relationships Archives

Image of person looking at themselves as illustration of triangulation reframing

#033 – Triangulate your Character

31/01/202321/09/2021 by Mike Clargo

Use reframing to understand and reshape your impact and influence on those around you – O wad some Pow’r the giftie gie us. To see oursels as ithers see us!

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

Why take this challenge?

Develop a clearer perspective on how you come across to other people

Provide opportunities to reflect yourself to others in a way that is more effective

Increase your impact and influence in achieving things for and through others

Graphic image reflecting different pathways to take the adventure

Before GPS, triangulation was the means used to determine the position of something. It was a vital component for locating your own position when you weren’t sure where you were. Basically it was a means of taking a perspective on something from different known positions to better understand its location.

Reframing is a sociological version of triangulation, but with a lot less maths.

In reframing, we view an entity, an idea or a situation from different stakeholder perspectives to gain a clearer understanding of its perception: Its impact, influence, appearance, significance, …

The result can help people appreciate a more complete and comprehensive ‘truth’ about things they typically only consider from their own perspective. And, as a result, it can help them reshape things to have a better impact.

So, the key questions are, in the long run: Are we who we believe ourselves to be? Or are we what other people perceive? To what extent are those different things? And does that difference matter? For example, in terms of our ability to influence and bless others?

+ Green track - taking it in your stride

Triangulate ourselves

So our green track this week is to triangulate ourselves from the perspectives of: Ourselves; our team; our leadership; our family; and our friends?

Clicking the image on the right will open up a template you can use to lay out your thoughts. Start in the centre with your self-perception, and then move clockwise around the other four perspectives.

We would suggest you use the following colour coding for the notes you add to each section: Yellow for things you know; pink for things you suspect; blue for things you ought to know but don’t.

Once you have finished your self-triangulation, you might want to pick one or two things you would really like to be different: Things you want to find out, or confirm, or change. You could perhaps add these as green notes.

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

Triangulate your team

The blue track is to try the same thing this time with your team, but to triangulate using different perspectives: Your members (yourselves); your customers; your suppliers; your organisation; your professional peers (e.g. those who are associated with fulfilling similar roles in other organisations).

Share the URL for the template (you will find the team template below the personal template on the whiteboard you opened in the green track) and invite your team to add their own thoughts to each of the perspectives. This could be a free for all, or by dividing into breakouts to tackle different sections, and then reviewing altogether. You can use the same conventions to triangulate as proposed in the green track.

+ 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

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

#014 – Discovering Diversity

06/04/2021 by Mike Clargo

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

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.

+ Green track - taking it in your stride

Celebrate your difference

So the green track this week is to share a little bit of your own story with (at least part of) your team. If you can associate it with something tangible – a picture, or object, or sounds of some kind, so much the better.

To introduce it to the team, explain that you want to do something to compensate for the lack of human contact at present. And that you would like to do something to increase the connections between us. Explain that, to start, you are going to share a short story about yourself to start the meeting. Then simply do that. It is important to try to keep it to under 5 minutes.

At the end, see how it went (you should be able to tell from people’s reactions). If it went well, use the opportunity to share the blue track with them: Get them to take turns at the beginning of subsequent meetings.

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

Celebrate everyone’s difference

So the blue track this week is to start a pattern of sharing stories.

Ask your team to find or prepare something that means something to them individually. Ideally, something that the bulk of the team do not know. Something that is part of their story, and reflects something they treasure. It might be a picture, an object, a memory, a piece of music, a piece of prose, or (when the pandemic is over) a taste or smell.

Explain why you are asking them to prepare this. That it is about appreciating our diversity. Say that at the start of each subsequent meeting, one person will share for 5 minutes, and the rest of us will each share a sentence of something we appreciate from it.

And then, at the beginning of each of your meetings, give one member of your team the floor. Hear the sentences of appreciation. Thank everybody, and move on with the agenda.

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

Embrace Diversity

Embracing diversity is clearly so much bigger than sharing stories. But at least sharing stories is a good start.

We are all diverse. We all have things that make us different. For some of us that difference is more obvious than others. And for some of those, that simple distinction has been used against them by those who are insecure in various ways to achieve a sense of power over them.

For all of us, we have some diversities that are less obvious. We could make them obvious, but we have all experienced patterns of inclusion and exclusion as a result of difference, and so anxieties over ‘standing out’ rather than ‘fitting in’ can cause us to suppress certain aspects of who we are – particularly where we are part of a culture where who is ‘in’ and who is ‘out’ can influence (sometimes unconsciously) how you are treated.

The red track is to begin a dialogue with your team around this issue. As a conversation starter, we have included a number of links in the pack that you may find helpful – particularly the TED talks.

You may also find the ‘Valuing Diversity and Justice’ thread of the meetings maturity model helpful (replicated below). This can help your team position what is currently appearing to happen. And to agree how they want it to be different in the future.

A basic explanation of the maturity model can be found here. There you will find a link to the more comprehensive model (from which the above is an excerpt).

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

Useful links:

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

#006 – Walk and Listen

19/02/202109/02/2021 by Mike Clargo

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.

+ Green track - taking it in your stride

What is your story?

Miles points out that very few people have ever been asked to talk about themselves. To have 15 minutes uninterrupted focus on them and their story, told in their way. If you stop and think about your team, and you were to ask each of them: “What is your story?”, would you know what each would answer? Do you know what you would answer?

So Miles’ adventure is: Ask someone out for a (virtual) walk where they tell their story. Without interruption or questions. For at least 15 minutes. Just explain to them that you realise you don’t really know their story, and that you would like to hear it. You want to understand a bit more about the things in their lives. And what they feel brought them to who they are today?

But please bear in mind that you should be prepared that they might ask the same thing of you.

Our hope is that the walk, and the talk, will reignite some of the human elements that may have been struggling of late.

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

What is their story?

If you find you get something out of the green track, consider extending this adventure to the other people in your team. And to other colleagues, customers, your network, anybody with whom you have regular contact. Simply explain the rationale, and perhaps use your green track experience as a example of why you think you will find it of value.

Not everyone will go for it, but that is okay too!

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

Planning for a virtual future

There is something about going on a 15-30 minute walk with someone, particularly when you don’t have to talk: You can start out in companionable silence, but then something will always spark a conversation.

The reality for many of us in the new normal is that there will be less opportunity for coffee machine conversations, and so we will need to find a way to replace this with other things that keep our working relationships human.

The red track is about creating a culture for your team where they have regular walk and talks together. Where the goal is always to understand and appreciate each other better. To practice curiosity in each other, and avoid judgement. To build empathy, and to build the skills of building empathy.

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

General guidance on walk and talk: https://meeting.toolchest.org/walk-and-talk-meetings/
Useful ‘getting to know more about you’ questions from Forbes and Sign-up-Genius

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

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

Playing at work! Seriously?

15/12/202209/09/2019 by Mike Clargo

Post intentionally hidden from search engines 15/12/2022 (covered in Clrgo.com)

The toy, Lego, can provide surprising insights into you, your work and your relationships.

Over the last two months I have been reading and listening to a lot of stuff about what makes us who we are, and the conclusion I am being drawn to is that, for most of us, we are not who we think we are.

Our identity is tied up in stories; multiple stories which we tell ourselves; a flow of narrative which leads to and flows from the current moment, and to a large part determines how we feel about what we are doing right now. Those stories may be short or long, they may originate from us or from others, they may be in conflict or harmony, and most of the time we may not be fully aware of them.

And some of them are the truth, and some of them are lies, and some of them are both in different circumstances. And we pick which ones we believe (not always consciously or consistently) and they determine not only our effectiveness, but also how we feel about our performance and our situation.

I say ‘not always consciously’ because a lot of this takes place in our subconscious. Most of what is going on in our heads is happening without us being in control of it, and yet it is making associations, feeding our attitudes, responding to cues, suggesting motives, and preparing us – all based on whatever narratives it is currently using.

But if we are not aware of this, how do we know that it is equipping us with the best narrative to do what we are wanting to do? The answer, for most of us, most of the time, is we don’t! And it isn’t!

In many cases, particularly in respect of relationships with others (business or otherwise) we find ourselves all too easily doing, saying, and feeling things that are not particularly helpful to us or to them – particularly in tense or difficult situations. And as a result, opportunities, time and resource get wasted.

So how do we fix this?

Well first of all, this is not a quick fix – it takes time. But that time can be enjoyable, insightful, and empowering. And it can yield benefits right from the outset.

Secondly, working on it is not like working on other things in our lives. Our subconscious is an alien space and it uses a different language to the ones we are used to speaking.

As a result, working with the subconscious involves doing things that our conscious might deem as silly or weird – like playing with Lego. Seriously.

Lego (R) Serious Play (R) or LSP, for brevity and avoidance of the the legal symbols, was a technique developed at the Lego group in the mid-nineties and made open-source in 2010. It is designed to access the metaphors that operate in our subconscious, and enable us to better work together on a shared vision or enterprise.

At an individual level, it enables people to see things in themselves that can surprise them; to unearth important facets of their narrative, and to work on them to bring about changes which can make us more effective, individually and together. It can surface metaphors that are important to us, and enable us to better examine them, and reassess their place (and their limits) in our story.

Whether by LSP, or by means of other Therapies, if you are blessed enough to have the opportunity to work on your own subconscious. I encourage you to take it (or even seek it out). It is not just for those with mental health issues, it is also for those with mental health who want to retain it.

The world is getting more and more complex, routine is being automated, things are moving ever faster, and relationships are increasingly key. Looking after our mental health so that it equips us with what we need to make the best of this emerging future is key, and I am increasingly convinced that a better grasp of our subconscious will enrich all our lives.

In these days of data protection, when we can ask any organisation to reveal the picture it has of us, particularly where it might lead them to make decisions which are not in our interest, perhaps our most productive course of action could be to start within our own minds.