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- [00:00]
A
Welcome to Manager Tools.
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B
This is Sarah and I'm Mark.
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A
Today's podcast, building Peer Relationships, part two of two.
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B
As always, folks, our content has been crafted by Humans me and is now certified by the Proudly Human Corporation. The questions this cast answers are, how important are my relationships with my manager peers? The answer is very how can I build relationships with those peers? What can I do to strengthen important peer relationships?
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A
If you want answers to these questions and more, keep listening. You're a manager. Your calendar is full, your to do list is longer than it should be, and finding time to listen to every episode the moment it's released is just not realistic. We get it. That's exactly why Manager Tools licensees receive full show notes for every new Manager Tools and Career Tools episode delivered directly to their inbox. So the content is always there when you need it, whether it's on your commute, between your meetings, or when a direct report needs specific guidance. Right now, if you're serious about becoming a better manager, Visit us at manager-tools.com licenses to learn more about what a license gets you. Mark, we are halfway done our podcast. We just finished up no dropping dimes. We're going now into Pre Wire, which.
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B
Right.
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A
Dude, I gotta say, I think some of the longtime Manager Tools devotees might disagree with me, but it's gotta be like one of the top 10 things that we've ever talked about.
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B
And, you know, one of the things that happens is people have never heard of it. It's like, if not you, who? It's like race, don't chase. Those are the kind of things that they don't get shared. And when they hear it for the first time and they realize it can be used in any level of an organization, they're just astounded that it is even a technique, a tactic that you can use. Yeah. So definitely.
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A
Yeah. So, folks, we. To be clear, again, in this podcast, we're kind of amalgamating a lot of different themes into one all surrounding this building of peer relationships topic. But we're not going to go over in full. The Pre Wire podcast. There is a hall of fame podcast on pre wiring decision briefs, recommendations or asks essentially that you're going to make publicly. That guidance to the Pre Wire podcast is going to be linked at the bottom of these show notes again for our licensees.
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B
And if not, if you go to the webpage for this podcast, you will find to the right in related cast or related guidance, you will find a link for Pre Wire.
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A
For Pre Wire. Exactly. Okay, so what is it?
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B
Yeah. So when I tell the story, everybody's like, oh my gosh, I did a post hoc ergo propter hawk that because he got the. Or she got the approval because of the briefing. And you've seen it. You've seen a colleague give a briefing that seems to go nearly perfectly. Maybe they're asking for more budget, maybe they're making a recommendation about a plan or a project and generally in front of more senior folks. Usually. And what happens is you watch the presentation and it's good. It's certainly good. They seem prepared. But you're amazed that they get a unanimous yes from the group they're presenting to. And most of us assume that it's just their miraculous or persuasive presenting skills.
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A
Yeah. And that's where we. Right. We're all jealous at that point. We're like, man, if only I could present.
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B
I want to be that good.
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A
Yeah. If only I could deliver that well. But folks, that's not what made them so successful. What actually did it, what caused all those people to immediately raise their hands. Yes. Without having to ask very many questions, if any at all, is what that individual did was pre wire their briefing or request before the presentation itself. That is, they took an initial, that, that initial request to each individual to whom they were going to present, the people in the room right now with you, and briefed them privately. They asked for those people's support while being willing to make reasonable changes to their briefing in order to gain the support of those individuals in advance. Now folks, there's some risk to this. Right. It means they might only get 70% of what they originally wanted. But, but it sure seems like a big win to the people who are in the room and didn't see any of the compromises that they had to make to get that win.
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B
Yeah. When I've been talk, when I've talked about this in the field with people in the community, Sarah, one of the things I've said is there are people who are put in the situation where they have to brief or they need to make a recommendation or make an ask for more budget or whatever. And they don't like the idea of compromising. They think their idea is good and it should be all or nothing. The problem is the all or nothing briefings are the ones that don't do well.
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A
They don't do well. They don't get agreement, they get a lot of pushback.
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B
Yeah. And if you think that it's my way or the highway, either take it as is or nothing. You're Going to get nothing. And organizations are inherently political. I know that sounds terrible. There's actually a thing in governmental politics called log rolling, meaning I'll vote for your bill if you'll vote for mine. But that's not what this is. It's essentially assessing the political situation and recognizing that some people may want to change little bits and pieces. And if you go through your career and you pre wire everything and you get 70% of what you want all the time, you're going to be massively ahead of the people who take essentially a point of, you know, my way or the highway kind of thing. And so the lesson here when it comes to peer relationships is don't ever brief your boss and peers together on anything that is going to have an impact on your peers or even very little impact, or even no impact without briefing each of the affected peers privately and be willing to, being willing to compromise to get their support. Half a loaf is better than none. Now that may irritate you, but remember, when we say politics at Manager Tools, all we're talking about is human relationship effects. And it shows real courage if you sit down with people and say, look, I want to brief you in advance, I'm interested in your input and I don't want to give a briefing and then have you be surprised by anything that's in it. But I also know that if there are some effects on your team, I want you to be able to have input and I want to mitigate those risks. And when you mitigate those risks, first of all, they see it as, wow, this is really, it's bold to talk to me in advance. But it's also very respectful that you don't want to step on my toes because there's no way that you understand fully the impact on each of your peers, not so much your boss. Although that's true too. When you make a recommendation, when you and your peers works are interactive or combined to create an output, and if you assume, oh, there's nothing there for that guy, it's fine, it's fine, it's fine, they'll actually make up stuff to say. I just, I just don't like this for whatever reason.
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A
And folks, that's not all. Let's, let's take it a step further and reverse engineer it, if you will.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Recognize that when you yourself are being pre wired, it is something that's occurring. Right. Don't just say no to block a colleague with whom you're going to have to work with tomorrow and in the future. Instead, recognize it for what it is, be willing to support that individual. If they're willing to make the compromises that you believe are necessary or would be valuable, be considerate to their parts of the plan and then you yourself can support a recommendation, one that will affect you and your team and the rest of the organization. But. But again, you're, you're going to be pre wired. Also participate in the pre wiring activity when you're on the receiving end as well.
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B
Oh, absolutely. Oh, give them credit.
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A
Yeah, exactly.
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B
Absolutely. Give them credit. And don't think to yourself, I can't agree to anything anybody's going to want that's about budget or whatever. Because if they get the budget I want six months from now or whatever, you know, it's a zero sum game. And if they win, I lose. Don't do that because if that happens and you push back in a pre wire and you're not willing to compromise and they may still get what they want, particularly if they've pre wired the boss as well. But the next time you want a brief, they're not going to support you. No, it's a quid pro quo. Okay, next. So. So guys. And again, we have hall of fame guidance on pre wiring. We've only covered it in high level here, but now you know what it is. It's one of my ten favorite unsung casts. Even though it's in the hall of fame, it's a great one. It's a fundamental part of Fortune 500 companies. So the next thing we have on our list is called offer to cover. Okay? So when your peers are traveling or out sick or on vacation, offer to them that you will cover meetings or responsibilities that they might have trouble handling because they're out to some degree, your ability to do some of the things that might need to be done might be limited a little bit. You're not them. You won't have the total understanding. But to a greater degree, it's the offer that matters. And probably the first couple of times they won't say yes, but you will have built up trust with them. And then when they're going on vacation for two weeks and they. And maybe they're going to be in a remote area, but they have to leave their family for half a day to go to a place where there's good wi Fi, they're going to really appreciate the fact that you sit in a meeting. Again, maybe only half as effectively as they could have, but half again is better than zero.
- [10:17]
A
Absolutely. So folks, how can you know when this support could be or would be needed? Well, first make sure you have access to your peers calendars. And this is something that I feel like we should be able to take for granted. But you may not have access. Maybe someone was relatively new the day the email went out telling everyone to share their calendars with everyone. They didn't get it or they weren't there yet. So make sure you look through all your peers. Do I have their calendars, yes or no? If no, you're going to want to ask.
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B
Can I just share a story I heard about six months ago about calendar sharing? Two managers, one manager gets promoted to another part of the organization was doing well and the new manager comes in and knows nothing because the old manager, who is my peer, is now moving on to new and better things and is excited about his or her new role. But the new person comes in and they don't even know about meetings that the, the previous manager who has been promoted had committed to. And one of the things in onboarding that you should do, if you onboard your replacement, you've got to share with them your calendar for the next six weeks. Now ideally, ideally you would reach out to the meeting sponsor and say, hey, you need to change that invite. You need to send, you know, if it's me and Sarah, then I need to call Mike and say, or text Mike and say, dude, you know, I got promoted, Sarah's taking over my role, would you please send out an invite to include her? Worst case, I share my calendar in print because pretty soon, I mean, I'm going to get rid of, if I share my electronic calendar, I'm going to say no to all the meetings and so they're going to disappear. So you either have to share it in print and then have them add them, or you could forward the invite email and then hopefully they'll get an invite and so on. Yeah, that's, that's part of that sharing of calendars.
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A
Now folks, I want to go back to what I was saying a bit earlier about asking your peers to share their calendars if you don't have their calendar. The best, the easiest way for you to ask your peers and it be seen as, as positive is to first share your calendar and then ask them to share theirs in response. Don't ask somebody to share their calendar with you if your calendar is not shared with them. Exactly. And especially not if you're not a bad word. Yeah, exactly. So share yours, ask them to share theirs in return. And then the way to make this into a process is essentially at the end of each week, look at your peers calendars for the next week and either on Friday or over the weekend or yes, even on Monday morning, shoot them a teams message or an email or a slack, leave a voicemail, stop by their desk, whatever communication works for you and your team and offer to cover anything that you might be able to. And obviously this becomes much, much easier if you're doing peer one on ones as discussed earlier in this podcast, then you don't have to necessarily even have this moment of reaction. Reach out. You could every single week in your one on one say, hey, what are you up to next week? Do I need to cover anything? Let's look at our calendars together and like see if there's anything that I can take for you.
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B
Yeah, good. Now look folks, some people aren't going to do that. They believe they're not going to accept your offer to cover for them because they think they should do it all themselves or you can't do it as good as me. And those are the people who dial in repeatedly to calls that are really ordinary, but everybody makes them super ordinary, super special or they make them extraordinary. And they're the ones who leave their family for half a day to go find wi fi when they're skiing somewhere or they're sailing or you know, they're at a religious retreat or they're at a baseball or basketball tournament or something like that. The key thing here is even if they say no, over half of the value of this effort that we're going to make to cover is in the offering itself. Again, there'll be plenty of things you can't do. And I will tell you, if somebody offered to cover for me, I don't care if it's only 40%. Actually, I don't even care if it's 20%. If they're offering, I like the offer and I'm going to return the favor. And even just 20%, something might be said in that meeting that affects the person you're covering for and you can text them immediately and say, hey, you know, warning, order. They discussed this and they said it's too bad that you're not here because you could probably come to decision it's going to affect his team or her team. That's not good. That's not good at all. And some of your peers will even rebuff you again with the mistaken belief that they must be perceived as being able to handle everything all the time. What is that movie title? Everything Everywhere, all at once. And they have to do that effortlessly. And it clearly, if they have to have somebody cover them, that's not effortlessly because, because there was effort involved in what they were going to do. And they do that whether they're in the office or not. So don't let the negatives of people who are control freaks or you don't have that great a relationship with detract you from your offer to others and to them in the future. Again, the offer is a trust building behavior, even if they turn you down.
- [15:37]
A
Yeah. And folks, again, going back to what Mark said, you, you might not be that helpful in the meeting. Like maybe all you can do is take notes in a meeting about things that you think might affect them and their team and then send them a short email telling them what happened in the meeting while they were out so they could plan for what they're going to do when they get back to the office. Even if it's small, even if it's not overly. In your opinion. Right. In your, your, your thought process.
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Right.
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Helpful. It's not like you can do that much. Again, don't let this dissuade you from the ask. It's still a win for them. It costs you very little to go to this meeting. To jot down a couple of sentences and you're doing so. You're making the offer, you're going there. You're preventing them. Needing to find wi fi on vacation is a huge win. It's just, it's a huge trust building win.
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B
Yeah. And look, bonus, some of your peers might be willing to return the favor. That's great. Even if it's not why you're doing it. But there's nothing wrong with them building trust with you as well.
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A
Absolutely. Do you have leadership questions that are not getting answered? Kyle B. Attended our Effective Manager conference and wrote to us to say manager Tools brought clarity to questions I felt I could not ask in my daily interactions within my organization. Rather than regarding team leadership. Don't let your questions go unanswered. Join us at a conference. Visit us online at manager-tools.com emc and we'll see you there. Okay. That takes us then into offer. Verbal meeting support, not challenges.
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B
Yes.
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A
One of the problems with meetings of peers, whether they include your boss or not, is that everyone is looking out for themselves. So in many low trust organizations, a prepared stance of defensiveness is part of what it means to go to meetings. Managers pride themselves on preventing their peers from getting what they want if it in any way is related to something the defender doesn't want to give we're all worried about who is going to get some budget or putting effort into something that will take resources or away from our part of the project. And this of course shows a low trust team. And low trust teams are also rarely high performing teams.
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B
Yeah, it's been our experience folks that it doesn't take much to make a dent in this component of a low trust team, this defensiveness. Okay? You don't have to completely recreate the team's behaviors in meetings. You just have to model different higher trust behaviors. You're not going to massively change the culture by having a culture discussion about how everybody's defensive. You can just engage in collaborative behaviors. It will increase trust and lower the defensiveness. You can set an example of behaving differently, of supporting when you can, others efforts and initiatives and this will encourage others to begin to do the same. Now if you try this for two years and you're a really good team player and yet somehow nobody changes at all, maybe you're in the wrong organization. Right?
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A
That might absolutely be it. But folks, what we're saying is don't take a defend my team attitude into every meeting that you go into. Remember, you're not at the top of the bottom and only representing your team to the rest of the organization. You're actually at the bottom of the top and you're a member of your entire organizations and therefore your bosses and leadership team.
- [19:32]
B
Yeah, that calls on our effective, our executive tools, content about. About Team 1. More specifically, folks, look for opportunities to support. And we, by support, we mean verbally, out loud. Ideas, plans, programs, projects and the like that your peers put forward if their idea relates to an area that really doesn't concern your team. Don't tune out too often in meetings. We have this thing where silence is consent, which is actually a fundamental thing. It's been around for thousands of years. But if silence is consent, then the only talking that you guys do with each other is disagreement is conflict. Whereas if we all spoke up and said, yes, I agree, I think that's a good plan, whatever. It would bind the team closer together and tell them you think it's a good idea. Tell them that you can see how you think it'll. You can see why they think it'll work. You are not smarter than everybody else. Who's your peers about the work that your peers do. They're smarter than you about it. Just like you're smarter than them about your team and its work. Show them the respect verbally, out loud, good idea, whatever that you would want from them about your efforts, even those that have minimal effects on them.
- [20:55]
A
Folks, get comfortable saying things like, you know what, that makes total sense to me. Good idea, Mark. Or I see why you're doing it that way or thinking of it that way. Let me know if I can help things like I get it, Claire. I'm happy to help. If you need just those kind of again, positive comments. You're not agreeing to do anything necessarily but you're acknowledging the fact that their idea was good and, and you're there for it. You're willing to be there if they need assistance.
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B
Yeah. And if you are worried, like I don't think I could do that because I've always been fairly defensive myself. I think they would think I'm being Pollyanna or sucking up to everybody. Pick one. You don't have to do it with everybody all the time. Pick one person that you. That's this is one of the components of your building trust with them in terms of building a stronger peer relationship. Next topic, communicate impacts. So when you're thinking about your own team's work, include as a standard planning or review item, how will what we're doing affect our peer team, my peers and their directs? How do I communicate that? What can I do or change to mitigate that impact?
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A
And folks, if you think about it going back to our conversation around prewire, this is just very much like a soft pre wire and it really works if there are several peers teams who are going to be affected. What we would recommend is that you meet with each of them individually. Actually in some cases the impact might be small enough that you can deconflict things through an email or teams or slack or, or even text messages. It doesn't have to be a meeting to add this additional level or layer of communication that will ease some of the friction in those relationships.
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B
Yeah, if it's communication that's needed, and it usually will be, do it quickly. Reach out when you see an impact as you're planning something. Okay. Send a mail or a teams message that says we're working on something and I can see that it's going to affect you guys and I wanted you to know about it and get your input. And again, sure some people will just be defensive, but some will not. And in either case you'll be working on building trust with your peers. People will think that what you're doing is classy and highly professional. If in the early stages of your planning you're thinking about doing X and you, you discover an impact on Joe's team and you reach out to Joe and say, hey, we're going to do X, I think that's going to affect you. I just figure I'll talk to you about it now, even if Joe is a defender and he's going to say no, say, well, I, you know, I don't know anywhere around this, but I wanted you to know about it. Maybe we can figure out a solution.
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A
And what you're saying there, Marcus, spot on. I mean, folks, ask other people. When you're still in the planning stages, even when it's just an idea, you're just starting a project that largely affects only your team.
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Largely. But not completely.
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A
But not completely. That's. I mean, we're in an organization, right? Nothing.
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B
Yeah, I don't know if that's an
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A
exaggeration, but nothing you do only. Only affects your team. Everything affects someone else in the organization.
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B
That was Sarah Horstman of Manager Tools with the Manager Tools podcast. Joke of the week. That was good. I like it.
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A
So, yeah, folks, remember, it's going to influence them. The sooner you know their concerns, the better. The sooner you know that all the true impacts of your project on them and their team, the better. So consider your peers inputs. After you ask them, do what you can do to be considerate of those impacts. I mean, that's the definition of considerate, considering other people in your efforts. So. So consider them.
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B
Yep. Okay, can I summarize?
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Do it. Wrap it up.
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B
Yeah. Folks, we have to have good relationships with our peers. It's a part of our manager tools, core guidance, results and relationships other than your boss or your directs up and down, which is the way everybody thinks in organizations. Your peers are your most important constituency. Engage in these kinds of considerate but not weak behaviors and you'll be first on everyone else's list if they ever get asked. If not you, who?
- [25:26]
A
Absolutely. Thank you so much, folks. Thank you for joining us. We hope that this helped you. Now help us help others and tell all your friends. And of course, follow rate and review our podcast. And remember, five stars only, please.
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B
Sam.