Leader as Facilitator: How to inspire, engage and get work done

By Lynne Cazaly

The days of leaders telling their people what to do are gone. But what has taken its place?
How do leaders get buy in, build engagement and gain the collective input and participation of their teams?

The answer is as simple - and aas complex - as facilitation.

Facilitation means 'ease'... to make easier. 

The

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cazaly Communications (CAZCOM)
• Release date: Aug 1, 2016
• ISBN: 9780648297338

Lynne Cazaly

Lynne Cazaly helps individuals, teams and organisations transition to new ways of working. Lynne is an international keynote speaker, author and a master facilitator. She is the author of 6 books: ish: The Problem with our Pursuit for Perfection and the Life-Changing Practice of Good Enough Agile-ish: How to Create a Culture of Agility Leader as Facilitator: How to Engage, Inspire and Get Work Done Making Sense: A Handbook for the Future of Work Create Change: How to Apply Innovation in an Era of Uncertainty Visual Mojo: How to Capture Thinking, Convey Information and Collaborate Using Visuals. She works with executives, senior leaders and project teams on their change and transformation projects. This includes working with agile practices, business agility improvements and digital transformations. Her background is that of a communication specialist, having lectured in under-graduate and post-graduate programs in several of Australia's Universities and consulting to different industries, sectors and fields on engagement, communication and change. She was a keynote speaker at Agile 2019 in Washington, USA and regularly keynotes on topics of agile, change, transformation and culture. Lynne can also help you think better, make sense of information and handle the realities of information overload with a range of ingenious processes, tools and methods. She is a 'cognitive load coping expert'. Lynne is an experienced board director and chair and an #avgeek, loving everything aviation, airports and air traffic control.

Book preview

First published August 2016

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Copyright © 2016 Lynne Cazaly

www.lynnecazaly.com

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright owner, except as provided by international copyright law.

National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:

Author: Lynne Cazaly, 1964 -

Title: Leader as Facilitator: How to inspire, engage and get work done

ISBN: 978-0-9874629-7-8

ISBN: 978-0-6482973-3-8 (e-book)

Subjects: Leadership.

Facilitation.

Collaboration.

Strategy.

Productivity.

Change.

Teams.

Creativity.

Communication.

Illustrations and layout by Lynne Cazaly

Cover design by Lliam Amor

CONTENTS

Leader as Facilitator

Why Facilitation?

The Challenges

Moving up the Ladder

Where to Facilitate

Why bother doing facilitation better?

Leadership Keeps Changing

Facilitation: It’s all about Context

Leader as Facilitator: The Way

1. You

2. Environment

3. Processes

4. Responses

Getting from Here to There: 75 Tips

About the Author

Leader as Facilitator

We’re seeing the days of barking instructions or telling people what to do, fading.

Yes, sometimes you still need to give instructions or directions but overall, people need to be engaged. Global engagement scores are not good. They’re awful in fact!

So many people in organisations have untapped capabilities. Your people may be itching to put their experience to work - if only they were asked.

And those teams that are engaged often aren't working at their peak levels of performance. This is because the environment, situation or processes they're working with are slowing them down, stifling them or hindering their opportunities to collaborate and deliver.

Old ways are too slow

The Leader as Coach approach has been a leadership staple in many industries and organisations for years. I remember running a Coach the Coach program for a big bank who was helping their leaders be better at those one-on-one conversations.

And while coaching is still a highly valued and valid leadership tool, many leaders find the drain, drag and pace of one-to-ones less efficient than they'd like and need.

As one leader in the bank's coaching program said:

"It take sooooo long to get that person to realise what needs to be done, to go through that GROW Model

(Goal, Reality, Options, Will) and get them on-board with it. I just don't have the time or patience".

And while that may run counter to what leadership or leaders should be like, the realities of pressured schedules, busy teams and project deadlines mean leaders need to leverage more than the one-to-one, at least some of the time. Granted, the one-on-one coaching conversation is a must for performance, development and other challenging or sensitive discussions. It will always be needed. No argument there.

Leverage for impact

How else can leaders leverage their time and the interactions with their teams to inspire the tribe, get them engaged and aligned to the work that needs to be done and then go ahead and get it done?

The shift from 'Leader as Coach' to 'Leader as Facilitator' is underway and I see it as one of the most exciting shifts in leadership today.

When a leader facilitates, group harmony and cohesion is strengthened and the sheer energy or vibe of the team, tribe or group coming together lift people to higher levels of performance.

Facilitators make progress easy... or easier. They run a process, respond to what happens and draw on very cool tools to make progress.

As a participant in my Leader as Facilitator program said:

Now I'm able to get stuff done; we talk as a team, I can help remove barriers across the team, we can make decisions and I'm better able to handle the general sh*t that goes down daily in our team.

(Note, this leader wasn't naming his people as sh*t; it was more about the finicky, challenging issues and hiccups that happen throughout a typical day when leading a diverse team).

So …leader as facilitator

Ah don't be mistaken, facilitation is not ‘soft’ work. Be assured, there are many effective and well-structured approaches and techniques that professional facilitators use to achieve swift, creative and relevant outcomes with a group.

And though the Twitter ‘Shit Facilitators Say' meme is a good laugh, it's time those clichéd phrases and lip service statements were sent to the trash file; they're dated and a poor first response for a contemporary leader applying facilitation approaches.

There are many more authentic, empathic and realistic ways to get stuff done in teams and keep the team connected to the work to be done, all via the power of facilitation.

Diversity demands it

A leader adopting the capabilities and behaviours of a facilitator is able to achieve outcomes that have a direct connection to business goals, and get genuine input and contribution from the team.

It's not enough for a team to meet to just talk or discuss. In the volatile, uncertain and complex world that businesses operate in, decisions, input and diverse contributions are paramount.

In trying to facilitate and drive these types of meetings, many leaders head into steamrolling territory. These shut down contributions or close down creativity without even knowing it. You may have just caused what you were trying to avoid!

Then when the room is silent, you might not know what to do. Was it something you said or did? Possibly. There's something you can do to change that silence or stuck situation, all by using facilitation skills.

It's not soft

Business facilitation is not about looking at a candle and taking three deep breaths, holding hands or singing 'Kumbaya'. Some industries and fields use this to good effect. I'm not a proponent of it in business.

The Leader as Facilitator needs to balance the four business imperatives of:

Achieving outcomes

Boosting engagement

Driving productivity

Encouraging contribution.

Being a Leader as Facilitator is all about using approaches that achieve the things that need to be done.

This is about a culture of leadership, a style of leadership in your organisation that you create. It supports teams and leaders with the capability they need to influence, drive and deliver.

And that's not 'soft'.

Why Facilitation?

Here’s a situation for you:

There's coffee on arrival, mints in little bowls, jugs of fresh water and an agenda on the tables - a gathering of the team for a strategy or team session. Perhaps it's a day or two, or you're fortunate enough to escape off-site to get fresh perspective and avoid workplace distractions.

The strategy or team session is a big investment of people, time, preparation, accommodation, travel, catering, audio visual support, time away from your role.

But simply getting people in the one venue and diving into the agenda doesn't get the best out of the group or give you a mega return on investment.

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Facilitation has been around for thousands of years.

For many decades it’s been the realm of the expert: you bring in an expert facilitator to lead your strategic planning session or run your team workshop.

But things are changing.

In this increasingly collaborative world, teams are working together like never before. When you bring people together, you bring diversity and difference. And it’s wonderful! And it’s challenging when you are tasked with leading a team. It’s not easy knowing what to do when something happens with all that diversity and difference bubbling around in the room!

Perhaps the topic has gone off track or maybe you’re struggling to get decisions made. Maybe there are some louder voices in the team and some quieter people who don’t contribute as much. Perhaps you have someone playing politics or pushing their agenda a little too much. Maybe there’s conflict or aggression, or maybe everyone’s being so nice to each other and so agreeable that you’re not uncovering what’s really going on!

Whatever the human challenges you have in front of you, facilitation has come of age. Its time is now.

There’s never been a better time to get people together, get work done and do it in a way that’s:

Respectful

Collaborative

Productive and

Engaging.

In the hundreds of workshops I’ve facilitated and training people in the Leader as Facilitator capability, I often ask ‘Why are you here?’ or ‘Why do you think you need to learn this now?’

Responses reveal these main themes:

o Challenging situations

As organisations grow and more and more people find themselves attached to more projects and other people across the organisation, things start to get more complex. There are more people to consult with, the gain input from, to collaborate with. The bigger the