FireFly Facilitation

Did you know that light originates from conflict? Atoms emit light only after bumping into another particle. The collision adds energy to the atom by momentarily knocking its electrons out of orbit. When the electrons fall back into place the extra energy is released as a photon—the basic unit of light.

I find this scientific metaphor suitable for teams. With a healthy amount of conflict, an entire team becomes brighter. Conflict strengthens our ideas by illuminating their flaws and refines our decisions by shedding light on our blind spots. What we miss seeing with our own eyes comes to light when we bump up against the differing perspectives and opinions of our teammates.

Unfortunately, most people shy away from conflict. Instead of seeing it as an illuminating force, they fear conflict because it’s combustible. As a leader, your job involves setting the tone for conflict. How can you do this well?

1) Solicit pushback. By inviting others to poke and prod at your ideas, you give permission for your teammates to voice dissent without feeling disrespectful.

2) Epitomize courtesy. While you don’t want to be walking on eggshells with your team, neither do you want people cutting one another down or trading insults. Confront uncivil language and impolite behavior.

3) Demand unity. At the end of the day, you have to make tough choices as a leader, and sometimes your decisions may lack consensus or not even have a majority. Regardless, once you’ve committed to a course of action, no one on the team can be permitted to withhold support. You must agree to disagree, and then unify around what has been decided.

There is minimal wasted energy in the glow of a firefly. Incredibly, 96 percent of the energy that a firefly uses to create light is actually converted into visible light. Compare that to a typical light bulb, which converts only 10 percent into light and uselessly expends the remainder. Fireflies know how to shine without creating heat—without wasting energy on unnecessary conflict.

Leaders are the gatekeepers of conflict—monitoring the degree to which it manifests itself within team dynamics. They allow conflict when it generates light, but defuse conflict when it serves only to raise the tempers and temperatures of those involved. However, what if you, as the leader, keep falling into useless arguments and petty debates?

From a healthy tension, conflict can easily boil over into a destructive war of personalities. Here are three pieces of advice to prevent you from stumbling into wasteful conflicts.

1) Start with the heart. Clarify your goals and intentions up front. Be honest and sincere in your motivations.

2) Innocent until proven guilty. Give the other person the benefit of the doubt. It’s easy to be suspicious of their motives and ascribe rotten qualities to them in the heat of the moment. Remain composed and seek their perspective, even when it seems to make no sense.

3) Mirror, mirror on the wall. Evaluate your own motivations when you find yourself ensnared in a fiery debate. Sometimes our prejudices and predispositions make us unreasonable. Looking in the mirror makes us aware of our underlying desires and enables us to communicate in a more levelheaded way.

Creativity can be an early casualty of a recession. As sales slump and budgets shrink, leaders are tempted to hunker down into survival mode. Resist the urge to batten down the hatches or barricade yourself inside of an office! Tough economic times are precisely when creativity matters most, and tapping into the creativity of others will yield far more than relying on your individual genius.

In Mavericks at Work, William C. Taylor and Polly Labarre relate the stunning story of a leader who reached out to solve the challenges facing his organization. As a means of finding creative solutions to extract gold from his unproductive mine, Robert McEwen initiated a $500,000 contest. His company posted a half-century of maps and geological information about the mine on the Internet and began accepting submissions of drilling plans. Entries poured in from scientists and geologists in 51 countries, and several of the plans made use of technology that had never before been applied to mining gold.

McEwen and his staff selected the best of the plans and went to work. A dozen years later, the formerly unproductive mine could boast of being among the richest in the world. $100,000 invested in McEwen’s company in 1993, when he instigated the drilling plan contest, was worth $2.9 million in 2005. Talk about the value of creativity!

Tips for Attracting Creative Solutions

1. Invitation – Have the humility to ask others to contribute their ideas
2. Openness – Share what you know about the present reality
3. Incentive – Find meaningful and public ways to reward creativity
Creativity and Innovation  Tagged $500, 000 contest, casualty of a recession, creative solutions, Creativity and Innovation, geological information, geologists, Incentive, individual genius, Invitation, Mavericks at Work, Mining for Creativity, Openness, Polly Labarre, richest in the world, Robert McEwen, scientists, survival mode, William C. Taylor, worth $2.9 million in 2005 No Comments »

It’s been said, “Variety is the spice of life,” but for many managers the spiciness of diversity causes heartburn. Leading a team would be much easier if one size fit all. However, the reality for managers involves cleverly tailoring roles, reward structures, and recognition. In doing so, leaders have to balance unique treatment of dissimilar personalities with a uniform application of fairness.

Diversity in the workplace goes much deeper than race, gender, job title, or even daily responsibilities. Leaders have to discover how team members think, what drives them, where their strengths shine, and so on. Leaders light the way by making this kind of inquiry a priority, and by creating the tools and processes that allow people to see one another in a new light.

Here’s a practical application to illuminate diversity on your team and reap benefits from it.

At the close of a week, gather your team together. Give each person ten minutes to make two lists:

List #1 – Three work activities from the past week that felt draining or tedious.

List #2 – Three job activities from the past week that felt enjoyable and invigorating.

Do not discuss the lists as a group; simply collect them after the ten minutes are over. Repeat the exercise each week for a month.

At the month’s close, convene a team meeting. During the meeting, assign each person to share one recurring activity they enjoy and do well. Also, have them talk about one regular activity they dislike and find draining.

This simple exercise will bring awareness of the various strengths and weaknesses on your team. Over the course of the meeting you may want to reshuffle a few tasks or open avenues for team members to volunteer their strengths in new ways.

In my most recent blog, I identified three myths that handcuff our creativity.

Myth #1: Creativity is something you either have or you don’t.

Myth #2: Being creative is something you do as opposed to something you are.

Myth #3: There are a limited number of creative geniuses.

In the words of Galileo: “You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him find it within himself.” As a leader, you ought to be the Chief Creative Mythbuster in your organization. It’s your duty to help others move path the myths to rediscover their unique creative abilities.

Here’s your first assignment as Chief Creative Mythbuster. Gather your team for a meeting and be sure to hand each person a coin. In the center of the table have all of the supplies to make ice cream sundaes (ice cream, chocolate topping, caramel topping, nuts, sprinkles, etc.)

Have each person flip a coin to illustrate Myth #1. Those with heads are “creative;” they can create their own sundae. Those with tails aren’t; they have to sit and watch.

As the “creatives” design their sundaes, talk about how we often view creativity as an either / or proposition. Just as it’s almost impossible to look at both sides of a coin at the same time; so also it’s impossible to see the creativity that everyone has when you subscribe to Myth #1. Explain how it’s not the job of a select few to come up with ideas. Affirm that you’re relying on everyone to contribute his or her creativity to the team. (After you’re done illustrating, it might be a good idea to let the “non-creatives” make sundaes, too!)