Kia ora
The 2020 election season got into full swing in October. Thankfully it's almost over. Hilary's latest blogs reflect on why we should feel sorry for politicians and pulls leadership lessons from several campaign trails.
This year has been unpredictable in many ways. But we're keeping some traditions: Hilary will do her end-of-year Tea & Toast, reflecting on Aotearoa New Zealand politics and the public sector. Needless to say there's a lot to talk about. She has some facts, some analysis, some humour, and some predictions for next year.
Can you believe we're talking about the end of 2020 already? We're running a December cohort of KickStart to Leadership! The December wind-down is a perfect time to upskill yourself, your people, and your teams. Dates and more information can be found below.
Join us next week at St. Andrew's for our first in-person Tea & Toast since March! Kristen tackles a problem that's all too familiar: silos. We know it's a problem, so what can we do about it?
And we have more resource recommendations: Dinah shares the logic of rage, Kristen reflects on better ways to collaborate, and Hilary highlights the power of asking what if?
Ngā mihi
The Training Practice team - Hilary, Dinah, Kristen, Sydney, and Jackson
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Kristen explores a topic that's been around for generations: silos.
Silos damage our workplaces. And yet, they're incredibly difficult to get rid of. Why? And what can we do about it?
When: Friday 13 November, 8.00am to 9.00pm
Where: St Andrew's Conference Centre on the Terrace
Cost: Free. Tea & toast (and coffee) provided
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A look back on Aotearoa politics, the public sector in 2020 and what lies ahead
Join us for a round up of local and central government politics and sector changes and challenges. There's been plenty happening, so we'll have no shortage of facts, figures, analysis and future issues to digest.
When: Friday 11 December, 8.00am to 9.00pm
Where: St Andrew's Hall on the Terrace
Cost: Free. Tea & toast (and coffee) provided
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KickStart to Leadership
We're offering KickStart to Leadership as an online programme in December. The winddown to Christmas is the perfect time to upskill and focus on leadership development.
The programme runs over four half-day modules on 2, 4, 9 and 11 December. Sign up now to reserve your spot.
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Why you should feel sorry for politicians
When we think of politicians, our first emotion might not be sympathy.
But Hilary reminds us of another perspective. And the "huge cauldron of steaming ambiguity" that politicians find themselves in.
There's also the endless paradox of trying to solve complex issues, but having to sell the solution in bite-sized, media-polished, one-liners.
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If you've ever worked with (or spoken to) Hilary, you know politics and how government works gets her going.
A necessary part of politics? Campaigning.
Whether you're campaigning to be Prime Minister or leading a team at work, it's all emotion, emotion, emotion.
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It only took one 30-minute workout for this 2002 MVP to remember the importance of testing assumptions. The result was a few days of sore and tender muscles.
At work, poor and ill-tested assumptions can be much more costly. They can stop our processes and systems from being as match-fit as our goals are, resulting in a mismatch between what you want to happen and what is actually possible.
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Our recommendations
We pull inspiration for new thinking, directions, and futures from an array of places. This month we've been moved by emotion, politics, and collaboration.
Dinah listened to an episode of the Hidden Brain podcast, The Logic of Rage. This starts with stories of mild-mannered people who were provoked to rage by physical threats and survived to tell their stories. It looks at the brain's pathway to rage, how it bypasses conscious thought. From there, it considers rage as a tool for influencing social and political change.
"Getting angry can be an effective means of changing other people's behaviour." Dinah is unlikely to be suggesting rage as a go-to strategy, but is thinking about how to target it as a tool to influence others.
Kristen listened to an episode of CBO Speaks: Collaboration and Breaking Down Campus Silos with Northwestern University's Nim Chinniah. Chinniah offers practical ways that people can shift their mindset and ways of working to collaborate better and break down silos.
He also notes basic skillsets today are shifting: "You've got to be an effective communicator, you've got to be able to convene people and use the power of influence rather than the power of status or role or title."
Of course, if you want to hear more about this - we'll see you at Tea & Toast next week!
Hilary is busy as usual. She's reading Prime Minister Corbyn and other things that never happened and she watched Sliding Doors, a 1998 film starring Gwyneth Paltrow. What's the connection? It's: what if?
In the case of the film, what if the main character caught a train or missed it? Her future is different depending on whether she jumped on the train at the last minute or the doors closed and she's left on the platform.
The book asks questions like: What if Britain had lost the Falklands War? What if Primakov, not Putin, had become Russian President in 2000? What if Lyndon Johnson had been shot down in 1942? Many of the other what ifs are British as it's a British book. And it's fascinating, because they're essentially stories about other possible (very possible) scenarios, none of which happened.
That's why what if thinking is so valuable for anyone in organisations looking back and, more to the point, looking forward. Future-looking scenarios are stories about what might happen if we take certain decisions today. They expand our thinking and encourage us to think differently.
And by the way, one of the what ifs is What if Boris Johnson became Prime Minister after the European Referendum. Ouch! Clearly in 2016, this was no more than one possible future. Watch out - one of your unlikely future scenarios may play out to become reality.
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