Strategic planning is not just for corporations—lots of my one-on-one coaching work feels like strategy-building for individuals too. And that’s a space I’m curious about—as group activities that also apply to individuals, and vice versa.
So over the next few weeks, I’m going to write about what strategic planning is and isn’t, and I’d invite you to view it through both an individual and collective lens, as I suspect it will apply to both.
Continue reading “Strategic Leadership”In this last installment of my mini-series on ‘facilitation tips from the trenches,’ I’m turning my attention to how the feedback elicited shapes the decisions we make.
Remember that I am a fan of collaborative strategy building. Multiple perspectives are protective. They reduce blind spots and build buy-in.
Except…
…when they encourage us to play it too safe.
Continue reading “Vanilla Strategy”Who’s with me in missing the Olympics?
I love watching them and give myself permission to become fully addicted while the games are happening.
One highlight for me this time was the commentary that accompanied Canada’s gold medal run in the men’s 4×100-metre relay. Each of those four runners had failed to make the final in their individual event(s). None of them individually is the fastest at that distance. But together, they won gold. Why? Because they practice as a team, they emphasize smooth handoffs, and they treat each other like brothers. The result? A relay result collectively greater than the sum of the individual sprints that comprise it.
Continue reading “Greater than the sum of the parts”In my roles as a facilitator or team coach, I am frequently structuring group conversations to help people reach consensus. But lately, I’m noticing how often I am in settings where people are working independently alongside each other instead. Alone together.
Continue reading “Parallel Play”One theme that has stayed with me from Minal Bopaiah’s book Equity is the pervasive, unhelpful and fundamentally untrue narrative of rugged individualism that implies that people who succeed did so courtesy of their own hard work and resourcefulness. It’s where the expression “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps” comes from, and it denies the powerful role of systems, privilege, interpersonal relationships (and even luck) in how our lives unfold.
Continue reading “Group Bootstrapping”
