Here’s the one thing, if you do nothing else different in 2021, to give yourself the best chance to have an exceptional year!
One of Lencioni’s “5 Behaviours of a Cohesive Team” is handling conflict. He talks about the need to be able to have that constructive conflict in a team, if that team is going to work and progress to being a “real team”.
The blueprint on how to do that comes from Weber in “Conversational Capacity”. It comes from 4 practices:
Stating your position clearly
Explaining your underlying thinking
Testing your perspective
Inquiring into the perspective of others
Weber calls them practices because even though they appear simple and full of common sense, when the pressure is on we will most likely default to “minimize” or “win”. Minimize and win are dysfunctional when trying to build a team and solve the toughest problems holding the team or business back.
Practicing building your conversational capacity will build trust, create mutual accountability, allow leadership to develop from any seat and expand your options.
Leaders, if you’re wanting to build a “real team” conversational capacity is a prerequisite skill set, for everyone. By expanding the way you look at “adaptive” problems (as opposed to routine problems for which we have basic roadmaps that allow us to solve routine problems, adaptive problems have no pre-existing roadmap - Weber), you are able to find solutions where none existed before.
Give yourself the best chance of having an exceptional year by building your “Conversational Capacity”! I’d love to help!
At the very least, read the book!