The purpose? To grow the confidence of group facilitators to be inspiring and engaging when sparking new thinking, new ideas and new actions in their groups. Peace of mind. In a word.
Here’s a link to the session: Know-Thyself-Creativity for Facilitators
Registration for the conference, the Creativity Expert Exchange at Buffalo State College closes soon. Take a look here to make your arrangements.
Hope to see you there…
Marci Segal, MS, Creativity and Change Leadership, Freeing leaders thinking so they can create new futures, since forever. Founder, World Creativity and Innovation Week, April 15-21.
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“Fresh ideas come when your brain is relaxed and engaged in something other than the particular problem you’re embroiled in… This is the polar opposite of what happens in brainstorming sessions. Long showers, soaks in a tub, long walks, or doing chores are frequently when those “synapses” that find alternative solutions to a problem in new ways all hit together so that the big idea can spring.” This from an article in Fastcompany called Why Innovation By Brainstorming Doesn’t Work by Debra Kay.
I wonder about the situations Kay sites with regard to introversion and extraversion. Introversion describes being inside our minds, when are quiet or reflecting or inwardly wondering; extraversion describes interacting with others and/or the world outside, possibly through talking or engaging with others. From a Myers Briggs Type Indicator® perspective, we all access these attitudes, inner and outer. We feel more energized using one more so than the other: the one that energizes is referred to as our preference.
I wonder if the quality of insight that comes from introverting varies much from those that arrive from the extraverting for people with preferences for extraversion than for people with preferences for introversion. Do people make meaningful and different kinds of connections in the inner world than they do in the outer one? Is it possible that the creation of new ideas is influenced by personality style preferences?
Is it possible that the one-size fits all approach to generating new ideas is archaic? Is it possible that people of the different personality preferences need distinct rules of behaviour be a their best to generate new ideas and make new decisions? I think so, and will be writing more about this as I review the Creativity and Personality Type: Tools for Understanding and Appreciating the Many Voices of Creativity, and converge on new thinking since writing it in 2001 in preparation for the pre-conference session with Danielle Poirier Getting Unstuck at the Association for Psychological Type International conference this July in Miami.
Ask: I could use your help. Please let me know your thoughts, feelings, inklings and experiences of personality style differences in generating new ideas and making new decisions; together we can create something wonderfully beneficial and useful. Even though I’ve led innovation training, creativity thinking and team building sessions for years, including designing corporate meetings that take into account the personality style differences I am still curious to know what doesn’t work for you when it comes to working with creating new ideas for innovation?
Marci Segal, MS, Creativity and Change Leadership; Freeing leaders’ thinking so they can create new futures.
Related articles
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The Future is an album by Canadian musician Leonard Cohen. His song, Anthem, provides a strong metaphor for insights into where to look for new ideas.
Anthem
The birds they sang
at the break of day
Start again
I heard them say
Don’t dwell on what
has passed away
or what is yet to be.
Ah the wars they will
be fought again
The holy dove
She will be caught again
bought and sold
and bought again
the dove is never free.
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.
We asked for signs
the signs were sent:
the birth betrayed
the marriage spent
Yeah the widowhood
of every government –
signs for all to see.
I can’t run no more
with that lawless crowd
while the killers in high places
say their prayers out loud.
But they’ve summoned, they’ve summoned up
a thundercloud
and they’re going to hear from me.
Ring the bells that still can ring …
You can add up the parts
but you won’t have the sum
You can strike up the march,
there is no drum
Every heart, every heart
to love will come
but like a refugee.
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.
That’s how the light gets in.
That’s how the light gets in.
Danielle and I are leading a masterclass at the Association for Psychological Type international this July in Miami. She mentioned Cohen’s song in our planning conversation today. Superb, eh?
Getting Teams and Individuals Radically Unstuck: Creating a Vital and Viable Future (yes you can…:-)) is a one-day program using depth psychology, Jungian type and creativity-thinking methods and tools to support people moving beyond perceived boundaries. Magic. There’s a crack in everything. more info
Marci Segal, MS, Creativity and Change Leadership; Freeing leaders’ thinking so they can create new futures.
]]>Personality style indicators help executive leadership teams innovate faster with success. The new decisions they need to make warrants them using creativity-thinking attitudes in environments that support diversity of thought, experience and perception. The Myers Briggs Type Indicator Instrument ®, Temperament, and FourSight are some we use. DISC, Herman Brain Dominance Indicator, Insights Discoveries are others. Each framework has its benefit.
Tina Seelig, Executive Director for the Stanford Technology Ventures Program and leader of this course says she uses Debono’s Six Thinking Hats. She shows how teams use a particular kind of ‘hat’ thinking AT THE SAME TIME, to minimize meeting derailment.
- White = point out logical, facts
- Green = generate new ideas
- Red = use intuition to make decisions
- Blue = be process-oriented, organized
- Black = say what won’t work; criticize
- Yellow = see only the positive; affirm
Imagine what that might feel like, to put aside your own usual hat to adopt a different kind of thinking or focus for a short period of time. What do you suppose might happen?
My Two Cents
Teams using a shared vocabulary and an agreed upon pathway for working through challenges give great results, regardless of the frame, with one proviso.
The selected framework must engage all the brainpower in the room – a diversity of styles instead of a one-size-fits all process. For example, the folks at Buffalo State’s International Center of Studies in Creativity articulate a number of thinking styles and affective orientations incumbent in the creative process overall. Wouldn’t it be great if all these skills were used each time a team uses a creative process. Imagine what that might do.
Education influences how teams solve problems
Tom Wujec’s fascinating Build a tower, build a team Ted Talk is a suggested resource for this week’s Crash Course on Creativity class. It shows the influence of education and approach on solving challenges. Definitely worth the 6 minutes to watch. Enjoy. You’ll be reminded of the Robert Fulghum 1988 book: All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. Brilliant.
Marci Segal, MS Creativity and Change Leadership – Freeing leaders’ thinking so they can create new futures.
Related articles
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Wonder why people aren’t engaged when asked for creative ideas ? Could be that there’s some psychological harassment going on.
If people you work with behave as in the list below, you can bet that there are interpersonal factors that block to allow free thinking and new ideas.
- Make rude, degrading or offensive remarks
- Act to intimidate or get back at someone
- Discredit others by spreading rumours
- Ridicule or humiliate others’ private life
- Belittle people by asking them to do tasks that are below their skill base
- Engage in or encourage others in professional misconduct
- Prevent others from expressing themselves through yelling, cutting them off while they are speaking, isolating them
- Refuse to talk to a person, not acknowledge a person’s existence
- Make fun of a person’s convictions, tastes or political choice
As a leader you can consider how you can model idea-supporting and engagement-producing behaviours. Turn the above statements around to nurture and sustain creativity’s growth, such as
- Make affirming, valuing remarks
- Act to support other’s success
- Spread other people’s success stories
- Honour people’s private lives
- Ask people to do tasks that stretch their skill level
- Behave ethically
When you do, you’ll replace psychological harassment with psychological safety, and then watch the creative ideas flow!
If there is psychological harassment going on, here are a few steps to take – programs to instill, actions to begin
- Promote respectful interpersonal communication – use psychological inventories, such as the Myers Briggs Type Indicator® instrument (I use its framework with executive teams to improve effective communication and navigate innovation through transformation. The interventions often result in them welcoming creative thinking and action and making flexible and productive organizational differences).
- Establish a known procedure that is known, efficient, credible and reality-based to handle conflicts confidentially
- Take a different approach to understanding conflict resolution – visit the Center for Non-Violent Communication for tips, assessments and language
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Last weekend I helped them to get to know how to use the creative process in their work. It was enlightening and inspiring to see their response in knowing how to use their creativity on purpose to realize their passions.
Because the FourSight Breakthrough profiles had been used with past cohorts of the program, we used it for this group as well. When a leader is aware of his/her creative thinking profile, it is easier for him/her to lead others toward accomplishing a desired outcome.
FourSight Profiles show four unique mental processes for breakthrough thinking and give people an opportunity to see in which they have preferences. In areas of a lack of preference, development tools and exercises are available to strengthen a person’s capacity to ‘think smarter’.
FourSight Breakthrough Process and Preferences
Over 50 years of research have gone into the development of this framework.
The creative process has been identified in many ways. Here’s how FourSight breaks it out.
- Clarify – identify the goal/wish/challenge; collect data surrounding the objective; clarify the true opportunity for breakthrough thinking.
- Generate ideas – list many alternative and unusual solutions; choose the most promising ones
- Develop a plan for implementation – refine ideas and evaluate them for success; list supporters and detractors and actions for implementation; form a specific plan of action
- Implement the plan.
Each one of these stages maps onto the four preferences in the FourSight preference model. People with preference in one, two, three or all four areas show an ease of using the corresponding creative process stage. Their characteristics.
- Clarifiers – focused, methodical, orderly, deliberate, serious, organized
- Ideators – playful, imaginative, social, adaptable, flexible, adventurous, independent
- Developers – reflective, cautious, pragmatic, structured, planning-oriented
- Implementers – persistent, decisive, determined, assertive, action-oriented
(from Puccio, Gerrard, J.(2009) FourSight Presenter’s Guide, 2nd Edition available from http://www.foursightonline.com/)
Interesting findings: Opportunities and Challenges of Being a Creative Leader
When everyone had their FourSight profile, we did an experiment to see if there would be any difference in how people with preferences in particular styles would answer this question: What are the opportunities and challenges of being a creative leader?
What’s similar among challenges listed for each preference group is resources and having new ideas supported and accepted by others. What’s sad about this scenario is that the people in this workshop, mostly 20-somethings, from diverse backgrounds, have stepped up as leaders and must shoulder a burden of feeling that their innovative new ideas lack support and resources. If we are to enable the new future to emerge, then why do we stand in their way?
The opportunities for creative leadership also show overlap between the preference groups, mention of being influential or acting as a role model appear in each.
Quick Review
As you read through the lists below you’ll see how the opportunities and challenges are perceived uniquely. In all cases but Clarifiers, challenges appear first, opportunities second. Only Clarifiers did not differentiate their comments in their list.
Unique statements for each group are bolded.
Clarifiers
- You have to be negative/critical thinker
- Open to ideas your don’t agree with
- You have to be realistic
- You are able to produce innovative work
- Looking at the big picture and options
- Burden of expectation = pressure = stress
- Able to bring Ideators’ ideas to light
- View you as a role model (influential)
- You may have a great idea that you need to convince/persuade others and not everyone is supportive.
Ideators
- Ideas not being accepted by the norm
- Being misunderstood
- Not being supported
- Burning out/mental blocks
- Not being able to get over our personal perception
- Personal self-doubts
- Thinking thoughts are original
- Get a unique view
- Break down barriers
- Influence others
- Diverse cultures
- Using real life experiences
- Advancement
- Establish our own legacy
- Actively engage others
Developers
- Acceptance of new ideas
- Lack of support
- Hard to innovate ideas
- Hard to get resources
- Time management
- Motivation
- Prioritizing goals
- Positive attitude
- Working with apathetic youth
- Lack of direction/focus
- Make changes
- Establishing relationships
- Networking
- Best practices
- Motivating others
- Establish reputation
- Feeling fulfilled
Implementers
- Acceptance of ideas
- Generating ideas
- Open-mindedness
- Lack of practical solutions
- Lack of participation
- Lack of resources
- Lack of motivation, inspiration
- Lack of role model/support
- Coming up with new ideas since everyone has their own experiences
- Helping others think outside the box
- Exercising innovativeness
- New solutions
- Unique solutions
- Being a role model for others
- Breaking the ice
- New solutions for old problems
- Make a space comfortable
- Create opportunities for networking
- Opening doors, moving up the chain
These young leaders have passion galore to make a meaningful difference for others and for themselves, they’ve got great ideas and energy. They saw benefit of using these preferences to work better with each other and the teams they lead in their communities to understand where people are coming from, how to motivate them, and how to bring out the best of every team member to accomplish a goal. They liked knowing that everyone plays an important role in the innovation process.
Commentary
Wouldn’t it be great if we could make the lives of junior leaders a little easier by showing them that we are open to their new ways of thinking? Wouldn’t it be amazing if they could experience the value of their wisdom rather than let it take a back seat to outdated, outmoded ways of thinking and perceiving that preceded them?
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Just back from a disappointing one week Holacracy One (HO) certification program that promises participants will
• Explore the leading-edge of human organization
• Learn new “sense and respond” habits and practices
• Learn how to “facilitate beyond ego”
• Practice, practice, practice their method!
It doesn’t promise to ruthlessly crush others as needed, yet that is the practice. Ruthless crushing is a term the company uses to describe behaviours needed to facilitate beyond the ego, to facilitate on the edge of now. (It’s in their notebook, Day 1, page 4.)
In the pre-session email, they write “You will be joining a diverse and experienced group of change agents to explore, play, and learn together, and based on past experience you can expect a very dynamic and engaging week.”
They don’t deliver – the training is less than engaging and is painful. (BTW in retrospect I find the experience rather funny.) I asked for my money back – they said, no, and, give us your feedback so we can make the program better. Is this parity? I paid $3,495.00 for the 5-day program, $295.00 for their Experiential Workshop, and the hotel and travel costs exceeded $1,500.00. I already stated I didn’t receive full value from the workshops and they wanted me to give them more. What a hoot!
Workshop Theme
The main purpose for this program is for participants to become beginners in HO’s system. What follows are confusing days in which the HO mantra to ‘ruthlessly crush others when needed’ comes to life. I gotta tell you, when ruthless crushing came up on Day 1, the whole room quivered and people recoiled. It affected the class for the rest of the week.
Before going further it’s important to tell you that HO is introducing a new paradigm they believe organizations can benefit from. If they use it, HO says, it will enliven their evolutionary purpose. Got that? If you are a Ken Wilbur fan you will likely be attracted to attend this training. 90% of the people in the room knew his Integral theory. In fact, Wilbur mentions holoarchy in his writings and lectures. HO is leveraging Integral theory for organizational development purposes and to embed their software subscription services and systems all over the world. Ka-ching.
Ruthless crushing, they say, serves to enliven the soul of an organization to fulfill its evolutionary purpose because it gets egos out-of-the-way. They don’t mention this in their pre-program literature, maybe they should. (They also do not provide terms of their refund policy or any interest in customer service or satisfaction. It’s best if you are going to enroll in this program to negotiate that upfront. I don’t want you to have to go through what I did when I asserted my consumer rights, which they are choosing to ignore. Long story. See the other posts…)
Program Delivery
The instructor, Brian Robertson, who is also the software entrepreneur behind HO, reads through ppt slides, talking at the group point-by-point 80% of the time. Few slides have pictures or models.
Many of the terms used, i.e. evolutionary purpose, holding a space, deep wisdom, being present, showing up, are not defined nor explained. Other content is similarly filled with unexplained abstractions and concepts; practical examples are hard to come by.
Inconsistencies occur between the HO promise and its program delivery in other areas. They hold true to the ruthless crushing and don’t follow through on nimble adaptation to the environment as described in their Sense and Respond dictum. In our workshop one participant spoke up about a frustration, and no offer of a course correction came and no facilitative question was asked to help reduce it.
Course Design
There is a science and art to course design and delivery and this program lacks discipline. The 5-day experience is an endless flow of information without benchmarks, gauges or reviews to solidify the learning.
In HO’s program, they do what feels right rather than what good adult learning research suggests. Robertson is unable to provide theoretical underpinning for the approach they use, says it’s been affirmed by others as a good practice for transformative learning and he does not offer solid evidence other than his word to support his claim.
(An aside – I went to this program with full faith, confidence and trust in Brian to deliver a program that smacked of his intelligence and forethought. Incrementally that trust eroded, can you tell?)
Workshop participants have differing levels of familiarity with the HO and Integral worldview and processes walking in to the room. This not addressed in the design; there is no leveling to provide a safe environment for experimentation with new thinking. In retrospect, it’s highly entertaining that the core principle’s of ‘what is a holon and how does it show up in our system’ is not mentioned, it stays hidden from anyone who is unfamiliar with Integral theory.
Other than the daily review of the agenda for that day, there are no overt relationships made between the modules that seamlessly blend from one to the next to the next in an ongoing flood. I drowned and so did some of my classmates. We were awash in psychobabble that, if handled correctly, could have made some real sense.
The workshop – what to expect
- A few fast-paced complex exercises occur that are not set up for learning. Brian tells us we are being thrown into the water (metaphorically) to find out how to swim using new behaviours and attitudes. It’s a total hoot that while flailing to use new principles, specific directions are given for the right behaviour. So get this – it’s a new paradigm, there are new rules and you have to follow them blindly and strictly. Why? Because we must trust the process. Brian says it works.
- The processes are shared in a confusing manner, directions are ambiguous on purpose. Brian tells us that he expects us to fail, so he has to make sure to set us up for that. Failing. Yah.
- Equally entertaining is their practice of having novices give feedback to other novices on their performance without the instructor providing key points or reminders on how to give meaningful feedback. Why this is funny is that many feedback comments point out what is wrong, rather than what is done right according to the new rules, by people who don’t really know them.
- Regardless, the exercises’ debriefing does not extend for the learner to make application of the new knowledge into his or her own situation. Some asked for an opportunity to talk about how they would apply the learning, and that conversation comes days later. The application conversation is scheduled for Day 5, and when it occurs, participants are warned not to try doing the processes on their own, no. Best to have someone from HO help there as their guide. Ka-ching.
- We know from the literature that adult learners tend to take errors personally and are less likely to risk learning and using new learning without being assured of psychological safety. There is no safety net here, unless participants bring their own (which is not mentioned as something to bring along in the HO pre-workshop literature).
- Participants’ values and beliefs are challenged without mechanisms in place to process the transition to a new way of thinking and acting. “Do as you are told” is the overriding theme, “it’s good for evolution when you do”. According to whom? Oh, right. Brian. He who has no proof.
- No anchoring of main concepts occurs other than through Brian’s restating and modeling guiding principles. Here are the ones for facilitating beyond the ego.
- Focus on the aim and hold the process as sacred
- Invite people to take care of themselves
- Ground in something beyond the people
- Rigidly stick to the process when needed
- Ruthlessly crush others when needed
- Have the wisdom to see how this is truly helpful (notebook, Day 1, page 4 I’d post a screen shot if it weren’t copyrighted material)
- HO doesn’t walk its talk 100%. Brian did numbers 1, 3, 4, 5 and maintains 6 likely as a mantra to guide his actions, as might the other HO people in the room (there were 2 besides him). Number 2 though is missing. No overt invitation for participant self-care is offered during the program, nor are strategies offered to help participants make the leap into using this new (to them) system.
- Brian repeats the same phrases again, and again and on their first mention, provides little space for participants to discuss of their impact and influence. Learning, it seems, is assumed to occur by Brian’s using a ‘repeat after me’ process. Honestly, I felt like I was back in middle-school learning French, and Joey Sunshine is throwing dead flies at me…
Practices in Adult Learning
The University of Hawaii’s faculty guidebook, lists learning assumptions and principles for its faculty. Using varied methods of teaching helps the learner maintain interest and may help to reinforce concepts without being repetitious, is one. This workshop is repetitious. Rather than rewording main components of the process or finding interesting other ways to convey them, Brian repeats the same terms in the same order, with the same emphasis, continuously. That must be his understanding of how transformative learning occurs.
Increasing or maintaining one’s sense of self-esteem and pleasure are strong secondary motivators for engaging in learning experiences. One afternoon Brian uses two hours to show how he organizes his email inbox. I’m still laughing at that one. Do you think he really believes doing so would be engaging for anyone but himself, oh, you know there’s a chance that the client group he had in the room (a national marketing company sent 6 high ranking leaders to this program) might have asked for this. They were engaged, asking questions and the like. Hm. Ka-ching.
UofH recommends these as in-class behaviours for instructors. Use this list as expectations before going to this program and contract for delivery of a good learning experience, so that if HO fails to deliver good learning you may have a better chance to get your money back.
- The learning environment must be physically and psychologically comfortable; long lectures, periods of interminable sitting and the absence of practice opportunities rate high on the irritation scale. (It was mostly sitting for 80% of the program).
- Adults have something real to lose in a classroom situation. Self-esteem and ego are on the line when they are asked to risk trying a new behavior in front of peers and cohorts. Bad experiences in traditional education, feelings about authority and the preoccupation with events outside the classroom affect in-class experience. (I really didn’t like Joey throwing those flies!)
- Adults have expectations, and it is critical to take time early on to clarify and articulate all expectations before getting into content. The instructor can assume responsibility only for his or her own expectations, not for those of students. (No preparation for what the experience is going to be beyond, challenging and tough, is given. There is no theoretical framework provided to offer safety.)
- Adults bring a great deal of life experience into the classroom, an invaluable asset to be acknowledged, tapped and used. Adults can learn well – and much – from dialogue with respected peers.
- Instructors who have a tendency to hold forth rather than facilitate can hold that tendency in check–or compensate for it–by concentrating on the use of open-ended questions to draw out relevant student knowledge and experience.
- New knowledge has to be integrated with previous knowledge; students must actively participate in the learning experience. The learner is dependent on the instructor for confirming feedback on skill practice; the instructor is dependent on the learner for feedback about curriculum and in-class performance.
- The key to the instructor role is control. The instructor must balance the presentation of new material, debate and discussion, sharing of relevant student experiences, and the clock. Ironically, it seems that instructors are best able to establish control when they risk giving it up. When they shelve egos and stifle the tendency to be threatened by challenge to plans and methods, they gain the kind of facilitative control needed to effect adult learning.
- The instructor has to protect minority opinion, keep disagreements civil and unheated, make connections between various opinions and ideas, and keep reminding the group of the variety of potential solutions to the problem. The instructor is less advocate than orchestrator.
- Integration of new knowledge and skill requires transition time and focused effort on application.
- Learning and teaching theories function better as resources than as a Rosetta stone. A skill-training task can draw much from the behavioral approach, for example, while personal growth-centered subjects seem to draw gainfully from humanistic concepts. An eclectic, rather than a single theory-based approach to developing strategies and procedures, is recommended for matching instruction to learning tasks.
I try to imagine how it might have been if HO incorporated these principles into the workshop. It was my assumption walking in that this was the case. Me bad?
University of Hawaii’s learning principles:
- We learn to do by doing.
- We learn to do what we do and not something else.
- Without readiness, learning is inefficient and my be harmful.
- Without motivation there can be no learning at all.
- For effective learning, responses must be immediately reinforced.
- Meaningful content is better learned and longer retained than less meaningful content.
- For the greatest amount of transfer learning, responses should be learned in the way they are going to be used.
- One’s response will vary according to how one perceives the situation.
- An individuals responses will vary according to the learning atmosphere.
- One does the only thing one can do given the physical inheritance, background, and present acting forces.
Learning principles and the workshop
The workshop failed to deliver on participant readiness (ruthless crushing!), learner motivation, immediate reinforcement (participants gave feedback to each other during the few simulations though they didn’t have full grasp of the material or principles when doing so) and in making learning meaningful from the participant’s perspective.
An example
We practiced the methods a few times on days 1 and 2 in small groups. We struggled to adapt to another way to hold meetings that had many stringent rules for behaviour. Like Bambi going onto the iced over pond for the very first time, we stepped sheepishly into the new consciousness and many received bruises that festered all week long, and then some.
Cut to the chase
HO does not provide a comfortable learning environment. Customers are continually told what to do and are not invited to integrate new learning with what they already know; they are treated as children rather than as adults.
Expectations of the instructor are withheld, the expectations of the learners are not managed.
Training methods do not engage all four common modalities: kinesthetic, visual, auditory and experiential. To add insult to injury, the instructor reveals an ability in psychological type and there is no evidence of inclusion of perspectives from types other than his own in practice or content delivery.
My experience
Rather than going into the moment by moment minutiae of the workshop, I’ll summarize by saying at Day 3 my engagement in the process and motivation for learning dwindled to nothing. It was far more rewarding to play Bejeweled and Facebook chat with friends. My enthusiasm dulled, my participation ended. Apathy took over, my levels of understanding and openness to apply new thinking evaporated.
The more the Brian talked, the less I wanted to be there. When the program closed I felt confused, betrayed, used, crushed. In tears, I told the remaining group (some left earlier that afternoon) that this was the worst workshop I had ever participated in and I’d be asking for a refund. Mine was a minority opinion, btw. Or, mine was the only opinion voiced. What do you think?
I’m a studied professional in the area of inviting people to learn new things, challenge their thinking and adopt new behaviours and outlooks. There are ways to do it that invites and supports their participation. HO’s workshop does not demonstrate respect for the learner’s experience, instead, it gives Brian a pedestal to speak from for 5 days straight (more or less).
The Refund Part
So, I asked for a refund. Here’s HO’s response:
“I’m terribly sorry you had such a negative experience at the Certification Training, and I completely honor the perspective you’re holding. However, I don’t think [the company] bears responsibility for it. As far as we can tell, our training design was reasonable. From the thousands of people of all different types who’ve come through our events, we’ve almost never heard anything about the design, and to be quite honest, no one has ever given us this kind of feedback. We’ve thus never had reason to believe there was a fundamental flaw in our training design.
Again, I certainly don’t mean to invalidate your experience, but from our perspective, [the company] doesn’t bear responsibility for it; we delivered as contracted. We of course want to continuously refine and improve our offerings, so we provide detailed feedback forms, and make use of the input to shape future events. Along those lines, if you’d like to offer any suggestions, I’d be delighted to pass your input along to Training Business.”
What unmitigated gall. I’m still laughing at the audacity. It surprises me that I am the first to offer critiquing feedback, and it doesn’t at the same time. Why? Because after a week of being ruthlessly crushed, scolded and having one’s stated needs ignored or delayed, I wonder how many would have the fortitude to speak up.
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Just as a Better Business Bureau exists to protect consumers, what do you think about a membership organization that offers standards, badges and protection for adult training? Wouldn’t it be nice if customers could be certain they will be treated with respect and dignity in ways that advance their learning before they invest in organizations are assumed to and do not deliver on those practices?
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Take a look at clarifyingquestions.wordpress.com for language and practice of HO. These are notes taken during conversations with Brian Robertson. They can be very scary. Btw, at the end of the program, Brian said that HO is an entity and it will grow to take over the world as long as there are people who are working to enliven it. True! Man, I felt like I was at a cult meeting.
Related Articles
- Creating a Positive Learning Environment (brighthub.com)
- Questioning Holocracy One’s Integrity (marcisegal.wordpress.com)
- Holacracy One Experiential Workshop Isn’t (marcisegal.wordpress.com)
- Does the Customer Experience Matter to Holocracy One? No. (marcisegal.wordpress.com)
- Inside holocracy (marcisegal.wordpress.com)
- Holacracy One’s Pattern of Customer Disservice (marcisegal.wordpress.com)
- Moving Forward with Holacracy in Legal Organizational Structure (clarifyingquestions.wordpress.com)
- Organization & Community (clarifyingquestions.wordpress.com)
- Holacracy, Literacies and Organisational Transformation (chriscstewart.com)
While cleaning out file drawer today I found a non referenced handout from a conference a few years ago, Powerful Questions.
According to the tiny description on the green sheet, the purpose of these questions is to stimulate new knowledge and creative thinking.
They don’t work so much for me. It’s hard for me to connect with more than 20% of them. Maybe they work better for you.
An important question for Creativity Professionals: are the questions we use ones that work for us, given our style preferences? And if so, then what are some ways to we expand our repertoire to ensure the people we work with connect with them rather than zone out?
So, if these work for you… go for it. And may the blessings of new ideas and new decisions to create a satisfying future rain upon you. If they don’t work, no worries, there are others that do. They are just not included in this post.
Powerful Questions
For Collective/group/team, Attention to a Specific Situation
- What question, if answered, could make the most difference to the future of your situation?
- What’s important to you about your situation, and why do you care?
- What draws you to this inquiry?
- What is our intention here? What’s the deeper purpose that is really worthy of your best effort?
- What opportunities can you see in your situation?
- What do we know about the situation and what do we still need to learn?
- What are the dilemmas/opportunities in the specific situation?
- What assumptions do we need to test or challenge in our thinking about this situation?
- What would someone who had a very different set of beliefs than we do say about this situation?
Questions for Connecting Ideas and Finding Deeper Insight
- What’s taking shape? What are you hearing underneath the variety of opinions being expressed? What’s in the center of the table?
- What’s emerging here for you? What new connections are you making?
- What had real meaning for you from what you’ve heard? What surprised you? What challenged you?
- What’s missing from this picture so far? What is it we’re not seeing? What do we need more clarity about?
- What’s been your major learning insight or discovery so far?
- What’s the next level of thinking we need to do?
- If there was one thing that hasn’t yet been said in order to reach a deeper level of understanding/clarity, what would that be?
Questions that Create Forward Movement
- What would it take to create change on this issue?
- What could happen that would enable you/us to feel fully engaged and energized about (the specific situation)?
- What’s possible here and who cares? (rather than ‘what’s wrong here and who’s responsible’?)
- What needs our immediate attention going forward?
- If our success were completely guaranteed, what bold steps might we choose?
- How can we support each other in taking the next steps? What unique contribution can we each make?
- What challenges might come our way and how might we meet them?
- What conversation, if begun today, could ripple out in a way that created new possibilities for the future of this situation?
- What see might we plant together today, that could make the most difference in the future of our situation?
Overall, I like these points for reference. It would never occur to me to ask people what’s on the table unless I didn’t know what the centerpiece was made from. There are many illusive metaphors and abstractions that require effort to understand, let alone respond to. I’m holding on to these though – for client groups I’ll be working with in the future who speak in metaphors and abstractions. Thank you anonymous author!
Related Articles
- The new currency: Imagination – Why artists will rule the future (dontgetburnedblog.com)
- Powerful Questions (teachstreet.com)
- Does Your Language Shape How You Think? (nytimes.com)
Fran is at a waterfront hotel at a conference promising to show people how to create, innovate and lead change, one she’s attended annually for more than half of her life when spring reveals summer’s promise.
Creativity and innovation are her passion and business. It’s more than a mind thing to Fran, creativity is life; it’s vitalizing. It’s unfortunate that the five half-day program she chose for the week is not.
Waiting
She is waiting for new information, enlightenment, something worthwhile to capture insights of heightened awareness into her little red notebook. New thinking, new thinkers is the title of the program. Its promise: a dialogue with people who are breaking new ground and exploring new ideas and research learnings in deliberate creativity and creative thinking.
The room has no windows, one media projector, and twelve people sitting around a large conference donut shaped table. The air is stifling, musty, old.
Bulldozed
Fran listens to men show their creativity processes and research. She feels like a once still and deep mist-covered pond in a rain forest being cleared. Each statement disturbs the creativity landscape, stirs the bottom silt. There is no time to process the new ideas, for them to re-settle anew before another bulldozer unloads it’s pushing.
One presenter after the next offers insights into momentary creativity, transformational leadership, patterns of education that influence thinking, creative processes. The agenda provides time for presenters to give and is not geared for the participants to receive. Fran’s creativity isn’t sparked that way. She waits.
Language
One steely haired creativity practitioner speaks, eye-glass frames bright red, stressing best decisions are not made through voting. He says other more effective methods exist.
He highlights the stages in his productive thinking process, emphasizing the importance of using clear language to describe the kind of thinking required in each one.
- What’s going on?
- What’s success?
- What’s the question?
- Generate answers
- Forge the solution
- Align resources
Regardless of focus, each stage has a simple internal process: Groups generate options, then select the best from the list.
“How do you arrive at the best one to select?” a participant asks.
“By voting,” he replies. He catches his breath, a tinge of crimson crosses his cheeks and his posture dips to a near imperceptible slump before regaining his pace.
Make it Simple
Another bespectacled practitioner, this one with a research background, tells the class that four thinking styles are used in getting effective results.
- Generation (problem finding and fact finding)
- Problem conceptualization (problem definition and idea finding)
- Optimizing solutions (evaluation and solution finding, and action planning)
- Implementing results (gaining acceptance and action)
His process is unique, he insists, because it integrates the styles into his applied creative thinking method.
A participant asks, “How is this different from other models that do the same?”
“They don’t,” he replies, meaning, mine is the only one that integrates personal styles for applied creativity.
Metacognition Saves
A third white male, this one a researcher, younger, shows his work on transcendental leadership, required, he says, for creative progress.
His research into leadership shows three kinds, 3T’s:
- Transactional (do this for me and I’ll give you something)
- Transformational (the stakeholders or constituents grow)
- Transcendent (it benefits the larger community)
To achieve transcendental leadership leaders must think about what they are thinking about, how their actions connect to all things in the web of life. To do that, the presenter continues, leaders must be authentic.
“Why is it important to think about what I’m thinking about?” a participant asks. “Wouldn’t that get in the way of me actually doing something?”
“You don’t understand metacognition. Let me explain it to you later,” he replies, meaning, you’ll be a lost soul if you don’t.
Fran wonders if the presenter uses metacognition himself. Half his allotted time is used apologizing for the state of his Powerpoint presentation and talking through his credentials.
Creativity Can be Lost in a Repeated Moment
How teachers respond to students’ unexpected responses to questions influences their confidence in creativity and hinders their participation. Speaking from a distance, present in live stream and Powerpoint here is another male researcher. He studies small moments that impact each life.
Here’s a sample pattern: IRE
- Teacher initiates a question
- One student at a time responds
- Teacher evaluates what the student says
When an unexpected student response arises, the teacher more often than not bats it away because it is not on the curriculum and there is no time for considering it.
After years of this behaviour, students learn to play intellectual hide and seek. They wait for others to comment than risk negative or off-putting attention. Their unique responses are buried, their curiosity dulled. The notion that the teacher has the right answer and theirs is wrong unless it is the same as the teachers is reinforced in classroom experiences throughout their schooling.
He recommends an adjustment to the IRE process outlined to replace students fear of risking or being wrong above to this: IREE
- Teacher initiates a question
- One student at a time responds
- Teacher explores the thinking behind the unexpected response
- Teacher evaluates what the student says
“Does this IRE fear-based pattern translate into people’s behaviours after they leave school?” a participant asks.
“They become expert at it by the time they reach 6th grade,” he responds. “They practice and perfect the behaviour during the 12,000+ hours spent in primary and middle school.”
Kinds of Creativity
Ascertaining creativity categories is the work of another distance presenting male researcher. He itemizes these domains before showing his work on how avatars influence online brainstorming in platforms like Second Life.
- Mini c creativity: personally meaningful
- Little c creativity: ordinary creativity that others will appreciate
- Pro c creativity: using one’s creativity as a career
- Big c creativity: revolutionizes the way people experience life
He then provides evidence that avatars tend to interfere with participants’ idea generation. Texting ideas without avatars present is more effective in his research.
“I wonder how distracting it is for people to brainstorm with others in a live face-to-face group,” Fran wonders aloud.
“There’s a lot of new research saying that personal brainstorming can be more effective than group efforts,” the workshop co-ordinator replies. He doesn’t ask to find out what thinking lies beneath her unexpected question. There isn’t time.
Note: Links to the content mentioned are available upon request. The names of the presenters have been withheld out of respect of their work.
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]]>Some people get ideas from inside, through reflection. Others, when interacting with the world outside of themselves.
Some people get new ideas from taking a look at the physical world, others, through insights and imagining what if, connecting things that have never been associated before.
Some people make new decisions by establishing measurable criteria, or linking them to existing frameworks; others, through connecting to others or aligning the solution to personally held values.
Carl Jung’s psychological type theory provides insight into how people find new ideas and make new decisions and how these processes may differ from person to person. When creativity professionals have this knowledge, it’s easier for them to welcome and facilitate everyone’s contribution.
I gave a presentation at the Creative Problem Solving Institute in June 2010 week to show people how to:
- use this theory to extend their facilitation skills
- gain knowledge about how their styles inform their approach to creativity
- design creative thinking practices that engage all people, encouraging them to give their best
Feedback from the session revealed we accomplished another unintended goal: participants learned what others need to hear to be open to consider a new idea, very helpful, they said, when working with people who’s styles are different from your own.
Marci Segal, MS, Creativity and Change Leadership; Freeing leaders’ thinking so they can create new futures.
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