leadership Archives

Glass orb image of man exploring woods in curious stance - metaphor for using questions to understand situations

#029 – Scouting the Terrain (Using Questions)

20/07/2021 by Mike Clargo

Develop your facilitative leadership skills – Provide empowering leadership through your choice of questions

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Why take this challenge?

Develop more facilitative approaches to leadership through questions

Build greater participation, contributions and ownership from your team

Use normal working opportunities to better grow your people’s potential

Graphic image reflecting different pathways to take the adventure

Good questions are the most powerful tools available to us. They stimulate engagement, confront error, energise debate, foster humility, unearth reason, generate insight, build ownership, deliver progress and help us find the right answers. Questions are key to adopting a more facilitative (and less directive) style of leadership. They help us to ensure progress, and to develop our people at the same time. And they enable us to ‘Scout the Terrain’ – to really understand what is going on before seeking to influence an outcome.

But how do we find good questions?

I have been a consultant and a facilitator for over 30 years now, and I confess they still don’t come as easily as I want them to.

I believe that part of the issue is attitudinal – in my heart (read ego) I still like to be the one with the answer. But I also like to help people grow. And I know that an answer provided by me is nowhere near as powerful as an answer discovered by ‘them’.

Something that has been immensely helpful to me is Monitoring my Internal Condition. If I can keep my head in curiosity, questions come much more easily. And if I can focus on my role as a facilitator over my role as a consultant, I can rid myself of the expectation that I should already have the answers.

Also, if I can think through the journey (at a meta-level) that people are likely to be taking beforehand, I have more time to develop the questions and incorporate them in the process I am using.

And there are also sources of good questions available if we have the time to peruse them in advance. Liberating Structures is one such source, and contains a range of question / format combinations that can be used effectively to engage people’s thinking.

So this week’s adventure is to practice deliberately using questions where you might otherwise provide answers.

+ Green track - taking it in your stride

Practicing Questions

The green track this week is to try to get through just one meeting using only questions. Keep a small piece of paper beside you, and on the left side right the following words in a column: Who, what, when, where, why, how. And on the right, keep a tally of every time you start to speak without using one of these six words.

Then, at the end of the meeting, reflect on how you fared and the impact it had on you, on your team, and on the meeting. That’s it.

If you want to repeat it, then please consider the blue track.

+ Blue track - a bit of a workout (click to open)

Developing a Questioning Approach

The challenge of the blue track is to try and develop your skill of asking questions across a number of meetings. Each time using the six words and the tally chart. Keep a record of your progress over a number of meetings. (You may want to plot the tally score divided by the meeting length in hours. And you may want to record different plots depending on whether you are running the meeting.)

Hopefully,you will see the graphs you plot improve in a downward trend (albeit somewhat erratic – meetings are like that). But if the plot plateaus, take some time to think through the possible factors behind that and whether you can do something about them.

+ Red track - stepping up to bat (click to open)

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:

Introduction to Leading by Adventure  |  What we mean by spirituality?  |  Why Adventure
Adventures to date   |  I did it, but it didn’t work very well   |  How do I know if it is working
Bringing this thinking into your meetings   |  Adventure & Mental Health
Leading by Adventure community   |  Explore Strategic Support options

Leading Adventure in Others

31/03/202207/07/2021 by Mike Clargo

“The future is a different country, they do things differently there”.

At some point the future will become our place of residence. But, if we are to make ourselves at home in it … If we are to realise its potential … We will need to embrace that transition. Adventuring is about developing that readiness to journey into it.

To illustrate what I mean, I would ask you to take a look at the people around you. If you do, you are likely to find a spectrum of different attitudes to their current situation and responsibilities.

Some are stressed, disappointed, disengaged, entrenched, resistant, awkward, resentful.

And some are excited, enthused, immersed, joyful, curious, compassionate.

Some are victims of the changes that have brought them to where they are

And some are adventurers within it.

There are those who have attitudes that help them to see the opportunities in change. These attitudes are fed and reinforced by what they make of those opportunities. And this helps to nourish their mental health.

And there are others who have attitudes which focus on the risks and the downsides of change. They resist the new, cling to the old, and may be unprepared for what happens. As a result their attitude is also fed and reinforced by their experience, and their mental health suffers.

the danger for all of us is that the increasing rate of change is likely to push us in the wrong direction…

Most of us, fall somewhere closer to the middle of this spectrum.

But the danger for all of us is that the increasing rate of change is likely to push us in the wrong direction unless we intentionally increase our ability to engage positively with it. That has been the purpose of the Leading by Adventure programme.

… unless we intentionally increase our ability to engage positively with it

Over the three months from April to June 2021, Leading by Adventure focused on the ‘leading’ element of adventure. It shared a sequence of tools that can be used to facilitate the engagement of teams with the opportunities of change: SWOT, Forcefields, Fishbones, Intuition, Hopes & Concerns, Brutethink, Staying Open, PMI, Solution Effect, ORID, Kanban, and Review. And it has also shared tailored resources to support this in the form of Virtual Flipcharts and Instant Whiteboards.

12 video stills of the Adventure series on leading adventure in others

These tools help to enable people to contribute better to what is happening. And through this to take fuller ownership of the possibilities. By using them, leaders can better develop the attitudes and the skill set of their people in rising above the change, and seeing its pattern and potential. They can navigate change, rather than feel subject to it. They can see themselves as adventurers not victims.

The exercises in Leading by Adventure., help us to practice the skills of ‘journey’ in ourselves and our team. Deliberately taking a few minutes out each week to try something new. To develop our intellectual and emotional ‘muscles’ in embracing a growth mindset.

To access the full set of Adventures to date, please click here.

Glass orb of Girl offering paintbrush and palette - metaphor for facilitating adventure in others

#015 – Facilitating Adventure in Others

13/04/2021 by Mike Clargo

Building confidence in our ‘voice’ and the ‘voices’ around us – Using structure to draw out insight and self-discovery in people Girl offering paintbrush and palette - metaphor for facilitating adventure in others

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

Why take this challenge?

To think through what it might mean to find our ‘voice’ and inspire others to find theirs
To develop a picture of the changes we want to see for ourselves and those around us
To provide a context for using structure to inspire creativity and self-discovery

Graphic image reflecting different pathways to take the adventure

In Leading by Adventure, our first 12 or so adventures might be best described as adventuring in leadership. They have been largely about us, and who, how and why we are.

They have hopefully been an exercise in moving our perspective out, and seeing things a little bit differently. Partly in the hope that some of those perspectives we might find helpful, and want to use again. But mostly with the intention of developing a habit of deliberately taking time to test out new perspectives and whatever they may or may not bring.

But what about the adventure we lead in others? How do we facilitate attitudes and habits in others to adventurously adopt new perspectives? After all, the stated aim of our adventuring is to help equip people for a future that is increasingly all about change.

So, as leaders (and we are ALL leaders – ‘Leadership is a choice, not a position’ – Stephen Covey) how are we helping those around us to explore new perspectives? How are we helping them to develop the skill of shifting their view points? And how are we developing confidence in them? That they too are adventurers in change and not the victims of it?

Over the next 12 or so adventures, our focus will be on leading (facilitating) adventures in others. Whatever our relation to them might be. In doing so, our own adventure will be into Covey’s vision for us: To find our ‘voice’ and inspire others to find theirs. (See the pack)

We will be using tools and techniques (some of which may be familiar) that ‘draw out’ from people, rather than ‘push in’. Tools that offer people a path to self-discovery of insights, rather than passively receiving them from others. And to keep it real, and make it sustainable, these are all things that you will be applying within your ‘normal’ work. Your (and their) current needs and situations.

The purpose of this week’s adventure then, is to develop a perspective, a vision, for how you would ideally see their voices develop. You may already have solutions for each of the tracks in place. But if you do, then please take this opportunity to consider how they might be further improved.

+ Green track - taking it in your stride

Discovering my own voice

The green track for each of the upcoming adventures will be about using each technique to extend your own personal understanding. Both from the point of view of what you want to ‘say’. And from the perspective of appreciating the relevance of the technique to drawing out the voices of others.

So the challenge of the green track this week is to reflect on how you might like to be more confident that your own voice is equipped for its role.

Think about circumstances where you have been (or will be) in a position to influence the opinions of those with the most power and authority to make the differences you want. In your mind, put yourself there now, immerse yourself, and sense how you feel? Might that feeling hold you back at crucial moments?

What knowledge or insight about the situation would give you confidence in your own authority? That might even compel you to give voice to your opinions? Write down your thoughts, and ponder them. And revisit them over the coming weeks.

+ Blue track - a bit of a workout (click to open)

Inspiring others to find their voice

The blue track for each of the upcoming adventures will be about using each technique to help others develop insight and confidence in what they want to say. To use the technique to both give practice in expressing their ‘voices’, and to build understanding that give strength and breadth to those opinions.

Each technique uses structure and space to drive participation.

So the challenge of the blue track this week is to reflect on how you might like to see others around you developing their own voices.

Think about circumstances where they may have remained quiet or passive. Times when you know they had something to add, but then didn’t. Opportunities to engage that they failed to take, or took poorly.

How would you ideally like them to be different? Write down your thoughts, and ponder them. And revisit them over the coming weeks.

+ Red track - stepping up to bat (click to open)

Empowering a voice driven process

The red track for each of the upcoming adventures will be about considering whether and how each technique might become a helpful part of your work.

So the challenge of the red track this week is to reflect on what a more ‘voice inspiring’, and ‘voice empowered’ way of working might look like. What for you would be the evidence that it exists?

Write down your thoughts, and ponder them. And revisit them over the coming weeks.

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.

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