Emergence of the leadership group and our aims

[Paul Z Jackson]

The group began at the Koln conference as an Open Space gathering, then continued the next day as a Hot Topic.

Our next step was to continue the group on a new SOL Ning website, as we suggested in our report back to the conference plenary session - and here we are...

Within the next year we aim to have:
A better list of what's going on in SF leadership
Case studies
Media coverage of SF leadership
SF in business schools
Webinars, geographical networks, salons
Meetings between leaders and SF people - perhaps a conference
SF Leadership training for international groups such as UN or EU

We made a list of activities that are already happening in SF leadership. These include:
SF Coaching for leaders
Leadership practice projects within training programmes
SF 360s, MBTI and VIA strengths
Action learning leader groups, collaborative learning
Job shadowing
A global leadership development programme
Development of SF leadership tools for project planning etc

What else can you add about what's already happening and what you would like to see?

Cheers, Paul.

[Bart van Loon]

this all is very interesting. I'm very curious about the contents of all these activities.

I've been involved in SF leadership training and coaching, but have been nosing around a lot, looking for SF-leadership-traits or elements in organisations that seem to be typically SF, or that can be developed as such. .

It's so great to see all the activities that are allready out there. However, I would like to see more exchange and on content-level. What do we consider to be typical SF-leadership? What are typical SF-leadership-resources?

It would be great if we could get SF-leadership on the map (see next year's aims in Paul's post). It would seem to me that we need building some sort of volume for that.

What are your thoughts?

Bart

[Phil Jones]

Hi Bart - do you mean a list of SF Leadership Behaviours? Or maybe a description of SF Leaders and how they do it?

There's a book here methinks!

Phil

[Steve Onyett]

Wonderful to see this group here. I lead on leadership and teamwork development within our organisation (an "arms-length" part of the Department of Health) and work freelance on the issue. What strikes me as a key strength of an SF approach is the way it chimes with the move away from "heroic" models that assume leadership is something that can be taught to talented individuals on the back of some evidence-based set of competencies towards a realisation that the action is in the interaction, no models fit all situations (it is bound by context) and whatever you do uncertainty remains. Alongside SF I find a good grasp of "complexity theory" (which should really be called "understanding and accepting the world as a beautiful natural system" theory) provides a good foundation- particularly when taking the view that you would only ever know there had ever been any effective leadership when you see something good happening.

Listing SF leadership behaviours feels like a trap into a sort of "heroic" formulation again (though maybe this could be avoided) but love the idea of telling stories of effective leadership that draws upon SF ways.

Definitely scope for that book!

Go well,

Steve

[Carin Mussmann]

Hi I already did a research study about SF.leadership competences. A summery is in the book from SOL Vienna. The study is on my homepage in german.
www.carin-mussmann.ch