Megan Hyatt Miller:
The people that are reporting to me, I don’t think about it like they’re serving me, I think about it like I’m serving them.

Michael Hyatt:
Hi, I’m Michael Hyatt.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
And I’m Megan Hyatt Miller.

Michael Hyatt:
And this is Lead to Win, the weekly podcast to help you win at work and succeed at life. We want to talk about how to get the feedback that you need to grow as a leader. We’re going to talk about five actions that you can take to conduct intentional candor meetings in your business, and the benefits of this are enormous.

Michael Hyatt:
You could go to a leadership coach, but the problem is, the leadership coach will never see you in a situation like the people that report to you see you. Right? Because they’re seeing you unfiltered when you’re not on your best behavior, and they’re experiencing it from the top down as opposed to you managing up or across. And so it’s important to get it from the people that you’re trying to lead because they know better than anybody what’s it like to be led by you.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Yeah.

Michael Hyatt:
Megan, I know this is something near and dear to you and something that you’ve put a lot of effort and thought into, just talk a little bit about the problem of how this becomes difficult the more you rise in the ranks.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Yeah. Well, I mean, this is one of those good news, bad news that your success creates this problem kind of a scenario. And here’s what I mean, we have been talking for a while on the podcast and elsewhere about how as business owners, we inevitably become the ceiling on our business. The business cannot grow past our own capabilities and capacity and thinking ability or whatever, and so, what we’ve got to be intentional about doing is removing those obstacles so that the ceiling on ourselves can grow.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Well, one of the biggest obstacles to growth is just awareness. Right? And the more people that you hire, the more successful you become, oftentimes there’s a barrier between you and what other people think about your leadership, how effective you are. When you’re at the beginning of your business, oftentimes you have a direct line of sight. You have people who are willing to tell you the truth. Maybe you’re not that powerful yet, nobody’s really that intimidated.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
But over time, either because there are people in between you or because inadvertently, maybe people feel like the expectation is they’re just supposed to say positive things to you, nobody’s giving you critical feedback. And I mean that in a positive way, constructive feedback to help you grow, and you can develop blind spots and they can just go on for years and years, and you can be unintentionally sabotaging yourself and really keeping that ceiling fixed on your business.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
So, we want to get that out of the way, and one of the best ways that I’ve found to do that is by proactively asking the people who report to me to give me candid feedback. This is a little uncomfortable, but every time I bring this up with our coaching clients, they are like clamoring to know more because I think it’s a real felt need that we don’t have access to the input that we need to grow as leaders.

Michael Hyatt:
Well, the thing about it is, that this is free, doesn’t cost us anything, and it’s readily available, people would love the opportunity to talk about your leadership, but they need permission and they need to know that it’s a safe environment to do so. And so, one of the things I’ve experienced over the years is, I’ve asked some of these questions and been intentional about gathering feedback is that people will often try a little bit of feedback that’s not that scary because they want to see how you’re going to react. And if you become defensive or you become angry, or if you have any negative emotion, including a scar on your face, that stops.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Okay. I have to tell you a funny story.

Michael Hyatt:
Okay.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Let me set this up first by saying the way that I solicit this feedback, and we’re going to get in into this in detail is I ask a series of questions in conversations that I have with my direct reports twice a year. And this is all inspired by the book, Radical Candor by Kim Scott, the questions are inspired by her. I can’t even remember which ones I pulled directly from the book and which ones I just jumped off from. But when I started doing these groups, I’ve done it both in a group setting and a one-on-one setting, I had to consciously say to myself, “Manage your face, manage your face.”

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Because when people give you feedback, we can let our thoughts come out through our bodies sometimes, like we’re doing a good job maybe, and we’re expanding a lot of energy on not interrupting the person giving us the feedback, but our body, we start to wiggle and Twitch and fidget, and maybe, like you said, get a scar. And I have to consciously have a little conversation in my head, “Relax your face, relax your body, take a breath.” It’s like I just repeat that in my own head.

Michael Hyatt:
This is one of the biggest things I’ve had to learn too is just to smile and be welcoming. I think my natural resting face, and yes, they do have a word for that or an acronym, which I’m not going to quote, but my resting face is, I think of it as thoughtful and open. But for whatever reason, people in the past have interpreted that as angry or there’s something going on inside of me. I mean, just even a poker face is not a helpful thing here. You got to be nodding and encouraging it and smiling. And most of us, I think, in leadership, think that we smile more than we actually do.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Yep. That’s really true.

Michael Hyatt:
And sometimes it takes some outside help and I’ve had to employ different people at different times to try to get me to smile, like when I’m speaking publicly, I had a booking agent one time, I said, “Look, I need to work on this because I watched some video of myself and I said, ‘Ooh, I look so stern.'” Even telling a joke and stuff, I wasn’t smiling. So, he worked with me over the course of, I don’t know, two years or so, and he would stand in the back of the room and he would point at his face and make a big smile, which was my cue to smile more.

Michael Hyatt:
Even after I started doing it and started working on it, then I’d watch video and I’d say, “Gosh, I’m still not doing it as much as it feels like.” Because I felt like I was this grinning idiot. But as it turns out, I wasn’t, I was only occasionally smiling. So this is something to be aware of when you embark upon this process, because it will shut things down if you don’t come across as open and make the environment safe, and that’s on you.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Yeah. It is. It’s like your primitive brain through your facial expressions is talking to somebody else’s primitive brain. And like that’s the conversation … That’s the meta conversation that’s happening. And so that’s why your body language and your facial expressions and your tone of voice and everything really matter. And basically what you want to communicate is keep going, say more, and so you’ve got to be safe in that way for the person who’s brave enough to share their feedback in what I call these candor meetings.

Michael Hyatt:
So, let’s talk about the first one and the first one, action one, select the candor questions. This is not where you’re just going to spitball or free associate, but you’re going to have a list of specific questions that you go in with that you want answers to. Megan, you actually developed these or borrowed them from Kim, please talk about these.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Yeah. I have a list of 11 questions and we’re going to talk about this in a second, how this works in the meeting, but I basically break these up into two groups of questions because 11 questions would be a lot. I find that you can get through about half of these in one meeting where it’s not too overwhelming. You can’t do this, by the way, in a group, you have to have a pretty high trust group and you need to have somebody identified to go first, who is maybe a little bit-

Michael Hyatt:
Brazen?

Megan Hyatt Miller:
On a braver side, somebody who is, you can just count on who you have a really good relationship with to kick things off because it’ll give other people courage. But that’s an interesting group dynamic when I’ve done it that way. But here are the questions, the 11 questions. So the first one is, how can I serve you better as a leader? How can I serve you better as a leader?

Michael Hyatt:
Okay. Before you go on, I just want to say there’s a philosophy of leadership that’s baked into that I think you should talk about.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Yeah, there is. I think about my direct reports as my most important clients, we have a whole bunch of coaching clients who are very important to me, hundreds of those folks, many of whom are listening, and they are at the top of our list of important people. But even above them are my direct reports. And I say that because they’re the people who are taking care of those clients primarily and they’re teams of course, and I know that if I take good care of my people, they’ll take good care of our clients.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
So, I really want to serve the people that are reporting to me. I don’t think about it like they’re serving me, I think about it like I’m serving them and I need to help clear the path for them to make their greatest contribution. And if I’m doing that well, then they will make their greatest contribution, which will enable me to make mine. So, I think you’re right, there’s a philosophy baked in there.

Michael Hyatt:
Yes. And it’s helpful to know that philosophy and be intentional about your own leadership philosophy. And we subscribe to something that we didn’t originate, somebody else did. I’m not sure if it was Blanchard or somebody like him, but the whole idea of servant leadership, that’s our model.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Yeah, definitely. Okay. That’s number one. How do I serve you better as a leader? Number two is, what is one thing that you need from me that you haven’t been getting? What’s one thing you need from me that you haven’t been getting?

Michael Hyatt:
I love that one.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Because often, there are unmet needs just like there are unmet needs in a marriage or in a parent child relationship or a friendship. There can be unmet needs in a relationship with someone who reports to you that, gosh, it’s not that you’re intentionally withholding yourself, it’s just that you don’t know what those needs are and maybe they would say something like, “I really need my wife to understand the vision of this company so that she understands what I’m contributing to.” “Okay. Well, you know what? We can have dinner next week and we can talk about that.”

Megan Hyatt Miller:
These are usually very easy to solve things, but not the things you’d normally bring up. It’s not like any one on one agenda, you’re asking that question on a regular basis. So this is a really good one. All right. And then number three is, in what ways do you feel set up to win or set up to lose in your position? Gosh, this is another really good one because you may be as the leader rigging the game in such a way, maybe it’s in your leadership style or how you hold that person accountable or how you set goals, or whatever it is. In some way, that person either feels like they’re set up to win or they’re set up to lose.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
And so often they’re just these small things that are in the way that are creating problems for somebody or that you want to do more of because, gosh, it’s working. And unless you ask directly, you’re just not going to know those things. So, I love that one too.

Michael Hyatt:
The thing that’s important here is that high achievers especially will not play game where there’s not the possibility of winning. So if they feel like the game is set up in a way that they can’t possibly win, they will disengage. And this is why in a lot of corporations and a lot of our coaching clients, the reason they have such a low level of engagement is because the leader, them, they haven’t defined the win and how people can win. So people are just phoning it in, and you don’t want that.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Well, that’s why in our mission statement, we say we’re a performance coaching company, and what we teach our clients how to do is drive performance both in themselves and in their teams. And so I think that you’re absolutely right. You want to be very intentional, you don’t want this to be unconscious or an afterthought, you want to be very intentional about what it looks like for this person to create a game that they can win and remove any obstacles that are in the way of that.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Question number four is, if we could resolve one issue to improve your role, what would it be? If we could resolve one issue to improve your role, what would it be? Now, this is a great one to ask just in general, but I have asked this oftentimes in a group setting with the team of my direct report, and I find that especially people who may not have the decision making power, find themselves with some annoying process or some hierarchical way of doing things that is really creating a lot of problems for them and keeping them from being able to make their greatest contribution.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
And oftentimes what they will tell you is something so dinky and small from your perspective, you’re like, “I can do that in 10 minutes on my way home from this meeting.” And for them, it makes like a world of difference.

Michael Hyatt:
I had somebody tell me one time when I was holding these candor conversations in a much bigger corporation, in a different context. Somebody said to me, because I asked a version of this question. They said, “If I could get another file cabinet, that would change my world.” Because they had maxed out their file cabinet and they literally had to have one of their colleagues come over and pry open the existing file, so they could stuff another one in there. And they said, “If I could just get another file cabinet, it would change my world.” And I’m thinking, “Wow, I can make that happen. How about this afternoon?”

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Right. Or somebody will say something like, “I do so much writing on my laptop that the R doesn’t work anymore on my keyboard and it just makes it so much harder to write.” And you’re like, “This is a $5 problem. We can do it right now.” Anyway, I love this question because it’s the hero question, it gives you the opportunity to be hero to somebody with not a whole lot of effort, but with a big impact. So it’s great.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
All right. Number five is what opportunities for improvement do you see in our business? What opportunities for improvement do you see in our business? This is a great question because if you haven’t done this much before, what you will find when you start intentionally creating space for people to give you feedback, is that sometimes the best ideas come from other people than you.

Michael Hyatt:
True.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
So often the people who work for us have a level of insight, have a perspective that we just don’t see, we can’t see it from our perspective, which is up at 30,000 feet. They’re much closer to the ground, they have a totally different vantage point and they can see opportunities for improvement or things that are really threatening that we just miss. I mean, from my perspective, the opportunity to get intelligence from people who are in different positions than us is so extraordinarily valuable. So, I’ve gotten some great answers to this question.

Michael Hyatt:
Me too.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
All right. So question number six is, what could I do better to lead our team as a whole? This is a macro question. What could I do better to lead our team as a whole? But this is giving people the opportunity to evaluate how effective is your leadership company wide. And again, they’re going to be privy to conversations with people who report to them or just with others who are at their same level where people are saying at the water cooler, “Gosh she never really communicates, or she never really tells us why we do what we do, or man, there’s just too many surprises, we don’t really understand when things are coming down the pike and it’s so disruptive, it’s like she doesn’t even understand our work.” And so, this intelligence, again, enables you to dial in your leadership, so you can be far more effective company wide.

Michael Hyatt:
Yeah, this is a sense in which you’re asking them to help you define the win for you.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Yes.

Michael Hyatt:
You’re helping to find the win for them, but you need to know what it takes to win with the team. So there’s nobody better to do that than the people that are the recipient of your leadership and are charged with leading other people, they’re in the middle and get to experience both sides of it, and can be an ambassador or representative of the entire team, and that’s helpful.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Absolutely. We did this in a survey recently, so not exactly in a candor conversation, although we gave people the opportunity to provide candid feedback, what did they need from a culture standpoint? We had a series of questions that we asked. And I had one idea in mind, I thought I need to be really spending more time with the team, all this kind of stuff. And I’m sure to some degree that’s always true, but what they actually wanted was more social time together. And that’s the thing that would come up in a conversation like, “I really wish you would provide more opportunities for us in a post COVID world to connect with each other as team members.” And you’re like, “Oh gosh, I’m so glad I have that insight or I would’ve solved the wrong problem. Thank you so much.” You can really get some surprising answers to this question.

Michael Hyatt:
By the way, parenthetically, this is probably something we can make an entire episode over. But one of the things we’ve seen in the last 20 to 50 years, fewer people are going to church, fewer people have what we would think of as a traditional family with a mom and a dad and all that. So, people have lost some of that nurturing social structure that they used to have, and they’re looking more and more to work for that, and there’s a sense in which we have to provide it in order for people to be productive.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Well, especially after a couple of years of virtual everything, people are really hungry for it.

Michael Hyatt:
Good point. Okay, what’s number seven?

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Okay. Number seven is my favorite question. This is also the most vulnerable one. I have this down the list for a reason, I would recommend doing this in your second set of questions, which is, what’s one thing that I do that makes you crazy? What’s one thing that I do that makes you crazy? Now, this is one where you just really have to manage your face and you’re probably going to see the person on the other end of giving the feedback, start to squirm a little bit, because they’re probably going to have something that they’ve prepared that they want to share with you and they’re going to be hesitant and they’re going to be looking at all those primitive cues like, “Can I really tell her?” So, you got to make it safe.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
But I have had some great answers to this question. And fortunately, I’ve also been blessed with direct reports who really are willing to give me this feedback. One of the things that I got a couple of times in a row was that when I change meetings around, so for example, like this next Friday, we have a company wide monthly focus meeting. So as a team, we get together on a monthly basis, we’re going to go over financial results and all that kind of stuff.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
And I was considering a couple of weeks ago moving it, and for good reasons, but I remembered in the back of my head, this feedback that I had gotten from a couple of my direct reports about when you move meetings around, it creates a cascading effect that you really have no idea about, and it is just a crazy scramble for everybody moving all their one-on-one meetings. And what you don’t realize is just this domino, and if you could just schedule things and leave them alone, that would be really helpful.

Michael Hyatt:
That’s good. All right. What’s number eight?

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Number eight is, what’s one thing that you’d like me to keep doing?

Michael Hyatt:
That’s good.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
It’s not all bad news. We want to make sure that we know what is really working in our relationship with our direct reports or with any group of people. So, for example, if consistent one-on-ones are really working for them, that’s great. Or if you call somebody on the phone every day on your way home, like I every day call my assistant, Elizabeth, as I’m driving to pick up one of our kids from school. And that really helps her to get the answers she needs to move forward with her job. I imagine she might say something like that for this question. Again, it might not be a big thing, but it’s really helping somebody, and you wouldn’t want to accidentally change that not realizing that’s the very thing that is helping set somebody up to win.

Michael Hyatt:
I like that. Okay. Number nine?

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Okay. Number nine. What’s one disconnect you see between me and the rest of the team? What’s one disconnect that you see between me and the rest of the team?

Michael Hyatt:
Can you give an example of that one? Does anything come to mind?

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Yeah. Well, we’ve been going through some big changes lately at Full Focus, we had our big rebrand shortly after the first of the year and have just been really reimagining several things in our business. And of course, I’m always at the center of those decisions. And I realized recently that I had made a mistake. I was meeting with our directors, our leadership team last week, and I realized that in an effort to try to free up some time for them, I had canceled a couple of meetings recently, and I thought I was doing them a favor, and probably in the short term might have felt like that to them too.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
The negative was that, they were not privy to one, the progress that I saw that we were making on some big projects, the why behind why it was worth the challenges that we were facing as we were implementing those changes, and how proud I was of them? So I think that they were, frankly, a little bit stressed out with just what we were working through and all that it would’ve taken for me is to spend more time with them and connect with them and really make sure that I was reinforcing the decisions that we’d made, what we were doing together, all that stuff.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
And there was a disconnect between what I knew was going on and how purposeful it was and how helpful it was and how excited I was about the future and what they were experiencing day to day with their teams in the trenches, so to speak. And I could have bridged that gap by just more communication and connection. So I think if I’d asked this question to them, that’s probably what they would’ve said to me.

Michael Hyatt:
That’s good.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Yeah.

Michael Hyatt:
Okay, number 10 is how can I better communicate with you? And I’ve got an example I want to give on this one. I wish I had had, in this case, it was a board member who was also part of the ownership team of a company that I was running, and he would text me after hours. I’m talking eight or nine o’clock and it was never, “Hey, congratulations, we’re giving you a raise.” Or, “Hey, you’ve earned more on your bonus than I know you even expected.” It was never good news. It was always either some bad news or it was some thorny question that he wanted the answer to that would keep me up at night.

Michael Hyatt:
And so, what I would’ve said to him had he answered me or asked me this question, how can I better communicate with you, I’d say, “Hey, that tough stuff, I’m totally up for that, but I do better in the morning. So if you’ve got that tough stuff, I’m more resourceful in the morning, not when I’m already tired and worn out.” I’m going to be honest, at the end of the day, sometimes when I get tired, I get a little bit negative. And so that’s not the best time to hand me a problem and say, “Solve this.” Because what I end up doing is spending half the night tossing and turning about it, and never really getting to a solution, when if you gave that to me in the morning, I could probably come up with a solution in 10 minutes. It’s those kinds of things.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Well, I had a direct report years ago who would always communicate with me in very lengthy Slack messages.

Michael Hyatt:
Oh, there you go. Yeah.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Super narrative like big, long paragraphs, hundreds of words, and I’m a person who likes to have the conclusion first. I like to know-

Michael Hyatt:
Me too.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Where we’re going to end up and then you can back it up. And as I said recently to somebody, “Please put your message in bullet points, if at all possible, just short sentences, bullet points, make it easy for me to scan because I’m probably reading it between messages.” Well, the other person wasn’t malicious in their communication style, they were trying to be thorough, they were trying to make sure I had all the information I needed. It was well intended, but it was really frustrating to me. And I think that’s a good example of this is just communication styles, and there are things you can do to frustrate people or not.

Michael Hyatt:
And you may not be aware of it at all.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
And you may not be aware of it. Yeah.

Michael Hyatt:
Okay. Last question.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Okay. Last question. What are your top three suggestions to help me be a better leader in our business? And this is really fun. This is when you really feel like the other person is acting as your coach. Again, these people have a front row seat to your leadership, they know what they think would be areas of opportunity, and I’ve gotten some great suggestions in these areas. Sometimes it’s, do more of what you’re doing in X, Y, Z area. And also, if you could do this, it’d be great. But I think this is a great question to leave on because it tends to be very action-oriented and something you can go put into play right away.

Michael Hyatt:
I’ve had a couple coaching situations where I’m talking to a client and they’re like, “I don’t know what else I could do.” And so they give me permission to talk to somebody on their team, and somebody on their team knows exactly what they need to do.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Right. Right.

Michael Hyatt:
And they’re completely oblivious unaware of any of that, and if they just ask their team, gosh, they get to the answer so much faster. Because like you said, those people have a front row seat to your leadership and they probably know best. Okay. Believe it or not, that always action number one, select the candor questions. The rest of this is going to go a lot faster. What’s action number two?

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Well, simply action number two is schedule meetings with your direct report. So, I do this with my executive assistant. I have her schedule two of these meetings per year, roughly six month intervals. I like to do one right at the beginning of the year and then one midway through the year. But this is not one of those things that you want to try to fit in like spontaneously, I think the discipline of having it on your calendar helps to move you quickly, and the person on the other end, who’s giving the feedback through the awkwardness or maybe that little sense of dread that you may have until you’ve done it enough times to know how valuable it is. If you just have it as a recurring appointment on your calendar, it’s so, so helpful.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
I usually try to leave 90 minutes for this. I think that is important. You don’t want to feel rushed. There will be a lot of questions or a lot of opportunity for a little bit of back and forth.

Michael Hyatt:
So, do you do these meetings in a group context or in one-on-one context?

Megan Hyatt Miller:
I have done them in a group context. I think I mentioned earlier that I had had a good experience with that. I like that. I think that it’s probably more productive to do it in a one-on-one context. You certainly are not going to get through five or six questions in a group unless you have half a day or something. So, I think if you decide to do it in a group, I would just do a couple of questions max, but I really like to do it as a rhythm, as a part of my one-on-one cadence with my direct reports.

Michael Hyatt:
People may want to try this in a group setting and try it in one-on-one yeah, and just experiment with it.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Yes.

Michael Hyatt:
The thing I like about the group experience, and I agree with you, I typically would default to one-on-one, but the thing I do like about a group experience, and you and I have done it in a group context before, is that it can validate whether that’s a quirk that only one person notices or whether the whole team has seen the same thing as the person who happened to voice it. So there’s value to both of them and I just would say, try both, see which one you prefer.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
One of the things I would be cautious of, if you do this in a group is I wouldn’t get too far down the org chart where there’s just a really big power differential because I think you can maybe pick different questions, but these are really asking a lot of the people sharing the feedback. And you’re asking them to take a risk from their perspectives, how it’s going to feel. And I think if they’re two layers down from you, if you’re in a bigger company or more. I think that’s going to put them in a pretty tricky situation, especially because it’s likely you don’t have much of a relationship with those people personally.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
I think if you’re going to do it in a group, I would try to reserve that for your direct reports, to the best of your ability, people that you have a lot of rapport with and a lot of trust and more likely a sense of safety.

Michael Hyatt:
Okay. Action number one, select the candor questions. Action number two, schedule meetings with direct reports. Action number three?

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Send the questions in advance. And that happened upon this by accident. I don’t think I did this the first few times that I did these meetings. I’ve been doing them for a couple years now. And what I found is that you get a better quality of answer if you allow people to think about it, and I think that’s because there is an inherent vulnerability to sharing candidly with someone. If they’re thinking of the answers off the cuff, they’re going to be more likely to hedge their bets or pull their punches in real time.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
But if they’re referencing what they’ve already written when they were all by themselves, preparing for this meeting, they’re more likely to say what they really mean. And so I would encourage people, I don’t normally ask people to prepare for one-on-ones very often, other than sharing KPIs or something like that, but I think in this case, you’re really doing them a favor by asking them to prepare.

Michael Hyatt:
I think also this gives a chance for people who have a personality type, where they just process more slowly or thoughtfully. It gives them a chance to do that, so they’re not put on the spot and have to be a quick start when that’s not really their personality makeup.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Yep. I think that’s true.

Michael Hyatt:
So you want to be respectful of people’s diverse personality types and give everybody a chance to play at the same level.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
I totally agree.

Michael Hyatt:
Okay. Action number four.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Action number four is to conduct the meeting. Okay? So you’ve scheduled it, you’ve sent the questions in advance, you’ve picked the questions, all those things. Now it’s time to actually do the meeting. And so again, I reserve about 90 minutes for this meeting. I don’t like to feel rushed. I like it there to feel like there’s a little bit of breathing room where I can ask a follow up question where I can ask somebody, usually I’ll ask this many times, so they say more about that, invite them to share more. Because, like you said at the very beginning of this episode, sometimes what people do is they’ll test the waters, they’ll say about half as much as they mean. And if you say to them, “Well, say more about that.” It’s like a therapist trick.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
They will eventually really get to the heart of the issue and you want to allow enough time to get through that. So, I think having enough time is helpful. Also, you’ve got to actively listen, you’ve got to make sure that your face and your body make it look like you want to be there, not like you’re offended, you don’t want to be leaning back with your arms crossed. You want to be curious. You want to be really interested in what they’re saying and make your face communicate, “Hey, keep going, this is excellent.” And I often will say, “This is so valuable. I know it’s a little awkward to do this, but you’re really helping me.” Because if you don’t say that, they’re not sure, and 90 minutes can feel like a long time to be vulnerable. So, this is important.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Also, don’t do too much talking. I mean, one of the things I have found, a couple times I’ve actually unintentionally allowed myself to fall into this is explaining why you did the thing that they, for example, when you ask what’s one thing I do that makes you crazy, maybe if, in that example for me of changing the meetings, maybe I could say, “Well, you may not know that I’m really trying to make sure that I’m always in regular communication, because my job has me changing my own schedule frequently because of the needs of the business. Sometimes have to do this, but that’s only because I’m prioritizing the team.”

Megan Hyatt Miller:
You want to not have any comments like that. This is not the opportunity for you to justify yourself as much as you may feel that impulse, this is really the opportunity to validate, to thank them for sharing, especially the more vulnerable it is. And then just ask clarifying questions as needed. So, this going to involve some self-control in your part as a business owner or the leader.

Michael Hyatt:
Can I say also, I think you need to listen for what’s true and what resonates, and don’t get hung up on this stuff that-

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Sure.

Michael Hyatt:
Doesn’t resonate. For example, somebody may say something to you and you go, “You know that was a one off behavior, you’ve never done it before. You don’t intend to do it again.” But forget that, don’t try to justify yourself as Megan was just saying. But I think there are situations where when you’re listening, if you can find 10% of it that’s true, that 10%, if you could change, that will be enormously helpful to your leadership. So focus on the area that resonates and the area that you know you can correct.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Well, I think that’s another good point, part of how we exercise self control and manage our facial expressions and our body language is you’re not obligated to take any of this feedback. I mean, you might have somebody who’s … This has not ever happened to me, but you might have somebody who just has it out for you or they’re just wildly misguided in their perspective, or have a bone to pick or whatever. You don’t have to do what they’re asking you to do. That’s not the point of the meeting. There’s not an implicit commitment to solve these issues necessarily.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
So I think part of what helps us to actively listen and have that posture of curiosity, it’s totally reasonable for you to go away and evaluate what somebody said. You don’t have to necessarily commit to solving all those problems right there in the meeting. This is one of the things you’re going to have to get good at as a leader and as a business owner is the more feedback you get, the more people you have, you can’t be just running around doing everything everybody says all the time. You have to be able to take the feedback and then process it and decide what you want to do with it.

Michael Hyatt:
One of the things I think is helpful too in terms of body language and communicating that I’m really actively listening is to consciously with my body lean toward them and take notes.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Yes.

Michael Hyatt:
Now I don’t know if you agree with that or disagree with that, Megan.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
I do agree.

Michael Hyatt:
But I’m taking notes and I’m talking about not typing on my laptop, that communicates that I’m distracted, but I’m literally writing in my full focus planner, writing what they’re saying. What that does is, communicates to them that what they’re saying is so valuable that I’m taking time to write it down.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
That’s right.

Michael Hyatt:
And then when I finish, what I like to do is to take my notes and say, “Okay, let me repeat to you what I heard you say. That gives them a chance to correct that if you misheard them, and it also gives you a chance to validate what they had to share with you. And then you can say, “Man, this is so valuable. Thank you so much. I’m going to really think about this, prioritize it and try to make the changes that are the most meaningful.”

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Yeah. I really like that. I’m glad you brought up the note taking, because I think that’s really important too. I think that you definitely do not want to take notes on your phone. That’s like the worst or your laptop, that’s about the second worst. You really want to do it by hand. You want to make sure you’re pausing to look up and make eye contact with that person, and reinforce what they’re doing. I think that’s so critically helpful.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
I have not done the reflective listening thing where I’m repeating back what I heard somebody say, but I feel like that might be, as our friends do says, a way to biggie size this. So I’m going to try that next time. I like that. I’ve done that in other context, of course, but not here. So I like that.

Michael Hyatt:
Good. Well that brings us to action number five or last but not least action.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Follow up as necessary is action number five. So, while I said in the previous action, number four, conduct the meeting, you don’t necessarily have to feel obligated to do everything that someone asks of you. However, it’s really important, I think, that you follow up on the things you are going to do, because just like you were talking about how important it is to validate what someone says so they understand how valuable it was to you and how important it was.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
The most valuable or the best way that you can validate someone is by actually doing what they said, which is again, not always the course you need to take, but when it is, if you can go back to them and say, “Hey, Jen, I wanted to let you know that I am going to do that thing you said. I’m going to start meeting with a team and providing social opportunities once a month, because I just think you’re right. We really need that for our culture, and thank you so much for that suggestion.” If you send that message to someone, or tell them when you see them, that is going to reaffirm the behavior that you want more of, which is, provide that candid feedback so that I can keep getting better. I think that is really, really critical.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
What I normally do, because I usually end up with several pages of notes from one of these meetings, is I will usually meet with my assistant and process the list, and I’ll usually know in my head, “Hey, I want to do this, I don’t want to do that. I definitely want to do this thing.” And we’ll get that ball rolling right away. That’s just the meeting follow up behind the scenes. And then the next thing is that I’ll follow up with the person and let them know what I’m going to do. By the way, if you have an assistant, I would not have that person join the meeting, I think that makes it feel even more vulnerable that they have to say it in front of two people, whatever it is that they want to share. So just keep that in mind if you’re doing this in a one-on-one context.

Michael Hyatt:
Yeah. When you set this meeting, you’re automatically creating the expectation that you’re going to change.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Right.

Michael Hyatt:
And if you don’t change something, then people will become disillusioned and cynical.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Yes.

Michael Hyatt:
So you’ve got to follow through, that example I gave earlier about the lady who expressed her frustration and not having a second file cabinet. I literally went that afternoon and got her manager, read him in. And this was a situation where I was meeting with people a little bit further down level without the managers. And I said, “Order that file cabinet, I’ll pay for it out of my department.” He did it immediately that I could communicate to her, “Hey, thanks for that input. It was super helpful. By the way, we’ve ordered you a file cabinet. It should be here in a couple days.”

Megan Hyatt Miller:
I love that.

Michael Hyatt:
So that communicates that you’re really serious. And then guess what? That person goes around and said, “Oh my God, I shared in a meeting how I had this problem and the guy already fixed it.” So that builds a positive reinforcement in the culture, and is the opposite of cynicism. Okay. We’ve had five actions here, let me repeat them. By the way, let me encourage you guys, if you’re thinking to yourself, oh, I missed all those questions under action number one, which was to select the candor questions, that’s where you need to go to Leadto.win, and download the transcript, because all that’s going to be there.

Michael Hyatt:
Action number two, schedule meetings with direct reports. Action number three, send your questions in advance. Action number four, conduct the meeting. Action number five, follow up is necessary. Meg, do you have any final thoughts on this topic?

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Yeah. Thanks for asking, dad. I think one of the biggest challenges as business owners, as leaders, is to not unintentionally self sabotage our own personal growth and business growth by not having self-awareness about where we need to grow, and your business is not going to grow if you, as the business owner aren’t growing.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
And I think that there’s this unexpected vein that we can tap into in terms of our own self-awareness, which is the people that we’re actually leading. Just like our own families and our friends, these are the people who see us up close and personal. And if we have enough courage and enough fortitude in the moment to create space for people to provide their insights, their perspective, and then we’re really open to hearing that, to implementing the things that make sense, then we create a really virtuous cycle of getting the feedback we need to become the best versions of ourselves so that we don’t limit the potential of our organizations or the opportunities for the people that we’re serving within our organization.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
So, I think once you start doing this, you are just going to love it, you’re never going to want to look back. I can’t imagine leading without having the opportunity to get this kind of feedback from my team. Honestly, that’s why we encourage our clients to do this on a regular basis in our coaching program, along with a lot of other performance strategies, because you’re just not going to be enough on your own, but the good news is you don’t have to be.

Michael Hyatt:
So good. Join us next time, we’ll be talking more about how to win at work and succeed at life. Until then, lead to win.