[SPEAKER_00]: I'm Jamie Cochran.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm Lake Babin.
[SPEAKER_00]: Weed wind.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm extreme watershed podcast.
[SPEAKER_00]: back with another episode of the lead win podcast, and we have, back with us today, J.P. to know one of our leadership instructors at Eshelon front.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the topic for today is simple, specifically simple plans, and simple communication.
[SPEAKER_00]: How do we as leaders ensure there's alignment across our teams, and they can go and execute on the things that we're asking them to do?
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's all about this principle of simple.
[SPEAKER_00]: So what do we mean when we say simple leave?
[SPEAKER_02]: we all have a tendency to overcomplicate things.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, and I think the scary thing about this is everyone knows that you should simplify stuff.
[SPEAKER_02]: Everyone knows that, I mean, the kiss principle keep it simple stupid was that had been taught to me by veterans and my community and certainly by the not commission officers at the Naval Academy when I was there.
[SPEAKER_02]: And yet the first time that I'm put in charge of coming up with a plan as a young junior officer in the seal teams, I come up with a super complex plan that nobody can understand.
[SPEAKER_02]: And even though I think I'm actually keeping an example, and we used to see this in training, we're running training the seal teams where you tell people, hey, come up with a simple plan.
[SPEAKER_02]: You don't want to make sure everybody understands it.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so you'd have a 40 plus man seal task unit that decides to split each of their guys up
[SPEAKER_02]: So you've got dozens of two-man shooter pairs running around instead of having a squad, you know, of eight guys or a fire team of four guys, and and in their mind like, oh, yeah, it is I, I remember talking to that particular task, you said, hey, you know, you feel like they're playing a simple.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, yeah, it's totally simple.
[SPEAKER_02]: But it's the reality, in their mind, they thought it was simple, the reality is it's highly complex.
[SPEAKER_02]: Because now you have all these different units out there that are running around doing their own thing, talking on the radio, and it was absolute disaster.
[SPEAKER_02]: So we actually had to come back from that debrief and talk about what keeping it simple actually meant.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's really the trap because, you know, we come out of meeting, I've done a bunch of talking, and I feel like, hey, yeah, Jamie and JP know exactly what I said, because I'm the perfect communicator, and I communicate in a manner that's simple care concise because I teach these principles.
[SPEAKER_02]: And the reality is, you guys are like, I don't know what you're talking about, that was super complex, I took something away, but maybe that wasn't when I actually meant, are you misinterpreted something, or you misunderstood something, then I said, or I poorly communicated, even though it was simply, it was clear in my mind, it wasn't clear to you.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so that's really the danger is that we think it's simple, and the only test that really matters is that the people you're trying to communicate with actually get it.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's the only test that matters.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and the measurement of your success is a leader as to whether or not you're communicating effectively is whether or not your team is executing.
[SPEAKER_00]: If our team is an executing, it's our instinct as leaders to look at them and question what they are doing wrong.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why are they not able to execute on this task or we've assigned them as opposed to looking inward and thinking,
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, this is a this is a function of me not being able to communicate effectively.
[SPEAKER_00]: If I was communicating in a simple clearing concise manner, my team has a much higher potential of actually executing on the task.
[SPEAKER_00]: That should be our measure.
[SPEAKER_00]: If our team isn't doing what we're asking them to do, it's because we're not communicating in a way that they can actually go and execute.
[SPEAKER_01]: I remember just, especially for my time in the sealed teams and then in business
[SPEAKER_01]: saying that life says all the time and I remember when I first started working at echelon front, getting to do, you know, keynotes and workshops with life in Jaco and, you know, listening to them and, you know, helping assist on Q and A's at the beginning and then actually getting to do like the workshops and keynotes with them whenever we would talk about our second law combat simple and it came to communication.
[SPEAKER_01]: Life has always said there's only two measures
[SPEAKER_01]: There's no gray zone, it's black or white, either it works or it doesn't work.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's hard because as leaders, like you guys are saying, we feel like our communication is effective and it's good.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the mistake that we make when we're communicating with people on our team and our family or just anybody in general is we ask a question, did that make sense?
[SPEAKER_01]: or hey does anybody have any questions and people don't ask questions and most of time it's not because they're afraid to ask questions it's in their mind they legitimately don't have any questions because what they heard communicated made sense to them.
[SPEAKER_01]: So when we say hey does anybody have any questions?
[SPEAKER_01]: Nobody ask questions.
[SPEAKER_01]: and then we just put it like for our own little like cherry on top to solidify how good our communication was we say all right so did that make sense and then my team's not in their heads they go off they do the work or the task and clearly it did not make sense because whatever they were doing was wrong or it wasn't done the right way and you know we get frustrated and who do we get frustrated with primarily?
[SPEAKER_01]: Initially, it's them, you know, that was joking.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't do workshops at echelon front.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm like, hey, you know, if you have kids, you know exactly what I'm talking about because you'll be communicating with your kids.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm like, all right, hey, you know, and then they go do something the wrong way.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's easy for us to get frustrated with other people, not doing things properly after our brief or our communication with them.
[SPEAKER_01]: But what we're missing is alignment.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and I think what a lot of leaders don't realize is that most mistakes come from unclear directions and expectations, not incompetence.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's something we as leaders need to recognize that our control in the situation is how we're communicating with our team.
[SPEAKER_00]: We do an exercise that actually on front, and without giving too much away, essentially we give two teams, two different sets of instructions.
[SPEAKER_00]: And on one hand, there is a, let's just call it Shakespearean explanation of what the team is supposed to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: And on the other one, it is broken down into three bullet points.
[SPEAKER_00]: And in bulls scenarios, they have the same amount of time.
[SPEAKER_00]: One group has the most simple set of instructions and tasks, but it's communicated in this very complicated Shakespeare language.
[SPEAKER_00]: The other group has a much more complicated task.
[SPEAKER_00]: They have to complete actually several tasks within their minute.
[SPEAKER_00]: And what we see every time is the group with the simple clear and concise instructions execute efficiently.
[SPEAKER_00]: And at the end of it, they feel like, yeah, we accomplished that.
[SPEAKER_00]: We did what we were asked to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: While the other group who's dealing with the Shakespeare takes almost a whole minute just to read it and try to decipher what the instructions are saying.
[SPEAKER_00]: Most of the time they end up completing the task, but the end result is when you ask them, hey, did you complete your task?
[SPEAKER_00]: There's always a sense of uncertainty, like, I think we did.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not really sure.
[SPEAKER_00]: And my message to leaders when we talk about this is hey, listen, you don't realize it, but you are overestimating.
[SPEAKER_00]: your ability to communicate effectively with your team.
[SPEAKER_00]: You are speaking to them in Shakespeare, and they are trying their best execute on what you're asking of them, and they're not able to do it because they can't understand the directions, and they can't understand the expectations, because you're speaking to them in some version of your own way of Shakespeare.
[SPEAKER_02]: that's an outstanding exercise and it just points out like how how can you say yes we could put it to the task with confidence when you don't even know what the task was.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean it's just it's just it seems obvious and yet we do this stuff all the time right and yet we might not be writing in Shakespeare but we're sending out you know a three page email and thinking that I communicate effectively and you know J. P. pulled out from you know paragraph seven sentenced three exactly the information that I wanted him to to see when J. P.
[SPEAKER_02]: 250 emails that morning.
[SPEAKER_02]: Maybe he's not even in front of his email right now.
[SPEAKER_02]: He's out, you know, away from his desk doing some stuff in the field, running training, whatever it is.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, and then in my mind, like, I've communicated perfectly what I want him to do and why his knee falling up with me.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's one of the hardest places to apply extreme ownership.
[SPEAKER_02]: It really is because.
[SPEAKER_02]: I get frustrated.
[SPEAKER_02]: I told Jamie exactly what, you know, I wanted to have happened and she's doing something entirely different.
[SPEAKER_02]: And instead of actually like, okay, why is Jamie doing something different than I thought I clearly communicated to her to do?
[SPEAKER_02]: Obviously, I wasn't clear, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: It's it's back to the effective or ineffective and the only way you're going to know that is.
[SPEAKER_02]: if you use the readback, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: The tool that we teach of asking not, hey, are there any questions?
[SPEAKER_02]: Like you said, JP, or even do you understand, because people will kind of fake it, tell they make it, nobody wants to admit, they don't understand what's going on.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so you actually have to use the readback, which is just asking a question of, can you talk me back through what we just talked about?
[SPEAKER_02]: And that is not a test for those people.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a test for yourself and how you communicated and whether or not you were effective.
[SPEAKER_02]: And what's interesting about it is it's different for different people.
[SPEAKER_02]: Because I might say something and Jamie, you clearly understood what I was trying to get across.
[SPEAKER_02]: You were able to drive out and execute with confidence.
[SPEAKER_02]: And JP just didn't process that at all for whatever reason.
[SPEAKER_02]: And our vice versa, I sent an army mail, but JP got the email and he's making it happen, but you didn't happen to see the email or you got my party with a bunch of other stuff.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so it's different for different people, and but that readback to is powerful as a task for whether or not our communications are simple, clear, good size, and that and we can make adjustments.
[SPEAKER_02]: And again, it's not a task for whether or not people are paying attention to the tests for you and whether or not you communicated clearly.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's one of the simplest things that we encourage leaders to implement, and it makes a massive difference in communication.
[SPEAKER_00]: We teach a lot of practical things in echelon front.
[SPEAKER_00]: A lot of practical things.
[SPEAKER_00]: I would argue the readback is one of the most effective practical tools, teams and leaders can implement within their organizations.
[SPEAKER_00]: And within their families, hey, I used to read back all the time with my kids.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's an amazing tool to ensure that alignment.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you guys work with clients all the time as do I.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think we would all agree.
[SPEAKER_00]: The readback is a tool that is allowed teams to correct
[SPEAKER_00]: for communication at every level in the organization and ensure alignment up down across the chain of command.
[SPEAKER_01]: Absolutely.
[SPEAKER_01]: And when these organizations start implementing the rebound,
[SPEAKER_01]: the return on that investment is immediate.
[SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't take anything other than a little bit of extra time.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think, you know, some people, they're a little hesitant to do in the rebound because it's something new.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're not comfortable with it.
[SPEAKER_01]: They don't know how to structure it properly and, you know, when we're working with clients,
[SPEAKER_01]: Welcome through that.
[SPEAKER_01]: We coach and we might even do role plays with them of how to implement a readback and there's there's definitely a right way to do it and there's a wrong way to do it and the best way to do it is to introduce it to your team before you're going to implement it.
[SPEAKER_01]: So if I'm going to sit down with my team.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I want to implement the Reback before I start that meeting or that brief or the plan of the day or the safety brief.
[SPEAKER_01]: I want to tell my team ahead of time about the Reback, what it is, the purpose of the Reback is for alignment and let them know.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you know, I would say, hey, Jane, I could use your help when we get down with the safety brief.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to have you live in a few other people.
[SPEAKER_01]: brief back to me what we talked about so that I can make sure my communication was simple clearing concise and I also want to know what I need to do to to best support you guys throughout the day.
[SPEAKER_01]: What's the likelihood of you and I have just a somewhat decent working relationship?
[SPEAKER_01]: You say no to that.
[SPEAKER_00]: very low.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and if you do, okay, cool, no factor.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, and if you're framing it as like, hey, this is a test for me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not as like a test for, I think that's where people screw up, which is that they use the readback.
[SPEAKER_00]: And instead, they say, hey, JP, can you give me a readback?
[SPEAKER_00]: But they don't caveat with the reason why.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it can feel like, hey, so I made sure that you were listening and you understand.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: You have to frame it as, hey, I don't always communicate effectively.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've got a lot going on.
[SPEAKER_00]: Can you give me a readback?
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to make sure I didn't miss anything of importance.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, absolutely.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I know that
[SPEAKER_01]: If I'm asking you in life and a few other people to brief it back to me, I know that you're going to be paying more attention, but that's a byproduct.
[SPEAKER_01]: The intent behind the Reback is not to test if you're listening or taking proper notes.
[SPEAKER_01]: The intent for the Reback is my communicator.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a test of my communication.
[SPEAKER_01]: Was it effective?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes or no.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, and then I just, you know, ask a few people, let them know, you know, and I might even say, like, hey, we're, you know, we're going to get started in a few minutes if you guys want to go grab some notebooks to take notes for free.
[SPEAKER_01]: We have that time.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you know, when we get down with it, we do the rebound.
[SPEAKER_01]: And if you brief back to me something that is wrong, I don't say, hey, why weren't you paying attention and why didn't you take notes?
[SPEAKER_01]: It's an opportunity for me to take ownership over my communication that clearly was not simple, clear and concise.
[SPEAKER_01]: And when you do that, you build trust with your people, you have a little more influence, which is how we lead people.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that time,
[SPEAKER_01]: that I know everyone's limited on on the back end is always going to be less time than what it would take to go fix a mistake.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I had a construction company two years ago, one of the superintendents after the half day workshop I did with them that evening sent me a message on Instagram and he said, hey, that that rebound that we talked about that you that you taught us today, I implemented it and it saved us a couple hundred thousand dollars today of
[SPEAKER_01]: That's incredible, and so we talked, we went back and forth, and he said he implemented it with his team, and he explained the purpose of alignment, him wanting to make sure his communication was clear and concise, and one of his foremen, you know, when he was briefing him back with the information, he told me that if that foreman who was a square of a foreman would have went and started doing the work, that he thought they needed to be doing, because it was such a large
[SPEAKER_01]: decentralized project that by time he would have figured out what was going on, it would have cost them a couple hundred thousand dollars in rework.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he just wanted to say, thank you for that.
[SPEAKER_01]: But the cool thing is this superintendent also reached out to all the other superintendents that had been in that training and said, hey, I implemented the re-backed this morning.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a non-negotiable for our team now.
[SPEAKER_01]: Here's why.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is what it saved us.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're doing re-backs and debriefs every day.
[SPEAKER_01]: The other superintendents, they recognized the value.
[SPEAKER_01]: They did the same thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: And when this company got done with this very large project,
[SPEAKER_01]: They were a head of schedule under budget and safety scores looked better than they had ever looked before.
[SPEAKER_01]: Moral was, you know, was better than it had ever been.
[SPEAKER_01]: And to your point, the rebound is something that you can implement right now that will have an immediate effect on your on your team.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and it works up the chain of came in, too.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, we're talking about how you might implement this as a leader with your team, but at echelon front, when you build a culture of using the rebound, it works in
[SPEAKER_00]: Give me information.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm quick to say, hey, real quick, if I want to give you a readback piece, I want to make sure I understand what you're asking of me.
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you're on the front lines, you can use a readback, too.
[SPEAKER_00]: And by doing that, it shows your boss that you've listened to him.
[SPEAKER_00]: You care about what he has to say.
[SPEAKER_00]: You care about the plan that he's put in place.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you want to get it right.
[SPEAKER_00]: Even if your boss isn't,
[SPEAKER_00]: implementing the readback in that way, you can start to build that culture of the readback by doing it yourself with your peers and up the chain with your leadership that creates that sense of alignment by me saying, hey, late, can I give you a quick readback?
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to make sure I understand what you need of me.
[SPEAKER_02]: No question.
[SPEAKER_02]: It goes up down and across the chain of command.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think that's this is something that the team does so well.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, at echelon front is we're talking about a bunch of stuff and we're throwing out a bunch of different ideas, but to capture that, you know, hey, life, I just
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, that these are the five things we should be focused on right for the next month or the next quarter.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that works really well.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think a practical way to implement this is using an alternative form of communication.
[SPEAKER_02]: If we're talking in person, then I can send an email, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: If we're having a phone call, I can send an email to fall from a feedback.
[SPEAKER_02]: If I'm sending an email, that's got a bunch of information in it.
[SPEAKER_02]: then how often Jamie, you'll pick up the phone and call me and say, hey, I just want to make sure I'm tracking on this and that I understand what your intent is here.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's that's a form of a readback just to clarify to make sure that you're pulling out the most important information.
[SPEAKER_02]: So you're using a phone call to do that to clarify an email.
[SPEAKER_02]: If you're sending out an important email,
[SPEAKER_02]: You ought to follow up with a text message or a phone call.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like it's just the idea that someone's going to read that and understand perfectly what you're meaning and how important it is in, you know, it just gets buried in all the other stuff that's there.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, you know, some people get pretty upset if you don't have an immediate response to an email.
[SPEAKER_02]: And yet, when people are actually practically just outdoing things and engaged in life for work, a lot of people aren't sitting in front of their desk.
[SPEAKER_02]: which other people that are sitting in front of a desk most of the day have sometimes have a hard time understanding that.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I think just seeing other people's perspectives is really important.
[SPEAKER_02]: And really, at the end of the day, what would we talk about here for communication?
[SPEAKER_02]: How do you keep things simple, clear, concise?
[SPEAKER_02]: It's really just,
[SPEAKER_02]: theory versus reality, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: In theory, I should be able to send you a three-page email and you should process all that perfectly, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: I should, JP, I should be able to stand up in front of the, you know, of the, of the, the, the platoon in a mission planning space and talk about what we're going to do and everyone should process that perfectly and understand what we're going to do.
[SPEAKER_02]: It, it doesn't work that way, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: People are thinking about other things.
[SPEAKER_02]: We used it.
[SPEAKER_02]: We had instructors going through Buds and an SKTJP, you remember they, they would
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm putting out the word you guys right now and this is pretty important and you're thinking what you're hearing right now is blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, what am I doing on Friday night right and that's that is actually the reality of a bunch of bug students that are tired you know or and particularly when people are hungry, people are tired, people are thinking about the things that they want to do.
[SPEAKER_02]: If you're trying to give an important presentation to people at 5 p.m. on Friday,
[SPEAKER_02]: When they're trying to get out for the weekend, they're not paying attention to what's going on.
[SPEAKER_02]: If they've been up all night, they're probably not paying attention to what's going on.
[SPEAKER_02]: They're thinking about other things.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so that's just the reality.
[SPEAKER_02]: What we're trying to do, that's all front is provide practical tools that people can implement immediately in the realities of their lives, of their worlds, and that's what this is.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's theory versus reality.
[SPEAKER_02]: In theory, everyone should process all of the information.
[SPEAKER_02]: My wife will tell me, hey, I need you to pick up the kids at 330 after school and take them to the their dental appointments.
[SPEAKER_02]: She says that to me, but guess what?
[SPEAKER_02]: I was thinking about something else.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was dealing with something else, or I lost track of it, and I might actually need a fall, but I'm like, hey, this is a reminder, what time am I picking them up again?
[SPEAKER_02]: If I have that in a text message, I can reference it.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, it's theory versus reality, deal with reality so that you can be successful because theory is not going to work.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and the key to all of this and communicating in a simple clear and concise manner is that it takes a lot of effort.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's why people don't do it.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a whole lot easier for me to just give you a running stream of what's going on in my mind as opposed to taking the time to simplify and ensure that the way I'm communicating is clear and concise.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that, there's a bunch of tools we can use.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you're sending emails, don't send the seven paragraph email, there's seven page email.
[SPEAKER_00]: And in certain situations where yes, you might need to provide a little more information, start with the tool of using the bluff bottom line up front.
[SPEAKER_00]: Give the person or the people that you're sending this message to and understanding of what the real goal is right up front.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then you can backfill with some of the more detailed information.
[SPEAKER_00]: In the same way, if I'm going to go put out word to my team, I'm going to take
[SPEAKER_00]: time to write that out to have a plan to make sure that I've got some bullet points of how I'm going to go through this so I can be as simple clear and concise as possible or in certain situations when I might be putting out word that is going to be maybe potentially misconstrued or have emotions around it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to take that chance to
[SPEAKER_00]: role play with a trusted agent and get feedback on that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hey, did this make sense?
[SPEAKER_00]: How can I anticipate the team to react?
[SPEAKER_00]: There's all these different tools that we can implement, but the key here is as leaders, we have to do the work to be more simple.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a lot more work, but the outcome is so much better when we can communicate in a way that allows our team to actually go and execute.
[SPEAKER_01]: I love it.
[SPEAKER_00]: immediate action drill for this week is to implement the readback.
[SPEAKER_00]: We have likely talked about using the readback in other episodes because this is a very practical tool.
[SPEAKER_00]: So what I want you to do this week is look for something that you need to communicate with a team, take the time to simplify it to the best of your ability.
[SPEAKER_00]: And at the end of that, ask for that readback, not as a test for them, but as a test for you.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you can ensure your
[SPEAKER_02]: any time that you're frustrated with somebody for not doing what you think you clearly told them to do.
[SPEAKER_02]: Don't look at them.
[SPEAKER_02]: Don't point fingers at them.
[SPEAKER_02]: Look at yourself.
[SPEAKER_02]: Take ownership of keeping it simple.
[SPEAKER_02]: And if you do that, you'll lead and win.