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Have you ever sat in a meeting where everyone is busy giving their point of view and trying to prove why they are right? Where no one is actually listening or trying to understand other individuals’ points of view. The alternative meeting format is where everyone listens to and agrees with the meeting leader. No one contributes or adds ideas, they are just compliant. In my experience most meeting are either one or the other. But when you think about it, what is the point of most meetings? Meetings are usually held to make decisions. The outcome that most people would want from the meeting is that the BEST decision is made, not that any decision is made, or another sub-committee is formed but that a decision that delivers results is made. Then we move on. So as we hustle from meeting to meeting being very busy, achieving nothing in the way of measurable results, we land up with yet another sub-committee. All because we have lost the art of dialogue. So, the question is; what is the difference between dialogue and discussion? DISCUSSION – Discussion is the way that most people communicate. During discussion we present our ideas and everyone analyzes and dissects them from their different points of view. The purpose of discussion, though, it to make sure you win, or that your point of view is the one that is accepted. During the discussion you will support your idea and give your points more strongly until, eventually, others agree with you. You want to prove that you are right, and the most knowledgeable, as does everyone else in the discussion. Great! With everyone trying to win the argument, no decision is ever made and we eventually need to form a sub-committee to decide. Or the CEO, or team leader, uses his or her divine autocratic right and decides for the team. DIALOGUE – Dialogue on the other hand is an exploration of ideas. It is not a new form of communication but is the way the ancient Greeks and many so called ‘primitive’ societies are seen to explore ideas. During dialogue everyone works together contributing towards the idea. Remember the team is greater than the sum of the parts; therefore more is achieved from the dialogue as each person’s ideas add to the last. In a dialogue no one is trying to win. They are trying to learn and create. They suspend their individual assumptions and explore ideas and issues. It is a free flow of ideas where participants continue to think and watch themselves think. The great physicists Heisenberg, Pauli, Einstein and Bohr described the conversations they had with each other. As we know from history their conversations (dialogue) changed traditional physics because what they could achieve as a group exceeded what each could do as individuals. Interesting? So who is ‘primitive’ now? How do you get your team to dialogue? There are 3 conditions needed: You are closer to achieving dialogue when your team meetings are filled with questions. Questions indicate an attempt at understanding. Sit back in your next meeting and see how often a question is asked. No questions = no dialogue. Teams can enter dialogue if everyone knows what is expected of them in advance and if they truly want the results created through dialogue. Dialogue is playful conversation and everyone must be willing to play with new ideas. Who says you can’t have fun and grow at the same time? I hope you can achieve dialogue in your teams. Since we became aware of the difference and have been trying to practice dialogue we have really had some amazing insights into our business and what we do. We have achieved a whole level of new understandings. Who knows, maybe there is something amazing that your company could achieve if you all just put your heads together. 1 + 1 = 3 makes a lot of sense! FaithBuilders - Family Ministry Resource. - Discussion starters for families seeking to nurture the faith development of their kids. Guest post written by Stuart Ngai, Director of Technology Solutions, VERAX
Continued from last Monday. Read Part 1 >> Enforce a checkpoint schedule Now that you’ve worked out a set of goals with your staff. Who’s responsible to make sure things are on track? My experience tells me that it’s both of you: your staff needs to take ownership to keep up with skills and you, as their manager, need to be the measuring stick. And if you fail to plan, then you plan to fail. So it needs to be instilled as a routine in order to keep the momentum going. By measuring training progress on a periodic basis like once every 3 to 4 months , you’ll know whether your staff is progressing as expected or perhaps he or she is being overloaded. With such a feedback loop, you’ll be able to fine tune the training plan and keep things in focus. Not one size fits all Everyone’s different. Some of your IT staff might be more comfortable with structured classroom learning while others prefer to be given time and web resources so they can learn at their own pace. And one of the techniques we have done successfully at VERAX is to provide some of the technology savvy staff with resources and allocated time so that they can put together lunch and learn seminars for their peers. And there are many benefits for that: opportunity to showcase what they’ve learned, efficiency in cross training each other, a chance for the team to gel and discuss innovative ideas for your workplace, and virtually no loss of productivity at a minimal cost to the company. It’s been a win-win training mechanism that has been working well for us. So be creative in your approach to training. Make use of web resources With advances in webcasting and e-learning tools, many companies are no longer constrained to sending their staff on expensive offsite training. Virtual training along with virtual machine images would be a great way to learn. And there are tons of resources on the web for that purpose that you should look into (some free resources - Developer Connection, Channel 9) Make it fun Be aware of e-learning trends and listen to your staff for innovative and fun ideas to learn. As an example, one thing we have done is to provide tablets to loan to our staff along with e-book subscriptions so that they can read at their own pace anywhere anytime. Our staff love such innovative approaches to learning and they appreciate our willingness to invest in them. So not only did we generated excitement and high level of staff engagement, we know our staff will be able to learn throughout the year on their own pace instead of the standard one to two weeks training for most companies. So make it fun and engaging. After all, it’s a small investment that pays back many folds. To finish off - You are not alone Just remember that you are not an island on your own. The best way to avoid missteps is to learn from the lessons and best practices of other managers. And guess what? There are already great resources freely available for you, such as the AlignIT portal and LinkedIn group. They are great places where you can read and interact with other IT practitioners for advice. Stuart Ngai
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Stuart Ngai, Director of Technology Solutions at