Chapter 6 - Extraordinary Leadership Workshop

The Workshop

The Extraordinary Leadership Workshop lies at the heart of this book. The theories, concepts and ideas we have presented throughout the book all have some connection with the workshop. Over the years, approximately 5,000 employees from various companies have experienced the workshop. As we said in the introduction to the book, it is difficult to convey the ambience at the beginning of the workshop week with that at the closing session. The change is most apparent in the ways that participants, managers, workers, leaders, (all relieved of their official status for the week) express thoughts and feelings about the quality of life at work. Possibilities have opened up and some of these in the most restricting of circumstances. Networks form, not for one or two week afterwards, as we tend to experience, but as lasting relationships where support can be asked for and automatically received. In fact in one organization, there is a healthy email network that operates outside of the formal system (Stacey would call this the shadow system) and where the spirit of the workshop is kept alive.

Complex Adaptive Systems - a Memory Jog

Before we go on to describe the workshop, we need just to remind the reader of the essence of complex adaptive systems so that you can appreciate the basis for the thinking underpinning many of the workshop decisions such as no agendas, letting communities happen naturally, inserting some disturbance into the workshop and challenging the value of unquestioning compliance with rules. The theory, which you met in chapter four, is, of course, complex adaptive systems theory.

The essence of the theory of complex adaptive systems lies in its non-linear, adaptive, self-organizing qualities. It sits well within a turbulent context and we propose that much of life today fits into that category. Let's look at this in a little more detail. The pace of work is faster than ever, and the expectations of 'smarts' as a way to beat the productivity clock have risen too. Because scientism and mechanistic management still loom large in organizations, managers are expected to know more about technology, and they have to keep abreast of new rules and regulations too. Working life is more complex as risk management and quality audits criss-cross with each other and with other administrative processes. Information overload is on the increase and managers have email, i-mail, hard mail and person-mail. Home life for many people is more turbulent than peaceful with education being more competitive, jobs less secure, and expectations higher, not to mention the overload on the psyche of the constant bombardment of consumer messages. There are some positive messages within the turbulent context, but not for those who seek order, predictability, familiarity and the security that comes with habit. In fact traditional workplaces are probably the only places that still put considerable effort into emulating a calm and regulated existence.

Youngblood captures the sort of qualities embedded in the workshop design. Organizations are seen as wholes, as opposed to being fragmented into work teams or departments. Due to the constant interaction and production of new ways to see and share things, the wholes are always greater than the sum of their parts. As people interact and veer off in their conversations, things get re-interpreted and re-invented, taking the conversations and practices far from the comfortable starting point that we call equilibrium. The more people create new ways of doing things (and in the doing, discard the old) the more stable structures and the balance they produce get in the way. By knocking things out of balance, effort has to be put into renewal and hopefully in different forms. As people are liberated from formal language, formal meetings, traditional roles, they find new ways of working that can, to the outside observer, be confusing. That is because often there is no direct 'this leads to that' and 'if we do this, then we know what will happen'.

Things might happen in roundabout ways and there is always room for surprises. In fact they are mandatory in the complex adaptive systems environment. There is more interconnectivity and autonomy than straight line connections and compliance and, one of the reasons why predictability is so difficult is that there is what we might call an ecological web of relationships which is constantly changing and adapting to new or re-constructed information coming in. As a basic condition, the complex adaptive system needs to be freed from certainty, predictability, linear thinking and an over-reliance on rational thinking. David set the workshop up, as far as possible, as a self-organizing system. Of course, like complex adaptive systems, the workshop had its initial conditions - clear objectives, agreed values and negotiable and non-negotiable boundaries. Behaviours, opinions, arguments, information were allowed to emerge.

There was ample room for spontaneity and trial and error. Opportunities for 'real', not always detectable, learning abounded due to the action-learning framework (described below). Negative as well as positive feedback loops were designed into the workshop so that the power of feedback could be felt naturally. Diversity of opinion and a strong sense of voluntarism were allowed scope. Creativity (especially around rules and traditions) was encouraged through a discovery and discussion approach. The workshop was designed so that surprises were a feature and disturbance was factored somewhere into the day. Participants became very sensitive to non-verbal information and in response to this, for example, when David was calling the group together he kept speeding up the musical signal and walk became run.

Every one of the qualities we mention above has been designed either into the thinking or the practice of the workshop. This makes it so hard to describe it in traditional terms. So what we decided to do was to leave this task to past participants. Kathrine recently interviewed some of the program participants of the leadership workshops. She was intrigued at the way people referred to the week's experience as 'IT'. The following, she tells us, is quite representative of many of the conversations she held.

'('IT' is the feeling ... the change ... a euphoria and enlightenment ... being true to yourself ...inner acceptance ...switched a light inside my head ...the whole course ...ability to speak to people about what you truly feel, not what you think they would want to hear to make them happy ...coming to terms with yourself and the way you interact with people ....confidence in myself to (say) exactly what I'm thinking ...a realization ...it gave me the strength to make the right decisions ...from here (pointing to heart) not from here (head) ...you can't call it a word, you can't call it anything, that's why I just call it 'IT'. You learn 'IT' while you're there...'

In the following extract, the participant makes an interesting observation that there are things he just did without thinking. Over time, (and we would say that in living with too many formal structures and norms) not only had people become inhibited but they seemed not to notice that this was happening.

'It's hard to explain without actually doing 'IT', but the easiest thing would be ... you learn something there that you've always known, but through work, relationships with people, experience in life, whatever, it gets pushed aside ... When you're a kid you just do that, but as you get older you start to learn you can't say what you feel all the time ...you become inhibited. You're restricted because you start to consider others ...what you're actually doing is conforming to society, and what David teaches you at the course is that you DON'T HAVE TO CONFORM ... when the 'light' flicked on, I realised that 'IT' was something that I'd always known, but you just couldn't use 'IT' as you get older and now he's teaching you how to use 'IT', or to realise that you've still got that ability, but also to use 'IT' properly.'

The extraordinary leadership workshop story began in the mid-nineties. David was commissioned by a large global steel manufacturer to develop a workshop that would change the culture of one of the plants within the steel works. The key drivers for the cultural change were the need to improve the safety performance through the creation of a culture of care and, to improve the plant's productivity. The Workshop aimed to give participants an experience of leadership and teamwork that encouraged a strong personal commitment to making a positive difference in their organizations. It was built using an action-learning model.

Action learning is a process in which a group of people come together to help each other learn from their experience. The participants typically came from different situations, where each of them was involved in different activities and faced individual problems within one organization. It is usual for the team to consist of people with a common task or problem. To us, action learning is a process by which change and understanding need to happen at the same time. It is usually described as cyclic, with action and critical reflection taking place in turn. The reflection is used to review the previous action and plan the next one. Mike Pedler , building on the work of Reg Revans shares ideas that echo the way we see learning and change. 'Here is an acid test: you can tell whether this is Action Learning or not by whether people are exercising moral imagination, by how often they question their own and each others' actions and by how much they strive towards integrity for themselves and their colleagues ... the process of 'outer' (actions) and 'inner' (learnings) is one which questions of value interact with the practical matters of managing'. To take this route is not an easy one because it is like leaving the safety of a calm stream and suddenly hitting rocks and shoals. As soon as values and any moral element come into learning situations, courage and emotional competence become essential qualities of the facilitator. One of the challenges in such a workshop is to be willing to be directed by the workshop team members.

The Beginning - What No Agenda?

So where do we start? Careful attention is paid to the physical layout of the workshop. Very few of the 'props' that participants and facilitators alike lean on are there. To begin with, there are no tables on which the participants can lean or psychologically hide behind. Second, the chairs are placed in a circle to encourage communication. Perhaps it is similar to the traditional campfire where people sit around a cental point (the fire) and tell stories.

The fact that there is no published agenda is emphasised during the introduction. Participants are told, however, that as facilitators we have a very clear overall mission to meet their needs. We find it difficult to publish an agenda and at the same time to invite participants to shape the week to ensure that their own needs are met. To some extent, the publication of an agenda in these types of workshops could be seen as an arrogant statement because the workshop facilitators are effectively saying that they know what the participants need. Bang goes the certainty and also the agreement from this diverse group about what the needs might be.

Of course, that does not trouble us as much as it troubles participants, who mostly want to slot in to whatever structure is presented. Stimulating uncertainty is the most important reason for not publishing an agenda. Uncertainty, we believe, is where most of the real world lives. As the week develops, the claims of certainty held on to by participants soon take on a mythical air. Even though at the beginning, people want and expect a map or a plan, it becomes clear that uncertainty is natural, has to be lived through, and is rich in possibilities for learning. The workshop creates an environment where actions and learning are developed from the experiences of the week. As the reader can imagine, this is not what is normally expected at the beginning of a workshop on leadership and change.

It is this uncertainty and the inability of participants to seek comfort in the workshop leaders or a map or plan that brings people together. Faced with situations that are far from certain and far from agreement as far as participants are concerned, they have to learn how to deal with the many unexpected circumstances that they are confronted with throughout the week. These circumstances provide the basis for developing and experiencing trust among the participants. After all, they only have each other on whom to rely.

Another important feature of the workshops is that the participants must discover for themselves what they believe is useful for them from a broad range of learning events. As we have said, participants are not given a plan for the week. A journey of discovery rather than one of completion presents itself. As people discover for themselves what the workshop is about for them, they are given an opportunity to make sense of it through the lens of their personal experiences and aspirations.

The First Day

The first day is devoted to developing the workshop community. In keeping with what we explained earlier, this is largely done by the participants (not the least in the bar later - to which teetotallers are also invited. Thanks from Alma to the 'fine and dandy' group). The sharing of information is a key feature and it, in turn, helps develop relationships. From those relationships a sense of identity starts to emerge. Time and time again, we have seen that as participants do things together, and they certainly do that from day one, identity forms. There is a value underlying the workshop and this is presented for the participants to make of, as they will. The value is expressed through a simple but powerful model of performance. That is, performance is a function of having a clear direction and, a willingness to pursue that direction with passion and energy. This can be represented by the formula Performance (P) = Direction (D) + Willingness (W) and participants are told that the workshop focuses on ways to generate willingness (or discretionary energy), more than on providing clarity of direction. Simulating a rational, systematic process of direction setting would, we think, validate the 'control from above' approach that we have talked about so much in earlier chapters.

So apart from the values, do we go in blind, with no tools and framework? No. There are certain tools, both knowledge and skills-based that fit in well with the uncertainty and control-from-within nature of the workshop. The first we have described already and this is action learning, developed by the famous Reg Revans as a device to bring fresh thinking and learning to diverse groups and individuals. The engineering of the workshop is underpinned by Kolb's learning cycle. First participants 'do' things together. This is the experience. Then they are encouraged to learn through the process of reflection. They then have a 'talk time' with a partner every day and problems and issues are tried out, mulled over and generally tried on for size.

As the Week Develops

We break our story here to share with you a gift from a past workshop participant.

Stories

Back at the workplace and the rusty conveyer problem

A very important question is not only about what happens at the workshop, but what happens back in the workplace. This story is about the impact of the workshop on the workplace.

It was over two years since people from the organization were exposed to the workshop and we had the opportunity to observe a team of maintenance fitters in a large capital intensive plant having a regular team meeting. It was interesting to observe that they were sitting in a circle without the usual props that are found at meetings, such as tables, projectors, etc. They had embraced many of the processes learnt during the workshop and the conversations were intelligent with humour being used to support the conversation and not distract from it. Ideas, no matter how absurd they may have seemed at first were accepted and analysed. Those ideas were often built on to lead to superior solutions and to seize new opportunities to improve the business. In fact, all through the conversation people were constantly asking questions like 'Is it the best business solution?' or 'What will be the impact on the business?' Such questions were explored in an atmosphere of trust and an overwhelming commitment to the long-term success of the business.

At that meeting, the team was analysing a constant maintenance problem and looking for easier and cheaper ways to maintain the particular plant. The problem was that the piece of plant, a conveyor system, is located by the ocean and suffers from severe rusting. Traditionally, the organization spent somewhere in the order of a million dollars a year painting the conveyor system. The team set about looking for ways to effect savings in this area of maintenance and came up with the idea that the conveyor system could be manufactured in modules and when a module rusted out it could simply be replaced with minimum downtime for the operations and much less expenditure on painting. Not only did they generate this innovation, but the team set about to implement the idea rather than pass it up to a senior manager to take action.

It is through the workshops that the extraordinary leadership journey began for many people. It is a journey where the participants "regain the keys to their safes" and experience how productive it is to work in an environment of trust and complete open information. The workshops allowed people to let go of old paradigms and replace them with new ones that enabled individuals to make a difference in their organizations.