Instagram has started feeding me all sorts of interesting bits about leadership and such. One of the reels it fed me was talking about working with sales people and how to tell if you had a good salesperson whether or not they actually listen to your history… and frankly, I think that applies beyond sales.
If you’re really interested in helping people improve or get value, you need to understand their relationship to the history with the product or service.
What has their experience been like before?
What did they like about those experiences?
What did they dislike about those experiences?
This card serves as that reminder that we are never acting in a vacuum when it comes to trying to manage people, coach people, help people, or even work with other people.
If we really want to help people, we have to understand where they are coming from and what they have experienced before in the context of whatever we are working with them on. Most of us don’t divorce our experiences from the way that we work, or how we see the world. This is naturally going to color our thoughts, approaches, opinions when we interact with others and the environment.
This serves as a good reminder for me about why I take the approach I do with team: I want to observe their current state and see what they are doing today, and I also want to have a chance to talk talk to them to see what they’ve done before and what they liked and didn’t like. This is going to help establish congruency between my coaching and guidance, and the people I’m working with.
It doesn’t have to be the raw, direct questions I posted on the card, but it should be some version of asking those questions from a curious position, seeking to understand.
I’m gonna broaden this out from the original card scope: This can be applied to any situation where we need to make a connection with others to be able to come together, collaborate, and move forward together in some appreciable way. It might be when you are managing a team, it might be when you are coaching others, it might be when you are facilitating a session, it might be when you engaging with customers to determine a next feature set and the value it might give them.
Stay curious, stay humble, connect with people.