Working With an Elephant
Apply the Elephant's profile to real interactions.
Elephants can easily and often be misread as resistant, slow, or overly negative.
None of those are accurate. What's actually happening is almost always simpler: an Elephant who doesn't have what they need — data, time, clarity — will not move. Not because they're difficult. Because their natural core wiring requires confidence before commitment.
Once you understand that, working with an Elephant becomes much more straightforward.
What an Elephant actually needs from you
- Give them the information early. Don't drop a complex topic in a meeting and expect a real-time response. Send the agenda. Send the brief. Send the data. Then have the meeting.
- Make the standard explicit. Elephants work best when they know exactly what "good" looks like. Vague direction ("just do a first pass") creates anxiety because it gives them no anchor for when to stop.
- Ask questions, don't give verdicts. Elephants receive feedback best when it's framed as an inquiry rather than a conclusion. "What's your read on why this section is running long?" lands differently than "This section is too long."
- Wait longer than feels comfortable. When you ask an Elephant something meaningful and they go quiet, that's not disengagement — that's the actual work happening. Filling the silence too quickly shuts down their best thinking.
Where Elephants create friction without realizing it
An Elephant's thoroughness — genuinely one of their greatest strengths — can slow a team in ways they don't always see. They'll keep refining when the team is ready to launch. They'll surface twelve risks when the room only has bandwidth for three. They're usually right. The question is the timing and volume.
What to watch for in a coaching conversation
If an Elephant is asking increasingly narrow, technical questions, something is worrying them that they haven't named yet. Follow the questions.
An Elephant in distress often looks like overcriticism directed outward. Ask what they're afraid will go wrong if it ships as is. You'll get to the real thing faster.
Practice this in Game 2.