• Focus
• Flow
• Passion
• Purpose
• Drive
I’m talking about engaging your workforce with the kind of conversation that produces an intelligent, cohesive, highly aligned energy.
I’m not talking about whipping up the troops with motivational froth. I’m talking about engaging your workforce with the kind of conversation that produces an intelligent, cohesive, highly aligned energy. Pull Conversations, the central concept of this book, are a specific type of conversation that best releases this kind of organizational energy, one in which a leader does the hard work of pulling out the reality of their employees. The following story illustrates how this type of conversation works. It also shows the type of energy and results that are released when leaders pull instead of push.
Pull Conversations in Action
Energizing a Turnaround
David was the VP of marketing in an international food company. A Canadian by birth, he had more than proved himself during his tenure in Canada and United States. But now he found himself severely challenged. He had been parachuted into an underperforming UK branch with a clear mandate from world headquarters: “Turn this division around and get us results.” He needed a breakthrough, and he needed it bad.
Whether it was because of UK culture, personalities, organizational history, or some other reason, David’s branch just wasn’t hitting its numbers. He had pushed hard for two years but it seemed that his marketing leadership team (MLT) was unwilling to be on the hook with him for results. When he was away on business, they took very little initiative, even skipping their leadership meetings. The rumblings from head office were getting more and more ominous.
David enlisted the help of Mitch Fairrais, a colleague of mine from On the Mark, a Toronto-based training company, and Mitch in turn enlisted my help. On the Mark and Juice formed a team and set about helping David achieve his breakthrough.
After a day of training the marketing team in how to pull out (understand) one another’s realities in conversation, we settled into day two: using Pull Conversations to solve the substantive trust and commitment issues between David and his MLT.
Mitch and I believed that if David and his team learned to pull understanding out of each other, as opposed to trying to push their understanding onto each other, they could resolve the situation. For this to happen, David had to first pull from his team.
We promised David, based on our experience of situations like his, that if he stepped into his leadership team’s world and pulled out their reality, they would reciprocate, seeking to understand his reality.
The MLT’s Reality
During the first day of training, we had used a series of experiences to teach the entire marketing leadership team the skills of Pull Conversations. We focused on inquiry: the ability to step into another person’s world to see their reality the way they see it.
Now, on the second day, David was on the hot seat with a mandate to pull out his team’s reality. It proved to be extremely challenging for him. He almost jettisoned the process, but to his credit, he pressed on. He stepped into the team members’ worlds and pulled out their thoughts, feelings, and assumptions.
As he did so, he made the alarming discovery that his MLT saw him as a mercenary who wanted results without concern for human cost.
David fought his instinctive desire to defend himself and push his world onto them. He swallowed hard as they shared their perception of him as someone who didn’t value their British culture, as someone who was in it only for the short haul, a manager who was taking the North American approach of dangling a carrot in front of them to get them to perform.
With help, David resisted the temptation to justify himself and repeatedly sought to step into their world and reflect back, in his own words, what they were saying.
Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the group began to feel understood. Their capacity to hear his viewpoint grew. Finally, at about the three-quarter mark of the second day, a shift occurred in the room.
One of David’s leaders asked, “When you can’t be here, we should still meet and keep things moving.”
Someone else said, “Maybe we can help find ways to make people feel recognized and rewarded.”
Others jumped in with, “Yes, and how can we get on the hook with you and give you the commitment you need?”
A feeling of electricity coursed through the room. Mitch and I were optimistic as we witnessed the result of David’s pull approach: the release of intelligent energy in the group. The members of the team were now turning toward David, asking him about himself and beginning to pull out his reality.
We witnessed the result of David’s pull approach: the release of intelligent energy in the group.
David’s Reality
David and his family had paid a high price in taking this job, and he wasn’t at all sure that it was worth it. He had never mentioned the personal costs to his team. As he saw it, he’d made choices, and they were his to own. He believed it would be cowardly to try to get his staff to understand what he was dealing with.
He realized now, however, that by pulling out his team’s reality, he had created the capacity in them to do the same for him. He had earned the right to speak and they were ready to listen.
David told the group of a time when he’d been hurrying to pick up his young son Matthew from school. As he closed his office door, an employee stopped him with some questions and concerns. David answered as briefly as he could, then said he needed to go because his five-year-old son was waiting. The employee followed him into the elevator, continuing the discussion down several floors and through the parking lot to his car.
Aware that he was late, David tried to get into his car, but the employee kept talking. David was growing more anxious by the second but felt as the leader of the company he must listen to this employee, who clearly felt she had to get her need met, right then. Once he was finally able to extricate himself, he drove all the way to his son’s school at twice the speed limit, his stomach knotted with anxiety, putting his life in danger as he roared through traffic. He had to get to Matthew; but he also had to be there for his staff. It was a no-win situation.
He also shared that he and his family had moved to this new country without any friends or family or social network to support them. His team members had made no effort to make his wife and him feel included, he said. They hadn’t invited them to their homes or to any social functions.
David was very direct as he spoke out his reality to his staff. He could see they hadn’t viewed him as a multifaceted person with a family and personal issues, but simply as a leader who was supposed to meet their needs. There was a lot of discomfort in the room as he talked, but this was part of his reality and therefore part of the whole group’s reality. Their reality as a group needed to be bigger. They needed to understand each other’s contexts.
As a leader, David was using a combination of pulling out his team’s reality and pulling them into his reality. But it mattered which of these actions he did first. Pull Conversations are based on the simple hypothesis that if you do an effective job of pulling out someone’s reality and making them feel deeply understood, they will reciprocate by trying to pull out your reality. This willingness to reciprocate is not restricted to understanding. When we feel respected by someone, it’s easier for us to respect them. And when we feel trusted by someone, it’s easier for us to trust them. This is known as the Law of Psychological Reciprocity. Robert K. Greenleaf, in The Leader as Servant, defines it this way: “People are impelled to return to you the feelings you create in them.”
The