If you really want to understand how your colleague’s feeling about something and get their perspective, use a scale. Here’s Peter with more.
I’m just in the final stages of preparing for a workshop that I’m delivering with a colleague today. Now, because we tailor our workshops to the individual specific needs of each organization, I’d spent some time working on it yesterday. And when I met up with my colleague, I wanted to get his perspective. So we talked it through. And then I said, “Well, you tell me how you feel about this.” And we used fist to five. Now, he came up with a three. And to be honest, I was a bit disappointed. I spent a lot of time working on it. Well, it was only a three. But what it enabled was a really good conversation about what needs to happen, what needed to change to move it from a three, closer to a five, which was all about ‘how do we bring it more to life and ensure people are able to apply these practices. ’If I just asked him, “Hey, how are you feeling about the workshop?” or “Everything good with the workshop tomorrow?” we would not have had that conversation. And so the workshop, I think, would have stayed at a three. So my nudge to this week is that if you really want to understand how your colleague’s feeling about something and to get their perspective, use a scale. Either fist to five or as simple as just “On a scale of 1to 10, how are you feeling about this?” It’s a great way of opening up a conversation that a closed question will simply not deliver. I’m Peter Russian. I’ve got about half an hour to go before my workshop. A little bit nervous. That’s your Leadership Nudge.
