Back on the rails

Wow the last three weeks have been hectic. We have been evaluating NHibernate plus I joined two book study groups and neither of them are about the book I am reading. Hopefully things have calmed down now and I get back to reading and posting about Collaboration Explained.

Tabaka writes:

You’ll know that you have seriously moved to a truly collaborative style of decision making when:

• You value the opinions of the group more than your own.


• You provide process guidance through positive encouragement instead of controlling dictatorship.


• You provide your opinion only as an expert contributor and only with the permission of the group(more on this later).


• You don’t use your opinion to sway the outcome of the meeting.


• You enlist others to dog your neutrality and ensure it is engaged throughout the meeting.

I do value the opinions of my team and believe that they can make a better decision together than I can make by myself. I have worked hard on being neutral and giving my team the power to make decisions, but I really need to work on being positive and supportive.

I have been avoiding providing my opinion. I don't know how to give my opinion without making it sound like the final decision. The book says it will talk more about this later so I am hoping there is some advice in there that can help me. The idea of getting someone to dog my neutrality sounds interesting.