I recently had lunch with a friend and he was telling me about an organization (a startup) they had 28 people turn over in the last year. That’s out of a total of thirty (30). I don’t know about you but that is a BIG RED FLAG.
In further questioning it turns out the executive is one of those that has money, a lot of ideas and no real clear “stable” vision. It seems that it is literally the flavor of the month. And the owner is not clean in the communication. They will tell someone what a great job they are doing in a conversation on Friday, while the termination papers are being drawn up for Monday.
In every conversation the owner is blaming all of the people that left for just “not getting it”.
My experience was that there was a time where I was leaving a wake of damaged people behind me. I had a temper and thought that being forceful would win me friends and influence people. Well in honesty I just wanted influence.
Then Greg, my boss opened my eyes to a blind spot by not giving me a raise. I did not get along well with others. This was not going to work for my career path. So I started my studies into human relations, communications, mindset and leadership. I’ve invested tens of thousands of dollars and read hundreds of books. And, it worked. I went on to get promoted to a vice president, I had a multi-million dollar territory and I had people that were awesome delivering results. 
Today I get to work with individuals and organizations to help them move and grow to even higher levels of performance by leveraging their communication skills to build transparency, accountability and performance.
I was recently working with an executive who had just had a testy conversation with their mentor/supervisor. It had not gone well. He thought that his mentor was just old school, out of touch and just dragging their feet. After allowing Jim (name changed) to vent I asked, “What would happen if you went back to the table and said something like, “I was uncomfortable after that conversation, it felt like I did not state my case clearly and you and I were not in alignment. Can we try again?”
I am happy to report that they had their conversation and Jim learned that the Mentor had been having a bad day and they were able to reach a compromise that met both of their objectives. Sometimes we get so caught up in the inertia of a conversation and our desire to “Win”, we don’t slow down to bring each side back to the common good that we both are pursuing. Jim’s blind spot was he was so interested in doing it his way, he did not slow down to really explore his mentors rationales, concerns and desires.
John works with Leaders and their organizations to improve performance through facilitation, consulting and coaching. With programs in behavioral blind spots, influence, team accountability and high performance teams. Contact john@johngies.com for more information.
