Six Creative Leadership Competencies for Addressing Complexity
Applying these 6 “Aesthetic Competencies” has helped us use leadership as a lever to address some of our world’s most pressing challenges, crises, and conflicts.
Paying Attention: Using Multiple Modes of Perception
Paying attention allows leaders to use multiple modes of perception to understand a complex situation thoroughly. Take Human Trafficking in Africa for example. Our team noticed in conversation with many of our friends that women were being "exported and exploited" from African countries into Middle Eastern countries. During subsequent trips to the Middle East we took time to pay attention.
We met with Ethiopian women to hear their stories and confirm what we were hearing back in Africa. We brought together organizations to seek international funding mechanisms and hear their approaches. We observed at the airport, bus stations, local churches, and family dinner tables. We read studies of human trafficking and labor migration.
Over time, we learned more about the promises of a better life that were being made - pictures of women driving cars and wearing fine clothes and saving money to send home.
We learned how "middle men" were profiting from funds raised by families to send daughters overseas as well as funds from families in countries like Lebanon who were charged a fee to bring the women from countries like Ethiopia. We heard how debt was created to keep some women beholden. We heard from heads of households in the Middle East about why they locked their Ethiopian women in their homes because they had reputations of being thieves and the house was responsible for all damages while the visitor was in country.
Pre-departure training camps were imagined that could help prepare rural women for life in the modern city. Legal documentation and human rights training were conceived to help mitigate abuses. Toolkits and conversation guides were created to help women tell their stories upon return so that local families, churches, mosques, can understand the realities before supporting their young women to be sent abroad. We are now applying for funding to tackle this complex issue that was understood simply by Paying Attention.
2. Personalizing
Personalizing allows individuals and teams to tap into the unique experiences of their employees, friends, members, and clients. Strategic decisions of large organizations are usually based on objective knowledge. However, organizations can thrive by tapping into the subjective personal experiences, cares, and imaginations of their employees and partners. Often, personal passion can lead the way to emerging markets in ways that ‘strategic objectives’ can not. Finding “Idea Champions” who align their personal passions has been key to our success and growth of Leadership Beyond Boundaries.
3. Imaging
Imaging helps leaders to make meaning and sense of complex information, construct ideas, and communicate effectively by using all kinds of images, such as pictures, stories, and metaphors.
For instance, the UNDP in Ethiopia took bold steps to curb their reputation as a slow, bureaucratic, government institution by naming 2012 the Year of Transformation. They engaged with Leadership Beyond Boundaries to both train leadership development, coach their staff, and facilitate their retreats and visioning process. As a result of using Life Tree tools for their organization, Visual Explorer to see their biggest challenges, and other tools to make Strategic Choices, they were able to imagine a new working environment.
They funded the renovation of their space to reflect and inspire a new way of thinking and doing. Walls were torn down, open spaces were created, idea spaces and access to visual tools were brought into the work space. Today both UNDP and CCL's EMEA office in Brussels showcase the Future Workspace that provides ample opportunity for project teams to Imagine and Image in new ways.
In Afar (a rural region to the north of Addis Ababa) where oral tradition is important and literacy is low, we used a series of 20 stories to convey the themes of an entire 3 day leadership program. The 56 participants found the stories memorable and compelling and shared them with 2500 members of the clan over the course of the following 2 weeks. The leadership lessons were scaled by using imaging relevant to the context.
4. Serious Play
Serious play allows leaders to generate knowledge through free exploration, improvisation, experimentation, levity, and play. Peace Corps volunteers and their local Ethiopian counterparts can have a hard time talking to one another right away. CCL's LBB has used Improv as a means of breaking down the barriers between people and preparing more reserved personalities to rapidly share their hearts and minds with newcomers. Additionally, Improv and Serious Play are used in the Hundred Oldest School (HOS) as part of the leadership development curriculum for students, allowing youth to gain confidence and experience with building on others ideas. The German Development Fund leverages Improv and Serious Play to develop new styles of Presentation for their Ethiopian staff seeking ways to more deeply connect their ideas across culture with their German counterparts and colleagues. How do I share my "elevator pitch" in 30 seconds? How do respond to questions that are complex and catch me off guard? Serious Play is a means of preparing for the uncertain and ambiguous world that we live in.
5. Collaborative Inquiry
Collaborative Inquiry helps leaders to dialogue within and across community boundaries of language, culture, function, and professional discipline. CCL is known for our use of tools that allow our facilitators to created meaningful dialogue by "putting something in the middle"... Visual Explorer, Object Explorer, Fragrance Explorer are a few key example of how collaborative inquiry can be generated across language / culture / and professional boundaries by allowing participants to simply speak to a framing questions using a picture, an object, or a smell to which they ascribe meaning. We have added more literacy dependent tools like Values Explorer and Collaboration Explorer to help teams and groups discuss where they are / where they want to be / and how to get there as well as the values that they hold and perhaps have either in common or see differently.
6. Crafting
‘Crafting’ means synthesizing issues, objects, events and actions into integrated & meaningful wholes. We often use "touch stones" as part of our work. In Gambella, the westernmost region of Ethiopia, as part of a Leadership for Peace program, the community leaders wanted to have "concrete steps" that would help them take their learning forward. To embody this commitment, we created a series of rock and concrete steps symbolized their commitment to the path ahead. Each participant added a rock and committed to peace. The first step represented Awareness. The second step represent Skill Development. The third step represented the Ability to Teach Others. And the fourth step was the goal of Teaching other Teachers. Crafting symbols of commitments, learning, or change can consolidate many days of development and generate momentum.
NOTE: This post was originally posted to www.ccl-explorer.org on August 10, 2012.
