Mentoring Adds Value

Mentoring valueThere are many ways that a mentoring program can add value to your company, association or organisation. Here are just some of them:

  • Mentoring is a very effective way to welcome new employees and induct them into your organisation’s culture and values or to support recently promoted employees.
  • Mentoring can offer effective support for minority groups or special employees and promote diversity.
  • A faciliated mentoring program can build a collegiate group which is more willing to share their experience and informal knowledge in a productive way.
  • Mentoring can assist in succession planning and the development of new leaders, provide a better basis for promotion and advancement decisions and shift high potential individuals onto the fast career track.

The messages that an invitation to participate in a mentoring program can be transformational.

QUOTE OF NOTE

“A lot of people don’t do great things because great things really aren’t expected of them and because nobody really demands they try.”
Steve Jobs

The power of demonstrating that great things are expected is immeasurable.  Mentoring really does add value.

Leadership styles – Being an expert in everything

Leadership stylesOne of the first things we notice about good leaders is how many different yet effective types of leadership styles there are. While one of these leadership styles will be authentically right for you, and it might be very different to the leadership styles adopted by others in your organisation.

But regardless of your personal leadership style, there is one trap we find new leaders fall into, far too frequently.

No one person is an expert in everything and the fact that you are leading a team certainly doesn’t mean you know everything that everyone on your team does.

In fact, the job of a leader has more to do with knowing what needs to be known than knowing everything.

Once we know what needs to be known it becomes possible to acquire either that knowledge, or the people who have the knowledge. The most effective leadership styles reinforce this. Leadership styles that demand all-encompassing leadership expertise demotivate other team members.

Good leaders need to be confident enough in their own leadership styles and positions to be able to ask the people who do know, and to still take charge (without all the knowledge) when the situation requires it.

Yet so often when I am mentoring managers and executives I come across people who feel under great pressure to be an expert in everything, just because they are in charge. And their leadership styles reflect this. They are concerned that their lack of detailed knowledge of some of the things their team members are doing will make it too hard for them to earn the respect of their people or even undermine their authority.

But it isn’t necessarily so. I’ve known outstanding leaders who knew little about the technical detail of what their team members individually did who still displayed really effective leadership styles.

So much of your success in this sort of situation depends on your personal leadership styles.  In particular on the way you pay respect to the team members who do have the knowledge, without relinquishing your own role as team leader. Effective leadership styles achieve this by placing focus on the contributions of every of team member, including the team leader, rather than on individual deficiencies – even their own.

Expertise and Leadership Styles

However, there are plenty of things a leader does need to be expert in.

Even though good leaders may not know how to do everything each individual team member does, they will always know exactly what each team member contributes. They will know what needs to be done. They will know how to build a diverse group into a well functioning team, how to change attitudes and manage organizational change. They will know how and when to listen, and when to act.

All in all, when you are in charge of a team you need to be expert, not in the work your people do, but in all the knowledge, skills, attitudes and behaviours of being a leader.

Whatever leadership styles different effective leaders display, they all have this in common.

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Find out more about the Leadership Coaching Club at http://kmginfo.com/go/lcc 

 

 

 

 

Leave a comment below to share what you think are the most effective leadership styles.

Group Conflict

What to do When Group Dynamics or Group Conflict are a Problem

scream and shout

Once you are promoted to a group leadership role you will find yourself responsible for meeting or group facilitation as a regular part of your role. So it is important you develop the skills required to manage group dynamics and handle any group conflict effectively.

Aside from routine team meetings, there are many other groups you may be called upon to facilitate.  Strategic planning workshops, incident debriefs, departmental meetings, external events or conferences and more. So it makes sense to ensure you know enough about group facilitation to decide whether you should do it yourself or bring in external professional facilitators in a given situation.

Although group facilitating might sometimes look easy, for many people the workshop facilitation skills required to achieve a satisfactory outcome can be more of a challenge than anticipated.

As a workshop facilitator, you need to be particularly conscious of group dynamics, including any pre-existing or emerging group conflict, and manage the process and personalities, all while you remain focused on the specific outcomes and results you are trying to achieve. This can be very difficult to do, if you also want to contribute to the discussion.

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A good professional facilitator will be acutely aware of the group dynamics, including any potential group conflict, when facilitating a workshop, debriefing session, strategic planning process or meeting.

Here are three critical aspects of group dynamics a meeting facilitator must manage:

Group Conflict

Work group conflict is one aspect of meetings that worries many people, but when it is managed properly by an experienced group facilitator, it can be quite positive.

In fact, groups that suppress differences of style, opinion or approach or never discuss any underlying group conflict, are rarely as successful over the long term as those that accept and even encourage discussion about areas of dissent or group conflict.

When you are exploring long term options in a strategic planning process, different perspectives and disagreements are a healthy part of work communication and should be both encouraged and respected.

If you are bringing in an external facilitator for your meeting or workshop and you expect conflict within the group, you should discuss your concerns with any potential group facilitators in advance. This way you can be confident the professional facilitators you select will incorporate group exercises that ensure all participants have the opportunity to express themselves appropriately.

When conflict persists a skilled meeting facilitator will still be able to build understanding and a level of consensus about the next actions to be taken, despite any group conflict.

Dominant Personalities

Another important aspect of group dynamics to consider is whether there are any dominant personalities in the group who may make it difficult for others to contribute fully to the workshop.

The professional facilitators role in this situation is to ensure everyone participates in all group exercises and discussions, not just dominant, extroverted or senior members of the group.

In some situations it may be necessary to address cultural expectations of who should speak or when someone should speak. Some individuals or cultural groups expect to be asked for their input before they will contribute to discussions and a good facilitator will ensure everyone is explicitly invited to contribute to each key discussion or group exercises during the meeting or workshop.

Assumptions

The final aspect of group dynamics I want to address is that of assumptions. When people work together, or spend a lot of time together, it becomes easy to assume that everyone shares the same point of view or perspective on a whole range of matters, including how people will interact with each other as well as the topic under discussion.

A skilled meeting facilitator will be focused on detecting and questioning assumptions. Common assumptions that may need to be made explicit and addressed revolve around the program agenda and expected outcomes, and about exactly how the workshop will be run.

To facilitate a positive group dynamic and productive group exercises, group agreement should be sought about how things that might otherwise be assumed will be handled. Agreement should be sought about things such as interruptions and phone calls, breaks and punctuality, confidentiality and respect, listening to other participants and even speaking one at a time, for example.

If you decide that the group facilitating role is one you can (or need to) handle yourself, focusing on these three key areas of group dynamics – including group conflict, personalities and assumptions – will help you to gain most from your group leadership role.

Kerrie Mullins-Gunst (MBA, BSc, DipEd, FAICD, FRACI) is an experienced and professional business facilitator. Call our office on 03-9859 3924 today to discuss your group facilitation needs.

Should you decide that you will be more likely to overcome any group conflict issues and achieve your desired outcomes by using an external group facilitator, please call us on 03-9859 3924 to discuss how we can help you with professional meeting facilitation.

Making connections

AutumnI learnt a lot about making connections when I was giving a presentation to an industry association conference in Osaka, Japan, a while back.

All presentations were being translated simultaneously between English and Japanese.

The Japanese take their responsibilities as hosts of such a major international conference very seriously and their natural formality made it very difficult to ascertain their true response to most presentations.

A single word made the connection

One speaker, however, completely broke through the audience reserve and generated smiles and murmurs of delight with a single word.

The word was “Konnichiwa“.

A simple “Hello” inexpertly pronounced, but in their own language, created a stronger connection than any number of words expertly translated.

Whether we are making a formal presentation, leading a team or serving a customer, the key to building a relationship is making a connection.

There won’t often be a single word which can make that connection but communicating from the other person’s perspective rather than your own will always produce better results in any of your business (or personal) relationships.

Strategic Planning

Good group leadership depends on good group facilitation. Throughout our site we feature information, tips and articles based around one of the central business leadership tasks in any organisation: group facilitation of Strategic Planning and how becoming or using a better workshop facilitator can help you.

Strategic Planning Resources

To assist you we have organised these strategic planning resources into a number of core ideas, including:

Group Facilitation

When it’s done well, group facilitation looks simple, although it isn’t always as easy to be a good workshop facilitator as it looks. Group facilitating takes skill and experience and it’s almost impossible to do if you also need to participate in the process as well as facilitate the group. This section offers tips on how to facilitate meetings for best results, as well as the value professional facilitators can add and group dynamics issues you must be conscious of in your group leadership role.

More details on group leadership and group facilitation

Team Building Ideas

I know some leaders and managers shudder at the thought of taking on responsibility for team bonding and group exercises, but if your team is in need of corporate team building activities, you will be acutely aware that your team is not performing to the standard you would wish. In this section we evaluate a number of team building ideas to help you create the team spirit that generates real results.

More details on team building ideas

Effective Meetings

For meeting planning to be effective, meetings need to promote group decision making and this doesn’t usually happen by chance. For important team meetings, for example where your objective is strategic planning that guides your future growth, an effective meeting may require business strategy consulting with the assistance of a professional meeting facilitator. An effective business strategy consultant will also be able to assist you with your business strategy implementation so it makes sense to ensure your meeting facilitator has the appropriate strategic planning skills and qualifications.

In this section we investigate the sort of group task that will benefit from an external facilitator or the facilitation skills you will need to have in-house to achieve the same results. We will also share a number of meeting tips that will help you achieve your work goals.

More details on effective meetings

While we will also explore many other aspects of strategic planning, including leadership styles, and look closely at your business management, web marketing and other marketing ideas and more, this is just meant to be a quick introduction to some of the central strategic planning resources you will find here.

Effective meetings – tips to make them happen

Perhaps you know some people who say there are never any really effective meetings. And it’s true that no matter how effective you might hope the meetings you organise are, there are often others present who think they could have done more important things with the time.

Meeting effectiveness mattersThe problem is that, in this busy world, everyone around the table has a lot of things they personally need to do – and those things aren’t necessarily what you called the meeting for!

So when you plan meetings you really do have an obligation to everyone present to make sure they are effective meetings which promote teambuilding and project success, rather than a waste of everyone’s time.

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Meetings can actually be very effective, with the right meeting planning. There are a number of things you can do as a leader to ensure you hold effective meetings so here are four tips to make your meetings more effective.

First, effective meetings have a clearly understood and communicated purpose. There is nothing that makes a meeting more ineffective than when there is an unclear objective. Lack of clarity in your meeting ‘s purpose can even lead to meeting attendees working at cross-purposes. When you define the meeting objective clearly – and communicate it to attendees before the meeting begins – you will find the right people not only attend your meeting, but they come well prepared and participate fully. This is one of the most powerful ways to ensure your meetings are effective meetings.

Second, make sure the attendees are the right people who need to be there.  Don’t invite others who aren’t involved in the project and don’t neglect to include everyone who is.  If the right people are at your meeting, all the information you need will be available, decisions will be made more quickly, time won’t be wasted bringing people up to speed on issues or outcomes and teambuilding will occur by default as people begin to feel involved in the things that matter.

Third, make sure your meeting lasts as long as needed to achieve your outcomes – but no longer.  That doesn’t mean that sharing a cup of coffee or even a meal before or after your meeting is inefficient or a waste of time.  In fact it can be a great way to build team spirit – better even than many other team building exercises.  And if teambuilding is one of your objectives in organising the meeting you might even consider it an essential part of your meeting agenda.  However, if your meeting has a more focused purpose that is achieved in 20 minutes, don’t be afraid to conclude the meeting just because you asked people to set aside an hour for it.  You will find everyone will be delighted to move on to work on their other priorities.

And finally, if your meeting is critical, such as one for strategic business planning, a critical incident review or even just one where poor group dynamics is an issue, consider using a professional facilitator.  An external group facilitator will mean that you are able to fully participate in the discussions, rather than having to focus on the meeting process which is imperative in such critical situations.  Careful group facilitation can be the difference between achieving your meeting’s purpose or not – and after all, that is at the core of what effective meetings are all about!

If you are considering using a meeting facilitator download our Facilitation Fact Sheet for details about:

  • Why to use a professional facilitator
  • How to make the most effective use of independent workshop facilitation
  • When an external meeting facilitator can add most value to your meetings.

So, there are four simple yet powerful things that will make your meetings are effective meetings which promote good team building. Apply them now and you’ll become known as someone who always runs the most effective meetings.

Resources from Amazon for more effective meetings