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Coaching leaders for community building

A well known regional organisation is going through a major leadership transition process at the Executive Director level. The change itself is quite sudden, instigated by a resignation at the end of 2009. Naturally, the organisation is experiencing much uncertainty and, given a number of organisational questions that have prevailed for some time, relationships have deteriorated and collaborative work has become severely strained. At the point that EASUN was called in to design an intervention in January 2010, relationships and team work were being fronted as the questions to be addressed.

Of course, it was probably more complex than that - many unresolved issues were combining to negatively affect the morale and any sense of optimism for both staff and board members. Returning to productive relationships was clearly going to require changed organisational practices in which people engage differently at the various levels of systems and organisational culture. In that context, a team building intervention seemed to be an important process to help the organisation identify their real questions and commit to creating new processes of "meaning-making" and development.

The point of these short notes, however, is to highlight specific challenges and prevailing tensions within the organisation at the time of contracting for the intervention; namely:

• The perception of "crisis" as fixed reality caused the assumption that OD experts from EASUN would adequately fix "bad relationships" in a one day team building process;
• Apparent panic caused the client to offer very little time for the consultant to engage the staff in a process of motivating them to come into the team building exercise as a development process for the organisation.

It seemed characteristic of a panic-driven reaction that only 60% of staff made themselves available for initial discussions with the consultant. Those who were not available for these discussions also did not attend the team-building workshop. This is a particularly challenging situation for a consultant given the understanding that a change process is more likely to be successful when it is organisation-wide (i.e. helping to change organisational consciousness toward achieving common ground). It was a difficult decision to make whether to undertake an intervention that, from a classical OD point of view, seemed doomed to fail because of the likely resistance of those whose concerns in the internal power plays would not have been addressed.

The leadership link

Many of the so-called problems in organisations are really questions related to their ability to function well as communities. The core task of leadership is to build communities that work effectively to achieve common purpose. Any intervention for change, therefore, needs to include building the leader's capacity to initiate or facilitate processes that increase members' ability to sustain collaboration as a way of performing tasks and meaning-making.

In the case of the organisation above, for instance, one recommendation from the team building intervention was "to change our strategy so that it may fit our structure." Structure here is clearly perceived to be the legitimate basis for the organisation's existence and the essential level where the organisation makes or sees meaning. Many OD practitioners would probably chime-in here that this organisation requires a change of mindset to embrace the conventional wisdom that "form follows function". Coaching thus becomes necessary, to build the leader's skills and capacity to initiate processes that emphasise organisational learning and strategy-making as opportunities to sustain institutional identity and the achievement of common purpose.

The overall objective of OD interventions as performed by EASUN is to support civil society organisations (CSOs) to sustain conscious management of systems that foster participatory democracy through inclusive processes of learning and shared leadership. It was particularly significant, therefore, that the second recommendation put forward by the organisation above was to immediately establish a system that will regularly bring staff members together into integrated processes of ongoing team learning, shared accountability and meaning-making of organisational questions that emerge from time to time.

For more information or a discussion on specific issues above, contact: mosi.kisare@easun-tz.org
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Apply NOW to build your skills in FOD!

EASUN is now taking applications for cycle "N" of its Facilitating Organisation Development (FOD) course. Apply now to ensure your place! Only 20 individuals are admitted in each cycle. The first module of the course will be held from 14-20th August 2010. Modules 2 and 3 will be held in November 2010 and March 2011 respectively, in Moshi, Tanzania.

FOD is designed for CSO heads and senior programme staff. Participants have, in the past, come from Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Ethiopia, Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia, Rwanda and South Africa. The training is run in English only.

For more information and application procedures, contact: alando.anyona@easun-tz.org
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Professional development opportunity for young women leaders

EASUN is announcing an opening in its Internship Programme for Young Women Leaders. The new intake is slated for 1st March 2010 and will run for 2 years till 29th February 2012. Professional development will include training in Facilitating Organisational Development (FOD), programme planning and coordination, as well as a wide range of skills in facilitative leadership of organisations and development activities. Young women throughout East Africa are encouraged to apply and benefit from the unique and rare opportunity to develop leadership skills in a consciously managed learning organisation. EASUN is the leading OD training institution in East Africa.

Applicants must be between 25 and 35 years old and have at least a Bachelors degree. Send your application by e-mail to the EASUN Executive Director: mosi.kisare@easun-tz.org. Please also send a signed hard copy of your application by post. Include names, addresses and telephone numbers of two referees, and ask these individuals to send recommendation letters directly to the Executive Director.

The deadline for applications is February 18, 2010.
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Profile of a humanistic development practice in East Africa

The last three months of October to December 2009 demonstrated more than the usual demand for EASUN's services to CSOs in East Africa. Some of the activities undertaken during this time were reported in our eNews of January 2010, where we made reference to "critical interventions" and specific processes that brought about new perspectives or changed mindsets in the management and governance practices of supported organisations.

During the first week of February 2010, we brought our field experiences into the EASUN learning site, i.e., for our own reflection and deepening on emerging issues and insights. We noted that the relevance of EASUN's services to CSOs is especially felt in the nature of our interventions, which build organisations as learning communities of practice. For instance:

• We have supported organisations to build leadership capacities that equip them with practices that promote innovation, creativity and working collaboratively without the attrition of conflict;
• We have supported organisations and individuals to expand their capacities for active listening, dialogue and openness in team learning situations, which strengthened their conscious management of common purpose.

As we shared and reflected on our recent activities, we assessed how the organisations we supported were able to benefit by taking ownership of their development endeavours. This was achieved through deepening understanding of the processes and tools we normally use to facilitate other organisations and individuals to engage effectively in inquiring about their development questions and opportunities.

Many OD practitioners today feel pressured by the more technocratically oriented need to package results as justification for investing resources in capacity building work. In EASUN's approach, the relevant result in any development effort is the sustained engagement and leadership of communities themselves in identifying their questions and opportunities for development, which support creativity and generates the commitment to innovate. In terms of external interventions in local development efforts, only consciously and skilfully facilitated processes of empowerment can achieve this result.

EASUN offers CSO leaders and organisations opportunities for transforming their own processes of engagement through both direct OD interventions and leadership skills training in facilitating organisation development.

For OD interventions, including construction of "learning sites", contact: atieno.olwal@easun-tz.org
For training (see FOD advert above), contact: alando.anyona@easun-tz.org
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This newsshot is also available at: www.easun-tz.org/enews/newsshot_11february2010.html

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EASUN Centre for Organisational Learning
P.O. Box 6120 Arusha, Tanzania
Tel: +255-(0)27-2548803
Fax +255-(0)27-2548289
info@easun-tz.org
www.easun-tz.org
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