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Do you share your progress or your perspective?
That’s a question that my colleague Sara Canaday, a leadership keynote speaker and author, posted on LinkedIn. Sara suggests that executives share perspective rather than progress. It’s a technique that she has shared with those she teaches and coaches, and it’s an idea that works. And here’s why.
“First is shows that an executive believes that others can absorb and understand their perspective," Canaday told me an email interview. “Second, it opens the door to conversation.”
When you share progress, it is more of a report card. Useful certainly, but it’s close-ended. A progress report “calls for a one answer response that does nothing to move the conversation forward,” says Canaday, “whereas [perspective] leads to discovery.” Progress is measured and as a management tool, it has finite parameters. An update on progress is cut and dried.
Sharing perspective, however, provides insight, what the executive is thinking about and why. The executive who shares her ideas about what the team is doing and how it is doing it gives people on that team and idea about how they are doing. It is also an opportunity for the executive to reveal how she feels about an issue. In this way, the team knows how she feels about asubject. Even, "if executives don't fill in the blanks in terms of setting the context and sharing their rational/perspective,” says Canaday, “others will be tempted to fill in the blanks for them.” That can lead to the risk of “unwarranted assumptions and rationale” arising.
Revealing perspective is helpful
Canaday,who is the author of Leadership Unchained: Defy Conventional Wisdom for Breakthrough Performance, shares a story with me about an executive with whom she coached who was seen as "distant, aloof and hard to read." Her staff also didn't know where she stood on key issues. The executive, in her desire to be respectful of her team's time, structured her communications to be clear and concise. "She didn't think others were interested in her perspectives or her rationale." Unfortunately, staff “started to feel like they were operating in a vacuum, never getting the benefit of her perspectives or feeling like she wanted to know theirs.”
Through coaching, the executive “changed the way she communicated with them, and she implemented some new policies to ensure that perspectives — theirs and hers —were freely exchanged.” Doing so improved the connection between the executive and her team.
Savvy executives take this one step further; they invite others to share their perspectives, too. This leads to a discussion that can do several things. One, it enables people to share their views on important topics. That is, the boss has his perspective, but so too do employees. Sometimes these perspectives are not on alignment, and for that reason, it is good to have a discussion.
Take the customer service issue, for example. An executive may preach service, but the team may not be delivering it. Why? Because they may not have been taught to do so, have the tools to respond, or know how to deal with customers in general. Having a conversation about the issue orients the executive to the real problem: failure to follow through on a subject (perspective) that he feels is important.
When it comes to progress and perspective, it's not an either-or. If you want to share a status update, you relate perspective. If you solicit ideas, you share perspective. Both have a role in managing and leading successfully.
