Leaders are typically tasked with setting organizational strategy and held accountable for making sure that goals are met. Historically, this model was effective.
However, as the world and internal work environment become more complex, leaders need to pause and consider whether this top-down approach to setting strategy still works.
Some leaders fear that involving their teams in the process will complicate the task, extend the timeframe or cause a clash of opinions. They limit participation to avoid conflict, foster group harmony and drive consensus.
What they don’t understand is that the ideas that come from inclusion can be far more valuable and critical to organizational success.
In fact, research shows that including your team and diversity in setting strategy and decision-making leads to better outcomes, enhanced creativity and fresh perspectives.
So, what’s the most effective way to broaden participation in important organizational conversations without getting mired in endless discussion, conflict and details?
Diverse perspectives and conflict are necessary for uncovering new thinking and evaluating solutions thoroughly.
Leaders who invite diversity, withstand conflict and know how to manage differences in opinion effectively, generate more ideas from their teams and put those ideas under intense scrutiny before converging around a path forward.
As a result, decisions are more informed and significantly better than those generated by individuals with similar mindsets who too easily agree, especially under the guidance of a conflict-avoidant leader.
Employee engagement is critical in today’s work environment. When employees aren’t invited to the table, they feel less invested in their work and don’t understand the relationship between their role and achieving organizational goals. As a result, they underperform and talent retention becomes a big challenge.
Asking your team to set strategy is a very compelling way to get them engaged and contributing. It demonstrates trust, shows you value their opinion and helps them make the connection between their work and the organization’s success.
Employees respond to this by producing better outcomes, experiencing less burn-out and staying with the organization.
We all have examples of times when a great strategy fell flat. More often than not, the cause is not the idea, but the implementation.
This is another reason including your team in setting strategy is a powerful tactic. You have their buy-in and they’re already vested.
They will be thinking even more critically about how to make the strategy work, determining key actions, setting an aggressive timeline and identifying the right benchmarks to ultimate success.
Diversity also plays a role in successful implementation in that a team with a mix of perspectives, skills and experiences has the depth to identify a wider range of potential obstacles, develop alternative approaches to overcoming them and make course corrections more quickly.
