We're focusing on three main clusters of skills that enable effective action. We've highlighted the skills that are important right now in the context of students' action projects, and in their future as leaders, managers, change agents, and participants in a wide variety of organizations and groups. This is a working list based on our experience teaching many dozens of student teams, an extensive review of the literature, conversations, interviews, and surveys of key stakeholders, and, most importantly, the students' own ideas.
Our focus:
Giving and getting feedback
- delivering appropriate feedback
- effective timing and frequency of feedback
- separating the descriptive from the evaluative
- how to ask for the feedback you want
- getting feedback on your idea/project and on your skills and personal performance
- responding to feedback
- setting ground rules and expectations for feedback
Building shared commitment
- describing what you want to achieve in specific and succinct language
- clearly explaining why (the causal linkage between your goal and the problem you're solving)
- understanding who you are talking to, in terms of where they're coming from
- framing the idea and the work in compelling and motivating terms
- presenting your project so as to motivate the request you are making
- persuading a reluctant audience
- inviting participation
- presenting a complex idea memorably (sans powerpoints!)
- setting joint goals and plans
Getting results at every step
- personal practices for following up
- personal, team, and stakeholder action planning
- pairing incremental progress check-ins (weekly tracking) with more radical reevaluations
- planning effective meetings
- running effective meetings
- testing the feasibility of your ideas in multiple ways, including creative new ones
- making sure you and your team use all your data including the qualitative
These three areas emerged from a consideration of a longer list of skills, habits, practices, and, to some extent, the worldviews, orientations, and perspectives that my students consider key to effective action. We took ideas from class discussions in 2006 and 2007 on readings and an in-class exercise that looked at effective managers in particular. Please see the original list--and add comments or email us!
This is a list of skills, habits, practices, and, to some extent, the worldviews, orientations, and perspectives that my students consider key to effective action.
Ideas are from class discussions in 2006 and 2007 on readings and an in-class exercise. We considered the skills of effective managers in particular.
Collaborating
Communicates
- listens well
- asks lots of questions
- facilitates conversations, interactions
- offers 100% focused attention
- makes others feel like they can ask questions
- open to other people's viewpoints
- clear and focused in speaking, writing
- effectively frames problems and issues
- takes time to explain what and why; transparency
- empathetic (can walk in another's shoes)
- avoids manipulative, indirect interactions, maintains task focus (Zaleznik)
Motivates
cheerleads, encourages team or employee
links
tough but fair
rolls up their sleeves along with you
gives credit where credit is due
stands up for employees / team
Cares
Creates personal connections with employees
genuine interest in others, you as a person
makes people feel valued
Accessibile; door is always open
inclusive
Develops/enables others
recognizes others' differing needs; tailors assignments to individual needs
Gives honest, timely feedback
Gives constructive criticism
sets stretch goals for teams
invests time in individual, team development
empowers via sense of ownership, coaching and hands on experience
prioritizes development of team members over short term tactical goals
high E.Q.
trusts team
Works with stakeholders
builds buy-in for objectives
Takes responsibility for communicating (Drucker)
Taking action
Uses time and resources effectively
sets clear expectations
avoids micromanagement
provides resources necessary to achieve goals
is organized; follows up
avoids useless effort by knowing objectives and goals for every task asked
forward thinking about how things should be done
controls agendas
manages both personal and team time
focus on completion
creates a culture of feedback
gives life to ideas
Is solution-oriented
leaves schedule open to handle emergent needs
Is flexibile
Develops action plans (Drucker)
Runs productive meetings (Drucker)
Iterates, learns
builds in team and interpersonal reflection
provides structure to measure success without being overbearing
Knowing and managing oneself
Integrity
Takes responsibility for mistakes
Takes responsibility for decisions (Drucker)
honest, even when news was bad
secure in own status
acts with consistency
never holds an employee back for personal gain
never talks poorly about another person
leads by example
Personal focus
exercises will power and discipline
refuses to take on too many projects
schedules own time effectively
Reflects to draw on experiences—digests "happenings" into "experience" (Gosling & Mintzberg)
cool under pressure; even-keeled
uses humor in times of stress, to defuse problems
keeps perspective
Gathering and using information, defining problems, and analysing skillfully
Balances task/technical/susbtantive focus with "psychosocial" work (Zaleznik)
Asks "What needs to be done?" (Drucker)
Asks "What is right for the enterprise?" (Drucker)
Actively cultivates a "worldly" mindset—e.g., spends time where products are produced (Gosling & Mintzberg)
Focuses on opportunities rather than problems (Drucker)
interests of the company take priority over personal interests; Thinks, says "we" rather than "I" (Drucker)
Is open-minded
Draws on soft data, sustains complexity within hard-nosed analysis (Gosling & Mintzberg)
Many of our ideas are still very general. In order to focus on specific skills that you are cultivating via your project work, you will need to translate from the general idea ("gives honest, timely feedback") to even more specific practices—e.g., "Sets up regular meetings with teammates to seek informal feedback"; "develops and uses a simple feedback framework at various points throughout a team project"; "backs up feedback points with specific examples to keep it honest." Another example: if we think that effective managers "build buy-in for objectives"—how does this translate into practices you need to use now? Whose buy-in do you need for this class project? How do you know if you have it? Perhaps your team will plan to revisit objectives every other week; perhaps after every meeting with your hosts, if an objective of any sort is discussed, you follow up with an email to confirm. Remember you also need to get faculty buy-in for your objectives; how do you do that? Together, this set of practices provides the means for you to translate the important idea of buy-in to action.
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