Circles

When it comes to building a business or network it can be useful to arrange people on a series of concentric circles.

The inner ring, ok, the “inner circle,” is comprised of people with whom we are the most intimate and honest. These people know our secrets, and love us anyway. With these folks we can share our hopes, dreams and disappointments. Our politics, assessments, and opinions. We can ask inner circle people for help and favors even as we look for ways to help them achieve their own aspirations. There is reciprocal care, concern, regard and support. There is no "right" number of people comprising the inner circle. Too many and we may not be able to fully reciprocate and support them all; too few and life can be lonely and more difficult. Rather than work toward some number, seek to grow the quality of the inner circle. Attract and hold on to those who have integrity, ambition, proficiency and compatible values.

As we progress to outer rings, our relationships are less intimate. Consequently, the farther from “core” a person is, the less likely we are to trust, to make requests, to disclose confidential information. At the outer edges are people who are acquaintances. We might transact with them, stay in light touch, but they tend not to have a deep, reciprocal relationships with us.

Why is this useful? One application is job hunting. One client wanted to advance to the next level in her profession. She had been thwarted in past attempts. In formulating a campaign strategy, I asked two questions:

1. Who do you know that could have a positive influence on the hiring decision?
2. Where do they fall on your map of concentric circles?

For example, she knew an influential senior VP, but just barely. In other words, the VP was outer circle. It seemed unlikely that this executive would offer much help, so why even ask? It might waste future political capital. There was another VP who was a strong supporter. She jumped at the chance to help my client, loudly singing her praises. We carried this thinking through and wound up with six influential people who were close enough to her inner circle that they were willing to lend support. Ultimately, she got the job.

One important note in this happy story: my client invested months or years in cultivating these people before asking for their support. She gladly helped them, stayed in touch, acted with integrity, acknowledged them, and spoke well of them. Hence, when the time came to ask for their help, they were glad to support her case.

Another application involves customers. Take a stab at situating your clients on the grid of concentric circles. Almost certainly you have customers who transact with you in a mostly impersonal, mutual use relationship. In other words, they are in an outer circle. If you raised your price, they might ditch you. On the other hand, your best customers probably know you or some of your people really well, care about them, and would feel personal pain at the prospect of losing you as a resource partner. These inner circle clients are the ones to cultivate, nurture and hang on to. You have to screw up pretty badly to lose their business. But you can never take them for granted. You must continue to search for ways to help them. Meanwhile, you might investigate the value of firing some of those outer circle clients. They can be royal pains!

Where somone falls on the circles is not an objective matter. It is invented based on observations, interactions, and experiences. Your first impression of someone you meet at a networking event may be tepid, so you initially place him on an outer ring. But the next time you encounter the person, he remembers you, passes along a referral, and demonstrates greater depth than you initially experienced. Consequently, this person might jump in a few circles. This is a simple illustration of how we continuously make assessments, and then revise those assessments over time as new data surfaces. But at least the circle map provides an orientation and framework for who you might approach and how you might approach them.

What do your circles look like? Are you intentionally working on ways to add to your circles? What steps could you take to attract higher quality people to your inner circles? Where do you fit in the circle maps of others?

Bridging Realities

Last post I claimed that humans live in different realities. It’s not just a particular event, like a basketball game, or perceptions of a particular person, like a boss. EVERYTHING we experience differs from another person’s reality because each person has lived through a completely unique blend of life experiences: family dynamics, education, religion, ethnic traditions, economic status, and the myriad situations and emotions we encountered. Given the infinite array of experiences we have each encountered, it’s not surprising that there are so many interpersonal conflicts.

Let’s look at a typical example. A client of mine was promoted to sales manager and was preparing to give a veteran employee a performance evaluation. The manager’s assessment was that sales rep had some strengths but seemed complacent, even below standards in some areas. Weekly reports were often late and sloppy. The boss was not confident the employee was a good fit. Past reviews had been acceptable, with little data.

Prior to the performance review meeting, he asked the sales rep for a self-appraisal, and was shocked by what he read: a totally different reality. The rep wrote that she was doing very well, was on track to achieving her sales goals, and received lots of positive feedback from her clients and colleagues. She rated herself “above expectations.”

Uh-oh. Talk about clash of realities.

Fortunately, my client was well positioned for the performance conversation. With the aid of foresight (and brilliant coaching!) he had done what I call building a conversational bridge between his reality and those of his direct reports.

The first step in building that bridge happed in his first days on the job, when he met with each rep to share and discuss mutual thoughts and feelings on roles, goals and expectations.

The next bridge-building step was regular, often short, conversations between manager and employee. For the boss, these conversations included both positive reinforcement and constructive, corrective suggestions and advice. For the employee it was an opportunity to share triumphs and challenges, ask questions, and ask for support. Good bridges work equally well in both directions.

This manager has a tendency to accentuate the positive and downplay the negative. Frankly, if you are to err one way or the other, I would rather have a manager err on the positive. But he had not completely ignored constructive feedback, and had done so both verbally and in writing. Unfortunately, the rep had somehow blocked out or diminished the negative feedback, hence their different perspectives.

Finally, and most important, the notion of “bridge” here is that there are two sides and BOTH are important. Translated to management, a good boss will ask for and listen attentively to the employee’s perspective on progress, challenges, likes and dislikes. This is why it is valuable to ask for an employee’s self-appraisal before the formal session. Knowing how the employee views their own performance gives advance warnings of the areas of connection and disconnection. It is also possible that the employee has a more powerful or accurate interpretation of her performance. After all, the employee has spent about 100% of her time with herself, while the boss has spent only a fraction.

Armed with the employee’s self-assessment, my client looked in the mirror and asked himself if he was being fair and consistent in his expectations, whether he had communicated feedback appropriately, and whether there were any perspectives from the rep that should cause him to re-evaluate. He concluded that his case was pretty strong, but because the rep was seasoned, he wanted to explore her viewpoint further.

Building a bridge is not the sole domain of the boss. Although most employees abdicate responsibility for performance assessments – unless forced by the system – it is far more powerful for them to hold up their part of the bridge. I encourage my clients to ask for regular feedback, from their boss, peers, direct reports and customers.

So how did the performance meeting turn out? Well, the conversation was difficult. When it became clear to the rep that the boss had a VERY different assessment than her own, she expressed both anger and tears. Because he knew that the conversation might go this way, my client was prepared to call a short break, allow the rep to regain composure, and then expressed genuine desire to turn the situation around. Sensing he was genuine, the rep opened up and said that many of her behaviors had been encouraged by the former boss and that perhaps she had not made a strong enough effort to adapt to different expectations from her new boss. The manager countered by saying there might be things he could do differently. They worked out a few ideas and agreed to speak weekly until they felt things had turned around. A year later, the employee was rated among the best in her region.

Strong bridges do not guarantee that every performance problem will be resolved in such a positive way. Sometimes, it is actually better for the organization and all involved that the parties part company. And if parting is the outcome, strong bridges will usually keep such separations from turning ugly.