The document discusses the need for collaborative leadership to address increasing complexity in the modern world. It argues that hierarchical organizations limit information sharing and innovation, while a networked organization with shared vision and purpose could foster collective wisdom. The key skills of advocacy, inquiry, and reflection are presented as ways for leaders to develop collaboration and collective learning. When these skills are practiced, the quality of decisions and results improves.

1. The Collaborative Leader:
Leading Through Conversation

2. What is
Compelling
case for new leadership
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3. Personal Situation
• My own work–urgency in creating a startup
that will foster and enable new leadership
• Focused on the every day, planning,
developing, deploying
• Reading Evolution’s Edge by Graeme Taylor
broadened my focus and brought me back
into contact with my sense of urgency and my
sense of purpose
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4. Everything
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5. Everything is
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6. Everything is increasingly
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7. Everything is increasingly complex
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8. Globally Interconnected
• Global teams rarely meet face-to-face
• Multiple cultures with very different ways of
working, thinking, making meaning
• Virtual work, telecommuting
• Generational differences
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9. What do you think?
What other things
?
are making it more
complex?
How do you
experience
complexity?
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10. Need for new skills
that deal with complexity
• Open to multiple
voices and perspectives
• Willing to be influenced
• Work across divisions
• Understand systems
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11. Leaders are expected to know what to do
and to have all the right answers
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12. Reality check
• Impossible to see and know everything
• Leaders have to draw on multiple perspectives
to understand complex situations
• Leaders have to filter and distribute volumes of
information
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13. Quality of decisions
Inclusion of
Multiple Perspectives
Quality Improves
of the the Quality
Information of Decisions
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14. What do you think?
What is missing
?
from leadership
capability?
What do we need
from our leaders?
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15. What could be
The Collaborative Leader
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16. Collaborative
Leadership
• Leaders help bring out collective knowledge
• Shared leadership enables good answers to be
generated from the group
• Collective knowledge and shared meaning are essential
for implementing change and achieving a vision
• Leaders need to understand the value of relationship
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17. “We are always,
already in relationship”
– Southern
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18. Fostering trust is important
for bringing out more than
superficial understanding
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19. Bringing out
diverse voices
lets the wisdom
of multiple
perspectives
emerge
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20. Collective
wisdom can help to
achieve the vision,
foster innovation
and move the
organization forward
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21. What do you think?
How can leaders foster
?
innovation?
What are some of
the obstacles that
could prevent
collaboration?
How can they be
overcome?
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22. What is
Organizations are hierarchical
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23. Hierarchy
• Knowledge stops at key positions, hierarchical
reporting structures limit how information flows
through the organization
• Power is wielded unconsciously without
understanding of the impact of language
• People are demotivated from contributing
• Innovations from people throughout the
organization are minimized
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24. What could be
A networked organization with free-flowing
information, shared vision and purpose
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25. What is
How we talk and think together in meetings
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26. The collective IQ drops for the entire group as
individuals justify their professional existence and
defend their actions every chance they get
“When you have to look good,
you are not able to learn anything.”
– Argyris
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27. Equation for failure
Advocacy - Inquiry - Reflection = No Collective Learning
Stagnation
Collective IQ =
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28. Mindfulness and reflection help us to better
integrate information, spark our creativity,
and increase our innovative ability
“Without reflection there is no learning.”
– Jack Mezirow
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29. What could be
The skills of advocacy, inquiry, and
reflection help to develop collaboration, and
can be learned individually and collectively
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30. Advocacy Steps
1. State your idea clearly
2. Explain how you arrived at your conclusions
(Ladder of Inference)
3. Ask others what they think of your idea
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31. Inquiry Steps
1. Ask an open-ended question
2. Listen with a willingness to be influenced
3. Follow with additional questions
and collective exploration
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32. How to Reflect
• Express your thinking
• Suspend what you are feeling or observing
• Mirror to the group a synthesis of what has been said
• Foster collective learning
Reflection is not a step-by-step process
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33. High
ADVOCAC Y
Tell and sell Learn together
Mentor Have rich conversation
Convince Dialogue
State Coach
Criticize Manipulate
Withdraw or withhold Ask false questions
Low INQUIRY High
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34. Practice
Possible Topics:
• Performance review process
• Global economy: how’s it going globally?
• The value of outsourcing
• Telecommuting--what are the benefits?
• Cross-cultural communications
• Other suggestions or ideas
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35. Reflection
Reflect on the practice session
• How did it go?
• What was hard?
• What was easy?
• What did we learn?
• How it can be of value?
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36. Conclusion
Quality of the
Conversation
Creativity
Improves Innovation Improves
the Quality the Quality
of Decisions of Results
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37. Companion
eBook
Download it for free at
http://www.ico-consulting.com/e-book.html
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38. Additional resources
• Virtual facilitation to further build these skills with a team
• Coaching to develop collaborative leadership
• Next Webinar - Team Learning 2/9/2011
• Release of on-line learning program March 2011
• Next eBook: Leading a Global Team - Spring 2011
• Recording of this webinar will be available next week
38 http://www.ico-consulting.com