Changing with Integrity: empowering leadership teams to remain steadfast in values and flexible in strategy.
This curriculum is designed for teams facing change – whether that be a change in leadership, change in responsibilities, change in team composition….or any of the other endless evolutions facing organizations today. The ideas is that while we cannot control and predict what the future holds, we have great power to prepare our teams to face the future with clarity and optimism.
The workshop is divided up into 5 sections and can be tailored to a 2 or 3 day intensive session. What is provided below is meant to be a guideline that can be tailored to meet the needs of individual teams.
Being grounded in the present moment.
We begin the workshop with a series of mindfulness exercises designed to ground participants in the present moment. The following mindfulness prompts will be explored for approximately 3-5 minutes each. Responses will not be shared in a group setting – they are merely intended to encourage reflection and focus.
Sample mindfulness prompts can be found at: www.presencing.org.
Next, we’ll bring the group back to the workshop. Participants will be asked three questions.
1) What hopes do you have for this workshop?
2) What fears do you have?
3) What intention would you like to set for your time here?
Finally, we’ll collectively establish a set of expected behaviors, or shared agreements, to govern our time together. Examples could be:
Silence your cell phone
Do not interrupt
Encourage participation from all – seek out quiet voices and make sure all are heard.
Looking back.
As a student of history one of my core beliefs is that our history deeply informs our future. As your team gets ready to enter a period of change, I think it’s valuable to recognize and honor the events that have brought you to this point.
For this section we’ll be drawing out your organization’s story as a timeline. Your team will decide where the story starts and ends. Everyone will be encouraged to add specific events/achievements/challenges that are meaningful to them. Once everyone has made contributions we will review the timeline as a group to see if there is anything important that has been missed.
Once the timeline is complete I will ask the group to identify the points of challenge/conflict/distress. What made these times difficult? What can we learn from past choices and behavior? As we move forward, what do we need to commit to leave behind?
Conversely, where are the times that the organization has thrived? What are the times that individuals within the organization have shined? What can these high points tell us about your inherent values of your organization? What are the historically based values that we want to preserve moving forward?
Looking forward.
This session will be guided by a tool from Stragility: Excelling at Strategic Changes by Ellen Auster, in which the group will be asked to imagine what a happy future would look like. The “happy futures” can be related to business goals, team culture, customer satisfaction other priorities participants identify.
For example, in our happy future:
We would increase customer satisfaction by 10% each year
We would launch a new product/service in XX market with XX outcomes
We would create a company culture that values collaboration over competition
Depending on how many “happy futures” are discussed, we will prioritize the top 3-5. Then we will collectively “backcast” – what would have to happen in order to make the “happy future” a reality? What resources would we need to add/capacities would we need to grow? How would we need to shift our focus? What might we have to let go of to make room for new growth?
Building capacity.
Now that the team has a solid grounding, we will dive into the more intentional preparation for change management. This session will be directed by the work of Patrick Lencioni’s The Advantage, which identifies four key functions to establish organizational health. Example exercises of how these functions are highlighted below.
1. Build a Cohesive Leadership Team – building trust through team building conversations, building understanding through the workstyles inventory test, creating long-term shared agreements.
2. Create Clarity – asking the team to address six critical questions: Why do we exist? How do we behave? What do we do? How will we succeed? What is most important, right now? Who must do what?
3. Overcommunicate Clarity – in this section we’ll utilize a tool from The Four Principles of Execution by Chris McChensney and Sean Covey. Now that we’ve decided why we exist and how we’ll succeed we’ll talk about lead measures – or the activities that will lead to the results we want. We’ll also create a “dashboard” that can effectively measure success – ie: number of sales calls, response time to customer complaints, donor retention, etc. Finally we’ll determine “cadence of accountability” – setting regular check in’s to monitor progress toward goals.
4. Reinforce Clarity – In this section we’ll discuss how our decisions need to be cascaded to others in the organization and how we’ll continue to keep focused on success.
Closing.
Sessions such as this can be emotionally charged, and it is important to close thoughtfully. We’ll start by compiling a list of next steps, action items, or topics we need to dive deeper in at another time. Then, we’ll invite everyone to go around and share a key take-away from the time together, something they are grateful for, and the most important thing they are committed to doing to help the team change with integrity.