How many times have repeated the same thing over and over to your team; only to have them agree and then do the exact opposite?
Have you considered that you’re not talking the same language? Today at lunch, I shared a story of a transformative a-ha moment I had on this very topic with my team. My lunch partner strongly urged me to share the story and lessons learned – so here you go.
The issue
First, let me say that the folks working at It’s Your Time are an awesome group of people. They all work hard and really care about the business and our clients. We sell our time and services to make money so tracking time and/or deliverables is essential. In the spring despite my team clearly working hard our chargeable hours were not what they needed to or could be. My solution was to set a 90-day challenge to increase chargeability and I made sure at our Monday mornings to give updates and talk about why it’s so important. About 3-weeks in I was lamenting to my husband about feeling like a talking head. We were making no headway on our goals and people seemed completely glazed over during team meetings. His response was to have each team member take a turn leading the meetings and to stop talking for a bit.
Everyone seemed really receptive to this idea and we immediately had a volunteer for the first meeting. Prior to the meeting Shovana, the volunteer, asked me to explain what chargeability meant. I was a bit incredulous but chalked it up to her being new with the company.
Mind Blown!
At our next team meeting Shovana presented the agenda and noted that “Amanda wanted to review chargeability but instead of doing that please put up your hand if you know what that means” There was not a single hand raised. Something that had seemed so common sense to me, so obvious was going right over everyone’s heads. I was blathering away at them in a different language and then frustrated that they weren’t taking my direction. Talk about being Charlie Brown’s teacher!! The result was we had a 30 minute conversation on what I was talking about, exactly how I was measuring it and how it impacted them. By the end of the week 80% of my team was hitting their targets.
Lesson Learned – Communicating is Key
I learned a few lessons with this one. I learned to step back and let my team lead more often. They have great ideas and insights (that I’m sure I will share more of later). I learned that if I’m being met by glassy stairs and resistance it may not be (and likely isn’t) because they don’t want to do something; it’s very possibly they just don’t know what I’m saying. Most importantly I continued to learn the number one lesson – listen – listen – listen. Listen to your advisers, your team and your inner gut. If I had not taken the time to stop and listen to my gut that something was wrong, or to my trusted adviser (aka husband) or Shovana I would still likely be frustrated by our poor numbers. Instead, I no longer have to lead every team meeting and our chargeability continues to climb.