In a company with 24 people, 2 owners, 2 teamleads
traditional leadership 1
- participants formed 4 groups & were being blindfolded
- leaders (4) were guiding the 4 groups by different means (voice, touch) - as collective & individually
participants supporting each other via holding & touch
competition 1
- participants formed 4 groups & lined up at different ends of two ropes
- participants start pulling trying to get each other over the middle
competition 2
- participants form pairs & stand facing each other, arms length apart
- participants push into each others hands trying to bring each other out of balance
reflection
- brief sharing of experiences in the pairs
- brief sharing of experiences in the whole group (what is the atmosphere in the room, how do we feel,...)
collaboration 1
- participants stand side to side
- participants lean against each other – sholder to sholder – sharing one center
collaboration 2
- participants walks, slightly falling to the side
- partner pushes back into horizontal
- participant slowly falls to other side
- partner pushes back into horizontal
- .....
collaboration 3
- participants jointly walk through the room - one is leading, the othere is following
- as 1 – with changed roles
- as 1 & 2 walking through the room without anybody leading
Collaboration 4
- pairs are being asigned numbers
- participants are being made aware of the other pairs in the room
- pairs are being made addressable - numbers are being called out with the "mandate" to "lead by example"
- other pairs are being invited to follow the example
- 1phase only one pair, over time 2,3,4 until all pairs were "leading by example" hence falling into group-score of distributed leadership
reflection with group
- participants part & share their experience
- group-exchange on experience (what is the atmosphere in the room, how do we feel,...)
- Overall reflection: what is the difference between the 2 modes? what does it require? what does it produce?
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my own reflection:
I have used this exercise in a leadership-training / a consultatin with a Software-Company aiming to evolve a more collaborative, cocreative distributed leadership. The aim of the exercise was to embody the differences between competition, traditional leadership, supportive leadership & distributed cocreation. It worked surprisingly well provided a lot of food for reflectionand opened up good discussion.