Leadership Metaphor Explorer Cards used with multiple federal agencies at the Treasury Executive Institute

From: Laskow, Greg
To: Palus, Chuck, Horth, David
Subject: Metaphor Explorer Cards with multiple federal agencies represented at today's Center Connection at the Treasury Executive Institute

Hello David and Chuck:
The Leadership Metaphor Explorer Cards were a supreme hit with multiple federal agencies represented at today's Center Connection at the Treasury Executive Institute. This was the initial event for the morning.

• First we asked them to write down adjectives in response to the framing question: In your agency today, how would you describe the talent pool for future leaders? (An option is to allow more time for journaling on this topic)
• Next we asked them to select a metaphor card that represented this current state of affairs in talent development (this is step 1R in the 4MAT Model). There were 5 tables with a deck of Metaphor Cards at each table. I asked them to spread them out so that all were visible. They did so immediately and enthusiastically and began to exchange their reactions to the cards (we did not have to tell them to do this).
• They each selected a card, sometimes two.
  
• We had them exchange with each other their adjectives and the reason they selected the card(s). This took 10 minutes.
  

When we asked them to report out, we received comments such as "I can't believe that we were able to describe our situation in such a short period of time".

Lastly, we did a Visual Explorer session. Here we asked, them to select one image that represented what they needed to do differently in their organizations given what they learned today. I literally took them on a gallery walk with almost all of the VE images on display to insure that they saw them all (we were constrained as to space) and with a hand-held mike, I "led" the tour encouraging them to let the picture "grab" them. Worked well and then we had them do a table-top debrief using the Star Model. VE was a real hit as well. We let them keep their selected VE images as well as their selected ME images.




Regards,
Greg
Gregory B. Laskow, Ph.D.
Lead Senior Enterprise Associate
Government & Military Sector
Center for Creative Leadership