Back to the Knitting

By Curtis Ogden

While offering a training to a group of health care reformers in Maine last month, I was struck by how powerful some of the fundamental tools of Facilitative Leadership were to many of the participants, including the fundamentals of listening as an ally (as opposed to listening as an adversary) and the basic architecture of building agreements. As I listened to an accomplished lawyer speak to the simple elegance of open-narrow-close framework, I felt renewed appreciation for the power of what we teach at IISC and IA.

In recent months there has been a real push within our organization to innovate, to tap more creative ideas and ways of doing things (applying network theory, creating more emergent spaces, using Web 2.0 tools). At times I have thought of this as being about moving away from what we have traditionally practiced and taught at IISC. Admittedly, there have been times when I have wanted something more.

Certainly there is more. There are other techniques, other tools for helping people to work together effectively. And it is also true that no matter the tool, there are certain core practices and principles that serve anyone and everyone well when working towards a shared goal - bringing a clear collaborative intent to one’s work, being transparent, checking for understanding, surfacing and honoring dissent, striving for a diversity of input, seeking to understand before being understood.

As we move forward I am gaining a better understanding of the need to remain grounded in these core (and perhaps timeless) practices, and also to be more precise about the intent of any given collaborative endeavor so as to choose the best tools for the job.