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What Just Happened?
Over the past few weeks, I’ve spoken to a number of people who’ve been blindsided by the unexpected. This has ranged from the fairly innocuous (an employee who didn’t follow through) to the very serious (being put on a performance improvement plan — completely out of the blue). For those involved, it can be shockingly painful and frustrating.
With respect and compassion for those who’ve been blindsided, I must nonetheless add that in every case extra attention to clarity and communication might have prevented these startling and upsetting events from happening in the first place.
I often point out to my clients that everyone tends to have tunnel vision on the job. When you focus exclusively — as most of us do — on the many details that go into fulfilling the requirements of your job, you can quite innocently set yourself up to be blindsided. A key factor in success is being able to maintain your peripheral vision and notice when something is sneaking up on you. (This peripheral vision has many other benefits as well, of course.)
Staying alert and maintaining clarity can be a challenge. It requires attention and focus, especially when you’re not used to it. It’s easy to get buried in your endless to-do list and all the squeaky wheels demanding your attention. However, a little follow-up, a little extra attention, a little clarity of understanding both on your part and communicated to others, goes a very long way — and sometimes even works miracles.
Although every situation is different, here are some suggestions for how to create more clarity both for yourself and for others.
What, by When — and Why?
People don’t know how to ask for help.
Yes, that’s a very large generalization, and yes, I generally hate generalizations. However, every now and then a generalization is true — and this one is very true!
I don’t mean it on any deep level, either; this isn’t about how people are often reluctant to ask. I literally mean that people don’t know how to ask in a way that’s clear and makes it easy to respond.
When you ask someone to do something — whether you’re asking a friend or peer for help, or delegating a task to an employee — don’t just tell them what the task is. Tell them when you need it and explain why you need it. This puts the task into context and helps them understand not only the importance, but more about how they might go about completing your request.
When you know when something needs to be complete, and why it’s important, you know how to prioritize it — and you can accurately let the requestor know whether you’ll be able to complete it by their deadline.
If you don’t know when or why, you have no frame of reference for completion.
So if you’re asking someone to do something, be sure to include the when and why in your request. And if you’re being asked, follow up to understand the time frame and context.
Don’t Make Assumptions — Part I
One of the biggest causes of snarled-up schedules and last-minute rushes is the (usually apparently reasonable) assumption that someone has done or will do something.
If you send a something to someone and receive no feedback, don’t assume it got there and was looked at. The email may have gotten lost (which happens more often than you might think), or be buried unread in a miles-long email inbox.
Likewise, if you’re expecting someone to complete a task, don’t assume it’s getting done — especially if you assigned the task before reading the previous suggestion on how to ask!
Instead, follow up with a quick phone call or a pause in the hallway: “Did you get that? Can you do it? Do you understand it? Is everything going okay?”
This isn’t an invitation to micro-manage. It’s an invitation to be aware of the status of what’s within your responsibility.
Don’t Make Assumptions — Part II
The old saying “no news is good news” is both untrue and dangerous.
Most people hate confrontation. So “no news” may actually be very bad news. For instance, although managers are never, ever supposed to surprise their employees with bad performance reviews, it happens all the time. Sometimes, managers think they have indicated their displeasure, but the employee hasn’t heard it. Or the manager may be avoiding the unpleasant task of communicating bad news — until they’re forced to do so by the company performance review schedule.
Ask. Don’t sound insecure — but ask. A simple, “Is everything okay? Is there anything I should be doing differently?” is easy to introduce into a conversation, and can go a long way to heading off unpleasant surprises.
It may sound over-cautious, but document the results, just in case. The thing about surprises is that they’re surprises — you didn’t see them coming.
As a manager, you already know that avoiding or delaying bad news isn’t to anyone’s advantage. Sit down with your employee — and be willing to be surprised by the results. The stories we tell about what confrontation will be like are almost always worse than the reality. And hoping that an issue will go away by itself doesn’t usually have the results you might wish for.
It’s Not Always Easy
If you’ve been blindsided recently — or ever — you know how painful it is, and you know it’s not all that easy to avoid.
For those of you who’ve experienced it (and I count myself among you), give yourself some space to feel the anger, frustration, and hurt. And recognize that within the confines of a 900-word article, I’ve made prevention sound more straightforward than it often is in practice.
So whether it was last week, last year, or last century, don’t be hard on yourself if someone dropped an unpleasant surprise on you. But do look at what happened to see how to prevent it, or something similar, from happening again.
“The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink.” George Orwell, English journalist, political essayist, and novelist, 1903-1950, from Politics and the English Language.
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