Chris Nichols and Philippa Hardman offer some reflections on a conversation with Dr Sybille Shiffmann & John Higgins
We have a bias towards participatory working in strategy and change. It’s been our action research focus for two decades. We are so committed to making participation work that we formed a collaborative consulting firm that helps organisations to do it better.
We have worked on participatory strategy projects in many countries and across diverse sectors. We have supported leadership teams that have worked hard to create participative approaches and have dug deep to make it happen. We have seen some committed and wonderful work. And we have sometimes been disappointed. Sometimes the participatory intent has stumbled and something “smaller” and more conventionally power-centric has re-established itself.
That’s why we were delighted to host Dr Sybille Shiffmann in our most recent pop-up event. Sybille has just completed her PhD, exploring a multi-year in-person deep-dive into one organisation’s journey into participative strategy and change. Sybille was in conversation with John Higgins, our GameShift research fellow and author of a significant body of work on power, voice and participation. It was wonderful to have the chance to explore this recent doctoral research in a field so close to our heartland.
The timing felt particularly appropriate given recent events in the US, where Google chose to sack a number of staff who’d staged a “sit-in”. Quoted in the media, John said “Everyone has been talking about dialogue in organisations for decades, but that (the Google case) isn’t dialogue, that’s straight power play … where will this end?”.
There does seem to be a sense of a turn of the dial, away from the power of distributed voices through participation, and back towards the power of the centre. We have sometimes been left wondering, are we seeing a deep enough impact in participative work? Or is it all at best fragile, and at worst a cynical and superficial form of “engagement”?
Sybille’s work is a rigorous and magisterial exploration of the glorious and gritty reality of what it takes to make participation work. She didn’t come to sell anyone a fantasy or panacea. Instead, she talked about the courage and commitment needed to sustain a participative approach over many years. We are certainly not going to attempt a summary of her doctoral work in this blog, but we do recommend viewing the recording below of John and Sybille’s conversation.
For us what leaps out is that success in participative working requires an investment of courage, identity, and consistent effort over time. Sybille told a story that featured a a committed leader and her Group Senior Management Team, consistently sustaining the development of a new leadership identity from her senior team. This was a case where there was a massive investment in the “inner work” needed to move from central power and projected certainty, into the messier world of deeper inquiring and co-creation. The shift rested on developing a “relational” approach to leading, with its roots in a feminist leadership framing that has become increasingly mainstream in the literature but is harder to see rigorously in practice. This focused and determined application to hard learning and inner work probably makes real participation a selective endeavour, always dependent on there being sufficient top level support to make the investment and support the journey. In the case of Sybille’s housing organisation, the CEO and the Board were fully behind the approach. A lesser commitment, or a change of top leaders could easily cause things to go another way.
It was a privilege to be part of the conversation. We are grateful to John and Sybille for the skill in steering us through the complexities of the story in our brief session. Sybille is willing to be contacted by anyone wanting to know more, and you can contact her with her details below. She has also provided links to her references below.
Sybille can be contacted on: Sybille@deostara.co.uk and her LinkedIn profile can be found here.
Finally, there is the link to the web site that supports the doctoral thesis and where a copy of the Learning History that was created for the Housing Association may be found. Here is the direct link to the Learning History that was produced for this Housing Association.
Here are some relevant reference related other some core frameworks and models Sybille used and referred to:
Fletcher, J. (2012) ‘The relational practice of leadership.’, in Uhl-Bien, M.a.O., S. (ed.) Advancing relational leadership research: A dialogue among perspectives. Greenwich, CT: Information Age Publishing, pp. 83-106.
Fletcher, J., K and Ragins, B., R (2007) ‘Stone Center Relational Cultural Theory
A Window on Relational Mentoring’, in Ragins, B., R and Kram, K., E (eds.) The handbook of mentoring at Work: Theory, research and practice. Los Angeles, CA: SAGE, pp. 373-399.
Fletcher, J. and Kaufer, K. (2002) ‘Shared leadership:paradox and possibility. ‘, in Pearce, C.L. and Conger, J.A. (eds.) Shared Leadership: Reframing the Hows and Whys of Leadership. Thousand Oaks, C.A: Sage Publications, pp. 21-47.