Thinking on your feet and dealing with ego.
How this important skill can drive collaboration
I may have a different definition of thinking on your feet than some people do. It’s a skill I developed in sales, and it is now one of the strongest tools I use when working on a team. Traditionally this phrase is used to describe people who can come up with solutions quickly, usually under some amount of stress. Often in a sales environment, it ends up describing someone who can come up with a fast line of BS to buy themselves extra time with their prospect.
To me, the action that comes along with this phrase has very little to do with what you end up saying. Thinking on your feet means being able to understand exactly what someone is saying to you, why they are saying it, and doing both at lightning speeds. I completely understand if you just read that and went “Oh yeah, duh”. However, I think it’s important to dive a little deeper. Here are three things to sum this all up:
1. Our brains are complex. Sometimes we don’t know what we want.
This happens to everyone and is not a reflection of anyone’s intelligence. This happens to me when I don’t drink enough coffee. Learn how to help people organize their thoughts without imposing your will. In a group environment, this means helping your team member by asking them genuine questions that allow them to arrive at their deeper point. Making this common practice will drive productivity.
“That’s so simple everyone knows that” It doesn’t matter what people know, It’s what people do. The enemy of productive collaboration is ego. People have the tendency to listen to their ego more than they listen to other people. I have been very guilty of this, and just like my point above it depends on the day how strong our egos are.
2. The quicker you fully understand someone, the quicker you can help them.
This one is pretty self-explanatory. The important thing here to think about is “fully understand”. Sometimes the person speaking to you is being very clear, you are the one who is lagging, and again, this is not a reflection of your intelligence. The trick here is to recognize that you need to catch up. Two things usually happen in this situation: The first is that you easily recognize the lag and ask further questions, carrying on the conversation into productivity. The second thing is your ego gets involved and even though they might be correct, you think that you are right because you didn’t take the time to fully understand what they were expressing. This is common with the more experienced people or managers on a team and may leave junior members feeling resentful.
3. If you deeply understand someone, the solution usually comes forward by itself.
If you go to a car lot looking for an eco-friendly sedan and the salesperson is showing you the pickup trucks, they did not take the time to understand your motives for being there. In sales, this can be the difference between creating a life long customer and doing the walk of shame back to your desk.
In a team environment, regardless of the industry, this allows you to connect people’s thoughts and test ideas. It might not mean solving the organization’s entire problem but it may guide you to the next step in the process. Again the opposing force to this is ego. Essentially, not taking the time to fully understand someone else’s thoughts, and therefore not productively moving forward. Your team could still make progress, however, you may have missed the thing that would have sparked true innovation and success.
To think on your feet and improve collaboration, you need to learn how to recognize when your ego is in the driver seat. Battling ego can be one of the hardest things we have to do but trust me, it’s worth it. I believe thinking on your feet is an industry-agnostic skill that you can build through experience. It will build faster the more mistakes you make!
Hopefully, this small post gave you some things to think about. Thank you so much for taking the time to read this, regardless if it helped!
