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Strategic Leadership Tips to Expedite Collaborative Decision-Making

Collaboration is a critical aspect to any successful company. It is a source of competitive advantage in most industries where organizations that promote more collaborative efforts are rewarded with greater outcomes. Opportunities to plan strategies, focus priorities, and organize responses continue to rise across companies. However, having more collaborative meetings does not mean they are effective. More often than not, corporate decisions fail because of organizational rather than analytical challenges in collaboration.

Leaders who fail to influence collaboration in groups often lack skill in facilitation techniques or struggle to balance facilitating with other roles they may hold such as project manager or subject matter expert (SME).

LEADERSHIP STYLES

Great leaders are able to master multiple leadership styles. A great leader does not wake up in the morning and decide they will operate one way or the other for the day – they will adjust their style depending on the type of meeting, outcomes desired, and timeline for implementation. We call this the Leadership Spectrum. On one end of this spectrum is Command and Control, which is preferred when time is of the essence and a decision must be made quickly. Perfection is the enemy of progress when it comes to this style of leadership. On the other end is Consensus – where the focus is high stakes strategic planning and visioning. This is where a leader must facilitate collaborative decision-making.

So how does one ensure they can enroll the group in the process and avoid pitfalls that can stymie progress or hinder successful outcomes?

TIPS FOR COLLABORATIVE DECISION-MAKING

Leaders can either lead a group collaboratively or authoritatively:
” Collaborative leaders will roll up their sleeves, brainstorm with the group, and help formulate recommendations to reach outcomes. This style generates options, but not decisions.
” Authoritative leaders will assume a hierarchal position in the group and have the right to make decisions based on the recommendations that the group creates.

Each of these roles has merit in a collaborative group setting. What is most important is that once a leader chooses one role, they remain in that role throughout the meeting. Often, leaders will make the mistake of assuming a collaborative role and then making authoritative decisions. This is known as SHAPE SHIFTING and it can derail collaborative decision-making.

There are three key tips to help leaders avoid the pitfall of shifting styles:
1. Establish with the group whether you will be taking a collaborative role or an authoritarian role in the group dynamic.
2. Be intentional and explicit in choosing the role that best fits the situation.
3. Once you have established your role – Don’t Shift!

4 Tips to Run a Meeting that Generates Awesome Ideas

“None of us is as smart as all of us.” – Ken Blanchard

When is the last time you were in a meeting and asked to come up with as many ideas as possible – to share any and all ideas since there was no such thing as a bad idea? My guess for most of you would be…never. Why would you spend everyone’s valuable time throwing out ideas that might seem unrealistic?

When I was a writer in Los Angeles, I would spend entire days crammed in a room with 10 to 15 other writers brainstorming over plot points, characters, and story arcs. By the time evening swept over the valley, there would be 50 or more ideas written on whiteboards and papers strewn across the table. Of those 50 ideas, we would use less than five, but they would be truly great ideas. Any one of us couldn’t have pieced together those ideas without the collective sum of that room. The adage of “quality over quantity” is one that you stick to through most of your professional career but when it comes to brainstorming, it is important to reverse this maxim before you walk into the room.

More choices almost invariably lead to better decisions. Ideas build off other ideas. Brainstorming allows groups to leverage all manner of viewpoints to generate more options and then pare them down to the fewest, most appealing to create breakthrough ideas. The key to getting great ideas is to first get lots of ideas. MeetingPRIMES.com offers expert techniques you can use to generate these dynamic and compelling breakthroughs for your organization.

Create the Environment

Groups that generate the best ideas do so because they have environments that promote openness, refrain from judgment, and encourage wild or abstract suggestions. Make sure each individual has sticky notes to write their ideas on – this is a great way to ensure everyone has a voice in the room and no single voice dominates the conversation. Participants can post their ideas on a shared surface to see patterns from others and generate further thinking. Display a visible timer to create a sense of urgency. Studies have shown that this method of brainstorming generates 20 percent more ideas and 42 percent more original ideas than traditional brainstorming techniques.[1] You will start to see the momentum build as ideas “snowball” on each other.

Establish the Purpose and Desired Outcome

The group needs to have a concrete destination in order to stay on track when brainstorming. Without a stated purpose and outcome, you risk the meeting devolving into chaos. You should have a short, balanced written statement prepared before holding a brainstorming meeting. It does not have to be “set in stone” and can be flexible depending on the thoughts of the group, as long as you keep a narrow outcome in mind. This outcome can be labeled as the WHAT. Next ask the group the WHY – why does it want to achieve this outcome? (Why is this important? What is the benefit/risk if it is achieved/isn’t achieved?)

Determine Obstacles

Once the group has decided on the one WHY they want to achieve the desired outcome, it is now time for participants to brainstorm on the reasons that may be stopping the organization from reaching its full potential. There can be any number of reasons including time, money, resources, or talent. It is common for an organization to have more than one. This is NOT an opportunity to play the blame game. Remember to curtail any finger-pointing as fast as possible or risk derailing the meeting.

Reach a Breakthrough

There is no guarantee the group will reach a breakthrough the first time through this process. In fact, it is more than likely you will have multiple iterations of brainstorming before you determine a viable opportunity. It may take you additional meetings, too. Brainstorming is not an exact science. When you do reach this point, have the group experiment with a storyboard to visualize where the organization is, where it is going, and what milestones exist along the way. This will allow the group to break down the larger outcome into smaller, achievable segments. The group can then develop the best ways to reach the milestones toward the larger breakthrough.

These are proven techniques that can help you create great ideas in the moment and more importantly, follow through on them the minute you leave the meeting. This is a key point as you can sustain the momentum from the meeting and continue to build upon the ideas generated and bring about real, positive change in your organization. The techniques from MeetingPRIMES.com do not stop when the meeting does – they permeate throughout your work. The father of brainstorming, Alex Osborn, once said, “Creativity is more than mere imagination. It is imagination inseparably coupled with both intent and effort.” MeetingPRIMES.com enables you to encourage powerful imagination with intent while ensuring that at the end of the day, the ideas aren’t left to gather dust on a shelf.

[1] Thompson, Leigh. “Creative Conspiracy: The New Rules of Breakthrough Collaboration” January 2013.

Put an End to Ineffective Meetings Today – Introducing MeetingPRIMES.com

You’re going to waste nearly 30 hours this month in unproductive meetings. Take a moment and look at your calendar from last month. Count all the meetings you had. I clocked in at around 56 meetings. You likely had a similar number, if not higher. In fact, the average employee attends 62 meetings a month. For C-suite level leaders, that number is even larger. Employees consider half of all meetings they attend a waste of time. That loss of time translates into a loss of work, which in turn means a loss in productivity. Last year, a total of $37 billion in lost revenue was attributed to wasteful meetings. So why not just get rid of meetings entirely? There are copious amounts of articles and blogs that champion this way of thinking. In today’s fast-paced business world, every minute and every dollar count. Every meeting removed is additional hours freed up for serious productivity. The rapid pace of technological change in the office has certainly made some meetings obsolete. Although it has improved the speed and agility of organizations, it is not a cure-all.

Meetings remain vital components in all industries to achieve impactful outcomes. Truly great leaders understand the importance of personal interactions and take the time to acknowledge the fewest, most important actions that must be taken to move their organization forward. The answer to this way forward is not to eliminate all meetings, but to design ones that are more efficient. Parkinson’s Law states that humans will fill up the full amount of time that is allotted to them to complete work. So if you schedule a 30-minute meeting, you will spend the entirety of those 30 minutes, even if half of it isn’t work-related. In order to properly design and lead a productive meeting, you need the right tools.

MeetingPRIMES.com is a free, interactive website that shares these types of tools and methods that will help put an end to unproductive meetings. The website provides users with straightforward tutorials on how to engage, motivate, and lead others in meetings using powerful, proven techniques. MeetingPRIMES is an intuitive means for any audience, from C-suite executives, to mid-level managers, to the next generation of rising leaders, to organize and execute a successful meeting. Team members from The Clearing and Safe Harbor Consulting gathered their decades of experience in meeting facilitation and design to inform this tool. In addition to easy-to-use universal tips and cautions, MeetingPRIMES identifies four unique meeting types that are seen across all organizations.

INFORM – Sharing information via email or memo is not always the most effective method, especially when leaders want to engage employees in a productive conversation on the topic being shared. MeetingPRIMES walks leaders through the necessary steps to design a meeting that informs an audience on a current or future issue, event, or exercise.

EDUCATE – A training session conveys a singular method or way to do something to an audience. An EDUCATE meeting differs from a normal training session in that it allows participants to generate new and novel ways possibilities and opportunities. MeetingPRIMES allows a leader to develop this type of meeting to drive participants to action based on the information that emerges.

BRAINSTORM – If one person is responsible for generating all the ideas, those ideas will very quickly became repetitive and stale. This is often how organizations get stuck in the status quo. More choices, voices, and viewpoints will often lead to better decisions. A BRAINSTORM meeting allows leaders to leverage the collective wisdom of their employees to develop powerful, viable outcomes. MeetingPRIMES has created a unique design that leaders can follow to organize a BRAINSTORM meeting to reach breakthrough opportunities.

DECIDE – Have you considered all the known constraints and criteria before you make a decision? If not, you may want to organize a DECIDE meeting to lean on the knowledge and wisdom of your peers. This will help you to consider all the available data, narrow down your options and make an informed choice. MeetingPRIMES outfits leaders with the steps needed to reach a consensus and commit to creating a new reality based on the decision.

There is an old saying that goes “A meeting is an event at which the minutes are kept and the hours are lost.” This does not have to be the case. You do not need to spend extra hours working because you wasted so much time in meetings. Instead, make those meetings work for you. MeetingPRIMES can help you do that. I encourage you to read through MeetingPRIMES, bookmark it, and find what works for your needs. I guarantee it will save you a few hours this month and a little more room on your calendar.

MeetingPRIMES.com is a useful tool to get you to more efficient meetings, but when leaders really need to reach powerful outcomes, they turn to our organization for the added expertise our facilitators provide. Contact us to learn more about how we can help you overcome complex challenges and achieve the results you need.