Leader as Facilitator

We know the days of barking instructions to people in teams and telling them what to do are fading. 

Yes sometimes you still need to give instructions or directions but overall, people need to be engaged. Global engagement scores are not good. Must try harder. 

Additionally, there are countless untapped capabilities in teams the world over, with people just itching to put their experience to work - if only they were asked.

And plenty of teams aren't quite working at their peak levels of performance because the environment, situation or processes they're working with are slowing them down, stifling them or hindering their opportunities to collaborate and deliver.

Leader as Coach : too slow and inefficient?

The Leader as Coach approach has been in play in many industries and organisations for years, decades perhaps. I remember running a Coach the Coach program for a big bank who were helping their leaders be better at those one-on-one conversations. 

And while coaching is still a highly valued and valid leadership tool, many leaders find the drain, drag and pace of one-to-ones less efficient than they'd like... and need. 

As one leader said in the bank's coaching program:

"It take sooooo long to get that person to realise what needs to be done, to go through that GROW model and get them on-board with it. I just don't have the time or patience". 

And while that may run counter to what leadership or leaders should be like, the realities of pressured schedules, busy teams and project deadlines mean leaders need to leverage more than the one-to-one... at least some of the time. Granted, the one-on-one coaching conversation is a must for performance, development and other discussions. It will always be needed. No argument there. 

Leverage for impact

So how else can leaders leverage their time and the interactions with their teams, to inspire the tribe, get them engaged and aligned to the work that needs to be done... and then go ahead and get it done?

The shift from 'Leader as Coach' to 'Leader as Facilitator' is well underway. 

Leaders are noticing that leverage is possible when they're adopting the role of a facilitator of their team. Group harmony and cohesion is strengthened and the sheer energy or 'vibe' of the team, tribe or group coming together seems to lift people to build higher levels of team performance. 

Facilitators make progress easy... or easier. They run a process, respond to what happens and draw on communication tools to make this progress. 

As a participant in a recent Leader as Facilitator program said:

"Now I'm able to get stuff done; we talk as a team, I can help remove barriers across the team, we can make decisions and I'm better able to handle the general sh*t that goes down daily in our team." 

(Note, this leader wasn't naming his people as sh*t; it was more about the finicky, challenging issues and hiccups that happen throughout a typical day when leading a diverse team).

So leader as facilitator, hey?

Ah don't be mistaken, facilitation is not ‘soft’ work. Be assured, there are many effective and well-structured approaches and techniques that professional and full-time facilitators use to achieve swift, creative and relevant outcomes with a group.

And though the 'Shit facilitators say' meme is a good laugh, it's time those cliched phrases and lip service statements were sent to the trash file; they're dated and a poor first response for a present day leader using facilitation approaches with their team. 

There are many more contemporary, authentic, empathic and realistic ways to get stuff done in teams and keep the team connected to the piece of work via facilitation skills. 

Diversity demands it

A leader adopting the capabilities or behaviours of a facilitator is able to achieve outcomes that have a direct connection to business goals, and importantly, get genuine input and contribution from teams and units across the business.  

It's not enough for a team to meet to just to talk or discuss. In the volatile, uncertain and complex world that businesses operate in, decisions, input and diverse contributions are paramount. 

In trying to facilitate and drive these types of meetings, many leaders head into steamrolling territory, shutting down contributions or closing down creativity without even knowing it. You might have just caused what you were trying to avoid!

Then when the room is silent, you might not know what to do. Was it something you said or did?  Possibly. And there's also something else you can do to change that again. 

It's not soft

Business facilitation is not about looking at a candle and taking three deep breaths, holding hands or singing 'Kumbaya'. Some industries and fields use this to good effect. I'm not a proponent of it. 

It's a balance of people participating and contributing AND achieving business outcomes.

The leader as facilitator needs to balance the business imperatives of:

• Achieving outcomes
• Boosting engagement
• Driving productivity
• Encouraging contribution.

Leader as Facilitator is all about using approaches that achieve the things that need to be done. 

Understanding how to be a Leader as Facilitator puts all of these imperatives to work in contemporary workplaces and makes great things happen.

Overall, this is about a culture of leadership, a style of leadership in your organisation that you create. It supports teams and leaders with the capability they need to influence, drive and deliver. And that's not 'soft'. 

Having a Design Mindset

The skills we’ll need for 2020 and beyond are shaping up as a slick looking list!
 
The skill of having a design mindset is right up there. 

This doesn’t mean you need to know your way around design software, or know which colours go with what or even what an industrial designer does.

Rather it’s the frame of mind, the mindset that you adopt to think, solve and respond to what’s going on in your team, business, industry … the world. 

Beyond ho-hum
A same/same response to strategy, performance, capability, culture and our teams is too ho-hum now. We can’t do the same as we always have.

Businesses who need to adapt and thrive (that includes the solo operator right through to mega-global big name players) need to increasingly take a design approach to many parts of their business. 

A Design Mindset
I think a design mindset looks like this: 


 

• Involve: it starts with people, finding out what’s going on, what’s working, what’s not, what’s needed. This is about connecting to your customers, colleagues, users, stakeholders.  

• Ideate: you come up with ideas, possibilities; it's ingenuity at work. Here you use your creativity and problem solving smarts to think of possible solutions.   

• Implement: start something, do something. Don’t wait until it’s complete, test out a minimum viable product, process or service. Put stuff to work, try it out, experiment and take note of what happens. 'Have a crack,’ as we say in Australia. 

• Iterate: You improve and evolve and keep working on it. Release another version, go again, ‘Have another crack’. The refining, adapting and responding is what keeps you agile, current and relevant. 

Having a design mindset is vital for change leaders, strategic planners, product owners, business owners, team leaders and executives.

And when you adopt and apply a design mindset to the situations, projects and pieces of work that you're working on, you're better equipped to remain competitive and respond to uncertainty.   

Strategy is changing; leadership is changing; organisations are changing. 

We need to also change how we think about what we do if we want to get closer, go further and deliver better.

Change Leader : What's your front page and headline?

A paragraph in the change pack I spied at an organisation this morning read like this:

We need a more contemporary reimagining of our integrated administrative capability.

What? What does that mean!!? You're leading change and you're communicating like that?

You can read more thrilling gobbledygook here by using the automated generator! But really, do leaders still distribute uninspiring, time wasting and mind-numbing change messages like this?

Unfortunately they do.

But we must do better. We must be clear, inspiring, real, relevant, brief, to the point. And then get on with it and listen, engage, and keep inspiring throughout the change.

So how to communicate before, during and after change?

You can take a leaf from Simon Sinek's angle on Start With Why, or the earlier version of it from Bernice McCarthy and the 4MAT Frame, loved by trainers around the world.

Or you could go PR-style and craft out your key messages. In some of my earlier roles on communication campaigns and strategies we'd create a 'story house'.

We'd build our key messages from the ground up:

• what is a foundation message, must be delivered message (like the concrete foundation or slab)?
• what is a structural, framework kind of message (like the wooden frame)?
• what is a higher vision, overarching message (like a roof)?

Another approach is to think sharp and engaging; to think in front page and headline style. 

What will the front page of your 'edition' on change read like? What story will you be leading with?

Where is the investigative piece? The history piece... the bit about why this is happening, the inspiring information about others who have taken this path, the reason why the business needs to do this... and what it means for the team. 

What are the headlines about this change? Where can I find the further details, the background, the unpacked data and spreadsheets and research on it? Where can I find the 'long read'? Where is the photojournalism on it - show me what it will look like? Where's the shipping news: what will be happening when - what's arriving when and where? What will be starting, what's stopping and when is that happening?

Delete that workplace waffle that reads: We're going forward with our plans to implement systemised third-generation paradigm shifts.

Urgh!

Go clear, bold, strong, interesting, engaging. 

Create your front page and your headlines; build your readership for this change. 

Pull the Plug on Change : Bullet Points are Bullshit

"Pull the plug! Go on I dare you! Step out from behind the PowerPoint slide deck you've created."

I said this to a leader of change in a health insurance business and he said ....'No. I can't do that!!!'

But if you're 'rolling out' your communications and key messages for that change and transformation project you're working on - just as this leader was - you don't need a slide deck, a pack or a bunch of pages with boxes, arrows, chevrons and bullet points in it!

In fact those bullet points you've got there? They're bullish*t.

There. It's in print. I think bullet points are bullish*t. 

They boring, linear, impossible to memorise after about five - unless you're a memory champ - and they do little to inspire or inform, particularly during times of change. 

Most of all, bullet points often show up as a default option in PowerPoint. But you need to buck the default if you want to get engagement and understanding with your message. 

With all of the information flying around your organisation and team, you want your change messages to get a little more cut-through than the notice in the kitchen that cleanliness is everyone's responsibility!

Just because you have some key points to make about change, doesn't mean they need to be communicated as points.

Unpack your entire message across different dimensions: a story, some data, a quote, the rollout plan, where things were, what they'll be like in the future, some engaging questions, some customer insights, the trends in the industry. 

So this leader who I challenged to 'pull the plug'? We took his PowerPoint pack of bullet points and crafted some flip charts, posters, key messages, a couple of stories and some questions to have dialogue with the team. 

That's what he rolled out across the country. No PowerPoint in sight. 

He did pull the plug; and his people were so pleased he did. He stepped out from behind the pack of pages. Now he's talking, engaging, interacting and co-creating the change process with his team. That's leadership!

What will you do when you get to Liminality?

Liminality? Where the heck is THAT?

If you're thinking from here to eternity is a big trip, wait until you find your way to liminality!

Actually, liminality isn't that far away. You've probably been there before. If you're in the midst of a new year change or trying some new habits and rituals, you'll get to liminality sometime over the next week or so...

Liminality isn't so much a place, but a state of uncertainty, a feeling of 'where the heck are we?'

If you've been travelling a bit and then wake up during the night in a darkened and unfamiliar room wondering 'where am I? Which city? Where's the bathroom', you could well be in liminality. 

Most of all we experience liminality in a place that's a bit like a twilight zone or no man's land; we're not quite here, we're not quite there. Like a threshold of sorts. 

Though the roots of liminality come from anthropology and have a strong connection to rituals, it's a useful concept when teams and individuals are working through changes and new patterns of working or behaving. 

Think of when the school year comes to an end; students have finished their exams, but they're waiting to graduate or waiting for the results. They're not quite done being school students and they're not yet university students. 

No wonder the 'gap year' has become so popular. Is it a way to truly enjoy no man's land and uncertainty and create some new holiday rituals perhaps?

When organisations, teams and businesses set off on a path of change, they must keep a look out for liminality. From here to liminality... that point where some of the old ways are breaking down and being replaced by new ways; but those new ways are not fully embedded. There's a chance we'll revert to old ways. 

Leading a team in liminality takes patience, understanding, empathy. There can often be a lengthy period of time before an old system or process stops fully and the new one 'goes live'. There's that time in between where both might be running; or some of the team are doing a bit of this, a bit of that. A threshold to cross. 

Know that from here to liminality can involve the decision to change, the introduction of new rituals, processes and ways of working. And then from liminality onwards... that's where the real change gets created, embedded, reinforced and truly starts to take shape. 

It will be a great trip. Want to come along?