How to talk to your boss | Peter Matthews | TEDxUWA

[Music] i'm here to speak about relationships in the workplace now sorry tricia from accounting not that kind of relationships but instead those with managers bosses employers clients this next 15 minutes is going to be directed to young people listening but my hope is that there are going to be tidbits within that are extremely relevant across the board across the age of demographics my name is peter matthews i'm 22 years old and for the past four years i've run a small business that operates in an extremely client relationship intensive industry strategic marketing now over these four years the work that we have delivered has changed quite a bit but the fundamental styles and strategies that we hope to use when dealing with clients have stayed fundamentally the same it's on the back of this that i have some recommendations today but first what are we young people doing wrong in my mind there are really three things that so often we young folks we miss the market with number one over enthusiasm too loud too fast too in your face too much number two we can often be a little bit bad at communicating our expertise outside the specific tasks that we're working on in the workplace number three we can be unrelatable even the most professional 18 year olds weekend probably looks a little bit different to that of a twice divorced three child parent industry professional these three components spell what i deem the age divide in clients or workplace relationships i'd like to introduce five hopelessly biased rules to live by when a young person or an industry professional looking to deal with those in the workplace with whom there is a bit of an age divide so rule number one the value of small talk the year is 2018 and i've just booked a coffee with a man named neil neil was a potential long-term high-value client and to be very honest with you i was the epitome of over-enthusiastic were you to be a fly on the wall in the week leading up to this coffee and you were to be in my bathroom at seven o'clock you would see me pacing around toothbrush in mouth reciting specific words and phrases that i wanted to get pitch perfect on the day of the coffee a little bit of dribble coming down the side too much well the week went by it's the day of the coffee and i get a text from neil about an hour before he's going to be five minutes late well no worries i'm already there hour goes by or an hour and five minutes i see neil walking in here's what happens neil mate it's so good to see you i can't wait mate let's talk about some real synergies we've got going on come on take a seat let's hop into it poor bloke neil i see a bit of a sweat patch for me he's got a bit of a thousand-yard stare going on he hasn't even had a chance to order his coffee i get a couple more hundred mile per hour uh words in before neil puts a literal hand up in front of me at this coffee table and says peter how are you how was your day oh thanks neil it just got a little bit worse but you know with a face of blushing i thankfully take the hit neil is telling me to slow down remember to build the relationship before the business neil and i move into five minutes of somewhat uneasy small talk and unsurprisingly we don't win the contract but neil gave me a lesson that day that i've now thoroughly incorporated into how i present professionally and that i'd like to share with you engaging in small talk before jumping into the business topic at hand achieves a few things number one it gives both counterparties the opportunity to calm down a little bit forget the stress of the freeway finding a park gives you time to order a coffee and the other thing as well is that it builds that relatability by not jumping straight into a business task you're able to find more common ground particularly when there isn't hedge divide rule number two silence is as uncomfortable as we let it be the year is 2018 again what a year i'm sitting down with a man named jar we're also at a coffee shop jar is actually an existing client he and i have been working together at that time for already about three months and at this point we're talking about a potential longer-term engagement and we're sitting now for coffee thus far the conversation seems to be going well there's a little bit of repate some jokes flying around he's making fun of my terrible job parallel parking and then when we get into the business task at hand things are going well too until i bring up pricing this is jar crikey not a word i'm sitting there i am witnessing this silence a couple of seconds go by before internally i start freaking out what the heck is going on what have i done wrong well jar was certainly doing something right because without needing to say a word i promptly proceeded to talk myself down to a 25 discount jar just sitting here like this this is the extreme of what i consider the silence game where on one end we have something like this but on the other we have things like humming and arring when we're in a conversation and we want to fill a space when we're unsure this sort of thing firstly if you're a dork like me leaves an opportunity to be taken advantage of but so too it really makes it harder to relate because somebody is overenthusiastic or they're too much or they're difficult to sit down with the good news is being uncomfortable with silence is very easy to remedy step one accept that if there is silence in a conversation that you're a part of it's because the other person has stopped talking not because you need to and number two once number one's looked after if we can be sure of our value in the conversation we can wait it out if we're in the chat and the other person's staying in the chat as well then it's clearly something's going right if they're not getting up and walking away they're there to say just wait it out that's silence rule number three speaks about the importance of advising a client or a boss and not just working hard now when we as young people or really anyone in the workplace are sitting down for a conversation with a boss a manager an employer chances are it's because they have a project outcome in mind that they want us to deliver let's call that point b we're currently at point a we're getting the job we're being assigned the task and we know we need to work pretty hard to deliver a great outcome at point b and so that's what 90 of the population is going to do it's my view that the time in between point a and point b is a sorely underutilized opportunity to in the context of a client facing role win more work in the context of a managerial relationship build relatability and in all in common show more expertise in 2019 so new year new me [Music] my small business won a procurement round with hockey western australia which is the government-funded body responsible for overseeing hockey in western australia the original scope of our work was just to handle the launch marketing for the new state hockey team but while working with hockey wa and dealing with hockey wa's general manager tom i quickly noticed that there were other issues that hockey wa was encountering that i knew a little bit about so i went to tom and i said tom i'm still of course going to be looking at this point b deliverable outcome with the launch marketing but would you like me while i'm here to just have a look and see if i might be able to make some recommendations about xyz that i've also noticed what just happened if tom said no big deal i'm still going to deliver that project b outcome or that point b outcome at worst tom's going to think that i have a little bit more expertise than otherwise but if tom says yes suddenly in a client-facing perspective that's potentially one more work but in the context of a employment relationship that demonstrates greater expertise and it builds relatability an example in maybe an accounting setting someone's just received an assignment to do something on the computer when they've received the task they've gone to their boss their boss is having a problem with outlook or something some old person thing [Laughter] and so we as the young people could say well look i suspect i might know a way of doing that a little bit faster would you like me to have a look uh fine if not boss says yes great some extra brownie points boss says no no dramas still gonna deliver that point b outcome rule number four taking feedback positively does very very good things let's say we as young people we've just spent a couple of months building a really really great presentation to give to a client or a boss we've put our heart and soul into this presentation and when we've gone through it we think we've done pretty well but our boss or our client gives this as their first piece of feedback i think you should have done that better bummer there's at least two ways of responding to that the first way might be to say well actually we did as you can see on slide seven appendix and this is something we spoke about five minutes ago would you like us to go back over that so that maybe it comes across a bit clearer what has that just done it set up a contradiction between the giver of the feedback and the receiver and in doing so it's put the existing rapport relationship at risk what's another way wow you're right i hadn't seen it like that that's a very good thing to point out this is something that we attempted to show on slide seven appendix n but as you've mentioned we missed the mark i if i could i'd like to follow up after this meeting and come back to you on that fundamentally the same thing has been said we've still drawn attention to slide seven appendix n but suddenly we're not creating a contradiction between the giver of the feedback and ask the receiver rule number five rule number five is a little bit cheeky it's actually made up of three very fast rules that there's a pop quiz on at the end just kidding number one reply first fast and last replying first you have received an email from a boss with 50 cc recipients inviting you to a barbecue or something majority of people aren't going to reply my advice do but definitely not reply all your monster just reply and say thanks you've risked nothing but you've shown that you're approachable and you're engaged reply fast speaks for itself reply last you ever seen a movie and there's no you hang up no you hang up no you hang up something like that but with a client or with a boss say thanks in an email and if they say thanks back say thanks to their thanks and then if they say thanks again probably leave it there but point being demonstrate approachability demonstrate that you are there and engaged reply first fast and last second rule advise and summarize when we as young folks are presenting a potentially controversial or risk risque idea to a room full or group of people we'll achieve much better outcomes if we contact each of those attendees directly personally first and give them a little bit of a heads up of what to expect so that they're not walked in they don't walk in to a surprise to summarize is to say that after any meeting write up a copy of notes send it over to the person that the meeting was with whether it's a group of attendees or just one and make sure that the key takeaways of the meeting the key walk-aways are mutually agreed on before you move on to the next topic firstly this looks after you if there's a disagreement down the line but secondly too it makes sure that the client feels listened to and that you or we are able to demonstrate that we are relatable rule number three positive language when we are ascribing responsibility or blame if it's to us active voice if it's to anyone else passively what does this mean we would say i'm sorry i did the wrong thing i didn't attach that to the email but if we're saying that someone else did any of those things we say the email was missing an attachment or we say it looks like something might have been done wrong there or maybe something was missing the key difference is that the first shows that we accept responsibility for our actions it invites accountability but on the second it's not giving that accountability to anybody else it's letting everybody else feel as if they aren't being accused of anything it builds relatability so there we have it five or seven if you hold me to my math rules to live and talk by in the workplace and the entry level i'd like to summarize or end this talk by saying that i completely disclaim liability for any of those should they go wrong but i wish you all very well in this arena and thank you for your time

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 77,967

Keywords: Business, Career, English, Leadership, Social Sciences, TEDxTalks, Work, Workplace, Youth

Id: _HbZnzXPXQg

Length: 17min 30sec (1050 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 18 2022