Creative Leadership Conversations program in Chile

I enjoyed working with amazing people in Chile. It has been a wonderful experience. I am delighted that the toolkit we developed has reached different countries and many more people. 

CCL was invited by Vertical to facilitate a Creative Leadership Conversation (CLC) program for 23 staff, consultants and coaches. Vertical is a multi-faceted entity that is part expedition company, part training and development organization, and part foundation for the social good. Vertical believes that these agendas as interlinked. In its work, Vertical guides people on journeys that generate new insights and learning and trace paths to greater social contribution.

For the program, Vertical wanted to convene its staff and partners so they could get to know each-other better and forge a shared vision for the organization moving forward. The CLC model uses conversation as a means for co-creation. Beginning with an exploration of identity and values, the process flows towards envisioning new futures. Participants learn and use the core coaching skills of listening, inquiry, and feedback along with a set of tools that can be used to anchor conversation. It helps to deepen the awareness of oneself, creates deeper bond among participants and provides knowledge, practices and tools.

The 2.5 day program was facilitated by Philomena Rego, Janet Carlson, and Lyndon Rego and delivered – thanks to simultaneous translation – in Spanish. We started the program by setting intentions for our time together. We used memento activity to introduce ourselves to each-other. This brought forth much emotion as people spoke of family connections and loss from the Chilean earthquake and tsunami. This kind of open sharing, we learned, is not so common as there is a wariness about being open. There is a Chilean expression known as chaquetero that means pulling another person down by their coat tails. It is manifest in a tendency to be critical. The CLC program was a process that took the participants in the other direction. It is about appreciation, support and abundance. It is about dreaming about possibilities and exploring how to bring them to life.

By the end of the program we heard that experience was powerful. Participants said it helped them to reconnect with themselves and each other. They had a greater appreciation for what it was to be a part of an organization like Vertical that values people. They felt that together they can make a difference. They expressed how this methodology could be used more broadly in Chile, in government, in communities, and with youth.

Chile is undergoing a period of volatility as young people take to the streets in protest about the cost and quality of education. The CLC model, we heard, can give people a voice and help enable constructive social engagement. There is much need to democratize leadership in Chile, a country that is affluent but with pervasive social inequity. With Vertical we are exploring a number of ways to carry this agenda forward in Chile.

Is Elementary School too Early for Leadership Development?

During the close of the school year, Philomena Rego and Laura Weber conducted a one-day leadership program for 47 5th graders at an arts-based elementary school in Winston-Salem, NC. The program was designed to bring closure for these students as they moved forward to middle school and create an opportunity to appreciate what they gained from elementary school while identifying their leadership skills which will help them adapt to middle school.

The focus of the morning was creating greater awareness of how experience shapes identity and how their school had played a major role in these experiences. These experiences are some of the building blocks for their leadership development. The training design was learner-center and experiential. Throughout the day we wove in artistic concepts to align with the schools’ mission. Following the traditional Leadership Beyond Boundaries Leadership format, we started with o Social Identity mapping (SI) for the students to begin understanding themselves at a deeper level. The SI map has three components, the “Core” which represents who we are at our truest self, “Given’, which represents unchangeable aspects of ourselves, and then the “Chosen” component represents what we what to have in our lives.. We were amazed by what the students put in their ore – to help others, be an authentic leader, to be a good friend, etc. They were asked what Social Identity has to do with leadership. The responses we received got at the essence of what we hear from adults, the 1) the need to know ourselves so we cannot understand others , and 2) knowing our values and what is at our core we can better connect with others. We closed out the morning with a memory walk. The students walked around the school and identified something they wanted to remember that influence their Social Identity and that they wanted to take with them from the school. Self portrait?


After lunch we focused on how they want to be in the middle school and what would help them in this transition. The students were asked to pick a Visual Explorer image card that represented the leadership qualities that will help them to make their first middle school year the best year. The key ideas presented by the students were developing listening skills, having the courage to stand up for their values, and understanding others. This activity helped them think how they can take responsibility to make it a great year for themselves. We also wanted to help them voice concerns they might have. The students were asked to come up with the skit regarding their concerns or fears about middle school and how they would use their leadership to overcome these fears or concerns. It was interesting that most of the students came up with the skits that represented bullying, not being understood by the teacher, or being pressured to do something they didn’t want to do. At the end of each skit we explored what could help them create a positive outcome.

Finally we had a closing circle where each student shared a learning they got and how they were going to apply it. Some spoke about their understanding of their Social Identity and how that will help them in their new school, others spoke about their memory walk and what they want to keep, and some shared the learning from their skit and about not to allowing others to bully them.

What we found was that elementary school is not too early to help young people think about themselves as leaders through exploring their identity, what they stand for, what they hope to become, how to relate to others, and to see life as a journey marked by passages that offer experiences and learning. It was a great learning experience for us as well and fun to engage this thoughtful and energetic group.

Anger

Recently I was reading this book “Peace is Every Step” by Thich Nhat Hanh and the chapter on anger captured my interest. Here is what he wrote “When we are angry we are not usually inclined to return to ourselves, we blame the other person who is making us angry”. This is a powerful statement or thought.

I found myself challenged since I am in this place more often than I would like to admit. Almost by default I tend to focus on the other person as to what they did or did not do that triggered my irritation. This leads to me feeling more angry or resentful and I end up making up a story about this person and exercising judgment rather than curiosity or compassion. As a result what does it do to me? I get angrier. I become unable to be rational or see things from their perspective and unable to engage the other person. It totally blocks my creativity since my energy gets used up on these negative feelings.

Thich Nhat Hanh explains it beautifully wherein he says we must be like a fireman who pours water on the blaze first and not waste time looking for the one who set the house on fire. This can mean taking a pause before reacting when angry. It can also mean not letting ourselves into situations, like being overly tired or hungry, that can give us a short fuse. We can also create more peace by doing things that make us feel more relaxed, whether it is meditation or exercise. Also, focusing on what triggers anger will create the awareness and the ability to feel the emotion. This is so that we can manage our emotion rather than the emotions managing us. The other benefits of feeling our emotions is it keeps us grounded and are able to deal with it in a shorter time frame. We increase our ability to be mindful, to reflect what the emotion is telling us and develop a deeper understanding of ourselves.

I invite you to practice focusing on the emotion you are feeling rather than focusing on the person who is making you angry. Journal your learning to further develop this new mindset.

Leadership Development Program in Jamaica

Recently I facilitated two different programs in Jamaica. One was for Management Institute for National Development, where I facilitated a Leadership Essentials program. The second one was for Caribbean Health Leadership Institute using the Creative Leadership Conversation approach for mentoring skills training. I was quite struck by the passion and desire and the eagerness of each group to learn in the service of self and others. You can read both these reports on the blog, http://www.leadbeyond.org/.

Leadership development provides an opportunity to turn the mirror inward and create greater awareness of values, beliefs/ limiting beliefs, strengths, challenges and our own mindset. It helps us expand and stretch. It was amazing to see how each of the participants were eager to embrace this learning so that they could live authentically and help others to do the same. They were all eager to put the new learning in practice on their job and with their teams.

Being present and connected

Recently I spent few days with my daughter and couple of my friends at a spiritual center, which also happens to be at a beach. It was a great time to reconnect with self and be in the NOW. One of the questions I have been working with is: How connected are we to our self when we are busy trying to get to the next thing? Where is this drive coming from? Is it from that deep place within, our purpose, or is it driven by the external? When I am connected I am able to notice the difference or else I get caught in the rat race and moving from one job to another. As a result the NOW just happens without our awareness.

There is a great link between the NOW and connection to oneself. When we are in this place of harmony with both we are able to experience the present moment and notice what is going on with our emotions, thoughts and our spirit. Focus on your breathing as often as possible during the day to be grounded in the NOW and be in the flow of connectedness. What a great way to enhance your EQ. When one is connected one can appreciate and enjoy life, in spite of things not going the way one wants, and learn from it. If this practice is developed one will not have to wait to get away to be in the NOW.

Building the Capacity for Collaboration with Public Health Leaders in the Caribbean

This is a repost from the Leadership Beyond Boundaries site on a mentor training program I did in Jamaica for public health leaders.

Tzipi Radonsky, Philomena Rego and Pat Williams used the Creative Leadership Conversation toolkit to help prepare public health leaders to grow their skills as collaborators and mentors. The two-and-a-half-day program was hosted by for Caribbean Health Leadership Institute at the University of West Indies in Kingston Jamaica and attended by participants from across the Caribbean: Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Dominica, Jamaica, St. Kitts, St. Lucia, and Trinidad & Tobago.

The 15 participants were doctors and senior public health administrators working on the frontlines of HIV/AIDS. In their work, they shoulder great responsibility and are charged with tackling a spectrum of public health challenges that involve an array of stakeholders. The ability to build relationships and shape collaborative outcomes is imperative as is the urgency to get things done. Said one participant before the program: 
 
“The major challenge is not having the patience to listen and let the mentee or the other people formulate a position or take full charge of the situation, and endure or enjoy the consequences. It requires an ability to both pull back and to be strong and frank giving an honest assessment, whether this is praise, compliment or correction. I have a tendency to “smooth over” some circumstances, adopt a protective posture or just do it myself.” 
 
The mentor training methodology used the Creative Leadership Conversations toolkit to help participants learn to engage others in a constructive, appreciative and developmental way that builds shared ownership and leadership. The program provided the public health leaders with the opportunity to learn and practice essential coaching and mentoring skills, and equipped them with key leadership concepts and simple yet powerful assessment tools they could use for mentoring and collaborative work. The program wove together coaching demos and practice sessions so that the participants had the immediate opportunity to practice new techniques in peer- based learning groups as soon as they learned them.

The participants found the experience powerful, personal, and practical. In the closing reflections we heard that it was an “enthralling, inspiring” experience that used practical methods that were “perfect examples of adult learning.” The peer discussions, participants said, brought forth “issues of significance that were hidden.” We were urged to “continue to promote this new paradigm of mentorship” and use the low-tech, high touch methods that characterized the program.

With programs conducted in India, Ethiopia, and Jamaica, we’re delighted by the power of this methodology to transform people’s ability to think more expansively, engage respectfully, and seek collaborative outcomes.