Steve Onyett Solution focused consultancy, coaching, facilitation and research Team working in the...

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focused consultancy, coaching, facilitation and research

Team working in the real world

Units United Conference29th June 2009

Steve Onyett

Thought for the day. Today Programme. Radio 4. 26th February 2009

•“Here is the gift of relationship. It lies at the very core of what it is to be human.”

Rev David Wilkinson, principal of St John’s College, Durham

Steve Onyett

The artist is Mel Gittridge, and this image was exhibited as part of Expressions, a touring display of art by people who have experienced mental or emotional problems- this picture captures the idea of environments where people can take power, supported by other environments where people can take power.

Start with what builds relationship

Steve Onyett

What whole system?

Family, friends, neighboursThe

practitioner

The local mental health service

The team

Within CAMHS

Primary-specialist care

Health and social care

Hospital and community care

Statutory and “social purpose” provision

Health and education

Moving to adult-hood

Housing, employment, leisure, benefits, substance misuse, learning difficulty, sensory impairment, etc.

Steve Onyett

Solution focused consultancy, coaching, facilitation and research New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 2

Steve Onyett

It is about “deepening and broadening” public service

• “The point is not to consult more, or involve people more in decisions; it is to encourage them to use the human skills and experience they have to help deliver public or voluntary services”

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 10-11

Steve Onyett

Co-production and working from strengths

• “… people are defined entirely by their needs and so those needs become the only asset they have. No-one should be surprised when people then behave in ways that perpetuate such needs” (11).

• “When ..assets are deliberately ignored or sidelined they atrophy”. (11)

• “Co-production demands that public service staff shift from fixers who focus on problems to enablers who focus on abilities. … This role is not recognised or rewarded within the management structures that are currently in place”.(13)

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“Front-line staff are essential to delivery and empowerment...

• Their morale is as important as client morale. Yet in practice, the participation that they are asked to extend to clients is often not extended to them”.

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 13

Steve Onyett

“System alignment”

• Allow yourselves with others to be moved by stories

• Give wide and shared exposure to the lived experience of people who use your service

• Envision the future together and ambitiously

• Don’t be coy about the love you put into your work

Steve Onyett

Real teams have..• Clear and shared objectives• Members who have to work closely

together to achieve the objectives of the team

• This interdependency includes users and their supporters

• Members who have different and clearly defined roles within the team

Steve Onyett

Human systems

Moving Following

Opposing

Bystanding

Make a move

Oppose a move

Follow a move

Observe and make comments intended to move the group

forward and connect ideas

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Take them away and you get….

Mover Follower

Opposer Bystander

No direction

No correction

No completion

No perspective

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StalemateMover Follower

Opposer Bystander

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DictateMover Follower

Opposer Bystander

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Let’s not

Mover Follower

Opposer Bystander

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Hall of mirrors

Bystander

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Dream teamMover Follower

Opposer Bystander

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Real teams have..• The minimum number of team

members required to get the job done

• Opportunities to review the performance of the team and how it could be improved

• A team identity, in that others can recognise it as a team

Steve Onyett

Effective teams have…..

• Good processes for decision making• Norms for excellence• Support for innovation- both

rhetorical and practical, including..• Defended time out to review what it

is trying to achieve, how it is going about it and what needs to change

• Safety in participation

Steve Onyett

Hackman’s five trip wires• Describe the performing unit as a team but

continuing to manage members as individuals. • Fail to exercise appropriate authority over the team

- leave it to clarify what it does.• Neglect internal structures for operational

management• Fail to provide organisational supports in the form

of rewards, training, information, and the material resources required to get the job done.

• Assume that team members already have all the competence they need to work well in teams.

Familiarity

Reliable Information

Clear Communications

Integrity

Shared Values

Shared Vision

Trusting Relationships

Change/Uncertainty/Dishonesty

Conflicting Needs

Pressures/Stress

Complex/Poor Data

UnclearCommunications

Lack of Time /Prior Experience

Distrusting Relationships

Source: Richard Lauve, MD (VHA Inc.)

Steve Onyett

Appreciative InquiryIs about developing the competence to CHOOSE a way of thinking• “Appreciative Inquiry is the cooperative search

for the best in people, their organizations, and the world around them.”

• “It involves systematic discovery of what gives a system 'life' when it is most effective and capable in economic, ecological and human terms.”

From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Steve Onyett

We manifest what we focus on and “we grow toward what we persistently ask

questions about”or

What we talk about gets bigger!

Solution focus/appreciative inquiry- exploring what works so that we can do more of it

Steve Onyett

It works to build the positive core of the organisations involved.

• Organisations need a lot less fixing and a lot more affirmation.

• Appreciation builds relationships, collective intelligence, and freedom to innovate

From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Steve Onyett

“The Power of Appreciation..

• ..rests with its self-reinforcing and self-generative capacity”

Srivastva and Cooperrider, 1999

• This requires inclusion, safety in participation and good communication =

• Effective team working and leadership• Teams are where this is modelled and

enacted

Steve Onyett

Working well with living systems means

working well with “complexity”

– See for example – • Bob Hudson. (2006). Whole systems working- a

Guide and Discussion paper. CSIP-ICN• Jake Chapman. (2004). Systems failure. Why

governments must learn to think differently. London: Demos

Complicated ComplexSimple

Source: Brenda Zimmerman, PhD

• Formulae have only a limited application

• Raising one child gives no assurance of success with the next

• Expertise can help but is not sufficient

• Every child is unique

• Uncertainty of outcome remains

Raising a Child

Recipe is essential

Recipes are tested to assure replicability of later efforts

No particular expertise; knowing how to cook increases success

Recipes produce standard products

Certainty of same results every time

Following a Recipe Building a

Moon RocketFormulae are critical

and necessary

Sending one rocket increases assurance that next will be ok

High level of expertise in many specialized fields & coordination

Rockets similar in critical ways

High degree of certainty of outcome

From - Plsek, P. “Complexity, culture and large systems change” presentation

Steve Onyett

Questions? (after Chapman, 2004)

• Are we spending too much time trying to apply complicated solutions to complex problems?

• What approach would we adopt if we accepted that systems cannot be controlled nor their behaviour predicted?

• What might we need to do differently?

Steve Onyett

Build collective understanding of what

working in complex systems really means • Small changes can have big effects • ..and big changes very little effect• Emergence- the whole is greater

than the sum of the parts• Tolerance of uncertainty and

flexibility• Recognising the futility of control

Steve Onyett

The pointlessness of controlfrom Jenny Rogers “Influencing Skills”

• You can’t force people to work effectively on something they disagree with.

• Organisations are so complex and subject to so many diverse influences that it is pointless trying to control them.

• Distance from most senior to most junior makes it unlikely that control can be exercised over that stretch

• Much control is unnecessary -where there is openness and willingness to give feedback

• Control reduces risk taking- a necessary precondition for the innovation on which organisations depend

• It’s exhausting and your time can be better spent!

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• People’s ability to stay the same will always be greater than our ability to make them different

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What implications of more ecological thinking?

• Push and exhortation (nor even resources!) from leaders and policy makers can be counter-productive.

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Working with your stakeholders- what is their• Readiness to change? • Confidence to change? • Judgement of the importance of change?

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Respectfully consider these cells and provide information to inform

Advantages Disadvantages

Change + -

No change - +

Steve Onyett

What implications of more ecological thinking?

• Change needs to happen bottom-up but the right conditions need to be created.

• …like gardening, or throwing a party?

Steve Onyett

Working with complexity values• Allowing solutions to emerge

by:–encouraging rich interaction,

removing barriers and oppressive controls

–giving space and time, –not over specifying means

Steve Onyett

Working with complexity values• Valuing multiple perspectives• Using multiple approaches

that make effective use of experience, experimentation, freedom to innovate and working at the edge of knowledge and experience.

Steve Onyett

Law of the Situation• Leadership is transient and

contextual• Where knowledge and

experience are needed the person who can is the right person to do it.

• Not all leadership should be determined by position power yet people with authority should be prepared to exercise it.

Steve Onyett

Subsidiarity

• Decision making should be located as closely as possible to the place where actions are taken.

• This means addressing the flight from authority

• .. and helping people love their monkeys!

Steve Onyett

• “If you do not fill your leadership space, voids appear, and in voids bad things happen”

Hugh Martyn and Robert Scurr quoting William Calley on his lack of leadership in the Mai Lay massacre in Vietnam, 1968

Steve Onyett

The essence of leadership and management

• …is the creation of environments in which people can be creative.. Where they can exercise power to achieve outcomes valued by patients/users, their supports, and other key stakeholders.

• This is usually a team

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“New paradigm” approach to leadership• More “soft stuff” emphasis on

working through others• Leaders with more faith in other

people than they have in themselves (and they have a lot of faith in themselves!)

• More concerned with connectedness and inclusiveness

With acknowledgement to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe of www.realworld-group.com

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“New paradigm” approach to leadership• More concerned with vision• More concerned with

improvement• Less concerned with “Great man”

models of leadership• Striving for excellence through

optimism, openness and personal humility

With acknowledgement to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe of www.realworld-group.com

Steve Onyett

“Transformational” leadership- roots

• James MacGregor Burns transformation as that which turns followers into leaders and leaders into moral agents.

• Transformational leadership occurs when people elevate each other into a higher level of motivation and morality.

• Thus inextricably linked with the social meaning that people attach to their work.

Steve Onyett

Leadership as an ethical endeavour• Positive Emotional Climate = “an

environment where managers take into account the emotional needs and personal growth of employees and encourage the sharing of positive emotions”

• Leadership practices that promote “positive emotional climate” associated with company gains in revenue, growth and outcome. Ozcelik et al, 2008

Steve Onyett

Leadership as an ethical endeavour

•PEC associated with less cynicism and more engagement

Steve Onyett

Research using the Team Leadership Questionnaire

• “Showing genuine concern” has the biggest impact on motivation.–Being interested in your needs and aspirations and how things feel for you.With acknowledgement to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe of www.realworld-group.com

Steve Onyett

The importance of authenticity• Leaders lead most effectively

when they are being themselves and being true to themselves.

• Authentic leadership is about, “being yourself- more – with skill”

Goffee and Jones, 2006

Steve Onyett

Highlights from “Host Leadership: Towards a new yet ancient metaphor” by Mark McKergow PhD MBADirector, sfwork - The Centre for Solutions Focus at Workmark@sfwork.com, www.sfwork.com Forthcoming in the International Journal of Leadership in Public Services

Steve Onyett

Shortcomings of the hero metaphor

• The hero leader is seen as all-knowing and the followers all-dependent;

• The illusion of control • The homogeneous

imagery of the followers - are we subjects or sheep!

• The willingness of the hero (warrior, king, even shepherd) to die in the act of saving the flock

Steve Onyett

Shortcomings of the servant metaphor• The richness of the

metaphor is not obvious. Your waiter or Jeeves?

• The image of servant is not a compelling one to those (for example women and ethnic minorities) who are traditionally cast in such a role

Steve Onyett

Leader as Host, Host as Leader

Servant

Steve Onyett

Warren Bennis on Gladstone and Disraeli• If you had dinner with William

Gladstone, you were left thinking “That Gladstone is the wittiest, the most intelligent, the most charming person around.”

• But when you had dinner with Benjamin Disraeli, you were left thinking, “I’m the wittiest, the most intelligent, the most charming person around!”

• Gladstone shone but Disraeli created an environment where others could shine. The latter is the more powerful form of leadership, an adventure in which the leader is privileged to find treasure within others and put it to good use.

From introduction to Parks 2005 p xi-xii).

Steve Onyett

Advantages of the host metaphor

• It’s an everyday image• Host and Guest are co-defining• Hosting is an activity, rather than a

defining characteristic of a person• Hosting gives a definite feel of some

responsibility for the success of the event

• The role of host can involve behaving as total hero or absolute servant

Steve Onyett

Elements of host leadership

•The four balances + 1

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Principle of Response-ability

•Defining the event

• Responding to what happens

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Principle of Co-participation

•Engage and provide

•Join in along with everyone else

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Principle of Gate-opener

• Protect boundaries

• Encourage new connections

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Principle of Alpha and Omega•Be the first

•Be the last

The host is both the first and the last – Arabic proverb

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The 5th principle?

•Front stage work.

•Back-stage work.

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Parting comments on rethinking leadership

• Ask yourself

Paul E. Plsek, 2008

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It’s all about well-being

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• “If you think you are too small to be effective

…you have never been in bed with a mosquito”

Betty-Reese

Steve Onyett

Thank you!- steve.onyett@gmail.com

Steve Onyett

Sources• Iles, P. & Macaulay, M. (2007) Putting principles into practice: developing ethical

leadership in local government. International Journal of Leadership in Public Services, 3(3), 15-28.

• Ozcelik, H., Langton, N., & Aldrich. (2008). Doing well and doing good. Journal of Managerial Psychology, 23(3), 186-203.

• Ham. C. (2008) “Health Care Commissioning in the International Context: Lessons from experience and evidence”. 2008.HSMC

• Ham, C. (2008)“Competition and integration in the English NHS”. BMJ. 2008. 336. 805-807

• Welsh, T. & Pringle, M. (2001). Social capital. Trusts need to recreate trust BMJ. 2001 July 28; 323(7306): 177–178.

• New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008

• www.icn.csip.org.uk/leadership• www.leadershipnet-icn.org.uk – for people involved in leadership and teamwork

development• www.steveonyett.co.uk – see page on solution focus for links to a range of other

resources of solution focussed working. Steve.onyett@gmail.com

Steve Onyett Solution focused consultancy, coaching, facilitation and research Team working in the...

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