Dr. Michael Gerharz, Autor auf The Art of Communicating

The perfect job reference

Job references are issued at the end of a work relationship, sometimes in between, in regular intervals.

They are usually a judgement of how well an employee has performed during the period after the work has been done. You are the judge. You evaluate their work and you write your verdict up in a reference. It makes it seem like the responsibility for an employee’s performance would be totally theirs, not the leaders.

This relationship changes dramatically when you write a job reference at the beginning of your relationship and keep it in your drawer.

How would you like the employee to perform? What would the ideal job reference for that employee look like if it turned out to become a perfect relationship?

Really, write your employee the best reference you can think of – in advance!

Here’s the crux: Make it your responsibility that they live up to it, not theirs.

Provide them with the environment and the support they need to thrive. Don’t blame them if they don’t deliver the results, ask yourself how you can support them better.

It forces you to be more considerate about whom you hire. But more importantly, it forces you to do everything you can to get the optimum out of your relationship.

And in that sense, when you finally write the real reference, the one that gets handed over, it’s much more a verdict about your performance as a leader as it is about their performance.

The not-so-rational argument

Fact: The glass is half full.
Which is the same as half empty.

The more relevant question is what conclusions do we draw from the fact?

These can be rather different depending on your take regarding half empty or half full, e.g. because they imply a different sense of urgency.

The thing is that arguing rationally based on facts can be just as frustrating as arguing emotionally when we don’t agree on the meaning of the facts. Even more so … because everyone is so deeply convinced that their take is right. After all, the facts prove them right. It really is a factual argument: “But the glass is half empty! You can’t deny that!”

Why then does the other party, based on the facts, arrive at a different conclusion? And how come they are just as convinced of their conclusion?

The problem is that facts are just facts and the argument is not about the facts. It’s about what the facts mean. It’s informed by our experiences and expectations. It’s influenced by our values and principles.

And this means, that it only masks as a rational discussion unless we agree on these things. It’s a rational discussion relative to our values and principles. Only when we agree about these will a rational argument lead to the same conclusion for all participants.

Are you clear about the values that influence the meaning of a fact to you?

Playing around

When you’re testing a new approach, are you really testing it or are you just playing around?

When we play around, we don’t expect to get anywhere meaningful. We just try out this or that and see where it leads us. Some things work, some don’t, which is ok because we’re just, well, playing around.

Testing is different. Testing requires a rigorous approach by clarifying the assumptions, specifying the variables that are to be tested and a measure to evaluate the outcome so that we can later determine whether the test was successful or not and what the best parameters are for the task.

Playing around is most useful when you’re in a creative process, looking for new ideas not knowing, yet, what answer you’re looking for exactly.

Testing is most useful when you have a specific answer in mind that you want verified from the test and (usually) when you have a timeframe within which you want the result.

When you say “Let’s try this out!”, are you playing around or are you testing? Both have their place but it’s good to be intentional about which one you need for the task at hand.

Afraid of failing

Some people are so afraid of failing that they can’t find the courage to succeed.

Sometimes to the degree that they won’t even start to play. Out of fear that something goes wrong. To their embarrassment.

They just don’t make that call. They just don’t publish that post. They just don’t hit the record button to shoot that video.

Even though their story is great and they’ve rehearsed it a hundred times. Even though their pitch is perfect.

Here’s the thing: the prerequisite for winning is playing. You can’t win if you don’t play.

If you feel like it needs more refinements, then refine it. If you feel like you need more practice, practice.

But eventually, go out and play your game. We need you to.

(And yet, let me be clear: Some people really do suffer from anxiety and it’s appropriate to respect that. There’s not much use in arguing that a failure is highly unlikely or that it wouldn’t be bad. It’s a fear and as such it’s irrational. People affected by this know that, too. Keep in mind that you’re not walking in their shoes. You haven’t made their experiences. So, you’re not in a position to judge their fears and anxieties.)

I’ll just improvise

A lot of people tend to think that improvising is about being super spontaneous. What gets easily overlooked is how much improvising has to do with being prepared to be spontaneous.

For example, the master improvisers in music don’t just walk on the stage and start playing what comes to their mind. Or, in fact, they do. But they do it after years of practising.

They have experimented a lot. Played a lot of wrong notes. Been surprised many times by an unexpected turn of their fellow band colleagues. Thought of a line that their fingers just couldn’t implement.

But kept trying. Experimenting. Playing.

And therefore they are able to react masterfully to every turn that their fellow musicians are taking while their hands are able to quickly play what their mind is thinking.

When you improvise unprepared you’re probably going to hit a couple of lucky goals. But you’re going to miss just as many. In essence, you’re leaving success to luck to a large degree.

(Which, by the way, is a comfortable place to be in for some because you can always put the blame on the fact that you haven’t actually prepared and were just winging it and if only you had prepared you of course would have performed better.)

That’s not to say that you shouldn’t start to improvise when you’re just starting out. It’s rather a motivation to dig deeper in order to become better at improvising.

The of course effect

Of course a tablet turns on instantaneously. Yet, before the iPad came out we were used to minute-long wake-ups from computer laptops. For many users, finding their device ready to use the instant they turned it on was a revelation.

Go through your office or your house and you’ll find dozens – if not hundreds – of these “of course” product features. The kind of feature that when you’ve used it even just once, you ask yourself how this could not have existed before. Why had no one thought of this before?

Many companies chase the wow effect in their marketing – a spectacular decoration of the product or a breathtaking story they can tell around the product – but overlook the fact that the down to earth “of course” effect is often way stronger.

What’s yours?

The practice drug

In a world of get-rich-quick advice it’s an eye-opening journey to explore the realm of world class musicians who practice an insane amount of time to get to the level they’re at.

Tosin Abasi is one of them. He’s the lead guitarist of Animals as Leaders and you probably haven’t heard of him (their music is at times hard to digest for some). His unique technique is crazy and he does things on the guitar that even experienced players wouldn’t even consider possible.

When he was asked if he indeed practised 15 hours a day and why, he replied:

What happens is there’s this revelation that if you put in work on something you can’t do at first, eventually you can do it. And the first time that happens it is kind of like an addiction. You want it to happen again. And the more it happens, the more you’re confident that it can happen. So you start chasing your potential.

For Abasi, practice is a drug. A drug that provides him with the feeling of achievement and possibility.

Through practice he is able to turn the knowledge that something can be done into the ability to do it. At the same time, by pushing the boundaries of what he’s able to do, he also pushes the boundaries of what he knows to be possible.

You might not be willing to invest 15 hours a day practising your craft. But if there’s something you can’t do but see others doing, it might just be that they have been willing to invest the time to practise.

Knowing that something can be done is quite different from being able to do it. The former can be achieved by reading inspirational blogs or watching YouTube, the latter often requires practise.

Fear of missing o…

A couple of things that FOMO, the fear of missing out, helps us with:

What if the world is going crazy about a tennis player who wants to travel to Australia but is refused entry to the country and we don’t know about it.

What if a new word puzzle sets the world in addiction mode and we’re the last to hear about it.

What if a friend has just commented on my picture on Instagram.

What if another friend has just posted an update on her morning routine.

What if someone just sent me a snap.

We better don’t take the risk of missing out on that. So, let’s just quickly check our phone to catch up on things, shall we?

Rather than speak with the person sitting right next to us. Make a personal connection. Embark on a conversation about a topic that’s so much more exciting than we thought as it turns out the person sitting next to us is a real expert in that field.

Fear of missing out is a major component of the fuel that social media brews to hook us up. They brew it so masterfully that they convince us to miss out on a lot of other opportunities without the same level of fear – such as the things that happen offline in the space we’re at right in that moment.

When I enter a workshop room, it’s not uncommon that I have a dozen brilliant people sitting in front of me and not one is talking to the other but all are staring on their phone.

The offline world is not at all good in brewing the same addictive fuel of missing out. Apparently, we fear so much more what we miss out on online that we overlook what we miss out on offline.

It takes conscious effort to act on this.

On the surface

Google’s search engine is incredibly complex inside and incredibly simple on the surface – basically a search bar and that’s it.

Many startups take a different approach. Rather than hide complexity, they surface it.

They want us to appreciate the complexity. To see the brilliance of their solution. They want us to be as obsessed about the nitty-gritty-deep-down-dirty parts as they are.

They want us to get it.

Google understood that that’s not what we want. We want our struggles solved. We’re happy to trust you in being the expert so that we don’t have to. We don’t want to become an expert in your field because we have our own passion that we’re the expert in.

We just want a solution.

The simpler, the better.

The irony is that that’s what we recognise as being brilliant. The simpler you make it, the less we have to deal with the complexity, the more we appreciate it.

(That’s why the “I’m feeling lucky” button is still present on Google’s homepage.)

Speaking up on their behalf

When Simon Sinek or Brené Brown tweet a sentence, it gets them 1000 likes and 100 retweets in a matter of minutes.

When you (or I) tweet the same sentence, it doesn’t work that way.

So, why do people love these words when Sinek or Brown say them but not when you do?

Because you’re a stranger while Sinek and Brown are not. In fact, for many in their audience they are heroes. And as such, they speak up on behalf of their audience. They say out loud their audience’s thoughts.

The appeal of their tweets is not that their audience agrees with the celebrity but the other way around. For the audience, it feels like their hero agrees with them.

And this is why it matters whether you’re a stranger or not. Because nobody cares for when a stranger agrees with them. They don’t know you and so you haven’t earned the right to speak on their behalf.

It’s been the same for the celebrity when she wasn’t famous, yet.

The safest way to earn the right to speak on their behalf is consistency. Show up consistently, speak the truth consistently, capturing your audience’s thoughts consistently. And have a little patience.

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