A reflection of the Being Leaders Circle hosted by Tim Collings + Melina Lipkiewicz
Recently we hosted a circle for our Being Leaders community, bringing into focus how adults learn today, to create a micro experience of the program.
We invited the sharing of learning experience challenges and opportunities, followed by peer discussion to deepen the dialogue on how learning can support leaders to sustain change, and finally coalescing to reflect on what we now think about learning and what this means for how leaders learn.
Rather than offering expertise, our approach was to hold space for knowledge to be shared and leaders stretched and challenged collectively, which includes us as hosts.
As we applied this experience to the theme, the very essence of it became topical as leaders identified the need to decentre expertise to learn collectively, embark on challenges and create safe spaces to be stretched in, which often resulted in growth you wouldn’t have previously imagined. Over time this brought about sustained behavioural change and increases in performance.
From here the conversation flowed to the importance of making learning sticky to sustain change. 80% of people acquire knowledge and do nothing with it, inviting dialogue around the need for practice not just safely but also within the context of our own environments being crucial to the way adults learn today.
The role of conversation in a community of practice was necessary for embodiment, deepening understanding and reflective practices.
As was the role of storytelling to the way we seek to understand the world, ourselves and each other, so nurturing spaces for this to organically appear was critical to adult learning. A cycle emerged for learning to be sticky - digest smaller amounts of content at a time, that is relative to your situation and environment and place of beginning.
We processed the role of leader vulnerability and authenticity in not just your own growth, but also as a witness and in giving feedback to others.
When we witness and experience with you, we are also experiencing for ourselves, paving the way for thresholds to be crossed and participant action.
The campfire enabled us to form a mutual starting point; the flow deepened our understanding collectively of what leaders needed to learn; relationships are needed to explore and challenge each others safely so that change emerges; and thresholds are crossed when expertise and knowledge is decentralised and not the focus; decentralising knowledge enables multiple streams of knowledge.
And all of this is how the Being Leaders program is designed. To allow for deeper collective discussion, emergence, safe practice and sustained behavioural change.
To find out more about the Being Leaders program, visit us here and register for the 2023 cohort.
Co-authored by Melina LIpkiewicz and Tim Collings