D R A F T
Studying Leadership: 3rd
International Workshop
Leadership Refrains
15-16 December, 2004
Keith Kinsella
Centre for Leadership Studies
University of Exeter
Xfi Building
Rennes Drive
Exeter EX
E Mail: [email protected]
Phone/Fax: 01865 762505
The development of practitioner
researchers
ABSTRACT
This paper
explores some issues arising when first using a relational approach to leading
and developing such leading with senior managers in a large organisation. It
outlines the ecology of ideas used to frame the intervention, reviews methods
which have been used to operationalise the approach, and identifies some of the
difficulties faced in the process so far. Ideas are put forward to improve the
approach to do with the central concept of mindsets, learning architecture, and
a crafting approach to design and facilitation.
This paper
reports on the early stages of an experiment into a new approach for
influencing how senior managers in a large public sector organisation can be
helped to adapt the existing �command and control� culture to address the
arrival of a more fully competitive marketplace. The opportunity is provided by
a 24 month long programme for helping a group of one hundred high potential
managers to develop the capability to take the organisation forward after a
three year rationalisation programme which has weakened the base of tacit
knowledge (van Krogh, Ichijo, Nonaka, 2000) that previously supported the
�machine� mode of organising.
The new
approach has been designed to create a temporary and permeable development
�container� to enhance learning/development from incidents and situations the
managers experience as they deal with daily crises and longer range tasks
associated with more strategic threats posed by de-regulation and increased
competition. Earlier conventional development activities had not impacted much on practice and
so the new programme had to address three challenges:
The former
two issues are familiar challenges to educators and developers who seek to go
beyond classroom impact and try and focus academic and other inputs on the
experience of participants - what Gosling and Mintzberg ( 2004) call
�experienced reflection�. The third is altogether a different matter in that we
and the all those associated with the enterprise would have to adopt an emergent approach if the programme were to
help deliver this capability in the face of a largely unknown and uncertain
future in terms of: the content of the programme – what kind of leadership?; the processes used – how to develop it?,
and the framing context – leading to do what (vision/strategy)?,.
In this
paper we report first on the range of ideas and thinking that we initially used
to frame our approach to the programme and how we were thinking these ideas
might impact and evolve. We then describe and inquire into our actual
experience of using this approach over the first phase of the first programme
lasting about 6 months, and culminating in the opening workshop with the first
cohort. And in the final part of the paper we draw out some initial learnings
in trying to apply this developing �ecology of ideas� and identify some ideas
for moving forward.
What
were our starting intentions?
Following
Grint (2000), we decided that the hundred strong participants in the programme
(initially 25 in the first cohort) should be encouraged to approach leadership
�as an art� rather than as a mainly technical achievement:
�...leadership might best be considered as an art rather
than as a science, or more specifically, an ensemble of arts...to do with
identity, the formulation of a strategic vision, the construction of
organisational tactics, and the deployment of persuasive means to ensure
followers actually follow.�
(Grint, 2000)
While we
remain moot over the concept of leading implied in the �ensure followers
actually follow�, we felt the focus on issues of identity (who),
vision/strategy (what), organising/culture (how), and communication (why) to be
wholly apposite for this group, as all of these fundamentals seemed in need of
attention. Our purpose was to encourage them to develop and use a new tacit
understanding of intentions, values, and practices which over time would help
transform the strategic capability of the organisation to prosper in the new
and uncertain environment (Baumard, 1999) to provide leadership that was
strategic, generative, and timely.
The client
had some experience of the �five mindsets of a manager� approach developed by
Gosling and Mintzberg (2003) for their international programmes of manager
development. This was the reason we were invited to do this work and it
provided a ready �leitmotif� for our early discussions about the programme. For
reasons of practicality and cost, we decided to use just three of the five
mindsets, hold three day workshops instead of the more usual 5-7 days, and
restrict locations to sites in England as against the more atmospheric locations
used on the international programmes. We were aware that we�d need to work more
intensively, if we were to gain the insights of the approach.
In view of
the urgent pressure to adapt, the client wanted a practical programme which
delivered change in the workplace.. We decided to focus on experience and
action more than
new know-how and strategy, to demonstrate the practical intent of the
programme. Learning from experience takes time so we agreed on a notional
twelve month duration for each cohort, so interaction and support could be
provided over time and on a timely basis. To deliver this and increase the
likelihood of learning transfer, we would offer each participant a coach who
for budget reasons needed to be internal. Despite misgivings over this lack of
an external viewpoint, we later decided it would offer the possibility of a
stronger network for change.
We decided
to launch the programme in a low profile way several months before the first
workshop was to be held, both to downplay the mindset workshops themselves and
to emphasise the central focus on participant experience/action in the
workplace. Instead participant and coach would meet for an initial series of
sessions to identify key aims for their development programme and start working
on an outline agenda we were offering for this first phase of work. The idea
was to help delegates take responsibility for their own learning. Part of this
initial agenda asked them to identify �live issues�, central challenges that
needed resolution - these would provide the core material for the development
process; and to begin to think about what we in our meetings were calling
�systemic accountability� – the notion that each manager had much wider
and as yet poorly understood responsibilities beyond those contained in the job
remit. The features of the programme that emerged from these early design
discussions comprised the following five elements:
These ideas
in a sense gave a glimpse of what we might call our �ontology, epistemology,
and methodology� for developing leaders; or more aptly, our �ecology of ideas�
(Bateson, 1973). As Bateson made clear, there is a two way relationship between
in this case, the set of ideas, and the thinking environment we were entering,
and we were keen to amplify the influence of the ideas on their environment
rather than the other way around.
A few extra
words about the three �punctuating� workshops. In the preceding international
university-based versions of the mindset programme, each mindset tends to be
regarded in a straightforward way as a capability �out there�, something to
learn to do. Here we wanted to be more ambitious and were looking to hoping
participants might move more towards qualities/performances that they were a
part of i.e.
constituted by the relations they were in. This represents a more extreme form
of relatedness or �becoming� that Wood has referred to as the �excluded middle�
(forthcoming), and what we were calling a more de-centred form of leading. Here
are brief pen pictures of what we wanted these three workshops to focus on:
Reflective: learning to use reflection to inquire into leading as an
�art� (Grint, ibid) where intuition and aesthetics have a powerful role to play
in developing personal insight and working creatively – particularly in a
�command and control culture�: moving from reflection on action towards
reflection-in-action
Connected: learning to position strategic activities – particularly
those to do with commercial competitive activity - within complex networks of
stakeholders where power relations and �worldliness� are key in establishing
�regimes of truth� (Foucault, 1977): moving from recognising the importance
of relationships towards experiencing self-in-the-flow of relatedness
Catalytic: learning to find the balance between change and continuity while
catalysing necessary changes – particularly those to do with involving
and collaborating: moving from making specific changes towards creating temporary
architectures which enable new realities to emerge in wider networks
To
illustrate how we tried to operationalise our developing ecology of ideas, we
can outline the basic process and content of the first �reflective� workshop as
this was completed just before this paper was written.
|
am Power
of Context
How
does context influence leadership
behaviour?
|
am How
– leadership style?
What
adjustments could I make to how I lead?
|
am Intention
to Behaviour
How can I embody my intentions -
walk the talk?
|
|
pm Power
of Everyday Action
How
does action support or change culture? �
systemic
interviews on �live issues� |
pm Why
– what we stand for?
What
are the key values and practices
we must preserve?
|
pm Intention
to Behaviour
How can I manage the politics of
engagement? �
staying alive
through managing the �politics |
There was a
simple three phase rationale behind this design: Day 1 was about refining
understandings of the present situation; Day 2 was about formulating some key
strands of a desired future; and Day three offered opportunities to develop
plans/behaviours for moving from one to the other. Each day had a repeating
cycle of input in the morning and reflection in the afternoon. And each session
and exercises within sessions was designed to create a learning architecture
(Wenger, 1998) which we believed would both contain and then stimulate the
kinds of conversations/interactions we thought would help participants progress
their live issues.
In summary:
these practical steps were seen as a way of introducing a framework of
interlocking ideas that we felt were associated with developing effective
leadership in uncertain times. With the resolution of key work issues as the
main driver for new thinking and the source of participant development, a
series of workshops and regular coaching would seek to develop practitioner
researchers who could critically examine their ways of working in order to
improve their leadership practice. In particular the three �mindsets� would
help managers understand in a more sophisticated way what flows through their
organisation�s �capillaries� in Foucault�s net-like concept of power (Foucault,
1977), how they are caught up in this flow, and their own contribution towards
these power relations. We believed this could enable them to offer leadership
in a more involving and de-centred style, where leading becomes more a function
and expression of a network of relationships and less that of actions of the leader (Gergen, 1999). We also were hoping that our intended
emergent approach to programme design and delivery - where we would look both
to the supporting learning architectures and to the emerging embodiments of new
thinking in action - would disturb the prevailing dominant �control and
command� narrative and encourage - as the Leadership Refrains brochure put it
– �the improvisation and breakaways that could usher in new forms of
organising�.
In this
second section we report on and explore the meaning of our experiences during
the first phase of the programme, a period of some six months, as we attempted
to operationalise our intentions through pursuing a joint and emergent approach
to the design and facilitation of the programme. We offer our comments in terms
of the three main client relationships we worked in.
Our
original idea for this work was to use a small team of CLS and client staff who
would both design and facilitate the programme. Previous experience of working
this way with another client had been positive both in introducing new thinking
and key �universal� ideas and taking account of important tacit knowledge of the client.
We had also found that facilitation from the mixed group rather than just
outsiders, was more powerful as participants saw how their own colleagues were
both committed to the programme and changing before their eyes. In this
instance, using client staff as initial �proxies� for participants would also
speed up the design process allowing us to work �jointly� with the client
without extensive interviewing and review meetings with sponsors and potential
participants.
In this
case, despite a good opening meeting with the nominated two client members of
the team, and agreement that this would be a good thing to do, the process soon
faced difficulties. Due to very high workloads, client members of the team had
problems making the time available to attend meetings and then take forward
ideas in the prevailing operations-driven �silo� culture, that needed further
consideration. Meetings were held on an intermittent basis and the gaps between
them extended. We, the external members of the team, found it difficult to move
our thinking forward for fear of leaving the internal members behind and losing
the benefit of their tacit knowledge and evolving commitment.
Soon an
awkward dynamic had been established. On the one hand, client members of the
design team wanted to be involved in the detailed decision making so the design
process slowed right down. But internal sponsors and potential participants who
were getting interested wanted more detail on the proposed programme. So the
client members of the team would quite often expect us to be able to provide
lots of this detail at the drop of a hat – which they knew we had not yet
discussed and developed with them! Because of these pressures, client members
in a number of instances, �invented� their own content and we�d find out quite
by chance that the design had �moved on� in some direction we�d not yet
discussed. These experiences had the effect of worrying us sufficiently to
hurry our own thinking forward, and press to see potential participants and
sponsors ourselves, so we too could develop more detail in advance of possible
future design meetings and possible demands for more detail on the programme
itself. What did not seem to be happening despite good intentions, was the
hoped for regular and fluid interaction which would allow a mutual and well
informed design to emerge.
After
several months of this somewhat stuttering and frustrating process (to both
sides), it began to dawn on us that �joint� did not mean what we had taken it
to mean i.e. the co-creation and mutual facilitation of an emergent programme
of development. Instead the client seemed to be reserving for themselves a
�gatekeeper� role in the design process which, though it allowed them to put
forward and debate key ideas about content/process, was more about assessing
the suitability of what was going to be offered, and the internal marketing of
the new programme.. Similarly it became clear that the running/facilitation of
the workshops was not going to be joint in any real sense either: one senior
client member who had taken no part in the design was going to act as
�director�, in a notional front person role for the programme, and the other
seemed destined to operate in a largely administrative capacity. So in both the
design and facilitation areas, we the outsiders were in fact going to have to
make the running.
But during
this period we increasingly felt that as advisers that we were at the end of a
very long and slow communication and decision making process, with very little
contact with or feedback from, the end users of our product. In the final run
up to the first workshop while interviewing a couple of participants we found
that this was indeed a perspective that many of the participants shared,
especially those in policy making roles in the centre. We had on reflection,
been gaining a first hand appreciation of the culture which clearly did not
favour appreciation or collaboration – so at least we were experiencing
their reality to some degree! We had also been experiencing �emergence� of a
kind which had been quite uncomfortable and certainly not conducive to any real
kind of joint working.
When we
first talked about using coaches and focussing on workplace experience we
thought the coaches could become an active part of the emergent
designing/facilitating network. And in so doing they would themselves have
considerable opportunities for development and would benefit from some sort of
action learning work alongside the main programme. We felt they certainly could
provide high quality information - both explicit and tacit - on how their
participants were doing, what problems they were facing in the workplace, and
so on, that�s normally not available to programme designers. But further, as we
explored possible interventions for the participants with them as a group, they
could act as �guinea pigs� for the ideas, materials and exercises; and this
would allow us to tailor and fine-tune these. It also opened the possibility of
getting the coaches to do things in their shorter but more regular sessions,
which would be difficult to do in workshops; or which needed to be offered on a
timely basis when the participant was actually ready and interested.
In practice
most of these good intentions failed to translate into reality. Like other
senior managers in the organisation, the coaches were all already operating at
full capacity. Many were unable to attend even the initial briefing meetings
let alone take part in �design� activity or action learning sessions for
themselves. As a result it was not possible to use them to act as an intelligent
�front end� for the design activity. The best we were able to do was give most
of them an overall briefing on the programme at the very start of their work
with participants.
However all
of these meetings went well and gave the impression that given half a chance,
they would have enjoyed playing the larger role we had envisaged for them, and
would have benefitted from the developmental opportunities a more engaging
process would have given them. However time and budget constraints put this
beyond our reach. It also meant that as we did not get good access to these
�once removed proxies� for participants, we were not able to do much tailoring
work, having to make do with just a few short interviews with a very small
sample of the participants. As a consequence, we felt we were having to go into
bat with an insufficient grasp of the context and issues that would be on
participants minds – just the thing that a more joint approach would have
avoided
Work
with delegates – developing the �reflective� mindset?
In this section we look at the main elements of the
workshop and seek to explore how their design attempted to operationalise our
ecology of ideas. We sought in the design of the event – in the learning
architecture - to provide a flow of work which might open up the subject of
�leading� to inquiries from the many different angles that these ideas offered.
We briefly describe the main interventions and attempt to assess the immediate
reactions of participants and possible effects on their learning.
Lessons from history - appreciating the impact of
context on meaning making
The first morning�s discussions were held in an historic
naval building in a famous port, and kicked off with a conventional expert
lecture with Q and A at the end, on the nature of leadership between admirals
and their captains round about the time of Trafalgar. The purpose of this was
to provide some evidence of the impact on behaviour of macro factors like, in
this instance, signalling technology, and show how this shaped thinking about
strategy and leadership for many decades. We wanted participants to see that
their own behaviour was to some extent determined by their organisation culture
and the environment and that in this sense they were not to �blame� for what
was happening. We also hoped the exciting nature of the story would get them
out of their more usual utilitarian approach to the affairs of business, would
move them into a more reflective state of mind, and excite their imaginations
about possible futures
This story did seem to bring the �background into the
foreground� for many of the group, especially those that took the optional tour
of HMS Victory during the lunch break: they were able to appreciate the
parallels and enjoyed the tale. But quite a few found the slow pace, lack of
involvement, and military nature of the content a �switch-off�
Systemic interviews – understanding how present actions
change culture
In the afternoon, participants worked in trios exploring
their �live issues�, using a specific format we had designed to stimulate
reflection and bring in new ideas about how these issues were being framed.
Each trio was constituted on a �max-mix� basis with as many differences as
possible between trio members in terms of role, experience, location, MBTI
preference, etc. The forty minute conversations involved ten minutes of self
disclosure about the issue, ten minutes questioning, ten minutes of
�gossiping-in-the-presence-of�, and ten minutes of self reflection and/or
dialogue (Campbell, Draper, and Huffington, 1991). At the end of the trio work
the whole group then discussed whether/how their discussions showed how the
culture was influencing their work approach; and similarly, how the way they
worked was in turn influencing local work practices and the wider culture. As a
final turn the group posted their thoughts on what aspects of the culture
needed to stay the same, change, be introduced.
Even though this session too was slow paced, everybody found
the conversations of great value. They particularly enjoyed the focus on their
live issues and found they learned a great deal from the �gossiping� part of
the process, discovering how �non experts� in their affairs could be of great
help to them
Adaptive
leadership style – offering leadership that suits the situation/followers
This
second morning was presented by a high profile outside academic who in complete
contrast to the pace of the first day, ran a very high energy session full of
models and expert �universal� guides to action. Although this didn�t seem to fit
well with our initial ecology of ideas, the client had liked the academic�s
approach and we felt it would provide an experience of difference. It also
indicated our desire to work together on the programme. The focus of the
presentation was about using an �adaptive� style of leadership to do with
evolving situations and follower capabilities – again not quite fitting
with our more �process� take on leading, but closer to the models that we
thought participants would be holding.
Everybody
rated this session very highly and though the model offered seemed very much
�old wine in new bottles�, most felt the session had cleared up some of their
confusion about how leaders should behave in today�s fast paced and uncertain
environments. The session was very full and though there was plenty of
discussion there had been very little time to reflect on the live issues and
own practices. Again due to pressure on time we were not able to remedy this
after lunch.
Appreciating
�what�s on the line� – identifying practices for future effectiveness
If
the morning was about choosing a leadership style, we wanted the afternoon to
help answer the question – why should I bother?; what�s �on the line� for
me in my work (Heifetz, 2002)?; what�s my purpose? As the client was also
interested in encouraging managers to try out the appreciative inquiry
approach, we decided to use this to help participants identify what they felt
was very important in their work experience. The afternoon was organised around
an initial case study from an outside organisation to set the scene, and then
pair and large group work to first identify and then share thinking on the
practices and values that could form the foundations for the challenges ahead
(ibid Srivasta and Cooperrider). A final piece involved small groups in putting
forward their thoughts on �provocative propositions� that captured the
behaviours that made a difference.
Though
the case study proved to be a weak scene setter, the appreciative work in pairs
and then the large group was a lot more productive, getting down below the
surface and generating some heat and emotion. The groups found the work on
distilling good practice quite difficult but in the ned were able to identify a
number of examples of good practice they wanted to develop and extend involving
collaborative working, appreciation and praise, and commmitment.
Embodiment
and forum theatre – learning how to �do� intentions
We
believed that the work done on the first two days would give participants a
chance to reflect enough on their intentions or strategic intent, to be in a
position to think about how they would convey this in interactions with others.
Unlike sport, when managers are taught skills, they seldom get the opportunity
to practice or rehearse what they might do in particular situations beforehand.
There�s usually therefore quite a �leap of contextualisation� that needs to be
made in order to apply these skills. So we wanted to offer them opportunities
to try out behaviours which would embody their intentions more effectively,
e.g. just how do you do �collaborating� (Gergen ibid ) - the well known �walk
the talk� challenge.
To set the scene and warm people up we got a couple of
actors to use the forum theatre technique (Boal , 1992) to enact a typical �influencing�
scenario for the participants to direct and coach. We hoped this would not only
help demonstrate what �doing x� looked like and involved, but also get them
into a frame of mind where whatever they did that morning, they�d be thinking
about the behaviours involved. Following this interactive demonstration, participants took
part in a range of options e.g. action learning sets, issue-focussed groups,
one to one coaching, etc to work in to pursue the question – how do I
convey my intentions? Everybody found this second opportunity to work on their
live issues in a more open atmosphere to be very valuable, although again we
did not have time to process the emerging discourse in a plenary discussion.
The
politics of engagement – taking an active stance towards power relations
The client had been interested in from the beginning
in how managers could protect themselves from attack as they brought in
adaptive change – what Heifetz calls staying alive� (2002). After short
inputs on his ideas and another on managing the politics of project management
(D�Herbemont and Cesar, 1998), we provided an opportunity for participants to
work in pairs on their live issues, planning in detail (diaries at the ready)
how they would use their everyday work patterns to introduce the new ideas
embodied in their intentions. We also asked them to �localise� the language of
these models and come up with brief guidelines for local application.
Though this did seem useful, this important last
session was curtailed by a visit from a Board member and the usual formal
client evaluation of the event, and so we weren�t able to have amore discursive
review of what had been set in process and theeffects of the three days
together.
What
have we learned about this approach to development?
To reprise:
the challenge for us in this programme has been how to mutually create a
context where insights into �leading� and �developing leading� could be
elicited, distilled, amplified and embodied by participants and ourselves, in a
situation where �strategising� also remains an uncertain entity. We find
ourselves in the difficult position of having to work within a �system�
comprising these three ambiguous/uncertain phenomena, in an emergent and
co-creative way with a client who is under considerable pressure, and who works
and makes sense largely within a �command and control� culture. Our experience
of working in this �system� has been stressful, not knowing but being expected
to know.
Initial
feedback from the first workshop has been largely positive but quite mixed.
Though participants did engage in reflection they found it difficult, and many
found the experience to be patchy. It felt a bit disjointed at times; and there
was a lack of linking between first phase pre-work and the workshop itself.
There are also questions about the real level of interest and support from the
top. But the programme is going ahead and a second cohort is being recruited -
so we�ve got through the first challenge. But what to do now?
The
question we have to ask ourselves is: what is really possible using this
particular approach, this ecology of ideas, given the expectations, skills and
extant power relations between client and external helper that we�ve
experienced so far? Here are a few initial thoughts based on our experience so
far: to do with:
Let�s look
first at the concept of mindsets as a focus for development. Using Foucault�s
netlike or capillary concept of power (Foucault, ibid) it becomes possible to
glimpse how we are both organising and being organised by the processes and
networks we take part in, and how this extends beyond behaviour to include
questions of identity and our assumptional frameworks. One of his memorable
quotes puts the paradox very nicely: �People know what they do; they frequently
know why they do what they do;.but what they don�t know is what what they do, does� (Foucault in Prado, 2000, p29,
emphasis added). In other words we don�t know the consequences and therefore
the meaning(s) of what we do, and consequently, to what extent we are
organising or being organised by others in the �net� – as Bateson has
noted, it�s a two way process. How can we inquire and help managers inquire
into what leading is (especially effective leading) when we and they don�t know
what these multiple �does� are? How can we notice and make sense of what is
taking place between people while we are enmeshed in processes which blind us
to what might be happening, by providing dominant narratives of the individual
and linear causation, into which we can happily settle?
We feel the
�mindset� idea provides a possible starting point as it suggests something
which we can adopt or not, but which when adopted, offers us the possibility of
both perceiving and making meaning in a different way i.e. it allows us to
notice and attend to features of some things more insightfully than others.
Polanyi�s work on tacit knowledge (Gill, 2000) offers a way of thinking further
about this idea. He suggests that if we interiorise a theory/framework through
the practice of indwelling, it can become a means of influencing what we see in
the world. And further, that true knowledge of such a theory or framework can
be established only after it has been interiorised and used extensively to
interpret experience. So we have to take it on trust - and then it becomes a
tacit part of us. So we create/adopt a new set of values through submitting to
them; and then we see the world differently.
If we then
link this idea to take on Ilyenkov�s concept of the �artifact� (Burkitt, 1999)
we can begin to see how a mindset could allow managers to begin to notice
aspects of what is currently hidden from them – the patterns in which
leading and following are taking place, that constitute �leading�. Ilyenkov
going beyond social constructionism, believes that artifacts (which for him
include all manner of technology as well as language) transform the human
bodily experience of the world and so change our way of being-in-the-world, the
social world of interrelations, practices and meanings. As a hammer transforms
the experience of our hands and arms and what we can do to/in the world, so too
can language change our perception and understanding of it. A mindset therefore
could be thought of as an artifact which gets installed in what Polanyi calls
the proximal term (subsidiary awareness) from which we attend to the distal term (focal awareness)
i.e. Foucault�s capillary flow of the �what what we do, does� i.e. the
consequences.
Using these
ideas it becomes possible to think of more formal means of installing such ways
of seeing, or mindsets - so the �reflective� mindset becomes a way of �getting
on the balcony� (Heifetz, ibid ) to quickly notice aspects of your experience,
decipher patterns, and get new angles on what might be happening before you
�step back� into the flow of leading/following. So a next step for us could be
inquiring into what makes for the effective indwelling and interiorisation of
these mindsets, which can transform our way of being in the world such that we
appreciate �leading� and �developing leading� in new ways. What might help us
with this?
Learning
architectures and the Foucauldian �does�
As we said
earlier, the feedback from the first cohort suggested that many found the
experience quite disjointing. Given the need to tackle our questions from many
angles this could be good news, but it would make sense to ensure that this
�disjointedness� was purposive and not just down to poor design, and to
increase the prospects of participants interiorising the specific mindset! How
might we go about doing this?
Using
Bateson�s notion of an ecology of ideas does perform another service here: it
makes us aware of the issue of survival and the need for the set of ideas we�re
using to find ways of accomodating to the client environment. In our case it
means accomodating – meaning influencing and being influenced – to
our client�s ways of thinking and valuing, and seeking to deliver what they say
they want and given enough time, what they need. So we have to be sensitive but
not too sensitive to their ways of framing the challenge. If they are talking
about leadership development as being about teaching individuals new skills and
techniques – giving them a new �toolbag�– then we�re some way off
using process
ideas of leading in client discussions.
In terms of
building trust and credibility it makes more sense to start where they are,
keeping their view in mind as a possible truth, while moving the discourse
towards a more relationally oriented perspective e.g. that of �leaders and
followers�: you can�t have one without the other - so let�s look at skill not
as something within a lone individual but in terms of that happens between people. And then let�s broaden this
to look at the specific situations these people are in. And so on.
However, if
we are to gain real insights into leading �as an art�, and how to develop it,
there is a need to keep the less punctuated �process� view of leading as a
possibility in our own ecology of ideas. It we can do this it will help us keep
our frame/canvas wide and our brushes and pallette of colours rich and sensitive
enough to capture imprints of whatever might emerge as we work together. If
then as Wood (2004, ibid) remarks, we think of leading as something that
appears only in �the most fleeting moments� against �a background of complex
dynamic relations�, what can we help set up with other members of the
development network to make this more possible?
We have
been thinking of this question in terms of designing learning architectures which contain, condition and help
make visible the learning experience. In his book Communities of Practice,
Wenger (1998) identifies a number of components for effective learning
architectures to deal with the �inherent uncertainty between design and its
realisation in practice�. It�s clear we have to deal with the phenomenon of emergence:
�practice is not the result of design but rather a response to it� (emphasis added). In other words we have to deal with
the complex flow of events and processes as they interact with the constraints
and encouragements of a particular design we try and impose on it. In other
words we have to attend to the complex interaction and cycling of the
Foucauldian �does�s.
We�ve
already indicated how we�ve tried to do this in the first phase and workshop.
One thing is clear: the architecture needs to help us slow down, have more
�pause and reflect� points, so we can allow the effects of what we have done to
show – in the workshop we had far too much to get through, to do this.
Our experience suggests that we also need to extend this domain covered by the
architecture. We have been regarding it mainly as something for the workshops.
But if we are to be able to notice what could be making a difference, the
network in view needs to be large enough to show the effects of more of the
�doing�, so we can see these as relational acts that are part of the emerging
discourse, not what A does to B. This poses considerable practical and
political challenges: if we�ve had difficulty pinning down members of the
internal design team, what chance have we got of involving e.g. participants in
the design phase and sponsors/superiors in the workshop itself?; and then most
of the �stakeholders� in ad hoc reviews of some kind? But this is what we need
to consider as we move forward, if we are to create a new discourse where �we�
can all work together to catch the �glimpses� of leading at work, and decide
it�s useful to make certain punctuations.
As we
worked/struggled through the workshop, the notion of �crafting� came to mind as
to what we were about: working with some material like a Michaelangelo with his
block of stone, trying to create something – chipping here and there and
noticing what was emerging. Only we didn�t have a clear idea of our �David�,
and we couldn�t have had one alone, because it was something that would need to
be co-created with the participants and all their interested stakeholders! It
seemed we were taking part more in a public art activity joining in with our
brush strokes (using our �ecology of ideas�) to try and figure out and
influence what was emerging from the work we were doing, and trying to play a
useful role. Or as Varela (Varela, Thompson, and Rosch, 1993)) put it in a
London seminar in 1987 when talking about his ideas about self-organisation, we
were flying blind in a fog, using the �bumps� we experienced to re-callibrate
our own instruments so we could influence the flight with our colleagues
without too many crashes.
Facilitating
the unravelling and exposure of complex interactions and possible useful
punctuations demands a huge amount of attention and openness. It means that we
as a group of facilitators need to be working very closely as a team, all
engaged with different parts of the network and regularly sharing our
experiences so we can see where and when to �bump� the system next i.e. do what
we think will amount to good �developing learning�. As mentioned earlier, this
we had been unable to achieve during the run up to the workshop and certainly
not at the workshop itself in the face of the pressures on us. So we weren�t
really able in a continuous and consistent way to bring a heightened and
emerging sensibility of relational leading into the present moment, to help our
colleague practitioner researchers. In other words we weren�t able to offer the
skill of �presencing� that Scharmer and his colleagues (2000) are
investigating. But it�s something we need to strive for if we are really to
enter into the living crafting process that the process approach to developing
leading demands.
So we�re
back to the idea of studying leading �as an art� but where the studying is a group
phenomenon and
where all the participants whether sponsor, facilitator, or delegate need to be
practitioner researchers willing to study what they doing, willing to wait and
seek out the consequences of what they are doing, willing to see themselves as
part of a flow where they are taking part in something with others rather than
doing something to others. And where now and again it�s useful to punctuate the
flow to draw attention to a �fleeting moment� and say – �that�s really
good......we should do more of that......how did we do it? So using
appreciative inquiry but of a more fluid and in the moment kind.
And then
the potential contribution of formal �facilitators� of this process like us,
becomes clearer in the sense of helping design and adapt learning architectures
in the moment, which allow such interaction and discourse to take place and be
noticed and worked with. And the art here is about creating such architectures
but not as the sole sculptor but in conjunction with other participants. And as
we pointed out earlier, this means getting far more involved in bringing into
the learning network a much wider range of interested parties who are party to
what this �system� is doing. So we�re back to our earlier question of how to
achieve �joint� working but in ways which recognise the political nature of
everything we are doing so we can attempt to take up a �de-centred� role where
we do not become seen as central players (White, 1997), the ones with the
know-how etc. - managers in large bureaucracies already have enough of this
dependency-creating culture to deal with.
So it�s
back to the �painting easel� for phase two of the programme: how can we use the
crafting
metaphor to better operationalise the emergent process approach to help our
clients learn and live �leading� that really works – because it is
already really working.
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