Facilitating the Power of your Team
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As a manager, do you really make the most of the great minds of your team to solve problems and improve the business? Really? It is common for managers to feel it is entirely their job, or the job of leadership team, to make all the important decisions and make the most difference but this is far from the truth.
As a leadership and career coach, I speak to a lot of my clients about “bad leadership” or “bad management”. They often ask me how they can get the best out of their team so they don’t fall into this trap themselves. It is worth remembering that your team were also employed into your business. You may have recruited them yourself. They were employed because they showed the potential and skills needed for your business.
So why aren’t you always harnessing their collective wisdom to help solve problems, come up with creative ideas or, ultimately, take the business forward?
You could be the facilitator of meetings where you empower your employees. Often this is where the best ideas come up and your team will become more enthusiastic about the decisions and the company because they will feel more part of it! Even when the outcomes may not be popular, at least they will have been part of the process so they are more likely to understand the decisions made.
But what is the best way to do this? Here are some tips on how to best facilitate a meeting to achieve the best results:
1. Full disclosure
Make sure everyone knows in advance what the meeting is about and what you would like them to think about or prepare in advance. It’s no good springing it on them in the meeting, give people time to collect their thoughts, come up with ideas and make some notes so they can buy into the meeting and there are good contributions from the start.
2. You are just a note taker
By this, what I mean is, try taking yourself out of the ideas generation process. Be the person at the whiteboard, introduce the meeting and the format and then stand back and let them run with it.
3. Trust in your team
Let them speak, let them argue about things, don’t try to stop the conflict but enjoy it, watch them become passionate about their opinions and then work together to find common ground. They may need a little steering but they are intelligent adults with ideas and creativity beyond your own capabilities so harness their collective wisdom.
4. Scrap any plans you had on how the meeting “should go”
If your team are pushing the meeting into a direction that you didn’t foresee but you can tell it is igniting their passion and fire and they are needing to discuss something you didn’t see coming, let them. Don’t quash their creativity or opinions that are important to them. Even if it leads to comments or opinions you don’t want to hear.
5. Tie it up
At the end of the meeting make sure you summarise, recap on what you achieved as a team, what ideas and decisions were made and how this will take the business forward. Set a plan for who will do what so everyone is clear of the great progress that was made in the meeting and what their roles are in making the ideas a reality.
What is teamwork?
Many companies talk about “teamwork” but there is often still a distinct lack of this due to team members never actually invited in to help with decisions or solving problems so there is always a feeling of “them and us”. Surely this should be why you have a team in the first place, otherwise you would be doing everything on your own. As a leadership coach I have worked with many business leaders on learning to, not only delegate, but to facilitate.
Remember, your job is as a leader, not a boss. You want to lead by example for the good of the team. In truth, very few managers are able to do this, but the ones that do command the most respect from their teams who feel listened to, that they matter, that they are of worth.
If you’d like to discuss leadership coaching to help you learn how to get the best out of your team, let’s talk. Fortem Coaching can help you harness the wisdom and enthusiasm of your team to help improve the performance of your business. Book a free 30-minute coaching consultation so I can help you gain greater clarity. Book now for a FREE 30-minute consultation.