The Collaborative Leader:Leading Through Conversation

What is

Compellingcase for new leadership

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Personal Situation•My own work–urgency in creating a startup

that will foster and enable new leadership

•Focused on the every day, planning, developing, deploying

•Reading Evolution’s Edge by Graeme Taylor broadened my focus and brought me back into contact with my sense of urgency and my sense of purpose

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Everything

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Everything is

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Everything is increasingly

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Everything is increasingly complex

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Globally Interconnected•Global teams rarely meet face-to-face

•Multiple cultures with very different ways of working, thinking, making meaning

•Virtual work, telecommuting

•Generational differences

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What do you think?

?What other things are making it more complex?

How do you

experience complexity?

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Need for new skillsthat deal with complexity

•Open to multiple voices and perspectives

•Willing to be influenced

•Work across divisions

•Understand systems

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Leaders are expected to know what to doand to have all the right answers

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Reality check

•Impossible to see and know everything

•Leaders have to draw on multiple perspectives to understand complex situations

•Leaders have to filter and distribute volumes of information

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Qualityof the

Information

Improvesthe Qualityof Decisions

Inclusion ofMultiple Perspectives

Quality of decisions

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?What is missing from leadership capability?

What do we need from our leaders?

What do you think?

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What could be

The Collaborative Leader

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CollaborativeLeadership•Leaders help bring out collective knowledge

•Shared leadership enables good answers to be generated from the group

•Collective knowledge and shared meaning are essential for implementing change and achieving a vision

•Leaders need to understand the value of relationship

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“We are always,

already in relationship”– Southern

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Fostering trust is important for bringing out more than superficial understanding

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Bringing out diverse voices lets the wisdom of multiple perspectives emerge

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Collective wisdom can help to

achieve the vision, foster innovation

and move the

organization forward

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?How can leaders foster innovation?

What are some of the obstacles that could prevent collaboration?

How can they be overcome?

What do you think?

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What isOrganizations are hierarchical

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•Knowledge stops at key positions, hierarchical reporting structures limit how information flows through the organization

•Power is wielded unconsciously without understanding of the impact of language

•People are demotivated from contributing

•Innovations from people throughout the organization are minimized

Hierarchy

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What could beA networked organization with free-flowing information, shared vision and purpose

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What isHow we talk and think together in meetings

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The collective IQ drops for the entire group as individuals justify their professional existence and defend their actions every chance they get

“When you have to look good,

you are not able to learn anything.”

– Argyris26

Advocacy - Inquiry - Reflection No Collective Learning

Collective IQ =

Stagnation

Equation for failure

=

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Mindfulness and reflection help us to better integrate information, spark our creativity, and increase our innovative ability

“Without reflection there is no learning.”– Jack Mezirow

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What could be

The skills of advocacy, inquiry, and reflection help to develop collaboration, and can be learned individually and collectively

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1. State your idea clearly

2. Explain how you arrived at your conclusions (Ladder of Inference)

3. Ask others what they think of your idea

Advocacy Steps

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Inquiry Steps

1. Ask an open-ended question

2. Listen with a willingness to be influenced

3. Follow with additional questions and collective exploration

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How to Reflect

• Express your thinking

• Suspend what you are feeling or observing

• Mirror to the group a synthesis of what has been said

• Foster collective learning

Reflection is not a step-by-step process32

Low High

High

Tell and sellMentor

Convince

StateCriticize

Withdraw or withhold

CoachManipulateAsk false questions

Learn togetherHave rich conversationDialogue

INQUIRY

AD

VO

CA

CY

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• Performance review process

• Global economy: how’s it going globally?

• The value of outsourcing

• Telecommuting--what are the benefits?

• Cross-cultural communications

• Other suggestions or ideas

Possible Topics:

Practice

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ReflectionReflect on the practice session

• How did it go?

• What was hard?

• What was easy?

• What did we learn?

• How it can be of value?

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Conclusion

Improvesthe Qualityof Decisions

Improvesthe Qualityof Results

Quality of theConversation

CreativityInnovation

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Companion eBook

Download it for free athttp://www.ico-consulting.com/e-book.html

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Additional resources•Virtual facilitation to further build these skills with a team

•Coaching to develop collaborative leadership

•Next Webinar - Team Learning 2/9/2011

•Release of on-line learning program March 2011

•Next eBook: Leading a Global Team - Spring 2011

•Recording of this webinar will be available next week

http://www.ico-consulting.com38