KANSAS LEADERSHIP CENTER
KANSAS LEADERSHIP CENTER
FIELD GUIDE An evolving resource for effective civic leadership
Version 2.0 November 2009 6.
FIELD GUIDE
KANSAS LEADERSHIP CENTER FACILITATORS FIELD GUIDE
KANSAS LEADERSHIP CENTER FIELD GUIDE VERSION 2.0
CONTENTS Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 KANSAS LEADERSHIP CENTER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 KLC Theory of Civic Leadership . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 KLC Civic Leadership Principles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 KLC Civic Leadership Competencies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 KLC Curriculum At-A-Glance. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 DIAGNOSE SITUATION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Understanding the Civic Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 TM Distinguishing Technical Problems from Adaptive Challenges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Faction Mapping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 Process vs. Content . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Productive Zone of Disequilibrium . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 Making Interpretations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 Seeing the World With New Eyes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 MANAGE SELF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
Person/Situation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 Distinguish Role from Self . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 Triggers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 FACILITATE INTERVENTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 Designing an Intervention. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 Raising the “Heat” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 Speak From the Heart . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 Smart Experimentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 ENERGIZE OTHERS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 Being Clear About Purpose – Why? Why? Why? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 Fostering Collaboration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 Connecting Interests . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 The Art of the Debrief (A Guide for Facilitators) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 Leadership Lexicon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 Notes Pages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
©Kansas Leadership Center 2009 The KLC Field Guide is published periodically by the Kansas Leadership Center, which is funded through an initial 10-year, $30 million investment from the Kansas Health Foundation. With a mission to foster civic leadership for healthier Kansas communities, KLC is unique in the field of leadership development due to its focus on civic leadership, statewide scope and robust funding source. KLC strives to deliver world-class leadership development experiences for Kansans by Kansans. Its initiatives are designed to inspire, educate and connect people from all areas of civic life, including business, government and nonprofit organizations. PERMISSIONS Abstracting, copying or reproductions are permitted with credit to the source.
KANSAS LEADERSHIP CENTER 300 North Main, Suite 100 Wichita, Kansas 67202 316.712.4950
www.kansasleadershipcenter.org 1.
KANSAS LEADERSHIP CENTER FIELD GUIDE VERSION 2.0
INTRODUCTION The KLC Field Guide is an evolving set of ideas, exercises, materials and provoking questions directly related to the KLC Civic Leadership Theory, Principles and Competencies. The KLC Field Guide provides a description of the core KLC curriculum as well as some related thought-provoking ideas to apply. This is not a finished product but a beginning of what will someday be a robust set of materials related to the KLC Civic Leadership Theory, Principles and Competencies. We will supplement this document frequently, and updates will be provided online. Our hope is that the KLC Field Guide will keep you connected to the ideas of the KLC and reinforce the learning that took place when you attended your KLC program. This field guide is also full of practical exercises for civic leadership development facilitators. You will notice many sections titled “Facilitation/Application Notes.” These sections describe possible facilitation processes that can be used with groups learning about civic leadership. In addition, many of these exercises could be easily modified to help an interested individual make progress on their own civic leadership. The content complements the Kansas Community Leadership Initiative Curriculum recently published by the KLC. This is not a curriculum guide, but rather a supplement to your KLC experience and a resource for facilitators of civic leadership programs. We hope you will develop an exercise or two based on the KLC Competencies. If you do so, please submit it for possible inclusion. Send your ideas to Matt Jordan, KLC Director of Operations, at mjordan@kansasleadershipcenter.org. Fostering civic leadership is daunting and requires continuous learning and experimentation. Let us use and continue to develop the KLC Field Guide as a collective resource for the journey. THE FOLLOWING INDIVIDUALS CONTRIBUTED TO KLC FIELD GUIDE: RON ALEXANDER, KLC Faculty SETH BATE, KCLI Consultant/KLC Affiliate Faculty KEVIN BOMHOFF, KLC Faculty DAVID CHRISLIP, KLC Senior Fellow PETER COHEN, KLC Faculty KRISTIN VON DONOP, Cambridge Leadership Associates MATT JORDAN, KLC Director of Operations LYNETTE LACY, KLC Faculty MARTY LINSKY, Cambridge Leadership Associates ED O’MALLEY, KLC President/CEO GREG MEISEN, KLC Affiliate Faculty
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KANSAS LEADERSHIP CENTER
MISSION To foster civic leadership for healthier Kansas communities
VISION To be the center of excellence for civic leadership development
CORE OBJECTIVES OF THE KANSAS LEADERSHIP CENTER: INSPIRE
Kansans to care more, engage more and risk more on behalf of their communities. EDUCATE
Kansans on how to engage more effectively and become citizens skilled at exercising leadership. CONNECT
Kansans together to create strong networks oriented towards improving their communities.
The Kansas Leadership Center admits the students of any race color, religion, gender, age, sexual orientation, national origin, ancestry, disability, veteran status or any other lawfully protected reason to all the rights, privileges, programs and activities generally accorded or made available to students at the Kansas Leadership Center and the Kansas Leadership Center does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, gender, age, sexual orientation, national origin, ancestry, disability, veteran status or any other lawfully protected reason in administration of its educational policies, admissions policies, scholarship policies, school-administered programs and conferences or in the hiring of faculty and instructors.
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KLC THEORY OF CIVIC LEADERSHIP An Overview of the Background, Purpose and Approach of the Kansas Leadership Center
BACKGROUND
The Kansas Health Foundation’s (KHF) decision to create the Kansas Leadership Center came after years of experience investing in improving the health of Kansans. Health, as KHF defined it, included health promotion and disease prevention. In order to address the root causes of health problems, the foundation’s three-pronged strategy focused on health policy, public health with a primary emphasis on children, and leadership. Reflecting on its experience in these three areas, KHF concluded that civic leadership – broadly defined – affects social determinants of health. To demonstrate its (KHF’s) commitment to transforming civic leadership to improve the health of Kansas, KHF created the Kansas Leadership Center (KLC) in 2007 with a sustained investment of $30 million over 10 years. KLC aspires to provide evidence that enhanced civic leadership will lead to demonstrable and sustainable improvement in the health of Kansans. Exactly what enhanced civic leadership means and how KLC will develop it remains an open question. LISTENING TO KANSANS
In order to succeed, KLC would need to develop a much more precise definition of civic leadership. This definition would provide the focus for its programmatic initiatives. Rather than adopt an existing model of leadership that might not be relevant to the Kansas context, KLC chose to develop its own theory and description of civic leadership based on a thorough understanding of the civic challenges facing Kansans and the civic culture—the norms and processes used to address civic challenges—of its towns, cities and regions. To do this, KLC conducted an extensive listening process using focus groups and interviews with Kansans from all walks of life. KLC then used the results of this process to find the leadership capacities Kansans would need to respond to these challenges and to develop a theory or hypothesis about how enhanced civic leadership would eventually improve the health of Kansans. “Grounding” this theory in the experiences of Kansans helps assure the relevance of KLC’s initiatives to the Kansas context. Additional vetting by leadership scholars and experts helped refine the leadership model and hypothesis. WHAT WE HEARD
Four significant observations stand out from the listening process about the civic challenges and the civic culture in Kansas. First, Kansans widely agree that there is inadequate progress on the issues they care about such as health and health care, education, economic development, immigration, crime and the environment. Second, these issues share some common characteristics that make progress difficult. For example, they are complex, interconnected and ever changing. They affect many people with a wide range of views about how they should be addressed and little shared understanding. Different interests and ideologies divide and polarize constituents. The issues cannot be solved unilaterally by any group or sector or by government alone. Short-term, symptomatic and technical responses prevail without getting at root causes. Put another way, the challenges require adaptive not technical work. Third, the more vocal “usual” voices, those with some vestige of authority or power, tend to dominate public debate. They see the process of addressing civic challenges primarily as a zero-sum, win or lose game pitting “us” against “them.” The vast majority of Kansans, however, do not participate or share responsibility for addressing the chal-
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lenges either out of apathy, anger or frustration with the ineffective and polarizing norms of civic engagement. This debilitating civic culture erodes social capital—the sense of trust, tolerance and reciprocity. Fourth, this default civic culture is a mismatch with challenges requiring adaptive work. When engagement, mutual learning and systemic responses are necessary, the current civic culture impedes rather than facilitates progress. INTERPRETING THE DATA
These observations imply the need for a profoundly different kind of civic leadership and civic culture in the state’s towns, cities and regions. Making progress on civic challenges requires working together—courageous collaboration. Civic leadership needs to engage both “usual” and “unusual” voices by convening and catalyzing civic work across boundaries, facilitating learning among stakeholders and creating a sense of shared purpose. The capacity to exercise leadership must come much more from personal credibility and skill rather than from positions of authority. Conscious choices need to be made to intervene in a different, more inclusive and constructive way instead of settling for the inadequacies of the default civic culture. This kind of leadership focuses much more on the process of engagement rather than the content of the issue. Specifically, exercising civic leadership requires four competencies (described in the following pages): diagnose situation, manage self, facilitate intervention and energize others. These four competencies encourage courageous collaboration by framing issues in open-ended ways, including usual and unusual voices, creating constructive processes and sustaining the work through decision and action. DESIGNING AN INTERVENTION
KLC’s programs and initiatives develop this kind of civic leadership through powerful experiences that provide conceptual frameworks, skills, tools, and ways of being that support the four competencies. By 2010, KLC expects to engage more than 1,000 Kansans a year in leadership development experiences. A combination of place-based community leadership programs and high-leverage role-based and open enrollment programs offers a range of opportunities for participants reflecting the diversity of the state’s population to enhance their capacity to exercise civic leadership. These “networks of responsibility” for civic work provide the energizing force for making progress on civic challenges and transforming the civic culture of the state. REALIZING THE VISION
The creation of KLC is itself an act of civic leadership carried out by KHF. In keeping with the working premise that leadership is an experimental and improvisatory art, establishing KLC offers a means of providing evidence that civic leadership affects social determinants of health. The KLC Theory of Leadership provides a framework for the organization’s programmatic initiatives that connects its purpose to the end envisioned by KHF. Some years from now, the fruits of this investment should be apparent in at least three dimensions. First, enhanced civic leadership in Kansas because of KLC’s efforts should lead to demonstrable progress on civic challenges such as health, education, economic development, environment and governance. Second, the amount of a particular kind of social capital, bridging social capital (the capacity of people to work together across boundaries), should grow significantly in the state. Third, the civic culture of Kansas towns, cities and regions should be transformed in ways that support adaptive work through collaborative civic engagement. Substantially achieving these outcomes will be the full measure and test of KLC’s Theory of Leadership.
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KLC CIVIC LEADERSHIP PRINCIPLES Leadership is especially hard in the civic sphere, and if we are going to make progress on creating healthier communities, KLC must help prepare people to exercise a different type of leadership especially in touch with civic life. These principles guide us toward that end. • Leadership is an activity not position or authority. • Each of us has the opportunity to exercise leadership at any time in any situation. • The activity of leadership starts with a personal intervention. • Exercising leadership is an experimental and improvisatory art. We cannot know if an intervention will work until we try it. • Exercising leadership is inherently risky: Once we intervene we lose significant control over the outcome. • The risks of exercising leadership are both personal and professional. • To make progress, we need to be more conscious, purposeful and intentional about our leadership interventions. • Making progress requires us to do what is needed in the situation rather than what is wanted or is comfortable for others or ourselves. • To make progress, we have to be willing to raise the heat to get others and ourselves into the zone of productive work. • Exercising leadership involves managing losses and risking casualties. • Our own defaults, how we would usually or unconsciously react or intervene in a situation, can be significant barriers to making progress on the issues we care about.
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THE COMPETENCIES FOR CIVIC LEADERSHIP An Introduction to the Core Curricular Underpinning of the KLC
The KLC Competencies offer a framework, born out of listening to Kansans, for effective civic leadership. Think about any failed effort at making change happen in civic life, and chances are one or more of The KLC Competencies was absent. Conversely, successful civic leadership efforts tend to embody these simple, yet profound competencies. The KLC Competencies represent the type of leadership needed to truly create healthier communities. Most everyone intimately involved with the Kansas Leadership Center (board, staff, faculty and advisors) has significant experience in civic life. We mention this, not to pat ourselves on the back (there is a difference between being involved and being effective after all – more on that later), but instead as a way of conveying our empathy with those active in civic life. Our experience tells us exercising civic leadership is hard. If it were easy, everyone would be doing it. We also believe developing civic leadership capacity in others – which is our charge – is a deep and daunting task that requires more know-how than we collectively possessed when we began the KLC effort. This led us to design and implement a process of engagement with Kansans about the nature of our state’s civic challenges and the type of leadership necessary to make progress on those challenges. Our experience, as well as the feedback from listening to Kansans, tells us there is something different about leadership in civic life versus business or organizational life. Of course, there are many similarities, with the main one being that leadership is never easy – anywhere. But we believe leadership is even more difficult in civic life, primarily because no one is in charge. Think about it. In civic life, even the governor has considerably less formal authority than the CEO of any company. To do anything significant, the governor must collaborate with at least the majority of the legislature. It’s no easy task to get a majority of people to do anything significant, but at least a CEO can hire, fire, promote, demote, give a bonus or raise, etc.
Leadership is especially hard in the civic sphere, and if we are going to make progress on creating healthier communities, KLC must help prepare people to exercise a different type of leadership especially in touch with civic life. Rather than just sit around and wax philosophic about what type of leadership is necessary for civic life, we instead engaged more than 100 Kansans to help us answer the question. All were asked the same questions, and their answers were recorded, transcribed and analyzed. As we explored their answers, four broad leadership competencies emerged. This article provides an introduction to those competencies, which have become known simply as The KLC Competencies. Our assertion is significantly greater progress would be made if more Kansans working toward creating healthier communities were competent in The KLC Competencies – diagnose situation, manage self, facilitate intervention and energize others.
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DIAGNOSE SITUATION
What does it mean to diagnose situations for the purpose of exercising effective leadership on difficult civic challenges? And why is it the first of The KLC Competencies? If you are trying to intervene to help your community make progress on a tough issue, it is critical that you understand what you are intervening into. And our experience and observation is that the biggest single mistake people make in trying to exercise leadership on civic challenges is in misdiagnosing the situation. Chuck Krider, a longtime godfather of Kansas economic policy, put it this way: “Problem identification is key. If you don't identify the right problems, then you are working on the wrong thing! What are you going to work on? What are you going to do? To set good objectives and goals, you have to understand the problem.” Why do people misdiagnose the situation? Two reasons stand out. Don’t Just Stand There, Do Something; When a community is facing a difficult issue, there is almost always tremendous pressure, especially on those in authority, to act, to do something, making it difficult to spend the time necessary to do a deep diagnosis. In the complex economic meltdown in the fall of 2008, President George W. Bush and the Congress took unprecedented steps in a matter of days. Inaction would not have been easily tolerated by the public. Find a Pain-Free Fix, Please. Second, the actions that are preferred by the community are ones that address the manifestations of the crisis with as little cost or pain as possible. The hurry-up legislation enacted to deal with the economic crisis was designed to stem the hemorrhaging rather than address the underlying causes.
That approach to the economic crisis illustrates the single biggest diagnostic error people make in framing civic issues: treating adaptive challenges as if they were technical problems. What is an adaptive challenge? And how is it different from a technical problem? Here’s a simple example. If the brakes on your car are failing, there is an easy fix. Take the car to a repair shop and hire an expert, a mechanic, who has skills and knowledge that are probably beyond your competence, certainly beyond ours. For you, the problem is beyond your capacity. For the mechanic, it is right in the wheelhouse and can be tackled with a high degree of certainty that the intervention will be successful. But let’s say that your 85-year-old father has recently moved in with you. He has been driving your car and, given his failing eyesight, prefers to keep his foot on the brake all the time just in case he needs to stop quickly. Getting new brakes will only provide a temporary fix. Like most complex problems, your brake problem has elements that are technical – the brakes do not function properly – and aspects that are adaptive – your father has been driving a car for over 60 years and for him driving symbolizes his continuing to lead an independent life, an important part of his self-identity. For him to stop driving would rip part of his heart out.
Technical problems live in people’s heads and logic systems. They are susceptible to facts and authoritative expertise. Adaptive challenges live in people’s hearts and stomachs. They are about values, loyalties and beliefs. Progress on them requires the people with the problem to do the work, and the work involves refashioning those deeply held beliefs. You can see why there is always pressure in the community or the system in which you are working to interpret challenges as technical problems. Here is a Kansas example. A few years ago, the legislature, feeling increased pressure from businesses and individuals, felt it had to act on health care reform. The only problem was legislators avoided the deep, daunting adaptive challenges related to health care reform – cost, cuts to other state programs, responsibility for government vs. individuals, etc. – and instead went for the technical fix and established what is now known as the Kansas Health Policy Authority (KHPA). 8.
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And you know what happened? For a while, the pressure in the system waned. Legislators could point out that they established the KHPA and had asked the KHPA to develop recommendations for reform. Low and behold, a few years later the KHPA, as requested, delivered a set of health care reform measures to the legislature. The problem was those recommendations represented many of the same conflictual value choices legislators tried so hard to avoid a few years earlier. What do they value more - health reform or a pledge not to raise taxes? Clean indoor air or the rights of local business owners? More Kansans covered by Medicaid or reducing the size of government? KHPA is a fine agency, staffed by talented and competent Kansans, and its mission goes beyond simply providing recommendations to the legislature. However, when it comes to health reform, KHPA must wrestle with the reality that it may have been the legislature’s attempt at solving an adaptive challenge with a technical solution. Interpretation of the current reality is an essential first step in exercising leadership on civic challenges so that you can tailor your intervention to the situation. In our brake example, your intervention would be very different if you understood that the problem was about undermining your father’s sense of independence rather than getting new brakes. Similarly, the U.S. government’s intervention into the economic crisis might have been very different if the problem were diagnosed as having to reverse the country-wide norm of forgoing savings in favor of consumption – spending beyond our means – rather than preventing bank failures. How do you interpret reality well? How do you diagnose situations effectively? How do you distinguish technical problems from adaptive challenges when they are often enmeshed and when most everyone around you wants you to accept the technical interpretations?
Here are four techniques you might find useful.
First, as your community struggles to deal with a difficult issue, it is a leadership act to help keep open interpretations that are adaptive, systemic and conflictual rather than technical, individual and benign. Here’s a current example. Kansas, like many states, is facing a severe budget shortfall. It would be tempting to diagnose the situation as simply having less money than anticipated to meet projected expenses. And that interpretation might well lead, as it often does in government budget crises, to across-the-board cuts. But a more uncomfortable and systemic interpretation might be that the problem is less about a revenue shortfall than about our unwillingness in more flush financial times to make hard decisions about priorities and to save enough money to get us through difficult times. That interpretation would lead to a different set of approaches than across-the-board budget cuts. It is important to push against our default interpretations, which are often ingrained deeply in us. When discussing how business men and women often diagnose civic life, one of our interviewees said, “… a lot of business folks have this fifth-grade civics book understanding of how the public sector works. They apply their model of how the universe works to the civic model they learned in fifth grade. It’s more complicated than that.” Another said, “We need skepticism. One of the things that has been a hindrance here is that if you hear it from the right source, if the superintendent says it for example, it must be true.” You must be able to push against your default thinking and test multiple interpretations. Second, interpretations are only a guess, ideally your best guess at the time. That means your best guess might not be right. So when you are engaged with others in trying to name and frame the issue, it is important to hold on to multiple interpretations rather than gravitating toward the first one that gains broad acceptance or meets the need to just do something. Test several interpretations simultaneously. Dr. Bob Moser, a family practice doctor in Tribune, Kansas, put the challenge of interpretation in civic life this way: “What we need is what I call the family practice model, because we have to go through so many different specialty rotations in medical school. So, you may see five different ways (or interpretations) to repair a particular wound. As you learn more about it, with time, study and evaluation, you take a little of this one and a little of that one.” Third, adaptive challenges are often more about process than content. The merits of an issue are relevant but not controlling. Think more about how you are going to go about making progress than marshalling the facts and making the best argument for your preferred solution.
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Ron Hammerschmidt, a former long time Kansas Department of Health and Environment employee, suggested to us people tend to get an “A” in commitment towards their cause, but a “D” or “F” in understanding what really needs to be done. What really needs to be done, at least for adaptive challenges, tends to be more about process than content. Finally, if you are trying to find the underlying, deeper, adaptive challenge, look for where there is conflict or pain, where the heat is in the system, where the disequilibrium is high. All of those indicia are signs of an adaptive issue at hand. Diagnosis is an art, not a science. But it is an essential skill in the effective exercise of leadership on difficult civil challenges where progress has been inconsequential or non-existent. MANAGE SELF
Exercising civic leadership effectively requires artfully deploying yourself. And artfully deploying yourself requires knowing yourself well enough to make conscious choices about whether you are well situated to intervene and, if so, how to intervene to maximize the chances of success. What is it that you need to know about yourself? First, with a cool, clear, realistic eye, you need to be able to identify your own capabilities, vulnerabilities and triggers. Everyone has strengths and weaknesses. Everyone has hot buttons that others can press to take us out of our game. Everyone’s packaging is both a resource and a constraint. If you are a well-spoken male, there might be situations where a more plain-spoken female would be more effective. If you have a big unfilled need to be liked, then you may not be well-suited to delivering unwelcome news with clarity. Brian Black, Corporate Public Affairs Manager for Spirit AeroSystems, said, “You get someone who is high super intelligent, who is just extremely bright, but their bedside manner is terrible, so they are ineffective. I know people with Ph.D.s who never had more than an adjunct faculty position, because they just don’t get it.”Regarding triggers, or the “hot buttons” that can set us off, Kay Johnson, Director of Environmental Services for the City of Wichita said, “We need to have a commitment to not give up, get mad, take our toys and go home!” Understanding what might trigger us to “take our toys and go home” is critical towards managing yourself for the difficult task of civic leadership. Second, and closely related to the first, you need to understand the role you play in the system. How are you understood? What is your formal authority? What is your informal authority? Are you considered an expert on certain issues? What is your reputation? What is the folklore about your past performance and involvement? If you are new to the community, you have certain advantages and certain disadvantages. If you supported the winning candidate for mayor, you are in a different place than if you supported her unsuccessful challenger. If you are a business person, then your stepping out on an issue that is seen to be pro-business will be less effective than if you are a prominent environmentalist. Third, you need to distinguish yourself from your role. When you are contemplating intervening to help make progress on a civic challenge that has been persistent in spite of previous attempts, people will come at you personally, with both praise and pushback. But you are neither saint nor sinner. It is not about you. Your initiative is a role you are playing at a moment in time, helping your community address a tough problem, and that activity will generate all sorts of emotions, which may well be directed at you. Taking them personally, thinking they are about you and not about the role you are playing, will be a diversion. On this note, prominent Kansas historian Craig Miner said: “I have been very impressed by some politicians’ patience. Sometimes I’m not impressed by much else about them. Sometimes they are listening to things that are quite abusive and not losing their cool or demeanor or feeling that people do have a right to express their opinions.”
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Since you are likely to be part of any system you are trying to change, a member of the community which you are trying to move from the current reality to an aspired future, you are part of the problem and will need to change as well. This suggests two other elements of managing yourself. Fourth, identify and choose among your own competing values. What has held you back from intervening in the past and what risks have you not been willing to take? If you can figure out what your own competing values are, such as being liked versus being respected, then you can also begin to assess whether you are willing to take the loss potentially associated with choosing among them. Embedded within this fourth concept is the ability to have the courage to accept risk and tolerate dissent while elevating a value for the common good over your own advancement.
Exercising civic leadership often requires us to put at risk our personal stakes for the common good. Leadership is risky business and requires tremendous courage. Mary Birch, the former president of the Overland Park Chamber of Commerce, said, “Leadership requires head, heart, guts and courage. And courage is the one I find missing the most.” A core value for everyone, according to Joe Harkins, the longtime civil servant and leadership scholar at the University of Kansas, is doing what feels right. He said: “Every human being, according to Sigmund Freud, is hard-wired to seek pleasurable experiences and avoid unpleasant ones… But that very instinctive drive in human beings is the Achilles’ heel for leadership. So you have to find people who have the ability to recognize the instinctive response when they experience it and override it. Leadership requires acting in unnatural ways. You have to willingly, consciously take on unpleasant tasks because they probably got to be a problem because everyone else was avoiding them. And that requires an extraordinary degree of self-awareness.” Fifth, beware of the tendency to make a moral principle out of being reluctant to do something that is really uncomfortable for you to do. It is important to do what is needed, not what is comfortable. For example, most people do not like to ask difficult questions of their friends, colleagues, peers or authority figures. But sometimes, forcing people to deal with difficult questions is exactly what is necessary to make progress. If you refuse to ask difficult questions, it may be tempting to say, “It’s not right to put people on the defensive that way,” rather than, “I know that is the right thing to do here, but it just makes me feel bad.” Exercising leadership on tough civic challenges will undoubtedly require you to get outside of your own preferred behavior, your own comfort zone. You will have to do what is needed, not what is comfortable. Again, Harkins’ words are illustrative: “All of us have incredible ability to rationalize our behavior. We can sidestep and avoid unpleasant situations with grace and dignity and convince ourselves that it’s the right thing to do. We’re deceiving ourselves and avoiding leadership. We talk ourselves into avoiding it and go on with our business. So the ability to recognize and override the pleasure principle is a fundamental leadership characteristic.” To manage yourself well requires a lot of self-awareness, not only of who you are as a human being, but also of who you are in the particular situation into which you are planning to intervene. In a sense, you are being asked to understand yourself deeply both in human terms and in political terms. This is no easy task. Often your view of yourself on either dimension is different than how you are perceived. For that reason, it is useful to reality check your own assessment with trusted others who can help keep you from making a misstep based on some assumptions that are part of your own self-identity but do not match how you are experienced by others.
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KANSAS LEADERSHIP CENTER FIELD GUIDE VERSION 2.0
FACILITATE INTERVENTION
If you keep doing what you have always been doing, nothing is going to change. If Kansas civic culture keeps doing what it has always been doing – engaging in zero-sum, win/lose scenarios – nothing is going to change. Leadership is about change. And the catalyst for change is often an intentional, well-designed intervention. The competency to “facilitate interventions” is the third of The KLC Competencies for civic leadership. Individuals and organizations “intervene” into the civic culture to attempt progress on things they care about. A church notices an increasing number of homeless families and intervenes by opening a shelter and providing job training. At a neighborhood homes association meeting, an individual realizes the meetings constantly revolve around technical issues such as dues and trash pickup and intervenes to focus part of the conversation on how the neighborhood can begin building neighborly bonds among residents.
It is important to think of interventions, or civic leadership in general, as able to come from anywhere in civic life, not just the positional authority figures. In fact, Kansas communities will be better off as soon as we quit thinking about civic leadership as positional and start thinking of it as an activity. Doing this allows us to analyze what behaviors and attributes make up the visible activity of leadership. We often refer to the “visible activity of leadership” as interventions. Mayors, city council members, county commissioners, state legislators, non-profit executives and business CEOs are often referred to as “leaders.” Why? Because they have an authority title, and in most places in life, authority and leadership are synonymous. The authority figures in the state legislature – speaker of the House, Senate president, etc. – are called “legislative leadership.” When citizens complain about the leadership of their city, more often than not, they are referring to the city council members.
These individuals are authority figures; whether they ever exercise leadership is a completely different question. Are they facilitating interventions in hopes of making real progress on the community’s most daunting challenges? Are their interventions leading to real change? Simply holding the authority role is not enough. Eric Sexton, longtime government relations director for Wichita State University and current WSU athletic director, put it this way: “Being able to stand up and make a speech is not leadership. It {leadership} is about how you engage people. I am talking about leadership that moves communities, states and neighborhoods… Just because someone is not viewed as an {authority figure} doesn’t mean they are not driving a system, a process or a decision.” The ability of more Kansans to facilitate interventions in the civic arena is critical. But understanding the concept of an intervention – or of leadership as an activity – is only part of the equation. We need to learn how to facilitate effective interventions. What makes interventions effective? Citizens who exercise civic leadership are intentional about when, why and how they intervene into a civic system or organization. They resist intervening in whatever way feels most natural to them (i.e. their “default” – see Manage Self) but instead make conscious choices about what type of intervention is needed to fit the situation. Dale Dennis is the deputy commissioner of education in Kansas. He has been with the Department of Education since the ‘60s and has worked closely with the legislature all those years. He referred to the idea of conscious choices in describing members of the House of Representatives:
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“Some of them went to the microphone and talked all the time. Those that didn’t accepted the reality that leadership often includes making choices about when to speak!” They calculate how best to capture the attention of their desired audience (e.g. protest, steady engagement, etc.). These individuals understand and appreciate the role and necessity of conflict in making progress on daunting issues. Conflict is not seen as something always to be avoided, but rather something that may be a necessary part of the process. They have diagnosed the situation well enough to know whether their intervention should be designed to increase or decrease conflict. They also intervene in a manner that engages people across factions in a collaborative and inclusive way. Their activity in groups or civic life tends to bring disparate individuals together to address daunting issues facing the broader community. One interviewee described a barrier to civic leadership not being a lack of willingness to engage across factions, but a lack of knowing how to do it. He said, “It’s the ability to go from their own universe to the next.” Especially important to civic leadership, these individuals purposefully seek ways to engage an expansive and unusual group of citizens, rather than relying on the same iconic or exclusive, depending on your perspective, small group of individuals to develop and implement solutions. For example, rather than relying on the “city fathers” to devise a plan for the revitalization of downtown, an individual skilled in civic leadership would instead engage the “city fathers” and numerous other individuals or factions that have a stake in downtown revitalization. They realize diverse minds, reflective of the many factions in the broader community, devise stronger and more sustainable solutions than any one or two factions could on their own. Another interviewee said, “For progress, there need to be other ideas that come into the mix.” This is the riskiest of the four KLC competencies. Once you begin an intervention you lose control of the outcome. Diagnosing the situation and managing self, the first two KLC competencies, are critical, but not inherently risk laden. At the heart of this competency are two beliefs. First, leadership is about activity (interventions) not position (authority) and, second, effective interventions are intentionally designed and delivered. ENERGIZE OTHERS
The fourth of the KLC competencies is energizing others. Leadership is not a solitary activity. The best idea or intervention goes nowhere without others taking up the cause. For example, someone passionate about helping low-income Kansans build assets doesn’t get very far if he can’t embolden dozens of additional champions for the cause. No one individual or entity can tackle a daunting civic challenge on their own. Leadership on these challenges must involve energizing more people to take up the difficult work of civic leadership. But, how is this done? Central to energizing others is figuring out where they are coming from. What do they care about and what do they need? People tend to get energized when they perceive you care about their situation and their issues. The old adage “it is better to be interested than interesting” applies here. To be effective at energizing others you need to start where they are, not where you are. The temptation, of course, is to have a firm understanding of where other like-minded people are coming from, but to make little effort at understanding where our opponents are coming from. Quite frankly, it is easier to vilify them than to seek to understand them. But energizing others is not about gaining a simple majority, but rather consensus, which by definition means engagement with all factions. Discovering “where they are” can best be done by intense engagement. But the purpose of the engagement is not to sell them on your idea, but rather to empower them to help design the intervention. You have to be open to (and wanting) new possibilities that go beyond or in a different direction than your initial preferred solution. Don’t defend your idea, but instead let the group work on it, make it better or throw it out.
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In addition, people are energized when they see or can envision progress on what they care about, on their purpose. More importantly, discovering a collective purpose and consistently orienting to that purpose is critical to energizing others. It creates hope within organizations and communities. High-performing communities are high-hope communities. Orienting to purpose reminds coalitions, factions and individuals why they are engaged in the difficult work of civic leadership. On one hand, energizing others is about empowerment, engagement and collective purpose – all of which tend to have a positive orientation. On the other hand, overcoming difficult civic challenges will require significant change, and change usually means loss or at least perceived loss for some. Rather than sugarcoat the bad news or pretend it does not exist, it is actually energizing for others to hear someone speak to their loss. The losses need to be acknowledged, not suppressed. Because real or perceived loss is involved with any significant civic change effort, you must pace the work of the group or community. Communities need to be ripe for change. Nothing zaps the energy out of people faster than forcing too much change on them too quickly. Conversely, not asking enough out of people who are ready and willing is also a recipe for failure to energize others.
At its core, leadership on daunting civic challenges is about emotions more than cold, hard facts. A few years ago, the Kansas Legislature was debating a bill to require young children to sit on a booster seat in automobiles. In the eyes of advocates, the cold, hard facts suggested the law should be passed. In fact several studies suggested implementation of the law would immediately begin to save lives in Kansas. To the disbelief of these advocates, the bill had lingered for years. Finally, in 2006 a state legislator who had a young family, including a child with special physical needs, went to the well of the House to speak passionately on behalf of the bill. His speech contained no facts. Instead, he spoke with first-hand knowledge of raising a child with special needs. As he spoke from his heart the bill’s passage became more likely. Towards the end of his speech he implored, “It will be worth it if this bill helps just one child not face what my daughter has faced.” No facts. No figures. The bill passed later that day. Over the years dozens of legislators had spoken at the well in support of the bill. Many were fine orators, but none spoke from the depth of such great personal experience as this legislator. By speaking from his heart, he created the space for others to do the same through their words and votes. At the heart of energizing others is the belief you can’t change people’s values; they have to change them. Energizing others is about creating the conditions for people to begin changing their values in a lasting way.
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KLC CURRICULUM AT-A-GLANCE
KLC Theory of Civic Leadership
KLC Civic Leadership Principles
What KLC observed through intense listening across Kansas:
• Leadership is an activity not position or authority.
• There is inadequate progress on issues Kansans care most about. • These issues are deep, daunting, adaptive challenges. • Our current civic culture, defined by “usual” voices dominating public discourse and “unusual” voices not participating as well as a pervasive “us” against “them” mentality, erodes social capital in our communities.
• Each of us has the opportunity to exercise leadership at any time in any situation. • The activity of leadership starts with a personal intervention. • Exercising leadership is an experimental and improvisatory art. We cannot know if an intervention will work until we try it.
• This default civic culture is a mismatch with the deep, daunting, adaptive challenges facing our communities, regions and state.
• Exercising leadership is inherently risky: once we intervene we lose significant control over the outcome.
KLC’S INTERPRETATION OF THE DATA A profoundly different kind of civic leadership and civic culture is needed throughout our communities. Making progress on civic challenges requires courageous collaboration that must engage “usual” and “unusual” voices. The capacity to exercise leadership must come much more from personal credibility and skill rather than from positions of authority. Furthermore, civic leadership must be focused more on process of engagement rather than the content of the issue. Finally, this different type of leadership must be pervasive across our state if Kansans are to create truly healthy communities.
• The risks of exercising leadership are both personal and professional. • To make progress, we need to be more conscious, purposeful and intentional about our leadership interventions. • Making progress requires us to do what is needed in the situation rather than what is wanted or is comfortable for others or ourselves. • To make progress, we have to be willing to raise the heat to get others and ourselves into the zone of productive work.
KLC’S INTERVENTION
• Exercising leadership involves managing losses and risking casualties.
KLC’s programs and initiatives develop this kind of civic leadership through powerful experiences that provide conceptual frameworks, skills, tools and ways of being consistent with this more purposeful and collaborative leadership approach.
• Our own defaults, how we would usually or unconsciously react or intervene in a situation, can be significant barriers to making progress on the issues we care about.
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KLC Competencies for Civic Leadership DIAGNOSE SITUATION
MANAGE SELF
Exercising civic leadership requires you to question your and others’ assumptions about what is really going on, digging deeply beneath the issue to uncover the real competing values and complexities at hand. Making observations and testing various interpretations of what is going on in the system can help you design and choose interventions that are more likely to lead to progress on the issue you care about.
Exercising civic leadership effectively requires knowing yourself enough to understand how well you are situated to intervene. This will involve challenging you assumptions about your strengths and weaknesses as well as expanding your repertoire of possible responses. • Identify your capabilities, vulnerabilities and triggers • Figure out how others perceive your role in the system • Distinguish self from role • Choose among competing values • Increase tolerance for uncertainty, ambiguity and conflict • Experiment beyond your comfort zone
• Explore adaptive and systemic interpretations • Distinguish the technical and adaptive elements • Distinguish the process challenges from the content challenges • Test multiple interpretations • Read temperature in system • Identify locus of the work
FACILITATE INTERVENTION ENERGIZE OTHERS
Exercising civic leadership starts with a personal intervention. Making conscious choices about whether, when and how you intervene, and how to do so most skillfully, will help you maximize your chances for making progress.
Exercising civic leadership on adaptive challenges requires engaging others. Engaging others means connecting interests, attending to how people work together (the process) and inspiring them to make progress. • • • • • • •
• • • • • •
Engage unusual voices Work across factions Start where they are Speak to loss Infuse the work with purpose Build a trustworthy process Discover connecting interests
Make conscious choices Raise the heat Give the work back Hold relentlessly to pressure Speak from the heart Act experimentally
Realizing the Vision Some years from now, the fruits of this investment should be apparent in at least three dimensions. First, enhanced civic leadership in Kansas because of KLC’s efforts should lead to demonstrable progress on civic challenges such as health, education, economic development, environment and governance. Second, the amount of a particular kind of social capital, bridging social capital (the capacity of people to work together across boundaries), should grow significantly in the state. Third, the civic culture of Kansas towns, cities and regions should be transformed in ways that support adaptive work through collaborative civic engagement. Substantially achieving these outcomes will be the full measure and test of KLC’s Theory of Leadership.
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{Diagnose Situation}
DIAGNOSE SITUATION Exercising civic leadership requires you to question your and others’ assumptions about what is really going on, digging deeply beneath the issue to uncover the real competing values and complexities at hand. Making observations and testing various interpretations of what is going on in the system can help you design and choose interventions that are more likely to lead to progress on the issues you care about. Explore adaptive and systemic interpretations • Distinguish the technical and adaptive elements • Distinguish the process challenges from the content challenges • Test multiple interpretations • Read temperature in system • Identify locus of the work
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{Diagnose Situation}
DIAGNOSE SITUATION: Understanding the Civic Context INTRODUCTION Webster's Dictionary defines the word context as the interrelated conditions in which something exists or occurs. What are the interrelated conditions in which civic challenges exist? What are the interrelated conditions in which civic leadership occurs? To what degree can these conditions be influenced through exercising civic leadership? How does the civic culture – the norms and practices of civic engagement commonly used to address civic challenges – of the community or region help or hinder making progress on the presenting concerns and challenges?
The challenges and opportunities inherent in civic life do not exist in a vacuum; they take place within a particular context – a bigger picture, a wider community, with regional, national, or even global aspects – and a varied history of efforts to address them. Understanding this larger context grounds the work of civic leadership and leads to more effective and responsive decisions. Unfortunately, many interventions in the civic arena, collaborative or otherwise, pay little heed to understanding the context for action. Decisions are disconnected both from the realities of the local context and from the vagaries of an uncertain future. Without this deeper understanding, real change remains elusive and well-conceived ideas unimplemented. FACILITATION/APPLICATION NOTES PURPOSE
To help individuals better understand their civic context.
PROCESS
Ask the following questions: • When you think about the future of (a presenting issue such as health, education or economic development in your community or region), what concerns you the most? • What are the common or cross-cutting characteristics of these kinds of concerns and challenges? • Distinguish adaptive from technical challenges (as mentioned in Field Guide). • What aspects of the (community or regional) civic culture help/hinder making progress on these challenges? • Distinguish process aspects from content aspects (see as mentioned in Field Guide). • How would you summarize these observations? • For example: • Not enough progress on challenges. • Responses are usually technical yet challenges require adaptive work. • The default civic culture is divisive, polarizing, exclusive and win/lose. • Default civic culture doesn’t help do adaptive work. • Given these observations, how would you interpret what is happening in the community or regional context around the presenting concerns and challenges? How might other factions (see as mentioned in Field Guide) interpret these observations? • What process challenges (see as mentioned in Field Guide) do you see that will have to be considered and addressed in any intervention aspiring to make progress on the presenting concerns and challenges?
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{Diagnose Situation}
DIAGNOSE SITUATION: Distinguishing Technical Problems from Adaptive Challenges TM
INTRODUCTION
An Adaptive Challenge consists of a gap between the aspiration and current reality that demands responses outside the repertoire - you don’t have the information you need or a protocol you can follow. Addressing an adaptive challenge requires moving people from the status quo by engaging and challenging both their hearts and minds. Technical problems are easy to recognize, and you either know how to solve them or can access the expertise in order to make progress. Adaptive challenges are different; they are not clearly defined and require learning to understand what is going on. The solutions also require learning to develop new tools, methodologies and practices. Example:
You go to the doctor with a broken arm. The problem is complex but there is a clear solution, and you can access hundreds of doctors who can fix the problem. What if you have high cholesterol? That is a different kind of problem. Your doctor can prescribe medication, but she can’t change the way you eat or make you exercise. This is an adaptive challenge: the work belongs to you, your family and even your co-workers. You will have to give up something you love, perhaps ice cream after dinner with the kids, or an extra hour in bed so you can get to the gym. It is a fundamentally different type of problem. Adaptive challenges are about changing priorities, beliefs, habits and loyalties for a compelling purpose. Properties of an adaptive challenge:
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The challenge consists of a gap between aspirations and reality demanding responses outside the current repertoire.
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Adaptive work is inherently conservative and innovative. What is essential? What part of our practices and way of operating will serve us in the future? What is expendable?
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Adaptive challenges are value-laden because you surface different values and points of view. Progress involves making choices among the beliefs that guide our decisions and the competing commitments that exist which reinforce the status quo.
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Adaptive work requires learning, which can be difficult as you learn to refashion loyalties and develop new competencies.
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The people with the problem are the problem, and they are part of the solution.
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Problem solving responsibility shifts to the stakeholders.
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Adaptive challenges require a longer time frame to address – longer because it takes time to understand and frame the challenge, the work can’t be delegated, and it requires engaging all salient factions.
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Adaptive challenges require experimentation and innovation to make progress.
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{Diagnose Situation}
FIGURE 1
FIGURE 2
SOURCE: CAMBRIDGE LEADERSHIP ASSOCIATES
FACILITATION/APPLICATION NOTES PURPOSE
To help individuals diagnose and begin to understand the nature of the adaptive challenges facing their community. PROCESS • Questions for participants - Ask the following questions of your participants. Depending on the time allotted, you may want to have them work individually first and then in dyads or small groups.
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What aspirations do you have for your community? (Record answers on flip chart.)
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What is the current reality of your community when contrasted with the aspirations you just stated? (Record answers on flip chart.)
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If you continue with business as usual, can you close the gap between the current reality and the aspiration (i.e., will current protocols, structures, culture, behaviors, norms, resources, skills, authorities, and partnerships get you there)? (Discuss but do not necessarily record on flip chart.)
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What aspects of the aspiration are attainable with the current way of doing things? (Record answers on flip chart.)
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{Diagnose Situation}
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What aspects of the aspiration are not attainable with the current way of doing things? (Record answers on flip chart.)
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Introduce the idea of technical problems versus adaptive challenges. (See background information.)
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Introduce figure 1.
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Introduce figure 2 – the interpretation chart.
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Explain that most people and communities tend to keep their interpretations of activity in the community on the left side of the chart.
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It is a leadership behavior to keep open interpretations on the right side of the chart.
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Now that the language of technical problems and adaptive challenges has been introduced, revisit the answers on the flip charts. Ask participants to label the items as either technical problems or adaptive challenges. (The answers from the question about aspirations that are attainable will most likely be technical problems. The answers from the question about aspirations that are not attainable will most likely be adaptive challenges.)
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{Diagnose Situation}
DIAGNOSE SITUATION: Faction Mapping INTRODUCTION
We use the term “factions” deliberately to uncover conflicts in the system. Factions refer to groupings of people who assume differing, and often competing, viewpoints and perspectives on an adaptive issue. More importantly, factions represent below-the-surface loyalties, values and potential losses. Faction mapping can be useful in diagnosing the situation, especially in pushing against one’s own default interpretations and assessing the degree of disequilibrium existing in the system.
FACILITATION/APPLICATION NOTES PURPOSE
To help individuals understand the complexity and competing loyalties inherent in civic challenges. To consider alternative interpretations (getting into others’ perspectives). PROCESS
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Individuals working alone — Think about an adaptive challenge your organization or community is currently facing. Who/what are the factions (list as many as you can)? Identify the three “high priority” factions. Make sure one of these factions would be considered the “opposition.” Add a fourth faction — you! For each of these four factions, answer the following questions. Note: whatever you write, you should be able to share with these factions.
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How does the adaptive challenge look to people in these factions? What story are they telling themselves?
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What are their loyalties (people, ideas, etc.), values, and potential losses?
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What would success look like to people in these factions?
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Dyads — Participants share their responses with partners.
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Large group report-out.
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{Diagnose Situation}
DIAGNOSE SITUATION: Process vs. Content INTRODUCTION
When working with issues in the civic arena, most of us gravitate toward the content aspect of the presenting concern. We seek knowledge and expertise that will help us understand the scope of the concern and inform what we might do about it. This over emphasis on content diverts our attention from the means or process we use to work together. When we engage others, the quality of our progress will be directly related to the quality of our engagement. Distinguishing process challenges from content when we diagnose the situation helps us design interventions that are more likely to succeed.
FACILITATION/APPLICATION NOTES PURPOSE
To help individuals understand the process and content issues involved in civic challenges. PROCESS
When discussing civic challenges in your community, asking the question – What makes exercising leadership difficult on this issue? – is a useful way to bring to the surface the process challenges in a way that distinguishes them from the content aspects. Some common responses include: •
A multitude of diverse and competing factions
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Different interpretations of what the problem is and what might be done about it
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Lack of trust among the different factions
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One or more of the dominant factions – the usual voices – tend to drive the debate
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Those most affected by the presenting concern – the unusual voices – are not at the table
Our interventions, if they are to succeed, will have to consider and consciously address these process challenges.
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{Diagnose Situation}
DIAGNOSE SITUATION: Productive Zone of Disequilibrium INTRODUCTION
To address adaptive challenges, you have to help people navigate through a period of disturbance as they sift through what is essential and what is expendable, and as they experiment with solutions to the adaptive challenges at hand. This disequilibrium can catalyze everything from conflict, frustration and panic to confusion, disorientation and fear of losing something dear. Adaptation occurs when there is some disequilibrium to the status quo. Without enough disequilibrium, nothing happens. But, if there is too much disequilibrium, the situation gets too hot and we are driven by fight, flight, or freeze responses. Above a threshold of change, and below a limit of tolerance, lies a productive zone of disequilibrium.
SOURCE: CAMBRIDGE LEADERSHIP ASSOCIATES
FACILITATION/APPLICATION NOTES PURPOSE
To help participants learn that conflict and “being uncomfortable” are necessary for real change to occur. PROCESS
Individually or collectively, have participants identify examples (meetings, discussions, or historical events) when the disequilibrium went up and when it went down. Explore the following questions: •
What caused the change?
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What was the consequence on the group’s work?
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What examples can you think of that successfully kept people in the productive zone of disequilibrium?
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Discover your own limit of tolerance: When was the last time you had a fight, flight or freeze response? What triggered you into that reaction? (This question can provide a nice connection to the “Triggers” activity found elsewhere in the Field Guide.)
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{Diagnose Situation}
DIAGNOSE SITUATION: Making Interpretations INTRODUCTION Exercising civic leadership requires being involved in the daily action and rising above to see the broader dynamics and patterns surrounding you. A significant challenge is to see the data for what it is, rather than censoring the data you don’t want to see. Too often we pay attention to some dynamics and ignore others.
“…you have to be able to view patterns as if you were on a balcony, viewing the field of action.” – RON HEIFETZ ‘Getting on the balcony’ is a metaphor to prevent the leap to action and instead, see the data and make multiple interpretations, before returning to the action and intervening. Consider the iterative process of engaging in three key activities: • • •
Observe events and patterns around you; Interpret what you observe – develop multiple hypotheses about what is going on; and Intervene to address the adaptive challenge.
Each of these activities builds on the one prior, such that you are continually refining your observations, interpretations, and interventions. The table below shows the shift in interpretations that people exercising civic leadership must grapple with to make progress on adaptive challenges. Your goal is to move from the default interpretations, which tend to be technical, benign and individually focused. Nudge yourself and others toward interpretations that are adaptive, conflictual and systemic.
Effective interventions mobilize a group to make progress on a larger purpose. Effective interventions are well-timed, well-framed and focused to advance the work of the group.
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FACILITATION/APPLICATION NOTES PURPOSE
To help individuals surface multiple interpretations and stretch beyond their default interpretations. PROCESS
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Name a current challenge you are facing.
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What types of data do you notice?
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What other sources of data or information would be useful to incorporate?
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What interpretations do you make about the current situation?
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Are your interpretations on the right side or left side of the chart?
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What possible interpretations can you make on the right side?
Instructions • Distribute the different sheets of colored paper with the squiggly lines to group members. Distribute the copies evenly so that at each table there are a variety of colors. Be sure that people sitting next to each other have different colors of paper.
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Tell the participants that you have begun a drawing for them. They are to complete the drawing with the markers.
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Once group members have completed the drawing, ask them to compare what their completed drawings.
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Ask all individuals with one color of paper and the same squiggly line to come together as a group. Have them discuss how differently each participant looked at the same squiggly line.
Debrief Questions: • Were you surprised by the different drawings from the same lines? If so why. •
Why do you think that participants in your group, who started with the same squiggly lines, drew a completely different picture? What influenced their drawing?
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What influences people’s different interpretations of the same data in our community?
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How might different interpretations of the same data impact the interventions that are selected?
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How do the multiple interpretations impact our work on the identified adaptive challenge?
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{Diagnose Situation}
DIAGNOSE SITUATION: Seeing the World With New Eyes INTRODUCTION Rosabeth Kanter, a professor at Harvard Business School, says “Our first, or second, or third, or maybe even fourth solution will not solve the complex problems of today. It is not until we get to our fifth, sixth, or maybe even seventh or eighth solution that will we begin to find something that works.” If anything, Dr. Kanter’s observation doesn’t go far enough. Addressing the adaptive challenges of the civic arena requires us to identify, test and hold onto dozens of interpretations of what may be going on. PURPOSE To demonstrate generating multiple stories/interpretations.
NOTE – This process is an adaptation from “Seeing the World With New Eyes,” in the Kansas Community Leadership Initiative Curriculum (pp. 118-119). The following process can introduce this skill. The process is presented in two versions; the first is a “low-temperature” introduction, while the second has potential to raise the heat with participants somewhat. The process might be followed with a discussion of the interpretation chart or the case consultation process. PROCESS
Version 1 (Low Temperature) •
Each table will work as a team.
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Put several everyday objects in the center of the room. Odd keys, old tools and little-used office equipment are good choices.
•
Give the teams two minutes to observe any data about the objects – their appearance, their structure, the team’s experience with using the items, relationship among the items, etc. Teams may record this information if they wish.
•
Give the teams three minutes to generate alternate interpretations of how these objects could be used (separately or together).
•
Have each team demonstrate its favorite interpretation of how to use the objects.
•
If you like, give a funny prize to the team with the most outlandish demonstration and/or the team with the most recorded alternate interpretations.
Version 2 (Moderate Temperature) •
Each table will work as a team.
•
Put several community issues on a piece of paper and place into a jar. Examples might include a local school bond issue, some particular issue on early childhood or poverty, new county jail proposal. Ideally, the issues should be high profile enough that most participants know the players – and may have a stake in the issue themselves. Each team pulls an issue out of the jar.
•
Give the individuals a couple of minutes to jot down their thoughts about the issue.
•
Give the individuals time in their groups to share each other’s interpretation/perspective of the issue. Encourage them to be specific – not just that they take one side or another but how they are connected to the issue and why they hold a particular interpretation.
•
Ask each group to compile the different interpretations/perspectives on the issue.
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{Diagnose Situation}
Debrief questions might include: •
What was challenging about this assignment? Did it get easier or harder as it went on? Why do you think that is?
•
Who found the first step (observation in version 1, writing down your own thoughts in version 2) valuable? Who thought it was a waste of time? What was behind your opinions?
•
In this exercise, we didn’t spend much time deciding which interpretation was best or most correct. What are the possible results of suspending judgment for a while when learning about a situation?
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{Manage Self}
MANAGE SELF Exercising civic leadership effectively requires knowing yourself enough to understand how well you are situated to intervene. This will involve challenging your assumptions about your strengths and weaknesses as well as expanding your repertoire of possible responses. Identify your capabilities, vulnerabilities and triggers • Figure out how others perceive your role in the system • Distinguish self from role • Choose among competing values • Increase tolerance for uncertainty, ambiguity and conflict • Experiment beyond your comfort zone
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{Manage Self}
MANAGE SELF: Person/Situation
YOU
ALL OF THE WORLD’S PEOPLE
ALL OF THE WORLD’S SITUATIONS
INTRODUCTION
Look at the diagram above. At its essence, leadership begins with one person intervening into a situation, a group of other human beings for some purpose. The top horizontal line represents all the world’s people. The bottom line represents all the world’s situations. The space between the two parallel solid lines in the middle of the people horizontal is you, everything about you, such as how you are packaged, your background and training, the lessons and hard wiring laid down by your parents, your upbringing, the advice and guidance you have received from mentors and friends, and what you have learned from the school of hard knocks. The space between the two parallel lines in the middle of the situation horizontal is the range of situations in which you are especially well-suited to intervene. This diagram suggests two leadership realities. First, in order to be effective, you need to understand yourself pretty well, who you are and who you are not, your skills and your vulnerabilities, and the way others experience you (especially if that is different from the way you experience yourself.) And you have to be able to be coolly realistic in diagnosing the situation you are stepping into. Second, look at the dotted lines. If you could expand your repertoire beyond the solid vertical lines in either direction, suddenly there would be a whole new set of situations in which you were well-situated to intervene. What keeps us between those solid lines? You can probably guess. Comfort and familiarity. Fear of appearing incompetent. Risk averseness. Organizational rewards. The time and energy it takes to learn new behaviors. But if you stay in your wheelhouse, if you do not change, how can you expect your system or community to change? So, getting beyond the status quo requires you to do something different from what the world expects you do to, based on past performance.
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{Manage Self}
FACILITATION/APPLICATION NOTES PURPOSE
To help individuals gain greater appreciation for managing self. Note – this is a primer only. There is not an activity associated with this section. Here are some questions you might use to stimulate conversation: •
What keeps you stuck between those parallel vertical lines?
•
In what way is staying there a self-protective device?
•
To what extent is pushing beyond those lines a question of skill? To what extent, will?
•
What are the external forces in your organization that are served by keeping you there?
•
What are the threats to the system you are in if you were to expand?
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{Manage Self}
MANAGE SELF: Distinguish Role from Self INTRODUCTION
The idea of “deploying yourself” in order to effectively intervene in civic settings is a radical idea. To consider the “self” as a tool for change requires that you can choose to adapt if doing so benefits the greater purpose you hope to accomplish. It is unlikely that you can be effective in civic life without encountering conflict. As you are persistent in your efforts, people will come at you personally. This may take the form of “push back” or praise. Remember, you are neither a “saint” nor a “sinner.” The best way to avoid taking things personally is to focus on the role you are playing at the moment in time. Your role is helping your community address a tough problem. A personal attack can, and may very well be intended to, divert you from the work at hand. FACILITATION/APPLICATION NOTES PURPOSE
To help participants distinguish themselves from the role they play in the community. PROCESS
Before introducing this competency, ask the group: •
Think about a role you play in civic life. What would it mean to distinguish yourself from that role?
•
Why would it be important to distinguish the role you are serving in your community from who you believe yourself to be personally?
•
To yourself, think of the most powerful personal attack someone could make toward you. It should be something that would discourage you and maybe cause you to consider backing away from a goal that you want to accomplish in the community. This should not be a physical threat, and it should be personal – one that is directed at you.
•
Write it down.
•
Now, think about what you can do to prepare yourself for this personal attack.
•
How does separating yourself from your role help you prepare for this possibility?
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{Manage Self}
MANAGE SELF: Triggers INTRODUCTION
In attempting to exercise leadership more frequently and more effectively, it is useful to consciously identify your capabilities and your vulnerabilities. As a part of exploring your vulnerabilities, it will be particularly useful to examine those things that are, for you, “triggers” or “chimes.” The hypothesis is that when your trigger has been set off, or your chime is ringing, it is very difficult to learn and, as a result, very difficult to exercise leadership. PURPOSE
To help individuals understand the concept of “triggers” as well as their own personal triggers. PROCESS
•
Introduce the concept of triggers for individuals.
•
Questions for participants: • Think about the last time that someone or something set off one of your triggers or rang one of your chimes. • How did you know that a trigger was set off, that a chime was rung? Can you identify the behavior? (e.g., tension in your “gut.”) • What was it that triggered you? Identify, as specifically as you can, what set you off? What chime was rung? • What value(s) do you hold so tightly that, when you perceive that value(s) was violated, your ability to respond to a situation or person becomes limited or compromised? (e.g., equality, hospitality, inclusion, faith, justice) • What role, if any, does your need to prove competence or be right play in your triggers/chimes? • What role, if any, does status play in your triggers/chimes? • How do the role of authority and your relationship with authority influence your triggers/chimes? • How does your trigger being set off, or your chime ringing, enable or constrain you in learning and in the exercise of leadership?
•
Introduce the concept of triggers for systems. • While this self-awareness is vital to those interested in exercising leadership, it is not sufficient. There must also be system awareness. Triggers and chimes also exist for systems, and the exploration of these, at a systems level, may be useful to the development of a culture of leadership. • What need or challenge in the system was connected to the set-off or the ringing?
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{Facilitate Intervention}
FACILITATE INTERVENTION Exercising civic leadership starts with a personal intervention. Making conscious choices about whether, when and how you intervene and how to do so most skillfully will help you maximize your chances for making progress. Make conscious choices • Raise the heat • Give the work back • Hold relentlessly to purpose • Speak from the heart • Act experimentally
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{Facilitate Intervention}
FACILITATE INTERVENTION: Designing an Intervention INTRODUCTION
Interventions are necessary to make progress on what we care about in civic life. Interventions may be as simple as an individual interjecting into a conversation a new idea or direction for the group to consider, or an intervention may be more involved such as redesigning a community leadership program to incorporate the Kansas Leadership Center Four Competencies Framework. As you attempt to change something that people care deeply about, conflict may be generated. Conflict should not be seen as something to be avoided but something that may be a necessary part of the process of change. An act of leadership is to effectively manage the conflict so that progress is made. It is helpful to frame your conversations about interventions in the context of experimentation. Select ideas that you can “rent” and may not “buy.” Conducting a “low-risk” experiment with a rented idea may give the group some data that can be used to later design a more permanent intervention. For example, a church determines a need in the community for infant day care. A “low-risk” experiment for the church may be to engage in a conversation with a local day care center about how they can assist expansion of the day care center to serve more infants. When designing an effective intervention into a civic system or organization, you must address “what,” “why,” and “who.” The following are guiding questions to focus on when designing an effective intervention. What?
•
What does the diagnosis of the situation tell us?
•
What interventions have been previously attempted? What were the outcomes? What could have made previous interventions more effective?
•
How do we ensure that we are steering away from our “defaults”? What is your “default,” and how does it impact the work that needs to be accomplished? Are we intervening in a way that feels most natural to us? If so, try something new, something that does not feel like we always do things this way.
•
How will we determine if our intervention is effective? What data are needed? What will success look like?
Why?
•
Is there a clear purpose for the intervention? Does everyone share that same purpose?
Who?
•
Who is the desired audience? How will we capture their attention?
•
Which are the relevant factions that can support your intervention? Which of these factions are important barriers and why?
•
Have the relevant stakeholders been engaged?
•
Are there unusual voices at the table? If not, who are they, and how can we bring them to the table?
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{Facilitate Intervention}
FACILITATE INTERVENTION: Raising the “Heat” INTRODUCTION
“A significant part of adaptive work is getting people to focus and put consistent attention on the difficult issues at hand.” – MARTY LINKSY As the quote above implies, addressing adaptive challenges requires you to orchestrate productive disequilibrium in order to get people to sift through what is essential and what is expendable. Adaptation occurs when there is some disequilibrium to the status quo. The 1957 film Twelve Angry Men with Henry Fonda is a great example of raising and lowering the heat. Henry Fonda’s character stood alone in opposition to the group, challenged them to consider “what if,” and confronted work avoidance (i.e., the tic tac toe game). Examples - Raising the Heat: • • • • • • •
Use the group as a case – process the working dynamics in real time Ask people “why” rather than letting their assertions/statements stand Make provocative interpretations (systemic, conflictual, adaptive) Impose deadlines Make a compelling case about what is not working in the current system Create groups of people that combine the usual and the unusual voices. Shine light on the elephants in the room and address rumors
Examples of Lowering the Heat: • • •
Take a break Tell a joke Take the conversation out of the room
FACILITATION/APPLICATION NOTES
Ask the group to write down their responses to the following questions and after each one, share their response with the person sitting next to them. • •
What are ways that you lower and raise the heat? When do jokes raise the heat?
Debrief their responses to the above questions. Then engage in a large group discussion with the following question: •
Here and now, what choices have we made as a faculty? What have we done to raise or lower the heat?
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{Facilitate Intervention}
FACILITATE INTERVENTION: Speak From the Heart INTRODUCTION
In making the choice to intervene in a situation, one powerful option can be speaking from the heart. For many people, this is an unfamiliar option. When engaging in the civic arena, people have often learned to lead with what can be proven, relying on statistics and past experiences. Stories and storytelling are powerful ways in which to share one’s thoughts, experiences and beliefs and to practice and prepare in order to use this intervention. The skill of storytelling has implications for diagnosing a situation as well, as it can be an opportunity to test multiple interpretations of an event. It can also be employed in the process of energizing others, as a way to engage unusual voices and discover connecting interests. Stories and storytelling can help heal the soul, create new relationships and deepen current relationships -- building social capital and reducing barriers to adaptive work along the way. The following storytelling process can help people practice speaking from the heart. PURPOSE
To help participants practice speaking from the heart. FACILITATION/APPLICATION NOTES PROCESS
Prepare two large pieces of flip chart paper, each with a list of story topics (modify these lists as you wish): List One • Adventure • Beach • Birthday • Girlfriend/boyfriend • Broken promise • Brother • Business • Camping • Car accident • Doctor visit • Puberty • Recital
List Two • First kiss • Grandfather/mother • Flying • Haircut • Hiding place • Honeymoon • Lie • Locked out • Lost • Fall • Father • Shopping
•
Ask participants to gather in “pods” of three to four people so that they are sitting knee-to-knee (or close to knee-to-knee). Allow participants to be comfortable.
•
Present the participants the two lists, posting them in a highly visible place.
•
Ask participants to pick one word from the first list and take turns telling a three-minute story about themselves related to the word.
•
After the first round is completed, if you sense the group is ready to be challenged, say something like, “As you prepare to practice again, shift your purpose for choosing and telling a story. Don’t try to entertain listeners. Don’t try to choose something that relates to someone else’s story. Move to your edge of comfort; choose and tell a story that comes from your heart.”
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{Facilitate Intervention}
•
Ask participants to pick one word from the second list and tell another three-minute story about themselves related to the word.
•
Debrief the discussion, asking participants about their insights from the experience.
Debrief questions might include: •
How effective do you think your stories were? What were your criteria?
•
Consider whether or not storytelling is a skill “in your wheelhouse.” How did that influence your choices in fulfilling this assignment?
•
What were the moments, whether as storyteller or listener, when you sensed something was coming from the heart? How did you know? How did it affect you?
•
Our assumption is that this was a chance to practice in a low-risk setting. What are the ways in which speaking from the heart could be risky?
•
In your exercise of leadership, when have you consciously chosen (or might you choose) to intervene by speaking from the heart? What did (or might) you learn from that?
•
What kinds of experiments in facilitating intervention by speaking from the heart might you run? What would push you to your learning edge if you decided to pursue them?
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{Facilitate Intervention}
FACILITATE INTERVENTION: Smart Experimentation INTRODUCTION
Practice is a critical part of improving performance. Think about how much time a professional athlete spends practicing to prepare for a game (about 90% of the time is spent practicing, and 10% of the time is spent performing). The point of this example is to highlight the important role practice plays in helping people improve performance and change behavior. In particular, the Facilitate Intervention competency involves making conscious choices about your actions, intentionally raising or lowering the heat in the system to create productive disequilibrium, as well as engaging unusual voices and working across factions. This work is not easy and demands practice, or experimentation. We have found the practice of helping participants design smart experiments as a useful way to emphasize the need to practice and for continual learning. Smart experiments are doable, possible and realistic. We want individuals to put some skin in the game and put themselves out there just a bit. But we do not wish to create martyrs. We suggest low-risk experiments. FACILITATION/APPLICATION NOTES PURPOSE
To help participants design an experiment that puts the KLC Competencies into practice. PROCESS
•
Introduce the concept of smart experiments to participants.
•
Give individuals 10-15 minutes to design an experiment with the following elements: • What is your purpose? • What assumptions are you testing? • Who are the factions? What issues or values do they represent? • What is your plan? • How will you monitor progress?
•
Have individuals present their experiments in small groups for discussion and enhancements.
•
If your group will be coming back together again, have small groups meet again in future sessions to hear reports from participants about their experiments.
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{Energize Others}
ENERGIZE OTHERS Exercising civic leadership on adaptive challenges requires engaging others. Engaging others means connecting interests, attending to how people work together (the process) and inspiring them to make progress. Engage unusual voices • Work across factions • Start where they are • Speak to loss • Infuse the work with purpose • Build a trustworthy process • Discover connecting interests
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{Energize Others}
ENERGIZE OTHERS: Being Clear About Purpose – Why? Why? Why? INTRODUCTION
Critical to energizing others is the ability to help others envision progress on what they care deeply about. Once you determine what a person or group considers critically important, the task becomes to consistently orient them to that purpose. A shared purpose will provide the energy needed for factions to hang together as they do the hard work. A clear purpose is not enough. People need that purpose to be something they care deeply about. If not, why bother with the effort needed to collaborate? FACILITATION/APPLICATION NOTES PURPOSE
To help individuals articulate their deeper purposes and to make connections between their purpose and others’ purpose. PROCESS
•
Ask individuals to work as pairs.
•
Frame the activity as an effort to “dig deeper” for the valuable nuggets of what they care deeply about. The gold is not on the surface. It is buried deep within each person.
•
Once they are paired, the first participant is instructed to ask an introductory question. (See examples of lead questions below.)
•
The second will respond for a full minute. The first participant should listen intently and not interrupt or short-cut the one-minute period.
•
After a minute, the first participant then asks “Why is that?” Again, the second participant talks for a minute while the first listens.
•
A third “why” is asked and answered in the same fashion.
•
The two then change roles and repeat the activity.
•
Debrief the activity after both participants in the duo have completed their responses. Debrief questions can include: • What did you observe? (Differences between responses to each round.) • What would have happened if you had stopped at the first or second “why?” • What have you learned about energizing your partner?
•
Remind the group that the challenge of energizing others in civic settings has to do with finding shared purpose and orienting the group to that purpose. A shared purpose provides a “holding environment” or container for keeping groups together as they do difficult work. Ask the following question:
•
What would it take to energize others who share my passion?
•
Ask people to call out responses. You are looking for strategies that focus people on what they care about the most. Example: If they say “Hold a town hall meeting about the needs of children,” challenge them to think what it would take to energize people to attend. Keep pursuing their strategies until others in the group agree that they would be motivated to attend (or get involved). Examples of lead questions include: (Only one question is needed for the activity.) • What energizes you? • When are you the happiest at (work or home)? • What change do you most want to see in your community? 41.
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{Energize Others}
ENERGIZE OTHERS:
Fostering Collaboration INTRODUCTION
One way of energizing others is to engage them in designing an intervention. In other words, if you want to energize others, engage them from the inception of the process right through to implementation. By involving others in planning the process as well as addressing the content of the presenting issue or concern, members of differing factions begin to feel a shared responsibility for making progress. Each phase of a collaborative process expands the circle of people engaged, enhancing the credibility of the effort. When others in the community see some reflection of themselves in these “convening” or “initiating” groups, they are more likely to trust the process and, hence, be energized to participate. A convening group includes enough credible people from the different factions to persuade others to work together. PURPOSE
To help individuals understand how to begin engaging others in designing interventions. PROCESS
Use the following outline to help determine whom to engage in planning an intervention: •
Identify the issue or concern you want to address in a collaborative way.
•
Identify the major factions with an interest in addressing this issue (see faction mapping exercise under Diagnose Situation).
•
Identify people within each of these factions that may share your interest in working together. (Some of these people may hold differing positions on what needs to be done but recognize that collaboration will be necessary to make progress.)
•
Develop talking points for engaging these people that describe why you think collaboration is important and the convening tasks you need help with.
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{Energize Others}
ENERGIZE OTHERS:
Connecting Interests INTRODUCTION
Making progress on adaptive challenges requires working across factions, engaging different and unusual voices, articulating differing interests and discovering how those differing interests may connect. FACILITATION/APPLICATION NOTES
Note: This activity should be done in conjunction with and after participants have engaged in the Why? Why? Why? Activity also described in the Field Guide. In the Why? Why? Why? Activity participants were encouraged to clarify and practice articulating their individual purpose. This activity is designed to provide an opportunity for participants to take that purpose and, in concert with another participant, look for how their individual purposes may connect. PURPOSE
The purpose of this activity is to help individuals articulate their own purpose, listen intently to others’ purposes and work collaboratively with another to discover how their individual interests may connect. PROCESS
Instructions to the Group: •
Find someone in the group with whom you believe you share little common work or purpose.
•
Your task is to listen intently to one another as you articulate your individual purposes.
•
Listen for places that those purposes may connect.
•
This is an opportunity to practice understanding where they are, not where you are.
•
Think about how might you understand your partner’s purpose?
•
Think about how you can articulate your purpose (something you are passionate about) in a way that allows your partner to think about connecting to it?
•
You have 20 minutes to see what connecting interests you might discover.
Debrief: Possible questions include: •
Insights? Surprises? Thoughts or observations?
•
Did anyone identify an existing or future opportunity to collaborate that is connected to your sense of purpose?
•
How did you frame the shared purpose, i.e., how was each person’s or each faction’s purpose advanced?
•
What would you/your faction have to give up to advance the shared purpose you just articulated? What are the losses?
•
Where might resistance come from? How could you energize those who might be resistant? How might you speak to their loss and speak from the heart? How can you engage and energize them?
•
Why would it be worth it for you to do anything differently? Why would it be worth it for you to work on this shared purpose?
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THE ART OF THE DEBRIEF: A Guide for Facilitators INTRODUCTION
The purpose of daily debriefs in a civic leadership program is to deepen and expand the learning of program participants. It is a moment for disciplined reflection and checking in with the group – i.e., “where are they?” It is a moment to get on the balcony (see Leadership Lexicon) together. The debrief is not a time to recap learning, restate key ideas or introduce new content. PURPOSE
To help participants reflect on their program activity in a structured and different way and to help deepen the learning of the program. Elements to a good debrief: • It is provocative – the facilitator explores the “song beneath the words,” exploring the participant experience and responses. The facilitator makes interpretations that are systemic and adaptive and bring conflicts to the surface. •
It covers new ground – the group gains greater insight about the dynamics at play in the room.
•
The faculty and group gain greater insight about how the system is functioning (i.e., who are the factions in the room, what losses are surfacing, how are people tuning to one another, what learning is taking place).
The debrief is an opportunity to assess “where people are at.” It is an opportunity for the faculty to test their interpretations about how the group is operating. The debrief, like the rest of your program, should be provoke people to think and behave differently. From the KLC perspective, if you are not being provocative it is likely learning is not taking place. You do not want the debrief to be a replay of conversations that have already taken place. By creating a balcony moment during the debrief, the intention is of program participants to explore both the ideas and interactions and reach new insights. Signs a debrief may be on the wrong track: • The conversation during the debrief sounds just like the one you are supposed to be debriefing (most likely with the same people doing the talking). •
The energy and heat in the room are low.
•
Reflections and discussion are about the content, rather than the way the process, i.e., the way the group has been working together.
PROCESS
Rather than provide a step-by-step guide, below are a list of options you can use depending on the needs of the group at that point in time. •
At the beginning of the program, take a few minutes to orient the group to the idea of debriefing. Share the ideas about the purpose of debriefing, elements that make a good debrief and signs the debrief may be on the wrong track.
•
Pick a good, short starting question and simply ask it. You want the participants talking as quickly as possible. Don’t ramble on about your thoughts; create space for the group members to express themselves. (See following for sample questions.)
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•
Identify a time boundary for the debrief and stick to it. There may be temptation to extend beyond the time boundary, especially if the debrief is surfacing intriguing ideas and interpretations about your group. Stick with your schedule. The debrief is not necessarily the time to solve issues related to your group, but rather to engage in a different style of learning.
Here are some potential questions to use during your debrief: •
How would you describe the way in which we have been working together? How are we tuning to each other?
•
How has the way we have worked together modeled (or not) the leadership ideas we are exploring?
•
What are our adaptive challenges as a group?
•
What is going on for you in this program?
•
What are the hidden issues in this group that may affect how we learn together?
•
What assumptions of yours are being challenged during this program?
•
How is what is happening in here, among all of us, reflective of what happens when people come together in civic life to address challenges?
•
Identify one word that describes “where you are at.” Each person shares. Then surface multiple interpretations about the system.
•
What concerns you most about bringing these ideas back to your organization/community?
•
What is on your mind? What thoughts, reflections, or observations do you have?
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LEADERSHIP LEXICON A
D
ADAPTIVE CHALLENGES/ADAPTIVE WORK – problems
DEFAULTS/DEFAULT BEHAVIOR – the behaviors in which
that resist easy solutions and in which new learning is needed often causing an examination of the context of a situation and the individuals involved including the way things typically work and the way we work. Contrasted with technical problems in which known remedies and expertise can be applied.
we naturally engage in many different situations that have worked for us so often in the past. Naturally going to our defaults or unintentionally engaging in our default behaviors might not be the acts of leadership needed to positively impact a situation especially an adaptive challenge. Part of managing self is identifying our defaults and not allowing them to interfere with positive change.
ALTERNATIVE INTERPRETATIONS – when “diagnosing
the situation” the analysis of the situation, issues and people involved often shifts the context from: • Technical Problems to Adaptive Challenges • Benign issues to conflictual issues • Individual problems to systematic issues
DANCE FLOOR – a metaphor for a situation in which we are actively engaged and may not see beyond our place in that situation with much clarity and/or perspective. Getting on the balcony allows an expanded view of the situation, our place in that situation and the roles of others.
AUTHORITY – ability to control or direct others or actions
in community and organizational settings either formally or informally; distinguished from acts of leadership, which can be performed by anyone. •
•
DISEQUILIBRIUM – instability or tension in a situation.
Often disequilibrium helps create a desire for change in an attempt to find equilibrium and/or our displeasure with the tension because of disequilibrium.
FORMAL AUTHORITY – those who are genuinely in positions of authority (e.g., city manager, business owner) who direct others.
DIAGNOSE SITUATION – deliberately working to more deeply and thoroughly understand a situation before action. It is typically done with others who are also invested in the issue. Accurately identifying the right problems or issues is critical and is often not done well before action. The working hypothesis is that deeply and accurately analyzing the context and the individuals and groups involved will allow acts of leadership that will positively impact the situation.
INFORMAL AUTHORITY – those that are perceived to have authority. Others allow themselves to be directed by persons with informal authority.
B BALCONY – metaphor for expanding our view when
we are too close to a situation. The balcony allows us to see beyond the dance floor, which represents just our place in that situation. Actively working toward this broader context can be especially helpful when diagnosing the situation.
E ENERGIZE OTHERS – ability to skillfully attract and encourage others to participate in community and civic issues of importance to them in order to engage in acts of leadership to positively impact their community.
C CIVIC LEADERSHIP – acts of leadership in which
individuals attempt to enhance the common good of their community based on a perceived sense of responsibility.
F FACILITATE INTERVENTION – intentional acts of leadership that are carefully and collaboratively designed to positively impact an issue.
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FACTIONS – on any issue and in any group there will
M
naturally be any number of different subgroups that are important to identify and clarify typically as part of diagnosing the situation. To successfully address adaptive challenges it is important to work across factions to strengthen ”bridging social capital.”
MANAGE SELF – to understand yourself honestly,
including your strengths, weakness and triggers, and to recognize how best to engage in acts of leadership to positively impact community issues.
O
G
ORCHESTRATE – to identify issues in a group or community situation and skillfully guide that group to address those issues even if conflictual instead of allowing them to ignore these critical issues as they will continue to resurface as the group attempts to address adaptive challenges.
GIVE BACK THE WORK – understanding that adaptive
challenges need those intimately involved as part of the diagnosis of the situation and the development of a skillful intervention. An important act of leadership is to allow and encourage those involved to discover, develop and implement interventions instead of doing that work for them.
ORIENTING TO PURPOSE – assisting group members to remember and stay focused on their collective vision, the passion that brought them together, and their potential in making a difference on the community issue of shared importance.
I INTERVENTION - is an orchestrated attempt by one
or often many people to address an issue of shared concern.
R RAISE THE HEAT – purposefully orchestrating
L
a situation that keeps a group working on difficult issues that are critical to effectively addressing adaptive challenges. The working hypothesis is that groups most effectively address critical issues when in an optimal zone of productive work characterized by a level of disequilibrium that is not so high as to produce unproductive chaos or the dissolution of the group but not so low as to avoid productive work on real issues.
LEADERSHIP – leadership is about behavior or acts
of leadership and not those in positions of authority directing others. Anyone can engage in acts of leadership in an attempt to address a community issue or enhance a community. LOSS – is to be anticipated by any significant
change in a situation or community issue. Even overall positive change will be accompanied by some loss to many involved. •
S
Acknowledging or Speaking to Loss – it is important to recognize and address the real or perceived loss rather than ignoring its importance and impact.
SOCIAL CAPITAL – is the connections among people
within groups and communities characterized by trust, mutual understanding, shared values and reciprocity that allow collaborative action.
LOW-RISK EXPERIMENTS – adaptive challenges that
can be extensively diagnosed and skillfully addressed but in situations with relatively low stakes or consequences. The working hypothesis is that to skillfully engage in acts of leadership, it is useful for most to have opportunities for practice, continued diagnoses and course correction.
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•
Bridging Social Capital – is the connections across different groups and social networks within a community that Robert Putnam has descriptively called “sociological WD-40” as it allows these different groups to work together.
•
Bonding Social Capital – the in-group connection or loyalty among people in a group or community that Robert Putnam has descriptively called “sociological superglue.”
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TECHNICAL PROBLEMS - problems for which there
WORK AVOIDANCE – doing less important tasks instead of those tasks or activities most important to you or your community or avoiding the important issues by focusing on real but substantially less important issues.
are known solutions that can be reliably applied by those with expertise. TRIGGERS – are those issues for an individual that make him or her vulnerable to reacting in ways not helpful to a situation or community issue. Everyone has triggers or “hot buttons” that others know how to push that distract them or make them less effective. Part of “Managing Self” is to identify and understand how to best deal with one’s own triggers.
Z ZONE OF PRODUCTIVE WORK – the optimal range of tension or disequilibrium in a group that produces the best work toward an adaptive challenge.
•
Limit of Tolerance – the upper level of the optimal range of tension that if exceeded can produce chaos that prevents positive work and/or threatens the stability of the group.
•
Threshold of Change – lower level of the optimal range of tension that if not reached will not produce the perceived need for change or positive work on an issue.
U USUAL VOICES – those individuals, often in positions
of authority, who are routinely called upon when dealing with community issues because of their real or perceived influence. UNUSUAL VOICES – those individuals who have a
“stake” in a community issue but are typically without influence or formal authority. Many times these “everyday citizens,” especially if they are powerfully impacted by an issue, can provide helpful insights and engage in important acts of leadership that positively impact an issue.
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