Bonnie (7:01)

Dave's story is getting me revisiting history as well. My first job out of college was teaching computer classes. I used to teach five or six different eight hour classes, all on Microsoft Excel. And I will say that you are probably asking teams, especially teams Chat, to do far more than it was designed, which often comes up when we talk about applications. People, for example, would want Microsoft Excel to be a relational database. And there's some differences between relational databases and what at least Microsoft Excel was capable of doing back then. And I would argue that trying to get Microsoft Teams and specifically Microsoft Chat to make your collaborative work visible in such a way as to identify when or if loops have been closed, has this particular thing been processed to. And Dave's example of going back and reading the notes from the earlier shifts today, that would probably be a really inefficient and ineffective way because of the more volume that someone may need to process. Reading handwritten notes wouldn't quite do it for you. My suggestion is that you might want to look at other tools that are designed specifically for a use case of tracking here's requests that have come in. Are we hearing people and what their needs are and then how those needs have been met. And this is by no means an advertisement for the product I'm going to mention, but one of the better if not best products and services and this is called Zendesk and it's a help desk manager. There are many of them out there, lots of different price points. But what a product like a Zendesk, a ticketing system lets you do in this day and age, which is really remarkable, is not just have people be able to email in their requests and many times they integrate with systems like Microsoft Teams, but it will allow for an answer to be made and for other people to see what that answer was. And many of these services have a self service component where other people who had a similar problem might go there first and begin to check out what other people have experienced, maybe difficulties. So my suggestion would be that you look at a ticketing system and one that will allow you to be able to see whose questions have been and answered and also consider the value of having and by the way, a lot of this is happening through artificial intelligence, where it can even answer people's questions, drawing from past answers that have been provided by humans. It's pretty remarkable what they're capable to do. The big objective here is to make the work visible. When we're working in this kind of collaboration, I need to be able to see did somebody else already take care of this or is this person still waiting on an answer? And so I think you're trying to get teams to do more than it was designed to do. And, and especially it may be able to cobble its way. There's something called Microsoft Planner, for example. I use it for some things. But Microsoft Planner is nowhere near as use case specific as a ticketing system might be for you in these cases.

Dave Stahoviak (10:42)

As you were talking Bonnie, I was thinking Help Scouts, the other one. I've heard of folks in our community using a ticketing system. I love that you drew that distinction. So hope that's helpful for you Josh, and let us know what you decide to try. And speaking of your podcast, Bonnie, this next question may require a bit of context for those who don't know. Bonnie hosts a podcast called Teaching in Higher Ed, helping higher ed faculty to do a better job at being present for their students and teaching effectively. And this question comes from Lily, who listens to both of our podcasts. She writes. Hi Dave and Bonnie. I'm relatively new to your shows and I'm Absolutely loving them both. Thank you. I'm a lecturer in higher education who, as well as being a course lead, have just secured a new faculty learning and teaching leadership role. This requires me leading my peers in the new year. I have set up innovation groups, basically action learning groups, so that the course leads can start working more collaboratively, learning and supporting each other. This is about hoping to change our faculty culture. My concern is they won't engage, as they always say, they are too busy. My question is any advice on structuring the first session to enhance engagement and any advice on gaining buy in. Thanks in advance for your guidance. Bonnie. I'm going to let you start with this one since of course this is very much your world and I'll jump in and add anything I think of as well.

Bonnie (12:05)

Priya Parker talks about in the Art of Gathering how vital it is to focus on purpose. And I let me go back just a second, by the way, and say congratulations on this new role and thank you for listening to both of these shows. I'm. I could, we could just, you know, go off Dave, and have an entire series of podcasts just on this one question alone. So I'll try to behave myself here, but my advice to you is to focus on purpose and do it absolutely laser focused every single time. What is the purpose for why you are gathering? I want to caution you, you're going to hear this. I'm too busy a lot. And some of this has to do with, among other things, what's known in the scholarship of human motivation and human behavior as the locus of control. How do we explain what happens to us? And you will find oftentimes in institutions of higher education there might be more people who tend to have an external locus of control. What happens to me is beyond my control, which, by the way, there's a lot of some of this in all of us. But, but these external factors, I'm too busy. That's going to be a refrain that you can expect to hear a lot, I think, no matter where you go to work in higher education. That doesn't mean it's a bad thing because there are sometimes times when we have, oftentimes we have no control over what happens to us. I just happen to be someone who has very much of an internal locus of control, which has its own set of advantages and disadvantages of viewing what happens to me with that paradigm. And so you're going to hear a lot of too busy, too busy, too busy. Which is why I would advocate even more. We have to focus on why Are we gathering and even is a gathering of the type that I was envisioning the right way to approach that? I have. I mentioned earlier in the. An earlier question about making the work visible. I sort of have three things that are really central to my work and my leadership, and they all have to do with the work. And the first one is to show up for the work. That's this idea that we show up in as authentic of ways as we're able to in a given context, and we welcome and try to cultivate in others the ability to do so. We make the. We do the work so we're people of integrity. We do what we say we will do and then we make the work visible. And so that's going to be important in all of this. You may show up and there's no one there. You may show up and there's one person there that is a real fear that could happen. And I would just prepare you that, yeah, that might happen. People might think that they're too busy. I would encourage you to be learning from that. But when you're trying to change a culture, that's going to take some time. And so everything isn't going to go in direct proportion to how well you planned for whatever this is, how well you promoted it, how well you execute on those plans. A culture change is going to take a lot longer than really nailing that first time or the second time or the third time. That being said, focus on the purpose, make that work visible. So for those who do show up, you want it to be a spectacular experience where they are left wanting more. I mentioned you're going to hear a lot. I'm too busy for this. You're also going to hear a lot. Gosh, I wanted more from that. I wanted more from that can sound like, gosh, couldn't you have made it longer? Or could you do more of these? I would invite you to consider. It's a good thing when your party ends before everybody's exhausted and bored with each other. It's a good thing if you finish the first book in the series and you can't wait to get to the second thing. If you are hearing that kind of feedback that it wasn't long enough, there aren't enough of them, that's a good thing. You've created some excitement, you've created some energy, you've created this. You've started to create some curiosity. Curiosity for those who weren't there to have been a part of this. So don't, don't necessarily instantly Turn up the volume just because you start to hear that. I hear it pretty regularly. I also hear the. I don't have time for this. Speaking of I don't have time for this. Avoid, avoid. Avoid the temptation to record everything. You will have people who will say, I am too busy. I can't be there. Can you record this? If you announce in advance that you are going to record that you are going to create a scenario where me, as interested as I was, and whatever it is that you had planned that day, as interesting as it sounded to me, my mind will shut off. As busy as I am knowing that you're going to record it, I'm a lot less likely to be there. If a recording is absolutely essential, consider not even having a scheduled meeting. Just record with that person. If it's some great, you know, five lessons on whatever 15 minutes you send out that video, get your culture used to that. Valuable things are going to come from you and your leadership, not always through a scheduled event, but also through the way that you curate and the way that you create. There are other ways for you to generate the kind of collaborative learning that you're describing besides just that one scheduled event. The last thing that I will say before asking Dave for his ideas is that you're going to need a home for this work. Try to resist just managing this over email. Hey, I'd like to invite you to come to this thing. There will need to be some sort of a home for where things live, like articles that people may want to read to learn more or podcast episodes. Or perhaps there's a way that you might want to have some conversations happening after the fact. So what is your home going to be for where the different assets and resources can live in addition to your scheduled time where people get together?

Dave Stahoviak (18:30)

I am so glad you mentioned recording yes to all of that. Yes to not recording almost everything out there. It's an interesting habit so many organizations and teams have gotten into. So yes to everything Bonnie said. And she mentioned Priya Parker at the very begin of her response. We had Priya on the show. Oh, gosh. However, many years ago, her book came out, the Art of Gathering, which is an incredible book. So, Lily, maybe a book that'd be helpful for you as you enter into the season of bringing people together. And one of the principles that I really love, I think it's in her book, or maybe I heard her say it in another venue or in the episode itself is. And I don't remember her language. But being able to broaden and elevate the conversation a bit before you get into the work of whatever the team or the group is doing. And one of the examples that she talks about that I think is in the book is bringing people together. In this case, it was bringing people together from many organizations and having them come together. And the first hour or so of the event, it was like a multi day thing of inviting people to not share what their organization was or their role or what they did professionally. Of just to get to know each other as people first. And I think it's a. I remember hearing that and thinking, wow, what a neat idea. And I do that today. Now, in our academy cohorts, when they begin, we are working together for usually many, many, many months. And the very first session of those groups. Oftentimes I will begin by starting with a big picture conversation versus talking about people's roles and organizations and titles and all of those things that we often do in professional context of let's start with something big picture of, you know, let's get to know each other as people first and so bringing in some questions that allow that to happen. And one of my favorite exercises comes from Patrick Lencioni in the Five Dysfunctions of a Team. It's a personal histories exercise. I will link to it in the notes. He's got it up on his website and ask for years for people to use. And it's a very simple set of questions of bringing a team or group together for the first time, of people getting to know each other. And you can do the exercise and depending on the size of the group, 20, 30 minutes or so. And it's just a really nice way to broaden and elevate the conversation. First of setting the tone for what you're about to do. The other thing that can be helpful is setting some team expectations at the beginning of like, okay, what are we here to do? What are we trying to accomplish together? We've done episodes on this. I'll link to them afterwards. But being able to set that big picture lens first and to tell people you're doing that, I think so often we bring a group together and we just jump in and start doing stuff and we don't stop and talk about the bigger picture of people getting to know each other. In your case, people may know each other so but you can still do these exercises. It's amazing like how often people have worked together for a decade and they don't really know a lot about the other person personally. So you can start with something like this and then set the framework for like, what does this look like going forward? And I think oftentimes we feel like when we bring people together, they finally all show up in the room. Maybe they're not going to show up next time we have that fear, right? And we feel like we have to try to do as much as possible in that one hour or 30 minutes or whatever we have. And oftentimes the very best thing we can do is just to help people to build a bit of trust with each other in the first conversation or to set a few expectations. And if we begin there, then that gets the engagement, the collaboration, a bit more trust going and then it opens the door to be able to do a lot more in the second, third and fourth conversation. And Lily, tell people you're doing that if you do that. But if you start there big picture and set the groundwork first, I think it opens up the door for you potentially to do a lot more.

Bonnie (22:30)

I was having one of those moments, Dave, where I could picture those people who are familiar with this type of group, what is called in higher education, yelling at their car radios or off into the distance at like, why aren't you mentioning faculty learning communities? You mentioned this being a new role to you and in the small chance you have not heard of faculty learning communities, that's going to be an excellent place for you to start because what you are describing sounds an awful lot like a faculty learning community. They are peer led groups of faculty members. One of the things you mentioned being afraid of was or concerned about was this being a relatively new role for you and being expected to lead your peers. It's a wonderful thing when we can orient ourselves toward collaborative learning. Takes a lot of pressure off of you and puts a lot more healthy pressure back to the learning that can only happen in groups. So these are peer led groups of faculty members, generally 6 to 12 people who often and typically engage in a active, collaborative, year long program. And they're structured in ways that provide encouragement for each other, provide support and reflection, and in many cases actually can result in, in some sort of research. Some universities will actually have faculty learning communities that present at a conference, whether it is a conference at your university or if it's one that is part of a broader set of scholarship that involves other universities. But just in case anybody was yelling at their, their podcast player, I wanted to mention the name of these groups and that is there's a ton of research out there. Milt Cox is someone who was quite involved from the very beginning in faculty learning communities. There are books, podcasts websites, all sorts of things to get you started on this journey.

Dave Stahoviak (24:26)

Thanks Lily for your question. So let's tackle one more question here from Nicole.

Bonnie (24:33)

Nicole writes hello Dave, I hope this email finds you well. I very much enjoy your podcasts still and thank you for your dedicated work. May I request some advice on a challenging situation I'm having a challenge keeping a major donor happy. We do appreciate their support and commitment to our work. The donor is very generous to our non profit. We speak to him on a regular basis, often weekly and via text at any time. However, I feel like what he requires from my team and I is a relationship that is more personal than professional. While he is a major donor, we have several other major benefactors and I could not imagine what the job would look like if we had to cater to each of them as we are required to do for this particular donor. How do I communicate the need for boundaries without losing my job or his funding? My boss has communicated that it is important to keep him happy.

Dave Stahoviak (25:36)

Nicole, thank you for the question. I think this is something that whether it is a non profit, a for profit, a government agency, all of us have run into situations where we have a stakeholder or a customer or donor who takes up a lot more time than all the other stakeholders, customers, donors, insert, you know, stakeholder name here. Right. And this is just part of this is just the reality of collaborating and working with and serving people. It's that old 8020 principle of like, you know, 20% of the people are going to require 80% of the work. And so you mentioned like, wow, this would be really undoable if everyone required this level of support. And the reality is, is thankfully that doesn't happen most of the time. Right? Like there's always those one or two that do require more handholding, more support for whatever reason that's just emerged because of who they are, because of what people did in the past, expectations when the relationship started, how they show up as human beings, whatever, right? And so that's just what's emerged. So I say that out loud. I think you know that and most of us sort of know that if we like just kind of look past the situation and step away from it and look at it objectively. But I think it's just helpful to remember that that's just a reality everywhere. I've run into that throughout my career as well too. Now that said, as you point out, there should be appropriate boundaries for things and like what does and what does not work. And I think about your boss's message of Like. Like, keep him happy. To me, that is a very different thing than do whatever he asks you to do. So, yes, keep the donor happy. And also, what are the expectations, the boundaries that are going to work for you and for your team? And you illustrated the distinction. You didn't say what, but, like, some of this is more personal than professional. So I think one question to ask of yourself, and maybe your team is, what are the things that you are doing for this donor or the requests you are getting that are related to the work of the organization, the nonprofit that you are leading and are related to the work you are doing and serving folks? And what are the things that are kind of sort of related, but not really to that? And what are things that are clearly not related at all? Like our personal requests or someone, I don't know, like, wants you to do something that's just unrelated to the support that they give to the organization? And again, I don't know what those things are because you didn't mention. But I think if you just start to maybe sit down, spend a little bit of time thinking about, like, all right, what are the kind of requests that my team and I have gotten over the last month? And where do they fall into those buckets? And maybe you just start with the list of, like, all right, here's like, the 10, 15, 20, however many requests, and like, what do they look like? Can you kind of group them up and like, okay, what are things that are related to our work? What are things that are not? And then you maybe make some decisions. And one thing you might do is you say, okay, we got all these requests, 20 requests in the last month, and 10 of them are related to our work, related to the organization, the kinds of things we would normally do for donors. Yeah, maybe it's a higher quantity than we normally do for someone else, but it sort of fits in the scope of what we would do. And then there's these other 10 requests that aren't and are something that are taking my time, my team's time, are keeping us from doing the work that we are here to do, to support the people that the organization's serving. And that's the way I'd think about it. If you're getting a lot of requests from a donor that don't have things to do with serving the organization, ultimately that's not a benefit to anyone. They're not using the resources they've donated to the organization. Well, if they're taking your team's time to do things that aren't in alignment with the purpose and mission of the organization. And if you identify some of those things and say, hey, you know, maybe here's some things that we would no longer do, I think that is something you then go and have a conversation with your boss and some of the other stakeholders and say, hey, you know, I've spent some time thinking about the time that we're dedicating to this donor as our team and we're going to continue to keep them happy. We're going to continue to dedicate the time and resources. And I'm noticing that there's this one particular area of requests that don't really line up with the mission and the purpose of our organization. And I'm thinking that I'm going to sunset doing some of this particular work or responding to this particular request. And by the way, that's a word that I like to use when I'm thinking about stopping doing something or stopping providing support for a service or whatever that's emerged over time is sunset. It's a signal that like a season is done and then this is something that I'm just not going to do any longer. And depending on what that is, you might decide to have a conversation with the donor and say, hey, I know that our team has provided this support to you over the last month, year, 10 years, whatever, and we've reevaluated some of the things we're doing and we're committed to continuing to do the things that are so critical and so important, important to the work that you have supported for organization. And here's one thing that we're going to sunset in this next season in order to do that work well, or maybe you don't say that, maybe you just start to do a little bit of that in practice. And one thing in, in the event that none of that's helpful, Nicole, and is like, well, I can't do that. This is just the way things are. I think one other thing just to try on a tactical level is I know early in my career, whenever a stakeholder customer requested something, I felt like I needed to respond instantly, either me or my team. And one of the things I've learned over the years is that it's helpful sometimes to slow things down a little bit, that if you get a text at 4pm on a Friday afternoon, that you still respond to it, but maybe you don't respond to it till Monday morning at 8am and it's really interesting, like just putting a little bit of space on some things and you may try that and Just experiment with that a bit, assuming nothing else works and just seeing okay, does that slow down some of this? Because I have gotten myself in trouble so many times of doing unnecessary work for people and supporting people by just like responding instantly and just slowing things down a little bit. Taking a day or two to respond to a request, again, in the context of the things that aren't central, aren't important to your work. The organization, I found, often helps to reset the pattern of the relationship just a bit and set a new standard, even in a situation when you can't have a more explicit conversation about it.

Bonnie (32:24)

I remember when I first started out in my Master's in Organizational leadership program about 25 or so years ago, and it stayed with me all this time was just this distinction that for many of us we fall somewhere on a continuum of focusing more on tasks and more or more on relationships. Now, of course, most people's leadership frameworks are more complicated than a single continuum. But you might think about for yourself. Do you tend to focus more on the tasks that need to get done or the relationships that need to get cultivated? If you had to pick, you know, somewhere where you might place more of your time, your passion, your talents, in a particular overly simplified spectrum like that. And as I was reading your question and listening to Dave reflect on it, I kept thinking, you need a Shannon. You need a Shannon. And what I meant by that is that I have a colleague who I work very closely with for whom a lot of her passion, her imagination, her talents are really wrapped up in relationship strengths. I encourage you to look at Lisa Cummings work on her Lead Through Strengths website and try to think through for the people on your team, do you have someone or someones for whom on a simplified spectrum like task versus relationship might find themselves spending more time on cultivating relationships and finding energy and passion? This is not to say that those who are more naturally inclined toward relationship are not also expected to get tasks done on their job. Nor does this say that those people who tend to orient themselves more toward task aren't expected to and should cultivate the ability to build relationships. But if you have someone for whom this is an inherent quality, meaning it comes naturally to them, it's their default setting. It might be worth thinking about if there is anyone on your team for whom this might be an energizing experience. I concur with Dave that you might want to start to slow down and sunset just for the overall culture and health of the organization. But is there someone on your team who may feel a spark of delight to get to, you know, really cultivate a relationship with someone who's given so generously in contrast to what sounds like a very taxing relationship for you. So those are just the thoughts that I have. Sounds like a challenging situation. I know Dave, and I would love to hear any steps that you take. And I'm also put a little asterisk next to sunset. I literally just found myself wanting to just carry around a piece of paper with me where I make a list of things that I might also like to sunset. That word does sound really it really resonates with me too.

Dave Stahoviak (35:23)

If this conversation was helpful to you three related episodes I'd recommend one of them is episode 395, how to create Meaningful Gatherings. We mentioned the work of Priya Parker. Priya was on that episode. We talked about her book the Art of Gathering, a wonderful masterpiece on bringing people together and how to do it. Not only the big picture, the why and the purpose, but also the tactical how to actually put events together, both personal and professional. Episode 395, for more on that also recommended episode 509, transitioning to remote Leadership. Tammy Bielen was my guest on that episode and we talked about one of the key tactics she recommends is having teams set up a team charter for how they communicate. When do we use email? When do we get on slack? When do we use teams? What do we talk about in person? It's the kind of thing that many teams never really say out loud. When norms have established in a lot of places, they've just established over time rather than the team, the team leader sitting down and having a conversation about what are the mediums we use and when and how do we utilize those in order to benefit communication in the best possible way. Episode 509 for more on that. And then finally, I'd recommend the work of Lisa Cummings. We mentioned her episode 692 is the time she's most recently been on we were talking about transcending leadership struggles through your strengths. Lisa, one of the top practitioners on utilizing the CliftonStrengths or Strengths Finder assessment. Many of us have taken that assessment over the years, but few organizations really leverage it daily. And thinking about how do you use strengths well so that you're not just trying to get better at the things you're not naturally good at, but you think about how do you work to leverage your own strengths? And just as importantly, if not more so, how do you leverage the strengths of the other people on your team to play to their strengths? As Bonnie mentioned today episode 692. For that. All of those episodes you can find on the coaching4leaders.com website and I have two invitations for you today if you've not done either before. The first one is to set up your free membership@coaching4leaders.com that's going to give you access to tons of the free resources inside of the membership, including the ability to search for every past episode We've aired since 2011 by topic, and also my free library, access to all of my interview and book notes, the free audio courses, and a bunch more benefits inside of the free membership. All of it is there. If you haven't done that before, go over to coaching4leaders.com, set up your free membership and you'll have access to all of that. The second invitation is if you already have your free membership, I would invite you to discover Coaching for Leaders Plus. It is an opportunity for you to go further and one of the things that I am remembering all the time when we have conversations like this and thinking about all of the past episodes we've had over the years and so many of these ideas that we keep coming back to so much about leadership and connecting with people well and having purpose and vision in organizations are timeless principles that if we would take the time to just take a first step or a second step or a third step, we could do so much for our teams and for our organizations. And every single week I am coming back to one of those key ideas, those key principles to help us all to move forward in my own personal journal. Every single week I am writing an entry. I'm delivering it to your inbox so that you can take the next step to move forward in your leadership. It is one of the benefits of Coaching for Leaders plus if you'd like to find out more about what's involved with plus go over to coaching4leaders plus all of the details are there. Thank you all for your continued support and those of you who are part of our Coach Coaching for Leaders plus Membership Coaching for Leaders is edited by Andrew Kroger Production support is provided by Sierra Priest Next Monday I'm glad to welcome Sunita Sa to the show. She's going to be joining us to discuss how to stand up for yourself, a critical skill for all of us. Join me for that conversation with Sunita. Have a great week and see you back Monday.