The unspoken skill of finesse
What finesse looks like, why it matters, and how to develop it for yourself and your team
š Hey, itāsĀ Wes. Welcome to my weekly advice column on managing up, driving growth, and standing out as a high performer.
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Today, weāre going to talk about the leadership trait of finesse.
Part I: What is finesse?
Part II: Same question, three different levels of finesse
Part III: The best ways to develop finesse
Read time:Ā 10 minutes
Many successful operators and leaders have what others would call āfinesse.ā Itās an important skill, especially for senior leaders and operators who want to continue to advance.
When people talk about finesse, thereās an air of je ne sais quoi, an abstract sense of āyou know it when you see it.ā Thereās this innate feeling that some people have finesse while others donāt.
As you progress in your career, finesse becomes increasingly important. If you lack it, your CEO canāt put you in front of your most important customers. They canāt trust that youāll be able to handle delicate, high-stakes issues. This stalls your growth and impacts your ability to add value.
Given how important finesse is, thereās shockingly little written about it.
I believe if we can dissect it, we can have more objective conversations about who has finesse, who gets rewarded for having it, and how to develop it in yourself and others.
But first, we need to understand what it is.
Part I: What is finesse?
For years, Iāve been fascinated with the topic of good judgment. You could give 10 operators the same primary data, and theyād potentially come up with 10 different recommendations of varying quality.
This is because deciding what to do and what to say requires judgment. And folks have varying degrees of judgment depending on their task-relevant maturity.
I see finesse and judgment as cousins. Iām still shaping how Iād define finesse, but for now Iāll say:
Finesse is the skill of interacting with other humans in a way that gets the outcome youāre looking for, despite situations that have grey area and a range of potential outcomes.
Finesse is the ability to notice whatās unsaid and handle sensitive dynamics.
Finesse is good judgment applied to delicate scenarios, usually involving communicating with other humans.
Iām sure others might define it differently, and I welcome building on what I have here. For the purpose of this essay, Iām mainly looking at finesse through the lens of interacting with customers, i.e. one the most important stakeholders.
Finesse requires good judgment because you need to:
Read a situation
Understand your levers
Identify risks
Determine what to do or say
Determine how to do it or say it
Execute your strategy to get the outcome youāre looking for
You might look at this list and think, How could anyone possibly do all this, especially in near real-time, while staying present with whoever theyāre with?
Finesse might come more naturally to some, like a personality traitājust like some people are more attuned to picking up clues and micro-expressions, or seem to always know what to say to make someone feel seen.
But luckily, it can be learned. As with anything that seems like magic from afar, I believe itās a skill that can be intentionally dissected, honed, and practiced.
So letās go to an example of finesse Iām excited to show you.
Part II: Same question, three different levels of finesse
One of the harder parts of my newsletter is showing you redacted examples, where after I redact, the point still shows through. After redacting, many things no longer make enough sense to be valuable.
Which is why I was straight-up giddy when I came upon this example for you.
Check out this Slack thread with three team members and how they each replied to a customer question. The customer asked:
āHow many users can your platform serve at any one time?ā
On the surface, this seems like a simple question with a simple answer. Thereās only one way to reply, right?
Wrong.
Here are three peopleāa mid-career operator, senior leader, and C-level executiveāanswering the same question in different ways.
All three answers are pretty good, but they get progressively better:
Hereās how I would dissect and rate their responses:
Person Aās response is too direct for a situation that isnāt as straightforward as they assumed. They simply say ā500 users.ā Thereās no framing to help contextualize this information. Itās a missed opportunity to guide the reader on how to feel about this fact. To be clear, I love being direct and concise, but this is actually missing important context that should have been included. Rating: āļøāļø
Person Bās response is better, but introduces a new unexpected issue of negative framing. There are a lot of negative phrases: Donāt have hard limits, without major issues, run into some performance issues, but. The reader leaves thinking using your product might be tenuous. This is common: You notice and solve for X in your messaging, but your solution ends up introducing a new problem Y that you didnāt realize. Rating: āļøāļøāļø
Person Cās response is the positive, strong version of Person Bās response. Person C shares the information, the right level of framing, and frames it positively so the user can interpret the information the way you want them to interpret it. After this reply, the user thinks more highly of your brand because you gave an answer thatās both customer-centric and direct. Rating: āļøāļøāļøāļøāļø
One of the things I like to do is dissect what seems simple on the surface, but upon a further look, offers more levers than you originally thought. More levers equals more opportunity to drive value.
As you can see, Person C noticed levers that Person A and Person B missed.
A bell curve of finesse
The range of finesse in the replies is a microcosm of the difference in skill and judgment that could be happening throughout your organization, in minor and not-so-minor ways.
The example above wouldnāt be that interesting if it were an isolated incident. But Iāve seen examples like this countless times, and it illustrates the varying levels of savvy among team members. Your team members are executing in hundreds of micro-interactions with coworkers, partners, leads, and customers on a weekly basis. This is slack in the system that, if removed, is all upside.
Youāve likely seen examples like this in your own team, but itās hard to pinpoint. For example, a more skilled (often more senior, but not always) operator shares their point of view and it just makes sense. Itās justā¦ better than what other people said. But itās hard to put your finger on what made their input more insightful and more right.
Every leader should actively look for opportunities to teach their team judgment. If youāre not doing this, youāre barely scratching the surface on what ālearning on the jobā means for your team.
You need to teach them to āseeā how you see, and notice what you notice. Explain the āwhyā behind what you said or did, or the āwhyā behind your feedback. When someone on the team displays finesse, point it out. Let everyone learn from it.
Over time, your team will improve their ability to pick up on what you pick up on, and eventually, to make the judgment calls you would have made.
I believe doing this, regularly and with gusto, is how you create a culture of high standards and dramatically improve your teamās chances of winning.
Part III: The best ways to develop finesse
1. Learn from your actual day-to-day work
I believe itās almost impossible to learn finesse purely in theory. The way to learn finesse is by thinking more deeply about the specific, real-world examples you encounter day-to-day.
Trying to learn finesse in human interactions, without actually interacting with other humans, is like trying to be an Olympic water polo player from your desk. You learn when you get in the water, flail around, and start to realize what you donāt know you donāt know. Then gradually, you keep at it and you fill in the blanks, and you get better.
For example, letās say you want to have more finesse when interacting with customers. There are times when you might want to ignore your customerās question altogether, and instead, answer the question you think they should be asking.
This sounds extreme, but good salespeople and founders do this all the time. Marc Randolph, co-founder of Netflix, talks about the skill of answering whichever question you want to answer. He said,
You donāt have to answer the question.Ā Itās perfectly appropriate to simply acknowledge how good of a question it is, but then go on to tell them something completely different.Ā The skill is figuring how to establish a plausible linkage between the two.
This isnāt only about projecting confidence and knowing this tactic exists. It takes judgment to know when to do this, and finesse to execute well in real-time.
I canāt tell you whether you should use this tactic without getting more information. Why? Because I donāt know enough about you, your personality, your skill level to pull it off, who the other person is, whether theyād balk or appreciate you doing this, and other important context.
There are too many variables to think about finesse in abstract terms. Focus on learning from real-life scenarios youāre encountering at work.
2. Pay attention to your self-awareness and situational awareness
One of the first things you can do is to become more aware of times that could benefit from finesse. At first, you might see opportunities as black-and-white, when often they are not. So simply acknowledging the range of outcomes, and your ability to influence those outcomes, is helpful. For example:
When should you err on being more matter-of-fact?
Whereās the line between an appropriate amount of framing vs turning your answer into meaningless marketing-speak?
Whatās considered ātoo on-the-noseā?
Whatās the right amount of backstory to share? How much is too much?
How do you take power dynamics into account?
How do you decide whether to play high or low, but not too high and not too low?
Whatās the right tone to use and why?
When should you be more conservative vs aggrandize a bit within reason?
When you can be a bit cheeky and what youāre able to āget away withā?
This is why I find it so rewarding to work with my 1:1 executive coaching clients. We get to work on a real situation, and strategize how to best add value to and appeal to real individuals (their CEO, direct reports) who have different personalities, worldviews, motivations, etc.
You can practice this with a trusted friend, as long as you believe they would notice things you might miss and you trust their judgment.
3. Become a keen observer of whatās around you
Here are other ways to improve your finesse, most of which are small steps you can start doing today:
Reflect on your personality-message-delivery fit. Certain personalities can āget away withā different things. I used to say to my co-founder, āI canāt believe you said thatāand it worked!ā But there was something about his vibe, who he was, and delivery that all came together and felt authentic when he said something a bit cheeky, and people could pick up on that. Similar to product-market fit, I call this personality-message-delivery fit. It takes self-awareness to know what works for you. So observe others for inspiration, but know thyself.
^ By the way, Iām sure you can think of a friend or coworker who says things you could never see yourself saying, but somehow it works. If you think of examples, tell me because Iād love to hear about it.
Study people who have finesse. When you think of finesse, there is likely someone who comes to mind. Think about when theyāve displayed finesse. What do you think they were aiming to do? What insight allowed them to react the way they did? What did they say? What could they have said that wouldnāt have landed as well?
Strategy, not self-expression. Always have a goal in mind of what you want your audience to do. If youāre not sure, figure it out, then have the conversation.
Study psychology. Both in books about applied psychology topics, like sales, negotiation, behavioral economics, influence, persuasion, conflict resolution, etc. But also, study psychology by studying the people around you.
Improve your vocabulary. Words shape perception and meaning, so studying this will increase the chances of getting the outcome youāre aiming for. Often the difference between finesse vs hitting a problem with a blunt instrument is word choice.
Consider the question behind the question. Try to understand where the person is coming from and why. Practice playing out how someone might (mis)interpret what youāre saying, and how to frame to increase comprehension and enthusiastic buy-in. Think about where there are opportunities to sell your ideas in the general direction you want to go in.
4. Donāt let your ego get in the way
Donāt let your ego prevent you from getting input that will help you improve your finesse. Let others give you feedback, preferably in public channels where your coworkers can learn too.
If Person A hadnāt shared their initial proposed answer in a public channel, the rest of the company wouldnāt have seen the improved versions of the response. The end result was better because of collaboration and iterationāit would have been a shame for everyone to miss out on that learning.
We can all improve our finesse in various situations, so let your manager and peers be honest and direct. Youāll be able to add more value, and take this newfound level of finesse with you wherever you go next.
There are different types of finesse, and different occasions that benefit from finesse. Keep an eye out for them in your daily workāthey are all free opportunities to learn as an individual and as a team.
Give yourself and your team the gift of learning from specific examples you can all look at in front of you. As coworkers, you have intense amounts of shared context that youāll never have from a book, course, coach, or anything outside your company.
Take full advantage of this opportunity to learn from each other.
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Thanks for being here,
Wes
PS If youāre as excited about the topic of finesse as I am, here are posts on how to improve your judgment for common workplace situations:
Such a great read, Wes. Your analysis in part three is spot on! (P.S. I felt second hand giddiness from that Slack example š)
As usual, so nuanced and readable šš¼
This feels like a culmination.
I'm curious when you realized that everything you've been writing about in the past few months all falls under the umbrella of "finesse."
Super cool to see the evolution. I smell a book!