Chad Silverstein got called out for talking too much during team practice. He shares norms for better facilitation: round-robin sharing, letting people pass, asking curious questions, and paying attention with your eyes and body. The goal is getting team members to solve problems themselves, not handing them answers.
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So recently I got some really good, valuable and hard feedback. I was facilitating a team practice and I was doing what I have a tendency to do, which is say a little bit too much and not engage people more than needed to be engaged in a practice to make it an incredible practice. So I was reminded of this. Tell me, I may listen, teach me, I may learn and involve me. I will do it. And there's so much to learn from that, especially if you're leading anything. I was recently practicing with a client one on one and we were talking about him building into his team and I asked him, you know, what's the process for when he gets into that team meeting. And it's funny because if you've been in built sleep practice, you know the game, there's a recipe. We speak and listen a certain way and we don't break that discipline. And when we do, usually people are going to call it out. Hopefully the builder does. If not, someone at the table might. But we let everyone speak. We all are very focused on making sure that we're making good eye contact and have good body language. We let people pass if they want to pass. We engage everybody. Because if you go around the table and someone shares something and then all of a sudden people pounce on that person because they're curious and they want to know and they ask, you have other people at the table that didn't say anything and they can feel like they didn't get involved and they're not going to gain as much. So everybody in a built to lead practice gets an opportunity to share. It's up to them to take it upon themselves to do so. But everybody gets the opportunity and everyone else is reminded that we do it a certain way. We ask curious questions, insatiably curious questions, and we don't do that until everyone is headed a chance to speak. And then usually after everyone speaks and we ask those curious questions and we see what bubbles up then as we go from table to table, we want to see what the themes were. And then usually practice is on underway and we're already talking about something that's going to be incredible. Great learning insights and you know, we always want to hear from the person who has the most to say, it's incredible what you learn from other people. It's incredible how different everyone thinks. One of the builders, David Deckey, starts off his practice 1.0's with new teams sometimes by asking everyone to look out the window and to write down what they see. So think about that. You have 20 people in the room and you ask everyone to look out the window and write down what you see. Imagine what happens when you start to share that around the table. Imagine the clarity that you start to see how different and unique and distinct everybody is, because they all see what they see based on where they are, and it's very different than the person next to them. It's just human nature for us to assume a lot, but to always be reminded and remember that we're all distinctly different in so many ways. And the only way to get the best out of your team is to engage them in whatever it is you're doing. There are times to teach and there are times to tell people things, but the best leaders are going to just not give people the answers. They're going to actually question people's answers, not give them the answers. They're going to make them come up with three solutions and tell them why instead of giving them the three solutions. And that's how you get the best out of people that are on your team. That's how you get the best out of your co workers, your teammates. You engage them, you make them think. Teach, teach, teach, teach, teach. Listen, listen, listen, teach. Chad's told me that many, many times. So here's your daily reminder.
