Knowledge Construction Worker

Think you're cut out for developing teamwork skills? Take this quiz

noreply@blogger.com (Adriano) — Wed, 21 May 2014 12:18:00 -0400

Wednesday May 21, 2014

The most important thing I know about teams is that there are no fixed rules, and too many variables involved (especially context, team goals and membership) to rely on a set of simple laws. All we can do is to predict higher team success on a statistical basis if some conditions are in place...

So most people learn about those conditions and, in general, about how to develop teamwork from either personal experiences or from some good readings on the subject. There's nothing wrong with that. But what if some of those ideas were no longer true? After all, the infamous "forming, storming, norming, performing" model of team development" dates back to the 1960s...So what's new in the, say, last 50 years of study and research on how to develop teamwork?

Again, most of the literature is unanimous on the difficulty of creating a silver bullet or holy grail for teams, focusing instead on conditions that make or break developing teamwork. What are those conditions? Are they the same from 50 years ago or have they changed?

Here I want to challenge my readers and invite them to take this 15-question test. It is a great way to get current on the latest research findings on high-performing teams...Just answer all the questions - either True or False - before checking the answers. And don't worry if you miss a few!

Are the following Statements True or False?

The ideal number of people in a team is 12
The presence of an expert in a team increases its effectiveness
The Team kick-off meeting loses its value if it is repeated in mid-stream
Teams negotiation of deliverables/resources with stakeholders diverts team energy
If team members are familiar with each other and have worked together, it is not necessary to define team's working agreements
In successful teams' conversations there are 2.9 positive comments for each negative comments
High-performing teams have less conflicts than low-performing ones
For a team to succeed clear roles and responsibility are more important than an emotional connection among team members
It's good for an efficient and effective team to have "silent ones" or members that decide not to share their opinions
If the team has effective formal meetings, then frequent interpersonal communications among team members is not required to reach excellence
Empathetic decision making in teams is counterproductive if the decision has a strong rational component
High performing team members have more answers than questions
Agreeableness is a valuable trait for team members during decision making
High performing teams focus on team's internal resources and information rather than reaching out of the regular team membership
The timing of team coaching interventions is different for high performing teams versus lower performing teams

So what are your answers? How many are true, how many are false?

Click here for the correct answers to these questions based on the latest research development on teamwork skills.

Leadership as the courage to be vulnerable

noreply@blogger.com (Adriano) — Wed, 9 Apr 2014 17:31:00 -0400

Wednesday April 9, 2014

For the first time in more than two centuries, the "Dying Gaul" has travelled from Rome's Musei Capitolini outside of Italy—to the National Gallery in Washington, DC. It is a magnificent statue of a warrior facing his death, a man facing his ultimate destiny.

This news made me reflect that word "vulnerability" comes from the Latin "vulnus," which means wound. And standing in front of the Gaul's wound carved from ancient Roman marble I am reminded of some great words on the subject by David Whyte.

"We are not Kings and Queens of the World..."

"...Any real conversation involves vulnerability. There is no real conversation, without vulnerability. If you think especially in intimate relationships, there's no way we can advance a marriage, a partnership by having one person have the answer and the other just receive the information and change accordingly.

And we change in relationships by admitting a few things about ourselves and inspired by that vulnerability the other person admits a few things too. And then because you've got into the spirit of things, I then admit a few more things and we get there together. And we get there through this mutually arrange opening, where we understand we are not kings or queens of the world and that we have untoward effects on other people and we have untoward effects on ourselves.

Sometimes the perspective that a partner gives us has to do with the way we sabotage ourselves actually and all of the real work, the real advancing of maturity and of character happen through understanding where we limp, where we are not quite there, not quite present, where we missed a beat

.....the vulnerability in leadership is associated with not knowing. And therefore being able to invite others in to help us; to invite other intellects, other eyes and ears, other perspectives. In other words to help carry a whole project along or to help carry us along in our lonely life of responsibility."

David Whyte

Can the Way we Talk Change the Way we Work?

noreply@blogger.com (Adriano) — Wed, 12 Mar 2014 13:17:00 -0400

Wednesday March 12, 2014

I want to argue this point because it is about a book I am reading that I find fascinating. The book is based on this powerful question: Why is the gap so great between our hopes, our intentions, even our decisions and what we are actually able to bring about? Even when we are able to make important changes in our own lives or the groups we lead at work, why are the changes so frequently short-lived and soon we are back to business as usual? What can we do to transform this troubling reality?

In this intensely practical book, "How the Way We Talk Can Change the Way We Work" Harvard psychologists Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey take us on a carefully guided journey designed to help us answer these very questions. And not just generally, or in the abstract. They help each of us arrive at our own particular answers that can solve the puzzling gap between what we intend and what we are able to accomplish.

This is a book to read with pen in hand. The authors invite you in—not as an observer but as an active participant—to help you make powerful, lasting change in your life and the lives of those you seek to help or lead.

The authors argue that, for every unrealized commitment to change we genuinely hold and act out of, we also have a conflicting and harder-to-recognize commitment that prevents the very change we desire. They share a new "learning technology" comprising seven transformational languages, each permitting new kinds of thinking, feeling, and experiencing.

Kegan and Lahey show us how we can use these languages ―in our conversations with colleagues, friends, and as importantly, in the way we talk to ourselves― to transform:
• Complaints into commitments
• Blaming and avoidance into responsibility
• Our view of our own ineffectiveness into an understanding of its hidden genius
• The assumptions we take as truths into changeable ways of understanding ourselves and the world
• Our tendency to praise and prize into ongoing regard
• Social regulation by rules and personnel policies into the power of public agreements
• Destructive and even constructive criticism into the bigger possibility of "deconstructive criticism"

Pick up the book and tell me if you like it. I did.

Good luck!

We don't Need Another Hero!

noreply@blogger.com (Adriano) — Wed, 12 Feb 2014 13:46:00 -0500

Wednesday February 12, 2014

It is time for all the heroes to go home
if they have any, time for all of us common ones
to locate ourselves by the real things
we live by. -William Stafford

I hear this over and over again in my classes and it's time to say it out loud: when we talk about leadership, we don't need another hero! I wonder:

· Why is it that leadership is synonymous with heroism?

· Why is it that when we hear the word "leader" many of us think about the heroic white male on a horse leading us into battle?

· Why is it that we continue to rely on someone else to figure things out for us?

This idea is so pervasive in the leadership discourse: the "pornography of leadership"—the seduction of someone taking charge, the charm, the women (or the men), the beautiful car, the great office, the big house… We keep believing and acting like this fairy tale is true. We need leadership, we say, and that means someone who will make it all better. Someone with vision, know-how. Someone who is trustworthy. And even though the models of command-and-control are well behind us, we continue to willingly surrender our individual freedom in exchange for security.

Sometime I think that this is the most important job of the leadership development work: convincing people that in the times we live it is impossible to rely on one person to deal with the complex challenges we face.

And when that job is done, what is left of the idea of leadership itself? Maybe we should embrace or look for a new word, like Mintzberg attempted a few years ago when he proclaimed that we need more "communityship" and less leadership to mobilize and move us into real, meaningful, collective change.

What if ...?

The interesting part of this dilemma— besides the creation of a disempowering dependency that is contrary to the principle of a mature democracy— is its inconsistency with today's world. If leaders have the answers, why don't people just do what they say? Why do we talk about the "end of leadership" on one hand while we continue to feed the myth of the omnipotent leader on the other?

The work in leadership development starts by questioning our desire for heroes. Are heroes born leaders, responsible for us? Are they authorities, rather than leaders, to whom we need to submit in exchange for security? This hero-myth is so persistent that I often ask the classical question in class: are leaders born or made?

"Born where?" answered a student of mine from Mali once, dismissing with a simple question an entire branch of leadership studies and powerfully restating the simple idea that no man is an island. Indeed, no leader is an island; most are products of their communities.

· What if leadership is an output rather than an input in a situation?

· What if we start seeing leadership as an emergent phenomenon that manifests itself in the power of people working towards a collective purpose with passionate responsibility?

· How does this idea change the conversation on leadership in our organizations and in our teaching?

Good luck and check our new website www.leadersh1p.com

Goodbye Madiba, Hello 2014

noreply@blogger.com (Adriano) — Wed, 11 Dec 2013 12:09:00 -0500

Wednesday December 11, 2013

Nelson Rolhlahla Mandela (Madiba) was the primary leader of the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa that opposed the systematc segregation of black Africans by an all-white minority. He was the leader of a largely peaceful, but sometimes violent, movement to establish equal rights for all South Africans and was imprisoned for 27 years for his activities. He led the transformation toward a democracy for all races in South Africa.

Nelson Mandela inspired my participation in the anti-apartheid movement during my college years at the Unversity of Rome. When I first heard of his death I felt a great sadness, as if a mentor had died. But my heart was also filled with great hope and pride for the immense legacy and inspiration this amazing person left for all of us.

As we start a new year, I like to send my best wishes to our readers of this blog. Many of you are involved in making a difference in your organizations and communities around the world...This time I want to wish you a little of Mandela's courage, determination and ability to understand the essential and the expendable in the work ahead. I want to do it with this poem "INVICTUS" (Latin for unconquered) by William Ernest Henley.

To all people, from all walks of life, as a celebration of Nelson Mandela, as an inspiration to continue to "stay in the game" and as an eloquent reminder of the indomitable spirit that it might very well take to move to the edges of our breakthroughs next year.

I wish you a happy 2014!

"Out of the night that covers me,

Black as the pit from pole to pole,

I thank whatever gods may be

For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance

I have not winced nor cried aloud.

Under the bludgeonings of chance

My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears

Looms but the horror of the shade,

And yet the menace of the years

Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,

How charged with punishments the scroll,

I am the master of my fate:

I am the captain of my soul."

William Ernest Henley

Download the audio file of this poem at the link below:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/70371276/Invictus%20-%20The%20Poem.mp3

Adriano Pianesi | ParticipAction Consulting, Inc.

Adaptive Leadership in Wonderland

noreply@blogger.com (Adriano) — Wed, 16 Oct 2013 14:32:00 -0400

Wednesday October 16, 2013

My parents read "Alice in Wonderland" to me when I was 5. To this day I can still remember every single character (my favorite was the Mad Hatter, il cappellaio matto).

As I re-read this book to my children and recently received an email from a friend about Alice (thanks, Libby), it became clear to me how the powerful messages of its author apply squarely to the work of leadership and organizational change. Just consider the key four themes of transformation, dramatic size change, language and logic in Lewis Carroll's book.

Do you see any similarities between Alice and the current challenges in your work as a leader?

Embracing Transformation

The character of Alice explores the theme of growth into adulthood. Her adventures speak to transformation and what it requires of us. Alice comes into numerous new situations in which adaptability is absolutely necessary for success.

She shows marked progress throughout her adventures; in the beginning, she can barely maintain enough composure to keep herself from crying...Yes: at the beginning of the story she is on her "way down" but by the end of it, she is self-possessed and able to hold her own against the most baffling Wonderland logic. She is not a winner, but she has options. She is no longer unaware of the "rules of the land."

Dealing with Dramatic Change

Closely connected to the theme of transformation, dramatic size change is another recurring concept. The dramatic changes in size hint at the radical changes the body (and we can apply this to organizations) undergo during adolescence or other times of change.

The key, once again, is adaptability. Alice's size changes also bring about a change in perspective, and she sees the world from a very different viewpoint. In the last trial scene, her growth into a giant reflects her interior growth. She becomes a much stronger person, able to speak out against the nonsensical proceedings of the trial. Her perspective taking, like in the work of transforming organizations, hinges on her ability to embrace different points of view—understanding the values, losses, and the implications of change for others.

Understanding Language and Communication

Linked to this is the theme of language. Lewis Carroll delights in puns and his books are full of games with language, to the reader's delight and Alice's confusion. The games often point out some inconsistency or slipperiness of language. Pointing out the pains and advantages of language, we start seeing language both as a source of joy as well as a source of great consternation.

Again adaptability is the way out: in a world where words are both powerful and deceiving, where we constantly battle—like Alice—with the meaning of "being heard," where interpretation is not the same as reality, and where the "work" is sometimes just understanding what is real and what is not. In that world our capacity for inquiry and emotional fortitude becomes our lifesaver.

Embracing a "New Logic"

Just as baffling is the logic at work in Wonderland. Like in today's world, all creatures can justify their most absurd behavior, and their arguments to justify themselves are often fairly complex. Their strange reasoning is another source of delight for the reader and a challenge for Alice and for us. And yet like Alice we learn in time to understand and decipher the logic even when at first when we do not see any. We learn to be at peace while doing that.

Developing our discernment between unusual logic (innovation) and utter nonsense (noise) is part of the game that Alice and Lewis Carroll ask us to do for ourselves and for the world in times of change.

Good luck in service of your purpose, regards

Adriano Pianesi | www.participactioninc.com

Are you confused about leadership?

noreply@blogger.com (Adriano) — Wed, 11 Sep 2013 12:04:00 -0400

Wednesday September 11, 2013

The word "leadership" is often used in a variety of contexts with different meanings. Adding insult to injury, many of these meanings describe very different things, like skills, specific actions, values or people. That is, often when we use the word leadership when we mean:

· The top management of organization (as in "Leadership's approval is required to move forward")

· The skills to communicate a strong vision on a subject so that people will follow (as in "She exercised leadership to make it happen")

· The courage to take responsibility and step up with passion to do something risky (as in "We need some leadership to deal with this issue")

To make matter worse we often hear that "everyone is a leader" (is this really true?), that leaders are born not made, and that a community need to produce "collective leadership" to solve its problmes… I wonder why the word is becoming so confusing and what this confusion means for all of us trying to exercise leadership in our organizational life day after day....

Different Ideas about "Leadership"...

From a casual conversation on the subject with friends or in a class of an MBA course, it's easy to verify how people ascribe to different "models" or ideas of what leadership is and what it should be like. Some hold a more traditional idea with one person solidly in charge. Others are more contemporary in their views and see leadership as shared between people.

These different models create different expectations of behaviors, values, actions and skills. So different people will call leadership different things based on their existing personal paradigm of what leadership is. They will recognize it when they see it, based on their implicit expectations.

Consider the examples of a speech given by the founder of a small company who created, owned and operated for 30 years a successful business, or the buzz in a room where a participative problem-solving session is taking place. It is often difficult for the same person to recognize both as "leadership in action".

Person A will fully recognize the founder speech as a great way to exercise leadership, and the group session as nothing more than a nice, different way to meet; person B will see the group session as a powerful expression of collective leadership and the speech as nothing more that the expression of a charismatic individual – not necessarily a leader.

Reconciling different "Leadership Ideologies"

Those different leadership ideologies can be reconciled using the concepts of direction (overall group mission and goals), alignment (coordination of action within the collective group ) and commitment (willingness of group members to put personal interests secondary to that of collective interest and benefit). The concepts can help us with a more generalized model of leadership that incorporates the traditional leader-follower theories with more modern idea of distributed leadership.

Articulated by Wilfred Drath in his book "The Deep Blue Sea" they offer us a renewed view of leadership where "practicing leadership would no longer necessarily involve leaders, followers, and their shared goals but would instead necessarily involve the production of direction, alignment, and commitment."

Paraphrasing Drath, the question to ask to recognize leadership in action is no more "Is what is happening in the room right now matching my way to recognize leadership?" but instead "Is what is happening in the room right now a contribution to creating direction, alignment and commitment?" If the answer to the question is yes - regardless of our idea of leadership or the way direction, alignment and committment are achieved - we might say that leadership is present. So leadership might involve traditional roles and relationships, but alternate processes might also be involved.

Some "Food for Thought"...

1. Do you agree with the idea that there can be multiple ways of accomplishing the outcomes associated with leadership?

2. What is your leadership "ideology"?

3. What "leadership in action" you are unable to recognize right now due to your preconceived notions about leadership?

4. What are ways to learn about different "leadership ways"?

5. How do direction, alignment and commitment manifest themselves in complex systems?

Good luck in all you do!

Adriano Pianesi | ParticipAction Consulting, Inc.

Can We Slide on the Learning Curve?

noreply@blogger.com (Adriano) — Wed, 7 Aug 2013 12:13:00 -0400

Wednesday August 7, 2013

Have you noticed? In organizations nobody is against learning per se. And no one denies the benefit of training. I have also noticed that the word TRAINING is increasingly synonymous with:

• a quintessential technical solution for big problems
• a failed technical solution to re-occurring problems

Here are a few examples I have collected in the last months from newspapers, the internet and in general public discourse to explain what I mean.

Training as the quintessential "technical" solution for big problems

Examples of "Training as the silver bullet" for solving big problems.

· "Better training for teachers" to solve to the nation's failing public schools system

· "Increased funds for training" to solve high unemployment rates and poor GDP growth

· "Training" to minimize abuse from caregivers in nursing homes

It makes you feel mighty as a trainer, doesn't it? Yet it's interesting how use of the rhetoric of training as the panacea for many problems, hasn't protected training programs to be the first victims of budget cuts and reduced spending. So which one is it? Is training essential or expandable? And of course we are not disputing whether throwing training at a problem really helps solve it.What if we do?

Training as a failed "technical" solution to re-occuring problems

Obviously when the use of training doesn't produce the results expected, training is seen as the bad guy.

· "Poor training" is the cause of failed expensive software implementations across federal agencies

· "Lack of training of the intervention personnel" is the reason for weak responses to natural disasters

· "Staff lacking training on the guidelines against torture" is the reason for human rights abuses

Do we need a Training Anti-defamation League to respond to these allegations? Or are we facing the difficulty of admitting that training was simply not the right solution in the first place? Maybe the issue was a little bigger than simple lack of knowledge or skills.

So What?

Unreasonable expectations and lack of accountability or clear definition of the boundaries of training responsibilities can kill the best training work before it even starts. So be careful with training in organizations: it is work highly controversial, highly visible and often not fully understood.

As a manager or training provider, what can you do to ensure the success of training? I have three suggestions:

• THE PAST Clarify the history of the problem and what has been done in the past to solve it, asking, "Why have past solutions failed to address this problem?"
• THE FUTURE Define the issue with all stakeholders, asking them the key question, "What will success look like?"
• THE PRESENT Set a meeting for debriefing the training experience and reflecting on its strengths/weaknesses, asking questions like, "What have we accomplished with this work that was not done before? What is possible now?"

Good luck with your training work!

Adriano Pianesi | ParticipAction Consulting, Inc.

The contract

noreply@blogger.com (Adriano) — Thu, 18 Jul 2013 10:10:00 -0400

Wednesday July 17, 2013

A word from the lead, the followers written by William Ayot :

"...And in the end we follow them not
because we are paid,
not because we might see some advantage,
not because of the things they have accomplished,
not even because of the dreams they dream
but simply because of who they are:
the man, the woman, the leader, the boss
standing up there when the wave hits the rock,
passing out faith and confidence like life jackets,
knowing the currents, holding the doubts,
imagining the delights and terrors of every landfall:
captain, pirate, and parent by turns,
the bearer of our countless hopes and expectations.
We give them our trust. We give them our effort.
What we ask in return is that they stay true."

I wish you good luck in fulfilling your aspirations.

What does it mean to learn "how to think"?

noreply@blogger.com (Adriano) — Thu, 6 Jun 2013 18:14:00 -0400

Wednesday June 5, 2013

"There are these two guys sitting together in a bar in the remote Alaskan wilderness.

One of the guys is religious, the other is an atheist, and the two are arguing about the existence of God with that special intensity that comes after about the fourth beer.

And the atheist says: "Look, it's not like I don't have actual reasons for not believing in God. It's not like I haven't ever experimented with the whole God and prayer thing. Just last month I got caught away from the camp in that terrible blizzard, and I was totally lost and I couldn't see a thing, and it was fifty below, and so I tried it: I fell to my knees in the snow and cried out 'Oh, God, if there is a God, I'm lost in this blizzard, and I'm gonna die if you don't help me.'"

And now, in the bar, the religious guy looks at the atheist all puzzled. "Well then you must believe now," he says, "After all, here you are, alive."

The atheist just rolls his eyes. "No, man,all that was was a couple Eskimos happened to come wandering by and showed me the way back to camp."

...the exact same experience can mean two totally different things to two different people, given those people's two different belief templates and two different ways of constructing meaning from experience.

Because we prize tolerance and diversity of belief, nowhere in our liberal arts analysis do we want to claim that one guy's interpretation is true and the other guy's is false or bad. Which is fine,except we also never end up talking about just where these individual templates and beliefs come from. Meaning, where they come from INSIDE the two guys. As if a person's most basic orientation toward the world, and the meaning of his experience were somehow just hardwired, like height or shoe-size; or automatically absorbed from the culture, like language. As if how we construct meaning were not actually a matter of personal, intentional choice.

Plus, there's the whole matter of arrogance. ....But religious dogmatists' problem is exactly the same as the story's unbeliever: blind certainty, a closemindedness that amounts to an imprisonment so total that the prisoner doesn't even know he's locked up.

The point here is that I think this is one part of what teaching me how to think is really supposed to mean. To be just a little less arrogant. To have just a little critical awareness about myself and my certainties. Because a huge percentage of the stuff that I tend to be automatically certain of is, it turns out, totally wrong and deluded. I have learned this the hard way, as I predict you graduates will, too.

Here is just one example of the total wrongness of something I tend to be automatically sure of: everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute center of the universe; the realist, most vivid and important person in existence. We rarely think about this sort of natural, basic self-centeredness because it's so socially repulsive. But it's pretty much the same for all of us. It is our default setting, hard-wired into our boards at birth.

Think about it: there is no experience you have had that you are not the absolute center of. The world as you experience it is there in front of YOU or behind YOU, to the left or right of YOU, on YOUR TV or YOUR monitor. And so on. Other people's thoughts and feelings have to be communicated to you somehow, but your own are so immediate, urgent, real.

Please don't worry that I'm getting ready to lecture you about compassion or other-directedness or all the so-called virtues. This is not a matter of virtue. It's a matter of my choosing to do the work of somehow altering or getting free of my natural, hard-wired default setting which is to be deeply and literally self-centered and to see and interpret everything through this lens of self..."

By David Foster Wallace

Why is it so Hard to Be Wrong?

noreply@blogger.com (Adriano) — Mon, 13 May 2013 19:02:00 -0400

Wednesday May 8, 2013

We all know that we make mistakes. And we often repeat the mantra "to err is human." Why, then, do we go about life never thinking that we might be wrong?

Well, I tested this concept in one of my classes, and asked my students if they could think about something they were wrong about in the past few years. 85% of my respondents answered yes, pointing out mistakes of inexperience, and of omission. Then I asked "if they could think about something they were wrong about right now. Aside from a few jokes ("Ask my wife!") a stunning 100% of my students were unable to answer the question. This is how it is to figure out where we err in the present.

This opens up a fascinating question: why is our ability to be wrong and to admit it is only valid in the past? What does this say about our fallibility as well as our ability to be right?

"Being Wrong" as a Doorway to Understanding

It is clear that we like to be right And for a competitive society being wrong spells trouble, social exclusion or simply losing. It is easy to see the difficulties to hold a contrarian approach to being wrong, when our entire society celebrates the victories of visionaries leaders that were never wrong, when the image of failure is often equated to not getting it right.

Yet, embracing our ability to be wrong, embracing it as a a founding character of our human experience holds the key to the treasure of expanding our understanding in a new dimension. Holding the healthy doubt that we might not be right, might very well prove the healthier "statement of faith" in the capabilities of the human race. Why? Becasue it would stop any of the easy attribution that we are quick to make when we disagree with someone.

It is clear that we like to be right. And for a competitive society, being wrong spells trouble, social exclusion or simply losing. It is easy to see the difficulties in holding a contrarian approach to being wrong when our entire society celebrates the victories of visionary leaders, and the image of failure is often equated with not getting it right.

Yet, embracing our ability to be wrong holds the key to the treasure of expanding our understanding of, ironically, success. Holding the healthy doubt that we might not be right, might very well prove the healthier "statement of faith" in the capabilities of the human race. Why? Because the act of stopping the easy and untested attributions ("he doesn't know what he is talking about!" or "She is not listening to me!") that we are quick to make when we disagree with someone is the necessary condition for learning something in the process and getting a better overall "picture" of the issue being discussed.

"Wow! How fascinating...May be I am wrong"

We've all done it.

When someone disagrees with us we think he doesn't have access to the same information that we do (attribution of ignorance), or that his brain—f he has the information and still disagrees with us— is truly pea-sized (attribution of stupidity). Worse, if he has the information and the intelligence to analyze it, he has an evil plan to take over the world (attribution of evil).

But try this instead: next time you are faced with a difference of opinions, stop and think "Wow! How fascinating...maybe I'm wrong." This will open a new awareness that as human beings we see the world as we are, rather than as it is.

And with this in mind exploring how different perspectives shed a light on the complexities of everyday organizational and personal life brings us closer to the understanding of ourselves and of our world.

Adriano Pianesi | ParticipAction Consulting, Inc.

What can we Learn about Leadership from Great Paintings?

noreply@blogger.com (Adriano) — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 21:56:00 -0400

Wednesday April 17, 2013

I have always loved art and great paintings in particular, their powerful rendering of a single, frozen moment of life has always fascinated me. It is a powerful and fascinating language. Sometime ago I stumbled on this great quote from the Mexican painter José Clemente Orozco:

"Art is knowledge at the service of emotion."

I started thinking that this knowledge can be used to facilitate the development of our leadership abilities. If this is true, then we can legitimately ask, "What is the depiction of leadership in art teaching us about leadership, authority and leaders?" I'm convinced that the answer to this question can enhance our understanding both of individual works of art and of the profoundly human interactions that lie at the core of the leader-follower relationship, and of the difficult work of leadership.

So I gave it a try with three great painters: Giulio Romano, Paul Klee and George Caleb Bingham.

Giulio Romano "The Battle of the Milvian Bridge" (1524)

THE OLD PARADIGM OF "LEADERSHIP" I like this beautiful fresco in one of the rooms that are now known as the Stanze di Raffaello, in the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican in Rome. It represents in clear terms a lot of an idea that is still so prevalent in today's organizations: the archetypes of the knight on a horse or the Lone Ranger that fights the bad guys, charging into the future to deliver the promise of unending happiness.

Indeed Constantine's victory gave him total control of the Western Roman Empire paving the way for Christianity to become the dominant religion for the Roman Empire and ultimately for Europe.

Click here to see "The Battle of the Milvian Bridge"

Paul Klee "The Conqueror" (1930)

THE OLD PARADIGM OF "LEADERSHIP WORK" In the "The Conqueror" by Paul Klee, a painting of evident parodist intent, the leader is alone, running with a weird, almost solid banner to incite and guide others in the fight. Klee, who was himself a soldier for many years, seems to decompose the image of the traditional leader through lines, circles and other shapes.

"The Conqueror" overall carries the strong message of the end of an era, where conquering and leading men in battle, motivating and influencing people to do or to perform, has lost much of its appeal as leadership work. With Klee, an expressionist and surrealist with a knack for the use of abstractions, we are shown the inadequacy of our idea of leadership work based on the old paradigm and are invited into a space, a blank space - like the one in the canvas - where a new leader-follower relationship might emerge.

Click here to see "The Conqueror"

George Caleb Bingham "The County Election" (1852)

THE NEW PARADIGM OF "COLLABORATIVE LEADERSHIP" This work pictures collective intelligence in action, the American democratic system in progress. The story takes place in a small Midwestern town in the mid-nineteenth century, when the rituals of voting were still taking shape, particularly in the frontier. George Caleb Bingham - known as "the Missouri artist" for the state where he lived and worked - recognized the responsibilities as well as the rights of citizenship. In "The County Election," he presents a raucous voting party as an enactment of democracy, bringing together a variety of residents in a rural community to make decisions for the common good.

I like this image because it pictures the new paradigm of collaborative leadership, of people engaging together in the messy work ahead in order to make progress on the difficult issues of the day. I also like it because it reminds us how leaders "from every seat" can take responsibility for action rather than waiting for the "designated authorities" to act.

Click here and scroll down to see "The County Election"

Click here for a more in-depth exploration of "Leadership and paintings" based on my current research.

Can Leadership Be Taught?

noreply@blogger.com (Adriano) — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 10:05:00 -0400

Thursday March 28, 2013

Carl Rogers once said, "I realize that I have lost interest in being a teacher. . . . I am only interested in being a learner, preferably learning things that matter." Leadership is something that matters to me as an educator and as a leadership practitioner. But can leadership be taught?

Have you ever been taught emotional intelligence by an instructor that uses PowerPoint slides? When I started teaching leadership, I vividly remember facing the challenge on how to make my content match my way of teaching. When teaching leadership, this call to congruence—how what I am teaching is demonstrated in how I teach it—was the major headache of my work. It forced me to explore a fateful inquiry that led to a powerful discovery: for the congruent educator teaching leadership needs to be in itself an act of ... leadership.

So when asked to design a leadership course, I decided that, rather than teaching or preaching, I would rely on evoking, naming, reminding, recognizing, questioning, acknowledging, and affirming. I stopped asking "How can I teach?" and instead started asking "What if leadership is already in the room, and my work is to give it the space and freedom to manifest itself?"

I discovered a methodology called "Case-in-point", straight from the Adaptive Leadership framework developed by Ron Heifetz, Marty Linsky and others at the Harvard Kennedy School and started experimenting with it...

Teaching Hands-on Leadership Using The "Case-in-point" Method

With this approach, In front of our eyes, the group dynamics of the class provide powerful material for reflection in real time, helping participants in a day class, leadership retreat, or university course to develop their ability to innovate and adapt to changing circumstances in their organizations.

Case-in-point has allowed me to learn and practice leadership experientially in a way that is aligned with my purpose as an educator. And in teaching leadership using Case-in-point I can use in its practice all I learned from other frameworks. In fact:

· As an Action Learning Coach (a process to learn and take action to solve a tough problem) I use the capacity to leverage the power of great questions in order to learn in real-time as individuals, as a team, and as an organization.

· As a World Café Host (a methodology that allows large groups to deepen their inquiry through important questions in a setting that promotes informal conversations and authenticity) I bring into it the artistry of hosting conversations that matter.

· As an Open Space Technology Convener (a meeting process rooted in participants' passion and responsibility in which attendees create their own meeting agenda and run the meeting in real time) my Case-in-point practice is informed by the trust that groups know how to self-organize for the greater good and by the power of systems to naturally exhibit the distributed leadership that makes change happen.

I continue to find that Case-in-point provides me with the best way to teach leadership experientially and encourage you to explore its power.

Read more about "Case-in-point" in my article published on March 2013 in THE SYSTEM THINKER

What do you do when ... you don't know what to do?

noreply@blogger.com (Adriano) — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 16:40:00 -0500

Wednesday February 20, 2013

Some call it being lost. Others call it a chance to be resourceful. For many, it is not a good place to be. I've come to believe that is an important component of the improvisational art of leadership work. So here is a reflection (in the form of a poem) that I hope will benefit those of us that like to be always in control.

When You Get Lost

Tell me what you do
when you get lost
Tell me

Tell me what you feel
How things look to you
What happens in your head
What you say to yourself
Tell me

Can you see anything
when you get lost
Can you hear what's about you
Do you perceive life at all
Tell me

Tell me what scares you most
when you get lost
Can you draw from deep inside
What you use to hold you up
Do you move yourself differently
Tell me

Tell me what you do
to reach that special calm
Can you direct a prayer
When do you know to wait
When do you know to risk
Tell me

Tell me what you do
when you get lost
Tell me

Then tell me
How you know
When you not lost
no more
Tell me

-Carol Prejean Zippert

Power of the Past: My Story as a Leadership Educator

noreply@blogger.com (Adriano) — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 12:23:00 -0500

Wednesday January 9, 2013

INTEGRAL LEADERSHIP REVIEW - Particles magazine - Published with permission

I grew up and was educated in Rome, Italy. Here are a few flashbacks about my life as a learner in the Italian school system:

■ Elementary School, 1972: Maestra Arena would consider any question from the class as a personal insult and refuse to answer.
■ 12th grade, 1977: Signor Pumo would simply not acknowledge our presence in the class as we walked in and would make fun of the students with low grades.
■ High School, 1986: Signora Bondi would lecture for hours, then she would draw a name from a little box, bingo-like, to select the student that would have to parrot back what she had said.

Alas! The Italian didactic style – being more theoretical and less interactive than that of the U.S. system – conditioned my thinking about teaching and learning at an early age. These experiences provided a powerful paradoxical teaching experience that has guided my life as a leadership educator across the Atlantic. (link: clik here)

Adriano Pianesi | ParticipAction Consulting, Inc.

Shall we feast on our lives in 2013?

noreply@blogger.com (Adriano) — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 10:26:00 -0500

Wednesday December 12, 2012

I love poetry and want to take this opportunity to wish a great 2013 to all my friends who read this blog. I want to do it with the verses of Derek Walcott, the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1992, the first Caribbean writer to receive the honor. I use his poems in my work with groups and find his verses graceful and energetic at the same time.

This one touches on the theme of getting to know ourselves without reservations, with loving care and an open heart.

Enyoy! To your personal homecomings!

"Love After Love"

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

- Derek Walcott

Can you Stay in the Questions?

noreply@blogger.com (Adriano) — Wed, 14 Nov 2012 18:00:00 -0500

Wednesday November 14, 2012

I came across again this lovely quote of Rainer Maria Rilke from "Letters to a Young Poet". Those are words of wisdom, shared with a man - the young poet - confused about his future, having to choose between a military career or the life of the artist...I wanted to share these words with you.

"... if you have this love for what is humble and try very simply, as someone who serves, to win the confidence of what seems poor: then everything will become easier for you, more coherent and somehow more reconciling, not in your conscious mind perhaps, which stays behind, astonished, but in your innermost awareness, awakeness, and knowledge.

You are so young, so much before all beginning, and I would like to beg you, dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language.

Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything.

Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer. Perhaps you do carry within you the possibility of creating and forming, as an especially blessed and pure way of living; train yourself for that -- but take whatever comes, with great trust, and as long as it comes out of your will, out of some need of your innermost self, then take it upon yourself."

I'm trying to figure out what "Live the questions now" means for me right now. What does it mean for you? What does it mean for your organization? What would happen if those questions were finally asked? What would be like for your organization to live the questions?

Adriano Pianesi | ParticipAction Consulting Inc.

The answer to HOW is ....WHO.

noreply@blogger.com (Adriano) — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 16:07:00 -0400

Wednesday October 10, 2012

Asking questions gives such a powerful leverage in some organizations, and yet the ability to ask critical questions and to listen might not be considered critical organizational capabilities. Why is that?

Organizations assume that employees do not need to learn how to listen and/or how to ask questions. And those are - in my opinion - two of the greatest delusions organizations live by.

I see constantly organizations struggling with complexity, that same complexity that requires more listening in order to uncover new perspectives. An inquiring heart that allows one to ask the right questions: nothing is more critical in the workplace.

Two very bad lessons...

The quality of our listening to each other is not great. We are usually focused on our impressions, interpretations, perspective, and opinions of what and whom we are listening to. We are often unable to create the silence and the internal "clearing" that empties "the cup of our being" to refill it with the speaker's.

Yet we were terrific at doing this as children. Think about the complete focus of a child on every single word as you tell him a story. Think about the questions children ask: what does it mean to be free? Why are people poor? How expensive is a tree?..

And many of our questions go for the techniques, steps, formulas that will deliver us—never for the intent, or the bigger picture, or the meaning of it all...

Yet we used to be great at doing both as children. Think about the complete focus of a child on every single word of yours as you tell him a story...and think about the questions children ask: what does it mean to be free? Why are people poor? How expensive is a tree?...

Somewhere, somehow we learned two very bad lessons:

1 That listening is not communicating.

2 That solving problems is not about asking great questions.

Deep down we have the capacity to ask deep, great questions. We have the capacity for deep, emphatic listening. It is available to us right now. Not tomorrow, not after practice, not after attending this class. We haven't forgotten, we simply do not remember it anymore.

And we need to be reminded of that.

Today, will I have the courage to be myself?

We can bring back this ability to really talk and to really listen if we want to. It's all about our willingness to notice.

And ultimately it's about a much bigger question—about how we decide to be in the world. Not just at work but everywhere. It's about answering the key question: Who am I?

For this reason the answer to the HOW question (how to do something) is WHO. The question we should always ask, especially when we learn a new technique or skill, is actually "Who am I?
Who do I decide to be today? How will I be myself in the world? How will I show up to meet the many challenges of the workplace? Today, will I have the courage to use this new skill and to be myself doing so in a world that tries constantly to make me anybody else?

Go ahead. Remember. And answer.

The Groan Zone: Can You Get Comfortable?

noreply@blogger.com (Adriano) — Wed, 19 Sep 2012 13:20:00 -0400

Wednesday September 19, 2012

A letter I sent to my students some time ago touches on the important issue of frustration during group work. How can we learn to be more comfortable in the "groan zone"—that time in group work where the conversation seems all over the place?

"…As we discussed, we identified several issues that had prevented the group from making real progress as far as sharing and building new knowledge.

The first issue that all of you have identified is the lack of purpose and the frustration that this causes you. Frustration comes from the Latin word frustra, which means 'useless.' I ask: was that moment in the conversation really useless? Is the frustration with the apparent lack of purpose of that part of the conversation simply the inability to deal with the time in group work called the 'groan zone'?

Let me recap: we were talking about something very important. The questions on the floor were:
• Is authority tasked to do the work of change?
• What is the job description of a change agent?
• What role is most effective to play in an organization in order to change it?

All great points on very juicy issues. Yes, I could have intervened and told you =my opinions, but would that have helped? Paradoxically, I am not so interested in the content here, but more in developing the ability of each and every one of you to 'learn how to learn' from a group discussion. So the question becomes: what are ways in which we can manage the frustration of the groan zone in service of more effective group work?

Three things to do to thrive in the "Groan Zone"

I have suggested that you bring a different attitude to the conversation, that you slow it down by paraphrasing each other's point ('John, so you are saying that……' 'Liz, your point is' …. 'Have I missed something?') and that you work to acknowledge reality first and foremost.

Different attitude. Would you rather win or learn? The point of a competitive discussion is "I win, you lose." If we bring to the conversation a different purpose ("I learn, you learn"), what would happen then? How do we change this? With intellectual humility. I would love to see this in action in our class! Without renouncing to advocating our own positions all together, but mixing it with them!

Slow down the conversation. A second thing might be to recognize our defensiveness in action. We talked about the ladder of inference. Conflict is often the result of people dueling at high level of inferences and never recognizing that they do that. Catch yourself being hurt, cover up that you are being hurt, and creating a reaction to all this with a statement. This added level of awareness to your action is sure to be the best leadership lesson you might have learned in our class.

Reality first. Ultimately making a difference by taking on a tough problem to make progress is done acknowledging reality. We have to acknowledge the forces at play in reality, the role that we all play in making it so, name a different reality and – in courageous conversations - calling spade a spade. This act is in itself a needed act of leadership in today's organizations.

On this subject, here is a nursery rhyme from Dylan's book that describe what I am saying here:

"There was a crooked man and he walked a crooked mile,
He found a crooked sixpence upon a crooked stile.
He bought a crooked cat, which caught a crooked mouse.
And they all lived together in a little crooked house."

Aren't today organizations so often "little crooked houses"? Leaders need to acknowledge the true reality of the organizations where they operate. Do not become "crooked" because you work in a "crooked organization". Reality first.

Does absence of criticism stimulate or hinder creativity?

noreply@blogger.com (Adriano) — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 18:18:00 -0400

Wednesday August 29, 2012

Alex Osborn, a partner in the famed advertising agency BBDO published a book in in 1948 called Your Creative Power. In a chapter on "How to Organize a Squad to Create Ideas," he wrote:

"Creativity is so delicate a flower that praise tends to make it bloom while discouragement often nips it in the bud,"

We all know the rules: no criticism or negative feedback. Brainstorming seems like an ideal technique, a feel-good way to boost productivity. But there is a problem. Brainstorming doesn't work.

In a test at Yale University in 1958 solo students competing against a brainstorming group came up with roughly twice as many solutions as the brainstorming groups. Psychologists have summarized the science: "Decades of research have consistently shown that brainstorming groups think of far fewer ideas than the same number of people who work alone and later pool their ideas."

But if brainstorming doesn't work, the question still remains: What's the best template for group creativity?

Want Something Novel? Turn Up the Heat

Most research and advice suggest that the best way to come up with good solutions is to come up with many solutions. Freewheeling is welcome; but researchers added that when the "debate" condition "is added as a rule – not just don't be afraid to say anything that comes to mind even if is critical of someone ideas, but you should debate and criticize each other's ideas – things improve dramatically. Most studies suggest that.

When a group received no further instructions on the process of generating ideas, leaving them free to collaborate however they wanted, the results were telling: the brainstorming groups slightly outperformed the groups given no instructions, but teams given the debate condition were the most creative by far. On average, they generated nearly 20 percent more ideas. And, after the teams disbanded, another interesting result became apparent. Researchers asked each subject individually if he or she had any more ideas about the topic debated. The brainstormers and the people given no guidelines produced an average of three additional ideas; the debaters produced seven.

Those studies suggest that the ineffectiveness of brainstorming is due to the very thing that Osborn thought was most important. Is imagination inhibited by the merest hint of criticism? Apparently it can thrive on conflict! According to number of studies, dissent stimulates new ideas because it encourages us to engage more fully with the work of others and to reassess our viewpoints.
This weird notion that the most important thing to do when working together is stay positive and get along, to not hurt anyone's feelings is just wrong. Maybe debate is going to be less pleasant, but it will always be more productive. True creativity requires some trade-offs.

The template for group creativity

I have always thought that criticism – and conflict - allows people to dig below the surface of the imagination and come up with collective ideas that aren't predictable. And recognizing the importance of conflicting perspectives in a group raises the issue of what kinds of people will work together best.

So the misconception behind brainstorming is that there is a particular script we should all follow in group interactions. But when the composition of the group is right—enough people with different perspectives running into one another in unpredictable ways—the group dynamic will take care of itself. All these errant discussions add up. In fact, they may even be the most essential part of the creative process. Although such conversations will occasionally be unpleasant—not everyone is always in the mood for small talk or criticism—that doesn't mean that they can be avoided.

Hard to admit, but we have been wrong for so long – pleasant brainstorming sucks. The best template for group creativity is an open conversation and a reasonable degree of diversity of opinions.

When I read these studies a long time ago, those ideas changed my concept of what creativity and innovation were all about. I hope they can be helpful to you too.

Adriano Pianesi | ParticpAction Consulting, Inc.

Logging on, dialing in and ...dozing off in your webinars?

noreply@blogger.com (Adriano) — Wed, 25 Jul 2012 13:12:00 -0400

Wednesday July 25, 2012

I used to hate webinars: just plainly boring affairs where we log on, dial in and ...doze off. You probably know about this kind of webinars. You may have attended a few yourself. Perhaps you found them boring and un-engaging, with no chance to interact or ask questions to a guarded speaker. Did the speaker drone on as you – yes, you! – checked your email? Good news: we are not talking about that kind of webinar. Yes: there is another way!

Why "THE ART OF ONLINE HOSTING"?

As a facilitator, a trainer and an adjunct professor working primarily face‐to-face, I have noticed that the one‐way nature of most webinars and web conferences misses an opportunity to engage an audience and draw on the wisdom of the group as well as the knowledge of the guest speaker, salesperson or instructor.

As the use of web conferencing extends to management training and leadership development, interactive workshops and collaborative meetings, the requirements of webinars shift from pushing information out to pulling ideas and knowledge in through many‐to‐many collaboration and interaction. This requires a new look at the design and facilitation of webinars and the technology tools used to deliver them. This requires a shift from Powerpoint to POWERFUL. From presenters to hosts.

Face‐to‐face workshops employ a wide range of collaborative learning techniques from case study analysis and group problem solving to role plays, inquiry circles and brainstorming. Unfortunately as training programs and workshops have moved online they have become less interactive, limited by assumptions about technology choices and participant engagement.

What are the opportunities of "LEADERSHIP 2.0"?

The opportunity presented by a more interactive and collaborative approach to webinars is to reclaim the many learning methods used in face‐to‐face workshops and adapt them for a virtual environment. In addition, we can take the opportunity that web conferencing technology offers as a chance to redefine the meaning of learning together, of being an educator, and of being in the world.

I see interactive webinars as an opportunity for more learning, shorter meetings, greater participation, and more ongoing collaboration. But also as an opportunity to update the work of learning (and teaching) as we know it, online and offline; as an invitation to join in defining the new exciting possibilities of "Leadership 2.0" ...

Check out our new website for The Art of Online Hosting

Is Good Teaching Servant Leadership?

noreply@blogger.com (Adriano) — Sun, 10 Jun 2012 23:36:00 -0400

Thursday June 7, 2012

"Good teaching cannot be equated with technique. It comes from the integrity of the teacher" - Parker Palmer

If you are active in the search of your own philosophy of the teaching-learning process read this piece written some 150 years ago. I find it refreshingly current.

A Point of View on Teaching

"... if real success is to attend the effort to bring a man to a definite position, one must first of all take pains to find HIM where he is and begin there.

This is the secret of the art of helping others. Anyone who has not mastered this is himself deluded when he proposes to help others. In order to help another effectively, I must understand what he understands.

If I do not know that, my greater understanding will be of no help to him. If, however, I am disposed to plume myself on my greater understanding, it is because I am vain or proud, so that at bottom, instead of benefitting him, I want to be admired. But all true effort to help does not mean to be a sovereign but to be a servant, that to help does not mean to endure for the time being the imputation that one is in the wrong and does not understand what the other understands . . .

For to be a teacher does not mean simply to affirm that such a thing is so, or to deliver a lecture, etc. No, to be a teacher in the right sense is to be a learner. Instruction begins when you, the teacher, learn from the learner, put yourself in his place so that you may understand what he understands and in the way he understands it ."

Soren Kierkegaard, The Journal, 1864

How can you leverage Peer Coaching in your workplace?

noreply@blogger.com (Adriano) — Wed, 16 May 2012 17:45:00 -0400

Wednesday May 16, 2012

It can be seen as untapped resource in any organization and as an effective cost-reduction strategy. Peer coaching is like a special kind of friendship, providing a structure for personal development and growth. Found in many forms and used in multiple situations, the idea is simple; rather than hire an expensive external consultant, a peer coach can:

· Walk beside new hires until they are up to speed, sharing his or her knowledge of the organization's processes and culture;

· Show the ropes to a person with a less-than-stellar record of achievement for a given period of time, focusing on those areas that they have jointly identified as needing attention;

· Stand by employees being groomed for greater management responsibilities and teach them how to give feedback and supervise others, modeling the expectations for supervisors or managers in real work situations;

· Support a colleague in solving a problem by sharing experiences which can lead to skill building and increased awareness.

In any of these scenarios, confidential peer coaching can serve as a useful process through which two or more professional colleagues work together to reflect on current practices; expand, refine, and build new skills; share ideas; teach one another; or solve problems. It is built around the philosophy of learn-teach-learn, and can be implemented at a very low cost, without tapping scarce training funds.

One must wonder: Why isn't peer coaching adopted more widely and consistently in business and non-profit organizations and government agencies? Is it too good to be true?

What obstacles reduce the impact of Peer Coaching?

Peer coaching is not without its challenges. The objections or issues that I've encountered in the organizations I have worked with go like this:

"The peer coach is busy!" Peer coaches have their own jobs to do. When coaching, they may feel pressure to get back to work. Because of this, peer coaches might take short cuts, present incomplete information, or neglect altogether the needs of their coachees. At other times, busy peer coaches might forget something, or not fully recognize as part of their job the need to provide emotional support when their coachees are challenged by difficult tasks.

"The peer coach is not a coach!" Much of what a coachee learns is dictated by the peer coach's own way of working. But if the peer coach cannot clearly communicate with the coachee, it may lead to greater confusion. Knowing a subject matter does not guarantee being able to share it clearly and understandably with others.

"The peer coach is not able to connect with the staff member!" In organizations with dispersed offices, it might be hard for some peer coaches to reach the staff members they are working with. This is especially true when there is no room available or no administrative support for the coaching program.

Three ways to add value to Peer Coaching with technology

Peer coaches can easily boot up their skills and use the latest technology to gain efficiency in working with their peers. Here are three strategies that I have successfully used to improve the quality of a peer coaching program:

1. Build mini e-learning modules. This can ensure consistent delivery of critical information while compressing the time to learn and reducing demand on the peer coach. Consistent messaging delivered through an intentional training design also allows you to review and assess the learner's understanding and progress with built-in measurements.

2. Create virtual training rooms by subject matter. If your peer coaching program relies exclusively on the phone or on Skype, you are undermining its effectiveness. By using a web conferencing system, you can minimize duplication of effort and share information more quickly. The system will enable you to use the same rich-media meeting room again and again for the same topic. In other words, you do the work once and set up several meeting rooms, each on a particular topic, uploading relevant files, creating polls, etc. When it's time for a session, the peer coach and the coachee together simply access the room devoted to that subject.

3. Encourage the use of an "Online Learning Journal." This creates a personal bridge between online and face-to-face coaching; something the learner always has access to. Besides helping with knowledge transfer, note-taking encourages reflection in action and often results in powerful insights. Learners can use checklists to record what they've learned as they advance. This can serve as a progress report for the learner, the peer coach, and his or her supervisor, enhancing the level of accountability in the program.

Last but not least: Train your coaches in effective coaching techniques. The best peer coaching programs include a coach development component. Coaches should learn to use deep, probing questions as a way to review what was learned and assess the person's understanding, while encouraging further inquiry on a given topic. In supporting self-assessment, the coach might plant a seed of reflection and self-improvement that can go well beyond the peer coaching program.

Adriano Pianesi and Anne Kelly | ParticipAction Consulting, Inc.

Can you talk politics with someone of a different party and still have fun?

noreply@blogger.com (Adriano) — Wed, 4 Apr 2012 18:14:00 -0400

Wednesday April 4, 2012

My mother-in-law was adamant: in good company, you do not discuss politics or religion. I had been living in the US for only a few years and those words seemed most curious to me, almost as curious as the word "controversial." (I distinctly remember asking my friend Val; "What does the word controversial mean?")

Why? Where I'm originally from everything is "controversial" (and perfectly fine) and all people do is talk about politics and religion (and this is also ok). That's why this post is about your ability to have a political discussion with someone who doesn't agree with a word you say: Can you do it? Even better, can you do it and have fun?

As we enter more squarely into this election year with a political system that many experts say is more polarized than ever before in history, I hope you find this topic interesting.

One Simple Condition of Success

This has nothing to do with the fact that I teach conflict resolution: I have been guilty myself of, ahem, unproductive political conversations. Eventually I realized that, unless the conversation has one necessary (but hardly sufficient) condition the effort is not likely to be successful.

I've learned that context is key. Ideally you need to be sitting at a lunch table. And somewhere between your tagliatelle with porcini mushroom and eggplant parmesan, you can try talking about any controversial topic from abortion, to gay marriage, to animal rights. After all what do we really, really know about politics? So, give it a try: you and your lunch companion might end up agreeing on some matters. For instance, about what wine to drink and whether or not take another portion before the next round of pasta. But be warned: what will make your lunch memorable—besides the food— will be how deeply you will disagree, and how congenially. You run the risk of laughing a lot. Hopefully each of you will be able to finish your sentences. Isn't that nice?

How satisfying is talking politics with people who agree with everything you say? Isn't what dazzles in these different conversations the slow realization that by talking with a person with dissimilar ideas reminds you of what you hold dear and firmly believe?

So here are the ground rules:

· Make sure you pay attention to the context (i.e. there's good food on the table or at least a congenial atmosphere).

· Think about what the other person has to say.

· Try like hell to listen rather than to talk. (The food will help!)

Adriano Pianesi | ParticipAction Consulting, Inc.

Why is Engagement so Hard to Generate in Group?

noreply@blogger.com (Adriano) — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 17:52:00 -0400

Wednesday March 14, 2012

What are the cornerstone principles of engagement when working with groups? The same headache always arises. It doesn't matter if you are working to lead a group in an action learning set, a strategic planning session or in a teambuilding retreat: the principles of engagement are elusive, making this work an art more than a technique. Its tentative, improvisational, error-prone nature reminds us of the experience of "flow"... but doesn't' help us clarify it.

I see groups as living systems and my work through the lens of service to the whole. As such sometimes I wonder: Why should I create engagement? What is engagement really telling me about the group? If I interpret engagement as success, whose success am I talking about? Mine? What if – more humbly – I simply focus on knowing what is really going on "deeply" in a group, drop my concern, and stop influencing a group towards engagement? What if I try to work on a deeper awareness of where the group is instead?

With this perspective, I have found that my observation skills are greatly improved if I work with the concept of the four "flows." Inspired by David Sibbet, those are great and simple ways I use to improve my awareness and my ability to diagnose what is really happening in a group.

The Four Flows

While working with groups is not a mathematical equation that can be solved in a distinct way, I believe that raising the quality of my awareness in groups is possibly the best and most honest help I have to offer. The four flows of Operations, Communication, Energy and Intuition can help you do it.

The flow of OPERATION concerns all the logistical, control-oriented parts of a process, all the decisions, commitments, and constraints of the work: design choices made with the client, methodologies , time allocations, agenda, recording equipment, room set-up, the invitation sent to attendees. In other words this is the ground zero of the work, the one that, if done right, frees your attention and energy for more important things. To manage this flow you need to be effective in coordinating and planning the session.

Key questions:

· What work before the session will contribute to the success of the meeting?

· Have I embraced all the constraints of this work as an opportunity for creativity?

The flow of COMMUNICATION concerns all the information, stated meeting roles and objectives, expectations, reflections, critical thinking, languages, artifacts, graphic recordings, and all the explicit communication taking place in a session. In other words this is the domain that is most visible and is where people pay most attention in meetings.

To manage this flow you need to stay focused on the processing of the group as well as on the information being shared.

Key questions:

· Is everyone on the same page?

· What do we need to unlearn to proceed?

· Are we learning together?

The flow of ENERGY concerns feelings, emotions, excitement, frustrations, and so on. This flow is hard to manage as it ebbs and flows through the pace of the sessions and the physical movements of the people. To manage this flow you need to be in it yourself or be on the sidelines creating opportunities for its movement through structured experiences.

Key questions:

· What's the feel of this group right now?

· Where is the quality and direction of it?

· What is the quality of participation?

The flow of INTUITION concerns the intention, attention, and consciousness of the work in group. To manage this flow you need to be aware and centered in the complex field of a group in session. Done right this flow has the power to inspire, direct, and move group attention.

Key questions:

· Am I being present for this group right now or am I hiding/overpowering?

· Am I open to the possibilities of this group without judgment?

· Is the group tapping into its own collective intelligence?

There you have it! I hope you find this helpful for your day-to-day work in teams and groups. I look forward hearing from you.