POWER July 2021 - 4

SPEAKING OF POWER
Fostering a
Speak-Up Culture with
Facilitative Leadership
Aaron Larson
T
he history books are littered with
incidents that could have been prevented
if people in the know had
been empowered to speak up and decision-makers
had acted differently based
on the input. For example, the Titanic,
Columbia, and Challenger disasters
could all have been prevented had leaders
listened to subordinates and taken
their concerns more seriously.
Facilitative Leadership
One management style that encourages
collaboration within a work group is
called " Facilitative Leadership. " Ed Halpin,
owner and CEO of Halpin Leadership Industries
Inc., a leadership consulting company,
explained the concept behind the
technique. " Facilitative leadership is the
definable, repeatable, teachable behaviors
that lubricate the wheels of collaboration,
and teach people how to co-labor
and work together, " he told POWER.
Halpin doesn't just speak from a theoretical
perspective; he has nearly 40
years of experience in the nuclear power
industry including at the South Texas
Project (STP), a dual-unit nuclear facility
located about 90 miles southwest of
Houston. " I worked in South Texas for
25 years. We were shut down in 1993
by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission
because we did not have a good safety
culture and we did not know how to collaborate, "
Halpin said.
Facilitative leadership helped to get
STP headed back in the right direction.
" It is this toolset that we introduced that
allowed us to turn that culture around
and then operate with excellence for
several years, " said Halpin.
Michael Reidy, senior consultant with
Interaction Associates, suggested facilitative
leadership improves communication,
which leads to positive outcomes.
" Leaders who are leading with a facilitative
mindset, heart set, spirit set, and
skill set are making it easier for people
to be part of the process. They're making
it easier for people to be part of decision-making.
They're making it easier
for people to speak up when they have
4
a problem. They're making it easier for
people to name their own needs and
their own concerns, particularly about
safety, " he said.
Reidy witnessed a cultural transformation
brought on through the use of facilitative
leadership at the Seabrook nuclear
plant, a single-unit station located in New
Hampshire, about 40 miles north of Boston,
Massachusetts. He said the change
began when Ted Nichols, who was a
technical support manager in charge of
equipment reliability, initiated the process
in his department at the plant. After
he demonstrated successful results,
the model spread throughout the whole
Seabrook facility.
Culture Can Adversely Affect
Performance
In most cases, savvy managers can easily
recognize when an organization's culture
is sabotaging results. " If you look at safety,
reliability, and affordability metrics-all
those high-level indicators-if they're not
going in the right direction, guess what,
something's probably wrong with your
culture and your ability to act as a team to
execute on your plan, " said Halpin.
" Productivity is a big indicator of
whether a culture is on track, so measuring
results is essential, " Reidy added.
But, he suggested, you have to do more
than simply measure results, you also
have to understand how you got those
results. He said it's important to have a
culture that allows for honest speaking.
" I don't think facilitative leadership does
that overnight, but I think it builds a container
in which it's possible. "
" The one key indicator I use, and have
used for several years, involves just going
into and watching a meeting take
place-observing a meeting-because
meetings are a microcosm of organizational
culture, " said Halpin. " If you go
into a meeting and people are there rolling
their eyes or they're not sure why
they're there, or you're not sure what the
desired outcome is, it's a key indicator of
a culture that is rudderless, " he said.
Effective meetings leave people feeling
good. Workers feel safe speaking up
www.powermag.com
and raising issues without leaders shutting
them down. However, it's not necessarily
easy to implement. Leaders must
know how to deal with issues that arise
using what Halpin called " open-narrowclosed
techniques. " They must be able
to reach agreements through a defined
decision-making methodology.
Implementing Change
Many of the organizations Reidy has
worked with over the years had an established
" command and control " culture
prior to his arrival. He said that management
style can work quite well when
things are going smoothly, but it may not
be sustainable in the long run. " Increasing
and balancing the level of involvement in
decision-making is one of the great gifts
that facilitative leadership brings to nearly
every organization that I've had the privilege
of bringing it into, " he said.
" Finding a way to increase the level of
involvement in decision-making promotes
ownership, " Reidy explained. " If you have
given people a buy-in opportunity-a
genuine opportunity of involvement in the
decision-making-they own it differently,
and they will actually implement it with
greater gusto and greater commitment. "
To get started, Halpin suggested organizations
focus on effective meeting
management. For example, leaders
should require agendas be developed
for meetings, with specific desired outcomes
that are well-conceived. They
should ensure the decision-making
methodology is clear, and roles and responsibilities
are identified. They should
verify meeting attendees are the right
key stakeholders. Furthermore, it is important
for facilitators to be trained to
use open-narrow-closed techniques.
" These are very simple techniques as a
part of facilitative leadership, " Halpin said.
" I would focus on having effective meetings
that bring out the best in the team
and move the needle on performance.
Meetings are a microcosm of the organizational
culture. If you have great meetings,
your culture is probably great. " ■
-Aaron Larson is POWER's
executive editor.
POWER | July 2021
http://www.powermag.com
POWER July 2021

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