- Be for-the-business (1x this week, should take about 15 minutes).Early this coming week, select a high-stakes or contentious interpersonal interaction (email, text, Skype, phone, or in-person) that you were recently involved in. It could be something that has ended or that is ongoing, either way will work. With this interaction in mind, take about 15 minutes to journal your unfiltered responses to the questions below and be honest:
- At the time of the event, what got and held your attention about this interaction or the people involved in it?
- At the time, was your focus on what’s for-the-business? Were there issues and considerations that were part of this interaction that weren’t really for-the-business? To test yourself here, review the challenge questions from this lesson and consider what you could leave behind about this interaction or the people involved in it.
- In what ways might the ladder of inference have been at play here, taking your focus off the business?
- How does a for-the-business orientation set you up to have the kind of impact you want to have?
- What are you learning?
- Owning it (daily this week, 5 minutes per day). During the week, start to notice where you aren’t taking that last 10% that really makes a difference in terms of owning it and demonstrating conviction. Carry the following questions with you this week as you move through your work and take five minutes at the end of each workday to reflect and journal your responses to the following questions.
- Did I close the loop by taking a stand or did I stop short in some way, leaving it for someone else to complete the sentence, solve the problem, or own the solution?
- Did I write up an email analyzing an issue or critiquing someone else’s work but fail to make a legitimate recommendation?
- Did I stay quiet in that meeting when I could have offered something because I “didn’t know if I was 100% right”?
- Did I not pick up an unsolved issue in that email thread because I figured someone else would do it or because no one specifically asked me?
- What am I learning?
