Reminder of what we can become
looking back at a leadership workshop
Over the course of my working life I have often served the role of meeting facilitator. That is, I assist a group of people in reaching an outcome they want in a certain amount of time.
Picture a business meeting with a long complicated agenda. Or an orientation meeting where team members hash out roles and responsibilities and come to an agreement on how they want to work with one another.
The facilitation work might include timekeeping, note taking, summarizing, asking for clarification. Keeping the train moving and on the track. But the most important aspect is helping people get to know each other and creating a space that is inclusive, where people are open and curious. Unfacilitated, most meeting content defaults to the person with the most power, or the person with the most opinions, or simply those people who like talking in groups.
The term “safe space” has implications for social discourse, community engagement and civil society. My work mostly involved small meetings in a single room. I am reminded of Peter Block’s observation from his 2008 book Community: The Structure of Belonging:
The future is created one room at a time, one gathering at a time.
In November 2018, I returned home from a weeklong workshop in Bangkok for USAID. I rested for a couple days and flew to Chicago to pilot a three-day leadership workshop for a non-profit. In a bright conference room (with external light) I met with the sixteen participants, most of whom did not know each other. Listed below are some quotes that I had written on large pieces of paper and posted around the room. The instructions were to walk around, take a look at each quote, then stand next to the one that most resonated with you. I put a time limit on this, giving sufficient time to review the choices, read, and reflect.
1. We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be. — Kurt Vonnegut
2. A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus. — Martin Luther King Jr.
3. Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others. — Jack Welch
4. The way you tell your story to yourself matters. — Amy Cuddy ('Presence')
5. Without leaps of imagination, or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning. — Gloria Steinem
6. I can see myself in all things and all people around me. — Sanskrit Phrase
7. I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel. — Maya Angelou
8. It’s not the load that breaks you down, it’s the way you carry it. — Lena Horne
9. A large chair does not make a king. — Sudanese proverb
10. I alone cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone across the water to create many ripples. — Mother Teresa
11. Do or do not. There is no try. — Yoda
12. I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed. — Michael Jordan
13. The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any. — Alice Walker
14. When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down 'happy.' They told me I didn't understand the assignment, and I told them they didn't understand life. — John Lennon
15. We are what our thoughts have made us; so take care about what you think. Words are secondary. Thoughts live; they travel far. — Swami Vivekananda
16. Without reflection, we go blindly on our way, creating more unintended consequences, and failing to achieve anything useful. — Meg Wheatley
17. If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea. — Antoine de Saint-Exupery
18. He who thinks he is leading and has no one following him is only taking a walk. — Malawian proverb
There is something energizing about standing up and moving at the beginning of a workshop. A few decisive folks moved right to position and stood proudly at their chosen quote. Participants drawn to the same quote would get into a conversation. One person moved a poster so she could stand near two quotes. One person seemed to want to visit and talk about each quote with whomever was around. And there were a few perpetual explorers, who up until the bell rang were still walking and weighing their options.
The debrief involved each person explaining why they were standing where they were. Of all the ideas in the room, why did this one call to you?
It was an easy “ice breaker” but it had a profound impact. The workshop was about leadership, and each of the quotes had some connection to stepping into that role:
The vitality of a compelling vision; the value of reflection before action; the need to connect to people as people (not merely “direct reports”); the nature of organizational change; the role of “failure;” distinguishing pretentiousness from genuine leadership.
My intent here is not to sketch out the whole workshop, but I will mention one more aspect that felt groundbreaking at the time. So many workshops I have attended (and designed, to be honest) began with the perfunctory question to the participants: “What do you want to get out of this workshop?” — from which prompt is generated a laundry wish list that is pulled out at the end of the workshop when you are asked the follow up question: “What is your one take-away from this workshop?”
I finally decided to scrap both of these questions.
For the first question, instead of plaintively asking “What do you want from three days of sitting in this room?” ask:
Why is it important for you to be here?
This prompt assumes you are here for a reason, and that the reason should be in some way commensurate with the 18 to 24 hours you will spend within those walls. It takes longer to answer, but the responses speak to each person’s intent: “Here is the work I want to do.”
As for the final “take-away” question? Throw it away. Again, from Peter Block:
The world was never transformed by a take-away.
Looking back these seven years since my little workshop, the importance of being a genuine leader, whatever you station in life, seems more evident than ever. Our current cultural landscape often seems to be doing a middling job of modeling leaders demonstrate, with words and deeds, graciousness, critical thinking, a growth mindset, and the desire to develop others to be the best version of themselves..
Instead we have lots of tadpole leadership wiggling around the pools of power.
Here is the full passage from the opening quote from Peter Block:
The future is created one room at a time, one gathering at a time. Each gathering needs to become an example of the future we want to create. This means the small group is where transformation takes place.
We structure these conversations so that diversity of thinking and dissent are given space, commitments are made without barter, and the gifts of each person and our community are acknowledged and valued.
Large-scale transformation occurs when enough small group shifts lead to the larger change. Small groups have the most leverage when they meet as part of a larger gathering. At these moments, citizens experience the intimacy of the small circle and are simultaneously aware that they are part of a larger whole that shares their concerns.
Here’s hoping we can get there, one room at a time.
I'm inclined to share this with those who are in lead roles in my organization, or at a minimum with those who head up my regional office so they can run it up the ladder.
Incidentally, as much as possible, I choose to not refer to the person in the top governmental position here in the U.S as a leader. Nor as president or commander in chief. Instead, I say, "the person currently in power." It gives me a sense of agency and removes the respect I think ought to come with those other titles.
I might have been one of the people still wandering among the quotes in your workshop. Quite a few of them speak to me. In this moment, I think I'd choose this one: "The way you tell your story to yourself matters." Thanks, Stew!
One of my favorite leadership quotes: “A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves.” – Lao Tzu