Because of the technology available to us, information travels at great speed. Truth, misinformation and assumptions also travel quickly. Without clear communication and connection between individuals and groups the misinformation can give impetus to the wrong direction or wrong conclusions about moving forward. Today’s business teams are globally located in different time zones with differing cultural norms. However, I have found it’s not the only situation in which quality communication and connection are difficult. This problem has been present even when teams are located in the same building. What is needed is a change in leadership mindset; the adoption of a different perspective and a reordering of priorities that support quality communication, collaboration and engagement throughout the organization

It is critically important that executives be more than just the boss, they must be a role model for leadership in order to motivate and drive their organization to achieve at a higher level.

Here’s what I mean:

When You’re Just the Boss

The boss is someone who sets the strategic plan and the team does what they can to satisfy and deliver results. Communication goes on without true connection because each person has a hidden agenda that is not approached. The hidden agenda of the team is to maintain their position and to hope that the boss will notice what they do. The agenda of the boss is to have the implementation happen and for the team to do what they are told to do. Communication and follow up does not occur so the team wonders if they are right about the conclusions they make.

This may seem to be an extreme scenario; and most bosses would deny that is their position. However, it is quite often what is experienced by the team, regardless of the boss’s intent.

In my experience working with leadership teams, while the boss is at least somewhat appreciative of the team, they often complain that their team does not own the strategy or are not strategic in their thinking. Yet, it is often the boss who needs to connect in a more meaningful way with the team members to engage them in the strategy, foster ownership, and get them thinking of creative solutions. Team members typically report their boss does not create time for interaction or follow up on decisions.

Most team members want to please the boss, however, they are not informed often enough when they do something well. When issues or concerns arise they may not be approached and resolved in a productive way because blame or a sense of being patronized is what is perceived by the team.

Result: the strategic process misses the creative input of the team who are often vying for position with the boss. Often what needs to be done is seen as a requirement rather than a creative opportunity because the team has not been engaged. Because there is lack of communication regarding issues or completions, the flow of work is interrupted or stalled.

This can occur at high levels in any organization.

When You’re The Leader

Communication and connection with the team is seen as a priority, not a soft skill or something to do at a dinner or a party. Regular connections occur which relate to strategic planning, implementation and individual development. This means that regular 1:1 meetings include the elements that go into a Performance Review, on an ongoing basis, and are tied to specific actions and results within a strategic plan.

The top priority of a leader is to hold the vision and strategy intact, while others bring forward results. If there are issues regarding results, they are addressed with the team as they occur. This allows the leader to attend to their own peer-leader relationships, enhancing the overall business performance of the organization. Delegation is seen as a priority, and there are integral processes set up for Strategic Planning, Accountability, and Solutions that are inclusive in accessing the resources of the entire team.

As a leader, the accountability process becomes a working solution with collaboration and partnership rather than competition. Accountability includes ownership which is established at the beginning of an initiative or set of goals. Leadership includes perceptiveness of the team members so that specific areas are addressed when necessary. This can now be done more effectively because time has been given for the creation of quality connection and trust within the team.

Leading inspires others to achieve more. Being just the boss can actually impair the engagement process of your team which will diminish progress, and sabotage your success.

If you have a leadership question or challenge you’d like to share, be sure to leave a comment. I would enjoy hearing from you!

~Patricia

Now many see that meetings are the core of successful implementation or execution of strategic planning. Both of these areas can be done more successfully by setting priorities and giving teams the ability to communicate, set up accountability, and problem solve with greater trust.

The essential component of business growth and success is the Health of the Executive Leadership Team which cascades down into the business no matter how large the company. Meeting Rhythms are an effective way to promote a healthy company culture and ongoing awareness of priorities within the organization, which is essential to moving business goals and business growth forward.

Meeting rhythms encompass the course of a full year, and are positioned as an important part of the overall business strategy and flow. Below are the recommended meetings to include in your company rhythm , from daily huddles to the annual meeting. Some may already be a part of your execution culture, some may not. The important thing to remember is that team cohesiveness at all levels is vital to the process.

Daily Huddles: these meetings typically start the day, and are held with everyone standing (who is able), and last 15 minutes or less. Daily huddles must have a specific agenda:

• What’s Up for you related to today
• What is the top priority for the day
• Am I stuck

Weekly Team Meetings for focus and collaboration: The weekly meeting should be held at the same time each week. Most organizations hold them either at the start of the week to set the stage for a productive week ahead, or at the end of the week, to serve as a recap of the week’s activities and performance. This is an opportunity to gather brain power to discuss strategically issues and solutions. This is also an opportunity for the leader to spend time with the team encouraging team relationships.

Monthly Meetings include front-line, middle and senior management and focus on strategic discussion and collaboration on issues and solutions, and further learning. They can be half or full day.

Quarterly Meetings: These are typically held offsite for one day to encourage uninterrupted focus on action planning and review of the yearly strategic plan.

Annual Meeting: This is typically held offsite as well for up to two days and includes review and strategy of the plan for the upcoming year.

The term Meeting Rhythms is used because the successful implementation comes from making the above meeting structure a part of everyday work patterns.

In my last article, Are you Thinking and Planning or Just Doing, I mentioned the basic foundations of strategy; Core Values and Purpose, along with Brand Promise and knowing your Core Customer. In all meetings, except the huddle, it is a good idea to review your organization’ values, purpose and brand promise, or have them visible. This way the foundation of your business is always present in each meeting as the planning and review are done.

Huddles and Weekly meetings provide opportunity to build trust and to correct difficult interaction issues. When things are left unspoken they tend to grow. However, adopting the business practice of regularly scheduled time together can help teams lift above their emotional reactions that stop progress, and bring them back into focus. Meeting rhythm creates consistency, which in turn, creates greater trust, and comfort in accountability.

You can find more information on Meeting Rhythm in Verne Harnish’s book, Scaling Up, How a Few Companies Make It…and Why the Rest Don’t.

Do you have a question, challenge, or success you would like to share? Please be sure to leave a comment. I would enjoy hearing from you! – Patricia

I recently spoke with a fellow consultant who has invited me to speak to a group of CEO’s about Collaborative Leadership and about how to keep the leader involved with the team as they move forward on the implementation plan. It is important to allow the leader the opportunity to consult and to hear progress rather than to enforce accountability. In collaborative leadership, accountability is a supportive process created through accountability partnerships where there is an opportunity to report action steps , discuss and solve challenges and finally to celebrate completion.

So often teams get lost in the action process and are not encouraged to seek support especially in some highly competitive situations. The accountability partnerships change this. These partnerships are created in the second meeting of the four meetings mentioned above:

• Each team member selects someone that they have not had that much opportunity to work with.
• They set up a schedule for a 15-30 minute meeting with the partner and create several goals that they are working on during the next week.
• The meeting occurs mid-week to see how everything is going.
• Then they report back to the team during the next full meeting about completions and challenges.

For full description of the Collaborative Leadership/Team Alignment process be sure to visit the Library Page of  our website and select the article entitled, The Full Team Alignment Process, pdf.

The most important thing to remember is to engage everyone in implementation and in the development of their own leadership in the process.

Do you have a question, challenge or particular success story you would like to share? Be sure to leave a comment, I would enjoy hearing from you. –  Patricia

I started writing this post on Monday and decided to share the process of living through and with Hurricane Sandy in New York where life as all know it has changed. New ways of thinking and arranging have come forward for all of those affected. I have written this from Monday through Wednesday as I moved through my process of acceptance and new arrangements for traveling:

Today is Monday, I find myself sitting out the super storm in New York City. It’s the afternoon and we are awaiting the landfall which continues to be predicted at an earlier as the speed of the hurricane accelerates.

The predicted path of the storm is being followed almost perfectly. It is amazing how technology can work so well even though the predictions were not what I had hoped. My wish was that the storm would stay in a straight path East out into the ocean instead of making the predicted left turn into the central Atlantic states. But here in New York the winds continue to build and there is no exit until the storm passes and we can begin the business of traveling again.

Since I last wrote I have completed the Global Institute of Leadership Development and once again was very happy to meet the leaders with whom I coached and consulted. The variety of situations I became involved with was amazing from a large hospital and medical school to one of the top executives in an international wine business.

As I spoke to these leaders, I was gratified to see how many of them were focused on the people within their organizations and the importance of collaboration and teamwork. However, I am becoming more and more convinced that the new culture needs to develop from the top down so that everyone has “permission” to step up to greater expression, empowerment and leadership.

For example, I had the opportunity last week to participate with a team in a pre-strategic planning exercise. Once again I saw a process where engagement can be created so that strategy will be implemented. There was discomfort, however, when the facilitators of the group did not provide a meeting structure, even though the processes for arriving at strategy and implementation were clearly outlined.

It is interesting to note that we often have left it to someone else to tell us what direction to follow. Yet when we are given the opportunity to create direction and focus do we take it or do we defer? How often do we complain about a situation rather than creating a solution and presenting that?

These are important questions and challenges that many organizations face, which our Strategic Planning Process addresses, outlined here on the Bridging Associates website, and helps leaders empower their teams to create direction rather than wait for it.

Wednesday: The storm has finally moved out of the area. However, the damage and changes to the infrastructure have kept most of the travelers here, including me. After several cancellation disappointments I have secured a flight out of New York and have been able to check in. I will fly home tomorrow through several cities to reach my final destination, Santa Fe, New Mexico.

As I wait, I continue to reflect on the opportunities I have created in my own business and the expansion in my thinking, and how my experience relates to what I call the new business paradigm that requires a restructuring of mindset regarding success and the use of essential collaboration to achieve results.

Take a look at the Strategic Planning Process on the website. If you have time, it would be great to hear your comments on the blog site or via e-mail about how your experience has required creative thinking and a change in mindset to accomplish the goals for leadership and innovative practices in your organization.

Sending a special message of safety and healing for those of you on the East Coast.

Leaders are expected to have ideas and solutions. One of the most effective tools for creating solutions is to have the benefit of connections that you can count on for discussion and clarity. In most organizations the time for connection is not a priority; but I am advocating making this a priority so that, when needed, there is a quick and clear ability to communicate and move forward with clarity.

If you are a leader who wants to break through the barriers to essential collaboration, there is an important practical step you must take: make regular appointments with colleagues who are your peers, as well as the team members that you lead.

One of the basic issues in organizations is the lack of connection between peers. Some thought leaders suggest that the team of which you are a member, your team of peers, is the primary team, while the team you lead is the secondary one. In my experience of working with teams, especially leadership teams, I have found that most leaders are more concerned about the team they lead rather than their team of peers where the ability to create more strategic results and innovation exists.

When meeting with colleagues, asking questions can be more important and more effective than any information you might impart. As a mentor to the team you lead, the way to move a team agenda forward is to create questions to ask each team member which, when answered, gives them an opportunity to share themselves and their knowledge with their colleagues, and to build trust. Often leaders approach team members with an issue beginning with phrases that create defensiveness instead of problem solving. With peers, the opportunity to problem-solve and to move the organizational agenda forward is available; if you give it priority and time to develop.

In the team development model used for Jumping from the I-Pod to the We-Pod, much time is spent in breaking the barriers to essential communication and collaboration. One of the biggest barriers to overcome is fear or mistrust, so asking questions and seeing the answers as a fund of knowledge for success can be quite powerful.

Essential Collaboration is necessary for building and sustaining the business, as well as for innovation. In order to have conversations that create essential connection, it is important to make asking questions or inquiry a major part of your agenda in order to get to the heart of the matter. These are not challenging questions, rather they are requests for information that help you understand what is important to the other person.

As a coach and consultant it is my job to ask questions to assist you in identifying the priorities that are important and the actions that will bring the results.

For example, recently I was talking with the new CEO of a large non-profit organization. As we explored the coming year with his team, I began asking him some questions. You can imagine that leading in a new context can seem overwhelming at first, and I was talking to an experienced CEO who has led other organizations. His leadership skills were developed, however, because this was a new place with a new culture, discovering how it operates and what changes are needed to bring it into the current context was essential.

Challenging people is not the first step; finding out what is important to them is. The following questions helped my client clarify his priorities and next steps:

1. How did you get started?
2. Where do you wish you were making faster progress?
3. What are the most exciting parts of the job?
4. Are there things you need to de-emphasize or stop doing?

These questions are ones I often ask as a coach as I assist executives to look at strategy and priorities, and they are questions you can ask yourself as you prepare for conversations with colleagues and your direct reports. Often questions like these allow you to move “out of the box” and become more aware of what is important and what actions need to be taken to move forward.

Please share your own thoughts and experiences by posting a comment.  I’d enjoy hearing from you!

Decisions within an organization are made in many ways due to a number of factors:

• Time line
• When action is needed
• Engagement
• Team leadership
• Organizational impact

In general the level of involvement in decision-making tends to determine the level of ownership, and the more involvement and input your team has, the more engaged they will be in supporting the decision and in the implementation. But sometimes decisions need to be made quickly and at the top without team input.

So what can you do to keep your team engaged and accountable when decisions come down from the top?

• Create an information session and ask your team for input on implementation plans to bring the engagement quotient up.
• Help your team clearly understand the decision by explaining how it was made and what the implications are.
• Create a plan for implementation with clear communication and accountability steps.
  By providing your team with the larger picture on decisions made, and by encouraging their input in their area of expertise, you create greater buy-in and accountability with each team member.

Sometimes we think that meeting to make decisions is inconvenient and time-consuming; and indeed I was involved in a Linked In discussion just a few days ago on this very thought which has inspired me to discuss the qualities of an effective meeting in my next post. An effective meeting can create a very productive work session that furthers the results that everyone is working for. Stay tuned!

As always, I encourage you to share your own thoughts and experiences by posting a comment.  I’d enjoy hearing from you!

PS: Look for my forthcoming book publishing soon; Jump from the I-Pod to the We-Pod: Breaking through the Barriers to Essential Collaboration for Business Success.

• We do not function as a team.
• I have no idea what “they” are doing.
• I am asked questions that I cannot answer.
• My boss never lets me know what I am doing well.
• The follow through after a meeting is not there.
• We discuss things and never get the final decisions in writing to move forward.
• Meetings are cancelled frequently with no new meeting made.
• I have to keep track of my team because I do not know how or if they are moving forward.
• My directs have teams that are not meeting the goals and I want them to do better

Team engagement in Strategic planning beginning at a high level can be part of the move to greater collaboration in the team. First a focus on communication, accountability and solutions leads to greater willingness and ability to vision and make decisions. Then using that ability and newfound familiarity with each other allows the strategic planning process to move forward successfully with full participation in planning and most importantly in implementation.

In my last post I introduced the Strategic Planning process, and discussed the first of the Four High Level Questions that I ask during the the offsite for the Strategic process.

1. Creating the Future—What Behaviors Do We Want to Bring Forward?
2. Expanding the Brand—Who Are We and Where Are We Going?
3. Investing in People—What Are the Important Values and Are They Aligned?
4. The Essential Elements for Growing the Business – What Values are Important to Our Customer?

I’m delving into the second question specifically today, Who Are We and Where Are We Going, which focuses on expanding the Brand, using high level strategic thought, expression and discussion from all team members that can then move into strategies for specific business areas.

The self definition of the first part, “who are we”, is something that is rarely brought forward in a strategic planning meeting. However, it is a huge part of creating engagement and the collaborative mindset that moves through the obstacles to unified action. As each leader gives their sense of the quality of the organization, what are the important goals, where are we going, and shares this with the team, it is amazing how much new information there is.

So often we assume we understand other people’s relationship to the work and we are just as often not accurate.

The second half of the question, “where are we going”, allows for the vision of each person to be brought forward within specific areas of the business.

During the last Strategic process offsite that I led, the confidential feedback given during the Team Alignment Strategic Interviews was presented in writing without identification. The team was then divided in half to come up with strategic goals for four specific areas of the business that were identified by the feedback given to the four high level questions during the individual strategic interviews.

The leadership team was then divided into two groups to begin the strategic plan. The feedback to the questions was available so they could see what others had presented. The connection between team members that was developed within each small group, was vital and occurred quickly following the team alignment process which had been held previously. So often strategic meetings are large and discussion is limited. Certain people often do not contribute in the group and may have thoughts later that are communicated to only one person, and more importantly, people do not become as engaged in the implementation as is necessary for a higher percentage of desired results.

In this particular offsite, the strategic plan, based on the answers to the four questions, brought forward a vision for the end of the current year, 1 ½ years forward, and three years ahead with clear action steps to create those results.

Because this was a Senior Leadership team of a large global unit of the business, each of the team members had a regional team to lead. Before participating in the Collaborative Leadership/Team Alignment process, these senior leaders were not aware of the challenges and best practices of their peers and the supporting teams. Accountability partnerships for completion of goals created consultation and support. Following the team alignment process offsite meeting, partnerships were created and SKYPE and phone calls used to have regular peer meetings with a partner, fostering the sense of connection and unity as the business is growing.

Once you have an initial strategic plan:

1. Create clear and measurable statements
2. Assign metrics for each strategic goal
3. Discuss issues and challenges of this goal
4. Map out clear Implementation steps
5. Establish accountability partnerships within the leadership team
6. Agree on next steps and due dates to be followed up on in the accountability partnerships

I  invite you to contact me via e-mail patricia@bridgingassociates.com to create an appointment for a 30-minute free coaching/consultation appointment to discuss the strategic planning process in detail and to see what you can use for your next team meeting. Please provide the best number to reach you and three available times you can meet via telephone or Skype (if you have that available), and my office will call you to confirm an appointment.

As always if you have a thought, challenge or success story you’d like to share please be sure to leave a comment!