My Leadership Learning Journey

Let us work successfully together

DEAR FELLOW TRAVELLER,

I hope all is well for you and you have had the opportunity to put some of the experiences I shared with you into your own professional practice. This time I would like to beat the big drum: I have often made reference to the valuable knowledge that received in the trainings that I attended and how it helped me to break through most obstacles.

Why? Well...Many of today’s societal, environmental, business and humanitarian challenges are so complicated and interrelated that we can only overcome them when we work together, from local multi-stakeholder collaboration initiatives to global corporations, government institutions, civil society. 

To address the challenges of complexity, what is required is a common understanding of collaboration. Our future depends on our ability to collaborate well, rather than competing. A clear, strong, and shared purpose is the glue that binds people together and motivates them to eliminate differences, to share different perspectives, essential for understanding a system and push it towards change.

Whatever you are working on, you have to incorporate diverse participation from across the whole system, be it in your close professional environment or the broader structure. If you want to understand more about the Art of Stakeholder Collaboration, I recommend the 4-day foundation training from 2-5 December 2014 and/or the advanced training on 9-12 December 2014 , both taking place in Potsdam (near Berlin), Germany. As a part of the StakeholderDialogues.net community you will receive a 5% discount for one training and 10% when you register for both.

Trust me, you will benefit greatly!

Best wishes

Rose Raymond

7th (...and last) destination: Wholeness

DEAR FELLOW TRAVELLER,

We are reaching the last destination of my Leadership Learning Journey.

It was a pleasure to have you on board and to show you how I managed to turn around my initiative for a sustainable commodity in Africa involving a multitude of diverse actors. Ultimately, my colleagues and I were able to capacitate the system: We provided concrete tools, assistance, and resources and enabled producers to participate sustainably in the global market, giving them the chance to sell better priced products while simultaneously raising the level of social and environmental integrity along the value chain.

This Leadership Journey was an important lesson for me as well as for my colleagues...and at the end we can say that we succeeded. We engaged all the stakeholders, gained their trust, created commitment and ownership not only for our common goal, but also for the common greater good. Looking back at the work done and the results achieved, it was, indeed, a complicated process.

My aim was to turn an originally very fragmented system into a stable collaborative system for joint implementation. To get there, I applied a variety of tools and techniques, above all the Dialogic Change Model and the Collective Leadership Compass.  One of the bigger challenges was to keep the larger context and the bigger picture in sight while dealing with a lot of details. That is why we are dedicating this destination to the dimension of WHOLENESS.

WHOLENESS: EVERYONE AND EVERYTHING IS CRUCIAL

From the moment I started leading and managing this initiative, I realised that the process is a system of people coming from different socio-economic environments, with special needs and expectations - professionally, but also as human beings. My job was to understand them and seek to be understood in order to reach our common goal.

Now imagine a room where representatives from 6 NGOs, managers and executives from different private sector companies and public sector institutions came together with the stated aim of producing agreements, to make decisions that directly affect and strengthen the capacity of small-scale farmers. The larger context was always to elevate the value chain towards more responsibility and a special focus on sustainable production.

Who would have thought that my initiative across national and organisational boundaries could create a climate of collaboration? It was a big challenge, especially when it comes to commitment for the purpose of others. We were often confronted with long list of criticism. I learnt that we had to attend to the quality of dialogue, to engage people, and make our learnings collective if we wanted to succeed in a complex multi-stakeholder project. Therefore, I had to deal with people and things on a very detailed level.

Yet it was essential to also focus on the larger scale and not to lose perspective on what we wanted to achieve with the initiative. Our selective perception often concentrated on surpassing differences, between us and others and us and there was a real threat of losing connection the world. I often thought that I could somehow connect the parts, but most of the time I was struggling with keeping a sense of WHOLENESS.

How can we develop our competence in the dimension of wholeness?

We can make a commitment to place pour action plans on a larger context by listening to stakeholders (COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE), checking what are the best practices in our field of work (INNOVATION), through exposure (WHOLENESS) and inquiry into the underlying story, when we did not understand where another person (HUMANITY). It helps to see the larger picture of an issue because we have to remind ourselves that we are committed to something larger than ourselves. 

WHOLENESS is looking at the entire project as well as the environment in which it exists, the interrelationship of the parts to each other.

LESSONS LEARNED ALONG THE WAY

As the head of the project secretariat of this initiative, I needed to accelerate progress. During this leadership journey I learnt a number of useful tricks that helped me to manage my workload at the office as well as my ever-growing list of tasks (reduce complexity). With the help of the Dialogic Change Model,  I designed and started the process with an initial container to foster trust, credibility, and engagement. The Collective Leadership Compass as a planning tool helped me to define the single roles of the different people involved, to plan resources, and create formal agreements. Once all stakeholders were on board, were prepared to move forward with me, once we set the goals and started reaching them, it was important to increase the returns on our investmented time and energy as well as the impacts on development outcomes by integrating a monitoring and evaluation system. Now we are going forward with this initiative to make it stable and sustainable by capacitating a bigger container of people and estalishing a long-term process.

WHAT ABOUT YOUR LEADERSHIP LEARNING JOURNEY?

Please share YOUR experiences with me! If you have any comments, advice to give, suggest other ways of dealing with a complex situation, feel free to send me a message (to your right, next to my picture).

Thank you to all of you for travelling with me, it was a great pleasure.

Take care & best wishes!

Rose Raymond

6th Destination: Innovation

DEAR FELLOW TRAVELLER,

After dealing with the complexity of my initiative over the last months, I have come to realise that there are many more things that can limit a leader’s ability to succeed. But whilst there are many reasons for giving up, there are even more to continue. I reckon you know by now that I don't give up that easily and rather see hindrances as opportunities to learn and find ways to overcome obstacles that come my way.

I have learnt that the two most important ingredients are teamwork and collective learning. Collaborative initiatives for sustainability are collective learning journeys. Success or failure of collaborative initiatives can be put down to the balance between the six dimensions of the compass: HUMANITY, COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE, WHOLENESS, FUTURE POSSIBILITIES, ENGAGEMENT, and INNOVATION.

THIS TIME, WE WILL HAVE A LOOK AT INNOVATION...

INNOVATION is a key lever for growth – a top priority for many organisations. It arises from Creativity, Excellence, and Agility - its aspects in the Collective Leadership Compass. It is not solely the capacity of a single person. In fact, the best ideas come from the passionate interests of a group of people who bounce their ideas off each other. And...if you look at some of the most successful projects in the world, you will see that the majority of the ideas are triggered by external stimuli.

The point of the matter is you can have all the ideas, knowledge and skills in your field but if you don’t have the right mind-set to combine them with the aspects of the Compass such as WHOLENESS and COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE - i.e. connecting them to the larger context, to the world outside, and developing them with others - chances are you will not be very successful.
Indeed, INNOVATION involves acknowledging diverse views, including expertise, and bringing in new and creative ways of seeing the challenges or overcoming differences.

EXERCISE

I found the following little exercise on brainstorming very helpful in generating creative ideas. I invite you to try it out for yourself and in a group:

1. Postpone and withhold your judgement of ideas.
   Do not suggest that an idea won’t work or that it has negative aspects. All ideas are potentially good. Suspend judgement at first. At this stage, avoid discussing the ideas as this will inevitably involve either criticising or complimenting them. Ideas should be put forward as solutions or to spark solutions. Write down all ideas.
2. Encourage wild ideas and exaggerate.
   The wilder the idea the better. Shout out bizarre and unworkable ideas to see what they spark off. No idea is too ridiculous. Exaggerate ideas to the extreme.
3. Quantity counts at this stage, not quality.                                                                           Go for as many ideas as you can come up with at this point. Narrow down the list later. The more creative ideas a person or group has to choose from, the better. If the number of ideas at the end of the session is very large, there is a greater chance of finding a really good idea. Keep each idea short, do not describe in detail – just capture its essence. Brief clarifications can be requested. Think fast, reflect later.
4. Build on the ideas put forward by others.
   Use other people’s ideas as inspiration, build and expand on them. Creative people are also good listeners. Combine several of the suggested ideas to explore new possibilities. It’s just as valuable to be able to adapt and improve other people’s ideas as it is to generate the initial idea that sets off new trains of thought.
5. Every person and every idea has equal worth.                                                              Every person has a valid viewpoint and a unique perspective on the situation and the solution. In a brainstorming session you can always put forward ideas purely to spark off other people and not just as a final solution. Don't hold off, find your way of expressing your ideas, even if you need to write down your ideas on a piece of paper and hand it out. Encourage participation from everyone. Each idea presented belongs to the group, not to the person who said it. It is the group’s responsibility and an indication of its ability to brainstorm if all participants feel able to contribute freely and confidently.

Where does my initiative stand?

I have already told you about my colleague John...He is my favourite sparring partner. Do you remember what he told me? When we stopped at my 2nd destination about Building Collaboration, he said: 

"Motivated people are extremely important to the spirit of your project. If they aren't engaged it will be difficult to drive innovation and creativity."

As a matter of fact, I managed to engage all participants of my initiative, and now, after having consolidated agreements, it is time to ensure that we reached our intended results. Result-orientation is a key factor for success. The of the explains why this is important for my process. It is important because you will reflect on the original initiative as well as on the ongoing process.

To improve our performance I was encouraged to introduce monitoring and evaluation tools, hence only if you learn from your experience you can improve your practices and activities in the future. Sometimes it becomes apparent that certain aspects were not adequately considered or that important stakeholders were not included in the process. At this point, it may therefore be helpful to take up the approach used in Phase 1 again to understand the ways in which the project developed and stimulated change.

Phase 3 can take months or years, and is concluded when the agreed-upon goals have been reached. During a Tailor-Made Training , conducted by Andrew Aitken , which John and I attended, we could focus on our project work, analyse our results, and the effects produced. We were enthralled by the training and decided to send some colleagues to the training course in Potsdam where they could learn about the Dialogic Change Model.

The next destination will already be the last of my Leadership Learning Journey. If you like me to pay attention to something specific, let me know by writing a message and I will try to consider it for the last stage of my journey.

Until then enjoy reading and see you in two weeks!

Best wishes

Rose Raymond

5th Destination: Future Possiblities

Dear Fellow Traveller,

If you could go back to all the decisions that you took during this year, how many would you take in precisely the same way? Do you recall a situation where you wish you would have been more resolute? 

This time, I will be telling you about what qualities I have to have as a manager of a complex process. Being in the middle of a group of people and numerous issues, I have to take decisions all the time. However, for me, these qualities did not always come naturally, sometimes I had to learn them the hard way.

Making decisions can be hard, but also rewarding...

A core quality of mine, which I also look for in managers that I work with, is Decisiveness. You certainly remember my account, at the beginning of this journey, of how difficult the situation was when I took over the initiative from a former colleague and how I had to step into a leader's role... I certainly knew that wringing my hands in desperation would not help me... So I took my first decision: To do something about it. I decided on the best course of action, I started to follow-through and get things done. This was probably the best decision I could make in that moment and I would certainly make it again... It saved me from chaos. 

I know that making decisions and taking action is sometimes hard, but it is one of the most vital success attributes for leaders. After all, when you make a decision you often take risks and can make mistakes. So it is all the more important to celebrate when you make the right decision and to learn from the bad ones. It has always been crucial for me to realise my mistakes, to learn from them, to take responsibility and to be accountable for my actions, and especially my inactions.

The importance of future possiblities

If we have a look at the Collective Leadership Compass again, there is a reason why Decisiveness is next to Future Orientation and Empowerment in the dimension of FUTURE POSSIBILITIES. Indeed, making decisions is the only way to actively walk into the future and when we start shaping it, it is very empowering. Today, more than ever, we need to take action, to innovate and move towards a sustainable future.  The dimension FUTURE POSSIBILITIES is therefore the one that drives changes, carries hope, but it can also seem tremendously challenging and trigger you fear of the unknown. It is however indispensable as the implementation of sustainable development as a long-term process needs goals, drive, values like ambition, and the capacitation of a multitude of people. 

How to plan the future together

Now back to my initiative...In order to move forward and build a stable collaborative system for joint implementation, I needed us all to clarify the goals, to commit, to establish which roles different people would have, and plan resources, and create formal agreements. Phase 2 of the Dialogic Change Model explains precisely this step into the future. At the beginning of my journey I've told you that I had to push agreements on guidelines, future funding structures and manage alignment and internal agreement processes within the core group. While phase 1 of the Dialogic Change Model is more about building trusting relationships, phase 2 is characterised by formalizing stakeholders' commitment for change and laying the grounds for the future.

Exercise: setting and reaching goals

• Step 1: Determine a time frame in which you want to realise your goals (My recommendation: Not less than 1 year and not longer than 5 years)
   
• Step 2: Think about the aspects that are important for you during this period (Once I reached this goal, things started to improve and I am satisfied with myself.).Add all aspects that spring to mind (brainstorm with posts-its, maps, lists...). This can be everything, for instance, professional or personal goals... Then start to cluster them: If it fits, create five clusters, which we call the.
  
  Please make sure that:
  1. a cluster relates to your personal development ("I ran a marathon", "I meditate every day" or "I won a dance contest")
  2. a cluster covers the social part ("I have a great family" or "my social network works great")
  3. not more than three clusters are defined by your professional goals.
      

• Step 3: Once you have sorted the clusters, specify a goal for each cluster (if you find more goals, try to define a top goal). Then write down all the goals and formulate them in a way that you can remember them.
   
• Step 4: For creative people: For each goal, find one word that describes it. Write the words down. The initial letters of these words must again give you a word that you can remember. So, whenever you think of this special word, you will instantly remember the other words and the goals they describe.
  
  When you start planning the realisation of your next goals, you can take the as a guiding tool. The objective of this exercise consists in working towards your goals step by step (And of course you can change your BIG FIVE at any time).
   
• Step 5: Now, for 2015 or for the next 3 months, think of 3 steps that will get you closer to your individual goals (at least one step and a maximum of 5 per goal).
   
• Step 6: Take the Collective Leadership Compass with the 6 dimensions and aspects, have a look at your time frame, think about the skills you need to pay special attention to, and define how you will do that.
   
• Step 7: Write down in your calendar when you will check your short- and long-term goals again.

*(This exercise is adapted from an idea by John Streckeley: Strelecky, and John Lemke, Bettina: The Big Five for Life: Was wirklich zählt im Leben, Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag (2009).

I hope you will find this exercise very useful.

A lot of people that I meet often tell me how difficult it is to steer complex process and to find proven methods to accompany bringing together individuals with ideas and potential, who are motivated to become change-makers in their environment. That's when I always recommend the use of the Dialogic Change Model.  As a matter of fact, this November, I am sending my own team to The Art of Stakeholder Collaboration 1 course in Cambodia for them to learn the methodology and using the benefits of implementing well-planned stakeholder collaboration. 

Always remember: Having a positive outlook, inspiring others, and taking a stance for sustainability is what helps you and others to create a common vision for the future!

Next time we will talk about INNOVATION. Exciting! :) ...See you in two weeks.

Best wishes!

Rose Raymond

4th Destination: Improving the quality of dialogue

Dear fellow traveller,

Today we are arriving at my fourth destination. I have just returned from a conference on Civil and Human Rights and I am still trying to come to terms with the experience. 

Let me explain why...
It was was one of those conferences that, I am sure, you have experienced as well, where you soon notice that commitments made are less and less likely to be taken seriously. Perhaps you also had the impression that conversations lose their meaning and any prospective progress. It is because too little attention is paid to the quality of dialogue and that's why I thought that this experience would be a very good example to showcase the importance of dialogic quality.

And then it begins to totter...

Actually, during the conference, I lost count of the times I heard people say: “Yes, but…”. People seemed to focus too much on their own projects or on their personal perspective. And then it begins to totter – people do not listen to each other, one person talks a lot, others never talk in public, but, during the coffee break, express severe criticism, and I feel the real issues are never bought to the table. The result is that the promises made seem to get blander each time I attend one of these conferences, something that always saddens me because the issues don't lose their urgency.

Raising my level of consciousness

However, I have to admit that I used to be a poor listener as well. You surely remember that at the beginning of my journey, when I composed my personal choreography, I identified HUMANITY as my development area, for I am rather impatient. I discovered that the aspects which needed my attention were MINDFULNESS and EMPATHY when I needed to (re-)design my dialogue process and personal abilities with the Collective Leadership Compass . I was confronted with the wide variety of people involved in my initiative, who I needed to connect with. I had to start asking how I could accelerate their understanding and awareness of different situations and solutions.

Say "yes, and..."

While I have always appreciated the different approaches that were brought in by different people, this diversity made it all the more complicated to set goals together. It was even harder to make sure that these common goals are reached in future. I was fed up with serial monologues, of people giving their views one by one without really making reference to the contribution of the preceding speaker. That's when I realised that the design of these so-called dialogues lacked a great amount of consciousness. So the first thing I changed was that I started to consider the perspectives of other stakeholders by getting rid of the "yes, but..." and turning it into a "yes, and...". I focused on what we had in common, what we all, myself included, could contribute. So, again and again, I had to ask myself: What common ground do we actually share and we can really build on? That was a first good step as it created an atmosphere not only of respect, but more importantly of inclusion.

At my second destination I told you how I learnt to build a good container in order to engage all participants across institutions and foster COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE. But the dialogue soon stalled when one of the high-level representatives changed and the new person was adopting a rather critical tone towards the issue of the initiative. So I needed to find new ways of engagement in order to minimise the repercussions on future progress and even the milestones that we had already passed.

A little exercise, which I remembered from a Stakeholder Collaboration course that I attended last year, helped me to find a constructive way of engaging this high-level representative (who could have easily prevented me from moving forward) by enhancing the quality of dialogue between us and find a way of thinking together:

The dialogic practices

Dialogue is dynamic process that requires a delicate balance between inquiry (seeking new understanding) and advocacy (seeking to be understood):

1. Inquiry needs the skills of listening and the ability to suspend judgement.
2. Advocacy requires the courage to speak out one's voice, to convey a purpose and defined course of action, and at the same time to understand one's position or criticism of other position while respecting difference.

Exercise:

I would like you to pay close attention to your contributions during your next meeting, be it small or big. Be attentive to your way of conversing, raise your level of consciousness to reflect on it and be able to see how other participants play their part, according to these characteristics and guiding questions (print them out and peek every now and then if that helps you):

Voice:

• Can I make myself heard?
• Do I get resonance?
• In what way do I need to develop my voice?
• Do I speak my authentic voice, with self-trust and confidence?
• Do I have access to my own voice or it is that of others?
• Do I dominate other with my voice?
• Can I authentically speak on behalf of the larger common goal?

Listen:

3rd Destination: Process Planning

Dear fellow traveller, 

Welcome to my third destination. As a frequent traveller I am always looking for things that make my life easier and more comfortable on the road. For instance, I have a soft neck pillow that I use on a long trip, a compressible packing bag that is not heavy to carry, and a tablet for my business necessities.

This same easiness of travelling I also like to achieve in my work. I try to learn about new tools and apply them to make my work easier, which also affects my work-life balance.
For the challenge ahead of me – planning the process of my initiative – the question was how I could advance my skills in that area. There are plenty of project management tools out there, but they were too technical and not strategic enough for my needs.

After having successfully established an initial core container and built a space for dialogue where people could exchange openly and work collectively during my last destination, it became time for me to plan our process a bit further and more in depth. So there was the next challenge in front of me.

It is not the first time I have done this, but this time I wanted to try something new, another way that makes it easier to plan and get a higher outcome in the end. From my past experiences, I know that too many processes are implemented superficially, which is the main reason why, too often, they do not work. Today, be it in the corporate world and also increasingly in the public sector, contexts and processes are very complicated. Coping with complexity demands engaged people, a good team spirit, and structures to deal with what is unknown to us. The underlying process that considers all these elements and holds them together, therefore, needs to be designed very carefully and thoroughly.

How did I do it? Well… I decided to return to the Collective Leadership Compass .

Let me explain why...

Last June, I was invited to attend a dialogue event about the Future of Leadership, organised by the BMW Foundation and the Collective Leadership Institute in Berlin. I wanted to broaden my understanding of leadership, so I was very interested to learn and exchange with other decision-makers that night. The evening kicked off with keynotes by Petra Kuenkel and Markus Hipp , followed by a discussion among the participants.
Towards the end of the event and after some very inspiring conversations, I finally got a hold of Petra Kuenkel as I absolutely wanted to ask her for advice on the process I needed to plan and my initiative. Petra had mentioned during her speech that the institute had also been using the Collective Leadership Compass for process design. She explained to me how it can serve as a planning tool.

So… here is briefly how it works as a planning tool...

Exercise:

• First you need to think about the task or leadership challenge ahead or what you would like to achieve.
• Then set a time-frame (depends on the challenge).
• Based on the leadership challenge you have phrased before, relate your actions to the dimensions of the compass. You can do this in two ways:

1. Take an already prepared action plan (for example, your Big Five, or your professional work plan) and compare it with the six dimensions of the compass. Use the dimensions and aspects as check and balance. Evaluate if any of the dimensions is missing or overemphasised. Then think about actions that would ensure a better balance.
2. Plan the implementation of your goals with the six dimensions of the compass. Make sure you include inward-looking actions (your personal development or learning steps) and outward looking action (how you lead and what you actually do). You can start with your development areas or focus on your strong areas first. Alternatively you go through each dimension evenly and note down whatever action steps come to your mind. Once you have gone through all dimensions, highlight the action steps that you find most important. Finally, create an action plan out of this information.

• At the end fix a date for when and how you will review your progress for every action. 

Once I had applied the Collective Leadership Compass to my process, I could soon reap the rewards of good process planning, which I will tell you more about at my next destinations. I hope you will experience the same.

See you in two weeks!

Best wishes,

Rose Raymond

2nd Destination: Building Collaboration

Dear fellow traveller,

Welcome to the second destination on my leadership learning journey.

I hope that the little exercise at the first destination was helpful. What have you experienced when you used the Collective Leadership Compass? I hope you were able to compose your personal choreography very easily.

Feel free to share you experiences with me...send me a personal message and we can talk about it!

So, let's go back to my journey. As I wrote in my last report, it was very important for me to identify my strenghts and areas of development. I could then focus on the other actors. So I started looking for committed people in the group of stakeholders, the ones that I could engage easily to get further with my process. 

I started talking to different persons — people who work in the public sector, the private sector, and to the NGOs involved in the process. I remember that nearly everyone I met or talked to on the phone said “What a great idea!” However, when I tried to set goals and started to plan, I realised that I was soon faced with problems like lack of trust, loss of credibility, and disengagement.

I remember that my colleague John told me “Enlarge your lens, Rose. Think about the things people have achieved, something that previously seemed impossible and get them on board. Motivated persons are extremely important to the spirit of your project. If they aren't engaged it will be difficult to drive innovation and creativity. Raise their attention with your vision, talk about what they really want because when they receive your attention, they will automatically and effortlessly be more engaged.” 

That was indeed very insightful, but how I could get there? 

Engaging others: The Dialogic Change Model

So I decided to go back to my choreography because I had found out that, actually, ENGAGEMENT is my second strongest dimension. The Collective Leadership Compass also revealed that, on the other hand, I am also impatient, not a good prerequisite when working with others on a large-scale project. 

I needed to learn the patience to listen even to the most critical stakeholders and decided that I had to strenghten my skills in engaging others and started reading about how to do it methodologically. In a course dealing with The Art Stakeholder Collaboration and stakeholder engagement that I attended, I learned about the Dialogic Change Model:

It is a model to foster dialogic exchange and design your stakeholder collaboration process with an integrated approach, combining change methodology, dialogic skills and reflection. Every multi-stakeholder process should move through four different phases, while the six dimensions of the Collective Leadership Compass balance every phase.

Phase 1: Exploring & Engaging

The first phase of the Dialogic Change Model was about understanding the context of my process, engaging all actors involved, how to build trust and a healthy relationship with all the people I have to work with. Therefore, I learned that it is necessary to understand also the dynamics of the stakeholder collaboration initiative, and that ENGAGEMENT starts small and it requires a team of committed people.

One of the most helpful parts was to know that I had to build an initial container, a small cross-sector team, with my stakeholders. The term ‘container’ refers to the function and relational quality of an initiating team or core group of interested actors. A good container exists if these actors are dedicated to the change envisaged, emotionally engaged with future possibilities and if they are committed to initiating and implementing the intended change jointly. Very often, if a good container for change was missing, change did not happen, failed or was difficult to achieve, which sadly was the case for me and my initiative. 

Thanks to the Dialogic Change Model, I learned how to build a container, how to create and sustain the engagement of my stakeholders. The result: I could soon reap the benefits of an energised and excited collaboration. The situation had changed.

I can assure that it is worth investing in properly engaging people and in a good container. It pays off many times over. All participants in the initiative where prepared to take a risk, to venture in an unknown territory with uncertain outcomes, they were ready to follow me and my lead. They moved from being a fragmented group were to jointly piloting an innovation, across institutions. Looking back at the Collective Leadership Compass, I realised that they gradually increased their openness to COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE.

Exercise

Now it's your turn again. I invite you to invest some time in relationship building and building your container. Therefore, I would like you answer the following questions and think about how that applies to your project. For every question, I have a few recommendations for you:

What if key actors do not want to get engaged, do not join the initial container, and refuse to get involved?

• Rethink your stakeholder analysis.
• Design specific strategies to engage difficult actors and be sure that you understand what makes them engaged or not.
• Check if the time for the initiative is right.
• Convey the goal, but link it to the interest of the difficult stakeholder.

What if people change position, drop out or send substitutes?

• Accept that you may need to slow the process down and ensure that you get the new people on board.
• If the people attending meetings continuously change, try to engage superiors more consciously and explain how important it is that the same people attend consistently.
• Invest in relationship-building and invest in time in getting people on board.

What if people do not understand the difference between a good container and a formal committee or task force?

• Invest in relationship-building and building the case for change. Inspire information and people, support people’s aspirations to make a difference, think in future possibilities rather than maintaining the status quo.
• Honour people’s contributions and acknowledge their viewpoints.
• Create an atmosphere of creative and constructive exchange of ideas.

I hope these questions & recommendations are a good starting point when you start planning and analyse the dynamics of people, teams, and organisations! 

Enjoy the exercise and see you in two weeks!

Best wishes,

Rose Raymond

1st Destination: My personal choreography

Dear fellow traveller,

Welcome back to my leadership learning journey. As you already know from my last correspondence, at the beginning of my work as the head of the project secretariat of an  initiative for a sustainable commodity in Africa  it was very frustrating to see how the multi-stakeholder process was was heading towards a wall.

The  intention of the initiative was to strengthen the capacity of small-scale farmers, elaborating a responsible value chain with a special focus on sustainable production, but the problems seemed so big that did not see our possibilities. I felt guilty even though I was not really responsible for the current situation. But I was not ready to give up, on the contrary, I was determined to change the situation.  

The Situation:

First, let’s have a quick look at what happened: The 6 NGOs involved in the initiative had criticised that the companies were just using the initiative for their own purposes, be it green-washing or to make more profit than truely implementing business practices that really minimise environmental and social impact. Therefore the NGOs asked for a deeper level of commitment from businesses, a way to show that they intend to go beyond past promises. At the same time the private sector companies were overly interfering with our secretary, looking over my and my colleagues shoulders. For instance, when I arrived to the office in the morning, I would find an email about changes on the smallest level of detail. Sadly, I soon had the feeling that they didn’t trust me with my work and my motivation was draining very rapidly.

However, this was not the only difficulties that challenged me: The initiative was co-financed by tax payer funds, hence every single step had to be documented, the incessant controlling in order to make sure that things are going according to the guidelines and directives of our public sector institution. Time was running out even faster while I was already under extreme time and success pressure.

I soon realised that I could not go any further like this and I decided to think about a way out of had become a can of worms for me.

I started leading then we led collectively:

I started reflecting on what I had personally learned and had read about multi-actor alliances, stakeholder collaboration, collective action, and my leadership leadership in all of this.  I needed to understand how to best put my skills to use, know exactly what I had already accomplished, and look ahead to what still needed to be done. That's when I remembered what I had learned about the Collective Leadership Compass. The compass is a planning tool to take difficult hurdles of complex processes, enhance livelihood of better co-creation. and I decided to use it as an aid for me to figure out my personal strengths and weaknesses.  It deemed to be very valuable to analyse my situation and then compose my personal choreography. This was my first and probably most important step in my leadership learning journey and I invite you to do the same exercise.

Let's take a better look at the Collective Leadership Compass:

The compass consists of six dimensions inspired by human competencies and arranged in a balanced composition. For each of the six dimensions there are three elements. Together and in a state of equilibrium they strengthen the capacity of collective action in order to cope with challenges arising from complex multi-actor processes. To identify your personal strengths and weaknesses have a look at the table below, which explains the six dimensions and their three elements in more detail.

Now it's your turn!

• Which of the six dimensions you would identify as your strongest? Choose also one aspect of this dimension that you would define as your strength.
• After that, select your second strongest dimension and its particular aspect.
• Then tag one dimension that you would characterise as your development area and name the particular aspect as your area of attention.

In my case it is FUTURE POSSIBILITIES because I have excellent management skills and the ability to follow-through focusing on the most important. So my particular strength is decisiveness. As my second strongest dimension I identified ENGAGEMENT, especially process quality because I am able to manage systematically processes and operate reliable and transparent. My development area is HUMANITY because I am impatient, and my areas of attention are mindfulness and empathy. I experiences difficulties in suspending judgement. I recognised that skills of listening and inquiring are essential to build attentive and thankful relationships. With the use of the compass I could focus on my action areas, which are on the one side HUMANITY and ENGAGEMENT (Empathy and Connectivity):

• I needed to build personal connection with key actors and obtain their view on the initiative.
• Furthermore I had to build rapport with the key influencer of the initiative.

And on the other side FUTURE POSSIBILITIES (Future Orientation, Empowerment, Decisiveness):

• I had to step into a leader’s role by pro-actively shaping the process, pushing agreements on guidelines and facilitating conferences in a very structured way.
• Additionally I had to manage an agreement of the future funding structure
• I needed as well to manage alignment and internal agreement processes within the core group.

Within four weeks I had gained the trust of the key actors and created a climate of collaboration between me and the key influencer. So I could finally make progress with my initiative!

This exercise helped me to change the situation, which is now considerably different today from the way it was when I joined months ago. Hopefully you can find some nuggets in my learning journey that might help you as well.

With this in mind I wish you an enlightening and successful exercise.

Best wishes and see you in two weeks!

Rose Raymond

P.S.:  Click here to compose your personal or team choreography with the assessment tool...

Itinerary of the journey

Dear fellow traveller,

Let me introduce myself… My name is Rose. I was recently appointed the task of pushing forward an initiative for a sustainable commodity in Africa involving a multitude of diverse actors.

Unfortunately, when I took over, the initiative was almost at a standstill. As you can imagine, on the one hand, I was very excited and on the other, I was overwhelmed by the complexity of the stakeholder environment. On top of that, many stakeholder were very unhappy about either not being heard or not seeing any “light at the end of the tunnel”. I can tell you this… in the end, the initiative turned out to be a great success! That’s why I absolutely want to share my story on my multi-stakeholder process over the next few weeks. But first, let me explain my challenge.

My Challenge:

My mission was to reinvigorate an initiative, across national and organisational boundaries. I soon learnt that I also have to design and to lead this multi-stakeholder process. To be honest I was uncertain about the best way to navigate through this complex and dysfunctional setting without clear structures and without the explicit mandate.

Burning Questions:

Naturally, I had a lot of burning questions: How can I pool everybody's resources, bring in expertise and make this project successful, effective, and sustainable? Can I lead the initiative together with everyone involved? How do I get all the diverse actors, with so many different opinions and goals to collaborate? Does this sound familiar to you?

My Leadership Learning Journey:

Over the next 7 weeks, I invite you to join me on my leadership learning journey. Every 2 weeks, we will stop at a destination… a milestone where I would like to share with you what I learnt, how I was able to overcome the difficulties that I faced:

• We will reach the first destination on 15 July. I will tell you about how I composed my personal choreography with the Collective Leadership Compass. 
• Two weeks later, I will show you how I engaged my stakeholders and drew them into a space of collaboration.
• In the middle of August, I will show how to plan a process using the Collective Leadership Compass.
• At the following destination, I invite you to reflect with me on dialogic quality and how to improve it.
• In September, I will talk about how I discovered the importance of future possibilities and innovation and why iterative learning mechanisms are important.
• And finally, I will tell you how the stakeholders of my initiative eventually developed ownership and contributed fruitfully to its success. 

I am very happy to take you with me on this exciting trip. Jump on board!

Best wishes and see you in 2 weeks! :)

Rose Raymond