Entry

I recently attended a workshop "what is the spirit of action learning?" attended by action learning facilitators like myself. It was being held about 200 miles away and travelling on the first train of the day, and with one connection and a taxi ride at the end, there was a possibility I might miss the beginning. I warned the organisers of the possibility. Although they did not mind at all, it was something I was very keen to avoid. I hate missing the beginning of 'events'.

I have found that others share the same feeling - a friend talked about travelling to attend a workshop held at a University in a city. On arrival she and others were told they would need to move their cars. By the time they had returned, the organisers had started, participants had done their introductions and were already working in small groups. She described that she never really felt fully part of the group for the rest of the day - sometimes missing that important part of a process/relationship can not be fully recovered.

Thinking about this, I remembered a course a few years ago on 'effective tools for busy people'. The trainers had designed a model for effective working and the first part was 'E' for 'Entry' - the importance of the beginning part of 'meeting'. Basically it referred to how we form relationships, about developing 'rapport', and engaging trust. Whether the contact is short and a one-off, or long term, the common theme of my reflection is that how we 'enter' is important.

Tony Gee of the Moveable Feast, also talked about this recently when describing a way of working with people in 'workshop' - working creatively with people. He talked (and showed) how he sometimes starts (enters) a workshop from behind a screen and uses 'puppets' to engage participants' attention and imagination - starting from, and working with, the unknown to allow creativity to unfold.

What happens at these 'beginnings' or 'entrances' can help or hinder the course of any type of relationship - working ones, or otherwise. A few years ago, I was asked to form a team to run a new service from scratch. A couple of years later when recruiting a team leader into the (by now) established team (this was the first 'new' person to join them) I asked applicants at interview how they approached joining a team. This was revealing in showing how aware and sensitive they were to how their actions could help or hinder developing trust and credibility. Thinking about other work situations, it is often a crucial time for a new CEO, Director, or manager in how they engage with staff of large organisations.

Sometimes, it can help to not be there at the beginning of a meeting - if you are the common element with people who have not met before, it can help them to start forming a relationship informally themselves.

We 'enter' through doors, we 'enter' relationships, we 'enter' a meeting, we make stage 'entrances', we make a diary 'entry' and musicians playing in an orchestra make an 'entry' -beginnings and entrances are important to what follows.

Living with not knowing

Yesterday evening I went to a monthly social meeting of the Exeter group of Couchsurfers. Couchsurfing is an international not-for-profit network that connects travellers with local communities they visit. A big part of it is about people 'hosting' travellers by giving them a place to stay. But that is just part of it. On a bigger scale it puts people together who would otherwise have never met; for cultural friendship, exchange and learning experiences. I have been a member for just a year and love it! It has expanded my thinking in all sorts of ways and I love the sense of common humanity it involves. But you don't have to travel vast distances to have experiences that have a big impact.

Last night, I met Steph again - a fellow CS in a different age group to me but whose approach to life-decisions I admire.

Steph travels around by hitchhiking, and travelling back to mid-devon from Exeter wasn't much of an option. Instead he put his trust in the Couchsurfing philosophy by asking if anyone at the gathering could give him somewhere to stay that night. It made me realise how little we live ourselves in that way - most of us don't leave anything to chance, but there is so much that comes from risking/trusting ourselves that we can gain from 'stepping out' without a 'definite' ahead.

This makes me think of situations where this is an underlying feature - for example the explorations found in improvisation, in therapy, in open travel. It is also one of Revans' principles of Action Learning - to 'start from a place of not knowing'. With a good facilitator who can hold the structure and create a safe and trusting space amongst participants, people can allow themselves to tackle problems by embracing a place of 'not knowing'.

It can be a scary place - to 'let go' of the side of the riverbank and trust that you will arrive somewhere safely. My own experience is that new expansion comes from trusting yourself and others - this is what mentoring and action learning encourages people to take part in.

Whether in Couchsurfing or in development opportunities in work with people, I know that this brings us (myself included) new encounters and new learning. It's something that Couchsurfing shows so often.

Learning by Doing

....which is a key principle in Action Learning work - the basis being that we learn by a process of doing, reflecting (through questioning), planning and then doing (action).. and so on.

At a recent event, I heard the following quote from John Holt in "Chicken Soup for the Soul" -

'not many years ago I began to play the cello. Most people would say that what I am doing is "learning to play" the cello. But these words carry into our minds the strange idea that there exists two very different processes: 1) learning to play the cello; and 2) playing the cello. They imply that I will do the first until I have completed it, at which point I will stop the first process and begin the second. In short, I will go on "learning to play" until I have "learned to play" and then I will begin to play. Of course, this is nonsense. There are not two processes, but one. We learn to do something by doing it. There is no other way.'

As a guitarist, I am fascinated by this and can see how nonsensical those phrases are that we use so often.

.. and so it is in workplaces - people learn to become managers by doing it (I certainly did!) and there is no separation between managing and learning to manage. Many CEOs and Senior Managers have benefited (as have their organisations) from executive coaching at a particular time in their career. The Action Learning process works because people in the group (the 'set') are open to learning - 20 years experience in a role does not shelter you from being able to benefit from and actively continuing to learn.

For me, I will now think of myself now as playing guitar by learning - I am always learning while I am playing!

Words not guns

A strange title I admit, but I was curious to hear the statement mentioned twice within a day of each other from two separate sources on the radio.

A programme titled "Memento" on the World Service on Friday interviewed refugees who had had to abandon their homes due to fear of their lives, with no time to pack belongings. Those interviewed talked about the one item they had chosen to take as a memento. One man from Afghanistan who had to leave with no time to pack any possessions grabbed a pen given to him by his father - it was not just the fact that it was a gift from his father but it was what it symbolised for him - "with a pen, the whole world is open to you - a pen, not a gun, will bring the world to you".

The next day, there was an interview on R4 with a couple in Baltimore who described their journey out of chaotic lives of addictions (drugs, alcohol), crime, imprisonment and despair. One of the couple described the pivotal moment which thrust him on his path to rehabilitation - with the word "why" from a member of staff. Kate Mosse, prize winning writer, listening to the story picked up the theme of the power of words - "it is words not guns that change lives".

Communication can drive people apart and it can bring people together - it can help people out of crisis and it can be a major component of change. The story of the truth and reconciliation talks in places like South Africa and Northern Ireland are testament to the power of words and talking in order to achieve understanding and movement from strongly held positions. In workplaces, communication can be inspiring, motivational, supportive, empowering - just as it can be decisive, de-motivating, counter-productive, and undermining. The phrase 'words not guns' reminds me of the Aesop fable of the sun and the wind with their different ways to try and make a man take off his coat. Using the 'force' of an authoritarian management style can indeed achieve 'results' (although often strengthens resistance) - other times, with 'warmth' of trust, laying a foundation for change, people are motivated and empowered to drop resistance long enough for change to happen.

Creativity, mistakes and learning

I came across the TED talks on Youtube - films of stimulating talks/lectures/masterclasses by prominent people. I watched one by Sir Ken Robinson talking about education, intelligence and creativity - and how education squanders children's talent and creativity....

"companies stigmatise mistakes, we are frightened to make them - children are not frightened to be 'wrong'. If we are not prepared to be wrong, we won't come up with anything new or original". In my work supporting people's development in their professional and personal lives, this is central. There is a quote I've read that goes something like "we can't expect to get different results if we continue to do the same things".

Some of my best learning has come from my mistakes - recruiting the wrong person made me look at what assumptions I had made, and led me to change a recruitment process. Good managers cultivate an atmosphere where mistakes are valued (albeit within agreed levels of authority and responsibility which allow room for learning and development).

In the same lecture, Robinson quotes Picasso - "all children are born artists, the problem is to remain an artist as we grow up".

Hand with flowers: Pablo Picasso

Goals and jigsaws

I use an exercise in my training courses to demonstrate aspects of learning. I invite participants to complete a small jigsaw (24 pieces) and use how they approached and completed the task to reflect on different ways we learn. This is then applied to thinking about how they might devise induction and training programmes for their staff.

I owe thanks to my friend Bill, who helped me to develop this exercise to a new level yesterday (we happened to be discussing the difficulty of understand tax matters for self employed people!). At the same time it also serves as an analogy for describing one of the ways that working with a coach / mentor / facilitator can help.

It involves trying to complete the jigsaw in reverse i.e. turn the pieces over so that you can't see any parts of the picture - only grey. This removes a lot of the clues we normally use to complete a jigsaw - limiting our information down to just 'shape'. The photo is the result of my attempt! By only having straight edges/corners as a guide, not only was I unable to get pieces in the right place, but it took me ages! Try it at home!

Developing and communicating a vision and engaging staff in the process and task is an essential part of leadership and management. It is also what we do as coaches/mentors and facilitators. Our aim is to work with others to help them to define and 'see' what the picture of their desired situation looks like (sometimes that is not even clear at the beginning), to compare this to what their current reality looks like, what they want it to be - and then how to make that happen through action. As a coach / facilitator, I assist clients to 'unlock' their thinking, help them to find the clues and answers that are inside themselves so that they turn their grey pieces into colour and bring their picture into reality.

Autumnal stages in life and work

I read a transcript today of an Inaugural Lecture (2008) at Henley School of Management by Prof Mike Pedler, an Action Learning facilitator and writer. In his lecture (All in a Knot of One Another's Labours - learning, self-determination and organising) he includes this extract from an article in The Guardian on 26.8.08 by the arts journalist Mark Lawson writing about writers' 'work' in later life:

"The conventional expectations of late work - the serenity of seniority, the perfection of philosophy - have been challenged by the literary critic Eric Said in his influential book 'On Late Style' (2002).

Said, a dedicated contrarian, argued that what made autumnal culture most interesting was not that the writer had come to some form of final understanding of their world and their work, but that they had failed to do so.

The career codas such as Beethoven's Grosse Fuge or Missa Solemnis - dark, dense, dragged out of deafness - were a statement, he argued, of 'intransigence, difficulty and unresolved contradiction'."

These phrases (my italics) stood out for me. As the year moves to into autumn, there are people who have a sense of that difficulty - the transition from one season to another. Some move into it easily - with serenity - while others struggle with the 'dark'. On a bigger scale, how do we approach our work as we move into this later stage? What is the nature of our own 'career coda' (Italian term meaning'tail' - to describe a section at the end of a music composition to give a greater sense of finality). And going back to the topic of mergers or the close of a business, how many people move stubbornly, with difficulty with a relation to their work/organisation left unresolved. There is something romantic about the notion of 'serenity of seniority' which in these times may be out of reach.

Emergence

Samuel Johnson, the essayist, poet and lexicographer wrote the First Comprehensive English Dictionary (1755). Curious from hearing recent items on R4 referring to it, I took a look (the wonders of the Internet!). I looked to see what it said about the word 'emergent' which has come up in several ways in the last couple of days.

I came across the phrase "The Emergent Leaders Programme" yesterday while doing research on leadership development work in South Africa (for my application for a Winston Churchill Travel Fellowship). This aims to support people to develop skills needed in moving into leadership roles.

At the end of the day I went to a fascinating talk by Nick Clements about his work with disaffected young males. Clements has written a book called "using The Ugly Duckling to find the missing link between boys and men". In it, he explains the archetypal themes in Hans Christian Andersen's autobiographical tale (a metaphor for a boy growing up without a father) and how this relates to Clements' own work in assisting teenagers through rites of passage into adulthood, to emerge knowing who they are without the need for their 'armoury'.

Then this morning I came from a meeting about a new programme which will include Action Learning to help bring social entrepreneur's ideas into fruition. The year-long programme will support them to develop what starts with a germ of an idea into a successful enterprise making a positive difference to their communities.

On the way back to the car I noticed spiky shells on the ground, burst open to reveal the beautiful red shiny new chestnuts that have been developing through the year inside the 'shells' - ripe and ready at the start of another stage of growth. Nature often provides us with these symbols.

So coming back to 'emergence' as described in Johnson's First Dictionary - to rise out of that which obscures or overwhelms it; rising into view. Three different groups of people - leaders, young people who struggle with what their circumstances have dealt them with, and entrepreneurs who have a desire to make a positive change - and different types of support but with the same purpose - to allow something from inside themselves to emerge into view, just as the chestnut out of its shell.

Photo: Laura Crichton

Transitions

I have just finished reading a Jungian perspective of the passage into midlife ("In Midlife" by Murray Stein). It describes the psychological journey of this particular type of transition as falling into three phases: separation, liminality, and re-integration.

The term 'liminality' comes from the Latin limen, meaning 'threshold' or 'doorway' and in psychologial theory refers to a state where identity is hung in suspension.

At the same time, I happened to be discussing organisations involved in mergers - a specific type of change and development in an organisation. I was struck by the resonances of the description of this process - not just what is happening externally (the organisational change, a merger) but also in the internal individual process of people in those organisations during a period of transition.

Mergers have a reasonably defined life cycle - from initial explorations (perhaps taking place 'off stage' in early days) to the coming into being of the new entity, formalised in legal terms with new systems and structures in place.

The whole process is a period of upheaval. Exisiting structures and boundaries will be taken down, formed/built into new 'shapes' (teams and departments) and a new identity established. It can involve great anxiety for staff caught up in the process (for most staff, the change is not within their control), letting go of what is known, uncertain about what is ahead, and not yet having a secure attachment and relationship to the new. A merger also involves a challenge to maintain 'business', bringing staff, customers and the public through this process of dismembering and construction.

At the same time, there is a life cycle of the personal processes involved - these depend on what role a person plays in the organisation - whether they are an instigator of the idea and involved in the early discussions, or whether they are further down in the hierarchical structure and enter the process at a later stage. For an individual, the organisation they know is now changing around them, bringing anxiety with an unknown future and identity.

Leaders and managers have a key role in guiding and supporting staff in the process (having a specific role/task to manage others through the change can mean their individual process through the change may move much quicker). They guide and support their staff in letting go of the old identity, structures, roles, relationships, and systems and moving to new ones (reintegration). Mergers can be seen as a reflection of (and containing elements of) the liminality that Stein describes in this particular life stage.

Communication

In a 'link' to my last post, I came across this quote while reading Marshall Rosenberg's Non Verbal Communication this morning written by the Sufi poet Rumi - "out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right-doing, there is a field. I'll meet you there".

This makes me think about the huge subject of 'communication' at work. We can perceive situations from a place of ideas of 'rightness' and 'wrongness'. We judge, analyse, and classify others according to our 'inner world'. The level of impact varies, sometimes leading to overt conflict and difficult relationships, often creating a difficulty for the people around them. A team member may start to 'cut out' a colleague believing themselves to be 'right', and the other 'wrong'. The other person might react aggressively in a counter-attack, defensively, with confusion, or perhaps by being vindictive. Managers have a responsibility to support people in understanding and getting to the bottom of the problem, and they need to develop their own communication skills in supporting and handling this conflict well. They need to understand that these prejudices, criticisms, blame, insults, put-downs, and labels come from unexpressed feelings. They need to spend time helping to unpick what is going on and the underlying cause of the conflict. They need to be impartial, to have compassion, to have a good sense of their own and other-awareness and motivations, and help people to express and understand their vulnerabilities, fears and anxieties that lie beneath the outward behaviour. A manager can help bring a new self and other- understanding and learning.

looking in the mirror

I made my third visit yesterday to see Anthony Gormley's Field for the British Isles which has been in Torquay for 6 weeks - today was the final day and I wanted to see it one last time before it left. Each visit has been a different experience. I got there early - I wanted to experience it in quiet, to contemplate it in silence.

I have been incredibly moved by it - so many layers and levels of meaning - from what is basically a lot of lumps of clay!

Gormley talks about the piece's subject - the experience of looking. His hope is that "the old formula of a 'subject who looks' at an object which 'is looked at' can be transmuted into us looking at ourselves".

I reflected on this - what do I see in and about myself by looking at 40,000 clay 'gazers'? The viewer is made the subject - I am being looked at. I feel unnerved- there seems an expectation of me. I look at individual figures and some make me laugh. I remind myself they are simply pieces of clay yet they are full of individual character. And I think about how the 'character' comes from the person who created each figure - they may have been 7 years old, they may have been 70 years old, each with their own history. The gazers link their makers with me, a viewer. The figures fill the entire space - the imaginative space is in the 'witness'. And I realise I have made a connection with these little characters - and feel sorry that they are going!

We often use the term 'looking at' in mentoring, Action Learning, and training. We take time out to 'look at' what is going on. We can discover that some of the things we see in others are parts of ourselves (there is model used in training to understand this concept called the Johari Window). We can become aware that what we see may be something different from what it is, and so what we 'see' is our assumption. We see different options for ourselves based on new knowledge. We can look in the 'mirror' and see ourselves .

Field of the British Isles : Anthony Gormley

Radiant thinking

I worked on a Mind Map today (see post below), for a presentation I am giving in a fortnight. I am intrigued by the photos of 'natural architecture' Buzan includes in The Mind Map Book. They illustrate the frequency the structure appears in biology.

A few moments later I noticed the dried flower of Allium christophii on my windowsill. I grew these for the first time this year and when they dry, they become this beautiful object, with the structure of the flower uncovered.

Buzan explains that The Mind Map is the external form of the brain's processes which he calls 'radiant thinking'. My Mind Map isn't finished yet - it is itself a reflection on, and illustration of, my learning over the last 6 months in Action Learning skills, and as I continue to work on it, it's still coming up with new connections.

the 'work' in silences

This section in Tony Buzan's "The Mind Map Book" jumped out at me today "...the space between items can be as important as the items themselves. For example, in Japanese flower arranging, the entire arrangement is based on the space between the flowers. Likewise in music the sound is arranged around a silence".

Twelve hours later, in the kind of synchronicity that so often happens, I heard classical guitarist Julian Bream on the radio on a programme about the lute ... "the silences are important in music -they provide the tension between the notes".

As it is in mentoring and Action Learning. These provide creative opportunities for silence - for reflection and to allow insights to emerge. A particularly 'insightful' question often brings a 'stopping' of words - and as a mentor or facilitator I can feel the palpable creative tension in that silence when I know that something is being revealed and realised within the person I am working with - a new meaning for them.