Do you get distracted by pre-worry, parallel-worry, or post-worry? It gets in the way of crystal clear communication. Executives often call me to prepare for a tough board meeting or a challenging discussion with one of their peers. One executive last week after our conversation, kicked off a potentially explosive meeting with “I know this project isn’t going to plan, I want to understand what is not working, what has caused it and how we can turn it around.” It went from being a potential circular discussion to immediately focusing on diagnosis and solutions.

Listen to me sharing more to an audience in Chicago, or if you prefer to read, the transcript is below.

Transcript:

You know on cartoons you get the speech bubble, the thought bubble and then you get the thing at the bottom that really tells you what is going on? This happens a lot and it happens every time you are interacting with your executives. They’re telling you something but they're thinking something else.

You're thinking right now, “Well how do I know what is unique and who says I'm unique?" And “How do I even know what I should be doing?” All these thought bubbles are going on. It’s this noise, this buzzing that goes on in your head and sucks your energy. You can have pre-worry, parallel worry and post worry.

You may be parallel worrying now, “What on earth is Val going to do to me right now in front of all these people I don't know?" And then afterward, in the break, you may think “Oh I should have said that,” or "I can’t believe I said this.” Or this morning while you’re driving you thought “What is this conference going to be like? Is this really a good investment of my time?”

Pre, parallel and post worry. It's one of these energy suckers that as a thoughtfully ruthless executive, as a thoughtfully ruthless leader, you’ve got to set free and it's going to give you back hours and hours of your life and the freedom to allow you to do what you need to do.

Val

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