I haven’t checked lately, but 50 years of watching what people say that FEAR of speaking has stayed as the number ONE fear of most people, including most workers. Okay, so now we make a good worker into a Supervisor. Has much really changed? Are these new leaders actually good at involving and engaging their people? Or are they just trying to keep things moving forward?

Plus, we can add in other leadership fears such as fear of loss of control and fear of not having the best idea and all that other personal competency stuff and maybe, we can generate a list of reasons why so many people find it hard to ask for ideas. But the reality is that this is really critical for organizational improvement.

And, the process is really simple if you have the right tools and some ideas around what you want to accomplish.

We suggest that you ask people for ideas for improvement. Generally, they really want to tell you.

So, what is really so hard about facilitating a group discussion? Not a whole lot, actually, speaking as someone who was a Certified Professional Facilitator (CPF) by the International Association of Facilitators and who has been leading organizational improvement workshops since 1978.

Really, it is really simple, really. Seriously, it is really really simple.

You can use our tools to make it bombproof.

• Share an illustration with them that has printed on it, “How might this illustration represent how organizations really work?” And let them think about it and then discuss it in small groups.

• Ask them to share their ideas.
• Ask them to share how some of those same ideas might represent how things work in their work initiatives.
• Ask them what we might try to do differently and if anyone is already doing something differently than everyone else.
• Ask them if they could try to implement a change in how they do things or to recommend something that you might change to make things work better.

That, in a nutshell, is facilitation.

You can read lots more about facilitation, engagement and intrinsic motivation throughout my blog posts, since I often talk about these issues and opportunities as being straightforward. You can also read about Russian Poets, if you want, since all this stuff does connect to motivating people and improving how things work.

The simple reality is that the Round Wheels already exist in the wagon but that people are seemingly too busy to stop and step back and identify issues and opportunities that are really visible and often relatively easy to fix. If things are going to improve, then the wagon pullers of the world need to get involved and engaged and start asking for ideas to implement. They already exist!

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For the FUN of It!

Dr. Scott Simmerman is a designer of team building games and organization improvement tools.
Managing Partner of Performance Management Company since 1984, he is an experienced presenter and consultant who is trying to retire!! He now lives in Cuenca, Ecuador.

You can reach Scott at scott@squarewheels.com

Learn more about Scott at his LinkedIn site.

Here is a 2-minute overview of our new online, virtual team building game: https://youtu.be/6sFUOTjdUVg

The exercise has many links to the themes of trust (within and between teams) with a strong focus on trust in the leadership and on collaboration between the teams. This is THE world-class exercise anchored to these elements, based on three decades of client feedback.

This text is a link to a press release about The Search for The Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine teambuilding exercise and its 30 years of impacting people and performance.

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