Paint Done

Today's blog prompt wants us to talk about an influential conversation from our past, how our level of preparedness impacted the outcome of said conversation, and what could we have done differently that would result in a different outcome.

Bob taught us about happy accidents but also so much more if we really paid attention.

I'm having a hard time narrowing down to one conversation that I initiated because there have been many. Some good, some major crash and burn scenarios, and some ineffective. Regardless of the outcome, I took at least one lesson from the interaction and always try to apply it to the next. So going to take a slightly different direction on this post, taking the opportunity to talk about an impactful conversation a leader had with me.

I had the blessing of working with and reporting to someone that became more of a friend than a boss, but she was a great boss, too. She was a mentor to me in many ways and was one of the few leaders in my life that truly led by example. Her name is April! April taught me so much about healthy and effective communication, and one of the standout lessons was something that she learned from a leader that she looked up to, Brene Brown. She told me about the concept of "Paint Done".

In today's lecture we spent some time discussing the importance of what motivates communication between people, and April came to mind almost immediately. I have never worked with or for someone as transparent as she when it came to her motivations for conversation. I didn't know it before I met her, but after working with her I immediately recognized this clear expression of intention to be one of the leadership qualities I admire the most. And this is a major tenant of the "Paint Done" concept.

This is Brene Brown's definition of "Paint Done". It sounds like such a simple and obvious approach to leading communication, but in my experience it is a rare one. I believe April and I were a pretty productive team, carrying our department through some major challenges and doing so considerably well. I owe a majority of that success to her use of this method.

The flipside is of course ambiguous communication. Best case scenario, you work with a very well meshed team with telepathic capabilities and autonomy is respected in your projects. I could be wrong, but I feel like that may be the case about .01% of the time. So the more likely scenario is you have a bunch of super confused people trying to accomplish their best interpretation of the goal they've been given. The outcome is extremely poor productivity and probably some angry people. All of this could have been avoided with "Paint Done".

So this is something I try to incorporate in communication, but I do still forget from time to time. I think it's important for the leader of the communication to do this, but I also think it's just as important for the team to ask for it. In the end it's a win/win for everyone.