“Coming into Community”: Bush Fellows Leadership Development Seminars Pt. 1 (of 8)

Last week, I attend the first of eventually eight Bush Fellow Leadership Development Seminars.  The two-day seminar was an enriching experience.  It was a time to meet and get to know other the other 17 Bush Fellows, to explore my leadership style and learn about others’, and to begin understanding “the work of leadership.”

Below, I describe my reflections and learning points around 5 different pieces of the seminar:

1. What’s in a Wordle?
2. Fair Process Exercise
3. Assumptive Worlds
4. Adaptive Leadership
5. Reflective Practices

1) “What’s in a Wordle?”
As part of our introductions, we were given a “Wordle”.  A Wordle is a graphic that shows which words of a given text are used most or emphasized.  My Wordle is comprised of the text from my final application question, my long-term vision, and it really showed my focus on: community, leadership, energy efficiency, process, direction, working, and building.

Other interesting words included: resources, building, resilient, together, adaptive, belief, and collaborative.

The Wordle exercise gave me a new way to introduce myself to others and learn about the common values I shared with the other fellows.  Community was a central focus for almost all of us.  + Anyone can make a Wordle at wordle.net.

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2) Fair Process Exercise

“People care about the decisions you make, but they care even more about the process you used along the way.” – Harvard Business Review, “Fair Process – Managing in the Knowledge Economy“

We opened with an exercise around Fair Process – an approach to group decision-making that establishes and maintains respect and dignity, even when a single person will ultimately make a decision that impacts everyone.

Fair Process emphasizes three components:

1. Engagement means involving individuals in decisions that affect them.  It communicates respect for individuals and their ideas.
2. Explanation means that everyone involved understands why decisions are made as they are.  Explanation shows that individuals’ input was considered.
3. Expectations clarity requires that leadership clearly state the new rules of the game.

I also found Explanation to be especially important upfront.  From the very beginning, leaders should explain the rules of engagement and the time limit or bound need to be communicated clearly, the steps of the decision-making process, and who ultimately will make the decision.  As my cohort and I went through a fair process exercise together, I noticed how smoothly it went.  I believe this was partly due to the process actually achieving those aspects listed above.  I also believe that we had begun to build a trust in the capability of one another.

I also began to see examples of Fair Process that I have experienced in my work.  From a day-to-day level to a larger planning project, the perspective of Fair Process explains both the vitality and the conflict I have seen in different situations.  Fair Process is a large part of creativity-centered work, design, organizing.  Without Fair Process there is confusion, accusation of not being heard, and lack of adherence to new policies.

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3) Assumptive Worlds
We also talked about our assumptive worlds, the worlds that we create to understand and survive in this world.  We create rituals, restrictions, and rules to attempt to make our worlds more predictable and explainable.  We are “meaning makers” and we ground our lives in a strong set of assumptions.  And these assumptions are different for everyone.

Leadership is an act of defining and describing the world, including current circumstances, history, and future possibilities.  And having a positive assumptive world, one that supports self-esteem, healthy affirmation, and openness helps us establish relationships with others.

Our facilitators challenged us to “play” with aspects of our assumptive worlds, such as eliminating or adding aspects, in order to broaden our view of what is possible.  We can “stretch” our assumptive worlds through a process of reflection, changing, checking, and reflecting.  Through time we can learn to see things differently, broadening our assumptive world.

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4) Adaptive Leadership

“Adaptive leadership is the practice of mobilizing people to tackle tough challenges and thrive.” – from Practice of Adaptive Leadership by Ron Heifetz, Marty Linsky, and Alexander Grashow

“Exercising leadership to do adaptive work means disappointing people’s expectations at a rate they can tolerate.” – Slide from the seminar

This statement illustrates that leadership is not about simply being followed or being looked up to, but leadership is about bringing people to the challenge, it’s about translating one’s informal authority (that rests on capability, results, integrity, and intent over title or position) into tangible work and action toward .

Adaptive leadership paints a realistic picture of what adaptive leadership looks like: It means getting your hands dirty because adaptive challenges mean competing values, changing attitudes, encouraging new learning, developing new behaviors, and holding the tension of polarities.  It means stepping up on the balcony to see the full situation and then providing the right level of direction to keep people mobilized.

One of the other pieces we talked about during this presentation was about how leadership means accepting conflict and using that tension to move forward.  It also means learning not to take things personally.  For me, this is probably my most difficult challenge in my leadership development.  Our facilitators emphasized: It’s never personal, even though it always will feel that way.  It might be the process, it might be the pace of not meeting expectations, it might be lack of relevancy, or it might be things are overwhelming.  Either way, I need to try to see it not as an attack on me, but focus on the situation and problem and find a way to move forward.

There’s a lot out there on Adaptive Leadership.  I was really lucky to spend a day in workshop with a consultant on Adaptive Leadership through my work with the Regional Sustainable Development Partnership.  At my Leadership Seminar with the Bush Fellows, we only went through the first part.  I’m really looking forward to learning about all of its aspects and how I can apply them in my work.

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5) Reflective Practices
The main take away from the 2nd day’s work on reflective practices was that taking time to reflect is not something you do if you have time.  As part of leadership development, reflection is central to increasing my awareness of myself.

Reflection is key to opening myself up to new ideas and to engage with uncertainty and ‘not-knowing’ in a productive and healthy way.

Reflection means playing…with my thoughts and ideas, with a new concept, and opening myself up to surprises.

Reflection is important for uncovering personal barriers and anxieties that may be hindering my growth or effectiveness.

Reflection (and by meditation) cultivates an attitude of patience and openness, mindfulness and loving-kindness.

Photo by Eitan Charnoff

As a Fellowship colleague described, cultivating leadership is like the flight of a migratory bird, making a long and grand journey.  And that migratory bird needs to have places it can stop to rest.

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Overall, the seminar was an incredible two days with an impressive group of individuals.  I was honored to be working and learning alongside individuals so committed to their work and communities.  Most importantly, we realized we weren’t alone in the difficulties we have already discovered in our work.

I thought our facilitators summed it up well:

“Your Bush Fellowship is the beginning of a conversation with yourself and your community.”

The seminar has begun a learning-rich conversation within myself, my Bush Fellows, my work colleagues, and friends and family about how we can change our communities, and what role I can play in that change.