What can we uniquely do together, that we cannot do apart? Takeaways from Peter Hawkins.

Written By Amelia Lim

This week I met Professor Peter Hawkins, and am very fortunate to participate in various sessions he had with the OD Practitioners, Managers/Directors, Associate Facilitators & Coaches, and Learning Designers in the Singapore Public Service. I am super excited to share with you my learnings as I write and process them for myself!

Peter Hawkins with our Associate Facilitators and Coaches!

Some anchoring questions:

  • Future-back: What would the world look like when our grandchildren are in their 70s?

  • Purpose: What are the challenges that require you to mobilise people?

  • Partnership: What can we uniquely do together, that we cannot do apart?

  • What’s necessary: What does the rest of the world need from our relationship?

  • Teaming: What’s the new thinking we have created, that was in nobody’s head before we entered the room? (rather than exchanging pre-cooked thoughts)

“Never locate the problem in a person or part. Ask, what’s not yet in partnership?”

It’s easy to blame and individualize problems. It happens all the time in organizations, the media, or with our own families where we say, ‘the problem lies with them!’

‘We are still thinking that leadership resides in leaders.'

What we see in leadership development interventions is that it tends to focus on the individual, and here’s how it looks like: We recruit smart and capable individuals to the organisation, and when a problem happens, we send these individual leaders to a programme, focusing on increasing their capabilities. But when they return, problems still exist!

The challenge here lies in the connections between people, teams, organisations. Instead of sending these individuals to study past case studies and increase their individual capabilities at yesterday’s game - How can we bring the learning to where the problem is?

Here’s a process he ran. He got the people in a room to answer these:

  • ‘What are the 7 biggest challenges in the public sector?”

  • ‘Who would need to be in the room for these issues to change?’

What unites people is a purpose - what is needed to change, and what they have commonly identified as a challenge. If we don’t own the challenge together, we don’t own the solution.

Leadership resides in relationships between followers and leaders, guided by a common purpose. We tend to notice the parts, but not the connections. Also - It is the purpose which creates the team, not the other way round!

Bringing this closer to home - if you ever encounter a couple in conflict, don’t ask ‘what do you appreciate about each other?’ as you may get answers like, ‘i like it when she shuts up!’ Ask, ‘what does the relationship need?’ Coach the connection, not the parts!

What got you here won’t get you there: from thinking in parts to thinking about connections

A participant from the social sector shared about the issue of high attrition rates, where the outflow of talents is faster than the inflow. She asked, ‘How do we sustain our business, fast-track onboarding, and shorten the learning curve? How can we attract people who fit into our desired culture?’

Let us pause. What would you do if you were tasked to resolve this? Think about what needs to shift in you, in order to shift this connection you work with, to shift this issue.

We cannot solve the problem with the thinking that caused it. As coaches, facilitators - we don’t solve the problem, we open the perspective to how people think.

Peter asked, ‘Do we want to attract people who fit into our desired culture or people who will co-create the desired culture to be future-fit? How can we attract people who will co-create with us, in this world that is constantly changing?

When asked about how much research has the department done on why young people go into social work, the participant had responded that what sells is the mission - the social cause, but rarely do organisations engage and say to young people, we’ve got this great challenge, and we need your help!

That’s what I am energised by too! (Millenial voice agrees)

Another way to think about this is that the responsibility for the social welfare of people does not lie in just the few thousand staff working for the organisation. It actually lies in the 5 million citizens, doesn’t it! Do we not have the collective responsibility as citizens to take care of each other, even if it’s just our families? So Peter also challenged how could we better partner with the 5 million citizens in Singapore.

Leaders don’t have the solutions, nobody has it. They need to frame the collective challenges.

We tend to only enrol people when we roll out solutions. Say it’s a system change, or a mental health campaign - often people are tasked to carry out these functions. And they may not feel like they ‘own’ it.

No single person holds the solutions to the complex, multi-faceted challenges we face. So what happens if you’re the leader, and you don’t have all the answers? The responsibility of the leader is now to frame challenges clearly, given that they have more access to data from different levels of the system.

When challenges are well-framed, it creates a sense of urgency and mobilises people to work out these challenges together. If we don’t own the challenge together, we don’t own the solution.

Success is co-created. We can’t do it by ourselves.

Leaders need to acknowledge that they don’t have the solutions. It is a vulnerable ‘confession’. I reflect back on when I was leading a team, I didn’t know what to do to bring the team forward, and I REALLY didn’t like that helpless feeling of not knowing.

Sometimes the only thing we can do is to say, “I’ve no idea, but let us work it out together.”

When I hear this, I find this declaration empowering. It is powerful because it is a call for help, and an invitation to tap into our collective humanity - this is when partnership truly happens, both of us don’t know what the solution is, but both of us need each other. It strips away the position and titles and enables people to connect at a human level and bring in unique gifts and resources to the table.

From Learning design to Stakeholder-centric design

As programme designers, we often ask participants to fill in the feedback form at the end of the programme. What does this do? This ensures that the following cohort got what this cohort wanted! And it also encourages people to not be direct, to only give feedback at the end. Feedback should be given in the middle - where we work with participants to co-create value.

Peter suggests that one thing we can do is to contract upfront, “Don’t put anything on the feedback form you haven’t told me!”

It’s about dealing with what’s emerging in the room, and not the learning agenda. We can have the agenda planned beforehand, how can we ensure participants get the maximum learning?

Leadership Development is to awaken the learning hunger!

When we send people for programmes, are they hungry to learn? Or are they already stuffed and loaded? We often think that learning starts at the point of the programme, but it actually starts way before that. We need to create a learning hunger in participants.

So how can we do this? One way is to contract with participants prior to bring in the challenge in their organisation/community/own development that they are committed to resolving.

The quality of challenge defines the quality of learning.

Bringing the future-back. It’s all interconnected.

Peter is very adept at thinking on a long term horizon, and it makes me think about how my actions today will affect tomorrow’s generation, with a sense of urgency and care.

He got us to think, and emotionally step into 2040. What’s the stake I have in 2040? Think of someone young you care about, your children/grandchildren. How old are they now? 5? Have a picture of them with you. (this is the 13th Fairy empty chair technique)

What would the world look like when they are 28?

What would the world look like when they are in their 70s?

Though i don’t have any children (yet), I got a little emotional at this part, because what I saw was earthquakes, volcano eruptions and there was little sign of life. Like those dystopian sci-fi movie scenes, when Thanos snapped his fingers. I teared a little, my body felt heavy, and I felt sad, and a little helpless. I know that some of my friends don’t want to have children because they don’t want to bring them into a world that is fragmented and broken.

The intention of this activity is to get participants to connect to their hearts - what matters most to them - to know that they have a stake in this and their actions today will have a real impact on the next generation. Getting them to emotionally connect - What would you regret in two years’ time not having addressed today? What would you like to be able to tell your grandchildren about what you achieved?

We often think that these are just problems that are ‘out there’, but it is our human thinking that is the problem. e.g. climate crisis, as if the environment is the problem. The truth of the matter is that ecology is already in the room. We are part of many systems (family, community, culture, earth) and we are just not noticing it. We haven’t figured out how to live with nature in a win-win partnership.

Peter adds that when we want to reduce costs - an important question to ask would be, ‘Where do you want to move it (costs) to?’ We don’t reduce costs, we are just moving it to somewhere else (e.g. the environment, or the future).

What’s the new thinking we have created, that was in nobody’s head before we entered the room?

“Say that to my boss lah!” “We need to send them for training!” Peter calls this the BMW - Blame, Moan, Whine!

As I mentioned earlier, no single person holds the answer to the complex challenges we face today. But how impactful are these dialogues?

Here’s how Peter framed it: he got the tops and middles together, and their job is to shift each other’s thinking. And measure the number of mindset shifts we can make. Was reimagining this in the context of getting social sector orgs / profit organisations/ policy ministries together! Groups that need each other, and have no idea about how to resolve the challenge - to create the thinking space to work it out together.

He asked, “how impactful are our dialogues?” “How can we make it twice as impactful?” “How are we going to get 10x more value together?” That we have to work together to create a better strategy than what we each could come out with. It is about making them responsible for each other’s learning.

Ending Note

There’s just so much learning i’ve gained and i’ve did my best to summarise the most impactful ones here. I might do a second blog post so do keep a lookout! It may be on processes to facilitate social learning, 3 horizon thinking, tips for 360 debriefs, coaching tools.

Since you made it this far - i am curious, what was one key takeaway or shift that you got from reading this? More importantly, what is one thing you would do differently tomorrow?

I will be very happy to hear from you! If you have any questions or would like to chat more (or form learning circles!), please connect with me via telegram @ameliaaalim :) You can also reach out to me here.

For the like-minded nerds (if you read till here, you probably are one) - find Peter’s book recommendations here:

PS. Coaching Hacks: Ran out of questions? Try these one-word Interventions.

Peter shared that coaches are used to asking questions as an intervention, so he suggested these one-word interventions:

Case 1: Coachee: “We need better communication!”

Coach: “We need better communication with?”

Case 2: Coachee: “We need more trust!”

Coach: “We need more trust to do…?”

Case 3: “The leader doesn’t listen to me!”

Coach: “The leader doesn’t listen to me about?”

Coach: “The leader doesn’t listen to me… yet!”

‘Yet’ - the one-word reframe: You haven’t found a way to get heard.

Amelia Lim
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