I don’t know if you’ve noticed from these videos, by my thoughts and emotions have a tendency to leak through my facial expressions. I’ll be sitting in a group conversation, strategizing over whether and when I want to insert myself, and the facilitator will stop and say, “I can tell Steve is just itching to say something.”
Subtle facial expressions like that are just one way that leaders like you can influence outcomes even when you don’t intend to. If you are in the room – whether physical or virtual – when your team is making a decision, your role as a leader carries a certain gravity that will nudge and manipulate people’s thinking even when you don’t intend to.
If you’re facilitating the conversation, your silent influence is even stronger. Your own biases can show up in the way you frame the discussion before it begins, in the follow-up questions you ask, in how you encourage or refrain from encouraging participation of specific members.
I once worked for a VP who was extremely deliberate in avoiding this kind of inadvertent influence. They would emphasize when a decision belonged to the team, and they would say, “I want to keep my thumb off the scale here.”
There may be times when your specific scope of responsibility means that you do indeed need to define and declare the desired outcomes for your team (even while you may let them choose the actions that will achieve those outcomes.) But when you can let your team identify the outcomes (or outputs) that make the most sense, be mindful of how your presence can exert an influence you may not intend.
And if you’d like to explore your situation in more detail, let’s talk. Visit stevedwire.com/talk to start the conversation.
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