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How Do I Get My Team Thinking Together? · The Pause Before You Lead

• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: Hi, I'm Heather Haig, and welcome to the Pause Before You Lead.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: My co-host Alicia is taking some well-deserved time away.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: And in her absence, I've put together a four-part solo series exploring some of the leadership questions I've been thinking about.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: As always, this isn't about finding the right answer.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's an opportunity for us to pause, get curious, explore, and perhaps see something we haven't seen before.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: So join me in this conversation.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: This week, I'm exploring the question: how can leaders build collective thinking on their teams?
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: This question is something I'm feeling leaders experiencing some pressure.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: My team has a lot of wisdom, and I need them to bring those diverse ideas to the table.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: We need more collective thinking in our meetings.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: And that pressure that leaders feel to be responsible for creating a collective thinking environment, I think is sometimes having outcomes that aren't necessarily the ones that leaders desire.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: And in my own lens, when I look at this challenge, I have seen two extremes that can happen when there's a lot of pressure to create collective thinking.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: When we want our team to think collectively so much, it's like, how can I make that happen?
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: So, on the one hand, in the design of the meetings, there's almost a performative over preparation to try and ensure that the team thinks collectively.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: And by that I mean that instead of maybe just putting together a rough agenda, there's like a very carefully curated, designed agenda.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: And the content of that agenda is put together by the leader.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: And the questions that'll be posed in each section are clearly and craftily designed.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: And oftentimes, as the leader puts in so much thought before the meeting to create this environment, they they come to a conclusion that they want the team to get to.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: And so with all of the thinking happening in advance of that meeting, there's very little room for the team to truly be thinking in a collective way, and in particular in a creative way, because the destination was already determined when the agenda was being set.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I felt myself do this in a number of meetings that I've run both in the past and sometimes I even feel it today, where I'll I'll be really concerned with wanting to add value.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: And so, like, I need to perform as a leader, I need to, I need to set the tone, I need to lead the team through this, and that focus on the performance and the outcome gets in the way of collective thinking.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: So that is one extreme.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: On the other extreme is that complete removal from the conversation.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: So the leader says, I'm too heavily involved, so I'm just gonna take a big step back.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna remove myself from the conversation and let the team do the collective thinking on their own.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: And the benefit of that, of course, is you don't have a defined outcome.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: You haven't mapped all the content.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: So there are definitely benefits to stepping back, but what we tend to do in leadership is we step too far back.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: And the team doesn't necessarily have a clear direction for the conversation.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's too free-form jazz without structure.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: And so they they're not getting to that, to creating and building on ideas.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: And as a result, it might feel like that didn't work either.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: I'm noticing in me, like how much responsibility as a leader I tend to feel in creating that conversation.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I think, you know, as I as I say this out loud, I think that the shift actually happens in the thinking uh that we have as leaders, which is to say, does every conversation need to be a team collective thinking conversation?
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: And when we get so focused on having to the pressure to create that, maybe we miss that that there are some times legitimately where the leader needs to do the thinking separate from the team and bring the ideas forward and uh focus on buy-in as opposed to that creative, diverse thinking environment.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: So before maybe we even are thinking about how do we design the content or the framework for the meeting is does the meeting actually need collective thinking?
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: What are the situations where we need collective thinking?
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: And one that comes to mind uh with leaders in the wealth space is that when you're evaluating the services you provide to your clients.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: You might say, I really want the team to come together and identify what are we, what are we doing well?
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: What can we get rid of that isn't adding value?
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: What should we be adding if we were to come together and build on each other's ideas?
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: What might we come up with that we haven't seen yet in this conversation?
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: Well, when the leader comes to that with an already desired outcome and then suggests a container to explore, there's a disconnect between those things.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: So once you've said, I want the team to think about and explore different ways of seeing client services, part of our job now becomes, and maybe this is the hardest part, is to step back, not in the instructions or in the design of the conditions for the conversation, but to step back and detach from the outcome and let the conversation flow in a way that the wisdom can rise and the possibilities can be uncovered without uh determination of an end result getting in the way.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: Because when we do that, it's like when you ask people leading questions and you want them to get to the answer.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: So never done that before, of course.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: What this then can look like is you've designed, you've identified when the conversation needs to be a collective thinking conversation, when we need to bring the wisdom of the whole team together to think through something in a way that we would not if each of us was thinking about it independently.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: So we know we this is a situation that requires this.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: And then as leaders, we need the mindset shift to be able to say the role that I play is not to guide the conversation, it's to create the conditions that allow the team to have the conversation.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: So I I'll pose two questions to you.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: The first one being, do we need collective thinking on this topic?
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: If the answer is yes, what conditions do I need to set to allow the team to think in this way?
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: As we wrap this conversation today, if there's anyone that comes to mind that you think could benefit from listening to this episode, please share it.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: Be sure to subscribe so that you can get notifications for new episodes that we release each week.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_00: And don't forget to pause before you lead.