Answer the Question, Not the Brief.
Image Credit: Digby Scott / Midjourney.com
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Years ago I worked as a recruitment consultant. My job was to source outstanding candidates for finance and accounting positions in large corporations. I remember this time when I’d sourced the perfect candidate for a CFO role. On paper, they had the experience and the credibility. In person, they were engaging and thoughtful. They were the clear choice for the role. The client was impressed. But they didn’t give them the job.
Instead, the client chose a less experienced person who already worked in the finance team. It wasn’t about budget, and it wasn't that my candidate hadn't impressed them. The organisation was losing talent because of the perceived lack of career development opportunities, and the board had recently directed that the organisation promote and develop talent from within to stem the flow.
Yep, I’d missed the context. The client asked for the best CFO candidate. What they were actually trying to solve was how to fill the role in a way consistent with what they'd just told their own people about career development. I didn’t ask the right questions: why is this role open? Who's already in the team? What's the board been saying about talent? I didn't go looking, because I was too narrowly focused on the quality of my shortlist. I answered the brief, but not the question.
And here’s the kicker: my boss knew the client well, but didn’t share the context with me. He knew about the board’s directive. And it would have cost him 30 seconds to tell me.
Great work isn’t enough.
Do you ever hear this from your people?
“The analysis is sound, so the decision should follow."
"They don’t get it. They ignored the evidence."
"I'll add more detail and take it back."
What do these statements have in common? They all put the problem outside the room they were in. As smart as your people might be, without the broader context, their ideas still may not land.
Hiring clever people doesn't give you astute people. Gerald Ferris and his colleagues found that being clever and being able to read a room are unrelated capabilities. Later work in the same field found that the ability to read a room predicts performance over and above intelligence.
You can’t assume being smart is the same as being savvy. You might hire clever people. But you need to coach them for the context.
Context is taught, not caught.
Most leaders assume their people will absorb the context the way they think they did, by being around long enough. If you ask them how they actually learned it, it’s almost always someone telling them, or getting burned badly enough to work it out. Neither is a development plan.
There are three things your people need to consider when looking to get their ideas across the line. One they can see, and two they often can’t:
Content: is what they are saying and recommending true and accurate? (This is where most experts focus their efforts).
Circumstances: whose world does it land in? And what is this person dealing with?
Consequences: what does it cost the decision-maker to say yes?
Your work as a leader is to name and remind your people to consider all three. Walk alongside them from the start as they shape up their work. Ask them questions to help them think about the circumstances and consequences. For example, you could ask, “If you put yourself in their shoes, what other factors besides the technical advice might shape their decision?”
Provide the context, not the answer.
Your people can bring the technical rigour. What they can't get from where they sit is who's really in the decision, what's politically live at the moment, and when the best timing is. That's the part only you can hand over. Most leaders give corrections. Give context instead.
What do you know about the terrain that you've never said out loud to the person who needs it most?
