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Working with Teams and Groups – for sustainable effectiveness and scale

7/4/2022

What organisations benefit from, often crave, are relational and conversational spaces coupled with routes to outcomes - and together ignited by leadership that can bridge both domains. This is at the heart of my work with teams and groups.

There are many models and ways of working with teams and groups. A colleague and I contributed one of our own in 6 Critical Leadership Capacities. These all have value, but I now want to get to more of the essential, the underlying essence, of what contributes to the growth of a team or group, of what promotes sustainable effectiveness and scale, and the approaches to development that work best.

The work is to become collectively more conscious and intentional, and consciously and intentionally more collective.

Sustainably effective teams and groups possess four key attributes:

Relatedness - safety and ok-ness, connection, good dialogue, belonging and community.
Clarity - of purpose, direction, priorities, roles and accountabilities.
Spaciousness - to think and listen, to breath and sense, for dialogue and generative conversation, to be with what is, to navigate within complexity.
Courage - of commitment and accountability, the ‘secret sauce’ of intentionality and practice, to step outside of places and patterns that no longer serve.

Working with teams and groups is about you seeing and working on yourselves, through what matters most right now, developing these (and other) attributes - bringing the work into the development and the development into the work.

I have a preference for dialogic over diagnostic discovery, each team and context is unique, so measuring one against a semi-arbitrary scale of others is of limited value.

Bringing thinking and being to the fore in addition to doing is critical. Our world and our upbringing, our measures, tend to be so much about doing, yet growth and development, working with today’s challenges, these really require us to build our muscles of thinking and being.

Being: the sense you have of yourself; an inner stance and place; who you are, why and what for; the basis for beliefs and values.

Thinking: ways and styles of thinking; why and how you think; the application of beliefs and values; the formation of principles and priorities.

Doing: actions, behaviours and practices; what you attend to; the way in which you are perceived and understood..

Pattern and cadence matter: one-off events have low utility, and the upfront investment in discovery and building permission can be hard to recoup from a single day workshop; regular and overtime garners so much greater return than sporadic and short term.

Too often when teams and groups come together it becomes a rushed experience with a tightly packed and timed agenda full of information transmission and with little space to engage and relate, little space to think and listen in a quality manner. My preference is for there to be more space, with a freer structure and the option to switch tempo and focus as the conversation emerges.

begin with invitation - craft the container - give a place to who and what came before - see and speak about the present, just as it is - pay attention to what wants to shift and emerge - galvanise steps towards better

To many this 'softness' doesn't look like it will get anywhere, yet if we're talking about complex situations with thorny and engrained problems, then slowing down and sensing really does help to move ahead better compared to rushing and fixing. This way promotes relatedness and creates the conditions where people can discover the ideas and courage for what lies ahead. The best way to start is not with information but with questions.

Some questions and areas that I find useful to prime thinking and for early discovery:

If the team or group could speak, what would it say?
What happened in the past that's affecting the present, that isn't being seen or acknowledged?
Who or what needs to given a place before you can move forward?
What's up with the present that’s no longer appropriate for the future that you see ahead?
What is the energy for change - the extent to which folks want to create change, and the desire or need to do so collaboratively?
What do you want to create together?
What is your part or contribution to the problem or situation you see before you?
What do you imagine there needs to be more or less of to improve effectiveness (individually, from the team or group, from the leader, by the leader)?

Places to start to improve effectiveness?

Safety trust

Listening

Responsibilities

Decision making

Remembering

Feedback

Accountability

Candour

Decision making

Strategy

Structure

Behaviours

Breathing space

Direction

Purpose

Mindsets

Ask members to pick one ‘big bet’ item that’s most important to improve the team’s effectiveness as quickly as possible; then one or two others that would fuel improvement in that first element (Bratt)

Some useful moving forward and 'charter' questions:

Why does this team/group exist and what for?
Who or what do we serve?
How will we be successful?
What are we excluding, saying no to or refusing?
How do we behave?
What's most important right now?
Who needs to do what?
How will we know that we are being successful?
What do we need to sustain ourselves in our good endeavours?

"Under conditions of uncertainty, starting a journey with a very clear plan is dangerous because it limits what you can see to what you think you might see. In complexity, it is better to start a journey with a sense of direction, but not having precise goals."
David Snowden

I work with teams and groups from the very small and local, to the very large and global; with those that are mostly looking inwards, to those mostly looking outwards; from those troubled by seeming dysfunction and lacking engagement, to those looking to expand their mission and impact. When I ask these clients what they hope to be different as a result of our work together I find many recurring contexts:

Wanting to refresh or repurpose, to reconnect with why and what matters.
A desire or imperative to scale leadership and overall organisational capacity.
Sensing that getting better at the 'soft stuff' will result in better delivery of the 'hard stuff'.
A need to build greater organisational and stakeholder understanding, engagement and contribution.
Being at a strategic inflection point of choice, opportunity or challenge.
Addressing dysfunction and inability to have productive courageous conversations.
Navigating complexity; moving from predict-and-plan to sense-and-respond.
Building systemic intelligence and promoting systemic health.
Leading and working in near constant change and unpredictability.
Understanding and working with transformation.

A note about structure - form and fit for future and function

'Team’ is often the default term for an organisational grouping, and everyone assumes it means the same thing. A team can have many different forms, and one of the traditional team forms may not even be the most appropriate for the task at hand.

For example Collaborative teams tend to have a single purpose and outcome, and there is a need for high mutual interdependency for effectiveness and success. Whereas Co-operative groups tend to have a commonality of purpose or interest, but there are as many different outcomes of success as there are members, and the need for interdependency may be more fluid. Getting clear about what form you are matters, knowing that it’s a fit for what lies ahead matters more.

This article draws on several sources and influences. Tony McGuire, Pete Marsh, Kat Ferguson, Chris Dalton, Patrick Lencioni, Peter Block, Bennett Bratt, Adam Kahane, Ty Francis, Lynn Stoney, and Harrison Snow have all influenced my thinking and learning. There are many others whose contributions have enriched my unconscious. Thank you all.

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gossamer: approaching hard edges with softness

27/2/2022

With thanks to my many teachers who guided me this far, a long way from where I started, and home to myself and where I belong.

The Man said "I want to go deeper, I want to spend longer",
and the Witch said "Let's drink tea together, sitting with others."
And the alchemy worked in the Man, space and stilling
birthing growth far beyond even the dreams of that first grasping.

That’s part of my own story and how I came to the threshold of a different way of looking at my work. A way I am experiencing more and more, and finding truly remarkable in its gentleness and impact.

I hesitate to even name and describe it, so I just call it gossamer - approaching hard edges with softness.

Whatever the professional term – coaching, change, development - too often I think folks see this work as being about fixed goals and measured outcomes. This can lead to an assumption of hard work and something to be overcome. I have had several clients say to me in chemistry meetings “I know this is going to be hard work”, “really” I think, and often reply that it needn’t necessarily be so. The very assumptions are revealing.

Limiting thinking that anything worthwhile needs to involve striving and struggle is often connected with major change initiatives - the battle cry of transformation rings out, so ‘big stuff’ is coming, accompanied by great plans and stratagems, and the message that the disruption may be difficult, but will be worth it in the end (and unspoken “for those that survive”).

“Sometimes you have no words.
Not because you’ve lost the poetry, but because you’ve become it.
Everything you are now sings the song that can’t be sung,
only lived and breathed with every breath.” (McCall Erickson)

I encourage you to go with the possibility and poetry of this article, to read with a little brain bypass, and let your body reveal an understanding it already knows.

gossamer maybe doesn’t even seem real in contrast to hard goals and outcomes. It is other than, ethereal. Yet from working in its spaces, scaffolding insights emerge that become the structure of healthy, beneficial change. The alchemists call this transmuting - changing appearance and characteristics.

Most folks have already had glimpses of it. Think of those times when you were in a particularly idyllic or settled place, and somehow you had an insight into a problem, a way forward emerged that previously didn’t even exist. You cast your eyes upon a vista, a painting or piece of sculpture, and it seems to work within you to bring you to a different form of realisation and knowing. Someone says something in a way that makes new connections for a group, and entirely different understandings and possibilities are right there in front of everyone.

The ways of gossamer are already known to you, the possibility is all around us: in silence and in gentle ancient practices like tea and yoga. I relish the nourishment that being in practice and with teachers in these spaces gives me. What is wonderful is that we can cultivate this space and activate it in working with others in coaching and helping relationships.

What seems to be understood or released so suddenly has been held by the body for a long, long time. And yet “What is precious inside of us does not care to be known by the mind in ways that diminish its presence.” (David Whyte)

By working work with deep presence and a listening body, engaging in emergent and intentional conversation, gossamer becomes activated, whether it be individually or in groups, in circle or in constellation. Mostly all we need to do is to tune in to what resonates, and I have noticed that these approaches raise the chances of harmony in one’s favour:

Crafting a good container and giving the past a place,
Being with the present, just as it is,
Being in front of and beyond processes and models,
Wisdom and maps alongside and behind,
Going outside of the logic of presenting polarities,
Opening paradigms alternate to that of a beginning question or issue,
Working ‘as if your head had been cut off’ and letting the knowing body speak.

Working with a clients metaphorical and spatial territory is like touching gossamer. They begin to mine not previously conscious, perhaps even mythical, meaning making and intelligence, emerging entirely fresh insights and ways of taking action.

The mind is known to work best in the presence of a question, yet the body feels and understands best in the presence of a 'true' sentence. As coaches and facilitators, 'true' sentences emerge from presence and allowing our body to speak. From such a sentence a shift in state emerges in those we work with. That is so often enough, at least in the moment. Later, movement and action, or choices not to act, emerge, now from a different form and state.

What is it that troubles you?
What is it that troubles this place?

With a question that ignites or a sentence of truth beyond knowing, a new song is breathed into those we serve, bypassing cognition, harmonising instead a shift in the very being. Sometimes the simplest questions and sentences can be the most profound and true. Gently and meaningfully touching unspoken, unknown wounds, individually and organisationally, and so revealing new places and paths of healing.

The alchemy of fresh inner understanding is often difficult to articulate because the conscious mind hasn’t yet made sense of it, but we ‘know it’ because we can feel it. Details, specifics, plans may later be useful, but so often they now seem superfluous, with only adjustments and refinements required.

So, I see that these 'gentlest of interventions’ can have a more profound and lasting impact than striving for goals and outcomes.

We hold so much within our bodies, so much pain and so much knowing, encoded long, long ago, and waiting to be released or brought again into light. Healing and growth can be at its most profound and exquisite in the safety and strength of delicate simplicity.

In inviting you to step into your own very personal exploration, to activate these spaces for yourself, I offer this encouragement:

Wake up to the edge of your wonder,
to the pain held in your body,
to the love that surrounds you,
giving everything its place.

Go to the edges,
just to the edges,
be still there and stay awhile.

Discover what’s possible now,
beyond the edge,
a breath away.

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Re-Dreaming Developing Leadership

9/2/2022

This post was originally published as an article on LinkedIn written with my good friend and colleague Pete Marsh.

So many individuals, teams and organisations invest significant time, money and energy into leadership development programmes. Yet much of this fails to stick and leaders are left with the demands placed upon them outpacing their developmental efforts.

For the last two years we have been engaged in an inquiry into the nature of developing leadership and of what is being asked of them and of us. We have a continuing reflective practice, have designed and offered experimental workshops, and are discovering a different way of working with clients, particularly those that we might identify as moving toward later stages of development.

We offer this reflection as a brief insight into our thinking, and to begin the conversation with others.

We have followed three strands of inquiry:

What’s not working with leadership development right now? Have demands outstripped the notion of ‘development’? What different (new and perhaps ancient) approaches are we being invited into?
What are the consequences for us in our work as coaches, facilitators, guides, OD practitioners, …? How must we ready ourselves, be prepared to let go of or evolve our offerings and practices?
What are the themes that run through the insights from both above?

Certainly (sadly), we have delivered programmes where the utility seems to decline as soon as the check-out finishes. And there have been many when the initiating context changes dramatically part way through. This is in part about expectation management, contracting, pre- / post- programme design, but that’s surely not the whole story.

Perhaps more intractable is the observation that many leaders developed in a different reality to the world they are being asked to lead in (Luis Costa).

The same surely applies to those of us who see ourselves as developers of leaders. If we continue to look through our old and inherited lenses, we will likely see the same problems and offer the same solutions.
The themes that have emerged as important for us and in our work are:

Reframing the paradigms and titles we work with and offer. Crafting journeys that continue over time and with good cadence. Repositioning our role from one of being some form of expert and separate from, to for example sherpa and companion.
Building multiple awareness’s and intelligences - somatic, systemic, collective, neural, …, field. Understanding the natures of complexity and building the capacities to work within it. Understanding and working with systemic influences (individual and organisational).
Promoting both conscious leadership and the expansion of consciousness. Recognising the creative powers of stilling and slowing, of individual and collective self-reflexivity. Understanding the value of a community of leadership, a community of practice, and how to craft a good container.
Bringing the work into the practice, and the practice into the work. Understanding the potency and alchemy of conversations where we leap into and are the questions and challenges, rather than attempting to get beyond them or outside of them/us.
Modelling the wisdom and stance we aim to promote, and crafting our preparation and approaches to bring that to life in the room and in the conversation.

The conversation is not so much about the future but is the future itself. (Peter Block)

Please contribute your own experiences and thoughts and shape this important conversation.

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Where I'm at my best today

10/8/2021

I can no longer meet folks in the foothills of leadership
Journey with me instead ...

These lines and the poem below emerged as I reflected on with who and in what contexts I do my best work, the spaces that seem to make the biggest impact to those I come alongside, and where I am energised to be and do more.

I can no longer meet folks in the foothills of leadership
Journey with me instead to the floor of the high valley
There we will discover clear sun lit air.

This may be the most exhilarating venture so far
One that goes through foggy uncharted territory
We will go with good strength and at a steady pace
Stilling, tenderness and spaciousness will companion us
Approaching hard edges with softness.

And we will come into the dark
Into the layers and roots of the ground of our forming
We will confront our own mythology
We will discover our souls yearning
And within find courage for the venture on.

There will be losses along the way and much to gain,
previously unknown or never thought possible.
We may not know where we are or where we have been
until emerging on the floor of that high valley,
some distance from where we started
and very close by.

The tall snow-capped mountains
more recognisable and friendly now
There is magic in this place
and it may feel like magic got us here.

It is not that I see no value in what I called the foothills of leadership. In fact, they are very necessary. It is simply that I do not really live there any longer. My point is that the foothills are thoroughly developed, there is an abundance of leadership models (I added my own and have several other favourites). So go adopt one or create your own. Be sure that it aligns with your stance and worldview as a leader and put it into action.

Then be prepared to move beyond it – that’s what the work up to the high valley is about. And as with any worthwhile venture there is no shortcut to ‘doing the work’, yet with intentionality and discipline a joyful dedication emerges, and at times the alchemy of devotion.

Our way will be sustained by:

intentionality and practice
self-reflexivity
honest self-assessment and authentic dialogue
journeying over time and with good cadence
exploring ancestrally and systemically
being ‘public’ about the path and the experience

If you want to explore and grow in this way, a way that is an expression of purpose and becoming, then my offer is to be a witnessing companion on your journey. I will encourage you to discern your own purpose and the intention of your life and work, to explore the deeper possibility behind events and circumstances, to see our world as one of possibility and interconnectedness. We will often be working with what I call the beauty of the end grain – the overlooked or unseen, the unknown, even the unspeakable or the untouchable.

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On becoming who you can be

10/8/2021

What is the way of living that I secretly hope for, hope for so much that I have blocked myself to even ask the question until now?

Who am I in the world that I so long to be that the ache hurts, yet when I am in touching or grasping distance, I close my fingers knowingly too soon?

Too many times we experience a magnetic repulsion of our dreams and give in to forces and voices that would turn us back. This may reflect patterns established in early years showing up still in adulthood.

Yet now we are in a different context and with different resources and choices available. If we can reach out and hold the tension just a little longer, the world turns with us, and we are pulled on.

By gently moving into the different conversation, into what might be a new or bigger identity and sense of self; by keeping our hand open just a little longer, open to a brush with possibility, then we might experience the magnetic attraction that always accompanies something worthwhile.

The is a titration movement, just a little then a little more, no more that might crack the spell, no less that might lose the tension.

Approaching hard edges with softness.

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Working with Teams and Groups – for sustainable effectiveness and scale

Places to start to improve effectiveness?

gossamer: approaching hard edges with softness

Re-Dreaming Developing Leadership

Where I'm at my best today

On becoming who you can be

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