Tapping the Wisdom of the Group
I am just coming off facilitating a virtual offsite for an executive leadership team where I'm reminded of how much wisdom a group inherently contains.
As a facilitator, there's quite a bit of ramp up for such an offsite in order to make sure we are using our time as wisely as we can by targeting the right problems for that point in time. When I design the offsite, I try to find the right balance of providing enough structure to focus the group on its work, but leaving enough space for whatever needs to emerge.
With this group, we had a couple jam-packed preparation meetings where I could get to know the team, they could get warmed up to my approach to meetings, and we could align on the goals for the offsite. Those preparation meetings give me so much information about what the right offsite design will be and my take away this time was that this team needed space to have rich dialogue and build shared understanding about its work.
Our plan was mainly to build some team agreements around decision making and communication, while leaving space in the meeting to listen and connect as humans. By the end of day 1, some team members wanted those agreements to have more teeth. Others believed that no matter how much teeth they had, the agreement wouldn't hold muster if the team wasn't aligned around the 'softer' parts. Everyone got to say their point of view, all were held as valid, and by the end, integrated to the extent we had time for.
Wisdom in a group can only emerge if disparate viewpoints like the 'teeth' example above can emerge. It's so cool to watch. At just the right moment, someone would have just the right comment to move the team forward. Because they'd built alignment with each other and trusted the process, there was very little disagreement about how to accomplish what we were working towards.
Here are my thoughts on how to create the conditions to allow the group's wisdom to emerge:
Have a clear process that the group can relax into.
Inspire and encourage dialogue, a slower communication approach that relies on the belief that each person only has a piece of the truth.
Reflect forks in the road back to the team and let them decide.
This last one is tricky because it can be scary for you, running the meeting, to give up control and ask the group what the next step should be. If you're a manager asking your team this, this is a clear step towards empowering your team. And the worst case scenario you might imagine where you get stuck at a crossroads rarely happens, and if it does, you get to exercise your muscle of finding a third alternative.*
* I recommend the book The Opposable Mind by Roger Martin