If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.
~ Wayne Dyer
Do you want to create positive change, and you know people are resistant?
Often
people are less hesitant about change than they are frustrated with the way
change is presented/communicated or not presented/communicated.
While life,
and business are not full consensus experiences, it is smart and wise, inclusive
and important to sincerely want, and get, input from others involved.
What is a good way to do that? Because Noncritical
thinking is limited thinking, emotional thinking is not critical thinking, and
often noncritical emotional thinking is distorted thinking, you want to engage
in creative and critical thinking for this by facilitating the following:
1.
Gather
people who have experience, exposure AND expertise to have a variety of
perspectives, and ensure all people invited to participate do not look like,
think like, and act like the leader (or you, if you are the one advancing this
effort).
2.
In
order to ensure people come in with the best sense and knowledge, in the
invitation to participate, do share that while there is a situation, you are
looking to define the mistake, opportunity, issue, or problem proactively,
realistically, and without a blame mentality so as to move forward with good
results, the ultimate decision will be that of yours, or if there is a smaller
group making the decision, if there will not be finality in what is done at
that meeting.
3.
Because
people can want their idea to “win”, ensure what you are seeking is what is
BEST for the company/group, and that it is not about who came up with what, it
is about what is BEST for your team, or organization, and address any questions
about that idea before moving forward to avoid a lot of “I think we should…”
conversations/
4.
Respecting
you may think the facts are clear, get the group to discuss and reach agreement
on what the topic really is, what situation you are addressing, and therefore
get the challenge/opportunity stated clearly with full agreement.
5.
With
the challenge/opportunity in mind, get a statement of focus, and in that process,
determine if the challenge/opportunity is problem or issue, a miss or a
mistake? Problems have solutions, issues have fixes. Misses have hits (points
to address), mistakes have corrections. Getting language clear means the
elevation of urgency and importance will follow.
6.
To stimulate discussion and open communication, there
are a few ways to generate free-flow sharing of ideas without judgement,
including:
a.
You become the scribe by writing each idea shared
b.
Asking very few questions to limit what may feel like
judgement
c.
Getting the input through one of these two facilitation
approaches:
i. OPTION 1: Pair, Share & Compare is where two or three people are in a group to privately offer their ideas with a spokesperson stating 2-4 options following time for all to discuss in groups. At the end of that time, you record and wait for step 7.
ii. OPTION 2: Reflect & Select is the process by which one person volunteers and then chooses each person after - as the leader/scribe you ask questions: “Tell me more, walk me through, how would that look/play out”.
7.
Selection
and prioritization includes asking things such as “Tell me more, walk me
through, how would that look/play out” by you first if you used OPTION
1, and if not, you move to open question period for all ideas shared. This is
imperative that the questions be WHAT and HOW question to advance the idea
without participants shutting down an idea at this point.
8.
Reiterate
the purpose is ensuring what you are seeking is what is BEST for what is
happening/presented and restate the opportunity/situation as the problem, issue,
miss, mistake clearly, and then ask for either votes or preferences by providing
people 2-4 “votes” cast with dots on the sheets where you have scribed the
ideas, or voting on a sheet, or whatever non-threatening, open approach you want
to take to narrow the ideas to no more than 4 total, preferably 2, 3 or 4
options.
9.
Open
discussion around those final options.
10.
To
make certain the next steps are clear, either:
a.
Determine
the direction right then, and assign authority, responsibility and timeline.
b.
If
that group is not the final decision-making entity, inform who will decide,
when, and how the group will receive communication, and from what person.
When you
are willing to invest the time and energy in people and ideas, you can create
and communicate change in a way that is forward-focused, welcomed, and clear in
the reason it is being implemented!
