Leading Decisive Meetings

As a leader, do you know how to lead a decisive meeting? 

Simply because someone is appointed to a leadership position, it doesn't mean that they automatically know how to lead effective meetings.  To keep momentum in your work, you need to run great meetings. Make your next meeting productive with these three guidelines:

• Restate the meeting's purpose. Even if you think everyone knows it, it helps to remind them and sharpen the group's focus.
• Include everyone. If one or two people dominate the conversation and others are shy about leaping in, draw out people through facilitating by saying, "Thanks for those ideas, Carl. What are your thoughts about this problem, Megan?"
• End well. Close the meeting with specific actions to take and a clear time frame. State the decisions the group has made, who owns what, and when they need to report back to the team. 

Adapted from Guide to Project Management (HBR OnPoint Collection).

Leading Meetings When No One Wants to Talk

As a leader, how do you handle meetings when participants don't want to speak up?

Discussions during meetings can be feast or famine. Either you can't get a word in edgewise or no one speaks up. Next time your meeting falls silent, try these tactics:

• Let it be. Wait a moment before breaking the silence and offering a suggestion. The group may need time to reflect on an idea.
• Name it. Call out what's happening, and ask the group about it, "It seems we've gone quiet. Does anyone want to talk about what's going on?"
• Take a break. Sometimes a short break gives people the chance to refocus.
• Think facilitation.  Rethink the processes used in your meetings.  Do your meetings included facilitated discussions?  If not, this might be just what you need to balance the amount of conversation.

Adapted from Guide to Making Every Meeting Matter (HBR OnPoint Collection).

Listening without Reacting

As a leader, do you know and use the skills of listening - without reacting?

Listening is harder than speaking. Even the best listeners sometimes have to bite their tongues to stop from reacting, interrupting, or trying to deal with the person talking. Here are four ways you can truly listen:

• Avoid distractions. This doesn't just mean putting down the Blackberry or closing your web browser. Try not to think about what you're going to say next. Simply focus on what the other person says.
• Listen for content and emotion.  When people are concerned about something and are speaking with you, there is both content (the issue) and emotion (how they're feeling).  Listen for both.  You'll need them in the next step.
• Repeat back by paraphrasing concisely. This sometimes feels silly, but repeating back what you heard - in the form of a clear, concise paraphrase - shows the other person that you're listening and you're getting it.
• Ask thoughtful questions. Ask open-ended questions that help you see the issue more clearly and allow your conversation partner to go deeper into what s/he cares about.

Adapted from "How to Really Listen" by Peter Bregman.

Leaders as Gatekeepers

As a leader, do you protect your staff from distracters by serving as a gatekeeper?

As a leader, one of the important roles you play is that of gatekeeper.  Every school/organization has an endless number of distracters that can take your staff off course from the core work.  When you serve as a gatekeeper, you keep these distracters at bay so that your staff can focus on the important work they do.  Some distracters are things that come from outside your school/organization.  Others come from higher up in your organization.  Others are brought into your organization by members of staff when they get an idea for something that is of interest to them personally.  Most disturbing is when the leader himself/herself is the one who brings in the distracters. 

As the leader/gatekeeper, it is vital for you to maintain the focus on the work of your school/organization.  You need to filter all distracters to determine if they will support the focus of your work or if they will funnel the energy of your staff into busywork that does not contribute to the fundamental purpose of the work. 

You need to be able to determine just how important that special field trip is to the learning of your students.  You need to be able to sort out which special event  - that uses up instructional time – really serves the learning needs of your students.  Most importantly, you need to be able to engage in dialogue those who bring forward the distracters to find out how the ‘special event’ serves the core business of your school/organization.  Staff may get tired of hearing you ask, “How does this support student learning?” but you need to do it.  If you don’t, you aren’t leading.  Leaders know how to engage people in conversation to sort through what supports the core work of your school/organization and what doesn’t. 

Espoused Theory vs. Theory of Action

As a leader, how do your espoused theory and your theory of action align?

As leaders, we each have some essential beliefs and messages that we deem to be important.  Part of our work is to ensure consistent messaging of what is important in the work we do in our schools/organizations.  This consistency helps staff to know what the focus of the work is and that it is not changing frequently.  No one works well when they are aiming at a moving target.  The essential beliefs and messages that you speak about are your espoused theory.

The problem with espoused theories is that they don't always align with our theories of action.  For example, in schools, we may claim that we believe deeply in student learning and ensuring that every student is successful.  However, does our theory of action align?  In other words, do our actions align with what we claim we believe in and what we stand for?  This is tough to answer for ourselves.  We may believe we can but how accurate are we?  In truth, only those we serve (students, parents, clients, customers) and those we lead can truly shed light on how well our actions align with our words.  Do our espoused theories align with our theories of action?  Does it matter to you?  If so, you'll want to determine some ways to find out.  Anonymous surveys are very helpful.  Nothing breeds cynicism more quickly than leaders who say one thing and act in a different way. 

As a guide, remember the old saying: Don't worry whether they are listening to you or not.  Worry that they are watching you.

Knowing what to do when you don't know what to do

As a leader, do you know what to do when you don't know what to do?

As leaders, we have a significant role to play in leading our organizations especially when challenging situations emerge.  People look to you for direction, for comfort, for reassurance, and for strength.  This can be incredibly difficult if you aren't feeling completely in control of the situation or if you feel you might not have the skills you need to navigate something really challenging.  Nonetheless, your staff are watching you and what they are seeing is important. 

We don't usually get warning about challenging situations in the workplace.  Things happen.  As leaders, we need to be able to respond to the 'things' that happen.  A great phrase to keep in mind is: I know what to do when I don't know what to do. In other words, when these challenging situations arise, I know that I need to develop a response.  I know I need to communicate with everyone affected.  I know I may need to seek help or support from others.  Your staff will watch you especially closely in such situations.  Knowing what to do when you don't know what do - that is, developing a response, communicating, and drawing on outside knowledge and skill - will demonstrate that you are managing the situation in the best way possible.  This is reassuring to your staff.  They can't attend to their work if they're worried about what's going on.  By being prepared to handle challenging situations at a moment's notice, you ensure that your staff can keep their focus on the important work they do and not channel their energies into a focus on what's going wrong.

Focus and Creativity Matter

If the following is true.....

Leaders in sustained, successful organizations focus on a small number of core priorities, stay on message, and develop others toward the same end, making corrections as new learning occurs (Fullan, 2011).

.......how, as a leader, do you:

• sustain the focus?
• stay on message?
• develop others?
• make corrections as new learning occurs?

Keeping a Client-centred Focus

Think about a time you felt you didn't get the service you wanted, needed, or deserved.  Perhaps you had taken time off to have someone come fix an appliance, and that person didn't show up and didn't call.  Maybe you had paid a bill but the accounting department kept sending you statements.  Possibly you had made arrangements with your supervisor to take a personal leave day but he or she had forgotten and scheduled you into a meeting. 

Try to remember what you were feeling.  Frustration?  Anger?  Resentment?  Now, think of just the opposite situation.

Think about a time you were treated as a valued customer.  Perhaps the accounting department notified you of an overpayment.  Maybe someone from your clinic called to tell you that the doctor was running late.  Possibly your supervisor stopped by to make sure that you had everything you needed to get the proposal in on time.

More and more leaders are finding it essential to adopt a client-centred focus.  Take education as an example.  The ultimate customers are the students and the community.  In the old paradigm, if students did not have basic skills in reading and math, it was their fault.  After all, they had the opportunity to learn, didn't they?  If that situation occurs now, schools are more inclined to look at their own systems to determine what else can be done to ensure that the students reach the learning goals.  Their core mission is to teach students, not just 'deliver' lessons. 

Students, their parents, and the community are external customers but there are also internal customers - the colleagues with whom you work.  It is important to maintain a client-centred focus with them also.  Having a client-centred focus means always thinking about how you can provide great service and making sure that people receive value. 

From:  Leading Every Day by Joyce Kaser, Susan Mundry, Katherine E. Stiles, & Susan Loucks-Horsley
Published by: Corwin Press

Setting Goals

As a leader, do you set goals for and/or with your staff?  Do you find that setting goals accomplishes what is needed and wanted? 

Goals work. ... The academic literature shows that by helping us tune out distractions, goals can get us to try harder, work longer, and achieve more.  ... Like all extrinisic motivators, goals narrow our focus. ... But...a narrowed focus exacts a cost.  For complex or conceptual tasks, offering a reward can blinker the wide-ranging thinking necessary to come up with an innovative solution. ... Substantial evidence demonstrates that in addition to motivating constructive effort, goal setting can induce unethical behavior.  ... The problem with making an extrinisic reward the only destination that matters is that some people will choose the quickest route there, even if it means taking the low road. ... Contrast that approach with behavior sparked by intrinsic motivation.  When the reward is the activity itself...it's impossible to act unethically because the person who's disadvantaged isn't a competitor but yourself.

From:  Drive by Daniel H. Pink
Published by:  Riverhead Books

Celebrate, Recognize, Reinforce, Reward

As a leader, do you Celebrate, Recognize, Reinforce, and Reward your staff?

The kind of significant, sustained improvement that we need in [organizations] will not occur in an isolated, free-lance culture, where no one knows what anyone else is doing or what each other's operative goals are.  That is a system in disarray.

[Organizations] improve when purpose and effort unite.  One key is leadership that recognizes its most vital function: to keep everyone's eyes on the prize of [improvement].  The crush of competing agendas and distractions does not make that focus easy.

One of the most effective means to cultivate a goal-oriented culture is to regularly reinforce and recognize improvement efforts, both privately and publicly. 

From: Results by Mike Schmoker
(Published by: ASCD - The Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development)