What
can you learn from spending five days having conversations with people who are
not obviously like you, and who know and do things you may not understand or
care about? Quite a lot, as I found out when I went on a leadership journey
organized by Leaders’ Quest. I have been home, physically, for two days, but in
my mind I am still on the road. I need more time to digest what I saw and
heard. Meanwhile, here are five things I learned:
1 How
milking with Paul beats sitting with Mary
‘Sitting
with Mary’ used to be how one learned to do a job. You sat, you listened, you
observed, and you asked questions. And sometimes you got to practice, too. Last
week I was given the chance to ‘milk with Paul’. Cows are very large animals,
they poo and pee a lot, and they don’t like strangers in their milking parlour.
This means you need highly developed skills and awareness to have someone
shadow you when you are milking 187 cows in a confined space. Paul, the cowman,
who looked after me, demonstrated phenomenal technical, spatial, communication,
time and risk management skills. I learned a lot about how to lead from Paul.
2 Collaborative
Inquiry not Interrogation
The
conversations that worked best for me were the ones where the people we met had
questions for us, too. Let me try to explain. If you tell me what you do, and
then I tell you what I do, then we both know, what we both know. Whereas, if
there is time, and the conditions are right for dialogue, new questions will
emerge, and quite possibly we will discover valuable learning points
together. Firing questions at
people may result in a diminished learning for all, because the thing you think
you need to know, may not be as valuable as the knowledge or experience your
interlocutor was going to share with you. If only you had let them.
3 Ditch
your titles
We
are conditioned to recognize people by their role, and job title. When you meet
someone for the first time, hearing a job title may help to understand who you are
speaking to: Banker, Consultant, Entrepreneur, Ex-Offender, Husband, Finance
Director, Mother, Piano Tuner, Student. Husband, Mother, and Newly Redundant
don’t work so well. If you want someone to remember who you are, it is
essential to say something about yourself that will help them understand what
you do, and, hopefully, arouse their curiousity.
4 Leadership
and Learning
‘Leadership
and Learning are indispendible to each other’, as John F Kennedy has said. For
me, the people we met who were consciously learning from their challenges and
opportunities, tended to be the most inspiring leaders. I’m thinking of a
manager at a social enterprise who knew everyone by name, a school student in a
new Academy, a probation officer who always took the difficult path, a
banker who wanted to be a painter, Jimmy Mizen’s family, a piano tuner whose
home is London, and who has no home.
5 The
Kindness of Strangers
Perfect
strangers can be exceptionally kind. Again, and again, we met people doing
difficult things, who were patient, open, thoughtful, generous, compassionate,
funny, and respectful to us, and to each other. With leaders like these,
seizing the opportunity to tell them how great they are at what they do, was a
privilege and a pleasure.
