“Research is creating new knowledge.” - Neil Armstrong Participate until July 10, 2018
INVITATION TO PARTICIPATE IN A
GLOBAL RESEARCH PROJECT
In September 2017 we were privileged to host Mee-Yan Cheung-Judge as a keynote speaker at the IODA Flourish conference here in SA. Her session was inspiring and thought-provoking, asking all of us to step up to doing more research and develop new theories for OD. She is clearly leading the charge as she has embarked on global research on the Use of Self in OD. Please participate in this global research project before 10 July to contribute to the growth of our profession.
The deadline is July 10, 2018
Invitation to Participate in a Global Use of Self (UofS) Research Study
We Mee-Yan Cheung-Judge and Professor David W. Jamieson (please see below in this letter a short biography about us) are writing to personally invite you to participate in our research on USE OF SELF.
Background to this research project:
Use of Self has been a core concept and practice value for OD practitioners. As an experienced OD practitioner, you know how critical the concept is in our practice. We talk and write about it, we practice it and we teach it. But, the concept remains a bit obscure and not clearly conceptualized making it difficult for the newcomers to the field or our clients to understand. There has not been enough of us investing time to research into this concept – e.g. what does it mean, whether it has different dimensions, what does “it” look like in practice, what impact does optimal use-of-self have in our work. etc. As a result, it has been surfacing less and less in OD education.
This research project is a first in our field and our intention is to engage a wide-ranging, diverse global sample of respondents to create new understanding, knowledge, theory and practice. We hope this project will help to create more innovative and effective development programs, designed to support practitioners’ continuous development journey – regardless of what stage of OD career they are in. However, our heart is in experienced practitioners’ development program. Hence, your participation will be very important in the research and we want to thank you in advance for participating in this study of the concept of use of self.
We decided to launch the first of two phases of research into Use of Self. We hope by the end of this first self-assessment phase, we will have a more robust (research based) and coherent definition of the concept of Use of Self and a stronger way to assess, as without that, it will be difficult to proceed into the second research phase – which is to have a more robust assessment of the impact of optimal Use of Self as seen by others (clients and close colleagues).
Three ways learning process:
We are committed in this research project to create three-way learning:
1. As researchers, we want to learn from your answers to formulate more robust understanding of the UoS concept;
2. As supporters of OD education and development, we will aggregate delegates’ answers from the same institution or country so that the data can go back to institution/country to inform a more strategic and coherent development of OD education;
3. As supporters to OD practitioners – we designed the questionnaire (in a self-assessment format) as an aid to help you reflect about your own UoS journey, and to identify what are your core strengths and what other areas you could develop yourself to be even better.
You can download or print your completed questionnaire after submitting, so that you can engage in further reflection on what you put down, or together with your supervisors or peers can discuss those answers that delight you or puzzle you. Hence there is no right or wrong answers, whatever you put down will heighten your own self-awareness about who you are and how you work. As we often say, doing OD is doing life work. As we touch other living system, this living system (the self) will be revealed, made known, stretched, and give us more data on how to deploy ourselves in service of others.
Personal note from Dave and Mee Yan: It is important to say that because of the wide range of definitions of UoS from multiple disciplines, there are 137 items in this questionnaire. Please do not see your inability to answer all these items in the scale 3 or above as an indication that you are not a “super UoS hero”. These are descriptive items, and we will need to narrow them down conceptually within each of the clusters. By the way both of us – as we test drive this link we both found it challenging to answer all these items in positive way. We know the UoS is a life long journey.
Who are we looking for as suitable respondents of this research? Our criteria is simple – anyone who has 5 or more years of OD practice experience, internally or externally.
What do I have to do if I participate in the research? Two things: (1) agree to participate in this research by completing the Consent Form at the beginning of the questionnaire; (2) Click on the Link below to access the questionnaire to complete and submit (we estimate it would take 45-60 minutes). Please note that there is no option to save your answers and return to it later, so we recommend that you set aside some time to complete the survey in one attempt. If you have any trouble accessing the forward and back buttons on each page of the survey, please remember to CLEAR ALL COOKIES AND CACHE IN ANY BROWSER and device you use. It is recommended that you do this before you start the survey.
What would you get in return by participating in this research: You will…
a) Have contributed to the field’s understanding of this core concept of use of self,
b) Have helped to participate in a piece of important research when the field of OD has seen the decline of research
c) Receive the first draft of the research report, give us your feedback, and be able to mention your participation in this project.
d) Receive notice of the Second Phase of research on “the impact of the optimal Use of Self” and be able to volunteer to play a role in the design of that phase of the research.
Please would you help us to forward this invitation to any colleagues whom you feel might be interested. As long as they qualify and only answer once, we welcome their participation.
In Summary:
We appreciate your patience in having read this far. May we sincerely ask you to please join in this significant undertaking and take up to an hour to participate in this online questionnaire. We thank you in advance for doing this. We appreciate your returning your questionnaire by July 10, 2018 and do appreciate if you can submit earlier.
Professor David W. Jamieson.
jami1396@stthomas.edu
Dr L Mee-Yan Cheung-Judge BSc, MA, Ph.D. Dr Mee-Yan Cheung-Judge is known as a “scholar-educator-practitioner” in the field of Organisation Development. She has worked directly with a number of organisations across sectors, industry and global regions to deliver powerful transformational change, which is what she is known for. She led one of the world’s largest participatory change in BBC – involving 17,000 people to co-construct the future of BBC simultaneously; she has led major cultural change in a number of global pharmaceutical, retail, energy, media organisations. Mee-Yan was the lead consultant to transform the stateowned multi-media organisation in United Arabic Emirates over 24 months; for close to 4 years she was the senior international consultant to lead the State of Singapore in their nation -wide public service transformation programme (2012- 2016) Mee-Yan is a senior visiting Fellow of Roffey Park Management Institute, and the Singapore Civil Service College, a guest faculty on the Gestalt Certificate Programme in UK, and a faculty of the Duke University Executive Programme. She is a professional member of the NTL Institute, was a trustee on the Board of the ODNetwork in US. She founded the ODNetwork in Europe, which she remains as a special advisor. She started the NTL OD Certificate programme for Europe and had been the Dean of the programme for the first 10 cohort. She is the author of a number of OD articles, books and report and have been a member of the editorial board of the Journal of OD Practitioner since 2014. She was voted by UK HR Magazine as one of the top most influential thinker in the field of HR in 2008, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, and in September 2017 she was voted as number 2 most influential thinker in UK. She was the recipient of the Life Time Achievement Award by ODN in recognition of her outstanding contribution to the field of OD globally in 2013, and the Richard Beckhard Award by IODA – the International Organisation Development Association in 2016. Mee Yan is an experienced practitioner, a writer and an outstanding educator because of her passion to grow the talent pipeline of OD practitioners. People who knows her value her pragmatic and fun approach to practice OD.
David W. Jamieson, Ph.D. Dr. Jamieson is Associate Professor & Department Chair, Organization Learning & Development, College of Applied Professional Studies at the University of St. Thomas. He is also President of the Jamieson Consulting Group, Inc., Practicum Director in the M.S. in Organization Development Program at American University/NTL and a Distinguished Visiting Scholar in Benedictine’s Ph. D. in OD Program. He has 40 years of experience consulting to organizations on leadership, change, strategy, design and human resource issues. He is a Past National President of the American Society for Training and Development (1984), Past Chair of the management Consultation Division and Practice Theme Committee of the Academy of Management and currently serves as Education Liaison for the OD Network. Dave is co-author of Managing Workforce 2000: Gaining the Diversity Advantage (Jossey-Bass, 1991), co-author of The Facilitator’s Fieldbook, 2nd Edition (AMACOM, 2006) and co-author of Consultation for Organizational Change (IAP, 2010). In addition, he has published 11 chapters and
numerous articles in journals and newsletters. He serves as Editor of Practicing OD, an OD Network on-line journal; Associate Editor for the Reflections on Experience Section of the Journal of Management Inquiry and on the Editorial Boards for the Journal of Organization Change Management and The Organization Development Practitioner. Contact information: djamieson@stthomas.edu; Organization Learning & Development,
University of St Thomas, 1000 LaSalle Ave., Minneapolis, MN 55403; (310)-699-3060 (cell).
