Reos Institute Series

The Art of Participatory Leadership, October 20-22, 2010

The Art of Participatory Leadership

Are you asking yourself

• How can I create authentic involvement in my organisation, group or association that leads to wise and sustainable action?

• How can I create full ownership of the learning and action with people I work with?

• How can I develop confidence in working with the chaos often experienced in groups?

If you find any of these questions relevant then this training is for you and your team.

The Art of Participatory Leadership is a participative training experience for all those who aspire to learn how to work with groups, committees, teams and communities in more interactive, engaging and effective ways: Ways that nurture personal leadership, collective intelligence, shared learning and effective action fit for our times.

This training is built on the assumption – and experience – that change for the common good calls for personal involvement, collective wisdom and co-creation to discover new solutions. People who are involved and invited to work together will take ownership and responsibility for action.

We invite leaders, facilitators, trainers, teachers, consultants, politicians, entrepreneurs, social innovators, community workers – anyone who wants to experience a different perspective of leadership, which sets free people’s creativity and intelligence in order to achieve better cooperation and results together.

R E O S PA R T N E R S i s a n international organisation dedicated to supporting and b u i l d i n g c a p a c i t y f o r innovative collective action in complex social systems. We organise, design and facilitate r e s u l t s - o r i e n t e d m u l t i -stakeholder change processes with business, government and civil society organisations. Our name comes from the Greek “rheos,” which means flow or stream.

The Art of Part ic ipat ive Leadership is a residential workshop at Heia Safari.

We begin on the 20th of October at 9 am and end on the 22nd of October at 4 pm.

Cost: Corporate rate: 7000 ZAR+ vatNGO Rate: 6000 ZAR + vat

R e g i s t r a t i o n : e m a i l ndlanzi@reospartners.com for registration details

How do we foster collective wisdom and wise action for positive change in South African organisations and communities?

Reos Institute Series

The Art of Participatory Leadership, October 20-22, 2010

The training will provide an opportunity to learn how to:

• Design and lead conversations and meetings that result in clear thinking, intelligent solutions and group coherence

• Host meaningful conversations as a core leadership practice and skill set for leading change

• Initiate interactive processes to generate fresh thinking, restore trust and create shared commitment to wiser action

• Work with new, effective and healthy patterns and tools for organising, interacting and innovating

This workshop is specifically targeting teams from organizations or change initiatives who wish to apply the lessons directly in their own organization or endeavours. Three-five people per organisation will enable the application of these tools in your work – developing your organizational skills and practices well beyond this workshop.

So collect your ideas, your plans and your team – who could be the most stimulating conversation and collaboration partners and who would you like supporting you? Invite them to join you and create the community to bring your projects to life in service of your community!

The Art of Participative Leadership practices are different and complementary to more traditional ways of working that are based on rational planning. Instead, this interactive training provides the basic theory and practices of specific tools to live and work in the creative tension between chaos and order – with just enough chaos to make the creation of newness possible and just enough order to bring the ideas into wise action. We call this the Chaordic Field, where learning and innovation take place and where wise and sustainable change can be discovered.

How the training will work:

• Our learning will grow out of participant contributions and presence – we will support each other as co-learners.

• We will learn by observation, experience and practice, using interactive processes to build a safe and inspiring learning environment

• We will explore and practice the approaches of Open Space Technology, Appreciative Inquiry, Circle work, World Café, storytelling and other participatory methodologies.

• We will step boldly in to experiment and apply these tools to your own projects-in-progress, as well as develop and continue a new practice that

“Imagine... a meeting of 60 people, where in an hour you would have heard everyone and at the end you would have precisely identified the 5 most important points that people are willing to act on together.”

European commission officials after having practiced the Art of Participative Leadership together

Other Upcoming Events:19 – 20 August: Embodying Power & Love: Two Essentials for Effective Leadership

16 – 17 September: The Leader in Social Change: A Personal Leadership InquiryNovember (TBA): Systems Thinking and Social Change

Email ndlanzi@reospartners.com for more details

Context and process

Reos Institute Series

The Art of Participative Leadership, October 20-22nd, 2010

Toke Moeller, Interchange For over 30 years I have organised, designed and hosted inspired spaces - dialogues, strategic change processes, learning conferences, circle councils, networked organisations and communities of practice - in support of life-affirming leadership, interactive learning, organisational and social, transformation and self-organisation. Former Chair of the Board of the Danish Entrepreneurs Association, long-time professional conference organiser (PCO) and process host. In the past 7 years I have worked with longer, in depth, engagement processes and participatory leadership training, supporting changing the civic conversations for large-scale transformation in systems in Denmark, England, USA and Canada, as well as in the European Commission. I practice the Art of Self Knowledge, Meditation, Aikido Warrior of the Heart, the flow game and the Art of Hosting. I work where-ever people and leaders are sincerely calling for help with their transformations, personal as well as organizationally.

Vanessa Sayers, MPA, Reos Partners

I am committed to designing and practicing work that integrates mind and heart, supporting people across sectors to move beyond the familiar into new possibilities. I am currently working with business, government and non-profit partners in two projects focused on addressing the challenges of children in difficult circumstances at national and community level, while concurrently developing new partnership projects related to the environment and climate change.

My professional and educational background is diverse, with an undergraduate degree in Politics, Philosophy and Economics from Oxford (1990) and a Masters in Public Administration from the Harvard Kennedy School (1998). I have worked in the Netherlands and Ethiopia on multi-stakeholder rehabilitation, development and civil society promotion programmes driven by local actors. There I saw the power and need for community processes that are designed to address what local people identify to be their priorities. In 2001, I joined FirstRand Group, a major South African financial services company, to design new approaches to financing previously disadvantaged entrepreneurs and later to promote sustainable business practices across the Group. Before this I worked in McKinsey.

My experience in these very different worlds revealed the challenges of trying to create change in large complex systems of all kinds and the need for approaches that directly address systemic issues.

Marianne Knuth, Msc, Founding Partner, Reos Partners

I am a facilitator of individual and group learning and co-creation. I am passionate about the often untapped potential of individuals and groups. This passion led me to found Kufunda Learning Village in Zimbabwe to support rural communities develop locally rooted solutions to community self-reliance challenges. Before that I co-founded Pioneers of Change - a global learning network of young change agents. More recently my work has led me to design and facilitate multi- stakeholder dialogue and action around the challenge orphans and vulnerable children to develop innovative solutions to better serve the children. Throughout - my work has been about enabling people to engage in meaningful conversations in order to find the best way forward.I have been a part of the faculty of the Shambhala Institute in Canada for several years, and have facilitated change processes and workshops for clients such as the Centre for Disease Control in Zimbabwe, the Nelson Mandela Foundation, UNISA (University of South Africa), and the Gordon Institute of Business Sciences in South Africa. For my work in Zimbabwe I was elected an Ashoka Fellow in 2004, and a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum in 2009.

Joining us from Denmark: