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Dialogue Facilitation

How Daring to Dialogue Creates a Culture of Agility in Leadership (Part 1)

Have you ever experienced a time where you thought you were going to have a conversation, but instead you just got yelled at?

Have you ever thought you were going to have a conversation, but it ended up that one person spoke for the entire time and you didn’t get a word in?

 Of course, you have. We all have. 

And if we’re really honest, there are times when we have been the offender, rather than the victim of those. It makes sense, we’re working at a faster pace than ever in a time of constant change and it doesn’t always occur to us to be intentional about our conversation. 

In fact, Playwright, George Bernard Shaw summed it up pretty well when he said, 

“The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.”

A lot of times, we think we are communicating when we are really doing something else.

As an executive coach and team coach, and the author of The Art & Science of Facilitation, I work with leadership teams who are wrestling with big challenges that are getting in the way of the results that they really want. 

In this three-part series, I will share some practical and actionable ways that you can bring more dialogue into your conversations. We’re going to look at what kind of conversations you have, when you suspend, and when you defend, and four actions that are required in all conversations.

In this first article, we are going to name and identify the types of conversations we have.

The Monologue: A Type of Conversation 

Let’s look metaphorically at the kinds of conversations we engage in, and this comes from the work of William Issacs. 

The first kind is monologue and monologue is a single voice, it’s turn-taking. I’ll say everything that I’m going to say, and then you can go. 

It’s a monologue, it’s a download. 

Comedians do monologues at the start of their sets, like Jimmy Fallon on the Tonight Show. Monologues are effective for getting a bunch of information out and setting the stage. 

The Debate: A Type of Conversation

The next kind of conversation is debate, and it’s a beating down of the other.  It’s probably the least effective mode of conversation. 

This is advocacy for your point of view over others, and there will be a winner and a loser. In debate, I’m holding really strongly to my point of view. Unwilling to be swayed, my only job is to persuade or convince others of my way of thinking.

Debate can be very effective for highlighting the issues and really understanding the differences between two points of view. 

However, when overused, which is often, debate can be quite toxic. Why? Missing form this conversation is inquiry. 

For an example of debate, we can look at the political system here in the US. Political candidates often debate topics. And the mindset here is that there’s a right way and a wrong way to look at something. 

On a smaller scale, debate can happen anytime there’s a decision to be made. 

A common debate in my household is deciding what’s for dinner. This is my most dreaded conversation of each day. Either everybody wants something different and they’re advocating for what they want, or nobody has an answer at all. But if everybody wants something different and is unwilling to be persuaded, then we’re stuck. And deciding what’s for dinner at the end of the day is draining.

The Discussion: A Type of Conversation

The next kind of conversation is discussion and this word gets used a lot, usually with the intention of having a skillful conversation, which we’ll talk about in a moment, but it’s actually something a bit different.

Discussion is actually the kind of conversation that is set up for people to defend their points of view, but just in a more conversational way than we might think of as organized debate. 

In fact, discussion means to “break apart”. And it’s certainly not a toxic back and forth, in the way that debate can be, but it can feel a little bit like table tennis, lobbing the ball back and forth. 

Think about a time when you walked into a meeting and sat across the table from someone else and thought of yourself as separate from them and their issues.

A common example of a discussion (in Agile) is between a product owner and an architect. They’re working towards the goal of producing a product together, but they can often get stuck in thinking about their world or perspective that they bring. Thus think about end users versus technical design, and then the conversation can feel very broken apart in their different realms. 

How Skillful Conversations Work!

Now, let’s circle back to the idea of skillful conversation and what people are often thinking when they use the word discussion. 

In skillful conversation, we shift from thinking about sides to take and begin to look at the conversation itself as creating something. A bit like plowing the field where we’re digging under the surface, and this is where inquiry lives, and here the goal is to stay with something long enough to understand the thinking behind it.

In skillful conversation, we begin to shift from seeing just our differences to also seeing commonality, and this is where dialogue comes in. 

Dare to Dialogue!

Dialogue, this last part is the art of creating a shared pool of meaning, and it’s a conversation with outsides. Only the idea of being curious and inquiring into differences and other perspectives. It’s the space where new thinking and new ideas happen. 

In dialogue, like in debate, you can have a perspective, but your viewpoint doesn’t guide the conversation. In fact, in dialogue you suspend your point of view, not only to hear the others’ perspective, but to ask them more about it. 

This is the space of curiosity and inquiry and listening without resistance, because this is where new thinking and innovation live.

The Gift That Dialogue Brings

When conversations bring new thinking and new insights and a view that we can do it, we can do this together, this is the gift that dialogue brings, and it takes a lot of courage to create. 

Recap:

The kinds of conversations we engage in are 

  • Monologue
  • Debate
  • Discussion
  • Skillful conversation
  • Dialogue

Each of these has a place and a time, and we need to know how to do each of them. Most of us are brilliant at monologue, debate, and discussion. We do them well. We’ve had years of practice. 

In part two of this series, I will take you through examples of all five of these types of conversations, while part three will solely focus on dialogue. 

If you’d rather take 30 minutes and watch Marsha present, click here to watch a video!

How To Take Your Agile Team Coaching Skills To The Next Level

If you are a team facilitator, and you are looking to grow your leadership skills, this is the place to be! In “7 Tips To Improve Your Team facilitation Skills” we learn that team facilitation starts with developing the right mindset and meeting preparation process. 

It’s informed by the things you believe as a facilitator, such as believing the group has the collective wisdom to solve the challenge at hand. Being aware of your bias means understanding how you can intentionally or unintentionally influence the group process.  

No matter the kind of meeting you walk into, your job is to help the group get over the hurdles of face-to-face communication. We’ve put together a checklist of what ‘Basic Agile Facilitation’ feels and looks like. 

Step 1: Basic Agile Facilitation

Purpose: Lead the process of a meeting

Personal: 

  • Process for tasks and outcomes 
  • Focus is on making meeting run better and more collaboratively

Symptoms: Team needs help with meetings

Sounds like: “Help us get better at running our release planning meetings”

Leadership: Active leadership from the facilitator who takes the process lead and designs a process to help the group achieve their desired outcomes.
Outcomes: Achievement of a specific goal or deliverable (i.i team charter, decision on work priorities, release plan etc.)

As well as:

What are you doing? 

  • Creating a clear meeting purpose, agenda, working agreement and a process that engages the whole group. 
  • Helping the team learn the agile practices – stand-up, team chartering, iteration planning, release planning, retrospective. 

How might you be using Structural Dynamics with the team? 

  • Notice the four action stances and how to bring or call for another action in the moment.

How are difficult problems handled? 

  • Mostly off-line or 1:1 with feedback about impact. 

What level of self-mastery might be needed here? 

  • Awareness of your own behavioral profile and how it might impact how you work teams.

Leveling Up Your Facilitation Skills

Once you have these skills and understand this framework, you will be able to move on to Advanced Team Facilitation. 

The five cornerstones of the Agile Team Facilitation Stance include:

  • Honoring the wisdom of the group
  • Maintaining Neutrality
  • Upholding the Agile Mindset and Practices
  • Standing in the Storm
  • Holding the Group’s Agenda

Read the following checklist about what Advanced Team Facilitation feels and looks like. 

Step 2: Advanced Team Facilitation

Purpose: Empower the team to facilitate themselves

Personal: 

  • How the group is working. 
  • Focus is on improving interactions, communications and decision-making skills of the team.

Symptoms: Challenges with behavior or interpersonal relationships

Sounds like: ”Help us improve how we work so we can facilitate our own work.”

Leadership: 

  • Active leadership from the facilitator that happens more from the back than the front. 
  • The emphasis is on the team’s capability to be more self-facilitating and self-organizing. 

Outcomes: Improvement in awareness, skills and effectiveness as a team.

As well as: 

What are you doing? 

  • Naming structural patterns so the group can become more aware of their helpful vs unhelpful patterns. 
  • Designing group processes to help change the patterns you see in the team. 

How might you be using Structural Dynamics with the team? 

  • Diagnose a stuck pattern in a team.

How are difficult problems handled? 

  • Name challenging patterns in the group, help them navigate the challenges or develop working agreements to prevent them.

What level of self-mastery might be needed here? 

  • Increasing awareness and able to see patterns in the moment – yours and others.
  • Expanding your tolerance for difference. 
  • Becoming “multi-lingual” and able to change your vocal range when needed. 

Check out this Facilitation Toolkit!

Leadership Journey to Agile Team Coach

Growing leadership competency is a cornerstone of creating organizational change

Increased performance outcomes are the direct result of the fact that the competencies of individual coaching, team coaching, mentoring, training, and facilitation help leaders build their range of leadership. 

At TeamCatapult, we call this “leadership range.” It refers to the ability of individuals to lead from the front and set a clear direction. It also refers to their ability to lead from behind, empowering others to make the move and understanding how to support ideas and create space for all voices to be heard.

Look at the following checklist to see if you are already at the next step!

Step 3: Agile Team Coaching

Purpose: Empower the team to lead and tackle more systemic challenges.

Personal: 

  • How the system is working. 
  • Focus is on the system as a whole and how it’s working or not working.

Symptoms: Systemic challenges and stuck patterns that are keeping the team from their full potential.

Sounds like: “Help us develop as a team so that we reach high performance.”

Leadership: 

  • Active leadership is happening within the team. 
  • The team is doing their real work either in a meeting, work session or at their desks. 
  • The coach is observing and intervening when appropriate or needed. 

Outcomes: 

  • Positive changes in individual and team performance. 
  • Individual and groups shift in mindset, deepended awareness and intentionality about working together effectively. 

As well as:

What are you doing? Live and “in the moment” coaching opportunities within the team to neutrally name what is happening so the team can see it and take their own actions. 

How might you be using Structural Dynamics with the team? 

  • Diagnosing a stuck patterns in a team and revealing it to the team so they can see it, too. 
  • Changing theme “in the moment” so that they are able to change the nature of their conversation for more productive outcomes. 

How are difficult problems handled?

  •  Problems are seen as systemic issues rather than 1:1 conversations and are with the system in the room. 
  • “Bring the conversation in the room” becomes a guiding principle.

What level of self-mastery might be needed here? 

  • Changing your behavior in order to help the team change their pattern and get different results. 

Next Step: Coaching Agility From Within Cohort!

Where in this journey to masterful agile team coaching are you?

Once you’ve mastered basic agile facilitation, advanced team facilitation and you’ve become an agile team coach, what’s next is an exciting journey! We invite you to learn more about “A Cohort Journey to Masterful Agile Team Coaching”

This 9-month TeamCatapult cohort starts on 10/25/21. We are accepting applications now. Click here to apply. We also invite you to learn more about this program by reading what those who’ve completed the program are saying.

How Advanced Facilitators Gain Self-Mastery and Can Read Group Dynamics

Are You Ready To Become an Advanced Facilitator?

In my book The Art and Science of Facilitation, I explain the five cornerstones of the Agile team Facilitation Stance. 

The cornerstones of the Agile Team Facilitation Stance include:

  • Honoring the wisdom of the group
  • Maintaining Neutrality
  • Upholding the Agile Mindset and Practices
  • Standing in the Storm
  • Holding the Group’s Agenda

These aforementioned cornerstones are important for all facilitators, but especially helpful for those at the beginning of their facilitation journey.

The links above will guide you through several resources to get you started. You might also need some tools – we have a wonderful free Facilitation Planning Toolkit for you!

Once you have a clear understanding of these principles, what’s the next step?

Next Step: Advanced Facilitation

Advanced Facilitation is about increasing your self-awareness so you can read the room, name the hidden dynamics beneath the surface, and effectively help groups modify their behaviors to achieve the best possible outcomes. 

Is this you?

☆ You might be ready for a more personal journey to deepen your skills as a facilitator, agile coach, or leader of collaboration.

☆ You might be ready to build your own capacity to lead and work collaboratively in order to help others do the same.

Self-awareness and the ability to confidently read the group are key characteristics of leadership range. Are you ready to further develop your leadership skills? 

About Gaining Self-Mastery

“Self-mastery is being in control of the internal thought processes that guide your emotions, habits, and behaviors.”

~ Thai Nguyen

That means turning within yourself. 

Practicing mindfulness and self-awareness along with journaling and auditing yourself can help you gain self-mastery. Sometimes self-mastery includes knowing when to hit the “pause” button to self-assess. 

About Reading Group Dynamics

How we communicate with one another either propels a group forward or holds it back.

Models and frameworks for communication, behavior and group dynamics help us make sense of what’s happening in the room and allow us to focus on something other than our own ego or personal agenda. 

Having a deep understanding of the theory and science behind group dynamics will also inform how you guide the meeting. 

Before you enter a room, have a model or models that provide you with a basis for understanding how groups and  teams interact and perform. 

The core model we at TeamCatapult use is Structural Dynamics, encompassing Daivd Kantor’s theory of face-to-face communication. Because they are structurally based, Structural Dynamics are visible in the room and, with practice, you will be able to see the structure of the interactions of the group!

Advanced Facilitation – The Workshop

In the TeamCatapult Advanced Facilitation Workshop, we cover:

  • ​​Understand what it means to ‘read the room‘ and reveal the hidden dynamics
  • How to recognize your impact on others
  • Seeing and working with conflict; diagnose and change stuck dynamics
  • Giving teams a language for skillfully holding tough conversations
  • The Kantor Behavioral Baseline Profile and Structural Dynamics
  • Understanding your Kantor Baseline Behavioral Profile and how to apply it in day-to-day interactions 
  • Working with group behavior using an implicit mental model and an explicit model for intervention 
  • Recognizing the content, style, and structure of a group’s behavior

Our multi-day advanced training will take you on a personal journey to deepen your leadership practice as facilitator, coach, or team leader.

Become adept at identifying and overcoming communication challenges

  • Use real-world experience to work with group dynamics at a much deeper level
  • Uncover your own behavioral model for working with difficult dynamics
  • Learn to help teams modify their behavior for enhanced dialogue and collaborative performance
  • Discover how to name structural patterns and make intentional choices to change them 
  • Identify the behaviors that challenge you most as a facilitator in order to better serve your team

Unlock The Wisdom Within!

For those with previous facilitation training and demonstrable knowledge of basic facilitation skills, Advanced Facilitation will help you become more adept at identifying communication challenges in groups so you can help them unlock the wisdom that resides within.

How to Help a Team Become More Agile: Upholding the Agile Mindset

Upholding the agile mindset is the fifth principle of the Agile Team Facilitation Stance. 

The five principles include:

  1. Maintaining Neutrality
  2. Standing in the Storm
  3. Honoring the wisdom of the group
  4. Holding the Group’s Agenda
  5. Upholding the Agile Mindset and Practices

If you are responsible for helping a team become more agile, and are looking for a way to assist a team adopt agility without telling them what to do, this is a good place to start.

It’s the Unique Position You Hold as a Part of the Team!

Agile facilitation is not unique because of the skills of facilitation it requires. What sets you apart as an agile facilitator is the unique position you hold as a part of the team. 

As a member of the team, when facilitating, your role is to stand apart from the team. 

This ‘dualism’ causes tension for many new facilitators.

Therefore it is important to acknowledge that if you are standing solidly in the other four principles of facilitation, you’ll be just fine – even if you don’t uphold the mindset of agility. You are still facilitating, you just won’t be supporting agility. 

The Agile Mind Does Not Equate to Tools and Practices

Facilitating while upholding the agile mindset starts with one simple premise:

“You are the guardian of the values and principles of the agile mindset, not the adjuster of the agile practices.”

Telling people what to do, forcing process, or not listening to what’s happening on the team is not what upholding the agile mindset is about. 

Upholding the agile mindset does not look like defending the use of retrospectives as a tried-and-true method of starting conversations. 

So, what is and what does upholding an agile mindset look like? 

Become the Guardian of the Values and Principles

When a team gets bored, or things aren’t working when leaning on practices in a particular agile framework, it’s time to look beyond what you know.

Lead the team and find inspiration in the practices that others have created, and try them.

You can’t ‘break agile’ when trying something new. 

In part, your job as a facilitator is to help teams adapt by inventing their own framework for agility!

In David Kantor’s “Reading the Room” he observes that we all model build. 

When we learn a new process, theory or skill set, we imitate first, then we feel constrained, and finally we create something new. We make it our own. 

It Starts with Practice

Focusing on upholding the agile mindset means learning how to bridge the divide between principles and practices. It’s what we do in the moment. As facilitator, you’re the one who is able to help a team see where they might be living into the agile values – and where they might not be. 

Four ways to practice upholding the Agile Mindset

  1. Develop a deep understanding of the agile practices and mindset
  2. Assess how agile the team is and ask, “Am I the right facilitator?”
  3. Uncover the key for upholding agility with this particular team
  4. Provide process, not solutions

In my book ‘The Art & Science of Facilitation’ based on the five principles of the Agile Team Facilitations Stance, I take a deep dive into each of these lessons.

Last Thoughts on Upholding an Agile Mindset

Upholding the agile mindset is not about convincing a team to buy into agile. It’s about helping a team focus on how they work. 

It’s about looking for ways to improve how they work so that they can be more effective, empowered, enjoy their work, and experience better outcomes.

Agility in action can look different for different teams. What’s needed is a critical reflection about how well we’re doing at any given moment lives into and upholds the core values and principles.

How Collective Intelligence Can Change Culture

Come think with me!

Here are a few questions I have for you as we start this conversation about collective intelligence.

  • Do you know how to have a conversation?
  • Have you ever experienced a time when you thought you were showing up to a conversation, but instead you got yelled at? 
  • You showed up to a conversation and instead everyone was multitasking on their phones, or on another device? 
  • Have you ever showed up to a conversation and instead one person really spoke the entire time and you didn’t really have a voice in the conversation at all?

George Bernard Shaw said it best:

“The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.”

Often we think we are communicating when we are really doing something else entirely! 

What Kinds of Conversations Do You Have?

Let’s look at metaphorically how the conversations can be broken down. 

[This comes from work done by William Isaacs.]

1) Monologue

Single voice.Turn taking. Download.

2) Debate

Beating down. Advocacy. There is a winner and a loser. I am holding strongly to a point of view and my job is to persuade, convince, cajole: to bring you over to my point of view. 

3) Discussion

It means to break apart. It feels a bit like table tennis. You take a topic and pull it apart in different ways and then it gets lobbed back and forth a bit. 

4) Skillful Conversation

It’s the first time where inquiry comes into the conversation. It’s a bit like plowing a field. We stick long enough with a topic to understand what’s there, we are inquiring and asking questions of others.

5) Dialogue

It’s metaphorically like a pool of water. We’re contributing to a pool of meaning. And everybody has equal voice. There aren’t any particular sides. There is no known objective. The idea and new thinking emerges from conversation, rather than somebody bringing ‘the idea’ into the conversation.

The Art & Science of Conversations

I believe that conversations are the single greatest predictor of success. 

Whether we are or aren’t having them and if we can learn to be more intentional about how we invite conversation, how we participate, cultivate and facilitate dialogue, I don’t believe there is anything, any challenge, any initiative that an organization is taking on that they can not skillfully navigate towards an effective outcome! 

Active engagement in skillful conversation and dialogue is the key to collective intelligence and culture change!  

“The fastest way to change the culture in an organization is by changing the way we talk and think together.”

Mindset Work is Needed To Engage in Meaningful Dialogue

It might take an organisation 1-2 years to put these concepts in play, and practice, in order to realize their full potential!

It all starts by learning the nuts and bolts of the structure of conversations. You need to fully understand what dialogue is and how to start thinking about it differently! 

Dialogue Is How We Access Collective Intelligence

Without dialogue, we can’t change culture, we can’t get to agility, we can’t seek the big things in organizations, these solutions, or vexing issues! 

Things like higher performance, agility in business, change culture, innovation, looking to anticipate what’s coming in terms of change. 

The solutions to these issues emerge from dialogue. Not from tools, processes or frameworks.

Solutions emerge from that collective pool of meaning!

Interested in learning more?

Watch and Listen! 

This article is based on my presentation for the Business Agility Conference in June 2021. 

It was recorded and can be watched right here! 

Dialogue is the Foundation to Increasing Agility

Dialogue is leadership! 

It’s not about what happens, it is about how you chose to respond to it! Learn more about dialogue! 

Leadership is a journey and your collaborative leadership journey can begin right here.

yoyo

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