Conscious Leadership Scenario:
PART TWO of Why You Will Never Be a Great Leader addressed the foundation of every great team-fear of Conflict [you can find PART TWO in our archived library]
Like many other aspects of life, teamwork comes down to mastering a set of behaviors that are at once theoretically uncomplicated but extremely difficult to put into practice day after day. Time and time again.
The “Never Slow Down Business Model” is driving your team into an absence of trust, fear of conflict, lack of commitment, and avoidance of accountability.
We will focus on lack of commitment today.
Leadership Fail:
Lack of Commitment From Your Team
You are buried in corporate goals, division goals, personal goals, maintaining budgets, and managing your team to gain the ultimate competitive advantage. The building, mentoring, and nurturing your team takes an immense amount of time. You will never, ever never, SLOW DOWN [It’s impossible to slow down], and invest the proper amount of time to ensure there isn’t a lack of commitment on your team. Great teams move forward with absolute clarity and buy-in from the entire team. What two fears dominate the Lack of Commitment from a team? The desire for consensus and need for certainty.
Negative Affect on Culture and Organizational Performance:
Teams that Fail to Commit…
- Creates ambivalence among team members about direction and priorities.
- The team watches windows of opportunity close dur to operational paralysis and continual delays.
- The team becomes overwhelmed with a lack of confidence and fear of failure.
- Constantly revisit discussions and decisions repeatedly with no forward progress.
- Promotes second guessing among team members.
Conscious Leadership Solution:
The first big step in ensuring your team is focused on commitment. By taking the right steps to optimize clarity and achieve buy-in and withstanding the urge to have consensus on specific agenda items.
- Mission Messaging: At the end of every meeting, a team should review the meeting in detail. Identify key decisions made during the meeting and decide how you want to communicate these messages to employees and key members of the organization. What usually happens during this wrap up is you will learn that not all team members are on the same page and share different realities on what has been agreed upon. Leaving meetings aligned with one another provides a common message to the organization.
- Disciplined Deadline: One of the most important tools for guaranteeing Team Commitment is a deadline that ensures a decision is being made. Milestones can also be put into place on longer plans. These deadlines and implemented milestones ensure misalignment is addressed before it gets out of hand.
- Plan B Analysis: When a team can’t come in alignment on a particular topic, we encourage a Plan B Analysis. Clarify the worst-case scenario if a decision isn’t reached. This approach shows the affect on the organization if a buy-in isn’t reached within the team.
- Riskless Exposure Remedy: If paralysis within a team continues and commitment phobia plaques the team’s decision making. We encourage teams to develop a “Riskless” solution. This slower and lower approach will unclog the decision making log jam and provide another potential option that leads to buy-in on a critical decision.
Each of these tools can have a significant impact on a team’s ability to become laser focused on commitment.
So, at Thomas & Taylor Partners, we are here to help. For us, our purpose is leadership for a better world, and we are here to help you in showing up as the leader you need to be. We are here to support you globally. We are on this journey together. This is an invitation, an invitation to join us in creating a collaborative movement: the movement that is leadership for a better world.
Live2Lead
Travis