A new role in radically self-organized leadership development

In the current issue of managerSeminare, Petra Martin describes the format of an agile leadership development programme at Bosch Automotive Electronics, which radically focuses on the self-organisation skills of the participating managers, in a vividly illustrated article entitled Aufbruch ins Unbekannte. In co-creative collaboration with the author (who was also the courageous and visionary client for the project) and the managing director of the Kalapa Leadership Academy and great consultant colleague Liane Stephan, I was able to help design the programme from the ground up and support its implementation.

In this article, I do not want to describe the course of the programme – for this, I recommend that every reader reads the article mentioned above. Rather, I would like to briefly highlight the most important principles from the trainer’s point of view, which make it possible to focus on the participants and the ever-increasing competence for self-organisation among them.

The principles are based on the main intrinsic motivators identified by Dan Pink: Purpose, Autonomy and Mastery. I also work along these principles in other counselling contexts wherever possible. This is accompanied by a change in my role: I step back as an organising, thematically leading, (teaching) trainer; in return, I empower the participants to self-organise, self-lead and self-directed learning. My (not to be underestimated) main function will be to hold the space. The vision that Petra Martin, Liane Stephan and I formulated at the very beginning of the concept phase was analogous to this: »We want to create a trainerless academy!«

Without claiming to be exhaustive, I would like to formulate the principles as follows:

Creating meaning and value

There should only be room in the event for what creates meaning and value from the participants‘ perspective. Anything that does not meet this requirement will not even be started or will be cancelled. The question of the meaning to be created introduces the event, from which all topics are derived. This means that the preparation of content is completed in advance (in both a positive and challenging sense). The continuous question of whether the participants are on a meaningful journey and spending their time in a value-creating way allows them to prioritise and make consistent decisions during the event.

Secure and demand autonomy

Participants are positioned and treated as radically self-responsible. They decide for themselves where and how they want to develop and where not. They are free to stop or do something else at any time – but they are responsible for the consequences. In the programme described by Petra Martin, for example, one of the biggest challenges was that participants repeatedly ‘invited’ us trainers (and sometimes even energetically demanded) to take the lead, for example by introducing topics. In order to ensure the autonomy of the learning process, we had to consistently delegate the invitations back to the self-organisation.

Design space

In order to enable the autonomy of self-learning, a space must be created that is both safe and creatively appealing. This applies to the conditions of the venue, but also to event formats, methods and the participants‘ thinking space. Modularised frameworks, tools and worksheets from which the participants can choose themselves depending on the situation, inclination and dynamics, and which they can quickly acquire themselves, allow autonomy without creating chaos and disorientation.

Agile architecture

Sprint logic, timeboxing, review and retro (as I described in another blog post in a different context) are the main agile tools that can be used to steer from the background. This alone is the guiding and organising aspect of the trainer role – cyclical time discipline and cybernetic feedback ensure freedom and further development.

Flow confidence and tension-based work

One of the biggest challenges of holding space is to trust in the dynamics of the self-organised group. Tensions and conflicts are highly likely to arise – confirming all the rules of team dynamics. However, ‘only’ recognising this and delegating the responsibility for dealing with the tensions and resolving any conflicts back to the group sometimes produces aversion to the trainer or format. However, standing firm here, patiently mirroring and empowering pays off in the long term. It allows perhaps the biggest leap for groups into self-organisation. As one participant put it: experiencing group dynamics for yourself and working through tensions yourself (empowered by the trainers) proved to be far more valuable than all the conflict management theory you had previously learnt.

Familiar, diverse team of trainers

Both in the conception and realisation of the event, it is essential to work in a team that can trust each other blindly, is well reflected in terms of relationships and approaches the work with role awareness and leadership flexibility. This is the only way to make productive use of the tensions that inevitably arise in self-organised contexts. Diversity-orientated, the core expertise in the team of trainers should be distributed differently; however, each team member should also share a degree of generalist moderation, mediation and coaching skills (sensible combination of T-profiles).