I recently (and, by recently, I mean 8 days ago) had the opportunity to attend the course Facilitative Leadership by Interaction Associates. I found the course quite interesting, and in retrospect learned more from it than I gave credit for initially. A lot of the focus in the course seemed to be on running meetings where work needed to be progressed or completed. However, thinking about it now, it really spoke to larger leadership issues that I think are very important.
Perhaps the best lesson I learned was the hierarchical relationship between Values, Mission, and Vision. Oftentimes companies get hung up on mission and mission statements, while others will go on and on espousing their values. This is, however, the first time I've really heard anyone talk about putting a vision out front around which to organize a project. As I'm beginning to do light work into cognitive psychology, this point resonated with me because it speaks to establishing a visual (mental) image toward which people can work.
So, you might be wondering what is meant by these terms (vision, mission, values). Values are the attributes of our culture that define us. In a positive light, it can be empowerment (implicit and real, not the fake cheerleaderly type) or integrity or transparency or communication or whatever. When you think of the culture or your organization, or even the micro-cultures of your departments and teams, these attributes create the value structure that equips you for accomplishing goals.
Mission is then built on top of these values. It's that defining statement that clearly articulates what it is your project, department, or organization is driving toward. It may be similar to your stated objective, but more likely it's that mantra that gets put on banners and repeated consistently as a motivator to drive toward a goal. It could be "to provide the best customer service" or "the be the recognized leader in [something]" or whatever. Hopefully the mission is useful. As Jim
During the course, we were asked to identify a project, team, or initiative and then write down what we pictured for the future of that thing. They literally asked us to come up with a mental image of how success would look. In my case, it involved things like having many more faces on our team (growing for success). What is important to understand here is that, beyond defining what the mission is (often in writing), it is also important to get develop a picture and get others to share (or buy into) it. Not only does this clarify purpose, ensuring everyone is on the same page, but it also provides an alternative method for cognitively processing purpose.
The course covered many other topics of value, particularly with respect to running meetings that are designed to develop solutions. In fact, the course title is really quite reflective of the purpose of the course. Following are some additional notes on the fundamental concepts taught:
* Facilitative leaders model three critical, related attributes: Strategic, Collaborative, and Receptive & Flexible. The Strategic attribute is the ability to maintain a "big picture" view of a project. The Collaborative attribute refers to working with others, ensure that the right stakeholders are identified and engaged. The Receptive & Flexible attribute speaks more to accepting input from stakeholders, allowing people to engage and participate fully in the process, and understanding how to allow a project evolve.
-- All of this works together to inform that all participants have a shared responsibility in a successful outcome. For example, if people refuse to collaborate with the leader, then the leader will be challenged to succeed in fostering a collaborative environment.
* I've already elaborated on this above, but picture an equilateral triangle pointing up and sliced horizontally into three segments. The base is labeled "Values," the middle is "Mission," and the point is "Vision." A Vision is an actual visual image of where you want to go or what you want the project or team to look like in the future. Values drive your Mission, and both jointly define your organization.
* There are three dimensions of success: Results, Process, and Relationship. Most of the problems that we identify with meetings, projects, etc., often come down to Process deficiencies. Being able to balance these three dimensions is important, ensuring that no one area holds too much focus.
* Depending on level of ownership and involvement, the decision-making process can vary greatly, ranging from making and announcing a decision, to gathering info from the team and making a decision, to delegating the process with constraints to the team and letting them make the decision.
* There was an excellent discussion of how to reach an agreement during a meeting, complete with tools. Non-status meetings should generally be divided into three sections: Opening, Narrowing, and Closing. The Opening ends up taking about half the time, with Narrowing and Closing then taking smaller portions of time (roughly a quarter each, in a perfect world).
-- Opening Tools: Make a Proposal ("limited opening") or List ("moderate opening") or Brainstorm ("wide opening"), then Clarify
--> It's worth noting that clarification is a separate step from brainstorming. This helps improve the flow of ideas during brainstorming.
-- Narrowing Tools: Combine Duplicates, Prioritize (N/3 choices/votes), then Advocate (fight for a choice that didn't get many votes)
-- Closing Tools: Negative Poll, Build-Up/Eliminate
--> The negative poll asks "do you not agree?" instead of "do you agree?" to garner better feedback.
--> Can eliminate by prioritization in both bottom-up and top-down manner.
As part of writing the original draft of this reflection for my management, I included a number of notes and ideas for applying this training to our environment. I'm not going to share those here, but will provide some general thoughts instead.
* A new management style needs to be developed - almost like flexible grouping in elementary school - where, when you're on a project team, you're responsible to the team first, and then to your traditional chain of command. In this manner, the project lead can assign tasks ("action items") and then evaluate performance based on execution on those tasks. Matrix management models might work, but I question whether or not they endow enough authority in the matrixed project manager.
* Enough time is not spent on celebrating performance. Criticism is often bountiful, but it seems rare to me that success is lauded, except when it's a big success that has contributed to the bottom line. Just because we're "just doing our jobs" doesn't mean we shouldn't be recognized for meeting our exceeding performance expectations. It seems to me that this would help build a success-oriented culture, rather than a self-destructive culture where people fear failure.
* Work is not just about process -- it needs balance process with results and relationship. It also isn't effective to just be results-driven. In particular, it's important to key on how people interact and leverage those characteristics to optimize success.
* No matter where I've worked, maximum appropriate involvement does not seem to be consistently achieved. In fact, many projects seem to lack proper involvement in general, making people wonder if project organizers are even making a best-effort attempt.
* Negative polls ("any objections?") should be used instead of positive polls ("everybody agree?"). This technique invites feedback and provides an opportunity to get feedback from everyone, whereas positive polls can obscure or gloss over objections or concerns (e.g., if you ask for agreement, you'll mostly get nods or avoided eye-contact).
* Meetings should begin by establishing the desired outcome and process (approach). It should answer the questions "Why are we here?" and "How are we going to approach things?".
* It is very important to articulate Vision. As I look back across my career, this seems to be lacking in many, if not all, cases. There have been lots of missions, and a hodge-podge of values, but I can't say I ever really had a mental picture of where we were going. This can be applied to information security, too, by the way. There's absolutely no reason that we can't have a vision for our organizations or clients of how we'd like things to look in the future.
