inclusion

Resources to Engage your People

Resources to Better Engage Your People in Change Leadership

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Resources to Engage your People

In our article on ‘The Future of Change‘ we looked at the time dilemma facing those in leadership positions. Basically, how we need to overcome the pressure on our time created by a reactive approaches. Coupled with proposing practical strategies for stealing that time back to think ‘smarter’ about what’s coming.

everybody leads change

One thing the article didn’t cover however, is how the nature of ‘who’ is ‘leadership’ is also changing.
As more and more of human routine gets handled by AI, bots and automation, inevitably more and more of human responsibility will concern non-routine activity. Primarily activity concerned with change, relationships, and change in relationships. Much of this change will need to be autonomous, self-directed. In part this is to avoid further overloading established leadership roles. But in bigger part, it will be because we will need to make these changes quickly and with direct understanding of the specific situation. Change leadership becomes everybody’s responsibility.
People at all levels will be making decisions that will change the nature of their relationships with their colleagues and all around them. They too will effectively be in leadership. This is a concept that is well understood in new coaching models – that we lead up, across, and within, as well as down. As Steven Covey put it ‘Leadership is a choice, not a position’.
But how will they make decisions? Will they also get the thinking time necessary?
Perhaps that is the wrong question. The reality is that, unless they get to spend some of their time in thinking, they too will spend far more of their time in redoing, fixing, dealing with consequences, or other inefficiency.

Learning to Lead Change

Somehow, we, the people in more established leadership roles, need to prepare them for this choice. And prepare them for how to make the best decisions.
The best way to do this is to involve them in the decisions being made at a higher level. Doing so will bring for clear benefits. One, they will learn good thinking practices and tools. Two, they will learn the importance of engaging others in their own decisions. Three they will understand better how it all fits together, and have ownership that their decisions need to support that. And four, their more detailed knowledge and insight will be available to make the higher level decisions better.
Engaging people in decisions on a whiteboard with sticky notesProviding of course that the higher-level decisions are an exemplar of this approach.
We have spent a large part of the last 30 years modelling such participative decision making in top-level workshops. And also in lower-level meetings.
Library of Participative Decision Tools and Selection MatrixOver time we have developed and collated a wide range of practical resources to support this. We have made these resources freely available to all those seeking to better engage the hearts and minds of their people. And we have developed practical pathways for people to learn how to use them. Starting with easy intuitive tools and techniques, and building to more sophisticated ones. Basically, we have a tool for every situation, and every level of ability. We will provide links to explain these shortly, but first, there is a key point to make.

these tools are not dialogue-centric

That doesn’t mean that we don’t think dialogue is important. We do! Indeed, we think balanced, supportive, insightful, dialogue is vital! And all of our tools are designed to lead onto and furnish such dialogue. It is just that we find, in meetings where verbal dialogue is pretty much the only form of communication, it is rarely balanced, supportive, insightful or inclusive. As such it is often a poor example of good decision making.
The reality is, as tensions rise, it tends to be overly-controlled by certain personalities, and dominated by those who believe their ideas should prevail. As such, it typically disadvantages those who may be quieter, more reflective, diverse, creative, introvert or junior. And it disadvantages them to the extent that, in some organisations, dominant personalities are more likely to succeed, and end up leading future meetings, and maintaining this culture.
But we need to use our meetings to build real participation and ownership at all levels, across diverse populations. Consequently, we need to give everyone a ‘voice’ so they can share in the ownership of the result, and cascade that commitment to their people.
Many of the toolsets you will encounter through the links below are about building that voice through non verbal participation. But, in doing so, they ensure that everybody’s opinion is ‘out there’. And, because of this, it informs a richer, more creative dialogue based on a broader context, more creative input, and more diverse sources.

Resources to Support Change Leadership

Image of white hand pint on a black background to reflect a racist position

We are all racist, unfortunately

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We are all racist, unfortunately. And yes, I confess, that sadly means I am a racist too.
Time and time again I disappoint myself with a sudden realisation that my first response to a particular situation is unworthy of what I truly believe and aspire to. I find unexpected feelings and justifications trying to creep in. Fortunately, I manage to catch myself well before it shows in my face or what I say. And that means most of the time I manage to behave as someone I truly want to be, and to be seen as. As someone who treats everyone equally, ideally with love and care.
And over my 65 years of life, it has gotten easier, but the problem has never gone away. Underneath it all, the fact is – I am still racist, sexist, … everything-ist.
The sad reality is: We are all inherently that way. We are genetically predisposed through millennia of evolution to favour people who we subconsciously see as being ‘the same as us’. And, in times past, this predisposition has helped our forebears to survive, even thrive. Our subconscious over-generalised models about who is safe to trust, and who is not, made sure that our antecedents lived long enough to maintain their genetic material until it became us.
And now, those same genetics leave their racist traces in my underlying nature. And also in yours.

But I am also a spiritual person.

I fundamentally believe that we are ALL equal and equally loved in God’s eyes. And that my purpose, wherever possible, is to overcome hatred and fear (in myself and others) with love and understanding, and ultimately (if required) with sacrifice. I so want to live up to how God sees me. However, I still have these flaws that undermine me. But … don’t we all?
I have been lucky in so many ways. Loved as a child. I was educated by those able to share good values. My brain chemistry is healthy. I have people I can trust. Nobody expects too much of me. And yet, childhood memories of being bullied, of being an outsider, of feeling helpless, still adversely impact my choices at times. Echoes of these things still press buttons within me that bring out the worst of who I might be. So what must that feel like to those who have had worse upbringings, or suffer from unhealthy aspects to their education, chemistry and sense of value?

Finding self-worth

And lets face it, there are a lot of those people about. People who have effectively dragged themselves up in dire situations. Surrounded by adults who don’t care about them. Who abuse them. Where they have to make sense of things that make no sense. Where survival requires that they find self-worth where they can, which is as often as not in the perversity around them.
Perhaps some of those people are more racist than me? More racist than you? They still have a need to belong, to feel of value, to cope or to leave a mark that says they were here and they matter. But perhaps they aren’t equipped to handle those needs properly, and those feelings, those attitudes, get subverted into the abuse we are currently seeing online (and more widely).
Please don’t get me wrong. I am not making excuses – for them or for me. But nor am I seeing them as being so opposite to me that there is no possible connection between us. Because if I do that. If I deny the continuum that exists between their behaviour and mine. Then what possible route can I offer them back to becoming a better soul themselves? If I am not honest about my own struggles and temptations, then how can they see me authentically empathise with theirs? What basis of dialogue exists? And if none, then how are they supposed to change?

A sense of grey?

And I guess that is what worries me in the current debate. Over recent decades, the media’s predilection for headlines and soundbites has created a reality where things are simple, polarised, black or white, true or false, for or against, this side or that. As a result, people are simply racist or not. I have heard lots about people condemning others as racist, but nobody owning up to the reality within themselves. So where is the change supposed to happen, when it is always someone else that is to blame?
If we cannot see the complexity, the spectrum of grey within ourselves and others, then we leave no path for people to change. We leave no space to engage people as they are. To help them see they are of value without them having to see others as of no value. To help them develop better ways to meet their needs for identity and belonging and love. We simply force them to suppress it until the opportunity arises that they can re-assert themselves – unchanged and unrepentant.
I am a racist. I am not proud of the fact, in fact I dearly wish it could be otherwise. But I am proud of the fact that I have admitted it – that I have highlighted the grey between the black and the white. That I have added my voice to those who recognise that making a real difference in this space will not be achieved with slogans, blame and polarising arguments. But with self-honesty, openness, and inclusion.
Discovering diversity - picture of a woman seeing herself in a range of images of people from different cultures

#014 – Discovering Diversity

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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

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