DC Circle Meeting

How Can We Foster Leadership Cohorts as Sustainable Communities of Learning

 

 May 20th, 11:00AM - 2:00 PM

 

 

Quote

 

For fragmentation is now very widespread, not only throughout society, but also in each individual; and this is leading to a kind of general confusion of the mind, which creates an endless series of problems and interferes with our clarity of perception so seriously as to prevent us from being able to solve most of them….The notion that all of these fragments are separately existent is evidently an illusion, and this illusion cannot do other than lead to endless conflict and confusion.

 

-David Bohm

 

Introduce LLC

 

Meeting Purpose:  To share and deepen what we are learning about creating communities of practice and learning  and explore the potential benefits and application to leadership programs.

 

Creating a Learning Environment:  What are the principles we will bring to this work together. candor, getting to know each other, being present and reflective, no reprecussions, creating space for authenticity, permission to be challenging, trust, compasssion and intimacy, not rushing into process, creating relationships, intergeneration respect and language, cues you establish in the environment

 

 

Introduce Ourselves (Building Community):  Name, Organization and as you thought about the theme for today's learning session, what image did you find yourself drawn to and what question did it evoke?

*** learning, arts, invisible community through scholarship, blurred borders..what is happening in the world today, environment for establishing community, authenticity of may I help you?, person within open space and looking out, expansive and diverse sharing of ideas, relaxing and breathing deeply..trees go through a dormant period, climbing the mountain, water is core and our work is facing the challenges of the past and future, sunset reminds me of being present in the morning and reflecting, can't see the forrest through the trees..figuring out connections, overwhelmed individual but strength in gathering, drawn by kind and compassionate eyes..even though I can't put it in words we have to work together to draw out thse words, developing new ceos and honoring pillars

 

Continuum Exercise (Reflection/Sharing): Think about the extent to which your leadership cohort (or a context in which you would like to cultivate a community of learning) and place it on a continuum with 10 being ideal and 1 fraught with every possible obstacle and frustration. Take a few minutes to jot down your thoughts.  Line up and cluster into 2-3 groups.  Develop a name for your group and come up with: one condition for success, one obstacle which needs to be addressed, a possibility or potential that makes the effort worthwhile.

 

Ocean Fork:

Success - trust

obstacle- not clear about why they are there

potential- learning through a situation, so that learning will pull people through gray areas they encounter in work

 

 

Threes for Potentials:

Success- having everyone make effort to get on and remain on same page, as new people enter process groups need to make regular effort to talk about history

 

Obstacle- lack of institutional memory, not understanding history

Potential- if can stay on same page can move more efficently,

 

Value Villagers:

Success- trust, narrowing the focus to get further along and build trust through shared context

Obstacle- expectations, language

Potential- language and diversity

 

 

Groovy and bad

Success- a learning cohort who bring a diversity of experience around a shared challenge, where the improvement of practice will benefit the entire group

Obstacle- how do you build trust, power differential that is usually unspoken, transition of a long standing group that includes new people

Potential- combination of diversity and different input and how that can enhance the group, can result in improved learning

 

Similiar thoughts-

Work on vision and then focus

 

 

Sustainable network development

 

Vision:  What do we believe can be accomplished by creating learning communities?

 

Open Space Lunch (Self-organizing):  One hour:  Announce questions, issues, topics you would like to invite others to work with you around.  Self select the groups you want to meet with and apply principles of open space.

 

Small group work:  Self organize around the following or new questions suggested by the group

 

1. How can we utilize experts in a skills based curriculum and simultaneously promote the idea that wisdom can be shared and generated by leadership program participants? How to attract cohort without experts?

    

Suggesting the need to define expert. Use experts for various reasons to play various roles and functions. Role to increase capacity that is emerging. Expertise can not always be transfered. Bring together established expertise with emerging expertise. We call experts catalysts.  There are instances when having experts can be helpful, try not to use experts all the time

1. How can you create a safe learning environment given potential power differentials, e.g. program staff/participants, race, class, etc.

 

          Sharing the common person and experience.  Name the power differences to have some transparency about it and recognize them.  Ask the group to talk about how to manage them.  Those who have the power need to try and put themselves in that role.  Sharing different perspectives. 

Remember what we have in common.  Humor and play can break down roles and help us get to know each other as people.

 

1.   How to follow and learn about the impact of learning communities.  People sometimes don't want to identify their process because there may be more value in the idea that     they as a leader had that knowledge or skill to get where they found themselves.  Need to identify up front the value of having measure and what they are, e.g. stories.

 

       We also do one and ones (at bars).

 

Closing Reflections

 What worked and didn't work

 What is one take away: an aha, a new methodology, a deeper question

 

Closing Quote

 

This is the setting out.

The leaving of everything behind.

Leaving the social millieu. The preconceptions. The definitions. The languague. The narrowed vision. The expectations.

No longer expecting relationships, memories, words or letters to mean what they used to mean. To be, in a word: Open.

 

-Rabbi Lawrence Kushner