Dialogue Facilitation

How Leaders Show Up: Learning to Be an Agile Leader

At TeamCatapult, we believe that the single greatest predictor of high performance and successful change lies in who leaders are BEING in conversations and how they are ENGAGING. We don’t operate from lists of “do this—not that.” Instead, we hold the perspective that all behaviors are choices that either produce the intended outcome or produce an unintended consequence. From this lens, becoming agile is less about right and wrong and more about awareness and choice.

The Quality of Leadership Communication

Research consistently demonstrates that team effectiveness is highly dependent upon the quality of communication between team members. The quality of communication is how we explain why some teams are high performing and others struggle. It’s how we explain why some organizations are successful at large organizational changes and others are not. And it’s how we explain why we might have very engaging and productive conversations with some people and end up in complete frustration with others. What often inhibits a team’s potential is how they show up and engage (or not) in the conversation.

Being Agile vs Doing Agile

Organizations that are successful at agility did not get there because they implemented the latest best practices. It’s not that they figured out the holy grail of team development or that they took the latest Kanban tool and prioritized work. They are likely DOING these things, but that’s not why they are finding success.

It’s not WHAT they are doing, it’s HOW.

It’s how their leaders are BEING when they show up in the room
It’s how they ENGAGE when they’re talking with their teams

How we show up and how we engage makes all the difference. Who are we being when the bottom drops out of the stock? How are we talking when a delivery does not go as planned?

“As a leader, the single MOST effective thing you can do to change your organizational culture and grow agile leadership at all levels is to develop your ability to understand and to choose how you show up and how you engage.”

How Leaders Show Up

Awareness precedes choice, precedes change.

What kind of leader do you want to be?

In agile leadership, who we are being when we show up in the room can make or break a team’s dynamic, its ability to work through complex problems, and the quality of its solutions.

That’s why it’s important to understand the characteristics of who you want to BE as a leader—and feel at choice in how you show up to every conversation. In our work with leaders, we start by introducing 4 characteristics that we’ve seen modeled by successful agile leaders time and time again:

1) Leaders Show Up Focused

What’s your vision? What are you saying ‘yes’ to? And, more importantly, what are you saying ‘no’ to?

The choice here is focus. It is clarity for yourself and for others about what’s important—and what’s the most important thing next. Focus has a cadence. It means you’re maintaining just the right level of strategy, purpose, and intent. You’re not so detailed that your focus changes every minute, and you’re not so broad that you don’t have the benefit of clarity.

When you are choosing focus, you are committing your attention. You are choosing to feel focused over feeling frazzled, scattered, and busy.

2) Leaders Need To Be Creative

Zig Ziglar once said, “It’s not what happens to you in life that matters. It’s how you respond to what happens to you that makes a difference.”

You can choose to create; to focus on the future and away from a past whose outcome you can’t change. Being creative comes from a place of hope, vision, and taking a systems perspective. It’s about asking, “what do I want to create?” If you don’t like the current situation, what would your ideal be? What’s possible? What’s next?

Being creative is the belief that you can create what you want. And tapping into vision and creativity is far more productive than being fearful and reactionary.

3) Leaders Should Be Adaptive

Being adaptive means choosing to inhabit the space of emergence, to be okay with not knowing, and to be open to sensing what’s needed next.

Ron Heifitz, in his book The Practice of Adaptive Leadership, makes an important distinction between “technical problems”—problems that have a clear definition and are easily solved by experts—and “adaptive challenges.” Adaptive challenges are problems whose solutions require exploration, experimentation, new learning, and changes to beliefs, values, and mindsets.

Becoming Agile as a business is the very definition of adaptive.

There is no roadmap, only hypotheses and learning to determine the next action.

4) Leaders Choose to Be Dialogic

William Issacs, in his book Dialogue and the Art of Thinking Together, defines dialogue as a shared inquiry—a way of thinking and reflecting together, particularly when the stakes are high.

Choosing to be dialogic is about seeking the collective intelligence in order to unfold new thinking and innovation that we would not or could not get to on our own.

Basically, it’s a way of being open and curious. Of joining with others in exploration. Of being aware of your own perspective and willing to share in a way that is not about convincing or influencing others.

There is a balance between having a clear opinion and perspective (advocacy) and genuinely seeking to understand others without clinging to our own viewpoints (inquiry). Being dialogic means choosing to find that balance.

Curious?

Read more in this next article titled “How Leaders Engage: Learning to Be an Agile Leader”

How To Run a Time Efficient Virtual Meeting

One of the most common mistakes people make when planning virtual meetings is allocating time incorrectly.

Hint: the problem is not usually that meetings end early.

Virtual Meeting Time Efficiency Formula

To help you avoid this error, here is a handy formula you can use to calculate how long something will take in a virtual meeting.

How long would this conversation with this group of people take in a face-to-face meeting? Write it down. We’ll call that number n.
Add modifiers to n as follows:

If there is no facilitator, double n before continuing. Then hire or assign a facilitator.
If there are more than 10 people involved (not counting the facilitator):
- For 11-15 people, add 5 minutes to n.
- For 15-20 people, add 10 minutes to n.
- For 21-30 people, add 15 minutes to n.
- For more than 30 people, design pre-work to take care of as much as you can before the meeting, then add 20 minutes to n.
Will you be switching tools during the meeting? For instance, going from screen-sharing to a collaborative sticky note board, Google doc, or similar?
- If so, add 5 minutes for every time you switch to a new tool.
- If the additional tool is new to at least half the group, add another 5 minutes.
- If the additional tool requires participants to log in, add another 2 minutes.
- If the additional tool requires a download or plug-in, add another 5 minutes.
- If you don’t display clear written instructions about how to access and use the tool, add 5 minutes.
Will you be using breakout rooms in this meeting? Add 5 minutes for each time you go into breakouts.
Will the group need to make a major decision during this conversation?
- For groups up to 15, add 10 minutes to propose the decision and check for agreement.
- For groups of 16-20, add 15 minutes to propose the decision and check for agreement.
- For groups over 20, add 15 minutes to propose the decision and check for agreement, and expect a lot of follow-up questions after the meeting.
If the group is very divided about the content of the decision, add another 5-10 minutes to the decision time.
Will you be keeping a Parking Lot, and do you expect more than two Parking Lot issues to come up? If so, add 5-10 minutes to resolve the Parking Lot issues.
Look at the total you have so far. For every 60 minutes, add 5 minutes for stretch breaks. If you’re over two hours total, add another 10 minutes for a sanity break in the middle.
Remember to add 10 minutes up front for people to connect to the meeting and get their audio and video sorted out.
Remember to add 5 minutes at the end of the meeting to review decisions and action steps.

stop watch to keep time in a virtual meeting

How To Implement The Time Efficiency Formula

As an example, let’s look at a group of 14 people who need to brainstorm ideas about their next product launch, select two, and assign research leads to each idea. It would take them 45 minutes to get this done in one focused face-to-face meeting with a facilitator, so n is 45.

Add 5 minutes for the number of people (14): 50 minutes
We’ll use screen sharing and Boardthing (a sticky note tool), so we add 5 minutes: 55 minutes
Boardthing doesn’t require an account or a download, so we don’t need to add any time for that.
Naturally we will create clear, visual instructions for Boardthing and show them before we switch as well as in Boardthing itself, so we don’t have to add 5 minutes for not doing that.
We will be using breakout groups once, so we add 5 minutes: 60 minutes
The group will need to make a major decision, so we add 10 minutes: 70 minutes
The group isn’t particularly deeply divided, so we don’t need to add time for that.
We don’t expect a long Parking Lot, so we don’t need to add time for that.
We add a 5-minute stretch break: 75 minutes
We add 10 minutes at the start for getting settled: 85 minutes
We add 5 minutes at the end to review decisions and actions: 90 minutes

In order to accomplish our objectives in a virtual meeting, we need to set aside 90 minutes, including a 5-minute stretch break.

Planning Ahead Will Save You Time!

By now you’re probably wondering whether this is meant to be satire.

Nope. I’m serious.

This is how long it takes to do real work when you’re not face-to-face. If you plan for it and people are prepared in advance, the meeting will run much smoother.

People will feel great about achieving their objectives in the time they set aside.

And hey, if you’re wrong, you can always end the meeting early.

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This article originally appeared on Rachel S. Smith’s blog, Digital Visual Facilitation, under “How long does it take to get things done in a virtual meeting?” on November 15, 2016.

Designing Your Meetings With Purpose

Responsibilities of a Facilitator

Your role as facilitator no longer depends on your opinion or even on your expertise about the content.

A facilitator has the responsibility to assess the situation, the people and plan productive meetings, all while remaining neutral and staying out of the content.

Your role as facilitator no longer depends on your opinion or even on your expertise about the content.

Realizing that content is no longer the facilitator responsibility but perhaps more of an outcome, an effective facilitator will focus on planning each meeting to assist in improved team efficiency and productivity.

The Facilitator and The Meeting

Some think that the facilitator is the “person in charge.” Rather than “charging your way” through a process, a meeting, or a team, there are three things that will help you bring focus to this role:

What: Only focus on those topics that are important and useful to all or most of the people in the meeting
Who: Only invite those people who need to understand, buy into, or act on the topics being discussed
Why: Give people the information they need in order to understand why they’re at the meeting.

The Result: Good Collaboration

Good collaboration doesn’t just happen. It takes forethought, intention and a keen sense of human nature. Human nature? Yep! Understanding how people get triggered and how people feel respected is part of the role as facilitator. Plan a process for a group of people that minimizes conflict and maximizes productivity. That takes skill, logic, intuition and a lot of practice.

If, for example, you need the group to arrive at decisions, then you’ll need to structure the process to get them there. Chances are good they cannot go straight to a decision and instead, will need to explore possibilities, then evaluate the alternatives, then make decisions.

These essential three steps are frequently rushed, so practice allowing the time to nurture what the process needs. To facilitate a group through large decisions it is likely you won’t have time (or the necessary requirements) within a single meeting. Consider three separate meetings, one for each purpose and design your meetings to encourage that outcome:

In the first meeting, meant to explore possibilities, imagination, innovation and creativity are welcome.
In the second meeting, meant to evaluate the alternatives, critical thinking, analysis and budget knowledge are welcome.
In the third meeting, meant to make decisions, negotiation and compromise are welcome.

Take Time To Design Your Meetings!

As you can see, how you design your meeting sets the stage for how it will go. When you design your meeting with clear purpose and intention, it’s likely to evoke less conflict and promote more efficiency and productivity during the meeting and for the team.

Why Being Wrong Matters

‘How you do anything is how you do everything’

…including how you manage, perceive and continue to lead a team when you’re wrong.

Discover why and how you can navigate this professionally and easily.

Have You Ever Been Wrong?

Ever had that moment of “Wow! I really misjudged that situation…” or “Yikes! I just cut that person off in mid-sentence” or even “Ugh, I totally missed the obvious there”?

Of course, you have. If you’re human, you’re probably wrong several times a day.

Sometimes we’re wrong because we have limited data.

Other times it’s because we have an emotional attachment to a particular outcome, and while that outcome may not be what’s best, it’s hard to let go.

Being Wrong is a Critical Leadership Skill

Whether the source is emotional, or neurological, being wrong is a critical leadership skill.

Not in the sense of the ability to be wrong; as humans, we’ve got that covered. I’m referring here to the ability to accept and integrate, the possibility of being wrong.

Current neuroscience studies offer a lens into why we get things wrong. Sometimes it’s our brain that’s perceiving things wrong, as when it tries to complete a sentence for us, based on what we’ve heard so far, but the sentence ends with a different conclusion.

Our internal models for how things are supposed to work don’t always match what’s happening in the real world. Sometimes a threat response has been triggered, but the situation turns out to be relatively harmless.

Research data tells us that being wrong is a natural function and denying the possibility is not only counter to that data, it doesn’t serve us as we try to lead our teams to solve complex issues with higher thinking.

As leaders, we are called upon daily to put forth opinions and decisions when we don’t have all the pertinent data at our disposal. That means, that at least some of the time we’ll be wrong, as additional data emerges and our initial judgment doesn’t look as good as it once did.

The critical leadership skill, then, is having the ability to admit that we were wrong and accept the correct answer as better than our first attempt.

One way to think about it differently is to think about problem-solving from the perspective that there is often more than one right answer.

If we say to our team “I need the best solution to this issue by the end of the day today”, we set up a very different scenario for ourselves and others, then if we say “I need a few possible solutions to this issue by the end of the day today.”

Opening the thinking weakens the right/wrong dichotomy and creates possibilities. Those options not chosen are no longer mistakes but are simply part of the process.

Going Forward & Adapting

It is only in this state of openness that we can accept the lesson that being wrong offers us. We can adapt going forward. We can make better judgments in the future, all the while acknowledging that we will likely be wrong again.

This ongoing mental process of judging, failing, learning, and adapting is also a critical leadership skill. And we can’t access the process if we can’t be wrong.

The challenge for leaders is the ability to be vulnerable – open to being wrong, and not losing the status that makes us leaders in the first place. Our senses tell us that no one wants to follow someone who is wrong and so we bluster our way through our mistakes. We look for scapegoats, or excuses, or perfectly logical explanations for what we’ve done, or said, and our positions of power create the opportunity for others to collude with us in that blustering.

But, when we allow that to happen, we are blocking the learning that comes from making mistakes, owning them, and learning from them. As leaders, we have the opportunity to model vulnerability, and to normalize it in the workplace.

Innovation Lies in Learning from Mistakes

When we are capable of that, we create teams that can be honest in their feedback to us, and to one another, appropriately critical of their own missteps, and constantly learning. And learning is where innovation lies.

Our current environment relies heavily on collaboration. The inter-dependencies in our work creates this reliance and that’s not likely to change any time soon. Collaboration, by its very nature, requires that we hold two distinct thoughts simultaneously.

First, that we have an opinion on an issue that we believe to be correct, and two, that others hold opinions that may also be correct. As leaders who want to create innovation, we have an opportunity to come with an open mind and bring authentic inquiry into the conversation. Through inquiry, we can help our teams think about problems from more than one perspective.

We can’t all be right unless we’re all thinking the exact same thing and that’s not likely.

No two brains are alike, because we are hardwired by our experiences and we each experience the world differently. You and I might have the same experience, but our brains will hard-wire that experience in unique ways, based on our past, unshared experiences.

Thinking Together To Create a Solution

Effective collaboration is only possible when we allow ourselves to let go of whose opinion is the right one and think together toward creating the best possible solution.

True collaboration happens when we walk out of the room, flying high with the knowledge that we’ve solved a problem in the best way possible, but none of us knows who, exactly, came up with the solution. Because we were thinking together and collaborating, we all did!

A leadership team I worked with was analyzing why their marketing wasn’t having the impact they expected. The first response was to blame the marketing team, and the ad agency. But the team leader asked a simple, yet powerful question: “What’s another way to look at this?” That got the conversation rolling, and as everyone seemed to talk at once, the solution emerged – the ads were focused on the users, but the users weren’t the buyers. The advertising was tweaked to focus on both, with the emphasis on the buyers, and sales went up.

How do we balance the need to lead with the possibility that we are wrong? We can practice self-deprecation, for one, but that’s not always effective.

Being of Real, Direct Service to a Team

In my work with leaders, I hear them say things like “I’m not the smartest person in this room” or “I’m sure that many of you have better ideas than anything I can come up with.”

Are those statements demonstrating vulnerability?

Yes, but they go a step too far. They undermine the trust that the team has in the leader and raise questions about the leader’s ability to lead. No one wants to follow an incapable leader.

Practicing Curiosity

Another way to lead AND be vulnerable is to cultivate curiosity. Ask thoughtful, open-ended questions that get people to open up and share their thinking. Questions like “what’s another way to look at this?”, “What else should we consider?” and “What would it look like if…” can shift the direction of a conversation and create more curiosity.

Curiosity deepens thinking, and the more curious the leader, the more thought the team will put into creating the solution. We can suspend what we do know in service of learning more about what we don’t know.

It takes practice. Curiosity is a muscle that builds by using it, like a bicep, in order to be strong. Curiosity and vulnerability require courage — and people want to follow courageous leaders.

Curiosity is a critical leadership skill.

If we already have all the answers and we believe that our answers are always the right ones, we have left no work to be done by our teams.

We’ll experience this as dis-engagement, where the team doesn’t speak up, but just nods and does what we have suggested be done. But they won’t really follow, they will just comply.

No one wants to follow an incapable leader and no one sees the need to follow a leader who already has it all figured out.

Agile Team Facilitation: Maintaining Neutrality

ROI Is in Improved Trust and Collective Intelligence Within the Team

This post is the 2nd in a series that dives into the Cornerstones of the Agile Team Facilitation Stance.

This element, Maintaining Neutrality, being the toughest to embrace and employ, is where we’ll begin. Ready?

The Maintaining Neutrality Concept

In its simplest terms, the role of a facilitator in a collaborative meeting is to bring an objective and unbiased view to a group process – so that all voices can be heard and that the team can access its collective intelligence.

One of the best ways to achieve this is for a facilitator to maintain neutrality by owning the process, of the meeting and let the participants own the content or topic.

That sounds easy, doesn’t it?

In theory, it is easy. It’s dead simple.

In practice? No. Not easy.

Most agile teams have someone who steps into the role of facilitator to help guide the group through practices like team start-up, retrospectives, release planning, iteration planning, etc.

Because this person is often part of the team, in some way, they likely have an opinion about what the team is doing. This can make it difficult, but not impossible, to actively achieve and maintain neutrality during the course of a meeting where the person acting as the facilitator has an opinion on the topic or content being discussed.

The cornerstones in the facilitation stance. See the first post in the series.

**Why You’d Want To Maintain Neutrality**

True neutrality builds trust within the group.

It’s the subtle reflection to a team that they have the wisdom needed to find the right solution or path.

Neutrality is free from judgment about good or bad, right or wrong. And there is an openness in neutrality that makes room for more than one truth and more than one solution.

So, with more trust within a team, comes more effectiveness, better solutions…and more options.

With more trust, comes more confidence for each member in the group as a whole. With more trust comes improved solutions, velocity, and an ease and eagerness to continue the momentum.

Facilitators: a Part of The Team, Yet Apart From The Team

Team leaders or agile coaches are often part of the team, in some way.

On occasion, they may even have a stake in the outcome of the meeting.

This is at the heart of what makes maintaining neutrality difficult.

Neutrality offers the gift of “not knowing” and being able to take a different perspective, to see another way, to dance in the space of not knowing.

As a Facilitator’s Work Is Different

Presence and awareness for the way the group is proceeding through the agenda or problem at hand is the facilitator’s domain.

In many groups, a leader may, instead, get caught up in offering solutions to the content being presented, rather than staying curious and asking questions of the group.

Why Does This Happen?

There’s a myth, based in fear, about being perceived as not contributing value in the facilitator position. Often unspoken, there’s a belief in many individuals that they can only bring value to a group by contributing verbally or sharing their opinions or suggestions on the topic.

Some individuals equate neutrality with passivity.

Neither of These Fear-Based Beliefs Are True

The work of a facilitator or leader is different. It’s active, but the active attention is on asking questions and trusting the group to provide their answers. You’re also watching for hidden dynamics in the group and you’re more focused on inquiring, staying with curiosity and inviting participants to dig deeper for more and better of themselves.

An Example

A facilitator has just taken the group through an exercise. There are large sheets, scribed with details and feedback from the exercise, hanging on the wall. Everyone takes a breath and reviews all of the content on the sheets.

The Facilitator’s Immediate Instinct?

Perhaps it is to summarize what she sees, which comes from a place of knowing, instead of a place of inquiry.

Helpful?

Perhaps – as a content owner, but the facilitator is the process owner.

A neutral tack would be to ask: “What do you see?”

Subtle? Yes.
Powerful? Definitely.

Shifting your focus from the topic or content, or what the group is working on, to the process, or how the group is working.

The value you bring is in owning the process and in holding the space so the group can do its best work.

Minding The Inherent Power in Leading

Teams can be greatly influenced by a slight comment or over-attention to one idea over another. When you’re trying to pay attention to the content in the process, there’s a danger you’re missing what is happening inside of the process.

Fully standing in the space of neutrality says to a group “I’m your ‘sherpa.’ I’ll guide you up this mountain, there is a specific process we will follow. And in the end, you’ll get to do the work.”

What else? You may not be entirely sure you can maintain neutrality in your group. But given the payoff of improved group trust, that shouldn’t stop you from trying it out.

From The Field

Having taught facilitation to many leaders and coaches, this is the one guiding principle, where I notice the most immediate resistance and push back.

It gets right at the heart of how we traditionally feel we add value in a conversation. It can also be greatly influenced by the culture in the organization and how people are rewarded. This is also the principle that most everyone will say to me at the end of a three-day course ‘I never realized how important or valuable it is to be a neutral facilitator – but I totally get it now’.

Offering advice or jumping too quickly to problem-solving for a team increases their dependence on a facilitator. It sends a subtle and unstated message that says “I don’t think you’re capable of this…”. Over time, it undermines the confidence of the team to access and voice their collective intelligence.

Maintaining neutrality is about putting your own ego aside. We can easily fall into a trap of believing that the only way to provide value to a team is to problem solve for them.

My First Time as a Facilitator

The first time I facilitated a group of 25 people I was scared to death. My fears were about wanting to be prepared, wanting the meeting to go well, wanting to provide value, wanting to show my expertise.

I could probably continue that list of fears, but you might notice the theme of my fears were all about me. So I spent quite a bit of my preparation time mapping out a detailed plan, having a back-up plan for every possible event, and doing my homework on the topic so I was knowledgeable about some of the issues that might come up as questions (so I could have an answer).

I have been practicing facilitation for 22 years. I have strong beliefs in the power of collective intelligence and the benefits of not letting my own opinions get in the way of being able to hear the collective voice of the group and yet there are still times when I want someone else to hold the process so I can fully be in the content.

Favorite Exercise

You can easily provide contrast and share the work of facilitation by rotating other team members into the role of owning the process.

By rotating, each person will notice the need to pay attention to so many different things:

Individual dynamics
System dynamics
Interpersonal communications
Watching for who are stepping forward to participate and who are withdrawing, or stepping back
Group awareness
The difference between what’s being said, and what isn’t.
Looking for signs & indicators that we just bumped into the elephant in the room – are we really ignoring that?

These are the subtle yet critical elements, the work, a facilitator maintains in order to hold the space for their group. So the group can focus deeply on the content and dig for their solutions with more trust.

	Internal Assumptions and Beliefs	Practices
Maintain Neutrality	I am active and engaged (not passive) I own the process, they own the content I add value by reflecting back to the group what’s actually happening I am open minded and see value in all voices Polarities in opinions offer opportunities to find common ground I am vested in helping the group achieve their desired outcomes Critique about the group process is not a critique about who I am	Say what you see, in a factual, non-judgmental way Take a systems perspective Bridge competing ideas Listen for the 2% common ground Offer ideas with no attachment to the outcome Inquire by asking powerful questions Seek to understand and deepen the group’s understanding
Not Neutral – Driving your Content	I am valuable because of my superior capability, experience, or insight The group will make the wrong decision if I don’t add my experience I can’t facilitate because I am too biased and have too much at stake My value is determined by my ability to add value to these discussions Neutrality means to be passive, so if I can’t offer my opinion, I won’t say anything	Using your positional authority of leading the meeting to contribute your idea Commenting positively on contributions made by some and not by others Disregarding input from those who don’t align with your thinking Allowing your design to reinforce biases (i.e., only hearing from those who like to talk) Over contributing content

Starting the Practice:

In a collaborative meeting, try on 100% content-neutral facilitation.

No matter what’s being said or presented, you step into your own leadership of the process, not the content. You are clear about the outcomes for the meeting and your focus remains on HOW the group is working.

It’s the participants who own the content, the suggestions, solutions and decisions.

Another strategy is to partner with another facilitator, not on your team, to co-design and co-lead the session. It’s a great way to learn facilitation and have someone who can see places where you might have slipped out of neutrality.

After the meeting, get feedback from your team on the impact the meeting had on them individually and their overall objectives. You can ask them to write the answers to these on a card as they are leaving the room or create a quick web-based survey after the session.

You might ask questions like:

Overall, how did the meeting go?
Did the team accomplish the outcomes it needed?
What was effective about the meeting process? (not content)
What was not being discussed in the meeting, but maybe needed to be?

Developing the Practice:

There’s a natural progression, an unfolding, in developing your own version of neutrality. The key to developing neutrality is building your self-awareness and self-management about how you show up in leading a meeting.

Consider using the same tools you utilize in leading a group and ask questions of yourself. And have patience; developing this practice is like building a muscle. You will grow and improve over time.

In a collaborative meeting, when a desire to jump in arises, ask yourself

Why do I want to offer content?
Am I trying to elevate my position in the group?
Do I have a different perspective? If so, can you inquire from the group if anyone has a different perspective?
What could be a consequence of jumping out of the process and into the content?

Another great practice is journaling and self-reflection after a meeting. Make notes of where you wanted to jump out of the process and over to content. What was behind that desire? When do you get triggered by topics or patterns in how the group works? What biases do you bring to the team you are working with?

Mastering the Practice:

Again, more questions than answers in mastering the practice. Consider documenting the following answers for your organization:

How would you define your stance on neutrality?
What are the circumstances where you might provide content?
How do you provide the content so it’s clear to both you and the team that you are stepping out of neutrality?
When might you hand a process over to someone else in the meeting?

Can You Ever Get “Good Enough” To Hold Both Roles?

It depends on the complexity and the importance of the meeting, overall. There are times & places where you can do both, hold both roles.

One group I work with, over time, they’ve gone to full neutrality and are now moving closer to center – each team member is finding their own version of what neutrality means and when they offer their opinion or perspective. As you grow the practice, you’ll find a natural cadence and volume for how much content you may bring in vs. owning the process & maintaining 100% neutrality.

No matter what balance you find, always be clear about boundaries of the hats you are wearing and be sure to make it transparent for both you and the team.

No matter what, going forward, it’s the organic development of what works best for the group/organization at hand is what will bring each participant to a deeper level of trust in the group.

That deeper level of trust is where traction & buy-in lives with all participants in a team.

And we’re rooting for you to get there.

In the next post we’ll cover the cornerstone of Standing in the Storm. Be sure to stay tuned here or on LinkedIn so you won’t miss it.