GA 315 | Dealing With Uncertainty with Steve Kane

Is everybody in a good mood? Are things going well? Is the boss okay? Is the company okay? And all these things happen just in the fraction of a second, just a quick glance. And that is something that we get from our experience working with other people. Hey, everyone.

Today I'm excited to share the audio from a presentation my Gemba Academy colleague, Steve Cain recently gave. The title of this talk is coaching and leadership work to help people find certainty in uncertain times. And obviously, if you're listening to this in early 2020, we're all dealing with a tremendous amount of uncertainty during the coronavirus. So hopefully the things that you learn in this presentation can help us in these challenging times. Now, this presentation was hosted by the good folks over at Patrick Adams Consulting, and we'll link to their website here in the show notes. In fact, you'll hear Patrick ask a few questions during the present. Now, show notes for this episode can be found over@gembapodcast.com just look for episode 315. Again, that's gembapodcast.com and look for episode 315. Okay, enough from me. Let's get to the show.

I normally work at home, and so in some respects, things are the same for me. But at the same time, I feel as though my life has been completely disrupted. So this disruption, the first thing that happens to us is that we have this feeling of uncertainty. So it's kind of like speeding down the road into a fog bank. We don't know what we're going to encounter one day to the next. News is full of all kinds of variation in stories. One story is that it's getting better. One story is that things are continuing to get worse and spreading. But what does that mean for us on an individual basis or an organizational basis? We go through certain experiences through the day that kind of help us feel normal, right? But right now, we're finding a new way to work, right? So normal isn't happening anymore. The idea of getting back to normal is something that I would challenge everybody to maybe put down for a while. We won't. The past is in the past, and now we're dealing with an uncertain future, right? So we don't know what to expect in the coming weeks or months. And. And this uncertainty impacts the contribution that we're making to our organizations. And I want to be really broad with that definition of organization, right? So it might be the company that you're working for, but, you know, think of your family as an organization, your faith group, your social circles. Everything is disrupted and uncertainty really is the topic that I, that I want to focus on today. So if you're accustomed to working in an office or a factory, some facility where people gather, there are some really interesting things that you are doing every single day and everybody else does as well. We all do it that you may not be aware of, right? So we're not really conscious of things, but the way our brains operate, think about it on an animal level, right? We're always trying to survive, we're always trying to find our safest path, we're always trying to escape pa and when that's been done, then we try to pursue pleasure. That's the way our brains operate. So if you think about your daily routines, you go to the office and you exchange pleasantries with people, you say, hello, good morning, you go have your coffee, put your things down. You probably do this pretty much the same way every single day. You park in the same place, you go in through the same door, etc, etc. Now these routines are doing a couple of things. One, they're establishing what is normal, right? And what you did yesterday is the same today. So things feel normal, things feel safe. And when we're able to do that now, when we have this sense of certainty or things that feel normal, then we're able to engage and we're able to then find some variety throughout the day. So we're making these assessments. Is everybody in a good mood? Are things going well? Is the boss okay? Is the company okay? And all these things happen just in the fraction of a second, just a quick glance. And that is something that we get from our experience working with other people, where we can see them and watch all of these behaviors, right? So we're making a quick assessment of the environment, of moods, our safety and security, right? We're looking for consistency. And now our office environment looks more like this, right? We're isolated and our view of the world is somewhat like looking through a window. And for many of us, it's like looking through a computer screen. Right? So we've switched to face to face interactions to like we're doing today, Zoom, I think Zoom, I read some statistic that Zoom's subscribership has increased something 100 fold in the last two weeks, something like that. It's enormous. Right? But this isn't the same experience as having, you know, face to face interactions with people. So one of the, one of the things that this isolation is doing to us is it's causing us to lose our nonverbal communication. Just walking by somebody's office, just that quick gesture the quick glance is often enough to say, you know, basically thumbs up. And it's reassuring to us. So when we see the boss walk by and smile, we know everything's good. Then when that's disrupted, it's not that things are bad, it's that we don't know. Right. And when we don't know. Right. What's going on, our. What's going on in our. In our minds. Right. So we have these disrupted assessments along with disrupted routines. Right. And that introduces uncertainty where certainty is desired. Right. We want to be sure everything's okay. So again, the informal conversations aren't happening. Communication now has to be deliberate. So we want to say good morning to somebody that we would normally do over at the coffee pot or the coffee station at work. Now that's a phone call or a video chat. And there are more obstacles to get over to make that happen. And quite often they don't. So let's talk a little bit about what's going on. When we have that uncertainty, what's happening in the brain? So uncertainty leads to stress and fear. And. And that is related to a shot of stress hormone. Right? Cortisol. So, and that is basic survival brain chemistry. Cortisol gives you a shot to focus you on immediate decisions. And quite often we would describe those as snap judgments or knee jerk reactions. And if you think about the way life may have been tens of thousands of years ago, you know, walking around on a plane somewhere and you, I mean, like a geographical feature, you know, out on the plains and you see some rustling in a bush. Right. Cortisol is that hormone that gets you to jump, run away immediately and not try to figure out what's in there. So the. That is happening to us when we feel stress or fear, when we feel uncertainty. And the thing that's happening to us is that it can drive some really bad decisions, bad conduct. And as an example, think about videos you've probably seen either in the news or online about people trying to buy toilet paper. Someone's pushing a cart through a store, and then people are just bombarding, just ripping things. Now, there is no shortage of toilet paper. There's plenty. But this stress, this feeling of uncertainty is driving some bad behaviors and bad decisions. Right. So we're in survival mode.

Yeah. There's a Gallup study that I had read about at one time that said that employees over, you know, I don't know, however many number that they had assessed, their employees said that they needed four things. Trust, compassion, stability, and hope. Okay. So when the stability is Taken away, which is kind of, you know, what has happened here that you talked about. The stable work environment where you're going to work every day, you're parking in the same spot, you're starting at the same time, you're grabbing coffee at the same time. That's stability. And when that's taken away now all of a sudden your life is not in balance anymore. And you're starting to now, like you said, make these rash decisions or these decisions that aren't seem like they make sense when you think back on them.

Right.

But it's because one of those important pieces that we seek out, that stability piece, has been taken away.

That's right. That's exactly right. Now. So we're driving this snap decision, short term thinking when we should be following this lean principle of making long term decisions for the long term health and success of our organization. And sometimes, again, sometimes that's our family or even us as individuals. So how does all of this relate to coaching and leader standard work? Well, as Patrick was talking about, right. People need. What were those again?

Trust, hope, trust, compassion, stability and hope were the four that Gallup put out.

Right. Okay, so take those into consideration as you're looking at this slide here, right. This is Maslow's hierarchy of needs, right. So where to trust is probably the safety social levels. Compassion is in the social level. So we're talking about the foundational levels of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Now this hierarchy has developed over the last few decades. The thing with this is these are the drivers of all of our decisions. And what that looks like today is really more about. This came from Tony Robbins, the six basic human needs. And our basic human needs are consistency, variety, significance, love, growth and contribution. And we need these things for ourselves. Nobody's exempt from this. We all have these needs. We all have one predominant need. So based on who we are, our personality, our experiences, one stands out more than the others. But that also changes according to our circumstances. And now many of us are right at the bottom. I just want to get certainty, consistency laid out. I want to make sure I'm safe, my family's safe, I'm able to take care of myself, my family, and then I can worry about work. Right? So this is really what we need to be focusing on. So for self we need these things. So what we're going to talk about in the next couple of minutes is how do we maintain that certainty for ourselves? But also if you're a leader within your organization or within your family, if you're A leader. So either people report to you or you influence other people. If you're an influencer, you're a leader. Your responsibility as a leader is to help people meet these needs. If you think about the first five needs, help them gain consistency, variety, significant belonging, growth so that they can make the greatest contribution possible. That's what we're supposed to be doing as leaders.

And maybe you're going to talk about this, Steve, but I'm curious to know how team members can do that because everybody's probably in a different situation.

Right?

I mean, again, if you're leading other team members or other leaders, you probably need to start by figuring out what conditions help them to perform the best and then again, helping to coach them through. How do we create that stability in the world that we're living in right now? I don't know what you think.

Yeah, exactly, exactly. So we're going to touch on those things that you mentioned. Yeah. So if you've ever been on a commercial airline flight, you've probably gone through this demonstration before. Right. And you know, in the unlikely event of the loss of cabin pressure, the oxygen mass is going to come from the ceiling. Right. And what is the big message that they give you? Please put on your mask first before assisting others. And we've heard this before over and over, but it's worth repeating. We're in our organizations to serve people for the long term. And we can't do that if we put everybody else before ourselves. We have to make sure that our basic needs are met so that we can serve others over the long term. So what does that really look like today, given our circumstances? Right. So Leader Standard work. Now we can get into some really technical leader Standard work that we might find from Toyota or similar organizations. What I'm showing you here is actually an image from the Best self company, Bestself co. And this is what they call the Self Journal. This is excellent Leader Standard work. And if you look from the left to the right, write out your schedule for the day. Here is talking about how you feel. But look on the next page on the right side. My goal, my target, what are my lessons learned? So what are we trying to do with Leader Standard Work? Well, we're trying to make sure that the important things get done, that we're addressing things that we're acknowledging the things that need to be done repeatedly. We're prioritizing our actions. The biggest things that we're doing here with Leader Standard work is we're establishing a predictable routine. So when the routine or the process fails us. We can make adjustments to it quickly and easily and improve our performance or improve our day to day experience. Right. So develop new routines, plan your day right. We put the most important things first. We plan our interactions with people and that's a big difference that we have today versus yesterday. Now that we're not having the casual conversations with people in passing, we need to make a point of it. And I really encourage you to build that into your leader standard work. Make time for other people. And what we're doing by following leader standard work is that we are deciding to take action. We are being proactive rather than reactive. And that's very, very important. Important. You're deciding at the beginning of the day the way your day is going to work. And in the military there's a saying that no battle plan survives first contact. But there's. But nobody goes into battle without a plan. Right? Right. So if you get off course, you can see where and, and you can still see everything that's important, what must get done for the day.

So in that reflection too you mentioned lesson learned, Steve, that reflection is so important. And just because maybe you didn't carry out your whole plan the way that you planned it out at 7am or 8am in the morning, that doesn't mean that you just throw the plan out and you just do things without a plan tomorrow. You think about the lessons that you learned today. You reflect on what happened today, how did you feel throughout the day, and then go right back into making your plan tomorrow. You know, maybe shifting some of the meeting, maybe some of those tasks that didn't get completed today to tomorrow.

Right, right, right. So if we think about it in lean speak. Right, Because Best Self doesn't speak lean, we do. Right. So this is pdca, right? That's exactly what it is. Lessons learned. That's the check, that's the reflection. And to your point, Patrick, what am I going to do differently tomorrow? So. Right. So I don't repeat my mistakes.

And the other thing too is if you are a. You mentioned taking care of yourself first. Right. So us as leaders, we need to make sure that we're doing this for ourselves. But also if we're coaching other people, you know, making sure that our team members at home, you know, while they're working remotely, that they understand the importance of leader standard work. And again, I don't know if you're going to hit on this or not, but helping them to see what is it that they should do as their supervisor, what do you expect from Them, what's the quality standard, what's the deadline for things? Just being clear with your expectations and making sure that they see the value in it also.

Yep. To me, leader standard work, by documenting this every day, you're making the decision to make things happen rather than let things happen to you.

Right?

Right. This, this says I've chosen my path. Whatever comes, I'm still going to do it. Where without a plan, all I can do is react.

That's right, Yep.

Okay. So alright now how does this tie to coaching? What is the role of the coach? So as a. Well, the coach's role is really to help people get themselves from point A to point B. And I really want to emphasize get themselves right. You can't make decisions for people and you can't make them do anything. Even as an employer, if people are reporting to you, ideally what you're trying to do, you've. What you're trying to get them to do is what you've already done with your leader standard work. You've decided to make the decisions to get through the day. Right. You've decided to be proactive regardless of the circumstances. And coaching does the same thing. Right. So you've got your day to day figured out through your leader standard working. Your coaching techniques enable you to help others to do the same thing. Right. And there are many different coaching models that will help you do that. So Kata for instance, Toyota Kata, that is a coaching model. There's the grow model and there are many others, but they all do the same thing. You're helping to enable people get from point A to point B, get themselves there. Right. So what does that really look like? Well, here's a real, very common coaching model. Believe it or not. This is the, it's also the Kata model, but it's where, where do you want to be? Where are you now? What's getting in your way? What are you going to do and when will you have done it? Right. So stated another way to look at Kata, for example, what's your target condition? What's the actual condition now? What obstacles are preventing you from reaching your target condition? What's your next step and when are we going to go and see what you've learned from taking that step. Right. Which is an accountability step. Green is the accountability piece of it. So the value of this model, and you can do this for yourself if you don't have anybody to coach you, you can write this in your leader standard work. Write these questions down and answer them on a daily basis. Because what this does Is it changes the mental state from things happening to me, to me making things happen. And that is what we're trying to do. We're trying to get a shift in mental state to help people navigate all of this uncertainty. Coaching respectfully positions a person to identify a future state. Acknowledge and accept the current state or your current circumstances, confront your obstacles, make a decision to move forward, and then hold yourself accountable to that. Right. So this process enables adaptability. Right. So we're asking people to adapt to something new, and there's a lot of confusion about that. If you ask these five questions, people will find clarity in a moment. So the coaching model is a process for navigating uncertainty. It creates certainty and helps people thrive during challenging times.

For those of us that are at home right now, if I have a team that is, you know, that is working remotely now and hasn't before, obviously if we were doing kata.

Within our.

Four walls, maybe we have a storyboard up and we were meeting daily or whatever it may be, or if not, but we were coaching in the workplace, how do you see us being able to do this at home? Is this something that I can jump on a zoom with my team members and I can walk through this with them just like we are here?

Absolutely. You can certainly do that. I do it over the phone, believe it or not. I do it via email as well. So you can do it with any medium. Absolutely. And sometimes some of the questions, they don't need to be these questions. Exactly. But you want to take people through these five steps. Right. So make it conversational. And when people get stumped, sometimes you ask, where do you want to be? And I really don't know. Maybe a different question to ask is what do you want more of in your life right now?

Yeah, that's a good question.

And here's a little coaching tip for you. When you ask these questions, think about being a. Like a police investigator on any police show or movie you've seen. Right. What an interrogator does, they'll ask the question and then they'll be quiet and be sure not to be the first person to speak because what's going on. The person that's receiving this question is going through some difficulty and they're formulating them their thoughts. And if we remain quiet long enough, we'll give them the freedom to. To articulate what they're feeling and what they're thinking. And sometimes that takes a minute. So we need to be patient with folks and let them go through that. So the whole coaching model asking These questions and taking people through this, we want to be sure to ask these questions. We want them to think on it. We want people to make decisions. And when we ask questions, we want to leave these very broad open questions. And we don't want to do what a coaching mentor shared with me as quad gestioning, which is making a suggestion through a question. Right? Right. Avoid that. You meet people at their point A and you help them find the clarity to get to their point B. And we have to remain detached from the outcome. So whatever it is that people choose to do, whatever their answers are to these questions, it belongs to them and we help them get to their point B.

That's right.

So essentially what we're trying to do is illuminate the path ahead. Right. So rather than driving into the fog bank now, we can see way out to the horizon, we can see where we're going. So some key points I'd like to leave you with. So first, getting back to normal isn't going to happen. So adapt, right? We need to adapt to the way things are today. And when we are able to go back to work, get back into offices and factories and etc. It's not going to be the way it was. Things will be different. Once everybody learns how to work well from home, we might see more of that. But the way business was conducted is going to be disruptive for quite a long time. So. So don't hang on to the way things used to be. Be open to the idea of just putting that down what used to be normal. Put it down, adapt and embrace what's coming. So two, be proactive and develop new routines. And these new routines for yourself will help you develop a sense of consistency, a sense of certainty. Use your leader standard work, plan your work and then work your plan. So everything, anytime you have some indecision or some confusion, come back to your leader standard. Work it back on track. Be deliberate about your interactions with other people. They're relying on you and you are bringing comfort to people by being able to speak to them, being able to see them. It is helpful and maybe even undervalued. Like we're not aware of how important it is to other people that we actually see them and then coach to get from point A to point B. And whether you're using the coaching model to help yourself or if you're using it to help others. So thank you very much.

Great point, Steve. We did have a couple questions pop up on here, Steve, if you don't mind. We have a few more Minutes?

You bet.

One of the questions that came Amaya said, would you suggest a site or an app to create and monitor Leader Standard work? She said that I find it increasingly difficult to coach and convince people on using standard or technical Leader standard work templates, which I completely understand.

Yeah. So I don't know of any sites or apps templates for Leader Standard work. Every time that I've used it, I've just created my own based on what I want to get done for the day. And when it comes to coaching others, if you can have a discussion early in the day of what do you want to have done by the end of the day, that can be where do you want to be? And now you get right into that coaching, the coaching cycle and you're keeping people focused on those and in a sense you're kind of driving Leader Standard work by consistently staying within the model.

Yeah, yeah. I think for us, I mean we use a very specific template, but you can go online. There's tons of templates out there online for any of you that do know maybe of an app or any kind of a good site for Leader Standard work. Maybe drop it in the comments so everybody can see that. But we use a template. To your point, Steve, it really is individualized to the organization or to the leader in what's working for them. What are the daily tasks that need to be done? What are the weekly tasks that need to be done? What are those things that I should be doing throughout my day or what's my plan for each day and what does that look like? Hamilton said in the comments that daily accountability is the key to making Leader Standard work work. And I would definitely agree with that. So that's a great, a great point from Hamilton. Yeah.

Anybody with using Microsoft Outlook, I don't use that any longer. My organization's not on Outlook, but in the past I've used it and in leadership roles. Outlook has a function to produce Leader Standard work. It's not labeled that way, but every day I'd come into the office and I would print my calendar and you can customize the format. So it was a trifold 8 1/2 by 11 in landscape orientation. But it had my calendar, it had my tasks on there and then an area for notes. So everything that was important was pre populated. So I was able to just print that out every day.

Good deal. Another question came in. It says the example that you showed of Leader Standard work that you showed earlier in your slide says this looks like it's more of a capture as you Go kind of thing they were saying. Isn't that really more like a journal or diary versus having the standard plan ahead of time? Do you want to clarify that real quick?

Sure. This is just one example and there are all kinds of different books like this. So on the left there's the calendar. So this is write out your appointments for the day before your, before your workday begins. You have there your goals and those goals are tied into longer term goals or organizational goals. So you're writing that out first thing in the morning today. And then you see that on the right page, just a little bit above center, today's targets. Right. So those are your top three for the day.

Right.

It's kind of hard to see there, but right below those three targets there's a little kind of a light gray banner and then it shifts to reflection at the end of the day. So yeah, right. So we fill this out at the beginning of the day and then the notes there, of course, for things happening during the day. But yeah, I take the point. We really, you know, we want to be proactive. Right? We plan our work. We work our plan.

Yeah, that's right. And obviously some of us have those recurring or repeatable daily tasks or weekly tasks. And so that makes it very easy to plan out way ahead of time. But also what you're talking about is in the morning, before you even move into your day, take out your leader standard work. Make sure that you have a good plan for how much time are you going to spend on your email today, how much time are you going to spend in meetings today or whatever it might be, what tasks need to be completed today. Then at the end of the day, looking back and reflecting what was I able to accomplish? Why didn't I get, I had 10 tasks that I wanted to accomplish today, why couldn't I get 10 tasks done? What did I learn from that? And that's where that PDCA comes in. And how can I change what I'm going to do tomorrow to make sure that I do get my 10 tasks done if possible? And I think right now more than ever, this is so key because we're at home, a lot of us are at home, remote, we're not used to working remotely. And we're trying to create this structure where this leader standard work could really help that to sit down and develop that plan before you start your day. It applies at home, working remotely just as much as it does when you're in the office or at your site. One of the things too that I thought is really key is especially when it comes to coaching and your team members, making sure that your team members at this time that they don't feel cut off, that you have these regular check ins and those coaching questions can really play into that. And making sure that you're having those touch points with your team very frequently, whether it's on the phone, over FaceTime or Zoom or whatever it is that you use, making sure that you have those touch points, you're asking those very deliberate questions to get some dialogue going and assure them that there is learning and action that should still be taking place.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Okay, so just to kind of recap on the key points, adapt, be proactive, plan your work, work your plan. Be deliberate about your interactions and follow a coaching model to get from point A to point B. With that Gemba Academy. Patrick mentioned the coaching. That's one of the many services that we offer. We help people improve business operations, improve their organizations, and also improve in terms of individual professional development. We do that through a fantastic library of videos, everything Lean and Six Sigma and the personal coaching. So with a subscription we talk to our customers about actually making use of the concepts that are being learned in the videos. We're here to help people be successful. That's really the point of Gemba Academy. And if anybody would like to make a contact with me, gemba academy.com if you go to the bottom of any page on the Gemba Academy website, you can just click on contact us and that will come directly to me and I'd be happy to speak with you. So with that I say thank you.

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