You are ready!
You prepared the agenda, complete with ‘reasonable’ time frames for each topic and sent it out 3 days prior. You integrated feedback about the agenda from Team Members and shuffled the order of items to allow for people to attend and leave according to the relevance of the topics.
Even with all these best practices attended to, you are apprehensive about one item that is likely to cause debate. You have the background reports and statistics ready to prove you have made the best decision. You want people to accept it as it is the only one, given the circumstances. You are prepared to stand your ground and keep to the timeframe of the meeting.
And it works!
There is no push back, people are quiet, some nod in agreement, others seem more preoccupied with ‘emails’ they are getting on their phones and scribbling notes.
Good! You are relieved and ready to move to the next agenda item.
Is this a familiar scenario to you? Regretfully, it is familiar to me. I know exactly when I used the strategy of Tell-Sell-Yell to get a decision pushed through. I did not think the decision warranted debate. I knew what we had to do.
Yet, I had a sense that no one took the decision well. Some ignored my directions, others followed-through reluctantly, others delayed taking action and others put in a half-hearted effort.
Not good!
I won the battle, but I lost trust and influence with my Team members after that meeting. I needed to turn things around. I wanted them to debate my ideas, not debate my authority.
As a Leader of a Team, you want people to contribute, offer alternatives, bring their ideas and experiences, and be enthusiastic to experiment to get the best solution. The Tell-Sell-Yell strategy is a poor substitute for quality, ‘sage’ conversations. Sage conversations leave people feeling heard, understood, and appreciated. They take a little longer, but they yield far greater results: better decisions, mutual agreement, and collective accountability.
There are many conversational tools that stimulate ‘sage’ conversations and decision-making. Here are 3 strategies you can try: reframe, refocus, and redirect.
- Reframe: to change the way something is expressed or considered.
When you change perspectives, other possibilities surface. Pose questions to help people see the situation in a new light.
- Is there another way to look at this situation?
- What are some other possible reasons this could have happened?
- If time, money, or energy were not an issue, what could we consider?
- Refocus: to put more effort into particular activities and less on others.
Bring the discussion to a higher level, reviewing the reason why this situation is important, how it affects other departments or future plans. At this level, you can discuss principles and values that everyone accepts. Experiment with questions to ‘refocus’ the discussion:
- What were the factors that have led up to where we are now?
- How impactful will this decision be in a year, 2 or 5 years from now?
- If we do things this way, where will we be next time?
- Redirect: to change the direction of something, of the conversation.
If the discussion begins to sound repetitive, same ideas, same objections, direct the discussion to other circumstances that were different, innovative, or successful. Describe examples of decisions that had good outcomes. This can help shift people from a negative to a positive mindset. Experiment with questions to trigger sharing of more examples:
- What does this situation remind you of?
- What do we want our Team to be known for?
- If we knew we couldn’t fail, what would we do?
The key is to make sure that the exploration of ideas is safe. You want your response to suggestions to trigger more ideas. Your body language, tone of voice and words can shut people down in a moment. Never follow-up in a defeatist or insulting manner:
- We tried that before and it didn’t work;
- We can’t do that;
- Management will never agree, or
- That’s a crazy idea, why would you come up with that!
These ‘sage’ decision-making conversations take longer. But the cost to trust and quality of future Team discussions is severely compromised. Reminds me of the saying ‘pay me now or pay me later’! It is always more expensive later.
When you are ready to focus, engage, and get results, contact us to master your mental fitness and communications with your Team Members, Colleagues, and Senior Management.
Positive Mindset + Leadership Skillset