They say it takes too much time. They describe the painful details of the myriad ways in which group members polarize on issues and then threaten to use their veto power when they don’t achieve their individual purposes.

I find these processes distasteful myself. They take up too much time and can definitely sap participants’ energies.

But these are not consensus processes — they are debate processes.

To achieve rapid consensus it’s essential that group members gather around a clear, shared purpose and then mobilize around a sense of urgency to make progress together.

In my experience, the following five practices fuel fast decision-making:

1. Consider more rather than fewer alternatives. And generate them together. Teams that move fast know that generating lots of alternatives actually clarifies decision-making. Criteria for choosing among them then surface in the group and, in the process, myriad contingencies are aired and shared.

Trying to analyze and choose between only two (or even three) alternatives stresses making the “right decision” (choosing between opposite poles), which can easily trigger parochialism and paralysis.

2. Involve more people and points of view in the process. When a large number of participants are heard, unique points of view can emerge, which actually increases the probability of discovering creative and expansive alternatives.

3. Integrate with more and/or other parts of the organization. Teams that move fast invite other departments to participate. Doing so enables them to coordinate in real-time, rather than learning after the fact and then having to play catch up. An added bonus is that other departments may actually bring better solutions.

4. Draw on the wisdom of “gray-hairs.” Teams that move fast check their thinking with mentors, sponsors, or coaches whose experience, intuition, and situational knowledge helps the team make smart choices.

5. Consensus with leader as time-breaker. The secret to leading consensus successfully is to establish collective action as more important to the group than complete and total agreement. To fast teams, getting a result and learning from it together is more important than being right. Fast teams also make sure that everyone is heard, especially minority views.

A smart consensus-focused leader will create “hang-time” in the conversation to allow for this. Then, if a consensus doesn’t emerge in a reasonable time, the leader makes a call for group action on the alternative with the best chance of succeeding.

This Week’s 5-Minute Practice Tip

This week, include more voices in decisions that affect others. And stress the urgency of action, steering away from “right versus wrong” arguments (use “Works for me” instead). Keep asking the group, “What could move us forward together?” but start your practice on less-than-critical decisions.

Everyone has experience with this issue. Tell me yours in the comment space below.

Christopher Avery, PhD, is a recognized authority on how individual and shared responsibility works in the mind and an advisor to leaders worldwide. Build a responsible team (or family) and master your leadership skills with The Leadership Gift Program for Leaders.

The change of a calendar year can be a wonderful time to acknowledge the investment required to maintain growth and development, including the quality of your relationships at work.

One of my favorite tools for team maintenance is the Reorientation Process.

Assembling all the players for reorientation is a powerful way to acknowledge that ALL productive relationships go through periods of being highly oriented — aligned, in sync, in the flow — as well as periods of not being so.

When teams get out of sync, committed members feel they have to “push harder” on the content of the team’s work.

A more fruitful strategy would be for them to notice — and acknowledge — that the team seems to have lost energy and/or direction (energy and direction are my simplest indicators for a team being “built”).

When this happens (and it may happen several times in the life of a team) I like to say, “It’s always a good time to reorient.” Get started with this week’s 5-minute practice tip.

5-Minute Practice Tip

To orient or reorient a work relationship, gather the players together and ask each of them to articulate their views of the following:

1. The WHAT — what are we as a team to do together?
2. The WHYs — why am I here? What’s in it for me to be on this team?
3. The HOWs — how are we playing? What are our team rules and agreements?
4. The WHOs — who’s doing what where? What does each of us bring to THIS task at THIS time?

When everyone has been heard, asking the group to craft a clear and elevating goal together (one that’s meaningful to every member) will help refuel the WHY for energy and the WHAT for direction.

You’ll always know when this conversation is on track — because you can see, hear, and feel the group’s energy increase and the team members’ direction come into focus.

Reorientation is a great way to start a new year with your teams — with renewed, positive energy.

Let me know your thoughts and experiences with a quick comment below.

Christopher Avery, PhD, is a recognized authority on how individual and shared responsibility works in the mind and an advisor to leaders worldwide. Build a responsible team (or family) and master your leadership skills with The Leadership Gift Program for Leaders.

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One of my clients for the Managed Leadership Gift Adoption program is generating fun and creative ways to promote the Leadership Gift throughout its organization — and across functional and department lines into other units to spread the word.

Here’s a poster they are hanging up and distributing. It’s connected to an event called Responsipalooza.

I’ve learned a thousand ways to not teach the Leadership Gift. One of the most important success strategies is to make the learning light and fun — like with Responsipalooza.

What’s your Responsipalooza strategy when promoting the Leadership Gift?

Nov. 9 Update -the poll is over, the link is gone. View some of the entries below. See the winner.

We’re hosting a contest at 99designs for the badge that will be used by accredited members of the Leadership Gift Program for leaders and their coaches. Already we’ve attracted some rocking submissions, and I expect there to be even more by tomorrow.

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I congratulate 99designs on the quality of my experience with them–good enough to recommend if you need a logo, badge, button, or icon designed.

Note, 99designs is not the only highly-regarded design contest site so do your own research and make your choice.

How often does one of your colleagues let you down?

Such situations happen way too often, but you can turn them around. The key is your response (not the other person’s actions).

I recently enjoyed the opportunity to decide how to react to a co-worker who was bailing out of a conference call for the second time in a row. ”Steve” emailed me about not knowing what the subject matter of a conference call was (we had been clear when we scheduled it) and not being ready for it if this call was what he thought it was (it was).

This was the second time in a couple of weeks on the same bit of work. I wasn’t pleased that he wanted to get out of the call, but being mad at him wouldn’t have gotten me anywhere. So instead of taking it personally, I urged him to hold up his end of the deal. This was my response:

Steve, thanks for your apology. I’ve deleted our appointment for this afternoon.

Your last two emails give me the impression that you don’t know what you committed to, aren’t prioritizing it very high, and don’t have a handle on your schedule. I could be okay with that if I weren’t scheduling team time for you and depending on your input.

So how about this? When you recall what we agreed to and if you still want to do it, let me know. Then, after you’ve completed your part I’ll be happy to schedule a time.

My best, Christopher

This is the e-mail I received in return:

Hey Christopher -

You’re right and for that I apologize to you and the team. I’ve taken on too much and it’s gotten the better of me. There’s a part of me that feels like I can just keep piling it on but in the end there are casualties. In this case, it was your project and that sucks. I take full responsibility. I put your work at risk because of my poor planning. No excuses.

Given this realization and the evident lack of hours in my day, I’d like to respectfully withdraw from the project. I recognize that my image and brand is likely a bit tarnished because of this and that’s something I’ll have to own.

Again, my apologies for this. It certainly wasn’t anything other my own failure. I’ll learn from it.

Good for him for owning up. However I didn’t want him to quit because his work is valuable to our team. I was willing to separate from him as an alternative to putting my progress and team time in his hands and then waiting for him — but that’s not what I wanted. So instead I put the future of our relationship in his hands:

Dear Steve,

Thanks for being forthright. I appreciate you.

Regarding withdrawing, I understand, and, I wish you wouldn’t. You bring a lot of value and have history that is hard to replace.

Would you think about it for a bit and see if any other arrangement or possibility comes to mind? As I said in the prior email, I would be okay with you doing the work at your leisure and then let me know when you are ready to debrief.

My best, Christopher

And guess what? Because I didn’t fly off the handle and sever my relationship with Steve, and because I didn’t let him off the hook and at the same time gave him another chance, he came around and I received this response:

Thanks Christopher.

I certainly would like to continue on the project so thanks for that. I’ll do the work over the next week or so and reach out as soon as it’s ready to deliver.
Very much appreciate the opp.

And he did just that. The relationship is repaired and stronger as a result of both of our actions.

It takes courage to call someone on their behavior. When done with complete responsibility and compassion, it can result in lessons, growth, and even a new and improved relationship agreement.

Christopher Avery, PhD, is a recognized authority on how individual and shared responsibility works in the mind and an advisor to leaders worldwide. Build a responsible team (or family) and master your leadership skills with The Leadership Gift Program for Leaders.

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As you saw in the Responsibility Man – Part 1 video, my son Thom is having fun mastering his Leadership Gift by lovingly mocking his dad. Here is the super-hero costume he’s outfitted for me.

What do you think? I’m not sure I can have the costume pulled together by Agile2011. Should I try?

I’ll post Thom’s next video — Responsibility Man 2 – I Am Here — maybe after you and 9 others leave a comment…

Hi Christopher,

I found your site at just the right time in my own quest for personal growth as a business analyst on my first Agile project, and I’ve been reading your blog for several months now. In addition to professional interest, I’m also in the middle of a lot of personal growth as a parent and spouse, which leads to my questions.

Do you have any favorite resources for teaching personal responsibility to children?  Any plans to develop a kid’s program for the Responsibility Process?  I have a very challenging time with one of my kids who just will not get the idea that his actions have a direct effect on the results he receives.  So, in addition to learning how to apply personal responsibility to my own life, I’d love to learn to teach and model it for my kids.  Got any suggestions?

Thanks,
Shelly
Tallahassee, FL

I intend someday to expand my work with the Responsibility Process and Leadership Gift to include offerings for parents and children, so I was happy to respond:

Hi Shelly,

Thanks so much for your inquiry and for sharing your story. I am very interested in helping parents, teachers, and kids understand how their minds work to both avoid and take responsibility. And, I am first committed to making a dent in the business/leadership world so we’ll have the time, resources, and talented global community to focus on parents, teachers, and kids. Regarding your child: I have three primary thoughts that my wife and I have discussed frequently regarding parenting our own children:

1. Practice responsibility yourself. The most important thing you can do as a parent is to model being a human who practices what we preach. That means catching yourself in blame, justify, shame, and obligation and correcting IN FRONT OF THEM OR REPORTING BACK ASAP (“I really blew it this morning when I yelled at you. I apologize. Here’s what I learned about myself and what I’d like to talk with you about…”). This requirement for you to practice it yourself will last until your children are making decisions for you.
2. Don’t always save them from the natural consequences they create for themselves from which they can learn and grow by making the cause-effect connections. Parents too often save kids from experiencing consequences and then wonder why their child acts entitled. Often we parents do this out of our own anxiety (of seeing our kids make a mistake, or of worrying about what others will think of us as parents). This is often something parents have to talk about and help each other with.
3. Look for teachable moments to teach your children about their Leadership Gift. They are never too young to hear about it, but their “intention” and “confront” (these words have specific meaning in the Leadership Gift, in case you have not run across them in this work — instead call it “motivation” and “courage”) are low, so tiny occasional doses of teaching will go farther than constant drumming.

I hope this helps.
My best,
Christopher

Shelly responded:

Thanks so much for your response to my questions!  I’m at a strange point in life where my husband and I are living and working in different states and it’s a challenge to keep up with everything.  I am growing in fits and spurts, and I can’t even begin to express to you how much what I’ve learned from your website has helped me.   I can’t wait to see what you develop for kids and families in the future.

As a side note, I went to hear Dale McGowan talk about “Parenting Beyond Belief” over the weekend.  It’s interesting how some of the stuff in his materiel overlaps the Responsibility Process.  For instance, Authoritative versus Authoritarian parenting.

Authoritative parenting is full of intention, awareness, confrontation and responsibility, while you can see blame, shame, justify, etc. in the Authoritarian model.  Then, in regard to teaching kids about how to handle religious discussions with their peers (from the secular standpoint of a child who has not made a personal religious decision yet), he discussed teaching diversity of belief as a value, collaboration, constant testing/questioning, and how to handle “thoughtstoppers.”

Thanks again!
Shelly

My pleasure! You can apply many of my blog posts and other materials to family relationships. After all, this stuff is about productive thinking, behavior, and relationships whether at work or at home. To me, its all personal.

What other parenting and relationship resources do you find align with the Responsibility Process? Leave a comment and let me know.

Christopher Avery, PhD, is a recognized authority on how individual and shared responsibility works in the mind and an advisor to leaders worldwide. Build a responsible team (or family) and master your leadership skills with The Leadership Gift Program for Leaders,.

Remember, we can’t successfully collaborate until we’re “in exchange.” To be in exchange, each party to a relationship must be providing and receiving fair value — as each perceives it.

Beyond the issue of exchange, though, I’ve noticed that excellent collaborators make two powerful distinctions in VALUE as they choose who to approach for collaboration.

Distinction #1. Being “in exchange” is not of itself collaborating. It is good, traditional business practice. As a result of the Quality movement, many people and companies developed a habit of referring to all their business associates as “partners.” Sometimes this is hyperbole. And sadly, the term “partnering” can be considered a lame promise in many business circles today.

I have developed a habit of inquiring a little about the nature of these relationships, looking for signs of expansion and integrity. It’s important to me that the term “partner,” as used by people with whom I’m considering doing business, refers to business practices that encourage and support expansion and integrity.

Distinction #2. Even in a relationship that’s in exchange around what’s provided and received (the contractual exchange) between participants, other aspects can make the relationship too “expensive.” It’s critical to make and monitor a distinction between contractual exchange and “relational” exchange.

Relational exchange drops out of balance when one party does something unexpected and/or unfair to another party. Examples include backstabbing, quibbling after the deal is made, asking too many favors, consistently ignoring needs, etc. Examples are endless. If you’re like most people I talk to, you’ve probably quit one or more valuable contractual exchanges because of their relational costs to you.

A balanced relational exchange is critical to creative collaboration. The relationship is either part of the reward of the activity or it’s a cost and liability to the contractual exchange.

What to look for? Excellent collaborators know that to stay in relational exchange they must:

1. Remain sensitive to observing and learning from others’ relationship requirements — the things that go beyond the contractual values.
2. Keep communication channels open for any party to say at any time, “You know, the deal we made isn’t working very well for me anymore, and here’s why…” And the other party must at least be open to discussing an adjustment.

I’m convinced these distinctions are the bedrock of high-performance collaboration. If you’ve got any hesitations about their importance, I encourage you to recall the last time you got a signal that “the deal’s the deal” from another party, that the other party wasn’t willing to take any responsibility for the relationship beyond the contractual exchange…

How much effort did you put into the work? And how big was your profit? Get started with this week’s 5-minute practice tip.

5-Minute Practice Tip

Choose one or two relationships that you consider to be ongoing collaborations or partnerships. Define the contractual exchange (i.e., what you are giving and receiving). Then, examine how you and your partner successfully keep the relational aspects of the exchange in balance.

Go beyond noticing how nice, open and flexible each of you are. Describe how each of you takes responsibility for the relationship, how you communicate about that, and how you make adjustments. Identify a relationship where the relational cost (otherwise known as aggravation) is approaching a level that makes the contractual exchange intolerable, and then challenge yourself to hold a conversation about changing the relational exchange in order to continue the contract.

Christopher Avery, PhD, is a recognized authority on how individual and shared responsibility works in the mind and an advisor to leaders worldwide. Build a responsible team (or family) and master your leadership skills with The Leadership Gift Program for Leaders.

I’m proudly thinking “No.”

Thom cooked up this video idea in June, while accompanying me to a Houston event. He enjoys developing characters and thinks he may want to be a director.

Apologies to machinima.com if this mash-up infringes on the copyright.

Comment to encourage Thom to direct more adventures of Responsibility Man.

I want to dispel the myth that responsibility is an inherent personality characteristic. Responsibility is learnable — my client’s results prove it over and over again. With the advances of the last twenty-five years responsibility is a directly observable, learnable, and teachable mental process anyone can understand and master.

When leaders treat responsibility as a personality trait (or flaw), then you assume it is nearly impossible to alter it and you must do your best to control others, hence you design controlling management structures and processes. But when you understand how responsibility actually works in the mind, then you can equip yourself with its power, and tap into it to leverage every other tool, skill, and process in your organization.

Ownership Mindset Missing In Action

Thinking that new tools and skills will increase productivity can frequently be a waste of resources for companies — the real problem isn’t a lack of problem-solving tools and skills. The real problem is a severe absence of problem-ownership that prompts someone to relate to the situation, learn from it, and choose a resourceful response. When people don’t feel a sense of ownership for problems, they don’t engage the abilities they posses.

You have the ability to directly and effectively confront this lack of ownership in your team and across your company. When teaching how to take responsibility, I find that once responsibility is mastered, people resourcefully employ all of the dormant tools the firm has invested in. Now that’s leverage!

Corporations are spending billions of dollars on the wrong investment — accountability — when they could be spending it on building sustainable cultures by teaching responsibility.

Most executives these days expend energy on strategic goals and objectives for building a culture of accountability. The focus of these efforts is on doing a better job of holding others to account. When I look at these investments, I see a focus on the external–i.e., outside of themselves–on attempting to do a better job detailing what must be done and then following up to make sure it is done, and finally ensuring there are meaningful consequences for achieving or failing to achieve the stated accountabilities.

The 3 reasons why companies loose money when they focus on accountability:

1. Tightening Control Results in Less Responsibility
Tightening behavioral control begets resistance and irresponsible behavior. Improving the mechanics of the external (accountability management) without understanding the dynamics of the internal (responsibility, or feelings of ownership) frequently creates the opposite effect. The more I attempt to control your performance, the less responsibility you will feel for your situation. You might expend a lot of energy creating some result out of a sense of obligation, but that’s different than a true sense of ownership.

2. We’re All Experts at ‘Looking Good’
There are many ways all of us successfully account for failed performance every day in order to get rewarded anyway. We blame others, or we blame the circumstances (“I got put on a bad team”), or we take pity on ourselves in hopes that others will pity us too, or we claim that we followed the instructions to the letter and still things didn’t work out. All of these claims compel many managers to accept the explanation and let the subordinate off the hook. With a strong desire to keep them on board and motivated, coupled with your own feelings of guilt about your contribution to their failure, you grant the annual raise or bonus.

3. Responsibility Trumps Accountability
My research shows that responsibility (the internal process) trumps accountability (the external process). All the resources in the world spent understanding, doling out, and managing accountability don’t matter in an environment where people don’t demonstrate a sense of ownership when things don’t go as planned. Where performance is concerned, responsibility is the more powerful and primary element. Performance studies consistently show that when high performance is achieved, people have stepped up and accomplished more than they were asked to do. The only state of mind that produces resourceful responses is Responsibility.

Keys to Responsibility

My quest to support clients in rapidly developing more resourceful responses to problems uncovered three keys that collectively provide a prescription for mastering Responsibility: Intention, Awareness, and Confront.

Intention
The first key to unlocking and mastering responsibility is to clearly and powerfully intend to operate as much as possible from a mental position of responsibility. Without this key, the others don’t matter. That’s why it’s first.

We can effectively support leaders and followers at every level to develop a thirst for, a belief in, and a shared value for thinking and acting responsibly.

Awareness
The second key to unlocking and mastering responsibility is to develop an ever-increasing awareness of the Responsibility Process™ operating in your thoughts, language, and actions. Unlocking and mastering responsibility means overcoming the temptation to behave irresponsibly, and that requires self-awareness.

Note that developing self-awareness also represents the state-of-the-art in leadership development.

Confront
The third key is to face the truth. I call this confront, which means to face. As a key to unlocking and mastering responsibility it means to face yourself, examine the situation, and see what’s true about how you are or are not responding resourcefully. The purpose of confronting yourself is to see the truth of the situation and generate new responses to it. Effectively confronting yourself always leads to growth, expanded perspectives, and change.

Most business cultures are not very good at supporting this ability. In fact they support the opposite behaviors of denying, avoiding, defending, and resisting. However, the good news is that this sill can be cultivated in your culture.

Redefine responsibility

The lack of responsibility at work and in society is a fundamental problem. Like solutions to other fundamental problems such as quality and service that are transforming industry, the solution is to redefine responsibility first for yourself and then for your team.

When people learn and apply what I call the the Keys to Responsibility™ to everyday upsets, they start eliminating wasted thoughts and wasted behaviors that are chewing up resources and adding no value to the top or bottom line. Remove them and productivity soars.

Highly responsible people — those who are self-aware and intend to confront themselves about the truth of a problem instead of disowning it — do not remain very long with a blaming, justifying, shaming, obligating employer. Highly responsible people are drawn to employers who cherish that quality and grant freedom, choice, and power.

I encourage you to work on creating that kind of mindset in yourself, and that kind of culture in your company.

As always, let me know what you think by sharing a comment below.

Christopher Avery, Ph.D. wrote the popular book Teamwork Is An Individual Skill: Getting Your Work Done When Sharing Responsibility — which Fortune Magazine claimed is the only teamwork book worth reading. He is a recognized authority on how individual and shared responsibility works in the mind and an advisor to leaders worldwide. Master leadership or build a responsible team (or family) with The Leadership Gift Program for Leaders.