LME for off-site team building

Here's another interesting and useful field report from Tom Hickok at DoD. Also check out Tom's earlier report on creating and sustaining high-performance organizations. Thanks Tom.

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I used the leadership metaphor explorer (LME) cards yesterday in a team-building off-site. The group that I support in the Department of Defense environment almost doubled in the last few months, from about 18 to about 30. The off-site was planned to be largely a fun event for this group, with pizza lunch with time afterwards to socialize and relax. But there was a team-building exercise at the front end and I used the LME cards as part of it. The design of the exercise was for the division director to make some comments about some changes ahead. The purpose of those comments was to get the group thinking seriously about change/change management.

When the director finished speaking, I followed on his talk with the theme of "initiating change within a sea of change." After a word about the purpose of teambuilding, I asked the 23 participants to browse the cards, and pick one that they related to in some way, or spoke to them about the challenges/opportunities ahead. They did that, and reconvened, with chairs arranged in a circle to allow good face to face contact. I asked them to share briefly about why they picked the card they did, and any brief story behind it. Everybody shared willingly, without extra pressure. A few people shared about parts of their personal background that were previously undisclosed. Others talked about their work goals. Comments after were very positive about the experience.

Some things to note: 1) The LME exercise was compressed to about 35 minutes because we started as lunch approached, and I didn't want to start a hunger strike, so I assured them at the beginning of the length of the exercise :)) 2) My design consideration in having the whole group share instead of breaking into sub-groups was to help facilitate relationships across the whole team. Also, the limited time didn't really support a two step feedback process (small teams to large teams). 3) I kept the sharing very short due to the time constraints. We could have productively shared much longer (at least another hour), I believe.

I continue to be impressed with the versatility of the LME cards at drawing people out to talk at a significant, or even profound level, in a short period of time. I appreciate the chance to use the cards, and I think they are very ready for prime time. I even had colleagues ask me after the exercise where they could order the cards (one wanted to use them in her church, which has a new leadership team).

Best,
Tom Hickok

Understanding leadership cultures that enable innovation

Sent: Thursday, June 26, 2008 4:26 PM
To: Harrison III, Steadman
Subject: Leadership Metaphor Explorer

Steadman,

We used the LME with our media client last week as we originally conceived the exercise: the participants explored leadership behaviors that enable and disable innovation. It was a memorable exercise in that it got the participants up on their feet so they could view the cards as well as stimulating fascinating dialog surrounding the questions. It was remarkable what people saw, how they interpreted it and then how they pursued consensus given their perspectives. I intend to share our experience at the AMI meeting in Banff. I'd be glad to elaborate more on the experience with you if you are interested and have the time.

Jim Myracle
TMT Associates, Inc.
"Experience Delivering Results"

Here's the process --

I used the LME cards to support a learning module on leading innovation and deliver on the objective to understand the leadership behaviors and cultural attributes enabling innovation. Since this module was part of a leadership development program that had been custom developed for one company, I also designed the exercise to deliver on the broader program goal of network and colleague development. To work within the available time, a pre-determined mix of enabling and disabling cards were distributed to four groups of four participants each.

The morning began with an interactive discussion of product life-cycles and how organization culture and leaders evolve as products succeed and organizations grow. This was followed by an exploration of the unique types of innovation; process, sustaining (incremental) and disruptive (new-growth).

It is at this point that I turned to the Leadership Metaphor Explorer to help identify the leadership behaviors and cultural attributes that had been hinted at. In the first round, each group was asked to discuss messages from the15 cards at their table and then collaborate to select up to four cards that depict leadership behaviors or cultural attributes that disable innovation. They were asked to share:
1. The disabling behaviors or cultural characteristics they saw in the image,
2. The type(s) of innovation that would be inhibited, and
3. The ways in which leaders display such disabling behaviors or organization culture works to send out these subtle messages.

A sampling of cards and comments selected during this round were:
o Calculating Brains – forcing outcomes based on the needs of now
o Well-Defended Warriors – use power to overcome resistance, oblivious to outside intelligence
o Lone Ranger – holding on to the glory, individual star
o Swarm of Bees – what happens to someone in our company if they make a mistake, fall short

In the next round, the groups were asked to revisit their discussions and collaborate to select up to four cards that depict leadership behaviors or cultural attributes that enable innovation. This time, they were asked to share:
1. The connections between the image and the enabling behaviors/cultural characteristics,
2. The type(s) of innovation that would be supported, and
3. The ways in which leaders display and cultures support such enabling behaviors.

A sampling of cards and comments selected during this round were:
o Shepherd – guiding, protective against interference, observant and listening, comes in all sizes and types
o Co-Creating Musicians – teams of unique contributors working in a highly integrated way to deliver one success they could not deliver on their own
o Creative Repairmen –Competent in the old and also open to a new way
o Garage of Innovators – An overall favorite card among all the participants
o Network of Peers
o The following 4 cards were told as one story:
Polarity of Opposites coming together, with the help of involved, knowledgeable Player Coaches, can organize and integrate a Community of (diverse) Craftspeople to set sail together as Ambitious Pioneers charting a new course.

Each table captured their key messages from the cards and discussions that spontaneously followed, thus enabling the participants to begin building their own vision for innovation leadership.

The Leadership Metaphor Explorer cards were enthusiastically received. There was absolutely no hesitancy to get involved. The differences in first impressions of the images led to both laughter and focused listening to one another. Participants easily collaborated, and I witnessed better brainstorming technique during these discussions than had been accomplished during an earlier brainstorm practice. Importantly, the LME experience also heightened the awareness of how perspectives differ when viewing the same image (or situation), what can be learned through effective sharing of the perspectives as well as the dialog skills and time required to share the perspectives.

My wish list:
1. More time:
a. To allow familiarization with the deck and avoid pre-selection
b. To allow for more discussion and collaborative work with these images. For example, one member at a table selected “A Polarity of Opposites” as an enabling card. A colleague challenged him that there was a wall separating the two sides from each other. A third participant at the table immediately pointed out that it looked like the wall was crumbling, while the fourth admitted that he had not even seen the wall in the image because he was focused on the meaning of the color vs. black and white difference. They were well on their way to a rich conversation when time ran out.
2. A deck without captions. To some degree, I feel as if the captions set boundaries on the messages of the images.

Thank you for the early use of these cards. The LME is a wonderful tool that lends itself to a wide range of leadership, cultural and community-building explorations at an individual or group level. I also think they can be a valuable reflection and discussion tool for leadership coaches, and look forward to working with the LME in that capacity soon.

Visual and verbal literacy: Skills for contemporary leadership

David Magellan Horth provides this field report on using Leadership Metaphor Explorer (LME) and Visual Explorer (VE) to address skills for contemporary leadership.

The following design was used successful at the Library Leadership and Management Association LLAMA (a Division of the American Library Association - ALA at the LLAMA President's meeting June 2008 in Annaheim, CA. I was expecting about 10 people but more like 300 people came so I had to think quickly on my feet.

Overview

• Introduction
• Leadership Metaphor Exercise
• Presentation on leadership culture stage development
• Presentation of the Sense Making Loop for complex challenges
  
• Visual Explorer Exercise
• Concluding remarks

Description

1. My session was called "Visual and verbal literacy: Skills for contemporary leadership"

2. I put on one LME Card and one VE Card face down on each chair, randomly distributed.

3a. I opened the session with the question: How does the metaphor you have been assigned describe leadership in your organization in any one of these ways:

• in the past?
• your organization at its worst?
• how leadership is practiced currently?
• how leadership is when your organization is at its best?
• how you would like leadership to be in the future?
• how leadership needs to be in order to resolve your most pressing leadership challenges?

3b. Discuss with your neighbors

4. People were then invited to come to the microphone with the card they had been assigned. The microphone had been set up in the center aisle to share what they had found. This was very rich. About 7 people came forward before I moved on to the next part of the session. They shared both the metaphor and insights they had gained.

5. I then did a presentation about how we think leadership will look like in the future using:

Honorable Captains to illustrate dependent leadership
Adventurous Explorers to illustrate independent leadership
Leaderless Orchestra to illustrate interdependent leadership


6. I then presented the Sense Making Loop used as a response to complex challenges.

7. There was a VE image at each seat. I asked them to think of a complex challenge in their organization. How does the visual image you have been assigned describe your complex challenge?

8. Again I had people come up to the microphone to share insights on the process and what they learned.

One woman chose the snails eye view of trees as a metaphor for appreciating diversity.

"Lying on my back looking up at the trees and seeing how beautiful they are and how different they are in height. If I appreciate the beauty in them, they will in turn appreciate the beauty in me."

I rounded things off by reciting a verse from T.S. Eliot, East Coker, to close.

In order to arrive there,
To arrive where you are, to get from where you are not,
You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy.
In order to arrive at what you do not know
You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance.
In order to possess what you do not possess
You must go by the way of dispossession.
In order to arrive at what you are not
You must go through the way in which you are not.
And what you do not know is the only thing you know
And what you own is what you do not own
And where you are is where you are not.