What makes a great leader? Listening, part 3.

Great leaders listen and create solutions together

1. Ask your team what they love about working for you and what gets in the way of them being able to do their best work.
2. Write down everything they say. Together, pick the smallest barrier and work with your team to discuss changes to improve it. You could use the circle meeting from Part 1 and/or consent process from Part 2 for this step.
3. Then, have your team implement these changes without asking you for permission!

This process is useful to…

• Engage every individual in searching for answers.
• Create safe spaces and open spaces for new possibilities.
• Enrich the quality of observations and insights before expressing them.
• Build naturally toward consensus or shared understanding.
• Help guide scaling up and spreading innovations.
• Simplify strategy in fast moving markets.

Practice listening by starting with the why

In pairs, have your people answer the question ‘Why’? at least 9 times. For example: ‘Why is it important to you that this project succeeds?’ At the end, collect the answer to the last why from each person.

This is useful to…

• Discover what is truly important for your team members.
• Generate a small number of clear answers to help you move forward faster.
• Generate criteria for deciding who will be included.
• Create a shared purpose and responsibility.
• Lay the foundation for spreading and scaling innovations.

Find out about more practices in Part 1 and 2 of this series and contact me directly to book a workshop and implement them within your team.