OUTSIDE THE VELVET CAGE

Dear Abby Singer: How can I point out a mistake without pointing fingers?

Filmmaker Dean Hyers Tackles Life Questions:

Minneapolis Business Owner asks: "Dean, sometimes I point out a mistake someone on my team made and they get angry and defensive. How can I avoid this?"

Good question, and one that most people get wrong. As leaders, we're typically tipped off to an improvement needed because a problem rears its ugly head. We react by pointing out the problem via a case example.

"Just last week you ______ (insert mistake here), and then what happened was ______ (insert negative outcome here)." People are often confused because if they don't use a specific example, how will you understand, but politics and hurt feelings seem to swirl around anyone pointing out the errors of another.

There are some simple rules about what NOT to do when pointing out someone else's mistake, but first let's understand the reason for the sensitivities and the resulting politics.

At the same time, face it, one of the reasons we point out the errors of others is to release our own emotional pressure-cooker by dragging the "offender" through what they did to us. We are all wired to seek some degree of public acknowledgment of our pain and hold offenders accountable.

That's only human, and it's often a part of a healthy "bio-feedback" loop in our social ecosystem. However, as leaders in life and work, we can be more strategic and less reactive, and recognize our sagely responsibility to strive for the win-win.

Being singled out in public for a mistake (whether we're talking peers, superiors, or reportees) tends to be experienced in a threatening way. Human beings inherently pursue blending in to feel safe, but whenever someone points out a mistake made, we feel "smoked out" and exposed, and fear the possibility of evidence levied against us.

Rational or otherwise, the warning lights go off in our mind and we respond through the filter of a fight or flight reaction as we brace for reprimand, tighter restrictions, some sort of probation, increased observation, reduced freedom, and the possibility that we may have to face change. On some level, these are natural fear reactions to having our dirty laundry aired in public.

Why? We must return again to our overused but versatile helicopter.

It's an emotional fact: talk about sad things in general (say, losing a pet) and we can intellectually explore the subject and not emotionally experience it. That would be "helicopter high." But talk about a specific sad thing (say when you were 7 and a specific pet died) and you are vulnerable to potentially go through the emotional experience. That would be "helicopter low."

The more "play-by-play" is contained within your approach – in other words, the more detailed or experiential you describe something, the more likely you are to create an emotional experience of the subject you're discussing.

That can be good or bad, depending upon your goals. Last week in my company, SagePresence, a team member was speaking in general about a problem we all have universally, but then the team member voicing the problem decided to sight one of us who made the mistake the week before, and that person got upset. It would have been easy to not use the example. It would have also been easy for the one voicing the problem to site a time when he himself made the mistake, or he could have asked us to voice our own examples.

If you feel someone will require an emotional experience in order to be motivated to change, then you may need to fly the helicopter low. If you think the person's sensitivities warrant an objective exploration of the problem, then you should keep the helicopter high and provide an intellectual experience. You might also fly the helicopter in the middle, using some examples, but in a safer, "group-focused" sort of way – say by sighting specifics without naming names.

The question was, "How do I talk about a mistake without pushing buttons?" The solution is simple:

1) Before outing someone on their mistake, ask yourself: "Is the example necessary?" Is it really important to drag someone through the experience of being "caught?" Or is it better to let the offending individual off the hook emotionally and correct the problem without bruising egos. Or am I somewhere in the middle?

(Hint: If you don't know, err on the side of flying higher rather than putting people on the spot)

If YES, then caringly fly the helicopter low and understand that sighting someone on a specific will cause them to feel the heat (emotions). "Judy, last week when the client call came in, I saw you ________, and that created a problem for me, which was ______."

If NO, then fly the helicopter high and speak to the problem in general, leaving examples out. "Team, we have ongoing procedural errors with _________, and I want to make sure everyone understands ______."

2) Minimizing the "on-the-spot" feeling the offender is undoubtedly going to experience is done by:

a – sighting a personal example of a time when you made the mistake yourself. "Here's how I learned the importance of this procedure... "

b – describing the issue in principle and asking the team to voluntarily share examples. (Don't bully the examples out, and allow people to stay quiet if they prefer. A trusting environment is a must!)

c – convert an actual example into a general example, saying, "Here's what typically happens in our department... "

d – describe an example but leave out individual details. "Several times this year, I've seen this happen with one of our team members... "

3) If you suspect a strong defensive reaction is likely to occur when sighting a specific example of an error made in your team, and you still want to fly the helicopter low, or park it right on the pavement and go step-by-step experientially through the offending incident, then consider having a private conversation with the individual so their emotional bruising is not public.

Hope this helps, and remember: This isn't the answer. It's the answer before the answer. The real answer has to come from you in the moment. Good luck with this one, and keep a lookout for times to make this easier on someone else!

Dean

LEADERSHIP ON THE SET

Essence Leadership Turns Man Power Into Brain Power

I stood before the wall of script pages, storyboards, location photos, and an org chart outlaying the hierarchy of a production crew that was going to make its first feature with it's first-time director. I wondered, "Will I do okay? Can I do that job? Will I direct well and be a good leader?" It was late. It was dark. I stood there alone, generally afraid. Then a calm out of nowhere and I knew it was time to work.

Directing Bill's Gun Shop was the biggest challenge of my leadership career to date, and it was that way because of one main factor – it was important to me. Very important.

It was on the set of my first feature that I established a personal understanding of leadership – what I wanted, what I wanted it to be, and how I was going to accomplish it. It was my style, and it was part procedure, part code and part self-protection.

What I didn't quite realize is that it was smart. It was good leadership and I lead that way today.

The year was 2000. I had already run a successful company which got acquired by a big advertising agency. I'd already directed several other films, first as a teen filmmaker, then with my brother as an independent making commercials and corporate film, then as a creative director in interactive media. Now, back to feature film, but this time with a very modest yet still substantial a budget.

I didn't know how to lead. I'd just done what came naturally, which was a bumpy ride at best, but somewhere in the recesses of my mind, probably mostly subconsciously, I was doing the secret work on my own leadership and forming my own answers.

The answer came to me in a phrase: Essence Leadership

As a film director, you're bombarded with questions. Literally hundreds, many at one time, as Wardrobe, Art Department, Cinematographer, Producers, Financiers, Writers, Set-Design, Actors, Sound, Crew, and even Craft Services (food) want to know what this should look like, how you plan to accomplish a scene, and who wants what for breakfast.

It was an overwhelming task to direct that show, but at the same time it's no different from any other leadership. You have to make a choice – whether leadership is figuring everything out yourself or if it's finding a way to delegate without compromising your vision.

How can delegating be an extension of your vision? That answer is Essence Leadership.

What is Essence Leadership?

I discovered when I was filming that whatever I told someone to do, they would do. "It's good to be King," said Mickey Freeman, my Director of Photography. In a way, how can you not like that. On some level, I didn't.

A few years back, I was making an interactive entertainment product called Virtual Cop, and I noticed the same thing there. Its memory reminded me of why dutiful followership bugged me. Again, I like the loyalty, but my Assistant Director (AD) back then really captured it for me.

A props person asked me how I wanted some prop to be and I began describing what I was going for. I'd hoped for their input on how to answer the challenge so I wanted them to know my thinking. My AD said, "Dean, they don't want to figure it out. They want you to tell them what you want so they can do it."

It bugged me that with complicated problems, with brain power all around, you'd have just one person making all the decisions and have everyone else serve as automatons. Great for the ego-head, but dumb. How can you maximize the brainpower and have a unified, thinking crew?

There were so many decisions to be made, I would have plenty of "do this" and "do that" to keep my ego satisfied.

So I began leading by essence. A great example was a car we needed for a bounty hunter character to drive. We were in a pinch and the car options we were working on fell through and I needed to get the right car quickly. I really didn't have much time to invest in the hunt because we were preparing to shoot a complicated scene in a gun range using real and fake ammo and I needed this one off my plate. So I said, "You pick the make, you pick the color. I'd like it to be an older car, but I'm trying to sell 'motor-head' and macho. He's a bounty-hunter so he's going to want some speed but not a lot of flash to draw attention. Find the car that sells motor-head, power, but low flash."

The folks on the car hunt said, "Ahh. I get what you want," and they were off to solve the problem. I was told that they were excited and engaged to over-deliver for me. Why? Because I engaged them. They came back to me with polaroid photos of 3 options. I picked from that and they felt they'd contributed, yet I still picked the final car.

Later on, the Lead Man on Swing (swing gang is the set-dressing crew) came to me about how to set up the bad guy hideaway, which was a trailer. They initially came to me with questions that were really detailed. Like if you imagine a helicopter (which could fly high or low), their questions were on the pavement. "How do you want the room laid out? Would there be a TV? What kind of couch? How much of this? How many of those?" I didn't have time for that.

I took five minutes and talked about the essence of what I was going for. I kept my helicopter up pretty high and told them strategically what the scene was, what success was, what I was trying to sell visually, and handed them the scene to read. I told them I trusted their ideas and gave them creative license to interpret my requests. "I can see you know what I'm going for. You make the call! I trust your creativity," I would say.

I remember these guys kind of glowing with a combination of excitement and fear. I'd given them responsibility. They were honored and they rose to the challenge. Again, I heard from their Art Department head that I had so much commitment from the swing gang. They wanted to come through for me and they seriously over-delivered.

Essence Leadership is simple. It's all about giving away leadership to get more authority and loyalty to the cause. It's not a total answer, but it is a value-well that will never run dry.

The principles are simple (if you need the nemonic, I guess it spells Eezze so it's eezze to remember):

#1: Essence: Share the essence of what you want and let them figure out the details.
#2: Engagement: Relinquish authority to your followers and let them initiate the labor.
#3: Zone of No Compromise: Establish what you will not compromise on – the essence you're going for.
#4: Zone of Flexibility: Establish what details you will be flexible on – hopefully all as long as #3 is achieved.
#5: Expression of Trust: Dialogue until you feel you're on the same page, and then express your trust in their creativity and find a way to accomplish the task.

Leaving the set at the end of this shoot was a two-step process. First, I had to battle an endless line of goodbye hugs with everyone from actors to crew, producers, production assistants, and volunteer interns, nearly each one of whom told me in one way or another that this had been the experience they'd gotten into film to have.

Over an hour later, having achieved the ten feet of distance to my car, I returned to the dark production office, which was much like it was the night before shooting began. I found myself standing in the exact same spot and could feel my nervous energy from four or five weeks prior. I stood there with the pride of having commanded in a way that didn't feel like commanding at all. I sacrificed no level of vision, nor did I compromise my own authority. I simply benefited from a thinking team, all engaged loyally to me because we were all equal servants to a vision I let them help me visualize it. It began in my head, was shared and owned by the team, and today it exists in reality with a little "WB" on the box!

My own thoughts echoed in my head like a voice, asking, "Will I do okay? Can I do that job? Will I direct well and be a good leader?" I replied out loud, "You do fine," and I finally understood the calm that had come over me when I had stood there worrying before the shoot.

My thoughts spoke out to me again, from some part of my brain that must have been still holding onto the fear and self-doubt. First there was a sigh, and then a statement in my own voice, saying, "Thanks. That's all I needed to know."

IT'S CHANGING MEN, HALLELUJAH!

Interest In Emotional Balance on the Upswing for Male Audiences

For years now, my travels around the country have given me glimpses of different companies, cultures, industries, various people, and various struggles. One constant in my purview has been women changing or trying to change by reaching across the gender barriers to find ways to expand themselves and "fit in" (and do so authentically). Another constant is men staying pretty much the same, or at least not changing in that one way, looking anywhere but across the gender barriers, not expanding themselves, and not altering themselves in any way either to fit in better with women or help women fit in better with them.

For the record, I'm not saying men aren't trying. I'm saying they haven't been looking at changing themselves as a means to find any sort of new balance in corporate culture.

As a professional speaker who speaks mostly about emotions in leadership, presence, and presentation, I'm a rare male preacher of the soft skills, usually playing from the Yin playbook in a business universe of Yang strategy. I've met with literally hundreds of men who will hear about it, but honestly don't want to hear about it. By "it" I mean the "e" word – emotions.

Therefore, it was a surprise to stand before an audience of hundreds of Utility Workers in the Midwest Energy Association's (MEA) annual conference in Aimes Iowa at eight in the morning one day this past August, to find that something seems to be changing in the very fabric of manliness.

The situation was this. SagePresence was hired to do two back-to-back presentations to the MEA annual conference in Aimes Iowa, speaking on Emotional Intelligence and Leadership Presence. I expected a full house on Leadership Presence, but I was fully prepared to drive all day and rehearse all night to rise and shine with a pot-full of hotel coffee and present to a mass audience of 5 people, who would probably have been the team-spirited organizers of the event.

My first surprise is that the coffee was pretty good. But that was nothing compared to what was coming next. At 7:55, two brave men walked in and sat down (well, one of them left, but not right away). Then after farting around with the powerpoint, I looked up to see well over a hundred people filling the seats in the small auditorium.

Two things about these "people." First, they weren't just "people" – these people were men! Secondly, they weren't just men, they were "manly" men. These were energy and utility worker types. I saw flannel, and steel-toe boots, and I could just visualize hard-hats and utility belts. Some were more administrative and leaderly. But there was something about the collective as a whole that screamed of the "traditional man" category.

There were only two women in the audience, and I felt for them, suspecting them to be women who've had to learn to function as anomalies in their male-dominated industry.

So far, this is what I expected as an audience, only there were about a hundred more than I would expect at an 8:00 am presentation on emotions. And don't get me wrong, I'm not judging the audience, only noting the attendance as compared to expectation. And then it happened.

I was curious enough to ask the question point blank in my intro: "What in the world are 100 plus men in the utility area doing in an 8:00 am presentation about emotional intelligence? What brought you here?"

A man raises his hand. He was sturdy, kind, and blue-collar in presence, dress and dialect. "I'm trying to find a better emotional balance between my work life and my home life," the man said. I am seldom at a loss of words, but I chose to smile and look for another hand.

"I view emotions as the foundation and fabric of all my relationships, and I'm looking for anything I can get to gain a better understanding of how to build stronger emotional bonds with my teams and my clients," says the next.

I'm used to responses like this in women's conventions, but here? Again, I take another response, and I get, "I've noticed that the emotional state of my team has a huge amount to do with how well they interact with others, and how safe my team is on the field. One emotional swing can lead to a compromise in safety procedure and I want to learn how I can be more proactive about managing emotions on my team."

A forth: "I've realized when I meet people that the first relationship I form is on the emotion, then I get to know about the person second. The emotion side has a lot to say about how the conversation goes." This and flannel – I'm beside myself!

In ten years of presenting on emotions and leadership, I've never had a single man ask a question like that without some serious leading on my part. Was I in some sort of emotional Twilight Zone? Could the Energy Industry Workers be the next leaders of social change?

For many years I've seen women reaching across the gender barrier to learn what men had to offer them. After that presentation, I've found myself running through my mental logs of trainings and presentations to answer the question: "Are men evolving?"

I think the answer is "yes, they are" – socially, intuitively, business-wise and in their dealings with professional women. Don't get me wrong. We still have much distance to go, but we are actually going... somewhere!

I've spent a month talking about this very question with my partners. And I'm seeing it more and more, but I just hadn't had as big a sign to believe it. Men are finally joining women in looking across the gender gap and asking the question, "what can I learn from them that would give me an edge and help me expand myself?"

More and more men are satisfied enough with what they know about "Yang" and are looking for a deeper meaning by exploring their "Yin" side. It took me a couple presentations at the MEA to recognize that this subtle shift is turning the "women in a man's world" paradigm on it's back, and into "men and women crossing over to become complete together."

Expect updates on this phenomenon in the future, as I check my impression with more audiences. Either the energy industry is where our most advanced male attitudes lie, or it's just a sign of the times – that men are finally evolving to recognize what women recognized many years ago – we're not so different, women and men, but we're different enough to offer something worth sharing and similar enough to grow closer together by looking for it.

I can here the musical in my head. The man sings: "We can feel anything better than you can, we can feel anything better than you!" Woman: "No you can't!" Man: "Yes we can!" Woman: "No you can't!" Man: "Yes we can! Yes I can, yes I can, yes I can!"