Last week I was selected to participate in a 10-week consulting project with a local Chicago start-up through the Business Solutions Group, a student club at Booth. Five of us will be working together on a new product development project for Bolder Thinking, a tech company that utilizes cloud computing to deliver cost effective telefony services.
Business school is about leadership development as much as it is academics; projects like this offer an opportunity to drill down and focus on soft skills, with conscious effort and intention. Here's what I worked on during the first week of our project.
Recognize Unique Personal Motivations
I'm participating in this project to gain practical consulting experience. I want to learn about an industry I've had no previous exposure to (tech), and to create new talking points for discussions with recruiters. So I'm willing to spend a fairly unlimited amount of time on this project. But it was important to recognize that others might not feel the same.
At the beginning of our first group meeting I asked what motivated everyone to apply for the project. This provided a practical sense of how much time everyone was willing to dedicate, was a great ice-breaker, and helped us maximize overall satisfaction by assigning various responsibilities based on individual motivations.
Identify Potential Assets
During the "Your team has just crash landed on the moon" LEAD module, we had to identify which of the goods that had survived the crash should be taken with us as we made our way from the crash site to base camp. The number of items we could select was limited, with an ultimate answer provided by NASA. One of our team members had been a fighter pilot and we quickly appointed him our expert. During the debriefing session our facilitator complimented us on this. Apparently another team had two aerospace engineers in their group but no one knew until after the exercise ended. That really ground in to me the importance of identifying assets in a group. You never know what you don't know about someone.
So I made sure to ask what skills/experience each team member had that they thought might be an asset for our project. The answers were surprising, and this conversation saved us a lot of time in terms of future discussions about who might be best suited for various tasks. Identifying expertise improves transparency and supports positive team dynamics. Without this shared understanding, a suggestion or question from a subject expert might be misinterpreted, rather than casually accepted and appreciated.
Structure, structure, structure
Last week I interviewed to join the steering committee of Booth's Leadership and Influence Group. The second-year student conducting the interview asked me what role I tend to play in a group. This was a great question as it really asked two questions: how self aware are you, and what will you bring to our team?
I tend to focus on group dynamics, assess what's needed and try to bridge any gaps. If someone else is leading, I'll follow. If questions are needed, I'll ask. If the questions are already being asked, I'll consider what perspectives might be being overlooked in the answers. But if all else fails, I focus on facilitation. (This makes sense after 6+ years of facilitation/meditation training.) What are we doing right now? What is our larger objective? You've been quiet; what do you think? Where are we on time? Facilitation is merely another element that groups need to function well.
I've paid attention to how people facilitate in various team activities, and how their efforts are received. In my study group for Footnote Accounting, one member is great at asking questions at the start of meetings to clarify our objectives and agenda. In a meeting for a case competition, a teammate said "Let's spend 30 minutes just throwing ideas on the wall, without any criticisms. So no "no's", and instead, we focus on building on each others' ideas." This clarity is terrific! When everyone is on the same page a group stands a much better chance of functioning harmoniously.
Know Thyself
This is the golden role, the starting point, the absolute foundation for mature, effective leadership. I mentioned that in a vacuum, I lean toward facilitation. I also lean toward structure. And as pressure mounts, I want more and more of it.
I know this about myself. I know the potential results. Tunnel vision, increasing focus on goals/results, to the potential detriment of team dynamics. This is a very important thing to know. In high-pressure situations I watch for this tendency, and consciously focus on what a given situation calls for, rather than my own personal preferences.
In our first team meeting for the consulting project we started brainstorming about solutions before we had clarified our guiding question. My need for structure kicked in and I wanted badly to stop the brainstorming and focus on identifying/clarifying goals and objectives. The fact that the brainstorming was visual compounded this for me: I wanted a bulleted list, and instead there was a white-board full of scattered, multicolored words, connected with arrows pointing in various directions.
In addition to being a great reminder of peoples' diverse learning styles (I'm not a visual learner), this provided an opportunity to practice seeing beyond my individual preferences. As much as I wanted a different approach, another team member needed some visual brainstorming. So we brainstormed for a while, then we returned to the question of our goals and objectives. At the end of the meeting I knew more about the learning and communication styles of some of my teammates than I would have if we'd taken the more linear approach I'd have preferred. Focusing on the big picture, this is very important information that I'd have missed out on if I'd gotten caught up in my own short-term wants.
I think sometimes people mistakenly believe that being a good leader means not having any tendencies some might label as negative. That's actually not true at all. Well, I suppose it is, but I don't believe many of those people actually exist. Shifting our focus from the Ghandis of the world, I believe being a good leader means having the wisdom and maturity to recognize our own conditioning and patterns and biases, and yet not be bound by them.
Hopefully this consulting project provides more opportunity to practice becoming increasingly fluid in my interpersonal relationships.
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