RELATIONSHIPS ARE SIMPLE. SIMPLE IS HARD.
It’s easy to be someone’s partner during the good times, but it’s most important during the hard ones.
Drink your best bottle not on your best day but on your worst.
After a setback, I’d tell the team to go ahead and wallow. “Guys, this sucks. We’re working so hard, and we care so much, and still - today didn’t go our way. Let’s allow ourselves to feel the disappointment; it’s real and we don’t need to pretend it’s not.”
Don’t care so much about the mission that you forget to take care of each other.
You have to learn how to embrace tension.
Don’t go to bed early… Don’t leave work if you’re harboring feelings of frustration or resentment toward a colleague or the job itself; make sure to talk things through before heading home.
People usually want to be heard more than they want to be agreed with. You show respect by taking the time to listen.
To break stalemates, try swapping sides. It’s easy for passionate people to get entrenched in their respective positions. But you can’t help but connect with a position when you’re arguing for it, and swapping sides tends to jog you out of a stubborn focus on “your” idea. You can stop worrying about winning and can start thinking about what’s right for the organization.
Sometimes the only way to proceed in pursuit of a good partnership is to decide that whoever cares more about the issue can have their way… But you can’t abuse this rule. You can’t pull the “It’s important to me” card too many times.
HAVE YOU TRIED YELLING AT HIM?
Cultures based on abuse and harassment and manipulation are not only awful and unethical, but unstable and inefficient… But that doesn’t mean your culture should be 100 percent sweetness and light.
Managing staff boils down to two things: how you praise people and how you criticize them. Praise is the more important of the two. But you cannot establish any standard of excellence without criticism, so a thoughtful approach to how you correct people must be a part of your culture, too.
ONE SIZE FITS ONE… There’s not one-size-fits-all approach to managing people.
The Five Love Languages: (1) Acts of service. (2) Gift giving. (3) Physical touch. (4) Quality time. (5) Words of affirmation.
Certain expressions of love work better for some people. The same is true of tough love. There are people for whom a polite correction will not land; those people need a little fire.
IF YOU’RE GOING TO LIE TO ME, I WANT NOTHING TO DO WITH YOU. You’re incredible, and I love what we’re doing here, but you need to decide right now what kind of leader you want to be. If that’s how you’re going to operate, you can do it without me.
You have to know the people you’re working with. Some people are totally pragmatic about criticism; correct them privately and without emotion, and they’ll receive the reproach in exactly the spirit in which it’s offered… Other folks are sensitive to criticism. This isn’t necessarily a negative characteristic - it’s usually an indication they want to do a good job and feel deeply wounded at any suggestion that they haven’t. But those people are going to react, no matter what you say or how gently and diplomatically you say it, so you’d better spend some time planning exactly how you’re going to deliver the feedback. And you’d be wise to budget time to spend with them afterward, so you can sit with them and let them know that they’re still loved… Then there are people who can’t or wont’t hear what you’re saying unless it comes with a little thunder. If your reprimand is too mild and conversational, they won’t believe you’re serious. With these people, you’re going to have to get into it a little bit, even if that’s not your usual managerial style.
Even this kind of reproach needs to be delivered privately and without emotion. Your voice may be loud, but your words need to be measured. You can be emotional about the situation, but that doesn’t have to come through in the delivery. You’re still criticizing the behavior, not the person, and a raised voice doesn’t mean losing control and raging. In fact, you absolutely CAN’T lose control and rage.
Ther’re on'e tough-love language that will never, ever work, and that’s sarcasm. Managers, especially young ones, will sometimes try to shroud criticism in humor because they’re insecure about delivering a rebuke. But sarcasm is always the wrong medium for a serious communication. It demeans the person who’s receiving the criticism, the message you’re delivering, and, frankly, you as well.
Most of us have no difficulty at all in delivering praise… But it’s hard to criticize someone. I spend a lot of time with my managers talking about criticism - how to deliver it, how to receive it, and maybe most important, how to think about it. We all want to be liked, and when you give someone a note about what they could be doing differently and better, you run the risk of losing their goodwill.
There is no better way to show someone you care than by being willing to offer them a criticism. It’s the purest expression of putting someone else’s needs above your own.
Praise is affirmation. Criticism is investment.
No matter where you are in the hierarchy you have to be able to receive criticism. It’s natural to bristle a little when you come up short, especially if you take pride in your work. But if your response if consistently defensive, if you always push back or insist on justifying your mistakes, people are eventually going to stop coming to you with notes. You’ve made it too unpleasant for them to continue, and they’re going to stop investing in you - and you’re going to stop growing as a result.