Lockdown 2020 series: How safe is it to progress by experiment in your team?
We’re hitting the end of week 2, and the landscape is still blurry. Hopefully your Participants have really warmed up their experimenting muscle. In the last post, I talked about providing encouragement, feedback and recognition to Participants who have been daring and tried out things that support our new way of working – even if they aren’t totally convinced this is something they are up for. I really encourage you to do that as the week draws to an end (or first thing back after the Easter break).
As well as acknowledging what they’ve done, recognise the courage it’s taken for them to act. We all love recognition when we’ve done something that’s been challenging and uncomfortable, and encouragement to keep going is just as important – so make that happen with your Participants.
If Participants keep at it, the very act of trying things out that support your new way of working turns them into Drivers in this model. It’s like there’s a tipping point at which they realise they’ve got this, they’re part of it now, and they’re ready to start helping others make progress. This moves their impact from being about changing themselves to influencing others around them to change. We’ll get into what Driver behaviour looks like next week.
For the end of this week though, go hard on being the kind of leader that makes it safe for your Participants to experiment and learn.
Boost your Participants – recognise experimentation, explore learning
Recognising when your Participants have tried out something differently and spending time to explore what they learnt from it sends messages that:
By being bold, they have discovered what works and what doesn’t, and that’s helped refine the team approach;
It’s more valuable to try something out to test its usefulness than whether that something succeeded or failed; and
Nobody in the team has all the answers – the contribution of Participants is vital for us finding our way.
If your Participants have tried out one thing new this week, made one suggestion for improvement or connected more widely to find out what works, that’s the stuff to recognise. It means they are enrolling to the new way of working, so let them know you are seeing that in them, and let them know the impact it’s having. Remember, if you get enough Participants trying out new ways that help the team move forward, you get momentum.
What’s next?
Just like your Observers, you are seeing the beginning of a shift that might take a while. You’ll need to keep walking at this pace with your Participants. If there’s a word to hold in your mind, I think it’s that you want them to enrol in this new way of working. Their habit of trying out new approaches and processes, and learning from those experiments, will start to have a positive impact on others in the team too.
My Participants still seem a bit stuck
If your Participants are still oscillating between this and Observer states, it usually signals they are feeling a bit unsure about whether it’s really safe to try new things and learn from them. Remember the two main things that are likely going on for Participants:
I don’t think I’m ready for this yet but I’ll give it a partial test to see if it’s safe.
It probably means you need to spend some time clarifying how you support an experimentation approach, and role modelling it yourself. You might do things like put forward ideas for improvement that you invite the team to test out, modify, poke holes in. Often, as leaders, we feel like our ideas need to be guaranteed winners. The impact of that is that your team develop the same mindset and you end up with nobody trying anything that has a risk of failure attached.
When you or others in the team do role model this behaviour, and the experiment fails, Participants will be closely watching to see the response to failure. Is it a genuine chance to learn? Or are people excluded, reprimanded or shamed for getting it wrong?
So, if your Participants are a bit inconsistent at the moment, focus on enrol:
Remind them none of us have the answers and we’ll need to try lots of stuff as we find our way.
Underline the important role they have in building on ideas, suggesting new approaches, trying things out themselves to see if they work.
Guarantee your support for experiments when they are done mindfully. If people notice an issue, create a hypothesis, test it out, learn from it and share their findings, how will you guarantee that’s a safe thing to do and that you’ll support them regardless of outcome?
What if I’m in the Participant state?
Same answer as last week (and next week. And next…). That’s called being human. In fact, I’d expect most leaders to be spending time in this state right now. You’ve had the usual way of working torn out from underneath you, and now you’ve got varying levels of wellbeing in your team. You are testing out how this remote platform works, what productivity means, how to accommodate Tinkles the cat in team meetings. And on top of that, your team is looking to you for answers and assurance about the future.
Again, don’t rush yourself. If you are new to experimenting, come up with some small ones you can try out. These ideas might help:
As always, how’s your own wellbeing? What habits do you need to start/continue/stop to help you feel healthy and in balance?
Have a chat with someone who already works with an experiment mindset (feel free to drop me a line!).
Look back at what you’ve tried already during lockdown. Now pause... Now spend some time drilling into what you have learnt from trying those things out. Record it, look for patterns, look for stories, share it with your team (great role modelling, you!)
Download these one-page resources I use with my leadership groups: How to run an experiment and Reflect and Learn.
Have a great holiday weekend in the bubble. If Easter eggs are your whanau’s thing, I hope the backyard Easter Egg hunt is completely awesome. Stay safe and take good care of each other.
This post is part of my 2020 Lockdown series. If you’ve found yourself thrust into new ways of working and you want some tips on helping your people navigate this unforeseen change, I’ll be providing ideas for leadership all the way through New Zealand’s lockdown. Check out the rest of the posts here.