understanding Archives

Image related to bringing the best version of yourself

#022 – Bringing the Best Version of Yourself

21/12/202101/06/2021 by Mike Clargo

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

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.

+ Green track - taking it in your stride

Monitoring your internal condition

So, the green track this week is to understand a bit more about Scharmer’s model by reading a short post on it. And to use that understanding to try and monitor your internal condition in your next meeting.

Use a timer to check inside yourself every few minutes, and just make a note of whether you feel open, closed or in the middle, and what may have made you that way. Then deliberately try and reset yourself to ‘open’ and see if you can maintain it.

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

Monitoring their internal condition

Before you attempt to use monitoring internal condition with your team, try to build up your own ability to maintain awareness of internal condition. Both your own, and the overall climate of the meeting at any point.

Develop your own practical understanding of what is happening within yourself and in the climate of the meeting. What shifts it one way or another. And what are the consequences of either state in terms of achieving the purpose of the meeting and the team.

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

Monitoring our internal condition

If you are up to it. Introduce the idea of Scharmer’s work to your team. Talk about your observations from the Blue track in a way that people can remain open to it. Avoiding anything that might put individuals on the defensive.

And see how the team feels about trying it out for themselves.

If they are ‘up for it’, pause the meeting at regular points (perhaps every 15minutes, or when the climate shifts perceptibly) and invite people to silently check their own inner condition, and to think about the overall climate at that point.

And then lead a discussion or exploration regarding how the dynamics developed, and what we can all do differently.

You will know you are going in the right direction when you find the language creeping in to the meeting itself, and people willing to be open about their own part in ‘getting it wrong’.

This meta-level monitoring of ourselves and the meeting can make meetings many more times more efficient and effective.

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

Picture of Whale Bones at Whitby - as symbol for fishbone diagram cause and effect

#018 – Diagnostic Bones – Fishbone Diagrams

04/05/202104/05/2021 by Mike Clargo

Look deeper than what at first appears; help your team solve issues at their root Picture of Whale Bones at Whitby - as symbol for fishbone diagram cause and effect - Source: Tim Hill via Pixabay

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

Why take this challenge?

Solve problems once and for all

Resolve long term and recurring issues

Build your team’s understanding of causality

Graphic image reflecting different pathways to take the adventure

Developed in 1982 by Kaoru Ishikawa, the Fishbone Diagram (so-called because of its shape) is one of the most useful mechanisms for a team of people to systematically solve the problems they are facing. It helps people move beyond pet theories, simplistic explanations and blame. It uses structured creativity to broaden their view and develop a richer picture of causality – one that is more likely to contain the real issue(s) and new insights.

Like all management methods from Japan at that time, it is both simple and collaborative: Bringing people together to share deeper insight and understanding. And yet, in that simplicity lies a surprising power to reach past division, to educate, and to bond people in finding a way forward.

And despite its power and its popularity, it is now increasingly common to find people who have never used them, at least not within the last decade.
So the adventure this week, for you and your team, is to get out those bones, and remind yourself of how useful they can be.

+ Green track - taking it in your stride

See a deeper perspective through a fishbone diagram

The Green Track this week is simply to remind yourself (or to learn for the first time) how fishbones work. And to try it out on something simple.

You can quickly read up on the Ishikawa diagram using the links in the Pack section. And there is a nice graphic video you will find here (but please don’t pay too much attention to the Cs and Xs).

Then, download the template from the Virtual Flipcharts (or simply draw out your own) and write your choice of the following at the head of the fish:

We are losing too much time in poor meetings
We don’t get a lot of good creative ideas
I am finding myself too rushed at times

Or any other issue you might like to try it out upon. Then simply give it a go. But please include some wacky thoughts to provide space for insight and creativity to crystallise. And when you have finished. Just highlight a few of the ideas to: test out; ponder upon; validate; or simply do something about.

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

+ 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

The Wikipedia article on the Ishikawa diagram

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:

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:

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

#012 – Hello Old Friend

23/03/202122/03/2021 by Mike Clargo

Explore simple ways to make your meetings more collaborative and engaging – Bring back the humble flipchart to your remote meetings Picture 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

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.

+ Green track - taking it in your stride

Bring back the flipchart

Flipcharts were a wonderful mechanism. They made the conversation, and the patterns of insight visible. People could see their contribution to an emerging conclusion. And the consensus of opinion was more explicit.

But as meetings have moved online, their use has declined, and their digital alternatives not been quite as convenient. As a result, if you look back over your meetings of the last year, your may see that some of these benefits have been lost.

So the green track this week is to choose to redress the balance a bit – to bring the flipchart back into your next meeting. You could do it physically if you have space and the right lighting/webcam. Or on a shared whiteboard if everyone is comfortable with that.

Or, if you are feeling a bit more adventurous, try out the Virtual Flipchart in the blue track.

But the goal is to actively use a flipchart to pose a question, and to draw out the perspectives onto it – like we used to.

Even if that is only for the check in: What are you feeling today?

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

The flipchart enabled webcam

Over the past month, I have been working on a virtual flipchart. Something simple, easy and instant, that can be used conveniently in more meetings for more situations. So the blue track this week is simply to try it out in a few meetings (see how to download it here: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/virtual-flipcharts-how-add-them-your-webcam-mike-clargo and to see what emerges.

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

Improving your flipchart skills

Like most meeting tools – it is not how the people work on the flipchart, but how the flipchart works on the people that is important. The product of a meeting is not what people put on to the pages, but what those pages put into the people – insights, understanding, alignment, confidence, cohesion, commitment, …
So the red track is about revisiting the real potential of flipcharts, and to choose to become more masterful in their use. To help you in this, you may find the following useful paper on flipcharts.

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:

Picture of gazing at a mountain as a metaphor for acceptance

#011 – It is what it is

16/12/202216/03/2021 by Mike Clargo

Recognise and appreciate what you can and cannot change – Conserve your emotional and spiritual energy for the things that you can do something about

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

Why take this challenge?

To focus your energy and emotion on things you can (and will) do something about

To limit the mental wastage caused by fretting over things you cannot do anything about

Graphic image reflecting different pathways to take the adventure

Last month, Adventure #008 helped us to practice gratitude. To stop, appreciate, and be blessed by all that is good in our lives. This week our Adventure is to the other side of the coin – acceptance of the bad things.

There is sadly a lot of that going around at the moment, and as we move past the supportive frameworks currently in place, we will realise the true implications of the pandemic. We will discover that much has changed further than we realised, and a lot of that is going to be unpleasant. Sorry.

But until we take the journey to accept things as they really are, we cannot see them clearly. We colour them through lenses of yearning and despair. And that lack of clarity means that our approaches to dealing with them are fundamentally flawed, or non-existent.

Len Pendle* says he always tried to coach in people one key phrase: “It is what it is!”

That might seem obvious. And yet most of the damage we do to ourselves arises from failing to accept that simple fact. Until we can step into accepting what it is, we are powerless to make it anything different. And we are ineffective in readying ourselves for its impact.

+ Green track - taking it in your stride

The wisdom to know the difference

David Newey* says the most important strategy for his life has been the serenity prayer. It reads: God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.

So the green track this week is to make a list of things that bother you most about our current situation. And then to take a piece of paper, and draw two boxes on it. Label one: Things I cannot change, and the other: “Things I can change”. Put every item on your list into one box or the other. No exceptions.

The items in the ‘can change’ box are up to you. All I would say is: “Do it, or don’t do it!”

But in respect of the ‘cannot change’ box, circle the item in that is causing you the most fretting. Fix it firmly in your mind, and say very clearly to yourself: It is what it is. Whenever it appears in your mind to sap time and mental energy. Stop and say to yourself, clearly: It is what it is. And then work out what that really means for you.

It is what it is … don’t let it create any more damage than it has to.

As David puts it: “So much mental anguish is self-generated as people try, and inevitably fail, to change the unchangeable, be that Covid, Brexit or just getting older. No one delights in failing so why set oneself to fail?”

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

The Illusion of Control

The Blue track takes this thinking a step further, and is based on Mo Gawdat’s Google talk on The illusion of Control.

The task is quite simple: watch the video, and then give yourself 30 minutes at the end to answer these three questions on a sheet of paper: “What was that all about?”; “What was in it that relates to me?”; “What am I going to do about it?”

I am grateful to Mark Richardson* for this, who playfully ‘traded’ it with me for my “working from home exercise wheel”

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

Is that so?

Zen Koans are Buddhist wisdom literature. They are short stories that have hidden depths. One of the stories I had most difficulty with is entitled: Is that so? I have reproduced it below. I read it and it made no sense whatsoever. In fact it made me angry … Angry enough to keep thinking about it … Thinking about it over the next three days .. Three days until a light went on, and I could see why I was wrong.

I include the story below in the hope that its enlightenment will bless you as much as it did me (despite the possible frustration you experience beforehand).

Hakuin was greatly respected and had many disciples. At one time in his life, he lived in a village hermitage, close to a food shop run by a couple and their beautiful, young daughter. One day the parents discovered that their daughter was pregnant. Angry and distraught, they demanded to know the name of the father. At first, the girl would not confess but after much harassment, she named Hakuin. The furious parents confronted Hakuin, berating him in front of all of his students. He simply replied, “Is that so?”

When the baby was born, the family gave it to Hakuin. By this time, he had lost his reputation and his disciples. But Hakuin was not disturbed. He took delight in caring for the infant child; he was able to obtain milk and other essentials from the villagers. A year later, the young mother of the child was troubled by great remorse. She confessed the truth to her parents – the real father was not Hakuin but rather a young man who worked at the local fish market. The mortified parents went to Hakuin, apologizing, asking his forgiveness for the wrong they did him. They asked Hakuin to return the baby. Although he loved the child as his own, Hakuin was willing to give him up without complaint. All he said was: “Is that so?”

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:

About Culturistics: Empowering full strategy engagement through: adventurous visions; deployment frameworks; culture management; facilitative leadership; inspirational meetings; insight landscaping; & powerful partnerships

#009 – Not Your Usual Seat – Building Empathy

09/03/202109/02/2021 by Mike Clargo

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

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.

+ Green track - taking it in your stride

Empathy Walk

Making deeper, meaningful connections with people is increasingly important for all of us. There is an old adage – before you criticise someone, walk a mile in their shoes. The point is that doing so will help you better understand their situation, and help you find more constructive means to improve the relationship and what you both get from it.

But why wait for something to go wrong? Walking a mile in their shoes can help you also see new opportunities. So the green track is doing exactly that.

Think around your network and find someone whose situation you do not fully appreciate, and determine to plan 30 minutes just to get to know them better as a person. This exercise is not entirely unlike Walk and Listen, except it is more focused on their work context (and you don’t have to walk).
Here are some questions that may help you to get things underway:

For you, what are the good bits about where our work overlaps?
And what are the bits that are not so good for you? And why?
Can you share with me a bit about what happens at your end? What it would be like for me if we were to end up in each others shoes for a moment?
If I could do anything different to help you play your part in a better, more enjoyable way, what might that be?
Are there any questions you have about what goes on at my end?

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

That is a really good question.

There is a wonderful listening technique within counselling that not only helps you to understand someone’s situation better, it helps them understand their own situation better too.

It works by seeking to create a picture of what is going on in another person’s mind in your own, and to do so solely by asking questions. For the listener, their goal is to only put into their mind what the other person has said, until they reach a point where they can anticipate what the other person would do in a particular situation and why. It is an act of systematic curiosity.

And it has this amazing effect around situations where the other person finds themselves stuck. As you try and construct the ‘stuck’ picture in your own head, in trying to fully understand the ‘stuckness’ you end up unearthing the blind spots and ask questions that the other person not only hadn’t considered, but hadn’t even recognised as a question.

So the blue track is to have this conversation with someone who is stuck. But it is absolutely key that your goal is NOT to help the other person to solve their problem – that will lead to suggestions and assumptions, which derail the technique. Your goal is solely to understand their thinking, and you do this purely with questions.

Sticking to open questions and questions of clarification is fine, but avoid any question that is a veiled attempt to propose a solution.

Trust in the technique – if you are determined to do you part in understanding well, they will eventually find the next steps for themselves – if only to find the answer to your question. For more on this, take a look at the steps to listening part of the Walk and Talk post

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

Breaking out of the Echo Chamber

The Red Track is basically somewhere where you probably don’t want to go. It is about listening intently and respectfully to views you disagree with at a pretty fundamental level.

We are all becoming more aware of the echo chamber effect, and we can see its impact on groups of people who are developing increasingly radical perspectives. As a result their views appear to become more polarised and reflect less and less that we can engage with.

What we may be less aware of is our own echo chamber. As opposing views become more polarised, we find that it is easier to recognise and exclude them. As a result we too are hearing less and less of what might otherwise maintain balance.

So the red track is a real challenge. It is about deliberately spending time in an echo chamber that is not your own, and trying to see things from that perspective.

To help you, I have included two important resources in the pack section.

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