The Warm and Fluffy Test - Adaptable communication

During my time scaling a start-up, I interviewed hundreds of people. Over 1500 to be precise and hired around 200 of those people. Each of these people went through a rigorous screening before the face-to-face interview, so it shows how hard it is to find great people - and why hiring is such an important aspect of being a manager.

For roles aligned to agility, management or leadership I ran a simple (and non-scientific) exercise called the Warm and Fluffy test.

I have a bit of a bug bear with the state of management right now. It’s become trendy for managers to let people do what they want (and the culture tanks but companies get great engagement scores!), or work on what they want (and sometimes this isn’t even contributing to the business), or to give no feedback about poor behaviours (search the web for toxic workplaces and you’ll find all you need).

At the same time, the command and control and “hardcore” demand approach by managers doesn't work either. We must treat people like people.

And so, during the interviews I would draw a horizontal line on the white board. At one end I would write “do it my way” - and at the other end I would write “warm and fluffy”. It’s a linear scale from direct tyranny to happy go lucky soft and fluffy - do what you want. I told you it wasn't scientific. But it does serve as a great topic starter for a conversation.

I would ask candidates to mark on the scale where they believe they are when it comes to their communication in work for their role.

It was amazing to see how honest many people were - I was expecting them to put themselves in the middle (the safe answer) but people were remarkably honest. They explained why they marked where they did and how that reflects in their work.

The best candidates though, always answered the same way. They marked where their “natural preferences” were but explained that they could move up and down the scale when they needed to.

Top prize. It’s really a micro-non-scientific-test of communication skills.

You know I put communication behaviours and skills above EVERYTHING else when recruiting and building teams. Communication behaviours are what make psychological safety possible, they help to overcome most problems businesses face and can help to build engaging cultures where people get work done but not at the expense of relationships or other people.

And someone’s ability to flex up and down the scale when needed is a good sign that they understand how important relating and communicating to other people is in the workplace.

Of course, in an interview we’ll never have an enough time to ascertain whether that is just a good interview answer or true, but we can dig in a little to find behavioural based answers to re-enforce this position.

Our natural response in a situation is rarely the right way to communicate at work.

We need to learn to flex. We need to know when to be harder with our communication or softer. We do this by reading other people, deeply studying the problem at hand, getting to know other people and reading the context of the situation - as well as developing the behaviours needed to flex. And it helps if we actively listen too.

In the comms workshop I bang on about all communication having a purpose, audience and context. Effective communicators understand this and flex accordingly. This warm and fluffy scale represents that idea.

The best people to work with have empathy, can understand other people and can adapt their own communication and work style to suit the context and the person. 

But be careful. When we spend too long in situations using our behaviours that are not overly natural to us (as in, we have learned to operate in a different way) it uses more energy and attention.

Control our reactions

The essential first step to being able to adapt is learning to control our natural reaction.

Instead of reacting in our normal way we must learn to pause and take the time to respond. Then we must learn to quickly understand the other person, the context and think about what the most appropriate way is to respond.

The more you learn about communication the more you naturally process this information in real-time. Then we must have the skills and behaviours to adapt - and the energy to sustain it for as long as we need to. And again, the more we learn the easier it is to adapt immediately with little pause, and less use of our essential energy.

And this takes practice. It is hard. It is mostly internal work on our own tendencies to react. And then it is about learning how to respond in a way that may not be our most natural.

But in our world of work if all we can do is be static in our approach to communication, we’ll find we can’t work with certain groups of people, or can’t control a situation that needs some control, or we lead with fear, or create a culture that spirals out of control, or simply find everything and everyone utterly overwhelming.  

The best people to work with are those who know when to move on the scale. They spend time building great relationships and can run that line between being effective and liked all day long. And at the heart of this is caring about other people greatly, whilst realising a business is only alive if it meets its business results.

Good managers (and employees) know this. They run that line. They flex when they need to. They coach other people in how to do this. And they recruit people who know how to communicate.

If you get this right as a manager you will see business results being hit with engaged staff who are enriched by their workplaces, and you’ll have a much easier job as a manager.