BCODN News

Written by Milla Zaenker

The morning of October 26 was beautiful, the sun was shining, and the air was crisp and clear. I was very excited to be going to the Art of Leadership conference for the first time. This is what I learned from each leader and would like to share with you:

Welby Altidor on Creativity and Collaboration

• A leader’s role is to create the most fertile soil where people can grow
• Successful leaders set one “beautiful and impossible” objective per quarter and strive to achieve it
• Great leaders map out people’s ‘superpowers’ before engaging in a project
• Don’t confuse authority and influence
• To practice creative courage – face the unknown and accept that you don’t know
• Seven stages to transforming our work:
  1. Care first
  2. Secure safety
  3. Foster trust
  4. Play with danger and limitations
  5. Dream
  6. Discover breakthrough
  7. Grow

Vince Molinaro on Engagement and Accountability

• Leadership is a decision – You must rise to new standards of behaviour, and be the role model
• If you want to be liked you need to rethink what it means to be a true leader
• Don’t be a bystander and wait for things to improve, do what is necessary for your organization to succeed
• The culture of a company is stronger than any individual and it’s hard to change
• Build a sense of community with your colleague leaders

Dr. Tasha Eurich on Self-Awareness and Performance

• Understand internal and external self-awareness
  • Internal – seeing yourself clearly
  • External – knowing how others see you
• Ask What, not Why: Instead of “why can’t I get along with my boss?” ask “what can I do differently to have a productive, healthy working relationship with my boss?”
• Make a daily commitment to receive feedback from your “loving critics”: those who will give you honest and objective feedback, and have your best interests at heart
• Ask two powerful questions:
  • What am I doing that makes me successful/respectful in your eyes?
  • What are the most annoying things that I am doing?
• Don’t defend, but listen and ask questions to understand

Amanda Lang on Innovation and Change

• An environment for innovation answers the questions “why” and “why not”
• Something has to change for it to be innovative; otherwise, it’s a good idea that dies
• How you think is who you are
• When brainstorming, find people who are slightly irritating – it will lead to great ideas
• Practice gratitude, share one good thing that happened to you today. If we focus on the good we won’t notice the bad
• You cannot buy passion, creativity, and trust – we do it only when we are engaged

Joe Biden on Leadership  

• Leadership is about putting yourself in other’s shoes, thinking about what their challenges and barriers could be, sharing loses and not just successes
• Surround yourself with people who are smarter then you are, use their strengths and talents.
• Never confuse academic credentials with sound judgement
• Leaders don’t always have all the facts, but they use good judgement, experience, and understand the risks when making a decision
• Leaders attribute success to their team when things go well and own the blame for the not so successful consequences
• Leadership means putting principles before career
• Real leaders are happy and successful — For Joe Biden happiness means three things:
  1. Having something to do
  2. Having someone to love
  3. Having something to look forward to

Liberating Structures

In honour of our most recent BCODN event, we explore liberating structures and how they can improve your organization.

What are liberating structures?

Developed by Henri Lipmanowicz and Keith McCandless, Liberating Structures are facilitation, meeting, and conversation techniques that open a dialogue and distributes the sharing of information from a more traditional, top down flow of information to a more inclusive, broad selection of information sources, as well as more involvement and inclusivity from all levels of the organization in designing solutions. “Liberating structures…put the innovative power once reserved for experts only in the hands of everyone” (Lipmanowicz & McCandless, 2014). This improves collaboration (how we work together), engagement, ownership and trust.

Liberating Structures shift the normal order of the ‘way things get done around here’ in the organization – from traditional modes of information sharing such as presentations, meetings, weekly “check-ins” (too rigid, inhibiting), brainstorming sessions (too loose) ; to an open sharing of information and solutions (liberating), but that minimallystructures the waywe interact (structures).

“Unwittingly, the conventional structures used to organize how people routinely work together stifle inclusion and engagement” – Lipmanowicz & McCandless, 2014

So, how do I get started?

A defining feature of Liberating Structures lies in their simplicity. The techniques are simple as well as easy to understand.  Walking through an example clarifies what a liberating structure technique looks and feels like.

The authors recommend starting with the simplest ones and building your practice from there. Here are some examples of liberating structures to get you started:

1-2-4-All (12 minutes):  Engage everyone in generating questions, ideas, and suggestions

Present an organizational issue or challenge to the group and ask “How would you handle this challenge?”; “What ideas or actions would you recommend”

Materials needed: Paper and pen for participants to record observations and insights

1. Each participant reflects alone and writes down thoughts (1 min)
2. In pairs, participants generate and share ideas together, building on previous self-reflection (2 mins)
3. Participants share and build on ideas generated in pairs in foursomes; noticing similarities and differences (4 mins)
4. Each group of 4 shares one idea with the entire group “What is one idea that stood out in your conversation?” (5 mins)

Impromptu networking (20 minutes):  Rapidly share challenges and expectations, build new connections

Ask the group “ What big challenge do you bring to this gathering? What do you hope to get from and hope to give to this group or community?”

As with regular networking, participants will engage in conversation with one key difference: they will be directly sharing with each other a challenge they are facing (and hoping to solve), and what they are hoping to get from or give to the group. Encourage participants to spend 4-5 minutes discussing in pairs with their networking partner, and then finding a new partner to share their challenges and hopes with (for approximately 3 rounds).

Impromptu networking helps participants establish new connections by sharing their stories, hopes, and challenges, while also helping them to deepen and clarify solutions.

There are a total of 33 Liberating Structures, hand-picked by Lipmanowicz & McCandless, you can view them all here:  http://www.liberatingstructures.com/ls/