Bringing people together

• Leadership Moment: Dance when everyone is watching

• One Minute Pro Tip: Meeting success criteria

• Chapter Teaser: Outrun the bear, not your friends

• Appearances

• (paid) 1% Coach: (Re)Building Trust

Leadership Moment: Dance when everyone is watching

I attended a bar mitzvah this weekend, and at the dinner afterwards, the grandmother of the bar mitzvah began to play a wind instrument. As she was about to start, she said, “It’s a simcha! Sing, clap, dance, whatever you want!” She played, and the crowd of around a hundred people started clapping along. But no one danced.

I looked across the room, knowing what I would see. A friend of mine glanced around, saw no one was dancing, grabbed the father of the bar mitzvah, and started to dance. Within moments, the social hall was filled with joyous dancing.

We’ve all been in a room like that. Maybe it’s a presenter, looking for questioners. Or a meeting facilitator, looking for answers. Or, in this case, a party, looking for dancers. If you’re fortunate, you have a leader in the room who has already decided that they will be the first person to act, to get the ball rolling. During a presentation, they write down a question or two just in case the audience is given the opportunity. When a facilitator asks a question, they glance around the room, do a slow count to three, and, seeing no one else answering, raise their hand.

If you plan to be the first one, then it’s much less intimidating. Especially when you realize you’re the one giving everyone else permission to participate.

One Minute Pro Tip: Meeting success criteria

Everyone in a meeting should have a purpose for being there. They (and the meeting organizer) should write down success criteria for participation in the meeting: how each person knows that they provided value, and how the organizer knows the meeting provided value. Sometimes, in writing down success criteria, you’ll realize that the meeting isn’t a good use of time. You may realize that you don’t have the correct people in the room. In the best case, each participant knows exactly how they can best add value to the meeting.

Chapter Teaser: Outrun the bear, not your friends

Ch 49: Act faster than your adversaries and slower than your allies.

While we always want to move faster than our adversaries to stay ahead of them, sometimes we leave our allies feeling like they can’t rely on us. It’s become popular in many circles recently to say, “you don’t have to outrun the bear, you just have to outrun your slowest friend” (although I like Josh Corman’s rebuttal, “that doesn’t help if you’re the one covered in bacon grease”). In a Survivor-style engagement, maybe that works.

But if you’re part of a team, your goal isn’t to be the last one standing, it’s to make sure the whole team remains standing. When the bear is chasing you, and you need to change plans, make sure you aren’t surprising your allies and leaving them in the dust. They might get eaten by the bear … but they’ll certainly stop trusting you.

Appearances

Last week, Orca Security published a two-part ebook I wrote on “How to CISO in the Cloud”.

On the CISO Series podcast, David Spark and I interviewed Shaun Marion, CISO of McDonald’s.