Disconnected connections

Sergei attacked the task of becoming a corporate executive the way he attacked anything new: with rigorous scientific curiosity.

An M.D. with two PhDs, Sergei had started a chemical company that a pharmaceutical giant had bought. Now, under contract to that corporation, Sergei was determined to succeed as an executive. It wasn’t always coming easily.

One piece of feedback I heard from a peer was, “Everyone knows Sergei’s a genius. We just don’t know what the hell he’s talking about.”

From one of his direct reports, I heard, “We try not to ask him any questions because we know the answer could go on for, like, twenty minutes.”

Sergei was realistic about the feedback. “I’ve never been good at getting my ideas across.”

“Because English is your second language?” I asked. Sergei was born in Kiev.

He laughed. “I am not good in Russian, either! That’s why I work alone so much. But working alone here does not serve me well, does it?”

“No,” I agreed. “As an executive, the only way you can get your work done is through other people.”

“Ha! In my company, the only way to get work done was through me.”

“Do you miss it?” I asked

“I miss the speed. Here, everything takes so much time.”

“Yeah. To get your work done through others, you have to talk to a lot of people.”

“Which I am not doing too well, it seems.” He was right. That was what had triggered his coaching.

Detours and rat holes

Early in our conversations, Sergei and I were discussing his relationships with his peers. He thought there might be good examples of his communication skills from his exchanges at a recent offsite he’d been at.

He told me the facilitator had asked them to form small groups of four or five. Sergei ended up with two people he knew and two he didn’t. I expected that, next, Sergei would tell me what the facilitator had asked them to do. Or perhaps something he had said. But he didn’t.

He began to describe one of the guys in his group. In detail. He told me his name, his title, who he reported to, his reputation and his expertise. Halfway through this portrait, I wondered if Sergei was going to describe each person at this level of detail. If he did, I asked myself, would I interrupt him or let him go on?

Sure enough, when he finished portrait number one, he began portrait number two. I confess I didn’t stay 100% tuned in: I was waiting for him to get back to the main topic—the exercise at the offsite.

Finally, he did. He told me how frustrating it was talking with these guys. (Yes, they all happened to be guys.) “I thought they would understand about my lab and what we do. But they didn’t. So they didn’t know what I was talking about. They were interrupting me almost every sentence. I think they thought I was crazy. And, to be honest, I thought they were a little stupid.”

“Did everyone walk away feeling like that about each other?” I asked.

“No, we talked again and it was fine. They’re not stupid. But that’s a good example of me not doing so well talking to people.”

He gave me more examples. Sometimes he assumed I knew more than I did and went zooming ahead faster than I could follow. At those times, I would either ask clarifying questions or keep quiet, assuming I would figure it out—if it ended up mattering at all.

Other times, Sergei would dive down a rat hole, drilling on details that drove us away from the original topic. When that occurred, sometimes I would half tune out. But other times I would give indications—and I mean vigorous hand gestures and head nods—to let him know I was ready to move on. But usually he didn’t.

Formation flying

After giving me many examples, he stopped. When we’d first met, he’d told me he wanted the coaching to be a master class in communication with him as the sole pupil. Now I saw him shift from speaker to student. What, he wanted to know, did I make of all that?

“Have you ever heard of The Blue Angels?” I asked.

He said, no, he hadn’t.

“They’re a high-speed, precision flying squadron. They’ve been around since World War II, and they’re still flying. But their jets are a lot faster now.”

He arched an eyebrow and gave a slow, “Yessss?”

“Their signature maneuver is done with four jets. It’s called The Blue Diamond.”

He nodded for me to go on.

“One plane flies in front and one behind. The other two on either side. That’s the diamond. Then they tighten up the diamond until the wingtip of one guy’s jet is eighteen inches from another guy’s canopy. All four of them. Practically touching. And get this—they’re flying four hundred miles an hour. Eighteen inches apart! Can you imagine?”

“How do you know all that?” he asked.

“A client of mine gave me a DVD about The Blue Angels. I’d followed them a little when I was a boy. But I had no idea how precise these pilots have to be.”

Assuming he would ask another question, I stopped talking. I wondered whether his question would take us back up to the main topic—his communication skills—or keep us on the sub-topic, my analogy about The Blue Angels. Or drive us down into sub-sub-topics, like me as a boy or the DVD or my client.

He asked, “And why The Blue Angels? What does that have to do with anything?”

The main topic! Yay!

Speaker as pilot

I answered, “I’d like to start talking to you about your communication skills as if you’re a Blue Angel pilot. I want to talk about your speed as it relates to other people’s speed.”

“My speed? Of communicating? You mean how fast I talk?”

“No, I mean how fast you travel through your topics. For example, you were telling me about your communication at the offsite. Great. I know about communication and I know about offsites, so I was with you. Your speed matched mine. So far, so good.

“Then you said ‘small group exercise.’ And I thought, ‘We’re still side by side. Same speed. Keep going!’

“Then you began telling me lots of details about this one guy. And I felt you suddenly hit your air brakes and changed speed. We had been flying towards a destination called ‘group exercise,’ but now you’re zooming down a tunnel called ‘everything about each one of these four guys at my table who I thought were stupid anyway!’ Our speeds didn’t match at all any more.”

“You don’t care about those guys?”

“If they’re going to really matter to the main topic—your communication skills—then, heck, yes, I care. But I didn’t think that information would end up mattering. And it didn’t.”

He considered that. “I guess it didn’t.”

“Here’s the bad news. When you shift speed like that, but I keep flying toward the destination, I leave you behind. That means I stop listening.”

“That’s what people say, isn’t it? That I’m hard to listen to. And you think it’s because I’m too slow.”

“Or too fast,” I said. “I think you were too fast when you assumed those guys in your group knew about your lab. You zoomed ahead and they couldn’t follow you. Sometimes I feel like you’ve zoomed ahead of me. When that happens, I start asking questions—which I know you don’t like. So sometimes I don’t ask questions but then I’m just confused.”

He became very still. After a minute he said, “I was at the wrong speed when I presented to the Board the first time. They must’ve known your Blue Angel example because they said I crashed and burned. Since then, this fabulous woman named Maureen from Communications works with me on my presentations. She helps me get to the right speed.”

“I’m glad you’re getting help,” I said. “What are you learning from her?”

“What they care about.”

Caring for your wingmen

“That’s perfect, Sergei. That’s The Blue Angel analogy in a nutshell. As a communicator, your job is to set the speed, then maintain it. The only way to do that is to focus on the other person. What do they care about? What do they know already? Are they ready to move on?”

“There is no way I can know that every time I talk to someone. That would be impossible.”

“Not really, Sergei,” I said. I asked if he’d ever noticed me gesturing, indicating that I was ready to move on. He asked if I’d actually done that. He was surprised to learn that, yes, I had, and no, he hadn’t noticed.

“That’s what we’re going to work on,” I told him. “You need to know when your speed changes and you shoot ahead or drop behind.”

I continued. “Remember I said you’re going to communicate like a Blue Angel pilot? Here’s the picture I want you to have. It’s about how they practice.”

I leaned forward and lowered my voice, as if I someone were sleeping nearby. “The day before one of their air shows, the pilots go in a room all by themselves. They sit down and they all close their eyes. Then the lead pilot begins to speak. He says every single word in the exact way he’s going to say it tomorrow. He gives every command at the exact interval. And, with their eyes closed the whole time, every pilot moves his imaginary joystick in the exact way he’ll do it the next day. They practice the entire show in real time there in that room, eyes closed, completely focused, imagining what they’ll be doing and seeing when they’re in the air.

“That’s your job now, Sergei. You need to be connected to your listeners. Guide us through your flight plan without losing us. If you change your speed, you have a responsibility to see if we’re still with you.

“Sometimes you’ll ask, ‘Are you following me?’ Sometimes you’ll know just by looking. And sometimes you’ll need to do a little homework, like learning what the Board cares about.”

We spent the bulk of our coaching helping Sergei become conscious of his main topic—his destination—then maintain his speed. If he changed topics, he had to make sure his listeners did, too. Slowly, as they listened to him, people began to experience The Look & Sound of Leadership™.