Facilitation of a team of managers

I was recently contacted by a manager to discuss theteam autonomy : a theme that I particularly like! This interested me all the more because the team in question was made up of insurance managers. Nothing to do with the profiles that I am used to rubbing shoulders with!

The request here was to build a workshop to help these managers take better charge of their training cap. All while giving them the speech and making them trust.

I invite you to find out what happened! 🙂

Context

During our first meeting with this manager, we had sailed together on different themes around the autonomy of teams. In particular, we discussed:

• THE Delegation Poker : to explain the notion of delegation and give it shades of gray
• there Give & Take Matrix : in its ability to explain the needs
• the CAC: a combination of useful attributes to take into account when carrying out a task that I explain in my last conference on Responsibility
• there Responsibility : to better understand the nuance between Responsibility and Accountability

Indeed, this theme brings together many different notions and it seemed important to me to filter for him open doors towards what would best meet his immediate need.

After letting it steep for a few weeks, we discuss a need of the moment: clarify the activities and responsibilities of a team of managers on their role as trainers. Indeed, a question seemed to arise on why certain activities were not carried out when they were well considered within the scope of the role of trainer.

So, rather than colliding head-on with his team, I offered him a more participatory approach. And this while keeping in mind his wish to autonomy development,

animation frame

Before we start, let's take note of the essential information for the construction:

• Duration: 1h30
• Number of active participants: around 10
• Format: face-to-face

Part 1: list trainer activities

Starting from the same principle as Delegation Poker, we could start by listing all the activities and responsibilities of the role of trainer.

The interest here is to see if there are any holes in the racket in the collective consciousness of the team.
If there are, this will be an opportunity to inject the missing elements and have the associated conversation.
If there isn't, then great! 🙂

To animate this, use a 1-2-4-All seems appropriate.

This structure makes it possible to make the exercise participatory and will give dynamism from the start of the workshop. This will act asContextualized Energizer ! 🙂

Part 2: evaluate yourself on the different activities

After having listed all the activities, we can evaluate the CAC of each person for each activity.

This seems logistically feasible even if there are about ten activities because the number of people remains correct (about 10 people). However, it still requires a bit of structure.

I therefore suggest using mini colored post-its (Green / Yellow / Pink) which will indicate their level for each of the CAC criteria associated with each activity. Each participant will then write their first name on the Post-it so that everyone can be identified.

The interest here is to be able visualize quickly the positioning of all people on all activities. The choice of mini post-its is a logistical constraint because not knowing the number of activities that will emerge, you might as well limit the space to the maximum necessary.

Part 3: define an action plan

If the exchanges during the debriefings are not too long, then we can take time to define actions for improvement. In this context, a simple “who does what and for what” will do the trick.

However, I would suggest that for each activity from which improvement actions would emerge, that a pair be the bearer of the subject (at a minimum): a manager and another person.

Here I would like to involve managers so that they develop a active posture to help their teams. This allows you to play the card of exemplary, an essential prerequisite for building a environment conducive to commitment and autonomy.

Unrolled

I discover with pleasure that all the participants are on time and that we can therefore start. The manager introduced the workshop to give meaning to this collective moment and then handed over to me for the animation.

List the activities of the trainer role

As expected, we start with a 1-2-4-All on the activities of the trainer role. The structure is all the more suitable as there are 8 participants! 🙂

The groups are made naturally and the mechanics are rather fluid. I sometimes leave 1 or 2 extra minutes to let the exchanges end because it helps to reinforce the team cohesion at the same time.

Seeing the managers still seated and gathered in the same place, I invite them to move around to listen and support the conversations. It seems important to me to To set in motion even if they are not directly at the heart of the exercise.

The debriefing takes place in a rather fluid way and we group some of the answers together when the general meaning is similar or if it belongs to the same theme. We then come out with 12 elements with only 1 activity added by the managers.

Position yourself on the CAC

The listing finished, I then invite each person to come position on the CAC for each of the activities listed. There's. therefore has movement for a good ten minutes.

As expected, we can quickly get an idea of the themes deserving our attention. I then ask the managers what they think of it and if it is consistent with their perception. The result being particularly green, this is reassuring. However, the focus of conversations tends to go to the few pink or yellow mini post-its!

I facilitate the exchanges that emerge for clarify the meaning behind everyone's positions. In addition, I specify that the results displayed are declarative and are not intended to be considered as "the truth". These remain individual perceptions giving rise to conversation.

When these conversations lead to potential improvement actions, I take this opportunity to move on to the next section. Let's enjoy it, we still have a good forty minutes left here!

Define improvement actions

We will identify here not only the improvement actions and the carriers for each activity but also the expected result. This is particularly close to my heart because it allows my senses to define more informed actions.

We are coming to the end of the workshop with 3 activities on which actions, carriers and results have been defined. I offer them one last challenge before closing the session: set the review date for these actions.

It is interesting to see that, just like in Agile retrospectives, the commitment to results seems to be scary. It was indeed not too difficult to evoke ideas or even to find carriers of the various subjects. On the other hand, defining a date on which we would follow these actions led to lively debates!

The final decision was to agree on End of June as an in-progress follow-up step rather than a results validation step. This seems to have relaxed the atmosphere.

It remains interesting to see how the pressure can rise suddenly without the stakes being so high. Looking at the actions more closely, some people even indicated that it could be done in a matter of hours!

Conclusion

To close the workshop, I asked each person to express a word representing what they left the session with.

The keywords seem to fit the original intent well: strengthen the collective in a participatory and structured approach to progress together. This is already a first step in order to develop more autonomy in the future!