Asking Better Questions to Accelerate Action

Thursday, 12 Nov 2020, 11:30 AM EST

You, along with many leaders, may feel like you’re struggling to get the organization moving on your project or initiative. You sense a clay layer between upper management and team leaders. You’re pushing spaghetti and herding cats.

These can be signals that the organization is resisting, but why? Maybe people are busy, their goals are misaligned with yours, or the initiative needs to be adjusted.

And although this describes internal organizational challenges, external initiatives can face similar and more complex, visible opposition.

How is the dilemma resolved? By identifying and pursuing comprehensive stakeholder engagement. It may feel time consuming up-front, but these efforts accelerate action internally and reduce opposition externally.

By focusing your conversational structures on asking instead of telling and cultivating rather than minimizing input from naysayers, your stakeholder engagement will increase enthusiasm and reduce overt and covert resistance.

Interested in learning more?

Join Katherine Rosback, BSChE, MA Organizational Communication and author of “Asking is Better Than Telling” and Sabrina Watkins. BSCE, MBA, Sustainable Business with a decade of experience in leading the global sustainable development in a 90 minute interactive webinar. By engaging with the critical stakeholders, asking better questions and systematizing engagement, you will bridge differing views, align your organization and accelerate action!

Ask the Better Question®:
Identifying Underlying Drivers

Wednesday, 9 Sep 2020, 1:00 PM EST

Every step of a successful decision-making process—from problem formulation to reaching an agreement on a path forward to fostering uptake of the new idea—benefits from engaging a diverse set of stakeholders and team members.

Yet the ability to navigate and resolve the differing perspectives and preferences held by these individuals can be a challenging task for a project lead. How does one overcome a strong opinion how things “should” be done, “lead” another to consider an alternative viewpoint, and/or navigate the inevitable resistance that occurs? Far too often the attempts to answer these challenges results in “top-of-the-iceberg” conversations; they fail to explore the governing assumptions and value systems that give rise to problem frames, preferred solutions, or certainties as to why something will not work.

The purpose of this webinar is to introduce participants to advanced questioning processes and structures that revise old patterns of thought, reshape cyclical discussions, foster innovation, and resolve persistent conflicts.