When things go around in circles

Have you been in a meeting recently when the discussion seemed to keep spinning around in circles, not getting anywhere?

Aaarrgggh! It’s so frustrating, time-wasting and a waste of efforts, energy and ideas.

It’s also a sure sign that people are talking and thinking about different things… and it’s something that can be remedied. Phew!

What can happen is someone launches off with data or detail, shifts into their opinion and then finishes up with their prescriptive ideas and suggestions of what the actions should be.

It's a mess of information. When things get messy and seem to go around in circles, I separate the mess into these 4 chunks:

1️⃣ facts

2️⃣ opinions

3️⃣ ideas

4️⃣ actions.

Do you see how different these are? It’s tricky for us to hold all 4 elements in our mind at once.

When someone is talking and they manage to cover all of these 4 things (in one breath) and then someone else does the same, yes it feels like it’s going around in circles - all that information, going nowhere. What do we do? Tune in, look out and listen for these 4 different types of communication and expression. Facts. Opinions. Ideas. Actions.

Leaders need to keep changing

If you've been a leader for a few years, you'd have noticed how leadership and the expectations of leaders keep changing.

The world of work changes and leaders need to adapt, flex, change with it too.

From when leaders were controllers and commanders, to an era where leaders were all about coaching their team members via 1:1 conversations, and now to today...

Today we see leaders better leveraging everyone's time and strengths by using the skills of facilitation.

My concept of the 'Leader as Facilitator' doesn't mean you become a full-time facilitator. It means you draw on the subtle, engaging and nuanced skills of facilitation to help people work together well - when needed. I wrote 'Leader as Facilitator' in 2016 to help people run better meetings, drop corny clichés (like 'I hear what you're saying' or 'Let's take it offline') and work in more collaborative, productive and creative ways.

Work still needs to get done. No matter the apps, software or systems you use, you'd do well to have the complex and impactful suite of skills that are facilitation.

Facilitation. It means 'ease' after all.

Q: How could you better build your facilitation skills?

Continue to cause damage - or decide you’ll make a difference

I’ve been posting this week on how being a leader who has contemporary facilitation skills is a huge advantage in today's workplace.

The time we waste in dull/boring/ineffective meetings should be enough of an incentive to make change!

Massive productivity gains are made when leaders know how to lead engaging, inspiring and productive meetings that get work done AND protect people’s self esteem so they stay engaged.

You can change culture by changing how you run meetings, workshops, consultations and conversations.

But damage is done to people in meetings when they're treated poorly, ignored, interrupted, excluded, forgotten, shut down.

It’s not on them to ‘speak up’; it’s on you to extend your leadership capability to include people, elicit information and contributions, helping to make work easier.

Facilitation is a life skill to be developed, not a simple skill to read a few articles about.

Do you commit to putting facilitation on your professional development agenda?

The difference you'll make will be immeasurable; the damage to people otherwise could be extreme. 

Up in the clouds... or down in the details

Up in the clouds... or down in the details. Author Jim Haudan suggests people across an organisation 'fly' at different levels. You'll experience it every day.

We have different altitudes of perspective and so we see different things, think differently.

We know this from being in an aircraft:

✈️ On the ground: you can see the airport, trees and tarmac as you're taxiing to the runway;

✈️ Up in the air: up to a few thousand feet up there, you can see cars, roads, rivers and patchwork quilts of fields and farms; and

✈️ Cruising Altitude: way up there, at 35,000 feet and above it’s cruising altitude and you're getting the big picture.

You can see a broader perspective stretching way w-a-y over the horizon. Today's leaders need to be able to fly at all levels - and most of all, to be able to recognise it or hear it when others are speaking.

This is one of the capabilities of the 'Leader as Facilitator' I posted on yesterday. Your preference may keep you 'locked' at a level that's not helpful.

Q: What say you? Are you an 'up in the clouds' person, 'down in the details' or do you fly somewhere in the middle? 

Premature solution giving.

When we’re thinking or talking in a meeting and someone jumps in with ’the solution’... Ta da! Big fanfare! Once they’ve spoken it’s as if no other solutions are welcome or matter.

The problem isn’t the person jumping in with the solution. They’ve had an idea and they’ve said it. Good on them!

The issue is with the meeting leader. 'Premature solution giving' is an example of what happens when meetings don't have an effective process.

I’m not talking about the agenda of the meeting, but the process or ‘way’ the meeting is happening.

Designing a process is a contemporary facilitation capability that today’s ‘leader as facilitator’ needs, so they can:

🌕 Create better and safer environments

🌕 Lead more productive meetings

🌕 Guide more effective team interactions

🌕 Respond more swiftly when some sh*t goes down in a meeting. (That is, no sweeping it under the carpet or ‘parking’ it in a carpark flip chart).

Learning the facilitation capability builds leadership confidence, boosts productivity and lifts psychological safety.

Urgh! What else kills that feeling of safety in a meeting?