"Events, dear boy, events"

I was asked in an interview the other day “Tell me about a meeting or session you ran where event’s: problems, conflicting opinions and argument could have derailed you but didn’t. What did you do and how did you do it?”

“Let me count the ways (times) ...” I thought; who, in any role, let alone a leadership role has not at one time or another felt themselves besieged by events, drowning in an ocean of feedback from customers, employees, stakeholders?

Likewise, how is it that some people seem able to steer a course through these events and "skip over" said “ocean like a stone”? In my darker moments I’ve thought of those people as being somehow, “Teflon coated”; masters in the art of explaining things away, obfuscation, blame shifting, or just blessed with some of the more useful attributes of the psychopath. 

I have to be careful of my darker thoughts: “acknowledge these thoughts, work out what’s driving them and if it isn’t helping me, change my thinking”. I can’t say that I am a master of this, yet, but I learn every day.

Of course, there probably are some people who are “Teflon coated”; I’m not one of those people, so spending too much time resenting them won’t help me either. So what does?

Acceptance: In life and business, we just have to accept that things, conversations, projects, will go wrong and when they do, we’re going to hear about it. 

Assume good intent: If we are getting a lot of negative feedback, we can start to wonder if some of it isn’t malicious, try not to assume so. The things we hear are just natural human reactions to events. These reactions are not about me, albeit they may be about what I’ve done. I try to do this even when the feedback is expressed in emotive, intolerant or personal terms. The reactions are driven by the event, but they reflect people’s thinking and beliefs about things: their ideas. 

Don’t argue. , I try not to parry with the feedback. Regardless of whether I think the feedback is fair or unfair, right or wrong, fact or fiction, it probably won’t help to engage in an argument about it. Acknowledge it, accept it and give yourself time to reflect; act on it later.

Try to put in place mechanisms to ensure that the often urgent and individual events are addressed but do not divert you from what’s really important. Focus on the ideas being expressed, not just the event or person. Distill from the feedback facts and opinions.

This is all very well in theory, but what are those mechanisms?

Well, try different things, but one that works for me, particularly in meetings is to stop talking and start listening; stop trying to control or argue about what is said and start capturing the ideas being expressed, taking note of what’s fact AND what’s not. What’s not will often reflect feelings which are driving the thoughts, beliefs and ideas in response to the event. I start writing these things down so that everyone can see them as I capture then.

Pretty quickly people start to think more about what they are saying, before they say it. People start to move away from the personal and event driven discussion to the ideas. Pretty quickly a meeting or discussion that could have turned into a noisy nightmare turns into something useful.

Before the meeting closes I flag that the meeting is going to close and I take a photo of what’s been captured. I also say that I’m going to leave the current list somewhere safe and invite the people who have not spoken to come and add to the list. I give them a time limit. (Some of your best thinks are the introverts! Give them a chance to have their say.)

I then commit to performing a review, editing and prioritisation process: I’m going to boil the ideas down and figure out what is really urgent and what is really important. I will share both the original list and the revised list. Agree that we will all meet again soon to review, discuss, debate and decide actions, roles and responsibilities.

I keep the original list as a matter of trust and because, “you need to keep your eye on the long-term trend lines; what is neither urgent nor important today might become one or the other by next year”.

So what are the benefits of this kind of approach?

• Everyone has been heard. More importantly they will feel that their point of view is closer to being understood. “Where there is disagreement, “both sides understand the way of thinking of the other”.
• The focus of the discussion and resultant actions moves from personalities and events to ideas: “Strong minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events and weak minds discuss people.”
• Counter-intuitive though it may seem, allowing people to vent their spleen helps in the management of the often urgent. It is the noise created by events which are our undoing, not the events themselves.
• It enables you to address both the events and the thinking around those events. Generate ideas that may provide the solution.
• Because you are dealing with the events, you are able to keep your eye on the ball, on what’s really important: “One of the problems of government (leadership) is to separate the urgent from the important and make sure you're dealing with the important and don't let the urgent drive out the important.

There are lots of other techniques of course. Keep trying them until you find one that works for you and the people with whom you live, love and work. 

The important point is that events, be they urgent or not, need not define you or your leadership: It is possible to move from a sense of drowning in events and instead “banking off the North East winds, sailing on a summer breeze ...”

With thanks and apologies to:

Former British Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, who was once, asked by a young journalist what defined his Prime Ministership and replied ‘Events, dear boy, events’.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning, “let me count the ways" is a line from the 43rd sonnet of Sonnets from the Portuguese, written by Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

Harry Nilsson who wrote that song: “Everybody’s Talkin at me”. Try playing it at the start of a meeting, if previous meetings have gone wrong in this way. It’s a little bit different and can set the right tone for the meeting.

My therapist: his teaching me about Cognitive Behavioural Therapy.

Henry Kissinger, who said: “the political leaders of both sides to understand the way of thinking of the other”. “One of the problems of government is to separate the urgent from the important and make sure you're dealing with the important and don't let the urgent drive out the important”.

Hillary Clinton, who said: “you try to keep your eye on the long-term trend lines because what is neither urgent nor important today might become one or the other by next year”.

Socrates who, Plato tells us, said: “Strong minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, weak minds discuss people.”