A few weeks ago, I consulted a mentor of mine about a school I’ve been working with. The principal had requested additional support, in light of several upcoming staff transitions and challenging interpersonal dynamics. I recounted the major players and the ins and outs of their strained relationships to this mentor for some time before he stopped me and asked what the school’s goals were, what were they really trying to achieve right now. The question, so basic, stopped me in my tracks; I didn’t have an answer. I had a very broad sense of the goal: the culture among staff members had been deteriorating for some time and they wanted to shift that. But even this response was not really answering the question of why or for what. For what real purpose was this group of people trying to work out their baggage and what would be possible if they were successful?
It makes sense intuitively for us to start with the purpose for anything that we do. That holds true for everything from a professional conference to choosing where to go on vacation to having a hard conversation. And yet, how often do we skip over alignment around goals or assume there’s agreement without confirming as much, and then get mired in the details and stuck in conflict?
Let’s consider a team meeting in an organization. In many workplaces, a regular team meeting is a given, a requisite part of doing any kind of work with other people, such that the goals behind it are rarely or never discussed. But there are many potential reasons to have a team meeting including to keep everyone informed about individuals’ workstreams, to make decisions, to set or communicate expectations, to troubleshoot problems, to share ideas, to build relationships, to surface tension, or to develop strategy - just to name a few! These different goals are served by different meeting formats, lengths of time, preparation, facilitators, and approaches. But in most workplaces I’ve encountered, the team meeting is static despite the purpose changing from meeting to meeting. What’s more, I’ve seen too many organizations attempt to accomplish all these things in an hour-long meeting every other week. It somehow makes perfect sense that people often tell me their team’s meetings feel like a waste of time and too little time simultaneously.
This phenomenon is one of the reasons many facilitators use a POP format to plan gatherings and meetings. The first ‘P’ in a POP is for identifying the purpose, the greater “why” driving the group. The ‘O’ stands for outcomes, honing in on what success looks like when you’ve finished, ensuring that it serves the larger purpose. And the final ‘P’ is for process, what you’ll actually do together to achieve those outcomes. Each step builds on the last so that our efforts together are all supporting what we’re trying to accomplish - whether that’s deepening our relationships, managing a crisis, or simply having fun together.
My mentor’s point to me was not just that grounding in purpose should come first, though. He was also drawing a connection between the interpersonal strain this school is struggling with and the lack of clarity around defined goals. Being on the same page about purpose doesn’t mean conflict goes away, but it does encourage conflict that is generative, that moves us forward instead of stalling us. If a group agrees on the deeper goals of what they’re trying to do together, a variety of perspectives about how to get there can be tremendously productive. Though it may be uncomfortable in the moment, that kind of disagreement often leaves us with more durable and creative approaches. But without agreement on shared purpose, people seek strategies to fulfill their own understanding of the goal, without making that explicit. If we have a variety of perspectives because we’re trying to meet a variety of different and possibly conflicting goals, that is a recipe for frustration, stalemate, and mistrust.
I’m still figuring out what I’ll do with the school I mentioned, but I know it will start with getting clear on what they’re trying to achieve – both with their bigger “why” that anchors their work as educators and administrators, as well as how addressing the fractures in their relationships will help them get there. The rest won’t necessarily be easy, but it will be in service of something defined and something that really matters to the people present.