Tag Archives: consensus

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Just Do It

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I am often puzzled by the leadership approach which is largley founded on desire rather than analysis.  The ” have my cake AND eat it” approach.

This commanding approach to getting things done is not about feasibility but force of personality.  It is not too important how it gets done (blood in the streets) just that it gets done.

Sustainability

My wonder at this approach arises from the fact that experience and observation make it clear over the longer term the results become worse.

Pushing hard, being aggressive and expecting demands will be met can certainly work once or twice, then typically passive agressive or similar behaviour kicks in.

Those being subjected to bullying and brutallity appear meek and compliant, however this is only a perception they wish to create.  In reality they are focusing on sabatoge.

Plan for Success

Realistic plans achieved through consensus are far more likely to be achieved.  Buy-in by all stakeholders, that is everyone has a stake in the outcomes, obviously is more motivating than fear of bad concequences.

Fear leads to defensive behaviours, (e.g., passive aggressive) and over time the forceful approach becomes less effective.  This leads to more bluster or more commonly, desertion.

More Effort

While the common sense approach is collaborative it is harder to do and so often brute force becomes the default.  If others are not staying on your team or seem to frequently misunderstand your orders it might be time to reassess your approach.

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

WIC

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Acronyms can make a simple thought or activity seem more meaningful than it is.  They are also not bad for grabbing attention.  Today I an going to explore WIC.

What is that you say.  Whose In Charge? (WIC).  This can be the bain of collaboration.  Even for the most effective collaborative efforts, failure is on the horizon if WIC is unknown.

Everyone or No One

The extreme cases are the issue, as is so often true.  If the answer to WIC is at either extreme (everyone or no one) little will be accomplished.

To be clear, without a full understanding of the leadership model there might be a lot of churn and burn and as a result solutions or outcomes will be etherial.

This is not to condem either dictating or anarchical approaches, both might have some validity in some context (although I can’t imagine when).

Rather, as is so often the case, a balanced approach is needed.  Albeit the question as to who is in charge, whether shared or through consensus or even a third party, must be clearly understood and bought into by all.

Everyone is important

Understanding who is in charge does not overrride the key principle of collaboration, that is “Everyone is Important”.  The key is focusing the energy and drawing out the best in everyone.

This is not to imply the leader is better or more important than anyone else but rather just to say the action of “herding the cats” is critical to achieve results.

The cat herder is necessary but not of special importance.

 

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Self Aware, Situation Aware & Balance

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Whatever you are trying to achieve, how you behave is a critical success factor.  This applies whether attempting to make a sale, get agreement, achieve consensus, build understanding, gain support and the list goes on.

Sterotypical behaviours are often associated with the goals.  Things like the pushy salesman, the receptive consensus builder, understanding  listener  and so on.

Do what works!

Situations can drive us toward different kinds of behavior.  In sales mode we might feel a little directness is needed .  Maybe some superiority, at very least there is probably a desire to at least appear knowledgable.

More important, and effective, than pre-concieved behavior is adopting your action to the exact context.  That is being fully aware of yourself, the other parties and the environment.

This awareness enables you to customize your behavior to the needs of the situation, ongoing.  Ultimately what you do becomes reflective of what needs to be done in order to achieve your goal.

Seek a balance

Successful outcomes of any interraction are far more likely to occur when they provide benefit to all participants.  Although you will have an objective, a critical success factor which always applies, is that everyone gets something.

This perspective is often called win-win.  In essence it simply ackowledges the best interactions are those that everyone feels good about.

Over time this type of approach builds reputations.  Those who focus on benefiting themselves become recognized for this type of practice.

Ultimately this impacts their  ability to sustain results overtime.