Are your quick-connects too quick? Bring back the hour in 3 important steps
Regular check-ins and quick meetings on progress are important. But if you’re not spending a full hour of close attention with your top leaders, you are leaving talent on the table. Spoiler alert? Something magical happens at minute 37. Making the most of the magic means leaving yourself space to transform awareness into action.
When home life and work life collided in 2020, we were parenting two precocious preschoolers, and I will forever remember a picture I snapped of them both standing in the entry of my doorless office, their chunky toes gripping an invisible line between my office and the foyer of our house. Bending forward at the waist, their bedhead wild from a week of no rules, they leaned through the atmosphere, judging whether the air in the off-limits workspace was any different from the rest of their house.
“Giving her full attention isn’t just nice. It’s her job.”
Today these same kids are in school full time, and we live in a different house with a door to my office. But the way I described my work then remains just as important now: “Mom is with a client, and it’s her job to give them her full attention.” What began as a way to describe why I couldn’t play with cars and dolls while also taking a phone call is today a reminder for both myself and those around me of the highest form of value I can offer–my focused attention. It’s what I give when I’m at my very best, and what you should be giving your people on a regular, predictable basis.
So, are you?
As a professional executive coach, I do this for most of my day. And even though I’ve been at it for years, I can still only manage about 4 sessions per day before I start to lose my full focus. So this isn’t something for the faint of heart, and it isn’t something I recommend leaders take on as a replacement for their other team touch-points. But if you are not having regular, focused sessions of attention-giving, you are doing yourself, your people, and your business a great disservice.
Gallup data suggests the magic dose of meaningful feedback is once per week, and that people crave that feedback about their performance from their direct manager. What I’m suggesting is something deeper. Depending on the size of your team, you may or may not be able to offer it yourself (that’s where mentors, peers, and professional coaches come in). Your job as a leader of leaders is to deeply focus on people, one at a time, for at least an hour, at a regular and predictable cadence.
And trust me on this one–30 minutes is not enough.
I am a big fan of half-hour meetings. This is not a meeting. This is a session. And in great sessions, something magical happens at minute 37. There is something that shifts in people after they are truly settled in and begin to think more openly. Thirty-seven minutes is not a poetic euphemism. It’s not a “well, every person is different, the point is just to take your time.” It is quite literally the moment in a session where I have noticed the most meaningful shift, most often, with the most of my coaching clients.
But you can’t just shoot the breeze for just over half an hour and hope the aha moment comes to you. When you’re doing this right, you’ve been reeling in the special shift by paying full attention. And here’s how:
First, make it about them. Especially if you’re leading high-level executives, conversations about their experience can be temptingly focused on their vertical team. The air time they get with you, their leader, is rarefied. It’s natural for them to want to fill it with requests for resources, suggestions, or representation of their team’s concerns. Making it about them means setting aside the needs of their direct reports in order to explore their experience of leading that team.
Making it about them also means it’s not about you. Coaching and connecting deeply means you prioritize their awareness over your connection. You serve as a facilitator of discovery more than a host of rapport.
Second, listen deeply. If you’re making it about them (not their team, but also not about you), you can listen for more than an opportunity to speak next. You can move up the ladder of quality listening by hearing what is said and asking more questions to understand it from a perspective other than your own. The highest level of listening, the kind that coaches literally go to school to learn, is often referred to as “global listening.” This means tuning in for more than just understanding. It’s hearing all that is being said and all that is not being said. If this is a step too far for you, listen to understand more about how you can individualize your leadership to this person. Listen for what motivates them, what challenges they might be ready for, and what behaviors they’re exhibiting that you can recognize in order to create repeat performances of excellence.
Listening and asking questions that evoke awareness should lead to a moment of exactly that–awareness. Sometimes it's a revisit to a truth they already knew but had lost sight of. Sometimes it’s a breakthrough change of perspective that opens doors of clarity far into the future. (Sometimes it doesn’t happen, and that’s okay too.) You can hold me on record to the prediction that this awareness moment happens most often in the second half of your hour together.
That’s why it’s so important to save enough time for the third step: help them fine tune their influence.
Paying active attention can lead to a meaningful breakthrough in awareness. This breakthrough turns into realized improvement when it’s coupled with two things: action (practice on the awareness) and relationship (someone who knows about the new awareness and cares that it makes a difference). You are well-positioned to serve your people by offering space for them to explore both.
Don’t leave a session without clarity on next steps. What is it you hope this person remembers? What do you think they are doing especially well? What action do you hope they take? This does not have to be punitive or a doubling down on weak areas. “Action” can be simply continuing good work they’re now more aware of, or increasing their great moments by letting something go. Use this opportunity to future-cast a hopeful experience. Help them understand their reach, their shadow, their influence.
Consider questions that place the leader in a more positive future, from the perspective of someone who benefits from the leader’s increased self-awareness. Here are a few hopeful future-casting questions that support greater understanding of the leader’s influence:
What would your work experience be like if you kept a hold of the awareness you have right now? What difference would that make for your team?
Who benefits from you getting this right?
If someone on your team was experiencing this breakthrough, what would you want them to do with it?
What opportunities do we leave on the table if you forget about this breakthrough?
Leaders spend so much of their time considering the needs of their people. Next time you meet with one, take the conversation full circle–fueled by attention. Your first stop is to create a space for the conversation to be about them. Then help them make the most of that awareness by pointing it toward others. In the space of one circle around the clock, you will have done so much more than had a meeting. You will have facilitated difference-making. And that, my friend, is your influence.
If your leaders are not getting focused attention sessions regularly, it’s a good idea to consult a coach to supplement your available attention. Contact us for support.
