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

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

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:

 

Discovering diversity - picture of a woman seeing herself in a range of images of people from different cultures

#014 – Discovering Diversity

Investigate & celebrate the diversity that is around you – Invite your people to introduce more of themselves: their richness, their uniqueness, & their journey.Discovering Diversity - exploring difference

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

Benefits of better embracing diversity - discovering diversity

Why take this challenge?

Embrace and celebrate diversity in all its forms – make it a natural part of your team’s processes

Build relationships and insight that embraces people through cultural boundaries and backgrounds

Stimulate the creativity that can be found in simply bring more of ourselves to the workplace

 

Graphic image reflecting different pathways to take the adventure

We all grow up with stories, with traditions and experiences. Some are common, but many are unique. They become OUR stories. And together they create  a bigger story: Our own individual narrative of who we are and why.

Our stories may be actual stories, words and pictures conjured out of a book, perhaps read to us by someone we loved. Or they may be memories, wise counsel, fragments of conversation that reflect what is important to those around us. They may be rituals, pet phrases, recipes, gestures, things that you remember as ‘belonging’ to your family or community. We all have them. And they are important.

And they are all different. The stories of others may have familiar elements to them, particularly where our ‘origins’ are similar. But they will always have something different also.

And where our ‘origins’ are dissimilar, we may find more new elements. But we will find familiar elements also. We will find connection and resonance in their meanings that may well surprise us.

Sharing elements of our story is a good way to build those connections and resonance, but it does more than that.

It helps us to become more aware of our common humanity. It highlights for us elements of our own story that we may have forgotten or lost sight of. It offers insight which helps build empathy, trust and teamwork. It stimulates creativity.

And it helps build understanding that the similarities and differences we have transcend issues of ethnicity, colour, orientation, and religion. That there are more reasons to hold together than to separate. And that there is an wonderful richness in everyone if only we open our eyes, ears and minds to appreciate it.

 

 

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:

 

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: