Andrew Scott Training

Organisational Integrity (ii)

2012-01-12T12:32:00.001Z

Here's what lay behind my post before Christmas.

A client had approached me and asked me to design and run an awayday for them. We had met and discussed the needs, and agreed a draft design for the day, a date and so on.

Then they said that we would have to go through a tendering process. (I was slightly surprised at this, as the value of the event was not high, and I was already on an approved suppliers' register, following a previous 'framework' tender).

But what concerned me was that:

A) Either I was the only person being asked to tender, in which case it seemed entirely meaningless (particularly as one of their organisational priorities is reducing meaningless work...);

B) Or they were inviting others to tender, in which case:

Either they had really decided to use me, but were going through the motions (wasting their own and others' time, and compromising their integrity) or
It was a real competition, in which case I had been misled earlier, when we had agreed that I would do the work, on a specific date etc (on the basis of which I did the (admittedly small amount of) consultation and design at no cost).

Further, I was expected to sign declarations of non-collusion, non-canvassing etc, including a statement that I had not talked with anyone at the organisation about this bit of work.

That was clearly a nonsense, and I could not sign it.

The good news is that I have talked all this through with the appropriate senior managers, they agree with my analysis that the system has thrown up something which, inadvertently, goes against a number of their own principles of operation, and they are sorting it out.

But as a supplier, it can be hard to raise such issues ('I can't sign that!') if one fears one may lose a contract, or even a client. There must be a better way...

Organisational Integrity

2011-12-12T07:49:00.000Z

I am increasingly interested in the ways in which processes intended to increase transparency, fairness etc can sometimes drive people within organisations to act in ways that are lacking in honesty and integrity.

I am not attributing any ill-will here, or intention to deceive, but rather noticing that the cumulative effect of some processes and their collision with other organisational needs (both strategic and pragmatic) can have some unintended consequences that make the organisation look dishonest.

I will blog more on this shortly, when I have more time and when I have discussed the specific issue that has brought this into sharp focus with the appropriate senior managers...

Startling creativity

2011-11-28T17:32:00.000Z

A while back we had a chap called Gordon Macsween as a guest speaker at Essex Futures. He went down so well that we invited him back. His talk was memorable, entertaining and of real practical use.

All of which could be said of his new product, just launched - a wii for wee, or pretty nearly... You play games by directing your... well, that's enough detail I think. Suffice to say that it's a men only game, for very practical reasons.

Initially I wondered if it was a joke, but a quick glance at the company wwwsite persuaded me that it has real commercial possibilities.

Astonishingly creative idea - and yet...

Please remember to wash your hands.

Resilience

2011-11-18T09:53:00.003Z

I have been reflecting a lot on resilience recently (which I am considering as the ability to work under increasing pressures without a stress response). As preparation for some Stress Management workshops, I have been reviewing some of the most recent research (see for example Margaret Chesney’s lecture, available via iTunes University: “New Scientific Strategies for Managing Stress, Building Resilience and Bringing Balance to Life [Show ID: 20631]”)

I have also been coaching a number of people experiencing both chronic and acute pressures, and reflecting on what has helped them - and in some cases their remarkable and humbling resilience.

What has proved interesting is the degree to which the most recent research gives ever-more solid underpinnings for the four-fold framework which I have been working with. (Chesney talks explicitly about three strands, the physical (both physiological and behavioural) the mental, and the relational or social/emotional. To these I add the existential/spiritual - dealing with issues of meaning and value. That relates to my interest in Viktor Frankl, and also echoes Covey's framework in 7 Habits and First Things First. And Chesney refers to it tacitly on several occasions: the importance of purpose, meaning and value.

Of course, this is all linked to my interest in narratives: the interpretations that people place upon their experiences, which can have a huge impact on positive affect - which is what all four strands are designed to support (and again, Chesney has the research to demonstrate the links between positive affect and resilience.)

And as someone who attended a recent workshop pointed out, there is nothing new under the sun. The classic Christian virtues of Faith, Hope and Charity are a good bedrock for meaning, values, positive relationships, and positive affect generally - and similar underpinnings may be found in many other ancient and traditional wisdoms, with which I am less familiar.

The other area I am keen to explore, and possibly integrate more fully into my work on resilience, is humour. I have been intrigued by Metcalf's Humor Risk and Change programme and am sure he is onto something (though his presentation doesn't always play well with a British audience). So I am on the look-out for any research on humour and resilience - any clues?

Brain Myths

2011-11-10T08:43:00.000Z

Fascinating programme on the brain on Radio 4 yesterday afternoon - Mind Myths, still available on iplayer - busting popular myths about the brain. Perhaps the most notable is the canard that we only use 10% of our brains, leaving the rest dormant (and of course full of potential for scammers selling techniques to activate or access it). Dale Carnegie was, apparently, the first to put the 10% myth into print in his hugely influential How to win friends and influence people. However, brain scanning demonstrates the fallacy of this myth; and is somewhat humbling in revealing that motor action tends to require more of our brain than high level thinking...

The style is somewhat irritating, with regular jingles put in, presumably on the assumption that our attention span is only 20 seconds (another myth, in my view...) but when the experts are allowed to speak, it is really interesting; not least in exploring the origins of some of these myths, and the degree to which they have some basis in reality.

The bit I found least convincing was the debunking of the left brain/right brain issue. It seems to me, listening to the evidence, that there are significant differences between the different hemispheres (left brain is sensitive to language, right brain to melody, for example). I thought that to some extent they set up a straw man by taking the most simplistic and exaggerated left brain/right brain ideas to attack. Certainly the work on creative thinking that I have studied and which I work with all stresses the fact that it is the whole brain working effectively that is likely to be most creative; and further that talk of left brain as processing logic and right brain as dealing with relationship is a metaphor - but one based on the neuroscience.

Well worth a listen, though...

Foxy Knoxy or Inspector Clouseau?

2011-10-09T08:12:00.001+01:00

The power of narrative in public opinion has been made very clear by the Knox trial, appeal and acquittal.

On the one hand, the prosecutors invited us to believe in Knox as a sexual predator whose over the top games ended in the death of her flat mate.

On the other hand, the defence put before us a story of police ineptitude, with evidence collected late and without sufficient care, calling into question the DNA samples that provided the link between Knox and the knife.

Which story we find more credible is likely to have a strong influence on how we interpret the evidence: was Knox callous or inconsolable when seen in her lover's arms soon after the body of her flatmate was found? And so on.

What we tend to find is that once a preferred story is settled on by an individual (you or me) or a group (police, media...) all the evidence in the world can be interpreted to fit that story.

It is no coincidence that Knox's family hired a PR consultant to help them to present a different narrative to the world, particularly the press. And it's interesting (though sad) to note that a neutral narrative (such as 'she didn't do it, we don't know much else') is much less appealing to the press either than the Foxy Knoxy narrative, which is sufficiently salacious, or the police ineptitude narrative (particularly foreign police ineptitude!) which eventually won the day.

Highlights Awayday

2011-10-08T06:59:00.002+01:00

Great Strategy Day yesterday with Highlights Rural Touring. Jane is a Board member, and a neighbour in the village is Chair, so I was very well briefed! Moreover, having recently led a two day Facilitation Skills Programme for Akzo Nobel, I was being particularly mindful of my planning and faciltation - and that paid off.

We agreed to use a village hall as the venue. Their last strategy day (unwisely facilitated by someone else) had been held at a hotel conference centre, and they'd apparently got little done in the afternoon, partly thanks to the big lunch!

But we thought a village hall was more appropriate, as their business is bringing arts (music, theatre, a craft show etc) to rural village halls.

We were made very welcome at Soulby, with a light lunch (delicious soups and a fabulous range of home-made puddings) and cakes and biscuits throughout the day. The bill for the whole day for 14 of us, including food, was less than £130 - so will be exploring village halls for other clients!

The day itself went very well: they have a good Board and good staff, all well-informed (and having read the pre-work!) and up for creative and purposeful discussions. In the morning, after the introductions, we reviewed the last period to recognise successes and extract the learning. We also identified the major strategic issues that needed discussion, and four groups spent a significant amount of time scoping the territory of one or other of these, generating ideas, and identifying next steps to take it forward.

After a light but delicious lunch (qv) we heard from each group, and interestingly, although they had been looking at different issues, some common next steps emerged, that would address several of these strategic priorities. So we prioritised them with sticky dots, and put names against them to take them forward.

After tea and some home-made cakes (which none of us needed, but somehow many were eaten....) we looked at how the Board and Staff were working together, and wrapped up the day by checking the degree to which the objectives and peoples' individual expectations had been met - and whether there was any further work to be done.

A very productive day, with high levels of energy, creativity and enthusiasm throughout: on that basis I am confident Highlights will have a very successful season, even in the challenging climate in which they find themselves.

And if you live in Northumberland, Durham or Cumbria, look out for their shows in ia village near you: always well worth a visit!

These ethical dilemmas...

2011-10-07T07:45:00.002+01:00

Clare has just gone off to University, and had used the last of my stock of flipchart paper to line her trunk...

And then I found an old pad, beside the filing cabinet. But it was rather faded and yellowed. So the dilemma was do I bin it, as it doesn't convey that professional image which I strive to achieve (you may have your own views on how successfully....)? Or do I use it? After all, binning it would seem a waste.

I did toy with the idea of keeping it for the next time somebody needs to line a trunk, but by the time that comes round we will have forgotten about it.

Then I reflected on our stated policy about environmental impact and all that, and realised it is wholly meaningless to use recycled paper etc and then throw away a pad of flipchart paper unused.

So it's on the flipchart stand today and I'll be using it for the Highlights Awayday: and have to rely on the efficacy of my facilitation to create the desired image of professionalism.

Disclaimer

2011-09-22T12:08:00.000+01:00

Just received a lovely email from a participant on one of my programmes a while back, including:

Come to think of it, perhaps you should have a disclaimer (cf. disclaimers on cigarette packages) on your training courses: "This may significantly affect your life." ;-)

I love the idea of disclaimers, and may try to work up some others.

The Essentials of a Strong Story

2011-09-21T15:49:00.002+01:00

I've been digressing a little in the writing of my book on the multistory approach (see this blog, passim) and considering story more broadly. Here's my draft notes for a digression on that subject. I will be interested in any reactions...

The Essentials of a Strong Story

One of the fascinating things about story is the basic structure, which seems constant across times and cultures. The other essentials in any story are setting and character: in nearly every story one hears, both setting and character are important, and we will come back to them, but for the minute, let’s focus on the structure.

Structure

At its most fundamental, the structure of story consists of:

a beginning: this sets the scene and starts the action, typically with the disruption of normality

a middle: in which conflict grows to a crisis (whether conflict of ideas, internal conflict, or physical conflict)

an end: how things are resolved (or not) often after an unexpected final twist in the tale (and tail).

There are variations, of course, on this basic three-act structure; but in most stories those essentials are there.

At the heart of story, then, is the escalation of conflict, and for our purposes that is an important realisation.

For a start, it helps us to understand why so many organisational visions and leadership attempts to create a positive narrative fail: they are not stories, because they lack that element of conflict. A vision statement that simply expresses a pious aspiration for a better future is fine - but it will not engage people’s hearts and minds, it will not fire their imaginations, because it is a poor story.

Secondly, it helps us to understand why negative stories are so powerful. If they are conflict-saturated, they are strong stories.

Thirdly, it can help us to understand the unhealthy dynamics of much competition. In competition, the exciting narrative is our conflict with our competitors. Too often, organisations set up competition between individuals, teams or divisions within the organisation - and then wonder why there is unproductive conflict instead of collaboration and creativity. Competition can be a powerful motivator, but choose your competitors carefully, and notice the stories you tell yourself (and others) about them, and the ones they will be generating about you.

Perhaps most positively, this understanding of the structure of story helps us understand something of the nature of the stories we need to help people construct if they are really to engage them. They include conflict. So who is the enemy? In my worldview, the enemies are things like ignorance, difficulty, laziness and so on. One can construct great narratives with plenty of conflict based on these and similar. That then has the added value of uniting us against a common enemy - but that enemy not being some other person or group.

Also, if one is helping people in a genuine conflict, it can be interesting to ask them how a happy ending could conceivably be attained - what twist it would take to allow the conflicting parties to learn to trust - and even like - each other. As so often, placing these questions in the context of exploring possible stories frees people up to answer them in unexpected - and potentially valuable - ways.

Setting

The world in which the story takes place has a huge impact on it and how we understand it. Part of the enduring power of Austen, Dickens, Tolkien, or Rowling is the world each has created.

Again, this has some valuable applications to organisational life. Sometimes the negative stories are predicated on a much more interesting, intriguing (and sometimes more credible) world than the world of official organisational stories. Is it any surprise that there is such an appetite for them?

It also suggests that when we are helping people to develop Rich Descriptions, being curious about the setting of the story, and inviting a rich description of that, may help them to recognise the richer description as a fuller and more accurate account than their (typically thin) dominant story.

Character

The other essential for strong stories is interesting characters. Again, this can drive organisational stories in difficult directions. It is so much more interesting if the boss is an ogre than a reasonable person struggling to do her best in a complex and fast-changing world...

Having said that, once one reaches Thin Conclusions about others, they instantly become less interesting, so one can harness this desire for interesting characters by inviting people to consider that the people who populate their conflict-saturated stories are more complex and subtle than simply ‘malicious’ or ‘lazy,’ or whatever thin descriptor has been applied.

Evaluation Time

2011-09-21T11:26:00.000+01:00

I'm currently doing a lot of evaluation. Both Newcastle and Essex have asked me to undertake longer-term evaluation (ie of all cohorts to date over several years) of their respective 'Futures' programmes. Indeed, they have agreed to share results and learning, which is good collaborative stuff!

We're starting with a Survey Monkey survey, to get some quantitative and some qualitative data, and then following that up with interviews, to enrich the qualitative.
I've also just completed a pilot, with two cohorts, of an Academic Leadership Programme with Northumbria University, and of course that needs to be evaluated too.

One of the issues, particularly with the Academic Leadership programme, is that the Learning Objectives were not tightly articulated at the start.

But Andrew, you gasp, why did you not do that? It is text book stuff!

Well, perhaps - but perhaps the text books are wrong. In this case, the reason was clear and, I think, right. I wanted the participants on the event to have a large part in designing the programme as we progressed, to ensure that we were addressing the issues that they identified as most important to them.

It's a great way of ensuring both relevance and commitment (or 'buy-in' as I suppose the text book would have it) but it does mean you sometimes go in directions not initially foreseen - which is of course the point...

A Tender that Added Value

2011-08-24T07:47:00.000+01:00

I have been fairly critical of the whole tendering process in the past, based on my experience of it. However, a recent tender I took part in seems certainly to have added value for the organisation asking for tenders.

It was a large organisational change project, and seven organisations or consultants were invited to tender. Of these four were invited for an interview.

I was the first to be interviewed, and although the interview was fairly brief (scheduled for 45 mins but we talked for about an hour in the event), it was a very interesting discussion, in which they were very open about that fact that I had taken their thinking forward - not least with regard to the scale and complexity of what they were undertaking.

I have just received the feedback: I was their second choice, so did not win the tender. But what was clear from the feedback was that they had continued to learn from the others whom they had interviewed, and had really clarified, and to some extent reformulated, what they wanted.

The disadvantage of going first (I know there are also advantages) was that they were not able to ask me questions about issues that they discovered later in the process.

Thus their feedback to me was that they weren't sure that my approach would address some of these issues - and had no opportunity to quiz me on that.

Needless to say, I believe that had I been asked those questions, I would have been able to demonstrate how my approach did indeed address those issues.

However, what is clear is that they learned a lot based on the tendering and interviewing process, and made a decision informed by that: it may well have been the right decision, of course, but there are still clearly flaws in the process from the suppliers' point of view...

Essex Futures Final Day

2011-06-18T09:43:00.000+01:00

Yesterday we had the final day of this year's Essex Futures Programme.

It was gratifying to hear participants reflecting on their learning over the year - nad also the many friendships forged - and also helpful to hear their ideas on improving the programme for the future.

We were joined for the day by some staff and recent graduates from E15, the University's Acting School, who helped us to prepare dramatic summaries of the projects that the groups have been working on over the year as part of their learning.

These were as creative and entertaining as ever, and were performed in the evening for an invited audience of the previous cohorts, participants' managers, mentors, guest speakers from earlier in the programme, and senior members of the University. It made for a great celebration.

Vagaries of Tendering

2011-05-20T22:49:00.002+01:00

A couple of tender results in recently. One client, with whom I have worked for many years, can no longer use me for some programmes they want to use me for, as their tendering process failed to differentiate on quality (loads and loads of people got 100 % on all quality measures) so they are having to use the cheapest. They are nervous of this...

Another client had a more discriminating process, which did differentiate. I got some of the programmes I bid for, but not all. Some were good calls - the presentation skills workshops are being done by Simon Raybould of Aware Plus, who will do an excellent job for them. Others went to people I don't know who may well be good too. But what I did notice was that the of programmes I got, only one is really playing to my core strengths - the others I will do a decent job of, but are a bit tangential for me; but several I didn't get are much closer to my core skills and experience.

It's an odd process: not sure it works well for either buyer or seller...

Roger Steare on Love in Business

2011-05-16T08:09:00.001+01:00

I went to the York St John's Business School Annual Lecture last week. Both speakers were very good, but I was particularly struck by Roger Steare (who was the reason for my going at all).

I had been intrigued and impressed by his book Ethicability, and his work as a corporate philosopher. On this occasion he was talking about the Power of Love in Business.

His essential thesis was that if we leave our emotional self at home when we go to work, we lack integrity - in its meaning as wholeness - and that lack of integrity is costly for ourselves, our colleagues, our organisations and the world.

This was explored in some depth and from a number of perspectives: if I understood correctly, we were being taken through his new book: the Power of Love. On the basis of the lecture, it should be well worth reading.

Narrative Training

2011-05-05T21:58:00.000+01:00

I recently completed the 5 day Narrative Training programme offered by Professor Liz Todd and her colleagues Charmian Hobbs and Cate Crallan at Newcastle University.

It was an excellent grounding in Narrative therapy, and really fascinating for me.

We covered some fo the background ideas, particularly deconstruction, de-centred working and externalisation, and then worked through the Statement of Position Maps.

One of the interesting discussions was around the different uses of maps: to orientate, get an overview of a territory, plan possible routes, become aware of hazards, find out where we are if feeling lost, review a journey retrospectively, and so on. We also discussed the need for a compass in order to use a map well in practice: a rich metaphor for the need for some guiding principles for our work.

The programme was rich in input, discussion and practice; which really helped me to deepen my understanding. Significantly, I found that I was reading some of the texts (eg Michael Whites and ALice Morgan's) in a much more informed way: making more and different sense from them.

It was also helpful to clarify for me some differences and distinctions: between my work as a trainer and coach, as opposed to the therapists who were the others on the course, and also between my approach to using Narrative (and my underlying assumptions and philosophy) and that advocated by White the Narrative Therapy movement.

So an extremely useful five days - thoroughly recommended for anyone else interested in this approach.

Collaborating

2011-05-05T21:48:00.001+01:00

Whilst I do a lot of work solo, I really enjoy collaborating with others - and tonight have just come off the phone from a great call with Mike Cockburn of Sogno and Alan Sides of Sides Partnership. We've been putting ideas together for a potential programme for a client, and have come up with three very different approaches, each one of which would be great to run with these guys. Let's hope the client likes them...

Moving Mountains

2011-05-05T21:46:00.000+01:00

Today's Moving Mountains (Influencing and Negotiating Skills) programme ran very well. Unusually, it was an entirely female group (apart form myself) - there was a question raised about gender differences in terms of influencing and negotiating...

As ever, different people found different elements of the programme useful, but overall they all found it helpful and really entered into both the practical exercises and discussions, and the conceptual frameworks we were exploring.

As well as Harvard's classic negotiating model, and the push/pull influencing skills, I can't resist introducing the Multistory ideas.

This remains one of my favourite programmes, because people demonstrably find it so valuable...

Academic Leadership

2011-05-05T21:41:00.000+01:00

The second day of both cohorts of the Academic Leadership programme went very well this week. Both modules were joined by the VC for a session on leadership from his perspective, and also each by a different Dean to share her experience, and a different PVC to take feedback and questions. These were all useful sessions, but equally valuable was the learning generated by the groups form their own experiences and observations: they had had an assignment to look out for examples of good leadership in HE, and also to gather others' expectations of themselves as leaders, and both of these topics led to fruitful and interesting discussions. Looking forward to Day 3 for each cohort, in June.

Multistory coaching and interviews

2011-04-07T07:53:00.001+01:00

Very interesting coaching session yesterday, helping someone identify alternative plots in her past to undermine a problematic dominant story. Often humbled as I hear the resilience people have brought to very tough situations - and the matter-of-fact way in which they see that as nothing special. That story so easily gets buried by the stories of the difficult bits, which quite naturally attract a lot of their attention. See my job, in part, as helping them to see their resilience and resourcefulness as special - and as a resource they can draw on: part of the story of who they are.

Then had a fascinating interview for the book: as ever, it set a whole load of new thoughts going, as well as confirming the essential interest in the ideas. Sure I'm onto something useful here...

Unpacking Your Chair

2011-03-31T19:09:00.000+01:00

Had the next day of the programme for new professors at Newcastle today. The focus was on the use of media in support of the professor's role.

So half the day was in the TV studio, with media pro Tony Baker, learning the skills of television interviews and then practicing them on camera. This is always fascinating - both because I always learn something new about the art fo the TV interview, and because the academics talk about their research in new ways. So today I learned a bit about the life and work of John Piper, about a proposal in 1965 to demolish Whitehall and replace it with a new concrete civic space, and about Algerian film-making.

The other half of the day was run by Joanna Berry from the Business School, who took us through a range of Social Media, from blogging and micro-blogging to slideshare, youtube and hootsuite, explaining how they can be used, why they might be helpful and so on: a really fascinating afternoon.

A Day in London

2011-03-25T16:53:00.000Z

Had a very interesting interview with Ruth Spellman CE of the Chartered Management Institute for my book, as well as lunch with my sister.

Also managed to find some time to enjoy the National Gallery. Started in the Sainsbury wing enjoying the medieval work, then wandered round ad lib visiting various old favourites, and discovered a fantastic newly-acquired Monet on display!

It is the familiar waterlily pond, but this time reflecting a willow tree at sunset - quite different from the others I've seen of this subject. Wonderful limpid surface to the water, and the whole thing breaks up entirely if you get close - but from a few yards away is a wonderful meditative piece. How did he do that?

Returned to the Sainsbury wing to end my visit and discovered that the back of Durer's St Jerome has an apocalyptic vision on it - I didn't remember ever having noticed that before.

Now sat in the Wellcome Collection Cafe awaiting my old friend Laurence Cranmer of Woodgreen Consulting.

Essex Futures Media Training

2011-03-25T16:39:00.000Z

I spent Wednesday and Thursday with the Essex Futures programme. The Chancellor, Lord Phillips, gave an excellent introduction to the subject, based on his extensive, varied and eventful media career. Then the University Comms experts brought us up to speed with some of the key issues they are addressing.

The rest of the two days were run by Karen and Kevin from Mosaic Publicity. On the first day, Karen took sus through the 5 Ps of podcasting, and participants made a number of innovative and entertaining podcasts about their projects.

Then on the following day, we were put through our paces in radio and TV interviews. This is always both daunting and exciting, but everyone performed either well or excellently, and I think everyone found it both useful and enjoyable. As last year, the Mosaic team were excellent - fun, informative and very practical

More reflections on Narrative Training

2011-03-15T08:39:00.000Z

One of the underlying assumptions of narrative work is that we don't know how it is for someone else: what their experience is and how they are making sense of that. And that is clearly an important and useful assumption.

However, we also did a fascinating exercise on Externalisation in which somebody took on the role of a Problem identified by another participant as being something he or she would like to address. Then one or two others in the group interviewed the Problem, as Investigative Reporters, seeking to understand the Problem's tactics, intentions, allies and so on - and then the Problem's weak points, the individual's past successes in overcoming the Problem, etc etc.

This may sound a little artificial to anyone who has not worked in this way, but in every case, the Problem's originator reported that the Problem had accurately described its role in his or her life and the strategies he or she used - or could use - against it.

As well as being a fascinating demonstration of the power of Externalisation, it also demonstrated that the person taking on the role of the problem - who in some cases had never met the Problem owner previously - was able to understand the role of the problem in the individual's life, simply by drawing on his or her own intuition, experience etc.

So in fact we need to hold those two things in some kind of creative tension: on the one hand we can have very good insights into how things are for others, and these insights may be useful if explored very tentatively; but on the other hand we must always maintain the starting assumption that we do not know how it is for the other until we have asked, and remain very aware of the risk of our insights (which might in any particular case be wildly inaccurate) influencing our thinking or listening.

Narrative Training

2011-03-13T19:15:00.004Z

The first two days of the Narrative Training Programme I'm attending at Newcastle University have been very good. The first day was largely introductory, and we explored what narrative work means, and had fun de-constructing a few frequently-used terms that are perhaps not always helpful.

On day two we explored externalisation in some depth, which really added to my understanding, and also to my experiencing it in different ways, as well as practicing it with others and observing it in different situations.

Interestingly, I've found that my reading of work by Alice Morgan and Michael White has changed since the programme. Reading the same words conveys different meaning to me... I guess that relates to a deeper and more experience-based understanding of externalisation, and the broader thinking behind it.

As I said to Liz Todd, one of the training team, it’s not a set of tools, it's about an orientation, a set of attitudes, characterised by an almost naïve curiosity, but also informed by a set of skills and practices (such as avoiding accidental internalising questions – or interpreting according to a pre-existing ‘expert’ framework such as Gestalt...)

The training team is a great combination, and the other people on the course are very interested and interesting - so I'm really looking forward to the remaining days of the programme in a few weeks' time - and have lots to practice in the interim.

Academic Leadership Programme

2011-03-08T20:32:00.000Z

First day of the new academic leadership programme today at Northumbria University. A great group, and interesting sessions from the PVCs for R&I and L&T Peter Croney and Paul Golding respectively.

As ever, I learned a lot from the wide-ranging discussion - not least what they believe will be most helpful to spend time on in future sessions. And as so often, the coffee and lunch break conversations were rich too. Looking forward both to tomorrow's launch of cohort two, and of the next session with this cohort in May.

Half term

2011-02-22T16:24:00.000Z

Half term is upon us, so today we went for a walk: Hartsop, Boredale Hause, Angle Tarn and Hayeswater, for those who know the area. Largely walking through cloud, but a great time had by all. Matters philosophical and cinematic (and many others) discussed in depth and levity... Jane, Mike, Liz, Lulu and me... This is probably why I'll never be rich or famous, but it's the path I choose.

Essex Futures again

2011-02-21T18:37:00.000Z

Thursday and Friday were spent with the Essex Futures crowd. On Thursday we were discussing how to develop an academic career, with contributions from Cam Donaldson of Glasgow Caledonian and Nigel South of Essex, who discussed their own careers and the learning they could draw from them. Sue Endean, the HR Director, helped keep the focus very practical with an exploration of the promotion process and a case study based on that, and I offered some provocations around the theme of time and priority management.

In the evening we went to see E!%'s production of Dracula, directed by one of last year's EF participants, Chris Main - and a good show it was too!

The second day was more focussed on research strategies, with Rob Massara and a team from the REO sharing their expertise and offering practical advice; and the day culminated in a Dragon's Den exercise, with participants pitching ideas to our visiting Dragons, having had minimal time to prepare the ideas or the pitches: but as ever they rose to the challenge, and came up with some great interdisciplinary ideas, and some compelling ways of pitching them.

And along the way we picked up snippets of how well their projects are going, and also heard some personal successes in the Action Learning Sets.

Another stimulating event with this very energising group!

Unpacking the chair a bit more...

2011-02-21T17:45:00.000Z

On Wednesday we had the second day of the Unpacking Your Chair programme for (relatively) new professors.

In advance of the day, participants had collected the expectations of others (within and beyond the University) of the role of the Professor. Sharing these expectations was a fascinating exercise, and quickly made us all realise that one individual could not possibly meet all these expectations. So we discussed and agreed that part of the role was to negotiate the role and the expectations others placed on it - and part was to discuss with the professoriate within one's discipline how, collectively, they could meet the expectations.

We were then joined by the Faculty PVC, Charles Harvey, who completely ratified that approach, and also shared his own experiences - and his values, approach etc in a very human way, which spoke to the participants.

We also discussed how to get things to happen in the University, with Gerry clarifying the importance of the informal relationships in making that easier; and then we spent some time thinking ahead to what we would like to have achieved as leaders over the next few years. Again, that provoked a very rich range of responses, which we shared and discussed in some depth.

As before, the attitude and commitment of the participants made this a very successful - and enjoyable - day, and I'm already looking forward to the next one!

Walking writing...

2011-02-03T10:00:00.000Z

I blogged a while back about walking coaching and how valuable that can be.

Yesterday I was stuck on a chapter on coaching in the book I'm writing, and instead of sitting industriously, virtuously, diligently at my Mac, I put on some waterproofs and took Lulu for a walk.

To assuage my (rather weak) pangs of guilt, I slipped my voice recorder in my pocket to record any inspirations.

By the end of plodding through muddy fields, doubled up against the gales and rain, I had recorded a few good insights and in particular had found a new way into the chapter: starting it from a quite different perspective than I had originally intended.

So the risk now is that I spend tons of time walking the dog in my carefully preserved 'writing' slots in the diary. Will have to monitor that, but if yesterday is anything to go by, that could be very productive.

GROWing pains...

2011-02-02T13:09:00.002Z

According to the Coaching Academy: 'The GROW (Goal, Reality, Options, Will) model is the most common and widely used coaching tool. It empowers the coach to structure a coaching conversation and deliver a meaningful result.'

I have a number of questions concerning it, at least as presented here and generally used and taught.

At one level it seems so obvious and helpful, but I think it implies a lot of things that are not helpful.

Consider, for example, the statement: It empowers the coach to structure a coaching conversation and deliver a meaningful result.

Is that necessarily a good thing? It implies:

a) that it is good for the coach to be empowered

b) that it is good for the coach to structure a coaching conversation

c) that the coach takes responsibility for delivering a meaningful result.

All of these, I think, are open to question.

And one good question is, what is it that we think we are doing when we are coaching?

And then the model itself:

Goal: how straightforward is that? It is all to easy to invite the person with whom one is working to 'set clear (achievable/relevant/challenging etc) goals'. But in my experience, people need time and space to discern what is truly important to them in the future, and it may not even fit the shape of a 'goal', or the very language of 'goals' may limit their thinking. From Peter Block, I have learned that the presenting problem is rarely the real problem (though that language also has implications one might wish to query.) And there is the whole question of being or doing....

Reality: this is another question-begging word. Given the multiple subjectivities of our experience, inviting people to articulate or even explore 'reality' may be less helpful than it sounds.

Options: I believe in these, I really do! But sometimes they are best generated as a by-product, almost, of other processes, not least profound listening, curious exploration, fantasising about the (seemingly) impossible, surfacing of deep values, and so on. Maybe it is the context that makes it sound so clinical and sterile, but something about the sequence Goal, reality, options... just does not resonate, neither with my philosophy of coaching nor my experience of what people with whom I work find helpful.

Will: again I understand what they are getting at, and maybe have fewer concerns about this word than the others - except it is the last word, and that I do find problematic. There is so much more that a rich coaching conversation could explore than is, seemingly, allowed by these four words.

Having said all of which, GROW may be useful as a primer for the busy work-based coach (say a supervisor) just wanting to break the habit of telling people how to do it... But as 'the most widely-used coaching tool' (and that word too is loaded!) I do have real concerns about it.

Ethics and narrative

2011-01-29T20:28:00.000Z

I mentioned that I've been reading a fascinating book: Ethicability by Roger Steare.

He talks about three kinds of ethical approach:

1) Rule-based (eg deontology)
2) Social agreement based (eg utitilatarianism)
3) Values or principles based.

He points out that all three have their use, and also suggests that the first tends to make us behave as children, the second as adolescents and the third as adults.

This made me wonder if there might be a parallel with modernism and post-modernism and... whatever comes next.

Modernism could be seen as rule-based; and when people object to my claims for the possibility of absolute truth, I think they may be objecting to this: rules laid down to be applied to all people in all places and at all times.

Post-modernism, social constructionism (the position of many in the narrative world) etc might be regarded as a reaction against that, and an attempt to replace rules with agreed interpretations that are necessarily variable depending on who agrees them. This interpretation resonates with me as some of the academics in particular with whom I have debated this seem to be reacting against precisely that rule-bound notion of truth that 1) would suggest - and one or two also seem to me to have something of the adolescent's idealism, pride in rebellion, and impatience with other perspectives...

I (naturally!) think I am in the more mature position of 3) I make truth claims for values, such as the intrinsic goodness of love rather than hate, of hope rather than despair and of faith rather than nihilism.

THese may need to be interpreted and mediated through social discourse (at level 2) and may on occasion need to be translated to rules (as at level 1 - for example, I would hate to meet a driver who thought the rule that we drive on the left side of the road [in the uk] was not in any sense true and therefore not binding on him or her...)
So I think some of the conversations I have been in have been based on a series of false assumptions - both ways: I think people were assuming I was wanting to make truth-claims of type 1) and have reacted against them; and I was assuming they were reacting against what I really think and believe and reacted against that!

Narrative Training

2011-01-27T11:55:00.000Z

Excited at the prospect of attending a five day training programme on Narrative with Liz Todd et al at Newcastle University.

Sure it will be excellent and it will be lovely to be on the receiving end for a change, and not be responsible for the success of the event (or at least, only a little bit: I'll try to be a 'good' participant!)

Academic Leadership Programme

2011-01-27T11:52:00.000Z

Busy working on the design of an Academic Leadership Programme; this is a successor to the successful Research Leadership Programme I've been running for the last few years at Northumbria, and aims to encompass leadership in Learning and Teaching as well.

Always an interesting tension between my desire to encourage self-directed learning, exploration of themes participants are interested in, responsiveness to emerging learning agendas with participants etc and the institutional need to outline clear learning objectives, plan all the sessions well in advance and so on.

And somehow from this creative tension something wonderful will emerge... I'm reminded of the leitmotif of Shakespeare in Love: 'It's a mystery..'

Ethics

2011-01-27T11:46:00.002Z

Reading Ethicability by Roger Steare: very interesting. Styles himself as a 'corporate philosopher;' seems to have done significant work with serious organisations, and certainly puts his material across well on paper.

Not sure I agree (of course) with all of it, but it is very thought-provoking and I am broadly in sympathy with his approach and insights.

Introduction to Leadership

2011-01-25T20:17:00.000Z

Good workshop today: enthusiastic and thoughtful participants, and the whole day ran well. Particularly pleased as I hadn't thought this programme really worked last time I ran it, so had re-vamped it considerably, (including new graphics, handout pack etc), but especially re-designing the exercises to get both good dialogue and good reflection - and both these seemed to take place.

But why is it you can only see a typo once you've handed out the materials: and then it leaps out at you?

Walking CPD

2011-01-22T11:33:00.000Z

A great day's walking with Alan, Glyn, Karen, Mike and Paul: a stimulating set of colleagues with whom to share experiences, compare notes, refresh thinking etc. Met at Haweswater around 10.00, and walked up ont Harter Fell, Nan Bield, Mardale Ill Bell, High Street, and Kidsty Pike. 8.5 miles and 2000 feet of height gain. Sorted the world out pretty thoroughly en route.

How to make Governance interesting

2011-01-15T10:32:00.004Z

A great day at Essex Futures yesterday. Governance may seem a potentially dull topic, but we managed to put together a day which I at least found very interesting. I think the participants did, too: there was certainly none of that glazed look one sometimes sees on such occasions.

We started the day, after a brief introduction by Colin Riordan, the VC, with Colin interviewing the Chair of Council. Somehow this format made the delivery of information about the role of Council much more interesting than a straight presentation.

Following that, we used a World Cafe type format for participants to talk in small groups to the VC (at one table) the Chair of Council (at another), the DVC (at a third) and the Registrar and Secretary (at a fourth). This was followed by summaries from three of them (the Chair having to leave for another appointment) and a panel-type discussion. Again, this seemed a much more engaging format than presentations: and lot of ground was covered which might not have emerged through more traditional approaches, not to mention the more human type of interaction it encouraged.

After lunch, participants were given a real proposal that was presented to the University for a decision, and discussed, in small groups, what they would decide and why. Their criteria were very good (though being academics, they wanted to defer the decision until they had more information...), and the Registrar was able to tell them what really happened...

Finally we had a presentation (the first of the day) from a visiting VC from another University: Dominic Shellard from De Montfort. In a very open and informal way he discussed his experiences and then engaged in discussion with participants.

I certainly learned a lot, and trust others did too.

And the whole day without a single powerpoint slide!

A successful bid

2011-01-13T20:19:00.000Z

Just learned that Glyn, Stuart and I have been successful in a joint bid for 3 lots of work at another university. I'm still not a fan of the bidding process (we heard today - the date we were meant to hear was last June! I'd actually forgotten this one was outstanding!) However, success is always gratifying...

Unpacking your chair

2011-01-13T20:16:00.000Z

Yesterday saw the first day of a new programme co-designed and co-delivered with some of my favourite clients, Liz Kemp and Gerry Docherty at Newcastle University.

It is aimed at relatively new professors, and the intention is to help them to consider what kind of professor they wish to be (hence Liz's genius title: unpacking your chair...)

We give them both the space and some structured conversations to explore this, and a series of perspectives from others to inform and stimulate their thinking. Yesterday, as well as Gerry sharing some insights, we heard form the VC about his view of the new dispensation in HE and what he expected of the professoriate, and from Andy Gillespie, an experienced successful and thoughtful professor.

A large part of the success of the day was down to the spirit in which the participants engaged in it. Right form the start they were open, inquisitive, curious and mutually supportive: it all bodes very well for the remaining days of the programme.

Outplacement Workshop

2011-01-13T20:08:00.000Z

Over the years I have done a lot of outplacement and career transition work, both in workshops and in a one-to-one setting. But I haven't done so much recently.

So it was interesting to update and re-vamp my Next Steps workshop for a group of people whose jobs are at risk. They were remarkably positive for people in such an unsettling time, and as ever, by putting a lot into the day, they got a lot out of it.

It is perhaps a sad sign of the times that I am receiving more and more invitations to tender for outplacement work. In my darker hours I can feel a bit like a jackal, feeding off the pickings of others' distress; but the feedback I get is that people really value the chance both to consider their options and to have some skills, structures and processes to help them through these difficult times.

An interesting day

2011-01-13T20:01:00.000Z

The other day I ran a team day which was a bit of a hybrid. In discussing what might be helpful with the team leader, I'd mentioned both a day exploring the stories (past, present and future) of the team, and also a Solutions Focused approach. She said both sounded good and could we combine them.

So ever up for a challenge, I agreed.

I am not sure how well that worked, in fact. It was OK - some parts went very well, and I think the team left with an increased sense of teamness, with greater mutual understanding, and most importantly, with a clearer sense of where they wanted to get to and a commitment to actions to take them forward.

But there wasn't really sufficient time either to turn the embryonic stories about the desired future into something substantial and compelling, or to get the full value of the material generated by the Solutions tools.

I will be interested to hear the team's feedback, and to explore with the team leader how to ensure we get all the value from the work done on the day.

Memo to self: work through the design more rigorously with the client (avoid agreeing to stuff the day before the Christmas break for delivery immediately after!).

Brian Hanrahan RIP

2010-12-20T11:27:00.000Z

I was sorry to learn of Brian Hanrahan's death today. He contributed to the Essex Futures programme last year and made a valuable and memorable contribution. He was also kind enough to make time to talk to me about the book I'm writing, purely on the basis of that one previous meeting. He was obviously an outstanding journalist, but what I remember equally was his kind, unassuming and generous spirit.

May he rest in peace.

Re-writing the story

2010-12-15T07:40:00.000Z

The awayday yesterday went even better than I expected: the participants recognised some very fundamental issues that they need to address in terms of the purpose and effectiveness of their combined contribution to their organisation.

Prior to the day, there was a lot of frustration in all of the teams represented. The distributed ones felt that the central team was imposing processes on them which were onerous and frustrated those working at the front line; the central team felt overworked and under-appreciated, having to police a system to which they did not fully subscribe.

A lot of the implicit blaming of each other drained away as they recognised their shared frustrations - and shared aspirations. In dialogue, they have decided on a strategic shift to move away from fire-fighting to value-adding. They are also determined to renew their relationships with the rest of the organisation and re-write the story of their place and contribution within the organisation.

Recognising this will require more work, initially, in order to get the big benefits they are aiming for, there was nevertheless a real sense of energy and commitment to take the agenda forward. And I am confident they will.

A great week

2010-12-11T18:28:00.001Z

As well as a good day's coaching on Monday and module two of Essex Futures, which went very well on Thursday, I have had a series of fascinating interviews for my book.

This week I have seen Marina Taylor, Philippa Stokes, Tim Melville-Ross, Luke Johnson, Sir John Ashworth, Doug Richard and Merdith Belbin. Each brought a unique perspective to bear on my project and all were valuable. I continue to be delighted with how generous busy people are with their time and their ideas.

But as to what they've told me, you'll have to wait till I write the book and buy a copy! All I can say is that if I do them, their stories and their insights justice, it will be a great read.

Staying busy...

2010-12-07T22:44:00.000Z

Had a fascinating interview with Marina Taylor at Akzo Nobel today: she told me a recent true story which will make a great case study for the book (suitably anonymised of course). And before that I was talking with Peter Block in the US (one of my favourite writers) and Chene Swart of South Africa, who offered a lot of valuable insights and encouragement.

Off to London tomorrow for three more interviews, then to Colchester for the next Essex Futures event, followed by another interview, then to Cambridge on Friday for a couple more interviews.

I am learning so much, meeting so many fascinating people, and generally enjoying the process so much that there's a real risk I'll prolong the interview stage for ever and never write the thing - except I have also promised so many people I will, as an insurance policy against that temptation!

Defeated by the snow...

2010-11-30T20:58:00.000Z

The closure of the A 66 meant I couldn't get across to Durham for a morning meeting, and so I also cancelled another couple in Newcastle in the afternoon, as it seemed too much to try to battle through the weather (and risk not getting home again). But I hate that: I guess it's pride...

However, it did mean I had an unexpected day at home, and I was able to use it to develop some ideas for another bid I'm going for - including workshops on Manager as Coach, Leadership, Change Management, Presentation Skills, Negotiating and Influencing: interesting seeing how my interest in narrative approaches feeds in to all of these.

I also refreshed a lot of my materials for an outplacement support workshop on Friday - not least because I suspect there may be more of these to come in the current (economic) climate. I think I'll travel on Thursday evening to make sure I'm there for the workshop...

Too busy to blog...

2010-11-29T15:55:00.000Z

It has been a really busy period recently, with book interviews, and the development of a number of new programmes for various clients, old and new.

Somehow I am still misled by the diary (which shows a few days at home) into thinking it will be a quiet week: and then I try to fit in all the things I've committed to...

Fascinating Stuff

2010-11-24T20:47:00.000Z

I have now interviewed half a dozen people for my book - and it has been a fascinating process. Already the scope of the book and my understanding of the issues have both expanded rapidly - I need to put some boundaries around the project or it will grow for ever...

So far I have spoken to academics, leaders of organisations large and small, and HR people. Every one of them has contributed not only the anecdotes and perspectives I was expecting, but also a fresh angle, question or insight that took me by surprise.

And I have another 30 or so people lined up to interview. Truly exciting times - but don't hold your breath waiting for the book, as it could be a while yet...

Social Inclusion through the Digital Economy

2010-11-17T12:28:00.000Z

The SIDE project is officially launched tomorrow, and is already producing some impressive work, ranging from digital jewellery that can bring tangible benefits for people dealing with dementia, to research assisting older drivers in driving safer for longer, to the Ambient Kitchen.

The centre is directed by the impressive Paul Watson with a very strong team, and is one of the largest research projects of its type (ie not Medical etc research). Its overall aim is to tackle social exclusion by making it easier for people to access the life-changing benefits offered by digital technologies.

Moving Mountains

2010-11-17T12:18:00.000Z

Good Moving Mountains (influencing and negotiating skills) Workshop yesterday at Durham University.

Very perceptive group: really liked the stuff on narratives and how important they can be in this context!

Several went away resolved to re-author their stories about some of their more difficult working relationships and difficult colleagues.

In defence of truth (again....)

2010-11-05T09:20:00.002Z

An interesting discussion with someone else - an academic this time - who can’t see how I reconcile believing in the possibility of absolute truth with working with multiple subjectivities or narratives.

I genuinely can’t see the problem, but we’ll come back to that.

It seems one of her concerns, inter alia, is that a belief in absolute truth has led, historically, to terrible persecution, oppression, totalitarianism, fascism and so on - none of which I would deny.

Oddly my adherence to the possibility of talking about truth in part springs from the same concern. I believe it is important that we can say both that the Holocaust really happened (a claim to truth about the past) and that the Holocaust was a bad thing (a claim to truth about a value judgement).

And the fact that a belief in absolute truth has led to terrible things does not demonstrate that it is false or bad, merely that it is dangerous or powerful. Just as the fact that religious belief has led to all sorts of attrocities does not prove it to be false, any more than the fact that in others religious belief leads to behaviours we may regard as good proves it to be true. It was probably Augustine or someone like that who first postulated that Abusus non tollit usum (the abuse of something does not render its correct use impossible).

In fact, I would posit that it is the best things which become the worst when abused. Thus the abuse of human love is one of the most terrible things (and my interlocutor made a pretty absolute claim about rape being always wrong), but that does not mean that human love is a bad thing.

My two principle concerns about the absolutely relativist approach are:

One is the inherent illogicality of the claim that there is no such thing as absolute truth - which is itself a claim to know absolute truth.

The other is the risk that if all value-judgements are seen a subjective social constructs, then one can easily opt out of them. I may say the Holocaust was a bad thing, but someone else may say that from their perspective it was not, it’s only a late 20th century social construct to interpret it in that way.

I think people sometimes confuse my insistence on the possibility of absolute truth with the idea that I think I know what it is; or conversely, that my recognition of multiple subjectivities means that I cannot possibly believe in objective truth.

My view is that, as we all know, the map is not the territory: our understanding of reality is not reality itself. However, to map a territory is to recognise that the territory exists, and a map that says ‘here is America’ is more truthful than one that says ‘here be dragons’ - although it is clearly still a map, not the reality it represents. Further, multiple maps may be useful for different people or different purposes - none of which are the reality, but all of which tell us something about it. But to say that there is no such reality, and that we are making the maps up simply as consensual constructs with no basis in what is truly ‘out there’ seems to me a nonsense.

Essex Futures '10-'11

2010-11-04T19:15:00.000Z

Just returning from the kick off event for the next Essex Futures programme. Each year, Colin Riordan the VC, and I wonder if the new group can possibly meet the high standards of previous groups.

This year, once again, we were delighted to find that they could. After two days of hard work, they have come up with very thoughtful presentations on leadership, forged real relationships with colleagues hitherto unknown, and developed startlingly creative and exciting proposals for the projects they will work on through the year.

We also had a very thought-provoking session with Essex alumna Philippa Stokes, who has just left a senior Personnel role at British Airways, and shred her perceptions and insights in a very open and honest way.

So I'm already looking forward to the next day of the programme, in December, where I'm sure they will attack the potentially dry subject of Financial Management with similar verve and enthusiasm!

Walking Meeting

2010-10-26T11:23:00.001+01:00

I wrote about Walking Coaching a few posts ago - but it is worth putting on the record that walking meetings can be very productive too.

We had a partnership meeting on Monday: Jane is both my business partner (as an accountant she is a brilliant head of finance and admin) and my wife.

So we had a partnership meeting, setting the world (or at least the business) to rights as we walked over Pikewassa (complete with dog and two of the children, as it's half term - but they entertained themselves while we talked).

This is not (purely) self-indlugent: as with coaching, you have a different quality of conversation when walking in the great outdoors to the conversations you have sat over a desk or even a coffee table.

If you are looking to solve problems, be creative, share dreams and visions, and commune in a different way, then walking meetings are well worth a try.

Here's where we went:

Great Response

2010-10-19T07:57:00.001+01:00

Very pleased with the positive responses I've been getting to requests for interviews for my book.

It is providing me with an opportunity to talk to some people whose work I've long admired, such as Merdith Belbin and Peter Block, as well as significant leaders in business, including Dragon Doug Richard, Luke Johnson (of Pizza Express and Channel 4 fame), academics, a Chief Constable, and many practitioners both within organisations like P&G, & Selfridges, and external consultants.

Should provide a rich array of narratives for me to draw on: I hope I do them justice.

If you are interested in contributing (see previous post In Praise of Pride adn Prejudice for the initial ideas) do get in touch!

Great day on Narrative

2010-10-18T20:12:00.000+01:00

I attended a day on Introduction to Narrative Practices at Newcastle University today, run by Liz Todd and Marilyn O'Neill.

It was fascinating and inspirational. The overview, the anecdotes and examples from experience, the exercises, the video of narrative therapy in practice, all added up to a great learning experience.

Other participants and their perspectives were also a valuable part of the day, and Liz and Marilyn ensured that all had the opportunity to contribute.

They also managed to simplify what is presented in Michael White's work as quite a complex process to its essence, both in terms of practitioner's position and core processes: Unravelling problem-saturated narratives, re-authoring the preferred narrative, and maintaining the preferred narrative and building resilience.

I learned a lot, both from Liz and Marilyn and from my fellow participants who were almost all from the therapeutic world, rather than the organisational development world I inhabit.

So lots of food for thought - and action!

In Defence of Truth

2010-10-15T21:39:00.001+01:00

In a comment on a recent post, Mo wrote: It is not possible to both hold the belief that there are objective truths "out there" and practice what Michael White advocated.

This reminded me of the NLP trainers I come across, who proclaim The Map is Not the Territory (as though that is some new insight) and therefore there is no such thing as objective truth.

Both claims have made asses of those who proclaim them; because both use a truth-claim to try to refute the possibility of truth.

There's nothing new here, of course. It was Pilate who said 'What is truth?' - a classic politician's way out of confronting the reality of the choice he faced.

If objective truth is not possible, then the types of conversation in which both the above claims were made are quite literally meaningless. All we could talk about would be subjective feelings and opinions.

However, we know that is not the case; we just need to be careful of the claim to know what objective truth is. But that it exists is self-evident to all but the most [perhaps I should leave you to fill in that blank]...

Don't try this at home...

2010-10-15T13:12:00.001+01:00

Father and Son Launch iPhone, HD Video Camera into Space
By Adam Rosen (4:00 am, Oct. 12, 2010)
Taking their iPhone Where No iDevice Has Gone Before, a father and son in Newburgh, NY recently took a weekend science project to new heights. Luke and Max Geissbuhlerattached an HD Video Camera, iPhone and some styrofoam packing to a weather balloon, then launched their homemade satellite on a journey that lasted 72 minutes and climbed over 100,000 feet into the atmosphere!
The resulting footage is stunning, and has been described as some of the best amateur space footage ever. The weather balloon burst after reaching about 19 miles high, then plummeted back to Earth by parachute and landed in a tree. TheiPhone’s on-board GPS helped located the equipment once it landed, undamaged and only 30 miles away from the launch site!
From: http://www.cultofmac.com/father-and-son-launch-iphone-hd-video-camera-into-space

Go there to see the fantastic photos and video footage - and hands off my iphone!

More on Walking Coaching

2010-10-15T09:38:00.001+01:00

Back in August, I posted about Walking and Coaching and how well they work together.

Here is one client's feedback (he's a bit of an addict - keeps coming back for more...)

'You must be mad to go up there on a day like this' said my wife as I packed my things for my 'Day in the Lakes' with Andrew. Well the gloomy forecast of gales and snow did not materialise and I had one of the most memorable personal development days in my professional life so far.

Having finally heaved my weary bones to the top of a snow-capped Blencathra, the views that we enjoyed that day down into the valleys below were breathtaking. Every morning when I come into the office, log onto my pc, the photograph from the peak of Blencathra as my screensaver reminds me of that experience and, as a relatively inexperienced hill walker, the exhilaration of having made it to the top and back.

The opportunity to get away from the office, the phone and email and just have time to think (and chat) was such a privilege and one that I shall remember for years to come. Coupled with the chance to walk and talk with Andrew about my own 'journey' was an experience I shall never forget. Andrews local knowledge of the safe routes up and down Blencathra coupled with the perceptive, sensitive way in which we explored the issues that I had identified for discussion about my own 'journey' was an experience I shall never forget.

Its too early to say whether this experience was life-changing, but it has had an effect in the short term. Like the view down the valley, the walk with Andrew helped to put things into perspective and work out where I am going and how best to get there.

What Andrew sells (so subtly) is hope - in my case hope that with some simple strategies I will be able to make more effective use of my time and be able to cope better with the day-to-day demands of my job, the things that I'm paid to do now, but somehow to create time to make real progress in the strategic things that will benefit me (and indirectly I hope my employer too) in the longer term

A grand day out - Andrew's relaxed and easy going manner made the whole experience so enjoyable.

Good books on Leadership?

2010-10-09T21:46:00.000+01:00

A coaching client who is off sick at present asked for ideas for reading about leadership. I suggested from the top of my head:

The New Leaders (Goleman et al); Maverick, Ricardo Semler; John Kotter, Leading Change; Peter Block, Empowered Manager; Escape from Cluelessness, Boleman & Deal; 7 Habits Highly Effective People, Covey; Fifth Discipline, Senge;

that lot should keep him going.

But in case he's on a speed reading kick what would others add...?

HR Awayday

2010-10-08T19:10:00.000+01:00

Fascinating day with the HR team at Newcastle University. Committed and professional, looking both at the big picture in challenging times and at some very specific and pragmatic actions to take the agenda forward - and they were up for playing on the beach to re-energise during their lunch time.

A great day with some great people...

2010-10-05T09:49:00.000+01:00

I spent yesterday at Essex University with some (relatively) newly-appointed Heads of Department, Deans and Directors.

The VC Colin Riordan kick-started the day with a brief overview of the challenging times ahead given the emerging story of the coalition government's plans for HE. As ever, Colin made sure this was a dialogue, not a monologue, and his optimism ensured it was thought-provoking and challenging rather than depressing...

Then we spent the day discussing various aspects of their new role: mind maps helped to illustrate the sheer complexity of it; syndicate work generated some rich discussion around the people management issues and options for them; a case study (based on an academic at another University whom I am coaching) stimulated some great discussion of approaches to leadership; and further syndicate work helped generate rich strategies for communication - formal and informal, disseminating information and eliciting feedback.

I was asked to design it as a highly participative day (I did use one slide...) and so most of the wisdom and ideas came from the participants; and we also enjoyed the perspectives of a more experienced head, Maria Fasli who joined us for the day.

Although Universities face challenging times, with the commitment and passion of people like these, I am sure the best will continue to flourish!

In Praise of Pride and Prejudice

2010-10-01T12:38:00.005+01:00

This describes the thinking behind my forthcoming book: Freeing People to Perform - How changing their stories can transform your people

It is long: a more elegant version for reading/printing is on Scribd

As Jane Austen might have written, it is a truth universally acknowledged that there are two sides to every story. However, the multistory approach recognises that in fact there are many more than two stories to every side.

By way of a few stories, I hope to illustrate the power of working with others’ stories - and our own - in unblocking difficulties and winning hearts and minds. I include one disaster story, as we often learn as much from our failures as our successes. Here are the starts of some stories which we will re-visit later in this article.

The Story of the Coffee Cup

The row over the unwashed coffee cup blew up suddenly and escalated dramatically. One of the protagonists, Annie, got herself signed off work for stress, and the other, Clare, complained to the Deputy Chief Executive. The whole department seemed to be in meltdown and the team leader unable to cope. It was as though civil war had broken out with an intensity of hostilities and recriminations that was hard to believe.

Of course, it became clear that the coffee cup was only the last straw in a long-running feud between the Clare and Annie, who had managed to get most of the department to side with one or other of them. Regular councils of war were held by each party in the staff restaurant, where the latest news of the hostility of the other was told and re-told.

The question was, how was it possible to sort this mess out? The hostilities actually went back almost two years and were deeply embedded. Annie and Clare could each tell a terrible story of the other: of provocation, rudeness, unreasonableness, and so on. And in that word story lay the start of a solution.

The Story of the Reluctant Leader

Mike had recently been promoted to team leader and was doing a great job. The one concern his boss had was that he seemed to lack confidence in his own abilities as a leader. However, all the indicators were positive: productivity was high, morale was high, absenteeism and sickness were low. But Mike believed he was a fraud, and that in accepting the leader’s job, and salary, he was cheating the organisation. His boss needed to break through this but was not sure it would be possible.

The Story of the Unpromotable Managers

After the management assessment centre, the unsuccessful candidates, who had been identified as not having potential for promotion, were sent on a series of workshops to address their deficiencies - or as they saw it, to lick their wounds... Within the year, nearly all had secured a promotion, after all.

The Story of the Offstage Character

This story is an example of where the ideas outlined in this article failed to deliver, so we will hold it back until the ideas have been articulated.

The Story of the Blind Hog

This tells how an ordinary trainer, facilitator and coach, who made a living using material, ideas and skills learned from others, finally, and almost accidentally, created an approach of real meaning and value himself... only to learn that he was not after all the first to stumble across such ideas. As they say, even a blind hog finds an acorn once in a while.

We all know that people often hold different views of the same reality: ‘the map is not the territory’ has become something of a mantra in some circles. We are also familiar with the idea of the self-fulfilling prophecy: that believing in something may make it come true. Indeed this wisdom goes back a long way: it is the stuff of Greek tragedy. Oedipus’ parents, fearing the prophecies made about him at his birth, seek to prevent their coming true, and in so doing create the very circumstances which cause Oedipus to fulfil them.

What I, the Blind Hog, discovered is a powerful way of using these insights and the whole concept of story, to dissolve conflicts, remove stumbling blocks, and enable great performance.

However, I did find that in many ways I was re-creating in an organisational context, approaches used in therapeutic settings. Moreover, once I started to look at that literature, I was able to enrich my approach with some of their techniques; however I am always aware that I am not a therapist, and my approach is a pragmatic one which leaders in any organisation could adopt and adapt.

So what’s the big idea?

The basic principle is to recognise how we create stories, normally outside of our conscious awareness, to make sense of our experience, and then live out these stories. Further, over time, we may well have collected a multiplicity of stories, sometimes contradictory, and that there are times when not all of these are available to us; particularly if a dominant story is very strong and muscles others off-stage. By a dominant story, I mean one which has taken the foreground to such an extent that it is perceived, at least for a time, as the whole truth. Typically, in the situations in which I am asked to help, these are problem-saturated, or conflict-saturated stories. For example...

When Clare (in the Story of the Coffee Cup) started work at her first job, she was young, and inexperienced in the world of work. However, she was outgoing and apparently confident. When embarrassed, she had the habit of laughing as a nervous release. Annie had worked in the department for years. She had a heart of gold, but a slightly dour manner which often concealed that. She understood how important precision was in the department’s work, as their output was often used in court cases, and could be torn apart by hostile lawyers unless it was perfect.

Clare did not report to Annie, but Annie noticed a couple of errors in Clare’s work and pointed them out. Clare was upset by this, and gave her nervous laugh. And from that small interaction, each built a huge edifice of meaning. Clare saw Annie as bullying and interfering; Annie saw Clare as insubordinate, unconcerned about her work and cheeky.

From that moment, without realising it, each had started to construct a story about the other, and collected evidence to prove that her story was real. From then, all interactions which confirmed, or seemed to confirm, the dominant narrative were noticed, collected and believed. Any interactions which seemed to contradict the story were either discounted as atypical, or not noticed at all. Neutral interactions were interpreted according to the story; and all of this outside the conscious awareness of either party.

From there it was a short step to recruiting allies and briefing them; and in that process, stories were re-told, often with extra colour, and their truth became unassailable; they were really dominant. And from there it was only a matter of time till the whole department went to war with itself.

But what was interesting to discover, and proved the salvation of this team, was that these dominant narratives were not the only stories that each protagonist told herself. Buried quite deep under the surface were others. When asked (and after being allowed sufficient time to tell her dominant narrative) Clare was able to tell of another Annie; an Annie who had been demonstrably kind to her on a number of occasions. “That’s what’s so maddening!” she said, “Sometimes she can be really nice - I just don’t know where I am with her.”

The same was true for Mike (the hero of the Story of the Reluctant Leader). His dominant story, that he was a sham as a leader, concealed another, that he was helping the team to perform well. Mike’s stories also helped me to recognise the link between these narratives and people’s underlying value systems. The reason this was such a big issue for Mike was that he felt a genuine commitment to the work of the organisation which employed him, and had a strong personal ethic around a fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work. Helping Mike to re-engage with his story about himself as having a real commitment to the organisation, and being essentially an honest person was part of the process we went through.

It is worth pointing out, at this stage, that my accounts of the people and stories in this article are themselves stories: narratives constructed to convey meaning. The real people are far more subtle and complex than I can capture in a few lines, and their stories more varied.

Working with story

Given that understanding, of how stories are built and how most of us hold onto a multiplicity of different stories, we can start to work with them in some simple and powerful ways.

Annie and Clare (The Story of the Coffee Cup) were helped to rebuild their relationship by rebuilding their stories about each other and their relationship. This was not done through some quick trick like ‘re-framing,’ but by a rigorous exploration of their perceptions and interpretations.

The first step was to build sufficient trust with each of them individually to be able to help them. A key part of that was, in a confidential one-to-one setting, to listen to their stories in their entirety - and to respect them. That involved resisting the urge to challenge or correct either of them when she made a leap of logic which was clearly fallacious. At the conclusion, each heard a sympathetic summary of her story, designed to demonstrate that she had been truly heard, and that she was not being challenged on the story. That is an important step, as the stories were dear to them and any attack might cause them to cling more tightly to them: but my agenda was to get them to loosen their grip just a little bit.

The next step in the process was to talk a little about stories, how we construct them and collect evidence and so on. I did this by talking about my mother-in-law and my wife: a classic tale of love and misunderstanding....; something each was able to relate to and recognise - and laugh at. Somehow when we look at others’ stories, it is much easier for us to see that stories have an existence of their own, separate from the protagonists. This distancing, or externalising, of the story is the prelude to starting to question it.

That created the atmosphere for a gentle probing of the comprehensiveness of their stories: was there anything which had happened over the last two years which did not fit the story so well? In the conversation with Clare, that was when the tears finally broke through and she made the “That’s what’s so maddening!” comment. In fact, when asked, she provided numerous examples of Annie’s kindness.

Now that her grip on the story was a little loosened and her curiosity about it as a story was engaged, I posed a different type of question: ‘If you had to give this story a name, like a fairy tale, what would you call it?’ After the barest moment’s reflection she replied: “The Princess and the Ogre!”

That created all sorts of possibilities. Some we pursued were asking whether Annie really got out of bed each day with an ogre-ish desire to make the princess’s life hell; and what Annie’s story might be called. We debated various options for that, in a fairly light-hearted way. This whole segment of the conversation was designed to continue the loosening of Clare’s grip on her story, by creating some distance between her and it (by the explicit naming of it as a story ‘out there’ as it were), by recognising the hyperbole implicit in the designation of Annie as an ‘ogre,’ and by starting to imagine how it might look from Annie’s perspective (by considering her name for it).

That led us to the moment where it seemed appropriate to re-consider Clare’s story. What I proposed was that there might alternative narratives to The Princess and the Ogre; stories which accounted for more of the evidence (including Annie’s acts of kindness) and that were less implausible than casting her as an ogre. I asked Clare if she would be interested to hear Annie’s story, if Annie were willing to listen to hers, and to explore whether between them they could construct better stories of the past and for the future. She needed some convincing that Annie would enter into the spirit of enquiry I was suggesting, but agreed that if Annie was prepared to, she would be.

Having had a parallel conversation with Annie, and also with all the other members of the team, we finally got to a stage where the whole team came together to look for a way forward. The one thing on which the whole team strongly agreed was that things could not go on the way they had been. Whilst neither protagonist was fully open to the idea that she might have misread the other, each was each pretty clear that that other had misread her!

So we had a day of story telling: each of the protagonists telling her story, (with clear ground rules preventing interruption or correction), and other members of the team invited to comment in turn. We then set about seeking a story which all could agree covered more of the evidence we had started to assemble, and that was when we got to the story of the dour, experienced, committed professional, and the new, slightly nervous, extravert team member.

We then started to ‘thicken the plot’: that is we went back over the two years to see what evidence there was that the emerging story was a better fit than their previous personal stories: and we found lots of it.

Somewhere along the way, there was a wonderful dawning revelation: not only is it possible for us to have a future together that works, but our past isn’t half as awful as we thought it was. Annie and Clare experienced, among other things, huge relief, at no longer feeling so dreadfully misunderstood and also no longer feeling so hated by the other.

The final stage was to look at what evidence everybody would need to see from now onwards, to starve the old stories of evidence, and provide plenty of evidence for the new story. That became the action plan for the team.

The power of this lay in part in the fact that everyone was convinced that the new story was a better account of what had been going on than the previous stories. It was not a result of positive (wishful) thinking or ‘re-framing’ but of seriously engaging with the evidence each had collected - and the evidence each had overlooked. So the better future was grounded in a more positive - and also a more credible - understanding of the past. We were not trying to make up stories or simply put a positive frame around the past, but really interrogate our understanding of it, to find a richer picture that we could all believe in - and typically where no party is so evil and malicious as their antagonist had imagined.

Towards a Framework

I am reluctant to produce a final route map for this process, as I undertake it in a fairly intuitive way, and the sequence I used with Annie and Clare was what seemed appropriate on that particular occasion; indeed it is only with hindsight that I have pulled it into such a coherent narrative.

However, there are certain key processes that are helpful along the way, and the overall effect is often very powerful indeed.

Listen to each person’s dominant story and honour it
Explain the way in which we build stories
Start to open up distance between the individual and the story; encourage externalisation
Invite them to name their dominant, problem-saturated or conflict-saturated story
Start to explore any counter-evidence
Consider the other person’s dominant story and its name
Search for alternative narratives which fit all the evidence better - and are positive
Thicken the plot, both historically, and from now on

Naming the story is a relatively recent addition to my approach, but it has real power. Is it that naming forces an exaggeration? Or does it make explicit the exaggeration that’s already happening? Either way, it does seem to help externalise the story, creating a distance between the individual and the story. Also, it gets to the heart of the issue: why is this so important to me? Moreover, it raises the possibility of asking: ‘What do you think the other person’s dominant story is?’ Often people seem to imagine: ‘she comes into work to make my life hell.’ One can then ask “Is that really her story, do you think?” Probably not...

Mike, (The Story of the Reluctant Leader) was an example of someone where the name of the story was actually the heart of the issue. His problem essentially was his belief that he was not a good leader. I did all I could to help him loosen his grip on that story: all the evidence was against him, but that didn’t seem to count. His idea of leadership was either heroic (Gandhi, etc) or tyrannical (his experience at work) and he was clear that he was neither. So we eventually re-named his job as team coach. The minute we did so, a weight was lifted from his shoulders: this was a role in which he could excel: indeed he was already doing well in it. To strengthen this new story, we did two things. One was to look back at the past for evidence of Mike as a good team coach - and we found plenty, including from before his promotion. Suddenly he was able to believe that he had earned his promotion and was worthy of it! The other was that Mike checked with his boss that she was happy with his role being team coach: she readily agreed, and Mike’s problems with team leadership have evaporated.

Thickening the plot is a concept I learned from the field of Narrative Therapy, though the way I go about it is not the way therapists might. I tend to do it firstly historically, by re-visiting the past through the lens of the new positive narrative and seeing how well it accounts for all the evidence we have collected, and also seeing what new evidence we can collect that this narrative is preferable. Then I invite people to look forward, and agree how we will continue to nourish the new story (what evidence we will go out of our way to provide in support of it) and also what evidence we may need to starve the old story of, to prevent its resurgence (that is, are there any particular behaviours, or interpretations of others’ behaviours, which we will need to stop doing....)

This was particularly powerful with the protagonists in the Story of the Unpromotable Managers. While many of them were convinced the assessment centre had not been fair, we looked at the story they needed to be able to tell back into the organisation, to get their careers moving forward again. Part of that story clearly had to be how they had worked to overcome the shortfalls identified by the centre. We did not need to debate how accurate the assessment was: we simply had to recognise the need to collect evidence to prove that the perceived weakness was a weakness no longer.

That led to each participant working to prove that he or she was capable of demonstrating strengths in those areas; and over the course of several months, they supported each other in developing that evidence using real work projects, and meeting as action learning sets to drive them forward and check that the learning was both applied and captured. By the end of the series of workshops, all had a good story to tell - and the organisation heard them, so that many are now promoted.

A Story of Failure: the Offstage Character

Like any approach, this one is not a guaranteed panacea. One failure I learned a lot from was in a social work setting, where a new manager had been appointed over a team involved in some quite creative approaches. The senior practitioner was unhappy with the financial constraints suddenly placed upon her and her team; but that was the very job the new manager had been appointed to do. The relationship quickly deteriorated and by the time I was asked to help, the two were not prepared to speak to each other. The boss was also involved, and I included him in the process. However what I failed to pick up in the early stages was the key role of an off-stage character, who used to share an office with the new manager, and who was still very influential with her.

I managed to get all three individuals to the stage where I - and they - believed that it might be valuable to sit down in the same room and explore their stories. However, the manager, who had shown some signs of movement and willingness to discuss by the end of our one-to-one conversation, now dug her heels in and refused to listen or to share. I later learned that her friend and old office-mate had spent some time with her advising her not to give an inch, as the boss and the practitioner would both take a mile if she did. Had I realised earlier the degree to which this off-stage character was actively involved in the dispute, I should have included her in the process. In the event, we got nowhere, and the two people who had been prepared to move a little felt very bruised and abused. The manager was eventually re-assigned to another area: most organisations’ default response to difficult relationship issues.

Some theoretical links

For a blind hog, I read quite a lot, and it may be that I have plagiarised more than I realise in putting this together, However, the influences of which I am conscious include these. There has been a lot written about the stories leaders tell to galvanise the troops, (Stephen Denning, ‘Telling Tales’, HBR May ’04; Bob McKee ‘Storytelling that Moves People,’ HBR June ’03).

NLP (Neuro Lingusitc Programming: see Frogs into Princes or The Structure of Magic, Bandler and Grinder ) is also interested in how we make sense of the world, and is, I understand, the origin of the mantra ‘the map is not the territory.’ However, NLP seems to me to focus on techniques such as re-framing which essentially involve putting on rose-tinted glasses.

Eric Berne’s work on Transactional Analysis (Games People Play) has long interested me, and there are resonances in my approach with his understanding of life scripts. However, I believe that what I am working with, though it may emanate in part from such deep sources, is closer to the surface and a lot easier to help people change.

The closest link I have found, and for this I am grateful to Liz Todd at Newcastle University who drew my attention to it, is narrative therapy and narrative mediation. This is a field pioneered by the late Michael White (see, for example, Maps of Narrative Practice). Reading texts in that context (eg Narrative Mediation, Winslade & Monk; What is Narrative Therapy?, Alice Morgan) made me wonder if I had discovered anything new at all - and eventually dispelled the illusion that I had.

However, what I had done was rediscover, from experience, what others were discovering in a very different field, and it is the application of that to the organisational context which is perhaps my original contribution (though even here my story may be wildly inaccurate: and this article is, in part, designed to provoke a response to that assertion so that I can enrich my story). I have certainly learned from that work, particularly with regard to ‘thickening the plot.’ I was heartened to read of the importance which practitioners of narrative approaches place on the re-kindling of hope. For some years, I have believed that one of my key skills is to help people re-discover hope in times of adversity.

Where I part company with the published work on narrative mediation and narrative therapy which I have read so far, is in the belief (or their story) that this pre-supposes a post-modern view of reality, and the absence of any objective truth. I happen to believe in objective truth - but also recognise it is a very hard thing to verify, and a risky one to claim sole insight to. Indeed it is because of my belief in, and respect for, objective reality, that I am so quick to recognise the multiple subjectivities to which I and everyone else lend temporary credence.

Underpinning all of this is a fundamental orientation in my work which has been there since I first read Viktor Frankl (Man’s Search For Meaning) and was strengthened when feedback from clients kept repeating to me that what I did for them was help them to rekindle hope. There is a deep connection between meaning and hope, in my view; and that brings me to my most fundamental source of all: ‘these three remain: faith, hope and love.’ My tentative position at this stage is that working with people on richer and more positive meanings in their lives, and helping them rediscover hope for the future also enables them better to love themselves and others - with enormously powerful benefits, both at work and beyond.

At this stage of the article, only one question remains which I can answer:

Why in Praise of Pride and Prejudice?

Not because pride and prejudice are considered good - in fact they are often the drivers behind unhelpful narratives - but rather because Jane Austen’s novel and the films made from it, exemplify how readily we can get the wrong end of the stick and then tenaciously interpret reality in a prejudicial way very convincingly, and also how discovering a better and truer narrative can let us all live happily ever after.

Targetted marketing

2010-09-23T15:12:00.001+01:00

I logged on to Amazon (because I should have been working...) and found:

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Max Atkinson de-bunking msrepresentation of Mehrabian's stuff

2010-08-17T11:56:00.000+01:00

Max Atkinson, whom I bumped into in a bar at Middle Aston House many years ago (and who took the opportunity of my interest to flog me a copy of his excellent book Our Masters' Voices) has just posted a good post de-bunking the myth about verbal communication being only 7% of the meaning we receive (the rest being voice (38%) and body language (55%).

It's one of those 'facts' that buzz around the training world, repeated from trainer to trainer in a fascinating example of the authority of the Verbal Tradition. Few who cite it can even name Mehrabian, let alone give any account of his research or his findings.

Of course it's rubbish, the way it's normally put across. But it has some surface credibility, because it is demonstrable that non-verbal aspects of communication can, in some instances, affect (or even reverse) the meaning we try to put across with our words.

For me, the key is congruence: matching your non-verbal behaviour, use of voice etc, to your message: that is certainly powerful and effective. But scarcely 93% of your meaning or impact or whatever the twits who peddle this stuff say.

Negotiating Skills

2010-08-09T21:43:00.001+01:00

Gratifying to find, once again, that that stuff I teach about negotiating really works in practice.

Annie had left my bike in Pooley Bridge overnight (locked to something, of course), and returned to find it gone.

The insurers wanted me to settle for some rubbish own-brand bike from Halfords (or £225 cash) to replace my rather nice Specialized Ridgeback. After a bit of to and froing (using the full range of Harvard strategies), they offered a substantially upgraded bike from Halfords (RRP £550 - probably worth £450 at the most) and we eventually settled on a cash amount that replaced my bike with the current Specialized, plus the rack and other fittings, and left me with a few pennies in pocket, even allowing for the £60 excess.

I still maintain buying Getting to Yes was one of the best investments I have ever made!

Holidays

2010-08-06T08:05:00.000+01:00

I'm off now, after a flurry of busy-ness. Taking August as holiday with the family, and a little time to work on my book.

Have just landed a couple of bits of work that mean we are going to hit our targets for the next year, so won't have to sell the kids into slavery over the next few months.

So a summer of rainy walks, mowing wet grass, and camping with the kids awaits - and I shall return refreshed (?) and ready for action in September. Blogging likely to be sparse, but you will survive without me for a few weeks...

Walking Coaching

2010-08-05T08:20:00.003+01:00

Talking with Liz and Stuart of Coaching Connect the other day, I was struck by how interested they were in coaching while walking. (Liz has posted a snippet of our conversation about walking coaching on Youtube, here).

I have done this for a while and often find it very powerful. It can range from simply suggesting to a client that we go for a walk if we are struggling for ideas in the middle of a session (round the streets or ideally into a nearby park) to clients booking a day or half a day for a serious walk in the hills.

Both my clients and I find it a different experience - and it always adds real value to the session.

I think there are many reasons for this, working on many different levels:

Walking side by side enables a different type of conversation compared with sitting looking at each other;
Exercise and movement stimulate the oxygenation of the brain;
Any kind of journey is a great metaphor for almost anything;
The larger horizon (particularly from the top of Blencathra, say...) seems to expand our mental field of vision;
The difference of the experience, compared to a normal day at the office, makes it very memorable (one client has a picture taken on one of our walks as his screensaver, to remind him of the learning from that day - he can still remember what we discussed on each section of the walk);
Silence, and thus reflection, are much easier when out walking;
Taking a generous half day, or better a full day, provides the space in time to match the space in the outdoors, enabling us really to explore possibilities in depth - without it feeling too intense (few people could stand being sat across the table from one other person focussing on one thing for a whole day - but when walking it becomes not only easy, but pleasurable).

I am sure there are more reasons for the power of this approach, but these are the ones that strike me at present.

A Day's Walking

2010-07-23T11:23:00.002+01:00

I was due to have a day's walking coaching with a client yesterday, but by Tuesday the weather forecast looked so dreadful that we decided to re-schedule.

Then on Thursday morning, the forecast wasn't nearly so bad - cloud at 750m and a 40% chance of rain.

So I decided to take the day off and go walking with the family. We had a fabulous time: went over High Spy, down to Deepdale Tarn, up to Deepdale Head, over Hindscarth and back down to Little Town where we'd left the car. About 9 miles in all, with about 2500 feet of height gain.

Fabulous views of Bassenthwaite, Derwent and Buttermere, and all the fells surrounding them - and the rain stayed off, and we were just below the clouds. And as ever, conversation is very rich when you are out for a long walk - which is why it's so good for coaching. I'll have to blog about that next....

Coaching Connect

2010-07-19T16:55:00.000+01:00

Met Liz and Stuart of Coaching Connect for a pint and a chat last night. They are on their big bike ride around England and Scotland, and have been taking the opportunity to interview some of the stars en route: Meredith Belbin, Nancy Kline, me...

Worth checking their website if you are in the business.

The cycle continues

2010-07-15T09:52:00.001+01:00

Down to Colchester yesterday, for two events. The first was a planning meeting for next year's Essex Futures programme; chaired by the VC, the main contributors were a couple of reps chosen by this year's cohort, to give us feedback on what had worked well and what could be improved. Althrough they didn't pull their punches, and gave us some clear indications of things to change, overall their feedback was very positive, and we had a most productive meeting.

The second event was a celebration: hosted by the VC, all participants from the first two cohorts of the programme were invited for a drink and buffet - and a viewing of the video diaries I made of both programmes. It was lovely to catch up with everyone, and great to see the links starting to form between the two cohorts. We are keen to support that, and hope that being a 'graduate' of Essex Futures will become a part of peoples' identity and a real boost to interdisciplinary networking etc.

Facilitation Skills Training

2010-07-14T11:28:00.000+01:00

Great two days with a group from International Paint at Felling. Co-facilitating with Warren Scott (no relation!) which is always stimulating and creative.

The group were hard working, up for taking risks, and keen to learn, so we had an energising and rewarding couple of days, and they all left fired up and full of good resolutions: will be meeting them in September to see how they have performed in reality. All their practice sessions were good, they fomred some strong learning alliances (buddying) and they were very receptive to feedback, so I'm confident they will do well back at work.

In praise of flipcharts

2010-07-08T18:11:00.000+01:00

For the recent transition workshops, I have been using no powerpoint (or Keynote, to be more accurate, as a devoted Mac user), simply a flipchart. It seemed to me more appropriate for the kind of event I wanted to run.

This reminded me powerfully why I prefer flipcharts to projected presentations:

They are more intimate
They don't distract me or participants from each other
They put me on the same level as participants - not some slick professional presenter (though of course I am...)
My messy use of them makes it easier for participants when I ask them to prepare flips to summarise their discussions: I model that it doesn't matter about neat handwriting, writing in straight lines etc
I only use them when I need to, whereas it is all to easy to use ppt or Keynote as a crutch/prompt, resulting in endless slides...

Must stay low-tech more often!

Worst fears confirmed...

2010-07-08T18:01:00.000+01:00

Chatting with a client recently about a bidding process I'm in the middle of. He was trying to be reassuring: I'll be one of the successful bidders, so will be able to continue to do the coaching and training I do there.

However, he was less reassuring than he thought, as he told me that the results hadn't come out right first time, so he had to negotiate with procurement to change the scoring or weighting or something till it gave him the answers he wanted...

Transition Workshops

2010-07-08T17:55:00.001+01:00

Just finished the last of four workshops for Cleveland Police for some of their people who are being outsourced.

It has been really interesting to see how quickly people are able to move through their distress and confusion in the face of unwanted change, and start to engage with the future in a more positive frame of mind.

Paradoxically, it was partly because we gave them permission, time and space to talk about their unhappiness that they were able to move on.

Used the framework from William Bridges' work (Endings, Neutral Zone, New Beginnings) to give them a structure for their thinking and conversation, and as ever it proved a very valuable framework.

Great that the Force sees the value of investing time and resource in this kind of activity: it will certainly smooth the transition, as well as reassure people going through a difficult time.

A busy week

2010-07-03T07:51:00.001+01:00

A couple of days working with teams at Cleveland Police about to go through a major transition (via TUPE): really good that their management see the benefit of giving them some information on transition itself, and the chance to process that via team awaydays.

Then some time with a team from Northumbria University who wanted to look at their time management as a team - always interesting to approach time mgt from that perspective: there are many ways in which team members can help or hinder each other, both individually and collectively, when it comes to managing time.

Then a day's coaching, which is always stimulating and rewarding, and finally a day to catch up in the office (well half a day really, as WImbledon called...)

And next week looks equally interesting. Beats having a 9-5 job...

And Another...

2010-06-25T11:04:00.000+01:00

The final day of HASS Faculty Futures at Newcastle yesterday.

A very interesting day, with Peter Reynolds taking us through some exercises using his expertise in drama, helping us to explore the different roles we play and how to be effective in them - particularly speaking persuasively: Once more unto the breach and all that.

In the afternoon, participants found creative ways to reflect on, communicate and celebrate their learning. As so often, they exceeded my expectations, with a TV chat show, some expressive origami made into a story, some free writing morphing into art, and some interesting narrative artworks.

In the evening we had a celebratory dinner, with some of their managers, mentors, and other guests. Liz Kemp and Gigi Herbert of the Staff Development Unit were rightly recognised for making the programme such a success - as too were Charles Harvey and Gerry Docherty, the senior academic sponsors and animators of the programme.

The participants seem to have had a really good year; fun and challenging, and full of learning and laughter, and I am sure will stay in touch with each other beyond the programme; and the learning - and the fun - will continue.

Another Ending

2010-06-19T10:32:00.001+01:00

It's that time of year: year-long programmes coming to an end.

Yesterday we had the final day for the Essex Futures Programme. Participants were given some time to reflect in pairs or threes on the journey they've been on - and the one ahead.

Then we challenged them to work in teams to develop creative ways to express this, and as ever, the teams surpassed our expectation.

One team developed a University Challenged quiz, with the VC Colin Riordan, co-opted into the role of question master, and handed the questions to ask. His respondents were all glove puppets. It was well-scripted/improvised and very funny - and towards the end even addressed the question of what people had learned.

Another team presented the filming of an advertisement for Essex Futures, with people being rudely interrupted by the Director, asked to repeat things with more passion or sincerity, and so on. Again, very funny and got some good learning points across.

The third team made an investigative documentary examining this waste of public money, with a wonderfully prejudiced reporter putting loaded questions to his interviewees and summarising outrageously what he wished they'd said. Once more, laughter and learning went hand-in-hand.

Throughout the day, we had a team from East 15 filming the proceedings, and with lightning quick editing, they presented a documentary of the whole day for the assembled guests at the course dinner.

All in all a great end to a great course - and we are already planning next year's....

Research Leadership

2010-06-11T08:07:00.000+01:00

A good ending to this year's Research Leadership Programmes. On Wednesday, Cohort A benefited from a fascinating discussion with Diana Woodhouse PVC (R) at Oxford Brookes, as well as exploring strategies for leading without formal authority (influencing skills etc), and ways to manage cultural change through the organisation.

On Thursday, Cohort B heard from Angelo Cangelosi from Plymouth, who shared his experience and learning from major interdisciplinary research projects he is running, and we also explored Emotional Intelligence as applied to Leadership very fruitfully.

The two cohorts have different agendas, as they design their own programme at the start of the year, which ensures both relevance and buy-in.

The final review suggests they all found it very beneficial: I hope that the University has the wisdom to see that and to re-run it next year...

Guest speakers

2010-06-03T09:23:00.000+01:00

I'm always impressed at people's generosity with their time, when invited to contribute to training for others. For next week's Research Leadership events at Northumbria, we have Diana Woodhouse coming up from Oxford Brookes, where she is PVC (R) and Angelo Cangelosi who runs robotics and things (Artificial Intelligence and Cognition) at Plymouth.

Perfect Timing

2010-05-29T07:05:00.000+01:00

Just as I was finalising the bid which Stuart , Glyn and I have been working on this week, the phone rang.

It was cpcr, a great consultancy with whom I've worked in the past, and with whom I plan to work in the future. 'Andrew, we're just putting a bid together and want to include you.'

Of course it was the same opportunity they were bidding for: Murphy's Law...

The Book

2010-05-29T06:54:00.001+01:00

As half term arrives, and I'm taking the weekend to spend some time with my family, I am also determined to find some good thinking time (probably in part in conversation with my wife and children as we stride the fells) to get my ideas about my new book sorted.

It's going to be about Story - the items tagged Multistory Development give some clues...

Further news will follow as it devlops - I'm aiming to get it out by next summer.

Awayday

2010-05-29T06:49:00.000+01:00

Great awayday with the newly-formed Learning and Teaching Academy at Northumbria University.

We spent the day starting their planing process; looking at why (and why not) plan, understanding what they actually do, what the University wants and expects them to do, what they aspire to do and to be (purpose, vision and values and all that kind of thing...), and how to develop as a team and how to take all those strands forward.

A really good, committed set of people, whom I am sure will develop into a strong team; they entered into the day with good spirit and good ideas, despite having learned immediately previously that they are to be the subject of an internal review a mere 6 months after being established (not as a result of anything they have done or failed to do - but that's life in large organisatoins!)

Bidding (Again)

2010-05-24T22:59:00.000+01:00

Spent a happy day writing a proposal for an ancient university... Put a good team together - Glyn Jones, Stuart Hunt and me, and came up with a programme that should deliver real change. Looks good to me - I hope it does to them.

I guess the good thing about rejected bids is that it helps one to empathise with academic clients submitting research proposals and papers to journals etc...

A Story of Failure... The Offstage Character

2010-05-20T08:07:00.000+01:00

I've posted a few examples of the Multistory approach working. Here's an example of it failing - I am always wary of any approach that seems to be a panacea, and I also believe we can learn a lot from failures.

One failure I learned a lot from was in a social work setting, where a new manager had been appointed over a team involved in some quite creative approaches. The senior practitioner was unhappy with the financial constraints suddenly placed upon her and her team; but that was the very job the new manager had been appointed to do. The relationship quickly deteriorated and by the time I was asked to help, the two were not prepared to speak to each other. The boss was also involved, and I included him in the process. However what I failed to pick up in the early stages was the key role of an off-stage character, who used to share an office with the new manager, and who was still very influential with her.

I managed to get all three individuals to the stage where I - and they - believed that it might be valuable to sit down in the same room and explore their stories. However, the manager, who had shown some signs of movement and willingness to discuss by the end of our one-to-one conversation, now dug her heels in and refused to listen or to open up and discuss here real perceptions. I later learned that her friend and old office-mate had spent some time with her advising her not to give an inch, as the boss and the practitioner would both take a mile if she did. Had I realised earlier the degree to which this off-stage character was actively involved in the dispute, I should have included her in the process. In the event, we got nowhere, and the two people who had been prepared to move a little felt very bruised and abused. The manager was eventually re-assigned to another area: most organisations’ default response to difficult relationship issues.

Hey Jude! - An inspirational head

2010-05-19T07:50:00.000+01:00

Yesterday's Essex Futures day on Teaching and Learning was fascinating. It was hosted by the Sir Charles Lucas School, and its inspirational head, Jude Hanner, who has turned a challenging school round successfully and told us how she had done so. I am always humbled when I meet head teachers like Jude: the dedication, courage and sheer tenacity required to do what she has done are exceptional.

We also heard from the PVC for T&L, Andy Downton, who set the context - and some interesting challenges for the participants, and from Maria Fasli, a National Teaching Fellow and Head of School at the University, who shared some innovative approaches to getting learning internalised.

As usual, the other stars were the participants themselves, who came up with some great ideas for the T&L agenda, as well as bringing us up to speed with some excellent projects they have been undertaking as part of the programme, which are now coming to fruition, and their own personal journeys in the ActionLearning sets.

All in all, an extremely positive and enjoyable day: I am so lucky in the work I am asked to do, and in particular in the people with whom I work!

New Business and Potential New Business

2010-05-14T07:06:00.000+01:00

One of those weeks when a lot of new and interesting stuff emerges from almost nowhere (this is why it's tempting to be lazy about marketing!)

Cleveland Police want me to do a series of awaydays for teams embarking on major changes: to celebrate success and plan for the journey ahead.

Another client has asked me to sketch out ideas for a very interesting project which they wish to keep confidential, as they don't want their competitors to get wind of it until it's delivered sensational competitive advantage.

Someone else who I coached a while back is now 18 months into a new leadership role in a complex environment and wants me to undertake a 360 feedback exercise for her.

And I see St Andrews has issued an invitation to tender for some interesting coaching work. See my previous rants about the bidding process: this one includes words to the effect that only those with a good understanding of the culture of ancient universities need apply. Does that mean if you have not worked with them, Oxford or Cambridge you are wasting your time, I wonder. Will probably give it a shot with a couple of colleagues (we all have extensive University experience - but maybe not ancient enough....)

Research Leadership

2010-05-12T15:35:00.000+01:00

A couple of Research Leadership workshops last week: as ever struck by the richness and diversity of the projects people are involved in.

My favourite was a project that looks at whether teaching autistic children to draw perspective drawings from different points of view will also help them make the mental leap to see things from other people's point of view.

My diary broadcast

2010-05-12T15:32:00.000+01:00

Struck by the brilliance of this blog, Radio Cumbria asked me to keep a diary for a week for their Little Cumbria programme. So I will be in the studio this Friday recording that. Have warned the postman to get in training so as to be fit to carry all the subsequent fan mail up the hill...

Moving Mountains

2010-05-01T20:02:00.000+01:00

Moving Mountains is what I call my Influencing and Negotiating Skills workshop. Just ended a three day programme with a great bunch of people from the Adult Education world in the North East.

Keen and committed learners, they pushed their boundaries, tried stuff out, laughed a lot, and learned a lot too.

Joined on the last day by Clare, Peter and Simon from Curved Vision who used their acting skills to help people practice putting all the skills together to address real work scenarios. People always dread this in advance, but afterwards agree that it really helps the learning process.

Certainly the feedback from this programme was very positive, which is always pleasing.

Bidding (Again)

2010-04-27T08:22:00.000+01:00

Provoked to write more about the folly of competitive bidding as currently practiced by a new contract being issued by North Tyneside Council. The intro blurb concludes:

It is expected that any organisation applying will have extensive local government experience of delivering training programmes of this nature.

That is clearly code for 'only the usual suspects need apply...' and confirms what anecdotal evidence suggests: that in many cases, organisations go through the process because they have to, but are not really interested in looking at innovative or new suppliers.

Nearly everyone I have talked to who is well-established (and therefore not discounting like crazy to win business as start-ups or struggling businesses do) has said they only win bids when they are already suppliers to the bidder.

The fact that I have delivered programmes of the nature they are seeking to universities, health organisations, voluntary sector organisations and commercial clients might make you think I was at least worth a look. But I'm not even going to bid, because I know that my bid will not be looked at seriously: they will get enough bids from the usual suspects to shortlist a number that meet their criteria (ie including extensive experience with local government) to mean they can safely and legitimately discard mine (and all the others from 'not the usual suspects').

The question is, does that really serve them - or their council tax payers - well in terms of getting the best value and quality out of the process?

The Story of the Unpromotable Managers

2010-04-26T21:51:00.000+01:00

A key part of their achievement was a result of ‘Thickening the Plot.’ This is a concept I learned from the field of Narrative Therapy, though the way I go about it is not the way therapists might. I tend to do it firstly historically, by re-visiting the past through the lens of the new positive narrative and seeing how well it accounts for all the evidence we have collected, and also seeing what new evidence we can collect that this narrative is preferable.

Then I invite people to look forward, and agree how we will continue to nourish the new story (what evidence we will go out of our way to provide in support of it) and also what evidence we may need to starve the old story of, to prevent its resurgence (that is, are there any particular behaviours, or interpretations of others’ behaviours, which we will need to stop doing....)

Bidding

2010-04-22T07:58:00.000+01:00

Just learned that a consortium I'd put together to bid for some work in Glasgow failed to get the contract. We scored highly on every criteria except price.

As our pricing was pretty competitive (certainly for the quality and experience we offer) I wonder what they are buying...

This competitive bidding seems a poor process to me: it is nigh on impossible to convey the subtleties of the work we do when constrained by the boxes on the e-forms we have to complete - and I know a number of highly successful consultants who won't do these things at all, as they can generate plenty of business by recommendation, and bidding wastes so much time.

Given that I too generate plenty of business by recommendation, I may stop bidding as well; but the risk is that if all successful consultants do that, organisations who have to go through that kind of procurement process will end up having to choose only from those who can't generate business any other way (and who employ professional bid-writers, which again may not give the clients a true view of their competence) - so counter-intuitively it may work against their interests.

Influencing and Negotiating Skills Workshop

2010-04-22T07:50:00.000+01:00

Great workshop yesterday - a really good group who got engaged and really interrogated the approaches, practiced the skills and saw the applications to their own particular situations.

The one day version of this programme is a bit light-weight compared to the three day programme, where we get far more chance to practice (I bring in a team of actors on day three).

But nonetheless they seemed to find it helpful.

It's a bit like buses: I've got a three-day one next week (met the actors for their briefing last night); then another one-day one the week after that - and then the next in June.

Luckily plenty of leadership programmes and coaching going on between now and then...

A vision delivered!

2010-04-15T10:42:00.000+01:00

A while back I ran a team building event for an IT team. As a fun evening activity I got them to paint a picture representing their vision for the next few years. They weren't hugely impressed, but over a few beers painted a picture of USS Enterprise. (They said it was all they could paint, and was vaguely future and techie...)

Then they discovered that I had some post-it notes in speech-bubble shapes, and had great fun covering it with those, saying the kinds of things they'd like to be saying a few years hence.

We got together again recently, and I asked them to bring the picture. After some umming and erring, they remembered that it was languishing in someone's garage where it had been since the last event.

But to all our delight and astonishment, when we looked at the post-it comments, all but one of their aspirations had been delivered and the last one was work in progress. It was a great start to our team review.

And I am left wondering how important getting them to articulate those aspirations was, in terms of getting them to happen...

The Story of the Reluctant Leader

2010-04-13T19:46:00.000+01:00

Here's another example of the power of working with narrative:

In discussions with Mike, it became clear that his dominant story, that he was a sham as a leader, concealed another, that he was helping the team to perform well. Once more it was the existence of sub-dominant stories that proved so important; and Mike also demonstrated the importance of names in stories.

In fact, he was an example of someone where the name of the story was actually the heart of the issue. His problem essentially was his belief that he was not a good leader. I did all I could to help him loosen his grip on that story: all the evidence was against him, but that didn’t seem to count.

His idea of leadership was either heroic (Gandhi, etc) or tyrannical (his experience at work) and he was clear that he was neither. So we eventually re-named his job as team coach.

The minute we did so, a weight was lifted from his shoulders: this was a role in which he could excel: indeed he was already doing well in it. To strengthen this new story, we did two things.

One was to look back at the past for evidence of Mike as a good team coach - and we found plenty, including from before his promotion. Suddenly he was able to believe that he had earned his promotion and was worthy of it!

The other was that Mike checked with his boss that she was happy with his role being team coach: she readily agreed, and Mike’s problems with team leadership have evaporated.

Mike’s story also helped me to recognise the link between these narratives and people’s underlying value systems. The reason this was such a big issue for Mike was that he felt a genuine commitment to the work of the organisation which employed him, and had a strong personal ethic around a fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work. Helping Mike to re-engage with his story about himself as having a real commitment to the organisation, and being essentially an honest person was part of the process we went through.

Understanding Narrative: the Power of Story

2010-04-12T09:08:00.000+01:00

Much has been written about stories Leaders use (eg Denning, Squirrel Inc etc), but far less about how leaders can - and indeed need to - work with others’ stories.

My interest in this was brought into focus by a client who pointed out that the way I work has a lot in common with Narrative Therapy.

As I hadn’t heard of Narrative Therapy I was intrigued, rushed off and read a lot, and had to agree with her.

So over a few posts, I will tell some stories about how working with others’ narratives - and particularly recognising that people often have several narratives available to them at any moment in time - can be powerful and helpful.

I will tag these posts Multistory Development.

As an example of what I mean, here is the Story of the Unwashed Coffee Cup.

When Clare started work at her first job, she was young, and inexperienced in the world of work. However, she was outgoing and apparently confident. When embarrassed, she had the habit of laughing as a nervous release. Annie had worked in the department for years. She had a heart of gold, but a slightly dour manner which often concealed that. She understood how important precision was in the department’s work, as their output was often used in court cases, and could be torn apart by hostile lawyers unless it was perfect.

Clare did not report to Annie, but Annie noticed a couple of errors in Clare’s work and pointed them out (with her dour countenance...). Clare was upset by this, and gave her nervous laugh. And from that small interaction, each built a huge edifice of meaning. Clare saw Annie as bullying and interfering; Annie saw Clare as insubordinate, unconcerned about her work and cheeky.

Annie and Clare were helped to rebuild their relationship by rebuilding their stories about each other and their relationship. This was not done through some quick trick like ‘re-framing,’ but by a rigorous exploration of their perceptions and interpretations.

Negotiating the future of the post office

2010-03-29T19:11:00.000+01:00

Spent the morning giving the Chair of a village Parish Council a crash course in negotiating, and the afternoon working with her to facilitate a negotiation between business owners about the future of the village post office.

Did not get a deal - there wasn't one there to be had - but did manage to ensure that a difficult set of issues was thoroughly explored, that nobody was bullied or abused, and that everyone is clear what the next steps are - and that felt like a win in the circumstances!

Used the Harvard Principled Negotiating approach (see Getting to Yes, Fisheer & Ury) and as ever it delivered a fair, efficient and (reasonably) amicable process, enabling us to clarify that there was no deal that was going to work in a way that avoided the parties attacking each other (again) and demonstrated that the PC had done all it could to facilitate discussions.

Media Training (2)

2010-03-26T08:14:00.000Z

I was so busy name-dropping in the last post (cue solo trumpet) that I forgot to mention the real stars: all the academics and professional staff from the University of Essex. Through their practice interviews I learned a huge amount, about Alberti, that great renaissance polymath, Goal Setting and Dental Hygiene, making Art History more vocational (though I do have some questions about that), and pioneering research into Alzheimers' disease.

And that was only a quarter of the group (we were split into small groups for the practice sessions).

I love the diversity of specialisms, the expertise and the passion of these people! Leaders of the future...

Media Training

2010-03-25T18:42:00.001Z

Excellent two days of Media Training as part of the Essex Futures Leadership programme I help to run.

Brian Hanrahan was a great interviewee, passing on a wealth of experience in a most enjoyable way, and Tony King was both informative and a great speaker.

Karen and Kevin from Mosaic who did the media training were excellent, and all present (including me) benefited from their support - and challenge.

We made several podcasts on the first day, and practiced radio and TV interviews on the second.

Andrew Scott Training

Organisational Integrity (ii)

Organisational Integrity

Startling creativity

Resilience

Brain Myths

Foxy Knoxy or Inspector Clouseau?

Highlights Awayday

These ethical dilemmas...

Disclaimer

The Essentials of a Strong Story

Evaluation Time

A Tender that Added Value

Essex Futures Final Day

Vagaries of Tendering

Roger Steare on Love in Business

Narrative Training

Collaborating

Moving Mountains

Academic Leadership

Multistory coaching and interviews

Unpacking Your Chair

A Day in London

Essex Futures Media Training

More reflections on Narrative Training

Narrative Training

Academic Leadership Programme

Half term

Essex Futures again

Unpacking the chair a bit more...

Walking writing...

GROWing pains...

Ethics and narrative

Narrative Training

Academic Leadership Programme

Ethics

Introduction to Leadership

Walking CPD

How to make Governance interesting

A successful bid

Unpacking your chair

Outplacement Workshop

An interesting day

Brian Hanrahan RIP

Re-writing the story

A great week

Staying busy...

Defeated by the snow...

Too busy to blog...

Fascinating Stuff

Social Inclusion through the Digital Economy

Moving Mountains

In defence of truth (again....)

Essex Futures '10-'11

Walking Meeting

Great Response

Great day on Narrative

In Defence of Truth

Don't try this at home...

More on Walking Coaching

Good books on Leadership?

HR Awayday

A great day with some great people...

In Praise of Pride and Prejudice

Targetted marketing

Recommended for you

Because you said you owned...

Max Atkinson de-bunking msrepresentation of Mehrabian's stuff

Negotiating Skills

Holidays

Walking Coaching

A Day's Walking

Coaching Connect

The cycle continues

Facilitation Skills Training

In praise of flipcharts

Worst fears confirmed...

Transition Workshops

A busy week

And Another...