One of the things I miss most in my facilitation practice during COVID-19 is the ability to vary our venues. Where we hold a meeting affects what happens in that meeting, and working from home has limited our options. Switching our virtual background or moving from our dining room to our family room are poor substitutes.
Place matters, in so many ways. Continue reading “Environmental Protection”
This is one of the questions Derek Sivers poses in his quick read on entrepreneurship lessons called Anything You Want. His point is that it’s not all about the money — it’s about whatever your “personal dream come true” looks like — but you’d better be clear on what a win looks like for you.
I’ve been thinking about this for boards of directors, because sometimes they behave as if their win lies in having a complete policy binder and quorum at each meeting. Or they develop elaborate board assessment tools that can be thorough without being particularly meaningful. Continue reading “How do you grade yourself?”
I’ve spoken to several Executive Directors over the past couple of months who’ve started their stories with, “I’m so glad we….” They finished their sentence in various ways, ranging from “…were clear on our priorities” to “…invested in culture-building” to “…had the right people around the leadership table” to “…trusted each other.”
A few others have had the opposite story to tell, that began, “I wish we…” For them, the ending has often been some variation of “…figured out remote work well before now” or “…made those changes we talked about but never got around to.” I suspect there are likely other endings they are reluctant to admit out loud.
When I facilitate in-person sessions, I frequently tell participants that I cannot guarantee that we’ll co-create a “safe space” together. They looked shocked. I go on to explain that the pre-existing power dynamics that will outlast our time together are outside of my control and inevitably affect people’s sense of safety in the room. What I can promise, however, drawing on the work of Amy Edmondson and others, is a session where people treat each other respectfully and have roughly equal airtime — two elements that do contribute to a psychologically safe session. Necessary but not sufficient conditions. Continue reading “Psychological Safety on Zoom”
Do you have something you’d like to launch but you aren’t sure if there’s an appetite for it or whether the details of your offerings are quite right?
Ask your audience.
It seems basic, but too often we behave as if we need to have all the answers when in fact, we have but one opinion and are often not representative of our own target market anyway. Continue reading “Co-Creation”
