On Wednesday this week, November 25, an idea that had been bubbling away for quite a few years, came to fruition. Instead of just thinking about it, earlier this year, I decided to organise an unconference to discuss changes in leadership.
As I have mentioned in previous posts, an unconference is a free ranging participant led discussion. I canvassed participants prior to the event and received a range of things they would like to discuss. From that I developed four themes, much like a regular conference. The themes were: Leading in a Changing World, Leading for Diversity, Being a Leader and Developing Leaders.
I set four starter questions per theme and we had four rounds of discussion to generate another level of questions to tease out a bit more. We then spent the afternoon discussing those and coming up with some more ideas, answers and concerns.
The final 16 questions were:
Leading in a Changing World
- How do you lead others in a changing world when you are not being led?
- How can we evolve in a changing world without losing who we are?
- How do we use the lessons of the government leadership during Covid going forward?
- Is the future that you envision one that you hope to bring to life?
Leading for Diversity
- How can we make diversity more than a box ticking exercise?
- How do we develop leaders to embrace cultural diversity?
- A need for change- what is the cost? How can we create the change?
- How do we create an environment for all to flourish?
Being a Leader
- How has leadership changed in a post-covid world where people are working separately?
- How do you create change?
- How do you balance your own personal success and the required success of your organisational measures?
- How do we honestly, fearlessly and accurately assess our own performance in order to continuously evolve?
Developing Leaders
- Who in your field would you mentor? Who is your successor?
- How do we sell being a leader?
- How do we find and support the hotspots where future leaders develop their voice?
- How do we create a culture where mistakes are OK?
Over the coming week I will be pulling together the outcomes from these discussions for the participants to reflect on.
The unconference was a success, it was the first one and there are areas to improve on, but the experience was great and I will definitely be organising some more.
