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The Look & Sound of Leadership

Building Consensus – Savvy or Sin?

The Look & Sound of Leadership

Essential Communications - Tom Henschel

Education, Executive Presence, Management, Careers, Executive Coaching, Self-improvement, Business

4.81.2K Ratings

🗓️ 4 October 2023

⏱️ 27 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

A leader, surrounded by people she knows and trusts, can’t seem to get traction with them. In conversation with her coach, she discovers an unexpected cause.

Tools for teams abound in this episode.


The four tools Tom suggests as first steps for helping your team openly discuss ideas are:

  • Say ‘thank you’ when people offer an idea;
  • Be curious; don’t dismiss ideas or people;
  • Don’t take differences personally; it’s not about you;
  • Develop your comfort with disagreement.


The Gradients of Agreement tool supports the ideas in this episode. Download it for free from our Essential Tools bin along with other communication tools like Sorting & Labeling.

Additional tools for team growth mentioned in this episode are the classic Crucial Conversations and Tom’s conversation on The cATalyzing Podcast.


This episode is in our podcast library in three categories:

Communication Skills

Leading Teams

Management Skills

Specific episodes that will help you develop your team are:

Facilitating Open Dialogue

How Teams Fight

Leadership Behavior in Meetings

Power Tools for Teams: Plus/Delta

Questions as Leadership

Taming Meetings

Our monthly Essential News email provides links to even more resources. You can sign up here.


To those of you who post reviews, thank you so much for supporting the show.


Let us know how we can support you.


Until next month, from Tom and everyone at The Look & Sound of Leadership, be well! And thanks!

#podcast #TeamDecisionMaking #Teamwork #Leadership #ConsensusBuilding #EffectiveTeams #TeamCommunication #TeamLeadership

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Welcome back to the look and sound of leadership.

0:06.6

An ongoing series of executive coaching tips designed to help you be perceived in the

0:11.2

workplace the way you want to be perceived.

0:14.3

I'm Tom Henshel, your executive coach, and today we're talking about building consensus.

0:19.8

Savvy or Sin?

0:23.8

Irene was a fascinating blend of artist in the clouds and a crisp leader who got

0:29.9

not stuff done.

0:32.2

Five years ago, she had become the head of a fine arts organization.

0:36.0

She had a clear vision of where she wanted to take them.

0:39.2

For her leadership team, she handpicked people she trusted, valued, and liked.

0:44.7

Now, years later, she found the team disappointing.

0:50.5

Individually they were okay, but as a team, she found them nice and polite, but not terribly

0:57.6

effective.

0:59.8

Having her team unstuck was one of the goals she had set for her coaching.

1:05.2

In one of our earliest coaching conversations, I asked what she meant when she said the

1:08.6

team was polite.

1:10.7

She shrugged, they don't speak up, but I need to hear from them.

1:15.2

We have some big decisions to make, and I want to be sure when we move forward everyone's

1:19.4

on the same page.

1:21.5

I said, so polite means being quiet.

1:24.5

Yeah.

1:25.5

And it's slowing me down.

...

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