Do you engage your team in vigorous debate to improve the quality of your decisions?

Wednesday September 14, 2011 If it is true that great leaders do not take "yes" for an answer, your success as a leader may depend on your willingness to push the inquiry of a group into passionate, emotional territory. Are you able to maximize the search for answers while keeping people engaged in vigorous and spirited debate? Does your team attend to the work of deciding what to do, or do they get diverted by interpersonal friction, "broken record" ideas, and intolerance for new questions? A bias I often notice is the idea that good decision making is dispassionate, rational, and totally unbiased. In fact, I believe the opposite is true: eliminating passion and emotion from decision making is not only nearly impossible; it's counterproductive. At the end of the day, those feelings are the same ones that will drive the successful implementation of the team's decision.   How do you make it vigorous? Rather than try to put passion aside, the key is to adopt a specific set of actions before, during, and after the actual conversation. BEFORE THE CONVERSATION: Establish ground-rules for how people should interact during the conversation, clarify the roles people are to play in the decision making process, and—most importantly—test to make sure that the group understands what is being decided (by asking people to restate it). DURING THE CONVERSATION: Ask questions and reframe statements as the group works though the decision. Involve everyone—especially the silent members—and summarize or revisit what has been said when the group reaches an impasse. Make good use of any distress that arises during the process by dismissing repetitive ideas or openly restating a controversial statement (to increase the controversy). Invite people to verbalize their emotions and reach out to other team members for help (to decrease the emotional discomfort). AFTER THE CONVERSATION: Ask people not to take themselves too seriously. Take the time to repair any damaged relationships or hurt feelings. Reflect on the value of the work that you've done and celebrate the effective ways in which the group has worked through a difficult decision.

 

What’s the soundtrack of team performance?

Wednesday July 13, 2011 This article made me think: Are small groups able to work better and more productively if music is played? I am clearly biased on this subject: I love music and use music generously in my sessions. As an avid listener who appreciates every music genre (with a little predilection for old school Blues) I have often wondered about the power of music to improve performance: How can music help your team be a better team? Have you ever thought of music in this way? What's music got to do with it? (sorry, Tina) Music can be used as a practice to establish productive norms of relaxed and joyous interaction among people. For example, how might music support the World Café principle of creating a hospitable space, where collective intelligence is given a chance to emerge?   Music can be used as a powerful, non-intrusive behavioral influence during a session. As background music—either online or live—my personal favorites are: a Vivaldi string quartet during reflection time, a joyous Pinetop Perkins's boogie-woogie piece during a long group exercise, a rumba from Cachao to accompany group dialogue, French Caribbean music to go with heavy group work, and Military Band music to close a session. Music can stand as a metaphor for superior performance. Like a good jam session, "music" and good vibrations are produced when a group is engaged in powerful collaborative work. Each group member improvises within a given set of guidelines to reach what behavioral theorist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls "flow," the optimal experience of heightened awareness and focused consciousness. Music, in this case, is the target objective of working together and ultimately its measure of success. Music can serve as an artifact of a group's learning experience. You might push the creative juices of a team and request, for instance, that they write and perform a song related to the contents of a session. Have you ever ended a workshop with a group singing an original rap in front of the class with a rap rhythm in the background? This way, music becomes a celebration of the work, and a powerful way to share the product of that work together.   Talking about music, here is a great group whose uncanny ability to create good vibrations will make your soul smile. Download a song here. Enjoy!  back to top

Do facts have the power to change your mind?

Wednesday June 8, 2011 We think that most people are objective and that, when presented with the right facts and evidence, they will be open to changing their minds. Don't you agree that if people are furnished with the facts, they will be clearer thinkers and better citizens? Well, I realized in working with organizational change that this notion is hardly true. In other words: Facts don't necessarily have the power to change people's minds. Sometimes I think that —especially in some organizations—quite the opposite is true.  How do we defend ourselves and our organizations from the powerful human tendency to find comfort in information that we already know and not challenge it? How do we ensure that we are not victims of cognitive biases when we make decisions and agree on actions?   How do you prevent cognitive bias in your decision making? ·         Because facts are powerless unless they are articulated in a story that helps us with shared meaning, in my work I stay away from statistics and data and focus on the story of a person impacted by the issue. ·         To prevent cognitive biases, ensure that people are free to admit when they are wrong. Research shows that organizations where a culture of admitting mistakes is strong are less prone to cognitive bias. When people are free to change their mind and encouraged to do so, it's easier for people to stop defending positions that are not confirmed by facts. ·         Use a variety of decision making tools to explore different options and celebrate disagreements as a healthy way to explore the fertile unknown. These kinds of conversations, called "inquiry on the edge", can become part of your toolkit to improve the decision making capacity of your team. To learn more about how to conduct an "Inquiry on the edge" click here.

Does your team learn from their mistakes?

 

Wednesday May 11, 2011 Accepting responsibility is critical for adult learning. It is only when we acknowledge that changing our behavior will improve a situation that we take steps to alter it. So after you accept responsibility for a situation, the first questions to ask yourself are: ·         How can I learn from my mistakes? ·         How do I contribute to the situation? ·         What can I change to achieve different results? Easier said than done.   Using mistakes to foster innovation in a team ·         Establish a "no blame" ground rule. Call a "wrong storming" meeting for 30 minutes to discuss how the team itself contributed to the issue. In fact, blaming others—bosses, co-workers, clients, suppliers — will make it very difficult for your team to learn anything. I am not saying that people outside of your team don't make mistakes; rather, mistakes made by others are part of the context in which your team operates and are often out of your team's control. ·         Encourage the team to talk about their mistakes without defensiveness. Go for a "round of mistakes" where—together with other business—you also encourage everyone to share the biggest mistake they made that week and what they learned from it. Done with a cohesive team and the right atmosphere, this exercise can become supremely cathartic. ·         Establish prizes for the most useful mistakes—in terms of learning—that your unit has committed in the last month. This creates an environment where mistakes fully explored and understood become a competitive advantage. Not to mention improving your team's capacity not to take themselves too seriously.  I realize that this advice runs counter to the cultural assumptions we have about mistakes and failure in many organizations. However, great organizations and powerful teams are not measured by the absence of mistakes but by their courage, compassion and creativity to deal with them, as well as by their overall ability to learn from them.    PS: Learn from the future, for a change. Sometimes learning from the past is not enough. Sometimes there is the need for a team to start fresh. In those situations - rather than fixing the past - a focus on the future and on what the team wants to create is way more productive. When that is the case, first you need to hold a session that creates a shared understanding of the current situation the team is dealing with. That can be a great springboard for the team to start building a shared vision of what  future can be possible together.

What is Leadership?

March 16, 2011 I find the concept of leadership full of paradoxes and ambiguities. The notion itself seems very personal to me and deeply ingrained in everyone's individual experience. Now, a complicated idea - difficult to understand or define - is very hard to teach to others. For some help I searched leadership quotes from big names to see if they give some clarity on this mystery: What does leadership mean at this time in human history? Here are a few that I found: ·         The key to successful leadership today is influence, not authority.Kenneth Blanchard, University of Massachusetts, Schatz, Managing By Influence, (Prentice-Hall, 1986) ·         Contrary to the opinion of many people, leaders are not born. Leaders are made, and they are made by effort and hard work. Vince Lombardi, 1913-1970, Professional football coach ·         Leadership, like swimming, cannot be learned by reading about it. Henry Mintzberg, McGill University School of Management, The Nature of Managerial Work, Harper & Row, 1973 ·         The best leader is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done, and the self-restraint to keep from meddling with them while they do it. Theodore Roosevelt, American President   ·         Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.  Steve Jobs   ·         Leadership includes wisdom of the mind, body, spirit, and emotions. Author Unknown What is your best leadership quote? Enter it in our Facebook contest here. My Leadership Questions I realized that when it comes to leadership, I have some key questions that I like to explore. Questions like: ·         What if true leadership is more about "unlearning" and "stop doing" than adopting yet another management concept? ·         What if all we need about leadership is an awareness of our "implicit" theory of leadership, the one we are already using? ·         If leadership is not only about influencing others, what can leadership also be about?

How Do You Help Experts Share Their Knowledge?

Wednesday February 16, 2011 Accessing the knowledge of experts is critical in order to make informed decisions, communicate an organization's messages, or effectively train. But extracting specialist knowledge with the purpose of sharing it with non-experts is often a challenge.   Expertise comes from years of familiarity -- and from a lot of opportunity, both formal and informal, to develop it. So while experts know their stuff and live in it like a fish live in the water, they don't always know how to best share what they know in "laymen's terms". They are often unable to define what information is most essential for a novice. We can relate to this, as we are all experts in some subject. But what would help us regain perspective? What thinking process should we go through to communicate meaningfully with people that have less knowledge than we have? What can help us work with a beginner's mind in our own area of expertise? back to top Three Questions to Ask/Three Things to Do To be effective with experts we need to ask some critical questions that connect their knowledge to the day-to-day life of a less-technical audience. ·         ASK: Among all the things that you know, what does our audience need to know? What would people care the most about?" What matters to your audience is a key criterion for selecting what truly needs to be shared vs. what would be nice to share. This brutally honest question can be helpful to clarify this for the expert: people wantto know things that meet their goals. DO: With your expert, list all the possible topics and select only the ones that your audience cares the most. ·         ASK: "What specific actions will your audience perform with the information you provide?" People understand specific actions better than abstract concepts. Keep people's attention on a complex subject with a call to action or an uncommon point of view right up front. Make a compelling case in actionable terms for your audience. This motivates people to follow with interest the expert's supporting evidence. DO: With your expert, brainstorm all the new things your audience will be doing differently with the new knowledge. ·         ASK: "How can we extract this information out of context? How can we communicate the how the context and some key principles interact?" Context is important to an expert. Often, they offer all sorts of contextual nuances -- and that is right, because their experience isn't based on black and white solutions. Instead they're nuanced based on variables that they've learned to master over the years. However, for the rest of us at the early stage of knowledge on a given topic, it is very helpful to name a pattern or a principle and then see it in action – even in all its different instances and contexts. DO: Ask your expert to generalize, identify a pattern, and discuss the difference instances of that pattern in varied contexts.

What Question Can Change Your Life in 2011?

Tuesday January 18, 2011 I love poetry and I want to take this opportunity to wish a great 2011 to all my friends with the verses of David Whyte, a poet that has brought his talent into the field of organizational development. I read his verses often in my work with groups and find his words graceful and energetic at the same time. This poem touches on the theme of the questions that waits us, those fateful questions that have the potential - if properly asked and given enough time - to make a difference in our life and work.   Enyoy! To your great questions!   back to top SOMETIMES Sometimes if you move carefully through the forest breathing like the ones in the old stories who could cross a shimmering bed of dry leaves without a sound, you come to a place whose only task is to trouble you with tiny but frightening requests conceived out of nowhere but in this place beginning to lead everywhere. Requests to stop what you are doing right now, and to stop what you are becoming while you do it, questions that can make or unmake a life, questions that have patiently waited for you, questions that have no right to go away. David Whyte   back to top

How do you manipulate (compassionately) a meeting that is going nowhere?

Tuesday November 30, 2010 The boring meeting has become a common evil of office life. Even with designated facilitators, meetings can still go terribly wrong and when we are not the meeting leader it can be hard to know what to do. However even in the most difficult situations we can still show leadership and make a little contribution. What are some empowering alternatives to just sitting there and feeling like a victim? The key is about asking innocent, real, authentic questions so that the meeting participants can take the action that is needed. back to top What questions can be asked? · What is the purpose of this meeting? This is the key question that can often save you hours of meeting aggravation. Asked right at the begining it gives you a chance to quickly understand if you are supposed to be in the meeting and if you can contribute. If you feel strongly that the purpose is unclear or that is not one you can really help achieve, do mention to the meeting organizers that you do not need to be in the meeting. · What are we going to do with the decisions, ideas, recommendations from this meeting? Oftentimes meetings have no real follow up. It is important to assess the impact of the meeting you are in by asking this question in order to define right away if it is worth your time. · Do we have an agenda/a recorder for this meeting? A meeting without an agenda or a recorder is normally not worth attending. Ask this question and request the meeting organizer to briefly define time limits, items of discussion and possibly name a recorder. · Do we have a timekeeper for this meeting? Time is the scarcest resource in today's busy workplace. By asking this question you voice your concern with ending on time and following the agenda. Do consider volunteering as timekeeper if there is no one doing it as a sign of your committment to a good meeting output. · How can we make sure everyone participates in this meeting? If someone dominates the conversation, this question can really make a difference as it challenges the group to come up with a way to equalize "air time".

How do you ensure candid feedback in your next meeting?

Friday October 29, 2010 It is not always easy to ensure that people talk with honesty and candor about a work issue. Nevertheless there are ways - inspired by the World Cafe' methodology - to ensure that even with the most difficult topic, participants will give you their best ideas and - at a minimum - the gift of honesty. back to top Principles for hosting honest conversations ·         Create a comfortable meeting space. Whether you are convening several dozen or several hundred people, it is critical to create a comfortable environment that evokes a feeling of both informality and intimacy. When your guests arrive, they should sense immediately that this is no ordinary meeting. ·         Make sure the meeting is about something they care about. When people focus on questions they care about, they begin thinking together rather than spinning off in random directions. Trying to convince others of a predetermined point of view is replaced by curiosity and new ways of understanding. ·         Encourage curiosity. State that learning something together is the objective of your meeting. Ask people to be curious and to listen for differences, surprises, and challenges. Consider different perspectives and assumptions as gifts; even when they make us uncomfortable, they offer rich soil for discovering unforeseen possibilities and unanticipated learning. back to top How do you do it? ·         Stay away from conference rooms! Instead be creative with your venue. If you can arrange tables in a staggered, random fashion rather than in neat rows. Ask people to sit in group of four or five at each tables. Background music is recommended. ·         Ask good questions, those that need not imply immediate action steps or problem solving. Instead, they should invite inquiry and discovery rather than advocacy and advantage. For example a conversation about the status of a project might feature questions like "What opportunities you see?" or "What is bigger than the committment to our client?",  "What would a good project also look like? rather than "What action should we take?" or "What's the next step?" or "What problems do you see?"  ·         Join in the conversation and do not facilitate the meeting. Your behavior will model that you are a peer among peers in the quest for learning something together. ·         Encourage people to move to other tables in several rounds so that everyone can all meet everyone else. Have fun in the process. ·         At the end of the meeting, ask the participants to share a common theme heard from all conversations. ·         Be mindful of time. Never go over the scheduled end time.  Adriano Pianesi ParticipAction Consulting Inc. | www.participactioninc.com Join me and David Isaacs in Boston on November 11 at the Systems Thinking in Action Conference  Check the FIRST ITALIAN WORLD CAFE' in Milan on October 20th, 2010   back to top

The Leadership Elephant

Friday September 10, 2010 By Adriano Pianesi and David Isaacs Can we define what leadership is, so that when it shows up we'll recognize it? Alas, it's an impossible task! Such a variety of ideas exist on this subject that it seems too difficult to say something new or vaguely original about it. A quick glance at the current theories of leadership reveals a wide range of choices: authentic leadership, exemplary leadership, heroic leadership, servant leadership, systemic leadership, open leadership, resonant leadership, transactional leadership. Indeed, you likely have other items that you could add to this list. The fable of the blind men and the elephant tells a story in which six men describe an elephant in the six different ways that they perceive it. One feels the animal's tail; another grasps its leg; a third touches its flank. Similarly, when it comes to leadership, each theory sheds partial light, but none gives us the whole picture. Yet our fascination with leadership is growing daily. The truth is that we badly need leaders to deal with the issues of our age, yet our world—at work, in our communities, in our politics—is empty of real examples of positive leadership. Maybe we should start by exploring our unconscious assumptions and deeply held beliefs about this key role. If leadership is about power, why do we give our certain people power rather than seeking to share it with them? Is a leader our leader because he or she represents something important to us—our alter egos, perhaps, or some sort of collective fantasy of ourselves magnified in some way? If this is the case, what is leadership telling us about ourselves? And about the people we hope will guide us? And what if leadership is not about solving problems? What if leaders are most effective when they ask questions rather than get answers? In this case, what would prevent us all from being leaders? And, if questions contain the seeds for lasting organizational success, how do we live in our organization's questions? What are the questions we need to ask to create, in the words of H. Thomas Johnson, "profit beyond measure"? Leadership lessons are omnipresent, if we take the time to access the wisdom that is present for us through the power of questions that matter. When we are able to clear away the clutter that weighs us down as leaders, we can connect to a deeper level of relationships, strategy, resilience, vision, ethics, and creativity. We believe that when we take time to "unlearn" what we already believe to be true about leadership and fully examine our assumptions, we become deeply present, act intentionally, and generate renewed power and direction in our own lives and work. Are you ready to unlearn? What steps can you take in your organization, today, to stop waiting for leadership and start creating it?   Join me and David Isaacs on Leadership on November 11, 2010  Regards to all Adriano Pianesi  www.participactioninc.com back to top

Learning: Why Are Adults Different from Kids?

Tuesday August 10, 2010 Since my son Dylan was born I have been constantly amazed by the magic of his learning. Is learning for children (pedagogy) really that different from learning for adults (andragogy)? Here are a few facts I have collected that might help clarify the difference. I hope these ideas can help you clarify what challenges you might encounter next time you are asked to teach a class at work -- or to entertain a group of children at a party! Children are natural learners and their readiness to learn is rooted in biological development. Adult learners need to take a break from "doing things" before they can get into the "learning mode." Adult learners view learning as a solution to cope with something that is impacting their immediate circumstances. For adults, learning is often sought out as a way to solve a problem or to deal better with something new. As such, adult learners are "problem-centered" and want to immediately apply new information or skills to current problems or situations. Children have a limited experience base. Adult learners have a powerful resource for the learning process: their rich life experience; and they use it actively as they continuously relate new information to previously learned knowledge and experiences. Unfortunately, adult learners are more set in their ways, and are much more likely to reject or explain away new information that contradicts their values, beliefs and opinions. Children, in turn, are open to new information and will readily adjust their views. (I say this, despite having a two-year-old with hearty attachments to his toy alligator and other strong opinions. It's a phase, right?) Children do not have to deal with the anxiety of the "un-learning" process before constructing new knowledge. Adult learners are proud. When a classroom environment is not perceived as safe or supportive, major issues of self-esteem and ego tend to degenerate into conflict. Adults perceive any lack of skill or knowledge as a gap that must be filled as quickly as possible to defend their acquired sense of professionalism and competence. Children do not question the importance of the learning content. Adults have preconceived ideas about what is important to learn and why. Children can be easily segmented by age when they come from similar socioeconomic backgrounds, etc. Adults exhibit significant differences and complexity as individuals, making them much harder to teach in a group with shared learning goals. Adriano Pianesi ParticipAction Consulting Inc. | www.participactioninc.com 306 Aspen Place, Alexandria, Virginia 22305 Ph: 703-920-0208 | Fax: 703-562-0856 | Cell: 202-262-3371 Follow me on Twitter   back to top

How do you teach by using dialogue? Here are some ideas that have worked for me

Monday July 12, 2010 While using dialogic techniques can greatly boost the power of learning, imperfect execution is always a possibility when you try dialogue for adult learning. However, when dialogue has not worked in my classes—that is, when I have not been able to generate participation, engagement, or bring educational value to the content— I have noticed three things that were always missing. What three things can make or break your attempt to become a "dialogic teacher"? back to top Three conditions for ensuring that dialogue works in the class ·         The silence of the trainer. The condition for dialogue to flourish in the class is rather simple for the trainer: He or she needs to be silent more, or, as Stephen Brookfield and Stephen Preskill wrote: "…[curb] the compulsion to say all they would like to say in the interests of promoting engagement and participation." (Discussion as a Way of Teaching, 1999) ·         A safe learning environment. A learning dialogue is impossible if the environment has not been clearly made safe. When you set the right class atmosphere, dialogue starts effortlessly. Avoid lifeless conference rooms if possible, and use or replicate informal room settings with natural light and round tables. ·         A set of clear ground rules. To  ensure that a learning dialogue is conducted properly and achieves full participation, it is important to state and request explicit buy-in to the ground rules you will follow. For example, here are the ones I circulate: shift focus from ideas, to the connection between ideas; shift focus from conflicting views, to how differences bring new insight to the whole; shift focus from the person to the idea, respecting the latter and always reserving skepticism. back to top Five tips to improve the quality of dialogue (in meetings or classes!) ·         An invitation to remember. Start by inviting people to remember a time in their lives when they had a really good conversation. The ability to have good conversations is something people already possess, they simply need to use it in a different context. Remembering what they already know is much easier to learning it from scratch. ·         Duration and purpose. At the outset, clarify the time available and the purpose of the conversation to encourage more effective and productive exchanges. ·         A talking stick. Only the person holding it can speak. This prevents people from talking at the same time. ·         A stone for your thoughts. Distribute five stones per person at the beginning of the dialogue. Whoever talks must relinquish one stone. This works well as a subtle invitation to those dominating the conversation to listen more! ·         A quick reflection. Always make a point to ask: "What could we have done better to improve our dialogue?". Exploring how this inherent human capacity can be used to its full potential is a worthwhile and relevant closing for your dialogue. back to top

What are LEARNING IMPACT MAPS? How do you use them?

Wednesday June 9, 2010 Have you ever tried to guess the final outcome of your training classes in an organization? It's a daunting exercise, especially when your classes deal indirectly with a challenge that your organization is experiencing. So how can you make sure that a training class really makes a dent on the problem? I have successfully used LEARNING IMPACT MAPS and I am happy to share with you how this simple tool can work wonders for any of your learning projects. IT'S IMPORTANT BECAUSE... Quality training programs are focused on creating a change of behavior that affects the bottom line in an organization. We fail in this effort if we do not anticipate and clearly chart a map of: ·          how new knowledge in the workplace is going to translate into effective behaviors ·          how new effective behaviors are going to translate into business results ·          how business results are going to translate into organizational goals Defining in advance the effective beaviors that your classes are supposed to create  results in more effective learning experiences that strengthen the possibilities of real organizational renewal and change. Effective beahaviors through LEARNING IMPACT MAPS should not be viewed as an end in itself, but as a means to ensure learning excellence, innovation, and ultimately change. TRAINING TIP: How do you use LEARNING IMPACT MAPS? ·         Draw four columns in a piece of paper. In the first column write the learning objective of your session ·         In the second column write the behaviors as a result of your session that you hope will emerge after the class ·         In the third column write down the business results that will come from people adopting the effective behaviors described earlier ·         In the fourth column list how these business results will serve the overall organizational goal of the organization you are working in ·         Share the resulting document with your stakeholders and trainees. The discussion that originates will provide clear guidelines for the creation of value as you deliver training sessions. How have you dealt with making sure people understand the link between learning and effective behaviors? In what ways have you helped others to see the link between training and business results? Write your comments here.