Image related to bringing the best version of yourself

#022 – Bringing the Best Version of Yourself

Creating a climate in which authenticity and creativity thrive – Being the person who makes the difference to your meetings

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Benefits of monitoring your internal condition

Why take this challenge?

Create meeting climates which bring out the very best in people

Shift your team culture to one in which people can fully be themselves

Be more in control of how your emotions help create the relationships you need

 

Graphic image reflecting different pathways to take the adventure

Brene Brown’s inspirational TED talk on connecting with others, describes the importance of courage – the openness to share all of yourself, flaws and all, whole heartedly.

So, I would like you to imagine your next team meeting, and to imagine you are going to be totally open. How do you feel? Can you feel a slight tightness around your heart?

Do you fear that some people would use it against you. Perhaps you feel they might judge you?
And does that feeling, that thought, make you defensive? It would me.

Vulnerability IS key to effective teamwork, but only in the right climate. It is virtual suicide in the wrong one.

Given the importance of such vulnerability to team performance and potential, it becomes clear that the climate is something we need to better understand and manage. And to take responsibility for our own part in that. 
And that is the subject of this week’s adventure.

It is based on the work of Otto Scharmer. And it is about our willingness to be honest (at least with ourselves) about what is currently happening inside us in response to what is being said (spoken and unspoken) outside us.

When we look into ourselves, do we sense open and inclusive feelings and attitudes of curiosity, compassion and courage? Or are we finding ourselves tending to judgement, cynicism and a degree of fear over what might develop if ‘it is not addressed’.

The former ‘open’ feelings and attitudes are great for creativity, honesty, bonding and insight, but they are fragile.

Conversely, the latter ‘closed’ feelings risk blame, politics, resentment, and disengagement, and they are contagious. ‘Openness’ all too easily turns to ‘closed’ attitudes in response to sensing ‘closed’ responses in others. And this is deep within our human DNA.

 

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:

 

Empathy for a person sitting in an unusual situation on a rock in the middle of water

#012 – Hello Old Friend

Explore simple ways to make your meetings more collaborative and engaging – Bring back the humble flipchart to your remote meetingsPicture of flipchart use in rural Kenya

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

Benefits of better flipchart use

Why take this challenge?

Increasing the sense of being part of a team adventure – seeing our footprints in new territory

Increased options and opportunity for participation and engagement in online meetings

The ability to visibly capture and record ideas for the group while retaining full interpersonal connection

 

Graphic image reflecting different pathways to take the adventure

In our Leading by Adventure to date, our focus has been pretty much about adventuring ourselves, and not so much about leading others in their adventures. So in this adventure we are stepping out into that space. We are asking how, in our locked down, remote world of work do we encourage others to join in our adventure. To release in them more joy of discovery and creativity, and to enable them to see their own foot prints in new territory – their contribution to the new reality they are bringing about?

Clearly, if you know me, you will recognise that my stock answer to “how we do this” is through a particular style of facilitation and virtual whiteboards. And one day, it will be. But I am finally coming round to see that most people are not yet ready for that.

And I reflect back to good facilitator colleagues, and what they have managed to achieve simply through questions, conversations and the humble flipchart.

However, the flipchart too has been a casualty of the ‘webcam vs shared screen’ thinking of online meetings.  And that set me to wondering – what if I could build a half-way house? Something that brought the flipchart back to the webcam, and formed a bridge between comforting familiarity and the possibilities of the internet for new ways of collaboration? A way of engaging participation without the disruption of a shared screen. Something that maintained our ‘face’ to ‘faces’ interaction, but still captured and honoured contributions, and gave a sense of progress – like flipcharts always used to.

And so this weeks adventure is to play with what I have created in this space. As always, the adventure is about simply taking another new perspective and see what the possibilities look like from there. What you then do with it is up to you.

 

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:

 

Integrative Complexity - Mural of Donald Trump

Integrative Complexity – Or why I should listen to Donald

Integrative Complexity - Mural of Donald Trump

What should be my response to an increasingly divided society, and those who seem to be intent on dividing it further?
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
Dr Sara Savage is a friend, a psychologist and a renowned world expert on something called ‘Integrative Complexity’. She uses it to understand terrorism and to work with those who are at risk of radicalisation. (Although she is on the side of the Angels of course).
And when I listen to Sara, and her insights, I begin to realise how we are ALL in imminent danger of also being radicalised.
We become radicalised when we see things too simplistically; when our values become polarised; when we stop understanding things deeply enough that we are forced to balance those values; and to work with those who balance them differently.
Radicalisation occurs when our values become so focused and exclusive that we stop understanding those on the other side of the argument. Radicalisation is what leads to a section of the population physically attacking their seat of government.

Integrative Complexity is about maintaining a wider viewpoint

And the fact is, it is not ‘them’. It is ‘us’. We may be being radicalised in the opposite direction, but we are still being radicalised.
The world has become more complex, not less, but our societal response to it is to run away from it. To seek sound bites, to look for simplistic certainty in our media rather than balanced but unresolved arguments, to surround ourselves with only those voices that are easy for us to identify with.
And the way I can recognise that radicalisation is taking place in me, is because I find myself struggling to appreciate the motives of those who continue to support the 45th US President and accept his stories.
And while I realise that I am not alone in this (nearly all my network feels the same), that does not make me right. In fact it is far more likely to mean that I am a victim of my own echo chamber. And I suspect that you probably are too – whichever side of the debate you are on.

And the problem with that is that if we don’t break out of it … it is only going to get worse.

Protester with placard reading 'I want to be Heard' reflecting the need for Integrative ComplexityIntegrative Complexity is key to moving forward. If I cannot value ‘the other side’ as people … Or follow their logic and conclusions … And if I refuse to appreciate their perspectives … Then how do I understand and respect them?
And if I don’t understand and respect them … Why would they talk with me?v

And if we are not talking … How do I pose the questions that might bring mutual appreciation and care? And if I cannot use language to resolve a widening gulf … What options are left to me, or indeed to them?
In Leading by Adventure this week (2nd March 2021) the Red Track challenge is to take something mainstream that you fundamentally disagree with, and understand what leads people to follow it.
You don’t have to come to agree with it. You just have to reach a point where you can understand why someone in different circumstances might. Where you can even see how, under different circumstances, you may have been drawn into it too. And where you can begin to recognise that someone who holds those views is another person not that radically different to you.
Because if we cannot truly appreciate our humanity in each other, the only option we leave ourselves is to demonise. And as self-fulfilling prophecies go, that is not going to be a good one to experience.
Empathy for a person sitting in an unusual situation on a rock in the middle of water

#009 – Not Your Usual Seat – Building Empathy

Develop insights that will help you to improve the relationships around you – help others to move past their points of ‘stuckness’ simply by asking questions

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

Graphic image saying Power-Up and reflecting the intended advantage to be gained through the adventure

Why take this challenge?

Develop insights that will help you to improve the relationships around you

Help others to move past their points of ‘stuckness’ simply by asking questions

Form relationships that stretch you and better develop you for #futurework

 

Graphic image reflecting different pathways to take the adventure

The future of work is increasing rates of automation, change, complexity, uncertainty …

And OPPORTUNITY!!!

But to engage with that opportunity, we need to be able to cope with all of the rest. As AI and automation take over the routine in our roles, we will increasingly be left with the things that are not routine – basically our roles will revolve around change. Change in our circumstances, our tools, our roles. And change in our own expectations and those of others.

Key to coping with this will be learning and relationships. To be good at this stuff, we need to spend more time with people and ideas.

But unfortunately, busy-ness, uncertainty and complexity are driving us the other way. It is becoming harder to simply take time out for a chat, or to explore a new concept. But unless we do, we will fall behind, the busy-ness will increase, and we will fail to compete and fall into a spiral of decline.

So our adventure for this week is about taking a different perspective on reaching out to new people and new ideas. Seeing what things look like from the other side, and building our abilities (and hopefully our joy) in looking at things through someone else’s eyes.

 

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 - people on beach - getting to know someone better through their story and through walking and listening

#006 – Walk and Listen

Walk and Listen . Get to know someone better through their own story in their own words. Don’t let Covid constrain our working practice more than it has.

Why take this challenge?

Build better, closer understanding with the people ‘around’ you.

Recognise people in their own story and enjoy the privilege of sharing in that story.

Break out of the working patterns that Lockdown has imposed upon us.


 

Back when working life was more ‘normal’, I used to organise ‘Walk and Talk‘ activities for mixed groups of different clients in the Derbyshire Peaks.

They were always a huge success. There is something about the rhythm of walking that makes silence okay, and keeps the brain moving.

Recently, Dietmar Harteveld suggested a walk and talk to me – him walking in Yorkshire, and me in Essex, connected by our mobiles, and I have to say it worked great. It felt so good to be out of the house. And it felt like he was there keeping pace beside me.

And it prompted me to think of an Adventure that Miles Protter proposed to me at the start of all this, and the realisation that now, in the heart of the restrictions, will be perfect for it.

So this week’s adventure is about two things, both of which thumbs our nose at Covid: walking virtually with someone; and making a real human connection through listening to their story.

 

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

 

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:

 

Acknowledgements:

Inspired by Miles Protter, Steve Quinn, Dietmar Harteveld, and Jeremy Clare, and all of those who have helped me shape and trial Walk and Talk over the years:  Andrew Taylor, Andy Withers, Bev Shepherd, Bill Pigg, Bob Judd, Brian Holliday, Bryan Sargeant, Chandra Lodhia, Clare Holden, Dario Buccheri, Derek Silcock, Dilip Popat, Ian Winter, Jennifer Atkinson, Jeremy Clare, Jonathan Chappel, Juergen Maier, Malcolm Denham, Mark Holden, Mark Preston, Mark Richardson, Mark Savage, Martin Panak, Martin Stow, Mike Brown, Mike Clargo, Peter Desmond, Phil Ranson, Richard Warren, Robin Phillips, Russ Spargo, Sarah Amies, Simon Ormston, Steve Blakeman, Steve Watters, Wayne Tantrum, Wendy O’Sullivan, Zoe Keens