Engage BS* detector: "We want to consult with you on this..."

As you respond to the volatile world of change out there, and work hard to engage and consult with people around you or with clients, customers and stakeholders, please please please, think first about how involved you want people to be.

How involved do you want people to be in the change, transformation or piece of work you’re leading?

You may want them fully empowered. Or perhaps this is about some consultation. Or something else. At each step or stage or leading change, keep asking yourself questions like: 

• Is this a briefing or transfer of information? (inform)
• Is it a consultative thing - I want to ask some questions and find out what they think? (consult)
• Do I need to involve them in the design or development of a process, product or service? (involve)
• Is it about collaboration: ‘let's work on this thing together’. (collaborate) 
• Do I want them to pick up the ball and run with it, to empower them so that they act and decide? (empower)

Whichever of these you'd like to make happen – and you may want to achieve several on one piece of work - you need to be clear, otherwise it can get awkward, disengaging and cause some further hiccups. 

When people say 'we want to consult with you on this...', I make sure my BS detector is switched on. Because they may have already made up their minds!

So here's a continuum or scale that can guide you. Get your goggles on: how low do you wanna go?

A Depth Gauge: How low do you want to go?

 Informing people about change is very much on the surface. You tell them, they listen. You move on.

But you can go further. When you consult with people, you’re getting under the surface, you’re asking them what they think, you want their views and those views may well impact the shape and size of things to come.

To go deeper is to involve people. How do they see things? What would they do? What do they think needs to happen? Get their ideas, their thoughts, their ways of thinking and seeing and bring them into the change.

Oh, yes you can go further. To collaborate with people, you go deeper. ‘Co’ means to work together. Now you’re talking, listening, meeting, co-creating, co-designing and co-delivering this thing together. Regularly. Often. Most of the time.

And even further you can go where people are empowered to design, create, deliver or implement a change or initiative. Give them power, decision making, financial, resource, timing: it’s theirs for the making.

I regularly use these five levels and ‘depths’ of involvement and participation (adapted from the International Association for Public Participation, or IAP2) to guide me in:

• how to prepare for engaging with a team,
• how to set up and design an environment a team is going to meet or work in,
• what processes they'll work through when I’m facilitating a meeting or workshop, and
• how to handle the stuff that happens during that team’s meetings, work, conversations and projects.

What you do as a leader makes a b-i-g difference in how well a group or team goes towards achieving an outcome. And how you set the scene is super important.

If they aren't engaging...

It's not ‘their fault' or 'up to them'. It's on you. If you've called a meeting, are facilitating a workshop, leading a piece of work or responsible for getting the outcome, it really helps to get clear about what you’re going to do when and how you'll engage them to make something good happen. 

Those crusty old days of workshops, meetings or conversations to 'discuss, decree and demolish' are gone. That's disengaging and ineffective. It’s super low engagement.

Start with this ‘depth gauge’ of participation and swim down to the levels that suit the outcome you're after and the people you’re leading. If it’s just about informing – stay on the surface. If it’s about collaboration, you’re going to have to go deeper, do more, design more and set things up so that people do indeed collaborate.

Just as a trained scuba diver plans their dive, maps out the use of their oxygen supplies and prepares their equipment, leaders too need to plan the depth of involvement and engagement with their teams, colleagues and stakeholders during times of change.

Take a big breath... and off you go. 

*BS: Bullsh*t (or Bullshit for the non edited version)

More than Post-it Notes & Sharpies

Let us give thanks... let us give respect, thanks and acknowledgement to two awesome and life changing tools :

• The Post-it Note (Well, anything Post-it really, brilliant)
• The Sharpie (In fact any marker. They're super too).

Used together, they are life changing, team changing and world changing tools.

So now that we've given thanks to them, we must realise that they alone (or together) do not a 'workshop' make.

When you're getting the team, clients, users, customers, stakeholders - anyone! - together and you ask them to write their thoughts or some comments on a post-it note, it isn't a workshop.

It's ONE tool, one task, one process in that workshop.

What do you then do with those Post-its? Put them not a wall, whiteboard or flip chart and start categorising or sorting? That's another process or task.

I've got to say, I'm seeing patterns before my eyes! The write-it-and-post-it technique can be limiting, repetitive and very 'same-same'.

I'm not dissing the approach per se; it works, it's just... overworked.

Hands up if you've been in a workshop/meeting/conversation/session/thing where you wrote stuff on a Post-it and put it on a board/whiteboard/flipchart/wall/thing?

We can fall into tired patterns of what a workshop is, or what we can get a team or individuals to do in a workshop. When you want to engage with users, customers, stakeholders, sponsors, clients, you must think and plan what processes you'll use.

Don't wing it. If you're the facilitator or leader of the meeting or workshop, then it's up to you to plan, think, prepare and map out what processes you'll use - or at least have at hand - to help the team and group move, shift, achieve decide and do.

Break the Post-it pattern.

Continue to evolve, adapt and build up your toolkit of 'go-to' processes, tools and activities that you can use with a team.

Be ready to go where the team needs to go, do what needs to be done to respond to what's happening. (Oh, and it's not about playing 'icebreaker' games either! They're so 1980s.)

Participation, contribution, collaboration and engagement in workshops needs to be built, ramped up, encouraged and rewarded. That's how you go deep, that's how you get great stuff done.

So what are you planning? What are you doing and saying? How are you responding?

This is more powerful than 'Write your idea on a Post-it' x four times in the one workshop.

Evolving Leadership

Meeting with a client yesterday and we were talking about how leadership continues to change and evolve. 

She is the Organisational Development manager; she's keen to see how else she can help develop the capability of the whole business. 

So the 'leadership is evolving' conversation went like this:

• Leadership used to be directive : 'you... do this'.
• It's evolved to being consultative : 'would you like to do this?'
• And continues to evolve to more facilitative : 'whats your view on what needs to be done? How will we go about doing it?'

Of course the questions will differ depending on the team, situation and needs of the business, but the shift and change is clear. 

From strong, directive statements, to questions about the work to be done, to a more facilitative, eliciting style of leadership. 

I think we can fear the facilitation style of leadership, thinking that it's going to take too long. "Who's got time to ask all those questions!?" Even the consultative style of leadership can be perceived as being a lengthy approach to achieving an outcome. "It's just quicker for me to tell them what to do."

Yeah? How much do you like being told what to do?

Our TELL bank accounts have a small balance in them. I think you need to save your directive approaches and telling for when they're really needed.

We need to use consultative approaches more, and realise they won't take longer... in the long run. If you're getting impatient or it feels like you're not getting anywhere, you'll likely save time later by getting buy-in, connection and engagement now, and to leverage that all along the process of leading the team. 

Plus, facilitative styles of leadership put more responsibility on the individuals and the team. The leader has less of the answers, which means less telling, less direction. This helps boost collaboration, trust, engagement, interest, freedom. 

Yes you'll still need to 'lead', to manage performance and to handle the tricky stuff when it comes up.

Notice how leadership continues to evolve; and so must we, if we are to engage and inspire new generations, diverse cultures, and thriving individuals who all want to make a mark on the world.

Wait... and wait a bit more...

You know the scenario - it's a team meeting and you're wanting to hear contributions or input, or it's time to hear if people have questions.

If you're not getting the engagement you want, it will likely be because of two things:

1. You asked a closed question

2. You didn't wait.

Even when engagement isn't that great in a meeting or workshop, the right questions will still elicit contributions.

Recently at a conference, the leader asked the team :

Does anyone have any questions?

It's SO easy to answer that with question a 'no' ... so we can just keep moving and get the hell outta the dull meeting!

If you're the leader, rather ask a question like:

So what thoughts are coming to mind?

What are you wondering about?

What questions are coming to mind?

These are open questions; simple, broad, open questions. It's amazing the difference they make. They allow people to just throw something out there. Their thoughts, their wonderings, the questions they may not normally ask.

Then once you've asked the question... wait.

Just wait.

The leader who asked 'Does anyone have any questions?' waited four seconds. I counted them. It can seem like an eternity when you're the asker, but when people are thinking about their thinking and possible questions, four seconds isn't enough.

Wait more.

And more.

And when you think you've waited too long...

...wait some more.

Some of the BEST questions will come when people are simply given some time to come up with the questions and contributions.

While you're waiting, keep looking at people, looking around the room or table at them; keep an open expression, be interested to hear what they say. Stay ready to hear what they have to say. Wait.

It reminds me of outback Australian stockmen who work their herds of cattle across the land. They rely so much on their trusty four-legged co-worker, the sheep or cattle dog.

'W-a-a-a-i-i-i-i-t-t-t-t' they say, telling the dog to just hold it before they round up more cattle.

Think of that before you jump in after some open questions... just w-w-w-w-a-a-a--i-i-i--t-t-t-t-.

Fire up the BBQ - it's ideas time

It's summer in Australia; there's sunshine, beaches, cool drinks and plenty of barbeques to be had. Before you put anything on the BBQ, turn it on, heat it up and prime it, ready for the tasty treats to be grilled and flamed... beyond recognition!

Priming the BBQ is like getting people ready for doing good work, producing tasty treats and creating great stuff. 

Too often we expect things from people when they're 'cold', as in "come up with some ideas on ..." or "tell me what you think about ...'

We've all got lots on our mind; give people time to get up to speed and be focused on what you're asking. 

You need to warm people up, prime them and create the environment so they'll deliver, and cook up some goodness. 

I think there are four stages or elements to priming people to come up with ideas or respond to your request:

1. environment - creating the right space so it's possible to think creatively and generatively;

2. mindset - framing why we're doing this ideas thing and how it will be used;

3. process - setting up the stages of the idea generation and gathering; what will happen now, next; and

4. acknowledge - reward and recognise early contributors, all participation and the success and progress being made. 

And then when it's done, finish it. Shut it done and stop.

Then move on to the next thing.

Fire them up, prime them and frame it so you will all get to taste the great stuff created. And you'll want to come back for seconds!