How to Build Trust Within a Cross Functional Team
Today’s guest post is from Rick Lepsinger, President of OnpointConsulting. They are long-time friends of ours, and leaders in the field of leadership development. Rick addresses a key application for trust in the business world – cross-functional teams.
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Trust is the foundation of any organization. On cross-functional teams, where collaboration between members of different functional units is a core part of effective day-to-day operations but when no one has direct authority over anyone else, trust is critical. However, it can be more difficult to build in a multi-functional team especially when team members are geographically dispersed.
Building trust among multi-functional team members is a key part of enhancing the overall productivity, profitability, and functionality of these teams.
Recognizing Trust Issues
Recognizing the signs of trust issues is crucial for diagnosing problems as well as guiding any trust-building efforts. Some of the danger signs of low levels of trust on a team include:
- Lack of Involvement. When team members do not share information or involve colleagues in decisions that may affect them.
- Lack of Interpersonal Interactions. When every conversation between team members is “strictly business” and team members do not connect on a personal level.
- Talking Behind Each Other’s Backs. When team members talk about the mistakes of others to everyone except the person who made the mistake.
- Focus on Functional Rather Than Group Goals. When team members are in it for themselves rather than helping one another meet goals for the good of the whole group.
- Team Members Avoid Asking for Help. When team members take on too much themselves and avoid asking for help because they believe that they cannot rely on others.
- Everyone Deflects Responsibility for Their Mistakes. When team members blame others rather than accept responsibility for mistakes or missed commitments.
- Micro-Managing. When team leaders, and even team members, scrutinize the work and progress of others and start to tell people how to do their work.
Odds are that if trust is lacking, then you may notice several of the above symptoms among your team members. So what can people do to build trust and increase the perception of their trustworthiness?
The 4 Essential Elements of Trust
Many of the aforementioned symptoms of a team with low levels of trust can be attributed to the lack of one or more of the following components (ref the Trust Equation):
- Credibility. How much team members believe what a person says.
- Reliability. The extent to which team members “follow through” on commitments.
- Intimacy. The extent to which team members empathize with others and feel they can confide in one another.
- Self-Orientation. How much a team member thinks that someone else has his or her best interests at heart.
Actions to Build Trust
Trust takes time and effort to build on any team. Although not always easy, some methods for building trust in a cross-functional team include:
- Arranging Face to Face Meetings. At least once early in the team’s development, arrange a direct, face-to-face meeting so everyone can put a face to a name. In addition, host online video-conferencing to replicate the characteristics of face-to-face interactions. This provides opportunities for team members to connect and build relationships.
- Partnering Team Members. Have team members at various locations work closely together on different projects. Then, rotate the teams so that everyone will, eventually, be partnered with everyone else at least once. This provides team members with opportunities to establish credibility (by demonstrating competence), demonstrate reliability (by meeting commitments), and build relationships and demonstrate intimacy.
- Clarifying Shared Goals and Common Ground. Self-orientation is greatly improved when the entire team is focused on the same objectives. Common ground creates a situation where it is no longer “your” goals or “my” goals but rather “our” goals, which makes cooperation and collaboration desirable.
- Using Action Plans. Actions plans outline who is responsible for what activity and when that activity is targeted for completion. They can be seen as “contracts” that document agreements. As a result, action plans improve reliability — they increase the likelihood that commitments are top of mind and that people will deliver on their promises.
- Celebrating Wins as a Group. Whenever a team member or the team as a whole has a major accomplishment (meets a particularly tough deadline, makes a big sale, solves a big productivity challenge, etc.), celebrate that win as a team. This provides a forum for team members to recognize the contributions of others and can enhance the perception of credibility and reliability.
- Encourage Team Members to Voice Their Concerns. If a problem is ignored, then it won’t get fixed. Such problems eat away at productivity and erode trust over time. Creating a culture where it is expected and safe for team members to voice their concerns and complaints—and acting on them when feasible—is a major part of improving self-orientation and intimacy among the team. When concerns are constructively raised and addressed, team members will feel that they can confide in others without fear of retribution and that their interests are being taken into account.
Using these methods, it is possible to increase trust between team members on a multi-functional team.
Monitoring Team Trust
It’s important to be on the lookout for the danger signs of low levels of trust. But, identifying specific issues can be difficult for team leaders who are not co-located with all or some of the team members and for Human Resources experts who may not be active members of the cross-functional team.
One way to monitor team trust is to use OnPoint’s GRID survey to collect insights and feedback from cross-functional teams. The survey includes questions on elements that impact trust, such as shared goals and clear roles, as well as questions specifically designed to address the quality of relationships and trust among cross-functional team members to help identify problems so they can be corrected.
For more information and advice about building trust within a matrix organization, contact OnPoint Consulting!
Competing With Colleagues
Co-opetition. Have you heard the term tossed around? It’s one that I learned earlier on in my career and has always stayed with me. A catchy phrase, to be sure; but how do you do it?
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When I wrote The Trusted Advisor with David Maister and Rob Galford, it became reasonably successful within several months. (Amazingly,16 years later, it still ranks #5 in Consulting under Small Business and Entrepreneurship.)
With its success came a happy problem: how to parcel out the leads between the three of us? Let me be clear, the book wasn’t drowning us in leads; any one of the three of us could have happily fielded all inquiries. And while we wanted to be fair to each other, we were also all of us very clearly in competition with each other.
So the question: how do you compete with colleagues?
Competing with Colleagues
What if one of us got a lead based on the book? Did we have any obligation to pass it along to the other two? If so, how? Should we establish a quota system, whereby each of us would get every third lead?
Should we let the market dictate things, and let whomever the client had reached out to handle the response? What if the client had written to all three of us? Should we all respond confidentially, or in some sense share our responses?
The problem was not unique to us, though it seemed so at the time. You may face a similar problem within your organization – who gets the lead? Who gets to present?
Or, you may come face to face with an old friend who has changed uniforms and now works for a competitor. In any case, the tension is much the same – the sensation of being a colleague feels intensely in conflict with the sensation of being a competitor.
How do you resolve it?
The Solution
The answer to the problem came to us fairly quickly, on reflection, and I documented it as part of the Four Trust Principles in my later books. The answer lies in true focus on client needs.
In our case: we agreed that we should all respond similarly to all client inquiries, regardless of to whom they were addressed. In all cases, we would say words to the effect of:
The Trusted Advisor was written by the three of us. I suspect that each of us could do an excellent job in response to your query, and each of us would handle the work slightly differently. You would be best served by having discussions with each of us, and making up your mind on that basis.
We will each be candid with respect to our own strengths and weaknesses, and answer questions to the best of our ability about the others. Each of us will respect your decision, and we are each committed to you making the best decision possible for you.
The best decision for you is what all three of us seek, and each of us will do our best to help you reach it, regardless of your choice.
This solution made everything easier. It kept our relationship collegial. It removed any awkwardness about responding to clients. It removed any awkwardness that clients might experience in choosing whom to talk to.
And, of course, it resulted in the best decision for clients, as each of us have our own particular skills and drawbacks.
So what’s the answer? Grindingly relentless focus on client service, and the willingness to pursue that logic wherever it leads.
The Antidote to Resentment
A lot of time is wasted debating the relative merits of “hard” and “soft” skills. The right response is almost always “both,” and “it depends.” I want to focus here on the “both” part.
There is a growing belief – particularly in tech and in consultative professions (and everything is becoming both tech and consultative) – that we should approach the ‘soft’ stuff in ‘hard’ terms, i.e. through metrics, short-term goals, competency models and the like.
Treating ‘soft’ skills this way completely disintegrates them. You can’t have both if you’ve turned one into the other.
Case in point: dealing with resentments in the business world.
You Might Be Copping a Resentment If…
You may not think you’re a resentful person. And maybe, graded on a curve, you’re not.
But how often do you find yourself muttering at the driver who cut you off; re-litigating arguments in your head, where you win this time; waking up in the middle of the night pre-occupied with your checking account; and gossiping with someone about how so-and-so really isn’t all that?
All those are versions of wishing you could change reality – when you can’t. And that’s pretty much resentment.
It’s the difference between hoping and wishing. Hoping things will change is fine, particularly if you’re doing something to help the change. But wishing that things were other than they are – that’s living in an alternative universe. That’s resentment. It’s fine to hope you win the lottery—as long as you bought a ticket. But wishing you’d won last week’s lottery – that’s resentment.
By living in an alternative universe, you’re playing at being God. (Unless, worse yet, you think it’s not play, and you actually believe that all your wishing makes a dime’s worth of difference to Reality). Well, hear this: there is a God – and you’re not it.
Resentment tends to eventually manifest as resentment against other people. But personal resentment is like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die. All it does is eat you up from inside, while the Resented One is either blissfully unaware, or at least generally doesn’t give much of a damn.
Why Resentment Kills Sales and Influence
This is not afternoon TV psycho-babble. It makes a daily difference in business – a huge difference.
If you are prone to the Black Art of Resentment, then you are likely to believe in short cuts, quick fixes, fad diets, new interpersonal techniques, flashy methodologies, and come-on lines for dating bars – because all those gimmicks appeal to your desire to live in a world other than this one: one in which you can dominate, control, bend the other’s will to your desire. And when they let you down – and they do, and they will – you will once again feel your Old Friend Resentment (or its kissing cousin, self-pity).
People don’t buy from those who are trying to change them. People don’t pay attention to people who are trying to persuade them. People don’t take advice from those whose egos are tied up in having their advice taken. (Interestingly, people of both genders also don’t like to date people who are needy; they prefer people who appear independently self-contained).
We interpret all those things as attempts to manipulate, and we shun the manipulator. This is not a good thing.
It also has serious business consequences. It makes for salespeople who can’t sell; advisers whose advice isn’t taken; and relationship managers that people don’t relate to. The absence of soft skills has dramatically hard results.
The Best Way to Sell and Influence
The best way to sell and influence is to get rid of resentment; to get rid of living in alternative universes; to accept everything, starting with the customer in front of you.
Acceptance in this case means taking them at face value, getting to know them on their terms, giving up all attachment to your outcome (because that’s about you, not them) – and applying your focus, energy and attention to simply helping them. Let’s call that, for lack of a better term, empathetic client focus.
If you do that, and spend your time and energy seeking to understand them, you’ll do a far better job of connecting with them than all the other resentment-fueled alternate-universe salespeople and advisors.
One result of which is – you’ll end up selling more and having your advice taken more often.
Is that a paradox? Definitely. But it’s life. People buy from those who don’t try to sell them. People listen to those who listen to them, not those who talk. The best way to sell it to stop selling. The best way to influence is to shut up.
Training to Get Rid of Resentments
You do not get rid of resentments by examining best practices. You don’t banish resentments by designing a training program based on four levels of resentment-coping skills, with behavioral metrics indicating competencies at successive levels.
Instead, you get rid of resentments by doing a Jedi mind trick; an emotional/spiritual jiu jitsu flip; a Paul-on-the-road-to-Damascus conversion. You have to come to believe that you are not God – and that all your resentments are nothing more than an attempt to claim otherwise, doomed to fail because your whole approach is selfishly based on You trying to dominate Them. It doesn’t work. They push back.
In practical terms, the solution is not the usual ‘act your way into right thinking.’ Instead, this new perspective comes about through conversations with others; through reflection; through role-playing; and through discussion with others about shared experiences. This is a different approach to corporate training – but a necessary one for certain advanced ‘soft’ skills.
Goals are Great, but An Expectation is a Pre-meditated Resentment
Goals are great. So are objectives and milestones and targets. They give you a sense of what you’re aiming for, and help you envision the to-be state.
But don’t confuse goals with their purpose. The purpose of a goal is not to achieve the goal – the purpose of a goal is to help you achieve your True Purpose. You should never confuse a quarterly sales quota with a Purpose.
It’s when goals get transmuted into expectations that we confuse goals with purpose. When we start living in that alternative universe defined by the goals, when we start obsessing over the new car, winning the contest, getting the boss’s approval, ranking in the top 20% on the bonus plan – that’s when we begin to have expectations. And an expectation is a pre-meditated resentment.
Think. Do. Accept. Rinse and repeat.
Plan, set goals, and strive. Then celebrate what you get; because to bemoan what you haven’t got is to live in resentment. A life spent wishing you were other than you are is a failed attempt at playing God, and a recipe for unhappiness – and for poor sales and unheeded advice.
Sometimes the Best Marketing Looks Like Sales
I got an email. It was from a 50-ish owner of a small CPA firm – call him “Jose” – with three competing offers to buy his practice, and a few complicating life factors. He wanted advice, and wondered if we could talk.
I don’t do much coaching or consulting, and he almost surely couldn’t afford my rates. Nor am I an expert in life planning, or in valuations.
But I said sure, call me in the morning, we’ll talk – no charge.
We had a very good chat for about 45 minutes.
I think I helped him. I know it was useful for him to talk to a third party able to comprehend his situation. I believe he’ll make a better decision, and I’m sure he’ll feel better about it. Value was created for him in our talk.
But what about me? I knew going in there was no chance of a sale from him – not now, not in the future, not anytime. And my rate was zero. Was this a foolish, impetuous, soft-hearted, flakey thing to do?
No. I like doing nice things, but I’m not a saint. Nor did I consider Jose a pro bono case.
Yes, it was a nice thing to do. But, I would argue – it was also good business.
Sometimes a sales lead that we would otherwise screen out can be a good marketing investment. Sometimes you can do well by doing good. Sometimes we need to let sales leads bleed into marketing budgets.
“Jose” will never buy from me (though other Jose’s might). But he will remember what I did for him; even more, that I was willing to help.
Jose is someone who cared enough to identify alternatives, choose me, and seek me out. He spent time to find out who I was, what I did, whether and how I might be useful to him. He was probably willing to pay for consulting. He was an educated, willing buyer, a near-client with influence on other potential clients.
For me, he was not a qualified sales lead. But – he was one helluva marketing resource.
He now knows me – the sound of my voice, how well I think on the spot, the way I interact, my sense of humor. He knows me better than one of 200 people in an audience for a speech; much better than 500 people reading this blog, or an article of mine.
Total investment: 45 minutes. Most sales people will tell you that’s an extravagant waste of sales time, an inefficiency that is off-scale. Just think of the waste in extrapolating such activities to scale!
But most salespeople would be wrong. This is not about efficiency in selling: this is about effectiveness in marketing.
The return is that Jose will tell X people about our discussion. That’s X people who will hear first-hand about a 1-to1 interaction. That’s a powerful testimonial.
The choice is not between being “good” or making money; they often go together.
Try, for just a few hours per month, shifting your sales practices to subsidize your marketing by investing in a lead.
Don’t get lost in charge-back accounting. The benefits will eventually accrue to your firm, and to you personally. Both.
What Problem Are We Trying to Solve?
An old business friend told me the other day that the thing he most remembers me saying was, “What problem are we trying to solve?” As he put it, “That little phrase is the key to unfreezing more off-course conversations than any other technique I know of.”
I can’t claim invention. I got it from the United Research side of Gemini Consulting, one of several pieces of clever social engineering they brought to business. Here’s how, and why, it works.
How Business Conversations Go Astray
To hear us tell it after the fact, many business meetings follow a logical flow. They start with an agenda or problem definition, data are then presented, discussions held, and conclusions reached. Then pigs fly.
It’s not that those individual elements don’t happen – they do. It’s that they happen like a Tower of Babel, randomly and all at once. When everybody’s got an opinion and a vested interest, and nobody’s a designated facilitator – a description of most meetings – we shouldn’t expect much else.
Have you ever been in a planning board meeting? A condo association meeting? A meeting within your firm’s HR department? An inter-departmental meeting? A sales call with an interested but wary client?
Then you’ve seen the following dysfunctions:
- People pursuing their own agendas as sub-text to a given issue
- Aimless wandering around various problem definitions
- Randomly proposed solutions without grounding
- A social struggle for air time
- An airing of pet peeves as they manifest in the given issue
- A game of dominance and submission playing out in an issue.
And I’m sure there are more. All are forms of incoherence, lacking sequence or structure, generating more frustration from which to feed more incoherence.
It Doesn’t Have to Be That Way
If the root issue is incoherence, then there are several ways to tackle it. You can agree on an agenda. You can enforce sequencing. You can apportion air time.
But one way seems to work better than others. When the babble begins to peak, and the frustration level is palpable, raise your hand, furrow your brow, and ask, genuinely, “Hey folks – what problem are we trying to solve?”
Notice what this simple formulation does.
First, it is socially neutral-to-positive. Logically it has the same effect as saying, “You fools are all over the map – you can’t even define the problem” – but the emotional effect is totally different. You’re not claiming the moral high ground or fighting for your point of view – you’re simply observing a phenomenon, and asking a question.
Second, it’s a very good question. Asking a group to gut-check a problem definition almost immediately elicits an answer – and often it’s the same answer. In which case, collaboration is restored – you all have a common mission again.
And if it’s a different answer, voila, you’ve distilled the essence of the debate – “we have two competing problem definitions, no wonder we were having such difficulties!” In either case, the group becomes re-centered around a dynamic goal – problem definition and resolution, rather than bitching and moaning, or power games.
The net effect of all this is claiming, centering, and norming. A group becomes a group again, with common goals, moving forward, rather than a fractious collection of squabblers.
Give it a try next time you’re in a meeting that’s driving you a little batty – just ask, “Hey folks – what problem are we trying to solve?”
Competing with Colleagues
When I co-wrote The Trusted Advisor with David Maister and Rob Galford a few years back, it became reasonably successful within several months. (Amazingly, it still ranks #5,252 – as of last night – on the list of all books on Amazon. That’s all books, including Harry Potter, Malcolm Gladwell, etc. I’ll take long-sellers over best-sellers any day of the week).
With its success came a happy problem: how to parcel out the leads between the three of us? Let me be clear, the book wasn’t drowning us in leads; any one of the three of us could have happily fielded all inquiries. And while we wanted to be fair to each other, we were also all of us very clearly in competition with each other.
So the question: how do you compete with colleagues?
Competing with Colleagues
What if one of us got a lead based on the book? Did we have any obligation to pass it along to the other two? If so, how? Should we establish a quota system, whereby each of us would get every third lead?
Should we let the market dictate things, and let whomever the client had reached out to handle the response? What if the client had written to all three of us? Should we all respond confidentially, or in some sense share our responses?
The problem was not unique to us, though it seemed so at the time. You may face a similar problem within your organization – who gets the lead? Who gets to present?
Or, you may come face to face with an old friend who has changed uniforms and now works for a competitor. In any case, the tension is much the same – the sensation of being a colleague feels intensely in conflict with the sensation of being a competitor.
How do you resolve it?
The Solution
The answer to the problem came to us fairly quickly, on reflection, and I documented it as part of the Four Trust Principles in my later books. The answer lies in true focus on client needs.
In our case: we agreed that we should all respond similarly to all client inquiries, regardless of to whom they were addressed. In all cases, we would say words to the effect of:
The Trusted Advisor was written by the three of us. I suspect that each of us could do an excellent job in response to your query, and each of us would handle the work slightly differently. You would be best served by having discussions with each of us, and making up your mind on that basis.
We will each be candid with respect to our own strengths and weaknesses, and answer questions to the best of our ability about the others. Each of us will respect your decision, and we are each committed to you making the best decision possible for you.
The best decision for you is what all three of us seek, and each of us will do our best to help you reach it, regardless of your choice.
This solution made everything easier. It kept our relationship collegial. It removed any awkwardness about responding to clients. It removed any awkwardness that clients might experience in choosing whom to talk to.
And, of course, it resulted in the best decision for clients, as each of us have our own particular skills and drawbacks.
So what’s the answer? Grindingly relentless focus on client service, and the willingness to pursue that logic wherever it leads.
Are Your Clients Lying to You?
Have you ever had that sinking feeling that your client—or your hopefully prospective client—is being less than honest with you?
Maybe they haven’t returned that call. The last three email exchanges have been one-way. They haven’t mentioned that meeting they were so eager about just last month. They’re talking constrained budgets. Is it possible your client is lying to you?
There Is Lying, and There Is Lying
I’m not talking about flat-out lies like, “We’re going to give you the project,” when they already signed an agreement with another firm. But consider a few other situations from your daily life:
How often do you answer “How are you?” with “Fine, thanks,” when you’re not fine?
How often do you answer, “No problem,” when, in fact, it is a problem?
How do you answer the classic, “Does this dress make me look fat?”
How often do you say, “Let’s do lunch,” meaning this is goodbye?
How about, “Oh, I’m sorry, I’m booked on Friday?” Or, “Yes, let’s definitely stay in touch.”
I’m not trying to draw a sharp moral distinction (or to blur one). I’m not trying to justify or excuse any type or level of truth-telling or its absence. I’m simply pointing out the ubiquity of situations in which we, on a daily basis, are Less Than Fully Transparent. Let’s call it LTFT. And let’s recognize that it happens—a lot.
What You Mean When You Are LTFT
What about when you are LTFT? Do you have evil intentions? Are you attempting to hoodwink someone? Are you a swindler? A thief? A con artist?
Almost certainly not. Your motives are probably to be careful of and solicitous toward the other person. You are trying not to hurt their feelings. You want to spare them the embarrassment of being contradicted, rejected, or humiliated.
And oddly enough, the less you know them, the more you are likely to feel a need to protect them. After all, if you knew them well, you’d feel more comfortable having a heart-to-heart.
But from another perspective, this isn’t odd at all. The fact that you don’t know them well is precisely why you don’t want to get into uncomfortably specific details. You can afford to think “out of sight, out of mind” because you won’t see them much more—if ever—but you don’t want them to speak ill of you either.
And so we choose a strategy for handling difficult situations with not-deep acquaintances we don’t want to hurt—to be polite and give no offense.
And so, you are LTFT. Or, if you prefer, you lie to them.
What They Mean When They Are LTFT
Be honest: why should other people’s motives be any different, or any worse, than yours? Unless you’re a candidate for sainthood, odds are your motives are the same as theirs.
What, then, to make of the girl in high school who, when you asked her out, said, “Oh, I’m so sorry. I’m busy Friday night,” before turning away? Do you really wish she had said, “Look, I just don’t want to go out with you at all?”
What to make of the prospective client you met at a networking event who said, “Yes, let’s do lunch one of these days.” Would you prefer he said, “Look, I’m just not interested in you or your offering, and I don’t want to waste any more time talking about it?”
What did your client really mean when they said you lost the bid on price? Would you really prefer they said, “Frankly, you were fourth out of five on most dimensions, and fifth on the rest, and we don’t want to invest more time in explaining it to you?”
Like you, your clients are trying to be polite, to spare your feelings, and to disengage without hurt feelings—or, at least, with the ability to say to themselves that there were no hurt feelings. They’re not “lying” to you; they’re just being LTFT with you.
The Solution to LTFT
If you don’t like being in an LTFT situation as a seller, you have two options.
The first option is appropriate when you really don’t have a viable proposition to bring to the table—when you know in your bones that you got solidly beat by a competitor or you just don’t have game. In those cases, your strategy should be simply to accept it.
In fact, be grateful for it. At least they liked you enough not to be “brutally honest.” Stop obsessing, stop feeling angry, and stop the self-pity. Resolve to either change your proposition for the next time you face this situation or not to get into that situation again.
The second option is preventive and prophylactic: drive sharply past the “friend zone,” and create a personal connection of trust. Use the “Name It and Claim It” approach and speak out loud the issue that everyone is dancing around. Give them an off-ramp, but be sure to put the issue on the table.
You don’t have to be a full-blown trusted advisor to have a trust-based connection. Nor does it have to take a long time. What you must do is speak a direct, unvarnished little piece of The Truth. Here’s what some “truth-bits” might look like:
- Don’t send that third email pretending nothing is wrong. Say something like this: “If I don’t hear back from you, I’ll assume things have shifted or changed, which of course does happen.” Then if you don’t hear back, move along.
- Instead of saying, “Let’s do lunch,” lean in while you shake the person’s hand and say, “Look, would you like to have lunch a week from Wednesday, or would you prefer to just get back to me at some later point of your choosing?” Then if you don’t hear back, move along.
- Instead of meekly accepting that you “lost on price,” say, “Look, Joe, I just want to ask you one favor, just one yes-or-no question with no follow-up. I know we did several things wrong—was it really just price that determined your decision? Or was it several other things, too? I just want to know where we should focus our efforts going forward, and that yes/no would be a huge help to us.”
- Better yet, before the bidding results are announced, say, “Look, Joe, I know we may win, and we may lose. I’d like to ask you one favor. If we were to lose, could I ask you to be honest with me about the main reason we lost? So often people give just a nice ‘So sorry’ and then we go off and make the same mistake again. You could really help us learn going forward. If you’d be so kind, I’d really appreciate it.”
Instead of meekly submitting to the LTFT ritual, be the one to break out of it. You can’t force other people to break out of it with you—you always need to give them the LTFT off-ramp—but you can lead by example.
You can show them that you’re willing to speak directly and truthfully, and you’ll appreciate the company—if they’re up to it.
Hitting a 7-Iron from the Tee Box
This weekend I joined a dozen school buddies for an annual golf outing. Now, I took up golf late in life, which explains why I’m pretty much the worst player in the group. At least, that’s what I tell myself.
Nobody minds much, except for me; everybody respects everyone else’s level of play. After all, that’s why handicaps exist. That said, once per outing, I will ask one good player for some advice. This time, I got some great advice from Dave.
“Charlie, your drives are too erratic. When they’re good, they’re as long as anyone’s, but much more often they end up in the woods on either side. Put away your driver club and just hit a 7-iron off the tee. You’ll give up 100 yards in distance, but you’ll always be in the fairway.”
An Insult? Or a Challenge?
As golfers know, on the face of it, that’s a bit of an insult. A 7-iron is made for much shorter shots than the driver. Telling me to use a 7-iron from the tee is like telling a cyclist to use training wheels, or a poet to go work on rhyming. But I know Dave, and he knows me, and I knew he was just trying to challenge my thinking in a creative way. And thinking is at the heart of the matter.
All sports are about one’s mental state to some degree; but no other sport can touch golf in the attitude-to-performance linkage. How can you miss a two-foot putt? Easy – start worrying about missing it.
For most golfers (me included), the tee shot leads the list of stress-inducing moments. There are a thousand ways to think wrongly about your tee shot – and every one of them can make for a self-fulfilling prophecy. The trick is to leave your thinking behind when you finally approach the tee, and let the habit of your muscle memory take over. Over-thinking is the root of all evil in golf.
Over-thinking: a Metaphor for Life
There was no way I was actually going to hit a 7-iron from the tee – these are my buddies, and I’m not all that ego-free! But I realized Dave had given me a gift. All I had to do was envision the result of a 7-iron from the tee – and duplicate it with the driver.
Mechanically, that meant slowing down, dialing back the swing, not trying to kill the ball. Mentally, that meant feeling relaxed, staying within my comfort zone, not pushing the limits – and especially not fearing all the bad things that could happen .
The result was powerful. I gave up some distance (less than 100 yards, though) but stayed within the fairway much more often. Result, better scores.
The Tee Box of Life
How often do you invite failure – because you’re pushing the limits on a dozen variables, living in fear of missing on one of them? Does it happen in sales calls? Client progress meetings? Presentations? Performance reviews?
Maybe you should try hitting a 7-iron from the tee box. Dial back the rough edges; stay within yourself; be very clear about the core message, the core values, the core parts of the relationship. Find your swing, and learn to trust it. Be clear and simple about what you’re doing. You may not make the occasional spectacular shot; but you’ll miss a whole lot of disastrous shots, and improve your score.