The end of a Discover Your Best Thinking with Precision Q+A workshop can feel like New Year’s Eve. It is an opportunity to think and communicate differently, and to use our new Q+A skills to think and collaborate deeper. But like many New Year's resolutions, the changes we swore we were going to make can soon be forgotten if we don’t establish a routine. Why It’s So Hard to Change Our workplace conversations differ dramatically from social conversations, where questions are often … [Read more...]
Precision Answering
Answering Anxiety
At the beginning of every workshop we teach, we ask participants to briefly self-assess their thinking and communication skills. Not surprisingly, more than 60% cite the following as their personal Achilles heel: “communicating clearly and concisely at the speed of conversation.” Answering questions that others ask us during meetings isn’t always easy. Anxiety can surface: We may worry that our comments could hurt a colleague’s feelings or be perceived as insensitive. We may worry that … [Read more...]
The First Step for Mindful Communication
We live in an age of ever-increasing chatter. The never-ending stream of messages, alerts, reminders, and emails means our minds rarely settle during the workday. In this context, it’s easy to rush as we ask questions and deliver answers in our meetings. We think we can’t pause for a second or two, because if we do: Someone might hijack the thread of our discussion, leaving issues unaddressed. We’ll be viewed as less credible or knowledgeable. We’ll lose out on the opportunity to add … [Read more...]
Hello, Are You REALLY Listening?
Successful collaboration requires listening. For something that seems so simple and natural on the surface, listening is far from simple or easy when we dive deeper. We recently read this profound observation about listening from the actor Alan Alda: … [Read more...]
So Much To Say, So Little Time
Developing expertise in our work is fulfilling, and when customers and colleagues call on us it feels gratifying. As we spend time in a domain, we come to see all the nuance and detail. But expertise also comes with a hidden cost: we are inclined to share all that detail with others who don’t need or understand it. If we don’t disrupt this dynamic, it hinders us from effectively making use of our expertise. The 4Practices of Precision Answering offer a helpful path toward making our expertise … [Read more...]
Stand-up meetings stand out with Precision Q+A
Unstructured meetings waste time and energy. Recent articles, like this one in the Wall Street Journal, document the growing popularity of "stand-up" meetings as a way to avoid the wasteful meetings of old. Just standing up, however, isn't the answer. Better meetings require better structure. Stand-up meetings offer some structural innovations that can help improve our workplace interactions. But meeting formats become even more powerful when they are combined with discussion formats that also … [Read more...]