“Contrary to popular opinion, you don’t need weird shoes or a black turtleneck to be a design thinker . . .” so goes the article from Harvard Business Review♦. The author suggests five characteristics found in design thinkers (i.e., innovators) that relate directly to the core competencies required for effective facilitation. Included (in alphabetical order) are Collaboration, Empathy, Experimentalism, Integrative Thinking, and Optimism.
Design Thinker: Collaboration
The increasing complexity of options and decision-making demands the involvement of many, rather than one. Lone genius has been replaced with cross-disciplinary subject matter experts. Select subject matter experts have the talent to succeed, the initiative, and the motivation to succeed, but frequently do not know how to succeed in a group setting. Many are subject matters across disciplines with experience drawn upon multiple backgrounds and organizations. At IDEO for example, they engage engineers, marketers, anthropologists, industrial designers, architects, and psychologists, among others.
Design Thinker: Empathy
Understanding that there is more than one right answer, seeking the best among multiple perspectives lends itself to creating an answer that did not walk into the meeting; but rather one that is created during the meeting. To support creation, empathy in the form of active listening with a neutral session leader becomes critical.
Design Thinker: Experimentalism
Challenging subject matter experts to make their thinking visible, from the heart, can advance the rationale behind their thoughts that breed both consensual understanding and breakthrough solutions. Through observation and questioning, session leaders can inspire and transfer ownership of the meeting output.
Design Thinker: Integrative Thinking
While analytical methods are certainly helpful, integrative approaches support innovation. A neutral facilitator can help a group understand multiple perspectives and build a solution(s) to reconcile seemingly contradictory points of view. For example, one participant may prefer black and another prefers white. Instead of viewing them as opposing thoughts, how can we integrate both black and white? Immediate answers include options such as two-tone, plaid, polka dot, shades of grey, etc.
Design Thinker: Optimism
Successful session leaders rely on confidence in method rather than expertise around content to generate higher quality solutions. Practically speaking, however, optimism and confidence come from experience, so don’t forget to try, practice, and some more. There is usually more than one right answer. You may not be the best facilitator in the world, but you are the best facilitator your group can find.
Trust that in the role of session leader, they need you more than anything else, to lead with Collaboration, Empathy, Experimentalism, Integrative Thinking, and Optimism. With this technique, you can open the doors of perception that make it easier for your group to develop breakthrough solutions.
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♦ June 2008 (pg 87)
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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 every day 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.)
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Terrence Metz, MBA, CSM, CSPF, PSP01, HTTO1, is the Managing Director of MG RUSH Facilitation Leadership, Training, and Meeting Design, an acknowledged leader in structured facilitation training, and author of “Meetings That Get Results – A Facilitator’s Guide to Building Better Meetings.” His FAST Facilitation Best Practices blog features nearly 300 articles on facilitation skills and tools aimed at helping others lead meetings that produce clear and actionable results. His clients include Agilists, Scrum teams, program and project managers, senior officers, and the business analyst community among numerous private and public companies and global corporations. As an undergraduate of Northwestern University (Evanston, IL) and an MBA graduate from NWU’s Kellogg School of Management, his professional experience has focused on process improvement and product development. He continually aspires to make it easier for others to succeed.
