JOIN US FOR OUR NEXT LEARNING BREAKFAST
Be the first to know about upcoming learning opportunities from Third Factor by entering your information below.
Third Factor CEO Dane Jensen and Rick Hansen
This year, the focus will be primarily on discussing what it means to be a collaborative community of organizations. How do we think about combining our efforts to make sure that we are punching above our weight and not just acting as a number of independent organizations? We are stronger as a whole and through better corporate collaboration, we can accelerate the pace of progress for people with disabilties.
This year also marks the launch of the Accessibility Professional Network, a membership network created to bring together accessibility professionals, consultants, students and anyone passionate about creating a Canada that’s accessible for all. The network will host its first Annual Accessibility Professional Network Conference on Oct. 31-Nov. 1 in Toronto, which will provide a platform to learn about national and international initiatives in accessibility and contribute to enhancing the field of accessibility in Canada.
Canada is a better place to live because of the important work that Rick and the Foundation have done to raise awareness and remove barriers, and we’re pleased that we’re able to contribute to a movement that’s making a real difference in the lives of people with disabilities in this country.
If you’re interested in doing more to improve accessibility within your organization or community, learn more at the Rick Hansen Foundation.
Sometimes we need to step outside of ourselves in order to better understand what is going on, on the inside.
Self-reflection is one of those things that managers often brush aside. In a forward-focused business environment it can feel as though you just don’t have time to be reflective. However, in order to be great it is crucial to first understand your own strengths and limitations and this understanding rests on the ability to become self-aware.
Sandra Stark and Peggy Baumgartner discuss why self-awareness is important, what it looks like, and the questions you must be able to answer about yourself. They introduce the concept of “active awareness”, a skill that helps you leverage self-awareness in the moment, and that has worked for the thousands of Canadian executives that Third Factor has worked with over the past ten years.
The time that you invest in getting to know yourself in the present, will only serve to benefit you in the future.
Click here to download the whitepaper. “I was covering a colleague’s position while she was on maternity leave. She has now returned and we have negotiated shared authority and management roles. Co-management is not easy. Now we have to see where our roles intersect and what makes us distinct. It was so much easier to be the sole operator and know exactly what my role was and what I was accountable for. I think that is the hardest part. How do we decide about accountability?”
In our workshops, we constantly talk about the importance of clarity. Nowhere is this more important than in areas of joint responsibility. My preferred starting point for clarity in these situations is the basic building block of management responsibility: the decision.
First and foremost, you and your colleague must be on exactly the same page with respect to what the key decisions are that are made in the course of your work, and then you need to have an open and frank discussion around who has the right to ‘make’ the decision vs. who has an ‘input’ right (I.e. They need to be consulted, but ultimately the decision is not theirs to make), or even just a ‘notify’ right (I.e. They must be notified once the decision has been made).
A lot of the issues in shared roles come when people believe they have a make right, but actually they just have an input right, or vice versa. Agreeing on this up front can diffuse a lot of potential tension.
It is very tempting to establish ‘joint make’ rights for key decisions—i.e. we both need to agree to make the decision. In my experience, ‘joint make’ rights cause some significant issues in the real world, and often lead to paralysis. Even though it can be very painful up front, it is better to align on one person who ultimately has the responsibility for making each decision. These ‘make’ rights would ideally be aligned with the unique knowledge, skills, etc. that you bring to the table. Sometimes this may not be possible, but try to use a “joint make” very sparingly.
One way to think about making this real is in going through the core job responsibilities you’ve outlined in your job description and really honing in on what the choices implied in each. For example, let’s say one element of your job is to “oversee the creation and implementation of a comprehensive communication strategy”. Within this task you might have 3 key decisions: 1) what core messages are we highlighting to which audiences, 2) what budget are we allocating for communications, 3) what media mix are we going to use. What you want to do is isolate the decisions that are likely to be hotly contested, and make sure you have clearly laid out decision rights with your partner. For example:
Once decision rights are clarified, accountability is easy: you are accountable to your supervisor for the decisions over which you have a ‘make’ right, and your accountability as colleagues is that you will effectively provide for, and really listen to, input across all decisions where you have agreed that the other person has input rights. Allocating decision rights is an exercise in power. Prepare for the discussion with your colleague to be a challenging one. If you push through it, however, you will have a solid foundation upon which to build a productive, collaborative relationship.