Or – How to make good decisions and turn them into action.
This is about decisions, mutuality and commitment. And personal leadership, of course….
I’m talking about the decisions we make in common. The necessary and important decisions – in dreams of great results and success. Commitment is your personal engagement, enthusiasm and contributions for the most brilliant result as possible. You can dictate people to promise their commitment, but you can’t force them actually to do it in practise. I’m talking about the crossfield between your way of being ‘The good leader’ for the project and each member’s Personal Leadership. I call this crossfield ‘Mutuality.’
‘The good leader’ can be either a person – the one who has the formal leadership. Or an idea – based on the common agreements, values, goals and frames for the cowork and results for the specific project. Whether it’s a person or a Vision – the leadership depends on mutuality and commitment to the common decisions. Get my point?
The traditional organization-models are ‘Top-Down( arrrrgh) or ‘Buttom -UP” (A little better, because there is space for co-influence.) I think it’s time to create and agree ’The Mutuality-model’.
What have Mutuality to do with good decisions? Everything.
A good decision is made in mutual agreements and commitment. Whether you’re the boss or the member of the community. Making decisions and resolutions have an implicit element of fear. Fear for ‘No way back’. Fear for the consequenses both for you and the community. Fear of making the wrong choise. Maybe fear of the hard work it demands to make the decisions come true?
The Mutuality-model makes it possible to make good decisions, and eliminate most of the fears.
Why?
Because the good decisionprocess contains an aggrement of commitment to follow the decision AND evaluate it after a while. A kind of pilotproject or test-period. Everybody paying attention to the pros & cons, when it comes to act the decision. Each and everyone is important and valuable in this process, because the mission is to get so many angles, thoughts and experiences on the effort as possible. That’s mutuality. The boss isn’t more important, than the employer in this process. Actually she’s less important. The real challenge for the leader is to allow people to experience and be critical. (And tell the usual one, who claims ‘I wasn’t there- I didn’t agree’, to shut up and be loyal to the decision, as well as the others.) Whether the leadership depends on a person or a set of common agreements, mutuality is the way.
HOW to create a dynamic decision-procedure based on mutuality and commitment.
Say after me, please:
‘I hereby commit myself to act the decision with all my attention, knowledge, experience, creativity and enthusiasm. I promise I will focus on the process, efforts and brilliant results. I also promise to act professional and let go of personal interests, effort, feelings and fears for changes or disagreements. I will do my very best to contribute and share my opinions, thoughts and experiences with my coworkers – as well as they do, to make sure we get as many angles, pros and cons as possible in the test-period. I will – of course, listen to the others with attention and respect for their points of views. To me, loyalty means loyalty to the best practice for the future, and never ever loyalty to a person, organization or the oldschool way of doing things. I will even promise to be a pioneer or a rebel, if that’s what it takes to get to the best results. Al the best for the best.’
Okay – it maybe sounds easy, and actually it is. There are some important steps and mutual agreements you have to make to get to the mutuality- statement.
Here they are – based on my own experiences:
- I know you have a clear vision and/or common goals. So I don’t have to mention, that your decisions must match your visions and goals?
- Everybody have to be involved in the creative process, leading to the decision, you’re about to test in action.
- Make sure, that visions, goals, timeframe, action and evaluation points are clear, visual and written down to everybody.
- Point out one or two keypersons with the professional and personal competences and skills to create and guarantee the ongoing conversation about pros and cons in the test-period.
- Please remember, that objections can be valuable questions in disguise about an angle, you didn’t pay attention to. And then – you have to tell between the valuable contributions to the process in the spirit of mutuality and the usual grumblers, walking backwards into the future – fighting to preserve the past.
- And then – If it shows up, that your decision is really bad, wrong or unrealistic, when you start acting it. If it breaks your vision and goals down instead of build them up – then quit it. Gather together as quick as possible, and make a common decision to make a new and better decision.
Go for it and have fun – says The Wise Woman. 
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