One of the things we have noticed when working with leaders on their development is that traditional approaches to learning and building understanding about themselves don’t always achieve the outcomes they want.
In many cases their journey through both life and work has already given them enormous experience and knowledge to draw on. They find that conventional development programs tend only to confirm what they are already aware of, while pre-determined or tightly facilitated programs don’t give them the opportunity to identify what they see as important in their learning.
In this context it is really important to us that our leadership development programs, including our Leadership Experiences, provide ample opportunity for this exploration. We want them to experience something well beyond the typical concept of a facilitated or guided discussion around their development. We want our participants to be the agenda setters, the owners, the explorers of our time together. We want them to be truly engaged in the process.
One of the ways we do this is by drawing on the principles of the ‘Open Space Technology’ approach. Open Space was originally devised by American author and consultant Harrison Owen as an alternative way of running conferences and meetings.
An Open Space event has no agenda beyond the broad initial question or statement of purpose. The ‘agenda’ is developed by the participants. Topics can be raised by anyone for discussion at a given time and place and participants then choose to attend the sessions that suit their interests, or to which they believe they can make a contribution. They may also circulate between a number of discussions that they find interesting.
In our Tetepare Leadership Experiences we use a variant of this approach which stretches over the whole week.
At the beginning of the week we ‘open the space’ with a question, usually something like: “What are the opportunities and challenges facing you as a leader?” At that time (and at any other time during the week) participants raise topics they would like to discuss. In addition to participant topics, we, as facilitators, also raise topics based on questions we’ve been asked (e.g. around the Enneagram) or on a discussion which has taken place as we were working (say, on a boat).
During the experience, anyone – participant or facilitator – can ‘retrieve’ a topic and invite others to explore it with them. And whilst we set aside time in the day to create space for these conversations, they are also experienced over the dinner table, on our exploration of a rainforest track or just sitting on the beach at the end of the day.
Important to the success of this approach are the principles which sit behind Open Space, and which we apply on our Experiences. They are:
- Whoever comes are the right people.
- Whenever it starts is the right time.
- When it is over, it’s over.
- Whatever happened is the only thing that could have happened.
There is also ‘the law of two feet’. This law means that if you find yourself in a session in which you are neither learning nor contributing, you should feel free to move on (with your two feet). This law creates a very different environment to the typical conference at which many participants persist with workshops out of politeness rather than relevance.
This approach creates a very fluid environment which is ideal for leaders and enables them to set the scene around what is important for them at that time. This is particularly the case on our Leadership Experiences which blend sharing and learning about each other and about leadership with making a contribution to the local community.
Open Space is just one of the facilitation approaches we use with leaders. Next time I will talk about another: ‘Time to Think’.
Gayle
Our next Leadership Experience on Tetepare Island will take place in the last week of April. We have one place left on this seven-day Experience. For full details and booking information, click here.
Thanks Gayle, I really like this concept and I can visualise introducing this at our organisation. It would be valuable to hear if others have implemented this in their workplace and how successful the uptake has been with their leaders. Given we all have limited time in the workplace, I’m wondering how it would work in an organisation where we can’t be so spontaneous eg: we need to be more specific about starting & ending times, and would this detract from the open space environment we are trying to create?
Cheers, Di
Hi Di
We do have clients who use open space to work through critical issues, explore strategic direction, generate “out of the box” and innovative ideas for their organisations as well as for their general meetings. Whilst we have the luxury of a week to keep the space open on Tetepare, our clients set start and finish times and open the space during this. We appreciate that the world of work needs to continue – and whilst a few organisations work in open space all day, we generally find that the practice is to open the space for specific opportunities.
Hi Gayle, Thanks for a lovely precis of open space and how it can be used. I have used it a lot in different organisations and found it to be really useful too. Cheers, Glenda
Thanks Gayle, reading this reminded me how valuable open space was at a workshop we both attended many years ago. This is the prompt to re-read some of the guidelines on using this technique and to remember to try different approaches to engage and meet expectation and need. It’s easy to stick to the comfortable, familiar methods which may not be the most productive.