Phase 2. Building the Foundations
is about becoming more open to working together, building a shared understanding of the system, brokering agreement that business as usual is not enough to make large scale impact, and partnering with community as the foundation for change.
What you might see
- People have more confidence to create new ways of seeing the problem and potential solutions, based on their own knowledge and practices;
- Increased willingness to take risks;
- Leaders are starting to explore the multidimensional and interconnected nature of relevant issues;
- There is an openness to building something new together;
- The focus is on the technical work of change with emerging conversation on the adaptive work required;
- A ‘container’ for change being created allowing diverse agendas and power differences to be explored;
- A growing awareness of links and interdependencies;
- Work on building relationships being prioritised over immediate solution focus.
What you can do
- Convene existing, new and emerging leaders to explore common interests and goals;
- Frame the work as a learning process requiring working differently together;
- Understand the dynamics of change over the long term and surface the challenges that are likely to arise in advance;
- Recognise the likelihood of speed bumps. It will likely be a case of two steps forward, one step back;
- Develop an awareness of relationships, power, loyalties and potential gains and losses;
- Identify where authorisation needs to come from (who needs to endorse you and others to take action);
- Develop a shared language on complexity, collaboration and leadership;
- To begin ‘building the container’, work with community to agree on a definition of the challenge;
- Collectively agree on a process for creating a shared vision;
- Understand your own capacity to hold conflict and identify what’s required to expand your skills in this area
Leadership Tools & Resources
See our latest Facilitator Tools
Understand where your initiative is on the Collaborative Change Cycle
A worksheet from Diamond Leadership that helps in mapping your different types of power - personal and positional. Use this worksheet to identify and cultivate your specific base of power, so you can remain effective and resilient, regardless of the challenges you face.
Diamond Leadership
2. Building the FoundationsThis video discusses why the often counter-intuitive approach of actively seeking out difference is helpful in the context of cross-cultural partnering. Deep Collaboration is a way of working that was created by First Nations and other Multicultural Australians to find new ways to work and lead together.
Deep Collaboration
Shared principles around trust need to be explicit in this work. This video explores strategies for how you might create some shared principles together. Deep Collaboration is a way of working that was created by First Nations and other Multicultural Australians to find new ways to work and lead together.
Step 1 of Deep Colalboration outlines a process of how to explore if readiness to work differently is really there – being realistic about investments of time, energy, level of drive, urgency and courage. Deep Collaboration is a way of working that was created by First Nations and other Multicultural Australians to find new ways to work and lead together.
This tool will help you to map and interpret stakeholder dynamics in your initiative. This tool can be useful at the start of an initiative when you are working out the ‘lay of the land’, if things go wrong, if there is conflict, or if you are not making progress.
Downloadable pdf
This resource is a video of Liz Skelton discussing the key components of a holding environment, drawing on the analogy of a pressure cooker.
This resource describes Australia’s unique leadership culture and shows how leaders working in this context can support the change they want to see in the world.
This resource is a video of Liz Skelton unpacking the key concepts required for diagnosing and working with power, including changing our organisations’ relationship with power.
This resource helps practitioners to reflect on how ready or well positioned they are to work in an adaptive, systemic way.
Change Cycle Locator Tool
Take the quick survey to work out where you are on your change journey and access information specific to your needs