Camp customs - The power of ground rules

#048 – Camp customs – The power of ground rules

Strategically decide your team and meeting freedoms for best results – Develop your own ground-rules for ensuring healthy productive teamwork

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The benefits of groundrules

Why take this challenge?

Better quality of relationships and interaction in your team

Improved creative impact from challenge and conflict

Efficient meetings with a positive feel

 

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This week’s adventure is about the use of ground-rules as a means to improve meetings and teamwork.

People tend to think of rules as the opposite to freedom, but they are not. Good rules apply common sense and fairness in determining how we can act freely in ways that don’t damage the freedoms of others. And the extent to which others can act without impinging on our own freedoms.

As such, rules can have a massive impact on the effectiveness of teams and meetings. They can make it easier for people to make choices that improve performance. And they can help ensure healthy positive interactions which raise the energy and satisfaction of those involved.

The article Rules for Effective Teamwork explains more on this. It also provides a simple means for teams to generate their own ground-rules.

 

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You may find the following resources helpful in tackling your challenge or in gaining further benefits from the skills and insights you develop

To catch up on past adventures you may have missed, feel free to browse our Adventures Library

 

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Let us know how you get on.
Share your experience, your insights and your observation using the comments section at the bottom of the Linkedin post.

Please help us to extend and develop our community by sharing what you are doing. Click on the links below where you are most active, and then like or share the article to your network. Thank you for helping.

And share your progress and insights with the Twitter LbA community using #leadingbyadventure

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modelling mastery - a picture of a master wood carver at work

#042 – Modelling Mastery

Set your own roadmap for working toward exemplary leadership – Use professional analogies to identify skills and practices you can develop

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The benefits of modelling mastery

Why take this challenge?

Use analogy and alternative perspectives to gain new insight into your potential

Create the basis for a novel and exciting self-development plan

Build your leadership skills

 

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I love the idea of ‘Mastery’. Not in terms of any sense of dominance, but in the sense of that almost magical connection that forms between what you want to do and it actually occurring as you imagined.

The way that, when we see true mastery at work, amazing things just seem to happen. How a brilliant artist can in a few stokes render not only pictures but emotions within us.

The idea of Michelangelo freeing his angel from the marble. What Michelin starred chefs achieve with food. And the way that Foyle calmly puts things to right in his war.

But we all have goals and imagination. We all have canvasses we are working upon.

In my case, it is the difference that I want to make to those around me. How I leave them feeling. What they are able to think and do differently. A greater sense of connection between their potential and their reality.

And I guess many of you work on very similar canvases. So what might mastery in our art mean to us? And what can we learn from other Master Craftsmen that may be of help to us on our journey toward that?

 

Graphic image reflecting the idea of a Pack of resources to support the adventurer in the challenge

You may find the following resources helpful in tackling your challenge or in gaining further benefits from the skills and insights you develop

To catch up on past adventures you may have missed, feel free to browse our Adventures Library

 

Graphic image suggesting the idea of posting a record of the adventurer's journey

Let us know how you get on.
Share your experience, your insights and your observation using the comments section at the bottom of the Linkedin post.

Please help us to extend and develop our community by sharing what you are doing. Click on the links below where you are most active, and then like or share the article to your network. Thank you for helping.

And share your progress and insights with the Twitter LbA community using #leadingbyadventure

Useful links:

 

Glass orb with image of roulette wheel to reflect the combination of excitement and randomness in this form of desk stretches exercises

#028 – Wheel Decide Desk Stretches

Use frequent physical stretching exercises to help keep you brain active – Try out the Wheeldecide/Bupa stretch combination for an easy solution

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The benefits of regular desk stretches

Why take this challenge?

Keep healthy when working at the screen for long periods of time

Pull out the kinks that can damage your posture and health

Use brief easy exercises to add regular sparks back into your work

 

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It was always too easy to sit for too long in one place. But at least the normal working environment got us up and moving around as we went to meetings, or popped across the room for a quick word.

Now, with more of us working, meeting and chatting from home, we often find ourselves in the same position until our physiological requirements cause us to do otherwise.

To combat this, and to help people maintain their health, BUPA created a simple set of eight desk stretches that take just seconds to do. They are so quick, they do not really distract from your work. More, they help you retain a perspective over it – and yourself.

Also, WheelDecide created a great web-page based tool that provides a random selection from a range of provided options, at a click of a mouse.

Combine these things together and you get: https://meeting.toolchest.org/wfhx/ – A page which, at the click of a mouse, randomly selects a stretch exercise for those working sat at a desk.

I have been using these 15-30 second desk strecthes as part of my longer meetings for some time now. And I have to say that you see people’s spirits visibly rise, people join straight in, move, smile, laugh, and restart the meeting with a real uplift.

 

Graphic image reflecting the idea of a Pack of resources to support the adventurer in the challenge

You may find the following resources helpful in tackling your challenge or in gaining further benefits from the skills and insights you develop

To catch up on past adventures you may have missed, feel free to browse our Adventures Library

 

Graphic image suggesting the idea of posting a record of the adventurer's journey

Let us know how you get on.
Share your experience, your insights and your observation using the comments section at the bottom of the Linkedin post.

Please help us to extend and develop our community by sharing what you are doing. Click on the links below where you are most active, and then like or share the article to your network. Thank you for helping.

And share your progress and insights with the Twitter LbA community using #leadingbyadventure

Useful links:

 

Orb based image showing person looking back from climb - metaphor for after adventure review

#027 – Review

Ensure you maximise your team’s learning from each adventure – Use simple review tools to capture and reinforce new insights

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The benefits of effective after-action review

Why take this challenge?

Maximise the potential of every experience for your future potential

Work with your team to increase its learning and growth

Establish a culture of continuous improvement through review

 

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Einstein said “Once you stop learning, you start dying”.

Learning is our way of fully engaging with our life, its experiences, and its opportunities. It is how we embrace our situation and those around us. And also how we effect change in both.

If we simply let our lives pass by us, immune to its possibilities. Then, for that moment at least, we die. Conversely, we live to the extent that we embrace life and its potential. A wonderful vibrant symbiosis in which we shape each other’s destinies. And we shape life itself.

The 26 adventures to date have hopefully been part of that learning and living for you. Opportunities to engage different perspectives, and see the effect they have on you. But more than that, to see the effect that deliberately and routinely adopting new perspectives has on you.

But I wonder if you have been getting as much out of them as you could? Or indeed out of all of the other things that you are routinely engaging with?

Have you been reflecting on the learning that is actually available to you? Asking yourself questions that help to make full use of the insights available, and to reinforce them in a way that they are more accessible going forward.

That is what this week’s adventure is all about. The questions and the reflection that helps us better utilise the learning available.

 

Graphic image reflecting the idea of a Pack of resources to support the adventurer in the challenge

You may find the following resources helpful in tackling your challenge or in gaining further benefits from the skills and insights you develop

To catch up on past adventures you may have missed, feel free to browse our Adventures Library

 

Graphic image suggesting the idea of posting a record of the adventurer's journey

Let us know how you get on.
Share your experience, your insights and your observation using the comments section at the bottom of the Linkedin post.

Please help us to extend and develop our community by sharing what you are doing. Click on the links below where you are most active, and then like or share the article to your network. Thank you for helping.

And share your progress and insights with the Twitter LbA community using #leadingbyadventure

Useful links:

 

Coloured roller process - metaphor for Kanban

#026 – The Spirit of Shared Adventure?

 

Adventuring together through teamwork, support and a sense of progress – Using Kanban and daily standups to support each other’s individual adventuresColoured rollers metaphor for Kanban

Please help us to get the word out in just two clicks – click here – then click the like button

The benefits of Kanban thinking

Why take this challenge?

Explore Kanban and standup as a regular basis for support and encouragement

Increase the rate of progress on projects and processes

Build a greater sense of teamwork and shared ownership of progress

 

Graphic image reflecting different pathways to take the adventure

There are a number of qualities we associate with the term adventure: Challenge; Novelty; Achievement; Movement. Sometimes we can engage with and complete adventures on our own, and sometimes we need help. And it is always good to be able to share experiences and insight.

All of these things are as true of the work environment as they are of the great outdoors. From an adventure mindset, it is great to be given tasks that stretch us. Situations that cause us to think in novel ways. The opportunity to do more than we were previously capable of. To experience personal growth and progress toward our potential.

And as we engage with these adventures, it is great to feel we are not alone. That we have others to help us think things through. To help us shift the rocks in our way. To empathise with our setbacks and to celebrate our successes.

As part of Agile frameworks, people are rediscovering this opportunity for this experience through what is known as the daily stand-up, and through a very simple tool called Kanban. And this is the tool that is the subject of this week’s adventure.

Kanban

At its simplest, Kanban is a simple three box model: To Do; Doing; Done. Within a team it makes individual victories part of a shared landscape of team success. And, in this way, it builds cohesion and a sense of collective responsibility.

New priority actions are thought out and added to the To Do box. People select items which utilise their strengths, but ideally also develop them, and move them to the Doing box. And as they complete them, they go to the Done box. Progress is reviewed daily by the whole team in a brief daily stand-up meeting, where progress is quickly shared (and celebrated), problems aired and help allocated, and new tasks identified.

Kanban charts are best set up in a prominent visible central location, but sadly this is not currently an option for many of us. However, they can also be set up virtually, and there are great tools available to do this.

 

Graphic image reflecting the idea of a Pack of resources to support the adventurer in the challenge

You may find the following resources helpful in tackling your challenge or in gaining further benefits from the skills and insights you develop

To catch up on past adventures you may have missed, feel free to browse our Adventures Library

 

Graphic image suggesting the idea of posting a record of the adventurer's journey

Let us know how you get on.
Share your experience, your insights and your observation using the comments section at the bottom of the Linkedin post.

Please help us to extend and develop our community by sharing what you are doing. Click on the links below where you are most active, and then like or share the article to your network. Thank you for helping.

And share your progress and insights with the Twitter LbA community using #leadingbyadventure

Useful links:

 

Image of someone seeing themselves in a shard of mirror - metaphor for self-reflection and ORID

#025 – Are you Seeing Yourself?

Take an adventure into your own thinking processes – Use ORID to improve how you engage with conflict

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The benefits of using ORID to reflect on your internal processes

Why take this challenge?

Become more effective at remaining as the person you want to be

Learn from the situations that lead to frustration and agitation in you

Help your team handle conflict productively and with insight

 

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Our greatest adventure is always the one that we take into ourselves. Externally, we may encounter formative challenges, inspiring insights, life-changing experiences. But it is the formative, inspiring, life-changing components of those things that really matter. And those victories are the ones we contend within ourselves.

As with all such things, the victories come easier with experience. They come easier as we can better understand and process what is happening to us. As we develop and adopt methods that help us make sense of what is going on.

ORID is one such model. And it is the subject of this week’s adventure.

ORID is an acronym for the four key steps of making sense of the external and internal components of our adventures, and how they connect.

The ORID Model

  1. Objective consideration of the situation as we experience it – what we read, see, hear, feel, smell, taste.
  2. Reflecting on how we experience that within us – how we feel, our emotional and physiological reactions
  3. Interpreting what is happening through our mental models – the connections and meanings we assign
  4. Deciding on our response – how we choose to act (or not), what we communicate, how we adjust internally

(5) Which may, or may not, impact on the Objective reality we experience

Martin Gilbraith postulates (with reasonable cause) that this is the universal principle of facilitation.  It is certainly what good facilitators do, although they may describe it differently, or interpret it through alternative models.

The power of helping individuals or groups explore what is happening in each of these four areas can do much to defuse conflict and build understanding and consensus. Such questions can also help us look ‘under the hood’ at our own internal (combustion?) engine, and to make conscious choices that move us beyond the disabling paradigm that anybody can ‘make us’ feel anything.

As we move forward on our Adventures, ORID will prove a helpful tool to keep in our pack, so this week our Adventure is to equip ourselves to use it.

 

Graphic image reflecting the idea of a Pack of resources to support the adventurer in the challenge

You may find the following resources helpful in tackling your challenge or in gaining further benefits from the skills and insights you develop

To catch up on past adventures you may have missed, feel free to browse our Adventures Library

 

Graphic image suggesting the idea of posting a record of the adventurer's journey

Let us know how you get on.
Share your experience, your insights and your observation using the comments section at the bottom of the Linkedin post.

Please help us to extend and develop our community by sharing what you are doing. Click on the links below where you are most active, and then like or share the article to your network. Thank you for helping.

And share your progress and insights with the Twitter LbA community using #leadingbyadventure

Useful links: