The DGMT Legacy Programme - Co-Creating a Community of Change

Learning Brief 1: Co-Creating a

COMMUNITY OF CHANGE April 2021 This document is a co-creation of the LEGACY – a leader’s journey system. It was prepared by Warren Banks & Carol-Ann Foulis in collaboration with participating leaders and the LEGACY design and facilitation team.

For responses to queries, or to offer feedback, please contact: warren@warrenbanks.co.za | Carol-Ann@dgmt.co.za.

Contents 1. Introduction & BACKGROUND ........................................................................................................... 2 What is LEGACY? ........................................................................................................................... 2 What inspired this work? ............................................................................................................... 2 Who might find this Learning Brief useful? .................................................................................... 4 2. What have we CO-CREATED – and WHY? ........................................................................................ 5 A starting model: three elements of transition ............................................................................. 5 Co-creation: a basis for building community ................................................................................. 5 Discovering a “Community of Change” ........................................................................................... 6 Community as an antidote to dependence (on expert support & technical solutions) .................... 7 3. HOW: Approach & Ingredients ......................................................................................................... 8 Approach ....................................................................................................................................... 8 Ingredients | programme architecture .......................................................................................... 12 Some considerations before adopting this approach ................................................................... 14 5. OUTCOMES (so far) ......................................................................................................................... 15 6. FUTURE applications...................................................................................................................... 18 7. In conclusion – an INVITATION ....................................................................................................... 18

1. Introduction & BACKGROUND This learning brief focuses on one core aspect of LEGACY – a leaders’ journey. In it, we foreground the value of building community to support significant processes of transition in civil society organisations (CSOs).

What is LEGACY? LEGACY is a two-year pilot, facilitated by footsteps (a CSO focused on organisation development) and DGMT, involving a community of 11 carefully selected leaders from South African CSOs. Leaders were invited based on their intention to leave their organisations in the coming period, and their desire to do so in ways that would best serve themselves, and their organisations.

Overall goal of the pilot 11 South African CSOs facing leadership change are better able to successfully and developmentally prepare for and manage this process in ways that strengthen their organisations in the long term.

LEGACY involves a seven-step process (pictured above), comprising three 3-day modules interleaved with a variety of support offerings and opportunities for leaders to connect with each other and with the facilitation team. The contact work of the programme is unfolding over the course of a year (October 2020-September 2021). This was preceded by a preparation and design phase, and will followed by some months of reporting and consolidating learning. The programme concludes in November 2021.

What inspired this work?

Civil society is at a crossroads at a global level. And no less so in South Africa. Funding is limited and highly competitive, and relations between civil society and the state are often complex and challenging. Solidarity within the civil space is also limited, in part because of these dynamics.

At the same time, the importance of a strong, principle-led civil society, and strong CSOs, seems abundantly clear. A context of spiralling corruption, state capture, and a wide range of systemic (social, economic, political, cultural) ills all seem to call for the kind of innovative and humancentred responses that civil society is well-positioned to offer.

Leadership, in general and as a concept, is itself in crisis. Most recent news reportage provides abundant evidence of this: signs of failed leadership on the global and local stage are plentiful.

Within this broader context, the particular spark for LEGACY was the fact that many leaders of progressive South African CSOs – mostly formed in late-stage Apartheid or early in democratic era – are now preparing to retire, or to move out of their organisations for other reasons. This is a natural process, and will create space for necessary transformation in the sector. However, it also presents a range of risks and challenges.

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In small-to-medium-sized organisations, the departure of a valued leader – especially, a founder leader – can herald a crisis, for both leader and organisation. It is often a difficult transition, at human and organisational levels. Poorly managed transitions have been known to kill organisations, or, more often, damage them in ways that reduce their effectiveness in the short- and mediumterm.

Why? Because leaders play a critical and central role in these kinds of organisations – often, they are the glue holding them together. Of course, staff members, the board, and other structures (e.g. community advisory councils) also play significant roles, but the director’s role is often decisive.

This is so for a variety of reasons: •

Many organisations exist, at least in part, to develop skills, so developmental hires are the norm.

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CSOs often struggle to afford highly skilled staff, which may leave the leader/founder as both the overall manager and the technically strongest staff member in a wide range of areas from fundraising, to report writing, to actual implementation of the work. They are also often the people who bring the ideas for conceptualising and designing new projects, strategies, processes, and events.

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Boards are composed of volunteers, and very often selected by the leader; strengthening them is certainly a priority, but no substitute for addressing leaders themselves.

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Founder leaders, by nature of their role in the organisations’ lives, are usually connected to every part of the system they have built. They often make changes rapidly to adapt to environmental shifts, or to introduce new ideas and innovations. This can be a significant strength, but it often outpaces the speed at which the organisation and its people can adapt … So, the system remains in a state of flux, held together and moved primarily by the founder’s will, ideas and energy, rather than being aligned to a clear strategy, or some other shared reference point. (This is most obvious in very young founder organisations, but aspects of this dynamic often remain long after the organisation is visibly ‘mature’ and successful, and even after significant growth and expansion has occurred.

Further, as one participating leader noted: Leaders are also often isolated from the rest of their staff and from their board because they are the only person in that role at that level of internal hierarchy, so they lack a peer group inside the organisation to (1) share difficult decisions with at the initial stages when they are just ideas and (2) to share the rawer feelings associated with facing significant change. The very nature of hierarchy makes it difficult to share doubts and fears.

Thus, a core assumption: the leader should be central to a workable transition in most CSOs << Further, the price of focused support for personal and organisational change puts it out of the range of many CSOs and their staff. Even where it is possible to hire consultants, coaches or experts of various kinds, transition efforts often flounder or turn into technicist exercises in ‘succession planning’, focused mainly on the top job. These fail to address the fact that leadership transition affects the whole organisational system, and not only the director, the board and the management team.

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Two other core assumptions: a process is needed, something that is not simply consulting or << coaching or training, to support leaders in transition to better support themselves and their organisations through this challenging passage a community Is also needed so that leaders have colleagues they can turn to outside their organisations for support and expertise.

This reality, and these experiences, foregrounded a range of questions for us: •

How might we support CSO leaders to transition in ways that take care both of themselves, and the organisations they leave behind?

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What does it mean to leave responsibly?

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Can this be done without overreliance on organisation development (OD) or other scarce and/or expensive professionals, by leveraging the knowledge, skills and resources of leaders and organisations themselves?

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Is it possible for leaders from different civil society organisations to work together to enable this?

The co-creation of the 'LEGACY: a leader’s journey' was, in part, an attempt to answer these questions.

Who might find this Learning Brief useful?

This Learning Brief is of relevance to CSO leaders, donors, and practitioners interested in strengthening civil society, or in supporting leadership development and leadership transition.

More broadly, anyone interested in the idea of building communities to support and effect positive change should find some value here.

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2. What have we CO-CREATED – and WHY? We did not begin from a place of ‘knowing the answers’ – indeed, as practitioners and leaders ourselves, we have often experienced the process of supporting (and living through) leadership change as one fraught with challenge and difficulty. Rather, we started from the assumption that there is no one single answer or ‘right way’ suitable for every leader and organisation. Therefore, the more wisdom and experience that could be brought to bear, the better.

Rather than starting with a recipe or a curriculum, we began with a very simple framework naming the elements/areas the process should address.

A starting model: three elements of transition 1.

The leader – as a leader, and as a human being

2. The organisation – as a whole, living system 3. The process – of change and transition These formed the basis for designing the LEGACY process in a responsive way. By ensuring that each module, and each point of contact addressed all three aspects (albeit to differing degrees) we could be reasonably sure of relevance, while remaining open and responsive to what emerged from the people and the process.

Co-creation: a basis for building community In essence, our approach has been: “let’s figure this out together.” Co-creation was a guiding principle from the beginning – it began in the initial conversations between footsteps and DGMT at concept level, it continued through the process of selecting and inviting leaders, and it is embedded in all aspects of our work with the leaders and their organisations.

LEGACY is a footsteps-DGMT project, but as a process and an experience it operates as a collaboration between footsteps, DGMT, and 11 South African CSOs working in KwaZulu-Natal, Gauteng and the Western Cape (represented by their current, or now, in some cases, recently departed leaders).

Importantly, co-creation, in the sense we use it here, is not the same as co-design. The footstepsDGMT team members positioned themselves as facilitators of the process. We aimed to design and facilitate modules (and other forms of engagement) which would be containers/spaces in which: •

leaders could come together, and find each other as human beings and professionals;

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be both vulnerable (share their challenges, points of stuckness, pain) and resourceful (share their experience, insight and learning); and

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generate new solutions and insights together.

All in the interests of enabling change in themselves, in each other, and in their respective organisations.

Together, we have built a community of sorts – one which is on a shared journey together. This shared process, in turn, provides the basis for supporting 11 separate (but thematically and relationally connected) change processes in the 11 participating organisations, and in the lives of

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their leaders. In other words, one community and one integrated process which addresses and enables at least 22 separate change processes at individual and organisational level.

Arguably, co-creation is an essential principle to adopt if one seeks genuine buy-in from a group of leaders. It is essential to meet and appreciate them as leaders – and therefore as valuable contributors to making the process work. Our invitation was not to a training programme or even a facilitated learning process, but to a shared journey of change in which we would discover things together.

In the same vein, it has also been clear from the outset that the process could offer practical support, community, connection and insight, but that each leader remains a leader – responsible for themselves, their issues, their organisation and their outcomes.

This work was enabled by forming a community of a special kind.

Discovering a “Community of Change” As a facilitation team, we are very familiar with the importance of building a learning community in professional formation and development programmes. Many of us have also worked with, and in, a variety of communities of practice (CoPs) or with therapeutic communities and support groups of different kinds. Finally, we all have some experience of networks in the civil society space.

The LEGACY community has elements of all these, but combines them in a way that feels new to us, and which has emerged, been co-created – and in a sense, discovered – through the process of working together. We might loosely call this a “Community of Change”.

This community is characterised by several areas of focus, held in balance: •

an inward/extractive focus – as in a traditional learning community: how can I best deal with my own transition and my organisation's? o with special emphasis on learning about process… The footsteps-DGMT team’s practice of facilitation and the embedded emphasis on co-creation make process-oriented learning implicit; it is also explicit in the emphasis on the leader’s role in their own transition processes ‘back home’: how shall I be, engage, intervene in my organisation (and in my life) to work well with this change?

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a mutual-help focus – as in a support group: how can we hold and support each other to negotiate the journey of transition as individual human beings and leaders?

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a strategic and technical focus – as in a network: what intelligence can we share and cocreate that will make this journey easier and more effective for ourselves and for others?

These foci play out within the total community (within the modules, on the leaders’ self-organised WhatsApp group, etc.), but also between smaller groups of leaders who find common interests, questions and concerns to engage around, and within one-to-one conversations between individual leaders, or between leaders and members of the facilitation team.

The balance between these aspects of the community’s life and work is held fairly organically by the community itself. However, maintaining a working balance between them is a significant responsibility of the footsteps-DGMT facilitation team. It is the team’s role to ensure that all of these areas of focus get space and attention, and, as far as possible, that all members of the community are engaged, and are adding and extracting what value they can from the process.

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Before LEGACY, we were not sure that it would be possible to build such a rich experience of community with leaders from diverse organisations, sectors and regions of the country… Leaders are sometimes relentlessly focused on their own organisations to the exclusion of all else, or they are too busy to be available, or, sometimes, they are simply overwhelmed by the complexities and responsibilities of leadership. It is hard to get them to stop and come together! And cooperation within civil society is made increasingly difficult in a context of high competition for resources, the imperative to prove one’s impact, the drive to be seen as cutting-edge and innovative in all things.

To our pleasure, and some surprise, we discovered both a deep thirst for community and mutual connection – within a non-competitive, safe-but-challenging space – and a high degree of generosity, empathy and willingness to support each other’s processes.

On reflection, this shouldn’t be surprising. Civil society, in theory at least, is all about this kind of cooperation for the mutual good. Leadership can be extremely lonely – even with a solid team and skilled colleagues. And the broader environment mitigates against investing time in taking care of the self and the system – these foundations for effectiveness and impact are often neglected in the rush to meet deadlines, to deliver projects, to present well in the world, to sustain salaries and activities, and so on.

LEGACY provided leaders with permission to invest energy and care in themselves and in the lives of their peers – fulfilling a need for human support, solidarity, and meaningful relationships with equals which is often difficult for CSO leaders to find.

The foundations for this community of change: •

some core, common experiences, and a common challenge: being a leader of a CSO in South Africa; being in the process of transitioning out of leadership (or of deciding whether, how and when to do so)

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a common purpose: to ‘do’ transition responsibly and leave a positive legacy behind them; and to support each other to do so

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significant diversity of circumstances: different kinds of organisations, with different purposes, constituencies, length of existence, etc.; a mix of founder and non-founder leaders

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a set of contracted agreements, developed by the community: around confidentiality, mutual respect, commitment, co-creation and trust in each other and the process

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a shared need for community, connection and support in this challenging process of change; and

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willingness to engage openly and generously enough with each other to, together, hold and develop both process and community together.

Community as an antidote to dependence (on expert support & technical solutions) One of the spin-offs of investing in building a resourceful community has been to minimise dependence on ‘the experts’/facilitators from the beginning.

The implicit message was: “You are leaders, we acknowledge and accept that. We don’t have the ‘answers’ either. But together we can hold a space that allows us all to step into the unknown, still responsible for our own choices and our own organisations, but no longer alone.”

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On a very practical note, we believe that activating the resources of a community such as this one has reduced the amount of consulting and coaching hours which might otherwise have been consumed in multiple, separate transition processes. In other words, it has the double effect of enriching the process, and making it more efficient and cost-effective.

3. HOW: Approach & Ingredients This section speaks mainly to our approach, as the footsteps-DGMT facilitation team, to designing, facilitating and holding the LEGACY process. After this we briefly address the programme ingredients – the machinery that helps the work to work.

Approach When the idea of developing the LEGACY programme first surfaced within footsteps, our early vision was more instrumental, and perhaps more content-led.

Of course, such a programme should include information about succession, about change dynamics, about phases of organisation development, about the grieving process and the hero’s journey, about leadership polarities, about team development, about organisational design, about change management … and so on, ad infinitum.

Perhaps, to begin with, we imagined a fairly traditional project, centring on a modular learning programme with some reasonably clear (though still flexible) outcomes/results. It would be a facilitated process, but one with some solid content/curriculum.

However, as our thinking deepened, and we entered into the co-creation process with DGMT, and the potential value of a community of leaders in change began to crystallise, our orientation shifted.

Running an applied masters in organisational transition was not what leaders wanted – or needed – or what our time frame and budget allowed. But letting go of control of content, means letting go of the illusion that outcomes can be predetermined by third parties. In reality, we can influence change in other people’s systems, if we’re invited to do so. We certainly can’t make it. This basic insight, coupled with the hunger for community and collegial support among the leaders themselves, informed the facilitative, co-creative, process- and community-centred approach that we adopted from Module 1 on.

Such a process can (and must!) be intentional and purpose-centred, but it cannot be objectivesoriented: each participant’s situation, needs, interests, and goals will inevitably differ, in subtle or profound ways.

In summary, we knew that each person and organisation would be on their own unique journey of transition and that our design had to respond to this uniqueness. We couldn’t approach legacy and transition as an objective, predictable and teachable set of steps. We were also aware that we didn’t have the resources to support full organisational development processes in 11 organisations over one year. And lastly, we knew that the transition process had to belong to the person transitioning – they had to find it themselves, and our role would be to support this discovery. In other words, we came to understand that fundamentally this process was about facilitating change, not facilitating learning.

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‘Creating community’ became our response to these circumstances – which training, in particular, could not address. Thus, our approach to building a generative community, where members can support each other in their individual journeys …

4 KEY ELEMENTS 1.

Model qualities, skills and practices that are valuable for creating community.

These are skills that enable one to be responsive in process, and to support each others’ growth and development. They are also skills that help one to formulate good questions, which are often key to unlocking new ideas, insights, and action. For us, as the facilitation team, this typically required: •

Listening well, and to everything, that anyone shared in the various sessions – viewpoints, discussions, facts and figures, any disagreement or conflict etc. Also listening to each other when we did our debriefing and planning.

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A certain amount of pausing and waiting until something emerged that was figural. This could be something relatively obvious. Or, it could be what others were struggling to see or to face. This was not a highly rational process, but rather intuitive – allowing for the topics and themes to emerge through the listening and waiting.

Listening

Exploring the question (sharing)

SOME QUALITIES, SKILLS & PRACTICES FOR FACILITATING COMMUNITY FORMATION

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Formulating a question

Waiting

Letting a 'figure' emerge

Then, formulating questions or exercises or tasks in response to these themes, that would speak to hot topics for participants.

For example, in the second module (February 2021), it was clear that different leaders were battling with tensions in relation to their departure. They were facing a lot of ambiguity and contradiction. But it wasn’t exactly clear who was dealing with what.

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Rather than ‘teaching’ the Leadership Polarities (a model that unpacks these general tensions conceptually), we asked them for examples of polarities/tensions in the change process and the facilitation team then spent some time looking at these that evening. We could then see the different stages of transition that people were at … For some this was linked to the reality of their leaving, for others they were struggling with the process of letting go. Yet others, were dealing with the tensions inherent in making transition plans, or finding a successor.

From this discussion, we were able to see who might work well together on certain topics, and what questions would speak to where they were in their process and to the tensions they held – questions that would enable a visceral response. Only then, did we build this into the design of the process for the following day.

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This was followed by the time and space for leaders to explore these questions – sometimes on their own, sometimes with one other, sometimes with a group.

Much like a pilot, particularly during take-off and landing the facilitation team had to bring significant alertness to what was happening in the moment, in the group, and in the day … This would inform our next question, our next task and the next day of work together. We also asked for participants’ input on what should come next, and what seemed figural to them – implicitly involving them in the design and facilitation process.

2. Create opportunities for the group to use these skills, so that they also contribute to the creation of community One obvious and basic guideline for strengthening community – create as many opportunities as possible for people to connect to each other across the community, and do so in a range of forms, and for a range of purposes. In this way, the web of relationships that comprises the community is slowly cemented and deepened, and everyone has an opportunity to integrate into the community as fully as they choose to.

We supported this in a variety of ways during modules (e.g. working in small groups, with or without a facilitator; working in pairs; presenting in plenary; etc.) and in the spaces between modules, by building in monthly small group meetings which happened online. See Ingredients below for more information about these Thinking Through Groups.

All of these forms created space for people to work with each other in ways that were congruent with what had been modelled by the facilitation team.

3. Foreground relationships | Keep building and enabling horizontal relationships – where everyone is both expert and learner This was done from the first engagement with potential participants, where each Individual leader was contacted by a member of the DGMT-footsteps team. In this process of engagement, each candidate was asked a range of questions and encouraged to see themselves not as recipients of a ‘service’, but as valuable contributors in the project (and ultimately, in the community of leaders it would form).

Relationship building was also a very significant part of Module 1 (October 2020). We started off with some light and fun exercises (are you an introvert or an extrovert?; are you the first-born,

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last-born, in-between, only child?; etc.)1, but then increasingly progressed to ask people to bring the substance of their work, their identities and their struggles to the process. We aimed to do this in ways that were unhurried, but not laboured or overly intense.

This initiated what one facilitator referred to as ‘a slow process of reciprocity’ – I reveal myself, which enables you to reveal yourself; I share my story, you share yours. This process is almost the direct opposite to the daily lives of leaders in which they are often holding things alone, under pressure, and focused on others rather than themselves.

Through this sharing, participants were able to learn about each other, and about the organisations and the work of others. They found enough in common to make them feel safe, and enough difference to make them curious. And this tension of feeling safe as well as being challenged created the container for much of the learning, and growth and development that happened along the way.

It also meant that useful, appropriate, and relevant support and resources could be made available by anyone in the group. In a sense, the facilitation team became part of the community and, by Module 2, the community became part of the facilitation team: actively resourcing the process with their experiences and insights.

4. Intervene with content, but only when the group has little knowledge/experience in the area, or to catalyse further ideas and thoughts In practice, this has seldom been necessary; the facilitation team has shared relatively little traditional ‘input’ during modules – the leaders themselves have provided the bulk of the content there.

Sharing content is more common in one-to-one engagements with leaders and organisations, but even here is kept to what is necessary and called for by the situation. Our content knowledge does not drive the change process – it is only a resource.

As noted earlier, we organise content around three main themes: The ‘journey of self as leader’. Departing as a founder leader (or someone who has played a significant role as a leader) requires insight and understanding into who you are as a leader. This is beneficial to both the leader and the organisation. It ideally includes identifying what you bring to the leadership role (your style, skills, experience/expertise) to better understand your unique contribution and possible gaps that your departure might open up, as well as the ‘shadow’ of what you bring. This understanding of self is also used as a scaffold for building the leader’s own (professional and personal) future.

The ‘journey of the organisation’. The organisation is viewed as a dynamic living system, that has its own journey of growth and development, linked to, but also separate from, that of the leader. Leaders spend time exploring and understanding their organisation, and what it needs – from the perspective of different stakeholders: staff, the board, beneficiaries, donors etc. The transition phase is an opportunity that can be harnessed for organisational strengthening. Of course, this requires some phasing of the leader’s departure.

1 While this Gestalt-inspired exercise was used lightly, it had the benefit of revealing the many ways In which people in the group are similar and different. This helped participants to drop their guard early on.

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‘Transition and change’. This theme is about better understanding change, the nature of it, how people respond to change, and how to lead and support it. It involves goalsetting in relation to the departure of the leader, and designing a process and steps for getting there.

One of our roles as the facilitation team has been to hold these themes throughout the 12month programme, and to hold each theme for each leader and each organisation.

Ingredients | programme architecture The broad approach described above is applied across the architecture of the programme as a whole. Another way of thinking about ‘programme architecture is, “the set of components and ingredients that make LEGACY work.” This section briefly describes each core ingredient.

THE INVITATION LEGACY is a pilot programme, so we invested significant energy in the selection and invitation process. This was not a ‘course’ to which people received an open call to apply.

Rather, we drew on the networks of footsteps practitioners and of DGMT, to explore a range of leaders’ interest in the programme – and indeed, the initial spark for the programme arose from what we were hearing from clients and colleagues in CSOs about their challenges and interests.

We engaged in several conversations or other contacts with most potential participants before a formal invitation was issued. And, in the process, we learned about their interests, their questions and their organisations.

There is unquestionable value in careful selection, and in the process of conscious invitation itself. It allowed the facilitation team to think through how various constellations of people and organisations might complement each other – a process focused on the value people might bring to a community, rather than the more usual focus on participants possible needs and deficits. As a consequence, the first LEGACY group’s members are committed and have bought into the process. The group includes many highly resourceful people. And all community members appear to be gaining significant benefits from their participation in the process.

Some version of this process seems fundamental to building an effective community of this kind; it should remain embedded in any future iterations of the process.

FORMING & DEEPENING COMMUNITY THROUGH THE MODULES As already noted, Module 1 placed a strong emphasis on relationship building and forming the community in other ways (agreeing on a contract with each other; setting dates for future meetings; agreeing on what would happen between modules; etc.). Module 2 continued to build on this, as will Module 3.

Time together as a whole community is essential. We could not have achieved the same results via online meetings exclusively. It is also important not to discount the value of what happens between formal sessions during the residential modules – tea breaks, lunches, long dinners and bottles of wine have their place in cementing relationships.

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THINKING THROUGH GROUPS The idea for “Thinking Through Groups” emerged from footsteps own internal practice.

These are groups of 2-3 leaders who meet (approximately monthly) with a footsteps facilitator for 1-2 hours online. The purpose of these meetings is to make space for leaders to hear themselves think – literally. Each participant has 10 minutes to simply talk and be listened to deeply. Once all have spoken, the conversation may move onto content or sharing ideas and feedback, but the essence of it is listening and being listened too.

Most leaders have found these valuable spaces - they help to keep the community connected in the space between Modules, and they feed into the design of subsequent modules. They have also made it possible for several members of footsteps (those not on the core facilitation team) to maintain some connection to the process, despite being a step removed from the Modules themselves.

ASSIGNMENTS Between-module assignments are another opportunity for reflective work on the part of leaders (encouraging ongoing processing of experience and the transition process at a personal and organisational levels) and for feedback to the facilitation team (also feeding into our design thinking).

Between Modules 1 and 2, a short, written assignment was requested and completed by 10 of the 11 participants.

Between Modules 2 and 3 we invited more regular reflections (every 3-4 weeks) in the form of voice-notes or other means (a more open-ended brief). The intention was to cement a regular practice of reflection, but also to maintain closer contact between leaders and the facilitation team as we move towards programme closure. Uptake of the latter approach was initially patchy, but is gaining momentum; we will review it in the lead up to, and during, Module 3 to check whether or not it is adding value.

EMERGENT ASPECTS In addition to the other ‘formal’ aspects mentioned in this list, the leaders themselves have initiated several mechanisms for staying connected and leveraging off each other’s skills and experience. They have a WhatsApp group which is used to stay in touch and pose questions or raise issues.

One group member has offered to curate a selection of the community’s online resources related to transition, succession, etc.- thus making them more easily available to all. It will include documents and materials related to some of the more technical aspects of this work and act as a complement to the process we’re going through together. This resource should be live in the coming month.

Some participants have also begun to make active use of other leaders in the group as consultants – formally (where the relevant leaders have already begun to transition out of their organisations) or informally.

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PROFESSIONAL SUPPORT OFFERINGS Members of the facilitation team and the wider footsteps team are also available to leaders for a variety of professional support between modules. The amount of time available per leader/organisation is limited by the project budget, but in several cases has been augmented by resources from other donors or the participating organisations themselves.

This support is not explicitly a ‘community building’ ingredient. Rather, it aims to augment this core element of the programme by offering leaders a range of support services, ensuring that the community is not the only resource available.

The menu of available support includes: • •

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coaching: one-to-one support for the leaders themselves consultations: using the facilitators as talking partners and resource people – to explore or work through an issue, or just to get some ideas and advice; different members of the facilitation team bring expertise in a range of fields – participating leaders have been informed of these facilitation: limited, process-oriented support – e.g. facilitating a workshop in which the leader announces their departure and helping to process this with staff

MONITORING, EVALUATION, ACCOUNTABILITY & LEARNING SYSTEM The team maintains a very thorough record of all contact work done within the LEGACY programme (including all the above elements, except a few emergent aspects, such as the WhatsApp group). All of this material feeds into process design and our own learning process.

Some of this material is confidential (e.g. coaching notes; some facilitation records), but material from Modules is shared with all community members in photographic form. We have also built online albums of photographs of the community, and of the places visited during the modules.

These records are part of the community’s shared history and memory. Towards the end of the process we intend to use these to produce personal portfolios for each community member: a memento of the process.

Some considerations before adopting this approach

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The process can only be as successful as the effort of those participating in it. It requires that participants work hard, dig deep into their own experience, don’t avoid their particular circumstances, or disappear into abstraction and theory.

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Not everyone is equally reflective; and not everyone has the same appetite for inner work.

We need to design so that those who want to go deep can, while not alienating/losing those who may not.

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There is an intensity to this approach that is best held by a small team – not an individual, or even a pair. Having 3-4 facilitators onsite – even with a small group such as this one – definitely adds value.

LEARNING BRIEF 1: LEGACY – a leader’s journey | Co-creating a Community of Change (April 2021)

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The people who were part of this first programme came with some particular qualities. To quote one leader, whose views were echoed by several others: “This community is filled with people who are intelligent, thoughtful, candid and willing to be vulnerable in our different ways. We all show extraordinary commitment to our organisations and the work they do. People in this community are kind, funny, warm and hospitable. …. I think we all care about the sector and I think we all care about South Africa in a deep and abiding way that brings us together.”

It may be challenging to find people of this calibre again, and there are certainly exceptional leaders in the group … On the other hand, one might argue that the process itself has enabled people to bring the best of themselves forward and share it. On balance, we conclude that thoughtful selection and invitation was an essential contributor to programme effectiveness (to date).

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It is not something that is easily achieved in online spaces (e.g. Zoom), or in less than three days per contact period.

4. OUTCOMES (so far) To what extent has this approach worked? What do people say they’re getting out of it, and what do we see them getting out of it?

1)

Participants understood early on that they are part of a group that shares a similar purpose, but where each person has to find their own way. They have experienced trust as a foundation to their own sharing, and they have identified what builds trust.

“It felt like we all arrived with a common challenge of being stuck, obviously at different levels of our journey but definitely all here to find a way forward.”

“The fact that we had a shared purpose and would be together in studying our own leadership transitions and leadership transitions in the sector was a very strong bonding factor right from the start because I had so much mental and emotional energy invested in that process already.”

“There is something about this space where there is a high degree of engagement, confidentiality, trust and openness – it is not something that I have experienced elsewhere.”

Some participants pointed to particular ingredients that contributed to this: “A shared need to find a way through the succession and transition process. Mutual respect for each person’s story and journey. Active listening and compassion during the listening exercises.

Engaging in non-judgmental questioning and reflection so that each person can experience their learning. Good facilitation skills and program design that allowed for the process to be authentic and liberating. The willingness of the sharing of experiences and enthusiasm to learn from each other.”

2) For at least 5 (of the 11) leaders, the conditions have been created for them to take their first step towards leaving. For some, this was particularly difficult because their own identity has been so intertwined with the identity of the organisation. This has meant that their first step is

LEARNING BRIEF 1: LEGACY – a leader’s journey | Co-creating a Community of Change (April 2021)

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to begin a process of untangling self from organisation, and for this they have needed to be courageous and vulnerable. It’s emotional work.

“Legacy has given me the courage to do it. I talked about it, but am not sure I would have gotten to the point of making timelines without the programme and without the other participants.”

“In the sharing I felt connected to the issues that other leaders were experiencing and I knew that I could openly confront my challenges without being afraid of any judgments.”

“Articulating what I feel makes it real and I can start unravelling. I realise what I can start handing over and that I’m not in such a bad place.”

“As a person who has been doing this work (of leading) for a long time, it is not always easy to confront your own weakness and own contribution to the situation. I found the space to acknowledge this in a supportive and loving/caring way, (this) allowed me to open up to the reality that I needed to do much self-work before I was able to confront the change needed in my organisation.”

“I don’t think I would have been able to approach this with such courage if not for this program and process because it would have been with a sense of guilt of ‘how can I leave’ and this is not the tone (now) that I am leaving with.”

“I’ve been sitting with the fear from module 1 and I have realised that it is not easy moving from the feeling of fear and guilt of leaving. That process of moving through one's feelings also needs to happen with others in the team – we need to address their anxieties and allow them to work through their emotions.”

3) Over the past 6 months, many participants have – for the first time – communicated their decision to leave to others. Six of the participants have had meetings with their board and/or EXCO to talk about their departure and transition plans. In all cases, these meetings have gone well – those they have communicated with have understood and appreciated their reasons for leaving. In this sense, participants are learning how to leave well.

“Our Board meeting on Wednesday will deal with the appointment of a new Director.”

“The LEGACY process gave me space – I feel more connected, more grounded, have more access to the bigger picture ,and am left with a sense of calm and clarity… Exco was very happy with my plans for the future which is a huge relief.”

4) While there aren’t universal steps, each participant has (repeatedly, at various points in the Legacy process) been supported to identify their own next step(s), and encouraged to take them.

“Those 3 days were really great in terms of taking the next step, gaining purpose and clarity.”

5) Some of the leaders in the group are learning that there is capacity and willingness from staff in their own organisations to take on greater responsibility– potential that they hadn’t tapped

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LEARNING BRIEF 1: LEGACY – a leader’s journey | Co-creating a Community of Change (April 2021)

into before. Others have found that key competencies are missing. Both insights invite organisational strengthening processes that can contribute to a more successful transition.

“It reminded me of a staff meeting that was held yesterday where a staff member was interested in the funding & policy world – to better understand the landscape … and the discussion that followed around fundraising and report writing was really great. It was the best, and (an) unexpected thing – I wonder what else can happen, if we open up and share responsibilities that aren’t always so obvious.”

“Something that has stuck in my head after my 1-on-1 meeting with my program manager, is that I am the only person that keeps the big picture in mind. There was a funding proposal that was due the Monday after Legacy and I left the proposal in their hands and said I would pick up everything with them on the Thursday and Friday after I get back. But when I got back everything was in chaos … No one had completed anything, everyone was in their own corner concentrating on their own work and it was more of a mess than I had expected.”

“This experience is much better curated than most others and more strategic in its design.

Previous groups and communities have been too short lived, not personal enough, not well facilitated and not properly funded as part of a broader vision for the sector. I feel like the LEGACY programme is all of that. The time away together in places that are welcoming, comfortable and beautiful has been very nurturing. The footsteps and DGMT team have put together a solution to a very real and critical problem and they have designed and implemented a process that really goes deep for each of us as individuals. I think that makes the bonds between people in the community strong and I feel they understand that there is a lot at stake for all of us and they take that very seriously without making the seriousness of it a heavy thing. They carry it lightly and gracefully and I really appreciate and feel safe within that.”

LEGACY – a leader’s journey is far from over. Even though only 5-6 months of active implementation remain, they promise to be very fruitful months, and there is clear potential for some work to continue within the community beyond the formally funded project.

In many cases, leaders have begun to move much more actively towards transition in the wake of Module 2. We look forward to reporting in more depth on outcomes, changes and learning as the programme moves to closure in October/November of this year.

In general, the response from leaders have been extremely constructive – and almost universally positive. One quotation from a recent conversation with a leader who plans to leave her organisation in February of 2022 could stand for the response of several participants:

“There is so little out there about doing [transition] right.

LEGACY’s the most valuable thing that has happened in the whole organisation’s history. It will change the life of the organisation for the future and for us as leaders.”

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5. FUTURE applications Civil society organisations in South Africa have undergone enormous changes over the past decades, sparked by the end of apartheid and the move to democracy, but also by global events like the financial crisis of 2008, and more recently, the COVID-19 pandemic.

The sector as a whole continues to transform, and needs to do so if it is to become more reflective of South Africa’s demographics (race, gender, class, etc.). Many older leaders need to move on and make space for new blood; but they often don’t know how to do so in ways that work for them and their organisations; ways that make space for change, development and organisational strengthening (rather than chaos and collapse); ways that improve the chances of leaving a lasting legacy.

In this context we believe there will be continued value for LEGACY in its current form – i.e. as it is being piloted, targeting departing leaders, and especially founders.

However, beyond this cohort (and the current programme does include some younger, mid-career leaders) we believe this approach has wider application. The work of leadership is the work of change. Any process that strengthens leaders’ capacity to do this skilfully, and to grow and develop in the process, might make a meaningful contribution to the development of civil society as a key social sector.

It is worth exploring the application of a process like LEGACY with other cohorts – e.g.

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Mid-career CSO leaders facing organisational change

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New CSO leaders stepping into leadership for the first time

Application with the former group presents only the challenge of framing the community’s shared purpose differently. The latter group may need higher levels of technical support and a stronger emphasis on coaching, but the approach may have potential application here too.

We would recommend exploring possibilities for piloting with these groups – perhaps as a next step, alongside a LEGACY 2.0 process.

6. In conclusion – an INVITATION We would value the opportunity to discuss these ideas further with interested others – whether leaders, donors or fellow practitioners. Feel free to reach out to us!

For more information about the partners that initiated and helped co-create LEGACY – a leader’s journey, or to contact us, please visit our websites: https://footsteps.org.za | https://dgmt.co.za

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LEARNING BRIEF 1: LEGACY – a leader’s journey | Co-creating a Community of Change (April 2021)