When I first engage with a leader and their senior team, one of the initial questions I ask about their company is, “Given that the future is uncertain, how do you approach the future?”
I have each person type out their response, limiting it to no more than 200 words. I then make a copy of each response (with names omitted) and distribute them to the team. I then ask each person to do two things:
1. Assign the “owner” of each statement.
2. Select the best individual response to approaching the future, and briefly state why they chose the one they did. They are free to choose their own.
You can learn a lot about your team members by having them do this simple exercise. Among the many takeaways, there are three I want to draw your attention to:
1. The more we spend time with someone, the more prone we are to making assumptions about how they think.
2. The more assumptions we make about someone over time, the more likely we are to ask them surface questions rather than deep rooted questions.
3. Heavy reliance upon assumptions + habitual practice of surface questions = overreliance on forecasting.
Forecasting is formulaic. Formulas are easy to work with and they supply you with quick answers. But over time, formulas often replace good thinking. Once you have a formula in place (either consciously or unconsciously), you become hooked. You become rigid. You and your team loose flexibility.
When it comes to discerning the future, the best teams I have seen are the ones that possess flexibility, and an insatiable willingness to learn. The teams with the most flexibility are the most adaptable.
If flexibility is so important, then what is it and how do you get really good at it?
Flexibility means that you and your team have the skills to be able to discern and act upon what is better versus what is different.
“Better” refers to incremental improvement of what you already have in place. “Different” refers to radical change; discarding what is already in place in favor of a new course of action. In my work as a Coach, I’ve observed that proficient leaders know when to facilitate thinking around one or the other.
Often in a coaching session, I will ask a client to talk through a decision they are contemplating through the filter of “better vs. different.” This simple dichotomy yields much more thoughtful responses that a simple “pros and cons” exercise.
Does your team have the skills to be able to try something different when what they are doing is not working, or when they need to respond to changing circumstances? Do they also possess the patience to improve existing plans, rather than to just jump to the next idea?
Most importantly, do they have the flexibility to move between these two different approaches when the situation calls for it?
Recently I wrote a blog entitled “Immature Leaders, Immature Teams.” Another sign of an immature leader is a need for control. Often we find this breed of immature leaders in high levels of management.
Those with a compulsive need for control do not do well with engaging in discussion about the future. Why? It brings forth their insecurity. They do not like to admit that they may have made incorrect assumptions about the future. Thus, they are hesitant to even discuss it, lest they be proved wrong.
After years of coaching I have found, TO THE CONTRARY, that too often the very people whose mandate it is to create the future of their company are the least skilled to do the job.
A mature team is willing to accept that the future may turn out differently from how they anticipated. They take great delight in that possibility, instead of fighting it. They don’t fear the future, because they are flexible enough to deal with whatever comes.
Do you consider yourself and your team to be flexible? Do you need to focus more attention right now on a “better” or “different” approach?
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