Decision Quality Focuses on ‘WHAT’ is Right, NOT ‘WHO’ is Right

Decision Quality Focuses on ‘WHAT’ is Right, NOT ‘WHO’ is Right

by | Aug 8, 2023 | Meeting Structure

Decision-making frequently considers fuzzy information, fuzzy implications, and fuzzy thinking.  To reduce fuzziness, and improve decision quality, lead your group to focus on What is right, NOT Who is right.

By structuring your questions and meeting design, you minimize the risk of decisions made that are no more than educated gambles.

Fuzzy - Focus on What is Right, NOT Who is Right

Decision Quality Results from Focusing On What is Right, NOT Who is Right

Some organizations rely on advocacy. As issues surface, people take sides[1]. Some participants win — while others lose. By depersonalizing the input required to support a decision, you create a win-win situation. In “majority win” cultures, the most powerful arguments do not necessarily win. Rather, the most persuasive and charismatic ‘champions’ are frequently victorious. Effective facilitation and structured meeting design mitigate risks associated with poor decision quality. After all, nobody is smarter than everybody[2].

Daniel Kahneman has proven that most people decide and then they justify their decision. A structured approach forces participants to delay their decision until available evidence has been provided. Unfortunately for most, once participants have decided, much of their deliberation focuses on finding support to justify their position. Structured facilitation can stop, or at least delay, premature decision-making. Tremendous risks arise if you don’t strive to identify the SMART (Specific, Measurable, Adjustable, Relevant, and Time-based) support that improves decision quality. We hope that you value and aspire to avoid the DUMB response (Dull, Ubiquitous, Myopic, and Broad).

Some meetings even lead to anger, resentment, or jealousy that can sabotage decisions and cultures. Reverse the flow of poor decision quality by first building consensus around the purpose of the decision. Next, develop and expose available options (actions). Then force the development of decision criteria based on evidence: facts, truths, and examples that support the claims. The structured approach helps groups focus one step at a time. Finally, have a method or tool(s) prepared for comparing the options against the criteria that support the originally stated purpose.

Structured Tools Focus on What is Right

For example, do you plan on using PowerBalls, Perceptual Map, Decision Matrix, Scorecard, etc.– or some combination thereof? Scrub (cleanse or clarify) that evidence to ensure clarity and shared understanding, so that the logic and arguments no longer belong to one person. Rather rationale for the decision quality becomes owned by the entire group. Visually displaying the comparison of the various options and supporting criteria additionally helps to depersonalize the analysis.

While many methods use a projected software tool, there are advantages to paper and whiteboards that include the transfer of ownership. The presenter or facilitator usually ends up owning PowerPoint®-type slides, regardless of group comments. If you create and visually display participant content with markers, the group retains ownership and not the keyboard operator.

Remember the 3-Question Approach when scrubbing:

  1. To what extent is the input clear and understood?
  2. What critical or substantive input appears to be missing?
  3. Will the participants support the input or does something need to be eliminated?

Professional facilitators understand the challenge and importance of focus. Groups cannot move coherently to consensus when starting from ‘many to many.’  With sharp questions, a group can be led from ‘one to many.’  The Content Management tool manages the transformation from the abstract to the concrete, from the WHY to the WHAT to the HOW. Note that a single fact (WHAT) can lead to multiple Implications (SO WHAT). Each Implication can lead to many Recommendations. And there is no way to focus a discussion from many facts to many recommendations effectively. However, the ‘many-to-many’ headache describes most unstructured meetings being held right now.

By structuring your decision-making, you minimize the personal bias that lowers decision quality. With focus, you eliminate much of the scope creep in meetings that results in wasted time. You may have heard that a ‘meeting’ is where minutes are kept and hours are lost. As a session leader, you can minimize confusion using a structure that documents the entire process. Therefore, all the participants can own it at the end.

Speed of Decision-making | When Quality Not Enough

According to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Army General Martin Dempsey,

“Power is no longer simply the sum of capability and capacity but now, disproportionately, it includes speed—speed of action but especially speed of decision-making.” (source: WSJ, Voices on the Future)

Speed of Decision-making

Race Against Time: Speed of Decision-making

For any consensual and well-informed decision, please embrace at least seven agenda steps to ensure speed of decision-making:

  • Introduction
  • Purpose of (the scope or object of the situation)
  • Options
  • Criteria
  • Decision
  • Testing
  • Review and wrap

Seven Agenda Steps Ensure Speed of Decision-making

Do not forget to begin with the purpose of the object of the decision. If not, you risk combative participants with competing purposes. Always begin with WHY the decision is valuable or important before you begin your analysis of WHAT decision appears best.

Do not forget the rules of ideation when capturing options — no discussion, high energy, etc. Set the options aside and immediately develop an understanding of the decision criteria. General Dempsey added that:

“Countering the need for speed is often the paralyzing volumes of information, which often create an illusion of control and optimal decision making.”

Here is why we rely on subject matter experts, to translate the volumes of information, into the most important factors.

Prepare in advance how you plan to scrub the criteria and what tool is most appropriate for your situation. In our MG RUSH Professional Facilitative Leadership workshops, we consider various tools that galvanize consensus around decisions including:

Technique to Ensure Speed of Decision-making

Throughout the decision step in your agenda, get the group to first deselect and agree to eliminate or delete sub-optimal options, thus reducing the number of viable options. The origin of the word ‘decide’ means to cut off,  and that increases the likelihood that your group will focus on the best candidates. NEVER allow any tool to make your decision for you, but do allow tools to help you de-select.

For testing, take the decision and compare it with the purpose developed in the second step of the agenda. Determine “to what extent” the tentative decision supports that purpose. If the harmony is strong, the meeting is over. If there are disconnects, revisit both the purpose statement and tentative decision with questions about clarity, omissions, and deletions, until you have developed a decision that the participants can “live with” meaning they will support it and not lose sleep over it, even if it is not their ‘favorite.’

What is Right by Others

Although Aldous Huxley with first attributed with saying . . .

“It isn’t who is right, but what is right that counts.”

. . . we imagine others have said something similar, in various languages, long before the 20th century. After all, the risk of poor group decisions in the past frequently resulted in death.

Karl Albrecht[3], a pioneer of the structured-inquiry method, said it best:

“As we trade in the ‘who is right’ mind-set for the ‘what is right’ mind-set. We make our organizations collectively more intelligent and more capable of meeting the changing demands of the business environment.”

~~~~~~~

[1] Note the Type One Thinking in Daniel Kahneman’s book, “Thinking, Fast and Slow”

[2] Look at James Surowiecki’s book, “The Wisdom of Crowds”

[3] See www.KarlAlbrecht.com

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Don’t ruin your career by hosting bad meetings. Sign up for a workshop or send this to someone who should. MGRUSH workshops focus on meeting design and practice. Each person practices tools, methods, and activities daily during the week. Therefore, while some call this immersion, we call it the road to building high-value facilitation skills.

Our workshops also provide a superb way to earn up to 40 SEUs from the Scrum Alliance, 40 CDUs from IIBA, 40 Continuous Learning Points (CLPs) based on Federal Acquisition Certification Continuous Professional Learning Requirements using Training and Education activities, 40 Professional Development Units (PDUs) from SAVE International, as well as 4.0 CEUs for other professions. (See workshop and Reference Manual descriptions for details.)

Want a free 10-minute break timer? Sign up for our once-monthly newsletter HERE and receive a free timer along with four other of our favorite facilitation tools.

Go to the Facilitation Training Store to access proven, in-house resources, including fully annotated agendas, break timers, and templates. Finally, take a few seconds to buy us a cup of coffee and please SHARE with others.

In conclusion, we dare you to embrace the will, wisdom, and activities that amplify a facilitative leader. #facilitationtraining #MEETING DESIGN

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Proven Methods for Managing Any and All Meeting Conflicts

Proven Methods for Managing Any and All Meeting Conflicts

by | Jun 13, 2023 | Communication Skills, Facilitation Skills, Leadership Skills, Managing Conflict, Meeting Tools

No method anywhere can show you how to facilitate a resolution for ALL meeting conflicts.

Proven Methods for Managing Conflict in Meetings and Workshops

Sometimes, people or parties refuse to agree simply because they dislike each other.

Sometimes, people or parties refuse to agree simply because they dislike each other. Yet while you may not be able to resolve all meeting conflicts, you can learn to manage all meeting conflicts. Below you will find four proven activities for managing conflicts in any group session or workshop.

Meeting conflicts present a serious distraction. Wisely, the International Association of Facilitators (IAF) aspires for facilitators to:

•    “Help individuals identify and review underlying assumptions.

•    Recognize conflict and its role within group learning/maturity.

•    Provide a safe environment for conflict to surface.

•    Manage disruptive group behavior.

•    Support the group through the resolution of conflict.”

Four Proven Activities For Managing Meeting Conflicts

Fortunately, you can rely on this four-step method to manage ALL meeting conflicts:

1.    Document consensual purpose.

2.    Secure evidence in support of the purpose.

3.    Align with the level of support for the objectives of the product, project, program, department, business unit, and enterprise.

4.    Assemble documentation, then escalate.

I.  Document consensual purpose

The burden on facilitators demands building consensus around the purpose of the decision and what the decision supports. You cannot afford to have a moving target if you want to build consensus. Make your group’s integrated purpose clear and concise. Use our Purpose Tool as a quick and effective means of galvanizing consensual purpose. When captured in writing, you supply instant visual feedback to all of your participants.

2.  Secure evidence in support of the purpose

Most office professionals have been exposed to the concept of active listening. Distinguished from passive listening because active listening demands that the listener provide reflection and confirmation of what the speaker said. Reflecting the reasons to support the statement and WHY the evidence to support the purpose remains more important. Frequently understanding WHY requires additional challenge and reflection. Other participants may hear WHAT was said but they also need to understand WHY the claim was made, and under what conditions the claim remains valid.

Effective facilitators make participants’ thinking visible by challenging them with one word—“Because?” Consensus is not built around symptoms. Rather, consensus gets established around causes. Getting everyone to understand under what conditions certain claims may be valid can ease misunderstanding. Sometimes people are in violent agreement with each other but are doing a poor job of listening. A good facilitator provides robust reflection, not only on what was said but under what conditions the assertions hold true. Fortify your active listening with a comprehensive reflection of BOTH what was said and why it was said.

Active listening includes four separate activities:
  1. Establish contact with the speaker, eye contact ensures the speaker is engaged,
  2. Absorb what the speaker presents so that you can advance the group’s understanding of the participant’s contribution,
  3. Reflect on what was said to ensure the speaker understands what was offered up, but more importantly, REFLECT WHY their contribution claims to be valid as it relates to the question they were answering (frequently it is best to provide their reflection in writing whether on a whiteboard, large Post-It® paper, or on the screen), and
  4. Confirm that their content, as reflected, is complete and correct.

Meeting participants do not necessarily listen or even hear what other participants say. Some people fail to listen to themselves. Reflection provides an essential part of effective, active listening. But do not forget to confirm that your reflections are clear, complete, and correct.

3.  Align with the level of support for the objectives of the product, project, program, department, business unit, and enterprise

Sometimes people understand each other and yet continue to disagree. Most arguments about future conditions cannot be proven one way or another. Learn to appeal to the objectives of the project or initiative your meeting supports. If needed, go further and appeal to the organizational values, as to which argument better harmonizes and supports the organization.

After two or more competing arguments have been clarified, and fully documented, ask the group to compare the positions by asking them to what extent each supports the organizational objectives; specifically:

  • Project or product: To what extent does each position support the overall project (or product) objectives?
  • Program or department: To what extent does each position support the program (or departmental) objectives (i.e., the reasons for approving the project or product)?
  • Business unit: To what extent does each position support the business unit objectives (i.e., what would the executive sponsor say)?
  • Enterprise or organization: To what extent does each position support the enterprise objectives (i.e., what would the chief executive officer say)?

In some company cultures, for example, safety is critical, and if one position can be viewed as ‘riskier,’ it loses. If necessary, look at the argument from the perspective of the executive sponsors or even the enterprise. If the CEO (Chief Executive Officer) attended the meeting, what would they say, and more importantly, WHY?

Appealing to objectives reconciles some disagreements, but not all of them. Use our holarchy to present a visual illustration of harmonizing objectives (available as a poster at https://mgrush.com/shop/product-category/posters/).

4.  Assemble documentation, then escalate

Sometimes participants do not agree with each other based on irrational or irreconcilable terms. When the three steps above, in sequence, do not drive consensual resolution, prepare to escalate. Take the documented positions back to the executive sponsor, product owner, steering team, decision review board, or other authority for their decision.

First, carefully and fully document both positions (arguments) with their supporting claims, evidence, and examples. Then take the conflict off-line, back to the executive sponsor. Explain the method you followed above and provide them with a set of documentation. Tell them the group has reached an impasse and needs their help. Ask them to decide. More importantly, capture their rationale so that their reasons can be brought back to team members and fortify them to be more effective in subsequent decision-making situations.

Executives will also Appeal to Objectives, asking questions like:

  • Why did we approve this product, project, or initiative?
  • What were we trying to accomplish?
  • How does this initiative serve as a foundation for our strategy and future planning?

Executive sponsors, product owners, steering teams, decision review boards, and other authorities supply better insight than team members because the authorities are more intimate with plans, shaping curves, and transitional and transformational efforts underway designed to ensure that your organization reaches its vision. When they share their understanding with you and your group, you empower your group to make higher-quality decisions in future meetings. No facilitator can build consensus around every issue, but having a method to follow provides the assurance that you have done your best.

Proven Methods for Managing Conflict in Meetings and Workshops

Fortunately, you can rely on four proven activities for managing meeting conflicts

Don’t Run

Meeting conflicts reflect emotions that, when harnessed, enable innovative change. A facilitator sees conflict in a workshop as coming from the group and coming from within. We must understand our own internal conflict so that we can better serve others. A meeting without conflict is a boring meeting, and we’ve seen truly little value derived from predictable and unexciting meetings, sessions, and workshops.

Internal Conflict

Internal conflict drives fear. All people possess fears. When we allow these fears to control us, we lose our ability to perform. First, we must understand our fears. Once we do, then we can control them. Fears never go away—you simply learn to control your fears.

Once you identify your personal fears, you can find ways to make them work to your advantage. Adrenaline gives you an edge. Remember that the butterflies in your stomach will always be there. You don’t want to remove them. You want to teach them to fly in formation.

Summary

Resolving conflict begins by understanding, clarifying, and confirming the purpose of the object of discussion and argument. When that appeal fails, active listening coupled with extensive challenges will structure the discussion. Appeals are determined by the extent to which the purpose and objectives will be supported by the decision, especially the product, project, departmental, program, business unit, and enterprise objectives.

______

Don’t ruin your career by hosting bad meetings. Sign up for a workshop or send this to someone who should. MGRUSH workshops focus on meeting design and practice. Each person practices tools, methods, and activities daily during the week. Therefore, while some call this immersion, we call it the road to building high-value facilitation skills.

Our workshops also provide a superb way to earn up to 40 SEUs from the Scrum Alliance, 40 CDUs from IIBA, 40 Continuous Learning Points (CLPs) based on Federal Acquisition Certification Continuous Professional Learning Requirements using Training and Education activities, 40 Professional Development Units (PDUs) from SAVE International, as well as 4.0 CEUs for other professions. (See workshop and Reference Manual descriptions for details.)

Want a free 10-minute break timer? Sign up for our once-monthly newsletter HERE and receive a free timer along with four other of our favorite facilitation tools.

Go to the Facilitation Training Store to access proven, in-house resources, including fully annotated agendas, break timers, and templates. Finally, take a few seconds to buy us a cup of coffee and please SHARE with others.

In conclusion, we dare you to embrace the will, wisdom, and activities that amplify a facilitative leader. #facilitationtraining #MEETING DESIGN

______

With Bookmarks no longer a feature in WordPress, we need to append the following for your benefit and reference

How To Develop Questions that Lead to Better Meetings (Three Proven Methods Including the Perspectives Tool)

How To Develop Questions that Lead to Better Meetings (Three Proven Methods Including the Perspectives Tool)

by | Mar 23, 2023 | Facilitation Skills, Meeting Support, Meeting Tools

We’ve spoken about the power of questions. But while you know the right questions (in the right order) can lead to answers that stimulate learning, the exchange of ideas, and fuel innovation and performance improvement–HOW do you develop these questions?

Below we offer up three proven methods for developing questions that include conversations, brainstorming, and changing perspectives. Questions, that when applied properly, ensure Meetings That Get Results.

CONVERSATIONS

How To Develop Questions that Lead to Better Meetings (Three Proven Methods)

The quickest and simplest method of developing questions relies on having conversations with others, especially your meeting participants.  Develop a list of questions that all stakeholders would like to answer by asking them what questions they would like to answer. Our conversations are considered CONFIDENTIAL so that no one is at risk when ‘speaking their mind.’ 

Use the following set of stress-tested questions to use during conversations with potential workshop participants, before the session. They are open-ended, precise, and optimally sequenced.

    • “What do you expect from the session?”
    • “What will make the workshop a complete failure?”
    • “What should the output look like?”
    • “What problems do you foresee?”
    • “Who should attend the workshop? Who should not? Why?”
    • “What is going to be our biggest obstacle?”
    • “What questions do you think we should answer?”
    • “What should I have asked that I didn’t ask?”

Example

During our preparation phase, we conducted conversations with meeting participants from a nationally recognized and respected client. After the conversations concluded and duplications were eliminated we developed a list of 39 discrete questions participants were hoping to answer throughout a two-day workshop.

By working with the executive sponsor (e.g., product owner), we developed nine distinct questions that needed to be answered during the workshop, in addition to standard activities like Introduction, Updates, and Conclusion. By distributing a Participant’s Package in advance, we were able to manage expectations. We shared the final questions that would be addressed while letting them know that other questions they raised would not be answered within the two-day timeframe.

The driving question for the session was to determine what could be done to improve client penetration. But we viewed that question as too broad and difficult to answer. The answers would be unstructured and difficult to prevent scope creep. Yet, from conversations in advance, we began to sense how ‘improving client penetration” (Y) was a function of many (Xs).

Nine Stakeholder-Driven Questions

Here are nine of the major questions that our conversations yielded:

  1. What can we do to improve insights on where clients need to improve? In response, what steps should both we and they take?
  2. What can we do to improve the quality of our presentation deck as a pre-read, presentation support, or as a stand-alone, leave-behind document?
  3. What can we do to improve client engagement and satisfaction during our presentation of insights and recommendations?
  4. What should we do to demonstrate the impact of improvements in customer experience on business results for individual clients?
  5. What is required to illustrate the impact of customer experience on stockholder value?
  6. What needs to be done to develop an approach for prioritizing clients with the highest potential for additional sales?
  7. What might a model of client interaction look like before, during, and after the presentation?
  8. What model might create thought leadership content for multi-channel distribution that identifies urgent and pervasive issues, risks/rewards of not taking/ taking action, and solutions?
  9. What should we do to create written stories that increase the perception of our expertise and solutions?

BRAINSTORMING FOR QUESTIONS

Hal Gregerson, Executive Director of the MIT Leadership Center and co-author of “The Innovator’s DNA” and four other books has his clients focus on questions for breakthrough insights.

“Brainstorming for questions rather than answers makes it easier to push past cognitive biases and venture into uncharted territory.”

Staging

Gregerson suggests a straightforward three-step approach that supports the tri-part approach we’ve always advised; i.e., diverge, analyze, and converge. Once a challenge has been identified and articulated, he suggests setting the stage with a heterogeneous group that offers unique perspectives.

Ideating

Leverage the various perspectives using at least two of our Ground Rules of Ideation, namely high energy and no discussion. Stress the latter to provide highly effective facilitation. Do NOT be the first one to violate the rule of no discussion by asking for clarification or additional information when you are in the listing or ideation mode. 

Don’t forget to enforce the rules for all other participants as well. Stick to verbatim for the time being, that will probably not exceed six to eight minutes. Enforce participant contributions to come in the form of questions and prohibit answers and ALL discussion during this step. Do not permit framing or justifying the questions during the ideation mode. Strictly enforce contributions that are provided exclusively as questions.

Encouraging

Experience shows that not all questions offer equal value, therefore encourage participants with principles such as:

  • Suggest divergent thinking by assigning different perspectives (more on this in the next section)
  • Ask for open-ended questions keeping in mind that shorter may be better, but eventually understand that complex questions will yield richer insight than simple questions
  • Encourage speculative questions (e.g., What might be?”) rather than simple descriptive questions (e.g., “What’s working?”)
  • Strive for evidence-based angles meaning facts, examples, and objective characteristics rather than accusatory or based on WHO rather than WHAT
  • Remove fear and any sense of reprisal, providing permission to speak freely

Analyzing

Facilitative tools that help sharpen the questions rely on challenging participants to make their thinking clear. Consider the Five WHYs and SCAMPER as immediate and appropriate challenges.

Keep your challenges focused on the WHY, WHAT, and HOW by de-emphasizing or prohibiting input about WHO, WHEN, and WHERE. Generously challenge modifiers such as adjectives and adverbs with the two best challenge questions:

  • What is the unit of measurement of ________________ ?
  • To what extent does ______________________________ ?

Consider multiple rounds by using the Perspectives approach explained in the next section. Remember that when a group is in the ideation phase, it is important to elicit ideas from all members of the group.  Additionally, consider using break-out groups and mixing them up from round to round.

Testing

Here are some questions you might ask yourself as you develop powerful questions. They are modified from research done by the Public Conversations Project, a group that helps create constructive dialogue on divisive public issues (Adapted from Sally Ann Roth Public Conversations Project c. 1998)

  • Is this question genuine—a question to which we don’t know the answer? 
  • To what extent is this question relevant to the real work of the people who will be exploring it? 
  • What assumptions or beliefs are reflected in the way this question is worded? 
  • To what extent is this question likely to invite fresh thinking/ feeling? Is it familiar enough to be recognizable and relevant—yet different enough to demand a new response? 
  • To what extent will this question generate hope, imagination, engagement, creative action, and new possibilities rather than increase a focus on past problems and obstacles?
  • What “work” do we want this question to do? What type of conversation, meanings, and feelings will be evoked by those exploring it? 
  • To what extent does this question leave room for new and different questions to be raised as the initial question is explored?

CHANGE PERSPECTIVES

In addition to Conversations and Brainstorming, Change Perspectives to develop sharper questions. To prevent or refine questions that are too broad (e.g., “How do we solve global hunger?”), carefully manage the scope of the question. We can more easily develop solutions for hunger among children in coastal Somalia than addressing all of humanity at once. The following is based on the Perspectives Tool found in Chapter Eight of Meetings that Get Results.

Perspectives Tool 

This approach to building questions is remarkably powerful and severely underused. When you ask your participants to “walk in someone else’s shoes” by embracing a new perspective, you stimulate participants to change their point of view. More perspectives create more ideas, and more ideas drive decision quality. 

The inputs provided by shifting perspectives are not necessarily definitive. By challenging and exploring them, we can surface questions and problems that were not previously considered. 

You may ask individuals or Breakout Teams (Chapter 6) to take on new perspectives. I’ve personally witnessed remarkable success using two specific Breakout Teams: monasteries and organized crime (it can be like night and day). I’m also aware of alumni who love contrasting the Apple, Linux, and Microsoft perspectives.

BREAK OUT TEAMS PERSPECTIVES 
  • WW_D: What Would pastedGraphic.pngDo? Insert analogs of famous people, organizations, or teams. Ask, “What questions would be asked from the perspective of ?” (fill in the blank using one of the items found later in this section). 
  • Use Breakout Teams to develop questions contrasted with other specific points of view, such as the following: 
      • A college or university compared with the military-industrial complex 
      • A monastery compared with the Mafia or organized crime
      • Bill Gates (or Microsoft) compared with Steve Jobs (or Apple)
      • Jeff Bezos (Amazon), Sergey Brin (Google), or Mark Zuckerberg (Meta)
      • Genghis Khan (warlike) compared with Mohandas Gandhi (peaceful)
    • Or create your own based on driving forces in your situation, such as antifragile technology (gets stronger), ants (collaborative), Drake or Lizzo (unrepresented voices), or weather (unpredictable yet returns to homeostasis) 

NOTE: Use any of the perspectives suggested or make up your perspectives to help participants focus their input from a specific point of view. 

INDIVIDUAL (OR TEAM PERSPECTIVES)

The 6-M’s, 7-P’s, or 5-S’s are frequently used as the main “bones” in an Ishikawa diagram. Take and choose from among the following 30 perspectives that are most germane and compelling to your situation to develop sharper questions, namely, what should be asked from each perspective? Take only the most pertinent perspectives related to your situation. For example, asking about machines may be irrelevant to a policy consulting firm, or packaging irrelevant to an organization that provides only services.

The 6-M’s perspectives: 
    • Machines
    • Manpower
    • Materials
    • Measurements
    • Methods
    • Mother Nature 
The 7-P’s perspectives: 
    • Packaging
    • Place
    • Policies
    • Positioning
    • Price
    • Procedure
    • Promotion
The 5-S’s perspectives:
    • Safety
    • Skills
    • Suppliers
    • Surroundings
    • Systems
Perspectives (trends) from the World Future Society
  • Demographic perspectives:
      • Family composition
      • Public health issues
      • Specific population groups (and so on)
  • Economic perspectives: 
      • Business 
      • Careers 
      • Finance 
      • Management 
      • Employment (and so on)
  • Environmental perspectives: 
      • Ecosystems 
      • Habitats 
      • Resources 
      • Species (and so on)
  • Governmental perspectives: 
      • Laws 
      • Politics 
      • Public policy 
      • World affairs (and so on)
  • Societal perspectives: 
      • Culture 
      • Education 
      • Leisure 
      • Lifestyle 
      • Religion 
      • Values (and so on)
  • Technological perspectives: 
      • Discoveries and effects 
      • Innovation and effects 
      • Science and effects (and so on) 
Six value or utility lever perspectives: 
  • Convenience
  • Customer productivity
  • Environmental friendliness
  • Fun and image
  • Risk
  • Simplicity

By shaping your questions around the most appropriate of these 37 Perspectives, you are assured of narrowing scope creep and minimizing wasted time in your meetings.

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Don’t ruin your career by hosting bad meetings. Sign up for a workshop or send this to someone who should. MGRUSH workshops focus on meeting design and practice. Each person practices tools, methods, and activities daily during the week. Therefore, while some call this immersion, we call it the road to building high-value facilitation skills.

Our workshops also provide a superb way to earn up to 40 SEUs from the Scrum Alliance, 40 CDUs from IIBA, 40 Continuous Learning Points (CLPs) based on Federal Acquisition Certification Continuous Professional Learning Requirements using Training and Education activities, 40 Professional Development Units (PDUs) from SAVE International, as well as 4.0 CEUs for other professions. (See workshop and Reference Manual descriptions for details.)

Want a free 10-minute break timer? Sign up for our once-monthly newsletter HERE and receive a free timer along with four other of our favorite facilitation tools.

Go to the Facilitation Training Store to access proven, in-house resources, including fully annotated agendas, break timers, and templates. Finally, take a few seconds to buy us a cup of coffee and please SHARE with others.

In conclusion, we dare you to embrace the will, wisdom, and activities that amplify a facilitative leader. #facilitationtraining #MEETING DESIGN

______

With Bookmarks no longer a feature in WordPress, we need to append the following for your benefit and reference

The Power of Questions — Why Leading with Questions Improves Meetings

The Power of Questions — Why Leading with Questions Improves Meetings

by | Feb 23, 2023 | Communication Skills, Facilitation Skills, Leadership Skills, Meeting Structure

The HBR (Harvard  Business Review) article, The Surprising Power of Questions by Professors Alison Wood Brooks and Leslie K. John declares that “the secret to being more likable and improving interpersonal bonding isn’t being polite, helpful, or having a good sense of humor. It’s asking more questions.”

The Power of Questions -- Why Leading with Questions Improves Meetings

This is the first of 2 articles on the Power of Questions.

  • FIRST, we’ll explain the power, importance, and special relevancy of using questions in meetings by either the role of facilitator or meeting designer.
  • NEXT, check back for Part Two in March, when we’ll help you build powerful questions by providing examples, perspectives, and tips.


“Question everything,” Euripides originally said.

Many consultants have realized that their value add derives less from providing clients answers and more by getting clients to focus on the right questions, in an optimal sequence. Drawing from the behavioral sciences and our research across more than 4,000 alumni who are certified facilitators (see additional evidence-based factors provided in Meetings That Get Results [pg 13] ), note that . . .

“The servant leader does not have answers but rather takes command of the questions. Optimal questions are scripted and properly sequenced. Today, leadership is about asking precise and properly sequenced questions while always providing a safe environment for everyone’s response.”

The Power of Questions

Professional facilitators understand that asking precise and sequenced questions can unlock value in organizations by providing a catalyst. Questions provide the basis for learning, stimulate the exchange of ideas, and fuel innovation and performance improvement. According to Brooks and John, 

“Questions can mitigate business risk by uncovering unforeseen pitfalls and hazards . . . For some people, questioning comes easily. Their natural inquisitiveness, emotional intelligence, and ability to read people put the ideal question on the tip of their tongue. But most of us don’t ask enough questions, nor do we pose our inquiries in an optimal way.”

Most meeting time is invested in information exchange. The three most common meeting deliverables are:

  1. To decide
  2. To endorse
  3. To inform

Yet, “to inform” comprises 80 percent of the time invested in meetings. If the information addresses gaps or uncertainties, then the material being presented addresses or answers questions germane to the participants. By having answers to questions, we can presumably reduce the FUD factor caused by change initiatives (fear, uncertainty, and doubt).

After all, if nothing changes after sitting through a deck of slides, what good were they? Therefore, it helps in advance to know and articulate what questions are being addressed by the information exchange.

We can observe and know that for some people, questioning comes easily. Natural curiosity, emotional intelligence, and the ability to read people ease their ability to construct optimal questions. But many people don’t ask enough questions, nor do they pose their inquiries optimally.

A Guide on the Side, Not a Sage on the Stage

Questions and not edicts or mandates advance information exchange. Well-prepared and sequenced questions:

  • Build group cohesion
  • Create receptiveness to change and development
  • Direct teams to look for similarities—for example, apples and oranges are both fruit and similar in shape, size, and weight; they both bruise easily and rot as well
  • Help maintain focus within the scope
  • Increase learning and innovative thinking

Questions are most effective when presented with an inquiring, probing, and neutral perspective. Effective questions are open-ended discoveries and not opinions disguised as questions. Superb questions convert subjective perspective into objective criteria, making it easier to build consensus:

  • “What is the unit of measurement for _________?”
  • “What examples have you discovered?”
  • “What type of evidence can you provide?”

Ask More Questions

The Power of Questions -- Why Leading with Questions Improves Meetings

Ask More Questions

Asking a lot of questions unlocks learning and improves interpersonal bonding. Dale Carnegie recommends in How to Win Friends and Influence People to “Ask questions the other person will enjoy answering.” The Harvard research discovered that people simply don’t ask enough questions.

Most people don’t appreciate that asking a lot of questions unlocks improves interpersonal bonding. Presumably, if people understood how beneficial questions can be, “They would end far fewer sentences with a period—and more with a question mark.”

Our workshop curriculum has stressed for more than 15 years the importance of closing with a question such as “What should have I asked you that I did not ask?” Research by others indicates that questions of this nature, even during job interviews, “can signal competence, build rapport, and unlock key pieces of information about the position.”

Sequencing Questions

For optimal meeting design, we’ve stressed and continue to stress the importance of questions to cause meeting traction (i.e., progress or the opposite of distraction) and the equal importance of the sequencing of those questions. For example, when building a new home (residence), eventually you will need to answer “What color do you want the grout to be in the kids’ bathroom?” However, if that is the first question the architect poses, you will likely seek out a new architect. 

Sequence is critical. For sequencing, a leader might begin with the least-sensitive questions to build rapport, and then escalate slowly. As a general rule, we should begin the WHY (purpose) first, then open up the world of options (WHAT might be done to support the purpose), and close with HOW we convert the new understanding into Next Steps or an action plan.

For politically charged situations such as business process improvement, consider asking the tougher questions first. Asking tough questions first can make participants more willing to open up. Leslie found that people are more willing to reveal sensitive information when questions are asked in decreasing order of intrusiveness. 

When a question asker begins with a highly sensitive question—such as ‘Have you ever had a fantasy of doing something terrible to someone?’—subsequent questions, such as ‘Have you ever called in sick to work when you were perfectly healthy?’ feel, by comparison, less intrusive, and thus we tend to be more forthcoming.”

However, also note that when the intent is to strengthen relationships, opening with less sensitive questions and escalating slowly may be more effective.

Type and Tone of Questions

Brooks and John further mention type and tone as factors to consider. For question types, echoing our sentiments, they encourage the use of open-ended questions. Answers to close-ended questions hide the underlying rationale or reason and offer only three possible responses:

  • Yes
  • No
  • Maybe (conditional)

Tone generally refers to those non-narrative aspects that are difficult to generalize, such as non-verbal clues, vocal intonations, and eye movement. Nevertheless, do not underestimate the power of the “right tone of voice” when asking questions. Note how the following sentence changes simply by shifting the emphasis of one of the three words: I Love You. The first-person emphasis of ‘I love you’ generates a different response than stressing the second word, as in ‘I love you’ and an additional difference is generated when stressing the third word as in ‘I love you.’ To improve your tone, strive to avoid using the first person singular “I” and especially avoid consuming too much air time by droning on and on. 

In the words of Brooks and John, “Use energy, humor, and storytelling to engage your partners and avoid talking too much about yourself.” Additionally, participants are more forthcoming when casually asked questions, rather than using an official tone. In general, an overly formal tone will likely inhibit participants’ willingness to share information.

Favor Challenge Questions

“Because?” — my favorite ‘challenge’ question is used very frequently, and as soon as the speaker has uttered their last sound. The ‘Because’ (WHY) question stimulates the subject matter expert to provide some proof, evidence, or something objective, to support their argument. Remember, people typically speak about external observations that are indicative of symptoms and do not represent the true, underlying cause. Consensus is built around causes, not symptoms.

For example, someone may be exhibiting “red eye.” While we could jump to conclusions, we’d probably be wrong. Much easier to find out WHY? For this example, causes could be air quality, allergies, asthenia, etc., and those are only top-of-mind causes that begin with the letter ‘A.’

‘Challenge’ questions provide special power because they signal that you are listening, care, and want the group to explore further. Participants led by a facilitator who challenges frequently feel heard and respected. Additionally, ‘challenge’ questions do not require much preparation, and may become part of your natural style.

Leverage Group Dynamics

Willingness to participate and contribute can be contagious. Willingness to respond openly and innovatively affects other members of the group who tend to follow one another’s lead. Caution however because the opposite is true, as one participant withholds information, others may follow suit. Additionally, Alison’s research revealed that participants tend to like the people asking questions more than those who answer them.

Rhetorical Precision

Creativity and innovation rely on sharp questions that generate novel perspectives and new information. After all, people don’t change their minds, they simply make a new decision based on new information.

Detailed, sequenced questions foster richer interactions, strengthen rapport and trust, and lead to discovery. Brooks and John beautifully summarize the power of questions when they say:

“The wellspring of all questions is wonder and curiosity and a capacity for delight. We pose and respond to queries in the belief that the magic of a conversation will produce a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts . . . mindful of the transformative joy of asking and answering questions.”

In Summary

While we are interested in WHAT participants think, consensus is built around WHY they think that way, and unanimity occurs when your questions and challenges result in objective proof or evidence. Consider the following sequence that demonstrates increasing robustness, by questioning:

  1. What they know or believe to be true—good
  2. Why they believe something to be true—better
  3. Proof for their belief or claim—best

(And don’t forget to avoid DUMB questions—[Dull, Ubiquitous, Myopic, and Broad], by preparing yourself with scripting and rhetorical precision!)

______

Don’t ruin your career by hosting bad meetings. Sign up for a workshop or send this to someone who should. MGRUSH workshops focus on meeting design and practice. Each person practices tools, methods, and activities daily during the week. Therefore, while some call this immersion, we call it the road to building high-value facilitation skills.

Our workshops also provide a superb way to earn up to 40 SEUs from the Scrum Alliance, 40 CDUs from IIBA, 40 Continuous Learning Points (CLPs) based on Federal Acquisition Certification Continuous Professional Learning Requirements using Training and Education activities, 40 Professional Development Units (PDUs) from SAVE International, as well as 4.0 CEUs for other professions. (See workshop and Reference Manual descriptions for details.)

Want a free 10-minute break timer? Sign up for our once-monthly newsletter HERE and receive a free timer along with four other of our favorite facilitation tools.

Go to the Facilitation Training Store to access proven, in-house resources, including fully annotated agendas, break timers, and templates. Finally, take a few seconds to buy us a cup of coffee and please SHARE with others.

In conclusion, we dare you to embrace the will, wisdom, and activities that amplify a facilitative leader. #facilitationtraining #MEETING DESIGN

______

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Facilitating Meaningful Connections — Lessons from “Atlas of the Heart”

Facilitating Meaningful Connections — Lessons from “Atlas of the Heart”

by | Jan 5, 2023 | Communication Skills, Facilitation Skills, Leadership Skills, Managing Conflict

Dr. Brené Brown’s book on emotions, “Atlas of the Heart” (Mapping Meaningful Connections and the Language of Human Experience), was our most flagged book of 2022. Undoubtedly, here’s why…

And why you, as a leader and facilitator, should read it.
Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience, by Brené Brown

Atlas of the Heart builds around the fact that the average American can only identify three emotions: mad, sad, and glad. Since her team studied more than seventy emotions, Brené Brown makes it clear that understanding emotive states is as important as knowing physically where you are or where you’re going. Significantly, people everywhere, are seeking meaningful connections.

Indeed, poor or inaccurate vocabulary (rhetorical precision) challenges most people to understand or explain what they are feeling. Similarly, when meeting and workshop participants are unable to express how they feel, deliverables and accountability for those deliverables are seriously jeopardized.

For example, a majority of us would have a tough time explaining the difference between despair and grief, or calm and tranquility, but “Atlas” makes the differences clear and easy to understand. Therefore, here is an alpha-sorted table of the emotions that “Atlas” explores:

Admiration Defensiveness Happiness Pride
Amusement Dehumanization Hate Regret
Anger Despair Heartbreak Relief
Anguish Disappointment Hopelessness Resentment
Anxiety Disconnection Hubris Resignation
Avoidance Discouragement Humiliation Reverence
Awe Disgust Humility Sadness
Belonging Dread Hurt Sarcasm
Betrayal Embarrassment Insecurity Schadenfreude
Bittersweetness Empathy Interest Self-compassion
Boredom Envy Invisibility Self-righteousness
Boundaries Excitement Irony Self-trust
Calm Expectations Jealousy Shame
Cognitive Dissonance Fear Joy Stress
Comparative Suffering Fitting In Loneliness Surprise
Comparison Flooding Love Sympathy
Compassion Foreboding Joy Lovelessness Tranquility
Confusion Freudenfreude Nostalgia Trust
Connection Frustration Overwhelm Vulnerability
Contempt Gratitude Paradox Wonder
Contentment Grief Perfectionism Worry
Curiosity Guilt Pity

Why You Should Care About Meaningful Connections

Whereas effective meetings rely on clear expression, “Atlas” opens with a quotation from Rumi indicating the importance of language to express oneself.

Heart is sea,
language is shore.
Whatever sea includes,
will hit the shore.

While I encourage you to add this book to your library, both as a reference and as an excellent ‘loaner,’ here are eleven “facilitator’s highlights.” In particular, she stresses references or definitions indicating the vital role that language provides to advance consensual understanding by sharing our emotions. Therefore, we all know that clarity and sharing are significant keystones of effective meetings and workshops.

Language and Facilitating Meaningful Connections

Brené Brown begins by touting the importance of language as the primary portal to meaning—allowing connections, learning, and increased awareness. Thus, having access to the right words (read: rhetorical precision) “opens up universes.” Furthermore, each of us contains a unique vocabulary that helps explain why no one is as smart as everyone.

“Without accurate language, we struggle to get the help we need, we don’t always regulate or manage our emotions and experiences in a way that allows us to move through them productively . . . Language shows us that naming an experience doesn’t give the experience more power, it gives us the power of understanding and meaning.”

Painting DONE

While the Agile mindset calls it DONE, business consultants call it a “deliverable.” Steven Covey concurs with his expression, “Start with the end in mind.” Likewise, Brené Brown asks her research staff and team to “paint done.” Markedly, she brings the “right to left” thinking component of our curriculum to life by describing the importance of “painting done.” Also, her method requires visual details as someone is walking her through the expectations of what the completed task will look like, when it will be done, how it will be used, the overall context, and the consequences of not doing it.

Highlighted Emotions When Facilitating Meaningful Connections

Frequently observed in meetings and workshops, the following emotional states have been selected for your review and consideration. Assuredly, “removing distractions” remains the primary rule for all facilitators. However, the following emotions cause noise and distraction, working against the traction you seed to develop among your meeting and workshop participants. Additionally, the highlighted emotions are alpha-sorted so as not to place a stronger emphasis on one over others.

Anger

Anger might not be an emotion. Rather, it is a reflection (symptom) or intensification of many potential emotional causes. Many times, people feel better simply by sharing and talking and getting things “off of their chest.” Use Brené Brown’s book when you want a clearer understanding of the following causes of anger:

  • Anxiety
  • Confusion
  • Depression
  • Fear
  • Frustration
  • Grief
  • Guilt
  • Helplessness
  • Humiliation
  • Hurt
  • Isolation
  • Jealousy
  • Loneliness
  • Outrage at injustice
  • Overwhelming stress
  • Rejection
  • Sadness
  • Shame

Belonging vs. Fitting In

Like earlier Best Practices articles and arguments about the crucial difference between being “nice” and being “kind.” Here are explanations discovered by other experts based on her extensive research:

  • Belonging is being somewhere where you want to be, and they want you.
  • Fitting in is being somewhere where you want to be, but they don’t care one way or the other.

 

  • Belonging is being accepted for you 🙂
  • Fitting in is being accepted for being like everyone else.

 

  • “If I get to be me, I belong. If I must be like YOU, I fit in.”

Confusion

When confusion persists, it’s clearly one of the most valuable times to benefit from a professional facilitator. Confusion is vital to learning, it motivates and triggers problem-solving. When confused, we typically engage in more careful deliberation. Brené Brown refers to a Fast Company article by Mary Slaughter and David Rock with the NeuroLeadership Institute who claim that to be effective, learning needs to be effortful. Liken it to a muscle ‘burn’ when the muscle is being strengthened. The brain needs to feel some discomfort for deep learning.

Connection (a synonym for love)

Brené Brown defines ‘love’ as the energy that exists between people when they feel seen, heard, and valued; when they can give and receive without judgment; and when they derive sustenance and strength from the relationship. We’re a social species (see Hurari’s “Sapiens”) and that’s why meaningful connections matter.

She stresses that connection is why shame can be so painful and debilitating. We’re wired to be connected, and shame weakens our connections. Note the importance of feeling connected based on her research:

  • Living with air pollution increases the odds of dying by five percent.
  • Living with obesity—twenty percent.
  • Loneliness—45 percent.

Love is defined as “the preoccupying and strong desire for further connection, the powerful bonds people hold with a select few and the intimacy that grows between them, the commitment to loyalty and faithfulness.” Love forms the emotional context from which to strengthen relationships. Strong relationships are an integral part of all high-performance teams.

Google’s research proved that the one characteristic among high-performance teams is the tendency to distribute airtime equally among all participants (i.e., how much time each person talks).

Contempt

Contempt says “I’m better than you. And you are lesser than me.” Today, in the USA, Democrats and Republicans think that each side is driven by benevolence while the other side is evil and motivated by hatred; therefore, an enemy with whom one cannot negotiate or compromise. Identical to the situation among diverse cultures and religions in the Middle East.

According to Arthur Brooks, we don’t need to disagree less, but we need to learn how to disagree better—without contempt and cruelty. We need to replace negative communication patterns with respect and appreciation. A talented facilitator will use ‘challenge’ and ‘discovery’ to surface the driving reasons or rationale behind contempt.

Empathy

Empathy is a tool of compassion, “an emotional skill that allows us to understand what someone is experiencing and to reflect that understanding. Empathy improves interpersonal decision-making because it “facilitates ethical decision-making and moral judgments.” It has been proven to enhance well-being, strengthen relational bonds, and allow people to improve how others see them.

“Empathy is a tool of compassion. We can respond empathically if we are willing to be present to someone’s pain. If we’re not willing to do that, it’s not real empathy.”

Brené Brown focuses on data that surfaces from her research when sourcing Theresa Wiseman’s attributes of empathy:

  1. Staying out of judgment: Just listen, don’t apply value.
  2. Recognizing emotions: How can I touch within myself something that helps me identify and connect with what the other person might be feeling?
  3. Communicating our understanding and confirming its accuracy.
  4. Perspective taking: What does that concept mean for you? What is that experience like for you?
  5. Practicing mindfulness (see Kristin Neff).

You may also take a self-compassion inventory at www.self-compassion.org.

Humility

Facilitators should remain humble and exude humility. Humility is not downplaying yourself or your accomplishments. That describes modesty. Humility is not thinking less of yourself, it is thinking of yourself less often.

Joy

The opposite of joy is not sadness, but fear. And FEAR is known to be an acronym for “F#@! everything and run.” FEAR implies a FUD factor that professional facilitators must eliminate or diminish; namely Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt.

Sadness

According to Brené Brown, one of the causes of “human beings engaging in all kinds of cognitive gymnastics aimed at justifying their behavior,” is sadness. Although many have proven the benefits of happiness, sadness provides benefits as well, according to Joseph Gorgas from Australia.

“Sad people are less prone to judgmental errors, are more resistant to eye-witness distortions, are sometimes more motivated, and are more sensitive to social norms. They can act with more generosity too.”

Even Daniel Kahneman would agree, that a group of sad participants will outperform a group of over-confident participants. Think about it, if we are not sad about something, then why have a meeting?

Surprise

Here we find the shortest-duration emotion. Brené Brown describes ‘surprise’ as a bridge between cognition and emotion, rarely lasting more than a few seconds. Although other experts claim a strong relationship between surprise and unexpectedness, she claims surprise is an emotion, but unexpectedness is a cognitive reaction. To improve our understanding of the differences, she references Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know by Wharton professor Adam Grant.

Tranquility

Seek contentment, not tranquility. Here is the difference between being content and feeling tranquil. With contentment, we often have the sense of having completed something. With tranquility, we relish the feeling of doing nothing.

Summary

Professional facilitators do not ignore emotions, they leverage them. Our goal is not to eliminate participant feelings but to harness them in a way that develops a deliverable that everyone promises to accept and support.

______

Don’t ruin your career by hosting bad meetings. Sign up for a workshop or send this to someone who should. MGRUSH workshops focus on meeting design and practice. Each person practices tools, methods, and activities daily during the week. Therefore, while some call this immersion, we call it the road to building high-value facilitation skills.

Our workshops also provide a superb way to earn up to 40 SEUs from the Scrum Alliance, 40 CDUs from IIBA, 40 Continuous Learning Points (CLPs) based on Federal Acquisition Certification Continuous Professional Learning Requirements using Training and Education activities, 40 Professional Development Units (PDUs) from SAVE International, as well as 4.0 CEUs for other professions. (See workshop and Reference Manual descriptions for details.)

Want a free 10-minute break timer? Sign up for our once-monthly newsletter HERE and receive a free timer along with four other of our favorite facilitation tools.

Go to the Facilitation Training Store to access proven, in-house resources, including fully annotated agendas, break timers, and templates. Finally, take a few seconds to buy us a cup of coffee and please SHARE with others.

In conclusion, we dare you to embrace the will, wisdom, and activities that amplify a facilitative leader. #facilitationtraining #MEETING DESIGN

______

With Bookmarks no longer a feature in WordPress, we need to append the following for your benefit and reference