Who Decides Who Needs to Know What?

While most organizations recognize and support leadership development, it can be challenging to find agreement on the key areas of focus. Deciding what to teach in any program can be both political and arrogant. In many corporate training initiatives leadership competencies are decided in the political arena. Often the senior executive team will look at their strategy for the upcoming year and decide what type of training would best support reaching their business goals. Or perhaps ‘leadership development’ is part of the strategy. Or increasingly the employee engagement survey is driving a need for training around a certain area like succession planning or performance management. That explains the political side of things but what do we mean by arrogant? It might sound harsh but there can be an element of arrogance when I decide someone else needs to learn something.

At The FIELD Collaborative we want to approach our clients with humility. We don’t have a ‘program’ to deliver. We want to work together to discover what the clients needs and wants. Sure, we have a lot of tools and experience to bring to the table but which ones we unpack will be decided together. So, how do we decide? Right now we are working in Cambodia with a client. Preparations for this 3 day leadership program began months ago with a focus group of the major stakeholders in the program. In addition to the insight we learned from this group we also did research into Cambodian culture and the organizations that we will be working with. And finally, we will begin our session by spending time listening to the participants tell their own leadership stories and then having a dialogue focused on the areas that they want to focus on. Together we will create an agenda. It takes confidence to walk into a three day session sans polished PowerPoint and a sexy binder of information. But we are putting our confidence in the wisdom of the women in the room.

Post by Sandy Reynolds, President, The FIELD Collaborative.  

Collaboration

The FIELD Collaborative’s commitment to a dialogue approach to dealing with difference leads naturally to our strong emphasis on collaboration.

Though we’re often slow to admit it, most times we can’t do what needs to be done all by ourselves, because we simply don’t have everything it takes to get it done. Even with unlimited (theoretically) financial and human resources, we come from certain vantage points, each with their own advantages and disadvantages, which makes it possible for us to do some things really well, but not all things needed equally well.

So we look to others for not only shared resources – ours are never unlimited – but also for different vantage points, different ways of seeing what’s happening and where we could go together as a result. Collaboration thus depends highly and firstly on building relationship – without relational dialogue as its starting point and continuing thread, collaboration will definitely fail.

Networking is a form of collaboration in its minimal form. At its most basic level, however, it’s about finding out what other people have so that we can have that too. Still, collaboration emerges naturally out of networking when people in relationship recognize that there may be things they can do together better than they can do alone.

Whatever its precedent, collaboration can’t be rushed. It takes time to hear where others are coming from and to tell properly one’s own story (dialogue again!), it takes time to craft a shared vision, and most importantly it takes time to build trust.

Without common understanding, shared vision and mutual trust, those involved in collaborative efforts may just as well pick up their marbles and go home. With those elements in place, however, the possibilities are real and exciting – and always fun as well!

This blog post was contributed by Aileen Van Ginkel, our VP, Partnering

“I” is for “Intentional”

Christopher Columbus set out to explore beyond what was known of the world in his day. He did this with only rough charts and incomplete maps. Although his intention was to find a western passageway to India, he found something that far exceeded anyone’s expectations. When we set our intention on growing as leaders, often we stumble on radical and exciting new worlds.

We are intentional when we focus in on something with the desire to understand it at a deeper level. A photographer is intentional on what she allows into the frame of her shot. An artist intentionally uses colour to paint a scene or express a deeper reality. A leader will often intentionally focus on some aspect of her organization or team to improve overall results. Often we must slow down enough to observe and ponder where we want to apply our efforts, what we want to study more thoroughly or bring more sharply into focus.

The FIELD Collaborative is intentional about leadership. We have considered this theme from many angles over the past decade or more. Individually and together, we have thought through leadership theory, read reams of books on the subject, led various organizations and teams, listened to current leadership gurus, and written on the topic in scholarly papers, theses and a dissertation. We are all lifelong learners. We continually learn from the past through the present and into the future.

Collaboration has emerged as a vital aspect of leadership and we intentionally invest deeply in others through collaborative learning. We will use the myriad tools we have developed to guide others, encouraging them to set aside time for intentional training to continue their own leadership development.

International leadership development, particularly focused on women, is another area we intentionally are targeting. We prioritize working with leaders who have a passion to bring about social change in our world. Our intention as an organization is to use our strengths, talents, education and experience to make a difference in the organizations we serve both in Canada and internationally.