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?

Stop throwing your status around

Careful throwing your status around.

Leaders in organisations, wherever they go, wherever they walk, sit, stand, eat ... come with status attached. It can't be hidden.

At a client workshop, the senior leader tip-toed in after about two hours, trying not to disturb the session. But really? They couldn’t be missed. Their status comes in the door first! At other sessions, leaders have said, ‘ I’m not participating today, I’m just observing’.

What's that caper!?

Now even more status is pouring out of you. Stop making yourself even more separate, different and higher. Make a decision: either be IN it with the team in the room, or get OUT of it and leave them to do the work of the workshop.

Why and what are you 'observing'? Why not get involved? I don’t see any need for leaders to be 'on the fringes’ of a workshop, doing this watching, checking, observing, judging. Participate, do the work, connect and listen to people, get your hands dirty, hear their stories. Your special title isn’t special when it comes to working with the team in a practical session.

Remove yourself and your status completely. Or reduce your status and sit at the table. How else do leaders throw their status around, perhaps unknowingly?

Break some patterns.

When you next plan an all-staff meeting, a conference, workshop, strategy session or meeting ... break some patterns.

The way it’s being done is dull. Starting at 9am; morning tea at 10.30am. Dull side decks from leaders trying to get ‘alignment’ and ‘buy-in’.

It’s too much presentation, not enough conversation; all monologue, not enough dialogue.

Darkened theatres and vanilla communications. We are done with it.

Open the blinds! Ask some questions. Break the routines and expectations that you think are the ‘right way’ to do things.

The people you serve - not the ‘resources’ or ‘numbers’ or ‘head count’ - the people will thank you for it. 

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.

A Blueprint for Meetings, Workshops, Conversations

When you get people together - face to face or via a hookup - you need to make something happen. 

 
Is it a briefing or transfer of information?
Is it a consultative thing - you want to ask some questions and find out what they think.
 
Maybe you need to involve them in the design or development of a process, product or service.
Perhaps it's about collaboration: 'let's work on this thing together'. 
 
And sometimes you want them to pick up the ball and run with it, toempower them so that they act and decide.
 
Whichever of these you'd like to make happen, you need to start with that in mind. Here's a continuum or scale that can guide you:



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

• how to prepare for the gathering,
• how to set up and design the environment they'll meet in,
• what processes they'll work through and
• how to handle the stuff that happens during that meeting.

What you do as a leader will make a b-i-g difference in how well the group goes towards achieving the outcome. 

It's not "their fault' or 'up to them'. It's on you. 

If you've called the meeting, are facilitating or leading it or are responsible for getting the outcome, it really helps to get clear about why they are in the room (or dialled in remotely) and how you'll engage them to make something good happen. 

Those crusty old days of workshops or conversations to 'discuss, decree and demolish' are gone. That's disengaging and ineffective. 

Start with this Blueprint and zoom in on the levels that suit the outcome you're after. 

The meeting, workshop or conversation will be more productive, more engaging and the people who've given their time to be there will oh-so grateful you got this sorted!