What’s In It For Me?
All of your professional interactions must promote some predefined goal. If you are part of these interactions, you must help achieve that goal. You must provide the team with value. But what’s in it for you?
Now, before you reject half of your meeting invitations and discard most of the emails in your inbox, let me explain.
Unlike pure personal interactions, formal workplace communication must always serve a purpose. It must promote a specific objective. Whether it is solving a design problem, mitigating a risk, coming up with a new idea for your product, or defining your marketing strategy, any meeting, email, or Slack chat should be designed to move the team from point A to point B — closer to your joint destination.
That’s not enough, though. You, like any other participant, must actively promote the goal. Effective communication does not require an audience. We must assemble the smallest team that can achieve the specific target of the interaction.
None of that explains what’s in it for us. Apart from doing our job, that is. The ideal world portrayed in the last two paragraphs focuses on what we contribute to professional interactions and how some organizational goals benefit from it. If most of our communication is meaningful in that sense, that’s a huge step forward, but I don’t think it is enough. When we focus only on providing value, we will eventually burn out. Our professional interactions should also serve us individually. At least, most of them should.
“What’s in it for me?” is not just a valid question but an essential one. I want most of my interactions to help me do my job better and become more professional. I want to help the team and provide value, but I also want to gain something.
The obvious problem is that I can’t really demand that. Ensuring that professional communication effectively promotes a predefined goal is already challenging enough. Expecting the interaction to benefit each participant is unrealistic — or is it?
Holding the person running a meeting or initiating an email responsible for designing it in a way that ensures everyone onboard has something to gain from it is not an option. But this doesn’t mean we can’t gain something from these interactions. When I ask, “What’s in it for me?” I am not pointing this question externally. I am not expecting someone to provide me with some value. I expect that from myself.
A while back, I decided to make the most of any interaction I am part of. First, I will ensure that I can contribute to the discussion. If I know I can’t, there’s really no reason for me to be there. Once I am engaged in the discussion, though, I have a personal goal that never contradicts the formal objective of the interaction: I aim to learn something new.
I might learn something new about the topic under discussion. I might learn something new about the history that led us here. Sometimes, I learn something new about one of the participants. I often gain insights into the dynamics between participants. I can learn what types of arguments work best with some of my colleagues or what I must avoid saying at all costs. I might discover a new effective data presentation technique or learn who appreciates a few minutes of small talk before we get to business. I learn from positive examples as well as negative ones. I learn from successes and unfortunate failures. I learn by observing and noticing stuff; I learn by experimentation. None of that comes at the expense of promoting the actual goal of the email thread or the meeting. It makes me better prepared for my following tasks and future interactions.
Most of us are frustrated by the meetings and emails that fill our days at work. I try to learn something new from each one. That’s not a reason to normalize meaningless meetings and pointless emails. Aiming to learn from each interaction does not replace the need to communicate effectively. It is an essential aspect of learning to do so.
Adopting a curious mindset ensures that each interaction not only achieves its goals but also enriches your professional journey. Make every meeting, email, and conversation work for you. Decide that you will learn something new — something you didn’t expect — from your upcoming interactions. In 99% of the cases, you will.
Unleash the power of Generative Communication and turn it into your superpower. I lead Generative Communication and Content-Shaping workshops and talks for teams and organizations.
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