When It’s BETTER to Answer a Question with a Question

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Answering a Question

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This week I was talking to a friend — he’s a kind, wise observer — about a habit that’s been with me a long time. It’s usually harmless, but it also doesn’t serve me well.

Sometimes it’s better to answer a question with a question.

This is a good story . . . it really happened.

The Question Was When?

It was the time I was commuting from Southern California to rural Massachusetts. I was living in a hotel, driving a rental, and parking in the visitor’s space.

The situation was caused by the real estate market in California. Banks were “forgiving” mortgages, which meant house prices were lower than the amount that folks still owed to the bank. We couldn’t afford to sell our home and lose the money invested in it. We ended up waiting two years for the prices to get back to where we could afford to sell.

During that two years, I would spend two weeks at each location. Every time I was in the office, two or three people would ask some form of the question

When are you going to move here?

One day, some time in the middle of the second year of my commute, I was walking out to my car with a woman who worked on my team. She asked,

When are you going to stop being a visitor?

I launched into my answer about where the housing market was at that moment and where we predicted it was going. I told her when we projected that would mean my family would be moving to the area for real. She stood with me, by my car, and listened intently.

As soon as i finished, she polited said, “Thank you, but what I wanted to know was, when you were going to quit parking in the visitor’s parking place?”

How many mistakes had I made there? Oh.

If only, I had thought to find out why she was asking.

If only, I didn’t assume I already knew.

BTW, I didn’t really park there every day. She a classic set-up for a joke when she saw one.

–ME ‘Liz” Strauss
Why SOBCon — Not that Other One? –

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Check out the Work with Liz!! page in the sidebar.

How Too Much Thinking Used to Screw Me Up

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We Think a Lot

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The other day, we were talking about being shy and telling stories in the context of self-promotion. I said something about the “ME” in self-conscious. I’ve always thought about it. RK came back and put to words in a pair of comments that said exactly what I always had wondered about . . . am I shy or am I egotistical?

Then, oh then, the killer sentence was this one.

I’d say the ME in the Self-Conscious could be very much due to hyper thinking and analysis. — Comment by RK

Guilty.

How Too Much Thinking Used to Screw Me Up

This is one of my best stories . . . ever.

The company had a feeling about people that was good. Some folks were larks and some were owls was how the president described it. So no one really watched what time anyone came in the door each morning. Everyone assumed we all knew what our role was and that we did our fair share.

Except well, it started to get noticed that my team was coming in later. Then later. Soon it was after 9:30 when the last ones were trailing in. Okay so maybe I was the only one who noticed . . . but I don’t think I was.

In any case, before anyone else said something I thought maybe I should.

We had a short meeting at 11 a.m. I explained that we were kind of pushing the envelope on the time we came in, that maybe we should be aware that other folks might misinterpret things. After some conversation, everyone went to lunch.

Two hours later, two people still weren’t back.

This is the part where I did too much thinking. . . . I had two completely different arguments going on in my head at the same time.

  1. They’re good people. This is a coincidence. I should handle this as I always would. Treat them as adults. Assume they have a reason. Move forward.

  2. We just had a meeting about taking advantage of time. If I don’t say something, I’m not doing my job.

I bet I had this argument going on for at least 20 minutes as I kept looking at the clock on my wall. I got absolutely nothing done during that time — talk about not doing my job.

As I’m in the middle of this argument, the two return. I hear their manager say to them, “Are you NUTS!?”

It was the perfect response for the two people and the situation.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Check out the Work with Liz!! page in the sidebar. She’s much better now.

Business Rule 9: What’s the Value of Money?

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Scheduled Pay Raises?

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Suzannah of the Square Periods — you know the editor, who didn’t play the banjo but should have — was one of three editors who had started work on the same day. I started work as their Executive Editor a few months after. Sheila and Kris had been teachers. Suzannah’s husband was a teacher still.

What all three editors knew about pay raises looked like the scheduled increases of teacher salaries.

That, unfortunately, turned out to be a problem.

When the time came for their first-year performance appraisals, I met with each of them individually. We went through the process of how the self-appraisal part worked, what I would do after that, and what we would talk about together.

Sheila, the star of the three, was already being considered for the next promotion. In the meeting with Sheila something unusual came up. She might have been looking to short-circuit what she didn’t want to happen.

Only Fair or Is It?

Sheila told me about an agreement the three editors had made.

“The three of us are having lunch to celebrate our first anniversary.” Sheila mentioned that they had agreed to reveal the amount of their salary increases. She said they wanted to be sure everyone was treated fairly.

“Oooh. That’s not a good idea.” I said. “I don’t think you want everyone to make the same.”

“Why’s that?” she asked. Remember that teachers don’t go to business school. They think in terms of grades and whole class rules. We spoke about company no tell policy, but I was focused on getting her personal investment in not wanting to share. Understanding that the no tell policy is a support and a protection is important.

“Imagine I hire a guy named Frank with a resume just like yours on the very same day as I hire you. One year later, you’ve done great work. You have managed three projects on your own. Whereas Frank has been confused at every turn and managed to screw up two projects so badly, they will miss their release dates by months. Same raises for both of you?”

“No.”

Sheila had just figured it out.

Money is paid for what the work is worth — and for management of that work in the company’s interest.

The more I wake up in the middle of the night, the more I have to think about the goals of the company, the more I’m responsible for the work of others, the more money I should make. Money = stress, execution, productivity, responsibility. End of story.

I then had the same conversation with the other two. The lunch happened. The salary revealing discussion did not.

Business Rule 9 may sound simplistic, if you already know it.

It’s key to ANY negotiation. When I learned it, suddenly I knew I understood how to buy a new car and how to purchase a house. The mysteries of talking money started to demystify before me. The value of money isn’t just important at work.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related
Business Rule 8: What Are Your Square Periods?
Business Rule 7: Sound Bytes, Stories, and Analogies
Business Rule 6: Who Dropped the Paddle?
Business Rule 5: Never Underestimate the Power of a Voice on the Telephone

Business Rule 8: What Are Your Square Periods?

Filed Under Business Book, Business Life, Perfect Virtual Manager, Successful Blog | 14 Comments

When People Don’t See

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At the end of the their first year, new editors begin to “find their feet.” They’ve been through the publishing process; completed one or more projects; and know considerably more about making books than they did when they first walked through the door.

We were working on 8-page readers. These books were for kids at the earliest stages of their reading career.

We were at the beginning of the book design process. On this day, we had met to review book design samples and had chosen the one we would go with – a large square, 8 inches de all photo or art but a one-inch band for type across the bottom of the page.

open a and open g

The typeface was one of the four then available that had an “open a” and an “open g.” These two letters are important to early readers because they help kids make connections. They look the same way kids are taught to write them.

I tell you this because the discussion of the open a and open g led one first year-editor to over-generalize, taking her woefully astray. Two hours after the design meeting, Suzannah, the editor, came into my office looking seriously concerned.

“We have a problem,” she said.

“I see. Tell me about it.”

“We can’t use this typeface we have chosen. It has square periods.”

square periods

She showed me a two-page design spread that had two giant pictures, one sentence per page. She pointed to the periods. Indeed they were square. Pixels are square. So are periods. I guess she hadn’t noticed that you have to go through a few typefaces to find periods that are not. It’s kind of like kissing frogs to find a prince. It takes a lot.

“Okay, lay out your thinking.”

“First-grade teachers teach kids to make their periods round like this,” she said demonstrating. She took out a sheet of paper and wrote a sentence like a first grade teacher might–though she had never taught, she seemed awfully certain of exactly how it was done.

“And the typeface is a problem because . . . ”

“It’s different from the teachers’ model.”

“Oh, Suzannah. Now I see.” I turned the two-page spread back to face her. “What you’re saying is . . . if I made another spread exactly like this one replacing only the square periods with round ones, . . . and if I showed the two spreads to ten teachers and asked them to tell me what was different, all ten would see it right away.”

“Oh yes,” said Suzannah. By now I’m thinking, I’d better get this girl a banjo for her knee, because she’s not seeing the world the way it really is.

“That’s okay, Suzannah. I’ll take the hit. I take full responsibility. For every letter or returned book we get because of square periods, the heat will come down on me.”

I’m not sure how long it took for her to get perspctive. I knew there was no convincing her just then. It’s hard to have an unbiased world view when you’re in love with the information in your own head.

Remembering what we once didn’t know seems to be an acquired skill not a natural talent.

That can lead us to endow our customers with information that they have no way of knowing and to us deciding what’s important to them.

Caring for customers is the goal. Configuring them is the problem. Don’t fix square periods that folks don’t even see.

I bet there are “square periods” in your line of work — they show up in conversations where I work more often than I’d ever have thought.
–ME “Liz” Strauss

Business Rule 7: Sound Bytes, Stories, and Analogies
Business Rule 6: Who Dropped the Paddle?
Business Rule 5: Never Underestimate the Power of a Voice on the Telephone

Business Rule 7: Sound Bytes, Stories, and Analogies

Filed Under Business Life, Perfect Virtual Manager, Successful Blog | 13 Comments

A Sense of Story

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My favorite CFO — I think of him as “my sometimes-irritating, little brother.” you would, too, if you heard him say, “This is the second iteration of my lunch.” — says that I talk in stories and sound bytes.

When he says sound bytes, he means quick points, analogies, and metaphors. It’s a habit that I learned from my dad. I use stories, sound bytes, metaphors, and analogies because they make it easier to explain what I’m trying to say.

We get a sense of story when we are really small. Our parents tell us stories to teach things. We learn about our family and friends through stories. We watch stories that are movies and tell stories that really happened to us and other people.

Stories help us communicate for many reasons.

  • People listen more closely to stories than they do to someone talking. People know a story has a point. Even more, a story has a beginning, middle, and an end -– and the end is usually satisfying. So we invest more in a story, because of the payoff at the end.
  • Stories bring an overlay of meaning and memories. A story told now reminds us of stories we heard as children and what we enjoyed about them then. Any story I tell gets the benefit of any well-told story that came before it. I only have to make sure that my story is told well.
  • Sound bytes, metaphors, and analogies offer quick information firmly packed. I can get a point across more quickly and more powerfully. On the day of the Famous Canoe Analogy had I said, “It’s time to stop talking about the past.” The words would have sounded an impatient opinion. Fewer words, some humor, and a shocking mental image was what got attention.
  • Storytelling, sound bytes, and analogies work because they move the problem from literal to figurative. People can explore an idea or a situation and test plans of action, sloshing through muddy waters without splashing the personalities involved. After all, we’re only telling stories.

Stories, sound bytes, and analogies can be a kinder and
more expedient way to get a point across.

Who doesn’t like to hear a story that has a great ending? Like this one — that’s over now. . . . ?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Check out the Perfect Virtual Manager on the Work with Liz!! page in the sidebar.

Related
Business Rule 6: Who Dropped the Paddle?
Business Rule 5: Never Underestimate the Power of a Voice on the Telephone
Business Rule 4: You Know Your Truth — Listen to Yourself

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