Our work with Leadership Teams takes us to some interesting places and processes. Meetings fascinate me, from trying to discern the “Real Business” to looking at the many masks that are worn, removed and replaced during their course, the interactions and intra-actions are a source of ongoing wonder.
Candour and commitment occupy a similar place where what is not said is every but as important as the spoken word and also at those times when inference is the major conveyor of information and something that looks and sounds like the truth. Commitments made in meetings can, I think sometimes barely survive a walk down the corridor and the relationship between agreements and accountability lies in tatters.
I’ve done it myself-around twenty or so years ago now and thought I was being ever so, ever so clever. “Say one thing and do another,” on reflection my motivation was good enough but my actions….oh dear! I look back and consider the damage this “smart trick” did to not only my “personal brand” but more painfully, my reputation. But that’s a life away now and it’s important to “Look back without staring” and learn from what was a crass and naive mistake.
I was recently involved in a piece of co-facilitation and the meeting was always going to have something of a charged atmosphere-a “mini evolution” of Forming, Storming, Norming and Performing and I kind of expected that: there were some difficult themes. True to form, some harsh things were said, there was a high level of emotion and participants (and their respective team members) are tired.
But here’s the deal-nothing gets done without commitment and honesty so I like to ask people how committed they are to each other and how they will honour that commitment. So I did and a number of very bright and verbally adept people contributed to a “Tumble weed Moment”
A brief one but it was there right enough. Now it wasn’t classic Tumble weed: after all, nothing embarrassing or offensive has been said and there was a quick recovery. Then people did what people do. Some made a meaningful and sincere commitment to the process and others made lip shapes and mouth noises that suggested they might. Normally I’d have pulled it back from there but to be honest, it wasn’t my event and I hadn’t cleared this sort of intervention with the other facilitator and to my shame, I let it pass.
There were a few questions I might have asked, like:
- Really?
- How will you deliver?
- What will people notice about your committed behaviour?
- What will they notice about you?
- How will the act and behaviour of commitment influence your work?
- How will the act and behaviour of commitment influence the work of others?
- In x weeks time, what would you like to have achieved as an outcome and product of your commitment?
But I didn’t. I didn’t do it with Candour either: sounding like an area of Middle-Earth, candour is essential if we are to give our trusted colleagues an honest evaluation of an idea, an insight into our thinking and an opportunity to increase trust. The above questions apply equally well after a bit of re-wording.
It was only a few days after the meeting when it emerged that there’d been an early fracture in “Commitment” and was told “Oh, he’s always like that.” Straight away I knew that at the meeting, I should have asked my questions: difficult, challenging, on-the -spot and completely valid.
I guess too the above story illustrates the importance of an accepted set of standards of conduct, expectations and behaviours and I know that the time we invest in setting out what we expect of each other in sometimes challenging areas will pay us back in Spades as we develop and grow as Leadership Teams in an increasingly challenging world.
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