If yes you are not alone, he says Hosla SandyAn executive coach and senior associate and assistant professor of marketing at Kellogg School. Many leaders convene strategic planning meetings that gather colleagues from all functions and management levels, but fail to benefit from talent to the room.
Often, these leaders lead their agendas instead of conducting “discovery laboratories” where new ideas and junior talent can bloom, Khosla says. As a result, workers disconnect and prevent the exchange of information.
“This contradicts the most fundamental principle of leadership: hearing,” says Khosla. “If a leader thinks they know everything, this is a problem.”
To lead the company’s best strategy, he says, leaders will have to implement a different, perhaps stunning, tactic for strategic planning meetings: mute of the boss. Intentionally maintaining silent, leaders create space for new ideas and talent development – which fuels innovation.
“Mute mute is a development tool as well as a tool that leaves room for broader contributions to the strategic vision of the business,” says Khosla.
But acquiring leaders in the room to call themselves is not easy. The process requires intentional planning, communication and supervision. Below, Khosla explains when and why the mute of the boss is necessary, how to pull it, which challenges to predict and when to climb.
Make room for your team to shine
When facing strategic business decisions – such as investing in new product growth or how to evaluate a market opportunity – it is difficult for some experienced leaders to leave control. They have gone to the leadership through years of assessing their skills and their insight. They are responsible for making decisions.
Whether you are the chief executive or head of a business unit or a function, it is your role as a leader to evaluate a stunning amount of information on the allocation of resources – financial, business and talents – leading business results, says Khosla. So it is natural that leaders will tend to define the parameters of strategic talks.
It is not surprising that “command and control” becomes a default approach, he says. “In addition, many bosses have strong personalities.”
Khosla knows it from the experience. As an executive coach, Khosla has seen many of the executives who coaches to go through strategic meetings and assume that because he is the leader, they must find all the answers. Khosla says this is a mistake.
“If you bring people together by saying that you want their contribution, but your behavioral signals differently, workers will not feel invested,” says Khosla. ‘When the time comes to be applied [ideas]Your strategy will not work. People tend to resist when they feel forced. ”
Leaders need a structure that maintains their strong personality under control to shine. Otherwise, they are in danger of perpetuating what Khosla calls a “negative spiral”.
“The whole idea is to create an environment where everyone can speak their minds,” he says. “It’s a safe environment where you actually release people’s ability to help the business.”
Prepare specific goals in advance
Still, the reduction is easier than it is.
It is easier for leaders to embrace the idea when they see it not as a control, but as a value creation, says Khosla. It advises leaders to focus on the two main benefits of reducing, and will get the whole team involved: better information and higher commitment.
“We improve the process so that the leader can make better decisions,” he says.
A step that will help leaders follow by decline is to determine the goals of the meeting with a close focus. If all stakeholders know what the team is trying to achieve, then the ability to violate is significantly reduced.
For example, the targeting of “to be more innovative” is very vague. Instead, leaders need to understand the strategic, high impact that the team can make progress toward, he says.
A company Khosla is currently advising to struggle to escalate the artificial intelligence platform. After some discussion, the team found that too many groups of customers were following. In the process, they spread thin and had no impact.
Instead of just “escalating”, the team shifted its goal of focusing on its customers with the highest performance and how the company could escalate its relationships with this team. Then they asked what specific actions could take that they are bold and different. As soon as they did this, the team felt excited and authorized because the goal was simple and clear: Develop an action plan clearly for “who does what from when”.
This process of setting the goal often requires several conversations with colleagues, Khosla explains. But it’s worth preparing.
“If you don’t have the alignment on the target in front, you end up going anywhere and wasting everyone’s time,” he says.
Strengthen the right voices
Assembling people with the right combination of skills, operation and experience for strategic planning periods can help leaders become comfortable with the reduction.
“The diversity of thought is a competitive advantage,” says Khosla.
The number of people in a meeting can vary in size. Between ten and twenty -five participants should provide a healthy range of perspectives. And before you fill the room with the usual seasoned leaders, says Khosla, identify high-potential employees of all levels with a history of success-“Champions of Change”. This expands the ideas team and acts as an incentive for team members more than June to offer new prospects.
At the Summit, the discussion should focus on the future and biased towards action. Think: “Well, what, now what?!” This does not exclude learning from previous experience, but tends to help teams avoid the analysis-paralysis trap.
For example, during a recent Khosla discovery workshop observed, the team discussed ways to improve customer experience. A retail manager shared immediate customer feedback that reformed the team’s approach. Her ideas, gathered from daily interactions in the first lines, helped senior leaders to recognize blind spots in their strategy. A specific plan emerged to escalate some of these ideas throughout the company.
Because many stars of the company are close to daily functions, they may have ideas that senior leaders are too far away to see. In this case, the idea of the store manager had caught fire and left the sense of authorization that her idea was heard.
It is important to remember that the mute of the boss will not automatically make your inferior staff out to express their views, while in a meeting with a group of senior leaders. Thus, breaking the larger group into smaller “unions”, each of which consists of a series of levels and management functions, provides more room for everyone to contribute.
“Small groups create security,” says Khosla. “So plan the meeting for these groups to accumulate for major conversations-from the brainstorming storm to problem solving-and then mention the full team.”
Appoint a mediator
Another important step to mute the boss is to have a meeting facilitator. This person must be a credible, senior colleague who knows his business, his people and his challenges well. They should also have strong communication, management and relational skills.
“Their main role is objectivity,” says Khosla. “They ensure that silent people are talking and the boss remains silent. Their goal is to make sure you hear from everyone, without judgment.”
During the meetings, stay implicit can be provocative and unpleasant for bosses at first, especially in hierarchical cultures. Thus, Khosla emphasizes that the facilitator must monitor the leader’s verbal and non -verbal communication and, when needed, intervenes.
Khosla describes a strategic meeting he observed, in which the leader constantly checked his phone and was fidgeted as small groups presented their ideas-a behavior observed by the participants. During a break, Khosla pulled the boss aside to point out that, although he remained silent, his actions signaled that he was not interested.
“Even a mute can say a lot,” says Khosla. “Mutely mutes the boss is not just talking but also seeing your body language.”
Sometimes, difficult issues arise that cause or cause a response from the leader. At another meeting, Khosla facilitated, one member of the team appeared one of the most pressing issues of the company: “Leadership does not hear”. As the team after the team shared examples, the leader appeared obviously upset, with his head down and face red while everyone was watching.
To prevent a defensive discussion or escalation of complaints, Khosla called a break to check in with the leader. Although upset, the leader acknowledged that the honesty of the teams proved that the meeting had achieved its primary goal of creating a space where workers felt empowered and heard. The pause allowed the leader to process and repeat the hearing instead of reacting.
What changed? The boss went one step beyond the mere recognition of the hearing impact on employees. He apologized, recognized his behavior and publicly contributed not to erase and absorb his team’s comments before making a decision.
“As a result, the team began to relate to him more and appreciate his humility and vulnerability,” says Khosla. “Listening and respecting different views has become a basic value of the company.”
You know when to turn on mute
As useful with the mute of the boss can be for promoting new voices and strategic capabilities, there is a point when the boss has the final reason. So when is the right time to hit the mute?
“Wait until the end of the meeting when the team agrees with the next steps,” says Khosla.
Sometimes the session has provided enough information on the leader to take action and assign responsibilities. But often, more time takes. In this case, the leader must commit to reviewing the results of the meeting and to redefine by decision.
“Of course, the boss will make the decision in the end when it’s ready,” says Khosla. “But in the discovery lab, their job is just to hear and create an environment where everyone can thrive.”
