10.7
GETTINGPARTICIPATION
Inspired by Jean Illsley Clarke, Robert Jolles, and numerous other sources.Eliciting group participation is a crucial skill for leaders, for many reasons:
✔ The best way to gain personal commitment and buy-in is through participation.
✔ Participation can lead to higher-quality, more innovative solutions.
✔ Two heads are better than one. Effective participation leads to synergy. Two or more
people working together well can accomplish much more than the sum of the results
of these same people working separately.
✔ Leaders need people’s commitment, not their compliance. Ideally, you want the dis-
cretionary effort to support and advance the process, not impede it. The best way to
get this discretionary effort is through involvement.HOW TO SECURE PARTICIPATION IN A GROUP
There is no one best way to elicit participation from a group. Some suggestions are:
❑ Ask for participation. Making a direct and honest request for participation is very effective.
❑ Build participation into project plans and meetings. Plan when and how to elicit participation.
❑ Do not dominate airtime yourself. The most common reason for lack of participation is
lack of opportunity provided by an overcontrolling or dominating leader.
❑ The earlier you give people the opportunity to participate, the more likely they are to
participate.
❑ People are more likely to participate in decisions and plans that they have opportunities to
influence. [☛9.2 Situational Leadership]
❑ Express appreciation and thank peoplewho participate. Be careful of early implied evalu-
ation of participant ideas: using a phrase like “Excellent idea” only when it supports
your own viewpoint, for example. [☛12.1 The Relationship Bank]
❑ Protect the first few ideas. Participants often judge the safety of participation by how well
the first couple of contributions are handled.
❑ Ask open-ended questions to get participation going.
❑ Asking for examples is a powerful way of getting participation.Participants often find it eas-
ier to tell a story than to state an abstract idea.
❑ Always verbally summarize or visibly record key points,so participants know you under-
stand, before you make an evaluative or rebuttal response. [☛8.7 Active Listening]SECTION 10 TOOLS FORLEADINGTEAMS ANDGROUPS 317