Importance of attentive listening

Interesting lesson to apply when managing projects, teams, people...

"Momo was able to listen in such a way that stupid people suddenly had wise insights. And this came not from her saying something or asking questions that provokes wise answers, no, she simply sat there and listened with deep attention and empathy. When she looked at someone with her big, dark eyes as she listened, that person felt all at once thoughts rise up from deep within, thoughts which even their owner had never suspected of being in there. She could listen in a way that confused and wavering people suddenly knew precisely what they wanted. Or so that shy ones suddenly felt free and brave. Unhappy and depressed ones would suddenly become confident and joyful. And when someone thought that his life was all amiss and insignificant, that he himself was merely one among millions, totally unimportant in replaceable like a broken dish, -when such a on went and told all this to little Momo, it happened that while he was still speaking he realized in some mysterious way clearly that he was mistaken: there was, in fact, no one quite like him among all other human beings; he was unique, and therefore in a special way important for the world. And all this came from the way Momo was able to listen."



Momo, a Fairytale novel by Michael Ende, 1973

Communication Tools in global projects: IM & email & Skype & Phone

Continuous communication is essential in all teams. Much more in global teams.

It is however important to chose the right communication channel for each situation:

- Phone: I only use the phone for urgencies and feedback that I really need immediately. I always try to respect time from others, and do not like controlling their schedules. My priorities are not always the priorities of others. Interruption has to be handled with care.

- Skype: I love the Chat and Call interaction of Skype and similar solutions. People can set their status availability, plus, you can start a conversation with chat, establish if it's the right moment to communicate and move to the call to speed up conversation and explain easily details.

- IM: I specially use it when multitasking. Both interlocutors need to be connected and communicate periodically, but it does not need to be an immediate, in the following second answer. (You need to agree this with your interlocutor to avoid having the other person waiting for your answer).

- email: I still like email very much, even for short messages: when I do not need immediate answer. Most of the time, the team needs to interact, but there is no need for interruption or to work together simultaneously. Sometimes however, email can take more time than the rest of the solutions... it's the moment to establish the solution above that meets your needs better.

Shared Project Management Softskills

Yesterday PMI Madrid organized the VI Project Management Congress.

It is always interesting to discuss on Project Management integrations, implementations, and procedures, with people from many different industries. Many things to apply to i18n and localization procedures even if coming from Energy, Pharmaceutical, Governance or Software Development.

A very interesting experience. Exhausting to be part of the team organizing something like this (close to 200 attendees), but very full-filing.

This sharing exercise with peers from industries that are in principle so different from the industries I am in, is one of the many benefits of collaborating with PMI.

I'll share a few interesting things from the "Soft skills" category:

Change rejection: Nothing really new, but it allows us to see that the same problems appear in different areas and companies of all sizes.

When changes come from upstream, the ones downstream tend to reject it. If improvements come from downstream, the ones upstream tend to reject it. (Notice my lapsus here with Improvement & Change... I leave the sentence like this...it actually adds some interesting meaning to it).

How to sell change: Improvements and changes: In order to succeed, you need to show in a tangible way how the change will benefit the individual. If there is no personal, short term improvement, it will be difficult for the change to be adopted.

"Companies need to play with this factor: a change in organization, process, is better accepted if the benefit is tangible for the ones that need to apply the change"

Perception and awareness:

Our mind is a categorization machine. We categorize everything. Changing things from one category to another is not simple.

Pygmalion (or Rosenthal) effect also affects managers perception: We need to be conscious that our perception of others can be (is) biased, and that the expectations we have from team members can definitely affect the response, feedback or performance we perceive from them. Meaning: we will tend to see only the responses that fit into the mind categories were we have placed our team members.

Community owns the content

Community owns the content today. Not the technicians.

Community owns the content and is even influencing the way we localize it.

Social media form a new layer that we have to consider.

Increased competition or increased opportunity?

Tell your story - Know your story

I've been in a couple of presentations this week.

FICOD 2010 is back (one of my favorite local events). Many are great speakers and very interesting pros that do have something interesting to say and share interesting stories.

Guy Kawasaki, René de Jong, Anthony Rose are some of the personalities I had the pleasure to listen to.

I was really impressed by Anthony Rose's skill as a speaker: no slides, just a story. Actually I have to admit I was not really very interested in Youview when entering the conference and was merely curious and had no meeting planned at that time... BUT... the speaker managed to captivate and engage the audience. I'm considering moving to the UK, just to be able to have Youview now.

And I also had the opposite experience: A presentation of a product where the speakers had absolutely nothing to say. Something went wrong with the computer they were using to present: they could have talked about what they were doing, what was the product about, why it was different... but no. No story, no anecdotes, nothing.... Once the technical problem was solved, the speakers were happy to be able to press the play button of the video their marketing team prepared...that was it. I don't think anybody was impressed with the product.

Lesson: Have a story to tell. Use the slides to help you engage, bring the attention of the audience back to you. Still you need to have an interesting story.

Misunderstanding excellence, misunderstanding effort.

In Malcom gladwell's book Outliers: The Story of Success, the author studies the most successful people. He found the key denominator to all is actually work. You need 10000 hours to excel in a given discipline.

Still this statement seems to discourage some. Being discouraged by the long effort, is missing the point completely. The statement that you need 10000 hours to excel in a given discipline, does not mean that you could not be very good, much better than average sometime in the meantime.

We always have to continue making efforts: aim to excel NOW.

You will be better next time for sure, but do not stop work in order to wait for the completion of all phases. That won't get you closer to your target.

"Game dynamics" to engage (clients, team members, employees):

Many wonder how to build rapport, engage, get connected. Different tools that could be used to facilitate this connection are already being used with us (against us?) for selling products, making us come back to buy, etc....

But how can we use them when offering services? How can we use these tools to reward clients? How can we engage employees and collaborators into the organization's mission or simply towards the success of a project?

Game Dynamics are just one of the many categories of these tools. The idea is of course to use these dynamics for the right and good reasons. It is very interesting to see that these tools are essential when you are running a volunteers organization for instance, where the reward is not monetary...And you don't want your teams to be with you just for the money, right?

The reward does not necessarily need to be money. It can be free stuff, certificates ("never underestimate the power of certificates" - anonymous (don't remember where I heard this clever statement), and the more interesting:

• Recognition
• Sense of contribution
• Visibility

Let's analyze some of these dynamics. Check if you can put in practices any of these (share please if you do :-) )

The appointment dynamic: to succeed, you have to come back to a specific place at a predefined time to make a predetermined action.
Meetups, Monthly meetings, Events, but also challenges at a specific place to get a special reward.

Influence and Status: One member with the ability to modify the behavior of another's actions using social pressure.
I want this, I want this, I want this....I really need this... That's the goal of this dynamic. Make people want to level up. And this is a powerful motivator. We see it all over the place, in social networks, with credit cards (it's the black or golden one you want...). There is a level, up there, where you want to be.
You can influence people by making them want to grow.

The progression dynamic: Success is granularly displayed and measured through the process of completing itemized tasks.
Are you 100% complete? Are you? You still need to show up here, or need to contribute with this. Then you will get your points.
This is indeed a powerful dynamic, not having something 100% done makes us nervous, we want to get there and have it completed, but we specially want to show that we have done what we have to do.

Communal discovery: An entire community is rallied to work together to solve a challenge.
This is a very interesting one for team work. Much more can be accomplished when working within real times, than working on independent silos. It could be named: "Contribute to a goal greater than oneself". The challenge here is to manage to make people work together in order to achieve something. It is actually a very interesting dynamic because of the social implications. If we work together as a coordinated group, we will make the target even more interesting than what we originally expected. 2+2 does not equal 4 but 5 or more...


Inspired by: Seth Priebatsch: Building the game layer on top of the world http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yn9fTc_WMbo