Checking and Validating

Smarty conversations happen when you check and validate. Your manager asks you for an update. Two minutes into your response stop and ask: ‘Am I going into the right level of detail?’                 

The questioner might only have wanted a couple of words: it’s going well, or I’ve encountered a few issues but I’m dealing with them. Or, they may have wanted to dive even deeper into the detail. By checking and validating in the early stages of the answer you will give them exactly what they wanted from the interaction. And who wouldn’t want that?

Dial up, or dial down, or make no change; ask if they want the scenic route or the highway. You’ll both get to where you want to be faster.

Checking and validating could be used in lots of your interactions at work. Many things going wrong (or not being right) are because of an absence of it.

An excerpt from Harvard-endorsed book, The Smarts: Big Little Hacks to Take You a Long Way at Work, by Saj Jetha (Penguin 2019) available on Amazon.

Saj is founder of the multi-award winning The Smarty Train, a training and talent consultancy with a mission to unlock talent everywhere. www.thesmartytrain.com