Creative Leadership Conversations in Ethiopia

I recently conducted a coach training session in Ethiopia for the Leadership Beyond Boundaries effort. It was an experience I enjoyed very much. Here's a post filed on the Lead Beyond blog:

The methodology used the Creative Leadership Conversations Toolkit to help participants learn essential coaching skills, key leadership principles, and half-a-dozen simple but powerful assessment tools. The two-day program included multiple opportunities for the participants to apply the skills learned in a cascading series of coaching sessions conducted in learning teams.

The participants found the tightly woven experience powerful and forged strong bonds with their learning partners. Some of what they shared at the conclusion reflected both personal and professional learning:

“I am feeling I learned both professionally and personally that I have everything I need. It has been two powerful days for me. I had a big breakthrough in my group and make a commitment to hold and be held accountable by my group.”

 “I feel I am turning in a new direction. The experience was great and moving, powerful. I need to open my heart and let the change in. I never thought about me in the same light before and it became very clear to me. I feel I found my direction.”

“Good energy! I learned that human beings can apply the coach approach in so many ways.”

The last comment speaks to the intention of the Creative Leadership Conversations methodology that coaching techniques can be used to develop others and also to foster greater understanding and collaboration between individuals. The participants in the program expressed a intent to apply the learning to work with school teachers, to initiate coaching through their training organizations, and make changes in their personal lives.

I am looking forward to the next program we have planned for Jamaica.

Creative Leadership Conversations in India

This is a cross-post from the Center for Creative Leadership's Leadership Beyond Boundaries blog:

The Leadership Beyond Boundaries effort has launched a prototype of the Creative Leadership Conversations toolkit. This is a resource to help individuals use “the Coach Approach” to engage in purposeful conversations that may be about developing leadership capacity (coaching and mentoring) or enacting leadership (collaboration, co-creation, and conflict resolution). The toolkit offers knowledge, practices, and tools that can be used to transform how we engage. The process begins with relationship building and developing an understanding and appreciation of the perspectives and needs of others through deep listening, inquiry, and feedback. It then flows into engagement to envision and enact a course of action that is energizing and empowering to all involved. The toolkit is the product of a collaboration by a team of CCL coaches, Tzipi Radonsky and Philomena Rego, and Pat Williams of Coaching the Global Village. Philomena recently tested the toolkit with a group of nuns in India. She filed this report.

“I had the opportunity to run the first test of the toolkit on two different groups of nuns in India. These religious workers surrender personal lives to be of service to others. They are tasked with great demands and limited resources. I recognized that leadership development could help them reconnect with their purpose and gain skills to be more effective in their work. While I had interacted with this population before I had never done any leadership development and was not sure how it would be received.

The first group I worked with was a team of nuns running a HIV/AIDs treatment center in Goa, India. This group of nuns had spent over 25 years in religious life. I started by setting an intention for us to have an open mind as we stepped into unfamiliar territory. Initially they found the coaching methods difficult and challenging. Yet I was encouraged to observe that they were open to be vulnerable as they struggled with new concepts. As the program unfolded, there was deep sharing of personal identity and struggles and the openness to receiving insights and feedback from others. At the conclusion of the program, the group made a commitment to develop an approach of engaging others in a different way — to suspend judgment and be curious about alternative perspectives. A week or so later, I heard from the person in-charge that she has noticed a difference in how the nuns had been using this new practices in changing how they were interacting with each other, the other staff, patients and children. Some of the participants who were least expected to change had changed the most. As the toolkit methods are designed to be shared with others, one of the nuns planned to do a short program for others who hadn’t been able to attend.

The second session I did was over a day in Bangalore, India with a group who were involved in education and development for marginalized women and youth. These nuns had been in religious life between 5 – 11 years. The material transferred really well and they got a chance to practice the skills with each other. Even though the participants felt that it was not enough time, they felt comfortable to take the practices to the groups they work with. Their superior said that the participants had gained a different perspective on how they could work and this would help them become more effective leaders in the community. I am encouraged by the power this tool to shift the nature of engagement and enhance the lives of people so dedicated to improving the lives of others.”

Next, we take the Creative Leadership Conversations toolkit to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where we will be running a Coaching Essentials workshop for a group of professionals who intend to bring coaching to the social sector.