Facilitative Leadership Training: Day 3

I'm learning about Facilitative Leadership, a program put together by the good people at Interaction Institute for Social Change (@IISCblog).

The top 3 things I learned on the final day of training:

It's all about the meeting.

1. How to plan a meeting.  I thought I knew how to do that.  The corners I cut in creating agendas the day before and getting people the info within 24 hours was all well and good, but I learned that every bit of planning that I can do ahead of time for the meeting pays off.  

2. "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of intervention." They say it pays off, and in the greatest currency I could wish for: Meetings that go smoothly.  Members that don't mutiny.  Most importantly, the meeting is more efficient in accomplishing goals and moving the team forward.  

 

3. This last one has taken awhile to sink in (with this late blog post, I've certainly given myself plenty of time to think).  It's that soapbox moment, when I get passionately argumentative about a controversial topic.  I used to think that every time I did this, I was being heroic.  I learned that leaders just don't do this every chance they get.  Who would follow that person?  In Facilitative Leadership they don't call it a soapbox, they call it a ladder:

Every once in awhile there's that particular piece of data that triggers someone.  When I'm "up my ladder," you'll probably find me spewing my beliefs forth from my lofty height, and maybe the conclusions I've drawn and the assumptions I've made.  Am I interested in a conversation?  Perhaps I'm more interested in grabbing my pitchfork and marching.

It's usually later when I look back on that moment sheepishly.

Between Wednesday, when I learned this, and Monday, as I write this, I caught myself up my ladder at least a half dozen times.  I'm proud to say I apologized a couple times, and I even stopped myself once before I even began.  

Baby steps!

-B