'Be the boss you always wanted.'
hints and tips
- Empathise to help you appreciate the perspective of others and why they do what they do.
- Use CARE information as detailed in workshop 1.
- DISC information to support leadership models.
- Judge your teams capability and ability to carry out a task – over loading leads to stress and failure.
- Keep your teams informed.
- Consider weekly meetings with your team. Allow them the opportunity to share best practice.
- A suggested agenda for a weekly teams meeting could be led by the team members:
- REFLECT: what went well the previous week.
- PLAN AND FOCUS: What are the tasks/issues for the week ahead.
- BEST PRACTICE: Ideas for improvement and sharing of best practice.
PLANNING FOR AUTHENTIC CONVERSATIONS
Every authentic conversation is different. As a result, a step-by-step planning guide seldom work. A better approach is to consider the context, situation and person(s) involved in the issue you need to address and plan around it accordingly, using the suggested planning frames below. This approach will allow you to be responsive to the context and nature of the people you are dealing with.
Purpose – What is the purpose of the conversation?
Boundaries – What is the conversation about and what is out of scope?
Impact – What is the impact of what’s currently happening for you and others involved?
Intent – what’s the intent of the conversation, is it to improve relationships for example?
Timing – What’s the best time for this conversation? Will you give the people involved a heads up and time to prepare, or try and step them straight into it?
WUFM (what’s in it for me?) – What do I want out of this dialogue? What might be the benefits of this dialogue for the other parties involved? What might be important to the other person?
Facts – What facts are relevant? What interpretations of the facts might there be? What facts might other parties refer to?
Solutions – What solutions will I offer? What solutions might the other people involved be able to offer?
Feelings – How is this situation making me fee? How might the other people involved be able to offer?
Objections – What objections might the other person(s) have to what I have to say? To the facts I present?
Questions – What questions will I ask to deepen my understanding of others views?
Behaviours – What behaviours are problematic? What examples can I share?
LANGUAGE
Generally, language that presents things as your point of view or how you feel about things works best in authentic conversations.
This type of language invites others to express their point of view and sets up a context for ‘sense-making’, that is, bringing each others points of view together to form a common understanding about the situation and what needs to happen about it.
Here are some examples:
- Here’s what I have observed…
- Here’s the gap between the current and desired state as I see it…
- This is how I think addressing this could benefit us.
- These are my thoughts on what I think cold be done…