Healthy Debate
We had a couple of guests at our senior management team (SMT) meeting yesterday. Just in case you’re wondering, our SMT gathers for lunch and then meets together once a week. I thought this was an interesting insight from Daryl after watching one of our meetings:
This isn’t a huge meeting, there are eight people on this team and each
come prepared and pour their heart into this time. The meeting had
intense moments and some really hilarious moments that I wish I could
share. What I learned from this meeting is that Perry is a confident
leader who believes in the vision that God has given him and he
believes in the people that God has put around him. Perry doesn’t run
this meeting but there is no doubt when it comes to vision, where it
comes from. This team is the real deal and I took lots of notes. One
other cool fact about this meeting is that they truly welcome
unfiltered debate. They actually want to duke it out over the important
things and come out unified, with the best idea.
The observation reminded me of a quote from Patrick Lencioni’s The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. Lencioni said, “Every effective team I’ve ever observed had a substantial level of debate. Even the most trusting teams mixed it up a lot.”
What’s important, though, is to walk out of those healthy debates unified. On that note, Jim Collins said it this way in Good to Great: “You need executives, on the one hand, who argue and debate–sometimes violently–in pursuit of the best answers, yet, on the other hand, who unify fully behind a decision, regardless of parochial interests.”
In other words, you can’t have healthy debate without trust. You can’t have unity without encouraging healthy debate. And, you can’t have trust where there isn’t unity behind the vision.
With that in mind, how’s the health of your team?
Healthy debate is what makes a meeting worthwhile and makes a team worthwhile. I also serve on a church staff and we were just discussing this very issue in our staff meeting this morning after having read Lencioni’s “Death By Meeting.” Our meetings are much more productive and we are able to accomplish much more with greater focus when we openly debate the issues.
We also worked through “The Five Dysfunctions of A Team” together about 18 months ago and that was a turning point for our team. The level of trust has gone up exponetially and the cohesiveness of the team has taken us to new levels.
The lesson I take from putting both of these books together is to have healthy debate you must first have trust among your team.
I think this is one of the favourite things about our team – lots of good discussion and engaging the issues but we always come out the other end very unified.
Good stuff Tony. Our team (and whole body) is in transition right now. Heavy transition. Healthy debates and discussions are finally taking place. And it is exciting to say the least. Definitely answers to many prayers prayed.
This is so absolutely true! My husband and I run our small busines together and we have learned over the years that all of our best decisions come when we talk through (read debate) things repeatedly…sometimes it is quite heated…but in the end, taking parts of both of our “solutions” we always craft a solution that is far better than either of ours alone ever could have been. We truly believe God has perfectly matched us together in our decision making process…it’s one of the things that makes our marriage so incredible!
We are in detox mode at the moment. Excited about what is coming, though!
Wow. Very interesting post T-Mo. We recently had our staff retreat and I got to share some of the 5 book stuff as well, mainly the rowing in the same direction ideas….Looks like it can have an impact all across the board.
Hope all is well.
Those are some good observations. We should all have a healthy amount of disagreement on our team as long as we can still remain in unity.
That would be so cool to sit in on a meeting like that.
Brad Ruggles
http://www.bradruggles.com
Good stuff. You mentioned 2 books that I just read back-to-back, both good reads, and translatable from a business context to a church. I would especially recommend the 5 dysfunctions of a team. The narrative style really brings out the real-world applications.