Moving your organization into, and through, an uncertain future takes courage, confidence, and a lot of comfort with ambiguity, even in the best of times.

And then when the world is as uncertain as it has been for, oh, most of the last decade or so, the leadership challenges only expand.

If you’re a leader in these uncertain times, you may have these concerns:

“How do I know if we’re on the right path for us to succeed…or perhaps, even to survive?”

“How can I let the people I’m leading know which direction to move next…and how can I do that as rapidly and clearly as possible?”

Leading well in uncertain times works best if you can create just enough structure to reduce unnecessary uncertainty in your organization, and yet not so much that you lock your team into an inflexible, maladaptive position when the world they’re operating in changes quickly.

Set your team up to be able to turn the best intentions and limited resources into maximum results on behalf of your customers and your company…before your competition can.

Leadership in unpredictable circumstances requires the ability to read your environment well, especially the significant changes in it. And then you must have the ability to communicate that well, and to inspire appropriate action, as a result.

When you do, you give your company or team far more opportunity to respond well to changing circumstances, reducing the changes they’ll be blindsided by them.

Here are a few tips for creating the right team signals, and then using them well in the uncertain circumstances:

1. Figure out the relevant details you have to pay close attention to.

Not all information is valuable. Lots of it is just noise.

But some details are absolutely crucial to your success.

Unpredictability and uncertainty doesn’t have to hold you back.

Knowing what signs and signals you must pay close attention to can make or break you. It tells you where to direct your attention, action and resources, leading most likely to success.

It’s almost inevitable that there is something valuable you can monitor, measure, and track that will help you stay focused and moving ahead well, together.

2. Figure out the minimum daily, weekly, and monthly communication requirements for your team to function well in current and foreseeable circumstances.

At a minimum, who needs information, to do what, if you have can provide it to them?

When do they need the information?

How do they need to receive the information – what channels, and in what format – in order to be able to understand it, and act on it well, and in a timely fashion in these circumstances?

3. Use the same terminology…and make sure you are.

It’s easy to believe you’re communicating well with someone, only to find out that you’re talking about very different things even though you’re using the same terms.

Here’s one non-work example to illustrate the point:

What comes to mind when you think of the word, “vacation”? (Just for fun, and to make this a graphic example, describe it in enough detail that you wish you could take that vacation right now).

Now ask three other people the same thing, what they think of when they hear the word “vacation.”

The odds are, you’ll come up with four VERY different ideas of what a vacation is.

In normal, everyday discussions you have to get on the same page to make any conversational headway, especially if there is any kind of agreement you need to reach, as is the case on almost any team.

Clear communication, starting with common terminology, is all that much more important when information comes at a premium (if the information is available at all), attention is limited, fear is running high, and the risk of error is very high, as well.

4. Listen. Don’t just stop talking…really LISTEN.

You may think you’re listening when you’re not talking. Often, though, our thoughts and fears are chattering away rapidly, keeping us bound up in our own concerns, even as we seem to be listening.

Still those attention-blocking concerns of the past, present, future – and places you’d really rather be at the moment.

Make space for new information to come in.

5. Create the time and space for dialogue now and then, when you can.

Uncertain times call for stronger than average teamwork.  You can’t dictate teamwork, legislate it, expect it, or inspect it in. I was in several different circumstances recently when leaders took this approach – trying to dictate teamwork, without engaging the people whose best efforts their own success depended upon.

Ultimately you have to inspire teamwork, for followers have to trust their leaders, if they are to follow fully, and with best effort.

Create ways for dialogue to occur in the simplest, most user-friendly way possible.

This, alone, can go a long way to opening up channels for essential information to flow out, and back in…leading you and your team more surely to success, even in uncertain times.

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Conversational skills can make a difference in team success, as they can in many other parts of work and life. When team members care about each other, as well as the work they’re doing together, it increases the chances they will succeed.

Good conversation has common characteristics, no matter who’s involved, or what subject is being covered.

Compare two very different conversations you’ve had in the past year. Think of one very satisfying conversation, and one that was unsatisfying or frustrating in some way.

What was the difference between the two experiences?

The following were probably some of the characteristics of good conversations you’ve had (and the opposite was probably true of unsatisfying ones, as well):

– People were fully “there,” and discussion was shared and free-flowing.

People in the good conversation were fully present, and committed to the discussion. They shared the give and take that good conversation involves. No one person or group dominated the floor, or had the burden of carrying the conversation on their own.

– There was a creative flow, and a sense of discovery.

In satisfying conversation, there’s often a sense of a flow, an exploration, in a way, as you share ideas and learn about each other – and often, learn about yourself, as well – in the process.

– You felt you could be honest in the discussion, and were. You felt that others were comfortable being honest, too.

You had no sense of trying to crack through a shell or a mask that you or others in the conversation had created to keep others away, or to block or prevent a high-quality conversation and experience together.

There may have been other reasons why the great conversation you recall was so memorable, but these are some of the most common ones.

If your conversational skills could use a tune-up, don’t be afraid to admit you’d like to learn and practice.

For starters, find and observe a friend who’s a good conversationalist. That’s probably not your friend who talks the most.

It’s the friend who draws others out, and engages them in a satisfying give-and-take…and seems to be able to do that in almost any situation.

A good conversationalist doesn’t try to control the conversation – unless it’s an interview, performance or meeting, but those are other experiences, entirely.

He or she can let go, and trust himself and others in the dialogue, as it happens.

Try to learn from good and great conversationalists. Ask them how they do what they do so well, and ask for their advice on how you can improve.

Practice skills and abilities they show in their easy and free-flowing conversation. Practice their mindset before and as they’re in conversation, if they share that information with you.

Also, increase your curiosity about others with whom you’re trying to have a conversation.

If you’re often nervous when talking to others, talking less, rather than more can help.

Learn to be comfortable with silence.

Ask more questions. Listen.

Let someone else share the floor, and the responsibility for good conversation.

Also – and this seems deceptively simple, but it’s an important thing – make sure you’re taking deep breaths so you’re as relaxed as you can be.

Taking deep breaths forces you to slow down, calm down, and relax a bit, and helps you to stay present. And that’s all part of being a good conversationalist.

The ease, confidence, and flexibility being a good conversationalist offers you can take you far.

As a final review for now, keep in mind these simple guidelines:

Care

Share.

Be there.

Be curious about other people.

Be open, be honest.

Breathe.

Relax, and let go.

Being a good conversationalist is an increasingly rare skill. It can lead to many great opportunities and wonderful experiences, if you learn to trust and let go a bit.

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Recall a frustrating conversation you had recently.

Can’t think of one…a conversation that is?

I’m kidding, and yet, conversations – and really great ones, especially – are becoming increasingly infrequent.

More often communication occurs in fragments: bits, bytes, snippets, streams, strings, posts and comments.

Contact is often more frequent in our techno-tethered times, yet communication is not always better when it happens in micro bites.

Could it be that as our technological options for staying in touch grow, our conversational skills are waning? And our satisfaction with the experience of contact we have is decreasing?

And could all that technology be handicapping us as it drains us of the opportunity and ability to use some of our basic – and in some ways, some of our most satisfying communication skills, the in-person kind?

Some people think so.

Here’s just one example. In a recent “Dear Abby” column, a woman was frustrated when guests at a dinner event endlessly texted friends, checked their Facebook pages or in other ways remained electronically tethered to people in other places, rather than to try to converse with people they were sitting right next to.

The situation the reader described was not unique. We’ve probably all seen similar situations at times, in our work and our personal lives. The reader suggested the guests were purposely being rude, and it can seem that way.

The advice columnist countered that the guests’ seemingly addictive use of technology was more likely to be a crutch or cover-up for lack of confidence and comfort in their social and conversational skills.

Conversational skill, like any skill, takes practice to develop and maintain.

Once developed, however, conversational skill can give you great confidence and flexibility.

It’s almost like an insurance policy, enabling you to talk to – and enjoy talking to – people in almost any situation, even if you’ve just met.

Sounds implausible, if not downright impossible?

It’s not.

If you’d like to learn how to improve your conversational skills and confidence, see, also, Tips for improving your conversational skills, the next post.

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“Investors are investing in you, the team”

That’s what companies who seek venture funding are advised, as they were once again, many times, at a boot camp for startups where I was a mentor recently.

“We’re investing in the team” is easy to say.

It’s not always easy to understand.

That’s especially the case if you haven’t had a lot of team experiences, and more specifically, if you haven’t had a lot of business team experiences and roles.

To really understand “We’re investing in the team,” you have to understand teamwork in a visceral sense.

And sometimes, frankly, it helps to have been on, and to have led very successful and less successful teams, as well.

“We’re investing in the team” is far easier to grasp if you understand the risks, opportunities and tools of teamwork and leadership.

And often some of the best learning occurs when you’ve had excellent but also less praiseworthy experiences on, and at the helm of a team. You learn a lot, like it or not, from having to scramble to create success from impending failure.

Fundamentally, what “We’re investing in the team” means is that investors – whoever they are – are looking to see if you and your leadership team can:

1. Turn a great idea into a company and then a growing flow of profits
2. Work well together
3. Turn your strengths as a team into something far greater than your strengths, as a group of separate individuals
4. Connect well with your prospects and convert them into customers
5. Organize people and resources to meet the opportunities and challenges you face, some of which you know, and many of which you don’t…yet
6. Attract a great team
7. Engage the team in your vision and keep them engaged through the ups and downs of startup life
8. Lead without squashing the strengths and enthusiasm of individual members of the company
9. Adapt well, as a team, as conditions change – because they will
10. Admit when you, as a leader or leadership team, need help
11. Listen and learn from customers, advisors, employees, and other members of your team
12. Make good decisions
13. Lead effective implementation of decisions
14. Grow and change, as individuals and as a leadership team, as the need for your leadership evolves
15. Let go of the reins, as appropriate, and delegate well
16. Show courage without foolishness
17. Get over, around and through the barriers that are presented to you without, in the process, causing other problems downstream
18. Be an alchemist, sometimes making progress in lieu of funding, sometimes stretching cash, and always turning the resources you have into more and better results than one initially might expect
19. See the path to success, and keep seeing it, and keep leading your team to it as it changes occur, obstacles emerge, and distractions happen
20. Handle success well

There are other things that investors are looking for, too, when they say they’re “investing in the team.”

You can rest assured, however, that if you do the 20 things on this list well, and if you do them better than your competitors, you’re well on your way to success, however your company is funded, whoever is at the helm.

Think about what would give you confidence that a startup company and leadership team were likely to succeed, if you were an investor, trying to guess which company was most likely to succeed from among the many on which you could place your bets, and your money.

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A colleague stopped me the other day after a meeting. She was worried about her son, still in elementary school. He’s competitive, and that has many benefits in the world in which he’s being raised.

Still, she thinks he may be becoming too competitive for his own good.

“He’s starting to be afraid to try new things,” she explained.

“He can’t stand to lose. He thinks that if he doesn’t try something new, but stays with what he knows, he’s far less likely to lose,”  she added.

Are you afraid to try new things because you can’t stand to lose?

Are you afraid of being a learner again? On the way to mastery of any skill, there’s always some uncertainty, experimentation, and failure that goes along with eventual success.

Is it possible that you’re too competitive for your own good?

You may actually be handicapping yourself, if you restrict yourself only to activities you can win.

If so, may be missing a lot of good experiences and great people.

And you may never uncover some of your greatest strengths, talents you never found you had because you chose the safe, known road rather than venturing beyond it.

Is it possible that you create unnecessary stress and competition in situations where it has no real value…to you or anyone else?

If you’re too afraid to try something new, you could soon be frozen in place (or frozen out of it), unable to adapt and change at the same pace as the rest of the workplace and world.

Don’t lose the race you’re trying to win by being afraid to try.

The skill it would be useful to master is learning how to learn well…and then knowing how to turn learning into valued results.

Here are some of the other things I advised my friend, the mother of the little boy who knows how to win, but is quickly becoming afraid to try:

- Applaud initiative, including good attempts and steady progress.

- Reward learning experiments.

- Encourage activities and learning where there is no clear winner.

- Look for ways to take competitiveness out of circumstances where it has no value, or may be a detriment to the desired experience or skill development.

Let the learner plan and dictate his or her learning path.

Reward the learning process.

Skills of the future include having the ability and initiative to direct one’s own learning  effectively, the ability to discern and gather high-quality information, the ability to synthesize much information, high quality decision-making and action taking.

Don’t handicap yourself by putting competition in places where competition doesn’t belong.

Ask yourself the next time you think your competitiveness maybe making things worse:

- What’s the point of competition here?

- Is competitiveness adding to the overall experience or taking away from it? How is it affecting the other people who are involved in the experience, in addition to me?

If you think you may be too competitive for your own good, try this test:

Let someone else be first in line once in a while.

You’ll survive the experience. And believe it or not, you may even find you enjoy it even more from that spot.

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Many companies struggle as they try to keep everyone focused and on the same page.

This is even more of a problem during times of great stress, growth, or other types of major change.

One tool you can use to overcome this not-on-the-same-page problem is to create a brief summary of your company, a Company Overview.

This brief overview of the company can help create a more consistent and higher quality experience for customers as they interact with people at your company.

It can also increase employees’ understanding and pride in the company they work for. The Company Profile can also be an important tool to managers and employees to discuss the value of employees’ work in creating company success.

As you create the Company Overview, you may discover strengths you hadn’t fully recognized or appreciated. You’re also likely to see areas where the company can improve.

If you’re thinking about creating a Company Overview for your organization, plan to gather and include information such as the following:

Who We Are and Why We Exist

- What is your company’s purpose, or the primary reason it exists?
- What is are you trying to accomplish, and for whom?
- What is your company’s vision of the future it is trying to create for itself?
- What is your company culture?
- What are your company values, or guiding principles and behaviors?
- What are your organization’s core competencies, or primary strengths? How do they relate to being able to fulfill your mission?

Our Customers and What They Want From Us

- Who are your primary customer segments? What do they need and expect from you?
- What are the main products and services you offer customers?
- How do you provide your products and services to customers?
- How do you provide customer support to customers who need it?
- How do you use feedback from customers to continually improve your products, services and support?

Our Company and Its Competitors

- What is your competitive position in your market?
- Who are your primary competitors now?
- What are the principal factors that drive success for your company, compared to its competitors?
- What are the major changes that affect your competitive position?

Our Resources and Governance

- What are the primary groups of employees in your company?
- What are the primary motivators that draw each group to your organization, and engage them in supporting your mission?
- Where the key benefits you provide employees?
- What are your main facilities, technologies and equipment?
- What is the regulatory environment under which your company operates?
- Are there any occupational health and safety regulations that govern your company?
- Are there certification or registration requirements, industry standards, environmental, financial, and product regulations with which you must comply?
- What is your organizational structure and governance system? What are the primary reporting relationships between your senior leadership, board, and parent organization, if you have one?

Who We Work With

- What are your key types of suppliers, partners, and other collaborators?
- What role does each of these groups play in your company’s success?
- What are the primary ways you communicate with customers, suppliers, and other key stakeholders?

Our Challenges and Strengths

- What are the primary challenges and advantages your company has now?
- How do you monitor and improve performance at your company?
- What are your key business, operational and human resource challenges and advantages?
- What are the key challenges and advantages for your company with respect to organizational sustainability?
- How do you monitor, manage and improve your company and its products and services?

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Could your company use a glossary?

“That’s ridiculous!” you reply?

You might be surprised.

As a consultant, I must go into a company and quickly learn as much as I can in order to come up to speed rapidly on foundation knowledge.

More often than you might guess, as I’m going through the rapid-cycle learning process as I begin a project with a new company, I’ve found that employees don’t know, or don’t agree on the meaning of some of the company’s most-used terms and acronyms.

Consider these examples:

For one project I had one day to “crash learn” as much as I could about the basic technology and terms involved in a major process. I was leaving the next day for a three-day offsite where I was helping the client company finalize a cross-company product delivery process.

To learn as much as possible, and as rapidly as I could, I dove right into all available information about key terms, processes, roles, responsibilities and other knowledge that was important to have for the process design and improvement work to be successful.

Eventually, I’d gone as far as I could in the process of learning on my own. I needed to clarify some things and met with a few people to close the gaps in my understanding.

I asked one manager fairly high up in the organization what one key acronym meant.

She admitted, somewhat sheepishly, that she didn’t know.

And the tough thing was, she was outside of what might be considered, unofficially, as the “statute of limitations” on when she could safely admit she needed to learn some of basic information at the company, too. I could ask the question she needed to because I was clearly in learning mode. She was supposed to have “graduated” it already.

At some point, it’s somehow assumed that people know what they need to know to do their jobs.

But if they don’t, and they’re afraid to ask, where do they go?

And who asks the question of the employees who work for them (and makes it safe for them to answer it honestly), “What do you need to learn, or know, that you don’t, to be successful in this job?”

In a second example, I was helping to create onboarding tools for a rapidly growing company.

The learning processes and tools I was helping the client company create were designed to help the cross-functional teams get established quickly and consistently, and start performing well together as quickly as possible.

We were editing a final draft of one product in the set of team tools.

In a meeting with two fairly senior people in the group, we discovered that each thought a key acronym meant something different.

They realized that many people in the organization were using the same acronym to mean different ways, and that it may have been just one of many miscues in a job and role that required excellent communication.

Is it possible this is happening at your company?

Eliminate the primary causes for miscommunication wherever you can.

One easy place to start is to make sure is to make sure that commonly used acronyms and terms are consistently defined.

In addition, make sure that other foundation knowledge that it’s important for employees to have is readily available. At a minimum, this is important to have when new employees join the company, or move to new jobs inside the company and need to get up to speed quickly and consistently.

Here’s how you can make your own glossary:

1. Make a list of key terms and acronyms.
2. Assign a person to complete the glossary by gathering and writing the definitions for the terms.
3. Ask a few people to review the glossary, noting additions or changes that they think need to be made to it.
4. Refine the glossary, reconciling any differences of opinion about what terms or acronyms mean.
5. Post the glossary on your website in a place where it will be easy to access and use.
6. Include contact information for anyone who needs to get more information about any of the terms, or to contribute new terms to the glossary.

In the process of creating and publishing the glossary, you may find other information you need to share, or to train people on.

Do everything you can to ensure that communication is clear and effective for the people working in your company. It can make a far bigger difference in effectiveness and business results than you expect.

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Delegating is no big deal. And giving good directions to others is a “piece of cake.”

Is that what you think?

Recall a time when you were assigned a new job or task, and the person making the assignment had:

- High standards
- A tight timeline before the work had to be complete
- Little or no time for you to ask questions of them, once the task was assigned to you so you were completely dependent on the instructions and resources they provided you

Now, recall:

- What directions did you receive for that work?

- What resources did the person provide you for guidance, in case you had problems you couldn’t resolve as you worked?

- How did it work out? Were you able to complete the assignment successfully?

- If so, what are the main reasons it worked out well?

- If there were problems with the project or its result, what made the work difficult?

I had the experience of starting a new job at a new company right into middle of the busiest season of the year in the department where I had been hired.

My manager had very high standards and I knew I would learn a lot there, which a big reason why the job appealed to me.

But I was also going to have a steep learning curve in this job, which I knew, and my manager knew, too. And I was not the only one like that in the department.

Delegating well, and providing effective guidance to new employees were leadership skills that were essential for success with this particular team.

Because my manager didn’t like to take the time to provide instructions or send employees to training, people in the group fairly often found themselves caught in a proverbial – and preventable – thorny thicket of problems.

One particular time, he and I had no alternative but to stop and correct something that had gone very wrong with a big deliverable on a tight timeline.

Suddenly there was no choice for him but to pause, slow down, listen and teach patiently and attentively.

He had many other leadership strengths that we knew, but no one had ever seen this one before.

And suddenly, with calm direction and teaching, the work now seemed easy to me. The problems seemed clear, the solutions achievable.

I learned a lot in that department, surviving the boot camp he’d created, perhaps unwittingly. And it prepared me well for other jobs at that company. But looking back, I still feel that the same thing could have been accomplished far less painfully.

Here are a few guidelines for you to provide good instructions, if you delegate work to others:

When you make the assignment of a project or task, provide this information to the person who will be doing the job:

1. Who needs this work? What will they do with the product, service or information that is being provided to them?

2. What are the customers’ standards for a high quality job, such as timeliness, cost, and quality requirements?

3. When does the customer need the work to be complete?

4. Is there a process or procedure they must follow to do the work? Where are the specific instructions for that?

5. Are there constraints they need to know about?

6. Are there materials or tools they need to do the job? Where will they get those?

7. If they need further guidance while doing the work, where should they go or whom should they contact?

8. How can they reach you as they work, if need be?

9. Will someone check the work before it goes to the customer? If so, who will do that, and when will that happen in the overall process?

10. What questions do they have? Do they need to have any information explained in another way to fully understand the instructions for what they must complete?

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Think of the worst meeting you were ever involved in, whatever your role was. (Don’t worry…we won’t stay in this memory for long).

Now, think of the best meeting you ever attended, or were a part of.

Why did one meeting work so well, and the other one flop?

The odds are very high that the good meeting had a good leader. In addition, it’s likely a lot of careful planning was involved.

Beyond that, though, the group involved in the good meeting probably used simple ground rules to guide their work together.

If that sounds a bit too bureaucratic to you, consider how kids create a game at a playground. It might be a pick-up basketball game where they’re setting the boundaries and rules of play. It might be a new game they invent.

Either way, one of the early steps in getting the game underway is to set some basic rules, boundaries, and other guidelines.

Why is setting the rules and boundaries important early in the process of getting the play underway? It helps them to:
- Make the game clear
- Focus on playing the game, not continually inventing or refining it
- Make the game fair
- Increase the chances that the game will be enjoyable
- Make the game as much fun as possible

Ground rules don’t have to be complicated.

In fact, it’s far better if they’re not.

You want rules that are clear, simple, easy to understand and teach, easy to enforce.

Ground rules also set up expectations of the way you will behave together, and how you will treat each other. And they provide a solid foundation or “home base” you can return to if the group gets lost in a heated debate.

If you need a set of ground rules you can adapt to create your own, try this set. I’ve used variations of these ground rules with more than 100 teams, and they’ve served each group well:

– Be prompt. Stay focused.

– Be an active listener and participant. Ask clarifying questions to understand others’ points of view. Be clear about your own point of view.

– Act with mutual respect.

– Emphasize inquiry and advocacy.  Inquiry: exploration of an issue, reserving judgment about the outcome. Advocacy: pushing or selling one’s position.

– Stay engaged. Stay with the team and the work until there is an outcome all parties can take credit for designing. Be flexible to accommodate information you receive in the dialogue process.

– Take personal responsibility for results.

– Turn cell phones, pagers, and other electronic devices off while the group is meeting.

If you found this post valuable, please share it with friends and colleagues who can use this information, too. You’ll also like the free weekly newsletter I publish every Tuesday. Sign up for the newsletter here.

Like a slow driver holding up many cars behind it in the fast lane, a “road boulder” may be clogging up the workflow and stopping progress for many other people at your company, or on your team.

It happens in many organizations.

“Road boulder” is a term I coined a few years ago in frustration about the people who drive more slowly than the flow of traffic in the fast lane on the freeway.

Often, there’s a mile or more of clear space – and pure potential – in front of them, but they stop the flow, even so.

The term also cropped up for me because I see road boulders of various kinds in companies’ workflows.

Road boulders not only frustrate the people behind them, but they can also create a very dangerous situation.

On the road, emergency response teams get caught in the no-exit-path logjam they create. In companies, people can be so distracted by problems caused inside the company that they miss significant signs of emerging problems outside the company.

The problem of road boulders can be corrected. And it can be prevented.

If you’re the road boulder at your company, you may be blocking others’ otherwise efficient, effective workflows by actions such as these:

- Providing too little direction, training and feedback to help employees stay on track
- Trying to control things you don’t need to control
- Not controlling things you should be managing closely, especially in high risk areas
- Poorly monitoring how well you’re meeting customers’ needs
- Poorly communicating with suppliers about what you need from them, and how well they’re meeting your needs

How can you find out – and correct the problem – if you or your department is a road boulder at your company?

Check in regularly with the people whose needs you’re supposed to be meeting. These are your customers.

They may be paying customers outside the company, or they could be customers inside the company who need your work in order to do their own.

Check, also, with your manager, if you’re an employee.

Check with your employees, if you’re a manager.

These are all potential customers of your work. You can accelerate their workflows through the work you do, or you can inhibit it. And you may not know what effect you’re having until you ask.

Ask the people who are dependent on the quality of work you provide them:

1. How well are we meeting their needs now?
2. Where could we improve?
3. What are we doing well?

Open the dialogue now, and continue it a few times a year.

You’ll find that the flow will grow as you radically reduce the chances that you and your department are company road boulders.

And in the process of gathering the feedback to make the overall system work better, you’re likely to collect a few accolades for your current work, too.

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