CSP S3 E4 - Kevin Metzger - Communication is Key

In this compelling episode of the Customer Success Playbook Podcast, co-host Kevin Metzger shares his foundational principle for driving team success: the power of clear communication. Drawing from his extensive experience in requirements gathering and project management, Kevin unveils practical strategies for avoiding communication pitfalls and fostering genuine understanding within teams.

Detailed Analysis

Kevin's insights delve deep into the complexities of workplace communication, offering a multi-layered approach to enhancing team effectiveness. His experience writing requirements for a major delivery company serves as a practical case study in the challenges and solutions of cross-functional communication.

Key takeaways include:

1. The importance of iterative communication processes and documentation
2. Strategies for managing disagreements proactively through pre-meeting alignments
3. Techniques for identifying and addressing miscommunications in real-time
4. The value of creating psychological safety through personal development sharing
5. Methods for aligning team mindset toward shared success goals

The discussion highlights how seemingly simple agreements can mask fundamental misunderstandings, emphasizing the need for active listening and careful facilitation. Kevin's approach to team meetings, incorporating personal development elements, demonstrates how creating a shared success mindset can enhance communication effectiveness.

This episode provides valuable insights for customer success leaders looking to improve team dynamics and project outcomes through better communication practices.

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Metzgerbusiness.com - Kevin's person web site
Kevin Metzger on Linked In.

You can find Roman at:
Roman Trebon on Linked In.

Transcript

Roman Trebon: 0:00

Hi everyone. And welcome to the Customer Success

Kevin Metzger: 0:02

Playbook Podcast.

Roman Trebon: 0:09

Where we bring you actionable insights, quick tips, and fresh ideas for driving customer success. We're already in week two of 2025, and I can't believe how quickly it's already going. I'm one of your hosts, Roman Trebon, and this week I'm interviewing my co host. Kevin Metzger, we're flipping tables. He interviewed me last week and I'm interviewing him this week. As we mentioned last week on the show, we have a new format this year. Mondays, you're going to hear our guests talk about their number one tip for customer success. On Wednesdays, we'll pose one big question and on Fridays, we'll explore the impact of AI on that week's topic. With all that said, Kevin, welcome to the show. Thanks, Roman. I'm excited to be here. Uh, be fun to get interviewed by you. Yeah, I was on the hot seat last week. Uh, we're turning tables this week. All right, Kev. So let's jump right in. What is your number one tip for driving team success?

Kevin Metzger: 1:04

Yeah, Roman. I'm excited about this question. I think my number one big tip for driving team success is you've got to be clear in communication. That's probably my number one tip and driving clear communication is such a difficult thing to do. I sat in a class with my son last night at our temple. The topic was how do you communicate between kids, teens, and adults. They talked about all different types of skills to use for communicating and how emotions and feelings can get in the way and all of that, all of that's true. Right. And it's stuff you've got to be, be aware of, but I'm going to take you back. I'm going to take, take myself back and talk about one of my first roles in, in. The business world was writing requirements for teams, how products should work. I was at a large delivery company. We had to write out all the requirements for all of our online products and how they would work and how to do, how, how the product would perform in the real world. The process of writing the requirements down involves working with your marketing teams, it involves working with technical teams, working with QA teams, working with usability teams. So we had all these different players in the meetings. We worked together to determine the requirements to build the product and to QA the product. And The process we'd use is we sit in a meeting, we'd go through, we'd take notes out of the meetings, send notes out, get feedback from the notes, document all of that into a doc, a requirements document. And we would do this in an iterative process over six weeks for business requirements and then another six weeks for functional requirements. And it'd be amazing to see how you could come into a meeting and some stuff that you would have reviewed in the previous meeting and read about and all gone through and agreed on. And then you go back through your next reading and somebody's like, that's not what we said, or that's not what I thought it said. That's not what I thought we were communicating. We need to change this. So it's a demonstration of how you can really miss things. And then if you aren't taking the time to really overly. Double check your communications, make sure that everybody's in agreement. There were things that as the person leading those discussions, you'd find certain techniques and tips that would help either one drive the communication. So, you know, that people have disagreements in how something should work. Well, how do you resolve that disagreement and not have a meeting fall apart? One of the. Things that we would use is reaching out and reach out to the one party beforehand and say, Hey, this is what we're thinking. How do you see that? How to, and then work, work with the other party offline and say, Hey, I had this conversation. We were thinking, this is how it would work. Can you draw and then can you drive an agreement prior to the meeting so that when you come into the meeting, you're not losing time and something like that. Another tip I had related to communication is when you're listening to being really, you've really got to take the time to listen to what people are saying, because a lot of times you'll have two people talking about the same topic. One person saying, well, it works like ABC and the other person saying, yes, I agree. It works like CBA. They think they're in agreement because they just said, we're the person to said, yeah, I agree with you. It works like CBA and person one, all he heard, because he said he, he heard it. He agreed with me. So he knows it works like ABC, not CBA. As a person leading a meeting, you have to be very careful to listen to those, listen for those types of misagreement agreements. That's another thing. And then you have to be able to negotiate that. Say, and how do you negotiate that without having people start getting upset? Either that you're saying, Hey, you're disagreeing. You can't say, Hey, you disagree. Yeah. You have to do something. Uh, Done well and properly. You have to say, well, I'm hearing this here and I'm looking at this over here. I could call it reflective of listening. I actually had an argument with the person at the, at the school last night, temple last night, that I didn't like the term reflective listening, because I feel like it's kind of a way of degrading. It's one thing if you reflect back, what somebody says to them, it doesn't mean you heard them. So I don't like that term, but you do have to be listening. You have to hear what's being said. But my biggest tip and the biggest thing, so just in communication, and this came a couple of years later, I was a project manager and I had a team of college graduates. I keep wanting to say young kids. It was college graduates. I was a little further along in my career and. At that point in time, I was spending a lot of time on personal development. And I made a decision that as part of my weekly team status meetings, I was going to share something that I learned as part of my personal development, I'd share a video, and then I take a minute to talk about what it meant to me, or I'd share saying and talk about what it meant to me. And then I'd go around the room and talk to the team. And it was kind of like an icebreaker at the beginning of the meeting. But one of the things that. Did that I really loved and that I think is a great, great thing to be able to do is it got all of us on the same page about thinking about what success was and what success meant to us. And then when you're looking at your project and you transition into the project, everybody on the team wants a project to be successful. So you've gotten yourself in the same mindset to have a better flow of discussion. And really drive a successful outcome in each of those meetings and really driving your products, project status. Hey, this is where I need help. People open up a little bit easier to that once they are all in the mindset of, yeah, we're working towards success together as a team. So I think

Roman Trebon: 7:15

that's my big tip of the week. I love it, Kevin. It reminds me of one of my favorite quotes. Uh, from George Bernard Shaw, the single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place. Right? I think that's what you hit the nail on the head there. And it really shows, Kev, I think what you were talking about is that true, effective communication, it's not just speaking, right? We've all been in enough meetings where people are talking and words are being spoken. But it really requires, uh, that others actually understand the intended message, right? Like, are we really getting through on what we're trying to deliver here and talk about? Not just saying words for words. So great examples. Great tip. I loved it. Next time on Wednesday, we'll be back, Kev, and we're going to talk about The one big question where we'll tackle how to look at service delivery as a product. Make sure you subscribe so you don't miss it and we'll see you in the next episode. Thanks for listening and keep on playing