Ever wonder how a great musician learns to play at such a high level of expertise?
Practice!
I’ve watched several interviews and documentaries about some of the world’s greatest performers. Each and every one of them has an unrelenting passion for practicing their craft.
In a family business, if you are going to perform at a high level, you need to learn how to communicate and get comfortable with some very common, yet difficult conversations.
Having watched working families over the past 20 years, I’ve seen people go from very uncomfortable and incompetent to more comfortable and competent in these skills. You noticed I didn’t say completely comfortable. Some of these conversations will always be a little bit difficult, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t practice them.
Rest assured the people that are the very best at what they do are willing to do the hard work that most people won’t do.
If you want to have a great family business, I would encourage you to practice these conversations:
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Giving and Receiving Feedback
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Making a Responsible Complaint
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Checking Something Out
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Ask for What You Want
Giving and Receiving Feedback
Giving and receiving feedback is one of the most important skills to maintaining a healthy team and a healthy relationship. Too often people have certain complaints or misgivings, but they keep them to themselves. When that information is held back, the other person doesn’t have a chance to do anything about it.
Learning to give and receive feedback is one of the simplest tools that we have created. We’ve seen it work with many clients over the years. It is a simple exercise of answering two questions:
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When I see you at your best I see…
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When I see you not at your best I see…
The most important part of this exercise is to make sure and deliver the feedback with a warm heart. The other important part is for the receiver to not spend a lot of time justifying or rationalizing but to simply say, “Thank you.” You can explore the person’s feedback in a later conversation but it’s really important to first let it sink in.
Making a Responsible Complaint
Too often we have complaints about people, yet we are ineffective at delivering the complaint in a way that’s productive. In coaching, we call it making a responsible complaint. What we mean by that is to share your discontent, but do it in a way that takes responsibility for thinking about how it will land with the other person. Also make sure to do it in a way that will move things forward.
Here’s an example:
My uncle would ask me to follow up with an employee about an issue. Then before I knew it, he took it upon himself to follow up on it.
Here’s an example of a responsible complaint:
May I give you feedback about something that’s not working for me? When you asked me to talk to an employee and then you talked to them before I had a chance to talk to them, makes us both look like we aren’t on the same page.
In the future would you be willing to have the two of us agree upon a deadline to talk to the employee? I would then have a reasonable amount of time to talk to them and we could look like we are on the same page. Would that work for you?
In this case, rather than simply just complain, I gave more information as to why I think what we’re doing isn’t working. I gave specific details on how I think it might be better and asked him to have a buy-in to the situation.
It’s important to express your complaints and most importantly to do it in a way that is productive.
Checking Something Out
Checking something out is a communication tool by which you can see what the other person is thinking and do it in a very non-threatening way.
I have a client that did something that I thought was not ideal. Rather than coming in with a harsh judgment and criticizing them for what they did, an important skill is to be able to check it out.
So I said to the client, “When we were in that meeting yesterday, I noticed that you said something to your team member that kind of surprised me. I wanted to just check it out with you. Could you give me a little bit of your thought process as to why you chose to use those words?
In other words, rather than jumping to judgment and criticism, I, with a warm heart and an open mind, simply wanted to check out with them what their thought process was. When you learn to check something out, you’ll get a more honest, less reactive or defensive answer about what someone is doing.
Asking for What You Want
This is one of the most important skills to learn. If you want to be happy and be in a beneficial relationship, you need to learn how to ask for what you want.
Take inventory of your relationships and the things that are working and not working. Ask yourself if you have been really clear about what you want from others and have you clearly communicated that to them.
Learning to ask for what you want in a reasonable and concise manner is really important.
Now, remember that when you ask for what you want it can be an opening for the other person to potentially deny what you want or negotiate for something different.
Wouldn’t it be better to hear their denial or listen to their negotiation? You really don’t want to walk around and be upset that you’re not getting what you want?
These are four simple examples of things you need to practice in terms of your communication in the family business. Remember, in the beginning of this article, the people that are the very best have a relentless desire to practice!
A coach many times can provide you feedback about your practice. These kinds of skills are a part of both our Family Business Playbook and our Family Business Decathlon which are two tools that give you a step-by-step recipe for learning how to practice.
Play to your potential!
Coach Pete
Pete Walsh is a demanding, courageous and playful Master Coach in Phoenix, Arizona. He is the founder of Peak Workout Business Coaching and the Family Business Performance Center. He can be reached at pete@peakcoach.com.
