Training article: The five steps to releasing your team.

 

 If you are the leader who finds themselves at the centre of a team or teams, then the chances are you will not be able to get out to set up new things.  It’s quite possible that you also find yourself at the centre of more than one group, and that they are being less effective than they could be.  

It’s unpleasant to amalgamate in business as there are often job losses, but it doesn’t always have to be like that.  Efficiency, particularly in voluntary work or in the church, makes better use of the people and resources that you have.  But how do you relinquish the reigns?

 This 5 step process is a way of considering how you could move separate groups together, or reconfigure a group in such a way as to be more productive, and yet use less energy.

 It is important that you include a good model of training (I do you watch; we do together and share ideas and production; you do I watch; you do I support) as well as using tools to analyze what is going to be successful (Pareto analysis, for example).

 The steps are: 

• Step back
• Combine
• Simplify
• Give over
• Support

 

Step back

No one can see a true picture up close.  Use analysis tools and/or bring in an outside consultant so that together with the team you can see what is truly going on.  How effective are you?  If you are in church, you need to also be listening to God and praying with others.  Use the 80/20 Pareto principle if appropriate, but don’t work to it slavishly. 

Combine

You don’t want to lose people.  You need to consider them by empowering them and including them in the change process.  Ask the five whys (search the internet for ‘change management 5 why’s’).  What will be the effect of combining?  Why do you want to do it?  What is the problem you are trying to solve?  Establish positive reasons and possible problems with the transition.  How will you support people during the process?  Be careful that as you change things some people may want to leave – be careful about that because you may find that you are putting more energy into support long term than the original problem.  

Simplify

It’s no good taking all the different activities and combining them, and then putting the total effort that had been spread between activities all into one project!  Identify the central essentials on the way through, and do them as well as possible.  However you MUST involve others in that.  As you bring people together in the previous step and in this step, make sure that you are not indispensible.  A rough guideline is that if the work force are unwilling to do it, it doesn’t happen.  That said, if you sufficiently involve everyone in the process and it isn’t just your idea they should be fired by the creativity.  Don’t give jobs out, rather allow ministry calling (or whatever you might describe it as…skills, gift perhaps?) to shape what is possible.  The meeting point of opportunity (discovered in the previous steps) with skills/gifts/passions will be your area of activity.  Set realistic expectations.  Watch out for unachievable ideologies.  Look for connections to reality. 

What about time?  People don’t have enough.  I am unsure of this anymore.  If most people were asked if they wanted £5000 and all they had to do was to meet you in time, I am sure that they would turn up.  The problem is twofold:  committing to anything means that people are relinquishing choice which in our consumerist world seems prized above all things.  Secondly time has become a commodity such that it is possible to waste time, and wasting time is calculated due to personal worth or what someone has called the selfish gene.  Thus, what does it do for me?  If you can provide the answer to both of these situations (provide personal value and make sure that people do not feel trapped into anything long term) then you will be more successful getting and keeping volunteers. 

Give over

If you haven’t been the sole initiator of the project and your team has been part of the project development, then stepping back won’t have a major impact.  You know that you have got this part right when

1)      they can do it with only a minimal wobble

2)      They miss you a little (it means you were involved)

3)      They say that they (and God) were responsible, and not you. 

You may be tempted when they wobble to step in,  don’t.  We let toddlers wobble, it doesn’t hurt them and they learn.  They will need support individually and as a group which may be more intense than before, but it will be ok, just give it time and back off quickly by demonstrating your confidence in them. 

Support

This will start by being there for the initial questions.  Phone people up after meetings.  Meet with the team after a month for a debriefing and (possibly) pizza.  This finally will lead to making sure that they are resourced, loved, encouraged and supported.

Shortlink:  http://wp.me/pDlJe-4r

Training article: the Pareto Principle (or the 80/20 rule)

The 80/20 rule, which should be more of a guideline anyway, is useful.  It was suggested by an Italian economist who observed that 80% of production derived from 20% effort, and the other 20% of production would take, therefore, 80% of the effort.

It was later suggested that for efficiency, determination of the cut off point of 20% effort would mean less energy would go into the last 20%, so long as we are happy with 80%.

In my last training article on mentoring and learning techniques I mentioned this principle. 

My key thought is this: that when we train people in our teams we should be careful about over training them.  Often our own standards are far higher than perhaps they need to be - as they say, we are often our own worse critic.  Of course we do have our blindspots, and for that reason we need to bear in mind the Johari window model but that can be of great benefit as we will need to be in a humble relationship with one another for it to truly work well.  The implementation of the Johari window model would be during phase two to three of the learning model.

Returning to the original Pareto principle thought, if we accept that for a person to undertake a task well we should then:

• consider at what point we have given 20% of the vital information
• stop training, and move instead to a co-creation methodology.

This will bring about far better tacit learning, as well as encouraging evolution of the methods involved in production – or in terms of ministry, ministerial engagement with the project.

So why should we have to give the 20% input?  Simply put, to gain knowledge you need a certain amount of seed knowledge.  There is great fear in many people of asking questions in case they should make a fool of themselves, particularly in a group situation.  Giving people some knowledge is useful as they are now more sure of what they don’t know, and have the words, perhaps, to express their ignorance.

Secondly, in my own experience with working with different people in roles from church management, to youth and children’s work, and even dabbling with entrepreneurial endeavours, a little knowledge is far from a dangerous thing!  Instead, a little knowledge can be more useful than a great deal.  If you know a lot about a subject, you will likely pursue that which you know and follow lines that are already well trodden.  You don’t make mistakes, but that also might mean that you don’t grow as a person!

On the other hand, knowing little means you have much more freedom in creating an interesting solution.  Sometimes that solution is the longer way around, and there is a better way, but that can be evolved.  More recently businesses have been crying out for creative problem solvers rather than college graduates who can simply churn out the right answers.  Of course, that might mean failure.  As a team leader, are you willing to accept that?

So, my call is for us to train people less. 

• To identify the magical 20% necessary. 
•  To engage in co-creativity. 
• To employ humble mutual accountability. 
• And to find and encourage both creative solutions and permission to fail.

Shortlink:  http://wp.me/pDlJe-4n

Training article: I do, you watch – mentoring and learning techniques

As I move towards a local trust model working in schools and bringing church and school together, with the support of Scripture Union, I recognise that I need some training articles online that some of the people I hope will join in with this will be able to read.

Mentoring and learning have been around for a while, and they can be quite complex models and ideas.  Nothing to be concerned about though, because bottom line is walking alongside someone, perhaps doing something together, and learning more in terms of journey, than classroom. Though that word ‘journey’ has become as hackneyed as has ‘born again’ by popular media.

The basic principle of learning in a mentoring environment could be considered cyclic as the following diagram represents.

There are two different versions of this I have discovered!  I was aware only of the one above.  The variation is as follows:

As you can see, this second model has a certain difference, which may only be semantics, but worth exploring.  I will table it to make it abundantly clear!

I do you watch	I do you watch
We do it together	I do you help
You do I watch	You do I help
You do, I support, and train someone else	You do I watch

These look very similar, but in discussion I with other decided that there was a distinction, namely the first has a much more creative approach to it.

The first stage is similar.  We need to be able to observe and have a little knowledge so that we can appreciate what might be needed.  Help can be included in this first stage in any case – we don’t need to sideline our volunteer who is learning from us.

Stage two is significant. If we do it together, then we imply that we are co-creators in the project.  That your opinion is as valid as mine is.  I do, you help indicates that my way is still the best, and you can assist me in it. From here the implications diverge considerably.

In stage 3, I assume that you have grasped the idea.  But in the first model I am there to give feedback with the focus of effectiveness, it doesn’t rely on my own skills.  With the second model I must assume that you are doing it in such a way that you are duplicating my original design.  The focus of the second is on model and product rather than the results.

In stage 4 the first model indicates moving forward and responsibility, which is where most development happens for the individual being trained.  Support has not been removed, and reviews are important.  But there is a sense that ‘I trust you’ under which most people thrive.  You do it, I watch however implies that I still don’t trust you, and will require a fifth stage if leverage of human resource is to be achieved.

Someone said to me that it’s the difference between McDonalds and a Starbucks franchise.  Creativity and space is encouraged within certain guidelines in Starbucks, but McDonalds is far more focus on presenting the same item in the same way no matter where you go. (I frequent both establishments!)

When we are working with volunteers, we need to accept that people of other skills and different from ourselves will, obviously, do things differently.  Forcing someone into a fixed shape ‘hole’ to fulfil a job is recognised as destructive.  Creativity is the key.  As such you need to shape a job around the person, as long as they roughly have the attributes necessary.

I won’t discuss it in depth at this point, but that again implies that we might need to not expect people to do it our way, and we need to decide to what level we want people to do it our way.  Something I will pick up on later is the Pareto principle of 80/20, which might suggest that if people do it 20% our way, then they will have 80% the same level of effectiveness, and that might be just right!

Giving that kind of space allows for freedom, creativity, and evolution of thought and practice which I believe are Godly principles.

I would value your comments on if you agree with my thinking here, and what experience you have had in using learning models and techniques.

Shortlink:  http://wp.me/pDlJe-4d