Following Up On Tough News

11 minute read | Last updated 4-Oct-2018 |  Rant

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Bad Robot Transcript

Morning, everybody. How you doing today? As you can tell from the background in yet another vocation this week. I am actually in Dallas Texas down at the Trend Micro North American headquarters for some meetings and FaceTime without a fantastic team down here after a great couple days of the sector conference in Toronto Canada of delivering hard news.

That was just before I did a keynote that was all about hard news now good news is if you ever need to know how to silence a room of 1300 people give me a call was interesting to deliver as I was delivering. It was hard to get a read on the audience because there’s a lot of Silence but I choose to think that that was because they were absorbing the message.

They were listening what I had to say, they were listening to the statistics and the day that I brought to back up that argument and then I tried to keep it light hearted. Importance of the positives when I could now after I got offstage obviously, I was worried giving an hour-long keynote to almost pure silence is a little unnerving as I got off stage.

I got a ton of great feedback a ton of great questions from people a lot of people nodding their head saying, you know what that is a situation that I find myself in a from a security cultural perspective that was enlightening that’s difficult. You have suggestions of how to move for that was the one downside if I was going to say, there’s any weakness in my talking is kind of ties to the issue from yesterday.

And for those of you that didn’t see the keno yesterday will be available on the Sektor site Sektor. CA / presentation should be up there within the next week or two and so you can see for yourself and put the one weakness in this in this keynote and I said it right out of the gate was that it doesn’t offer Solutions.

It’s not a prescriptive. It’s not preaching and think this is what you need to do. It was highlighting the issues to give people the awareness of constraints that they weren’t really pretty too before. They just things that they assumed were written in stone and try to highlight them. Who has the how that got out of the point was and what it was doing to impact the outcomes Salata great conversations afterwards some good ones online while great ones in person in the hallway a lot of discussions with other speakers at the conference as well as it apparently there’s a lot to pull out of soap pull out of that Kino.

So there is one thing that ties back to yesterday. Stop delivering hard news. Would you need to expect the fact that people are going to have that logical follow-up question, which is okay. What can I do about this time? And I thought I had anticipated that enough that was the deposit constructive feedback was obviously I could have done a little bit more in that keynote in that talks doctrinal updated to reflect that of walking people to The Next Step.

So I would equate the analogy as you know, I I highlighted the walls and the ceiling in the floor of the room that people were stuck in and I showed them a door. What people are really asking for is open that door up a little bit and let me pee wrote a little more than just making me aware that there’s a door there.

So that was great. It was fantastic feedback. I was really happy with how that went in it. You know, I like to learn something as well. And I think I delivered some value and I can’t help but also I got value of an understanding that when you’re dealing with difficult news like that.

And this isn’t just with I talk like that is talking to the board and I was talking to a business team. It’s dealing with application developers. Is any number of things is that you should be prepared to take that next step and that’s a good thing. That’s a really positive thing where people want the ability at Union or they’re eager to move forward.

They’re eager to see where things are and how to how to get out of this trap. So I think it’s this really interesting. I think that that that is a key takeaway is that if you’re highlighting issue, sometimes you have a little more success than you think highlight in an issue and people want in their shot.

They want out of the ability to keep rolling. So I’m really valuable lesson for me. Translate that to you to you on the show. If you’re going to deliver bad news, I’m going to do it constructively do it a data-driven take the personalities out of it have empathy and try to be clear and consistent and stick to that to the quantitative not to qualitative not to personalize things and have the next step ready.

And if you don’t know what they are have some Meo further studies warranty here here here. Let’s work together. Let’s collaborate. Let’s move forward. I’m now in a keynote situation is really hard internally in your own organizations. You can do that. Like hey, this is a problem business application team.

Here’s how we there are some Avenues we can look to make this better. Let’s work together on that. That’s my advice for you and some of my experiences from a fantastic conference. I cannot recommend Sektor enough. If you are in Toronto in the Fallen 2019, you absolutely should be there.

Even if you’re not in Toronto make your way to Toronto to go check this out of the top of that. It’s too full o Fishel days is normally free Day activities on the money as well jam packed full of great content great people. Fantastic conversations in the hallway a great social side of it to network and expand and learn from others.

How how do you how do you handle that delivering bad news topic yesterday and what you think about you don’t mind my observations in the keynote and in general today. Let me know on lying to me up at Mark NCAA on all social networks for those of you on the blog in the comments down below and as always by email me at Mark n.

Ca for a podcast listeners and everybody else. I hope you are set up for a fantastic Thursday. I will talk to you online and I’ll see you on the show tomorrow. Morning, everybody. How you doing today? As you can tell from the background in yet another vocation this week.

I am actually in Dallas Texas down at the Trend Micro North American headquarters for some meetings and FaceTime without a fantastic team down here after a great couple days of the sector conference in Toronto Canada of delivering hard news. That was just before I did a keynote that was all about hard news now good news is if you ever need to know how to silence a room of 1300 people give me a call was interesting to deliver as I was delivering.

It was hard to get a read on the audience because there’s a lot of Silence but I choose to think that that was because they were absorbing the message. They were listening what I had to say, they were listening to the statistics and the day that I brought to back up that argument and then I tried to keep it light hearted.

Importance of the positives when I could now after I got offstage obviously, I was worried giving an hour-long keynote to almost pure silence is a little unnerving as I got off stage. I got a ton of great feedback a ton of great questions from people a lot of people nodding their head saying, you know what that is a situation that I find myself in a from a security cultural perspective that was enlightening that’s difficult.

You have suggestions of how to move for that was the one downside if I was going to say, there’s any weakness in my talking is kind of ties to the issue from yesterday. And for those of you that didn’t see the keno yesterday will be available on the Sektor site Sektor.

CA / presentation should be up there within the next week or two and so you can see for yourself and put the one weakness in this in this keynote and I said it right out of the gate was that it doesn’t offer Solutions. It’s not a prescriptive. It’s not preaching and think this is what you need to do.

It was highlighting the issues to give people the awareness of constraints that they weren’t really pretty too before. They just things that they assumed were written in stone and try to highlight them. Who has the how that got out of the point was and what it was doing to impact the outcomes Salata great conversations afterwards some good ones online while great ones in person in the hallway a lot of discussions with other speakers at the conference as well as it apparently there’s a lot to pull out of soap pull out of that Kino.

So there is one thing that ties back to yesterday. Stop delivering hard news. Would you need to expect the fact that people are going to have that logical follow-up question, which is okay. What can I do about this time? And I thought I had anticipated that enough that was the deposit constructive feedback was obviously I could have done a little bit more in that keynote in that talks doctrinal updated to reflect that of walking people to The Next Step.

So I would equate the analogy as you know, I I highlighted the walls and the ceiling in the floor of the room that people were stuck in and I showed them a door. What people are really asking for is open that door up a little bit and let me pee wrote a little more than just making me aware that there’s a door there.

So that was great. It was fantastic feedback. I was really happy with how that went in it. You know, I like to learn something as well. And I think I delivered some value and I can’t help but also I got value of an understanding that when you’re dealing with difficult news like that.

And this isn’t just with I talk like that is talking to the board and I was talking to a business team. It’s dealing with application developers. Is any number of things is that you should be prepared to take that next step and that’s a good thing. That’s a really positive thing where people want the ability at Union or they’re eager to move forward.

They’re eager to see where things are and how to how to get out of this trap. So I think it’s this really interesting. I think that that that is a key takeaway is that if you’re highlighting issue, sometimes you have a little more success than you think highlight in an issue and people want in their shot.

They want out of the ability to keep rolling. So I’m really valuable lesson for me. Translate that to you to you on the show. If you’re going to deliver bad news, I’m going to do it constructively do it a data-driven take the personalities out of it have empathy and try to be clear and consistent and stick to that to the quantitative not to qualitative not to personalize things and have the next step ready.

And if you don’t know what they are have some Meo further studies warranty here here here. Let’s work together. Let’s collaborate. Let’s move forward. I’m now in a keynote situation is really hard internally in your own organizations. You can do that. Like hey, this is a problem business application team.

Here’s how we there are some Avenues we can look to make this better. Let’s work together on that. That’s my advice for you and some of my experiences from a fantastic conference. I cannot recommend Sektor enough. If you are in Toronto in the Fallen 2019, you absolutely should be there.

Even if you’re not in Toronto make your way to Toronto to go check this out of the top of that. It’s too full o Fishel days is normally free Day activities on the money as well jam packed full of great content great people. Fantastic conversations in the hallway a great social side of it to network and expand and learn from others.

How how do you how do you handle that delivering bad news topic yesterday and what you think about you don’t mind my observations in the keynote and in general today. Let me know on lying to me up at Mark NCAA on all social networks for those of you on the blog in the comments down below and as always by email me at Mark n.

Ca for a podcast listeners and everybody else. I hope you are set up for a fantastic Thursday. I will talk to you online and I’ll see you on the show tomorrow.