ley provides compelling support for this proposition. She

devised an experimental version of an architectural task,

involving construction of a college residence hall out of

LEGO bricks. Groups were informed in advance how the

structures they created would be evaluated, on dimen-

sions that included sturdiness (assessed using a “drop

test” unique in the annals of architecture), aesthetics,

and technical indices involving fl oor space, number of

fl oors, and so on. She devised two coaching-type inter-

ventions, one intended to improve members’ interper-

sonal relations, and another that provided assistance to

the team in developing a task-appropriate performance

strategy. Each team received only one intervention,

which was administered either at the beginning or at the

midpoint of its work period.7

Woolley’s fi ndings, shown in fi gure 15-2, confi rm that

strategy interventions are especially helpful when they

come near the midpoint of a team’s work cycle. When the

strategy intervention was administered at the beginning

of the work period, before members had logged some

experience with the task, it did not help. Note also that

the intervention that addressed members’ interpersonal

155

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Customize Your Coaching

FIGURE 15-2

Coaching type and timing

8

7

6

5

Thousands 4

Team performance

3

2

Beginning

Midpoint

Beginning

Midpoint

Interpersonal intervention

Strategy intervention

Source: Based on fi ndings from Anita Woolley, “Eff ects of intervention content and timing on group task performance,” Journal of Applied Behavioral Science 34, 1998.

relationships rather than their task processes made no

difference whatever in team performance, regardless

of when it was administered—an important fi nding to

which we will return shortly.

Coaching about performance strategy helps team

members stay closely in touch with changing demands

and opportunities in their environment and encour-

ages them to fi nd ways to implement their chosen per-

formance strategies mindfully and effi ciently. Strategy-

focused coaching can also help members fi nd or invent

new performance strategies that are more appropriate to

the task and environment than those they had previously

been using. It can even prompt a team to engage in some

persuasion or political action to try to negotiate a change

in organizational constraints that may be impeding their

performance.

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Coaching Teams

Endings

Because focus on the project dissipates somewhat once

a piece of work is fi nished, postperformance periods of-

fer an especially good time for coaching interventions

aimed at helping members capture and internalize the

lessons that can be learned from their work experiences.

Even then, however, team members may be disinclined

to exploit the learning opportunities that are avail-

able to them. When a team learns that it has performed

splendidly—for example, an athletic team that has won

the championship game or a task force whose project

proposal has been approved—members may be much

more disposed to celebrate their success than to explore

what they can learn from their experience. Celebration is

to be valued because it confi rms that the team has done

well and it fosters collective internal motivation. But if

receiving positive performance feedback prompts noth-

ing more than that, members may fail to notice those

aspects of the feedback that could help them learn how

to work together even more effectively in the future. It

is fi ne for a basketball team to hoist the coach to mem-

bers’ shoulders to cut the net from the hoop; but in the

locker room later, or at practice the next day, the team

should also take a few moments to refl ect on the lessons

to be learned from its victory.

What Good Coaches Don’t Do

Although I am agnostic about the particular behaviors

or styles coaches should exhibit, that is decidedly not the

case regarding the focus of coaches’ activities. That focus

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Customize Your Coaching

should be on a team’s task performance processes, not on

members’ social interactions or interpersonal relation-

ships. The great majority of writing about team coach-

ing posits (sometimes explicitly but more often implic-

itly) that coaching interventions should foster smooth or

harmonious relationships among team members. This

emphasis on harmony is misplaced and derives from a

logical fallacy about the role of interpersonal processes in

shaping team performance outcomes.

When we observe a team that is having performance

problems, we often simultaneously see a group that is

plagued with interpersonal diffi culties—confl ict among

members, leadership struggles, communications break-

downs, and so on. It is natural to infer that these diffi cul-

ties are causing the performance problems and, there-

fore, that the best way to improve team performance

would be to fi x them. As reasonable and as consistent

with lay experience as this inference is, it is neither logi-

cal nor correct. In fact, the causal arrow often points

in the opposite direction—how a group is performing

shapes the character of members’ interaction rather than

vice versa. Or at least it shapes members’ perceptions of

their interaction. Social psychologist Barry Staw gave

teams false feedback about their performance and then

asked members to provide objective descriptions of how

the team had functioned. Teams that had been led to be-

lieve that they had performed well reported that their in-

teraction had been more harmonious and that they had

communicated better (among other differences) than

did groups whose members thought they had performed

poorly.8

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Coaching Teams

As tempting as it may be for coaches to jump in and

try to make things better when they observe members en-

meshed in interpersonal confl icts or leadership struggles,

there is little reason to believe that such interventions

will succeed in clearing out the interpersonal underbrush

so task work can get back on track. More advisable, per-

haps, would be to address the structural or contextual

conditions that may have engendered the interpersonal

diffi culties, and to supplement those structural improve-

ments with well-timed and task-focused coaching of the

kind described in this chapter.

Yet even teams that are appropriately structured

and supported inevitably encounter some rough inter -

personal sledding. Despite the pain that members may

feel while experiencing and trying to resolve such prob-

lems, they are not necessarily bad for a group or detri-

mental to its performance. On the contrary, research

shows that certain patterns of interaction that are often

experienced as problematic by team members and coded

the same way by outside observers can actually promote

team performance and member learning.9 Task-based

confl ict is one such pattern, and the vocal presence of a

member with “deviant” views is another. A skilled coach

knows that it sometimes is best to leave things alone and

let the tension remain high for a while, rather than to

rush in and try to contain the problems or refocus their

most negative manifestations.

Sharing Coaching

Throughout this chapter, I have discussed coaching as if

it were done by one person, perhaps someone designated

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Customize Your Coaching

as “team leader” or “team advisor” or, for that matter,

“coach.” In practice, coaching is often done by a num-

ber of individuals, sometimes different ones at different

times or for different purposes—including, especially in

mature self-managing teams, team members themselves.

What is critical is that competent coaching be available

to a team, regardless of who provides it or what formal

positions those providers hold.

The potential benefi ts of sharing coaching among

team members are wonderfully evidenced by the Or-

pheus Chamber Orchestra, a twenty-six-person ensemble

that both rehearses and performs without a conductor.

Although that orchestra has no leader on the podium, it

has much more leadership than do orchestras known for

their famous conductors.10 For each piece of music the

orchestra chooses to perform, one violinist is selected by

his or her peers to serve as concertmaster. That person

manages the rehearsal process for that piece—begin-

ning each rehearsal, fi elding suggestions from mem-

bers about interpretive matters, deciding when spirited

disagreements among members must be set aside to

get on with the rehearsal, and taking the lead in fi gur-

ing out how to handle transitions in the music that in a

traditional orchestra would be signaled by a conductor’s

baton.

There is abundant shared leadership and peer-to-peer

coaching in this unusual orchestra, but it is far from a

one-person, one-vote democracy.11 Orpheus members are

quite discriminating about who is invited to have special

say in the preparation of each piece. Only some violin-

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Coaching Teams

ists are chosen to serve as concertmasters, for example,

and it is clear to all which members have earned the right

to be listened to especially carefully about which musi-

cal issues. Members are not treated as equals because in

fact they are not equals: Each individual brings special

talents and interests to the ensemble and has also some

areas of relative disinterest and lesser strength. Orpheus

members recognize that fact and exploit it relentlessly in

the interest of collective excellence. The orchestra’s will-

ingness to acknowledge, to respect, and to exploit the

individual differences among its members is one of its

greatest strengths as a self-managing team. It is as fi ne

an example of shared leadership and peer coaching as I

have encountered.

One of the things that helps peer coaching work so well

at the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra is that those who are

coaching are also playing in the orchestra, and therefore

they are always there. It is diffi cult, if not impossible, for

any of the three kinds of coaching explored in this chap-

ter—motivational, consultative, and educational coach-

ing—to be accomplished by remote control. Good coach-

ing helps team members practice and learn the skills and

rewards of being superb self-managers, and that is highly

unlikely to happen if the coach is rarely around.12

J. Richard Hackman was one of the world’s leading ex-

perts on group and organizational behavior and was a

professor of social and organizational psychology at Har-

vard University.

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Customize Your Coaching

NOTES

1. For details, see J. R. Hackman and C. G. Morris, “Group Tasks,

Group Interaction Process, and Group Performance Effectiveness:

A Review and Proposed Integration,” in Advances in Experimental

Social Psychology 8: 45–99, ed. L. Berkowitz (New York: Academic

Press, 1975); and J. R. Hackman and R. Wageman, A Theory of Team

Coaching, manuscript submitted for publication (2001).

2. For additional details about the origins, dynamics, and conse-

quences of process losses in groups, see I. D. Steiner, Group Process

and Productivity (New York: Academic Press, 1972).

3. Since the groups’ projects in the original study [C. J. G. Gersick,

“Time and Transition in Work Teams: Toward a New Model of Group

Development,” Academy of Management Journal 31 (1988): 9–41]

were of varying duration, these periods varied from several days to

several weeks. A subsequent experimental study [C. J. G. Gersick,

“Marking Time: Predictable Transitions in Task Groups,” Academy of

Management Journal 31 (1989): 9–41], in which all groups had the

same amount of time to complete their task, found the same life-cycle

dynamics as did the original fi eld study.

4. For details, including discussion of conditions under which

time-inappropriate motivational, educational, and consultative coach-

ing interventions may nonetheless succeed, see J. R. Hackman and

R. Wageman, A Theory of Team Coaching, manuscript submitted for

publication (2001). Timing issues in coaching teams are also explored

in a teaching case and video; see R. Wageman and J. R. Hackman,

“The Overhead Reduction Task Force” [Case No. 9–400-026], [Video-

cassette No. 9–400- 501], [Teaching Note No. 5–400-027] (Boston:

Harvard Business School Publishing, 1999).

5. It is a characteristic of all social systems, from small groups to

large organizations, that decisions made early in a system’s life have

consequences over its entire life span. See P. David, “Understanding

the Economics of QWERTY: The Necessity of History,” in Economic

History and the Modern Historian, ed. W. Parker (London: Blackwell,

1986), 30–59; W. R. Scott, “Unpacking Institutional Arguments,” in

The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis, ed. W. W. Pow-

ell and P. J. DiMaggio (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991),

164–182.

6. Although I am aware of no systematic research on the process

by which work teams revise and redefi ne their assigned tasks, the task

redefi nition process has been examined for individual performers (see

J. R. Hackman, “Toward Understanding the Role of Tasks in Behav-

ioral Research,” Acta Psychologica 31 (1969): 97–128; and B. M. Staw

and R. D. Boettger, “Task Revision: A Neglected Form of Work Perfor-

mance,” Academy of Management Journal 33 (1990): 534–559).

7. For details, see A. W. Woolley, “Effects of Intervention Content

and Timing on Group Task Performance,” Journal of Applied Behav-

ioral Science 34 (1998): 30–49.

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Coaching Teams

8. For details, see B. M. Staw, “Attribution of the ‘Causes’ of Per-

formance: A General Alternative Interpretation of Cross-Sectional

Research on Organizations,” Organizational Behavior and Human

Performance 13 (1975): 414–432.

9. Two fi ndings are of special interest in the present context. Jehn

(1995) found that task confl ict could facilitate group performance

for engaging tasks, but that it impaired group functioning for tasks

that were highly routine. This fi nding further affi rms the interdepen-

dence between team structure (here, the design of its task) and group

interaction processes. Coaching interventions tha t help team members

identify and address differences in their views about how the task

ought to be performed can be helpful if the team task is motivationally

well designed—but can backfi re if the task is routine and repetitive

[K. A. Jehn, “A Multimethod Examination of the Benefi ts and Detri-

ments of Intragroup Confl ict,” Administrative Science Quarterly 40

(1995): 256–282]. Research by Jehn and Mannix (2001) highlights

the role of timing in understanding and addressing confl ict among

members. Among other fi ndings, these researchers observed that

well-performing teams exhibited moderate levels of task confl ict at

the midpoint of the group interaction. And, as we have seen, the

midpoint is exactly the time when teams are most open to coaching

interventions intended to help members bring their task performance

strategies into better alignment with task and situational demands.

[K. A. Jehn and E. A. Mannix, “The Dynamic Nature of Confl ict: A

Longitudinal Study of Intragroup Confl ict and Group Performance,”

Academy of Management Journal 44 (2001): 238–251].

10. For details, see E. V. Lehman and J. R. Hackman, “The

Orpheus Chamber Orchestra: Case and Video,” Boston: Kennedy

School of Government, Harvard University (2001); H. Seifter and

P. Economy, Leadership Ensemble (New York: Henry Holt, 2001);

and J. Traub, “Passing the Baton: What C.E.O.s Could Learn from the

Orpheus Chamber Orchestra,” The New Yorker (Aug. 26/Sept. 2 1996):

100–105.

11. The idea of shared leadership is generally more attractive in

theory than it is in practice. Not to have some single individual who is

responsible for making sure things stay on track is to invite coordina-

tion problems (“Who was supposed to do that?”) and unnecessary

interpersonal confl ict as those who are supposedly sharing leadership

arrange themselves into a hierarchy. Ideas such as “Co-CEOs” and the

“Offi ce of the President” sound better than they actually work.

12. It also is possible, of course, for a coach to be oppressively pres-

ent. If the coach takes over and handles personally all the problems he

or she believes to be really serious, then members will be unlikely to

ever develop their collective capabilities as a self-managing team.

163

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Index

accountability, 52

common mistakes to avoid in,

action items, 52, 54–55

93–100

active listening, 6–8

communicating impact of, 57

affi rmation, 6

defi nition of, xii

A players, 116–118

effectiveness of, xii–xxvi

appreciation, 63–64

giving feedback during, 61–72

attention-seeking, 63

growth in fi eld of, xi–xii

mind-set for, 3–11

peer, 159–161

background information, of situ-

reasons for, xi–xvi

ation prompting coaching,

rising managers, 135–146

43–45

rookie managers, 123–134

benefi ts, of coaching, xii, xv–xvi

self-coaching, 48, 85–91

biases, recognizing your, 8, 10

senior managers, 135–146

body language, 6, 8

setting the stage for, 13–27

B players, 118–119

shared, 159–161

Bradford, David, 68

skills, 5–11

as special time, 94–95

star employees, 116–118

career opportunities, 119

steady employees, 118–119

check-ins, 53, 56–58

struggling employees, 119–121

coachability, 98–99

tailoring, to learning styles,

coaches

103–113

knowledge, 73–76

vs. teaching, 8, 9

self-refl ection by, 58–60

teams, 149–164

coaching

time management for effec-

challenges of, xiv–xv

tive, 77–83

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Index

coaching sessions

employees

baseline understanding for,

acknowledging, 18–19, 119

43–45

appreciation for, 63–64

closing, 47–48

checking in on, 53, 56–58

defi nition of, 39–40

connecting with, 17–20, 63

follow-up after, 51–60

crediting, 33–34

holding, 39–49

earning trust of, 29–35

interventions for, 57–58

impact of, 5

length of, 40

as individuals, 19, 62–63

outcomes from, 41–43

intent of, 5–8

time for, 77–83

learning styles of, 103–113

command-and-control hierar-

mistakes by, 96–97

chies, xiii

one-on-one conversations

communication

with, 16, 31–33

active listening and, 6–8

paying attention to, 6, 63

matching to learning styles,

progress of, 57–59

105–106

promoting play in, 20–21

confi dence, 14, 128–130

recognition of, 23

connections, with employees,

relationships with, 31–33, 57,

17–20, 63

62–64

conversations, 19, 40

self-coaching by, 48, 85–91

C players, 119–121

task selection for, 14–17, 23–27

cross-functional roles, 140

types of, 115–121

uncoachable, 98–99

underperforming, 5–6, 15,

debriefi ngs, 42, 44

119–121

decision making, 34

expectations, 3, 10, 51–53, 127

delegation, 124–126

experiential learning cycle, 103,

direct reports. See employees

104

disconnection, 17–18

experimentation, guided, 76

Drucker, Peter, xiii

expertise, 73–76

duration, of feedback conversa-

tion, 70

Dweck, Carol, 86

face-to-face conversations, 19, 40

failures, 87–88

fairness, 68–69

emotional maturity, 135–146

fear, 17–18

emotions, management of, 64,

feedback

67–68

candid, 79–80

empathy, 18, 137

in coaching sessions, 52

166

H6577.indb 166

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Index

effective, 61–72

interviews with employees, 16–17,

effi ciency in giving, 79–81

23–27

focusing, on goals, 87

issues, understanding the, 43–45

paraphrasing, 80–81

to rookie managers, 132–133

standardizing delivery of, 79

job rotation, 140

360-degree, 137–139

transparency in, 34

for underperformers, 120

knowledge coaches, 73–76

“feedforward,” 82

knowledge workers, xiii, 85–86

fi ght-or-fl ight response, 61–62

fi rst-time managers, 123–134

fi xed mind-set, 86, 87

leaders

follow-up

as coaches, xiv

after coaching session, 51–60

team, 154

on agreements, 53, 56

leadership

checking in on direct reports,

effective, xii

53, 56–58

by example, 34

expectations for, 51–53

shared, 159–161

found time, using, 81–82

soft skills for, 135–146

framing, 46

styles, xiv–xv

traditional role of, xii

learning opportunities, 87–88

Gersick, Connie, 152–153

learning styles, 103–113

get-togethers, 20

acting, 106, 109–110

goals, for coaching sessions,

analyzing, 105, 108–109

41–43, 54–55

balancing, 106, 110

Goleman, Daniel, xiii

deciding, 106, 109

Gottman, John, 62, 63

experiencing, 105, 108

groups, coaching, 149–164

imagining, 105, 108

growth mind-set, 4–5, 11, 86–88

initiating, 105, 107

refl ecting, 105, 108

thinking, 105, 109

high performers, 116–118

listening

building trust through, 31–33

skills, 6–8

imagination, 20–21

location, for feedback conversa-

informal networks, 144–145

tion, 70

intent, of employees, 5–8

long-term development, 41–42

interpersonal skills, 135–146

low performers, 119–121

167

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Index

managers

positive feedback, 63–64, 65–67

big-picture focus by, 130–132

practice, guided, 74

coaching new, 123–134

praise, 65–67, 119

coaching rising, 135–146

preparation, for coaching, 71-72,

confi dence projection by,

79

128–130

problem solving, 42–43, 45, 88

cross-functional assignments

guided, 75–76

for, 140

process losses/gains, 150–153

delegation by, 124–126

productive dialogues, 45–47

giving feedback to, 132–133,

proximity, in feedback conversa-

137–139

tions, 70–71

support for fi rst-time, 126–128

matching employees with big-

picture needs, 10–11

questions

meetings, types of direct report, 40

asking, xii, 88–89

mentoring, 144–145

to ask in interview with em-

milestones, establishing, 97–98

ployee, 16–17, 23–27

mind-set

to match employee learning

for coaching, 3–11

styles, 105–106

fi xed, 86, 87

naive, 89

growth, 4–5, 11, 86–88

open-ended, 20–21, 45,

mistakes, common, 93–100

88–89

“Why”, 89–90

nonverbal cues, 6, 8

refl ecting, listening tactic, 7, 46

reframing, 46

observation, guided, 75

relationships

one-on-one meetings, 40

with employees, 31–33, 57,

open-ended questions, 20–21,

62–64

45, 88–89

informal networks of,

organizational needs, matching

144–145

employees’ skills with, 10–11

resource needs, of employee, 53

rewards, 23, 119

role-playing, 47, 71–72

paraphrasing, 7, 80–81

patience, 95–98

peer coaching, 159–161

Schein, Edgar, 88

performance reviews, 40

self-coaching, 48, 85–91

personal development, 142–144

self-refl ection, 58–60

play, role of in performance,

senior managers, coaching,

20–21

135–146

168

H6577.indb 168

9/15/14 1:06 PM

Index

setbacks, 87–88

teams

shared coaching, 159–161

coaching, 149–164

short-term problem solving,

interpersonal confl icts on,

42–43, 45

158–159

skills

leaders, 154

coaching, 5–11

life cycle of, 152–157

guided practice for, 74

process losses/gains and,

interpersonal, 135–146

150–153

listening, 6–8

shared coaching of, 159–161

matching with organizational

threat response, 61–62, 67, 68

needs, 10–11

360-degree feedback, 137–139

practicing, new, 47

time lines, setting, 97

Socratic method, 20–21, 88–90

time management, for effective

soft skills, 135–146

coaching, 77–83

star employees, coaching,

timing, of feedback conversation,

116–118

69–70

steady employees, coaching,

tone, of communication, 98

118–119

transparency, 34, 90–91

strategic thinking, 130–132

trust

stress, 17, 19

of employees, 29–35

structured interviews, 16–17,

through behaviors, 33–35

23–27

through listening, 31–33

struggling employees, coaching,

two-way dialogues, 45–47

119–121

summarizing, listening tactic, 7

support networks, 120–121

value-added assignments, 32

task selection, 14–17, 23–27

“Why” questions, 89–90

teaching, vs. coaching, 8, 9

Woolley, Anita, 155

169

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Notes

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10/15/13 9:19 AM

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HBR Guide to Finance Basics for Managers

HBR Guide to Getting a Job

HBR Guide to Getting the Mentoring You Need

HBR Guide to Getting the Right Work Done

HBR Guide to Giving Effective Feedback

HBR Guide to Making Every Meeting Matter

HBR Guide to Managing Stress

HBR Guide to Managing Up and Across

HBR Guide to Persuasive Presentations

HBR Guide to Project Management

H5971.indb ii

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HBR Guide to

Getting

the Right

Work Done

HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW PRESS

Boston, Massachusetts

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Find more digital content or join the discussion on www.hbr.org.

The web addresses referenced and linked in this book were live and

correct at the time of the book’s publication but may be subject to change.

Copyright 2012 Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation

All rights reserved

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced

into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means

(electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise),

without the prior permission of the publisher. Requests for permission

should be directed to permissions@hbsp.harvard.edu, or mailed to Permissions, Harvard Business School Publishing, 60 Harvard Way,

Boston, Massachusetts 02163.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

HBR guide to getting the right work done.

p.

cm.

ISBN 978-1-4221-8711-1 (alk. paper)

1. Time management. 2. Decision making. I. Harvard Business

Review Press. II. Title: Harvard Business Review guide to getting

the right work done. III. Title: Guide to getting the right work done.

HD69.T54.H374

2012

650.1'1—dc23

2012012383

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What You’ll Learn

Are you paralyzed by the pile of projects on your plate?

Has fear of delegation buried you in administrivia? Is

your focus destroyed by the incessant call of e-mail and

Twitter? Do you leave work exhausted—but with little to

show for it? Are promotions passing you by because your

peers are more productive?

You can’t possibly tackle every task that awaits you.

But here’s the good news: You can learn to get the right

work done, focusing your time and energy where it’ll

yield the greatest reward—for you and your organization.

This guide will help by offering a range of accessible tools

so you can sample them and see what works for you.

You’ll get better at:

• Prioritizing

• Staying

focused

• Working less but accomplishing more

• Stopping bad habits and developing good ones

• Writing to-do lists that work

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What You’ll Learn

• Breaking overwhelming projects into manageable

pieces

• Thwarting e-mail overload

• Refueling your energy

vi

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Contents

Section 1: GET STARTED

1.

You

Can’t

Get

It

All

Done

3

. . . so what should you do?

BY PETER BREGMAN

2. Nine Things Successful People Do Diff erently

9

It’s not who you are; it’s what you do

BY HEIDI GRANT HALVORSON

3. Being More Productive: An Interview

with

David

Allen

and

Tony

Schwartz

23

Do you need the right system or the right

frame of mind?

BY DANIEL MCGINN

Section 2: PRIORITIZE YOUR WORK

4. Get a Raise by Getting the Right Work Done

35

Focus on the work that will bring the

greatest reward—for your organization and

for you

BY PETER BREGMAN

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Contents

5. The Worth-Your-Time Test

39

Stop wasting time on the wrong work

BY PETER BREGMAN

6. Say Yes to Saying No

43

Make it easier to decline projects and

invitations

BY ALEXANDRA SAMUEL

Section 3: ORGANIZE YOUR TIME

7. A Practical Plan for When You Feel

Overwhelmed 49

How to get started when you don’t know

where to begin

BY PETER BREGMAN

8. Stop Procrastinating—Now

53

Five tips for breaking this bad habit

BY AMY GALLO

9. Don’t Let Long-Term Projects Become

Last-Minute

Panic

57

What to do when you have “all the time in

the world”

BY PETER BREGMAN

10. Stop Multitasking

63

Do just one thing to get many things done

BY PETER BREGMAN

11. How to Stay Focused on What’s Important

69

Stop fi ghting fi res

BY GINA TRAPANI

viii

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Contents

12. To-Do Lists That Work

73

The secret is specifi city

BY GINA TRAPANI

13. How to Tackle Your To-Do List

77

Use your calendar

BY PETER BREGMAN

14. Reward Yourself for Doing Dreaded Tasks

81

When crossing items off your list just isn’t

enough

BY ALEXANDRA SAMUEL

Section 4: DELEGATE EFFECTIVELY

15. Management Time: Who’s Got the Monkey?

87

Delegate, Delegate, Delegate

BY WILLIAM ONCKEN, JR., AND DONALD L.

WASS, WITH COMMENTARY BY STEPHEN R. COVEY

16. Levels of Delegation

109

Teach them to fi sh

BY LINDA A. HILL AND KENT LINEBACK

Section 5: CREATE RITUALS

17. Ritual: How to Get Important Work Done

113

Make good habits automatic

BY TONY SCHWARTZ

18. Power Through Your Day in 90-Minute Cycles

117

Work with your body’s natural rhythms

BY TONY SCHWARTZ

ix

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Contents

19. An 18-Minute Plan for Managing Your Day

121

Frequent check-ins with yourself will keep

you on course

BY PETER BREGMAN

20. Use a 10-Minute Diary to Stay on Track

125

The best way to spend the last few minutes

of your day

BY TERESA AMABILE AND STEVEN KRAMER

Section 6: RENEW YOUR ENERGY

21. How to Accomplish More by Doing Less

135

Take breaks to get more done

BY TONY SCHWARTZ

22. Manage Your Energy, Not Your Time

139

Time is limited, but your energy is not

BY TONY SCHWARTZ AND CATHERINE MCCARTHY

23. Why Great Performers Sleep More

147

. . . and how you can, too

BY TONY SCHWARTZ

Section 7: TAKE CONTROL OF YOUR

E-MAIL

24. Simplify Your E-mail

153

Three folders will do it

BY GINA TRAPANI

25. Eight E-mail Overload Experiments

157

Don’t be afraid to be extreme

BY ALEXANDRA SAMUEL

x

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Contents

Section 8: MAINTAIN YOUR NEW

APPROACH

26. Sustaining Your Productivity System

165

You’ve become productive! Now keep it up

BY ALEXANDRA SAMUEL

Section 9: EXPLORE FURTHER

27. More Productivity Books to Explore

171

Summaries of three popular titles by Covey,

Morgenstern, and Allen

BY ILAN MOCHARI

28. Productivity Apps and Tools

175

Tech tools to keep you on track

Index 181

xi

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Section 1

Get Started

1

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Chapter 1

You Can’t Get

It All Done

by Peter Bregman

Brad is as hard a worker as anyone I know. (Names and

some details have been changed.) He’s not just busy, he’s

keenly focused on getting the right things done. And it

pays off—he is the largest single revenue generator at his

well-known professional services fi rm. A few days before

Thanksgiving, Brad fl ew from Boston to Los Angeles

with his family. During the fi ve-hour fl ight, he decided

not to use the plane’s Internet access, choosing to play

with his children instead. A fi ve-hour digital vacation.

When they landed, Brad turned on his BlackBerry and

discovered that a crisis had developed while he was in the

air. He had close to fi ve hundred new e-mail messages.

So much for a digital vacation.

The truth is, we can’t really get away from it. There’s

no escaping the nonstop surge of e-mail, text, voice

3

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Get Started

mail, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn—and that’s just the

technology- based stream. How can we ever catch up?

We can’t.

The idea that we can get it all done is the biggest myth

in time management. There’s no way Brad can meaning-

fully go through all his e-mail, and there’s no way any of

us are going to accomplish everything we want to.

Face it: You’re a limited resource.

On the one hand, that’s depressing. On the other

hand, acknowledging it can be tremendously empower-

ing. Once we admit that we aren’t going to get it all done,

we’re in a much better position to make explicit choices

about what we are going to do. Instead of letting things

haphazardly fall through the cracks, we can intentionally

push the unimportant things aside and focus our energy

on the things that matter most.

That’s what this guide is all about.

There are two main challenges in doing the right

things: identifying what they are and then doing them.

To determine the “right things,” we need to make

choices that will move us toward the outcomes we most

want. Which, of course, means we need to know what our

priorities are.

In terms of the second challenge—the “doing” or

follow- through—we need tools. Rituals. To-do lists. Del-

egation skills.

But which tools will work best for you? Which ritu-

als will help you follow through? You might be the kind

of person who can read through a book like this, full of

great advice, and implement it all at once. I am not. I get

overwhelmed and end up not changing anything.

4

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You Can’t Get It All Done

So, here’s one way to use this guide:

1.

Identify your time management challenges. Do

you leave the offi ce with a nagging feeling that

you worked all day but didn’t get your most

important work done? Are you distracted by

little things? Avoiding big, ha iry projects? Take

this three-minute quiz (see “How well do you

manage distraction?”) to discover where you’re

distracting yourself the most.

2. Find one piece of advice you think will have the

greatest impact on your work. Once you’ve

identifi ed your biggest challenges, read

through this guide and fi nd a tip that speaks

to you. Maybe you’re not clear on your “right

things.” Maybe the rituals you’re using aren’t

working. Maybe you procrastinate. Choose one

tactic you think will help you the most. Then

do that one thing.

3. Do it again. Once that tactic has had an impact

on your work, repeat the process. Return to

this guide and select another tip.

Because Brad is a paragon of productivity, he decided to

put his BlackBerry away and wait to reply to the mes-

sages until he was in his hotel room. Then, using his lap-

top, he attacked the crisis: called his client to allay their

concerns, delegated tasks to his team, and sent an e-mail

to his team and his client detailing the plan. Within an

hour, he had fi nished, shut his laptop, left his BlackBerry

in his room, and enjoyed a fun, chaos-fi lled dinner with

5

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H5987.indb 7

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Get Started

his family—which, at that time, was precisely the right

thing for him to do.

Peter Bregman is a strategic adviser to CEOs and their leadership teams. His latest book is 18 Minutes: Find

Your Focus, Master Distraction, and Get the Right

Things Done.

8

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Chapter 2

Nine Things

Successful People

Do Diff erently

by Heidi Grant Halvorson

Why have you been so successful in reaching some of your

goals, but not others? If you aren’t sure, you’re far from

alone. Even brilliant, highly accomplished people are

pretty lousy when it comes to understanding why they

succeed or fail. The intuitive answer—that you’re born

predisposed to certain talents and lacking in others—

is really just one small piece of the puzzle. In fact, dec-

ades of research on achievement suggest that successful

people reach their personal and professional goals not

Excerpted with permission from Nine Things Successful People Do Dif-

ferently (product #11065).

9

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Get Started

simply because of who they are, but more often because

of what they do.

What follows are the nine things that successful peo-

ple do—the strategies they use to set and pursue goals

(sometimes without consciously realizing it) that have

the biggest impact on performance.

1. Get Specific

When you set a goal, be as specific as possible. “Lose five

pounds” is a better goal than “lose some weight,” because

it gives you a clear idea of what success looks like. Know-

ing exactly what you want to achieve keeps you motivated

until you get there. Also, consider the specific actions

you’ll need to take to reach your goal. Promising you’ll

“eat less” or “sleep more” is too vague. “I’ll be in bed by

10 pm on weeknights” leaves no doubt about what you

need to do, and whether or not you’ve actually done it.

Spelling out exactly what you want to achieve removes

the possibility of settling for less—of telling yourself that

what you’ve done is “good enough.” It also makes your

course of action clearer.

Instead of “getting ahead at work,” make your goal

more concrete, such as “a pay raise of at least $ ____” or

“a promotion to at least the ____ level.”

To be successful, you also need to get specific about the

obstacles you may encounter. In fact, what you really need

to do is go back and forth, thinking about the success you

want to achieve and the steps it will take to get there. This

strategy is called mental contrasting, and it’s a remarkably

effective way to set goals and strengthen your commitment.

10

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Nine Things Successful People Do Diff erently

To use the mental contrasting technique, first imagine

how you’ll feel attaining your goal. Picture it as vividly

as you can—really consider the details. Next, think about

the obstacles in your way. For instance, if you wanted to

get a better, higher-paying job, you would start by imag-

ining the sense of pride and excitement you would feel

accepting a lucrative offer at a top firm. Then you would

think about what stands between you and that offer—

namely, all the other really outstanding candidates.

Kind of makes you want to polish up your résumé a bit,

doesn’t it?

That’s called experiencing the necessity to act; it’s a

state that’s critical for reaching your goal, because it gets

the psychological wheels in motion. Mental contrasting

turns wishes and desires into reality by bringing atten-

tion and clarity to what you will need to do to make them

happen.

2. Seize the Moment to Act on

Your Goals

Given how busy most of us are and how many things

we’re juggling at once, it’s not surprising that we rou-

tinely miss opportunities to act on a goal. Did you really

have no time to work out today? No chance at any point

to return that phone call?

To seize the moment, decide when and where you’ll

take action, in advance. Be specific (“If it’s Monday,

Wednesday, or Friday, I’ll work out for thirty minutes

before work”). Studies show that this if-then planning

helps your brain to detect and take advantage of the

11

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Get Started

opportunity when it arises, increasing your chances of

success by roughly 300 percent. (For more on planning

when and where you’ll perform tasks, see “How to Tackle

Your To-Do List,” later in this guide.)

Deciding in advance when and where you will take

specific actions to reach your goal (or how you will ad-

dress obstacles you might encounter) is probably the

most effective single thing you can do to ensure your

success.

If-then plans take the form:

If X happens, then I will do Y.

For example:

If I’m getting too distracted by colleagues, then I’ll

stick to a five-minute chat limit and return to work.

Why are these plans so effective? Because they’re written

in the language of your brain—the language of contin-

gencies. Humans are particularly good at encoding and

remembering information in “if X, then Y” terms, and

using these contingencies to guide their behavior, often

below their level of awareness.

Once you’ve formulated your if-then plan, your un-

conscious brain will start scanning the environment,

searching for the situation in the “if ” part of your plan.

This enables you to seize the critical moment (“Oh, it’s

4 pm! I’d better return those calls!”), even when you’re

busy doing other things.

Since you’ve already decided exactly what you need

to do, you can execute the plan without having to con-

sciously think about it.

12

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Nine Things Successful People Do Diff erently

3. Know Exactly How Far You Have

Left to Go

Achieving any goal also requires honest and regular

monitoring of your progress—if not by others, then by

you yourself. If you don’t know how well you’re doing,

you can’t adjust your behavior or your strategies accord-

ingly. Check your progress frequently—weekly, or even

daily, depending on the goal.

Feedback helps motivate us because we subconsciously

tune in to the presence of a discrepancy between where

we are now and where we want to be. When your brain

detects a discrepancy, it reacts by throwing resources at

it: attention, effort, deeper processing of information,

and willpower.

If self-monitoring and seeking out feedback are so im-

portant, you may be wondering why we don’t always do

it. The first and most obvious reason is that it’s effortful;

you need to stop whatever else you’re doing and really

focus on assessment. And of course, the news isn’t always

positive; sometimes we avoid checking in on our progress

because we don’t want to acknowledge how little progress

we’ve made. Self-monitoring requires a lot of willpower,

but you can make it easier by using if-then planning to

schedule your self-assessments.

Done the right way, assessing your progress will keep

you motivated from start to finish. Done the wrong way,

it may actually lower your motivation. Recent research

by University of Chicago psychologists Minjung Koo and

Ayelet Fishbach examined how people pursuing goals

were affected by focusing on either how far they had al-

13

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Get Started

ready come (to-date thinking) or what was left to be ac-

complished (to-go thinking).

Koo and Fishbach’s studies consistently show that

when we’re pursuing a goal and consider how far we’ve

already come, we feel a premature sense of accomplish-

ment and begin to slack off.

When we focus on progress made, we’re also more

likely to try to achieve a sense of “balance” by making

progress on other important goals. As a result, we wind

up with lots of pots on the stove, but nothing is ever ready

to eat.

If, instead, we focus on how far we have left to go

(to-go thinking), motivation is not only sustained, it’s

heightened. So when you’re assessing your progress,

stay focused on the goal and never congratulate yourself

too much on a job half-done. Save it for a job well—and

completely—done.

4. Be a Realistic Optimist

When you’re setting a goal, by all means engage in posi-

tive thinking about how likely you are to achieve it. Be-

lieving in your ability to succeed is enormously helpful

for creating and sustaining your motivation. But don’t

underestimate the time, planning, effort, and persistence

it will take to reach your goal. Thinking things will come

to you easily and effortlessly leaves you ill prepared for

the journey ahead and can significantly increase the odds

of failure.

This is the difference between being a realistic opti-

mist and an unrealistic optimist.

14

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Nine Things Successful People Do Diff erently

Realistic optimists believe they will succeed, but

also believe they have to make success happen—through

things like planning, persistence, and choosing the right

strategies. They recognize the need for considering how

they’ll deal with obstacles.

Unrealistic optimists, on the other hand, believe that

success will happen to them—that the universe will re-

ward them for their positive thinking.

Cultivate your realistic optimism by combining a posi-

tive attitude with an honest assessment of the challenges

that await you. Don’t just visualize success; visualize the

steps you will take in order to make success happen. If

your first strategy doesn’t work, what’s plan B? (This is

another great time to use your if-then plans.) Remember,

it’s not “negative” to think about the problems you are

likely to face—it’s foolish not to.

5. Focus on Getting Better,

Rather Than Being Good

Believing you have the ability to reach your goals is im-

portant, but so is believing you can get the ability. Many

of us believe that our intelligence, personality, and physi-

cal aptitudes are fixed—that no matter what we do, we

won’t improve. As a result, we focus on goals that are all

about proving ourselves, rather than developing and ac-

quiring new skills.

Fortunately, abilities of all kinds are profoundly

malleable. Embracing the fact that you can change will

allow you to make better choices and reach your fullest

potential. People whose goals are about getting better,

15

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Get Started

rather than being good, take difficulty in stride and ap-

preciate the journey as much as the destination.

How can you motivate yourself to approach new re-

sponsibilities with confidence and energy? The answer is

simple, though perhaps a little surprising: give yourself

permission to screw up.

I know this may not be something you’re thrilled to

hear, because you’re probably thinking, if you screw up

you’ll be the one to pay for it. But you needn’t worry, be-

cause when people feel they’re allowed to make mistakes,

they’re significantly less likely to actually make them!

People approach any task with one of two types of

goals: what I call be-good goals, where the focus is on

proving that you have a lot of ability and already know

what you’re doing, and get-better goals, where the fo-

cus is on developing ability and learning to master a new

skill.

The problem with be-good goals is that they tend to

backfire when we’re faced with something unfamiliar or

difficult. We quickly start feeling that we don’t actually

know what we’re doing, that we lack ability—and this

creates a lot of anxiety. And nothing interferes with per-

formance quite like anxiety does; it is the productivity

killer.

Get-better goals, on the other hand, are practically

bulletproof. When we think about what we’re doing in

terms of learning and mastering—accepting that we may

make some mistakes along the way—we stay motivated

despite setbacks that might occur.

A focus on getting better also enhances the experience

of working; we naturally find what we do more interest-

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Nine Things Successful People Do Diff erently

ing and enjoyable when we think about it in terms of

progress, rather than perfection. Finding what you do in-

teresting and believing it has inherent value is one of the

most effective ways to stay motivated despite unexpected

roadblocks. In fact, interest doesn’t just keep you going

despite fatigue; it actually replenishes your energy.

6. Have Grit

Grit is a willingness to commit to long-term goals and to

persist in the face of difficulty. Gritty people obtain more

education in their lifetimes and earn higher college GPAs.

Grit predicts which cadets will stick out their first gruel-

ing year at West Point. In fact, grit even predicts how far

contestants at the Scripps National Spelling Bee will go.

The good news is that if you aren’t particularly gritty

now, you can do something about it. People who lack grit

often believe that they just don’t have the innate abilities

successful people have. If that describes your own think-

ing, you’re wrong. As I mentioned earlier, effort, plan-

ning, persistence, and good strategies are what it really

takes to succeed. Embracing this knowledge will not only

help you see yourself and your goals more accurately, but

also do wonders for your grit.

Study after study of successful people, whether they

are athletes, musicians, or mathematicians, shows that

the key to success and enhanced ability is deliberate

practice—thousands of hours spent mastering the neces-

sary skills and knowledge.

Grit is all about not giving up in the face of difficulty,

even when you’re tired or discouraged. And the best pre-

dictor of not giving up is how we explain that difficulty in

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the first place. When you’re having a hard time, what do

you blame?

Entity theorists, who are convinced that ability is

fixed, tend to blame setbacks on a lack of ability. If this

is hard for me, I must not be good at it. As a result, they

lack grit; they give up on themselves way too soon, inad-

vertently reinforcing their misconception that they can’t

improve.

Incremental theorists, on the other hand, tend to

blame setbacks on more controllable factors—insuf-

ficient effort, using the wrong strategy, poor planning.

When faced with difficulty, they try harder, armed with

the belief that improvement is always possible. This gritty

attitude leads to far greater long-term accomplish ments.

Change really is always possible, and the science here

is crystal clear. There is no ability that can’t be developed

with experience. The next time you find yourself think-

ing, “But I’m just not good at this,” remember: You’re just

not good at it yet.

7. Build Your Willpower Muscle

Our self-control “muscle” is just like others in your body;

when it doesn’t get much exercise, it becomes weaker

over time. But when you give it regular workouts, it will

grow stronger and help you reach your goals.

To build willpower, take on a challenge that requires

you to do something you’d rather not do. Give up high-

fat snacks, do a hundred sit-ups a day, try to learn a new

skill. When you find yourself wanting to give in or give

up—don’t. Start with just one activity and make a plan

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Nine Things Successful People Do Diff erently

for how you’ll deal with troubles when they occur (“If I

want a snack, I’ll eat one piece of fresh or three pieces of

dried fruit”). It will be hard in the beginning, but it will

get easier, and that’s the whole point. As your strength

grows, you can take on more challenges and step up your

self-control workout.

Like biceps or triceps, willpower can vary in its

strength, not only from person to person, but from mo-

ment to moment.

The good news is that willpower depletion is only tem-

porary. Give your muscle time to bounce back, and you’ll

be back in fighting form. When rest is not an option, you

can accelerate your recovery simply by thinking about

people you know who have a lot of self-control.

Or, you can try giving yourself a pick-me-up. Anything

that lifts your spirits—listening to a favorite song, calling

a good friend, or reflecting on a past success—should also

help restore your self-control when you’re looking for a

quick fix.

8. Don’t Tempt Fate

No matter how strong your willpower muscle becomes,

it’s important to always respect the fact that it’s limited,

and if you overtax it, you will temporarily run out of

steam. Don’t try to take on two challenging goals at once,

if you can help it (like quitting smoking and dieting).

And make achieving your goal easier by keeping yourself

out of harm’s way. Many people are overly confident in

their ability to resist temptation, and as a result they put

themselves in situations where temptations abound. Suc-

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cessful people know not to make reaching a goal harder

than it already is.

Resisting temptation is a key part of successfully

reaching just about any goal. What we want to do is often

the very opposite of what we need to do. This may sound

a bit counterintuitive, but the very first thing you’re go-

ing to want to do if you’re serious about resisting tempta-

tion is make peace with the fact that your willpower is

limited.

Even if you’ve built up large reserves of willpower, you

won’t have much left for sticking to your resolutions at

the end of a long day of putting out fires at work. That’s

why it’s so important to give some thought to when you’re

most likely to feel drained and vulnerable and make an

if-then plan to keep yourself out of harm’s way.

It’s far easier to abstain from doing something all to-

gether than it is to give in just a little and then stop. And

you need more and more self-control to stop a behavior

the longer it goes on. If you don’t want to eat the entire

slice of cake, don’t take “just one bite.”

9. Focus on What You Will Do,

Not What You Won’t Do

Do you want to get promoted, quit smoking, or put a lid

on your bad temper? Then plan how you’ll replace coun-

terproductive behaviors with more constructive ones.

Too often, people concentrate all their efforts on what

they want to stop doing and fail to consider how they will

fill the void. Trying to avoid a thought can make it more

active in your mind (“Don’t think about white bears!”).

The same holds true when it comes to behavior; by trying

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not to do something, you strengthen rather than dimin-

ish the impulse.

If you want to change your ways, ask yourself, “What

will I do instead?” For example, if you’re trying to gain

control of your temper, you might make a plan such as, “If

I’m starting to feel angry, then I’ll take three deep breaths

to calm down.” By using deep breathing as a replacement

for giving in to your anger, your success-sabotaging im-

pulse will get worn away over time until it disappears

completely.

Once you’ve decided to make an if-then plan to help

you reach your goal, the next thing you need to do is

figure out how to construct it.

There are three types of if-then plans:

• “Replacement” if-then plans do just what the

name suggests—replace a negative behavior with

a more positive one (as in the anger management

strategy just described).

• “Ignore” if-then plans are focused on blocking out

unwanted feelings, like cravings, performance

anxiety, or self-doubts. (“If I have the urge to

smoke, then I’ll ignore it.”)

• Finally,

“negation” if-then plans involve spelling out

the actions you won’t be taking in the future. With

these plans, if there is a behavior you want to avoid,

you simply plan not to perform this behavior. (“If I

am at the mall, then I won’t buy anything.”)

Of all three types, replacement plans are most successful.

When it comes to reaching your goals, focusing on what

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you will do, not what you won’t do, is the most effective

way to achieve them.

Heidi Grant Halvorson, PhD, is a motivational psycholo-

gist and author of the HBR Single Nine Things Successful

People Do Differently (Harvard Business Press, 2011) and the book  Succeed: How We Can Reach Our Goals (Hudson Street Press, 2011). Her personal blog, The Science of

Success, can be found at http://www.heidigranthalvorson

.com/.

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Chapter 3

Being More

Productive

An Interview with David Allen

and Tony Schwartz

by Daniel McGinn

David Allen is a productivity consultant and the author

of the best seller Getting Things Done, which outlines

the list-driven effi ciency system adherents call by its

acronym: GTD. Tony Schwartz, the author of the best-

seller Be Excellent at Anything, is the CEO of The En-

ergy Project, which helps people and organizations fuel

engagement and productivity by drawing on the science

of high performance.

Excerpted from Harvard Business Review, May 2011 (product

# R1105D).

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In this edited conversation with HBR, they discuss the

distractive pull of e-mail, how they’ve been infl uenced by

each other, and why you should do your most important

task fi rst thing in the morning (even though only one of

them does).

HBR: Let’s start with something simple. How does each

of you defi ne what you do?

Allen: I help people and organizations produce more

with less input. I teach a set of best practices and a

methodology that produce a greater sense of concen-

tration and control.

Schwartz: We teach individuals and organizations

how to manage energy more skillfully in order to get

more work done in less time, more sustainably. That

requires a new way of working—one that balances

periods of high focus with intermittent renewal.

Both of you have written several books describing your

techniques, but give me a quick summary.

Allen: I call what I’ve uncovered “the strategic value

of clear space.” Say you’re going to cook dinner for

people, it’s 5:00 pm, and they’re coming at 6:00.

You want to have all the right ingredients. You want

to have the right tools. You want the kitchen to be

nice and clear. You need the freedom to make a cre-

ative mess. I teach people to achieve that freedom by

taking very immediate, concrete steps: downloading

all your commitments and projects into lists, focusing

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Being More Productive: An Interview with Allen and Schwartz

on “next actions,” and thinking about the context—

work that needs to be done in your offi ce, or on the

phone, or on the computer. You don’t need to change

who you are. You just need some simple but very

powerful techniques.

Schwartz: We focus on the four primary dimensions

of energy that we all need to perform at our best. The

ground level is physical—fi tness, sleep, nutrition, and

rest. At the emotional level, it’s about cultivating pos-

itive emotions—and as a leader, communicating them

to others. At the mental level, it’s about gaining more

control of your attention—both by increasing [your]

ability to focus on one thing at a time and by learning

to shift into the right hemisphere to do more-creative

work. And at the spiritual level, it’s about defi ning

purpose, because when something really matters, you

bring far more energy to it. Very few [managers and]

leaders I’ve met fully appreciate how meeting these

needs—in themselves and for others—is absolutely

critical to sustainable high performance. They’re good

at doing things, and they’ve been rewarded by being

given more things to do. But increasingly, demand is

outrunning their capacity. They’re overloaded with

e-mail and texts and all the information that comes

in. We have to teach them to step back and say, “What

do I actually want to do? What are the right choices?

What are the costs of this choice?”

Let’s talk about some of the concrete principles you

teach. Tony, explain why you think people should

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approach work as a series of short sprints, not an all-day

marathon.

Schwartz: There’s a fundamental misunderstanding

about how human beings operate at their best. Most

of us mistakenly assume we’re meant to run like com-

puters—at high speeds, continuously, for long periods

of time, running multiple programs simultaneously.

It’s just not true. Human beings are designed to be

rhythmic. The heart pulses; muscles contract and

relax. We’re at our best when we’re moving rhythmi-

cally between spending energy and renewing it. We

need to recognize the insight of athletes, who man-

age their work-rest ratios. We encourage people to

work intensely for 90 minutes and then take a break

to recover. We teach them to eat small, energy-rich

meals every few hours, rather than three big meals a

day. We believe napping drives productivity, although

that remains a tough sell in most companies. Still,

the reality is that if a person works continuously all

through the day, she’ll produce less than a person

of equal talent who works very intensely for short

periods and then recovers before working intensely

again. (To learn more, see “Power Through Your Day

in 90-Minute Cycles” and “Manage Your Energy, Not

Your Time,” later in this guide.)

Allen: It’s also an issue of choosing the right work. Pe-

ter Drucker said that the toughest job for knowledge

workers is defi ning the work. A century ago, 80% of

the world made and moved things. You worked as

long as you could, and then you slept, and then you

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Being More Productive: An Interview with Allen and Schwartz

got up and worked again. You didn’t have to triage or

make executive decisions. It’s harder to be produc-

tive today because the work has become much more

complex.

David, what’s the biggest roadblock to productivity that

you typically observe when you go into an organization

for the fi rst time?

Allen: People don’t capture stuff that has their atten-

tion. They don’t acknowledge it or objectify it. And

it keeps rolling around in the organizational psyche

as well as the personal psyche, draining energy and

creating incredible psychic residue. People say, “I’ll

do that,” but they don’t write it down, and it goes into

a black hole. That would be fi ne if it were just one

thing, but it’s hundreds of things. And people don’t

determine exactly what their commitment to that

stuff is—what’s the outcome they want to achieve,

what’s the next action required to move it forward.

Your head is for having ideas, not holding them. Just

dumping everything out of your head and external-

izing it is a huge step, and it can have a signifi cant

effect.

The devil’s advocate position is that this results

in gigantic to-do lists, which are overwhelming in

themselves.

Allen: You need lists because your brain isn’t good at

keeping them. Your mind is this dumb little com-

puter that will wake you up at 3:00 am and beat you

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bloody over stuff you can’t do spit about while you’re

lying there. All it’s doing is repeating stuff in open

loops, and it sucks your energy like crazy.

Schwartz: There’s a process of humility that’s re-

quired here. It’s a little bit of a turn on the 12-step

notion of admitting that you’re powerless over your

addictions. In this case, the addiction is to e-mail and

information. The problem is that our willpower and

self- discipline are wildly overrated. We think the way

to make a change is to push harder—to resist that

chocolate-chip cookie, or wake up early and get to the

gym. It doesn’t work. It’s humbling to discover that

we’re creatures of habit, and what we did yesterday

is what we’re going to do today. You want to co-opt

the process by which negative habits arise without

your intention, and substitute what we call “positive

rituals,” or deliberate practices. (See Section 5: Create

Rituals.)

How much do you know about each other’s work—and

how much do you use each other’s strategies?

Schwartz: I always kept lists, but until I connected

with David’s work, I didn’t realize that anything I

didn’t download would potentially create distrac-

tions—so now I keep lists of everything. Another

ritual I have that aligns with David’s work is to always

do the most important task of the day fi rst thing in

the morning, when I’m most rested and least dis-

tracted. Ninety percent of people check their e-mail

as soon as they get to work. That turns their agenda

over to someone else.

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Being More Productive: An Interview with Allen and Schwartz

David, how has Tony’s thinking infl uenced the way

you work?

Allen: The piece that’s made the biggest difference is

his work on energy cycles. I actually brought a pillow

into work. I work in a glass offi ce, and now people

can see me lying on my fl oor taking a nap for 20 min-

utes. That’s directly from Tony’s work. I wish I had

the discipline Tony does to tackle the hardest tasks

fi rst thing in the morning, but I don’t.

Schwartz: It’s not that you don’t have the discipline—

it’s that you don’t have the ritual. If you built that

ritual, I have zero doubt that you could do it.

Allen: Part of the way to attack that problem is to

break big tasks down and focus on smaller “next ac-

tions,” which can seem more manageable. What most

people put on a to-do list are vague things like “Mom.”

Great! So Tony will write down “Mom,” signifying that

he has to decide whether to get his mother a birthday

present, and what to buy, and how to deliver it. He’ll

resist looking at the list, because he knows there’s a

lot of work in that simple notation. Instead the list

should specify a smaller next action—say, “Call sister

re: Mom’s birthday.” Oh, look—I can do that! There’s

actually a part of us that loves to produce, that loves

to be complete. Now I’ve created motivation: I see a

desired result, I have the confi dence I can get there,

and I see the path. A lot of what GTD does is set it up

so that you only have to think about things once. The

problem is that everybody is multitasking and getting

distracted by the latest and loudest. They fail because

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they haven’t captured, clarifi ed, organized, or built in

a regular review system they trust.

Schwartz: Let me beg to differ a little. Say you’re work-

ing on a primary task and you get an e-mail. You hear

that little Pavlovian beep, and you cannot resist it. So

you turn to the e-mail and lose track of the initial task,

and it takes you time to reconnect to it afterward. Re-

searchers have found that over time and with practice,

people get better at task shifting, but they never get

remotely as good as they’d be if they did one thing at a

time. (For more on effective to-do lists and multitask-

ing, see Section 3: Organize Your Time.)

Allen: Let’s take it a step further. Why do people

get disturbed by that e-mail beep? It’s because they

don’t trust that they’ve emptied their e-mail every

24 hours. Most people are living in an emergency

scan mode. They never deal with their e-mail, so

they’re afraid there’s still something sitting in there,

and they’re constantly allowing themselves to get

distracted by it. (See Section 7: Take Control of Your

E-mail.)

Last question: If people could take just one thing away

from your work, what should it be?

Schwartz: [We] need to recognize that human beings

are basically organisms containing energy. And that

energy is either being renewed or being dissipated

over time. An organization has to realize that part

of its responsibility, whether it wants it or not, is to

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Being More Productive: An Interview with Allen and Schwartz

ensure that people have full tanks of energy. This is

one of the big variables that will determine which

organizations thrive in the next 10 or 20 years. [And

until organizations do so, we need to take on that

responsibility for ourselves.]

Allen: Think about it this way: While we’ve been

sitting here talking, stuff has been piling up in our

in-boxes and our voice mails. Some of it has the po-

tential to meaningfully shift our priorities. When we

turn to this accumulated stuff, we’ll need to eliminate

old business that is pulling on us, that’s taking our

attention, and reallocate our resources to these new

priorities. You can only do one thing at a time, and

you only have so many resources. You either feel OK

about sitting here talking to us, or you feel bad about

the 9,000 other things you’re not doing. Everybody

needs a system to make those choices wisely.

Daniel McGinn is a senior editor at Harvard Business

Review.

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Section 2

Prioritize

Your Work

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Chapter 4

Get a Raise by

Getting the Right

Work Done

by Peter Bregman

My friend Dave is notorious for eating fried food. (Names

and some details changed.) Yet recently he was surprised

to learn that his cholesterol was high because, as he put

it, “The day before the test, I ate really well.”

The idea of immediate results is alluring. But whether

it’s managing our diet or prioritizing our workload, there

are no quick fi xes.

I was reminded of this when a reporter asked me what

advice I would give to someone who wanted to ask for a

raise at a time when most wages are stagnating or falling.

My answer? Don’t ask.

It’s not that I think people can’t get raises right now.

But if you haven’t spent the last year laying the ground-

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Prioritize Your Work

work, it’s highly unlikely that you’ll be successful now.

There’s no formula—no perfect words or spinning of

events—that will magically deliver a raise with a day or

two of preparation.

But there is a formula for getting more money over

time. And it starts with your ability to prioritize.

The formula is based on one simple premise: We can

get more money when we demonstrate that we’ve added

more value. And we can add more value when we spend

the majority of our time focusing on the work that the

most senior leaders in our organization consider valu-

able, which is almost always work that increases revenue

or profi ts, either short-term or long-term.

But when we’re not clear about what work is most im-

portant to our organization, one of two things can hap-

pen: Either we put the same amount of energy and effort

into everything or we let the wrong things fall through

the cracks.

Making more intentional and strategic choices about

where to spend our time can mean the difference be-

tween a stagnant salary and a growing one. We can be

more productive when we know which initiatives deserve

our highest priority.

Here’s my formula for getting a raise:

1. During this year’s compensation conversation,

take whatever is given to you without negotia-

tion and with appreciation. Then explain that

you’re less interested in a raise right now and

more interested in how you can add tremen-

dous value to the organization.

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Get a Raise by Getting the Right Work Done

2. Think like a shareholder of the company. Ask

lots of questions about the strategy and what’s

keeping the top leaders awake at night. Un-

derstand how your department affects revenue

or profi tability and what’s important to your

direct manager. With your manager, identify

the top two or three things you can work on

that will drive revenue or profi tability. Once

you’ve had that conversation, you’ll have your

raiseworthy work focus.

3. Now

keep those two or three revenue

and/or profi tability drivers at the top of

your to-do list. Approach your daily work so

that the majority of your effort moves the

organization further in those areas. Share your

to-do list with your manager, to keep you on

the same page about your priorities and how

your work affects the bigger picture. Quantify

the impact you’re making. If your manager

asks you to do things outside of your top

priorities, push back and discuss the possible

trade-offs you could make. Sure, you’ll need

to work on some things that aren’t important.

But make a strategic choice to shortchange

those.

After about six months of this laser focus, you’ll be ready

to talk about how you’ve added tremendous value on the

things that matter most.

During that discussion you’ll also be ready to talk

about a real raise. That’s good timing, since most organi-

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Prioritize Your Work

zations are beginning to think through their departmen-

tal budgets and promotions around the six-month mark.

Here’s why this formula works: It’s not a trick. If you

focus on your highest-priority work—even if it requires

that you push back when your manager asks you to work

on other tasks—ultimately you and your manager will be

more productive, and the organization will benefi t. That’s

money in the bank. It will make your job more secure and

you more promotable.

“So,” I asked Dave. “Now that you know you have high

cholesterol, are you going to change the way you eat?”

“No,” Dave answered, true to form, “I’m taking a pill.

My cholesterol will be lower in a few days and I can still

eat everything.”

Maybe I like doing things the hard way. But as far as I

know, there’s no pill for getting a raise.

Peter Bregman is a strategic adviser to CEOs and their leadership teams. His latest book is  18 Minutes: Find

Your Focus, Master Distraction, and Get the Right Things

Done.

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Chapter 5

The Worth-Your-

Time Test

by Peter Bregman

Nate Eisman recently started working for a large consult-

ing fi rm after many years as an independent consultant.

(Some details changed to protect privacy.) He called me

for some advice.

“I’m wasting a tremendous amount of time,” he com-

plained. “I’m in meetings all day. The only way I can get

any real work done is by coming in super early and stay-

ing super late.”

Nate had gone from an organization of one to an or-

ganization of several thousand and was drowning in the

time suck of collaboration. He is not alone.

Working with people takes time. And different people

have different priorities. Someone may need your per-

Adapted from content posted on hbr.org on April 1, 2010.

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Prioritize Your Work

spective on an issue that’s critical to him but not to you.

Still, if he’s a colleague, it’s important to help. And often,

we want to help.

On the other hand, we’ve all felt Nate’s pain: How can

we spend time where we add the most value and let go of

the rest?

We need a way to quickly and confi dently identify and

reduce our extraneous commitments, to know for sure

whether we need to deal with something or delegate it,

and to manage our desire to be available to others. I pro-

pose a brief test that every commitment should pass be-

fore you agree to it. When someone comes to you with a

request, ask yourself:

1. Am I the right person?

2. Is this the right time?

3. Do I have enough information?

If the request fails the test—if the answer to any one of

these questions is “no”—then don’t do it. Pass it to some-

one else (the right person), schedule it for another time

(the right time), or wait until you have the information

you need (either you or someone else needs to get it).

Sometimes it’s impossible or inappropriate to wall

yourself off completely. For example, what if your boss is

the person who interrupts you? Or what if you’re on va-

cation and an important client reaches out with a time-

sensitive and crucial question?

The three test questions offer a clear, easy, and consis-

tent way of knowing how to respond—and help us avoid

the tendency to say yes to everything.

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If your boss asks you to do something and her request

fails the test, it’s not just okay, it’s useful to push back on

or redirect her so the work is completed productively. It’s

not helpful to you, your boss, or your organization if you

waste your time on the wrong work.

That’s the irony. We try to be available because we

want to be helpful. And yet being overwhelmed with

tasks—especially those we consider to be a waste of our

time—is exactly what will make us unhelpful.

When we get a meeting request that doesn’t pass the

test, we should decline it. When we’re cc’d on an e-mail

that doesn’t require our attention, we need to delete it.

And a 50-page presentation needs to pass the test before

we read it—and even then, it’s worth an e-mail asking

which are the critical pages to review.

A few weeks after sharing the three questions with

Nate, I called him at his offi ce at around 6 pm to see how

it was going. I guess it was going well, because I never

reached him. He had already gone home.

Peter Bregman is a strategic adviser to CEOs and their leadership teams. His latest book is  18 Minutes: Find

Your Focus, Master Distraction, and Get the Right Things

Done.

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Chapter 6

Say Yes to

Saying No

by Alexandra Samuel

If your e-mail in-box looks like mine, it’s full of requests

and invitations that promise challenging new projects,

clients, and commitments. Sure, you enjoy the stimula-

tion and excitement that come with these offers, but it’s

a fi ne line. You have to be selective about what you take

on—and disciplined about retiring long-standing activi-

ties to make room for new ones. You have to be able to say

no. Frequently, politely, and effectively.

The good news is that the same technologies that

threaten to overload you with things to say yes to can also

help you say no. Here’s how:

Adapted from content posted on hbr.org on January 8, 2010.

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Prioritize Your Work

Set your intentions

Before you say no, make it clear to yourself what you want

to say yes to. Sites like 43Things.com and SuperViva

.com can help you create lists of what you want to accom-

plish and experiences you want to have. Writing down

your goals will help you clarify what’s important, identify

what you want to eliminate, and get the community sup-

port to achieve it.

Prioritize your commitments

A simple Excel spreadsheet can help you evaluate what’s

on your plate before you agree to take on more. Capture

every project you’re working on—even ones you’ve only

thought about—and list these in column A, one row per

task. Use column B to assign a priority to each project,

ranking items from 1–5. In column C, capture the name

of anyone who could take over or help with certain proj-

ects. Sort your projects according to priority.

For high-priority tasks you’ve noted could be del-

egated, e-mail or meet with everyone to whom you hope

to transfer projects.

Review with your boss the list of high-priority tasks

that only you can handle. Are they aligned with her and

your unit’s goals? If not, reevaluate to see if you should:

shift priorities; delegate more of the projects; or defer

some to a later date. (To download a sample Excel spread-

sheet, visit my website at http://www.alexandrasamuel

.com/career-work/excel-template-7-steps-to-achieving-

your-goals.)

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Say Yes to Saying No

Make it easy to say “no”

When my in-box piles up with unanswered messages,

you can bet that it’s full of e-mails that require a no—ones

that I can’t bring myself to write. To make it easier, I’ve

created a few different signature fi les in my e-mail client,

with polite “no” messages for different circumstances: I’d

love to join you, but my schedule is really booked for the

next month; or Thanks for thinking of us, but we’re only

taking on XYZ type of client right now; or That sounds

like a great project, but my pro bono work is already com-

mitted for this quarter. Using these removes the burden

of working up the energy to let someone down.

Make “no” your default answer

Say no to the majority of invitations and project offers you

receive unless they meet a short set of criteria. For exam-

ple, I look for conferences that combine business devel-

opment (getting clients), professional development (im-

proving skills or knowledge), and personal development

(regeneration or personal growth), and attend only events

that promise meaningful value on at least two of those

fronts. Write down your criteria and stick them to your

computer monitor, or put them on a digital sticky note.

None of these practices will eliminate the anxiety that

comes from saying no or the fear that you may be passing

up a fantastic opportunity. But it’s because saying no is so

diffi cult that we need tools and systems to make it a little

easier and a little more habitual. The more you say no, the

better you’ll be able to focus on your most important work.

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Prioritize Your Work

Alexandra Samuel is the Director of the Social + Interactive Media Centre at Emily Carr University, and the co-

founder of Social Signal, a Vancouver-based social media agency. You can follow Alex on Twitter at @awsamuel or

her blog at alexandrasamuel.com .

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Section 3

Organize

Your Time

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Chapter 7

A Practical Plan

for When You Feel

Overwhelmed

by Peter Bregman

We’ve all experienced it: that feeling that we’ve got so

much to do that there’s no chance we’ll get it all done.

And certainly not done on time. Right now, I’m feeling

completely overwhelmed by my to-do list.

Here’s the crazy part. I just spent the last two days try-

ing to work without actually working. I start something

but get distracted by the Internet. Or a phone call. Or an

e-mail. At a time when I need to be most effi cient, I’ve

become less effi cient than ever.

You’d think it would be the opposite—that when we

have a lot to do, we’d become very productive in order to

get it done. Sometimes that happens.

Adapted from content posted on hbr.org on September 23, 2010.

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But often, when there’s so much competing for our at-

tention, we don’t know where to begin—so we don’t be-

gin anywhere.

Next time you fi nd yourself in this situation, try this

approach:

1. Write down everything you have to do on a piece

of paper. Resist the urge to use technology for

this task. Why? I’m not sure, but somehow

writing on paper—and then crossing things

out—creates momentum.

2. Spend 15 minutes completing as many of the

easiest, fastest tasks on your list as you can.

Make your quick phone calls. Send your short

e-mails. Don’t worry about whether these are

the most important tasks on your list. You’re

moving. The goal is to cross off as many tasks

as possible in the shortest time. Use a timer to

keep you focused.

3. Work on the most daunting task for the next 35

minutes without interruption. Turn off your

phone, close all the unnecessary windows on

your computer, and choose the most chal-

lenging task on your list, the one that instills

the most stress or is the highest priority. Then

work on it and only it—without hesitation or

distraction—for 35 minutes.

4. Take a break for 10 minutes, then begin the cycle

again. After 35 minutes of focused work, take

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A Practical Plan for When You Feel Overwhelmed

a break. Then start the hourlong process over

again, beginning with the 15 minutes of quick

actions.

“Thirty years ago,” Anne Lamott writes in her book Bird

by Bird, “my older brother, who was ten years old at the

time, was trying to get a report on birds written that he’d

had three months to write. It was due the next day. We

were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at

the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder pa-

per and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobi-

lized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father

sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother’s

shoulder, and said, ‘Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird

by bird.’”

That’s it. Bird by bird, starting with a bunch of easy

birds to help you feel accomplished and then tackling a

hard one to gain serious traction and reduce your stress

level. All timed.

Working within a specifi c and limited time frame is

important because the race against time keeps you fo-

cused. When stress is generalized and diffuse, it’s hard to

manage. Using a short time frame actually increases the

pressure but keeps your effort specifi c and particular to a

single task. That increases good, motivating stress while

reducing negative, disconcerting stress. So the fog of feel-

ing overwhelmed dissipates, and forward movement be-

comes possible.

In practice, I’m fi nding that although I make myself

work at least the full 35 minutes, I don’t always stop

when the 35 minutes of hard work are over, because I’m

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in the middle of something and I have traction. On the

other hand, though it’s tempting, I don’t exceed the 15

minutes of easy, fast work. When the timer stops, so do I,

immediately transitioning to the hard work.

Maybe this method has been working simply because

it’s novel for me and, like a new diet, offers some struc-

ture to motivate my effort. Today, though, it doesn’t mat-

ter, because it’s a useful tool for me. And I’ll keep using it

until I don’t need it or it stops working.

Am I still stressed? Sure. But overwhelmed? Much

less so. Because I’m crossing things off my list and get-

ting somewhere on my little tasks as well as my big ones,

bird by bird.

Peter Bregman is a strategic adviser to CEOs and their leadership teams. His latest book is  18 Minutes: Find

Your Focus, Master Distraction, and Get the Right Things

Done.

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Chapter 8

Stop

Procrastinating—

Now

by Amy Gallo

It seems that no one is immune to procrastination. When

someone asked Ernest Hemingway how to write a novel,

he replied, “First you defrost the refrigerator.” But put-

ting off tasks takes a big toll on our productivity and our

psyche.

Here are fi ve principles to follow the next time you

fi nd yourself procrastinating:

1. Figure Out What’s Holding You Back

When you fi nd yourself ignoring or delaying a task, ask

yourself why. Psychiatrist Ned Hallowell says there are

two types of tasks we most often defer:

Adapted from content posted on hbr.org on October 11, 2011.

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• Something you don’t like to do. This is the most

common one. As Hallowell says, “You don’t put off

eating your favorite dessert.”

• Something you don’t know how to do. When you

lack the necessary knowledge or are unsure of how

to start a job, you’re more likely to avoid it.

Once you’ve identifi ed why you’ve put something off,

you can break the cycle and prevent future bouts of

procrastination.

2. Set Deadlines

One of the simplest things to do is create a schedule

with clear due dates for each task. “As soon as you get

the project, chunk it down into a few manageable seg-

ments,” advises Teresa Amabile, coauthor of The Progress

Principle. Then, assign deadlines for each task. “Put an

appointment in your calendar to work on a small piece of

the next segment each day to allow yourself to get it done

a bit at a time,” she says. These “small wins” make the

work more manageable and contribute to your sense of

progress. And achieving them is much easier than trying

to barrel through a complex project.

Use whatever visual cues work for you: Set reminders

in your calendar, add items to your to-do list, or put a

sticky note on your computer screen.

3. Increase the Rewards

We often dally because the reward for doing an assign-

ment is too far off. To make a task feel more urgent, focus

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Stop Procrastinating—Now

on short-term rewards. If you always procrastinate on fi l-

ing your taxes, for example, focus on getting a refund by a

certain date. And if there aren’t any obvious rewards, cre-

ate your own. Treat yourself to a coffee break or a quick

chat with a coworker once you’ve fi nished a task. Embed

the reward into the work by making it more fun to do,

like partnering with a colleague on a particularly diffi cult

project.

4. Involve Others

One of the principles Hallowell emphasizes is “Never

worry alone.” If you don’t know how to do something, ask

for help. Turn to a trusted colleague or a friend for advice.

Asking people to review your work can also help spur you

to get started, because you know they’re expecting it.

5. Get in the Habit

“People throw up a hand and say ‘I’m such a procrastina-

tor’ as if they have no control,” says Hallowell. “You do

have control over this, and you’ll be very proud when

you change it.” There are immediate benefi ts when you

start getting things done right away, and it’s a habit you

can cultivate. Amabile suggests tracking your improve-

ment. “Spend just fi ve minutes a day to note the progress

you made, any setbacks you encountered, and what you

might do the next day to enable further progress,” she

says. She recommends you do this in a work diary (see

“Use a 10-Minute Diary to Stay on Track,” later in this

guide). Then see yourself—and talk about yourself with

others—as someone who gets things done. “The most

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Organize Your Time

powerful event for maintaining positive inner work life

is making progress in meaningful work,” says Amabile.

Amy Gallo is a contributing editor at Harvard Business

Review. Follow her on Twitter at @amyegallo.

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Chapter 9

Don’t Let Long-

Term Projects

Become Last-

Minute Panic

by Peter Bregman

I want to write a screenplay.

Actually, I wanted to write one last year, but then other

work took more time than I expected, and I kept pushing

“Write screenplay” off my to-do list.

I know I’m not alone in struggling to make incremen-

tal progress on long-term projects or goals. How do you

get started when you have “all the time in the world”?

Maybe you have no due date, like my screenplay. Or

maybe you have a deadline that’s months away—like pre-

paring a speech, developing a business plan, or designing

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a training program. Perhaps you tend to procrastinate

on projects with generous schedules—until “next month”

becomes “next week” and then “next day,” and suddenly

your long-term project has morphed into a short-term,

panic-fi lled nightmare.

Accomplishing something big and important is rarely

as simple as just getting it done. Often we don’t know

how to start and, even when we do, we rarely have all

the knowledge and skills we need to see it through. Also,

we always have more urgent things to do and so we push

off long-term goals. (See the previous article, “Stop Pro-

crastinating—Now,” for more ideas about overcoming the

temptation to postpone work.)

We all know the basic advice: Break the work into

smaller, more manageable chunks; focus on the next

small step; set intermediate deadlines.

It’s good advice. But, in my experience, it’s not enough.

The reason we procrastinate on a big, long-term proj-

ect is because it’s important. So important, we’re too

scared to work on it.

I’ve never written a screenplay. I don’t know how to

format it. I don’t know how to structure the story. I don’t

even know the story I want to tell.

I’m afraid that I’ll fail. That I’ll spend a lot of time on

it—while other more immediate things don’t get done—

and that it’ll be terrible, anyway.

My screenplay is work I care about deeply. Almost all

big projects fi t into that category—including the compet-

itive analysis your boss asked for. Because a big project is

a mirror. Even if you think you don’t care about it, a big

project refl ects your smarts, effort, and character. It has

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Don’t Let Long-Term Projects Become Last-Minute Panic

your signature on it. Failure in a long-term project isn’t

just a work issue, it’s an identity issue.

So what’s the antidote?

Acknowledge your fear

As soon as you know you’re going to give that speech or

design that training program, take a quiet moment and

feel the fear that comes with the importance—and un-

knowns—of the project. Maybe you’re afraid of getting in

front of all those people to give your speech. Maybe you’re

afraid that your training design will expose how much

you don’t know. Maybe you’re afraid of letting other peo-

ple down.

Share your fear

Some people may think you’re a wimp, but that hasn’t

been my experience. Telling others you’re intimidated by

something you have to do gives them permission to feel—

and maybe express—their own fear. I fi nd that people are

gracious, supportive, and empathic.

Round up the tools you need

Acknowledging your fear also serves another, crucial

purpose: it informs you. By recognizing that you don’t

have everything you need to see the project through,

you’re identifying your next, manageable step: gathering

the necessary tools, information, skills, and support.

Lower your expectations

You’re scared because you expect a lot from yourself and

you’re afraid you’ll underperform. When you acknowl-

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edge that fear, you recognize that you might not have all

that it takes to meet your expectations. Admitting that, in

turn, reduces your expectation of getting it perfect right

off the bat. And lowering your expectation of getting it

right is key to getting started.

Make it a priority

Even if the long-term project isn’t your choice—commit

yourself to it fully. Make it one of your top fi ve priorities.

This forces you to also identify what’s not a priority. If

you have too many important goals, you’ll never get to

the big long-term ones. So slash your list until you’re left

with only fi ve.

I use a six-box to-do list—each box represents one

of my top fi ve priorities and the sixth box, labeled “The

Other 5%,” is for everything else. (See fi gure 9-1, “Sample

18 Minutes daily to-do list.”) That last box shouldn’t take

more than 5% of your time. One of my fi ve boxes always

represents a long-term priority, which, for this year,

contains my screenplay. Having a long-term project on

my daily to-do list means every day I make incremental

progress toward my big goal.

Break the work into smaller pieces,

and set deadlines

Now you’re ready for the standard advice. Break the work

into manageable chunks and make sure you know how to

do the fi rst chunk. Set an intermediate deadline. If you

need other people’s help, get them involved early. Finally,

decide when and where you’re going to accomplish the

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Don’t Let Long-Term Projects Become Last-Minute Panic

FIGURE 9-1

Sample 18 Minutes daily to-do list

Date: ______________________

Do great work with

Develop new business

current clients

opportunities

- Follow-up

meetings

with

- Abigail—M&A

work?

Anycorp

and

Bigorg

GMs

- Referrals

from

Tom

- Mary appt for next week

- Talk to Fernanda about real

- Jason—on-boarding

docs

estate

opportunity

- Set up flight to SF

- Lunch

with

Joe

- E-mail request to clients for

Howie to call

- Speak with Luisa about 360

- Ideas for General Corporation

leadership

team

Speak and write about

Express myself creatively

my ideas

- Talk with Alice about

screenplay

- Next

HBR

article

- Review changes to WSJ article

- Speaking engagement call

with Loretta

- Rich—ideas

for

future

management

guides

- Slides for keynote speech

Nurture myself and

The other 5%

my family

- Dr.

Clancy—confirm

Wed

- Write in journal

CT scan

30 minutes/day

- Call

Tim

- Type

with

Isabelle

- Lunch with Kathy to talk

- Book flights to Bahamas

about job search

- Exercise 60 minutes/day

- Andrew—Amex

card

- Research

new

running

- Make reservation for dinner

sneakers

with

Eleanor

- Buy

bathing

suit

- Get exact numbers from Kristin

© PeterBregman.com. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.

Download a blank six-box to-do list at http://peterbregman.com/18minutes/.

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fi rst chunk and make an appointment with yourself in

your calendar.

When you sit down to start your work, you may feel

the resistance—fear—come up again. But now you know

what it is. Acknowledge it, and it’ll be easier to move into

the work.

Peter Bregman is a strategic adviser to CEOs and their leadership teams. His latest book is 18 Minutes: Find Your

Focus, Master Distraction, and Get the Right Things Done.

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Chapter 10

Stop Multitasking

by Peter Bregman

During a conference call with the executive committee

of a nonprofi t board on which I sit, I decided to send an

e-mail to a client.

I know—multitasking is dangerous.

But I wasn’t texting while driving. I was safe at my

desk. What could go wrong?

Well, I sent the client the message. Then I had to

send him another one, this time with the attachment I’d

forgotten to append. Finally, my third e-mail to him ex-

plained why that attachment wasn’t what he was expect-

ing. When I eventually refocused on the call, I realized I

hadn’t heard a question the board’s chair had asked me.

I swear I wasn’t sleep-deprived or smoking anything.

But I might as well have been. A study showed that

people distracted by incoming e-mail and phone calls

saw a 10-point drop in their IQs. What’s the impact of

Adapted from content posted on hbr.org on May 20, 2009.

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10 points? The same as losing a night of sleep. More than

twice the effect of smoking marijuana.

Doing several things at once is a trick we play on our-

selves, thinking we’re getting more done. In reality, our

productivity decreases by as much as 40%. We don’t ac-

tually multitask. We switch-task, shifting rapidly from

one thing to another, interrupting ourselves, and losing

time in the process.

You might think you’re different, that you’ve done it so

much you’ve become good at it.

But research shows that heavy multitaskers are less

competent at doing several things at once than light

multitaskers. Unlike most things, the more you multi-

task, the worse you are at it. Practice, in this case, works

against you.

I decided to try an experiment. For one week I would

do no multitasking and see what happened. What tech-

niques would help? Could I sustain a focus on one thing

at a time for that long?

For the most part, I succeeded. If I was on the phone, I

did nothing but participate in the conversation. In meet-

ings, I was fully focused on the presentation or discus-

sion at hand. And when I was working at my desk, I held

off any interruptions—e-mail, a knock on the door—until

I fi nished my task.

I discovered six things:

1.

It was delightful. When I shut off my cell phone

I was much more deeply engaged and present.

While it may seem that thumbing out a text

under the table during a meeting takes only a

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split second, it’s a longer distraction than that.

First you think about your text, then you type it

out, then you think about how the other person

might respond, then you check for her re-

sponse, etc. Before you know it, you’ve missed

the whole meeting.

2. I made signifi cant progress on challenging proj-

ects. Activities like writing or strategy work

require thought and persistence. They’re the

kind I usually try to distract myself from. I

stayed with each project when it got hard, and

I experienced a number of breakthroughs.

3. My stress level dropped dramatically. Multi-

tasking isn’t just ineffi cient, it’s stressful. It

was a relief to focus on only one thing at a

time. It felt reassuring to completely fi nish

a task before moving to the next.

4. I had no patience for wasted time. I became

laser-focused on getting things done. An hour-

long meeting seemed interminable. A mean-

dering conversation was excruciating.

5.

I had tremendous patience for useful and enjoy-

able things. When I was on a call with a client, I

closed my computer, shut my eyes, and focused

completely. I was able to pick up nuance and

subtle emotion. And when I was brainstorming

about a diffi cult problem, I stuck with it. Noth-

ing else was competing for my attention, so I

was able to settle into the one thing I was doing.

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6. There was no downside. I lost nothing by not

multitasking. No projects were left unfi nished.

No one became frustrated with me for not an-

swering a call or failing to return an e-mail the

second I received it.

So how do we resist the temptation to multitask?

Turn off interruptions

Often I write at 6 am, when there’s nothing to distract

me. I shut down my computer’s wireless connection and

turn off my phone. In my car, I leave my phone in the

trunk. Drastic? Maybe. But most of us shouldn’t trust

ourselves.

Prioritize

Say you’re the only person with information that your

team needs in order to move forward with a time-sensi-

tive project, but you’re on an important conference call.

What do you do? Decide which task is more important

to focus on and ask the other one to wait. Making a con-

scious choice to interrupt one task for another is better

than trying to do them at the same time. So either excuse

yourself from the conference call for a moment, or tell

your team to wait until you’re done.

Use your loss of patience to your advantage

Create unrealistically short deadlines. Cut all meetings in

half. Give yourself a third of the time you think you need

to accomplish something.

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There’s nothing like a deadline to keep things moving.

And when things are moving fast, we can’t help but focus

on them. If it turns out you only have 30 minutes to fi n-

ish a presentation you thought would take an hour, are

you really going to answer your cell phone?

Because multitasking is so stressful, single-tasking

to meet a tight deadline will actually reduce your stress.

And giving yourself less time to do things may make you

even more productive and relaxed.

Peter Bregman is a strategic adviser to CEOs and their leadership teams. His latest book is  18 Minutes: Find

Your Focus, Master Distraction, and Get the Right Things

Done.

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Chapter 11

How to Stay

Focused on What’s

Important

by Gina Trapani

Most of us spend our workdays in one of two ways: react-

ing to urgent demands, or proactively focusing on what

we decided ahead of time are our most critical tasks to

accomplish. The best way to be productive is to mitigate

the urgent to work on the important.

What’s the difference between urgent and important?

“Urgent” tasks include things like:

• Frantic e-mails that need a response “right now”

• Sudden requests that seem like they’ll take only

two minutes but instead take an hour

Adapted from content posted on hbr.org on February 18, 2009.

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• Putting out fi res—especially others’

• Fixing the day’s crisis rather than stepping back to

consider what will solve the chronic problem

• Tasks you’d rather do fi rst because they’re less

intimidating than your priorities

We’re drawn to these seemingly “urgent” tasks because

they keep us busy and make us feel needed and essential.

If we label projects as urgent, it justifi es the time and at-

tention we throw at them.

But dealing with a constant stream of “urgent” tasks

leaves you wrung out at the end of the day, wondering

where all your time went, staring at the important work

you’ve yet to start, much less complete.

On the fl ip side, important work:

• Moves you and your business toward long-term

goals

• Can be hard work that feels scary because you’re

not confi dent you can actually do it

• May not give you that same shot of adrenaline that

“urgent” requests do

If your workplace encourages constant, frantic headless-

chicken running, it can feel impossible to focus on what’s

actually important versus what seems urgent. Still, an

awareness of the difference and a few simple techniques

can help. Here are three.

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How to Stay Focused on What’s Important

Choose three important tasks to complete

each day

Write them down on a slip of paper and keep it visible on

your desk. If, for example, you’re tempted to respond to

an e-mail notifi cation, check your list and remember that

that “ding” probably has nothing to do with your most

critical work. When you have an unexpected hour thanks

to a canceled meeting, move forward on those three im-

portant tasks.

Turn off your e-mail

Shut down Outlook, turn off e-mail notifi cations on your

mobile, and do whatever else you have to do to muffl e

e-mail interruptions. When you decide to work on one

of your important tasks, give yourself at least an hour of

uninterrupted time to complete it. If the Web is too much

of a temptation, disconnect your computer from the In-

ternet for that hour.

Set up a weekly 20-minute meeting

with yourself

Put it on your calendar, and don’t book over it—treat it

with the same respect you’d treat a meeting with your

boss. If you don’t have an offi ce door or you work in a

busy open area, book a conference room. Go there to be

alone. Bring your project list, to-do list, and calendar,

and spend the time reviewing what you fi nished in the

past week and what you want to get done next week.

This is a great time to choose your daily three important

tasks. Productivity author David Allen refers to this as

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Organize Your Time

the “weekly review,” and it’s one of the most effective ways

to be mindful of how you’re spending your time.

For other ideas on how to tackle your day, see “Power

Through Your Day in 90-Minute Cycles” (later in this

guide) and “A Practical Plan for When You Feel Over-

whelmed” (earlier in this guide).

Gina Trapani is the founding editor of the personal pro-

ductivity blog Lifehacker.com.

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Chapter 12

To-Do Lists

That Work

by Gina Trapani

Here’s how to write to-do lists that work:

1. Break it down. Take a task and carve it into

bite-sized chunks. Then break it down some

more. Don’t confuse to-do’s with goals or proj-

ects. A to-do is a single, specifi c action that will

move a project toward completion. It’s just one

step. For example, “Plan the committee lunch”

is a project. “E-mail Karen to get catering con-

tact” is a to-do.

Breaking down your task into the smallest

possible actions forces you to think through

each step up front. With the thinking out of

the way, it’s easy to dash off that e-mail, make

Adapted from content posted on hbr.org on January 13, 2009.

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Organize Your Time

that call, or fi le that report, and move your

work along with much less resistance.

2. Use specifi c action verbs and include details

You’re overdue for a check-in with your men-

tor, but the “Lunch with Judy” to-do just

hasn’t gotten done. When you write down

that task, use an action verb (call? e-mail?)

and include whatever details your future self

needs to check it off. “Call Judy at 555–4567

for lunch on January 17, 18, or 19” is a specifi c,

detailed to-do.

Make your to-do’s small and specifi c to set yourself up for

that glorious moment when you can cross them off your

list as DONE.

Here are some more tips for effective to-do lists from

the hbr.org community.

• Bucket your work in any way that makes sense

for you (for example, work/home/freelance); by

area of responsibility (Smith account/Culver ac-

count/web team); by diffi culty level (group all of

your “easy” fi ve-minute tasks together so when

you have spare time, you can quickly spot them

and knock a few off ). Give each bucket its own

column.

• Deliberately use a small-trim book or paper

(6″ × 9″) to keep your list short or a distinctive size

(like an 8.5″ × 11″ piece of paper folded in half)

that makes it stand out from other papers you

carry.

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To-Do Lists That Work

• Make a two-view list. Two lists, with the same to-

do’s, but one organized by buckets, one by week.

Bonus: You get the joy of crossing off one task in

TWO places.

• Pick a medium that works for you: a notebook you

love (for example, Moleskine); a web-based app

that syncs on your mobile and computer, wherever

you are; your mobile’s voice-memo function.

• Make notes in the margin or beside an item to

mark when it’s due (M or 2/16).

• Highlight your top-priority items or put a bright-

colored sticky with your top three things to do for

the day on top of your longer list/buckets.

• Build in rewards. For example, for every three

things you cross off your work list, allow yourself

to do one home/personal task; or for every one

diffi cult work task you accomplish, reward yourself

with three easy or fun work ones.

• Rewrite your list every other day or so to help you

reprioritize.

• When a task is done, check off a box or cross off

the item with a fat marker—whatever gives you the

most satisfaction.

Gina Trapani is the founding editor of the personal pro-

ductivity blog Lifehacker.com.

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Chapter 13

How to Tackle Your

To-Do List

by Peter Bregman

For many of us, our to-do list has become more of a guilt

list: an inventory of everything we want to do and re-

ally should do, but never get to. And the longer the list,

the less likely we’ll get to everything on it, and the more

stressed we become.

So how do we turn intention into action?

It’s the power of when and where.

Decide when and where you’ll do something, and

the likelihood that you’ll follow through increases dra-

matically. The reason we’re always left with unfi nished

items on our to-do lists is because they’re the wrong tool

to drive our accomplishments. A list is useful as a collec-

tion tool—to ensure we know the pool of things that we

need to do.

Adapted from content posted on hbr.org on March 2, 2011.

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Organize Your Time

A calendar, on the other hand, is the perfect tool to

guide our daily accomplishments. A calendar is fi nite;

there are only so many available hours. This becomes

clear the instant we try to cram an unrealistic number of

things into any one day.

Once you have your to-do list, open your calendar and

decide when and where you’re going to do each item.

Schedule each task for a specifi c time, placing the most

challenging and important items at the beginning of the

day—before even checking your e-mail.

Since your entire to-do list won’t fi t into your calendar,

prioritize. What do you really need to do today? What

important items have you been ignoring? Where can you

slot them into your schedule? Once you schedule an item,

cross it off your list.

Transferring items from your to-do list to your calen-

dar will help you make strategic choices about where you

spend your time, but it will also leave you with a long list

of items that didn’t fi t into your calendar for the day.

What do you do with those things?

I created a three-day rule to prevent items from haunt-

ing me indefi nitely.

Here’s what I do: After I’ve fi lled my calendar for the

day, I review what’s left on the list. I leave new items,

those I just added that day or in the previous two days,

on the list to see if they make it onto my calendar the fol-

lowing day.

But for everything else—anything that’s been on my

calendar for three days—I do one of four things:

1. Do it immediately. I’m often amazed at how

many things have been sitting on my list for

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How to Tackle Your To-Do List

days that, when I fi nally decide to do them,

take no time at all. Often they turn out to be

30-second voice mails or two-minute e-mails.

2. Schedule it. For those things that I don’t do

immediately, I look for a time to slot them into

my calendar, even if it’s six months away. If it’s

important enough for me to have on my list,

then I need to commit to doing it at a specifi c

time and day. I can always change my plan

when I review my calendar for that day, but if I

want to do it, I need to schedule it.

3. Let it go. That’s a nice way of saying delete the

to-do. If I’m not willing to do something im-

mediately or schedule it for a specifi c time and

day, I won’t ever do it. I face the reality that

while I might like these things to be priorities,

they currently aren’t.

4. Add it to a someday/maybe list. Sometimes it’s

too hard to delete something. I don’t want to

admit that I’m not going to do it. And I want

to remember that I think, someday, maybe it

would be a good idea. So I put those items in

a someday/maybe list, which I learned about

from David Allen, author of Getting Things

Done. It’s where I put things to slowly die. I

rarely, if ever, do things on this list. I look at

it occasionally, get rid of the items that are no

longer relevant, and then put the list away for

another month. I probably could delete ev-

erything on this list, but I sleep a little better

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Organize Your Time

knowing I can put things on it when I’m not

courageous or guilt-free enough to do away

with them right off the bat. And who knows?

Perhaps someday, maybe, I’ll do something on

that list.

Peter Bregman is a strategic adviser to CEOs and their leadership teams. His latest book is  18 Minutes: Find

Your Focus, Master Distraction, and Get the Right Things

Done.

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Chapter 14

Reward Yourself

for Doing Dreaded

Tasks

by Alexandra Samuel

For some of us, checking off each item on our to-do lists

provides the endorphin rush we need to make task com-

pletion an intrinsic joy. But most of us need a little ex-

tra motivation, especially for boring work like recording

billable hours, uncomfortable tasks like facing awkward

conversations with dissatisfi ed clients, or major projects

like writing a complex case study. Setting up a compelling

reward system can help you power through your to-dos.

Here are some types of rewards to consider:

Regenerative

By rewarding yourself in a way that recharges your body

and brain, you’ll give yourself more energy to tackle your

next task or project. Use these brief rewards mid morning,

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Organize Your Time

midafternoon, or midproject to help maintain your mo-

mentum. Examples of regenerative rewards include:

• Meditating for 20 minutes in a secluded spot

• Using your lunch hour to treat yourself to a yoga

class, run, or walk

• Doing 5 to 10 minutes of stretches in your offi ce,

guided by a video on your computer or iPad

• Talking with a good friend for 5 or 10 minutes

• Treating yourself to a second cup of coffee or a

snack after an hour of focused work

Productive

Often—hopefully—work is rewarding in and of itself:

meeting with colleagues you respect and enjoy or craft-

ing a PowerPoint deck that incorporates self-deprecating

humor or favorite photographs. Use these aspects of your

job as rewards for completing something more diffi cult or

tedious. Other examples of productive rewards include:

• Reading a popular business book or article

• Taking a working meeting to a good restaurant

• Installing or tweaking a piece of software you’ve

been eager to use

• Reading/posting an article you think your

colleagues/clients would enjoy to Twitter,

LinkedIn, or Google+

• Cleaning your desk

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Reward Yourself for Doing Dreaded Tasks

Concurrent

Some tasks are so odious or boring that even the pros-

pect of a pint of ice cream can’t help you face them. These

tasks call for a concurrent reward: something you do

while working so that you can bear to plow through your

in-box backlog or complete your quarterly budget report.

This type of reward works especially well for tasks that

are time-consuming but not concentration-intensive.

You can make even diffi cult tasks that require your full

concentration more pleasant in the right setting. Some

concurrent rewards include:

• Setting up camp in a Wi-Fi-enabled restaurant so

you can eat while you work

• Making a work date with a friend so you can chat

while you purge your e-mail in-boxes

• Storing up mindless tasks to complete while

watching your favorite TV show at home

• Downloading some new music to listen to while

you purge your fi les

• Making arrangements to work from home for

the day

Cumulative

Establish a special-purpose account to pay into every

time you complete an especially challenging or large

project. Set different dollar values depending on the size

and unpleasantness of the task. Examples include:

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Organize Your Time

• An iTunes account

• A replenishable gift card to your favorite coffee

shop or store

• A PayPal account you can refi ll with quick

micro payments to treat yourself to some online

shopping

• A discretionary savings account that you use to

fund something signifi cant like tickets to a sports

or arts event

You’ll know your reward system is working when your

to-do list no longer includes tasks you’ve been avoiding

for weeks, or when you fi nd yourself racing to complete

your least-favorite work so that you can get to that deli-

cious brownie, fantastic concert, or backlog of Mad Men

episodes.

Alexandra Samuel is the Director of the Social + Interactive Media Centre at Emily Carr University, and the co-

founder of Social Signal, a Vancouver-based social media agency. You can follow Alex on Twitter at @awsamuel or

her blog at alexandrasamuel.com.

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Section 4

Delegate

Eff ectively

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Chapter 15

Management Time

Who’s Got the Monkey?

A summary of the full-length HBR article by William

Oncken, Jr., and Donald L. Wass, highlighting key

ideas, with commentary by Stephen R. Covey.

THE IDEA IN BRIEF

You’re racing down the hall. An employee stops you and

says, “We’ve got a problem.” You assume you should get

involved but can’t make an on-the-spot decision. You say,

“Let me think about it.”

You’ve just allowed a “monkey” to leap from your em-

ployee’s back to yours. You’re now working for the person

who works for you. Take on enough monkeys, and you

won’t have time to focus on your own priorities.

Reprint #99609

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Delegate Eff ectively

How do you avoid accumulating monkeys? Develop

your employees’ initiative. For example, when one of your

people tries to hand you a problem, clarify whether he

should: recommend and then implement a solution; take

action, then brief you immediately; or act and report the

outcome at a regular update.

When you encourage your employees to handle their

own monkeys, they acquire new skills—and you gain

time to do your own job.

THE IDEA IN PRACTICE

How do you return monkeys to their proper owners? Try

these tactics:

Make Appointments to Deal

with Monkeys

Avoid discussing any monkey on an ad hoc basis—for ex-

ample, when you pass an employee in the hall. You won’t

convey the proper seriousness. Instead, have your em-

ployee schedule an appointment to discuss the issue.

Specify Level of Initiative

Your employees can exercise fi ve levels of initiative in

handling on-the-job problems. From lowest to highest,

the levels are:

1. Wait until told what to do.

2. Ask what to do.

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Management Time: Who’s Got the Monkey?

3. Recommend an action, then with your ap-

proval, implement it.

4. Take independent action but advise you at once.

5. Take independent action and update you at

an agreed-on time; for example, your weekly

meeting.

When an employee brings a problem to you, outlaw use

of level 1 or 2. Agree on and assign level 3, 4, or 5 to the

monkey. Take no more than 15 minutes to discuss the

problem.

Agree on a Status Update

After deciding how to proceed, agree on a time and place

when the employee will give you a progress report.

Develop Employees’ Skills

Employees try to hand off monkeys when they lack the

desire or ability to handle them. Help employees develop

needed problem-solving skills. It’s initially more time-

consuming than tackling problems yourself—but it saves

time in the long run.

Foster Trust

Developing employees’ initiative requires a trusting rela-

tionship. If they’re afraid of failing, they’ll keep bringing

their monkeys to you rather than working to solve their

own problems. To promote trust, reassure them that it’s

safe to make mistakes.

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Delegate Eff ectively

Why is it that managers are typically running out of

time while their subordinates are typically running out

of work? Here we shall explore the meaning of manage-

ment time as it relates to the interaction between manag-

ers and their bosses, their peers, and their subordinates.

Specifically, we shall deal with three kinds of manage-

ment time:

Boss-imposed time—used to accomplish those activi-

ties that the boss requires and that the manager can-

not disregard without direct and swift penalty.

System-imposed time—used to accommodate re-

quests from peers for active support. Neglecting

these requests will also result in penalties, though not

always as direct or swift.

Self-imposed time—used to do those things that the

manager originates or agrees to do. A certain por-

tion of this kind of time, however, will be taken by

subordinates and is called subordinate-imposed time.

The remaining portion will be the manager’s own

and is called discretionary time. Self-imposed time is

not subject to penalty since neither the boss nor the

system can discipline the manager for not doing what

they didn’t know he had intended to do in the first

place.

To accommodate those demands, managers need to

control the timing and the content of what they do. Since

what their bosses and the system impose on them are

subject to penalty, managers cannot tamper with those

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Management Time: Who’s Got the Monkey?

requirements. Thus their self-imposed time becomes

their major area of concern.

Managers should try to increase the discretionary

component of their self-imposed time by minimizing or

doing away with the subordinate component. They will

then use the added increment to get better control over

their boss-imposed and system-imposed activities. Most

managers spend much more time dealing with subordi-

nates’ problems than they even faintly realize. Hence we

shall use the monkey-on-the-back metaphor to examine

how subordinate-imposed time comes into being and

what the superior can do about it.

Where Is the Monkey?

Let us imagine that a manager is walking down the hall

and that he notices one of his subordinates, Jones, com-

ing his way. When the two meet, Jones greets the manager

with, “Good morning. By the way, we’ve got a problem.

You see . . . .” As Jones continues, the manager recognizes

in this problem the two characteristics common to all the

problems his subordinates gratuitously bring to his at-

tention. Namely, the manager knows (a) enough to get

involved, but (b) not enough to make the on-the-spot de-

cision expected of him. Eventually, the manager says, “So

glad you brought this up. I’m in a rush right now. Mean-

while, let me think about it, and I’ll let you know.” Then

he and Jones part company.

Let us analyze what just happened. Before the two of

them met, on whose back was the “monkey”? The sub-

ordinate’s. After they parted, on whose back was it? The

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Delegate Eff ectively

manager’s. Subordinate-imposed time begins the mo-

ment a monkey successfully leaps from the back of a

subordinate to the back of his or her superior and does

not end until the monkey is returned to its proper owner

for care and feeding. In accepting the monkey, the man-

ager has voluntarily assumed a position subordinate to

his subordinate. That is, he has allowed Jones to make

him her subordinate by doing two things a subordinate

is generally expected to do for a boss—the manager has

accepted a responsibility from his subordinate, and the

manager has promised her a progress report.

The subordinate, to make sure the manager does not

miss this point, will later stick her head in the manag-

er’s office and cheerily query, “How’s it coming?” (This is

called supervision.)

Or let us imagine in concluding a conference with

Johnson, another subordinate, the manager’s parting

words are, “Fine. Send me a memo on that.”

Let us analyze this one. The monkey is now on the

subordinate’s back because the next move is his, but it

is poised for a leap. Watch that monkey. Johnson duti-

fully writes the requested memo and drops it in his out-

basket. Shortly thereafter, the manager plucks it from his

in- basket and reads it. Whose move is it now? The manag-

er’s. If he does not make that move soon, he will get a fol-

low-up memo from the subordinate. (This is another form

of supervision.) The longer the manager delays, the more

frustrated the subordinate will become (he’ll be spinning

his wheels) and the more guilty the manager will feel (his

backlog of subordinate-imposed time will be mounting).

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Management Time: Who’s Got the Monkey?

Or suppose once again that at a meeting with a third

subordinate, Smith, the manager agrees to provide all

the necessary backing for a public relations proposal he

has just asked Smith to develop. The manager’s parting

words to her are, “Just let me know how I can help.”

Now let us analyze this. Again the monkey is initially

on the subordinate’s back. But for how long? Smith re-

alizes that she cannot let the manager “know” until her

proposal has the manager’s approval. And from experi-

ence, she also realizes that her proposal will likely be sit-

ting in the manager’s briefcase for weeks before he even-

tually gets to it. Who’s really got the monkey? Who will

be checking up on whom? Wheel spinning and bottle-

necking are well on their way again.

A fourth subordinate, Reed, has just been transferred

from another part of the company so that he can launch

and eventually manage a newly created business venture.

The manager has said they should get together soon to

hammer out a set of objectives for the new job, adding,

“I will draw up an initial draft for discussion with you.”

Let us analyze this one, too. The subordinate has the

new job (by formal assignment) and the full responsibil-

ity (by formal delegation), but the manager has the next

move. Until he makes it, he will have the monkey, and the

subordinate will be immobilized.

Why does all of this happen? Because in each instance

the manager and the subordinate assume at the outset,

wittingly or unwittingly, that the matter under consid-

eration is a joint problem. The monkey in each case be-

gins its career astride both their backs. All it has to do is

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MAKING TIME FOR GORILLAS

by Stephen R. Covey

When Bill Oncken wrote this article in 1974, managers

were in a terrible bind. They were desperate for a way

to free up their time, but command and control was

the status quo. Managers felt they weren’t allowed to

empower their subordinates to make decisions. Too

dangerous. Too risky. That’s why Oncken’s message—

give the monkey back to its rightful owner—involved

a critically important paradigm shift. Many managers

working today owe him a debt of gratitude.

It is something of an understatement, however, to

observe that much has changed since Oncken’s radical

recommendation. Command and control as a manage-

ment philosophy is all but dead, and “empowerment”

is the word of the day in most organizations trying to

thrive in global, intensely competitive markets. But

command and control stubbornly remains a common

practice. Management thinkers and executives have

discovered in the last decade that bosses cannot just

give a monkey back to their subordinates and then

merrily get on with their own business. Empowering

subordinates is hard and complicated work.

The reason: when you give problems back to subor-

dinates to solve themselves, you have to be sure that

they have both the desire and the ability to do so. As

every executive knows, that isn’t always the case. En-

ter a whole new set of problems. Empowerment often

means you have to develop people, which is initially

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Management Time: Who’s Got the Monkey?

much more time consuming than solving the problem

on your own.

Just as important, empowerment can only thrive

when the whole organization buys into it—when formal

systems and the informal culture support it. Manag-

ers need to be rewarded for delegating decisions and

developing people. Otherwise, the degree of real em-

powerment in an organization will vary according to the

beliefs and practices of individual managers.

But perhaps the most important lesson about em-

powerment is that eff ective delegation—the kind

Oncken advocated—depends on a trusting relation-

ship between a manager and his subordinate. Oncken’s

message may have been ahead of his time, but what

he suggested was still a fairly dictatorial solution. He

basically told bosses, “Give the problem back!” Today,

we know that this approach by itself is too authoritar-

ian. To delegate eff ectively, executives need to estab-

lish a running dialogue with subordinates. They need

to establish a partnership. After all, if subordinates are

afraid of failing in front of their boss, they’ll keep com-

ing back for help rather than truly take initiative.

Oncken’s article also doesn’t address an aspect of del-

egation that has greatly interested me during the past

two decades—that many managers are actually eager to

take on their subordinates’ monkeys. Nearly all the man-

agers I talk with agree that their people are underutilized

in their present jobs. But even some of the most success-

( continued)

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Delegate Eff ectively

( continued)

ful, seemingly self-assured executives have talked about

how hard it is to give up control to their subordinates.

I’ve come to attribute that eagerness for control to

a common, deep-seated belief that rewards in life are

scarce and fragile. Whether they learn it from their fam-

ily, school, or athletics, many people establish an iden-

tity by comparing themselves with others. When they

see others gain power, information, money, or recogni-

tion, for instance, they experience what the psycholo-

gist Abraham Maslow called “a feeling of deficiency”—a

sense that something is being taken from them. That

makes it hard for them to be genuinely happy about the

success of others—even of their loved ones. Oncken

implies that managers can easily give back or refuse

monkeys, but many managers may subconsciously fear

that a subordinate taking the initiative will make them

appear a little less strong and a little more vulnerable.

How, then, do managers develop the inward security,

the mentality of “abundance,” that would enable them to

relinquish control and seek the growth and development

of those around them? The work I’ve done with numer-

ous organizations suggests that managers who live with

integrity according to a principle-based value system are

most likely to sustain an empowering style of leadership.

Given the times in which he wrote, it was no won-

der that Oncken’s message resonated with managers.

But it was reinforced by Oncken’s wonderful gift for

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Management Time: Who’s Got the Monkey?

storytelling. I got to know Oncken on the speaker’s cir-

cuit in the 1970s, and I was always impressed by how he

dramatized his ideas in colorful detail. Like the Dilbert

comic strip, Oncken had a tongue-in-cheek style that

got to the core of managers’ frustrations and made them

want to take back control of their time. And the monkey

on your back wasn’t just a metaphor for Oncken—it was

his personal symbol. I saw him several times walking

through airports with a stuff ed monkey on his shoulder.

I’m not surprised that his article is one of the two

best-selling HBR articles ever. Even with all we know

about empowerment, its vivid message is even more

important and relevant now than it was 25 years ago.

Indeed, Oncken’s insight is a basis for my own work on

time management, in which I have people categorize

their activities according to urgency and importance.

I’ve heard from executives again and again that half or

more of their time is spent on matters that are urgent

but not important. They’re trapped in an endless cycle

of dealing with other people’s monkeys, yet they’re re-

luctant to help those people take their own initiative.

As a result, they’re often too busy to spend the time

they need on the real gorillas in their organization.

Oncken’s article remains a powerful wake-up call for

managers who need to delegate eff ectively.

Stephen R. Covey is vice chairman of the Franklin Covey Company, a

global provider of leadership development and productivity services and

products. He is the author of  The 7 Habits of Highly Eff ective People (Simon & Schuster, 1989) and First Things First (Simon & Schuster, 1994).

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Delegate Eff ectively

move the wrong leg, and—presto!—the subordinate

deftly disappears.

The manager is thus left with another acquisition for

his menagerie. Of course, monkeys can be trained not to

move the wrong leg. But it is easier to prevent them from

straddling backs in the first place.

Who Is Working for Whom?

Let us suppose that these same four subordinates are so

thoughtful and considerate of their superior’s time that

they take pains to allow no more than three monkeys

to leap from each of their backs to his in any one day.

In a five-day week, the manager will have picked up 60

screaming monkeys—far too many to do anything about

them individually. So he spends his subordinate-imposed

time juggling his “priorities.”

Late Friday afternoon, the manager is in his office with

the door closed for privacy so he can contemplate the sit-

uation, while his subordinates are waiting outside to get

their last chance before the weekend to remind him that

he will have to “fish or cut bait.” Imagine what they are

saying to one another about the manager as they wait:

“What a bottleneck. He just can’t make up his mind. How

anyone ever got that high up in our company without be-

ing able to make a decision we’ll never know.”

Worst of all, the reason the manager cannot make any

of these “next moves” is that his time is almost entirely

eaten up by meeting his own boss-imposed and system-

imposed requirements. To control those tasks, he needs

discretionary time that is in turn denied him when he

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Management Time: Who’s Got the Monkey?

is preoccupied with all these monkeys. The manager is

caught in a vicious circle. But time is a-wasting (an un-

derstatement). The manager calls his secretary on the

intercom and instructs her to tell his subordinates that

he won’t be able to see them until Monday morning.

At 7 pm, he drives home, intending with firm resolve to

return to the office tomorrow to get caught up over the

weekend. He returns bright and early the next day only

to see, on the nearest green of the golf course across from

his office window, a foursome. Guess who?

That does it. He now knows who is really working for

whom. Moreover, he now sees that if he actually accom-

plishes during this weekend what he came to accomplish,

his subordinates’ morale will go up so sharply that they

will each raise the limit on the number of monkeys they

will let jump from their backs to his. In short, he now sees,

with the clarity of a revelation on a mountaintop, that the

more he gets caught up, the more he will fall behind.

He leaves the office with the speed of a person run-

ning away from a plague. His plan? To get caught up on

something else he hasn’t had time for in years: a weekend

with his family. (This is one of the many varieties of dis-

cretionary time.)

Sunday night he enjoys ten hours of sweet, untroubled

slumber, because he has clear-cut plans for Monday. He

is going to get rid of his subordinate-imposed time. In

exchange, he will get an equal amount of discretionary

time, part of which he will spend with his subordinates

to make sure that they learn the difficult but rewarding

managerial art called “The Care and Feeding of Monkeys.”

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The manager will also have plenty of discretionary

time left over for getting control of the timing and the

content not only of his boss-imposed time but also of his

system-imposed time. It may take months, but compared

with the way things have been, the rewards will be enor-

mous. His ultimate objective is to manage his time.

Getting Rid of the Monkeys

The manager returns to the office Monday morning just

late enough so that his four subordinates have collected

outside his office waiting to see him about their monkeys.

He calls them in one by one. The purpose of each inter-

view is to take a monkey, place it on the desk between

them, and figure out together how the next move might

conceivably be the subordinate’s. For certain monkeys,

that will take some doing. The subordinate’s next move

may be so elusive that the manager may decide—just

for now—merely to let the monkey sleep on the subor-

dinate’s back overnight and have him or her return with

it at an appointed time the next morning to continue the

joint quest for a more substantive move by the subordi-

nate. (Monkeys sleep just as soundly overnight on subor-

dinates’ backs as they do on superiors’.)

As each subordinate leaves the office, the manager is

rewarded by the sight of a monkey leaving his office on

the subordinate’s back. For the next 24 hours, the subor-

dinate will not be waiting for the manager; instead, the

manager will be waiting for the subordinate.

Later, as if to remind himself that there is no law against

his engaging in a constructive exercise in the interim,

the manager strolls by the subordinate’s office, sticks his

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Management Time: Who’s Got the Monkey?

head in the door, and cheerily asks, “How’s it coming?”

(The time consumed in doing this is discretionary for the

manager and boss imposed for the subordinate.)

When the subordinate (with the monkey on his or her

back) and the manager meet at the appointed hour the

next day, the manager explains the ground rules in words

to this effect:

At no time while I am helping you with this or any

other problem will your problem become my problem.

The instant your problem becomes mine, you no longer

have a problem. I cannot help a person who hasn’t got

a problem.

When this meeting is over, the problem will leave

this office exactly the way it came in—on your back.

You may ask my help at any appointed time, and we

will make a joint determination of what the next move

will be and which of us will make it.

In those rare instances where the next move turns

out to be mine, you and I will determine it together. I

will not make any move alone.

The manager follows this same line of thought with

each subordinate until about 11 am, when he realizes that

he doesn’t have to close his door. His monkeys are gone.

They will return—but by appointment only. His calendar

will assure this.

Transferring the Initiative

What we have been driving at in this monkey-on-the-

back analogy is that managers can transfer initiative back

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Delegate Eff ectively

THE DELEGATION CHECKLIST

by Peter Bregman

When it comes to delegating eff ectively, communi-

cation is key. Most of us think we communicate well,

which is why we often inadvertently leave out important

information. Sometimes we assume that the people to

whom we’re delegating share our understanding. Or we

resist clarifying something because we don’t want to

insult the person.

Thankfully, there’s a simple solution to ensure proj-

ects you delegate will transfer well: Create a checklist

and use it during every handoff .

Before you pass off a project, complete the delega-

tion checklist with the person who’ll be taking on the

responsibility. Reviewing the list together ensures that

you transfer all important information. With the follow-

ing questions as a starting point, add or delete some

to suit your particular situation. It takes no longer than

10 minutes to complete the checklist, but it could save

you countless dropped balls and service failures.

to their subordinates and keep it there. We have tried to

highlight a truism as obvious as it is subtle: namely, be-

fore developing initiative in subordinates, the manager

must see to it that they have the initiative. Once the man-

ager takes it back, he will no longer have it and he can

kiss his discretionary time good-bye. It will all revert to

subordinate-imposed time.

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Management Time: Who’s Got the Monkey?

Delegation Checklist

• What do you understand the priorities of this

project to be?

• What are your next key steps, and by when do

you plan to accomplish them?

• What key contingencies should you plan for

now?

• When will you next check in with me on

progress/issues?

• Who else needs to know our plans, and how will

you communicate them?

• What concerns or ideas do you have that we

haven’t already discussed?

Adapted from content posted on hbr.org on January 25, 2011.

Peter Bregman is a strategic adviser to CEOs and their leadership teams.

His latest book is 18 Minutes: Find Your Focus, Master Distraction, and

Get the Right Things Done.

Nor can the manager and the subordinate effectively

have the same initiative at the same time. The opener,

“Boss, we’ve got a problem,” implies this duality and

represents, as noted earlier, a monkey astride two backs,

which is a very bad way to start a monkey on its career.

Let us, therefore, take a few moments to examine what

we call “The Anatomy of Managerial Initiative.”

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Delegate Eff ectively

There are five degrees of initiative that the manager

can exercise in relation to the boss and to the system:

1. wait until told (lowest initiative);

2. ask what to do;

3. recommend, then take resulting action;

4. act, but advise at once;

5. and act on own, then routinely report (highest

initiative).

Clearly, the manager should be professional enough

not to indulge in initiatives 1 and 2 in relation either to

TIPS FOR DELEGATING EFFECTIVELY

• Recognize the capabilities of your employees

and trust their ability to get the job done.

• Consider delegation a development opportu-

nity—a way to broaden your people’s skills.

• Focus on results and let go of your need to get

involved in how tasks are accomplished.

• Explain assignments clearly and provide re-

sources needed for successful completion.

• Always delegate to the lowest possible level to

make the best use of staff resources.

Adapted from Pocket Mentor: Managing Projects (product #1878), Harvard Business Review Press, 2006.

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Management Time: Who’s Got the Monkey?

the boss or to the system. A manager who uses initiative

1 has no control over either the timing or the content of

boss-imposed or system-imposed time and thereby for-

feits any right to complain about what he or she is told

to do or when. The manager who uses initiative 2 has

control over the timing but not over the content. Initia-

tives 3, 4, and 5 leave the manager in control of both,

with the greatest amount of control being exercised at

level 5.

In relation to subordinates, the manager’s job is two-

fold. First, to outlaw the use of initiatives 1 and 2, thus

giving subordinates no choice but to learn and master

“Completed Staff Work.” Second, to see that for each

problem leaving his or her office there is an agreed-upon

level of initiative assigned to it, in addition to an agreed-

upon time and place for the next manager-subordinate

conference. The latter should be duly noted on the man-

ager’s calendar.

The Care and Feeding of Monkeys

To further clarify our analogy between the monkey on the

back and the processes of assigning and controlling, we

shall refer briefly to the manager’s appointment sched-

ule, which calls for five hard-and-fast rules governing the

“Care and Feeding of Monkeys.” (Violation of these rules

will cost discretionary time.)

Rule 1

Monkeys should be fed or shot. Otherwise, they will

starve to death, and the manager will waste valuable time

on postmortems or attempted resurrections.

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Delegate Eff ectively

Rule 2

The monkey population should be kept below the maxi-

mum number the manager has time to feed. Subordinates

will find time to work as many monkeys as he or she finds

time to feed, but no more. It shouldn’t take more than

five to 15 minutes to feed a properly maintained monkey.

Rule 3

Monkeys should be fed by appointment only. The man-

ager should not have to hunt down starving monkeys and

feed them on a catch-as-catch-can basis.

Rule 4

Monkeys should be fed face to face or by telephone, but

never by mail. (Remember—with mail, the next move

will be the manager’s.) Documentation may add to the

feeding process, but it cannot take the place of feeding.

Rule 5

Every monkey should have an assigned next feeding time

and degree of initiative. These may be revised at any time

by mutual consent but never allowed to become vague

or indefinite. Otherwise, the monkey will either starve to

death or wind up on the manager’s back.

“Get control over the timing and content of what you do”

is appropriate advice for managing time. The first order

of business is for the manager to enlarge his or her discre-

tionary time by eliminating subordinate-imposed time.

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Management Time: Who’s Got the Monkey?

The second is for the manager to use a portion of this

newfound discretionary time to see to it that each subor-

dinate actually has the initiative and applies it. The third

is for the manager to use another portion of the increased

discretionary time to get and keep control of the timing

and content of both boss-imposed and system-imposed

time. All these steps will increase the manager’s lever-

age and enable the value of each hour spent in managing

management time to multiply without theoretical limit.

William Oncken, Jr.,

was chairman of the William

Oncken Corporation until his death in 1988. His son,

William Oncken III, now heads the company. Donald L.

Wass was president of the William Oncken Company of

Texas when the article fi rst appeared. He now heads the

Dallas–Fort Worth region of The Executive Committee

(TEC), an international organization for presidents and

CEOs.

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Chapter 16

Levels of

Delegation

by Linda A. Hill and Kent Lineback

If you think that delegation is appropriate only for em-

ployees who’ve already demonstrated complete com-

petence in an area, then you may be trapped in this vi-

cious cycle: Until your employee has the opportunity to

perform an activity by herself, she’ll never develop the

necessary skill and experience to do it well. But until she

does it well, you’ll continue to believe that you must be

involved—either by performing the task yourself or by

micromanaging her so closely she never learns to do it

independently.

Here’s a way to think about delegation as three levels

corresponding to your direct reports’ increasing levels of

competence:

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Sour

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Section 5

Create Rituals

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Chapter 17

Ritual

How to Get Important

Work Done

by Tony Schwartz

Most of us feel pulled in more directions than ever, ex-

pected to work longer hours, and asked to get more done,

often with fewer resources. But we also know people who

get lots done, including the important stuff, and still

manage to have lives.

What have they fi gured out that the rest of us haven’t?

The answer, surprisingly, isn’t that they have more will

or discipline than we do. The counterintuitive secret to

getting things done is to make them more automatic, so

they require less energy.

How do we do that? By developing rituals—highly

specifi c behaviors, done at precise times, so they

Adapted from content posted on hbr.org on May 24, 2011.

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Create Rituals

eventually become automatic and no longer require

conscious will or discipline. Decide what behavior you

want to change, design the ritual you’ll undertake, and

then get out of your own way.

Over the past decade, I’ve built a series of rituals into

my daily schedule to make sure that I get to the most im-

portant things—and that I don’t get derailed by the end-

lessly alluring trivia of everyday life.

Here are four of the rituals that have made the biggest

difference to me:

1.

Going to bed at the same time every night. This

ritual ensures that I get eight hours of sleep.

Nothing is more critical to the way I feel every

day. If I’m fl ying somewhere and know I’ll

arrive too late to get my eight hours, I make it

a priority to make up the hours I need on the

plane.

2. Working out as soon as I wake up. Since exercise

has a huge impact on how I feel all day long,

this ritual ensures that I work out even when I

don’t feel like it.

3. Launching my workday by focusing fi rst on what-

ever I’ve decided the night before is my most

important activity. Then I take a break after

90 minutes to refuel. Today—which happens

to be a Sunday—this blog was my priority. My

break was playing tennis for an hour. During

the week it might be chatting with a colleague

for a few minutes or getting a snack. (Working

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Ritual: How to Get Important Work Done

in 90-minute segments throughout your day

can be another useful ritual to develop. See

the next article, “Power Through Your Day in

90-Minute Cycles,” to learn more.)

4. Immediately writing down on a list any idea or

task that occurs to me over the course of the

day. Once it’s on paper, it means I don’t walk

around feeling preoccupied by it—or risk for-

getting it.

Obviously, I’m human and fallible, so I don’t perform ev-

ery one of these rituals every day. But when I do miss

one, I pay the price, and feel even more pulled to it the

next day.

Tony Schwartz is the president and CEO of The Energy

Project and the author of Be Excellent at Anything. Be-

come a fan of The Energy Project and connect with Tony on Twitter at @tonyschwartz and @energy_project.

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Chapter 18

Power Through

Your Day in

90-Minute Cycles

by Tony Schwartz

For nearly a decade, I’ve begun my workdays by focusing

for 90 minutes, uninterrupted, on the task I decide the

night before is the most important to tackle the following

day. After 90 minutes, I take a break. When my break is

up, I begin the cycle again.

To make this possible, I turn off my e-mail while I’m

working, close unnecessary windows on my computer,

and let the phone go to voice mail.

I typically get more work done and feel more satis-

fi ed than I do for any comparable period of time the rest

of the day. It can be tough on some days to fully focus

Adapted from content posted on hbr.org on May 24, 2011.

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Create Rituals

for 90 minutes, but I always have a clear stopping time,

which makes it easier.

I launched this practice because my energy, will, and

capacity for intense focus diminish as the day wears on.

Anything really challenging that I put off tends not to get

done, and it’s the most diffi cult work that generally pro-

duces the greatest value. Usually, that means a challenge

that is “important but not urgent,” to use Steven Covey’s

language. These are precisely the types of activities we

most often postpone in favor of those that are more ur-

gent, easier to accomplish, or provide more immediate

gratifi cation. (See “How to Stay Focused on What’s Im-

portant,” earlier in this guide.)

I fi rst made this discovery while writing a book. At the

time, I’d written three previous books. For each one, I’d

dutifully sit down at my desk at 7 am and I’d often stay

there until 7 pm.

I never fi nished a book in less than a year. Looking

back, I probably spent more time avoiding writing than

I did actually writing. I made lists, responded to e-mail,

answered the phone, and kept my desk clean and my fi les

well organized. There were days I never got to writing at

all. It was incredibly frustrating.

For my new book, The Way We’re Working Isn’t Work-

ing, I wrote without interruptions for three 90-minute

periods and took a break between each one. I had break-

fast after the fi rst session, went for a run after the sec-

ond, and had lunch after the third. I wrote no more than

4 ∏ hours a day, and fi nished the book in fewer than six

months. By writing in several cycles of 90 minutes each

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Power Through Your Day in 90-Minute Cycles

and building in periods of renewal, I was able to focus far

more intensely and get more done in less time.

What made me so productive? Creating the ritual

of tackling the most important work at the start of the

day and working with my body’s natural rhythms. At the

heart of making this work is to build highly precise, de-

liberate rituals, done at specifi c times, so they eventually

become automatic and don’t require much expenditure

of energy or self-discipline, akin to brushing your teeth

at night.

Pioneering sleep researcher Nathaniel Kleitman

observed that our bodies operate by the same 90-min-

ute “basic rest-activity” cycle during the day that we do

when we sleep. When we’re awake, we move from higher

to lower alertness every 90 minutes. This “ultradian

rhythm,” researcher Peretz Lavie and others have found,

governs our energy levels. The human body is hardwired

to pulse, and requires renewal at regular intervals, not

just physically, but also mentally and emotionally.

Many of us unwittingly train ourselves to ignore sig-

nals from our body that we need a rest—diffi culty con-

centrating, physical restlessness, irritability. Instead, we

fi nd ways to override this need with caffeine, sugar, and

our own stress hormones—adrenalin, noradrenalin, and

cortisol—all of which provide short bursts of energy but

impair our ability to consistently focus on our work for a

signifi cant period of time.

By intentionally aligning with my body’s natural

rhythms, I’ve learned to listen to its signals. When I no-

tice them, it usually means I’ve hit the 90-minute mark.

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At that point, I take a break, even if I’m on a roll, because

I’ve learned that if I don’t, I’ll pay the price later in the day.

When I’m not working on a book, I still choose the

next day’s most important work the night before, because

I don’t want to squander energy thinking about what to

do during the time I’ve set aside to actually work. I start

at a very specifi c time, because when I don’t, I give myself

license to procrastinate.

Ideally you’ll be able to divide up your day into several

90-minute focused work segments, with brief periods of

renewal in between each. However, it’s not always pos-

sible to structure your days this way. So make it a high

priority to fi nd at least one time a day to focus single-

mindedly on your most challenging and important task.

Tony Schwartz is the president and CEO of The Energy

Project and the author of Be Excellent at Anything. Become a fan of The Energy Project on Facebook and connect with Tony on Twitter at @tonyschwartz and

@energy_project.

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Chapter 19

An 18-Minute

Plan for Managing

Your Day

by Peter Bregman

I began my day yesterday with the best intentions. I

walked into my offi ce in the morning with a vague sense

of what I wanted to accomplish. Then I sat down, turned

on my computer, and checked my e-mail. Two hours

later, after fi ghting several fi res, solving other people’s

problems, and dealing with whatever happened to be

thrown at me through my computer and phone, I could

hardly remember what I had originally set out to do.

Most of us start every day knowing we’re not going to

get it all done. So how we spend our time is a key strate-

gic decision. That’s why it’s a good idea to create both a

to-do list and a to-don’t list.

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But even with those lists, the challenge—as always—is

execution. How can you stick to a plan when so many

things threaten to derail it? How can you focus on just a

few important tasks when so many others require your

attention?

We need a trick.

Jack LaLanne, the fi tness guru, knew all about tricks.

He had one trick that I believe was his real secret power.

Ritual.

At the age of 94, he still spent the fi rst two hours of

his day exercising. Ninety minutes lifting weights and

30 minutes swimming or walking. Every morning. He

needed to do so to achieve his goals: on his 95th birthday

he planned to swim from the coast of California to Santa

Catalina Island—a distance of 20 miles.

So he worked consistently and deliberately. He did the

same things day in and day out. He cared about his fi t-

ness and he built it into his schedule.

Managing our time needs to become a ritual, too. Not

simply a list or a vague sense of our priorities. That’s not

consistent or deliberate. It needs to be an ongoing proc-

ess we follow, no matter what, to keep us focused on our

priorities throughout the day.

We can do it in three steps that take fewer than 18 min-

utes over an eight-hour workday:

1. (5 minutes): Set Your Plan for the Day. Before

turning on your computer, sit down with a

blank piece of paper and decide what will make

this day highly successful. What can you real-

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istically accomplish that will further your goals

and allow you to leave at the end of the day

feeling productive? Write those things down.

Now, most important, take your calendar and

schedule those things into time slots, placing

the hardest and most important items at the

beginning of the day—before checking your

e-mail. If your entire list doesn’t fi t into your

calendar, reprioritize your list. There is tre-

mendous power in deciding when you’re going

to do something. (See “How to Tackle Your

To-Do List,” earlier in this guide.)

2. (1 minute every hour): Refocus. Set your watch,

phone, or computer to ring every hour. When it

rings, take a deep breath, look at your list, and

ask yourself: Am I doing what I most need to be

doing right now? Then look at your calendar

and deliberately recommit to how you’re going

to use the next hour. Manage your day hour

by hour. Don’t let the hours—or the inevitable

interruptions—manage you.

3. (5 minutes at end of day): Review. Shut off your

computer and review your day. What worked?

Where did you focus? Where did you get dis-

tracted? What did you learn that will help you

be more productive tomorrow?

The power of rituals is their predictability: You do the

same thing in the same way over and over again. And the

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outcome of a ritual is predictable, too. If you choose your

focus deliberately and wisely and consistently remind

yourself of that focus, you will stay focused.

This particular ritual may not help you swim 20 miles

through the ocean or live to be 100. But it may just help

you leave your offi ce feeling productive and successful.

And, at the end of the day, isn’t that a higher priority?

Peter Bregman is a strategic adviser to CEOs and their leadership teams. His latest book is  18 Minutes: Find

Your Focus, Master Distraction, and Get the Right Things

Done.

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Chapter 20

Use a 10-Minute

Diary to Stay

on Track

by Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer

What’s the best way to use the last 10 minutes of your day?

Many productivity gurus recommend an end-of-the-day

meeting with yourself to review your to-do list, check

how you’re doing against short- and long-term goals, or

select the most challenging project you’ll tackle the fol-

lowing day. Our research suggests that not only should

you do an end-of-day review, but you’ll reap the greatest

benefi ts for your productivity and personal well-being

if you actually record your thoughts in a “mini-diary.” A

work diary will improve your focus, track your progress,

and make you more satisfi ed with your work—which will

help you be even more productive.

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No question: This refl ective time is often the fi rst thing

that we drop when we’re feeling overloaded. Adding a

daily writing assignment—the word “diary” conjures up

a long-term commitment—seems counterproductive to

making headway on “real” work. So try it for just one

month, focusing on just one short-term project (for ex-

ample, developing a departmental staffi ng plan), or just

one area of professional development (improving your

presentation skills).

Take 10 minutes at the end of each workday, write no

more than 100 words, and see what you’ve learned after

four weeks. You may be surprised.

You’ll get fi ve benefi ts from keeping a work diary. You:

1.

Track your progress. The diary is a record of your

“small wins,” incremental steps toward mean-

ingful goals, that can boost your motivation—if

only you take a moment to refl ect on them.

2. Plan. You use the diary as a tool for drafting

your next steps.

3. Fuel personal growth. The diary gives you a

way of working through your diffi cult—even

traumatic—events, gaining new perspectives

on them.

4. Sharpen your focus. You identify your

strengths, passions, and challenges by look-

ing at patterns in your entries over time. For

example, your diary may reveal that you’ve

been spending a lot of time on low-priority

issues. Reviewing your diary and identifying

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this pattern can help you recommit to focus-

ing your time and energy on your most im-

portant work.

5.

Develop patience. The diary serves as a re-

minder during frustrating days that, in the

past, you’ve persevered through days that, at

the time, seemed even worse.

Our research shows that, of all these benefi ts, using a

work diary to track your progress may be the most im-

portant one for your productivity and psychological well-

being. As part of a massive study on the psychology of ev-

eryday work life, we collected nearly 12,000 diary entries

from 238 professionals working on complex, creative

projects. Our analyses revealed a big surprise. Of all the

things that could make people feel both happy and highly

motivated to dig into their work, the single most impor-

tant event was simply making progress in work they

cared about. We call this the progress principle, and it ap-

plies even when the progress is an incremental small win.

When we see we’re making progress, we’re motivated to

keep going, and it’s easier to keep our focus—even when

we encounter setbacks. Witness this example, from the

diary of a software engineer in our study:

Today, when I started work [. . .] there was a note from

a user regarding some work I had done for him. It was

very complimentary and it made me feel pretty good.

Also in the note was a request to go ahead with an

enhancement to the database analysis package. I was

able to code and load this request today in less than the

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estimated time, which makes me feel good. And I know

it will please our user when he comes in tomorrow.

That entry probably took fewer than fi ve minutes to

write. Yet, at the end of the day, that engineer was quite

happy—and seems motivated toward high productivity

the next day, too. Making progress, and noting it, can

provide a real lift—and give you the boost you need to

keep working on the projects that will yield the greatest

benefi t for your organization and its customers.

Daily writing and review helps in negative situa-

tions, too. In the following entry, an employee struggles

to gain a sense of control during a traumatic event in

her company—a downsizing. Even though her own job

might still be in jeopardy, her work diary helps her shape

a healthy perspective; it enables her to focus on her work,

amid swirling gossip and uncertainty. Her personal

growth is almost palpable in this entry:

This morning, my project manager came over and sat

next to me and asked me if I was okay after all the lay-

offs that went on yesterday. I thought that was really

nice. We all had a very rough day yesterday, but I feel

better today. In 45 days, we will all know our fate, and

then we can get on with our lives one way or the other.

The outcome of all this is really out of our control. I’m

trying to concentrate on what IS in my control, by do-

ing my job.

And here, in his fi nal entry for our study, a profes-

sional tells us directly how valuable it was for him to fi ll

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out the diary questionnaire that we sent every day during

his project:

I did fi nd value in doing the questionnaires, especially

when I was disciplined enough to do them at the end of

the day, when everything was still fresh in my mind. It

helped me to refl ect on the day, my accomplishments,

the team’s work, and how I was feeling in general.

When you’re working at a hectic pace, refl ection time is

rare, but [it’s] really benefi cial.

Don’t dismiss the idea of trying a work diary because

you think you have to create fi nely-crafted entries for

posterity. We’ve found that if you avoid making a big

commitment to it, you’ll be more successful. Don’t worry

about how to express yourself. Simply describe one event

or insight from the day. In our study, the average length

of the entries was a mere 54 words.

To get started:

• Pick a time. Consider when you’re most likely to

have ten minutes to yourself. Ideally, this will be

the same time each day, because it’s much easier

to get into the habit that way. For some of us, that

will be the very end of the day, just before bed.

For others, it’s at the end of the workday, or on the

train ride home.

• Create a memory trigger. Choose something you’ll

see or hear at the designated writing time. For ex-

ample, if you want to do the diary before you leave

the offi ce at 5:00, set a repeating alarm in your

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calendar for 4:50. If you choose bedtime, put your

diary notebook and a pen on your bedside table.

• Select a medium. Find something you enjoy us-

ing. People have very different preferences for

diarykeeping. Some love a leather-bound, mono-

grammed, silk-bookmarked, fi ve-year diary, with

just a few pre-ruled lines for each day. Others

like online journaling programs (like iDoneThis).

Whether it’s a Word doc, a note app, a spiral-

bound notebook to an Excel spreadsheet, use

whatever works for you.

• Refl ect on your day. Some people discover what

they think as they write, but most of us need a bit

of time to collect our thoughts. Use the fi rst three

minutes to let your mind go to any one of these

types of events from the day:

– Progress . . . and what led to it. (Congratulate

yourself!)

– Setbacks . . . and what might have caused

them. (Learn from them!)

– Something good. (Feel grateful!)

– Something diffi cult. (Get it off your chest!)

– One thing you can do tomorrow to make your

work go better. (Then plan how to do it!)

– Anything else that dominates your

refl ection time.

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• Write. Use the remaining seven minutes to jot

down your thoughts. Don’t give a thought to

grammar, proper sentence construction, style, etc.

Focus on the event.

• Review. Once in a while, take a few minutes to sit

down with your journal and a favorite beverage in

a comfy chair. Much of the value in a diary comes

from periodically reviewing the past few days (or

more).

Keep a diary for just one project, for just a few weeks,

and you might fi nd it’s a productivity tool you don’t want

to give up.

Teresa Amabile is the Edsel Bryant Ford Professor o

f

Business Administration at Harvard Business School.

She researches what makes people creative, productive,

happy, and motivated at work. Steven Kramer is a psy-

chologist and independent researcher. They are coau-

thors of The Progress Principle (Harvard Business Review Press, 2011).

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Section 6

Renew Your

Energy

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Chapter 21

How to

Accomplish More

by Doing Less

by Tony Schwartz

We know that it’s not just the number of hours we sit at

our desks that determines the value we generate. It’s the

energy and focus we bring to those hours. Human beings

are designed to pulse rhythmically between spending

and renewing energy. That’s how we operate at our best.

Maintaining a steady reservoir of energy—physically,

mentally, emotionally, and even spiritually—requires re-

fueling intermittently.

Take for example, two people of equal skill—Bill and

Nick—who work in the same offi ce. Each day they arrive

at work at 9:00 am and leave at 7:00 pm.

Adapted from content posted on hbr.org on December 13, 2011.

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Bill works for 10 hours—essentially without stop-

ping—juggling tasks at his desk and running between

meetings all day long. He even eats lunch at his desk. By

1:00 pm, Bill’s feeling tired and beginning to lose focus.

Between 4:00 and 7:00 pm, he’s really dragging and eas-

ily distracted.

It’s the law of diminishing returns. Because he

doesn’t take breaks to renew his energy, Bill effectively

delivers about 6 hours of productive work over his 10-

hour day—about 60% of his capacity.

Now contrast that with Nick. He puts in the same

10 hours as Bill. But rather than working essentially with-

out stopping, Nick paces himself: he works intensely for

approximately 90 minutes at a stretch, and then takes a

15-minute break before resuming work. At 12:15, he goes

out for lunch for 45 minutes or works out in a nearby

gym. At 3:00 pm, he goes out to his car and takes a brief

rest. Sometimes it turns into a 15- or 20-minute nap. Fi-

nally, between 4:30 and 5:00, he takes a 15-minute walk

outside.

Nick takes off a total of two hours during his 10 at

work, so he “only” puts in 8 hours. But because he’s build-

ing in periods of renewal with scheduled breaks, he’s able

to work at 80% percent of his full capacity over the course

of the whole day—20% more than Bill.

Cycling through periods of work and rest allows Nick

to be more focused and alert than Bill, to make fewer

mistakes, and to return home at night with more energy

left for his family.

Work the way Nick does, and you’ll get more done, in

less time, at a higher level of quality, more sustainably.

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How to Accomplish More by Doing Less

Learn how to manage your energy, not your time, in

the next article.

Tony Schwartz is the president and CEO of The Energy

Project and the author of Be Excellent at Anything. Become a fan of The Energy Project on Facebook and connect with Tony on Twitter at @tonyschwartz and

@energy_project.

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Chapter 22

Manage Your

Energy, Not

Your Time

A summary of the full-length HBR article by Tony

Schwartz and Catherine McCarthy , highlighting key

ideas.

THE IDEA IN BRIEF

Is your job demanding more from you than ever before?

Do you feel as if you’re working additional hours but rarely

getting ahead? Is your mobile device leashing you to your

job 24/7? Do you feel exhausted, disengaged, sick?

Spending longer days at the offi ce and putting in ex-

tra hours at home doesn’t work because your time is a

limited resource. But your personal energy is renewable.

By fostering deceptively simple rituals that will help you

regularly replenish your energy, you can strengthen your

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physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual resilience.

These rituals include taking brief breaks at specifi c inter-

vals, expressing appreciation to others, reducing inter-

ruptions, and spending more time on the activities you

do best and enjoy most.

THE IDEA IN PRACTICE

Try these practices to renew the four dimensions of your

personal energy:

Physical Energy

• Enhance your sleep by setting an earlier bedtime

and reducing alcohol use.

• Reduce stress by engaging in cardiovascular activ-

ity at least three times a week and strength train-

ing at least once a week.

• Eat small meals and light snacks every three hours.

• Learn to notice signs of imminent fl agging energy,

including restlessness, yawning, hunger, and dif-

fi culty concentrating.

• Take brief but regular breaks away from your desk

at 90- to 120-minute intervals throughout the day.

Emotional Energy

• Defuse negative emotions—irritability, impatience,

anxiety, insecurity—through deep abdominal

breathing.

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• Fuel positive emotions in yourself and others by

regularly expressing appreciation to people in de-

tailed, specifi c terms through notes, e-mails, calls,

or conversations.

• Look at upsetting situations through new lenses.

Adopt a reverse lens to ask, “What would the

other person in this confl ict say, and how might he

be right?” Use a long lens to ask, “How will I likely

view this situation in six months?” Employ a wide

lens to ask, “How can I grow and learn from this

situation?”

Mental Energy

• Reduce interruptions by performing high-

concentration tasks away from phones and e-mail.

• Respond to voice mails and e-mails at designated

times during the day.

• Select the most important challenge for the next

day the night before. Then make that challenge

your fi rst priority when you arrive at work in the

morning.

Spiritual Energy

• Identify your “sweet spot” activities—those

that give you feelings of effectiveness, effortless

absorption, and fulfi llment. Find ways to do more

of these. One executive who hated doing sales

reports delegated them to someone who loved that

activity.

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• Allocate time and energy to what you consider

most important. For example, spend the last

20 minutes of your evening commute relaxing,

so you can connect with your family once you’re

home.

• Live your core values. For instance, if being con-

siderate is important to you but you’re perpetually

late for meetings, practice intentionally showing

up fi ve minutes early for meetings.

Are You Headed for an Energy Crisis?

Take the following quiz to identify which areas of your

life could benefi t from energy-renewing rituals.

Please check the statements below that are true

for you:

Body

□ I don’t regularly get at least seven to eight hours

of sleep, and I often wake up feeling tired.

□ I frequently skip breakfast, or I settle for some-

thing that isn’t nutritious.

□ I don’t work out enough (meaning cardiovascular

training at least three times a week and strength

training at least once a week).

□ I don’t take regular breaks during the day to re-

new and recharge, or I often eat lunch at my desk,

if I eat it at all.

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Manage Your Energy, Not Your Time

Emotions

□ I frequently fi nd myself feeling irritable, impa-

tient, or anxious at work, especially when work is

demanding.

□ I don’t have enough time with my family and

loved ones, and when I’m with them, I’m not

always really with them.

□ I have too little time for the activities that I most

deeply enjoy.

□ I don’t stop frequently enough to express my

appreciation to others or to savor my accomplish-

ments and blessings.

Mind

□ I have diffi culty focusing on one thing at a time,

and I am easily distracted during the day, espe-

cially by e-mail.

□ I spend much of my day reacting to immediate

crises and demands rather than focusing on ac-

tivities with longer-term value and high leverage.

□ I don’t take enough time for refl ection, strategiz-

ing, and creative thinking.

□ I often work in the evenings or on weekends, and

I almost never take an e-mail–free vacation.

Spirit

□ I don’t spend enough time at work doing what I

do best and enjoy most.

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□ There are signifi cant gaps between what I say is

most important to me and how I actually allocate

my time and energy.

□ My decisions at work are more often infl uenced

by external demands than by a strong, clear sense

of my own purpose.

□ I don’t invest enough time and energy in making a

positive difference to others or to the world.

How Is Your Overall Energy?

Total number of statements checked: ____

Guide to energy scores

0–3: Excellent energy management skills

4–6: Reasonable energy management skills

7–10: Signifi cant energy management defi cits

11–16: A full-fl edged energy management crisis

What Do You Need to Work On?

Number of checks in each category:

Body ____

Mind ____

Emotions ____

Spirit ____

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Guide to category scores

0: Excellent energy management skills

1: Strong energy management skills

2: Signifi cant defi cits

3: Poor energy management skills

4: A full-fl edged energy crisis

Tony Schwartz (tony@theenergyproject.com) is the president and CEO of The Energy Project in New York City, and a coauthor of The Power of Full Engagement: Man-

aging Energy, Not Time, Is the Key to High Performance

and Personal Renewal (Free Press, 2003).

Catherine McCarthy (catherine@theenergyproject.com)

is a senior vice president at The Energy Project.

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Chapter 23

Why Great

Performers

Sleep More

by Tony Schwartz

Why is sleep one of the fi rst things we’re willing to sacri-

fi ce as the demands in our lives keep rising? We continue

to live by a remarkably durable myth: Sleeping one hour

less will give us one more hour of productivity. In real-

ity, even small amounts of sleep deprivation take a sig-

nifi cant toll on our health, mood, cognitive capacity, and

productivity.

How Much Sleep Do You Need?

When researchers put test subjects into environments

without clocks or windows and ask them to sleep any

Adapted from content posted on hbr.org on March 3, 2011.

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time they feel tired, 95% sleep between seven and eight

hours out of every 24. Another 2.5% sleep more than

eight hours. That means just 2.5% of us require fewer

than seven hours of sleep a night to feel fully rested.

That’s one out of every 40 people.

In my talks, when I ask who has had fewer than seven

hours of sleep several nights during the past week, the

majority raise their hands. That’s true whether it’s an au-

dience of corporate executives, teachers, cops, or govern-

ment workers.

Great performers are an exception. Typically, they

sleep signifi cantly more than the rest of us. In Anders

Ericsson’s famous study of violinists, the top performers

slept an average of eight and a half hours out of every 24,

including a 20- to 30-minute midafternoon nap—some

two hours a day more than the average American.

The top violinists also reported that except for practice

itself, sleep was the most important factor in improving

their skills.

As I gathered research about sleep, I felt increasingly

compelled to give it higher priority in my own life. Today,

I go to great lengths to ensure that I get at least eight

hours every night, and ideally between eight and a half

and nine hours, even when I’m traveling.

I still take the overnight redeye from California to New

York, but I’m asleep by takeoff—even if I have to take

a sleeping aid. When I get home at 6:00 or 7:00 am, I

go right to bed until I’ve had my eight hours. What I’ve

learned about those days is that I’d rather work at 100%

for fi ve or six hours than at 60% for eight or nine hours.

With suffi cient sleep, I feel better, I work with more fo-

cus, and I manage my emotions better, which is good for

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WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING ON HBR.ORG

Try the coff ee nap—Lifehacker had a great article about

[naps]. I’m a paramedic and I’ve used this trick for

ages. Fix a cup of coff ee so you can drink it quickly. Set

up the spot where you’ll nap and then drink the coff ee.

Set a timer for 20 minutes and make sure you get up

when it goes off . Any longer and you’ll feel worn out. I

know this has saved my life on many late-night, long-

distance transports. —Posted by John

everyone around me. I dislike enduring even a single day

when I haven’t had enough sleep because the impact is

immediate and unavoidable. On the rare days that I don’t

get enough, I try hard to get at least a 20- to 30-minute

nap in the afternoon. That’s a big help.

How to Get More Sleep

Here are three other tips to improve the quantity and

quality of your sleep:

• Write down what’s on your mind before you get

into bed. If you leave items such as unfi nished

to-do’s and unresolved issues in your working

memory, they’ll make it harder to fall asle ep, and

you’ll end up ruminating about them if you wake

up during the night.

• Go to bed earlier—and at a set time. Sounds obvi-

ous, right? The problem is there’s no alternative.

You’re already waking up at the latest possible time

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you can. If you don’t ritualize a specifi c bedtime,

you’ll fi nd ways to stay up later, just the way you do

now.

• Start winding down at least 45 minutes before you

turn out the light. You won’t fall asleep if you’re all

wound up from answering e-mail or doing other

work. Create a ritual around drinking a cup of

herbal tea, listening to music that helps you relax,

or reading a dull book.

Tony Schwartz is the president and CEO of The Energy

Project and the author of Be Excellent at Anything. Become a fan of The Energy Project on Facebook and connect with Tony on Twitter at @tonyschwartz and

@energy_project.

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Section 7:

Take Control of

Your E-mail

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Chapter 24

Simplify Your

E-mail

by Gina Trapani

If you spend more time dealing with e-mail than getting

the right work done, it’s time for an e-mail makeover.

Clear Out Your In-Box

Computer scientists developed e-mail based on the par-

adigm of postal mail, so think of your in-box like your

physical mailbox. You wouldn’t keep bills you have to

pay and the invitation to that birthday party in there for-

ever, right? Sort by sender, date, or subject line to clear

out your messages as effi ciently as possible. Then delete

the junk; unsubscribe from newsletters you never read

or websites you no longer visit. If you have thousands of

messages in your main folder, business writer Amy Gallo

Adapted from content posted on hbr.org on June 9, 2009.

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suggests creating a new subfolder in your Archive folder

called “Old In-box” and putting all of your messages in

there. You’ll still have access to them if you need them,

but you’ll be able to jump-start your new e-mail process

without the drudgery of actually reviewing every old

message.

Set Up Just Three Folders

Sometimes it’s not just the sheer volume of messages that

makes e-mail management a time-sink, it’s the compli-

cated folder system we’ve concocted. Streamline your in-

box by creating these three folders:

Follow-up: For messages you have to respond to or

act on that will take longer than a couple of minutes.

(Put a corresponding item on your to-do list for each

of these messages.)

Hold: For messages where you’re waiting for some-

thing to happen, like a package shipment or event

invitation. (Put a corresponding item on your calen-

dar for each of these messages.)

Archive: For messages you’re done with but want to

keep for reference.

Maintain Your New System

Once you’ve cleaned out your in-box, you’ll want to keep

it organized and manageable, so you can focus your at-

tention on your most important work.

Here are some techniques to keep your e-mail under

control:

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Simplify Your E-mail

• Process your e-mail in batches. Most of us are on

e-mail all day, scanning for anything urgent and ig-

noring everything else, which is how backlog ac cu-

mulates in your in-box. Instead of checking every

time you hear the incoming message “ding,” proc-

ess your e-mail in batches. Completely shut down

your e-mail or set it and your handheld to check

for messages only every few hours. Then, when you

have time or are in between tasks, fully commit

yourself to processing new messages. Alexandra

Samuel, cofounder of Social Signal, recommends

selecting specifi c times when you’ll process e-mail

(for example, 8:00 to 10:00 am and 4:00 to

6:00 pm). Notify correspondents and colleagues

of your schedule through your e-mail signature or

a note on your blog (and clear this approach with

your supervisor, if applicable). Assume that if it’s

an emergency, people will call you—but refrain

from actually suggesting that, since you don’t want

to encourage a constantly ringing phone.

• Use the “two-minute” rule. As you process your

e-mail in batches, reply to any messages that will

take fewer than two minutes on the spot. Don’t de-

lay and leave them in your in-box marked as read,

thinking you’ll get back to them; don’t even fi le

them away in “Follow-up.” Just take care of them

immediately. To help keep you within the two-

minute mark, try answering all e-mails in three

sentences or fewer (visit Three.Sentenc.es), says Dave Kerpen, CEO of Likeable Media. Anything

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Take Control of Your E-mail

that takes more text probably requires a quick call

instead. Have your team or department try this

as a group experiment, and watch your collective

e-mail–processing time shrink.

• End “Reply all.” Kerpen also recommends using

internal social networking tools instead of e-mail

to chat with your coworkers, facilitate collabo-

ration and passive listening, and eliminate the

dreaded “Reply all” e-mail chains. Try a private,

closed Facebook group. Or explore proprietary

tools such as Jive and Yammer, which allow organizations to set up private social networking

platforms. Jive is best for large enterprises, while

Yammer is suitable for departments or smaller

organizations. Get an on-the-spot answer and get

on with your work.

• Stop spamming people. Samuel notes that a major

contributor to e-mail overload is the widely held

expectation that every e-mail must get a reply,

even if it’s just “OK” or “Thanks.” Don’t do it.

For more suggestions on keeping your e-mail under

control, see the next article, “Eight E-mail Overload

Experiments.”

Gina Trapani is the founding editor of the personal pro-

ductivity blog Lifehacker.com.

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Chapter 25

Eight E-mail

Overload

Experiments

by Alexandra Samuel

If you’ve tried all of the basic ways to structure and man-

age your e-mail, but are still feeling overwhelmed, here

are eight road-tested experiments for battling e-mail

overload that range from reasonable to radical. Try each

one, or a couple at a time—but push yourself to the very

limits of your comfort zone, because the tactics that seem

most inconceivable may be just the ones that help you

discover a new way to work more effectively with e-mail.

If your company’s culture includes expecting instant

replies to every message, e-mail your colleagues and reg-

ular correspondents to let them know about your experi-

ment. This will help avoid ruffl ed feathers over some of

the more radical suggestions.

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Take Control of Your E-mail

1. Reject the mandatory reply. Set up an auto-

responder that lets all correspondents know

that you’re only replying to selected e-mail,

depending on your availability and priorities—

and make it clear you don’t expect a reply to

every e-mail you send them, either.

Here’s one version:

SUBJECT: Limited e-mail means I may not reply to

the message you sent

Thank you for getting in touch. I’m experimenting

with a new approach to e-mail: I’m sending and

replying to a smaller number of messages. I still

check e-mail regularly, so if you don’t get a reply

within 72 hours please assume I have reviewed and

fi led your message. This approach should help me

focus my attention on my current priorities. Thank

you for your understanding.

For a less extreme solution, add a polite line

to your standard e-mail signature. Here’s mine:

Alexandra Samuel, PhD

Director, Social + Interactive Media Centre,

Emily Carr University

alex@alexandrasamuel.com |

Twitter @awsamuel

Join the fi ght against e-mail overload:

• Focus on your priorities; I’ll understand if you

don’t reply.

• Sorry if I don’t reply; I’m trying to focus, too.

• If it’s urgent, reach me by Twitter or SMS.

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Eight E-mail Overload Experiments

2. Set message quotas. For outbound messages,

limit the number of e-mail threads you initi-

ate each day. Assume that every e-mail you

send will generate 4–10 responses, so you’re

creating work for yourself with each message.

Send fewer, and you’ll get fewer. For incoming

messages, guesstimate the number and make

that your daily quota. Use fi lters in your e-mail

software to sort incoming mail and keep all but

the most crucial messages out of your in-box.

Auto-fi le other messages in alternative fold-

ers. Keep adding rules until your daily in-box

volume falls below the quota you’ve set.

For example, I automatically direct e-mails

into different folders for internal mail, mes-

sages I’m cc’d on, social network notifi cations,

and more. My closest colleagues know that any

e-mail marked “URGENT” still comes directly

to my in-box; you might set your rules to

ensure that all messages from your boss come

through marked as high priority or color coded

in a way that makes them stand out. The fi lters

thin the incoming messages to a manageable

level and ensure that e-mails from current or

prospective clients don’t get lost in a sea of

spam.

3. Reply by phone. You can eliminate dozens of

e-mails a day with quick calls. A fi ve-minute

chat about a landmine your project just stum-

bled on may be more effi cient than crafting an

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Take Control of Your E-mail

e-mail that adequately explains the situation.

Also, thank people in person or by phone, even

if that means leaving a voice mail (detailed

thanks for project work, however, should

always go by e-mail, so the recipient can fi le

it for performance reviews). Most crucially,

switch to phone or in-person communication

whenever you get a message that angers or

hurts you, because e-mail exchanges tend to

escalate and solidify grievances.

4. Do not copy. Refuse to send, read, or reply to

cc’ed messages. As blogging entrepreneur Anil

Dash puts it, including someone as a cc on an

e-mail is like saying “This is important enough

for me to interrupt you [with] but not to write

to you [about directly].” If a message you’re

sending requires a recipient’s attention, in-

clude that person in the “to” fi eld; if not, leave

them off entirely. Tell colleagues they should

address messages to you directly if they need

you to reply.

5. Don’t touch that phone! When you have a few

minutes between meetings or while waiting

for a plane, don’t use that time to respond to

e-mail on your mobile’s tiny keyboard. Rather

than send a rash or typo-ridden reply, wait un-

til you’re back at your desk or with your laptop

or tablet, when you can craft a better response

in less time.

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Eight E-mail Overload Experiments

6. Take an e-mail vacation: Try a two-week vaca-

tion, a six-month sabbatical, or something in

between. But it’s not much of a break if you

come back to an overfl owing in-box, so be-

fore you tune out, turn on the vacation auto-

responder with a message like this:

Thanks for your message. I’m taking an e-mail vaca-

tion until the new year. The message you’ve just

sent me has been fi led, so it’s not lost forever, but

if you need a reply it would be great if you could

e-mail me sometime on or after January 4. If you

need to reach me urgently, I’ll be available by Twit-

ter or mobile phone.

Set your e-mail program to fi le everything in a

folder labeled “Vacation,” and when you return,

take a quick look for any truly life-changing

messages you may have missed and actively ig-

nore the rest. If someone really wants to reach

you, they’ll e-mail again.

7.

Reply to every e-mail: If ignoring e-mail makes

your palms sweat, maybe it’s time to give into

its primacy. For two weeks, make your entire

morning an e-mail processing zone. (If three

hours isn’t enough, block as big a chunk of

time as you think you’ll need.) See whether

your commitment to a 100% response rate

makes you more effective. This will help you

make some conscious decisions about how

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Take Control of Your E-mail

to better allocate your time and triage your

in-box.

8. Give up e-mail altogether: For the ultimate in

in-box liberation, give it up. Yes, you really

can—especially if you’re comfortable with so-

cial media tools. Use your blog to post updates

on your work instead of sen ding an e-mail to

a big distribution list; Basecamp or another

project management tool to communicate with

project teams; Google Docs to circulate drafts;

Skype for a quick conversation instead of a

14-message exchange; and Twitter DMs , chat,

and SMS for tight, effi cient, and confi dential

messaging. Take your e-mail address off your

business card and Web page, and encourage

anyone who needs to reach you to pick up the

phone.

Alexandra Samuel is the Director of the Social + Interactive Media Centre at Emily Carr University, and the co-

founder of Social Signal, a Vancouver-based social media agency. You can follow Alex on Twitter at @awsamuel or

her blog at alexandrasamuel.com.

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Section 8

Maintain Your

New Approach

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Chapter 26

Sustaining Your

Productivity

System

by Alexandra Samuel

A productivity system is like any other faith: It works

for as long as you continue to believe in it. Let a hint of

skepticism creep in—about the discipline required, the

rewards promised, or the potential superiority of other

ideologies—and the threat of disorder quickly returns.

If you can accept that your system is a work in prog-

ress, it’s a lot easier to keep that threat at bay. Here are

some tips for sustaining your productivity system:

1. Focus on outcomes. Many productivity meth-

odologies are so specifi c about their recom-

mended processes that your zeal for maintain-

ing your folders, sorting your communications,

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Maintain Your New Approach

or acquiring snazzy storage bins can easily

eclipse the problems or benefi ts that motivated

you in the fi rst place. Remember that adher-

ence to a system is a false god: Don’t stick to it

just because you bought the book or the soft-

ware. If you’re working effectively and meet-

ing your deadlines, it doesn’t matter if you no

longer geocode your task list.

2. Make micro commitments. When you embrace

a new productivity religion, adopt its minor

practices as well as its major ones. Sometimes

the smaller commitments are the most sus-

tainable. For example, two years after I got

serious about In-box Zero, I no longer process

my in-box to empty every day. But my e-mail

is still dramatically easier to manage, thanks to

the various fi lters I initially set up as part of my

in-box zero approach.

3. Find fellow adherents. One of my big stumbling

blocks with David Allen’s book Getting Things

Done was Allen’s denunciation of hanging

folders; my fi le cabinet only worked with

hanging fi les. Happily, I thought to Google

“GTD hanging fi les,” and discovered a com-

munity of enthusiasts discussing the merits of

various folder styles—and even brands—with

the seriousness of Talmudic scholars. Reading

about how other people implemented and ad-

justed the system liberated me from my slavish

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Sustaining Your Productivity System

adherence to every detail. You can also make

your own adherents: Marnie Webb, the CEO of

nonprofi t tech resource CompuMentor/

TechSoup, keeps a shelf full of copies of Getting

Things Done. “When one of my team members

complains about not being able to manage

their lists or having too much to do, I pull a

book off my shelf,” Webb says. “I tell them to

complain again after they’ve implemented

[GTD] for three months.”

4. Schedule routine maintenance. A few years ago

I sorted all the junk in our home offi ce into

beautifully labeled boxes. Six months later, a

friend observed that whether you opened a

box labeled “Bills to Pay” or “Pens and High-

lighters,” you were guaranteed to fi nd a pad of

Post-its, an iPod adapter, a handful of bat-

teries, and 37 cents in change. Now I know

that getting organized isn’t enough—to stay

organized, I have to set aside a couple of days

every 4–6 months so that I can reestablish

order and update my systems. (This is one of

my favorite ways to make productive use of the

few days after a major trip or project wrap-up,

when I’m too brain-dead to do anything more

demanding.)

5. Anticipate obsolescence. Even the best pro-

ductivity systems and tips may not survive

the passage of time and the advent of new

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Maintain Your New Approach

technologies. So stick with software tools that

provide options for exporting your data to .csv,

iCal, or other standard formats, so you don’t

get trapped by any one platform.

6. Embrace eclecticism. Troy Angrignon, vice

president of sales and marketing at Cloudscal-

ing, is religious about tracking his tasks and

goals using a single, two-column document

whose structure borrows from just about every

productivity guru out there—Brian Tracy,

David Allen, Robert Fritz. While combining

approaches might amount to apostasy in the

eyes of any one system’s adherents, it’s allowed

Angrignon to develop a customized method

that’s served him well for 15 years, even as he

continues to make adjustments and sample

new tools. You may also fi nd that tweaking

your productivity system, whether it’s try-

ing out a new calendaring approach or sort-

ing your paper fi les, is part of your creative

process—a way of preparing yourself for a new

year or project.

Alexandra Samuel is the Director of the Social + Interactive Media Centre at Emily Carr University, and the co-

founder of Social Signal, a Vancouver-based social media agency. You can follow Alex on Twitter at @ awsamuel or

her blog at alexandrasamuel.com .

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Section 9

Explore Further

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Chapter 27

More Productivity

Books to Explore

by Ilan Mochari

This guide provides a wide range of tactics and tips for

improving your productivity. If you wish to explore fur-

ther, we’ve summarized the approaches of three other

experts: Stephen Covey, Julie Morgenstern, and David

Allen.

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Explore Further

The Seven Habits of Highly Eff ective People,

by Stephen R. Covey

The Basic Idea: This is a guide to changing your life, not just the way you

manage your day. To zero in on the best ways to spend your time and energy,

focus on things you can control, keep your desired outcomes (for both

individual projects and your life overall) in mind, improve your personal and

professional relationships, nurture yourself, and classify your tasks as urgent

or important.

Ideal if you:

Not ideal if you:

• Want to transform how you live.

• Are happy with your life outside

For example, you can break old

work and simply want a nuts-

habits like procrastination, but

and-bolts system for managing

it will require work on your

workfl ow.

character, not just your

• Will roll your eyes at phrases

productivity practices.

like “opening the gate of

• Have spiritual leanings and want to

change,” “emotional bank

develop mission statements for

account,” and “abundance

diff erent areas of your life (“I want

mentality.”

to raise two self-confi dent children”

• Are looking for advice that

or “I’m here to deliver smart and

addresses modern worklife

media-savvy public relations

and gadgets. Covey’s advice

services to my customers. I will

transcends trends, but his book

draw on my industry knowledge,

predates smartphones and

my understanding of my clients

social networking.

and their challenges, and a

• Are looking for advice on orga-

genuine passion for what I do.”).

nizing your physical workspace.

• Enjoy a longer read, rich with

personal anecdotes and scholarly

references.

Additional resources: franklincovey.com, stephencovey.com, the3rdalternative.com.

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More Productivity Books to Explore

Organizing from the Inside Out,

by Julie Morgenstern

The Basic Idea: This book will help you organize your physical spaces de-

pending on your personality, needs, and goals. Identify the root cause of your

clutter (Is your current system too complex? Are you by nature a packrat?).

Find homes for your most important things by using the Kindergarten ap-

proach: Divide your space into specifi c activity zones that have everything

necessary to do whatever type of work you’ve assigned to that area, with

appropriate supplies and storage units to keep them contained. For example,

set up a bill-paying area with everything you need—even if it means dupli-

cates (like postage stamps) in multiple zones.

Ideal if you:

Not ideal if you:

• Literally have trouble fi nding

• Aren’t a fan of self-refl ection.

things.

• Are looking for more advice

• Want advice about organizing

about productivity or time

physical spaces (desks, offi

ces,

management.

fi ling systems).

• Are looking for a quick fi x or

• Prefer lists and tips in clearly

an excuse to purge everything.

signposted sections.

Morgenstern recommends a

three-step approach (analyzye,

strategize, attack), with a fi ve-

step process for the attack phase.

Additional resources: juliemorgenstern.com, oprah.com/home/More-with-Organizing-Expert-

Julie-Morgenstern, amazon.com/Julie-Morgenstern/e/B001IGQY78

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Explore Further

Getting Things Done, by David Allen

The Basic Idea: This book will help you gather, evaluate, and make progress

on all of your tasks. Don’t rely on your brain to remember everything you have

to do. Instead, write it all down in a calendar and series of lists (projects,

next actions, waiting for, maybe/someday). Review each task and determine

if you should: do it, delegate it, or defer it. When you’re ready to start a new

task, use four criteria to decide what to do: context, time available, energy

available, priority. Once a week, gather your lists and calendar to review your

system, update your lists, and check in with yourself about where you are

relative to your workload and schedule.

Ideal if you:

Not ideal if you:

• Want a nuts-and-bolts guide to

• Seek spiritual guidance,

determining priorities and mastering

too.

workfl ow.

• Enjoy storytelling or

• Prefer bulleted lists, diagrams,

personal anecdotes in your

scattered inspirational quotes, and

business reading.

fl owcharts.

• Are overwhelmed by setting

• Have the authority or resources to

up elaborate physical fi le-

delegate.

folder systems.

• Are looking for advice on setting up

• Aren’t comfortable

physical work spaces, as well as

delegating.

productivity in general.

Additional resources: davidco.com, gtdtimes.com, youtube.com/watch?v=Qo7vUdKTlhk

Ilan Mochari is chief writer for The Build Network and a

contributor to the MIT Sloan Management Review.

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Chapter 28

Productivity Apps

and Tools

Here are some apps and websites to further fuel your in-

terest in making the most of your time and energy. This is

by no means an exhaustive list—we’ve compiled favorites

from some of the most productive members of our hbr.org

community: Joshua Gans, Skoll Chair in Innovation and

Entrepreneurship, Rotman School of Management, Uni-

versity of Toronto; Heidi Grant Halvorson, PhD, author

of Nine Things Successful People Do Differently; Whitney

Johnson, author of Dare Dream Do; Dave Kerpen, author

of Likeable Social Media; and Andrew McAfee, author

of Enterprise 2.0. Since technology is ever-evolving, con-

sider this an inspiration list. For example, if Longer Days

is no longer available when you look for it, try a search for

virtual assistant to see what new offerings exist.

Manage Your Schedule

• Longer Days, Brickwork, and Uassist.ME are just three of dozens of virtual assistant companies

175

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Explore Further

that provide online access to people to help with

administrative tasks, such as scheduling meetings

and calls, researching individuals’ backgrounds

for networking opportunities, marketing research

(such as company information or revenue data);

other professional functions, such as copywriting

and managing event RSVPs; and even personal

tasks like scheduling doctor’s appointments.

Virtual assistants add extra hands without adding

extra headcount. The programs are relatively inex-

pensive: Longerdays.com offers 20 hours for $350

and Uassist.ME charges $650 per month for about

40 hours/month’s worth of work. — Dave Kerpen

• Tungle.Me and Doodle will end those long, painful e-mail chains that often result when you’re

trying to set up a meeting with multiple people

inside and outside of your organization. Tungle

.Me allows people to see your calendar availability and easily schedule meetings and phone calls, and

it syncs with most Web and mobile calendar ap-

plications. Doodle allows multiple parties to share

their availability via poll and quickly fi nd a mutu-

ally convenient date and time for an event.

— Dave Kerpen

Make Your Lists

• Workfl owy is an online tool and app that allows you to better organize yourself by mimicking the

way you naturally think. It helps you make a list of

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Productivity Apps and Tools

high-level ideas and tasks and then breaks them

into smaller pieces. For example, I’ve started with

Personal and Work as my two broad categories.

Under “Work,” I’ve created sublists such as Rose

Park Advisors, Book launch, and HBR blog. You

can subdivide lists like this almost infi nitely.

— Whitney Johnson

• Remember The Milk is an online task manager that allows you to easily track your to-do list from

your smartphone. You can add items to your to-do

list, set location tags to help you remember to take

care of things when you’re out and about, organize

tasks by priority, schedule tasks by integrating

with popular calendar tools (including Outlook

and Google Calendar), and sync everything so that

you can see your updated, prioritized list whether

you’re at your desk or on the go. — Dave Kerpen

• Evernote allows you to capture notes, fi les, and images and later access them from your tablet,

mobile, or computer through a robust search

feature. Save favorite Web pages with notes about

them, take a picture of a potential location for a

future launch party, record your thoughts on your

next product idea and add to it whenever and

wherever inspiration strikes, or keep your scanned

itineraries and travel docs all in one place. Ever-

note also makes it easy to share notes and docu-

ments with friends, classmates, and colleagues.

— Dave Kerpen

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Explore Further

Manage Your Reminders

• Due is an iPhone app that repeatedly reminds you to do something at a certain time—until you do

it. Here’s how it works: You need to remember to

write an e-mail to someone but can’t do it right

now. With Due, you set your phone to alert you

to write the e-mail at a certain time (30 minutes

from now, 4 pm). I used to leave myself notes or

write on my hand. With Due, I can do the same

thing but with more precision. It will continue to

beep until I accept the reminder or change the

time I want to be reminded. — Joshua Gans

• Nudge-mail helps you remember what you need to do when you need to do it. Whether your spouse

asks you to pick up milk on your way home or

a client requests a draft proposal, Nudge-mail

reminds you of the task at the right time. Just

forward an e-mail to addresses like “tomorrow@

nudge-mail.com” or “2hours@nudge-mail.com”

and free your mind to focus on your next impor-

tant task.

— Dave Kerpe n

Manage Your Files

• If you use multiple computers, work on sev-

eral projects, and/or have multiple colleagues,

try  Dropbox. It’s a cloud-based storage utility that eliminates fi le-related hassles. It puts your fi les in

one folder that all of your devices can access, and

synchronizes them in the background without

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Productivity Apps and Tools

your having to lift a fi nger. It also allows you to

share different folders with collaborators. How

many times have you tried to send a fi le via e-

mail, only to have a server reject it because it was

too big? Just create a Dropbox folder, invite the

recipient(s) to share it, and your problems are past

tense. — Andrew McAfee

• JotNot is an iPhone app that allows you to take a photo of any image or document and instantly

turn it into a .pdf—for example, you can sign and

fax back a contract in seconds, on the go.

— Dave Kerpen

Manage Your Social Media

• I don’t know what I would do without  HootSuite.

It’s a social media dashboard that allows you to

monitor and post to all your networks simulta-

neously. If you blog or use social media for your

work, this is a huge timesaver. When I’ve written

something new or read something I want to share

on my networks, I can let everyone know with a

single entry, rather than having to log on to each

network separately. I use it to manage my Face-

book, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+ accounts,

and you can also use it with Tumblr, WordPress,

and Foursquare. — Heidi Grant Halvorson, PhD

• Buffer allows you to schedule Tweets and Face-

book messages (and soon, LinkedIn posts) ahead

of time, and automatically spaces them out. In fi ve

minutes, you can fi nd interesting articles worth

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Explore Further

sharing with colleagues and prospective clients,

and be tweeting all day, without actually going to

Twitter again. — Dave Kerpen

• Rapportive is a browser add-on for Gmail that

transforms Gmail’s bland sidebar into a time-

saver. Instead of ads, you’ll see social media infor-

mation about the sender of the e-mail: his picture,

links to his profi le, recent Tweets, etc. The add-on

is available for Firefox, Chrome, and Safari, is free

to use, and integrates smoothly with Gmail. This

tool obviates the need for a separate search to fi nd

out more about new contacts or clients.

— Dave Kerpen

• Dragon Dictation is a voice-recognition application that allows you to easily dictate text or e-mail

messages. Speak into the program and instantly

see the transcription. Faster and safer than typing

while on the go, you can dictate everything from

Tweets to longer e-mail messages. — Dave Kerpen

• NutshellMail eliminates the need for multiple visits to your social network accounts. It sends

you a daily summary and includes only important

information such as Facebook likes, posts, and

comments; and Twitter mentions, new followers,

and Tweets. — Dave Kerpen

180

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Index

ability development, 18

deadlines

Allen, David, 23–31

far away, 57–58

appreciation, expressing, 141

setting, 54, 60, 66–67

attention, focusing, 25

delegation

checklist, 102–103

be-good goals, 16

effective, 87–107

behaviors

levels of, 109–110

focusing on positive, 20–22,

tips for, 104

28

diary, work, 125–131

rituals for, 113–115, 119

distractions

bodily rhythms, 119–120, 135–

e-mail, 30

137

impact of, 63–64

boss-imposed time, 90–91,

managing, 6–7, 141

98–99, 100

turning off, 66, 71, 117

breaks, 50–51, 119–120, 135–137,

140

e-mail

managing, 157–162

calendars, 78–79, 123

responding to, 141

coffee nap, 149

saying no via, 45

commitments

simplifying, 153–156

being overwhelmed by, 49–52

turning off, 71

prioritizing, 39–41, 44

vacations from, 161

concurrent rewards, 83

emotional energy, 25, 140–141

control, relinquishing, 96

employees

core values, 142

delegation to, 87–107, 109–110

Covey, Stephen R., 172

developing initiative of, 88–89,

cumulative rewards, 83–84

101–105

181

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Index

employees ( continued)

important tasks, 28, 70–72,

empowering, 94–96

118–119

skill development for, 89

in-boxes, 153–154

trusting relationship with, 95

incremental theorists, 18

empowerment, 94–96

interruptions. See distractions

end-of-day review, 125

energy cycles, 25, 29–31,

law of diminishing returns,

119–120, 135–137

136

energy management, 139–145

lists

entity theorists, 18

of goals, 44

exercise, 114, 140

someday/maybe, 79–80

expectations, lowering your,

to-do, 27–28, 50, 60, 61,

59–60

73–75, 77–80, 176–177

to-don’t, 121

failure

tools for, 176–177

allowing for, 16

long lens, 141

fear of, 59

long-term projects, 57–62

fears

acknowledging your, 59

management time, 87–107

sharing your, 59

managerial initiative, 103–

fi le management, 178–179

105

meetings, with self, 71–72,

get-better goals, 16–17

125

Getting Things Done (Allen), 23,

mental contrasting, 10–11

79, 166, 174

mental energy, 141

goals

mistakes, allowing for, 16

acting on, 11–12

Morgenstern, Julie, 173

be-good, 16

motivation

get-better, 16–17

to-go thinking and, 14

long-term, 57–62

using rewards for, 54–55,

monitoring progress toward,

81–84

13–14

multitasking, 29–30, 63–67

optimism about, 14–15

setting specifi c, 10–11

naps, 149

writing down, 44

“negation” if-then plans, 21

grit, 17–18

negative behaviors, replacing

with positive, 20–22, 28

habits, 28, 55–56. See also rituals

negative emotions, 140

90-minute cycles, 114–115,

if-then planning, 11–12, 20–22

117–120, 136–137

“ignore” if-then plans, 21

no, saying, 43–46

182

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Index

optimism

reverse lens, 141

realistic, 14–15

rewards, 54–55, 75, 81–84

unrealistic, 15

rituals

Organizing from the Inside Out

developing, 113–115, 119

(Morgenstern), 173

for energy management,

139–145

physical energy, 25, 140

positive, 28

planning, if-then, 11–12, 20–22

for time management, 121–

positive emotions, 141

124

positive rituals, 28

practice, 17–18

saying no, 43–46

priorities

scheduling tools, 175–176

long-term projects and, 60

Schwartz, Tony, 23–31

setting, 4, 36–41, 44, 66,

self-control, 18–20

122–123, 141

self-discipline, 28

problems, delegating to employ-

self-imposed time, 90–91

ees, 87–107

self-monitoring, 13–14

procrastination

setbacks, 18

with long-term projects, 57–62

Seven Habits of Highly Effective

overcoming, 53–56

People (Covey), 97, 172

productive rewards, 82

skill development, 15–17, 89

productivity

sleep, 140, 147–150

books on, 171–174

social media tools, 179–180

deadlines and, 66–67

someday/maybe lists, 79–80

impact of multitasking on, 64

spiritual energy, 25, 141–142

priority setting and, 36–38

stress, 51, 65, 140

roadblocks to, 27

stress hormones, 119

sustaining system for, 165–168

subordinates. See employees

techniques for increasing,

system-imposed time, 90–91,

23–31

98–100

tools for, 175–180

progress

tasks

monitoring your, 13–14

being overwhelmed by, 49–52

principle, 54, 127–128

breaking down large, 26, 29,

projects, long-term, 57–62

51, 54, 58, 60, 73

completing easiest fi rst, 50

raises, 35–38

delegation of, 87–107

realistic optimism, 14–15

doing most important fi rst,

regenerative rewards, 81–82

28, 119

reminders, 54, 62, 123, 129, 178

focusing on challenging, 50

“replacement” if-then plans, 21

important, 28, 70–72, 118–119

183

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7/16/12 2:28 PM

Index

tasks ( continued)

tackling items on, 77–80

prioritizing, 44, 66, 141

tools for, 176–177

reasons for deferring, 53–54

to-don’t lists, 121

rewards for completing,

to-go thinking, 14

81–84

trust, 89, 95

saying no to, 43–46

time-wasting, 39–41

ultradian rhythm, 119–120

urgent, 69–70, 118

unrealistic optimism, 15

telephone calls, 159–160

urgent tasks, 69–70, 118

temptations, resisting, 18–20

thinking

value creation, 35–38

to-date, 13–14

virtual assistants, 175–176

to-go, 14

time management

weekly review, 71–72

rituals for, 121–124

wide lens, 141

tips for, 106–107

willpower, 18–20, 28

tools for, 4–5, 175–180

work diary, 55, 125–131

to-date thinking, 13–14

work-rest ratio, 26, 118–119,

to-do lists, 27–28, 50, 60, 61

135–137, 140

effective, 73–75

worth-your-time test, 39–41

184

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Notes

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Notes

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Notes

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Notes

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Notes

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Notes

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Notes

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Notes

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Notes

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Notes

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Notes

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HBR Guide to

Negotiating

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Arm yourself with the advice you need to succeed on the

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HBR Guide to

Negotiating

Jeff Weiss

HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW PRESS

Boston, Massachusetts

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Names: Weiss, Jeff A., author.

Title: HBR guide to negotiating / Jeff Weiss.

Other titles: Harvard Business Review guide to negotiating

Description: Boston, Massachusetts : Harvard Business Review Press,

[2016]

Identifi ers: LCCN 2015044110 (print) | LCCN 2015049476 (ebook)

| ISBN 9781633690769 (hardcover : alk. paper)

| ISBN 9781633690776 ()

Subjects: LCSH: Negotiation in business.

Classifi cation: LCC HD58.6 .W45 2016 (print) | LCC HD58.6 (ebook)

| DDC 658.4/052–dc23

LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015044110

ISBN: 9781633690769

eISBN: 9781633690776

00-H6888-FM-LH1.indd iv

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What You’ll Learn

For many people, negotiating may be scary or unpleas-

ant. You worry that you may not have the right skills to

go head-to-head with someone and get what you deserve,

or that you’ll damage your relationship with your boss,

customer, or colleague in the process. You fear that the

negotiation will escalate into hard bargaining or a heated

debate and that, in the end, one of you is going to have to

give up something you want just to reach an agreement.

But negotiations don’t need to be stressful. You can

work with your counterpart to get what both of you want

in a more productive, positive way. In this guide, you’ll

learn a collaborative and creative approach that results

in better outcomes and stronger relationships. It works

in any situation in which you and a counterpart need to

come to terms despite competing interests—from formal

multimillion-dollar sales agreements to informal conver-

sations with colleagues about how you will tackle a quick

project.

You’ll get better at:

• Identifying the real issues at stake

• Overcoming your assumptions about the other party

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What You’ll Learn

• Preparing materials in advance

• Setting the right tone as you begin the

conversation

• Coming up with potential solutions that work for

both parties

• Narrowing down your options

• Handling emotions in the negotiating room

• Recovering when communications break down

• Taming the hard bargainer

• Knowing when to walk away—and how to

strengthen your fallback plan beforehand

• Managing multiple-party negotiations

• Reality-proofi ng your agreement

• Learning from your negotiation

vi

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Contents

Introduction xi

Negotiation is about creativity,

not compromise.

1. The Seven Elements Tool

1

Carefully defi ne your measure of success.

Section 1: BEFORE YOU GET IN THE ROOM

The best negotiator is the most

prepared one

2. Question Your Assumptions About

the Negotiation

15

Develop new, more empowering expectations.

3. Prepare the Substance

23

Understand interests, brainstorm options,

research standards, and consider

alternatives.

4. Prepare the Process

43

Plan how you will work and communicate

with the other party.

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Contents

5. Connect in Advance

57

Agree on the process and who’s involved.

Section 2: IN THE ROOM

Power comes from negotiating

with discipline

6. Begin the Negotiation

71

Establish how you’ll work together.

7. Create and Refi ne Your Options

81

Make the most of your time together.

8. Select the Right Outcome

95

Narrow in on a workable solution and

commit with care.

9. Continuously Adapt Your Approach

103

Be prepared to change course.

Section 3: THE COMMON CHALLENGES

Tools and techniques you can use

in specifi c situations

10. Align Multiple Parties

111

Avoid ineffi

ciency and chaos.

11. Tame the Hard Bargainer

123

Shift the conversation.

12. When Communication Breaks Down

135

Build understanding.

13. When Emotions Get in the Way

147

Go from boiling to cool.

viii

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Contents

Section 4: POSTGAME

Careful review drives learning

and improvement

14. Wrap Up the Negotiation

159

Know when you’re done, and communicate

the fi nal decisions.

15. Review What Happened

167

Use “lessons learned” today for

improvement tomorrow.

Learn More

171

Index 173

About the Author

179

ix

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H6888.indb x

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Introduction

Negotiation is about creativity,

not compromise.

Whether you’re aware of it or not, you’re negotiating all

the time. When you ask your boss for more resources,

agree with a vendor on a price, deliver a performance

evaluation, convince a business partner to join forces

with your company, or even decide with your spouse

where to go on your next vacation, you’re taking a poten-

tially confl ict-fi lled conversation and working toward a

joint solution. That’s what a negotiation is—a situation in

which two parties with potentially competing incentives

and goals come together to create a solution that satisfi es

everyone.

It’s not just high-stakes, months-long discussions that

warrant a thoughtful approach. Improving your ability to

handle all of these situations pays off. This means honing

skills such as confl ict management (as you’d expect) and

creative thinking (which you might not), both of which

are critical to reaching mutually benefi cial decisions.

xi

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Introduction

I’ve heard many people say that being a good negotia-

tor is about thinking quickly on your feet or being a bet-

ter orator or debater than your counterpart. Sure, those

things are helpful. But the best negotiators—the ones

who most often get what they want—are those who are

the most prepared and the most creative.

This guide will help you develop the skills to negotiate

like them so that you’ll be more effective at work—and

even get that trip to Maui on the calendar.

The advice in this guide is meant for professionals at

all levels. You may have years of experience under your

belt or be relatively new to negotiation. It is also ap-

plicable to negotiations of any size, whether you’re the

lone person at the table or have a team supporting you.

Throughout the guide, I’ll give examples of negotiations

large and small to show you how the tactics I recommend

play out.

Rethink Your Approach to

Negotiations

There’s a popular misconception that in a negotiation,

you can either “win” or preserve your relationship with

your counterpart—your boss, a customer, a business part-

ner—but you can’t do both. People assume they need to

choose between getting good results by being hard and

bargaining at all costs or developing a good relationship

by being soft and making concessions.

That way of thinking causes the typical negotiation to

go something like this:

Party 1: Here’s what I want.

Party 2: Here’s what I want.

xii

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Introduction

Party 1: OK, I’ll make this small concession to get

closer to what you want. But just this one time.

Party 2: OK, since you did that, I’ll also make a small

concession. But just this one time.

Party 1: Well, that was the best I can do.

Party 2: Me, too.

Party 1: I guess I need to get my boss involved (or

fi nd someone else with whom to negotiate).

Party 2: I may need to walk away, too.

Party 1: Maybe there’s something I can do. What if I

make this additional concession?

Party 2: That would help.

Party 1: I’ll need to get a concession from you then.

Party 2: OK. What if we agreed to split the

difference?

Party 1: It’s a deal.

Sound familiar? This is a common approach, often

called “positional bargaining.” People believe that if they

go into the negotiation looking stern and unmovable, and

then make small planned concessions and not-so-thinly

veiled threats along the way, they’ll have more infl uence

and get the results they want. But in my view, that isn’t a

path toward negotiation that gets you what you want. It’s

simply a haggle, a concessions game that forces you (and

your counterpart) to compromise.

Positional bargaining isn’t all bad. It can be quick and

effi cient. It requires little preparation other than know-

xiii

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Introduction

ing what your opening offer is, what concessions you’re

willing to make, and any threats you might use. And in

the end, it always feels as if you got something, because

if your counterpart played his role, then he conceded as

well. In fact, positional bargaining works well when you

are negotiating simple transactions that have low stakes

and you don’t care about your ongoing relationship with

the other party (think about agreeing on a price for that

leather couch off Craigslist).

But this approach can be dangerous. In almost all

business negotiations—requesting a raise with your boss,

resolving a confl ict with a customer, convincing others

of a change in policy, agreeing on a budget for next year,

for example—there is a lot more at stake, and chances

are strong that you’ll need to continue to work with the

other party going forward. If you were to try to use po-

sitional bargaining in those situations, you wouldn’t get

impressive results. You have to be able to stand fi rm and

maintain important relationships.

Positional bargaining rewards stubbornness and de-

ception; it often yields arbitrary outcomes; and it risks

doing damage to your relationships. Most importantly, it

causes you to miss the opportunity to get more value out

of the negotiation than you originally expected. In other

words, you won’t be creative and fi nd ways to expand

the pie because you’ll be so focused on exactly how to di -

vide it up.

Perhaps most dangerously, there is an underlying

assumption in this approach that you’re in a zero-sum

game: If you gain something, the other party has to give

up something in return. In the vast majority of negotia-

xiv

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Introduction

TABLE I-1

A critical shift in negotiations approach

From

To

What do you want?

Why do you want it?

Will you accept, or will you

What are some diff erent possible

give up?

ways we might resolve this?

How about we just split it?

By what criteria/legitimate pro-

cess can we evaluate (and defend)

the best answer?

Saying, “I understand”

Showing I understand

Thinking my strength comes from

Thinking my strength comes

knowing I am right, anchoring

from being open to learning and

well, and eff ectively using threats

persuasion, being skilled at fi gur-

ing out their motives, and being

extremely creative

Copyright © 2011 Vantage Partners, LLC. All rights reserved.

tions I’ve worked on, there is always more value to be cre-

ated than originally thought. The pie is rarely— probably

never—fi xed.

To negotiate more effectively, you need to shift your

approach away from this combative and compromising

approach and toward a more collaborative one. Table I-1

shows how to reframe key questions about the negotia-

tion with this approach in mind. For example, instead

of asking yourself, “What am I willing to give up?” you

might think more creatively and wonder, “What are dif-

ferent ways we can resolve this?” This helps ensure you

aren’t shrinking the pie but expanding it. Throughout

this guide, I’ll offer advice on how to make this critical

shift.

xv

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Introduction

The Circle of Value Approach

This shift is the foundation of what my colleagues and

I call the circle of value approach to negotiating. This

is where two parties come together to jointly solve a

problem—decide on a contract, create the parameters

of a new job, or delineate the conditions of a partner-

ship. Together they dig to fully understand each other’s

underlying interests, invent options that will meet every-

one’s core interests (including those of people not even

in the room), discuss rational precedent, and use exter-

nal standards to evaluate the possibilities—all while ac-

tively managing communications and building a working

relationship.

At fi rst read, this may sound like a “soft” approach to

negotiation. In fact, it is just the opposite: It takes dis-

cipline and toughness to truly get creative and to apply

sound decision-making criteria. Taking a joint problem-

solving approach does not require, or even condone, sac-

rifi cing your own interests. It is about being clear about

why you want what you want (and why the other party

wants what she wants)—and using that information to

fi nd a high-value solution that gets you both there.

This is a method that my partners and I have devel-

oped and refi ned over the past three decades since its ori-

gin in our work with Roger Fisher at the Harvard Nego-

tiation Project. We apply it—along with the frameworks,

checklists, and techniques shared in this guide—with

corporate clients, government leaders, and students at

Harvard, Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business, and West

Point. It’s grounded in research, but more importantly,

xvi

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Introduction

it’s based on what very successful negotiators do from the

battlefi elds of Afghanistan to the boardrooms of Silicon

Valley, from Tokyo to Johannesburg to Berlin, from com-

plex sales and purchases to alliances and acquisitions.

The benefi ts of this approach include better solu-

tions, improved working relationships, greater buy-in

and commitment, and more successful implementation

of solutions.

Of course, there are challenges as well. This approach

requires more preparation, deeper skill, and real disci-

pline. You’ll likely need to set aside a signifi cant amount

of time in advance of your negotiation to think through

your needs, your counterpart’s needs, creative options,

and more. Not every negotiation will wrap up in one

sitting. Some may require multiple sessions with time in

between to rethink, regroup with others, or revise your

plan. It will take discipline to control your responses—

to avoid reacting unthinkingly to what your counter-

part might do or say, or to “change the game” when

necessary—and to keep moving in the direction you de-

sire. Even the simplest negotiations require thought be-

fore, during, and after as you enter and work within the

circle of value.

You may feel uncomfortable at times as you use what

may be an unconventional approach. Your counterpart

might be uncomfortable as well. She might even inter-

pret your openness to collaboration as weakness and

think she can take advantage of you. But if you follow the

advice here, she won’t. In fact, you’ll shape the negotia-

tion and get the results you seek, and often much better

ones than you ever expected.

xvii

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H6888.indb xviii

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Chapter 1

The Seven

Elements Tool

Carefully defi ne your

measure of success.

How you defi ne success in a negotiation will infl uence

how you prepare and, in turn, how you negotiate. Think

through what you want to achieve: What would a suc-

cessful agreement look like? How do you want to feel

when you’ve left the table? You want to identify specifi c

criteria that will help guide your preparation, and you’ll

also use these measures to evaluate the agreement when

it’s complete.

Beware: There are a lot of common measures that are

limiting, and even dangerous. Some professionals think

they’ve negotiated well when they’ve extracted more con-

cessions than they gave up or when they’ve pushed their

1

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The Seven Elements Tool

counterpart past his bottom line. Others believe that

success means they avoided confrontation or an uncom-

fortable situation. Still others are happy if they simply

reached any agreement at all.

These measures focus on the wrong things, and they

can undermine your effectiveness. Using them may limit

your approach, hinder creativity, and most importantly,

lead you to leave value on the table because you haven’t

considered a better solution. It’s tempting to use these

measures, especially when you sense your counterpart

or your boss is doing the same, but don’t. Instead, use a

more robust defi nition of success, one that meets seven

criteria.

Defi ne Success with Seven Elements

Aim for an agreement that:

• Satisfi es everyone’s core interests (yours and

theirs)

• Is the best of many options

• Meets legitimate, fair standards

• Is better than your alternatives

• Is comprised of clear, realistic commitments

• Is the result of effective communication

• Helps build the kind of relationship you want

We call these bolded terms the seven elements. Not

only do they form a helpful checklist for determining

whether your negotiation was successful, they can also

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The Seven Elements Tool

guide the entire circle of value approach. We’ll use them

throughout the book, but for now, let’s focus on how they

defi ne a successful negotiation.

Satisfi es everyone’s core interests

By interests, we do not mean the preconceived demands

or positions that you or the other party may have, but

rather the underlying needs, aims, fears, and concerns

that shape what you want.

For example, when negotiating a job offer, you may say

to yourself that you want no less than $75K and a 15% bo-

nus. But those are demands, rather than statements that

explain why you want what you want. Do you want that

money to pay off short-term debt, cover increased living

expenses, travel, create long-term security, or something

else? These are your motivating interests. They’re impor-

tant to identify because you may be able to satisfy them

in many other ways, some of which might be even more

valuable to you than $75K plus 15%.

Aim for an outcome that satisfi es your full range of

interests and your counterpart’s; this will go a long way

toward ensuring that your agreement sticks.

Is the best of many options

Options are the solutions you generate that could meet

your and your counterpart’s interests. During the course

of a productive negotiation, the two of you will develop

many options to discuss.

Your fi nal agreement should be the best of those many

options. A good negotiator leaves the discussion think-

ing that she and her counterpart created real value; if the

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The Seven Elements Tool

outcome feels like it was the only solution possible, it’s

probably not a good one.

Meets legitimate, fair standards

Standards are external, objective measures that can be

applied to an agreement to assess its fairness. These

might be formal guidelines, such as market prices or

rules and regulations; they could be common practices

or precedents in your industry; or they might be a third

party’s informal assessment. Those evaluating the agree-

ment—you and your counterpart, your boss, leaders at

the other company, outside regulators—are going to want

to know it is fair and will want to compare it against ob-

jective criteria or external principles. You can’t simply

have ceded to a lower price because your counterpart

begged and pleaded, or won a key concession because

you outnegotiated him.

In research we conducted with close to 1,000 nego-

tiators all over the world, we found that what the vast

majority of people wanted most from a negotiation was

to leave feeling that they were fairly treated and that they

could defend the outcome to stakeholders and critics.

Most reported this as more important than thinking they

got a “great deal.” Aim for an agreement that would be

considered fair by those in the room and outside of it.

Is better than your alternatives

An alternative is something you would do to fulfi ll your

interests if you couldn’t reach an agreement with your

counterpart, something that would not require the other

party’s consent.

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The Seven Elements Tool

Typically when thinking ahead to situations in which

they are unable to come to an agreement, most people

simply say, “I’m not willing to go below $120K” or “My

boss told us to abandon the discussion if we can’t get

these terms.” Unfortunately, while this “bottom line”

might be your desired threshold, it’s often arbitrary. In-

stead, consider what your alternatives truly are: What

would you do if you were unable to reach an agree-

ment with your counterpart? Would you fi nd another

vendor? Could your company make the part? Or would

you stop manufacturing the product altogether? And

what would all of this cost you in terms of time, quality,

and money?

Once you’ve identifi ed these alternatives, consider

which is the best one. (This is sometimes referred to

as your BATNA—your best alternative to a negotiated

agreement. I’ll refer to it as your best alternative. )

Any outcome you agree to needs to be better than

what you would do if you walked away from the negoti-

ating table. If the best option that your counterpart will

consider is worth less than your best alternative, by defi -

nition you’re better off resorting to that alternative.

Is comprised of clear, realistic commitments

Each party ultimately makes commitments to do or not

do certain things, to do them in a certain way, by a certain

date, and so on. These promises—to provide a service,

pay a fee, deliver a product, provide resources—need to

be operational, suffi ciently detailed, and realistic. They

also need to be made by someone with the correct au-

thority and with the approval of necessary stakeholders.

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The Seven Elements Tool

It’s not just the fi nal agreement that is comprised of

commitments: Each party will likely make promises dur-

ing the process of negotiating as well (to research stan-

dards, to vet an option with people back at the home

offi ce). It’s important that each of these commitments,

including the fi nal one, is made by someone with the au-

thority to do so, on both sides of the table.

After all, structuring unrealistic agreements is a waste

of time. It might feel good to think you “got them,” but

when the agreement unravels a week, a month, or even

a year later because, for example, your supplier can’t re-

alistically produce the parts you desperately need, you

will likely end up wishing you had never agreed to those

terms in the fi rst place. For an agreement to be success-

ful, it needs to be clear that each side can hold up its end

of the bargain.

Is the result of eff ective communication

Many negotiators make the mistake of focusing only

on the substance of the negotiation (interests, options,

standards, and so on). How you communicate about that

substance, however, can make all the difference. The lan-

guage you use and the way that you build understand-

ing, jointly solve problems, and together determine the

process of the negotiation with your counterpart make

your negotiation more effi cient, yield clear agreements

that each party understands, and help you build better

relationships.

Open lines of communication between parties make

for an effective negotiation and will make it easier to ne-

gotiate with this party the next time as well.

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The Seven Elements Tool

Helps build the kind of relationship you want

Another critical factor in the success of your negoti-

ation is how you manage your relationship with your

counterpart. You may want to establish a new connec-

tion or repair a damaged one; in any case, you want

to build a strong working relationship built on mu-

tual respect, well-established trust, and a side-by-side

problem- solving approach.

Using All Seven Elements

Some elements have more to do with the process, or the

“how” of negotiation, and some are more relevant to the

substance, or the “what.” You can see all seven elements

and how they are used in fi gure 1-1.

Some clients have asked me whether it’s acceptable to

simply do better than their best alternative and to call it

a successful negotiation if only that element of success is

reached. My response is almost always the same: Aim to

FIGURE 1-1

The seven elements of negotiation

① Interests

② Options

③ Standards

Substance

④ Alternatives

⑤ Commitments

⑥ Communication

ocessPr ⑦ Relationship

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The Seven Elements Tool

satisfy the requirements of all seven elements, both the

substantive ones and the process ones. Each is impor-

tant to ensuring you’ve gotten the most you can out of

the agreement. You wouldn’t cut down your checklist for

assessing the safety of a product, reviewing a contract, or

purchasing a key piece of equipment, so why do it here?

Begin with this structured approach, and stay disciplined

throughout your negotiation.

The seven elements provide a useful framework to

defi ne your measure of success, and as you’ll see in the

chapters to come, you can use these elements to help you

prepare, determine your approach in the room, diagnose

and handle diffi cult situations, and capture what you’ve

learned afterward. To help you with this, use the Seven El-

ements Tool (fi gure 1-2) to document information about

each of the seven elements during your prep work and

the negotiation itself. Think expansively, and write down

as many responses as you can for each prompt. When you

learn something new before or during the negotiation,

or something happens that you didn’t anticipate, return

to this tool and update it. This valuable worksheet will

guide you throughout the entire negotiation process.

Keep in mind, you won’t always use the elements in

the exact same order; nor will this tool remain static

throughout your negotiation. You’ll likely use it itera-

tively, coming back to the elements over and over as you

gather more information.

Now that you have a good understanding of what suc-

cess looks like and the tool to get you started, it’s time to

prepare for the negotiation.

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Section 1

Before You Get

in the Room

The best negotiator is

the most prepared one.

Preparation is the key to any successful negotiation, but

few people spend enough time on it. I’ve had sales lead-

ers tell me that they prepare in accordance with how long

it takes to get to their customer’s offi ce. That’s fi ne if your

meeting is in Tokyo and you live in Manhattan. But it’s

abysmal if you’re meeting the customer in Brooklyn.

Prepare as far in advance of the negotiation as pos-

sible. Take time to:

• Question your assumptions about the negotiation

• Think through what you want from the negotia-

tion and why—and what the other party wants

and why

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Before You Get in the Room

• Get creative about your options

• Consider objective standards to apply to your

options

• Assess your best alternative (and theirs)

• Plan how you’ll manage communication and your

relationship with your counterpart

• Lay the groundwork for a successful negotiation by

reaching out to the other party in advance

Doing all of this ahead of time gives you the advantage

in the room. You’ll be able to better control the process

and shape the outcome.

In the next chapter, I’ll discuss how to overcome some

of the more common negative assumptions that you may

hold as you go into conversations with your counter-

part. Then, in the rest of this section, I’ll address how to

prepare for both the substance and the logistics of your

negotiation.

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Chapter 2

Question Your

Assumptions

About the

Negotiation

Develop new, more

empowering expectations.

As you launch into the preparation process, you may al-

ready have a lot of assumptions about how your negotia-

tion will go, many of them negative. You may suspect that

there is only one option the other party will agree to (be-

cause your counterpart has never budged from his stated

policy) or that the negotiation itself will be unpleasantly

contentious (because that’s always been your experience).

But assumptions like this can be dangerous and lim-

iting: They hinder your creativity. For example, if you

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Before You Get in the Room

think the other party is going to cling to a specifi c policy,

you’ll be focused on combating it directly and unlikely to

throw out more-inventive options that may actually get

you and your counterpart something better. Or if you as-

sume the other party is going to push hard, you might

send signals that you’re going to do the same, without

even realizing it.

Take, for example, a salesperson working with a pro-

curement manager. The salesperson might think, “Well,

the procurement manager has never gone for a risk-

sharing deal in the past, so let’s not even bring that up

this time.” This assumption will cause him to hold back

what might be a viable solution for both sides, and if the

purchaser learns he’s holding something back because

he’s underestimated him, he risks damaging the relation-

ship. Perhaps most dangerously, the salesperson could be

leaving value on the table by not mentioning the option

he’s hiding. A relatively simple shift in thinking—from

“He’ll never go for that” to “If I never try, I’ll never know

if he might go for some new, creative options”—can posi-

tively change the negotiation.

As you begin preparing, take a closer look at the as-

sumptions you’ve already made and how they might be

holding you back. Then challenge them, and see if you

can shift them. Continue this process for the entire ne-

gotiation, checking to see what assumptions you’ve made

and recasting them if necessary.

The salesperson in the example might, after all, offer

risk sharing as an option: “I know you haven’t been in-

terested in the past, but we’ve changed how we structure

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Question Your Assumptions About the Negotiation

these deals to address the accounting issues you raised. It

might solve the pricing issue, so I wanted to test this out

again and see if we might be able to make it appealing for

both of us.”

Even if the purchaser says no, the salesperson has

demonstrated his understanding of his counterpart’s in-

terests and his willingness to be collaborative and open

to creative solutions.

Be Aware of the Assumptions

You Often Make

In order to go into a negotiation with an open mind, you

must fi rst become cognizant that you hold particular as-

sumptions that may be limiting your perspective. That’s

not as easy as it sounds, because these notions are often

deeply embedded; they often feel like objective truths

rather than subjective beliefs.

Common negative assumptions fall into two catego-

ries: premature judgments about your counterpart, and

those about the negotiation more generally:

About the other party

• As in the example with the salesperson, you may

expect your counterpart to do certain things based

on prior experience with her: “She’ll never go for

an equal partnership” or “She always acts nice

until the very end.”

• Even if you’ve never negotiated with the person,

you guess how she’s going to behave based on

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Before You Get in the Room

where she’s from or her role: “People from the

Northeast are aggressive; those from the West

Coast are laid back” or “People in procurement

care only about the bottom-line price; engineers

care only about the quality of the product and are

pushovers when it comes to actual cost.”

About how the negotiation will go

• You may assume that business negotiations are

always formal, protracted, and overly focused

on terms and conditions, or that certain kinds of

personal negotiations are always contentious or

zero sum, such as those about asking for a raise,

purchasing a car, or buying a house.

As you’re preparing for your negotiation, think back to

past negotiations, or other types of work situations, and

list assumptions you made that turned out to be false. Try

to spot patterns and identify the kinds of assumptions

you typically make.

Then review the list and ask yourself which of these

are pertinent to the current situation. As you do, add any

other assumptions that come to mind about the negotia-

tion at hand.

Shift Your Assumptions

Once you have a list of your assumptions, for each item,

ask yourself whether it’s possible that the assumption is

not true and then what it would take to disprove it. De-

pending on how you answer, there are a number of ways

to change your thinking.

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Question Your Assumptions About the Negotiation

Shifting your assumptions about

the other party

Hard data is one of the best ways to refute a myth. Find

people who know the person or organization with whom

you’re going to negotiate. Talk to others who have worked

with him. You might even fi nd people who have a similar

job as your counterpart and can give you a sense of what

the person might care about, what pressures he may be

under, or what his interests might be. Gather as many

facts as you can that might disprove, or at least challenge,

what you’re given to believe.

If you don’t have access to those facts, invite some of

your trusted colleagues to a meeting where you can ex-

plain what your assumptions are and ask that they sys-

tematically challenge them. Give them permission to

poke holes in your theories, and they can help you see

things from a different perspective.

Shifting your assumptions about how

the negotiation will go

To address your negative ideas about how the negotiation

will go, reframe them into “enabling” assumptions—ones

that support a more positive outcome. (If you aren’t able

to disprove myths about the other party, this approach

can work for her as well.)

To do so, imagine how you would act if your belief

weren’t true. This is what the salesperson did in the ex-

ample earlier: Realizing his possibly faulty and debilitat-

ing assumption—that his counterpart was likely to be

“yet another unimaginative procurement manager” who

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Before You Get in the Room

would never even consider discussing a risk-sharing deal,

and therefore that it wasn’t worth even raising the idea—

he jotted down a few ways in which risk sharing could

work (both for him and his counterpart). Armed with

this list, he is ready to share this information with the

procurement manager in the negotiation itself in order to

both test his openness to the idea and persuade him how

it could benefi t each of them.

In table 2-1, I’ve listed some other limiting assump-

tions and their more enabling partners.

TABLE 2-1

Shifting your assumptions about the negotiation

Limiting

Enabling

Our interests are opposed, so we

While some interests con-

can’t both get what we want.

fl ict, others are shared or just

diff erent.

These negotiations are always

There are many ways to negoti-

contentious. There’s no other way

ate, and with a little discipline,

to handle this except to haggle

I can lead the way to a more col-

and eventually compromise.

laborative negotiation.

The other party makes poor

The other party, like all people,

decisions.

will do what she believes is in

her best interest.

I should behave as badly as

I should do what moves us in the

he does.

right direction no matter how

the other party behaves.

We have no choice but to go

There are always other options,

with this solution.

and nothing is settled unless

I agree.

These people are impossible

With the right tools and ap-

to deal with.

proach, I can understand what

motivates them and craft an

agreement that works.

Copyright © 2013 Vantage Partners, LLC. All rights reserved.

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Question Your Assumptions About the Negotiation

Look to Be Surprised

Throughout your interactions with your counterpart, con-

tinue to look for data that challenges your assumptions.

Consider assigning someone on your team to be a watch-

dog; his job is to keep an eye out for any evidence that

proves your expectations wrong. Maybe you presumed

that the other party was going to be unbending, but you

notice a willingness to involve new people in the discussion

or to share information that you never thought she’d re-

veal: It looks like it’s time to revisit your beliefs about her.

Also question your assumptions anytime you get stuck

in the negotiation. Go back to your list and see which of

the thoughts you wrote down might be holding you back at

this particular moment. If you could disprove or reframe

any of them, would it help you move the process forward?

Finally, review your assumptions after the negotia-

tion is over. Look over the list and determine what you’ve

learned. Record the new lessons so that you don’t make

the same mistakes next time. (I’ll go into more detail on

learning from your negotiation in section 4.)

Keep in mind that many of your assumptions, even

negative ones, will be proven correct once you’re in the

room. After all, you made many of them based on past

experience, and that can be a good guide. Perhaps the

other party does make poor decisions or is particularly

stubborn. But shifting to a more positive belief anyway

will get you beyond those limitations. If you assume that

you or the other party cannot get creative, change the

course of the negotiation, fi x the relationship, or trust

each other, you never will.

21

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Chapter 3

Prepare the

Substance

Understand interests,

brainstorm options, research

standards, and consider

alternatives.

To be agile and creative in a negotiation, you need to

prepare for both the substance and the process— what

you will say and do and also how you say and do it.

You’ve been introduced to the seven elements and used

them to defi ne what success looks like. Now you’ll use

the same elements to prepare. In this chapter, we’ll fo-

cus on the fi rst four—interests, options, standards, and

alternatives—which outline the content of your conver-

sation. The other three—commitments, communication,

23

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Before You Get in the Room

and relationships—are more about process, and we’ll

cover those in the next chapter.

One note: While I lay out the elements here in a logi-

cal order, it’s important to remember that, in practice,

things are much more fl uid; you’ll iterate between them

throughout the negotiation. For example, it’s helpful to

brainstorm interests to lay the foundation so you can

then generate options, but thinking about options may

help you uncover interests you hadn’t yet thought about.

When you’re actually in the negotiating room, you’ll be

returning to your prep work and updating it as well.

Reserve Time for Preparation

Negotiations—of any size—require time, commitment,

and careful preparation. You should devote the same

amount of time to getting ready as you think the nego-

tiation will take—at a minimum. This is true for even

seemingly straightforward discussions. If you’ve sched-

uled a two-hour conversation, spend at least two hours

getting ready. And the more complex the issues at hand,

the more you need to prepare, at least double or triple the

length of time you’ll spend at the table.

There are times, of course, when you won’t be able to

thoroughly prepare: You see your boss on your way into

a meeting, for example, and you have to agree on a dead-

line for an upcoming report; a vendor shows up unex-

pectedly and wants to negotiate a new volume purchase;

or a customer calls demanding a price cut. Discussions

like these still require some quick prep work—or, in the

worst case, just running through the seven elements in

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Prepare the Substance

your head as you’re walking down the hall—so you can

understand how you’ll view success and understand your

and your counterpart’s point of view.

Identify Whom to Involve

in Your Preparation

While you may do most of your prep work on your own,

it’s helpful to get others involved, if not to actively assist

you, then at least to provide useful information.

As you work on each element in your preparation,

reach out to colleagues both inside and outside your or-

ganization who have been in similar negotiations, either

with similar issues or with the same party. Invite them to

a brainstorming session to talk about the other party’s in-

terests and alternatives, for example, or just to pick their

brains for fi ve minutes: “Carol, I’m doing a limited liabil-

ity agreement with a new customer, and we’re trying to

agree on the terms. Here are the constraints; how have

you done this in the past?”

Also think broadly about who will be affected by the re-

sults of the negotiation. It might be your peers, who have

to implement the decision you come to; your spouse, who

cares about how your salary negotiation turns out; and,

in high-stakes cases, your company’s CEO or the board.

These folks don’t need to be included in every prepara-

tion session, but it can be helpful to review your work

on the seven elements with them before you go into the

room; you don’t want to fi nd out after the fact that an op-

tion you’ve proposed isn’t feasible or doesn’t account for

an important interest of theirs. Most people remember

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Before You Get in the Room

to do this with their boss but neglect to do it adequately

with other stakeholders.

Even if no one else is affected by the outcome of your

negotiation, it’s always helpful to have someone else in-

volved during preparation to challenge your thinking

and ask tough questions. Find a trusted coworker to re-

view your work with you and play devil’s advocate.

Set the Stage for Your Preparations

To begin, think again about all of the parties involved in

your negotiation—the stakeholders you just identifi ed, as

well as anyone else who is involved directly (the nego-

tiators and those to whom they will need to defend the

agreement) and indirectly (end users, senior manage-

ment, legal, fi nance, regulators). Draw a map that shows

roughly how all of these players are interconnected—who

reports to whom, who infl uences whom. Once you’ve

connected with your counterpart, you’ll dive deeper into

this list of people and how they’ll infl uence the negotia-

tion (see chapter 5), but for now, capture a quick snap-

shot of the players.

Then identify the core issues—the discrete points that

the negotiation needs to resolve. For example, in a sales

negotiation, you may need to agree on price, service, de-

livery date, and so forth. Thinking through each issue will

help as you think about your interests, the other party’s

interests, and a wide range of different options.

Keep these two things—who the parties are and what

the issues are—in mind as you prepare for the negotia-

tion using each of the seven elements.

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Prepare the Substance

Interests: Identify Underlying

Aims and Needs

Begin going through the elements by understanding your

interests. This often takes more work than you might

think. You may have broad desires like “make as much

money as I can” or “get it done quickly” or “maintain

control of the project.” Or you may have an idea of what

you want in your head—the $75K plus 15% bonus dis-

cussed in chapter 1. But you need to get beyond what you

want to why you want it. Why do you want that particu-

lar salary and bonus? What are you going to do with the

money? What is driving your desire to want to structure

it with a bonus? What are your deep-down needs, aims,

fears, and concerns in this negotiation? You want to be

sure to identify not just one or two of them, but all of your

relevant motivations.

Write down every interest you can think of. Then take

each one in turn and ask why it’s important. Continue

this line of questioning by asking why that reason is im-

portant and then again why that reason is important.

Keep asking why, why, why. By digging deeper, you’ll get

a better understanding of what you really want from the

negotiation, so you can be more creative about fi nding

solutions that yield better outcomes overall.

Consider the other party

Think about what the other party’s interests might be. Your

fi rst guess may be just that, a guess. That’s OK, but seek to

back it up with evidence. Look at past negotiations with

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this particular person or organization. What was driv-

ing your counterpart in these situations? If you haven’t

participated in those discussions yourself, ask colleagues

who have.

Talk to people who know your counterpart outside

the context of a negotiation. What do they think he cares

about most? Look at similar negotiations with other

companies or people. What did those people care about

that might inform your estimate of the current party’s

interests?

Think of these initial ideas as hypotheses that you can

test as you gather more data, before and during the ne-

gotiation; after all, you want to be careful that you’re not

just making assumptions. And, as with your own inter-

ests, get more specifi c by asking yourself why your coun-

terpart might care about each of these interests.

Consider other stakeholders

Think, too, about your list of the other individuals di-

rectly or indirectly involved in the negotiation. For ex-

ample, consider why HR might care about the compen-

sation package you are negotiating with your future boss;

think about what concerns regulators who are monitor-

ing your company’s R&D alliance might have; or refl ect

on what the fi nance department might worry about in

the sale you’re negotiating with a customer.

Identify areas of confl ict

and common ground

Once you have each individual’s interests listed, note

where your interests overlap, which are different but

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complementary, and which confl ict. Thinking in advance

about what drives your behavior and theirs on similar is-

sues will help you brainstorm options that take advan-

tage of interests that complement one another or bridge

the gap between those that confl ict.

Options: Imagine Potential Solutions

When brainstorming options, your goal is to develop

possible solutions that meet the interests of everyone in-

volved in the negotiation.

Write down as many good, bad, and crazy ideas as you

can; don’t settle for one or two options. Aim for at least

seven or eight, even in a simple negotiation, and many

more in a complex one. Allow yourself to come up with so-

lutions that seem unrealistic; often from those impossible

options, you’ll see a path toward a more viable one. Those

solutions may not address every interest listed, but each

should meet at least one interest from each stakeholder.

During this portion of your prep, you might come up

with an option that you feel is perfect—it meets every-

one’s needs. But don’t become too wedded to a single idea

here or even worry about prioritizing your ideas yet. You

want to develop as many as you can so that you can go

into the room fully armed with a range of solutions. That

way you’ll have a backup if your perfect idea doesn’t actu-

ally end up working, and you will have your eyes and ears

open if your counterpart shares something new about

her interests or tosses out an even better plan.

At this point, don’t worry about whether you’ll divulge

these options to the other party when you get into the

room; just be creative. If you run out of steam, go back and

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look at your lists of interests, pick confl icting ones from

each party’s list, and ask, “What can I do about these?”

Focusing on those deeper underlying interests you

identifi ed earlier is the key to this exercise. For example,

when imagining the options for your raise negotiation

with your boss, avoid thinking, “I want $75K and she just

doesn’t want to increase my salary.” (There don’t seem

to be many options that would meet both of those broad

statements of interest.) Instead, consider that you want

this raise primarily to pay for the online classes you’re

taking at night and the increased child-care costs in-

volved. She may be worried about keeping salary levels

consistent and having cash on hand to fund the new hire

she keeps talking about, too. Once you’re thinking this

way, you can see that one option might be to have the

company pay for your courses, especially if they make you

a more valuable employee—even more so if your newly

earned skills would mean your boss wouldn’t have to

make the new hire at all.

Make smarter trade-off s

Some options you create may be simple trades: For ex-

ample, you may consider that you will accept a vendor’s

increase in price if he provides a higher level of service.

However, push yourself as much as you can to be more

sophisticated. Invent high-gain and low-cost trade-off

options. Think about what kind of options would be valu-

able to the other party, but don’t take much away from

you, and vice versa.

For example, imagine you’re negotiating with a cus-

tomer who is buying a new piece of equipment worth sev-

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eral million dollars. You know that he’s deeply concerned

about ensuring that the new equipment will work with

his company’s existing equipment. If you have plenty of

engineers available at that time, you might offer to have

your engineers do a pre-inspection to certify compatibil-

ity, free of charge. This doesn’t cost you much (since the

engineers’ other projects aren’t taking all their time), and

it meets the customer’s interest—confi dence in his com-

pany’s ability to use the expensive new equipment.

Get some help

If you think you’ve come up with all the options you can,

share the interests you’ve identifi ed with a colleague who

isn’t familiar with the negotiation. Ask her: “What have

I missed?” “What could you imagine working here?” “Is

there something else I should consider putting on the

table?” She may provide you with a different perspective

that can lead to more creative options.

Review your list

When you think you’re done, review your list of options

against the interests you identifi ed earlier and consider

whether there are ways to improve them; can you revise

or add to what you have so that the options better satisfy

your and your counterpart’s goals?

Standards: Find Objective Criteria

to Assess Fairness

Next, think about what standards might apply to the

situation. Standards help you ascertain what would be

considered fair if someone outside was looking in on

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your negotiation. They can be formal, written guidelines;

common practices or precedents; or a third party’s infor-

mal assessment.

Consider what objective criteria you and your coun-

terpart might apply to determine acceptable prices, vol-

umes, payment conditions, quality standards, cancella-

tion terms, or other stipulations of your agreement. What

standard might help you select one of your options over

another?

Research written standards that might legitimize your

eventual agreement. You might simply search the web, or

you may need to purchase industry reports, attend con-

ferences, or perform other forms of market research. It

may take a little sleuthing, but more often than not you’ll

fi nd something that will help.

For example, in a sales meeting, you might use pub-

licly available information about what other companies

have paid for similar products and services. In an alliance

negotiation in which you are deciding who has rights to

newly developed intellectual property, you might look at

other situations in your industry where each partner is

making similar investments and taking similar risks. For

a conversation about your salary, look for data on what

other people make who have the same level of experience

and work in the same industry and region as you. If you

can fi nd that data from a reliable source, both you and

your manager will likely see this as a helpful standard.

If you’re unable to fi nd existing criteria, set up a pro-

cess to assess fairness, such as asking a disinterested

third party to look at the agreement. For example, if

you’re negotiating the price for a portion of your busi-

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ness, approach an investment banker whom you and the

buyer both trust to review the deal.

Alternatives: Consider

Fallback Solutions

Now it’s time to think about your alternatives, or what

you would do if you’re unable to reach an agreement with

your counterpart. Go back to your list of interests and

ask yourself what you might do to meet them if you can-

not come to an agreement. Jot down all the possibilities

that come to mind.

For example, if you and a supplier aren’t able to settle

on terms, you could go to another supplier. You could

stay with this supplier, but escalate the negotiation to his

boss. Or you could hold out a few months and see if the

deal gets better with time. In a raise negotiation, if you

aren’t able to agree on an arrangement that meets your

range of interests, you could look for a different job, go

freelance, or—in the previous example—decide not to

take those classes after all.

Consider alternatives that you or your organization

might simply pursue on your own (manufacturing a part

yourself ) as well as those that involve other parties (fi nd-

ing another supplier). In either case, research each alter-

native you identify: Get bids and understand costs and

benefi ts so that you can understand how each alternative

refl ects your interests.

Strengthen your best alternative

Once you’ve created a list of fi ve or more alternatives, ask

yourself which best meets your interests. This is your best

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alternative and sets the bar for any agreement: Never

agree to an option that is worth less to you than your best

alternative.

Now ask yourself what you can do to make this al-

ternative more valuable to you. As a simple example, if

you’re a manager negotiating a revised agreement with a

longtime vendor, you might decide that your best alter-

native would be to switch to a different supplier. You’ve

done research and identifi ed potential alternatives and

even solicited bids. But if you’ve identifi ed this as your

best alternative, fi nd a way to improve those bids. You

might negotiate the price with one supplier or send some

of your engineers to work with her to improve her prod-

uct. Doing this work up front improves your ability to

resort to your best alternative: You’re poised to take that

option if necessary.

Weaken the other party’s alternatives

Also think about what the other party’s alternatives

might be. You won’t know for sure, but come up with

some hypotheses. Perhaps you’ve heard he’s working

with another supplier, or you assume that he has another

job candidate in the interview process.

Assess how you can weaken the other party’s best al-

ternative. Can you change your counterpart’s perception

of how strong that alternative is? Can you show him that

it wouldn’t be easy to change to a new supplier by dem-

onstrating the switching costs? Or can you show that you

are more valuable than the other job candidates because

you’re likely the only one who knows the organization as

well as you do?

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Here’s another example: If you’re getting ready to dis-

cuss an agreement with a colleague from another depart-

ment and you assume his best alternative is to go to your

boss instead, you might go to your manager preemptively

and explain the situation: “I just want to give you a heads-

up that you might get a phone call. When you do, do what

you think is best, but I’d prefer you refer him back to me.”

If your boss agrees, then in that one easy move, you’ve

eliminated your counterpart’s ability to get a better deal

by escalating the issue.

Push as Far as You Can

As you prepare each of these four elements, push yourself:

Don’t settle for two or three interests; fi nd seven or eight.

Come up with a whole range of relevant standards. De-

velop options that might seem crazy at fi rst. Ask yourself

hard questions, and if you’re unable to, bring someone in

to help. The harder you push and the deeper you go in

your preparation, the more power you’ll have at the table.

You may not be able to answer all of these questions

during your preparation. If you’ve never interacted with

the other party before, you may not know her specifi c in-

terests or have a way to fi nd out. You may not be able to

uncover relevant standards. That’s OK. Identifying these

holes as you prepare is just as important as completing

what you know. These gaps help you decide where to

start when you walk in the room: You’ll want to open the

fi rst meeting by asking about the other party’s interests,

for example, or probing about her best alternative.

Don’t skip out on portions of your preparation, even if

you think, for example, that it’s highly unlikely that you’ll

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Before You Get in the Room

need to resort to your alternative. Even if you don’t end

up using it, your preparation will help you make the right

decisions in the negotiation. Prepare every element us-

ing the questions in the box “Questions to Answer While

Preparing for the Substance of Your Negotiation” at the

end of this chapter so that you are ready for anything that

comes your way.

Preparing When You’re Short on Time

Even if you fi nd yourself with limited time to prepare—

you’re facing an immediate discussion or a customer

calls you for a spur-of-the-moment chat—it’s important

to consider each element carefully before your negotia-

tion. You’ll need to understand the full range of solutions

available to you in order to best meet your interests, even

if that means looking elsewhere. In a case such as this,

run through each of the elements in your mind and list

all that time will allow.

For example, Annie is walking down the hall and spots

a colleague, Raj, whose help she needs in staffi ng a new

strategic project. Raj has 15 people on his team and lots

of projects to which they are assigned, and Annie has the

same. Unfortunately, Annie cannot get one of her prior-

ity projects done on time without the expertise of two of

Raj’s team members.

Annie waves to Raj, asking if she can set up a time

with him later in the week to talk about the possibility of

borrowing some of his people for the project. He tells her

he’ll be out of the offi ce, but if she can wait fi ve minutes,

he’ll be happy to discuss it today. He ducks into a confer-

ence room and says he’ll be right out.

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Annie didn’t expect to have the discussion immedi-

ately, but she takes what time she has to prepare. She

asks herself the following:

What are my interests?

• To get the new strategic project done well and

on time

• To ensure my team’s other projects remain on track

• To stay within a small hiring budget

• To keep up the morale of my team

• To solve the staffi ng problem quickly

What might Raj’s interests be?

• To ensure his team’s projects are not derailed

• To keep control over his resources, so he can plan

ahead and have the fl exibility to adjust his people’s

projects

• To

fi nish some lingering projects on which his

team is behind

• To avoid setting a precedent of loaning out his

people, particularly during busy times

What are some creative joint options?

• Raj loans me the two experts I need for three

weeks, and I loan him three people afterward

to help fi nish up the projects on which he is

behind.

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Before You Get in the Room

• His experts agree to provide training and supervi-

sion for some of my team members and help him

and his people look like heroes to the executive

team.

• He and I pool our limited hiring budgets and

jointly hire another person who has the expertise

we both need.

• He loans me the experts, but he can pull them

back any time for his own projects with two days’

notice.

• We jointly make the case to our managers to ex-

tend the schedule on one or more of Raj’s projects,

so we can tackle my new one together.

What are some persuasive standards to apply?

• Previous instances of resource sharing when work-

ing together in the past

• How other departments or functions within our

company determine resource sharing

• What we believe our managers consider are the

most important projects to get done in the near

term, given strategic importance, revenue-generat-

ing opportunities, and the cost of delay

• How much of the expertise I think I need tends to

be required on similar projects in our industry

What are my alternatives if we can’t reach an agreement?

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• Negotiate with a different colleague who may have

the same kinds of expert resources on her team

• Escalate the issue to my boss for help in securing

the expertise needed or for additional funds to hire

from the outside

• Hire someone part-time who can train my team

• Negotiate to delay the start of this project until

experts are free

What are Raj’s alternatives if we can’t reach an agreement?

• Simply say no and focus on his own projects

• Delay the decision by saying, “I’ll get back to you

in a few days”

• Negotiate with others for resources that will help

him get his projects back on track

• Bury his experts in his more strategic projects, so I

can’t make the case to management to lend those

people to me

By quickly asking herself these questions and coming

up with even just a few answers for each, Annie is bet-

ter equipped to have a successful negotiation and knows

what alternatives she can leverage if she and Raj have

trouble reaching an agreement, even though time is short.

Now that you’ve gone through the fi rst four elements

of success, let’s move on to the next three: commitments,

communication, and relationship.

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QUESTIONS TO ANSWER WHILE PREPARING FOR

THE SUBSTANCE OF YOUR NEGOTIATION

Interests:

• What are your interests and why?

• What might the other party’s interests be

and why?

• Are there any third parties whose interests

should be considered?

• Which interests are shared, which are just diff er-

ent, and which confl ict?

Options:

• List a range of options that might meet diff erent

combinations of both parties’ interests.

• How can you build upon these options to even

better meet your interests and theirs?

Standards:

• What external criteria might be relevant?

• What standards might a third party apply to

evaluate the fairness of the agreement?

• What other objective standards might be rel-

evant to apply here?

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QUESTIONS TO ANSWER WHILE PREPARING FOR

THE SUBSTANCE OF YOUR NEGOTIATION

Alternatives:

• How can you satisfy your interests without the

other party?

• How might the other party satisfy their interests

without you?

• How can you improve your alternatives?

• How can you weaken the other party’s

alternatives?

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Chapter 4

Prepare the

Process

Plan how you will work

and communicate with

the other party.

Once you have a grasp of the substance of your negotia-

tion, it’s time to think about the process. Imagine that

the interests, alternatives, options, and standards you’ve

just formulated are the “what” of your negotiation. Now,

plan the “how.”

Commitments: Identify Milestones

and Consider Who Has Authority

Think about the smaller commitments each side will

make throughout the process and determine who has

authority to make each of those commitments. You’ll

have an agreement at the end that represents the total

package you’ve shaped, but along the way you will also

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Before You Get in the Room

make more-discrete promises, and each of those need

to be realistic. Take time now to prepare how and when

those commitments will be fulfi lled.

Identify milestones

Start by thinking about the negotiation from start to fi n-

ish. Maybe it will be one meeting, or perhaps you’ll need

to get together multiple times. Roughly estimate how

many sessions it will take and identify a smaller goal or

set of goals for each one. Even for smaller negotiations or

quick hallway discussions, you’ll want to delineate your

plan for each touch point.

Start with the fi rst meeting you’ve envisioned. What’s

its purpose, and what do you want to achieve? Maybe all

you want from this initial discussion is to build the rela-

tionship, showing your counterpart that you’re trustwor-

thy and committed to coming up with a joint solution. Or

maybe you want to walk out with a solid understanding

of his interests. Perhaps you want to lay out some options

for the other party to consider or take back to his boss.

Do this for each subsequent session, too, identifying

what you hope to achieve at each milestone. When do

you hope to have a joint recommendation? When do you

want to have a signed agreement in place?

In a simple negotiation, you might plan to make the

following commitments (and ask your counterpart to do

the same):

Meeting 1. Generate a range of options to mull over

Meeting 2. Create a draft agreement

Meeting 3. Reach a fi nal agreement

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In a more complex negotiation, the commitments

might look like this:

Meeting 1. Agree on what the core issues are and the

timeline for addressing them

Meeting 2. Come to a clear understanding of interests

around each key issue

Meeting 3. Create a framework for the agreement

and brainstorm options for fi lling the framework

Meeting 4. Decide on options to review internally

Meeting 5. Defi ne standards to apply and use them to

narrow down options to a select few for you to each

review individually

Meeting 6. Agree on a joint recommendation to share

with stakeholders

There are two primary reasons to map out milestones

in advance. First, it helps you plan for each session ad-

equately: Walking into a meeting to defi ne the issues to

eventually resolve requires a different kind of prepara-

tion from going into a meeting to develop a full agree-

ment. Second, it identifi es set times to go back to your

stakeholders during the negotiation and get their input

or approval so that you can make sure that they are avail-

able at those times.

Know who has authority to

make commitments

You and your colleague may be planning to discuss

what resources each of your teams can give to a new

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cross-functional project, but before you meet, consider

whether either of you has the authority to make the fi -

nal call on these allocations—and if not, who does. Simi-

larly, think about the authority of your counterpart. From

whom will she be getting approval?

If you need to get approval from others, keep that in

mind as you set milestones and build in time to go back

and huddle with your team. Similarly, if your counterpart

has a low level of authority, you need to be prepared to

give her the time and evidence she needs to get the agree-

ment approved.

Lastly, if you don’t yet have enough information about

your counterpart to make this assessment, note that so

you can ask about the structure of who can make what

commitments once you are face-to-face with her.

Communication: Plan Messaging

and Process

As you prepare to reach out to the other party to begin

the negotiation, think about what and how you are com-

municating. You’ll want to think about what messages

you want to send, identify what information you need,

and create an agenda to send to your counterpart.

Plan your messaging

Whether oral or written, verbal or nonverbal, the mes-

sages you convey during your interaction—and how and

when you do it—can have great impact on the course

of the negotiation, so it pays to be deliberate. Equally

important to consider are the messages you don’t want

to send.

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First, think through what you want the other party to

understand and how you’ll convey it. You might want to

express how seriously you take the negotiation, your de-

sire to move quickly (or slowly), your level of authority, or

your wish to repair a damaged relationship.

Take this example: A sales team has been working

with a prospective customer for months, and they have

a solution they think will work. They need to agree on

details such as price and precise confi guration. The team

has determined the messages they want to send in the

next session:

• There’s tremendous value for the customer in this

solution.

• The customer should focus on the total cost

of ownership for this product, not simply the

price.

• The product confi gured as discussed is $4 million

apiece, but each machine will save the customer

$2.5 million in increased volume and reduction in

defects.

• There are other product confi gurations, which

could bring down the price.

• Given what the customer has said about his inter-

est in cutting costs, increasing volume, and reduc-

ing defects, the team believes this solution best

meets his needs.

Now that the team knows what they want to get

across, they can think about the best way to deliver those

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messages. They’ll decide who on the team will say what,

in what order, and at what points during the next session.

Know what information you need

Equally important to knowing the messages you want

to send is identifying what you want to learn from your

counterpart. There are likely to be holes in your prepara-

tion—things you need to confi rm about her interests, her

alternatives, her authority, and so forth. You’ll also want

to learn about how she views you, your relationship, and

any past history you have. Craft a set of questions to ask

in the room to uncover critical information and test any

hypotheses you made.

In the earlier example, because the sales team is try-

ing to better understand the buyer’s interests and his

ability to make a commitment, they might ask questions

like “We talked before about downtime for this piece

of equipment. How much is that costing you every day

now?” or “You said there are some folks in your organiza-

tion whom you need to convince. Who are they, and what

are their interests?”

The team may prepare questions to query the other

party for feedback on the messages they plan to present.

To keep the lines of communication open, they can ask

things like “Are there other interests that this solution

doesn’t meet?” and “Do our calculations seem right? If

not, what are we missing?”

Draft an agenda

The last piece you’ll need is an agenda to share with your

counterpart. Use the milestones you laid out when pre-

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paring commitments and the communication goals you

have for each session, and create a draft agenda. This

tentative plan will help you communicate with the other

party about how you expect the negotiation will go. If

you plan to develop a series of options by the end of the

fi rst meeting, for example, draft an agenda that includes

exploring her interests, sharing some of yours, jointly

brainstorming possible options, and narrowing down to

a few ideas for further consideration. Also consider who

needs to be in the session. Can you and your counterpart

be the only ones in the room? Do you need someone with

a particular expertise, perspective, or level of authority?

Include the appropriate individuals on the attendee list

in your agenda.

Relationship: Plan How You

Will Work Together

Whether your relationship with your counterpart is on-

going or you expect it to last for only the duration of the

negotiation, it pays to invest in it. It creates the founda-

tion for the best possible outcome of your negotiation.

Identify any gaps in the relationship

Start by assessing the relationship as it stands now. Is

there one? If there is, is it based on trust? Has it ever

involved creative, joint problem solving? How about

risk taking? Are you able to deal with differences? Has

there been damage to the relationship that needs to be

repaired? You may have done some of this as you ques-

tioned your assumptions about the negotiation, but take

a moment to think about with whom you’ll be interacting.

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Then think about the relationship you want to have.

Do you want to deepen trust? Encourage an equal part-

nership? Do you want to express emotions more openly?

Or are you happy with the way the relationship is and

just want to maintain it?

Examine any gaps between how you see the current

state and the ideal you’ve described. First, assess why

the gaps exist. What caused a breakdown in trust or a

lack of respect? What happened to make the relation-

ship a transactional one? Why can’t you solve problems

together or take risks? Why do you feel unable to share

your emotions about the state of the agreement?

Take action on the gaps

Next, ask yourself what you can do to address the situa-

tion. For example, perhaps you’ve identifi ed that the lack

of trust a customer has expressed stems from the time

you broke a key commitment. Now that you’re negotiat-

ing a contract renewal, you’ll know that you need to talk

early on about what happened, why, and how you can en-

sure it won’t happen again.

Or perhaps you need to agree on a plan for sharing

resources with your fellow manager in an overseas offi ce,

and any communication between the two of you—never

mind negotiations over touchy subjects—is awkward.

This may be because you’ve mostly communicated over

late-night e-mails and met in person only once. For this

negotiation, you might decide to meet face-to-face, or at

least via video conference. Leave time before you dive

into the negotiation to get to know each other, discuss

the pressures you’re each under, and perhaps even show

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a little empathy for the amount of work your counterpart

has taken on after hours.

When the relationship is broken

If your relationship with your counterpart is truly dam-

aged, you need to take further steps. Focus on fi xing the

relationship before you address the substance of the

negotiation. Take time to understand your counterpart’s

story about past interactions, share your own story, and

try to build understanding. If the situation calls for it,

actively show your empathy or plan an apology. If the

problem is big, you’re unlikely to solve all of the relation-

ship challenges in just a few conversations, but aim to

get the relationship to a point where you can work to-

gether in the negotiation without strong emotions get-

ting in the way. (We’ll go into more detail on how to fi x a

damaged relationship in chapter 6.)

When the relationship is threatened

Alternatively, you may be negotiating with someone

with whom you have a perfectly good relationship, but

you don’t expect to see eye to eye on the issue up for

discussion and worry this might strain the relation-

ship. For example, imagine you’re the head of HR and a

long- standing, valued employee requests a more fl exible

schedule, which your company’s policy doesn’t provide.

Don’t plan to jump in with a hard line, sharing that the

policy is the policy and it applies to everyone. Instead, de-

fi ne an approach that respects your existing relationship,

demonstrates openness and creativity, and sets a strong

precedent for future dealings.

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Before You Get in the Room

This is where the communication and relationship

elements intersect: Send the right messages to keep the

relationship strong. Here are some of the messages you

may want to plan to send:

• You’re a valuable employee.

• We want to treat you fairly and with respect.

• We are willing to be creative.

• Here is our policy and why.

• Here is how it compares with fl extime policies

at other organizations (including researched

standards).

You may also want to ask questions:

• “Why is fl extime important to you?” and “How

would you use this time?” (getting to the person’s

interests)

• “What are your other alternatives if we can’t make

this work?” (the person’s alternatives)

• “Are there any other ideas you have, beyond giving

you fl extime, for how we together might meet your

interests?” (the person’s options)

Instead of angering the employee by shutting him

down before you have a chance to discuss the issue, you

tee up a respectful conversation in which you are fi rm,

but listen; are open to persuasion; and aim to be creative.

With a little hard work, you will fi nd a solution: per-

haps more vacation time for reduced compensation, al-

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Prepare the Process

lowing him to work at home on Mondays and Fridays,

delegating some of his work to other employees, or help-

ing him fi nd child-care options.

On the off chance that you two cannot come to a clever

solution, at least the relationship is preserved by the way

you approached the discussion.

When you don’t yet have a relationship

Sometimes you’re negotiating with someone with whom

you’ve never worked. Your goal in these cases is to bring

the other party to trust or respect you. Think about how

you might forge a connection once you’re in the room. Do

you know someone in common or have a shared inter-

est? To prepare, research the person’s background, using

Google or LinkedIn, to identify potential connections.

Also think about situations in which you’ve had a strong

relationship with your counterpart and what contributed

to that dynamic. If you’re selling a product, plan to talk

about other customers who were satisfi ed or a specifi c

problem you solved for a client.

As you think about what kind of relationship you want

to have (or avoid) with your counterpart, you’ll inevita-

bly come up with additional things on which to prepare

under communication—a message you want to send, a

piece of information you need. With all of the elements,

approach them iteratively and return to previous ones as

needed.

Anticipate Surprises

At this point, take a step back and ask yourself: What

might I be overlooking? What faulty assumptions am

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Before You Get in the Room

I making? Am I being overly positive or confi dent

about certain elements? Am I being overly negative

or concerned about others? What have I assumed is

not likely that might very well happen? Review and

revise your preparation based on the answers to these

questions.

Then think through any external factors that might

alter the negotiation. Will a competitor show up with an

equally or more attractive offer? Will your counterpart

get pulled from the negotiation, leaving you to interact

with someone else entirely? Will someone at the coun-

terpart’s company raise a concern about working with

your company? Will your counterpart’s company get ac-

quired? Might regulations change and create new risks

or dictate the need for new terms?

Plan for these risks ahead of time. Write down every-

thing that could go wrong (or differently than expected)

and what action you can take in each scenario. You can’t

get rid of surprises altogether, but you can minimize their

impact.

Some negotiators are tempted to map out tactical

steps they’ll take to make the negotiation go exactly as

they plan. As my mentor, Roger Fisher, used to say, “It’s

better to have a map of the terrain than to have planned

one path through the woods.” Be prepared, but be fl ex-

ible. You want to drive the negotiation while also listen-

ing and learning.

Most importantly, be ready and willing to be sur-

prised, because chances are, you will be. If you prepare

well, making sure to answer all the questions in the box

“Questions to Answer While Preparing the Process of

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Prepare the Process

Your Negotiation,” you will learn from those surprises—

an unexpected interest, a creative option, a persuasive

standard—and the things you learn along the way can

make all the difference in your negotiation.

QUESTIONS TO ANSWER WHILE PREPARING THE

PROCESS OF YOUR NEGOTIATION

Commitments:

• What do you want to accomplish in your fi rst

meeting?

• What level of commitment do you want to have

by the end of the upcoming session?

• What type of commitment do you want when the

issue is fully resolved?

• What kind of authority do you have to make

commitments?

• What is your counterpart’s level of authority?

Communication:

• What is the best agenda for the upcoming

session?

• What messages do you want to send?

• What do you want to learn from the other party?

• How does the other party perceive you, and how

might you change that perception?

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Before You Get in the Room

QUESTIONS TO ANSWER WHILE PREPARING THE

PROCESS OF YOUR NEGOTIATION

• What did your preparation about interests reveal

that you need to test?

• What other questions do you want to make sure

to ask the other party?

Relationship:

• How is the relationship now?

• What kind of working relationship do you want

to build?

• What are the reasons for that gap? How can you

bridge it?

• What do you want to do—or avoid—in the

upcoming session to develop this kind of

relationship?

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Chapter 5

Connect in

Advance

Agree on the process

and who’s involved.

The fi nal step in preparing for your negotiation is to actu-

ally connect with your counterpart. You’ll want to agree

on the process, decide where and when the negotiation

will take place, become familiar with the players in both

parties, help your counterpart prepare, and set the right

tone for the negotiation as a whole.

Agree on the Process

Before you tackle the substance, talk to your counterpart

about how you want to negotiate. This will entail some

sort of conversation in advance of the negotiation itself.

Negotiating over the negotiation is important and often

forgotten: People like to get down to business and skip

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Before You Get in the Room

advance discussion, but if you discover deep into the pro-

cess that you disagree on what the core issues are, both

sides will be frustrated.

Your preparation will help you and your counterpart

begin to answer the following questions. As you go, ex-

plain that you want to work together to fi nd a solution,

that you believe there are solutions that will get you both

what you want, and that you want to work together using

a joint problem-solving approach.

• What issues do we need to cover?

• What process do we want to use?

• Are there any other parties we need to include?

When and how?

• Do we want to establish any ground rules?

• Do we want to set a timeline?

• How will we resolve confl ict?

• What will we do if the negotiation begins to

break down?

• Are there any specifi c ways we both should pre-

pare before we begin? What are the topics around

which we should prepare?

In most situations, this prenegotiation activity in-

volves just a few e-mail exchanges or a short conversa-

tion. Sometimes this is as simple as calling your colleague

and saying that before you meet next week to talk about

resource sharing, you wanted to discuss who should at-

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tend the meeting and whether there are some key issues

on which you and they should prepare ahead of time. Or

if you’re meeting with your boss to advocate for taking on

additional responsibilities, this might entail sending the

draft agenda you’ve prepared for your next check-in and

asking for feedback before you meet.

In complex alliance, sales, purchasing, or acquisition

negotiations, however, this initial process should be more

robust. In those cases, hold a more formal “negotiation

launch” to discuss these questions in detail over the

course of a series of prenegotiation meetings.

Treat these initial interactions as your chance to in-

fl uence how the negotiation will go, setting a collabora-

tive and creative tone from the get-go. In our surveys of

hundreds of people over time, we’ve seen that well over

50% of people choose an approach based on how their

counterpart negotiates. Rather than leaving your nego-

tiation up to the other person—who may well choose

a poor approach—jointly shape the process before it

begins.

Choose a Time and Place

After you’ve established what the process will be, care-

fully select the time and place to meet. Issues of location

and timing may seem trivial, but they’re not: When and

where you negotiate has a large infl uence on how the ne-

gotiation goes and, often, what the outcome will be.

Think about the larger context for the discussion.

What will have happened before, and what will come af-

ter, both for you and your counterpart? For example, you

don’t want to engage in negotiations with your boss about

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Before You Get in the Room

increasing your sales team’s travel budget just after he’s

returned from a meeting with the CFO about controlling

costs. Pay attention to the broader timing as well: What’s

happening that day, week, or quarter for your counter-

part, his company, or his stakeholders?

Think about the location, too. Will you meet at his

headquarters or your offi ce? If you’re having a sensitive

conversation with your boss, does it make sense to dis-

cuss it behind closed doors rather than in the hallway?

If you need to build or rebuild the relationship, might

the initial meetings be better off somewhere friendlier

than a conference room? If there are cultural or language

barriers, you may want to host a video conference, rather

than have a long conference call, so that everyone can see

gestures and facial expressions. If you sense that the big-

gest barrier to an agreement will be to convince the other

party of the value of your product, consider giving your

counterpart a tour of another customer’s site and then

beginning negotiations at a nearby hotel.

Jointly choosing the time and location with your coun-

terpart can model the approach for the rest of your dis-

cussions. Think of it as a mini-negotiation. If you force a

location or time upon him, your counterpart may try to

reciprocate that forceful behavior in the actual negotia-

tion. If you tee up the logistics as a draft plan, share your

reasoning, and ask for his feedback, you set the right tone

going forward.

Identify the Players

It’s easy to assume that if you’re meeting with John, you’ll

be negotiating with John, but just as you have numerous

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constituents who care about the negotiation, so does

your counterpart. Beyond John are a number of people

who infl uence what options he can entertain, have a say

in what he can commit to, and can otherwise alter the

course of the negotiation. Understand who these people

are and how they infl uence the person with whom you’re

negotiating.

Create a relationship map

You created a rough map of these relationships in your

preparation, but now that you are in contact with your

counterpart, ask who is involved in this negotiation both

directly and indirectly. Build on the map you created by

adding any individuals you may have missed and includ-

ing all those on your counterpart’s side. Figure 5-1 pro-

vides an illustration of your counterpart’s stakeholders as

you follow these steps:

1. Identify all the people from your party and the

other party who need to buy into any agreed-

upon course of action or decision. Who are the

stakeholders? Don’t just focus on who has the au-

thority to approve a decision or make it go more

smoothly, but think also about who can veto or

derail it (step A).

2. Estimate each individual’s biases. Who is likely

to be supportive, and who might be opposed to

the kinds of options that you’ve brainstormed?

Think about the consequences of a decision for

each stakeholder to understand where he or she

might stand.

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Before You Get in the Room

3. If you are not negotiating with the decision

maker herself—and you can’t change the pro-

cess so that you are—then you will also want to

identify the “infl uence relationships” between the

parties (step B). Is there antagonism between two

people such that if Jim supports the agreement,

then Heather is likely to oppose it? Who has in-

fl uence over others and can sway them to support

a decision? Is there anyone who defers to others

and will simply support (or reject) an agreement

if she knows a certain person has already ac-

cepted (or rejected) it?

You may not be able to gather all this intelligence

about the other party from your counterpart. Consider

other avenues for getting the information: Think back to

your past experiences working with the other party, con-

sult colleagues who have worked with them in the past,

and approach mutual acquaintances who can help clarify

these connections.

Use the map to infl uence decision makers

This map will help you get buy-in and build support, es-

pecially as you get close to an agreement. Here are three

ways to put it to use:

1.

Bridge gaps in your infl uence. Look for critical

decision makers and infl uencers in the other

party with whom you currently have no relation-

ship. Create a strategy to connect with these

people. Start by seeking out people who are

likely to support the agreement and can help

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Connect in Advance

infl uence pivotal but potentially unsympathetic

parties.

2.

Note which relationships are antagonistic.

Determine if any of the existing relationships

may be detrimental to the outcome of the nego-

tiation and create strategies for managing those

risks (you already did some of this in step B).

Figure out how to mitigate any potential damage

these negative relationships can cause. Laying

the groundwork to infl uence a key stakeholder

may take extra time, but it will also increase the

odds of getting him on board.

3.

Determine a sequence for getting buy-in. Think

about the most effi cient path to getting approval

for the fi nal decision, perhaps focusing your ef-

forts on getting those whose support would lead

others to follow suit. If you can’t get the attention

of a pivotal party or it will take three weeks to set

up a meeting, enlist the assistance of those who

have access to that person.

Help Your Counterpart Prepare

As you begin your conversations with your counterpart,

help her think about how to prepare. Negotiations go

more smoothly if the other party is equally equipped,

and helping her along will encourage collaboration. This

may seem like a radical idea (you’re helping the other

side!), but think about it: If your counterpart shows up

not knowing what her interests are or unsure of what her

best alternative may be, you may have the upper hand,

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Before You Get in the Room

but the negotiation is going to be slow and laborious

while she works through what she wants.

Don’t share all of your preparation with the other

party, but ask questions in advance of the fi rst meeting,

either in an e-mail or in person, that prompt your coun-

terpart to contemplate the seven elements on her own.

It’s much better if you both come to the table with this

information in hand.

Set the Right Tone

As I’ve pointed out throughout this chapter, your fi rst

interactions are your opportunity to set the right tone

for the negotiation. Consider the key messages you’ve

defi ned in your prep work as you think about how to

convey them.

You can communicate some of the softer messages

about the process (for example, “I want to work collabor-

atively”) by jointly agreeing on the time and place, asking

about who else is involved, and helping your counterpart

prepare. The substantive messages about the content of

the negotiation require separate communications. If the

messages you want to send are particularly nuanced or

complex, have a face-to-face conversation.

However you choose to communicate, be deliberate

so that you don’t accidentally convey the wrong message.

For example, if you want the other party to be put on his

toes, share the fact that you have three other good job of-

fers and that you have to decide by Monday. But if what

you really want to convey is that you like the role but are

interested in a better compensation package, say that.

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Neither of these approaches is wrong, but you should

know what tone you’re setting.

Once you’ve agreed on the logistics and identifi ed the

relevant parties, you’re ready to turn to the negotiation it-

self. In the next section, I’ll explain how to put all of your

preparation into action when you walk into the room.

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Section 2

In the Room

Power comes from negotiating

with discipline.

Typically, when negotiation parties have differing inter-

ests and concerns, they each start by putting a proposal

on the table. Then they engage in a concessionary haggle

between these opening positions. This leads to arbitrary,

often lowest-common-denominator outcomes and, far

too frequently, damaged relationships. Most important,

it leaves value on the table.

But with the circle of value approach, negotiation

needn’t be a zero-sum game. We use an image of a circle

because rather than a linear back-and-forth between

you and your counterpart, you’re creating a space to

productively explore interests, options, and standards.

With this method, you develop—and distribute—value

together and work to reach an agreement that benefi ts

both sides.

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In the Room

This section will help you take a more disciplined ap-

proach while you’re in the discussion. You’ll learn to:

1. Use communication and relationships to get into

the circle of value

2. Maximize your time in the circle by exploring

interests, brainstorming options, and agreeing on

fair standards

3. Make a good choice by assessing your alternatives

and making thoughtful commitments

In the next chapter, I’ll focus on how to communicate

and how to build your relationship with the other party.

Then, in the following two chapters, I’ll explain how and

when to employ the other elements. Finally, I’ll conclude

this section with suggestions about how to continuously

adapt your approach throughout the negotiation so that

you can respond to whatever comes your way.

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Chapter 6

Begin the

Negotiation

Establish how you’ll

work together.

Budding negotiators often wonder whether they should

open the conversation at the fi rst meeting. Should I make

the fi rst move, or should they?

Most people choose a negotiation approach based on

what the other party does: They wait to see how their

counterpart is going to negotiate, and then follow suit.

Instead of sitting back and waiting for your counterpart

to make an opening move, lead the way.

Similarly, if your counterpart takes charge, but does

so in a way that you don’t feel is helpful, there is no need

to follow. If he opens your conversation by tossing out a

position, or perhaps making a subtle threat, take a deep

breath and ignore it. Explain that you’d rather work in

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In the Room

a different way, by developing—and distributing—value

together and working to reach an agreement that ben-

efi ts both sides.

So what should your fi rst move be?

Instead of laying a preferred option or demand on

the table and waiting for a reaction from the other party,

start by establishing how you will work together, invoking

the elements of communication and relationship. You’ll

focus on these throughout the negotiation, but they’re a

particularly useful starting point.

Establish Eff ective Communication

Use this fi rst experience in the room together to establish

how you’ll interact during the course of the negotiation.

You laid the groundwork for this in your preparatory in-

teractions with your counterpart, but now that you’re in

the room, show her how you’ll work with her throughout

your time together:

1. Use questions and listening skills to learn as

much as possible and demonstrate understand-

ing to the other party.

2. Make your own messages clear, confi rm that you

are being understood, and manage any obstacles

that get in the way of your being understood.

Ask questions and listen

As your negotiation session opens, leverage what you

have prepared: review the agenda, and discuss the

desired goals for this meeting and what you want to

have at the end of it. As you begin, ask good questions

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Begin the Negotiation

and demonstrate that you are truly listening to your

counterpart.

Let’s say you begin to query him about his interests.

You can do this directly by saying something like, “Based

on our past discussions, it sounds like what matters to you

is reducing overall costs, improving quality, and decreas-

ing downtime. Is that accurate? What am I missing?”

Then listen carefully to what he shares (and note what

he doesn’t). Summarize his points back to him. People

want to feel heard. Check for understanding so that you

have the right information and to make him feel he got

his point across.

As you listen, avoid reacting to what you hear (“Oh,

that couldn’t possibly be that important to you” or “Wow,

I want just the opposite.”). Instead, absorb it and use it.

You might say something like, “You really care about pay-

ing off debt and getting better training? Got it. We’ll need

to fi gure out a solution that meets those interests and

some that I have. Are there other interests you haven’t

shared yet?”

Make your messages clear

Set a good example by sharing information yourself; that

will go a long way to keeping the lines of communications

open. Whenever you suggest an option or offer a stan-

dard, share your reasoning. But don’t give speeches, ei-

ther. Brevity is important. Share your ideas in consumable

chunks, giving your counterpart time to absorb them and

ask questions. For example, if you say too much all at once,

the great point you made about needing to use a standard

that your boss would fi nd persuasive will get lost.

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In the Room

If you fi nd yourself giving mini-speeches, stop your-

self and ask questions instead. Test to see if you have

been understood. Solicit your counterpart’s reactions.

See if she has some new ideas sparked by what you just

shared.

Watch out for situations in which you may have mis-

understood each other. If you fi nd that you view things

differently (you disagree on whether a standard is valid,

for example), slow down and explore the issue together.

Instead of debating who’s right and who’s wrong, share

the reasoning behind your perspective and ask for hers.

You may not see eye to eye, but reaching an understand-

ing of why you see the issues differently will allow the

negotiation to move forward.

Make sure you’re engaged in a discussion, not a debate.

The more your counterpart feels listened to, the more

open to persuasion she’ll be. If you get to a point where

you can make her case as well as (or even better than) she

can, you know you’re headed in the right direction.

Continue to use these questioning and listening tac-

tics throughout the negotiation.

Build the Working Relationship

Early in the negotiation is also the right time to focus

on your relationship by separating it from the essence of

what’s being discussed in the negotiation. We call this ne-

gotiating on two tracks.

Negotiate on two tracks

People often believe they need to make concessions or

forgo their interests for the sake of “the relationship.”

We’ve heard people say things like:

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Begin the Negotiation

• “Well, I really like my boss, and if I act like she’s

not paying me well, she might feel that I disre-

spected her, so I’m going to just let the bonus

idea drop.”

• “This company is my biggest customer, and they’re

just asking for an extra three weeks of work, so I’m

not going to risk rattling the cage by bringing up

that this is out of scope and that they should pay

an additional fee.”

• “My customer said that he wants us to be a bet-

ter partner, that we lost his trust because of how

we reacted to the outage six months ago, and now

he’s demanding a 15% discount on the renewed

contract to demonstrate that we care about him.

That feels like a small concession to keep this half-

billion-dollar contract.”

Conceding like this in an attempt to make the other

party happy is a mistake. You’re not only giving away

more than you should, you’re also not improving the rela-

tionship itself, so you’re not even getting what you think

you are “paying” for. Furthermore, you’re probably mak-

ing matters worse: Appeasing your counterpart encour-

ages his behavior, and you’ll likely see it again and again.

More important, you’re not addressing the issues at stake

or the circumstances that may have put the relationship

on rocky footing.

To negotiate on two tracks, do the following:

• Deal with the relationship head-on. It may seem

easier to bury relationship issues, but it isn’t. If

your preparation raised any concerns, or if you

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In the Room

suspect that your counterpart has some, name

them, jointly diagnose them, and explore possible

solutions. A strained relationship will make it dif-

fi cult for you to tackle specifi c terms, conditions,

price, and so on.

• Separate relationship issues from the substance of

the negotiation. If your counterpart says, “If you

were a good partner, you’d agree with my plan,” or

uses your relationship as a basis for requesting a

special discount or privileged information, don’t

get sucked in. Instead, actively establish two tracks

for the conversation. Say something like, “If you

feel that I’m not being a good partner, let’s discuss

that. I’d like to know what you look for in a good

partner, and what I’m doing or not doing, and

what we both can do differently to improve our

partnership. If you want to discuss the plan,” or

the price, or the protocols for information sharing,

“that feels like something else—we should explore

that on its own merits by discussing interests,

options, and standards. Which of these would you

like to address fi rst?”

• Work unconditionally to grow the relationship.

Whether or not there are existing issues in the

relationship, always work on making it stronger.

Set the stage for a collaborative approach from

the get-go by being respectful, well prepared, and

ready to listen. Always be trustworthy in your

interactions. Don’t worry about whether your

counterpart is trustworthy or reciprocating your

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respect, and don’t wait for him to make the fi rst

move; just do this unconditionally. Similarly, if at

fi rst your counterpart does something that you

feel harms your relationship, don’t take an eye-

for-an-eye approach: Keep working on your end

to make the relationship stronger. My former

colleagues Roger Fisher and Scott Brown fi rst

talked about this in their book Getting Together:

Building Relationships as We Negotiate, explain-

ing that rather than reacting in kind, you should

always keep your goal of a successful negotiation in

mind and adopt an “unconditionally constructive”

strategy for building the relationship with your

counterpart.

Negotiating on two separate tracks is particularly im-

portant if you’re trying to repair an already-damaged

relationship; see the box “Negotiating on Two Tracks: An

Example.”

If you have a good relationship, but you fear that your

request—a raise, additional resources, or a discount—

will strain it, you can use the same approach. Raise the

issue respectfully and with an openness to think and

work it through together. Be explicit about the rela-

tionship factor: “I have enormous respect for you and

don’t want to strain our relationship in any way, and

yet I have what I think is an important request. I’d love

to fi nd a way to discuss my request on its merits and

in a respectful and creative manner.” If you enter into

the conversation and sense from your counterpart’s

responses that he does feel that you are hurting the

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NEGOTIATING ON TWO TRACKS: AN EXAMPLE

My colleagues and I worked with an IT outsourcing

company that was reaching the end of a seven-year

contract with a customer. The customer wanted to sign

a new agreement, but managers there were still con-

cerned about a service outage that occurred a few years

earlier. They pointed out that it had taken our client

four days to respond, and the outage ended up cost-

ing them several million dollars. Trust had been bro-

ken, and the customer demanded, for the sake of the

relationship, a 20% discount on what would amount to

a multi-hundred-million-dollar deal.

Our client was tempted to give the discount—per-

haps not the full 20% but something close—but we

knew that wasn’t going to solve the real problem: The

customer was still not going to trust our client to re-

spond on time, since the issues that had caused the

lack of trust had not been addressed at all. Instead our

client needed to break the problem in two and deal

with the relationship fi rst and the pricing for the new

contract separately.

Our client then acknowledged to the customer that

they had not handled the outage eff ectively and they

understood it had led to distrust and a strain on the

relationship. They also noted that while they were very

open to discussing pricing for the new contract, they

thought these were unrelated issues and wanted to

solve them one at a time.

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NEGOTIATING ON TWO TRACKS: AN EXAMPLE

Based on the ensuing discussion, our client worked

with the customer to develop a new set of procedures

to ensure that kind of outage would not occur again

and if any other problem occurred, it would be dealt

with swiftly and would involve close ongoing contact

with the customer team and the CIO. They also identi-

fi ed the actual cost of the outage to the customer and

agreed to cover this cost as part of the new deal un-

der negotiation. They were then able to use industry

standards when pricing the new contract. Thus the

client was much better off than they would have been

if they had unnecessarily given up millions of dollars

and ignored the issues that had caused the problem

to begin with.

relationship, that’s the time to move the conversation to

the separate track and deal with any feelings of hurt or

disrespect head-on.

In all cases, your goal is to negotiate on the merits of

the deal rather than making concessions or offering dis-

counts to build rapport or trust.

Opening the lines of communication and establishing

a productive working relationship allow you to move into

the circle of value and then work together to negotiate a

solution. You’ll keep applying these approaches to com-

munication and the relationship that you learned in this

chapter throughout the negotiation.

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Chapter 7

Create and Refi ne

Your Options

Make the most of your

time together.

Once you’ve established lines of communication and be-

gun to build (or rebuild) the relationship, start discuss-

ing the substance of your negotiation.

As you move further into the circle of value, you’ll

continue to test out your hypotheses and learn new in-

formation about what the other party’s interests might

be. Continuously update the Seven Elements Tool you

fi lled out earlier. Whether you do this in your head in the

midst of the negotiation or update the physical document

between meetings, make sure you’re recording what you

learn along the way.

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Draw Out Interests

When preparing, you created a list of what you believed

the other party’s interests to be. Now is the time to clarify,

confi rm, deny, and add to those, as well as choose which

of your own interests to convey.

This step of the process requires careful thought and

discipline. Don’t forget to use the tactics you learned in

the last chapter about how to handle communications

throughout the negotiation: asking questions of your

counterpart and actively listening, as well as making your

own messages clear.

Uncover their interests

To begin understanding your counterpart’s interests, ask

what hers might be. “What are your key aims, objectives,

and concerns around the issues we are discussing?” Or,

prime the pump by testing your hypotheses about her in-

terests and fi ll in the gaps. Refl ect back to your counter-

part what, when you prepared, you suspected those inter-

ests might be and ask what you got wrong, what you got

right, and, most importantly, what interests you might

have missed altogether.

It’s possible, even likely, that your counterpart will ini-

tially respond to these questions by stating a position: “I

want a guarantee that we’re getting 5% less than what

your other customers pay, and I’d like you to throw in

two engineers to come train my people for three months.”

Don’t react to this. Instead, keep probing for actual in-

terests. Ask “Why?” or “For what purpose?” or “What are

you trying to achieve?” Dig deeper to fi nd out what’s driv-

ing the other party’s position.

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Listen carefully, because it’s not often that your coun-

terpart will come out and just say what those interests

are; you’ll likely have to ask a number of questions, probe

deeply and even read between the lines. When you hear

something that sounds like an interest, check it. “I think

I heard you just say that being able to defend the price to

your executive committee is important to you. Did I un-

derstand that correctly?” Adding “What am I missing?” is

also helpful, because it will keep the conversation going

and you might learn more.

If you’re having trouble drawing out the other party’s

interests, suggest possible options and solicit criticism.

Asking “What would be wrong with that?” can help

you solicit interests from a counterpart who isn’t be-

ing forthcoming otherwise: “I know this is a crazy idea

and I’m not really proposing it, but what if we raised

prices 20% and cut our support in half? What would be

wrong with that?” It’s often easier for your counterpart

to point out why a potential solution won’t work than

to state her interests directly. (Most people will jump

at an opportunity to criticize an idea. Use this to your

advantage.) Then infer the embedded interests from her

explanation: “I could never do that! If I did, I wouldn’t

be able to fund a critical R&D project; I’d have to fi re

people; I’d look like a terrible negotiator and might lose

my own job; I’d have to personally take time to provide

support to our people when I should be out developing

new partnerships; or there’s no way that I could justify

this to my new boss.”

Don’t get defensive if your counterpart reacts nega-

tively; after all, you put this forward as a “crazy idea.” In-

stead, listen carefully: You just uncovered a gold mine of

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interests. Your job here is not to show that you’re “right”;

rather, it’s to get your counterpart to tell you where you’re

wrong so that you can understand her interests more

fully and more accurately.

Keep pushing for answers. Press for criticism. Listen

for the interests within it. Test to ensure that the inter-

ests you are hearing are, in fact, her interests. Don’t go so

far as to frustrate her, but constructively push, listen, and

test. The more interests you uncover, the easier it will be

to develop creative options later.

Share your interests—carefully

It’s also important that your counterpart understands the

driving force behind your interests. Sharing your own

interests may also prompt him to respond in kind. But

be smart about which interests you share at this point.

Though your counterpart may already know or suspect

some of them, there are others that he doesn’t that he

could use against you.

For example, a sales representative might say, “Let

me share some of my goals for this negotiation. I need

to fi nd a way to cover the increasing cost of raw ma-

terials, achieve the kind of profi t that will allow us to

invest in new product development, and better man-

age inventory as storage costs are becoming less pre-

dictable.” He didn’t just say he needed a high price, but

instead shared what he was trying to achieve with that

price.

But the representative has other interests he has cho-

sen not to share: He really needs a solid reference to use

with other accounts and he wants to set a good price

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precedent here so that he can use it when selling this new

product to another customer. He might share that later

in the negotiation, but right now, at the beginning of the

negotiation, he is worried (rightly so) that his counter-

part could use those interests against him: “Oh, we’d be

thrilled to serve as a reference for other customers . . . for

a 15% discount.”

There is also information here that he would never

share: the fact that without this sale, he won’t make his

quarterly numbers, and that he’s already tried to con-

vince every other leading customer in this industry to

adopt this new product. Both of these statements would

show how weak his alternatives are.

Most often, you don’t want to put all of your interests

on the table, at least not at the outset. But you want to get

enough out there so that your counterpart follows suit.

Capture both sets of interests

Push hard and generate as many interests as possible.

During the negotiation, list your interests on a common

piece of paper, computer screen, or fl ip chart so that you

can refer to them when you move on to brainstorming

options. Don’t worry; the whole process is iterative, so

you’ll still have opportunities to add to or adjust the list

of interests later.

Jointly Brainstorm Possible Options

With both parties’ interests on the table, imagine solu-

tions that might satisfy all or most of them. This dis-

cussion works best when accomplished in two steps:

Generate ideas fi rst, and then evaluate and refi ne them.

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Generate options

Before you begin, tell your counterpart that you’d like to

move into a joint problem-solving mode and brainstorm

together to come up with possibilities, withholding judg-

ment for the time being. Refer to the interests that you

captured earlier and ask what you could do to address

each one or, better yet, combinations of them. Bring in

any options you came up with in your preparation that

are still relevant based on the interests you discussed.

Engage your counterpart so that she’s also creating

possibilities. We’ve had experienced salespeople tell us

that once they have everyone’s interests on the table, they

throw out a few options and the customer chooses one

and they go from there. That’s OK, but it would be better

to have the customer build off the solutions she’s offered

and jointly come up with even better options. When you

invent ideas together, it’s easier to reach an agreement

later on because you’ll have more options to choose from

and you’ll feel joint ownership over them.

Focus on generating possibilities, not evaluating them,

and certainly not eliminating them. The word possibili-

ties is important for three reasons:

• First, whatever options you come up with together

at this point are just that: possibilities, not offers

or commitments. Be clear that you and your coun-

terpart should feel free to come up with ideas even

if you can’t commit to them. Your options need

not be fully formed either; if you want to suggest

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something without assigning a concrete number to

it, it’s fi ne to leave that blank for now.

• Second, the options should be within the realm of

what’s possible. You don’t need to spend a lot of

time at this point thinking about whether they’re

better than your best alternative or if they meet

fair standards, however. The options should be

possible, but they don’t need to be good at this

point.

• Third, the “s” is very important: Invent more than

one option. If you toss out only one possibility, even

if it is creative, it may be heard as an offer rather

than one of many options. Throwing out multiple

options at once encourages your counterpart to

build on your ideas and avoids an unproductive

back-and-forth. Offering three or four possibilities

increases your chances of iterating together to fi nd

a solution that meets both your interests.

As you invent options, you might also discover new

interests—yours and your counterpart’s. If an option ei-

ther of you comes up with sounds odd, think about why

it might actually make sense and if it refl ects an interest

you haven’t identifi ed yet. Iterating between options and

interests and back to options is a good sign that you’re

being open to the fl uid nature of this process.

When you’ve generated as many options as you can, go

back to your lists of interests and check that you have an

option that addresses each one.

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GENERATING OPTIONS: AN EXAMPLE

Imagine that you and your colleague are negotiating

how to allocate a limited budget for next year. You say,

“We could split it 50–50.” Neither of you is satisfi ed, so

you off er, “Or maybe I could take more of it and com-

pensate you by lending you some needed resources.

Or—wait—crazy idea: We could go try to negotiate with

Pablo to drop one of his key projects this year and give

us some of his budget.”

Your colleague thinks for a minute and then adds to

your ideas. “Well, maybe that idea isn’t so crazy. You

or I could also consider dropping a key project and

giving the other one the budget for that. Or, since you

said one key reason you needed more budget this year

was to make investments in that new market you’ve

been pursuing, maybe I could help since we’ve already

started tapping into that market.”

This makes sense to you, so you build further on the

ideas: “If we went together to discuss with our boss

Be prepared for this process to take a while, sometimes

multiple sessions. To see how this process of generating

options might look in action, see the box “Generating

Options: An Example.”

Evaluate and refi ne your options

Once you feel as if you have truly exhausted the options

you both can develop and have gone back to your and your

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GENERATING OPTIONS: AN EXAMPLE

that either we need to get some more funding or one

of us will need to drop a key project, we’d have more

power than if one of us went alone. And, I forgot that

you already have a small team in that market. Can we

make use of some of your people to do some prospect-

ing work for us?”

“I’m not ready to commit,” she replies, “but we

should be able to work with you part-time or introduce

you to some people we’re starting to work with in the

market.”

Because you and your counterpart understood each

other’s interests and weren’t afraid to suggest “crazy”

ideas, you were able to come up with a plan that not

only works for both of you but may also save the com-

pany money. If you’d agreed to the fi rst option—a 50–

50 budget split—or spent time haggling over who got

what percent, you wouldn’t have realized that these

opportunities were available.

counterpart’s lists of interests to see if they spark any new

ideas, narrow down your brainstormed list. If there are ob-

vious options that don’t meet your or your counterpart’s

interests well, now is a good time to weed them out.

For example, if you and your customer have devel-

oped various options for pricing and payment terms for a

project, you might note that two of the options where he

pays the bulk of the fee at the end is problematic for you,

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given that you are hoping to pay for highly specialized en-

gineering resources that you need to subcontract out and

pay for up front. He might share that the option in which

you get a success bonus for delivering early is interesting,

but since he is not funded for that event, he would not be

able to pay you in that way.

As you each explain your thinking, you are, of course,

not only winnowing down some options, but highlight-

ing some interests that might spark new options. Don’t

rush to get your list of options down to just one or two

yet, but do refi ne the list to ensure most options are ones

that meet your and his interests well.

Use Standards to Narrow Options

Holding an objective yardstick up to your options will

help you further improve some and eliminate others,

leaving you with few solid options to take forward. Ap-

ply standards to make sure that each option would seem

fair and reasonable to an unbiased outside party. Also use

standards to fi ll in any gaps in the options, such as what

percentage of time your counterpart’s team might devote

to your projects or what exact price increase you’ll ask a

customer for.

You already have some standards at your fi ngertips

from your prep work. But now that you better understand

the other party’s interests and have some real options to

work with, brainstorm useful and relevant criteria to-

gether. You might prompt your counterpart, “Consider-

ing the individuals we will need to explain our agreement

to, what kinds of standards might we use to refi ne and

evaluate the options we’ve come up with?”

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Use sources and data that will be the most persuasive

to you and the other party. For example, if you are negoti-

ating with a customer, you might share the kinds of deals

you have struck with other companies she respects and

feels are similar to her company. In the alternative, avoid

talking about terms and conditions, or pricing used with

customers who purchase a lot less or buy a very different

product or service from you. And don’t pick standards

that favor only your viewpoint. Choose ones that would

seem fair whichever side you were on. The goal here is

to make sure that any options still on the table are truly

defensible to both parties.

For larger, more complex negotiations, think about

how the deal would come across in a press release de-

scribing the fi nal agreement. Draft one to share with the

other party so that you both can assess how others would

evaluate the option in front of you.

Use standards to support an appealing option

When discussing an option that you believe is a good so-

lution, use a standard to support it. Though the goal here

is to persuade the other party to believe that the solution

is a valid one, also make it clear that you’re bringing up

this standard to make sure the fi nal decision is fair and

defensible. If you ask your supplier to consider decreas-

ing his price by 10%, for example, you’ll be more persua-

sive if you show that similar suppliers are also decreasing

their prices by 8% to 12%. He may not like the decrease,

but he’ll see that your request isn’t arbitrary, and you’ve

given him evidence so that he can go back to the com-

pany’s stakeholders to discuss the request.

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Citing a standard doesn’t necessarily mean that the

other party will accept it. In the example earlier, the sup-

plier might come back with a persuasive argument about

why his company is different from the suppliers who are

lowering their prices. Either way, you’re now focused on

what the right number or term or policy ought to be and

the defensible reasons for it, not simply what one party

wants it to be.

Use standards to eliminate an

unfavorable option

When the other party advocates for an option that you

don’t feel is fair or defensible, use standards to support

your argument against it. Ask your counterpart, “Why

that number?” or “On what are you basing that amount?”

or, often even more effectively, “How would I justify that

fi gure to my boss?” Have her explain to you why the op-

tion is fair or defensible, especially if you have a standard

that shows it might not be.

If she can’t, suggest a standard that might make sense

instead.

Identify and reconcile confl icting standards

Of course, it’s very possible that you and your counterpart

will bring confl icting standards to the table. Perhaps you

found data that shows people in your position get paid

an average of $20K more than you do, but your boss says

that he has evidence that your salary is on the high end

of average. Be sure that you’re comparing apples with

apples. Perhaps your data assumes that you have an ad-

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vanced degree, and your boss is looking only at how much

programming experience you have and doesn’t think a

master’s in international relations is relevant to your role.

Discuss which data is appropriate for your situation.

If this doesn’t work, research additional standards on

your own that you think might be applicable or helpful,

jointly defi ne what you think would make a good stan-

dard, or appeal to an unbiased third party who can pro-

vide insight on what an appropriate number would be.

If you’re truly at an impasse, circle back to your in-

terests and options, and try to get more solutions on the

table that could hold up to both your standards.

Be persuasive—and open to persuasion

Applying standards can be tricky because you need to

persuade the other party that some options are accept-

able (or not). When brandishing a standard, it can be

easy to act dismissive or antagonize the person across

the table. Be both assertive and empathetic. Remember

what you learned about communication and keep refl ect-

ing what you’ve heard back to your counterpart as you

ask for more information: “I’m hearing that what you re-

ally are interested in is x. Help me understand why that

might be fair.”

One of the ironies of negotiation is that you’re more

persuasive if you seem open to persuasion yourself. Don’t

roll over; that won’t help. But listen, consider the other

person’s point of view, and assume you might have some-

thing to learn. As your counterpart sees you do this, she

will do the same.

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Eventually, by applying standards and iterating and

refi ning the options, you’ll arrive at a few workable solu-

tions. The options on the table should meet both of your

interests and should be defensible by both parties. Now

you move to using your alternatives and commitments to

make a good choice among these options.

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Chapter 8

Select the Right

Outcome

Narrow in on a workable solution

and commit with care.

With a few solutions left in front of you, it’s time to move

toward a fi nal agreement. Do this by applying your alter-

native and making sure what’s on the table is better. Then

make commitments carefully so that the agreement is

workable for all parties.

Compare Your Options to

Alternatives

It’s possible, maybe even inevitable, that you and your

counterpart will have already stumbled on a discussion

of alternatives by this point. As with all of the elements,

consider addressing them as they come up in the conver-

sation. But if that hasn’t happened yet, now is the time.

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Evaluate the remaining options

As we’ve already discussed, you want a solution that’s

better than your best alternative. Measure the remaining

solutions against this alternative. If one of them passes,

you’re in good shape. In many negotiations, you never

need to share your alternatives with the other party; you

silently measure the solution against your best one.

Push for a better solution

If the options left after applying fair standards are not

better than your best alternative, use that fact to push

you—and your counterpart—to come up with better

options.

For example, you could say, “Right now, the options on

the table are good, but not nearly as good as what I can

do on my own. Is the same true for you?” Or you might

say, “For us to reach an agreement, we need to work

harder to come up with something better than my team

could do elsewhere. Right now I believe I could get 10%

more value by going with another vendor, and perhaps as

much if we simply used what’s left in inventory of your

old product.”

Be sure to frame the discussion as an effort to do bet-

ter than your alternative, not as a threat. You might have

said, “If you can’t do better than what’s on the table, I’m

going to go with a different vendor,” but while threats

like these sometimes get the other party to pay attention,

most often they derail the negotiation. Your counterpart

will likely make her own threat and you’ll get stuck in a

back-and-forth.

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If your alternatives are weak to begin with, you likely

will not want to reveal them, no matter the message. In

this case, focus all the more on getting creative with your

options.

Challenge the Other Party’s

Alternatives

Remember that even if your own alternatives are weak,

the other party’s may not be any better. Throughout the

negotiation, look for signals of how good your counter-

part believes his alternatives to be. You took an educated

guess during your prep work, but listen to what he actu-

ally says in the negotiation. Watch for clues about what

he would do if he had to walk away.

Keep in mind that your counterpart might exagger-

ate how good his alternatives are. If you suspect that’s

the case, do some research or even ask some questions to

fi nd out how realistic what he’s told you is. Does his orga-

nization really have other vendors who provide a similar

service? Might they truly be able to do it on their own?

Can they really wait you out a few quarters until you do

what they want?

Furthermore, just because some of these things are

possible doesn’t mean your counterpart actually wants

to see them come to pass. Ask questions that challenge

how attractive his alternative is. Can the other vendor

his company is considering really meet its volume needs

and deliver the same quality you can? What costs would

the other party’s organization incur doing it themselves?

You’re not just testing the strength of the other party’s

alternatives here; you’re also making your counterpart

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see his weaknesses. Educate him: “It can take months to

transfer to a new provider when you take into account all

of the equipment that needs to be replaced.” “The operat-

ing life of our competitors’ products is two years with no

guarantee. Ours, while slightly more expensive, have an

operating life of twice that, and we are the only ones who

provide a two-year guarantee.” This may not change your

counterpart’s view right away, but it will give him food

for thought.

When to walk away

If you still aren’t able to identify an option that’s better

than your best alternative, then you may need to resort to

that alternative. That’s OK: It’s not a failure to walk away

if you can’t negotiate an agreement that’s better. Never

negotiate just to agree. Instead of walking away, you may

also be able to wait it out until you can develop a stronger

alternative or until the other party’s weakens. Perhaps you

can negotiate with others in your counterpart’s organiza-

tion or fi nd other companies that can meet your needs.

However, if you have successfully come up with solu-

tions that surpass your best alternative, it’s time to think

about commitments.

Make Commitments Carefully

Now that you have a few strong options left on the table,

assess them against the following three criteria to narrow

them down further and make sure you should commit.

1.

It’s operational and suffi

cient. The timeline,

terms, and conditions in the given option need

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to be realistic and detailed enough to be imple-

mented. Imagine putting the agreement into

action, thinking about each step you’d need to

take, and make sure you haven’t left out anything

that still needs to be agreed upon.

2. You have the authority to commit to it. Don’t get

carried away in the room and make agreements

you’re not allowed to (or let your counterpart do

the same). Look at what’s about to be agreed to,

and think through whether you’re allowed to sign

on the dotted line or if you need approval from

others.

3. You’ll be able to sell it internally to key stake-

holders. Test the solution with the right people

before you make any commitment. This may be

your boss, upper management, your team, or, in

a negotiation that would affect your family, your

spouse or children. They may have concerns or

ideas you haven’t considered.

You can apply these three criteria during the discus-

sion silently, or you might need to step away from the

table and talk to others before making a commitment.

Either way, devote careful attention to this step. You

want to see through what you’ve agreed to and be sure

the other party can do the same.

Leave committing to any options until the very end.

Even if you seem to have found options that meet all the

criteria, force yourself to stay in the circle a bit longer,

inventing and refi ning, to make sure you’ve come up with

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In the Room

the best possible arrangement. Do this whether your ne-

gotiation is a fi ve-minute hallway discussion or a months-

long formal process. In the same way that you want to

start preparing for a negotiation as early as possible, you

also want to commit to its outcome as late as you can. As

you do, make sure you’ve avoided the common mistakes

in the box “Watch Out for Common Mistakes.”

At this point, if all has gone well, you should have a

fi nal agreement that meets the seven elements of success.

Of course, not every negotiation goes this smoothly.

Every negotiator faces obstacles and struggles, and even

in the circle of value, there may be contention. In the next

chapter, I’ll talk about how to adjust to realities in the

room; in the next section, I’ll talk about problems people

most often encounter and how to handle them.

WATCH OUT FOR COMMON MISTAKES

There are a few places where many negotiators get

tripped up when using the circle of value approach.

Here are the most common ones to watch out for and

avoid:

• Failing to listen. When you’ve put hours or days

into your preparation, it makes sense that you

want to share your interests, lay out options,

and so forth. But when you get into the room,

focus on listening and asking questions as much

as—if not more than—presenting.

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Select the Right Outcome

WATCH OUT FOR COMMON MISTAKES

• Sacrifi cing your interests in order to preserve

the relationship. Deal with the relationship sep-

arately. Resolve any trust issues before you move

on to the substance of the negotiation.

• Focusing on positions, not interests. It’s easy

to get wrapped up in what you or the other party

wants and move too quickly into the specifi cs of

the potential agreements. But unless you both

understand the drivers behind your positions,

you won’t be able to fi nd an agreement that

satisfi es both parties’ interests.

• Evaluating options too soon. When your coun-

terpart throws out an option that’s not appeal-

ing to you, don’t start pointing out what’s wrong

with it. Spend time coming up with many options

together before you start criticizing.

• Using your best alternative as your only bar

for success. Your goal shouldn’t be doing “well

enough.” Press for more options that meet your

interests better and apply real standards so

that you don’t accept an off er that is too low. It

might be tempting to agree to a 5% raise simply

because it’s better than your current salary, but

if others with your talent are getting 8% and

10% increases, then you’re leaving value on the

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In the Room

WATCH OUT FOR COMMON MISTAKES

table that you can capture with more work and

discipline.

• Committing too early in the process. Your

counterpart may suggest an option early on that

sounds perfect to you and is based on a very

reasonable standard. Don’t jump on it, though.

Agreeing to one suggestion prematurely will

limit creativity. Be patient and take time to act

thoughtfully and carefully. You may come up

with an even better option.

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Chapter 9

Continuously

Adapt Your

Approach

Be prepared to change course.

One of the things many negotiators fi nd frustrating is the

fact that you can’t control what the other party does. All

of the preparation you’ve done will help you shape and

direct the process, and the circle of value approach will

optimize your chances of working together toward a joint

solution, but the reality is that you don’t know what your

counterpart will say, do, propose, or reject—or in what

order. It’s therefore important to be fl exible when you’re

in the room.

Here are several ways to stay nimble and adjust your

approach when necessary.

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In the Room

Role-Play

When you’re between negotiation sessions and not sure

in what direction to go, or you want to feel more confi -

dent implementing your planned approach, it’s helpful

to practice with someone else before going back into the

room with your counterpart. Seeing and feeling the ap-

proach in action helps you decide whether or not you’re

on the right course.

Practicing your approach

Maybe you haven’t been able to get your counterpart

to discuss interests or your attempt to negotiate on two

tracks doesn’t seem to be working. Maybe you’re not sure

how to begin brainstorming options in your next session

or you’re uncomfortable presenting the standards you

want to bring to the table. Ask a colleague to play the

role of your counterpart as you test out what you might

say and do. If possible, choose someone who doesn’t have

a stake in the outcome of the negotiation so that she can

be objective. If you have to work with someone who is

directly involved, pick someone who you know will be

honest with you.

Explain the situation to her, perhaps even sharing your

preparation tool so that she can orient herself, and then

try out different approaches. Play it out multiple times.

Ask for feedback after each try. “How did that sound?

How did that feel? Was that persuasive?” Adjust your ap-

proach and repeat.

Your colleague might even make some suggestions.

“What if you tried sharing a few more of your interests

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Continuously Adapt Your Approach

fi rst or explained why you are asking about that there?”

Keep practicing. When you feel comfortable—and have a

range of moves you can use—you’re ready to go back to

the table.

Understanding your counterpart

If you’re struggling to understand why your counterpart

is behaving in a certain way, try a role reversal: You play

your counterpart and ask a trusted colleague to play you.

Before you begin, have your colleague interview you (be-

ing yourself ) so that he can begin to understand how you

think, what you feel, and what things you’ve been saying

and doing in the negotiation. This will also allow him to

accurately play your role when you’re ready.

Next, have your colleague interview you again, this

time with you playing your counterpart, so that you can

begin to feel, think, speak, and act the way she does. Keep

doing this until you really feel and speak like her.

Then, negotiate: your colleague as you, and you as

your counterpart. After a few minutes, stop and review:

What did you learn about your counterpart by getting

inside her head? Do you better understand her perspec-

tive? Perhaps you have a better sense of why she has been

acting the way she has.

Consider what you learned about the impact of your

own words (spoken by your colleague). Are you being per-

suasive? Is your counterpart likely hearing what you’re

trying to say? Ask your colleague for observations as well.

Make adjustments to your approach. Perhaps you

could be more persuasive on certain points or maybe you

need to be more empathetic to build trust.

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In the Room

Become a Fly on the Wall

Any good athlete knows how to hop off the fi eld or the

court for a moment and assess what’s going on. She be-

comes a “fl y on the wall,” stepping out of the action briefl y

to observe what she, her teammates, and her opponent

are doing. Successful athletes adjust their approach (or

consciously choose to stick to it) given what they see, and

jump back into the game and execute.

A good negotiator has the same skill. Throughout the

negotiation, pop out of the action and look at what’s hap-

pening. Narrate to yourself what’s taking place: “She has

explained her interests. I shared mine. Now we’re moving

into options. Is this going smoothly? If not, I could stay

with interests a bit longer, or I could move to standards

next, or I could even ask for a time-out.” Avoid getting

stuck in your narrow view of the situation so that you can

adjust as necessary.

Ideally you’ll be able to do this yourself while at the

table, but you can also assign people on your team to

monitor certain slices of the negotiation. For example,

you might ask Bob to watch how the other party reacts to

certain options and Joan to monitor how your counter-

part responds to messages you’re sending.

Take an Occasional Break

If you have trouble becoming a fl y on the wall in the heat

of the negotiation, consider asking for a brief pause in the

discussion. Don’t hesitate to request a break if you’re not

sure what to do next, if you get annoyed and need time to

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Continuously Adapt Your Approach

calm down, or if you want to consult with colleagues who

aren’t at the table. Also consider asking for a time-out if

you learn something unexpected or are truly surprised.

A break could be 10 minutes or it could be a few days.

You can explain the reason for the time away from the ta-

ble, or, if you’re concerned about sending the wrong sig-

nal to your counterpart, you can always ask for a chance

to use the restroom, check your e-mail, or grab a cup of

coffee.

It’s often less awkward if you establish up front that

either of you can call a break at any time. That way it

doesn’t look odd if you ask for a time-out right after your

counterpart has suggested an option you especially don’t

like, or if you head to the restroom when you’re stumped

about which standards to apply.

Conduct Frequent Reviews

and Make Corrections

A smart negotiator also takes a more complete step back

at certain points to review what’s happening in the ne-

gotiation. Do this frequently—after each negotiation ses-

sion to update prep documents, anytime you’re stuck or

things get heated, and prior to making any commitments.

At each of these junctures, ask yourself what’s work-

ing and what you might do differently. Even if you only

do this in your head for 10 minutes while driving home,

you’ll learn something and generate concrete ideas for

adjusting your approach.

If you’re stuck, do a more formal review, preferably

with a colleague or two who can ask you tough questions:

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In the Room

“What did you say right before they threatened to walk

away? What led you to say that? Why do you think they

might have reacted that way?”

When you’re preparing to commit, ask your colleagues

to walk through the seven elements for a good outcome.

“Does this truly meet your full range of critical interests

very well? How many options did you consider? Why do

you think this is the best one? Is it truly better than your

best alternative?”

Then make any necessary adjustments. Perhaps you

need to spend more time coming up with options or fo-

cus more on repairing the relationship before you talk

about interests. If things aren’t moving forward, con-

sider a change of venue, timeline, or even players. Can

you bring in someone from your or your counterpart’s

side who can help?

Don’t think of midcourse corrections as failures; it’s

not uncommon that you’d have to make changes as the

negotiation progresses (in fact, it likely means you are

truly learning things along the way). Expect to make

these kinds of shifts to move the discussion in the right

direction and reach a more successful agreement.

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Section 3

The Common

Challenges

Tools and techniques you can

use in specifi c situations.

All the advice we’ve given you so far optimizes your

chances of reaching a successful agreement. But even

with diligent preparation and a thoughtful approach,

sometimes the most fl exible negotiators can still fi nd

themselves stuck.

The four most common problems that negotiators

may face are:

1.

There are multiple parties involved. With nu-

merous people at the table, the complexity of

the negotiation has slowed it down or stopped it

altogether.

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The Common Challenges

2. Your counterpart is a hard bargainer. Your fellow

negotiator resists your attempts to work collabor-

atively and instead states a position and demands

concessions.

3.

Communication breaks down. You and the other

party keep talking past each other, unable to

understand each other’s perspectives, never mind

reach an agreement.

4.

The conversation gets heated. Emotions run

high and either you or your counterpart is upset,

angry, or offended.

In the chapters that follow, I’ll explain how to over-

come each of these issues in turn.

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Chapter 10

Align Multiple

Parties

Avoid ineffi

ciency and chaos.

The Problem

Many negotiations involve more than two parties, all of

whom need to subscribe to a fi nal agreement. These are

situations in which there aren’t just multiple stakeholders

behind the scenes, but also multiple parties sitting at the

table: Perhaps you’re negotiating the details of a go-to-

market strategy with multiple channel partners; maybe

you work for a research institution that is collaborating

with several others on a government contract; or perhaps

you’re working on a complex services sale that involves

a number of individuals from both the customer’s and

your organizations. When you have more than two par-

ties that want to agree on a fi nal solution, the circle of

value approach becomes more complicated.

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The Common Challenges

Why It Happens

There are two primary reasons that these negotiations

are more complex:

• People overload. Getting the parties to commit to

an option or agreement typically takes longer sim-

ply because there are more individuals involved.

Start by discussing agenda items and ground rules

at the beginning of the negotiation. You can also

try to make things easier by identifying who the

decision makers are and leaving everyone else out

of the mix, but that can backfi re if you fi nd out

later that there are others who need to have a voice

as well.

• Process complexity. Negotiating with multiple

parties means you have more interests to meet,

more options to sort through, and more alterna-

tives to consider.

Balancing the need to include and consult many dif-

ferent parties with the reality of how long it may take

to consider all the options that satisfy their interests is

not easy.

What to Do About It

There are ways to accelerate the process and still make

sure that all points of view are considered.

Make it clear who decides

You can work through complex decisions more effi -

ciently—and avoid confusion and frustration—by estab-

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Align Multiple Parties

lishing expectations up front about who gets to de-

cide what.

People have different interests in the negotiation, so

they should play different roles in making a fi nal deci-

sion. Those roles fall into three categories:

• Inform. Those who need to know about a deci-

sion and its rationale but don’t need to (and

likely, when pressed, don’t really want to) be

involved in the negotiation itself. This broad

category of people includes those who have to

implement the agreement or are otherwise af-

fected by it, but don’t have particular expertise

or viewpoints needed in the discussion itself. For

example, the vast majority of end users of a new

product or service being purchased would fall

into this category.

• Consult. Those whose input should inform the

decision. These are the advisers to the decision

makers. Consider their needs or advice before

making a decision, though ultimately they don’t

need or get a vote. These participants typically

have a unique perspective or expertise that you

want to draw upon.

• Negotiate. Those who are ultimately responsible

for all or key parts of the fi nal agreement. These

are people who need to make the decision because

of their position, roles, responsibilities, or author-

ity. It can be helpful to subdivide this group into

those who have veto power (the agreement cannot

go forward without their consent) and those who

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The Common Challenges

can simply vote on an issue (the group can proceed

without their approval if necessary).

It’s best to formally establish these roles early in the

negotiation, ideally in advance of sitting down together

or when you fi rst get in the room. At the very least, you

want to have a discussion about roles before you begin

refi ning options.

To decide who goes in which category:

1.

List each decision that will need to be made.

When you were preparing for the negotiation,

you laid out the various issues that needed to be

addressed in a negotiation. Using those, make a

list of the specifi c decisions that need to be made.

2.

Assign each person a role for each decision.

Identify all the parties who have a stake in each

decision and place them in one of the three buck-

ets: Inform, Consult, or Negotiate (veto/vote).

Keep in mind that the same person might be in

different buckets for different decisions; your

boss might have veto rights on the decision about

pricing but needs to be consulted only about the

length of the service contract. Use a chart like the

one in table 10-1 to capture this work.

You may be tempted to put most people in

the “Negotiate” category, but that’s not realistic,

and many of them don’t actually need or want

to be that closely involved. Instead, aim to put

each person in the bucket as far to the left side as

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toe

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Business Unit

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Business Unit VP of

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Quality

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VP of Pricing

VP of Pr

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Copyright © 2013 V

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The Common Challenges

possible, limiting those in this crucial group to

those who really must be there.

3.

Share and get feedback. Be clear with everyone

about the role you expect them to play and why.

Ask for their input. Negotiate as necessary with

people over their roles, and get their commit-

ment to honor them during the negotiation.

Sometimes people will easily fall into these

roles, and other times it will take some discus-

sion. If there is disagreement, discuss why the

person feels she needs to be in the role she’s re-

questing. Is she truly prepared to put in the effort

and time necessary? Can a different role meet her

interests? For example, you might say something

like, “You had said you want to be in the Negoti-

ate role because you want to share your opinion

on the risks here. Could that be achieved in the

Consult role, especially since your boss is already

in the Negotiate role?”

This process can add work to your negotiation, but it

will also help streamline the decision-making process,

ultimately saving time.

Get people on the same page—literally

Even with agreed-upon responsibilities, it can be diffi -

cult to get everyone in a multiparty situation to agree to

a solution.

Often each party will simply present their ideal solu-

tion and wait for the other parties to react or add more

detail. This can jump-start a long, unproductive game

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Align Multiple Parties

of positional bargaining that leads to a lowest-common-

denominator solution. Even if you don’t fall into these

traps and manage to draft a single proposal and circulate

it to others for feedback, sorting through their reactions

can descend into chaos.

Instead, use what we call the one-text procedure. As its

name suggests, this process forces everyone to focus on

one draft of an agreement. The parties work together on

that single shared document, seeking to improve it along

the way by offering criticism (not suggestions), allow-

ing the drafter to creatively edit the draft from one round

of feedback to the next.

Here’s how it works:

1.

Choose a drafter. Work together to select one

individual who will be solely responsible for all

writing and editing. Find someone who is known

to be respected and trusted, a good listener, and

creative. Look for a person who has built enough

credibility with everyone at the table to be con-

sidered neutral. Ideally, he’ll have no direct stake

in the decision but understand the context and

the issues. If everyone can’t agree on who should

play this role, create a small team composed of

representatives from each party. You can also use

an uninvolved outsider.

If you’re unable to fi nd someone for this role,

you may decide that you are the best person to

draft the agreement. If this is the case, be very

clear throughout the process which hat you’re

wearing when; at times, you will be the balanced

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The Common Challenges

facilitator soliciting and capturing feedback from

others, while at other times, you will play the role

of critiquing your own draft. No matter what,

you’ll need to take a fair, balanced approach to

the discussion and to the drafting, understanding

that you can’t just focus on your own interests.

2.

Listen to each party’s views. The drafter then

elicits interests from each party. He may do

this in separate interviews or while everyone is

together in the room. Each side is likely to make

the case for what the solution should be, but

it’s the drafter’s responsibility to ask questions

that get at the interests underlying the preferred

solutions and current positions. The drafter will

want to probe deeply, asking, “Why?” “For what

purpose?” and “What are you trying to achieve

(or avoid)?”

3.

Create a rough draft. The drafter then creates a

rough solution that is impartial and responsive

to what he’s heard. It should be clear that this

is a draft and not fi nal in any way. Driving that

point home can be as simple as writing “draft for

discussion only” on each page.

4.

Ask for criticism. The drafter shares the one text,

asking each party in what ways the current draft

does not meet their interests. Usually in this fi rst

round, he asks them as a group, as it is helpful for

each participant to hear the others’ answers. The

drafter should not defend or explain the draft.

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Instead, he asks questions like, “What would be

wrong with something like this?” “Which inter-

ests of yours are not reasonably met with this

proposal?” If he gets back a suggestion (“You

should just change that term, and I will be set”),

he should always ask about the interests behind

it (“Why might that make more sense than what

is there?”). His tone should not be defensive, but

inquisitive.

Capitalizing on people’s natural willingness to

criticize, this approach further exposes their un-

derlying interests. Ideally, the drafter will record

all of those new interests heard in a place where

everyone can see them. (See the box “Questions

to Ask in the One-Text Procedure.”)

5.

Make revisions. The drafter then refi nes the text.

He looks for new creative solutions, ideas that

reconcile differences, and ways to create joint

gains. If he believes certain interests are still not

being shared, he might even put in a controver-

sial idea or a few to spur criticism in the next

round. The drafter should do this transparently,

by noting what he has done and why. He again

marks it as a “draft” and brings it back to the

negotiators.

6.

Repeat. The drafter once again asks all parties

for their criticism, probing for interests, testing

them, recording them, and digging more deeply

for what is driving any proposed change. Most

often this is done in live sessions, but if necessary,

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The Common Challenges

he might send out a draft with numbered lines

and ask the negotiating parties to write up their

feedback in a separate document. Some individu-

als might beg to mark their changes directly on

the draft, but the drafter should not give in. The

result would be too many unreconciled versions,

and all those productive steps toward one orga-

nized solution would be lost.

In this next round, the drafter gathers up the

criticism, shares his appreciation with the ne-

gotiators, and goes back to improve the draft on

his own. He then continues to alternate between

soliciting criticism and revising. He continues

iterating this way until he believes he cannot

make the draft any better, the benefi ts of further

improvement seem not worth the cost in time

and effort, or he runs out of time.

7.

Present a choice. At this point, the drafter presents

all parties with a stark choice: Accept the draft as

is or accept the consequences of not coming to an

agreement. He might say something like:

“I have done the very best I can. I can’t prom-

ise everyone will be 100% happy, but I’ve listened

to all of you and tried hard to meet many of your

underlying interests. This is a fi nal proposal. I

don’t think we can make it any better. If you all

say yes, then we have ourselves an agreement. If

you say no, we may all have to revert to our best

alternative. I now need a simple yes or no from

each of you.”

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QUESTIONS TO ASK IN THE ONE-TEXT PROCEDURE

• What is wrong with this draft as it is pre-

sented now?

• Do you have important interests that this draft

does not adequately address? Which ones? Why

are they important?

• What else seems wrong or is missing from the

draft? Why are these things important?

• Do you have other ideas for improvement? What

are your reasons for suggesting these items?

What key unmet interests do they address?

• Do you have other ideas for how confl icting in-

terests might be creatively and fairly resolved?

• Understanding why you would like this particular

interest met, but given that it has become clear

that it is in direct confl ict with others’ interests,

why should meeting your interest here take pri-

ority over meeting theirs? What standards or fair

process might we apply to deciding this?

My colleagues and I have used the one-text proce-

dure in complex multiparty situations, such as peace

negotiations, complex sales, mergers and acquisitions,

and

large-scale organizational change initiatives, and

seemingly straightforward discussions, such as who gets

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The Common Challenges

which offi ce, how a new policy should read, how to set

budgets for the next fi scal year, and even where to go on

vacation with the extended family.

The process leads to much better outcomes and builds

relationships. Despite the number of people involved,

people have a voice, they feel heard, and they begin to

view crafting an agreement as a joint problem.

While the process as a whole may seem like it would

take longer than putting everyone in a room and letting

them fi ght it out, that approach usually just leads to dead-

lock or forced compromises that themselves often lead to

unworkable agreements that can’t be implemented prop-

erly. In the end, the one-text approach often saves time.

This process works very well for situations in which

there are multiple parties at the table, but it can also be

helpful for one-on-one negotiations in which you know

your counterpart is going to have to vet the agreement

with an array of internal constituents. You might develop

a rough draft together, and then she can run the one-text

procedure inside her organization. Of course, you have

interests that need to be met, too, so remain involved to

ensure your interests are taken into account in future

drafts.

Negotiating with many individuals who have widely

disparate interests can be daunting, but clarifying

decision- making roles and using the one-text procedure

is a disciplined way to bring all those voices together to

reach one solution.

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Chapter 11

Tame the Hard

Bargainer

Shift the conversation.

The Problem

You’ve worked hard to prepare for the negotiation, and

you’re ready to enter the circle of value. But every time

you try to better understand your counterpart’s interests

or jointly brainstorm options, he resists. Rather than fol-

lowing your approach, he’s wedded to using typical ne-

gotiation tactics: laying out his position, making threats,

and waiting for you to make concessions. He dismisses

your questions about what’s driving his demands, saying

instead, “That’s not relevant. I want what I want.”

Take, for example, Ruben, a salesperson trying to sell

a large piece of equipment to George, his potential cus-

tomer. George makes an opening demand: “I’m going to

need a 10% discount.” He explains that none of his other

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suppliers would get away with charging more, not even

his top suppliers. When Ruben asks George why, explain-

ing that he wants to understand his underlying interests,

George cuts him off. “Listen, I’m doing you a favor be-

cause I like working with you. If this were someone else,

I’d ask for an even steeper discount.” He adds, “If you

were a good partner, you’d give us this discount. Just re-

member, my boss is an old friend of your boss, and he can

call him anytime.”

This kind of answer is frustrating, but panicking, re-

acting in kind, walking out—or even worse, just giving

in—won’t get you anywhere. George, as a hard bargainer,

is playing a kind of game. Don’t get lured into playing the

game yourself; it often leads to a compromised solution

and a strained relationship.

Why It Happens

You’re in this uncomfortable situation because no matter

how good your intentions or how well prepared you are,

you can’t demand that your counterpart negotiate the

way you want. There are many reasons people choose to

use the unproductive tactics George is using here:

• This is the only approach they know. They may

assume that this is how negotiations are supposed

to be done. If this is the case, you can sometimes

show or teach them a better way.

• This has worked for them in the past. When

they’ve played the hard bargainer before, they may

have been rewarded by previous counterparts who

have given concessions and let them “win.” Here,

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too, you may need to show them a more productive

approach and make it clear that you’re not going to

continue to reward their bad behavior.

• They’ve been told to negotiate this way by a boss

or other superior. It’s possible that someone in

their organization pays them to negotiate this way

(for example, gives a bonus based on the discount

they achieve) or gives them positional instruc-

tions, such as “Go get a 10% discount,” with no

explanation of why or for what purpose. Or per-

haps the hard bargainer has seen someone she

respects negotiate this way. You don’t know what

pressure they’re under, but you can show them

that they might get a better result using a different

process.

• They aren’t prepared to negotiate any other way.

They haven’t thought through what their inter-

ests are, what they might do if they can’t reach an

agreement, who needs to approve an agreement,

and so forth. Give them time to regroup and guid-

ance on how to prepare.

Considering why your counterpart is driving a hard

bargain can help you determine how best to respond.

What to Do About It

Your job in this situation is to spot “the game,” diagnose

what’s going on, and then change the tone and direction

of the conversation so that you don’t mimic your counter-

part’s style.

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Don’t react

The fi rst step is to use the skills we talked about in chap-

ter 9 and become a “fl y on the wall.” Instead of panick-

ing or reacting to threats or demands, take a deep breath,

mentally pop out of the negotiation, and objectively look

at what’s happening. Take a calm, disciplined approach

so that you can systematically and strategically decide

how to move forward.

Diagnose what’s happening

Seek to understand what’s going on by using the seven el-

ements to spot the “game” and assess what “moves” your

counterpart is making. Determine which of the elements

he’s using and how he’s using them—and, importantly,

which elements he’s not.

Sometimes you’ll see that he’s using the elements, but

in ways that aren’t ideal; he’s actually mis using them.

Where you’re trying to brainstorm options that meet

both parties’ interests, he’s pressing for options that

meet only his. Where you share very concrete standards

based on research and analysis, he might toss out a

fuzzy generalization such as, “Everyone agrees to those

terms these days.” Where you try to build the relation-

ship, he might hold the relationship hostage by making

threats if you don’t give in.

Let’s return to the large equipment sales example from

earlier. George made the following four moves:

1. “I’m going to need a 10% discount.”

2. “None of our suppliers would get away with

charging more.”

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3. “I’m doing you a favor because I like working

with you” and “If you were a good partner, you’d

give us this discount.”

4. “My boss is an old friend of your boss, and he can

call him anytime.”

Thinking of the elements, Ruben should note:

• With Move #1, George used commitment to de-

mand that Ruben agree to his position.

• With Move #2, he tossed out just one, very general

standard, without supporting it with evidence, and

implied that Ruben should take his word for it.

• With Move #3, he tried to use the relationship to

get Ruben to make a concession and perhaps even

threaten the relationship if he doesn’t.

• With Move #4, George is focused on alternatives,

sharing that he has a pretty good one and that he

can easily exercise it if Ruben doesn’t cooperate.

Ruben should also note that George didn’t address

the other three elements: interests, options, or commu-

nication. Now he knows what elements are in play (and

which aren’t) and how they’re being used.

Lastly, consider, too, how you may be contributing

to the unhealthy dynamic. What is your body language

saying? What’s your tone of voice? How did you frame

what you shared or asked? Are you acting defensive?

Have you responded to his demand with a counter-

demand? You can’t expect him to exhibit collaborative

behaviors if you aren’t.

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Change the game

Now that you know what’s happening, you can work to

change it. Here are three approaches you can use:

1.

Introduce an element your counterpart is not

using. Bringing in another element often helps

move the conversation forward. If your counter-

part is focused on her alternative and keeps

pushing you to come to a fi nal resolution, con-

sider presenting some new options, asking about

her interests, sharing standards that would allow

you to both defend yourselves to relevant stake-

holders, and so on.

In the sales example earlier, Ruben could

bring in one of the following elements George

has not used:

• Interests. George wasn’t forthcoming about

his interests, but Ruben needs to persevere.

He should ask why George wants the 10%

discount a number of times in a variety of dif-

ferent ways. Why 10%? Why not 8% or 12%?

How will George use this extra money?

If this tack does not work, Ruben should

test his own hypotheses about what George’s

interests might be. Is he trying to improve the

margins on his product into which these parts

go? Is he trying to fund another project? Does

he need to save money to invest in training and

support? Alternatively, he could share some of

his interests to prime the pump.

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Tame the Hard Bargainer

• Options. Ruben could also say, “Let’s consider

10% as one possibility. What are three other

ways we could structure this deal?” Or, even

better, he could bring in George’s interests as

well: “I’m guessing the 10% is being driven by

your increased production costs, and if so, I

can imagine these three other ways we might

structure this deal to address that problem.”

2.

Take an element your counterpart is using and

use it in a diff erent way. For example, Ruben

might recognize George’s invocation of his

alternative and decide to stay focused on that

element. Instead of threatening George with his

own alternatives, Ruben can push George on how

good his alternative really is. Ruben might ask

George what it would look like if he had to go

back and get his boss involved, or he could share

with George that he’s already discussed this deal

with his own boss, and any call to his boss would

just get directed back to him. He could possibly

even remind him of the cost to George’s company

if the deal falls apart (for example, the costs of

switching to a competitor’s product).

Ruben could also note that both of them have

good alternatives and then steer the conversation

in a different direction: “We both have alterna-

tives, so let’s see if we can come up with some

better options, and then we can each go back and

decide if what we created is better or worse than

our alternatives.”

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Last, Ruben could continue with one of the

other elements that George invoked:

• Standards. Ruben might inquire into George’s

suggestion that other potential partners would

accept a lower price. He could ask which other

suppliers provide a 10% discount or ask if

George has ever purchased from a supplier

who didn’t provide such a discount. Any of

these questions might be persuasive in and

of themselves, or they might lead to a conver-

sation about what standards George would

need to persuade his constituents that he was

getting a good deal.

• Commitment. Ruben could test George’s au-

thority to go below 10% and consider trading

an immediate commitment to a 5% discount

for an agreement to “sign” today. While not a

move back into the circle, this exception could

be a useful game-changing move. Ruben could

ask who in George’s organization could com-

mit to something less than 10% and explore

how to get that person to the table, or arm

George with the arguments he needs to get

approval.

• Relationship. Finally, Ruben could tell George

that he likes doing business with him, too, and

that the appropriate discount (if any) to apply

here has nothing to do with their relationship

and more to do with both sides being treated

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fairly. Or he might ask if there’s anything

straining the relationship now (short of price)

and address those issues head on, before mov-

ing back to how they both determine what a

fair price should be.

3.

Call your counterpart out on the game she’s

playing. Explicitly say what she’s doing, explain

the downsides of the tactic she’s using, and sug-

gest the circle of value approach instead. You

might say something like, “I notice that you’re

making a unilateral demand, and it seems you’d

like me to make a concession in return. That feels

like a losing game for both of us. If we put our

heads together, we could come up with a solu-

tion that would be a lot more valuable to both of

us.” Don’t force a new process down her throat,

though; ask: “What would be your concerns

about that approach?” Stepping back and explic-

itly negotiating over the process itself can be a

powerful move to refocus the discussion.

To change the game, you’ll likely need to use a com-

bination of these three approaches. Which you lead with

depends on your unique situation, but often it is easiest to

go to an element that isn’t being used. Bringing in some-

thing new can breathe fresh air into a tense conversation.

Some negotiators have an element or two with which

they feel particularly comfortable, so you might go with

that element fi rst. There isn’t one right move. Rather,

think of the seven elements as seven options to choose

from whenever you get stuck.

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The Common Challenges

Whichever move you decide to make, persevere. If

your fi rst attempt doesn’t work, try again. Your fi rst ques-

tion, “Why do you need 10%?” may not be answered, so

ask it again in different ways. If that move does not work,

then try one of the other six elements. The good news is

that you have seven different places to go, and if you stay

focused and disciplined, you’ll make progress.

When you can’t change the game

On rare occasions, you may simply not be able to change

the game. This happens most frequently when your

counter part has an actual interest in being a hard bar-

gainer. For example, he takes some delight in seeing who

will back down fi rst or making concessions back and

forth. If you have truly exhausted the strategies without

success, you have a few choices.

1. Play the game, but play it better than he does.

For example, if you are going to engage in the

horse-trading game of positional bargaining, be

well prepared on all seven elements, keep your

measure of success in view, and use this to get

the upper hand in his game. For example, use

prepared standards to reinforce your positions,

brainstormed options to select and use low-cost

concessions as you extract high-cost ones from

him, and so forth. Keep in mind, though, that you

should do this only on very rare occasions. Even

if you succeed, you risk setting a bad precedent.

2. Resort to your best alternative, but do so in a

way that leaves the door open for the other party

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to come back to the table later. You might say,

“I wish we could make this work, but as is, I’d

simply do better losing this deal than agreeing to

it. I have a number of other customers and think

it would be better if I focus my attention there. If

things change for you, I’d be thrilled if you gave

me a call.” Sometimes your counterpart won’t

call, but other times he’ll realize his best alterna-

tive wasn’t quite as good as he thought, is going

nowhere, or worse yet, is leading to bad results,

and your phone will ring.

Changing the game can save a negotiation that is go-

ing nowhere. It often sets a good precedent for future in-

teractions, too. For example, if you bring in a standard

that works against a tough negotiator, you’ve done two

things: fi rst, you’ve established a criterion you both can

agree on and point to in the future, and second, you’ve

made it clear that you want to negotiate fairly, rather

than using one-sided power plays. Create the history you

want to repeat.

This all may sound easier said than done, but armed

with the advice here and some practice, you too will be

able to do this. Start by watching tough negotiations and

thinking about how you would steer your counterpart

away from the hard bargainer’s tactics. Then practice on

some low-risk negotiations, gradually building your way

up. As you get more experienced, make sure each time

that you step back, diagnose, and make active choices

about how you want to reshape the conversation.

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Chapter 12

When

Communication

Breaks Down

Build understanding.

The Problem

Sometimes when you get in the room, you fi nd that you

and your counterpart can’t get on the same page. Per-

haps the conversation has turned contentious quickly,

and your counterpart was offended by something you

said, even though you didn’t mean it that way. Maybe you

don’t understand why the options that you’ve suggested

don’t work for the other party. Or perhaps you fi nd your-

selves debating over how you each see the situation or

issues in the negotiation. No matter what you do, there

seems to be a disconnect.

Take this example from an R&D joint venture between

an automobile manufacturer and a producer of electric

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The Common Challenges

car parts. Alfredo, one of the executives with the manu-

facturer, tried to persuade Deirdre, his counterpart with

the electronics producer, to move the venture’s main site

to the Midwest, where the manufacturing of the vehicles

took place. Deirdre was resistant, so Alfredo went out of

his way to explain the benefi ts: They would have access to

more-talented engineers, and the whole venture would

be closer to “where the action was.” Every time they spoke

and he indicated another benefi t, she’d shoot him down.

Despite the fact that he had a counterargument ready for

every issue she raised—like the fact that they’d save more

in the cost of operations than what they’d have to spend

on the relocation—still she said no, but would never ex-

plain why.

Their relationship was getting strained, since Alfredo

simply couldn’t understand where Deirdre was coming

from, and he was beginning to assume that she was just

being diffi cult. Further proof of this was her odd reac-

tion to something he had said weeks earlier. In trying

to be a helpful partner, he had told her proudly that the

engineers at his company had fi nally come up with a

method to integrate her company’s very complex com-

ponents into all their car models. He thought she’d be

thrilled by this development. Instead, she glared at him

and stomped off.

Despite Alfredo’s best intentions, several common

breakdowns in communication are evident here: Deir-

dre won’t tell Alfredo why his proposals won’t work for

her; Alfredo has managed to offend Deirdre without

knowing why; and Alfredo hasn’t created an option

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When Communication Breaks Down

that takes Deirdre’s perspective and her interests into

account.

Why It Happens

Breakdowns in communication aren’t an infrequent oc-

currence in negotiations. To understand why, think about

the classic black-and-white drawing that to some people

looks like a young girl and, to others, like an old woman.

It’s the same picture, but people simply see it differently.

These are called partisan perceptions, and they apply to

negotiations the same way. You see the whole negotiation

differently—the very act of the negotiation, one another,

and the issues at hand.

These perceived differences are dangerous because we

often amplify them in our minds. Research has shown

that we have a tendency to enhance our own side of an

issue—to think of it as more honest or real—while vilify-

ing others into “the opposition.” This often leads to nega-

tive perceptions of the other party and their reasoning,

behavior, or position.

The gaps between your stories can be hard to fi ll. But if

you don’t explore the difference together, you’re likely to

be left debating conclusions instead of reducing confl ict

and solving problems.

What to Do About It

You can bridge this gap by building mutual understand-

ing. This starts with you: Figure out what information

you are lacking and how to get it. After all, you can’t

change someone’s mind unless you know where his mind

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The Common Challenges

is. Once you do, you have a better chance of working to-

gether to form a solution that works for both of you.

Make understanding a collaborative eff ort

It helps to acknowledge that partisan perceptions exist

and to assume that you will encounter them as a matter

of course. When you do, you’ll have to deliberately seek to

understand your counterpart’s perspective, and have that

person understand yours:

1. Ask her to share her reasoning. Ask questions

until you fully understand the other party’s

story and can see how she would’ve reached her

conclusion (though you don’t have to agree with

it). Focus on the data she’s using to reach conclu-

sions and make clear how you’re interpreting the

data to reach your conclusions.

2.

Repeat it. Tell your counterpart’s story back to

her. Test it, and demonstrate that you understand

it. If she tells you that you missed something,

play back what you learned.

3.

Share your story. Don’t present it as an airtight

case, but explain how you got to your conclusion

so that she understands your reasoning. Openly

admit that it’s possible that you might not have

all the facts and that there may be other legiti-

mate ways to view the situation.

4.

Invite your counterpart to ask questions. She

might ask about your story and how it leads to

your conclusion, or she might critique it.

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When Communication Breaks Down

Stay away from the question of who’s right. Use this

method to get away from “agreeing to disagree” and

move toward a mutual understanding of how and why

you disagree and building trust.

If you expect partisan perceptions to be particularly

divergent in your negotiation, consider discussing them

early on in the negotiation process.

Manage impact, not intent

If your counterpart feels offended or hurt by something

you said, but you didn’t mean it that way, that may be

another symptom of a communication breakdown. As

someone who didn’t mean to offend, it’s natural to focus

on correcting your counterpart’s perception and demon-

strating what you did intend to say. But your intentions

shouldn’t be the focus here. Instead, address the impact

you might have had.

Begin by exploring the emotions your counterpart is

feeling as a result of what you did or said. If he is not

forthcoming about his feelings, test what you think your

impact might have been: “While it was not my intent, I

fear what I did yesterday ended up putting you in an em-

barrassing situation with your boss,” or “I am truly wor-

ried that what I said sounded like I was criticizing your

team, when I didn’t mean to.” Open up the conversation,

explore unintended results, and let him talk. Show em-

pathy or at least understanding, and never hesitate to

apologize. You are not apologizing for good intent; you

are apologizing for the impact.

Consider the example in which Alfredo’s intent was

to share how he had helped Deirdre and her company.

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The Common Challenges

Unfortunately, from her reaction, Alfredo could tell that

Deirdre hadn’t understood it that way. What Alfredo

didn’t know was that Deirdre had heard many times how

much better the engineering talent was at Alfredo’s com-

pany than at hers. So based on her own experience, she

heard one-upmanship and boasting—and, in effect, criti-

cism. She was hurt by being reminded of what she failed

to accomplish.

But Alfredo did not know that; to him, her reaction

was baffl ing. Alfredo’s next step was to follow up with

Deirdre, explaining that he had expected a different re-

action and asking her what was wrong. Still angry, Deir-

dre accused him of insulting her and showing off. But

Alfredo kept asking questions about her reaction. When

she calmed down, Deirdre explained how she had under-

stood his remark and the background behind her reac-

tion. She explained that she had always seen her failure

to create an easier-to-use product as a pivotal moment

in her career, and she hadn’t been truly happy with her

job since. Alfredo then had the opportunity to respond,

“I can imagine how that makes you feel. I’m so sorry for

bringing it all up and hurting you.”

By managing the negative impact of what he had said,

rather than insisting that Deirdre understand his intent,

Alfredo learned more about Deirdre’s interests, which

then helped him in the course of his negotiation with her:

She was competitive, she wished she could solve her com-

pany’s problems, and she wanted to improve her job. He

also gained Deirdre’s trust; he put the relationship back

on track by asking questions, listening carefully, and ac-

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When Communication Breaks Down

knowledging the impact of his words and the validity of

Deirdre’s feelings.

Create a “yesable” proposition

If your counterpart keeps saying no to your proposals and

options and you can’t understand why, that’s also a sign

of miscommunication. While it’s easy to assume that the

person is being irrational or stubborn, neither conclusion

is helpful nor, most often, true. People do what they think

is in their best interests, whether we understand those

interests or not.

Alfredo already shared with Deirdre all the reasons the

move makes sense to him and explained away every con-

cern she raised. It was unlikely he would get anywhere by

continuing to try to persuade her.

Instead, after their conversation, Alfredo realized that

his proposal must not meet Deirdre’s interests well. In-

stead of continuing to press her, he stepped into her shoes

to try to better understand why his idea wasn’t winning

her over. His goal was to uncover which of her interests

weren’t being met and to brainstorm new options that

might work better for her.

My partner Roger Fisher always advised people to

think about the decision from the other party’s point of

view and to use this to craft a yesable proposition. To

create a yesable proposition in your negotiation, follow

these fi ve steps:

1.

Ask yourself whether you’re trying to persuade

the right person. Sometimes the person with

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The Common Challenges

whom you’re negotiating may be saying no

because the options don’t satisfy other key par-

ties. This could indicate that you should negoti-

ate with someone else, or it might simply mean

that you need to keep in mind that your coun-

terpart will later need to get buy-in from some-

one else. In either case, you need to analyze the

interests of these outside stakeholders and even

get them directly involved in the discussion. For

example, Alfredo might have talked to Deirdre’s

boss instead if he had realized that Deirdre didn’t

have the authority to make the decision whether

to move the venture.

2.

Imagine what choice your counterpart believes

you’re asking her to make. Think about how your

counterpart might describe that choice to herself

from her perspective, not yours. Alfredo, for

example, might realize that he has been thinking

about the question in Deirdre’s mind as, “Shall

I fi nally agree to Alfredo’s excellent proposal to

create closer collaboration, more effi ciency, and

lower operating costs for me?” when she’s really

thinking something more like, “Shall I today give

in to another demand from superstar Alfredo,

have to lay people off in one location only to

have to hire people in the new location, and have

people from his company more easily poke their

noses into our business?”

Imagining this tougher and not very appeal-

ing choice for Deirdre would help Alfredo realize

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When Communication Breaks Down

more of her interests and come up with new op-

tions that meet them.

3.

Make a list of the negative consequences the

other party might perceive in saying yes to the

current proposal. Carefully gauge what would

happen for your counterpart if she said yes to

your proposal. Make a list of the potential nega-

tive outcomes. (Put the positives aside for now;

you’ve already tried to use those to convince her,

and they haven’t worked.) Then, make a separate

list of reasons it would benefi t her to say no to

you. Put yourself in her shoes. If you think, “Wow,

if I saw things this way, I would say no, too,”

you’re headed in the right direction.

When you do this analysis, don’t just use your

imagination to complete the lists. Talk to people

who know your counterpart and her company.

Do research on what’s happening within the

company.

Alfredo started in on his lists. Considering

what would happen if Deirdre said yes, he real-

ized that she’d have to relocate people, fi re oth-

ers, take the time to hire new employees where

perhaps the required specialized skills were in

short supply, and explain her decision to the

local union with which her company had strong

relations. If she said no, Alfredo listed, she’d look

strong to her colleagues and her team, keep her

promise of no relocations, remain close to her

company’s headquarters where she could position

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The Common Challenges

herself for her next job, continue to have a team

of engineers travel to Alfredo’s company once a

month, and use videoconference the other three

weeks. And if things changed for some reason,

she could always say yes tomorrow to what would

likely be a sweeter deal from Alfredo.

It was no wonder that Deirdre was not saying

yes, Alfredo realized; not only did the option on

the table go against some of her key interests,

but her best alternative was actually sounding

pretty good.

Armed with a better understanding of Deir-

dre’s unmet interests, Alfredo could now consider

other options; research standards that could

help Deirdre defend her choice to others if she

did agree to his proposal; or demonstrate that

her best alternative was weaker than she thought

(perhaps the option to move her department

wouldn’t last forever!).

4.

Share and check your analysis. Show your

counter part that you’ve thought through her

perspective and make sure you’re on the right

track by sharing your conclusions. Say something

like, “I was having trouble understanding your

point of view, so I tried to list out the reasons you

were saying no. What do I have wrong? What am

I missing?” Your counterpart will appreciate that

you took the time to think through her choice

from her perspective, and even if you did a poor

job, she’ll pick up a pen and begin marking up

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When Communication Breaks Down

your list. This conversation clarifi es unmet inter-

ests and helps you to move the negotiation back

to inventing new options.

5.

Develop a new proposal. Try to infl uence your

counterpart by coming up with a different choice.

This might involve developing a new solution

altogether or simply refi ning or adding to the one

already on the table. The goal is to fi nd a way to

meet more key interests of hers (as well as meet-

ing your own) and make her alternatives look

weaker, so she’ll be more likely to say yes.

Using his analysis, Alfredo created new options that

he felt would be more attractive to Deirdre:

1. Actively assist with recruiting in the new

location.

2. Share criteria on the lower cost of living and

help draft a press release that will address the

concerns of Deirdre’s strongest critic—the union.

These standards could help her sell the idea to

her stakeholders.

3. House Deirdre’s people for the next six months,

but don’t ask them to move permanently.

Notice that the fi rst two options are just slight adjust-

ments to the option that had been on the table all along,

while the third is a very different proposal.

Lastly, Alfredo let Deirdre know that this window of

opportunity wouldn’t last forever because the funding for

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The Common Challenges

the move wouldn’t be available after the end of the fi scal

year. He helped her see that her best alternative—saying

no and waiting for him to make a better offer—wasn’t as

appealing as she thought.

The goal here is to create a new, more appealing op-

tion by better understanding the other party’s interests.

Remember, most people start with a position and hold

on to it tightly. Once you understand the reasons behind

their grip, you can address their needs and yours with a

yesable proposition.

Making understanding a collaborative effort and cre-

ating a proposition to which your counterpart can say yes

will both help address communication breakdowns and

move you toward a more productive solution.

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Chapter 13

When Emotions

Get in the Way

Go from boiling to cool.

The Problem

Many people fear that no matter how they prepare, their

negotiation will spiral into an unproductive debate or a

shouting match. Even if you’re approaching the negotia-

tion with a collaborative, joint problem-solving mind-

set, it’s possible that things will get heated. You know

when it’s happening: Perhaps you feel yourself getting

emotional; you sense that your blood pressure is ris-

ing, that you’re becoming angry or anxious. Maybe your

counterpart is doing the same. The volume might be get-

ting louder, or perhaps one or both of you have started

to yell.

Let’s look at an example inside a company doing its

annual budget planning. Betty, the head of sales, is pre-

paring her budget for next year, and she’s meeting with

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The Common Challenges

Amit, the director of fi nance. Betty has asked Amit sev-

eral times for revised numbers that she can include in her

budget. Instead of delivering, however, he keeps coming

back to her with more questions.

Betty’s draft budget is due to the CFO fi rst thing to-

morrow morning, so she sends Amit a meeting request

to discuss what’s going on. Amit accepts, but shows up

15 minutes late. After explaining why she needs the num-

bers today, Betty asks what’s preventing Amit from just

giving her the numbers she’s asked for. He begins to ex-

plain that she hasn’t shared enough information and that

he’s been working hard to make sense of what she has

given him.

Betty raises her voice: “I’ve asked you four times to

give me those numbers, you showed up late to this meet-

ing, and this is somehow my fault. Why can’t you just do

what I asked?”

Amit can’t believe she’s not getting it. “I’ve been work-

ing on your numbers for weeks! But I can’t get you the

fi nal fi gures until you give me all the information I need.

Don’t you understand that this is on you?”

This may not strike you as a negotiation at fi rst glance,

but it is: There are two parties, with different incentives

and interests, who are trying to come to an agreement

about how to proceed. In this case, a confl ict has erupted,

but it doesn’t have to hurt Betty and Amit’s relationship

or Betty’s draft budget.

Why It Happens

Emotions get heated during a negotiation because there

are high stakes: people’s jobs, their standing with their

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When Emotions Get in the Way

bosses, their confi dence, the success of a venture, or the

future of their business.

A negotiation can also get emotional when you and

your counterpart haven’t communicated well (as we saw

in the previous chapter). Perhaps you misunderstood

each other’s intentions or offended each other by acci-

dent, and feelings were hurt.

What to Do About It

Whatever the reason the conversation has turned com-

bative, help your counterpart—or yourself—go from

boiling to cool. Remain calm, work to understand what’s

triggered both of you, see if you can use any of your emo-

tions to help you make your case, and address any sys-

temic problems.

Keep calm

If your counterpart is worked up, try to stay calm. This is

easier said than done. Here are a few ways to help defuse

the situation:

1.

Focus on your physical reaction. Breathe deeply

rather than tensing up and holding your breath.

Ground yourself by putting your hands on the

table or your feet on the fl oor. The physical mo-

tions you make will infl uence how your mind

reacts. If you start wringing your hands, you’re

signaling to your mind that there is something

to worry about. On the other hand, if you move

slowly and deliberately, you send the message to

your brain to remain calm.

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2.

Listen to what your counterpart is saying. Let

him vent. Some people need to boil over as a kind

of release. After yelling or banging the table, they

might calm down by themselves. Don’t always

feel you need to respond to the outburst. If you

can, let it go and move on to a more productive

way of interacting.

3.

Show you’ve heard him. Calmly paraphrase

what you heard. Acknowledging the reason that

your counterpart got upset can often help turn

things around. Sometimes people just want to be

heard.

4.

Show some empathy. If he’s mad because of

something that doesn’t have anything to do with

you, acknowledge that it seems like a tough situ-

ation. Perhaps even frame the issue as a joint

problem on which you two can work together.

5.

Find out more. If you’re the cause for his frustra-

tion, dig in and fi nd out what’s happening. Bor-

rowing strategies from the previous chapter, try

to understand what you did and how the two of

you might be seeing things differently.

6.

Take a break. If you’re the one who’s getting

angry or emotional, consider taking a break. Go

for a walk around the building. Ask someone on

your team to help you talk it through. Some deep

breathing, or even a little meditation, can help

you reground yourself.

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When Emotions Get in the Way

When Amit snapped back at her, Betty took a deep

breath and sat back in her chair, putting both feet on

the ground. With her body steady, she was able to begin

calming down, but she couldn’t help noticing that Amit

still had a red face and crossed arms.

Betty’s next step was to apologize for her outburst.

She didn’t stop there, though. She also asked Amit why

he was upset. She moved forward to listen and let him

go at it.

Amit said that he was under a lot of pressure given

that it was budget time. He admitted that Betty wasn’t

the fi rst person to get angry with him that week. He

talked about how he was missing his targets because he

did not get enough resources last year. He even shared

a situation two months back when he had asked Betty

for help and had gotten nothing. She had no idea what

he was referring to, but she didn’t stop him; instead, she

asked what the consequences had been. With all that off

his chest—and with Betty’s evident openness to hear-

ing from him—Amit calmed down, too. Betty watched,

relieved, as Amit’s shoulders began to relax and he un-

crossed his arms.

Understand the triggers

As you try to move forward, it’s helpful to know what’s

gotten you worked up in the fi rst place. We all have pet

peeves or behaviors that push our buttons. Develop an

awareness of what typically makes you upset. Perhaps

you don’t like it when someone challenges your truth-

fulness or integrity. Maybe you get mad when someone

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The Common Challenges

exaggerates her point or keeps repeating it. Perhaps it’s

when someone calls you on something you know you

need to work on or something you pride yourself on that

the person is now framing as a negative. Sometimes sim-

ply understanding the underlying reason for your anger

can help you regain control.

Pay attention to what makes your counterpart upset as

well. Observe when she gets emotional. Are there certain

words or behaviors that seem to provoke her? If you’ve

negotiated with her in the past, try to think back to other

occasions when she has gotten upset. Do you notice any

patterns?

Once Betty and Amit began to calm down, Betty re-

minded herself that she always got angry when people

showed up late to meetings because it made her feel dis-

respected. She worked many hours in the evening and

on the weekends to ensure she was never late, and here

not only was Amit late for the meeting, but he was on the

verge of making her late submitting her budget. She rec-

ognized that this was her trigger and that was probably

what made her particularly upset.

Betty also remembered that the sales team was known

for being overly punctual, and fi nance just the opposite

(perhaps, she now realized, due to the workload created

by the demanding sales team). She had worked with

Amit for several years and had seen him get upset be-

fore: It happened most often when people questioned his

work ethic. Amit, too, worked long days, often staying

into the evening, and he prided himself on the quality of

his work, even if it didn’t always get fi nished on time. To

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When Emotions Get in the Way

him, working hard and getting things right were more

important than meeting a deadline.

Betty suggested that she stay late with Amit that eve-

ning so that they could work on the numbers together.

Amit would get the information he needed to get the cal-

culations right, and Betty would be able to submit her

budget on time. Amit agreed, and both left the meeting

feeling much better about the plan and each other.

Use your emotions

Some people think that they aren’t supposed to be emo-

tional in a negotiation, that they shouldn’t reveal what

they’re feeling, whether it’s good or bad. But there are

times that showing passion can be helpful. While per-

haps Betty derailed the conversation by losing her cool

in the meeting, at least Amit now understood how much

she cared about getting those numbers and delivering

her draft budget on time.

If something upsets you, or if someone pushes your

buttons, it’s fi ne to show that you’re angry, frustrated, or

disappointed. (Reacting without forethought by bang-

ing the table, jumping up and down, storming out of the

room, or verbally attacking your counterpart, however, is

a different story; being out of control is never helpful.)

If you’re really excited about something positive, such

as a feature of the agreement, or something of concern,

such as the need to solve a key problem, it’s OK to ex-

press your passion. Of course, do so as a conscious choice.

You certainly don’t want to accidentally signal that you’re

particularly needy (that you care about this interest over

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The Common Challenges

all else) or desperate (that your alternatives aren’t very

good). Instead of letting your emotion control you, har-

ness that emotion and use it to make your point.

You can also harness your counterpart’s emotion. Use

it to uncover his interests (especially fears or concerns)

or as a catalyst to invent options. “You’re steaming mad,

and I am, too, so what can we do about this?” or “You’re

clearly hurt. What are some ways we might fi x this?” If

the person is emotional, he is engaged, and this is often

the best time to move into the circle of value. As the emo-

tion dissipates, you might move to sit beside him, focus

on a common piece of paper or fl ip chart, and begin re-

cording interests, options, and standards together.

Address recurring confl icts

Sometimes emotions run high not because of something

specifi c that’s happening in the room but because there is

a long-standing unhealthy relationship between the two

parties. If you sense the underlying reason for your coun-

terpart yelling at you has little to do with what you’ve just

said, try talking about that.

If you’re surprised by the negotiation turning emo-

tional, or if negotiations with a particular counterpart

turn sour on a consistent basis, it is likely a sign that

something systemic is going on. Discover what the un-

derlying cause is: missed deadlines, other broken com-

mitments, lack of preparation, disrespectful comments or

behaviors, past threats or escalations, or truth stretched.

Use what you learned in chapter 6 about managing the

relationship: Explicitly bring these issues up instead of

letting them fester, and discuss how to solve the under-

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When Emotions Get in the Way

lying problem rather than just temporarily smoothing

things over.

Emotional outbursts can be scary, and it’s often hard

to imagine how to get past them in the moment. But bal-

ancing your and your counterpart’s reactions—allowing

emotions to be expressed but also thinking analytically

about what’s really going on and how to address it—helps

the conversation stay productive and helps you fi nd solu-

tions that work for everyone.

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Section 4

Postgame

Careful review drives learning

and improvement.

How you conclude your negotiation is just as important

as how you begin it. End on the right note so that what

comes next—implementation of the agreement and any

future negotiations—goes smoothly.

In the next chapter, I’ll discuss how to wrap up the

negotiation and communicate the results with the right

people. In the fi nal chapter, I’ll explain how to learn from

your negotiation to continuously improve your organiza-

tion’s approach to similar transactions, as well as to re-

fi ne your own skills.

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Chapter 14

Wrap Up the

Negotiation

Know when you’re done, and

communicate the fi nal decisions.

If you’ve successfully negotiated an agreement that meets

the criteria you set out earlier for a good outcome, con-

gratulations! It’s tough work to get to this point.

You might assume that you’ve now reached the end

of the negotiation and all that’s left is the signing of the

papers. However, you’ll need to take three last steps be-

fore considering the negotiation fi nal: documenting the

terms, communicating with stakeholders, and prepping

for implementation of the agreement.

Document the Terms

If you used the one-text procedure described in the “Get

People on the Same Page—Literally” part of chapter 10,

you’ve already written out the terms that you’ve agreed

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Postgame

to. But if you haven’t, now is a good time to record where

you ended up so that you both have a shared understand-

ing of the specifi cs.

Incorporate any notes you and your counterpart made

along the way, any points you recorded on fl ip charts or

in postsession memos. In a more formal setting, this is

where you would create a formal contract that captures

your agreement and requires signatures. Whether you

use an e-mail, memo, or contract, have your counterpart

review and agree to the text, and be sure you each have

a copy. Even for quick negotiations in a hallway, you’ll

likely want to follow up with some sort of written confi r-

mation of your discussion to share with your counterpart

and any other stakeholders.

Documenting serves two purposes: One, it ensures

that everyone is on the same page. You and your counter-

part can share the e-mail or contract as a draft with oth-

ers in your organizations. Two, the fi nal approved version

serves as a record of what you agreed to in case you, your

counterpart, or anyone implementing the agreement

later needs a reminder of the details.

Caution: Unless you are the sole stakeholder in your

party, make clear to your counterpart that you are not yet

making a fi nal commitment at this stage. You still need

to take your documentation back to your colleagues for

review.

Communicate to Make Sure

You Have Agreement

Throughout the negotiation, you’ve been keeping your

stakeholders informed. Now is the time to confi rm that

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Wrap Up the Negotiation

everyone with decision rights is onboard. Your legal or

fi nance teams may need to review the terms closely, your

operations team may be interested in what’s coming

their way, or perhaps your boss just needs to give her

blessing. Share your documentation and explain why

you recommend it, focusing on the interests and stan-

dards it meets.

Sometimes this review will just be a formality; in other

cases, you may need to work to persuade others or, on

rare occasion, to revisit parts of the agreement if they

have issues.

Whether it’s your boss, key functional leaders, or your

family, getting those who truly matter onboard will sig-

nifi cantly increase your chances of successfully imple-

menting your agreement.

Think Through the Implementation

Before you declare victory and move on, think about

what steps will ensure a smooth transition from agree-

ment to implementation.

Perhaps the agreement is something you’ll be carrying

out yourself, like a new role you just negotiated with your

boss. If that’s the case, talk about follow-up steps before

leaving the room. Who will write up a new job descrip-

tion? Will you need certain resources, and if so, who will

acquire them and how? What’s the timeline? How will

progress be tracked and success be measured? Explic-

itly discuss how to move from conceptual agreement to

action.

If you’re wrapping up a more complex negotia-

tion, you’ll probably already have addressed important

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Postgame

milestones and deadlines and captured them in the con-

tract. But before everything is fi nalized, think one last

time about how the agreement will be carried out and

by whom, and what could change or go wrong. Have you

discussed what happens if you or your counterpart can-

not hit these milestones? What process will you use to

make adjustments? Will there be any penalties? What

happens if you or your counterpart, or other prominent

stakeholders, leave your organization before the project

is complete? Perhaps you and the other party agreed that

there were some risky terms in the agreement and you

need to put something up for collateral; if so, what is the

plan for doing this?

If your job is simply to negotiate, and you’ll hand off

the implementation responsibility to others, think about

what they need to effectively carry out the agreement.

These may feel like logistical issues that are extraneous to

the negotiation, but in fact they are integral details that

you need to consider, discuss with your counterpart, and

perhaps also formally add into your documentation. All

the work you did to negotiate your agreement will be for

naught if it cannot be implemented.

Put the Agreement into Action

Once the agreement is (fi nally!) fi nal, brief anyone in-

volved in its implementation on what has been negoti-

ated, the intent behind it, what you’ve learned about your

counterpart and his interests, and any predictable future

risks or stumbling blocks. Sharing sticking points from

the negotiation process can be helpful as well, since this

can indicate where future problems may occur. Certainly

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Wrap Up the Negotiation

take time to explain any element of the agreement that is

new to your organization, such as a particularly creative

delivery or payment method.

Take, for example, a salesperson for a service provider

who just closed a deal. Because of the deal’s complexity,

the contract required a lot of legal language, so the sales-

person should convey the key terms to the delivery team

in plain English. The customer emphasized throughout

the negotiations concerns about certain deadlines or

dependencies, so he should convey those to his delivery

team as well. He also noticed during the process that rep-

resentatives of the customer’s organization approached

confl ict head-on: He’ll tell her team that as well, in case

disagreements come up over time.

Don’t consider the negotiation “fi nished” until you’ve

conveyed all relevant information about the agreement

to anyone who will be working to put it into action; use

the “Communicating to Implementers Checklist” box to

make sure you’ve covered everything. Of course, some

of these items will not be appropriate in every negotia-

tion. In each case, consider how complex the contract

is, how challenging you expect the implementation will

be, the depth and dynamics of the past history with this

counterpart, and how contentious the negotiation was,

and share that with anyone who may be affected by the

agreement.

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Postgame

COMMUNICATING TO IMPLEMENTERS CHECKLIST

(1) To help the implementers truly understand the

agreement, I have:

• Shared the contract

• Highlighted key points

• Documented our and the other party’s core

interests behind important terms

• Shared the intent behind terms where it might

not be clear

(2) To forewarn them about potential future con-

fl icts, I have:

• Noted where, and why, there was signifi cant

contention during the negotiation around a

particular issue or term

• Pointed out key areas where there was uncer-

tainty in the negotiation about how to deal

with a core issue or diff erence between the

parties

• Highlighted areas where the issue or term

creates, leaves open, or tries to manage some

substantial risk for either or both parties

• Documented any areas where we are worried

about the other party living up to their com-

mitments and any areas where they seem wor-

ried about us living up to our commitments

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COMMUNICATING TO IMPLEMENTERS CHECKLIST

(3) To assist implementers in managing the ongoing

relationship with the other party, I have:

• Shared what I learned from the negotiation

about how the other party’s organization

operates

• Highlighted key diff erences between our and

their priorities, methods, ways of interacting,

values, and so on

• Informed them about any relationship ten-

sions, diffi

cult people in the other organization,

great people with whom to work, particularly

strong and helpful relationships between

certain people in our organization and certain

people in the other organization, and so on

• Passed on any insights into who infl uences

whom in the other organization, about what

kinds of issues, and in what ways: in other

words, the details of a fl eshed-out Relation-

ship Map for the other organization

(4) To help the implementers get started, I have:

• Made introductions between them and key

people in the other party’s organization

• Highlighted near-term goals, activities to

launch, commitments to be fulfi lled, dead-

lines, and so on

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COMMUNICATING TO IMPLEMENTERS CHECKLIST

• Noted any key dependencies between what

they need to do and what we need to do, and

especially between what we and they com-

mitted to do

• Shared how both we and they will be measur-

ing near-term success

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Chapter 15

Review What

Happened

Use “lessons learned” today for

improvement tomorrow.

When the negotiation is truly fi nished, don’t just pat

yourself on the back. Every negotiation is an opportunity

to learn and to improve your skills as a negotiator.

Set Up a Review

Unfortunately, most people don’t formally look back over

their negotiations unless things went horribly wrong. Of

course, you’ll learn a lot from your failures, but there are

valuable takeaways from successes, too. Make sure to re-

view, capture what you learned, and get feedback.

Set aside time as close to the end of the negotiation as

possible so that the events of the negotiation are still fresh

in your mind. For a simpler negotiation, take 15 minutes

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Postgame

in your car to think through your lessons learned. For one

that’s more complex, set up reviews after each session.

Consider doing another review after you’ve lived with the

agreement for a few months to gauge if there are things

that have come up in the implementation that might

cause you to think differently about what to do or avoid

the next time you negotiate.

If you negotiated on your own, get help from a trusted

colleague and walk her through the process. For a more

complex negotiation, set up a meeting with any col-

leagues who were involved. This includes anyone who

was in the room, as well as those who played an impor-

tant role behind the scenes.

Determine what worked well

and where to improve

Identify areas to improve your and your organization’s

negotiation skills and strategies you may want to use

again in other situations.

When you convene this review meeting (or when you

sit down to think it through on your own), ask the follow-

ing questions:

• What worked well? Why? What should I continue

doing next time?

• What didn’t work well? Why? What should I do

differently next time?

• Where did I get stuck in the negotiation and why?

If I was able to work my way out, how did I do it?

• Were there things the other party, or his organiza-

tion, did from which I might learn?

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Review What Happened

• Are there new interests, creative options, per-

suasive standards, or effective game-changing

moves that I might want to capture to use again

or share with colleagues who have similar kinds of

negotiations?

For more complex negotiations, consider asking these

questions for each phase of the negotiation: preparing,

conducting, making midcourse corrections, and closing

it out.

Also go back and gauge your fi nal agreement against

each of the seven elements as a measure of success. If the

agreement meets your interests well, but you can’t quite

say the same about standards, you now know where you

need to prepare or practice more in the future.

Capture what you learned

Document everything discussed in your review session.

Be prescriptive. Translate what you’ve learned into ad-

vice to use the next time you negotiate.

Consider keeping a journal that captures lessons from

each of your negotiations, including inventive options,

compelling standards, ways of improving relationships,

or other strategies that worked well for you. That way,

you can review these practical tips before your next nego-

tiation and put them to use for a better result.

Share what you’ve learned with others

Capture your lessons in a way that others who were

not part of the process can understand them. Lessons

learned in the negotiation too often stay with the nego-

tiator alone. Help others benefi t from your experience

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Postgame

by highlighting what you learned about the process and

the other parties, creative ways you structured the agree-

ment, and successful strategies. Some organizations cre-

ate negotiation strategy playbooks in which they docu-

ment this kind of information.

Aim for Continuous Improvement

The best way to get better at negotiation is to prepare,

conduct, review, and repeat. While your next negotiation

may be about a different set of issues, the process and

skills you’ll need to be successful are likely quite similar.

If you approach the whole process with discipline, over

time you will not only become increasingly confi dent, you

will also achieve better results, build productive relation-

ships, and create valuable agreements with bosses, col-

leagues, customers, suppliers, and partners alike.

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Learn More

If you’re interested in learning more about negotiation,

the books listed here are a great place to start. These pub-

lications are by my colleagues, and each one defi ned or

helped shape the strategies and advice in this guide.

Ertel, Danny, and Mark Gordon. The Point of the Deal:

How to Negotiate When Yes Is Not Enough. Boston:

Harvard Business School Press, 2007.

Fisher, Roger, and Scott Brown. Getting Together: Build-

ing Relationships as We Negotiate. Boston: Houghton

Miffl in, 1988. (Paperback edition: New York: Penguin

Books, 1989.)

Fisher, Roger, and Daniel Shapiro. Beyond Reason:

Using Emotions as You Negotiate. New York: Viking/

Penguin, 2005.

Fisher, Roger, William L. Ury, and Bruce Patton. Getting

to YES: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In,

2nd edition. New York: Penguin Books, 1991. (1st edi-

tion: Boston: Houghton Miffl in, 1981.)

Stone, Douglas, Bruce Patton, and Sheila Heen. Diffi cult

Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most.

New York: Viking/Penguin, 1999.

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Index

adaptation, of approach 103–108

BATNA (best alternative to a

agenda, drafting, 48–49

negotiated agreement), 5.

alternatives

See also best alternative

best, 5, 7, 33–34, 95–98,

best alternative, 5, 7, 33–34,

101–102, 132–133

95–98, 101–102, 132–133

challenging other party’s,

body language, 127

34–35, 97–98

breaks, 106–107, 150–151

comparing options to, 95–97

brevity, 73–74

of counterpart, 34–35, 97–98,

buy-in, 65

129

preparing a list of, 33

calm, remaining, 149–151

resorting to, 98, 132–133

challenges

as success element, 2, 4–5

communication breakdowns,

assessment, of negotiation, 106,

110, 135–146

107–108, 167–169

hard bargainers, 110, 123–133

assumptions

heated conversations, 110,

being aware of, 17–18

147–155

challenging your, 21

multiple parties, 110, 111–122

about counterparts, 17–18,

circle of value approach, xvi–xvii,

19–20

69–70, 131

enabling, 19–20

collaborative approach, xv, 65–66

negative, 15–18, 20

commitments, 2, 5–6, 43–46,

about the negotiation, 18,

98–100, 102, 130

19–20

common ground, identifying

questioning your, 15–21

areas of, 28–29

shifting your, 18–20

communication

authority, to make commitments,

breakdown in, 110, 135–146

43–46, 99

brevity in, 73–74

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Index

communication (continued)

waiting for opening move

clarity in, 73–74

from, 71–72

with decision makers, 160–161

creative thinking, xi–xvii

effective, 6, 72–74

to implementers about agree-

decision makers

ment, 161–166

clarifying, 112–116

planning messaging and pro-

communication with,

cess, 46–49

160–161

relationships and, 52

infl uencing, 64–65

setting tone and, 66–67, 127

documentation

as success element, 2, 6

one-text procedure and,

concessions, xiii–xiv, 69, 74–75

117–121

confl ict

post-negotiation review and,

addressing recurring, 154–155

169–170

identifying areas of, 28–29

of terms, 159–160

management, xi

continuous improvement, striv-

elements. See seven elements of

ing for, 170

success

counterpart

emotional triggers, 151–153

alternatives of, 34–35, 97–98,

emotions, 110, 139–141, 147–

129

155

connecting with, in advance,

physical reaction to, 149–151

57–67

triggers, 151–153

hard bargaining by, 110,

using your, 153–154

123–133

empathy, 139, 150

helping prepare, 65–66

enabling assumptions, 19–20

identifying, 60–65

external factors, affecting nego-

interests of, 27–28, 82–84, 128

tiation, 54

listening to, 72–73, 150

negative reactions from,

fairness, 4, 31–33

83–84

fallback solutions, 33–35. See

perceptions of, 137–139

also alternatives

perspective of, 74, 142–145

Fisher, Roger, xvi, 54, 77, 141

persuading, 93–94

fl exibility, 103–108

premature judgments about,

17–18

hard bargainers, 110, 123–133

relationship with, 49–53,

heated conversations, 110,

130–131

147–155. See also emotions

shifting assumptions about, 19

understanding, through role-

impact of actions, addressing,

play, 105

139–141

174

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Index

implementation, of agreement,

negative assumptions, 15–18, 20

161–166

negative outcomes, 143–144

information, identifying needed,

negotiation

48

adapting during, 103–108

informational role, 113–116

assessment of, 106, 107–108,

intentions, 139–141

167–169

interests

assumptions about, 15–21

common, 28–29

beginning, 71–79

confl icting, 28–29

breaks during, 106–107,

of counterpart, 27–28, 82–84,

150–151

128

circle of value approach to,

drawing out, 82–85

xvi–xvii, 69–70, 131

versus positions, 101

collaborative approach to, xv,

sacrifi cing your, 101

65–66

sharing your, 84–85

common challenges in,

of stakeholders, 28

109–110, 111–122, 123–133,

as success element, 2, 3

135–146, 147–155

understanding your, 27–29

common mistakes in, 100–102

issues, identifying core, 26

communication breakdowns

during, 110, 135–146

lessons learned, from negotia-

creative thinking in, xi–xvii

tion, 167–170

defi ned, xi

listening

effective communication dur-

to counterpart, 72–73, 83–84,

ing, 6, 72–74

150

emotions during, 110, 139–141,

failure of, 100

147–155

location, for negotiation, 59–60

external factors affecting, 54

identifying players in, 60–65

messages

misconceptions about, xii–xiii

clarifying, 73–74

with multiple parties, 110,

planning, 46–48

111–122

setting tone and, 66–67

practicing, 104–105

milestones

preparation for ( see

identifying, 43–45

preparation)

missed, 162

process of, 43–59

mistakes, common, 100–102

recurring confl icts in, 154–155

misunderstandings, 74

rethinking approach to, xii–xv

motivations, 3. See also interests

review of, 167–170

multiple parties, 110, 111–122

roles in, 113–116

mutual understanding, building,

setting tone for, 66–67, 127

137–139

success measures for, 1–12

175

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Index

negotiation (continued)

practice, 104–105

time and place for, 59–60

premature judgments, 17–18

on two tracks, 74–79

prenegotiation contact, 57–67

walking away from, 98

preparation

wrap-up of, 157, 159–166

anticipating surprises, 53–55

as zero-sum game, xiv–xv

brainstorming options, 29–31

for communication, 46–49

objective criteria, 31–33. See also

connecting in advance, 57–67

standards

considering alternatives,

one-text procedure, 117–122,

33–35

159–160

of counterpart, 65–66

options

drafting agenda, 48–49

brainstorming possible, 29–31,

fi nding objective criteria,

85–89

31–33

committing to, 98–100

getting others involved in,

comparing to alternatives,

25–26

95–97

identifying issues, 26

creating “yesable,” 141–146

identifying stakeholders, 26

eliminating, using standards,

imagining potential solutions,

92

29–31

evaluating and refi ning,

importance of, 13–14

89–90, 96, 101

for negotiation process, 43–56

narrowing down, 90–94

pushing yourself during,

selecting right, 95–102

35–36

as success element, 2, 3–4

questioning assumptions,

trade-offs, 30–31

15–21

outcome

questions to answer during,

negative, 143–144

55–56

selecting right, 95–102

for the relationship, 49–53

researching standards, 31–33

paraphrasing, 150

for substance of negotiation,

partisan perceptions, 137–139

23–41

perspectives, understanding oth-

time for, 24–25, 36–39

ers’, 74, 142–145

understanding interests,

persuasion, 93–94

27–29

physical reactions, 149

when time is short, 36–39

place, for negotiation, 59–60

positional bargaining, xiii–xv,

questions

117, 132

to answer during preparation,

possibilities, generating, 86–87.

40–41, 55–56

See also options

asking, 72–73

176

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Index

to obtain critical information,

stakeholders

48

communication with, 160–161

for one-text procedure, 121

considering interests of, 28

identifying, 26, 61–65

recurring confl icts, 154–155

mapping, 61–65

relationship mapping, 26, 61–65

multiple, 110, 111–122

relationships

selling solution to, 99

antagonistic, 65

veto power, 113, 115

broken, 51

standards

building working, 74–79

confl icting, 92–93

communication and, 52

eliminating options using, 92

with counterpart, 49–53,

fi nding, 31–33

74–79, 130–131

narrowing down options us-

damaging, xiv

ing, 90–94

dealing with, head-on, 75–76

as success element, 2, 4

gaps in, 49–51

supporting options using,

growing, 76–77

91–92

lack of, 53

using with hard bargainers, 130

mapping, 61–65

success

recurring confl icts in, 154–155

best alternative as bar for, 7–8,

sacrifi cing interests to pre-

101–102

serve, 101

seven elements of, 1–12

separating from substance of

surprises, anticipating, 53–55

negotiation, 76, 79

as success element, 2, 7

terms, documentation of,

threatened, 51–53

159–160

reviews, 107–108, 167–170

threats. See hard bargainers

role-play, 104–105

time

roles in negotiation, assigning,

for negotiation, 59–60

113–116

for preparation, 24–25, 36–39

tone setting, 66–67, 127

seven elements of success, 1–12

trade-offs, making smart, 30–31

Seven Elements Tool, 8–12, 81

triggers, 151–153

solutions

agreeing on, 116–122

written documentation. See

creating “yesable,” 141–146

documentation

fallback, 33–35

imagining potential, 29–31

“yesable” propositions, 141–146

pushing for better, 96–97

selecting, 95–102

zero-sum game, negotiation as,

selling to key stakeholders, 99

xiv–xv

177

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About the Author

Jeff Weiss is a partner at Vantage Partners, a global

consultancy specializing in corporate negotiations,

relationship management, partnering, and complex

change management. At Vantage, Jeff has led both

the Alliances and the Sales Advisory practices, and

worked extensively both in the Strategic Sourcing and

Supply Chain Management practice and in Vantage’s

training business. Jeff also serves on the faculties of the

Tuck School of Business and the United States Military

Academy at West Point, where he is also the codirector of

the West Point Negotiation Project.

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Notes

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Notes

H6888.indb 189

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HBR Guide to

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HBR Guide to

Leading Teams

Mary Shapiro

HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW PRESS

Boston, Massachusetts

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Shapiro, Mary.

HBR guide to leading teams / Mary Shapiro.

pages

cm

ISBN 978-1-63369-041-7 (alk. paper)

1. Teams in the workplace—Management. 2. Leadership. I. Title.

HD66.S4844

2015

659.4'022—dc23

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ISBN: 9781633690417

eISBN: 9781633690424

HBR Guide to Leading Teams.indd iv

3/25/15 11:01 AM

What You’ll Learn

How often have you sat in team meetings, grousing to

yourself, “What a colossal waste of time. Why does it take

forever for us to make a simple decision? What are we

even trying to achieve here?”

Dysfunctional teams are maddening—and sadly, they

seem to be endemic to organizational life. But as the

team leader, you have the power to change things for the

better. It’s up to you to get people to work well together

and produce results.

How do you avoid the pitfalls you’ve experienced so

painfully in the past? This guide offers step-by-step ad-

vice, drawing on time-tested principles, practical exer-

cises, guidelines for structured team conversations, and

examples from a range of industries and organizational

settings.

You’ll get better at:

• Picking the right team members

• Cultivating their skills

• Setting clear, smart goals

HBR Guide to Leading Teams.indd v

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What You’ll Learn

• Rallying support both within and outside

the team

• Fostering camaraderie and cooperation

• Addressing bad behavior before it gets out

of hand

• Promoting healthy dissent

• Resolving confl ict when it rears its head

• Holding members accountable to one another, not

just to you

• Keeping them focused and motivated to the end

• Identifying best practices for your next team

vi

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Contents

Introduction xi

Invest in the “people” side of teamwork.

Section 1: BUILD YOUR TEAM’S

INFRASTRUCTURE

1. Pull Together a Winning Team

3

Make it small and diverse.

2. Get to Know One Another

11

Connect in a meaningful way and learn what

people need to do their best work.

3. Establish Your Team’s Goals

25

Defi ne your tasks and outcomes—and your

processes for achieving them.

4. Agree on Individuals’ Roles

35

Decide who will do what on the team.

5. Agree on Rules of Conduct

45

Specify how the team will operate as a unit.

HBR Guide to Leading Teams.indd vii

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Contents

6. Set the Stage for Accountability

55

Sort out how the team will enforce its goals,

roles, and rules.

7. Commit to a Team Contract

67

Summarize what you’ve agreed to in your team-

building conversations.

Section 2: MANAGE YOUR TEAM

8. Make Optimal Team Decisions

73

Create an environment where everyone

participates.

9. Hold People Accountable

87

Build skills—and trust—in giving and receiving

feedback.

10. Give People Recognition

99

Motivate them to contribute more by

acknowledging what they’ve done.

11. Resolve Confl icts Constructively

103

Get problems out in the open right away so you

can move past them.

12. Welcome New Members

117

Discuss what’s working and what may need to

change.

13. Manage Outside the Team

123

Cultivate mutually benefi cial external

relationships.

viii

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Contents

Section 3: CLOSE OUT YOUR TEAM

14. Deliver the Goods

133

Keep everyone focused and working

productively until the end.

15. Learn from Your Team’s Experiences

139

Refl ect on what worked and what didn’t.

Appendix A: Rules Inventory

147

Appendix B: Cultural Audit

153

Appendix C: Team Contract

157

Index 161

About the Author

165

ix

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HBR Guide to Leading Teams.indd x

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Introduction

Whether you’re taking over an existing team, launching

a new one, or have been leading a group for a while, get-

ting people to work together to produce excellent out-

comes is not easy. Each team is different, and each poses

a distinct set of challenges. Maybe you’ve just been as-

signed to chair a task force of people from different units

to launch a companywide initiative. Perhaps you manage

fi ve people who have to work together daily as a part of

ongoing operations. Or maybe you’ve been struggling at

the helm of a team so mired in confl ict that the members

couldn’t reach agreement on anything if their lives de-

pended on it. No matter what type of team you’re leading,

you probably face tight deadlines and high expectations

and feel the pressure to churn out project plans, assign

tasks, and, above all, execute.

It’s only natural. We create teams to accomplish work,

after all, so we tend to focus mainly on tasks. But that’s

just one side of the equation; we also need to focus on the

people who will be carrying out those tasks.

xi

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Introduction

If your team members don’t have good relationships

with one another, your team won’t do good work. People

will squabble. They won’t trust each other. They’ll feel

underappreciated, grumbling that others aren’t carrying

their share of the load. They’ll stop collaborating. Tem-

pers will fl are—and productivity will grind to a halt.

It takes time and energy to prevent complications like

these and to get team members working well together.

You have to explain tasks clearly, coordinate efforts, mo-

tivate people, resolve confl icts, give feedback, and de-

velop skills. In short, you have to manage the people with

as much discipline as you manage the work.

Before investing all that effort, consider whether you

even need a team to do the job at hand. We’ve all been

on teams assembled for the wrong reasons—to rub-

ber-stamp an already-made decision, for example, or

to spread out the risk and blame in case a project goes

badly. To ensure that your team has a solid reason for be-

ing, conduct a straightforward cost/benefi t analysis: Will

it help you meet your goals and improve your outcomes?

Or can you do the work just as well yourself, with greater

effi ciency and fewer headaches?

If you decide the investment is worthwhile, you’ll

want to create a winning team, of course—not one

that crashes and burns or limps along indefi nitely. This

book will help you do just that. Effective team leader-

ship unfolds in three stages: build-up, managing, and

closing out.

xii

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Introduction

Stage 1: Build Your Team’s

Infrastructure

Just like a house, a solid team needs a strong foundation.

But instead of stones or cement, your materials will be

early discussions about goals, roles, rules of conduct, and

the metrics you’ll use to gauge progress. Once you’ve en-

listed people with the required skills and perspectives, the

group must explicitly agree on what it’s trying to achieve,

how it will get there, and what success will look like. This

is how team building really works. It’s not about ropes

courses or whitewater-rafting trips, it’s about reconciling

individual temperaments and work styles to get the most

out of each contributor and the team as a whole.

You may be thinking, “Who has time for all these

conversations? We have a job to do, and we’re already

in a pinch to get it done.” But agreeing on how you’ll do

that work beforehand will make it go more quickly and

smoothly. You’ll have fewer confl icts to navigate, deci-

sions to revisit, and tasks to redo.

Because each group has its own quirks, you’ll need

to build this infrastructure every time you create a new

team—and every time you lose or add members.

Stage 2: Manage Your Team

If you’ve ever led a project, you know what it takes to

manage tasks: You acknowledge when they’re done well

and on time. And when something misses the mark, you

xiii

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Introduction

stipulate changes to get it back on track. Throughout the

project, you strive for continuous improvement.

The same principles apply to leading a team. When

people exhibit useful behavior—such as warning others

before a deadline slips—point it out. This motivates them

to keep it up and reminds others of what they should do

to support team goals. It’s just as important to nip nega-

tive behavior in the bud—a team member stops partici-

pating in meetings, for example, or verbally attacks those

who disagree with her. Just as you monitor and tweak

tasks to follow a project plan, keep a close eye on how

people are doing relative to the goals, roles, and rules

you’ve all agreed on—and talk openly about problems as

soon as they crop up.

It sounds simple, but most team leaders don’t do this.

Instead, they let issues go unaddressed until someone ex-

plodes in frustration, or until everyone mentally checks

out, bringing work to a standstill.

Stage 3: Close Out Your Team

Say you’re almost ready to turn your prototype over to en-

gineering, for example, or to present recommendations

to the board of directors. You should be elated, right? The

team is so close to achieving its goals. But you’ve noticed

that people are skipping meetings or spending time on

other work. What’s happening?

When the fi nish line is in sight, team members often

lose their focus, drive, and patience. They start thinking

about the next project or obsessing about all their other

work that has piled up. You may feel the same impatience

to move on. Now more than ever, it’s critical to motivate

xiv

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Introduction

team members—and yourself—to wrap things up prop-

erly and capture best practices to apply next time around.

That’s what this third stage is about. If you solicit your

team’s input on what went well and what didn’t, you’ll

manage those problems better in the future. You’ll grow

as a team leader—and your team members will improve

their own skills.

We’ll cover each of these stages in this guide. Through-

out, I provide sample structured conversations and ac-

tivities developed from my experience of more than 20

years of consulting with teams. I draw on many real ex-

amples (some of them disguised) to show how team lead-

ers have applied the advice in a range of situations.

You may feel uncomfortable with some of the activi-

ties, at least initially, since they deal with the “people”

side of teams (an area where many leaders struggle, es-

pecially those who were promoted because of their tech-

nical expertise). But give them a try. I’ve seen them work

for new and existing teams, large and small, colocated

and virtual, and in just about every organizational set-

ting—including fi nancial services, manufacturing, cus-

tomer service, technology, nonprofi ts, and government

agencies. They’ll help your team to grow, prevent and fi x

hard problems, and produce the results you’re after.

xv

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HBR Guide to Leading Teams.indd xvi

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Section 1

Build Your

Team’s

Infrastructure

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HBR Guide to Leading Teams.indd 2

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Chapter 1

Pull Together a

Winning Team

If you’ve ever led a team, you’ve dealt with maddening

members: Those who dominate meetings. Slowpokes

who analyze every problem from every angle when the

schedule is tight. Those who harp on reasons not to sup-

port decisions the group made months ago. Quiet folks

who say nothing in meetings, but then complain end-

lessly at the coffee station about decisions that were

made in their presence. Those who compete for “resident

expert” status without actually contributing much at all.

You may have wondered: Do they stay up all night

thinking of ways to torment me? What’s wrong with

them? Why can’t they be more like me?

That’s a common—though a bit melodramatic—re-

sponse to the challenge of leading a team of diverse in-

dividuals. Socially we all gravitate toward people who are

3

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Build Your Team’s Infrastructure

like us—those who understand our humor, enjoy doing

the same things we do, and don’t get offended when we

cancel at the last minute (after all, they do it, too). Same-

ness minimizes confl ict and misunderstanding. Yet, to

paraphrase U.S. gum maker William Wrigley Jr. when

two people think alike on a team, one of them is redun-

dant. Assemble a team of people who are just like you,

and you’ll undoubtedly experience less frustration. The

group will reach decisions more quickly, and members

will approach the work in the same way.

But lack of diversity has a serious downside. If every-

one on the team prefers big-picture thinking, who comes

up with the practical steps necessary to realize the

group’s vision? If everyone likes taking risks, who plans a

soft landing before you leap? Who handles the tasks you

don’t like to do or can’t do well?

Research repeatedly shows that greater diversity on

a team yields more innovation and higher-quality work.

That’s why each individual on your team should bring

some unique combination of expertise and skills that will

help you produce great work (see fi gure 1-1).

To achieve the diversity “sweet spot” you’re aiming

for, you must fi rst envision the results you want, and

then determine what strengths and capabilities you’ll

need to achieve them. If you’re building a business case,

for instance, you’ll need expertise in data mining and

proposal writing. Tap your network for people who are

good at those things or ask your colleagues whom they’d

recommend. Once you’ve got someone on board who

possesses a critical skill, don’t add another team mem-

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FIGURE 1-1

Making the most of diversity

Use this list of task- and people-related strengths to determine what mix of

knowledge and skills your team requires.

To complete the tasks at hand,

To get everyone working well

you may need members who

together, enlist members who

bring:

excel at:

• Relevant functional expertise

• Facilitating meetings

(for example, in engineering,

• Building consensus

accounting, marketing, fi nance,

or customer service)

• Giving feedback

• Relevant industry knowledge

• Communicating in groups

(for example, in manufacturing,

• Resolving confl icts

technology, health care,

or fi nancial services)

• Negotiating

• Technological skill

• Motivating others

• An appetite for research

• Exercising emotional

intelligence

• The ability to mine and

analyze data

• Infl uencing others

• A knack for writing and

• Networking with people

presenting

outside the team who can

provide resources

ber who excels at the same thing. Remember to address

both task-related strengths and people skills when as-

sembling your team.

Consider this hypothetical example illustrating the

value of diversity on a team.

Imagine that your company has experienced a dra-

matic increase in products returned from customers. If

you pull together a team of six engineers to analyze the

problem, chances are they’ll quickly come to one conclu-

sion and make a recommendation consistent with their

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common backgrounds: It’s an engineering issue, and the

solution is to rework the design.

I know this is a cliché, but it applies here: When ev-

eryone on your team is a “hammer,” then every problem

will look like a nail, and every solution will be to pound

it. Outcomes will be quick, consistent, and harmonious—

but not innovative.

Now suppose you add people from customer service

and marketing to your team. Team members will look at

the problem from different viewpoints. Maybe it’s an en-

gineering problem, maybe customers don’t understand

how to use the product correctly, or maybe they’re buying

the wrong model for their purposes.

That’s the good news—a variety of perspectives ex-

pands the number of possible solutions. But the team

still must work together to come up with a single cre-

ative solution. The decision making takes much longer,

and relationships may get strained as members hash out

confl icting ideas.

So what’s the right amount of diversity? Jon Katzen-

bach and Douglas Smith defi ne the optimal makeup of

a team in their classic Harvard Business Review article

“The Discipline of Teams” this way: “A small number

of people with complementary skills who are commit-

ted to a common purpose, set of performance goals,

and approach for which they hold themselves mutually

accountable.”

Building on this defi nition and drawing on my years

of experience consulting with teams and leading my own,

I’ve developed the following principles for assembling an

effective team:

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Make It Small

The larger the team, the more diffi cult it is to fi nd meet-

ing times, the longer it takes to make decisions, and the

tougher it is to manage information and work fl ow. So

bring together the smallest number of people necessary

to provide the skills and perspectives you need. That’s

usually somewhere between three and seven members.

Other contributors who will be needed only occasion-

ally—organizational allies, content experts, and advis-

ers—should not be included as full-fl edged members:

That just wastes everyone’s time. Instead, consult them

at specifi c points and assign one member to serve as a

conduit of information back and forth. For example, a fi -

nance representative should weigh in as you put together

a budget request for a project, but that person obviously

shouldn’t participate in all the team building and ongo-

ing work that doesn’t require fi nancial expertise.

If you are assuming leadership of an existing team,

you’ll need to start by deciding whom to keep and whom

to cut loose. If the numbers feel bloated, consider defi n-

ing a core team of a few essential people and moving oth-

ers onto a “support” team that you enlist on an ad hoc

basis. This strategy is particularly useful if you have in-

herited some noncontributors, complainers, or obstruc-

tionists. If you can’t eliminate them, you can at least mar-

ginalize their impact.

Incorporate Skills and Knowledge

List the skills and types of expertise you’ll need to tackle

the team’s responsibilities—not just what’s needed to

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accomplish the work but also what will facilitate collabo-

ration. (Again, use fi gure 1-1 to get started.) Then identify

the fewest number of people who can cover most of those

requirements.

You can also conduct this inventory to reevaluate your

current team. If certain members aren’t contributing

much, ideally you’ll remove them. But if you don’t have

that authority, try giving them “support team” status as

suggested above. Does your team lack key competencies?

Add people to fi ll those gaps—or at least identify advisers

you can call on periodically.

Include Diverse Approaches to Work

The best teams offer a mix of work styles: people who

carefully address one task at a time and those who can

multitask, folks who excel at contingency planning and

those who nimbly adjust when problems strike, and so

on. Here, we’re talking about people’s natural inclina-

tions, not the skills they’ve acquired through training or

experience. When assembling your team, consider how

people differ in their outlooks, priorities, and attitudes

about decision making, change, and risk.

Don’t drive yourself crazy trying to include every con-

ceivable work style on your team. It’s just not possible.

But identify people whose wiring differs from your own

and who possess characteristics essential for your team’s

success. If you’re leading a team that will drive deep

change in the organization, you may want members on

both sides of the “change” spectrum: early adopters to

generate creative ideas and late adopters to anticipate

sources of resistance (see fi gure 1-2).

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FIGURE 1-2

How are they wired?

When you’re selecting team members, think about how they’re naturally

inclined to act. On each dimension below, most people will gravitate toward

one end of the continuum or the other when they’re on “autopilot,” though

they can adjust their behaviors with eff ort—when under deadline pressure,

for instance.

Is detail oriented

Focuses on the big

picture

OUTLOOK

Focuses on the next

Looks one to three

project deadline

years down the road

Decides on the basis

Relies on intuition

of data

DECISION

Decides deliberately

Decides spontaneously

MAKING

with analyses and

contemplation

Is a late adopter

Is an early adopter;

of trends; prefers

is comfortable with

certainty and clarity

uncertainty

CHANGE

Prefers incremental

Prefers large, sweep-

change; builds on

ing change; likes a

what works

“clean slate”

Places task completion

Places relationships

ahead of relationships

and harmony ahead

of tasks

PRIORITIES

Focuses on the tasks

Focuses on how the

themselves

work gets done (the

process)

Prefers a slow

Prefers a fast and fl uid

and methodical

environment

environment

WORK

Works on one task at

Multitasks

a time

Spends time analyzing

Faces risk with

and preparing for risk

minimal planning

Identifi es all possible

RISK

Prefers to make real-

outcomes and gener-

time adjustments as

ates contingencies

needed

ahead of time

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Though work quality will benefi t from a mix of per-

sonalities and approaches, relationships may suffer.

For example, the big-picture thinkers might regard the

detail- oriented people as data geeks crippled by “analy-

sis paralysis.” And the detail people may dismiss the big-

picture folks as unrealistic or people who “shoot from

the hip.”

Why would you want both types on your team?

Imagine how much work would get done with only big-

picture thinkers to execute ideas. Probably very little.

They’d generate lots of excitement and creative thought,

but the goals would keep changing and expanding, and

no one would focus on how exactly to accomplish them.

And you wouldn’t be any better off with an entire team of

detail-oriented colleagues. They’d provide clarity, struc-

ture, and solid documentation of progress—but their

outcomes would probably resemble what’s been done in

the past. They wouldn’t break new ground.

So the differences are worth the potential headaches.

We’ll talk more about how to handle the confl ict—both

destructive and benefi cial—that is a natural by-product

of diversity in chapter 11, “Resolve Confl icts Construc-

tively.” But let’s now look at ways to minimize the head-

aches by anticipating some of the problems members

will have.

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Chapter 2

Get to Know One

Another

Now that you’ve identifi ed the skills and expertise your

project needs and pulled together your team, it’s time for

your launch meeting. You’ve made a PowerPoint deck

outlining the project. You’ve provided coffee and donuts,

and everyone’s sitting around the table expectantly. How

do you begin? If you’re like most of us, you welcome ev-

eryone, introduce yourself, and then ask each person to

share his or her name, title, and maybe “a little about

yourself.”

But hang on. Don’t zip past those introductions.

Before you dig into that deck and start explaining and

organizing tasks, it’s essential to gather some personal

data to help the group establish effective goals, roles,

and rules of conduct. I’m not suggesting that your team

members should share their favorite reality TV shows or

“fun facts” about themselves. Rather, I’m encouraging

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you to connect with them in a meaningful way so that

you—and the rest of the group—will know what each

person needs to do his or her best work.

Begin by addressing the fundamental questions

they’re privately contemplating while munching on their

donuts:

• Why am I on this team, and what are your expec-

tations of me?

• Why are others on this team?

• How do you see us working together?

If your team members understand why you chose

them, they’ll have a clearer sense of how they can con-

tribute. And just as important, they’ll learn what other

team members bring to the table. You’re also helping

people recognize from the outset the purpose for the

team’s diversity, so they’ll be less likely later to snipe

about how some members “leap before they look” and

others can’t “analyze their way out of a paper bag.” By

naming differences from the beginning, you’re acknowl-

edging the need to work across them and highlighting

the value each person brings.

Having everyone say “Hi, my name is Ellen, and I’m

from St. Louis” doesn’t accomplish any of that.

As the team leader, you’ve intentionally chosen peo-

ple with complementary skills and perspectives. Now

you need to shed light, in a series of group conversa-

tions, on members’ personal strengths, work styles, and

priorities.

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Personal Strengths

Each member’s skills, knowledge, and work style will

add to the pool of valuable team resources. A simple way

of getting the group up to speed on those resources is to

go around the room and ask individuals to share what

strengths they bring to the team and what others say

they do well. Because many people are reluctant to talk

about themselves, you may need to prompt them with

a structured conversation (see, for example, the sidebar

“Artifact Exercise”).

You can also invite them to talk about one another.

For existing teams or for members who have collaborated

before, ask people to complete this sentence about each

colleague: “In the past, I’ve relied on this person to . . . .”

Then it’s your turn to speak up: Say why you placed

each individual on the team and what contributions you

expect each member to make.

One project leader at a large pharmaceutical company

did this in a quirky way: He cut a poster of his business

unit’s logo into jigsaw-puzzle pieces. At his team’s fi rst

meeting, he explained why he’d asked each person to par-

ticipate, handing him or her a puzzle piece as he did so.

Then he had the seven members assemble the puzzle.

You may be thinking, “There’s no way I can do that—

it’s too hokey.” And that might be true for your team.

Members have to be receptive for this to work, but when

they are, it packs a punch. The team leader in the ex-

ample above had enough seniority that people were

willing to suspend disbelief and give the exercise a fair

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ARTIFACT EXERCISE

Before meeting as a group for the fi rst time, ask each

team member to come prepared with a fi ve-minute

story about a past accomplishment. This can be a

personal or business achievement—anything the

story teller is proud of. Have everyone bring an arti-

fact (some physical object, whether it’s a photo, a di-

ploma, or a rock from Mount McKinley) that symbol-

izes the achievement.

When people share their stories in the meeting,

prompt them to describe the opportunities or chal-

lenges they faced, the actions they took, and the

outcomes they produced. Then debrief by asking

the team:

• What was your reaction to hearing everyone’s

stories?

• What do these stories tell us about the skills

that each person brings to the team?

It’s never too late to do this exercise, even with

existing teams or those you inherit. People are often

amazed by their colleagues’ accomplishments. The

stories may uncover hidden resources the team can

put to use. They also give members a chance to com-

municate their own strengths and help them appreci-

ate one another.

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One manager at a government agency found this

exercise particularly helpful when she was tapped to

lead a team of account managers and engineers. She

knew she had to neutralize a lot of pent-up mistrust—

not a small feat—because the two groups had a long

history of organizational confl ict. They didn’t like or

work well with each other.

So she used the artifact exercise. By listening to

team members’ stories of achievement, each group

gained a new appreciation for the other’s challenges.

It took time to break down the long-standing barri-

ers between them, but this exercise gave them a good

start. It opened their minds so they could fi nd new,

better ways of working together.

shake. He also articulated a clear goal for doing it: He

wanted to convey that everyone’s voice had equal weight,

even though the scientists in the group outranked the

administrators and junior members in the corporate hi-

erarchy. It was an important point to make, because the

team’s ability to produce meaningful recommendations

for the company depended on the full commitment and

engagement of all its members. The scientists got the

message that, at least on this team, they had to collabo-

rate with their junior colleagues. And the junior folks felt

empowered.

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Work Styles

Some of your team members may prefer a “divide and

conquer” approach, where you break projects into small

tasks and have people work independently on their sec-

tions, with limited interaction until it’s time to assemble

the fi nal report. Others may prefer to work together in all

aspects of the project, believing that collaboration gener-

ates a better outcome. Not surprisingly, the fi rst group

will probably feel micromanaged if forced to work with

others constantly, and people in the second group will

feel isolated if left on their own for too long.

By fi nding out how individuals prefer to operate, you

and the team can develop rules that enable all members

to contribute meaningfully (see chapter 5, “Agree on

Rules of Conduct”). Yes, the “divide and conquer” mem-

bers will have to collaborate occasionally, and the “let’s

stay joined at the hip” members will have to work inde-

pendently at times. But understanding those confl icting

preferences helps you and the team anticipate members’

needs and determine how to work together productively.

So how do you fi gure out individuals’ preferences? In

a meeting, have each member talk about prior team ex-

periences. This allows people to learn how their team-

mates naturally behave when deadlines loom and stress

increases. Ask everyone:

• What was your best team experience and why?

What made it so good? What did team members

or the leader do that made it such a good experi-

ence? What was the atmosphere like?

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• What was your worst team experience and why?

What made it so bad? What behaviors drove

you crazy?

Another approach is to have each team member com-

plete a diagnostic like the Myers-Briggs Type Indica-

tor. People’s traits—how decisive, detailed, intuitive, or

adaptable they are—have an impact on their behavior

and on how they’d prefer to operate on your team.

You have many diagnostics to choose from (see the

sidebar “Personality and Work Style Assessments” for

a few examples). The goal in using any of them is to

help people on your team understand their own traits

and styles and recognize how other members differ.

This sets the stage for the team to craft a “team style” of

working.

Such diagnostics are powerful partly because they re-

inforce the notion that people’s intentions are generally

good and that the way they behave isn’t random, arbi-

trary, or malicious. Rather, their behavior refl ects what

makes sense to them. It may not make sense to others

until people can more clearly see the motives behind it.

That’s what happened with Nancy, a nurse at a

community- based health care center where each patient

is assigned a team: a physician, a nurse practitioner,

several nurses, and a patient care manager. Whenever

Nancy met with a team to determine a patient’s care,

she asked lots of questions because she preferred to

make decisions on the basis of abundant data. However,

team members with different styles misinterpreted her

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PERSONALITY AND WORK STYLE ASSESSMENTS

Myers-Briggs Type Indicator

Indicates how people get their energy (working alone

or working with others), how they make decisions (us-

ing intuition or data), what they base their decisions

on (emotions or objective information), and how they

manage their lives (with or without structure).

Howard Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences

Recognizes diff erent types of intelligences beyond

standard IQ, which measures only logical and math-

ematical intelligences. Teams benefi t when they bring

additional intelligences (linguistic, musical, kines-

thetic, intrapersonal, interpersonal, and spatial-

visual) to bear on their work.

DISC

Identifi es the level of dominance (control of environ-

ment), infl uence, steadiness (cooperation), and con-

scientiousness (accuracy and completeness) each

member brings to the team.

Big Five Personality Test

Assesses individuals’ extraversion (how outgoing or

solitary they are), agreeableness (how cooperative

or not), conscientiousness (how organized or casual),

openness (how curious or cautious about diverse peo-

ple and experiences), and emotional stability (how

steady or impulsive).

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motives. The physician thought Nancy saw herself as

smarter than her teammates; others assumed she didn’t

trust them to make good decisions.

It wasn’t until the team did a personality diagnostic

that they discovered what really drove Nancy’s behavior.

She scored much higher on conscientiousness and the

need for detail and control than the other team mem-

bers. And most of them scored higher than she did on

valuing relationships. With their focus on maintaining

harmony in the group, they were reluctant to bring up

dissenting ideas when making decisions together. They

usually agreed to the fi rst idea offered and didn’t ask

people to explain their opinions, fearing that disagree-

ment would be seen as a challenge. Nancy, whose assess-

ment revealed a focus on tasks rather than relationships,

didn’t view questions and disagreement as personal at-

tacks. She saw them as tools for making the best decision.

Unnamed, these differences between Nancy and her

teammates had created a big problem. But now when

Nancy asks a lot of questions, the rest of the team un-

derstands that it’s just how she operates—and that her

questions may actually prevent errors.

Priorities

It’s also critical to identify up front where the team ranks

on each member’s personal priority list. This is partic-

ularly true for ad hoc teams, where you’re given a lim-

ited amount of time, and you’re adding work to people’s

already-full plates. It’s also important when you’ve bor-

rowed team members from their “real” jobs, because

they’re now accountable to you and their managers. As

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ALLAYING FEARS ABOUT ASSESSMENTS

As helpful as diagnostics can be, they make some peo-

ple feel exposed or vulnerable. To put them at ease,

you can:

Make It Optional

Allow members to opt out. The team needs to be OK

with that and to understand that people diff er in their

need for privacy.

Explain the Purpose

If people understand that the results will help the

team defi ne its goals and ways of working together,

they’ll be more receptive to the exercise. Remind

them that these assessments are not evaluative or

judgmental—it’s neither good nor bad to be identifi ed

as decisive, for instance, or collaborative. Rather, ef-

fective assessments simply describe individuals’ traits,

increasing self-awareness and others’ understanding.

Emphasize Confi dentiality

Assure team members that you won’t share results

with anyone outside the group, and set the expecta-

tion that no one else will, either. The insights are for

the team’s use only.

Let Members Choose What to Share

If people don’t feel comfortable discussing individual

results, that’s all right—you can still get value from

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reviewing results in the aggregate. But if they’re will-

ing to disclose what they’ve learned about themselves,

ask how they think their colleagues scored and have

them explain what behaviors they’re basing their con-

clusions on. People usually guess others’ styles cor-

rectly, as you can imagine. That member who loves to

create PERT charts for projects? Of course she scored

high on conscientiousness. And the person who loves

to deliver presentations? He probably scored high on

extroversion.

Discuss Impact on the Work

Ease people into sharing their experiences. If you’re

leading a small team, give them time to think before

they speak. If it’s a larger team, you might group them

according to their styles. That way, they can trade sto-

ries with similarly wired members before opening up

to the whole team. Someone might say, for example, “I

scored high on introversion. That explains why I usually

gravitate toward task management. I love making sure

the hundreds of moving parts are in alignment. How-

ever, because I’m an introvert, I have a hard time asking

others for input. I prefer making decisions alone and

sometimes miss important points as a result.”

When you break into small groups, you can also

ask people to discuss what they need from a team to

do their best work, what they like about teams, what

( continued)

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( continued)

they struggle with, and how they defi ne a good team

member, leader, and meeting. Gathering this kind of

data now will help the team fi gure out its rules and

processes later.

Collect Results in a Chart

Create a visual to show members where they over-

lap and where they diff er. You can match traits with

names or just indicate how many team members have

each tendency. Even if you do the latter, names of-

ten come up as people discuss the diagnostic, guess

one another’s styles, or talk about themselves. Either

way, it’s useful to discuss which traits the team has in

abundance and which it lacks. For new teams, con-

sider how the distribution of styles might shape what

the group is likely to do well and what it might over-

look. For existing teams, ask what impact the various

styles have had on group dynamics (both positive and

negative). The health care team, for instance, found it

enlightening that Nancy was the only one who scored

high on conscientiousness. No wonder her behavior

frustrated the others—she was an outlier.

Emphasize Value Added

Have people with similar traits brainstorm in small

groups—that way, they’ll come up with a long list of

all the good things they bring. Then ask the groups to

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share their lists with the rest of the team. This helps

people appreciate the value of having diff erent styles

in the mix. For example, those who love big, sweep-

ing change are more likely than others to challenge

the status quo and prompt innovation. Conversely,

those who prefer small, incremental adjustments will

prevent the team from making changes too hastily or

without due cause.

you assembled the team, you probably negotiated for the

amount of time each ad hoc member would give. But

even your full-time members have personal (and often

invisible) limits to their availability.

For that reason, a group conversation about individu-

als’ priorities yields useful information for all types of

teams. Members come with their own goals, ambitions,

and outside commitments. So ask how many hours they

can realistically devote to your team every week. Also

get them to specify competing demands on their time.

Sometimes I have each member draw up and share a

rough pie chart showing how they’ll allocate their time

across their multiple commitments.

By fi nding all this out early, you can make smart as-

signments that align with individuals’ priorities and avail-

ability. While this may not seem like a fair way to distrib-

ute the work, it’s the right way. The team’s outcomes will

be only as ambitious as its members’ availability allows.

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And the team can boost its performance and avoid miss-

ing deadlines by funneling more tasks to members with

more time and a greater level of investment.

Beware the usual expectation that everyone will par-

ticipate equally. This is unrealistic and sets everyone up

for disappointment. Expecting equity also hurts perfor-

mance, since members who give the work a lower prior-

ity may do just what’s minimally required. And it hurts

members for whom the work is a high priority: They

aren’t given as much responsibility as they’d like, and

they may feel they have to scale back their contributions

to the lowest common denominator. Instead of looking

for equal participation, expect members to contribute to

the best of their abilities.

Once everyone has a clear sense of what each member

brings to the team and how individuals’ styles and priori-

ties differ, you’re well positioned to establish the team’s

goals, roles, and rules of conduct, which we’ll cover in the

chapters that follow.

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Chapter 3

Establish Your

Team’s Goals

No matter what kind of team you’re leading, the group

must set two types of goals: Task goals specify what your

outcomes should look like. They direct what gets done,

defi ning the work of the team. Process goals describe the

team’s approach to working together. They direct how

individuals do the work and interact with one another.

(You’ll work out the “how” in more detail when you cre-

ate rules of conduct, addressed in chapter 5.)

Although it’s tempting to skimp on the goal setting

and immediately start planning tasks, taking the time up

front to develop both task and process goals yields sev-

eral benefi ts:

• Group decision making becomes clearer and more

effi cient—and confl icts are easier to resolve. The

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team can cull its options by asking, “Which ideas

move us closer to our goals?”

• Individual members approach autonomous deci-

sions consistently. This allows for a smoother

discussion when people report back to the group,

and it expedites the team’s progress.

• Goals provide a framework for holding team mem-

bers accountable. When giving feedback (positive

or negative) or evaluating a team member’s per-

formance, you can answer the question: “Did this

outcome or behavior support our goals?”

Let’s take a closer look at both types of goals.

Task Goals

Suppose you’ve been asked to lead a team to plan how

your company will store and ship products during ware-

house renovations.

First, you need to agree on outcomes—your task goals.

To develop them, ask members to describe what an opti-

mal future would look like. Have them envision the ware-

house layout, for instance, and the staffi ng. Also consider

as a group what failure would look like. Often, people

can easily articulate what they don’t want; recasting their

language reveals what they would like to see happen. Fi-

nally, discuss the desired customer experience from be-

ginning to end.

During this conversation, your team may decide, for

example, that the fi nal plan should include the fewest

possible moves (of people, equipment, and inventory),

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Establish Your Team’s Goals

a way of updating all affected departments on progress

to facilitate their planning, a continual feedback loop to

permit real-time adjustments, and suffi cient procedures

and staffi ng to keep the renovation process invisible to

customers. Once you’ve got those overarching goals in

place, the team needs to defi ne three components:

Actions

What steps will the team take to achieve its task goals?

Teams often rely on one or two members with project

management skills to create and present a plan, which

others then add to or revise. However you develop it, any

plan should include key activities, contingencies, check-

points for monitoring the work, guidelines for keeping

stakeholders informed, and details about who needs to

sign off on which steps.

Deadlines

When will the team take each step? Without deadlines

to drive you forward, the actions you’ve planned will re-

main a wish list. Work backward from the fi nal due date,

and estimate (realistically) how long each step should

take. Allow buffer for actions outside the team’s control,

such as waiting for go-aheads from senior management.

Metrics

How will the team measure progress on its tasks? What

are the criteria for completion? Clear measures of team

success will help individuals understand what’s expected

of them and how they’ll be evaluated. You may want to

gauge fi nancial performance (reduced costs, for example,

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Build Your Team’s Infrastructure

or increased margins), productivity (reduced time), or

quality (reduced errors). Metrics should spur team mem-

bers to work hard and “stretch”—but they’ll discourage

people if they aren’t within reach. And they need to be

specifi c so that team members won’t interpret tasks dif-

ferently (“What do we mean by ‘accurate’ reports?”).

Process Goals

Clear process goals allow you to blend individual team

members into one cohesive unit, so these goals are every

bit as critical to your success as planning the work. Most

teams don’t even bother with process goals—they assume

they already know how to work together. But remember

all the diversity you purposely embedded in your team?

Each member probably has a different understanding of

how to collaborate, not to mention different styles and

preferences.

Identifying process goals requires that you defi ne the

team’s culture. You’ll explicitly address the following

questions:

• What will it feel like to work with the team? Will it

be inclusive with shared responsibility or dictato-

rial with autocratic decrees? Will there be mutual

respect or backstabbing and political alliances?

Will the tone be optimistic or pessimistic? Sup-

portive or competitive?

• What will the relationships look like? Will

they be equal or hierarchical? Open or closed?

Trusting or suspicious? Social and personal or

all-business?

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• What do we want from those relationships? Do

we want to simply get the tasks done or develop

longer-term connections? Divide and conquer

tasks with minimal interaction or learn from and

mentor one another?

• What do we value? Do we care more about speed

or accuracy? Risk taking or compliance? Innova-

tion or building on core strengths?

Of course, no team in the universe tries to establish

a culture of suspicion, backstabbing, and passivity. But

we’ve all been on a team like that. A team’s culture

evolves whether you talk about it or not—so it’s better to

spell out what you’re aiming for, giving people the oppor-

tunity to explicitly reject undesirable behaviors. Other-

wise, you’re likely to wind up with a culture that evolves

by itself in the wrong direction—one, for example, where

people stop contributing because they see only a few in-

dividuals getting all the credit, or one where the mantra

is “CYA.”

It’s important to incorporate members’ personal goals

into your team’s process goals. Otherwise, people may

act against the group’s interests to satisfy their own. Say,

for instance, that one member is eager to gain visibility

with senior leaders. It’s best to know that before he de-

cides to leak messy work-in-progress details to a stake-

holder over lunch. (You can prevent that sort of problem

by creating a “team of equals,” where all members get

visibility and credit, not just the team leader.) But how

do you uncover his personal agenda? You’ll need to read

between the lines. If you asked, “What do you want to

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get out of this team project?” he would never say, “More

visibility to advance my career.” But he might reveal that

objective through his questions (“Who will get to present

the fi nal proposal to senior management?”) or through

his comments on what success or failure would look like

(“We need to be seen as innovators in the company”).

There’s no set formula for creating process goals be-

yond focusing on behaviors and the feelings they elicit,

but here’s an example of what process goals can look like.

At a large Midwestern college, the Student Life De-

partment faced deep resource cuts and needed to fi gure

out how the team could do more with less (including

fewer people). Group members developed these process

goals to guide them:

As a team, we aspire to:

Support each other fully.  We will understand and ap-

preciate one another’s lives, both at work and outside

of work. We will create a climate where team members

feel free to ask for help, offer help, and listen.

Communicate fully.  We will share information and

best practices; we will share what we do at work and

in our lives, to better support one another; and we

will share our successes to motivate ourselves and po-

sition our team to build upon those accomplishments.

Be innovative.  We will develop a climate where it feels

safe to take risks (including expressing ourselves)

and experiment, and where downsides are identifi ed

but upsides are protected from naysaying.

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Those process goals enabled the new team of 10, down

30% from its original size, to do the hard work of decid-

ing which programs to keep and which to cut, and to put

in the longer hours needed to maintain most of its regu-

lar programming. One academic year later, the director

was pleased to see that all 10 staffers were still on the

team; she had not lost a single member to burnout.

So how can you get the conversation about process

goals started? Ask members to recall the best and worst

team experiences they shared when getting to know one

another. Call out common themes, and build your goals

around them. Usually the “worst” stories are the most

vividly told. They also powerfully convey what problems

people don’t want to encounter on the new team.

If you used a diagnostic tool to highlight diversity

when building your team, revisit the results. Not surpris-

ingly, people’s personality traits will infl uence the types

of relationships they want with team members and what

qualities they value in a team setting. Once again, group

individuals according to their traits, and ask each sub-

group to propose a set of process goals. Then, as a full

team, negotiate goals that work across diverse traits.

Usually, you’ll want process goals to accommodate

most people’s preferences, on the theory that individu-

als contribute most effectively when they feel comfort-

able. In the example mentioned earlier, the goals of the

Student Life Department refl ected its members’ high in-

terpersonal intelligence (from Howard Gardner’s Mul-

tiple Intelligences diagnostic). But sometimes it’s good

to go against the grain and set process goals that stretch

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people and build future capacity. For instance, if most

members shy away from confl ict, your team may set a

goal of engaging in rigorous discussions, encouraging

constructive dissent, and seeking honest feedback.

Process goals should tap into team members’ aspira-

tions as well as their styles. Here are two exercises for

doing that:

Capture ideals

Ask each person to prepare a one-paragraph e-mail that

he or she would like to send to a friend, at the close of

the project or initiative, about the team’s fantastic expe-

rience working together. When you meet, have members

share their hypothetical e-mails and identify themes.

These idealized visions of the future can inform both task

and process goals: What do people want to accomplish?

How do they want to accomplish it?

Channel hopes and concerns

Have each member write down two hopes for the team

and two concerns. Discuss these as a group, again look-

ing for areas of overlap. Often one person will articulate

something as a hope and another will frame the same

thought as a concern. For example, “I hope we’ll work ef-

fi ciently together” is equivalent to saying, “I’m concerned

that the project will take much longer with us working as

a team than it would if we tackled the tasks individually.”

For both statements, the theme is making the best use

of everyone’s time. Translate common themes into three

to fi ve process goals for the team. To continue with the

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example above, one process goal might be, “We will work

effi ciently and respect everyone’s time.”

This exercise can be effective even for large groups.

Consider how well it worked for a regional nonprofi t that

brought together about 60 people to build a new pro-

gram strategy. The team included representatives from

the staff, the nonprofi t’s board of directors, and other or-

ganizations with overlapping missions, as well as current

and potential funders. To decide how they would work

together over a series of several weekends, each person

was asked to submit by e-mail two hopes and two con-

cerns for the sessions. The hopes of all 60 people were

compiled into one list, the concerns into another—with

no indication of who said what.

On their fi rst weekend together, the team members di-

vided into 10 working groups. Half of the groups received

the list of hopes; the other half, the list of concerns. Each

group chose up to fi ve themes from its respective list and

posted them on a fl ip chart. The full group of 60 then

looked at all 10 charts and went through the same pro-

cess of identifying three to fi ve recurring themes. After

doing so, the team broke into groups again and crafted

the themes into goals.

In about two hours, then, 60 people agreed on fi ve

process goals defi ning how they would work together.

Once you’ve established process goals, keep reinforcing

them. State them at the beginning of each team meet-

ing or refl ect on them at the meeting’s close ( answering

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“What did we do today that advanced our process

goals?”). Consider including them as a footer in every

team e-mail or posting them in offi ce common areas.

These reminders prevent members from reverting to old

behaviors and drifting from the team’s agreed-upon way

of operating.

At the same time, though, consider the process goals

a set of living principles that will evolve as team mem-

bership changes and people develop their team skills. To

keep these goals salient in a changing environment, pe-

riodically review them by asking, “Which ones have we

accomplished? Which ones are still priorities? Which

should be more ambitious, or less so?” Conduct this re-

view at least quarterly and at your project or initiative’s

end, as you’re gathering lessons learned to apply to the

next team experience.

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Chapter 4

Agree on

Individuals’ Roles

Once you’ve set task and process goals, establish the

roles that each member will play. That includes your role,

too: You may have the title “leader,” but what does that

mean—to you and to the rest of the team? Even though

everyone has worked on teams before, each individual

will bring different ideas about leadership to this team.

Some people may expect you to make all decisions uni-

laterally and tell them what to do. Others may expect you

to lead the team in making decisions together and build

consensus on who will handle which activities.

To prevent confusion, you must have an explicit con-

versation about who will do what on the team. (Here,

we’re talking about “internal” roles, essential to produc-

ing solid work together. In chapter 13, “Manage Outside

the Team,” we’ll look at “external” roles for managing rela-

tionships outside the team.) Each member needs to know

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what his or her role is and what it means to succeed in that

role. Without that discussion, some members may jump

in and take on tasks that don’t have clear owners—and

some may see that “initiative” as grabbing power, or at

least overstepping boundaries. By agreeing explicitly on

who has what responsibilities, teams avoid misinterpret-

ing motives, duplicating effort, and fi ghting turf battles.

You’ve already considered roles in terms of expertise.

When assembling your team, you chose people because

of what they can do, whether it’s computer programming,

for instance, or managing vendors. And you’ve already

shared, during introductions, what kind of expertise

each individual brings to the team (see chapter 2, “Get

to Know One Another”). But here are two other ways to

defi ne roles in teams:

• By structure: Most teams have a basic structure

of one leader and multiple team members. The

leader has one role to play; each of the members,

another.

• By activity: The team must complete many activi-

ties to reach its goals. For example, someone will

plan the project; someone else will keep senior

management informed. Each of those activities

constitutes a role.

You can take either approach to frame the group’s dis-

cussion about roles. One way is not any better than the

other. The same is true for how roles are distributed. You

can match roles to strengths or, conversely, give people

opportunities to stretch. Growth assignments will mean

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more work for you because of the monitoring and coach-

ing they require, but they can help you develop new com-

petencies in your people.

Defi ning Roles by Structure

To clarify which behaviors people can expect from the

leader and which they can expect from team members,

try completing the form in table 4-1 as a group.

As you capture and discuss everyone’s input, you’ll ex-

pose differences in thinking. Work together to reconcile

them. You might, for example, ask each team member to

write down fi ve behaviors of a good team member, and

TABLE 4-1

Clarifying behaviors

Leader

Team members

Here’s what I propose to do as the

Here’s what we propose to do as

leader:

members:

Here’s what I need from you as

Here’s what we need from our

members:

leader:

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fi ve of a good team leader, and then have people share

what they wrote. Identify points of agreement, and use

those to establish basic roles for you as the leader and for

your team’s members.

Another useful exercise is to lead the team through

developing a “job description” for the ideal team mem-

ber, as if you were going to post an ad to attract strong

candidates.

When teams do this, they often list obligations such as

those in table 4-2.

Your team will need to defi ne each obligation to en-

sure consistent understanding: For instance, what does

it mean for members to “pull their weight”? One way

of clarifying expectations is to ask each person, “What

would you need to see to know that someone is pulling

his or her weight?” Team members may suggest specifi c

behaviors, such as volunteering for new assignments or

offering to assist others who are not meeting deadlines.

At a large pharmaceutical company, a “client express”

team (assembled to improve communication between

customers and account managers) wrote a job descrip-

tion for its members. After the group spent hours craft-

ing it, one person observed, “There is no human being

alive capable of meeting all those requirements!” Rather

than feeling that they’d just wasted a lot of time creat-

ing something that wasn’t doable, team members real-

ized that they needed to prioritize their job requirements,

which helped them set more reasonable expectations for

themselves.

It’s critical to explicitly defi ne leader and member

roles if you’re on a team of peers. When no one has for-

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TABLE 4-2

Defi ning expectations

Regarding:

Team members are expected to:

Task work

• meet deadlines

• keep everyone informed on progress

• meet targets

Relationships

• manage their own emotional responses

• maintain good working relationships

• resolve confl icts

Collaboration

• pull their weight

• accept and support team decisions

Meetings

• attend all required meetings

• come prepared

• actively participate

Time management

• give advance notice before pushing back a

due date

• return all team-related e-mails, texts, and calls by

close of business each day

mal authority, teams are often tempted to decide, “We

don’t need a leader. We can all share that role.” Although

that can work, most leaderless teams fi nd that tasks take

longer, the quality of the work is lower, and more con-

fl icts arise among members.

Instead, consider rotating leadership throughout the

project. For example, during data collection, the team’s

analytics expert might act as the leader. When it’s time to

create the fi nal report for stakeholders, the person with

the best writing skills might assume the role.

However, it’s usually a good idea to designate an over-

all leader, as well. You’ll want someone to maintain a

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big-picture view of the team’s work (both task progress

and relationship dynamics) and to serve as a tie breaker

when the group has a hard time making a decision.

Defi ning Roles by Activity

Teams that defi ne roles by activity often divide them into

two essential categories: those that manage tasks (focus-

ing on getting the work done) and those that manage

processes (making sure members work well together).

See table 4-3 for an example.

When looking at all these roles, you’ll quickly see that

you, the team leader, can’t do them all. Think about what

happens at just one meeting: Perhaps you take up the

facilitator role to guide the team through all the agenda

points you want to cover. While you’re doing that, you

can’t also play gatekeeper, devil’s advocate, and consen-

sus taker.

To distribute roles, make assignments based on what

you’ve learned about members’ strengths and natural

tendencies, or allow people to volunteer for what they

would feel competent doing. Either way, people’s domi-

nant traits often indicate what roles they’d do well and

enjoy. For example, Myers-Briggs “judgers,” who need

structure and order, can make great project managers or

note takers. Extroverts, who get their energy from work-

ing with people, may prefer the liaison role.

Team members can fi ll multiple roles simultaneously

or over time. For example, if Janice is detail oriented and

good at organizing, she may play project manager in the

beginning, shift to note taker and goal/rule keeper as

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TABLE 4-3

Defi ning roles

Task roles

Process roles

Meeting facilitator: puts the

Gatekeeper: pays attention to who

agenda together, leads the discus-

is and isn’t talking; invites quiet

sion, and makes sure the meeting

members into the conversation

starts and ends on time

Mediator: names confl icts (often

Project manager: sets up the proj-

the “elephant in the room”) and

ect sequence and timeline; holds

then guides confl ict resolution

members accountable to that plan

Devil’s advocate: challenges the

Task specialist: organizes and

team’s thinking to increase rigor in

leads a portion of the larger

decision making

project, such as conducting the

research or doing the analysis

Morale manager: keeps mem-

bers energized by remembering

Note taker: records all key deci-

birthdays, organizing social events,

sions; documents the progress of

and so on

the team

Consensus taker: monitors the

Liaison: informs stakeholders (cli-

commitment level during team

ents, boss, customers) about team

discussions to see if people really

activities; brings their ideas and

agree with decisions

concerns back to the group

Goal/rule keeper: monitors

adherence to team goals and rules;

facilitates ongoing “continuous

improvement” discussions

specialists step in to manage different aspects of the proj-

ect, and then come back as project manager at the end to

tie everything together and capture lessons learned.

The roles your team needs may evolve. When one

team’s leader announced his retirement, the group cre-

ated a new role: succession planner. That person became

responsible for working with the retiring leader to cap-

ture his institutional knowledge before the team lost it.

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Periodically ask, “Are our roles still working for us?”

If they aren’t, the team may need to redefi ne them or

change who does what.

Reconciling Individual and

Team Interests

No matter how you clarify roles, it’s important to rec-

ognize a dilemma that’s central to teamwork: balancing

each person’s need for control and autonomy (including

your own) with the team’s shared goals and accountabil-

ity. Why is that diffi cult? Because members will be evalu-

ated on what the team produces, not what they do on

their own. Their reputations (and future opportunities

for assignments and promotions) may suffer if the team

doesn’t produce good work. No wonder team members

often want to do it all themselves and micromanage one

another.

To work together productively, they need to trust that

their teammates will do a good job, and they must ac-

cept that the team’s outcomes will differ from what they

would have done individually. They need to feel owner-

ship and pride in those joint outcomes—yet they also

need the autonomy to perform their individual tasks as

they see fi t. Otherwise, they’ll throw up their hands and

say, “Why bother working hard? You’re just going to redo

it anyway.”

You can avoid frustration and prevent duplicated or

discarded work by creating clear boundaries. Within

those boundaries, give members control over their own

tasks. Spell out what can be done autonomously within

each role and what needs approval by others inside or

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Agree on Individuals’ Roles

outside the team. Decide when progress reports for each

role are required, and in what format, so the team feels

assured that tasks will be accomplished on time and ac-

cording to specifi cations. Also specify opportunities for

team members to weigh in on someone else’s decisions

or actions. For example, before any subgroup goes off

to plan a task, the whole team might brainstorm about

it and suggest performance metrics. And then the sub-

group can use this input—or not.

You may occasionally have to “invade” the bound-

aries you have so carefully defi ned. That becomes eas-

ier if you’ve clearly articulated the criteria for success

within each role: When individuals fail to meet certain

standards, you can simply redistribute their delegated

responsibilities. Suppose one member of your team is

responsible for synthesizing customer data collected by

the group. Say you’ve specifi ed how the report should be

structured and how much secondary research to include,

and you’ve set expectations for accurate numbers, solid

grammar, and correct spelling. If the fi rst, and certainly

the second, draft doesn’t meet those criteria, give the role

to someone else.

With the team’s goals and roles established, you’ve

agreed on what the team seeks to accomplish and who

will be responsible for which activities. You’re now ready

to craft the team’s operating rules, which map out how

the team will work together.

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Chapter 5

Agree on Rules

of Conduct

If you ask six team members what they think “complet-

ing work on time” entails, you’ll probably get six differ-

ent answers. The same holds true for your team’s other

aspirations.

Now that you’ve talked openly about roles, the group

shares a broad understanding of what a good team mem-

ber is. But you must also sort out what a good member

does—that is, the rules that will guide everyone’s behavior.

We each have our own rules of conduct, of course.

Yours may tell you that getting to a 9:00 a.m. meeting

at 9:03 is just fi ne. Or that it’s OK to chime in mid-

presentation when you’re enthusiastic about an idea. Or

that you should remain silent to avoid rocking the boat

when you disagree with a decision the majority of people

seem to support.

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So what happens when you work with someone who

thinks that a 9:00 start time really means 8:55? And

that interrupting is rude? And that silence signals agree-

ment? One or both of you end up frustrated, angry, or

feeling disrespected, and tensions will mount.

Generally speaking, people want to do a good job and

work well together. But when individuals’ rules of con-

duct are unspoken, motives are often misinterpreted

(“He’s just doing that because he always has to be right”

or “She’s trying to hog the spotlight”).

Rules of conduct build on the team’s process goals

(see chapter 3, “Establish Your Team’s Goals”) to clarify

how you’ll make decisions, keep everyone informed, run

meetings, play nicely, hold one another accountable, as-

sess progress, and continually improve.

Here’s an example: An executive committee at a large

pharmaceutical company had a reputation for behav-

ing territorially and bad-mouthing each other. When a

new chair took over, the group established an important

new goal: “We will project a unifi ed sense of mission and

strategy across silos.” The committee then identifi ed a

few rules of conduct to guide members’ behavior:

1. Support the team’s fi nal decisions, even when you

would have made a different call.

2. Express your support when communicating deci-

sions to constituents.

3. Share decisions with stakeholders, but keep the

discussions that led to them confi dential.

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The chair relentlessly held members accountable to

these rules. As a result, when the company announced a

reorganization of its regional offi ces, there was no fi nger-

pointing or back-channel griping, and executives in lower

ranks said they noticed a more collegial tone at the top.

Teams often skip discussing rules of conduct for the

same reason they tend to gloss over process goals: They

assume their members all know how to work on teams.

Yes, they all do, but they do it differently. For example,

some may be accustomed to having an agenda for every

meeting, while others fi nd agendas restrictive for short

meetings, say, or brainstorming sessions. The purpose

of discussing your team’s rules isn’t to determine the one

right way of running a team. It’s to agree on the one con-

sistent way you’ll run this particular team.

Rules of conduct:

• Clarify what others expect of you, the leader.

• Make members’ behavior more predictable.

• Rein in members’ behavior so you won’t have to

play “cop” as often.

• Reduce the amount of time you spend rehashing

processes, such as how team decisions are made.

• Provide criteria for objective feedback and confl ict

resolution.

Like process goals, rules of conduct will form and

evolve whether you talk about them or not. Without

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deliberate conversations, you’ll fi nd that unproductive

rules crop up as people mimic what you and other infl u-

ential team members do in practice. If you, the leader,

routinely show up fi ve minutes late for meetings, lateness

becomes the norm, overriding any notion that punctual-

ity is important. Rules also evolve according to what you

reward. By listening to a team member complain about

another member, you reward that behavior—you’re giv-

ing the complainer your attention. And that kind of ex-

change becomes an accepted way of operating, even if

the team originally agreed that members should try to

resolve confl icts without your intervention.

Get your team members thinking about rules by ask-

ing them, “How do you want to handle X?” (fi ll in the

blank with meetings, confl ict, delegation, feedback,

and so on). If they’ve completed a personality diagnos-

tic, have them work with people with similar styles, and

reframe the question: “According to your style, what

is the best way to handle X?” This allows them to ask

for what they want in an objective, nonpersonal way. It

also brings different ideas to the surface, none of them

“wrong.” The team can discuss their respective merits and

then agree on one way.

Reconciling personality and style differences isn’t

the only reason to create rules of conduct (though it’s a

big one). If you’re leading a cross-unit team, you’ll need

to blend the different approaches. If you’ve added new

people to a team, you’ll have to take their perspectives

into account. If you’re managing two teams that must

collaborate to achieve larger goals, you’ll have to estab-

lish a third, overarching set of rules. You get the picture:

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Any time you bring people together, you have to create

explicit rules of conduct—or the work will suffer.

Here are a couple of exercises to help your team estab-

lish its rules.

Begin with a Boilerplate List

Rather than having open-ended discussions about de-

sired conduct—which can take a lot of time and exhaust

everyone—use an existing framework. For example, the

Rules Inventory in appendix A lists basic rules for respect

and trust; meeting discussions and decision making; dis-

sent and innovation; feedback and reporting; and con-

fl ict resolution.

A framework like this serves as a starting point for

establishing your team’s top 10 rules (a manageable

number to generate and remember). You can then reach

agreement on them through what’s called the nominal

method of decision making:

• Ask individuals to do their own assessments:

Which rules has the team followed from the get-

go? Which would they like to add? Which would

they rate as their top 10?

• At a meeting, post everyone’s lists on the wall.

• Have team members walk around, view everyone’s

lists, and put checks next to the 10 rules they value

the most (with fresh ideas in the room, their picks

are likely to differ from their original 10).

• The rules with the most votes become the team’s

top 10.

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This exercise works well for new and existing teams.

At a large technology retailer, a team of eight Service

Center staffers had worked together for several years,

but they had never held team-building conversations. As

a result, some counterproductive rules of conduct had

emerged: For instance, team members weren’t follow-

ing up on customer requests. As more and more of those

requests went unaddressed, people started pointing fi n-

gers. The team decided it was time to create explicit rules

of conduct; members consulted the Rules Inventory and

worked together to come up with the following list:

1. Bring up problems (regarding tasks or relation-

ships) when they arise. Don’t expect them to go

away; instead, name the “elephant in the room.”

2. Take ownership and follow through on problems.

3. Don’t let things fall through the cracks. Even if

the next step is someone else’s responsibility, stay

in touch until it’s done.

4. Tell people what you need. Don’t expect them to

guess.

5. When responding to someone’s request, always

explain why you are doing what you are doing,

especially when you have to say no.

6. When asking for something, always explain why

you are making the request. This allows the

person to come up with an alternative solution if

what you are asking for isn’t possible.

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7. If you need training or tools in order to be suc-

cessful, ask for them.

8. Take risks, but inform key people so that they

don’t get blindsided. Analyze the risks, identify

the unexpected consequences, and plan for them.

9. Think Center-wide. When your actions diverge

from usual practice, always ask, “What impact

will this have on the team?”

10. Start each meeting with individuals sharing

“what I did this week that constituted excellent

customer service.”

To make these rules stick, the team regularly reviewed

them, especially when they experienced backsliding. And

when the Service Center added three employees, veteran

staffers used orientation as an opportunity to reexamine

the rules. They invited the new hires to propose different

rules or suggest changes to existing ones.

Even if the makeup of your team doesn’t change,

members should periodically reassess its rules. As with

goals and roles, you can do this quarterly or each time

you close out a project. That keeps the rules relevant as

tasks and timelines change. It also helps quash undesir-

able behaviors that emerge, as the Service Center staffers

discovered.

Conduct a Cultural Audit

A cultural audit helps newly blended or ongoing teams

with new members identify rules of conduct that already

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exist—whether explicitly established or unoffi cially

evolved. The team can then decide what to keep, modify,

discontinue, or add.

A few days before you meet, ask people to think about

how they would describe to a new member “the way

things are done around here.” Use the following ques-

tions as prompts:

• What rules were you told explicitly when you

joined the team? Did someone take you aside and

give you the “inside story”? If so, what did that

person say?

• What rules do you wish you’d been told about

early on?

• Has a teammate ever told you, “That’s not how it’s

done around here”? (Violating an unknown rule is

often the quickest way to learn!)

• What criticisms have you heard about others’

behavior? Name the criticisms but not the people

involved.

As the leader, conduct your own audit of the culture.

Don’t spend too long on it: Your spontaneous responses

are probably the most accurate. (To prompt thinking,

see appendix B, “Cultural Audit,” for a list of behaviors.)

When the team meets, ask members to share their per-

ceptions. Take time to highlight differences—they’re of-

ten a source of confl ict (or at least confusion). As in the

Rules Inventory exercise, ask members to vote for the top

10 rules they’d like to see the team adopt.

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A team I consulted with at a large health care com-

pany used the Cultural Audit to identify and resolve a

culture clash. The leader, a VP of marketing, had brought

together some internal folks and a group of contractors

to create a social media campaign. But the two camps

had problems gelling. The internal folks complained

that the consultants were too lax about details and dead-

lines, and too informal. Not surprisingly, the contractors

saw the company insiders as bureaucratic and stodgy.

When each group fell back on its own home rules, con-

fl icts arose. The Cultural Audit gave the team a nonjudg-

mental way of recognizing the two sets of rules, which

took the heat out of the conversation. Members then ne-

gotiated one common set of rules to guide interactions

within the blended team.

Rules of conduct should help your team work together

smoothly and productively, so keep things simple and

practical. Focus on behaviors that will improve collabo-

ration and the quality of the work. Early on, though, it’s

usually best to err on the side of more structure (and a

few more rules), which you can adjust or relax as the

team hits its stride. For instance, you might start out

with a rule about answering e-mails by the end of the day.

As that behavior becomes ingrained, you may no longer

need that rule to ensure responsiveness. When teams

don’t have clear, specifi c rules at the outset, they often

have to impose structure later as confusion and confl ict

arise, which takes more time and energy than spelling

out desired behaviors in the fi rst place.

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You’ll fi nd more suggestions for rules when we cover

decision making (chapter 8, “Make Optimal Team De-

cisions”) and accountability (chapter 9, “Hold People

Accountable”).

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Chapter 6

Set the Stage for

Accountability

“Step into my offi ce . . . I have a little feedback for you.”

If you’re like most people, that sentence strikes fear

into your heart. You expect the worst: bad news. A pink

slip. The end of life as you know it.

Understanding how it feels to be on the receiving end

is part of what makes giving feedback to others so hard.

But providing it is an essential part of your job as team

leader. It’s how you ensure that the work gets done on

time, on budget, and according to quality standards. It’s

how you sharpen people’s skills and keep them motivated.

It’s how you demonstrate commitment to their develop-

ment and recognize their efforts to grow.

To all those ends, you must monitor tasks against proj-

ect plans and track people’s behavior against the team’s

process goals, roles, and rules of conduct. You may fi nd

the task-monitoring side easier, but you’ll achieve good

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outcomes on tasks only if team members work together

productively.

Say you’ve got one team member who holds forth

during meetings. That violates a team rule—“Share air-

time”—yet no one calls her on her behavior. Instead,

people roll their eyes when she starts talking, cross their

arms, and hunker down for a long, irritating meeting. If

this dynamic continues, you’ll end up with lots of frus-

trated and silenced members—and poor decisions.

Better to correct the behavior before it gets out of

hand. Hold people accountable by reminding them of

the rules for working together that everyone agreed on.

When that troublesome team member starts pontifi cat-

ing, you can say, “Let’s follow our rule of sharing airtime

and give someone else a chance to comment.”

The good news is, you shouldn’t be the only one paying

attention to the goals, roles, and rules. Everyone should.

Members’ behavior affects the whole team, not just you.

By involving the whole team in monitoring behavior, you

foster team ownership of the rules, making it more likely

that each person will internalize and follow them.

Yet you may still need to persuade team members to

hold one another accountable and give candid feedback,

for a few reasons:

• They avoid the negative. When people think

of accountability, they usually envision calling

people out for poor behavior. They don’t enjoy

bearing bad news, so they try to avoid it. But

remind them that giving positive feedback is an

equally important part of the equation. Rather

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than just focusing on what needs fi xing, you and

other team members will want to acknowledge

and reinforce productive behaviors.

• They’re not used to giving feedback. Growing

up, many of us were taught to bounce complaints,

injustices, or rule violations up to our parents or

teachers or bosses. So we don’t have much experi-

ence sitting down with a peer and explaining, for

example, how that person’s late contribution had

a negative impact on our own work. We just aren’t

skilled at it—and we need practice to improve.

• They don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings. Any

feedback conversation has two components: the

message you need to deliver and the relationship

you want to preserve with the recipient. We often

worry that the feedback (particularly if it’s peer-to-

peer) will harm the relationship. We fear that the

recipient will take it personally—that he’ll be hurt

by the message, angry, suspicious of our intentions,

and so on. So it seems easier to keep mum. In-

stead, you may avoid him, complain about him to

others, or become resentful—all of which damages

the relationship further. As a result, there’s less

collaboration and less shared effort, and the work

goes downhill.

So how do you get other team members to participate

willingly in the monitoring? It can be helpful to lead a

frank discussion about feedback itself. Ask how people

feel about giving it—and what makes it so hard for them.

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Also ask why they think it’s worth pushing past that ini-

tial diffi culty and holding one another accountable. By

raising these questions, you’ll make everyone’s discom-

fort normal and understandable while signaling that it’s

something you’ll all have to work through together.

You can also frame accountability as a continuous im-

provement process. That’s what we do to refi ne tasks. It’s

also what we should do to strengthen relationships. When

you see disruptive behaviors and do nothing, you’re set-

ting yourself up for frustration: People won’t change on

their own—they may not even realize they need to. Like

subpar work, problem behavior will improve only if it’s

identifi ed and corrected. Enlist your entire team in ap-

plauding the good conduct of others (a great motivator

and energizer) and in speaking up when unproductive

behavior emerges. With that sense of mutual—and on-

going—accountability, the team will improve over time,

resulting in better outcomes and relationships.

Agreeing on a Process for

Accountability

The next step is to sort out how the team will enforce the

agreed-upon goals, roles, and rules. (Then in chapter 9,

“Hold People Accountable,” you’ll fi nd exercises to help

structure your feedback conversations.) At this point,

you’ll want to:

Decide how to celebrate successes

Never let a well-done task or accomplishment go by with-

out celebrating it with the team. Plan how you’ll recognize

achievements and link those rewards to performance

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metrics and due dates. For example, when the team hits

an important milestone, a celebratory dinner out can be

a satisfying reward—and an effective motivator.

Schedule periodic continuous improvement

meetings

Just as the team monitors its progress toward its goals

through regular check-ins, it must also occasionally as-

sess how people are working together (as noted in chap-

ters 3–5). Set aside time for continuous improvement

meetings up front, while you’re planning the work: When

people know that the conversations are coming, they’re

more inclined to hold themselves accountable along the

way. Scheduling these meetings also prevents the need

for convening a postmortem after things go wrong, which

tends to amp up the anxiety.

In the meetings, the team should identify the behav-

iors and processes that support its goals and those that

are getting in the way. Focus on:

• How the team is doing as a whole (“Do we need

to drop, change, or add any processes or rules in

order to work together more effectively?”)

• How individual members are doing (“What should

we continue to do and what should we change?”)

Schedule a fi nal debrief

A wrap-up conversation about overall team perfor-

mance and individual contributions is essential to learn-

ing from the experience. (We’ll cover this in more detail

in chapter 15, “Learn from Your Team’s Experiences.”)

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Again, get this meeting on the calendar up front to make

sure that it happens. If you wait until you’re nearing the

end, you’ll fi nd that team members have scattered and

you’ve lost the opportunity to glean lessons and apply

them to the next team. This fi nal debrief isn’t a remedial

intervention; it’s just the conclusion of the continuous

improvement process you’ve implemented throughout

the team’s work together.

Assign the role of goal/rule keeper

As noted in chapter 4, “Agree on Individuals’ Roles,” it’s

useful to charge a team member with monitoring com-

pliance and facilitating continuous improvement discus-

sions. This can be one person, or the role can rotate proj-

ect to project, or even meeting to meeting.

Agree on rules for evaluating work

Determine as a group how you will conduct feedback

sessions: Establish, for example, when feedback should

be given one-on-one and when it should be offered in

a team setting. For example, your team may decide to

spend the fi nal fi ve to ten minutes of each meeting dis-

cussing “what we did well today” and “what we could

have done better.” Also set guidelines for how to give and

receive feedback.

Building Feedback Skills

Many people have no idea when to give feedback or how

to deliver and receive it effectively. As noted earlier, they

particularly struggle with negative messages, euphemis-

tically called “constructive feedback” (which we all know

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means “I don’t like what you are doing, and I want you

to change”). As a team leader, it’s your job to set a good

example and provide some training. At the very least, the

team should talk about the following principles.

When to give feedback

It’s always appropriate to give positive feedback, as long

as it’s specifi c and genuine—so encourage team mem-

bers to do it often, both publicly and privately. Negative

feedback requires more deliberate timing. Here are some

guidelines:

• Provide feedback when someone’s behavior pre-

vents you from meeting team goals. Don’t give it

when it’s a matter of personal taste and you’d just

like to see the other person do things your way.

• Speak up as soon as you can. The longer you wait,

the more likely you are either to drop the issue

altogether (resolving nothing) or to explode. Those

on the receiving end of your pent-up frustration

will probably be embarrassed or angry that you’ve

been harboring negative thoughts about them for

so long.

• Give negative feedback in a one-on-one conversa-

tion whenever possible. Not all disruptive behavior

merits a group discussion, and you don’t want to

gang up on individuals—that puts them on the

defensive and prevents them from hearing your

message. For example, if you had to recheck every

number in a teammate’s spreadsheet to correct

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multiple errors, take her aside and ask her to do

more checking herself next time before sending

the spreadsheet to you.

• Establish rules for when it is appropriate to give

negative feedback in a team setting: for instance,

when someone’s behavior has a negative impact

on the entire team or on many members, when the

person has already received private feedback but

has not demonstrated a willingness to change, or

when the feedback is likely to lead to changes in

goals, roles, or rules. If you have warring factions

inside the team, avoid frustrating “he said, she

said” conversations by bringing them together to

hear each other’s concerns and work out a solution.

(More on this in chapter 11, “Resolve Confl icts

Constructively.”)

How to give feedback

Although the team should follow standard best practices

for giving feedback, lead the group in defi ning its own

preferences. They may include principles like these:

• Describe the behavior (“You interrupted me several

times”), not the personality (“You were rude”).

• Avoid casting behaviors and people as good or bad,

right or wrong.

• Don’t try to interpret motives behind the behavior;

stick with your observations. Say, “You’ve been late

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three times,” not “It’s obvious you aren’t commit-

ted to this project.”

• Point out the behavior’s impact on your work. For

example: “You waited until after my presenta-

tion to say what you didn’t like, so I couldn’t take

your points into consideration before our client

meeting.”

• Be specifi c. This is important even for positive

feedback. A simple “good job” without details

won’t show that you’ve paid attention and really

appreciate the work. Give examples, such as “I par-

ticularly liked how you answered the customer’s

questions about our data collection methodology.

You avoided jargon and limited your response to

exactly what was asked.”

• Invite discussion about the problem and alterna-

tive solutions.

• Suggest behavior that would be more helpful. In

the presentation example above, you might say:

“It would be helpful to get your input in advance

next time.”

• Ask colleagues for permission to give feedback,

especially in peer-to-peer situations, where no one

has clear authority. For example: “I have some

feedback on how you organized your proposal that

might make your main idea come through more

clearly. Would you like to hear it?” Highlight a

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benefi t (in this case, clarifying the idea) to get your

audience to listen.

How to receive feedback

The natural human response to receiving negative stim-

ulus is “fi ght or fl ight”: We either lash out or withdraw

from the situation. It’s much more diffi cult to respond

openly and objectively, but that’s how people grow and

improve. Consider with your team the following ground

rules for receiving feedback:

• Control your emotional response. Breathe. If you

fi nd it tough to remain calm in the moment, ask

for a “time out” to think about the feedback, and

resume the conversation later.

• Remember that while all feedback is subjective, it

also represents someone else’s “reality”—so don’t

dismiss it if it doesn’t align with your perceptions.

• Assume that people giving you feedback have good

intentions (that is, that they want to improve how

the team works together—they’re not out to get

you). Resist interpreting their motives. Take their

stated reasons at face value.

• Demonstrate that you care about what they’re say-

ing. Listen. Request clarifi cation and examples if

you’re not sure you understand the message.

• Ask people to rephrase their feedback if their de-

livery doesn’t follow agreed-upon team guidelines.

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• Ask if they’d like to hear your point of view if you

disagree with their feedback. (You might have

a different recollection of events, for example.)

Someone with good intentions will say yes. Some-

one who just doesn’t like you will say no—or

simply not listen.

As with setting rules of conduct, start with a more struc-

tured approach to accountability and then ease up. You

might, for instance, schedule monthly continuous im-

provement meetings up front if the team will be working

together for a year. Early on you’ll want to regularly re-

mind people what the team’s goals, roles, and rules are;

signal the importance of compliance; and provide some

basic training on giving and receiving feedback. You

can reduce the frequency or duration of the meetings as

team members develop trust and internalize rules. It’s

easier to cancel unneeded meetings than to add meet-

ings when confl ict reaches a crisis level. There’s a lot of

groundwork to be laid, but once that’s done, you switch

to maintenance mode.

Finally, you need to consistently hold yourself account-

able to meeting the team’s goals, respecting its roles, and

following its rules. If you don’t, you can’t credibly hold

others accountable for doing the same.

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Chapter 7

Commit to a Team

Contract

If you’ve made it this far, you’ve done a lot of work to

build your team’s infrastructure. Now it’s time to seal

the deal.

Nothing secures commitment more than writing

up a contract—summarizing what you’ve agreed to in

team-building conversations—and having all members

sign it. This solidifi es their understanding of what’s ex-

pected of them, helps in resolving future disagreements,

and reminds them of what they’ve agreed to as you track

progress, hold one another accountable, and strive for

improvement.

Signing the contract also serves as a symbolic bridge

from building the team to working as a team. Consider

recognizing the achievement with a dinner out or a

toast—a lot of time, energy, and human capital has gone

into building a solid foundation for the team.

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There’s no set format for a team contract, but it’s use-

ful to include the following:

• The team’s task and process goals

• The team members’ roles—how they’ll be

designated and who will hold them

• Rules of conduct

• How you’ll hold one another accountable for

producing good work and nurturing strong

relationships

See appendix C for a basic template, which you can

adapt to suit your team. The contract shouldn’t be a

lengthy document fi lled with legalese. Rather, it should

be a living document that will evolve and change along

with the team.

Once you’ve got a written and signed agreement, keep

it visible to all members as a continual reminder of guid-

ing team principles. You might, for example, display it

in a wiki where team members regularly post updates

on their tasks. A team of sales reps in a medical devices

group made a poster out of its contract, titled the “Dec-

laration of Interdependence,” and tacked it up in their

conference room. A team at a military manufacturing

company summed up its process goals in a slogan (“On

time, on place, on target”) that members included in

their e-mail signatures. If you’re leading a long-term or

ongoing team, you may even want to put your slogan on

coffee mugs so members will have it in front of them all

the time.

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Rest assured that all this foundational work will pay

off: Although teams that jump right into assigning and

executing tasks may get a head start on reaching per-

formance goals, research consistently shows that they’re

soon overtaken by teams that have invested time in es-

tablishing their task and process goals, roles, and rules

of conduct. Why? Because in all those team-building

conversations, members develop trust, the ability to

learn from one another, an understanding of how to

collaborate fruitfully, and a clear sense of how everyone

can best contribute. They then feel more empowered

to take on work and solve problems. All of that leads to

stronger performance, greater effi ciency, and continuous

improvement.

Now it’s time to focus on the work itself and reap the

rewards of your investment.

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Section 2

Manage Your

Team

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Chapter 8

Make Optimal

Team Decisions

Much of your team’s time together will be devoted to

making decisions about the work: planning tasks, moni-

toring progress, evaluating outcomes, changing strate-

gies, or responding to crises. Teams often struggle with

decision making, though. We all have our stories about

leaving a meeting confi dent that everyone knows who’s

doing what—only to later discover that isn’t true. Or get-

ting bogged down in long, tedious discussions about mi-

nutiae, losing sight of what’s important. Or realizing that

hours were spent essentially endorsing a decision the

boss had already made.

But you’re now well equipped to avoid pitfalls like

these. While you were building the team’s infrastructure

(its goals, roles, and rules), you were also developing

the skills a team needs to make good decisions together:

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airing dissent, tolerating others’ points of view, and mak-

ing trade-offs, to name a few.

In this chapter, we’ll examine best practices for group

decision making in the moment.

Think “Good,” Not “Right”

We tend to believe deep in our hearts that there’s one

“right” answer out there, and that it will become evident

if we collect enough data and apply enough analytic rigor.

Sadly, for most decisions, that’s not the case.

Having a discussion about what constitutes an opti-

mal decision for the group, versus one that’s right, saves

everyone the frustration of pursuing unachievable per-

fection. When your team discussed rules of conduct,

members may have agreed on decision-making criteria

such as these:

• Take all key factors into account.

• Use the best (often limited) information available.

• Balance data and intuition.

• Rigorously generate multiple options.

• Weigh the pros and cons of each option.

• Get input from everyone who will feel the impact

of the decision.

• Support the team’s goals.

• Improve the team’s ability to solve future problems.

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These criteria are not about discovering an end-all,

be-all solution. You’re just trying to fi nd the best possible

answer given whatever constraints the team faces.

Here’s an example to show how clear decision-making

criteria will expedite that process. A faculty team at a

small college found itself at a stalemate after more than

a year of debating which core courses all undergraduates

must take. Even though all the professors could link their

own departments’ courses to the school’s mission (a criti-

cal selection factor), they couldn’t agree across depart-

mental lines. But then, after discussing what would con-

stitute a good decision, the team decided that “made in a

reasonable period of time” should be a guiding principle.

That put everyone in a better frame of mind to meet the

fast-approaching deadline for the next year’s catalog.

The team made compromises on all sides and fi nalized

the curriculum.

Look at the Context

We often associate teams with building consensus.

Didn’t you pull your team together precisely because you

wanted its members’ collective brainpower? Yet reach-

ing consensus takes a lot of time and energy—sometimes

more than it’s worth. Instead of using that as your de-

fault approach, consider which type of decision is best for

the current situation. Ask yourself:

• How much time do I have? If it’s in short supply,

you may need to make the decision yourself or ap-

point someone on the team to do it.

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• Who has the expertise? When one or a few people

within the team have greater insight about an is-

sue because of their knowledge or experience, let

them make the call—or at least a strong recom-

mendation to the group.

• Is growth a goal? If you want members to learn

from a decision, spend time discussing it as a

group rather than delegating it or making it on

your own. Less-experienced members will benefi t

from hearing subject-matter experts debate which

solution is optimal. Members can also develop

key skills—such as advocating for a position or

challenging someone’s point of view—through the

decision-making process.

• How much buy-in do I need? The greater the com-

mitment you need from team members to imple-

ment a decision, the more you’ll want to build

consensus or at least solicit their input. You’d

probably want everyone’s buy-in when deciding

on the team’s strategy for pitching to prospective

clients, for example. However, you don’t need it to

select the PowerPoint template you’ll use. Many

of those supportive, operational decisions are best

delegated to individuals or subgroups.

• How much creativity does the decision require? If

you’re trying to generate really fresh ideas—say

you’re looking for a new fund-raising concept—

don’t just sit down at your computer and type up

what comes to mind. Ask others to contribute

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ideas or, better yet, conduct a brainstorming ses-

sion. Once the team has come up with a long list of

possibilities, you’ll shift to a different mode of de-

cision making: evaluating and selecting (possibly

through the nominal group technique described in

chapter 5, “Agree on Rules of Conduct”).

Bottom line: Use consensus only when a decision will

affect every team member. For big-picture, direction-

setting decisions—sorting out or changing rules of con-

duct, for example—it makes sense. But remember, reach-

ing consensus is not about agreeing on a decision that

every member likes. You’ll drive yourself—and others—

mad attempting to arrive at this elusive, usually impos-

sible, destination. Consensus really just means that all

members feel they’ve had a fair hearing so that they’ll

publicly defend the decision even if it’s not in line with

their personal preferences.

Majority vote is another option, but use it sparingly.

It creates winners and losers—and that division in the

group can impede progress, especially if you need peo-

ple in the minority to implement the decision. People

may also interpret your call for a vote as a power play.

If it’s pretty clear beforehand which side will win, a vote

will simply shut down further debate. They know that,

and they know you do, too. So save voting for when a

deadline looms, when additional delays will damage the

team’s work, or when the team has already spent too

much time trying to reach an agreement. When stale-

mates occur, it’s often because the options are equally

good or bad. In that case, vote just to end the gridlock.

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Whatever decision-making method you choose, re-

member to factor in members’ need for control and au-

tonomy. Empower people to make decisions connected

to their individual roles. If you’re delegating a decision

to a small group within the team, specify when others

can offer input (and when they can’t) and have the team

agree on what criteria the subgroup should use in mak-

ing the fi nal decision.

Make It Easy to Contribute

Create an environment where every team member comes

to meetings prepared to participate in decision making

by advocating, challenging, and proposing alternatives—

and by getting behind the group’s fi nal choice. You’ve al-

ready set the stage for this by establishing rules for deci-

sion making, but people will sometimes need reminders

about those rules.

One board chair had several trustees who dominated

every decision-making discussion and several who, as

a result, rarely bothered to say much. To address that

problem, she handed each member fi ve poker chips at a

meeting and explained that every time someone spoke,

that person had to turn in one chip. Once members used

up their chips, they could no longer chime in. The group

thought she was joking until she began telling people

they’d lost the fl oor because they’d used up their chips.

She made her point, and the team took it to heart. Board

members continued to hold one another accountable

even without the chips, occasionally saying, “Hey, you’ve

used up your chips. Let’s hear from someone else.”

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Other ways to encourage equal participation include:

• Acting as a gatekeeper: Explicitly invite quiet

members to speak up. Don’t assume that they

agree with their teammates or have nothing to add.

They may just feel uncomfortable about interrupt-

ing to get into the conversation.

• Resisting the impulse to speed up a decision: The

team may try to quickly narrow down its options

or accept the fi rst one on the table just to move

things along. But there’s value in broadening the

fi eld of possibilities before evaluating any of them.

Instead of that fi rst or second idea, it may be the

ninth or tenth that best meets your needs. You

won’t get that far if you cut your discussion short.

As team leader, you may feel forced to make a fi nal call,

since the team looks to you for guidance. If you want the

others to own the decision, push it back on them. Boo-

merang their “What should we do?” back to them by ask-

ing, “What do you think we should do?” Or say, “That’s

up to the group.”

That’s often a good way to go, because offering your

input too soon can quickly shut down a discussion. Once

you say, “Wow, that’s a great idea—that’s what we should

do,” team members may be reluctant to offer any compet-

ing (and possibly better) alternatives. Try waiting until

the end of the discussion to offer your ideas or endorse

suggestions. When a team member shares an idea that

confl icts with your own, watch your body language. You

can “kill the messenger” with just one disapproving look.

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Of course, when you have expertise that would ben-

efi t the discussion, you won’t do the team any favors by

remaining silent. In a case like that, consider relinquish-

ing your team leader role momentarily so that you’re

free to participate as a regular member. You might ask

an outsider to come in and facilitate. One team leader

communicated this role shift by moving out of his usual

seat at the head of the table. Another did it by saying,

“I’m taking my ‘team lead’ hat off . . . ” before adding her

perspectives.

Use Your Experts Wisely

You’ve included subject-matter experts on your team to

provide knowledge, but what if they don’t express their

insights effectively? Perhaps they give too little input or

withhold ideas altogether because they don’t want to be

held responsible for decisions. You may need to prompt

them to share their thoughts so that quality doesn’t suffer.

By contrast, when experts give too much input, oth-

ers may see them as condescending and dominating.

Or their teammates may abdicate their own respon-

sibility for decisions, thinking, “It’s up to the expert.”

So continually remind all team members of the value

they bring: different ideas, new perspectives, ideas not

limited to those that worked in the past. Ask them to

keep voicing their opinions and to avoid acquiescing

too quickly.

Periodically remind the team that each expert’s role is

to share expertise, not to make decisions unilaterally be-

cause of it. You may decide it’s best for experts to weigh

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in later in the discussion if their comments appear to be

silencing others early on.

Invite Dissent

Dissent is at the heart of why you’ve created a team in the

fi rst place. Consulting a variety of data sources and ex-

amining confl icting ideas will lead to better decisions. If

everyone prefers to work with Vendor A, then you won’t

explore other options, which could include a cheaper

supplier with a better track record. If you all agree right

away on what the data indicates then you won’t con-

duct further analysis, which might have revealed serious

breaches in collection integrity.

Dissent infuses problem solving with energy and cre-

ativity. It also promotes closer relationships (as members

grow to appreciate one another’s contributions), greater

social competence (as people learn how to persuade, ad-

vocate, and challenge constructively), and psychological

well-being (as individuals recognize the value they add in

the exchange of ideas).

So why don’t teams foster dissent more often? When

they’re in decision-making mode, the conversation has a

task component (evaluating the information) and a peo-

ple component (maintaining the relationships). Destruc-

tive confl ict can ensue if dissent starts to feel personal.

When someone questions your thinking in a meeting,

you might wonder, “Is he trying to make me look bad?”

That kind of dissent hurts relationships.

Not surprisingly, many teams attempt to ward off

interpersonal confl ict by suppressing dissent. We see a

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team’s lack of disagreement as a good thing—but really, it

may signal apathy, disengagement, or alienation.

The best teams explore opposing ideas while preserv-

ing relationships. But how do you make that happen?

First, agree on what you’re trying to accomplish with

the decision—perhaps you’re looking to woo back a lost

client, for example—and then collect as many ideas and

views as you reasonably can. Don’t fi nalize big decisions

until the group has rigorously examined several options

and weighed the pros and cons: This can take the form

of a cost/benefi t analysis or a discussion of risks and re-

wards. If the group agrees on one idea quickly, solicit dis-

sent by saying, “Let’s see if we can come up with reasons

not to move forward with this” or “I’d like to hear at least

one other proposal before we continue down this path.”

You may also provide some time to refl ect before mak-

ing the decision. Ask everyone to think about it until the

next meeting. In the interim, talk to people one-on-one.

Some members may feel comfortable expressing oppos-

ing views in a team setting, but others may not. You may

fi nd in these conversations that people start to change

their minds—or they may remain aligned. Sometimes

early agreement is just that—it’s not always a symptom

of “groupthink.”

Keep the tone constructive. When members state op-

posing views, have them fi rst paraphrase the other per-

spective to show that they listened to it and understand

it. And protect the dissenters on your team. As they raise

concerns, encourage them to say more. As they propose

new ideas, ask the team to point out the positives as well

as the negatives so people don’t simply shoot them down.

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Here are several activities for fostering constructive

dissent:

Post before you discuss

After you defi ne the problem to solve or the decision

to make, have team members post their ideas on a wall

(sticky notes work well), and then proceed with a discus-

sion. This brings out views that might otherwise be sup-

pressed once a majority opinion becomes obvious or once

the team leader or a major infl uencer states a position.

Build on written ideas

Have everyone come up with as many ideas as possible,

writing each one on a separate piece of paper and plac-

ing it in the center of the table. Once members have fi n-

ished doing this, they can pull out others’ papers, read

them, jot down why they disagree or how they’d expand

the ideas, and put the papers back into the middle. When

people stop writing comments, the team reads the ideas

out loud and discusses the points others have added to

them. You can also do this with fl ip charts or large sheets

of paper tacked on the wall: Members write their ideas

on their fl ip chart and then move around the room to

the other charts, reading teammates’ ideas and adding

comments.

Use advocacy groups

After identifying a few main options, assign each alter-

native to an advocacy group within the team. Task those

groups with developing “best cases” for their assigned

options and presenting their positions to the whole

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team. Once all the groups have presented their cases,

they can challenge one another’s information, rationales,

and conclusions. The outcome is a clearer understand-

ing of the strengths and weaknesses of each position.

Here’s an example: In an IT company, an eight-person

team was formed to streamline the process of fi lling cus-

tomer requests. The team consisted of representatives

from two very siloed, embattled functions: customer

reps, who took the orders, and technical developers, who

completed the orders. The reps proposed a process that

made sense to them, but the developers hated it. The de-

velopers responded with their own proposal, and the reps

hated that. To break the stalemate, the team leader told

the reps to strongly advocate for the developers’ proposal,

and vice versa. This required each side to look at the

problem from the other’s perspective. As a result, both

camps recognized the limitations of their own propos-

als and the merits of the other side’s. They then worked

together to create a third proposal that addressed the

needs and concerns of both functions.

Play devil’s advocate

Early in a discussion, team members may hesitate to ac-

tively disagree with one another. Make it safe to do so

by assigning the role of devil’s advocate to an individual

or a subgroup of members. Whenever an idea or posi-

tion is presented, it’s their responsibility to challenge it

and identify its weaknesses. This allows people to ask

the hard questions or dispute positions without fear of

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hurting their relationships with their colleagues. It’s

their role to disagree—so others are less likely to take it

personally.

To use key decision meetings as learning opportunities,

consider ending them with a debrief about the process.

You won’t do this every time, but it can be useful after a

particularly rigorous or contentious debate. Take a few

minutes to capture best practices for future decisions,

nip bad behaviors in the bud, and review team rules. Try

to evaluate the process while it’s still fresh. But if people

need a little cooling off or refl ection time, it’s fi ne to do

the debrief at the next meeting or before the next deci-

sion. Continuous improvement is your goal.

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Chapter 9

Hold People

Accountable

When do you start holding the team accountable for its

work? Right away.

Don’t wait for deadlines to slip—or even for someone

to show up 15 minutes late more than once. An account-

able team strives for continuous improvement from the

outset. There’s no time like the present to become more

effi cient and effective as a group.

Initially, focus your accountability discussions on the

team as a whole. Use them to build trust and develop

skills in giving and receiving useful feedback. Then you

can start having more diffi cult conversations about indi-

vidual performance.

Team Accountability

Start small and simple. Do a brief “plus/delta” at the end

of every meeting, asking “What did we do well today?

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What do we need to change for the next meeting?” Team

members might say, for example, that they generated lots

of promising ideas but that next time they shouldn’t be-

gin analyzing and eliminating options so quickly. You’ll

want to end the team’s conversations about continuous

improvement with a plus/delta, too. It may sound circu-

lar, but it’s the only way your team will get better at giving

feedback and holding one another accountable.

These exercises are also useful in assessing team

performance.

Discuss what to stop, start, or continue

These three questions are fundamental to any continu-

ous improvement process: “What should we stop? What

should we start? What should we continue?” Asking

them regularly will build members’ feedback skills and

trust within the group. A different way of framing this

sort of conversation is to ask, “What are some of our

greatest achievements so far, and what factors have con-

tributed to those successes? What have been our great-

est challenges, and how might we overcome them in the

future?”

Rate your team in one area

Ask each member to privately rate the group on some ac-

tivity or event. It might be as general as “How do you feel

about the team’s performance on the last project?” or as

specifi c as “How do you feel about the level of support

you received from your teammates in the fi nal stretch?”

Use a scale of 1 (highly unsatisfi ed) to 10 (greatly satis-

fi ed). When you meet, ask each person to share his or her

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rating, explain the reason for it, and say what would have

to change to increase it.

Even though some team members are inevitably

harder “graders” than others, the ratings help people

see more clearly what’s working for the team and what’s

not. Saying why they gave the ratings they did will shed

light on their own preferences, and saying what needs

to change will help the team fi gure out which rules to fi x.

One team leader used this exercise when he noticed

tension brewing in his group. No one had complained

to him, but people had been uncharacteristically quiet

at the past few meetings. He had everyone rate the level

of trust among team members. Though several mem-

bers gave high ratings, two people gave 3s. After they

explained their ratings, the problem became clear: In

writing a client report together, the two members had di-

vided it into sections that each would prepare. But then

one member completely rewrote the other’s material

when combining the drafted sections into one document.

It was a breakdown in roles: One had assumed the edi-

tor role, unbeknownst to the other. They agreed that in

future joint efforts, they would decide on roles up front.

Rate your team’s processes

Want to conduct a more comprehensive review of your

team’s performance? Try the Process Ratings Exercise

(see sidebar). For ongoing teams and long projects, sched-

ule time for this activity quarterly or semi annually; for ad

hoc teams or shorter projects, do it at their conclusion.

This exercise measures performance on several key di-

mensions of teamwork, such as infrastructure, account-

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ability, workload, and trust. However, you can adjust it to

meet your needs: Rate only a few elements, for instance.

Modify the descriptions at the ends of the scales to in-

clude specifi c behaviors. Or add new scales. If the team

consists of people from different parts of the business,

you might assess collaboration across functional lines.

Don’t buckle under time pressure and skip these con-

versations because you have 100 tasks that need to be

PROCESS RATINGS EXERCISE

Ask members to score the team on the following elements of teamwork,

and then meet to discuss. Have them share their ratings, explain their

reasoning, and suggest changes that would improve the ratings.

1. Team infrastructure (goals, roles, and rules)

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

9 10

Never clearly

Clearly established;

established;

members know

members don’t

what’s expected of

know what’s

them.

expected of them.

2. Accountability

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

9 10

Members don’t

Members comply

comply with team

with goals and

goals and rules;

rules; they’re held

they aren’t held

accountable.

accountable.

3. Workload

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

9 10

Team has “free

Team has no “free

riders” who don’t

riders”; work is fairly

contribute or

distributed.

volunteer; their

work gets ignored

or is done by a

dominant few.

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4. Problem solving and decision making

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

9 10

A few members

Team discusses

make all the

decisions rigorously,

decisions, with little

seeks diverse ideas,

or no rigor; the team

invites dissent, and

doesn’t appreciate

includes aff ected

opposing ideas.

stakeholders.

5. Managing confl ict

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

9 10

Members avoid

Members explicitly

confl ict or pretend

discuss confl icts

it doesn’t exist;

with all those

people complain

involved.

about others behind

their backs.

6. Task/project progression

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

9 10

Members do poor-

Members produce

quality work and

high-quality work

miss deadlines.

on time.

7. Communication

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

9 10

Members don’t

Members communicate

communicate; they fail

frequently and fl uidly;

to disclose decisions,

they fully disclose

rationales, goals, and

decisions, rationales,

other information

goals, and other

critical to performance.

information critical to

performance.

8. Trust

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

9 10

Members don’t trust

Members have a high

one another, which

degree of trust, which

stifl es innovation, risk

fosters innovation, risk

taking, and rigorous

taking, and rigorous

decision making; they

decision making; they

expect their input to

expect their input to

be misinterpreted

be received openly and

or leaked to people

kept confi dential.

outside the team.

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done. It’s tempting to do so, even when things are going

well on a team. But resist that urge. It’s as important to

acknowledge what’s going well, so people continue that

behavior, as it is to identify and fi x what’s broken.

As with any continuous improvement discussion, have

someone record the group’s observations and resulting

decisions. This record will help you update the team’s

roles and rules as they evolve.

Individual Accountability

As members gain experience in holding the team ac-

countable, it’s time to add in discussions that focus on in-

dividuals. To help people with that transition, allow them

time to carefully prepare their remarks in advance. You’ll

also want to review the team’s rules about how to give

and receive feedback (see chapter 6, “Set the Stage for

Accountability”) and remind people that the overarching

goal of the discussion is to continuously improve indi-

vidual performance for the benefi t of the team. Members

should always use that lens when deciding what to share

in a feedback session.

To keep discussions focused and constructive, you can

modify the team exercises described earlier in this chap-

ter. Familiarity with those structured conversations may

help members overcome their natural reluctance to give

their peers feedback.

The stop-start-continue exercise works particularly

well for individuals. Approach it the same way you would

a team-focused discussion: Ask everyone to consider

each member: “What do you want this person to stop

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doing? What do you want him to start doing? What do

you want him to continue doing?” Have people write

down their comments in advance and then meet to share

their thoughts. Remind them to describe specifi c behav-

iors, not personalities, so their observations don’t come

across as personal attacks.

Remember the community health care team that

Nancy, the nurse, drove crazy with all her questions

(chapter 2, “Get to Know One Another”)? To avoid fu-

ture misunderstandings about one another’s intentions,

members began conducting stop-start-continue discus-

sions on a quarterly basis. Over time, they dubbed these

“Kudos and Concerns” meetings, where members could

give each person an unlimited number of kudos (for be-

haviors to continue) and point out two areas of concern

(behaviors to manage).

It’s essential to limit the number of behaviors to man-

age. Realistically, most people can work on one or two

areas at a time. They may feel overwhelmed by more

than that.

After each member receives feedback, call out themes

and ask individuals what behaviors they’ll commit to

stopping, starting, or continuing. You may need to give

them time to think about this fi rst, as it involves digest-

ing and accepting what they’ve heard. Allowing them to

decide what they’ll do empowers them. Feedback is sub-

jective, after all, and members may have confl icting re-

sponses to behaviors (for instance, one may appreciate

someone’s close attention to detail, and another may fi nd

it frustrating).

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Group feedback is powerful because we all feel a basic

need for affi liation. Team discussions harness the power

of the group and compel individuals to get with the pro-

gram—it’s like high-school peer pressure channeled for

the good. This approach (versus a one-on-one conversa-

tion) is most useful when:

• The behavior aff ects the whole team’s ability to

perform. Talking with the group enables people to

see the broader impact of their actions. Complet-

ing tasks late doesn’t just hurt the person waiting

for them—it hurts the full team. That realization

usually prompts members to comply with the

team’s expectations.

• The behavior is best handled by adjusting the

team’s expectations. Take Isaac, a fi nancial

analyst on a client support team who was continu-

ally late for the group’s daily 9:00 a.m. check-in

meeting. Through the stop-start-continue exercise,

team members told Isaac he needed to change this

behavior. He then revealed that he was respon-

sible for dropping off his son at day care, and even

when he arrived there at the earliest possible

drop-off time, the public transportation schedule

didn’t permit him to get to work by 9:00. With

that information, the team changed the meeting

time to 9:30.

Despite the power of accountability, some individuals

may choose to not do the work or comply with agreed-

upon rules. It’s your job as team leader to manage indi-

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vidual performance. After you’ve let problem members

know that they aren’t doing what’s expected of them,

here are some other steps you can take:

• Confi rm that they have the skills to do what your

team needs. Can they demonstrate those skills?

Have they used those skills in other situations? If

not, you will need to train and coach them or work

more closely with them to build the required com-

petencies. Although you may enlist team members

to assist in their skill development—for example,

by partnering up on tasks—the coaching respon-

sibility primarily falls to you. As people are getting

up to speed, give them smaller tasks, shorter time-

lines, more observation, and more feedback.

• Make sure they have the resources to do the work

and follow team rules. Isaac, in the earlier exam-

ple, couldn’t get to team meetings on time because

of child care and transportation constraints, so

his team changed the meeting time. Consider how

you can provide missing resources for your team

members or help them overcome obstacles to

performance.

• Zero in on what motivates them. If your team

members know that they’re not meeting expecta-

tions, they possess the skills and resources to do

the work, and you don’t see any other barriers im-

peding their performance, then they are probably

lacking motivation. Again, as the team leader, it’s

up to you to identify whether they respond best to

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recognition, control, achievement, or affi liation—

all big motivators. The fi rst three can be tricky to

satisfy in a team setting: Recognition for group

accomplishments must be shared. So must control.

And depending on others to produce results can

dampen an individual’s sense of achievement. You

may have more luck appealing to each member’s

need to belong to the group. But keep in mind

that lack of motivation is often a reason to cut

someone loose.

Ideally, you’ll have the authority to remove nonpro-

ductive or disruptive members from your team. If that is

not automatically granted, negotiate for it. Without this

authority, you may get stuck with people who don’t carry

their weight, which can have a demoralizing effect on the

rest of the team.

The IT team leader who used advocacy groups (from

chapter 8, “Make Optimal Team Decisions”) faced that

problem. After multiple accountability conversations,

one technical developer kept reverting to the old siloed

way of fi lling customer requests instead of following the

new protocols the team had agreed on. His recalcitrance

led to unhappy customers and frustrated colleagues.

Unfortunately, the team leader didn’t have the author-

ity to remove anyone from the group. So he isolated the

offending member, protecting the rest of the team from

the disruptive behavior. The engineer followed his own

protocol: Instead of collaborating with the team to fi ll

requests, he worked alone. The team leader held him

accountable only for his own outcomes, and he did not

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participate in any team meetings. The developer pulled

his weight but was essentially an individual contributor.

Although this may seem like an inequitable or easy-

way-out solution, it’s sometimes the best one for the

team, the individual, and even you (fewer headaches!).

You need to decide how much time and energy you want

to invest in fi xing the behaviors or outcomes of a prob-

lem member. If you’ve chosen that person for his content

expertise, you might treat him like a consultant, pulling

him in as needed without involving him in ongoing team

building and maintenance.

Accountability conversations are important throughout

the life of the team. Here, we’ve discussed how to con-

tinuously improve by aligning behavior with the team’s

aspirations (embedded in its rules). In the next chapter,

we’ll turn to another aspect: giving team members rec-

ognition for their good work. And chapter 15 covers the

fi nal step of accountability: reviewing each individual’s

contributions to identify which behaviors and processes

to bring to future teams and which to change. This en-

ables you to learn from each team experience and build

your own competence as a team leader over time.

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Chapter 10

Give People

Recognition

Even in team environments, recognition remains one of

the top four human motivators (along with the need for

achievement, control, and a sense of belonging).

It’s relatively easy to recognize the full team for good

task work, such as meeting goals and hitting deadlines,

or for exemplary behavior, such as conducting a diffi cult

feedback session constructively. It can be harder, in a team

setting, to recognize individuals for their good work or

behaviors. Teams are based on collaboration, equity, and

fairness. How can you give individuals their due while fos-

tering the cohesiveness that comes when everyone works

toward the same goals and follows the same rules?

The Japanese proverb, “The nail that sticks up gets

hammered down,” comes to mind. Sadly, that’s what of-

ten happens to individuals who get a lot of praise from

their team leader: Other team members may begin

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competing for your attention or, worse, sabotaging the

work of your “pets.”

You need to give recognition to motivate individuals—

and certain team members do regularly go the extra mile.

Here are some tips.

Connect One-to-One

You can do lots of things to discreetly show your appre-

ciation for individuals’ contributions. For starters, get to

know each member personally. Find out about people’s

backgrounds, lives outside work, and interests. For ex-

ample, does a team member bike for a cancer charity?

If so, ask about her latest race and consider donating to

the cause.

Learn about people’s career aspirations, too, and pass

along relevant articles, blog posts, or other information

you come across. Introduce team members to people in

your network who can help advance their careers. You

might even sponsor them in professional development

training or write letters of recommendation for school or

fellowship applications.

You can also privately provide extra feedback, going

beyond the performance appraisals the team conducts.

One of the most powerful forms of recognition is to help

people grow. Assign them challenging tasks, and coach

them. Pass on positive comments you’ve heard about

them from others. And give them as much time and at-

tention as you reasonably can.

Written acknowledgments go a long way, too. Send

a note of thanks, for example, and copy senior manage-

ment and HR.

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Include Positive Feedback

Make sure the team gives positive feedback in its ac-

countability discussions (chapter 9, “Hold People Ac-

countable”). Don’t just focus on behaviors that should

be added, dropped, or changed. Give recognition dur-

ing discussions about behaviors that people should con-

tinue, and occasionally conduct a session devoted just to

sharing positive feedback. Go around the room, and ask

everyone to say what they appreciate about each team

member. Try prompting people to comment on specifi c

contributions (to a particular task or project) as well as

general strengths (skills, attitude, and so on).

A design team at an engineering company conducted

a positive feedback session immediately following a big

team failure: The prototype it had produced came back

from the engineering group with a long list of attributes

deemed infeasible. While the team pondered everything

that had contributed to this failure, its leader wanted

to boost morale by reminding people of the talents and

strengths they brought to the new challenge. The appre-

ciation exercise helped the team members see that they

had the skills and smarts to come up with a successful

new design.

Share Credit Publicly

Visibility outside the group is another effective form of

recognition. Consider having every member sign the pro-

posals and project reports submitted by the team. Or ask

every member to participate in fi nal presentations to cli-

ents or senior management.

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A senior scientist in a pharmaceutical laboratory saw a

dramatic increase in individuals’ motivation (and, conse-

quently, their contributions) when she changed how the

lab gave credit to employees. She didn’t like the fact that

only her name would appear on research reports and ac-

ademic articles in medical journals. This made the rest of

the team’s work invisible to the outside world. Over time,

it became increasingly diffi cult to get junior scientists

and research analysts to put in the extra time and energy

needed to meet project deadlines. So she changed the

lab’s practice, giving recognition to junior scientists and

research analysts. When team members could claim au-

thorship on reports and articles, their motivation soared.

The lab began meeting its deadlines and found itself del-

uged with applications for junior positions.

Think about your interactions with team members as

bank transactions: Every time you give constructive

feedback or hold someone accountable, you’re with-

drawing on your account. Every time you give positive

feedback or recognition, you’re making a deposit. Clearly,

you always want to be “in the black.” This means making

timely, consistent deposits. You’ll get a great return on

your investment.

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Chapter 11

Resolve Confl icts

Constructively

Most of us go to great lengths to avoid confl icts. We smile

and nod instead of proposing alternatives. We give in

and do things “their way.” We’ll deny outright that con-

fl icts even exist when asked (the “Nothing’s wrong—

everything’s great” scenario). But on teams, confl icts are

inevitable.

Why Confl icts Arise

Typically, team members don’t try to cause trouble or

seek negative attention. More often, they become em-

broiled in confl icts for several reasons:

• Diff erent work styles. To arrive at a team contract,

members had to compromise. Most likely, at least

a few rules of conduct don’t jibe with their own

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personal preferences. That’s why team-building

conversations can be so diffi cult: It’s not easy for

people to change their ways. It’s even harder when

the stakes are high. After all, a team’s output can

affect individuals’ salaries, careers, and reputa-

tions. Before signing the contract, people may

have resisted certain rules—not out of petulance

but from a desire to do what’s worked for them in

the past.

You’ve done a lot of work to preempt style-

based confl icts, yet they’ll still fl are up now and

then, particularly when deadlines loom, people

get overworked, or the team experiences a setback.

When we’re tired or stressed, we all tend to revert

to the way we act most naturally, with no mental

pause, no behavioral adjustment. For example,

under time pressure, a team member might make

a decision unilaterally, despite what the team

had agreed.

• Opposing ideas, perspectives, and opinions. As

we discussed earlier, the diversity you carefully

built into your team often leads to disagree-

ments. If your team is operating as it should,

people will voice dissenting opinions—and that’s

a healthy kind of confl ict. Your team’s rules of

conduct will help keep tempers in check, ward-

ing off feelings of being dismissed or “spoken

down to.” When people give in to those feelings,

however, teams experience the third source of

confl ict.

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• Anger or hurt feelings. This is what most people

think of when they hear the word confl ict: One

member mad at another. One person offended by

someone’s comments. Subgroups vying to “win” a

decision. Individuals taking outcomes personally.

We’ve all been on teams that feel like a war zone.

How do you react in situations like these? Do you lash

out, raising your voice and slinging a few choice words?

Or do you try to bargain your way out of the confl ict, sug-

gesting that you and your opponent “split the difference”

or “agree to disagree”? If you’re like many people, you

won’t directly confront the colleague who offended you

(although you might talk to others about the problem).

You delay answering her calls and avoid eye contact at

meetings.

We often avoid dealing with interpersonal confl ict

because we don’t know how to handle it or because we

had disastrous experiences in the past. We withdraw and

hope it goes away on its own.

The individuals seated around your table may respond

in any of those ways. But that’s exactly why you spent

time creating rules for dealing with confl ict back in your

team-building conversations (see chapter 5, “Agree on

Rules of Conduct”).

Before you even start talking about the problem, fi rst

review those rules with the team. For instance, you all

may have agreed to acknowledge the ways in which

you’ve each contributed to the problem. You also may

have decided to discuss confl icts openly with the people

involved, to resist the impulse to counterattack, and to

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control emotional responses (no profanity, threats, or

stalking out of the room).

Taking the time to review the rules you established

when you were not actually in confl ict will allow you to

have a more productive conversation, and perhaps even

to act in accordance with the ideal behaviors you laid out

when it was all hypothetical.

How to Handle Confl icts

Yelling or giving in won’t fi x anything. Nor will splitting

the difference, which often compromises quality or re-

sults in an outcome no one likes. How, then, can you pave

the way to resolution?

Identify the cause

Instead of viewing confl ict as something to avoid, look

at it as a red fl ag: Something is breaking down, but what

is it? Just as you’d investigate why a product line didn’t

perform up to expectations or why a marketing launch

didn’t yield the targeted response rate, you need to un-

derstand why the confl ict has arisen. Ask those involved

what they are hoping to achieve. Their answers may

reveal opposing intentions—for instance, one person

wants to fi nish a project quickly, while the other wants

to do it perfectly.

Opposing intentions may mean that individuals

are operating with different goals in mind—often the

most fundamental reason for confl ict. Even though

you worked together up front to formulate team goals,

over time people’s interpretations may have splintered

into different directions. Certain goals may no longer

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be salient, or new ones may need to be added. Recon-

fi rming why you’re working together and what you’re

all trying to accomplish helps get everyone back on the

same page.

If you’ve reviewed your goals together and yet there’s

still a problem, you’ll need to dig deeper. Try asking the

same questions you’d use to uncover a task breakdown:

• What’s working?

• What’s not working?

• When did it stop working? What in the environ-

ment changed at the time of the shift—team mem-

bership? The task? Other events?

• Who is part of the confl ict? Who isn’t? Why?

• Who has the upper hand, and in what way? Who

is “losing,” and in what way? (Answers to both

these questions can uncover resistance to resolv-

ing the confl ict.)

You can also explore what’s going on around the

confl ict:

• What driving forces are exacerbating the problem?

(A client’s increasing dissatisfaction? A competi-

tive threat in the marketplace? Factors like these

can ratchet up the urgency.)

• What’s preventing the situation from getting

better? (Competing demands on time? Under-

staffi ng? You’ll need to address these to resolve

the confl ict.)

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Revisit the team’s rules

Most people operate with good intentions, believing that

they’re contributing to the team’s goals and behaving in

accordance with team norms. Confl ict can still creep in,

however, because it’s impossible to outline expectations

for every scenario you’ll encounter. What’s more, peo-

ple often assign different meanings to the same words.

Confl ict is a good opportunity to investigate and repair

whether you need to create new rules, clarify existing

ones, or pull individuals back into alignment.

For example, your team may be ready to strangle one

member who keeps repeating his idea over and over

again as the team tries to reach agreement. His behavior,

which other team members fi nd rigid and overbearing,

means it takes forever to make a decision. Increasingly,

they just “give up” and let his ideas prevail. Revisiting the

team’s rules as a group will allow members to take such

behavior into account, focusing on:

• Gaps we may not have noticed when articulating

our rules. Did we anticipate all the challenges we

might encounter? Now that we’ve lived as a team

for a while, do we need to create new rules?

• Whether our existing rules are explicit and eff ec-

tive. Is the language clear enough? For example,

when the team created the rule “Advocate your

position well in team decisions” our goal was to

encourage rigorous exploration of lots of good

options. But in practice, “advocate” means differ-

ent things to different people (relentless hounding,

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in this case). Confl ict can arise from even well-

intentioned behavior (for example, we thought

having a devil’s advocate during decision making

would be useful, but perhaps we need to scale it

back to having someone play that role only for

certain types of decisions).

• Whether individuals have “drifted” from the

rules. Even if everyone was in lock-step with the

rules in the beginning, over time, people’s recol-

lections and interpretations may have shifted. Our

memories often fail us when we’re under stress

or we may revert to our own preferred behavior in

a crisis.

One way to expose the differences in people’s expecta-

tions or interpretations is to ask team members to write

down what they believe the team’s goals and rules are.

Then, review the responses as a group, and note how

consistent their answers are. Go over the team contract

together and ask the group, “Are these goals and rules

still valid? Should we change them? What’s missing?” If

most people aren’t following what’s documented, make

tweaks to refl ect actual practice.

Point out strengths

In times of confl ict, it’s easy to demonize others. They’re

the ones who yelled. They’re the ones who caused a bottle-

neck. And so on. During all the fi nger-pointing, people

forget about the value everyone brings to the team. So

bring the strengths and skills of others to their atten-

tion before talking about the confl ict. These next two

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structured conversations can help cut through the ten-

sion, remind people that they’re complementary team-

mates (not adversaries), and preempt defensiveness.

Even if you’ve already used the Artifact Exercise to

highlight individuals’ strengths back when you intro-

duced your team members (see chapter 2, “Get to Know

One Another”), try it again. Ask each person to share an

accomplishment external to the team. This allows mem-

bers to see everyone in a positive light and get a fuller

picture of one another, beyond the work they do together.

The power of this next exercise comes from having

others sing each member’s praises. Have the team sit in

a circle around a table. Ask one person at a time to turn

her back to the group while the rest of you talk about

her strengths, what she brings to the team, and how she

contributes. She’s not allowed to say a word in response.

Speak loudly enough for her to hear all the good things

you’re saying. Spend about two minutes per person.

Foster empathy

Empathy is a critical ingredient in confl ict resolution. Do

what you can to promote it. For instance, you might ask

individuals or small subgroups with different perspec-

tives to prepare three-minute skits acting out, on fast-

forward, a day in their hectic lives. This gives them all

a chance to highlight—in an entertaining way—some of

the daily challenges they face. Encourage them to exag-

gerate, both to punch up the humor and to drive their

points home. This exercise helps everyone recognize that

seemingly combative behaviors, such as curt language or

omitting colleagues from an e-mail thread, are often at-

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tempts to deal with time pressure, reconcile competing

demands, and so on. With that empathic view, people

are less likely to assume malicious intent and may lower

their defenses.

The sales and fulfi llment groups at a consumer prod-

ucts distribution company used this exercise to address a

classic confl ict: Fulfi llment folks felt that sales reps made

ridiculous promises to customers, and they resented hav-

ing to “move heaven and earth” to deliver on those con-

tracts. They complained about frequent rush orders and

exceptions to shipping protocols. Sales reps viewed the

people in fulfi llment as infl exible and totally out of touch

with the realities of the marketplace.

After a little prodding, each group created a “day in

the life” skit. These skits featured every imaginable dis-

ruption, setback, screw-up, and bad-news event. Both

groups came away with a clearer sense of their colleagues’

challenges and pressures. They then worked together to

redesign their fulfi llment processes. Sales reps had pre-

viously tagged most customer requests as “special” or

“rush”; after seeing what fulfi llment had to deal with as

a result, sales put a cap on those, making them excep-

tions rather than the norm. And fulfi llment redistributed

routine tasks to free up staff time and capacity to satisfy

special requests when they came through.

Reframe the confl ict

By phrasing the confl ict in constructive language and

focusing on solutions, you’ll depersonalize the problem.

If one member consistently fails to fi nish tasks on time,

the group does need to hold her accountable, but avoid

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defi ning it this way: “Maura always turns her work in

late.” Instead, ask each member to state the problem in

a solution-oriented way: “how to create processes that

enable Maura to complete her work on time.” That gets

people thinking about the future instead of wallowing in

TRUTHS ABOUT CONFLICT

Consulting with teams and leading my own, I’ve expe-

rienced the following truths about confl ict again and

again. Once you absorb them, have a discussion with

your team early on, preferably before any problems

crop up.

Unnamed confl icts remain unresolved.  Confl icts

do not go away on their own. Rather, they intensify

as work pressures mount. So discuss them as soon as

possible. Task-oriented team members tend to believe

they can “just push through this,” hoping to complete

their work and meet their deadlines. They often feel

they don’t have time to talk about confl icts. People-

oriented members worry that discussion will lead to

hurt feelings and severed relationships. And mem-

bers of ad hoc teams may think, “I have to work with

this group for only three more weeks, so why bother

talking about this? I can put up with anything for that

long.” However, avoidance leads to the next problem.

Ignored confl icts hurt the team’s work.  People

focus less on their tasks if they’re wasting time and

energy avoiding one another, and quality suff ers as

a result. Withdrawal from the group amounts to lost

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the past. If Maura doesn’t have to sit through rehashing

of her continual lateness, she’s less likely to be defen-

sive—and more likely to engage in the conversation and

change her behavior. Plus, having every team member

state the problem brings out different perspectives. For

resources (brainpower, sets of hands). As members

stop talking to one another, they may duplicate work

or fi nd at the end of a project, when writing up the

fi nal report, that their work isn’t cohesive. For all

these reasons, members must get problems out in

the open.

You can’t resolve every confl ict.  This is hard for

team leaders to accept: Unless all aff ected parties

want to resolve a confl ict, they won’t. So what should

you do if someone deliberately perpetuates the con-

fl ict—drawing it out as a way of holding a decision

hostage, for example? What if he passive-aggressively

signals his unhappiness by sabotaging tasks—skip-

ping important steps or not verifying data? Refusal

to resolve confl ict is a violation of basic team rules.

If someone refuses to discuss an issue, or nothing

changes after you’ve talked, you might need to isolate

that member from the others (as discussed in chapter

9, “Hold People Accountable”) so that their behaviors

don’t bring the work to a halt or threaten its quality.

Or, if you have the authority, remove that person from

the team.

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example, one member may see the problem as “how to

get the project done on time”; another may see it as “how

to develop people’s skills so they can get their portions

done on time”; still another may see it as “how to pri-

oritize all the challenges each member faces.” To craft a

viable solution, everyone needs to be solving the same

problem.

As discussed earlier, it’s equally important to look at

what is working. In Maura’s case, the team could talk

about times when she did get her work in on deadline.

This acknowledges the good work Maura does, and it

may somewhat reduce her need to defend herself. (Rarely

is a member always late or always creating problems.) It

also provides the team with data for coming up with a

solution: What variables allowed her to meet her dead-

lines? Did a different person do the delegating? How did

the tasks differ? Were they less complex? More squarely

in her comfort zone? Did she have more time? Did the

work require fewer interactions with others? Identifying

contextual differences often reveals a solution.

Envision the future

The more you gear your conversations toward the fu-

ture, the more productive they will be. Rigorously decon-

structing the events that led up to a confl ict, even with

the best intentions of understanding the causes, can still

put people in a blaming frame of mind.

Once again, think continuous improvement. Ask the

team, “What do we need to do differently going for-

ward?” For instance, what reporting relationships need

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to change? What timelines? What team processes? How

can you or others change the context to prevent unhelp-

ful behavior in the future?

Teams in confl ict often feel consumed by how terrible

and overwhelming their current situation is. Try to get

people to lift their heads up from the present and look

toward where they want to go. Ask them to describe how

they’d like the team to operate, what kinds of relation-

ships they want with their teammates, what caliber of

work they’d like to produce. You’ve had this conversation

before (see chapter 3, “Establish Your Team’s Goals”); but

you’ll want to revisit these issues now and then, and a

confl ict is a good opportunity to do so. The next exercise

is one way of doing this.

Ask each member to prepare a “farewell letter” to the

team. Have people refl ect on what they’d be most proud

of about the team’s work and, more important, the way

members worked together. At the meeting, invite indi-

viduals to share their letters, and then discuss what was

important to each person. Often themes will emerge

across letters, revealing the source of the confl ict and

what needs to change.

That’s what happened when an alumni board at a

small college did this exercise. Over the years, the group

had served largely as a mouthpiece for its president and

the college deans. As new people joined, they became

increasingly frustrated with the board’s passive, com-

placent culture. To root out the confl ict between new

and legacy members, each person wrote a farewell letter

answering the question “In what position do you want

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the school to be in when you leave?” They used that as

a starting point for crafting a unifi ed vision and, from

there, agreed on which actions the team would take to

push for that vision.

The goals and rules you’ve already established will guide

your team in resolving confl icts. But as you can see, those

confl icts will serve to refi ne the goals and rules to prevent

problems down the road (see the sidebar “Truths About

Confl ict”). Once again, it’s a process of continuous learn-

ing and improvement.

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Chapter 12

Welcome New

Members

When your team gains or loses even one member, its com-

position changes. It becomes a new team, with a differ-

ent mix of skills and temperaments, so you’ll need to re-

view (and possibly redefi ne) goals, roles, and rules. If you

don’t, here’s the kind of problem you might encounter:

As VP of market development at a fairly young health

care start-up, Steve had built a tight team of eight ac-

count reps, each in charge of a different region of the

New England area. After three years, the team lost one

of its reps and brought in Carol as a replacement. Carol

quickly learned the business, but she had trouble inte-

grating with her new team. Other members complained

about her to Steve: They said she was taking over cli-

ent relationships without permission, writing “sharp”

e-mails, and challenging them in embarrassing ways.

They thought she was aggressive, disrespectful, and

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Manage Your Team

inconsiderate. How, they wondered, had they misjudged

her so badly when interviewing her for the job?

Maybe Carol had pulled the wool over their eyes dur-

ing the hiring process and was really a ruthless, competi-

tive colleague who didn’t care about people. But more

likely, she hadn’t been brought up to speed on the team’s

expectations. Had anyone told her that before taking on

a client relationship she needed to speak to the rep in

charge of that region? Or that the team valued its collab-

orative culture? Or that if she disagreed with someone,

she needed to discuss it privately? Probably not, Steve

realized.

Ideally, a team’s veteran members will orient the new

ones, fi lling them in on the rules. Even better, the whole

(new) team will discuss whether the old ways of working

still apply and what may need to change. Unfortunately,

that’s not what usually happens. When adding someone

new, teams tend to explain what the tasks are but gloss

over how the group prefers to interact. They expect their

new teammate to pick up that information along the way,

or they point out rules after she violates them (“Yeah, not

a good idea to just pop into his offi ce with a question—

you really need an appointment”).

Given the time you’ve already spent on team building,

you might not relish the thought of revisiting the process.

You may be thinking, “We’ve done all that! We’ve got

work to do!” But think of the rewards you’ll reap: a fully

invested, integrated new member and a more cohesive,

productive team.

As you’re taking a fresh look at your team’s infrastruc-

ture, you’ll want to:

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Welcome New Members

• Recognize the impact of any departures. Before

new people come on board, acknowledge how the

team has changed as a result of losing a member.

At this point, you’re not just wondering who’s going

to become the resident software expert. That’s only

the “task” side of the loss. You’ll certainly need to

deal with it—missing competencies should guide

who you hire or how you redistribute responsibili-

ties among remaining team members. But there’s

also a “people” side: Legacy members may feel sad,

abandoned, envious, or even relieved when a team-

mate leaves. It’s critical to give them a chance to

air their emotional responses, whether it’s through

a good-bye lunch or a conversation about how

they’re feeling. It allows the team to clear the air

of past issues, identify important changes to make,

and refocus members on their work.

• Celebrate the addition of new members. If you’re

hiring new employees, of course you’ll do all the

regular onboarding: setting up their new work

spaces, training them, explaining their responsi-

bilities, familiarizing them with company poli-

cies, and so on. But again, those are task-related

activities. What can you do on the “people” side to

help new members? As the team leader, how can

you address their anxiety, excitement, or feelings

of separateness?

Throughout the centuries, groups have per-

formed ceremonies to receive new members into

adulthood, religious sects, the military, fraternities,

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and gangs. Though you probably won’t give your

new members tattoos or have them fast for a week,

the basic idea is the same: Accept them into the

group with some sort of celebration or initiation

rite. You might host a dinner at your house, for

example. One team leader situated newcomers in

the offi ce next to his. The close proximity allowed

for frequent informal check-ins and ensured that

lots of foot traffi c passed by the new person’s desk.

• Make meaningful introductions. Legacy members

already know about everyone’s skills, interests,

and idiosyncrasies. But you need to share all that

information with your new members—it will help

them bond and interact with the group. This can

be fun. Try having veterans introduce one another

to their new teammates by going around the room

and completing the following sentence: “What you

should know about Ava is . . . .” Or you might ask

people to describe the funniest (or worst or most

embarrassing) thing that’s happened to them since

they’ve joined the team. It doesn’t really matter

how you frame the exercise, as long as it gives new

members a sense of what individuals are like.

• Highlight personalities and work styles. The

goal here is to reveal how each person works in

a team setting, as you did in chapter 2, “Get to

Know One Another.” If continuing members

completed a personality diagnostic such as

Myers-Briggs, have new ones do it, too. Then

invite all members to share their results. You

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may even want legacy folks to comment on one

another’s traits, describing how they’ve seen those

tendencies play out (“I could see that Debbie was

an ESFP type when she . . . ”). Or have people

talk about their own work styles, completing

sentences such as “When I make decisions, my

biggest concern is . . . ” and “When I’m under

pressure, I tend to . . . .”

• Adjust your team’s process. Although you want

new people to learn about the team’s established

ways of working together, you also want veterans

to learn about the new members’ preferences.

That way, the team can renegotiate an infrastruc-

ture that refl ects everybody. Revisit the exercises

you’ve done to defi ne goals, roles, and rules (see

chapters 3–5), and by all means, share the team

contract with the new person. But make sure that

legacy members comment on how things work

in practice—and then update the goals, roles,

and rules accordingly. And ask new members to

talk about their experiences on past teams: what

worked well, what didn’t, and what lessons might

apply in this new context.

Integrating new members in a deliberate way enables

them to contribute more quickly and the team to adjust

to its new future together. You’ve already invested lots

of time in recruiting the right members, old and new.

It’s worth investing a little more in keeping the group

humming.

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Chapter 13

Manage Outside

the Team

You’ve already done a lot of work to organize, moti-

vate, and manage your team. But to meet your goals, it’s

equally important to motivate and manage people out-

side your team, up and down the hierarchy.

MIT management professor Deborah Ancona calls

this boundary management: You cultivate mutually

benefi cial relationships with colleagues elsewhere in the

organization—particularly the people your team relies

on for information and resources. If you don’t manage

boundaries, team performance suffers.

Consider this cautionary tale: A branch manager at a

regional bank had high aspirations (task goals) for inno-

vative customer service, so he worked with his team of

10 employees to defi ne them and put them into practice.

Though customers liked the changes they saw, internal

relationships across the organization became strained.

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The corporate compliance department grew frustrated

as branch employees continually asked for exceptions to

existing rules. Corporate marketing resisted the branch’s

requests for variations to branding protocols. And other

branch managers resented this branch for getting “spe-

cial treatment.” Within a year, it had a reputation as a

problem child, not as an innovator. Eventually the execu-

tive team replaced the branch manager.

If the manager had thought about the impact his

team’s innovations would have on others in the organiza-

tion, he could have partnered with them instead of alien-

ating them. For example, he might have included them

in brainstorming sessions or solicited their input before

changes came their way.

So consider your team’s work from the perspective of

your stakeholders—the individuals and groups who will

have the greatest impact on your team’s success. They

may include:

• senior managers who control your resources

• leaders of other teams competing for company

resources

• managers of groups whose collaboration or input

your team needs

• managers who have “loaned” people to your team

on an ad hoc basis

• functional groups (marketing, engineering, ac-

counting) who provide support

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To identify your stakeholders and map out your rela-

tionships with them, draw an X on a whiteboard and say,

“This is us.” Next draw incoming arrows labeled with all

the resources you need (and who owns them) and outgo-

ing arrows labeled with all the people and groups who

will use what you’re producing. Your project plans also

reveal the interconnected relationships your work entails.

Once you’ve identifi ed which parties will require care

and feeding, manage your team’s boundaries by estab-

lishing a reputation, providing external value, and as-

signing boundary roles. Let’s look at each of those steps

in more detail.

Establish a Reputation

To obtain the people, funding, commitment to timing,

and cross-functional collaboration your team requires,

you must earn a favorable reputation early on with deci-

sion makers in the senior ranks. As Deborah Ancona’s

research shows, their fi rst impression of your team will

stick—and it will signifi cantly infl uence your team’s suc-

cess or failure. If your stakeholders like what they see,

they’ll spread the word, and others in the organization

will eagerly help you out. Everyone likes backing a winner.

For a brief period after you’ve assembled your team,

you’ve got a clean slate: Senior managers haven’t formed

an opinion about you either way. That’s your chance to

forge a positive impression.

Suppose you’re submitting your team’s fi rst progress

report, for instance, or releasing a beta version of your

software program. From this early glimpse of your team’s

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work, top management will form its opinion, which will

then spread rapidly through the organization.

Initial communication matters a lot. If it reveals any

kind of struggle within your team—diffi culty meeting a

deadline or a goal, for example—you’ll have to fi ght the

uphill battle from then on of overcoming a bad reputa-

tion. Senior managers may question your team’s com-

petence, reconsider whether the work you’re doing is

even necessary, or signal in some way their withdrawal

of confi dence or support. Others inside the organiza-

tion will follow suit, thinking why get behind a losing

team? Additionally, people will view your subsequent

efforts through that lens of negativity, emphasizing mis-

steps and even attributing any success to luck instead of

competence. Expectations of failure will become a self-

fulfi lling prophecy.

How do you manage your reputation to prevent that

from happening? By controlling information fl ow. Dis-

cuss up front with your team who should communicate

with whom, and what information to share. At one small

nonprofi t, the executive committee actually used the

last part of every team meeting to craft external talking

points so that they’d all be on the same page once they’d

left the conference room.

Carefully consider who will be the “face” of your team.

Send only the most positive, articulate, and politically

savvy team members to meet with senior managers, de-

liver status updates, and so on.

Also, embed small, early wins in your project plan—

important outcomes the team can quickly and easily ac-

complish. Delivering right away on these promises shows

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that the team is competent, well organized, and primed

for success. Even if you then miss a deadline later on, the

senior team will probably see it as a temporary setback.

Identifying early wins often involves breaking a larger

task into smaller pieces. One team at a nonprofi t, which

focused on giving children access to science education,

was charged with getting six new corporations to fund

community outreach programs. Instead of waiting to

achieve all six goals, the team widely publicized its fi rst

success—and then its second. Word quickly spread that

the team was on a roll.

Provide External Value

As a team leader, you can’t require that people in other

groups support you. You have to make them want to. You

can win them over by invoking what Allan Cohen and

David Bradford call “the law of reciprocity” in their book

Infl uence Without Authority. It’s the “almost universal

belief that people should be paid back for what they do.”

When colleagues do something for you, they expect you

to help them at some point—and when you do something

for them, they feel obliged to reciprocate.

Once you’ve identifi ed the people and groups you need

to rely on to meet your goals, fi gure out what you can

do for them. Consider how you might support them in

achieving their own goals. They may respond well, as

Cohen and Bradford suggest, to an exchange “of tan-

gible goods, such as a budget increase, new equipment,

or more personnel; of tangible services, such as a faster

response time, more information, or public support; or

of sentiments, such as gratitude, admiration, or praise.”

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Determine which “currencies” they value, and start

paying. You can earn reciprocity points with your fi nance

colleagues simply by submitting your budget proposal

on time and in good shape. Timeliness, accuracy, and at-

tention to detail are all valuable to them. And they’ll be

more inclined to reciprocate when you ask for help on a

task that calls for number crunching, such as building a

business case.

You’ll gain infl uence with people only when you’re

“in the black”—when you’ve done more for them than

they’ve done for you. That’s not to say you should keep a

running tally of favors exchanged. But make an ongoing

effort to be helpful. Don’t wait until you need something

to do something for them.

Assign Boundary Roles

To manage your team’s boundaries properly, it’s helpful to

understand the roles Deborah Ancona outlines for con-

trolling the fl ow of information. Their overall purpose

is to make sure outgoing messages enhance the team’s

reputation and incoming messages enable the group to

do its best work.

Managing two-way fl ow

The “task coordinator” occupies the role we most typi-

cally associate with boundary management. This is the

person who gathers external approvals to proceed with

tasks, negotiates for resources, coordinates the team’s

activities with other people’s schedules, and solicits ex-

ternal feedback. The task coordinator both shares and

receives information across the team’s boundaries.

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Managing outward fl ow

The “ambassador” focuses on team PR. This person es-

tablishes relationships with key stakeholders, updates

them on progress, and strategically shares information

to infl uence perceptions and generate support. The

“guard,” conversely, ensures that confi dential information

remains inside the team, often creating and enforcing

protocols for data storage and dissemination.

Managing inward fl ow

The “scout” actively seeks external information so that

the team avoids surprises and can capitalize on oppor-

tunities. This person scans the environment for trends

in markets, technology, competitive products, and ideas,

and identifi es potential allies and opponents. The “sen-

try,” on the other hand, monitors the data that comes into

the team, protecting members from information over-

load and distractions.

You can assign these roles in a number of ways (see

chapter 4, “Agree on Individuals’ Roles”). You might play

to individuals’ strengths, asking someone with good in-

terpersonal skills to serve as ambassador, for example.

Or you could use the roles to complement the work that

members do inside the team. Your team’s project man-

ager might act as the task coordinator, since she’d be do-

ing many of those activities anyway.

One team I worked with managed its stakeholders

like clients: Individuals “owned” entire relationships and

maintained them by taking on multiple roles rather than

divvying them among members. For a given stakeholder,

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the same team member would manage perception of the

team (ambassador), make sure the work went smoothly

(task coordinator), and inform the team of important

challenges its clients faced (scout).

Whatever approach your team chooses, the criti-

cal takeaway is this: To succeed internally, it must also

succeed externally. By managing the people and groups

that will have an impact on your team, you avoid get-

ting blindsided by surprises, gain input into signifi cant

decisions, and build a reputation that precedes you in a

good way.

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Section 3

Close Out Your

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Chapter 14

Deliver the Goods

As your team’s work begins to wrap up, you may fi nd

yourself starting to mentally and emotionally move on.

It’s hard not to. You’re thinking about everything you’ve

put on hold during this project—all the other work that’s

once again screaming for your attention. Maybe your

mind is starting to wander a little in meetings or you’re

quicker to lose patience with a team member who grates

on your nerves. You might be tempted to cut a corner or

two just to fi nish things up.

Chances are, your team members feel the same way.

How do you keep everyone, including yourself, focused

and working productively so that your team delivers the

goods on time and up to quality standards? By devoting

as much care to maintaining the relationships as you do

to completing the tasks—up until the very end.

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Manage Emotions

As your project draws to a close, members may feel ful-

fi lled by a job well done, relieved that the pressure is fi -

nally letting up, sad to stop working together, or regretful

about confl icts that erupted along the way. They may be

anxious about what they’ll be doing next or whom they’ll

report to. Or, after putting in so much hard work, they

may worry about passing the baton to others in the or-

ganization: What if they ignore the team’s recommenda-

tions or make ill-considered changes?

Help members deal with the ups and downs by re-

minding them that closure is imminent. Talk openly, as

a group, about how everyone’s feeling to signal that those

emotions are normal but still need to be managed. Agree

on how the team will safeguard against letting emotions

compromise the work that remains.

One team leader became very adept at anticipating,

recognizing, and dealing with members’ feelings. He ran

the training program for new hires at a boutique fi nan-

cial fi rm. Two times a year, he would get a class of about

15 to 20 new hires. In addition to educating them about

the company’s products, he tried to “mold them into a

tight unit.” During the six months of training, he encour-

aged individuals to study together and quiz one another

as they prepared for the exam they would take at the end.

He knew that their anxiety would dramatically increase

as the exam drew near—and that they’d need one anoth-

er’s support as they transitioned from the safe haven of

the program to the demanding real world. In the last few

weeks, he did weekly assessments with the group, ask-

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ing questions like these: “On a scale of 1 (terrible) to 10

(great), how are you feeling about exam prep? How are

you feeling about starting your ‘real’ job? How are you

feeling about this unit?” As members shared their rat-

ings, he acknowledged their feelings, focusing on what

individuals, the team, or he could do to manage them.

One outcome from the discussions was a new wiki where

people could post questions to the entire group. This not

only helped with exam prep but also reminded individu-

als that they were part of a larger group that would face

the exam together.

Orchestrate Your Delivery

A strong handoff is essential to your team’s overall suc-

cess. Otherwise, all the accumulated time and effort

is wasted.

Suppose senior executives asked your team to analyze

a problem and make a recommendation. Unless mem-

bers make a solid case for their proposed solution—docu-

menting and presenting their fi ndings in a clear, engag-

ing way—their research and analysis won’t amount to

anything. Or say the team explored a new product idea

and created a prototype. That developed idea won’t be-

come a reality unless you get people in manufacturing to

buy in to the specifi cations.

So keep in close contact, as you did in the team’s early

days, by increasing the number of check-ins and amount

of face time. That will keep the energy up and prevent

people from taking shortcuts or dropping tasks alto-

gether. One team leader posted a calendar in the offi ce

15 days before the fi nal deadline and, with great fl ourish,

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crossed off each passing day. Another held brief “count-

down” meetings toward the end. First thing every morn-

ing, she assembled her team in the hallway (standing, to

signal urgency) and asked members to quickly report on

their plans for that day.

Another way to keep people alert is to include them in

delivering the end result. It’s easy to disengage if you’ve

completed all of your delegated tasks. But if your name

is on the fi nal report or you’ll participate in the presenta-

tion to senior management, you’ll stay focused.

And make sure to give your team something to look

forward to. Whether you celebrate completion with a

dinner out or bring pizza to the last meeting, let people

know what you’re planning to do. That will give produc-

tivity a nice boost as you head to the fi nish line. It’s a way

of saying, “Just a little more, and we’ll be done.”

Provide Closure

We have diplomas and graduation ceremonies to mark

the end of school, retirement parties to commemorate a

career, trophies to recognize our sports achievements. So

why don’t we close out our teams and projects with some

gesture, act, or event? Often, it’s because we’re busy or

we’ve already leapt to the next team or project. Some-

times we don’t want to acknowledge that our work or re-

lationships will end and that change is imminent.

So teams tend to drift apart rather than come to a

clear, defi nitive close. They keep canceling or postpon-

ing their increasingly unnecessary meetings. Attendance

dwindles, and those who do come get frustrated. And the

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opportunity to show the team how much you appreciate

and respect everyone’s effort and time slips away.

Providing closure and wrapping up on a positive note

makes members more inclined to join future teams if you

invite them. Here are some ways of doing that:

• Hand out awards (humorous or real) that show

appreciation for individual contributions.

• Send letters to their managers outlining their con-

tributions, and give copies to your team members

so that they can see the accolades.

• Invite senior executives to the fi nal meeting. Have

them express their thanks and discuss how the

team’s work supports the company’s strategic

priorities.

• Ask team members to talk about which tasks gave

them the greatest sense of accomplishment.

• Discuss the team’s successes and what could be

done better in the future.

That last point is crucial. Don’t forget to acknowledge

the failures. It’s even more important than celebrating

the successes. What if senior management rejects the

team’s recommendations? What if the prototype can’t be

reproduced on the factory fl oor? Help members recover,

and put them in a constructive frame of mind for the next

project. You might, for example, have a champagne toast

to the prospect “that got away” or hold a funeral for a pro-

posal that got killed. One engineering team actually fi lled

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a box with copies of project-related materials and buried

it in a hole behind the company parking lot. Then each

member took a moment to reminisce about the project.

It added some levity to the situation and put the loss into

perspective.

Learning from the past, in preparation for future

teams and projects, is your next and fi nal step as a

team leader.

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Chapter 15

Learn from

Your Team’s

Experiences

Before rushing off to the next big project, refl ect on what

worked and what didn’t for your team. That way, you

carry forward processes that served you well and change

those that didn’t on work with future teams. You don’t

want to experience déjà vu as the same people create

bottlenecks, for example, or the same decision-making

processes create “winners” who dominate and “losers”

who drag their feet.

As veteran project manager Ray Sheen points out in

the HBR Guide to Project Management, many organi-

zations provide templates to evaluate the work and the

outcomes. You fi ll out those reports and send them up to

senior managers for review, both to inform them about

your initiative and to contribute institutional knowledge

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that will help managers of future projects in their own

planning and execution.

For each project you complete, you’ll need to evaluate

how well the team met its targets (task outcomes, time-

lines, budgets, resource usage) and analyze the lessons

learned at each stage.

You’ll also want to conduct an evaluation of people

and processes. Do a review at both the team level (rules

and processes) and the individual level (behaviors).

Evaluate the Team

When examining the group’s performance, pose ques-

tions such as:

1. Did we adhere to our rules and processes?

2. Did we achieve our process goals?

3. What factors (planned and unplanned, inside

and outside the team) contributed to our suc-

cess? What got in our way?

4. What did we do well? What should we continue

doing on future teams?

5. What did we not do well? What changes should

we make going forward?

You can use accountability exercises (see chapter 9,

“Hold People Accountable”) to facilitate the discussion.

Just shift the focus from the here and now (“What can

we do better on this team?”) to future (“What can we do

better on our next teams?”).

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Or try this exercise, which highlights personal reac-

tions to the group dynamic: Ask members to refl ect on

their entire experience working together and share their

thoughts with the full team. Here are some questions to

consider:

1. What gave you the greatest satisfaction working

on this team?

2. What was the most diffi cult or frustrating aspect?

3. What did you learn about working with others?

4. What did you learn about accomplishing tasks?

5. What would you suggest doing again on future

teams? What would you change?

Evaluate Individuals

Next take a look at individual contributions and behaviors.

Team members need to know which behaviors they per-

sonally should continue and which they should stop or ad-

just as they move to future teams. Ask members to answer

the following two questions about each of their colleagues.

1. How did this person contribute?

2. What could he or she do differently to become an

even more valuable team member?

During the team’s fi nal feedback session, have mem-

bers share their comments about one another. And ask

someone to take notes so that people can refl ect later on

what was said.

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If your team members have grown skilled at giving

and receiving honest feedback, you may want them to

conduct a more rigorous review. Have them rate one an-

other on dimensions such as sharing the workload and

solving problems, perhaps with the same assessments

they used for continuous improvement discussions (see

the Process Ratings Exercise in chapter 9) or an abbrevi-

ated one, such as the Final Ratings Exercise (see sidebar).

In a growing number of organizations, individuals’

compensation depends partly on peer ratings like these.

That practice stems from the assumption that peers are

in the best position to know how much work employ-

ees do and the level of quality they achieve. Though the

boss—which may be you, the team leader—will still con-

duct annual performance appraisals, peer assessments

add useful data to the mix. But in my experience, it’s best

to use them only if you’ve made that explicit in the origi-

nal team contract; peer ratings should not be used as a

response to uneven work or disruptive behavior. Other-

wise, you’ll sacrifi ce the trust you’ve worked so hard to

develop in the group. Ideally, peer ratings are a natural

extension of team feedback. If you feel the need to collect

them privately to ensure honesty, consider that a red fl ag,

and don’t use them. Your team isn’t ready.

After members hear their feedback, encourage them

to digest it and align their self-perceptions with those

of the group. Suggest that they write down what they’ve

learned, what they disagree with, how they feel they’ve

contributed to the team’s outcomes and processes,

how they may have hindered progress, what they’ll do

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FINAL RATINGS EXERCISE

Before meeting to discuss individuals’ performance, ask people to

score each team member on these dimensions (or others the team

deems relevant). As individuals share their ratings, they should explain

their thinking and off er suggestions for ways their colleagues can

improve.

1. Adhered to team rules

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

9 10

2. Fully contributed to our process goals and team culture

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

9 10

3. Completed tasks on time and with care

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

9 10

4. Engaged in and supported team decisions

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

9 10

5. Gave and received feedback appropriately

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

9 10

6. Resolved confl icts and promoted harmony

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

9 10

OVERALL SCORE

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

9 10

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Close Out Your Team

differently on future teams, and what they’ll do to keep

developing their team membership skills. They’ll be

more likely to act on the feedback if you have them pro-

cess it on their own.

You might also work with individuals to craft a de-

velopment plan together, if appropriate. Ask members

to keep their written refl ections as a reminder of what

they’re committing to do (stop, start, continue) on fu-

ture teams.

Agree on Principles

These end-of-team discussions and exercises help pro-

vide closure. They also wipe the slate clean for the next

team experience. Often the conversations are cathartic,

helping people move beyond grudges or perceived inju-

ries and prime them for a fresh start.

Make your fi nal review as productive as possible by:

• Agreeing up front how you’ll handle it. This is your

last conversation about accountability. It will go

much more smoothly—and people will get more

out of it—if the team has decided earlier, in discus-

sions about rules and processes, what will happen

at this stage. Members need to know in advance

how they’ll be held accountable along the way and

at the end so that they can monitor their behavior

accordingly. Nothing is more demoralizing than

being critiqued for something without receiving

fair warning.

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• Giving people time to consider what they will

say. People should avoid speaking off the cuff,

especially when delivering feedback to individual

members.

• Providing guidance on what to say and how to say

it. Regarding the “what,” remind everyone that

this conversation is about the future. The fi nal

review is not the time to rehash past mistakes or

bring up new pain points. Instead, it’s a chance

to acknowledge what people (as a team and as

individuals) did well and should continue on

future teams, and what they could do differently to

improve the next team experience. Regarding the

“how,” remind members of the team’s feedback and

accountability rules (see chapters 5 and 6), and ask

them to frame their comments constructively.

Since the beginning, you’ve led your team through

continuous improvement: You established goals, roles,

and rules; helped members build essential team skills;

and held them accountable to the contract they agreed

on. Now, at the end, you’re identifying best practices for

the future.

The fi nal review promotes learning and improvement

across teams: Individuals hone their team behaviors into

even more productive ones; you sharpen your leader-

ship skills; and future teams benefi t from the growth all

around.

145

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HBR Guide to Leading Teams.indd 146

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Appendix A

Rules Inventory

This exercise provides structure for a team conversation

about desired behaviors, or rules of conduct. Under each

category, you’ll fi nd open questions to help identify rules

the team may already be following, followed by prompts

for considering new ones. If you’re leading a new team,

you might revise the open questions and ask people what

has worked well (or not) for them on previous teams.

147

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Appendix A

NORMS

Do

Add

Now

RESPECT AND TRUST

What do we do well?

What might we do diff erently?

Keep conversations confi dential.

Be punctual.

Return phone calls and e-mails by close of business

each day.

Avoid sarcasm, snide remarks, or melodramatic

body language (such as eye rolling) when conveying

disagreement.

Don’t sulk or give the silent treatment when your

position has not prevailed.

Respect other people’s ways of accomplishing tasks;

don’t redo work or impose your way on others.

Be fl exible.

Listen without interpreting people’s motives. Ask why

they said, did, or asked for something.

Volunteer to take on work when you can without doing

the “who’s doing more/less” calculation.

Other:

148

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Rules Inventory

Do

Add

Now

MEETING DISCUSSIONS/

DECISION MAKING

What do we do well?

What might we do diff erently?

Share “airtime,” listen, and don’t interrupt others.

Invite quiet people to speak.

Resist regarding an opposing view as a personal aff ront.

Be willing to change your position or compromise.

Support the team’s fi nal decision, even when it’s

diff erent from the one you proposed.

Stop advocating your position after a decision has

been made.

Make sure people have been given the fl oor to present

their views before a decision is made.

Other:

( continued)

149

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Appendix A

( continued)

Do

Add

Now

DISSENT AND INNOVATION

What do we do well?

What might we do diff erently?

Rigorously examine multiple options, and their

respective strengths and weaknesses, before

evaluating alternatives and making decisions.

Protect dissenting views by encouraging the speaker

to explain and preventing others from immediately

dismissing the ideas.

Encourage innovation by delaying evaluation.

Reframe “This will never work” as “How could we

make it work?”

Other:

150

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Rules Inventory

Do

Add

Now

FEEDBACK AND REPORTING

What do we do well?

What might we do diff erently?

Give the team status updates according to the

prescribed process (which the team determines).

Give a “heads-up” and be responsible for the

consequences if you have to miss a deadline.

Give positive feedback frequently; speak up when

someone’s behavior helps the team.

Give negative feedback constructively. State the

observed behavior and its impact on the team, ask

for the other person’s perceptions, and suggest a

preferred behavior.

Admit your own mistakes.

Listen and avoid defensiveness when receiving

constructive feedback.

When giving or receiving feedback, put it in the context

of helping the team move toward its goals.

Other:

( continued)

151

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Appendix A

( continued)

Do

Add

Now

CONFLICT RESOLUTION

What do we do well?

What might we do diff erently?

Assume that every team member is working in good

faith toward the team’s goals.

Put confl ict “on the table” for discussion.

Discuss confl ict with the goal of identifying what is best

for the team’s future.

Discuss the confl ict fi rst with the person involved;

avoid talking behind anyone’s back.

Don’t yell, use profanity, make threats, or walk out

of discussions.

Other:

152

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Appendix B

Cultural Audit

Ask team members to describe the group’s way of operat-

ing, as if you were bringing someone new onboard. Have

them quickly answer the following questions, without

overthinking their responses.

What would you tell new team members about

how we:

Communicate

• How do we share information? (Through what

channels? What’s the tone and level of formality?)

• Who can—or can’t—we communicate with? What

chain of command do we need to honor?

• What’s the expected response time? Is it ever OK

to be “offl ine”? If so, when, and how do we inform

others of our availability?

153

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Appendix B

• What are the standards for presentations?

• What are the standards for written documents?

Conduct meetings

• How do we run meetings? How long are they?

How frequent? What’s the tone and level of

formality?

• Why do we hold meetings?

• Who should attend? When is it OK to meet in sub-

groups, and when is the full team required? How

and when do we invite outsiders?

• How do we handle sensitive or confi dential issues?

Make decisions

• What is our process for making decisions?

• Who makes them? Who is included and who isn’t?

• How do we communicate decisions? Who gets

told about them? Through what medium? What’s

the tone and level of formality?

Handle diff ering viewpoints

• How do we solicit dissent (if at all)? At meetings?

In e-mail? One-on-one?

154

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Cultural Audit

• How do people offer dissenting ideas or opinions?

How direct should the language be?

• Is dissent allowed from everyone?

• Are some people never to be challenged?

Delegate work

• How do we negotiate timelines and resources (if

at all)?

• How do we communicate assignments? (Through

what medium? At what level of detail? What’s the

tone and level of formality?)

• How do we make sure that all team members

understand their roles?

• How do we reach agreement on outcomes and

schedules?

• How do people get feedback on their tasks?

Manage projects

• How do we keep teammates and stakeholders up

to date on progress? (Through scheduled sta-

tus reports? When things go wrong? At project

milestones?)

• Who gets told? How frequently?

155

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Appendix B

• What’s included?

• What happens with problems, missed deadlines,

changes, adjustments, and so on? How do we com-

municate them? How do we get back on track?

156

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Appendix C

Team Contract

Here’s a template for capturing the goals, roles, rules, and

metrics your team has agreed to. Update your contract

periodically, as members, tasks, and timelines change.

157

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Appendix C

Brief team description:

Date:

Team members:

Name

Contact information

Signature

Goals that will serve as a unifying force in the

work ahead:

Task goals (what we’ll accomplish)

Process goals (how we’ll work together)

Roles we’ve identifi ed to ensure performance:

Roles

Names

158

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Team Contract

Rules of conduct:

Meetings

Communication

Decision

making

Managing tasks

Managing

relationships

Evaluation plan (how we’ll determine that

we’ve achieved our goals):

159

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HBR Guide to Leading Teams.indd 160

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Index

accountability, 55–65, 87–97

closure, providing, 136–138

achievements

collaboration, 8, 99. See also rules

celebrating, 58–59, 137

of conduct

early, 126–127

communication

See also recognition

outside of team, 126

activity, defi ning roles by, 36,

team ( see rules of conduct;

40–42

feedback)

advocacy groups, 83–84, 96

concerns of team members,

ambassador, team, 129, 130. See

32–33. See also goals

also roles

conduct, rules of, 45–54, 74,

anger, handling, 105. See also

108–109

emotions, managing;

confl icts

confl icts

dissent and, 81–85

Artifact Exercise, 14–15, 110

reasons for, 103–107

assessments

reframing, 111–114

of individual performance,

resolving, 103–116

141–144

truths about, 112–113

personality, allaying fears

unresolved, 112–113

about, 20–23

consensus building, 75, 77. See

of personality and work style,

also decision making

17–19

continuous improvement, 58, 59,

of team performance, 140–141

114–115, 145

audit, cultural, 51–54, 153–156

contract, team, 67–69, 157–159

autonomy, 42–43

creativity, in decision making,

76–77. See also decision

behavior. See conduct, rules of

making

boundary

culture, team, 28–29

individual, 42–43

cultural audit, 51–54, 153–156

management of, 123–130

roles, 128–130

deadlines, 27

buy-in, for decisions, 76

debriefi ng, 59–60, 139–145

161

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Index

decision making

failures, acknowledging, 137–138

buy-in, 76

fairness, 99. See also rules of

by consensus, 75, 77

conduct

context for, 75–78

feedback, 55–65, 87–94, 101,

creativity and, 76

141–144

criteria for, 74–75

Final Ratings Exercise, 142, 143.

dissent and, 81–85

See also evaluations

expert opinions and, 76,

fi nal review, 139–145

80–81

functional groups, 124. See also

group, 25–26

stakeholders

as growth opportunity, 76

future, envisioning, and confl ict

individual, 26

resolution, 114–116

by majority vote, 77

nominal method of, 49–51

goals

participation in, 78–80

confl icts about, 106–107

team, 73–85

establishing, 25–34

timing and, 75

importance of, 25–26

deliverables, 133–145. See also

personal, 29–30

goals

process, 25, 28–33

devil’s advocate role, 41, 84–85

task, 25, 26–28

disagreements, 103–116. See also

group decision making, 25–26,

confl icts

73–85

DISC assessment, 18. See also

group feedback, 94. See also

personality traits

feedback

discussion. See communication

groupthink, 82. See also

dissent, 81–85, 104. See also

diversity

confl icts

guard, team, 129. See also

diversity

roles

in teams, 3–6

of work styles, 8–10

hopes, of team members,

dysfunction. See confl icts

32–33. See also goals

hurt feelings, 105. See also

emotions, managing, 134–135

emotions, managing;

empathy, in confl ict resolution,

confl icts

110–111

evaluations, 139–145

ideals, of team members, 32.

exercises

See also goals

artifact, 14–15, 110

individuals

fi nal ratings, 142, 143

evaluating, 141–144

process ratings, 89–91, 142

interests of, reconciling with

stop-start-continue,

team interests, 42–43

92–93

recognition of, 99–102

expectations, defi ning, 39. See

information fl ow, 126

also rules of conduct

introductions, 11–15, 120

experiences, learning from,

inward information fl ow

139–145

management, 129–130

expertise, 7–8, 36, 76, 80–81

external value, 127–128. See also

knowledge, of team members,

boundary management

7–8

162

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Index

launch meetings, 11–24

process roles, 40–41. See also

law of reciprocity, 127–128

roles

leaders

public credit, 101–102. See also

of other teams, 124 ( see also

successes

stakeholders)

roles of, 37–40

reciprocity, law of, 127–128

learning, 139–145

recognition, 99–102

reputation, establishing your

majority vote, 77. See also

team’s, 125–127

decision making

roles

metrics, 27–28. See also goals

by activity, 36, 40–42

multiple intelligences, 18. See

ambassador, 129, 130

also personality traits

boundary, 128–130

Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, 17,

defi ning by structure, 36,

18, 120. See also personality

37–40

traits

defi ning by task, 40–41

devil’s advocate, 84–85

negative feedback, 56–57, 60–65.

establishing, 35–43

See also feedback

goal/rule keeper, 41, 60

new members, welcoming,

guard, 129

117–121

leader, 37–40

nominal method of decision

process, 40–41

making, 49–51

scout, 129–130

norms. See rules of conduct

by structure, 36, 37–40

task, 40–41

optimal decisions, 73–85

task coordinator, 128, 130

outcomes. See goals

rules inventory, 147–152

outward information fl ow

rules of conduct, 45–54, 74,

management, 129

108–109

peer ratings, 142. See also

scout, team, 129–130. See also roles

evaluations

senior managers, 124, 125, 126.

personal goals, 29–30

See also stakeholders

personality traits, 17–19, 31, 40,

skills, of team members, 7–8

120–121

stakeholders, 124–125

personal strengths, 13–15,

stop-start-continue exercise,

109–110

92–94

perspectives

structure, defi ning roles by, 36,

opposing, 104

37–40

variety of, 5–6

subject-matter experts, 80–81

positive feedback, 56–57, 61, 101.

successes

See also feedback

celebrating, 58–59, 137

priorities of team members, 19,

early, 126–127

23–24

problem solving. See confl icts;

task

decision making

coordinator, team, 128, 130 ( see

process goals, 25, 28–33

also roles)

Process Ra tings Exercise, 89–91,

goals, 25, 26–28

142

roles, 40–41

163

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Index

team members

teams

accountability of, 55–65, 87–97

accountability, 87–92

behaviors of, 37–38

building winning, 3–10

connecting with, one-on-one,

closing out, xiv–xv, 133–145

100

confl ict resolution on,

contributions by, 78–80

103–116

departing, 119

contract, 67–69, 157–159

development of, 76

culture, 28–29

diffi cult, 3–4

delivery of goods by, 133–138

diversity in, 3–6, 8–10

evaluating, 140–141

evaluating, 8, 141–144

goals for, 25–34, 106–107

existing, 7

infrastructure, xiii, 73

expectations of, 39

launch meetings for, 11–24

expertise of, 7–8, 36, 76, 80–81

learning from experiences of,

fears about assessment of,

139–145

20–23

management, xiii–xiv

introductions, 11–15, 120

managing outside of,

managing emotions of,

123–130

134–135

reconciling individual and

negative behavior by, 56–57

team interests, 42–43

nonproductive, 95–97

reputation of, 125–127

personal strengths of, 13–15,

rules of conduct for, 45–54,

109–110

74, 108–109

priorities of, 19, 23–24

size, 7

recognition of, 99–102

trust, xii. See also rules of

reconciling individual and

conduct

team interests, 42–43

two-way information fl ow,

relationships among, xii

managing, 128

roles of, 35–43

rules of conduct for, 45–54

work styles, 8–10, 16–19, 103–

selecting, 3–10

104, 120–121

welcoming new, 117–121

wrap-up meeting, 59–60, 137,

work styles of, 8–10, 16–19,

144–145

103–104, 120–121

164

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About the Author

Mary Shapiro has worked with Fortune 500 companies,

nonprofi t organizations, and government agencies as a

consultant and executive trainer for more than 20 years.

She has developed and delivered executive education

programs at Simmons College since 1988 and joined the

Simmons MBA faculty in 1993. She holds the Trust Pro-

fessorship of Leadership Development at Simmons Col-

lege School of Management. Shapiro specializes in four

areas: team building and intervention, communicating

in a diverse and virtual environment, personal effective-

ness in infl uence and motivation, and strategic career

management.

165

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Notes

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213

167

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Notes

H

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Notes

H

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H

212

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Notes

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Notes

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11/6/12 1:21 PM

Notes

H

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11/6/12 1:21 PM

Notes

6082.indb 212

174

11/6/12 1:21 PM

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HBR Guide to

Building Your

Business Case

H6722.indb i

4/13/15 8:12 AM

Harvard Business Review Guides

Arm yourself with the advice you need to succeed on the

job, from the most trusted brand in business. Packed

with how-to essentials from leading experts, the HBR

Guides provide smart answers to your most pressing

work challenges.

The titles include:

HBR Guide to Better Business Writing

HBR Guide to Building Your Business Case

HBR Guide to Coaching Employees

HBR Guide to Finance Basics for Managers

HBR Guide to Getting the Mentoring You Need

HBR Guide to Getting the Right Job

HBR Guide to Getting the Right Work Done

HBR Guide to Giving Effective Feedback

HBR Guide to Leading Teams

HBR Guide to Making Every Meeting Matter

HBR Guide to Managing Stress at Work

HBR Guide to Managing Up and Across

HBR Guide to Negotiating

HBR Guide to Offi ce Politics

HBR Guide to Persuasive Presentations

HBR Guide to Project Management

H6722.indb ii

4/13/15 8:12 AM

HBR Guide to

Building Your

Business Case

Raymond Sheen

with Amy Gallo

HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW PRESS

Boston, Massachusetts

H6722.indb iii

4/13/15 8:12 AM

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Harvard Business Review Press titles are available at signifi cant

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Copyright 2015 Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation

All rights reserved

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced

into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means

(electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise),

without the prior permission of the publisher. Requests for permission

should be directed to permissions@hbsp.harvard.edu, or mailed to Permissions, Harvard Business School Publishing, 60 Harvard Way,

Boston, Massachusetts 02163.

The web addresses referenced in this book were live and correct at the

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Sheen, Raymond.

HBR guide to building your business case / Raymond Sheen with

Amy Gallo.

pages cm. — (Hbr guide)

ISBN 978-1-63369-002-8 (paperback)

1. Business planning. 2. Strategic planning. 3. New business

enterprises—Planning. I. Gallo, Amy. II. Title.

HD30.28.S428 2015

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2015002965

Find more digital content or join the discussion on www.hbr.org.

H6722.indb iv

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What You’ll Learn

You’ve got a great idea that will increase revenue or pro-

ductivity—but how do you get approval to make it hap-

pen? By building a business case that clearly shows its

value.

Maybe you struggle to win support for your projects

because you’re not sure what kind of data your stakehold-

ers will trust, or naysayers tend to shoot down your ideas

at the last minute. Perhaps you’re intimidated by analysis

and number crunching, so you just take a stab at esti-

mating costs and benefi ts, with little confi dence in your

accuracy.

To get any idea off the ground in your company, you’ll

have to make a strong case for it. This guide gives you the

tools to do that.

You’ll get better at:

• Spelling out the business need for your idea

• Aligning your case with strategic goals

• Building the right team to shape and test your idea

• Calculating the return on investment

H6722.indb v

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What You’ll Learn

• Analyzing risks and opportunities

• Gaining support from colleagues

• Presenting your case to stakeholders

• Securing the resources your project needs

vi

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Contents

Introduction xi

Success is enabling a wise decision.

Section 1: PREPARE

1. Know the Basics of Making a Case

3

You’re telling a story about how to meet

a business need.

2. Learn How Your Company Evaluates Cases

7

Seek counsel from those who know what

will fl y.

Section 2: GET TO KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE

3. Figure Out Who’s Calling the Shots

13

Who really has the authority to give your

project the green light?

4. Understand Your Audience’s Objectives

17

Find out what your stakeholders care about.

H6722.indb vii

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Contents

Section 3: BUILD THE CASE

5. Clarify the Need

25

What pain are you trying to alleviate? What

opportunity are you pursuing?

6. Build a Cross-Functional Team

33

You need multiple perspectives to fi nd the

right solution.

7. Consider Alternatives

37

The tough part is ruling out options.

8. Think Through the “How” at a High Level

43

Pave the way for realistic estimates.

Section 4: CRUNCH THE NUMBERS

9. Estimate Costs and Benefi ts

49

Peg them to categories in your

company’s P&L.

10. Calculate ROI

61

Spreadsheets make it fairly painless.

11. Account for Risks

79

Weigh the “what ifs.”

Section 5: PRESENT YOUR CASE

AND MOVE FORWARD

12. Prepare Your Document

87

Summarize your story and support

it with data.

viii

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Contents

13. Shop Your Case Around

93

Drum up support before decision time.

14. Are You Ready to Present?

97

Use this brief checklist to make sure you’ve

covered all the bases.

15. Make Your Pitch

99

Appeal directly to decision makers.

16. Get to a Decision

105

“Yes” is meaningless unless stakeholders

commit resources.

17. What Next?

109

Get started, even if it means heading back to

the drawing board.

Appendix A: Avoid Common Mistakes

119

Appendix B: How to Give a Killer Presentation

123

BY CHRIS ANDERSON, TED CURATOR

Glossary 139

Index 143

About the Authors 149

ix

H6722.indb ix

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H6722.indb x

4/13/15 8:12 AM

Introduction

Whether you’re pitching a new project at your company

or seeking funds for a start-up, you’ll need to develop

a persuasive business case if you want your idea to go

anywhere.

Your primary goal is to help people decide whether to

invest resources in your idea. If you’re making a case for

a project or initiative within an organization, you’re not

starting in a vacuum. You have insight into your com-

pany’s strategic priorities, and you probably know the

people you’re pitching to. But you’ve still got plenty of

work to do. Your audience—the leaders of your unit or

company—will expect you to put yourself in their shoes.

(What are their chief concerns? How does your project

address them?) They’ll also expect a thoughtful analysis

of the fi nancials and the risks. They’ll want to under-

stand what impact your project will have on the P&L so

they can intelligently weigh the costs and benefi ts.

How does that differ from pitching a start-up? As

an entrepreneur, you’re selling potential partners and

funders on you as well as on your idea. Though that’s

an important distinction—it affects what you’re trying

xi

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Introduction

to achieve and what you’ll emphasize in your presenta-

tion—you’ll take the same general approach you would

inside an organization. In both situations, you must iden-

tify a clear business need, get to know your stakeholders,

and tell them a compelling story about how to profi tably

meet that need.

That’s what you’ll learn to do in this guide. We’ll fo-

cus on building internal business cases because that’s the

challenge most managers face—but the principles and

tools will benefi t entrepreneurs, too.

Internal business cases can serve many purposes, but

here are three common reasons for developing one:

1.

You want to create a new product or service.

Here, your goal is to demonstrate the profi ts your

offering would add to the bottom line. You’ll help

decision makers weigh sales estimates against

the costs of development, manufacturing, and

delivery.

2.

You want to invest in a large IT system. When

you’re making a case for a new enterprise re-

source planning (ERP) system or a customer

relationship management (CRM) database, for

instance, you’ll take into account the impact on

the entire business—which departments will

benefi t and which will incur the costs.

3.

You want to improve your company’s facilities.

This type of business case is becoming more com-

mon as organizations try to save money through

energy effi ciency. You may propose buying a

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Introduction

new building, for example, or remodeling an

existing one.

You might also create a business case to prioritize

projects and propose cutting a few; obtain additional re-

sources for an ongoing initiative; invest in building a new

capability; or decide whether to outsource a function.

Anytime you want your company to dedicate resources

beyond what’s already budgeted, you need to make a

case. But you’re not just doing legwork to persuade oth-

ers to support your efforts. You’re trying to fi gure out the

best way to capture an opportunity or solve a problem.

Developing a case will force you to generate and evaluate

ideas in a disciplined way.

For that reason, success doesn’t necessarily mean get-

ting a “yes.” It means enabling your leadership team to

make a wise investment decision. A business case ad-

dresses the question “What happens if we take this course

of action?” ( not “Why is this a good idea?”). If the answer

doesn’t demonstrate that the benefi ts outweigh the costs

or that the results align with the company’s strategy, you

haven’t failed. On the contrary, you’ve saved your com-

pany from making a poor investment.

Let’s look at a couple of fi ctional examples that make

this point:

Jim, a brand manager, had an idea for a product that

would help his midsize media company compete against

larger rivals. His boss asked him to develop a business

case, so Jim talked to customers, researched competi-

tors, and looked at several alternatives. He worked with

colleagues in fi nance, marketing, and sales to project

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Introduction

revenues 10 years out and calculate ROI. His initial cal-

culations showed promise for the new product. But his

risk analysis revealed that if just one competitor got to

market fi rst, his company’s market share would take a

huge hit. During a quarterly review meeting with senior

managers, Jim presented a well-researched, clearly artic-

ulated business case that incorporated both his original

estimates and a worst-case scenario. They said the prod-

uct looked like a good opportunity, but they agreed with

Jim that it felt too risky, so they didn’t fund it.

Now consider Catherine, a VP of IT at a manufacturing

fi rm. Her boss asked her to put together a business case

for a new inventory-management system. The managers

of the company’s six plants had been clamoring for this

for more than a year, saying that they didn’t have enough

visibility into one another’s inventory levels. Catherine

traveled to the plants to learn more about what each one

needed the new system to do. She then met with several

vendors to review off-the-shelf options and discuss what

customization might be required. After getting rough

cost estimates, she worked with each plant manager to

project how much the new system would speed up ful-

fi llment times and then calculated the savings over the

next fi ve years. She presented a well-researched, clearly

articulated business case to the CFO, the CEO, and her

boss, the CIO. They gave her approval to select a vendor,

develop an implementation plan, and cost out the system

in detail.

So, who did a better job—Jim or Catherine? You might

be tempted to say Catherine, because her project won ap-

proval and moved to the next stage. But ultimately, both

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Introduction

succeeded. They both helped senior managers make an

informed decision. Not gaining support for a project af-

ter you’ve devoted time and energy to it is never fun. But

as long as you’ve presented a well-constructed business

case, it’s OK—and sometimes desirable—to get a “no”

from the powers that be. Even if you’ve persuaded senior

managers not to approve your project, you’ll have earned

their trust by showing how carefully you’ve thought it

through. The fi rst step in helping your company decide

whether or not to invest in your idea is understanding

what goes into a business case.

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Section 1

Prepare

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Chapter 1

Know the Basics

of Making a Case

No matter where you work or what type of idea you’re

pitching, you should follow the same basic process for

any business case you develop. I’ll briefl y outline it here

to give you a sense of the whole before delving into the

individual steps in later chapters.

Here, in section 1, “Prepare,” you learn how to put

yourself in the right frame of mind. Don’t even think

about constructing a logical argument yet or wrestling

with the numbers—it’s much too soon for that level of

detail. Instead, imagine you’re telling a story.

The story starts, as all good ones do, with a problem.

This is the business need you’re trying to solve. For ex-

ample: Are customers complaining about a particular

product feature? Is fi nance struggling to produce accu-

rate reports because of an outdated IT system? Has your

company lost market share to a competitor that’s offering

adjacent services?

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You may spot the need yourself. Or your manager

may ask you to address a concern that came up during

a strategic-planning discussion or a product-line review.

Once you’ve pinpointed the problem or opportunity, it’s

time to identify your story’s characters:

• Your

stakeholders have the authority to approve or

reject your business case. They might include your

boss, your boss’s boss, or your company’s senior

leadership team (section 2, “Get to Know Your

Audience”).

• Benefi ciaries are those who stand to gain from

what you’re proposing. You’ll usually have more

than one group to consider, either inside or outside

the organization. If you’re recommending a new

IT system for the fi nance department, you’ll have

two sets of benefi ciaries: the people who run the

fi nancial reports and those who receive them.

• You’ll draw on subject-matter experts to create the

case. They’re the people with insight into what it

will take to solve the problem. If you’re proposing

a new product, you’ll probably pull in colleagues

from R&D, sales, and marketing. For any type of

project, you’ll work closely with fi nance to come

up with cost estimates.

Then you’ll consider alternatives for meeting the busi-

ness need—different ways your story might play out (sec-

tion 3, “Build the Case”). With the experts you’ve brought

in, you’ll explore several options: Which is the most effi -

cient? The most cost-effective? The most appropriate for

the organization’s culture and capabilities?

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Know the Basics of Making a Case

After making the best choice in light of what you know

at that point, you’ll create a very high-level project plan

to roughly gauge the amount of time and resources you’ll

need and the value your solution will bring. Estimating

costs and benefi ts can be daunting for managers who are

new to developing business cases. But as you’ll see in sec-

tion 4, “Crunch the Numbers,” it’s pretty straightforward

if you’ve got the rest of your story clearly laid out: your

business need, the alternatives you’ve considered, and

your recommended approach to meeting the need.

You’ll enter those numbers into a spreadsheet to de-

termine the return on investment (ROI). A classic ROI

calculation (benefi ts divided by cost) is static—it pro-

vides a snapshot of one point in time—so very few com-

panies still rely on it alone. It’s better to use a more nu-

anced version of ROI and look at a stream of costs and

benefi ts over months or years by examining the break-

even point, payback period, net present value, or internal

rate of return—or some combination of those measures

(which we’ll cover in chapter 10).

Finally, it’s time to tell your story. Package it in whatever

format your company uses for business cases and present

it to your stakeholders. If no templates exist, create your

own logical format (you’ll fi nd suggestions and samples

in section 5, “Present Your Case and Move Forward”).

Above all else, your story needs to be clear—it should

not be a mystery. Your stakeholders won’t be receptive

if they have to puzzle out which solution you’re recom-

mending, what divisions it will affect, or what it will cost.

Whether you get a yea or nay on your business case,

you’re not done, so chapter 17, “What Next?” will walk you

through the fi rst few steps. If your case is approved, you’ll

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Prepare

kick off your project and get started. If it’s not approved,

you still have work to do, such as wrapping things up so

you can easily dust off your business case in the future if

need be.

Knowing the basic components of a business case will

help you get into the right frame of mind to gather, pol-

ish, and present your compelling story. But before you

dive into the work, you need to know what the decision

makers look for in a business case.

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Chapter 2

Learn How

Your Company

Evaluates Cases

How you tell the story of your business case depends on

how your organization reviews and approves projects

and initiatives.

To fi gure that out, you need to answer questions such as:

• Does your company have a formal process for

evaluating cases? If so, what’s involved—and is it

connected to other processes, such as the budget

review cycle?

• Does your company review cases as they come

up, or at specifi c times tied to your fi scal year or

budgeting season?

• Do stakeholders look at projects individually or as

a portfolio?

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Prepare

• What level of detail will your audience want? For

instance, are they looking for sales projections by

region, product line, year, or a combination of the

three?

• Does the organization approve entire projects at

once or in discrete phases?

Find out as much as you can from a colleague who

knows the ins and outs of the process. Reach out to your

boss and members of your internal network to connect

you with someone who’s made a successful pitch. What

forms should you use? Which decision makers should

you talk to in advance? What types of projects typically

get approved?

Large companies like GE, where I spent several years

on the corporate staff, usually have a formal process with

preset templates. And they typically review business

cases at specifi c times during the year. Some other com-

panies I’ve worked with do it as part of their annual bud-

geting process: Senior leaders look at a portfolio of 20 to

30 cases at a time and decide which to fund with the bud-

get that’s available. Say they’ve got $10 million to work

with. After reviewing the company’s strategic priorities,

they may decide to spend roughly $5 million on prod-

uct development; for instance, $3 million on compli-

ance projects and $2 million on cost-reduction projects.

They’ll evaluate the portfolio against those numbers and

do the necessary juggling to hit them. Companies that re-

view business cases annually often set aside a small por-

tion of the budget for off-cycle opportunities that pop up

throughout the year.

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Learn How Your Company Evaluates Cases

Many large companies also have a tollgate process.

That means a project lead prepares a business case for

an initial discovery phase—not for the entire project. If

stakeholders give that a green light, they’ll ask the team

to break the rest of the project into phases (such as de-

sign, development, testing, and commercialization, if

you’re proposing a new product) and to return for ap-

provals along the way. This allows senior managers to

hedge their bets, committing more resources only as it

becomes clearer that the benefi ts will outweigh the costs.

Though they sometimes have less structure, smaller

organizations work similarly. They may have set times to

review cases, for example, and approve initial phases be-

fore committing to an entire project.

One small internet service provider I worked with re-

viewed its business cases at a monthly leadership meet-

ing. After going over the previous month’s sales and

costs, senior managers would discuss which new projects

to fund. Another company—an automotive supplier—

developed business cases before responding to requests

for proposals (RFPs). That exercise helped stakeholders

decide whether to bid on new-vehicle projects and how

aggressive their bids should be.

Regardless of company size, you’ll need to know who

has the authority to approve or reject your case. In some

organizations, even small projects require approval by

senior leaders. The decisions may be made at the func-

tional, unit, or regional level.

If your organization doesn’t dictate a process for

business cases or you’re requesting resources during

an off-cycle time, fi nd out what others have done to get

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Prepare

approval. Ask around to see which colleagues have a

track record of success and request meetings with them

to learn what materials they used, whose help they en-

listed, what twists and turns they encountered, and what

mistakes they’re now careful not to repeat.

Knowing what’s worked—and what hasn’t—is the best

way to develop a case that stands a chance of being ap-

proved. We’ll dig into learning more about strategic pri-

orities and fi guring out who has the authority to approve

your case in the next section.

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Section 2

Get to Know

Your Audience

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Chapter 3

Figure Out Who’s

Calling the Shots

The fate of your project or initiative will usually lie with a

small group or even one individual.

Early on, ask your boss who will be evaluating your

idea so you can build a case that speaks to their priori-

ties (see chapter 4, “Understand Your Audience’s Objec-

tives”). Maybe it’s your boss’s boss or the division head.

Or perhaps the review committee consists of eight lead-

ers representing different parts of the organization—and

they take a vote on every idea presented.

Knowing which people will review your business case

isn’t the same as understanding who makes the fi nal de-

cision. At one company I worked with, a committee of

six executives looked at cases during the annual budget

meeting. But everyone knew that the CFO had the last

word.

It’s not always clear who’s calling the shots, but you

can get important clues by looking at business cases that

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Get to Know Your Audience

have been approved. If projects that benefi t marketing

often get a green light, some decision-making power may

lie with the CMO. If cases from HR and fi nance tend to

sail through, the heads of those departments may have a

large say in what gets approved.

Once you’ve fi gured out who has decision rights, how

do you appeal to that person or group? By fi nding sources

of infl uence and support.

Who Has Infl uence?

In most organizations, there’s a dominant department—

and its leader wields informal authority, regardless of his

title. At P&G, marketing is king. At GE, it’s fi nance. And

at General Motors, it’s manufacturing. You can assume

that the dominant department’s objectives will trump

others when decision makers review business cases.

Which area of your company has that kind of power?

Projects under its purview stand the best chance of ap-

proval, especially in a close race for resources. At P&G,

leaders reviewing cases will ask “Which projects promise

the most market growth?” At GE, “Which ones will give

us the best fi nancial returns?” At General Motors, “Which

ones will make our plants most effi cient?” Identify your

company’s dominant department—and cast your idea in

light of its goals.

Who Will Have Your Back?

Finding a champion on the review committee—or one

who’s close to it—will help you get a fair review, because

she will lobby on behalf of your case. But how do you fi nd

a project champion?

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Figure Out Who’s Calling the Shots

Look at each member of the review committee: Whose

goals and concerns will your project address most di-

rectly? That person is a potential champion. Reach out

and ask what her department is trying to achieve in the

coming year. Get a sense of what big projects are under

way and which need more support. Explain how your

initiative can help fi ll in gaps or address trouble spots.

This is a time when your personal network will pay divi-

dends. Work with people you know in that department

or division to clarify the problem or business need that

your project will address. Ask them specifi cally what

the champion will care most about and how to address

those concerns. Then, ask your contacts to introduce you

to the potential champion or to set up a meeting so you

can clarify the need and explain your ideas. Even if you’ve

never met the potential champion, you’re more likely to

get her ear since you’re working on a problem that affects

her division. If she is interested, ask her to review your

business case when it’s ready and champion it within the

review committee. You’ll also want to keep her informed

and use her as a sounding board along the way.

Of course, having someone infl uential on your side

does little good if you don’t have a strong case that meets

a business need and well-thought-out fi nancials. If those

elements are missing, even a powerful champion can’t

help you. So now that you’ve won over one person, it’s

time to tailor your pitch to meet the objectives of the or-

ganization and the broader committee.

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Chapter 4

Understand

Your Audience’s

Objectives

Once you know who the decision makers are, the next

step is to discover what they care about most. Senior

leaders are looking for projects and initiatives that fi t the

company’s strategy, and they’re likely to reject those that

don’t.

But many managers don’t understand that, so they

have trouble getting even solid business cases approved.

They believe that the benefi ts are obvious—and neglect

to align their cases with broader objectives.

Very few organizations have money or people sitting

around waiting to be deployed. So when you’re making

a business case, you’re inevitably competing with others

for limited resources. The best way to come out on top

is to explicitly demonstrate how your idea supports the

company’s priorities.

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Get to Know Your Audience

GETTING TO KNOW POTENTIAL

INVESTORS OR PARTNERS

If you’re an entrepreneur developing a business case, it

can be tough to unearth your audience’s objectives. Af-

ter all, you may not know the people you’re pitching to.

But with a little creativity, you can get the information.

Find other entrepreneurs who have worked with your

audience. Sometimes investors will off er this informa-

tion if asked; otherwise, you may need to tap your net-

work to see if anyone knows whom else they’ve funded.

Reach out to these fellow entrepreneurs through

LinkedIn, Twitter, or mutual acquaintances to get the

inside scoop. And don’t just ask about your audience’s

business priorities. You also want to understand what

they’re passionate about and tailor your business case

to that. They’re more likely to invest in or partner with

you if they have an emotional connection to your proj-

ect, in addition to confi dence in the fi nancials.

If you’re not entirely sure what those are, look at the

annual report, the CEO’s letter to shareholders, and all-

staff memos. Consider: What are we trying to do this

year overall? Are we in growth mode or cutting costs?

Are we attempting to go global quickly or focusing on

one or two regions? As you comb through those external

and internal communications, you’ll probably fi nd a few

main themes. Typically, the people evaluating your busi-

ness case are also charged with meeting those larger ob-

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Understand Your Audience’s Objectives

jectives—and they’ll want to understand how your idea

helps them do that. If your executive team has set a goal

of 5% top-line growth, demonstrate how your project

will add directly to revenue. If you can’t do that, highlight

metrics that show an indirect connection: Will your idea

reduce the time to market by 3%? Will it save cycle time?

Whatever the benefi ts, clearly explain how they relate to

overarching goals.

That strategy paid off for one utility company I

worked with. Several years ago, market research fi rm

J.D. Power evaluated customer satisfaction at 300 util-

ity companies. The company I worked with came in dead

last. Worst in the nation. For the next two years, the ex-

ecutive committee set its sights on reversing that dismal

rating, approving any solid business case that dealt with

the problem. If you couldn’t make a case for improving

customer satisfaction in some way, it didn’t matter how

much money your project would save the company or

how much growth it would generate—you’d get turned

down. Five years later, when J.D. Power did a follow-up

study, the company scored in the top 50% on customer

satisfaction—a huge improvement.

Even if your company’s goals are that narrowly de-

fi ned, your stakeholders may not agree on how to achieve

them, so you have to understand each decision maker’s

perspective on execution. Say your organization is keen

to reduce costs. The CFO may feel the best way to do that

is to streamline manufacturing processes, but the COO

may advocate outsourcing.

That’s one reason it’s critical to pull in experts from

various functions to help you build your business case

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Get to Know Your Audience

(see chapter 6, “Build a Cross-Functional Team,” for more

on this). They’ll shed light on what their department’s

leaders care about. For example, someone from fi nance

can probably give you insight into what the CFO thinks

about the company’s strategic goals and how to achieve

them.

How else can you get the information you need about

your audience?

1. Gather intelligence from above. In addition to

tapping cross-functional experts, ask your boss

about your stakeholders’ priorities, values, goals,

and decision-making styles. What might they gain

or lose from the opportunity you’re presenting?

How are they infl uenced? Do they like to be pre-

sented with strong opinions supported by facts, or

do they prefer to go through the thinking process

with you and then reach their own conclusions?

How do they like to receive information? Are they

numbers oriented? Customer focused?

Your champion can be a good source of intel-

ligence, too. Ask her the same questions. In

addition, inquire about anything you shouldn’t

include in the proposal because it might push

the buttons of one of the decision makers.

If you have direct access to stakeholders, ap-

proach them with three simple questions: What

are your group’s chief objectives this year? How

do you measure success? What are your barri-

ers? Then use their answers to inform your case.

If they’re struggling to respond to increasingly

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Understand Your Audience’s Objectives

stringent environmental protection regulations,

for example, highlight how your idea will help

them do that.

2.

Examine your stakeholders’ track records. Look

at the projects they’ve approved over the past two

years. What do they have in common? Do they all

focus on improving customer satisfaction? Low-

ering costs? Growing your product line? Finding

new sources of revenue? Adding capabilities?

Now look at projects your stakeholders have

killed—they, too, may have telling similarities.

Of course, it’s important to put those approvals

and rejections in context. If your company just

acquired a business or went through a restructur-

ing, the goals may have changed.

As you’re digging for insights into your stakeholders,

also consider what their stakeholders care about. Even if

the people reviewing your business case have decision-

making authority, they’ll have to justify their choices

when actual revenues and costs start rolling in. So think

carefully about your audience’s audience: If you pitch

to the CEO, he’ll probably try to anticipate the board of

directors’ reactions and concerns. A marketing VP will

channel the CMO. Put yourself in your stake holders’

shoes and give them what they’ll need to convey the

value of your idea to those above them.

Now that you know what your audience cares about

most, you can turn to gathering the specifi c information

you need, starting with the pain point or opportunity

you’ve identifi ed.

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Section 3

Build the Case

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Chapter 5

Clarify the Need

You can’t build your team, brainstorm solutions, or

crunch the numbers until the business need is crystal

clear.

Try thinking of it as a pain point: Plant managers don’t

have an effective way to share performance information.

The sales force in Europe is losing bids because of a new

competitor. Whatever the pain, that’s the source of the

need, and your task is to fi gure out how to alleviate the

suffering.

Of course, some projects are driven by opportunities,

not by urgent problems. Your company might save 40%

in operating costs by switching to a new CRM system,

for example, or become eligible for $2 million in tax in-

centives by updating its wastewater treatment facility by

year-end.

You may identify the pain point or opportunity your-

self—maybe you have an idea about how to remedy a

product defect or make a process more effi cient. But

more often, stakeholders will hand you a problem and

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Build the Case

say, “Fix this,” or point to an opportunity and say, “Check

this out.” In either situation, research the business need

so you’ll have a thorough understanding of it.

Let’s look at an example that shows how you might

do this.

Imagine that a manufacturing VP comes to a strategic-

planning meeting and says, “We can’t meet our goals this

year if we don’t fi x or replace our inventory system. Our

counts are all wrong. In some places, we have excess; in

others, we keep running out.” The CEO asks you, an IT

manager, to look into it. Now it’s your responsibility to

build a case for investing in a new system, or not, de-

pending on what you fi nd.

Your primary challenge at this point? Learn why the

inventory levels are off and which parts of the business

suffer as a result. Here are the steps you’ll take.

Talk to Benefi ciaries

First, ask the manufacturing people who use the cur-

rent system what they think is going on: When did the

problem start? How does it manifest itself? How often?

How does the problem prevent their teams from doing

their work effectively? Who else in the company does it

affect? Talk to those individuals as well, and gather rel-

evant data, reports, surveys—whatever evidence your

benefi ciaries can provide. If possible, observe the issue

fi rsthand. You might visit plants and watch how inven-

tory is captured and entered into the system. You could

shadow the people who use the system and observe how

they complete their tasks.

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Clarify the Need

Your job is to listen and probe further. The benefi cia-

ries may not know the underlying reason for the prob-

lem: “We’re not sure why the inventories keep showing

up wrong. But when we go to the warehouse fl oor, the

count is always off.” It’s up to you to discover the cause

and identify a reasonable solution.

The benefi ciaries may have a solution in mind. (Per-

haps the manufacturing VP learned about an inventory

management system that he believes will provide a more

accurate count.) But sometimes what they want isn’t the

best fi x. Of course you need to look into this option, but it

might not be your fi nal recommendation, especially if it’s

costly or diffi cult to adopt.

Analyze Processes

Next, examine the problem yourself. Don’t just take peo-

ple’s word for it. Use a process-fl ow analysis—a visual rep-

resentation of the various stages. Through conversations

with benefi ciaries and your own observations, develop a

full picture of how inventory moves and where amounts

are captured. Lay out all the steps of the inventory fl ow,

illustrating how they connect and noting decision points

(for example, who decides when to enter amounts into

the system?). This is critical because you may fi nd out

that it isn’t an IT problem at all. Maybe there’s a train-

ing issue or a communication breakdown in the supply

chain. You could discover places where the process falls

apart.

Look at the sample fl owchart in fi gure 5-1. Note how

many parts of the process depend on manual updates

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ed

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recor

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Clarify the Need

—we’ve got lots of room for human error. And the lag time

after quality control identifi es a defective part makes it

even harder for the inventory system to refl ect accurate

counts. You’ll want to examine all these pain points to

fully expose the need.

Agree on What the Solution

Should Accomplish

Once you’ve gathered all this information and formed

a clearer picture of the business need, go back to your

stakeholders (the CEO and the manufacturing VP) and

make sure your assumptions match theirs about what

the solution should do and what the constraints are. For

example, a new inventory system may need to work in

Europe as well as in the United States—that’s an assump-

tion you’ll want to confi rm with your stakeholders, even

if it seems obvious to you. Constraints might include

compatibility with other IT systems or short windows of

time when the rollout can take place. Use the following

questions to guide the discussion with your stakeholders:

• Where will the solution be used? In what offi ces or

facilities? In how many countries?

• Who will be affected by the solution? A single

department or the entire organization?

• How quickly does the solution need to be in place?

Will we roll it out over time or all at once?

• How should we measure the solution’s effective-

ness? Do we have a baseline that we can compare

against?

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Build the Case

TESTING THE NEED WITH A STEALTH PROJECT

What if you suspect a market need but lack data to

back it up? Or senior managers don’t want to alter a

product, despite customer complaints? Or they tend to

reject out-of-the-mainstream ideas like yours?

Try demonstrating the importance of your business

case—to yourself and others—by doing a stealth proj-

ect as proof of concept. A small pilot project can help

you test your hypothesis about the need before you de-

velop and present a solution.

Take this example: At GE, we had some problems

with a product that my engineering team was respon-

sible for. We thought fi xing them would require a time-

consuming, expensive redesign, but then one of my en-

gineers suggested a minor change in the manufacturing

process. Not everyone agreed it would work, so he and

the manufacturing manager pulled operators aside and

asked them to collect product and process data over

• Should we combine the solution with another

related initiative?

Stakeholders may not have the answers to all these

questions, or they may ask you to make recommenda-

tions. When that happens, it usually means there’s no

constraint with respect to that question, which is helpful

to know.

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Clarify the Need

a two-week period. The data demonstrated the validity

of his idea, and he got approval for it.

The stealth approach has its risks, of course. You

might annoy people or even get into trouble, particu-

larly if you’re spending funds meant for other projects.

Doing a proof of concept without getting approval can

also signal to senior managers that you don’t trust

them to make smart decisions.

To reduce these risks, keep your project lean and fo-

cused—and frame it as a fact-fi nding experiment.

Know what you want to learn, and spend only as

much money as it takes to do that. Get your answer

and move on. Don’t let the project carry on for months.

And document everything you learn so you can include

your fi ndings in your business case.

You may discover that the business need isn’t so

great, after all—so be prepared to abandon your idea.

Document, Document, Document

Record everything you learn: where the pain comes from,

who’s experiencing it, and what the solution needs to ac-

complish. This documentation will save you time later as

you prepare your presentation to stakeholders—they’ll

want to see what you’re basing your recommendations on

(see Section 5, “Present Your Case and Move Forward”).

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Build the Case

The process can be as straightforward as jotting down

notes or entering them in an Excel or PowerPoint fi le—or

you might use your company’s project management soft-

ware to log evidence of the need. Keep track of who told

you what. That way, you can go back for clarifi cation in

the likely event that you receive confl icting or partial in-

formation from benefi ciaries. This will also help you refer

stakeholders’ questions to the right people.

After doing all this work, what if you fi nd out the busi-

ness need isn’t strong? That’s OK. You’re still helping your

stakeholders make an informed decision about whether to

invest, and how much. This is a good time to meet with

your champion and ask for guidance. Should you continue

to develop a business case even though there isn’t much

benefi t? Is there an additional benefi t that you haven’t

considered that should be added to the business case? For

instance, you may fi nd that a new inventory system will

speed up delivery time by just 5%—and that the project

won’t generate any return for several years, given software

and innovation costs. But stakeholders may still want to go

ahead if the new system brings manufacturing up-to-date

with competitors. When I sat on the review committee at a

medical device company, we saw many projects that didn’t

immediately deliver huge revenues or cost savings. Still,

they had to get done—sometimes to comply with new FDA

guidelines, sometimes to address concerns of key hospitals

or doctors and gain their support for new products.

Figuring out the specifi cs of how to address the busi-

ness need and with what resources can be a daunting

task. Fortunately, you don’t typically have to go it alone.

Your next step is to gather a team of internal experts who

can help you get the information you need.

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Chapter 6

Build a Cross-

Functional Team

Unless you’re an entrepreneur, you probably won’t build

the business case on your own. Inside established com-

panies, it’s a team effort. Both benefi ciaries and subject-

matter experts will help you determine which solution to

the underlying problem will work best, how much it will

cost, how much revenue it will bring in, and so on.

You probably won’t have a full-time, dedicated team at

your disposal. Instead, you’ll bring people together from

various departments at different points in the process—

when it’s time to brainstorm alternatives, for instance, or

estimate the costs and benefi ts.

Building a cross-functional team allows you to ex-

amine solutions from multiple angles. Otherwise, you’ll

develop the case from a particular point of view—most

likely your department’s—and run the risk of overlooking

an option or important costs and benefi ts.

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Build the Case

Include the following types of team members:

• A fi nance representative. Too many people assume

that fi nance is the enemy. This couldn’t be further

from the truth, especially when you’re developing a

business case. Someone from fi nance can establish

current costs and benefi ts, and make accurate pro-

jections. And the earlier you bring in this person,

the better. Don’t attempt to do the forecasting

and ROI calculations on your own, even if you’re

good with numbers. You might make incorrect as-

sumptions about industry dynamics, depreciation,

personnel costs, and so on without guidance from

someone with a big-picture view of the company’s

revenues and expenses.

• Benefi ciaries. If you’re proposing a product fi x,

engineering may be your primary internal benefi -

ciary, but salespeople could also gain an advan-

tage. So include someone from each group. Don’t

overemphasize the role of your benefi ciaries—

since they’re the ones feeling the pain, they’re not

going to be your most objective problem solvers.

But ask them to voice their chief concerns as the

team identifi es and weighs solutions, just as they

did when they helped you gain a deeper under-

standing of the business need.

• Someone who regularly talks with customers. If

customers feel the pain most acutely, or the pro-

posed solution will affect them in any way (most

new ideas do), consult with someone who knows

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Build a Cross-Functional Team

what they care about—or who can ask them. This

may be an account manager, a customer service

rep, or a marketing associate who conducts cus-

tomer surveys.

• External experts. You might not get all the in-

formation and insight you need in-house. If your

company has never solved this kind of problem

before, ask outside experts for their recommenda-

tions. Considering a new ERP system? Reach out

to your network of IT professionals, online com-

munities, vendors, and partners. Find out what

they use and how well it’s working for them.

What might a team that includes all those members

look like? Let’s return to the inventory problem we looked

at in chapter 5, “Clarify the Need.” You’d want to bring

in people most affected by the incorrect counts: several

manufacturing representatives (from different plants),

colleagues from fi nance and sales, and someone who can

speak to the concerns of suppliers. You could also consult

with vendors who sell inventory systems to fi nd out what

additional features the latest software provides.

By involving these people in building the business

case, you don’t just gain access to information (though

that’s important); you also gain their support. They’re en-

gaged, right along with you, in fi nding the right solution.

And it’s much easier to get approval if your stakeholders

know that people from their departments helped create

the proposal.

Once you know what types of team members you

need, handpick individuals you work well with—those

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Build the Case

who will be generous with their time and information.

You can add occasional “guest stars” to the lineup. For

instance, if you’re bringing the team together to brain-

storm solutions, include people who thrive in meetings

like that—creative colleagues who are quick on their feet,

not black-and-white thinkers wedded to their own ideas.

But keep the core group small—no more than six peo-

ple, if possible. You’d lose momentum and focus if you

spent weeks or months consulting everyone who knows

something about the problem. You want a tight team of

experts who can effi ciently help you work out the best

solution.

Even with a dream team, it’s rare you’ll come up with

the best solution out of the gate. That’s because there’s

rarely one solution to any given problem. You’ll need to

generate and weigh several alternatives.

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Chapter 7

Consider

Alternatives

Now that you’ve selected your team, it’s time to start

brainstorming. Bring your experts and benefi ciaries to-

gether to think about potential solutions. Briefl y describe

the pain, who’s feeling it, and its underlying cause—just

to orient the group—and ask for suggestions on how to

alleviate it. Lay out the ideas that stakeholders or benefi -

ciaries proposed early on, and ask your team to generate

several more. Encourage people to look beyond their own

unit or function: How have other departments met this

need? What have other companies done? What’s worked,

and what hasn’t?

At the beginning of a meeting like this, don’t put con-

straints on people. Let them think out loud. Then, after

the team generates options, you can mention limitations

to focus their thinking and spur additional ideas: Remind

people that the solution can’t involve relocating staff, for

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Build the Case

instance, or that it must take into account the products

the company will launch in the coming year.

Open the fl oor to any and all ideas for solving the

problem with the following guidelines in mind.

Forgo Precision—and Push

Beyond the Obvious

Generate alternatives quickly. You aren’t drafting project

plans or identifying specifi c vendors or product names.

Instead, you’re coming up with a generic system, initia-

tive, or product to recommend. Don’t get hung up on

particulars. If your team starts laying out specifi cations

for a solution, pull them back to the big picture. You’ll

gather basic specs later, after you’ve narrowed down your

options and begun assessing them. And once you get ap-

proval, you’ll have time to sort out the nitty-gritty details.

The goal right now is to sketch out several directions you

might take, not to pave the actual path.

Often there’s a front-runner idea from the very begin-

ning—perhaps a solution suggested by your champion or

adopted by leaders in your industry. Don’t fi xate on this

option, even if it’s the CEO’s idea. Stakeholders will ex-

pect you to seriously consider multiple options. After all,

they want to see that you’ve conducted a thorough analy-

sis, not just gone with the obvious solution.

If you struggle to come up with other options, try these

techniques to broaden your perspective:

• Start with the desired end state. Look at how

other organizations have achieved the business

performance you’re aiming for, whether it’s faster

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Consider Alternatives

time to market or improved quality. Would those

approaches work for your company?

• Think about how other departments would address

the issue. What would the project look like if IT

took the lead? How about sales? HR? Engineer-

ing? Supply chain?

• Consider how you’d do the project with diff er-

ent constraints. What if you had twice the time

to complete the project? Or half the time? What

would change if you outsourced (or insourced) the

work? What if you had to scale the solution to do

the same thing 100 times?

Consider a Do-Nothing Option

A business case addresses the question “What happens if

we take this course of action?” But you also need to con-

sider the consequences of doing nothing. That will help

you articulate the business need when you present your

case. For example: “If we stick with our current line, sales

will continue to drop 10% a year. This new product will

reverse that trend—in fact, we project a 20% increase in

sales over the next fi ve years.”

Sometimes doing nothing is a viable option. That’s

often true of internal improvement projects. Suppose

the supply chain organization wants to modify its parts-

traceability program to meet the industry standard. The

manager developing the business case will include a do-

nothing option to show stakeholders what costs they’ll

avoid by approving the project. She’ll answer questions

along these lines: “If we don’t get in line with the industry

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Build the Case

standard, what work-arounds will we need in order to

keep selling our products? Will we lose any customers?”

If the do-nothing costs aren’t prohibitive, stakeholders

may decide to absorb them rather than invest in chang-

ing the program.

Narrow Down Your Possibilities

When I reviewed business cases at GE, I didn’t like being

given one option and told that was the way we had to do

it. Nor did I want someone to walk me through 25 alter-

natives. Chances are your review committee members are

looking for the same thoughtful balance. Present stake-

holders with two or three reasonable choices. This means

you need to whittle down the list from your brainstorm-

ing session. Questions like these will help:

• Which option costs the least?

• Which is the fastest to implement?

• Which has the fewest risks?

• Which brings in the most revenue?

Often, one option will meet several of those condi-

tions—but each idea you present should have at least one

big thing going for it. Don’t offer an obviously unaccept-

able solution in contrast to your preferred choice. It will

appear that you’re trying to manipulate the review board.

Once you’ve selected a few options, talk with the cham-

pion you identifi ed early on—ask her what she thinks of

your alternatives and which ones stand the best chance

of approval. Also, review the options with your subject-

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Consider Alternatives

matter experts. If there is something in an option that is

impossible or unacceptable, modify the option or drop

it. For instance, if one option violates existing codes or

standards, revise it to make it compliant.

When you prepare the fi nancials, one of your options

may stand out as a clear winner. So you’ll present it to

the review committee—but also share other options you

considered. If you looked at three alternatives but imme-

diately saw that two would generate no revenue growth

(or would cost too much, or present a compliance prob-

lem), explain that in your presentation. Stakeholders ex-

pect to see which viable choices you rejected and on what

grounds.

You have several good ideas for solving the prob-

lem, but that’s only half the work. Now it’s time to dig

a bit deeper and consider what it would mean to imple-

ment them.

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Chapter 8

Think Through

the “How” at

a High Level

To build a strong case, you’ll need to paint a picture—in

very broad strokes—of how the organization would im-

plement the solution you’re proposing. You’re not doing a

detailed project plan at this point. Far from it. You’re just

sketching a basic outline of what the project requires so

your estimates of costs and benefi ts will be realistic.

This helps you see more clearly whose support you’ll

need. If you start to think through the “how” and sud-

denly realize that marketing and sales will have to con-

tribute resources, you’ll need to tap them for information

when you’re working on the fi nancials and get their buy-

in before you present the case.

This process also reveals transition costs, which many

managers overlook (see chapter 9, “Estimate Costs and

Benefi ts”). They’re often so gung ho about their pet

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Build the Case

solution that they forget to consider how they’re going to

migrate the company’s data into that fancy new system,

how they’ll train everyone to use it, or how they’ll shut

down and archive the old system. To get the fullest pic-

ture of what implementation will mean to your project,

you’ll need to work with your team to get their feedback

and to set a rough plan.

Consult Your Team

Here again, you’ll bring in your subject-matter experts

to get their input on various practical questions. For

example:

• What work must be done before the company can

switch to the new system?

• Who needs to do it?

• What—and whom—will the actual switch involve?

• Where will major costs be incurred before, during,

and after the switch?

• Will we roll out the system once companywide or

multiple times for different customers, depart-

ments, or locations?

• What training will employees need?

• What systems, products, or processes will be elimi-

nated when this new system is implemented?

Benefi ciaries will have strong opinions on how to

implement the solution since they’re often the ones who

will do the work. They may believe the system needs to

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Think Through the “How” at a High Level

be rolled out across the organization all at once. Or they

may think that their department should be responsible

for managing the project. Make sure your case refl ects

their input so you’ll have their buy-in when it’s time for

them to contribute. Let’s say you’re proposing to develop

a new product for the Asian market. The marketing and

sales force in Asia may think that they should manage the

project. If your recommendation is that the project will

be managed by the R&D department in Germany, you

might add that a person from the Asian marketing team

will relocate to Germany or that the prototype reviews

and design reviews will be done in Hong Kong. That way,

the team in Asia won’t stand in your way when it’s time

to roll out the project.

Make the Plan Directionally Correct

You’re still not at the point where you need a detailed

project plan, so don’t go too far into the weeds. But you’ll

want to fi gure out, for instance, whether you’ll use the

new system in three countries or fi ve. You can think later

about which country you’ll do fi rst, and so on, depend-

ing on what’s happening in those markets. For now, just

knowing the “where” at a high level will help you consider

what kind of work will go into getting the system ready

(translating it into three or fi ve languages, testing it with

user groups in each country, and so on). You’re not sort-

ing out every task—just the types of tasks and the people

involved.

As you do this, you may realize that one or more of

your alternatives aren’t feasible, after all. Perhaps you dis-

cover a large hidden cost or see that one of the solutions,

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Build the Case

when implemented, would violate a stated constraint. In

that case, go back to your team of experts to reconsider

other options or generate new ones.

With the key issues identifi ed and your rough plan

mapped out, you’re ready to turn to the fi nancials.

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Section 4

Crunch the

Numbers

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Chapter 9

Estimate Costs

and Benefi ts

Before you calculate the ROI, you’ll need a more accurate

projection of costs and benefi ts. For many people (espe-

cially nontechnical folks), working with these numbers

can be intimidating. But now that you’ve identifi ed and

clarifi ed the business need, gathered the right team, and

tested your assumptions, this part won’t be hard.

Start by estimating costs and benefi ts for the option

that you and your team consider to be the most viable.

Once you’ve done that, explore the alternatives by adjust-

ing the numbers. Will they cost more to implement? Will

they return revenue sooner? Usually you’ll change just

a few fi gures. For example, one option may be to do a

phased rollout instead of a universal launch. Your project

costs are likely to be similar, but some of your benefi ts

won’t show up until later—so you’ll decrease those num-

bers for the fi rst year or two.

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Crunch the Numbers

Stick to two or three alternatives. You’ll drive your-

self—and your team—crazy if you explore all the possibil-

ities available to you. On rare occasions, you may need to

develop a full-blown case for more than one alternative.

For example, in a fi nancial services company I worked

with, some executives wanted to outsource the call cen-

ter; others pushed to keep it in-house and update the an-

tiquated system. We knew the review team had advocates

on both sides, so we had to create two separate cases—

one to outsource, one to upgrade—for equal consider-

ation. In this case, the outsourcing option had a faster

payback, but ultimately did not deliver as much value to

the company. The organization decided to upgrade the

existing system. This option cost more and took longer,

but it also created a long-term capability that grew in

value over time.

Exceptions like this aside, once you have your alterna-

tives identifi ed, you’ll want to assemble the fi gures that

will be most useful in helping your stakeholders make a

solid decision.

The Numbers You Need

Base your estimates on the categories in your company’s

income statement (P&L)—those are the numbers your re-

viewers will care about. Together, your costs and benefi ts

make up the cash fl ow for your project. Consider when

they’ll begin and how they’ll change over time. Don’t

look at the total pot of money your company will “net”

at the end of fi ve or ten years. Instead, show a stream of

expenses and income: Generate estimates for each year

until the benefi ts run out.

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Estimate Costs and Benefi ts

How many years out do you go? It depends on the

project. Your company may have guidelines—or your

stakeholders may have a preference. But if not, follow

these rules of thumb: For IT projects, estimate three to

fi ve years of cash fl ows. (After that, most IT systems be-

come obsolete.) For product development cases, look at

the product life cycle. In some industries, such as con-

sumer electronics, that’s three years. In others, like the

aircraft industry, it’s 15. Facilities projects usually need a

minimum of 15 years.

With those rough guidelines in mind, gather the cost

and benefi t information.

Costs

You’ll look at two main types of costs. The fi rst type, proj-

ect costs, consists of project expenditures and capital ex-

penditures. Project expenditures usually occur at the be-

ginning—they tend to include development, testing and

qualifi cation, training and deployment, and travel costs.

They’re pretty straightforward to estimate: You consider

the type of work to be done on the project and approxi-

mately how long it will take, and then put together your

estimate for completing that work. I generally start by as-

sessing how many people I need on the team and, using

an average salary rate, I can project the personnel costs.

Then I do a rough estimate of travel and supplies to be

purchased on the project.

Capital expenditures aren’t as simple. A project cost

becomes a capital expenditure when you’ve spent the

money to acquire or develop an asset. Anything that is

capitalized must be depreciated—which means fi nance

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Crunch the Numbers

must show the decrease in value over the asset’s life. On

your project ROI calculation, you can record the cost of

an asset as a single number, under the year the company

acquired the asset, or you can spread the cost over the

years it’s depreciated. (Either way, you capture the total

cost.) Check with your fi nance person to fi nd out how you

must represent the costs in your analysis. The fi nancial

rules for capital expenditures are complex, and they of-

ten change, so you’ll want expert guidance.

The second type of costs, operating costs, can be tricky

because you’re estimating how much money it will take to

maintain whatever you’re proposing. These include over-

head—costs, such as personnel, offi ce space, maintenance

and licensing fees, and any other ongoing expenses. Con-

sider: Will you need a part-time staff member to monitor

your new centralized procurement system? Or will your

new product require a dedicated sales team that under-

stands its technical features? What about changes to the

help desk? Some projects will reduce operating costs, so

look at expenses you’ll eliminate as well as those you’ll add.

The department doing the project work incurs the

project costs (IT, if it’s creating a new customer manage-

ment system). By contrast, operating costs can crop up

anywhere in the business (for instance, in the depart-

ments that will use the system).

As discussed in chapter 8, “Think Through the ‘How’

at a High Level,” many managers overlook transition

costs, the type of operating expense that kicks in when

the organization switches from something old to some-

thing new. These costs might include a temporary spike

52

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Estimate Costs and Benefi ts

in manufacturing defects, say, or an increase in calls

to the help desk. Most major projects will cause some

disruption, and you need to account for it in your esti-

mates. The subject-matter experts on your team should

be able to identify transition costs for their departments;

these should be included as a separate line on our ROI

worksheet.

Benefi ts

Benefi ts consist mainly of revenue (money you’ll bring

in through sales) and productivity savings (costs you’ll

avoid through greater effi ciency). Let’s look at each.

Revenue

Ask your sales and marketing subject-matter experts to

work with you to estimate revenue. They’ll help you set

realistic targets—both how much to expect and when to

expect it.

They’ll also help you anticipate the response from

competitors—a critical long-term factor. For example,

the revenue stream for a new product may plateau or

decrease when a rival comes to market with a similar or

better offering. Look with your team at what’s happened

with previous products—and base your assumptions on

that. Did sales grow steadily for the fi rst three years and

then decay once competitors entered the market?

When considering revenue, factor in the cost of goods

sold (listed as COGS on the income statement). This puts

a price tag on the materials and labor required to pro-

duce what you’re selling. Of course, to do that, you’ll fi rst

53

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Crunch the Numbers

have to estimate how many units you’ll sell each year—

once again, your team members from sales and market-

ing can help with those numbers. People often neglect to

take COGS into account and so accidentally infl ate their

revenue estimates. But your stakeholders will want to see

that you’ve deducted them from your revenues—that’s

how you calculate your gross profi t margin.

Productivity savings

Some productivity savings relate to product costs, oth-

ers to overhead costs. You can achieve the former by

changing materials or automating assembly. These sav-

ings change the product cost baseline and, therefore, the

gross profi t margin. You’ll base these estimates on how

many units you’ll produce each year. By contrast, over-

head productivity savings come from cutting current, on-

going expenses that stem from how you run the business.

Maybe a security system you’re proposing would enable

your company to hire fewer guards without compromis-

ing safety. Such savings are usually fl at—in other words,

they are the same every year.

If you say your project will save personnel overhead

costs, your stakeholders will probably ask, “Who are we

going to lay off?”—and for good reason. Unless you get

rid of people, you still have to pay them. Even if you make

the argument that they’ll do other things instead, you’re

not really saving money. You’re just moving expenses

around to other parts of the organization. But you might

be able to cut other types of operating expenses: Maybe

your initiative will eliminate the need for overtime or re-

duce costly errors by giving people more time to focus on

54

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Estimate Costs and Benefi ts

their tasks. Or perhaps the company will spend less on

maintenance contracts.

Intangible costs and benefi ts

Some costs and benefi ts are tough to measure. For ex-

ample, a new employee time-tracking system may hurt

morale—but how do you quantify the cost to the com-

pany? If a new product feature will increase overall cus-

tomer satisfaction, how do you translate that benefi t into

dollars?

Whenever possible, assign numbers to your costs and

benefi ts. Derive those fi gures from expected changes in

behavior—those are the business consequences you can

measure. If morale will be hurt, will you see an increase

in absenteeism? By how much? What about error rates

and training costs? How much will they go up? If cus-

tomers will be happier, how many repeat customers will

you gain? How much will you save in advertising as a

result? If you think your new performance management

system will improve employee satisfaction, how much

will the turnover rate drop? And how much will that save

the company in new-hire training?

If you truly can’t quantify certain costs or benefi ts, you

can’t use them in your calculations—though you should

still mention them when you present your case.

Where to Get the Numbers

As you’ve probably gathered by now, you’re not making

up these estimates alone in your offi ce. You’re reaching

out to benefi ciaries and experts in various departments to

get accurate information. If you’re proposing an initiative

55

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Crunch the Numbers

to improve the contracting process with vendors, get in-

put from procurement. If your case is for a new prod-

uct in a new market, ask sales and marketing colleagues

how much revenue growth they expect and whether the

product will cannibalize other offerings. The experts on

your team have already helped you identify types of costs

and benefi ts—now they can suggest actual numbers from

their functions’ perspectives.

Since it’s nobody’s job to give you the numbers you

need, you have to rely on relationships—often going be-

yond your core team—to get them. If you’re an IT man-

ager proposing a new system to track sales leads, ask one

of your contacts in sales to vet your costs and benefi ts.

Don’t have anyone to call? See if your manager or a mem-

ber of your team can put you in touch with somebody.

When you’re making a case for an entirely new type of

project for your company, tap your broader professional

network for fi gures, as you did when you were weighing

various options and narrowing them down. Ask people in

other companies what they’ve spent on similar projects.

They’re not going to hand over their detailed plans—

those would be considered proprietary. But they may be

willing to give you a ballpark number, saying that it cost

them about $20 million to put in SAP software. You can

also get general estimates from vendors, based on their

experience doing similar work for other clients. If you

work for a large corporation, ask other operating divi-

sions for their input.

Whatever the source, don’t take the numbers at face

value. Your sales contact may give you fi ve-year forecasts

that seem low. Find out what he’s basing them on, how

56

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Estimate Costs and Benefi ts

they compare with other product sales, and whether he’s

willing to back up the numbers when you share them

with the review committee. And keep in mind that cer-

tain departments are inclined to either pad or lowball

numbers. Salespeople rewarded with commissions may

underestimate so they can exceed their targets. Mar-

keting colleagues, wanting to see a new product get ap-

proved, may give you a higher number. Understanding

biases like these will help you ask the right questions to

get the most accurate, balanced numbers possible. Of

course, people won’t tell you that their numbers are bi-

ased. They’ll say that they’re realistic. To assess how accu-

rate their estimates are, ask them what the impact would

be if the number were 20% higher or 20% lower. If you

get an emotional response to such questions, there’s a

good chance that, whether they realize it or not, they’ve

given you a biased number. In that case, check with an-

other subject-matter expert to confi rm the initial fi gures

you received. If you’ve got a large range for one of your

estimates, that signals a project risk. Select the value that

you believe is most realistic and test the best-case and

worst-case numbers (see chapter 11, “Account for Risks”).

Only use—and present—numbers that have buy-in

from the departments affected. When the CFO questions

your forecasts, you want to be able to tell him that his

team has endorsed them. If you can’t back up numbers

when stakeholders scrutinize them, your entire case loses

credibility.

Again, this is where friends in the fi nance department

can be enormously helpful in putting together estimates.

They have insight into where money is spent across

57

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Crunch the Numbers

functions and quick access to those numbers. They’re fa-

miliar with each line of the P&L, and they know what

past projects have cost the company. If you don’t have a

helpful contact in fi nance already, it’s worth your time to

fi nd one and cultivate that relationship. Ask your boss

who supports your department in the fi nance group.

Then reach out to the person and say you’re interested

in understanding your department’s numbers and how

your work can affect them. It’s smart to do this right af-

ter the quarterly report comes out. Showing that interest

will win you a friend, and you’ll probably learn some-

thing along the way.

Track Where Each Number

Comes From

As you gather fi gures, collect them in a spreadsheet like

the one in chapter 10, “Calculate ROI” (see fi gure 10-1).

You can tailor this spreadsheet to fi t your circumstances.

For instance, if you are doing an IT project, you’ll fore-

cast only three to fi ve years out, not 10. List your costs

and benefi ts—and capture the assumptions and sources

along with them. This is critical information to have

when it’s time to do your risk analysis and present to

stakeholders. For example, if one of your expenses is new

software, list the amount, how many licenses it includes,

and any other assumptions you’ve made about the price.

Then document who gave you the estimate. Later, when

you’re asked where the number came from, you’ll have

the information right there in the spreadsheet.

Your completed spreadsheet may have 50 rows, or

more than 100—whatever it takes to accurately cost out

58

H6722.indb 58

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Estimate Costs and Benefi ts

the project and account for its benefi ts. Tracking the

source of your fi gures may sound tedious, but will save

you time later. And being able to answer questions from

the review committee during your presentation will defi -

nitely enhance your credibility.

Manage Uncertainty

You’re dealing with estimates and forecasts, so work with

round numbers. If you’re forecasting sales, it’s OK to say

that you’ll see $5 million the fi rst year, $8 million the

next year, and $12 million the year after that. No one ex-

pects you to have a detailed, 100% accurate list of costs

and benefi ts at this point in the process.

In fact, many of your numbers will be educated guesses.

I worked with a company a couple of years ago that

wanted to install an ERP system. The IT manager build-

ing the case reached out to three of his contacts at other

companies to ask what they had spent on similar systems.

He got three wildly different numbers. Which did he use?

The one in the middle. But he also ran the calculation

using the high fi gure (considering it the worst case) and

the low one (the best case). That’s what you should do if

there’s a high level of uncertainty with some of your num-

bers. Identify a range, and use the middle number.

You can also reduce uncertainty by benchmarking

your project against others your company has under-

taken. These comparisons will often give you the most-

accurate numbers because you’re dealing with known

systems, processes, and people.

Even so, some uncertainty will remain, and senior

managers understand that. If you’re off—say you initially

59

H6722.indb 59

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Crunch the Numbers

estimate $7 million in costs but discover later that the

project will run closer to $8 million—people probably

won’t blame you, demanding to know why you were

wrong. More likely (assuming you’ve developed and pre-

sented a solid case), they’ll ask, “OK, so what will $7 mil-

lion get us?”

Ignore Sunk Costs

On occasion, you may do a business case for a project

that’s already in progress so stakeholders can decide

whether to continue it or alter its direction. In a situation

like that, you need to keep track of sunk costs—the money

already spent—but don’t include them in your estimates

or ROI calculation. Know the total amount in case stake-

holders have questions, but don’t allow it to factor too

heavily in their decision. If you do, they may choose to

keep funding the project since they’ve already spent so

much on it—and that’s how companies dig themselves

into gigantic fi nancial holes.

Take an equipment rental company I worked with that

wanted to go completely paperless. The project lead es-

timated that it would take three years and $25 million.

Three years later, the company had spent $35 million,

with only one quarter of the work done. The team redid

the business case, wisely ignoring the $35 million al-

ready spent, and the stakeholders decided not to move

forward—it wasn’t worthwhile in light of all the hassles

they now knew to expect.

Using the costs and benefi ts you’ve outlined, you can

now calculate the return on your investment.

60

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Chapter 10

Calculate ROI

Return on investment (ROI) is a more pointed look at

the fi nancial value of your proposal. Think of it as a mea-

sure of relative “goodness” because it helps organizations

compare projects and decide which ones to pursue.

Good news for mathphobes: It takes nanoseconds to

calculate ROI in a spreadsheet (Excel saves you from do-

ing fi fth-order partial differential equations by hand).

Many companies have templates, like the one in fi g-

ure 10-1, where you just plug in your numbers and the

software does the rest.

Here’s the classic formula for ROI:

ROI = Net Benefi t/Total Cost

(Net benefi t is the total benefi t minus the total cost.)

A positive ROI is good. A negative one means the proj-

ect’s not worth doing. The larger the ROI value, the bet-

ter the project. But this is a static measure that doesn’t

take into consideration changes to benefi ts and costs over

time. Therefore, most companies use one of the more ad-

vanced, dynamic techniques described in fi gure 10-2.

61

H6722.indb 61

4/13/15 8:12 AM

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H6722.indb 63

4/13/15 8:12 AM

Crunch the Numbers

The best method for you—break-even analysis, pay-

back period, net present value (NPV), or internal rate of

return (IRR)—will depend on the nature of your project

and what’s most important to the business. If your com-

pany has a standard approach, go with that so your stake-

holders can easily compare your project with others. Or

you may need to apply several methods to accommodate

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Fortunately, you can start with the same basic spread-

sheet shown in fi gure 10-1, no matter which techniques

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perform the different types of calculations.

Break-Even Analysis

Break-even analysis tells you how many units you need

to sell in order to pay for the project (see fi gure 10-3).

Companies typically use it for new products and other

projects that have a marketing focus—they weigh their

analysis against the size of the market opportunity. This

technique doesn’t reveal how long it takes to break even,

so it’s most useful when you’re unsure about timing—

when the project will start, how long it will last, and so

on. Entrepreneurs often use break-even analysis to show

investors how many units must be sold before they’ll turn

a profi t.

It’s not the best method when you have high, time-

dependent operating costs or infrastructure benefi ts that

aren’t related to product volume, since it’s impossible to

quantify the impact of those factors on unit sales. In those

cases, you’ll probably want to determine NPV instead.

64

H6722.indb 64

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H6722.indb 65

4/13/15 8:12 AM

Crunch the Numbers

To calculate your break-even point, you’ll fi rst deter-

mine the gross profi t margin from selling one unit of

your product:

Revenue − COGS = Gross Margin

Then you can fi gure out how many units you need to

sell for your sales benefi t to equal your total costs:

Break-Even Number of Units = Net Project Cost/Gross Margin

Here’s what those calculations look like when you plug

in numbers from the spreadsheet in fi gure 10-3.

Our gross margin from selling one unit is $300. (See

“Estimate Rationale” for sales benefi ts in the spread-

sheet: 30% of $1,000 is $300. If you don’t already know

the gross margin, calculate it by subtracting COGS from

revenue, as described above.) And in this case, we’ll get

our net project cost ($400,000) by adding one year of

the productivity benefi t ($100,000) to the total project

investment (−$500,000).

Now we can enter these numbers into our break-even

formula:

Break-Even Number of Units = $400,000/$300

We’ll break even when we sell 1,334 units (rounding up

from 1,333.33 because we can’t sell one-third of a unit).

Payback Period

Payback period, one of the simplest ways of calculating

ROI that accounts for time, tells you how long it will take

to earn back the money invested.

66

H6722.indb 66

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Calculate ROI

You can create a basic payback spreadsheet that lists

the total costs and benefi ts and spreads them over time,

either by month or year (usually the latter—see fi g-

ures 10-4 and 10-5 for examples). You’ll determine pe-

riod totals by summing each month’s or year’s numbers—

these refl ect the monthly or annual cash fl ow. And then

you’ll fi gure out the cumulative cash fl ow by adding pe-

riod totals.

Typically, you’ll start off with a negative cash fl ow

because you’re spending on the project but you haven’t

yet reaped the benefi ts. Eventually, benefi ts should off-

set costs. The payback point occurs when the cumulative

cash fl ow changes from negative to positive—that’s when

the cumulative benefi ts exceed the cumulative costs.

You can start your timing for payback either after you

complete the project, when benefi ts kick in (as in fi g-

ure 10-4, which shows what’s known as Type 0), or when

the project work begins, to capture the time and money

invested throughout (as in fi gure 10-5, which shows

Type 1). Neither approach is better or worse. Just make

sure you’re following your company’s standard or you agree

with stakeholders ahead of time on which method to use.

In our Type 0 example (fi gure 10-4), when the project

is done, we start off $500,000 in the hole. Then, in Year 1,

we gain $400,000 in benefi t—so we’re still $100,000 in

the negative, but we’re making our way out. The project

goes positive in Year 2, so we know the payback period

will be one full year plus some fraction of the second year.

To fi gure that out, take the last year of negative cumula-

tive cash fl ow (Year 1) and using the absolute value of that

67

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H6722.indb 69

4/13/15 8:12 AM

Crunch the Numbers

year’s cumulative total, divide by the following year’s an-

nual cash fl ow.

In this case, it’s $100,000 divided by $400,000, or .25

(note that we drop the negative of the fi rst fi gure—we’re

using the absolute value). It will take us 1.25 years to re-

coup our investment.

Now take a look at our Type 1 example (fi gure 10–5).

By the end of Year 1, we’ll have racked up most of our

project costs ($400,000), with no benefi ts to show for

them yet. In Year 2, we’ll spend another $100,000 in the

fi rst three months to fi nish the project, but that’s offset

by productivity savings and new sales in the fi nal nine

months, so we’ll be $200,000 in the hole at year-end. In

Year 3, we’ll get the full $400,000 of benefi t.

To fi gure out our payback period in Type 1, we take

the last year that our cumulative cash fl ow was still

negative (Year 2) and again using the absolute value of

that year’s cumulative cash fl ow, divide by the following

year’s annual cash fl ow (in this case, $200,000 divided

by $400,000). So it will be 2.5 years before we recoup

our investment.

With each type of calculation, you get completely dif-

ferent numbers. Companies often use Type 0 to analyze

smaller projects with uncertain time frames. For larger

projects that tie up a lot of money, companies prefer

Type 1 because they want to know when they’re going

to get the investment back. But to use Type 1, you need

to have a good sense of how long the project will take—

otherwise, your calculations will be way off.

One downside of the payback period method: It doesn’t

show what happens after you earn the money back. Let’s

70

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Calculate ROI

say you’ll recoup the investment in a new product in two

years, and after that you expect exponential sales growth.

With this technique, your stakeholders wouldn’t know

the difference between your product and a similar one

for which sales start to decay after two years. If your com-

pany uses the payback calculation as its standard but you

expect benefi ts to increase or decrease signifi cantly after

the payback point, you should calculate net present value

as well.

Net Present Value (NPV)

Net present value (NPV) shows today’s value of a long-

term investment by discounting future cash fl ows, so you

can see what the impact of your 10-year project would be

in today’s dollars. This is my preferred method for calcu-

lating ROI—I believe it gives the most complete view of

a project’s value. Both NPV and the next technique, IRR,

rely on the principle of the time value of money, which

states that the buying power of money today is greater

than the buying power of the same amount of money in

the future.

If the NPV is negative, the project is not a good one.

It will ultimately drain cash from the business, and you

shouldn’t even bring it to the table. If it’s positive, you can

make a solid case for the project. The larger the positive

number, the greater the benefi t.

NPV is particularly useful in comparing the intrinsic

value of two mutually exclusive projects. Your stakehold-

ers can look at the NPV of your project and a completely

different one and make a fair comparison.

Here’s the calculation:

71

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Crunch the Numbers

Year n Total Cash Flow

Net Present Value = ∑

(1

+ Discount Rate)n

Where “n” is the year whose cash fl ow is being discounted.

This is the sum of the present value of cash fl ows

(positive and negative) for each year associated with the

investment, discounted so that it’s expressed in today’s

dollars.

Luckily, you don’t have to do this by hand. Excel does

it for you when you enter the stream of costs and benefi ts

over a set time period.

As you can see, the example in fi gure 10-6 has a high

NPV compared with the level of investment (even $1

in the positive is considered good). We’d have a strong

chance of getting that project approved, as long as it’s

aligned with business objectives and not up against proj-

ects with a higher value.

Assuming your project costs will only be accurate to

plus or minus 25%, don’t recommend an option with

an NPV that’s less than 25% of the project cost. Other-

wise, stakeholders might worry that once the project gets

started, the true NPV will be closer to $0.

One note about the formula: The “NPV” function

in Excel starts discounting the fi rst year inside the for-

mula. However, any costs or benefi ts in the current year

shouldn’t be discounted—they’re already in today’s dol-

lars. So you’ll need to remove the value for the current

year from the Excel NPV formula and manually add that

to your total NPV for the remaining years.

72

H6722.indb 72

4/13/15 8:12 AM

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H6722.indb 73

4/13/15 8:12 AM

Crunch the Numbers

CHOOSING A DISCOUNT RATE FOR NPV

To calculate NPV, you need to include a discount rate in

your formula. This is tied to the current cost of money. It

will change from year to year, depending on the health

of the company, the health of the economy, and your

stakeholders’ risk tolerance. In today’s economy, most

companies are using 5% to 10%. In a good economy,

they’ll use 10% to 15%. Someone in fi nance can prob-

ably tell you what rate to use, or it will already be fi lled

in on your company’s template. If this isn’t the case, or

if you’re an entrepreneur, you can use your company’s

interest rate or the prime rate (whichever is higher)

plus 5%.

Internal Rate of Return (IRR)

Internal rate of return (IRR) shows a project’s invest-

ment value. It essentially tells you what rate of return you

would get if you invested the same amount of money in a

CD that performed as well as your project.

If the IRR is small, you shouldn’t do the project—there

are better ways to spend your money. If it’s large, you

have a good shot at approval (as with NPV, the greater

the rate, the greater the benefi t). Finance experts often

use this technique to determine whether it’s worth bor-

rowing money for a project. Bankers will want to know

the return rate on the money they lend, to make sure

your company can pay back the interest and principal.

Entrepreneurs, take note: Investors often want to un-

derstand the IRR in the same way that bankers do. The

74

H6722.indb 74

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Calculate ROI

rate of return indicates what they can expect to receive

from their investment when they cash out.

Here’s the calculation:

0 = ∑ Year n Total Cash Flow

(1 + Rate of Return)n

Where “n” is the year whose cash fl ow is being discounted.

Again, thank goodness for software.

Many people run IRR when they run NPV since both

use the same numbers, and it’s just another formula in

the spreadsheet. The example in fi gure 10-7 shows an

IRR of 72.4%—a great result. You’re not likely to get that

much of a return on other types of investments.

What to Do with Negative

or Low Numbers

When your calculations show a negative NPV or a very

low IRR, for example, you need to reevaluate the case

you’re trying to make. If the project was your idea, go

back and check your assumptions and numbers carefully.

Unless you fi nd errors, it may be time to pull the plug on

your case. Stakeholders usually won’t approve a project

that doesn’t return value to the company (occasional ex-

ceptions apply—more on this later).

By contrast, if you were assigned the business case,

your benefi ciaries may insist that the project is necessary

even if the numbers don’t support it. In a situation like

that, go ahead and present the case with the bad ROI—

but provide stakeholders with other viable options. Sup-

pose your sales team decides that the company needs a

certain new product to compete in the low-price market,

and you’re tapped to develop the case. After running the

75

H6722.indb 75

4/13/15 8:12 AM

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H6722.indb 76

4/13/15 8:12 AM

Calculate ROI

numbers, you get a negative NPV. Perhaps the competi-

tor has patent protection or a strong hold on the market

that you don’t think you can crack. Present the case, but

also suggest another way to address the sales team’s con-

cerns. Maybe your company should take out features to

bring down the product’s price, for instance, or go to that

market with a different type of offering.

In some cases, such as compliance projects, you can ex-

pect a negative return because you’ll get no new revenue

or productivity (although staying in business is obviously

a benefi t). Say you have to meet new air-emissions stan-

dards or upgrade your fi nancial reporting system to com-

ply with a new regulation. The numbers won’t be good,

but you may have to do the project anyway. The medical

device folks I worked with needed to get rid of certain

product materials that the FDA had deemed potentially

hazardous. They’d been making products with some of

these materials for 20 years, so they had to go through

major redesigns. They’re now in the process of removing

more than 20 materials that are no longer compliant—a

major investment that doesn’t show any increase in sales

or productivity. But they have to do it to sell compliant

products.

When evaluating projects, stakeholders look for the

best numbers: the lowest break-even point, the quickest

payback period, or the highest NPV or IRR. But that’s

not all they base their decision on. Remember that you

are telling a story to convince them your project is worth-

while—the ROI number is just one data point.

77

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H6722.indb 78

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Chapter 11

Account for Risks

After you’ve run the ROI, you still have some number

crunching left to do. None of the ROI techniques will ac-

count for risks, so it’s a separate step to identify them and

consider what impact they’ll have on your fi nal fi gures.

Gut-Check the Numbers

If you’re looking at a low ROI and thinking, “Wait—I

thought this was going to be a great project,” question

your numbers. Could you have underestimated revenue?

Or overestimated transition costs? Or entered a wrong

fi gure? (As you’d imagine, leaving off a zero makes a big

difference.) Scrutinize each line item and ask whether

the number—or the timing—could be off.

You may need to go back to your subject-matter ex-

perts and ask them to double-check their estimates. For

example: “Can we get 20% more in sales? What would

you need to deliver that?” Or: “Can we train call center

employees on the new system sooner?”

79

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Crunch the Numbers

You’ve based every line of your spreadsheet on assump-

tions—which you’ve carefully documented. But what if

they’re wrong and things don’t go as you planned? What

if the worst (or best) case occurs?

Analyzing risk helps you see what will happen to the

project’s value if your assumptions are off. Most people

focus on threats. (What if the vendor doesn’t deliver on

time? What if the cost of raw materials goes through the

roof?) But you need to consider opportunities as well.

(How can you get a higher NPV or a faster payback? Can

you complete the project sooner? Can you put your best

team on it?) Go through your estimates line by line and

consider what factors might alter them. For instance:

• Personnel: What if the person running this project

leaves the company? What if you don’t get all the

resources you requested? Or conversely: What if

you’re able to pull together an all-star team or hire

an outside expert?

• Technology: What if you encounter bugs when

testing? What if employees struggle to adapt to

the new system? What if you run into intellectual-

property issues with the technology?

• Quality/Performance: What if the product

doesn’t perform as you expect it to—for better or

worse? What if quality suffers because of a tight

schedule?

• Scope: What if the project needs to include more

(or fewer) geographic regions, employees, or cus-

tomers? What if the stakeholders change require-

80

H6722.indb 80

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Account for Risks

ments? What if a regulatory change creates a new

opportunity?

• Schedule: What if you aren’t able to hit the launch

date? What would allow you to get ahead of sched-

ule? Does anything outside the project need to

happen before you can complete it?

Think about what concerns your stakeholders will

have. Where will they see risks? Does your CTO always

assume projects take twice as long as planned? Does your

CMO distrust any project that relies on vendors? Identify

the questions they might ask so you can account for them

in your calculations and, ultimately, in your presentation.

Once you’ve listed the risks, identify your biggest threats

and opportunities (see fi gure 11-1): Which are most likely

to happen, and which would have the greatest impact on

FIGURE 11-1

Assessing threats and opportunities

When reviewing project risks with decision makers, draw their attention to

the threats and opportunities with the highest probability and impact—those

that would fall in the upper-right corner of this matrix.

High

obabilityPr

Low Low

High

Impact

81

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Crunch the Numbers

your project? Those are the ones to highlight when you

present to your stakeholders.

Test the Numbers

In light of the risks you’ve identifi ed, rerun your calcu-

lations. What happens if your project costs run over by

20%? How does that change the NPV? What if the prod-

uct launches six months later than you expected (see fi g-

ure 11-2)?

Play with the numbers. Plug in your best guess for each

line, then the best- and worst-case fi gures, and see what

happens to your spreadsheets. You’re likely to choose a

middle number for most lines, but you may have reason

to be conservative or aggressive on certain items. If one

of your critical stakeholders is risk-averse, for example,

you may go with lower numbers on your benefi t stream.

If you face severe penalties for completing the project

late, you may want to build some buffer into your tim-

ing assumptions. Conservative assumptions lower your

risk; aggressive assumptions increase it. Often you can

mention contingencies and say that the team will develop

plans for them when it’s time to put together a detailed

project plan—but sometimes stakeholders want to know

up front what types of contingencies you’re considering.

Ultimately, each number you settle on is a judgment

call. Check with your subject-matter experts, your man-

ager, and your project champion for feedback on major

costs and benefi ts. Do your fi nal fi gures seem reasonable

to them?

As you tinker, you’ll start to see what it would take to

get the best ROI fi gure. But you need to present realistic

82

H6722.indb 82

4/13/15 8:12 AM

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H6722.indb 83

4/13/15 8:12 AM

Crunch the Numbers

risks, not just ones that make the case look good. Change

an assumption if you have reason to believe it is wrong.

Use wisdom and experience to make these decisions—

don’t pick arbitrary numbers to pad or manipulate your

ROI. And make your risk assessment consistent with the

numbers you have selected.

All of your information gathering, pressure-testing,

and documenting sources will pay off as you assemble

your winning presentation.

84

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Section 5

Present Your

Case and Move

Forward

H6722.indb 85

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H6722.indb 86

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Chapter 12

Prepare Your

Document

To get buy-in from your stakeholders, you must tell your

“story” in a compelling way so they’ll easily grasp the

need, the solution (or solutions) you’re proposing, and

the benefi ts to the company. Typically, your audience

will care most about ROI and how your project relates

to strategic objectives—so keep those issues front and

center. (See appendix B: How to Give a Killer Presenta-

tion by TED curator Chris Anderson for further advice

on crafting your story, fi nding the right mix of data and

narrative, and sharpening your delivery.) Here are some

things to keep in mind as you prepare your presentation.

Your Document Should

Speak for Itself

In some companies, especially large ones, you may not

get to present your case. You might simply submit a

Word document, Excel fi le, or slide deck and wait for the

87

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Present Your Case and Move Forward

committee’s decision. Or you might have just a few min-

utes in front of stakeholders who are considering 40 proj-

ects in a half-day meeting. Increasingly, companies decide

on projects over conference calls or videoconferences to

include stakeholders in different locations—so you can’t

even assume that your audience will pay undivided atten-

tion to your pitch. People may multitask, catching up on

e-mail or getting other work done during the call.

For all those reasons, your document needs to stand

on its own. Stakeholders must be able to comprehend the

case without your voice-over. So don’t distribute a deck

as thick as a dictionary. Keep your slides crisp, clear, and

to the point. But share enough data to show that you’ve

done your homework.

Follow your company’s process for presenting cases.

Some fi rms want you to fi ll out forms or templates. That

helps them review a large number of projects in one

batch and make fair comparisons. Sure, the process may

feel bureaucratic, but if you want your case approved, you

have to go through the system.

Look at Past Presentations

Whether or not there’s a standard format, fi nd out what

other presenters in your company have done. This will

give you ideas for your own presentation—and a sense

of what stakeholders might expect from you. Reach out

to several coworkers who have recently gotten approval

for business cases and ask to see their documents. Look

for similarities. Did your colleagues use PowerPoint or

Word? How did they describe the business need? What

kind of data did they include in backup slides? How did

88

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Prepare Your Document

they render the data? Also get your hands on a few re-

jected cases, if you can, to see what their project leads

did differently. Did they fail to address risk? Were their

documents too long or not substantial enough?

Make a Structured Argument

If your company doesn’t provide templates and you can’t

track down helpful examples, you may need to start

from scratch. In that case, I recommend the following

structure:

1.

Opening slide: Begin with an executive summary

that briefl y states the problem or opportunity, de-

scribes how you plan to address it, and explains

why your solution is sensible and its expected

ROI.

2. Business need: Describe why you’re proposing

the project. Explicitly connect the need to the

company’s strategic goals, and share data points

that convey its urgency.

3. Project overview: Give a high-level descrip-

tion of the solution. If it’s a new product, lay

out the general concept and explain how it fi ts

with existing offerings. For a productivity initia-

tive (such as an IT project), specify which busi-

ness processes it will affect and which costs it

will eliminate or reduce. For a facility project,

describe its magnitude, and name the facility sys-

tems it will touch (power, HVAC, water, sewage,

and so on).

89

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Present Your Case and Move Forward

TELLING YOUR STORY IN THE EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Your stakeholders are extremely busy, with competing

demands on their time and attention. So think of your

executive summary as a hook: It’s a concise, compel-

ling story about the business need, your solution, and

the impact your solution will have.

Here’s an example:

Executive Summary

We’re facing tough new competitors in our Southeast

Asian market—and losing a lot of sales as a result [the

need]. So I’m proposing a new product that will help

us regain market share [the solution] . When we get it

out through our distribution channels, we expect to see

sales double within the fi rst six weeks—and we’ll recoup

our investment in just under three years [the impact] .

Of course, if you’re presenting with slides, you’ll

want to break up the text, perhaps like this:

Executive Summary

Problem:

• Tough new competitors in Southeast Asia

• Loss of market share

Solution:

• New product

Benefi ts:

• Double sales in fi rst six weeks

• Recoup investment in fewer than three years

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Prepare Your Document

Clearly state the result of your ROI calculation: Above,

it’s the payback period of fewer than three years. But

use whatever fi gure your stakeholders care most about:

The NPV is $20,000. Or: We’ll get $30 million in new

sales. Or: We’ll cut $1.5 million in costs.

Display the ROI prominently—it’s the satisfying end-

ing to your story. Then, in the rest of your document

or presentation, demonstrate with data and other sup-

porting material why your audience should have confi -

dence in that story.

4. Schedule and team: Provide a high-level project

plan. Include basic milestones, major deliv-

erables, and core team members (by name or

function).

5. Impact: Describe the benefi ts. Say which depart-

ments the project will affect, and how. Quantify

the impact as precisely as you can.

6. Risk: Explain what might not go as planned—

whether positive or negative. Include major risks

associated both with doing the project and with

not doing it.

7. Financials: Summarize the costs and benefi ts,

and restate the ROI.

8. Closing slide: Restate the need, why your solu-

tion is a good one, and, once again, the ROI.

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How long you make each section and how much sup-

porting material you include will depend on how much

time you have to present and your stakeholders’ appetite

for data. Again, use other successful cases as guides.

Your opening slide is crucial. It grabs reviewers’ atten-

tion and sets the stage for everything to come (see side-

bar “Telling Your Story in the Executive Summary”). And

remember, you may not get beyond the opening slide if

your review committee is busy or distracted. In fact, one

time when I presented a business case at GE, previous

presenters had gone long, and members of the review

committee needed to wrap things up—they had to catch

a plane. So I got fi ve minutes to make my case (I was

scheduled for 30 minutes). I did the presentation using

only my executive summary slide and told reviewers they

could fi nd details in the rest of the deck. My project was

one of the few they approved that day.

Document in hand, it’s time to gather more feedback

before you go in front of the offi cial review committee.

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Chapter 13

Shop Your Case

Around

You’ve drafted your case, but you’re not ready to present

it just yet. First, you need to get buy-in from your stake-

holders—because you’ll want allies in the room when

tough questions come up.

Two people in particular are critical: the head of the

department that will lead the work and the head of the

department that will benefi t most from it. With these

individuals on board, you’ll defuse many concerns and

greatly increase your chances of getting that green light.

Work with Your Champion

Go back to the champion you identifi ed early in the case-

development process. Ideally, you’ve asked for her input

and kept her updated all along. But if not, defi nitely con-

nect before the presentation.

If your champion believes in the value of your project,

she’ll defend it against naysayers or play a critical role in

a tie-breaker situation.

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Meet with Other Stakeholders

in Advance

It’s also helpful to give individuals on the review com-

mittee a preview and ask about their concerns. Get feed-

back from as many stakeholders as you can—you want to

know where they stand, especially on new projects that

are out of the ordinary for your company.

If you can’t schedule meetings with them, you might

be able to reach out through your subject-matter experts.

Enlist a team member who is close to someone on the

review board to go over the highlights with her. He might

mention that he helped develop the business case and

thinks it’s a good project. He can then share her reaction

with you and relay any questions or concerns she had.

Most questions you’ll get at this point shouldn’t come

as a surprise if you’ve thoroughly prepared your case.

(You know the CMO will ask about brand implications

of the new product feature. Or that the CFO doesn’t want

to approve any projects over $5 million this year.) But

on occasion, you’ll discover concerns that haven’t come

up yet. It’s always better to bring them to the surface be-

fore review time. Big surprises during the review meet-

ing may sink your case and will almost certainly delay

a decision. Of course, you’ll need to adjust your content

in response to what you hear. You may drop some fea-

tures, for example, or tweak a few numbers. Let your

stakeholders know you’ve made changes to allay their

concerns so they can give the project their support at the

review meeting.

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Shop Your Case Around

Anticipate New Concerns

Other issues may arise when the committee is in the

room, comparing your case with others.

Anticipate those concerns by getting inside the heads

of your stakeholders: What do they care most about?

What are their hot buttons? Ask around to fi nd out what

happened in similar review meetings. What unexpected

questions came up? What issues became sticking points?

And think carefully about what’s been going on in the

business over the past week or month. Recent events can

play a big role in review meetings. At a pharmaceutical

company I worked with, the focus one year was growth,

so people knew to explain how their proposed projects

would grow sales, increase market share, or expand the

customer base. But two days before the review com-

mittee met, one of the company’s products got recalled.

Quality hadn’t been a major concern a few days earlier—

and now, suddenly, it was the top priority. Stakeholders

grilled project leads on quality assurance, testing, valida-

tion, and clinical trial strategy. They rejected cases that

weren’t airtight on quality, no matter how much growth

those projects promised.

Size Up the Competition

Find out what other business cases are being considered.

Talk with your boss to see if he knows of any initiatives

up for approval. Ask your subject-matter experts (par-

ticularly those in fi nance) if they’ve been consulted about

other projects. You probably won’t change your numbers

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Present Your Case and Move Forward

or general approach to beat out another project, but you

might change what you emphasize in your presentation.

If six other projects focus on market differentiation, as

yours does, you may want to play up other benefi ts as well

to distinguish your case.

Now that you’ve had a chance to socialize your case

and gather and incorporate feedback, you’re almost

ready to go before the board. Time to quickly double-

check that you have everything you need to deliver a

great presentation.

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Chapter 14

Are You Ready

to Present?

Congratulations—you’ve developed your business case,

and now you’re ready to present it. Or are you?

Use this checklist to confi rm that you’ve covered all

your bases. If you answer “no” to any of these questions,

go back and rework your case.

Did You . . .

□ Lay out a clear business need and frame it as

a compelling story that will grab stakeholders’

attention?

□ Align your objectives with strategic priorities,

directly connecting your case to one of the com-

pany’s stated goals?

□ Identify each stakeholder’s objectives and address

as many as possible?

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Present Your Case and Move Forward

□ Meet with your benefi ciaries and accurately cap-

ture their needs?

□ Identify a champion on the review committee who

will support your project in front of the group?

□ Consult subject-matter experts in different de-

partments or functions to estimate costs and ben-

efi ts, assess risks, calculate ROI, and get buy-in?

□ Factor in transition costs?

□ Document the assumptions behind each esti-

mate—and note the source of each number?

□ Double-check the numbers?

□ Consider best- and worst-case scenarios?

□ Consider several viable solutions along with the

one you’re proposing?

□ Meet with stakeholders to preview your case and

ask for input?

□ Gain support from the department that will do

the work?

□ Gain support from the department that will ben-

efi t most from the project?

□ Create a clear, concise document or slide deck?

□ Gather enough information to move immediately

into project planning if you get the green light?

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Chapter 15

Make Your Pitch

On decision day, some stakeholders focus entirely on

ROI. Others want to know who you worked with to

gather information. Still others scrutinize the risk plan.

If one person will decide your project’s fate, play to her

preferences. But when presenting to multiple stakehold-

ers, include something for everyone.

Start with the Need

If stakeholders don’t believe you’ve identifi ed a real busi-

ness need that’s connected to the company’s strategic

priorities, they’ll stop listening—or even ask you to stop

talking. So describe that need at the outset, and remem-

ber to tell it like a story to engage your audience.

Be Brief

Review each slide, providing only pertinent informa-

tion on major points. Your busy stakeholders will ap-

preciate a concise, direct presentation. And don’t just

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read your slides to them—you’ll bore them to tears. As

communication expert Nancy Duarte suggests in the

HBR Guide to Persuasive Presentations, you can use the

“notes” fi eld in PowerPoint to spell out everything you

want to say without projecting teleprompter text on the

wall for everyone to see.

While reviewing the proposed solution, you might ex-

plain other alternatives you considered and then ruled

out. Or when talking about risks, you might share the

perspective of an important team member. But touch on

these things quickly, then move on. Stay away from tan-

gents. Many managers make the mistake of going deep

into the risks, trying to head off doubts. It’s better to

mention them at a high level. For instance: We thought

about product introduction, technology transfer, and

supplier issues and have included ways to mitigate these

issues. Stakeholders will request more detail if they want

it—and then you can speak directly to their concerns.

Personalize the Presentation

Involve your benefi ciaries and stakeholders in the discus-

sion. If you’re talking about the need, turn to the stake-

holder who’s feeling the most pain and invite her to com-

ment on it. You might say something like, “Because this

product line hasn’t lived up to expectations, sales won’t

make its numbers”—and then ask the sales VP for quick

observations on what’s happening in the fi eld. You might

also have fi nance chime in with how much gross profi t

the company is short. This will enroll people in building

and supporting your case in front of their peers.

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Make Your Pitch

Shine a Light on Your Experts

In some instances, stakeholders will be more (or less)

inclined to approve your project depending on which

subject-matter experts you worked with. You’ve chosen

your team members carefully for their smarts and their

perspective—now it’s time to showcase their contribu-

tions. For example: Bob gave me these forecasts and feels

confi dent we’ll hit the numbers. If Bob is a superstar in

his department, his endorsement will mean something.

People who trust him will trust you.

Handle the Naysayers

Even the strongest business cases will get some push-

back. Here are the most common types of resistance and

tips on how to address them:

1.

“This is too good to be true.” Stakeholders may

not believe that the benefi ts, sales, or savings

you’ve identifi ed are realistic. This happens in

organizations where people frequently overprom-

ise. If you think you’ll face this roadblock, take

extra care in backing up your numbers. For each

benefi t stream, identify a subject-matter expert

who can credibly speak to the fi gure you’ve listed.

If you’re promising 25% sales growth, have your

sales expert say how the team arrived at that

estimate.

2.

“But you haven’t thought of . . .” Many stake-

holders like to point out gaps: You haven’t even

talked about how this will play out in Europe,

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Present Your Case and Move Forward

and that’s a critical region for us. They may also

bring up risks that you didn’t address in your pre-

sentation. Give honest, direct responses. If you

haven’t considered the issue, say so. Offer to look

into it and get back to the committee. If you don’t

believe Europe is critical, you can ask the group

whether they’d like you to do more research. If

others agree with you, they may step in to say so.

3.

“We’ll never get this done.” Another common

concern is timing. Stakeholders may think you’re

being overly optimistic about when the project

will be completed. Here, again, it’s essential to

have the support of those who will do the work.

You can reply, “I’ve shared these timelines with

IT and manufacturing, and they agree the work

will take no longer than six months.”

If people try to shoot down your case with objections

like these, don’t get defensive. Instead, “invite the lions

in,” as leadership and change expert John Kotter advises

in his book Buy-In. When someone voices skepticism,

thank him for his comment and engage him directly. Say

something like, “Yes, I hear your concern. Let’s go back to

that issue and discuss how we’re planning to address it.”

If you give a thorough, straightforward answer, chances

are that your skeptic will back off—or people in the room

will come to your defense. Invite your champion to com-

ment if she can credibly address the concern.

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Make Your Pitch

End on a Positive Note

It’s always a good sign when stakeholders say, “Tell me

more.” You know you’re on the right track if they ask who

would be assigned to the project or when you could get

started. Whenever possible, close your presentation on a

high note. Reiterate a positive NPV or highlight the sig-

nifi cant need your project fi lls. No matter what questions

arose during the discussion, you want stakeholders to re-

member the good your initiative will bring the company.

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Chapter 16

Get to a Decision

After you’ve submitted or presented your case, you prob-

ably won’t have to sit around biting your nails for long.

Usually, decision makers respond either in the meeting

itself or within a few days. You’ll get one of four answers.

“No, the Project Isn’t a Priority.”

When cases get rejected, it’s typically because they’re not

in sync with strategic goals, the ROI isn’t high enough, or

the organization simply doesn’t have the funds or people

to get it done. While this can be disappointing, keep in

mind that “no” is sometimes the best answer for the busi-

ness (as discussed in the introduction). Depending on

the reason for the rejection, you may be able to build a

stronger case later. If the project wasn’t aligned closely

enough with the company’s objectives, you could propose

it again when the goals evolve. Or you might collect in-

formation over the next year or so showing that the bene-

fi ts are even stronger than you initially thought. Whether

you plan to let your proposal go or revisit it in the next

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Present Your Case and Move Forward

approval cycle, thank your champion, your subject-

matter experts, and everyone else who helped you build

the case. You might need their help later on.

“We Can’t Make a Decision Yet.”

Stakeholders who agree about the business need but

don’t think you’ve found the right solution may send

you back to the drawing board. (This can also happen

if you haven’t told the story clearly or provided enough

data.) Find out from your stakeholders what the stick-

ing points are. Does the project take too long? Does it

cost too much? Is a strategic element missing? In light

of these concerns, revisit other alternatives that you and

your team considered. Sometimes stakeholders already

have another project in mind and your proposal just

doesn’t align with it. Have someone who’s close to your

stakeholders—whether it’s your champion or a trusted

subject-matter expert—work with them to understand

more about the project they do want. Evaluate that idea

and include it as one of the alternatives you come back

with.

“We Can Approve Only Part

of the Project.”

Typically, there are two reasons why a review board will

give you the go-ahead on just a portion of your case: pro-

cess or issues.

On long projects or those with many risks, decision

makers may hedge their bets and give you an OK to go

up to some key milestone. Leaders at companies with

this type of tollgate process intentionally fund only early

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Get to a Decision

stages so they can see if the assumptions are valid. The

“yes” has a caveat—you’ll need to reapply for funding for

the next year or possibly even the next phase. This partial

approval can be a blessing, since it gives you the opportu-

nity to refi ne the solution as you move forward.

Sometimes review boards grant partial approval due

to funding issues. It’s not uncommon for a review com-

mittee to say that it can’t greenlight your $2 million proj-

ect, but it can give you part of that money. When that

happens, you’re expected to come back and explain what

you can do with fewer resources.

The complexities surrounding partial approvals are

discussed in chapter 17, “What Next?”

“Yes, Let’s Move Ahead.”

If you get a “yes,” stakeholders will immediately start ask-

ing questions about resources: Who will lead the project

(if not you)? How soon can you have a project plan in

place? When can you pull together a team and get started

on the work? Be ready with answers—you don’t want to

lose momentum after securing your hard-won approval.

A note of caution, though: “Yes” doesn’t always mean

yes. Confl ict-averse leaders sometimes approve a project

but then never allocate resources for it. If they withhold

the dollars, people, and time it will take to do the work,

they might as well have said no. You may be able to pre-

vent this from happening by following up immediately

with a detailed request for resources. Ask for the names

of individuals assigned to the project. If managers won’t

give you names, they probably aren’t assigning resources.

In that case, ask your champion to talk with them and

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fi nd out the reasons for the holdup—then address what-

ever concerns you can in the detailed project plan.

You can make a quick decision more likely by putting

a time frame on your project. Explain that a window of

opportunity will close if you don’t move forward soon—

perhaps it’s an opening in the market because a competi-

tor’s product just fl opped or the chance to upgrade an IT

system during a facility upgrade. Don’t be the boy who

cried wolf, though. The urgency needs to be legitimate.

Assuming it is, bringing this up in your presentation can

help you get closure sooner rather than later.

No matter what the outcome of the decision, don’t rest

on your laurels. You can take steps forward whether your

project was rejected or approved.

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Chapter 17

What Next?

Whether you’re popping a bottle of bubbly, walking de-

spondently back to your desk, or pulling your hair out be-

cause you have to create and present a case all over again,

remember that you’ve done your job—you’ve helped the

company make a wise decision.

But the work is not over. If you got a yes, it’s time to be-

gin implementing your project. And even if the decision

makers said no, there are steps you can and should take.

If You Heard “No, the Project

Isn’t a Priority.”

First off, don’t despair if your project isn’t approved. Al-

though it may feel like failure to hear “no,” keep in mind

that you’ve contributed to the success of the company by

helping it identify that the project wasn’t a worthwhile

investment. The real purpose of a business case is not to

necessarily win approval for your proposal, but to pro-

vide enough information so the committee can make an

informed decision.

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But don’t just accept the “no” by saying thank you and

walking away. Instead, always ask “Why?” If you know

precisely why the decision makers rejected the case, then

you’ll be able to follow up appropriately. Ask this question

in the meeting or in a subsequent email. Don’t pick a fi ght

or try to use the response to change the outcome, but seek

to understand their reasoning. You might say, “Thanks for

letting me know about your decision. I’d love any feed-

back you have on why the project wasn’t approved.”

The reviewers may have passed on your project for any

of several reasons. For example, they might tell you that

the project doesn’t align with the company strategy. In

this case, let it die. Any project that doesn’t fi t with the

company’s imperatives should be rejected.

If they thought the project wasn’t viable—that the

approach you described wouldn’t yield the results you

promised—you can go back and address their concerns.

Do you need more data to show why the approach works?

Can you create a prototype that will assuage their wor-

ries? You might ask for a small amount of funding to run

a quick pilot to prove the project can succeed.

If the higher-ups say no because there aren’t enough

resources, hold on to your case in the event that resources

become available. That actually happened to me at GE.

Partway through the year, corporate decided to give

our business unit some additional funding to invest in

strategic product development projects. Some market

dynamics had changed, making our market segments

more attractive than others. The product manager and

I quickly dusted off several business cases that had not

been funded due to lack of resources during the previous

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What Next?

year’s strategic planning process. In less than a month,

projects were approved and teams were getting down to

work. Staying in close touch with your project champion

so that she can keep you apprised of any changes will

help you prepare for such opportunities.

When you ask for the reasons behind the rejection,

you have to hope you’ll get an honest answer. In most

cases, you will. It may not be direct—the CEO may not

say to you, “We didn’t think you could pull off the proj-

ect”—but you’ll likely be able to infer the reasons. Try to

read between the lines. If you’re still not sure, ask the

project champion for her insight. Whatever response you

get, don’t argue with the logic or take it personally. That’s

not a way to win allies—or support—for this or future

projects.

If You Heard “We Can’t Make

a Decision Yet.”

Having your proposal tabled is better than an outright

“no,” but it’s still disappointing. In most cases, you’ll just

have to trust that you built and presented a solid case

and then wait and see what happens. Any additional

measures you take will depend on the decision makers’

rationale. Typically, it’s for one of three reasons.

The case hasn’t made the fi rst cut.

It could be that your case didn’t make it into the “defi -

nite yes” pile. If the decision committee is reviewing mul-

tiple cases at once, it may divide proposals into yes, no,

and maybe piles. At least you know your project is in the

mix. There’s no need to lobby for your case at this point,

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Present Your Case and Move Forward

especially if your project champion is representing you to

the decision makers.

The decision makers just

haven’t decided yet.

Sometimes you’ve got a management team full of dith-

erers who are unable or unwilling to make decisions on

the spot. They might want to hold off until they’re be-

hind closed doors to make the fi nal call. Of course, your

project is more likely to be approved if your proposal

clarifi es what’s in it for each of the decision makers.

While you wait, though, you may want to periodically

work through your champion to be sure your idea is still

in front of people and to check if there’s anyone else’s ear

you should get.

Sometimes, the committee hasn’t decided because

they’re waiting for the outcome of another decision that

has farther-reaching impact. This happened to me once,

when a project I’d proposed was hanging in the bal-

ance while we waited to fi nd out if an acquisition that

was in the works would be successful. If the acquisition

went through, our project wouldn’t be needed. If the deal

didn’t go through, our project would help fi ll a larger

product development void.

The strategy is on hold.

The third reason for tabling projects is that the strategy

it supports is on hold or being reconceived. Use your

internal network to stay abreast of where the strategy

is going. Once you have that information, you’ll have

to tweak your case to refl ect new goals, assumptions,

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What Next?

or constraints. If your proposal focuses on U.S. cus-

tomers, and your company has decided to focus more

on European customers, for example, explore whether

your idea could be carried out in the United Kingdom.

Since you’ve done a good job preparing your business

case, you’ll easily be able to tweak it. This can be a great

opportunity. Typically, senior leaders will want to do a

project right away that aligns with the new imperatives

to demonstrate support for the new strategy. With your

carefully prepared plan, you could be fi rst in line with

a project that fi ts. Don’t shoehorn your project into the

new strategy, of course. If your case doesn’t support it,

don’t make it.

Sometimes waiting for a fi nal decision takes time—

days, weeks, and even months. And the reason for the

project—the pain point it’s designed to address—likely

isn’t going away. There may not be a whole lot you can

do, but look for opportunities to alleviate the pain a bit.

If your case proposed a new system that would allow cus-

tomer service representatives to respond more quickly to

complaints, look for workarounds. Collaborate with the

person heading up that department to see if he has any

short-term ideas that will make things better.

While you’re waiting, it’s not a bad idea to fi nd a simple,

easy way to collect more information about the problem

and its magnitude. Document what’s happening so that

when you have the opportunity to go back to the decision

makers or to your project champion you can say, “This

problem hasn’t gone away; in fact, it’s gotten worse.” This

will make your case stronger. If the problem is getting

severe, you’ll provide people with new information and

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change the story of your case: The boat’s not just taking

on water—it’s sinking.

If You Heard “We Can Approve Only

Part of the Project.”

What if your case has three parts but the decision mak-

ers only approve one? Or they sign off on the fi rst phase

of your project but ask you to come back in six months

or more to request the additional funding? This hap-

pens more often than people think. It’s frustrating, but

it doesn’t have to demotivate you and your team. Instead,

focus on the fact that the committee liked your idea and

want to move it forward.

Chapter 16, “Get to a Decision,” discussed how ap-

proval of just one part of your project is particularly com-

mon at companies that use a tollgate process. If this is

the situation you’re in, ask the review committee what

risks or questions need to be resolved by the time you

reach the fi rst milestone. Then proceed as though your

project will be fully funded. That will give you the best

sense of whether the project will be a success. At the

end of the funding period, be prepared to go back and

explain which of your assumptions held true and which

didn’t. For instance, you might have determined that the

product cost can be 10% less than planned or that the

launch date will need to change by three months. Since

you documented the source of all your original numbers

and assumptions, it will be easy to check with those in-

dividuals for updates. Prepare to come back and present

the business case again with updated information on the

benefi ts or costs based on what you learned so far.

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What Next?

The most common scenario, however—and the most

challenging—is when the decision makers come back

and say, “OK, we know you wanted $2 million, but what

can you do for $1 million?” When asked if you can do the

project or reach the same goals with less time or money,

never say yes right away. Instead, tell the reviewers that

you’ll get back to them—very quickly—so you have time

to redo the business case with those new constraints.

When you commit to doing just part of the project,

resist the temptation to overpromise. First, don’t do an

across-the-board cut. If the committee wants you to sub-

mit a proposal for a project that costs 30% less, don’t try

to do everything the original case did with 30% less re-

sources. It’s better to restructure the project completely.

Ask yourself and your team: What is a viable business

opportunity that we can fund with this much money to

achieve a portion of the goal? Can we drop the European

sales arm? Can we cut down the rollout time? Second,

don’t agree to a cut in resources without a cut in the

benefi ts. This creates an almost impossible situation. If

your original case promised $800,000 in revenue from

the new product but now you’re asked to cut the bud-

get by 20%, chances are you won’t be able to realize the

full $800,000. You’ll need to bring that number down

as well. After all, if you don’t have a full tank of gas, you

can’t go as far.

You’ll be prepared for this conversation if you ran

several scenarios in your spreadsheet (as described in

chapter 7, “Consider Alternatives”). It’s great if you have

those numbers in your back pocket, but if not, go back

and rerun your numbers. Fortunately, this is pretty easy

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Present Your Case and Move Forward

because you’ve structured your spreadsheet well. Simply

create another tab and change the relevant fi gures.

It’s rare that a company can afford to fund every good

idea. Instead of harping on the cuts you needed to make,

focus your team on creating and implementing a new

plan that will help pave the way for the rest of your proj-

ect to be approved later on.

If You Heard “Yes, Let’s Move Ahead.”

First, celebrate. Open a bottle of champagne or take your

team out for dinner. Then get to work. After all, the deci-

sion makers just opened a door and you’ve got to walk

through it. You’ll need to fi gure out how you transition

from getting your project approved to implementing it.

Don’t wait for the check. In most companies, a for-

mal funding mechanism doesn’t exist—nobody actually

writes you a check. More likely you’re told: OK, you’ve

got the resources and people you need, get started.

After your celebration, the fi rst step is to set up your

project management process. Some companies have a

methodology for this. If that’s the case at your organiza-

tion, reach out to your contact in the project planning

or management group. This person can set you up with

the appropriate tools, templates, checklists, or software

to start the project.

If there isn’t a formal process at your company, get

the project moving yourself. Start by gathering your

team and working on a project charter. Review the high-

level implementation plan you outlined in the case and

make sure it’s still actionable. And keep the business case

handy. It was the initial road map for the project and

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What Next?

it will be helpful to refer to as you structure the work.

See the HBR Guide to Project Management for more in-

formation on tools and templates to help you manage a

project effectively.

You’ve succeeded in getting the organization behind

your solution to an important business need, but this is

just the beginning. Think of it as building a house: You’ve

chosen the architect and the builders, you’ve agreed on a

blueprint, the bank has approved the funding, and you

have a rough schedule and budget—but you haven’t bro-

ken ground yet. Now comes the real work.

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Appendix A

Avoid Common

Mistakes

When creating and pitching business cases, even experi-

enced managers fall into these traps—but you can avoid

them.

Mistake #1: Failing to Address the

Company’s Goals

Too many managers assume that the benefi ts of their

proposed projects speak for themselves or are implicit in

a strong ROI.

This often happens with IT initiatives. Take, for ex-

ample, a project lead who wants to put in a new system

because it’s the industry standard and he fears the fi rm

will fall behind the competition without it. He’ll prob-

ably build a case demonstrating how the system will pay

off in a few years. But how will it support the company’s

strategy? That’s what senior leaders really want to know,

because that’s what they’re on the hook to deliver. They

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Appendix A

won’t approve anything that doesn’t help them on that

front. So when you’re creating your case, show that you’re

meeting a clear business need that aligns with their goals.

Mistake #2: Ignoring Other

Perspectives

Ideas rarely touch just one department—yet the people

pitching them often fail to consider how they’ll affect

others in the organization.

Proposing a new product? It will be produced, mar-

keted, and sold by colleagues in other functions, so you’ll

need their buy-in. Suppose the product makes three

other lines obsolete: It’s important to anticipate the im-

pact on manufacturing processes, marketing, and sales

projections. You can’t just say, “Oh, and these three lines

will go away.”

Involve a cross-functional team when developing your

case. Bring in experts whose departments will be affected

by your idea. Share drafts of estimated costs and bene-

fi ts with them, and ask if you’ve accurately gauged the

impact on their teams. And think about your idea from

their perspective: How will it benefi t them? What will

they need to contribute? What new work will they have

to do? Include this information in your case—the review

committee will expect it.

Mistake #3: Neglecting Transition

Costs and Timing

Most managers realize they need to identify all the costs

and benefi ts of a new system, facility, product, and so

on—but they often don’t factor in what it takes to make

the switch.

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Avoid Common Mistakes

Senior leaders need a handle on transition costs and

how long it will take to fully realize benefi ts before they

can decide whether to invest. Even if you can’t give them

exact fi gures, include rough estimates based on similar

projects. This shows stakeholders that you’re looking at

the big picture and helps you gain support across the

organization (see Mistake #2). If your colleagues in the

quality department know you’re asking for money to up-

grade their systems and provide training for your prod-

uct launch, for example, they’re more likely to endorse

your case. Amounts can be adjusted later on, when you

have a better sense of the project’s scope.

Mistake #4: Glossing Over Risks

The easiest way to poke holes in a business case is to

ask, “What if?” I see executive teams do this all the time:

“What if our competitors beat us to market? What hap-

pens to your projections then?” Or: “What if our key part-

ner bails? What will it take to get a backup plan in place?”

Unless you’ve adequately addressed things that could go

wrong, your reviewers will surely ask about them.

It’s not enough to throw in a brief nod to risks at the

end of the presentation—or to say you’ll examine them

in the project’s next phase. Executives want to see that

you’ve thought through contingencies from the begin-

ning. Of course, you can’t account for every imaginable

scenario, and stakeholders shouldn’t expect you to. But

look at the most likely possibilities, especially in light of

recent business experience. For example, if the project

will require you to outsource work, consider what hap-

pens if you can’t fi nd a qualifi ed vendor or if your chosen

vendor doesn’t deliver on time.

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Appendix A

It can be diffi cult to spot risks on your own, so appoint

someone on your team to help you. As you’re building

your case, ask that person to challenge assumptions, to

think like your stakeholders and raise the concerns they’ll

have. Or ask each member of your team to come up with

fi ve “What if?” questions. Encourage them to channel the

approval committee when identifying risks. Does your

CFO worry that the housing market will crash again? Is

your division head preoccupied with a particular com-

petitor? Those are the sorts of issues that will come up

during review.

Mistake #5: Cluttering the

Presentation with Jargon

Use plain language in your presentation so you won’t

bore and alienate your audience. The technical folks in

the room will know what you mean by “backward com-

patibility” and “dual-layer technology,” but others may

not. People from several different functions will probably

weigh in on your case, and if they can’t understand it,

you’re in trouble. To avoid this problem, ask colleagues

in other functions to review drafts, noting any opaque

terms you should defi ne or cut altogether.

In many fi rms, leaders review business cases on paper

or on conference calls, so you may not get the chance to

present face-to-face. Even if you do, you probably won’t

have time to give lengthy explanations—and your audi-

ence won’t have the patience to listen to them. A clear,

concise document always wins the day.

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Appendix B

How to Give a

Killer Presentation

by Chris Anderson

Editor’s note: Though giving a TED Talk to a large,

diverse audience is different from presenting a busi-

ness case to the handful of stakeholders who will as-

sess your project’s value, this article provides helpful

tips on crafting and delivering your message.

A little more than a year ago, on a trip to Nairobi, Kenya,

some colleagues and I met a 12-year-old Masai boy

named Richard Turere, who told us a fascinating story. His

family raises livestock on the edge of a vast national park,

and one of the biggest challenges is protecting the ani-

mals from lions—especially at night. Richard had noticed

Reprinted from Harvard Business Review, June 2013 (product

#R1306K)

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19-H6722-APB-RA.indd 124

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How to Give a Killer Presentation

that placing lamps in a fi eld didn’t deter lion attacks, but

when he walked the fi eld with a torch, the lions stayed

away. From a young age, he’d been interested in elec -

tronics, teaching himself by, for example, taking apart

his parents’ radio. He used that experience to devise a

system of lights that would turn on and off in sequence—

using solar panels, a car battery, and a motorcycle indica-

tor box—and thereby create a sense of movement that he

hoped would scare off the lions. He installed the lights,

and the lions stopped attacking. Soon villages elsewhere

in Kenya began installing Richard’s “lion lights.”

The story was inspiring and worthy of the broader au-

dience that our TED conference could offer, but on the

surface, Richard seemed an unlikely candidate to give a

TED Talk. He was painfully shy. His English was halting.

When he tried to describe his invention, the sentences

tumbled out incoherently. And frankly, it was hard to

imagine a preteenager standing on a stage in front of

1,400 people accustomed to hearing from polished

speakers such as Bill Gates, Sir Ken Robinson, and Jill

Bolte Taylor.

But Richard’s story was so compelling that we invited

him to speak. In the months before the 2013 conference,

we worked with him to frame his story—to fi nd the right

place to begin, and to develop a succinct and logical arc

of events. On the back of his invention, Richard had won

a scholarship to one of Kenya’s best schools, and there

he had the chance to practice the talk several times in

front of a live audience. It was critical that he build his

confi dence to the point where his personality could shine

through. When he fi nally gave his talk at TED, in Long

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Appendix B

Beach, you could tell he was nervous, but that only made

him more engaging—people were hanging on his every

word. The confi dence was there, and every time Richard

smiled, the audience melted. When he fi nished, the re-

sponse was instantaneous: a sustained standing ovation.

Since the fi rst TED conference, 30 years ago, speakers

have run the gamut from political fi gures, musicians,

and TV personalities who are completely at ease before

a crowd to lesser-known academics, scientists, and writ-

ers—some of whom feel deeply uncomfortable giving

presentations. Over the years, we’ve sought to develop a

process for helping inexperienced presenters to frame,

practice, and deliver talks that people enjoy watching.

It typically begins six to nine months before the event,

and involves cycles of devising (and revising) a script,

repeated rehearsals, and plenty of fi ne-tuning. We’re

continually tweaking our approach—because the art of

public speaking is evolving in real time—but judging by

public response, our basic regimen works well: Since we

began putting TED Talks online, in 2006, they’ve been

viewed more than one billion times.

On the basis of this experience, I’m convinced that giv-

ing a good talk is highly coachable. In a matter of hours,

a speaker’s content and delivery can be transformed from

muddled to mesmerizing. And while my team’s experi-

ence has focused on TED’s 18-minutes-or-shorter for-

mat, the lessons we’ve learned are surely useful to other

presenters—whether it’s a CEO doing an IPO road show,

a brand manager unveiling a new product, or a start-up

pitching to VCs.

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How to Give a Killer Presentation

Frame Your Story

There’s no way you can give a good talk unless you have

something worth talking about. Conceptualizing and

framing what you want to say is the most vital part of

preparation.

We all know that humans are wired to listen to stories,

and metaphors abound for the narrative structures that

work best to engage people. When I think about compel-

ling presentations, I think about taking an audience on

a journey. A successful talk is a little miracle—people see

the world differently afterward.

If you frame the talk as a journey, the biggest decisions

are fi guring out where to start and where to end. To fi nd

the right place to start, consider what people in the audi-

ence already know about your subject—and how much

they care about it. If you assume they have more knowl-

edge or interest than they do, or if you start using jargon

or get too technical, you’ll lose them. The most engaging

speakers do a superb job of very quickly introducing the

topic, explaining why they care so deeply about it, and

convincing the audience members that they should, too.

The biggest problem I see in fi rst drafts of presenta-

tions is that they try to cover too much ground. You can’t

summarize an entire career in a single talk. If you try to

cram in everything you know, you won’t have time to in-

clude key details, and your talk will disappear into ab-

stract language that may make sense if your listeners are

familiar with the subject matter but will be completely

opaque if they’re new to it. You need specifi c examples

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Appendix B

to fl esh out your ideas. So limit the scope of your talk to

that which can be explained, and brought to life with ex-

amples, in the available time. Much of the early feedback

we give aims to correct the impulse to sweep too broadly.

Instead, go deeper. Give more detail. Don’t tell us about

your entire fi eld of study—tell us about your unique

contribution.

Of course, it can be just as damaging to overexplain

or painstakingly draw out the implications of a talk.

And there the remedy is different: Remember that the

people in the audience are intelligent. Let them fi gure

some things out for themselves. Let them draw their own

conclusions.

Many of the best talks have a narrative structure that

loosely follows a detective story. The speaker starts out by

presenting a problem and then describes the search for

a solution. There’s an “aha” moment, and the audience’s

perspective shifts in a meaningful way.

If a talk fails, it’s almost always because the speaker

didn’t frame it correctly, misjudged the audience’s level

of interest, or neglected to tell a story. Even if the topic

is important, random pontifi cation without narrative is

always deeply unsatisfying. There’s no progression, and

you don’t feel that you’re learning.

I was at an energy conference recently where two peo-

ple—a city mayor and a former governor—gave back-

to-back talks. The mayor’s talk was essentially a list of

impressive projects his city had undertaken. It came off

as boasting, like a report card or an advertisement for

his reelection. It quickly got boring. When the governor

spoke, she didn’t list achievements; instead, she shared

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How to Give a Killer Presentation

an idea. Yes, she recounted anecdotes from her time in

offi ce, but the idea was central—and the stories explana-

tory or illustrative (and also funny). It was so much more

interesting. The mayor’s underlying point seemed to

be how great he was, while the governor’s message was

“Here’s a compelling idea that would benefi t us all.”

As a general rule, people are not very interested in

talks about organizations or institutions (unless they’re

members of them). Ideas and stories fascinate us; or-

ganizations bore us—they’re much harder to relate to.

(Businesspeople especially take note: Don’t boast about

your company; rather, tell us about the problem you’re

solving.)

Plan Your Delivery

Once you’ve got the framing down, it’s time to focus on

your delivery. There are three main ways to deliver a talk.

You can read it directly off a script or a teleprompter.

You can develop a set of bullet points that map out what

you’re going to say in each section rather than scripting

the whole thing word for word. Or you can memorize

your talk, which entails rehearsing it to the point where

you internalize every word—verbatim.

My advice: Don’t read it, and don’t use a teleprompter.

It’s usually just too distancing—people will know you’re

reading. And as soon as they sense it, the way they receive

your talk will shift. Suddenly your intimate connection

evaporates, and everything feels a lot more formal. We

generally outlaw reading approaches of any kind at TED,

though we made an exception a few years ago for a man

who insisted on using a monitor. We set up a screen at

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Appendix B

the back of the auditorium, in the hope that the audience

wouldn’t notice it. At fi rst he spoke naturally. But soon he

stiffened up, and you could see this horrible sinking feel-

ing pass through the audience as people realized, “Oh,

no, he’s reading to us!” The words were great, but the talk

got poor ratings.

Obviously, not every presentation is worth that kind

of investment of time. But if you do decide to memorize

your talk, be aware that there’s a predictable arc to the

learning curve. Most people go through what I call the

“valley of awkwardness,” where they haven’t quite memo-

rized the talk. If they give the talk while stuck in that val-

ley, the audience will sense it. Their words will sound re-

cited, or there will be painful moments where they stare

into the middle distance, or cast their eyes upward, as

they struggle to remember their lines. This creates dis-

tance between the speaker and the audience.

Getting past this point is simple, fortunately. It’s just

a matter of rehearsing enough times that the fl ow of

words becomes second nature. Then you can focus on

delivering the talk with meaning and authenticity. Don’t

worry—you’ll get there.

But if you don’t have time to learn a speech thoroughly

and get past that awkward valley, don’t try. Go with bullet

points on note cards. As long as you know what you want

to say for each one, you’ll be fi ne. Focus on remembering

the transitions from one bullet point to the next.

Also pay attention to your tone. Some speakers may

want to come across as authoritative or wise or powerful

or passionate, but it’s usually much better to just sound

conversational. Don’t force it. Don’t orate. Just be you.

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How to Give a Killer Presentation

If a successful talk is a journey, make sure you don’t

start to annoy your travel companions along the way.

Some speakers project too much ego. They sound con-

descending or full of themselves, and the audience shuts

down. Don’t let that happen.

Develop Stage Presence

For inexperienced speakers, the physical act of being

on stage can be the most diffi cult part of giving a pre-

sentation—but people tend to overestimate its impor-

tance. Getting the words, story, and substance right is a

much bigger determinant of success or failure than how

you stand or whether you’re visibly nervous. And when

it comes to stage presence, a little coaching can go a

long way.

The biggest mistake we see in early rehearsals is that

people move their bodies too much. They sway from side

to side, or shift their weight from one leg to the other.

People do this naturally when they’re nervous, but it’s

distracting and makes the speaker seem weak. Simply

getting a person to keep his or her lower body motion-

less can dramatically improve stage presence. There are

some people who are able to walk around a stage during a

presentation, and that’s fi ne if it comes naturally. But the

vast majority are better off standing still and relying on

hand gestures for emphasis.

Perhaps the most important physical act onstage is

making eye contact. Find fi ve or six friendly-looking peo-

ple in different parts of the audience and look them in the

eye as you speak. Think of them as friends you haven’t

seen in a year, whom you’re bringing up to date on your

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Appendix B

work. That eye contact is incredibly powerful, and it will

do more than anything else to help your talk land. Even

if you don’t have time to prepare fully and have to read

from a script, looking up and making eye contact will

make a huge difference.

Another big hurdle for inexperienced speakers is ner-

vousness—both in advance of the talk and while they’re

onstage. People deal with this in different ways. Many

speakers stay out in the audience until the moment they

go on; this can work well, because keeping your mind en-

gaged in the earlier speakers can distract you and limit

nervousness. Amy Cuddy, a Harvard Business School

professor who studies how certain body poses can af-

fect power, utilized one of the more unusual preparation

techniques I’ve seen. She recommends that people spend

time before a talk striding around, standing tall, and

extending their bodies; these poses make you feel more

powerful. It’s what she did before going onstage, and she

delivered a phenomenal talk. But I think the single best

advice is simply to breathe deeply before you go onstage.

It works.

In general, people worry too much about nervousness.

Nerves are not a disaster. The audience expects you to

be nervous. It’s a natural body response that can actu-

ally improve your performance: It gives you energy to

perform and keeps your mind sharp. Just keep breath-

ing, and you’ll be fi ne.

Acknowledging nervousness can also create engage-

ment. Showing your vulnerability, whether through

nerves or tone of voice, is one of the most powerful ways

to win over an audience, provided it is authentic. Susan

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How to Give a Killer Presentation

Cain, who wrote a book about introverts and spoke at

our 2012 conference, was terrifi ed about giving her

talk. You could feel her fragility onstage, and it created

this dynamic where the audience was rooting for her—

everybody wanted to hug her afterward. The fact that we

knew she was fi ghting to keep herself up there made it

beautiful, and it was the most popular talk that year.

Many of our best and most popular TED Talks have

been memorized word for word. If you’re giving an im-

portant talk and you have the time to do this, it’s the best

way to go. But don’t underestimate the work involved.

One of our most memorable speakers was Jill Bolte Tay-

lor, a brain researcher who had suffered a stroke. She

talked about what she learned during the eight years it

took her to recover. After crafting her story and under-

taking many hours of solo practice, she rehearsed her

talk dozens of times in front of an audience to be sure she

had it down.

Plan the Multimedia

With so much technology at our disposal, it may feel

almost mandatory to use, at a minimum, presentation

slides. By now most people have heard the advice about

PowerPoint: Keep it simple; don’t use a slide deck as a

substitute for notes (by, say, listing the bullet points you’ll

discuss—those are best put on note cards); and don’t

repeat out loud words that are on the slide. Not only is

reciting slides a variation of the teleprompter problem—

“Oh, no, she’s reading to us, too!”—but information is

interesting only once, and hearing and seeing the same

words feels repetitive. That advice may seem universal by

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Appendix B

now, but go into any company and you’ll see presenters

violating it every day.

Many of the best TED speakers don’t use slides at all,

and many talks don’t require them. If you have photo-

graphs or illustrations that make the topic come alive,

then yes, show them. If not, consider doing without, at

least for some parts of the presentation. And if you’re

going to use slides, it’s worth exploring alternatives to

Power Point. For instance, TED has invested in the com-

pany Prezi, which makes presentation software that of-

fers a camera’s-eye view of a two-dimensional landscape.

Instead of a fl at sequence of images, you can move around

the landscape and zoom in to it if need be. Used properly,

such techniques can dramatically boost the visual punch

of a talk and enhance its meaning.

Artists, architects, photographers, and designers have

the best opportunity to use visuals. Slides can help frame

and pace a talk and help speakers avoid getting lost in

jargon or overly intellectual language. (Art can be hard

to talk about—better to experience it visually.) I’ve seen

great presentations in which the artist or designer put

slides on an automatic timer so that the image changed

every 15 seconds. I’ve also seen presenters give a talk ac-

companied by video, speaking along to it. That can help

sustain momentum. The industrial designer Ross Love-

grove’s highly visual TED Talk, for instance, used this

technique to bring the audience along on a remarkable

creative journey.

Another approach creative types might consider is to

build silence into their talks, and just let the work speak

for itself. The kinetic sculptor Reuben Margolin used

that approach to powerful effect. The idea is not to think

134

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How to Give a Killer Presentation

“I’m giving a talk.” Instead, think “I want to give this au-

dience a powerful experience of my work.” The single

worst thing artists and architects can do is to retreat into

abstract or conceptual language.

Video has obvious uses for many speakers. In a TED

Talk about the intelligence of crows, for instance, the sci-

entist showed a clip of a crow bending a hook to fi sh a

piece of food out of a tube—essentially creating a tool.

It illustrated his point far better than anything he could

have said.

Used well, video can be very effective, but there are

common mistakes that should be avoided. A clip needs

to be short—if it’s more than 60 seconds, you risk los-

ing people. Don’t use videos—particularly corporate

ones—that sound self-promotional or like infomercials;

people are conditioned to tune those out. Anything with

a soundtrack can be dangerously off-putting. And what-

ever you do, don’t show a clip of yourself being inter-

viewed on, say, CNN. I’ve seen speakers do this, and it’s

a really bad idea—no one wants to go along with you on

your ego trip. The people in your audience are already

listening to you live; why would they want to simultane-

ously watch your talking-head clip on a screen?

Putting It Together

We start helping speakers prepare their talks six months

(or more) in advance so that they’ll have plenty of time

to practice. We want people’s talks to be in fi nal form at

least a month before the event. The more practice they

can do in the fi nal weeks, the better off they’ll be. Ideally,

they’ll practice the talk on their own and in front of an

audience.

135

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Appendix B

The tricky part about rehearsing a presentation in

front of other people is that they will feel obligated to of-

fer feedback and constructive criticism. Often the feed-

back from different people will vary or directly confl ict.

This can be confusing or even paralyzing, which is why

it’s important to be choosy about the people you use as a

test audience and whom you invite to offer feedback. In

general, the more experience a person has as a presenter,

the better the criticism he or she can offer.

I learned many of these lessons myself in 2011. My

colleague Bruno Giussani, who curates our TEDGlobal

event, pointed out that although I’d worked at TED for

nine years, served as the emcee at our conferences, and

introduced many of the speakers, I’d never actually given

a TED Talk myself. So he invited me to give one, and I

accepted.

It was more stressful than I’d expected. Even though

I spend time helping others frame their stories, fram-

ing my own in a way that felt compelling was diffi cult. I

decided to memorize my presentation, which was about

how web video powers global innovation, and that was

really hard: Even though I was putting in a lot of hours

and getting sound advice from my colleagues, I defi nitely

hit a point where I didn’t quite have it down and began to

doubt I ever would. I really thought I might bomb. I was

nervous right up until the moment I took the stage. But

it ended up going fi ne. It’s defi nitely not one of the all-

time great TED Talks, but it got a positive reaction—and

I survived the stress of going through it.

Ultimately, I learned fi rsthand what our speakers have

been discovering for three decades: Presentations rise

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How to Give a Killer Presentation

or fall on the quality of the idea, the narrative, and the

passion of the speaker. It’s about substance, not speak-

ing style or multimedia pyrotechnics. It’s fairly easy to

“coach out” the problems in a talk, but there’s no way to

“coach in” the basic story—the presenter has to have the

raw material. If you have something to say, you can build

a great talk. But if the central theme isn’t there, you’re

better off not speaking. Decline the invitation. Go back

to work and wait until you have a compelling idea that’s

really worth sharing.

The single most important thing to remember is that

there is no one good way to do a talk. The most memo-

rable talks offer something fresh, something no one has

seen before. The worst ones are those that feel formulaic.

So do not on any account try to emulate every piece of

advice I’ve offered here. Take the bulk of it on board, sure.

But make the talk your own. You know what’s distinctive

about you and your idea. Play to your strengths and give

a talk that is truly authentic to you.

Chris Anderson is the curator of TED.

137

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H6722.indb 138

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Glossary

Benefi ciaries. Those inside or outside the organization

who stand to gain from the project or initiative you are

proposing.

Break-Even Point. Method of calculating ROI that deter-

mines how many units you need to sell in order to pay for

the project.

Capital Expenditures. Money spent to acquire or develop

an asset—which then depreciates, or decreases in value,

over its life.

Internal Rate of Return (IRR). Method of calculating ROI

that shows a project’s investment value—essentially, the

percentage of return you would get by investing the same

amount of money in a CD that performed equally well.

Net Present Value (NPV). Method of calculating ROI

that expresses the value of a long-term investment in to-

day’s dollars.

139

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Glossary

Operating Costs. Amount of money it will take to main-

tain the result of the project you are proposing. Includes

ongoing expenses and overhead such as personnel, offi ce

space, and maintenance and licensing fees.

Payback Period. Method of calculating ROI that shows

how many months or years it will take to earn back the

money invested.

Productivity Savings. Costs you avoid through greater

effi ciency. Achieved either by changing the product cost

baseline (with less-expensive materials, for example) or

by cutting overhead costs (ongoing expenses that stem

from how you run the business).

Project Expenditures. Onetime costs of doing the up-

front project work, such as development, testing, train-

ing and deployment, and travel.

Proof of Concept. A small pilot project that tests your

hypothesis about the business need for a project before

you develop and present a solution.

Return on Investment (ROI). An estimate of the project’s

value. Four ROI measures calculated by using a stream of

costs and benefi ts over time: break-even point, payback

period, net present value, and internal rate of return.

Revenue. Money brought into the organization through

sales.

140

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Glossary

Stakeholders. People with the authority to approve or

reject your business case.

Sunk Costs. Money your organization has already spent

on a project and will never get back.

Tollgate Process. Multiphased project approval, allow-

ing stakeholders to decide one phase at a time whether

to commit resources.

141

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H6722.indb 142

4/13/15 8:12 AM

Index

alternative options and solutions,

business case

37–41, 100

accounting for risks in, 79–84

assumptions, checking, 80, 84.

basics of making, 3–6

See also risks

competition and, 95–96

audience

decisions about, 105–117

decision makers, 8, 13–15, 17,

document preparation for,

20–21, 105–117

87–92

objectives of, 13, 17–21

evaluation of, 7–10, 77

See also stakeholders

fi nancials for, 49–77

getting feedback on, 93–96

goal for, xi–xii

benchmarking, 59. See also un-

high-level project plan for,

certainty, managing

43–46

benefi ciaries

making pitch for, 99–103

consulting with, 26–27, 44–45

mistakes to avoid, 119–122

cross-functional teams and,

need for clarifi cation in, 25–32

33, 34

presentation of ( see

defi nition of, 139

presentations)

identifying, 4

reasons for developing, xii–xiii

involving in discussion, 100

rejection of, 105–106, 109–111

See also stakeholders; cross-

structure of, 89, 91–92

functional teams

templates for, 88

benefi ts

business need

estimating, 5, 49–60

clarifying, 25–32

intangible, 55

developing solutions for,

productivity savings, 53, 54–55

29–31, 37–41

revenue, 53–54

documentation and, 31–32

tracking, 58–59

identifying, 3–5

types of, 53–55

presenting, 89

brainstorming options (or alter-

starting with, in presentation,

natives), 37–41

99

break-even analysis, 63, 64–66,

business priorities, 17–21

139. See also ROI

business strategy, 19

H6722.indb 143

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Index

capital expenditures, 51–52, 139.

depreciation, 51–52. See also

See also costs

costs

cash fl ows, 50–51, 67, 70

discount rate, for NPV, 72, 73, 74

champion, project, 14–15, 20,

documentation, 31–32, 113

40, 93, 112–114. See also

document preparation, 87–92.

stakeholders

See also presentations

closing slide of business case, 91.

dominant departments, 14. See

See also presentations

also stakeholders

company goals, 17–21, 119–120.

do-nothing option, 39–40

See also mistakes to avoid

competition, of other cases,

95–96

evaluation process, 7–10

cost of goods sold (COGS),

executive summary, 89, 90–91,

53–54. See also costs

92

costs

experts

capital expenditures, 51–52

cross-functional, 20–21, 120

estimating, 5, 49–60

external, 35. See also cross-

intangible, 55

functional teams

operating, 52, 54–55

fi nancial information from,

personnel, 54

55–58

project, 51–52

highlighting, in presentations,

sunk, 60

101

tracking, 58–59

subject-matter, 4, 33, 40–41,

transition, 43–44, 52–53,

44, 79, 94, 101

120–121

types of, 51–53

cross-functional teams, 20–21,

facility investments, xii–xiii,

33–36, 120

25, 89

customers, 34–35. See also cross-

fi nance department, 57–58

functional teams

fi nance representative, 34. See

also cross-functional teams

fi nancials

decision makers

accounting for risks, 79–84

gathering information about,

estimating costs and benefi ts,

20–21

49–60

identifying, 13–15

forecasts, 56–57

interests of, 17–21

gut-checking, 79–82

lack of decision by, 106,

managing uncertainty about,

111–114

59–60

reaching out to, 8

negative or low numbers, 75,

responses by, 105–117

77

decisions, 105–117

presenting, 91

approvals, 107–108, 116–117

return on investment (ROI), 5,

lack of, 106, 111–114

52, 61–77. See also break-

negative, 105–106, 109–111

even analysis; payback

partial approvals, 106–107,

period; net present value;

114–116

internal rate of return

delivery, planning, for presenta-

sources of information for,

tions, 129–131

55–58

144

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Index

testing the numbers, 82–84

objections, handling, 101–102.

tracking, 58–59

See also presentations

forecasts, 56–57

opening slide of business

case, 89, 92. See also

presentations

goals, company, 17–21, 119–120

operating costs, 52, 54–55, 140.

See also costs

opportunity assessment, 81. See

high-level plan, 5, 43–46

also risks

income statement, 50. See also

partial approvals, 106–107,

costs

114–116

information

payback period, 63, 64, 66–71,

from benefi ciaries, 26–27

140. See also ROI

on fi nancials, 55–58

personal network, 15, 56

gathering, about stakeholders,

personnel costs, 54. See also costs

20–21

personnel factors, and assump-

intangible benefi ts, 55. See also

tions, 80. See also risks

costs

perspectives, ignoring other, 120.

intangible costs, 55. See also costs

See also mistakes to avoid

internal rate of return (IRR), 63,

pilot projects, 30–31, 110

64, 74–75, 139. See also ROI

PowerPoint tips, 133–134. See

investors

also presentations

IRR and, 74–75

presentations

understanding objectives

brevity in, 99–100

of, 18

checklist for, 97–98

clarity in, 5

data and narrative mix in, 124

mistakes to avoid, 119–122

delivery, planning for, 129–131

money, time value of, 71. See also

document preparation for,

net present value

87–92

multimedia presentations, 133–

ending on positive note in,

135. See also presentations

103

framing story in, 127–129

handling naysayers during,

narrative structure, for presenta-

101–102

tions, 124, 127–129. See also

jargon in, 122. See also mis-

presentations

takes to avoid

naysayers, 101–102. See also

looking at past in, 88–89

presentations

making pitch in, 99–103

negative returns, 75, 77. See also

multimedia for, 133–135

ROI

personalizing, 100

nervousness, during presenta-

preparation for, 135–137

tions, 132–133. See also

stage presence and, 131–133

presentations

starting with the business

net present value (NPV), 63, 64,

need in, 99

71–74, 75, 77, 139. See also

structure for, 89, 91–92

ROI

tips for, 123–137

145

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Index

problems

identifi ed by stakeholders,

analyzing, 27–29

101–102

developing solutions for,

presenting, 91, 100

29–31

ROI. See return on investment

identifying, 25–27

(ROI)

process-fl ow analysis, 27–29

productivity savings, 53, 54–55,

140

schedule, 81, 91

project champion, 14–15, 20,

scope, and assumptions, 80–81.

40, 93, 112–114. See also

See also risks

stakeholders

slides, 133–134. See also

project costs, 51–52. See also

presentations

costs

solutions

project overview, in business

alternative, 37–41, 100

case, 89

do-nothing option, 39–40

projects

narrowing down possible,

approval of, 107–108, 116–117

40–41

funding of, 114–115

spreadsheets

high-level view of, 5, 43–46

break-even, 62

implementing, 116–117

factoring risks into, 83

lack of approval for, 105–106,

internal rate of return (IRR),

109–111

75, 76

lack of decision about, 106,

net present value (NPV),

111–114

72–73

next steps for, 109–117

payback period, 67–70

partial approval of, 106–107,

return on investment (ROI),

114–116

61–62

plan, 43–46

tracking fi nancials in, 58–59

stage presence, 131–133. See also

presentations

quality, and assumptions, 80, 95.

stakeholders

See also risks

buy-in from, 93–96

concerns of, 81–82, 95

decisions by, 105–108

rejections, 105–106, 109–111

defi nition of, 141

return on investment (ROI), 5,

gathering information about,

52, 61–77, 79, 99, 140. See

20–21

also break-even analysis;

identifying, 4

payback period; net pres-

involving in discussion, 100

ent value; internal rate of

meeting with, 94

return

perspectives of, 120

revenue, 53–54, 140

presentations to, 87–88

review committee, 15, 94–95,

resistance from, 101–102

107. See also stakeholders

solution development and,

risks

29–30

accounting for, 79–84

support from, 35, 57

glossing over, 121–122. See also

track record of, 21

mistakes to avoid

start-ups, pitching, xi–xii

146

H6722.indb 146

4/13/15 8:12 AM

Index

stealth projects, 30–31

and presentations, 133–135. See

story framing, 3–6, 127–129. See

also presentations

also presentations

templates, for business case. See

strategic goals, 17–21

business case, structure of

structured argument, 89,

threat assessment, 81. See also

91–92

risks

subject-matter experts, 4, 33,

time value of money, 71. See also

40–41, 44, 79, 94, 101

net present value

sunk costs, 60, 141. See also

timing, 102, 120–121. See also

costs

mistakes to avoid

tollgate process, 9, 106–107, 114,

141

teams

transition costs, 43–44, 52–53,

consulting, 44–45

120–121. See also costs;

cross-functional, 20–21,

mistakes to avoid

33–36, 120

technology

and assumptions, 80. See also

uncertainty, managing, 59–60.

risks

See also costs

147

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H6722.indb 148

4/13/15 8:12 AM

About the Authors

Raymond Sheen, PMP, is the president of Product & Pro-

cess Innovation, a consulting fi rm specializing in proj-

ect management, product development, and process

improvement. He teaches seminars on developing and

reviewing business cases at Worcester Polytechnic In-

stitute, Clemson University, and the China Institute for

Innovation. Sheen has managed projects for both gov-

ernment and private organizations. He prepared and

reviewed hundreds of business cases when he worked at

General Electric—both as a member of corporate staff

and as an engineering executive within GE’s Industrial

Systems business. He holds engineering degrees from

the U.S. Air Force Academy and the Massachusetts In-

stitute of Technology. He and his family reside in South

Carolina.

Amy Gallo is a contributing editor at Harvard Business

Review and is the author of the forthcoming HBR Guide

to Managing Confl ict at Work. Her writing appears regu-

larly on HBR.org. Before working as a writer and editor,

she was a consultant at Katzenbach Partners, a strategy

and organization consulting fi rm based in New York.

149

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Notes

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Notes

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Notes

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Notes

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Notes

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Notes

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Notes

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Notes

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10/15/13 9:19 AM

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HBR Guide to

Better Business

Writing

H6082.indb i

11/6/12 1:21 PM

H6082.indb ii

11/6/12 1:21 PM

Harvard Business Review Guides

Arm yourself with the advice you need to succeed on the

job, from the most trusted brand in business. Packed

with how-to essentials from leading experts, the HBR

Guides provide smart answers to your most pressing

work challenges.

The titles include:

HBR Guide to Better Business Writing

HBR Guide to Finance Basics for Managers

HBR Guide to Getting the Mentoring You Need

HBR Guide to Getting the Right Job

HBR Guide to Getting the Right Work Done

HBR Guide to Giving Effective Feedback

HBR Guide to Making Every Meeting Matter

HBR Guide to Managing Stress

HBR Guide to Managing Up and Across

HBR Guide to Persuasive Presentations

HBR Guide to Project Management

H6082.indb iii

11/6/12 1:21 PM

Other Books Written or Edited

by Bryan A. Garner

Garner’s Modern American Usage

Garner’s Dictionary of Legal Usage

Black’s Law Dictionary (all editions since 1996)

Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts, with

Justice Antonin Scalia

Making Your Case: The Art of Persuading Judges,

with Justice Antonin Scalia

Garner on Language and Writing

The Redbook: A Manual on Legal Style

The Elements of Legal Style

The Chicago Manual of Style, Ch. 5, “Grammar and

Usage” (15th & 16th eds.)

The Winning Brief

Legal Writing in Plain English

Ethical Communications for Lawyers

Securities Disclosure in Plain English

Guidelines for Drafting and Editing Court Rules

The Oxford Dictionary of American Usage and Style

A Handbook of Basic Legal Terms

A Handbook of Business Law Terms

A Handbook of Criminal Law Terms

A Handbook of Family Law Terms

H6082.indb iv

11/6/12 1:21 PM

HBR Guide to

Better

Business

Writing

Bryan A. Garner

HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW PRESS

Boston, Massachusetts

H6082.indb v

11/6/12 1:21 PM

Copyright 2012 Bryan A. Garner

All rights reserved

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in, or intro-

duced into a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any

means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or other-

wise), without the prior permission of the publisher. Requests for

permission should be directed to permissions@hbsp.harvard.edu or

mailed to Permissions, Harvard Business School Publishing, 60 Har-

vard Way, Boston, Massachusetts 02163.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Garner, Bryan A.

HBR guide to better business writing / Bryan A. Garner.

p. cm. — (Harvard business review guides)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-4221-8403-5 (alk. paper)

1. Commercial

correspondence. 2. Business

writing. I. Harvard

business review. II. Title. III. Title: Guide to better business

writing.

HF5718.3.G37

2013

808.06′665—dc23

2012032809

Find more digital content or join the discussion on www.hbr.org.

The web addresses referenced and linked in this book were live and

correct at the time of the book’s publication but may be subject to change.

H6082.indb vi

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To J.P. Allen,

my lifelong friend

H6082.indb vii

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H6082.indb viii

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What You’ll Learn

Do you freeze up when writing memos to senior execu-

tives? Do your reports meander and raise more questions

than they answer for key stakeholders? Do your e-mails

to colleagues disappear into a void, never to be answered

or acted on? Do your proposals fail to win clients?

You’ll lose a lot of time, money, and infl uence if you

struggle with business writing. And it’s a common prob-

lem. Many of us fumble for the right words and tone in

our documents, even if we’re articulate when we speak.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. Writing clearly and

persuasively requires neither magic nor luck. It’s a skill—

and this guide will give you the confi dence and the tools

you need to cultivate it.

You’ll get better at:

• Pushing past writer’s block.

• Motivating readers to act.

• Organizing your ideas.

• Expressing your main points clearly.

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What You’ll Learn

• Cutting to the chase.

• Holding readers’ attention.

• Writing concise, useful summaries.

• Trimming the fat from your documents.

• Striking the right tone.

• Avoiding grammar gaffes.

x

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Contents

Introduction: Why you need to write well

xv

Section 1: Delivering the Goods

Quickly and Clearly

1. Know why you’re writing

3

2. Understand your readers

7

3. Divide the writing process into four

separate tasks

13

4. Before writing in earnest, jot down your

three main points—in complete sentences

19

5. Write in full—rapidly

27

6. Improve what you’ve written

31

7. Use graphics to illustrate and clarify

37

Section 2: Developing Your Skills

8. Be relentlessly clear

43

9. Learn to summarize—accurately

49

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Contents

10. Waste no words

53

11. Be plain-spoken: Avoid bizspeak

57

12. Use chronology when giving a factual

account 67

13. Be a stickler for continuity

71

14. Learn the basics of correct grammar

77

15. Get feedback on your drafts from colleagues

85

Section 3: Avoiding the Quirks That

Turn Readers Off

16. Don’t anesthetize your readers

91

17. Watch your tone

99

Section 4: Common Forms of

Business Writing

18.

E-mails

105

19.

Business

Letters

111

20. Memos and Reports

125

21.

Performance

Appraisals

133

Appendixes

A. A Checklist for the Four Stages of Writing

139

B. A Dozen Grammatical Rules You Absolutely

Need to Know

143

xii

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Contents

C. A Dozen Punctuation Rules You Absolutely

Need to Know

153

D. Common Usage Gaff es

163

E. Some Dos and Don’ts of Business-Writing

Etiquette 165

F. A Primer of Good Usage

169

Desk References

199

Index 203

Acknowledgments 209

About the Author

211

xiii

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Introduction:

Why you need to

write well

You may think you shouldn’t fuss about your writing—

that good enough is good enough. But that mind-set is

costly. Supervisors, colleagues, employees, clients, part-

ners, and anyone else you communicate with will form

an opinion of you from your writing. If it’s artless and

sloppy, they may assume your thinking is the same. And

if you fail to convince them that they should care about

your message, they won’t care. They may even decide

you’re not worth doing business with. The stakes are that

high.

Some people say it’s not a big deal. They may feel com-

placent. Or they may think it’s ideas that matter—not

writing. But good writing gets ideas noticed. It gets them

realized. So don’t be misled: Writing well is a big deal.

Those who write poorly create barriers between them-

selves and their readers; those who write well connect

with readers, open their minds, and achieve goals.

xv

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Introduction

All it takes is a few words to make a strong impres-

sion, good or bad. Let’s look at four brief passages—two

effective and two not. See whether you can tell which

ones are which:

1. In the business climate as it exists at this point

in time, one might be justifi ed in having the

expectation that the recruitment and reten-

tion of new employees would be facilitated by

the economic woes of the current job market.

However, a number of entrepreneurial busi-

ness people have discovered that it is no small

accomplishment to add to their staff people

who will contribute to their bottom line in a

positive, benefi cial way.

2. In this job market, you might think that hiring

productive new employees would be easy. But

many entrepreneurs still struggle to fi nd good

people.

3. The idea of compensating a celebrity who

routinely uses social media to the tune of

thousands of dollars to promote one’s com-

pany by tweeting about it may strike one as

unorthodox, to say the least. But the number of

businesses appropriating and expending funds

for such activities year on year as a means of

promotion is very much on the rise.

4. Paying a celebrity thousands of dollars to pro-

mote your company in 140-character tweets

xvi

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Introduction

may seem crazy. But more and more businesses

are doing just that.

Can you tell the difference? Of course you can. The fi rst

and third examples are verbose and redundant. The syn-

tax is convoluted and occasionally derails. The second

and fourth examples are easy to understand, economical,

and straightforward. They don’t waste the reader’s time.

You already recognize business writing that gets the

job done—and trust me, you can learn to produce it.

Maybe you think writing is a bother. Many people do. But

there are time-tested methods for reducing the worry and

labor. That’s what you’ll fi nd in this book, along with lots

of “before” and “after” examples that show these meth-

ods in action. (They’re adapted from real documents, but

disguised.)

Good writing isn’t an inborn gift. It’s a skill you cul-

tivate, like so many others. Anyone of normal athletic

ability can learn to shoot a basketball or hit a golf ball

reasonably well. Anyone of normal intelligence and coor-

dination can learn to play a musical instrument compe-

tently. And if you’ve read this far, you can learn to write

well—probably very well—with the help of a few guiding

principles.

Think of yourself as a professional writer

If you’re in business, and you’re writing anything to get

results—e-mails, proposals, reports, you name it—then

you’re a professional writer. Broadly speaking, you belong

to the same club as journalists, ad agencies, and book

xvii

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Introduction

authors: Your success may well depend on the writing

you produce and its effect on readers. That’s why what

you produce should be as polished as you can make it.

Here’s an example you may be familiar with. Various

versions of this story exist—it’s sometimes placed in dif-

ferent cities and told with different twists:

A blind man sits in a park with a scrawled sign hang-

ing from his neck saying, “I AM BLIND,” and a tin cup

in front of him. A passing ad writer pauses, seeing only

three quarters in the cup. He asks, “Sir, may I change

your sign?” “But this is my sign. My sister wrote it

just as I said.” “I understand. But I think I can help.

Let me write on the back, and you can try it out.” The

blind man hesitantly agrees. Within two hours the cup

is full of coins and bills. As another passerby donates,

the blind man says: “Stop for a moment, please. What

does my sign say?” “Just seven words,” says the newest

contributor: “It is spring, and I am blind.”

It matters how you say something.

Read carefully to pick up good style

To express yourself clearly and persuasively, you’ll need

to develop several qualities:

• An intense focus on your reason for writing—and

on your readers’ needs.

• A decided preference for the simplest words pos-

sible to express an idea accurately.

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Introduction

• A feel for natural idioms.

• An aversion to jargon and business-speak.

• An appreciation for the right words in the right

places.

• An ear for tone.

How can you acquire these traits? Start by noticing their

presence or absence in everything you read. Slow down

just a little to study the work of pros. This shouldn’t be a

chore, and it shouldn’t be squeezed in at the end of a long

day. Grab a few spare minutes, over your morning cof-

fee or between tasks, and read closely. Find good mate-

rial that you enjoy. It could be the Economist or the Wall

Street Journal, or even Sports Illustrated, which contains

tremendous writing.

If you can, read at least one piece aloud each day as if

you were a news announcer. (Yes, literally aloud.) Read

with feeling. Heed the punctuation, the phrasing, the

pacing of ideas, and the paragraphing. This habit will

help cultivate an appreciation of the skills you’re trying to

acquire. And once you’ve honed your awareness, all you

need is practice.

Recognize the payoff

An ambiguous letter or e-mail message will require a

“corrective communication” to clear up a misunder-

standing—which saps resources and goodwill. A poorly

phrased and poorly reasoned memo may lead to bad

decision-making. An ill-organized report can obscure

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Introduction

important information and cause readers to overlook vi-

tal facts. A heavy, uninviting proposal will get put aside

and forgotten. A badly drafted pitch to a key client will

only consume the time of higher-ups who must rewrite

it at the eleventh hour to make it passable—lowering its

chances of success because of the hectic circumstances

surrounding its preparation.

That’s a lot of wasted time—and a drag on profi ts. But

you can prevent these problems with clear, concise writ-

ing. It’s not some mysterious art, secret and remote. It’s

an indispensable business tool. Learn how to use it, and

achieve the results you’re after.

One prefatory note: Asterisks are used in the text

throughout this book to mark examples of incorrect En-

glish grammar, spelling, or usage.

xx

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Section 1

Delivering the

Goods Quickly

and Clearly

H6082.indb 1

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Chapter 1

Know why

you’re writing

Many people begin writing before they know what they’re

trying to accomplish. As a result, their readers don’t know

where to focus their attention or what they’re supposed to

do with the message. So much depends on your purpose

in writing that you must fi x it fi rmly in your mind. What

do you want the outcome to be? Do you want to persuade

someone to sign a franchise contract, for instance? Or

to stop using your trademark without permission? Or to

come to a company reception?

Say clearly and convincingly what the issue is and

what you want to accomplish. With every sentence, ask

yourself whether you’re advancing the cause. That will

help you fi nd the best words to get your message across.

Form follows function

Say your fi rm rents space in an offi ce building that has

thoroughly renovated the entrance and the entire fi rst

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Delivering the Goods Quickly and Clearly

fl oor. Your general counsel has alerted you that the land-

lord has violated the Americans with Disabilities Act

(ADA). For example, there are no wheelchair-access

ramps or automatic doors. You’ve decided to write to the

landlord. But why are you writing? The answer to that

question determines much of what you’ll say and all of

the tone that you’ll use. Consider three versions of the

letter you might write:

Version #1

You’re good friends with the landlord, but you think that

the law should be followed for the good of your employees

and your customers. Purpose: to gather more information.

Tone: friendly.

Dear Ann:

The new foyer looks fantastic. What a great way for us

and others in the building to greet customers and other

visitors. Thank you for undertaking the renovations.

Could it be that the work isn’t fi nished? No ac-

commodations have yet been made for wheelchair

accessibility—as required by law. Perhaps I’m jumping

the gun, and that part of the work just hasn’t begun?

Please let me know.

Let’s get together for lunch soon.

All the best,

Version #2

You’re on good terms with the landlord, but on principle,

you don’t like being in a building that isn’t ADA- compliant.

You have a disabled employee on staff , and you want the

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Know why you’re writing

situation righted. Purpose: to correct the oversight. Tone:

more urgent.

Dear Ann:

Here at Bergson Company, we were delighted when

you renovated the fi rst fl oor and made it so much more

inviting to both tenants and visitors. We are troubled,

however, by the lack of wheelchair-access ramps and

automatic doors for handicapped employees and cus-

tomers, both of which are required by state and federal

law. Perhaps you’re still planning that part of the reno-

vations. If so, please advise.

If this was a mere oversight, can you assure us that

construction on ramps and automatic doors will begin

within 60 days? Otherwise, as we understand it, we may

be obliged to report the violation to the Vermont Build-

ings Commission. Without the fi xes, you may be subject

to some hefty fi nes—but we feel certain that you have

every intention of complying with the law.

Sincerely,

Version #3

You’ve had repeated problems with the landlord, and you

have found a better rental property elsewhere for your

company. Purpose: to terminate your lease. Tone: fi rm, but

without burning bridges.

Dear Ms. Reynolds:

Four weeks ago you fi nished renovating the fi rst fl oor

of our building. Did you not seek legal counsel? You

have violated the Americans with Disabilities Act—as

5

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Delivering the Goods Quickly and Clearly

well as state law—by failing to provide a wheelchair-

access ramp and automatic doors for handicapped visi-

tors and employees. Because four weeks have elapsed

since you completed the work, we are entitled under

state law to terminate our lease. This letter will serve as

our 30 days’ notice.

Although we have no doubt that your oversight was

a good-faith error, we hope that you understand why

we can’t stay in the building and have made plans to go

elsewhere.

We hope to remain on friendly terms during and after

the move.

Sincerely,

These three letters are quite different because you are

writing them to accomplish different things. Focus on

the reaction you’re trying to elicit from the reader. You

want results. Yet notice how even the sternest letter—

Version 3—maintains a civil tone to foster goodwill. No

hostility is necessary.

Recap

• Consider your purpose and your audience before

you begin writing, and let these guide both what

you say and how you say it.

• Plainly state the issue you’re addressing and what

you hope to achieve.

• Keep your goal in mind: Don’t undermine your ef-

forts with a hostile or inappropriate tone.

6

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Chapter 2

Understand

your readers

Communication is a two-way exercise. Without knowing

something about your readers—and about psychology

in general, for that matter—you’ll rarely get your ideas

across. What are their goals and priorities? What pres-

sures do they face? What motivates them?

Respect readers’ time constraints

The most important things to realize about all business

audiences are these:

• Your readers are busy— very busy.

• They have little if any sense of duty to read what

you put before them.

• If you don’t get to your point pretty quickly, they’ll

ignore you—just as you tend to ignore long, ram-

bling messages when you receive them.

7

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Delivering the Goods Quickly and Clearly

• At the slightest need to struggle to understand

you, they’ll stop trying—and think less of you.

• If they don’t buy your message, you may as well

have stayed in bed that day.

Each of these universal tendencies becomes magnifi ed as

you ascend the ranks of an organization. Your job as a

writer, then, is to:

• Prove quickly that you have something valuable to

say—valuable to your readers, not just to you.

• Waste no time in saying it.

• Write with such clarity and effi ciency that reading

your material is easy—even enjoyable.

• Use a tone that makes you likable, so that your

readers will want to spend time with you and your

message.

Do these things and you’ll develop a larger reservoir of

goodwill. You’ll not only have a genuinely competitive

edge, but you’ll also save time and money.

Tailor your message

If you’re writing a memo to colleagues, for example, con-

sider where they sit in the organization and what they’re

expected to contribute to its success. Or if you’re respond-

ing to a client’s request for proposal, address every need

outlined in the RFP—but also think about the client’s in-

dustry, company size, and culture. Your tone will change

depending on your recipients, and so will your content.

You’ll highlight the things they care about most—the

ever-important “what’s in it for them.”

8

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Understand your readers

Connect with particular readers to

connect with large audiences

It’s challenging to write for a large, diverse group of read-

ers, especially if you don’t know them. But you can make

it easier by focusing on some specifi c person you know.

In his preface to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Com-

mission’s Plain English Handbook, Warren Buffett sug-

gests grounding your prose by having a particular reader

in mind:

When writing Berkshire Hathaway’s annual report,

I pretend that I’m talking to my sisters. I have no

trouble picturing them: Though highly intelligent,

they are not experts in accounting or fi nance. They will

understand plain English, but jargon may puzzle them.

My goal is simply to give them the information I would

wish them to supply me if our positions were reversed.

To succeed, I don’t need to be Shakespeare; I must,

though, have a sincere desire to inform.

If you focus on a smart nonspecialist who’s actually in

your audience—or, like Buffett, imagine that you’re writ-

ing for a relative or a friend—you’ll strike a balance be-

tween sophistication and accessibility. Your writing will

be more appealing and more persuasive.

Your readers may have little or no prior knowledge

about the facts or analysis you’re disclosing. But assume

that they’re intelligent people. They’ll be able to follow

you if you give them the information they need, and they

won’t be bamboozled by empty, airy talk.

9

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Delivering the Goods Quickly and Clearly

NOT THIS:

BUT THIS:

We aspire to be a partner

We’re a client-focused fi rm

primarily concerned with

dedicated to making sure

providing our clients the

you get the most out of our

maximal acquisition of

services. Our client base

future profi ts and assets and

includes individual entrepre-

focus mainly on clients with

neurs, midsized companies,

complex and multi-product

and large corporations. If you

needs, large and midsized

decide to do business with us,

corporate entities, individual

we’ll give you fi nancial advice

or multiple entrepreneurial

that is in tune with the current

agents, and profi t-maximizing

economy and with what you

institutional clients. By listen-

can aff ord to invest. For years,

ing attentively to their needs

we’ve consistently received

and off ering them paramount

the highest possible industry

solutions, we empower those

ratings, and we have won the

who wish to gain access to

coveted Claiborne Award for

our services with the optimal

exceptional client satisfaction

set of decisions in their pos-

17 of our 37 years in business.

sible action portfolio given

We hope to have the opportu-

the economic climate at the

nity to work with you in your

time of the advice as well as

fi nancial endeavors.

the fi scal constraints that

you are subject to. Against

the backdrop of signifi cant

changes within our industry,

we strive to ensure that we

consistently help our clients

realize their goals and thrive,

and we continue to strengthen

the coverage of our key clients

by process-dedicated teams

of senior executives who can

deliver and utilize our inte-

grated business model. On

the back of a strong capital

position and high levels of

client satisfaction and brand

recognition, we have achieved

signifi cant gains in market

share. We hope that you have

a favorable impression of our

company’s quantitative and

qualitative attributes and will

be inclined to utilize our ser-

vices as you embark on your

fi nancial endeavors.

10

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Understand your readers

Recap

• Understand that your readers have no time to

waste: Get to the point quickly and clearly to en-

sure that your message gets read.

• Use a tone appropriate for your audience.

• Emphasize the items most important to your

readers. If they can easily see how your message is

relevant to them, they will be more likely to read it

and respond.

• Choose an intelligent, nonspecialist member of

your audience to write for—or invent one—and

focus on writing for that person. Your message will

be more accessible and persuasive to all your read-

ers as a result.

11

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H6082.indb 12

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Chapter 3

Divide the writing

process into four

separate tasks

Do you feel anxious every time you sit down to write?

Your main diffi culty is probably fi guring out how to

begin. Don’t try to picture the completed piece before

you’ve gathered and organized your material. It’s much

too soon to think about the fi nal, polished product—and

you will just make the challenge ahead of you seem over-

whelming. The worry can take more out of you than the

actual writing.

Instead, break up your work. Think of writing not as

one huge task but as a series of smaller tasks. The poet,

writer, and teacher Betty Sue Flowers has envisioned

them as belonging to different characters in your brain:

MACJ.1 That stands for Madman–Architect– Carpenter–

1. Betty S. Flowers, “Madman, Architect, Carpenter, Judge: Roles and

the Writing Process,” Proceedings of the Conference of College Teachers

of English 44 (1979): 7–10.

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Delivering the Goods Quickly and Clearly

Judge, representing the phases that a writer must go

through:

• The Madman gathers material and generates ideas.

• The Architect organizes information by drawing up

an outline, however simple.

• The Carpenter puts your thoughts into words, lay-

ing out sentences and paragraphs by following the

Architect’s plan.

• The Judge is your quality-control character, polish-

ing the expression throughout—everything from

tightening language to correcting grammar and

punctuation.

You’ll be most effi cient if you carry out these tasks

pretty much in this order. Sure, you’ll do some looping

back. For example, you may need to draft more material

after you’ve identifi ed holes to fi ll. But do your best to

compartmentalize the discrete tasks and address them in

order.

Get the Madman started

Accept your good ideas gratefully whenever they come.

But if you’re methodical about brainstorming at the be-

ginning of the process, you’ll fi nd that more and more of

your good ideas will come to you early—and you’ll largely

prevent the problem of fi nally thinking of your best point

after you’ve fi nished and distributed your document.

Get your material from memory, from research, from

observation, from conversations with colleagues and oth-

14

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Divide the writing process into four separate tasks

ers, and from reasoning, speculation, and imagination.

The problem you’re trying to solve may seem intractable,

and you may struggle to fi nd a good approach. (How on

earth will you persuade the folks in fi nance to approve

your budget request when they’re turning down requests

left and right? How will you get the executive board to

adopt a new mind-set about a proposed merger?) Don’t

get hung up on the size of the challenge. Gathering ideas

and facts up front will help you push through and defuse

anxiety about the writing.

How do you keep track of all this preliminary mate-

rial? In the old days, people used index cards. (I wrote my

fi rst several books that way.) But today the easiest way is

to create a rough spreadsheet that contains the following:

• Labels indicating the points you’re trying to

support.

• The data, facts, and opinions you’re recording

under each point—taking care to put direct quotes

within quotation marks.

• Your sources. Include the title and page number

if citing a book or an article, the URL if citing an

online source. (When writing a formal document,

such as a report, see The Chicago Manual of Style

for information on proper sourcing.)

As you’re taking notes, distinguish facts from opinions.

Be sure to give credit where it’s due. You’ll run aground if

you claim others’ assertions as your own, because you’ll

probably be unable to back them up convincingly. Worse,

you’ll be guilty of plagiarism.

15

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Delivering the Goods Quickly and Clearly

This groundwork will save you loads of time when

you’re drafting and will help you create a well-supported,

persuasive document.

Let the Architect take the lead

You may feel frustrated at fi rst as you’re groping for a

way to organize your document. If a sensible approach

doesn’t come to mind after you’ve done your research

and scouted for ideas, you may need to do more hunting

and gathering. You want to arrive at the point of writ-

ing down three sentences—complete propositions—that

convey your ideas. Then arrange them in the most logi-

cal order from the reader’s point of view (see chapter 4).

That’s your bare-bones outline, which is all you typically

need before you start drafting.

Give the Carpenter a tight schedule

The key to writing a sound fi rst draft is to write as swiftly

as you can (you’ll read more about this in chapter 5).

Later, you’ll make corrections. But for now, don’t slow

yourself down to perfect your wording. If you do, you’ll

invite writer’s block. Lock the Judge away at this stage,

and try to write in a headlong rush.

Call in the Judge

Once you’ve got it all down, it’s time for deliberation—

weighing your words, fi lling in gaps, amplifying here and

curtailing there. Make several sweeps, checking for one

thing at a time: the accuracy of your citations, the tone,

the quality of your transitions, and so on. (For an edito-

rial checklist, see chapter 6.) If you try to do many things

16

H6082.indb 16

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Divide the writing process into four separate tasks

at once, you won’t be doing any of them superbly. So leave

plenty of time for multiple rounds of editing—at least as

much time as you spent researching and writing. You’ll

ferret out more problems, and you’ll fi nd better fi xes for

them.

Recap

• Approach a writing project as a series of manage-

able tasks using the MACJ method.

• Use the Madman to gather research and other

material for the project, diligently keeping track

of quotations and sources. And allow more of your

best ideas to come early by methodically brain-

storming at the beginning of the process.

• As the Architect, organize the Madman’s raw ma-

terial into a sensible outline. Distill your ideas into

three main propositions.

• In the Carpenter phase, write as quickly as

possible—without worrying about perfecting

your prose.

• Finally, assume the role of the Judge to edit,

polish, and improve the piece. Do this in several

distinct passes, each time focusing on only one ele-

ment of your writing.

17

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H6082.indb 18

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Chapter 4

Before writing

in earnest, jot

down your three

main points—

in complete

sentences

A mathematician once told me that there are really only

four numbers in the world: one, two, three, and many.

There’s something to that: Four items just seem to be one

too many for most people to hold in their memory. But a

proposal, a report, or any other piece of business writing

feels underdeveloped when it’s supported by only one or

two points.

So write down your three main points as full sen-

tences, and spell out your logic as clearly as you can. That

way, you’ll force yourself to think through your reasons

19

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Delivering the Goods Quickly and Clearly

for recommending a vendor, for example, or pitching an

offer to a client—and you’ll make a stronger case.

If you try to simply think things out as you write, you’ll

run into trouble because you won’t really know yet what

you’re hoping your reader will think or do. You’ll fl ail

about, gradually clarifying your point as you make sev-

eral runs at it. In the end, after multiple attempts, you

may fi nally fi gure out what you have to say, but you prob-

ably won’t say it in a way that your reader can follow.

An example of fi nding your focus

Let’s say your name is Carol Sommers, and you work

at a small management-consulting fi rm. Your boss,

Steve, owns the business and is considering acquiring a

17,000-square-foot building as his new offi ce. Because

you’re the offi ce manager, Steve has asked you to think

through the logistics and to write up your recommenda-

tions before the company makes an offer to purchase the

building. At fi rst, you’re at a loss—there are so many is-

sues to sort through. But you’ve got to start somewhere.

So before you write your memo, you put on your Mad-

man hat and brainstorm a list of considerations:

• Ownership

• Maintenance

• Buildout

• Security

• Offi ces vs. cubicles

• Real-estate

values—comparables?

20

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Before writing in earnest, jot down your three main points

• The move—bids on movers?

• Timing

• Tax

consequences

• Employee and visitor parking

• Environmental inspection and related issues

• Smooth transitioning: phone and Internet service,

mail forwarding, new stationery, updating busi-

ness contacts, subscriptions, etc.

• Insurance

• Leaving current landlord on good terms

• Taking signage to new location?

These are just topics, not fully formed thoughts. But now

that you have a rough list, you can start the Architect

phase of writing and categorize in threes.

Steve’s responsibilities (before acquisition):

• Consider an environmental inspection to make

sure that the building has no hidden issues. Our

commercial realtor can help.

• Check with our accountant to fi nd out what tax

consequences we might have depending on how

we time the closing.

• Ask the accountant and perhaps a tax lawyer

whether Steve should own the property personally,

whether the company should own it, or whether a

21

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Delivering the Goods Quickly and Clearly

newly formed entity (an LLC, for example) should

own it. There may be liability issues.

My responsibilities (before acquisition):

• Cost out insurance coverage.

• Interview contractors for building out the space to

our satisfaction. (Note to self: Confi rm that we can

roll the buildout into the mortgage.)

• Cost out the annual bill for providing the kind of

security we currently have.

My responsibilities (postacquisition):

• Contract for maintenance (cleaning and trash

services, lawn and parking-lot care).

• Plan the move, with a smooth transition in opera-

tions (the physical move, mail forwarding, phone

and Internet, new stationery, address updates, an-

nouncement to customers, moving signage, etc.).

• Help Steve plan the architectural buildout to foster

collaboration and use space effi ciently.

To come up with all this, put yourself in Steve’s place,

imagining what you’d want your offi ce manager to think

of to help you do your job better. But it also takes a little

legwork—for example, talking to people at fi rms that

have recently changed locations or acquired buildings.

Can’t fi nd anyone like that through your network? Ask

the commercial realtor to put you in touch with one or

two of its clients.

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Before writing in earnest, jot down your three main points

For each stage, we’ve listed the three big issues—at least

what we think they are. Look how easy it is now to begin

your Carpenter work (writing a useful memo to Steve):

Memo

To: Steve Haskell

From: Carol Sommers

Re: The Prospective Purchase of 1242 Maple Avenue

Date: April 12, 2012

As you requested, I’ve thought through the logistics of

purchasing and moving into the Maple Avenue property.

Here are my suggestions for each stage of the process.

Now

I’d like your approval to tackle the following tasks im-

mediately because they’ll give us a more complete

picture of how expensive the acquisition and move

would be:

• Cost out insurance coverage.

• Interview contractors for building out the space

to our satisfaction. (I’ve checked with the bank to

see if we can roll the buildout into the mortgage,

and we can.)

• Cost out the annual bill for providing the kind of

security we currently have.

Preclosing

If you decide to go forward with the purchase and your

off er is accepted, I’ll take care of these items before we

close on the loan:

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Delivering the Goods Quickly and Clearly

• Arrange for at least one thorough inspection of

the building.

• Work with our accountant, to the extent you’d

like, to get papers in order for obtaining the bank

fi nancing you mentioned.

• Ensure that all due-diligence deadlines are met.

After Closing

After closing, I’ll get into the nuts and bolts of the move:

• Help you plan the architectural buildout to foster

collaboration and use space effi

ciently.

• Plan the move, with a smooth transition in

operations (the physical move, mail forward-

ing, phone and Internet, new stationery, address

updates, announcement to customers, moving

signage, etc.).

• Contract for maintenance (cleaning and trash

services, lawn and parking-lot care).

Issues for You to Think About

While I’m attending to the details above, you might

want to:

• Consider environmental and structural inspec-

tions to make sure the building has no hidden is-

sues. Our commercial realtor says he can provide

guidance—I’d be happy to set up a meeting if

you like.

• Check with our accountant to fi nd out what tax

consequences we might have depending on how

we time the closing.

• Ask the accountant and perhaps a tax lawyer

whether you should own the property person-

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Before writing in earnest, jot down your three main points

ally (highly unlikely), whether Haskell Company

should own it, or whether a newly formed en-

tity (such as an LLC) should own it. You or the

company may face liability issues with outright

ownership.

Of course, I’m always on hand to take on whatever tasks

you need. Just let me know.

Prewriting in threes resulted in a clear, useful memo. It

helped us forestall writer’s block, organize the material,

and make concise, well-reasoned recommendations.

But did you notice that the fi nished memo breaks

things down into four categories, not three? As hard as

I tried to think of everything before writing the memo,

I couldn’t. Looking at my preliminary list, I identifi ed

a gap in time—a period in which there would be other

necessary tasks. So I added the preclosing category and

wrote those items on the fl y. But I probably wouldn’t have

come up with them if I hadn’t started with a plan. Orga-

nizing my main points in sets of three helped me see the

preclosing gap; after that, fi lling it in wasn’t diffi cult.

The order of categories changed, too. Why move

Steve’s tasks from the beginning to the end? The memo

was about what you, Carol Sommers, the offi ce manager,

could do for Steve. To think of your responsibilities, you

needed to think of Steve’s. That was your starting point

for brainstorming—but not for your memo.

You couldn’t very well lead by telling your boss what he

needs to do. That’s not your place, and that’s not what he

asked for. So Steve’s to-dos can go at the end, as helpful

reminders. That way, you can focus his attention mainly

on items you’ll take care of to make his decisions easier.

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Delivering the Goods Quickly and Clearly

Recap

• Find your focus by fi rst generating a list of topics

to cover.

• Develop these raw ideas into full sentences and

categorize your main points in sets of three.

• Arrange these sets in a logical order, keeping your

reader’s needs in mind.

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Chapter 5

Write in

full—rapidly

Once you’ve written your three main points so that you

know where you’re going, you’re in Carpenter mode—

ready to put together the ideas you’ve generated and or-

ganized. Write as quickly as possible. Your sentences will

be shorter than they otherwise would be, your idioms will

be more natural, and your draft should start taking shape

before you know it. If there’s a painful part of writing, it’s

doing the fi rst draft. When you shorten the duration, it’s

not as painful.

Time yourself

To prevent premature fussing, write against the clock.

(Creative writers call this speed writing. They often use

it as an exercise to get juices fl owing.) Allow yourself 5 or

10 minutes to draft each section—the opener, the body,

and the closer—and set the timer on your computer or

phone to keep yourself honest.

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Delivering the Goods Quickly and Clearly

Don’t edit as you go

It’s counterproductive to allow the Judge and the Car-

penter to work side by side. That’s essentially multitask-

ing—you’re just doing two things ineffi ciently rather than

simultaneously. And besides, the editorial part of the

brain is simply incompatible with the production part.

Who needs a fault-fi nding critic’s kibitzing when you’re

trying to create something new and fresh? You’re best off

keeping the Judge away as you produce your fi rst draft.

You’ll spend plenty of time editing later.

Don’t wait for inspiration

Inspiration rarely comes when you want it to. After the

careful planning you’ve done, you won’t need it anyway.

As the management expert Peter Drucker famously said

about innovation, good writing takes careful, conscious

work, not a “fl ash of genius.”

If you follow the MACJ process, you’ll inspire your-

self—and minimize your procrastinating. Once the Mad -

man and the Architect have worked, you should be

primed to write. Schedule the time when the Carpen-

ter is to begin, and when the appointed time comes, get

started.

Begin by writing in support of what you’re most com-

fortable addressing. When you get stuck, skip to some-

thing else. You need to get into a fl ow. If you’re still strug-

gling when you come back to that problem passage, say

out loud (to yourself or to a colleague) what you’re trying

to convey. Sometimes speaking will help you fi nd the right

words. The point is to get your ideas on paper—knowing

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Write in full—rapidly

that you’ll still have time to elaborate and perfect them at

the next stage.

Recap

• Write your fi rst draft as quickly as you can.

• Don’t get stuck waiting for inspiration. Try giv-

ing yourself 5 to 10 minutes for each section when

drafting.

• Resist the urge to perfect as you write. Saving the

editing until the draft is fi nished will keep the

Judge from getting in your way.

• Schedule a time for the Carpenter to work—and

when that time comes, begin.

• If you fi nd yourself stumped, move on to a dif-

ferent section you’re more comfortable with and

come back to the problem once you’ve found

your fl ow.

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Chapter 6

Improve what

you’ve written

Once you’ve written a complete draft, you’ll revise fi rst

and then edit. Revising is a reconsideration of what

you’re saying as a whole, and where you’re saying it. It’s

rethinking the fl oor plan. Editing is more a matter of

fi ne-tuning sentences and paragraphs. You need to allow

time for both. On the one hand, don’t let some neurotic

obsession with perfectionism delay important projects.

On the other hand, don’t rashly send things out without

proper vetting and improvement.

Revising

As a reviser, you’re asking several questions:

• Have I been utterly truthful?

• Have I said all that I need to say?

• Have I been appropriately diplomatic and fair?

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Delivering the Goods Quickly and Clearly

• Do I have three parts to the piece—an opener, a

middle, and a closer?

• In my opener, have I made my points quickly and

clearly? And concretely?

• Have I avoided a slow wind-up that unnecessarily

postpones the message?

• In the middle, have I proved my points with specifi cs?

• Is the structure immediately apparent to my read-

ers? Have I used informative headings?

• Is my closer consistent with the rest—yet ex-

pressed freshly? Have I avoided lame repetition?

Editing

When it comes to editing, you’re asking different ques-

tions as you read through your sentences and paragraphs:

• Can I save some words here?

• Is there a better way of phrasing this idea?

• Is my meaning unmistakable?

• Can I make it more interesting?

• Is the expression relaxed but refi ned?

• Does one sentence glide into the next, without

discontinuities?

An example of revising and editing

To understand the process more concretely, let’s take a

look at how an internal memo takes shape through three

32

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Improve what you’ve written

drafts. The fi rst draft is not very clear and omits impor-

tant information, but the germ of an idea is there:

First Draft

To: All Sales Personnel

From: Chris Hedron

Subject: Changes in Order-Processing Procedure

In order to facilitate the customers’ placement of

orders, a new order-processing procedure has been

designed. The process will require a customer to enter

the product and/or service code into our order-entry

system, which will then generate a quote for the job and

return it to the customer for approval. This will make

time for the customer to review the quote and transmit

any changes before work begins. Upon receipt of the

customer’s written approval, the quote will be trans-

formed into a work order. This procedure will make it

easier and faster for us to process customers’ orders.

This memo needs some amplifi cation, especially in the

realms of who, what, why, and when. The second draft,

a full-fl edged revision, fl eshes out much that was unclear

about the fi rst draft.

Second Draft

To: All Sales Personnel

From: Chris Hedron

Subject: New Work-Order-Processing Procedure

Because our current work-order-processing proce-

dure requires a lot of paperwork and phone calls, it’s

diffi

cult for customers to make changes prior to the

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Delivering the Goods Quickly and Clearly

commencement of work. The procedure is ineffi

cient

and subject to numerous errors. And it takes up to four

weeks from quote to approval to work order. So we have

designed a new four-step order-processing procedure

that will allow customers to place orders through our

website and allow us to begin jobs faster.

Beginning in January 2013, we will inform our cus-

tomers about the new procedure, and on April 20, 2013,

we will implement the new procedure, which will work

as follows. First, to initiate or change a work order,

customers can visit our website to request a quote by

fi lling out a detailed form and providing a purchase-

order number. Second, we will transmit a quote to the

customer for approval. Third, if the customer approves,

they can return the quote with an electronic signature

and purchase-order number. Fourth, we will transform

the quote to a work order immediately. Work-order

changes can be made using the same procedure except

that instead of a quote, customers will request a work-

order change.

The focus there was on saying all that needed to be

said—not on refi ning the expression. Now, though, it’s

possible to engage in fi ne-tuning and to produce a much-

improved draft.

Third Draft

To: All Sales Personnel

From: Chris Hedron

Subject: New Work-Order-Processing Procedure

Our current work-order processing takes a lot of paper-

work and phone calls, so it’s hard for our customers to

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Improve what you’ve written

make changes to the work before it begins. The proce-

dure is ineffi

cient and subject to error. And it takes up

to four weeks from quote to approval to work order. We

have therefore designed a new four-step procedure that

has two key benefi ts: (1) Customers can place orders

through our website, and (2) we can start jobs faster.

Beginning January 2013, we’ll tell our customers

about the new procedure. On April 20, 2013, we’ll im-

plement it. The new procedure will work in four steps:

• Customers can visit our website to request a

quote for a job by fi lling out a form and providing

a purchase-order number.

• We’ll then send a quote for the customer’s

approval.

• The customer can return the approved quote with

a digital signature.

• We’ll instantly convert the quote to a work order.

Work-order changes can be made using the same pro-

cedure except that instead of a quote, customers will

request a work-order change.

Recap

• Allow yourself ample time to revise and edit

your work.

• Consider your draft in its entirety. Take a fresh

look at your content and structure: Have you

said everything you need to—and in the most

effec tive way?

• Then edit your work, fi ne-tuning to tighten,

sharpen, and refi ne your prose.

35

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Chapter 7

Use graphics

to illustrate

and clarify

When you’re writing about complex ideas, for example,

or looking for useful ways to break up a long stretch of

text, you can use a simple, elegant chart to convey critical

information at a glance. Such graphics especially serve

people who want to skim what you’ve written.

A few crucial principles:

• Make sure your graphics illustrate something dis-

cussed in the text.

• Place them near the text they illustrate, preferably

on the same page or on a facing page.

• Use legends and keys that readers can easily grasp.

To learn how to produce effective graphics, con-

sult the books of Edward Tufte, especially Envisioning

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Delivering the Goods Quickly and Clearly

Information and Beautiful Evidence. You’ll marvel at the

amount of learning and the sophisticated thought that lie

behind superb visuals.

It would be gross negligence to leave off without a

graphic, so here’s one to round out the section. Note that

when you fl ip through this book, your eye stops here.

That’s because any departure from the norm achieves a

special emphasis. If every third or fourth page had such a

FIGURE 7-1

The Who-Why-What-When-How Chart

Who are you

Key point: Consider your audience’s concerns,

writing for?

motivations, and background.

Why are you

Key point: Keep your purpose firmly in mind.

writing?

Every sentence should advance it.

What needs

Key point: Include only the main points and

saying?

details that will get your message across.

When are you

expecting

Key point: State your time frame.

actions to be

taken?

How will your

communication

Key point: Make it clear to readers how you’re

benefit your

meeting their needs.

readers?

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Use graphics to illustrate and clarify

chart, the effect would be nullifi ed. So make your graph-

ics distinctive—and don’t overuse them.

Recap

• Distill your report (or part of it) into a chart, dia-

gram, or other visual aid that helps your audience

understand the content and its import.

• Take your design cues from visuals you have found

effective.

• Read the books of Edward Tufte to develop this

skill.

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Section 2

Developing

Your Skills

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Chapter 8

Be relentlessly

clear

Clarity can be a double-edged sword. When you’re forth-

right enough to take a position or recommend a course

of action, you’re sticking your neck out. People who don’t

want to commit make their writing muddy. Perhaps they’re

trying to leave room for their views to evolve as events un-

fold. Or perhaps they’re hoping they can later claim credit

for good results and deny responsibility for bad ones.

The fact is, though, that many readers will perceive

them not as savvy wait-and-see participants but as spine-

less herd-followers who are slow to see (much less seize)

opportunities within their reach. So clean up the mud.

Adopt the reader’s perspective

Always judge clarity from the reader’s standpoint—not

your own. Try showing a draft to colleagues with fresh

eyes and asking them what they think your main points

are. If they can’t do that accurately, then you’re not being

clear enough.

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Developing Your Skills

Your ideal should be to write so unmistakably that

your readers can’t possibly misunderstand or misinter-

pret. Anything that requires undue effort from them

won’t be read with full attention—and is bound to be

misunderstood.

Keep your language simple

Simplicity breeds clarity. Strive to use short words and

sentences. Over the years, research has confi rmed again

and again that the optimal average for readable sen-

tences is no more than 20 words. You’ll need variety to

hold interest—some very short sentences and some lon-

ger ones—but aim for an average of 20 words. With every

sentence, ask yourself whether you can say it more briefl y.

NOT THIS:

BUT THIS:

Effi

ciency measures that have

Our senior management

been implemented by the com-

team has cut costs and

pany with strong involvement

made the company more

of senior management have

effi

cient. We expect to be

generated cost savings while

more profi table for the next

at the very same time assisting

four quarters.

in the building of a culture that

is centered around the value

of effi

ciency. We anticipate

that, given this excising of

unnecessary expenditures

and enhanced control of other

expenditures, the overall prof-

itability of the company will be

increased in the near term of

up to four quarters.

If you’re writing about technical matters for an audi-

ence of nonspecialists—for example, explaining the ben-

efi ts of a software upgrade to end users or putting to-

gether an investment primer for your company’s 401(k)

participants—don’t try to defi ne each term in the sen-

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Be relentlessly clear

tence where it fi rst appears. That will bulk up your sen-

tences and make the material even harder for people to

grasp. Sometimes you’ll need a new sentence or even a

new paragraph to explain a term or concept in simple,

straightforward English.

Show, don’t tell

You probably heard writing teachers in school say, “Show,

don’t tell.” It’s excellent advice no matter what you’re writ-

ing—even business documents. The point is to be spe-

cifi c enough that you lead your readers to draw their own

conclusions (conclusions that match yours, of course), as

opposed to simply expressing your opinions without sup-

port and hoping people will buy them.

Consider these examples:

NOT THIS:

BUT THIS:

He was a bad boss.

He got a promotion based on

his assistant’s detailed re-

ports, but then—despite the

company’s record profi ts—

denied that assistant even

routine cost-of-living raises.

The company lost its focus and

The CEO acquired fi ve un-

fl oundered.

related subsidiaries—as far

afi eld as a paper company

and a retailer of children’s

toys—and then couldn’t ser-

vice the $26 million in debt.

The shares of OJM stock issued

We expect that OJM will is-

to Pantheon stockholders in

sue about 320 million shares

the merger will constitute a

of its stock to Pantheon

signifi cant proportion of the

shareholders in the merger.

outstanding stock of OJM after

That fi gure will account

the merger. Based on this signif-

for about 42% of OJM’s

icant proportion, it is expected

outstanding stock after the

that OJM will issue millions of

merger.

OJM shares to Pantheon stock-

holders in the merger.

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Developing Your Skills

WRITE LETTERS TO SHARPEN YOUR SKILLS

Your letter writing is the best barometer of your writ-

ing skills generally. And it’s a safe way to practice—to

prepare yourself for your more diffi

cult writing tasks.

Write thank-you letters, congratulatory letters, letters

of recommendation (when asked), complaint letters,

letters to the editor, personal notes (handwritten), and

all sorts of others. If you can write good letters, you can

write just about anything. (See chapter 19, “Business

Letters,” for pointers on how.) That’s because they help

you to focus on others. When you write a letter, you’re

connecting with one particular recipient. And letters

help you build goodwill with people. An e-mail mes-

sage may create an impression, but it’s far less likely to

be remembered than a personal letter is.

To develop the habit, try writing a few letters a

week. Make many of them handwritten notes. (When

you receive one in a stack of mail, isn’t that the fi rst

thing that grabs your attention?) They’re personal and,

if well done, memorable and even savable. They’ll

help you build and maintain relationships. Write them

to tell those you supervise how much you appreciate

their hard work, congratulate colleagues on promo-

tions, motivate team members to meet goals, let new

partners know you’re eager to start collaborating, and

so on. To write a good one, keep it neat, try limiting it

to one page, make it warm and friendly, use you more

than I, and use tasteful, mature stationery.

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Be relentlessly clear

A short, vague sentence (like “He was a bad boss”) may

register in the readers’ minds—but only as a personal im-

pression that’s potentially biased. It’s credible only if its

source is highly credible. As for the long, vague sentence

about OJM stock, there’s nothing for readers to hold on

to, and they’ll get tired trying.

Concrete business writing is persuasive because it’s

evidence-based, clear, and memorable. When you supply

meaningful, objective details (explaining, for example, that

the fl oundering company “couldn’t service the $26 million

in debt”), you’re sharing information, not just your opin-

ion that the company “lost its focus.” You earn credibility

by demonstrating a command of the facts. You also give

your message staying power. People don’t care about—or

even remember—abstractions the way they do specifi cs.

So if you’re marketing your fi rm’s consulting services

to potential clients, don’t just tell them you’ll save them

money. Say how much money you’ve saved others. Don’t

just promise that you’ll make their lives easier. List the

time-consuming tasks you’ll take off their hands. Don’t

just claim to have deep experience in the health care

industry. Name names: Mention several hospitals and

medical centers you’ve done work for, and include testi-

monials saying how happy clients are with the time and

money you’ve saved them.

Recap

• Put yourself in the reader’s shoes to assess your

clarity. Better yet, see whether a colleague can ac-

curately summarize the main points of your draft

from a quick read-through.

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Developing Your Skills

• Phrase your ideas as plainly and briefl y as possible,

aiming for an average sentence length of 20 or

fewer words.

• Pave your readers’ way with concrete details. Don’t

try to push them there with abstract assertions.

• Cultivate your letter writing to improve your writ-

ing skills more generally.

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Chapter 9

Learn to

summarize—

accurately

A good summary is focused and specifi c—and it’s at the

beginning of your document so readers don’t have to dig.

It gets to the point. It lays the foundation for what’s to fol-

low. There’s no holding back on the crucial information.

Consider the difference between these two openers to

a recommendation that a proposal be rejected:

NOT THIS:

Summary

The cell phone changeover that has been proposed should

be rejected. For the reasons stated below, the company would

not be well served by accepting the proposal.

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Developing Your Skills

BUT THIS:

Summary

Last year, we adopted an offi

cewide policy of issuing cell phones

to all executives and sales reps at an annual cost of $58,000

(including voice and data plans). The Persephone company has

proposed that we switch to its phones and service at an annual

cost of $37,000. The committee charged with evaluating this

proposal recommends that we reject it for four reasons:

1. The new plans would have signifi cantly less coverage in

Europe and Asia, so our international sales reps might

suff er lost opportunities.

2. Our current provider has been highly responsive and has

tailored its service to our needs.

3. The $21,000 savings is dwarfed by potential costs (even

one dropped sales call could result in a loss of much

more money than that).

4. Persephone’s customer service appears from credible

online reviews to be inferior.

What makes the second version better? It can be fully un-

derstood by anyone who reads it—at any time. The fi rst

version, by contrast, assumes familiarity: It’s clear to only

a few “insiders”—and for only a limited period. And be-

cause it’s vague, it lacks the credibility that the second

version earns through specifi cs.

Struggling to incorporate the right amount of detail to

make your summary clear and useful? Write a descrip-

tive outline of your document—summarize each para-

graph or section with a sentence that captures the who,

what, when, where, why, and how—and try creating your

overall summary out of that. Also, keep your readers’

needs foremost in your mind. What questions will people

have when they open your document? Provide brief but

concrete answers to those questions. These will assure

readers that what follows will matter to them.

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Learn to summarize—accurately

Be brief—but not too brief

People often assume that shorter is better when it comes

to summaries. But brevity without substance is worth-

less. Never say more than the occasion demands—but

never say less, either. Adopt the reader’s perspective: Fill

in as much information as it takes to get people up to

speed. Think of your summary as the CliffsNotes version

of your document. Although the second example is lon-

ger, it conveys the whole gist of the message. And there’s

not one wasted word, which brings us to our next chapter.

Recap

• Summarize the vital information at the beginning

of the document.

• Summarize each section with a sentence that ad-

dresses “the fi ve Ws” (who, what, when, where,

why) and how—and use these sentences to build

your general summary.

• Provide only the information the reader needs to

understand the issue—no more and no less.

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Chapter 10

Waste no words

Make every word count. When you mean before, don’t say

or write prior to, much less prior to the time when.

Though prior to is a linguistic choice that the diction-

ary offers us, it’s a bad choice. Never use two words for

one, three words for two, and so on. Syllables add up

fast and slow people down. Of course, stick to idiomatic

English. Don’t start dropping articles ( a, an, the) where

we’d all normally expect them. And don’t cut the impor-

tant word that left and right—more often than not, you

really need it to be clear. But remove all the words that

aren’t performing a real function. Doing so saves readers

time and effort and makes your ideas easier to grasp and

apply.

Wordiness can exist on many levels, from rambling

statements to unnecessary repetition to verbose expres-

sions that could be replaced by shorter, sharper alterna-

tives. Whatever the manifestation, it’s bad. Consider the

following examples:

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Developing Your Skills

NOT THIS:

BUT THIS:

The trend in the industry

Since Internet technology

is toward self-generation

makes it easier than ever to

by some companies of

develop sophisticated web-

their own websites, and

sites, some companies now

Internet technology is

develop their own in-house.

changing the nature of

[19 words]

training necessary to

acquire the skill of

website development

at an acceptable level of

sophistication, so that

this activity can more

and more be handled

in-house.

[49 words]

We are unable to fi ll

We cannot fi ll your order

your order at this point

right now because of the dock

in time because there is

strike.

an ongoing dock strike

[12 words]

that aff ects our

operations.

[23 words]

I am writing in response

You may have heard that we’re

to a number of issues

raising the fees for using our

that have arisen with

lobby computers.

regard to the recent

[14 words]

announcement that

there will be an increase

in the charge for the use

of our lobby computers.

[35 words]

The greater number of

Most of these problems can be

these problems can

readily solved.

readily be dealt with in

[8 words]

such a way as to bring

about satisfactory solutions.

[21 words]

To trim extra words from your documents, try:

• Deleting every preposition that you can, especially

of: change April of 2013 to April 2013 and point of

view to viewpoint.

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Waste no words

• Replacing every – ion word with a verb if you can.

Change was in violation of to violated and pro-

vided protection to to protected.

• Replacing

is, are, was, and were with stronger

verbs where you can. Change was hanging to hung

and is indicative of to indicates.

You’ll see all three tricks at work here:

NOT THIS:

BUT THIS:

The manufacturers of tools

The garden-tool industry has

for gardening have been the

suff ered from an oversupply

victims of a compression

of units coupled with rising

factor that has resulted in

prices.

an increase in units on the

[14 words]

market accompanied by a

negative disproportionate

rise of prices.

[36 words]

For the near and intermediate To increase sales, Bromodrotics

future in terms of growth

needs to improve its image.

goals, Bromodrotics, Inc., is

[9 words]

evaluating its corporate

design needs. The purpose

of this short-term and

intermediate-term evaluation

is to make a determination as

to how the image of the

company might best be

positioned to be of assistance

to the sales force in meeting

its growth goals.

[57 words]

Ruthlessly cut words from your fi rst draft, so long as

you remain faithful to the sounds and rhythms of nor-

mal, down-to-earth English. Don’t compress words to

the point of sounding curt or unnatural.

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Developing Your Skills

One other trick in that last example: eliminating pad-

ding such as in terms of and the purpose of. Sometimes

you’ll fi nd even worse phrases:

in this connection it might be observed that

it is important to bear in mind that

it is interesting that

it is notable that

it is worthwhile to note that

it should be pointed out that

it will be remembered that

Leave all these things unsaid—without saying it goes

without saying that . . . .

Recap

• Never use more words than necessary: If you can

say it in two words instead of three, do so—as long

as the result still sounds natural.

• Tighten your prose by removing inessential prepo-

sitions, replacing abstract –ion nouns with action

verbs where possible, and replacing wordy be-verb

phrases with more direct simple verbs.

• Eliminate padding that doesn’t contribute to your

meaning.

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Chapter 11

Be plain-spoken:

Avoid bizspeak

It’s mission-critical to be plain-spoken, whether you’re

trying to be best-of-breed at outside-the-box thinking

or simply incentivizing colleagues to achieve a paradigm

shift in core-performance value-adds. Leading-edge le-

veraging of your plain-English skill set will ensure that

your actionable items synergize future-proof assets with

your global-knowledge repository.

Just kidding. Seriously, though, it’s important to write

plainly. You want to sound like a person, not an institu-

tion. But it’s hard to do, especially if you work with people

who are addicted to buzzwords. It takes a lot of practice.

Back when journalists were somewhat more fastidi-

ous with the language than they are today, newspaper

editors often kept an “index expurgatorius”: a roster of

words and phrases that under no circumstances (except

perhaps in a damning quote) would fi nd their way into

print. Here’s such a list for the business writer. Of course,

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Developing Your Skills

it’s just a starting point—add to it as you come across

other examples of bizspeak that hinder communication

by substituting clichés for actual thought.

Bizspeak Blacklist

actionable (apart from legal action)

agreeance

as per

at the end of the day

back of the envelope

bandwidth (outside electronics)

bring our A game

client-centered

come-to-Jesus

core competency

CYA

drill down

ducks in a row

forward initiative

going forward

go rogue

guesstimate

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Be plain-spoken: Avoid bizspeak

harvesting effi ciencies

hit the ground running

impact (as verb)

incent

incentivize

impactful

kick the can down the road

Let’s do lunch.

Let’s take this offl ine.

level the playing fi eld

leverage (as verb)

liaise

mission-critical

monetize

net-net

on the same page

operationalize

optimize

out of pocket (except in reference to expenses)

paradigm shift

parameters

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Developing Your Skills

per

planful

pursuant to

push the envelope

putting lipstick on a pig

recontextualize

repurpose

rightsized

sacred cow

scalable

seamless integration

seismic shift (outside earthquake references)

smartsized

strategic alliance

strategic dynamism

synergize; synergy

think outside the box

throw it against the wall and see if it sticks

throw under the bus

turnkey

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Be plain-spoken: Avoid bizspeak

under the radar

utilization; utilize

value-added

verbage (the correct term is verbiage—in reference

only to verbose phrasings)

where the rubber meets the road

win-win

These phrases have become voguish in business—ab-

stain if you can. Sometimes people use them to enhance

their own sense of belonging or to sound “in the know.”

Or they’ve been taught that good writing is hyperformal,

so they stiffen up when they use a keyboard or pick up a

pen, and they pile on the clichés.

It takes experience to bring your written voice into line

with your spoken voice and to polish it so well that no one

notices the polish.

NOT THIS:

BUT THIS:

The reduction in monthly

We’ll be cutting your assess-

assessments which will occur

ments beginning next month

beginning next month has

because we’ve saved on

been made fi nancially fea-

expenses.

sible as a result of leveraging

our substantial reductions in

expenditures.

It is to be noted that a con-

We’ve saved considerable sums

siderable amount of savings

by streamlining our purchases.

has been made possible

by reason of our planful

initiation of more effi

cient

and eff ective purchasing

procedures.

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Hunt for off ending phrases

Start looking for bizspeak in all kinds of documents,

from memos to marketing plans, and you’ll fi nd it every-

where. You’ll eventually learn to spot it—and avoid it—in

your own writing. You’ll omit canned language such as

Attached please fi nd and other phrases that only clutter

your message.

Bizspeak may seem like a convenient shorthand, but

it suggests to readers that you’re on autopilot, thought-

lessly using boilerplate phrases that people have heard

over and over. Brief, readable documents, by contrast,

show care and thought. Attached please fi nd is just one

example among many:

NOT THIS:

BUT THIS:

at your earliest convenience

as soon as you can

in light of the fact that

because

we are in receipt of

we’ve received

as per our telephone

as we discussed this

conversation on today’s date

morning

Pursuant to your instructions,

As you asked, I met with

I met with Roger Smith today

Roger Smith today.

regarding the above-mentioned.

Please be advised that the

The deadline is April 2, 2012.

deadline for the above-

mentioned competition is

Monday, April 2, 2012.

Thank you for your courtesy

Thank you.

and cooperation regarding

this matter.

Thank you in advance for your

Thank you. If you have any

courtesy and cooperation in this

questions, please call.

regard. Please do not hesitate

to contact me if you have any

questions regarding this request.

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Be plain-spoken: Avoid bizspeak

Writing plainly means expressing ideas as straight-

forwardly as you can—without sacrifi cing meaning or

tone.

Take Warren Buffett again, one of the smartest busi-

ness leaders on the planet—and someone, by the way, who

cares a lot about good business writing. Consider how

he rewrote a short passage that he found in a fi nancial-

services fi rm’s business prospectus. Read through the

fi rst excerpt before you read Buffett’s translation below it,

and note the bizspeak phrases that landed on the cutting-

room fl oor as Buffett tightened and translated:

NOT THIS:

Maturity and duration management decisions are made in the

context of an intermediate maturity orientation. The maturity

structure of the portfolio is adjusted in the anticipation of

cyclical interest-rate changes. Such adjustments are not made

in an eff ort to capture short-term, day-to-day movements in

the market, but instead are implemented in anticipation of

longer-term, secular shifts in the interest rates ( i.e., shifts

transcending and/or not inherent to the business cycle). Adjust-

ments made to shorten portfolio maturity and duration are

made to limit capital losses during periods when interest rates

are expected to rise. Conversely, adjustments made to lengthen

maturation for the portfolio’s maturity and duration strategy lies

in the analysis of the U.S. and global economies, focusing on

levels of real interest rates, monetary and fi scal policy actions,

and cyclical indicators.

Words: 136

Sentences: 5 (All passive voice)

Average sentence length: 27.2

Flesch Reading Ease: 8.2

BUT THIS:

We will try to profi t by correctly predicting future interest

rates. When we have no strong opinion, we will generally hold

intermediate-term bonds. But when we expect a major and

sustained increase in rates, we will concentrate on short-term

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Developing Your Skills

issues. And conversely, if we expect a major shift to lower rates,

we will buy long bonds. We will focus on the big picture and

won’t make moves based on short-term considerations.

Words: 74

Sentences: 5 (None passive voice)

Average sentence length: 14.8

Flesch Reading Ease: 60.1

If you analyze the before-and-after prospectuses under

the Flesch Reading Ease (FRE) scale—a test developed by

readability expert Rudolf Flesch to measure the compre-

hensibility of written passages using word and sentence

length—you can quantify the difference. The higher the

score, the easier the passage is to read and comprehend.

On a scale of 0–100, the original 136-word prospectus on

top scores an 8.2. In contrast, Warren Buffett’s revision

below it scores a 60.1. To give some perspective, Reader’s

Digest scores 65 on the FRE scale, Time magazine around

52, and the Harvard Law Review in the low 30s. Increas-

ing a passage’s readability is not the same as “dumbing

it down.” The revised passage above gives the reader the

same information—but more clearly.

Here’s a shorter example, this time from a community

college’s mission statement:

NOT THIS:

The object of this enterprise is to facilitate the development of

greater capacities for community colleges and not-for-profi t

neighborhood organizations to engage in heightened collabora-

tion in regard to the provision of community services that would

maximize the available resources from a number of community

stakeholders and to provide a greater level of communication

about local prioritization of educational needs with the particu-

lar community.

[63 words]

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Be plain-spoken: Avoid bizspeak

BUT THIS:

This project seeks to help community colleges and nonprofi t

neighborhood groups work more effi

ciently together.

[15 words]

In both the Buffett example and the community- college

example, the original versions seem to be aiming at

something other than getting the point across. Perhaps

the writers wanted to sound impressive, or wanted to ob-

scure what they were actually up to, or wanted to cover

up the fact that they weren’t entirely sure what they were

up to. Whatever the answer, the original styles won’t

work on any target audience.

Recap

• Aim to write as naturally as you speak: Sound like

a human being, not a corporation.

• Avoid boilerplate phrases that weigh down your

language and suggest lazy thinking.

• Increase readability by expressing your ideas as

directly as possible.

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Chapter 12

Use chronology

when giving a

factual account

Stories are inherently chronological. One thing happens,

then another, then another. That structure works well

not only in books and fi lms but also in business writing.

It’s more likely to be clear and effi cient, and to keep read-

ers interested. So include “just the facts, ma’am,” as Joe

Friday on the old TV series Dragnet used to say. Just the

facts that matter, and in the right order.

In theory this point seems obvious, but in practice

writers fi nd storytelling diffi cult. They often dive straight

into the middle without orienting their readers, and the

inevitable result is confusion on the receiving end. You’re

familiar with this phenomenon. It happens all the time

in conversations with friends or family members: “Wait a

minute. Back up. When was this? Where were you? And

why were you talking to this guy? And where’d he come

from?”

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Developing Your Skills

Suppose you’re sending an e-mail message to give the

status of an ongoing project, and it’s been some time

since the last update. The recipient isn’t as immersed

in the project as you are and probably has many other

things going on. So remind your reader where things

stood when you last communicated about the subject,

and describe what’s happened since then:

NOT THIS:

BUT THIS:

Sarah—

Sarah—

It was hard making

Last week you asked me to

headway with Jim Martinez,

approach Magnabilify Corpora-

but fi nally we’re looking (in

tion, the software developers,

the best-case scenario) at a

to see whether they might have

demonstration of what our

any interest in our customizing

software can do by mid-May,

some security applications for

as I established in my fi rst

their computer systems. I fi nally

telephone conference with

got through to Jim Martinez,

Jim last Monday at 9:00

corporate vice president in

a.m. He was out Wednesday

charge of software, and we have

and Thursday (I didn’t see

planned a face-to-face meeting

any reason to try calling

at his offi

ce next Tuesday.

on Tuesday), but on Friday

The next steps, as I under-

he told me that we’d need

stand them under Magnabilify’s

a sample app. But prior to

protocol, will be to enter into

that, Magnabilify requires

a nondisclosure agreement, to

an NDA. Tuesday’s meeting

develop a sample application

should clarify things. Let me

(in less than two weeks), and

know what you think.

to schedule a demonstration

Frank

shortly after.

Can you and I chat before

Tuesday’s meeting?

Frank

The version on the left reads like stream-of-conscious-

ness. The writer didn’t take the time to step back, think

of the message from the reader’s perspective, and then

lay out the important points chronologically. A story,

even a short one like the narrative on the right, holds the

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Use chronology when giving a factual account

reader’s interest more effectively than jumbled facts in-

terspersed with opinions.

Plot out what happened, and when

When a serious dispute arises within a company, the

lawyers will typically ask their clients to produce a “chro-

nology of relevant events,” detailing the most important

incidents leading up to the dispute. This document helps

everyone involved think more clearly about how things

unfolded. Try taking a similar approach when writing

a document that walks the reader through a series of

events—whether you’re sending someone a project up-

date or preparing an employee’s performance evaluation.

Create a chronology of relevant events to organize the

narrative. Say you did that before drafting your e-mail

message to Sarah in the right-hand example. Here’s how

it might look:

Chronology of relevant events

Last week

Sarah asked me to gauge

Magnabilify’s interest in having

us build customized security

applications.

Today

I spoke with Jim Martinez.

Next Tuesday

Jim and I will meet at his offi

ce

to discuss.

In two weeks

If Magnabilify is interested, we’ll

do an NDA, develop a sample

app, and schedule a demo.

Once you’ve laid out the chronology like this, drafting

the e-mail message becomes a lot easier—just a matter

of stringing the events together and asking to meet with

Sarah before next Tuesday’s meeting.

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Developing Your Skills

Recap

• Include only the relevant facts.

• Provide them in chronological order to make it

easy for your readers to follow you.

• Organize your narrative by creating a chronology

of relevant events before you write; then string the

events together in your draft. But avoid the rote

recitation of unnecessary dates.

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Chapter 13

Be a stickler

for continuity

Smooth writing consists of a sequence of well-joined

sentences and paragraphs, not a mere collection of them.

This smooth sequencing requires good planning and skill

in handling transitions, or links that help readers follow

your train of thought.

Watch how a good writer on business ethics, Man-

uel G. Velasquez, does it with a series of paragraph open-

ers (the links are indicated here by italics):

A Series of Paragraph Openers from

Manuel G. Velasquez’s Business Ethics (2011)

1.

How well does a free monopoly market

succeed in achieving the moral values that

characterize perfectly competitive free mar-

kets? Not well.

2. The

most obvious failure of monopoly mar-

kets lies in the high prices they enable the

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Developing Your Skills

monopolist to charge and the high profi ts they

enable him to reap, a failure that violates capi-

talist justice.

3. A monopoly market also results in a decline

in the effi ciency with which it allocates and

distributes goods.

4. First, the monopoly market allows resources to

be used in ways that will produce shortages of

those things buyers want and cause them to be

sold at higher prices than necessary.

5.

Second, monopoly markets do not encourage

suppliers to use resources in ways that will

minimize the resources consumed to produce a

certain amount of a commodity.

6. Third, a monopoly market allows the seller to

introduce price differentials that block con-

sumers from putting together the most satisfy-

ing bundle of commodities they can purchase

given the commodities available and the

money they can spend.

7.

Monopoly

markets

also embody restrictions on

the negative rights that perfectly free markets

respect.

8. A monopoly market, then, is one that deviates

from the ideals of capitalist justice, economic

utility, and negative rights.

The italicized transitional phrases steer us from one idea

to the next. Normally, we wouldn’t even notice them. The

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Be a stickler for continuity

transitions in really good writing are almost subliminal—

but they’re carefully placed where readers will need

them. These connections take readers forward in differ-

ent ways. They can:

• Establish a time sequence: then, at that point,

afterward, as soon as, at last, before, after, fi rst,

initially, meanwhile, later, next, now, once, origi-

nally, since, then, until, fi nally

• Establish place: there, in that place, at the front, in

back, farther back, in the rear, at the center, to the

left (right), up front, way back

• Add a point: and, or, further, also, in fact, more-

over, not only . . . but also

• Underscore a point: above all, after all, and so,

chiefl y, equally important, more so, indeed, more

important

• Concede a point: although, and yet, admittedly,

at the same time, certainly, even though, doubt-

less, granted, no doubt, of course, still, though, to be

sure, whereas, yet, while

• Return to a point: even so, nevertheless, nonethe-

less, still

• Give an example: for example, for instance, in

particular

• Provide a reason: because, hence, thus, for, it fol-

lows, since, so, then, therefore

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Developing Your Skills

• Set up a contrast: but, yet, and yet, conversely,

despite, by contrast, instead, on the other hand,

still, then, while

• Set up a conclusion: so, as a result, fi nally, in con-

clusion, in short, in sum, on the whole, therefore,

thus, to sum up

Use subheads as transitions

No matter how smooth your transitions are between sen-

tences and paragraphs, time-pressed readers will zone

out if you place a solid wall of text in front of them. Break

up your documents (even e-mails that are longer than a

paragraph) with some signposts to lead people from sec-

tion to section and help them quickly locate the parts

they’re particularly interested in. A “summary” subhead,

for example, tells readers where to fi nd just the high-

lights. And subheads that concisely yet clearly lay out

your key points allow people to skim and still get the gist

of your message.

Make your subheads as consistent as you can. For in-

stance, if you’re leading a task force that’s recommend-

ing ways to forge direct customer relationships through

social media, you might write each subhead in your body

text as a directive, along these lines:

Use LinkedIn to Get Feedback on Current Products

Use Facebook to Test New Concepts

Use Twitter to Facilitate Chats About Live Events

The parallelism will help your document hang together

both rhetorically and logically.

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Be a stickler for continuity

Recap

• Use well-placed transitional phrases to guide the

reader to your next idea and indicate its relation-

ship to what came before.

• Break up documents with concise, descriptive

subheads to increase readability and help readers

quickly locate the information most important

to them.

• Use a “summary” subhead to point your readers to

the document’s highlights.

• Use consistent style and parallel syntax in your

subheads to reinforce the document’s logical and

rhetorical cohesion.

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Chapter 14

Learn the basics of

correct grammar

Why nitpick about grammar? Because readers may see

your language—especially your use of your native lan-

guage—as a refl ection of your competence. Make lots of

mistakes and you’ll come across as uneducated and unin-

formed. People will hesitate to trust your recommenda-

tion to launch a resource-intensive project, for example,

or to buy goods or services. They may think you don’t

know what you’re talking about.

Telltale indicators

Consider pronouns. If you don’t know how to handle I

and me, many of your colleagues, partners, and custom-

ers won’t take you seriously. Some errors will predictably

get you in trouble:

• “She placed an order *with Megan and I.” (Correct:

She placed an order with Megan and me.)

• (On the phone:) “*This is him.” (Correct: This is he.)

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Developing Your Skills

• “Just keep this matter *between you and I.” (Cor-

rect: Just keep this matter between you and me.)

• “*Whom may I say is calling?” (Correct: Who

may I say is calling?)

The rule, very simply, is that I, we, he, and she are sub-

jects of clauses <Leslie and I were delighted to work with

you>; me, us, him, and her are objects of either verbs or prepositions <Please call either Leslie or me> <You

might want to consult with Leslie and me>. In the com-

pound phrasings, try leaving out Leslie and—and you’ll

know the correct form immediately.

Besides pronoun problems, here are the main types

of grammatical errors to watch out for. As for dozens of

other wording issues that can torpedo your credibility,

see Appendixes D and F.

Subject–verb disagreement

A verb must agree in person and number with its sub-

ject <I am aware of that> <You are aware of that> <Pat is

aware of that> <We are all aware of that>. But syntax can

make things tricky.

There is poses a problem because There appears to be

the subject. It’s not. It’s what grammarians call an exple-

tive—not a bad-word expletive (as in “expletive deleted”),

but a word that stands in for the subject in an inverted

sentence. In these sentences, there is just means “exists.”

Take, for example, There is a vacancy on the hiring com-

mittee. The uninverted sentence would be A vacancy

(exists) on the hiring committee. Because there seems to

some people to resemble a singular subject, they tend to

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Learn the basics of correct grammar

use a singular verb. But there inverts the word order, and

the true subject follows the verb <There are several rea-

sons for approving the plan>. And, of course, when the

subject is plural, a plural verb is needed.

NOT THIS:

BUT THIS:

There is always risk and

There are always risk and liabil-

liability considerations to

ity considerations to take into

take into account.

account.

There is many options to

There are many options to avoid a

avoid a takeover.

takeover.

Another troublesome area for subject–verb disagree-

ment involves prepositional phrases that follow the sub-

ject. By “false attraction,” they often mislead writers to

choose the wrong verb (singular for plural or vice versa).

The object of a prepositional phrase is never the subject

of a sentence. It may be nearer the verb, but the number

of the subject controls the number of the verb:

NOT THIS:

BUT THIS:

The details of the custom-

The details of the customized

ized work is delaying the

work are delaying the project.

project.

The source of our replace-

The source for our replacement

ment parts and main-

parts and maintenance supplies

tenance have not been

has not been selected yet.

selected yet.

In the fi rst example, work is the object of the preposition

of, so the plural subject details controls the verb. In the

second, source takes the singular has not been selected.

Disagreements can also arise with compound subjects

connected by or, either . . . or, or neither . . . nor. If the sub-

jects are all singular then the verb is singular as well. But

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Developing Your Skills

when one or more are plural, the number of the verb must

match the number of the noun that follows the or or nor:

NOT THIS:

BUT THIS:

Special services or a new

Special services or a new prod-

product target a niche

uct targets a niche market.

market.

Neither the education fund

Neither the education fund nor

nor the training costs is

the training costs are without

without budget constraints.

budget constraints.

In the fi rst example, the singular subject a new product

after the or mandates a singular verb. In the second ex-

ample, the plural subject after nor makes the verb plural

as well. Notice that it’s more idiomatic to use the singular

subject or plural subject + plural verb form.

Noun–pronoun disagreement

Strictly speaking, a pronoun must have the same gender

and number as the subject.

NOT THIS:

BUT THIS:

A shareholder may cast their A shareholder may cast his or

vote for only one member of

her vote for only one member of

the board.

the board.

Although their is colloquially used as a genderless sin-

gular pronoun, this usage is not yet widely accepted in

formal writing. And unless you know the sex of the sub-

ject, try to avoid using a masculine or feminine pronoun.

If you wish to make a political statement with pronoun

gender (by always choosing the generic feminine, for ex-

ample), do so: Just know that some of your readers may

be distracted by it or may discount your credibility. The

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Learn the basics of correct grammar

safest course is to use some ingenuity to write in an invis-

ibly gender-neutral way.

NOT THIS:

BUT THIS:

Either the receptionist or

Either the receptionist or the

the sales assistant will have

sales assistant will have to start

to change their lunch hour

taking lunch earlier or later so

so that at least one will be

that at least one will be in the

in the offi

ce at all times.

offi

ce at all times.

Three candidates responded Three candidates responded

to the advertisement for the

to the advertisement for the

fi nancial-offi

cer position.

fi nancial-offi

cer position. Each

Each submitted their

submitted a résumé.

résumé.

But back to grammar. When the subject of a sentence

is a singular pronoun such as either, neither, each, or ev-

ery, other nouns that accompany it have no effect on the

number of the verb:

NOT THIS:

BUT THIS:

Have either of our clients

Has either of our clients ar-

arrived yet?

rived yet?

Neither of the new products

Neither of the new products

have sold spectacularly this

has sold spectacularly this

year.

year.

Each of us are responsible

Each of us is responsible for

for the tasks assigned.

the tasks assigned.

Double negatives

A double negative occurs when back-to-back negatives

are meant to intensify, not cancel, each other. It’s easy

to recognize in dialect (for example, we didn’t have no

choice or it didn’t hardly matter), but the problems can

be more subtle in formal writing. Watch for the word not

plus another word with a negative sense.

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Developing Your Skills

NOT THIS:

BUT THIS:

We couldn’t scarcely manage

We could scarcely manage to

to keep up with the demand.

keep up with the demand.

Another subtle double-negative combination is not

. . . but.

NOT THIS:

BUT THIS:

The clerk couldn’t help but call

The clerk couldn’t help calling

the manager for advice.

the manager for advice.

But indicates a negative or contradiction, so not . . . but

may be ambiguous. The fi rst sentence could mean the

clerk had some other option. The second sentence clearly

states there was no alternative.

Nonstandard vocabulary

In business writing, always use standard English—unless

you’re writing specifi cally for a niche audience of non-

standard speakers. Broadly speaking, standard English

is characterized by attention to accepted conventions for

grammar, vocabulary, spelling, and punctuation.

You needn’t always be strictly formal—in appropriate

situations, use less formal English. But your prose and

speech must always be professional and respectful.

Dialect is always nonstandard. Avoid using it in

business:

NOT THIS:

BUT THIS:

Where’s the meeting at?

Where’s the meeting?

Me and Kim will handle the

Kim and I will handle the Brews-

Brewster account.

ter account.

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Learn the basics of correct grammar

Nonstandard language may also creep in when writers

rely on the spoken sounds of words:

NOT THIS:

BUT THIS:

They shouldn’t of submitted

They shouldn’t have submitted

those incomplete reports.

those incomplete reports.

Irregular verbs are also fertile ground for nonstandard

language.

NOT THIS:

BUT THIS:

We drug our heels getting

We dragged our heels getting

into the mid-Atlantic market.

into the mid-Atlantic market.

Our late entry almost sunk

Our late entry almost sank our

our chances against

chances against established

established competitors.

competitors.

How to correct yourself

Here are three good ways to brush up: (1) Read fi rst-rate

nonfi ction; (2) have knowledgeable colleagues proof your

material and explain their corrections; and (3) browse

through guides on grammar and usage, consulting them

whenever questions arise.

This last method will help you distinguish between the

real rules and the artifi cial ones that plague so much writ-

ing. For example, were you told in school never to begin

a sentence with a conjunction? So was I. But look at all

the and s and but s that begin sentences in fi rst-rate prose.

They’re everywhere. These words, as sentence-starters,

keep readers going smoothly with the train of thought.

They don’t break any real rules—and they never have.

Grammatically, there’s nothing wrong with using

additionally and however as sentence-starters. But

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Developing Your Skills

stylistically, they’re inferior. The multisyllable connectors

don’t join as cleanly and as tightly as monosyllables do.

Do you worry that your readers will think a sentence-

starting conjunction is wrong? They won’t even notice it,

just as you never do. Good style gets readers focused on

your clear, concise message. Bad style, by contrast, draws

attention to itself.

For a handy collection of grammar guidelines, see Ap-

pendix B, “A Dozen Grammatical Rules You Absolutely

Need to Know.” And be sure to spend some quality time

with Appendix F, “A Primer of Good Usage.” Fall in love

with the language, and it will love you back.

Recap

• When considering verb number, watch for com-

pound subjects, inverted syntax, and prepositional

phrases that follow the subject.

• Never mistake the object of a preposition for the

subject of a sentence.

• Avoid

using

they/them/their as genderless singular

pronouns in formal writing.

• Avoid double negatives.

• Follow the conventions of standard English.

• Improve your grasp of standard English by read-

ing quality nonfi ction, having colleagues review

your writing, and referring to grammar and usage

guides when you have questions.

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Chapter 15

Get feedback

on your drafts

from colleagues

Say you’ve drafted a budget request. Ask people on your

team to read it and make sure you’ve explained clearly,

concisely, and persuasively why you should receive the

funding, for example, to hire two more staff members.

And if possible, get constructive feedback from an objec-

tive peer in a different department—preferably someone

who is good at lobbying for resources.

Pay attention to what your colleagues say: Their re-

actions will probably be quite close to those of your in-

tended readers.

Accept suggestions graciously

A good writer welcomes good edits—yearns for them, in

fact. A bad writer resents them, seeing them only as per-

sonal attacks. A good writer has many ideas and tends

to value them cheaply. A bad writer has few ideas and

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Developing Your Skills

values them too dearly. So share your material while it’s

still rough—the feedback will help you make it shipshape

much faster than if you were toiling in isolation.

Try to avoid having your colleagues explain their edits

in person. You may get defensive and have a hard time

recognizing good advice. Invite them to mark up your

document, and thank them for their help.

If you have the people you supervise tightening and

brightening your prose regularly, you’ll benefi t in two

ways: Your documents will be more polished, and the

people you manage will, with practice, become better ed-

itors and writers. Give them direction, though: Ask them

to look not just for outright errors but also for passages

that are verbose, unclear, or awkwardly expressed. Ide-

ally, you’ll get to the point where you’re accepting 80 per-

cent of their suggestions.

Create a culture where editing fl ourishes

At my company, everyone who edits or proofreads must

suggest at least two changes per page. No one is allowed

to hand something back—even a short letter—and say,

“It looks good to me!” People can always make improve-

ments by asking, “What did the writer not say that should

have been said? How could the tone be improved? Isn’t

there a better, shorter way of phrasing one of the ideas?”

And so on.

If each reader suggests at least two edits per page, your

typos will get caught—believe me. Typos are generally the

easiest things to catch, so readers will usually mark those

before trying the more diffi cult task of suggesting stylis-

tic improvements. In the end, awkwardness will disap-

pear. You and your team will look better because you’ll

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Get feedback on your drafts from colleagues

perform better. You’ll make stronger, clearer arguments.

You’ll put together more persuasive pitches.

Does this seem like overkill? Consider that every com-

munication you send is a commentary on your team or

company and its level of professionalism. If it’s a printed

brochure or a commercial e-mail with wide distribution,

the more feedback the better. You simply cannot have too

many sets of knowledgeable eyes review the copy.

A dumb mistake can be disastrous—as a major univer-

sity discovered after printing thousands of commence-

ment brochures with “School of Pubic Affairs” in large

type on the front cover. A photo of this embarrassing gaffe

almost instantly popped up on the Internet, of course,

and the university became the target of many jokes.

When it comes to writing, you want a culture of un-

neurotic helpfulness. There’s no shame in needing edits

from others. People should freely seek them and freely

give them—without any unpleasant overtones of one-

upmanship. Everyone in an organization, regardless of

rank, can benefi t from good editing.

Recap

• Routinely ask your colleagues and those you su-

pervise to read your drafts and suggest edits.

• Have them mark up the document and submit

their edits in writing, rather than explaining them

in person, to avoid reacting defensively. Always

thank them for their help.

• Foster an environment where edits are freely

sought and offered—without overtones of petty

one-upmanship.

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Section 3

Avoiding

the Quirks

That Turn

Readers Off

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Chapter 16

Don’t anesthetize

your readers

It seems obvious that you shouldn’t put your audience

to sleep, doesn’t it? It should also be obvious to people

who talk in circles at dinner parties or deliver dull lec-

tures, but consider how many boring speakers you’ve had

to listen to. It doesn’t have to be that way—whether in

conversation or in writing.

Ponder the best conversationalists and the best lec-

turers you’ve ever heard. No matter how obscure the topic,

they make it fascinating through their technique. They

avoid trite expressions. They use strong, simple words.

Think of Winston Churchill’s famous phrase “blood, toil,

tears, and sweat.” And remember what George Wash-

ington reputedly said when questioned about the fallen

cherry tree: not “It was accomplished by utilizing a small

sharp-edged implement,” but “I used my little hatchet.”

Effective writers use the same techniques. Why do you

read some books all the way through but set others aside?

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Avoiding the Quirks That Turn Readers Off

It’s their style: the way they explain things, the way they

tell the story.

Here are several tips for writing business documents

that hold readers’ attention.

Use personal pronouns skillfully

Don’t overuse I (try not to begin paragraphs or successive

sentences with it), but do lean heavily on we, our, you,

and your. Those are personal, friendly words that add

human interest and pull readers into a document. Rudolf

Flesch, a leading fi gure in plain-English circles and the

author of How to Be Brief, was one of the fi rst to explain

the need for you:

Keep a running conversation with your reader. Use the

second-person pronoun whenever you can. Translate

everything into you language . This applies to citizens

over 65 = if you’re over 65, this applies to you. It must

be remembered that = you must remember. Many

people don’t realize = perhaps you don’t realize. Always

write directly to you, the person you’re trying to reach

with your message.

Likewise, the words we and our—in reference to your

fi rm or company—make corporations and other legal

entities sound as if they have collective personalities (as

they should and typically do). People usually appreciate

this down-to-earth approach over the sterile, distanc-

ing effect of third-person prose. Compare the following

examples:

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Don’t anesthetize your readers

NOT THIS:

BUT THIS:

Whether or not a stockholder

Whether or not you plan to

plans to attend a meeting, he

attend a meeting, please

or she should take the time to

take the time to vote by

vote by completing and mailing

completing and mailing the

the enclosed proxy card to the

enclosed proxy card to us.

Company. If a stockholder signs,

If you sign, date, and mail

dates, and mails a proxy card

your proxy card without

without indicating how he or she

indicating how you want to

wants to vote, that stock holder’s

vote, your proxy will count

proxy will be counted as a vote

as a vote in favor of the

in favor of the merger. If a stock-

merger. If you don’t return

holder fails to return a proxy

your card, in most cases

card, the eff ect in most cases will

you’ll be counted as voting

be a vote against the merger.

against the merger.

Use contractions

Many writers have a morbid fear of contractions, having

been taught in school to avoid them. But you won’t be

breaking any real rules if you use them—and they coun-

teract stuffi ness, a major cause of poor writing.

This doesn’t mean that you should become breezy or

use much slang—just that it’s good to be relaxed. If you

would say something as a contraction, then write it that

way. If you wouldn’t, then don’t.

NOT THIS:

BUT THIS:

For those customers who do

If you prefer not to use our

not participate in West Bank’s

online banking program,

online banking program, and do

we’ll continue mailing your

not wish to consider doing so,

statements to you.

West Bank will continue sending

them statements by U.S. Mail.

We would like to remind you

Remember: You needn’t be

that it is not necessary to be

present to win the drawing.

present to win. We will inform

We’ll call you if you win.

all winners by telephone subse-

quent to the drawing.

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Avoiding the Quirks That Turn Readers Off

Stick to simple language

I know I repeat this again and again—but it bears repeat-

ing. Readers who can’t follow you will stop trying.

Avoid passive voice

Don’t say “The closing documents were prepared by Sue,”

but instead “Sue prepared the closing documents”; not

“The message was sent by George,” but either “George

sent the message” or “The message came from George.”

This guideline is hardly absolute—sometimes passive

voice is the most natural way to say what you’re saying.

Sometimes it can’t be avoided. (See?) But if you develop

a strong habit of using active voice, you’ll largely pre-

vent convoluted, backward-sounding sentences in your

writing.

How do you identify passive voice? Remember that

it’s invariably a be-verb (typically is, are, was, were) or get, plus a past-tense verb. There are eight be-verbs and

countless past participles.

Examples of Passive Voice

is + delivered

are + fi nished

was + awarded

were + praised

been + adjusted

being + fl own

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Don’t anesthetize your readers

be + served

am + relieved

got + promoted

You will improve your writing if you minimize passive

voice. (Not: Your writing will be improved if passive voice

is minimized by you.)

Vary the length and structure of your

sentences

Monotony, as Cicero once said, is in all things the mother

of boredom. It’s true of syntax no less than it’s true of eat-

ing or anything else. Sameness cloys. So you want short

sentences and long; main clauses and subordinate ones.

You want variety.

NOT THIS:

BUT THIS:

Over a signifi cant period

For many years, we have

of time, we have gained

helped clients better use their

experience helping our

resources and improve per-

clients improve operational

formance. How? By streamlin-

performance and maximize

ing operations and changing

both the effi

ciency of their

managers’ mind-sets and

human resources and the

behaviors.

economical utilization of their

capital. Ours is an integrated

approach that both diagnoses

and streamlines operating

practices and procedures

using lean maintenance and

optimization tools, while at

the same time implementing

change-management tech-

niques involving mind-sets

and behaviors of those in-

volved in managerial positions

within a given organization.

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Avoiding the Quirks That Turn Readers Off

NOT THIS:

BUT THIS:

In order to provide you, the

What should you do if you

user of our products, the op-

need a free replacement for a

tion of obtaining free replace-

defective product? Go to the

ments for defective products

nearest offi

ce. Any of our of-

from the nearest offi

ce, we

fi ces can help even if you did

off er a simplifi ed processing

not purchase the item there.

without acknowledgment of

the statutory duty (“goodwill”)

regardless of whether the

product has been purchased

there or has reached the user

by another route.

Avoid alphabet soup

Readers fi nd acronyms tiresome, especially ones they’re

not familiar with. So use them judiciously. It might be

convenient to refer to COGS instead of spelling out “cost

of goods sold.” If you also throw in acronyms such as ABC

(“activity-based costing”), EBITDA (“earnings before in-

terest, tax, depreciation, and amortization”), and VBM

(“value-based management”), the accountants in your

audience will follow you—but you’ll lose everyone else.

Small wonder, too. People don’t want to master your ar-

cane vocabulary to get what you’re saying.

Surely you’ve had this experience as a reader: You

encounter an acronym (a long one if you’re particularly

unlucky) and can’t connect it with anything you’ve read

in the article or document so far. You fi nd yourself scan-

ning backward through the text, hoping to fi nd the fi rst

appearance of that acronym or words that might fi t it.

By the time you fi nd it (or give up trying), you’ve com-

pletely lost the writer’s train of thought. Never put your

own readers through that.

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Don’t anesthetize your readers

Stick to words when you can. Acronyms make writing

easier but reading harder. Your shortcut is the reader’s

hindrance.

Recap

• Don’t

overuse

I. Use we, our, you, and your instead

to add a personal touch and appeal to your reader.

• Avoid

stuffi ness by overcoming any fear you might

have of contractions.

• For clearer, more straightforward writing, prefer

active voice—unless the passive in a particular

context sounds more natural.

• Vary the length and structure of your sentences.

• Make the reader’s job easier by avoiding acronyms

when you can.

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Chapter 17

Watch your tone

Striking the right tone takes work—but it’s critical to the

success of your business documents. If you sound likable

and professional, people will want to work with you and

respond to you. So adopt a relaxed tone, as if speaking

directly to the recipient of your document.

Avoid hyperformality

What do you think of colleagues who say or write “How

may I be of assistance?” instead of “How may I help

you?” Or “subsequent to our conversation” instead of “af-

ter we spoke”? When they choose overblown words over

everyday equivalents, don’t they strike you as pompous?

Too much formality will spoil your style. Keep your

writing down to earth and achieve a personal touch by:

• Writing your message more or less as you’d say it,

but without all the casualisms ( like s and you know s).

• Including courtesies such as thank you, we’re

happy to, and we appreciate.

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Avoiding the Quirks That Turn Readers Off

• Using the names of the people you’re writing about

( David Green, not the above-mentioned patient).

• Using personal pronouns ( you, he, she—not the

reader, the decedent, the applicant; we under-

stand—not it is understood; we recommend—not

it is recommended by the undersigned).

Be collegial

You’ll have better luck delivering most kinds of mes-

sages, even tough ones, if you approach people colle-

gially. Imagine that everything you write will be paraded

before a jury in a contentious lawsuit. You’ll want that

jury to think you’ve behaved admirably. Of course, some-

times you’ll need to take an aggressive stance—for ex-

ample, when you’re at the last stage before litigation. But

do this only as a last resort, and preferably on advice of

counsel.

Be yourself. Just be your most careful, circumspect self.

People have gotten their companies into terrible trou-

ble—and have lost their jobs—by writing ill- considered

letters, memos, and e-mails. So always summon your

best judgment.

Even if you’re collegial and fairly relaxed, your lan-

guage will vary somewhat depending on your relation-

ship with the recipient. You’ll be okay if you ask yourself,

“How would I say this to so-and-so if he were right here

with me?” You don’t want a distant tone with your clos-

est colleagues, and you don’t want a chummy tone with

someone you don’t know all that well.

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Watch your tone

Never try to make your readers admit that they’re in

the wrong. It’s unwise to say that they labor under a de-

lusion, or claim to understand, or fail to understand, or

complain, or erroneously assert, or distort. These expres-

sions, and others like them, breed ill will. Instead, treat

your readers with integrity and fairness—and show your

willingness to meet them halfway.

Drop the sarcasm

Sarcasm expresses contempt and superiority. It doesn’t

shame people into compliance. Rather, it’s a surefi re way

of irritating and alienating them. Compare:

NOT THIS:

BUT THIS:

Given that Monday was a

Because Monday was a bank

bank holiday, as declared

holiday, I didn’t receive your

by federal statute no less,

e-mail message of the 17th

your e-mail of the 17th

until yesterday. Naturally I was

of the present month did

chagrined that you had to write

not come to my attention

a second time. But of course I

until yesterday. It is with no

want you to call on me when-

small degree of regret that

ever I might help.

we note that you deemed

it necessary to send a

follow- up e-mail to us

regarding this matter, since

we are desirous of estab-

lishing a relationship of

mutual trust and respect.

In the left-hand column, note the deadly combination

of hyperformality and sarcasm, and the annoying sub-

text: “You wrote on a holiday, you DOPE. Of course you

had to wait for a response.” The chance of “establishing

a relationship of mutual trust and respect” is very likely

diminished.

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Avoiding the Quirks That Turn Readers Off

Recap

• Arrive at a relaxed but professional tone by writing

your message as if you were speaking to the recipi-

ent in person.

• Refer to people by name, use personal pronouns

as you naturally would, and shun fancy substitutes

for everyday words.

• Always use your best judgment and a collegial tone

in composing your messages, even if the content

isn’t positive. You’ll get better responses from your

recipients and keep yourself—and your company—

out of trouble.

• Adopt a tone appropriate to your relationship with

the recipient.

• Never use sarcasm in professional messages. It

will result in a step away from—not toward—your

desired outcome.

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Section 4

Common Forms

of Business

Writing

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Chapter 18

E-mails

When you send e-mails, do you usually receive a useful,

friendly, timely response? Or one that falls short of that

ideal? Or no response at all? If you’re struggling to get

your recipients to focus on your messages, it’s because

you’re competing with a lot of senders—in some cases,

hundreds per day.

Here’s how to write e-mails that people will actually

read, answer, and act on:

• Get straight to the point—politely, of course—in

your fi rst few sentences. Be direct when making

a request. Don’t fulsomely butter up the recipi-

ent fi rst—although a brief compliment may help

(“Great interview. Thanks for sending it. May I ask

a favor?”). Spell out deadlines and other details the

recipient will need to get the job done right and

on time.

• Copy people judiciously. Include only those who

will immediately grasp why they’re on the thread.

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Common Forms of Business Writing

And avoid “Reply All.” Your correspondent may

have been overinclusive with the “Copy” list, and if

you repeat that mistake, you’ll continue to annoy

the recipients who shouldn’t be there.

• Keep your message brief. People fi nd long e-mails

irksome and energy-sapping. The more they have

to scroll or swipe, the less receptive they’ll be to

your message. They’ll probably just skim it and

miss important details. Many people immediately

close long e-mails to read the shorter ones. So

rarely compose more than a single screen of read-

ing. Focus your content and tighten your language.

• Write a short but informative subject line. With a

generic—or blank—subject line, your message will

get buried in your recipient’s overstuffed inbox.

(Not “Program,” but “The Nov. 15 Leadership

Program.”) If you’re asking someone to take action,

highlight that in the subject line. By making your

request easy to fi nd, you’ll improve your chances of

getting it fulfi lled.

• Stick to standard capitalization and punctuation.

Good writing conventions may seem like a waste

of time for e-mail, especially when you’re tapping

out messages on a handheld device. But it’s a mat-

ter of getting things right—the little things. Even

if people in your group don’t capitalize or punctu-

ate in their messages, stand out as someone who

does. Rushed e-mails that violate the basic norms

of written language bespeak carelessness. And

their abbreviated style can be confusing. It takes

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E-mails

less time to write a clear message the fi rst time

around than it does to follow up to explain what

you meant to say.

• Use a signature that displays your title and contact

information. It should look professional (not too

long or ornate) and make it convenient for others

to choose how to reach you.

These tips are pretty commonsensical—but they’re not

common practice. To show you how well they work, let’s

compare some sample e-mails.

Say you’re trying to help a young friend of yours, a

budding journalist, land an internship. You happen to

know the editor of a metropolitan newspaper, and you

send him a message. Consider these two approaches:

NOT THIS:

Subject: Hello there!

Hal—

It’s been ages, I know, but I’ve been meaning to tell you

just how eff ective I think you’ve been as the editor of the Daily

Metropolitan these past seven years. Although I canceled my

subscription a few years back (LOL)—the papers kept cluttering

the driveway—I buy a copy at the coff ee shop almost every day,

and I always tell people there just how good the paper is. Who

knows, I may have won you some subscribers with all my gush-

ing praise! Believe me, I’m always touting the good old DM.

Anyhoo, I have a mentee I’d like you to meet. You’ll soon be

thanking me for introducing you to her. She would like an intern-

ship, and I know she’ll be the best intern you’ve ever had. Her

name is Glenda Jones, and she is A-1 in every way. May I tell her

you will contact her? (With good news, I hope!) It can be unpaid.

I know your paper has fallen on tough times—but she wants to

get into the business anyway! Silly girl. Ah, well, what can you

do when journalism seems like it’s just in the blood?

Expectantly yours,

Myra

P.S. You’ll thank me for this!

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Common Forms of Business Writing

BUT THIS:

Subject: Request for an Interview

Hal—

May I ask a favor of you? Glenda Jones, a really sharp mentee

in the township’s Young Leaders program, wants to pursue a

career in journalism, and she’s eager to learn how commercial

news organizations work. Would you spend 15 minutes chat-

ting with her at your offi

ce sometime this month, before school

lets out? I know it would be a meaningful introduction for her.

You’ll fi nd that she is a poised, mature, smart, and incredibly

self-possessed young woman.

She tells me that she’s looking for an unpaid internship.

After a brief interview, perhaps you’d consider giving her a

one-week tryout as your assistant. I know you’ve been a mentor

to many aspiring journalists over the years, but here you have a

real standout: editor of her college newspaper, Phi Beta Kappa

member, state debate champion.

No pressure here. If it’s a bad summer for you to take on an

intern, I’ll completely understand. But please meet with her if

you can. I’ve asked her to write to you independently, enclosing

her résumé, to give you a sense of her writing skills.

Thanks very much. Hope you and your family are doing well.

Myra

The fi rst version is colossally ineffective—and if Glenda

gets an internship it will be very much despite the mes-

sage from her mentor. The writer is inconsiderate (sug-

gesting that journalism is a thankless career), insensitive

(confessing to having canceled her subscription), and

horribly presumptuous (acting as if the recipient owes

her for “always touting” the newspaper and for suggest-

ing this “A-1” intern—as well as assuming that Glenda

must get the job).

The second version is effective because it’s humble,

you-centered, considerate (“No pressure here”), and

mildly fl attering (“I know you’ve been a mentor to many”).

Though it’s a little longer than the fi rst one, it gets to the

point sooner, and it provides only helpful information. If

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E-mails

Glenda has any real potential, she stands a decent chance

of getting that interview and possibly landing an intern-

ship with this version.

You may occasionally need to reprimand someone in

an e-mail—to clearly explain a misstep, to make a record

of it, or both. Compare these two examples, which show

the right and wrong way to deal with an employee who

sent an offensive e-mail to the whole team:

NOT THIS:

Subject: You Are in Trouble

Ted—

What on earth were you thinking when you sent that “joke”?

Your coworkers sure didn’t appreciate it one bit, and neither

did I. Don’t tell me it was “just a joke.” Haven’t you cracked your

employee handbook and read our company’s policies? You’ve

never done this before, that I am aware of. Don’t ever send an

e-mail like this one again.

Bill Morton

Offi

ce Manager

BUT THIS:

Subject: Disruption Caused by Your E-mail

Ted—

What one person considers funny, another may fi nd off ensive

and insulting. Several people have complained to me about the

e-mail headed “Have You Heard This One” that you sent every-

one yesterday. I was as upset as they were by the foul language,

which is inappropriate for an e-mail sent at work. Our compa-

ny’s policy does not make an exception for off ensive language,

even when used in jest. Please think about how future e-mails

will aff ect your coworkers. If I receive complaints again, HR will

have to get involved. But I trust that won’t be necessary.

Bill

In the fi rst version, the writer’s anger is clear—and that’s

about all that’s clear. Ted will certainly feel stupid (“What

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Common Forms of Business Writing

on earth were you thinking” and “Haven’t you cracked

your employee handbook”) and scared (“Don’t ever”). But

the writer doesn’t detail what Ted did wrong and why.

And Ted isn’t likely to ask (“Don’t tell me it was ‘just a

joke’”).

The tone of the second version won’t immediately put

the recipient on the defensive. This time, the writer ex-

plicitly identifi es the source of the problem (“the e-mail

headed ‘Have You Heard This One’ that you sent every-

one yesterday”) and explains the effects, the policy vio-

lated, and the consequences. Ted is much more likely to

understand his mistake.

Recap

• Be as direct as possible while maintaining a polite

tone. Come to the point of your e-mail within the

fi rst two or three sentences.

• Never click “Reply All” without fi rst checking the

recipient list. Send your e-mail only to people who

need to know its contents.

• Keep e-mails brief. Restrict yourself to one screen’s

worth of text and keep the message tight and fo-

cused so your readers get the point fast.

• Write a concise subject line that tells your re-

cipients why you’re writing and what it means to

them. If they need to act on your message, make

that clear in the subject line.

• Diligently adhere to standard writing conven-

tions—even when typing with your thumbs on a

handheld device.

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Chapter 19

Business Letters

Business letters aren’t a quaint thing of the past. They’re

necessary in all sorts of situations—from correcting a

vendor’s error to recommending a job candidate to an-

nouncing a new service. Effective ones can increase your

profi tability—by getting key customers to renew large

orders, for example, or persuading service providers to

charge you less for repeat business. They can also create

goodwill, which may eventually yield fi nancial returns.

The pointers in this chapter will help you get those

kinds of results.

Use direct, personal language

You see canned phrases like enclosed please fi nd and as

per all the time in letters. They’re high-sounding but low-

performing. Your letters will be much clearer and more

engaging without them.

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Common Forms of Business Writing

TIPS FOR WRITING CLEAR, PERSUASIVE LETTERS

• Focus on the reader. Try not to begin with the

word I; make it you, if possible (“You were so

kind to . . . ,” “You might be interested . . . ,”

etc.). Keep your recipient in the forefront

because—let’s face it—that’s what will hold the

reader’s interest. Not: “I just thought I’d drop

you a note to say that I really enjoyed my time

as your guest last week.” But instead: “What a

wonderful host you were last week.”

• Say something that matters.  Make your mes-

sage pointed but substantive—not just airy fi ller.

Not: “I trust this fi nds you prospering in busi-

ness, thriving in your personal life, and continu-

ing to seek the wisdom that will bring lasting

satisfaction in all your dealings.” But instead:

“I hope you and your family and friends all

dodged the fi res last week in Maniton Springs—

which sounded devastating.”

• Avoid hedging and equivocating.  Not: “It is

with regret that we acknowledge that we do not

appear at this time to be in a position to extend

an off er of employment.” But instead: “We’re

sorry to say that we aren’t now hiring.”

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Business Letters

NOT THIS:

BUT THIS:

Enclosed please fi nd . . .

Here are . . .; Enclosed are . . .

As per your request . . .

As you requested . . .

We are in receipt of . . .

We’ve received . . .

We shall advise you . . .

We’ll let you know . . .

As per your letter . . .

As your letter notes . . .

We have your order and will

We’ll forward your order

transmit same . . .

promptly . . .

We take pleasure . . .

We’re glad . . .

Due to the fact that . . .

Because . . .

At an early date . . .

Soon . . .

In respect of the matter of . . .

Regarding . . .

People often overwrite their letters—studding their

language with stiff, wordy expressions—when they’re un-

comfortable with the message. Consider the difference

between the two examples that follow. The fi rst letter is a

greeting to customers from a hotel manager; the second

is my revision.

NOT THIS:

Dear Valued Guest:

Welcome to the Milford Hotel Santa Clara. We are delighted

that you have selected our hotel during the time when you will

be here in the Silicon Valley area. Our staff is ready to assist you

in any way and ensure that your stay here is an enjoyable and

excellent one in every way.

During your time here at the Milford Hotel Santa Clara, we

would like to inform you that the hotel is installing new toilet

facilities in all guest rooms. This project will begin on Tuesday,

May 8 until Tuesday, May 29. The project engineers will begin

at 9:00 a.m. and conclude for the day at 5:30 p.m. The team

of associates will begin work on the 14th fl oor and will work in

descending order until completion. During these hours, you

may see the new or old toilets in the guest room corridors dur-

ing the exchange process, and we will ensure that a high level

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Common Forms of Business Writing

of cleanliness standards will be upheld. We think you’ll soon

appreciate fresh toilet seats. Should you be in your guest room

during the toilet exchange and/or wish not to be disturbed, we

recommend that you please utilize your Do Not Disturb sign by

placing it on the handle of your guest room door.

The vending area should remain sanitary, so feel free to have

a candy bar or beverage of your preference. For your conve-

nience, there are safes located in the bottom nightstand drawer

in your guest room to safely store your valuables. There may

also be available to you utilization of our safe deposit boxes

located at the Front Desk.

We appreciate your cooperation and understanding while

we continue to improve the delivery system and appearance of

our guest room product. Our goal is to minimize any inconve-

nience related to the toilet-exchange project. Please contact our

Manager on Duty should you have any questions or concerns.

Once again, please be assured of our utmost devotion to the

total quality of your stay within the confi nes of the Milford Hotel

Santa Clara. On behalf of myself and all the other management

personnel and staff of employees here, we wish to reiterate our

thanks for your selection and confi dence that each and every

factor of your stay here will be more than satisfactory.

Sincerely,

[386 words]

BUT THIS:

Dear Valued Guest:

Welcome to the Milford Hotel Santa Clara. We’re delighted

you’re staying here, and we’re ready to help make your stay both

enjoyable and productive.

This month, we’re renovating the bathrooms, starting with

the 14th fl oor and working our way down. Although you may

have occasion to see or hear workers (during the day), we’re

striving to minimize disruptions.

Always feel free to use your “Do Not Disturb” sign while you’re

in your room to ensure that our staff will respect your privacy.

And if the renovations ever become a nuisance, please call me

(extension 4505): I’ll see what I can do. The renovations are but

one example of our commitment to providing fi rst-rate lodging.

Thank you again for joining us.

Sincerely,

[125 words]

The original is verbose ( guest room product), perversely

repetitious (the word toilet appears fi ve times), hyper-

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Business Letters

bolic ( excellent . . . in every way), bureaucratic-sounding

( there may also be available to you utilization), unpleas-

antly vivid ( you may see the new or old toilets), and even

gross ( have a candy bar right after you may see the new

or old toilets). It seems destined to arouse ill-feeling and

to drive away customers who bother to read it. The re-

vised version, by contrast, conveys warmth and consider-

ation with its “you” focus.

Start fast, and say what you need to say in the sim-

plest way you can. Think of Olympic diving: neatly in, no

splash, soon out. And if you’re writing on behalf of your

fi rm, use we. It’s much warmer and friendlier than the

passive voice ( It has been decided vs. We have decided) or

the impersonal third person ( this organization vs. we).

Consider the difference:

NOT THIS:

BUT THIS:

The Mercantile Association

Here at the Mercantile As-

of Greater Gotham is delighted

sociation of Greater Gotham,

to count you among its newest

we’re delighted to count you

members. The Mercantile As-

among our newest members.

sociation will provide not only

We provide not only network-

networking opportunities but

ing opportunities but also

also advantageous insurance

advantageous insurance

rates, concierge services,

rates, concierge services, and

and Internet advertising to its

Internet advertising. If you

members. If you ever confront

ever confront business issues

business issues with which

we can help with, we’ll do

the Mercantile Association

whatever we can. Just let us

might be able to devote its

know.

resources, it stands ready to

be of assistance.

In the left-hand example, passive voice ( is delighted)

and repetition of the organization’s name (it appears

in every sentence) put distance between the writer and

the reader. They make the communication sound like a

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Common Forms of Business Writing

commercial or promotion. But the you s and we s in the

version on the right create a sense of belonging, a personal

connection.

Motivate readers to act

Business letters get results when they meet readers’

needs. To get people to do something, give them reasons

they’ll care about.

Consider one of the most challenging kinds of letters

to write: a fund-raising appeal for a nonprofi t group. The

key is to understand why people give money to charitable

organizations. Although marketers often cite seven “fun-

damental motivators” to explain responses—fear, guilt,

exclusivity, greed, anger, salvation, and fl attery—the re-

ality is a bit more nuanced. Some combination of eight

major reasons might motivate donors to send money in

response to your appeal:

• They believe their gifts will make a difference.

• They believe in the value of organizations like

yours.

• They will receive favorable recognition for the gift.

• They will be associated with a famous or respected

person.

• They will enhance their sense of belonging to a

worthy group.

• They will be able to relieve emotional burdens

such as fear and guilt.

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Business Letters

• They feel a sense of duty.

• They will receive tax benefi ts.

Certain principles follow from these reasons for giving.

A successful fund-raising letter must (1) appeal directly

from one person to another; (2) depict an opportunity

for the recipient to satisfy personal needs by supporting

a worthwhile aim; and (3) prompt the recipient to take a

specifi c, decisive action. (These principles apply to other

types of business letters as well.)

Note how all this theory plays out in an actual fund-

raising letter:

Dear Marion:

May I count you in as a table sponsor at the Annual

Dinner of the Tascosa Children’s Home of North Texas?

Your sponsorship will pay a month’s room and board for

one of the 50 orphaned teenagers that we care for.

The event will be held at 6:00 p.m. on July 1 at

Snowdon Country Club, and the emcee will be the

nationally syndicated television host Spooner Hudson—

our longtime national spokesperson. Celebrity chef

Margrit Lafl eur promises to serve up one of his memo-

rable dinners, and the wines will be personally selected

by master sommelier Peter Brunswick. Most excitingly,

two mystery guests from Beverly Hills will be there that

evening—among the best-known philanthropists in the

world.

As a table sponsor, you’ll be credited as one of our

Patron Angels—and, believe me, the tangible gratitude

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Common Forms of Business Writing

of our kids will bring you the lasting satisfaction that

you have vastly improved their lives and well-being.

Our kids are reachable and teachable, but only through

the generosity of our community’s philanthropic

leaders.

Many people, of course, can’t help us in our mis-

sion. We count on our Patron Angels. I hope you’ll

spend a few minutes browsing through the Home’s

brochure (enclosed) and that you’ll fi ll out the card

committing to fi ll ten seats at your table (a $1,500

tax-deductible gift).

I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Sincerely,

Now look again at the bulleted list that precedes the

letter to Marion (our fi ctitious recipient): The writer

deals with every item on the list. With a letter like that,

you can hope to elicit prompt action from an acceptable

percentage of recipients.

Ease into bad news

If you have a rejection to deliver in your letter, sandwich

it between happier elements. Don’t start with a direct

“no.” Your readers can bear disappointment more easily

if you begin on a genuine positive note and then explain

the reason for the negative decision. They’ll also be more

likely to grant your wishes—make a purchase, sign up for

your webinar, renew a membership—despite your deny-

ing theirs.

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Business Letters

NOT THIS:

BUT THIS:

We regret to inform you

How rewarding to hear that

that we cannot supply the

you intend to use Negotiate

500 copies of Negotiate It

It Now! as part of your busi-

Now! at the 60% discount

ness summit. You’ve chosen

that you have requested.

the best book on the subject,

No one—not even one of

and we’d be delighted to sup-

our authors, and not even

ply it.

the biggest bookselling

Although you’ve requested

chains—receives such a hefty

a 60% discount off list price,

discount. If you would care

the most we can off er is 30%.

to resubmit your order at the

That’s the largest discount

more modest fi gure of 30%,

available to anyone, and we’re

we will gladly consider the

happy to extend it to you with

order at that time. But I can

a purchase of 500 copies.

off er no guarantees.

Recipients of bad news will probably be unhappy no

matter what. But to some extent you can control just how

unhappy they’ll be. Some tips:

• Adopt the reader’s perspective—and be your best

self. If your correspondent is rude, be polite; if

anxious, be sympathetic; if confused, be lucid; if

stubborn, be patient; if helpful, show gratitude;

if accusatory, be reasonable and just in admitting

any faults.

• Answer questions directly.

• Don’t overexplain. Say only as much as necessary

to get your point across.

• Put things in the simplest possible terms—never

use “insider talk” or bizspeak.

• Use the voice of a thoughtful human being, not a

robot.

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Common Forms of Business Writing

Even if your letter grants a benefi t or request, it may

irk the recipient if it does so in a way that puzzles, sounds

grudging, or seems indifferent to the reader’s pre dic -

ament.

NOT THIS:

BUT THIS:

Joan—

Joan—

In response to your

Congratulations on your

request for a travel subsidy

Spivey Award! We’re delighted

to the conference where

for you. Jonathan hastened to

your award will be given,

tell me that despite our current

Jonathan has reminded me

discretionary-spending freeze,

of our current discretionary-

he wants to support your travel

spending freeze. He has de-

to accept your award. We can

cided, however, to make an

manage a $400 fl ight reim-

exception in this instance so

bursement and a $50 per diem

long as your fl ight is no more

for on-the-ground expenses.

than $400 and you stick to a

You’ll be a great company rep-

$50 per diem. Please submit

resentative, I know, and I only

your fully documented ex-

wish I could be there myself to

penses upon your return.

see you honored.

Sincerely,

Sincerely,

Rebekah

Rebekah

Brandy—

Brandy—

At this time you have

Once again I want to extend

now used up all your avail-

my condolences for your fam-

able sick-leave days and

ily’s loss. Take the time you

vacation days for the year. A

need next week to be with

sister-in-law does not qualify

your family. I’m sorry to report

for the closeness of relation

that the days will be uncom-

required for an employee to

pensated, according to our

be eligible for compensated

policies for bereavement leave,

bereavement leave, so you

but I hope you’ll call on me if

will be docked for any days

I can do anything else for you

you choose to be absent

in this time of need. Jane joins

next week around the time

me in sending our heartfelt

of the funeral. I’m afraid that

sympathies.

policy is simply infl exible,

and I checked with Jane to

Sincerely,

con fi rm this.

Pamela

Sincerely,

Pamela

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Business Letters

ENCLOSED PLEASE FIND

See what business-writing authors have long said about

this wooden phrase and others like it:

Richard Grant White (1880): “[ Please fi nd en-

closed:] A more ridiculous use of words, it seems to

me, there could not be.”

Sherwin Cody (1908): “All stereotyped words [that]

are not used in talking should be avoided in letter

writing. There is an idea that a certain peculiar com-

mercial jargon is appropriate in business letters.

The fact is, nothing injures business more than this

system of words found only in business letters. The

test of a word or phrase or method of expression

should be, ‘Is it what I would say to my customer if I

were talking to him instead of writing to him?’”

Wallace E. Bartholomew & Floyd Hurlbut (1924):

“Inclosed herewith please fi nd. Inclosed and herewith

mean the same thing. How foolish to tell your reader

twice exactly where the check is, and then to suggest

that he look around to see if he can fi nd it anywhere.

Say, ‘We are inclosing our check for $25.50.’”

A. Charles Babenroth (1942): “Enclosed please fi nd.

Needless and faulty phraseology. The word please

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Common Forms of Business Writing

has little meaning in this instance, and the word

fi nd is improperly used. poor: Enclosed please fi nd

sample of our #1939 black elastic ribbon. better:

We are enclosing (or We enclose) a sample of our

#1939 black elastic ribbon.”

L. E. Frailey (1965): “So much for the worn-out,

hackneyed expressions [ enclosed herewith, en-

closed please fi nd, herewith please fi nd] so often

seen in business letters—whiskers, rubber-stamps,

chestnuts, call them what you please. They are

sleeping pills [that] defeat the aim of making every

letter a warm, personal contact with the reader.”

Gerald J. Alred, Charles T. Brusaw, & Walter E.

Oliu (1993): “Using unnecessarily formal words

(such as herewith) and outdated phrases (such

as please fi nd enclosed) is another cause of

aff ectation.”

Kelly Cannon (2004): “[I]n any business letter,

certain principles are universal. ‘Inure to the benefi t

of’ is four words too long, ‘enclosed please fi nd’

sounds pompous and silly, and ‘I am writing this

letter to inform you that . . .’ is a thoughtless state-

ment of the obvious.”

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Business Letters

Don’t write in anger

Be kind and diplomatic, and say please and thank you.

Courtesy is necessary to all business transactions—even

letters of complaint. Omit it, and you’ll be dismissed as a

crank. You can be courteous while still being direct.

NOT THIS:

BUT THIS:

We are astonished at

We agree with you that

your complaint. The bro-

the brochures did not match

chures that we printed were

the high standards you have

exactly as you specifi ed. You

a right to expect from us. But

okayed the sample paper,

we believed, in this instance,

the typesetting, and the

that you considered the color

proofreading (we gave you

quality less crucial than a low

an extra three hours). You

price and a quick turnaround.

chose the hot-pink bor-

So we pushed the work through

ders with the fi ne-screen

production in three days’ less

halftones in the body type

time than we usually require.

against our advice. You

We advised against your

insisted on drop-shipping by

using hot-pink borders and

the 18th, and as you know,

fi ne-screen halftones on the

a rushed job does not allow

grade of paper you chose. Still,

for fi rst-rate press work.

we exercised some ingenuity to

Moreover, we quoted you

achieve better results than are

a bargain-basement price.

ordinarily possible. I mention

Under the circumstances we

this not to avoid responsibility

believe that any unbiased

but merely to suggest that we

observer would say that we

did the best that could be done

performed remarkably well

under diffi

cult circumstances. If

under the impossible condi-

you’ll allow us a few more days

tions you imposed.

next time, as you ordinarily do,

the results will be better.

As you can see, a combative, superior tone irritates and

alienates the reader—and probably loses a customer. A

more diplomatic approach still gets the point across (rush

jobs always take a hit on quality), but without souring the

relationship.

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Common Forms of Business Writing

When you receive unreasonable letters, don’t ever re-

spond in kind. That just starts a negative chain reaction.

Approach complaints with a dedication to fi rst-rate ser-

vice. Write with the same warmth and friendliness you’d

use in face-to-face conversations. If you or your company

made a mistake, avoid the temptation to ignore it, cover

it up, or shift the blame. Instead of deceiving readers,

you’ll provoke more ire. When you blunder, admit error

and say what you’ve done (or will be doing) to correct it.

Stress the desire to improve service.

Recap

• Keep your language simple, personal, and direct.

Avoid canned phrases that add little but pomposity

and verbiage to your letter.

• Motivate your readers to act on your letter by giv-

ing them reasons that matter to them.

• When conveying bad news, soften the blow by

opening on a positive note. Follow up by explain-

ing the reason for the unfavorable outcome—

without overexplaining.

• Consider the reader: Be polite, sympathetic, and

professional.

• Remain courteous and diplomatic. Accept respon-

sibility for any mistakes you may have made.

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Chapter 20

Memos and

Reports

Memos and reports are often used to get people up to

speed on an issue, to induce action, or both. So make it

immediately clear in each element—your title, summary,

body, and conclusion—what you want readers to learn

about or do.

Pick a short, clear title

Whether you’re writing a memo’s subject line or a report

title, choose concise, sure-footed language that says ex-

actly what the document is about.

NOT THIS:

BUT THIS:

Subject: Siegelson

Subject: Approval of Siegelson

Acquisition

Subject: Settlement

Subject: Why We Should Reject Frost’s

Settlement Off er

Subject: Print Run

Subject: Ginsburg Autobiography Print

Run

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Common Forms of Business Writing

The titles on the left hint at the topics covered but don’t

let readers know what they’re supposed to do with the in-

formation. Those on the right are more pointed (without

being wordy): The fi rst and third titles promise status up-

dates; the second asks readers to follow a recommendation.

Summarize key specifi cs up front

Figure out how many main issues you’re addressing—

preferably no more than three (see chapter 4)—and then

for each one state: (1) the issue in a way that anyone can

understand, (2) your solution, and (3) the reason for your

solution. Here’s an example:

Summary

Issue: Arnold Paper Supply has consistently failed to

meet our deadlines for delivery of multicolor, printed

cardstock.

Proposed Solution: Switch to National Paper and

Plastics Company, which has a higher fi xed fee.

Reason: Though National Paper and Plastics Com-

pany has a higher rate per delivery, its turnaround

is quicker. This will increase effi ciency in the ware-

house, allow us to fi ll more orders, and help us to

establish goodwill with retailers who have been angry

with us for not meeting their deadlines.

By sharing everything important at the beginning of

the document, you’ll end up repeating yourself—but in a

way that’s reinforcing, not redundant. Readers will get a

quick orientation with your very short version up front;

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Memos and Reports

the fully elaborated version in the body will unpack each

point, providing details and data for support. I recom-

mend going back and forth between the summary and

the body when writing your fi rst draft: Start by stating

the problem and offering your best shot at the answer in

your summary. As you do more work on the body of the

memo or report, you’ll go back and refi ne the problem

and the answer.

Write your summary for three types of readers:

• A primary audience of one or more executives

interested only in a quick status update, your

fi ndings and conclusions about a problem, or your

recommendations.

• A line of readers who may be called in (with or

without your knowledge) to assess the soundness

of your document, judging its merits according to

their own fact-checking and critical analysis.

• Future readers (including those in the fi rst cat-

egory two years from now) who will be required

to quarry information from your document some

time after you’ve written it. (After all, memos and

reports are rarely acted on quickly: They may be

laid aside for weeks or months or even years before

anyone has the resources—or a mandate—to act.)

All three types of readers have a legitimate claim to

your attention. More important, you need to win them all

over if you want your recommendations to go anywhere.

Even if someone else has assigned you the question

you’re exploring, you must defi ne it in your summary.

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Common Forms of Business Writing

WHEN WRITING A REPORT . . .

• Make sure you understand why you’re writing

and what you’re reporting on.

• Do your best, in light of your background knowl-

edge and initial research, to write a summary

that concisely states the problem, your solution,

and why your solution will work or why it’s pref-

erable to alternatives.

• Discern sources of relevant information.

• From those sources, gather all the data and

explanations that you can.

• Synthesize relevant observations and inferences

and throw out the rest.

• Put your fi ndings into report form.

• Revise your summary to match your body text.

You, the writer, are in the best position to limit its scope:

The person who did the assigning may not know enough

about the problem to raise the right question—or to un-

derstand that it actually contains three subquestions.

In fact, you won’t know these things until you do your

research, which may involve digging up data that reveal

where the problem lurks, reading about how other orga-

nizations have tried to solve it, talking with people who

have discovered some helpful workarounds, and so on.

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Memos and Reports

You should do enough research to understand the prob-

lem. Then you state the problem so clearly that anyone

could understand why it’s worth solving.

If you’re making a recommendation, say (1) what

needs to be done, (2) who should do it, (3) when and

where it should be done, (4) why it should be done, and

(5) how it should be done.

A brief marketing report might look like this:

Marketing Strategy for Skinny Mini Line of Chocolates

Summary

Issue: Within the last fi scal year, Pantheon Chocolate’s

sales have dropped from $13,320,000 to $10,730,000,

but its market share remains unchanged at 37%.

Proposed Solution: Increase promotion of the Skinny

Mini line of chocolates. These chocolates contain less

sugar and fat than the regular line.

Reason: Health-conscious consumers want low-calorie

options but don’t want to sacrifi ce full fl avor. The Skinny

Mini chocolates have fewer calories than Pantheon’s

regular chocolates but the same fl avor.

Consumers are buying more “healthy alternative”

chocolates

Because consumers increasingly regard sugar and fat as

unhealthy, they are not buying as much high-end gour-

met chocolate as they were a year ago. This has led to

a decline in sales for all high-end chocolate makers, in-

cluding Pantheon. But for candies marketed as “healthy

alternatives” with less sugar and fat and fewer calories,

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Common Forms of Business Writing

sales have increased 42% in the same period. Marketing

studies show that consumers of “healthy alternative”

candies are most attracted to low-calorie chocolates

that are packaged in specifi c-calorie portions rather

than by weight.

These consumers also complain that low-calorie

candies lack the rich fl avor that they are used to,

and they are willing to pay more for quality. Pan-

theon already produces a line of low-calorie gourmet

chocolates, Skinny Minis, that have fewer calories than

Pantheon’s regular candies but the same fl avor. They’re

currently sold by the pound or in gift boxes in high-end

chocolate boutiques and as elegantly wrapped bars in

coff ee shops.

Recommendations

• To reach more health-conscious consumers,

Pantheon should package Skinny Mini choco-

lates in a variety of portion-controlled sizes and

make them available in health-food stores and

supermarkets as well as the chocolate and cof-

fee shops.

• The marketing campaign should stress the con-

trolled portion and limited calories of each Skinny

Mini bar or gift box, and the packaging should

boldly display the low calorie count.

Recap

• Choose a concise title or subject line that tells

readers what topics the memo or report covers

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Memos and Reports

and what they should do about it (or why they

should care).

• Begin your document by addressing your main

points and outlining the issue, your solution, and

the reason for it.

• Work from this summary when elaborating the

body of your fi rst draft.

• Modify the summary as you go to ensure that it

accurately refl ects what’s in the body.

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Chapter 21

Performance

Appraisals

Writing performance appraisals, sometimes called em-

ployee reviews, needn’t be a dreaded responsibility. As

long as you have gathered your facts in advance—re-

viewed the notes you’ve taken throughout the year, asked

others for feedback on the people you supervise, and

carefully read people’s self-assessments—the drafting

isn’t onerous if you have an ample evaluative vocabu-

lary. I’ve written this chapter so you’ll have some helpful

phrases at the ready.

The sample phrases that follow address seven aspects

of work: attitude, effi ciency, human relations, judgment,

knowledge, reliability, and communication skills. But

you can adapt the wording to suit whatever qualities

you’d like to focus on. Then it’s a matter of pairing the

phrases with specifi cs that support them. For example:

“When we had several layoffs last June, Lauren remained

utterly calm and collected while demonstrating keen sen-

sitivity to those who lost their jobs. She [fi ll in whatever

particular action was noteworthy].”

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Common Forms of Business Writing

Attitude

Superb

• shows unwavering commitment

• always gives maximal eff ort

• is always friendly and happy to help

• always brings out the best in others

Good

• shows strong commitment

• usually makes a strong eff ort

• is usually friendly and happy to help

• usually brings out the best in others

Acceptable

• shows adequate commitment

• makes an eff ort

• is often friendly and happy to help

• is often a positive infl uence on the group

Needs Improvement

• could show more commitment

• doesn’t always make an eff ort

• is sometimes quarrelsome

• sometimes creates tension within the group

Poor

• lacks

commitment

• rarely makes a real eff ort

• is quarrelsome and sometimes even hostile

• often creates tension within the group

Effi

ciency

Superb

• never wastes time or eff ort

• delegates

eff ectively

• always completes tasks on time

• can manage many projects at a time

Good

• rarely wastes time or eff ort

• usually delegates appropriately

• almost always completes tasks on time

• can manage several projects at a time

Acceptable

• usually doesn’t waste time or eff ort

• delegates pretty well

• usually completes tasks on time

• can manage more than one project at

a time

Needs Improvement

• sometimes wastes time and eff ort

• tries to do too much without delegating

• fails to complete tasks on time

• cannot manage more than one project at a

time

Poor

• often wastes time and eff ort

• usually fails to delegate when appropriate

• can’t be counted on to complete tasks on time

• struggles to manage even one project at a time

Human relations

Superb

• demonstrates keen sensitivity to others and an

uncanny ability to understand their needs

• participates actively and collegially in meetings

• works exceptionally well on teams

• relates to customers extremely well

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Performance Appraisals

Good

• usually demonstrates sensitivity to others

• participates

eff ectively in meetings

• works

eff ectively on teams

• relates to customers well

Acceptable

• often demonstrates sensitivity to others

• participates adequately in meetings

• gets along with fellow team members

• relates to customers competently

Needs Improvement

• does not always pick up on interpersonal cues

• sometimes wastes others’ time in meetings

• is sometimes motivated more by personal goals

than by team goals

• sometimes alienates customers through

inattention

Poor

• rarely pays attention to others’ reactions

• often wastes others’ time in meetings

• does not work well on teams

• often alienates customers with impoliteness and

sarcasm

Judgment

Superb

• makes excellent choices and informed

decisions

• remains utterly calm and collected even in times

of crisis

• knows precisely which problems need immedi-

ate attention and which ones can wait

• behaves professionally and appropriately in

every situation

Good

• makes sound choices and reasonable decisions

• remains relatively calm and collected even in

times of crisis

• generally knows which problems need immedi-

ate attention and which ones can wait

• behaves professionally and appropriately

Acceptable

• generally makes sound choices and informed

decisions

• remains mostly calm and collected except in

times of crisis

• does a pretty good job distinguishing between

problems that need immediate attention and

those that can wait

• generally behaves professionally and

appropriately

Needs Improvement

• sometimes makes poor choices and ill-informed

decisions

• sometimes lacks the calm and collected de-

meanor required in high-pressure circumstances

• often doesn’t distinguish between problems

that need immediate attention and those that

can wait

• sometimes behaves unprofessionally and

inappropriately

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Common Forms of Business Writing

Judgment ( continued)

Poor

• often makes poor choices and ill-informed

decisions

• often lacks the calm and collected demeanor

required in high-pressure circumstances

• typically fails to distinguish between problems

that need immediate attention and those that

can wait

• often behaves unprofessionally and

inappropriately

Knowledge

Superb

• is exceptionally well informed about all aspects

of the job

• demonstrates extraordinarily comprehensive

knowledge

• skillfully handles complex assignments without

supervision

• has a comprehensive knowledge of the industry

Good

• is well informed about key aspects of the job

• demonstrates thorough knowledge

• can handle complex assignments with some

supervision

• has strong knowledge of the industry

Acceptable

• understands the job

• demonstrates adequate knowledge

• can handle moderately complex assignments

with supervision

• has an acceptable degree of knowledge of the

industry

Needs Improvement

• doesn’t fully understand the job

• demonstrates less than satisfactory knowledge

• sometimes mishandles assignments of moder-

ate complexity, even with supervision

• has

insuffi

cient knowledge of the industry

Poor

• is ill-informed about many aspects of the job

• demonstrates inadequate knowledge

• mishandles basic assignments

• has little knowledge of the industry

Reliability

Superb

• always meets deadlines

• is unfailingly dependable

• achieves excellent results in urgent situations

• always delivers on promises

Good

• meets

deadlines

• is highly dependable

• achieves good results in urgent situations

• almost always delivers on promises

Acceptable

• meets most deadlines

• is

dependable

• achieves acceptable results in urgent situations

• delivers pretty consistently on promises

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Performance Appraisals

Needs Improvement

• sometimes fails to meet important deadlines

• is sometimes undependable

• sometimes fails to achieve acceptable results in

urgent situations

• sometimes fails to deliver on promises

Poor

• often fails to meet important deadlines

• is rarely dependable

• often fails to achieve acceptable results in

urgent situations

• can’t be counted on to deliver on promises

Communication skills

Superb

• writes and speaks with remarkable clarity

• never gets bogged down in unnecessary details

• has superior communication skills in person and

over the phone

• develops and delivers imaginative, clear, and

concise presentations

Good

• writes and speaks clearly

• rarely gets bogged down in unnecessary details

• has sound communication skills in person and

over the phone

• develops and delivers clear, concise

presentations

Acceptable

• generally writes and speaks clearly

• usually avoids getting bogged down in unneces-

sary details

• has adequate communication skills in person

and over the phone

• develops and delivers acceptable presentations

Needs Improvement

• sometimes writes and speaks unclearly and with

undue complexity

• sometimes gets bogged down in unnecessary

details

• sometimes struggles to communicate in person

and over the phone

• develops and delivers presentations in need of

further work and polish

Poor

• writes and speaks unclearly and with undue

complexity

• gets bogged down in unnecessary details

• fails to communicate eff ectively in person and

over the phone

• develops and delivers presentations that ramble

and lack clarity

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Common Forms of Business Writing

Recap

• Prepare by gathering your facts in advance: Keep

performance notes throughout the year and review

them before writing. Ask other colleagues for feed-

back on those you’re evaluating. Carefully review

the employees’ self-assessments.

• Use the sample phrases provided here to help

articulate your impressions.

• Always pair your general statements with specifi c

examples that support them.

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Appendix A

A Checklist for

the Four Stages

of Writing

Madman

□ Consider why you’re writing: What’s

moved you to write? What’s the assign-

ment? What do you hope to achieve?

□ Think about who your readers are and

what they need to know.

□ Figure out how much time you have,

and work out a rough schedule for

gathering ideas and material, outlining,

preparing a draft, and revising.

□ Research with imagination and gusto.

Take notes on relevant information.

□ Push yourself to be creative. Don’t be

content with obvious ideas that just

anyone would think of.

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Appendix A

Architect

□ Jot down your three main points in

complete sentences—with as much

specifi city as you can.

□ Consider the best order of the

three points and reorganize them if

necessary.

□ Decide how to open and conclude the

document.

□ Think about what visual aids might be

helpful in conveying your ideas.

Carpenter □ If possible, turn away from all distrac-

tions. Silence your phone and your

computer alerts, and fi nd an hour or so

of solitude. You’ll be writing.

□ Use your three-point outline as a

guide.

□ Start writing paragraphs that sup-

port the point you fi nd easiest to

start with—then move to the other

points.

□ Write swiftly without stopping to edit

or polish.

□ Try to write a full section in one sitting.

If you must get up in the middle of a

section, start the next sentence with

a few words and then leave. (When

you come back, you’ll fi nd it easier to

resume a half-completed sentence than

to start a new one.)

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A Checklist for the Four Stages of Writing

Judge

□ Immediately after completing your

draft, read it through with the idea of

amplifying ideas here and there.

□ Then let it cool off—overnight, if you

can, or for a few minutes if you’re work-

ing under an urgent deadline.

□ When you return to your draft, con-

sider it from the audience’s perspective.

Will it be clear to everyone who looks at

it, or does it require inside knowledge?

Is it concise, or does it waste words and

time?

□ Identify the draft’s two biggest fl aws

and try to fi x them.

□ Ask yourself:

• Is anything essential missing?

• Are important points stressed?

• Is the meaning of each sentence

clear and accurate?

• Are my transitions smooth?

• What can I trim without sacrifi cing

important content?

• Are there any vague passages I can

sharpen with specifi c facts?

• Are there boring passages I can

word more vividly?

• Can I improve the phrasing?

• Can I improve the punctuation?

• Are there any typos?

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Appendix B

A Dozen

Grammatical Rules

You Absolutely

Need to Know

1. It is perfectly acceptable to start a sentence with

And or But.

The single most important element in fl uid

writing is the use of effective transitions

between sentences and paragraphs. And no

transition is more effective than the plain

single-syllable words and and but.

The notion that it’s ungrammatical to start

a sentence with a conjunction has long been

ignored by the best writers and debunked by

reputable grammarians. Look at the op-ed

page of any major newspaper or scan through

some pages of any well-edited magazine and

you’ll see plenty of examples. Why? Because

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Appendix B

conjunctions are excellent transition tools,

signaling how the sentence to follow fi ts in

with what came before—and because they’re

short, sharp, and fl eet. And and but are usually

more effective than clunky conjunctive adverbs

such as additionally and however, which add

syllables and demand a comma after them.

2. It is perfectly acceptable to end a sentence with a

preposition.

The “rule” that you should not end a sentence

with a preposition is a misbegotten notion

based on Latin syntax and expounded by a few

(a very few) 19th-century writers. Grammar-

ians have long since dismissed it as ill-founded

and unnecessary.

Often a sentence that ends with a preposi-

tion sounds far more natural than the same

sentence forced into avoiding the terminal

preposition. Consider: What will the new prod-

uct be used for? versus For what purpose will

the new product be used?

That said, a strong sentence should end

forcefully because the end of a sentence is the

most emphatic position. A preposition is rarely

a powerful sentence-ender, but it is not an

ungrammatical one.

3. The adverb corresponding to the adjective good

is well.

When describing performance, manner, action,

and the like, use the adverb well <The intern

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A Dozen Grammatical Rules You Absolutely Need to Know

works well under pressure> <The research

and development stage is going well> <We

wish them well in the future>. Though be-

coming more widespread, the adverbial use

of good is nonstandard English <The vice

presidents *worked good as a team> <The new

water pump *is running good>. The question

whether to use good or well frequently arises

when someone asks “How are you doing?” The

best answer—assuming a positive response—

is “I’m doing well” (or “I’m fi ne, thank you”).

Saying “I’m good” is common but unrefi ned.

The response “I’m *doing good” is substandard

because good is there being used as an adverb.

An exception to the rule against using good as

an adverb applies with certain set phrases

<a good many more> <did it but good>.

4. The subject of the sentence determines the num-

ber of the verb.

A subject and its verb must both be either

singular or plural. Grammar Girl says so.

( Grammar Girl and says are both singular.)

All grammarians say so. ( Grammarians and

say are both plural.) The rule seems so elemen-

tary as to be trivial. But a lot can go wrong. A

prepositional phrase modifying the subject is a

common source of trouble: Should an over-

supply of foreign imports take a singular or

plural verb? The answer is singular, to match

the subject oversupply. Although compound

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Appendix B

subjects generally take plural verbs, sometimes

a subject really expresses a single (and singu-

lar) idea <The company’s bread and butter is

still shipping>. The subject, bread and butter,

is plural in form but singular in sense, so it

takes the singular verb is.

There (in its use as a subject stand-in, as in

There is another way) presents a special prob-

lem, one that some authorities call the most

common grammatical error today. In inverted

sentences, the true subject follows the verb

<There go our fourth-quarter profi ts>. The

subject profi ts is after the verb go. Yet people

seem to want singular verbs with there regard-

less of what follows, and errors result <*There

is still market capacity and established com-

petition to be considered>. The compound

subject capacity and competition should take

the plural verb are, not the singular verb is.

Illusory compounds can also cause trouble.

These occur with constructions such as to-

gether with, as well as, and the like, none of

which forms a plural. <The board, along with

the president and CFO, endorses the stock

split>. The subject is the singular board, which

takes the singular verb endorses.

5. Both either and neither, as subjects, take singular

verbs.

Beware of distractions caused by prepositional

phrases containing plural objects: The sub-

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A Dozen Grammatical Rules You Absolutely Need to Know

ject— either or neither— is still singular <Either

of the marketing plans involves [not involve]

capital investment> <Neither of our expan-

sion options provides [not provide] a total

solution>.

6.

With

neither/nor and either/or in the subject posi-

tion, the second element controls the number of

the verb.

When the correlative conjunctions either/or or

neither/nor frame alternatives in the singular,

the verb is singular <Either phone or fax is ac-

ceptable for your response>. When the alter-

natives are plural, the verb is plural <Neither

our accountants nor our lawyers are concerned

about the merger>. But when one element is

singular and the other is plural, match the verb

to the second element <Neither the regional

managers nor the vice-president for sales likes

[not like] the proposed campaign’s theme>

<Either the home offi ce or the branch manag-

ers are [not is] largely responsible for em-

ployee morale>.

7.

A

fl at adverb like thus or doubtless takes no – ly

ending.

Most adverbs are formed by adding the -ly

suffi x to adjectives ( large makes largely, quick

makes quickly) or changing the - able suffi x

to -ably ( amicable makes amicably, capable

makes capably). But the English language also

contains a fair number of adverbs that do not

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Appendix B

end in -ly (such as fast, ill, and seldom). With

these, it is unnecessary—and unidiomatic—to

add the suffi x -ly. The two most common ex-

amples are * doubtlessly and * thusly.

8.

The

words

however, therefore, and otherwise can-

not join independent clauses without additional

punctuation.

An independent clause (1) contains a sub-

ject and a verb and (2) expresses a complete

thought. It can stand alone as a sentence, or

it can be connected with another clause by a

comma and a conjunction (such as and, but,

or) <The new advertising campaign is ready,

but the CEO has yet to approve it>. When two

independent clauses are joined with a conjunc-

tive adverb like however, a semicolon must go in

front of the connector and a comma after

<Mr. Bingham can’t attend the meeting; how-

ever, he hopes to call before we adjourn>. Omit-

ting the semicolon or replacing it with a comma

creates what is known as a “comma splice”

<*We were supposed to arrive at 4:00 p.m.,

however, we didn’t arrive until 5:00>.

9. With a verb phrase, the adverb usually goes after

the fi rst auxiliary verb.

Writing authorities have long agreed that mid-

phrase is the strongest and most natural place

for an adverb <Industry experts have long

agreed on the product’s effectiveness>. The

alternatives are awkward <Industry experts

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A Dozen Grammatical Rules You Absolutely Need to Know

long have agreed on the product’s effective-

ness> or nonsensical <Industry experts have

agreed long on the product’s effectiveness>.

Resistance to this guidance may be due to the

old superstition that it’s ungrammatical to split

an infi nitive (it isn’t), since that is one type of

split verb <We expect the new product line and

expanded territory to almost double our sales

in the next two years>.

When the phrase has more than one aux-

iliary verb, the most natural placement is

usually after the fi rst one (as in has long been

assumed).

10. Relative pronouns ( that, which, and who) must

appear alongside their antecedents.

A relative pronoun ( that, which, who, whom,

and various forms with the -ever suffi x) serves

one of two purposes. First, it can link a de-

pendent clause to an independent one <Who-

ever wants to participate is welcome>. The

dependent clause ( whoever wants to partici-

pate) serves as the subject of the main clause.

Second, it can join a clause with its antecedent

<Those who want to participate are welcome>.

Here, the dependent clause ( who want to

participate) adds crucial information about its

antecedent, those.

The second type of relative pronoun should

be close to its antecedent—preferably imme-

diately after it. The link must be clear because

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Appendix B

trouble can occur when the reference becomes

uncertain <*Please discuss the customer-

service position in the accounting department

that is being eliminated>. Which is being

eliminated, the position or the department?

Restating the sentence clarifi es it <Please dis-

cuss the customer-service position that is being

eliminated in the accounting department> .

The relative pronoun that immediately follows

its antecedent, customer-service position.

11. An appositive is set off by commas when it is not

essential to the sentence (when it is nonrestric-

tive), but is not set off by commas when it is es-

sential (restrictive).

An appositive is a noun or noun phrase that

follows another noun (or pronoun) and identi-

fi es or depicts it more fully <My colleague Pat

agrees> <The customer, a tall man in an over-

sized suit, left his keys on the counter>.

In the fi rst example, the appositive Pat is not

set off by commas from the rest of the sen-

tence. In the second, a tall man in an oversized

suit is set off. The reason is that appositives,

like relative clauses (those introduced by

which, who, and whom), may or may not be

essential to the meaning of the sentence. Pat,

in the fi rst sentence, is essential—it specifi es

which colleague (presumably out of several) is

being referred to. In the second sentence, the

appositive merely adds description. We could

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A Dozen Grammatical Rules You Absolutely Need to Know

also say that Pat, in the fi rst sentence, defi nes

or restricts its referent, colleague, while the

appositive in the second sense is indefi nite

or nonrestrictive. Current stylebooks use the

terms restrictive and nonrestrictive to label

these qualities.

Appositives may also be set off by em-dashes

(typically for emphasis) or parentheses (typi-

cally for deemphasis) instead of commas.

12. Correlative conjunctions (those used in pairs)

require parallel phrasing.

Correlative conjunctions (such as both . . .

and, neither . . . nor, and not only . . . but also)

work in pairs, joining related constructions

that match in syntax. Each conjunction should

immediately precede the part of speech it

describes. Parallelism is rarely a problem with

simple nouns <neither time nor money>, but

it becomes tricky with phrases and clauses, as

in the erroneous phrasing * We not only raised

our regional market share but also our profi t

margin, which should read: We raised not only

our regional market share but also our profi t

margin. The verb raised must be outside the

fi rst correlative conjunction ( not only) to apply

to both possessive phrases ( our regional mar-

ket share and our profi t margin).

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Appendix C

A Dozen

Punctuation Rules

You Absolutely

Need to Know

1. Hyphenate your phrasal adjectives.

A small-business incentive is different from a

small business incentive. A limited-liability

clause is different from a limited liability

clause. When two or more words as a unit

modify a noun, they must be hyphenated (un-

less certain exceptions apply). So a hotel’s door

sign advising the staff not to disturb the guests

would be a do-not-disturb sign. A company

that is 25 years old is a 25-year-old company.

There are some exceptions: (1) Don’t hy-

phenate simple phrases formed by an -ly ad-

verb and a past-participial adjective <a greatly

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Appendix C

exaggerated claim>. (2) Don’t hyphenate

phrases formed with proper nouns <New Zea-

land exports> or foreign words <a post facto

rationalization>. (3) Generally, don’t hyphen-

ate phrasal adjectives used after the noun they

modify <a job well done>, but there are excep-

tions based solely on conventions of usage <our

HR manager is risk-averse by nature> <the

information is time-sensitive>.

2. Use a comma before and or or when listing three

or more items.

Although simple series < red, white, and blue>

might not require the so-called serial comma

before the conjunction to be perfectly clear,

clarity fades fast as series become longer and

more complex <We hope to boost sales in the

target area, to build the company’s name-

recognition statewide and beyond, and to

attract investors for possible franchise oppor-

tunities>. So what is the rule?

The Chicago Manual of Style and other

authorities on professional, technical, and

scholarly writing almost universally endorse

using the serial comma in all series for one

good reason: It is sometimes wrong (ambigu-

ous or worse) to omit it, but never wrong to

include it.

3. Don’t use a comma to separate two compound

predicates. Do use punctuation—usually a comma

but a semicolon if needed for clarity—to separate

a series of three or more compound predicates.

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A Dozen Punctuation Rules You Absolutely Need to Know

When two predicates share the same subject,

it’s common not to repeat the subject. If the

second clause repeats the subject, then the

comma is proper before the conjunction <I

stopped by yesterday, and I will call today>.

But if the subject isn’t repeated (is shared by

both predicates), there should be no comma

before the conjunction <I stopped by yester-

day and will call today>. When three or more

such clauses are combined (sharing the same

subject), the predicates become a series and do

require at least a comma to separate them <I

wrote him yesterday, stopped by yesterday, and

will call today>.

When one or more of the parts in the series

contain commas, use semicolons instead to

separate the predicates <I wrote him last week;

I stopped by yesterday with the paperwork,

the deposit check, and the keys; and I will call

him today>. The same principle holds for a

compound predicate <I wrote him last week;

stopped by yesterday with the paperwork, the

deposit check, and the keys; and will call him

today>.

4. Don’t use an apostrophe to form plural nouns.

The use of apostrophes to form plurals (rather

than possessives or contractions) is almost

always incorrect. Most proper nouns take a

simple -s, while those ending in -s, - x, -z, and

sibilant -ch or -sh take -es. The exceptions

to the no-apostrophe rule are for lowercase

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Appendix C

letters <Mind your p’s and q’s> and capital

letters when an apostrophe might prevent a

miscue <all A’s on the audit report>. Don’t use

apostrophes to pluralize numbers or capital-

ized abbreviations without periods <ATMs

became ubiquitous in the 1990s>. The usual

way to pluralize words and letters is to itali-

cize the word or letter and append -s in roman

type <Please delete the fi rst two or s in the

sentence>.

The incorrect use of apostrophes is es-

pecially common when pluralizing names.

Mr. and Mrs. Smith are the Smiths, not * the

Smith’s (or * the Smiths’). Mr. and Mrs. Stevens

are the Stevenses (not * the Steven’s or

* the Stevens’).

5. Don’t separate the grammatical subject from the

verb, unless there’s a set-off intervening phrase.

As a rule, words and phrases that go together

should be together, not unduly separated. So

an appositive, for example, is next to the noun

or pronoun it elaborates <Maeve Peterson, the

new CEO, is . . .> and a pronoun should not

be so far from its antecedent as to make the

connection unclear. On the same principle, the

subject and verb in a sentence are best kept

close together so that the sentence does not

wander off on tangents.

That’s not to say that an intervening phrase

or clause between the subject and verb is

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A Dozen Punctuation Rules You Absolutely Need to Know

always wrong. It can be an effective way

to modify the sense or add information

<Ms. Peterson, whose leadership at McLaugh-

lin Enterprises has been credited with that

fi rm’s turnaround, will take the reins here on

June 1>. Although this technique adds empha-

sis to the modifying matter, it’s often clearer to

make the phrase or clause introductory so that

the subject and verb remain close <Credited

with turning around McLaughlin Enterprises

during her four years as CEO, Ms. Peterson

starts work here on June 1>.

6. Use bullets as attention-getting devices, but don’t

overuse them.

Bullets draw the reader’s eye to a list of

points without signaling that they’re pre -

sented in a certain order. The best lists follow

these rules:

• Set up the list with an explanatory sentence

in the form of an introduction that ends

with a colon.

• Keep all the items parallel in grammatical

form (all noun phrases, say, or all predicates

starting with verbs) and somewhat similar

in length.

• Present the items with a hanging indent so

the bullets stand out to the left and all the

lines of type align.

• Typeset the items single-spaced, perhaps

with a bit of extra spacing between items.

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Appendix C

• Keep the bullets simple in appearance, es-

chewing whimsical artwork in favor of solid

bullet dots about the size of a lowercase o.

As with any other design device aimed at

signaling emphasis or attracting the reader’s

attention, the overuse of bulleted lists dilutes

their impact.

7. Avoid quotation marks as a way of emphasizing

words.

Quotation marks can send mixed signals. Most

often they signal their traditional function: to

set off a quotation. Sometimes they suggest a

snide attitude <an “expert” in negotiation>, or

perhaps imply that what they contain is not

what it purports to be at all <Here’s the “fi -

nal” schedule>. They can be the equivalent of

introducing the words with “so-called.” Given

all these different possible meanings, quotation

marks are a poor choice for emphasizing words

and phrases. That is traditionally the role of

italic type, an unambiguous signal.

Also avoid (1) underlining, the italic font’s

uglier equivalent from the typewriter era;

(2) overuse of boldface type, which is best re-

served for titles and headings; and (3) all caps,

which is irritating and hard to read if longer

than a word or two.

8. Don’t hyphenate most prefi xed terms.

American English is generally averse to hy-

phenating its prefi xes ( anteroom, biennial,

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A Dozen Punctuation Rules You Absolutely Need to Know

deselect, proactive, quarterfi nal, semisweet).

Avoid the practice of inserting a hyphen, even

when it results in a doubled letter ( cooperate,

reelect, misspeak). But there are a few excep-

tions: (1) when it’s needed to avoid a miscue

or an ambiguity ( re-create, re-lease, re-sign);

(2) when the root word is a proper noun ( pre-

Halloween sales); and (3) when using certain

prefi xes such as all- ( all-inclusive), ex- ( ex-

partner), and self- ( self-correcting).

9. Use a colon or a comma—never a semicolon—

after a salutation.

Colons are standard in business correspon-

dence <Dear Ms. Wilson:>, commas in

personal letters <Dear Barbara,>. Commas

may also be permissible for business letters,

depending on the personal relationship be-

tween the sender and the recipient. But to

use a semicolon (* Dear Mr. Jones; ) is always

incorrect.

10. Long dashes have two defensible—and valuable—

uses: to frame and to emphasize.

First, long dashes—called em-dashes—frame

what is basically parenthetical matter and

make it stand out. Notice in the fi rst sentence

how “called em-dashes” stands out. It could

just as easily have been set off from the rest of

the sentence by commas or placed inside pa-

rentheses. But the dashes give an interruptive

phrase special emphasis (while parentheses

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Appendix C

almost beg to be skipped over). It’s a strong

technique that should be used but, like all ef-

fective writing devices, not overused.

Second, em-dashes are handy for short tags

that sit apart from the main sentence. The

em-dash replaces the colon but adds emphasis.

The setoff can come at the beginning of the

sentence <Customer service—it’s our top prior-

ity> or at the end <No matter what the fi eld, an

able workforce starts with and continues with

one thing—professional training>.

11. Don’t use a comma when writing a month

and year.

Stylebooks have long agreed that no comma

should appear between the month and year

<February 2012>. With the standard American

format of month–day–year, do use a comma

after the day <February 23, 2012>. No comma

is necessary with the day – month–year format

<23 February 2012>. Use a comma after the

year <Groundbreaking was held February 23,

2012, in Menomonee Falls> unless the date

is used adjectivally <the February 23, 2012

groundbreaking ceremonies>.

12. For singular possessives, add ’s even if the word

ends with an -s, -z, -x, or -ss.

This is the fi rst rule in Strunk & White’s fa-

mous book The Elements of Style: A singular

possessive takes ’s <Kansas’s business climate>

<Holtz’s contract> <Xerox’s patents> <the

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A Dozen Punctuation Rules You Absolutely Need to Know

actress’s endorsement>. But note that per-

sonal pronouns and who have their own form

without the ’s ( mine, our, ours, your, yours, his, her, hers, its, their, theirs, whose). Also, if the name of a corporation or other entity is formed

from a plural word, add only the apostrophe

<United Airlines’ quarterly report> <The

United Arab Emirates’ capital is Abu Dhabi>.

When forming a plural possessive, use

the word’s standard plural form and add an

apostrophe to the fi nal -s <caterers’ fees> <the

bosses’ offi ces>. An exception applies to plural

words that don’t end in -s: they follow the

same rule as singular possessives <a line of

children’s clothing> <the alumnae’s reunion>.

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Appendix D

Common Usage

Gaff es

In this top-20 list of usage points that distinguish sloppy

from refi ned language, an asterisk precedes erroneous

words and phrases.

NOT THIS:

BUT THIS:

I *feel badly about the

I feel bad about the oversight.

oversight.

I’m *feeling very well about

I feel good (contented).

the sales fi gures.

I feel well (healthy).

They’re *doing good.

They’re doing well.

Just *between you and I.

Just between you and me.

He expected *Helen and I

He expected Helen and me

to help him.

to help him.

She *could care less.

She couldn’t care less.

He’s *laying down on the

He’s lying down on the couch.

couch.

*Where are you at?

Where are you?

*If I would have been

If I had been there . . . .

there . . . .

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Appendix D

NOT THIS:

BUT THIS:

She serves on the board;

She’s a board member; as

*as such, she has fi du-

such, she has fi duciary duties.

ciary duties.

The letter was sent *on

The letter was sent by accident.

accident.

I *wish he was faster.

I wish he were faster.

I *could of done it.

I could have done it.

*in regards to

in regard to, or regarding

*less items

fewer items

He was *undoubtably guilty.

He was undoubtedly guilty.

*preventative

preventive

*There’s lots of reasons.

There are lots of reasons.

*as best as she can

as best she can

*irregardless

regardless, or irrespective

For more on usage, see Appendix F.

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Appendix E

Some Dos and

Don’ts of Business-

Writing Etiquette

Dos:

1. Proofread all documents before sending them

out to make sure the spelling and grammar are

correct.

2. Double-check that the recipient’s name is

spelled correctly and that the form of address

is proper (Ms., Mrs., Miss, Mr., Dr., Judge,

Justice, Honorable, etc.). Double-check the

envelope, too, if there is one.

3. Sign business letters with your full name un-

less you’re friends with the recipient. If the

salutation is “Dear Mr. Smith,” sign your full

name; if it’s “Dear George,” sign your fi rst

name only.

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Appendix E

4. Sign your letters with an ink pen and not with

a stamp of your signature.

5. Always include your contact information so

that the recipient will know how to respond

to you.

6. If you’re sending a handwritten note to a busi-

ness contact or friend, use a stamp to mail

the letter rather than meter-stamping the

envelope.

7. Before sending an e-mail, make sure that you

have (a) included everyone you need in the

address block and (b) incorporated any attach-

ments you refer to in the e-mail.

8. Use white space effectively so that the docu-

ment reads well and is not a strain on peo-

ple’s eyes. Create generous margins, leave

spaces between paragraphs, break up text

with subheads if appropriate, and indent

appropriately.

9. Date your communications (except e-mails,

which will date themselves) so that they give

the reader a reference time.

10. Write distinctive thank-you notes if you’re

writing them to several people in the same

offi ce. It’s counterproductive if recipients

compare their notes and realize you mass-

produced them.

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Some Dos and Don’ts of Business-Writing Etiquette

Don’ts:

1. Don’t use all caps. It amounts to shouting at

the reader.

2. Don’t return a letter to its sender by writing on

it to save time or paper. A reply should be on a

separate piece of paper, even if it’s a short note.

Contracts and other agreements are a separate

issue.

3. Don’t write “Thank you in advance.” If you

want to thank people in a request, simply make

the request and then write “Thank you.” Also,

be sure to say thanks (perhaps in person) again

when the task has been completed.

4. Don’t use BCC on an e-mail unless you are

quite sure that it is necessary. It could get you

a bad reputation as being indiscreet.

5. Don’t use tiny or unusual fonts that make your

writing hard to read or that make you seem

fl ippant.

6. Don’t write a very long topic in the subject line

of an e-mail.

7. Don’t write a thank-you note on a card with

a preprinted “Thank you!” or “Merci” (it’s not

considered good manners).

8. Don’t let the passage of time stop you from

writing to express congratulations, gratitude,

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Appendix E

condolences, or whatever other sentiment your

instincts say you ought to express.

9. Don’t write a letter in anger or frustration.

Step back, take some time, and detach yourself

from the situation. Come back to writing when

you have had time to refl ect on the matter and

can express yourself calmly.

10. Don’t put anything in writing that you would

be ashamed to see reported on the front page

of the Wall Street Journal.

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Appendix F

A Primer of

Good Usage

abstruse. See obtuse.

accede; exceed. Accede = to agree or yield <We acceded

to your request>. Exceed = to surpass, to be greater than

<Your needs exceeded our capacity for production>.

access; excess. Both are traditionally nouns. Access =

the act or opportunity of approaching or entering. Ex-

cess = an amount beyond what is required. Of course,

access is also common today as a verb meaning “to gain

entry to; to penetrate” <I couldn’t access those fi les> <I

accessed the storage unit>.

accord; accordance.  Accord = agreement <The partners

are in accord about expanding plant capacity>. Accor-

dance = conformance <The materials weren’t in accor-

dance with our specs>.

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Appendix F

administer; administrate. The fi rst is standard. Avoid

* administrate, a back-formation from administration.

admission; admittance.  Admission = permission or au-

thority to enter <The price of admission is steep>. Admit-

tance = physical entry <No admittance after 6 p.m.>.

adopt; adapt.  Adopt = take up as one’s own <Adopt this

cause>. Adapt = modify <Adapt your leadership style>.

Note that the nouns are adoption and adaptation.

adverse; averse.  Adverse = unfavorable or contrary to

<The expansion plan was postponed in face of adverse

market conditions>. Averse = reluctant or unwilling;

having distaste of, fear of, or hostility toward <The com-

pany is risk-averse>.

advise; advice.  Advise is the verb <Our CFO advised

against the merger>. Advice is the noun <We took the

consultant’s advice>.

aff ect; eff ect.  Affect is usually a verb meaning “to have

an infl uence” <The ordinance may affect our sales>. Ef-

fect is usually a noun denoting a result or outcome <It

may be a positive effect>. Effect may also be a verb mean-

ing “to bring about” <The new manager effected several

changes>.

aggravate; irritate.  Aggravate = to make worse <This

news aggravates an already-bad situation>. Irritate = to

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A Primer of Good Usage

annoy. Using aggravate to mean “irritate” is a common

colloquialism, but it will still annoy some readers.

aide; aid.  Aide is an assistant. Aid is assistance.

allusion; illusion.  Allusion = an indirect reference, as to

a cultural work, historical event, or other form of shared

knowledge <“Sage of Omaha” is an allusion to Warren

Buffett>. Illusion = a misperception or a mistaken belief

<Their profi tability turned out to be an illusion>.

a lot. Always two words.

already; all ready.  Already = previously, by this time

<She was already taking notes>. All ready = completely

prepared <The corporate minutes were all ready for the

secretary’s sign-off>.

alternative; alternate. As a noun, alternative = one op-

tion (among one or more others) <We came up with an

alternative design>; alternate = a substitute <The del-

egate’s alternate attended>.

altogether; all together.  Altogether = entirely or com-

pletely <This trip was altogether useless>. All together =

collectively or in a group <That day we reported to him

all together>.

ambiguous; ambivalent.  Ambiguous = inviting more

than one reasonable interpretation <Please clarify the

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Appendix F

ambiguous policy>. Ambivalent = having mixed emo-

tions about something <The CFO has ambivalent feel-

ings about the trade-off>.

amend; emend.  Amend = to add to a document, esp.

a law or other legal document <Amend the contract>.

Emend = to make corrections or edits to a piece of writ-

ing <Emend the proposal before you circulate it>.

among. See between.

amuse; bemuse.  Amuse = to entertain or delight. Be-

muse = to befuddle.

antidote; anecdote.  Antidote = anything that coun-

teracts a bad situation <Preparation is the antidote for

nervousness>. Anecdote = an amusing, illustrative story

<She told an anecdote about her fi rst day on the job>.

anxious; eager.  Anxious = anticipating with unease or

worry <We grew anxious about the IPO>. Eager = antici-

pating with enthusiasm <Customers were eager for the

retail stores to open>.

appraise; apprise.  Appraise = to assess in value <Ap-

praise the property at $1 million>. Apprise = to keep

someone informed <Apprise me of any changes>.

arbiter; arbitrator.  Arbiter = a person with fi nal say over

a matter <You’re the arbiter of company policy>. Arbi-

trator = a person who conducts an arbitration to settle

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A Primer of Good Usage

a dispute <The arbitrator decided the dispute in our

favor>.

as. See like.

assure; ensure; insure.  Assure = to try to satisfy someone

of something <He assured me he’d attend>. Ensure = to

make certain that something will happen or that things

will be as expected <We made a schedule to ensure that

we’d meet our deadline>. Insure = to indemnify against

loss or damage <The warehouse was insured for less than

market value>.

attain; obtain.  Attain = to achieve or accomplish some-

thing <The regional division attained its quarterly sales

target>. Obtain = to get something <We had no trouble

obtaining raw materials>.

averse. See adverse.

avocation. See vocation.

awhile; a while.  Awhile is an adverb meaning “for a short

time” <Let’s talk awhile before deciding>. A while is a

noun phrase meaning “a period of time” <Let’s talk for a

while before deciding>.

bear; born; borne.  Bear = (1) to carry or support <Cor-

porate suitors come bearing gifts> or (2) to give birth

<bear a child>. Borne refers to sense 1 <Airborne par-

ticulates make the product unsafe>, and born to sense 2

<You’re a born leader>.

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Appendix F

bemuse. See amuse.

beside; besides.  Beside = (1) next to or at the side of

<The seat beside the window is taken> or (2) outside of

<That’s beside the point> <she was beside herself with

joy>. Besides = in addition to <Besides coffee, we sell tea

and baked goods>.

between; among.  Between shows one-to-one connec-

tions <Between payroll and health care, our costs are

up>, even when more than two things are involved <Talks

began between the fi rm and its various suitors>. Among

connotes a looser relationship with three or more <There

was one standout among applicants>.

blatant; fl agrant.  Blatant = obvious, overt <That’s a bla-

tant lie>. Flagrant = conspicuously rude or abusive <Re-

fusing to shake hands was a fl agrant break of protocol>.

bombastic = pompous, pretentious <Bombastic speeches

stretched out the meeting>. The word has nothing to do

with violence.

born; borne. See bear.

breach; broach.  Breach = to break <That’s a breach of

contract> or break though <Expansion plans will breach

the market’s boundaries>. Broach = to bring up <I hate

to broach the subject>.

can; may. Most properly, can expresses power or abil-

ity <We can ship your order next week>. May expresses

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A Primer of Good Usage

permission or possibility <May we ship your order

by UPS?>.

canvas; canvass.  Canvas = coarse cloth <We ordered a

canvas awning>. Canvass = a noun meaning “a poll or

survey” or a verb meaning “to conduct a poll or survey”

<Canvass your customers before you brainstorm new

products>.

capital; Capitol.  Capitol = the building where the U.S.

Congress or a state legislature meets. In all other senses,

the spelling is capital <capital expenses> <capital letter>

<a capital crime> <the capital city>.

censor; censure.  Censor = to inspect and possibly re-

strict the release of matter judged to be objectionable.

Censure = to reprimand someone.

clench; clinch.  Clench = to tighten, esp. in anger or de-

termination <clenched fi st>. Clinch = to secure or fasten

<clinch the sale>.

climatic; climactic.  Climatic = of the weather, esp. cli-

mate <climatic change>. Climactic = dramatic, riveting,

moving toward a climax <climactic tension>.

clinch. See clench.

closure; cloture.  Closure = the act or fact of concluding

or resolving. Cloture = the parliamentary procedure for

ending debate and calling for a vote.

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Appendix F

collaborate; corroborate.  Collaborate = to cooperate in

an enterprise <We once collaborated in a joint venture>.

Corroborate = to lend support, esp. by confi rming infor-

mation <Two studies corroborate the claims>.

common. See mutual.

compare to; compare with. To compare something to

something else is to liken the two things; to compare

it with something else is to note both similarities and

differences.

compel; impel.  Compel = to force, esp. by dint of au-

thority or necessity <I felt compelled to report the er-

ror>. Impel = to drive forward, as by circumstances or

weight of argument <Better opportunities impelled her

to relocate>.

compendious; voluminous.  Compendious = concise, con-

densed. Voluminous = large, roomy.

complementary; complimentary.  Complementary

=

(1) making complete or perfect or (2) matching or

harmonious <a bundle of complementary products>.

Complimentary = (1) free <complimentary tickets> or

(2) fl attering <complimentary reviews>.

comprise; compose.  Comprise = to include <The com-

pany comprises three business units>. Compose =

to make up <The company is composed of three business

units>. The phrase * is comprised of is always faulty.

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A Primer of Good Usage

compulsive; compulsory.  Compulsive = prone to or

caused by uncontrollable urges <compulsive behavior>.

Compulsory = mandatory <compulsory training>.

connote. See denote.

consequent; subsequent.  Consequent = following as a

result (consequence) <Our supplier took responsibility

for consequent costs>. Subsequent = following in time

<Subsequent ads included a disclaimer>.

continual; continuous.  Continual = recurring, intermit-

tent <continual calls for tech support>. Continuous =

ceaseless, uninterrupted <continuous efforts to meet our

goals>.

convince; persuade.  Convince . . . of = to win over, to

prove a point <convince the board of the need to ex-

pand>. Persuade . . . to = convince and cause to take ac-

tion <persuade the board to fund the building program>.

corroborate. See collaborate.

council; counsel.  Council = a board <the city council>.

Counsel = (1) adviser <corporate counsel>, (2) advice

<She heeded the counsel of her CFO>, or (3) to advise

<My mentor counseled patience>.

credible; credulous; incredulous; creditable.  Credible =

believable, trustworthy <a credible argument>. Credu -

lous = gullible <credulous acceptance>. Incredulous =

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Appendix F

unbelieving <an incredulous audience>. Creditable = re-

spectable but not outstanding <a creditable performance>.

damage; damages.  Damage = harm <damage caused by

the false rumor>. Damages = judicial compensation for

harm <judgment for $2 million in damages>.

declaim. See disclaim.

defi nite; defi nitive.  Defi nite = clear, explicit, unmistak-

able <a defi nite asset to the department>. Defi nitive =

authoritative <the defi nitive source of information>.

delegate. See relegate.

deliberate; deliberative.  Deliberate = purposeful <a de-

liberate affront>. Deliberative = of or relating to debate

or discussion <a deliberative decision-making process>.

denote; connote.  Denote = to signify; to be the name

of < Mortgagee denotes the lender, not the borrower>.

Connote = to imply; to suggest something beyond the

literal sense of a term <An open workspace connotes

collaboration>.

depreciate; deprecate.  Depreciate = to fall in value <The

car will depreciate by 40% when you drive it away>. Dep-

recate = to disapprove of, to plead against <The manager

deprecated the use of company meal allowances for those

working solo>.

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A Primer of Good Usage

detract; distract.  Detract = take away (some quality)

<His abrupt manner detracted from his effectiveness>.

Distract = divert <An accomplice distracted the cashier>.

device; devise.  Device = a tool or apparatus <a handy

device>. Devise = to create or invent <devise a better

system>.

diff erent. Prefer different from over different than.

diff er from; diff er with. To differ from is simply to be dif-

ferent <Gross profi ts differ from net profi ts>; to differ

with is to disagree <I differ with you on that point>.

disburse. See disperse.

disclaim; declaim.  Disclaim = deny or disavow <dis-

claim any knowledge of the report>. Declaim = to orate

<declaim against corruption>.

discrete; discreet.  Discrete = distinct <three discrete

sources of funding>. Discreet = circumspect, tactful <a

discreet phone call>.

disinterested; uninterested.  Disinterested = unbiased;

lacking any fi nancial or emotional stake in a dispute

<The arbitrator must be a disinterested third party>. Un-

interested = uncaring <The audience was uninterested>.

disperse; disburse.  Disperse = to scatter <disperse an

unruly crowd>. Disburse = to distribute funds <disburse

grants>.

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Appendix F

distinct; distinctive.  Distinct = clear, well-defi ned <We

set three distinct goals this quarter>. Distinctive = mark-

ing a difference, characteristic <her distinctive manage-

ment style is unlike any we’ve ever seen>.

distract. See detract.

dominant; dominate.  Dominant = supreme <the domi-

nant player>. Dominate = to control <dominate the

market>.

eager. See anxious.

eff ect. See aff ect.

e.g.; i.e.  E.g. = for example <big-ticket items (e.g., cars,

refrigerators, and furnaces)>. I.e. = that is <numismatics

(i.e., coin-collecting)>.

elicit; illicit.  Elicit = to draw a response <The verbal

gaffe elicited laughter>. Illicit = forbidden, illegal <illicit

behavior>.

eligible; illegible.  Eligible = fi t to be chosen; suitable.

Illegible = incapable of being read because of bad hand-

writing, poor printing, etc.

embarrass. So spelled.

emend. See amend.

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A Primer of Good Usage

eminent. See imminent.

empathy; sympathy.  Empathy = understanding <empa-

thy for a kindred spirit>. Sympathy = compassion <sym-

pathy for the displaced survivors>.

ensure. See assure.

equally. Avoid * equally as. Good usage dictates equally

profi table, not * equally as profi table.

evoke; invoke.  Evoke = to draw out <evoke memories>.

Invoke = to call on, esp. for authority or assistance <in-

voke the right to counsel>.

explicit; implicit.  Explicit = (1) unambiguous <an ex-

plicit disclaimer> or (2) graphic, lurid <explicit photos>.

Implicit = (1) implied <an implicit warranty> or (2) ab-

solute <implicit trust>.

farther; further.  Farther = physically more distant

<Drive three miles farther>. Further = more advanced

<Further study is needed>.

faze; phase.  Faze = to agitate <not fazed by the rude

caller>. Phase = a stage of development <a growing

phase>.

fewer. See less.

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Appendix F

fi rst, second, third. So written—preferably not * fi rstly,

* secondly, * thirdly.

fl agrant. See blatant.

fl air; fl are.  Flair = (1) an innate talent <a fl air for pitch-

ing ideas> or (2) stylishness <write with fl air>. Flare = a

burst, as of light, activity, etc. <an emotional fl are-up>.

fl aunt; fl out.  Flaunt = to show off something <fl aunt-

ing new jewelry>. Flout = to openly disobey or disregard

<fl outing the rules>.

fl ounder; founder.  Flounder = to struggle or thrash

about <The campaign was fl oundering>. Founder =

(1) to sink <The stock foundered when profi ts fell> or

(2) to fail <The company foundered after the scandal>.

forbear; forebear.  Forbear = to refrain from an impulse

<We must forbear any thoughts of retaliating>. Fore-

bear = an ancestor <My grandmother and other fore-

bears were mostly Irish>.

forgo; forego.  Forgo = to do without <forgo help>.

Forego = to precede <the foregoing events>.

formally; formerly.  Formally = properly <We haven’t

been formally introduced>. Formerly = previously <He

was formerly with Hastings>.

founder. See fl ounder.

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A Primer of Good Usage

further. See farther.

gibe; jibe.  Gibe = a taunt or tease <The manager’s talk

was interrupted by good-natured gibes>. Jibe = agree

<That jibes with what I expected>.

harass. So spelled.

horde; hoard.  Horde = large group of people <hordes of

customers>. Hoard = a cache, esp. of valuable things <a

hoard of cash>. As a verb, to hoard is to accumulate to an

excessive degree.

i.e. See e.g.

if; whether. A fi ne but useful distinction: If = on the

condition that. So, e.g., Let me know if you need a cata-

log means most rigorously not to call if you don’t want a

catalog. Whether = which way you decide about. So Let

me know whether you need a catalog means, again most

rigorously, to please call either way.

illegible. See eligible.

illicit. See elicit.

illusion. See allusion.

imminent; eminent.  Imminent = looming and inevitable

<an imminent announcement>. Eminent = prominent

and respected <an eminent authority on the subject>.

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Appendix F

impel. See compel.

implicit. See explicit.

imply; infer.  Imply = to suggest something without say-

ing it expressly <There’s an implied threat>. Infer = to

read into <Can we infer from the announcement that

they will build stores close to ours?>.

in behalf of. See on behalf of.

incredulous. See credible.

infer. See imply.

ingenious; ingenuous.  Ingenious = clever, skillful <That

is an ingenious solution>. Ingenuous = frank, innocent,

free of ulterior motive <Security released the child, who

they said was open and ingenuous under questioning>.

in order to. Usually you can shorten this expression to to.

Do so whenever you can with no loss in clarity.

insure. See assure.

invoke. See evoke.

irritate. See aggravate.

it’s; its.  It’s = it is <it’s no mistake>. Its = the possessive

form of it <each branch has its responsibilities>.

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A Primer of Good Usage

jibe. See gibe.

just deserts (what one deserves) is so spelled—not * just

desserts. Deserve and desert [pronounced /di-ZURT/]

are related words.

lay > laid > laid. To lay is to put down or arrange <I’ll lay

it on his desk> <I laid it on his desk yesterday> <if only

I’d laid it there>.

lend; loan.  Lend = to provide, to grant the temporary

use of <Could you lend me that calculator?>. Loan = a

sum of money that has been lent <We’re paying back the

loan>. Though traditionally a noun, loan is also accept-

able as a verb when the object is money <We asked the

bank to loan us $50,000>.

less; fewer.  Less = a smaller amount <less waste>. Fewer

= a smaller number <fewer losses>.

lie > lay > lain. To lie is to recline <I should lie down> <I

lay down earlier this afternoon> <if I’d lain down this af-

ternoon, I’d have more energy now>.

like; as.  Like precedes a noun or pronoun <like a rock>.

As precedes a subject and verb <as you said>.

loan. See lend.

loathe; loath.  Loathe is the verb meaning “to abhor” <He

loathes broccoli>. Loath is the adjective meaning “reluc-

tant” <He’s loath to admit that he loves spinach>.

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Appendix F

loose; lose.  Loose is an adjective meaning “not tight” or

“not constrained” <loose lips> or a verb meaning “to free”

<loose the dogs of war>. Lose, the verb <lose customers>,

is often misspelled loose.

make do = to get by with <We’ll have to make do with

what’s available>. The phrase is often mistakenly ren-

dered * make due.

marshal. Both the noun <the fi re marshal> and the verb

<marshal our arguments> are so spelled.

may. See can.

mete out = to allocate. So rendered, not * meet out.

militate. See mitigate.

minuscule = tiny <a minuscule amount>. So spelled, not

* miniscule.

mitigate; militate.  Mitigate = to make less harsh <I nor-

mally would have fi led a complaint, but there were miti-

gating circumstances>. Militate = to weight heavily in

one direction <A long history of confl ict militated against

the agreement>.

mutual; common.  Mutual = reciprocal <mutual admira-

tion>. Common = shared <common interests>.

nonplussed = frozen by surprise, perplexed <nonplussed

by the shocking news>.

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A Primer of Good Usage

number. See quantity.

obtain. See attain.

obtuse; abstruse.  Obtuse = dull, dim-witted <I was too

obtuse to catch the allusion>. Abstruse = obscure, ar-

cane <But it turns out that no one caught the abstruse

allusion>.

on behalf of; in behalf of.  On behalf of = representing

<accepting the award on behalf of>. In behalf of = in sup-

port of <speaking in behalf of the motion>.

orient; *orientate.  Orient = to get one’s bearings <spend

the fi rst day getting oriented>. * Orientate is an ostenta-

tious variant to be avoided.

past; passed.  Past is the noun <in the past>, adjective

<past efforts>, adverb <walk on past>, and preposition

<past the park>. Passed is the past tense and past parti-

ciple of the verb pass <time passed slowly>.

peak; peek; pique.  Peak = a high point, esp. a pointed

one such as a mountaintop or a spike on a chart <reach

the peak>. Peek = a quick, furtive look <take a peek at

this fi le>. Pique = (1) indignation <a fi t of pique> or

(2) to arouse <piqued her interest>.

peddle; pedal.  Peddle = to sell <peddle hot dogs>.

Pedal = to operate a foot lever <pedal a bike>.

peek. See peak.

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Appendix F

pejorative = having negative implications; tending to

belittle. So spelled, not * perjorative.

pendant; pendent.  Pendant = a piece of dangling jew-

elry <a silver pendant>. Pendent = pending, unsettled <a

pendent lawsuit>.

people. See persons.

percent. This word (meaning “by the hundred”) was for-

merly spelled as two words. Today it is one.

perquisite; prerequisite.  Perquisite = a privilege or ben-

efi t, esp. one attached to a position; usually shortened

to perk <Perks included a company car>. Prerequisite

= a necessary condition <This position has job-training

prerequisites>.

persecute; prosecute.  Persecute = treat harshly, esp. as a

group <a persecuted minority>. Prosecute = pursue legal

action <prosecuted for embezzlement >.

personal; personnel.  Personal = an adjective meaning

“private, individual.” Personnel = a noun meaning “the

whole group of persons employed in a business.”

persuade. See convince.

persons; people. In most contexts, the plural persons

sounds stilted. Except for set phrases <missing-persons

report>, reserve person for singular use <Only one per-

son showed up> and use people for the plural.

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A Primer of Good Usage

perspicuous; perspicacious.  Perspicuous = lucid <a per-

spicuous argument>. Perspicacious = insightful, shrewd

<a perspicacious observer of the market>.

phase. See faze.

pique. See peak.

populace; populous.  Populace = the inhabitants of a

place, collectively <the Swiss populace>. Populous =

heavily populated <populous northeastern cities>.

pore; pour. To pore is to read intently <poring over the

fi nancial statements>. To pour is to make (a liquid) fl ow

downward.

practical; practicable.  Practical = pertaining to experi-

ence or actual use; adapted to useful action instead of to

contemplation <There must be a practical way of ship-

ping these goods>. Practicable = capable of being done

or used <Scientists have long known that a perpetual-

motion machine is impracticable>.

precede; proceed.  Precede = to occur before something

else <An extensive campaign preceded the launch>.

* Preceed is a common misspelling. Proceed = (1) to start

<Proceed with your report> or (2) to continue <From

St. Louis, proceed to Chicago>.

precipitate; precipitous.  Precipitate is most commonly a

verb meaning “to cause suddenly or recklessly” <precipi-

tate a riot>. As an adjective, it means “sudden, rash, or

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Appendix F

violent” <a precipitate run on the banks>. Precipitous =

steep <a precipitous decline in demand>.

prerequisite. See perquisite.

prescribe; proscribe.  Prescribe = to direct a course of ac-

tion <The consultants prescribed a plan>. Proscribe = to

forbid or outlaw <Insider trading is proscribed>.

presumptive; presumptuous.  Presumptive = assumed to

be <the presumptive nominee>. Presumptuous = arro-

gant, impudent <making presumptuous demands>.

preventive; *preventative.  Preventive = intended to

ward off harm <preventive measures>. * Preventative is

a corrupt form.

principal; principle.  Principal = main, fi rst <the princi-

pal reason>. As a noun, it refers to the main person <a

principal at a consulting fi rm> or, in fi nance, the origi-

nal sum of money lent or invested <the principal contin-

ues to earn interest>. Principle = a belief, tenet, or law

<stand on principle> <the principles of economics>.

proceed. See precede.

prophesy; prophecy.  Prophesy = to predict <proph-

esy great success>. Prophecy = the prediction <another

doomsday prophecy>.

proposition; proposal.  Proposition = something that is

offered for consideration <We reject the proposition that

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A Primer of Good Usage

plants should be located only on rivers>. Proposal = a

formal offer <His proposal was silent on the personnel

required to make it work>.

proscribe. See prescribe.

prosecute. See persecute.

prostrate; prostate.  Prostrate = lying face down. Pros-

tate = a gland in male mammals.

proved; proven.  Proved = the long-preferred past par-

ticiple of prove <last year’s projections have proved ac-

curate>. An exception is the set phrase innocent until

proven guilty. Proven is an adjective <Our new line is

already a proven seller>.

purpose. See intention.

quandary = state of confusion <in a quandary about

how to proceed>, not the cause of that confusion.

quantity; number.  Quantity = an unspecifi ed mass <The

farm produces large quantities of grain>. Number = a col-

lection of individually countable objects <The number of

units we sold last year exceeded that of any previous year>.

rack. See wrack.

rebut; refute.  Rebut = to answer a charge or argument.

Refute = to disprove a charge or argument.

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Appendix F

reek; wreak.  Reek = (1) to stink <The stagnant water

reeks> or (2) the bad odor <We could smell the reek of an

open sewer>. Wreak = to cause a specifi ed type of harm

<wreak havoc>.

refute. See rebut.

regrettable; regretful.  Regrettable = unfortunate <a re-

grettable decision>. Regretful = sorry about <regretful

about not calling>.

rein; reign.  Rein = a bridle strap. Figuratively, the means

of control <give free rein> <to rein in>. The homophone

reign (= to rule over) is sometimes mistakenly used in

those and similar idioms.

relegate; delegate.  Relegate = to reassign to a lower po-

sition or task <relegated to traffi c control>. Delegate = to

entrust (a person) to act on one’s behalf <delegated the

research to Terry>.

reluctant. See reticent.

respectfully; respectively.  Respectfully = in a polite

manner <May I respectfully ask you to wait another fi ve

minutes>. Respectively = in regular order <So $500,000

and $600,000 are the benchmarks, respectively, for Ted

and Carol>.

reticent; reluctant.  Reticent = taciturn, not open about

one’s thought; reluctant to talk <Veterans can be reticent

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A Primer of Good Usage

about their experiences>. Avoid using it as a substitute

for being reluctant to act.

role; roll.  Role (in the sense “a part in an organization, a

movie, etc.”) and roll (in the sense “a list of participants,

actors, etc.”) are often confounded.

sanction = (1) a penalty <The commission imposed

sanctions for the incident> or (2) an endorsement <The

board gave its sanction for continued talks>.

species; specie.  Species = a type of plant or animal. The

word is both singular and plural. Specie = coined money.

stanch. See staunch.

stationary; stationery.  Stationary = unmoving <The

gym has fi ve stationary bikes>. Stationery = writing pa-

per <We received 12 boxes of stationery>.

staunch; stanch.  Staunch = loyal and devoted <He’s a

staunch supporter>. Stanch = to stop or control the ac-

tual or fi gurative loss of liquid <stanch the red ink>.

strait; straight.  Strait = a tight spot <Strait of Magel-

lan> <in dire straits>. Straight often displaces strait in

straitjacket and straitlaced.

strategy; tactics.  Strategy = big-picture planning <com-

petitive strategy>. Tactics = actions and techniques that

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Appendix F

support your strategy <fl ash mobs and other guerrilla-

marketing tactics>.

subsequent. See consequent.

supersede = to take the place of <It supersedes last

year’s employee handbook>. The word is often mis-

spelled * supercede.

sympathy. See empathy.

tactics. See strategy.

than. See then.

that; which. Use that to introduce a clause that’s essen-

tial to meaning (a restrictive clause), and don’t set it off

with commas. If you write, “The departments that made

their numbers last quarter received budget increases,”

readers will infer that some departments didn’t receive

increases. Use which with a clause that isn’t essential (a

nonrestrictive clause). If you write, “The departments,

which made their numbers last quarter, received budget

increases,” you’re saying that all departments received in-

creases. You can leave out a which clause set off by com-

mas and still convey the gist of the sentence.

their. See there.

then; than. Then = at that time; in that case; therefore.

Than expresses comparison <more successful than any

other start-up>.

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A Primer of Good Usage

there; their; they’re.  There refers to direction <over

there> or place <where there is life>; their is the posses-

sive of they <all their worldly belongings>; and they’re is

the contraction of they are <they’re on the way>.

torpid. See turgid.

toward; towards.  Toward dominates in American En-

glish, towards in British English.

try and. Make it try to.

turgid; torpid.  Turgid = (1) swollen <the turgid river af-

ter Friday’s rain>, or (2) bombastic <a turgid harangue>.

Torpid = dormant or sluggish <Demand is usually torpid

after the holidays>.

uninterested. See disinterested.

unique; unusual. Unique = one of a kind, unmatched <a

unique handmade quilt>. As an absolute term, unique

should not take modifi ers such as very. It is not a syn-

onym of unusual.

use; utilize. Prefer the simple term.

venal; venial.  Venal = corrupt, susceptible to bribery

<a venal border guard>. Venial = pardonable <a venial

mistake>.

veracity; voracity.  Veracity = truthfulness <Veracity

earns trust>. Voracity = gluttony <His voracity was his

downfall>.

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Appendix F

verbiage = wordiness, not the words in a message. Excess

verbiage is redundant. Avoid the misspelling * verbage.

vocation; avocation.  Vocation = career <His vocation

is nursing>. Avocation = (1) hobby or (2) second occu-

pation <On weekends he works on his avocation, fl int-

knapping>.

voluminous. See compendious.

voracity. See veracity.

wangle. See wrangle.

whether. See if.

whether; whether or not. In most instances whether can

stand alone: or not adds nothing. But when the sense is

“regardless of whether,” the additional words are needed

<We’re going whether or not you can make it>.

which. See that.

who’s; whose.  Who’s = who is. Whose = the possessive

form of who or whom.

whosever; whoever’s.  Whosever is the standard posses-

sive form of whoever. Whoever’s is a contraction for who-

ever is.

workers’ compensation. This gender-neutral phrase has

replaced workmen’s compensation as standard.

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A Primer of Good Usage

wrack; rack.  Wrack = (1) to destroy <wracked by fraud>

or (2) wreckage <go to wrack and ruin>. Rack = to tor-

ture as on a rack <rack my brains>.

wrangle; wangle.  Wrangle = to argue noisily <wrangling

over licensing rights>. Wangle = to obtain by manipula-

tion <wangle an invitation>.

wreak. See reek.

your; you’re.  Your = possessive form of you. You’re =

contraction of you are.

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Desk References

Writing well is not just one skill but a combination of

many—and it’s something you must constantly work at.

In addition to this guide you might want to keep the fol-

lowing desk references handy.

The Basic Writer’s Bookshelf

• The American Heritage Dictionary of the English

Language. 5th ed. Boston: Houghton Miffl in Har-

court, 2011.

• Garner, Bryan A. Garner’s Dictionary of Modern

American Usage. 3d ed. New York: Oxford, 2009.

• Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary. 11th ed.

Springfi eld, MA: Merriam-Webster, 2008.

• Roget’s Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases.

George Davidson, ed. Avon, MA: Adams Media,

2011.

• Trimble, John R. Writing with Style. 3d ed. Upper

Saddle River, NJ: Pearson, 2010.

199

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Desk References

The Connoisseur’s Bookshelf

• Flesch,

Rudolf.

The Art of Plain Talk. New York:

Harper & Brothers, 1946.

• Flesch,

Rudolf.

How to Write Plain English: A

Book for Lawyers and Consumers. New York:

Harper & Row, 1979.

• Fowler, H. W. A Dictionary of Modern English

Usage. 2d ed. Edited by Ernest Gowers. New York:

Oxford University Press, 1965.

• Garner, Bryan A. Legal Writing in Plain English.

2d ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012.

• Gowers,

Ernest.

The Complete Plain Words. 3d ed.

Edited by Sidney Greenbaum and Janet Whitcut.

Boston: David R. Godine, 1986.

• Graves, Robert, and Alan Hodge. The Reader over

Your Shoulder. 2d ed. London: Cape, 1947.

• Partridge,

Eric.

Usage and Abusage: A Guide to

Good English. New York: Harper & Brothers,

1942.

• Strunk, William, and E. B. White. The Elements of

Style. 4th ed. Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 1999.

• Tufte, Edward R. Beautiful Evidence. Cheshire,

Conn.: Graphics Press, 2006.

• Tufte, Edward R. Envisioning Information.

Cheshire, Conn.: Graphics Press, 1990.

200

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Desk References

• Wallace, David Foster. Consider the Lobster. New

York: Little, Brown & Co., 2005.

• Zinsser,

William.

On Writing Well. New York:

HarperCollins, 30th Ann. ed., 2006.

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Index

acronyms, 96–97

Beautiful Evidence (Tufte), 37–38,

adverbs, 144–145, 147–148

200

all caps, 158, 167

be verbs, 55, 94–95

Alred, Gerald J., 122

bizspeak, 57–65

and, starting a sentence with,

boilerplate, 62

83–84, 143–144

boldface type, 158

apostrophes, improper use of,

brainstorming, 14–15, 20–21

155–156, 160–161

brevity and clarity, xvi–xvii, 44–45,

appositives, 150–151, 156

49–51, 53–56, 106, 110

Architect phase, 13–14, 16, 21–26,

Brusaw, Charles T., 122

140

Buffett, Warren, 9, 63–65

articles, ( a, an, the), don’t drop, 53

bullets, as attention-getting de-

as per, 62, 111, 113

vice, 157–158

attached please fi nd, 62

but, starting a sentence with,

audience

83–84, 143–144

connecting with, 9–10

buzzwords, 57–61

consideration for, 111–116,

123–124

Cannon, Kelly, 122

for letters, 4–6

Carpenter phase, 13–14, 16, 23–25,

holding readers’ attention,

27–29, 140

91–97

Chicago Manual of Style, The,

motivating to act, 116–118

15, 154

nonspecialists, 44–45

chronology, 67–70

perspective of, 43–44

Churchill, Winston, 91

understanding readers, 7–11

clarity, 43–48, 53

who you’re writing for, 8

clichés, 58–61

closing text, 32

Babenroth, A. Charles, 121–122

Cody, Sherwin, 121

Bartholomew, Wallace E., 121

collegiality, 100–101

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Index

colons, 157, 159

general guidelines for, 105–110

commas, 148, 150–151, 154–155,

storytelling, 67–70

159–160

subject line, 106, 167

conclusions, leading readers to, 45

em-dashes. See long dashes.

concrete writing, 47

emphasis, adding, 37–39, 157–

conjunctions

160

correlative, 147, 151

empty words, 9–10

starting sentences with, 83–84,

enclosed please fi nd, 111, 113,

143–144

121–122

connecting with large audiences,

Envisioning Information (Tufte),

9–10

37–38, 200

continuity and transitions, 71–75,

etiquette, business writing,

143–144

165–168

contractions, 93

courtesy, 123–124

feedback from colleagues, 85–87

credibility, 47, 50, 77–78, 80–81

Flesch Reading Ease (FRE) scale,

63–64

dates, 160, 166

Flesch, Rudolf, 64, 92, 200

defi nitions, 44–45

Flowers, Betty Sue, 13

delivering bad news, 118–120

focus

dialect, 81–82

fi nding it, 19–25

diplomacy, 123–124

“you” focus, 92–93, 108, 112,

double negatives, 81–82

115–116

drafts

fonts, 158, 167

e-mail, 107–110

forms of address, 165

feedback, 85–87

Frailey, L.E., 122

fi rst, 16, 27–29, 32–35, 55

FRE scale, 64

revising, 31–35

fund-raising, 118–119

writing rapidly, 27–29

Drucker, Peter, 28

genderless pronouns, 80–81

dumbing it down, 64–65

getting to the point, 7–8

good and well, 144–145, 163

editing, 16–17, 28, 31–35

grammar

effi ciency, 14–17

generally, 77–84

either, 79, 81, 146–147

mistakes creating bad impres-

Elements of Style, The (Strunk and

sions, 163–164

White), 160, 200

passive voice, 94–95, 115–116

e-mails

phrasal adjectives, 153–154

BCC, 167

rules to know, 77–84, 143–151

check before sending, 166

granting a benefi t or request, 122

compared to letters, 46

graphics, 37–39

204

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Index

Harvard Law Review, 64

mistakes, admitting, 124

however, 83–84, 144, 148

motivating readers, 116–118

Hurlbut, Floyd, 121

hyperformality compared to

neither, 79–81, 146–147, 151

polished plain speech, 61,

nonstandard language, 82–84

99–100

notes, making, 15

hyphens, 153–54, 158–159

nouns

disagreement with pronouns,

impressions, bad, 163–164

80–81

“index expurgatorius,” 57–61

plural, 155–156

inspiration, 28

-ion words, 55

of, 54–55

issues, stating plainly, 3, 49–50,

Oliu, Walter E., 122

126–27, 129

opening text, 32, 49–50, 71–74

italic type, for emphasis, 156, 158

opinions, unsupported, 45, 47

organizing

Judge phase, 13–14, 16–17, 28,

chronology, 67–70

141

main points/issues and logic,

19–25

letters

outlining, 16, 50

as a tool for sharpening writing

sets of three, 19–25

skills, 46

subheads, 74

chronology in, 67–70

otherwise, 148

form and purpose, 3–6

outlining, 16, 50

general guidelines for, 111–124

replying to, 167

padding, recognizing and elimi-

salutations, 159, 165

nating, 53–56

signature, 165–166

paragraph openers, 71–72

when to write and when not to

passive voice, 94–95, 115–116

write, 167–168

performance appraisals, 133–138

logic, 16, 19–20

persuasiveness, xviii–xix, 47, 112

long dashes, uses for, 159–160

phrasal adjectives, hyphenating,

153–154

MACJ, 13–14, 28

phrases

Madman phase, 13–16, 20–21, 139

canned, 62, 111, 113, 121–122

Madman–Architect–Carpenter–

creating bad impressions,

Judge, 13–14

163–164

main points, 19–25

overused, 58–61

marketing reports, 129–130

for performance reviews,

memos, 8, 20–25, 32–35, 125–130

133–137

middle, 32

plagiarism, 15

205

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Index

plain-spoken language, impor-

requests for proposal, 8

tance of, 57–65

research, 14–16, 128–129

planning your writing project,

reviews, employee. See perfor-

13–16, 19–25

mance appraisals

polishing your writing, 14, 16–17,

revising

61, 86

general guidelines for, 31–35

possessives, 160–161

continuity and transitions,

predicates, compound, 154–155

71–75

prefi xes, hyphenating, 158–159

prepositions, 54, 79, 144, 145,

salutations, punctuation follow-

146–147

ing, 159

prior to, 53

sarcasm, 101

process of writing, 13–17, 19–25,

semicolons, 148, 154–155, 159

27–29

sentences

procrastination, 28–29

compound subjects, 79–80,

pronouns

145–146

errors in using, 77–78, 80–81

conjunctions at beginning of,

personal, 92–93

83–84, 143–144

relative, 149–150

length of, 44–45, 63–65, 95–96

punctuation, basic rules of, 148,

noun–pronoun disagreement,

150, 153–161

80–81

purpose for writing, 3–6

prepositions at end of, 144

pronouns, 77–78, 80–81, 92–93

quotation marks, for emphasis,

starters, 83–84, 143–144

158

structure, 95–96

subject–verb disagreement,

readers. See also audience

78–80, 81, 145–147

nonspecialist, 9, 44–45

“show, don’t tell,” 45, 47

perspective, 43–44, 51, 68–69,

signature, 107, 165–166

119

simplicity and clarity in language,

three types for memos, 127

43–48, 53–55, 57–65, 91, 94

time constraints, 7–8

sources, 15

understanding, 7–10

speed writing, 27

Reader’s Digest, 64

split infi nitives, 149

reason for writing. See purpose for

standard English, 82–83

writing

starting to write, 13–17, 19–25

recommendations, 129–130

storytelling and chronology, 67–70

rejection, 118–119

Strunk, William, Jr., 160–161, 200

relative pronouns, 149–150

style, how to acquire good,

reports, tips on writing, 125–131

xviii–xix

reprimand by e-mail, 109–110

subheads, 74

206

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Index

subject lines, 106, 125–126, 167

irregular, 83

subject–verb agreement, 78–80,

past-tense, 94

81, 145–147

separating the grammatical

summarizing, 49–51, 74, 126–128

subject from, 156–157

split infi nitives, 149

thank you in advance, 167

strong, 55

thank-you notes, 166, 167

verb phrases, 148–149

that, 53, 149–150, 194

visual aids, 37–39, 140

there, 78–79, 195

vocabulary, 82

their, 80–81, 195

therefore, 73, 74, 148

Washington, George, 91

third person, 92–93, 115–116

we, 78, 92, 100, 115–116

Time (magazine), 64

well, 144–145, 163

time management, 27–29, 31

which, 149–151, 194

titles, 125–126

White, E. B., 160–161, 200

tone

White, Richard Grant, 121

collegial, 100–101

white space in document design,

combative, 123

166

courteous and direct, 123–124

who, 149–51, 161, 196

in e-mails, 107–110

“who, what, when, where, and

friendly, 4, 8

why,” 38, 50

hyperformality, 99–100

wordiness, controlling, 53–56

purpose and content, 4–6, 8

wording, problems with, 77–84

relaxed, 99–100

words, wasting of, 53–56

sarcasm, 101

writer’s block, 16, 25, 28

stern, 5–6

writing

urgent, 4–5

anxiety about, 13–15

transitions and continuity, 71–75

benefi ts of good writing, xv–xx

Tufte, Edward, 37–38, 200

etiquette in, 165–168

four stages checklist for,

underlining, 158

139–141

U.S. Securities and Exchange

how to begin, 13–17, 19–25

Commission’s Plain English

muddy, 43

Handbook, 9

process of, 13–17, 19–25, 27–29

usage

purpose of, 3–6

bad examples of, 163–164

rapidly, 27–29

good, 169–197

style, 91–97, 99–100

timing, 27

vagueness, 43–47, 49–50

verbs

“you” focus, 92–93, 108, 112,

buried, 55

115–116

207

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H6082.indb 208

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Acknowledgments

My profound gratitude goes to Lisa Burrell of HBR,

who suggested and edited the book through several re-

visions; to the LawProse employees Heather C. Haines,

Becky R. McDaniel, Tiger Jackson, Jeff Newman, David

Zheng, and Ryden McComas Anderson—all of whom

helped in developing and refi ning the text; my Twitter

followers (I’m @bryanagarner) who suggested examples of bizspeak to be avoided; my mother-in-law Sandra

W. Cheng, her brother Daniel Wu, and my sister-in-law

Linda Garner, all of whom suggested lines of inquiry

from their many years in business; and most of all my

wife, Karolyne H.C. Garner, who cheered and goaded

and inspired me in the months when this book was being

written—as she has before and since.

The book is dedicated to J.P. Allen, the fi lmmaker,

who has been my close friend from childhood (I was 5, he

was 3): We developed our interest in language and writ-

ing as teenagers, while also reading intensively about en-

trepreneurship and business management—never wor-

rying that we might be considered nerds or eggheads. We

H6082.indb 209

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Acknowledgments

always thought learning was cool, and ignorance uncool.

Nothing has changed.

B.A.G.

August 2012

210

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About the Author

Bryan A. Garner is a noted lexicographer, grammarian,

lawyer, and business owner. Since founding LawProse

Inc. in 1991, he has trained more than 150,000 lawyers

in the techniques of written persuasion and effective con-

tract drafting. His clients include the legal departments

of dozens of Fortune 500 companies.

Garner is the author of Garner’s Modern American Us-

age, The Elements of Legal Style, and The Winning Brief,

and the editor in chief of all in-print editions of Black’s

Law Dictionary. He has coauthored two best-selling

books about judicial decision-making with Justice Anto-

nin Scalia.

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Notes

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Notes

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Notes

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Notes

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Notes

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Notes

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Notes

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Notes

H6082.indb 219

11/6/12 1:21 PM

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Harvard Business Review Guides

Arm yourself with the advice you need to succeed on the

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with how-to essentials from leading experts, the HBR

Guides provide smart answers to your most pressing

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HBR Guide to Persuasive Presentations

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H5971.indb ii

7/16/12 10:15 AM

HBR Guide to

Persuasive

Presentations

Nancy Duarte

HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW PRESS

Boston, Massachusetts

H5981.indb iii

7/16/12 9:05 AM

Find more digital content or join the discussion on www.hbr.org.

The web addresses referenced and linked in this book were live and

correct at the time of the book’s publication but may be subject to change.

Copyright 2012 Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation

All rights reserved

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced

into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means

(electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise),

without the prior permission of the publisher. Requests for permission

should be directed to permissions@hbsp.harvard.edu, or mailed to Permissions, Harvard Business School Publishing, 60 Harvard Way,

Boston, Massachusetts 02163.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Duarte, Nancy.

HBR guide to persuasive presentations / Nancy Duarte.

p.

cm.

ISBN 978-1-4221-8710-4 (alk. paper)

1. Business

presentations. 2. Persuasion

(Psychology) I. Title.

HF5718.22.D817

2012

658.4′52—dc23

2012019634

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What You’ll Learn

Do you dread giving presentations? Maybe your mind

goes blank when you sit down to generate ideas, or you

struggle to organize your fragmented thoughts and data

into a coherent, persuasive message. Is it tough to con-

nect with customers you’re wooing, senior executives

you’re hitting up for funding, or employees you’re train-

ing? Do you fumble for the right words, get lost in your

slide deck, run out of time before you’ve hit your main

points—and leave the room uncertain you’ve gotten

through to anyone?

This guide will give you the confi dence and tools you

need to engage your audience, sell your ideas, and inspire

people to act. You’ll get better at:

• Showing people why your ideas matter to them

• Winning over tough crowds

• Balancing analytical and emotional appeal

• Crafting memorable messages

• Creating powerful visuals

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What You’ll Learn

• Striking the right tone

• Holding your audience’s attention

• Measuring your impact

vi

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Contents

Introduction xv

Plan well.

Section 1: AUDIENCE

Know your audience and build

empathy.

Understand the Audience’s Power

3

Your idea’s fate is in their hands.

Segment the Audience

7

Focus on who matters most.

Present Clearly and Concisely to Senior

Executives 11

Help them make big decisions on a

tight schedule.

Get to Know Your Audience

15

It’s easier to convince someone you know.

Defi ne How You’ll Change the Audience

19

What do you want people to believe? How do

you want them to behave?

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Contents

Find Common Ground

21

Resonate through empathy.

Section 2: MESSAGE

Develop persuasive content.

Defi ne Your Big Idea

27

Clearly state your point of view—and

what’s at stake.

Generate Content to Support the Big Idea

29

When you’re brainstorming, more is more.

Anticipate Resistance

33

Think through opposing perspectives.

Amplify Your Message Through Contrast

37

Create and resolve tension.

Build an Eff ective Call to Action

39

Get things done!

Choose Your Best Ideas

43

Sort and fi lter.

Organize Your Thoughts

47

Outline your presentation by writing

clear, active slide titles that hang together.

Balance Analytical and Emotional Appeal

51

Stay credible while you reel people in.

Lose the Jargon

55

Is your language clear enough to pass the

“grandmother test”?

viii

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Contents

Craft Sound Bites

59

Good ones get repeated, tweeted,

and heeded.

Section 3: STORY

Use storytelling principles and

structure to engage your audience.

Apply Storytelling Principles

63

Make your presentation stick.

Create a Solid Structure

65

Storytelling principles provide a framework.

Craft the Beginning

67

Establish the gap between what is and what

could be .

Develop the Middle

71

Build tension between what is and what

could be .

Make the Ending Powerful

73

Describe the new bliss.

Add Emotional Texture

75

Decisions are not made by facts alone.

Use Metaphors as Your Glue

81

Memorable themes help rally an audience.

Create Something They’ll Always Remember

83

Drive your big idea home.

ix

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Contents

Section 4: MEDIA

Identify the best modes for

communicating your message.

Choose the Right Vehicle for Your Message

91

Slide decks aren’t always the answer.

Make the Most of Slide Software

95

It’s not just for slides.

Determine the Right Length for Your

Presentation 99

Keep your audience engaged by budgeting

your time.

Persuade Beyond the Stage

103

Communicate before, during, and

after your presentation.

Share the Stage

107

Mixing in experts and media holds interest.

Section 5: SLIDES

Conceptualize and simplify

the display of information.

Think Like a Designer

111

Visuals should convey meaning.

Create Slides People Can “Get” in

Three Seconds

113

Do they pass the glance test?

Choose the Right Type of Slide

117

Bullets aren’t the only tool.

x

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Contents

Storyboard One Idea per Slide

123

Plan before you create.

Avoid Visual Clichés

127

Make your slides stand out.

Arrange Slide Elements with Care

129

Make your visuals easier to process.

Clarify the Data

137

Emphasize what’s important,

remove the rest.

Turn Words into Diagrams

143

Use shapes to show relationships.

Use the Right Number of Slides

149

Size up your situation before building

your deck.

Know When to Animate

151

. . . and when it’s overkill.

Section 6: DELIVERY

Deliver your presentation

authentically.

Rehearse Your Material Well

155

Roll with the unexpected and fully engage

with the audience.

Know the Venue and Schedule

159

Control them when you can.

Anticipate Technology Glitches

163

Odds of malfunction are high.

xi

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Contents

Manage Your Stage Fright

167

Exercises to calm your nerves.

Set the Right Tone for Your Talk

169

You never get a second chance to

make a fi rst impression.

Be Yourself

171

Authenticity connects you to others.

Communicate with Your Body

175

Physical expression is a powerful tool.

Communicate with Your Voice

179

Create contrast and emphasis.

Make Your Stories Come to Life

181

Re-experience them in the telling.

Work Eff ectively with Your Interpreter

183

Pay attention to chemistry, pacing, and

cultural resonance.

Get the Most out of Your Q&A

187

Plan, plan, plan.

Build Trust with a Remote Audience

191

Get past technology’s barriers.

Keep Remote Listeners Interested

195

You’re fi ghting for the attention of

multitaskers.

Keep Your Remote Presentation

Running Smoothly

199

Use this checklist to minimize annoyances.

xii

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Contents

Section 7: IMPACT

Measure—and increase—your

presentation’s impact on your

audience.

Build Relationships Through Social Media

205

Engage with users so they’ll engage fully

and fairly with your ideas.

Spread Your Ideas with Social Media

211

Facilitate the online conversation.

Gauge Whether You’ve Connected with People

215

Gather feedback in real time and

after your talk.

Follow Up After Your Talk

219

Make it easier for people to put your ideas

into action.

Index 223

About the Author

229

xiii

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H5981.indb xiv

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Introduction

If I am to speak for ten minutes, I need a week for

preparation; if fi fteen minutes, three days; if half

an hour, two days; if an hour, I am ready now.

—Woodrow T. Wilson

We work in a fi rst-draft culture. Type an e-mail. Send.

Write a blog entry. Post. Whip up some slides. Speak.

But it’s in crafting and recrafting—in iteration and re-

hearsal—that excellence emerges.

Why worry about being an excellent communicator

when you have so many other pressing things to do? Be-

cause it will help you get those things done.

So as you conceive, visualize, and present your mes-

sage, don’t skimp on preparation, even if you’re giving

a short talk. It actually takes more careful planning to

distill your ideas into a few key takeaways than it does

to create an hour-long presentation (see fi gure I-1). And

gather lots of feedback so you’ll be all the more effective

when you start the process again.

xv

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Introduction

FIGURE I-1

Planning a presentation

IMPACT

AUDIENCE

Measure and increase

Know your audience

your presentation’s

and build empathy

impact on your

audience

MESSAGE

Develop

persuasive

content

PRESENTING

CONCEIVING

VISUALIZING

DELIVERY

Deliver your

presentation

authentically

STORY

Use storytelling

principles and

structure to engage

your audience

SLIDES

MEDIA

Conceptualize and simplify the

Identify the best modes

display of information

for communicating

your message

Since 1990, I’ve run a fi rm that specializes in writing

and producing presentations—and then I became a pre-

senter myself. This book is loaded with insights learned

from supporting other presenters and giving my own

talks. But, trust me, I’ve had my share of embarrassing

moments, many of which could have been avoided with

a little planning. Loading the wrong presentation onto

xvi

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Introduction

my laptop. Walking onstage with my skirt tucked into

my underwear. Botching my delivery to executives at an

$8 billion company because I hadn’t rehearsed enough—

and getting cut from their continuing series of meetings.

Experience is a powerful teacher.

I’ve also learned a lot from success. When audiences

can see that you’ve prepared—that you care about their

needs and value their time—they’ll want to connect with

you and support you. You’ll get people to adopt your

ideas, and you’ll win the resources to carry them out.

You’ll close more deals. You’ll earn the backing of deci-

sion makers. You’ll gain infl uence. In short, you’ll go far-

ther in your organization—and your career.

Special thanks to:

• The wonderful Lisa Burrell, who edited my mess

into coherence

• The entire team at Duarte, who supported me with

case studies

• Members of the Twitterverse who answered my

questions: @annzerega, @caddguru,

@carolmquig, @catiehargrove, @charlesgreene3,

@ckallaos, @conniewinch, @iamanshul,

@karlparry, @managebetternow,

@matthewmccull, @moniquemaley,

@mpacc, @speakingtall, and @zupermik

xvii

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H5981.indb xviii

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Section 1

Audience

Designing a presentation without an audience in

mind is like writing a love letter and addressing it

“to whom it may concern.”

—Ken Haemer,

Presentation Research Manager, AT&T

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Understand the

Audience’s Power

When you walk into a room as a presenter, it’s easy to feel

as if you’re in a position of power: You’re up front, per-

haps even elevated on a stage, and people came to hear

you speak. In reality, though, you’re not the star of the

show. The audience is.

Why? The people you’re addressing will determine

whether your idea spreads or dies, simply by embracing

or rejecting it. You need them more than they need you.

Since they have that control, it’s crucial to be humble in

your approach. Use their desires and goals as a fi lter for

everything you present.

Presenters tend to be self-focused. They have a lot to

say, they want to say it well, and they have little time to

prepare. These pressures make them forget what’s im-

portant to the audience. A self-focused presenter might

just describe a new initiative and explain what needs to

get done—outlining how to do it, when to do it, and the

budget required. Then maybe, if the audience is lucky,

he’ll have a slide at the very end about “why it matters.”

3

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Audience

This format screams, “I pay you to do this, so just do it!”

The presenter is so consumed by the mission that he for-

gets to say why people would want or need to be involved.

Spend a moment in your audience’s shoes. Walk peo-

ple through why the initiative matters to them and to the

organization, what internal and external factors are driv-

ing it, and why their support will make it successful. Yes,

get through the nitty-gritty details, but set up the valu-

able role they’ll play in the scenario rather than dictate a

laundry list of to-do’s.

Though presentations and audiences vary, one impor-

tant fact remains constant: The people in your audience

came to see what you can do for them, not what they

must do for you. So look at the audience as the “hero” of

your idea—and yourself as the mentor who helps people

see themselves in that role so they’ll want to get behind

your idea and propel it forward.

Think of Yoda—a classic example of a wise, humble

mentor. In the Star Wars movies, he gives the hero, Luke

Skywalker, a special gift (a deeper understanding of the

“Force”), trains him to use a magical tool (the lightsaber),

and helps him in his fi ght against the Empire.

Like Yoda and other mentors in mythology, presenters

should:

• Give the hero a special gift: Give people insights

that will improve their lives. Perhaps you intro-

duce senior managers at your company to an excit-

ing new way to compete in the marketplace. Or

maybe you show a roomful of potential clients that

you can save them money and time.

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Understand the Audience’s Power

• Teach the hero to use a “magical” tool: This is

where the people in your audience pick up a new

skill or mind-set from you—something that en-

ables them to reach their objectives and yours.

• Help the hero get “unstuck”: Ideally, you’ll come

with an idea or a solution that gets the audience

out of a diffi cult or painful situation.

So if you’re gearing up to launch a new service offer-

ing, for example, give your team a clear roadmap (tool)

and a promise to bring in consultants for training and

support (gift)—and describe how these will help every-

one rise to the challenge ahead.

5

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Segment the

Audience

If you see your audience as a homogenous, faceless clump

of people, you’ll have a hard time making a connection

and moving them to action. Instead, think of them as

a line of individuals waiting to have a conversation

with you.

Your audience will usually include a mix of people—

individuals in diverse roles, with various levels of

decision-making authority, from different parts of the

organization—each needing to hear your message for

different reasons. Decide which subgroup is the most

important to you, and zero in on that subgroup’s needs

when you develop your presentation.

When you’re segmenting your audience, take a look at:

• Politics: Power, infl uence, decision process

• Demographics: Age, education, ethnicity, gender,

and geography

• Psychographics: Personality, values, attitudes,

interests, communities, and lifestyle

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Audience

• Firmographics: Number of employees, revenue

size, industry, number of locations, location of

headquarters

• Ethnographics: Social and cultural needs

After you’ve segmented the group, fi gure out which

members will have the greatest impact on the adoption

of your idea. Is there a layer of management you need to

appeal to? Is there a type of customer in the room with a

lot of sway over the industry?

Then view yourself as a curator of content for your

most valuable and powerful stakeholders. Pick the one

type of person in the room with the most infl uence, and

write your presentation as if just to that subgroup. The

presentation can’t be so specialized that it will alienate

everyone else—you’ll need some content that appeals to

the greater group. But tailor most of your specifi cs to the

subgroup you’ve targeted.

Say you’re presenting a new product concept to the

executive team, and you know you won’t get their buy-

in unless Trent, the president of the enterprise division,

gets excited about the idea, because they always defer to

his instincts on new initiatives. Appeal fi rst to Trent’s en-

trepreneurial nature by describing how exciting the new

market is—while keeping in mind what the other execu-

tives will care about. Here’s where your segmentation

work will come in handy (table 1–1).

Draw on your understanding of the team members as

you prepare your talk. In addition to fanning the fl ames

of Trent’s entrepreneurism, for example, have data in

your pocket to respond to Marco, the analytical and

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Segment the Audience

TABLE 1-1

Segmenting your audience

Executive team member

Qualities

Bert, CEO

Hierarchical, micromanager,

dominant, fear-driven, needs to be

liked

Carol, president of Consumer

Visionary, creative, disruptive,

division

scattered, wants to stand on own feet

Trent, president of Enterprise

Entrepreneurial, design thinker,

division

systematic, found self after

near-death experience

Martin, CMO

CEO’s favorite, empirically minded,

arrogant, sabotages projects

Marco, CTO

Political, risk-averse, analytical,

introverted, has self-doubt

risk-averse CTO, when he inevitably balks. And try to

work with, not against, your CMO’s arrogance: Ask for

his counsel on a key marketing point or two before the

group meets, and he’ll be less likely to lash out during

the presentation or sit there quietly plotting a coup, as is

his wont.

What if some audience members are already familiar

with your idea and others need to be brought up to speed?

(This is most likely to happen when you’re presenting

within your organization.) Consider evening things out

by giving the newbies a crash course before you conduct

the larger presentation. Or you may decide just to do two

separate presentations.

9

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Present Clearly

and Concisely to

Senior Executives

Senior executives are a tough segment to reach. They

usually have very little time in their schedules to give

you. Though that’s true of many audiences, what sets this

crowd apart is that they need to make huge decisions

based on accurate information delivered quickly. Long

presentations with a big reveal at the end do not work

for them. They’ll want you to get to the bottom line right

away—and they often won’t let you fi nish your shtick

without interrupting. (Never mind that you would have

answered their questions if they’d just let you get through

the next three slides.)

When presenting to an audience of senior executives,

do everything you can to make their decision making

easier and more effi cient:

• Get to the point: Take less time than you were al-

located. If you were given 30 minutes, create your

talk within that timeframe but then pretend that

11

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Audience

your slot got cut to 5 minutes. That’ll force you

to be succinct and lead with the things they care

about—high-level fi ndings, conclusions, recom-

mendations, your call to action. Hit those points

clearly and simply before you venture into sup-

porting data or tangential areas of importance

to you.

• Give them what they asked for: Stay on topic. If

you were invited to give an update about the fl ood-

ing of the manufacturing plant in Indonesia, do

that before covering anything else. They’ve invited

you because they felt you could supply a miss-

ing piece of information, so answer that specifi c

request quickly.

• Set expectations: At the beginning, let the au-

dience know you will spend the fi rst 5 of your

30 minutes presenting your summary and the

remaining time on discussion. Most executives will

be patient for 5 minutes and let you present your

main points well if they know they’ll be able to ask

questions fairly soon.

• Create executive summary slides: Develop a clear,

short overview of your key points, and place it in

a set of executive summary slides at the front of

the deck; have the rest of your slides serve as an

appendix. Follow a 10% rule of thumb: If your

appendix is 50 slides, devote about 5 slides to your

summary at the beginning. After you present the

summary, let the group drive the conversation.

12

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Present Clearly and Concisely to Senior Executives

Often, executives will want to go deeper on the

points that will aid their decision making. You

can quickly pull up any slides in the appendix that

speak to those points.

• Rehearse: Before presenting, run your slides by

someone who has success getting ideas adopted at

the executive level and who will serve as an honest

coach. Is your message coming through clearly and

quickly? Do your summary slides boil everything

down into skimmable key insights? Are you miss-

ing anything your audience is likely to expect?

Sounds like a lot of work, right? It is, but presenting to

an executive team is a great honor and can open tremen-

dous doors. If you nail this, people with a lot of infl uence

will become strong advocates for your ideas.

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Get to Know Your

Audience

Segmenting your audience members politically, demo-

graphically, psychographically, and so on is a great start,

but connecting with people means understanding them

on a more personal level. To develop resonant content for

them, dig for deeper insights about them. Ask yourself:

• What are they like? Think through a day in their

lives. Describe what that looks like so they’ll know

you “get” them.

• Why are they here? What do they think they’re go-

ing to get out of this presentation? Are they willing

participants or mandatory attendees? Highlight

what’s in it for them.

• What keeps them up at night? Everyone has a fear,

a pain point, a thorn in the side. Let your audience

know that you empathize—and that you’re here

to help.

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Audience

• How can you solve their problems? How are you

going to make their lives better? Point to benefi ts

you know they’ll care about.

• What do you want them to do? What’s their part in

your plan? Make sure there’s a clear action for your

audience to take. (See “Build an Effective Call to

Action” in the Message section of this guide.)

• How might they resist? What will keep them from

adopting your message and carrying out your call

to action? Remove any obstacles you can.

• How can you best reach them? How do they prefer

to receive information? Do they like the room to

be set up a certain way? Do they want materials to

review before the presentation? Afterward? What

atmosphere or type of media will best help them

see your point of view? Give them what they want,

how they want it.

When getting ready to present to an audience you’ve

never met, do some research online. If you know the

names of stakeholders in your audience, look up their

bios. If you know only generalities about the audience,

fi nd the event on social media feeds and read what’s on

the minds of those who’ll be attending. If you’ll be pre-

senting to a company, fi nd recent press mentions, look

at how the company positions itself against competitors,

read its annual report, and have Google Alerts send new

articles about the company to your e-mail.

One time, I was preparing to present to beer execu-

tives, and I don’t like beer or know anything about the

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Get to Know Your Audience

industry. So I hosted a beer-tasting event at my shop,

read their annual report, read recent press, studied key

infl uencers, and looked up each attendee online. During

the Q&A, a question came from one of the top executives

(I knew he was at the top because I’d looked him up)—

and I answered his question with timely examples.

When your audience is familiar—say, a group of your

direct reports or colleagues—think through the pres-

sures they are under and fi nd ways to create an empathic

connection.

Knowing people— really knowing them—makes it

easier to infl uence them. You engage in a conversation,

exchange insights, tell stories. Usually, both you and they

change a bit in the process.

People don’t fall asleep during conversations, but they

often do during presentations—and that’s because many

presentations don’t feel conversational. Knowing your

audience well helps you feel warmly toward the people in

the room and take on a more conversational tone. Speak

sincerely to your audience, and people will want to listen

to your message and root for and contribute to the suc-

cess of your idea.

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Defi ne How

You’ll Change

the Audience

When you present, you’re asking the people in the room

to change their behavior or beliefs in some way, big or

small. Before you begin writing your presentation, map

out that transformation—where your audience is start-

ing, and where you want people to end up. This is the

most critical step in planning your presentation, because

that desired endpoint is the whole reason you’re pre-

senting in the fi rst place, and people won’t get there on

their own.

Ask yourself, “What new beliefs do I want them to

adopt? How do I want them to behave differently? How

must their attitudes or emotions change before their be-

havior can change?”

By thinking through who they are before they enter

the room and who you want them to be when they leave,

you’ll defi ne their transformation arc, much as a screen-

writer plans the protagonist’s transformation in a fi lm.

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Audience

Let’s say you work in the development offi ce at a uni-

versity and you’re delivering a presentation to potential

donors. The audience transformation might look like the

one shown in table 1-2.

TABLE 1-2

Transforming your audience

Move audience from:

Move audience to:

Skepticism that the school will

Excitement about innovative

make good use of the money

research by faculty, students, and

alumni—and an impulse to give

Change typically doesn’t happen without a struggle.

It’s hard to convince people to move away from a view

that is comfortable or widely held as true, or change a

behavioral pattern that has become their norm. You are

persuading members of your audience to let go of old be-

liefs or habits and adopt new ones. Once you understand

their transformation, you can demonstrate empathy for

the sacrifi ces they may need to make to move your idea

forward.

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Find Common

Ground

Whether you evoke frenzied enthusiasm or puzzled

stares or glassy-eyed boredom depends largely on how

well your message resonates with the audience.

Resonance is a physics phenomenon. If you tap into an

object’s natural rate of vibration, or resonant frequency,

it will move: It may vibrate, shudder, or even play a sym-

pathetic musical note—think tuning forks. The same is

true, metaphorically, when you present to an audience.

If you tap into the group’s resonant frequency, you can

move the people listening to you .

But how do you resonate deeply enough to move them

toward your objective? Figure out where you have com-

mon ground, and communicate on that frequency. Think

about what’s inside them that’s also inside you. That way,

you’re not pushing or pulling them; they’re moving be-

cause you tapped into something they already believe.

All this may sound highly unscientifi c and touchy-

feely, but you can fi nd your audience’s resonant frequency

by doing a little research. You’ll want to examine:

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Audience

• Shared experiences: What from your past do you

have in common. Do you share memories, histori-

cal events, interests?

• Common goals: Where are you all headed in the

future? What types of outcomes are mutually

desired?

• Qualifi cations: Why are you uniquely qualifi ed to

be the audience’s guiding expert? What did you

learn when you faced similar challenges of your

own, and how will your audience benefi t from that

insight?

The amount of common ground you discover will de-

pend on the depth of your relationship with the group.

Lots of common ground

If you are presenting to family, friends, club members,

or a religous group, it’s easy to fi nd common ground be-

cause you know the people well and tend to share many

experiences, interests, and values.

Moderate common ground

With your colleagues, the challenge is a bit tougher. You

know them a bit, but not as much as close friends or rela-

tives. You share some interests but possibly only around

one or two things. Examine those points of intersection

for a way in.

Let’s say you’re a scientist working for a biotech com-

pany and you’ve been asked to speak at an all-hands

meeting. Most of the audience members will be scien-

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Find Common Ground

tists, but you’ll also be addressing executives and admin-

istrative employees. To fi nd common ground with them,

think about why you decided to work for this company

and what motivates you to do your job day to day. Maybe

you wanted to use your research and problem-solving

skills to help people stay healthy—a mission the others

in the room will share or at least support. Finding such

commonalities will help you connect with them.

Minimal common ground

With a broad audience—for instance, a group of semi-

nar participants from a variety of organizations and in-

dustries—you’ll have many types of people to think about.

The overlap won’t be immediately evident, because there

are so many perspectives and backgrounds to consider.

You’ll need to work hard to fi nd or create it, but that work

will pay off.

Before I went to China on a book tour, for example,

I researched communication and storytelling in mod-

ern and ancient Chinese culture. I identifi ed three great

communicators in Chinese history and analyzed their

speeches. When I shared my analysis with audiences, it

was clear to them that I understood the historical con-

text surrounding the speeches—I could even provide de-

tailed answers to their questions about it. I got feedback

multiple times on that trip that people could see I cared

enough to really study and understand their perspective.

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H5981.indb 24

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Section 2

Message

Are ideas born interesting or made interesting?

—Chip and Dan Heath,

authors of Switch: How to Change Things When

Change Is Hard

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Defi ne Your

Big Idea

Your big idea is that one key message you must commu-

nicate. It’s what compels the audience to change course.

(Screenwriters call this the “controlling idea.”) It has two

components:

• Your point of view: The big idea needs to express

your perspective on a subject, not a generalization

like “Q4 fi nancials.” Otherwise, why present? You

may as well e-mail your stakeholders a spreadsheet

and be done with it.

• What’s at stake: You’ll also want to convey why

the audience should care about your perspective.

This helps people recognize their need to partici-

pate rather than continue with the status quo.

Express your big idea in a complete sentence. It needs

a subject (often some version of “you,” to highlight the

audience’s role) and a verb (to convey action and elicit

emotion).

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Message

When asked, “What’s your presentation about?” most

people answer with a phrase like “Software updates.”

That’s not a big idea; it’s a topic—no point of view, no

stakes. Change it to “Your department needs to update

its workfl ow management software,” and you’re getting

closer. You’ve added your point of view, but the stakes

still aren’t clear. So try this instead: “Your department

will struggle to meet key production deadlines until we

update the workfl ow management software.”

Another example: If you say your presentation is

about “the Florida wetlands,” that’s also just a topic. Add

your point of view and what’s at stake. For instance: “We

need to restrict commercial and residential development

in Florida’s wetlands, because we’re destroying the fragile

ecosystem there and killing off endangered species.”

People will move away from pain and toward plea-

sure. Prod them (with words like “struggle” from the fi rst

example; “destroying” and “killing” from the second) so

they feel uncomfortable staying in their current position.

Lure them toward your idea with encouragement and re-

wards (the promise of meeting deadlines; protection of

endangered species).

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Generate Content

to Support the

Big Idea

Now that you’ve articulated your big idea, it’s time to

create your content, but don’t fi re up your presentation

software quite yet. Software forces linear thinking—one

slide after another—so it’s not the best tool for early

brainstorming.

Instead, change up your usual environment. Move to

a new room, turn off your e-mail and cell phone, maybe

play some music. Use tactile tools like paper, white-

boards, and sticky notes.

Generate as many ideas as possible by:

• Gathering existing content: You don’t have to start

from scratch. Dig up other presentations, industry

studies, news articles, reports, surveys—anything

that’s relevant to your big idea.

• Building on existing content: Push on the ideas

in the content you’ve gathered. Challenge them,

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Message

or consider them from a new angle. Draw new

connections.

• Creating new content: Be curious, take risks,

and let your intuition guide you. Experiment and

dream.

For brainstorming to be successful, you have to sus-

pend judgment and stay receptive to seemingly unrelated

ideas—they may lead to something great. Increase your

creative yield by moving back and forth between brain-

storming alone and brainstorming in a group.

Brainstorm alone

It’s intimidating to approach a blank piece of paper or

whiteboard, but you have to start somewhere. Write

down a key word and riff off that. Let your mind move

in random directions. Then draw connections with lines.

Keep brainstorming until you have a messy web of con-

cepts and relationships to explore. This is called mind

mapping (see fi gure 2-1). You can get special software to

do it, but paper or sticky notes will work just as well.

Brainstorm in a group

When you work with others, you get more gems to choose

from—and someone else’s idea may spark even more cre-

ative ones in you. Be extra kind to the folks with enough

guts to put half-baked or embarrassing ideas out there.

Treat every idea as valuable. Have someone facilitate and

capture the ideas so the discussion can move at a fast clip

(if it slows down, people will start to question and censor

themselves). Or ask brainstormers to scribble ideas on

30

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Generate Content to Support the Big Idea

FIGURE 2-1

Mind map

REVENUE

ITERATI

QUALITY

SERENDIPITOUS

VE

VOLUME

AGILE SPEED

PROFIT

INCLUSIVE

METRICS

ORGANICPRINCIPLES

INDUSTRY ISSUES

&TRENDS

ENABLERS

PARTNERSHIPS

INHIBITORS

STAR

LINEAR

T-UPS

CULTURE

CULTURE

RISK

ENTERPRISES

SILOED

TECHNOLOGY

INSULAR

RISK

ADAP

HIERARCHICAL

RESEARCH

TIVE

INSTITUTIONS

MARKET RISK

IP EXPOSURE

ENTREPRENEURIAL

sticky notes and post them on a wall. Sticky notes are the

perfect brainstorming tool. They’re small, convenient,

and moveable—great for collecting and organizing ma-

terial. Limit yourselves to one idea per sticky note so it’s

easier to sort and cluster thoughts.

Brainstorm alone again

Take the seeds of ideas that came from the rapid-fi re

group session and do another round of quiet brainstorm-

ing on your own. This will give those latent ideas a chance

to develop.

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Message

Go for quantity, not quality. You may work your way

through fi ve, ten, twenty ideas until you fi nd ones that

are distinctive and memorable. This is not the time to

edit yourself. Even if an idea has been expressed or used

before, add it to the mix. You may later fi nd a unique way

of incorporating it.

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Anticipate

Resistance

As a presenter, you’re asking people to change their

beliefs or behavior. That’s not something they’ll enjoy

or fi nd easy, so every audience will resist in some way.

People will adamantly defend their own perspectives

to avoid adopting yours. While listening to you, they’ll

catalog what they hear. Having come into the room with

their own knowledge and biases, they’ll constantly evalu-

ate whether what you say fi ts within or falls outside their

views.

So think through why and how they might resist, and

plan accordingly. Here are the most common types of re-

sistance, and how to get ready for them:

Logical resistance: Can you fi nd logical arguments

against your perspective? Dig up articles, blog posts,

and reports that challenge your stance to familiarize

yourself with alternate lines of reasoning. This kind

of research prepares you for skeptical questions and

comments you may have to fi eld—and it helps you

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Message

develop a deeper understanding of the topic and a

more nuanced point of view.

Emotional resistance: Do the people you’re address-

ing hold fast to a bias, dogma, or moral code—and

does your idea violate that in some way? Hitting raw

nerves will set off an audience, so proceed carefully.

For example, if you’re at a medical conference launch-

ing a new HPV vaccination for kids, also emphasize

the importance of abstinence in youth.

Practical resistance: Is it physically or geographically

diffi cult for the audience to do what you’re asking?

Will it take more fi nancial means than people have?

Be sensitive if you’re asking employees to hang in

there as you temporarily freeze salaries to weather a

recession, for instance, or giving your team a deadline

that will take nights and weekends to meet. Acknowl-

edge the sacrifi ces people are making—and show that

you’re shouldering some of the burden yourself. Say

that your salary will be frozen, too. Or explain that

you’ll be in 24/7 mode right along with your team un-

til the big project is wrapped up—and that everyone

will get comp time afterward.

Prepare for these types of resistance, and you’ll stand

a much better chance of winning over an entrenched au-

dience. You can raise and address concerns before they

become mental roadblocks—for example, by sharing at

the beginning of your talk that you too were skeptical

until you’d looked more closely at the data, or by meet-

ing with particularly tough critics in advance to “pre-sell”

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Anticipate Resistance

your ideas. By showing that you’ve considered opposing

points of view, you demonstrate an open mind—and in-

vite your audience to respond in kind.

If you’re struggling to come up with opposing view-

points, share your big idea with others and ask them to

pressure-test it. You may be so deeply connected to your

perspective that you’re having a hard time anticipating

the most simple and obvious forms of resistance. Use

your boss as a sounding board as you prepare to speak to

the executive committee, for example. Or ask a key stake-

holder for a reality check before you present to other

managers in her group.

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Amplify Your

Message Through

Contrast

People are naturally drawn to contrast because life is

fi lled with it: Day and night. Male and female. Love and

hate.

A skilled communicator captures an audience’s inter-

est by creating tension between contrasting elements—

and then provides relief by resolving that tension. It’s

how you build a bridge between others’ views and yours.

Try brainstorming ideas around polar opposites such

as the ones in table 2-1.

TABLE 2-1

Dynamic opposites

Past/present

Future

Need

Fulfi llment

Speed

Endurance

Ambition

Humility

Stagnation

Growth

Roadblocks

Clear passage

Sacrifi ce

Reward

Budget

Quality

37

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Message

Suppose you manage an airline’s maintenance divi-

sion, and you’re asking for money to invest in analytics.

Table 2-2 shows pairs of opposites you might explore as

you fi gure out how to make your case.

TABLE 2-2

Using the tension of extremes

Customer complaints

Customer satisfaction

We’re getting low ratings on customer

What if we could better schedule

surveys because of fl ight delays and

our planes’ maintenance by

missed connections caused by simple

digging into our repair data?

maintenance issues.

We currently follow the manufacturer’s

By tracking and studying how

recommended maintenance

often we actually perform certain

schedule—and it’s not suffi

cient.

kinds of repairs, we can create

Planes get held up at the gate while

a schedule that’s more realistic.

mechanics do routine repairs.

We’ll be able to prevent prob-

lems instead of fi xing them when

they pop up.

By embracing the tension between the extremes, you

can propel your message—and the movement will feel

natural.

The familiar will comfort people; the new will stimu-

late them and keep them interested. Generate plenty

of content on both sides of the contrast or you’ll lose

momentum—and your audience.

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Build an Eff ective

Call to Action

Presentations move people to act—but only if you explic-

itly state what actions you want them to take, and when.

Are you asking them to be doers, suppliers, infl uencers,

or innovators (see table 2-3)?

To get to this list of four things an audience can do for

you, I read hundreds of speeches and classifi ed their calls

to action. Whether your audience is corporate, politi-

cal, scientifi c, or academic, the people you’re addressing

should fall into one of these categories.

Make it clear what you need to accomplish together

and break that down into discrete tasks and deadlines

that feel manageable to the audience. Let’s consider an

example where the call to action is to “innovate”—since

that can be tough to pull off. Suppose you have an ag-

ing product that needs reinvention. Not all great ideas

have to come from engineering. So after you say that the

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Message

organization is open to ideas from all departments, you

might break down the tasks like this:

• Identify enthusiastic brainstormers from all

departments.

• Have engineers facilitate a cross-departmental

brainstorming session that week.

• Assign a team member to take notes.

• Filter ideas at the engineering summit the follow-

ing week.

You might ask everyone to take just one action, or you

might provide a few actions people can choose from. Ei-

ther way, be explicit in your request—and about how it

will benefi t the audience.

40

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ead

x for

s

s think

ategies,

tor

. They

a

ys to add

ate ideas

ucts.

spectives, and

eate str

od

Innov

Gener

Innovator

outside the bo

new wa

value to and spr

your idea

cr

per

pr

y

.

oups,

s

ceptions

s can swa

e your idea

e per

uals or gr

eliz

uencer

uencer

ge or small, mobilizing

Infl

Chang

Infl

individ

lar

them to adopt and

evang

e

fi nancial, —

e the peopl

d.

s

ces

ces

s ar

ve the means to

esour

esour

Supplier

Get r

Supplier

with r

human, or material.

They ha

get you what you need to

move forwar

er

et done,

s to

e on the tasks.

ecruit and

e the work

s

ete important

s ar

’ll tak

oer

Doer

Instigate activities

D

bees. Once they know

what needs to g

they

They also r

motivate other

compl

activities.

udience can do for you

-3

TABLE 2

What your a

What they do for you

How they do it

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Choose Your

Best Ideas

Up to this point, we’ve been focusing on how to generate

presentation ideas and content. That’s actually the easy

part. It’s much harder to trim everything down so only

the most effective messages remain. But the quality of

your presentation depends as much on what you choose

to remove as on what you choose to include.

Many of your ideas may be fascinating and clever, but

you can’t fi t them all in—and no one wants to hear them

all, anyway. Connect, analyze, sort, and fi lter the ideas so

you use only the ones that will yield the best outcomes.

Designers call this part of the process convergent think-

ing, and they refer to its opposite, idea generation, as di-

vergent thinking (see fi gure 2-2) . As Tim Brown, the CEO

of IDEO, explains: “In the divergent phase, new options

emerge. In the convergent phase, it is just the reverse.

Now it’s time to eliminate options and make choices.”

Your primary fi lter should be your big idea (see “De-

fi ne Your Big Idea” at the beginning of the Message sec-

tion). Everything you keep in your talk must support it.

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Message

FIGURE 2-2

Filter your best ideas

Divergent

Convergent

thinking

thinking

Generate lots

Filter best

of ideas

ideas

, most

st

Fir

obvious idea

Random

crazy

idea

If you don’t fi lter your presentation, the audience will

have to—and people will resent you for making them

work too hard to identify the most important points. Cut

mercilessly on their behalf. Say you’re presenting a busi-

ness case for acquiring a company. You might brainstorm

things to cover, like:

• The competencies your company would gain

• Estimated return on investment

• Lessons learned from the last acquisition

• Threat R&D might perceive

• Bringing in culture consultants

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Choose Your Best Ideas

• Receivables are at net 45 days

• Need to retool the factory fl oor

All these ideas fi t into the big idea except the fact that

receivables are at net 45 days. Though that may be im-

portant, it would be a distraction during this meeting.

Save it for another meeting.

Even if all you do is sort and fi lter the ideas you’ve gen-

erated, you’re technically ready to present. You can place

your sticky notes on the inside of a fi le folder and use

those as your speaking notes, as I did at a launch party

for my book Resonate. I had only to glance down once in

a while.

Or you can begin to put your ideas into the presenta-

tion software of your choice.

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Organize Your

Thoughts

Because presentation programs such as PowerPoint are

visual tools, we often jump too quickly into visually ex-

pressing our ideas when we use them—before we’ve

spent enough time arranging our thoughts and craft-

ing our words. When moving ideas from sticky notes to

software, enter each point you plan to cover as a clearly

worded title in outline or slide-sorter mode rather than

going straight to slide-creation mode (fi gure 2-3). That

allows you to read the titles in sequence, without the dis-

tractions of supporting details or graphics, to make sure

your presentation fl ows from point to point.

Ask yourself, “If people read just the titles, will they

get what I’m saying?” That’s not just an academic exer-

cise. You really want to know the answer, because your

audience members often won’t read past your slide ti-

tles when you present. They’ll scan them the way they

do headlines of news articles—and make snap decisions

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Message

FIGURE 2-3

Convey a clear message with each title

about whether they’d like to learn more. So convey a clear

message with each title, arrange them in an order that

will make sense to your audience, and infuse them with

personality where you can. You’ll want to come across as

a real person, not an automaton. Include verbs to show

action.

Compare the examples shown in table 2-4.

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Organize Your Thoughts

TABLE 2-4

Convey clear meaning with titles

Vague, passive

Clear, active

Market overview

We’re neck-and-neck with an aggressive rival.

Productivity gains

Production time shrank from 21 days to 8.

Agonize over your titles as marketing copywriters do

in their campaigns to get more click-throughs and sales.

You, too, are selling something—your big idea—and the

more quickly you grab people’s attention, the higher your

“conversion rate” will be.

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Balance Analytical

and Emotional

Appeal

Now that you’ve outlined your message, consider how

you’ll appeal to people’s minds and hearts.

Strike the wrong balance of analytical and emotional

content in your presentation, and you risk alienating the

audience and diminishing your credibility. But how do

you get it right? Take your cues from the topic and the

audience.

Certain topics—like layoffs and product launches—

are inherently charged and naturally lend themselves to

emotional appeal. Others—like science, engineering, and

fi nance—invite more analytic treatment.

Weigh the subject against the group you’re address-

ing. Suppose you’re making a case for personnel cuts to

a group of managers who’ll soon have to decide which

direct reports to let go. They may see you as cold and

inhumane if you focus primarily on cost savings, with

nary a word about people losing jobs. A numbers-based

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Message

approach will probably go over better with a group of

executives charged with improving the bottom line—

though even they will expect you to at least acknowledge

that layoffs are diffi cult.

No presentation should be devoid of emotional con-

tent, no matter how cerebral the topic or the audience.

In a business setting, it may feel more comfortable to just

“state the facts,” but look through your deck and see if you

can add emotional texture to any content that’s purely

analytical (see fi gure 2-4).

FIGURE 2-4

Strike a balance

Analytical

Emotional

Features

Benefits illustrated

through stories (personal,

Data/evidence

true, fictional)

Exhibits

Metaphors and analogies

Logical arguments

that make data meaningful

Proofs

Thought-provoking

Examples

questions

Case studies

Slow reveal (builds

suspense)

There are two basic classes of emotion: pain and plea-

sure. Determine how you’d like people to feel at various

points in your presentation. Where would you like them

to feel happy? To cringe? To be inspired?

Ask “why” questions to unearth your big idea’s emo-

tional appeal. For example, if you’re requesting funding

to pay for cloud storage, start by asking, “Why do we need

to buy cloud storage?” Your answer may be “to facilitate

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Balance Analytical and Emotional Appeal

data sharing with colleagues in remote locations.” So then

ask, “Why do we need to facilitate data sharing with col-

leagues in remote locations?” Eventually you’ll get to the

human beings whose lives will be affected by your idea,

and that’s where you’ll discover your emotional appeal:

Maybe you need cloud storage “to help those remote col-

leagues coordinate disaster relief efforts and save lives.”

Once you know what that hook is, use words or phrases

that have emotional weight to them—like “save lives” in

the cloud example above. Tell personal stories with con-

viction and describe not just what people did, but how

they felt. (See “Add Emotional Texture” in the Story sec-

tion of this guide.)

53

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Lose the Jargon

Have you ever listened to a presenter who sounded

supersmart—without having any idea what she really said?

Each fi eld has its own lexicon, fi lled with words that

are familiar to experts but foreign to everyone else. Even

different departments within the same organization use

niche language and acronyms that mean nothing to other

groups. And the more companies and individuals inno-

vate within their areas of expertise, the bigger and gnar-

lier their vocabularies get.

Unless you’re presenting to a roomful of specialists

cut from the same cloth, don’t assume that everyone will

understand your jargon. Modify your language so it reso-

nates with the people whose support and infl uence you

need. If they can’t follow your ideas, they won’t adopt

them.

What’s more, delivering abstruse presentations can

hurt your career. As communications coach Carmine

Gallo puts it, “Speaking over people’s heads may cost you

a job or prevent you from advancing as far as your capa-

bilities might take you otherwise.”

So lose the jargon. If a specialized term is central to

your message, translate it. Would your grandmother

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Message

understand what you’re talking about? Rework your

message until it’s that clear.

The presenter in the following example (fi gure 2-5)

spoke to an audience of 800 people who could fund his

FIGURE 2-5

Drop the jargon

Before: Developed from a

After: Reworked for a lay

scientific perspective

audience

I am currently the lead researcher

Desalination is a process that

developing a microbially induced

removes salt from water so it can be

brine-mining technology, where

used for drinking and irrigation.

bacteria are employed to

Removing salt from water—in

accumulate selected minerals

particular sea water—via reverse

from desalination brine, producing

osmosis requires energy to produce

a minable sediment, which may

clean water. This process also

indirectly reduce the cost of

creates a toxic saltwater solution, or

desalinated water and the

brine, that is generally dumped back

environmental impact of the

out at sea and is harmful for the

desalination process.

ecology of the receiving water body.

Initial experiments have shown

This is where my collaboration with

how certain bacterial cultures are

bacteria comes in. Introducing

able to mine selected metals from

bacteria into the brine draws out

desalination brine. I am now

metals such as calcium, potassium,

hoping to prove the economic

and magnesium from desalination

viability of the process through

brine. The value of magnesium alone

qualitative and quantitative studies

in the volume of brine potentially

of the metals produced.

needed for Singapore represents

4.5 billon U.S. dollars—indirectly

Conventional mechanical and

lowering the cost of the desalinated

chemical mining technologies are

water produced, while reducing the

restrictive due to technological

environmental impact of the process.

and economic constraints.

Biological processes, however,

Imagine a mining industry in a way

present an efficient and

it hasn’t existed before.

environmentally benign alternative,

which must be seen in the context

Imagine a mining industry that

of a future where urban ecological

doesn’t mean defiling the earth.

systems are in harmony with the

ecological cycles of our planet.

Imagine bacteria helping us achieve

this industry, as they accumulate

and sediment minerals out of

desalination brine.

In other words, imagine a mining

industry in harmony with nature.

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Lose the Jargon

idea but didn’t have deep knowledge of the science be-

hind it. The fi rst column shows what he said during re-

hearsal; the second shows what he said at the presenta-

tion, after he got feedback and reworked his talk for an

intelligent lay audience.

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Craft Sound Bites

Your words are now clear—but are they memorable? Will

people share them with others?

Great quotes get picked up and repeated—whether at

the water cooler, in blog posts, or on social networking

sites. Brilliant ones end up on the front pages of newspa-

pers. So embed well-crafted sound bites into every talk.

Steve Jobs made this an art form. He relied on rhe-

torical devices to drive his messages home and get pickup

from audiences and press alike. Here are a few that he

used to great effect:

Rhythmic repetition: Repeated phrase at

beginning, middle, or end of a sentence.

In 2010, Jobs had to deliver an emergency press con-

ference about the performance of the antenna in

the iPhone 4. If users held the phone a certain way, it

dropped calls. As social media scientist Dan Zarrella, at

HubSpot, points out, Jobs repeated the phrase “We want

to make all our users happy” several times during his

talk. Midway through, Jobs fl ashed a slide showing that

the antenna issue affected only a fraction of users. Soon,

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Message

a message appeared at the bottom: “We care about every

user.” A few slides later: “We love our users.” Then “We

love our users” appeared again on the next slide. And the

next. And the next. “We love our users, we love them,”

Jobs concluded. “We do this [provide a free phone case

that will solve the problem] because we love our users.”

That “love” was the message the press took away from his

piece of “crisis communication.”

Concrete comparison: Simile or metaphor.

In his iPhone keynote speech at MacWorld 2007, Jobs

likened Apple’s switch to Intel processors to a “huge heart

transplant. ”

Slogan: A concise statement that’s easy to

remember.

At the iPhone launch, Jobs said “reinvent the phone” sev-

eral times—and the slogan was all over the press release

Apple sent out before his keynote. “Reinvent the phone”

ended up in PCWorld’s headlines the next day.

As Jobs did, take time to create repeatable sound bites.

But don’t deliver them with a lot of fanfare. Make them

appear spontaneous, so people will want to repeat them.

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Section 3

Story

[Stories] are the currency of human contact.

—Robert McKee,

author of Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the

Principles of Screenwriting

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Apply Storytelling

Principles

Stories have the power to win customers, align col-

leagues, and motivate employees. They’re the most com-

pelling platform we have for managing imaginations.

Those who master this art form can gain great infl uence

and an enduring legacy.

If you use stories in your presentation, the audience

can recall what they’ve learned from you and even spread

the word. Just as the plot of a compelling play, movie, or

novel makes a writer’s themes more vivid and memora-

ble, well-crafted stories can give your message real stay-

ing power, for two key reasons:

• Stories feature transformation: When people hear

a story, they root for the protagonist as she over-

comes obstacles and emerges changed in some

important way (perhaps a new outlook helps her

complete a diffi cult physical journey). It’s doubly

powerful to incorporate stories that demonstrate

how others have adopted the same beliefs and

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Story

behaviors you’re proposing—that is, show others

going through a similar transformation that your

audience will go through. This will help you get

people to cross over from their everyday world into

the world of your ideas—and come back to their

world transformed, with new insights and tools

from your presentation.

• Stories have a clear structure: All effective stories

adhere to the same basic three-part structure that

Aristotle pointed out ages ago: They have a begin-

ning, a middle, and an end. It makes them easy

to digest and retell—and it’s how audiences have

been conditioned for centuries to receive informa-

tion. Make sure your presentation—and any story

you tell within it—has all three parts, with clear

transitions between them.

In this section of the guide, you’ll learn how to use

storytelling principles to structure your presentation and

incorporate anecdotes that add emotional appeal.

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Create a Solid

Structure

All good presentations—like all good stories—convey

and resolve some kind of confl ict or imbalance. The sense

of discord is what makes audiences care enough to get on

board.

After gleaning story insights from fi lms and books,

studying hundreds of speeches, and spending 22 years

creating customized presentations for companies and

thought leaders, I’ve found that the most persuasive

communicators create confl ict by juxtaposing what is

with what could be. That is, they alternately build tension

and provide release by toggling back and forth between

the status quo and a better way—fi nally arriving at the

“new bliss” people will discover by adopting the proposed

beliefs and behaviors. That confl ict resolution plays

out within the basic beginning-middle-end storytelling

structure we all know and love (fi gure 3-1).

The tips in this section will help you weave confl ict

and resolution throughout the beginning, middle, and

end of your presentation.

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Story

FIGURE 3-1

Persuasive story pattern

BEGINNING

MIDDLE

END

What

What

What

could be

could be

could be

New bliss

Call to

action

What is

What is

What is

What is

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Craft the Beginning

Begin by describing life as the audience knows it. People

should be nodding their heads in recognition because

you’re articulating what they already understand. This

creates a bond between you and them and opens them

up to hear your ideas for change.

After you set that baseline of what is, introduce your

ideas of what could be. The gap between the two will

throw the audience a bit off balance, and that’s a good

thing—because it creates tension that needs to be re-

solved (fi gure 3-2).

FIGURE 3-2

Create dramatic tension

What

could be

Contrast the

The

commonplace

gap

with the lofty.

What is

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Story

If you proposed what could be without fi rst establish-

ing what is, you’d fail to connect with the audience before

swooping in with your ideas, and your message would

lose momentum.

The gap shouldn’t feel contrived—you wouldn’t say

“Okay, I’ve described what is. Now let’s move to what

could be.” Present it naturally so people will feel moved,

not manipulated. For instance:

What is: We’re fell short of our Q3 fi nancial goals

partly because we’re understaffed and everyone’s

spread too thin.

What could be: But what if we could solve the worst

of our problems by bringing in a couple of power-

house clients? Well, we can.

Here’s another example:

What is: Analysts have been placing our products at

the top of three out of fi ve categories. One competi-

tor just shook up the industry with the launch of its

T3xR—heralded as the most innovative product in

our space. Analysts predict that fi rms like ours will

have no future unless we license this technology from

our rival.

What could be: But we will not concede! In fact, we

will retain our lead. I’m pleased to tell you that fi ve

years ago we had the same product idea, but after

rapid prototyping we discovered a way to leapfrog

that generation of technology. So today, we’re launch-

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Craft the Beginning

ing a product so revolutionary that we’ll gain a ten-

year lead in our industry.

Once you establish the gap between what is and

what could be, use the remainder of the presentation to

bridge it.

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Develop the

Middle

The middle is, in many ways, the most compelling part of

your presentation, because that’s where most of the “ac-

tion” takes place.

People in your audience now realize their world is

off-kilter—you’ve brought that to their attention and at

least hinted at a solution at the beginning of your presen-

tation. Now continue to emphasize the contrast between

what is and what could be, moving back and forth be-

tween them, and the audience will start to fi nd the for-

mer unappealing and the latter alluring.

Let’s go back to that Q3 fi nancial update example

from “Craft the Beginning.” Revenues are down, but you

want to motivate employees to make up for it. Table 3-1

shows one way you could approach the middle of your

presentation.

Earlier, you brainstormed around pairs of contrasting

themes (see “Amplify Your Message Through Contrast”

in the Message section). Try using one of those pairs—for

instance, sacrifi ce versus reward—to drum up material to

fl esh out this structure.

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Story

TABLE 3-1

Creating “action” in the middle of your story

What is

What could be

We missed our Q3 forecast by 15%.

Q4 numbers must be strong for us

to pay out bonuses.

We have six new clients on our roster.

Two of them have the potential to

bring in more revenue than our best

clients do now.

The new clients will require extensive

We’ll be bringing in experts from

retooling in manufacturing.

Germany to help.

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Make the Ending

Powerful

Your ending should leave people with a heightened sense

of what could be—and willingness to believe or do some-

thing new. Here’s where you describe how blissful their

world will be when they adopt your ideas.

Let’s return to our Q3 example from “Craft the Begin-

ning” and “Develop the Middle” in this section. You might

wrap up your presentation along the lines of fi gure 3-3.

FIGURE 3-3

Making the ending powerful

Call to action

New bliss

It will take extra work from

I know everyone’s running on

all departments to make Q4

fumes—but hang in there. This

numbers, but we can deliver

is our chance to pull together

products to our important

like a championship team, and

new clients on time and

things will get easier if we make

with no errors.

this work. The reward if we meet

our Q4 targets? Bonuses, plus

days off at the end of the year.

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Story

Many presentations simply end with a list of action

items, but that isn’t exactly inspiring. You want the last

thing you say to move your audience to tackle those

items. You want people to feel ready to right the wrong,

to conquer the problem.

By skillfully defi ning future rewards, you compel peo-

ple to get on board with your ideas. Show them that tak-

ing action will be worth their effort. Highlight:

• Benefi ts to them: What needs of theirs will your

ideas meet? What freedoms will the audience

gain? How will your ideas give the audience

greater infl uence or status?

• Benefi ts to their “sphere”: How will your ideas

help the audience’s peers, direct reports, custom-

ers, students, or friends?

• Benefi ts to the world: How will your ideas help the

masses? How will they improve public health, for

instance, or help the environment?

In the example above, we’ve called out a key benefi t

to the organization (making up for Q3 revenue short-

fall), plus three benefi ts to employees (bonuses, time off,

and—probably most important—the promise of a saner

workload).

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Add Emotional

Texture

Now step back and review all your content so far. Do you

have the right mix of analysis and emotion? (See “Bal-

ance Analytical and Emotional Appeal” in the Message

section.) If you need more emotional impact, you can add

it with storytelling.

A message matters to people when it hits them in the

gut. Visceral response, not pure analysis, is what will

push your audience away from the status quo and toward

your perspective. Stories elicit that kind of response.

When we hear stories, our eyes dilate, our hearts race, we

feel chills. We laugh, clap, lean forward or back. These re-

actions are mostly involuntary, because they’re grounded

in emotion.

While you’re describing what is, tell a story that makes

people shudder, or guffaw at the ridiculousness of their

situation, or feel disappointment. While you’re describ-

ing what could be, tell a story that strikes a little awe or

fear into their hearts—something that inspires them to

change.

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Story

Table 3-2 shows a template (with an example plugged

in) that can help you transform supporting information

into a story with emotional impact.

You may be thinking that people don’t go to work to

feel; they go to get stuff done. But by making them feel,

you move them to action—and help them get stuff done.

It’s not about issuing a gushing, weepy plea. It’s about

TABLE 3-2

Making an emotional impact with data

Point you want to make

Every cross-divisional function could benefi t

from a steering committee.

Story about organizational change

Beginning

When, who,

A few years ago, the sales

where

team tackled a cross-

divisional problem with

the help of a steering

committee.

Middle

Context

At the time, all sales groups

were independent.

Confl ict

This means we were

confusing customers

with many diff erent rules,

processes, and formats.

Proposed

So we decided to create a

resolution

sales steering committee.

Complication

You can imagine how hard it

was to reach agreement on

anything.

End

Actual

But we agreed to meet every

resolution

two weeks to fi nd common

ground. Over the next year,

we standardized all our

processes and learned a

lot from each other. The

customers became much

happier with our service.

Source: Glenn Hughes, SMART as Hell.

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Add Emotional Texture

adding emotional texture to the logical case you’ve built

with data, case studies, and other supporting evidence.

Personal stories told with conviction are the most ef-

fective ones in your arsenal. You can repeat stories you’ve

heard, but audiences feel more affection for presenters

who reveal their own challenges and vulnerability.

Use relevant stories that are appropriately dramatic,

or you may come across as manipulative or out of touch

with reality. When giving an update at a small staff meet-

ing on a project you’re leading, you wouldn’t tell a melo-

dramatic story about the “just-in-time delivery” of mul-

tiple vendors you managed at your daughter’s wedding.

It would waste everyone’s time.

But one U.S. government offi cial did effectively tell a

story about his daughter’s wedding—to get new remote-

communication technology adopted in his organization.

Many of his relatives couldn’t travel to the wedding, so he

used a commercial version of the technology to push the

wedding pictures quickly to the remote family members,

helping all feel more included in the event. He argued

that adopting the enterprise version of this technology

would similarly include distant employees in the devel-

opment of important agency initiatives. The senior ex-

ecutives not only understood this with their minds but

felt it in their hearts. They could relate this story about

a father doing his best to serve his family to their agency

doing its best to serve the citizenry.

Take out a notepad and start cataloging personal

stories and the emotions they summon. This exercise

takes time, but it will yield material you can draw on

again and again. Do your fi rst pass when you have an

77

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Story

uninterrupted hour or so to refl ect. You can use the

checklist that follows to trigger your memory. As you

recall past events, jot down how you felt when you ex-

perienced them.

Inventory of Personal Stories

□ Important times in your life: Childhood, adoles-

cence, young adulthood, later years

□ Relatives: Parents, grandparents, siblings, chil-

dren, in-laws

□ Authority fi gures: Teachers, bosses, coaches, men-

tors, leaders, political fi gures, other infl uencers

□ Peers: Colleagues, social networks, club members,

friends, neighbors, teammates

□ Subordinates: Employees, mentees, trainees,

interns, volunteers, students

□ Enemies: Competitors, bullies, people with chal-

lenging personalities, people you’ve been hurt by,

people you’ve hurt

□ Important places: Offi ces, homes, schools, places

of worship, local hangouts, camps, vacation spots,

foreign lands

□ Things you cherish: Gifts, photos, certifi cates/

awards, keepsakes

□ Things that have injured you: Sharp objects, ani-

mal bites, spoiled food, allergens

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Add Emotional Texture

Spending time with each item on this list, you’ll un-

earth many stories you’ve forgotten. Even after you’ve se-

lected stories for whatever presentation you’re currently

working on, save your notes and continue adding to them

here and there, as you fi nd time. They’ll come in handy

when you’re creating future presentations.

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Use Metaphors as

Your Glue

Metaphors are a powerful literary device. In Dr. Martin

Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, about 20%

of what he said was metaphorical. For example, he lik-

ened his lack of freedom to a bad check that “America has

given the Negro people . . . a check which has come back

marked ‘insuffi cient funds.’” King introduced this meta-

phor three minutes into his 16-minute talk, and it was

the fi rst time the audience roared and clapped.

Presenters tend to overrely on tired visual metaphors

instead of using powerful words to stir hearts. King’s

speech would not have been nearly as beautiful if he’d

used slides with pictures of bad checks and piles of gold

symbolizing “freedom and the security of justice.”

For each point you make in your presentation, try

to come up with a metaphor to connect people’s minds

to the concept. You might even weave it like a thread

throughout the presentation.

When developing metaphors, reject overused themes

like racecars and sporting events—and avoid stock pho-

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Story

tos along those lines. If you want to tell a story of tri-

umph, dig into one of your own stories for the right meta-

phor: Describe, for instance, how it felt to struggle to the

top of Yosemite’s Half Dome, run your fi rst marathon, or

win the citywide Boy Scout trophy. Identify metaphors

that will be meaningful to the audience.

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Create Something

They’ll Always

Remember

Place Something They’ll Always Remember—a climac-

tic S.T.A.R. moment—in your presentation to drive your

big idea home. That moment is what the audience will

chat (or tweet) about after your talk. It can also help your

message go viral through social media and news cover-

age. Use it to make people uncomfortable with what is or

to draw them toward what could be. Here are four ways

to create a S.T.A.R. moment that captivates your audi-

ence and generates buzz.

Shocking statistics

If statistics are shocking, don’t glide over them—amplify

them. For example, in his 2010 Consumer Electronics

Show presentation, Intel CEO Paul Otellini used star-

tling numbers to convey the speed and impact of the

company’s newest technology. “Today we have the indus-

try’s fi rst-shipping 32-nanometer process technology. A

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Story

32-nanometer microprocessor is 5,000 times faster; its

transistors are 100,000 times cheaper than the 4004

processor that we began with. With all respect to our

friends in the auto industry, if their products had pro-

duced the same kind of innovation, cars today would go

470,000 miles per hour. They’d get 100,000 miles per

gallon, and they’d cost three cents.”

Evocative visuals

Audiences connect with emotionally potent visuals.

When asking donors to help raise $1.7 million, Conserva-

tion International contrasted dreamy, glistening, surreal

under-ocean images (captioned with phrases like “90%

of our oxygen” describing how dependent we are on the

ocean) with photos of grimy rubbish that washes up on

the beach (where “14 billion pounds of trash” roll in on

the waves). That approach tapped the power of evoca-

tive visuals and shocking stats—and people responded by

getting out their wallets.

Memorable dramatization

Bring your message to life by dramatizing it. As Bill Gates

spoke about the importance of malaria eradication at a

TED conference in 2009, he released a jar of mosquitoes

into the auditorium and said, “There is no reason only

poor people should be infected.” It got the audience’s

attention—and effectively made the point that we don’t

spend nearly enough money on fi ghting the disease. The

mosquitoes were malaria-free, but he let people squirm a

minute or two before he let them know that.

Consider another example. When Mirran Raphaely,

CEO of Dr. Hauschka Skin Care, presented to the cos-

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Create Something They’ll Always Remember

metics industry, she wanted to draw a sharp contrast

between industrial agriculture and biodynamic farming

practices. She showed two photos side by side—a con-

tainer of chemicals and an herb called horsetail—and

compared the toxicity of the two substances. In indus-

trial agriculture, farmers rely on glyphosate, a synthetic

chemical linked to cancer in animals and humans. In bio-

dynamic agriculture, farmers treat crops with an extract

made from horsetail. Holding up two glasses—one fi lled

with the chemical weed killer, the other with the horse-

tail extract—she asked the audience, “Which one of these

would you want on the crops you consume?” After the

audience fi nished laughing, she took a sip of the biody-

namic solution.

Emotive anecdote

Sometimes S.T.A.R. moments are gripping personal sto-

ries (see “Add Emotional Texture” earlier in this section).

Here’s one such story, told by Symantec.cloud group

president Row an Trollope in May 2012, to encourage his

organization to innovate:

I went mountain climbing at Mount Laurel, in the

eastern Sierras, with two of my friends. I’m not very ex-

perienced, but both of them were even less experienced.

We’d been climbing for about 19 hours. We were up at

11,000 feet, and it was getting dark. Fast.

We needed to get down the side of this mountain . . .

and we needed to do it fast. Descending fi rst, I got to a

ledge and started to get our line ready.

Climbers carry two emergency pitons with them for

just this purpose. I’d never used them before, but I knew

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Story

how they worked. I took out my hammer and started

hammering one into the rock. The books tell you that

you’ll hear the tone of the hammer strike change when

it’s “in.” I heard a loud ping with each strike of the

hammer and decided it was in “good enough.”

The books also tell you, though, to always use two, so

I used two. As I hammered in the second one, I heard a

sharp, high-pitched ping at the end, so I tied the knots

and got our line ready. By this time, my buddies had

reached the ledge, and I started to hook us in.

Something was bugging me. I looked at the knot

between the two pitons and it looked like this [prop:

climbing rope with two pitons]. The problem with a

knot like that is that if one piton fails, you’ll fall. You

need to tie it instead like this [prop: retie knot].

My buddies were all clipped in and wanted to get

going. It was getting darker. The way I tied the knot

seemed good enough, but something in the back of my

head told me to stop. So I did.

We all unclipped, and I retied the knot, and then we

clipped in again and started the climb down.

The moment I put weight on my line, the fi rst piton

popped out and hit me smack in the middle of the hel-

met. Had I not unclipped and retied the knot, I would

have died on that ledge. My life rushed through my

mind. And I suddenly and irrevocably got the danger

of “good enough.”

When I pounded in that fi rst piton, I decided it was

good enough.

When I tied the knot that fi rst time, I decided that it

wasn’t, so I did it again.

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Create Something They’ll Always Remember

I still have that piton that popped out. I brought it

with me today because I thought you might like to see

it [prop: piton]. The other one? The one that saved my

life? It’s still in a crack on the Laurel Cliffs. Still doing

its job.

I came back to work, and everything had new mean-

ing for me. Retying my knots became a sort of meta-

phor. I realized that in every job I did, every project I

touched, I was making piton decisions every time. I

was deciding, with every one of those moves, whether

good enough was good enough for me.

I picked that story for today because I think we’re

facing a similar climb as a company. And we’re mak-

ing piton decisions every day. For my buddies and me,

there was nothing but sky beneath us. When you and I

look down, we see the PC business changing dramati-

cally. We can see physical things being driven into the

cloud, and we can agree that the Internet is not yet a

secure place.

Unfortunately, it will take more than one piton to

address these dangers. But I think it starts by reawak-

ening in our company some of the qualities that made

us great in the fi rst place. And to do that, I think we

need to change how we approach our work.

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Section 4

Media

People who know what they’re talking about don’t

need PowerPoint.

—Steve Jobs

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Choose the Right

Vehicle for Your

Message

Now that you’ve carefully considered your audience’s

needs and tailored your message and content accord-

ingly, it’s time to determine how the people you’re ad-

dressing prefer to process information so you can select

the best vehicle for reaching them. Just because you have

something to communicate and a time slot to fi ll doesn’t

mean a formal presentation with slides is the right choice.

Some audiences—a group of analysts, for example—may

fi nd a thoughtfully written memo more persuasive. Oth-

ers, such as young professionals, might prefer a video.

It’s your job to determine the best way to connect

with your audience. Presentations aren’t limited to a

single time or place anymore. They can be broadcasted,

streamed, downloaded, and distributed. Slides aren’t a

must-have, either. You can use props, handouts, sketches,

tablets, videos, fl ipcharts—pretty much anything that

will help people receive your message.

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Media

Before opening your presentation software, think

about your audience and venue. Will you be speaking to

a few team members in an intimate setting? A big crowd

in an auditorium? A small group who will be connect-

ing remotely? The size of your audience and the level of

interaction that your setting allows should determine

which media you choose.

See fi gure 4-1 for a sampling of ideas on how to deliver

your message to one person or many, in a staged or more

spontaneous setting.

There’s also an element of common sense. Delivering a

stand-up formal presentation in a small conference room

just doesn’t make sense if you’re speaking to two of your

direct reports—but it does if you’re speaking to a couple

of venture capitalists who may invest in your business.

Although technology has opened up new ways of com-

municating, a low-tech approach is sometimes your best

bet. If you show up with a slick slide deck, everything

seems fi nal. But sketching out ideas while people watch

and listen signals that your thinking is in the formative

stages and that the audience can still weigh in.

Maybe the “presentation” you’re developing should

really be a carefully mapped-out conversation with a

planned whiteboard drawing. When my fi rm was buying

a new digital storage system, we met with two potential

vendors: One brought a deck of slides and didn’t deviate

from its spiel. The other, which won our business, white-

boarded out a full storage and network plan. That rep

came across as having listened to our needs and under-

stood what we wanted. Her presentation felt collabora-

tive, not canned.

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Formal

(1:many)

Large

audience

(few:many)

Canned

• Deliver formal presentation with polished visuals

• Host panel discussion

• Host formal webinar (audience is muted)

• Package or stream on-demand presentation

• Post slides with audio voice-over or recorded webinar

• Post curated content (slides, videos, articles, white

papers)

Programmed, staged, and formally rehearsed

Distributed for audience to access on own time

staged

spontaneous

e

call)

• Deliver short presentation, then discuss

• Lead conversation with planned whiteboard sketches

• Lead conference call with document or slides posted

(earnings

• Distribute printed document or slides, then meet to

discuss

• Host conversational webinar (audience is unmuted)

• Use flipchart or whiteboard spontaneously

Carefully planned but informally delivered

Facilitated by presenter or audience

1

(1:1)

Casual

Small

(1:few)

FIGURE 4-

Choosing your delivery styl

audience

Interactive

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Make the Most of

Slide Software

Presentation software is widely reviled. The press has

called PowerPoint evil, and corporations have cried for

its banishment. The software isn’t at fault. It’s an empty

shell, a container for our ideas. It’s not a bad communica-

tion tool unless it’s in the hands of a bad communicator.

So how do you use it without abusing it—and your au-

dience? Know exactly what you’re trying to accomplish

and rely on the software to achieve that—and nothing

more.

You can use presentation software to create docu-

ments, compose teleprompter notes, and visualize ideas.

But keep those tasks separate to avoid the most common

PowerPoint pitfalls. The trick is to show audience mem-

bers only what they want to see, when they want to see it.

Create documents

Presentation software is great for laying out dense mate-

rial in easy-to-read documents. In fact, that functionality

is built right in—the default setting is a document tem-

plate, not a slide template. You can swiftly compose and

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Media

format your text and move sections around—and best

of all, when it’s time to derive a presentation from that

document, you don’t have to copy and paste from Word.

That said, don’t project your entire document when

you speak. No one wants to attend a plodding read-along.

It’s boring, and people can read more effi ciently on their

own, anyway. Circulate your document before or after

the presentation so you won’t need to project text-heavy

slides—which Garr Reynolds, author of Presentation Zen,

aptly calls slideuments. If your content can be distributed

and clearly understood without a presenter, you’ve cre-

ated a document, not a presentation—and that’s fi ne as

long as you treat it as such. That might be all you need if

you’re giving a status update, for instance.

If you step back and realize you’ve created a slide -

ument, it may be a sign that you need to distribute a docu-

ment. Make some adjustments so it looks and feels more

like a document before you circulate it. Try dividing the

content into clear sections, creating a table of contents

that links to each one, adding page numbers, converting

fragments and phrases into complete sentences, and dis-

tributing the fi le as a PDF rather than a slide deck. Nolan

Haims, the presentation director at the global PR fi rm

Edelman, sets up slideuments in portrait layout instead

of landscape so it’s very clear to staff members that they’re

documents in the making, not visual aids to be projected.

Compose teleprompter notes

What if you have to deliver several presentations per

month, each customized for a different audience? (Think

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Make the Most of Slide Software

of sales pitches tailored to corporate clients, for exam-

ple.) In situations like that, it’s impossible to memorize

what you’ll say every time—and you shouldn’t have to.

For decades, great orators have relied on note cards,

notepaper, even full scripts. You can use bulleted slides

as teleprompter material—but again, don’t project them.

You’ll run into the same read-along problems (boredom

and ineffi ciency) you encounter when you project slide-

uments. Sheryl Sandberg, the COO of Facebook, didn’t

show any slides at her eloquent TEDWomen presenta-

tion “Why We Have Too Few Women Leaders.” But when

the camera panned to her view of the audience, you could

see her bulleted slides on the comfort monitor. Those

slides were her teleprompter notes, and she was the only

person in the room viewing them.

If you’re using PowerPoint to compose teleprompter

notes, write them in “Notes” view, and then go to “Set Up

Show.” After you attach your projector, select “Presenter

View.” Everything in your notes will appear on your lap-

top screen or comfort monitor, and only your slides will

project behind you. Bring printouts of your teleprompter

notes in case anything technical goes wrong.

Visualize ideas

The only things you should actually project are images,

graphics, and phrases that move your ideas along—and

cement them in the audience’s memory long after your

presentation is over. Strip everything off your slides that’s

there to remind you what to say; keep only elements that

will help the audience understand and retain what you’re

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saying. Developing clear visuals that add emotion, em-

phasis, or nuance to your delivery is no easy task—but

when you do this well, your ideas will resonate with your

audience. (See the Slides section in this guide for detailed

tips on creating powerful visual aids.)

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Determine the

Right Length for

Your Presentation

If you ask around, “What do great presentations have

in common?” you’ll get one consistent answer: “They’re

short.” It’s no secret that people value their time.

But many presenters don’t realize that it costs them

time to save the audience time. It’s easier to blather on

for an hour than to craft a tight, succinct presentation.

Some of the magic of TED is in the 18-minute limit. A

great talk goes by quickly. A bad one—well, people can

endure it if it’s only 18 minutes.

People in your audience won’t scold you for ending

early, but they will for ending late. Out of consideration

for them and the day’s agenda, treat the time slot as-

signed to you as sacred. And keep in mind that people

have a 30- to 40-minute presentation tolerance (they’re

conditioned by TV shows with creatively produced com-

mercial breaks). Go longer than that, and they’ll begin to

squirm.

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Here are fi ve ways to tighten your talk and keep your

audience engaged:

1. Plan content for 60% of your time slot: If you’re

given a full hour, take no more than 40 min-

utes. That will leave time for Q&A, a panel,

or some other form of discussion. It’s hard to

keep people’s attention for much longer than

40 minutes unless you’ve built in interesting

guest speakers, video clips, interactive exer-

cises, and such. As Thomas Jefferson put it,

“Speeches that are measured by the hour will

die with the hour.”

2. Trim your slide deck: If you created an hour-

long presentation and want to deliver it in

40 minutes, cut your slides by a third. You

can work in slide-sorter mode in PowerPoint,

dragging slides to a “slide cemetery” at the very

end of the fi le. Don’t delete them, because you

might have to resurrect one or more at the last

minute, when you’re answering questions.

3. Practice with the clock counting up: As you’re

cutting material, rehearse with a clock count-

ing up, not with a timer counting down. If you

go over, you need to know how much you’re

over. Give critical content the most stage time;

cut sections that are more important to you

than to the audience. Keep trimming and

practicing until you’re consistently within your

desired time frame.

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Determine the Right Length for Your Presentation

4. Practice with a timer counting down: Once

you’re within the time frame, begin practicing

with a timer counting down. Divide your con-

tent into quarters and calculate a time stamp

for the end of each quarter. For example, if

you’re giving a 40-minute talk, know the exact

slide you should be on at the 10-, 20-, and

30-minute marks so you can gauge throughout

the talk if you’re on time or running over. That

way you can trim more easily on the fl y.

5.

Have two natural ending points: Create a false

ending (a summary of the ideas covered, for

example) and a real ending—perhaps a rous-

ing, inspirational story that drives the message

home. If you’re running long, you can drop

the second ending and still get your message

across. Once at a TED event in India, I was

given a 15-minute time slot and had rehearsed

it to a T. Two days before the talk, I caught a

severe chest cold, so I was heavily medicated

when I walked on stage. Before I knew it, the

“time’s up” light was blinking, and I wasn’t

done. Fortunately, I’d planned two natural

places to end my talk, so I wrapped things up

with my fi rst ending, citing a beautiful saluta-

tion to the land of India from a famous Indian

speech. As far as the people in the audience

knew, that was the real ending—and they re-

sponded warmly.

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Persuade Beyond

the Stage

Your presentation doesn’t start the moment you enter the

room; it starts the moment you’ve committed to speak—

and it continues after the actual talk, as you follow up

with the audience. If you take advantage of opportunities

to reinforce your message at all three stages, you’re much

more likely to change people’s thinking and behavior.

Before

How you position the talk before you even deliver it will

have a big impact on the audience’s level of interest.

Consider the most effective forms of communication to

send out in advance. If you’re presenting to colleagues,

you might e-mail them a summary of your message and a

rough list of points you plan to cover, for example, or send

a meeting request with a detailed agenda. If you’re go-

ing to speak to people from outside your organization—

conference attendees, for instance—you may post your

biography and talking points online and provide links

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Media

to prereading material (published articles, abstracts of

white papers, and so on).

Preparing strong supporting material may take as

long as developing the presentation itself. However you

choose to orient your audience members, make it clear

how they will benefi t from this talk.

During

If you need to distribute handouts during your talk,

bring more than enough copies and recruit volunteers to

pass them out at the right time. You can also tape secret

messages under people’s chairs for retrieval at a key mo-

ment during your talk, have audience members hold up

color-coded cards to give you feedback in real time, or

give them all a prop to interact with, such as a product

prototype.

And if you’re trying to create external buzz—about

a launch, for example—post your slides online along

with any videos or photos that support your presenta-

tion. Downloadable assets like these will make it easier

for journalists, bloggers, and fans in social media circles

to write about your talk. If appropriate, use webinar or

streaming technology to further increase your audience

reach.

After

Follow up with a thank-you note, a survey, or supple-

mentary reading or viewing material to keep your mes-

sage fresh in people’s minds. But don’t overtly solicit your

audience. People should feel they’re getting additional

insights and value—not doing extra work that benefi ts

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Persuade Beyond the Stage

you more than it does them. For example, if you send a

survey to fi nd out what they think about a new service

you’re offering, make it worth their time: Explain how

their feedback will lead to benefi ts they’ll care about, and

offer a relevant, attractive free product in exchange for

their participation. When I wrap up a webinar on pre-

sentations, I set up a URL where the audience can access

free digital content from my books on the topic. Attend-

ees love getting free, useful tools like this. More than a

quarter of them download the fi les.

By adding points of contact before, during, and after

your presentation, you’ll make a lasting impression and

increase the likelihood that your ideas will gain traction.

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Share the Stage

Audiences fi nd monologues boring. Thanks to advances

in entertainment, they’ve become accustomed to quick

action, rapid scene changes, intense visual stimulation,

and soundtracks that make the heart race. They’re no

longer willing to sit attentively for an hour while a single

speaker drones on.

The key to getting and holding their attention is hav-

ing new things continually happen. You can do that by:

• Bringing in other presenters: Invite others to

join you on the stage or by video. Consider which

experts or analysts in your organization or indus-

try would add meat and credibility to your pre-

sentation. And look for ways your team members

can play to their strengths. If your colleague Sam

is quick on his feet, for example, have him lead

the Q&A.

• Mixing up your media: Try alternating between

slides and other media. Hang posters and exhibits

on the wall, place tchotchkes on the table that tie

into the theme of your talk, or have a helper unveil

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Media

a prop or new product while you speak. Add video

to inject humor, boost credibility through testi-

monials, or clarify concepts with animated info-

graphics. If you’re talking about a product, demo

it—hold it, display it, allow people to interact with

it. If you’re explaining a concept, try drawing on a

fl ipchart or a whiteboard—it varies the pace and

audiences often fi nd it endearing because it makes

all but the most artistic presenters vulnerable and

thus accessible. Or you can hire a graphic recorder

to capture your message visually on a large strip of

butcher paper while you talk. She can synthesize

what’s being said in real time, creating a mural

that memorializes the talk. Display it somewhere

prominent in your department as a reminder of

the goals everyone agreed on at the last vision

meeting.

You can reengage your audience several times during

your talk by alternating presenters and changing up your

media. Of course, all those moving parts require planning

and rehearsal—but they’ll also keep people tuned in.

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Section 5

Slides

At our studio we don’t write our stories,

we draw them.

—Walt Disney

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Think Like a

Designer

To make the point that design thinking goes “hand-in-

hand with fi nancial success” in business, Fast Company

cited an intriguing Design Council study in its October

2007 letter from the editor: “A portfolio of 63 design-

driven British companies . . . trounced the FTSE 100 in-

dex over 13 years.”

A chart like the one in fi gure 5-1 accompanied the letter.

What does this have to do with presentations? A lot.

Presentations are one of the most popular business

communication tools, second only to e-mail. They attract

clients and keep employees on track. And the most ef-

fective presenters think like designers. Good presenters

display data clearly, simply, and compellingly, as in the

chart in fi gure 5-1. They select visuals that convey mean-

ing and brand value. They create and arrange slides that

persuade audiences and help them solve problems.

After reading the tips in the Slides section of this

guide, you won’t be a master designer—but you’ll make

better choices when confronted by the empty expanse of

a virgin slide.

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Slides

FIGURE 5-1

Design contributes to the bottom line

£5,000

Design portfolio

£4,000

£3,000

Yield on

investment

of £1,000

£2,000

FTSE 100

£1,000

0

’95

’97

’99

’01

’03

’05

’07

Source: Fast Company, Design Council, and FTSE.

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Create Slides

People Can “Get”

in Three Seconds

Audiences can process only one stream of information

at a time. They’ll either listen to you speak or read your

slides—they won’t do both simultaneously (not without

missing key parts of your message, anyway). So make

sure they can quickly comprehend your visuals and then

turn their attention back to what you’re saying.

Let’s say you’re using the default template in Power-

Point, and you completely fi ll in the fi eld that says “Click

to Add Text” each time you create a slide. That fi eld

holds about 80 words, and the average reading speed is

250 words per minute. So, if you develop 40 text-heavy

slides for a 40-minute presentation, people will miss

about 13 minutes (one-third!) of your talk just because

they’re too busy reading your slides to listen.

Another important reason to keep your slides simple:

Research shows that people learn more effectively from

multimedia messages when they’re stripped of extrane-

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Slides

ous words, graphics, animation, and sounds. The extras

actually take away meaning because they become a dis-

traction. They overtax the audience’s cognitive resources.

Each slide should pass what I call the glance test:

People should be able to comprehend it in three seconds.

Think of your slides as billboards. When people drive,

they only briefl y take their eyes off their main focus—the

road—to process billboard information. Similarly, your

audience should focus intently on what you’re saying,

looking only briefl y at your slides when you display them.

To create slides that pass the glance test:

• Start with a clean surface: Instead of using the

default “Click to Add Title” and “Click to Add Text”

slide master, turn off all the master prompts and

start with a blank slide. And when you add ele-

ments, make sure you have a good reason. Does

the audience need to see your logo on each slide

to remember who you work for? Does that blue

swoosh add meaning? If not, leave it off.

• Limit your text: Keep the text short and easy to

skim. Scale the type as large as possible so the

people in the back of the room can see it.

• Coordinate visual elements: Select one type-

face—two at most—for the entire slide deck. Use a

consistent color palette throughout (limit yourself

to three complementary colors, plus a couple of

neutral shades, like gray or pale blue). Photos

should be taken by the same photographer or look

as if they are. Illustrations should be done in the

same style.

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Create Slides People Can “Get” in Three Seconds

• Arrange elements with care: When you project

your slides, they’ll be many times larger than they

are on your laptop screen—so they need to be

tidy. (Blown up, unkempt slides look downright

chaotic.) Align your graphics and text blocks. Size

objects appropriately. If one element is larger than

another, the audience will interpret that to mean

the larger object is more important.

Take a look at the “before” slide (fi gure 5-2). It fails the

glance test because it’s packed with text.

But when you streamline the text and incorporate

simple visual elements—as in fi gure 5-3—you help the

audience process the information much more quickly.

Presentation software gives us many shiny, seductive

elements to work with. But there’s beauty and clarity in

FIGURE 5-2

Before

Business Challenges

• Difficulty of managing various devices and end points,

each with different requirements and needs

–

Managing client software, user access portal, etc.

• Complexity of maintaining and provisioning access

based on individual needs/roles

–

Contractors vs. full time

• High cost per user

• Difficulty of ensuring security

–

Remote device downloading data

• Scalability

–

As the company grows

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Slides

FIGURE 5-3

After

Business

Challenges

Devices

Access

Cost

$

Security

Scalability

restraint. Though you can develop your visual sensibil-

ity by studying well-designed publications, you may also

want to ask a professional designer to customize a tem-

plate for you so you’ll have a solid foundation to build

from.

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Choose the Right

Type of Slide

If you’re feeling overwhelmed by endless possibilities

as you’re creating slides, rest assured—all slides can be

boiled down to the following types. Here’s how they work,

and when you’ll use them.

Walk-in slide

This slide is already up when people enter the room. It

creates the fi rst impression. You may want it to display

your company’s branding, for example, or an image that

sets the tone for your presentation.

Title slide

Here’s where you show the title of your talk and (if you’re

addressing an external crowd) your name, title, and com-

pany. Include a title slide even if you don’t state the title

when you speak; it helps orient and focus the audience.

Navigation slide

This type of slide helps the audience see where you are

in the presentation. You can, for example, show section

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Slides

FIGURE 5-4

Navigation slide

Agenda

• Section 1

• Section 2

• Section 3

• Section 4

titles as you move from point to point or periodically

show an agenda slide that highlights where you are in

your talk (see fi gure 5-4).

Bullet slide

Use bullets to cluster related ideas into a list, but don’t

display them all at once. If you do, your audience will get

ahead of you—and get bored. Instead, control your pacing

with a “build” (have each bullet appear as you cover it by

animating each one). If the bullets on your slide don’t have

to be associated together, give each point its own slide.

Big-word slide

This type of slide shows a single word or short phrase in

large type—the one message or idea you want to convey

at that moment. Sometimes I use a single word to set up

a visual surprise on the next slide. When I was speak-

ing at a high-tech company’s annual sales meeting, for

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Choose the Right Type of Slide

instance, I told a story about my fi rst sales job: selling

candy for the Camp Fire Girls as a kid. I had clipped a

newspaper photo of my troop with a trophy for selling

the most candy—but I wanted that part to be a surprise.

So fi rst, I slipped in a slide that said, “Victory is sweet.”

This text not only explained an important reason why

people sell but also teed up the photo showing our goofy

fi fth-grade smiles and our skinny arms holding up a tro-

phy that was bigger than we were.

Quote slide

Project quotes by experts or from important documents

to add credibility or factual support to your message, but

clearly show where the material came from. Use quota-

tion marks and include a source line. Project only one

quote at a time—more than one will muddy the focus.

And try not to exceed 30 words. That allows you to fi t in

attribution without sacrifi cing readability. You can also

borrow a technique that I’ve seen several TED presenters

use effectively: Supplement the visual with a recording of

the person you’re quoting or (if that’s not available) add

voice-over so the audience feels as if it’s reading along

with the author of the quote.

Data slide

You may need to display data when explaining your re-

search, for example, or reporting on your business unit’s

performance, or making a controversial argument that

requires proof. Be judicious, though, so you don’t over-

whelm people with numbers they don’t really need to

know. Visually emphasize what part of the data you want

people to look at by rendering everything else in the chart

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Slides

in gray (see “Clarify the Data” later in this section of the

guide).

Diagram slide

Diagrams translate abstract, invisible concepts into

something people can see. Use them to show connections

between ideas or to illustrate processes. You may want

to transform some of your bullet slides into diagrams to

clarify the type of relationship your points and subpoints

have with each other (see “Turn Words into Diagrams”

later in this section).

Conceptual image slide

Sometimes showing is more powerful than telling. Pro-

ject photos or illustrations to convey concepts or even

FIGURE 5-5

Conceptual image slide

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Choose the Right Type of Slide

combine them. Slaveryfootprint.org used the familiar

image of a clothing tag with provocative wording to open

consumers’ eyes to the realities of slave labor in supply

chains (fi gure 5-5).

Video slide

A video slide provides a nice break from a series of static

slides. Use videos of talking heads to endorse your con-

cept, for example, or animated infographics to explain it.

Many images from stock photography houses also come

in video versions.

Walk-out slide

Leave people with something useful as they exit the

room. You may want to re-project a rousing call to ac-

tion, show your contact information, or display a nicely

branded slide and play music that reinforces the mood

you’ve created.

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Storyboard One

Idea per Slide

Filmmakers sketch out their shots before production

begins to make sure they’ll hang together structurally,

conceptually, and visually. Good presenters use a similar

planning process before they sweat over their slides.

Sure, you’re not Steven Spielberg, but don’t be intimi-

dated. Basic storyboarding isn’t hard, and it saves you

more time than it takes.

When you’re storyboarding a presentation:

• Keep it simple: Draw small visual representations

of your ideas on 1.5″ × 2″ sticky notes (see fi g-

ure 5-6). Constraining your ideas to a small sketch

space forces you to use simple, clear words and

pictures as proof of concept before creating slides

in presentation software. Don’t be embarrassed by

rudimentary sketches. This is an ideation phase;

doodles work fi ne as long as you understand them

(and if you don’t, the concept is probably too com-

plex anyway).

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Slides

FIGURE 5-6

Use stickies to keep it simple

• Limit yourself to one idea per slide: There’s no

reason to crowd several ideas onto one slide. Slides

are free. Make as many as you need to give each

idea its own moment onstage (as in fi gure 5-7).

The sketching process helps you clarify what you want

to say and how you want to say it. As Dan Roam, author

of The Back of the Napkin, points out, “All the real prob-

lems of today are multidimensional. . . . There is no way

to fully understand them—thus no way to effectively be-

gin solving them—without at some point literally draw-

ing them out.”

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Storyboard One Idea per Slide

FIGURE 5-7

One idea per slide

Original slide with multiple points...

“

”

“

Delete

”

...becomes three separate slides

As you storyboard, you’ll be able to tell immediately

which concepts are clunky or overly complex (you’ll run

out of space on your sticky notes). Eliminate them, and

brainstorm new ways to communicate those messages.

Chances are good you can develop at least a couple of

your storyboarding doodles into graphics or diagrams

you’ll actually use in the presentation. If they’ll help the

audience understand or remember your verbal message,

they’re worth including. But even if you don’t display any

images when you present, nice big type on the screen is

better than dense prose.

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Avoid Visual

Clichés

When your CFO announces at an all-staff meeting that

the company’s fi nancials are “right on target,” does he

treat you and your colleagues to the all-too-familiar im-

age of a bull’s-eye?

Nothing gets eyes a-glazing like a visual cliché. If you

want your presentation to stand out (in a good way) from

the others your audience has seen, throw out the fi rst vi-

sual concepts that come to mind. They’re the ones that

occur to everyone else, too. Brainstorm several ideas for

TABLE 5-1

Find new visual metaphors

Concept

Cliché

Unique

Goal

Bull’s-eye

Maze; threshold

Partnership

Handshake in front

Reef ecosystem; Fred

of globe

Astaire and Ginger Rogers

Security

Lock and key

Doberman pinscher;

pepper spray

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Slides

each concept you want to illustrate—and you’ll work

your way toward fresh, surprising images.

Table 5–1 gives some examples of visual clichés and

more-creative ways to illustrate the same concepts.

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Arrange Slide

Elements with

Care

By carefully arranging your slide elements, you can help

your audience process the information more easily—and

that, as we’ve discussed, frees up people to hear what

you’re saying.

Follow these fi ve design principles when arranging el-

ements to simplify your slides.

Flow

Placement governs fl ow—that is, how the eye travels

across a space. You can direct people’s eyes to certain ar-

eas of a slide and help your audience get to the important

points quickly. People should be able to move their eyes

across your slide in one back-and-forth motion and be

done processing the information.

In fi gure 5-8, your eye takes in the cluster of grapes,

then moves to the text, then focuses on one individual

grape.

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Slides

FIGURE 5-8

Flow—Part 1

The next example (fi gure 5-9) shows one of a series of

fi ve points made. Your eye moves from left to right: You

see the number 5 and the title, then your eye follows the

path to the ridgeline.

Contrast

Our eyes are drawn to things that stand out, so designers

use contrast to focus attention. Create contrast through

your elements’ size, shape, color, and proximity.

Look at fi gure 5-10, where the presenter compared

cross-sections of skin and soil to show that tending to

both requires an understanding of the microbiologi-

cal activity beneath the surface. Notice how the blurred

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FIGURE 5-9

Flow—Part 2

FIGURE 5-10

Contrast

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Slides

background images set off the stark white illustrations in

high relief so they can be processed quickly.

White space

White space is the open space surrounding items of in-

terest. Presenters are often tempted to fi ll it up with ad-

ditional content that competes for attention. But includ-

ing a healthy amount of white space imparts a feeling of

luxury (advertisers have discovered that it creates higher

perceived value) and sharpens viewers’ focus by isolating

elements.

That doesn’t necessarily mean that everything is liter-

ally “white”—just that the design feels spacious. See the

example in fi gure 5-11:

FIGURE 5-11

White space

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Arrange Slide Elements with Care

If we’d paired the quote with a larger or more detailed

image, your eye wouldn’t know where to begin. Buried,

the quote’s message would have lost its power.

Hierarchy

A clear visual hierarchy allows viewers to quickly ascer-

tain a slide’s most important elements.

The sample slide in fi gure 5-12, citing a statistic from

a recent McKinsey study, has a top-down hierarchy: You

process the picture, and then the large percentage, and

then the supporting copy.

Unity

Slides with visual unity look as though the same person

created them and make your message feel cohesive. You

FIGURE 5-12

Hierarchy

of senior execs are

disappointed with

their enterprise’s ability

to stimulate innovation

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Slides

FIGURE 5-13

Unity—Part 1

FIGURE 5-14

Unity—Part 2

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Arrange Slide Elements with Care

can achieve this through consistent type styles, color, im-

age treatment, and element placement throughout the

slide deck.

The slides in fi gures 5-13 and 5-14 feel united for a

couple of reasons: Both of their backgrounds are dark

around the edges and lighter in the middle. Also, all the

type and the images are black.

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Clarify the Data

When displaying data in a presentation, pursue clarity

above all else. The people in your audience can’t spend

extra time with your projected charts or pull them closer

to examine them, as they do with charts in print. They

have to get meaning from your numbers at a distance,

before you click away.

People will interpret your data slides fi rst by reading

the titles, then by looking at the shapes the data make,

and then by reading the axes. It’s a multistep process,

complex to begin with. So if the information you’re dis-

playing is visually complex, the audience won’t have time

to comprehend it.

These rules of thumb will help you clarify—and sim-

plify—your data.

Highlight what’s important

Start by asking, “What would I like people to remember

about the data?”—and give that point visual emphasis.

If you’re projecting a chart about sales trends over fi ve

years but talking specifi cally about how sales are consis-

tently low in the fi rst quarter, show the fi rst-quarter bar

of each year in a rich color and other bars in a neutral

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Slides

color, like gray. Deemphasize grid lines, borders, axes,

and labels—you’ll provide that kind of context when you

speak, so your visuals don’t have to—and use contrast

(color, size, or position) to draw the viewer’s eye to where

the meaning is.

Notice in fi gure 5-15 (top) how the grid lines and

borders all have the same weight as the data, so the eye

doesn’t know where to go fi rst. But the bottom image—

borderless, with muted axes and gridlines—takes view-

ers right to the point: They see immediately that revenue

leveled off after a spike early in the year.

Tell the truth

This may seem obvious, but many presenters play fast

and loose with their charts. If you don’t have a z-axis in

FIGURE 5-15

Highlight what’s important

Revenue (%)

100

80

60

40

20

0

1st Qtr 2nd Qtr 3rd Qtr 4th Qtr

Revenue (%)

100

80

60

40

20

0

1st Qtr 2nd Qtr 3rd Qtr

4th Qtr

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Clarify the Data

your data, omit 3-D effects—the depth can make your

numbers look larger than they are. In a 3-D pie chart, for

example, the pie piece in the foreground appears decep-

tively larger than the rest. Also, don’t alter the proportions

of your axes. Doing so can make a change in the num-

bers look more signifi cant (fi gure 5-16a) or less so (fi g-

ure 5-16b). Square grid lines (fi gure 5-16c) will keep your

data true.

Pick the right chart for the job

The most common charts in business are pies, bars, ma-

trixes, and line graphs. They serve different purposes,

though. Use a line graph instead of a bar chart if the

shape of the line will draw attention to your most impor-

FIGURE 5-16

Tell the truth

a. Exaggerated

b. Exaggerated horizontal scale

vertical scale

c. Accurate scale

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Slides

tant point. Use a matrix instead of multiple pie charts if

you want to show relationships between the data points.

For example, the slide in fi gure 5-17 uses pie charts to

show how airline ticket sales break down between three

different sales channels: online, agents, and direct sales.

But there’s not much you can deduce from these charts,

because they’re visually similar.

Lay out the data in a matrix, however, and suddenly

it’s clear that total sales for Airline 3 are almost double

the others (fi gure 5-18).

Sometimes the best chart is no chart at all. If a number

conveys your key message most clearly on its own, show

just that number—huge—on the slide.

FIGURE 5-17

The wrong chart for the job

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Clarify the Data

FIGURE 5-18

The right chart for the job

Find the narrative in the data

Explain not just the “what,” but the “why” and the “how”

of your data. Maybe the numbers went up, but what made

them go up? What impact did people have on them? How

will people be affected by them?

Use concrete comparisons to

express magnitude

The bigger a number is, the tougher it is to grasp. Mil-

lions, billions, and trillions sound a lot alike, but they’re

nowhere near each other in magnitude. Help your audi-

ence understand scale by communicating large numbers

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Slides

in concrete terms. For example, if you’re trying to get an

audience to visualize a billion square feet, hold up a car-

pet square that’s 12″ × 12″ and tell them it would take a

billion of those squares to cover Manhattan.

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Turn Words into

Diagrams

Diagrams are great tools for illustrating relationships.

They clarify concepts so an audience can see at a glance

how parts of a whole work together. For example, if your

organization is merging with two others, you can use a

diagram of three overlapping circles to signify redundan-

cies between departments. Or if you want to encourage

your team members to innovate iteratively, try using a

fl ow diagram that loops back on itself in several places to

illustrate the process of working out kinks in a prototype.

When you’re creating your presentation visuals, try

turning some of your words into diagrams that reinforce

your speech. It’s easy to translate words into diagrams

when you have a visual taxonomy at your disposal—and

I’m providing one here.

Because my fi rm has visualized concepts for companies

and brands for more than 20 years, my designers’ note-

books are fi lled with great business diagrams. Looking

for patterns, I clipped thousands of sketches from those

notebooks and sorted them into the following commonly

used (and universally understood) types of diagrams.

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FIGURE 5-19

Types of diagrams

A Network

HUB AND

SPOKES

FLARE

RING

SPOKES

B Segment

DONUT

PIE

C Join

HOOK

OVERLAP

D Flow

LOOP

PARALLEL

LINEAR

MERGE

AND DIVIDE

E Stack

VERTICAL

HORIZONTAL

CONCENTRIC

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Turn Words into Diagrams

The diagrams in fi gure 5-19 illustrate these kinds of

relationships:

• Network

Example: A hub-and-spokes diagram can il-

lustrate the stakeholders from various depart-

ments who come together to make an initiative

successful.

• Segment

Example: A donut can show how separate prod-

ucts fi t into a suite of offerings.

• Join

Example: A hook diagram can depict a relation-

ship between supply chain partners.

• Flow

Example: Parallel arrows can show two teams

working in concert toward a goal.

• Stack

Example: Vertical layers can illustrate discrete

fi scal-year goals as building blocks that will lead

to profi tability.

So, how can you use these diagrams in your presen-

tation? Look through your slides and fi nd a list of bul-

lets. Those bullets should “feel” related—that’s why you

grouped them together in the fi rst place. Circle the verbs

or nouns on the slide and consider how they’re related.

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Slides

That relationship will most likely fall into one of the cat-

egories in fi gure 5-19. Now see if you can use one of the

diagrams in that category to replace your bullet slide. Re-

peat the process with other text slides.

Consider two sets of slides (fi gures 5-20a and 5-20b;

fi gures 5-21a and 5-21b) showing how a list of bullet

points (“Before”) can be turned into a diagram (“After”).

The taxonomy in fi gure 5-19 isn’t exhaustive, and

there’s room for creativity within each category. You can

use different shapes and styles for the nodes and con-

nectors, and so on (go to diagrammer.com for thousands of choices). But it covers most of the bases, so it takes

some of the pressure off as you’re working to meet your

deadline.

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FIGURE 5-20a

Before

We follow the same basic process every time

• We start with the invention. We take early stage ideas and turn

them into demos—not technical demos but conceptual ones,

like the rough version of Flare you saw.

• Then our team takes this seed of an idea to customers, in

conferences and forums, to get feedback that helps us shape it

into

something

even

more

useful.

• We improve it and build a prototype that we give to a set of

early adopters, who use it and give us more feedback.

• Eventually, after a few quick cycles of this process, we

standardize the product features.

• Ev

O entually, after a f

nly then is

ew quick cy

it ready to go out cles of this process, we

to our larger group of customers,

standardize the product

like the finished ve

features.

rsion of Flare you saw.

FIGURE 5-20b

After

Dem

Proto

o

type

eedback

F

eedback

F

Invention

Improve

Standardize

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FIGURE 5-21a

Before

Research Programs

Concentrate on four research programs

• Domestic Energy Development

• Environmental Technologies

• Carbon Management

• Energy Efficiency

The potential impact of all of our programs will

extend beyond policy makers to corporations

and citizens around the world.

FIGURE 5-21b

After

Concentrate on Four Programs

Research

Domestic

Energy

Energy

Efficiency

Environmental

Carbon

Technologies

Management

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Use the Right

Number of Slides

How many slides should you have? That depends on your

audience, the technology you’re using, the setting you’re

in, your own sense of pacing, and how comfortable you

are with a clicker. Some presenters could spend an hour

on three slides; others could go through 200 or more and

you’d never know it.

Consider these slide-count variables as you’re creating

your presentation.

No slides

If you need to make a very personal connection with your

audience or you’re delivering a short talk in a casual envi-

ronment, go without slides. They don’t work in every sit-

uation. As Andrew Dlugan says in his “Six Minutes” blog

about public speaking, presenters shouldn’t use slides in

a commencement speech, a eulogy, a wedding toast, or

a layoff announcement. If you’re unsure whether they’re

appropriate, bring them with you but also carry a print-

out of your slide notes in case you decide when you arrive

that it’s best to leave your laptop off.

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Slides

Moderate slide count

Some experts recommend 1 to 2 slides per minute, or 30

to 60 slides for an hour-long talk. That’s about the aver-

age count in corporate presentations—but most of them

cram too much information on each slide. If you’ve bro-

ken your content down to one idea per slide (see “Story-

board One Idea per Slide” earlier in the Slides section),

you may end up with more than 60.

High slide count

Some presenters use 5 slides per minute. This rapid-fi re

style keeps the audience extra alert because people will

visually reengage with each click—but it requires a lot

of rehearsal and careful pacing. In a 40-minute talk, I

typically use 145 slides. (If you count “builds” within each

slide—where I reveal bullets one at a time, and so forth—

I click up to 300 times.) But when I ask audiences how

many slides they think I used, they usually say between

30 and 50.

Social media slide count

The most popular presentations on social media sites

like slideshare.com have more than 75 slides that you can read in 2 to 3 minutes. They also tend to be built like

children’s books—sentence, visual, sentence, visual—to

facilitate quick clicking.

Don’t worry about slide count. Just make your slides

count.

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Know When to

Animate

When things move, eyes are drawn to them. So anima-

tion is a powerful communication tool—but only when

applied judiciously and in a way that enhances your

message.

It’s tempting to include every feature and fl ashy effect

that’s available—but that would be like adding rhine-

stones to every outfi t in your closet. You’d be blinded by

all the bling when you opened the door, and you wouldn’t

know what to pick.

Effective animation:

• Shows how things work: Use animation and mo-

tion to control eye movement as you reveal how

things are put together, explain changes, show

direction, or illustrate sequence. If, for example,

you’ve got a stack of boxes showing how parts of

your software application fi t together, you can

provide information on one part at a time, with-

out crowding the visual: When you click on a box,

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Slides

have a “drawer” slide out from behind it to reveal

details.

• Creates contrast: Show many slides with no ani-

mation so that when you do use it, it stands out.

• Looks natural: Just like actors on a stage, elements

can enter your slide, interact, and then leave the

scene. But the movement should seem natural and

controlled, not busy and frenetic.

• Does not annoy: Most content isn’t any clearer if

you make it spin, twitch, or twirl. Gratuitous fea-

tures like these just get on people’s nerves, so don’t

waste time on them.

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Section 6

Delivery

Golden Rule: Never deliver a presentation you

wouldn’t want to sit through.

—Motto at Duarte, Inc.

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Rehearse Your

Material Well

There’s no such thing as overrehearsing your delivery.

Not that you should memorize your talk—if you do, you’ll

come across as stiff and struggle to connect with the au-

dience. But know your material inside and out. That way,

you can adapt more easily if the environment, audience,

or technology suddenly changes on you (something often

does). Also, audiences can tell if you try to wing it—and

they feel slighted. It sends the message that you don’t

value them or their time. Perhaps most important, re-

hearsing frees you up to be more present in your talk and

fully engage with the people in front of you.

When you rehearse, leave plenty of time to:

• Get honest feedback from a skilled presenter: As

the presenter, you’re so familiar with (and prob-

ably attached to) your ideas that you may think

you’re making each point more clearly and per-

suasively than you are. So ask a skilled presenter

to give you honest feedback. Give her a printout

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of your slides and have her jot down what you

say well, what you don’t, what’s essential to keep,

and what’s distracting. She might say things like:

“When you put it that way, people won’t follow

you,” and “That term sounds derogatory to me,”

and “I thought you expressed it better last time,

when you said . . .” The extra set of eyes and

ears helps you see and hear yourself as the audi-

ence will.

• Prepare a short version: Many variables in a

presentation can go wrong, leaving you with less

time than you expected. The technology doesn’t

always work. Other speakers might cut into your

time slot by running long. An impatient executive

may interrupt you with lots of questions. Prepare a

presentation that fi ts your scheduled time, but also

craft and rehearse a version that’s much shorter,

just in case.

• Fiddle with your slides: Continue to tweak your

slides until the day you present. Refi ning a bit of

text here and adding an image there is a form of

rehearsal. You become more deeply familiar with

the content as you engage with your slides—so

when you present, they feel seamlessly integrated

with your message, not tacked-on or disruptive.

• Rehearse a few times in slide-show mode: Because

slide-show mode doesn’t allow you to peek at the

notes view, it forces you into an even greater fa-

miliarity with the material and allows you to focus

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Rehearse Your Material Well

on pacing and visualize the fl ow. Look for choppy

transitions from slide to slide, inconsistent graph-

ics, and awkward builds as you reveal new bullets,

so you can smooth things out.

• Practice on camera: Record some of your fi nal

rehearsals on video. You don’t need a professional

setup. Use a webcam or the camera on your cell

phone or tablet. Pretend you are in front of an au-

dience, and address the camera as if it’s a person.

When you’re done, review the video to assess not

just your content but also your stage presence, eye

contact, facial expressions, gestures, and ease of

movement. Identify where you don’t appear natu-

ral, relaxed, or in command of your material—and

work on those areas.

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Know the Venue

and Schedule

Scoping out the room in advance will help you navigate

it. If you can’t check it out in person, look for details

online or ask the host to describe it. Sometimes, if you

get this information early enough, you can change the

setup to meet your preferences. If you’re leading an off-

site meeting for a team of six, for example, and you’ve

been assigned a large conference space, see if you can get

a cozier room—or at least a smaller table to encourage

discussion.

Don’t make any assumptions about the space. When I

was invited to speak to 70 people at Google, in my head

I pictured rows of chairs. But when I got there, I was

taken to a tiny conference room with 20 people crammed

in—and 50 small faces of webcam participants projected

on the wall. If I’d known what the room would be like, I

would have prepared to facilitate a conversation instead

of delivering a formal presentation. Instead, I found my-

self making lots of last-minute mental adjustments, like

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Delivery

fi guring out where to stand and where to focus my eye

contact, and that threw me off my stride.

Avoid such surprises by getting information about:

• Floor and seating plan: How is the room ar-

ranged? Does it have classroom seating? Round

tables? Is the size of the room appropriate for the

number of attendees you expect? It’s better for

people to sit close together, feeding off one anoth-

er’s energy, than to feel lost and disconnected in a

cavernous space. Will you be elevated on a stage?

Will the audience be able to see you if you stand

on the same level as everyone else to make your

talk feel less like a lecture? Do you have room to

walk around and connect with people? If you’ll be

on stage, where will the lights hit the fl oor? Mark

any pockets of darkness with tape so you can avoid

them (important for talks recorded on video).

Does the room have any poles that will obstruct

the audience’s view? Do what you can to work

around them. Is there a podium? Remove it—it’s a

visual barrier that puts distance between you and

the audience—unless you need a place to put your

notes.

• Food plan: Are you presenting near a mealtime?

Find out whether food will be provided. If not,

build in time for people—including yourself—to

grab a bite. Or if you’re presenting within your or-

ganization, bring some snacks. A hungry audience

won’t focus on your message. Will you be speak-

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Know the Venue and Schedule

ing during a sit-down meal? You’ll need adequate

amplifi cation so people can hear you above the

sounds of forks and knives. Or see if you can wait

until the food service crew clears the dishes before

you speak.

• Show fl ow: What will the order of events be?

Check with the organizer. Will you be introduced,

or do you need to prepare your own introduction?

Who will speak before you and after you? What

messages will others present? It’s nice to reference

things others are saying. If you’re toward the end

of a long list of speakers, keep your message short

and simple—the audience will already be tired and

overloaded with information. And if you’re follow-

ing a presenter with a contrary view, you can pre-

pare to address any seeds of resistance he might

plant in the audience. Speaking at a conference?

Look at sessions in the same time slot as yours

to fi nd out if you’ll be competing with a popular

workshop, for example, or a famous author doing

a book signing. That’ll help you gauge whether the

room will fi ll up.

• Recording: Will your talk be recorded? If so, locate

the cameras and look at them often to connect

with remote viewers or listeners. Do you want to

restrict distribution of your recorded presentation?

Make that clear to the organizers. Once, when

I spoke to a group of 250 professional women

about overcoming obstacles, I knew I was being

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recorded but thought only attendees could access

the recording, via a password-protected website. A

local TV channel ended up broadcasting my entire

presentation. My talk was very raw. I wouldn’t

have gotten so personal if I’d known it would go

beyond the room.

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Anticipate

Technology

Glitches

Equipment often malfunctions—even for people who

aren’t as technologically challenged as I am. So arrange a

tech walkthrough or, if that’s not possible, give yourself at

least 30 minutes to set up.

Here’s a checklist I’ve developed after years of trial by

fi re to avoid last-minute frenzy from tech glitches:

• Get to know the AV person: Learn his name and

treat him well. He’ll work extra hard and extra fast

for you if he likes you.

• Test all the equipment: Do a dry run using the

projector, the clicker, and any audio equipment

beforehand. Make sure it all works.

• Bring backups: If a piece of technology is criti-

cal to the success of your talk, request that it be

provided—but also bring your own. That goes

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for the projector, the cables needed to connect it,

the clicker, and any audio equipment you’ll need.

I travel with my own speakers because at-venue

audio often doesn’t work. Venture capitalist and

former Apple marketer Guy Kawasaki even brings

his own in-ear microphone when he presents.

Also, back up the content of your presentation on

drives and in the cloud—and make printouts of

your slides and notes.

• Prerecord your demos: If you’re planning to

demonstrate software, an app, or a website, have a

recorded version of your demo on your machine in

case the Internet connection is slow or down at the

time of your talk.

• Test your slide deck: Click through every single

slide. This is your last time to see what the slides

look like projected in the room. You want to

confi rm that you’ve grabbed the right version, that

everything is legible from the back of the room,

and that each time you click, the slides advance to

the right content. Sometimes the distance between

the clicker and the computer backstage is too far

for the signal to reach, and the AV team has to

make adjustments.

• Try out the comfort monitors: Confi rm that your

comfort monitors (teleprompters) work and you

can read from them. At a technical walkthrough

the day before a presentation, I discovered that

my comfort monitors were so small I couldn’t read

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Anticipate Technology Glitches

anything from the stage. I wanted to use monitors

rather than rely solely on printouts because I’d be

quoting lengthy excerpts from famous speeches. So

that night, I doubled the font size and saved myself

a lot of embarrassment.

• Play all media: When transferring fi les to a venue’s

machines, it’s easy to forget to grab video and

audio fi les. Double-check that you have all your

media in one folder and that the fi le types will play

on the machines you’ll be using.

• Confi rm type of projection: Check the screen’s

aspect ratio (usually 16:9 or 4:3), and make sure

your slides are the right dimensions. Also con-

sider whether they’ll be front- or rear-projected—

and mark the fl oor with tape so you won’t walk

through the light beam and have slides projected

across your face when you’re speaking.

• Find out if people will attend remotely: The

odds of technical mishaps go way up in remote

presentations—especially ones that involve last-

minute equipment changes. Once I tested all my

videos before walking onstage, only to discover

moments before I began speaking that the AV

crew switched machines to accommodate a large

remote group. The crew forgot to copy over my

video fi les—so I did my best to describe what

people would have seen if we had those fi les.

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Manage Your

Stage Fright

Before you present, does your heart speed up? Do you

sweat? Does your mouth go dry and your breathing be-

come erratic? That’s your fi ght-or-fl ight instinct kicking

in. Your body is telling you to fl ee because your brain

perceives the audience as a possible threat: People might

judge, challenge, or resist you.

You may also fear the fact that presentation delivery

can’t be undone. It’s live, and it’s fi nal.

A little bit of fear can be a good thing. I actually do

a better job of presenting when I’m mildly nervous—it’s

like a shot of adrenaline. But don’t let it overwhelm you.

Here are a few ways to manage your stage fright before

you present:

• Quiet your mind: Stop the self-critical internal

chatter and think instead about something that

calms you. Take a short walk outside. Listen to

soothing music.

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• Breathe: Sit on a chair or the fl oor, breathe deeply,

and hold it in. Then take in one more gasp of air

to fi ll your lungs even more—and let it all out very

slowly. By doing this four times in a row, I can

calm my body down in less than a minute.

• Laugh: Read your favorite humor website or watch

a funny video. Laughing doesn’t just distract you

from your fear—it releases tension.

• Visualize: Communication coach Nick Morgan,

the author of Trust Me, suggests my favorite fear-

busting technique: “Role-play in your mind a com-

munication between you and your favorite person.

. . . Form a memory of what that feels like physi-

cally, not about what you say. Notice everything

you can about your behavior. . . .What are you do-

ing with your hands? . . . How close are you? . . .

Catalogue and remember the behavior, and then

use that behavior.”

• Remember your audience’s fl aws: You’ve spent

time thinking about how the people in your audi-

ence might resist your message—and rightly so.

They do have that power. But, having studied

them, you should also have insights into what

makes them human and frail. Remembering that

they’re just as fl awed as you are will help calm your

nerves.

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Set the Right Tone

for Your Talk

Your audience will size you up before you utter a word—

so it’s critical to make a positive, message-appropriate

fi rst impression.

What’s the fi rst thing you want people to think or expe-

rience? What mood do you want to create? Set the right

tone for your talk by attending to the following details.

Precommunication

When you invite others to your presentation, send a

thoughtfully written agenda with a concise but telling

subject line—and be explicit about what the audience will

get out of it. All communication leading up to your talk

will affect your credibility and impact—so put as much

thought and care into it as into the presentation itself.

(See “Persuade Beyond the Stage” in the Media section.)

Atmosphere

Special touches in the room let people know what to

expect and prime them for the type of experience you

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want them to have. If you’re giving a calculated, chill-

ing speech, a cold, sparsely appointed room works. Use

bright lighting for a casual talk; go a bit darker for a for-

mal one. Provide refreshments (even for small, familiar

groups) to make people feel welcome. Music, props, and

projected images can also help set the tone.

Appearance

As much as you want the audience to like you for your

mind, people will make quick judgments based on your

appearance. Suit up to address potential clients, for ex-

ample, or investors. Dress more casually when introduc-

ing yourself to a new group of direct reports, to signal

that you’re accessible. In Enchantment: The Art of Chang-

ing Hearts, Minds, and Actions, Guy Kawasaki suggests

matching your audience (or dressing for a “tie”). If you

underdress, you’re saying, “I don’t respect you”; and if

you overdress, you’re saying, “I’m better than you.”

Disposition

The moment people see you, your disposition should

prepare them for your message. For your content to ring

true, do you need to come across as passionate? Humbled

by the challenges ahead? If you’re announcing a layoff, be

somber, not smiley. If your talk is upbeat, chat with indi-

viduals as the group gathers; shake hands if you’re meet-

ing for the fi rst time. No matter what tone you’re trying

to establish, be available and sincere.

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Be Yourself

Transparency wins people over. Though you’ll want to

come across as smart and articulate, it’s even more im-

portant to be open and sincere so people will trust you

and your ideas.

It’s OK if you’re nervous. Audiences are gracious. As

business communication expert Victoria Labalme points

out, they’ll “forgive a stumble, an ‘um,’ or a section where

you backtrack as long as they know that your heart is in

the right place.”

She adds: “Your audience wants you to be real. So

avoid sounding like a corporate spokesperson—but don’t

portray false humility, either. Playing small and meek

when inside you know (and the audience knows) you’re

a giant will not win you any fans. Authenticity means

claiming who you are.”

If you love what you do, for instance, let your enthu-

siasm show.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer explodes with so much

passion when he presents that his sweaty, breathless

dancing became a YouTube phenomenon (fi gure 6-1).

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dance”

ey boy

monk

’s famous “

-1

FIGURE 6

Steve Ballmer

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Be Yourself

In a January 2012 article about Ballmer, Business-

Week mused, “He plays the cheerleader in public appear-

ances in an apparent effort to prove that no one can top

his love of Microsoft—and he succeeds cringingly well.”

It’s over-the-top, but it’s all him. No one questions his au-

thenticity, and the man can rally his troops.

And then there’s Susan Cain, who took the opposite

tack when she gave one of the most buzzed-about talks

at TED 2012. Cain spoke quietly and convincingly about

being an introvert in a world that rewards extroverts. Her

style suited her—and her subject matter—perfectly. She

seemed comfortable onstage, but she certainly wasn’t

dramatic or even passionate. That wouldn’t have been

natural, given her personality and her topic. Instead, she

delivered her message in a way that would resonate with

fellow introverts: “The world needs you, and it needs the

things you carry. So I wish you the best of all possible

journeys and the courage to speak softly.”

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Communicate with

Your Body

People will read your body language to decide if they can

trust you and your expertise. Constricted and contrived

gestures will make you seem insecure. Larger movement

conveys confi dence and openness.

Use your physical expression to its fullest with the fol-

lowing techniques:

• Project emotion with your face: Connect with the

audience by using your face to convey your feel-

ings. Smile, laugh, open your mouth in disbelief.

Before you begin your talk, try moving every facial

muscle you can—it’ll help you warm up.

• Peel yourself away from your slides: If you

turn your back to the audience to look at your

slides, you put up a barrier. As much as you can,

keep your eyes on the people who have come to

hear you.

• Open up your posture: Avoid a “closed” stance,

such as folding your arms, standing with legs

175

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crossed, putting your hands in your pockets, or

clasping your hands behind or in front of you. It

signals discomfort.

• Exaggerate your movements: Fill the space around

you, especially if you’re speaking in a large room.

Use the same types of gestures you would if you

were having a personal conversation—but make

them bigger and more deliberate. Before your

presentation, stretch your arms as wide as you can

and as tall as you can (even stand on your toes).

This helps you open up your chest cavity and prac-

tice exaggerating your gestures.

• Match gestures with content: Gestures should

complement or amplify what you’re saying. If

you’re presenting a record year in sales, go “big”

with your arms and your smile. If your team barely

missed its targets, bring everything in, perhaps

showing a tiny little gap between your thumb and

forefi nger.

Brain scientist Jill Bolte Taylor coordinated her ges-

tures and content beautifully when she described in her

2008 TED talk what it was like to have a massive stroke.

She threw her arms upward to convey the unexpected

rush of euphoria she’d felt as the left side of her brain

shut down (fi gure 6-2a); she brought them back down

when she described how she’d surrendered her spirit,

ready to transition out of this world (fi gure 6-2b).

When you tape yourself in rehearsal, you may iden-

tify gestures, movements, or facial expressions that look

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FIGURE 6-2a

Jill Bolte Taylor, arms up

FIGURE 6-2b

Jill Bolte Taylor, arms down

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Delivery

lackluster or unnatural. Re-create those gestures so you

can physically feel them, and then practice new ones that

would be appropriate replacements. As with golf, focus

on how it feels as you do it so you can create “muscle

memory” of what works.

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Communicate with

Your Voice

Your voice is multitalented. It can sound:

• Assertive: Firm, unyielding, signifi cant, focused

• Cautious: Measured, enunciated, understated

• Critical: Harsh, angry, upset, pointed, caustic

• Humorous: Comedic, light, novel, irreverent

• Motivational: Uplifting, encouraging, friendly

• Sympathetic: Emotional, moving, personal,

delicate

• Neutral: Casual, technical, dispassionate,

informative

And it does all this through pitch, tone, volume, pacing,

and enunciation.

Many business presenters have a dispassionate vocal

style, assuming that it makes them sound objective or

authoritative. But a fl at delivery will bore your audience.

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Instead, create contrast—and emphasis—through vocal

variation. You can do this on your own or by tag-teaming

with someone else. When my husband and I copresent

our company’s vision each year, our contrasting styles

come through: He’s soft-spoken and charmingly funny,

whereas I’m dramatic and passionate. That mix works

well for our content. He gets everyone to refl ect on the

fi rm’s success, and I talk about the future with bold

enthusiasm.

To ensure that your content comes through clearly,

identify and remove verbal tics. Because silence makes

most speakers uncomfortable, they tend to use words

such as “um,” “uh,” “you know,” “like,” and “anyway” to fi ll

up space between points. They’d almost always be better

served by a pause, which gives the audience a chance to

refl ect.

I didn’t think I had any verbal tics until I watched my-

self on video. After each key point, I said, “Right?” with an

annoying lilt in my tone. It didn’t take me long to remove

that from my repertoire. I watched the video several times

to cement it in my mind. At my very next speaking gig, I

said it. Once. This word I didn’t even know I used sud-

denly sounded like fi ngernails on a chalkboard. I caught

myself two more times about to say it—and stopped. Be-

coming self-aware and really hearing how bad it sounded

helped me correct myself in the moment.

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Make Your Stories

Come to Life

The beauty of an honest story—whether comedic or dra-

matic—is that it touches people. (See the Story section

for details on how to apply storytelling principles when

crafting and structuring your content.) But even the

most compelling stories lose their power if they’re not

told well. How do you make yours come to life? Try the

following two tips from business communication expert

Victoria Labalme.

Reexperience your stories

Broadway actors relive stories each time they perform.

It’s how they keep their material fresh and engage audi-

ences show after show. You can do the same. If you’re talk-

ing about the time you got lost in a strange city at night

to make a point about fi nding your way when there’s no

one around to guide you, re-create that scene. Don’t be

melodramatic or ridiculous. But narrate the story as if

you’re still in the moment, and you’ll increase its impact

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on your audience. Use evocative, descriptive words. En-

hance them with your stance and gestures.

One CEO reenacts the moment when his CFO came

into his offi ce and recommended that they not invest

in subprime mortgages. The story is riveting partly be-

cause audiences know, in hindsight, how high the stakes

were—but also because the CEO brings people into the

scene. He describes the wood-paneled room, the view out

the window on a clear day, and the moment of his razor’s-

edge decision—a decision that ultimately saved the com-

pany hundreds of millions of dollars. He then acknowl-

edges his CFO for his sage advice at this critical juncture.

Rarely does someone approach a speaker weeks after

a presentation to say, “I loved your third point on leader-

ship.” What people do say, however, is “I still think of the

story you told . . .”

Use sensory details to set the scene

The more you can invoke the senses when telling a story,

the better. Paint a visual picture, or the audience is left

with a blank canvas. Also describe sounds, tastes, smells,

and how things feel to the touch. “I waited in a chilly, mil-

dewed alcove the size of an elevator” says a lot more than

“I waited in a small room.” By grounding yourself in such

details, you’ll avoid fl owery, empty language reminiscent

of greeting cards and embroidery pillows. You’ll give your

stories credibility and staying power.

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Work Eff ectively

with Your

Interpreter

As companies do business farther and farther from home,

presenters increasingly need translation. And working

with an interpreter always complicates things. You can

make it easier, though, with preparation.

Start by picking the right type of interpreter for your

situation. Three types are available:

• Simultaneous: The interpreter sits in a soundproof

booth while you present without disruption. Audi-

ence members who need translation wear ear-

phones. When I spoke to a large group of business

leaders in Taiwan, more than half the audience

used earphones. As a result, I got through a lot of

material with little time lost. Simultaneous inter-

pretation requires more overhead than the other

types do, since it involves technology.

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• Consecutive: The interpreter shares the stage with

you. After you make a point, you pause for her to

relay what you’ve said. You can use this approach

in less-formal settings or if you don’t have the bud-

get for simultaneous interpretation.

• Whispering: Here, the interpreter whispers

translation to you when audience members make

comments or raise questions. This approach works

best if you are familiar enough with the language

to understand most of what’s said but need

help here and there with specifi c words and

phrases.

Once you’ve sorted out which kind you need, here’s

how to choose the right person and work effectively with

her. If you can, allow up to a month to do the following:

• Test your chemistry: Some interpreters bring

energy to the presentation; others can drain you.

Spend time speaking with yours before you hire

her. If you have time to interview a few candidates,

all the better. You’ll know someone’s a good fi t if

she makes you laugh, for example, or calms you

down. The interpreter shouldn’t agitate you in any

way—public speaking in a different culture is hard

enough as it is. You should trust that she values

your material and will represent it well.

• Call in reinforcements: If you can’t fi nd an excel-

lent interpreter who’s also a subject matter expert

(a rare breed), use the professional interpreter as

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Work Eff ectively with Your Interpreter

your primary source of translation—but also enlist

an expert who speaks both languages to help out.

That way you’ll have someone who can correct the

interpreter if she makes content mistakes here and

there, in real time, or who can simply step in at a

point where the material gets highly specialized or

technical.

• Prepare half as much material: If you are given

an hour, prepare 30 minutes’ worth of material. It

takes twice as long to convey your message with a

consecutive interpreter—and even with the other

types, you’ll need extra time to translate any Q&A

discussion.

• Send your notes: A week ahead of time, send over

your notes or a transcript of a similar talk so the

interpreter can practice. Even if you don’t deliver

your presentation exactly the same way, she’ll get a

feel for your material and style.

• Work through idioms and metaphors: Many

phrases and sayings have no direct corollaries in

other languages. If you’ve sent your notes or a

transcript in advance, your interpreter will have

time to fl ag anything that doesn’t translate clearly.

She can then suggest regional stories and meta-

phors that would work in her culture.

• Practice pacing: Rehearse with your interpreter

when you arrive to get a sense of how much mate-

rial she can translate at a time. Have her coach you

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on your speed of delivery, so she can keep up and

audience members can process what you’re saying.

• Complete each thought: Each burst of content

should be a concise but complete thought. Other-

wise, you’ll leave people hanging midphrase while

the interpreter translates the fi rst half of your

point. Keeping your statements short and sweet

makes it easy for the audience to follow you and

engage with you.

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Get the Most out of

Your Q&A

A Q&A is a powerful, interactive way to address your au-

dience’s concerns and drive your point home. Always al-

low time for Q&A in a business presentation—trim your

talk if necessary. When people leave the room with burn-

ing, unanswered questions, they won’t adopt your ideas.

Get the most out of your Q&A by:

• Planning when you’ll take questions: Establish

early on if you want to fi eld questions throughout

your talk or save them until the end. If you need

to build a thorough case, ask people at the very

beginning to hold questions until the end. But if

you’re making a series of points, you can take ques-

tions after each one, while they’re fresh in people’s

minds.

• Anticipating questions: You can spend hours pre-

paring a presentation and deliver it beautifully—

and then undo all your hard work and undermine

your credibility by fumbling a response to an un-

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expected question. Think through any questions

the audience might raise, from the mundane to the

hostile. (See “Anticipate Resistance” in the Mes-

sage section.) Prepare answers ahead of time so

you won’t be thrown off your game when all eyes

are on you. Rehearse those answers, but still be

mentally prepared for curveballs. Some question-

ers may feel a need to publicly challenge your idea.

When that happens, it’s important to keep your

composure. Knowing your material inside-out will

help immensely.

• Listening empathetically for subtext: Answer

questions directly, but also try to identify and ad-

dress any deeper ones behind them. (You’ll often

fi nd a larger issue or unspoken motive lurking in

the shadows.) Say you’re in HR and you’re host-

ing an orientation for employees from a recently

acquired company. If people ask why they don’t

get to have monthly employee birthday parties

anymore, you may be tempted to brush that off as

silly—but the parties are probably a symbol of a

bigger underlying problem. The question behind

the question might be: “The culture we used to

have isn’t valued here. How can we hang on to

some of the traditions that made our organization

feel like a family?”

• Admitting when you don’t know something: Don’t

fake an answer. Ever. Your audience will see right

through it. If you don’t know the answer to a ques-

tion, say that—and offer to do some research after

the presentation and get back to the group.

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Get the Most out of Your Q&A

• Keeping a tight rein on large or tough crowds:

If you’re presenting to a large group, ask a Q&A

moderator to graciously take the microphone back

after each question is asked. That way, one aggres-

sive question won’t turn into a barrage. Or, if you

don’t have a moderator, let the audience know up

front that you’re answering one question per per-

son so more folks will have a chance to participate.

When I took delivery training classes, I learned

to acknowledge questions from angry inquisi-

tors—but to look at other audience members when

answering them so it’s easier to move on to the

next person and keep the discussion construc-

tive. If your topic is emotionally charged or you’re

addressing a crisis—a safety recall, for example—

have a facilitator fi lter the questions. He can

compile a mix of tough questions and lighter ones

that might get a laugh, and omit those that stray

off topic or seem to have a personal agenda behind

them. He can also plant questions the audience

might be too intimidated to ask—for instance,

“Will people lose their jobs if we don’t make our

numbers this year?”

• Leaving a strong fi nal impression: Don’t end

abruptly after the Q&A—it feels incomplete and

unsatisfying to the audience, and you’ll miss an

opportunity to reinforce your message. Wrap up

the discussion with a brief summary that re-

caps the “new bliss” you’re helping the audience

achieve. (See “Make the Ending Powerful” in the

Story section.)

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Build Trust with a

Remote Audience

Thanks to easily accessible webinar and teleconference

technology, about 80% of corporate presentations are

delivered remotely, according to several live surveys I’ve

conducted with audiences at large companies in a range

of industries. That’s a stunning percentage. Any time

technology revolutionizes how we communicate, there’s

a trade-off: Communication theorist Marshall McLuhan

pointed it out when he proposed his system for examin-

ing the impact of new media on society. Use his system

to examine remote presenting (fi gure 6-3), and you’ll see

both positive and negative outcomes.

Even though it’s designed to connect people remotely

and even globally, the technology isolates participants

from human contact. So how do you solve that problem?

How do you build trust with your remote audience? That

depends on whether you incorporate video streaming.

With video streaming

When you’re visible to the audience, your body lan-

guage—particularly eye contact and gestures—can help

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FIGURE 6-3

Pros and cons of remote presenting

Reverses

Enhances

It allows you to

When pushed to its

communicate to

limits, this medium

makes the audience

many people, globally.

feel disconnected.

Remote

presenting

Retrieves eople

Obsolesces

It replaces

among p

It restores collaboration

physical presence.

separated by distance.

you connect with people (see “Communicate with Your

Body” earlier in this section). If you glance at your notes

or slides too often, your eyes will look shifty, so keep them

trained on the camera as much as possible. Place the

camera at eye level so you and the audience are on even

ground. Looking down at it forces viewers to look up at

you. Cinematographers use that trick to show a charac-

ter’s superiority—but the last thing you want to do is ap-

pear condescending.

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Build Trust with a Remote Audience

If you can, deliver your presentation standing rather

than seated. This allows you to move naturally—use your

hands freely, lean forward, step back—which puts view-

ers at ease. Overall, make your movements expansive to

connect with the people in the room. But when you want

remote viewers to see certain gestures, keep those hand

motions closer to your chest so they’ll stay in the video

frame. Use a high-quality video recorder and light your-

self well: A professional-looking setup makes the audi-

ence feel valued.

Without video streaming

Your voice is your most valuable tool for building trust

when the audience can’t see you. But again, stand

up—you’ll sound more open and relaxed than if you’re

hunched over your computer. Hold people’s attention by

varying your volume, pitch, and tone (see “Keep Remote

Listeners Interested” in this section). But don’t overdo

it—melodrama doesn’t earn anyone’s trust.

You can also build trust through the visuals you post.

Create slides that convey an “open” feel by using type

that’s easy to read and keeping the graphics simple and

clean. Also, in the spirit of transparency, let your audi-

ence download your deck.

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Keep Remote

Listeners

Interested

When people tune in to a webinar or dial in to a telecon-

ference, you can’t see them, so their temptation to mul-

titask is great.

My fi rm recently surveyed almost 400 people who’ve

attended a webinar within the last year, and it turns out

that more of them checked e-mail than doing any other

activity—including watching the webinar (fi gure 6-4).

That makes people’s in-boxes your biggest competitor.

So what can you do to lure people away from their

other tasks?

• Break the content down into small bites: Feed par-

ticipants small, tasty morsels one by one so they

stay tuned in. Move through your points quickly—

don’t spend a long time explaining concepts. And

if you have slides, change them up about every

20 seconds.

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FIGURE 6-4

E-mail is your biggest competitor

Webinar participants said they…

Checked e-mail

17%

Watched the webinar

15%

Browsed the Internet

14%

Instant-messaged

11%

Caught up on work

10%

Cleaned up desk

9%

Text-messaged

8%

Ran to the bathroom

6%

Other answer

6%

Attended to hygiene

2%

Made phone calls

1%

• Make your presentation interactive: Create use-

ful activities for audience members to do, like

spending a few minutes researching something

and posting their fi ndings in the chat window for

everyone to see. If you ask people to take a survey,

make sure the results will be of interest to them.

And reward participants for paying close attention.

When I was a guest on marketing consultant Chris

Brogan’s video blog, I placed a sign behind me that

said, “First one who posts on Twitter that they saw

this sign wins a free book.”

• Enjoy your own material: Your enthusiasm needs

to come through in your voice, especially if the

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Keep Remote Listeners Interested

audience can’t see you on video. Smile as you share

your material—and your voice will automati-

cally take on a more cheerful tone. And if you say

something funny, laugh a bit even if no one’s in the

room with you—it invites listeners to laugh, too.

• Vary the voices: Bring in other voices for inter-

est. Try cohosting your presentation with another

subject matter expert and bantering like morning

show hosts. The audience will reengage each time

a new speaker talks.

• Pause strategically: When audiences tune out

remote presenters, the presentations sound like

white noise to them. Sprinkle in pauses before

points you really want people to hear. That’ll cut

through the white noise. When you begin speaking

again, people will notice. Sometimes pausing also

makes the audience think there’s a problem with

the technology—and people reengage to fi ddle

with their computers.

• Picture your listeners: Remember that you’re talk-

ing to people, not machines. Picture their faces in

your mind and imagine that you’re having a live

conversation with them. When I fi rst started to

present remotely, I struggled with talking natu-

rally to the camera. So I took photos of my smiley

staff members, cut out their faces, and taped them

above my monitor (fi gure 6-5). This served as a

visual reminder that I was speaking to real people.

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FIGURE 6-5

Visualizing real people

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Keep Your Remote

Presentation

Running Smoothly

Since remote audiences are so susceptible to distrac-

tion, even minor annoyances can derail your presenta-

tion. Keep things running smoothly with the following

checklist:

• Provide clear instructions: When you send out

an invitation explaining what the presentation is

about, spell out how to register and log in, and

explain any technical requirements up front so

people don’t sign up only to discover later that they

don’t have the equipment to participate.

• Plan for technology snafus: Give the audience con-

tact information for technical questions. E-mail

handouts ahead of time, and have slides in a handy

location online just in case the webinar technology

fails.

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• Test your slides: Some webinar software “breaks”

your slides by not properly displaying animations,

builds, and transitions. Many path-based anima-

tions don’t work or are so choppy they are ineffec-

tive. Color contrast can fade, and photos become

pixilated. Test your slides on the exact same

machine you’re presenting from, because different

operating systems and software behave differently.

Click through each slide in the software and fi x any

problems.

• Start on time: Set up at least 30 minutes in ad-

vance to make sure your audio and video are work-

ing properly. You don’t want attendees to think

you’re ill prepared as they listen to you fuss with

technology issues.

• Reduce personal noise: Remove loud jewelry like

bangle bracelets or earrings that can bang loudly

against a headset. Minimize fi dgeting. Don’t drum

your fi ngers, click pens, shuffl e paper, or take sips

of water near the microphone.

• Reduce environmental noise: Close your door and

turn off fans and music. Close out of computer

applications that have alert noises. Mute your

microphone in the remote app when someone else

is speaking so people won’t hear your breathing or

throat clearing. Turn off your cell phone, and put

your offi ce phone on the “Do Not Disturb” setting.

If people are dialing in for a teleconference, don’t

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Keep Your Remote Presentation Running Smoothly

put your phone on hold—they’ll hear your hold

music. Mute it.

• Reduce visual noise: Hide unnecessary software

application windows and icons on your computer

desktop to help focus the audience’s attention. Use

your mouse as a pointing device; don’t frantically

zing the arrow around your slides.

• Reduce communal noise: Remote listeners can

hear just one person at a time, so don’t have mul-

tiple conversations going at once during a telecon-

ference. If someone in your room asks a question,

repeat it so the remote audience can hear it.

• Use a facilitator: Relieve some of your pre-

presentation stress by asking a facilitator to man-

age many of the details, like wrangling the technol-

ogy, setting up the room, sending out the agenda

and slides ahead of time, monitoring chat rooms,

conducting surveys, and making sure people in all

locations get a chance to be heard.

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Section 7

Impact

We are competing for relevance.

—Brian Solis,

principal analyst at Altimeter Group

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Build Relationships

Through Social

Media

Social media channels give your audience a lot of con-

trol over your PR. People can broadcast bits of your con-

tent to their followers—quoting you, synthesizing your

ideas, adding their own comments. Even if you have

only 30 people in front of you when you speak, hundreds

more—perhaps thousands, if your audience is highly

networked—might catch a glimpse of what you’re saying

and what others think of it.

When the comments are positive, your ideas gain trac-

tion. At one event, a group of new attendees came to my

talk about 15 minutes after I started. I found out after-

ward that an audience member had tweeted about my

session, so some of his followers came to check it out.

But sometimes the comments aren’t positive. Look

at these sample tweets that went out during a higher-

education conference presentation in Milwaukee:

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Impact

@jrodgers

Starting to see the OMG I AM TRAPPED looks on faces.

#heweb09

@jShelK

We need a drinking game for every time he says “actu-

ally” and “actionable.” #heweb09

@stomer

We need a tshirt, “I survived the keynote disaster of

09.” #heweb09

Within hours, someone created a shirt on CafePress

and shared it with conference attendees (fi gure 7-1).

FIGURE 7-1

CafePress T-shirt

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Build Relationships Through Social Media

In The Backchannel, communication consultant Cliff

Atkinson writes about social media’s impact on presenta-

tions. He points out that the “backchannel”—the stream

of chatter before, during, and after your talk—is con-

structive when it:

• Enriches your message as people take notes, add

commentary, and suggest additional resources on

the topic

• Provides a valuable archive of information to re-

view after the presentation

• Connects people in the room, building a commu-

nity around the ideas

• Allows people who can’t attend your live talk to fol-

low dispatches and engage in conversations about it

• Increases your reach to more people

It’s destructive when it:

• Distracts audience members so they pay more at-

tention to the backchannel than to you

• Steers the conversation to unrelated topics

• Excludes audience members who are unaware of

the backchannel or unable to join

• Limits people’s ability to convey nuance or context,

because of the brevity of the posts

• Injects a rude or snarky tone, since people feel com-

fortable tweeting thoughts they wouldn’t say out loud

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Impact

Your goal is to avoid a backchannel revolt, where peo-

ple rally one another to reject your message. How? By

making the folks online feel heard.

With or without your involvement, they’ll have con-

versations about you. So participate. Engage with people

like a skilled conversationalist, and they’ll engage more

fully and fairly with your ideas.

Build relationships with them by:

• Observing their behavior: Pay attention to what

else they’re commenting on. Active social me-

dia users can point you to hot spots online—a

Linked In discussion group, for instance, or a

brand’s fan page—where you can begin or join con-

versations with potential customers or advocates.

• Providing a channel: Create a Twitter hashtag for

your presentation and invite audience members to

use it to chat with you and one another about

your message. (Of course, this is appropriate

only for external presentations with broad au-

diences. You wouldn’t broadcast content from

confi dential company meetings, for example, or

client sales calls.) Encourage attendees to use the

backchannel before, during, and after your presen-

tation; display your hashtag on an introductory

slide.

• Asking for their input: Try presenting a partially

developed idea and asking people to help you

refi ne it through social media. I do this all the time

and get useful replies. When I don’t know much

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Build Relationships Through Social Media

about an audience I’m preparing to address, I’ll

do some digging on my own—but I’ll also ask my

Twitter channel what might be on the minds of

people attending a certain event, for instance, or

working for a particular company or industry.

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Spread Your Ideas

with Social Media

Use social media content the way you use stories, visuals,

and sound bites: to reinforce and spread your message.

You can write blog entries, post photos, commission

infographics, and produce videos that enhance your ideas

so your audience feels compelled to share them with oth-

ers. If you want to get started but don’t generate a lot of

content yet, tweet links to other experts’ articles and blog

posts that support your talk.

Social media activity usually spikes during a presenta-

tion, with moderate chatter beforehand and afterward.

Facilitate the conversation at its peak by:

• Streaming your presentation: Post a live video

stream of your talk so people can attend remotely.

This is the most direct way of extending your reach

online, because the full message comes through,

not just the chatter around it.

• Time-releasing messages and slides: Craft

messages and slides expressly for social me-

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Impact

dia channels, and use technology to automati-

cally push them out at key moments during the

presentation. You can download social media

tools to program the time-release. Or you can

add 140-character phrases to your notes fi eld in

PowerPoint and set them to auto-tweet when you

advance the slides.

• Selecting a moderator: Assign someone—a col-

league, a guest blogger, an audience member—to

keep the social media thread constructive. Pick a

person who’s quick-witted, with a strong command

of your material. Ask her to tweet key phrases as

you say them, raise thought-provoking questions

online, and bring the chatter back on topic when it

starts to stray. Also have your moderator send out

links to your slides (post them on slideshare.com

or as pdfs on your website).

• Repeating audience sentiment: In addition to

broadcasting your message, the moderator should

repeat (and validate) what live audience members

are saying. The currency of social media is reci-

procity: If you don’t spread the ideas of others,

yours probably won’t get anywhere.

• Posting photos of your talk: Enlist someone to

photograph your presentation. To give social me-

dia users a sense of immediacy, he can work with

your moderator to post the images while you’re

speaking.

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Spread Your Ideas with Social Media

• Encouraging blogging: Invite bloggers, journalists,

and social media specialists to attend and cover

your presentation. You’ll increase your reach expo-

nentially through their outlets and followers.

Social media guru Dan Zarrella studied what types of

social media content people like to share during presen-

tations. Here are a couple of tips from his research:

• Don’t be too overt: People want to identify what’s

worth spreading on their own. So resist the temp-

tation to use a little Twitter bird to fl ag sound bites

you want the audience to spread. They’ll actually

get shared less.

• Be novel: Close to 30% of respondents in Zar-

rella’s study said they were more likely to tweet

or blog about a presentation if it was novel or

newsworthy. For an idea to spread, it needs to be

distinct and stand out.

After you present, post a video of your talk on your

website and on LinkedIn, Facebook, and other social

media sites. Though most backchannel activity typi-

cally happens during the talk, presentations sometimes

go viral after the fact. (Great ones can get hundreds of

thousands of views week after week.) Posting a video

will also help you capture new audience members who

didn’t know about your presentation when you gave it

or weren’t able to tune in to the streamed version or the

backchannel.

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Gauge Whether

You’ve Connected

with People

Gathering feedback on your talk in real time and after

you’re done gives you different kinds of insights—all of

them valuable.

Watch the backchannel

Have a moderator keep an eye on social media and send

text messages to your cell phone if she thinks you should

address any criticisms in a Q&A at the end of your talk.

(She should pass along tough but fair comments—and fi l-

ter out any chatter that would completely throw you off-

kilter.) Or, if you’re comfortable tweaking your message

as you go, try putting your phone in silent mode, setting

it on the podium or table in front of you, and glancing at

it throughout the presentation. If the audience begins to

revolt on the backchannel, you can change direction. Let

people know you’ve monitored their sentiment because

you want to address their concerns.

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Impact

Watch the live audience

People in the room will show how they’re feeling through

their posture and facial expressions. Keep a keen eye out

for physical cues that they’re engaged in your material.

One reason Steve Jobs could maintain a heightened sense

of anticipation during a 90-minute keynote is because he

had a gift for eliciting frequent physical reactions. In his

2007 iPhone launch presentation, the audience laughed

79 times and clapped 98 times—that’s about one reaction

every 30 seconds.

It’s important to pick up on negative cues, too, so you

can change course. Are audience members leaning back

with their arms crossed? That could be a sign of resis-

tance. Do they look tired? Are they fi dgeting? Looking

around? Checking e-mail? They may be bored or apa-

thetic toward your ideas. If they’re not demonstrating

engagement by leaning forward, nodding, smiling, and

taking notes, fi nd a way of drawing them in.

One conference presenter could easily tell from body

language that he was missing the mark with his audi-

ence—people clearly weren’t into his message. Instead

of dragging on, he stopped, admitted that he’d miscal-

culated when he’d prepared, and asked if he’d be given a

chance to speak at the next conference if he promised to

do a better job of understanding the group’s needs. He

got a standing ovation and an invitation to come back

the next year.

Survey your audience

A survey isn’t quite as immediate as backchannel chat-

ter and other real-time feedback, but it gives you more

216

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Gauge Whether You’ve Connected with People

control over the kinds of insights you’ll get from the

audience—and the comments may be more thoughtful.

Make it short and direct, and have people fi ll it out on pa-

per, online, or by e-mail. Explicitly ask them to be candid.

Project a slide at the end of your talk encouraging people

to rate you either right away, with their phones or tablets,

or at their leisure.

Organizers of large events often survey audiences at

all the sessions. If you’re speaking at such an event, ask

for the results. Even if you’re doing a much smaller, less-

formal presentation, you can ask one or two audience

members whose opinion you value to give you an honest

read on how it went. Tell them you’re trying to refi ne your

skills, and they’ll probably be glad to help.

Analyze sentiment

If you’re giving a high-stakes talk to a large group—a key-

note address, for example—it’s probably worth analyzing

social media data, such as how many people blogged

about your talk, how much traffi c was driven to the press

announcement through social media, and whether the

coverage and comments were negative or positive. This

will give you an even fi ner-grained picture of how well

you’ve connected with your audience.

But the data can be daunting if you don’t know what

you’re doing. Hire an analytics specialist to really dig in

and help you see where you did well and where you can

improve. In the analysis, you may discover a rival you

didn’t know about, for instance, or a new key infl uencer

who drives buying behavior.

217

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Impact

Analyze your reach

You can also use analytics tools to measure how many

people spread your message through social media, how

many clicked on the shared links, and whether your mes-

sage was picked up by the people you’d want to hear it.

Again, work with a data specialist.

It takes an iron gut to digest critical feedback. But it

will make you a better presenter. Look closely at what the

audience is saying about you, and modify your message,

visuals, and delivery so you’ll resonate more deeply with

people in the future.

I launched my speaking career at a small annual con-

ference. The fi rst survey I got back said that I delivered a

fi re hose of valuable information, but the audience felt no

connection. The event organizer told me I should incor-

porate more personal stories. It was painful to hear, but

true. I took the feedback very seriously. In fact, it sent me

on a several-year journey studying story principles and

structure, which I now apply to presentations.

I’m not suggesting that every piece of feedback you

get will be useful or even true. Usually, though, if you put

the audience’s needs fi rst when you create your content

and you’re sincere in your approach when you deliver it,

people will want to help you succeed.

218

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Follow Up After

Your Talk

Your presentation is done, and the adrenaline has

stopped pumping. Now what?

Once you’ve won people over to your point of view,

help them implement your ideas. Encourage them. Bring

them new insights. Remove roadblocks. Keep your mes-

sage alive by:

• Sending personal notes: It’s rare to get a nice

handwritten note these days, and people appreci-

ate it when they do. Send a note whenever you

feel grateful—to a colleague who helped you set

up your presentation, for example, or to a busy

executive who made time to attend and voice her

support. (I’ve sent a few “I’m sorry” notes, too—it

works both ways.) It can be a formal branded

thank-you note or a clever card that touches on a

personal conversation you had with an audience

member. In a world of digital communications, a

human touch stands out.

219

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Impact

• E-mailing the audience: Follow up with an e-mail

thanking people for their time. If appropriate,

summarize your big idea, key points, call to action,

and “new bliss.” Many times, event organizers will

share their attendees’ e-mail addresses with you in

lieu of paying speaking fees.

• Being accessible: If you presented within your

organization, being accessible can mean hosting

a lunch immediately after your talk, for instance,

or blocking off your calendar so you can have an

open door to answer questions in more detail. If

you spoke to a broader audience and don’t have

people’s contact information, send out thank-yous

and other follow-up messages through blog and

social media posts. Respond to anyone who starts

a thoughtful conversation with you.

• Sending materials: If you promised the audience

any materials in your talk, get them out right

away. You might want to offer thank-you gifts

such as free books or access to secure content, but

check with the audience fi rst. Many people have

contracts with their employers that don’t allow

them to accept gifts from vendors or industry

infl uencers.

• Calling or meeting with individuals: Suppose

you presented a new initiative that’s going to be

demanding on your team. Spend time listening to

each member’s concerns. Pick up the phone if it’s

not possible to talk to everyone in person. Insights

220

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Follow Up After Your Talk

from these conversations can help shape your next

piece of communication with the group. If you

discover, for instance, that people are most wor-

ried about limited resources, describe your plans

for shoring them up.

• Booking “next steps” meetings: Gather folks

afterward to answer questions that require some

research or analysis, and work together on a road-

map for achieving your goals. Facilitate collabora-

tion in any way you can—for instance, order in

lunch and ask your project leaders to brainstorm

ways of marketing your initiative internally.

• Presenting again: Though your presentation is

done, you may need to do a few more like it to

share your message with other groups and move

your ideas along. If you’re selling a product or ser-

vice, the purpose of the fi rst presentation is usually

to get a second presentation—that is, face-to-face

time with a decision maker.

Think of each interaction as one moment in a larger

relationship with your audience. That’s the mind-set it

takes to persuade people to change their thinking and

behavior—and their world of work.

221

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H5981.indb 222

7/16/12 9:05 AM

Index

accessibility, 220

of senior executives, 11–13

analytical appeal, 51–53

surveying, 104–105, 216–217

anecdotes, 85–87

transforming, 19–20

animation, 151–152

authenticity, 171–173

appearance, 170

Atkinson, Cliff, 207

backchannels, 215

atmosphere, 169–170

Ballmer, Steve, 171–173

audience

big idea

appealing to, 8

content to support, 29–32,

call to action for, 39–41

43–45

connecting with, 91–92,

defi ning your, 27–28

215–218

big-word slides, 118–119

creating value for, 4–5

blogging, 213

cues from, 216

body language, 175–178

expectations of, 12

Bolte Taylor, Jill, 176–177

feedback from, 215–218

brainstorming, 29–32

fi nding common ground with,

Brogan, Chris, 196

21–23

Brown, Tim, 43

follow-up with, 219–221

bullet slides, 118

knowing your, 15–17

buzz, 104

power of the, 3–5

Q&A sessions with, 187–189

Cain, Susan, 173

relationship building with,

call to action, 39–41

205–209

change, 19–20

remote, 165, 191–193, 195–201

charts, 137–141

resistance from, 33–35

clarifi cation, of data, 137–141

segmentation, 7–9

clichés, visual, 127–128

223

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7/16/12 9:05 AM

Index

comfort monitors, 164–165

disposition, 170

common ground, with audience,

divergent thinking, 43, 44

21–23

documents, creating, 95–96

communal noise, 201

dramatizations, 84–85

communication

dress, 170

nonverbal, 175–178

dynamic opposites, 37

vocal style, 179–180

comparisons, 60, 141

e-mail, 195, 196, 220

conceptual image slides, 120–121

emotional appeal, 51–53, 75–79

consecutive interpreters, 184

emotional resistance, 34

content. See also message

enthusiasm, 196–197

existing, 29–30

environmental noise, 200–201

to support big idea, 29–32

equipment malfunctions,

contrast, 37–38, 130–132, 138,

163–165, 199

152

ethnographics, 8

controlling idea, 27–28

executive summary slides, 12–13

convergent thinking, 43, 44

expectations, audience, 12

conversational tone, 17

eye contact, 175

co-presenters, 107, 197

facial expressions, 175

data, displaying, 137–141

facilitators, 201

data slides, 119–120

feedback, 105, 155–156, 215–

delivery

218

authenticity in, 171–173

fi nal impressions, 189

nonverbal communication

fi rmographics, 8

during, 175–178

fi rst impressions, 169–170

rehearsing, 155–157

fl oor plan, 160

to remote audiences, 191–193

fl ow, 129–130

scoping out venue for, 159–

fl ow diagrams, 144, 145

162

follow-up, 104–105, 219–221

setting tone for, 169–170

food plan, 160–161

stage fright and, 167–168

of stories, 181–182

Gallo, Carmine, 55

technology glitches during,

Gates, Bill, 84

163–165

gestures, 176–178

voice for, 179–180

gifts, 220

delivery styles, 93

glance test, 114

demographics, 7

group brainstorming, 30–31

design, 111–112, 129–135

diagrams, 120, 143–148

Haemer, Ken, 1

Disney, Walt, 109

Haims, Nolan, 96

224

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Index

handouts, 104

message

Heath, Chip, 25

amplifying, through contrast,

Heath, Dan, 25

37–38

hierarchy, visual, 133

appeal of your, 51–53

hook diagrams, 144

call to action, 39–41

hub-and-spoke diagrams, 144

choosing best ideas for, 43–45

choosing medium for delivery

ideas

of, 91–93

big idea, 27–32, 43–45

content to support, 29–32

brainstorming, 29–32

defi ning your big idea, 27–28

choosing best, 43–45

emotional impact of, 75–79

contrasting, 37–38

memorable, 83–87

one per slide, 123–125

organizing your, 47–49

organizing your, 47–49

resistance to your, 33–35

spreading via social media,

sound bites, 59–60

211–213

metaphors

visualizing, 97–98

translation of, 185

idioms, 185

using, 60, 81–82

insights, 4

visual, 127–128

interpreters, 183–186

mind mapping, 30, 31

moderators, 212, 215

jargon, 55–57

Morgan, Nick, 168

Jobs, Steve, 59–60, 89

join diagrams, 144, 145

navigation slides, 117–118

network diagrams, 144, 145

King, Martin Luther, Jr., 81

noise

visual, 201

Labalme, Victoria, 171, 181

during webinars, 200–201

length of presentation, 99–101

nonverbal communication,

logical resistance, 33–34

175–178

McKee, Robert, 61

opposites, 37–38

McLuhan, Marshall, 191

order of events, 161

media

organization, 47–49

choosing right, 91–93

follow-up, 104–105

pacing, 185–186

mixed, 107–108

pauses, 197

online, 104

personal notes, 219

presentation software, 95–98

personal stories, 77–79

testing, 165

persuasion, off-stage, 103–105

memorable stories, 83–87

photographs, posting online, 212

225

H5981.indb 225

7/16/12 9:05 AM

Index

planning, xvi

Q&A sessions, 187–189

politics, 7

quote slides, 119

posture, 175–176

PowerPoint, 95–98

Raphaely, Mirran, 84–85

practical resistance, 34

recordings, 161–162

precommunication, 169

rehearsals, 13, 155–157

preparation

relationship building, 205–209

rehearsals, 155–157

remote audience, 165, 191–193,

scoping out venue, 159–162

195–201

presentations

repetition, 59–60

audience for, 3–23

resistance, 33–35

communication before,

resonance, 21

103–104

Reynolds, Garr, 96

delivery of, 153–201

rhetorical devices, 59–60

endings of, 189

rhythmic repetition, 59–60

follow-up after, 104–105,

Roam, Dan, 124

219–221

impact of, 203–221

Sandberg, Sheryl, 97

length of, 99–101

scale, of charts, 138–139

media for, 89–108

schedule, 161

message for, 27–60

seating plan, 160

planning, xvi

segmentation, of audience, 7–9

recorded, 161–162

segment diagrams, 144, 145

remote, 191–193, 195–201

senior executives, 11–13

setting tone for, 169–170

sensory details, 182

short versions of, 156

similes, 60

slides for, 109–152

simultaneous interpreters, 183

social media’s impact on,

slides

205–209

animated, 151–152

stories in, 61–87

arrangement of, 115, 129–

storyboarding, 123–125

135

streaming, 211

avoiding clichés in, 127–128

presentation software, 95–98

designing, 111–112, 129–135

presenters

diagrams on, 143–148

feedback from skilled, 155–

displaying data in, 137–141

156

executive summary, 12–13

multiple, 107, 197

notes for, 96–97

self-focused, 3–4

number of, 149–150

projection size, 165

organizing, 47–49

psychographics, 7

posting online, 104

punctuality, 200

presentation software, 95–98

226

H5981.indb 226

7/16/12 9:05 AM

Index

refi ning, 156

teleconferences, 195–201

simplicity of, 113–116

teleprompter notes, 96–97

storyboarding, 123–125

teleprompters, 164–165

testing, 164, 200

time

types of, 117–121

for presentation, 99–101

when not to use, 149

starting on, 200

slide-show mode, 156–157

title slides, 117

slideuments, 96

tone, setting the, 169–170

slogans, 60

transformation, 19–20, 63–64

social media

translations, 183–186

monitoring, 215, 217

transparency, 171

reach of, 218

Trollope, Rowan, 85–87

relationship building with,

Twitter, 208

205–209

spreading ideas via, 211–213

unity, 133–135

software, presentation, 95–98

Solis, Brian, 203

value creation, 4–5

sound bites, 59–60

venue, scoping out, 159–162

stack diagrams, 144, 145

verbal tics, 180

stage fright, 167–168

video slides, 121

statistics, shocking, 83–84

video streaming, 191–193, 211

stories

visual hierarchy, 133

beginnings of, 67–69

visual noise, 201

bringing to life, 181–182

visuals. See also slides

for emotional impact, 75–79

avoiding clichés in, 127–128

endings of, 73–74

coordination of, 114

memorable, 83–87

design elements for, 129–135

metaphors in, 81–82

emphasizing important

middles of, 71–72

elements in, 137–138

personal, 77–79

evocative, 84

principles of, 63–64

of ideas, 97–98

reexperiencing, 181–182

vocal style, 179–180

structure of, 64, 65–66

storyboarding, 123–125

walk-in slides, 117

summary slides, 12–13

walk-out slides, 121

supporting material, 104

webinars, 195–201

surveys, 104–105, 216–217

whispering interpreters, 184

white space, 132–133

technology

glitches, 163–165, 199

Zarrella, Dan, 59, 213

new media, 191–193

227

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H5981.indb 228

7/16/12 9:05 AM

About the Author

Communication expert Nancy Duarte has more than

20 years of experience working with global organizations

and thought leaders from a wide range of industries and

fi elds. Her company, Duarte, Inc., has created more than

a quarter of a million presentations for its clients. Her

team also teaches corporate and public workshops on

writing and storyboarding effective presentations.

Duarte is the author of two award-winning books:

Resonate: Present Visual Stories That Transform Audi-

ences, which spent nearly a year on Amazon’s top 100

business book bestsellers list; and Slide:ology: The Art

and Science of Creating Great Presentations.

Duarte has been featured in Fortune, Forbes, Fast

Company, Wired, the Wall Street Journal, the New York

Times, and the LA Times, and on CNN.

229

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Notes

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Notes

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Notes

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Notes

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Notes

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Notes

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Notes

H5981.indb 236

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Notes

H5981.indb 237

7/16/12 9:05 AM

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HBR Guide to

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Managers

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What You’ll Learn

The vast amounts of data that companies accumulate to-

day can help you understand the past, make predictions

about the future, and guide your decision making. But

how do you use all this data effectively? How do you as-

sess whether your fi ndings are accurate or signifi cant?

How do you distinguish between causation and correla-

tion? And how do you present your results in a way that

will persuade others?

Understanding data analytics is an essential skill for

every manager. It’s no longer enough to hand this re-

sponsibility off to data experts. To be able to rely on the

evidence your analysts give you, you need to know where

it comes from and how it was generated—and what it

can and can’t teach you.

Using quantitative analysis as part of your decision

making helps you uncover new information and pro-

vides you with more confi dence in your choices—and

you don’t need to be deeply profi cient in statistics to

do it. This guide gives you the basics so you can better

understand how to use data and analytics as you make

tough choices in your daily work. It walks you through

H7353_Guide-DataAnalytics_2ndREV.indb v

1/17/18 10:47 AM

What You’ll Learn

three fundamental steps of data analysis: gathering the

information you need, making sense of the numbers,

and communicating those fi ndings to get buy-in and

spur others to action.

You’ll learn to:

• Ask the right questions to get the information

you need

• Work more effectively with data scientists

• Run business experiments and A/B tests

• Choose the right metrics to evaluate predictions

and performance

• Assess whether you can trust your data

• Understand the basics of regression analysis and

statistical signifi cance

• Distinguish between correlation and causation

• Sidestep cognitive biases when making decisions

• Identify when to invest in machine learning—and

how to proceed

• Communicate and defend your fi ndings to

stakeholders

• Visualize your data clearly and powerfully

vi

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1/17/18 10:47 AM

Contents

Introduction 1

Why you need to understand data analytics.

S E C T I O N O N E

Getting Started

1. Keep Up with Your Quants

13

An innumerate’s guide to navigating

big data.

BY THOMAS H. DAVENPORT

2. A Simple Exercise to Help You Think

Like a Data Scientist

25

An easy way to learn the process of data

analytics.

BY THOMAS C. REDMAN

S E C T I O N T WO

Gather the Right Information

3. Do You Need All That Data?

33

Questions to ask for a focused search.

BY RON ASHKENAS

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Contents

4. How to Ask Your Data Scientists for

Data and Analytics 37

Factors to keep in mind to get the

information you need.

BY MICHAEL LI, MADINA KASSENGALIYEVA,

AND RAYMOND PERKINS

5. How to Design a Business Experiment

45

Seven tips for using the scientifi c method.

BY OLIVER HAUSER AND MICHAEL LUCA

6. Know the Diff erence Between Your Data

and Your Metrics 51

Understand what you’re measuring.

BY JEFF BLADT AND BOB FILBIN

7. The Fundamentals of A/B Testing

59

How it works—and mistakes to avoid.

BY AMY GALLO

8. Can Your Data Be Trusted?

71

Gauge whether your data is safe to use.

BY THOMAS C. REDMAN

S E C T I O N T H R E E

Analyze the Data

9. A Predictive Analytics Primer

81

Look to the future by looking at the past.

BY THOMAS H. DAVENPORT

10. Understanding Regression Analysis

87

Evaluate the relationship between variables.

BY AMY GALLO

viii

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Contents

11. When to Act On a Correlation,

and When Not To

103

Assess your confi dence in your fi ndings and

the risk of being wrong.

BY DAVID RITTER

12. Can Machine Learning Solve Your

Business Problem? 111

Steps to take before investing in artifi cial

intelligence.

BY ANASTASSIA FEDYK

13. A Refresher on Statistical Signifi cance

121

Check if your results are real or just luck.

BY AMY GALLO

14. Linear Thinking in a Nonlinear World

131

A common mistake that leads to errors

in judgment.

BY BART DE LANGHE, STEFANO PUNTONI,

AND RICHARD LARRICK

15. Pitfalls of Data-Driven Decisions

155

The cognitive traps to avoid.

BY MEGAN MacGARVIE AND KRISTINA McELHERAN

16. Don’t Let Your Analytics Cheat the Truth

165

Pay close attention to the outliers.

BY MICHAEL SCHRAGE

S E C T I O N FO U R

Communicate Your Findings

17. Data Is Worthless If You Don’t Communicate It 173

Tell people what it means.

BY THOMAS H. DAVENPORT

ix

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Contents

18. When Data Visualization Works—and

When It Doesn’t

177

Not all data is worth the eff ort.

BY JIM STIKELEATHER

19. How to Make Charts That Pop and Persuade

183

Five questions to help give your numbers

meaning.

BY NANCY DUARTE

20. Why It’s So Hard for Us to Communicate

Uncertainty 191

Illustrating—and understanding—the

likelihood of events.

AN INTERVIEW WITH SCOTT BERINATO

BY NICOLE TORRES

21. Responding to Someone Who Challenges

Your Data

199

Ensure the data is thorough, then make

them an ally.

BY JON M. JACHIMOWICZ

22. Decisions Don’t Start with Data

205

Infl uence others through story and emotion.

BY NICK MORGAN

Appendix: Data Scientist: The Sexiest Job

of the 21st Century

209

BY THOMAS H. DAVENPORT AND D.J. PATIL

Index 225

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Introduction

Data is coming into companies at remarkable speed and

volume. From small, manageable data sets to big data

that is recorded every time a consumer buys a product or

likes a social media post, this information offers a range

of opportunities to managers.

Data allows you to make better predictions about the

future—whether a new retail location is likely to suc-

ceed, for example, or what a reasonable budget for the

next fi scal year might look like. It helps you identify the

causes of certain events—a failed advertising campaign,

a bad quarter, or even poor employee performance—so

you can adjust course if necessary. It allows you to iso-

late variables so that you can identify your customers’

wants or needs or assess the chances an initiative will

succeed. Data gives you insight on factors affecting your

industry or marketplace and can inform your decisions

about anything from new product development to hiring

choices.

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But with so much information coming in, how do you

sort through it all and make sense of everything? It’s

tempting to hand that role off to your experts and ana-

lysts. But even if you have the brightest minds handling

your data, it won’t make a difference if you don’t know

what they’re doing or what it means. Unless you know

how to use that data to inform your decisions, all you

have is a set of numbers.

It’s quickly becoming a requirement that every deci-

sion maker have a basic understanding of data analyt-

ics. But if the thought of statistical analysis makes you

sweat, have no fear. You don’t need to become a data

scientist or statistician to understand what the numbers

mean (even if data scientists have the “sexiest job of the

21st century”—see the bonus article we’ve included in the

appendix). Instead, you as a manager need a clear un-

derstanding of how these experts reach their results and

how to best use that information to guide your own deci-

sions. You must know where their fi ndings come from,

ask the right questions of data sets, and translate the re-

sults to your colleagues and other stakeholders in a way

that convinces and persuades.

This book is not for analytics experts—the data sci-

entists, analysts, and other specialists who do this work

day in, day out. Instead, it’s meant for managers who

may not have a background in statistical analysis but still

want to improve their decisions using data. This book

will not give you a detailed course in statistics. Rather,

it will help you better use data, so you can understand

what the numbers are telling you, identify where the re-

sults of those calculations may be falling short, and make

stronger choices about how to run your business.

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What This Book Will Do

This guide walks you through three key areas of the data

analytics process: gathering the information you need,

analyzing it, and communicating your fi ndings to oth-

ers. These three steps form the core of managerial data

analytics.

To fully understand these steps, you need to see the

process of data analytics and your role within it at a high

level. Section 1, “Getting Started,” provides two pieces

to help you digest the process from start to fi nish. First,

Thomas Davenport outlines your role in data analysis

and describes how you can work more effectively with

your data scientist and become a better consumer of

analytics. Then, you’ll fi nd an easy exercise you can do

yourself to gather your own data, analyze it, and identify

what to do next in light of what you’ve discovered.

Once you have this basic understanding of the pro-

cess, you can move on to learn the specifi cs about each

step, starting with the data search.

Gather the right information

For any analysis, you need data—that’s obvious. But

what data you need and how to get it can be less clear

and can vary, depending on the problem to be solved.

Section 2 begins by providing a list of questions to ask

for a targeted data search.

There are two ways to get the information you need:

by asking others for existing data and analysis or by run-

ning your own experiment to gather new data. We ex-

plore both of these approaches in turn, covering how to

request information from your data experts (taking into

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Introduction

account their needs and concerns) and using the scien-

tifi c method and A/B testing for well-thought-out tests.

But any data search won’t matter if you don’t measure

useful things. Defi ning the right metrics ensures that

your results align with your needs. Jeff Bladt, chief data

offi cer at DoSomething.org, and Bob Filbin, chief data

scientist at Crisis Text Line, use the example of their own

social media campaign to explain how to identify and

work toward metrics that matter.

We end this section with a helpful process by data ex-

pert and company adviser Thomas C. Redman. Before

you can move forward with any analysis, you must know

if the information you have can be trusted. By following

his advice, you can assess the quality of your data, make

corrections as necessary, and move forward accordingly,

even if the data isn’t perfect.

Analyze the data

You have the numbers—now what? It’s usually at this

point in the process that managers fl ash back to their

college statistics courses and nervously leave the analy-

sis to an expert or a computer algorithm. Certainly, the

data scientists on your team are there to help. But you

can learn the basics of analysis without needing to un-

derstand every mathematical calculation. By focusing on

how data experts and companies use these equations (in-

stead of how they run them), we help you ask the right

questions and inform your decisions in real-world man-

agerial situations.

We begin section 3 by describing some basic terms

and processes. We defi ne predictive analytics and how to

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Introduction

use them, and explain statistical concepts like regression

analysis, correlation versus causation, and statistical

signifi cance. You’ll also learn how to assess if machine

learning can help solve your problem—and how to pro-

ceed if it does.

In this section, we also aim to help you avoid common

traps as you study data and make decisions. You’ll dis-

cover how to look at numbers in nonlinear ways, so your

predictions are more accurate. And you will fi nd practi-

cal ways to avoid injecting subconscious bias into your

choices.

Finally, recognize when the story you’re being told

may be too good to be true. Even with the best data—and

the best data analysts—the results may not be as clear as

you think. As Michael Schrage, research fellow at MIT’s

Sloan School Center for Digital Business, points out in

the last piece in this section, an unmentioned outlier can

throw an entire conclusion off base, which is a risk you

can’t take with your decision making.

Communicate your fi ndings

“Never make the mistake of assuming that the results

will ‘speak for themselves,’” warns Thomas Davenport

in the fi nal section of this book. You must know how to

communicate the results of your analysis and use that

information to persuade others and drive your decision

forward—the third step in the data analytics process.

Section 4 explains how to share data with others so

that the numbers support your message, rather than

distract from it. The next few chapters outline when

visualizations will be helpful to your data—and when

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Introduction

they won’t be—as well as the basics of making persuasive

charts. You’ll learn how to depict and explain the uncer-

tainty and the probability of events, as well as what to do

if someone questions your fi ndings.

Data alone will not elicit change, though; you must

use this evidence in the right way to inform and change

the mindset of the person who sees it. Data is merely

supporting material, says presentations expert Nick

Morgan in the fi nal chapter. To truly persuade, you need

a story with emotional power.

Set your organization up for success

While we hope that you’ll continue to learn and grow

your own analytical skills, it’s likely that you’ll continue

to work with data experts and quants throughout your

data journey. Understanding the role of the data scien-

tist will be crucial to ensuring your organization has the

capabilities it needs to grow through data.

Data scientists bring with them intense curiosity and

make new discoveries that managers and analysts may

not see themselves. As an appendix at the end of this

book, you’ll fi nd Thomas H. Davenport and D.J. Patil’s

popular article “Data Scientist: The Sexiest Job of the

21st Century.” Davenport and Patil’s piece aims to help

you better understand this key player in an organiza-

tion—someone they describe as a “hybrid of data hacker,

analyst, communicator, and trusted adviser.” These indi-

viduals have rare qualities that, as a manager, you may

not fully under

stand. By reading through this piece,

you’ll have insight into how they think about and work

with data. What’s more, you’ll learn how to fi nd, attract,

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Introduction

and develop data scientists to keep your company on the

competing edge.

Moving Forward

Data-driven decisions won’t come easily. But by under-

standing the basics of data analytics, you’ll be able to ask

the right questions of data to pull the most useful informa-

tion out of the numbers. Before diving in to the chapters

that follow, though, ask yourself how often you’re incor-

porating data into your daily work. The assessment “Are

You Data Driven?” is a brief test that will help you target

your efforts. With that knowledge in mind, move through

the next sections with an open mind, ready to weave data

into each of your decisions.

ARE YOU DATA DRIVEN?

by Thomas C. Redman

Look at the list below and give yourself a point for ev-

ery behavior you demonstrate consistently and half

a point for those you follow most—but not all—of the

time. Be hard on yourself. If you can only cite an in-

stance or two, don’t give yourself any credit.

□ I push decisions down to the lowest possible

level.

□ I bring as much diverse data and as many diverse

viewpoints to any situation as I possibly can.

( continued)

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Introduction

ARE YOU DATA DRIVEN?

( continued)

□ I use data to develop a deeper understanding of

the business context and the problem at hand.

□ I develop an appreciation for variation.

□ I deal reasonably well with uncertainty.

□ I integrate my understanding of the data and its

implications with my intuition.

□ I recognize the importance of high-quality data

and invest to make improvements.

□ I conduct experiments and research to supple-

ment existing data and address new questions.

□ I recognize that decision criteria can vary with

circumstances.

□ I realize that making a decision is only the fi rst

step, and I revise decisions as new data comes

to light.

□ I work to learn new skills, and bring new data

and data technologies into my organization.

□ I learn from my mistakes and help others to do

so as well.

□ I strive to be a role model when it comes to data,

and work with leaders, peers, and subordinates

to help them become data driven.

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Introduction

Tally your points. If you score less than 7, it’s im-

perative that you start changing the way you work as

soon as possible. Target those behaviors where you

gave yourself partial credit fi rst and fully embed those

skills into your daily work. Then build on your success

by targeting those behaviors that you were unable to

give yourself any credit for. It may help to enlist a col-

league’s aid—the two of you can improve together.

If you score a 7 or higher, you’re showing signs of

being data driven. Still, strive for ongoing improve-

ment. Set a goal of learning a new behavior or two ev-

ery year. Take this test every six months to make sure

that you’re on track.

Adapted from “Are You Data Driven? Take a Hard Look in the Mirror” on

hbr.org, July 11, 2013 (product # H00AX2).

Thomas C. Redman, “the D ata Doc,” is President of Data Quality So-

lutions. He helps companies and people, including startups, multi-

nationals, executives, and leaders at all levels, chart their courses to

data-driven futures. He places special emphasis on quality, analytics,

and organizational capabilities.

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SECTION ONE

Getting Started

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CHAPTER 1

Keep Up with

Your Quants

by Thomas H. Davenport

“I don’t know why we didn’t get the mortgages off our

books,” a senior quantitative analyst at a large U.S. bank

told me a few years ago. “I had a model strongly indicat-

ing that a lot of them wouldn’t be repaid, and I sent it to

the head of our mortgage business.”

When I asked the leader of the mortgage business why

he’d ignored the advice, he said, “If the analyst showed me

a model, it wasn’t in terms I could make sense of. I didn’t

even know his group was working on repayment prob-

abilities.” The bank ended up losing billions in bad loans.

We live in an era of big data. Whether you work in

fi nancial services, consumer goods, travel and transpor-

Reprinted from Harvard Business Review, July–August 2013 (product

#R1307L).

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Getting Started

tation, or industrial products, analytics are becoming a

competitive necessity for your organization. But as the

banking example shows, having big data—and even peo-

ple who can manipulate it successfully—is not enough.

Companies need general managers who can partner ef-

fectively with “quants” to ensure that their work yields

better strategic and tactical decisions.

For people fl uent in analytics—such as Gary Loveman

of Caesars Entertainment (with a PhD from MIT), Jeff

Bezos of Amazon (an electrical engineering and com-

puter science major from Princeton), or Sergey Brin and

Larry Page of Google (computer science PhD dropouts

from Stanford)—there’s no problem. But if you’re a typi-

cal executive, your math and statistics background prob-

ably amounts to a college class or two. You might be ad-

ept at using spreadsheets and know your way around a

bar graph or a pie chart, but when it comes to analytics,

you often feel quantitatively challenged.

So what does the shift toward data-driven decision

making mean for you? How do you avoid the fate of

the loss-making mortgage bank head and instead lead

your company into the analytical revolution, or at least

become a good foot soldier in it? This article—a primer

for non-quants—is based on extensive interviews with

executives, including some with whom I’ve worked as a

teacher or a consultant.

You, the Consumer

Start by thinking of yourself as a consumer of analytics.

The producers are the quants whose analyses and mod-

els you’ll integrate with your business experience and in-

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Keep Up with Your Quants

tuition as you make decisions. Producers are, of course,

good at gathering the available data and making predic-

tions about the future. But most lack suffi cient knowl-

edge to identify hypotheses and relevant variables and to

know when the ground beneath an organization is shift-

ing. Your job as a data consumer—to generate hypoth-

eses and determine whether results and recommenda-

tions make sense in a changing business environment—is

therefore critically important. That means accepting a

few key responsibilities. Some require only changes in

attitude and perspective; others demand a bit of study.

Learn a little about analytics

If you remember the content of your college-level statis-

tics course, you may be fi ne. If not, bone up on the basics

of regression analysis, statistical inference, and experi-

mental design. You need to understand the process for

making analytical decisions, including when you should

step in as a consumer, and you must recognize that every

analytical model is built on assumptions that producers

ought to explain and defend. (See the sidebar “Analytics-

Based Decision Making—in Six Steps.” ) As the famous

statistician George Box noted, “All models are wrong,

but some are useful.” In other words, models intention-

ally simplify our complex world.

To become more data literate, enroll in an executive

education program in statistics, take an online course, or

learn from the quants in your organization by working

closely with them on one or more projects.

Jennifer Joy, the vice president of clinical operations

at Cigna, took the third approach. Joy has a nursing

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Getting Started

ANALYTICS-BASED DECISION

MAKING—IN SIX KEY STEPS

When using big data to make big decisions, non-

quants should focus on the fi rst and the last steps of

the process. The numbers people typically handle the

details in the middle, but wise non-quants ask lots of

questions along the way.

1.

Recognize the problem or question.  Frame the

decision or business problem, and identify pos-

sible alternatives to the framing.

2. Review previous fi ndings.  Identify people who

have tried to solve this problem or similar ones—

and the approaches they used.

3. Model the solution and select the variables.

Formulate a detailed hypothesis about how par-

ticular variables aff ect the outcome.

4. Collect the data.  Gather primary and second-

ary data on the hypothesized variables.

5. Analyze the data.  Run a statistical model, as-

sess its appropriateness for the data, and repeat

the process until a good fi t is found.

6. Present and act on the results.  Use the data to

tell a story to decision makers and stakeholders

so that they will take action.

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Keep Up with Your Quants

degree and an MBA, but she wasn’t entirely comfortable

with her analytical skills. She knew, however, that the

voluminous reports she received about her call center

operations weren’t telling her whether the coaching calls

made to patients were actually helping to manage their

diseases and to keep them out of the hospital.

So Joy reached out to Cigna’s analytics group, in par-

ticular to the experts on experimental design—the only

analytical approach that can potentially demonstrate

cause and effect. She learned, for example, that she

could conduct pilot studies to discover which segments

of her targeted population benefi t the most (and which

the least) from her call center’s services. Specifi cally, she

uses analytics to “prematch” pairs of patients and then to

randomly assign one member of the pair to receive those

services, while the other gets an alternative such as a

mail-order or an online-support intervention. Each pilot

lasts just a couple of months, and multiple studies are

run simultaneously—so Joy now gets information about

the effectiveness of her programs on a rolling basis.

In the end, Joy and her quant partners learned that

the coaching worked for people with certain diseases

but not for other patients, and some call center staff

members were redeployed as a result. Now her group

regularly conducts 20 to 30 such tests a year to fi nd out

what really makes a difference for patients. She may

not under stand all the methodological details, but as

Michael Cousins, the vice president of U.S. research and

analytics at Cigna, attests, she’s learned to be “very ana-

lytically oriented.”

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Getting Started

Align yourself with the right kind of quant

Karl Kempf, a leader in Intel’s decision-engineering

group, is known at the company as the “überquant” or

“chief mathematician.” He often says that effective quan-

titative decisions “are not about the math; they’re about

the relationships.” What he means is that quants and the

consumers of their data get much better results if they

form deep, trusting ties that allow them to exchange in-

formation and ideas freely.

Of course, highly analytical people are not always

known for their social skills, so this can be hard work.

As one wag jokingly advised, “Look for the quants who

stare at your shoes, instead of their own, when you en-

gage them in conversation.” But it’s possible to fi nd

people who communicate well and have a passion for

solving business—rather than mathematical—problems

and, after you’ve established a relationship, to encourage

frank dialogue and data-driven dissent between the two

of you.

Katy Knox, at Bank of America, has learned how to

align with data producers. As the head of retail strat-

egy and distribution for the bank’s consumer division,

she oversees 5,400-plus branches serving more than

50 million consumers and small businesses. For several

years she’s been pushing her direct reports to use analyt-

ics to make better decisions—for example, about which

branches to open or close, how to reduce customer wait

times, what incentives lead to multichannel interactions,

and why some salespeople are more productive than

others.

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Keep Up with Your Quants

Bank of America has hundreds of quants, but most of

them were pooled in a group that managers could not

easily access. Knox insisted on having her own analyt-

ics team, and she established a strong working relation-

ship with its members through frequent meetings and

project-reporting sessions. She worked especially closely

with two team leaders, Justin Addis and Michael Hyzy,

who have backgrounds in retail banking and Six Sigma,

so they’re able to understand her unit’s business prob-

lems and communicate them to the hard-core quants

they manage. After Knox set the precedent, Bank of

America created a matrix structure for its analysts in the

consumer bank, and most now report to both a business

line and a centralized analytical group.

Focus on the beginning and the end

Framing a problem—identifying it and understanding

how others might have solved it in the past—is the most

important stage of the analytical process for a consumer

of big data. It’s where your business experience and in-

tuition matter most. After all, a hypothesis is simply a

hunch about how the world works. The difference with

analytical thinking, of course, is that you use rigorous

methods to test the hypothesis.

For example, executives at the two corporate parent

organizations of Transitions Optical believed that the

photochromic lens company might not be investing in

marketing at optimal levels, but no empirical data con-

fi rmed or refuted that idea. Grady Lenski, who headed

the marketing division at the time, decided to hire

analytics consultants to measure the effectiveness of

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Getting Started

different sales campaigns—a constructive framing that

expanded on the simple binary question of whether or

not costs were too high.

If you’re a non-quant, you should also focus on the

fi nal step in the process—presenting and communicat-

ing results to other executives—because it’s one that

many quants discount or overlook and that you’ll prob-

ably have to take on yourself at some point. If analytics

is largely about “telling a story with data,” what type of

story would you favor? What kind of language and tone

would you use? Should the story be told in narrative or

visual terms? What types of graphics do you like? No

matter how sophisticated their analyses, quants should

be encouraged to explain their results in a straightfor-

ward way so that everyone can understand—or you

should do it for them. A statistical methods story (“fi rst

we ran a chi-square test, and then we converted the cat-

egorical data to ordinal, next we ran a logistic regres-

sion, and then we lagged the economic data by a year”)

is rarely acceptable.

Many businesspeople settle on an ROI story: How

will the new decision-making model increase conver-

sions, revenue, or profi tability? For example, a Merck

executive with responsibility for a global business unit

has worked closely with the pharmaceutical company’s

commercial analytics group for many years to answer a

variety of questions, including what the ROIs of direct-

to-consumer promotions are. Before an ROI analysis, he

and the group discuss what actions they will take when

they fi nd out whether promotions are highly, margin-

ally, or not successful—to make clear that the effort isn’t

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Keep Up with Your Quants

merely an academic exercise. After the analysis, the ex-

ecutive sits the analysts down at a table with his man-

agement team to present and debate the results.

Ask lots of questions along the way

Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, who

once served as an adviser to a quantitative hedge fund,

told me that his primary responsibility in that job was

to “look over shoulders”—that is, to ask the smart quants

in the fi rm equally smart questions about their models

and assumptions. Many of them hadn’t been pressed

like that before; they needed an intelligent consumer of

data to help them think through and improve their work.

No matter how much you trust your quants, don’t

stop asking them tough questions. Here are a few that

almost always lead to more- rigorous, defensible analy-

ses. (If you don’t understand a reply, ask for one that

uses simpler language.)

1. What was the source of your data?

2. How well do the sample data represent the

population?

3. Does your data distribution include outliers?

How did they affect the results?

4. What assumptions are behind your analysis?

Might certain conditions render your assump-

tions and your model invalid?

5. Why did you decide on that particular analytical

approach? What alternatives did you consider?

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Getting Started

6. How likely is it that the independent variables

are actually causing the changes in the dependent

variable? Might other analyses establish causality

more clearly?

Frank Friedman, the chief fi nancial offi cer and manag-

ing partner for fi nance and administration of Deloitte’s

U.S. business, is an inveterate questioner. He has assem-

bled a group of data scientists and quantitative analysts

to help him with several initiatives, including optimizing

the pricing of services, developing models that predict

employee performance, and identifying factors that drive

receivables. “People who work with me know I question

a lot—everything—always,” Friedman says. “After the

questioning, they know they will have to go back and

redo some of their analyses.” He also believes it’s vital to

admit when you don’t understand something: “I know I

am not the smartest person in the room in my meetings

with these people. I’m always pushing for greater clarity

[because] if I can’t articulate it, I can’t defend it to others.”

Establish a culture of inquiry, not advocacy

We all know how easily “fi gures lie and liars fi gure.” Ana-

lytics consumers should never pressure their producers

with comments like “See if you can fi nd some evidence in

the data to support my idea.” Instead, your explicit goal

should be to fi nd the truth. As the head of Merck’s com-

mercial analytics group says, “Our management team

wants us to be like Switzerland. We work only for the

shareholders.”

In fact, some senior executives push their analysts to

play devil’s advocate. This sets the right cultural tone

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Keep Up with Your Quants

and helps to refi ne the models. “All organizations seek

to please the leader,” explains Gary Loveman, of Caesars,

“so it’s critical to cultivate an environment that views

ideas as separate from people and insists on rigorous evi-

dence to distinguish among those ideas.”

Loveman encourages his subordinates to put forth

data and analysis, rather than opinions, and reveals

his own faulty hypotheses, conclusions, and decisions.

That way managers and quants alike understand that

his sometimes “lame and ill-considered views,” as he

describes them, need as much objective, unbiased test-

ing as anyone else’s. For example, he often says that his

greatest mistake as a new CEO was choosing not to fi re

property managers who didn’t share his analytical ori-

entation. He thought their experience would be enough.

Loveman uses the example to show both that he’s fallible

and that he insists on being a consumer of analytics.

When It All Adds Up

Warren Buffett once said, “Beware of geeks . . . bearing

formulas.” But in today’s data-driven world, you can’t af-

ford to do that. Instead you need to combine the science

of analytics with the art of intuition. Be a manager who

knows the geeks, understands their formulas, helps im-

prove their analytic processes, effectively interprets and

communicates the fi ndings to others, and makes better

decisions as a result.

Contrast the bank mentioned at the beginning of this

article with Toronto-

Dominion Bank. TD’s CEO, Ed

Clark, is quantitatively literate (with a PhD in econom-

ics), and he also insists that his managers understand the

math behind any fi nancial product the company depends

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Getting Started

on. As a result, TD knew to avoid the riskiest-structured

products and get out of others before incurring major

losses during the 2008–2009 fi nancial crisis.

TD’s emphasis on data and analytics affects other ar-

eas of the business as well. Compensation is closely tied

to performance-management measures, for example.

And TD’s branches stay open longer than most other

banks’ because Tim Hockey, the former head of retail

banking, insisted on systematically testing the effect of

extended retail hours (with control groups) and found

that they brought in more deposits. If anyone at a man-

agement meeting suggests a new direction, he or she is

pressed for data and analysis to support it. TD is not per-

fect, Clark acknowledges, but “nobody ever accuses us of

not running the numbers.”

Your organization may not be as analytical as TD, and

your CEO may not be like Ed Clark. But that doesn’t

mean you can’t become a great consumer of analytics

on your own—and set an example for the rest of your

company.

Thomas H. Davenport

is the President’s Distinguished

Professor in Management and Information Technology

at Babson College, a research fellow at the MIT Initiative

on the Digital Economy, and a senior adviser at Deloitte

Analytics. Author of over a dozen management books,

his latest is Only Humans Need Apply: Winners and

Losers in the Age of Smart Machines.

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CHAPTER 2

A Simple Exercise

to Help You

Think Like a Data

Scientist

by Thomas C. Redman

For 20 years, I’ve used a simple exercise to help those

with an open mind (and a pencil, paper, and calculator)

get started with data. One activity won’t make you data

savvy, but it will help you become data literate, open your

eyes to the millions of small data opportunities, and en-

able you to work a bit more effectively with data scien-

tists, analytics, and all things quantitative.

Adapted from “How to Start Thinking Like a Data Scientist” on hbr.org,

November 29, 2013.

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Getting Started

While the exercise is very much a how-to, each step

also illustrates an important concept in analytics—from

understanding variation to visualization.

First, start with something that interests, even both-

ers, you at work, like consistently late-starting meetings.

Form it up as a question and write it down: “Meetings

always seem to start late. Is that really true?”

Next, think through the data that can help answer

your question and develop a plan for creating it. Write

down all the relevant defi nitions and your protocol for

collecting the data. For this particular example, you have

to defi ne when the meeting actually begins. Is it the time

someone says, “OK, let’s begin”? Or the time the real

business of the meeting starts? Does kibitzing count?

Now collect the data. It is critical that you trust the

data. And, as you go, you’re almost certain to fi nd gaps

in data collection. You may fi nd that even though a meet-

ing has started, it starts anew when a more senior per-

son joins in. Modify your defi nition and protocol as you

go along.

Sooner than you think, you’ll be ready to start draw-

ing some pictures. Good pictures make it easier for you

to both understand the data and communicate main

points to others. There are plenty of good tools to help,

but I like to draw my fi rst picture by hand. My go-to plot

is a time-series plot, where the horizontal axis has the

date and time and the vertical axis has the variable of in-

terest. Thus, a point on the graph in fi gure 2-1 is the date

and time of a meeting versus the number of minutes late.

Now return to the question that you started with

and develop summary statistics. Have you discovered an

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s?

e meeting

-1

FIGURE 2

How late ar

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Getting Started

answer? In this case, “Over a two-week period, 10% of

the meetings I attended started on time. And on average,

they started 12 minutes late.”

But don’t stop there. Ask yourself, “So what?” In this

case, “If those two weeks are typical, I waste an hour a

day. And that costs the company x dollars a year.”

Many analyses end because there is no “so what?”

Certainly if 80% of meetings start within a few minutes

of their scheduled start times, the answer to the original

question is, “No, meetings start pretty much on time,”

and there is no need to go further.

But this case demands more, as some analyses do. Get

a feel for variation. Understanding variation leads to a

better feel for the overall problem, deeper insights, and

novel ideas for improvement. Note on the graph that

8–20 minutes late is typical. A few meetings start right

on time, others nearly a full 30 minutes late. It would

be great if you could conclude, “I can get to meetings

10 minutes late, just in time for them to start,” but the

variation is too great.

Now ask, “What else does the data reveal?” It strikes

me that six meetings began exactly on time, while every

other meeting began at least seven minutes late. In this

case, bringing meeting notes to bear reveals that all six

on-time meetings were called by the vice president of

fi nance. Evidently, she starts all her meetings on time.

So where do you go from here? Are there important

next steps? This example illustrates a common dichot-

omy. On a personal level, results pass both the “inter-

esting” and “important” test. Most of us would give al-

most anything to get back an hour a day. And you may

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A Simple Exercise to Help You Think Like a Data Scientist

not be able to make all meetings start on time, but if the

VP can, you can certainly start the meetings you control

promptly.

On the company level, results so far pass only the in-

teresting test. You don’t know whether your results are

typical, nor whether others can be as hard-nosed as the

VP when it comes to starting meetings. But a deeper look

is surely in order: Are your results consistent with others’

experiences in the company? Are some days worse than

others? Which starts later: conference calls or face-to-

face meetings? Is there a relationship between meeting

start time and most senior attendee? Return to step one,

pose the next group of questions, and repeat the process.

Keep the focus narrow—two or three questions at most.

I hope you’ll have fun with this exercise. Many fi nd

joy in teasing insights from data. But whether you ex-

perience that joy or not, don’t take this exercise lightly.

There are fewer and fewer places for the “data illiterate”

and, in my humble opinion, no more excuses.

Thomas C. Redman, “the Data Doc,” is President of Data

Quality Solutions. He helps companies and people, in-

cluding startups, multinationals, executives, and leaders

at all levels, chart their courses to data-driven futures.

He places special emphasis on quality, analytics, and or-

ganizational capabilities.

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SECTION TWO

Gather

the Right

Information

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CHAPTER 3

Do You Need All

That Data?

by Ron Ashkenas

Organizations love data: numbers, reports, trend lines,

graphs, spreadsheets—the more the better. And, as a re-

sult, many organizations have a substantial internal fac-

tory that churns out data on a regular basis, as well as

external resources on call that produce data for onetime

studies and questions. But what’s the evidence (or dare I

sa y “the data”) that all this data leads to better business

decisions? Is some amount of data collection unneces-

sary, and perhaps even damaging by creating complexity

and confusion?

Let’s look at a quick case study: For many years the

CEO of a premier consumer products company insisted

Adapted from content posted on hbr.org, March 1, 2010 (product

#H004FC).

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Gather the Right Information

on a monthly business review process that was highly

data-intensive. At its core was a “book” that contained

cost and sales data for every product sold by the com-

pany, broken down by business unit, channel, geography,

and consumer segment. This book (available electroni-

cally but always printed by the executive team) was sev-

eral inches thick. It was produced each month by many

hundreds of fi nance, product management, and infor-

mation technology people who spent thousands of hours

collecting, assessing, analyzing, reconciling, and sorting

the data.

Since this was the CEO’s way of running the business,

no one really questioned whether all of this activity was

worth it, although many complained about the time re-

quired. When a new CEO came on the scene a couple of

years ago, however, he decided that the business would

do just fi ne with quarterly reviews and exception-only

reporting. Suddenly the entire data-production indus-

try of the company was reduced substantially—and the

company didn’t miss a beat.

Obviously, different CEOs have different needs for

data. Some want their decisions to be based on as much

hard data as possible; others want just enough to either

reinforce or challenge their intuition; and still others

may prefer a combination of hard, analytical data with

anecdotal and qualitative input. In all cases, though,

managers would do well to ask themselves four ques-

tions about their data process as a way of improving the

return on what is often a substantial (but not always vis-

ible) investment:

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Do You Need All That Data?

1.

Are we asking the right questions? Many compa-

nies collect the data that is available, rather than

the information that is needed to help make deci-

sions and run the business. So the starting point

is to be clear about a limited number of key ques-

tions that you want the data to help you answer—

and then focus the data collection around those

rather than everything else that is possible.

2.

Does our data tell a story? Most data comes in

fragments. To be useful, these individual bits of

information need to be put together into a coher-

ent explanation of the business situation, which

means integrating data into a “story.” While

enterprise data systems have been useful in driv-

ing consistent data defi nitions so that points can

be added and compared, they don’t automatically

create the story. Instead, managers should con-

sider in advance what data is needed to convey

the story that they will be required to tell.

3.

Does our data help us look ahead rather than

behind? Most of the data that is collected in

companies tells managers how they performed in

a past period—but is less effective in predicting

future performance. Therefore, it is important to

ask what data, in what time frames, will help us

get ahead of the curve instead of just reacting.

4.

Do we have a good mix of quantitative and quali-

tative data? Neither quantitative nor qualitative

data tells the whole story. For example, to make

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Gather the Right Information

good product and pricing decisions, we need to

know not only what is being sold to whom, but

also why some products are selling more than

others.

Clearly, business data and its analysis are critical for

organizations to succeed, which is underscored by the

fact that companies like IBM are investing billions of

dollars in acquisitions in the business intelligence and

analytics space. But even the best automated tools won’t

be effective unless managers are clear about these four

questions.

Ron Ashkenas

is an Emeritus Partner with Schaffer

Consulting, a frequent contributor to Harvard Busi-

ness Review, and the author or coauthor of four books

on organizational transformation. He has worked with

hundreds of managers over the years to help them trans-

late strategy into results and simplify the way things get

done. He also is the coauthor (with Brook Manville) of

The Harvard Business Review Leader’s Handbook (Har-

vard Business Review Press; forthcoming in 2018). He

can be reached at rashkenas@gmail.com.

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CHAPTER 4

How to Ask Your

Data Scientists for

Data and Analytics

by Michael Li, Madina Kassengaliyeva,

and Raymond Perkins

The intersection of big data and business is growing

daily. Although enterprises have been studying analyt-

ics for decades, data science is a relatively new capability.

And interacting in a new data-driven culture can be dif-

fi cult, particularly for those who aren’t data experts.

One particular challenge that many of these individ-

uals face is how to request new data or analytics from

data scientists. They don’t know the right questions to

ask, the correct terms to use, or the range of factors to

consider to get the information they need. In the end,

analysts are left uncertain about how to proceed, and

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Gather the Right Information

managers are frustrated when the information they get

isn’t what they intended.

At The Data Incubator, we work with hundreds of

companies looking to hire data scientists and data engi-

neers or enroll their employees in our corporate train-

ing programs. We often fi eld questions from our hiring

and training clients about how to interact with their data

experts. While it’s impossible to give an exhaustive ac-

count, here are some important factors to think about

when communicating with data scientists, particularly

as you begin a data search.

What Question Should We Ask?

As you begin working with your data analysts, be clear

about what you hope to achieve. Think about the busi-

ness impact you want the data to have and the com pany’s

ability to act on that information. By hearing what you

hope to gain from their assistance, the data scientist can

collaborate with you to defi ne the right set of questions

to answer and better understand exactly what informa-

tion to seek.

Even the subtlest ambiguity can have major implica-

tions. For example, advertising managers may ask ana-

lysts, “What is the most effi cient way to use ads to in-

crease sales?” Though this seems reasonable, it may not

be the right question since the ultimate objective of most

fi rms isn’t to increase sales, but to maximize profi t. Re-

search from the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising

shows that using ads to reduce price sensitivity is typi-

cally twice as profi table as trying to increase sales.1 The

value of the insight obtained will depend heavily on the

question asked. Be as specifi c and actionable as possible.

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How to Ask Your Data Scientists for Data and Analytics

What Data Do We Need?

As you defi ne the right question and objectives for

analysis, you and your data scientist should assess the

availability of the data. Ask if someone has already col-

lected the relevant data and performed analysis. The

ever-growing breadth of public data often provides eas-

ily accessible answers to common questions. Cerner, a

supplier of health care IT solutions, uses data sets from

the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to

supplement their own data. iMedicare uses information

from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to

select policies. Consider whether public data could be

used toward your problem as well. You can also work

with other analysts in the organization to determine if

the data has previously been examined for similar rea-

sons by others internally.

Then, assess whether the available data is suffi cient.

Data may not contain all the relevant information

needed to answer your questions. It may also be infl u-

enced by latent factors that can be diffi cult to recognize.

Consider the vintage effect in private lending data: Even

seemingly identical loans typically perform very dif-

ferently based on the time of issuance, despite the fact

they may have had identical data at that time. The effect

comes from fl uctuations in the underlying underwriting

standards at issuance, information that is not typically

represented in loan data.

You should also inquire if the data is unbiased, since

sample size alone is not suffi cient to guarantee its valid-

ity. Finally, ask if the data scientist has enough data to

answer the question. By identifying what information is

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Gather the Right Information

needed, you can help data scientists plan better analyses

going forward.

How Do We Obtain the Data?

If more information is needed, data scientists must

decide between using data compiled by the company

through the normal course of business, such as through

observational studies, and collecting new data through

experiments. As part of your conversation with analysts,

ask about the costs and benefi ts of these options. Obser-

vational studies may be easier and less expensive to ar-

range since they do not require direct interaction with

subjects, for example, but they are typically far less reli-

able than experiments because they are only able to es-

tablish correlation, not causation.

Experiments allow substantially more control and

provide more reliable information about causality, but

they are often expensive and diffi cult to perform. Even

seemingly harmless experiments may carry ethical or so-

cial implications with real fi nancial consequences. Face-

book, for example, faced public fury over its manipula-

tion of its own newsfeed to test how emotions spread on

social media. Though the experiments were completely

legal, many users resented being unwitting participants

in Facebook’s tests. Managers must think beyond the

data and consider the greater brand repercussions of

data collection and work with data scientists to under-

stand these consequences. (See the sidebar, “Under-

standing the Cost of Data.”)

Before investing resources in new analysis, validate

that the company can use the insights derived from it

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How to Ask Your Data Scientists for Data and Analytics

in a productive and meaningful way. This may entail

integration with existing technology projects, providing

new data to automated systems, and establishing new

processes.

UNDERSTANDING THE COST OF DATA

Though eff ective data analysis has been shown to gen-

erate substantial fi nancial gains, there can be many

diff erent costs and complexities associated with it.

Obtaining good data may not only be diffi

cult, but very

expensive. For example, in the health care and phar-

maceutical industry, data collection is often associ-

ated with medical experimentation and patient ob-

servations. These randomized control trials can easily

cost millions. Data storage can cost millions annually

as well. When interacting with data scientists, manag-

ers should ask about the specifi c risks and costs as-

sociated with obtaining and analyzing the data before

moving forward with a project.

But not all costs associated with data collection are

fi nancial. Violations of user privacy can have enormous

legal and reputational repercussions. Privacy is one

of the most signifi cant concerns regarding consumer

data. Managers must consider and weigh the legal

and ethical implications of their data collection and

analysis methods. Even seemingly anonymized data

can be used to identify individuals. Safely anonymized

( continued)

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UNDERSTANDING THE COST OF DATA

( continued)

data can be de-anonymized when combined with other

data sets. In a famous case, Carnegie Mellon University

researchers were able to identify anonymized health

care records of a former Massachusetts governor us-

ing only his ZIP code, birthday, and gender.2 The Gart-

ner Data Center predicted that through 2016, over 25%

of fi rms using consumer data would incur reputation

damage due to privacy violation issues.3 Managers

must ask data scientists about these risks when work-

ing with the company’s potentially sensitive consumer

data.

Is the Data Clean and Easy

to Analyze?

In general, data comes in two forms: structured and un-

structured. Structured data is structured, as its name

implies, and easy to add to a database. Most analysts fi nd

it easier and faster to manipulate. Unstructured data

is often free form and cannot be as easily stored in the

types of relational databases most commonly used in en-

terprises. While unstructured data is estimated to make

up 95% of the world’s data, according to a report by pro-

fessors Amir Gandomi and Murtaza Haider of Ryerson

University, for many large companies, storing and ma-

nipulating unstructured data may require a signifi cant

investment of resources to extract necessary informa-

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How to Ask Your Data Scientists for Data and Analytics

tion.4 Working with your data scientists, evaluate the ad-

ditional costs of using unstructured data when defi ning

your initial objectives.

Even if the data is structured it still may need to be

cleaned or checked for incompleteness and inaccuracies.

When possible, encourage analysts to use clean data fi rst.

Otherwise, they will have to waste valuable time and re-

sources identifying and correcting inaccurate records.

A 2014 survey conducted by Ascend2, a marketing re-

search company, found that nearly 54% of respondents

complained that a “lack of data quality/completeness”

was their most prominent impediment. By searching for

clean data, you can avoid signifi cant problems and loss

of time.

Is the Model Too Complicated?

Statistical techniques and open-source tools to analyze

data abound, but simplicity is often the best choice. More

complex and fl exible tools expose themselves to overfi t-

ting and can take more time to develop (read more about

overfi tting in chapter 15, “Pitfalls of Data-Driven Deci-

sions”). Work with your data scientists to identify the

simpler techniques and tools and move to more complex

models only if the simpler ones prove insuffi cient. It is

important to observe the KISS rule: “Keep It Simple,

Stupid!”

It may not be possible to avoid all of the expenses and

issues related to data collection and analysis. But you

can take steps to mitigate these costs and risks. By ask-

ing the right questions of your analysts, you can ensure

proper collaboration and get the information you need

to move forward confi dently.

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Gather the Right Information

Michael Li is the founder and executive director of The

Data Incubator, a big data company that trains and places

data scientists. A data scientist himself, he has worked at

Google, Foursquare, and Andreessen Horowitz. He is a

regular contributor to VentureBeat, The Next Web, and

Harvard Business Review. Madina Kassengaliyeva is a

client services director with Think Big, a Teradata com-

pany. She helps clients realize high-impact business op-

portunities through effective implementation of big data

and analytics solutions. Madina has managed accounts

in the fi nancial services and insurance industries and led

successful strategy, solution development, and analytics

engagements. Raymond Perkins is a researcher at Prince-

ton University working at the intersection of statistics,

data, and fi nance and is the executive director of the

Princeton Quant Trading Conference. He has also con-

ducted research at Hong Kong University of Science and

Technology, the Mathematical Sciences Research Insti-

tute (MSRI), and Michigan State University.

NOTES

1. P. F. Mouncey, “Marketing in the Era of Accountability,” Journal

of Direct, Data and Digital Marketing Practice 9, no. 2 (December

2007): 225–228.

2. N. Anderson, “‘Anonymized’ Data Really Isn’t—and Here’s Why

Not,” Ars Technica, September 8, 2009, https://arstechnica.com/

tech-policy/2009/09/your-secrets-live-online-in-databases-of-ruin/.

3. D. Laney, “Information Innovation Key Initiative Over-

view,” Gartner Research, April 22, 2014, https://www.gartner.com/

doc/2 715317/information-innovation-key-initiative-overview.

4. A. Gandomi and M. Haider, “Beyond the Hype: Big Data Con-

cepts, Methods, and Analytics,” International Journal of Information

Management 35, no. 2 (April 2015): 137–144.

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CHAPTER 5

How to Design

a Business

Experiment

by Oliver Hauser and Michael Luca

The rise of experimental evaluations within organi-

zations—or what economists refer to as fi eld experi-

ments—has the potential to transform organizational

decision making, providing fresh insight into areas rang-

ing from product design to human resources to public

policy. Companies that invest in randomized evaluatio ns

can gain a game-changing advantage.

Yet while there has been a rapid growth in experi-

ments, especially within tech companies, we’ve seen too

Adapted from “How to Design (and Analyze) a Business Experiment”

on hbr.org, October 29, 2015 (product #H02FSL).

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Gather the Right Information

many run incorrectly. Even when they’re set up properly,

avoidable mistakes often happen during implementa-

tion. As a result, many organizations fail to receive the

real benefi ts of the scientifi c method.

This chapter lays out seven steps to ensure that your

experiment delivers the data and insight you need. These

principles draw on the academic research on fi eld ex-

periments as well as our work with a variety of organiza-

tions ranging from Yelp to the UK government.

1. Identify a Narrow Question

It is tempting to run an experiment around a question

such as “Is advertising worth the cost?” or “Should we re-

duce (or increase) our annual bonuses?” Indeed, begin-

ning with a question that is central to your broader goals

is a good start. But it’s misguided to think that a single

experiment will do the trick. The reason is simple: Multi-

ple factors go into answering these types of big questions.

Take the issue of whether advertising is worth the

cost. What form of advertising are we talking about, and

for which products, in which media, over which time pe-

riods? Your question should be testable, which means it

must be narrow and clearly defi ned. A better question

might be, “How much does advertising our brand name

on Google AdWords increase monthly sales?” This is an

empirical question that an experiment can answer—

and that feeds into the question you ultimately hope to

resolve. In fact, through just such an experiment, re-

searchers at eBay discovered that a long-standing brand-

advertising strategy on Google had no effect on the rate

at which paying customers visited eBay.

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How to Design a Business Experiment

2. Use a Big Hammer

Companies experiment when they don’t know what will

work best. Faced with this uncertainty, it may sound ap-

pealing to start small in order to avoid disrupting things.

But your goal should be to see whether some version of

your intervention—your new change—will make a dif-

ference to your customers. This requires a large-enough

intervention.

For example, suppose a grocery store is considering

adding labels to items to show consumers that it sources

mainly from local farms. How big should the labels be

and where should they be attached? We would suggest

starting with large labels on the front of the packages, be-

cause if the labels were small or on the backs of the pack-

ages, and there were no effect (a common outcome for

subtle interventions), the store managers would be left

to wonder whether consumers simply didn’t notice the

tags (the treatment wasn’t large enough) or truly didn’t

care (there was no treatment effect). By starting with a

big hammer, the store would learn whether customers

care about local sourcing. If there’s no effect from large

labels on the package fronts, then the store should give

up on the idea. If there is an effect, the experimenters

can later refi ne the labels to the desired characteristics.

3. Perform a Data Audit

Once you know what your intervention is, you need to

choose what data to look at. Make a list of all the inter-

nal data related to the outcome you would like to infl u-

ence and when you will need to do the measurements.

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Include data both about things you hope will change and

things you hope won’t change as a result of the inter-

vention, because you’ll need to be alert for unintended

consequences. Think, too, about sources of external data

that might add perspective.

Say you’re launching a new cosmetics product and

you want to know which type of packaging leads to the

highest customer loyalty and satisfaction. You decide

to run a randomized controlled trial across geographi-

cal areas. In addition to measuring recurring orders and

customer service feedback (internal data), you can track

user reviews on Amazon and look for differences among

customers in different states (external data).

4. Select a Study Population

Choose a subgroup among your customers that matches

the customer profi le you are hoping to understand. It

might be tempting to look for the easiest avenue to get

a subgroup, such as online users, but beware: If your

subgroup is not a good representation of your target

customers, the fi ndings of your experiment may not be

applicable. For example, younger online customers who

shop exclusively on your e-commerce platform may be-

have very differently than older in-store customers. You

could use the former to generalize to your online plat-

form strategy, but you may be misguided if you try to

draw inferences from that group for your physical stores.

5. Randomize

Randomly assign some people to a treatment group and

others to a control group. The treatment group receives

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How to Design a Business Experiment

the change you want to test, while the control group re-

ceives what you previously had on offer—and make sure

there are no differences other than what you are testing.

The fi rst rule of randomization is to not let participants

decide which group they are in, or the results will be

meaningless. The second is to make sure there really are

no differences between treatment and control.

It’s not always easy to follow the second rule. For ex-

ample, we’ve seen companies experiment by offering a

different coupon on Sunday than on Monday. The prob-

lem is that Sunday shoppers may be systematically dif-

ferent from Monday shoppers, even if you control for the

volume of shoppers on each day.

6. Commit to a Plan, and Stick to It

Before you run an experiment, lay out your plans in de-

tail. How many observations will you collect? How long

will you let the experiment run? What variables will be

collected and analyzed? Record these details. This can

be as simple as creating a Google spreadsheet or as offi -

cial as using a public trial registry. Not only will this level

of transparency make sure that everyone is on the same

page, it will also help you avoid well-known pitfalls in

the implementation of experiments.

Once your experiment is running, leave it alone! If

you get a result you expected, great; if not, that’s fi ne too.

The one thing that’s not OK: running your experiment

until your results look as though they fi t your hypothesis,

rather than until the study has run its planned course.

This type of practice has led to a “replication crisis” in

psychology research; it can seriously bias your results

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and reduce the insight you receive. Stick to the plan, to

the extent possible.

7. Let the Data Speak

To give a complete picture of your results, report mul-

tiple outcomes. Sure, some might be unchanged, un-

impressive, or downright inexplicable. But better to

be transparent about them than to ignore them. Once

you’ve surveyed the main results, ask yourself whether

you’ve really discovered the underlying mechanism be-

hind your results—the factor that is driving them. If

you’re not sure, refi ne your experiment and run another

trial to learn more.

Experiments are already a central part of the social

sciences; they are quickly becoming central to organiza-

tions as well. If your experiments are well designed, they

will tell you something valuable. The most successful

will puncture your assumptions, change your practices,

and put you ahead of competitors. Experimentation is

a long-term, richly informative process, with each trial

forming the starting point for the next.

Oliver Hauser is a research fellow at Harvard Business

School and Harvard Kennedy School. He conducts re-

search and runs experiments with organizations and

governments around the world. Michael Luca is the

Lee J. Styslinger III Associate Professor of Business

Admin is tration at Harvard Business School and works

with a variety of organizations to design experiments.

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CHAPTER 6

Know the

Diff erence

Between Your Data

and Your Metrics

by Jeff Bladt and Bob Filbin

How many views make a YouTube video a success? How

about 1.5 million? That’s how many views a video posted

in 2011 by our organization, DoSomething.org, received.

It featured some well-known YouTube celebrities, who

asked young people to donate their used sports equip-

ment to youth in need. It was twice as popular as any

video DoSomething.org had posted to date. Success!

Then came the data report: only eight viewers had signed

up to donate equipment, and no one actually donated.

Adapted from content posted on hbr.org, March 4, 2013.

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Zero donations from 1.5 million views. Suddenly, it

was clear that for DoSomething.org, views did not equal

success. In terms of donations, the video was a complete

failure.

What happened? We were concerned with the wrong

metric. A metric contains a single type of data—video

views or equipment donations. A successful organiza-

tion can only measure so many things well and what it

measures ties to its defi nition of success. For DoSome-

thing.org, that’s social change. In the case above, success

meant donations, not video views. As we learned, there

is a difference between numbers and numbers that mat-

ter. This is what separates data from metrics.

You Can’t Pick Your Data, but You

Must Pick Your Metrics

Take baseball. Every team has the same defi nition of

success—winning the World Series. This requires one

main asset: good players. But what makes a player good?

In baseball, teams used to answer this question with a

handful of simple metrics like batting average and runs

batted in (RBIs). Then came the statisticians (remember

Moneyball?). New metrics provided teams with the abil-

ity to slice their data in new ways, fi nd better ways of de-

fi ning good players, and thus win more games.

Keep in mind that all metrics are proxies for what

ulti mately matters (in the case of baseball, a combi-

nation of championships and profi tability), but some

are better than others. The data of the game has never

changed—there are still RBIs and batting averages.

What has changed is how we look at the data. And those

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teams that slice the data in smarter ways are able to fi nd

good players who have been traditionally undervalued.

Organizations Become Their Metrics

Metrics are what you measure. And what you measure

is what you manage to. In baseball, a critical question is,

how effective is a player when he steps up to the plate?

One measure is hits. A better measure turns out to be

the sabermetric “OPS”—a combination of on-base per-

centage (which includes hits and walks) and total bases

(slugging). Teams that look only at batting average suf-

fer. Players on these teams walk less, with no offsetting

gains in hits. In short, players play to the metrics their

management values, even at the cost of the team.

The same happens in workplaces. Measure YouTube

views? Your employees will strive for more and more

views. Measure downloads of a product? You’ll get more

of that. But if your actual goal is to boost sales or acquire

members, better measures might be return-on-invest-

ment (ROI), on-site conversion, or retention. Do people

who download the product keep using it or share it with

others? If not, all the downloads in the world won’t help

your business. (See the sidebar, “Picking Statistics,” to

learn how to choose metrics that that align with a spe-

cifi c performance objective.)

In the business world, we talk about the difference

between vanity metrics and meaningful metrics. Van-

ity metrics are like dandelions—they might look pretty,

but to most of us, they’re weeds, using up resources and

doing nothing for your property value. Vanity metrics

for your organization might include website visitors per

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month, Twitter followers, Facebook fans, and media im-

pressions. Here’s the thing: If these numbers go up, they

might drive up sales of your product. But can you prove

it? If yes, great. Measure away. But if you can’t, they

aren’t valuable.

PICKING STATISTICS

by Michael Mauboussin

The following is a process for choosing metrics that al-

low you to understand, track, and manage the cause-

and-eff ect relationships that determine your com-

pany’s performance. I will illustrate the process in a

simplifi ed way using a retail bank that is based on an

analysis of 115 banks by Venky Nagar of the Univer-

sity of Michigan and Madhav Rajan of Stanford. Leave

aside, for the moment, which metrics you currently

use or which ones Wall Street analysts or bankers say

you should. Start with a blank slate and work through

these four steps in sequence.

1. Defi ne Your Governing Objective

A clear objective is essential to business success be-

cause it guides the allocation of capital. Creating eco-

nomic value is a logical governing objective for a com-

pany that operates in a free market system. Companies

may choose a diff erent objective, such as maximizing

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the fi rm’s longevity. We will assume that the retail bank

seeks to create economic value.

2. Develop a Theory of Cause and Eff ect to Assess

Presumed Drivers of the Objective

The three commonly cited fi nancial drivers of value cre-

ation are sales, costs, and investments. More- specifi c

fi nancial drivers vary among companies and can in-

clude earnings growth, cash fl ow growth, and return

on invested capital.

Naturally, fi nancial metrics can’t capture all value-

creating activities. You also need to assess nonfi nan-

cial measures such as customer loyalty, customer sat-

isfaction, and product quality, and determine if they

can be directly linked to the fi nancial measures that

ultimately deliver value. As we’ve discussed, the link

between value creation and fi nancial and nonfi nancial

measures like these is variable and must be evaluated

on a case-by-case basis.

In our example, the bank starts with the theory that

customer satisfaction drives the use of bank services

and that usage is the main driver of value. This theory

links a nonfi nancial and a fi nancial driver. The bank

then measures the correlations statistically to see if

the theory is correct and determines that satisfi ed cus-

tomers indeed use more services, allowing the bank to

( continued)

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PICKING STATISTICS

( continued)

generate cash earnings growth and attractive returns

on assets, both indicators of value creation. Having

determined that customer satisfaction is persistently

and predictively linked to returns on assets, the bank

must now fi gure out which employee activities drive

satisfaction.

3. Identify the Specifi c Activities That Employees

Can Do to Help Achieve the Governing Objective

The goal is to make the link between your objective

and the measures that employees can control through

the application of skill. The relationship between these

activities and the objective must also be persistent and

predictive.

In the previous step, the bank determined that

customer satisfaction drives value (it is predictive).

The bank now has to fi nd reliable drivers of customer

satisfaction. Statistical analysis shows that the rates

consumers receive on their loans, the speed of loan

processing, and low teller turnover all aff ect customer

satisfaction. Because these are within the control of

employees and management, they are persistent. The

bank can use this information to, for example, make

sure that its process for reviewing and approving loans

is quick and effi

cient.

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4. Evaluate Your Statistics

Finally, you must regularly reevaluate the measures you

are using to link employee activities with the governing

objective. The drivers of value change over time, and

so must your statistics. For example, the demograph-

ics of the retail bank’s customer base are changing,

so the bank needs to review the drivers of customer

satisfaction. As the customer base becomes younger

and more digitally savvy, teller turnover becomes less

relevant and the bank’s online interface and customer

service become more so. Companies have access

to a growing torrent of statistics that could improve

their performance, but executives still cling to old-

fashioned and often fl awed methods for choosing met-

rics. In the past, companies could get away with going

on gut and ignoring the right statistics because that’s

what everyone else was doing. Today, using them is

necessary to compete. More to the point, identifying

and exploiting them before rivals do will be the key to

seizing advantage.

Excerpted from “The True Measures of Success” in Harvard Business Re-

view, October 2012 (product #R1210B).

Michael Mauboussin is an investment strategist and an adjunct profes-

sor at Columbia Business School. His latest book is The Success Equa-

tion (Harvard Business Review Press, 2012).

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Metrics Are Only Valuable if You

Can Manage to Them

Good metrics have three key attributes: Their data is

consistent, cheap, and quick to collect. A simple rule of

thumb: If you can’t measure results within a week for

free (and if you can’t replicate the process), then you’re

prioritizing the wrong ones. There are exceptions, but

they are rare. In baseball, the metrics an organization

uses to measure a successful plate appearance will af-

fect player strategy in the short term (do they draw more

walks, prioritize home runs, etc.?) and personnel strat-

egy in the mid- and long terms. The data to make these

decisions is readily available and continuously updated.

Organizations can’t control their data, but they do

control what they care about. If our metric on the You-

Tube video had been views, we would have called it a

huge success. In fact, we wrote it off as a massive failure.

Does that mean no more videos? Not necessarily, but for

now, we’ll be spending our resources elsewhere, collect-

ing data on metrics that matter.

Jeff Bladt

is chief data offi cer at DoSomething.org,

America’s largest organization for young people and so-

cial change. Bob Filbin is chief data scientist at Crisis Text

Line, the fi rst large-scale 24/7 national crisis line for

teens on the medium they use most: texting.

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CHAPTER 7

The Fundamentals

of A/B Testing

by Amy Gallo

As we learned in chapter 5, running an experiment is a

straightforward way to collect new data about a specifi c

question or problem. One of the most common meth-

ods of experimentation, particularly in online settings, is

A/B testing.

To better understand what A/B testing is, where it

originated, and how to use it, I spoke with Kaiser Fung,

who founded the applied analytics program at Columbia

University and is author of Junk Charts, a blog devoted

to the critical examination of data and graphics in the

mass media. His latest book is Numbersense: How to Use

Big Data to Your Advantage.

Adapted from “A Refresher on A/B Testing” on hbr.org, June 28, 2017

(product #H03R3D).

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What Is A/B Testing?

A/B testing is a way to compare two versions of some-

thing to fi gure out which performs better. While it’s most

often associated with websites and apps, Fung says the

method is almost 100 years old.

In the 1920s, statistician and biologist Ronald Fisher

discovered the most important principles behind A/B

testing and randomized controlled experiments in gen-

eral. “He wasn’t the fi rst to run an experiment like this,

but he was the fi rst to fi gure out the basic principles and

mathematics and make them a science,” Fung says.

Fisher ran agricultural experiments, asking questions

such as, “What happens if I put more fertilizer on this

land?” The principles persisted, and in the early 1950s

scientists started running clinical trials in medicine. In

the 1960s and 1970s, the concept was adapted by mar-

keters to evaluate direct-response campaigns (for exam-

ple, “Would a postcard or a letter sent to target custom-

ers result in more sales?”).

A/B testing in its current form came into existence in

the 1990s. Fung says that throughout the past century,

the math behind the tests hasn’t changed: “It’s the same

core concepts, but now you’re doing it online, in a real-

time environment, and on a different scale in terms of

number of participants and number of experiments.”

How Does A/B Testing Work?

You start an A/B test by deciding what it is you want to

test. Fung gives a simple example: the size of the “Sub-

scribe” button on your website. Then you need to know

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how you want to evaluate its performance. In this case,

let’s say your metric is the number of visitors who click

on the button. To run the test, you show two sets of us-

ers (assigned at random when they visit the site) the

different versions (where the only thing different is the

size of the button) and determine which infl uenced your

success metric the most—in this case, which button size

caused more visitors to click.

There are a lot of things that infl uence whether some-

one clicks. For example, it may be that those using a mo-

bile device are more likely to click a button of a certain

size, while those on desktop are drawn to a different

size. This is where randomization is critical. By random-

izing which users are in which group, you minimize the

chances that other factors, like mobile versus desktop,

will drive your results on average.

“The A/B test can be considered the most basic kind

of randomized controlled experiment,” Fung says. “In its

simplest form, there are two treatments and one acts as

the control for the other.” As with all randomized con-

trolled experiments, you must estimate the sample size

you need to achieve a statistical signifi cance, which will

help you make sure the result you’re seeing “isn’t just be-

cause of background noise,” Fung says.

Sometimes you know that certain variables, usually

those that are not easily manipulated, have a strong ef-

fect on the success metric. For example, maybe mobile

users of your website tend to click less in general, com-

pared with desktop users. Randomization may result

in set A containing slightly more mobile users than

set B, which may cause set A to have a lower click rate

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regardless of the button size they’re seeing. To level the

playing fi eld, the test analyst should fi rst divide the users

by mobile and desktop and then randomly assign them

to each version. This is called blocking.

The size of the “Subscribe” button is a very basic ex-

ample, Fung says. In actuality, you might not be testing

just size but also color, text, typeface, and font size. Lots

of managers run sequential tests—testing size fi rst (large

versus small), then color (blue versus red), then typeface

(Times versus Arial), and so on—because they believe

they shouldn’t vary two or more factors at the same time.

But according to Fung, that view has been debunked by

statisticians. Sequential tests are in fact suboptimal, be-

cause you’re not measuring what happens when factors

interact. For example, it may be that users prefer blue on

average but prefer red when it’s combined with an Arial

font. This kind of result is regularly missed in sequential

A/B testing because the typeface test is run on blue but-

tons that have “won” the previous test.

Instead, Fung says, you should run more-complex

tests. This can be hard for some managers, since the

appeal of A/B tests is how straightforward and simple

they are to run (and many people designing these ex-

periments, Fung points out, don’t have a statistics back-

ground). “With A/B testing, we tend to want to run a

large number of simultaneous, independent tests,” he

says, in large part because the mind reels at the number

of possible combinations that can be tested. But using

mathematics, you can “smartly pick and run only certain

subsets of those treatments; then you can infer the rest

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from the data.” This is called multivariate testing in the

A/B testing world, and it means you often end up doing

an A/B/C test or even an A/B/C/D test. In the colors and

size example, it might include showing different groups

a large red button, a small red button, a large blue but-

ton, and a small blue button. If you wanted to test fonts

too, you would need even more test groups.

How Do You Interpret the Results

of an A/B Test?

Chances are that your company will use software that

handles the calculations, and it may even employ a stat-

istician who can interpret those results for you. But it’s

helpful to have a basic understanding of how to make

sense of the output and decide whether to move forward

with the test variation (the new button, in the example

Fung describes).

Fung says that most software programs report two

conversion rates for A/B testing: one for users who saw

the control version, and the other for users who saw the

test version. “The conversion rate may measure clicks or

other actions taken by users,” he says. The report might

look like this: “Control: 15% (+/– 2.1%); Variation 18%

(+/– 2.3%).” This means that 18% of your users clicked

through on the new variation (perhaps the larger blue

button) with a margin of error of 2.3%. You might be

tempted to interpret this as the actual conversion rate

falling between 15.7% and 20.3%, but that wouldn’t be

technically correct. “The real interpretation is that if

you ran your A/B test multiple times, 95% of the ranges

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will capture the true conversion rate—in other words,

the conversion rate falls outside the margin of error 5%

of the time (or whatever level of statistical signifi cance

you’ve set),” Fung explains.

This can be a diffi cult concept to wrap your head

around. But what’s important to know is that the 18%

conversion rate isn’t a guarantee. This is where your

judgment comes in. An 18% conversation rate is cer-

tainly better than a 15% one, even allowing for the mar-

gin of error (12.9% to 17.1% versus 15.7% to 20.3%). You

might hear people talk about this as a “3% lift” ( lift is the

percentage difference in conversion rate between your

control version and a successful test treatment). In this

case, it’s most likely a good decision to switch to your

new version, but that will depend on the costs of imple-

menting it. If they’re low, you might try out the switch

and see what happens in actuality (versus in tests). One

of the big advantages to testing in the online world is

that you can usually revert back to your original pretty

easily.

How Do Companies Use A/B Testing?

Fung says that the popularity of the methodology has

risen as companies have realized that the online en-

vironment is well suited to help managers, especially

marketers, answer questions like, “What is most likely

to make people click? Or buy our product? Or register

with our site?” A/B testing is now used to evaluate every-

thing from website design to online offers to headlines

to product descriptions. (See the sidebar “A/B Testing in

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Action” to see an example from the creative marketplace

Shutterstock.)

Most of these experiments run without the subjects

even knowing. As users, Fung says, “we’re part of these

tests all the time and don’t know it.”

And it’s not just websites. You can test marketing

emails or ads as well. For example, you might send two

versions of an email to your customer list (random-

izing the list fi rst, of course) and fi gure out which one

generates more sales. Then you can just send out the

winning version next time. Or you might test two ver-

sions of ad copy and see which one converts visitors

more often. Then you know to spend more getting the

most successful one out there.

A/B TESTING IN ACTION

by Wyatt Jenkins

At Shutterstock, we test everything: copy and link col-

ors, relevance algorithms that rank our search results,

language-detection functions, usability in download-

ing, pricing, video-playback design, and anything else

you can see on our site (plus a lot you can’t).

Shutterstock is the world’s largest creative market-

place, serving photography, illustrations, and video to

more than 750,000 customers. And those customers

( continued)

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A/B TESTING IN ACTION

( continued)

have heavy image needs; we serve over three down-

loads per second. That’s a ton of data.

This means that we know more about our custom-

ers, statistically, than anyone else in our market. It

also means that we can run more experiments with

statistical signifi cance faster than businesses with less

user data. It’s one of our most important competitive

advantages.

Search results are among the highest-traffi

cked

pages on our site. A few years back, we started experi-

menting with a mosaic-display search-results page in

our Labs area—an experimentation platform we use to

try things quickly and get user feedback. In qualitative

testing, customers really liked the design of the mosaic

search grid, so we A/B tested it within the core Shut-

terstock experience.

Here are some of the details of the experiment, and

what we learned:

• Image sizes: We tested diff erent image sizes to

get just the right number of pixels on the screen.

• New customers: We watched to see if new

customers to our site would increase conversion.

New customers act diff erently than existing ones,

so you need to account for that. Sometimes ex-

isting customers suff er from change aversion.

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• Viewport size: We tracked the viewport size

(the size of the screen customers used) to

under stand how they were viewing the page.

• Watermarks: We tested including an image

watermark versus no watermark. Was including

the watermark distracting?

• Hover: We experimented with the behavior of a

hover feature when a user paused on a particu-

lar image.

Before the test, we were convinced that removing

the watermark on our images would increase con-

version because there would be less visual clutter on

the page. But in testing we learned that removing the

water mark created the opposite eff ect, disproving our

gut instinct.

We ran enough tests to fi nd two diff erent designs

that increased conversion, so we iterated on those de-

signs and re-tested them before deciding on one. And

we continue to test this search grid and make improve-

ments for our customers on a regular basis.

Adapted from “A/B Testing and the Benefi ts of an Experimentation Cul-

ture” posted on hbr.org, February 5, 2014 (product #H00NTO).

Wyatt Jenkins is a product executive with a focus on marketplaces,

personalization, optimization, and international growth. He has acted as

SVP of Product at Hired.com and Optimizely, and was VP of Product at

Shutterstock for fi ve years. Wyatt was an early partner in Beatport from

2003 to 2009, and he served on the board until 2013.

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What Mistakes Do People Make When

Doing A/B Tests?

Fung identifi ed three common mistakes he sees compa-

nies make when performing A/B tests.

First, too many managers don’t let the tests run their

course. Because most of the software for running these

tests lets you watch results in real time, managers want

to make decisions too quickly. This mistake, Fung says,

“evolves out of impatience,” and many software vendors

have played into this overeagerness by offering a type of

A/B testing called real-time optimization, in which you

can use algorithms to make adjustments as results come

in. The problem is that, because of randomization, it’s

possible that if you let the test run to its natural end, you

might get a different result.

The second mistake is looking at too many metrics.

“I cringe every time I see software that tries to please

every one by giving you a panel of hundreds of metrics,”

he says. The problem is that if you’re looking at such a

large number of metrics at the same time, you’re at risk

of making what statisticians call spurious correlations (a

topic discussed in more detail in chapter 10). In proper

test design, “you should decide on the metrics you’re

going to look at before you execute an experiment and

select a few. The more you’re measuring, the more likely

that you’re going to see random fl uctuations.” With too

many metrics, instead of asking yourself, “What’s hap-

pening with this variable?” you’re asking, “What in-

teresting (and potentially insignifi cant) changes am I

seeing?”

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Lastly, Fung says, few companies do enough retest-

ing. “We tend to test it once and then we believe it. But

even with a statistically signifi cant result, there’s a quite

large probability of false positive error. Unless you retest

once in a while, you don’t rule out the possibility of be-

ing wrong.” False positives can occur for several reasons.

For example, even though there may be little chance that

any given A/B result is driven by random chance, if you

do lots of A/B tests, the chances that at least one of your

results is wrong grows rapidly.

This can be particularly diffi cult to do because it is

likely that managers would end up with contradictory

results, and no one wants to discover that they’ve under-

mined previous fi ndings, especially in the online world,

where managers want to make changes—and capture

value—quickly. But this focus on value can be misguided.

Fung says, “People are not very vigilant about the practi-

cal value of the fi ndings. They want to believe that every

little amount of improvement is valuable even when the

test results are not fully reliable. In fact, the smaller the

improvement, the less reliable the results.”

It’s clear that A/B testing is not a panacea for all your

data-testing needs. There are more complex kinds of ex-

periments that are more effi cient and will give you more

reliable data, Fung says. But A/B testing is a great way

to gain quick information about a specifi c question you

have, particularly in an online setting. And, as Fung

says, “the good news about the A/B testing world is that

everything happens so quickly, so if you run it and it

doesn’t work, you can try something else. You can always

fl ip back to the old tactic.”

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Gather the Right Information

Amy Gallo is a contributing editor at Harvard Business

Review and the author of the HBR Guide to Dealing with

Confl ict. Follow her on Twitter @amyegallo.

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CHAPTER 8

Can Your Data Be

Trusted?

by Thomas C. Redman

You’ve just learned of some new data that, when com-

bined with existing data, could offer potentially game-

changing

insights. But there isn’t a clear indication

whether this new information can be trusted. How

should you proceed?

There is, of course, no simple answer. While many

managers are skeptical of new data and others embrace

it wholeheartedly, the more thoughtful managers take a

nuanced approach. They know that some data (maybe

even most of it) is bad and can’t be used, and some is

good and should be trusted implicitly. But they also re-

alize that some data is fl awed but usable with caution.

Adapted from content posted on hbr.org, October 29, 2015 (product

#H02G61).

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Gather the Right Information

They fi nd this data intriguing and are eager to push the

data to its limits, as they know game-changing insights

may reside there.

Fortunately, you can work with your data scientists to

assess whether the data you’re considering is safe to use

and just how far you can go with fl awed data. Indeed,

following some basic steps can help you proceed with

greater confi dence—or caution—as the quality of the

data dictates.

Evaluate Where It Came From

You can trust data when it is created in accordance with

a fi rst-rate data quality program. They feature clear ac-

countabilities for managers to create data correctly, in-

put controls, and fi nd and eliminate the root causes of

error. You won’t have to opine whether the data is good—

data quality statistics will tell you. You’ll fi nd an expert

who will be happy to explain what you may expect and

answer your questions. If the data quality stats look good

and the conversation goes well, trust the data. This is the

“gold standard” against which the other steps should be

calibrated.

Assess Data Quality Independently

Much, perhaps most, data will not meet the gold stan-

dard, so adopt a cautious attitude by doing your own

assessment of data quality. Make sure you know where

the data was created and how it is defi ned, not just how

your data scientist accessed it. It is easy to be misled by

a casual, “We took it from our cloud-based data ware-

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Can Your Data Be Trusted?

house, which employs the latest technology,” and com-

pletely miss the fact that the data was created in a dubi-

ous public forum. Figure out which organization created

the data. Then dig deeper: What do colleagues advise

about this organization and data? Does it have a good or

poor reputation for quality? What do others say on social

media? Do some research both inside and outside your

company.

At the same time, develop your own data quality

statistics, using what I call the “Friday afternoon mea-

surement,” tailor-made for this situation. Briefl y, you,

the data scientist providing the analysis, or both of you,

should lay out 10 or 15 important data elements for

100 data records on a spreadsheet. If the new data in-

volves customer purchases, such data elements may in-

clude “customer name,” “purchased item,” and “price.”

Then work record by record, taking a hard look at each

data element. The obvious errors will jump out at you—

customer names will be misspelled, the purchased item

will be a product you don’t sell, or the price may be miss-

ing. Mark these obvious errors with a red pen or high-

light them in a bright color. Then count the number of

records with no errors. (See fi gure 8-1 for an example.) In

many cases you’ll see a lot of red—don’t trust this data!

If you see only a little red, say, less than 5% of records

with an obvious error, you can use this data with caution.

Look, too, at patterns of the errors. If, for instance,

there are 25 total errors, 24 of which occur in the price,

eliminate that data element going forward. But if the

rest of the data looks pretty good, use it with caution.

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Can Your Data Be Trusted?

Clean the Data

I think of data cleaning in three levels: rinse, wash, and

scrub. “Rinse” replaces obvious errors with “missing

value” or corrects them if doing so is very easy; “scrub”

involves deep study, even making corrections one at a

time, by hand, if necessary; and “wash” occupies a mid-

dle ground.

Even if time is short, scrub a small random sample

(say, 1,000 records), making them as pristine as you pos-

sibly can. Your goal is to arrive at a sample of data you

know you can trust. Employ all possible means of scrub-

bing and be ruthless! Eliminate erroneous data records

and data elements that you cannot correct, and mark

data as “uncertain” when applicable.

When you are done, take a hard look. When the

scrubbing has gone really well (and you’ll know if it has),

you’ve created a data set that rates high on the trust-

worthy scale. It’s OK to move forward using this data.

Sometimes the scrubbing is less satisfying. If you’ve

done the best you can, but still feel uncertain, put this

data in the “use with caution” category. If the scrubbing

goes poorly—for example, too many prices just look

wrong and you can’t make corrections—you must rate

this data, and all like it, as untrustworthy. The sample

strongly suggests none of the data should be used to in-

form your decision.

After the initial scrub, move on to the second clean-

ing exercise: washing the remaining data that was not in

the scrubbing sample. This step should be performed by

a truly competent data scientist. Since scrubbing can be

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Gather the Right Information

a time-consuming, manual process, the wash allows you

to make corrections using more automatic processes. For

example, one wash technique involves “imputing” miss-

ing values using statistical means. Or your data scientist

may have discovered algorithms during scrubbing. If the

washing goes well, put this data into the “use with cau-

tion” category.

The fl ow chart in fi gure 8-2 will help you see this pro-

cess in action. Once you’ve identifi ed a set of data that

you can trust or use with caution, move on to the next

step of integration.

Ensure High-Quality Data Integration

Align the data you can trust—or the data that you’re

moving forward with cautiously—with your existing

data. There is a lot of technical work here, so probe your

data scientist to ensure three things are done well:

• Identifi cation: Verify that the Courtney Smith in

one data set is the same Courtney Smith in others.

• Alignment of units of measure and data defi nitions:

Make sure Courtney’s purchases and prices paid,

expressed in “pallets” and “dollars” in one set, are

aligned with “units” and “euros” in another.

• De-duplication: Check that the Courtney Smith

record does not appear multiple times in different

ways (say as C. Smith or Courtney E. Smith).

At this point in the process, you’re ready to perform

whatever analytics (from simple summaries to more

complex analyses) you need to guide your decision. Pay

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Trust

this data

YES

NO

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data with

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Gather the Right Information

particular attention when you get different results based

on “use with caution” and “trusted” data. Both great in-

sights and great traps lie here. When a result looks in-

triguing, isolate the data and repeat the steps above,

making more detailed measurements, scrubbing the

data, and improving wash routines. As you do so, de-

velop a feel for how deeply you should trust this data.

Data doesn’t have to be perfect to yield new insights,

but you must exercise caution by understanding where

the fl aws lie, working around errors, cleaning them up,

and backing off when the data simply isn’t good enough.

Thomas C. Redman, “the Data Doc,” is President of Data

Quality Solutions. He helps companies and people, in-

cluding startups, multinationals, executives, and leaders

at all levels, chart their courses to data-driven futures.

He places special emphasis on quality, analytics, and or-

ganizational capabilities.

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SECTION THREE

Analyze the

Data

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CHAPTER 9

A Predictive

Analytics Primer

by Thomas H. Davenport

No one has the ability to capture and analyze data from

the future. However, there is a way to predict the future

using data from the past. It’s called predictive analytics,

and organizations do it every day.

Has your company, for example, developed a customer

lifetime value (CLTV) measure? That’s using predictive

analytics to determine how much a customer will buy

from the company over time. Do you have a “next best

offer” or product recommendation capability? That’s an

analytical prediction of the product or service that your

customer is most likely to buy next. Have you made a

Adapted from content posted on hbr.org, September 2, 2014 (product

#H00YO1).

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forecast of next quarter’s sales? Used digital marketing

models to determine what ad to place on what publish-

er’s site? All of these are forms of predictive analytics.

Predictive analytics are gaining in popularity, but

what do you really need to know in order to interpret

results and make better decisions? By understanding a

few basics, you will feel more comfortable working with

and communicating with others in your organization

about the results and recommendations from predictive

analytics. The quantitative analysis isn’t magic—but it is

normally done with a lot of past data, a little statistical

wizardry, and some important assumptions.

The Data

Lack of good data is the most common barrier to or-

ganizations seeking to employ predictive analytics. To

make predictions about what customers will buy in

the future, for example, you need to have good data on

what they are buying (which may require a loyalty pro-

gram, or at least a lot of analysis of their credit cards),

what they have bought in the past, the attributes of those

products (attribute-based predictions are often more ac-

curate than the “people who buy this also buy this” type

of model), and perhaps some demographic attributes of

the customer (age, gender, residential location, socioeco-

nomic status, etc.). If you have multiple channels or cus-

tomer touchpoints, you need to make sure that they cap-

ture data on customer purchases in the same way your

previous channels did.

All in all, it’s a fairly tough job to create a single

customer data warehouse with unique customer IDs

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A Predictive Analytics Primer

on everyone, and all past purchases customers have

made through all channels. If you’ve already done that,

you’ve got an incredible asset for predictive customer

analytics.

The Statistics

Regression analysis in its various forms is the primary

tool that organizations use for predictive analytics. It

works like this, in general: An analyst hypothesizes that

a set of independent variables (say, gender, income, vis-

its to a website) are statistically correlated with the pur-

chase of a product for a sample of customers. The analyst

performs a regression analysis to see just how correlated

each variable is; this usually requires some iteration

to fi nd the right combination of variables and the best

model. Let’s say that the analyst succeeds and fi nds that

each variable in the model is important in explaining the

product purchase, and together the variables explain a

lot of variation in the product’s sales. Using that regres-

sion equation, the analyst can then use the regression

coeffi cients—the degree to which each variable affects

the purchase behavior—to create a score predicting the

likelihood of the purchase.

Voilà! You have created a predictive model for other

customers who weren’t in the sample. All you have to do

is compute their score and offer them the product if their

score exceeds a certain level. It’s quite likely that the

high-scoring customers will want to buy the product—

assuming the analyst did the statistical work well and

that the data was of good quality. (For more on regres-

sion analysis, read on to the next chapter.)

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The Assumptions

Another key factor in any predictive model is the as-

sumptions that underlie it. Every model has them,

and it’s important to know what they are and monitor

whether they are still true. The big assumption in pre-

dictive analytics is that the future will continue to be like

the past. As Charles Duhigg describes in his book The

Power of Habit, people establish strong patterns of be-

havior that they usually keep up over time. Sometimes,

however, they change those behaviors, and the models

that were used to predict them may no longer be valid.

What makes assumptions invalid? The most com-

mon reason is time. If your model was created several

years ago, it may no longer accurately predict current

behavior. The greater the elapsed time, the more likely

it is that customer behavior has changed. Some Net-

fl ix predictive models, for example, that were created

on early internet users had to be retired because later

inter net users were substantially different. The pioneers

were more technically focused and relatively young;

later users were essentially everyone.

Another reason a predictive model’s assumptions may

no longer be valid is if the analyst didn’t include a key

variable in the model, and that variable has changed

substantially over time. The great—and scary—example

here is the fi nancial crisis of 2008–2009, caused largely

by invalid models predicting how likely mortgage cus-

tomers were to repay their loans. The models didn’t in-

clude the possibility that housing prices might stop ris-

ing, and that they even might fall. When they did start

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A Predictive Analytics Primer

falling, it turned out that the models were poor predic-

tors of mortgage repayment. In essence, the belief that

housing prices would always rise was a hidden assump-

tion in the models.

Since faulty or obsolete assumptions can clearly bring

down whole banks and even (nearly!) whole economies,

it’s pretty important that they be carefully examined.

Managers should always ask analysts what the key as-

sumptions are, and what would have to happen for them

to no longer be valid. And both managers and analysts

should continually monitor the world to see if key factors

involved in assumptions have changed over time.

With these fundamentals in mind, here are a few good

questions to ask your analysts:

• Can you tell me something about the source of the

data you used in your analysis?

• Are you sure the sample data is representative of

the population?

• Are there any outliers in your data distribution?

How did they affect the results?

• What assumptions are behind your analysis?

• Are there any conditions that would make your

assumptions invalid?

Even with those cautions, it’s still pretty amazing that

we can use analytics to predict the future. All we have to

do is gather the right data, do the right type of statisti-

cal model, and be careful of our assumptions. Analytical

predictions may be harder to generate than those by the

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Analyze the Data

late-night television soothsayer Carnac the Magnifi cent,

but they are usually considerably more accurate.

Thomas H. Davenport

is the President’s Distinguished

Professor in Management and Information Technology

at Babson College, a research fellow at the MIT Initiative

on the Digital Economy, and a senior adviser at Deloitte

Analytics. Author of over a dozen management books,

his latest is Only Humans Need Apply: Winners and

Losers in the Age of Smart Machines.

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CHAPTER 10

Understanding

Regression

Analysis

by Amy Gallo

One of the most important types of data analysis is re-

gression. It is a common approach used to draw conclu-

sions from and make predictions based on data, but for

those without a statistical or analytical background, it

can also be complex and confusing.

To better understand this method and how compa-

nies use it, I talked with Thomas Redman, author of

Data Driven: Profi ting from Your Most Important Busi-

ness Asset. He also advises organizations on their data

and data quality programs.

Adapted from “A Refresher on Regression Analysis” on hbr.org, No-

vember 4, 2015 (product #H02GBP).

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What Is Regression Analysis?

Redman offers this example scenario: Suppose you’re a

sales manager trying to predict next month’s numbers.

You know that dozens, perhaps even hundreds, of fac-

tors from the weather to a competitor’s promotion to

the rumor of a new and improved model can impact

the number. Perhaps people in your organization even

have a theory about what will have the biggest effect on

sales. “Trust me. The more rain we have, the more we

sell.” “Six weeks after the competitor’s promotion, sales

jump.”

Regression analysis is a way of mathematically sorting

out which of those variables do indeed have an impact.

It answers the questions: Which factors matter most?

Which can we ignore? How do those factors interact

with one another? And, perhaps most importantly, how

certain are we about all of these factors?

In regression analysis, those factors are called vari-

ables. You have your dependent variable—the main fac-

tor that you’re trying to understand or predict. In Red-

man’s example above, the dependent variable is monthly

sales. And then you have your independent variables—

the factors you suspect have an impact on your depen-

dent variable.

How Does It Work?

In order to conduct a regression analysis, you gather data

on the variables in question. You take all of your monthly

sales numbers for, say, the past three years and any data

on the independent variables you’re interested in. So, in

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Understanding Regression Analysis

this case, let’s say you fi nd out the average monthly rain-

fall for the past three years as well. Then you plot all of

that information on a chart that looks like fi gure 10-1.

The y-axis is the amount of sales (the dependent vari-

able, the thing you’re interested in, is always on the y-

axis) and the x-axis is the total rainfall. Each dot repre-

sents one month’s data—how much it rained that month

and how many sales you made that same month.

Glancing at this data, you probably notice that sales

are higher on days when it rains a lot. That’s interesting

to know, but by how much? If it rains three inches, do

you know how much you’ll sell? What about if it rains

four inches?

FIGURE 10-1

Is there a relationship between these two variables?

Plotting your data is the fi rst step to fi guring that out.

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FIGURE 10-2

Building a regression model

The line summarizes the relationship between x and y.

Now imagine drawing a line through the chart, one

that runs roughly through the middle of all the data

points, as shown in fi gure 10-2. This line will help you

answer, with some degree of certainty, how much you

typically sell when it rains a certain amount.

This is called the regression line and it’s drawn (using

a statistics program like SPSS or STATA or even Excel)

to show the line that best fi ts the data. In other words,

explains Redman, “The line is the best explanation of the

relationship between the independent variable and de-

pendent variable.”

In addition to drawing the line, your statistics pro-

gram also outputs a formula that explains the slope of

the line and looks something like this:

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Understanding Regression Analysis

y = 200 + 5 x + error term

Ignore the error term for now. It refers to the fact

that regression isn’t perfectly precise. Just focus on the

model:

y = 200 + 5 x

What this formula is telling you is that if there is no x

then y = 200. So, historically, when it didn’t rain at all,

you made an average of 200 sales and you can expect

to do the same going forward assuming other variables

stay the same. And in the past, for every additional inch

of rain, you made an average of fi ve more sales. “For ev-

ery increment that x goes up one, y goes up by fi ve,” says

Redman.

Now let’s return to the error term. You might be

tempted to say that rain has a big impact on sales if for

every inch you get fi ve more sales, but whether this vari-

able is worth your attention will depend on the error

term. A regression line always has an error term because,

in real life, independent variables are never perfect pre-

dictors of the dependent variables. Rather, the line is an

estimate based on the available data. So the error term

tells you how certain you can be about the formula. The

larger it is, the less certain the regression line.

This example uses only one variable to predict the fac-

tor of interest—in this case, rain to predict sales. Typi-

cally, you start a regression analysis wanting to under-

stand the impact of several independent variables. So

you might include not just rain but also data about a

competitor’s promotion. “You keep doing this until the

error term is very small,” says Redman. “You’re trying to

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get the line that fi ts best with your data.” While there can

be dangers in trying to include too many variables in a

regression analysis, skilled analysts can minimize those

risks. And considering the impact of multiple variables

at once is one of the biggest advantages of regression.

How Do Companies Use It?

Regression analysis is the “go-to method in analytics,”

says Redman. And smart companies use it to make deci-

sions about all sorts of business issues. “As managers, we

want to fi gure out how we can impact sales or employee

retention or recruiting the best people. It helps us fi gure

out what we can do.”

Most companies use regression analysis to explain

a phenomenon they want to understand (why did cus-

tomer service calls drop last month?); to predict things

about the future (what will sales look like over the next

six months?); or to decide what to do (should we go with

this promotion or a different one?).

Does Correlation Imply Causation?

Whenever you work with regression analysis or any other

analysis that tries to explain the impact of one factor on

another, you need to remember the important adage:

Correlation is not causation. This is critical and here’s

why: It’s easy to say that there is a correlation between

rain and monthly sales. The regression shows that they

are indeed related. But it’s an entirely different thing to

say that rain caused the sales. Unless you’re selling um-

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Understanding Regression Analysis

brellas, it might be diffi cult to prove that there is cause

and effect.

Sometimes factors are correlated that are obviously

not connected by cause and effect, but more often in

business it’s not so obvious (see the sidebar, “Beware

Spurious Correlations,” at the end of this chapter). When

you see a correlation from a regression analysis, you can’t

make assumptions, says Redman. Instead, “You have to

go out and see what’s happening in the real world. What’s

the physical mechanism that’s causing the relationship?”

Go out and observe consumers buying your product in

the rain, talk to them, and fi nd out what is actually caus-

ing them to make the purchase. “A lot of people skip this

step and I think it’s because they’re lazy. The goal is not

to fi gure out what is going on in the data but to fi gure

out what is going on in the world. You have to go out and

pound the pavement,” he says.

Redman once ran his own experiment and analysis in

order to better understand the connection between his

travel and weight gain. He noticed that when he trav-

eled, he ate more and exercised less. Was his weight gain

caused by travel? Not necessarily. “It was nice to quan-

tify what was happening but travel isn’t the cause. It may

be related,” he says, but it’s not like his being on the road

put those extra pounds on. He had to understand more

about what was happening during his trips. “I’m often

in new environments so maybe I’m eating more because

I’m nervous.” He needed to look more closely at the cor-

relation. And this is his advice to managers. Use the data

to guide more experiments, not to make conclusions

about cause and effect.

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What Mistakes Do People Make When

Working with Regression Analysis?

As a consumer of regression analysis, there are several

things you need to keep in mind.

First, don’t tell your data analyst to go fi gure out what

is affecting sales. “The way most analyses go haywire is

the manager hasn’t narrowed the focus on what he or

she is looking for,” says Redman. It’s your job to identify

the factors that you suspect are having an impact and

ask your analyst to look at those. “If you tell a data scien-

tist to go on a fi shing expedition, or to tell you something

you don’t know, then you deserve what you get, which

is bad analysis,” he says. In other words, don’t ask your

analysts to look at every variable they can possibly get

their hands on all at once. If you do, you’re likely to fi nd

relationships that don’t really exist. It’s the same princi-

ple as fl ipping a coin: Do it enough times, you’ll eventu-

ally think you see something interesting, like a bunch of

heads all in a row. (For more on how to communicate

your data needs to experts, see chapter 4.)

Also keep in mind whether or not you can do anything

about the independent variable you’re considering. You

can’t change how much it rains, so how important is it to

understand that? “We can’t do anything about weather

or our competitor’s promotion but we can affect our own

promotions or add features, for example,” says Redman.

Always ask yourself what you will do with the data. What

actions will you take? What decisions will you make?

Second, “analyses are very sensitive to bad data” so

be careful about the data you collect and how you col-

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Understanding Regression Analysis

lect it, and know whether you can trust it (as we learned

in chapter 8). “All the data doesn’t have to be correct or

perfect,” explains Redman, but consider what you will be

doing with the analysis. If the decisions you’ll make as a

result don’t have a huge impact on your business, then

it’s OK if the data is “kind of leaky.” But, “if you’re try-

ing to decide whether to build 8 or 10 of something and

each one costs $1 million to build, then it’s a bigger deal,”

he says.

Redman also says that some managers who are new

to understanding regression analysis make the mistake

of ignoring the error term. This is dangerous because

they’re making the relationship between two variables

more certain than it is. “Oftentimes the results spit out

of a computer and managers think, ‘That’s great, let’s use

this going forward.’” But remember that the results are

always uncertain. As Redman points out, “If the regres-

sion explains 90% of the relationship, that’s great. But

if it explains 10%, and you act like it’s 90%, that’s not

good.” The point of the analysis is to quantify the cer-

tainty that something will happen. “It’s not telling you

how rain will infl uence your sales, but it’s telling you the

probability that rain may infl uence your sales.”

The last mistake that Redman warns against is letting

data replace your intuition. “You always have to lay your

intuition on top of the data,” he explains. Ask yourself

whether the results fi t with your understanding of the

situation. And if you see something that doesn’t make

sense, ask whether the data was right or whether there

is indeed a large error term. Redman suggests you look

to more experienced managers or other analyses if you’re

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getting something that doesn’t make sense. And, he says,

never forget to look beyond the numbers to what’s hap-

pening outside your offi ce: “You need to pair any analy-

sis with study of the real world. The best scientists—and

managers—look at both.”

Amy Gallo is a contributing editor at Harvard Business

Review and the author of the HBR Guide to Dealing with

Confl ict. Follow her on Twitter @amyegallo.

BEWARE SPURIOUS CORRELATIONS

We all know the truism “Correlation doesn’t imply cau-

sation,” but when we see lines sloping together, bars

rising together, or points on a scatterplot clustering,

the data practically begs us to assign a reason. We

want to believe one exists.

Statistically we can’t make that leap, however.

Charts that show a close correlation are often relying

on a visual parlor trick to imply a relationship. Tyler Vi-

gen, a JD student at Harvard Law School and the au-

thor of Spurious Correlations, has made sport of this

on his website, which charts farcical correlations—for

example, between U.S. per capita margarine con-

sumption and the divorce rate in Maine.

Vigen has programmed his site so that anyone can

find and chart absurd correlations in large data sets.

We tried a few of our own and came up with these

gems:

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Understanding Regression Analysis

More iPhones means more people die from

falling down stairs

40M

2,000

Deaths caused

30

1,975

by falls down

stairs (U.S.)

20

1,950

10

1,925

iPhone

sales

0

1,900

2007

2008

2009

2010

Let’s cheer on the team, and we’ll lose weight

$22B

70 LBS

20

Per capita consumption

65

of high-fructose

18

corn syrup (U.S.)

16

60

14

55

12

Spending on admission

to spectator sports (U.S.)

10

50

,

,

,

,

,

,

,

,

,

2000

01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09

Source: Tylervigen.com

( continued)

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BEWARE SPURIOUS CORRELATIONS

( continued)

To increase auto sales, market trips to

Universal Orlando

8M

6M

Visitors to Universal

Orlando’s “Islands

7

of Adventure”

5

6

Sales of new

cars (U.S.)

5

4

2007

2008

2009

Source: Tylervigen.com

Although it’s easy to spot and explain away absurd ex-

amples, like these, you’re likely to encounter rigged

but plausible charts in your daily work. Here are three

types to watch out for:

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Understanding Regression Analysis

Apples and Oranges: Comparing

Dissimilar Variables

Y axis scales that measure different values may show

similar curves that shouldn’t be paired. This becomes

pernicious when the values appear to be related but

aren’t.

80M

$800M

70

600

eBay total gross

60

merchandise volume

Total “Black Friday”

400

50

online revenue

40

200

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

2013

It’s best to chart them separately.

eBay total gross

Total “Black Friday”

merchandise volume

online revenue

80M

$800M

60

600

40

400

20

200

0

0

,

,

,

,

,

,

,

,

,

,

2008 09

10

11

12

13

2008 09

10

11

12

13

( continued)

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BEWARE SPURIOUS CORRELATIONS

( continued)

Skewed Scales: Manipulating Ranges to Align Data

Even when y axes measure the same category, chang-

ing the scales can alter the lines to suggest a correla-

tion. These y axes for RetailCo’s monthly revenue dif-

ference in range and proportional increase.

$500K

$35K

400

30

300

25

Customers

Customers

200

under 40

over 40

20

100

15

0

10

J

F

M

A

M

J

J

A

S

O

N

D

Eliminating the second axis shows how skewed this

chart is.

$500K

400

300

Customers

200

under 40

100

Customers over 40

0

J

F

M

A

M

J

J

A

S

O

N

D

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Understanding Regression Analysis

Ifs and Thens: Implying Cause and Effect

Plotting unrelated data sets together can make it seem

that changes in one variable are causing changes in the

other.

$30M

140M

124

25

Musical works

copyrighted (U.S.)

108

20

92

Pandora

15

net losses

76

10

60

2006

2007

2008

2009

We try to create a narrative— if Pandora loses less

money, then more music is copyrighted—from what is

probably a coincidence.

Pandora net losses

Musical works copyrighted (U.S.)

0

2006 2007 2008 2009

150M

–$10M

100

–20

50

–30

0

2006 2007 2008 2009

Adapted from “Beware Spurious Correlations,” Harvard Business Re-

view, June 2015 (product #F1506Z).

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CHAPTER 11

When to Act On a

Correlation, and

When Not To

by David Ritter

“Petabytes allow us to say: ‘Correlation is enough.’”

— Chris Anderson,

Wired, June 23, 2008

The sentiment expressed by Chris Anderson in 2008 is

a popular meme in the big data community. “Causality is

dead,” say the priests of analytics and machine learning.

They argue that given enough statistical evidence, it’s no

long er necessary to understand why things happen—we

need only know what things happen together.

Adapted from content posted on hbr.org, March 19, 2014 (product

#H00Q1X).

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But inquiring whether correlation is enough is asking

the wrong question. For consumers of big data, the key

question is, “Can I take action on the basis of a corre-

lation fi nding?” The answer to that question is, “It de-

pends”—primarily on two factors:

• Confi dence that the correlation will reliably recur

in the future. The higher that confi dence level, the

more reasonable it is to take action in response.

• The trade-off between the risk and reward of

acting. If the risk of acting and being wrong is ex-

tremely high, for example, acting on even a strong

correlation may be a mistake.

The fi rst factor—the confi dence that the correlation

will recur—is in turn a function of two things: the fre-

quency with which the correlation has historically oc-

curred (the more often events occur together in real

life, the more likely it is that they are connected) and an

under standing of what is causing that statistical fi nding.

This second element—what we call “clarity of causal-

ity”—stems from the fact that the fewer possible explana-

tions there are for a correlation, the higher the likelihood

that the two events are linked. Considering frequency

and clarity together yields a more reliable gauge of the

overall confi dence in the fi nding than evaluating only

one or the other in isolation.

Understanding the interplay between the confi dence

level and the risk/reward trade-off enables sound deci-

sions on what action—if any—makes sense in light of a

particular statistical fi nding. The bottom line: Causal-

ity can matter tremendously. And efforts to gain better

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When to Act On a Correlation, and When Not To

insight into the cause of a correlation can drive up the

confi dence level of taking action.

These concepts allowed The Boston Consulting Group

(BCG) to develop a prism through which any potential

action can be evaluated. If the value of acting is high, and

the cost of acting when wrong is low, it can make sense to

act based on even a weak correlation. We choose to look

both ways before crossing the street because the cost of

looking is low and the potential loss from not looking is

high (in statistical jargon what is known as “asymmet-

ric loss function”). Alternatively, if the confi dence in the

fi nding is low due to the fact you don’t have a handle on

why two events are linked, you should be less willing to

take actions that have signifi cant potential downside,

illustrated in fi gure 11-1.

FIGURE 11-1

When to act on a correlation in your data

How confi dent are you in the relationship? And do the benefi ts of

action outweigh the risk?

Frequent

correlation;

clear causal

hypothesis

Act

Frequent

correlation;

but many

causal

hypotheses

Don’t act

Infrequent,

unstable

Confidence in the relationship

correlation

Risks outweigh

Benefits

benefits

outweigh risk

Benefits of action relative to cost of being wrong

Source: David Ritter, BCG

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Consider the case of New York City’s sewer sensors.

These sensors detect the amount of grease fl owing into

the sewer system at various locations throughout the city.

If the data collected shows a concentration of grease at

an unexpected location—perhaps due to an unlicensed

restaurant—offi cials will send a car out to determine the

source. The confi dence in the meaning of the data from

the sensors is on the low side—there may be many other

explanations for the excessive infl ux of grease. But there’s

little cost if the inspection fi nds nothing amiss.

Recent decisions around routine PSA screening tests

for prostate cancer involved a very different risk/reward

trade-off. Confi dence that PSA blood tests are a good

predictor of cancer is low because the correlation itself is

weak—elevated PSA levels are found often in men without

prostate cancer. There is also no clear causal explanation

for how PSA is related to the development of cancer. In ad-

dition, preventative surgery prompted by the test did not

increase long-term survival rates. And the risk associated

with screening was high, with false positives leading to un-

necessary, debilitating treatment. The result: The Ameri-

can Medical Association reversed its previous recommen-

dation that men over 50 have routine PSA blood tests.

Of course, there is usually not just one, but a range

of possible actions in response to a statistical fi nding.

This came into play recently in a partnership between an

Australian supermarket and an auto insurance company.

Combining data from the supermarket’s loyalty card pro-

gram with auto claims information revealed interesting

correlations. The data showed that people who buy red

meat and milk are good car insurance risks while peo-

ple who buy pasta and spirits and who fuel their cars at

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When to Act On a Correlation, and When Not To

night are poor risks. Though this statistical relationship

could be an indicator of risky behaviors (driving under

the infl uence of spirits, for example), there are a number

of other possible reasons for the fi nding.

Potential responses to the fi nding included:

• Targeting insurance marketing to loyalty card

holders in the low-risk group

• Pricing car insurance based on these buying

patterns

The latter approach, however, could lead to brand-

damaging backlash should the practice be exposed.

Looking at the two options via our framework in fi g-

ure 11-2 makes clear that without additional confi dence

in the fi nding, the former approach is preferable.

FIGURE 11-2

If supermarket purchases correlate with auto

insurance claims, what should an insurer do?

With the case of relationship unclear, low risk actions are advisible.

Frequent

correlation;

clear causal

hypothesis

Act

Frequent

Targeting insurance

Don’t act

correlation;

marketing based

Pricing car

but many

on buying patterns

insurance based

causal

on buying patterns

hypotheses

Infrequent,

Confidence in the relationship

unstable

correlation

Risks outweigh

Benefits

benefits

outweigh risk

Benefits of action relative to cost of being wrong

Source: David Ritter, BCG

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Analyze the Data

However, if we are able to fi nd a clear causal expla-

nation for this correlation, we may be able to increase

confi dence suffi ciently to take the riskier, higher-value

action of increasing rates. For example, the buying pat-

terns associated with higher risks could be leading indi-

cators of an impending life transition such as loss of em-

ployment or a divorce. This possible explanation could

be tested by adding additional data to the analysis.

In this case causality is critical. New factors can po-

tentially be identifi ed that create a better understanding

of the dynamics at work. The goal is to rule out some pos-

sible causes and shed light on what is really driving that

correlation. That understanding will increase the overall

level of confi dence that the correlation will continue in

the future—essentially shifting possible actions into the

upper portion of the framework. The result may be that

previously ruled-out responses are now appropriate. In

addition, insight on the cause of a correlation can allow

you to look for changes that cause the linkage to weaken

or disappear. And that knowledge makes it possible to

monitor and respond to events that might make a previ-

ously sound response outdated.

There is no shortage of examples where the selection

of the right response hinges on this “clarity of cause.” The

U.S. Army, for example, has developed image process-

ing software that uses fl ashes of light to locate the pos-

sible position of a sniper. But similar fl ashes also come

from a camera. With two potential reasons for the imag-

ing pattern, the confi dence in the fi nding is lower than

it would be if there were just one. And that, of course,

will determine how to respond—and what level of risk is

acceptable.

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When to Act On a Correlation, and When Not To

When working with big data, sometimes correlation

is enough. But other times understanding the cause is vi-

tal. The key is to know when correlation is enough—and

what to do when it is not.

David Ritter is a director in the Technology Advantage

practice of The Boston Consulting Group (BCG), where

he advises clients on the use of technology for competi-

tive advantage, open innovation, and other topics.

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CHAPTER 12

Can Machine

Learning Solve

Your Business

Problem?

by Anastassia Fedyk

As you consider ways to analyze large swaths of data, you

may ask yourself how the latest technological tools and

automation can help. AI, big data, and machine learn-

ing are all trending buzzwords, but how can you know

which problems in your business are amenable to ma-

chine learning?

Adapted from “How to Tell If Machine Learning Can Solve Your Busi-

ness Problem” on hbr.org, November 25, 2016 (product #H03A8R).

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To decide, you need to think about the problem to be

solved and the available data, and ask questions about

feasibility, intuition, and expectations.

Assess Whether Your Problem

Requires Learning

Machine learning can help automate your processes, but

not all automation problems require learning.

Automation without learning is appropriate when the

problem is relatively straightforward—the kinds of tasks

where you have a clear, predefi ned sequence of steps that

is currently being executed by a human, but could con-

ceivably be transitioned to a machine. This sort of au-

tomation has been happening in businesses for decades.

Screening incoming data from an outside data provider

for well-defi ned potential errors is an example of a prob-

lem ready for automation. (For example, hedge funds

automatically fi lter out bad data in the form of a negative

value for trading volume, which can’t be negative.) On

the other hand, encoding human language into a struc-

tured data set is something that is just a tad too ambi-

tious for a straightforward set of rules.

For the second type of problem, standard automation

is not enough. Such complex problems require learning

from data—and now we venture into the arena of ma-

chine learning. Machine learning, at its core, is a set of

statistical methods meant to fi nd patterns of predictabil-

ity in data sets. These methods are great at determining

how certain features of the data are related to the out-

comes you are interested in. What these methods cannot

do is access any knowledge outside of the data you pro-

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Can Machine Learning Solve Your Business Problem?

vide. For example, researchers at the University of Pitts-

burg in the late 1990s evaluated machine-learning algo-

rithms for predicting mortality rates from pneumonia.1

The algorithms recommended that hospitals send home

pneumonia patients who were also asthma sufferers, es-

timating their risk of death from pneumonia to be lower.

It turned out that the data set fed into the algorithms did

not account for the fact that asthma sufferers had been

immediately sent to intensive care, and had fared better

only because of the additional attention.2

So what are good business problems for machine

learning methods? Essentially, any problems that meet

the following two criteria:

1. They require prediction rather than causal

inference.

2. They are suffi ciently self-contained or relatively

insulated from outside infl uences.

The fi rst means that you are interested in understand-

ing how, on average, certain aspects of the data relate to

each other, and not in the causal channels of their rela-

tionship. (Keep in mind that the statistical methods do

not bring to the table the intuition, theory, or domain

knowledge of human analysts.) The second means that

you are relatively certain that the data you feed to your

learning algorithm includes more or less all there is to

the problem. If, in the future, the thing you’re trying to

predict changes unexpectedly and no longer matches

prior patterns in the data, the algorithm will not know

what to make of it.

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Examples of good machine learning problems include

predicting the likelihood that a certain type of user will

click on a certain kind of ad, or evaluating the extent to

which a piece of text is similar to previous texts you have

seen. (To see an example of how an artifi cial intelligence

algorithm learned from existing customer data and test

marketing campaigns to fi nd new sales leads, see the

sidebar “Artifi cial Intelligence at Harley-Davidson.”)

Bad examples include predicting profi ts from the in-

troduction of a completely new and revolutionary prod-

uct line, or extrapolating next year’s sales from past data

when an important new competitor just entered the

market.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AT HARLEY-DAVIDSON

by Brad Power

It was winter in New York City, and Asaf Jacobi’s

Harley-Davidson dealership was selling one or two

motor cycles a week. It wasn’t enough.

Jacobi went for a long walk in Riverside Park and

happened to bump into Or Shani, CEO of an AI fi rm,

Adgorithms. After discussing Jacobi’s sales woes,

Shani suggested he try out Albert, Adgorithm’s AI-

driven marketing platform. It works across digital

channels, like Facebook and Google, to measure and

then autonomously optimize the outcomes of market-

ing campaigns. Jacobi decided he’d give Albert a one-

weekend audition.

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Can Machine Learning Solve Your Business Problem?

That weekend, Jacobi sold 15 motorcycles—almost

twice his all-time summer weekend sales record of

eight.

Naturally, Jacobi kept using Albert. His dealership

went from getting one qualifi ed lead per day to 40. In

the fi rst month, 15% of those new leads were looka-

likes, meaning that the people calling the dealership

to set up a visit resembled previous high-value cus-

tomers and therefore were more likely to make a pur-

chase. By the third month, the dealership’s leads had

increased 2,930%, 50% of them lookalikes, leaving

Jacobi scrambling to set up a new call center with six

new employees to handle all the new business.

While Jacobi had estimated that only 2% of New

York City’s population were potential buyers, Albert

revealed that his target market was larger—much

larger—and began fi nding customers Jacobi didn’t

even know existed.

How did it do that?

Albert drove in-store traffi

c by generating leads, de-

fi ned as customers who express interest in speaking to

a salesperson by fi lling out a form on the dealership’s

website. Armed with creative content (headlines and

visuals) provided by Harley-Davidson and key perfor-

mance targets, Albert began by analyzing existing cus-

tomer data from Jacobi’s customer relationship man-

agement system to isolate defi ning characteristics and

( continued)

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ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AT HARLEY-DAVIDSON

( continued)

behaviors of high-value past customers: those who ei-

ther had completed a purchase, added an item to an

online cart, viewed website content, or were among

the top 25% in terms of time spent on the website.

Using this information, Albert identifi ed lookalikes

who resembled these past customers and created

micro segments—small sample groups with whom it

could run test campaigns before extending its eff orts

more widely. Albert used the data gathered through

these tests to predict which possible headlines and vi-

sual combinations, and thousands of other campaign

variables, would most likely convert diff erent audience

segments through various digital channels (social me-

dia, search, display, and email or SMS).

Once it determined what was working and what

wasn’t, Albert scaled the campaigns, autonomously

allocating resources from channel to channel, making

content recommendations, and so on.

For example, when it discovered that ads with the

word call—such as, “Don’t miss out on a pre-owned

Harley with a great price! Call now!”—performed 447%

better than ads containing the word buy, such as, “Buy

a pre-owned Harley from our store now!” Albert imme-

diately changed buy to call in all ads across all relevant

channels. The results spoke for themselves.

For Harley-Davidson, AI evaluated what was work-

ing across digital channels and what wasn’t, and used

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Can Machine Learning Solve Your Business Problem?

what it learned to create more opportunities for con-

version. In other words, the system allocated resources

only to what had been proven to work, thereby increas-

ing digital marketing ROI. Using AI, Harley- Davidson

was able to eliminate guesswork, gather and analyze

enormous volumes of data, and optimally lever age the

resulting insights.

Adapted from “How Harley-Davidson Used Artifi cial Intelligence to In-

crease New York Sales Leads by 2,930%” on hbr.org, May 30, 2017

(product #H03NFD).

Brad Power is a consultant who helps organizations that must make

faster changes to their products, services, and systems to compete with

startups and leading software companies.

Find the Appropriate Data

Once you verify that your problem is suitable for ma-

chine learning, the next step is to evaluate whether you

have the right data to solve it. The data might come from

you or from an external provider. In the latter case, ask

enough questions to get a good feel for the data’s scope

and whether it is likely to be a good fi t for your problem.

Ask Questions and Look for Mistakes

Once you’ve determined that your problem is a clas-

sic machine learning problem and you have the data to

fi t it, check your intuition. Machine learning methods,

however proprietary and seemingly magical, are statis-

tics. And statistics can be explained in intuitive terms.

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Instead of trusting that the brilliant proposed method

will seamlessly work, ask lots of questions.

Get yourself comfortable with how the method works.

Does the intuition of the method roughly make sense?

Does it fi t conceptually into the framework of the par-

ticular setting or problem you are dealing with? What

makes this method especially well-suited to your prob-

lem? If you are encoding a set of steps, perhaps sequen-

tial models or decision trees are a good choice. If you

need to separate two classes of outcome, perhaps a bi-

nary support vector machine would be best aligned with

your needs.

With understanding come more realistic expectations.

Once you ask enough questions and receive enough an-

swers to have an intuitive understanding of how the

methodology works, you will see that it is far from magi-

cal. Every human makes mistakes, and every algorithm

is error prone too. For all but the simplest of problems,

there will be times when things go wrong. The machine

learning prediction engine will get things right on aver-

age but will reliably make mistakes. And these errors will

happen most often in ways that you cannot anticipate.

Decide How to Move Forward

The last step is to evaluate the extent to which you can

allow for exceptions or statistical errors in your pro-

cess. Is your problem the kind where getting things

right 80% of the time is enough? Can you deal with a

10% error rate? 5%? 1%? Are there certain kinds of er-

rors that should never be allowed? Be clear and upfront

about your needs and expectations, both with yourself

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Can Machine Learning Solve Your Business Problem?

and with your solution provider. And once both of you

are comfortably on the same page, go ahead. Armed with

knowledge, understanding, and reasonable expectations,

you are set to reap the benefi ts of machine learning. Just

please be patient.

Anastassia Fedyk is a PhD candidate in business eco-

nomics at Harvard Business School. Her research fo-

cuses on fi nance and behavioral economics.

NOTES

1. G. F. Cooper et al., “An Evaluation of Machine-Learning Meth-

ods for Predicting Pneumonia Mortality,” Artifi cial Intelligence in

Medicine 9 (1997): 107–138.

2. A. M. Bornstein, “Is Artifi cial Intelligence Permanently In-

scrutable?” Nautilus, September 1, 2016, http://nautil.us/issue/40/

learning/is-artifi cial-intelligence-permanently-inscrutable.

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CHAPTER 13

A Refresher

on Statistical

Signifi cance

by Amy Gallo

When you run an experiment or analyze data, you want

to know if your fi ndings are signifi cant. But business rel-

evance (that is, practical signifi cance) isn’t always the

same thing as confi dence that a result isn’t due purely to

chance (that is, statistical signifi cance). This is an impor-

tant distinction; unfortunately, statistical signifi cance

is often misunderstood and misused in organizations to-

day. And because more and more companies are relying

on data to make critical business decisions, it’s an essen-

tial concept for managers to understand.

Adapted from content posted on hbr.org, February 16, 2016 (product

#H02NMS).

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To better understand what statistical signifi cance re-

ally means, I talked with Thomas Redman, author of

Data Driven: Profi ting from Your Most Important Busi-

ness Asset, and adviser to organizations on their data and

data quality programs.

What Is Statistical Signifi cance?

“Statistical signifi cance helps quantify whether a result

is likely due to chance or to some factor of interest,” says

Redman. When a fi nding is signifi cant, it simply means

you can feel confi dent that it’s real, not that you just got

lucky (or unlucky) in choosing the sample.

When you run an experiment, conduct a survey, take

a poll, or analyze a data set, you’re taking a sample of

some population of interest, not looking at every single

data point that you possibly can. Consider the example

of a marketing campaign. You’ve come up with a new

concept and you want to see if it works better than your

current one. You can’t show it to every single target cus-

tomer, of course, so you choose a sample group.

When you run the results, you fi nd that those who saw

the new campaign spent $10.17 on average, more than

the $8.41 spent by those who saw the old campaign. This

$1.76 might seem like a big—and perhaps important—

difference. But in reality you may have been unlucky,

drawing a sample of people who do not represent the

larger population; in fact, maybe there was no difference

between the two campaigns and their infl uence on con-

sumers’ purchasing behaviors. This is called a sampling

error, something you must contend with in any test that

does not include the entire population of interest.

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Redman notes that there are two main contributors to

sampling error: the size of the sample and the variation

in the underlying population. Sample size may be intui-

tive enough. Think about fl ipping a coin 5 times versus

fl ipping it 500 times. The more times you fl ip, the less

likely you’ll end up with a great majority of heads. The

same is true of statistical signifi cance: With bigger sam-

ple sizes, you’re less likely to get results that refl ect ran-

domness. All else being equal, you’ll feel more comfort-

able in the accuracy of the campaigns’ $1.76 difference

if you showed the new one to 1,000 people rather than

just 25. Of course, showing the campaign to more people

costs more money, so you have to balance the need for a

larger sample size with your budget.

Variation is a little trickier to understand, but Red-

man insists that developing a sense for it is critical for

all managers who use data. Consider the images in fi g-

ure 13-1. Each expresses a different possible distribution

of customer purchases under campaign A. Looking at the

chart on the left (with less variation), most people spend

roughly the same amount. Some people spend a few dol-

lars more or less, but if you pick a customer at random,

chances are pretty good that they’ll be close to the aver-

age. So it’s less likely that you’ll select a sample that looks

vastly different from the total population, which means

you can be relatively confi dent in your results.

Compare that with the chart on the right (with more

variation). Here, people vary more widely in how much

they spend. The average is still the same, but quite a few

people spend more or less. If you pick a customer at ran-

dom, chances are higher that they are pretty far from

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FIGURE 13-1

Population variation

Lesser variation

Greater variation

Number of

Number of

Number of

customers

Number of

customers

customers

customers

Spend amount

Spend amount

Source: Thomas C. Redman

the average. So if you select a sample from a more varied

population, you can’t be as confi dent in your results.

To summarize, the important thing to understand is

that the greater the variation in the underlying popula-

tion, the larger the sampling error.

Redman advises that you should plot your data and

make pictures like these when you analyze the numbers.

The graphs will help you get a feel for variation, the sam-

pling error, and in turn, the statistical signifi cance.

No matter what you’re studying, the process for evalu-

ating signifi cance is the same. You start by stating a null

hypothesis. In the experiment about the marketing cam-

paign, the null hypothesis might be, “On average, cus-

tomers don’t prefer our new campaign to the old one.”

Before you begin, you should also state an alternative

hypothesis, such as, “On average, customers prefer the

new one,” and a target signifi cance level. The signifi cance

level is an expression of how rare your results are, un-

der the assumption that the null hypothesis is true. It is

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A Refresher on Statistical Signifi cance

usually expressed as a p-value, and the lower the p-value,

the less likely the results are due purely to chance.

Setting a target and interpreting p-values can be

dauntingly complex. Redman says it depends a lot on

what you are analyzing. “If you’re searching for the Higgs

boson, you probably want an extremely low

p-value,

maybe 0.00001,” he says. “But if you’re testing for

whether your new marketing concept is better or the new

drill bits your engineer designed work faster than your

existing bits, then you’re probably willing to take a higher

value, maybe even as high as 0.25.”

Note that in many business experiments, managers

skip these two initial steps and don’t worry about sig-

nifi cance until after the results are in. However, it’s good

scientifi c practice to do these two things ahead of time.

Then you collect your data, plot the results, and calcu-

late statistics, including the p-value, which incorporates

variation and the sample size. If you get a p-value lower

than your target, then you reject the null hypothesis in

favor of the alternative. Again, this means the probabil-

ity is small that your results were due solely to chance.

How Is It Calculated?

As a manager, chances are you won’t ever calculate statis-

tical signifi cance yourself. “Most good statistical packages

will report the signifi cance along with the results,” says

Redman. There is also a formula in Microsoft Excel and a

number of other online tools that will calculate it for you.

Still, it’s helpful to know the process in order to

under stand and interpret the results. As Redman ad-

vises, “Managers should not trust a model they don’t

understand.”

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How Do Companies Use It?

Companies use statistical signifi cance to understand

how strongly the results of an experiment, survey, or poll

they’ve conducted should infl uence the decisions they

make. For example, if a manager runs a pricing study to

understand how best to price a new product, they will

calculate the statistical signifi cance (with the help of an

analyst, most likely) so that they know whether the fi nd-

ings should affect the fi nal price.

Remember the new marketing campaign that pro-

duced a $1.76 boost (more than 20%) in the average

sale? It’s surely of practical signifi cance. If the p-value

comes in at 0.03 the result is also statistically signifi cant,

and you should adopt the new campaign. If the p-value

comes in at 0.2 the result is not statistically signifi cant,

but since the boost is so large you’ll probably still pro-

ceed, though perhaps with a bit more caution.

But what if the difference were only a few cents? If

the p-value comes in at 0.2, you’ll stick with your current

campaign or explore other options. But even if it had a

signifi cance level of 0.03, the result is probably real,

though quite small. In this case, your decision probably

will be based on other factors, such as the cost of imple-

menting the new campaign.

Closely related to the idea of a signifi cance level is the

notion of a confi dence interval. Let’s take the example of

a political poll. Say there are two candidates: A and B.

The pollsters conduct an experiment with 1,000 “likely

voters.” From the sample, 49% say they’ll vote for A and

51% say they’ll vote for B. The pollsters also report a

margin of error of +/- 3%.

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A Refresher on Statistical Signifi cance

“Technically, 49% plus or minus 3% is a 95% confi -

dence interval for the true proportion of A voters in the

population,” says Redman. Unfortunately, he adds, most

people interpret this as “there’s a 95% chance that A’s

true percentage lies between 46% and 52%,” but that

isn’t correct. Instead, it says that if the pollsters were to

do the result many times, 95% of intervals constructed

this way would contain the true proportion.

If your head is spinning at that last sentence, you’re

not alone. As Redman says, this interpretation is “mad-

deningly subtle, too subtle for most managers and even

many researchers with advanced degrees.” He says the

more practical interpretation of this would be “Don’t get

too excited that B has a lock on the election” or “B ap-

pears to have a lead, but it’s not a statistically signifi cant

one.” Of course, the practical interpretation would be

very different if 70% of the likely voters said they’d vote

for B and the margin of error was 3%.

The reason managers bother with statistical signifi -

cance is they want to know what fi ndings say about what

they should do in the real world. But “confi dence inter-

vals and hypothesis tests were designed to support ‘sci-

ence,’ where the idea is to learn something that will stand

the test of time,” says Redman. Even if a fi nding isn’t sta-

tistically signifi cant, it may have utility to you and your

company. On the other hand, when you’re working with

large data sets, it’s possible to obtain results that are

statistically signifi cant but practically meaningless, for

example, that a group of customers is 0.000001% more

likely to click on campaign A over campaign B. So rather

than obsessing about whether your fi ndings are precisely

right, think about the implication of each fi nding for the

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decision you’re hoping to make. What would you do dif-

ferently if the fi nding were different?

What Mistakes Do People Make When

Working with Statistical Signifi cance?

“Statistical signifi cance is a slippery concept and is often

misunderstood,” warns Redman. “I don’t run into very

many situations where managers need to understand it

deeply, but they need to know how to not misuse it.”

Of course, data scientists don’t have a monopoly on

the word “signifi cant,” and often in businesses it’s used

to mean whether a fi nding is strategically important. It’s

good practice to use language that’s as clear as possible

when talking about data fi ndings. If you want to discuss

whether the fi nding has implications for your strategy or

decisions, it’s fi ne to use the word “signifi cant,” but if you

want to know whether something is statistically signifi -

cant, be precise in your language. Next time you look at

results of a survey or experiment, ask about the statisti-

cal signifi cance if the analyst hasn’t reported it.

Remember that statistical signifi cance tests help you

account for potential sampling errors, but Redman says

what is often more worrisome is the non-sampling error:

“Non-sampling error involves things where the experi-

mental and/or measurement protocols didn’t happen ac-

cording to plan, such as people lying on the survey, data

getting lost, or mistakes being made in the analysis.” This

is where Redman sees more troubling results. “There

is so much that can happen from the time you plan the

survey or experiment to the time you get the results. I’m

more worried about whether the raw data is trustwor-

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A Refresher on Statistical Signifi cance

thy than how many people they talked to,” he says. Clean

data and careful analysis are more important than statis-

tical signifi cance.

Always keep in mind the practical application of the

fi nding. And don’t get too hung up on setting a strict con-

fi dence interval. Redman says there’s a bias in scientifi c

literature that “a result wasn’t publishable unless it hit a

p = 0.05 (or less).” But for many decisions—like which

marketing approach to use—you’ll need a much lower

confi dence interval. In business, says Redman, there’s of-

ten more important criteria than statistical signifi cance.

The important question is, “Does the result stand up in

the market, if only for a brief period of time?”

As Redman says, the results only give you so much in-

formation: “I’m all for using statistics, but always wed it

with good judgment.”

Amy Gallo is a contributing editor at Harvard Business

Review and the author of the HBR Guide to Dealing with

Confl ict. Follow her on Twitter @amyegallo .

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CHAPTER 14

Linear Thinking in

a Nonlinear World

by Bart de Langhe, Stefano Puntoni,

and Richard Larrick

Test yourself with this word problem: Imagine you’re re-

sponsible for your company’s car fl eet. You manage two

models, an SUV that gets 10 miles to the gallon and a

sedan that gets 20. The fl eet has equal numbers of each,

and all the cars travel 10,000 miles a year. You have

enough capital to replace one model with more-fuel-

effi cient vehicles to lower operational costs and help

meet sustainability goals.

Which upgrade is better?

A. Replacing the 10 MPG vehicles with 20 MPG

vehicles

Reprinted from Harvard Business Review, May-June 2017 (product

#R1703K).

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B. Replacing the 20 MPG vehicles with 50 MPG

vehicles

Intuitively, option B seems more impressive—an in-

crease of 30 MPG is a lot larger than a 10 MPG one.

And the percentage increase is greater, too. But B is not

the better deal. In fact, it’s not even close. Let’s compare.

Gallons used per 10,000 miles

Current

After

upgrade

Savings

A. 1,000 (@10 MPG)

500 (@20 MPG)

500

B. 500 (@20 MPG)

200 (@50 MPG)

300

Is this surprising? For many of us, it is. That’s because

in our minds the relationship between MPG and fuel

consumption is simpler than it really is. We tend to think

it’s linear and looks like this:

But that graph is incorrect. Gas consumption is not a

linear function of MPG. When you do the math, the rela-

tionship actually looks like this:

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Linear Thinking in a Nonlinear World

And when you dissect the curve to show each upgrade

scenario, it becomes clear how much more effective it is

to replace the 10 MPG cars.

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Shockingly, upgrading fuel effi ciency from 20 to 100

MPG still wouldn’t save as much gas as upgrading from

10 to 20 MPG.

But choosing the lower-mileage upgrade remains

counterintuitive, even in the face of the visual evidence.

It just doesn’t feel right.

If you’re still having trouble grasping this, it’s not your

fault. Decades of research in cognitive psychology show

that the human mind struggles to understand nonlinear

relationships. Our brain wants to make simple straight

lines. In many situations, that kind of thinking serves us

well: If you can store 50 books on a shelf, you can store

100 books if you add another shelf, and 150 books if you

add yet another. Similarly, if the price of coffee is $2, you

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Linear Thinking in a Nonlinear World

can buy fi ve coffees with $10, 10 coffees with $20, and

15 coffees with $30.

But in business there are many highly nonlinear rela-

tionships, and we need to recognize when they’re in play.

This is true for generalists and specialists alike, because

even experts who are aware of nonlinearity in their fi elds

can fail to take it into account and default instead to re-

lying on their gut. But when people do that, they often

end up making poor decisions.

Linear Bias in Practice

We’ve seen consumers and companies fall victim to lin-

ear bias in numerous real-world scenarios. A common

one concerns an important business objective: profi ts.

Three main factors affect profi ts: costs, volume, and

price. A change in one often requires action on the oth-

ers to maintain profi ts. For example, rising costs must be

offset by an increase in either price or volume. And if you

cut price, lower costs or higher volumes are needed to

prevent profi ts from dipping.

Unfortunately, managers’ intuitions about the rela-

tionships between these profi t levers aren’t always good.

For years experts have advised companies that changes

in price affect profi ts more than changes in volume or

costs. Nevertheless, executives often focus too much on

volume and costs instead of getting the price right.

Why? Because the large volume increases they see af-

ter reducing prices are very exciting. What people don’t

realize is just how large those increases need to be to

maintain profi ts, especially when margins are low.

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Imagine you manage a brand of paper towels. They

sell for 50 cents a roll, and the marginal cost of produc-

ing a roll is 15 cents. You recently did two price promo-

tions. Here’s how they compare:

Normal

Promo A:

Promo B:

20%

off

40% off

Price/Roll 50¢

40¢

30¢

Sales

1,000

1,200 (+20%)

1,800 (+80%)

Intuitively, B looks more impressive—an 80% in-

crease in volume for a 40% decrease in price seems a

lot more profi table than a 20% increase in volume for a

20% cut in price. But you may have guessed by now that

B is not the most profi table strategy.

In fact, both promotions decrease profi ts, but B’s neg-

ative impact is much bigger than A’s. Here are the profi ts

in each scenario:

Normal

Promo A:

Promo B:

20%

off

40% off

Price/Roll 50¢

40¢

30¢

Sales

1,000

1,200 (+20%)

1,800 (+80%)

Profi t/Roll 35¢

25¢

15¢

Profi t $350

$300 $270

Although promotion B nearly doubled sales, profi ts

sank almost 25%. To maintain the usual $350 profi t

during the 40%-off sale, you would have to sell more

than 2,300 units, an increase of 133%. The curve looks

like this:

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The nonlinear phenomenon also extends to intan-

gibles, like consumer attitudes. Take consumers and

sus tain ability. We frequently hear executives complain

that while people say they care about the environment,

they are not willing to pay extra for ecofriendly prod-

ucts. Quantitative analyses bear this out. A survey by the

National Geographic Society and GlobeScan fi nds that,

across 18 countries, concerns about environmental prob-

lems have increased markedly over time, but consumer

behavior has changed much more slowly. While nearly

all consumers surveyed agree that food production and

consumption should be more sustainable, few of them

alter their habits to support that goal.

What’s going on? It turns out that the relationship

between what consumers say they care about and their

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actions is often highly nonlinear. But managers often

believe that classic quantitative tools, like surveys using

1-to-5 scales of importance, will predict behavior in a lin-

ear fashion. In reality, research shows little or no behav-

ioral difference between consumers who, on a fi ve-point

scale, give their environmental concern the lowest rat-

ing, 1, and consumers who rate it a 4. But the difference

between 4s and 5s is huge. Behavior maps to attitudes on

a curve, not a straight line.

Companies typically fail to account for this pattern—

in part because they focus on averages. Averages mask

nonlinearity and lead to prediction errors. For example,

suppose a fi rm did a sustainability survey among two of

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Linear Thinking in a Nonlinear World

its target segments. All consumers in one segment rate

their concern about the environment a 4, while 50% of

consumers in the other segment rate it a 3 and 50% rate

it a 5. The average level of concern is the same for the two

segments, but people in the second segment are overall

much more likely to buy green products. That’s because

a customer scoring 5 is much more likely to make envi-

ronmental choices than a customer scoring 4, whereas a

customer scoring 4 is not more likely to than a customer

scoring 3.

The nonlinear relationship between attitudes and

behavior shows up repeatedly in important domains,

including consumers’ privacy concerns. A large-scale

survey in the Netherlands, for example, revealed little

difference in the number of loyalty-program cards car-

ried by consumers who said they were quite concerned

versus only weakly concerned about privacy. How is it

possible that people said they were worried about pri-

vacy but then agreed to sign up for loyalty programs that

require the disclosure of sensitive personal information?

Again, because only people who say they are extremely

concerned about privacy take signifi cant steps to protect

it, while most others, regardless of their concern rating,

don’t adjust their behavior.

Awareness of nonlinear relationships is also impor-

tant when choosing performance metrics. For instance,

to assess the effectiveness of their inventory manage-

ment, some fi rms track days of supply, or the number

of days that products are held in inventory, while other

fi rms track the number of times their inventory turns

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over annually. Most managers don’t know why their

fi rm uses one metric and not the other. But the choice

may have unintended consequences—for instance, on

employee motivation. Assume a fi rm was able to reduce

days of supply from 12 to six and that with additional

research, it could further reduce days of supply to four.

This is the same as saying that the inventory turn rate

could increase from 30 times a year to 60 times a year

and that it could be raised again to 90 times a year. But

employees are much more motivated to achieve im-

provements if the fi rm tracks turnover instead of days

of supply, research by the University of Cologne’s To-

bias Stangl and Ulrich Thonemann shows. That’s be-

cause they appear to get decreasing returns on their

efforts when they improve the days-of-supply metric—

but constant returns when they improve the turnover

metric.

Other areas where companies can choose different

metrics include warehousing (picking time versus pick-

ing rate), production (production time versus produc-

tion rate), and quality control (time between failures ver-

sus failure rate).

Nonlinearity is all around us. Let’s now explore the

forms it takes.

The Four Types of Nonlinear

Relationships

The best way to understand nonlinear patterns is to see

them. There are four types.

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Increasing gradually, then rising more steeply

Say a company has two customer segments that both

have annual contribution margins of $100. Segment A

has a retention rate of 20% while segment B has one of

60%. Most managers believe that it makes little differ-

ence to the bottom line which segment’s retention they

increase. If anything, most people fi nd doubling the

weaker retention rate more appealing than increasing

the stronger one by, say, a third.

But customer lifetime value is a nonlinear function of

retention rate, as you’ll see when you apply the formula

for calculating CLV:

Margin × Retention Rate

1 + Discount Rate – Retention Rate

When the retention rate rises from 20% to 40%, CLV

goes up about $35 (assuming a discount rate of 10% to

adjust future profi ts to their current worth), but when

retention rates rise from 60% to 80%, CLV goes up

about $147. As retention rates rise, customer lifetime

value increases gradually at fi rst and then suddenly

shoots up.

Most companies focus on identifying customers who

are most likely to defect and then target them with mar-

keting programs. However, it’s usually more profi table to

focus on customers who are more likely to stay. Linear

thinking leads managers to underestimate the benefi ts

of small increases to high retention rates.

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Decreasing gradually, then dropping quickly

The classic example of this can be seen in mortgages.

Property owners are often surprised by how slowly they

chip away at their debt during the early years of their

loan terms. But in a mortgage with a fi xed interest rate

and fi xed term, less of each payment goes toward the

principal at the beginning. The principal doesn’t de-

crease linearly. On a 30-year $165,000 loan at a 4.5% in-

terest rate, the balance decreases by only about $15,000

over the fi rst fi ve years. By year 25 the balance will have

dropped below $45,000. So the owner will pay off less

than 10% of the principal in the fi rst 16% of the loan’s

term but more than a quarter of it in the last 16%.

Because they’re misled by their linear thinking in this

context, mortgage payers are often surprised when they

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sell a property after a few years (and pay brokerage costs)

and have only small net gains to show for it.

Climbing quickly, then tapering off

Selling more of a product allows companies to achieve

economies of scale and boost per unit profi t, a metric of-

ten used to gauge a fi rm’s effi ciency. Executives use this

formula to calculate per unit profi t:

(Volume × unit price) – Fixed Costs – (Volume × Unit Variable Costs)

Volume

Say a fi rm sells 100,000 widgets each year at $2 a

widget, and producing those widgets costs $100,000—

$50,000 in fi xed costs and 50 cents in unit variable costs.

The per unit profi t is $1. The fi rm can increase per unit

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profi t by producing and selling more widgets, because it

will spread fi xed costs over more units. If it doubles the

number of widgets sold to 200,000, profi t per unit will

rise to $1.25 (assuming that unit variable costs remain

the same). That attractive increase might tempt you into

thinking per unit profi t will skyrocket if you increase

sales from 100,000 to 800,000 units. Not so.

If the fi rm doubles widget sales from 400,000 to

800,000 (which is much harder to do than going from

100,000 to 200,000), the per unit profi t increases only

by about 6 cents.

Managers focus a great deal on the benefi ts of econo-

mies of scale and growth. However, linear thinking may

lead them to overestimate volume as a driver of profi t

and thus underestimate other more impactful drivers,

like price.

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Linear Thinking in a Nonlinear World

Falling sharply, then gradually

Firms often base evaluations of investments on the pay-

back period, the amount of time required to recover the

costs. Obviously, shorter paybacks are more favorable.

Say you have two projects slated for funding. Proj ect A

has a payback period of two years, and proj ect B has one

of four years. Both teams believe they can cut their pay-

back period in half. Many managers may fi nd B more at-

tractive because they’ll save two years, double the time

they’ll save with A.

Company leadership, however, may ultimately care

more about return on investment than time to break-

even. A one-year payback has an annual rate of re-

turn (ARR) of 100%. A two-year payback yields one of

50%—a 50-point difference. A four-year payback yields

one of 25%—a 25-point difference. So as the payback pe-

riod increases, ARR drops steeply at fi rst and then more

slowly. If your focus is achieving a higher ARR, halving

the payback period of proj ect A is a better choice.

Managers comparing portfolios of similar-sized proj-

ects may also be surprised to learn that the return on

investment is higher on one containing a proj ect with a

one-year payback and another with a four-year payback

than on a portfolio containing two proj ects expected to

pay back in two years. They should be careful not to un-

derestimate the effect that decreases in relatively short

payback periods will have on ARR.

How to Limit the Pitfalls of Linear Bias

As long as people are employed as managers, biases

that are hardwired into the human brain will affect the

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quality of business decisions. Nevertheless, it is possible

to minimize the pitfalls of linear thinking.

Step 1: Increase awareness of linear bias

MBA programs should explicitly warn future manag-

ers about this phenomenon and teach them ways to

deal with it. Companies can also undertake initiatives

to educate employees by, for instance, presenting them

with puzzles that involve nonlinear relationships. In

our experience, people fi nd such exercises engaging and

eye-opening.

Broader educational efforts are already under way in

several fi elds. One is Ocean Tipping Points, an initiative

that aims to make people more sensitive to nonlinear re-

lationships in marine ecosystems. Scientists and manag-

ers often assume that the relationship between a stressor

(such as fi shing) and an ecological response (a decline in

fi sh population) is linear. However, a small change in a

stressor sometimes does disproportionately large dam-

age: A fi sh stock can collapse following a small increase

in fi shing. The proj ect’s goal is to identify relevant tip-

ping points in ocean ecology to help improve the man-

agement of natural resources.

Step 2: Focus on outcomes, not indicators

One of senior management’s most important tasks is to

set the organization’s direction and incentives. But fre-

quently, desired outcomes are far removed from every-

day business decisions, so fi rms identify relevant inter-

mediate metrics and create incentives to maximize them.

To lift sales, for instance, many companies try to improve

their websites’ positioning in organic search results.

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The problem is, these intermediate metrics can be-

come the end rather than the means, a phenomenon aca-

demics call “medium maximization.” That bodes trouble

if a metric and the outcome don’t have a linear relation-

ship—as is the case with organic search position and

sales. When a search rank drops, sales decrease quickly

at fi rst and then more gradually: The impact on sales is

much greater when a site drops from the fi rst to the sec-

ond position in search results than when it drops from

the 20th to the 25th position.

Other times, a single indicator can be used to predict

multiple outcomes, and that may confuse people and

lead them astray. Take annual rates of return, which a

manager who wants to maximize the future value of an

investment may consider. If you map the relationship

between investment products’ ARR and their total ac-

cumulated returns, you’ll see that as ARR rises, total re-

turns increase gradually and then suddenly shoot up.

Another manager may wish to minimize the time it

takes to achieve a particular investment goal. The rela-

tionship here is the reverse: As ARR rises, the time it

takes to reach a goal drops steeply at fi rst and then de-

clines gradually.

Because ARR is related to multiple outcomes in

different nonlinear ways, people often under- or over-

estimate its effect. A manager who wants to maximize

overall returns may care a great deal about a change

in the rate from 0.30% to 0.70% but be insensi-

tive to a change from 6.4% to 6.6%. In fact, increas-

ing a low return rate has a much smaller effect on ac-

cumulated future returns than increasing a high rate

does. In contrast, a manager focused on minimizing

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the time it takes to reach an investment goal may de-

cide to take on additional risk to increase returns from

6.3% to 6.7% but be insensitive to a change from 0.40%

to 0.60%. In this case the effect of increasing a high in-

terest rate on time to completing a savings goal is much

smaller than the effect of increasing a low interest rate.

Step 3: Discover the type of nonlinearity

you’re dealing with

As Thomas Jones and W. Earl Sasser Jr. pointed out in

HBR back in 1995 (see “Why Satisfi ed Customers De-

fect” ), the relationship between customer satisfaction

ratings and customer retention is often nonlinear—but

in ways that vary according to the industry. In highly

competitive industries, such as automobiles, retention

rises gradually and then climbs up steeply as satisfaction

ratings increase. For noncompetitive industries reten-

tion shoots up quickly and then levels off.

In both situations linear thinking will lead to errors. If

the industry is competitive, managers will overestimate

the benefi t of increasing the satisfaction of completely

dissatisfi ed customers. If the industry is not competitive,

managers will overestimate the benefi t of increasing the

satisfaction of already satisfi ed customers.

The point is that managers should avoid making gen-

eralizations about nonlinear relationships across con-

texts and work to understand the cause and effect in

their specifi c situation.

Field experiments are an increasingly popular way to

do this. When designing them, managers should be sure

to account for nonlinearity. For instance, many people

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try to measure the impact of price on sales by offering

a product at a low price (condition A in the chart on

the next page) and a high price (condition B) and then

measuring differences in sales. But testing two prices

won’t reveal nonlinear relationships. You need to use at

least three price levels—low, medium (condition C), and

high—to get a sense of them.

Step 4: Map nonlinearity whenever you can

In addition to providing the right training, companies

can build support systems that warn managers when

they might be making bad decisions because of the incli-

nation to think linearly.

Ideally, algorithms and artifi cial intelligence could

identify situations in which that bias is likely to strike

and then offer information to counteract it. Of course,

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while advances in AI make this possible in formal set-

tings, it can’t account for decisions that take place off-

line and in conversations. And building such systems

could eat up a lot of time and money.

A low-tech but highly effective technique for fi ghting

linear bias is data visualization. As you’ve noticed in this

article, whenever we wanted you to understand some

linear bias, we showed you the nonlinear relationships.

They’re much easier to grasp when plotted out in a chart

than when described in a list of statistics. A visual repre-

sentation also helps you see threshold points where out-

comes change dramatically and gives you a good sense of

the degree of nonlinearity in play.

Putting charts of nonlinear relationships in dash-

boards and even mapping them out in “what if ” sce-

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Linear Thinking in a Nonlinear World

narios will make managers more familiar with nonlin-

earity and thus more likely to check for it before making

decisions.

Visualization is also a good tool for companies inter-

ested in helping customers make good decisions. For ex-

ample, to make drivers aware of how little time they save

by accelerating when they’re already traveling at high

speed, you could add a visual cue for time savings to car

dashboards. One way to do this is with what Eyal Pe’er

and Eyal Gamliel call a “paceometer,” which shows how

many min utes it takes to drive 10 miles. It will surprise

most drivers that going from 40 to 65 will save you

about six min utes per 10 miles, but going from 65 to 90

saves only about two and a half minutes—even though

you’re increasing your speed 25 miles per hour in both

instances.

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The Implications for Marketers

A cornerstone of modern marketing is the idea that by

focusing more on consumer benefi ts than on product at-

tributes, you can sell more. Apple, for instance, realized

that people would perceive an MP3 player that provided

“1,000 songs in your pocket” to be more attractive than

one with an “internal storage capacity of 5GB.”

Our framework, however, highlights the fact that in

many situations companies actually profi t from promot-

ing attributes rather than benefi ts. They’re taking advan-

tage of consumers’ tendency to assume that the relation-

ship between attributes and benefi ts is linear. And that is

not always the case.

We can list any number of instances where showing

customers the actual benefi ts would reveal where they

may be overspending and probably change their buy-

ing behavior: printer pages per min ute, points in loy-

alty programs, and sun protection factor, to name just

a few. Bandwidth upgrades are another good example.

Our research shows that internet connections are priced

linearly: Consumers pay the same for increases in speed

from a low base and from a high base. But the relation-

ship between download speed and download time is

nonlinear. As download speed increases, download time

drops rapidly at fi rst and then gradually. Upgrading from

fi ve to 25 megabits per second will lead to time savings

of 21 min utes per gigabyte, while the increase from 25 to

100 Mbps buys only four minutes. When consumers see

the actual gains from raising their speed to 100 Mbps,

they may prefer a cheaper, slower internet connection.

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Linear Thinking in a Nonlinear World

Of course, willfully exploiting consumers’ fl awed

perceptions of attri bute-benefi t relationships is a ques-

tionable marketing strategy. It’s widely regarded as un-

ethical for companies to take advantage of customers’

ignorance.

In recent years a number of professions, including ecolo-

gists, physiologists, and physicians, have begun to rou-

tinely factor nonlinear relationships into their decision

making. But nonlinearity is just as prevalent in the

business world as anywhere else. It’s time that man-

agement professionals joined these other disciplines

in developing greater awareness of the pitfalls of linear

thinking in a nonlinear world. This will increase their

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ability to choose wisely—and to help the people around

them make good decisions too.

Bart de Langhe is an associate professor of marketing

at Esade Business School, Ramon Llull University, and

an assistant professor of marketing at the Leeds School

of Business, University of Colorado–Boulder. Stefano

Puntoni is a professor of marketing at the Rotterdam

School of Management, Erasmus University. Richard

Larrick is the Hanes Corporation Foundation Professor

at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business.

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CHAPTER 15

Pitfalls of

Data-Driven

Decisions

by Megan MacGarvie and Kristina McElheran

Even with impressively large data sets, the best analytics

tools, and careful statistical methods, managers can still

be vulnerable to a range of pitfalls when using data to

back up their toughest choices—especially when infor-

mation overload leads us to take shortcuts in reasoning.

In some instances, data and analytics actually make mat-

ters worse.

Psychologists, behavioral economists, and other schol-

ars of human behavior have identifi ed several common

decision-making traps. Many of these traps stem from

the fact that people don’t carefully process every piece

of information in every decision. Instead, we often rely

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on heuristics—simplifi ed procedures that allow us to

make decisions in the face of uncertainty or when ex-

tensive analysis is too costly or time-consuming. These

heuristics lead us to believe we are making sound deci-

sions when we are actually making systematic mistakes.

What’s more, human brains are wired for certain biases

that creep in and distort our thinking, typically without

our awareness.

There are three main cognitive traps that regularly

skew decision making, even when informed by the best

data. Here are each of these three pitfalls in detail, as

well as a number of suggestions for how to escape them.

The Confi rmation Trap

When we pay more attention to fi ndings that align with

our prior beliefs, and ignore other facts and patterns in

the data, we fall into the confi rmation trap. With a huge

data set and numerous correlations between variables,

analyzing all possible correlations is often both costly

and counterproductive. Even with smaller data sets, it

can be easy to inadvertently focus on correlations that

confi rm our expectations of how the world should work,

and dismiss counterintuitive or inconclusive patterns in

the data when they don’t align.

Consider the following example: In the late 1960s

and early 1970s, researchers conducted one of the most

well-designed studies on how different types of fats af-

fect heart health and mortality. But the results of this

study, known as the Minnesota Coronary Experiment,

were not published at the time. A recent New York Times

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article suggests that these results stayed unpublished

for so long because they contradicted the beliefs of both

the researchers and the medical establishment.1 In fact,

it wasn’t until 2016 that the medical journal BMJ pub-

lished a piece referencing this data, when growing skep-

ticism about the relationship between saturated fat con-

sumption and heart disease led researchers to analyze

data from the original experiment—more than 40 years

later.2 These and similar fi ndings cast doubt on decades

of unchallenged medical advice to avoid saturated fats.

While it’s unclear whether one experiment would have

changed standard dietary and health recommendations,

this example demonstrates that even with the best pos-

sible data, when we look at numbers we may ignore

important facts when they contradict the dominant

paradigm or don’t confi rm our beliefs, with potentially

troublesome results.

This is a sobering prospect for decision makers in

companies. And confi rmation bias becomes that much

harder to avoid when individuals face pressure from

bosses and peers. Organizations frequently reward em-

ployees who can provide empirical support for existing

managerial preferences. Those who decide what parts

of the data to examine and present to senior managers

may feel compelled to choose only the evidence that re-

inforces what their supervisors want to see or that con-

fi rms a prevalent attitude within the fi rm.

To get a fair assessment of what the data has to say,

don’t avoid information that counters your (or your

boss’s) beliefs. Instead, embrace it by doing the following:

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• Specify in advance the data and analytical ap-

proaches on which you’ll base your decision, to

reduce the temptation to cherry-pick fi ndings that

agree with your prejudices.

• Actively look for fi ndings that disprove your

beliefs. Ask yourself, “If my expectations are

wrong, what pattern would I likely see in the

data?” Enlist a skeptic to help you. Seek people

who like to play devil’s advocate or assign contrary

positions for active debate.

• Don’t automatically dismiss fi ndings that fall

below your threshold for statistical or practi-

cal signifi cance. Both noisy relationships (those

with large standard errors) and small, precisely

measured relationships can point to fl aws in your

beliefs and presumptions. Ask yourself, what

would it take for this to appear important? Make

sure your key takeaway is not sensitive to reason-

able changes in your model or sample size.

• Assign multiple independent teams to analyze

the data separately. Do they come to similar

conclusions? If not, isolate and study the points

of divergence to determine whether the differ-

ences are due to error, inconsistent methods,

or bias.

• Treat your fi ndings like predictions, and test them.

If you uncover a correlation from which you think

your organization can profi t, use an experiment to

validate that correlation.

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Pitfalls of Data-Driven Decisions

The Overconfi dence Trap

In their book Judgment in Managerial Decision Mak-

ing, behavioral researchers Max Bazerman and Don

Moore refer to overconfi dence as “The Mother of All

Biases.” Time and time again, psychologists have found

that decision makers are too sure of themselves. We tend

to assume that the accuracy of our judgments or the

probability of success in our endeavors is more favorable

than the data would suggest. When there are risks, we

alter our read of the odds to assume we’ll come out on

the winning side. Senior decision makers who have been

promoted based on past successes are especially suscep-

tible to this bias, since they have received positive signals

about their decision-making abilities throughout their

careers.

Overconfi dence also reinforces many other pitfalls of

data interpretation, be it psychological or procedural. It

prevents us from questioning our methods, motivation,

and the way we communicate our fi ndings to others. It

makes it easy to underinvest in data and analysis; when

we feel too confi dent in our understanding, we don’t

spend enough time or money acquiring more informa-

tion or running further analyses. To make matters worse,

more information can increase overconfi dence without

improving accuracy. More data in and of itself is not a

guaranteed solution.

Going from data to insight requires quality inputs,

skill, and sound processes. Because it can be so diffi cult

to recognize our own biases, good processes are essential

for avoiding overconfi dence when analyzing data. Here

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are a few procedural tips to avoid the overconfi dence

trap:

• Describe your perfect experiment—the type

of information you would use to answer your

question if you had limitless resources for

data collection and the ability to measure any

variable. Compare this ideal with your actual

data to understand where it might fall short.

Identify places where you might be able to close

the gap with more data collection or analytical

techniques.

• Make it a formal part of your process to be your

own devil’s advocate. In Thinking, Fast and Slow,

Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman suggests asking

yourself why your analysis might be wrong, and

recommends that you do this for every analysis

you perform. Taking this contrarian view can

help you see the fl aws in your own arguments and

reduce mistakes across the board.

• Before making a decision or launching a project,

perform a “pre-mortem,” an approach suggested

by psychologist Gary Klein. Ask others with

knowledge about the project to imagine its

failure a year into the future and to write stories

of that failure. In doing so, you’ll benefi t from

the wisdom of multiple perspectives, while also

providing an opportunity to bring to the surface

potential fl aws in the analysis that you may

otherwise overlook.

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Pitfalls of Data-Driven Decisions

• Keep track of your predictions and systemati-

cally compare them with what actually happens.

Which of your predictions turned out to be true

and which ones fell short? Persistent biases can

creep back into our decision making; revisit these

reports on a regular basis so you can prevent mis-

takes in the future.

The Overfi tting Trap

When your model yields surprising or counterintui-

tive predictions, you may have made an exciting new

discovery—or it may be the result of overfi tting. In The

Signal and the Noise, Nate Silver famously dubbed this

“the most important scientifi c problem you’ve never

heard of.” This trap occurs when a statistical model de-

scribes random noise, rather than the underlying rela-

tionship we need to capture. Overfi t models generally do

a suspiciously good job of explaining many nuances of

what happened in the past, but they have great diffi culty

predicting the future.

For instance, when Google’s Flu Trends application

was introduced in 2008, it was heralded as an innovative

way to predict fl u outbreaks by tracking search terms as-

sociated with early fl u symptoms. But early versions of

the algorithm looked for correlations between fl u out-

breaks and millions of search terms. With such a large

number of terms, some correlations appeared signifi cant

when they were really due to chance (searches for “high

school basketball,” for example, were highly correlated

with the fl u). The application was ultimately scrapped

only a few years later due to failures of prediction.

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In order to overcome this bias, you need to discern

between the data that matters and the noise around it.

Here’s how you can guard against the overfi tting trap:

• Randomly divide the data into two sets: a training

set, with which you’ll estimate the model, and a

“validation set,” with which you’ll test the accuracy

of the model’s predictions. An overfi t model might

be great at making predictions within the training

set, but raise warning fl ags by performing poorly

in the validation set.

• Much like you would for the confi rmation trap,

specify the relationships you want to test and how

you plan to test them before analyzing the data, to

avoid cherry-picking.

• Keep your analysis simple. Look for relationships

that measure important effects related to clear and

logical hypotheses before digging into nuances. Be

on guard against spurious correlations—the ones

that occur only by chance—that you can rule out

based on experience or common sense (see the

sidebar, “Beware Spurious Correlations,” in chap-

ter 10). Remember that data can never truly “speak

for itself ” and must rely on human interpreters to

make sense of it.

• Construct alternative narratives. Is there another

story you could tell with the same data? If so, you

cannot be confi dent that the relationship you have

uncovered is the right—or only—one.

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Pitfalls of Data-Driven Decisions

• Beware of the all-too-human tendency to see

patterns in random data. For example, consider

a baseball player with a .325 batting average who

has no hits in a championship series game. His

coach may see a cold streak and want to replace

him, but he’s only looking at handful of games.

Statistically, it would be better to keep him in the

lineup than substitute the .200 hitter who had

four hits in the previous game.

From Bias to Better Decisions

Data analytics can be an effective tool to promote con-

sistent decisions and shared understanding. It can high-

light blind spots in our individual or collective awareness

and can offer evidence of risks and benefi ts for particular

paths of action. But it can also make us complacent.

Managers need to be aware of these common

decision-making pitfalls and employ sound processes

and cognitive strategies to prevent them. It can be

diffi cult to recognize the fl aws in your own reason-

ing—but proactively tackling these biases with the right

mindset and procedures can lead to better analysis of

data and better decisions overall.

Megan MacGarvie is an associate professor in the mar-

kets, public policy, and law group at Boston Univer-

sity’s Questrom School of Business, where she teaches

data-driven decision making and business analytics.

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She is also a research associate of the National Bureau

of Economic Research. Kristina McElheran is an assis-

tant professor of strategic management at the University

of Toronto and a digital fellow at the MIT Initiative on

the Digital Economy. Her ongoing work on data-driven

decision making with Erik Brynjolfsson has been fea-

tured on HBR online and in the American Economic

Review.

NOTES

1. A. E. Carroll, “A Study on Fats That Doesn’t Fit the Story Line,”

New York Times, April 15, 2016.

2. C. E. Ramsden et al., “Re-evaluation of the Traditional Diet-

Heart Hypothesis: Analysis of Recovered Data from Minnesota

Coronary Experiment (1968-73),” BMJ (April 2016), 353:i1246,

doi: 10.1136.

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CHAPTER 16

Don’t Let Your

Analytics Cheat

the Truth

by Michael Schrage

Everyone’s heard the truism that there are lies, damned

lies, and statistics. But sitting through a welter of

analytics-driven, top-management presentations pro-

vokes me into proposing a cynical revision: There are

liars, damned liars, and statisticians.

The rise of analytics-informed insight and decision

making is welcome. The disingenuous and deceptive

manner in which many of these statistics are presented

is not. I’m simultaneously stunned and disappointed

Adapted from “Do Your Analytics Cheat the Truth?” on hbr.org, Octo-

ber 10, 2011.

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by how egregiously manipulative these analytics have

become at the very highest levels of enterprise oversight.

The only thing more surprising—and more disappoint-

ing—is how unwilling or unable so many senior execu-

tives are about asking simple questions about the analyt-

ics they see.

At one fi nancial services fi rm, for example, call center

analytics showed spike after spike of negative customer

satisfaction numbers. Hold times and problem resolu-

tion times had noticeably increased. The presenting ex-

ecutive clearly sought greater funding and training for

her group. The implied threat was that the fi rm’s reputa-

tion for swift and responsive service was at risk.

Three simple but pointed questions later, her analytic

gamesmanship became clear. What had been presented

as a disturbing customer service trend was in large part

due to a policy change affecting about 20% of the fi rm’s

newly retired customers. Between their age, possible tax

implications, and an approval process requiring coordi-

nation with another department, these calls frequently

stretched beyond 35 to 45 minutes.

What made the situation worse (and what might ex-

plain why the presenter chose not to break out the data)

was a management decision not to route those calls to a

specially trained team but instead to allow any customer

representative to process the query. The additional de-

lays undermined the entire function’s performance.

Every single one of the presenter’s numbers was tech-

nically accurate. But they were aggregated in a manner

that made it look as if the function was underresourced.

The analytics deliberately concealed the outlier statisti-

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cally responsible for making the numbers dramatically

worse.

More damning was a simple queuing theory simula-

tion demonstrating that if the call center had made even

marginal changes in how it chose to manage that excep-

tional 20%, the aggregate call center performance num-

bers would have been virtually unaffected. Poor manage-

ment, not systems underinvestment, was the real root

cause problem.

Increasingly, I observe statistical sophisticates in-

dulging in analytic advocacy—that is, the numbers are

deployed to infl uence and win arguments rather than

identify underlying dynamics and generate insight. This

is particularly disturbing because while the analytics—in

the strictest technical sense—accurately portray a situa-

tion, they do so in a way that discourages useful inquiry.

I always insist that analytics presentations and pre-

senters explicitly identify the outliers, how they were de-

fi ned and dealt with, and—most importantly—what the

analytics would look like if they didn’t exist. It’s astonish-

ing what you fi nd when you make the outliers as impor-

tant as the aggregates and averages in understanding the

analytics. (To guide your discussion, consider the ques-

tions in the sidebar “Investigating Outliers.”)

My favorite example of this comes, naturally enough,

from Harvard. Few people realize that, in fact, the aver-

age net worth of Harvard dropouts vastly exceeds the av-

erage net worth of Harvard graduates.

The reason for that is simple. There are many, many

more Harvard graduates than there are Harvard drop-

outs. But the ranks of Harvard dropouts include Bill

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INVESTIGATING OUTLIERS

by Janice H. Hammond

When you notice an outlier in data, you must investi-

gate why the anomaly exists. Consider asking some of

the following questions:

• Is it just an unusual, but valid, value?

• Could it be a data entry error?

• Was it collected in a diff erent way than the rest

of the data? At a diff erent time?

After making an eff ort to understand where an

outlier comes from, you should have a deeper under-

standing of the situation the data represent. Then think

about how to handle the outlier in your analysis. Typi-

cally, you can do one of three things: leave it alone, or—

very rarely—remove it or change it to a corrected value.

Excluding or changing data is not something we

do often—and it should be done only after examin-

ing the underlying situation in great detail. We should

never do it to help the data “fi t” a conclusion we want

to draw. Changes to a data set should be made on a

case-by-case basis only after careful investigation of

the situation.

Adapted from “Quantitative Methods Online Course,” Harvard Busi-

ness Publishing, October 24, 2004, revised January 24, 2017 (product

#504702).

Janice H. Hammond is the Jesse Philips Professor of Manufacturing

at Harvard Business School. She serves as program chair for the HBS

Executive Education International Women’s Foundation and Women’s

Leadership Programs, and created the online Business Analytics course

for HBX CORe.

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Don’t Let Your Analytics Cheat the Truth

Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and Polaroid’s Edwin Land,

whose combined, infl ation-adjusted net worth probably

tops $100 billion. That megarich numerator divided by

the smaller “dropout” denominator creates the statisti-

cally accurate illusion that the average Harvard dropout

is much, much wealthier than the Harvard student who

actually got their degree.

This is, of course, ridiculous. Unfortunately, it is no

more ridiculous than what one fi nds, on average, in a sta-

tistically signifi cant number of analytics-driven board-

room presentations. The misdirection—and mismanage-

ment—associated with outliers is the most disturbingly

common pathology I experience, even in stats-savvy

organizations.

Always ask for the outliers. Always make the analysts

display what their data looks like with the outliers r e-

moved. There are other equally important ways to wring

greater utility from aggregated analytics, but start from

the outliers in. Because analytics that mishandle outliers

are “outliars.”

Michael Schrage, a research fellow at MIT Sloan School’s

Center for Digital Business, is the author of the books

Serious Play, Who Do You Want Your Customers to Be-

come? and The Innovator’s Hypothesis.

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SECTION FOUR

Communicate

Your Findings

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CHAPTER 17

Data Is Worthless

If You Don’t

Communicate It

by Thomas H. Davenport

Too many managers are, with the help of their analyst

colleagues, simply compiling vast databases of infor-

mation that never see the light of day, or that only get

disseminated in autogenerated business intelligence

reports. As a manager, it’s not your job to crunch the

numbers, but it is your job to communicate them. Never

make the mistake of assuming that the results will speak

for themselves.

Consider the cautionary tale of Gregor Mendel. Al-

though he discovered the concept of genetic inheritance,

Adapted from content posted on hbr.org, June 18, 2013 (product

#H00ASW).

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Communicate Your Findings

his ideas were not adopted during his lifetime because

he only published his fi ndings in an obscure Moravian

scientifi c journal, a few reprints of which he mailed to

leading scientists. It’s said that Darwin, to whom Mendel

sent a reprint of his fi ndings, never even cut the pages

to read the geneticist’s work. Although Mendel carried

out his groundbreaking experiments between 1856 and

1863—eight years of painstaking research—their signifi -

cance was not recognized until the turn of the 20th cen-

tury, long after his death. The lesson: If you’re going to

spend the better part of a decade on a research project,

also put some time and effort into disseminating your

results.

One person who has done this very well is Dr. John

Gottman, the well-known marriage scientist at the Uni-

versity of Washington. Gottman, working with a statis-

tical colleague, developed a marriage equation predict-

ing how likely a marriage is to last over the long term.

The equation is based on a couple’s ratio of positive to

negative interactions during a 15-minute conversation

on a diffi cult topic such as money or in-laws. Pairs who

showed affection, humor, or happiness while talking

about contentious topics were given a maximum num-

ber of points, while those who displayed belligerence

or contempt received the minimum. Observing several

hundred couples, Gottman and his team were able to

score couples’ interactions and identify the patterns that

predict divorce or a happy marriage.

This was great work in itself, but Gottman didn’t

stop there. He and his wife, Julie, founded a nonprofi t

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Data Is Worthless If You Don’t Communicate It

research institute and a for-profi t organization to apply

the results through books, DVDs, workshops, and ther-

apist training. They’ve infl uenced exponentially more

marriages through these outlets than they could possibly

ever have done in their own clinic—or if they’d just is-

sued a press release with their fi ndings.

Similarly, during his tenure at Intuit, George Rou-

me lio tis was head of a data science group that analyzed

and created product features based on the vast amount

of online data that Intuit collected. For his projects, he

recommended a simple framework for communicating

about each analysis:

1. My understanding of the business problem

2. How I will measure the business impact

3. What data is available

4. The initial solution hypothesis

5.

The

solution

6. The business impact of the solution

Note what’s not here: details on statistical methods

used, regression coeffi cients, or logarithmic transforma-

tions. Most audiences neither understand nor appreciate

those details; they care about results and implications.

It may be useful to make such information available in

an appendix to a report or presentation, but don’t let it

get in the way of telling a good story with your data—

starting with what your audience really needs to know.

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Communicate Your Findings

Thomas H. Davenport

is the President’s Distinguished

Professor in Management and Information Technology

at Babson College, a research fellow at the MIT Initiative

on the Digital Economy, and a senior adviser at Deloitte

Analytics. Author of over a dozen management books,

his latest is Only Humans Need Apply: Winners and

Losers in the Age of Smart Machines.

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CHAPTER 18

When Data

Visualization

Works—and When

It Doesn’t

by Jim Stikeleather

I am uncomfortable with the growing emphasis on big

data and its stylist, visualization. Don’t get me wrong—

I love infographic representations of large data sets.

The value of representing information concisely and ef-

fectively dates back to Florence Nightingale, when she

developed a new type of pie chart to clearly show that

more soldiers were dying from preventable illnesses than

Adapted from content posted on hbr.org, March 27, 2013 (product

#H00ADJ).

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Communicate Your Findings

from their wounds. On the other hand, I see beautiful

exercises in special effects that show off statistical and

technical skills, but do not clearly serve an informing

purpose. That’s what makes me squirm.

Ultimately, data visualization is about communic at-

ing an idea that will drive action. Understanding the cri-

teria for information to provide valuable insights and the

reasoning behind constructing data visualizations will

help you do that with effi ciency and impact.

For information to provide valuable insights, it must be

interpretable, relevant, and novel. With so much unstruc-

tured data today, it is critical that the data being analyzed

generates interpretable information. Collecting lots of

data without the associated metadata—such as what is it,

where was it collected, when, how, and by whom—reduces

the opportunity to play with, interpret, and draw conclu-

sions from the data. It must also be relevant to the people

who are looking to gain insights, and to the purpose for

which the information is being examined (see the sidebar

“Understand Your Audience”). Finally, it must be original,

or shed new light on an area. If the information fails any

one of these criteria, then no visualization can make it

valuable. That means that only a tiny slice of the data we

can bring to life visually will actually be worth the effort.

Once we’ve narrowed the universe of data down to

that which satisfi es these three requirements, we must

also understand the legitimate reasons to construct data

visualizations, and recognize what factors affect the

quality of data visualizations. There are three broad rea-

sons for visualizing data:

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When Data Visualization Works—and When It Doesn’t

• Confi rmation: If we already have a set of assump-

tions about how the system we are interested in

operates—for example, a market, customers, or

competitors—visualizations can help us check

those assumptions. They can also enable us to

observe whether the underlying system has devi-

ated from the model we had and assess the risk of

the actions we are about to undertake based on

those assumptions. You see this approach in some

enterprise dashboards.

• Education: There are two forms of education that

visualization offers. One is simply reporting: here

is how we measure the underlying system of inter-

est, and here are the values of those measures in

some comparative form—for instance, over time,

or against other systems or models. The other is to

develop intuition and new insights on the behavior

of a known system as it evolves and changes over

time, so that humans can get an experiential feel

of the system in an extremely compressed time

frame. You often see this model in the “gamifi ca-

tion” of training and development.

• Exploration: When we have large sets of data

about a system we are interested in and the goal is

to provide optimal human-machine inter actions

(HMI) to that data to tease out relationships,

processes, models, etc., we can use visualization to

help build a model to allow us to predict and bet-

ter manage the system. The practice of using visual

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UNDERSTAND YOUR AUDIENCE

Before you throw up (pun intended) data in a visual-

ization, start with the goal, which is to convey great

quantities of information in a format that is easily as-

similated by the consumers of this information—deci-

sion makers. A successful visualization is based on the

designer understanding whom the visualization is tar-

geting, and executing on three key points:

• Who is the audience, and how will it read and

interpret the information? Can you assume these

individuals have knowledge of the terminology

and concepts you’ll use, or do you need to guide

them with clues in the visualization (for example,

good is indicated with a green arrow going up)?

An audience of experts will have diff erent expec-

tations than a general audience.

• What are viewers’ expectations, and what type

of information is most useful to them?

• What is the visualization’s functional role, and

how can viewers take action from it? An explor-

atory visualization should leave viewers with

questions to pursue; educational or confi rma-

tional graphics should not.

Adapted from “The Three Elements of Successful Data Visualizations” on

hbr.org by Jim Stikeleather, April 19, 2013.

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When Data Visualization Works—and When It Doesn’t

discovery in lieu of statistics is called exploratory

data analysis (EDA), and too few businesses make

use of it.

Assuming the visualization creator has gotten it all

right—a well-defi ned purpose, the necessary and suf-

fi cient amount of data and metadata to make the visu-

alization interpretable, enabling relevant and original

insights for the business—what gives us confi dence that

these fi ndings are now worthy of action? Our ability to

understand and to a degree control three areas of risk can

defi ne the visualization’s resulting value to the business:

• Data quality: The quality of the underlying data is

crucial to the value of visualization. How complete

and reliable is it? As with all analytical processes,

putting garbage in means getting garbage out.

• Context: The point of visualization is to make

large amounts of data approachable so we can

apply our evolutionarily honed pattern detection

computer—our brain—to draw insights from it.

To do so, we need to access all of the potential

relationships of the data elements. This context is

the source of insight. To leave out any contextual

information or metadata (or more appropriately,

“metacontent”) is to risk hampering our under-

standing.

• Biases: The creator of the visualization may infl u-

ence the visualization’s semantics and the syntax

of the elements through color choices, positioning,

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Communicate Your Findings

and visual tricks (such as unnecessary 3D, or 2D

when 3D is more informative)—any of which can

challenge the interpretation of the data. This also

creates the risk of pre-specifying discoverable

features and results via the embedded algorithms

used by the creator (something EDA is intended to

overcome). These in turn can signifi cantly infl u-

ence how viewers under stand the visualization,

and what insight they will gather from it.

Ignoring these requirements and risks can under-

mine the visualization’s purpose and confuse rather than

enlighten.

Jim Stikeleather, DBA, is a serial entrepreneur and was

formerly Chief Innovation Offi cer at Dell. He teaches

innovation, business models, strategy, governance, and

change management at the graduate level at the Uni-

versity of South Florida and The Innovation Academy

at Trinity College Dublin. He is also a senior executive

coach.

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CHAPTER 19

How to Make

Charts That Pop

and Persuade

by Nancy Duarte

Displaying data can be a tricky proposition, because dif-

ferent rules apply in different contexts. A sales director

presenting fi nancial projections to a group of fi eld repre-

sentatives wouldn’t visualize her data the same way that

a design consultant would in a written proposal to a po-

tential client.

So how do you make the right choices for your situa-

tion? Before displaying your data, ask yourself these fi ve

questions:

Adapted from “The Quick and Dirty on Data Visualization” on hbr.org,

April 16, 2014 (product #H00RKA).

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1. Am I Presenting or Circulating

My Data?

Context plays a huge role in how best to render data.

When delivering a presentation, show the conclusions

you’ve drawn, not all the details that led you to those

conclusions. Because your slides will be up for only a

few seconds, your audience will need to process them

quickly. People won’t have time to chew on a lot of com-

plex information, and they’re not likely to run up to the

wall for a closer look at the numbers. Think in broad

strokes when you’re putting your charts together: What’s

the overall trend you’re highlighting? What’s the most

striking comparison you’re making? These are the sorts

of questions to answer with projected data.

Scales, grid lines, tick marks, and such should pro-

vide context, but without competing with the data. Use

a light neutral color, such as gray, for these elements so

they’ll recede to the background, and plot your data in

a slightly stronger neutral color, such as blue or green.

Then use a bright color to emphasize the point you’re

making.

It’s fi ne to display more detail in documents or in

decks that you email rather than present. Readers can

study them at their own pace—examine the axes, the leg-

ends, the layers—and draw their own conclusions from

your body of work. Still, you don’t want to overwhelm

them, especially since they won’t have you there in per-

son to explain what your main points are. Use white

space, section heads, and a clear hierarchy of visual ele-

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How to Make Charts That Pop and Persuade

ments to help your readers navigate dense content and

guide them to key pieces of data.

2. Am I Using the Right Kind of

Chart or Table?

When you choose how to visualize your data, you’re de-

ciding what type of relationship you want to emphasize.

Take a look at fi gure 19-1, which shows the breakdown of

an investment portfolio.

In the pie, it’s clear that this person holds a number

of investments in different areas—but that’s about all

you see.

Figure 19-2 shows the same data in a bar chart. In this

form it’s much easier to discern how much is invested in

each category. If your focus is on comparing categories,

the bar chart is the better choice. A pie chart would be

more useful if you were trying to make the point that a

single investment made up a signifi cant portion of the

portfolio.

FIGURE 19-1

Investment portfolio breakdown

International stocks

Large-cap U.S. stock

Bonds

Real estate

Mid-cap U.S. stock

Small-cap U.S. stock

Commodities

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FIGURE 19-2

Investment portfolio breakdown

International stocks

Large-cap U.S. stock

Bonds

Real estate

Mid-cap U.S. stock

Small-cap U.S. stock

Commodities

0

5

10

15

20%

3. What Message Am I Trying

to Convey?

Whether you’re presenting or circulating your charts,

you need to highlight the most important items to en-

sure that your audience can follow your train of thought

and focus on the right elements. For example, fi gure

19-3 is diffi cult to interpret because all the information

is displayed with equal visual value.

Are we comparing regions? Quarters? Positive versus

negative numbers? It’s diffi cult to determine what mat-

ters most. By adding color or shading, you can draw the

eye to specifi c areas, as shown in fi gure 19-4.

We now know that we should be focusing on when

and in which regions revenue dropped.

4. Do My Visuals Accurately Refl ect

the Numbers?

Using a lot of crazy colors, extra labels, and fancy effects

won’t captivate an audience. That kind of visual clutter

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FIGURE 19-3

Revenue trends

Q1

Q2

Q3

Q4

Total

Americas

–18%

7%

25%

2%

2%

Australia

47%

–7%

26%

15%

17%

China

15%

–5%

1%

7%

19%

Europe

57%

10%

–3%

7%

13%

India

57%

6%

–3%

8%

13%

FIGURE 19-4

Revenue trends

Q1

Q2

Q3

Q4

Total

Americas

–18%

7%

25%

2%

2%

Australia

47%

–7%

26%

15%

17%

China

15%

–5%

1%

7%

19%

Europe

57%

10%

–3%

7%

13%

India

57%

6%

–3%

8%

13%

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Communicate Your Findings

dilutes the information and can even misrepresent it.

Consider the chart in fi gure 19-5.

Can you fi gure out the northern territory’s revenue for

year one? Is it 17? Or maybe 19? The way some programs

create 3D charts would lead any rational person to think

that the bar in question is well below 20. However, the

data behind the chart actually says that bar represents

20.4 units. You can see that if you look at the chart in a

very specifi c way, but it’s diffi cult to tell which way that

should be—even with plenty of time to scrutinize it.

It’s much clearer if you simply fl atten the chart, as in

fi gure 19-6.

5. Is My Data Memorable?

Even if you’ve rendered your data clearly and accurately,

it’s another challenge altogether to make the information

stick. Consider using a meaningful visual metaphor to il-

FIGURE 19-5

Yearly revenue per region

50

45

40

35

30

25

20

15

10

5

0

Year one

Year two

North

South

East

West

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How to Make Charts That Pop and Persuade

FIGURE 19-6

Yearly revenue per region

50

40

30

20

10

0

North South

East

West

North South

East

West

Year 1

Year 2

lustrate the scale of your numbers and cement the data

in the minds of your audience members. A metaphor can

also tie your insights to something that your audience al-

ready knows and cares about.

Author and activist Michael Pollan showed how much

crude oil goes into making a McDonald’s Double Quar-

ter Pounder with Cheese through a striking visual dem-

onstration: He placed glasses on a table and fi lled them

with oil to represent the amount of oil consumed during

each stage of the production process. At the end, he took

a taste of the oil to drive home his point. (To add an ele-

ment of humor, he later revealed that his prop “oil” was

actually chocolate syrup.)

Pollan could have shown a chart, but this was more

effective because he gave the audience a tangible visual—

one that triggered a visceral response.

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By answering these fi ve questions as you’re laying out

your data, you’ll visualize it in a way that helps people

understand and engage with each point in your presen-

tation, document, or deck. As a result, your audience will

be more likely to adopt your overall message.

Nancy Duarte has published her latest book, Illuminate,

with coauthor Patti Sanchez. Duarte is also the author

of the HBR Guide to Persuasive Presentations, as well as two award-winning books on the art of presenting,

Slide:ology and Resonate. Her team at Duarte Inc. has

created more than a quarter million presentations for its

clients and teaches public and corporate workshops on

presenting. Find Duarte on LinkedIn or follow her on

Twitter @nancyduarte.

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CHAPTER 20

Why It’s So

Hard for Us to

Communicate

Uncertainty

An interview with Scott Berinato

by Nicole Torres

We use data to make predictions. But predictions are

just educated guesses—they’re uncertain. And when

they’re being communicated, they’re incredibly diffi cult

to explain or clearly illustrate.

A case in point: The 2016 U.S. presidential election

did not unfold the way so many predicted it would. We

now know some of the reasons why—polling failed—but

Adapted from “Why It’s So Hard for Us to Visualize Uncertainty” on

hbr.org, November 11, 2016 (product #H039NV).

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watching the real-time results on the night of Tuesday,

November 8, wasn’t just surprising, it was confusing.

Predictions swung back and forth, and it was hard to

process the information that was coming in. Not only

did the data seem wrong, the way we were presenting

that data seemed wrong too.

I asked my colleague Scott Berinato, Harvard Busi-

ness Review editor and author of Good Charts: The HBR

Guide to Making Smarter, More Persuasive Data Visu-

alizations, if he would help explain this uncertainty—

how we dealt with it, why it was so hard to grasp, and

what’s so challenging about communicating and visual-

izing it.

Torres: What did you notice about how election

predictions were being shown election night?

Berinato: A lot of people were looking at the New

York Times’ live presidential forecast, where you’d see

a series of gauges (half-circle gauges, like a gas gauge

on your car) that updated frequently.1 The needle

moved left if data showed that Hillary Clinton had a

higher chance of winning, and right if Donald Trump

did. But the needle also jittered back and forth, mak-

ing it look like the statistical likelihood of winning

was changing rapidly. This caused a lot of anxiety.

People were confused. They were trying to interpret

what was going on in the election and why the data

was changing so drastically in real time, and it was

really hard to understand what was going on.

The thing was, the needle wasn’t swinging to

represent statistical likelihood; it was a hard-coded

effect meant to represent uncertainty in the statisti-

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cal forecast. So trying to show real-time changes

in the race, while accounting for uncertainty, was a

good engagement effort, but the execution fell short

because it confused and unnerved people. The jitter

wasn’t the best visual approach.

What do we mean by “uncertainty”?

When thinking about showing uncertainty, we think

mostly about two types. One is statistical uncer-

tainty, which applies if I said something like, “Here

are my values, and statistically my confi dence in

them is 95%.” Think about margin of error built into

polls. Statisticians use things like box-and-whisker

plots to represent this, where a box shows the upper

and lower ranges of the fi rst and third quartiles in a

data set, a line in the box marks the median, and thin

bar “whiskers” reaching above and below the box to

indicate the range of the data. Dots can also be used

beyond the whiskers to show outliers. There are lots

of variations of these, and they work reasonably well,

though academics try other approaches sometimes

and the lay audience isn’t used to these visualizations,

for the most part.

The other kind of uncertainty is data uncertainty.

This applies when we’re not sure where within a

range our data falls. Instead of having a value and a

confi dence in that value, we have a range of possible

values. A friend recently gave me a data set with two

values. One was “the estimate ranges from 1 in 2,000

to 1 in 4,500” and the other was “an estimate ranging

from 1 in 5,500 to 1 in 8,000.” There’s not an accepted

or right way to visualize something like this.

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Finding ways to accurately and effectively repre-

sent uncertainty is one of the most important chal-

lenges in data visualization today. And it’s important

to know that visualizing uncertainty in general is

extremely diffi cult to do.

Why?

When you think about it, visualizations make some-

thing abstract—numbers, statistics—concrete. You

are representing an idea like 20% with a thing like a

bar or dot. A dot on a line that represents 20% looks

pretty certain. How do you then express the idea

that “fi ve times out of a hundred this isn’t the right

answer, and it could be all these other answers”?

So are there good ways of visualizing uncertainty

like this?

A lot of the time people just don’t represent their

uncertainty, because it’s hard. We don’t want to do

that. Uncertainty is an important thing to be able

to communicate. For example, consider health care,

where outcomes of care may be uncertain but you

want people to understand their decisions. How

do you show them the possible range of outcomes,

instead of only what is the most likely or least likely

to happen? Or say there’s an outbreak of a disease

like Ebola and we want to model the worst case, the

most likely, and the best-case scenarios. How do we

represent those different outcomes? Weather fore-

casts, hurricane models are the same thing. Risk

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analysts and probability experts think about how to

solve these problems all the time. It’s not easy.

There are a number of other approaches, though.

Some people use bars to represent the range of

uncertainty. Some use solid lines to show an aver-

age value and dotted lines above and below to show

the upper and lower boundaries. Using color satu-

ration or gradients to show that values are becom-

ing less and less likely—but still in the realm of

possibility— is another way.

On top of uncertainty, we’re also dealing with

probability.

Yes, it’s really hard for our brains to perceive prob-

ability. When we say something has an 80%

chance of happening, it’s not the simplest thing to

understand. You can’t really feel what 80% likelihood

really means. I mean, it seems like it will probably

happen. But the important thing to remember is

that if it doesn’t happen, that doesn’t mean you were

wrong. It just means the 20% likelihood happened

instead.

Statistics are weird. Even if we felt like we under-

stood what a “20% chance” was, we don’t think of it

as the same as “1 in 5.” We tend to think that “1 in 5”

is more likely to happen than “20%.” It’s less abstract.

If you say 1 in 5 people commits a crime, you actually

picture that one person. We “image the numerator.”

But “20%” doesn’t commit a crime. It’s not a thing

that acts. It’s a statistic.

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What do we do when the 20% or 10% chance thing

happens?

How do you tell someone who has had the very rare

thing happen to them that, based on the probability

we gave you, it was the right advice, even though it

didn’t work out for you? That’s really diffi cult, and

security executives and risk experts think about this

all the time. When you think about it, businesses

need to learn this because it’s easy in hindsight to

say “Our models were wrong—the unlikely bad thing

happened.” Not true! We all along were communicat-

ing there was some small chance that the bad thing

could happen. Still, as humans, that’s hard for us to

grasp.

Is it because we try to hang on to the hope of a more

favorable outcome?

It’s because likely things happen more of the time.

When unlikely things happen, we want to make sense

of it. We weren’t expecting it. We shouldn’t have been

expecting it because it was unlikely. But it’s still pos-

sible, however unlikely. Already just hearing myself

say this, you see how elliptical it sounds. When a

natural disaster strikes, you often hear people after-

ward say “It was a 100-year storm, no one could have

seen this coming.” Not true! Risk experts always see it

coming. It was always a statistical possibility. It’s just

not likely.

I get probability, but I still can’t help but feel misled by

the presidential election predictions. What am I missing?

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Three things are going on with the election mod-

els. (1) Even if a candidate had a 10% chance of

winning 10 days ago and they end up winning, it

doesn’t mean the model was wrong. It means the

unlikely happened. (2) This whole notion of using

probability to determine who will win an election

(based on whether they have an 80% chance, etc.)

is hard for the audience to grasp, because we tend

to think about elections in more binary terms—this

person will win versus that person will win. (3) We

revisit the probabilities every day and update them.

And when one candidate says something stupid,

their probability of winning goes down and the

others go up. This makes us feel like these winning

probabilities are reactive, not speculative. So we,

the lay audience, end up thinking we’re looking at

data that tells us something about how the candi-

dates are behaving, not how likely it is they’ll win.

It starts to feel more like an approval rating than a

forecast.

That fi rst point must come up in business all the time.

The election brings the subject of visualizing un-

certainty into focus but it’s an increasingly com-

mon challenge in businesses building out their data

science operations. As data science becomes more

and more important for companies, managers are

starting to deal with types of data that show multiple

possible outcomes, where there is statistical uncer-

tainty and data uncertainty that they have to commu-

nicate to their bosses. If they don’t help their bosses

understand the uncertainty, they will look at their

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Communicate Your Findings

charts and say that’s the answer when it’s only the

likelihood. It’s okay to focus on what is most likely,

but you don’t want to forgo showing the range of pos-

sible outcomes.

For example, if you’re looking at a way to model

customer adoption and you’re using statistical mod-

els, you want to make sure you demonstrate what you

think is most likely to happen, but also how this out-

come is one of a range of potential outcomes based

on your models. You need to be able to communicate

that visually, or your boss or client will misinterpret

what you’re saying. If the data scientists say we have a

90% chance of succeeding if we adopt this model, but

then it doesn’t happen, the boss should know that you

weren’t wrong—you really just fell into the 10%. You

rolled snake eyes. It happens. This is a really hard

thing for our brains to deal with and communicate,

and it’s an important challenge for companies invest-

ing in a data-driven approach to their businesses.

Scott Berinato is a senior editor at Harvard Business Re-

view and the author of Good Charts: The HBR Guide to

Making Smarter, More Persuasive Data Visualizations

(Harvard Business Review Press, 2016). Nicole Torres is

an associate editor at Harvard Business Review.

NOTE

“Live Presidential Forecast,” New York Times, November 9, 2016,

https://www.nytimes.com/elections/forecast/president.

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CHAPTER 21

Responding to

Someone Who

Challenges Your

Data

by Jon M. Jachimowicz

I recently conducted a study with a large, multinational

company to fi gure out how to increase employee engage-

ment. After the data collection was complete, I ran the

data analysis and found some intriguing fi ndings that I

was excited to share with the fi rm. But a troubling re-

sult became apparent in my analysis: The organization

had rampant discrimination against women, especially

Adapted from “What to Do When Someone Angrily Challenges Your

Data” on hbr.org, April 5, 2017 (product #H03L2M).

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ambitious, passionate, talented women. Although this

result was based on initial data and was not particularly

rigorous, I was convinced that managers at the collab-

orating organization would like to hear it so that they

could address the issue.

I couldn’t have been more wrong. In a meeting with

the company’s head of HR and a few members of his

team, I fi rst presented my overall fi ndings about em-

ployee engagement. In my last few slides, I turned the

presentation toward the results of the gender discrimi-

nation analysis that I had conducted. I was expecting an

animated conversation, and perhaps even some internal

questioning into why the discrimination was occurring

and how they could rectify it.

Instead, the head of HR got very angry. He accused

me of misrepresenting the facts, and countered by citing

data from his own records that showed men and women

were equally likely to be promoted. In addition, he had

never heard from anyone within the organization that

gender discrimination was a problem. He strongly be-

lieved that the diversity practices his team had champi-

oned were industry leading, and that they were suffi cient

to ward off gender discrimination. Clearly, this topic was

important to him, and my fi ndings had touched a nerve.

After his fury (and my shock) had cooled, I reminded

him that the data I presented was just initial pilot data

and should be treated as such. Perhaps if we were to do a

more thorough assessment, I argued, we would fi nd that

the initial data was inaccurate. In addition, I proposed

that a follow-on study that focused on gender discrimi-

nation could pinpoint which aspects of the diversity poli-

cies were working particularly well, and that he could

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Responding to Someone Who Challenges Your Data

use these insights to further advocate for his agenda.

We landed on a compromise: I would design and run an

additional study with a focus on gender discrimination,

connecting survey responses to important outcomes

such as promotions and turnover.

A few months later, the data came in. My data analy-

sis showed that my initial fi ndings were correct: Gen-

der discrimination was happening in the company. But

the head of HR’s major claim wasn’t wrong: Men and

women were equally likely to be promoted.

The improved data set allowed us to see how both

facts could be true at the same time. We now had de-

tailed insights into which employees were—and, more

important, were not—being promoted. Although am-

bitious, passionate, and talented men were advancing

in the company, their female counterparts were being

passed over for promotion, time and again—effectively

being pushed out of the organization. That is, the best

men were moving up, but not the best women. Those

women who were being promoted were given these op-

portunities out of tokenism: They weren’t particularly

high performing, and often reached a “natural” ceiling

early on in their careers due to their limited abilities.

We also now had data on the specifi c kind of advance-

ment opportunities male and female employees received

to learn new skills, make new connections, and increase

their visibility in the organization. Compared with their

male counterparts, passionate women were less likely to

get these kinds of chances.

Armed with this new data, I was invited to present to

the head of HR again. Remembering our last meeting,

I expected him to be upset. But we had a very different

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Communicate Your Findings

conversation this time. Instead of being met with anger,

the data I presented prompted concern. I could place the

fact of men and women being equally likely to be pro-

moted in a fuller context, complete with rigorous data

from the organization. We had a lively debate about why

this asymmetry between men and women existed. Most

important, we concluded that the data he measured to

track gender discrimination was unable to provide him

with the necessary insight to understand whether gen-

der discrimination was a problem.

He has since appointed a task force to tackle the prob-

lem of gender discrimination head-on, something he

wouldn’t have done if we hadn’t collected the data that

we did. This is the power of collecting thorough data in

your own organization: Instead of making assumptions

on what may or may not be occurring, a thoughtful de-

sign of data-collection practices allows you to gather the

right information to come to better conclusions.

So it’s not just about the data you have. Existing data

blinds us, and it is important to shift the focus away from

readily available information. Crucially, not having the

right data is no excuse. In the case of the head of HR, not

hearing about gender discrimination from anyone in the

organization allowed him to conclude that women did

not face this issue. Think about what data is not being

collected that may help embed existing data in a richer

context.

Next time someone angrily challenges your data,

there are a few steps you can take:

First, take their perspective. Understand why your

counterpart is responding so forcefully. In many

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Responding to Someone Who Challenges Your Data

cases, it may simply be that they really care about the

outcome. Your goals may even be aligned, and fram-

ing your data in a way where their goals are achieved

may help you circumvent their anger.

Second, collect more data that specifi cally takes their

criticism to heart. Every comment is a useful com-

ment. Just as a fi ction author can’t be upset when

readers don’t get the point of what they are trying to

say, a researcher must understand how their fi ndings

are being understood. What is the upset recipient

of your analysis responding to, and how can further

data collection help you address their concerns?

Last, view your challenger not as an opponent, but

as an ally. Find a way to collaborate, because once

you have their buy-in, they are invested in the joint

investigation. As a result, they will be more likely to

view you as being part of the team. And then you can

channel the energy that prompted their fury for good.

Defending your data analysis can be stressful—espe-

cially if your fi ndings cause confl ict. But by following

these steps, you can diffuse any tension and attack the

problem in a productive way.

Jon M. Jachimowicz

is a PhD candidate at Columbia

Business School. In his research, he investigates the an-

tecedents, perceptions, and consequences of passion for

work. His website can be found at jonmjachimowicz

.com.

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CHAPTER 22

Decisions Don’t

Start with Data

by Nick Morgan

I recently worked with an executive keen to persuade his

colleagues that their company should drop a longtime

vendor in favor of a new one. He knew that members of

the executive team opposed the idea (in part because of

their well-established relationships with the vendor) but

he didn’t want to confront them directly, so he put to-

gether a PowerPoint presentation full of stats and charts

showing the cost savings that might be achieved by the

change.

He hoped the data would speak for itself.

But it didn’t.

Adapted from content posted on hbr.org, May 14, 2014 (product

#H00T3S).

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Communicate Your Findings

The team stopped listening about a third of the way

through the presentation. Why? It was good data. The

executive was right. But, even in business meetings,

numbers don’t ever speak for themselves, no matter how

visually appealing the presentation may be.

To infl uence human decision making, you have to

get to the place where decisions are really made—in the

unconscious mind, where emotions rule, and data is

mostly absent. Yes, even the most savvy executives begin

to make choices this way. They get an intent, a desire,

or a want in their unconscious minds, and then decide

to pursue it and act on that decision. Only after that

do they become consciously aware of the choice they’ve

made and start to justify it with rational argument. In

fact, research from Carnegie Mellon University indicates

that our unconscious minds actually make better deci-

sions when left alone to deal with complex issues.

Data is helpful as supporting material, of course. But,

because it spurs thinking in the conscious mind, it must

be used with care. Effective persuasion starts not with

numbers, but with stories that have emotional power

because that’s the best way to tap into unconscious de-

cision making. We decide to invest in a new company

or business line not because the fi nancial model shows

it will succeed but because we’re drawn to the story told

by the people pitching it. We buy goods and services

because we believe the stories marketers build around

them: “A diamond is forever” (De Beers), “Real beauty”

(Dove), “Think different” (Apple), “Just do it” (Nike). We

take jobs not only for the pay and benefi ts but also for

the self-advancement story we’re told, and tell ourselves,

about working at the new place.

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Decisions Don’t Start with Data

Sometimes we describe this as having a good “gut

feeling.” What that really means is that we’ve already un-

consciously decided to go forward, based on desire, and

our conscious mind is seeking some rationale for that

otherwise invisible decision.

I advised the executive to scrap his PowerPoint and

tell a story about the opportunities for future growth

with the new vendor, reframing and trumping the loy-

alty story the opposition camp was going to tell. And so,

in his next attempt, rather than just presenting data, he

told his colleagues that they should all be striving toward

a new vision for the company, no longer held back by a

tether to the past. He began with an alluring description

of the future state—improved margins, a cooler, higher-

tech product line, and excited customers—then asked his

audience to move forward with him to reach that goal. It

was a quest story, and it worked.

Data can provide new insight and evidence to inform

your toughest decisions. But numbers alone won’t con-

vince others. Good stories—with a few key facts woven

in—are what attach emotions to your argument, prompt

people into unconscious decision making, and ultimately

move them to action.

Nick Morgan is a speaker, coach, and the president and

founder of Public Words, a communications consulting

fi rm. He is the author of Power Cues: The Subtle Science

of Leading Groups, Persuading Others, and Maximiz-

ing Your Personal Impact (Harvard Business Review Press, 2014).

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APPENDIX

Data Scientist:

The Sexiest Job of

the 21st Century

by Thomas H. Davenport and D.J. Patil

When Jonathan Goldman arrived for work in June 2006

at LinkedIn, the business networking site, the place still

felt like a startup. The company had just under 8 million

accounts, and the number was growing quickly as exist-

ing members invited their friends and colleagues to join.

But users weren’t seeking out connections with the peo-

ple who were already on the site at the rate executives

had expected. Something was apparently missing in the

social experience. As one LinkedIn manager put it, “It

Reprinted from Harvard Business Review, October 2012 (product

#R1210D).

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Appendix

was like arriving at a conference reception and realizing

you don’t know anyone. So you just stand in the corner

sipping your drink—and you probably leave early.”

Goldman, a PhD in physics from Stanford, was in-

trigued by the linking he did see going on and by the

richness of the user profi les. It all made for messy data

and unwieldy analysis, but as he began exploring people’s

connections, he started to see possibilities. He began

forming theories, testing hunches, and fi nding patterns

that allowed him to predict whose networks a given pro-

fi le would land in. He could imagine that new features

capitalizing on the heuristics he was developing might

provide value to users. But Linked In’s engineering team,

caught up in the challenges of scaling up the site, seemed

uninterested. Some colleagues were openly dismissive of

Goldman’s ideas. Why would users need LinkedIn to fi g-

ure out their networks for them? The site already had an

address book importer that could pull in all a member’s

connections.

Luckily, Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn’s cofounder and CEO

at the time (now its executive chairman), had faith in the

power of analytics because of his experiences at PayPal,

and he had granted Goldman a high degree of autonomy.

For one thing, he had given Goldman a way to circum-

vent the traditional product release cycle by publishing

small modules in the form of ads on the site’s most popu-

lar pages.

Through one such module, Goldman started to test

what would happen if you presented users with names of

people they hadn’t yet connected with but seemed likely

to know—for example, people who had shared their

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Data Scientist: The Sexiest Job of the 21st Century

tenures at schools and workplaces. He did this by gin-

ning up a custom ad that displayed the three best new

matches for each user based on the background entered

in his or her LinkedIn profi le. Within days it was obvi-

ous that something remarkable was taking place. The

click-through rate on those ads was the highest ever

seen. Goldman continued to refi ne how the suggestions

were generated, incorporating networking ideas such as

“triangle closing”—the notion that if you know Larry and

Sue, there’s a good chance that Larry and Sue know each

other. Goldman and his team also got the action required

to respond to a suggestion down to one click.

It didn’t take long for LinkedIn’s top managers to rec-

ognize a good idea and make it a standard feature. That’s

when things really took off. “People You May Know” ads

achieved a click-through rate 30% higher than the rate

obtained by other prompts to visit more pages on the

site. They generated millions of new page views. Thanks

to this one feature, Linked In’s growth trajectory shifted

signifi cantly upward.

A New Breed

Goldman is a good example of a new key player in orga-

nizations: the “data scientist.” It’s a high-ranking profes-

sional with the training and curiosity to make discover-

ies in the world of big data. The title has been around

for only a few years. (It was coined in 2008 by one of us,

D.J. Patil, and Jeff Hammerbacher, then the respective

leads of data and analytics efforts at LinkedIn and Face-

book.) But thousands of data scientists are already work-

ing at both startups and well-established companies.

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Appendix

Their sudden appearance on the business scene refl ects

the fact that companies are now wrestling with informa-

tion that comes in varieties and volumes never encoun-

tered before. If your organization stores multiple peta-

bytes of data, if the information most critical to your

business resides in forms other than rows and columns

of numbers, or if answering your biggest question would

involve a “mashup” of several analytical efforts, you’ve

got a big data opportunity.

Much of the current enthusiasm for big data focuses

on technologies that make taming it possible, including

Hadoop (the most widely used framework for distributed

fi le system processing) and related open-source tools,

cloud computing, and data visualization. While those are

important breakthroughs, at least as important are the

people with the skill set (and the mindset) to put them to

good use. On this front, demand has raced ahead of sup-

ply. Indeed, the shortage of data scientists is becoming a

serious constraint in some sectors. Greylock Partners, an

early-stage venture fi rm that has backed companies such

as Facebook, LinkedIn, Palo Alto Networks, and Work-

day, is worried enough about the tight labor pool that

it has built its own specialized recruiting team to chan-

nel talent to businesses in its portfolio. “Once they have

data,” says Dan Portillo, who leads that team, “they really

need people who can manage it and fi nd insights in it.”

Who Are These People?

If capitalizing on big data depends on hiring scarce data

scientists, then the challenge for managers is to learn

how to identify that talent, attract it to an enterprise, and

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Data Scientist: The Sexiest Job of the 21st Century

make it productive. None of those tasks is as straightfor-

ward as it is with other, established organizational roles.

Start with the fact that there are no university programs

offering degrees in data science. There is also little con-

sensus on where the role fi ts in an organization, how

data scientists can add the most value, and how their

performance should be measured.

The fi rst step in fi lling the need for data scientists,

therefore, is to understand what they do in businesses.

Then ask, What skills do they need? And what fi elds are

those skills most readily found in?

More than anything, what data scientists do is make

discoveries while swimming in data. It’s their preferred

method of navigating the world around them. At ease in

the digital realm, they are able to bring structure to large

quantities of formless data and make analysis possible.

They identify rich data sources, join them with other,

potentially incomplete data sources, and clean the re-

sulting set. In a competitive landscape where challenges

keep changing and data never stop fl owing, data scien-

tists help decision makers shift from ad hoc analysis to

an ongoing conversation with data.

Data scientists realize that they face technical limita-

tions, but they don’t allow that to bog down their search

for novel solutions. As they make discoveries, they com-

municate what they’ve learned and suggest its implica-

tions for new business directions. Often they are creative

in displaying information visually and making the pat-

terns they fi nd clear and compelling. They advise execu-

tives and product managers on the implications of the

data for products, processes, and decisions.

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Appendix

Given the nascent state of their trade, it often falls to

data scientists to fashion their own tools and even con-

duct academic-style research. Yahoo, one of the fi rms

that employed a group of data scientists early on, was

instrumental in developing Hadoop. Facebook’s data

team created the language Hive for programming Ha-

doop projects. Many other data scientists, especially at

data-driven companies such as Google, Amazon, Micro-

soft, Walmart, eBay, LinkedIn, and Twitter, have added

to and refi ned the tool kit.

What kind of person does all this? What abilities

make a data scientist successful? Think of him or her

as a hybrid of data hacker, analyst, communicator, and

trusted adviser. The combination is extremely power-

ful—and rare.

Data scientists’ most basic, universal skill is the ability

to write code. This may be less true in fi ve years’ time,

when many more people will have the title “data scien-

tist” on their business cards. More enduring will be the

need for data scientists to communicate in language

that all their stakeholders understand—and to demon-

strate the special skills involved in storytelling with data,

whether verbally, visually, or—ideally—both.

But we would say the dominant trait among data sci-

entists is an intense curiosity—a desire to go beneath the

surface of a problem, fi nd the questions at its heart, and

distill them into a very clear set of hypotheses that can

be tested. This often entails the associative thinking that

characterizes the most creative scientists in any fi eld. For

example, we know of a data scientist studying a fraud

problem who realized that it was analogous to a type of

DNA sequencing problem. By bringing together those

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Data Scientist: The Sexiest Job of the 21st Century

disparate worlds, he and his team were able to craft a so-

lution that dramatically reduced fraud losses.

Perhaps it’s becoming clear why the word “scientist”

fi ts this emerging role. Experimental physicists, for ex-

ample, also have to design equipment, gather data, con-

duct multiple experiments, and communicate their re-

sults. Thus, companies looking for people who can work

with complex data have had good luck recruiting among

those with educational and work backgrounds in the

physical or social sciences. Some of the best and bright-

est data scientists are PhDs in esoteric fi elds like ecol-

ogy and systems biology. George Roumeliotis, the head

of a data science team at Intuit in Silicon Valley, holds a

doctorate in astrophysics. A little less surprisingly, many

of the data scientists working in business today were for-

mally trained in computer science, math, or economics.

They can emerge from any fi eld that has a strong data

and computational focus.

It’s important to keep that image of the scientist in

mind—because the word “data” might easily send a

search for talent down the wrong path. As Portillo told

us, “The traditional backgrounds of people you saw 10

to 15 years ago just don’t cut it these days.” A quantita-

tive analyst can be great at analyzing data but not at sub-

duing a mass of unstructured data and getting it into a

form in which it can be analyzed. A data management

expert might be great at generating and organizing data

in structured form but not at turning unstructured data

into structured data—and also not at actually analyzing

the data. And while people without strong social skills

might thrive in traditional data professions, data scien-

tists must have such skills to be effective.

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Appendix

Roumeliotis was clear with us that he doesn’t hire on

the basis of statistical or analytical capabilities. He be-

gins his search for data scientists by asking candidates if

they can develop prototypes in a mainstream program-

ming language such as Java. Roumeliotis seeks both a

skill set—a solid foundation in math, statistics, probabil-

ity, and computer science—and certain habits of mind.

He wants people with a feel for business issues and em-

pathy for customers. Then, he says, he builds on all that

with on-the-job training and an occasional course in a

particular technology.

Several universities are planning to launch data sci-

ence programs, and existing programs in analytics, such

as the Master of Science in Analytics program at North

Carolina State, are busy adding big data exercises and

coursework. Some companies are also trying to de-

velop their own data scientists. After acquiring the big

data fi rm Greenplum, EMC decided that the availability

of data scientists would be a gating factor in its own—

and customers’—exploitation of big data. So its Educa-

tion Services division launched a data science and big

data analytics training and certifi cation program. EMC

makes the program available to both employees and cus-

tomers, and some of its graduates are already working

on internal big data initiatives.

As educational offerings proliferate, the pipeline of

talent should expand. Vendors of big data technolo-

gies are also working to make them easier to use. In the

meantime one data scientist has come up with a creative

approach to closing the gap. The Insight Data Science

Fellows Program, a postdoctoral fellowship designed by

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Data Scientist: The Sexiest Job of the 21st Century

HOW TO FIND THE DATA SCIENTISTS YOU NEED

1. Focus recruiting at the “usual suspect” universi-

ties (Stanford, MIT, Berkeley, Harvard, Carnegie

Mellon) and also at a few others with proven

strengths: North Carolina State, UC Santa Cruz,

the University of Maryland, the University of

Washington, and UT Austin.

2. Scan the membership rolls of user groups

devoted to data science tools. The R User

Groups (for an open-source statistical

tool favored by data scientists) and Python

Interest Groups (for PIGgies) are good places

to start.

3. Search for data scientists on LinkedIn—they’re

almost all on there, and you can see if they have

the skills you want.

4. Hang out with data scientists at the Strata,

Structure:Data, and Hadoop World conferences

and similar gatherings (there is almost one a

week now) or at informal data scientist “meet-

ups” in the Bay Area; Boston; New York; Wash-

ington, DC; London; Singapore; and Sydney.

5. Make friends with a local venture capitalist, who

is likely to have gotten a variety of big data pro-

posals over the past year.

( continued)

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Appendix

HOW TO FIND THE DATA SCIENTISTS YOU NEED

( continued)

6. Host a competition on Kaggle or TopCoder, the

analytics and coding competition sites. Follow

up with the most-creative entrants.

7. Don’t bother with any candidate who can’t code.

Coding skills don’t have to be at a world-class

level but should be good enough to get by. Look

for evidence, too, that candidates learn rapidly

about new technologies and methods.

8. Make sure a candidate can fi nd a story in a data

set and provide a coherent narrative about a

key data insight. Test whether he or she can

communicate with numbers, visually and

verbally.

9. Be wary of candidates who are too detached

from the business world. When you ask how

their work might apply to your management

challenges, are they stuck for answers?

10. Ask candidates about their favorite analysis or

insight and how they are keeping their skills

sharp. Have they gotten a certifi cate in the

advanced track of Stanford’s online Machine

Learning course, contributed to open-source

projects, or built an online repository of code to

share (for example, on GitHub)?

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Data Scientist: The Sexiest Job of the 21st Century

Jake Klamka (a high-energy physicist by training), takes

scientists from academia and in six weeks prepares them

to succeed as data scientists. The program combines

mentoring by data experts from local companies (such

as Facebook, Twitter, Google, and LinkedIn) with ex-

posure to actual big data challenges. Originally aiming

for 10 fellows, Klamka wound up accepting 30, from an

applicant pool numbering more than 200. More organi-

zations are now lining up to participate. “The demand

from companies has been phenomenal,” Klamka told us.

“They just can’t get this kind of high-quality talent.”

Why Would a Data Scientist

Want to Work Here?

Even as the ranks of data scientists swell, competition

for top talent will remain fi erce. Expect candidates to

size up employment opportunities on the basis of how

interesting the big data challenges are. As one of them

commented, “If we wanted to work with structured data,

we’d be on Wall Street.” Given that today’s most qualifi ed

prospects come from nonbusiness backgrounds, hiring

managers may need to fi gure out how to paint an excit-

ing picture of the potential for breakthroughs that their

problems offer.

Pay will of course be a factor. A good data scientist

will have many doors open to him or her, and salaries

will be bid upward. Several data scientists working at

startups commented that they’d demanded and got large

stock option packages. Even for someone accepting a po-

sition for other reasons, compensation signals a level of

respect and the value the role is expected to add to the

219

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Appendix

business. But our informal survey of the priorities of

data scientists revealed something more fundamentally

important. They want to be “on the bridge.” The refer-

ence is to the 1960s television show Star Trek, in which

the starship captain James Kirk relies heavily on data

supplied by Mr. Spock. Data scientists want to be in the

thick of a developing situation, with real-time awareness

of the evolving set of choices it presents.

Considering the diffi culty of fi nding and keeping data

scientists, one would think that a good strategy would

involve hiring them as consultants. Most consulting

fi rms have yet to assemble many of them. Even the larg-

est fi rms, such as Accenture, Deloitte, and IBM Global

Services, are in the early stages of leading big data proj-

ects for their clients. The skills of the data scientists

they do have on staff are mainly being applied to more-

conventional quantitative analysis problems. Offshore

analytics services fi rms, such as Mu Sigma, might be the

ones to make the fi rst major inroads with data scientists.

But the data scientists we’ve spoken with say they

want to build things, not just give advice to a decision

maker. One described being a consultant as “the dead

zone—all you get to do is tell someone else what the

analyses say they should do.” By creating solutions that

work, they can have more impact and leave their marks

as pioneers of their profession.

Care and Feeding

Data scientists don’t do well on a short leash. They

should have the freedom to experiment and explore pos-

sibilities. That said, they need close relationships with

the rest of the business. The most important ties for

220

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Data Scientist: The Sexiest Job of the 21st Century

them to forge are with executives in charge of products

and services rather than with people overseeing business

functions. As the story of Jonathan Goldman illustrates,

their greatest opportunity to add value is not in creating

reports or presentations for senior executives but in in-

novating with customer- facing products and processes.

LinkedIn isn’t the only company to use data scientists

to generate ideas for products, features, and value- adding

services. At Intuit data scientists are asked to develop in-

sights for small-business customers and consumers and

report to a new senior vice president of big data, social

design, and marketing. GE is already using data science

to optimize the service contracts and maintenance inter-

vals for industrial products. Google, of course, uses data

scientists to refi ne its core search and ad-serving algo-

rithms. Zynga uses data scientists to optimize the game

experience for both long-term engagement and revenue.

Netfl ix created the well-known Net fl ix Prize, given to

the data science team that developed the best way to

improve the company’s movie recommendation system.

The test-preparation fi rm Kaplan uses its data scientists

to uncover effective learning strategies.

There is, however, a potential downside to having

people with sophisticated skills in a fast-evolving fi eld

spend their time among general management colleagues.

They’ll have less interaction with similar specialists,

which they need to keep their skills sharp and their tool

kit state-of-the-art. Data scientists have to connect with

communities of practice, either within large fi rms or ex-

ternally. New conferences and informal associations are

springing up to support collaboration and technology

sharing, and companies should encourage scientists to

221

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Appendix

become involved in them with the understanding that

“more water in the harbor fl oats all boats.”

Data scientists tend to be more motivated, too, when

more is expected of them. The challenges of accessing

and structuring big data sometimes leave little time or

energy for sophisticated analytics involving prediction or

optimization. Yet if executives make it clear that simple

reports are not enough, data scientists will devote more

effort to advanced analytics. Big data shouldn’t equal

“small math.”

The Hot Job of the Decade

Hal Varian, the chief economist at Google, is known

to have said, “The sexy job in the next 10 years will be

statisticians. People think I’m joking, but who would’ve

guessed that computer engineers would’ve been the sexy

job of the 1990s?”

If “sexy” means having rare qualities that are much in

demand, data scientists are already there. They are diffi -

cult and expensive to hire and, given the very competitive

market for their services, diffi cult to retain. There simply

aren’t a lot of people with their combination of scientifi c

background and computational and analytical skills.

Data scientists today are akin to Wall Street “quants”

of the 1980s and 1990s. In those days people with back-

grounds in physics and math streamed to investment

banks and hedge funds, where they could devise entirely

new algorithms and data strategies. Then a variety of

universities developed master’s programs in fi nancial en-

gineering, which churned out a second generation of tal-

ent that was more accessible to mainstream fi rms. The

222

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Data Scientist: The Sexiest Job of the 21st Century

pattern was repeated later in the 1990s with search en-

gineers, whose rarefi ed skills soon came to be taught in

computer science programs.

One question raised by this is whether some fi rms

would be wise to wait until that second generation of

data scientists emerges, and the candidates are more nu-

merous, less expensive, and easier to vet and assimilate

in a business setting. Why not leave the trouble of hunt-

ing down and domesticating exotic talent to the big data

startups and to fi rms like GE and Walmart, whose ag-

gressive strategies require them to be at the forefront?

The problem with that reasoning is that the advance

of big data shows no signs of slowing. If companies sit

out this trend’s early days for lack of talent, they risk fall-

ing behind as competitors and channel partners gain

nearly unassailable advantages. Think of big data as an

epic wave gathering now, starting to crest. If you want to

catch it, you need people who can surf.

Thomas H. Davenport

is the President’s Distinguished

Professor in Management and Information Technology

at Babson College, a research fellow at the MIT Initiative

on the Digital Economy, and a senior adviser at Deloitte

Analytics. Author of over a dozen management books,

his latest is Only Humans Need Apply: Winners and

Losers in the Age of Smart Machines. D.J. Patil was ap-

pointed as the fi rst U.S. chief data scientist and has led

product development at LinkedIn, eBay, and PayPal. He

is the author of Data Jujitsu: The Art of Turning Data

into Product.

223

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Index

A/B testing, 59–70

assumptions

blocking in, 62

confi rming, through visualiza-

defi ned, 60

tions, 179

example of, 65–67

in predictive analytics, 84–86

interpretation of results,

asymmetrical loss function, 105

63–64

attributes versus benefi ts, in

mistakes in, 68–69

marketing, 152–153

multivariate, 62–63

audience

origin of, 60

data presentations and, 175,

overview of, 60–63

178, 180, 184, 186, 188–189

real-time optimization, 68

understanding your, 180

retesting, 69

automation, 112

sequential, 62

averages, 138–139

uses of, 64–65

Albert (artifi cial intelligence

algorithm), 114–117

Bank of America, 18–19

analytical models, 15, 22–23, 43,

bar charts, 185, 186–188

84–85, 161, 198. See also

behavior patterns, 84

data models

bias

analytics-based decision making.

cognitive, 156–163

See data-driven decisions

confi rmation, 156–158

Anderson, Chris, 103

linear, 135–140, 145–151

annual rate of return (ARR), 145,

overconfi dence, 159–161

147–148

overfi tting, 161–163

artifi cial intelligence (AI),

visualizations and, 181–182

114–117, 149–150. See also

big data, 13–14, 104, 212, 222,

machine learning

223

225

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Index

blocking, in A/B tests, 62

correlation, 40, 68, 92–93,

Boston Consulting Group (BCG),

96–101, 158

105

acting on, 103–109

Box, George, 15

confi dence in recurrence of,

box-and-whisker plots, 193

104–105

Buffett, Warren, 23

spurious, 68, 93, 96–101, 162

business experiments. See

culture, of inquiry, 22–23

experiments

customer lifetime value, 81, 141

business relevance, of data fi nd-

ings, 121, 127–128

data

anonymized, 41–42

causation, 40, 92–93, 96, 103,

big, 13–14, 104, 212, 222, 223

104–109

challenges to, 199–203

charts, 26, 150–151, 183–190. See

cherry-picking, 158, 162

also data visualization

clean, 42–43, 75–76

Cigna, 15, 17

collection, 26, 34–36, 39–42

clarity of causality, 104–109

communication of ( see

Clark, Ed, 23–24

communication)

cognitive psychology, 134. See

context for, 181, 184

also cognitive traps

costs of, 40, 41–42

cognitive traps, 156–163

errors in, 72–73

color, in visualizations, 184–185,

evaluating, 43, 72–76

186

external, 39, 48

communication

forward-looking, 35

accuracy in, 165–167, 186–188

integration of, 76–78

of data fi ndings, 5–6, 20,

internal, 39, 48

165–167, 173–176

for machine learning, 117

of data needs, 37–40

metadata, 178, 181

with data scientists, 21–22,

versus metrics, 51–58

38–43

needs, 33–36, 39–40

responding to challenges,

outliers, 5, 21, 85, 166–169

199–203

for predictive analytics,

of uncertainty, 191–198

82–83

visualizations ( see data

presenting, 184–190

visualization)

qualitative, 35–36

confi dence interval, 126–127, 129

quality of, 71–78, 94–95, 181

confi rmation bias, 156–158

quantitative, 35–36

context, in rendering data, 181,

for regression analysis, 94–95

184

scrubbing, 75–76

control groups, 48–49

story, 20, 35, 207

226

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1/17/18 10:48 AM

Index

structured, 42–43

color and shading in, 184–185,

trusting the, 71–78, 94–95

186

unstructured, 42–43

to combat linear bias, 150–151

uses of, 1

context in, 184

visualizing ( see data

reasons for, 178–179, 181

visualization)

risks, 181–182

data analysts. See data scientists

of uncertainty, 193–195,

data analytics

197–198

deceptive, 165–169

deception, 165–169

predictive, 81–86

decision making

process, 3–6

cognitive traps in, 155–163

data audits, 47–48

data-driven, 7–9, 14, 16, 18,

data collection, 26, 34–36,

23–24, 155–164

39–42

factors in, 205–207

data-driven behaviors, 7–9

heuristics, 156

data-driven decisions, 7–9, 14,

intuition and, 95–96

16, 18, 23–24, 155–164

linear thinking and, 131–154

data experts. See data scientists

statistical signifi cance and,

data models

121–129

overfi tting, 43, 161–163

unconscious, 206–207

simplicity of, 43

de-duplication, 76

See also analytical models

dependent variables, 88, 90, 91

data scientists

devil’s advocate, playing, 22–23,

asking questions of, 21–22, 85

160

compensation for, 219

DoSomething.org, 51–52, 58

education programs for,

Duhigg, Charles, 84

218–219

fi nding and attracting,

212–220

economies of scale, 143–144

job of, 209–223

education

requesting data and analytics

programs for data scientists,

from, 37–44

218–219

retention of, 219–222

to learn analytics, 15, 17

role of, 6–7, 213–215

in visualizations, 179

skills of, 214–215

enterprise data systems, 35

working with, 18–19, 220–222

errors

data uncertainty, 193, 197

in data, 73, 75–76, 168

data visualization, 177–190

non-sampling, 128–129

audience for, 180, 184

prediction, 138–139

accuracy of, 186–188

sampling, 122–123, 128

charts, 26, 150–151, 183–190

error term, 91, 95

227

H7353_Guide-DataAnalytics_2ndREV.indb 227

1/17/18 10:48 AM

Index

experiments, 40

Hadoop, 212, 214

A/B tests, 59–69

Harley-Davidson, 114–117

design of, 17, 45–50

heuristics, 156

fi eld, 148–149

Hoffman, Reid, 210

narrow questions for, 46

hypothesis, 19

plan for, 49–50

null, 124–125

randomization in, 48–49,

61–62

randomized controlled, 41, 60

independent variables, 88, 90,

results from, 50

91–92

statistical signifi cance and, 125

indicators, 146–148

study populations for, 48

information overload, 155

exploration, in visualizations, 179

inquiry, culture of, 22–23

exploratory data analysis (EDA),

internal data, 39, 48

179, 181, 182

Intuit, 221

external data, 39, 48

intuition, 95–96, 113, 117–118

Facebook, 40, 214

Kahneman, Daniel, 160

favorable outcomes, 196–197

Kaplan (test preparation fi rm),

fi eld experiments, 148–149

221

fi nancial drivers, 55–56

Kempf, Karl, 18

fi ndings, communication of, 5–6,

Klein, Gary, 160

20, 165–167, 173–176

Fisher, Ronald, 60

Friedman, Frank, 22

lift, 64

Fung, Kaiser, 59–64, 68–69

linear thinking, 131–154

future predictions. See

awareness of, 146

predictions

limiting pitfalls of, 145–151

in practice, 135–140

LinkedIn, 209–211, 217, 220

General Electric (GE), 221

Loveman, Gary, 23

Goldman, Jonathan, 209–211,

220

Google, 46, 161, 220

machine learning, 111–119

Gottman, John, 174–175

assessment of problem for,

governing objectives, 54–57

112–114

Greylock Partners, 212

data for, 117

gut feelings, 206–207. See also

defi ned, 112–113

intuition

example, 114–117

228

H7353_Guide-DataAnalytics_2ndREV.indb 228

1/17/18 10:48 AM

Index

intuition and, 117–118

objectives, aligning metrics with,

moving forward with, 118–119

54–57

marketing, 152–153

observational studies, 40

medium maximization, 147

outcomes, 146–148, 196–197

Mendel, Gregor, 173–174

outliers, 5, 21, 85, 166–169, 193

Merck, 20–21, 22

overconfi dence, 159–161

metadata, 178, 181

overfi tting, 43, 161–163

metrics

choosing, 54–57, 139–140

versus data, 51–58

patterns, random, 163

intermediate, 146–147

performance metrics, 139–140

managing, 58

persuasion, 206–207

performance, 139–140

per unit profi t, 143–144

using too many, 68

Pollan, Michael, 189

vanity, 53–54

polls, 126–127, 191–193

Minnesota Coronary Experi-

population variation, 123–124

ment, 156–157

practical signifi cance, 121,

mistakes

126–128

in A/B testing, 68–69

prediction errors, 138–139

in machine learning, 117–118

predictions, 81–86, 161, 191–193

in regression analysis, 94–96

predictive analytics, 81–86

in statistical signifi cance,

assumptions, 84–86

128–129

data for, 82–83

mortgage crisis, 84–85

questions to ask about, 85

multivariate testing, 62–63

regression analysis, 83

statistics of, 83

uses for, 81–82

Netfl ix, 220

pre-mortems, 160

Nightingale, Florence, 177–178

presentations, 184–190

noise, 61, 161–162

presidential election (2016),

nonfi nancial measures, 55–56

191–193, 196–197

nonlinear relationships, 131–154

privacy, 41–42

linear bias and, 135–140

probability, 195–197

mapping, 149–151

problems, framing, 19–21

marketing and, 152–153

p-value, 125, 126

performance metrics and,

139–140

types of, 140–145, 148–149

qualitative data, 35–36

non-sampling error, 128–129

quality, of data, 71–78, 94–95,

null hypothesis, 124–125

181

229

H7353_Guide-DataAnalytics_2ndREV.indb 229

1/17/18 10:48 AM

Index

quantitative analysts. See data

results, communication of, 5–6,

scientists

20, 165–167, 173–176

quantitative data, 35–36. See also

return on investment (ROI),

data

20–21, 145

quants. See data scientists

Roumeliotis, George, 175, 215,

questions

216, 218

to ask data experts, 21–22,

38–43, 85

asking the right, 35, 38

sample size, 123

for experiments, 46

sampling error, 122–123, 128

for focused data search, 34–36

Shutterstock, 65–67

for investigating outliers, 168

Silver, Nate, 161

for understanding audience,

spurious correlations, 68, 93,

180

96–101, 162

machine learning and, 117–118

statistical methods story, 20

for understanding audience,

statistical models. See analytical

180

models

statistical signifi cance, 121–129,

158

randomization, 48–49, 61–62, 68

calculation of, 125

randomized controlled experi-

confi dence interval and,

ments, 41, 60

126–127, 129

random noise, 161–162

defi nition, 122

random patterns, 163

mistakes when working with,

real-time optimization, 68

128–129

regression analysis, 83, 87–101

null hypothesis and, 124–125

correlation and causation,

overview of, 122–125

92–93, 96–101

sampling error and, 122–123

data for, 94–95

use of, 126–128

defi ned, 88

variation and, 123–124

dependent variables in, 88,

statistical uncertainty, 193, 197

90, 91

statistics

error term, 91, 95

deceptive, 165–169

independent variables in, 88,

evaluating, 57

90, 91–92

machine learning and, 117–118

mistakes in, 94–96

picking, 54–57

process of, 88–92

in predictive analytics, 83

use of, 92

summary, 26, 28

regression coeffi cients, 83

storytelling, with data, 20, 35, 207

regression line, 90–91

structured data, 42–43

replication crisis, 49–50

study populations, 48

230

H7353_Guide-DataAnalytics_2ndREV.indb 230

1/17/18 10:48 AM

Index

summary statistics, 26, 28

unstructured data, 42–43

Summers, Larry, 21

user privacy, 41–42

surveys, 128–129, 138

vanity metrics, 53–54

tables, 185

variables

time-series plots, 26, 27

comparing dissimilar, 99

Toronto-Dominion Bank (TD),

dependent, 88, 90, 91

23–24

independent, 88, 90, 91–92

treatment groups, in experimen-

Varian, Hal, 222

tation, 48–49

variation, 28, 123–124

Vigen, Tyler, 96–98

visualization. See data

uncertainty, 191–198

visualization

data, 193, 197

favorable outcomes and,

196–197

Yahoo, 214

probability and, 195–197

statistical, 193, 197

unconscious decision making,

Zynga, 221

206–207

231

H7353_Guide-DataAnalytics_2ndREV.indb 231

1/17/18 10:48 AM

H7353_Guide-DataAnalytics_2ndREV.indb 232

1/17/18 10:48 AM

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HBR Guide to

Making Every

Meeting Matter

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HBR Guide to

Making Every

Meeting Matter

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Description: Boston, Massachusetts : Harvard Business Review Press,

[2016] |

Series: Harvard Business Review guides

Identifi ers: LCCN 2016025614 | ISBN 9781633692176 (pbk.)

Subjects: LCSH: Business meetings—Handbooks, manuals, etc. |

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Classifi cation: LCC HF5734.5 .H397 2016 | DDC 658.4/56—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016025614

ISBN: 9781633692176

eISBN: 9781633692183

What You’ll Learn

We all know what we’re supposed to do to run meetings

effectively, but we seldom do them well. Why? Perhaps

we think it’s just not worth the time to clarify what we

hope to accomplish, craft an agenda, handpick partici-

pants, issue prework, and send out follow-up notes that

detail key decisions and next steps. So we run meetings

off the cuff or saddle participants with an overly am-

bitious agenda we have no hope of working through.

Other meeting problems feel beyond our control. People

nod their heads in our decision-making meeting but

then show their true feelings with their lack of follow-

through. Derailers. Latecomers. Blowhards. Nonpartici-

pants. People who bring their agenda to your meeting.

The best way to prevent or overcome any of these

obstacles is thoughtful and thorough preparation. This

guide offers tips and scripts for curbing inappropriate

behavior and making your meetings easier to prepare

for, more effi cient to conduct—and more productive.

You’ll learn how to:

• Determine whether you even need to meet

• Prepare a realistic agenda

What You’ll Learn

• Identify why you’re meeting—and articulate your

purpose to attendees

• Orchestrate group decision making

• Prevent implementation roadblocks by giving

participants equal airtime

• Cope with chronic latecomers, windbags, and

other people problems

• Turn around a bad meeting

• Run any type of meeting—from a status stand-up

to a one-on-one walking check-in to a strategy

off-site

• Get the most out of digital meeting tools

• Hold people accountable without hounding or

micromanaging

• Keep the momentum going with prompt meeting

follow-up

vi

Contents

Preface: The Condensed Guide to Running Meetings

1

The 5-minute version of everything you need to know.

BY AMY GALLO

SECTION ONE

Prepare

1. Do You Really Need to Hold That Meeting?

11

A simple tool to help you decide.

BY ELIZABETH GRACE SAUNDERS

2. Stop Calling Every Conversation a “Meeting”

15

We need a more eff ective vocabulary.

BY AL PITTAMPALLI

3. If You Can’t Say What Your Meeting Will

Accomplish, You Shouldn’t Have It

19

Set a purpose by answering two questions.

BY BOB FRISCH AND CARY GREENE

4. How to Design an Agenda for an

Eff ective Meeting

25

A productive meeting begins here.

BY ROGER SCHWARZ

Contents

5. The Key to Shorter, Better Meetings

33

A fi lter to help you articulate your purpose.

BY ANTHONY TJAN

6. The 50-Minute Meeting

35

Build in time for transition.

BY DAVID SILVERMAN

7. The Magic of 30-Minute Meetings

37

Give yourself less time, and you’ll get

more done.

BY PETER BREGMAN

8. Meetings Need a Shot Clock

43

Tackle your agenda by beating the buzzer.

BY BOB FRISCH AND CARY GREENE

9. Are There Too Many People in Your Meeting?

47

Probably. A rule of thumb.

SECTION TWO

Conduct

10. Before a Meeting, Tell Your Team That

Silence Denotes Agreement

53

Speak now or forever hold your peace.

BY BOB FRISCH AND CARY GREENE

11. Establish Ground Rules

59

Set expectations for participation.

12. Reach Group Decisions During Meetings

63

You have options for gathering input and

moving forward.

viii

Contents

13. The Right Way to Cut People Off in Meetings

67

“Jellyfi sh!”

BY BOB FRISCH AND CARY GREENE

14. Dealing with People Who Derail Meetings

71

Having an explicit purpose will get you

back on track.

BY ROGER SCHWARZ

15. Refocus a Meeting After Someone Interrupts

77

Listen, validate, and redirect.

BY REBECCA KNIGHT

SECTION THREE

Participate

16. Polite Ways to Decline a Meeting Invitation

87

Preserve your time—and the relationship.

BY LIANE DAVEY

17. How to Interject in a Meeting

93

Useful phrases to introduce ideas, disagree,

and express confusion.

BY JODI GLICKMAN

18. Stuck in a Meeting from Hell?

Here’s What to Do

97

Don’t just sit there and suff er.

BY MELISSA RAFFONI

19. 7 Ways to Stop a Meeting from Dragging On

101

Break free from the silent majority.

BY JOSEPH GRENNY

ix

Contents

20. When Your Boss Is Terrible at Leading Meetings 107

Three tactics for turning things around.

BY PAUL AXTELL

SECTION FOUR

Close and Follow Up

21. The Right Way to End a Meeting

115

With closure.

BY PAUL AXTELL

22. Don’t End a Meeting Without Doing

These 3 Things

119

Make sure everyone’s on the same page.

BY BOB FRISCH AND CARY GREENE

SECTION FIVE

Specifi c Types of Meetings

23. What Everyone Should Know About

Running Virtual Meetings

127

Just three things.

BY PAUL AXTELL

24. How to Run a Great Virtual Meeting

135

Rules matter more.

BY KEITH FERRAZZI

25. Conduct a Meeting of People from

Diff erent Cultures

143

Help them step outside their comfort

zones.

BY REBECCA KNIGHT

x

Contents

26. Making Global Meetings Work

151

Inconvenience everybody equally.

BY JUNE DELANO

27. Give Your Standing Meetings a Makeover

155

Do away with the same old, same old.

BY MARTHA CRAUMER

28. How to Do Walking Meetings Right

157

Boost your creative thinking and engagement.

BY RUSSELL CLAYTON, CHRISTOPHER THOMAS,

AND JACK SMOTHERS

29. Stand-Up Meetings Don’t Work for Everybody

163

Are they speedy, or sexist, ageist, and height-ist?

BY BOB FRISCH

30. Leadership Summits That Work

167

Stop putting your top people to sleep.

BY BOB FRISCH AND CARY GREENE

Appendix A: Meeting Preparation Checklist

197

Appendix B: Sample Agendas

199

Appendix C: Meeting Follow-Up Checklist

205

Appendix D: Sample Follow-Up Memo

207

Appendix E: Digital Tools to Make Your

Next Meeting More Productive

211

There’s an app for that.

BY ALEXANDRA SAMUEL

Index 219

xi

PREFACE

The Condensed

Guide to Running

Meetings

by Amy Gallo

Editor’s note: Here’s where to start if you need to

organize a meeting soon—and you don’t have a ton

of time to prepare, but you want to do it right. When

you’re not so pressed for time, take a look at the rest

of the book, which expands on themes raised here.

We love to hate meetings. And with good reason—they

clog up our days, making it hard to get work done in the

gaps, and so many feel like a waste of time.

Adapted from content posted on hbr.org on July 6, 2015.

1

Preface

Paul Axtell, author of Meetings Matter: 8 Powerful

Strategies for Remarkable Conversations, says that this

is a major pain point for nearly every manager he works

with. “People are absolutely resigned,” he says. “They

have given up on the hope that it could be different.”

Axtell and Francesca Gino, author of Sidetracked: Why

Our Decisions Get Derailed, and How We Can Stick to the

Plan and a professor at Harvard Business School, weigh

in here on whether much of the conventional wisdom on

meetings holds true.

“Keep the meeting as small as possible.

No more than seven people.”

Though research does not point to a precise number

that’s ideal, “there is evidence to suggest that keeping

the meeting small is benefi cial,” says Gino. For one thing,

you’re better able to notice body language when there are

fewer people. “In a group of 20 or more, you can’t keep

track of the subtle cues you need to pick up,” says Ax-

tell. And if you want people to have the opportunity to

contribute, limit attendance. In Axtell’s experience, lim-

iting it to four or fi ve people is the only way to make sure

every one has the chance to talk in a 60-minute meeting.

The challenge with large meetings isn’t just that ev-

eryone won’t have a chance to talk but that many of

them won’t feel the need to. “When many hands are

available, people work less hard than they ought to,” ex-

plains Gino. “Social psychology research has shown that

when people perform group tasks (such as brainstorm-

ing or discussing information in a meeting), they show

a sizable decrease in individual effort from when they

2

The Condensed Guide to Running Meetings

perform alone.” This is known as “social loafi ng” and

tends to get worse as the size of the group increases.

That’s not to say that your 20-person meeting is

doomed for failure. You just need to plan more carefully.

“The degree of facilitation has to go up,” says Axtell. You

have to be more thoughtful about getting input from the

group and reading people in the room. “You need some-

one who is masterful at managing the conversation.”

“Ban devices.”

Both experts agree this is a good idea, for two reasons.

First, we know devices distract us. Gino points out that

many people think they can multitask—fi nish an e-mail

or read through their Twitter feed while listening to

someone in a meeting. But research shows they really

can’t. “Recent neuroscience research makes the point

quite clear on this issue. Multitasking is simply a mythi-

cal activity. We can do simple tasks like walking and

talking at the same time, but the brain can’t handle mul-

titasking,” says Gino. “In fact, studies show that a person

who is attempting to multitask takes 50% longer to ac-

complish a task and makes up to 50% more mistakes.”

And those who pick up their devices during meetings

may well be the worst multitaskers. “The research fi nds

that the more time people spend using multiple forms of

media simultaneously, the less likely they are to perform

well on a standardized test of multitasking abilities,” ex-

plains Gino.

The second reason to ban devices is that they distract

others. Gino recently conducted a simple survey that as-

sessed whether people thought reaching for a phone,

3

Preface

posting a status on Facebook, or writing a tweet during

a meeting was distracting or socially inappropriate. The

subjects “found the same action to be much more prob-

lematic if their friend or colleague engaged in it but did

not fi nd it to be very problematic when they were the ones

who were (arguably) being rude,” she says. These results

suggest that we feel annoyed when others are on their de-

vices during a meeting. “Yet we fail to realize that our ac-

tions will have the same effect on others when we are the

ones engaging in them,” she says. This is what Axtell sees

in practice: People feel insulted when someone reaches

for their phone, especially if that person is a senior leader.

“If you’re presenting or talking about an idea, and you see

a senior manager on their phone, it hurts,” he says.

Still there are some good reasons to use technology in

a meeting, says Axtell. You may want to take notes or re-

trieve reference material. “Perhaps they need to be avail-

able because something important is going on in their

lives,” he says. But if these circumstances don’t apply to

your participants, have everyone turn their devices off

and pay attention.

“Keep it as short as possible—

no longer than an hour.”

Research shows that there are advantages to keeping

meetings short. One reason is that people stay more fo-

cused during shorter time spans. “Classic studies have

found that groups adjust both their rate of work and

their style of interaction in response to deadlines and

time constraints,” says Gino. For example, one study

showed that “groups solving problems communicated at

4

The Condensed Guide to Running Meetings

a faster rate and used more autocratic decision-making

processes under high time pressure than they did when

time pressure was low.”

“Once people realize you’re tight on time, they stop

asking questions or talking and focus on getting the

work done,” says Axtell.

This doesn’t mean you should try to cram every

meeting into a 30-minute slot. Axtell warns that there

are conversations that necessitate more time, and you

shouldn’t rush over certain topics. “If the purpose of your

meeting is to talk through something, you need to give

people enough time to voice their opinions, build on one

another’s ideas, and reach a conclusion,” he says. Time

pressure will make this more effi cient, but you don’t

want to make the time so short that you truncate impor-

tant conversations (chapters 6 and 7 offer suggestions

for ideal meeting length).

“Stand-up meetings are more productive.”

While some might feel that stand-up meetings are a

gimmick, Gino points out that there is empirical data

that proves they work. In one study (done in 1999 before

stand-up meetings were a staple in most offi ces), Allen

Bluedorn from the University of Missouri and his col-

leagues concluded that stand-up meetings were about

34% shorter than sit-down meetings, yet they produced

the same solutions. (For a different take on stand-up

meetings, see chapter 29.)

Axtell fi nds these types of solutions encouraging. “I

like that people are trying to do something bold to

change up meetings—going for a walk, standing up,” he

5

Preface

says. But, he warns, don’t let the format distract you from

doing what really matters: running an effective meeting.

“I’d prefer people have the guts to say ‘I’m going to run

this meeting well.’”

“Make sure everyone participates, and

call on those who don’t.”

Some people may want to speak up in your meeting but

feel like they can’t unless they’re asked, says Axtell. This

may be due to “cultural reasons, or language barriers, or

general disposition.” Axtell believes that people who hold

back often have the best perspective on the conversation,

and you need to draw them out.

Having everyone contribute isn’t just good for the end

result of your meeting, it’s good for the participants as

well. People like to know that their opinions are being

heard and considered, says Gino. And “just by asking

people in the meeting for their opinion, you’re going to

raise their commitment to the issues being discussed.”

For people you know may feel too put on the spot,

talk to them ahead of time and tell them that you’re

hoping they’ll contribute. That way they’ll have time to

plan what they’ll say. Then in the meeting, you may still

need to prompt them by asking for their perspective, but

they’ll be primed to do so.

“Never hold a meeting just to

update people.”

“If you’re already meeting for worthwhile topics, it’s okay

to give a quick update,” says Axtell. You might ask at the

end if there’s anything the group needs to be aware of

6

The Condensed Guide to Running Meetings

or if there’s something going on in the department that

others need to know about. “But if you’re only meeting

to transfer information, rethink your approach,” Axtell

urges. “Why take up valuable time saying something you

could just send in an email?”

Wasting time isn’t the only problem with update

meetings. Gino explains that research by Roy Baumeis-

ter, Kathleen Vohs, and their colleagues suggests that we

have a limited amount of what they call “executive re-

sources.” “Once they get depleted, we make bad decisions

or choices,” says Gino. “Business meetings often require

people to commit, focus, and make decisions with little

or no attention paid to the depletion of the fi nite cog-

nitive resources of the participants—particularly when

the meetings are long or too frequent.” She fi nds that in

her own research, “depletion of our executive resources

can even lead to poor judgment and unethical behav-

ior.” So if you can avoid scheduling yet another meeting,

you should.

“Always set an agenda ahead of time, and

be clear about the purpose of the meeting.”

It’s hard to imagine more sound advice about meetings.

Axtell and Gino agree that designing the meeting and

setting an agenda ahead of time is critical. “You should

explain what’s going to happen so participants come

knowing what they’re going to do,” says Axtell. In her

book, Sidetracked, Gino talks about how lacking a clear

plan of action is often why groups get derailed in deci-

sion making. “Having a plan gives us the opportunity to

clarify our intentions and think through the forces that

7

Preface

could make it diffi cult for us to accomplish our goals,”

she says.

Following the advice given here will ensure that the

next time you need to bring a group together, you’ll make

it a good use of everyone’s time—including your own.

Amy Gallo is a contributing editor at Harvard Business

Review and the author of the HBR Guide to Dealing with

Confl ict. She writes and speaks about workplace dynam-

ics. Follow her on Twitter @amyegallo.

8

SECTION ONE

Prepare

CHAPTER 1

Do You Really

Need to Hold

That Meeting?

by Elizabeth Grace Saunders

“Let’s schedule a meeting” has become the universal de-

fault response to most business issues. Not sure what to

do on a project? Let’s schedule a meeting. Have a few

ideas to share? Let’s schedule a meeting. Struggling to

take action? Let’s schedule a meeting.

Although scheduling a meeting can be the right solu-

tion in many instances, it’s not always the best answer.

Here’s a decision tree to help you quickly determine if

holding a meeting makes the most sense (see fi gure 1-1).

Adapted from content posted on hbr.org on March 20, 2015.

11

Prepare

FIGURE 1-1

Should I hold a meeting?

Have I

Do I need

Does moving

Does this

Schedule

thought

outside

forward

necessitate

and

through

YES

input

YES

require a

YES

a face-to-

YES

prepare

this

to make

real-time

face

for the

situation?

progress?

conversation?

meeting?

meeting

NO

NO

NO

NO

Schedule

Schedule

Send an

Use chat, call,

time for

time for

e-mail

or schedule

strategic

doing the

a video

thinking

work

conference

Copy this decision tree, and keep it handy. It makes it

quick and easy to decide whether or not to hold a meet-

ing. Here’s what you should consider at each step.

Have I thought through this situation?

When you don’t have clarity about what you’re doing on

a project, it’s tempting to schedule a meeting to give you

the feeling that you’re making progress. But unless the

meeting’s intent is to structure the project, scheduling

a meeting is probably an ineffi cient use of your time—

and your colleagues’. Instead, do some strategic thinking.

Evaluate the scope of the project, its current status, and

the potential milestones, and lay out a plan of action for

making meaningful progress. Once you’ve completed

your own strategic thinking prep work you can consider

if it makes sense to hold a meeting.

Do I need outside input to make progress?

You may be in a situation where you know what needs to

be done, and you simply need to do the work. If so, don’t

12

Do You Really Need to Hold That Meeting?

schedule a meeting; update your to-do list, and take ac-

tion instead. However, if after clarifying what needs to

be done you require outside input to answer questions or

give feedback before you feel comfortable jumping into

action, continue on.

Does moving forward require a

real-time conversation?

If you have questions that need to be answered but don’t

require a two-way conversation, e-mail can be an excel-

lent alternative to a meeting. This is particularly true

when you’re looking for feedback on your written plans

or documents. It’s much more effi cient for everyone in-

volved if you send over items that they can look at on

their own (while you’re not awkwardly watching them

read during an in-person meeting) and then shoot you

back feedback. If you feel your situation does require a

real-time conversation, examine different communica-

tion channels.

Does this necessitate a

face-to-face meeting?

When you need two-way communication but don’t nec-

essarily need to see the person, you have a variety of

options. An online chat can help you answer questions

quickly, or for more in-depth conversations, scheduling

a phone call or video conference can work well. This not

only saves you the transition time of going to and from a

meeting place, it also allows you to continue working if

someone is late, rather than having to sit somewhere and

wait for them to show up.

13

Prepare

If in the end you decide that you need face-to-face, in-

person communication, then schedule a meeting, and

think through in advance how you can make it as effi -

cient and effective as possible. That means considering

your intent for the meeting, establishing your desired

outcomes, and preparing any materials that should be

sent out or reviewed in advance.

This decision-making process can help you radically

reduce the number of meetings you attend and increase

the amount of work that gets done.

Elizabeth Grace Saunders is the author of How to Invest

Your Time Like Money (Harvard Business Review Press,

2015), a time coach, and the founder of Real Life E Time

Coaching and Training. Find out more at the website

www.RealLife E.com.

14

CHAPTER 2

Stop Calling Every

Conversation a

“Meeting”

by Al Pittampalli

When both a 500-attendee event and a two-person dis-

cussion are referred to as “meetings,” it’s diffi cult to suss

out a gathering’s true purpose and to know how to pre-

pare to make it successful. In order to have fewer, more

purposeful meetings, we need a more robust vocabulary

to describe them. So let’s do some renaming, starting

with three common “meetings” that you’ll soon realize

aren’t really meetings at all.

Meetings with just two people are actually conver-

sations. Whereas meetings with ample attendee lists

Adapted from content posted on hbr.org on November 3, 2015.

15

Prepare

require an agenda, plenty of preparation, and an artic-

ulable purpose, one-on-one discussions need not be as

rigorous. They aren’t weapons of mass interruption, and

humans are naturally good at them. So keep conversa-

tions casual, and hold them as often as you’d like.

Another kind of meeting that needs to be renamed

is one in which work actually gets done. Management

expert Peter Drucker famously noted that a “work-

ing meeting” was impossible: “One either meets or one

works. One cannot do both at the same time.” And, for

the most part, he’s right. Most meetings involve planning

and coordinating the work, not executing it. But some-

times people—writers, programmers, mathematicians—

do huddle around a laptop or whiteboard to do real work

together. Let’s call these group work sessions and make

sure to disinvite the bureaucrats.

Then there are meetings where the primary goal is to

generate ideas. If you want people to be truly imagina-

tive and express themselves, don’t dare call it a brain-

storming meeting. Just call it a brainstorm. Since these

sessions are designed to maximize creativity, it’s a good

idea to play a warm-up game, get people standing and

active, and give people permission to have fun—free

of judgment and criticism. If someone walks past the

conference room and thinks you’re having a “meeting,”

you’re probably not doing it right.

Now let’s consider a few types of meetings that are

diffi cult to justify if you name them correctly. Take, for

example, meetings that are called primarily because

managers have information to disseminate. Rather than

distributing a memo or having several one-on-one con-

16

Stop Calling Every Conversation a “Meeting”

versations, these bosses decide to save time by wasting

the time of their colleagues, disrupting work, and cor-

ralling the team into a room together. These are conve-

nience meetings and almost always a bad idea. They’re

typically convenient for the individual and inconvenient

for everyone else.

Meetings called as a matter of tradition or habit—

formality meetings—should also be banned. These

gatherings may have served a purpose at one time but

do so no longer. Rather than considering an issue and

asking “Is a meeting the best way to address it?” we treat

the event as a given and ask “What issues do we need

to address at this meeting?” This ensures we always fi nd

things to discuss, no matter how trivial they are.

Some meetings are called under the guise of collabo-

ration or alignment when it’s really connection we’re af-

ter. These are social meetings. Connection is a laudable

goal, but meetings are a pretty lousy way to foster it. In-

stead, invite people to a team-building activity, a retreat,

or a party. But make it optional. While the extroverts on

the team might love the chance to socialize, the intro-

verts may want to stay back and get some work done.

Finally, we come to the decision-making meeting ,

a total misnomer as it implies that the meeting itself is

making the decision. But meetings don’t make decisions;

leaders do. Group discussions can help support that pro-

cess, of course, so let’s rename these types of gatherings

decision-supporting meetings to remind the leader

that it’s her job, and hers alone, to make sure action fol-

lows. It’s also helpful to distinguish between high-stakes,

low-stakes, and no-stakes decision-supporting meetings.

17

Prepare

In a high-stakes meeting, you want to facilitate a real

honest debate. Research shows that moderate task con-

fl ict leads to more accurate decisions, so demand candor

from attendees, and encourage them to disagree. Iden-

tifying these meetings as high-stakes will remind you to

let the best decision prevail, even if it’s not yours.

When the decisions to be made are less consequential,

the goal isn’t to slow down, it’s to speed up. Propose a

plan for moving forward, and focus on generating buy-in.

Of course you should allow for disagreement and be pre-

pared to revise your plan if participants offer good rea-

sons. But aim for quick resolution so you can spend most

of the time coordinating implementation. As for meet-

ings called to support inconsequential, no-stakes deci-

sions? They should obviously never see the light of day.

Imagine a culture where people regularly talk about

meetings using this kind of precise language. Picture

someone pushing back on a meeting invitation by calling

it a formality meeting. Envision the leader of a decision-

supporting meeting asking whether her gathering quali-

fi es as high stakes or low stakes. Think about someone

canceling an upcoming staff meeting and requesting a

few conversations instead. Better language isn’t the only

step you must take to transform your meeting culture,

but it’s a powerful start.

Al Pittampalli is the author of Persuadable: How Great

Leaders Change Their Minds to Change the World

(Harper Business, 2016).

18

CHAPTER 3

If You Can’t Say

What Your

Meeting Will

Accomplish, You

Shouldn’t Have It

by Bob Frisch and Cary Greene

How many times have you walked out of a theoretically

important meeting—a leadership off-site, a C-suite pow-

wow, a sit-down with the board—thinking, “That was a

great discussion, but I’m not sure we really accomplished

anything?” More often than not, the problem lies not in

Adapted from content posted on hbr.org on April 18, 2016.

19

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what did or didn’t happen at the meeting itself but in

the fact that you didn’t get anything done because the

goals for the meeting were never fi rmly established in

the fi rst place.

We see this happen all the time when clients hire us

to help manage off-sites. Often, they start by handing us

a pretty well-developed (and usually packed) agenda full

of already-booked speakers and a fi nalized list of con-

fi rmed attendees. Beyond logistics, the actual substance

of the off-site is nearly set. But then we always ask the

meeting owner—the most senior executive hosting it—

the same two questions:

• What do you want to have debated, decided, or

discovered at the end of this session that you and

the team haven’t already debated, decided, or

discovered?

• What do you want attendees to say when their

team members ask, “What happened at the big

meeting?”

In almost every case, the response is the same: “That’s

a good question—I hadn’t actually thought about those

things.”

It doesn’t matter if it’s an 8-person board meeting, a

15-person executive team meeting, a 150-person lead-

ership conference, or a regularly recurring status meet-

ing: Your fi rst step when planning an important meeting

should be to draft an initial set of goals based on the an-

swers to the two questions above. In the words of Ste-

phen Covey, “Begin with the end in mind.” These objec-

20

If You Can’t Say What Your Meeting Will Accomplish . . .

tives are not the activities you will be engaged in or the

time slots on the agenda. They are more high level: your

desired outcomes for the meeting.

The list needn’t be very long or complicated. As a

starting point, three to fi ve short bullet points or sen-

tences that articulate what you want to accomplish is

more than enough.

But this process may take some time. You could go

through two to three iterations before you have a straw-

model set of objectives that are ready to be tested with

other key meeting stakeholders, who should then be

asked to review the list and identify any missing or un-

necessary goals. Once everyone is aligned, agree and

communicate to all other attendees that these objectives

are locked in. This will help keep the agenda focused and

give you cover if someone asks to add an unrelated pre-

sentation or discussion at the last minute.

Here are some sample objectives from different types

of meetings we’ve facilitated recently.

Regularly recurring weekly meeting

• Share updates and review progress-to-date, in-

cluding major milestones or upcoming activities

(ask and answer “What did I do? What will I do?”).

• Identify questions and concerns related to prog-

ress (ask and answer “What are the potential

roadblocks?”).

• Prioritize and resolve issues and address addi-

tional questions.

21

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• Agree on next steps (for example, escalation of

issues, clear accountabilities, etc.).

Board meeting

• Provide board input as management formulates

the new fi ve-year strategy.

– Agree on how much runway remains on the

current core strategy.

– Identify new strategies to potentially pursue.

• Finalize the operating model for strategic

governance.

– Launch annual strategic planning process.

– Put in place long-term (fi ve-plus-year) strategic

oversight.

• Agree on the topics and timing for additional

board input into the current planning cycle.

Executive team meeting

• Develop a list of growth opportunities for the team

to assess further.

• Begin to defi ne select growth opportunities, in-

cluding the future-state description for each and

potential measures of success.

• Confi rm the accountable executive and team

leader for each opportunity.

• Understand the time line and activities over the

next three months.

22

If You Can’t Say What Your Meeting Will Accomplish . . .

Leadership conference

• Establish the purpose and positioning of the

extended leadership team.

• Impart a meaningful understanding of the com-

pany’s vision, mission, and strategy, including top

priorities for the next three years.

• Understand priority issues raised by attendees,

and develop potential solutions.

• Align around next steps.

Your list of objectives must also drive important deci-

sions about aspects of the meeting.

Agenda.  Draft an agenda, and map each activity to your

stated goals. Do all of them help you achieve one or more

of your objectives? Are there any objectives that can’t be

achieved through what you have planned?

Attendees.  The number and identity of attendees should

be based on the scope and objectives of the meeting. For

example, if you need to make decisions, we recommend a

smaller group. If your aim is to generate ideas or achieve

broad organizational buy-in for an initiative, you should

invite a larger group.

Pre-reads.  Don’t overload people with voluminous meet-

ing pre-reads full of assorted plans, reports, and studies

that aren’t directly related to your objectives. Instead,

use your list to organize, fi lter, and focus the content you

send in advance.

23

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Location.  The location of your meeting should refl ect its

objectives, too. For example, if your goals focus on a spe-

cifi c region, go there. If an explicit objective is for par-

ticipants to get to know each other better, pick a venue

designed for socializing.

When you set out and share your objectives in this way,

it ensures that everyone is “coming to the same meeting.”

Attendees will be energized and ready to accomplish

those goals.

Bob Frisch is the managing partner of the Strategic Off-

sites Group, a Boston-based consultancy, and is the au-

thor of Who’s In The Room? How Great Leaders Struc-

ture and Manage the Teams Around Them (Jossey-Bass,

2012). He is the author of four Harvard Business Review

articles, including “Off-Sites That Work” (June 2006).

Cary Greene is a partner of the Strategic Offsites Group.

They are coauthors of Simple Sabotage: A Modern Field

Manual for Detecting & Rooting Out Everyday Behav-

iors That Undermine Your Workplace (Harper One, 2015)

and are frequent contributors to hbr.org.

24

CHAPTER 4

How to Design

an Agenda for an

Eff ective Meeting

by Roger Schwarz

An effective agenda sets clear expectations for what

needs to occur before and during a meeting. It helps

team members prepare and allocate time wisely, quickly

gets everyone focused on the same topic, and makes it

clear when the discussion is complete. If problems occur

during the meeting, a well-designed agenda promotes

the team’s ability to address them right away.

Here are some tips for designing an effective agenda

for your next meeting. You’ll fi nd sample agendas and

Adapted from content posted on hbr.org on March 19, 2015.

25

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a blank template in appendix B. These suggestions will

be helpful whether your meeting lasts one hour or three

days or whether you’re meeting with a group of fi ve peo-

ple or forty.

Seek input from team members.  If you want your team to

be engaged in meetings, make sure the agenda includes

topics that refl ect their needs. Ask team members to sug-

gest agenda items and an explanation of why each area

needs to be addressed in a team setting. If you ultimately

decide not to include an item, be accountable: Explain

your reasoning to the team member who suggested it.

Select topics that are relevant to the entire team.  Team

meeting time is expensive and diffi cult to schedule. It

should mainly be used to discuss and make decisions

on issues that affect the whole team—and that need the

whole team to solve them. These are likely to be areas in

which individuals must coordinate their actions because

their parts of the organization are interdependent. They

are also likely to be issues for which people have differ-

ent information and needs. Examples might include:

How do we best allocate shared resources? How do we

reduce response time? If the team isn’t spending most of

the meeting talking about interdependent issues, mem-

bers will disengage and ultimately not attend.

List agenda topics as questions the team needs to answer.

Most agenda items are simply several words strung to-

gether to form a phrase, such as: “offi ce space realloca-

tion.” This leaves meeting participants wondering, “What

26

How to Design an Agenda for an Eff ective Meeting

about offi ce space reallocation?” When you list a topic

as a question (or questions) to be answered, it instead

reads like this: “Under what conditions, if any, should we

reallocate offi ce space?”

A question enables team members to better prepare

for the discussion and to monitor whether their own and

others’ comments are on track. During the meeting, any-

one who thinks a comment is off track can say something

like, “I’m not seeing how your comment relates to the

question we’re trying to answer. Can you help me under-

stand the connection?” The team knows that when the

question has been answered, the discussion is complete.

Note whether the purpose of the topic is to share infor-

mation, seek input for a decision, or make a decision.  It’s

diffi cult for team members to participate effectively if

they don’t know whether to simply listen, give their in-

put, or be part of the decision-making process. If people

think they are involved in making a decision, but you

simply want their input, everyone is likely to feel frus-

trated by the end of the conversation. Updates are bet-

ter distributed—and read—prior to the meeting, with a

brief part of the meeting allocated to answering partici-

pants’ questions. If the purpose of the topic is to make

a decision, state the decision-making rule. If you’re the

formal leader, at the beginning of the agenda item you

might say, “If possible, I want us to make this decision by

consensus. That means that everyone can support and

implement the decision given their roles on the team. If

we’re not able to reach consensus after an hour of discus-

sion, I reserve the right to make the decision based on

27

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the conversation we’ve had. I’ll tell you my decision and

my reasoning for making it.” (For more on group deci-

sion making, see chapter 12.)

Estimate a realistic amount of time for each topic.  This

serves two purposes. First, it requires you to do the

math: to calculate how much time the team will need

for introducing the topic, answering questions, resolving

different points of view, generating potential solutions,

and agreeing on the action items that follow from dis-

cussion and decisions. Leaders typically underestimate

the amount of time needed. If there are 10 people in

your meeting and you have allocated 10 minutes to de-

cide under what conditions, if any, you will reallocate of-

fi ce space, you have probably underestimated the time.

By doing some simple math, you would realize that the

team would have to reach a decision immediately after

each of the ten members had spoken for a minute.

Second, the estimated time enables team members

to either adapt their comments to fi t within the allotted

time frame or to suggest that more time may be needed.

The purpose of listing the time is not to stop discussion

when the time has elapsed; that simply contributes to

poor decision making and frustration. The purpose is to

get better at allocating enough time for the team to effec-

tively and effi ciently answer relevant questions.

Propose a process for addressing each agenda item.  A

defi ned process makes it possible to identify the steps

the team should take to complete a discussion or make

a decision. Agreeing on a process signifi cantly increases

28

How to Design an Agenda for an Eff ective Meeting

meeting effectiveness, yet leaders rarely do it. Unless a

team has agreed on a process, members will, in good

faith, participate based on their own process. You’ve

probably seen this in action: Some team members are

trying to defi ne the problem, while other team members

are wondering why the topic is on the agenda, and still

other members are already identifying and evaluating

solutions.

The process for addressing an item should appear on

the written agenda. When you reach that item during

the meeting, explain the process and seek agreement.

For example: “I suggest we use the following process.

First, let’s take about 10 minutes to get all the relevant

information on the table. Second, let’s take 10 minutes to

identify and agree on any assumptions we need to make.

Third, let’s take another 10 minutes to identify and agree

on the interests that should be met for any solution. Fi-

nally, we’ll use about 15 minutes to craft a solution that

ideally takes into account all the interests and is con-

sistent with our relevant information and assumptions.

Any suggestions for improving this process?”

Specify how members should prepare for the meeting.

Distribute the agenda with suffi cient time before the

meeting so the team can read background materials

and prepare their initial thoughts for each agenda item

ahead of time.

Identify who is responsible for leading each topic.  Some-

one other than the formal meeting leader can be respon-

sible for leading the discussion of a particular agenda

29

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item. This person may provide context for the topic, ex-

plain data, or have organizational responsibility for that

area. Identifying this person next to the agenda item

ensures that anyone who is responsible for leading part

of the agenda knows it—and prepares for it—before the

meeting.

Make the fi rst topic “review and modify agenda as

needed.”   Even if you and your team jointly developed

the agenda before the meeting, take a minute to see if

anything needs to be changed due to late-breaking

events. I once had a meeting scheduled with a senior

leadership team. As we reviewed the agenda, I asked if

we needed to modify anything. The CEO stated that he

had just told the board of directors that he planned to re-

sign and that we probably needed to signifi cantly change

the agenda. Not all agenda modifi cations are that dra-

matic, but by checking in at the beginning of the meet-

ing, you increase the chance that the team will use its

meeting time most effectively.

End the meeting with a plus delta evaluation.  If your

team meets regularly, two questions should form a sim-

ple continuous improvement process: What did we do

well? and What do we want to do differently for the next

meeting? Investing 5 or 10 minutes will enable the team

to improve performance, working relationships, and

team member satisfaction. Here are some questions to

consider when identifying what the team has done well

and what it wants to do differently.

30

How to Design an Agenda for an Eff ective Meeting

• Was the agenda distributed in time for everyone to

prepare?

• How well did team members prepare for the

meeting?

• How well did we estimate the time needed for each

agenda item?

• How well did we allocate our time for decision

making and discussion?

• How well did everyone stay on topic? Did team

members speak up when they thought someone

was off topic?

• How effective was the process for each agenda

item?

To ensure that your team follows through, review the

results of the plus delta evaluation at the beginning of

the next meeting.

If you develop agendas using these tips, your team

will have an easier time getting—and staying—focused

in meetings.

Roger Schwarz is an organizational psychologist, speaker,

leadership team consultant, and president and CEO of

Roger Schwarz & Associates. He is the author of Smart

Leaders, Smarter Teams: How You and Your Team Get

Unstuck to Get Results (Jossey-Bass, 2013). For more,

visit www.schwarzassociates.com or fi nd him on Twitter

@LeadSmarter.

31

CHAPTER 5

The Key to

Shorter, Better

Meetings

by Anthony Tjan

Your meetings may often cut across multiple objectives,

but setting and articulating the purpose of your meet-

ing will help participants prepare and contribute more

effectively. Outside general relationship-building, con-

sider that a business meeting has only three functional

purposes:

1. To inform and bring people up to speed.

2. To seek input from people.

3. To ask for approval.

Adapted from content posted on hbr.org on June 23, 2009.

33

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Use this as a fi lter to determine why you’re having a

meeting, to clarify your agenda viewing items through

this lens, and to explain your purpose to your audience.

Consider a meeting that sets its agenda goals along

the lines of “I want to bring you up to speed on these two

things,” or “I need input on this item,” or “I would like to

get your approval on these outstanding issues.” That’s it:

a simple, three-purpose rule that frames the goals of the

meeting from the perspective of each participant.

Anthony Tjan is CEO, managing partner, and founder

of the venture capital fi rm Cue Ball. He is coauthor of

Heart, Smarts, Guts, and Luck: What It Takes to Be an

Entrepreneur and Build a Great Business (Harvard

Business Review Press, 2012).

34

CHAPTER 6

The 50-Minute

Meeting

by David Silverman

I have a life-changing proposal for businesspeople every-

where: 50-minute hours. Start a productivity revolution

by scheduling business meetings that, by default, run 50

minutes long instead of 60.

How often do you fi nd that by 11 a.m. you’re running

late, and by 3 p.m. you’ve either been forced to dump a

meeting to reset your day or are 100 e-mails behind be-

cause you’ve gone straight from one appointment to an-

other all day long? Either way, you’re leaving someone

(or many people) in the lurch. It’s a stressful and unsat-

isfying existence.

Adapted from content posted on hbr.org on August 6, 2009.

35

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There’s another group of people who are scheduled

in back-to-back sessions all day long, fi ve days a week. I

speak, of course, of students. All the way through school

we’re taught in 50-minute blocks, a schedule that lets us

get to our next class on time. The buildings even have

bells to remind the person running the meeting—er,

class—to end on time.

Why is it, then, that when we graduate, they take away

our bells, replace them with an irritating “doink” sound

signaling “15 minutes until your next meeting,” and as-

sume we can now teleport to the next location? What

could cause such madness? In two words: Microsoft

Outlook. (Not without blame would also be IBM Notes,

Google Calendar, Apple’s Calendar, and others.)

By default, Outlook sets up meetings that are 30, 60,

90, or 120 minutes long. There’s no room for travel time,

to compose yourself, to answer a couple of e-mails, or for

a coffee or bathroom break.

Next time you’re faced with scheduling a meeting,

consider booking a 20-minute or 50-minute session. See

what you can accomplish in that time, and if you can still

get to your next meeting. You may just start a new trend

in your organization.

David Silverman has been an entrepreneur, an executive,

and a business-writing teacher. He is the author of Typo:

The Last American Typesetter or How I Made and Lost

4 Million Dollars (Soft Skull Press, 2009).

36

CHAPTER 7

The Magic of

30-Minute

Meetings

by Peter Bregman

Often we schedule one-hour time slots. Why? How did

an hour become our standard time allotment for so

many meetings, phone calls, and appointments? Re-

cently I tried a new experiment: I cut the time I allot for

many activities in half.

I started with something easy. I used to work out for

an hour a day. Now it’s down to 30 minutes. My results—

weight and conditioning—improved.

Adapted from content posted on hbr.org on February 22, 2016.

37

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Here’s why: My intensity is higher (I know I only have

30 minutes), I eat better (I don’t rely on my workout to

keep slim), I integrate movement more into my day (I

don’t rely on my workout to take care of all my fi tness

needs), and I never miss a workout (I can always fi nd 30

minutes).

If you have half the time to accomplish something,

you become hyperaware of how you’re using that time.

And hyperfocused during it. Most of my meetings are

now 30 minutes or less. My podcast is 15 to 20 minutes.

Even many of my conference calls, with multiple parties,

are 30 minutes or less. People on the calls, aware of the

time constraint, are more thoughtful about when they

speak and more careful not to follow tangents that aren’t

useful.

People also listen better because when things are

moving faster, we tend to be more alert. We know that

a single distracted moment will leave us behind. And,

since that keeps us more engaged, we end up having

more fun in the process.

Nowhere has this impact been more transformational

—and more evident—than in the leadership coaching we

do at Bregman Partners. For the past several years, all

of our coaching is accomplished in 30-minute sessions.

The advantages are obvious: Everyone saves time and

money. But here’s what’s less obvious: The coaching isn’t

simply as powerful as what we could do in a longer ses-

sion, it’s vastly more so. When the coach and the client

both know they have only 30 minutes, they move into

high gear.

38

The Magic of 30-Minute Meetings

• People show up. Just as with my workouts, clients

are far less likely to skip a 30-minute session than

they are an hour-long one.

• Everyone is on time. Every minute counts in a

30-minute conversation, and people know it. The

session gets started more quickly, because every-

one’s aware that the relationship is built on doing

good work, not on making small talk.

• People are much more likely to come prepared.

There’s no time wasted on off-topic items and

going-nowhere conversations. Clients know what

they want to cover and have put some thought into

it beforehand.

• The time pressure enhances focus and attention.

People don’t focus on multiple issues; they tackle

the single biggest opportunity or most persistent,

intractable obstacle. And they move on it.

• Coaches are more willing to be courageous, and

clients are more willing to be prodded. In a

30-minute session, coaches can’t waste time beat-

ing around the bush. They get to the point faster

and earlier, interrupt more bravely, and ask more

provocative questions.

The compressed, focused coaching session hones the

skill of getting to the point quickly, focusing on the

most essential elements of a situation, and taking ac-

tion. The downside? I haven’t seen one yet. Try it your-

self.

Transition some of your hour-long meetings to

39

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30 minutes. As you do, consider these three steps as a

way to make the 30 minutes most powerful:

1. Read what you need to beforehand, and tell

everyone else to do the same. Think about your

questions and concerns. Decide what’s important

to you and what you can let go of. Ask yourself

the most important question: What outcome do

you want?

2. Decide on the one thing that will make the big-

gest difference, and spend the 30 minutes on that

issue, topic, or opportunity. Get started right on

time, no matter who isn’t there, and be bold and

disciplined at keeping the conversation on track.

Let go of anything that is less critical. Make deci-

sions quickly, even if they are imperfect. Getting

traction on a single thing is far more useful than

touching on many issues without forward mo-

mentum on any.

3. Save at least the last fi ve minutes to summarize

what you learned, articulate what was valuable,

commit to what you’re going to do as a result of

the meeting, and clarify how you’ll assess the

success of your next steps. The sign of a great

meeting isn’t the meeting itself—it’s what hap-

pens after that meeting.

Like our coaches, you’ll need these “get to the most

critical point fast” skills—and the courage to use them—

if you’re going to make the most of your time. You need

to be bold and even provocative. You need to be will-

40

The Magic of 30-Minute Meetings

ing to interrupt, thoughtfully and for the greater good

of moving ambitiously toward what is most important.

You need to let go of things that don’t really matter.

And you need to be fully present. No multitasking. No

texting under the table. No distractions. Which is also

the upside: you get to be fully present in what you are

doing.

There is a cost. While it’s energizing, it also takes a lot

of energy to be so focused, even for a short amount of

time. It’s a sprinter’s tactic.

On the other hand, when you cut your meetings in

half, you’ll have a lot more time to relax at dinner, write,

sleep, and spend unstructured time with people you love.

Peter Bregman is CEO of Bregman Partners, a company

that strengthens leadership in people and in organiza-

tions through programs (including the Bregman Leader-

ship Intensive), coaching, and by consulting with their

CEOs and leadership teams. He is the best-selling au-

thor of 18 Minutes (Business Plus, 2011), and his most

recent book is Four Seconds (HarperOne, 2015).

41

CHAPTER 8

Meetings Need

a Shot Clock

by Bob Frisch and Cary Greene

We’ve all been invited to meetings with agendas so long

that it’s impossible to cover every item. The early speak-

ers run long. The early proposals get debated. But those

at the end get short shrift or are tabled until the next

gathering, even if they’re equally important.

How can you avoid this problem? One option is to

limit your ambitions, to be more realistic about what you

can get done in the hour or hours you’re meeting. Sim-

ply resign yourself to covering less. In our view, however,

there’s a better solution, one that allows you to accom-

plish more while still ensuring that each person or topic

gets adequate time. As crazy as it sounds, the answer is

Adapted from content posted on hbr.org on March 16, 2016.

43

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a shot clock. Yes, an actual shot clock, like the ones they

use in high school, college, and professional basketball

games. The NBA and the NCAA put the shot clock in

place years ago to quicken the pace of play, because some

teams (especially when leading near the end) passed the

ball endlessly without penalty. Now there’s a limit on the

time a team has to shoot—24 seconds in the NBA, 30

seconds in the NCAA—and if that time runs out, the ball

goes to the opponent.

We’ve experimented with the same system in business

meetings—especially when fair process is important to

uphold—and had great success. Although most attend-

ees tend to be a bit skeptical at fi rst, they quickly recog-

nize the purpose and value of the shot clock: It ensures

that all agenda items are covered and each is allocated

appropriate time.

Here’s how it works: Before a meeting begins, explain

that you want to devote a certain amount of time to each

topic. For example, if you’re leading an annual budget

review and have 40 investment proposals on the table,

you might say, “We’re going to spend exactly 10 minutes

on each topic. Speakers will have three minutes to pres-

ent, followed by seven minutes of discussion.”

Of course, sometimes different topics require differ-

ent amounts of discussion time. A relatively straight-

forward issue might warrant fi ve minutes, while a more

contentious one merits 20. If you can identify the more

time-consuming items in advance, great. If not, consider

using a few minutes at the start of a meeting to deter-

mine how much time each agenda item deserves. One

44

Meetings Need a Shot Clock

organization we worked with listed topics on a wall chart

and asked attendees to put a green, yellow, or red dot

next to each one to signify whether it deserved 7, 10, or

15 minutes of discussion, respectively. To limit the num-

ber of 15-minute conversations, each person only had

three red dots to dole out.

Once you’ve determined appropriate time allocations,

set up the shot clock. A smartphone stopwatch works

nicely. It should buzz—loudly—when time runs out and

keep buzzing until the person stops talking.

When people are introduced to this tool, they usually

both love it and hate it. They like the fact that it limits

others from commandeering too much time, overanalyz-

ing decisions, and beating dead horses in debates, but

they don’t enjoy getting cut off themselves. Still, we of-

ten fi nd that by the end of that fi rst meeting, everyone

has grown more comfortable with it and even fond of

it. The shot clock is impersonal—even obnoxious—but

that’s what makes it effective. It’s fair. Everyone is guar-

anteed to get a turn, and each issue is given the attention

it needs. No one gets to “buy” extra fl oor time because of

their status. It grants no wiggle room.

The shot clock also keeps meetings lively, focused,

and sharp. And it’s a great training tool. At several meet-

ings, we’ve observed that executives who are tasked with

speaking on multiple agenda items progressively get

better at managing the clock. The fi rst time they might

run a tad over. The second time they come in right at

the buzzer. By the third or fourth time, they’re express-

ing themselves much more succinctly and wrapping up

45

Prepare

well before their minutes run out. They are more careful

with their time because—just like the best basketball

players—they know it’s fi xed.

Bob Frisch is the managing partner of the Strategic Off-

sites Group, a Boston-based consultancy, and is the au-

thor of Who’s In The Room? How Great Leaders Struc-

ture and Manage the Teams Around Them (Jossey-Bass,

2012). He is the author of four Harvard Business Review

articles, including “Off-Sites That Work” (June 2006).

Cary Greene is a partner of the Strategic Offsites Group.

They are coauthors of Simple Sabotage: A Modern Field

Manual for Detecting & Rooting Out Everyday Behav-

iors That Undermine Your Workplace (Harper One, 2015)

and are frequent contributors to hbr.org.

46

CHAPTER 9

Are There Too

Many People in

Your Meeting?

When you set up a meeting, the people you invite are

just as important as what you need to get done.

It may be easy to default to inviting a crowd of people

to a meeting—that way, you don’t really have to identify

the most critical participants, you can avoid any ruffled

feathers, you’ll have everyone involved on hand for a de-

cision, and you won’t have to repeat your communica-

tions separately afterward. Or maybe your tendency is

to keep things small, to invite just a handful of people

whose opinions you value most.

Adapted from content posted on hbr.org on March 18, 2015 and from

Running Meetings (20-Minute Manager series; product#17003), Har-

vard Business Review Press, 2014.

47

Prepare

But for a meeting to be most useful, you have to have

the right people—and only the right people—in the room.

With too many attendees, you might have trouble focus-

ing everyone’s time and attention and not accomplish

anything; with too few, you might not have the right de-

cision makers or information providers in the room.

As you plan your attendee list, consider who will help

you accomplish your meeting’s goal and who will be

most affected by its outcome. You’ll likely want to in-

clude a combination of people who will offer a variety of

perspectives. Take the time to methodically list each in-

dividual and place them into the following categories to

make sure you include the right people:

• The key decision makers for the issues involved

• Those with information and knowledge about the

topics under discussion

• People who have a commitment to or a stake in the

issues

• Those who need to know about the information in

order to do their jobs

• Anyone who will be required to implement deci-

sions made

Consult with other stakeholders to make sure you’ve

made the right list. Often another key stakeholder can

remind you of a perspective you forgot to bring into the

room.

Just because someone’s name is on your list, however,

doesn’t mean they must be at the meeting. How many

48

Are There Too Many People in Your Meeting?

people should you actually invite? There are no hard-

and-fast rules, but in principle, a small meeting is best for

deciding or accomplishing something, a medium-sized

meeting is ideal for brainstorming, and a large meeting

makes the most sense for communicating and rallying.

Some people use what’s known as the 8–18-1800 rule as

a rough guideline:

• If you have to solve a problem or make a decision,

invite no more than 8 people. If you have more

participants, you may receive so much conflicting

input that it’s difficult to deal with the problem or

make the decision at hand.

• If you want to brainstorm, then you can go as high

as 18 people.

• If the purpose of the meeting is to provide updates,

invite however many people need to receive the

information. However, if everyone attending the

meeting will be providing updates, limit the num-

ber of participants to no more than 18.

• If the purpose of the meeting is for you to rally the

troops, go for 1,800—or more!

If you decide not to invite individuals you listed as

likely to be affected by the meeting’s outcome, have a

plan to communicate the substance of the meeting to

them afterward.

49

SECTION TWO

Conduct

CHAPTER 10

Before a Meeting,

Tell Your Team

That Silence

Denotes

Agreement

by Bob Frisch and Cary Greene

The meeting seemed to go smoothly. Bill, the executive

vice president of sales at a global company, had gathered

his extended leadership team—a group of more than

20 people—and outlined his latest plan to reconfi gure

the sales organization. When he asked if anyone had

Adapted from content posted on hbr.org on February 3, 2016.

53

Conduct

concerns, there were a few questions, but no one raised

any signifi cant obstacles or issues, and some of the more

senior team members spoke up in support of the plan.

Bill felt that everyone was on board and ready to go.

But later that week, one of the meeting attendees

came into Bill’s offi ce. “Do you remember when you were

talking about reconfi guring the sales organization?” the

attendee asked. “I’m not sure we’ve got Latin America

quite right.” Similar scenes played out with other di-

rect reports and more-junior employees in the halls

and cafeteria over the next few days. People had opin-

ions they hadn’t shared at the meeting. The plan, which

had seemed unanimously popular, was now unraveling.

What happened?

Most bosses assume that when they directly ask for

feedback, people will offer their thoughts candidly. It’s

great when that happens. But it often doesn’t, especially

in public settings and high-stakes situations. If you get

unanimous, but mostly unvoiced, support for a decision

that you thought might be contentious, it should be a

warning sign.

Why do people hold back from weighing in? In some

cases, junior people may hesitate to disagree with bosses

or senior colleagues. In others, the most powerful team

members may be disinclined, for political or other rea-

sons, to express candid opinions in front of the group be-

cause they know they can always get access to decision

makers or launch a covert campaign to sway support

their way after the fact.

How can you prevent this from happening? Set one

key ground rule: Silence denotes agreement.

54

Tell Your Team That Silence Denotes Agreement

These three words do a great job of forcing people to

open up, no matter how reluctant they may be feeling (or

how passive-aggressive they are). Explain to people that

if they don’t say anything when given a proposal or plan,

they’re voting “yes” for it. Silence doesn’t mean “I’m not

voting” or “I reserve the right to weigh in later.” It means

“I’m completely on board with what’s being discussed.”

You must then commit to enforcing the rule. If some-

one—even a powerful team member or friend—comes

up to you after a meeting to express reservations about

what was said, the response should be “You should have

spoken up at the meeting. Now everyone is on board and

the ship has sailed. Next time, say something.”

Sometimes the establishment and reinforcement of

“silence denotes agreement” as a ground rule is enough

to get the opinions fl owing. But if you sense that some

participants are still fi nding it diffi cult to express them-

selves freely, consider the following tactics, which al-

low perspectives to be aired in a way that focuses on the

ideas rather than on the individuals voicing them.

• Take anonymous polls. Ask people to write down

questions or concerns on index cards, put them

into a bowl, and read them aloud without using

names. Better yet, use a polling app or device to

query meeting participants and see their answers

in real time.

• Heat map the topic. Put poster-sized charts of

the components of an idea or plan on the wall.

Ask participants to place yellow dots on the charts

where they have a question and red dots where

55

Conduct

they have a signifi cant concern. Use the dots to

guide the conversation.

• Break up a big group. People are more likely to

participate in small group discussions, so divide

people into teams with specifi c instructions to

discuss any challenges to the proposal at hand.

Appoint a representative from each group to sum-

marize everyone’s thoughts.

• Ask them to empathize. People are often more

willing to speak on others’ behalf than on their

own. So when you solicit opinions with a ques-

tion like “What objections or concerns might your

direct reports have?” it can open the fl oodgates of

reaction. That’s because it allows those in the room

to externalize criticism. It’s not what they don’t

like. It’s what they think their people won’t like.

When you enforce the discipline of “silence denotes

agreement” and use the tactics described here, everyone

is motivated to say what they really think immediately

and discuss it openly, rather than fl agging problems af-

ter the fact.

Bob Frisch is the managing partner of the Strategic Off-

sites Group, a Boston-based consultancy, and is the au-

thor of Who’s In The Room? How Great Leaders Struc-

ture and Manage the Teams Around Them (Jossey-Bass,

2012). He is the author of four Harvard Business Review

articles, including “Off-Sites That Work” (June 2006).

56

Tell Your Team That Silence Denotes Agreement

Cary Greene is a partner of the Strategic Offsites Group.

They are coauthors of Simple Sabotage: A Modern Field

Manual for Detecting & Rooting Out Everyday Behav-

iors That Undermine Your Workplace (Harper One, 2015)

and are frequent contributors to hbr.org.

57

CHAPTER 11

Establish

Ground Rules

Setting guidelines at the beginning of a meeting encour-

ages everyone’s participation and keeps the conversation

on track. The guidelines don’t have to be rigid or overly

formal but should serve as a set of shared expectations

for behavior that refl ect your time constraints, the size of

your group, and your meeting’s intentions and goals. For

example, your group may decide to let only one person

speak at a time, not allow interruptions, set time limits

on contributions, table issues that aren’t easily resolved,

limit conversations that stray from the topic at hand,

and make sure that everyone is heard from.

Adapted from Running Meetings (20-Minute Manager series; product

#17003), Harvard Business Review Press, 2014; and Martha Craumer,

“How to Run an Effective Meeting: The Basics.”

59

Conduct

If you’re meeting with the same group of people on

a regular basis, the group can develop these guidelines

together. Otherwise, suggest some ground rules at the

beginning of your meeting, and get buy-in from the

attendees.

Specifying ground rules signals to participants that

you intend to keep things moving effi ciently.

• Reassert that you’re committed to beginning and

ending on time (and then really do it).

• Ask for everyone’s participation and openness to

new ideas.

• Agree to listen to each other and limit interrup-

tions—and as the leader, enforce that rule.

• Clarify how decisions will be made. Let the group

know right up front if this will be a group-decision

meeting, a meeting that calls for participants’

input, or a meeting that shares a decision that

has already been made.

• Explain your policy on multitasking and de-

vice use.

You may also need to establish ground rules for spe-

cifi c agenda items:

• Clarify constraints that exist for any issue that

will be under discussion—for example, upper-

management decisions or policy or budget restric-

tions that may limit the group’s range of options.

60

Establish Ground Rules

• Identify the fi nal decision maker for each item—

especially if it’s not someone in the meeting (such

as the CEO or department manager).

Martha Craumer is a senior writer at The Boston Con-

sulting Group.

61

CHAPTER 12

Reach Group

Decisions During

Meetings

Facilitating group decisions in meetings is rarely

easy. The following suggestions for choosing the right

decision-making method will help ensure that everyone

leaves your meetings with clear decisions and next steps

for implementing those decisions.

You can use three common decision-making methods

with groups: group consensus, majority vote, or leader’s

choice. Each has its own benefi ts and challenges.

Adapted from Running Meetings (20-Minute Manager series; product

#17003), Harvard Business Review Press, 2014.

63

Conduct

Group Consensus

Group consensus does not mean arguing and lobbying

until everyone agrees. It means reaching a decision that

everyone understands, supports, and is willing to help

implement.

Advantages:

• Allows all meeting participants to share their

exper tise in order to arrive at the best decision.

• Results in all participants understanding the deci-

sion and its implications.

• Greatly enhances the chance for buy-in from all

parties.

Disadvantages:

• Participants may not be familiar with this

decision-making process: They may think that

they all have to agree to and believe in the fi nal

outcome, so it may feel like people are spinning

their wheels or heading in the wrong direction.

• May take more time than other decision-making

approaches.

• May require that you have an alternative decision-

making process (for example, leader’s choice) in

case consensus cannot be reached within given

time constraints.

How do you know when you have a genuine con-

sensus? You’ll hear comments such as “Option A isn’t

64

Reach Group Decisions During Meetings

my fi rst choice, but I believe it incorporates everyone’s

needs.” Or “I don’t think Option A satisfi es all our crite-

ria, but I’m prepared to implement it as fully as possible.”

Majority Vote

The proposal or idea with the most votes wins.

Advantages:

• The group arrives at a decision relatively quickly.

• The group perceives the decision to be fair.

• You hear from everyone, even people who are usu-

ally quiet.

Disadvantages:

• Open voting requires taking public stands on

issues and can result in perceived winners and

losers.

• People may not feel comfortable voting according

to their true feelings or voicing reservations they

might have about decisions.

• Losers often feel their voices have not been heard.

• Not everyone buys into the decision.

Leader’s Choice

In some ways, having the leader decide is similar to a

majority rule because the leader needs to hear what the

participants think and is most likely to agree with the

majority view.

65

Conduct

Advantages:

• It’s the fastest approach to decision making and

may be the best approach when time is short or

when there is a crisis.

• If the meeting participants respect the leader and

understand why they are making a certain deci-

sion, people are somewhat more likely to buy into

the decision.

Disadvantages:

• Meeting participants may feel that the leader is

ignoring their views, particularly if they haven’t

been given the chance to state their ideas.

• You may encounter resistance during implementa-

tion, as meeting participants may feel less owner-

ship or may not have bought in completely.

66

CHAPTER 13

The Right Way to

Cut People Off

in Meetings

by Bob Frisch and Cary Greene

You’ve spent hours preparing for the meeting. The ob-

jectives are clear. The agenda is tight. Relevant material

was distributed to attendees in advance. Smartphones

are put away, and your team seems focused and ready to

work.

The conversation begins, but after 10 minutes of good

discussion on the fi rst agenda item, someone goes off

on a tangent that, while interesting, is only marginally

related to the designated topic. Then another person

jumps in to elaborate, and the two start talking in detail

Adapted from content posted on hbr.org on April 8, 2016.

67

Conduct

about issues relevant only to them. Other attendees be-

gin to tune out. Now 20 minutes have passed—and you

haven’t made any progress.

We’ve all seen scenes like this play out, whether in an

hour-long meeting or at a multiday off-site. Participants

veer off topic or take the conversation into the weeds, and

because no one feels comfortable doing anything about

it, critical agenda items are left untouched. In fact, re-

search suggests that “getting off the subject” is the num-

ber one challenge to meeting productivity. When lead-

ers or peers do try to intervene, it’s often after too much

time has passed (since they’ve waited for the perfect op-

portunity to interrupt), and the typical approach—“This

is really interesting, but can I suggest we get back to the

topic at hand?”—leaves everyone feeling awkward.

Thankfully, there is a simple solution to this predica-

ment: the word “jellyfi sh.” Jellyfi sh are, of course, those

funny-looking creatures with no brain, no blood, and no

heart that have drifted along on ocean currents for mil-

lions of years. We use the word to prevent meetings from

drifting.

Here’s how it works. At the start of your gathering,

introduce the jellyfi sh ground rule: If any attendee feels

the conversation is heading off course or delving into an

inappropriate level of detail, they can and should employ

the word to indicate that opinion. Simply say “jellyfi sh”

or “I think we’re having a jellyfi sh moment” or “Gee, did I

just see a jellyfi sh swim by?” It’s a catchall for “Why don’t

you take this offl ine—the rest of us would like our meet-

ing back.”

Of all things, why is “jellyfi sh” so effective?

68

The Right Way to Cut People Off in Meetings

It’s safe. The word is both simple and funny, and if set

up correctly at the start of a meeting, it carries the same

effect as other, more traditional (and less comfortable)

ways of interrupting and redirecting the conversation.

Of course, you can pick another, similarly silly word,

but we’ve been using this one for years and have found

that people—indeed, entire organizations—quickly em-

brace it.

It’s accessible. Anyone can invoke it. The meeting owner

or facilitator may be the fi rst to use it, but they don’t have

to be the only one. Any participant can ask, “This feels

like jellyfi sh. Do you agree?” prompting the person or

people on the tangent to ask themselves if they are using

the group’s time well.

It raises awareness. When meeting participants know

that jellyfi sh will be used, they can’t help but become

more self-aware about staying on topic. In many cases

we’ve even seen attendees call jellyfi sh on themselves.

In decades of helping clients conduct better meetings,

we’ve found “jellyfi sh” to be one of the most effective

ways of keeping the discussion on target.

Bob Frisch is the managing partner of the Strategic Off-

sites Group, a Boston-based consultancy, and is the au-

thor of Who’s In The Room? How Great Leaders Struc-

ture and Manage the Teams Around Them (Jossey-Bass,

69

Conduct

2012). He is the author of four Harvard Business Review

articles, including “Off-Sites That Work” (June 2006).

Cary Greene is a partner of the Strategic Offsites Group.

They are coauthors of Simple Sabotage: A Modern Field

Manual for Detecting & Rooting Out Everyday Behav-

iors That Undermine Your Workplace (Harper One, 2015)

and are frequent contributors to hbr.org.

70

CHAPTER 14

Dealing with

People Who

Derail Meetings

by Roger Schwarz

What does your team do when someone takes a meeting

off track? If your team is like most, the leader says some-

thing like, “Lee, that’s not what we’re talking about now”

or “Let’s get back on track” or the team simply ignores

Lee’s comment and tries to bring the conversation back

to the original topic.

But if your team responds in any of these ways, Lee

may continue to press his off-topic point, the meeting

may drag on with members getting more frustrated with

Adapted from content posted on hbr.org on September 20, 2013.

71

Conduct

Lee, and the team may not accomplish its meeting goals.

Or Lee may stop participating for the rest of the meeting

and the team, without realizing it, will lose Lee’s critical

input and support for implementing a team decision.

If you assume that Lee or others who derail a meeting

are the problem and the solution is to get them back on

track or stop them from talking, you may be off track.

These team members’ behaviors are often a symptom of

larger team problems. People often make off-track com-

ments when there isn’t clear agreement on the meeting’s

purpose or process, or when the team doesn’t provide

time to hear everyone’s thoughts on a topic. Sometimes

the problem is that you think others are off track when

they aren’t. So what should you do?

Agree on the track before going down it.

If your team doesn’t explicitly agree on the purpose and

topic for each part of the meeting, then people will use

their own understanding to decide what is appropriate.

Because team members will naturally have different in-

terpretations, one person’s comments can easily seem off

track to others.

Start your meeting by saying something like, “My un-

derstanding of the purpose of this meeting is X; does

anyone have a different understanding or think we

need to add anything?” This ensures that if people think

other issues need to be addressed, they can say so and

have them considered for the agenda, rather than rais-

ing them as off-track items. If it’s not your meeting and

there is no agenda, simply ask “Can we take a minute to

72

Dealing with People Who Derail Meetings

get clear on the purpose and topics for the meeting to

make sure we accomplish what you need?”

Check that others are ready to

move down the track.

Rather than saying “Okay, let’s move on” or simply shift-

ing to a new topic, say something like “I think we’re

ready to move to topic Y. Anyone have anything else

we haven’t fully addressed on X ?” If some people aren’t

ready to move on, fi nd out what needs to happen before

they can move forward. This reduces the chance that

people will raise issues later that you thought had been

fully discussed. If your team is staying focused but regu-

larly runs out of time before completing its agenda, then

you’re underestimating the amount of time necessary to

make high-quality decisions that generate commitment.

When you and the team agree on the goals and make

sure everyone is ready to move on, you’re jointly design-

ing next steps, and that builds commitment to decisions.

Test your assumption that the meeting

is getting derailed.

If the team has agreed on the topic to discuss and you

still think that someone is off track, say something like,

“Lee, I’m not seeing how your point about outsourcing is

related to the topic of our planning process. Help me un-

derstand the connection.” When Lee responds, you and

other team members might discover a link between the

two topics that you hadn’t considered. For example, Lee

might say that outsourcing will free up internal resources

73

Conduct

so that the team can complete the planning process in

less time. If there is a connection, the team can decide

whether it makes more sense to explore Lee’s idea now

or later. If it turns out that Lee’s comment isn’t related

but is still relevant for the team, you can suggest placing

it on a future agenda. One caveat: There are times when

it is critical to address team members’ issues imme-

diately, even if they’re off track. If team members raise

highly emotional issues about how the group is work-

ing together, it’s important to acknowledge the issue’s

importance and then decide whether it’s more essential

to address it than the current agenda topic. Sometimes

focusing on how the team works together is more critical

than sticking with the team’s substantive topics.

This is more than a polite way of dealing with people

who get off track: It’s a way to suspend your assumption

that you understand the situation and others don’t, to be

curious about others’ views, and to ask people to be ac-

countable for their own contributions so that the team

can make an informed choice about how best to move

forward. For this approach to work, you can’t just say the

words; you have to believe that Lee’s topic might be con-

nected and that you don’t see it.

By getting explicit agreement about the meeting’s

purpose and topics and by being genuinely curious when

people seem off track, you and your team can move faster

and accomplish more in your meetings.

Roger Schwarz is an organizational psychologist, speaker,

leadership team consultant, and president and CEO of

74

Dealing with People Who Derail Meetings

Roger Schwarz & Associates. He is the author of Smart

Leaders, Smarter Teams: How You and Your Team Get

Unstuck to Get Results (Jossey-Bass, 2013). For more,

visit www.schwarzassociates.com or fi nd him on Twitter

@LeadSmarter.

75

CHAPTER 15

Refocus a Meeting

After Someone

Interrupts

by Rebecca Knight

You did everything you were supposed to do: invited all

the right people, sent out an agenda in advance, and got

everyone’s agreement on the process. But despite your

diligence, your meeting is being hijacked. How should

you handle a persistent interrupter? Will it work to just

ignore the person? And how can you regain control of

the meeting?

Adapted from content posted on hbr.org on April 16, 2015.

77

Conduct

What the Experts Say

Whether it’s a team member who disagrees with your

approach, an employee from another department who

brings up irrelevant information, or a colleague who

wants to use your meeting as a soapbox for their own

personal agenda, dealing with interrupters during a

meeting is challenging. “When someone interrupts you,

blocks you, or otherwise thwarts your intended action,

it’s natural to feel upset,” says Judith White, visiting as-

sociate professor at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Busi-

ness. “This is a basic instinct, and you will always have a

fl ash of annoyance.” The key to successfully dealing with

interrupters is to quash your frustration and instead “op-

erate from a mind-set of curiosity,” says Roger Schwarz,

an organizational psychologist and the author of Smart

Leaders, Smarter Teams. Here’s how to handle disrup-

tors and regain control.

Gather Input Ahead of Time

“A well-designed agenda both provides a structure for

the meeting and serves as a point of reference,” Schwarz

explains. People are less likely to disrupt a meeting if

they feel like they had a hand in shaping it. So send out

a proposed agenda ahead of time, and ask your team for

input. Give them a time frame for making recommen-

dations, and ask that they include a reason why they

think an item is worthy of discussion. Everyone should

have a say, but “the team leader gets the fi nal decision

about what to include.” While an agenda does not en-

tirely prevent interruptions, “it becomes the basis of your

78

Refocus a Meeting After Someone Interrupts

intervention,” says Schwarz. Once you’re in the meeting,

if someone interrupts with an off-topic remark, Schwarz

suggests saying something like, “I don’t see how your

comment connects to the issue we’re talking about now.

Help me understand how the two relate.” If the speaker

can’t draw a connection, “then you use the agenda to

pick up where you left off,” he says.

Stay Calm

When someone interrupts or challenges you in a meet-

ing, manage your response. “Don’t get emotional” says

White. “If you look threatened or angry, you will lose the

trust of everyone in the room.” Rather, your goal should

be to “react with humor, kindness, inclusion, and asser-

tiveness.” Modulate your tone of voice and infl ection,

too. When you respond to the person who is interrupt-

ing, Schwarz says, “Speak in a genuinely curious, not

frustrated, way.”

Listen, Validate, Redirect

Don’t be tempted to ignore the interruption and move

on. At the point of interruption, “you need to stop talk-

ing and listen to what the person has to say,” White ex-

plains. Then summarize his points “to let him know

he’s been heard.” Let’s say, for instance, you’re leading a

meeting about new corporate initiatives, and your col-

league, Bob, interjects with, “Why are we bothering to

discuss this? We don’t have money in the budget to ex-

ecute these ideas.” You should then say, “Bob, your point

is that we don’t have money in the budget for this. And

that’s a good point.” After validating his comments,

79

Conduct

redirect the discussion. Start by restating the purpose of

the meeting. In this instance, White suggests you could

say something along the lines of, “We have great minds

in this room, and the president of our company asked us

to work together to come up with cost-effi cient ideas. I

am confi dent we can do it.”

Probe Further

Don’t always rush to redirect the conversation, how-

ever, warns Schwarz. It’s not necessarily your goal to

move through the meeting agenda as quickly as possible.

Rather, he says, your aim is to “address issues effi ciently,

but also in a way that leads to a sustainable solution.

When a colleague interrupts you with a comment you

think is off topic, that’s not a fact; it’s an inference.” Ask

your colleague to elaborate on his point. if you’re still un-

sure how what he’s saying relates to the topic at hand,

ask others at the meeting for help. Frame the interrup-

tion as “an opportunity for learning a new perspective,”

he says. “Think: What does he know that I don’t know?”

It may be that he has a perspective you haven’t thought

of. Says Schwarz: “Take time to address legitimate issues,

because they’re not going away.”

Be Resolute and Direct

When a colleague persists in interrupting, is off on a tan-

gent, or keeps on making the same point over and over,

be direct and fi rm, says White. She suggests saying some-

thing like “Rich, you’ve brought this issue up before, and

we heard you. If you would like to stay after the meet-

ing and talk with me, I’d be happy to discuss the matter

80

Refocus a Meeting After Someone Interrupts

further, but now we need to get back on track.” Or you

could directly address the colleague who keeps on inter-

rupting. Schwarz recommends a script like this: “Bob,

I’m seeing a pattern, and I’m trying to fi gure out what’s

happening here. Is there something going on that’s lead-

ing you to bring up these items?” While some might

contend that this strategy puts Bob on the spot, Schwarz

says “you need to deal with the issue in the place where

the data lies—within the team.” Handling situations in

the open also allows you to model to your team how to

have challenging conversations and provides a forum for

others to add relevant information.

Use Body Language to Take Back Control

When your meeting is in danger of derailment because

of insistent or hostile interrupters, regain control us-

ing body language and nonverbal communication. “If

you’re already standing, take a step or two toward the

person who’s interrupting you,” says White. “Face that

person and hold his gaze for fi ve seconds—it will feel

like an eternity.” Never cross your arms. “You should ap-

pear open,” she says. Then, walk slowly around the ta-

ble, “stand directly behind the person who’s disrupting

the meeting, and address the rest of the room.” Proceed

accordingly. This, of course, requires confi dence and fi -

nesse. Even though it’s not always easy, “it’s a powerful

way to exert infl uence,” she says.

Consider Having a One-on-One Conversation

After a meeting fi lled with tense and numerous interrup-

tions, you might spend a little time alone refl ecting on

81

Conduct

WHEN A SIT-DOWN IS CALLED FOR

Sometimes nothing you do in a meeting will help break

someone of their problematic behavior. If this is the

case, sit down with that person and speak directly with

them. Here are tips for approaching the en counter.

1.

Ask permission.  “May I talk to you about today’s

meeting?”

2. Clarify goals.  Ask the person what they hope to

get out of the meeting. Discuss what you see as

the meeting’s core goals.

3. Describe the behavior.  “I see you doing X.”

This way, you each have a common reference

point.

4. Describe the consequences.  Explain how the

behavior is aff ecting the group’s performance,

whether you’re doing anything to contribute to the prob-

lem, says Schwarz. It might also be worth approaching

the interrupter for a one-on-one conversation. “Don’t

argue with him after the meeting, and never scold,” says

White. “He wants to feel heard.” Instead, pose questions

and listen. Ask: What is your thinking on this issue?

What would you like done differently? What’s important

to you? “It may turn out that you both want the same

thing, in which case, propose that you become allies,” she

says. On the other hand, “you can agree to disagree.” (See

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Refocus a Meeting After Someone Interrupts

and detail the consequences you see it having

for the group.

5. Inquire about the root of the behavior.  Ask, for

example, if the person is upset about a particu-

lar issue.

6. Make a specific suggestion or request.  “At the

next meeting, please try not to dismiss an idea

until others have had a chance to fi nish their

thoughts.” Being unambiguous increases the

likelihood that they will change their behavior.

7.

Agree on next steps.  Getting the person to com-

mit to changing their behavior will help them

actually do so.

Adapted from Harvard Management Communication Letter (product

#C0504B), Spring 2005.

the sidebar “When a Sit-Down Is Called For” for more

ideas on conducting this conversation.)

Rebecca Knight is a freelance journalist based in Bos-

ton and a lecturer at Wesleyan University. Her work has

been published in the New York Times, USA Today, and

the Financial Times.

83

SECTION THREE

Participate

CHAPTER 16

Polite Ways to

Decline a Meeting

Invitation

by Liane Davey

There it is in your inbox: an invitation to a meeting you

really don’t want to attend. Maybe because it’s shoe-

horned into one of the few open spaces in your calendar.

Or perhaps it’s at a time that’s already booked, and now

you’re left to decide whom to turn down. Sometimes you

just need to click “decline.”

Your fi rst challenge is deciding which meetings to say

no to. Establish a set of criteria for participation, and

stick with it. Ask yourself the following questions.

Adapted from content posted on hbr.org on May 17, 2016.

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What is the value of the meeting?

Start by assessing whether the meeting is about some-

thing important, timely, and worthwhile. Is it set up for

success by having a clear purpose and an agenda? Is there

background information available to inform par ticipants

in advance? Are the appropriate people invited so that

meaningful progress can be made? If the value of the

meeting isn’t clear from the invitation, reply back with a

few open-ended questions before making your decision:

• “Could you please provide some additional infor-

mation on the agenda?”

• “What stage of decision making are we at on this

topic?”

• “How should I prepare for the discussion?”

Am I the right person to attend?

If it’s clear that the meeting is worthwhile, your next

question is whether or not you should be there. Are the is-

sues within the purview of your role? Do you have the ex-

pertise to contribute to the conversation? Are you under-

qualifi ed or overqualifi ed for the level of decision making

on the table? If you’re questioning why you were invited,

reach out to the meeting organizer before responding:

• “What are you looking for me to contribute at this

meeting?”

• “Who else will be there from my department?”

• “Who will I be representing?”

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Polite Ways to Decline a Meeting Invitation

Is the meeting a priority for me right now?

If you believe the meeting will be valuable and that you

would make a contribution to the discussion, consider

how it aligns with your goals and work. How central is

the meeting topic to your role? Where does the issue fi t

relative to your other immediate demands? How unique

is your contribution, and could your seat be better fi lled

by someone else?

If you ask yourself these questions and fi nd that your

participation isn’t essential, then it’s appropriate to de-

cline the meeting. Even if you choose not to attend, the

following options can help you demonstrate that you’re a

good team player and a positive contributor, even if you

can’t be in the room.

Can I stop the meeting altogether?

If the meeting failed your fi rst criteria because you don’t

believe it’s set up for success, talk with the organizer

about your concerns. It’s possible the person will dismiss

your comments, but you could also trigger one of two

positive outcomes: Either the meeting gets better posi-

tioned for success or gets cancelled. Try one of the fol-

lowing approaches:

• “This is an interesting topic. Based on our

current- year priorities, I’m not sure we’re ready

for a productive conversation yet. Would it be

possible to push this meeting back and let the

working group make a little more progress before

we meet?”

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• “I’m looking forward to making some decisions

on this issue. From the meeting invite, it doesn’t

look like Production is involved. I would like to

wait until someone from that team is willing to

join. Otherwise, we won’t be able to make any

decisions.”

• “Based on the information in the invitation, it

looks like this meeting is for informational pur-

poses. Would it be possible to get a summary sent

out rather than hold a meeting?”

Can I recommend someone else?

If the meeting is important, but it failed your second cri-

teria because you’re not the right person for the job, try

nominating someone else. Invest some effort in fi nding

the right person so you don’t appear to be shirking the

responsibility. Try fl oating these options:

• “I’m glad that you’re interested in my input, but I

don’t believe I’m the most qualifi ed person on this

topic. I did a little digging, and it looks like Pat

would have the necessary context. Would you be

comfortable inviting Pat rather than me?”

• “Given that this is a decision-making meeting, I

think it’s more appropriate to have my manager

represent our team.”

• “Thanks for the invite to this meeting. I don’t

think I’m required at this point. If it’s okay with

you, I’d like to send José as my delegate.”

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Polite Ways to Decline a Meeting Invitation

Can I contribute in advance?

If the meeting failed your third criteria (you determined

that it was an important topic on which you could add

unique value, but attending the meeting doesn’t fi t with

your schedule or priorities), consider adding value in ad-

vance. Take a few minutes to pull together some notes

and to brief the chair or a suitable participant. That will

be much more effi cient than attending the entire meet-

ing. You can respond to the organizer by saying:

• “This is going to be an important discussion. I’m

not able to attend, but I will fi nd some time to

share my thoughts so you can include them in the

conversation.”

• “I’m sorry that I can’t attend the meeting. If I pre-

pare you in advance, could I ask that you represent

my ideas at the meeting?”

Can I attend only part of the meeting?

If one or more agenda items meets all three of your crite-

ria but others don’t, you might have the option of attend-

ing only part of the meeting. Respond with one of the

following approaches:

• “Thanks for the invite. I think it’s really important

for me to be part of the discussion on rebranding.

Given a few other priorities at the moment, I’m go-

ing to excuse myself once that item is complete.”

• “Would it be possible to cover the rebranding

discussion as the fi rst agenda item? I can’t stay for

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the entire meeting but I’d really like to contribute

on that one.”

Regardless of which option you choose, you’re try-

ing to do three things. First, model deliberateness about

the use of time. Second, share your rationale so that the

meeting organizer has some context for why you’re not

participating. Third, make an effort to meet the organiz-

er’s needs, even if it’s not in the way they had originally

envisioned.

It might be a bit of a culture shock at fi rst, but all the

overwhelmed people with 35 hours a week of meetings

will quickly admire your discipline, and you may fi nd

folks declining your invites based on similar criteria.

Liane Davey is the cofounder of 3COze Inc. She is the

author of You First: Inspire Your Team to Grow Up,

Get Along, and Get Stuff Done (Wiley, 2013) and a co-

author of Leadership Solutions: The Pathway to Bridge

the Leadership Gap (Jossey-Bass, 2007). Follow her on

Twitter @LianeDavey.

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CHAPTER 17

How to Interject

in a Meeting

by Jodi Glickman

How many times have you sat through a meeting with

something brilliant to say but without knowing quite

when to say it? Or realized halfway through the meeting

that your colleague said something completely errone-

ous? Or, worse yet, found yourself nodding and smiling

in agreement while wondering what in the world the dis-

cussion was actually about?

Speaking up in meetings—to interject, correct some-

one else, or ask for clarifi cation—can be extremely in-

timidating. Having a few useful phrases at hand can go a

Adapted from content posted on hbr.org on November 3, 2010.

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long way toward giving you the confi dence and tools you

need to be able to introduce your thoughts and opinions

effectively in meetings.

When You’ve Got an Idea

Often people don’t speak up because they’re afraid of go-

ing on the record as wrong, uninformed, or the propo-

nent of a dumb idea. A great way to sidestep this inher-

ent fear is to depersonalize your idea, putting a question

to the group. When you think you might have a good

idea but aren’t overly confi dent about it, go ahead and

lob in an offhanded caveat, such as:

• “Have we thought about . . . getting Steve involved

in the PR campaign directly?”

• “Did anyone mention . . . the Brealy report? I

seem to recall it covered some of the same topics

Andrew has raised here.”

• “Another option we may want to consider . . . is

pushing back the timeline until early October.”

• “Is it worth revisiting . . . last week’s minutes from

the meeting to review the agreed-upon product

specifi cations?”

The subtext here is that you’re contributing to the dis-

cussion and adding value to the group—but not taking

ownership of an idea or commandeering the conversa-

tion. By using a more informal question or caveat, you’ll

make your voice and idea heard without overstating your

commitment to that idea.

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How to Interject in a Meeting

When You Disagree

It’s hard to disagree without being disagreeable. When

the conversation is heading in a direction that doesn’t

work for you, it may be diffi cult to keep your mouth shut.

Of course, it’s your right (and perhaps even your respon-

sibility) to speak up when you’ve got something contrar-

ian to say; the key, however, is knowing how to fi nesse

your comments so you don’t come off sounding like a

jerk. Here are a few strategies and helpful phrases to use

in those awkward or tense moments:

• Be blunt. “I respectfully disagree with that assess-

ment, Jon.” Or “My experience has actually been

quite different. I found the team to be highly

engaging.”

• Be cagey. “I just want to play devil’s advocate here

for a moment. What if we were to go with the

opposite approach and use direct-mail marketing

instead of relying solely on social media efforts?”

• Be provocative. “I want to throw out a curveball

here and challenge our assumption that we have to

take the deal.”

When You’re Confused

What’s worse than sitting in on a meeting and having

no idea what’s going on? You may have stumbled in late,

tuned out at exactly the wrong moment, or simply never

known much about the topic at hand—and found your-

self falling further and further in the dark as the meeting

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progressed. No matter the cause, the longer you wait to

ask for clarifi cation, the harder it is to meaningfully rein-

sert yourself into the conversation.

Here are some good phrases to use the next time you

fi nd yourself lost in a meeting:

• “I’m not entirely sure I’m following you. Could

you please recap what you just mentioned regard-

ing . . . the August delivery?”

• “I’m sure I’m supposed to know this already, but

. . . how many attendees are we expecting at the

conference next week?”

• “I apologize if this is totally obvious to everyone

here, but . . . what does CAFE stand for?”

• “This may be a dumb question, but I’m still not up

to speed on why . . . we’re not using rail instead of

truck.”

It’s best if you speak up in meetings and make your

case—whether to push a new idea, correct a misconcep-

tion, or simply keep yourself up-to-date on what’s really

going on. You owe it to yourself and your team to con-

tribute to your fullest potential. It’s far less intimidating

than you might think.

Jodi Glickman is a speaker, the founder of the communi-

cation training fi rm Great on the Job, and the author of

Great on the Job: What to Say, How to Say It. The Secrets

of Getting Ahead (St. Martin’s Griffi n, 2011). Follow Jodi

on Twitter @greatonthejob.

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CHAPTER 18

Stuck in a Meeting

from Hell? Here’s

What to Do

by Melissa Raff oni

We’ve all been in meetings that seem to go on forever,

whether they’re being dominated by windbags or bounce

aimlessly from one topic to the next. Don’t just sit there

and roll your eyes. Take control by trying one of the fol-

lowing options.

Be brave. Play dumb.

Even if you think you know what’s going on, you may not

really get it, or you may sense others don’t get it. Con-

sider the power of the statement, “I’m sorry, I’m lost.

Adapted from content posted on hbr.org on January 29, 2010.

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Can somebody help me understand what problem we’re

trying to solve and what needs to happen to resolve it?

Joe, can you help me out?” The key to the success of this

tactic isn’t your question. It’s Joe. The person you ap-

peal to should be one of the strongest communicators in

the room. It forces the group to stop and hear clarifi ca-

tion from the most articulate person. It often helps get a

group back on track. Playing dumb is pretty smart.

Be a helper. Create shared visuals.

Use some technology.

Another great question to ask: “Would it be helpful if I

took some notes?” Flip open your laptop, and take notes

on a projected screen or in a shared document (such as

a Google Docs). This is much better than using a marker

and fl ip chart, which don’t allow for good group editing

and require transcription. Taking and projecting notes

serves two purposes. First, it refocuses participants on

what they can see before them, which could be a list of

questions, decisions to be made, individual commentary,

or whatever makes sense.

Second, if you can sort it out, you can use the docu-

mentation to drive problem solving. Framing the discus-

sion with a simple outline, such as “Problem, Objectives,

Facts, Questions, Action Items, Next Steps,” will help

move the team from A to B. Better yet, it will keep the

team from wandering off to Y and Z.

Also, don’t neglect to wrap up the meeting without

committing summaries and next steps to the document.

Now, given your efforts, the group has a working docu-

ment that serves as a reference for next time. It sounds

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Stuck in a Meeting from Hell? Here’s What to Do

simple, but it works. What’s really happening is you’re

volunteering to do the facilitating that the facilitator has

failed to do.

Find the root cause of the meeting’s

lack of focus, and suggest a solution.

Politely observe that “we seem to be spinning our wheels

here,” and ask what’s causing the endless cycles. Some-

times identifying the reason for meetings from hell al-

lows you to refocus them or call a new one to sort

through the problem more productively.

Identifying root causes of bad meetings is not al-

ways easy. Here are some common examples of barri-

ers that may be making that meeting interminable and

unproductive:

• Lack of preparation. Often, meetings get stuck

because not everyone (or no one) has prepared.

Whether that meeting-prep document is sent out

early or 20 minutes before the meeting starts,

people may not stop to read it. Other times, some-

one conducts the meeting off the cuff or tosses out

issues for brainstorming. These approaches waste

everybody’s time.

• Who has the D? Just ask the question, “Who’s

responsible for this decision?” Ask that person if

they’re comfortable making a decision, right now.

• The right people aren’t in the room. Save a meet-

ing from droning on by identifying the people

who are needed but absent. “We really can’t move

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forward on this without Jane.” Then cancel the

meeting, and reschedule it with Jane.

Taking some of these steps and saying some of these

things when you’re not in charge might seem profession-

ally precocious, but they’re good leadership and manage-

ment skills. And if you think you’re in the meeting from

hell, it’s likely many of your colleagues do, too. They’ll

appreciate your effort to get the meeting back on track.

Melissa Raff oni is founder and CEO of The Raffoni Group.

100

CHAPTER 19

7 Ways to Stop

a Meeting from

Dragging On

by Joseph Grenny

When I got a speeding ticket a few years ago, I was of-

fered the option of attending traffi c school in lieu of a

black mark on my otherwise spotless driving record.

I showed up at city hall promptly at 6 p.m., hoping my

educational experience would end at 8:30 as advertised.

The instructor was 25 minutes late and quite disorga-

nized. By 8:15, he was on slide 18 of 123 and seemed to

be just getting into the groove. My heart sunk and I was

quickly getting resentful. At 8:26 he launched into what

Adapted from content posted on hbr.org on April 25, 2016.

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promised to be a lengthy story about a multicar accident.

I felt a toxic sense of dread and powerlessness.

In 1964, social psychologists John Darley and Bibb

Latané conducted an experiment on group powerless-

ness. Subjects were led to believe they were part of a

group discussion about personal problems, when one

participant is struck with an epileptic seizure. Darley

and Latané wondered what conditions would predict

whether the subject witnessing the seizure would either

sit passively or interrupt the gathering and take action

to help. It turned out that the larger the group, the less

likely the subject was to break ranks from powerless

peers and leave the room in search of help. This has be-

come known as bystander apathy.

If human beings can act so passively when health and

safety are on the line, it should be no wonder that we

turn ourselves into victims when the sole risk is an hour

or two of wasted time. Meetings are notoriously ineffec-

tive, because most participants act like passive victims

rather than responsible actors.

Interestingly, even meeting leaders often view them-

selves as constrained by unstated and untested group ex-

pectations that limit their ability to intervene effectively

in the group process. They allow dysfunctional time-

wasting behavior to go unchecked because they imagine

it is the vox populi.

I’ve made myself a meeting victim more often than I’d

like to admit, but over the years I’ve discovered that if

I’m suffering, others are likely suffering too, and it’s in

my power to do something. There are tactful things I

can do to not only take responsibility for my own invest-

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7 Ways to Stop a Meeting from Dragging On

ment of time, but also to become a healthy voice for the

silent majority. In fact, most people silently cheer when

someone takes action to refocus or cut off time-wasting

activities.

Here are seven of my favorite interventions for stop-

ping meandering in a meeting:

• Come prepared. You can organize a chaotic

conversation and gain disproportionate infl uence

by simply arriving with a clearly articulated straw

position on the topic to be discussed. Don’t push it

on people, but do offer to share it if others believe

that it will help accelerate discussion. More often

than not they will.

• Set boundaries. Take responsibility for your time.

If a meeting is notorious for starting late and

running over, let people know when the meeting

begins what your boundaries are. For example, you

might say, “I understand we’re starting late but I

have a commitment to the Murphy team I want to

keep, so I have a hard stop at 10:45.”

• Trust your gut. Go public. Check with the group.

Notice, honor, and trust your gut. If you’re feel-

ing lost, pay attention. If you’re feeling bored, take

notice. There’s a good chance others are, too. Then,

tactfully and tentatively share your concern. Don’t

express it as truth; instead, own the fact that it is

simply your experience. Next, check to see if others

are feeling similarly. Here’s what that might sound

like: “I’m not sure I’m tracking the discussion.

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We seem to be moving between three different

agenda items. Are others seeing that, too?”

• Restate the less than obvious. If the discussion is

toggling between two or more problems, summa-

rize the topics on the table, and suggest the group

tackle one at a time. For example, “I’m hearing

points about both whether this is a good invest-

ment and when we should make the purchase. I

think we’ve already made the purchase decision

and timing is the only question. Is that right?”

• Ask the question no one’s asking. If a sacred cow

is glaringly obvious, ask for confi rmation of its

existence. For example, “I’m getting from the com-

ments that some of us question the wisdom of the

original decision. Is that right?”

• Spot the weeds. Periodically point out digressions

into unproductive detail or tangents. Everyone in

the group is responsible for the group process, so

if you say nothing, you’re part of the problem (see

chapter 10 for more on silence in meetings). Say

something to the effect of, “It sounds like we’re in

agreement about the policy. Rather than word-

smith it now, it might be better to have someone

do a draft.”

• Clarify responsibilities at the end. It’s rare that

someone in the meeting takes the time to sum-

marize decisions and clarify commitments at the

end. This usually only takes 60 seconds but can

save hours in misunderstanding and unneces-

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7 Ways to Stop a Meeting from Dragging On

sary future meetings. Even if you aren’t running

the meeting, you can speak up and ask, “Can we

take a second to summarize what we’ve agreed to

and who will do what by when? Maybe I’m the

only one who’s fuzzy, but I want to be sure I follow

through on my commitments.”

As I sat festering in my misery in traffi c school, I be-

gan to suspect I was not alone. I had 175 other class-

mates who might be playing victim right alongside me.

So I checked my gut, went public, and addressed the per-

son running the meeting.

“Offi cer, I’m anxious to hear the end of this story, but

I’m wondering what time class ends.”

He looked a bit uncertain. “I thought it ended at 9:30.”

I heard an audible groan from my classmates.

“What time were you told it ended?” he inquired.

“8:30,” I said.

He looked at his watch. Then announced, “Class dis-

missed.” The cheers were audible. I felt like the valedic-

torian of the class.

Joseph Grenny is a four-time New York Times best-selling

author, keynote speaker, and social scientist. His work

has been translated into 28 languages, is available in 36

countries, and has generated results for 300 of the For-

tune 500. He is the cofounder of VitalSmarts, an innova-

tor in corporate training and leadership development.

105

CHAPTER 20

When Your Boss

Is Terrible at

Leading

Meetings

by Paul Axtell

If you think your boss is ineffective at leading meetings,

you’re not alone. Few managers have mastered the art of

meetings, and even fewer organizations have made it a

priority. Add to that the fact that leaders are busy—and

often don’t have the time to adequately prepare—and

you’ve got a recipe for ineffective meetings. The question

is, what can you do about it?

Adapted from content posted on hbr.org on May 16, 2016.

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Three broad perspectives are available to you in every

meeting:

1. You can offer to do things to support your boss

in preparing, leading, and following up after the

meeting.

2. You have the right to ask for whatever you need

to be effective in the meeting.

3. You can choose to be responsible for the experi-

ence of other people in the meeting.

Let’s look at each of these options individually.

What might you off er to do?

I love this perspective because it allows you to be sup-

portive without making your boss wrong. A key aspect

of infl uence is the ability to state a problem without

blaming anyone. Offering to supply elements that may

be missing is a powerful way to do this. Here are some

things you might offer to do:

• Collect agenda suggestions from the group, and

then prepare an agenda for your boss to review

and edit.

• Find team members to lead the different agenda

items, or offer to lead the meeting so the boss can

more fully focus on the conversation.

• Handle all of the room arrangements—and be

there early to make sure it’s all set.

• Help bring the conversation back when it wanders

away from the intended path.

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When Your Boss Is Terrible at Leading Meetings

• Notice who isn’t yet involved in the conversation,

and invite them to speak.

• Take notes so that a written summary can be pre-

pared quickly after the meeting.

• Chart complex conversations on a whiteboard as

they unfold so the group can stay on track and see

what has been said.

• Listen for commitments and actions that are

voiced, and then review them during the closing

for each topic.

• Write and distribute a summary shortly after the

meeting ends.

Stepping up and offering to do something will usually

be appreciated and respected. However, we all know that

our ability to speak frankly with our boss is determined

by the level of trust and respect that exists between us. If

your boss values what you bring to the group, you can be

straightforward: “Sam, I think we can improve the qual-

ity of our meetings by doing a couple of things differently.

If you agree, I would be willing to do the following.”

If your boss takes offense at your offer or says, “No

thanks, I’ve got it under control,” then respond with,

“OK, and if you change your mind, let me know. I just

want to do whatever I can to support you.” None of us

are as open-minded or coachable in the moment as we

think we are. There is a good chance that your boss will

continue to think about your suggestion during the next

few meetings. Without your offer, nothing will change;

with your offer, it just might.

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What do you need to be eff ective?

What are your most common complaints about these

meetings? What could you ask for that would resolve

each complaint? If you need something in order to be

both present and productive in a meeting, fi nd a dip-

lomatic way to ask for it. Other people will probably be

having the same experience and will welcome your ini-

tiative. Here are some suggestions for asking for what

you need.

• An agenda: “Most of the time, I think it’s fi ne to

fi nd out what’s on the agenda when we walk into

the meeting. On a few topics, like the budget,

however, I would appreciate knowing the agenda

ahead of time so I can prepare in a way that lets

me add value to the conversation.”

• Proper setup for each topic: “Before we start this

conversation, I’d like to know what input you’re

looking for from us and where you want to be at

the end of this discussion.”

• Broader participation: “I realize we’re a bit

pressed for time, but there are a couple of people

I’d really like to hear from in this conversation.

So I’d appreciate if we could stay with this topic a

bit longer so Sarah, Ganesh, and Tori can give us

their views.”

• Clarity: “I might be the only person struggling

with this conversation, but I need to get clear on

where we are with this and what we’ve said so far.”

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When Your Boss Is Terrible at Leading Meetings

• To stay on track: “It appears that we’re now talk-

ing about something different than what’s on the

agenda. Do we want to stay with this new topic or

go back to our intended discussion?”

• Alignment: “It seems the group has settled on a

direction. I’d like to ensure the decision works for

everyone.”

• Next steps: “This was a great conversation, and

I want to be clear about what, if anything, I need

to do as a result. Could we nail down what actions

will be taken next and when we should have them

completed?”

How can you aff ect the experience

of other participants?

Usually we go into a meeting thinking about one person:

ourselves. Fair enough, but looking out for others is an

easy way to add value and impact in an organization.

Consider these questions:

• Who is not yet participating in the conversation

who might have something to say or ask?

• Who is affected by the decision and has not yet

voiced their concerns or ideas?

• Who might not be able to attend and would

like you to take notes or represent them in the

meeting?

• Who would appreciate your collaboration on

small-group work that is assigned during the

meeting?

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OK, now it’s up to you. This is wonderful place to trust

your instincts. Sincerity trumps all conversational skills.

Take your boss to coffee, and offer to help. And, try the

ideas that resonate with you in other meetings that you

attend. You’ll be pleased with the results.

Paul Axtell provides consulting and personal effective-

ness training to a wide variety of clients, from Fortune

500 companies to universities. His latest book, Meet-

ings Matter: 8 Powerful Strategies for Remarkable Con-

versations (Jackson Creek, 2015), received awards from

the Nonfi ction Book Awards and the Benjamin Frank-

lin Book Awards, a Silver award in the Nautilus Book

Awards, and was fi rst runner-up for the Eric Hoffer Prize.

112

SECTION FOUR

Close and

Follow Up

CHAPTER 21

The Right Way to

End a Meeting

by Paul Axtell

A common complaint among managers is that the con-

versations they have with employees aren’t producing

results. “We keep talking about the same issue over and

over, but nothing seems to ever happen!” they say. That’s

because most managers are missing a vital skill: the abil-

ity to deliberately close a conversation. If you end a con-

versation well, it will improve each and every interaction

you have, ultimately creating impact.

Meetings are a series of conversations—an oppor-

tunity to clarify issues, set direction, sharpen focus,

and move objectives forward. To maximize their effect,

you need to actively design the conversation. While the

Adapted from content posted on hbr.org on March 11, 2015.

115

Close and Follow Up

overall approach is straightforward—and may seem like

basic stuff—not enough managers are actually doing

this in practice.

• Set up each conversation so everyone knows the

intended outcomes and how to participate.

• Manage the conversation rigorously so the discus-

sion stays on track and everyone is engaged.

• Close the conversation to ensure alignment, clarity

on next steps, and awareness of the value created.

In my 35 years of experience as a corporate trainer,

I’ve found that closure is more often than not the missing

link between meetings and impact. Without it, things can

be left unsaid, unchallenged, unclear, and uncommitted.

Each agenda item should be considered incomplete un-

less it is wrapped up in a thoughtful, deliberate way.

To deliberately close a conversation, do these fi ve

things:

Check for completion.  If you move to the next topic on

an agenda too quickly, people will either cycle back to

that topic later or they’ll leave the meeting with their

thoughts unclear or misaligned. Ask, “Is there anything

else someone needs to say or ask before we change topics

or adjourn the meeting?” Giving people the space to ad-

dress their lingering concerns and questions allows you

to deal with those issues promptly and move forward.

Check for alignment.  If someone can’t live with the de-

cisions being made in the meeting or the potential out-

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The Right Way to End a Meeting

come of those decisions, ask that person what it would

take to get them on board. People prefer to be united

with the group, and if they aren’t, there’s a reason be-

hind it that needs to be surfaced. Asking the question,

“Is everyone OK with where we ended up?” will surface

questions or concerns so they can be resolved as soon as

possible.

Agree on next steps.  Getting fi rm, clear commitments is

the primary way to ensure progress between meetings.

In order for a conversation to lead to action, you need to

clearly state what you will do by when and ask others to

do the same. To maintain the momentum of any project,

nail down agreed-upon next steps, fi rm timelines, and

individual responsibilities, and then follow up often. The

question to ask here is “What, exactly, will we do by our

next meeting to ensure progress?”

Refl ect on the value of what you accomplished.  This is

one of the most powerful acknowledgment and appreci-

ation tools. People rarely state the value created by a con-

versation, and therefore lose a wonderful opportunity to

validate both the conversation and the individuals who

are a part of it. After a presentation don’t just say, “That

was good.” Instead, say “Let me tell you the fi ve things

I’m taking away from your presentation.”

Check for acknowledgments.  Did anyone contribute to

the conversation in a way that needs to be highlighted?

While you don’t want to use acknowledgment and ap-

preciation so frequently that it becomes a commodity

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Close and Follow Up

with no value, at times someone’s questions or remarks

do help provide the tipping point that turns an ordi-

nary conversation into an extraordinary one—and that’s

worth acknowledging. Doing so reinforces the conver-

sations that occurred, supports the people in the meet-

ing, and encourages everyone’s desire to produce the ex-

pected results.

Try spending the next three weeks working on closing

every conversation in this deliberate, thoughtful way.

You’ll see an immediate impact on how and when things

get done.

Paul Axtell provides consulting and personal effective-

ness training to a wide variety of clients, from Fortune

500 companies to universities. His latest book, Meet-

ings Matter: 8 Powerful Strategies for Remarkable Con-

versations (Jackson Creek, 2015), received awards from

the Nonfi ction Book Awards and the Benjamin Frank-

lin Book Awards, a Silver award in the Nautilus Book

Awards, and was fi rst runner-up for the Eric Hoffer Prize.

118

CHAPTER 22

Don’t End a

Meeting Without

Doing These

3 Things

by Bob Frisch and Cary Greene

When a sports team fi nishes a game, they usually don’t

gather up their gear and immediately leave the court,

rink, fi eld, or locker room. The players and coaches take

a few minutes for a post-game meeting—a ritual that’s

just as important as the pre-game warm-up.

Meeting participants can benefi t from the same exer-

cise. A quick wrap-up discussion before attendees leave

the room goes a long way toward ensuring the gathering

Adapted from content posted on hbr.org on April 26, 2016.

119

Close and Follow Up

achieved what it set out to do and that future get-

togethers will also prove successful. Here are three steps

to take at the end of each meeting (though you can, of

course, dial up or down each component as the situation

warrants). Once you’ve done this in person, follow up in

writing.

Confi rm key decisions and next steps.

Recap what was decided in the meeting, who is account-

able for following through, when implementation will

occur, and how it will be communicated. You want every

attendee to leave the meeting with the same understand-

ing of what was agreed on so there’s little chance of any-

one reopening the issues later. One client we’ve worked

with preps for this end-of-meeting review by writing on a

fl ip chart to capture decisions as they’re made so nothing

is forgotten or overlooked. He also notes action items,

including who is responsible, when things should hap-

pen, and how status will be reported back to the group.

Develop communication points.

If a colleague who missed the meeting asks an attendee

“What happened?” the person who went to the meeting

should know what to say. So before you wrap up, put

the question to the group. “What are the most impor-

tant things we accomplished in our time together here?”

As the group responds, capture the key points on a fl ip

chart, whiteboard, or shared document, and briefl y sum-

marize them. Once you have alignment on what should

be communicated to others, ask everyone if there are

any parts of the discussion that they wouldn’t want to

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Don’t End a Meeting Without Doing These 3 Things

be shared. Some information might be confi dential; per-

haps some ideas aren’t quite ready for dissemination. Be

as specifi c as possible here so everyone clearly under-

stands what is off-limits. Then, as soon as possible after

the meeting, send your agreed-upon talking points to

everyone in an e-mail. The goal of this exercise is not to

give people a script to read from. It’s to provide guidance

on the key messages they should convey and what they

should keep to themselves, if asked, so the rest of the

organization gets a consistent picture of what went on.

After a recent strategy meeting of the top 30 executives

at a major technology company, for example, the group

decided on these communication points:

• This was not a one-time event but rather the be-

ginning of this group coming together as a senior

leadership team.

• We talked about our strategy, which is to build a

collection of great businesses in strong categories.

• We agreed that each business should focus on

driving its own growth, but where it makes sense,

units and functions should leverage each other’s

best practices and capabilities. We captured some

ideas for how to start doing this and talked about

opportunities for leaders to grow and take on new

boundary-spanning roles.

Gather session feedback.

Especially if your group will meet regularly, ask attend-

ees for feedback on the session while it’s fresh in their

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Close and Follow Up

minds. This is an often-missed opportunity to learn

what people liked and what they would change. Instead

of asking a broad question like “What feedback do you

have?” which often yields equally vague and unhelpful

responses, break the discussion into what we call “roses”

(positives) and “thorns” (negatives). Start with the lat-

ter. Tell attendees to think about everything they have

received or done related to the meeting from the time

they were invited right through the review, including

any pre-reads or prework and aspects of the meeting it-

self (such as location and use of time). Then ask, “What

could be improved?” Avoid debating the suggestions

raised, but do ask questions to clarify what’s being said.

Finally, turn to roses. Ask the group, “What went well?

What should we be sure to do again in the future?” Com-

bined with the recap of decisions, next steps, and talking

points, this last discussion helps you end the session on

a positive note.

When you embed a regular post-meeting debrief that

incorporates these three elements into your meetings,

you’ll help your team dramatically improve its play.

Bob Frisch is the managing partner of the Strategic Off-

sites Group, a Boston-based consultancy, and is the au-

thor of Who’s In The Room? How Great Leaders Struc-

ture and Manage the Teams Around Them (Jossey-Bass,

2012). He is the author of four Harvard Business Review

articles, including “Off-Sites That Work” (June 2006).

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Don’t End a Meeting Without Doing These 3 Things

Cary Greene is a partner of the Strategic Offsites Group.

They are coauthors of Simple Sabotage: A Modern Field

Manual for Detecting & Rooting Out Everyday Be-

haviors That Undermine Your Workplace (HarperOne,

2015) and are frequent contributors to hbr.org.

123

SECTION FIVE

Specifi c Types

of Meetings

CHAPTER 23

What Everyone

Should Know

About Running

Virtual Meetings

by Paul Axtell

To make sure that your virtual meetings are adding value

and velocity to your projects, do three things:

Focus on relationships.

The quality of people’s relationships in a meeting deter-

mines the quality of the conversations that will occur

during the meeting. That’s why it’s important to set aside

time to build relationships among team members.

Adapted from content posted on hbr.org on April 14, 2016.

127

Specifi c Types of Meetings

Start with casual conversation.

Make it a practice for the conference lines to be open 10

minutes early, and designate that time for catching up.

Ask someone to be there to greet and talk with people

once the lines are open. If you’re leading the meeting,

prepare ahead of time so that you can spend time chat-

ting rather than answering e-mails or reviewing your

notes. Encourage others to make it a practice to show up

early to converse.

Then, at the start of each meeting, ask three people

to take a couple of minutes to share what’s happening

with them. Here are my favorite ways to start this brief

conversation:

• Please catch us up on one of your other projects.

• What’s happening in your country?

• How’s your family?

Use people’s names.

During the meeting, credit people when you refer to

their earlier comments. Keep a chart next to you to help

remember who’s out there. People love to be recognized,

and in virtual meetings, it builds a sense of community

that can otherwise be diminished by not being in the

same space. It also pulls meeting participants into a zone

of being more attentive and thoughtful.

Meet face-to-face.

When team members visit from out of town or from an-

other country, fi nd time to see them. Schedule a working

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What Everyone Should Know About Running Virtual Meetings

dinner. Invite them to coffee. If there’s driving involved,

ride together. Pick them up at the airport. This lays the

foundation for authentic conversation—so you’ll feel less

distant on your next virtual encounter.

Prepare, so you can be present

and productive.

Publish an agenda.

A clear agenda helps your participants understand how

you’ll conduct the virtual meeting and allows them to

think about and prepare for each topic in advance. This

is particularly important for those who speak English as

a second language. When people have time to prepare,

they can participate more fully and powerfully. Expect-

ing people to develop their thinking and then express

it clearly in the moment during a meeting is asking

too much.

The agenda doesn’t need to be elaborate. For each

topic, answer these questions:

• Why is this topic on our agenda?

• How much time is allocated for this topic?

• Where do we want to be at the end of our

discussion?

• What do we need from participants?

Give yourself more time.

Plan on 20% more time than you think you’ll need for

each topic. The process of getting broad participation

129

Specifi c Types of Meetings

and checking to see if everyone has had a chance to ex-

press their views and ask their questions takes time—

lots of time. You don’t want to feel any pressure to get

through an agenda. You’ll sacrifi ce clarity and align-

ment if you or your team members feel rushed. You can

always end early if the extra time you’ve built in isn’t

needed.

Identify who you want to hear from.

Before the meeting, consider:

• Who would get the conversation off to a great

start?

• Who will be most affected by the topic?

• Who is likely to have different views and ideas?

• Whose experience needs to be brought into the

conversation?

Part of feeling included and adding value in a group

is having the opportunity to share what you’re think-

ing about the topic. This can be diffi cult when you’re in

the same room and even harder virtually. Once you’ve

thought about who you want to hear from, tell people

which topics you’d like their input on. Letting people

know that you want broad participation is the fi rst step;

calling on people strategically and gently is the second

step. Knowing ahead of time who you want to get into

the conversation for each topic will make this easy.

130

What Everyone Should Know About Running Virtual Meetings

Lead to accomplish the agenda

and to get broad participation.

Review how you’ll manage the conversation.

Virtual meetings require a stronger leadership approach

because you don’t have access to the nonverbal cues

about whether people have questions or would like to

get into the conversation. These meetings also require

more empathy and thoughtfulness on your part because

people have this sense of being less connected than when

they’re in the same room.

Ask for the permission you need to be able to relax

and enjoy leading the meeting. This is what I usually

request:

• Permission to be fi rm about keeping the conversa-

tion on track

• Freedom to call on different people when it seems

appropriate

• Agreement from everyone about setting aside their

technology, unless they have a good reason for

keeping it available

I also let people know that while I have a plan for the

meeting, I’m open to their coaching and ideas on making

the meeting work for everyone.

Asking for what you want gives you the opportunity

to guide the group without making anyone wrong. It

also gives people in the group permission to step out-

side of their normal ways of interacting and participate

131

Specifi c Types of Meetings

authentically. It’s easy to be ourselves in small groups

of four or fi ve people over coffee. In larger groups and

virtual groups, the conversation needs to be set up to be

safe and effective.

Consider covering these points in your opening:

• “With your permission, I’d like to manage our

conversation today in a deliberate fashion so that

we all stay on track and to make sure that everyone

gets heard. This doesn’t mean that I intend to be

heavy-handed; I’d just like more freedom to keep

the conversation focused and permission to call on

people to ensure we have everyone’s questions and

views expressed before we end a topic.”

• “For each item, I’d like to ask certain people to

start the topic off. I’ve made notes on who I think

might be affected and will check with each of

you. Of course, if I haven’t called on you and you

want to add something, please do so. You always

have permission to get into any conversation if

your ideas, questions, and views have not yet been

expressed.”

Then, manage the conversation thoughtfully.

Go slowly. Without being able to see people as they

speak, it’s not only harder to hear, it’s more diffi cult to

process what’s being said. Speaking succinctly will help,

and a calmer pace will provide openings for people to

ask their questions. Refer to your chart of who’s in the

meeting to keep track of who’s already spoken and to re-

mind you to invite others to add to the conversation.

132

What Everyone Should Know About Running Virtual Meetings

Consider adding a process step to check for clarity

on each topic. Without visual clues, you can’t always tell

when people aren’t understanding or are disagreeing.

If you have people with different language or cultural

backgrounds, getting to clarity and alignment may re-

quire more time going back and forth.

Paul Axtell provides consulting and personal effective-

ness training to a wide variety of clients, from Fortune

500 companies to universities. His latest book, Meet-

ings Matter: 8 Powerful Strategies for Remarkable Con-

versations (Jackson Creek, 2015), received awards from

the Nonfi ction Book Awards and the Benjamin Frank-

lin Book Awards, a Silver award in the Nautilus Book

Awards, and was fi rst runner-up for the Eric Hoffer Prize.

133

CHAPTER 24

How to Run a

Great Virtual

Meeting

by Keith Ferrazzi

Virtual meetings have the potential to be more valuable

than traditional face-to-face meetings. Beyond the fact

that they’re an inexpensive way to get people together—

no travel costs and readily available technology—they’re

also a great opportunity to build engagement, trust, and

candor among teams.

Virtual meetings are just as effective as in-person

gath erings if key rules and processes are maintained

and respected. Here’s my comprehensive list of simple

steps you can take to get the most out of your next one.

Adapted from content posted on hbr.org on March 27, 2015.

135

Specifi c Types of Meetings

Before the Meeting

Turn the video on.

Since everyone on the call is separated by distance, us-

ing video is the best thing you can do to make everyone

feel like they’re in the same room. Choose from several

options, including WebEx and Skype. Video makes peo-

ple feel more engaged because it lets team members see

each other’s emotions and reactions, which immediately

humanizes things. No longer are they just voices on a

phone line; they’re the faces of your coworkers respond-

ing to what you and others are saying. Without video,

you’ll never know if the dead silence in a virtual meeting

is happening because somebody isn’t paying attention,

someone’s rolling their eyes in exasperation, or an indi-

vidual is nodding their head in agreement. Facial expres-

sions matter.

Cut out status updates.

Too many meetings, virtual and otherwise, are reminis-

cent of a bunch of fi fth graders reading to each other

around the table: a waste of the valuable time and op-

portunity of having people together. The solution is to

send out a simple half-page document in advance of the

meeting to report on key agenda items—and then only

spend time on it in the meeting if people need to ask

questions or want to comment.

This type of prework prepares participants to take full

advantage of the meeting by thinking ahead about the

content, formulating ideas, or getting to know others in

the group. This can help keep team members engaged,

136

How to Run a Great Virtual Meeting

says business consultant Nancy M. Settle-Murphy in her

book Leading Effective Virtual Teams. But one thing

is critical: It has to be assumed that everyone has read

the pre-reading. Not doing so becomes an ethical viola-

tion against the team. I use the word “ethical” because

it’s stealing time from the team—and that’s a disrespect-

ful habit. The leader needs to aggressively set the tone

that the pre-reading should be done in advance of the

meeting.

Come prepared with the team’s opinions.

Not only do you need to do your pre-reading, but after

seeing the agenda, you should also discuss what’s going

to be covered with your team—that is, do your own due

diligence. Often people get on a virtual call with a point

of view, but because they haven’t done any real home-

work beforehand, they end up reversing their opinions

once the call has ended and they’ve learned new infor-

mation that they could have easily obtained in advance.

If there’s a topic that seems to have interdependencies

with people who work in another location, get their in-

put ahead of time so you’re best representing those con-

stituents in the meeting.

During the Meeting

Encourage collaborative problem solving.

Replace the standard detailed status updates that can

weigh meetings down with a group problem-solving ses-

sion. How do they work? Raise a topic for discussion,

and the team works together—viewing their fellow team

members as sources of advice—to unearth information

137

Specifi c Types of Meetings

and viewpoints and to generate fresh ideas in response

to business challenges.

Give each person time on the agenda.

Along with collaborative problem solving, giving each

person time on the agenda fosters greater collabora-

tion and helps all team members weigh in. Here’s how

it works: In advance of the session, have team members

write up an issue they’ve been struggling with and bring

it to the group, one at a time. Each team member then

gets fi ve minutes on the agenda to discuss their issue.

The group then goes around the table so everyone gets a

chance to either ask a question about it or pass. After the

team member answers everyone’s questions, people then

get an opportunity to offer advice in the “I might sug-

gest” format, or pass. Then you move on to the next issue

until everyone has had the opportunity to present their

challenge and receive ideas for addressing it.

Kill mute.

In an in-person meeting, there are social norms: You

don’t get up and walk around the room, not paying at-

tention. Nor do you make a phone call and “check out”

from the meeting. Virtual meetings should be no dif-

ferent. You can’t press mute and leave the room to get

something or strike up a conversation with your spouse.

So establish a standard: Just because you’re in a virtual

meeting and it’s possible to be disrespectful without

others knowing, such behavior is unacceptable. If you

wouldn’t do something in person, don’t do it virtually.

138

How to Run a Great Virtual Meeting

Turning the volume on for everyone’s phones will keep

people in line and raises the potential for lively discus-

sion, shared laughter, and creativity.

Ban multitasking.

Once thought of as a way to get many things done at

once, multitasking is now understood to be a way to do

many things poorly. Science shows us that despite the

brain’s remarkable complexity and power, there’s a bot-

tleneck in information processing when it tries to per-

form two distinct tasks at once. Not only is this bad for

your brain, it’s bad for your team. Set a fi rm policy that

multitasking during your meeting is unacceptable, as it’s

important for everyone to be mentally present.

Here are three ways to make sure the ban on multi-

tasking is followed:

• Use video. It essentially eliminates multitasking,

because your colleagues can see you.

• Call on specifi c people. Ask someone, by name, to

share their thoughts. Since no one likes to be caught

off-guard, they’ll be more apt to pay attention.

• Give people diff erent tasks in the meeting. To keep

people engaged, have a different team member

keep the minutes of the meeting each time; track

action items, owners and deadlines; and try com-

ing up with a fun question to ask everyone at the

conclusion of the meeting. If you meet regularly,

rotate assignments to keep things fresh.

139

Specifi c Types of Meetings

Check in.

Nick Morgan, president of consulting company Public

Words, recommends having constant touch points. “In a

virtual meeting, you need to stop regularly to take every-

one’s temperature. And I do mean everyone. Go right

around the list, asking each locale or person for input.”

Assign a Yoda.

Candor is diffi cult even for co-located teams, but it’s the

number one gauge of team productivity. To keep people

engaged during virtual meetings, appoint a “Yoda.” Like

the wise Jedi master in Star Wars, the Yoda keeps team

members in line and makes sure everyone stays active

and on topic. By being courageous and calling out any

inappropriate behaviors, the Yoda keeps honesty from

boiling over into disrespect. At critical points during the

meeting, the leader should turn to the Yoda and ask, “So,

what’s going on here that nobody’s talking about?” This

allows the Yoda to express what they see happening and

encourage risk-taking.

After the Meeting

Formalize the watercooler.

Have you ever been in a meeting, and after it’s over ev-

erybody walks out and vents their frustrations next to

the water cooler? Make the water cooler conversation

the formal ending of your next virtual meeting. Roughly

10 minutes before the meeting ends, do what everybody

would have done after the physical meeting—but do it

140

How to Run a Great Virtual Meeting

in the meeting and make sure it’s transparent and con-

scious, refl ecting people’s real feelings.

How? Have everyone go around and say what they

would’ve done differently in the meeting. This is the fi -

nal Yoda moment—the chance to “speak now or forever

hold your peace.” This is the time when you say what you

disagreed with, what you’re challenged with, what you’re

concerned about, what you didn’t like, and so on. Make

it clear that all the watercooler–type conversations need

to happen right now or never happen again. And if they

do happen later, you’re violating the ethics of the team.

Most important, civility and respect must be the norm in

virtual meetings. There must be inalienable ethical rules

that you follow before, during, and after a virtual meet-

ing if it is to be truly successful. And that means adher-

ing to two fundamental principles: Be respectful of oth-

ers’ time, and be present.

Keith Ferrazzi

is the CEO of Ferrazzi Greenlight, a

research-based consulting and training company, and

the author of Who’s Got Your Back (Broadway Books,

2009).

141

CHAPTER 25

Conduct a

Meeting of People

from Diff erent

Cultures

by Rebecca Knight

When you’re running a meeting with participants from

different cultures, consider your colleagues’ various

needs and approaches. How do you brainstorm ideas,

make decisions, and address confl ict in a way that is

comfortable for everyone? Which culture’s preferences

should be the default? And how can you be sure that

people who aren’t from the dominant culture participate

and are heard?

Adapted from content posted on hbr.org on December 4, 2015.

143

Specifi c Types of Meetings

What the Experts Say

Multicultural meetings can be challenging to lead. “Peo-

ple bring their cultural baggage with them wherever they

go—and that includes the workplace,” says Jeanne M.

Brett, professor of dispute resolution and negotiations

at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Man-

agement. Communication styles vary from culture to

culture, as do notions of authority and hierarchy, which

only heightens the potential for misunderstanding and

hard feelings. “If you don’t prepare for cultural differ-

ences and anticipate them at the front end, they’re a lot

harder to deal with after the fact,” she says. It’s daunt-

ing, but you needn’t feel overwhelmed, says Erin Meyer,

a professor at INSEAD and the author of the book The

Culture Maps. Approach your cross-cultural meeting

with an open mind. And have faith in your abilities, be-

cause “you likely have more experience than you know,”

adds Andy Molinsky, professor of organizational behav-

ior at Brandeis University International Business School

and the author of the book Global Dexterity. “You’ve

probably run meetings where there was quite a lot of di-

versity, be it gender diversity, functional diversity, senior-

ity diversity, or just different personalities. Culture is one

more element,” he says. Here are some ideas to help your

multicultural meetings go smoothly.

Be mindful of diff erences . . .

The key to showing cultural sensitivity in the workplace

is being aware of the variations that exist among cul-

tures and how they play out, says Molinsky. “There are

144

Conduct a Meeting of People from Diff erent Cultures

differences in how and where people are supposed to sit

in meetings, the extent to which they get down to busi-

ness at the start of a meeting versus how much time they

spend socializing, the extent to which they’re willing to

provide feedback or argue publicly—there are so many

different elements.” Meyer recommends “learning as

much as you possibly can about the people and the re-

gions of the world you are collaborating with so that you

can adjust your management style in small ways.” Study

up on a country’s customs and professional practices,

and become an expert observer of others. It’s a team ef-

fort. Provide your colleagues with reading material on

cultural differences, and encourage colleagues to “think

about how their behavior is viewed so they can make ad-

justments too,” she adds.

. . . But don’t obsess over them

And yet, says Molinsky, “sometimes culture matters,

sometimes it doesn’t, and you can’t always anticipate”

how cultural differences will play out. It’s important to

respect cultural norms, but don’t be rigid about them—

and especially don’t pigeonhole individuals and groups

of people. “Culture is only one potential infl uence on a

person’s style, his behavior, and how he perceives things,”

he says. “You should have a working hypothesis but test

it against evidence.” As the person in charge of the meet-

ing, you’ll probably need to make some adjustments and

adaptations to your leadership style, but stay true to

yourself, too. Don’t be boorish or ignorant, but don’t pre-

tend to be someone you’re not.

145

Specifi c Types of Meetings

Set expectations

It’s important to “create protocols and establish norms

at the beginning” of your meetings, says Brett. “You want

to be clear about what you expect and how meetings will

run,” she says. “This gives certain people the freedom to

move outside their comfort zone, and it also gives you

the freedom to rein in others.” Say, for instance, some of

your colleagues come from a culture where punctuality is

not adhered to, but you want meetings to start and end

in a timely manner. “You need to demonstrate that you

understand different cultural behavior but also explain

why you think it’s critical for people to show up to meet-

ings on time—and that people [who are late] will suffer

the consequences,” says Molinsky. “Be explicit. There are

deal breakers.” Structure and protocol “can override or

supersede cultural norms” in other ways, too. If, for in-

stance, you want to hold a group brainstorming session

but some of your colleagues are from a culture that’s typ-

ically reticent, ensure participation by asking “everyone

to go around the room and spend two minutes describ-

ing their point of view on a particular problem,” he says.

“Institute rules” that are clear and that everyone follows.

Build relationships

Getting to know the personalities on your team is sound

management practice in any culture, but it’s especially

important when your team is made up of people from

different countries. “You need to know the people on

your team and fi gure out the extent to which culture

is an issue for each individual,” says Molinsky. Say, for

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Conduct a Meeting of People from Diff erent Cultures

instance, one of your team members comes from a hi-

erarchical culture and is loath to provide feedback to a

senior colleague. “If you would like him to speak up in

a meeting, you need to talk with him beforehand and

strategize with him on how he can adapt his behavior,”

he says. Alternatively, “you need to forgive him for not

doing it.” Focus, too, on forging bonds and fostering trust

among your team members, says Meyer. “Invest time

up front on building emotional bonds so that people on

your team have opportunities to get to know each other

by sharing meals or talking over drinks,” she says. “That

way a lot of the cultural differences [that appear in the

workplace] won’t matter as much.”

Be creative with confl ict

When it comes to professional meetings, one of the big-

gest cultural differences is the degree to which open de-

bate and disagreement are viewed as a positive, accord-

ing to Meyer. “In countries like Korea, Indonesia, and

Thailand, saying: ‘I disagree,’ is seen as very aggressive

and could lead to a break in the relationship, whereas

in France and Russia, it’s seen as a great opportunity to

build a relationship,” she says. While “individual adjust-

ments like softening your language” can be effective, it’s

also worth trying to make your team more comfortable

with confl ict. Meyers suggests that before the meet-

ing, you ask your team members to e-mail their ideas

and thoughts to a central organizing body that will be

grouped by theme and shared when everyone is together.

“That way you’re disagreeing with an idea, not a col-

league,” she says. “It’s not personal.”

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Specifi c Types of Meetings

Be fl exible

Meetings are only one element of the fl ow of workplace

decision making. There are pre-meetings, post- meetings,

informal, one-on-one conversations in the corridor, and

impromptu group discussions. If cultural differences are

making group meetings particularly challenging, try “so-

liciting coworkers’ opinions in other venues and giving

people an opportunity to provide feedback in different

ways,” says Molinsky. “Be fl exible about the process,” says

Brett. “Consider breaking up your group into smaller

subgroups.” And remember, adds Meyer, “In many coun-

tries, the formal meeting is not the place to hash out

ideas—it’s for putting a stamp on what we’ve already de-

cided in pre-meetings,” she says. In other words, don’t

put too much stock in what takes place in the conference

room. “Recognize that in many cultures the tough stuff

is done off-line, one-on-one.”

Consider rewards

“It’s really hard for people to overcome their cultural be-

haviors because they’re so ingrained,” says Brett. But if

you’re concerned that cultural differences are having a

negative impact on your team’s capacity for growth and

change, think about ways to push your colleagues out-

side their cultural comfort zones during meetings. “You

need to institutionalize rewards around what you’re try-

ing to motivate people to do so that it’s hardwired in,”

says Molinsky. Say, for instance, you want to encour-

age more-open confl ict and feedback at meetings, but

your workforce is confl ict averse. In that case, you could

148

Conduct a Meeting of People from Diff erent Cultures

“make providing feedback part of their performance

evaluations” and a prerequisite for promotion. They get

rewards when they do it well and perhaps even penal-

ties if they fail. It’s not easy, but “it’s defi nitely possible to

encourage and train people to behave in ways that might

not feel natural,” says Meyer.

Rebecca Knight is a freelance journalist based in Bos-

ton and a lecturer at Wesleyan University. Her work has

been published in the New York Times, USA Today, and

the Financial Times.

149

CHAPTER 26

Making Global

Meetings Work

by June Delano

Running a virtual team is an interesting challenge, es-

pecially if people are spread across countries and time

zones and have different levels of language profi ciency.

At one time I had a team of about 17 people spread

across 10 countries, and we needed to have a meeting

weekly or at least every other week. The challenge was

that somebody was always in the meeting in the middle

of the night, somebody was always the only person in a

room while other people were in small groups.

This content originally appeared in the Virtual Teams module of Har-

vard ManageMentor (product #6789AR).

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Specifi c Types of Meetings

So we experimented and came up with a model we

called “inconvenience everybody equally.” That meant

that we rotated our meeting time so that at some point,

everyone—whether they were in London, Berlin, New

Delhi, or New York—was up in the middle of the night or

in the middle of their normal workday. And it meant that

everybody got a chance to be drowsy and falling asleep,

as well as wide awake and full of energy at the peak of

their day.

We also came up with a rule that, at fi rst, was very

hard to enforce: Even if there were several people in one

location, each needed to be on the phone separately—not

in a room together. It completely changes the dynamic of

a meeting if some people are together in one place and

can see and talk to one another off-line.

So although several of us were sitting in a row in cu-

bicles in the same offi ce, we made sure that we all got

on the phone equally with everybody else. That meant

no side conversations and that everybody needed to put

their expression into their voice rather than rely on facial

expressions.

We also learned that it was really important to have

an agenda go out ahead of time, particularly when you

have people who are speaking a second or a third lan-

guage. Seeing the agenda in advance gave them a chance

to read and get familiar with the content and what was

going to be discussed.

Finally, we made sure that we kept the agenda to

those things that really mattered to everyone who was on

the phone. If there are 17 people on the line, you don’t

152

Making Global Meetings Work

want to have people getting bored and losing their sense

of involvement and engagement in the meeting.

June Delano is a managing partner and cofounder of The

ClearLake Group.

153

CHAPTER 27

Give Your

Standing Meetings

a Makeover

by Martha Craumer

Regularly scheduled meetings (staff meetings, progress

report meetings, and sales meetings) sometimes seem

to be called out of habit or a sense of duty rather than

need. They’re valuable not only for the information they

allow people to share but also for the face time they of-

fer. However, their importance doesn’t necessarily make

them interesting. Meeting with the same people in the

same room every week to discuss the same topics can

get boring, resulting in many empty chairs—and a lack

of enthusiasm among the remaining attendees. Here are

Adapted from the “The Effective Meeting: A Checklist for Success,”

Harvard Management Communication Letter (reprint #C0103A),

March 2001.

155

Specifi c Types of Meetings

some ways to keep your regular meetings fresh—and at-

tendance high.

Regularly review the meeting’s purpose

From time to time remind participants of the reasons for

meeting, and ask if the meeting still serves that purpose.

For example, a project team may hold twice-weekly status

reports at the beginning of a project, when there are a lot

of new developments and many decisions to make. Once

the initial frenzy subsides, though, there may only be

enough new information to warrant a monthly meeting.

Solicit agenda items from the

group in advance

This gives attendees a chance to bring up issues that are

of interest to them.

Cancel when there is no reason to meet

Nothing on the agenda? Don’t meet. There’s no sense in

gathering together just because it’s what you do on Tues-

days at 11 a.m. People will come to appreciate that your

meetings won’t be a waste of time.

Rotate leadership of the meeting

Have each attendee take a turn running the meeting—

setting the agenda, preparing materials, and introduc-

ing topics. It’s a great way to inspire ownership of the

meeting.

Martha Craumer is a senior writer at The Boston Con-

sulting Group.

156

CHAPTER 28

How to Do

Walking

Meetings Right

by Russell Clayton, Christopher Thomas,

and Jack Smothers

Fran Melmed is the founder of Context, a communi-

cation and change management consulting fi rm. She

spends her days performing communication audits for

organizations and meeting with clients. Sounds like a

recipe for a sedentary workday, right? On the contrary.

Fran is part of a growing trend known as walking meet-

ings or “walk and talk.”

A walking meeting is simply that: a meeting that

takes place during a walk instead of in an offi ce, board-

Adapted from content posted on hbr.org on August 5, 2015.

157

Specifi c Types of Meetings

room, or coffee shop. Nilofer Merchant wrote in Har-

vard Busi

ness Review about her own transition to

walking meetings after realizing that, like many Amer-

icans, she was sitting way too much while she worked.

Merchant traded her coffee shop meetings for walking

meetings and immediately saw the benefi ts. Likewise,

Melmed fi nds that merely holding some of her meetings

while walking has given her the necessary time to “un-

plug” that she needs in order to be an effective writer.

Recent research fi nds that the act of walking leads to

increases in creative thinking. This certainly supports

the idea that walking meetings are useful. Plenty of an-

ecdotal evidence also suggests that walking meetings

lead to more honest exchanges with employees and are

more productive than traditional sit-down meetings.

Based on this, we undertook an exploratory study

of the benefi ts associated with walking. We surveyed a

population of approximately 150 working adults in the

United States to gather input about their walking meet-

ing and work habits. In short, we found that those who

participate in walking meetings are 5.25% more likely to

report being creative at their jobs than those who do not.

Additionally, the responses suggest that walking meet-

ings support cognitive engagement—or focus—on the

job. Those who participate in walking meetings are 8.5%

more likely to report high levels of engagement.

What we found adds support to the notion that walk-

ing meetings are benefi cial for workers. Is an increase in

creativity of 5.25% likely to make or break a business?

Probably not. But look at these fi ndings through the lens

of a cost-benefi t analysis. The costs associated with regu-

158

How to Do Walking Meetings Right

larly participating in walking meetings are next to nil.

Keep in mind that walking meetings are not breaks from

work. They are meetings that would have taken place re-

gardless of whether they were held in someone’s offi ce or

while walking around your building complex. There may

be no cheaper way to achieve moderate increases in cre-

ativity and engagement.

Just how do walking meetings produce these positive

benefi ts in the workplace? Ted Eytan, a physician and

medical director of the Kaiser Permanente Center for

Total Health and a vocal advocate of walking meetings,

has some ideas. First, from a neurochemical perspective,

Eytan emphasizes that our brains are more relaxed dur-

ing walks due to the release of certain chemicals. This

aids executive function, which governs how we focus

on tasks and deal with unforeseen events, among other

things. Open-ended responses to our survey seemed to

back this up in that people said they had moments of

creativity sparked by walking meetings.

Furthermore, Eytan believes walking meetings lead

to better employee engagement by breaking down bar-

riers between supervisor and subordinate or between

coworkers. He sees the bonding achieved through walk-

ing meetings as a micro version of the connection often

made between coworkers who travel together on busi-

ness trips. David Haimes, a senior director of product

development at Oracle, has experienced this in his meet-

ings with team members: “The fact that we are walk-

ing side by side means the conversation is more peer to

peer than when I’m in my offi ce and they’re across a desk

from me, which reinforces the organizational hierarchy.”

159

Specifi c Types of Meetings

To be sure, walking meetings aren’t always the right

choice (and not everyone is physically able to participate

in them). Sometimes it is valuable to have materials or

a whiteboard close at hand, and sometimes, as in an in-

tense negotiation, it is important to be face-to-face. The

best choices for walking meetings are situations in which

colleagues are conferring on decisions or exploring pos-

sible solutions. Indeed, in our survey, participants who

held managerial and professional positions experienced

more of a creativity boost from walking meetings than

those in technical or administrative jobs (though all cat-

egories realized some benefi ts).

If you are inspired to give walking meetings a try,

here are a few tips that can help your walking meeting

go well:

Consider including an “extracurricular”

destination on your route.

Eytan, whose offi ce is located in Washington, D.C., often

mentions the nearby Washington Coliseum as a place to

stroll by and notes it’s where the Beatles played their fi rst

U.S. concert. Naming a point of interest, he says, pro-

vides more rationale and incentive for others to go for

a walk.

Avoid making the destination a source

of unneeded calories.

One of the arguments in favor of walking meetings is

the health benefi t. However, this is easily negated if the

walking meeting leads to a 425-calorie white-chocolate

mocha that wouldn’t otherwise be consumed.

160

How to Do Walking Meetings Right

Don’t surprise colleagues or clients

with walking meetings.

It’s fi ne to suggest a walk if it seems appropriate in the

moment, as long as it’s clear that you’ll be fi ne with a

“maybe next time.” But if you’re planning ahead to spend

your time with someone in a walking meeting, have the

courtesy to notify them in advance. Doing so allows them

to arrive dressed for comfort, perhaps having changed

shoes. You might also keep water bottles on hand to offer

on warm days.

Stick to small groups.

Haimes recommends a maximum of three people for a

walking meeting.

Have fun.

Enjoy the experience of combining work with a bit of ex-

ercise and fresh air. Our data shows that those who par-

ticipate in walking meetings are more satisfi ed in their

jobs than their colleagues who don’t.

Based on our survey and the clear case to be made for

walking in general as a key to good health, it’s smart to

make walking meetings a habit—or at least to give them

a try.

Russell Clayton

is an assistant professor of manage-

ment at Saint Leo University’s Donald R. Tapia School

161

Specifi c Types of Meetings

of Business. Follow him on Twitter @ProfessorRWC.

Christopher Thomas is an assistant professor of man-

agement at Saint Louis University’s John Cook School

of Business. Jack Smothers is an assistant professor of

management at the University of Southern Indiana’s Ro-

main College of Business.

162

CHAPTER 29

Stand-Up

Meetings

Don’t Work for

Everybody

by Bob Frisch

Stand-up meetings have become a routine part of the

workday in many organizations, mostly due to the adop-

tion of agile and other innovative management methods.

These are usually brief daily progress sessions in which

an initiative team updates and coordinates efforts. The

phrase “stand up” is literal—participants remain stand-

ing for the duration of the meeting—and the reason is

Adapted from content posted on hbr.org on May 27, 2016.

163

Specifi c Types of Meetings

speed. You want people to rapidly surface issues and

solve disagreements. As the Wikipedia entry for stand-

up meetings explains, “The discomfort of standing for

long periods is intended to keep the meetings short.”

While it’s hard to argue with the success of agile tac-

tics, it’s worth taking a moment to question the wisdom

of an organization adopting stand-up meetings on a

widespread basis. They don’t work for all interactions,

and as with anything, treating them as a one-size-fi ts-all

solution can have unintended consequences.

When I was a managing partner at Accenture, our or-

ganization and change strategy team helped design a new

conference facility for one of our offi ces. We specifi cally

varied the table shapes and sizes. Some rooms had a large

round one in the center, others the classic boat-shaped,

boardroom model. We had open-ended rectangles and

squares, as well as U-shaped (with the boss typically

seated at the center of the bottom of the U) and V-shaped

(where the facilitator can move forward to stand in front

of the individual participants) options. The reason for

such variety is clear: The dynamics of a meeting are di-

rectly related to how people are seated relative to the

boss, to one another, and to the presenter or facilitator.

Now think about a stand-up meeting, in which there

is no rhyme or reason to how people are positioned. And

overlay that with physical differences between team-

mates. Imagine someone who is 5′3″ trying to make a

point when a 6′4″ colleague is standing in front of them,

or picture the two debating the pros and cons of a critical

problem while standing up. Don’t think that’s an issue?

Then I’d bet you’re not 5′3″. Remember too that, statisti-

164

Stand-Up Meetings Don’t Work for Everybody

cally speaking, the average male is taller than the aver-

age female, so height-ism often carries over into sexism.

Consider also a healthy 25-year-old negotiating a

dif fi cult compromise with a 63-year-old peer who suf-

fers from a mild heart condition, with the “time clock”

for resolution set by the fact that both have to stand

for the length of the conversation. The higher stamina

of the younger worker could certainly put an unappre-

ciated thumb on the scale in their favor. Attempting to

compensate for these differences by, for example, telling

the short people to stand in front or offering the older

worker a seat while everyone else stands only serves to

reinforce these inequalities. Chairs may make meetings

longer, but, depending on the layout of the table, they

also put everyone on equal footing (so to speak).

I’m not advocating for eliminating stand-up meetings.

They can be effective in certain circumstances, and re-

search has shown that they can boost group productivity

(see the preface of this book for more on the benefi ts of

stand-up meetings). But any organization that uses them

regularly should review how, when, and why they’re be-

ing held. Is one stand-up per day or week appropriate for

your team instead of several? Should stand-up meetings

be limited to 5 or 10 minutes or allowed to go longer, oc-

casionally substantially so? Will people really perform

better at the desired activity—brainstorming, discussing,

decision making, and so on—while on their feet?

Assume you were 5′3″ or in ill health or the most

petite female in your organization having a raging dis-

agreement with a tall, young, fi t male. Would you want

to be standing or seated?

165

Specifi c Types of Meetings

Bob Frisch

is the managing partner of the Strategic

Offsites Group, a Boston-based consultancy; author of

Who’s In The Room? How Great Leaders Structure and

Manage the Teams Around Them (Jossey-Bass, 2012);

and co author, with Cary Greene, of Simple Sabotage: A

Modern Field Manual for Detecting and Rooting Out

Everyday Behaviors That Undermine Your Workplace

(HarperOne, 2015). He is the author of four Harvard

Business Review articles, including “Off-Sites That

Work” (June 2006), and is a frequent contributor to

hbr .org.

166

CHAPTER 30

Leadership

Summits

That Work

by Bob Frisch and Cary Greene

Every year, in virtually all large and midsize companies,

high-level leaders come together for a leadership sum-

mit. These events usually last two to four days and can

rack up millions of dollars in costs: airfare and accom-

modations for the 50 to 500 or so attendees, fees for

outside speakers, production expenses, the many person

days that go into planning, and the enormous opportu-

nity cost incurred by taking so many top managers away

from their normal duties for several days.

Reprinted from Harvard Business Review, March 2015 (product

#R1503F).

167

Specifi c Types of Meetings

When executed well, these meetings are certainly

worth the time and expense. They can serve as a power-

ful catalyst to align leaders, develop solutions to prob-

lems, introduce new strategies, and fuel collaboration

across the organization. But many companies squander

this rare opportunity to harness the collective knowledge

of their frontline leaders.

The typical summit begins with a numbing sequence

of platform presentations from a parade of C-level ex-

ecutives. Later sessions address topics, such as a new ad

campaign or a product rollout schedule, that concern

only a portion of the people in the room. A motivational

speaker adds a dollop of entertainment. Some breakout

sessions and an open mic Q&A with the top team, em-

ceed by the CEO, pass for an exchange of ideas.

Information, proposals, and solutions fl ow in only one

direction—from the top down—and not all that coher-

ently. Attendees leave only slightly better informed and

better networked than when they arrived. It’s usually not

clear whether they’ve understood the messages they’re

supposed to take back to their people, much less what

anyone would be expected to do as a result. A huge op-

portunity has been missed. Contrary to what leaders and

planners assume, you can have genuine and productive

conversations with hundreds of people at once. Over the

past decade we have designed and conducted leadership

summits for thousands of executives in scores of compa-

nies, ranging from Fortune 500 multinationals to Ger-

man Mittelstand family businesses, and we’ve seen such

conversations take place. Remarkably straightforward

strategies and practices can ensure that information

168

Leadership Summits That Work

fl ows not only down from the top but also up from the

group, and across it, in a way that allows leaders to direct

the conversation without inhibiting creative responses.

By applying the appropriate techniques before, during,

and after the meeting, C-level leaders can get the full

value of the knowledge of their frontline executives; see

to it that participants leave with unambiguous messages

that their employees can turn into action; and transform

a meeting that often lulls people to sleep into an event

that gets the organization’s synapses fi ring.

Before the Summit

Why do CEOs and their top teams settle for less-than-

optimal leadership conferences? A few executives may

shy away from a real exchange of ideas for fear of los-

ing control of the meeting. But most leaders and meet-

ing planners simply assume that the events are too un-

wieldy to allow for much more than an annual update

and marching orders from the top.

Here’s how the planning process generally unfolds:

Some 6 to 12 months in advance, a midlevel executive

from HR, fi nance, strategy, marketing, or corporate

communications is charged by the CEO or another top

executive with planning the summit. He struggles to get

on the executive team’s calendar to discuss it. When he

does, he uses his allotted 15 minutes to offer up some

possible locations, three to fi ve potential guest speakers,

and a preliminary agenda seemingly related to a theme.

Such themes are often so laughably vacuous—“One com-

pany, one vision,” “Forward together,” “Creating a com-

mon future”—that virtually any presentation or activity

169

Specifi c Types of Meetings

could be made to fi t them. Executive team members

spend a few minutes reacting to the locations. They may

suggest a few more speakers. And then they promptly

forget about the summit until a few weeks before the

event, when the planner starts reminding them that they

need to pull their presentations together.

That’s when people start paying attention. C-level ex-

ecutives, division presidents, and function heads begin

lobbying to add speaking slots or favored subjects to the

agenda. The planner, lacking any real authority, attempts

to allot them all time. Sometimes the CEO suddenly

remakes the entire agenda. The result is a highly frag-

mented or superfi cial meeting conceived entirely from

the perspective of top executives, with hardly a thought

given to what the attendees are likely to take away from

it, much less what they might contribute.

It doesn’t have to be like this. Because these compli-

cated conferences are scheduled so far in advance, there’s

plenty of time to take the steps needed to create a coher-

ent, focused event. (Table 30-2 at the end of this chapter

lays out the timeframe and important milestones for a

summit from prep work to post-summit follow-up.)

Assign clear roles that have real authority.

Because the lines between directing, designing, plan-

ning, and coordinating a summit can blur, it often turns

out that no one is clearly in charge of shaping the event.

Roles and responsibilities should be clarifi ed at the out-

set (see the sidebar “Who Should Do What?”). Rather

than viewing meeting planning as a lower-level admin-

istrative function, the top executive convening the sum-

mit (the “meeting owner”) should designate a summit

170

Leadership Summits That Work

director and grant that person the authority to control

the agenda and to say no to people asking to add things

that don’t fi t its focus. Working with a design team, the

director should oversee the creation of all pre-meeting,

in-meeting, and post-meeting materials and activities.

A coordinator, reporting to the director, should be ap-

pointed to handle scheduling, travel, production, and

logistics with the venue. An emcee should be selected to

introduce the sessions and speakers, smooth transitions,

clarify questions from the audience to the speakers, and

present instant polls and other social media input dur-

ing the event. Facilitators are also needed to help guide

small-group discussions.

WHO SHOULD DO WHAT?

Meeting Owner

• Who

• The CEO or a member of the executive team

• What

• Initiates the meeting and designates a Sum-

mit Director

• Makes fi nal decisions on the meeting’s objec-

tives, structure, and design

• Retains ultimate accountability for achieve-

ment of the objectives

( continued)

171

Specifi c Types of Meetings

WHO SHOULD DO WHAT?

Executive Team

• What

• Provides input on the objectives and agenda

• Develops content with the help of the Content

Editor

• Participates in presentations and panels

• Tracks progress on commitments made at the

summit

Summit Director

• Who

• An internal or external strategy, HR, or mar-

keting executive; reports to the Meeting Owner

• What

• Works with the Meeting Owner and the Execu-

tive Team to confi rm objectives

• Owns the agenda

• Works with the design team to create all

meeting materials and activities

• Manages the planning on a daily basis

Design Team

• Who

• Led by the Summit Director; includes two or

three other senior executives

172

Leadership Summits That Work

• What

• Creates the detailed agenda

• Deploys and analyzes all meeting surveys

• Confi rms meeting design

Content Editor

• Who

• A midlevel strategy or communications ex-

ecutive or a third-party speechwriter

• What

• Tasked by the Meeting Owner with oversee-

ing development of content, ensuring that all

presentations are aligned with the objectives

and coordinated with one another

• Attends rehearsals and provides feedback to

presenters

Coordinator

• Who

• A midlevel event planning or HR executive

• What

• Coordinates scheduling, travel, and lodging

• Handles venue logistics

• Coordinates with speakers and other outside

vendors

( continued)

173

Specifi c Types of Meetings

WHO SHOULD DO WHAT?

Emcee

• Who

• Could be the Meeting Owner, the Summit

Director, or someone outside the company

• What

• Introduces sessions and speakers

• Creates smooth transitions between sessions

• Summarizes discussions, clarifi es questions

from audience members, and presents instant

polling and social media input during the event

Facilitators

• What

• Guide small-group discussions in breakout or

table sessions

Defi ne a clear set of objectives for the conference

by starting with the right questions.

The summit director’s fi rst contact with the CEO and

the executive team may need to include a discussion of

locations—an issue that requires a long lead time. But

that’s not the most important topic. The director should

begin by asking two questions: “What do you want

the outcome of the meeting to be from the perspec-

174

Leadership Summits That Work

tive of the attendees?” and “What do you want them to

say when their teams ask, ‘What happened at the big

meeting?’”

The answers aren’t always readily apparent. But af-

ter some discussion, most executive teams develop a

few concrete objectives. Depending on a company’s cir-

cumstances, objectives might include aligning everyone

around a common set of priorities, solving problems

impeding company progress, driving a cultural transfor-

mation, or accelerating the integration of a major acqui-

sition. Typically, executives will want to specify several

outcomes, but the important point is to formulate them

as outcomes, not as a grab bag of agenda items loosely

connected by a vague theme.

Take, for example, a consumer products company

we’ll call Kallos, which has more than 35,000 employ-

ees and hundreds of thousands of sales reps. A new

leader had succeeded a celebrity CEO, who in his wake

left fi nancial problems, low morale, and a culture that

tolerated broken promises on the part of managers.

The new CEO and his team, wishing to shake things

up, developed fi ve objectives for their summit of 200

executives: reach a realistic understanding of the cur-

rent state of the company, including the need to drive

growth; restore employees’ faith in the brand; prepare

to embark on a cost-reduction program in a way that

would not adversely affect consumers; ensure that ev-

eryone understood what they needed to do in the near

and long term to fulfi ll those goals; and lay the ground-

work to make sure everyone followed through on his or

her promises.

175

Specifi c Types of Meetings

Start the conversation before anyone

leaves home.

Eight to ten weeks before the meeting, attendees should

be surveyed so that the summit director can determine

how much time to spend on each objective and identify

related issues that should be addressed. To gauge peo-

ple’s current view of the fi ve objectives, Kallos admin-

istered an anonymous survey that asked respondents,

among other things, how proud they were of the quality

and performance of the company’s products, how com-

fortable they would be describing the fi nancial situation

of the company to a newly hired employee, and to what

extent they believed that managers they dealt with on

a day-to-day basis behaved as if they were accountable

for their actions. When 90% of the 200 respondents in-

dicated that they were proud of the brand, the focus of

the objective “restore faith in the brand” was shifted to

“determine how to communicate our pride in the brand

to sales reps.” Open-ended survey questions included

the standard “What’s the one question you or your team

would like addressed at the upcoming conference?” and

“If you were riding in the elevator with the CEO and

could tell him the one thing that would most improve

the company’s prospects, what would it be?”

Design the summit around the objectives

and coordinate the content.

Podium presentations, breakouts, and interactive ses-

sions should be not only relevant to the meeting objec-

tives but also coordinated so that together they form a

coherent whole. This is commonsensical, but rare. That’s

176

Leadership Summits That Work

because the fi rst time anyone other than a speaker or a

few of his reports hears any of the podium presentations

is often at the meeting itself.

Focusing C-level and other stage presentations on the

objectives and making sure the presentations tie together

requires appointing an individual as a single point of edi-

torial contact. This role may be fi lled by someone from

HR or corporate communications, or by a third-party

speechwriter, but whoever it is should enjoy the protec-

tion of the meeting owner, who must defl ect attempts to

interfere. Four to six weeks before the meeting, the con-

tent editor should begin to assist all presenters, including

outside speakers, in using one or more of the meeting’s

objectives as the starting point and backbone of their pre-

sentations and to coordinate the presentations with one

another. The editor should attend rehearsals and provide

feedback. He must hold the line against presenters who

say they have a few extra slides but promise they can get

through them in the allotted time and those who try to

cram mountains of information onto each slide. With the

guidance of a fi rm editorial hand, hours of formerly “must

have” presentations by a succession of C-level executives

will be transformed into short, pithy, coordinated talks.

Engage participants in the issues in the days

leading up to the summit.

Seven to ten days before the meeting, attendees can be

given reading material focused on the objectives. Include

only the minimum amount necessary to set up discus-

sions planned for the event. We’ve found that carefully

focused and framed material usually takes no more than

60 minutes to read.

177

Specifi c Types of Meetings

An orientation webcast, similarly lasting no more

than an hour, can also prepare participants to make

meaningful contributions at the summit. For one luxury

goods company, a key objective of an upcoming leader-

ship conference was to prepare the organization for a

new global e-commerce division, which would supplant

an outmoded regional structure. Before the meeting,

participants were required to join in on one of three

webcasts conducted by the new division head, who used

a few simple diagrams to explain the new operating

structure and then answered typed-in questions from

participants. Instead of wasting valuable conference

time explaining the structure, top leaders were able to

have a problem- solving session about its implementation

with knowledgeable, well-prepared attendees —the peo-

ple who would ultimately have to make the new struc-

ture work.

During the Summit

Solid pre-meeting work clarifi es the objectives, coor-

dinates the content, and initiates engagement with at-

tendees. The design and execution of the meeting itself

should make that work come alive in what is in essence a

series of structured conversations, carefully orchestrated

to generate ideas, alignment, and, often, surprises along

the way. Employing some simple principles and tools

can make that happen.

Pay attention to the pace and rhythm

of the meeting.

Kallos kicked off its conference with a brief (15-minute)

keynote in which the CEO introduced the meeting ob-

178

Leadership Summits That Work

jectives and framed what was going to unfold. Day one

was devoted to the fi rst two objectives: understanding

the current state of the company and communicating

pride in the brand. Two 20-minute podium presenta-

tions, each focused on one objective, were broken up by

exercises performed by each table and breakout sessions,

followed by reports to the entire assembly. During lunch,

a guest speaker addressed the drivers of successful direct

selling, offered a case study, and took questions from the

audience. After lunch, presentations from the product

and marketing group, along with several exercises, fo-

cused on communicating pride in the brand, particularly

to sales reps. Day two—featuring a similar mix of pre-

sentations, exercises, and breakouts, and a Q&A with the

executive team—was devoted to the remaining objec-

tives: cost reduction, accountability, and commitment.

An abbreviated day three included breakouts by region

and concluded with a call to action from the CEO and

promises from the executive team to track and support

the commitments individuals and groups had made dur-

ing the summit.

IT’S TIME TO BREAK UP WITH BREAKOUT GROUPS

by Andrew McAfee

Does anyone actually enjoy breakout groups? It’s a se-

rious question. I participate in more than a few full-day

or longer meetings every year—management retreats,

training sessions, meetings of centers and professional

( continued)

179

Specifi c Types of Meetings

IT’S TIME TO BREAK UP WITH BREAKOUT GROUPS

societies, and so on—and there’s nothing I dread see-

ing on the agenda more than a time slot devoted to

“breakout groups.”

This time slot usually follows a presentation on an

important topic. The organizers then ask participants

to split up into breakout groups for an hour. Groups

could be organized in any number of other ways, and

participants are typically assigned into these groups

randomly. The groups report back for 30 minutes, then

everyone goes to lunch.

I fi nd this a complete waste of an hour and a half. For

one thing, the random assignments mean that many

(most?) people spend the time in a group where they know

little about the topic and probably also care little about it.

For another, the reporting back is rushed, superfi cial (“we

talked about X, then we talked about Y”), and rarely ques-

tioned. And fi nally, I don’t think I’ve ever seen the results of

breakout groups actually used for anything.

I have also noticed that breakout groups are a great

way to take energy out of the room. People usually

head off to them with an air of resignation and report

back from them in monotone.

Breakouts aren’t the product of sadistic minds,

though. They’re put into agendas by well-meaning peo-

ple who don’t want participants to passively sit all day

while one person after another drones on at them from

onstage. Breakout groups are intended to break up the

monotony of a long meeting and get people talking to

180

Leadership Summits That Work

each other about key topics. These are worthy goals;

breakout groups are just lousy at realizing them.

What could work better? I think time slots devoted

to mini “unconferences” would. I fi rst came across the

concept at FOO (“friends of O’Reilly”) events orga-

nized by tech guru Tim O’Reilly. At an unconference,

time slots and meeting rooms are predetermined, but

nothing else is. Using whiteboards or sticky notes,

people propose sessions that they want to lead or fa-

cilitate and also decide (by looking at the whiteboards

or sticky notes) which ones they want to attend. The

photo here shows a portion of the agenda for the re-

cently completed FOO Camp.

This agenda was assembled on the fl y and refl ected

the topics participants cared enough about to volun-

teer their time, energy, and knowledge. Attendance

at each session refl ected relative interest in the topic

among all participants. Attendance varies widely, but

( continued)

181

Specifi c Types of Meetings

IT’S TIME TO BREAK UP WITH BREAKOUT GROUPS

this is not perceived as a problem; some topics are just

of narrower interest than others.

I think it would be straightforward to adopt the un-

conference approach to time slots at corporate meet-

ings. If the organizers had a couple of topics that they

wanted to be sure to cover, they could put them on

the whiteboard before opening it up to others. And

the organizers could wander around the rooms while

sessions were taking place to see which ones had the

most attendance and energy. Those should be the ones

whose leaders report back to the group as a whole.

Andrew McAfee is the codirector of the Initiative on

the Digital Economy in the MIT Sloan School of Man-

agement. He is the author of Enterprise 2.0 and the

coauthor, with Erik Brynjolfsson, of The Second Ma-

chine Age.

Adapted from content posted on hbr.org on July 18, 2012.

Allow for fl exibility within sessions.

Given the many moving parts of large, multiday meet-

ings—

presentations, breaks, meals, breakouts, audio-

visual setup, and the like—deviation from the schedule is

impossible. Even so, fl exibility can be maintained within

sessions to address issues that arise or to pursue produc-

tive lines of discussion. For example, at the luxury goods

182

Leadership Summits That Work

company’s leadership summit, the division president

conducted an instant poll asking attendees if they would

feel comfortable explaining to others a strategy she’d just

outlined. When a large percentage of the 90 people there

said no, she asked participants to anonymously submit

written questions, which she addressed on the spot. Only

after a second instant poll indicated that virtually all at-

tendees were comfortable explaining the strategy to oth-

ers did the session proceed as planned.

Improve the quality and eff ectiveness

of top-down communication.

During conferences, top-down communication generally

takes place in three ways: podium presentations, videos,

and Q&As with the executive team. If the editor respon-

sible for coordinating content has done a good job, the

podium presentations will be succinct and integrated.

We have found that an ideal podium session includes no

more than four presenters who speak for 15 to 20 min-

utes each, using just fi ve to seven slides.

Most leadership summits also include an open mic

Q&A session in which attendees ask questions of the

CEO or the executive team. The worthy intent is to pro-

vide unvarnished answers from the top in response to

what’s really on people’s minds. But what actually hap-

pens is wearyingly predictable: impromptu speeches dis-

guised as questions, multipart inquiries requiring time-

consuming answers, softball questions intended to curry

favor with the leaders, and questions relevant to only a

handful of people in the room—to all of which the lead-

ers must extemporize answers. Meanwhile, attendees

183

Specifi c Types of Meetings

who are hesitant to raise provocative (or any) issues in

front of a large audience remain silent.

There is a better way. If you hold the Q&A on the sec-

ond day, you can ask people to submit questions at the

end of day one. That evening, the summit director, edi-

tor, and meeting owner can select the best questions and

add ones they feel should have been asked; the executive

team can formulate responses to the more provocative

ones; and the rest can be parceled out to the appropri-

ate executive team members. Many leaders resist this

technique as somehow manipulative or undemocratic,

feeling that an open mic is more honest. We argue that,

in fact, this approach is ultimately more democratic, be-

cause it ensures that a cross section of questions are an-

swered in a way that brings substance to what is often an

empty exercise.

Use high- and low-tech approaches to

capture the thinking of frontline executives

and communicate it upward.

Numerous techniques can be employed to harvest the

ideas of conference attendees. To determine which tool

to use when, the director should ask four closely related

questions:

• What kind of input is needed: Opinions? Ques-

tions? Brainstorming? Solutions to a specifi c

problem? Complex judgments?

• What characteristics should the communication

have: Anonymous or public? Guided or open-

ended? In real time or delayed?

184

Leadership Summits That Work

• What’s the right unit from which to get that kind

of input: Individuals? Small tables? Larger break-

out groups?

• What are the most effective tools for gathering that

kind of input from that unit: Polling? Discussion

templates? Worksheets? Complex exercises? (See

table 30-1.)

Polling technology as simple as a wireless keypad or

an app accessed through a smartphone or web browser

allows participants to respond to yes or no questions or

to indicate how much they agree with statements such

as “I am confi dent that we will achieve our revenue goals

for the next two years.” Polling results can be projected at

the front of the room in real time for everyone to see (the

luxury goods company did this). Text messages work well

when more-substantive answers are desired, as when

140 attendees at a leadership conference for an informa-

tion management company were asked to name the big-

gest obstacle to the company achieving its growth goals.

Among the responses were: “We lack focus,” “Too many

initiatives distract our attention,” “We lack new prod-

ucts,” “The plan to grow is not clear,” and “Our ability to

attract and retain top-notch talent is questionable.” The

responses were compiled, and a subset was displayed on

a screen at the front of the room for discussion.

Such audience response systems can also facilitate

highly complex group deliberations during breakout ses-

sions. Take, for example, an exercise we call “the poker

chip game,” fi rst described in the 2006 Harvard Busi-

ness Review article “Off-Sites That Work,” which allows

185

Specifi c Types of Meetings

TABLE 30-1

The right tool to gather input from a crowd

Response

Participants

Questions

Pre-

Anony-

Open-

defi ned

mous

Public

Individual

Group

ended

options

PRE-MEETING

Survey

●

●

●

●

●

Webcast

Q&A

●

●

●

IN-MEETING

Question

cards

●

●

●

●

Keypad

polling

●

●

●

●

Poker chip

game

●

●

●

●

Text-in

answers

●

●

●

●

●

Table

discussions

●

●

●

Breakouts

●

●

●

Pairs

●

●

●

Com-

mitment

●

●

●

●

worksheets

Give and

Get

●

●

●

POST-MEETING

Survey

●

●

●

●

●

Intracorpo-

rate social

●

●

●

●

network

186

Leadership Summits That Work

small groups using a game board and some poker chips

to determine how a company should allocate its re-

sources. Thanks to technology advances, the results of

such exercises can be displayed instantly, providing com-

prehensive feedback to guide further deliberation.

Kallos conducted this game with its 200 attendees,

who were divided among 20 tables. Each table was given

66 poker chips and a game board on which to allocate

the discretionary portion of the annual $3.3 billion op-

erating budget. The result was eye-opening for top man-

agement. Every table signifi cantly reduced the amount

of money budgeted for product development and pack-

aging and increased the allocation for marketing. In the

healthy discussion that ensued, a consensus emerged

that growth was being constrained by an inability to tell

consumers a compelling story.

Many old-school, low-tech tools are still remarkably

effective in gathering input, including 3 × 5 cards on

which participants write questions; color-coded cards,

which participants can hold up in response to questions;

templates to guide small-group discussions; and reports

from breakout sessions.

Such tools can make brainstorming—often unwieldy

and unfocused when conducted with hundreds of peo-

ple—more productive. Using a technique called “self-

facilitated dialogue,” Kallos had pairs of participants

spend 10 minutes in a conversation, guided by a paper

template, about what the company should start doing,

stop doing, and continue doing in the next 6 months to

implement a strategy for increasing revenue. A member

187

Specifi c Types of Meetings

of each pair recorded the results of the conversation on

the template. Another template was used to capture the

suggestions from all fi ve dialogues around the table and

to communicate those results to the entire assembly.

A “round robin” variation of the breakout can be par-

ticularly effective in eliciting a full range of reactions to a

series of issues. Instead of having 200 people sit through

podium presentations on each of the 5 objectives, for in-

stance, Kallos broke attendees into 5 groups of 40. Five

executive team members, each responsible for explain-

ing one of the objectives, rotated through the groups.

Participants asked questions and provided input on ev-

ery objective (captured on the lowly fl owchart), an op-

portunity that top-down podium explanations cannot

provide.

Make sure ideas fl ow across the

meeting to lay the groundwork for

genuine collaboration afterward.

The summit may be the only time in the year when many

participants see one another. Yet all too often, connec-

tions are left to happen by chance—at meals, in breakout

groups, or during coffee breaks and cocktail hours. To

connect in a deliberate and more constructive way, we

use an exercise we call “Give and Get.”

Typically, this exercise is part of a breakout session

with anywhere from 30 to 60 people. Two charts, one

labeled “Give” and the other marked “Get,” hang on op-

posite walls. On each chart, each participant is assigned

a column with his or her photo, name, function, business

unit, and location at the top.

188

Leadership Summits That Work

In the Get column, each participant posts a card that

completes this sentence: “If I could get help in one area

that would make me and my team more successful in the

coming year, it would be . . .” The card is like a classifi ed

ad, asking for a particular type of expertise or assistance.

Perhaps someone needs help developing a product fea-

ture, reconfi guring a plant layout, or adjusting a cus-

tomer contract to achieve a certain outcome. In the Give

column, the participant posts a card that completes the

sentence, “If I could name one area in which my team

and I have developed expertise that may be useful to oth-

ers in the company, it would be . . .”

After all the Give and Get cards have been posted,

participants are given Post-it notes and asked to circu-

late around the room. If a participant sees a Get that she

or someone she knows could address, she leaves a Post-it

with a message about how she might be able to assist. If

she sees a Give that could be helpful to her, she places a

Post-it with a message under the card.

Once participants have posted all their offers to assist

and requests for help, they switch rooms with another

breakout group and survey the Gives and Gets on those

walls. If each breakout room holds 50 people, each par-

ticipant will see 100 requests for help and 100 offers.

Those 200 Gives and Gets typically generate hundreds

of Post-its, creating a network of connections across lo-

cations, functions, and business units. After the meeting,

all the Gives and Gets are recorded and distributed to

the appropriate individuals for follow-up.

These and other exercises, designed to ripple far be-

yond the walls of the meeting venue, can be explicitly

189

Specifi c Types of Meetings

tied to the objectives of the summit. Kallos, for instance,

used a technique called the Wall of Commitments to

further its goal of getting participants to follow through

on their promises.

Here’s how it worked: The packet each participant

received on arrival contained worksheets printed on

carbonless copy paper. At the end of day one, largely de-

voted to top-line growth, participants fi lled out a work-

sheet that asked them to list specifi c steps they and their

teams would take to increase revenue immediately, in

the coming 3 months, and in the coming 12 months.

They handed in the original and kept the copy.

During the evening, unbeknownst to the attendees,

200 linear feet of eight-foot foam board walls were con-

structed in the auditorium. Participants’ commitment

sheets were posted on the walls under their names, af-

fi liations, and photos. After dinner, the nine members

of the executive committee went around the room with

a stack of Post-it notes imprinted with their own names

and posted comments on the commitment sheets. The

comments ranged from “Great idea” and “Let me know

if I can help with that” to “This is disappointing” and “I

was hoping you were more ambitious than this.”

The following morning, when the 200 participants

walked into the auditorium, their reaction, as intended,

was shock. As they wandered the perimeter of the room

reading the comments about their own and their col-

leagues’ commitments, some were visibly embarrassed.

During the next two days, the commitment sheets that

were generated to address the other objectives—which

190

Leadership Summits That Work

were added to the walls—became more thoughtful. Not

only did the quality of the promised actions greatly im-

prove, but attendees learned what colleagues throughout

the organization would be focusing on in the coming

months, creating opportunities for collaboration. In sev-

eral instances, participants formed teams to work on ini-

tiatives, coordinate their efforts, or establish discussion

groups about commitments that dovetailed.

The element of surprise in this exercise can have a

galvanizing effect, and identifying individuals creates

opportunities for networking. But both features can be

adjusted. For example, to spur ambitious commitments

from the outset, participants can be warned that the ex-

ecutive team members will comment on their posts. To

avoid embarrassing participants, the comments can be

provided to them individually rather than posted pub-

licly. Because Kallos was looking to jump-start a culture

change, it dialed up both features.

After the Summit

Because companies generally don’t design leadership

conferences around concrete objectives, they typically

pay little attention to what happens afterward. Morale

may have been lifted, but the absence of clear direction

usually results in halfhearted follow-up and few tangible

outcomes. If, however, you’ve begun with a purpose in

mind, you can do some simple things to make sure it is

achieved.

191

Specifi c Types of Meetings

Create succinct materials for

attendees to take home.

The real moment of truth for a summit occurs when

leaders return to their divisions, regions, or functions,

and people ask, “So, what happened at the meeting?”

Those leaders should be able to answer clearly and ex-

plain the implications. But that’s hard to do if all they’ve

brought back is a notepad full of haphazard observa-

tions, doodles, and a few vague slogans, as so often hap-

pens. Far better to supply them with communication

aids such as talking points, pithy presentations, or video

links to drive home the objectives of the meeting and

form the basis of discussions with their teams. Meeting

participants are encouraged to add their own content

to make the messaging relevant. In some cases we have

conducted sessions before the close of the meeting in

which leaders, working with tablemates, simulate com-

municating major points to their teams and get feedback

on both content and style.

Ensure that all commitments made at the summit—

up, down, and across the organization—are kept.

Answers to all questions that were not addressed at the

meeting, whether from executive team leaders or from

attendees, should be provided within one to two weeks.

What’s more, the executive team should track progress

on any initiatives or commitments undertaken. Thirty

days after the Kallos summit, each participant received

an e-mail from an executive committee member listing

the actions that person had committed to in the “next

192

Leadership Summits That Work

30 days” section of his or her worksheet, followed by

a single sentence: “Shoot me a quick e-mail letting me

know how these went.”

Continue the conversation.

Within 48 hours of the meeting’s conclusion, conduct a

survey to see if the goals were fulfi lled and to ask par-

ticipants about what worked, what could be improved,

and what should be jettisoned for next year’s summit.

Repeating the pre-meeting survey questions will give

you valuable insights into the impact of the event. For

example, the percentage of people saying they fully un-

derstood the company’s growth strategy rose from 37%

in Kallos’s pre-meeting survey to 82% after the summit,

and the percentage describing themselves as “optimistic”

or “very optimistic” about the company’s prospects rose

from 49% to 80%. To encourage collaboration within

teams or discussion groups that emerged at the summit,

either by design or by happenstance, enable attendees to

continue the conversation among themselves through an

intracorporate social network.

By adjusting how information fl ows—more up, more

effectively down, and a lot more across—you can turn

a leadership summit into a high point of the annual

management calendar, one that makes a real difference.

Leaders will know in advance that they’ll be heard. Peo-

ple across the organization will understand what the re-

sults of the meeting mean for them. Executive commit-

tee members will know that they’re going to get valuable

193

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input and that the meeting will be well worth the consid-

erable investment. And enthusiasm will build for each

succeeding summit, as people look forward to a memo-

rable event that’s strategically signifi cant for everyone.

Bob Frisch is the managing partner of the Strategic Off-

sites Group, a Boston-based consultancy, and is the au-

thor of Who’s In The Room? How Great Leaders Struc-

ture and Manage the Teams Around Them (Jossey-Bass,

2012). He is the author of four Harvard Business Review

articles, including “Off-Sites That Work” (June 2006).

Cary Greene is a partner of the Strategic Offsites Group.

They are coauthors of Simple Sabotage: A Modern Field

Manual for Detecting & Rooting Out Everyday Behav-

iors That Undermine Your Workplace (Harper One, 2015)

and are frequent contributors to hbr.org.

196

APPENDIX A

Meeting

Preparation

Checklist

Use this tool to prepare for your next meeting.

Have you . . .

□ Identifi ed the specifi c purpose of the meeting?

□ Made sure you need a meeting at all?

□ Developed a preliminary agenda?

□ Selected the right participants?

□ Assigned roles to participants?

Adapted from Running Meetings (20-Minute Manager series; product

#17003), Harvard Business Review Press, 2014.

197

Appendix A

□ Decided where and when to hold the meeting and

confi rmed availability of the space?

□ Sent the invitation, notifying participants when

and where the meeting will be held?

□ Sent the preliminary agenda to key participants

and other stakeholders?

□ Sent any reports or items needing advance prepa-

ration to participants?

□ Followed up with invitees in person, if

appropriate?

□ Identifi ed, if appropriate, the decision-making

process that will be used in the meeting?

□ Identifi ed, arranged for, and tested any required

equipment?

□ Finalized the agenda and distributed it to all

participants?

□ Verifi ed that all key participants will attend and

know their roles?

□ Prepared yourself?

198

APPENDIX B

Sample Agendas

A sample meeting agenda

Topic

Preparation

Proposed process

1  What changes,

None

• Mike polls team.

if any, should

we make to the

agenda?

TIME: 2 minutes

PURPOSE: Decision

LEADER: Mike

2  What deltas from

Review applicable

• Anne reviews areas

the previous meet-

deltas from previous

of improvement

ing will we focus

meeting notes.

that we agreed to

on in this meeting?

focus on during this

TIME: 3 minutes

meeting.

PURPOSE: Decision

LEADER: Anne

( continued)

Adapted from “How to Design an Agenda for an Effective Meeting,” by

Roger Schwarz, posted on hbr.org on March 19, 2015.

199

Appendix B

Topic

Preparation

Proposed process

3  How do we best

Identify relevant infor-

• Statement of the

manage the fl uc-

mation, criteria, and

problem.

tuating internal

assumptions that you

TIME: 5 minutes

demand for our

believe should guide

• Team identifi es and

services?

the decision.

agrees on relevant

TIME: 50 minutes

information to

PURPOSE: Decision

consider.

LEADER: Peg

TIME: 10 minutes

• Identify and agree

on criteria for ac-

ceptable solutions.

TIME: 10 minutes

• Identify and agree

on assumptions.

TIME: 10 minutes

• Craft solutions that

meet the above

constraints.

TIME: 15 minutes

4  Which fi rm should

Read the attached

• Questions and ad-

we select for the

memo recommend-

ditional informa-

adjacent markets

ing three fi rms. Be

tion regarding the

acquisition study?

prepared to ask ques-

recommendations

TIME: 15 minutes

tions and share your

of the three fi rms.

PURPOSE: Decision

initial preference and

• Decision to select

LEADER: Martin

your reasoning.

one fi rm.

5  What developmen-

Review the attached

• Identify the avail-

tal assignments

memo identifying the

able developmen-

are available dur-

current high-potential

tal assignments.

ing the next FY for

managers and the

• Match the assign-

high-potentials?

areas in which we are

ments to the pool

TIME: 15 minutes

seeking developmen-

of high-potential

PURPOSE: Decision

tal assignments for

managers.

LEADER: Noah

them. If feasible, be

• Agree on next

prepared to off er an

steps for any high-

appropriate develop-

potential managers

mental assignment.

who have not been

given a develop-

mental assignment.

6  PLUS/DELTA: What

None

• Members identify

did we do well

pluses and deltas.

for this meeting?

• Team agrees on

What should we

deltas to work on

do diff erently for

for next meeting.

the next meeting?

TIME: 5 minutes

PURPOSE: Decision

LEADER: Carrie

200

Sample Agendas

A blank meeting agenda template

Meeting agenda

MEETING NAME

DATE

TIME

Topic

Preparation

Proposed process

1  TIME ALLOTTED:

PURPOSE:

LEADER:

2  TIME ALLOTTED:

PURPOSE:

LEADER:

3  TIME ALLOTTED:

PURPOSE:

LEADER:

4  TIME ALLOTTED:

PURPOSE:

LEADER:

5  TIME ALLOTTED:

PURPOSE:

LEADER:

201

Appendix B

Branded Books Meeting:

sales, marketing, production,

editorial team

9/17/16; 10:00–11:00; 307W

Jessica, Erin, Lisa, Mary, Jane, Audra, Sarah, Alex, Jen,

Kate

Meeting objective:

To coordinate our marketing, sales, production, and edi-

torial activities in order to execute our plan to generate

$750,000 in sales of branded e-books across all chan-

nels: retail, e-tail, and our own website this fi scal year.

What

How

Who

Time

Introduction

•  How did it go? What’s the word on the Mary

5 min

new lines of books?

Book revision

•  Overarching strategy: Need to

Jane

15 min

planning

revise/refresh before a potential

customer picks up the book and says,

“Outdated!”

•  Options:

○  Since book display plans are done

4 months in advance, should the

reprint schedule be on an 18–24

month cycle?

○  Should we coordinate the revi-

sion schedule with the reprint

schedule? Do we know the reprint

schedule far enough in advance—

or is that driven by sales?

•  Next steps

( continued)

202

Sample Agendas

What

How

Who

Time

Paperback &

•  We agreed that we’d off er the e-book

Mary

15 min

e-book

and PDF versions of the paperbacks

publication

one month pre–bound book date, so

schedule

the fi rst group of fi ve will be live and

promoted on 2/14/17.

•  How do we develop an informed point

of view about e-book/print book pub-

lication schedules? How do we gather

best practices?

•  Next steps

Pre-sales

•  Scheduled for mid-October.

Mary

10 min

meeting

•  How can the team help prepare?

•  Should we pursue the possibility of

pre-loading the fi rst 10 Must Reads

book on an e-reader?

•  Next steps

Merchan-

•  How about grouping our books by

Jane

10 min

dising idea

topic rather than by series? For ex-

ample, what if we grouped all of our

Managing People books together?

○  10 Must Reads on Managing

People

○  HBR on Finding and Keeping the

Best People

○  HBR Guide to Delivering Eff ective

Feedback

•  Next steps

Recap

•  What we decided

Jane

5 min

•  Next steps—who’s doing what

203

APPENDIX C

Meeting

Follow-Up

Checklist

Have you . . .

□ Written a succinct follow-up note, including what,

who, and when?

□ Distributed the note to all participants?

□ Recorded any task due dates in your calen-

dar so you can follow up to make sure they’re

completed?

□ Distributed the note to all other relevant

stakeholders?

Adapted from Running Meetings (20-Minute Manager series; product

#17003), Harvard Business Review Press, 2014.

205

Appendix C

□ Followed up with key stakeholders in person to

make sure they’re aware of meeting highlights?

□ Assessed yourself as leader?

□ Assessed the outcome of the meeting?

□ Met with critics?

□ Thought through what you could do better next

time?

206

APPENDIX D

Sample

Follow-Up Memo

Branded Books Meeting:

sales, marketing, production,

editorial team

9/17/16 Follow-Up Notes

Attendees: Jessica, Erin, Lisa, Mary, Jane, Audra, Sarah,

Alex, Jen, Kate

Meeting objective:

To coordinate our marketing, sales, production, and edi-

torial activities in order to execute our plan to generate

$750,000 in sales of branded e-books across all chan-

nels—retail, e-tail, and our own website this fi scal year.

207

Appendix D

What

How

Who

When

Pre-sales

•  Most important meeting in the buying

Team

Done

meeting

cycle

•  25 national account reps

•  Loved the jackets!

•  Sell sheets very helpful

○  Thanks to Sarah, Mary, and Alex for

creating them!

Book

•  Overarching principles

Jane

Ongoing

revision

○  When a content area (managing

planning

supply chains, doing business in

China, marketing) undergoes a

sea change, we should be ready to

update ASAP.

○  The new content in a refreshed

book needs to be game changing.

○  And we must be sure we’re going

Jane w/ Ongoing

to sell a lot more of the refreshed

Mary

book; otherwise, we’ll lose money

and

on returns.

Jess

○  Need to revise/refresh before a

potential customer picks up the

book and says, “Outdated!”

Paperback •  We agreed that we’d off er the e-book

Jane

2/14/17

& e-book

and PDF versions of the paperbacks

publication

one month pre–bound book date, so

schedule

the fi rst group of fi ve will be live and

promoted on 2/14/17.

○  We agreed that we’d use the

Team

branded lines as an experiment for

fi guring out nontraditional digital/

print book release, marketing, and

merchandising.

( continued)

208

Sample Follow-Up Memo

What

How

Who

When

Merchan-

•  What if we suggested grouping our

dising

books—all of our books, not just the

idea

branded lines—by topic rather than

by series (for example, when all six 10

Must Reads are out, as well as the new

paperbacks and authored books [such

as Grote on performance appraisal]):

○  What if we grouped all the Manag-

ing People books together:

▪  10 Must Reads on Managing

People

▪  HBR on Finding and Keeping

the Best People

▪  Grote’s new book on perfor-

mance appraisal

•  In e-tail, we already do this type of

grouping (Sarah and Alex); that is,

thematic book lists with focus on core

topics.

○  Need to look at Alex and Sarah’s

Sarah

9/18/17

e-tail promotion of 10 Must Reads:

The Essentials with each author’s

related books.

○  Also need to take a fi eld trip to

Mary

10/18/17

some physical bookstores—before

the winter weather!

209

APPENDIX E

Digital Tools to

Make Your Next

Meeting More

Productive

by Alexandra Samuel

Meetings may seem like the ultimate holdout against the

digitization of working life: After all, what’s more analog

than talking directly with another person? Even though

the core work of a meeting—listening to and connecting

with other people—hasn’t changed, there are lots of ways

technology can make that work easier and more effec-

Adapted from content posted on hbr.org on March 12, 2015 and July 3,

2015

211

Appendix E

tive. Given how much of our working lives we spend in

meetings, building a digital meeting toolkit is one of the

smartest investments you can make in tech-savvy pro-

ductivity. Here are the tools you need.

Before Your Meeting

Find a group meeting time with Doodle, which lets you

poll the various people who are part of your meeting and

fi nd a time that works for everyone. You’ll get the best

results if you hook it up to your own calendar (so you

only offer people options that actually work for you) and

if you set expectations by explaining you’re using Doodle

to fi nd the time that works for as many people as pos-

sible—even if you can’t fi nd one that works for everyone.

Quickly schedule one-on-one meetings so the process

of fi nding a time doesn’t consume more time than the

meeting itself. Use Google appointment slots or Calendly

to set up times when you’re available for calls or meet-

ings, and when you want to take a meeting, share the

link to your open slots.

If you’re booking a call with someone in another time

zone, make sure you’re actually booking the same time

into your calendars. Send an actual calendar invita-

tion, rather than just agreeing on a time via e-mail, and

as long as your calendaring app has built-in time zone

support (nearly all of them do), you can avoid making

a mistake. And use Every Time Zone to fi gure out what

the time zone difference actually is, so you don’t invite

someone to a 4 a.m. meeting.

Find a place to meet. On-demand services like Liquid-

space or Desks Near Me give you lots of options for iden-

212

Digital Tools to Make Your Next Meeting More Productive

tifying a meeting space, even when you’re on the road.

You can book weekly, daily, or even by the hour.

During Your Meeting

Take notes in Evernote or another dedicated digital

note book application. Capturing good, searchable notes

makes meetings much more valuable, and the right note-

taking tool will make it easy for you to fi le your meeting

notes with the project or topics they relate to. Best of all,

if you use the Evernote mobile app to snap pictures of

your meeting whiteboard or fl ip charts, optical charac-

ter recognition makes those handwritten notes search-

able, too.

Share note taking with Google Docs. When you use

a Google Docs document to capture meeting updates

in more-or-less real time, you’ll be able to see and con-

tribute to each other’s notes as long as you have an in-

ternet connection. (Be sure to copy the meeting notes in

Evernote afterward, if that’s where you like to keep all

your project notes.) That means you and your team can

take notes collaboratively, so that if one person’s talking,

another person records what’s being said. This is a par-

ticularly nifty trick if you’re working with one or more

colleagues on a meeting with a client or another team,

because you have a kind of psychic link—you can suggest

ideas to one another alongside the notes you’re taking.

And if you don’t have an internet connection but you and

your colleagues all work on Macs, you can use the fab

SubEthaEdit to collaborate with even less lag than you

get on Google Docs, simply by creating a computer-to-

computer network.

213

Appendix E

Bring an extra screen to view reference materials. The

one downside of digital note taking is that if you need

to refer to a document during your meeting, you have to

fl ip back and forth between your note-taking applica-

tion and your reference document. That’s why I always

carry my iPad. I use the application GoodReader to store

any PDFs or documents I might need to look at during

a meeting. And because GoodReader is hooked up to

my DropBox account, I can always access a document I

need to have open, even if I didn’t think to preload it in

GoodReader.

Collaborate with mind mapping. I’m a huge fan of

mind mapping: diagramming ideas and information

visually, using something that looks like a tree or fl ow-

chart. While some people actually take their meeting

notes in mind map form (been there, done that, reverted

to text), I fi nd mind maps most useful when I’m part of

a group discussion where we need to capture and orga-

nize ideas together. My two favorite mind-mapping apps

for meetings are MindMeister (very fl exible and power-

ful) and Popplet (less expensive, a little easier to use, less

fl exible). If you’re using mind mapping in a face-to-face

meeting, you can simply hook a projector up to one com-

puter, but the real-time collaboration support in these

apps mean they’re great for using during virtual meet-

ings, too.

Inspire new thinking. Your meeting outcomes will

only be as good as the thinking that goes into them. But

huddling around a PowerPoint presentation is hardly a

recipe for inspiring bold new ideas. Instead, think about

214

Digital Tools to Make Your Next Meeting More Productive

using a collaborative visual tool like Popplet to share

ideas, so that you can reorganize them on the fl y.

Convert action items to tasks. Once you leave a meet-

ing, it’s easy for follow-up steps to fall by the wayside. It

really helps if everyone in a meeting actually puts their

action items into their task manager—something that’s

a lot easier with TaskClone. A reader put me onto this

service, which can scan Evernote to fi nd any action items

and then import them into your favorite task manage-

ment tool.

Access your outcomes. Too often, we leave meetings

with a tangible outcome, only to lose it in the digital

morass. Even if you generally take your meeting notes

in Evernote or another digital note-taking program, you

may still have trouble tracking down that brilliant brain-

storm that occurred on a pile of Post-its, the inspired

idea you wrote in your paper notebook, or the meeting

notes written on a fl ipchart. That’s why it’s handy to snap

a photo of any written output and add it to Evernote, so

that it becomes searchable.

For Virtual or Phone Meetings

While all the tools I’ve mentioned here are useful in both

face-to-face and virtual meetings, there are a few extra

tools I’d recommend for people conducting virtual or

phone meetings.

Share screens faster with Join.me. I’ve tried GoTo-

Meeting, WebEx, Google Hangouts, and Skype. They

all work some (or even most) of the time. But the only

bullet-proof screen-sharing tool I’ve used is Join.me. It

215

Appendix E

works for me every time, and because it’s so fast to set up

a meeting and share a link, it works even if I’m already

midcall when I realize I need to share my screen.

Choose a back channel. If you’re doing a client or pros-

pect call with colleagues who are in another offi ce or lo-

cation, keep yourselves in sync by choosing an instant

messaging back channel before your meeting begins.

There’s nothing worse than needing to send your copre-

senter an urgent note but discovering you have to wait

for him to read his e-mail so he can see it. A back chan-

nel chat provides a way of discreetly asking someone to

let the conversation move forward or of checking in with

other meeting attendees to see if they feel like your meet-

ing has lost focus. Your back channel can be Skype, Lync,

MSN, Apple Messages, or Gmail Chat—any messag-

ing application works, as long as it has desktop support

(so you’re not trying to type urgent messages into your

phone) and you have connected to your colleague before

the meeting begins. (Send a test message just to be sure.)

Even if you’re using a virtual meeting application that

supports private messaging, I recommend using a sepa-

rate app as your back channel so you don’t accidentally

share your message with the client.

Record crucial phone meetings. If you’re participating

in a phone meeting and aren’t in a position to take notes

(or can’t type fast enough), consider recording your call

for future reference. TapeACall, which is available for

both iPhone and Android, makes it really easy: Just in-

stall the app, and then conference the TapeACall number

into your call. (Note that in many jurisdictions it’s illegal

to tape a call unless everyone consents.)

216

Digital Tools to Make Your Next Meeting More Productive

Set up these tools on your computer and mobile de-

vices, and you’ll be better equipped to make the most of

your meetings. Far from distracting you from your work

and colleagues, this is one place technology can help you

reconnect with them—by making the time you spend to-

gether as valuable as possible.

Alexandra Samuel is a speaker, researcher, and writer

who works with the world’s leading companies to un-

derstand their online customers and craft data-driven

reports such as “Sharing Is the New Buying.” The author

of Work Smarter with Social Media (Harvard Business

Review Press, 2015), Alex holds a PhD in political sci-

ence from Harvard University. Follow Alex on Twitter

@awsamuel.

217

Index

accomplishments in meetings,

time allotted to, 43–46

value of, 117

time estimates for, 28

acknowledgments of participant

anonymous polls, use of in meet-

contributions, 117–118

ings, 55

agenda

attendance, criteria for, 87–92

effective, 25–31

attendees

input for, 26, 78–79

choosing, 47–49

mapping to goals, 23

cutting off, during meetings,

purpose of, 25

67–69

reviewing and modifying, 30

feedback from, 121–122

sample, 199–203

interjections by, 93–96

setting, 7–8

at leadership summits,

sharing before meeting, 110

177–178, 188–191

for virtual meetings, 129,

meeting objectives and, 23

152–153

number of, 47–49

agenda items

silence by, as agreement,

alignment on, 111, 116–117,

53–56

120

See also participants

checking for completion of,

audience response systems,

116

185–187

ground rules for, 60–61

leadership responsibility for,

29–30

back channels, 216. See also digi-

process for addressing, 28–29

tal tools for meetings

proper setup for, 110

board meetings, 22. See also

as questions, 26–27

types of meetings

selecting topics for, 26

body language, reading and

for standing meetings, 156

using, 2, 81

Index

boss

confl icts, managing, 147

as ineffective leader, 107–112

confusion, overcoming, 95–96,

supporting, 108–109

97–98

boundary setting, 103. See also

consensus, group, 64–65. See also

interventions for bad

decision-making meetings

meetings

continuous improvement pro-

brainstorming, 16, 49, 187

cess, 30–31

breakout groups, 179–182

control, regaining, of meeting,

77–83

convenience meetings, 16–17. See

calendars, 212. See also schedul-

also types of meetings

ing meetings

conversations

Calendly, 212. See also digital

casual, 128

tools for meetings

cutting off, during meetings,

calmness, during interruptions,

67–69

79

designing, 115–116

cancelling meetings, 156

ending, 115–118

checklists

versus meetings, 15–16 ( see

follow-up, 205–206

also types of meetings)

preparation, 197–198

one-to-one, 81–83

clarity, asking for, 110, 133

real-time, 13

closing a meeting, 115–118,

in virtual meetings, managing,

119–123

131–133

collaborative problem solving,

water cooler, 140–141

137–138

creative thinking, 158, 159

commitments, on next steps,

cross-cultural meetings, 143–149,

117, 120

151–153. See also types of

communication

meetings

e-mail, 13

cultural differences, 144–145,

face-to-face, 13–14, 128–129

147–149

styles, across cultures, 144–

cultural sensitivity, 144–145

145

cutting people off during

tools, 213–217

meetings, 67–69. See also

top-down, 183–184

conversations

two-way, 13

communication points, 120–121

conducting meetings, 53–83,

decision makers, 48, 61, 99–100

127–133, 137–140, 143–149,

decision making

156, 160–161, 178–191

group, 63–66

conference calls, 13. See also

by leader, 65–66

types of meetings

as meeting purpose, 27–28

220

Index

decision-making meetings, 17–18.

examples and samples

See also types of meetings

agenda, 199–203

decisions, confi rming key, 120

follow-up checklist, 205–206

decision-supporting meetings,

follow-up memo, 207–209

17–18. See also types of

preparation checklist, 197–198

meetings

executive team meetings, 22. See

decision tree, on whether to hold

also types of meetings

a meeting, 11–14

expectations

declining meeting invitations,

group, 102

87–92

setting, 146

derailed meetings, 71–75, 77–83

Desks Near Me, 212–213. See

also digital tools for

face-to-face communication,

meetings

13–14, 128–129

devices, banning during meet-

facilitating discussions. See

ings, 3–4. See also interrup-

conducting meetings;

tions, managing

conversations

digital tools for meetings,

feedback, 121–122, 148–149, 193

211–217

50-minute meetings, 35–36. See

disagreement

also scheduling meetings

in multicultural teams, 147

fl exibility in cross-cultural meet-

stating your, 95

ings, 148

discussion, facilitating. See

focus, lack of, 99–100

conducting meetings;

follow-up, 111, 140–141

conversations

checklist for, 205–206

distractions, managing, 3–4,

sample memo for, 208–209

38, 41

formality meetings, 17. See also

Doodle, 212. See also digital tools

types of meetings

for meetings

duration of meetings. See sched-

uling meetings

“Give and Get” exercise, 188–189

global meetings, 151–153. See also

types of meetings

8-18-1800 rule, 49. See also par-

goals, for meeting, 19–24, 27–28,

ticipants, number of

33–34, 174–175

ending a meeting. See closing a

GoodReader, 214. See also digital

meeting

tools for meetings

evaluation of meeting, 30–31. See

Google, 212. See also digital tools

also feedback

for meetings

Evernote, 213, 215. See also digi-

Google Docs, 98, 213. See also

tal tools for meetings

digital tools for meetings

221

Index

ground rules, 59–61, 146

language barriers. See communi-

group consensus, 64–65

cation; global meetings

group decision making, 27–28,

large meetings, challenge of, 2–3.

63–66

See also attendees, number

group discussions, 56

of

group problem solving, 137–

leader’s choice, 65–66. See also

138

decision-making meetings

group work sessions, 16. See

leaders, ineffective, 107–112

also types of meetings

leadership

guidelines. See ground rules

of cross-cultural meetings,

gut instincts, 103–104. See

143–149

also interventions for bad

of standing meetings, 156

meetings

of virtual meetings, 131–133

leadership conferences and goal

setting, 23

heat mapping topics, 55–56

leadership summits, 167–196

hell, meetings from, interven-

breakout groups in, 179–182

tions for, 97–100. See also

commitments made at,

interventions for bad

192–193

meetings

engaging participants before,

high-stakes meetings, 18. See

177–178

also types of meetings

execution of, 178–191

feedback on, 193

fl exibility in, 182–183

ideas, speaking up with, 94

follow-up after, 191–193

ineffective meeting leadership,

idea fl ow during, 188–191,

107–112

193

information dissemination,

input from conference attend-

16–17. See also types of

ees at, 184–188

meetings

objectives for, 174–177

interjections, 93–96

orientation webcasts, 178

interruptions, managing, 60,

pace and rhythm of, 178–179

77–83

preparation for, 169–178,

interventions for bad meetings,

194–195

97–112

presentations at, 176–179

invitations, declining, 87–92

Q&A sessions in, 183–184

role assignment for, 170–174

take-home materials for, 192

jellyfi sh rule, 68–69

top-down communication

Join.me, 215–216. See also digital

and, 183–184

tools for meetings

See also types of meetings

222

Index

length, of meeting, 4–5. See also

note taking, 98–99, 213, 215.

scheduling meetings

See also digital tools for

Liquidspace, 212–213. See also

meetings

digital tools for meetings

notes, follow-up, 111, 117, 120,

location, for meeting, 24

140–141, 191–193, 208–209

majority vote, 65. See also

objectives, 19–24, 33–34,

decision-making meetings

174–177. See also goals, for

materials. See pre-reads

meeting

meetings from hell, interven-

off-topic discussions, 67–69,

tions for, 97–100. See also

71–75, 77–83, 104, 111

interventions for bad

one-to-one conversations, 81–83

meetings

outcomes, summarizing, 104–

meetings that drag, interventions

105, 215. See also follow-up

for, 101–105. See also inter-

ventions for bad meetings

Microsoft Outlook, 36. See also

participants

scheduling meetings

acknowledgment of, 117–118

mind mapping, 214. See also

affecting experience of other,

digital tools for meetings

111

MindMeister, 214. See also digital

calling by name, 128, 139

tools for meetings

calling on, 6

mobile devices, banning during

checking in with, in virtual

meetings, 3–4

meetings, 140

moderation. See conducting

choosing, 47–49

meetings

cutting off, during meetings,

multicultural meetings, 143–149,

67–69

151–153. See also types of

input from, 78–79

meetings

interruptions by, 77–83

multitasking, 3, 41, 60, 139. See

at leadership summits,

also ground rules

177–178, 188–191

number of, 2–3, 47–49

off-track comments by, 71–75

need to meet, assessing. See

preparation for meetings, 29

decision tree, on whether to

relationship building among,

hold a meeting; attendance,

127–129, 146–147

criteria for

silence by, as agreement,

nonverbal communication, 81.

53–56

See also interventions for

tasks for, 139

bad meetings

See also attendees

223

Index

participation, 6

questions

broad, 110

agenda items as, 26–27

declining meeting invitations,

asking diffi cult, 104

87–92

to evaluate meetings, 30–31

interjections, 93–96

in virtual meetings, 130,

131–133, 138

reading materials. See pre-reads

phone calls, 13. See also types of

recurring meetings. See standing

meetings

meetings

planning meetings. See

regularly scheduled meetings,

preparation

155–156. See also types of

playing dumb, 97–98. See also

meetings

interventions for bad

relationship building

meetings

in multicultural teams,

plus delta evaluations, 30–31. See

146–147

also feedback

in virtual teams, 127–129

polling technology, 185–187.

restatement of topics, 104. See

See also digital tools for

also interventions for bad

meetings

meetings

Popplet, 214–215. See also digital

rewards and cultural differences,

tools for meetings

148–149

preparation

rules. See ground rules

checklist, 197–198

lack of, 99

for leadership summits,

session feedback, 121–122

169–178, 194–195

scheduling meetings, 4–5, 35–36,

for meetings, 29, 40, 103,

37–41, 151–152. See also

128–130, 136–137, 197–

time management

198

shared visuals, 98–99. See also in-

for virtual meetings, 129–

terventions for bad meetings

130, 136–137

shot clocks, 43–46. See also time

pre-reads, 23, 40, 136–137

management

problematic behavior, managing,

silence during meetings, 53–56

77–83

sit-downs, one-on-one, 82–83

problem solving, collaborative,

size of meeting, 2–3. See also at-

137–138. See also types of

tendees, number of

meetings

small group discussions and

purpose of meeting, clarifying,

participation, 56

33–34, 72–74, 156. See also

social meetings, 17. See also types

goals

of meetings

224

Index

standing meetings, 155–156. See

value of meeting, assessing, 88

also types of meetings

video conferencing, 13, 136, 139

stand-up meetings, 5–6, 163–166.

virtual meetings

See also types of meetings

agendas for, 129, 152–153

status updates, 136–137. See also

banning multitasking during,

types of meetings

139

SubEthaEdit, 213. See also digital

checking in with participants,

tools for meetings

140

follow-up after, 140–141

global, 151–153

talking points, 120–121. See also

leadership of, 131–133

follow-up

participation during, 130,

tangents, 104. See also interven-

131–133, 138

tions for bad meetings

preparation for, 129–130,

TapeACall, 216. See also digital

136–137

tools for meetings

pressing mute during, 138–

TaskClone, 215. See also digital

139

tools for meetings

relationship building for,

technology, 3–4, 211–217

127–129

30-minute meetings, 37–41. See

running, 127–133, 135–141

also scheduling meetings

time for, 129–130

time management, 4–5, 28,

tools for, 215–217

35–36, 37–41, 43–46,

value of, 135

129–130. See also schedul-

See also types of meetings

ing meetings

time zones, 151–152

tools. See digital tools for

walking meetings, 157–162. See

meetings

also types of meetings

top-down communication,

water cooler conversations,

183–184

140–141

types of meetings, 15–18, 125–196

weekly meetings, goals for, 21–22

wrap-up discussions, 119–123

unproductive meetings, 97–100

updates, 6–7, 27, 136–137

Yoda, 140. See also participants

225

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Document Outline

- Contents

- About the pagination of this eBook

- HBR Guide to Emotional Intelligence

- Contents

- Section One: What Is Emotional Intelligence?

- Chapter 1: Leading by Feel

- Chapter 2: Do You Lead with Emotional Intelligence?

- Section Two: Self-Awareness: Understand Your Emotions, Know Your Behaviors

- Chapter 3: You Can’t Manage Emotions Without Knowing What They Really Are

- Chapter 4: A Vocabulary for Your Emotions

- Chapter 5: Are You Sure You Show Respect?

- Section Three: Manage Your Emotions

- Chapter 6: Make Your Emotions Work for You

- Chapter 7: Defuse a Challenging Interaction

- Chapter 8: Stay Grounded in Stressful Moments

- Chapter 9: Recovering from an Emotional Outburst

- Section Four: Everyday Emotional Intelligence

- Chapter 10: Writing Resonant Emails

- Chapter 11: Running Powerful Meetings

- Chapter 12: Giving Difficult Feedback

- Chapter 13: Making Smart Decisions

- Chapter 14: An Emotional Strategy for Negotiations

- Chapter 15: Working Across Cultures

- Section Five: Dealing with Difficult People

- Chapter 16: Make Your Enemies Your Allies

- Chapter 17: How to Deal with a Passive-Aggressive Colleague

- Chapter 18: What to Do If You’re a Toxic Handler

- Section Six: Understand Empathy

- Chapter 19: What Is Empathy?

- Chapter 20: Beyond Empathy: The Power of Compassion

- Section Seven: Build Your Resilience

- Chapter 21: Resilience in the Moment

- Chapter 22: Cultivate Resilience in Tough Times

- Chapter 23: Practice Self-Compassion

- Chapter 24: Don’t Endure; Recharge

- Chapter 25: How Resilient Are You?

- Section Eight: Developing Emotional Intelligence on Your Team

- Chapter 26: How to Help Someone Develop Emotional Intelligence

- Chapter 27: Handling Emotional Outbursts on Your Team

- Chapter 28: How to Manage Your Emotional Culture

- Index

- HBR Guide to Managing Up and Across

- Contents

- Section 1: Managing Up

- Managing Your Boss

- Winning Over Your New Boss

- Steps for Presenting Problems or Opportunities to Your Boss

- Manage Up with Your Mentor's Guidance

- Change the Way You Persuade

- Get to Know Your Boss's Boss

- How to Make Your Boss Look Good--Without Becoming a Sycophant

- Stop Being Micromanaged

- Dealing with Your Incompetent Boss

- Coping with a Conflict-Averse Boss

- How to Give Your Boss Feedback

- Managing Multiple Bosses

- Section 2: Managing Across

- What Makes a Leader?

- The Discipline of Teams

- Managing Remote Relationships

- A Smarter Way to Network

- How to Deal with Office Politics

- Make Your Enemies Your Allies

- The Necessary Art of Persuasion

- Three Ways Not to Persuade

- Harnessing the Science of Persuasion

- How to Get Your Colleague's Attention

- Collaborating Across Generations

- When the Direct Approach Backfires, Try Indirect Influence

- Index

- HBR Guide to Finance Basics for Managers

- Contents

- Section 1: Finance Basics: Don't Be Afraid

- Finance Quiz

- The Key Financial Statements

- The Fundamental Laws of Business

- Section 2: Making Good Decisions--and Moving Those Numbers

- Using Statements to Measure Financial Health

- Grow Your Profits by Streamlining Your Business

- Working Your Assets to Boost Your Growth

- Profit Does Not Equal Cash (And You Need Both)

- Why Cash Matters

- Your Balance Sheet Levers

- What's Your Working Capital Model? A Case Study

- Learn to Speak the Language of ROI

- Practical Tools for Managements Decisions

- Section 3: The Limits of Financial Data

- What the Financial Statements Don't Tell You

- The Five Traps of Performance Management

- Finance Quiz: How Much Have You Learned?

- Glossary

- Index

- HBR Guide to Performance Management

- Contents

- Introduction

- Section 1: Goal Setting

- Ch. 1: The Characteristics of Effective Goals

- Ch. 2: Define Employee Goals--and Decide How They're Measured

- Ch. 3: Collaborate with Your Employee to Create a Plan for Moving Forward

- Section 2: Ongoing Performance Management

- Ch. 4: Assessing Performance Isn't a Onetime Event

- Ch. 5: Make a Habit of Providing Feedback

- Ch. 6: Coach Your Employees to Close Performance Gaps

- Ch. 7: How to Keep Your Employees Motivated

- Section 3: Developing Employees

- Ch. 8: Understand Your Employee's Wants and Needs

- Ch. 9: Expand Your Employee's Skill Sets

- Ch. 10: Craft a Developmental Plan

- Ch 11: How to Develop Someone Who's Struggling

- Section 4: Formal Performance Reviews

- Ch. 12: The Case Against (and for) Annual Appraisals

- Ch. 13: Assess Performance, but Rethink Ratings

- Ch 14: How to Conduct the Review Conversation

- Ch. 15: Define New Goals for a New Cycle

- Section 5: Tough Topics

- Ch. 16: Responding to the Steady Worker

- Ch 17: Preventing Burnout on Your Team

- Ch. 18: Managing the Performance of Remote Employees

- Sources

- Index

- HBR Guide to Project Management

- Contents

- Ch 1: The Four Phases of Project Management

- Ch 2: The Cast of Characters

- Phase 1: Planning

- Ch 3: A Written Charter

- Ch 4: Dealing with a Project's "Fuzzy Front End"

- Ch 5: Performing a Project Premortem

- Ch 6: Will Project Creep Cost You--or Create Value?

- Phase 2: Build-Up

- Ch 7: Setting Priorities Before Starting Your Project

- Ch 8: Boost Productivity with Time-Boxing

- Ch 9: Scheduling the Work

- Ch 10: HBR Case Study: A Rush to Failure?

- Ch 11: Getting Your Project Off on the Right Foot

- Ch 12: The Discipline of Teams

- Phase 3: Implementation

- Ch 13: Effective Project Meetings

- Ch 14: The Adaptive Approach to Project Management

- Ch 15: Why Good Projects Fail Anyway

- Ch 16: Monitoring and Controlling Your Project

- Ch 17: Managing People Problems on Your Team

- Ch 18: The Tools of Cooperation and Change

- Ch 19: Don't Throw Good Money (or Time) After Bad

- Phase 4: Closeout

- Chapter 20: Handing Off Authority and Control

- Ch 21: Capturing Lessons Learned

- Glossary

- Index

- HBR Guide to Dealing with Conflict

- Contents

- Preface

- Introduction: A Practical Plan for Dealing with Conflict

- Section One: Preparing for Conflict Before It Happens

- Chapter 1: Types of Conflict

- Chapter 2: Your Options for Handling Conflict

- Chapter 3: Recognize Your Natural Tendency

- Section Two: Managing a Conflict

- Chapter 4: Assess the Situation

- Chapter 5: Get Ready for the Conversation

- Chapter 6: Have a Productive Conversation

- Section Three: Resolving a Conflict

- Chapter 7: Get to a Resolution and Make a Plan

- Chapter 8: Repair the Relationship

- Chapter 9: Navigate Common Situations

- Sources

- Featured Experts

- Index

- About the Author

- HBR Guide to Delivering Effective Feedback

- Contents

- Section 1: Ongoing Feedback

- Ch 1: Giving Effective Feedback

- Ch 2: Sometimes Negative Feedback Is Best

- Ch 3: Giving Feedback That Sticks

- Ch 4: A Better Way to Deliver Bad News

- Ch 5: The Set-Up-to-Fail Syndrome

- Ch 6: How to Give Feedback That Helps People Grow

- Ch 7: Recognize Good Work in a Meaningful Way

- Section 2: Formal Performance Appraisals

- Ch 8: Delivering an Effective Performance Review

- Ch 9: Managing Performance When It's Hard to Measure

- Ch 10: Stop Worrying About Your Employee's Weaknesses

- Ch 11: How to Set and Support Employee Goals

- Ch 12: When to Grant a Promotion or Raise

- Ch 13: Tips for Record Keeping

- Section 3: Tough Topics

- Ch 14: How to Help an Underperformer

- Ch 15: Delivering Criticism to a Defensive Employee

- Ch 16: How to Give Star Performers Productive Feedback

- Ch 17: Prioritizing Feedback--Even When Time Is Short

- Ch 18: Navigating the Choppy Waters of Cross-Cultural Feedback

- Ch 19: How to Discuss Performance with Your Team

- Index

- HBR Guide to Coaching Employees

- Contents

- Introduction: Why Coach

- Section 1: Preparing to Coach Your Employees

- Ch 1: Shift Your Thinking to Coach Effectively

- Ch 2: Set the Stage to Stimulate Growth

- Ch 3: Earn Your Employees' Trust

- Section 2: Coaching Your Employees

- Ch 4: Holding a Coaching Session

- Ch 5: Following Up After a Coaching Session

- Ch 6: Giving Feedback That Sticks

- Ch 7: Enlist Knowledge Coaches

- Ch 8: Coaching Effectively in Less Time

- Ch 9: Help People Help Themselves

- Ch 10: Avoid Common Coaching Mistakes

- Section 3: Customize Your Coaching

- Ch 11: Tailor Your Coaching to People's Learning Styles

- Ch 12: Coaching Your Stars, Steadies, and Strugglers

- Ch 13: Coaching Your Rookie Managers

- Ch 14: Coaching Rising Managers to Emotional Maturity

- Ch 15: Coaching Teams

- Index

- HBR Guide to Getting the Right Work Done

- Contents

- Section 1: Get Started

- Ch. 1: You Can't Get It All Done

- Ch. 2: Nine Things Successful People Do Differently

- Ch. 3: Being More Productive

- Section 2: Prioritize Your Work

- Ch. 4: Get a Raise by Getting the Right Work Done

- Ch. 5: The Worth-Your-Time Test

- Ch. 6: Say Yes to Saying No

- Section 3: Organize Your Time

- Ch. 7: A Practical Plan for When You Feel Overwhelmed

- Ch. 8: Stop Procrastinating--Now

- Ch. 9: Don't Let Long-Term Projects Become Last-Minute Panic

- Ch. 10: Stop Multitasking

- Ch. 11: How to Stay Focused on What's Important

- Ch. 12: To-Do Lists That Work

- Ch. 13: How to Tackle Your To-Do List

- Ch. 14: Reward Yourself for Doing Dreaded Tasks

- Section 4: Delegate Effectively

- Ch. 15: Management Time

- Ch. 16: Levels of Delegation

- Section 5: Create Rituals

- Ch. 17: Ritual

- Ch. 18: Power Through Your Day in 90-Minute Cycles

- Ch. 19: An 18-Minute Plan for Managing Your Day

- Ch. 20: Use a 10-Minute Diary to Stay on Track

- Section 6: Renew Your Energy

- Ch. 21: How to Accomplish More by Doing Less

- Ch. 22: Manage Your Energy, Not Your Time

- Ch. 23: Why Great Performers Sleep More

- Section 7: Take Control of Your E-mail

- Ch. 24: Simplify Your E-mail

- Ch. 25: Eight E-mail Overload Experiments

- Section 8: Maintain Your New Approach

- Ch. 26: Sustaining Your Productivity System

- Section 9: Explore Further

- Ch. 27: More Productivity Books to Explore

- Ch. 28: Productivity Apps and Tools

- Index

- HBR Guide to Negotiating

- Contents

- Introduction

- Chapter 1: The Seven Elements Tool

- Section 1: Before You Get in the Room

- Chapter 2: Question Your Assumptions About the Negotiation

- Chapter 3: Prepare the Substance

- Chapter 4: Prepare the Process

- Chapter 5: Connect in Advance

- Section 2: In the Room

- Chapter 6: Begin the Negotiation

- Chapter 7: Create and Refine Your Options

- Chapter 8: Select the Right Outcome

- Chapter 9: Continuously Adapt Your Approach

- Section 3: The Common Challenges

- Chapter 10: Align Multiple Parties

- Chapter 11: Tame the Hard Bargainer

- Chapter 12: When Communication Breaks Down

- Chapter 13: When Emotions Get in the Way

- Section 4: Postgame

- Chapter 14: Wrap Up the Negotiation

- Chapter 15: Review What Happened

- Learn More

- Index

- About the Author

- HBR Guide to Leading Teams

- Contents

- Introduction

- Section 1: Build Your Team's Infrastructure

- Chapter 1: Pull Together a Winning Team

- Chapter 2: Get to Know One Another

- Chapter 3: Establish Your Team's Goals

- Chapter 4: Agree on Individuals' Roles

- Chapter 5: Agree on Rules of Conduct

- Chapter 6: Set the Stage for Accountability

- Chapter 7: Commit to a Team Contract

- Section 2: Manage Your Team

- Chapter 8: Make Optimal Team Decisions

- Chapter 9: Hold People Accountable

- Chapter 10: Give People Recognition

- Chapter 11: Resolve Conflicts Constructively

- Chapter 12: Welcome New Members

- Chapter 13: Manage Outside the Team

- Section 3: Close Out Your Team

- Chapter 14: Deliver the Goods

- Chapter 15: Learn from Your Team's Experiences

- Appendix A: Rules Inventory

- Appendix B: Cultural Audit

- Appendix C: Team Contract

- Index

- About the Author

- HBR Guide to Building Your Business Case

- Contents

- Introduction

- Section 1: Prepare

- Chapter 1: Know the Basics of Making a Case

- Chapter 2: Learn How Your Company Evaluates Cases

- Section 2: Get to Know Your Audience

- Chapter 3: Figure Out Who's Calling the Shots

- Chapter 4: Understand Your Audience's Objectives

- Section 3: Build the Case

- Chapter 5: Clarify the Need

- Chapter 6: Build a Cross-Functional Team

- Chapter 7: Consider Alternatives

- Chapter 8: Think Through the "How" at a High Level

- Section 4: Crunch the Numbers

- Chapter 9: Estimate Costs and Benefits

- Chapter 10: Calculate ROI

- Chapter 11: Account for Risks

- Section 5: Present Your Case and Move Forward

- Chapter 12: Prepare Your Document

- Chapter 13: Shop Your Case Around

- Chapter 14: Are You Ready to Present?

- Chapter 15: Make Your Pitch

- Chapter 16: Get to a Decision

- Chapter 17: What Next?

- Appendix A: Common Mistakes

- Appendix B: How to Give a Killer Presentation

- Glossary

- Index

- About the Authors

- HBR Guide to Better Business Writing

- Contents

- Introduction

- Section 1: Delivering the Goods Quickly and Clearly

- Ch 1: Know why you're writing

- Ch 2: Understand your readers

- Ch 3: Divide the writing process into four separate tasks

- Ch 4: Before writing in earnest, jot down your three main points--in complete sentences

- Ch 5: Write in full--rapidly

- Ch 6: Improve what you've written

- Ch 7: Use graphics to illustrate and clarify

- Section 2: Developing Your Skills

- Ch 8: Be relentlessly clear

- Ch 9: Learn to summarize--accurately

- Ch 10: Waste no words

- Ch 11: Be plain-spoken: Avoid bizspeak

- Ch 12: Use chronology when giving a factual account

- Ch 13: Be a stickler for continuity

- Ch 14: Learn the basics of correct grammar

- Ch 15: Get feedback on your drafts from your colleagues

- Section 3: Avoiding the Quirks That Turn Readers Off

- Ch 16: Don't anesthetize your readers

- Ch 17: Watch your tone

- Section 4: Common Forms of Business Writing

- Ch 18: E-mails

- Ch 19: Business Letters

- Ch 20: Memos and Reports

- Ch 21: Performance Appraisals

- Appendix A: A Checklist for the Four Stages of Writing

- Appendix B: A Dozen Grammatical Rules You Absolutely Need to Know

- Appendix C: A Dozen Punctuation Rules You Absolutely Need to Know

- Appendix D: Common Usage Gaffes

- Appendix E: Some Dos and Don'ts of Business-Writing Etiquette

- Appendix F: A Primer of Good Usage

- Desk References

- Index

- Acknowledgments

- About the Author

- HBR Guide to Persuasive Presentations

- Contents

- Introduction

- Section 1: Audience

- Understand the Audience's Power

- Segment the Audience

- Present Clearly and Concisely to Senior Executives

- Get to Know Your Audience

- Define How You'll Change the Audience

- Find Common Ground

- Section 2: Message

- Define Your Big Idea

- Generate Content to Support the Big Idea

- Anticipate Resistance

- Amplify Your Message Through Contrast

- Build an Effective Call to Action

- Choose Your Best Ideas

- Organize Your Thoughts

- Balance Analytical and Emotional Appeal

- Lose the Jargon

- Craft Sound Bites

- Section 3: Story

- Apply Storytelling Principles

- Create a Solid Structure

- Craft the Beginning

- Develop the Middle

- Make the Ending Powerful

- Add Emotional Texture

- Use Metaphors as Your Glue

- Create Something They'll Always Remember

- Section 4: Media

- Choose the Right Vehicle for Your Message

- Make the Most of Slide Software

- Determine the Right Length for Your Presentation

- Persuade Beyond the Stage

- Share the Stage

- Section 5: Slides

- Think Like a Designer

- Create Slides People Can "Get" in Three Seconds

- Choose the Right Type of Slide

- Storyboard One Idea per Slide

- Avoid Visual Cliches

- Arrange Slide Elements with Care

- Clarify the Data

- Turn Words into Diagrams

- Use the Right Number of Slides

- Know When to Animate

- Section 6: Delivery

- Rehearse Your Material Well

- Know the Venue and Schedule

- Anticipate Technology Glitches

- Manage Your Stage Fright

- Set the Right Tone for Your Talk

- Be Yourself

- Communicate with Your Body

- Communicate with Your Voice

- Make Your Stories Come to Life

- Work Effectively with Your Interpreter

- Get the Most out of Your Q&A

- Build Trust with a Remote Audience

- Keep Remote Listeners Interested

- Keep Your Remote Presentation Running Smoothly

- Section 7: Impact

- Build Relationships Through Social Media

- Spread Your Ideas with Social Media

- Gauge Whether You've Connected with People

- Follow Up After Your Talk

- Index

- About the Author

- HBR Guide to Data Analytics Basics for Managers

- Contents

- Introduction

- Section 1: Getting Started

- Chapter 1: Keep Up with Your Quants

- Ch 2: A Simple Exercise to Help You Think Like a Data Scientist

- Section 2: Gather the Right Information

- Ch 3: Do You Need All That Data?

- Ch 4: How to Ask Your Data Scientists for Data and Analytics

- Ch 5: How to Design a Business Experiment

- Ch 6: Know the Difference Between Your Data and Your Metrics

- Ch 7: The Fundamentals of A/B Testing

- Ch 8: Can Your Data Be Trusted?

- Section 3: Analyze the Data

- Chapter 9: A Predictive Analytics Primer

- Ch 10: Understanding Regression Analysis

- Ch 11: When to Act On a Correlation, and When Not To

- Ch 12: Can Machine Learning Solve Your Business Problem?

- Ch 13: A Refresher on Statistical Significance

- Ch 14: Linear Thinking in a Nonlinear World

- Ch 15: Pitfalls of Data-Driven Decisions

- Ch 16: Don't Let Your Analytics Cheat the Truth

- Section 4: Communicate Your Findings

- Ch 17: Data Is Worthless If You Don't Communicate It

- Ch 18: When Data Visualization Works--and When It Doesn't

- Ch 19: how to Make Charts That Pop and Persuade

- Ch 20: Why It's So Hard for Us to Communicate Uncertainty

- Ch 21: Responding to Someone Who Challenges Your Data

- Ch 22: Decisions Don't Start with Data

- Appendix: Data Scientist: The Sexiest Job of the 21st Century

- Index

- HBR Guide to Making Every Meeting Matter

- Contents

- Preface: The Condensed Guide to Running Meetings

- Section One: Prepare

- Chapter 1: Do You Really Need to Hold That Meeting?

- Chapter 2: Stop Calling Every Conversation a "Meeting"

- Chapter 3: If You Can't Say What Your Meeting Will Accomplish, You Shouldn't Have It

- Chapter 4: How to Design an Agenda for an Effective Meeting

- Chapter 5: The Key to Shorter, Better Meetings

- Chapter 6: The 50-Minute Meeting

- Chapter 7: The Magic of 30-Minutes Meetings

- Chapter 8: Meetings Need a Shot Clock

- Chapter 9: Are There Too Many People in Your Meeting?

- Section Two: Conduct

- Chapter 10: Before a Meeting, Tell Your Team That Silence Denotes Consent

- Chapter 11: Establish Ground Rules

- Chapter 12: Reach Group Decisions During Meetings

- Chapter 13: The Right Way to Cut People Off in Meetings

- Chapter 14: Dealing with People Who Derail Meetings

- Chapter 15: Refocus a Meeting After Someone Interrupts

- Section Three: Participate

- Chapter 16: Polite Ways to Decline a Meeting Invitation

- Chapter 17: How to Interject in a Meeting

- Chapter 18: Stuck in a Meeting from Hell? Here's What to Do

- Chapter 19: 7 Ways to Stop a Meeting from Dragging On

- Chapter 20: When Your Boss is Terrible at Leading Meetings

- Section Four: Close and Follow Up

- Chapter 21: The Right Way to End a Meeting

- Chapter 22: Don't End a Meeting Without Doing These 3 Things

- Section Five: Specific Types of Meetings

- Chapter 23: What Everyone Should Know About Running Virtual Meetings

- Chapter 24: How to Run a Great Virtual Meeting

- Chapter 25: Conduct a Meeting of People from Different Cultures

- Chapter 26: Making Global Meetings Work

- Chapter 27: Give Your Standing Meetings a Makeover

- Chapter 28: How to Do Walking Meetings Right

- Chapter 29: Stand-Up Meetings Don't Work for Everybody

- Chapter 30: Leadership Summits That Work

- Appendix A: Meeting Preparation Checklist

- Appendix B: Sample Agendas

- Appendix C: Meeting Follow-Up Checklist

- Appendix D: Sample Follow-Up Memo

- Appendix E: Digital Tools to Make Your Next Meeting More Productive

- Index

Table of Contents

Contents

About the pagination of this eBook

HBR Guide to Emotional Intelligence

Contents

Section One: What Is Emotional Intelligence?

Chapter 1: Leading by Feel

Chapter 2: Do You Lead with Emotional Intelligence?

Section Two: Self-Awareness: Understand Your Emotions, Know Your Behaviors

Chapter 3: You Can’t Manage Emotions Without Knowing What They Really Are

Chapter 4: A Vocabulary for Your Emotions

Chapter 5: Are You Sure You Show Respect?

Section Three: Manage Your Emotions

Chapter 6: Make Your Emotions Work for You

Chapter 7: Defuse a Challenging Interaction

Chapter 8: Stay Grounded in Stressful Moments

Chapter 9: Recovering from an Emotional Outburst

Section Four: Everyday Emotional Intelligence

Chapter 10: Writing Resonant Emails

Chapter 11: Running Powerful Meetings

Chapter 12: Giving Difficult Feedback

Chapter 13: Making Smart Decisions

Chapter 14: An Emotional Strategy for Negotiations

Chapter 15: Working Across Cultures

Section Five: Dealing with Difficult People

Chapter 16: Make Your Enemies Your Allies

Chapter 17: How to Deal with a Passive-Aggressive Colleague

Chapter 18: What to Do If You’re a Toxic Handler

Section Six: Understand Empathy

Chapter 19: What Is Empathy?

Chapter 20: Beyond Empathy: The Power of Compassion

Section Seven: Build Your Resilience

Chapter 21: Resilience in the Moment

Chapter 22: Cultivate Resilience in Tough Times

Chapter 23: Practice Self-Compassion

Chapter 24: Don’t Endure; Recharge

Chapter 25: How Resilient Are You?

Section Eight: Developing Emotional Intelligence on Your Team

Chapter 26: How to Help Someone Develop Emotional Intelligence

Chapter 27: Handling Emotional Outbursts on Your Team

Chapter 28: How to Manage Your Emotional Culture

Index

HBR Guide to Managing Up and Across

Contents

Section 1: Managing Up

Managing Your Boss

Winning Over Your New Boss

Steps for Presenting Problems or Opportunities to Your Boss

Manage Up with Your Mentor's Guidance

Change the Way You Persuade

Get to Know Your Boss's Boss

How to Make Your Boss Look Good--Without Becoming a Sycophant

Stop Being Micromanaged

Dealing with Your Incompetent Boss

Coping with a Conflict-Averse Boss

How to Give Your Boss Feedback

Managing Multiple Bosses

Section 2: Managing Across

What Makes a Leader?

The Discipline of Teams

Managing Remote Relationships

A Smarter Way to Network

How to Deal with Office Politics

Make Your Enemies Your Allies

The Necessary Art of Persuasion

Three Ways Not to Persuade

Harnessing the Science of Persuasion

How to Get Your Colleague's Attention

Collaborating Across Generations

When the Direct Approach Backfires, Try Indirect Influence

Index

HBR Guide to Finance Basics for Managers

Contents

Section 1: Finance Basics: Don't Be Afraid

Finance Quiz

The Key Financial Statements

The Fundamental Laws of Business

Section 2: Making Good Decisions--and Moving Those Numbers

Using Statements to Measure Financial Health

Grow Your Profits by Streamlining Your Business

Working Your Assets to Boost Your Growth

Profit Does Not Equal Cash (And You Need Both)

Why Cash Matters

Your Balance Sheet Levers

What's Your Working Capital Model? A Case Study

Learn to Speak the Language of ROI

Practical Tools for Managements Decisions

Section 3: The Limits of Financial Data

What the Financial Statements Don't Tell You

The Five Traps of Performance Management

Finance Quiz: How Much Have You Learned?

Glossary

Index

HBR Guide to Performance Management

Contents

Introduction

Section 1: Goal Setting

Ch. 1: The Characteristics of Effective Goals

Ch. 2: Define Employee Goals--and Decide How They're Measured

Ch. 3: Collaborate with Your Employee to Create a Plan for Moving Forward

Section 2: Ongoing Performance Management

Ch. 4: Assessing Performance Isn't a Onetime Event

Ch. 5: Make a Habit of Providing Feedback

Ch. 6: Coach Your Employees to Close Performance Gaps

Ch. 7: How to Keep Your Employees Motivated

Section 3: Developing Employees

Ch. 8: Understand Your Employee's Wants and Needs

Ch. 9: Expand Your Employee's Skill Sets

Ch. 10: Craft a Developmental Plan

Ch 11: How to Develop Someone Who's Struggling

Section 4: Formal Performance Reviews

Ch. 12: The Case Against (and for) Annual Appraisals

Ch. 13: Assess Performance, but Rethink Ratings

Ch 14: How to Conduct the Review Conversation

Ch. 15: Define New Goals for a New Cycle

Section 5: Tough Topics

Ch. 16: Responding to the Steady Worker

Ch 17: Preventing Burnout on Your Team

Ch. 18: Managing the Performance of Remote Employees

Sources

Index

HBR Guide to Project Management

Contents

Ch 1: The Four Phases of Project Management

Ch 2: The Cast of Characters

Phase 1: Planning

Ch 3: A Written Charter

Ch 4: Dealing with a Project's "Fuzzy Front End"

Ch 5: Performing a Project Premortem

Ch 6: Will Project Creep Cost You--or Create Value?

Phase 2: Build-Up

Ch 7: Setting Priorities Before Starting Your Project

Ch 8: Boost Productivity with Time-Boxing

Ch 9: Scheduling the Work

Ch 10: HBR Case Study: A Rush to Failure?

Ch 11: Getting Your Project Off on the Right Foot

Ch 12: The Discipline of Teams

Phase 3: Implementation

Ch 13: Effective Project Meetings

Ch 14: The Adaptive Approach to Project Management

Ch 15: Why Good Projects Fail Anyway

Ch 16: Monitoring and Controlling Your Project

Ch 17: Managing People Problems on Your Team

Ch 18: The Tools of Cooperation and Change

Ch 19: Don't Throw Good Money (or Time) After Bad

Phase 4: Closeout

Chapter 20: Handing Off Authority and Control

Ch 21: Capturing Lessons Learned

Glossary

Index

HBR Guide to Dealing with Conflict

Contents

Preface

Introduction: A Practical Plan for Dealing with Conflict

Section One: Preparing for Conflict Before It Happens

Chapter 1: Types of Conflict

Chapter 2: Your Options for Handling Conflict

Chapter 3: Recognize Your Natural Tendency

Section Two: Managing a Conflict

Chapter 4: Assess the Situation

Chapter 5: Get Ready for the Conversation

Chapter 6: Have a Productive Conversation

Section Three: Resolving a Conflict

Chapter 7: Get to a Resolution and Make a Plan

Chapter 8: Repair the Relationship

Chapter 9: Navigate Common Situations

Sources

Featured Experts

Index

About the Author

HBR Guide to Delivering Effective Feedback

Contents

Section 1: Ongoing Feedback

Ch 1: Giving Effective Feedback

Ch 2: Sometimes Negative Feedback Is Best

Ch 3: Giving Feedback That Sticks

Ch 4: A Better Way to Deliver Bad News

Ch 5: The Set-Up-to-Fail Syndrome

Ch 6: How to Give Feedback That Helps People Grow

Ch 7: Recognize Good Work in a Meaningful Way

Section 2: Formal Performance Appraisals

Ch 8: Delivering an Effective Performance Review

Ch 9: Managing Performance When It's Hard to Measure

Ch 10: Stop Worrying About Your Employee's Weaknesses

Ch 11: How to Set and Support Employee Goals

Ch 12: When to Grant a Promotion or Raise

Ch 13: Tips for Record Keeping

Section 3: Tough Topics

Ch 14: How to Help an Underperformer

Ch 15: Delivering Criticism to a Defensive Employee

Ch 16: How to Give Star Performers Productive Feedback

Ch 17: Prioritizing Feedback--Even When Time Is Short

Ch 18: Navigating the Choppy Waters of Cross-Cultural Feedback

Ch 19: How to Discuss Performance with Your Team

Index

HBR Guide to Coaching Employees

Contents

Introduction: Why Coach

Section 1: Preparing to Coach Your Employees

Ch 1: Shift Your Thinking to Coach Effectively

Ch 2: Set the Stage to Stimulate Growth

Ch 3: Earn Your Employees' Trust

Section 2: Coaching Your Employees

Ch 4: Holding a Coaching Session

Ch 5: Following Up After a Coaching Session

Ch 6: Giving Feedback That Sticks

Ch 7: Enlist Knowledge Coaches

Ch 8: Coaching Effectively in Less Time

Ch 9: Help People Help Themselves

Ch 10: Avoid Common Coaching Mistakes

Section 3: Customize Your Coaching

Ch 11: Tailor Your Coaching to People's Learning Styles

Ch 12: Coaching Your Stars, Steadies, and Strugglers

Ch 13: Coaching Your Rookie Managers

Ch 14: Coaching Rising Managers to Emotional Maturity

Ch 15: Coaching Teams

Index

HBR Guide to Getting the Right Work Done

Contents

Section 1: Get Started

Ch. 1: You Can't Get It All Done

Ch. 2: Nine Things Successful People Do Differently

Ch. 3: Being More Productive

Section 2: Prioritize Your Work

Ch. 4: Get a Raise by Getting the Right Work Done

Ch. 5: The Worth-Your-Time Test

Ch. 6: Say Yes to Saying No

Section 3: Organize Your Time

Ch. 7: A Practical Plan for When You Feel Overwhelmed

Ch. 8: Stop Procrastinating--Now

Ch. 9: Don't Let Long-Term Projects Become Last-Minute Panic

Ch. 10: Stop Multitasking

Ch. 11: How to Stay Focused on What's Important

Ch. 12: To-Do Lists That Work

Ch. 13: How to Tackle Your To-Do List

Ch. 14: Reward Yourself for Doing Dreaded Tasks

Section 4: Delegate Effectively

Ch. 15: Management Time

Ch. 16: Levels of Delegation

Section 5: Create Rituals

Ch. 17: Ritual

Ch. 18: Power Through Your Day in 90-Minute Cycles

Ch. 19: An 18-Minute Plan for Managing Your Day

Ch. 20: Use a 10-Minute Diary to Stay on Track

Section 6: Renew Your Energy

Ch. 21: How to Accomplish More by Doing Less

Ch. 22: Manage Your Energy, Not Your Time

Ch. 23: Why Great Performers Sleep More

Section 7: Take Control of Your E-mail

Ch. 24: Simplify Your E-mail

Ch. 25: Eight E-mail Overload Experiments

Section 8: Maintain Your New Approach

Ch. 26: Sustaining Your Productivity System

Section 9: Explore Further

Ch. 27: More Productivity Books to Explore

Ch. 28: Productivity Apps and Tools

Index

HBR Guide to Negotiating

Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1: The Seven Elements Tool

Section 1: Before You Get in the Room

Chapter 2: Question Your Assumptions About the Negotiation

Chapter 3: Prepare the Substance

Chapter 4: Prepare the Process

Chapter 5: Connect in Advance

Section 2: In the Room

Chapter 6: Begin the Negotiation

Chapter 7: Create and Refine Your Options

Chapter 8: Select the Right Outcome

Chapter 9: Continuously Adapt Your Approach

Section 3: The Common Challenges

Chapter 10: Align Multiple Parties

Chapter 11: Tame the Hard Bargainer

Chapter 12: When Communication Breaks Down

Chapter 13: When Emotions Get in the Way

Section 4: Postgame

Chapter 14: Wrap Up the Negotiation

Chapter 15: Review What Happened

Learn More

Index

About the Author

HBR Guide to Leading Teams

Contents

Introduction

Section 1: Build Your Team's Infrastructure

Chapter 1: Pull Together a Winning Team

Chapter 2: Get to Know One Another

Chapter 3: Establish Your Team's Goals

Chapter 4: Agree on Individuals' Roles

Chapter 5: Agree on Rules of Conduct

Chapter 6: Set the Stage for Accountability

Chapter 7: Commit to a Team Contract

Section 2: Manage Your Team

Chapter 8: Make Optimal Team Decisions

Chapter 9: Hold People Accountable

Chapter 10: Give People Recognition

Chapter 11: Resolve Conflicts Constructively

Chapter 12: Welcome New Members

Chapter 13: Manage Outside the Team

Section 3: Close Out Your Team

Chapter 14: Deliver the Goods

Chapter 15: Learn from Your Team's Experiences

Appendix A: Rules Inventory

Appendix B: Cultural Audit

Appendix C: Team Contract

Index

About the Author

HBR Guide to Building Your Business Case

Contents

Introduction

Section 1: Prepare

Chapter 1: Know the Basics of Making a Case

Chapter 2: Learn How Your Company Evaluates Cases

Section 2: Get to Know Your Audience

Chapter 3: Figure Out Who's Calling the Shots

Chapter 4: Understand Your Audience's Objectives

Section 3: Build the Case

Chapter 5: Clarify the Need

Chapter 6: Build a Cross-Functional Team

Chapter 7: Consider Alternatives

Chapter 8: Think Through the "How" at a High Level

Section 4: Crunch the Numbers

Chapter 9: Estimate Costs and Benefits

Chapter 10: Calculate ROI

Chapter 11: Account for Risks

Section 5: Present Your Case and Move Forward

Chapter 12: Prepare Your Document

Chapter 13: Shop Your Case Around

Chapter 14: Are You Ready to Present?

Chapter 15: Make Your Pitch

Chapter 16: Get to a Decision

Chapter 17: What Next?

Appendix A: Common Mistakes

Appendix B: How to Give a Killer Presentation

Glossary

Index

About the Authors

HBR Guide to Better Business Writing

Contents

Introduction

Section 1: Delivering the Goods Quickly and Clearly

Ch 1: Know why you're writing

Ch 2: Understand your readers

Ch 3: Divide the writing process into four separate tasks

Ch 4: Before writing in earnest, jot down your three main points--in complete sentences

Ch 5: Write in full--rapidly

Ch 6: Improve what you've written

Ch 7: Use graphics to illustrate and clarify

Section 2: Developing Your Skills

Ch 8: Be relentlessly clear

Ch 9: Learn to summarize--accurately

Ch 10: Waste no words

Ch 11: Be plain-spoken: Avoid bizspeak

Ch 12: Use chronology when giving a factual account

Ch 13: Be a stickler for continuity

Ch 14: Learn the basics of correct grammar

Ch 15: Get feedback on your drafts from your colleagues

Section 3: Avoiding the Quirks That Turn Readers Off

Ch 16: Don't anesthetize your readers

Ch 17: Watch your tone

Section 4: Common Forms of Business Writing

Ch 18: E-mails

Ch 19: Business Letters

Ch 20: Memos and Reports

Ch 21: Performance Appraisals

Appendix A: A Checklist for the Four Stages of Writing

Appendix B: A Dozen Grammatical Rules You Absolutely Need to Know

Appendix C: A Dozen Punctuation Rules You Absolutely Need to Know

Appendix D: Common Usage Gaffes

Appendix E: Some Dos and Don'ts of Business-Writing Etiquette

Appendix F: A Primer of Good Usage

Desk References

Index

Acknowledgments

About the Author

HBR Guide to Persuasive Presentations

Contents

Introduction

Section 1: Audience

Understand the Audience's Power

Segment the Audience

Present Clearly and Concisely to Senior Executives

Get to Know Your Audience

Define How You'll Change the Audience

Find Common Ground

Section 2: Message

Define Your Big Idea

Generate Content to Support the Big Idea

Anticipate Resistance

Amplify Your Message Through Contrast

Build an Effective Call to Action

Choose Your Best Ideas

Organize Your Thoughts

Balance Analytical and Emotional Appeal

Lose the Jargon

Craft Sound Bites

Section 3: Story

Apply Storytelling Principles

Create a Solid Structure

Craft the Beginning

Develop the Middle

Make the Ending Powerful

Add Emotional Texture

Use Metaphors as Your Glue

Create Something They'll Always Remember

Section 4: Media

Choose the Right Vehicle for Your Message

Make the Most of Slide Software

Determine the Right Length for Your Presentation

Persuade Beyond the Stage

Share the Stage

Section 5: Slides

Think Like a Designer

Create Slides People Can "Get" in Three Seconds

Choose the Right Type of Slide

Storyboard One Idea per Slide

Avoid Visual Cliches

Arrange Slide Elements with Care

Clarify the Data

Turn Words into Diagrams

Use the Right Number of Slides

Know When to Animate

Section 6: Delivery

Rehearse Your Material Well

Know the Venue and Schedule

Anticipate Technology Glitches

Manage Your Stage Fright

Set the Right Tone for Your Talk

Be Yourself

Communicate with Your Body

Communicate with Your Voice

Make Your Stories Come to Life

Work Effectively with Your Interpreter

Get the Most out of Your Q&A

Build Trust with a Remote Audience

Keep Remote Listeners Interested

Keep Your Remote Presentation Running Smoothly

Section 7: Impact

Build Relationships Through Social Media

Spread Your Ideas with Social Media

Gauge Whether You've Connected with People

Follow Up After Your Talk

Index

About the Author

HBR Guide to Data Analytics Basics for Managers

Contents

Introduction

Section 1: Getting Started

Chapter 1: Keep Up with Your Quants

Ch 2: A Simple Exercise to Help You Think Like a Data Scientist

Section 2: Gather the Right Information

Ch 3: Do You Need All That Data?

Ch 4: How to Ask Your Data Scientists for Data and Analytics

Ch 5: How to Design a Business Experiment

Ch 6: Know the Difference Between Your Data and Your Metrics

Ch 7: The Fundamentals of A/B Testing

Ch 8: Can Your Data Be Trusted?

Section 3: Analyze the Data

Chapter 9: A Predictive Analytics Primer

Ch 10: Understanding Regression Analysis

Ch 11: When to Act On a Correlation, and When Not To

Ch 12: Can Machine Learning Solve Your Business Problem?

Ch 13: A Refresher on Statistical Significance

Ch 14: Linear Thinking in a Nonlinear World

Ch 15: Pitfalls of Data-Driven Decisions

Ch 16: Don't Let Your Analytics Cheat the Truth

Section 4: Communicate Your Findings

Ch 17: Data Is Worthless If You Don't Communicate It

Ch 18: When Data Visualization Works--and When It Doesn't

Ch 19: how to Make Charts That Pop and Persuade

Ch 20: Why It's So Hard for Us to Communicate Uncertainty

Ch 21: Responding to Someone Who Challenges Your Data

Ch 22: Decisions Don't Start with Data

Appendix: Data Scientist: The Sexiest Job of the 21st Century

Index

HBR Guide to Making Every Meeting Matter

Contents

Preface: The Condensed Guide to Running Meetings

Section One: Prepare

Chapter 1: Do You Really Need to Hold That Meeting?

Chapter 2: Stop Calling Every Conversation a "Meeting"

Chapter 3: If You Can't Say What Your Meeting Will Accomplish, You Shouldn't Have It

Chapter 4: How to Design an Agenda for an Effective Meeting

Chapter 5: The Key to Shorter, Better Meetings

Chapter 6: The 50-Minute Meeting

Chapter 7: The Magic of 30-Minutes Meetings

Chapter 8: Meetings Need a Shot Clock

Chapter 9: Are There Too Many People in Your Meeting?

Section Two: Conduct

Chapter 10: Before a Meeting, Tell Your Team That Silence Denotes Consent

Chapter 11: Establish Ground Rules

Chapter 12: Reach Group Decisions During Meetings

Chapter 13: The Right Way to Cut People Off in Meetings

Chapter 14: Dealing with People Who Derail Meetings

Chapter 15: Refocus a Meeting After Someone Interrupts

Section Three: Participate

Chapter 16: Polite Ways to Decline a Meeting Invitation

Chapter 17: How to Interject in a Meeting

Chapter 18: Stuck in a Meeting from Hell? Here's What to Do

Chapter 19: 7 Ways to Stop a Meeting from Dragging On

Chapter 20: When Your Boss is Terrible at Leading Meetings

Section Four: Close and Follow Up

Chapter 21: The Right Way to End a Meeting

Chapter 22: Don't End a Meeting Without Doing These 3 Things

Section Five: Specific Types of Meetings

Chapter 23: What Everyone Should Know About Running Virtual Meetings

Chapter 24: How to Run a Great Virtual Meeting

Chapter 25: Conduct a Meeting of People from Different Cultures

Chapter 26: Making Global Meetings Work

Chapter 27: Give Your Standing Meetings a Makeover

Chapter 28: How to Do Walking Meetings Right

Chapter 29: Stand-Up Meetings Don't Work for Everybody

Chapter 30: Leadership Summits That Work

Appendix A: Meeting Preparation Checklist

Appendix B: Sample Agendas

Appendix C: Meeting Follow-Up Checklist

Appendix D: Sample Follow-Up Memo

Appendix E: Digital Tools to Make Your Next Meeting More Productive

Index