Techniques for FIT

• If employees struggle exhibiting behaviors in line with your strategy, start recruiting. It focuses you on sticking to your plan, and reminds employees that you're serious. 
• Increasing the frequency of feedback sounds great, but the first conversations are tough. Focus on the goal. 
• Be more specific with feedback on failure. The tendency is to generalize failure and be specific on success. Flip it. 
• If you're trying to change poor performance, zero in on the mechanisms of the process. Results tend to regress to the mean.

Being Human - Hard conversations

Why does the dog expose his belly?



We used to have a beagle named Louie. She was dumb and sweet and if I came home to find the contents of the trash can spilled out in the kitchen, she would start by dropping her ears, making those sad hound dog eyes, and then she would roll over over and expose her belly. An action that is as adorable as it sounds. 

Why? In my mind, it was to garner love and affection. She had eaten the best leftover nonsense from the trash hours before I came home, and most likely had no idea why I might be agitated. So she would expose her belly to me as if to say, "You seem agitated. Do you want to kick me? Or rub my belly? I'm good either way." 

I think about Louie when a critical conversation is coming up. Especially when that conversation is one that is long past its due date and things have spun out of control. Ignoring it will not make the issue disappear, only make it worse. Having the conversation will be like pulling teeth from an injured mama wolf. 

My advice: When it comes to getting back on top of critical employee conversations, use the same tactic Louie did. Expose your belly. Be vulnerable. 

"We need to talk about X. I know this is a sensitive topic for you. I haven't done my job well by ignoring it. I want to get back on track and I need your help." 

That's obviously a weird, fictionalized, way-too-general example, but it illustrates the Louie method. It acknowledges that you both have shortcomings, you take the blame, and you ask for help.

In my experience, using this technique, the injured mama wolf lashes out and fatally injures you less than 1/3 of the time. (nothing's perfect)

 

Random Stuff

A drabble for you

Flash fiction is a fictional work of extreme brevity, says Wikipedia. It comes in various forms: Twitterature (140 characters), the dribble (50 words), the drabble (100 words), and sudden fiction (750 words).

Here's a drabble for you:

The Shadow

“That makes me want to cry,” she said. “Poor boy. Forced to hide under the lunchroom table. Kids are cruel.” She starts texting.
At her house, she recreates the scene as pretty, slack-jawed faces listen and cluck. Soon, an anti-bullying luncheon is organized, menu selected, and speaker secured.
Across town, dinner is delayed as a mother tries in vain to coax her son from under the table. She leans back and sighs. 
“Relax,” her husband says, “I had an ‘invisible’ phase too. Hiding in closets at school. . .”
Her eyes widen, “Do you think he does this at school?”