Author Archives: Douglas Ferguson

About Douglas Ferguson

Douglas Ferguson is an entrepreneur and human-centered technologist. He is the founder and president of Voltage Control, an Austin-based change agency that helps enterprises spark, accelerate, and sustain innovation. He specializes in helping teams work better together through participatory decision making and design inspired facilitation techniques.

Design Thinking Facilitator Guide

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A Crash Course in the Basics

Design Thinking Facilitator Guide

GUEST POST from Douglas Ferguson

Are you interested in facilitating a design thinking session at your workplace or for another organization? Have you learned about design thinking and want to get started or deepen your skills? If you are a newbie to design thinking facilitation, this is the guide for you. We’ve highlighted the basics you need to know to lead a design thinking or innovation workshop. Facilitation skills are essential to navigating complex business problems, and a skilled facilitator can supercharge the team’s performance. We encourage you to attend our Facilitation Lab, a weekly virtual meetup to support effective implementation.

Read this design thinking facilitator guide, and you’ll have solid tools to be successful from start to finish.

What is Design Thinking?

To start, let’s define some key terms. First, design thinking. Design thinking is a process used for creative problem-solving; a methodology that puts the end-user or customer at the center of decision-making. Design thinking is also characterized by an emphasis on prototyping and testing ideas and working in a highly collaborative manner with a cross-disciplinary team. Design thinking isn’t a passing business trend. It’s a powerful and widely-implemented approach to strategic work adopted by both startups and major corporations to tackle business challenges. Here are a few of our favorite design thinking books we recommend adding to your library for an in-depth background.

A design thinking facilitator leads collaborative working sessions that utilize design thinking practices to reinvigorate creative growth. The gatherings include brainstorms, innovation workshops, executive summits, design springs, multi-day workshops, and long-term projects.

A design thinking facilitator is a coach to innovative, productive group think and work.

Design thinking facilitators help teams focus on the customer throughout the process and uncover new insights and ideas typically aren’t revealed during business as usual (ex. the boss has an epiphany in the shower and tells the team to execute). In a nutshell, a design thinking facilitator is a conduit to innovative productive group discovery and creation. Facilitation skills are key to maximizing these outcomes.

Want to learn the basics of how to facilitate a design thinking workshop? Read our 7-step guide below, then consider our Workshop Design Course to help you get started.

Step 1: Get Focused

Your first task as a design thinking facilitator is to clarify and define what you need to accomplish through your workshop or meeting. You want to determine the focus based on team needs or challenges. Record the primary goal and high-level questions to answer, and make sure participants are aligned on defined objectives.

Pro-tip: Before planning the workshop, consider 30-60-minute conversations with each stakeholder before the design thinking session to make sure objectives are clear.

Step 2: Make the Guest List

Now that you’ve defined objectives, you and the key stakeholder(s) need to determine fitting participants. Who’s taking part in the workshop? Your client will likely have a strong hand in building the guest list. As the design thinking facilitator, it’s crucial that you advise here.

Too many people leads to chaos. Too few people means too few ideas.

Diversity in skillset, expertise, attitude, tenure, etc. is essential to an informed perspective. The more points-of-view that are represented, the more applicable your solutions. In terms of number of participants, somewhere between 7 to 15 is ideal. Too many people leads to chaos. Too few people means too few ideas.

Step 3: Make Your Agenda

With the objective and participants determined, the next step of facilitating a design thinking workshop is the agenda. A wise way to plan your agenda is to start at the end: With what tools do you need to leave the design thinking session? Are you prioritizing alignment? A system or process in place? A collection of novel ideas? Are you looking for a prioritized roadmap or a paper prototype of a new experience? When you clearly define your goals, you can plan the design thinking activities to build toward the conclusion.

The individual activities you will implement varies greatly based on the challenge. Need inspiration to kick off your Design Thinking activities? There are many free resources to help guide you and your team on your journey. We’ve also outlined exercises for virtual workshops here.) No matter your timeline, prioritize time for introductions, icebreakers, and short breaks to check inboxes.

Pro tip: Be generous when time-boxing your design thinking activities. Everything will take longer than you think. A good rule of thumb is to double the time you imagine an individual activity will take.

Step 4: Get Your Space

Next up: Where are you going to host your design thinking workshop? While it might sound like a minor detail, the space affects the day’s success.

We recommend getting participants out of their workspace(s) to inspire fresh thinking and distance from day-to-day work. Whether you need to offer a hybrid option, have the budget for an offsite space, or need to use the office, consider the following to enhance the experience:

  • Look for good natural light and character. (A windowless hotel conference room is not ideal.)
  • Provide comfortable seating for all. (Simple, but we’ve seen it happen.)
  • Guarantee wall space or boards for pinning materials and capturing ideas.
  • Don’t forget AV needs: a projector for presenting, a screen if someone needs to collaborate remotely, etc.

Want more information on choosing a space? Check out 7 Things to Consider When Choosing a Workshop Venue here.

Step 5: Gather Supplies

With space, participants, and a solid agenda, you now need supplies to execute your workshop. Your exact supplies will be driven by your activities, agenda, and chosen space. Here are some basics to get you started:

If you want to dive deeper into the specific supplies that are recommended for a design sprint (which are helpful for any workshop), read here.

Pro-Tip: If possible, bring a filling breakfast and lunch so you don’t have to leave to eat. Also, healthy snacks, water, and coffee will keep people engaged as the day goes on.

Step 6: Be the Leader

It’s the big day! It’s time for you to lead the group through the agenda and activities you worked so hard on. The more you facilitate, the more skilled you become. 

Make sure to be yourself and keep the following things in mind as you lead the team in design thinking:

  • You’re the boss: People are looking for you to guide them. You’re prepared and are the expert. Establish your authority early and feel confident making decisions and telling the group when it’s time to move forward in the agenda.
  • Establish rules: Let the group know the rules of the day. Encourage people to stay off their phones and to fully participate in the session. Let them know that there are designated breaks.

Give everyone a voice: As the facilitator, you are responsible for making sure everyone is heard. If you notice someone being quiet, pull them into the conversation. You designed the guest list with their contribution in mind.

Step 7: Wrap It Up & Play It Back

After the workshop has come to a close, recognize your role as a design thinking facilitator to equip the group with tools for long-term success. Consider these in the days afterward:

  • Photograph and document: Make sure you photograph important output from the meeting: Post-its, diagrams, or worksheets that may have been created.
  • Synthesize the learnings: Take time to reflect on the session and the ideas that came of it. Create a MURAL board or a short presentation to share with participants and their teammates.

Get the group back together: Schedule time to share back your learnings with the participants and make plans together for how to implement thinking and learnings into daily work.

Looking to become a Design Thinking Facilitator?

What’s the importance of bringing in a professional to lead the session? A design thinking facilitator positively disrupts the team dynamic. Read up on why professional facilitation can make a difference.

We hope you’re excited to become a Design Thinking facilitator. Voltage Control has design thinking facilitator training will maximize your facilitation skills. Our Facilitation Certification programs will guide you through key facilitation skills and provide you with ample opportunities to practice.

Article originally published at VoltageControl.com

Image credit: Pexels

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The Impact of AI on Human Civilization

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A New Era of Possibility

The Impact of AI on Human Civilization: A New Era of Possibility

GUEST POST from Douglas Ferguson

OpenAI released ChatGPT on Nov 30th, 2022, which has captivated the public due to its applicability to various needs and asks and near-human accuracy at astounding efficiency. AI has traditionally elicited mixed reactions, ranging from excitement and anticipation to fear and hesitation. With the introduction of this revolutionary technology, questions about its implications are beginning to arise. How will this affect knowledge workers? Which career paths are likely to become obsolete? What new knowledge do marketers, creators, programmers, etc. need to acquire to make the most of this changing landscape?

These are valid and important questions to consider, and it is essential that we have open and honest conversations about the potential impacts of AI on the workforce and how its emergence is making us and our co-workers feel. As the workplace continues to evolve and adopt more of these tools, It is critical to explore some common fears people have about AI and discuss ways that individuals and organizations can adapt, maintain the best parts of our humanity, and thrive alongside these technological advancements.

The tools now available to the public are incredibly powerful and are ushering in a momentous time of discovery. The availability of such powerful AI tools has opened up new avenues for discovery and innovation in various fields. GPT-3, Claude,  Sparrow, and the technology they will inspire all have the potential to revolutionize the way we communicate, learn, and interact with information. If we approach this game-changing tech with humanity, curiosity, and excitement, we can easily step into a world where AI is not only a tool but also a collaborator.

A common reaction to experiencing the power of AI is a feeling of cheating or that we are replaceable, this leads to discussion and debate about whether people will lose their jobs. It’s important to remind ourselves that this feeling is not new or unique to AI. Consider innovations like the printing press or the internet. While initially seen as disruptive, more opportunity has always been generated than lost. New roles and markets emerge in times of massive change.

One unique thing about AI technologies, in particular, is that there are advancing and improving at an astonishing rate. This means that it’s an exciting time to play and watch and learn what can be done with these tool and how they might shape our work in the future. As we learn more and gain clarity and confidence, we are better suited to experiment with new approaches to our work. From there, we can consider how our jobs might shift and take on new requirements and meanings. If the AI can now automate 80% of your work, what can you do with that 80% that is now gifted back to you? Are you able to spend focus on the 20% that really provided the most value? The part that speak to your humanness?

While many people will shift habits and behaviors, some will shift into complete new roles with new titles that never existed before. We’ve already seen this happen in the AI ecosystem. A role that has specifically caught my attention is the “Prompt Engineer” I fondly like to refer to them as AI Facilitators. If you’ve spent any time with ChatGPT, you’ve learned that getting great results from Chat GPT is similar to getting great results from a room of people you are facilitating. You have to ask GREAT QUESTIONS.

Software companies seeking to add GPT capabilities into their products are hiring Prompt Engineers to create the best prompts for GTP to tailor the responses for their product use cases. Think of it like constructing the perfect MadLib. Consumers of a product will interact with the product and maybe fill in some data or make some requests in the app. The app will then submit that request and data to GTP by inserting the pieces into this perfectly crafted MadLib that will generate the ideal result for the end user. Prompt Engineers design these prompts and Madlib-like structures to get desired outcomes from the AI model.

It’s fun to watch the job boards and careers pages for AI consultancies and AI-forward tech companies to see what trends are emerging around new job titles. Reflecting on these observations and considering what that means for overall trends and how those might emerge in your work can lead to valuable insights. Take a look. What ideas surface for you when you consider potential new roles in this emerging landscape?

If nothing else, remember to be curious! It’s totally normal to feel overwhelmed, confused, scared, frustrated, dubious, and generally concerned. Take time to move past those reactions and cultivate the generative curiosity needed to learn and understand the technology. When we are curious, we see connections that are non-obvious, and when these pathways are illuminated are able to design our future more effortlessly.

Putting It Into Action

As I mentioned previously, questions have always been paramount in facilitation, which is still true for ChatGTP and other language modules. While these tools are amazing, you won’t get far if you don’t know how to ask good questions or know what questions you should be asking. Questions are uniquely human. No other being discovered has this ability. And, when we engage in self-reflection, introspection, and empathy towards others, we connect more deeply with our humanity—leading to a better understanding of our thoughts, emotions, and values as well as how we are connected to those around us. Thoughtful inquiry cultivates a greater sense of awareness, compassion, and connection within our teams, organizations, and, eventually the AIs alongside us.

Master facilitators have spent years honing their skills and developing their ability to attune to and guide the flow of energy, attention, and conflict in a room. Successful facilitation in the future will also require mastering the art of collaborating with machines. Adapting and extending existing practices to maximize new potential with AI will be the norm. In preparation for this new age of collaboration, we’ve started experimenting by employing proven facilitation techniques while interacting with ChatGPT and other tools. The familiarity of the tools provides some comfort and confidence as we experiment with the unknown.

Start with classic facilitative questions to help guide ChatGPT toward your outcomes:

  1. How might we clarify and align the goals and objectives?
  2. How might we identify the tone and perspective?
  3. How might we recognize empathetic requirements that are considerate to our audience?
  4. How might we brainstorm and generate ideas for prompts and test them?
  5. How might we evaluate and prioritize prompts with core values in mind?

If you are a leader, facilitation is key to your work, or you are curious to grow into these areas, start by familiarizing yourself with the capabilities and nuances of the tools. You’ll want to start with any tool-specific tutorials to familiarize yourself with the UI and functions of the tool. Once you are on the tool and ready to start experimenting, take a moment to explore and learn how to craft questions that yield the best outcomes. As with any good question, think about the context of your audience, what do they know, the purpose of your question, what’s the format of a really good response, and even the types of answers you’d like to avoid.  Remember that we have spent our entire lives asking, communicating, and presenting questions to other humans, and it will take some time and experimentation to master questions for machines.

I have been experimenting with ChatGPT and have made some progress on how to get the most interesting results.

  • Always make sure to start with your purpose, and think clearly about why this is important. Find ways to incorporate your why into the questions and prompts you construct for ChatGPT.

  • Consider the personality of, or style of, the response that might be most valuable to you. Would you like to have your meeting summarized from the perspective of an investigative journalist, Charles Dickens, or Gandhi Think about the tone, attitude, and mindsets you seek to convey.

  • Remember that ChatGPT is there to perform tasks for you. What is the thing you want it to generate? An essay, a poem, a love letter, a summary, a report, or computer code.

  • One noteworthy feature of ChatGPT is that it can reference up to approximately 3000 previous words from the conversation. Take advantage of this is beneficial for requesting revisions and getting the tool to generate variations and adaptations until you get results you are happy with. Give it specific instructions on how to improve.

  • Include specific qualities or requirements you have for defining a good response. This may not be immediately apparent when you first start, and you’ll need to rely on iterating and refining to get the answer you want. Over time you’ll get a handle on the criteria and instructions that are important to you. Save these for the next time you use ChatGPT.

We have created a template laying out these steps in further detail so you can play with ideas and help streamline this process.

ChatGPT has lots of potential but how do we get the most out of it? It’s all about the prompt. Writing and tweaking prompts specific to your needs is key to unlocking the best results. Use this tool template to think through what you’d like to achieve and how to construct the ideal prompt for ChatGPT to get you there.

Collaborating With AI

Practice, practice, practice! Learn to ask the right questions and become more comfortable collaborating with AI. This is key because, eventually, AI will work with us on our teams. We need to become accustomed to how they operate and how they “think”, as it will be different than collaborating with humans. We have generations of experience collaborating with humans, and now is the time to start building that same experience with machines.

Imagine you are on a team of five, four humans and one AI.

  1. What does collaboration with AI look like, and how does it feel?
  2. What questions will the team ask the AI?
  3. How will we learn to work and collaborate in new ways?
  4. What does it mean to invite AI in as a team member?
  5. How might we notice and encourage it to have more ethical and inclusive answers?

Inviting the AI in as a team member means giving it context and teaching it how to work best with us. We can help it learn our culture and values to better align with our mission, vision, and purpose. Building a strategy to incorporate AI as a team member is not unlike working with people in an organization. When a company’s strategy is aligned with its values and purpose, it can create a more meaningful and fulfilling work experience for employees. AI can be an extension of this, reinforcing desired norms and behaviors. Creating a safe environment allowing people to bring their whole selves to work and tap into their innate sense of purpose and connection with others. This can, in turn, help employees lean deeper into their humanity and contribute to a more positive, ethical, and sustainable organizational culture.

Transcending The AI

There are many examples of how technology has allowed us to put aside trivial matters and  elevate as humans. AI is currently simplifying tasks of all kinds by efficiently performing mundane tasks on demand. For example, AI design tools are able to nearly eliminate the creation of UI design, allowing designers to spend their time considering the strategy, conceptual design, how to elevate user experience, and how to address accessibility or other concerns. While the simple example is handy for examples sakes, the potential is much greater than just moving from tactical work to strategic work. As these tools advance and provide deeper functionality for us, we will shift into a higher state of work, finding deeper connections and relating at levels never before experienced in the workplace.

Humans are exceptionally adaptable organisms, and the AI revolution is a time that calls for us to lean into that ability. As with any change, we must also be considerate of long-term systemic implications and sustainability of our actions and work. As you embark on your journey, consider the ethics of what you or your organization are asking of the AI.  Think about the second and third-order effects of what you are asking. If the AI excels at doing this task, what might result from that and so on and so forth? What are the long-term consequences of that? Finally, consider if we might want to pick a different starting point or provide more conditions to properly guide or constrain the AI.

I’m excited about what the future holds for us. As we explore these times together, join me as I focus on appreciating and respecting the diversity of experiences and perspectives that make us all unique. As we begin to create our first relationships with AI, remember to reach firmly into the deepest depths of our humanity.

Article first published at VoltageControl.com

Image credit: Pixabay

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Hyper-Innovation

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A Change Management Strategy for Better, Faster Ideas

Hyper-Innovation

GUEST POST from Douglas Ferguson

The nature of innovation is that it is a hyper-fluid force that is never fully predictable. A well-curated change management strategy helps to harness the power of innovative change.

Innovation plays a significant role in driving positive change, as 51% of organizations attribute their success to innovative initiatives, all of whom also experienced an 11% increase in revenue.

In this article, we trace the pathway to innovative change in the following topics:

  • The Plan for Change
  • Designing Strategies for Change
  • An Agile Approach to Transformation
  • Getting Curious About Change

The Plan for Change

In charting a course to bigger and better ideas, a clear change management strategy helps to identify a direct path forward. Creating a thoughtful change management strategy allows you to plan several steps ahead and steer change in your favor.

The most intentional change management strategies focus on proactive change. The following are key elements in creating a proactive path for change:

1. Prepare to Plan

Preparing to create a change management strategy is essentially planning to plan. As you consider the best approach to creating change, take time to map out each step of your strategy. While it may seem more effective to just dive in, remember that intentionality is the name of the game in lasting change.

2. Cultivate Transparency

Many changes are unexpected and unwanted. For this reason, many organizations make the mistake of keeping changes quiet from the rest of the team. However, this type of secrecy can sabotage your organizational transformation.

Make it a point to cultivate a sense of transparency at every level of your organization. By including all parties in your plans for change, you’ll get a head start on driving innovation. When team members feel included in major decisions like a big change, they are more likely to accept and support it going forward.

3. Encourage High Tolerance

Tolerance for change is a muscle that should be exercised. Challenge your team members to fight their resistance to change by sharing the benefits of change. Explaining “what’s in it for me” gives team members a reason to root for change while increasing their tolerance for the unknown.

4. Monitor and Measure 

Just as true change is a long-term endeavor, creating a change management strategy isn’t just a one-time event. Successful strategies for change will never be static, making monitoring and measuring key performance indicators a perpetual part of the change management process.

Design a fluid change management strategy by teaching your team to measure success, monitor potential problems, and resolve issues as efficiently as possible. This way, your strategy for change will evolve according to your needs.

Designing Strategies for Change

A design thinking change management strategy places team members at the heart of a change. This people-first approach to purposeful change lets team leaders curate a strategy with the greatest benefits for all parties involved. At Voltage Control, we explore design thinking as a change management practice to inspire the most innovative ideas, allowing team members to shape new initiatives together.

Apply design thinking to your change management strategy in the following ways:

1. Find the ‘What’ of Change

Design thinking facilitates purposeful change. Shape your change management strategy by determining the “what” of your change to inform your path to the most viable and innovative solutions.

2. Center Empathy

Successful changes tap into our emotions. Design thinking cuts to the heart of a change by prioritizing empathy from the very beginning. Harness empathy in your next change by considering your team members’ mindsets and perspectives before implementing change. Continue to research how all participants will be impacted by a change as you incorporate empathy into your change strategy.

3. Use Divergent Thinking

Employ divergent thinking in your change management strategy. Through a design-centered approach, shape a plan for change that encourages collaborative thinking, integrated innovation, and holistic decision-making.

4. Practice Constant Experimentation

Experimentation is the beating heart of design thinking. Make the strategizing process more tangible by testing new ideas and running experiments to see what works. By testing an idea on a small scale, you’ll be able to make the necessary changes to help shape your initiative for real change.

An Agile Approach to Transformation

An agile approach to change management zeroes in on a faster, more urgent need for transformation. Agile principles offer a valid framework for transformation. Agile is tailor-made for systemic problem-solving, allowing team members to find the most groundbreaking solutions to the most persistent problem.

According to Carie Davis, a corporate innovation specialist, inventing new methods for problem-solving is the key to driving innovative change. Regardless of how powerful an initial initiative is, lasting change won’t take hold until it truly transforms an organization. For this reason, Davis suggests that businesses initiate long-term shifts by starting small and by making little changes at the core of the company. These smaller changes are a key part of Agile change management strategy and are instrumental in catalyzing lasting transformation.

Consider applying agile methodology to your change strategy in the following ways:

1. Go Lean

  • Focus on a change strategy that provides increased value and positive change. Going lean allows for rapid transformation by limiting factors that waste resources, energy, and time.

2. Practice Continuous Improvement

  • Agile champions continuous improvement through small changes over time. These small changes lead to the most significant shifts.

3. Encourage Employee Authorship

  • Innovative change doesn’t happen with a top-down approach. Create an agile-informed change management strategy by bringing your employees into the decision-making process. This way, all team members can determine the most pressing areas for improvement and make meaningful contributions as they work together to co-create the next change.

    • 4. Practice Reflective Improvement 

  • In shaping a change management strategy to grow with your organization, practicing reflective improvement guarantees consistent long-term change. Regularly evaluate your organization’s performance and initiatives as you continue to shape your change management strategy into a better, leaner plan.

    • Getting Curious About Change

    In designing the most innovative change management strategy, don’t forget to consider a sense of curiosity. Thrive through change and drive innovation by cultivating a curious desire to be better than ever.

    Research shows that curiosity allows us to welcome new experiences with less defensiveness and aggressiveness. By responding to the unknown in uniquely positive and inquisitive ways, your teams can dream up the most imaginative solutions on their path to lasting change.

    In addition to helping teams accept change, facilitating a sense of curiosity is an essential component in designing an innovative workplace. In creating a culture of curiosity, you’ll encourage team members to become change agents themselves. With a desire to learn more, be more, and do more, you’ll be able to reframe the potential pitfalls of change and the fears that come with it as an opportunity to get better and better.

    Innovation and change are infinitely interconnected. Harness the power of both by designing a change management strategy that continues to transform your organization in the best ways possible. Explore our offerings to learn more about taking change management to the next level.

    Image credit: Pixabay

    Article first seen at VoltageControl.com 

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    Engaging Consciousness in the Emotional Work of Organizational Transformation

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    Engaging Consciousness in the Emotional Work of Organizational Transformation

    GUEST POST from Douglas Ferguson

    Organizational transformation is a uniquely human endeavor. Navigating the journey to change starts with understanding the employee experience and creating space for emotional safety in the workplace.

    According to organizational behavior expert Sigal Barsade, emotions are the key to encouraging higher performance and achievement. Her research shows that emotions influence employees’ wellness in addition to driving productivity. Thus, to influence organizational transformation, leaders need to take a closer look at how emotions factor into the employee experience.

    In this article, we’ll discuss emotions and their role to change management in the following topics:

    • The Employee Experience
    • The Transformation Timeline
    • Emotions at Work
    • An Engagement of Consciousness

    The Employee Experience

    Without a keen understanding of the employee experience and your team’s emotional state, sustainable change is more fantasy than reality. In your efforts to initiate organizational transformation, consider first transforming employees’ work experience to promote a sense of emotional well-being.

    In shaping the employee experience, it’s critical to understand employees’ expectations for emotional safety in the workplace. As most employees value their mental health above all else, they expect their working environment to promote trust, purpose, and social cohesion. Moreover, they want to know that leadership recognizes their contributions and that there is room and opportunity for sustainable growth and development. Similarly, team members want their personal sense of purpose to be in alignment with the organization.

    With increased emotional wellness comes higher employee engagement and a more motivated workforce. With a stronger sense of emotional safety in the employee experience, leaders will find that their team is prepared to engage in organizational transformation.

    The Transformation Timeline

     “You have to attract people… you can’t bribe or coerce transformation.”
    Greg Satell

    Once you prioritize the employee experience in your change strategy, you can begin the organizational transformation timeline. Organizational transformation is a process that happens through gradual change, resulting in sustainable behavioral transformation. This type of comprehensive change can only occur through a series of repeatable actions and innovative systems, not one-time initiatives.

    Take steps towards sustainable change with the following phases of organizational transformation:

    Phase One: Fight Resistance

    To sustain organizational transformation, leaders and team members need a solid strategy for managing resistance. Resistance often stems from the discomfort that change brings.

    To move beyond this fear, leaders should explain that while transformation involves many unknown factors, the forthcoming change will bring overall positive results. By showing team members how they will benefit from a change, leaders can overcome resistance and encourage their employees to support the initiative.

    • Freezing of Behaviors
      In Lewis’ Change management model, change is broken into three steps: freezing, changing, and refreezing.

      In the first phase of organizational transformation, the “unfreezing” process will occur. This involves recognizing one’s need for change and defining new behaviors that replace the former methods and practices. During this very fluid phase, team members and leaders identify and share data that supports a need for change.

    Phase Two: Facilitate Adjustment

    After strategically managing resistance to change, the next phase in achieving organizational transformation is facilitating the adjustment period. During this phase, team members are no longer actively resisting transformation but still need time to adjust to the changes the new initiative brings.

    In the adjustment period, changes are discussed in detail, and team members are invited to provide criticism and feedback. This phase allows team members to personalize the change as they recognize their individual roles in achieving organizational transformation. In a successful adjustment phase, every team member is aligned with the necessary actions for the next phase: acceptance.

    • Changing

    Within the adjustment phase of organizational transformation, team leaders will actively change their old habits. At this time, all stakeholders work to replace undesired behaviors with desired ones.

    Phase Three: Foster Acceptance

    In phase three of the organizational transformation timeline, you’ll lead your team into the acceptance phase with a solid vision and strategy for sustaining the changes over time.

    • Refreezing

    In the foster acceptance phase, refreezing occurs when changes are stabilized and become the new normal. As the organizational transformation nears completion, team members are in the best position to cement these changes by ensuring a legacy of growth.

    Phase Four: Ensure Consistency

    The fourth phase of organizational transformation establishes consistent and sustainable growth. Consistency is a direct result of repeatable actions from strategic processes, intentional routines, and innovative practices that allow each team member to enact changes that carry into the future continuously.

    Emotions at Work

    A clear strategy for long-term change is only a roadmap to organizational transformation. After setting the stage for change to take place, leaders must engage in the emotional work of transformation.

    Change takes emotional labor, requiring an environment that is uniquely attuned to address employees’ emotional needs. In the workplace, emotions can be an accelerator for transformation. To engage emotions in the most effective way, leaders can create conditions that ensure psychological safety.

    Research shows that to solidify organizational transformation, we must mitigate emotional harm and, in doing so, foster emotional commitment from team members. While emotional harm isn’t tangible, it presents itself in certain ways that can create anxiety, fear, and similar negative responses in employees. Essentially, working to facilitate positive experiences alongside potentially negative emotions is the key to harnessing a safe space for transformation. Leaders that are able to manage the effects of stress successfully can transform a high-pressure environment into a space for high performance.

    Sonja Kresojevic, the founder of Spinnaker Co. and a proponent of using agile principles for organizational change, firmly believes that true transformation is a product of an empowered organization. According to  Kresojevic, the more we humanize change through emotional labor and healing initiatives, the more we are able to influence others and start shifting organizations in the direction of transformation.

    Leaders can promote healing and psychological safety by allowing employees to share their thoughts and criticisms freely and without retribution. With an increase in support and emotional safety, your team will be ripe for organizational transformation.

    An Engagement of Consciousness

    An organization’s penchant for the unknown is essential in driving organizational transformation. In your efforts to humanize change management, it’s crucial to understand and accept human nature’s role in experiencing change. In understanding our natural inclinations toward risk aversion in the face of change, we can work to replace this avoidance of uncertainty with curiosity, vulnerability, and authenticity in the workplace. This approach to change management will transform the way we work, the risks we take, and our willingness to accept change.

    Much of organizational transformation is dependent on accepting uncertainty: that the future is unclear and we don’t have all the answers. The real secret to driving organizational transformation is empowering people to develop and accept new ideas on their own. Managing the uncertainty of organizational transformation takes time, allowing for the unfreezing, changing, and refreezing process to take place as stakeholders consider their options.

    Rob Evans, Master Coach of Collaboration and Transformation Designer, shares that giving people a chance to court the unknown, is essential for change acceptance as it allows new ideas to seep in and take hold.

    Practicing patience during the change management process allows for “engagement in the full consciousness,” in which leaders can kickstart the organizational transformation timeline and encourage employees to buy into the change. By pairing deliberate strategy with time for authentic employee engagement, radical transformation is an inevitability.

    Ready to start the journey to organizational transformation? Consider a new approach to the employee experience. Voltage Control can help you and your team define the best path for your organization’s transformation. 

    This article originally appeared at VoltageControl.com

    Image credit: Pixabay

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    Designing Innovation – Accelerating Creativity via Innovation Strategy

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    Designing Innovation - Accelerating Creativity via Innovation Strategy

    GUEST POST from Douglas Ferguson

    To innovate is to survive.

    As an overwhelming 80% of founders believe innovation to be the heart of organizational growth, employing an innovation strategy that promotes,  facilitates, and feeds innovation is essential.

    Developing a solid plan for facilitating innovation in your organization is a necessary step in your company’s growth. In this article, we’ll discuss the best ways to harness innovation as we explore the following topics:

    • The Source of Innovation
    • What is an Innovation Strategy?
    • Strategizing for Innovation
    • Innovating from Within
    • A System of Innovation

    The Source of Innovation

    Innovation often feels like a form of magic: it’s a powerful yet elusive force that drives the best ideas and creates the greatest breakthroughs. While some prefer to wait for inspiration to strike, happenstance is hardly the driving force behind innovation.

    The true source of innovation is the organization itself. Leaders must intentionally create systems, processes, and strategies that allow for innovation at every turn.

    Innovation is similar to any other corporate function as it requires careful strategizing to make the best ideas come to life. In doing this, leaders can set the stage and make the most innovative ideas and processes a regular practice in their organization. Ultimately, innovation may appear in the initial spark of a great idea, but it takes purposeful, thoughtful, and conscious planning for a great idea to exist beyond that moment of genius.

    What is an Innovation Strategy?

    Driving organizational innovation starts with creating an innovation strategy. An innovation strategy identifies processes that allow for the most creative and effective solutions.

    The ideal innovation strategy allows an organization to zero in on its audience’s expectations by:

    •  Identifying customers’ unmet needs
    • Targeting these needs for growth

    A healthy innovation strategy allows an organization to create the most efficient pathways to resolving these needs and growing its company. Effective strategies for innovation follow a prioritization method to help teams understand which ideas hold the highest return. In creating a solid innovation strategy, leaders must develop a system that can be repeated time and again.

    Strategizing for Innovation

    From defining your goals to using tech to transform your organization into a hybrid model, the possibilities are endless when it comes to innovation. As you design your innovation strategy, it’s essential to understand the nuances of innovation. Working with an innovation consultant can help you iron out a strategy that’s best for your team. With an expert in innovation, you’ll be able to better determine effective next steps toward the business’s goals.

    Consultants are equipped to explain the subtleties in innovative strategizing, such as the various types of innovation:

    • Routine Innovation.

    Routine innovation is a building block that adds to the company’s pre-existing structure, such as its customer base or earlier versions of a product.

    • Disruptive Innovation.

    Disruptive innovation results in a new business model that disrupts or challenges the competition’s business models.

    • Radical Innovation.

    Radical innovation introduces new inventions, software, or technology to completely transform an existing business model. This type of innovation is best used to help organizations achieve a competitive advantage in the market.

    • Architectural Innovation.

    Architectural innovation uses new technology to create new markets. Essentially, architectural innovation changes the entire overall design of a product by redesigning existing components.

    In creating the best innovation strategy for your current needs, take into account the following guidelines:

    • Clarifying your goals and priorities.

    The right innovation strategy outlines your organizational goals and efforts to identify the best actionable steps to achieve these goals.

    • Fostering alignment within your organization.

    Alignment should be at the center of any innovation strategy. Everyone must be aligned in pursuing a common goal for an organization to achieve new ideas and an innovative way of working.

    • Encouraging your team to keep improving.

    Complacency kills innovation. Make sure your company is always ready to move on to the next great idea by making continuous growth and development a key part of your innovation strategy.

    • Reaching long-term success.

    Focusing on reaching long-term success is an essential part of any innovation strategy.

    Innovating From Within

    An innovation strategy becomes the most effective when leaders can ingrain the processes and practices into their culture. Once innovation becomes an integral part of how a team works, they’ll be able to keep innovation top-of-mind.

    By innovating from within, you’ll create a sustainable innovation strategy that becomes part of your company culture. Consider these pillars of innovation as you center innovation strategy at the heart of your company:

    1. Models: Innovation strategies fall into two models:
    • Business model innovation
      In this process, an organization completely adapts its business model to add value to its customers.
    • Leveraging an existing business model
      This process allows an organization to use its existing business model while bringing innovation to the business itself.
    1. Intrapreneurship
      Intrapreneurship empowers employees to act as entrepreneurs while working within the company. This encourages each person to create and act on their ideas, thus fostering a culture of ongoing company-wide innovation.

    2. Corporate Accelerator
      Corporate accelerators are programs started by larger enterprises, offering aspiring entrepreneurs the opportunity to find mentors, access seed capital, and make important connections.

    3. Innovation Labs
      Innovation labs are a starting point for R&D teams and startups to facilitate new ideas.

    4. Open Innovation Program
      This model of R&D encourages existing employees to collaborate on new business ideas that add value to the company.

    5. External Accelerators
      Though external accelerators don’t meet in-house, they can add incredible value to an organization. Businesses can use external accelerators to advance startups and drive concepts that align with their goals and needs without covering the costs of running an in-house program.

    6. Collaboration
      Collaboration is an integral component in shaping a cohesive innovation strategy. Through constant discussion, interaction, and creative collaboration, all members of an organization work together to bring their ideas to life.

    7. Ideation
      Managing innovation requires organizations to manage ideation. In doing so, leaders work to identify the best plans for analyzing, gathering, and implementing the right ideas. Ultimately, companies need an effective system that will transform an idea into a process that gets results.

    8. Measurement
      Innovation strategies should include a plan to measure success by considering relevant metrics for each goal. For example, KPIs such as email subscribers, website traffic, and social shares are excellent metrics for tracking brand awareness.

    A System of Innovation

    Developing a comprehensive innovation strategy must go beyond general objectives such as achieving growth, creating value, and beating competitors. To truly create company-wide change through innovation, organizations should clearly articulate specific objectives that will allow for the most sustainable competitive advantage.

    A thorough innovation strategy successfully embeds innovation in the very system of an organization. To implement such systemic innovation, design your innovation strategy with the following objectives:

    • Creating Long-Term Value for Potential Customers

    An innovation strategy should always consider the most effective ways to create long-term value for customers. In developing a cohesive strategy, consider the type of value you’re aiming to create through innovation. Value can be created in many ways, including improving customer experience, making a product more affordable, or benefiting society at large.

    In your efforts to identify what values to zero in on, consider those that will have the greatest impact in the long term. This way, your innovation strategy will include continuously iterating towards better designs in the future.

    • Capturing Value Generated From Innovations 

    Innovations easily attract competitors that can pose a risk to the original product or idea. In your efforts to create a thorough innovation strategy, consider how your company plans to capture the value its innovations create.

    For example, a company that creates an exciting new product should be prepared for its competition to create more affordable prototypes. In the worst-case scenario, the competition may capture the value of the innovation.

    Consider these risks in your innovation strategy by identifying what complementary services, products, assets, and capabilities may improve customer loyalty. This way, you’ll already have a plan in place to ensure your organization continues to profit from every innovation.

    • Strategizing for Business Model Innovation

    Technology plays an important role in innovation but isn’t the only path to new ideas. In developing a robust innovation strategy, consider the level of technology and your preferred method of innovation to pursue.

    Harnessing the magic of innovation takes careful planning. Need help driving innovation in your organization? At Voltage Control, we help leaders develop innovative strategies through change! Contact us today to discuss the best path to innovation. 

    Image credit: Pexels

    Article first published here: voltagecontrol.com

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    Effective Facilitation for All

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    How Leadership Fundamentals Benefit Everyone

    Effective Facilitation for All

    GUEST POST from Douglas Ferguson

    Effective facilitation isn’t limited to the inner workings of staff meetings. True facilitation goes beyond simply setting an agenda: it’s a mindset, framework, and way of being.

    Excellent facilitators know how to get the best out of their teams and design conversations that are innovative, exciting, and productive.

    In this article, we explore how the fundamentals of facilitation affect an organization in the following topics:

    • Leading with Great Expectations
    • Effective Facilitation for Everyone
    • Facilitation with a Purpose

    Leading with Great Expectations

    At its core, great facilitation is an engaging conversation. In practicing effective facilitation, leaders make sure all communication is as clear and thoughtful as possible. Facilitators can begin this conversation by intentionally setting their expectations with all stakeholders in every conversation, meeting, and project.

    Often, meetings end with attendees unaware of their colleagues’ and leaders’ expectations. By focusing on effective facilitation, leaders can identify and communicate their expectations as well as the expectations of everyone else in the room.

    Consider the following facilitation fundamentals when identifying others’ expectations and needs ahead of a meeting:

    • Personal Preparation

    Preparation is essential for any form of facilitation. Whether you’re leading a meeting or heading up a project, participants expect you to come prepared. Demonstrate proper facilitation techniques by preparing to be physically, emotionally, and mentally ready for your presentation.

    • Practice

    Practice is the next step in proper facilitation. In practicing, you’ll be able to review your process and identify any areas needed for adjustment. Moreover, practicing will help you visualize your upcoming session, anticipate problems, and prepare alternative plans should something go wrong.

    • Process

    Effortless facilitation follows a seamless process designed specifically for your audience. Facilitators have a variety of processes to choose from, including strategic planning, problem-solving, decision-making, and more.

    • Place

    Your physical or virtual environment plays an important role in your facilitation ventures. It’s essential to be as intentional as possible in selecting the space for your next session. Consider the requirements for a space, such as the size of the room, what equipment is needed, and any other elements that may affect the flow of your meeting.

    • Purpose

    The purpose may be the single most important component of effective facilitation. Your purpose will outline the end goal of a meeting and will communicate why the session is taking place.

    • Perspective

    Perspective is as essential to effective facilitation as the purpose. Your perspective allows you to contextualize the goals, mission, vision, and purpose of your meeting.

    • Product

    As effective facilitation hinges on meeting with a purpose, understanding what that purpose will produce is just as important. Consider what deliverables should be created by the end of a project, meeting, or conversation. Additionally, be sure to define the most important goals and actionable steps required to achieve them.

    • People

    Facilitate with intention by identifying who should be in attendance. Learn more about each participant by researching the bias, potential barriers, and preconceived ideas that they may bring to each meeting. Likewise, be sure to highlight their strengths to further assess how they can be an asset in your conversation.

    Effective Facilitation for Everyone

    Integrating effective facilitation skills and techniques goes far beyond the walls of a meeting. A facilitative approach to leadership zeroes in on the positives of leading an active and engaged group. Facilitation techniques such as active listening and encouragement work to stimulate participative group conversation and collaboration.

    Every member of an organization can benefit from the power of facilitative leadership. Leaders that demonstrate and embody proper facilitation skills can impart these practices to their employees.

    Facilitation techniques benefit employees in the following ways:

    1. Fostering Collaboration and Learning

    Facilitation skills are essential in encouraging an environment of collaboration and learning. Encouraging team members to look at a situation from a different perspective, consider new solutions, and understand how to bring the best out of each other will result in the most productive experiences.

    In creating a culture of learning, leaders should take the time to learn from their teams as well. Giving your employees a platform to offer their own insights is the best way to invite them into this collaborative process of co-creating learning.

    2. Getting More From Meeting Attendees

    As employees adopt the elements of effective facilitation, they’ll bring more of their skills, focus, and energy to each meeting. Equipped with the skills to act as influencers amongst their peers, each employee will become an active participant in the meeting, encouraging each other to make the most out of their time together.

    3. Improving Productivity

    As team members work together on various projects, effective facilitation skills allow them to move forward in the most productive, cost-effective, and timely manner. When employees incorporate their finely-honed facilitation skills, they work together efficiently, converse productively, and solve problems effectively. Ultimately, facilitation fundamentals allow everyone from team members to management to make the most of their time at work.

    4. Boosting Group Dynamics

    Incorporating effective facilitation skills helps improve group dynamics as well. All team members benefit from improved communication strategies, both in and out of the structured setting of meetings. These strategies allow all participants to better express their thoughts, opinions, and concerns as they work together to achieve a common goal.

    Teams that invest in developing their communication skills are likely to retain the best employees. Statistics show that organizations that practice strong communication skills experience 50% less attrition overall.

    5. Encouraging Active Participation

    While effective facilitation is often considered from a leadership perspective, it is also an excellent catalyst in driving employee participation. Oftentimes, team members don’t feel comfortable enough to share their true opinions in a meeting. Moreover, they tend to bring the bare minimum to the workplace if they don’t feel as though their participation, efforts, and insights are valued.

    Organizations that champion effective facilitation as part of their company culture are actively shaping an environment that makes employees feel as though they are truly part of their team. Feeling this sense of psychological safety allows all stakeholders to feel comfortable enough to put their all into their work.

    6. Encouraging Team Competency

    Leaders that excel in facilitation techniques are able to engender a sense of self-efficacy in their team. Oftentimes, leaders fail to go beyond methods of coaching to help their team members understand and internalize pertinent information. Effective facilitation helps to bridge the gap of competency in an organization.

    Leaders must encourage team members on the path toward true competency. This approach to facilitation is essential to incorporate a culture where facilitation skills are easily transferable.

    Lauren Green, Executive Director of Dancing with Markers, shares that the path to competency starts with meeting employees where they are:

    “First, you’re unconsciously incompetent. You’re unconscious. And then you become aware [of] your incompetence, and then you’re consciously competent. And then you start to grow your skills. So then you’re consciously competent. And then when you don’t have to think about it anymore, then you’re unconsciously competent.”

    Facilitation with a Purpose

    Just as the purpose is a powerful tool in leading a meeting, it’s also essential in building effective facilitation skills in others. Intentionally investing in facilitation training allows organizations the opportunity to teach, practice, and embody the structured techniques of effective facilitation.

    The nature of effective facilitation is that nothing can take place without purpose. From managing meetings to running projects, leading with the fundamentals of facilitation helps every facet of an organization run smoothly.

    Lead with purpose by focusing on the following effective facilitation practices:

    1. Listening first and speaking second
    2. Leading with effective communication
    3. Managing time and tracking deadlines
    4. Asking intentional questions
    5. Inviting others to engage
    6. Creating a focused and psychologically safe environment
    7. Providing unbiased objectivity
    8. Acting as a decider in group discussions

    Effective facilitation benefits everyone, whether you’re leading a meeting or encouraging employees to take their leadership skills to the next level. At Voltage Control, we help leaders and teams harness the power of facilitation. Contact us to learn how to apply these fundamentals to your organization.

    Article originally published on VoltageControl.com

    Image credit: Pexels

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    The Battle Against the Half-Life of Learning

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    The Battle Against the Half-Life of Learning

    GUEST POST from Douglas Ferguson

    Leading with learning in mind is a necessary skill to consistently innovate as a team. Continually learning and revisiting skill sets is crucial to combating the half-life of learning.

    As leaders, it’s important to make time available to our employees to freshen up their skills and knowledge through programs and tools. It’s equally important to ask ourselves, “how am I helping to provide the right resources?”.

    Below, we’ll discuss the following:

    • What is the half-life of learning?
    • How can we contribute as leaders?
    • Why should individual growth be the focus?

    What is the half-life of learning?

    Now, what is the half-life of learning? For one, it’s something that is not talked about frequently enough. It affects all of us, no matter what we specialize in and touch day-to-day. It lives within marketing campaigns, our bodies, the living things around us, our skill sets, and more.

    Put succinctly, it’s the halfway point of one’s strength becoming ineffective. Regarding learning or knowledge, the half-life is the halfway point for a current skill set or facts to no longer be true or effective. 

    Ernest Rutherford discovered the concept of a half-life within the context of science. He deduced that it takes a certain period of time for an element to decay halfway.

    For example, we can ask, “what’s the half-life of caffeine in a group of 100 people?“ Caffeine’s half-life is about five fours. By the fifth hour, the caffeine’s effects have fully diminished within half (50/100) of the people. Within the half-life period of the next five hours, the effects expire on half of the remaining 50 people (25/100), and so on. Like any other element, its effects vary per person, but the half-life serves as a comprehensible range for its lifespan.

    We can also practically apply this to work. Within marketing, how long can a campaign represent relevant and effective information? Within learning, how long are someone’s learned skills still relevant?

    Say that you’ve been operating with skills you learned years ago. Since then, your competitive advantage with those learned skills has diminished. The World Economic Forum claims that “the half-life of a job skill is about five years (meaning that every five years, that skill is about half as valuable as it was before).”

    How can we contribute as leaders?

    Suppose you consciously support your employees in real learning, educating themselves, participating in important programs within their specialty, etc… In that case, they remain relevant in their field and are significantly more valuable in their role. It’s a no-brainer when spelled out. As leaders, we need to make this a priority and hold ourselves and others accountable for staying ahead rather than playing catch-up.

    We lose information without practice and reinforcement. Putting this concept into practice is critical to working against the half-life of learning.

    How are we approaching accountability in this realm? These organizations offer structuring opportunities for learning and upkeep accountability. At Voltage Control, we have programs designed to keep organizations on track and sustain change.

    Maintaining a competitive advantage requires this continual learning. An environment for innovation can only be cultivated by staying ahead of the curve with knowledge and skills.

    What are the best resources for knowledge? Knowledge can be taught with content. Find the relevant educational content, and commit to time with it regularly. Are there education programs that employees can attend? Who in the space is in the business of educating others? We should be absorbing information that’s new to us.

    It’s also key to observe trends within certain fields. What is changing within their expertise in the next ten years, and is knowledge or experience required?

    What are the best resources for skills? They’ve learned through experience with others. The more we can encourage collaboration amongst individuals, the better our team. We develop skills by learning from those with more or different experiences, so it’s important to have confidence in your team’s structure and provide room for growth within the company, as well as to educate individuals about the half-life of learning so that they’re invested in their growth.

    Setting aside time specifically for continuing education in both knowledge and skills is vital.

    Where are we headed?

    As innovators, not only do we need to be ready to address change. We need to expect it and get well ahead of it.

    Within the workplace, demand does not match supply long-term. In 2020, the World Economic Forum claimed, “This lack of attention to upscaling will lead to an urgent disparity between workers and jobs. In the future, nine out of 10 jobs will require digital skills, yet today 44% of Europeans age 16 to 43 lack even basic digital abilities. In Europe, the impending skills gap will lead to 1.67 million unfilled vacancies for ICT professionals by 2025.”

    The world around us is constantly evolving.

    The half-life of learning is something to be embraced. It’s an opportunity to recognize that everyone’s skills fade and that innovation will always play a role in our lives. It’s a matter of whether we choose to continue learning or accept our past experience as the extent of it. Learning and management play equal roles in the workplace. To impact our work, leaders need to allow employees the time and resources to develop and learn information relevant to business goals.

    Why should individual growth be the focus?

    Keeping this half-life of learning in mind is crucial from a hiring perspective. Degrees from decades ago have little to nothing to do with the knowledge that’s relevant now. Thinking long-term, it’s also important to consider how roles need to evolve with time. Automation is likely to greatly impact needed skill sets in the current decade. For example, McKinsey claims, “6 of 10 current occupations have more than 30% of technically automatable activities.” They claim that while job opportunities will still exist, a significant portion of the population will need to learn new skill sets to remain relevant.

    People need to feel that there’s room for groove within their rules and that their responsibilities can develop as they do. How are we allowing employees to explore their interests and strengths? Are we using them to our advantage within the organization? Are we allowing them the flexibility to understand their strengths and value?

    Article originally published on VoltageControl.com

    Image Credit: Pixabay

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    Importance and Ethos of Empathy in Business

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    Importance and Ethos of Empathy in Business

    GUEST POST from Douglas Ferguson

    Why is empathy important in business? The reality is that though empathy focuses on identifying others’ emotions and connecting with your team in the workplace, true empathy has powerful results for every facet of an organization.

    Organizational Ethos: Why is Empathy Important in Business?

    Why is empathy important in business? The reality is that though empathy focuses on identifying others’ emotions and connecting with your team in the workplace, true empathy has powerful results for every facet of an organization.

    Empathy makes it possible to center each other’s needs, desires, and emotions at the heart of what you do. From navigating your intuition to working to identify and meet the needs of clients, workplace empathy is essential to effective leadership and future success.

    Below, we explore why is empathy important in business as we discuss:

    • Empathy in the Workplace
    • Empathy as Empowerment
    • The Ethos of Empathy
    • Why Empathy is Important for Business
    • Applications of Organizational Empathy

    Empathy in the Workplace

    Allowing empathy in the workplace encourages leading from the heart. By centering emotional intelligence in your organization, you’ll prioritize a people-first approach to leadership.

    Empathy allows us to recognize others’ emotions and to understand their point of view in a situation. When employed in the workplace, empathy offers insight into how to understand and respond to others’ needs. While empathy can be confused with sympathy, the two aren’t the same. Empathy focuses on identifying and sharing the emotions and experiences of others.

    By practicing emotional intelligence, organizations can use empathy to better navigate and support their employee’s well-being, while driving innovation and collaboration. As life constantly ebbs and flows, employees need empathetic leaders that understand the nuances of navigating life’s changes. This allows team members to craft the best work-life balance that lets them do their best work while maintaining a positive home life.

    Empathy as Empowerment

    Why is empathy important for business? The simple answer is that empathy empowers. As leaders and fellow team members extend empathy to each other, they are allowing one another to feel a sense of validation and respect. Considered to be an organizational superpower, empathy can positively impact employees’ engagement, motivation, and well-being.

    The true power of empathy lies in your ability to envision yourself in a team member’s position, or a position of leadership. Once empathy becomes part of the organizational culture, it empowers employees to center their fellow members and work collaboratively.

    From a leadership perspective, empathy invites employees into the decision-making process. This communicates that leaders value and trust the opinions and positions of their team members. As such, more employees feel a sense of validation and are driven to engage with their work and their teams’.

    The Ethos of Empathy

    Workplace empathy is part of a larger conversation about organizational ethics. The ethics of an organization refer to how the leadership and team members respond to their external environment. These ethics dictate the principles and guidelines that determine how the company and its employees conduct business in the workplace.

    Leaders should work to translate empathy into their organizational ethos to ensure that every decision is guided by a commitment to uplifting and connecting with others. To make an impact with empathy and ingratiate it in your company culture, ensure that your organization has a clear code of ethics. By building empathy into your ethos, you’ll train your leaders and employees to constantly prioritize each other’s feelings and perspectives in the workplace.

    Why Empathy is Important for Business

    Empathy has a multifaceted impact on the workplace. From enhancing leaders’ capabilities and improving the way team members relate to one another to prioritizing clients’ needs and customer relations, empathy is undoubtedly an important part of any business.

    Empathy benefits businesses in the following ways:

    1. Empathy is your  leadership superpower.

    • Maintain Top Talent: Leaders that connect with their team in a genuine way are able to foster a sense of loyalty and retain the best people.
    • Boost Morale by Instilling Motivation: Empathetic leaders can successfully encourage their teams and motivate them to perform at their best.
    • Increase Sales and Productivity: Leaders with empathy can better understand customers’ needs and address their desires, pain points, and fears.

    2. Empathy is essential for teams.

    • Develop a Community: Through empathy, team members can develop stronger bands and build trust in each other. This allows team members to become a true community both in and out of the workplace.
    • Increase innovation: Empathy is linked to innovation as it allows team members to practice curiosity, generosity, and equality towards their colleagues’ ideas. By entering another’s perspective, team members develop a sense of compassion that allows for creative thinking.
    • Create a safe environment for collaboration and learning: Teams that practice empathy are leading with their heart. This encourages a sense of psychological safety, allowing others to feel vulnerable and open to learning and collaborating.

    3. Empathy is transformative for clients.

    • Forge connections with customers: Empathetic organizations put their clients first. This human-centered approach allows teams and leadership to build real bonds with their customers that can last a lifetime.
    • Prioritize clients’ wants and needs: Why is empathy important for business? Empathy makes it easy to identify and prioritize clients’ wants and needs. By walking a mile in their shoes, an organization will have a better understanding of customers’ expectations.

    Applications of Organizational Empathy

    Discovering why empathy is important for business is the first step in cultivating an empathic culture. The next challenge is learning to apply empathy in every facet of your organization.

    Implement empathy in your workplace with the following practices:

    1. Listen to Others

    Listening to others is the first step in implementing empathy in the workplace. Listening goes beyond hearing what someone says; empathic listening requires one to actively listen and pay attention to body language, facial expressions, and similar nuances.

    2. Use Empathy Maps 

    Empathy maps allow organizations to take a human-centered approach to problem solving and ideation. Essentially, this helps one to get inside the user’s head. Organizations use empathy maps to determine what the user is thinking or feeling, and how they may experience the product.

    3. Design User Personas

    User personas identify the skills, goals, attitudes, background information, and behavioral patterns of your target audience. This allows your team to better explore how to relate to users and which solutions would benefit them the most.

    4. Practice Empathy Immersion

    Use an activity called empathy immersion to encourage your team to understand their perspective and opinion of others.

    • Change Your Perspective

    Challenge your team to adopt another’s perspective.

    • Limit Yourself

    A major part of having empathy for another person is understanding the challenges and struggles they face. By limiting yourself, you’ll be able to experience the same type of challenges as you empathize with their experience.

    • Do It Yourself

    Oftentimes in the field, it makes the most sense to wait for management or a qualified leader. However, this shouldn’t limit one from problem-solving on their own. Under empathetic leadership, team members will feel a sense of self-motivation and confidence that allows them to take agency and create solutions of their own.

    • Similar Experience

    Team members can empathize with each other and their clients by recreating an experience similar to what their colleagues or customers are going through.

    • Day-in-the-Life

    A day-in-the-life activity allows team members to walk in another’s shoes and navigate the successes and pitfalls from another person’s perspective.

    Want to adopt empathy in your organization? Connect with us at Voltage control to learn the ways you can implement empathy in your workplace. Our courses on Change Management and Master Facilitation will teach the art of leading with empathy as you learn how to shift your company culture to one that embraces an empathic ethos.

    Article originally seen at VoltageControl.com

    Image Credit: Pexels

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    Cultivate Innovation by Managing with Empathy

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    Cultivate Innovation by Managing with Empathy

    GUEST POST from Douglas Ferguson

    Managing with empathy is a leader’s superpower. Empathy opens the door to increased innovation, collaboration, and engagement.

    Experts assert that empathy is the single most important skill in today’s workplace and the numbers don’t lie: 76% of workers with empathetic leaders are reportedly more motivated and engaged than those who experience leadership with less empathy.

    Leaders can harness the power of empathy to create a more collaborative and engaged culture at work. In this article, we explore empathetic leadership in the following topics:

    • What is Workplace Empathy?
    • Becoming an Empathetic Leader
    • The Benefits of Managing a Team With Empathy
    • The Connection Between Empathy and innovation

    What is Workplace Empathy?

    Managing with empathy requires a keen understanding of the nuances of workplace empathy and empathetic leadership. Empathy allows one to understand another person’s emotions, actions, and thoughts. Our emotional or social intelligence helps us practice empathy and understand the mindsets and emotions of others.

    Empathy belongs in the workplace. While work-related responsibilities should be top of mind, your team members won’t be able to do their best work if they feel as though their emotions and feelings are invalidated or ignored. It’s crucial that team members feel as though their feelings and emotions are prioritized both in their professional and personal lives. With the power of empathy, team leaders and managers can shift company culture for the better and motivate their team to be the best version of themselves.

    Empathetic leaders understand the three types of empathy:

    1. Cognitive Empathy

    Cognitive empathy relates to connecting to another person’s mentality and understanding how certain situations influence their thoughts. Cognitive empathy is related to “theory of mind” that explores how someone can think like another and predict what their future behavior may be.

    2. Somatic Empathy

    Somatic empathy occurs when one experiences a physical response to another’s feelings or experience.

    3. Affective Empathy

    Affective empathy involves understanding another’s emotions and responding most appropriately.

    Becoming an Empathetic Leader

    Managing with empathy is possible for all leaders and team members willing to start within. To connect emotionally with others, you have to first prioritize your connection with yourself. By cultivating your emotional intelligence and understanding your own emotions and feelings, you’ll be better equipped to lead with empathy.

    In today’s ever-changing climate, workers have to navigate the likes of diverse workforces, virtualized teams, and global economic challenges. Being able to adapt and sympathize with the perspective and experiences of others will help you improve your empathetic leadership.

    Consider the following steps to amplify your emotional intelligence and grow your leadership skills:

    1. Listen

    Listening to your team is one of the fastest ways to start managing with empathy. With every conversation comes the opportunity to build a better relationship and affirm your team member’s emotions. In each conversation, be sure to pay attention, avoid distractions, and wait for the person to finish before you speak.

    In addition to letting your team members fully share their opinions, the art of listening requires you to fully understand the emotions that are behind each conversation. This includes understanding nonverbal cues, identifying the tone of voice, and paying attention to body language. If you’re working remotely, managing with empathy can be particularly challenging. Take advantage of voice notes, video chats, SMS messaging, and sending photos and videos to ensure you’re virtually communicating as comprehensively as possible.

    2. Get Personal

    Though personal bonds in the workplace are often discouraged, building healthy professional relationships is an effective way to start managing with empathy. By forming personal connections with your team members, you’ll encourage a culture of open communication and alignment. As you both connect, you’ll find commonalities in your shared vision and values.

    3. Adopt their Point of View

    As an empathetic leader, it’s essential to gain emotional insight into what your team is feeling and thinking by adopting their point of view. Whether your company is remote or in-person, it isn’t always easy to understand the perspective or emotional state of your team. While some leaders shy away from discussing emotions and feelings at work, the truth is that learning more about each employee’s emotional state will help you understand how they approach their work and why they work the way they do.

    4. Get Leadership Training

    Managing with empathy doesn’t always come naturally. Take the opportunity to invest in leadership training to learn how to better incorporate your emotional intelligence and empathy into your management style. With the help of professional leaders, you’ll learn how to emotionally connect with your team and manage the personal and professional challenges that come your way. Consider courses in facilitation and change management as you learn the ins and outs of empathetic leadership.

    The Benefits of Managing a Team With Empathy

    Don’t put empathy on the backburner. While it takes time and intention to cultivate a company culture rooted in empathy, making the journey to create an emotionally intelligent environment is worth it.

    Consider the following benefits of managing with empathy:

    1. Better Relationships

    Better relationships are a direct benefit of managing with empathy. Empathy helps team members emotionally connect as they identify personal interests and can freely communicate with each other. Use empathy to deepen relationships by asking questions about how others feel and providing careful and thoughtful responses.

    2. Enhanced Teamwork

    Empathy is a key ingredient in designing stronger teams. Managing with empathy encourages a desire for team members to help each other and work together. As you learn more about the challenges your team faces, you’ll naturally want to assist them in finding solutions. This type of cooperation encourages a culture of camaraderie where team members feel as though they are a critical part of each other’s success.

    3. A Stronger Work-Life Balance

    Empathy is a natural part of a stronger work-life balance. At times, challenges from one’s personal life can affect the way team members approach work obligations. Understanding their challenges will help you shape a better work-life balance for your team. Whether they need more time off or want more remote work, listening to and understanding their needs will help them create a healthier balance between their personal and professional lives.

    4. Increased Innovation

    A workforce of engaged and emotionally aligned employees allows for increased innovation. A workplace culture of empathy helps to develop soft skills such as curiosity, generosity, and equality, which encourages team members to design new creative and collaborative solutions.

    The Link Between Empathy and Innovation

    The link between innovation and empathy is undeniable. Empathetic leadership allows us to understand and relate to each other in a deeply profound and authentic way. Empathy is an incredible tool for innovation as it works to encourage companies and teams to center the needs and feelings of others.

    By encouraging team members to adopt another’s point of view, leaders can utilize empathy as a problem-solving framework. Empathy places the experience and satisfaction of others at the heart of the creative and collaborative process. These empathetic techniques and behaviors are undoubtedly linked to the most effective designs, products, and creative solutions.

    In the workplace, empathy naturally reinforces a culture of innovation as it encourages and validates the feelings and opinions of others. Regardless of the problems at hand, human-centered thinking encourages organizations to empathetically eliminate their biases, reservations, and judgment to arrive at the solution that benefits the end-user and their fellow team members the most.

    If innovation is at the heart of your company, it’s time to start managing with empathy. Voltage Control offers custom programs built around connection, psychological safety, community, and play. Connect with us today to learn how to use empathetic leadership for the greatest good.

    Article originally published at VoltageControl.com

    Image Credit: Pexels

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    How Networking Accelerates Growth

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    How Networking Accelerates Growth

    GUEST POST from Douglas Ferguson

    As a leader, you’re likely aware that building a network takes time and work. Mentors and a network of peers are not easily established for jobs, professional growth, or business. The process of growing a network, and a community, is proportional to the thought you put towards it.

    That said, not everyone takes the same steps to build a network. Leadership development programs are tools we highly recommend considering. They’re a step towards learning about yourself and expanding your understanding of how to work with people.

    Now, how does a network contribute effectively to your role as a leader, and how can you unlock that network in a productive way?

    The search for true leadership requires self-awareness, which networks play a key role in developing.

    A true leader puts in the self-work before looking to others to change. They also view self-work as an ongoing experience of sustained learning rather than a short-term project.

    Let’s dive deeper into networking, a concept that you’ll learn has positive connotations when framed correctly. This article addresses the following:

    • What is networking and why is it important?
    • How do we pursue true leadership?
    • How do we sustain learning as leaders?

    What is networking?

    Networking is intercommunication, exchanging ideas with those with shared interests or expertise. We view networking as a series of opportunities to learn and engage. Learning about yourself, others, and information. Most importantly to leadership development, it’s learning about yourself through others.

    Networking doesn’t have to be insincere, corporate, or repulsive if you approach it with meaning and an intention to develop deeper relationships. Oftentimes, those relationships are a twofold source of wisdom and knowledge when you need it most.

    Good networking involves a mutual understanding of the relationship and an environment conducive to it. The more work you put into a network, the more it resembles a community: a place you can go to for help or to help.

    Why is networking important?

    Networking is profound for connection and support. As you build yours, you’ll find that you can lean into your network for much more than professional development, and you begin to build a community.

    It’s also a wonderful practice in self-awareness. By interacting with people outside of your usual environment, your creativity and self-image is challenged. It often feels uncomfortable for good reason. Allowing yourself to feel uncomfortable and observe the environment around you serves as practice for what you should often do as a leader.

    As we do this, we acquire perspective, which encourages growth. A healthy network focused on growth boosts:

    • Confidence and awareness of strengths
    • Understanding of opportunities for personal and professional growth
    • Creativity through exposure to other pools of knowledge and ways of thinking

    The community you draw from networking often becomes a resource for your team. That includes resources for:

    • Hiring new teammates and identifying strong leaders
    • Industry information and trends
    • Future positions or opportunities for involvement

    Dr. Peter Gray, who spent years studying professional networks, also emphasizes the importance of maintaining a tight-knit community, or as he phrases it, “building a collaboration network”. In our Control the Room podcast episode with Dr. Grey, he suggests that consistent, quality relationships with 15-20 close ties prove wildly beneficial to a work environment. Reframing teamwork as a collaborative effort makes the workplace exciting, and perspective within your network enhances your desire for innovation.

    “Your ability to see the world really changes as a function of your network.”

    Dr. Peter Gray

    Are there people who are positive thinkers within your network? Do they support your ideas? Do you feel excited to present your ideas to them? Dr. Gray calls these traits of good leaders “energizer traits”.

    As you grow within an organization, it becomes more important to have a solid network from which to pull when needed. That’s especially the case as teams become more collaborative with time. We built this assessment tool to help analyze involvement and existing relationships.

    Spend time pursuing a network. Your future self will thank you for the time you save them and opportunities you bring them.

    How do we pursue true leadership?

    Self-awareness assessments can fall down when used without follow-through. We can use them to help us understand whose strengths in the team will help us prevail when faced with a new problem, product, or shift.

    Such assessments should be used or followed up with for inner work and inner change. The self-assessment serves as a true mirror when you’re focused on self-discovery and self-improvement. Use the reflective moments to continually practice being the improved version of yourself.

    When you practice looking at your true self, you can begin to ask questions. It can be powerful to see if you’re being perceived the way you see yourself. 

    Are you being manipulative? Are you a true leader? Is the story in your head about yourself authentic? What can be done to fine-tune your tendencies and align the person in the mirror with the person in your head.

    The leader should always start within, looking to the symptoms that need to be addressed within themselves.

    It is necessary to lean into the things that can create change, empathy, psychological safety, and culture. These are often viewed by society as soft, squishy, and even scary to approach.

    As you address these within yourself, you’ll learn how to better work with those around you, and you’ll see the value in advancing those skills. Inter-relational dynamics have to be discussed and addressed. People don’t often want to lean into that stuff, but that’s ultimately where the real work happens.

    Learning and working through how to work with people and welcome collaboration advances innovation. Spawrks, the co-host of Space Pencils, stated the following in a recent conversation on our podcast:

    “I feel like that’s the thing, that if you can have the patience for assuming positive intent all the time as much as possible, you can really find out and learn a lot more, even when you might be completely able to see around the corner. By validating it with that type of respect and in your communication, you can yourself learn more than you even knew about what you’re thinking about.”

    Spawrks

    Start with yourself, move to department health, and finally the full organization.

    How do we sustain learning as leaders?

    Practical steps must be taken to sustain learning and development. Oftentimes, this takes the form of programs, which can replace networking if done right.

    There are systems and programs that offer some of the same benefits of networking. What’s key is finding the right cohort or program to suit your needs.

    Programs offer support to those who are looking to build a network. At the end of a program, this question often arises: “Now that I’m trying to use these learnings, what do I do with them?” It’s vital to be able to bring it back to the cohort for support.

    The most powerful programs offer quality content and provide an environment for connection. We believe that the right programs, ours included, are designed to create extended relationships as a long-term resource. That’s invaluable. Maximize your time by recognizing opportunities for connection. That comes in the form of connecting the content and training into the work you do and building relationships with others on site.

    Ultimately, learning is sustained through consistent attention to self-work and upkeep with your network. Connection within programs allows a moment where we truly connect to the work we do.

    We’re capable of both contributing towards and gleaning from our networks in a productive manner. The aim of “networking” should be to do both, developing connections into communal, mutually beneficial relationships.

    Interested in growing your network through programs? Check out our Leadership Development Programs, which offer leadership consulting through self-work and connection with a cohort. The aim is to provide a clearer view of your leadership style and connect people with interests in innovating as leaders.

    Article originally seen on VoltageControl.com

    Image Credit: Unsplash

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