Co-Creation Support
Delegate with trust: how to unlock your team’s best work and highest engagement
Purpose-driven leadership is about “leading from the back”. You are not a “boss”, but rather facilitate space and resources for your team to flourish.
Make the shift from command-and-control to delegated authority and watch your team’s performance, happiness, engagement and fulfillment go through the roof.
Team flow is the goal.
Focus on facilitating flow, and the rest falls into place.
Continue reading to understand how this works.
What is probably holding your team back today
Long meetings with few decisions being made. Lengthy discussions with no clear outcome suck the life out of your team.
Misalignment in vision and expectations. People do not aim for the exact same outcome. Working agreements are implicit and accountabilities vaguely defined.
Powerplay. One or more individuals have a strong presence and overshadow others. These team members remain unheard and their genius is lost in the process.
If one or more resonate, your team has a massive growth opportunity.
An enormous potential for productivity, fun, empowerment and engagement is left on the table!
The remedy
If you recognize one or more of the above painpoints, realize that it is your priority to address this challenge!
You may desire a high performing team, but if such tensions remain unaddressed, team flow is impossible and you will always operate at a margin of your true potential.
The cause of thes etensions may go deep into personal relationships, and far back into time. To untangle that spaghetti of tensions and opinions, I highly recommend hiring an external (objective) group facilitator.
The benefits of objective group facilitation:
1. The team enters the process in full equality. No conflict of interest, for example, the facilitator creating more space to discuss the ideas he prefers from his own role in the organization.
2. No “old pains”. A fresh person guiding the process symbolizes a fresh start, and the team members can rest in the space, follow the process, without being blinded by any opinions and judgments from the past.
3. Experience and expertise: the right group facilitator knows the right formats and structures to follow, and knows how to deal with tensions and challenging moments which may arise during the meetings.
How it works
There is not a one-size-fits-all process to help teams return to alignment and harmony. But there are certain best practices which can be applied in the process.
1. Realize it is a journey. Returning to team flow cannot be done in one or two meetings. It is a journey you go on, together, with purpose.
2. Start by clarifying which tensions are alive in the team. Flow is our natural state, and only tensions keep us from being in flow. When the team feels heard and understood, they are more likely to buy in to this journey.
3. Make new agreements. Working agreements, roles and accountabilities, team meeting structures… all of these need to be revisited and re-agreed. Together as a team, you install a new “operating system” which structures your way of working.
4. Self-organization is the goal. The ultimate form of purpose-driven leadership is to organize work so that team members can work with full purpose, mastery and autonomy.
5. Remove the training wheels. In the process, we train one or more team members to be able to facilitate the meetings. This way, once the new structures are set up, the team can function independently.
Case study
In March 2020 I founded Gaianet, a living lab to form “the ultimate purpose-driven organization”. Right from the beginning, we started practicing holacracy, a method to self-organize. In Gaianet there are no bosses, no human holds power over another human. Everybody is a leader of their own role(s) and domain(s) and purpose is the boss.
I cannot begin to describe how engaging, satisfying and fulfilling this way of working is. I’ve been active in many teams: in corporate, in small-medium enterprises, in start-ups… but their productivity and engagement came nowhere close to what I’m experiencing now in Gaianet.
Today, almost three years after the start, team members are as engaged and excited as ever. While we saw other similar project teams, using traditional leadership structures, fall apart throughout the years, Gaianet still stands strong.
Why?
Self-organization gives us autonomy, personal connection, flexibility, transparency, responsibility and hyper-focus. A dream for every purpose-driven professional.
We partnered with experienced holacracy and self-organization consultants, to implement these best practices to the letter. And now Gaianet helps other organizations do the same.
Powered by self-organization and heart-conscious collaboration
Alexander demonstrates strong people developing, coaching, teaching and excellent presentation skills, takes on responsibility, is mature, integer and professional.
Underneath Alexander’s wings, teams were successfully merged (bridge-builder) and team spirit, bonding and engagement noticeably improved.
Up to today, Alexander is the most inspiring manager, the best motivational speaker, and the best personal consultant I have ever witnessed. The source of his skill and wisdom is an unbounded passion for knowledge, improvement and the individual.
His method as a manager was simple: happy and engaged team members perform well and make happy customers.
‘Talented Mentor and Coach’ is the phrase that comes to mind when I think about Alexander.
I had the pleasure of reporting into Alexander for two years at Accenture in Prague, as a Team lead while he was Client Service Delivery lead.
I was always impressed by his ability to address an audience and get people on board with ideas, even people who were initially on completely different pages, keeping the team focused and coach them towards success.
A transformative experience for your team
A renewed way of relating to each other
When professional learn to separate the role from the soul, a new level of communication arises. Team members learn to not take things personally, address tensions in a non-violent way, express their needs, formulate clear proposals, and operate in full transparency.
Aligned visions and expectations
Renewed working agreements, roles and accountabilities created renewed alignment. With everybody facing the same direction, fueled by the purpose and feeling safe in the new meeting structures, their mind power is no longer lost in misalignment and personal frustrations, but becomes available to deliver top quality work.
Next-level productivity
In a self-organizing team, there is no more room to hide. The transparent structures ask each team member to report on their progress and their priorities. Everybody has a place to address their tensions and ask for what they need. Everybody committed to one or more clear roles, each with a clear purpose and clear accountabilities. Less noise, less obscurity, less vagueness. The result is focus, personal leadership and resourcefulness.