Monthly Archives: February 2017

TNF #074: Professional mindset

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Welcome Professionals…

…I have a colleague who recently brought his professional mindset clearly to the point. He said:

“I strive to serve the individuals that I accept in my circle of people. Sometimes I will get paid immediately for my service. Sometimes I will be paid in the future, sometimes even by different people, sometimes never. Either way, I am doing it because I believe in my service!”

What a bold mission statement! This mindset is both professional and liberating. He is truly dedicated to client service, but remains independent. He decides who enters his circle. And he decides to deliver his service. He is not asking for any approval by people served. He is just applying his own principle of service because he believes in it.

I definitely admire this professional mindset and truly hope that it inspires you, too.

Happily serving

Malte

professional mindset

Thursday Night Flight is brought to you by Malte Müller Professionals. Sharing best practices for top management consultants on topics like communication, client handling, problem solving, appearance, and fitness. Check out www.mm-professionals.com for more material and free resources!

TNF #073: Conversation starter

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Welcome Professionals…

…When we meet someone for the first time, there are good and bad introductions. One of the worst is to start right away with the question of “what do you do?”. Meaning “what is your profession?” or “what are you doing for living?”.

This answer to this question instantly leads to categorizing the other person into useful or not useful contacts, into potential client, supplier, colleague, or outsider. We can be sure that the counterquestion of “what do you do?” will follow shortly after the answer and if we don’t watch out, the conversation will be over by that time.

conversation

We unconciously categorize people by all kinds of ways before we approach them: by age, gender, color of skin, clothing, status, behaviour, and so on. There is no need to add another categorization right in the beginning of a verbal contact. It is much better to open the conversation with a commonality than another differentiation. Something that addresses a common experience. Something that most likely can be shared with the approached person.

Potential openers could be something along these lines:

  • How do you know the host of this party?
  • The weather is supposed to be fantastic on the weekend – do you have any plans?
  • I think the band is doing a great job tonight, what do you think?

You get the idea. Wishing you good conversations!

Malte

Thursday Night Flight is brought to you by Malte Müller Professionals. Sharing best practices for top management consultants on topics like communication, client handling, problem solving, appearance, and fitness. Check out www.mm-professionals.com for more material and free resources!

TNF #072: Getting ship done

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Welcome Professionals…

…You all have probably heard about a famous quote that is often used in the context of teamwork and motivation. It goes like this:

If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men and women to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.

There are several versions of this quote and most of the time it is associated with Antoine de Saint-Exupéry who is best known internationally as the author of “Le Petit Prince”. I don’t know if he is the definite originator, but for sure I have heard this quote a thousand times.

ship

While the motivational saying sounds pursuading in general, I have never really seen this working in practice. Teams perform best when led by precise orders. Sure – go ahead an give your work some meaning! Every project leader shall feel blessed whose team is yearning for results.

But if this teaching “to yearn for the vast and endless sea” is all that a project leader does, odds are that team members spend endless hours at their desk yearning, without getting any tangible results. Or they pick the easiest jobs first, or they spent time in group discussions dividing the tasks themselves, or … – whatever.

If you want to get your ship done and you don’t have time to have the team figure it out by themselves, give clear and concise orders. Control work progress in a decent number of milestones. That’s the way to go!

Now I hope I get some push-back from the little prince lovers out there.

Good luck building your ship

Malte

Thursday Night Flight is brought to you by Malte Müller Professionals. Sharing best practices for top management consultants on topics like communication, client handling, problem solving, appearance, and fitness. Check out www.mm-professionals.com for more material and free resources!

TNF #071: Simply to the point

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Welcome Professionals…

…I attended a speaking event yesterday. The first part of the presentation was delivered by the CEO, who had been running a successful company for 25 years. The second part was delivered by a consultant, who had served this company over 10 years and used it is a case study to explain some general patterns of leadership.

After the presenation was done, we had a casual conversation among the audience, since this was a best practice sharing event. I talked to three independent participants, who all mentioned the same thing: “Why do consultants always have to make it so complicated?”

to the point

Whether this generalized critique is fair or not, I think we need to take this feedback seriously. Oftentimes, we consultants tend to use complicated vocabulary for messages that could be delivered in much more simple terms. Why are we doing this? Is it just to make a simple finding look more sophisticated? Or are we shying away from straight and clear messages?

The attention span of an audience is extremely short and is getting shorter with more and more overload of data and general distraction. Complicated vocabulary and fancy buzz words will turn off the receiver. If we want to get our messages across, we need to deliver them very clearly and straight to the point.

Wishing you concise conversations

Malte

Thursday Night Flight is brought to you by Malte Müller Professionals. Sharing best practices for top management consultants on topics like communication, client handling, problem solving, appearance, and fitness. Check out www.mm-professionals.com for more material and free resources!