Have better discussions
When you build a team of people that have differing views or approaches, you then have to find a way to unite them so you can be productive.
“In whatever business that we’re in, we’re looking for, ‘What’s the common passion?’” Norwood says. “What is the passion for why you do what you do? It’s a whole lot easier to get people’s backs into a project than it is to get their hearts into it.”
But by getting people’s hearts into it, you’ll be more effective. For Norwood, that common passion comes pretty easily — providing excellent care for patients — but maybe you run a business that doesn’t have as clear-cut of a commonality. That’s when you look for the basics.
“Whether you’re building a car or a computer … at the end of the day, if you’re running a successful organization, you’re actually providing employment for people in your firm and all the industries that support your economy,” he says.
You can also dig more to establish further common ground.
“Sometimes the question would be, ‘What’s the outcome that you’re looking for? What do you want to see come out of this?’” he says. “You have self-interest in it, and the interest of your patients in it, what does success look like? I believe that people always act in ways that make sense to them. We can get into disagreements and disputes and look at the other party and say, ‘That doesn’t make any sense,’ but it does make sense to them.”
As a leader, Norwood says you have to go with Stephen Covey’s approach of seek first to understand and then be understood.
“Instead of pushing so hard to try to get someone to do it your way, spending a little bit of time upfront to understand why it’s so important to them, apparently, to do what makes no sense to you, is huge,” he says.
To understand others, become a better active listener.
“It’s someone who says, ‘Let me say back to you what I think I just heard you say — did I catch what it is I think you’re saying?’” Norwood says. “That’s a hallmark of good active listening — you’re showing respect to the other person to say, ‘I wasn’t just sitting here thinking about what I was going to say next.’”
If you can master this, then you’re already halfway there, and you’ll notice people beginning to relax.
“It’s like a pressure cooker,” he says. “You see the pressure valve go off in the chest of that person across the table because they’re showing you that you finally get it — ‘You understand what I’m upset about or what I’m trying to get to.’”
Despite actively listening and finding a common ground, you’ll still have times when people don’t handle themselves well in the meeting.
“I always have a choice of OK, if there’s a conflict, do I take that conflict offline and avoid dealing with it in the group or do I invest the time — not spend the time — right there in the moment to make a teaching moment and say, ‘OK, let’s take a look at what just happened and how could we have done that better?’” Norwood says.
Often, you may ignore it in an attempt to move through your agenda, but look at that teachable moment as an investment instead of a waste.
“We invest in things that we know will give us a return later, so we can stop and catch ourselves in the moment and say, ‘I’m going to cause myself to invest the time right now, when I don’t really want to do it, because I’m going to get a much better return from this if I do it now than if I go write a memo later,’” he says.
