Shape up. Let the brickie go!

How much thinking goes into the selection and use of team development approaches and tools where you work? Who does this thinking, choosing, using, and evaluating?

In various leadership roles over a couple of decades I have been a buyer of external consulting and development support. I now run a company with an expertise around team development. And so I have been on both sides of the thinking, choosing, using, evaluation engagement.

The phrase “both sides” is telling, isn’t it?

As a buyer, how many times have you specified with great confidence that you want a bit of MBTI, some Belbin, and an away day that focuses on subject X? You are the leader-buyer, and you know what the organisation or team needs. Right?

Can you remember how you grew into a different kind of leader-buyer? One that became more comfortable about not knowing the solution? One that became more comfortable with sensing and shaping rather than specifying? One whose role was to create the conditions for success rather than deliver the detail?

Can you remember letting go of being a bricklayer and becoming an architect? Can you remember when the thinking, choosing, using and evaluating engagement became a dialogue with trusted professional partners?

In our work we get to see the many versions of the buyers we used to be.

What kind of leader-buyer are you becoming?

Dave Stewart

The Fresh Air Learning Company