Groupthink

Stephen H. Hoffman would go
broke without consensus.

As president of the Jewish
Community Federation of
Cleveland
, Hoffman is constantly
working to ensure that donors
are heard because each has three
unique votes in every decision
the organization makes.

Donors who are members of
the board first vote for or against
a decision, and then they vote
with their wallets, deciding
whether to financially support a
decision. Last, they can vote with
their feet, deciding to walk out if
their opinions aren’t heard.

Throughout the years, Hoffman
has become an expert in building
a consensus to capitalize on the
$90 million grant budget at the
nonprofit organization that supports the Jewish and general
communities of Cleveland.
Learning to hear every point of
view and find common ground
among people who think they are
on different planets, Hoffman
pushes the organization forward
by getting both volunteers and
his 130-person staff behind the
bigger vision.

Smart Business spoke with
Hoffman about understanding the
team dynamic and how to learn
to delegate before your hair gets
too gray.

Guide the team dynamic to build
consensus.
In group work,
there are two parallel dynamics operating at the same time.
One is the actual work, the
topics that are being discussed
and the decisions that you
have to make.

The other side is the process
that’s being followed to make
decisions and achieve consensus. There you focus on trying
to include all members of the
group in the discussion, trying
to listen to what different people are saying, trying to see if
there’s common ground in the
different views expressed and
trying to understand where different people are coming from
to move toward a consensus.

And you want to do so not
by a 5-4 vote, but where everybody says, ‘OK, I think that’s
where I could go and support.’

Now, that doesn’t mean you
have to get everybody to
agree, but you have to make
everybody feel they had a
chance to participate and a
chance to be heard and
respected. It’s very important
that it be an authentic process
and that people perceive it
that way so their participation
matters. And they may not prevail because the majority of
the group is in a different
place, but if we find that the
decision is split too narrowly,
we generally won’t move forward; we wait until we are
able to muster a much larger
consensus.

Help employees own their work.

People have to own their work
and their decisions and make
things happen. So you introduce them to what your standards are, and you enculturate
them to your expectations.

You expose them to what
your values are, you expose them to your processes, and
then, as one of my mentors is
fond of telling me, you delegate authority, but you don’t
abdicate responsibility. In
other words, you can’t say,
‘Well, I delegated that to Sara,
and I checked out.’ That’s not
acceptable.

I go through a monthly meeting with each of our department heads where we discuss
the issues on the table. I keep
a list of things I want to talk
about, but the more important
list are the issues that they
bring in.

The obvious thing is not to
solve people’s problems but to
ask them to propose solutions.
The more that they have to
propose, the more thought
they’re going to give and the
more they’re going to own it.

Then, through the conversation back and forth, you engage in the measurement of
the issue versus the culture of
the organization and the vision.

Keep your staff members interested
by changing their roles.
After
people have mastered a particular job, we might move them
to a situation where they are
not necessarily logically prepared but where we think they
can make a difference and let
them get new skills. What
we’re learning with the
younger generation is that the
money and benefits are kind
of taken for granted. What
they’re really looking for is an
organization that is going to
help them grow personally,
and we’ve been giving a lot more attention to that aspect.
We look to see first if they
have an interest. Then we look
to see if they have some fundamental skills, so when we add
in knowledge, they can make
the leap.

Our confederation has a history that goes back 60 years to
changing people’s assignments
and helping them grow and
gain better breadth, and that
helps individuals both for their
growth and for motivation
within the organization. It’s a
two-way street.

Do the things only you can do.

When I was younger, I did it
all. As my hair turns gray, I’ve
begun to focus much more
intensely on downloading
responsibilities and decisions
to my team, and I’ve become much more conscious of
working through others.

I had to learn to put my
focus on things that, in theory,
only I can do at the moment,
and where others can step up
and do something to give it to
them. To delegate and to trust
and follow up, that’s become a
huge thing.

It was a huge struggle —
it’s always tempting to do it
yourself, think about it yourself and write the report. Of
course, what you find is you
do a great job, you just don’t
do enough. As your staff
grows, you have to develop
different lines of supervision
and delegation, and you are
ultimately faced with choices
because your time is not
infinite.

HOW TO REACH: Jewish Community Federation of Cleveland, (888) 467-1125
or www.jewishcleveland.org