Episode 87

[Solocast] Answer the Question, Not the Brief

When one of your people brings you work that's accurate, well researched and clearly argued, and it still goes nowhere, where do you look for the reason? At the decision maker who ignored the evidence? Or at what your person couldn't see from where they were sitting?

In this solocast, I start with a CFO placement I lost early in my career as a recruitment consultant. I had the strongest candidate on the shortlist and still missed, because I'd answered the brief without asking what the client was really trying to solve. From there I look at research from Gerald Ferris and colleagues showing that intelligence and the ability to read a room are separate capabilities. That's why context is something you need to teach your people rather than hope they pick up. You'll come away with three things to keep in front of your people, and a question that might change what you hand over next.

You'll learn:

Why a strong shortlist still lost the CFO role, and the three questions that would have changed the outcome
Why clever and savvy are separate capabilities, and what the research says about which one predicts performance
How most people actually learn context, and why neither route counts as a development plan
The three things your people need to weigh up to get an idea across the line: content, circumstances and consequences
How to walk alongside your people while the work is still taking shape, rather than after it's failed
Why handing over context does more for your people than handing over corrections
The question to ask yourself about what you know and haven't said out loud

Timestamps

(00:00) Introduction

(00:10) The CFO placement I got wrong

(01:52) Answering the brief and missing the real question

(02:09) When great work isn't enough

(02:52) Clever people and astute people

(03:38) Context is taught

(04:25) Content, circumstances and consequences

(05:22) Giving context rather than the answer

(05:46) A question for you

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