See work from their angle

Excuse the the stutters, stumbles, and stammers: here’s a one-take recording of this edition if you prefer to listen: Spotify Link

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Thanksgiving! A holiday with no gift giving requirements and a distribution of household labor (the cooking, the baking, turkey carving, cleaning the dishes, beer fetching...) where the expectations are inherently agreed upon because they’ve become annual ritual.

It also gives many of us a reason to think about other people—a collective, nationwide exercise happening on the same day.

And if you'll pardon a blunt segue from the dinner table to the boardroom table, thinking about other people is something much of the workforce could do more often. Specifically: predicting what might help other people succeed … so that you can succeed, too.

Jenna Fischer—you may know her better as Pam from The Office—shared a story on Brian Koppelman's podcast that’s stuck with me over the years. Fischer tells of sitting through a network test audition for a pilot episode of a new TV show in a room full of actors, writers, producers, and network executives.

The actor thinks it's about them. The writer thinks it's about them. The producer thinks it's about them. The network executives definitely think it's about them.

But of course it's about everybody. The actor needs the writer and the producer. The writer needs the actor and the producer. The producer needs the actor and the writer. The end product suffers if anyone loses sight of what the other people need to succeed.

Organizational psychologist Adam Grant calls this perspective-taking—the ability to understand what someone else thinks and needs, which is different from empathy. Empathy is feeling what they feel. Perspective-taking is understanding what they're trying to accomplish. And while empathy might make you a kinder colleague, perspective-taking makes you a more effective one. It's the difference between sympathizing with your colleague's stress and understanding what they actually need to succeed.

Most of us move through work focused on our own angle—our own pressures, our own metrics, what we need to accomplish. And that makes sense. That's what we're paid for. But here's what really gets the work moving—asking what the person across from you needs to succeed. Not to manipulate them. Not to play politics. Not to please. But because understanding what someone else is trying to accomplish changes how you frame your own work.

• You get budget approval for your scheduling pilot because you framed it in terms of measurable cost savings—the language the CNO needs to present to the board

• You land the assignment you wanted because you showed how it solves the problem your director's actually trying to fix

• Your team engages with your input requests (this time and the next) because you close the loop on what happened to their suggestions

The practical application: Before your next meeting, proposal, or request, ask: What does this person need to accomplish? What pressures are they under? How does my request help or hinder that?

And here's some homework for the next two weeks: Do you think the Thanksgiving roles are still working for everyone? Or has someone found themselves making all the pies again because, well, that's the way it's always been? Has someone been fetching beer for a decade who'd actually love to be in charge of the turkey? Give it a thought. Then check in with your crew.

Around The Water Cooler ⛲

Self-Mastery Is Good, Actually by Damon Linker

Inside Uniqlo’s Quest for Global Dominance by Lauren Collins

If AI Takes “Our Jobs, It’s Because We’ve Made Our Jobs Really Stupid”: Tom Goodwin

Thanks for reading. Hit reply and let me know your thoughts.

How To Work is healthcare-focused work design inspiration (from the experts!) to nudge your perspectives and practices into better alignment with the world of work as it is, and away from what it was. Here’s my take on what we’re working through.