Timestamps

00:00:00: Introduction

00:02:38: Some examples of pitching with skill

00:04:28: Idea inhibitors …

00:04:38: … 1: it has to be crystal clear

00:06:06: … 2: idea ownership

00:08:05: … 3: bigger is not always better

00:09:31: Ideas for action …

00:09:47: … 1: get people nodding

00:16:26: … 2: share the short version

00:24:28: … 3: use more visuals than words

00:29:47: … 4: frame your feedback ask

00:31:52: Bonus thought - greenhousing

00:34:03: Final thoughts

Interview Transcription

Helen Tupper: Hi, I'm Helen.

Sarah Ellis: And I'm Sarah.

Helen Tupper: And this is the Squiggly Careers podcast, a weekly show where we talk about the ins, the outs and the ups and downs of work to give you a little bit of squiggly support and some ideas to help you to take action.  And if it's the first time you're listening, you might want to know that we also create lots of other things to help you as well as what you're listening to today.  So, every episode comes with a PodSheet, which is a downloadable summary that you can use on your own to reflect on what you've heard or maybe use with someone else, maybe you mentor someone or you could use it in your team. 

We've also got little pod summaries which are swipeable short things on social media.  So, follow us @amazingif on Instagram or LinkedIn and you'll see those there.  They're good to tag people in, that you think might be helpful.  And we've got PodPlus, which is a weekly conversation with the very lovely Squiggly Careers community, where we just dive in a bit deeper and people ask questions, they share their own insights, and it's just a bit of a boost.  That's every Thursday at 9.00am.  All the details for that are on our website, amazingif.com.

Sarah Ellis: So, this week we're talking about how to present an idea.  And the reason we think this is important is, everybody has ideas, and it's a way that we all add value in our roles.  It shows that we're thinking and creating beyond where we are today, so we're being strategic, we're looking to the future.  And a big part of having ideas is being able to share those ideas.  We don't want those ideas to just rattle around in our brain and to not make it out, to not make it out to share with other people.  I think it's a really important skill in terms of how we influence and persuade other people. 

I think we probably all do this more than we give ourselves credit for.  But when you actually look at some of the research or if you read some of the articles around presenting ideas, it very quickly moves into pitching territory.

So, there is a really good HBR article that I read before the podcast, called How to Pitch a Brilliant Idea, but this is all about essentially one and done, like you're pitching a script for a film or you're maybe even pitching yourself for something for a project, and essentially you either win or you lose in quite a binary way.  So, we can definitely borrow some of the learnings from pitching, but I do think be careful that you don't go, "Oh, that's not for me because I don't pitch".  Actually, I don't think that many people do really out and out pitch.  I think what most of us do is share ideas where we're trying to get a feel for, is this something we should take forward, how could this be useful, and we want to be able to do this in a way that it shows our thinking, shows and shares our thinking, and also that we feel really confident, we've got the clarity and confidence to do this well.

Helen Tupper: And we were thinking about when do we do this, so we could kind of bring it to life for you a little bit.

Sarah Ellis: "When don't I do this?" I thought would be a better question!

Helen Tupper: I know, I know.  I was about to say, when do we do it with skill, Sarah?!

Sarah Ellis: Oh, that's harsh.

Helen Tupper: Well, no, because I think I end up sharing quite a lot of ideas.  So, we'll be talking to, in our sessions for example, we're presenting and maybe in a session I'll drop in a little idea I've got about, "Oh, could this be useful?"  Or we'll be talking to lots of the companies that we work with about career programmes, and I'll sometimes in those conversations drop in, "Oh, we've been thinking about this". 

I think I drop quite a lot of ideas into presentations to see what sticks and to be able to sort of communicate it a bit more clearly.  But I don't always, having prepped for this podcast today and some of the ideas that we're going to share with you, I don't think I always do that with skill.  I do it because I like an idea and I'm dropping it into conversation to see what sticks, and I think that is not bad, that's not a bad thing, at least I'm sharing them.  But there are lots of things that we're going to talk about that I think, "Oh, actually, if I did it in that way, that would be sharing an idea with a bit more skill, rather than just because I like the thought of it".

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, that's interesting.  I think I have a lot of ideas, which I think is a slightly different thing to presenting ideas.  And I think I share a lot of those ideas, actually, more with you than I do with anyone else.  And actually, I think you're slightly different.  I think you often share ideas maybe more openly or with bigger groups and more communities, like you say, just to sort of see what the reaction is.  Whereas, I would be more likely to have been mulling something over and then be like, "Oh, yeah, I've got a bit of idea, I'm going to share this with Helen".  

And I think over the past couple of years, I've actually got a lot better at how do I share this with someone else, and what does that need to look like.  And some of the things that we started to list were idea inhibitors.  So, I think there are some misconceptions around how to present an idea that can get in our way. The first one is that it has to be crystal clear.  Most ideas are not fully formed because if they were, we've gone too far.  And this is definitely something that I've learned.  I would hold on to ideas for too long, I'd keep developing them.

 But I find by sharing ideas early and often, those ideas go further.  And also, you can let go of the ones that you think are, this is either not for now, and I've definitely learned that "not now" doesn't have to mean not ever, I can come back to it, I'll just keep it in my head and then share it again in a month's time with Helen if I really love it.  But also, not feeling like you have to know the answer to every question, because I think one of the things that I found quite hard when I first started sharing lots of ideas with Helen when we were really working together a lot, was I'd feel a bit defensive about maybe some of Helen's questions.

So, Helen would ask me some questions back, which is sort of her default response usually when I share an idea.  I'd say she asks questions before she tells me maybe what she thinks.  I would then be like, "Oh, she's questioning me".  And then I'd maybe feel a bit defensive or that she's not open to this idea or she's not interested in this idea. 

And then what I think once I started to learn, I was like, "Oh, well no, she's asking questions.  And if I don't know the answer, that's fine, because the idea is not fully formed.  But the longer I keep this idea, almost the more fully formed it becomes in my mind, and then the harder those questions are to absorb.  So, the crystal clear one is the one that I think has really helped me.

Helen Tupper: I think the second inhibitor is one that you talked a bit about there, which is idea ownership, which I don't think you do this anymore at all.  But I think you have to watch out for effectively, I think it's just ego and energy over an idea, like, you like it -- well, some people have, "It's my idea", which I don't think you do.  I don't think you have the ego over, "This is my idea".  

But what you do have is the energy over an idea and I don't think this happens now, but I think it means for lots of people that you can hold it too tightly so, "It needs to look like this and it needs to be done in this way, and this is exactly what this idea should be", because there's so much love for the idea.  But I think when you can hold it a bit more lightly, so back to it doesn't have to be crystal clear and my whole identity doesn't have to be attached to this idea, then you evolve it with other people's input. So, Sarah would be much more willing to say, "I've had this idea about something we could do in our sessions, and I'll talk it through with you and get your input".  And actually, if that evolves along the way because of the conversation we've had about it, that's okay.  And feeling more open to other people's input rather than feeling like you have to own an idea, that's a much better way of taking them forward too.

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, so I think I've managed to just about sometimes let go of the ego thing.  What I still find hard, I think maybe you don't see it as much because I think I've got better at managing, is the energy, because I do still have a lot of energy around, and you probably do still see that, you've probably been quite kind on a Monday afternoon, I definitely have energy around an idea when I'm like, "Oh, I care about it".  

I think what I have learned is that when it's not working or when we might be deviating from it or doing something differently, I ask myself, "Why did it give me so much energy?" because there's usually some insight in that like, well, if I really care about something there must be something in that idea that I was like, "What was it that made it particularly interesting; and can you keep some of that but in a new way?"  So, I actually think it's getting really curious about those things that you that you care about.  I think that can be really helpful. Then the last thing, bigger is not always better.  You know when you say "idea", I do think ideas can maybe be intimidating, like if this is not you.

Helen Tupper: I feel like it should be when they're big, or the idea is big, it should come with a sound.

Sarah Ellis: A big idea.

Helen Tupper: Well like, "I've had an idea", "ding!", like it's the pressure of this big idea!

Sarah Ellis: Someone actually sent me a card once that said something like, "That's an excellent idea", and the little response was, "Yes, all my ideas are excellent".  And I was like, "Oh, okay, it's like a nice, not so subtle message there".  And I do think there's this, you know, just remembering that most ideas are small ideas.  So, this could be a really small tweak to a process or a project, or something really small that you think, "Oh, this could make a bit of a difference to how we work or what we work on".  So, don't mistake this for thinking, "Well, I don't do this because I don't really have any ideas.  I just don't believe…"  It's a bit like, you know, that I'm not creative.  I think sometimes people might bring those things together like, "Oh, I'm not a creative ideas person".  I bet some people listening will be like, "Yeah, that's me".  And I would say, in my experience, some of those people have incredible ideas and they're really good problem-solvers.  

And sometimes, if you just use a slightly different word, then you realise actually, they've got loads of ideas, it's just their identity can almost get in the way a little bit. So, we've now got four actions that we hope would really help you with how to present an idea, and then we've got a little bonus at the end about how to receive ideas from other people, which I really like, which I can say because it wasn't my idea, so that's not my ego getting in the way there!  So, our first action is to get people nodding at the start.  So, nodding doesn't mean, you're not tricking people into agreeing with you.  What I'm talking about here is including people, you know, including people in the conversation, because I think the best ideas when you're sharing them, because this is not a pitch, this is not a one way, "I want Helen to be silent for the next ten minutes while I pitch her this incredible idea", this is a, "I want to include Helen in an idea that I've had". 

So, how do we include people and get people included very quickly, because if it feels one way, people are never as invested? So, I've got three tools that help me to do this, and each one of them works slightly differently, depending on what the idea is that you're talking about.  The first one, and they're each an E, by the way, to hopefully make it a bit easier, the first one is about an experience; can you include people by sharing a recognisable, universal experience?  So for example, it might sound like, "Remember when you had that careers advisor or lesson at school, when there was about four options you could choose from about what you could do in your future?"  If we said that, most people recognise having a careers advisor or usually one random one-off session about careers when they were at school.

Helen Tupper: The room at school; there was, at my school, there was just one room!

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, there was a tiny room, which was really small.

Helen Tupper: Yeah, a tiny room.

Sarah Ellis: Mine was really small.  It was like, "Go in the cupboard and work on your career".

Helen Tupper: This is in the old days, where it was just full of paper prospectuses.

Sarah Ellis: Yeah!  Oh, God, yeah!

Helen Tupper: And then you always had to just go around and pick one up, and that was your whole career.

Sarah Ellis: That was like, "That's the cupboard for your career", wasn't it?

Helen Tupper: Yeah, the career cupboard.  Oh, my God, horrendous!

Sarah Ellis: The career cupboard where you could be just like teacher, lawyer.  It was like, butcher, baker, candlestick maker; there were three or four things, weren't there?  So, even there, that's including people already. 

Helen recognised that, I could talk about that, and I think usually there's a universal experience you can draw on.  The second E is more about an emotion.  So, you might say something like, "We're probably all quite familiar with feeling a bit guilty when you buy loads of salad because you're trying to be healthy, but then half of it ends up in the bin and we feel really bad about it.  And I know from experience..."

Helen Tupper: I can't believe that was your example!  My salad never goes in the bin.

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, but I mean you are literally the one exception to the rule here, we all know that!  I have pitched ideas about food waste quite a lot.

Helen Tupper: Of course.

Sarah Ellis: And salad is the classic one.  No one eats all their salad, essentially.  And also generally, there, it doesn't matter whether it's salad or not, what you probably recognised is feeling guilty about putting food in the bin.  It's not a nice feeling, you feel guilty because you know that you've either spent money on that …

Helen Tupper: Or other people are hungry and you're throwing food away.

Sarah Ellis: … or other people are hungry and haven't got enough to eat and you're throwing food away.  And so "guilty", I guess, is the key word there that you're trying to prompt people to be like, "Yeah, I do actually feel really guilty when that happens", and so is there an emotion?  Or you might be like, "How energised do you feel when you spent a day away from the office and just had some time to think?" and everyone's like, "Oh, yeah, I'd love that energy", even if they've not had it for a while.

Helen Tupper: Or the emotion when you start a company, we all know what it's like to feel on our first day, we're all a little bit lost.  Everyone's got the first-day feelings, it's very easy to connect emotionally with it.

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, perfect.  There you go, well done, good example.  It's almost like we've prepared!  And then the third E is empathy.  So sometimes, it might not be an experience that somebody's had directly, and it might not even be an emotion that people could recognise within themselves, but you might know "someone who…".  So for example, we all know someone who's been made redundant at some point in their career, and how tough that is. 

I mean, I don't know anyone who doesn't know someone who's been made redundant, and you might think, "Oh, yeah, I do know someone; me", it might be you make it a first-person experience.  Or you think, "Oh, yeah, a sister, a friend", so somebody that you are connected with. So again, you're going for things which are involving and including for as many of the people as possible as you're talking to.  It could be one person, it could be me talking to Helen, and actually quite quickly -- so, if I was talking to Helen about food waste, just as an example there, actually Helen's response to that would almost make me go, "Oh, okay, Helen probably actually isn't someone who wastes very much food.  Okay, so I might just need to bear that in mind as I start to share this idea. 

Maybe she doesn't quite recognise that".  So, almost not getting the nod is actually as useful as getting the nod.  And it won't happen as often.  I honestly think with these techniques, 90% of the time you get people going like, "Oh, yeah, I can see where you're going with that".  Occasionally you get someone being like, "No", or it just doesn't make sense to someone, and you're like, "Okay, that's good, that's good to know", because then it might mean you share a bit less in that one conversation.  You know you don't need to share all of an idea all at once.

Helen Tupper: So, that's just reminded me.  So, part one of what I'm about to say is that I think this is exactly what I mean about sharing an idea with skill, which I don't think I always do, like really thinking in advance, "Is it emotion, empathy or experience that's going to help me connect this idea to whoever I'm talking to?"  I think this is a really good example of I think why you're really good at it. 

But the other thing I was just thinking about, I was in a conversation with someone the other week and I unintentionally, I think, tried to use something like this.  So, I tried to use an experience-based start to share my idea with them, and the person came to me afterwards and basically said, "No".  Like, everybody in the room put their hand up.  So, I did this thing, everybody in the room put their hand up and was like, "Yeah, totally get it", they totally related. This one person very nicely came over and was like, "No", and just basically sat down and was like, "No, just haven't had that experience.  Basically I don't get it.  This is not something --"

Sarah Ellis: I remember you telling me this now.

Helen Tupper: Yeah.  But then what I did was I shifted to empathy and I was basically like, "Well, if you haven't directly experienced it, let's think about if this was reflective of other people that you might work with.  How can we empathise with the majority of people that do experience it?"  And then he was completely on board.  It was like, "Oh, yeah, absolutely.  I totally…" yeah, the empathy thing clicked.  So, I think even if you don't get a nod, to your point, that was really insightful.  And then, I didn't have this model in front of me at the time, but I think what I did do is moved on to the empathy piece, and it worked.  So, I think it's very useful.  This is Sarah's idea, everybody, all credit to Sarah.  I think it's a good one.

Sarah Ellis: Thanks, it's a pleasure.

Helen Tupper: So, the second action when you're presenting your ideas is to share the short version.  So, there might be a temptation to, I don't know, write a very big 20-page presentation to talk your idea through, but you probably lost people by page 2.  And what we want to do with ideas is to connect with people relatively quickly, and there's a few different ways that you can do that.  So, the first thing that you can do is you could share the idea in a word or a sentence, or maybe use a comparison that people can get quite quickly.  So, "We want to be careers what Martin Lewis is for money". 

People in their heads might be like, "Oh, okay, they want to be like a common-sense advisor and a place where people can quickly get some support.  He kind of democratises money knowledge and maybe that's what we want to do for careers".  So, that isn't actually what we say about our business, but hopefully you get the idea.  Or maybe if we were going to build some, I don't know, skills-job-match tool, where you could say, "Oh, we're building Tinder for careers, where people can swipe and see what they want to do with their development".  Again, we are not doing that, we're just trying to share some examples of what this might look like.

Sarah Ellis: I think there's a reason that when organisations are pitching for money, for investment in their businesses, this is what they do.  Because essentially this is a shortcut for people to understand something that is new to them and that they're hearing for the first time.  And so, what you're doing is you're borrowing from something that's very established and well understood to help you to describe something that isn't established and isn't understood.  So, it's a shortcut which is why it works so well. The other thing that I've seen really recently, that David Hieatt from DO Lectures, and if you don't follow him on LinkedIn, he's worth following because he writes so well, he talked about the idea of any time he does anything new, before or as he's getting started, he writes this mini manifesto, which can sound a bit intimidating, but essentially it's just a description of what is this thing; why am I doing it; why do I think it's important?  And when you read that manifesto it might be, what, like four to eight lines long, so it's sort of pretty short.  It does give you a real sense of what the thing is.  And it might change, and you might adapt it over time.  But I was thinking this as last week, Helen and I were working on our next book, which is all about learning, which we'll talk a lot more about at some point in the future, and I don't think you can always do this at the very start of an idea, it depends where you are in the idea development.  I think if you try to do this too soon without involving other people, I think it could read as, "Well, I've decided everything", because it can feel quite complete, a manifesto can feel quite complete. But what you could do is write a few different versions of it. 

I've done that before, where you sort of go, "Well, there are three ways that this idea could work", and I think that's nice because you're not being too definitive and you're staying really open, and again you're involving people like, "Oh, actually, we're all quite attracted to the middle one here", or, "We all really like that last one".  Or you could involve people when you're a bit further down by going, "Should we try and really summarise?"  I think that's what they are, they're a really good summary of an idea.  It might even be worth you doing for yourself though.  I was thinking when I read some of David's, and when we did ours last week, I was thinking if we had done that at the start of writing this book about learning just for us, that would have been something to keep coming back to, and we didn't quite do that and I think that would have been helpful.

Helen Tupper: And as well as those ways to kind of get a shortcut for sharing your idea, it's also useful to make sure you've got a shareable version of that, because sometimes those things might be easy for you to say, you might say it and sell it in your way, but it might be harder for somebody to put that in an email, for example like, "Sarah and Helen are building Tinder for careers". 

So, what might be more useful and more shareable is to do an idea on a page.  And so, you share the short version, but you also give people a shareable version.  And an idea on a page, I would just stick this into probably a grid of four boxes, because I like frameworks and things like that. But I would have the insight, so what's led you to this way of thinking.  Maybe there's a data point or there's something happening in the market or the business, for example, what's the insight.  Then I would have the idea, as simple and succinct as you can.  Maybe that's your idea in a word, or whatever, but a really short summary of the idea.  Then I'd have the impact, so if this idea was done, what would you expect the impact to be?  And then I would have implement, and this is not a massive project plan, this just might be, "Over the next three months, we'd need to do this in order to make it happen".  So, insight, idea, impact, implement.  This could just be an email by the way with a couple of bullet points under it, you don't need to have a matrix-y grid if you don't want to, but I would probably put it on a page and I would make it look good so that people would probably share it or put it into a presentation, or put it up on a screen in a meeting, because I want people to talk about it.

Sarah Ellis: And depending on what your idea is, something like "from and to" would also probably be quite helpful here.  So, you might want to describe the world as it is today from -- when I say the world as it is today, it might be just the process for our team meetings -- to, what's the outcome?  So, before you get to your idea, what are you trying to make happen, essentially?  So it's like, "If we're trying to move from weekly team meetings that take 90 minutes, but it feels like only half the people participate, to short, specific, high-energy team meetings where everybody feels part of them and everybody plays a role", you go back to getting everyone to be like, "Yeah, that does sound quite a lot better".

Helen Tupper: Who doesn't want that?

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, you know when you're like, "Yeah, okay, well we do want to do that".  That's not our team meetings, I'd just like to make that point!  Obviously, they're high energy and everyone's involved.

Helen Tupper: That's what we think! Sarah Ellis: Yeah, I know.  Don't, it's too late on a Monday to have that conversation.  But then you go, "Okay, well, if that's the from and to, what's the idea that is essentially the conduit that's going to get you there?" and that could be it.  I think you could be as simple as that, and if you've got that as something that was shareable, because often ideas include lots of people, have lots of dependencies, and you might not always be in a room or a Zoom when something that you have created or you've shared is then being shared again.  And I would say this is the bit that I'm always worst at. 

So, I think if I'm there and I can talk about it, like I said, I have lots of ideas and I think I've got well-practised and versed in sharing ideas.  But then I very rarely, because I'm not a very good completer, finisher, I don't then give people things that make it really easy to share those ideas on my behalf.  And then obviously, that's a really good thing for lots of reasons.  You get loads more feedback, the idea goes further, and that's why sometimes I think I've definitely shared ideas that have stopped too soon because I didn't do this very well.

Helen Tupper: I'm just going to challenge you.  I think you are a very good completer finisher.  I just think you have too many ideas to complete and finish.  I think you're very good, you're much better than me.

Sarah Ellis: Well, yeah, I know, but that's a low bar.  Between you and I, I'm like...  I mean, what is the personality assessment though that has completer finisher in it?

Helen Tupper: I'm a low bar!  "I mean if you're comparing me to you, Helen, that's a low bar"!

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, that is true though, because what is it?  Is it Myers Briggs or Belbin?  There's one of the personality profiles, and some are better than others obviously, but one of them has completer finisher.  What's the one that's like plant?

Helen Tupper: Isn't that Belbin's roles?

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, Belbin.  Belbin's roles, because I really remember you and I doing this a really, really long time ago.  And I reckon completer finisher, we are both quite rubbish at.  The only reason I'm any different is I am more stubborn than you, and so I get a bit overly determined and I'm like, "Right, I'm going to see this through".  Almost, "If it kills me, I'm going to make it through".  And you definitely don't have that.  So between us, it's a miracle, really, that anything makes it out the door!

Helen Tupper: Let's complete this podcast and prove that wrong!

Sarah Ellis: Let's, yeah, let's do that.  So, the third action is, share your idea with way more visuals than words, and way more visuals than words on a slide or words that you say, because people remember visuals.  We see it all the time in our workshops where we live draw.  It's the live drawing that stands out.  I might be saying something that's incredibly useful, but if I can draw it, it's the drawings that people refer back to.  When people are talking to me about what they've learned, they'll be like, "Oh, yeah, so you know when you showed that diagram or where you described strengths using shapes", that's something I did today, I could see, I was like, "That's what sticks, that's where people will remember that idea about strengths", because I used these shapes and then managed to come up with quite a good idea of showing whether you have intent and impact when it comes to your strengths.  People might not remember the exact phrase, but I reckon they will remember the shapes. So, show a prototype, show a mock-up, draw a diagram.  I think the thing that stops people from doing this, and actually I was doing a leadership session last week and I heard this from lots of people, you know that desire for things just to be so good, the quality bar is so high and you're used to doing things that are that are really good and that look great and are very well thought-through, and so we're often quite reluctant to sketch stuff out quickly.  

Because I think we also fear, and I recognise this, you fear the critique isn't going to be of the idea, it's going to be because you're like, "But this is really sketchy", and so it's like, "You're not understanding it properly because I haven't done a good job of properly showing it". But in my experience, every time I have tried to do this, whether it's like -- we did it recently, we mocked up some book covers.  And yeah, obviously, it's not right and we did it quite quickly, I think we did it in 24 hours.  But it was still better than not having one.  And I just can't think of an example where it's not better to try and show rather than tell.

Helen Tupper: I've looked at my scribbles before for meetings that I've been in, where there's an idea in my head and I'm trying to make it real for people, and I sort of scribble things on a page.  And people get nodding, they're like, "Oh, yeah".  And in my head, in the moment, it's like, "It's really good", in the moment I've drawn it.  Then I look at it afterwards, I'm like, "That just looks like a lot of scribbles, but actually people get it".  Because I think the words that you're saying at the same time as you're using visuals, they are the things that click together.  If I just drew without any voiceover, I'm not a particularly good drawer, I'm not sure my drawings would communicate what it is.  But I think it's the combination of a visual hook on top of the idea that you're sharing that really works.

Sarah Ellis: And I mean, I have done this with our designer.  We work with a brilliant designer called Jen, and sometimes I can just see that my brief for an idea that I've got for something that we want to create around careers, I just think, "This would be so much quicker for me to mock up and draw", and I have done that so many times for her.  And it is so rubbish what she gets, like embarrassingly rubbish.  

I did one last where, what were we were doing?  An event summary thing for Gremlins.  And I just said to her, "Oh, but I feel like it could work a bit like this", and did the worst creative of all time.  But it meant that she got what I was trying to communicate as an idea really, really fast, and I think it saved us loads of time.  She could also tell me whether she thought it was going to work or not. Actually, often if you are using words -- I think I had actually tried to describe it first in a couple of sentences, and then I could see it going in a different direction, and I was like, "Do you know what, this is like a show-versus-tell moment".  And then she can at least say to me, "This won't work for these reasons", or, "Yeah, it's amazing, isn't it?"  You know when you're so clear in your own mind, and then you think you've written it in a way that's really clear, but often if you could just bring it to life in some way, it just really helps people to understand what you're trying to say.

Helen Tupper: And I've done that, in case people are thinking, "How could this look for me?" using something like Whiteboard on Microsoft Teams, or whatever software you use, you could draw...  Imagine you've got an idea about a process at work.  Whilst you're talking it through, you could draw the different stages of the process.  That's the sort of thing that we mean, that people would latch onto it then.  Or maybe you're in a job where there's a lot of communication by PowerPoint, for example, and you've got an idea about what this could look like or how you could structure it, literally doing a sketch, like the bullet points.  I've done that before, I've taken a photograph and I've sent it to somebody and been like, "This is what I mean".  It's just the connection that you're trying to get really in their brain.  They've just got a little bit more to just make this idea a little bit more tangible.

Sarah Ellis: And actually, we had an example recently, Helen and I had an example recently where we were both very clear of something we wanted to create, and it didn't happen.  And I think if we had done this, actually we would have got the thing that we'd both got in mind, but people sort of went off in different directions.  Not necessarily rightly or wrongly, but I was like, "Oh, it's a really interesting example of if we had just very quickly mocked up visuals", which actually I would say, Helen, this is one of the things that you're best at.  You're very good at just being like, "I'm just going to quickly create a one page in Canva, I'm just going to quickly do this".  And I was like, "Oh, I wish in hindsight we'd done that", because I remember us both looking at it going, "Oh, that's not quite what we meant.  But then someone's now wasted time on it", and then it gets frustrating for everyone.

Helen Tupper: And the last section is all about framing your feedback ask.  So, to the point of when we share an idea, we're not really sharing it fully formed, and we are sharing it in order to get other people's input, what's really important is that you frame your feedback ask in a way that allows you to get useful input on your idea.  So, for example, if I just say, "Sarah, what do you think?"  I mean, Sarah's pretty good at giving feedback, but that's a bit of a broad question.

Sarah Ellis: I'd absolutely love it.  I'd be like, "That's a free-for-all"!

Helen Tupper: She might go, "Oh, well let me just talk about how you've shared that idea".  And I'd be like, "No, I don't want feedback on my communication style, I want it on this actual idea".  But it's quite a big ask, really, "What do you think of the idea?"  You don't know if what you're going to get back is going to be particularly useful for you.  So, what you might want to do is ask some questions on, "Okay, having shared that idea, I'd really love to know what stood out", and then just listen, like really, really listen.  And then you could ask another question, "Okay, so having shared that idea, what do you think might be missing if we were going to move this forward?"  And I think when you are asking those questions, you listen really well, because there's going to be so much insight in what they come back with.

They might have some comments, they might also have some questions, and their questions might be focused on different areas.  So, the insight that we talked about earlier, are they questioning, "Well where's this idea actually come from?" because ultimately, if they don't believe where it's come from, it's going to be really, really hard for them to buy into the idea.  Or they might have some questions about the impact.  Maybe they think you've been a bit too stretching with the impact this idea might have.  Or they might have -- where I think I tend to go a lot is the implementation.  I genuinely think, "Oh, great idea", and most of my questions are all around the implementation.  And it's just useful to listen out for where their questions are going.  I think also that stops you being too defensive. 

It stops you just hearing, "A question about my idea, because they don't like it", and it helps you to clue into like, "Where is this question focused?" so you can stay a bit more objective and be less emotional about what they might be saying about your very brilliant idea.

Sarah Ellis: And then the last extra bonus thought from us is if you're on the receiving end of somebody sharing an idea.  For some people, this might be second nature.  So, if you're someone like me, I enjoy doing this, this is a skill I just want to get even better at.  But for some people, and I do see this quite frequently, this can feel really hard to do.  It can feel quite vulnerable. 

Again, people do feel like, "Oh, if this idea doesn't go down well, that really reflects badly on me and how I'm doing in my role".  So, it's always good to be aware of that.  I always find I definitely need to be aware of this, I think because you and I are so comfortable doing this and we've got so used to it over the years, but it's not the same, say, if someone on our team was sharing an idea with us and maybe they're challenging something that you and I have come up with.  That's quite a hard thing to do. So, a good way to support people is to take a technique that we've borrowed from a book called Sticky Wisdom, which is called greenhousing.  Helen, do you want to talk a bit about greenhousing, because I know that this is something you've done before?

Helen Tupper: So, the idea of greenhousing an idea is recognising that young ideas, like little plants you might put in a greenhouse, need a bit of extra protection because that's when they're at their most vulnerable.  And so, what they really need is a little bit of SUN.  And think about SUN as an acronym where the S is to suspend judgment, the U is to understand, and the N is to nurture. 

So, if you are seeing someone share a young idea, give them some SUN; suspend judgment, understand and nurture.  The worst thing that we can do to a young idea that needs a bit of protection is give them a lot of RAIN.  We will drown that idea, we will kill it if we give them too much RAIN.  RAIN is an acronym where the R stands for react, the A is for assume and the I is for insist.  So, anytime we don't listen and we just react with our emotions straightaway, or we make assumptions about what this should be or how it should happen, or we insist that it must be done in this way, we take away that support that we want to surround the idea with so it can grow.  This ultimately kills a lot of ideas from very, very early stages.  So, give it a bit of SUN and minimise the RAIN.

Sarah Ellis: So, we hope this has been helpful for you, whether you're presenting ideas all the time and this is a strength of yours that you just want to get even better at, or whether this is something that makes you nervous or you feel like you're maybe starting from a lower base, we hope there's some really practical ideas here for you.

Helen Tupper: So, that's everything for this week, don't forget all those resources that we've got, find them on amazingif.com, the PodSheets, the PodNotes and also the PodPlus.  We would love to see you there and talk about ideas with you.

Sarah Ellis: That's everything for this week, thank you so much for listening and bye for now.

Helen Tupper: Bye everyone.