Jun 25, 2019
Before I walk you through how to lead a Plus Delta exercise for your team, you might be wondering what it is or really what purpose it serves. In a nutshell, it's a team building exercise that celebrates their successes and the things you're doing well, which are the pluses, as well as highlighting the things that need to change, which are the deltas. Now, in math, the plus symbol means addition or a positive number, and the delta symbol, which is a triangle, is a symbol for change.
So, this is how it works. Everyone in your leadership team gathers together and each of you take a turn being in the hot seat. When you're in the hot seat, everyone else takes turns telling you all the things that you're doing well, all of your pluses, and then they go around and tell you your deltas or things that you can change or improve on. You can see why this can be really powerful and really vulnerable. If you give every member on your leadership team an opportunity to speak directly to you and tell you the things that you're doing well and the things that you need to improve on or change, you get the opportunity to learn about blind spots you don't know you have. Likewise, when one of your team members gets to be in the hot seat and you and the other leaders on your team get to speak life into him, and tell him or her the changes they need to make, as well as the things that they're doing well, it calls them up to another level. It can build them up and challenge them in ways that they probably wouldn't realize they even needed.
Now, one thing that's important to note is this is not a good versus bad exercise: “Here are all the good things you're doing, here all the bad things.” That's not what it's about. This entire exercise is a positive one because it highlights all the ways you're succeeding and what you're doing well while also highlighting the ways that you can improve. Now, it's up to you as a leader to set the tone, and we'll talk a little bit about that. But overall, it's an incredibly powerful exercise. So press play and I’ll walk you through how you can lead a Plus Delta exercise in five steps!
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